title: Joe Louis

text: His recognition also transcends the sporting world. In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Joe Louis on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans. On August 26, 1982, Louis was posthumously approved for the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest award given to civilians by the U.S. legislative branch. Congress stated that he "did so much to bolster the spirit of the American people during one of the most crucial times in American history and which have endured throughout the years as a symbol of strength for the nation". Following Louis's death, President Ronald Reagan said, "Joe Louis was more than a sports legend—his career was an indictment of racial bigotry and a source of pride and inspiration to millions of white and black people around the world."


title: Joe Louis

text: A memorial to Louis was dedicated in Detroit (at Jefferson Avenue and Woodward) on October 16, 1986. The sculpture, commissioned by Time, Inc. and executed by Robert Graham, is a arm with a fisted hand suspended by a pyramidal framework. It represents the power of his punch both inside and outside the ring.


title: Joe Louis

text: In an interview with Arsenio Hall in the late 1980s, former heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali stated that his two biggest influences in boxing were Sugar Ray Robinson and Joe Louis.


title: Joe Louis

text: On February 27, 2010, an bronze statue of Louis was unveiled in his Alabama hometown. The statue, by sculptor Casey Downing, Jr., sits on a base of red granite outside the Chambers County Courthouse.


title: Joe Louis

text: In 1993, he became the first boxer to be honored on a postage stamp issued by the U.S. Postal Service.


title: Joe Louis

text: Various other facilities have been named after Joe Louis. In 1984, the four streets surrounding Madison Square Garden were named Joe Louis Plaza in his honor. The former Pipe O' Peace Golf Course in Riverdale, Illinois (a Chicago suburb), was in 1986 renamed "Joe Louis The Champ Golf Course". American Legion Post 375 in Detroit is also named after Joe Louis. Completed in 1979 at a cost of $4 million, Joe Louis Arena, nicknamed The Joe, was a hockey arena located in downtown Detroit. It was the home of the Detroit Red Wings of the National Hockey League from 1979 until 2017. The planned demolition of the Arena prompted the City of Detroit in 2017 to rename the Inner Circle Greenway as the Joe Louis Greenway. When completed, this biking and walking trail will pass through the cities of Detroit, Hamtramck, Highland Park, and Dearborn.


title: Joe Louis

text: In one of the most widely quoted tributes to Louis, "New York Post" sportswriter Jimmy Cannon, when responding to another person's characterization of Louis as "a credit to his race", stated, "Yes, Joe Louis is a credit to his race—the human race."


title: Joe Louis

text: Joe Louis trained at the site of the Pompton Lakes (NJ) Elks Club. When he won one of his fights, he donated the first ambulance to the Pompton Lakes First Aid Squad.


title: Indian Ocean

text: The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by the Southern Ocean or Antarctica, depending on the definition in use. Along its core, the Indian Ocean has some large marginal or regional seas such as the Arabian Sea, Laccadive Sea, Bay of Bengal, and Andaman Sea.


title: Indian Ocean

text: The Indian Ocean has been known by its present name since at least 1515 when the Latin form "Oceanus Orientalis Indicus" ("Indian Eastern Ocean") is attested, named after India, which projects into it. It was earlier known as the "Eastern Ocean", a term that was still in use during the mid-18th century (see map), as opposed to the "Western Ocean" (Atlantic) before the Pacific was surmised.


title: Indian Ocean

text: Conversely, Chinese explorers in the Indian Ocean during the 15th century called it the Western Oceans.


title: Indian Ocean

text: In Ancient Greek geography, the Indian Ocean region known to the Greeks was called the Erythraean Sea.


title: Indian Ocean

text: The borders of the Indian Ocean, as delineated by the International Hydrographic Organization in 1953 included the Southern Ocean but not the marginal seas along the northern rim, but in 2000 the IHO delimited the Southern Ocean separately, which removed waters south of 60°S from the Indian Ocean but included the northern marginal seas. Meridionally, the Indian Ocean is delimited from the Atlantic Ocean by the 20° east meridian, running south from Cape Agulhas, and from the Pacific Ocean by the meridian of 146°49'E, running south from the southernmost point of Tasmania. The northernmost extent of the Indian Ocean (including marginal seas) is approximately 30° north in the Persian Gulf.


title: Indian Ocean

text: The Indian Ocean covers , including the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf but excluding the Southern Ocean, or 19.5% of the world's oceans; its volume is or 19.8% of the world's oceans' volume; it has an average depth of and a maximum depth of .


title: Indian Ocean

text: All of the Indian Ocean is in the Eastern Hemisphere and the centre of the Eastern Hemisphere, the 90th meridian east, passes through the Ninety East Ridge.


title: Indian Ocean

text: In contrast to the Atlantic and Pacific, the Indian Ocean is enclosed by major landmasses and an archipelago on three sides and does not stretch from pole to pole, and can be likened to an embayed ocean. It is centered on the Indian Peninsula. Although this subcontinent has played a significant role in its history, the Indian Ocean has foremostly been a cosmopolitan stage, interlinking diverse regions by innovations, trade, and religion since early in human history.


title: Indian Ocean

text: The active margins of the Indian Ocean have an average depth (land to shelf break) of with a maximum depth of . The passive margins have an average depth of .


title: Indian Ocean

text: The average width of the slopes of the continental shelves are for active and passive margins respectively, with a maximum depth of .


title: Indian Ocean

text: In correspondence of the Shelf break, also known as Hinge zone, the Bouguer gravity ranges from 0 to 30 mGals that is unusual for a continental region of around 16 km thick sediments. It has been hypothesized that the "Hinge zone may represent the relict of continental and proto-oceanic crustal boundary formed during the rifting of India from Antarctica."


title: Indian Ocean

text: Australia, Indonesia, and India are the three countries with the longest shorelines and exclusive economic zones. The continental shelf makes up 15% of the Indian Ocean.


title: Indian Ocean

text: More than two billion people live in countries bordering the Indian Ocean, compared to 1.7 billion for the Atlantic and 2.7 billion for the Pacific (some countries border more than one ocean).


title: Indian Ocean

text: The Indian Ocean drainage basin covers , virtually identical to that of the Pacific Ocean and half that of the Atlantic basin, or 30% of its ocean surface (compared to 15% for the Pacific). The Indian Ocean drainage basin is divided into roughly 800 individual basins, half that of the Pacific, of which 50% are located in Asia, 30% in Africa, and 20% in Australasia. The rivers of the Indian Ocean are shorter on average () than those of the other major oceans. The largest rivers are (order 5) the Zambezi, Ganges-Brahmaputra, Indus, Jubba, and Murray rivers and (order 4) the Shatt al-Arab, Wadi Ad Dawasir (a dried-out river system on the Arabian Peninsula) and Limpopo rivers.


title: Indian Ocean

text: After the breakup of East Gondwana and the formation of the Himalayas, the Ganges-Brahmaputra rivers flow into the world's largest delta known as the Bengal delta or Sunderbans.


title: Indian Ocean

text: Along the east coast of Africa, the Mozambique Channel separates Madagascar from mainland Africa, while the Sea of Zanj is located north of Madagascar.


title: Indian Ocean

text: On the northern coast of the Arabian Sea, Gulf of Aden is connected to the Red Sea by the strait of Bab-el-Mandeb. In the Gulf of Aden, the Gulf of Tadjoura is located in Djibouti and the Guardafui Channel separates Socotra island from the Horn of Africa. The northern end of the Red Sea terminates in the Gulf of Aqaba and Gulf of Suez. The Indian Ocean is artificially connected to the Mediterranean Sea without ship lock through the Suez Canal, which is accessible via the Red Sea.


title: Indian Ocean

text: The Arabian Sea is connected to the Persian Gulf by the Gulf of Oman and the Strait of Hormuz. In the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Bahrain separates Qatar from the Arabic Peninsula.


title: Indian Ocean

text: Along the west coast of India, the Gulf of Kutch and Gulf of Khambat are located in Gujarat in the northern end while the Laccadive Sea separates the Maldives from the southern tip of India.


title: Indian Ocean

text: The Bay of Bengal is off the east coast of India. The Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait separates Sri Lanka from India, while the Adam's Bridge separates the two. The Andaman Sea is located between the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Islands.


title: Indian Ocean

text: The Gulf of Carpentaria of located on the Australian north coast while the Great Australian Bight constitutes a large part of its southern coast.


title: Indian Ocean

text: Several features make the Indian Ocean unique. It constitutes the core of the large-scale Tropical Warm Pool which, when interacting with the atmosphere, affects the climate both regionally and globally. Asia blocks heat export and prevents the ventilation of the Indian Ocean thermocline. That continent also drives the Indian Ocean monsoon, the strongest on Earth, which causes large-scale seasonal variations in ocean currents, including the reversal of the Somali Current and Indian Monsoon Current. Because of the Indian Ocean Walker circulation there are no continuous equatorial easterlies. Upwelling occurs near the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula in the Northern Hemisphere and north of the trade winds in the Southern Hemisphere. The Indonesian Throughflow is a unique Equatorial connection to the Pacific.


title: Indian Ocean

text: The climate north of the equator is affected by a monsoon climate. Strong north-east winds blow from October until April; from May until October south and west winds prevail. In the Arabian Sea, the violent Monsoon brings rain to the Indian subcontinent. In the southern hemisphere, the winds are generally milder, but summer storms near Mauritius can be severe. When the monsoon winds change, cyclones sometimes strike the shores of the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal.


title: Indian Ocean

text: Some 80% of the total annual rainfall in India occurs during summer and the region is so dependent on this rainfall that many civilisations perished when the Monsoon failed in the past. The huge variability in the Indian Summer Monsoon has also occurred pre-historically, with a strong, wet phase 33,500–32,500 BP; a weak, dry phase 26,000–23,500 BC; and a very weak phase 17,000–15,000 BP,


title: Indian Ocean

text: The Indian Ocean is the warmest ocean in the world. Long-term ocean temperature records show a rapid, continuous warming in the Indian Ocean, at about (compared to for the warm pool region) during 1901–2012. Research indicates that human induced greenhouse warming, and changes in the frequency and magnitude of El Niño (or the Indian Ocean Dipole), events are a trigger to this strong warming in the Indian Ocean.


title: Indian Ocean

text: South of the Equator (20–5°S), the Indian Ocean is gaining heat from June to October, during the austral winter, while it is losing heat from November to March, during the austral summer.


title: Indian Ocean

text: In 1999, the Indian Ocean Experiment showed that fossil fuel and biomass burning in South and Southeast Asia caused air pollution (also known as the Asian brown cloud) that reach as far as the Intertropical Convergence Zone at 60°S. This pollution has implications on both a local and global scale.


