title: Mileva Marić

text: In 1901, Marić was pregnant with Einstein's first child. She managed to hide the pregnancy and travelled to her home town to give birth in order to avoid the scandal. Letters to Einstein have documented that their daughter was born in Novi Sad, in January 1902. No further information is available about what happened to the little girl.


title: Mileva Marić

text: In 1903, Marić and Einstein married in Bern, Switzerland, where Einstein had found a job at the Federal Office for Intellectual Property. In 1904, their first son Hans Albert, was born. The Einsteins lived in Bern until 1909, when Einstein got a teaching position at the University of Zürich. In 1910, their second son Eduard was born. In 1911, they moved to Prague, where Einstein held a teaching position at Charles University. A year later, they returned to Zurich, as Einstein had accepted a professorship at his alma mater.


title: Mileva Marić

text: In July 1913, Max Planck and Walther Nernst asked Einstein to come to Berlin, which he agreed to, but the decision caused Marić distress. In August, the Einsteins planned a walking holiday with their sons and Marie Curie and her two daughters. Marić was delayed temporarily due to Eduard being ill, but then joined the party. In September 1913, the Einsteins visited Marić's parents near Novi Sad, and on the day they were to leave for Vienna, Marić had her sons baptised as Orthodox Christians. After Vienna, Einstein visited relatives in Germany while Marić returned to Zurich. After Christmas, she traveled to Berlin to stay with Fritz Haber, who helped her look for accommodation for the Einsteins' impending move in April 1914. The Einsteins both left Zurich for Berlin in late March. On the way, Einstein visited an uncle in Antwerp and then Ehrenfest and Lorentz in Leiden, while Marić took a swimming holiday with the children in Locarno, arriving in Berlin in mid-April.


title: Mileva Marić

text: The marriage had been strained since 1912, in the spring of which Einstein became reacquainted with his first cousin, Elsa. They began a regular correspondence. Marić, who had never wanted to go to Berlin, became increasingly unhappy in the city. In mid-July 1914, after settling in Berlin, Einstein insisted on harsh terms if she were to remain with him. Although initially accepting the terms, she reconsidered and on 29 July 1914, the day after World War I started, she left Germany and took the boys back to Zürich, a separation that was to become permanent. Einstein made a legal commitment to send her an annual maintenance of 5600 Reichsmark in quarterly instalments, just under half of his salary, a commitment to which he largely adhered. After the required five years of separation, the couple divorced on 14 February 1919.


title: Mileva Marić

text: They had negotiated a settlement whereby the Nobel Prize money that Einstein anticipated he would soon receive was to be placed in trust for their two boys. Einstein would receive the prize for his work, and she would receive the money. Marić could draw on the interest, but had no authority over the capital without Einstein's permission. After Einstein married his cousin Elsa in June 1919, he returned to Zurich to talk to Marić about the children's future. During the visit, he took Hans Albert for a sail on Lake Constance and Eduard to Arosa for convalescence.


title: Mileva Marić

text: In 1922, Einstein received news that he had won the Nobel Prize in November. His divorce agreement promised her his Nobel Prize money. Under the terms of the agreement, the money was to be held in trust for their two boys, while she was able to draw on the interest. Based on newly released letters (sealed by Einstein's step-granddaughter, Margot Einstein, until 20 years after her death), Walter Isaacson reported that Marić eventually invested the Nobel Prize money in three apartment buildings in Zurich to produce income. Marić lived in one, a five-story house at Huttenstrasse 62; the other two were investments.


title: Mileva Marić

text: In 1930, at around 20, Eduard had a breakdown and was diagnosed with schizophrenia. By the late 1930s, the costs of his care at the University of Zürich's psychiatric clinic "Burghölzli" overwhelmed Marić. She sold the two houses to raise funds for his care and maintenance. In 1939, Marić agreed to transfer ownership of the Huttenstrasse house where she was living to Einstein to prevent its loss, with Marić retaining power of attorney.


title: Mileva Marić

text: died at age 72 on 4 August 1948, in Zürich. She was interred there at Nordheim-Cemetery. Eduard Einstein was institutionalized until his death in 1965.


