title: Mickey Mantle

text: When Mantle was four years old, his family moved to the nearby town of Commerce, Oklahoma, where his father worked in lead and zinc mines. As a teenager, Mantle rooted for the St. Louis Cardinals. In addition to his first love, baseball, Mantle was an all-around athlete at Commerce High School, playing basketball as well as football. He played halfback and Oklahoma offered him a football scholarship. His football playing nearly ended his athletic career. In his sophomore year, he was kicked on the left shin during a practice game, and he developed osteomyelitis—an infectious disease that was incurable just a few years earlier—in his left ankle. Mantle's parents drove him at midnight to Oklahoma City, where he was treated at the children's hospital with the newly available penicillin, which reduced the infection and saved his leg from amputation.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: Mantle began his professional baseball career in Kansas with the semi-professional Baxter Springs Whiz Kids. In 1948, Yankees scout Tom Greenwade came to Baxter Springs to watch Mantle's teammate, third baseman Willard "Billy" Johnson. During the game, Mantle hit three home runs. Greenwade returned in 1949, after Mantle's high school graduation, to sign Mantle to a minor league contract. Mantle signed for $140 per month () with a $1,500 signing bonus ().


title: Mickey Mantle

text: Mantle was assigned to the Yankees' Class-D Independence Yankees of the Kansas–Oklahoma–Missouri League, where he played shortstop. During a slump, Mantle called his father to tell him he wanted to quit baseball. Mutt drove to Independence, Kansas, and convinced Mantle to keep playing. Mantle hit .313 for the Independence Yankees. Shulthis Stadium, the baseball stadium in Independence where Mantle played, had been the site of the first night game of organized baseball in 1930. Mantle hit his first professional home run on June 30, 1949, at Shulthis Stadium. The ball went over the center field fence, which was 460 feet from home plate.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: In 1950, Mantle was promoted to the Class-C Joplin Miners of the Western Association. Mantle won the Western Association batting title, with a .383 average. He also hit 26 home runs and recorded 136 runs batted in. However, Mantle struggled defensively at shortstop.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: Mantle was invited to the Yankees instructional camp before the 1951 season. After an impressive spring training, Yankees manager Casey Stengel decided to promote Mantle to the majors as a right fielder instead of sending him to the minors. Mickey Mantle's salary for the 1951 season was $7,500.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: Mantle was assigned uniform #6, signifying the expectation that he would become the next Yankees star, following Babe Ruth (#3), Lou Gehrig (#4) and Joe DiMaggio (#5). Stengel, speaking to "SPORT", stated "He's got more natural power from both sides than anybody I ever saw." Bill Dickey called Mantle "the greatest prospect [he's] seen in [his] time."


title: Mickey Mantle

text: After a brief slump, Mantle was sent down to the Yankees' top farm team, the Kansas City Blues. However, he was not able to find the power he once had in the lower minors. Out of frustration, he called his father one day and told him, "I don't think I can play baseball anymore." Mutt drove up to Kansas City that day. When he arrived, he started packing his son's clothes and, according to Mantle's memory, said "I thought I raised a man. I see I raised a coward instead. You can come back to Oklahoma and work the mines with me." Mantle immediately broke out of his slump, and went on to hit .361 with 11 homers and 50 RBIs during his stay in Kansas City.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: Mantle was called up to the Yankees after 40 games with Kansas City, this time wearing uniform #7. He hit .267 with 13 home runs and 65 RBI in 96 games. In the second game of the 1951 World Series, New York Giants rookie Willie Mays hit a fly ball to right-center field. Mantle, playing right field, raced for the ball together with center fielder Joe DiMaggio, who called for the ball (and made the catch). In getting out of DiMaggio's way, Mantle tripped over an exposed drain pipe and severely injured his right knee. This was the first of numerous injuries that plagued his 18-year career with the Yankees. He played the rest of his career with a torn ACL.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: Joe DiMaggio retired from baseball following the 1951 World Series. The following year, Mantle moved to center field. He was selected an "All-Star" for the first time and made the AL team, but did not play in the five-inning All-Star game that had Boston Red Sox Dom DiMaggio at center field. In his first complete World Series (1952), Mantle was the Yankees hitting star, with an on-base percentage above .400 and a slugging percentage above .600. He homered for the third Yankee run in a 3–2 Game 6 win and he knocked in the winning runs in the 4–2 Game 7 win, with a homer in the sixth inning and an RBI single in the seventh inning. Mantle played center field full-time for the Yankees until 1965, when he was moved to left field. He spent his final two seasons at first base. Among his many accomplishments are all-time World Series records for home runs (18), runs scored (42), and runs batted in (40).


title: Mickey Mantle

text: The osteomyelitic condition of Mantle's left leg had exempted him from being drafted for military service since he was 18 in 1949, but his emergence as a star center fielder in the major leagues during the Korean War in 1952 led baseball fans to question his 4-F deferment. Two Armed Forces physicals were ordered, including a highly publicized exam on November 4, 1952, which was brought on by his All-Star selection, that ended in a final rejection.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: Mantle had high hopes that 1953 would be a breakout year but his momentum was stopped by an injury. He missed several weeks, so his numbers were modest but respectable, especially with 92 RBIs.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: The next was arguably his first great year, as he concluded with 37 home runs and a .306 batting average.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: Mantle had his breakout season in 1956 after showing progressive improvement each of his first five years. Described by him as his "favorite summer", his major league-leading .353 batting average, 52 home runs, and 130 runs batted in brought home both the Triple Crown and first of three Major League Baseball Most Valuable Player Awards. He also hit his second All-Star Game home run that season. During Game 5 of the 1956 World Series—Don Larsen's perfect game against the Brooklyn Dodgers—Mantle kept the perfect game alive by making a running catch of a deep fly ball off the bat of Gil Hodges, and provided the first of the two runs the Yankees would score with a fourth-inning home run off Brooklyn starter Sal Maglie. Mantle's overall performance in 1956 was so exceptional that he was bestowed the Hickok Belt (unanimously) as the top American professional athlete of the year. He is the only player to win a league Triple Crown as a switch hitter.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: Mantle won his second consecutive MVP in 1957 behind league leads in runs and walks, a career-high .365 batting average (second to Ted Williams' .388), and hitting into a league-low five double plays.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: His batting average in mid-season had climbed as high as .392. His on-base percentage at one point, reached .537.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: Mantle reached base more times than he made outs (319 to 312), one of two seasons in which he achieved the feat. The 1958 season started slowly for Mantle; the first half saw him at the .274 mark, as a shoulder injury from a collision with Braves’ Red Schoendienst in the 1957 World Series left him with permanent struggles in his uppercut from the left side. (Another story says, he was badly injured playing touch football, at home, in the late summer of that year). Although his injury affected his upper cut from the right side, it still can be said he was not injured in 1958.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: He did, however, regain his status, hitting .330 in the second half of 1958, and leading his team back to the Series. In January 1959, the New York Times reported Mantle sought a contract raise to 85,000 dollars but he settled for 70,000. (His batting average closed 61 points lower than the previous year).


