title: Reformation

text: Refused an annulment of his marriage to Catherine, King Henry decided to remove the Church of England from the authority of Rome. In 1534, the Act of Supremacy recognised Henry as "the only Supreme Head on earth of the Church of England". Between 1535 and 1540, under Thomas Cromwell, the policy known as the Dissolution of the Monasteries was put into effect. The veneration of some saints, certain pilgrimages and some pilgrim shrines were also attacked. Huge amounts of church land and property passed into the hands of the Crown and ultimately into those of the nobility and gentry. The vested interest thus created made for a powerful force in support of the dissolution.


title: Reformation

text: There were some notable opponents to the Henrician Reformation, such as Thomas More and Cardinal John Fisher, who were executed for their opposition. There was also a growing party of reformers who were imbued with the Calvinistic, Lutheran and Zwinglian doctrines then current on the Continent. When Henry died he was succeeded by his Protestant son Edward VI, who, through his empowered councillors (with the King being only nine years old at his succession and fifteen at his death) the Duke of Somerset and the Duke of Northumberland, ordered the destruction of images in churches, and the closing of the chantries. Under Edward VI the Church of England moved closer to continental Protestantism.


title: Reformation

text: Yet, at a popular level, religion in England was still in a state of flux. Following a brief Catholic restoration during the reign of Mary (1553–1558), a loose consensus developed during the reign of Elizabeth I, though this point is one of considerable debate among historians. This "Elizabethan Religious Settlement" largely formed Anglicanism into a distinctive church tradition. The compromise was uneasy and was capable of veering between extreme Calvinism on one hand and Catholicism on the other. But compared to the bloody and chaotic state of affairs in contemporary France, it was relatively successful, in part because Queen Elizabeth lived so long, until the Puritan Revolution or English Civil War in the seventeenth century.


title: Reformation

text: The success of the Counter-Reformation on the Continent and the growth of a Puritan party dedicated to further Protestant reform polarised the Elizabethan Age, although it was not until the 1640s that England underwent religious strife comparable to what its neighbours had suffered some generations before.


title: Reformation

text: The early "Puritan movement" (late 16th–17th centuries) was Reformed (or Calvinist) and was a movement for reform in the Church of England. Its origins lay in the discontent with the Elizabethan Religious Settlement. The desire was for the Church of England to resemble more closely the Protestant churches of Europe, especially Geneva. The Puritans objected to ornaments and ritual in the churches as idolatrous (vestments, surplices, organs, genuflection), calling the vestments "popish pomp and rags" (see Vestments controversy). They also objected to ecclesiastical courts. Their refusal to endorse completely all of the ritual directions and formulas of the "Book of Common Prayer", and the imposition of its liturgical order by legal force and inspection, sharpened Puritanism into a definite opposition movement.


title: Reformation

text: The later Puritan movement, often referred to as dissenters and nonconformists, eventually led to the formation of various Reformed denominations.


title: Reformation

text: The most famous emigration to America was the migration of Puritan separatists from the Anglican Church of England. They fled first to Holland, and then later to America to establish the English colony of Massachusetts in New England, which later became one of the original United States. These Puritan separatists were also known as "the Pilgrims". After establishing a colony at Plymouth (which became part of the colony of Massachusetts) in 1620, the Puritan pilgrims received a charter from the King of England that legitimised their colony, allowing them to do trade and commerce with merchants in England, in accordance with the principles of mercantilism. The Puritans persecuted those of other religious faiths, for example, Anne Hutchinson was banished to Rhode Island during the Antinomian Controversy and Quaker Mary Dyer was hanged in Boston for repeatedly defying a Puritan law banning Quakers from the colony. She was one of the four executed Quakers known as the Boston martyrs. Executions ceased in 1661 when King Charles II explicitly forbade Massachusetts from executing anyone for professing Quakerism. In 1647, Massachusetts passed a law prohibiting any Jesuit Roman Catholic priests from entering territory under Puritan jurisdiction. Any suspected person who could not clear himself was to be banished from the colony; a second offence carried a death penalty.


title: Reformation

text: The Pilgrims held radical Protestant disapproval of Christmas, and its celebration was outlawed in Boston from 1659 to 1681. The ban was revoked in 1681 by the English-appointed governor Edmund Andros, who also revoked a Puritan ban on festivities on Saturday nights. Nevertheless, it was not until the mid-19th century that celebrating Christmas became fashionable in the Boston region.


title: Reformation

text: Bishop Richard Davies and dissident Protestant cleric John Penry introduced Calvinist theology to Wales. In 1588, the Bishop of Llandaff published the entire Bible in the Welsh language. The translation had a significant impact upon the Welsh population and helped to firmly establish Protestantism among the Welsh people. The Welsh Protestants used the model of the Synod of Dort of 1618–1619. Calvinism developed through the Puritan period, following the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II, and within Wales' Calvinistic Methodist movement. However few copies of Calvin's writings were available before mid-19th century.


title: Reformation

text: The Reformation in Scotland's case culminated ecclesiastically in the establishment of a church along reformed lines, and politically in the triumph of English influence over that of France. John Knox is regarded as the leader of the Scottish reformation.


title: Reformation

text: The Reformation Parliament of 1560 repudiated the pope's authority by the "Papal Jurisdiction Act 1560", forbade the celebration of the Mass and approved a Protestant Confession of Faith. It was made possible by a revolution against French hegemony under the regime of the regent Mary of Guise, who had governed Scotland in the name of her absent daughter Mary, Queen of Scots (then also Queen of France).


title: Reformation

text: Although Protestantism triumphed relatively easily in Scotland, the exact form of Protestantism remained to be determined. The 17th century saw a complex struggle between Presbyterianism (particularly the Covenanters) and Episcopalianism. The Presbyterians eventually won control of the Church of Scotland, which went on to have an important influence on Presbyterian churches worldwide, but Scotland retained a relatively large Episcopalian minority.


title: Reformation

text: Besides the Waldensians already present in France, Protestantism also spread in from German lands, where the Protestants were nicknamed "Huguenots"; this eventually led to decades of civil warfare.


title: Reformation

text: Though not personally interested in religious reform, Francis I (reigned 1515–1547) initially maintained an attitude of tolerance, in accordance with his interest in the humanist movement. This changed in 1534 with the Affair of the Placards. In this act, Protestants denounced the Catholic Mass in placards that appeared across France, even reaching the royal apartments. During this time as the issue of religious faith entered into the arena of politics, Francis came to view the movement as a threat to the kingdom's stability.


title: Reformation

text: Following the Affair of the Placards, culprits were rounded up, at least a dozen heretics were put to death, and the persecution of Protestants increased. One of those who fled France at that time was John Calvin, who emigrated to Basel in 1535 before eventually settling in Geneva in 1536. Beyond the reach of the French kings in Geneva, Calvin continued to take an interest in the religious affairs of his native land including the training of ministers for congregations in France.


title: Reformation

text: As the number of Protestants in France increased, the number of heretics in prisons awaiting trial also grew. As an experimental approach to reduce the caseload in Normandy, a special court just for the trial of heretics was established in 1545 in the Parlement de Rouen. When Henry II took the throne in 1547, the persecution of Protestants grew and special courts for the trial of heretics were also established in the Parlement de Paris. These courts came to known as ""La Chambre Ardente"" ("the fiery chamber") because of their reputation of meting out death penalties on burning gallows.


title: Reformation

text: Despite heavy persecution by Henry II, the Reformed Church of France, largely Calvinist in direction, made steady progress across large sections of the nation, in the urban bourgeoisie and parts of the aristocracy, appealing to people alienated by the obduracy and the complacency of the Catholic establishment.


title: Reformation

text: French Protestantism, though its appeal increased under persecution, came to acquire a distinctly political character, made all the more obvious by the conversions of nobles during the 1550s. This established the preconditions for a series of destructive and intermittent conflicts, known as the Wars of Religion. The civil wars gained impetus with the sudden death of Henry II in 1559, which began a prolonged period of weakness for the French crown. Atrocity and outrage became the defining characteristics of the time, illustrated at their most intense in the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of August 1572, when the Catholic party killed between 30,000 and 100,000 Huguenots across France. The wars only concluded when Henry IV, himself a former Huguenot, issued the Edict of Nantes (1598), promising official toleration of the Protestant minority, but under highly restricted conditions. Catholicism remained the official state religion, and the fortunes of French Protestants gradually declined over the next century, culminating in Louis XIV's Edict of Fontainebleau (1685), which revoked the Edict of Nantes and made Catholicism the sole legal religion of France, leading some Huguenots to live as Nicodemites. In response to the Edict of Fontainebleau, Frederick William I, Elector of Brandenburg declared the Edict of Potsdam (October 1685), giving free passage to Huguenot refugees and tax-free status to them for ten years.


title: Reformation

text: In the late 17th century, 150,000–200,000 Huguenots fled to England, the Netherlands, Prussia, Switzerland, and the English and Dutch overseas colonies. A significant community in France remained in the Cévennes region. A separate Protestant community, of the Lutheran faith, existed in the newly conquered province of Alsace, its status not affected by the Edict of Fontainebleau.


title: Reformation

text: In the early 16th century, Spain had a different political and cultural milieu from its Western and Central European neighbours in several respects, which affected the mentality and the reaction of the nation towards the Reformation. Spain, which had only recently managed to complete the reconquest of the Peninsula from the Moors in 1492, had been preoccupied with converting the Muslim and Jewish populations of the newly conquered regions through the establishment of the Spanish Inquisition in 1478. The rulers of the nation stressed political, cultural, and religious unity, and by the time of the Lutheran Reformation, the Spanish Inquisition was already 40 years old and had the capability of quickly persecuting any new movement that the leaders of the Catholic Church perceived or interpreted to be religious heterodoxy. Charles V did not wish to see Spain or the rest of Habsburg Europe divided, and in light of continual threat from the Ottomans, preferred to see the Roman Catholic Church reform itself from within. This led to a Counter-Reformation in Spain in the 1530s. During the 1520s, the Spanish Inquisition had created an atmosphere of suspicion and sought to root out any religious thought seen as suspicious. As early as 1521, the Pope had written a letter to the Spanish monarchy warning against allowing the unrest in Northern Europe to be replicated in Spain. Between 1520 and 1550, printing presses in Spain were tightly controlled and any books of Protestant teaching were prohibited.