title: Mileva Marić

text: In 2005, Marić was honoured in Zürich by the ETH and the Gesellschaft zu Fraumünster. A memorial plaque was unveiled on her former residence in Zürich, the house Huttenstrasse 62, in her memory. In the same year, a bust was placed in her high-school town, Sremska Mitrovica. Another bust is located on the campus of the University of Novi Sad. A high school in her birthplace of Titel is named after her. Sixty years after her death, a memorial plate was placed on the house of the former clinic in Zürich where she died. In June 2009, a memorial gravestone was dedicated to her at the Nordheim-Cemetery in Zürich where she rests.


title: Mileva Marić

text: In 1995, "Narodna knjiga" in Belgrade published (in Serbian) "Mileva Marić Ajnštajn" by Dragana Bukumirović, a journalist with "Politika".


title: Mileva Marić

text: Three years later, in 1998, Vida Ognjenović produced a drama, "Mileva Ajnštajn", which was translated into English in 2002. Ognjenović later adapted the play into a libretto for the opera "Mileva", composed by Aleksandra Vrebalov, which premiered in 2011 in the Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: The Battle of Dien Bien Phu ( ; , ) was a climactic confrontation of the First Indochina War that took place between 13 March and 7 May 1954. It was fought between the French Union's colonial Far East Expeditionary Corps and Viet Minh communist revolutionaries. The United States was officially not a party to the war, but it was secretly involved by providing financial and material aid to the French Union, which included CIA contracted American personnel participating in the battle. The People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union similarly provided vital support to the Viet Minh, including most of their artillery and ammunition.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: The French began an operation to insert, and support, their soldiers at Điện Biên Phủ, deep in the autonomous Tai Federation up in the hills northwest of Tonkin. The operation's purpose was to cut off Viet Minh supply lines into the neighboring Kingdom of Laos (a French ally), and draw the Viet Minh into a major confrontation in order to cripple them. The plan was to resupply the French position by air, a strategy adopted based on the belief that the Viet Minh had no anti-aircraft capability.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: The Viet Minh, however, under General Võ Nguyên Giáp, surrounded and besieged the French. They brought in vast amounts of heavy artillery (including anti-aircraft guns) and managed to move these bulky weapons through difficult terrain by individual men and women up the rear slopes of the mountains. They dug tunnels through the mountains and arranged the guns to target the French position.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: In March, the Viet Minh began a massive artillery bombardment of the French defenses. The strategic positioning of their artillery made it nearly impervious to French counter-battery fire. Tenacious fighting on the ground ensued, reminiscent of the trench warfare of World War I. At times, the French repulsed Viet Minh assaults on their positions while supplies and reinforcements were delivered by air. As key positions were overrun, the perimeter contracted, and the air resupply on which the French had placed their hopes became impossible. As the Viet Minh anti-aircraft fire took its toll and artillery bombarded the airstrip, effectively preventing takeoffs and landings, fewer and fewer of those supplies reached the French.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: The garrison was overrun in May after a two-month siege, and most of the French forces surrendered. A few men escaped to Laos. Of the 11,000 French troops captured, only 3,300 survived imprisonment. The French government in Paris resigned. The new Prime Minister, the left-of-centre Pierre Mendès France, supported French withdrawal from Indochina.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: The Battle of Điện Biên Phủ was decisive; the war ended shortly afterward and the 1954 Geneva Accords were signed. France agreed to withdraw its forces from all its colonies in French Indochina, while stipulating that Vietnam would be temporarily divided at the 17th parallel, with control of the north given to the Viet Minh as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh, and the south becoming the State of Vietnam, nominally under Emperor Bảo Đại, preventing Ho Chi Minh from gaining control of the entire country.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: By 1953, the First Indochina War was not going well for France. A succession of commanders – Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque, Jean Étienne Valluy, Roger Blaizot, Marcel Carpentier, Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, and Raoul Salan – had proven incapable of suppressing the insurrection of the Viet Minh, who were fighting for independence. During their 1952–1953 campaign, the Viet Minh had overrun vast swathes of Laos, Vietnam's western neighbor, advancing as far as Luang Prabang and the Plain of Jars. The French were unable to slow the advance of the Viet Minh, who fell back only after outrunning their always-tenuous supply lines. In 1953, the French had begun to strengthen their defenses in the Hanoi delta region to prepare for a series of offensives against Viet Minh staging areas in northwest Vietnam. They set up fortified towns and outposts in the area, including Lai Châu near the Chinese border to the north, Nà Sản to the west of Hanoi, and the Plain of Jars in northern Laos.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: In May 1953, French Premier René Mayer appointed Henri Navarre, a trusted colleague, to take command of French Union forces in Indochina. Mayer had given Navarre a single order—to create military conditions that would lead to an "honorable political solution". According to military scholar Phillip Davidson,