title: Mickey Mantle

text: The 1959 season was another frustrating situation; this time the first half of his season was good and his second-half comparatively bad. The season was bad for the Yankees, too, as they finished third. It was that year, also, he was timed running from home plate to first base in 3.1 seconds, considered outstanding for a heavy hitter. ‘59 was the first of four consecutive seasons that two All-Star games were played and Mantle played in seven of these games. Mantle made the AL All-Star team as a reserve player in 1959, as his numbers had tailed off from previous seasons, he was used as a pinch runner for Baltimore Orioles catcher Gus Triandos and replacement right fielder for Cleveland Indians Rocky Colavito in the first game with Detroit Tigers Al Kaline playing the center field position. Mantle was the starting center fielder in the second All-Star Game's lineup, getting a single and a walk in four at bats.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: 1959 is said to be his only “off season “ in his prime, and historians point to 75 runs batted in as particularly low for him but as the team slumped overall , he was still the team leader in several departments , for example in base stealing (23), runs scored (104), on-base average /percentage (.399) and fielding (.995). Because of these comparatively low numbers , he took a salary cut of 10,000 dollars, down to 60,000 dollars.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: In 1960 Mantle started in both All-Star games, getting two walks in the first and a single in the second game.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: - indeed, the first week of June saw his batting average drop to .228—although by mid-August, he was back in his prime, leading the team to another World Series.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: Although his batting average was his lowest since his rookie year, his league-leading 40 home runs and 94 runs batted in, saw him come in a close second to Roger Maris’ MVP award. His on-base percentage was .400, for the year.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: In the 1960 season, he hit what is still believed to be the longest home run in history. He hit one over the right center field roof at Briggs Stadium, which is said to have traveled 643 feet.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: On January 16, 1961, Mantle became the highest-paid player in baseball by signing a $75,000 () contract. DiMaggio, Hank Greenberg, and Ted Williams, who had just retired, had been paid over $100,000 in a season, and Ruth had a peak salary of $80,000. Mantle became the highest-paid active player of his time. Mantle's top salary was $100,000, which he reached for the 1963 season. Having reached that pinnacle in his 13th season, he never asked for another raise.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: During the 1961 season, Mantle and teammate Roger Maris, known as the M&M Boys, chased Babe Ruth's 1927 single-season home run record. Five years earlier, in 1956, Mantle had challenged Ruth's record for most of the season, and the New York press had been protective of Ruth on that occasion also. When Mantle finally fell short, finishing with 52, many of the traditionalists were relieved. The New York press was harsh in its treatment of Mantle in his early years with the team, emphasizing that he struck out frequently, was injury-prone, was a rube from Oklahoma, and was perceived as inferior to his predecessor in center field, Joe DiMaggio.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: Over the course of time, however, Mantle (with a little help from his teammate Whitey Ford, a native of Queens) had learned to deal with the New York media and had gained the favor of the press. Maris did not follow suit, and many in the press viewed him as surly. In the 1961 season, the press appeared to view the Yankees as Mantle's team, with Maris often belittled and ostracized as an outsider and not a true Yankee. Mantle was hospitalized with an abscessed hip resulting from a flu shot that he had received late in the season, leaving Maris to break the record (he finished with 61). Mantle finished with 54 home runs while leading the American league in runs scored and walks. For the second consecutive year, he narrowly missed winning his third MVP award, finishing four points behind repeat winner Maris.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: In 1962, Mantle batted .321 in 121 games. He was selected an All-Star for the eleventh consecutive season and played in the first game, but because of a recurrence of an old injury, he did not play in the second game. Despite missing 41 games, he was selected as MVP for the third time, beating out teammate Bobby Richardson in the voting. In 1963, he batted .314 in 65 games. On May 22, Mantle hit a line-drive home run off the third-tier facade at Yankee Stadium, the closest that any hitter had come to hitting a fair ball out of the park. On June 5, he tried to prevent a home run by Brooks Robinson in Baltimore when his shoe spikes were caught in the center field chain-link fence as he leaped against the fence for the ball and was coming down. He broke his foot and did not play again until August 4, when he hit a pinch-hit home run against the Baltimore Orioles at Yankee Stadium. He returned to the center field position on September 2. He was selected an All-Star as the starting center fielder, but for the first time he could not make the 25-man roster because of the foot injury. In 1964, Mantle hit .303 with 35 home runs and 111 RBIs, and played center field in the All-Star game. In the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 3 of the 1964 World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals, Mantle hit Barney Schultz's first pitch into the right field stands at Yankee Stadium, which won the game for the Yankees 2–1. The home run was his 16th in a World Series, breaking Babe Ruth's record of 15. It also was perhaps his only "called shot," as he told on-deck hitter Elston Howard, "he might as well return to the dugout ...this game is over!" He hit two more home runs in the series to set a new lifetime World Series record with 18. The Cardinals won the World Series in seven games.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: Mantle finished in second place in MVP voting for 1964, as Baltimore's Brooks Robinson won the award. In that season, he also hit another long home run at Yankee Stadium to left-center field that was reported to have traveled 502 feet.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: The Yankees and Mantle were slowed by injuries during the 1965 season, and they finished in sixth place, 25 games behind the Minnesota Twins. Mantle hit .255 with 19 home runs and 46 RBI in 361 plate appearances. He was selected an AL All-Star again, but as a reserve player, and he did not make the 28-player team for the second and last time because of an injury. To inaugurate the Astrodome, the world's first multi-purpose, domed sports stadium, the Houston Astros and the New York Yankees played an exhibition game on April 9, 1965. Mantle hit the park's first home run. In 1966, his batting average increased to .288 with 23 home runs and 56 RBI in 333 at-bats, in large part because of very strong June and July, when he returned to his 1964 form until he was sidelined with another injury. After the 1966 season, Mantle was moved to first base, with Joe Pepitone taking his place in the outfield. On May 14, 1967, Mantle became the sixth member of the 500 home run club.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: Mantle hit .237 with 18 home runs and 54 RBI during his final season in 1968. The low batting average caused his lifetime average to dip below .300, which caused him anguish the next year as he worked with a statistician to review all of his at-bats since 1951, hoping to find enough uncounted hits to elevate his average to .2995, but his lifetime average remained .298.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: Mantle announced his retirement at the age of 37 on March 1, 1969. He delivered a farewell speech on Mickey Mantle Day, June 8, 1969, at Yankee Stadium. Mantle's wife, mother, and mother-in-law were in attendance and received recognition at the ceremony held in honor of him. When he retired, Mantle was third on the all-time home-run list with 536, and he was the Yankees' all-time leader in games played with 2,401, a record that would be broken by Derek Jeter on August 29, 2011.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: Mantle hit some of the longest home runs in Major League history. On September 10, 1960, he hit a ball left-handed that cleared the right-field roof at Tiger Stadium in Detroit and, based on where it was found, was estimated years later by historian Mark Gallagher to have traveled 643 feet (196 m). Another Mantle homer, hit right-handed off Chuck Stobbs at Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C. on April 17, 1953, was measured by Yankees traveling secretary Red Patterson (hence the term "tape-measure home run") to have traveled 565 feet (172 m). Deducting for bounces, there is no doubt that both landed well over 500 feet (152 m) from home plate. Mantle two times hit balls off the third-deck facade at Yankee Stadium, nearly becoming the only player to hit a fair ball out of the stadium during a game. On May 22, 1963, against Kansas City's Bill Fischer, Mantle hit a ball that fellow players and fans claimed was still rising when it hit the high facade, then caromed back onto the playing field. It was later estimated by some that the ball could have traveled had it not been blocked by the ornate and distinctive facade. On August 12, 1964, he hit one whose distance was undoubted: a center field drive that cleared the batter's eye screen, some 75' beyond the marker at the Stadium. The Daily News reported it as a 502-foot homer.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: Although he was a feared power hitter from either side of the plate and hit more home runs batting left-handed than right, Mantle considered himself a better right-handed hitter. In roughly 25% of his total at-bats he hit .330 right-handed to .281 left. His 372 to-164 home run disparity was due to Mantle having batted left-handed much more often, as the large majority of pitchers are right-handed. In spite of short foul pole dimension of 296 feet (90 m) to left and 301 feet (92 m) to right in original Yankee Stadium, Mantle gained no advantage there as his stroke both left and right-handed drove balls there to power alleys of 344' to 407' and 402' to 457' feet (139 m) from the plate. Overall, he hit slightly more home runs away (270) than home (266).


title: Mickey Mantle

text: Mantle was also one of the best bunters for base hits of all time. He is in 10th place in number of bases-empty bunt singles for his career, with 80 in only 148 at-bats.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: Mantle's career was plagued with injuries. Beginning in high school, he suffered both acute and chronic injuries to bones and cartilage in his legs. Applying thick wraps to both of his knees became a pre-game ritual, and by the end of his career simply swinging a bat caused him to fall to one knee in pain. Baseball scholars often ponder "what if" had he not been injured, and had been able to lead a healthy career.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: As a 19-year-old rookie playing right field in his first World Series, Mantle tore the cartilage in his right knee on a fly ball hit by Willie Mays. Joe DiMaggio was playing center field. Mays' fly was hit to shallow center, and as Mantle came over to back up DiMaggio, Mantle's spikes caught a drainage cover in the outfield grass. His knee twisted awkwardly and he instantly fell. Witnesses say it looked "like he had been shot." He was carried off the field on a stretcher and watched the rest of the World Series on TV from a hospital bed. Dr. Stephen Haas, medical director for the National Football League Players Association, has speculated that Mantle tore his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) during the incident and played the rest of his career without having it properly treated since ACLs could not be repaired with the surgical techniques available in that era. Still, Mantle was known as the "fastest man to first base" and won the American League triple crown in 1956. In 1949, he received a draft-examine notice and was about to be drafted by the US Army but failed the physical exam and was rejected as unqualified and was given a 4-F deferment for any military service.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: During the 1957 World Series, Milwaukee Braves second baseman Red Schoendienst fell on Mantle's left shoulder in a collision at second base. Over the next decade, Mantle experienced increasing difficulty hitting from his left side.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: Mantle desired to be remembered as a stellar teammate. Joe Collins, who played with him from 1951 through 1957, recalled that "Mickey was the type of guy who cared about you as a person. As a teammate, he never complained about his injuries and always tried to lead by example. He always had that country boy attitude that made you feel at ease. He was a huge star, but he never treated you like he was better than you." Also displaying a sense of humor, he enjoyed playing practical jokes on his teammates. Frequently, he would dump ice water on those who were showering. Other times, he would leave fake snakes, bugs, or frogs around for Phil Rizzuto to find. Once, he put a live snake in Marshall Bridges's uniform, and another time he released a live mongoose into the visitors clubhouse at Tiger Stadium.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: Mantle served as a part-time color commentator on NBC's baseball coverage in 1969, teaming with Curt Gowdy and Tony Kubek to call some "Game of the Week" telecasts as well as that year's All-Star Game. In 1972 he served as a part-time television commentator for the Montreal Expos.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: In 1973, at the Old-Timers Game at Yankee Stadium, Mantle, batting right handed, faced old friend Whitey Ford. After fouling off a few pitches, he hit a towering home run over the 402-foot sign by the bullpen. Some now call this his last home run at Yankee Stadium.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: Although he was among the best-paid players of the pre-free-agency era, Mantle was a poor businessman and did not invest well. His lifestyle was restored to its former luxury by his leadership in the sports-memorabilia craze that swept the U.S. beginning in the 1980s. Mantle was a prized guest at baseball-card shows, commanding fees far in excess of those of any other player for his appearances and autographs. Mantle insisted that the promoters of baseball-card shows always include one of the lesser-known Yankees of his era, such as Moose Skowron or Hank Bauer, so that they could also earn money for their appearances.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: After the failure of Mickey Mantle's Country Cookin' restaurants in the early 1970s, the popular Mickey Mantle's Restaurant & Sports Bar opened in New York at 42 Central Park South (59th Street) in 1988. His original Yankee Stadium Monument Park plaque is displayed at the front entrance. Mantle let others run the business but made frequent appearances.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: Mantle worked as a customer-relations representative for the Dallas Reserve Life Insurance Company. In 1983, he worked at the Claridge Resort and Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey as a greeter and community representative. His job mostly involved representing the Claridge in golf tournaments and at other charity events, but Mantle was suspended from baseball by Commissioner Bowie Kuhn because any affiliation with gambling was viewed as grounds for placement on the "permanently ineligible" list. Kuhn warned Mantle before he accepted the position that he would be placed on the list if he took the job. Hall of Famer Willie Mays, who had taken a similar position, had already had action taken against him. Nevertheless, Mantle accepted the position because he felt the rule was "stupid." Mantle was reinstated on March 18, 1985 by Kuhn's successor Peter Ueberroth.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: On December 23, 1951, Mantle married Merlyn Johnson (1932–2009) in Picher, Oklahoma; they had four sons. In an autobiography, Mantle said that he had married Merlyn not out of love, but because he was told to by his domineering father. While his drinking became public knowledge during his lifetime, the press kept quiet about his many marital infidelities. Mantle was not entirely discreet about them, and at his retirement ceremony in 1969, he brought his mistress along with his wife. In 1980, Mantle separated from his wife, and while the two lived apart for the rest of Mantle's life, they never filed for divorce. During this time, Mantle lived with his agent Greer Johnson.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: The couple's four sons were Mickey Jr. (1953–2000), David (born 1955), Billy (1957–1994), whom Mickey named for Billy Martin, his best friend among his Yankee teammates, and Danny (born 1960). Like Mickey, Merlyn and three of their sons became alcoholics, and Billy developed Hodgkin's disease, as had several previous men in Mantle's family.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: Mantle made an appearance in the music video for "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" by Paul Simon in 1988. He batted left-handed hitting while Simon pitched left-handed.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: During the final years of his life, Mantle purchased a condominium on Lake Oconee near Greensboro, Georgia, near Greer Johnson's home, and frequently stayed there for months at a time. He occasionally attended the local Methodist church, and sometimes ate Sunday dinner with members of the congregation. He was well-liked by the citizens of Greensboro, and seemed to like them in return. The town respected Mantle's privacy, refusing either to talk about him to outsiders or to direct fans to his home. In one interview, Mantle stated that the people of Greensboro had "gone out of their way to make me feel welcome, and I've found something there I haven't enjoyed since I was a kid."