title: Reformation

text: Between 1530 and 1540, Protestantism in Spain was still able to gain followers clandestinely, and in cities such as Seville and Valladolid adherents would secretly meet at private houses to pray and study the Bible. Protestants in Spain were estimated at between 1000 and 3000, mainly among intellectuals who had seen writings such as those of Erasmus. Notable reformers included Dr. Juan Gil and Juan Pérez de Pineda who subsequently fled and worked alongside others such as Francisco de Enzinas to translate the Greek New Testament into the Spanish language, a task completed by 1556. Protestant teachings were smuggled into Spain by Spaniards such as Julián Hernández, who in 1557 was condemned by the Inquisition and burnt at the stake. Under Philip II, conservatives in the Spanish church tightened their grip, and those who refused to recant such as Rodrigo de Valer were condemned to life imprisonment. In May 1559, sixteen Spanish Lutherans were burnt at the stake: fourteen were strangled before being burnt, while two were burnt alive. In October another thirty were executed. Spanish Protestants who were able to flee the country were to be found in at least a dozen cities in Europe, such as Geneva, where some of them embraced Calvinist teachings. Those who fled to England were given support by the Church of England.


title: Reformation

text: The Kingdom of Navarre, although by the time of the Protestant Reformation a minor principality territoriality restricted to southern France, had French Huguenot monarchs, including Henry IV of France and his mother, Jeanne III of Navarre, a devout Calvinist.


title: Reformation

text: Upon the arrival of the Protestant Reformation, Calvinism reached some Basques through the translation of the Bible into the Basque language by Joanes Leizarraga. As Queen of Navarre, Jeanne III commissioned the translation of the New Testament into Basque and Béarnese for the benefit of her subjects.


title: Reformation

text: During the Reformation era Protestantism was unsuccessful in Portugal, as its spread was frustrated for similar reasons to those in Spain.


title: Reformation

text: The Reformation in the Netherlands, unlike in many other countries, was not initiated by the rulers of the Seventeen Provinces, but instead by multiple popular movements which in turn were bolstered by the arrival of Protestant refugees from other parts of the continent. While the Anabaptist movement enjoyed popularity in the region in the early decades of the Reformation, Calvinism, in the form of the Dutch Reformed Church, became the dominant Protestant faith in the country from the 1560s onward. In the early 17th century internal theological conflict within the Calvinist church between two tendencies of Calvinism, the Gomarists and the liberal Arminians (or Remonstrants), resulted in Gomarist Calvinism becoming the "de facto" state religion.


title: Reformation

text: The first two Lutheran were monks from Antwerp, Johann Esch and Heinrich Hoes, who were burned at the stake when they would not recant.


title: Reformation

text: Harsh persecution of Protestants by the Spanish government of Philip II contributed to a desire for independence in the provinces, which led to the Eighty Years' War and, eventually, the separation of the largely Protestant Dutch Republic from the Catholic-dominated Southern Netherlands (present-day Belgium).


title: Reformation

text: In 1566, at the peak of Belgian Reformation, there were an estimated 300,000 Protestants, or 20% of the Belgian population.


title: Reformation

text: Luxembourg, a part of the Spanish Netherlands, remained Catholic during the Reformation era because Protestantism was illegal until 1768.


title: Reformation

text: Much of the population of the Kingdom of Hungary adopted Protestantism during the 16th century. After the 1526 Battle of Mohács, the Hungarian people were disillusioned by the inability of the government to protect them and turned to the faith they felt would infuse them with the strength necessary to resist the invader. They found this in the teaching of Protestant reformers such as Martin Luther. The spread of Protestantism in the country was assisted by its large ethnic German minority, which could understand and translate the writings of Martin Luther. While Lutheranism gained a foothold among the German- and Slovak-speaking populations, Calvinism became widely accepted among ethnic Hungarians.


title: Reformation

text: In the more independent northwest, the rulers and priests, protected now by the Habsburg monarchy, which had taken the field to fight the Turks, defended the old Catholic faith. They dragged the Protestants to prison and the stake wherever they could. Such strong measures only fanned the flames of protest, however. Leaders of the Protestants included Mátyás Dévai Bíró, Mihály Sztárai, István Szegedi Kis, and Ferenc Dávid.


title: Reformation

text: Protestants likely formed a majority of Hungary's population at the close of the 16th century, but Counter-Reformation efforts in the 17th century reconverted a majority of the kingdom to Catholicism. A significant Protestant minority remained, most of it adhering to the Calvinist faith.


title: Reformation

text: In 1558 the Transylvanian Diet of Turda decreed the free practice of both the Catholic and Lutheran religions, but prohibited Calvinism. Ten years later, in 1568, the Diet extended this freedom, declaring that "It is not allowed to anybody to intimidate anybody with captivity or expulsion for his religion". Four religions were declared to be "accepted" ("recepta") religions (the fourth being Unitarianism, which became official in 1583 as the faith of the only Unitarian king, John II Sigismund Zápolya, r. 1540–1571), while Eastern Orthodox Christianity was "tolerated" (though the building of stone Orthodox churches was forbidden). During the Thirty Years' War, Royal (Habsburg) Hungary joined the Catholic side, until Transylvania joined the Protestant side.


title: Reformation

text: Between 1604 and 1711, there was a series of anti-Habsburg uprisings calling for equal rights and freedom for all Christian denominations, with varying success; the uprisings were usually organised from Transylvania. The Habsburg-sanctioned Counter-Reformation efforts in the 17th century reconverted the majority of the kingdom to Catholicism.


title: Reformation

text: The center of Protestant learning in Hungary has for some centuries been the University of Debrecen. Founded in 1538, the university was situated in an area of Eastern Hungary under Ottoman Turkish rule during the 1600s and 1700s, being allowed Islamic toleration and thus avoiding Counter-Reformation persecution.


title: Reformation

text: Transylvania in what is today's Romania was a "dumping ground for undesirables" by the Habsburg monarchy. People who did not conform to the will of the Habsburgs and the leaders of the Catholic Church were forcibly sent there. Centuries of this practice allowed diverse Protestant traditions to emerge in Romania, including Lutheranism, Calvinism and Unitarianism.


title: Reformation

text: Calvinism was popular among Hungarians who inhabited the southwestern parts of the present-day Ukraine. Their descendants are still there, such as the Sub-Carpathian Reformed Church.


title: Reformation

text: The first Protestant congregation was founded in Brest-Litovsk in the Reformed tradition, and the Belarusian Evangelical Reformed Church exists today.


title: Reformation

text: The Reformation in Ireland was a movement for the reform of religious life and institutions that was introduced into Ireland by the English administration at the behest of King Henry VIII of England. His desire for an annulment of his marriage was known as the King's Great Matter. Ultimately Pope Clement VII refused the petition; consequently it became necessary for the King to assert his lordship over the church in his realm to give legal effect to his wishes. The English Parliament confirmed the King's supremacy over the Church in the Kingdom of England. This challenge to Papal supremacy resulted in a breach with the Roman Catholic Church. By 1541, the Irish Parliament had agreed to the change in status of the country from that of a Lordship to that of Kingdom of Ireland.


title: Reformation

text: Unlike similar movements for religious reform on the continent of Europe, the various phases of the English Reformation as it developed in Ireland were largely driven by changes in government policy, to which public opinion in England gradually accommodated itself. However, a number of factors complicated the adoption of the religious innovations in Ireland; the majority of the population there adhered to the Catholic Church. However, in the city of Dublin the Reformation took hold under the auspices of George Browne, Archbishop of Dublin.


title: Reformation

text: Word of the Protestant reformers reached Italy in the 1520s but never caught on. Its development was stopped by the Counter-Reformation, the Inquisition and also popular disinterest. Not only was the Church highly aggressive in seeking out and suppressing heresy, but there was a shortage of Protestant leadership. No one translated the Bible into Italian; few tracts were written. No core of Protestantism emerged. The few preachers who did take an interest in "Lutheranism", as it was called in Italy, were suppressed or went into exile to northern countries where their message was well received. As a result, the Reformation exerted almost no lasting influence in Italy, except for strengthening the Catholic Church and pushing for an end to ongoing abuses during the Counter-Reformation.


title: Reformation

text: Some Protestants left Italy and became outstanding activists of the European Reformation, mainly in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (e.g. Giorgio Biandrata, Bernardino Ochino, Giovanni Alciato, Giovanni Battista Cetis, Fausto Sozzini, Francesco Stancaro and Giovanni Valentino Gentile), who propagated Nontrinitarianism there and were chief instigators of the movement of Polish Brethren. Some also fled to England and Switzerland, including Peter Vermigli.


title: Reformation

text: In 1532, the Waldensians, who had been already present centuries before the Reformation, aligned themselves and adopted the Calvinist theology. The Waldensian Church survived in the Western Alps through many persecutions and remains a Protestant church in Italy.


title: Reformation

text: In the first half of the 16th century, the enormous Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was a country of many religions and Churches, including: Roman Catholics, Byzantine Orthodox, Armenian Oriental Orthodox, Ashkenazi Jews, Karaites, and Sunni Muslims. The various groups had their own juridical systems. On the eve of the Protestant Reformation, Christianity held the predominate position within the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and Catholicism received preferential treatment at the expense of the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox.


title: Reformation

text: The Reformation first entered Poland through the mostly German-speaking areas in the country's north. In the 1520s Luther's reforms spread among the mostly German-speaking inhabitants of such major cities as Danzig (now Gdańsk), Thorn (now Toruń) and Elbing (now Elbląg). In Königsberg (now Kaliningrad), in 1530, a Polish-language edition of Luther's Small Catechism was published. The Duchy of Prussia, a vassal of the Polish Crown ruled by the Teutonic Knights, emerged as a key center of the movement, with numerous publishing houses issuing not only Bibles, but also catechisms, in German, Polish and Lithuanian. In 1525 the last Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights secularised the territory, became Lutheran, and established Lutheranism as the state church.


title: Reformation

text: Lutheranism found few adherents among the other peoples of the two countries. Calvinism became the most numerous Protestant group because Calvin's teachings on the role of the state within religion appealed to the nobility (known as szlachta), mainly in Lesser Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Several publishing houses were opened in Lesser Poland in the mid-16th century in such locations as Słomniki and Raków. At that time, Mennonites and Czech Brothers came to Poland. The former settled in the Vistula Delta where they used their agricultural abilities to turn parts of the delta into plodders. The latter settled mostly in Greater Poland around Leszno. Later on, Socinus and his followers emigrated to Poland. Originally the Reformed Church in Poland included both the Calvinists and the Anti-trinitarians (also known as the Socinians and the Polish Brethren); however, they eventually split due to an inability to reconcile their divergent views on the Trinity. Both Catholics and Orthodox Christians converts became Calvinists and the Anti-Trinitarians.