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: Navarre began searching for a way to stop the Viet Minh threat to Laos. Colonel Louis Berteil, commander of Mobile Group 7 and Navarre's main planner, formulated the "hérisson" ('hedgehog') concept. The French army would establish a fortified airhead by airlifting soldiers to positions adjacent to key Viet Minh supply lines to Laos. They would cut off Viet Minh soldiers fighting in Laos and force them to withdraw. "It was an attempt to interdict the enemy's rear area, to stop the flow of supplies and reinforcements, to establish a redoubt in the enemy's rear and disrupt his lines".


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: The hedgehog concept was based on French experiences at the Battle of Nà Sản. In late November and early December 1952, Giáp had attacked the French outpost at Nà Sản, which was essentially an "air-land base", a fortified camp supplied only by air. The French had beaten back Giáp's forces repeatedly, inflicting very heavy losses on them. The French hoped that by repeating the strategy on a much larger scale, they would be able to lure Giáp into committing the bulk of his forces to a massed assault. This would enable superior French artillery, armor, and air support to decimate the exposed Viet Minh forces. The success at Nà Sản convinced Navarre of the viability of the fortified airhead concept.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: French staff officers failed to treat seriously several crucial differences between Điện Biên Phủ and Nà Sản:


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: First, at Nà Sản, the French commanded most of the high ground with overwhelming artillery support. At Điện Biên Phủ, however, the Viet Minh controlled much of the high ground around the valley, their artillery far exceeded French expectations, and they outnumbered the French troops four to one. Giáp compared Điện Biên Phủ to a "rice bowl", where his troops occupied the edge and the French the bottom. Second, Giáp made a mistake at Nà Sản by committing his forces to reckless frontal attacks before being fully prepared. He learned his lesson: at Điện Biên Phủ, Giáp spent months meticulously stockpiling ammunition and emplacing heavy artillery and anti-aircraft guns before making his move. Teams of Viet Minh volunteers were sent into the French camp to scout the disposition of the French artillery. Artillery pieces were sited within well-constructed and camouflaged casemates. As a result, when the battle finally began, the Viet Minh knew exactly where the French artillery pieces were, while the French did not even know how many guns Giáp possessed. Third, the aerial resupply lines at Nà Sản were never severed, despite Viet Minh anti-aircraft fire. At Điện Biên Phủ, Giáp amassed anti-aircraft batteries that quickly shut down the runway, and made it extremely difficult and costly for the French to bring in reinforcements.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: In June 1953, Major General René Cogny, the French commander in the Tonkin Delta, proposed Điện Biên Phủ, which had an old airstrip built by the Japanese during World War II, as a "mooring point". In another misunderstanding, Cogny envisioned a lightly defended point from which to launch raids; Navarre, however, believed that he intended to build a heavily fortified base capable of withstanding a siege. Navarre selected Điện Biên Phủ for Berteil's "hedgehog" operation. When presented with the plan, every major subordinate officer – Colonel Jean-Louis Nicot (commander of the French Air transport fleet), Cogny, and Generals Jean Gilles and Jean Dechaux (the ground and air commanders for "Operation Castor", the initial airborne assault on Điện Biên Phủ) – protested. Cogny pointed out, presciently, that "we are running the risk of a new Nà Sản under worse conditions". Navarre rejected the criticisms of his proposal and concluded a 17 November conference by declaring that the operation would begin three days later, on 20 November 1953.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: Navarre decided to go ahead with the plan despite serious operational difficulties. These later became painfully obvious, but at the time may have been less apparent. He had been repeatedly assured by his intelligence officers that the operation carried very little risk of involvement by a strong enemy force. Navarre had previously considered three other approaches to defending Laos: mobile warfare, which was impossible given the terrain in Vietnam; a static defense line stretching to Laos, which was not feasible given the number of troops at Navarre's disposal; or placing troops in the Laotian provincial capitals and supplying them by air, which was unworkable due to the distance from Hanoi to Luang Prabang and Vientiane. Navarre believed that this left only the hedgehog option, which he characterized as "a mediocre solution". The French National Defense Committee ultimately agreed that Navarre's responsibility did not include defending Laos. However, its decision, which was drawn up on 13 November, was not delivered to him until 4 December, two weeks after the Điện Biên Phủ operation began.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: Operations at Điện Biên Phủ began at 10:35 on 20 November 1953. In "Operation Castor", the French dropped or flew 9,000 troops into the area over three days, as well as a bulldozer to prepare the airstrip. They were landed at three drop zones: "Natasha" (northwest of Điện Biên Phủ), "Octavie" (to the southwest), and "Simone" (to the southeast). The Viet Minh elite 148th Independent Infantry Regiment, headquartered at Điện Biên Phủ, reacted "instantly and effectively". Three of its four battalions, however, were absent.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: Initial operations proceeded well for the French. By the end of November, six parachute battalions had been landed, and the French Army consolidated its positions.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: It was at this time that Giáp began his countermoves. He had expected an attack, but had not foreseen when or where it would occur. Giáp realized that, if pressed, the French would abandon Lai Châu Province and fight a pitched battle at Điện Biên Phủ. On 24 November, Giáp ordered the 148th Infantry Regiment and the 316th Division to attack Lai Chau, while the 308th, 312th, and 351st divisions assaulted Điện Biên Phủ from "Việt Bắc".