title: Indian Ocean

text: Forty percent of the sediment of the Indian Ocean is found in the Indus and Ganges fans. The oceanic basins adjacent to the continental slopes mostly contain terrigenous sediments. The ocean south of the polar front (roughly 50° south latitude) is high in biologic productivity and dominated by non-stratified sediment composed mostly of siliceous oozes. Near the three major mid-ocean ridges the ocean floor is relatively young and therefore bare of sediment, except for the Southwest Indian Ridge due to its ultra-slow spreading rate.


title: Indian Ocean

text: The ocean's currents are mainly controlled by the monsoon. Two large gyres, one in the northern hemisphere flowing clockwise and one south of the equator moving anticlockwise (including the Agulhas Current and Agulhas Return Current), constitute the dominant flow pattern. During the winter monsoon (November–February), however, circulation is reversed north of 30°S and winds are weakened during winter and the transitional periods between the monsoons.


title: Indian Ocean

text: The Indian Ocean contains the largest submarine fans of the world, the Bengal Fan and Indus Fan, and the largest areas of slope terraces and rift valleys.


title: Indian Ocean

text: The inflow of deep water into the Indian Ocean is 11 Sv, most of which comes from the Circumpolar Deep Water (CDW). The CDW enters the Indian Ocean through the Crozet and Madagascar basins and crosses the Southwest Indian Ridge at 30°S. In the Mascarene Basin the CDW becomes a deep western boundary current before it is met by a re-circulated branch of itself, the North Indian Deep Water. This mixed water partly flows north into the Somali Basin whilst most of it flows clockwise in the Mascarene Basin where an oscillating flow is produced by Rossby waves.


title: Indian Ocean

text: Water circulation in the Indian Ocean is dominated by the Subtropical Anticyclonic Gyre, the eastern extension of which is blocked by the Southeast Indian Ridge and the 90°E Ridge. Madagascar and the Southwest Indian Ridge separate three cells south of Madagascar and off South Africa. North Atlantic Deep Water reaches into the Indian Ocean south of Africa at a depth of and flows north along the eastern continental slope of Africa. Deeper than NADW, Antarctic Bottom Water flows from Enderby Basin to Agulhas Basin across deep channels (<) in the Southwest Indian Ridge, from where it continues into the Mozambique Channel and Prince Edward Fracture Zone.


title: Indian Ocean

text: North of 20° south latitude the minimum surface temperature is , exceeding to the east. Southward of 40° south latitude, temperatures drop quickly.


title: Indian Ocean

text: The Bay of Bengal contributes more than half () of the runoff water to the Indian Ocean. Mainly in summer, this runoff flows into the Arabian Sea but also south across the Equator where it mixes with fresher seawater from the Indonesian Throughflow. This mixed freshwater joins the South Equatorial Current in the southern tropical Indian Ocean.


title: Indian Ocean

text: Sea surface salinity is highest (more than 36 PSU) in the Arabian Sea because evaporation exceeds precipitation there. In the Southeast Arabian Sea salinity drops to less than 34 PSU. It is the lowest (c. 33 PSU) in the Bay of Bengal because of river runoff and precipitation. The Indonesian Throughflow and precipitation results in lower salinity (34 PSU) along the Sumatran west coast. Monsoonal variation results in eastward transportation of saltier water from the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal from June to September and in westerly transport by the East India Coastal Current to the Arabian Sea from January to April. It is found that Arabian Sea warming is in response to the reduction in lower monsoon circulation in recent decades.


title: Indian Ocean

text: An Indian Ocean garbage patch was discovered in 2010 covering at least . Riding the southern Indian Ocean Gyre, this vortex of plastic garbage constantly circulates the ocean from Australia to Africa, down the Mozambique Channel, and back to Australia in a period of six years, except for debris that gets indefinitely stuck in the centre of the gyre.


title: Indian Ocean

text: The garbage patch in the Indian Ocean will, according to a 2012 study, decrease in size after several decades to vanish completely over centuries. Over several millennia, however, the global system of garbage patches will accumulate in the North Pacific.


title: Indian Ocean

text: There are two amphidromes of opposite rotation in the Indian Ocean, probably caused by Rossby wave propagation.


title: Indian Ocean

text: Icebergs drift as far north as 55° south latitude, similar to the Pacific but less than in the Atlantic where icebergs reach up to 45°S. The volume of iceberg loss in the Indian Ocean between 2004 and 2012 was 24 Gt.


title: Indian Ocean

text: Since the 1960s, anthropogenic warming of the global ocean combined with contributions of freshwater from retreating land ice causes a global rise in sea level. Sea level also increases in the Indian Ocean, except in the south tropical Indian Ocean where it decreases, a pattern most likely caused by rising levels of greenhouse gases.


title: Indian Ocean

text: Among the tropical oceans, the western Indian Ocean hosts one of the largest concentrations of phytoplankton blooms in summer, due to the strong monsoon winds. The monsoonal wind forcing leads to a strong coastal and open ocean upwelling, which introduces nutrients into the upper zones where sufficient light is available for photosynthesis and phytoplankton production. These phytoplankton blooms support the marine ecosystem, as the base of the marine food web, and eventually the larger fish species. The Indian Ocean accounts for the second-largest share of the most economically valuable tuna catch. Its fish are of great and growing importance to the bordering countries for domestic consumption and export. Fishing fleets from Russia, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan also exploit the Indian Ocean, mainly for shrimp and tuna.


title: Indian Ocean

text: Research indicates that increasing ocean temperatures are taking a toll on the marine ecosystem. A study on the phytoplankton changes in the Indian Ocean indicates a decline of up to 20% in the marine plankton in the Indian Ocean, during the past six decades. The tuna catch rates have also declined 50–90% during the past half-century, mostly due to increased industrial fisheries, with the ocean warming adding further stress to the fish species.


title: Indian Ocean

text: 80% of the Indian Ocean is open ocean and includes nine large marine ecosystems: the Agulhas Current, Somali Coastal Current, Red Sea, Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal, Gulf of Thailand, West Central Australian Shelf, Northwest Australian Shelf, and Southwest Australian Shelf. Coral reefs cover c. . The coasts of the Indian Ocean includes beaches and intertidal zones covering and 246 larger estuaries. Upwelling areas are small but important. The hypersaline salterns in India covers between and species adapted for this environment, such as "Artemia salina" and "Dunaliella salina", are important to bird life.


title: Indian Ocean

text: Coral reefs, sea grass beds, and mangrove forests are the most productive ecosystems of the Indian Ocean — coastal areas produce 20 tones per square kilometre of fish. These areas, however, are also being urbanised with populations often exceeding several thousand people per square kilometre and fishing techniques become more effective and often destructive beyond sustainable levels while the increase in sea surface temperature spreads coral bleaching.


title: Indian Ocean

text: Mangroves covers in the Indian Ocean region, or almost half of the world's mangrove habitat, of which is located in Indonesia, or 50% of mangroves in the Indian Ocean. Mangroves originated in the Indian Ocean region and have adapted to a wide range of its habitats but it is also where it suffers its biggest loss of habitat.


title: Indian Ocean

text: In 2016 six new animal species were identified at hydrothermal vents in the Southwest Indian Ridge: a "Hoff" crab, a "giant peltospirid" snail, a whelk-like snail, a limpet, a scaleworm and a polychaete worm.


title: Indian Ocean

text: The West Indian Ocean coelacanth was discovered in the Indian Ocean off South Africa in the 1930s and in the late 1990s another species, the Indonesian coelacanth, was discovered off Sulawesi Island, Indonesia. Most extant coelacanths have been found in the Comoros. Although both species represent an order of lobe-finned fishes known from the Early Devonian (410 ) and though extinct 66 mya, they are morphologically distinct from their Devonian ancestors. Over millions of years, coelacanths evolved to inhabit different environments — lungs adapted for shallow, brackish waters evolved into gills adapted for deep marine waters.


title: Indian Ocean

text: The origin of this diversity is debated; the break-up of Gondwana can explain vicariance older than 100 mya, but the diversity on the younger, smaller islands must have required a Cenozoic dispersal from the rims of the Indian Ocean to the islands. A "reverse colonisation", from islands to continents, apparently occurred more recently; the chameleons, for example, first diversified on Madagascar and then colonised Africa. Several species on the islands of the Indian Ocean are textbook cases of evolutionary processes; the dung beetles, day geckos, and lemurs are all examples of adaptive radiation.


title: Indian Ocean

text: Many bones (250 bones per square metre) of recently extinct vertebrates have been found in the Mare aux Songes swamp in Mauritius, including bones of the Dodo bird ("Raphus cucullatus") and "Cylindraspis" giant tortoise. An analysis of these remains suggests a process of aridification began in the southwest Indian Ocean began around 4,000 years ago.


title: Indian Ocean

text: Mammalian megafauna once widespread in the MPA was driven to near extinction in the early 20th century. Some species have been successfully recovered since then — the population of white rhinoceros ("Ceratotherium simum simum") increased from less than 20 individuals in 1895 to more than 17,000 as of 2013. Other species are still dependent of fenced areas and management programs, including black rhinoceros ("Diceros bicornis minor"), African wild dog ("Lycaon pictus"), cheetah ("Acynonix jubatus"), elephant ("Loxodonta africana"), and lion ("Panthera leo").


title: Indian Ocean

text: This biodiversity hotspot (and namesake ecoregion and "Endemic Bird Area") is a patchwork of small forested areas, often with a unique assemblage of species within each, located within from the coast and covering a total area of c. . It also encompasses coastal islands, including Zanzibar and Pemba, and Mafia.


title: Indian Ocean

text: This area, one of the only two hotspots that are entirely arid, includes the Ethiopian Highlands, the East African Rift valley, the Socotra islands, as well as some small islands in the Red Sea and areas on the southern Arabic Peninsula. Endemic and threatened mammals include the dibatag ("Ammodorcas clarkei") and Speke's gazelle ("Gazella spekei"); the Somali wild ass ("Equus africanus somaliensis") and hamadryas baboon ("Papio hamadryas"). It also contains many reptiles.


title: Indian Ocean

text: In Somalia, the centre of the hotspot, the landscape is dominated by Acacia-Commiphora deciduous bushland, but also includes the Yeheb nut ("Cordeauxia edulus") and species discovered more recently such as the Somali cyclamen ("Cyclamen somalense"), the only cyclamen outside the Mediterranean. Warsangli linnet ("Carduelis johannis") is an endemic bird found only in northern Somalia. An unstable political situation and mismanagement has resulted in overgrazing which has produced one of the most degraded hotspots where only c. 5 % of the original habitat remains.