title: Reformation

text: The Commonwealth was unique in Europe in the 16th century for its widespread tolerance confirmed by the Warsaw Confederation. This agreement granted religious toleration to all nobles: peasants living on nobile estates did not receive the same protections. In 1563, the Brest Bible was published (see also Bible translations into Polish). The period of tolerance came under strain during the reign of King Sigismund III Vasa (Zygmunt Wasa). Sigismund, who was also the King of Sweden until deposed, was educated by Jesuits in Sweden before his election as King of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. During his reign, he selected Catholics for the highest offices in the country. This created resentment amongst the Protestant nobility; however, the country did not experience a religiously motivated civil war. Despite concerted efforts, the nobility rejected efforts to revise or rescind the Confederation of Warsaw, and protected this agreement.


title: Reformation

text: The Deluge, a 20-year period of almost continual warfare, marked the turning point in attitudes. During the war with Sweden, when King John Casimir (Jan Kazimierz) fled to Silesia, the Icon of Mary of Częstochowa became the rallying point for military opposition to the Swedish forces. Upon his return to the country Kihn John Casimir crowned Mary a Queen of Poland. Despite these wars against Protestant, Orthodox, and Muslim neighbours, the Confederation of Warsaw held with one notable exception. In the aftermath of the Swedish withdrawal and truce, attitudes throughout the nobility (Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant) turned against the Polish Brethren. In 1658 the Polish Brethren were forced to leave the country. They were permitted to sell their immovable property and take their movable property; however, it is still unknown whether they received fair-market value for their lands. In 1666, the Sejm banned apostasy from Catholicism to any other religion, under penalty of death. Finally, in 1717, the Silent Sejm banned non-Catholics from becoming deputies of the Parliament.


title: Reformation

text: The strategy the Catholic Church took towards reconverting the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth differed from its strategy elsewhere. The unique government (Poland was a republic where the citizen nobility owned the state) meant the king could not enforce a religious settlement even he if so desired. Instead the Catholic Church undertook a long and steady campaign of persuasion. In the Ruthenian lands (predominately modern day Belarus & Ukraine) the Orthodox Church also undertook a similar strategy. Additionally, the Orthodox also sought to join the Catholic Church (accomplished in the Union of Brześć [Brest]); however, this union failed to achieve a lasting, permanent, and complete union of the Catholics and Orthodox in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. An important component of the Catholic Reformation in Poland was education. Numerous colleges and universities were set up throughout the country: the Jesuits and Piarists were important in this regard but there were contributions of other religious orders such as the Dominicans. While in the middle of the 16th century the nobility mostly sent their sons abroad for education (the new German Protestant universities were important in this regard), by the mid-1600s the nobility mostly stayed home for education. The quality of the new Catholic schools was so great that Protestants willingly sent their children to these schools. Through their education, many nobles became appreciative of Catholicism or out-right converted. Even though the majority of the nobility were Catholic circa 1700, Protestants remained in these lands and pockets of Protestantism could be found outside the German-speaking lands of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth into the 20th century.


title: Reformation

text: Among the most important Protestants of the Commonwealth were Mikołaj Rej, Marcin Czechowic, Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski and Symon Budny.


title: Reformation

text: The Reformation was very insignificant in what is now Moldova and saw single congregations of Hussitism and Calvinism being founded across Besserabia. During the Reformation era, Moldova was repeatedly invaded.


title: Reformation

text: Primož Trubar is notable for consolidating the Slovene language and is considered to be the key figure of Slovenian cultural history, in many aspects a major Slovene historical personality. He was the key figure of the Protestant Church of the Slovene Lands, as he was its founder and its first superintendent. The first books in Slovene, "Catechismus" and "Abecedarium", were written by Trubar.


title: Reformation

text: At one point in history, the majority of Slovaks (~60%) were Lutherans. Calvinism was popular among the Hungarians who inhabited the southernmost parts of what is now Slovakia. Back then, Slovakia used to be a part of the Kingdom of Hungary. The Counter-Reformation implemented by the Habsburgs severely damaged Slovakian Protestantism, although in the 2010s Protestants are still a substantial minority (~10%) in the country.


title: Reformation

text: The Protestant teachings of the Western Church were also briefly adopted within the Eastern Orthodox Church through the Greek Patriarch Cyril Lucaris in 1629 with the publishing of the "Confessio" (Calvinistic doctrine) in Geneva. Motivating factors in their decision to adopt aspects of the Reformation included the historical rivalry and mistrust between the Greek Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Churches along with their concerns of Jesuit priests entering Greek lands in their attempts to propagate the teachings of the Counter-Reformation to the Greek populace. He subsequently sponsored Maximos of Gallipoli's translation of the New Testament into the Modern Greek language and it was published in Geneva in 1638. Upon Lucaris's death in 1638, the conservative factions within the Eastern Orthodox Church held two synods: the Synod of Constantinople (1638) and Synod of Iași (1642) criticising the reforms and, in the 1672 convocation led by Dositheos, they officially condemned the Calvinistic doctrines.


title: Reformation

text: In 2019, Christos Yannaras told Norman Russell that although he had participated in the Zoë movement, he had come to regard it as Crypto-Protestant.


title: Reformation

text: The Reformation spread throughout Europe beginning in 1517, reaching its peak between 1545 and 1620. The greatest geographical extent of Protestantism occurred at some point between 1545 and 1620. In 1620, the Battle of White Mountain defeated Protestants in Bohemia (now the Czech Republic) who sought to have the 1609 Letter of Majesty upheld.


title: Reformation

text: The Thirty Years' War began in 1618 and brought a drastic territorial and demographic decline when the House of Habsburg introduced counter-reformational measures throughout their vast possessions in Central Europe. Although the Thirty Years' War concluded with the Peace of Westphalia, the French Wars of the Counter-Reformation continued, as well as the expulsion of Protestants in Austria.


title: Reformation

text: According to a 2020 study in the "American Sociological Review", the Reformation spread earliest to areas where Luther had pre-existing social relations, such as mail correspondents, and former students, as well as where he had visited. The study argues that these social ties contributed more to the Reformation's early breakthroughs than the printing press.


title: Reformation

text: There is no universal agreement on the exact or approximate date the Reformation ended. Various interpretations emphasise different dates, entire periods, or argue that the Reformation never really ended. However, there are a few popular interpretations. Peace of Augsburg in 1555 officially ended the religious struggle between the two groups and made the legal division of Christianity permanent within the Holy Roman Empire, allowing rulers to choose either Lutheranism or Roman Catholicism as the official confession of their state. It could be considered to end with the enactment of the confessions of faith. Other suggested ending years relate to the Counter-Reformation or the 1648 Peace of Westphalia. From a Catholic perspective, the Second Vatican Council called for an end to the Counter-Reformation.


title: Reformation

text: The Reformation and Counter-Reformation era conflicts are termed the European wars of religion. In particular, the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) devastated much of Germany, killing between 25% and 40% of its entire population. The Catholic House of Habsburg and its allies fought against the Protestant princes of Germany, supported at various times by Denmark, Sweden and France. The Habsburgs, who ruled Spain, Austria, the Crown of Bohemia, Hungary, Slovene Lands, the Spanish Netherlands and much of Germany and Italy, were staunch defenders of the Catholic Church. Some historians believe that the era of the Reformation came to a close when Catholic France allied itself with Protestant states against the Habsburg dynasty.


title: Reformation

text: The treaty also effectively ended the Papacy's pan-European political power. Pope Innocent X declared the treaty "null, void, invalid, iniquitous, unjust, damnable, reprobate, inane, empty of meaning and effect for all times" in his apostolic brief "Zelo Domus Dei". European sovereigns, Catholic and Protestant alike, ignored his verdict.


title: Reformation

text: Six princes of the Holy Roman Empire and rulers of fourteen Imperial Free Cities, who issued a protest (or dissent) against the edict of the Diet of Speyer (1529), were the first individuals to be called Protestants. The edict reversed concessions made to the Lutherans with the approval of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V three years earlier. The term "Protestant", though initially purely political in nature, later acquired a broader sense, referring to a member of any Western church which subscribed to the main Protestant principles. Today, Protestantism constitutes the second-largest form of Christianity (after Catholicism), with a total of 800 million to 1 billion adherents worldwide or about 37% of all Christians. Protestants have developed their own culture, with major contributions in education, the humanities and sciences, the political and social order, the economy and the arts and many other fields. The following outcomes of the Reformation regarding human capital formation, the Protestant ethic, economic development, governance, and "dark" outcomes have been identified by scholars:


title: Reformation

text: Margaret C. Jacob argues that there has been a dramatic shift in the historiography of the Reformation. Until the 1960s, historians focused their attention largely on the great leaders and theologians of the 16th century, especially Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli. Their ideas were studied in depth. However, the rise of the new social history in the 1960s led to looking at history from the bottom up, not from the top down. Historians began to concentrate on the values, beliefs and behavior of the people at large. She finds, "in contemporary scholarship, the Reformation is now seen as a vast cultural upheaval, a social and popular movement, textured and rich because of its diversity."


title: Reformation

text: Partly due to Martin Luther's love for music, music became important in Lutheranism. The study and practice of music was encouraged in Protestant-majority countries. Songs such as the Lutheran hymns or the Calvinist Psalter became tools for the spread of Protestant ideas and beliefs, as well as identity flags. Similar attitudes developed among Catholics, who in turn encouraged the creation and use of music for religious purposes.


title: Kane Tanaka

text: Tanaka was born as on 2 January 1903 in the village of Wajiro (now part of Higashi-ku, Fukuoka), on the southern island of Kyushu, the third daughter and seventh child of her parents, Kumayoshi and Kuma Ota. Kane and her family said she was actually born on 26 December 1902 and that her parents delayed the process of filing the report for a week because they were not sure if she would survive, as she was born prematurely.


title: Kane Tanaka

text: Kane's early childhood was during the last years of the Meiji period, which ended when she was nine, in 1912. Kane married her cousin Hideo Tanaka in 1922, with whom she had two sons and two daughters. The couple also adopted their niece, the second daughter of Hideo's sister. Kane's eldest daughter died shortly after birth and her second daughter died at the age of one in 1947, while her adoptive daughter died in 1945 at the age of 23 of an unspecified illness. The couple worked in a store selling shiruko and udon noodles.