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: Starting in December, the French, under the command of Colonel Christian de Castries, began transforming their anchoring point into a fortress by setting up seven satellite positions. (Each was said to be named after a former mistress of de Castries, although the allegation is probably unfounded, as the eight names begin with letters from the first nine of the alphabet.) The fortified headquarters was centrally located, with positions "Huguette" to the west, "Claudine" to the south, and "Dominique" to the northeast. The other positions were "Anne-Marie" to the northwest, "Beatrice" to the northeast, "Gabrielle" to the north, and "Isabelle" to the south, covering the reserve airstrip.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: The choice of de Castries as the local commander at Điện Biên Phủ was, in retrospect, a bad one. Navarre chose de Castries, a cavalryman in the 18th-century tradition, because Navarre envisioned Điện Biên Phủ as a mobile battle. But Điện Biên Phủ would require a commander adept at World War I-style trench warfare, something for which de Castries was not suited.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: The arrival of the 316th Viet Minh Division prompted Cogny to order the evacuation of the Lai Chau garrison to Điện Biên Phủ, exactly as Giáp had anticipated. En route, they were virtually annihilated by the Viet Minh. "Of the 2,100 men who left Lai Chau on 9 December, only 185 made it to Điện Biên Phủ on 22 December. The rest had been killed, captured, or "deserted".