title: Indian Ocean

text: Encompassing the west coast of India and Sri Lanka, until c. 10,000 years ago a landbridge connected Sri Lanka to the Indian Subcontinent, hence this region shares a common community of species.


title: Indian Ocean

text: Indo-Burma encompasses a series of mountain ranges, five of Asia's largest river systems, and a wide range of habitats. The region has a long and complex geological history, and long periods rising sea levels and glaciations have isolated ecosystems and thus promoted a high degree of endemism and speciation. The region includes two centres of endemism: the Annamite Mountains and the northern highlands on the China-Vietnam border.


title: Indian Ocean

text: Several distinct floristic regions, the Indian, Malesian, Sino-Himalayan, and Indochinese regions, meet in a unique way in Indo-Burma and the hotspot contains an estimated 15,000–25,000 species of vascular plants, many of them endemic.


title: Indian Ocean

text: Sundaland encompasses 17,000 islands of which Borneo and Sumatra are the largest. Endangered mammals include the Bornean and Sumatran orangutans, the proboscis monkey, and the Javan and Sumatran rhinoceroses.


title: Indian Ocean

text: Stretching from Shark Bay to Israelite Bay and isolated by the arid Nullarbor Plain, the southwestern corner of Australia is a floristic region with a stable climate in which one of the world's largest floral biodiversity and an 80% endemism has evolved. From June to September it is an explosion of colours and the Wildflower Festival in Perth in September attracts more than half a million visitors.


title: Indian Ocean

text: As the youngest of the major oceans, the Indian Ocean has active spreading ridges that are part of the worldwide system of mid-ocean ridges. In the Indian Ocean these spreading ridges meet at the Rodrigues Triple Point with the Central Indian Ridge, including the Carlsberg Ridge, separating the African Plate from the Indian Plate; the Southwest Indian Ridge separating the African Plate from the Antarctic Plate; and the Southeast Indian Ridge separating the Australian Plate from the Antarctic Plate. The Central Indian Ridge is intercepted by the Owen Fracture Zone.


title: Indian Ocean

text: Since the late 1990s, however, it has become clear that this traditional definition of the Indo-Australian Plate cannot be correct; it consists of three plates — the Indian Plate, the Capricorn Plate, and Australian Plate — separated by diffuse boundary zones.


title: Indian Ocean

text: Since 20 Ma the African Plate is being divided by the East African Rift System into the Nubian and Somalia plates.


title: Indian Ocean

text: There are only two trenches in the Indian Ocean: the -long Java Trench between Java and the Sunda Trench and the -long Makran Trench south of Iran and Pakistan.


title: Indian Ocean

text: A series of ridges and seamount chains produced by hotspots pass over the Indian Ocean. The Réunion hotspot (active 70–40 million years ago) connects Réunion and the Mascarene Plateau to the Chagos-Laccadive Ridge and the Deccan Traps in north-western India; the Kerguelen hotspot (100–35 million years ago) connects the Kerguelen Islands and Kerguelen Plateau to the Ninety East Ridge and the Rajmahal Traps in north-eastern India; the Marion hotspot (100–70 million years ago) possibly connects Prince Edward Islands to the Eighty Five East Ridge. These hotspot tracks have been broken by the still active spreading ridges mentioned above.


title: Indian Ocean

text: There are fewer seamounts in the Indian Ocean than in the Atlantic and Pacific. These are typically deeper than and located north of 55°S and west of 80°E. Most originated at spreading ridges but some are now located in basins far away from these ridges. The ridges of the Indian Ocean form ranges of seamounts, sometimes very long, including the Carlsberg Ridge, Madagascar Ridge, Central Indian Ridge, Southwest Indian Ridge, Chagos-Laccadive Ridge, 85°E Ridge, 90°E Ridge, Southeast Indian Ridge, Broken Ridge, and East Indiaman Ridge. The Agulhas Plateau and Mascarene Plateau are the two major shallow areas.


title: Indian Ocean

text: The opening of the Indian Ocean began 156  when Africa separated from East Gondwana. The Indian Subcontinent began to separate from Australia-Antarctica 135–125 Ma and as the Tethys Ocean north of India began to close 118–84 Ma the Indian Ocean opened behind it.


title: Indian Ocean

text: The Indian Ocean, together with the Mediterranean, has connected people since ancient times, whereas the Atlantic and Pacific have had the roles of barriers or "mare incognitum". The written history of the Indian Ocean, however, has been Eurocentric and largely dependent on the availability of written sources from the colonial era. This history is often divided into an ancient period followed by an Islamic period; the subsequent periods are often subdivided into Portuguese, Dutch, and British periods.


title: Indian Ocean

text: A concept of an "Indian Ocean World" (IOW), similar to that of the "Atlantic World", exists but emerged much more recently and is not well established. The IOW is, nevertheless, sometimes referred to as the "first global economy" and was based on the monsoon which linked Asia, China, India, and Mesopotamia. It developed independently from the European global trade in the Mediterranean and Atlantic and remained largely independent from them until European 19th-century colonial dominance.


title: Indian Ocean

text: The diverse history of the Indian Ocean is a unique mix of cultures, ethnic groups, natural resources, and shipping routes. It grew in importance beginning in the 1960s and 1970s and, after the Cold War, it has undergone periods of political instability, most recently with the emergence of India and China as regional powers.


title: Indian Ocean

text: Pleistocene fossils of "Homo erectus" and other pre–"H. sapiens" hominid fossils, similar to "H. heidelbergensis" in Europe, have been found in India. According to the Toba catastrophe theory, a supereruption c. 74,000 years ago at Lake Toba, Sumatra, covered India with volcanic ashes and wiped out one or more lineages of such archaic humans in India and Southeast Asia.


title: Indian Ocean

text: The "Out of Africa" theory states that "Homo sapiens" spread from Africa into mainland Eurasia. The more recent "Southern Dispersal" or "Coastal hypothesis" instead advocates that modern humans spread along the coasts of the Arabic Peninsula and southern Asia. This hypothesis is supported by mtDNA research which reveals a rapid dispersal event during the Late Pleistocene (11,000 years ago). This coastal dispersal, however, began in East Africa 75,000 years ago and occurred intermittently from estuary to estuary along the northern perimeter of the Indian Ocean at a rate of per year. It eventually resulted in modern humans migrating from Sunda over Wallacea to Sahul (Southeast Asia to Australia).


title: Indian Ocean

text: Since then, waves of migration have resettled people and, clearly, the Indian Ocean littoral had been inhabited long before the first civilisations emerged. 5000–6000 years ago six distinct cultural centres had evolved around the Indian Ocean: East Africa, the Middle East, the Indian Subcontinent, South East Asia, the Malay World, and Australia; each interlinked to its neighbours.


title: Indian Ocean

text: Food globalisation began on the Indian Ocean littoral c. 4.000 years ago. Five African crops — sorghum, pearl millet, finger millet, cowpea, and hyacinth bean — somehow found their way to Gujarat in India during the Late Harappan (2000–1700 BCE). Gujarati merchants evolved into the first explorers of the Indian Ocean as they traded African goods such as ivory, tortoise shells, and slaves. Broomcorn millet found its way from Central Asia to Africa, together with chicken and zebu cattle, although the exact timing is disputed. Around 2000 BCE black pepper and sesame, both native to Asia, appear in Egypt, albeit in small quantities. Around the same time the black rat and the house mouse emigrate from Asia to Egypt. Banana reached Africa around 3000 years ago.


title: Indian Ocean

text: At least eleven prehistoric tsunamis have struck the Indian Ocean coast of Indonesia between 7400 and 2900 years ago. Analysing sand beds in caves in the Aceh region, scientists concluded that the intervals between these tsunamis have varied from series of minor tsunamis over a century to dormant periods of more than 2000 years preceding megathrusts in the Sunda Trench. Although the risk for future tsunamis is high, a major megathrust such as the one in 2004 is likely to be followed by a long dormant period.


title: Indian Ocean

text: A group of scientists have argued that two large-scale impact events have occurred in the Indian Ocean: the Burckle Crater in the southern Indian Ocean in 2800 BCE and the Kanmare and Tabban craters in the Gulf of Carpentaria in northern Australia in 536 CE. Evidences for these impacts, the team argue, are micro-ejecta and Chevron dunes in southern Madagascar and in the Australian gulf. Geological evidences suggest the tsunamis caused by these impacts reached above sea level and inland. The impact events must have disrupted human settlements and perhaps even contributed to major climate changes.


title: Indian Ocean

text: The history of the Indian Ocean is marked by maritime trade; cultural and commercial exchange probably date back at least seven thousand years. Human culture spread early on the shores of the Indian Ocean and was always linked to the cultures of the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf. Before c. 2000 BCE, however, cultures on its shores were only loosely tied to each other; bronze, for example, was developed in Mesopotamia c. 3000 BCE but remained uncommon in Egypt before 1800 BCE.


title: Indian Ocean

text: During this period, independent, short-distance oversea communications along its littoral margins evolved into an all-embracing network. The début of this network was not the achievement of a centralised or advanced civilisation but of local and regional exchange in the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and the Arabian Sea. Sherds of Ubaid (2500–500 BCE) pottery have been found in the western Gulf at Dilmun, present-day Bahrain; traces of exchange between this trading centre and Mesopotamia. The Sumerians traded grain, pottery, and bitumen (used for reed boats) for copper, stone, timber, tin, dates, onions, and pearls.


title: Indian Ocean

text: Coast-bound vessels transported goods between the Indus Valley civilisation (2600–1900 BCE) in the Indian subcontinent (modern-day Pakistan and Northwest India) and the Persian Gulf and Egypt.


title: Indian Ocean

text: The Red Sea, one of the main trade routes in Antiquity, was explored by Egyptians and Phoenicians during the last two millennia BCE. In the 6th century, BCE Greek explorer Scylax of Caryanda made a journey to India, working for the Persian king Darius, and his now-lost account put the Indian Ocean on the maps of Greek geographers. The Greeks began to explore the Indian Ocean following the conquests of Alexander the Great, who ordered a circumnavigation of the Arabian Peninsula in 323 BCE. During the two centuries that followed the reports of the explorers of Ptolemaic Egypt resulted in the best maps of the region until the Portuguese era many centuries later. The main interest in the region for the Ptolemies was not commercial but military; they explored Africa to hunt for war elephants.