title: Kane Tanaka

text: Kane's husband was later drafted into the military, in which he served from 1937 to 1939; one of her sons was captured towards the end of World War II, as a military POW, and was held captive in Siberia before being released and returning home in 1947. After World War II, the couple continued working in the store, with Kane converting to Christianity under the ministry of pastors stationed by the United States military. Retiring from working at their store at 63, Kane traveled to the United States in the 1970s to visit her relatives in California and Colorado. Her husband died in 1993 at the age of 90, after 71 years of marriage.


title: Kane Tanaka

text: Kane lived in a nursing home in Higashi-ku, Fukuoka, from September 2018, and was reportedly still in good health on her 118th birthday. Tanaka was supposed to hold the Olympic torch at the 2020 Summer Olympics, but she withdrew from it due to concerns regarding an increase in COVID-19 cases in Japan. She occasionally played the board game Othello, and took short walks in the nursing home's hallways. Her hobbies included calligraphy and solving arithmetic problems. She had five grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. Tanaka died in a hospital in Fukuoka, on 19 April 2022, nine days after being verified as the second-oldest person to have lived. Her death was announced on 25 April 2022. No cause of death was given, but her grandson said she had been feeling ill since late 2021, according to the Japanese Health Ministry.


title: Kane Tanaka

text: Tanaka had several major illnesses, and was infected with paratyphoid fever with her adopted daughter at the age of 35. She underwent pancreatic cancer surgery at the age of 45. In 2006, Tanaka was diagnosed with colorectal cancer and underwent surgery when she was 103 years old. Her life and longevity were noted by her second son and his wife four years later when they published a book called "In Good and Bad Times, 107 Years Old". At the age of 114, she was interviewed by KBC in September 2017. On 9 March 2019, Tanaka was officially presented with the "World's Oldest Living Person" and "World's Oldest Living Woman" titles by "Guinness World Records", verifying her longevity claim. On 19 September 2020, she broke the record of longest-lived Japanese person, as well as the third-oldest person in the world, after surpassing Nabi Tajima's age of 117 years, 260 days. On 10 April 2022, she surpassed the lifespan of Sarah Knauss to become the second-oldest verified person.


title: Kane Tanaka

text: Tanaka had said that she wanted to live to the age of 120, crediting her faith in God, family, sleep, hope, eating good food and practicing mathematics for her longevity. Her longevity, along with that of Jeanne Calment, has contributed to the debate that the maximum lifespan for humans could be 115–125 years. After Tanaka's death, Frenchwoman Lucile Randon became the world's oldest validated living person.


title: Rutger Hauer

text: Rutger Oelsen Hauer (; 23 January 1944 – 19 July 2019) was a Dutch actor. In 1999, he was named by the Dutch public as the Best Dutch Actor of the Century.


title: Rutger Hauer

text: Hauer's career began in 1969 with the title role in the Dutch television series "Floris" and surged with his leading role in "Turkish Delight" (1973), which in 1999 was named the Best Dutch Film of the Century. After gaining international recognition with "Soldier of Orange" (1977) and "Spetters" (1980), he moved into American films such as "Nighthawks" (1981) and "Blade Runner" (1982), starring in the latter as self-aware replicant Roy Batty. His performance in "Blade Runner" led to roles in "The Osterman Weekend" (1983), "Ladyhawke" (1985), "The Hitcher" (1986), "The Legend of the Holy Drinker" (1988), and "Blind Fury" (1989), among other films.


title: Rutger Hauer

text: From the 1990s on, Hauer moved into low-budget films, and supporting roles in major films like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (1992), "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" (2002), "Batman Begins" (2005), "Sin City" (2005) and "The Rite" (2011). Hauer also became well known for his work in commercials. Towards the end of his career, he made a return to Dutch cinema, and won the 2012 Rembrandt Award for Best Actor in recognition of his lead role in "The Heineken Kidnapping" (2011).


title: Rutger Hauer

text: Hauer supported environmentalist causes and was a member of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. He also founded the Rutger Hauer Starfish Association, an AIDS awareness organization. He was made a knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion in 2013.


title: Rutger Hauer

text: Hauer was born in Breukelen, in the Province of Utrecht, on 23 January 1944, while the Netherlands was under German occupation during World War II. He stated in a 1981 interview, "I was born in the middle of the war, and I think for that reason I have deep roots in pacifism. Violence frightens me." His parents were Teunke (née Mellema) and Arend Hauer, both actors who operated an acting school in nearby Amsterdam. He had three sisters. According to Hauer, his parents were more interested in their art than their children. He did not have a close relationship with his father, and writer Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema later became a father figure to Hauer after they met during the filming of "Soldier of Orange".


title: Rutger Hauer

text: Hauer attended a Rudolf Steiner school, as his parents wanted him to develop his creativity. At the age of 15, he left school to join the Dutch merchant navy. He spent a year travelling the world aboard a freighter, but was unable to become a captain due to his colourblindness. Returning home, he worked odd jobs while finishing his high school diploma at night. He then entered the Academy for Theater and Dance in Amsterdam for acting classes, but soon dropped out to join the Royal Netherlands Army. He received training as a combat medic, but left the service after a few months as he opposed the use of deadly weapons. He subsequently returned to acting school and graduated in 1967.


title: Rutger Hauer

text: Hauer had his first acting role at the age of 11, as Eurysakes in the play "Ajax". After graduating from the Academy for Theater and Dance, he became a stage actor with the . Hauer made his screen debut in 1969 when Paul Verhoeven cast him in the lead role of the television series "Floris", a Dutch medieval action drama. The role made him famous in his native country, and Hauer reprised his role for the 1975 German remake "Floris von Rosemund".


title: Rutger Hauer

text: Hauer's career changed course when Verhoeven cast him in "Turkish Delight" (1973), which received an Oscar nomination for best foreign language film. The film found box office favour abroad and at home, and Hauer looked to appear in more international films. Within two years, Hauer made his English-language debut in the British film "The Wilby Conspiracy" (1975). Set in South Africa, the film was an action-drama with a focus on apartheid. Hauer's supporting role, however, was barely noticed in Hollywood, and he returned to Dutch films for several years. During this period, he made "Katie Tippel" (1975) and worked again with Verhoeven on "Soldier of Orange" (1977), and "Spetters" (1980). These two films paired Hauer with fellow Dutch actor Jeroen Krabbé. At the 1981 Netherlands Film Festival, Hauer received the Golden Calf for Best Actor for his overall body of work.


title: Rutger Hauer

text: Hauer made his American debut in the Sylvester Stallone film "Nighthawks" (1981) as a psychopathic and cold-blooded terrorist named Wulfgar. With his sights set on a long-term career in Hollywood, Hauer worked with an accent coach in the early 1980s to develop a convincing American accent. Unafraid of controversial roles, he portrayed Albert Speer in the 1982 American Broadcasting Company production "Inside the Third Reich". The same year, Hauer appeared in arguably his most famous and acclaimed role as the eccentric and violent but sympathetic antihero Roy Batty in Ridley Scott's 1982 science fiction thriller "Blade Runner", in which he delivered the famous tears in rain monologue. Hauer wrote some of the speech himself, the night before shooting, "cutting away swathes of the original script before adding the speech’s poignant final line". He went on to play the adventurer courting Theresa Russell in "Eureka" (1983), investigative reporter opposite John Hurt in "The Osterman Weekend" (1983), hardened mercenary Martin in "Flesh & Blood" (1985), and knight paired with Michelle Pfeiffer in "Ladyhawke" (1985).


title: Rutger Hauer

text: He appeared in "The Hitcher" (1986), in which he played a mysterious hitchhiker tormenting a lone motorist and murdering anyone in his way. He received the 1987 Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the television film "Escape from Sobibor". At the height of Hauer's fame, he was set to be cast as RoboCop (1987), but Verhoeven, the film's director, considered his frame as too large to move comfortably in the character's suit. Also in 1987, Hauer starred as Nick Randall in "" as the descendant of the character played by Steve McQueen in the television series of the same name.


title: Rutger Hauer

text: In 1988, he played a homeless man in Ermanno Olmi's "The Legend of the Holy Drinker". This performance won Hauer the Best Actor award at the 1989 Seattle International Film Festival. Hauer was chosen to portray a blind martial artist superhero in Phillip Noyce's action film "Blind Fury" (1989). He initially struggled with the implausibility of the character, but learned to "unfocus my eyes, to react to smells and sounds" after meeting with blind judo practitioner Lynn Manning during his research for the role. Hauer returned to science fiction in 1989 with "The Blood of Heroes", in which he played a gladiator in a post-apocalyptic world.


title: Rutger Hauer

text: By the 1990s, Hauer was well known for his humorous Guinness commercials as well as his screen roles, which had increasingly involved low-budget films, such as "Split Second" (1992); "The Beans of Egypt, Maine" (1994); "Omega Doom" (1996) and "New World Disorder" (1999). In 1992, he appeared in the horror-comedy film "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" as the main antagonist vampire Lothos. He also appeared in the Kylie Minogue music video "On a Night Like This" (2000). During this time, Hauer acted in several British, Canadian and American television productions, including "" (1994) as Earhart's navigator Fred Noonan, "Fatherland" (1994), "Hostile Waters" (1997), "" (1997), "Merlin" (1998), "The 10th Kingdom" (2000), "Smallville" (2003), "Alias" (2003), and "Salem's Lot" (2004).


title: Rutger Hauer

text: Hauer played an assassin in "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" (2003), a villainous cardinal with influential power in "Sin City" (2005) and a devious corporate executive running Wayne Enterprises in "Batman Begins" (2005). Also in 2005, he played the title role in Patrick Lussier's film "". Seven years later, he portrayed the vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing in Dario Argento's "Dracula 3D". Hauer hosted the British reality television documentary "Shock Treatment" in 2005, and featured in "" (2007) as Real Madrid coach Rudi Van der Merwe. He also recorded voice-overs for the British advertising campaign for the Danish butter brand Lurpak.


title: Rutger Hauer

text: In 2008, Hauer received the Golden Calf Culture Prize for his contributions to Dutch cinema. The award recognised his work as an actor as well as his efforts to aid the development of young filmmakers and actors, through initiatives such as the . In 2009, his role in avant-garde filmmaker Cyrus Frisch's "Dazzle" received positive reviews; it was described in Dutch press as "the most relevant Dutch film of the year". The same year, Hauer starred in the title role of "Barbarossa", an Italian film directed by Renzo Martinelli. In April 2010, he was cast in the live action adaptation of the short and fictitious "Grindhouse" trailer "Hobo with a Shotgun" (2011). Hauer played Freddie Heineken in "The Heineken Kidnapping" (2011), for which he received the 2012 Rembrandt Award for Best Actor. Also in 2011, Hauer appeared in the supernatural horror film "The Rite" as an undertaker named Istvan, the protagonist's father.