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: French military forces had committed 10,800 troops, together with yet more reinforcements, totalling nearly 16,000 men, to the defense of a monsoon-affected valley surrounded by heavily-wooded hills and high ground that had not been secured. Artillery as well as ten US M24 Chaffee light tanks (each broken down into 180 individual parts, flown into the base, and then re-assembled) and numerous aircraft (attack and supply types) were committed to the garrison. A number of quadruple 0.50 calibre machine guns were present and used in the ground role. This included France's regular troops (notably elite paratrooper units, plus those of the artillery), French Foreign Legionnaires, Algerian and Moroccan tirailleurs (colonial troops from North Africa) and locally-recruited Indochinese (Laotian, Vietnamese and Cambodian) infantry.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: In comparison, altogether the Viet Minh had moved up to 50,000 regular troops into the hills surrounding the French-held valley, totalling five divisions, including the 351st Heavy Division, which was an artillery formation equipped with medium artillery, such as the US M101 105mm howitzer, supplied by the neighbouring People's Republic of China (PRC) from captured stocks obtained from defeated Nationalist China as well as US forces in Korea, together with some heavier field-guns as well as anti-aircraft artillery. Various types of artillery and anti-aircraft guns (mainly of Soviet origin), which outnumbered their French counterparts by about four to one, were moved into strategic positions overlooking the valley and the French forces based there. The French garrison came under sporadic direct artillery fire from the Viet Minh for the first time on 31 January 1954 and patrols encountered the Viet Minh troops in all directions around them. The French were completely surrounded.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: Originally, the planned Việt Minh attack was based on the Chinese “Fast Strike, Fast Victory” model, which aimed to use all available power to thrust into the command center of the base to secure victory, but this was changed to the “Steady Fight, Steady Advance” model of siege tactics.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: The battle plan designed on the fast strike model was due to open at 17:00 on 25 January and to finish three nights and two days later. Nevertheless this start date was delayed to 26 January, because on 21 January Việt Minh's intelligence indicated that the French had grasped this plan.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: After much debate, due to the French knowledge of the battle plan and along with other complications, the assault was canceled on 26 January, and Giáp went away and designed a new plan with a new start time. He said that this change of plan was the hardest decision of his military career.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: The Viet Minh assault began in earnest on 13 March 1954 with an attack on the northeastern outpost, "Béatrice", which was held by the 3rd Battalion, 13th Foreign Legion Demi-Brigade. Viet Minh artillery opened a fierce bombardment with two batteries each of 105mm howitzers, 120mm mortars, and 75mm mountain guns (plus seventeen 57mm recoilless rifles and numerous 60mm and 81/82mm mortars). French command was disrupted at 18:30 when a shell hit the French command post, killing the battalion commander, Major Paul Pégot, and most of his staff. A few minutes later, Lieutenant colonel Jules Gaucher, commander of the entire central subsector, was also killed by artillery fire. The Viet Minh 312th Division then launched an assault with its 141st and 209th Infantry Regiments, using sappers to breach the French obstacles.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: "Béatrice" comprised three separate strong points forming a triangle with the point facing north. In the southeast, strong point "Beatrice"-3, its defenses smashed by 75mm mountain guns firing at point-blank range, was quickly overrun by the 209th Regiment's 130th Battalion. In the north, most of "Beatrice"-1 was swiftly conquered by the 141st Regiment's 428th Battalion, but the defenders held out in corner of the position for a time because the attackers thought they had captured the entire strong point when they encountered an internal barbed wire barrier in the dark. In the southwest, the assault on "Beatrice"-2 by the 141st Regiment's 11th Battalion did not fare well because its assault trenches were too shallow and portions of them had been flattened by French artillery. Its efforts to breach "Beatrice"-2's barbed wire were stalled for hours by flanking fire from "Beatrice"-1 and several previously-undetected bunkers on "Beatrice"-2 that had been spared by the bombardment. The holdouts on "Beatrice"-1 were eliminated by 22:30, and the 141st Regiment's 11th and 16th Battalions finally broke into "Beatrice"-2 an hour later, though the strong point was not entirely taken until after 01:00 on 14 March. Roughly 350 French legionnaires were killed, wounded, or captured. About 100 managed to escape and rejoin the French lines. The French estimated that Viet Minh losses totaled 600 dead and 1,200 wounded. The victory at "Beatrice" "galvanized the morale" of the Viet Minh troops.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: Much to French disbelief, the Viet Minh had employed direct artillery fire, in which each gun crew does its own artillery spotting (as opposed to indirect fire, in which guns are massed further away from the target, out of direct line of sight, and rely on a forward artillery spotter). Indirect artillery, generally held as being far superior to direct fire, requires experienced, well-trained crews and good communications, which the Viet Minh lacked. Navarre wrote that, "Under the influence of Chinese advisers, the Viet Minh commanders had used processes quite different from the classic methods. The artillery had been dug in by single pieces...They were installed in shellproof dugouts, and fire point-blank from portholes... This way of using artillery and AA guns was possible only with the expansive ant holes at the disposal of the Vietminh and was to make shambles of all the estimates of our own artillerymen." Two days later, the French artillery commander, Colonel Charles Piroth, distraught at his inability to silence the well-camouflaged Viet Minh batteries, went into his dugout and committed suicide with a hand grenade. He was buried there in secret to prevent loss of morale among the French troops.