title: Indian Ocean

text: The Rub' al Khali desert isolates the southern parts of the Arabic Peninsula and the Indian Ocean from the Arabic world. This encouraged the development of maritime trade in the region linking the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf to East Africa and India. The monsoon (from "mawsim", the Arabic word for season), however, was used by sailors long before being "discovered" by Hippalus in the 1st century. Indian wood have been found in Sumerian cities, there is evidence of Akkad coastal trade in the region, and contacts between India and the Red Sea dates back to 2300 B.C. The archipelagoes of the central Indian Ocean, the Laccadive and Maldive islands, were probably populated during the 2nd century B.C. from the Indian mainland. They appear in written history in the account of merchant Sulaiman al-Tajir in the 9th century but the treacherous reefs of the islands were most likely cursed by the sailors of Aden long before the islands were even settled.


title: Indian Ocean

text: "Periplus of the Erythraean Sea", an Alexandrian guide to the world beyond the Red Sea — including Africa and India — from the first century CE, not only gives insights into trade in the region but also shows that Roman and Greek sailors had already gained knowledge about the monsoon winds. The contemporaneous settlement of Madagascar by Austronesian sailors shows that the littoral margins of the Indian Ocean were being both well-populated and regularly traversed at least by this time. Albeit the monsoon must have been common knowledge in the Indian Ocean for centuries.


title: Indian Ocean

text: The Indian Ocean's relatively calmer waters opened the areas bordering it to trade earlier than the Atlantic or Pacific oceans. The powerful monsoons also meant ships could easily sail west early in the season, then wait a few months and return eastwards. This allowed ancient Indonesian peoples to cross the Indian Ocean to settle in Madagascar around 1 CE.


title: Indian Ocean

text: In the 2nd or 1st century BCE, Eudoxus of Cyzicus was the first Greek to cross the Indian Ocean. The probably fictitious sailor Hippalus is said to have learnt the direct route from Arabia to India around this time. During the 1st and 2nd centuries AD intensive trade relations developed between Roman Egypt and the Tamil kingdoms of the Cheras, Cholas and Pandyas in Southern India. Like the Indonesian people above, the western sailors used the monsoon to cross the ocean. The unknown author of the "Periplus of the Erythraean Sea" describes this route, as well as the commodities that were traded along various commercial ports on the coasts of the Horn of Africa and India circa 1 CE. Among these trading settlements were Mosylon and Opone on the Red Sea littoral.


title: Indian Ocean

text: Unlike the Pacific Ocean where the civilization of the Polynesians reached most of the far-flung islands and atolls and populated them, almost all the islands, archipelagos and atolls of the Indian Ocean were uninhabited until colonial times. Although there were numerous ancient civilizations in the coastal states of Asia and parts of Africa, the Maldives were the only island group in the Central Indian Ocean region where an ancient civilization flourished. Maldivians, on their annual trade trip, took their oceangoing trade ships to Sri Lanka rather than mainland India, which is much closer, because their ships were dependent of the Indian Monsoon Current.


title: Indian Ocean

text: Arabic missionaries and merchants began to spread Islam along the western shores of the Indian Ocean from the 8th century, if not earlier. A Swahili stone mosque dating to the 8th–15th centuries has been found in Shanga, Kenya. Trade across the Indian Ocean gradually introduced Arabic script and rice as a staple in Eastern Africa.


title: Indian Ocean

text: Muslim merchants traded an estimated 1000 African slaves annually between 800 and 1700, a number that grew to during the 18th century, and 3700 during the period 1800–1870. Slave trade also occurred in the eastern Indian Ocean before the Dutch settled there around 1600 but the volume of this trade is unknown.


title: Indian Ocean

text: From 1405 to 1433 admiral Zheng He said to have led large fleets of the Ming Dynasty on several treasure voyages through the Indian Ocean, ultimately reaching the coastal countries of East Africa.


title: Indian Ocean

text: The Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope during his first voyage in 1497 and became the first European to sail to India. The Swahili people he encountered along the African east coast lived in a series of cities and had established trade routes to India and to China. Among them, the Portuguese kidnapped most of their pilots in coastal raids and onboard ships. A few of the pilots, however, were gifts by local Swahili rulers, including the sailor from Gujarat, a gift by a Malindi ruler in Kenya, who helped the Portuguese to reach India. In expeditions after 1500, the Portuguese attacked and colonised cities along the African coast.


title: Indian Ocean

text: European slave trade in the Indian Ocean began when Portugal established Estado da Índia in the early 16th century. From then until the 1830s, slaves were exported from Mozambique annually and similar figures has been estimated for slaves brought from Asia to the Philippines during the Iberian Union (1580–1640).


title: Indian Ocean

text: The Ottoman Empire began its expansion into the Indian Ocean in 1517 with the conquest of Egypt under Sultan Selim I. Although the Ottomans shared the same religion as the trading communities in the Indian Ocean the region was unexplored by them. Maps that included the Indian Ocean had been produced by Muslim geographers centuries before the Ottoman conquests; Muslim scholars, such as Ibn Battuta in the 14th Century, had visited most parts of the known world; contemporarily with Vasco da Gama, Arab navigator Ahmad ibn Mājid had compiled a guide to navigation in the Indian Ocean; the Ottomans, nevertheless, began their own parallel era of discovery which rivalled the European expansion.


title: Indian Ocean

text: The establishment of the Dutch East India Company in the early 17th century lead to a quick increase in the volume of the slave trade in the region; there were perhaps up to slaves in various Dutch colonies during the 17th and 18th centuries in the Indian Ocean. For example, some 4000 African slaves were used to build the Colombo fortress in Dutch Ceylon. Bali and neighbouring islands supplied regional networks with slaves 1620–1830. Indian and Chinese slave traders supplied Dutch Indonesia with perhaps slaves during the 17th and 18th centuries.


title: Indian Ocean

text: The East India Company (EIC) was established during the same period and in 1622 one of its ships carried slaves from the Coromandel Coast to Dutch East Indies. The EIC mostly traded in African slaves but also some Asian slaves purchased from Indian, Indonesian and Chinese slave traders. The French established colonies on the islands of Réunion and Mauritius in 1721; by 1735 some 7,200 slaves populated the Mascarene Islands, a number which had reached in 1807. The British captured the islands in 1810, however, and because the British had prohibited the slave trade in 1807 a system of clandestine slave trade developed to bring slaves to French planters on the islands; in all – slaves were exported to the Mascarene Islands from 1670 until 1848.


title: Indian Ocean

text: In all, European traders exported – slaves within the Indian Ocean between 1500 and 1850 and almost that same amount were exported from the Indian Ocean to the Americas during the same period. Slave trade in the Indian Ocean was, nevertheless, very limited compared to slaves exported across the Atlantic.


title: Indian Ocean

text: Scientifically, the Indian Ocean remained poorly explored before the International Indian Ocean Expedition in the early 1960s. However, the "Challenger" expedition 1872–1876 only reported from south of the polar front. The "Valdivia" expedition 1898–1899 made deep samples in the Indian Ocean. In the 1930s, the John Murray Expedition mainly studied shallow-water habitats. The Swedish Deep Sea Expedition 1947–1948 also sampled the Indian Ocean on its global tour and the Danish "Galathea" sampled deep-water fauna from Sri Lanka to South Africa on its second expedition 1950–1952. The Soviet research vessel "Vityaz" also did research in the Indian Ocean.


title: Indian Ocean

text: The Suez Canal opened in 1869 when the Industrial Revolution dramatically changed global shipping – the sailing ship declined in importance as did the importance of European trade in favour of trade in East Asia and Australia.


title: Indian Ocean

text: The construction of the canal introduced many non-indigenous species into the Mediterranean. For example, the goldband goatfish ("Upeneus moluccensis") has replaced the red mullet ("Mullus barbatus"); since the 1980s huge swarms of scyphozoan jellyfish ("Rhopilema nomadica") have affected tourism and fisheries along the Levantian coast and clogged power and desalination plants. Plans announced in 2014 to build a new, much larger Suez Canal parallel to the 19th-century canal will most likely boost the economy in the region but also cause ecological damage in a much wider area.


title: Indian Ocean

text: Throughout the colonial era, islands such as Mauritius were important shipping nodes for the Dutch, French, and British. Mauritius, an inhabited island, became populated by slaves from Africa and indenture labour from India. The end of World War II marked the end of the colonial era. The British left Mauritius in 1974 and with 70% of the population of Indian descent, Mauritius became a close ally of India. In the 1980s, during the Cold War, the South African regime acted to destabilise several island nations in the Indian Ocean, including the Seychelles, Comoros, and Madagascar. India intervened in Mauritius to prevent a coup d'état, backed up by the United States who feared the Soviet Union could gain access to Port Louis and threaten the U.S. base on Diego Garcia.


title: Indian Ocean

text: Iranrud is an unrealised plan by Iran and the Soviet Union to build a canal between the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf.


title: Indian Ocean

text: Testimonies from the colonial era are stories of African slaves, Indian indentured labourers, and white settlers. But, while there was a clear racial line between free men and slaves in the Atlantic World, this delineation is less distinct in the Indian Ocean — there were Indian slaves and settlers as well as black indentured labourers. There were also a string of prison camps across the Indian Ocean, such as Cellular Jail in the Andamans, in which prisoners, exiles, POWs, forced labourers, merchants, and people of different faiths were forcefully united. On the islands of the Indian Ocean, therefore, a trend of creolisation emerged.


title: Indian Ocean

text: On 26 December 2004 fourteen countries around the Indian Ocean were hit by a wave of tsunamis caused by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. The waves radiated across the ocean at speeds exceeding , reached up to in height, and resulted in an estimated 236,000 deaths.


title: Indian Ocean

text: In the late 2000s, the ocean evolved into a hub of pirate activity. By 2013, attacks off the Horn region's coast had steadily declined due to active private security and international navy patrols, especially by the Indian Navy.


title: Indian Ocean

text: Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, a Boeing 777 airliner with 239 persons on board, disappeared on 8 March 2014 and is alleged to have crashed into the southern Indian Ocean about from the coast of southwest Western Australia. Despite an extensive search, the whereabouts of the remains of the aircraft is unknown.


title: Indian Ocean

text: The Sentinelese people of North Sentinel Island, which lies near South Andaman Island in the Bay of Bengal, have been called by experts the most isolated people in the world.


title: Indian Ocean

text: The sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean is disputed between the United Kingdom and Mauritius. In February 2019, the International Court of Justice in The Hague issued an advisory opinion stating that the UK must transfer the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius.


title: Indian Ocean

text: On 26 February 2022, an AB Aviation Flight 1103 Cessna 208 crashed into Indian Ocean, killing all 14 on board.