title: Mickey Mantle

text: Mantle's off-field behavior is the subject of the book "The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood", written in 2010 by sports journalist Jane Leavy. Excerpts from the book have been published in "Sports Illustrated".


title: Mickey Mantle

text: Mantle allegedly took his first drink of alcohol at age 19, when teammate Hank Bauer gave him a beer that he "chugged as if it were soda pop," according to baseball historian Frank Russo. Before Mantle sought treatment for alcoholism, he admitted that his hard living had hurt both his playing and his family. His rationale was that the men in his family had all died young, so he expected to die young as well. His father died of Hodgkin's disease at age 40 in 1952, and his grandfather also died young of the same disease. "I'm not gonna be cheated," he would say. At the time, Mantle did not know that most of the men in his family had inhaled lead and zinc dust in the mines, which can cause Hodgkin's disease and other cancers. He outlived all the men in his family by several years. As the years passed, Mantle frequently used a line popularized by football legend Bobby Layne, a Dallas neighbor and friend who also died in part from alcohol abuse: "If I'd known I was gonna live this long, I'd have taken a lot better care of myself."


title: Mickey Mantle

text: Mantle's wife and sons all completed treatment for alcoholism and told him that he needed to do the same. He checked into the Betty Ford Clinic on January 7, 1994 after being told by a doctor that his liver was so badly damaged from almost 40 years of drinking that it "looked like a doorstop." The doctor bluntly told Mantle that the damage to his system was so severe that "your next drink could be your last." Also helping Mantle decide to enter the clinic was sportscaster Pat Summerall, who had played for the New York Giants football team at Yankee Stadium, by then a recovering alcoholic and a member of Mantle's Dallas-area country club. Summerall himself had been treated at the clinic in 1992.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: Shortly after Mantle completed treatment, his son Billy died on March 12, 1994 at age 36 of heart problems brought on by years of substance abuse. Despite the fears of those who knew him that this tragedy would send him back to drinking, Mantle remained sober. Mickey Jr. later died of liver cancer on December 20, 2000 at age 47. Danny later battled prostate cancer.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: Mantle spoke with remorse about his drinking in a 1994 "Sports Illustrated" cover story. He said that he was telling the same old stories, and realizing how many of them involved being drunk, including at least one drunk-driving accident, he decided they were not funny any more. He admitted that he had often been cruel and hurtful to family, friends, and fans because of his alcoholism, and sought to make amends. Mantle became a Christian when his former teammate Bobby Richardson, a Baptist, shared his faith with him. After the Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, 1995, Mantle joined with fellow Oklahoman and Yankee Bobby Murcer to raise money for the victims.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: Early in 1995, doctors discovered that Mantle's liver had been severely damaged by both alcohol-induced cirrhosis and hepatitis C. They also discovered that he had an inoperable liver cancer known as undifferentiated hepatocellular carcinoma, which further necessitated a liver transplant. Mantle received the transplant at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas on June 8, 1995. In July, he had recovered enough to deliver a press conference at Baylor, and addressed fans that had looked to him as a role model. "This is a role model: Don't be like me," a frail Mantle said. He established the Mickey Mantle Foundation to raise awareness for organ donations. Mantle returned to the hospital in late July, and the cancer was found to have spread throughout his body. Doctors observed that it was among the most aggressive cancers that they had ever treated, attributing the antirejection drugs administered to Mantle for his liver transplant with helping the cancer spread so quickly.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: Mantle's popularity led to controversy over his liver transplant. Some felt that his fame had permitted him to receive a donor liver in just one day, bypassing patients who had been waiting much longer. Mantle's doctors insisted that the transplant was based solely on medical criteria, but acknowledged that the very short wait created the appearance of favoritism.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: During Mantle's final days he made peace with his estranged wife Merlyn and repeated a request that he expressed decades earlier for Richardson to read a poem at his funeral.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: Mantle died at 2:10 a.m. on August 13, 1995 at Baylor University Medical Center with his wife at his side, five months after his mother had died at age 91. He was 63 years old. His son David was also present. The Yankees played the Indians that day and honored him with a tribute. At Mantle's funeral, Eddie Layton played "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" on the Hammond organ because Mickey had once told him that it was his favorite song. Roy Clark sang and played "Yesterday, When I Was Young." The team played the rest of the season with black mourning bands topped by a number 7 on their left sleeves. Mantle was interred in the Mantle Family Mausoleum, located in the St. Matthew Section of the Sparkman-Hillcrest Memorial Park Cemetery in Dallas. In eulogizing Mantle, sportscaster Bob Costas described him as "a fragile hero to whom we had an emotional attachment so strong and lasting that it defied logic." Costas continued: "In the last year of his life, Mickey Mantle, always so hard on himself, finally came to accept and appreciate the distinction between a role model and a hero. The first, he often was not. The second, he always will be. And, in the end, people got it." Richardson read the poem at Mantle's funeral, which he described as being extremely difficult. Richardson recited the same poem ("God's Hall of Fame"), which was written by a baseball fan, at Roger Maris' funeral.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: After Mantle's death, his family pursued a federal lawsuit against Greer Johnson, his agent and live-in aide during the last decade of his life, to prohibit her from auctioning many of Mantle's personal items, including a lock of hair, a neck brace, and expired credit cards. A settlement was reached allowing for the sale of some of Mantle's belongings for approximately $500,000.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: On Mickey Mantle Day at Yankee Stadium, June 8, 1969, Mantle's number 7 was retired and he was a awarded a bronze plaque to be hung on the center field wall near the monuments to Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Miller Huggins. The plaque was officially presented to Mantle by Joe DiMaggio. Mantle gave a similar plaque to DiMaggio, telling the huge crowd in Yankee Stadium, "Joe DiMaggio's deserves to be higher." In response, DiMaggio's plaque was hung one inch higher than Mantle's. When Yankee Stadium was reopened in 1976 following its renovation, the plaques and monuments were moved to a newly created Monument Park behind the left-center field fence, which has since been replaced by a new Monument Park at the current Yankee Stadium, which opened in 2009.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: Shortly before his death, Mantle videotaped a message to be played on Old-Timers' Day, which he was too ill to attend. He said, "When I die, I wanted on my tombstone, 'A great teammate.' But I didn't think it would be this soon." Those words were carved on the plaque marking his resting place at the family mausoleum in Dallas. On August 25, 1996, about a year after his death, Mantle's Monument Park plaque was replaced with a monument bearing the words "A great teammate" and keeping a phrase that had been included on the original plaque: "A magnificent Yankee who left a legacy of unequaled courage." Mantle's monument now stands at the current Monument Park. Mantle's original plaque, along with DiMaggio's, are now on display at the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center, with the DiMaggio plaque still hung higher than Mantle's.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: Mantle and former teammate Whitey Ford were elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame together in , Mantle's first year of eligibility, Ford's second.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: Beginning in 1997, the Topps Baseball Card company retired card #7 in its baseball flagship sets in tribute to Mantle, whose career was taking off just as Topps began producing them. Mantle's cards, especially his 1952 Topps rookie card, are extremely popular and valuable among card collectors. One of the 1952 cards (Topps; #311; SGC MT 9.5) sold for $12.6 million in August 2022. Topps unretired the #7 in 2006 to use exclusively for cards of Mantle in the current year's design. In 2017, Topps began including #7 cards in its main sets again, with Yankees catcher Gary Sanchez the first player other than Mickey Mantle to appear in the #7 slot since 1995. In 2018, the #7 card was issued to Yankees outfielder Clint Frazier. In 2019, the #7 card was issued to Yankees second baseman Gleyber Torres. In 2020, the #7 card was issued to right fielder Aaron Judge. The first main series #7 card not issued to Mantle or a Yankee was to shortstop Orlando Arcia of the Milwaukee Brewers in 2021.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: In 1998, "The Sporting News" placed Mantle at 17th on its list of baseball's 100 greatest players. That same year, Mantle was one of 100 nominees for the Major League Baseball All-Century Team, and was chosen by fan balloting as one of the team's outfielders. ESPN's "SportsCentury" series that ran in 1999 ranked him No. 37 in its "50 Greatest Athletes" series.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: In 2006, Mantle was featured on a United States postage stamp, one of a series of four including fellow baseball legends Mel Ott, Roy Campanella, and Hank Greenberg.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: A statue of Mantle is located at Mickey Mantle Plaza at Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark, the home stadium of the Triple-A Oklahoma City Dodgers, 2 South Mickey Mantle Drive in Oklahoma City.


title: Mickey Mantle

text: In August 2022, a 1952 Topps baseball card (Topps; 1952; #311; SGC MT 9.5) in mint condition sold for $12.6 million, a record for sports memorabilia at the time. It was originally purchased for $50,000 in 1991. This card is sometimes erroneously referred to as , though Mantle had in fact appeared in the 1951 Bowman Baseball set.


title: Parsis

text: Parsis () or Parsees are an ethnoreligious group of the Indian subcontinent adhering to Zoroastrianism. They are descended from Persians who migrated to Medieval India during and after the Arab conquest of Iran (part of the early Muslim conquests) in order to escape persecution by Muslims and preserve their Zoroastrian identity. The Parsi people comprise the older of the Indian subcontinent's two Zoroastrian communities vis-à-vis the Iranis, whose ancestors migrated to British-ruled India from Qajar-era Iran. According to a 16th-century Parsi epic, "Qissa-i Sanjan", Zoroastrian Persians continued to migrate to the Indian subcontinent from Greater Iran in between the 8th and 10th centuries, and ultimately settled in present-day Gujarat after being granted refuge by a local Hindu king.