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: Following a five-hour ceasefire on the morning of 14 March, Viet Minh artillery resumed pounding French positions. The airstrip, already closed since 16:00 the day before due to a light bombardment, was now put permanently out of commission. Any further French supplies would have to be delivered by parachute. That night, the Viet Minh launched an attack on the northern outpost "Gabrielle", held by an elite Algerian battalion. The attack began with a concentrated artillery barrage at 17:00. This was very effective and stunned the defenders. Two regiments from the crack 308th Division attacked starting at 20:00. At 04:00 the following morning, an artillery shell hit the battalion headquarters, severely wounding the battalion commander and most of his staff.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: De Castries ordered a counterattack to relieve "Gabrielle". However, Colonel Pierre Langlais, in forming the counterattack, chose to rely on the 5th Vietnamese Parachute Battalion, which had jumped in the day before and was exhausted. Although some elements of the counterattack reached "Gabrielle", most were paralyzed by Viet Minh artillery and took heavy losses. At 08:00 the next day, the Algerian battalion fell back, abandoning "Gabrielle" to the Viet Minh. The French lost around 1,000 men defending "Gabrielle", and the Viet Minh between 1,000 and 2,000 attacking the strongpoint.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: The northwestern outpost "Anne-Marie" was defended by Tai troops, members of an ethnic minority loyal to the French. For weeks, Giáp had distributed subversive propaganda leaflets, telling the Tais that this was not their fight. The fall of "Beatrice" and "Gabrielle" had demoralized them. On the morning of 17 March, under the cover of fog, the bulk of the Tais left or defected. The French and the few remaining Tais on "Anne-Marie" were then forced to withdraw.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: A lull in fighting occurred from March 17 to March 30. The Viet Minh further encircled the French central area (formed by the strong points "Huguette", "Dominique", "Claudine", and "Eliane"), effectively cutting off "Isabelle" and its 1,809 personnel to the south. During this lull, the French suffered from a serious crisis of command. Senior officers with the garrison and Cogny in Hanoi began to feel that de Castries was incompetent in defending Dien Bien Phu. After the loss of the northern outposts, he isolated himself in his bunker, "de facto" shirking his command of the situation. On 17 March, Cogny attempted to fly into Điện Biên Phủ to take command, but his plane was driven off by anti-aircraft fire. He considered parachuting into the encircled garrison, but his staff talked him out of it.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: De Castries' seclusion in his bunker, combined with his superiors' inability to replace him, created a leadership vacuum in the French command. On 24 March, an event took place which later became a matter of historical debate. The historian Bernard Fall records, based on Langlais' memoirs, that Colonel Langlais and his fellow paratroop commanders, all fully armed, confronted de Castries in his bunker on 24 March. They told him he would retain the appearance of command, but that Langlais would exercise it. De Castries is said by Fall to have accepted the arrangement without protest, although he did exercise some command functions thereafter. Phillip Davidson stated that the "truth would seem to be that Langlais did take over effective command of Dien Bien Phu, and that Castries became 'commander emeritus' who transmitted messages to Hanoi and offered advice about matters in Dien Bien Phu". Jules Roy, however, makes no mention of this event, and Martin Windrow argues that the "paratrooper putsch" is unlikely to have ever happened. Both historians record that Langlais and Marcel Bigeard were known to be on good terms with their commanding officer.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: French aerial resupply took heavy losses from Viet Minh machine guns near the landing strip. On 27 March, the Hanoi air transport commander, Nicot, ordered that all supply deliveries be made from or higher; losses were expected to remain heavy. The following day, De Castries ordered an attack against the Viet Minh AA machine guns west of Điện Biên Phủ. Remarkably, the attack was a complete success, with 350 Viet Minh soldiers killed and seventeen AA machine guns destroyed (French estimate), while the French lost 20 killed and 97 wounded.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: The next phase of the battle saw more massed Viet Minh assaults against French positions in central Điện Biên Phủ – particularly at "Eliane" and "Dominique", the two remaining outposts east of the Nam Yum River. Those two areas were held by five understrength battalions, composed of Frenchmen, Legionnaires, Vietnamese, North Africans, and Tais. Giáp planned to use the tactics from the "Beatrice" and "Gabrielle" skirmishes.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: At 19:00 on 30 March, the Viet Minh 312th Division captured "Dominique" 1 and 2, making "Dominique" 3 the final outpost between the Viet Minh and the French general headquarters, as well as outflanking all positions east of the river. At this point, the French 4th Colonial Artillery Regiment entered the fight, setting its 105 mm howitzers to zero elevation and firing directly on the Viet Minh attackers, blasting huge holes in their ranks. Another group of French soldiers, near the airfield, opened fire on the Viet Minh with anti-aircraft machine guns, forcing the Viet Minh to retreat.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: The Viet Minh's simultaneous attacks elsewhere were more successful. The 316th Division captured "Eliane" 1 from its Moroccan defenders, and half of "Eliane" 2 by midnight. On the west side of Điện Biên Phủ, the 308th attacked "Huguette" 7, and nearly succeeded in breaking through, but a French sergeant took charge of the defenders and sealed the breach.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: Just after midnight on 31 March, the French launched a counterattack against "Eliane" 2, and recaptured it. Langlais ordered another counterattack the following afternoon against "Dominique" 2 and "Eliane" 1, using virtually "everybody left in the garrison who could be trusted to fight". The counterattacks allowed the French to retake "Dominique" 2 and "Eliane" 1, but the Viet Minh launched their own renewed assault. The French, who were exhausted and without reserves, fell back from both positions late in the afternoon. Reinforcements were sent north from "Isabelle", but were attacked en route and fell back to "Isabelle".