title: Indian Ocean

text: The sea lanes in the Indian Ocean are considered among the most strategically important in the world with more than 80 percent of the world's seaborne trade in oil transits through the Indian Ocean and its vital chokepoints, with 40 percent passing through the Strait of Hormuz, 35 percent through the Strait of Malacca and 8 percent through the Bab el-Mandab Strait.


title: Indian Ocean

text: The Indian Ocean provides major sea routes connecting the Middle East, Africa, and East Asia with Europe and the Americas. It carries a particularly heavy traffic of petroleum and petroleum products from the oil fields of the Persian Gulf and Indonesia. Large reserves of hydrocarbons are being tapped in the offshore areas of Saudi Arabia, Iran, India, and Western Australia. An estimated 40% of the world's offshore oil production comes from the Indian Ocean. Beach sands rich in heavy minerals, and offshore placer deposits are actively exploited by bordering countries, particularly India, Pakistan, South Africa, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand.


title: Indian Ocean

text: In particular, the maritime part of the Silk Road leads through the Indian Ocean on which a large part of the global container trade is carried out. The Silk Road runs with its connections from the Chinese coast and its large container ports to the south via Hanoi to Jakarta, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur through the Strait of Malacca via the Sri Lankan Colombo opposite the southern tip of India via Malé, the capital of the Maldives, to the East African Mombasa, from there to Djibouti, then through the Red Sea over the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean, there via Haifa, Istanbul and Athens to the Upper Adriatic to the northern Italian junction of Trieste with its international free port and its rail connections to Central and Eastern Europe.


title: Indian Ocean

text: The Silk Road has become internationally important again on the one hand through European integration, the end of the Cold War and free world trade and on the other hand through Chinese initiatives. Chinese companies have made investments in several Indian Ocean ports, including Gwadar, Hambantota, Colombo and Sonadia. This has sparked a debate about the strategic implications of these investments. There are also Chinese investments and related efforts to intensify trade in East Africa and in European ports such as Piraeus and Trieste.


title: Bologna

text: Bologna (, , ; ; ) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different nationalities. Its metropolitan area is home to more than 1,000,000 people. It is known as the Fat City for its rich cuisine, and the Red City for its Spanish-style red tiled rooftops and, more recently, its leftist politics. It is also called the Learned City because it is home to the oldest university in the world.


title: Bologna

text: Originally Etruscan, the city has been an important urban center for centuries, first under the Etruscans (who called it "Felsina"), then under the Celts as "Bona", later under the Romans ("Bonōnia"), then again in the Middle Ages, as a free municipality and later "signoria", when it was among the largest European cities by population. Famous for its towers, churches and lengthy porticoes, Bologna has a well-preserved historical centre, thanks to a careful restoration and conservation policy which began at the end of the 1970s. Home to the oldest university in the Western world, the University of Bologna, established in AD 1088, the city has a large student population that gives it a cosmopolitan character. In 2000 it was declared European capital of culture and in 2006, a UNESCO "City of Music" and became part of the Creative Cities Network. In 2021 UNESCO recognized the lengthy porticoes of the city as a World Heritage Site.


title: Bologna

text: Bologna is an important agricultural, industrial, financial and transport hub, where many large mechanical, electronic and food companies have their headquarters as well as one of the largest permanent trade fairs in Europe. According to the most recent data gathered by the European Regional Economic Growth Index (E-REGI) of 2009, Bologna is the first Italian city and the 47th European city in terms of its economic growth rate.


title: Bologna

text: Traces of human habitation in the area of Bologna go back to the 3rd millennium BCE, with significant settlements from about the 9th century BCE (Villanovan culture). The influence of Etruscan civilization reached the area in the 7th to 6th centuries, and the Etruscan city of "Felsina" was established at the site of Bologna by the end of the 6th century. By the 4th century BCE, the site was occupied by the Gaulish Boii, and it became a Roman colony and municipium with the name of "Bonōnia" in 196 BCE.


title: Bologna

text: During the waning years of the Western Roman Empire Bologna was repeatedly sacked by the Goths. It is in this period that legendary Bishop Petronius, according to ancient chronicles, rebuilt the ruined town and founded the basilica of Saint Stephen. Petronius is still revered as the patron saint of Bologna.


title: Bologna

text: In 727–28, the city was sacked and captured by the Lombards under King Liutprand, becoming part of that kingdom. These Germanic conquerors built an important new quarter, called "addizione longobarda" (Italian meaning "Longobard addition") near the complex of St. Stephen. In the last quarter of the 8th century, Charlemagne, at the request of Pope Adrian I, invaded the Lombard Kingdom, causing its eventual demise. Occupied by Frankish troops in 774 on behalf of the papacy, Bologna remained under imperial authority and prospered as a frontier mark of the Carolingian empire.


title: Bologna

text: Bologna was the center of a revived study of law, including the scholar Irnerius ("c" 1050 – after 1125) and his famous students, the Four Doctors of Bologna.


title: Bologna

text: After the death of Matilda of Tuscany in 1115, Bologna obtained substantial concessions from Emperor Henry V. However, when Frederick Barbarossa subsequently attempted to strike down the deal, Bologna joined the Lombard League, which then defeated the imperial armies at the Battle of Legnano and established an effective autonomy at the Peace of Constance in 1183. Subsequently, the town began to expand rapidly and became one of the main commercial trade centres of northern Italy thanks to a system of canals that allowed barges and ships to come and go. Believed to have been established in 1088, the University of Bologna is widely considered the world's oldest university in continuous operation. The university originated as a centre for the study of medieval Roman law under major glossators, including Irnerius. It numbered Dante, Boccaccio and Petrarch among its students. The medical school was especially renowned. By 1200, Bologna was a thriving commercial and artisanal centre of about 10,000 people.


title: Bologna

text: During a campaign to support the imperial cities of Modena and Cremona against Bologna, Frederick II's son, King Enzo of Sardinia, was defeated and captured on 26 May 1249 at the Battle of Fossalta. Though the emperor demanded his release, Enzo was thenceforth kept a knightly prisoner in Bologna, in a palace that came to be named Palazzo Re Enzo after him. Every attempt to escape or to rescue him failed, and he died after more than 22 years in captivity. After the death of his half-brothers Conrad IV in 1254, Frederick of Antioch in 1256 and Manfred in 1266, as well as the execution of his nephew Conradin in 1268, he was the last of the Hohenstaufen heirs.


title: Bologna

text: During the late 1200s, Bologna was affected by political instability when the most prominent families incessantly fought for the control of the town. The free commune was severely weakened by decades of infighting, allowing the Pope to impose the rule of his envoy Cardinal Bertrand du Pouget in 1327. Du Pouget was eventually ousted by a popular rebellion and Bologna became a signoria under Taddeo Pepoli in 1334. By the arrival of the Black Death in 1348, Bologna had 40,000 to 50,000 inhabitants, reduced to just 20,000 to 25,000 after the plague.


title: Bologna

text: In 1350, Bologna was conquered by archbishop Giovanni Visconti, the new lord of Milan. But following a rebellion by the town's governor, a renegade member of the Visconti family, Bologna was recuperated to the papacy in 1363 by Cardinal Gil Álvarez Carrillo de Albornoz after a long negotiation involving a huge indemnity paid to Bernabò Visconti, Giovanni's heir, who died in 1354. In 1376, Bologna again revolted against Papal rule and joined Florence in the unsuccessful War of the Eight Saints. However, extreme infighting inside the Holy See after the Western Schism prevented the papacy from restoring its domination over Bologna, so it remained relatively independent for some decades as an oligarchic republic. In 1401, Giovanni I Bentivoglio took power in a coup with the support of Milan, but the Milanese, having turned his back on them and allied with Florence, marched on Bologna and had Giovanni killed the following year. In 1442, Hannibal I Bentivoglio, Giovanni's nephew, recovered Bologna from the Milanese, only to be assassinated in a conspiracy plotted by Pope Eugene IV three years later. But the signoria of the Bentivoglio family was then firmly established, and the power passed to his cousin Sante Bentivoglio, who ruled until 1462, followed by Giovanni II. Giovanni II managed to resist the expansionist designs of Cesare Borgia for some time, but on 7 October 1506, Pope Julius II issued a bull deposing and excommunicating Bentivoglio and placing the city under interdict. When the papal troops, along with a contingent sent by Louis XII of France, marched against Bologna, Bentivoglio and his family fled. Julius II entered the city triumphantly on 10 November.


title: Bologna

text: The period of Papal rule over Bologna (1506–1796) has been generally evaluated by historians as one of severe decline.


title: Bologna

text: However, this was not evident in the 1500s, which were marked by some major developments in Bologna. In 1530, Emperor Charles V was crowned in Bologna, the last of the Holy Roman Emperors to be crowned by the pope.


title: Bologna

text: In 1564, the Piazza del Nettuno and the Palazzo dei Banchi were built, along with the Archiginnasio, the main building of the university. The period of Papal rule saw also the construction of many churches and other religious establishments, and the restoration of older ones. At this time, Bologna had ninety-six convents, more than any other Italian city. Painters working in Bologna during this period established the Bolognese School which includes Annibale Carracci, Domenichino, Guercino and others of European fame.


title: Bologna

text: It was only towards the end of the 16th century that severe signs of decline began to manifest. A series of plagues in the late 16th to early 17th century reduced the population of the city from some 72,000 in the mid-16th century to about 47,000 by 1630. During the Italian Plague of 1629–31 alone, Bologna lost up to a third of its population. In the mid-17th century, the population stabilized at roughly 60,000, slowly increasing to some 70,000 by the mid-18th century. The economy of Bologna started to show signs of severe decline as the global centres of trade shifted towards the Atlantic. The traditional silk industry was in a critical state. The university was losing students, who once came from all over Europe, because of the illiberal attitudes of the Church towards culture (especially after the trial of Galileo). Bologna continued to suffer a progressive deindustrialisation also in the 18th century.


title: Bologna

text: In the mid-1700s pope Benedict XIV, a Bolognese, tried to reverse the decline of the city with a series of reforms intended to stimulate the economy and promote the arts. However, these reforms achieved only mixed results. The pope's efforts to stimulate the decaying textile industry had little success, while he was more successful in reforming the tax system, liberalising trade and relaxing the oppressive system of censorship.


title: Bologna

text: The economic and demographic decline of Bologna became even more noticeable starting in the second half of the 18th century. In 1790 the city had 72,000 inhabitants, ranking as the second largest in the Papal States; however, this figure had remained unchanged for decades.


title: Bologna

text: During this period, Papal economic policies included heavy customs duties and concessions of monopolies to single manufacturers.