title: Parsis

text: Prior to the 7th-century fall of the Sassanid Empire to the Rashidun Caliphate, the Iranian mainland (historically known as 'Persia') had a Zoroastrian majority, and Zoroastrianism had served as the Iranian state religion since at least the time of the Achaemenid Empire. Despite the retreat of many Iranians to the Indian subcontinent, a number of Iranian revolutionary figures such as Babak Khorramdin remained in active rebellion against the Rashidun army and the later Islamic caliphates for almost 200 years after the Arab conquest. However, the decline of Zoroastrianism in Iran continued, and most Iranians had adopted Islam by the 10th century.


title: Parsis

text: The word "Parsi" is derived from the Persian language, and literally translates to "Persian" (); an Arabized form of the word () is used in Persian-speaking regions as an endonym for the Persian language.


title: Parsis

text: The Parsi and Irani communities, while being the only ethnoreligious groups adhering to Zoroastrianism in India, are culturally, linguistically, and socially distinct from each other due to the relative recency of the latter community's migration to the Indian subcontinent.


title: Parsis

text: According to the Encyclopædia Britannica,Parsi, also spelled Parsee, member of a group of followers in India of the Persian prophet Zoroaster. The Parsis, whose name means "Persians", are descended from Persian Zoroastrians who emigrated to India to avoid religious persecution by the Muslims. They live chiefly in Mumbai and in a few towns and villages mostly to the south of Mumbai, but also a few minorities nearby in Karachi (Pakistan) and Chennai. There is a sizeable Parsee population in Pune as well in Bangalore. A few Parsee families also reside in Kolkata and Hyderabad. Although they are not, strictly speaking, a caste, since they are not Hindus, they form a well-defined community. The exact date of the Parsi migration is unknown. According to tradition, the Parsis initially settled at Hormuz on the Persian Gulf but finding themselves still persecuted they set sail for India, arriving in the 8th century. The migration may, in fact, have taken place as late as the 10th century, or in both. They settled first at Diu in Kathiawar but soon moved to South Gujarāt, where they remained for about 800 years as a small agricultural community.


title: Parsis

text: The term "Pārsi", which in the Persian language is a demonym meaning "inhabitant of Pārs" and hence "ethnic Persian", is not attested in Indian Zoroastrian texts until the 17th century. Until that time, such texts consistently use the Persian-origin terms "Zartoshti" "Zoroastrian" or "Vehdin" "[of] the good religion". The 12th-century "Sixteen Shlokas", a Sanskrit text in praise of the Parsis, is the earliest attested use of the term as an identifier for Indian Zoroastrians.


title: Parsis

text: The first reference to the Parsis in a European language is from 1322, when a French monk, Jordanus, briefly refers to their presence in Thane and Bharuch. Subsequently, the term appears in the journals of many European travelers, first French and Portuguese, later English, all of whom used a Europeanized version of an apparently local language term. For example, Portuguese physician Garcia de Orta observed in 1563 that "there are merchants ... in the kingdom of Cambaia ... known as Esparcis. We Portuguese call them Jews, but they are not so. They are Gentios." In an early 20th-century legal ruling (see self-perceptions, below), Justices Davar and Beaman asserted (1909:540) that "Parsi" was also a term used in Iran to refer to Zoroastrians. notes that in much the same way as the word "Hindu" was used by Iranians to refer to anyone from the Indian subcontinent, "Parsi" was used by the Indians to refer to anyone from Greater Iran, irrespective of whether they were actually ethnic Persian people. In any case, the term "Parsi" itself is "not necessarily an indication of their Iranian or 'Persian' origin, but rather as indicator – manifest as several properties – of ethnic identity". Moreover, if heredity were the only factor in a determination of ethnicity, the Parsis would count as Parthians according to the "Qissa-i Sanjan".


title: Parsis

text: The term "Parseeism" or "Parsiism", is attributed to Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron, who in the 1750s, when the word "Zoroastrianism" had yet to be coined, made the first detailed report of the Parsis and of Zoroastrianism, therein mistakenly assuming that the Parsis were the only remaining followers of the religion.


title: Parsis

text: In ancient Persia, Zoroaster taught that good (Ohrmazd) and evil (Angra Mainyu) were opposite forces and the battle between them is more or less evenly matched. A person should always be vigilant to align with forces of light. According to the "asha" or the righteousness and "druj" or the wickedness, the person has chosen in his life they will be judged at the Chinvat bridge to grant passage to Paradise, Hammistagan (A limbo area) or Hell by a sword. A personified form of the soul that represents the person’s deeds takes the adjudged to their destination and they will abide there until the final apocalypse. After the final battle between good and evil, every soul’s walk through a river of fire ordeal for burning of their dross and together they receive a post resurrection paradise. The Zoroastrian holy book, called the "Avesta", was written in the Avestan language, which is closely related to Vedic Sanskrit.


title: Parsis

text: The "Qissa-i Sanjan" is a tale of the journey of the Parsis to India from Iran. It says they fled for reasons of religious freedom and they were allowed to settle in India thanks to the goodwill of a local prince. However, the Parsi community had to abide by three rules: they had to speak the local language, follow local marriage customs, and not carry any weapons. After showing the many similarities between their faith and local beliefs, the early community was granted a plot of land on which to build a fire temple.


title: Parsis

text: Over the centuries since the first Zoroastrians arrived in India, the Parsis have integrated themselves into Indian society while simultaneously maintaining or developing their own distinct customs and traditions (and thus ethnic identity). This in turn has given the Parsi community a rather peculiar standing: they are mostly Indians in terms of national affiliation, language and history, but not typically Indian in terms of consanguinity or ethnicity, cultural, behavioural and religious practices.


title: Parsis

text: Genealogical DNA tests to determine purity of lineage have brought mixed results. One study supports the Parsi contention that they have maintained their Persian roots by avoiding intermarriage with local populations. In that 2002 study of the Y-chromosome (patrilineal) DNA of the Parsis of Pakistan, it was determined that Parsis are genetically closer to Iranians than to their neighbours.


title: Parsis

text: A 2004 study in which Parsi mitochondrial DNA (matrilineal) was compared with that of the Iranians and Gujaratis determined that Parsis are genetically closer to Gujaratis than to Iranians. Taking the 2002 study into account, the authors of the 2004 study suggested "a male-mediated migration of the ancestors of the present-day Parsi population, where they admixed with local females [...] leading ultimately to the loss of mtDNA of Iranian origin". A study was conducted in 2017 which found that Parsis are genetically closer to Neolithic Iranians than to modern Iranians who have witnessed a more recent wave of admixture from the Near East, and that there were “48% South-Asian-specific mitochondrial lineages among the ancient samples, which might have resulted from the assimilation of local females during the initial settlement.”


title: Parsis

text: The definition of who is, and is not, a Parsi is a matter of great contention within the Zoroastrian community in India. It is generally accepted that a Parsi is a person who:


title: Parsis

text: In this sense, "Parsi" is an ethno-religious designator, whose definition is of contention among its members, similar to the identity question among Jews.


title: Parsis

text: Some members of the community additionally contend that a child must have a Parsi father to be eligible for introduction into the faith, but this assertion is considered by most to be a violation of the Zoroastrian tenets of gender equality and may be a remnant of an old legal definition of the term Parsi.


title: Parsis

text: An oft-quoted legal definition of Parsi is based on a 1909 ruling (since nullified) that not only stipulated that a person could not become a Parsi by converting to the Zoroastrian faith but also noted:


title: Parsis

text: This definition was overturned several times. The equality principles of the Indian Constitution void the patrilineal restrictions expressed in the third clause. The second clause was contested and overturned in 1948. On appeal in 1950, the 1948 ruling was upheld and the entire 1909 definition was deemed an obiter dictum – a collateral opinion and not legally binding (re-affirmed in 1966).)


title: Parsis

text: There is a growing voice within the community that if indeed equality must be re-established then the only acceptable solution is to allow a child to be initiated into the faith only if both parents are Parsi.


title: Parsis

text: Nonetheless, the opinion that the 1909 ruling is legally binding continues to persist, even among the better-read and moderate Parsis.


title: Parsis

text: According to the 2011 Census of India, there are 57,264 Parsis in India. According to the National Commission for Minorities, there are a "variety of causes that are responsible for this steady decline in the population of the community", the most significant of which were childlessness and migration. Demographic trends project that by 2020 the Parsis will number only 23,000. The Parsis will then cease to be called a community and will be labeled a 'tribe'.


title: Parsis

text: One-fifth of the decrease in population is attributed to migration. There are sizeable Parsi communities in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and the United States. A slower birthrate than deathrate accounts for the rest: as of 2001, Parsis over the age of 60 make up for 31% of the community. Only 4.7% of the Parsi community are under 6 years of age, which translates to 7 births per year per 1000 individuals. Concerns have been raised in recent years over the rapidly declining population of the Parsi community in India.


title: Parsis

text: The gender ratio among Parsis is unusual: as of 2001, the ratio of males to females was 1000 males to 1050 females (up from 1024 in 1991), due primarily to the high median age of the population (elderly women are more common than elderly men). As of 2001 the national average in India was 1000 males to 933 females.


title: Parsis

text: Parsis have a high literacy rate; as of 2001, the literacy rate is 97.9%, the highest of any Indian community (the national average was 64.8%). 96.1% of Parsis reside in urban areas (the national average is 27.8%). Parsis mother tongue is Gujarati.


title: Parsis

text: In the Greater Mumbai area, where the density of Parsis is highest, about 10% of Parsi females and about 20% of Parsi males do not marry.


title: Parsis

text: According to the Qissa-i Sanjan, the only existing account of the early years of Zoroastrian refugees in India composed at least six centuries after their tentative date of arrival, the first group of immigrants originated from Greater Khorasan. This historical region of Central Asia is in part in northeastern Iran, where it constitutes modern Khorasan Province, part of western/northern Afghanistan, and in part in three Central-Asian republics namely Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.