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: Shortly after dark on 31 March, Langlais told Major Marcel Bigeard, who was leading the defense at "Eliane" 2, to fall back from "Eliane" 4. Bigeard refused, saying "As long as I have one man alive I won't let go of "Eliane" 4. Otherwise, Dien Bien Phu is done for." The night of 31 March, the 316th Division attacked "Eliane" 2. Just as it appeared the French were about to be overrun, a few French tanks arrived from the central garrison, and helped push the Viet Minh back. Smaller attacks on "Eliane" 4 were also pushed back. The Viet Minh briefly captured "Huguette" 7, only to be pushed back by a French counterattack at dawn on 1 April.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: Fighting continued in this manner over the next several nights. The Viet Minh repeatedly attacked "Eliane" 2, only to be beaten back. Repeated attempts to reinforce the French garrison by parachute drops were made, but had to be carried out by lone planes at irregular times to avoid excessive casualties from Viet Minh anti-aircraft fire. Some reinforcements did arrive, but not enough to replace French casualties.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: On 5 April, after a long night of battle, French fighter-bombers and artillery inflicted particularly devastating losses on one Viet Minh regiment, which was caught on open ground. At that point, Giáp decided to change tactics. Although Giáp still had the same objective – to overrun French defenses east of the river – he decided to employ entrenchment and sapping to achieve it.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: On 10 April, the French attempted to retake "Eliane" 1, which had been lost eleven days earlier. The loss posed a significant threat to "Eliane" 4, and the French wanted to eliminate that threat. The dawn attack, which Bigeard devised, began with a short, massive artillery barrage, followed by small unit infiltration attacks, then mopping-up operations. "Eliane" 1 changed hands several times that day, but by the next morning the French had control of the strong point. The Viet Minh attempted to retake it on the evening of 12 April, but were pushed back.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: At this point, the morale of the Viet Minh soldiers was greatly lowered due to the massive casualties they had received from heavy French gunfire. During a period of stalemate from 15 April to 1 May, the French intercepted enemy radio messages which told of whole units refusing orders to attack, and Viet Minh prisoners in French hands said that they were told to advance or be shot by the officers and non-commissioned officers behind them. Worse still, the Viet Minh lacked advanced medical treatment and care, with one captured fighter stating that, "Nothing strikes at combat-morale like the knowledge that if wounded, the soldier will go uncared for". Concerned about a potential mutiny from his troops, Giáp had to call for fresh reinforcements from neighbouring Laos to bolster his dwindling and dispirited forces.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: During the fighting at "Eliane" 1, on the other side of camp, the Viet Minh entrenchments had almost entirely surrounded "Huguette" 1 and 6. On 11 April the garrison of "Huguette" 1, supported by artillery from "Claudine", launched an attack with the goal of resupplying "Huguette" 6 with water and ammunition. The attacks were repeated on the nights of the 14–15 and 16–17 April. While they did succeed in getting some supplies through, the French suffered heavy casualties, which convinced Langlais to abandon "Huguette" 6. Following a failed attempt to link up, on 18 April, the defenders at "Huguette" 6 made a daring break out, but only a few managed to make it to French lines. The Viet Minh repeated the isolation and probing attacks against "Huguette" 1, and overran the fort on the morning of 22 April. After this key advance, the Viet Minh took control of more than 90 percent of the airfield, making accurate French parachute drops impossible. This caused the landing zone to become perilously small, and effectively choked off much needed supplies. A French attack against "Huguette" 1 later that day was repulsed.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: "Isabelle" saw only light action until 30 March, when the Viet Minh isolated it and beat back the attempt to send reinforcements north. Following a massive artillery barrage on 30 March, the Viet Minh began employing the same trench warfare tactics that they were using against the central camp. By the end of April, "Isabelle" had exhausted its water supply and was nearly out of ammunition.