title: Bologna

text: Napoleon entered Bologna on 19 June 1796. Napoleon briefly reinstated the ancient mode of government, giving power to the Senate, which however had to swear fealty to the short-lived Cispadane Republic, created as a client state of the French First Republic at the congress of Reggio (27 December 1796 – 9 January 1797) but succeeded by the Cisalpine Republic on 9 July 1797, later by the Italian Republic and finally the Kingdom of Italy.


title: Bologna

text: Papal rule was contested in the uprisings of 1831. The insurrected provinces planned to unite as the "Province Italiane Unite" with Bologna as the capital. Pope Gregory XVI asked for


title: Bologna

text: Austrian help against the rebels. Metternich warned French king Louis Philippe I against intervention in Italian affairs, and in the spring of 1831, Austrian forces marched across the Italian peninsula, defeating the rebellion by 26 April.


title: Bologna

text: By the mid-1840s, unemployment levels were very high and traditional industries continued to languish or disappear; Bologna became a city of economic disparity with the top 10 percent of the population living off rent, another 20 percent exercising professions or commerce and 70 percent working in low-paid, often insecure manual jobs. The Papal census of 1841 reported 10,000 permanent beggars and another 30,000 (out of a total population of 70,000) who lived in poverty.


title: Bologna

text: In the revolutions of 1848 the Austrian garrisons which controlled the city on behalf of the Pope were temporarily expelled, but eventually came back and crushed the revolutionaries.


title: Bologna

text: Papal rule finally ended in the aftermath of Second War of Italian Independence, when the French and Piedmontese troops expelled the Austrians from Italian lands, on 11 and 12 March 1860, Bologna voted to join the new Kingdom of Italy.


title: Bologna

text: In the last decades of the 19th century, Bologna once again thrived economically and socially. In 1863 Naples was linked to Rome by railway, and the following year Bologna to Florence. Bolognese moderate agrarian elites, that supported liberal insurgencies against the papacy and were admirers of the British political system and of free trade, envisioned a unified national state that would open a bigger market for the massive agricultural production of the Emilian plains. Indeed, Bologna gave Italy one of its first prime ministers, Marco Minghetti.


title: Bologna

text: After World War I, Bologna was heavily involved in the Biennio Rosso socialist uprisings. As a consequence, the traditionally moderate elites of the city turned their back on the progressive faction and gave their support to the rising Fascist movement of Benito Mussolini. Dino Grandi, a high-ranking Fascist party official and Ministry of Foreign Affairs, remembered for being an Anglophile, was from Bologna. During the interwar years, Bologna developed into an important manufacturing centre for food processing, agricultural machinery and metalworking. The Fascist regime poured in massive investments, for example with the setting up of a giant tobacco manufacturing plant in 1937.


title: Bologna

text: Bologna suffered extensive damage during World War II. The strategic importance of the city as an industrial and railway hub connecting northern and central Italy made it a target for the Allied forces. On 24 July 1943, a massive aerial bombardment destroyed a significant part of the historic city centre and killed about 200 people. The main railway station and adjoining areas were severely hit, and 44% of the buildings in the centre were listed as having been destroyed or severely damaged. The city was heavily bombed again on 25 September. The raids, which this time were not confined to the city centre, left 2,481 people dead and 2,000 injured. By the end of the war, 43% of all buildings in Bologna had been destroyed or damaged.


title: Bologna

text: After the armistice of 1943, the city became a key centre of the Italian resistance movement. On 7 November 1944, a pitched battle around Porta Lame, waged by partisans of the 7th Brigade of the "Gruppi d'Azione Patriottica" against Fascist and Nazi occupation forces, did not succeed in triggering a general uprising, despite being one of the largest resistance-led urban conflicts in the European theatre. Resistance forces entered Bologna on the morning of 21 April 1945. By this time, the Germans had already largely left the city in the face of the Allied advance, spearheaded by Polish forces advancing from the east during the Battle of Bologna which had been fought since 9 April. First to arrive in the centre was the 87th Infantry Regiment of the Friuli Combat Group under general Arturo Scattini, who entered the centre from "Porta Maggiore" to the south. Since the soldiers were dressed in British outfits, they were initially thought to be part of the allied forces; when the local inhabitants heard the soldiers were speaking Italian, they poured out onto the streets to celebrate.


title: Bologna

text: In the post-war years, Bologna became a thriving industrial centre as well as a political stronghold of the Italian Communist Party. Between 1945 and 1999, the city was helmed by an uninterrupted succession of mayors from the PCI and its successors, the Democratic Party of the Left and Democrats of the Left, the first of whom was Giuseppe Dozza. At the end of the 1960s the city authorities, worried by massive gentrification and suburbanisation, asked Japanese starchitect Kenzo Tange to sketch a master plan for a new town north of Bologna; however, the project that came out in 1970 was evaluated as too ambitious and expensive. Eventually the city council, in spite of vetoing Tange's master plan, decided to keep his project for a new exhibition centre and business district. At the end of 1978 the construction of a tower block and several diverse buildings and structures started. In 1985 the headquarters of the regional government of Emilia-Romagna moved in the new district.


title: Bologna

text: In 1977, Bologna was the scene of rioting linked to the Movement of 1977, a spontaneous political movement of the time. The police shooting of a far-left activist, Francesco Lorusso, sparked two days of street clashes. On 2 August 1980, at the height of the "years of lead", a terrorist bomb was set off in the central railway station of Bologna killing 85 people and wounding 200, an event which is known in Italy as the Bologna massacre. In 1995, members of the neo-fascist group Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari were convicted for carrying out the attack, while Licio Gelli—Grand Master of the underground Freemason lodge Propaganda Due (P2)—was convicted for hampering the investigation, together with three agents of the secret military intelligence service SISMI (including Francesco Pazienza and Pietro Musumeci). Commemorations take place in Bologna on 2 August each year, culminating in a concert in the main square.


title: Bologna

text: In 1999, the long tradition of left-wing mayors was interrupted by the victory of independent centre-right candidate Giorgio Guazzaloca. However, Bologna reverted to form in 2004 when Sergio Cofferati, a former trade union leader, unseated Guazzaloca. The next centre-left mayor, Flavio Delbono, elected in June 2009, resigned in January 2010 after being involved in a corruption scandal. After a 15-month period in which the city was administered under Anna Maria Cancellieri (as a state-appointed prefect), Virginio Merola was elected as mayor, leading a left-wing coalition comprising the Democratic Party, Left Ecology Freedom and Italy of Values. In 2016, Merola was confirmed mayor, defeating the conservative candidate, Lucia Borgonzoni. In 2021, after ten years of Merola's mayorship, one of his closest allies, Matteo Lepore, was elected mayor with 61.9% of votes, becoming the most voted mayor of Bologna since the introduction of the direct elections in 1995.


title: Bologna

text: Bologna is situated on the edge of the Po Plain at the foot of the Apennine Mountains, at the meeting of the Reno and Savena river valleys. As Bologna's two main watercourses flow directly to the sea, the town lies outside of the drainage basin of the River Po. The Province of Bologna stretches from the western edge of the Po Plain on the border with Ferrara to the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines. The centre of the town is above sea level (while elevation within the municipality ranges from in the suburb of Corticella to in Sabbiuno and the Colle della Guardia). The Province of Bologna stretches from the Po Plain into the Apennines; the highest point in the province is the peak of Corno alle Scale (in Lizzano in Belvedere) at above sea level.


title: Bologna

text: Bologna has a mid-latitude, four-season humid subtropical climate (Köppen climate classification: "Cfa").


title: Bologna

text: Annual precipitation oscillates between around and , with the majority generally falling in spring and autumn. Snow is not uncommon between late November and early March; one of the snowiest months of the past decade was February 2012.


title: Bologna

text: The legislative body of the municipality is the City Council ("Consiglio Comunale"), which is composed by 48 councillors elected every five years with a corrected proportional system (granting the majority to the list or alliance of lists which receives more votes), contextually to the mayoral elections. The executive body is the City Committee ("Giunta Comunale"), composed by 12 assessors, that is nominated and presided over by a directly elected Mayor. The current mayor of Bologna is Matteo Lepore (PD), elected on 4 October 2021 with 61.9% of the votes.


title: Bologna

text: The municipality of Bologna is subdivided into six administrative Boroughs ("Quartieri"), down from the former nine before the 2015 administrative reform. Each Borough is governed by a Council ("Consiglio") and a President, elected contextually to the city Mayor. The urban organization is governed by the Italian Constitution (art. 114). The Boroughs have the power to advise the Mayor with nonbinding opinions on a large spectrum of topics (environment, construction, public health, local markets) and exercise the functions delegated to them by the City Council; in addition, they are supplied with an autonomous founding to finance local activities.


title: Bologna

text: Bologna is the capital of the eponymous metropolitan city and of Emilia-Romagna, one of the twenty regions of Italy. While the Province of Bologna has a population of 1,007,644, making it the twelfth most populated province of Italy, Emilia-Romagna ranks as the sixth most populated region of Italy, with about 4.5 million inhabitants, more than 7% of the national total. The seat of the regional government is Fiera District, a tower complex designed by Japanese architect Kenzo Tange in 1985.


title: Bologna

text: According to the last governmental dispositions concerning administrative reorganisation, the urban area of Bologna is one of the 15 Metropolitan municipalities ("città metropolitane"), new administrative bodies fully operative since 1 January 2015. The new Metro municipalities, giving large urban areas the administrative powers of a province, are conceived for improving the performance of local administrations and to slash local spending by better co-ordinating the municipalities in providing basic services (including transport, school and social programs) and environment protection. In this policy framework, the Mayor of Bologna is designated to exercise the functions of Metropolitan mayor ("Sindaco metropolitano"), presiding over a Metropolitan Council formed by 18 mayors of municipalities within the Metro municipality.


title: Bologna

text: The Metropolitan City of Bologna is headed by the Metropolitan Mayor ("Sindaco metropolitano") and by the Metropolitan Council ("Consiglio metropolitano"). Since 21 June 2016 Virginio Merola, as mayor of the capital city, has been the mayor of the Metropolitan City.


title: Bologna

text: Until the late 19th century, when a large-scale urban renewal project was undertaken, Bologna was one of the few remaining large walled cities in Europe; to this day and despite having suffered considerable bombing damage in 1944, Bologna's historic centre is Europe's second largest, containing an immense wealth of important medieval, renaissance, and baroque artistic monuments.