title: Parsis

text: According to the "Qissa", the immigrants were granted permission to stay by the local ruler, Jadi Rana, on the condition that they adopt the local language (Gujarati) and that their women adopt local dress (the "sari"). The refugees accepted the conditions and founded the settlement of Sanjan, which is said to have been named after the city of their origin (Sanjan, near Merv, modern Turkmenistan). This first group was followed by a second group from Greater Khorasan within five years of the first, and this time having religious implements with them (the "alat"). In addition to these "Khorasani"s or "Kohistani"s "mountain folk", as the two initial groups are said to have been initially called, at least one other group is said to have come overland from Sari, Iran.


title: Parsis

text: Although the Sanjan group are believed to have been the first permanent settlers, the precise date of their arrival is a matter of conjecture. All estimates are based on the "Qissa", which is vague or contradictory with respect to some elapsed periods. Consequently, three possible dates – 716, 765, and 936 – have been proposed as the year of landing, and the disagreement has been the cause of "many an intense battle ... amongst Parsis". Since dates are not specifically mentioned in Parsi texts prior to the 18th century, any date of arrival is perforce a matter of speculation. The importance of the "Qissa" lies in any case not so much in its reconstruction of events than in its depiction of the Parsis – in the way they have come to view themselves – and in their relationship to the dominant culture. As such, the text plays a crucial role in shaping Parsi identity. But, "even if one comes to the conclusion that the chronicle based on verbal transmission is not more than a legend, it still remains without doubt an extremely informative document for Parsee historiography."


title: Parsis

text: The Sanjan Zoroastrians were certainly not the first Zoroastrians on the subcontinent. Sindh touching Balochistan, the easternmost periphery of the Iranian world, too had once been under coastal administration of the Sasanian Empire (226-651), which consequently maintained outposts there. Even following the loss of Sindh, the Iranians continued to play a major role in the trade links between the east and west. The 9th-century Arab historiographer Al-Masudi briefly notes Zoroastrians with fire temples in al-Hind and in al-Sindh. There is evidence of individual Parsis residing in Sindh in the tenth and twelfth centuries, but the current modern community is thought to date from British arrival in Sindh. Moreover, for the Iranians, the harbours of Gujarat lay on the maritime routes that complemented the overland Silk Road and there were extensive trade relations between the two regions. The contact between Iranians and Indians was already well established even prior to the Common Era, and both the Puranas and the "Mahabharata" use the term "Parasikas" to refer to the peoples west of the Indus River.


title: Parsis

text: "Parsi legends regarding their ancestors' migration to India depict a beleaguered band of religious refugees escaping the new rule post the Muslim conquests in order to preserve their ancient faith." However, while Parsi settlements definitely arose along the western coast of the Indian subcontinent following the Arab conquest of Iran, it is not possible to state with certainty that these migrations occurred as a result of religious persecution against Zoroastrians. If the "traditional" 8th century date (as deduced from the "Qissa") is considered valid, it must be assumed "that the migration began while Zoroastrianism was still the predominant religion in Iran and economic factors predominated the initial decision to migrate." This would have been particularly the case if – as the "Qissa" suggests – the first Parsis originally came from the north-east (i.e. Central Asia) and had previously been dependent on Silk Road trade. Even so, in the 17th century, Henry Lord, a chaplain with the English East India Company, noted that the Parsis came to India seeking "liberty of conscience" but simultaneously arrived as "merchantmen bound for the shores of India, in course of trade and merchandise."


title: Parsis

text: The "Qissa" has little to say about the events that followed the establishment of Sanjan, and restricts itself to a brief note on the establishment of the "Fire of Victory" (Middle Persian: "Atash Bahram") at Sanjan and its subsequent move to Navsari. According to Dhalla, the next several centuries were "full of hardships" ("sic") before Zoroastrianism "gained a real foothold in India and secured for its adherents some means of livelihood in this new country of their adoption".


title: Parsis

text: Two centuries after their landing, the Parsis began to settle in other parts of Gujarat, which led to "difficulties in defining the limits of priestly jurisdiction." These problems were resolved by 1290 through the division of Gujarat into five "panthak"s (districts), each under the jurisdiction of one priestly family and their descendants. (Continuing disputes regarding jurisdiction over the "Atash Bahram" led to the fire being moved to Udvada in 1742, where today jurisdiction is shared in rotation among the five "panthak" families.)


title: Parsis

text: Inscriptions at the Kanheri Caves near Mumbai suggest that at least until the early 11th century, Middle Persian was still the literary language of the hereditary Zoroastrian priesthood. Nonetheless, aside from the "Qissa" and the Kanheri inscriptions, there is little evidence of the Parsis until the 12th and 13th century, when "masterly" Sanskrit translations and transcriptions of the Avesta and its commentaries began to be prepared. From these translations Dhalla infers that "religious studies were prosecuted with great zeal at this period" and that the command of Middle Persian and Sanskrit among the clerics "was of a superior order".


title: Parsis

text: From the 13th century to the late 16th century, the Zoroastrian priests of Gujarat sent (in all) twenty-two requests for religious guidance to their co-religionists in Iran, presumably because they considered the Iranian Zoroastrians "better informed on religious matters than themselves, and must have preserved the old-time tradition more faithfully than they themselves did". These transmissions and their replies – assiduously preserved by the community as the "rivayat"s (epistles) – span the years 1478–1766 and deal with both religious and social subjects. From a superficial 21st century point of view, some of these "ithoter" ("questions") are remarkably trivial – for instance, "Rivayat" 376: whether ink prepared by a non-Zoroastrian is suitable for copying Avestan language texts – but they provide a discerning insight into the fears and anxieties of the early modern Zoroastrians. Thus, the question of the ink is symptomatic of the fear of assimilation and the loss of identity, a theme that dominates the questions posed and continues to be an issue into the 21st century. So also the question of conversion of "Juddin"s (non-Zoroastrians) to Zoroastrianism, to which the reply (R237, R238) was: acceptable, even meritorious.


title: Parsis

text: Nonetheless, "the precarious condition in which they lived for a considerable period made it impracticable for them to keep up their former proselytizing zeal. The instinctive fear of disintegration and absorption in the vast multitudes among whom they lived created in them a spirit of exclusiveness and a strong desire to preserve the racial characteristics and distinctive features of their community. Living in an atmosphere surcharged with the Hindu caste system, they felt that their own safety lay in encircling their fold by rigid caste barriers". Even so, at some point (possibly shortly after their arrival in India), the Zoroastrians – perhaps determining that the social stratification that they had brought with them was unsustainable in the small community – did away with all but the hereditary priesthood (called the "asronih" in Sassanid Iran). The remaining estates – the "(r)atheshtarih" (nobility, soldiers, and civil servants), "vastaryoshih" (farmers and herdsmen), "hutokshih" (artisans and labourers) – were folded into an all-comprehensive class today known as the "behdini" ("followers of "daena"", for which "good religion" is one translation). This change would have far reaching consequences. For one, it opened the gene pool to some extent since until that time inter-class marriages were exceedingly rare (this would continue to be a problem for the priesthood until the 20th century). For another, it did away with the boundaries along occupational lines, a factor that would endear the Parsis to the 18th- and 19th-century colonial authorities who had little patience for the unpredictable complications of the Hindu caste system (such as when a clerk from one caste would not deal with a clerk from another).


title: Parsis

text: Following the commercial treaty in the early 17th century between Mughal emperor Jahangir and James I of England, the East India Company obtained the exclusive rights to reside and build factories in Surat and other areas. Many Parsis, who until then had been living in farming communities throughout Gujarat, moved to the English-run settlements to take the new jobs offered. In 1668 the English East India Company leased the Seven Islands of Bombay from Charles II of England. The company found the deep harbour on the east coast of the islands to be ideal for setting up their first port in the sub-continent, and in 1687 they transferred their headquarters from Surat to the fledgling settlement. The Parsis followed and soon began to occupy posts of trust in connection with government and public works.


title: Parsis

text: Where literacy had previously been the exclusive domain of the priesthood, in the era of the British Raj, the British schools in India provided the new Parsi youth with the means not only to learn to read and write but also to be educated in the greater sense of the term and become familiar with the quirks of the British establishment. These capabilities were enormously useful to Parsis since they allowed them to "represent themselves as being like the British," which they did "more diligently and effectively than perhaps any other South Asian community". While the colonial authorities often saw the other Indians "as passive, ignorant, irrational, outwardly submissive but inwardly guileful", the Parsis were seen to have the traits that the authorities tended to ascribe to themselves. Johan Albrecht de Mandelslo (1638) saw them as "diligent", "conscientious", and "skillful" in their mercantile pursuits. Similar observations would be made by James Mackintosh, Recorder of Bombay from 1804 to 1811, who noted that "the Parsees are a small remnant of one of the mightiest nations of the ancient world, who, flying from persecution into India, were for many ages lost in obscurity and poverty, till at length they met a just government under which they speedily rose to be one of the most popular mercantile bodies in Asia".


title: Parsis

text: One of these was an enterprising agent named Rustom Maneck. In 1702, Maneck, who had probably already amassed a fortune under the Dutch and Portuguese, was appointed the first broker to the East India Company (acquiring the name "Seth" in the process), and in the following years "he and his Parsi associates widened the occupational and financial horizons of the larger Parsi community". Thus, by the mid-18th century, the brokerage houses of the Bombay Presidency were almost all in Parsi hands. As James Forbes, the Collector of Broach (now Bharuch), would note in his "Oriental Memoirs" (1770): "many of the principal merchants and owners of ships at Bombay and Surat are Parsees." "Active, robust, prudent and persevering, they now form a very valuable part of the Company's subjects on the western shores of Hindustan where they are highly esteemed".In the 18th century, Parsis with their skills in ship building and trade greatly benefited with trade between India and China. The trade was mainly in timber, silk, cotton and opium. For example Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy acquired most of his wealth through trade in cotton and opium Gradually certain families "acquired wealth and prominence (Sorabji, Modi, Cama, Wadia, Jeejeebhoy, Readymoney, Dadyseth, Petit, Patel, Mehta, Allbless, Tata, etc.), many of which would be noted for their participation in the public life of the city, and for their various educational, industrial, and charitable enterprises.").