title: Rutger Hauer

text: From 2013 to 2014, Hauer featured as Niall Brigant in HBO's "True Blood". In 2015, he starred as Ravn in "The Last Kingdom" and as Kingsley in "Galavant". In 2016, he joined the film jury for ShortCutz Amsterdam, an annual film festival promoting short films in Amsterdam. Hauer voiced the role of Daniel Lazarski in the 2017 video game "Observer", set in post-apocalyptic Poland. Lazarski is a member of a special elite police unit that can hack into minds and interact with memories within. Hauer also provided the voice of Xehanort in the 2019 video game "Kingdom Hearts III", replacing the late Leonard Nimoy and was himself replaced by Christopher Lloyd following his death.


title: Rutger Hauer

text: Hauer was an environmentalist. He supported the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and was a member of its board of advisors. He also established an AIDS awareness organization called the Rutger Hauer Starfish Association. In April 2007, he published his autobiography, "All Those Moments: Stories of Heroes, Villains, Replicants, and Blade Runners" (co-written with Patrick Quinlan), in which he discussed many of his acting roles. Proceeds from the book go to the Rutger Hauer Starfish Association.


title: Rutger Hauer

text: Hauer was married twice. From his marriage with his first wife, Heidi Merz, came his only child, Aysha Hauer (born 1966), an actress who gave birth to Hauer's grandson in 1987. He had been together with his second wife, Ineke ten Cate, since 1968, and they married in a private ceremony on 22 November 1985. Although born in Utrecht, Hauer had strong links to Friesland. His second wife was the daughter of Laurens ten Cate, the editor-in-chief of the Friesland-based newspaper "Leeuwarder Courant", and Hauer once stated in an interview with the "Algemeen Dagblad" that he "needed to feel the Frisian clay under [his] feet".


title: Rutger Hauer

text: Hauer died on 19 July 2019 at his home in Beetsterzwaag, following a short illness. He was 75 years old. A private funeral service was held on 24 July. On 23 January 2020, which would have been Hauer's 76th birthday, a ceremony was held in Beetsterzwaag in his honour. Attendees included Sharon Stone, Miranda Richardson, Diederik van Rooijen, and Prince Pieter-Christiaan of Orange-Nassau, van Vollenhoven.


title: Brave (web browser)

text: Brave is a free and open-source web browser developed by Brave Software, Inc. based on the Chromium web browser. Brave is a privacy-focused browser, which automatically blocks online advertisements and website trackers in its default settings. It also provides users the choice to turn on optional ads that pay users for their attention in the form of Basic Attention Tokens (BAT) cryptocurrency. Users can then send contributions to websites and content creators, which support BAT in the form of tips along with the ability to keep the cryptocurrency they earned.


title: Brave (web browser)

text: As of August 2022, Brave claims to have more than 57.42 million monthly active users, 19.3 million daily active users and a network of more than 1.6 million content creators.


title: Brave (web browser)

text: On 28 May 2015, CEO Brendan Eich and CTO Brian Bondy founded Brave Software. On 20 January 2016, Brave Software launched the first version of Brave with ad-blocking capabilities and announced plans for a privacy-respecting ad platform.


title: Brave (web browser)

text: In June 2018, Brave released a pay-to-surf test-version of the browser. This version of Brave came preloaded with approximately 250 ads and sent a detailed log of the user's browsing activity to Brave for the short-term purpose of testing this functionality. Brave announced that expanded trials would follow. Later that month, Brave added support for Tor in its desktop browser's private-browsing mode.


title: Brave (web browser)

text: Until December 2018, Brave ran on a fork of Electron called Muon, which they marketed as a "more secure fork". Nevertheless, Brave developers moved to Chromium, citing a need to ease their maintenance burden. Brave Software released the final Muon-based version with the intention that it would stop working and instructed users to update as its end-of-life approached.


title: Brave (web browser)

text: In June 2019, Brave started testing a new ad-blocking rule-matching algorithm implemented in Rust, replacing the previous C++ one. The uBlock Origin and Ghostery algorithms inspired the new logic, which Brave claims to be on average 69 times faster than the previous algorithm.


title: Brave (web browser)

text: Brave launched its stable release, version 1.0, on 13 November 2019, while having 8.7 million monthly active users overall. At the time, it had approximately 3 million active users on a daily basis. Brave 1.0, running on Android, iOS, Windows 10, macOS, or Linux, integrated "almost all of Brave's marquee features across all platforms", according to "Engadget".


title: Brave (web browser)

text: In November 2020, Brave reported having 20 million monthly users, and, in September 2021, it passed 36 million monthly active users.


title: Brave (web browser)

text: In March 2021, Brave built its search engine out of Tailcat, which it acquired earlier that year from Cliqz, a subsidiary of Hubert Burda Media based in Germany. Tailcat was designed to deliver search results without logging user activity or creating profiles.


title: Brave (web browser)

text: In June 2021, the public beta for Brave Search, Brave Software's search engine, was launched. It exited its beta phase in June 2022 along with an announcement that within its year-long beta testing period Brave Search surpassed 2.5 billion total queries.


title: Brave (web browser)

text: Brave uses its Basic Attention Token (BAT) to drive revenue. Originally incorporated in Delaware as Hyperware Labs, Inc. in 2015, the company later changed its name to Brave Software, Inc. and registered in California, where it is headquartered.


title: Brave (web browser)

text: By August 2016, the company had received at least US$7 million in angel investments from venture capital firms, including Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Propel Venture Partners, Pantera Capital, Foundation Capital, and the Digital Currency Group.


title: Brave (web browser)

text: In November 2019, Brave launched Brave Ads, an ad network. Brave Software takes 30% of the ad revenue and the rest is given back to the users. As consumers browse, they are presented with advertisements.


title: Brave (web browser)

text: Brave Firewall + VPN is a browser based system wide firewall and VPN for iOS. It uses the Guardian VPN.


title: Brave (web browser)

text: Brave Search is a search engine developed by Brave and released in Beta form in March 2021, following the acquisition of Tailcat, a privacy-focused search engine from Cliqz. Since October 2021, Brave Search is the default search engine for Brave browser users in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, and Germany.


title: Brave (web browser)

text: Brave Wallet is a native crypto wallet with no extensions required. It supports all EVM compatible chains (Polygon, xDai, Avalanche, etc.) and L2 chains. The Brave Wallet support is limited to Desktop browser, but is planned to be extended to mobile browsers. In addition, Brave Wallet can be used to store non-fungible tokens.


title: Brave (web browser)

text: Brave Wallet (Legacy) is a fork of MetaMask, which comes pre-installed with the Brave browser. This lets the browser interact with websites supporting the MetaMask API's to sign crypto transactions for supported Ethereum Virtual Machine networks.


title: Brave (web browser)

text: Brave Swap is an aggregator for cryptocurrency DEX's based on 0x. It lets users swap Ethereum tokens for other tokens from within the browser. Brave makes money off this by taking a small "router" fee. It plans to return 20% of this fee to the user in the form of BAT tokens.


title: Brave (web browser)

text: All user data is kept private on the user's device and is not accessible by any third party. The browsing data is not sent to Brave's servers, so only the user of the device can see the browsing data. A research study analyzing browser privacy by Professor Douglas J. Leith of the University of Dublin reported that Brave had the highest level of privacy of the browsers tested. Brave did not have "any use of identifiers allowing tracking of IP address overtime, and no sharing of the details of web pages visited with backend servers".


title: Brave (web browser)

text: To prevent browser fingerprinting, Brave uses fingerprint randomization, which makes the browser look different to websites over browser restart, to ensure Brave's users cannot be uniquely identified or tracked periodically by using browser fingerprinting.


title: Brave (web browser)

text: On 15 October 2021, Brave announced a new privacy feature dubbed "debouncing". The new feature is designed to disarm bounce tracking, a method of Internet tracking through intermediary domains that load when users click on a link. Debouncing will automatically recognize when users are about to visit a known tracking domain and renavigates the user to their intended destination, skipping the tracking site altogether.


title: Brave (web browser)

text: Tests conducted by Digital Trends found Brave to be the only mainstream browser to pass the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Cover Your Tracks test.


title: Brave (web browser)

text: In April 2022, Brave announced a de-AMP feature that bypasses Google's AMP system, directing the user straight to the original website instead. The company cited this as a privacy feature, calling AMP "harmful to users and to the Web at large".


title: Brave (web browser)

text: Brave Shields is an engine inspired by uBlock Origin and others, which blocks third-party ads and trackers in a similar fashion to other extension-based ad blockers. The advertisement blocking features are enabled by default. Users are given control to adjust ad blocking, script, and cookies settings in the Shields and Privacy section of the browser. As well as ads and cookie-based trackers, Brave shields also protect against fingerprint tracking using a technique it calls "farbling", allowing each browser session to appear unique.


title: Brave (web browser)

text: A browser-based, privacy-focused video conferencing tool based on Jitsi. It was integrated into Brave in September 2021. On 2 March 2022, the Brave Talk widget was made visible by default on the New Tab Page.


title: Brave (web browser)

text: Since April 2019, users of the Brave browser can opt in to the Brave Rewards feature, which enables users to earn BAT as a reward for viewing privacy-preserving ads and use earned BAT in a number of ways.


title: Brave (web browser)

text: Users can earn BAT by viewing advertisements that are displayed as notifications by the operating system of their computer or device or as a native pop-up window. Advertising campaigns are matched with users by inference from their browsing history; this targeting is carried out locally, with no transmission of personal data outside the browser.


title: Brave (web browser)

text: Users may choose to send BAT micropayments to websites and content creators within the ecosystem. Site owners and creators must first register with Brave as a publisher. Users can either turn on auto-contribute, which automatically divides a specified monthly contribution in proportion to the time spent, or they can manually send a chosen amount (referred to as a tip) while visiting the site or creator. In addition or alternatively, users may withdraw their BAT to a verified Uphold or Gemini wallet.


title: Brave (web browser)

text: The first version of the micropayments feature was launched in 2016 under the name "Brave Payments" and used Bitcoin. Advertisements were shown in a separate browser tab.