title: Bologna

text: Bologna developed along the Via Emilia as an Etruscan and later Roman colony; the Via Emilia still runs straight through the city under the changing names of Strada Maggiore, Rizzoli, Ugo Bassi, and San Felice. Due to its Roman heritage, the central streets of Bologna, today largely pedestrianized, follow the grid pattern of the Roman settlement. The original Roman ramparts were supplanted by a high medieval system of fortifications, remains of which are still visible, and finally by a third and final set of ramparts built in the 13th century, of which numerous sections survive. No more than twenty medieval defensive towers remain out of up to 180 that were built in the 12th and 13th centuries before the arrival of unified civic government. The most famous of the towers of Bologna are the central "Due Torri" ("Asinelli" and "Garisenda"), whose iconic leaning forms provide a popular symbol of the town.


title: Bologna

text: The cityscape is further enriched by its elegant and extensive porticoes, for which the city is famous. In total, there are some of porticoes in the city's historical centre (over in the city proper), which make it possible to walk for long distances sheltered from the elements.


title: Bologna

text: The Portico di San Luca is possibly the world's longest. It connects Porta Saragozza (one of the twelve gates of the ancient walls built in the Middle Ages, which circled a part of the city) with the Sanctuary of the Madonna di San Luca, a church begun in 1723 on the site of an 11th-century edifice which had already been enlarged in the 14th century, prominently located on a hill () overlooking the town, which is one of Bologna's main landmarks. The windy 666 vault arcades, almost four kilometres () long, effectively links "San Luca", as the church is commonly called, to the city centre. Its porticos provide shelter for the traditional procession which every year since 1433 has carried a Byzantine icon of the Madonna with Child attributed to Luke the Evangelist down to the Bologna Cathedral during the Feast of the Ascension.


title: Bologna

text: San Petronio Basilica, built between 1388 and 1479 (but still unfinished), is the tenth-largest church in the world by volume, 132 metres long and 66 metres wide, while the vault reaches 45 metres inside and 51 metres in the facade. With its volume of 258,000 m, it is the largest (Gothic or otherwise) church built of bricks of the world. The Basilica of Saint Stephen and its sanctuary are among the oldest structures in Bologna, having been built starting from the 8th century, according to the tradition on the site of an ancient temple dedicated to Egyptian goddess Isis. The Basilica of Saint Dominic is an example of Romanic architecture from the 13th century, enriched by the monumental tombs of great Bolognese glossators Rolandino de'Passeggeri and Egidio Foscherari. Basilicas of St Francis, Santa Maria dei Servi and San Giacomo Maggiore are other magnificent examples of 14th-century architecture, the latter also featuring Renaissance artworks such as the Bentivoglio Altarpiece by Lorenzo Costa. Finally, the Church of San Michele in Bosco is a 15th-century religious complex located on a hill not far from the city's historical center.


title: Bologna

text: In terms of total GDP, the Metropolitan City of Bologna generated a value of about €35 billion ($40.6 billion) in 2017, equivalent to €34,251 ($40,165) per capita, the third highest figure among Italian provinces (after Milan and Bolzano/Bozen).


title: Bologna

text: The economy of Bologna is characterized by a flourishing industrial sector, traditionally centered on the transformation of agricultural and zootechnical products (, Granarolo, Segafredo Zanetti, ), machinery (, IMA, Sacmi), construction equipment (Maccaferri); energy (Hera Group), automotive (Ducati, Lamborghini), footwear, textile, engineering, chemical, printing and publishing (, , , ).


title: Bologna

text: In particular, Bologna is considered the centre of the so-called "packaging valley", an area well known for its high concentration of firms specialised in the manufacturing of automatic packaging machines (, IMA). Furthermore, Bologna is well known for its dense network of cooperatives, a feature that dates back to the social struggles of farmers and workers in the 1800s and that today produces up to a third of its GDP and occupies 265 thousand people in the Emilia-Romagna region.


title: Bologna

text: Bologna is home to the Guglielmo Marconi International Airport, the seventh busiest Italian airport for passenger traffic (8 million passengers handled in 2017).


title: Bologna

text: Bologna Centrale railway station is one of Italy's most important train hubs thanks to the city's strategic location as a crossroad between north–south and east–west routes. It serves 58 million passengers annually. The city hosts several minor railway stations (see List of railway stations in Bologna).


title: Bologna

text: Bologna San Donato classification yard, with 33 railway tracks, used to be the largest freight hub in Italy by size and traffic. Since 2018, it has been repurposed as the Bologna San Donato railway test circuit.


title: Bologna

text: The city is also served by a large network of public bus lines, including trolleybus lines, operated since 2012 by Trasporto Passeggeri Emilia-Romagna (TPER).


title: Bologna

text: A large commuter rail service is currently under development (see Bologna metropolitan railway service), and a four line tram network is also planned (see Trams in Bologna).


title: Bologna

text: The average amount of time people spend commuting with public transit in Bologna, for example to and from work, on a weekday is 53 min. 9% of public transit riders ride for more than 2 hours every day. The average amount of time people wait at a stop or station for public transit is 12 min, while 16% of riders wait for over 20 minutes on average every day. The average distance people usually ride in a single trip with public transit is 5.4 km, while 7% travel for over 12 km in a single direction.


title: Bologna

text: At the end of 2016, the city proper had a population of 388,254 (while 1 million live in the greater Bologna area), located in the province of Bologna, Emilia Romagna, of whom 46.7% were male and 53.3% were female. Minors (children ages 18 and younger) totalled 12.86 percent of the population compared to pensioners who number 27.02 percent. This compares with the Italian average of 18.06 percent (minors) and 19.94 percent (pensioners). The average age of Bologna resident is 51 compared to the Italian average of 42. In the five years between 2002 and 2007, the population of Bologna grew by 0.0 percent, while Italy as a whole grew by 3.56 percent. The current birth rate of Bologna is 8.07 births per 1,000 inhabitants compared to the Italian average of 9.45 births.


title: Bologna

text: The University of Bologna, conventionally said to have been founded in 1088 by glossators Irnerius and Pepo, is the oldest university in Europe. It was an important centre of European intellectual life during the Middle Ages, attracting scholars from Italy and throughout Europe. The Studium, as it was originally known, began as a loosely organized teaching system with each master collecting fees from students on an individual basis. The location of the early University was thus spread throughout the city, with various colleges being founded to support students of a specific nationality.


title: Bologna

text: In the Napoleonic era, the headquarters of the university were moved to their present location on Via Zamboni, in the northeastern sector of the city centre. Today, the university's 11 schools, 33 departments, and 93 libraries are spread across the city and include four subsidiary campuses in nearby Cesena, Forlì, Ravenna, and Rimini. Noteworthy students present at the university in centuries past included Dante, Petrarch, Thomas Becket, Pope Nicholas V, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Peter Martyr Vermigli, and Copernicus. Laura Bassi, appointed in 1732, became the first woman to officially teach at a university in Europe. In more recent history, Luigi Galvani, the discoverer of bioelectromagnetics, and Guglielmo Marconi, the pioneer of radio technology, also worked at the university. The University of Bologna remains one of the most respected and dynamic post-secondary educational institutions in Italy. To this day, Bologna is still very much a university town, with over 80,000 enrolled students in 2015. This community includes a great number of Erasmus, Socrates, and overseas students. The university's botanical garden, the Orto Botanico dell'Università di Bologna, was established in 1568; it is the fourth oldest in Europe.


title: Bologna

text: Johns Hopkins University maintains its Bologna Center in the city, which hosts one of the overseas campuses of the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). SAIS Bologna was founded in 1955 as the first campus of a US post-graduate school to open in Europe. It was inspired by Marshall Plan efforts to build a cultural bridge between America and Europe. Today, the Bologna Center also hosts the "Associazione italo-americana "Luciano Finelli"", which supports cross-cultural awareness and exchange between Italy and the United States.


title: Bologna

text: Dickinson College, Indiana University, Brown University, and the University of California also have campuses or antennas in the city.


title: Bologna

text: In addition, Bologna hosts a music school, Conservatorio Giovanni Battista Martini, established in 1804, and an art school, Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna, founded in 1802. Both institutions were born as part of the reforms introduced by Napoleon Bonaparte.


title: Bologna

text: Over the centuries, Bologna has acquired many nicknames: "the fat" ("la grassa") refers to its cuisine, in which the most famous specialities are prepared using rich meats (especially pork), egg pasta and dairy products, such as butter and Parmesan. Another nickname that has been given to the city is "the red" ("la rossa"), which was originally used as a reference to the colour of the buildings in the city centre, has later become connected with the communist ideology supported by the majority of the population, in particular after World War II: until the election of a centre-right mayor in 1999, the city was renowned as a bastion of the Italian Communist Party. The centre-left regained power again in the 2004 mayoral elections, with the election of Sergio Cofferati. It was one of the first European cities to experiment with the concept of free public transport.


title: Bologna

text: Bologna has also two other nicknames: the first one, "the towered" ("la turrita") refers to the high number of medieval towers that can be found in the city, even if today only 24 towers are still standing. The second one, "the learned" ("la dotta") is a reference to its university.


title: Bologna

text: Bologna's university was founded in 1088 and it is considered the oldest university in the Western world. According to the QS University Rankings, Bologna university is the 4th-ranked Italian university and the 180th-ranked in the world.


title: Bologna

text: The high number of students coming from all over Italy and the world (in Bologna there are several campuses of foreign universities such as Johns Hopkins University, Dickinson College, Indiana University, Brown University, University of California and more) has a considerable effect on everyday life. While it contributes to livening up the city centre (an area in which the average age of the residents is very high) and it also helps to promote cultural initiatives, on the other hand, it creates public order and waste management problems that stem from the lively nightlife of the university district.


title: Bologna

text: The city of Bologna became a UNESCO City of Music on 26 May 2006. According to UNESCO, "As the first Italian city to be appointed to the Network, Bologna has demonstrated a rich musical tradition that is continuing to evolve as a vibrant factor of contemporary life and creation. It has also shown a strong commitment to promoting music as an important vehicle for inclusion in the fight against racism and in an effort to encourage economic and social development. Fostering a wide range of genres from classical to electronic, jazz, folk and opera, Bologna offers its citizens a musical vitality that deeply infiltrates the city's professional, academic, social and cultural facets."


title: Bologna

text: The theatre was a popular form of entertainment in Bologna until the 16th century. The first public theater was the Teatro alla Scala, active since 1547 in Palazzo del Podestà. An important figure of Italian Bolognese theatre was Alfredo Testoni, the playwright, and author of "Cardinal Lambertini", which has had great theatrical success since 1905, repeated on screen by the Bolognese actor Gino Cervi. In 1998, the City of Bologna initiated the project "Bologna dei Teatri" (Bologna of the Theatres), an association of the major theatrical facilities in the city. This is a circuit of theatres which offer diverse theatrical opportunities, ranging from Bolognese dialect to contemporary dance, but with a communications strategy and promoting unity. Specifically, the shows on the bill in various theatres participating in the project are advertised weekly through a single poster. Bologna's opera house is the Teatro Comunale di Bologna. The Orchestra Mozart, whose music director was Claudio Abbado until his death in 2014, was created in 2004.