title: Parsis

text: Through his largesse, Maneck helped establish the infrastructure that was necessary for the Parsis to set themselves up in Bombay and in doing so "established Bombay as the primary centre of Parsi habitation and work in the 1720s". Following the political and economic isolation of Surat in the 1720s and 1730s that resulted from troubles between the (remnant) Mughal authorities and the increasingly dominant Marathas, a number of Parsi families from Surat migrated to the new city. While in 1700 "fewer than a handful of individuals appear as merchants in any records; by mid-century, Parsis engaged in commerce constituted one of important commercial groups in Bombay". Maneck's generosity is incidentally also the first documented instance of Parsi philanthropy. In 1689, Anglican chaplain John Ovington reported that in Surat the family "assist the poor and are ready to provide for the sustenance and comfort of such as want it. Their universal kindness, either employing such as are ready and able to work, or bestowing a seasonable bounteous charity to such as are infirm and miserable, leave no man destitute of relief, nor suffer a beggar in all their tribe".


title: Parsis

text: In 1728 Rustom's eldest son Naoroz (later Naorojee) founded the Bombay Parsi Panchayet (in the sense of an instrument for self-governance and not in the sense of the trust it is today) to assist newly arriving Parsis in religious, social, legal and financial matters. Using their vast resources, the Maneck Seth family gave their time, energy and not inconsiderable financial resources to the Parsi community, with the result that by the mid-18th century, the Panchayat was the accepted means for Parsis to cope with the exigencies of urban life and the recognized instrument for regulating the affairs of the community. Nonetheless, by 1838 the Panchayat was under attack for impropriety and nepotism. In 1855 the "Bombay Times" noted that the Panchayat was utterly without the moral or legal authority to enforce its statutes (the "Bundobusts" or codes of conduct) and the council soon ceased to be considered representative of the community. In the wake of a July 1856 ruling by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council that it had no jurisdiction over the Parsis in matters of marriage and divorce, the Panchayat was reduced to little more than a Government-recognized "Parsi Matrimonial Court". Although the Panchayat would eventually be reestablished as the administrator of community property, it ultimately ceased to be an instrument for self-governance.


title: Parsis

text: At about the same time as the role of the Panchayat was declining, a number of other institutions arose that would replace the Panchayat's role in contributing to the sense of social cohesiveness that the community desperately sought. By the mid-19th century, the Parsis were keenly aware that their numbers were declining and saw education as a possible solution to the problem. In 1842 Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy established the Parsi Benevolent Fund with the aim of improving, through education, the condition of the impoverished Parsis still living in Surat and its environs. In 1849 the Parsis established their first school (co-educational, which was a novelty at the time, but would soon be split into separate schools for boys and girls) and the education movement quickened. The number of Parsi schools multiplied, but other schools and colleges were also freely attended. Accompanied by better education and social cohesiveness, the community's sense of distinctiveness grew, and in 1854 Dinshaw Maneckji Petit founded the Persian Zoroastrian Amelioration Fund with the aim of improving conditions for his less fortunate co-religionists in Iran. The fund succeeded in convincing a number of Iranian Zoroastrians to emigrate to India (where they are known today as Iranis) and the efforts of its emissary Maneckji Limji Hataria were instrumental in obtaining a remission of the jizya for their co-religionists in 1882.


title: Parsis

text: In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Parsis had emerged as "the foremost people in India in matters educational, industrial, and social. They came in the vanguard of progress, amassed vast fortunes, and munificently gave away large sums in charity". Near the end of the 19th century, the total number of Parsis in colonial India was 85,397, of which 48,507 lived in Bombay, constituting around 6.7% of the total population of the city, according to the 1881 census. This would be the last time that the Parsis would be considered a numerically significant minority in the city.


title: Parsis

text: Nonetheless, the legacy of the 19th century was a sense of self-awareness as a community. The typically Parsi cultural symbols of the 17th and 18th centuries such as language (a Parsi variant of Gujarati), arts, crafts, and sartorial habits developed into Parsi theatre, literature, newspapers, magazines, and schools. The Parsis now ran community medical centres, ambulance corps, Scouting troops, clubs, and Masonic Lodges. They had their own charitable foundations, housing estates, legal institutions, courts, and governance. They were no longer weavers and petty merchants, but now were established and ran banks, mills, heavy industry, shipyards, and shipping companies. Moreover, even while maintaining their own cultural identity they did not fail to recognize themselves as nationally Indian, as Dadabhai Naoroji, the first Asian to occupy a seat in the British Parliament would note: "Whether I am a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Parsi, a Christian, or of any other creed, I am above all an Indian. Our country is India; our nationality is Indian". While having an outsized role in the Indian independence movement, the majority of Parsis opposed the partition of undivided India.


title: Parsis

text: The main components of Zoroastrianism as practiced by the Parsi community are the concepts of purity and pollution (nasu), initiation (navjot), daily prayers, worship at Fire Temples, marriage, funerals, and general worship.


title: Parsis

text: The balance between good and evil is correlated to the idea of purity and pollution. Purity is held to be of the very essence of godliness. Pollution's very point is to destroy purity through the death of a human. In order to adhere to purity it is the duty of Parsis to continue to preserve purity within their body as God created them. A Zoroastrian priest spends his entire life dedicated to following a holy life.


title: Parsis

text: Zoroastrians are not initiated by infant baptism. A child is initiated into the faith when they are old enough to enter into the faith as the child requires to recite some prayers along with the priest at the time of Navjote ceremony ideally before they hit puberty. Though there is no actual age before which a child must be initiated into the faith (preferably after 7 years), Navjote cannot be performed on an adult. While the Parsi traditionally do not do adult Navjote (except in cases where it is performed for descendants of Parsi wanting to join the faith), the Iranian Zoroastrian equivalent, the sedreh-pushti can be done at any age for those wanting to convert.


title: Parsis

text: The initiation begins with a ritual bath, then a spiritual cleansing prayer; the child changes into white pajama pants, a shawl, and a small cap. Following introductory prayers, the child is given the sacred items that are associated with Zoroastrianism: a sacred shirt and cord, sudre, and kusti. The child then faces the main priest and fire is brought in to represent God. Once the priest finishes with the prayers, the child’s initiation is complete and he or she has become part of the community and religion.


title: Parsis

text: Marriage is very important to the members of the Parsi community, believing that in order to continue the expansion of God’s kingdom they must procreate. Up until the mid-19th century child marriages were common even though the idea of child marriage was not part of the religious doctrine. Consequently, when social reform started happening in India, the Parsi community discontinued the practice. There are, however, rising problems over the availability of brides. More and more women in the Parsi community are becoming well educated and are therefore either delaying marriage or not partaking at all. Women within the Parsi community in India are ninety-seven percent literate; forty-two percent have completed high school or college and twenty-nine percent have an occupation in which they earn a substantial amount of money. The wedding ceremony begins much like the initiation with a cleansing bath. The bride and groom then travel to the wedding in florally decorated cars. The priests from both families facilitate the wedding. The couple begin by facing one another with a sheet to block their view of each another. Wool is passed over the two seven times to bind them together. The two are then supposed to throw rice to their partner symbolizing dominance. The religious element comes in next when the two sit side by side to face the priest.


title: Parsis

text: The pollution that is associated with death has to be handled carefully. A separate part of the home is designated to house the corpse for funeral proceedings before being taken away. The priest comes to say prayers that are for the cleansing of sins and to affirm the faith of the deceased. Fire is brought to the room and prayers are begun. The body is washed and inserted clean within a sudre and kusti. The ceremony then begins, and a circle is drawn around the body into which only the bearers may enter. As they proceed to the cemetery they walk in pairs and are connected by white fabric. A dog is essential in the funeral process because it is able to see death. The body is taken to the tower of death where the vultures feed on it. Once the bones are bleached by the sun they are pushed into the circular opening in the center. The mourning process is four days long, and rather than creating graves for the dead, charities are established in honor of the person.


title: Parsis

text: Zoroastrian festivals were originally held outside in the open air; temples were not common until later. Most of the temples were built by wealthy Parsis who needed centers that housed purity. As stated before, fire is considered to represent the presence of Ahura Mazda, and there are two distinct differences for the types of fire for the different temples. The first type of temple is the Atash Behram, which is the highest level of fire. The fire is prepared for an entire year before it can be installed, and once it is, it is cared for to the highest possible degree. There are only eight such temples located within India. The second type of fire temple is called a Dar-i Mihr, and the preparation process is not as intense. There are about 160 of these located throughout India.


title: Parsis

text: "This section contains information specific to the Parsi calendar. For information on the calendar used by the Zoroastrians for religious purposes, including details on its history and its variations, see Zoroastrian calendar."


title: Parsis

text: Until about the 12th century, all Zoroastrians followed the same 365-day religious calendar, which had remained largely unmodified since the calendar reforms of Ardashir I ("r." 226-241 AD). Since that calendar did not compensate for the fractional days that go to make up a full solar year, with time it was no longer accordant with the seasons.


title: Parsis

text: Sometime between 1125 and 1250 ("cf." ), the Parsis inserted an embolismic month to level out the accumulating fractional days. However, the Parsis were the only Zoroastrians to do so (and did it only once), with the result that, from then on, the calendar in use by the Parsis and the calendar in use by Zoroastrians elsewhere diverged by a matter of thirty days. The calendars still had the same name, "Shahenshahi" (imperial), presumably because none were aware that the calendars were no longer the same.


title: Parsis

text: In 1745 the Parsis in and around Surat switched to the "Kadmi" or "Kadimi" calendar on the recommendation of their priests who were convinced that the calendar in use in the ancient homeland must be correct. Moreover, they denigrated the "Shahenshahi" calendar as being "royalist".


title: Parsis

text: In 1906 attempts to bring the two factions together resulted in the introduction of a third calendar based on an 11th-century Seljuk model: the "Fasili", or "Fasli", calendar had leap days intercalated every four years and it had a New Year's day that fell on the day of the vernal equinox. Although it was the only calendar always in harmony with the seasons, most members of the Parsi community rejected it on the grounds that it was not in accord with the injunctions expressed in Zoroastrian tradition ("Dēnkard" 3.419).