title: Brave (web browser)

text: The "Basic Attention Token" (BAT) is a cryptocurrency token based on Ethereum, created for use in an open-source, decentralized ad exchange platform and as a cryptocurrency. It is based on the ERC-20 standard.


title: Brave (web browser)

text: In an initial coin offering on 31 May 2017, Brave sold one billion BAT for a total of 156,250 Ethereum ($35 million) in less than 30 seconds. An additional 500 million BAT was retained by the company to be used to promote the adoption of the platform.


title: Brave (web browser)

text: In early December 2017, the company disbursed the first round of its "user growth pool" grants: a total of 300,000 BAT was distributed to new users on a first-come, first-served basis.


title: Brave (web browser)

text: Advertisers must purchase BAT to show ads on the Brave Rewards platform. Brave facilitates USD-based ad purchases, but will then buy BAT on behalf of the advertiser. These ads are then shown to the user, where the user then receives the BAT spent on the ad, minus a 30% fee going to Brave. Users can then tip creators using the "Brave Creators" platform (creators being hosts of websites the user has visited or literal creators on platforms such as YouTube), or withdraw their BAT to a verified Gemini or Uphold wallet.


title: Brave (web browser)

text: In March 2021, BAT became available on the Binance Smart Chain in the form of wrapped BAT. These tokens are wrapped by Binance and the original BAT is held in "Token Vaults" with Binance.


title: Brave (web browser)

text: HTC: In December 2018, Brave partnered with HTC to make Brave Browser the default browser on the HTC Exodus 1.


title: Brave (web browser)

text: In January 2016, in reaction to Brave Software's initial announcement, Sebastian Anthony of Ars Technica described Brave as a "cash-grab" and a "double dip". Anthony concluded, "Brave is an interesting idea, but generally it's rather frowned upon to stick your own ads in front of someone else's". "TechCrunch," "Computerworld," and "Engadget" termed Brave's ad replacement plans "controversial" in 2016.


title: Brave (web browser)

text: In February 2016, Andy Patrizio of Network World reviewed a pre-release version of Brave. Patrizio criticized the browser's feature set as "mighty primitive", but lauded its performance: "Pages load instantly. I can't really benchmark page loads since they happen faster than I can start/stop the stopwatch".


title: Brave (web browser)

text: In April 2016, the CEO of the Newspaper Association of America, David Chavern, said that Brave's proposed replacement of advertising "should be viewed as illegal and deceptive by the courts, consumers, and those who value the creation of content".


title: Brave (web browser)

text: In April 2017, "TechWorld" praised Brave's "great speeds and advanced ad-tracking controls", but said that its "extension functionality is still lacking".


title: Brave (web browser)

text: In November 2019, CNET reviewed the newly released 1.0 version of Brave. They praised the speed, saying "Brave is hands-down the fastest browser I've used this year on any operating system, for both mobile and desktop. Memory usage by the browser is far below most others, while website loading is far faster." They also said battery usage could be reduced by using the browser – "With less strain on resources comes less strain on your device's battery life as well." However, they had concerns that the user base is still far below Chrome, and thus it may not be able to build out its ad system fully yet, saying – "The browser will need more users, however, to truly build out its new ad system: while 8 million people is a good start, it will still need to compete with Google Chrome's billion-plus users."


title: Brave (web browser)

text: In March 2021, "The New York Times" analyzed internet browsers and recommended Brave as the best privacy browser. Writer Brian X. Chen concluded, "My favorite websites loaded flawlessly, and I enjoyed the clean look of ad-free sites, along with the flexibility of opting in to see ads whenever I felt like it."


title: Brave (web browser)

text: In December 2018, British YouTube content creator Tom Scott said that he had not received any donations collected on his behalf by Brave. In a tweet, he stated "So if you thought you'd donated to me through Brave, the money (or their pseudo-money [BAT]) will not reach me, and Brave's terms say that they may choose to just keep it for themselves. It looks like they're 'providing this service' for every creator on every platform. No opt-in, no consent." In response, Brave amended the interface with a disclaimer for each creator who has not signed up with Brave and promised to consider adding "an opt-out option for creators who do not wish to receive donations" and "switching the default so users cannot tip or donate to unverified creators".


title: Brave (web browser)

text: Critics stated that the system should be opt-in and not opt-out, that the disclaimer did not clearly state absence of any relation with the creators, and suggests that creator begun process of signing up with Brave. Two days after the complaint, Brave issued an update to "clearly indicate which publishers and creators have not yet joined Brave Rewards so users can better control how they donate and tip" and in January 2020 another update to change the behavior of contributions and tips. They are now held in the browser and transferred if the creator signs up within 90 days; otherwise, they are returned to the user. Tom Scott, the original complainant, tweeted in response: "These are good changes, and they fix the complaints I had!".


title: Brave (web browser)

text: On 6 June 2020, a Twitter user pointed out that Brave inserts affiliate referral codes when users navigate to Binance. Further research revealed that Brave also redirected the URLs of other cryptocurrency exchange websites. In response to the backlash from the users, Brave's CEO apologized and called it a "mistake" and said "we're correcting".


title: Brave (web browser)

text: Two days later, Brave released a new version which they said disabled the auto-completion to partner links, followed by a blog post explaining the issue and apologizing.


title: Brave (web browser)

text: One privacy issue appeared via a private disclosure on Brave's HackerOne bug bounty platform on 12 January 2021. The disclosure reported that Brave was sending DNS requests to ISP of the users instead of routing it through the Tor network, thus allowing ISPs to have knowledge of user's browsing sessions.


title: Brave (web browser)

text: Brave fixed the issue in its Nightly channel soon after it was initially reported. Once the bug received public attention in mid-February from Twitter users verifying the vulnerability, the fix was soon uplifted to the Stable channel and landed in Brave 1.20.110.


title: Brave (web browser)

text: Gab in April 2019 created a fork of Brave called Dissenter which bundled in their add-on of the same name after it was banned in the Chrome and Firefox stores. Eich criticized the decision to fork Brave as unnecessary and "parasitic".


title: Brave (web browser)

text: A February 2020 research report published by the School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College Dublin tested six browsers and deemed Brave to be the most private of them, in terms of phoning home: "In the first (most private) group lies Brave, in the second Chrome, Firefox and Safari, and in the third (least private) group lie Edge and Yandex."


title: Pepe the Frog

text: Pepe the Frog () is an Internet meme consisting of a green anthropomorphic frog with a humanoid body. Pepe originated in a 2005 comic by Matt Furie called "Boy's Club". It became an Internet meme when its popularity steadily grew across Myspace, Gaia Online, and 4chan in 2008. By 2015, it had become one of the most popular memes used on 4chan and Tumblr. Different types of Pepe include "Sad Frog", "Smug Frog", "Angry Pepe", "Feels Frog", and "You will never..." Frog. Since 2014, 'rare Pepes' have been posted on the 'meme market' as if they were trading cards.


title: Pepe the Frog

text: Originally an apolitical character, Pepe was appropriated from 2015 to 2016 onward as a symbol of the alt-right movement. The Anti-Defamation League included Pepe in its hate symbol database in 2016, but said most instances of Pepe were not used in a hate-related context. Since then, Furie has expressed his dismay at Pepe being used as a hate symbol and has sued organizations for doing so.


title: Pepe the Frog

text: In 2019, Pepe was used by protesters in the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests. Despite being used in a political context, Pepe the Frog's use in Hong Kong is not perceived as being connected with alt-right ideology. Furie has welcomed the use of Pepe by Hong Kong protesters.


title: Pepe the Frog

text: Pepe remains a recognizable and familiar sight on social media platforms like 4chan, Twitch, Reddit, and Discord, where images are modified into custom Pepe-based emoji.


title: Pepe the Frog

text: Pepe the Frog was created by American artist and cartoonist Matt Furie in 2005. Its usage as an Internet meme came from his comic "Boy's Club" #1. The progenitor of "Boy's Club" was a zine Furie made on Microsoft Paint called "Playtime", which included Pepe as a character. He posted his comic in a series of blog posts on Myspace in 2005.


title: Pepe the Frog

text: In the comic, Pepe is seen urinating with his pants pulled down to his ankles and the catchphrase "feels good man" was his rationale. Furie took those posts down when the printed edition was published in 2006.


title: Pepe the Frog

text: Pepe was used in blog posts on Myspace in 2005 and became an in-joke on Gaia Online. In 2008, the page containing Pepe and the catchphrase was scanned and uploaded to 4chan's /b/ board, which has been described as the meme's "permanent home".


title: Pepe the Frog

text: The meme took off among 4chan users, who adapted Pepe's face and catchphrase to fit different scenarios and emotions, such as melancholy, anger, and surprise. "Feels bad, man", a sad variant of the frog's "feels good, man" catchphrase, also became associated with Pepe. Color was also added; originally a black-and-white line drawing, Pepe became green with brown lips, sometimes in a blue shirt. "Feels Guy", or "Wojak", originally an unrelated character typically used to express melancholy, was eventually often paired with Pepe in user-made comics or images.


title: Pepe the Frog

text: The "sad frog" variation entered usage on Tumblr by 2012. That same year, the "Smug Pepe" variant emerged. Versions of the meme appeared on Chinese social media, such as Baidu Tieba, as early as 2014. There, it has been known as "shangxin qingwa" (傷心青蛙), or "sad frog". In 2014, images of Pepe were shared on social media by celebrities such as Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj. As Pepe became more widespread, 4chan users began referring to particularly creative and unique variants of the meme as "rare Pepes". These images, sometimes as physical paintings, were sold on eBay and posted on Craigslist. 4chan users referred to those who used the meme outside the website as "normies" (or "normalfags"). Users from 4chan, Reddit, and elsewhere attempted to prevent mainstream usage of the meme by "making Pepe as shocking as possible".


title: Pepe the Frog

text: In 2015, Pepe was #6 on "Daily News and Analysis"s list of the most important memes and the most retweeted meme on Twitter. The "Daily Intelligencer" called it Tumblr's "Biggest Meme of 2015". According to "Inverse", it was one of the most-reblogged memes on Tumblr in 2015.


title: Pepe the Frog

text: As early as 2015, a number of Pepe variants were created by Internet trolls to associate the character with the alt-right movement. Some of the variants produced by this had Nazi Germany, Ku Klux Klan, or white power skinhead themes.