title: Bologna

text: Bologna hosts a number of international music, art, dance and film festivals, including Angelica, "Bologna" and "Contemporanea" (festivals on contemporary music), Bolognafestival (international classical music festival),


title: Bologna

text: Bologna Jazz Festival, Biografilm Festival (devoted to biographical movies), BilBolBul (a comics festival), Danza Urbana (a street contemporary dance festival), F.I.S.Co (festival on contemporary art, now merged into Live Arts Week), Future Film Festival (animation and special effects), "Il Cinema Ritrovato" (film festival about rare and forgotten movies), Live Arts Week, Gender Bender (festival on gender identity, sexual orientation, and body representation), Homework festival (electronic music festival), Human Rights Film Festival, Some Prefer Cake (lesbian film festival), Zecchino d'Oro (a children's song contest).


title: Bologna

text: Bologna is renowned for its culinary tradition. It is the home of the famous Bolognese sauce, a meat-based pasta sauce. In Italy, it is called "ragù" and is substantially different from the variety found worldwide. In Bologna, the sauce is used only as a dressing for tagliatelle, and serving it with spaghetti is considered odd.


title: Bologna

text: Situated in the fertile Po River Valley, the rich local cuisine depends heavily on meats and cheeses. As in all of Emilia-Romagna, the production of cured pork meats such as prosciutto, mortadella and salumi is an important part of the local food industry. Well-regarded nearby vineyards include Pignoletto dei Colli Bolognesi, Lambrusco di Modena and Sangiovese di Romagna. Tagliatelle with ragù, lasagne, tortellini served in broth, and mortadella, the original Bologna sausage, are among the local specialties.


title: Bologna

text: Traditional Bolognese desserts are often linked to holidays, such as "fave dei morti" ("cookies of the dead"), multi-coloured almond paste cookies made for All Saints' Day, jam-filled raviole cookies that are served on Saint Joseph's Day, and carnival sweets known as "sfrappole", a light and delicate fried pastry topped with powder sugar, "certosino" or "panspeziale" ("carthusian" or "apothecary-cake"), a spicy cake served on Christmas. "Torta di riso", a custard-like cake made of almonds, rice and amaretto, is made throughout the year, as well as the zuppa inglese.


title: Bologna

text: Differently from the vaste majority of Italian cities, in Bologna, basketball is the most followed sport. In fact, the sporting nickname for Bologna is "Basket City" in reference to the successes of the town's two rival historic basketball clubs, Virtus and Fortitudo. Of the two, the former won, among others, 16 Italian basketball championships, two Euroleagues, one EuroCup and one FIBA Saporta Cup, making them one of the most influential European basketball clubs; the latter won two league titles between 1999 and 2005. The Italian Basketball League, which operates both Lega A and LegADue, has its headquarters in Bologna. There are two indoor arenas in the city: PalaDozza, the oldest one with a capacity of 5,570 seats, and Segafredo Arena, a temporary venue with a capacity of 9,980 seats.


title: Bologna

text: The city's main club, Bologna F.C. 1909, have won seven Italian league championships (the latest in 1963–64), which makes them the sixth most successful team in the history of the league; in their heyday in the 1930s Bologna FC was called ""Lo squadrone che tremare il mondo fa"" (Italian for "The Team that Shakes the World").


title: Bologna

text: The club play at the 38,000-capacity Stadio Renato Dall'Ara, which has hosted the Italian national team in both football and rugby union, as well as the San Marino national football team.


title: Bologna

text: Rugby union is also present in the city: Rugby Bologna 1928 is not only one of the oldest Italian rugby union clubs but also the first club affiliated to the Italian rugby union federation. and, to date (2014) is Italy's oldest rugby union club still in operation.


title: Bologna

text: The club took part in the top tier of the Italian championship for the first 25 years of their history never winning the title but getting to the runner-up place several times; they returned to the top division (Serie A1 then Super 10), in the late 1990s and faced serious financial problems which led them to the relegation and almost to disappearance.


title: Bologna

text: Gianni Falchi Stadium is a baseball stadium located in Bologna. It is home to the home games of Fortitudo Baseball Bologna, in the Italian Baseball League.


title: The Aviator (2004 film)

text: The Aviator is a 2004 American epic biographical drama film directed by Martin Scorsese and written by John Logan. It stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes, Cate Blanchett as Katharine Hepburn, and Kate Beckinsale as Ava Gardner. The supporting cast features Ian Holm, John C. Reilly, Alec Baldwin, Jude Law, Gwen Stefani, Kelli Garner, Matt Ross, Willem Dafoe, Alan Alda, and Edward Herrmann.


title: The Aviator (2004 film)

text: Based on the 1993 non-fiction book "Howard Hughes: The Secret Life" by Charles Higham, the film depicts the life of Howard Hughes, an aviation pioneer and director of the film "Hell's Angels". The film portrays his life from 1927 to 1947 during which time Hughes became a successful film producer and an aviation magnate while simultaneously growing more unstable due to severe obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD).


title: The Aviator (2004 film)

text: "The Aviator" was released in the United States on December 25, 2004 to positive reviews with critics praising DiCaprio’s and Blanchett's performances and Scorsese’s direction. It grossed $214 million on a budget of $110 million and received many accolades. At the 77th Academy Awards, it was nominated for eleven awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actor for DiCaprio, and Best Supporting Actor for Alda, winning five: Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Costume Design, Best Art Direction, and Best Supporting Actress for Blanchett. At the 58th British Academy Film Awards, it was nominated for fourteen awards, winning four: Best Film, Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Blanchett, Best Production Design and Best Makeup and Hair. At the 62nd Golden Globe Awards, it was nominated for six awards, winning three: Best Motion Picture — Drama, Best Actor — Motion Picture Drama for DiCaprio and Best Original Score for Howard Shore. In addition, DiCaprio was nominated for Outstanding Male Actor in a Leading Role and Blanchett won Outstanding Female Actor in a Supporting Role at the 11th Screen Actors Guild Awards.


title: The Aviator (2004 film)

text: In 1913, Houston, eight-year-old Howard Hughes' mother gives him a bath and teaches him how to spell "quarantine", warning him about the recent cholera outbreak. Fourteen years later, in 1927, he begins to direct his film "Hell's Angels", and hires Noah Dietrich to manage the day-to-day operations of his business empire.


title: The Aviator (2004 film)

text: After the release of "The Jazz Singer", the first partially talking film, Hughes becomes obsessed with shooting his film realistically, and decides to convert the movie to a sound film. Despite the film being a hit, Hughes remains unsatisfied with the end result and orders it to be recut after its Hollywood premiere. He becomes romantically involved with actress Katharine Hepburn, who helps to ease the symptoms of his worsening obsessive–compulsive disorder.


title: The Aviator (2004 film)

text: In 1935, Hughes test flies the H-1 Racer, pushing it to a new speed record, despite having to crash-land into a beet field when the aircraft runs out of fuel. Three years later, he breaks the world record by flying around the world in four days. He subsequently purchases majority interest in Transcontinental & Western Air (TWA).


title: The Aviator (2004 film)

text: Juan Trippe, company rival and chairman of Pan Am, gets his crony, Senator Ralph Owen Brewster, to introduce the Community Airline Bill, which would give Pan Am exclusivity on international air travel. Hepburn grows tired of Hughes' eccentricity and workaholism, and leaves him for fellow actor Spencer Tracy. Hughes quickly finds a new love interest with 15-year-old Faith Domergue, and later actress Ava Gardner. However, he still has feelings for Hepburn, and bribes a reporter to keep reports about her and the married Tracy out of the press.


title: The Aviator (2004 film)

text: In the mid-1940s, Hughes contracts two projects with the Army Air Forces, one for a spy aircraft, and another for a troop transport unit for use in World War II.


title: The Aviator (2004 film)

text: In 1947, with the H-4 Hercules flying boat still in construction, Hughes finishes the XF-11 reconnaissance aircraft and takes it for a test flight. However, one of the engines fails midflight, and he crashes in Beverly Hills, miraculously surviving the crash. The army cancels its order for the H-4 Hercules, although Hughes still continues the development with his own money. Dietrich informs Hughes that he must choose between funding the airlines or his flying boat. Hughes orders Dietrich to mortgage the TWA assets so he can continue the development.


title: The Aviator (2004 film)

text: As his OCD worsens, Hughes becomes increasingly paranoid, planting microphones and tapping Gardner's phone lines to keep track of her, until she kicks him out of her house. The FBI searches his home for incriminating evidence of war profiteering, searching through his possessions.


title: The Aviator (2004 film)

text: Brewster privately offers to drop the charges if Hughes sells TWA to Trippe, but Hughes refuses. Hughes' OCD symptoms become extreme, and he retreats into an isolated "germ-free zone" for three months. Trippe has Brewster summon him for a Senate investigation, certain that Hughes will not show up. Gardner visits him and personally grooms and dresses him in preparation for the hearing.


title: The Aviator (2004 film)

text: An invigorated Hughes defends himself against Brewster's charges and accuses the Senator of taking bribes from Trippe. He concludes by announcing that he has committed to completing the H-4 aircraft, and that he will leave the country if he cannot get it to fly. Brewster's bill is promptly defeated.


title: The Aviator (2004 film)

text: After successfully flying the aircraft, Hughes speaks with Dietrich and his engineer, Glenn Odekirk, about a new jetliner for TWA. However, he begins hallucinating men in germ-resistant suits, and has a panic attack. As Odekirk hides him in a restroom while Dietrich fetches a doctor, Hughes begins to have flashbacks of his childhood, his love for aviation and his ambition for success, compulsively repeating the phrase "the way of the future".


title: The Aviator (2004 film)

text: Warren Beatty planned to direct and star in a Hughes biopic in the early 1970s. He co-wrote the script with Bo Goldman after a proposed collaboration with Paul Schrader fell through. Goldman wrote his own script, "Melvin and Howard", which depicted Hughes' possible relationship with Melvin Dummar. Beatty's thoughts regularly returned to the project over the years, and in 1990 he approached Steven Spielberg to direct Goldman's script. Beatty's Hughes biopic was eventually released under the title "Rules Don't Apply" in 2016. Charles Evans, Jr. purchased the film rights of "Howard Hughes: The Untold Story" () in 1993. Evans secured financing from New Regency Productions, but development stalled.