title: Parsis

text: Today the majority of Parsis are adherents of the Parsi version of the "Shahenshahi" calendar although the "Kadmi" calendar does have its adherents among the Parsi communities of Surat and Bharuch. The "Fasli" calendar does not have a significant following among Parsis, but, by virtue of being compatible with the "Bastani" calendar (an Iranian development with the same salient features as the "Fasli" calendar), it is predominant among the Zoroastrians of Iran.


title: Parsis

text: Since some of the Avesta prayers contain references to the names of the months, and some other prayers are used only at specific times of the year, the issue of which calendar is "correct" also has theological ramifications.


title: Parsis

text: To further complicate matters, in the late 18th century (or early 19th century) a highly influential head-priest and staunch proponent of the "Kadmi" calendar, Phiroze Kaus Dastur of the Dadyseth Atash-Behram in Bombay, became convinced that the pronunciation of prayers as recited by visitors from Iran was correct, while the pronunciation as used by the Parsis was not. He accordingly went on to alter some (but not all) of the prayers, which in due course came to be accepted by all adherents of the "Kadmi" calendar as the more ancient (and thus presumably correct). However, scholars of Avestan language and linguistics attribute the difference in pronunciation to a vowel-shift that occurred only in Iran and that the Iranian pronunciation as adopted by the "Kadmi"s is actually more recent than the pronunciation used by the non-"Kadmi" Parsis.


title: Parsis

text: The calendar disputes were not always purely academic, either. In the 1780s, emotions over the controversy ran so high that violence occasionally erupted. In 1783 a "Shahenshahi" resident of Bharuch named Homaji Jamshedji was sentenced to death for kicking a young "Kadmi" woman and so causing her to miscarry.


title: Parsis

text: Of the eight Atash-Behrams (the highest grade of fire temple) in India, three follow the "Kadmi" pronunciation and calendar, the other five are "Shahenshahi". The "Fassali"s do not have their own Atash-Behram.


title: Parsis

text: The "Ilm-e-Kshnoom" ('science of ecstasy', or 'science of bliss') is a school of Parsi-Zoroastrian philosophy based on a mystic and esoteric, rather than literal, interpretation of religious texts. According to adherents of the sect, they are followers of the Zoroastrian faith as preserved by a clan of 2000 individuals called the "Saheb-e-Dilan" ('Masters of the Heart') who are said to live in complete isolation in the mountainous recesses of the Caucasus (alternatively, in the Alborz range, around Mount Damavand).


title: Parsis

text: There are few obvious indications that a Parsi might be a follower of the Kshnoom. Although their "Kusti" prayers are very similar to those used by the "Fassali"s, like the rest of the Parsi community the followers of Kshnoom are divided with respect to which calendar they observe. There are also other minor differences in their recitation of the liturgy, such as repetition of some sections of the longer prayers. Nonetheless, the Kshnoom are extremely conservative in their ideology and prefer isolation even with respect to other Parsis.


title: Parsis

text: The largest community of followers of the Kshnoom lives in Jogeshwari, a suburb of Bombay, where they have their own fire temple (Behramshah Nowroji Shroff Daremeher), their own housing colony (Behram Baug) and their own newspaper ("Parsi Pukar"). There is a smaller concentration of adherents in Surat, where the sect was founded in the last decades of the 19th century.


title: Parsis

text: It has been traditional, in Mumbai and Karachi at least, for dead Parsis to be taken to the Towers of Silence where the corpses are quickly eaten by the city's vultures. The reason given for this practice is that earth, fire, and water are considered sacred elements which should not be defiled by the dead. Therefore, burial and cremation have always been prohibited in Parsi culture. However, in modern day Mumbai and Karachi the population of vultures has drastically reduced due to extensive urbanization and the unintended consequence of treating humans and livestock with antibiotics, and the anti-inflammatory diclofenac, which harm vultures and have led to the Indian vulture crisis. As a result, the bodies of the deceased are taking much longer to decompose. Solar panels have been installed in the Towers of Silence to speed up the decomposition process, but this has been only partially successful especially during monsoons. In Peshawar a Parsi graveyard was established in the late 19th century, which still exists; this cemetery is unique as there is no Tower of Silence. Nevertheless, the majority of Parsis still use the traditional method of disposing of their loved ones and consider this as the last act of charity by the deceased on earth.


title: Parsis

text: The Tower of Silence in Mumbai is located at Doongerwadi at Malabar Hill. In Karachi, the Tower of Silence is located in Parsi Colony, near the Chanesar Goth and Mehmoodabad localities.


title: Parsis

text: The genetic studies of Parsis of Pakistan show sharp contrast between genetic data obtained from mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and Y-chromosome DNA (Y-DNA), different from most populations. Historical records suggests that they had moved from Iran to Gujarat, India and then to Mumbai and Karachi, Pakistan. According to Y-DNA, they resemble the Iranian population, which supports historical records. When the mtDNA pool is compared to Iranians and Gujaratis (their putative parental populations), it contrasted Y-DNA data. About 60% of their maternal gene pool originates from South Asian haplogroups, which is just 7% in Iranians. Parsis have a high frequency of haplogroup M (55%), similar to Indians, which is just 1.7% in combined Iranian sample. The studies suggest sharp contrast between the maternal and paternal component of Parsis. Due to high diversity in Y-DNA and mtDNA lineages, the strong drift effect is unlikely even though they had a small population. The studies suggest a male-mediated migration of Parsi ancestors from Iran to Gujarat where they admixed with the local female population during initial settlements, which ultimately resulted in loss of Iranian mtDNA.


title: Parsis

text: A study published in "Genome Biology" based on high density SNP data has shown that the Parsis are genetically closer to Iranian populations than to their South Asian neighbours. They also share the highest number of haplotypes with present-day Iranians; the admixture of the Parsis with Indian populations was estimated have occurred approximately 1,200 years ago. It is also found that Parsis are genetically closer to Neolithic Iranians than to modern Iranians who had recently received some genes from the Near East.


title: Parsis

text: The absence of lung cancer-related DNA mutational signals among Parsis both point to the community's distinctive non-smoking social practises, which have been practised for millennia. Additionally Parsis have high prevalence of longevity as a genetic feature. Parsis have however been shown to have high rates of breast cancer bladder cancer, glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency and Parkinson's disease.


title: Parsis

text: D. L. Sheth, the former director of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), lists Indian communities that constituted the middle class and were traditionally "urban and professional" (following professions such as doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers, etc.) immediately after Indian partition in 1947. This list included the Kashmiri Pandits, the Nagar Brahmins from Gujarat, the Brahmins from Southern India, the Punjabi Khatris and Kayastha from northern India, the Chitpavans and CKPs from Maharashtra; Bengali Probasis and Bhadraloks, the Parsis, as well as the upper echelons of the Indian Muslim and Indian Christian communities throughout the country. According to Pavan K. Varma, "Education was a common thread that bound together this pan-Indian elite"; almost all of the members of these communities could read and write in English and were educated beyond regular schooling institutions.


title: Parsis

text: The Parsis have made considerable contributions to the history and development of India, all the more remarkable considering their small numbers. As the maxim "Parsi, thy name is charity" alludes to, their most prominent contribution is their philanthropy.


title: Parsis

text: Although their people's name Parsi comes from the Persian-language word for a Persian person, in Sanskrit the term means "one who gives alms". Mahatma Gandhi would note in a much misquoted statement, "I am proud of my country, India, for having produced the splendid Zoroastrian stock, in numbers beneath contempt, but in charity and philanthropy perhaps unequaled and certainly unsurpassed."


title: Parsis

text: Several landmarks in Mumbai are named after Parsis, including Nariman Point. The Malabar Hill in Mumbai, is a home to several prominent Parsis. Parsis prominent in the Indian independence movement include Pherozeshah Mehta, Dadabhai Naoroji, and Bhikaiji Cama.


title: Parsis

text: Particularly notable Parsis in the fields of science and industry include physicist Homi J. Bhabha, nuclear scientist Homi N. Sethna, industrialists J. R. D. Tata and Jamsetji Tata, regarded as the "Father of Indian Industry", and construction tycoon Pallonji Mistry. The families Godrej, Mistry, Tata, Petit, Cowasjee, Poonawalla, and Wadia are important industrial Parsi families.


title: Parsis

text: Other notable Parsi business persons include Ratan Tata, Cyrus Mistry, Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata, Dinshaw Maneckji Petit, Ness Wadia, Neville Wadia, Jehangir Wadia and Nusli Wadiaall of them related through marriage to Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan. Mohammad Ali Jinnah's wife Rattanbai Petit, was born into two of the Parsi PetitTata families, and their daughter Dina Jinnah was married to Parsi industrialist Neville Wadia, the scion of the Wadia family. The husband of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and son-in-law of Jawaharlal Nehru, Feroze Gandhi, was a Parsi with ancestral roots in Bharuch.


title: Parsis

text: The Parsi community has given India several distinguished military officers. Field Marshal Sam Hormusji Framji Jamshedji Manekshaw, Military Cross, the architect of India's victory in the 1971 war, was the first officer of the Indian Army to be appointed a Field Marshal. Admiral Jal Cursetji was the first Parsi to be appointed Chief of the Naval Staff of the Indian Navy. Air Marshal Aspy Engineer served as India's second Chief of Air Staff, post-independence, and Air Chief Marshal. Fali Homi Major served as the 18th Chief of Air Staff. Vice Admiral RF Contractor served as the 17th Chief of the Indian Coast Guard. Lieutenant Colonel Ardeshir Burjorji Tarapore was killed in action in the 1965 Indo-Pakistan war and was posthumously awarded the Param Vir Chakra, India's highest military award for gallantry in action.