title: Pepe the Frog

text: During the 2016 United States presidential election, the meme was connected to Donald Trump's campaign. In October 2015, Trump retweeted a Pepe representation of himself, associated with a video called "You Can't Stump the Trump (Volume 4)". Later in the election, Roger Stone and Donald Trump Jr. posted a parody movie poster of "The Expendables" on Twitter and Instagram titled "The Deplorables", a play on Hillary Clinton's controversial phrase "basket of deplorables", which included Pepe's face among those of members of the Trump family and other figures popular among the alt-right.


title: Pepe the Frog

text: Also during the election, various news organizations reported associations of the character with white nationalism and the alt-right. In May 2016, Olivia Nuzzi of "The Daily Beast" wrote that there was "an actual campaign to reclaim Pepe from normies" and that "turning Pepe into a white nationalist icon" was an explicit goal of some on the alt-right. In August 2016, Clinton denounced the alt-right in a speech. During the speech, a 4chan user who was liveblogging the event on the site audibly shouted "Pepe!" at the request of another user. In September 2016, an article published on Hillary Clinton's campaign website described Pepe as "a symbol associated with white supremacy" and denounced Trump's campaign for its supposed promotion of the meme. In 2020, social scientist Joan Donovan said of the Clinton campaign's decision to describe Pepe as an alt-right symbol, "If it weren't for Hillary Clinton's campaign in 2016 trying to [...] name Pepe as a signifier of the Alt-Right, that kind of recognition probably wouldn't have taken hold [...] In doing so, they showed how much of a newbie they were at what it essentially meant to be online, which in turn created a wave of media attention on which the Alt-Right was ready to coast."


title: Pepe the Frog

text: In an interview with "Esquire", Furie said of Pepe's usage as a hate symbol, "It sucks, but I can't control it more than anyone can control frogs on the Internet". Fantagraphics Books, Furie's publisher, issued a statement condemning the "illegal and repulsive appropriations of the character". The Anti-Defamation League, an American organization opposed to antisemitism, included Pepe in its hate symbol database but wrote that most instances of Pepe were not used in a hate-related context. Writing in "Time" on October 13, 2016, Furie said that "I understand that it’s out of my control, but in the end, Pepe is whatever you say he is, and I, the creator, say that Pepe is "love"." The next day, the ADL announced that it had partnered with Furie to launch the #SavePepe (or "Save Pepe") campaign, an attempt to associate the symbol with positivity. As part of that campaign, Furie collected hundreds of "positive or peaceful" versions of Pepe to store in an online "Peace Pepe Database of Love". On October 17, 2016, Furie published a satirical take of Pepe's appropriation by the alt-right movement on The Nib. This was his first comic for the character since he ended "Boy's Club" in 2012.


title: Pepe the Frog

text: In January 2017, in a response to "pundits" calling on Theresa May to disrupt Trump's relationship with Russia, the Russian Embassy in the United Kingdom tweeted an image of Pepe. White supremacist Richard B. Spencer, during a street interview after Trump's inauguration, was preparing to explain the meaning of a Pepe pin on his jacket when he was punched in the face, with the resulting video itself becoming the source of many memes.


title: Pepe the Frog

text: On May 6, 2017, on Free Comic Book Day, it was announced that Furie had killed Pepe off in response to the character's continued use as a hate symbol. However, in an interview with Carol Off on her show "As It Happens" Furie said that despite news of Pepe's death, he will eventually return: "The end is a chance for a new beginning ... I got some plans for Pepe that I can't really discuss, but he's going to rise from the ashes like a phoenix ... in a puff of marijuana smoke." Soon thereafter, Furie announced his intention to "resurrect" Pepe, launching a crowdfunding campaign for a new comic book featuring Pepe. In a July 2017 interview with The Outline, Furie spoke about the comic in which he "killed" Pepe the Frog. He said, "This comic was just kind of my own kind of art therapy and dealing with the fact that Trump got elected and the new twist on Pepe that ensued. I decided to lay him to rest. But really it was just a joke, and a way for me to deal with the weirdness that was happening."


title: Pepe the Frog

text: In June 2017, a proposed app and "Flappy Bird" clone called "Pepe Scream" was rejected from the Apple App Store due to its depiction of Pepe the Frog. The app's developer, under the name "MrSnrhms", posted a screenshot of his rejection letter on r/The_Donald. The app is available on the Google Play Store.


title: Pepe the Frog

text: A children's book appropriating the Pepe character, "The Adventures of Pepe and Pede", advanced "racist, Islamophobic and hate-filled themes", according to a federal lawsuit Furie filed. The suit was settled out of court in August 2017, with terms including the withdrawal of the book from publication and the profits being donated to the nonprofit Council on American-Islamic Relations. Initially self-published, the book was subsequently published by Post Hill Press. The book's author, a vice-principal with the Denton Independent School District, was reassigned after the publicity.


title: Pepe the Frog

text: Until September 2018, Social media service Gab used a Pepe-like illustration of a frog (named "Gabby") as its logo. The site is popular with the alt-right.


title: Pepe the Frog

text: In January 2019, the video game "Jesus Strikes Back: Judgment Day" was released, which allows players to play as Pepe the Frog, among other figures, and murder various target groups including feminists, minorities, and liberals.


title: Pepe the Frog

text: In June 2019, Furie received a $15,000 out of court settlement in a copyright infringement case against Infowars and Alex Jones concerning unlicensed use of the image of Pepe the Frog on far-right themed posters. Furie stated that he would continue to "enforce his copyrights aggressively to make sure nobody else is profiting off associating Pepe the Frog with hateful imagery."


title: Pepe the Frog

text: "Kek", from "kekeke"/"ㅋㅋㅋ", a Korean onomatopoeia of laughter used similarly to "LOL", is the Korean equivalent of the English "haha". Since this is often used in "StarCraft" matches, Blizzard, "Starcraft"’s developers, decided to reference it in "World of Warcraft" (2004): when a player of the Horde faction types "lol" using the "/say" messaging command, members of the opposing faction see it as "kek". A common misconception is that "kek" originated as a variation of "lel", itself a variation of "lol".


title: Pepe the Frog

text: During the 2016 United States presidential election, Kek became associated with alt-right politics. Kek is associated with the occurrence of repeating digits, known as "dubs", "trips", "quads", among other terms, in the sequential codes assigned to posts made on 4chan, as if he had the ability to influence reality through Internet memes.


title: Pepe the Frog

text: Online message boards such as 4chan first noted a similarity between Kek and Pepe. The phrase is widely used and 4chan users see Kek as the god' of memes". The phrase then became associated with the Egyptian deity of the same name.


title: Pepe the Frog

text: "Esoteric Kekism" references the "Esoteric Hitlerism" of writer Savitri Devi. Esoteric Kekism, also called "the Cult of Kek", is a parody religion worshipping Pepe the Frog, which sprang from the similarity of the slang term for laughter, "kek", and the name of the ancient Egyptian frog god of darkness, Kek. This deity, in turn, was associated with Pepe the Frog on internet forums. The Internet meme has its origin on the internet message forum 4chan and other chans, and the board /pol/ in particular. Kek references are closely associated with Trump and the alt-right, and the Kek-Flag was spotted at the 2021 storming of the Capitol.


title: Pepe the Frog

text: Kekistan is a fictional country created by 4chan members that has become a political meme and online movement. The name is derived from "kek" and the suffix "-stan", a common Central Asian country suffix. Since late 2016, the satirical ethnicity of Kekistani has been used by U.S.-based alt-right protesters opposed to what they view as political correctness. These Kekistanis decry the "oppression" of their people and troll counterprotesters by waving the "national flag of Kekistan" (modeled after the Nazi war flag, with the red replaced by green, the Iron Cross replaced by the logo for 4chan, and the swastika replaced by a rubric for KEK). This flag was prominently displayed at the 2017 Berkeley protest for free speech in mid-April, and the Unite the Right rally in August 2017, and was carried by supporters of Donald Trump during the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol. Kekistanis identify themselves as "shitposters" persecuted by excessive political correctness. Self-identified Kekistanis have created a fictional history around the meme, including the invasion and overthrow of other fictional countries such as "Normistan" and "Cuckistan". Kekistanis have also adopted Internet personality Gordon Hurd (in his "Big Man Tyrone" persona) as their president and the 1986 Italo disco record "Shadilay" as a national anthem. The record gained attention from the group in September 2016 because of the name of the group (P.E.P.E.) and art on the record depicting a frog holding a magic wand.


title: Pepe the Frog

text: "Heat Street"s Ian Miles Cheong credits Carl Benjamin, who uses the pseudonym Sargon of Akkad on YouTube, for popularizing the meme. Benjamin claimed that Kekistanis could technically classify as an ethnic group for the British census, and contacted the Office for National Statistics to request that it be added, but was unsuccessful.


title: Pepe the Frog

text: A variation of Pepe known as "Groyper" or "Easter Toad" was used as early as 2015, and became popular in 2017. Groyper is depicted as a rotund green, frog-like creature with its chin resting on interlocked fingers. There is some disagreement around the specifics of Groyper: it is alternatively said to be a depiction of the Pepe character, a different character from Pepe but of the same species, or a toad. The Groyper meme is the namesake for Groypers, a loose group of white nationalist activists and followers of Nick Fuentes.


title: Pepe the Frog

text: In August 2019, it was reported that various demonstrators at the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests were using Pepe as a "resistance symbol".


title: Pepe the Frog

text: Hong Kong protestors began to use depictions of Pepe the Frog as a symbol of liberty and resistance against the extradition bill and police brutality in the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests. New images of Pepe the Frog surfaced showing Pepe with an injured eye after a young female first aider got her eye gouged by a projectile fired by police and spurred a new protest campaign called "An eye for an eye". A sign with Pepe with an injured eye held by a young nurse with one eye covered gained international media attention. Furie responded in an email with a protester, stating "This is great news! Pepe for the people!". In the Hong Kong context, Pepe the Frog is not perceived as being connected with far-right ideology.


title: Pepe the Frog

text: Hong Kongers were generally unaware that Pepe the Frog had been appropriated by the alt-right and white supremacists in the United States.


title: Pepe the Frog

text: In a further iteration, Pepe has seen usage among cryptocurrency enthusiasts as a meme on Twitter and elsewhere. Amongst other icons, it was featured on a Fortune magazine cover dedicated to a special report about cryptocurrency.


title: Pepe the Frog

text: A 2020 documentary, "Feels Good Man", relates the story of Pepe's origins and co-option by the alt-right, and Furie's attempts to regain control over his creation.