title: Parsis

text: Particularly notable Parsis in other areas of achievement include cricketers Farokh Engineer, Nari Contractor and Polly Umrigar, rock musician Freddie Mercury, composer Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji and conductor Zubin Mehta; cultural studies theorist Homi K. Bhabha; screenwriter and photographer Sooni Taraporevala; authors Rohinton Mistry, Firdaus Kanga, Bapsi Sidhwa, Ardashir Vakil and investigative journalists Ardeshir Cowasjee, Russi Karanjia, Behram Contractor; actor Boman Irani; educator Jamshed Bharucha, India's first woman photo-journalist Homai Vyarawalla; Actresses Nina Wadia and Persis Khambatta are Parsi who appear primarily in Bollywood films and television serials. Naxalite leader and intellectual Kobad Ghandy is a Parsi. Mithan Jamshed Lam was a suffragist, the first female barrister admitted to practice law at the Bombay High Court, and served as a Sheriff of Bombay. Dorab Patel was Pakistan's first Parsi Supreme Court Justice. Fali S Nariman, Nani Ardeshir Palkhivala are constitutional experts and noted jurist. Soli Sorabjee was a prominent Indian jurist and former Attorney-General of India. Rattana Pestonji was a Parsi living in Thailand who helped develop Thai cinema. Another famous Parsi is the Indian-born American actor Erick Avari, best known for his roles in science-fiction films and television. Cyrus S. Poonawalla and Adar Poonawalla are prominent Indian Parsi businessmen.


title: Nuclear fusion

text: Nuclear fusion is a reaction in which two or more atomic nuclei are combined to form one or more different atomic nuclei and subatomic particles (neutrons or protons). The difference in mass between the reactants and products is manifested as either the release or absorption of energy. This difference in mass arises due to the difference in nuclear binding energy between the atomic nuclei before and after the reaction. Nuclear fusion is the process that powers active or main-sequence stars and other high-magnitude stars, where large amounts of energy are released.


title: Nuclear fusion

text: A nuclear fusion process that produces atomic nuclei lighter than iron-56 or nickel-62 will generally release energy. These elements have a relatively small mass and a relatively large binding energy per nucleon. Fusion of nuclei lighter than these releases energy (an exothermic process), while the fusion of heavier nuclei results in energy retained by the product nucleons, and the resulting reaction is endothermic. The opposite is true for the reverse process, called nuclear fission. Nuclear fusion uses lighter elements, such as hydrogen and helium, which are in general more fusible; while the heavier elements, such as uranium, thorium and plutonium, are more fissionable. The extreme astrophysical event of a supernova can produce enough energy to fuse nuclei into elements heavier than iron.


title: Nuclear fusion

text: In 1920, Arthur Eddington suggested hydrogen-helium fusion could be the primary source of stellar energy. Quantum tunneling was discovered by Friedrich Hund in 1927, and shortly afterwards Robert Atkinson and Fritz Houtermans used the measured masses of light elements to show that large amounts of energy could be released by fusing small nuclei. Building on the early experiments in artificial nuclear transmutation by Patrick Blackett, laboratory fusion of hydrogen isotopes was accomplished by Mark Oliphant in 1932. In the remainder of that decade, the theory of the main cycle of nuclear fusion in stars was worked out by Hans Bethe. Research into fusion for military purposes began in the early 1940s as part of the Manhattan Project. Self-sustaining nuclear fusion was first carried out on 1 November 1952, in the Ivy Mike hydrogen (thermonuclear) bomb test.


title: Nuclear fusion

text: While fusion was achieved in the operation of the hydrogen bomb (H-bomb), for it to be a useful energy source controlled, sustained fusion is required. Research into developing controlled fusion inside fusion reactors has been ongoing since the 1930s, but the technology is still in its developmental phase.


title: Nuclear fusion

text: The US National Ignition Facility, which uses laser-driven inertial confinement fusion, was designed with a goal of break-even fusion; the first large-scale laser target experiments were performed in June 2009 and ignition experiments began in early 2011. On 13 December 2022, the United States Department of Energy announced that on 5 December 2022, they had successfully accomplished break-even fusion, "delivering 2.05 megajoules (MJ) of energy to the target, resulting in 3.15 MJ of fusion energy output."


title: Nuclear fusion

text: Prior to this breakthrough, controlled fusion reactions had been unable to produce break-even (self-sustaining) controlled fusion. The two most advanced approaches for it are magnetic confinement (toroid designs) and inertial confinement (laser designs). Workable designs for a toroidal reactor that theoretically will deliver ten times more fusion energy than the amount needed to heat plasma to the required temperatures are in development (see ITER). The ITER facility is expected to finish its construction phase in 2025. It will start commissioning the reactor that same year and initiate plasma experiments in 2025, but is not expected to begin full deuterium-tritium fusion until 2035.


title: Nuclear fusion

text: Similarly, Canadian-based General Fusion, which is developing a magnetized target fusion nuclear energy system, aims to build its demonstration plant by 2025.


title: Nuclear fusion

text: The release of energy with the fusion of light elements is due to the interplay of two opposing forces: the nuclear force, which combines together protons and neutrons, and the Coulomb force, which causes protons to repel each other. Protons are positively charged and repel each other by the Coulomb force, but they can nonetheless stick together, demonstrating the existence of another, short-range, force referred to as nuclear attraction. Light nuclei (or nuclei smaller than iron and nickel) are sufficiently small and proton-poor allowing the nuclear force to overcome repulsion. This is because the nucleus is sufficiently small that all nucleons feel the short-range attractive force at least as strongly as they feel the infinite-range Coulomb repulsion. Building up nuclei from lighter nuclei by fusion releases the extra energy from the net attraction of particles. For larger nuclei, however, no energy is released, since the nuclear force is short-range and cannot continue to act across longer nuclear length scales. Thus, energy is not released with the fusion of such nuclei; instead, energy is required as input for such processes.


title: Nuclear fusion

text: Fusion powers stars and produces virtually all elements in a process called nucleosynthesis. The Sun is a main-sequence star, and, as such, generates its energy by nuclear fusion of hydrogen nuclei into helium. In its core, the Sun fuses 620 million metric tons of hydrogen and makes 616 million metric tons of helium each second. The fusion of lighter elements in stars releases energy and the mass that always accompanies it. For example, in the fusion of two hydrogen nuclei to form helium, 0.645% of the mass is carried away in the form of kinetic energy of an alpha particle or other forms of energy, such as electromagnetic radiation.


title: Nuclear fusion

text: It takes considerable energy to force nuclei to fuse, even those of the lightest element, hydrogen. When accelerated to high enough speeds, nuclei can overcome this electrostatic repulsion and be brought close enough such that the attractive nuclear force is greater than the repulsive Coulomb force. The strong force grows rapidly once the nuclei are close enough, and the fusing nucleons can essentially "fall" into each other and the result is fusion and net energy produced. The fusion of lighter nuclei, which creates a heavier nucleus and often a free neutron or proton, generally releases more energy than it takes to force the nuclei together; this is an exothermic process that can produce self-sustaining reactions.


title: Nuclear fusion

text: Energy released in most nuclear reactions is much larger than in chemical reactions, because the binding energy that holds a nucleus together is greater than the energy that holds electrons to a nucleus. For example, the ionization energy gained by adding an electron to a hydrogen nucleus is —less than one-millionth of the released in the deuterium–tritium (D–T) reaction shown in the adjacent diagram. Fusion reactions have an energy density many times greater than nuclear fission; the reactions produce far greater energy per unit of mass even though "individual" fission reactions are generally much more energetic than "individual" fusion ones, which are themselves millions of times more energetic than chemical reactions. Only direct conversion of mass into energy, such as that caused by the annihilatory collision of matter and antimatter, is more energetic per unit of mass than nuclear fusion. (The complete conversion of one gram of matter would release 9×10 joules of energy.)


title: Nuclear fusion

text: An important fusion process is the stellar nucleosynthesis that powers stars, including the Sun. In the 20th century, it was recognized that the energy released from nuclear fusion reactions accounts for the longevity of stellar heat and light. The fusion of nuclei in a star, starting from its initial hydrogen and helium abundance, provides that energy and synthesizes new nuclei. Different reaction chains are involved, depending on the mass of the star (and therefore the pressure and temperature in its core).


title: Nuclear fusion

text: Around 1920, Arthur Eddington anticipated the discovery and mechanism of nuclear fusion processes in stars, in his paper "The Internal Constitution of the Stars". At that time, the source of stellar energy was unknown; Eddington correctly speculated that the source was fusion of hydrogen into helium, liberating enormous energy according to Einstein's equation . This was a particularly remarkable development since at that time fusion and thermonuclear energy had not yet been discovered, nor even that stars are largely composed of hydrogen (see metallicity). Eddington's paper reasoned that:


title: Nuclear fusion

text: The primary source of solar energy, and that of similar size stars, is the fusion of hydrogen to form helium (the proton–proton chain reaction), which occurs at a solar-core temperature of 14 million kelvin. The net result is the fusion of four protons into one alpha particle, with the release of two positrons and two neutrinos (which changes two of the protons into neutrons), and energy. In heavier stars, the CNO cycle and other processes are more important. As a star uses up a substantial fraction of its hydrogen, it begins to synthesize heavier elements. The heaviest elements are synthesized by fusion that occurs when a more massive star undergoes a violent supernova at the end of its life, a process known as supernova nucleosynthesis.


title: Nuclear fusion

text: A substantial energy barrier of electrostatic forces must be overcome before fusion can occur. At large distances, two naked nuclei repel one another because of the repulsive electrostatic force between their positively charged protons. If two nuclei can be brought close enough together, however, the electrostatic repulsion can be overcome by the quantum effect in which nuclei can tunnel through coulomb forces.


title: Nuclear fusion

text: When a nucleon such as a proton or neutron is added to a nucleus, the nuclear force attracts it to all the other nucleons of the nucleus (if the atom is small enough), but primarily to its immediate neighbors due to the short range of the force. The nucleons in the interior of a nucleus have more neighboring nucleons than those on the surface. Since smaller nuclei have a larger surface-area-to-volume ratio, the binding energy per nucleon due to the nuclear force generally increases with the size of the nucleus but approaches a limiting value corresponding to that of a nucleus with a diameter of about four nucleons. It is important to keep in mind that nucleons are quantum objects. So, for example, since two neutrons in a nucleus are identical to each other, the goal of distinguishing one from the other, such as which one is in the interior and which is on the surface, is in fact meaningless, and the inclusion of quantum mechanics is therefore necessary for proper calculations.


title: Nuclear fusion

text: The electrostatic force, on the other hand, is an inverse-square force, so a proton added to a nucleus will feel an electrostatic repulsion from "all" the other protons in the nucleus. The electrostatic energy per nucleon due to the electrostatic force thus increases without limit as nuclei atomic number grows.