title: Lead

text: Lead is a chemical element with the symbol Pb (from the Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a heavy metal that is denser than most common materials. Lead is soft and malleable, and also has a relatively low melting point. When freshly cut, lead is a shiny gray with a hint of blue. It tarnishes to a dull gray color when exposed to air. Lead has the highest atomic number of any stable element and three of its isotopes are endpoints of major nuclear decay chains of heavier elements. Lead is toxic, even in small amounts, especially to children.


title: Lead

text: Lead is a relatively unreactive post-transition metal. Its weak metallic character is illustrated by its amphoteric nature; lead and lead oxides react with acids and bases, and it tends to form covalent bonds. Compounds of lead are usually found in the +2 oxidation state rather than the +4 state common with lighter members of the carbon group. Exceptions are mostly limited to organolead compounds. Like the lighter members of the group, lead tends to bond with itself; it can form chains and polyhedral structures.


title: Lead

text: Since lead is easily extracted from its ores, prehistoric people in the Near East were aware of it. Galena is a principal ore of lead which often bears silver. Interest in silver helped initiate widespread extraction and use of lead in ancient Rome. Lead production declined after the fall of Rome and did not reach comparable levels until the Industrial Revolution. Lead played


title: Lead

text: a crucial role in the development of the printing press, as movable type could be relatively easily cast from lead alloys. In 2014, the annual global production of lead was about ten million tonnes, over half of which was from recycling. Lead's high density, low melting point, ductility and relative inertness to oxidation make it useful. These properties, combined with its relative abundance and low cost, resulted in its extensive use in construction, plumbing, batteries, bullets and shot, weights, solders, pewters, fusible alloys, white paints, leaded gasoline, and radiation shielding.


title: Lead

text: Lead's toxicity became widely recognized in the late 19th century, although a number of well-educated ancient Greek and Roman writers were aware of this fact and even knew some of the symptoms of lead poisoning. Lead is a neurotoxin that accumulates in soft tissues and bones; it damages the nervous system and interferes with the function of biological enzymes, causing neurological disorders ranging from behavioral problems to brain damage, and also affects general health, cardiovascular, and renal systems.


title: Lead

text: A lead atom has 82 electrons, arranged in an electron configuration of [Xe]4f5d6s6p. The sum of lead's first and second ionization energies—the total energy required to remove the two 6p electrons—is close to that of tin, lead's upper neighbor in the carbon group. This is unusual; ionization energies generally fall going down a group, as an element's outer electrons become more distant from the nucleus, and more shielded by smaller orbitals.


title: Lead

text: The similarity of ionization energies is caused by the lanthanide contraction—the decrease in element radii from lanthanum (atomic number 57) to lutetium (71), and the relatively small radii of the elements from hafnium (72) onwards. This is due to poor shielding of the nucleus by the lanthanide 4f electrons. The sum of the first four ionization energies of lead exceeds that of tin, contrary to what periodic trends would predict. Relativistic effects, which become significant in heavier atoms, contribute to this behavior. One such effect is the inert pair effect: the 6s electrons of lead become reluctant to participate in bonding, making the distance between nearest atoms in crystalline lead unusually long.


title: Lead

text: Lead's lighter carbon group congeners form stable or metastable allotropes with the tetrahedrally coordinated and covalently bonded diamond cubic structure. The energy levels of their outer s- and p-orbitals are close enough to allow mixing into four hybrid sp orbitals. In lead, the inert pair effect increases the separation between its s- and p-orbitals, and the gap cannot be overcome by the energy that would be released by extra bonds following hybridization. Rather than having a diamond cubic structure, lead forms metallic bonds in which only the p-electrons are delocalized and shared between the Pb ions. Lead consequently has a face-centered cubic structure like the similarly sized divalent metals calcium and strontium.


title: Lead

text: Pure lead has a bright, shiny gray appearance with a hint of blue. It tarnishes on contact with moist air and takes on a dull appearance, the hue of which depends on the prevailing conditions. Characteristic properties of lead include high density, malleability, ductility, and high resistance to corrosion due to passivation.


title: Lead

text: Lead's close-packed face-centered cubic structure and high atomic weight result in a density of 11.34 g/cm, which is greater than that of common metals such as iron (7.87 g/cm), copper (8.93 g/cm), and zinc (7.14 g/cm). This density is the origin of the idiom "to go over like a lead balloon". Some rarer metals are denser: tungsten and gold are both at 19.3 g/cm, and osmium—the densest metal known—has a density of 22.59 g/cm, almost twice that of lead.


title: Lead

text: Lead is a very soft metal with a Mohs hardness of 1.5; it can be scratched with a fingernail. It is quite malleable and somewhat ductile. The bulk modulus of lead—a measure of its ease of compressibility—is 45.8 GPa. In comparison, that of aluminium is 75.2 GPa; copper 137.8 GPa; and mild steel 160–169 GPa. Lead's tensile strength, at 12–17 MPa, is low (that of aluminium is 6 times higher, copper 10 times, and mild steel 15 times higher); it can be strengthened by adding small amounts of copper or antimony.


title: Lead

text: The melting point of lead—at 327.5 °C (621.5 °F)—is very low compared to most metals. Its boiling point of 1749 °C (3180 °F) is the lowest among the carbon group elements. The electrical resistivity of lead at 20 °C is 192 nanoohm-meters, almost an order of magnitude higher than those of other industrial metals (copper at ; gold ; and aluminium at ). Lead is a superconductor at temperatures lower than 7.19 K; this is the highest critical temperature of all type-I superconductors and the third highest of the elemental superconductors.


title: Lead

text: Natural lead consists of four stable isotopes with mass numbers of 204, 206, 207, and 208, and traces of five short-lived radioisotopes. The high number of isotopes is consistent with lead's atomic number being even. Lead has a magic number of protons (82), for which the nuclear shell model accurately predicts an especially stable nucleus. Lead-208 has 126 neutrons, another magic number, which may explain why lead-208 is extraordinarily stable.


title: Lead

text: With its high atomic number, lead is the heaviest element whose natural isotopes are regarded as stable; lead-208 is the heaviest stable nucleus. (This distinction formerly fell to bismuth, with an atomic number of 83, until its only primordial isotope, bismuth-209, was found in 2003 to decay very slowly.) The four stable isotopes of lead could theoretically undergo alpha decay to isotopes of mercury with a release of energy, but this has not been observed for any of them; their predicted half-lives range from 10 to 10 years (at least 10 times the current age of the universe).


title: Lead

text: Three of the stable isotopes are found in three of the four major decay chains: lead-206, lead-207, and lead-208 are the final decay products of uranium-238, uranium-235, and thorium-232, respectively. These decay chains are called the uranium chain, the actinium chain, and the thorium chain. Their isotopic concentrations in a natural rock sample depends greatly on the presence of these three parent uranium and thorium isotopes. For example, the relative abundance of lead-208 can range from 52% in normal samples to 90% in thorium ores; for this reason, the standard atomic weight of lead is given to only one decimal place. As time passes, the ratio of lead-206 and lead-207 to lead-204 increases, since the former two are supplemented by radioactive decay of heavier elements while the latter is not; this allows for lead–lead dating. As uranium decays into lead, their relative amounts change; this is the basis for uranium–lead dating. Lead-207 exhibits nuclear magnetic resonance, a property that has been used to study its compounds in solution and solid state, including in human body.


title: Lead

text: Apart from the stable isotopes, which make up almost all lead that exists naturally, there are trace quantities of a few radioactive isotopes. One of them is lead-210; although it has a half-life of only 22.2 years, small quantities occur in nature because lead-210 is produced by a long decay series that starts with uranium-238 (that has been present for billions of years on Earth). Lead-211, −212, and −214 are present in the decay chains of uranium-235, thorium-232, and uranium-238, respectively, so traces of all three of these lead isotopes are found naturally. Minute traces of lead-209 arise from the very rare cluster decay of radium-223, one of the daughter products of natural uranium-235, and the decay chain of neptunium-237, traces of which are produced by neutron capture in uranium ores. Lead-210 is particularly useful for helping to identify the ages of samples by measuring its ratio to lead-206 (both isotopes are present in a single decay chain).


title: Lead

text: In total, 43 lead isotopes have been synthesized, with mass numbers 178–220. Lead-205 is the most stable radioisotope, with a half-life of around 1.73 years. The second-most stable is lead-202, which has a half-life of about 52,500 years, longer than any of the natural trace radioisotopes.


title: Lead

text: Bulk lead exposed to moist air forms a protective layer of varying composition. Lead(II) carbonate is a common constituent; the sulfate or chloride may also be present in urban or maritime settings. This layer makes bulk lead effectively chemically inert in the air. Finely powdered lead, as with many metals, is pyrophoric, and burns with a bluish-white flame.


title: Lead

text: Fluorine reacts with lead at room temperature, forming lead(II) fluoride. The reaction with chlorine is similar but requires heating, as the resulting chloride layer diminishes the reactivity of the elements. Molten lead reacts with the chalcogens to give lead(II) chalcogenides.


title: Lead

text: Lead metal resists sulfuric and phosphoric acid but not hydrochloric or nitric acid; the outcome depends on insolubility and subsequent passivation of the product salt. Organic acids, such as acetic acid, dissolve lead in the presence of oxygen. Concentrated alkalis will dissolve lead and form plumbites.


title: Lead

text: Lead shows two main oxidation states: +4 and +2. The tetravalent state is common for the carbon group. The divalent state is rare for carbon and silicon, minor for germanium, important (but not prevailing) for tin, and is the more important of the two oxidation states for lead. This is attributable to relativistic effects, specifically the inert pair effect, which manifests itself when there is a large difference in electronegativity between lead and oxide, halide, or nitride anions, leading to a significant partial positive charge on lead. The result is a stronger contraction of the lead 6s orbital than is the case for the 6p orbital, making it rather inert in ionic compounds. The inert pair effect is less applicable to compounds in which lead forms covalent bonds with elements of similar electronegativity, such as carbon in organolead compounds. In these, the 6s and 6p orbitals remain similarly sized and sp hybridization is still energetically favorable. Lead, like carbon, is predominantly tetravalent in such compounds.


title: Lead

text: There is a relatively large difference in the electronegativity of lead(II) at 1.87 and lead(IV) at 2.33. This difference marks the reversal in the trend of increasing stability of the +4 oxidation state going down the carbon group; tin, by comparison, has values of 1.80 in the +2 oxidation state and 1.96 in the +4 state.