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: The Viet Minh launched a massed assault against the exhausted defenders on the night of 1 May, overrunning "Eliane" 1, "Dominique" 3, and "Huguette" 5, although the French managed to beat back attacks on "Eliane" 2. On 6 May, the Viet Minh launched another massed attack against "Eliane" 2, using, for the first time, Katyusha rockets. The French artillery fired a "TOT" (time on target) mission, so that artillery rounds fired from different positions would strike on target at the same time. This barrage defeated the first assault wave, but later that night the Viet Minh detonated a mine under "Eliane" 2, with devastating effect. The Viet Minh attacked again, and within a few hours the defenders were overrun.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: On 7 May, Giáp ordered an all-out attack against the remaining French units with over 25,000 Viet Minh against fewer than 3,000 garrison troops. At 17:00, de Castries radioed French headquarters in Hanoi and talked with Cogny.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: The last radio transmission from the French headquarters reported that enemy troops were directly outside the headquarters bunker and that all the positions had been overrun. The radio operator in his last words stated: "The enemy has overrun us. We are blowing up everything. "Vive la France"!" That night the garrison made a breakout attempt, in the Camarón tradition. While some of the main body managed to break out, none succeeded in escaping the valley. At "Isabelle", a similar attempt later the same night saw about 70 troops, out of 1,700 men in the garrison, escape to Laos. By about 18:20, only one French position, strong point Lily, manned by Moroccan soldiers commanded by a French officer, Major Jean Nicolas, had not been overrun. The position surrendered that night when Nicolas personally waved a small white flag (probably a handkerchief) from his rifle.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: Dien Bien Phu was a serious defeat for the French and was the decisive battle of the Indochina war. The garrison constituted roughly one-tenth of the total French Union manpower in Indochina, and the defeat seriously weakened the position and prestige of the French; it produced psychological repercussions both in the armed forces and in the political structure in France. This was apparent with the previously planned negotiations over the future of Indochina, which had just begun. Militarily there was no point in France fighting on, as the Viet Minh could repeat the strategy and tactics of the Dien Bien Phu campaign elsewhere, to which the French had no effective response.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: News of Dien Bien Phu's fall was announced in France several hours after the surrender, around 16:45, by Prime Minister Joseph Laniel. The Archbishop of Paris ordered a mass, while radio performances were cancelled and replaced by solemn music, notably Berlioz' "Requiem". Theatres and restaurants closed and many social engagements were cancelled as a mark of respect. Public opinion in France registered shock that a guerilla army had defeated a major European power.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: On 8 May, the Viet Minh counted 11,721 prisoners, of whom 4,436 were wounded. This was the greatest number the Viet Minh had ever captured, amounting to one-third of the total captured during the entire war. The prisoners were divided into groups. Able-bodied soldiers were force-marched over to prison camps to the north and east, where they were intermingled with Viet Minh soldiers to discourage French bombing runs. Hundreds died of disease along the way. The wounded were given basic first aid until the Red Cross arrived, extracted 858 prisoners, and provided better aid to the remainder. Those wounded who were not evacuated by the Red Cross were sent into detention.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: The Viet Minh captured 8,000 French and marched them on foot to prison camps; fewer than half survived the march. Of 10,863 prisoners (including Vietnamese fighting for the French), only 3,290 were repatriated four months later; however, the losses figure may include the 3,013 prisoners of Vietnamese origin whose fate is unknown.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: The Vietnamese government reported its casualties in the battle as 4,020 dead, 9,118 wounded, and 792 missing. The French estimated Viet Minh casualties at 8,000 dead and 15,000 wounded. Max Hastings stated that "In 2018 Hanoi has still not credibly enumerated its Dien Bien Phu losses, surely a reflection of their immensity." Mark Moyar's book "Triumph Forsaken" lists Viet Minh casualties as 22,900, out of an original force of 50,000.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: The Geneva Conference opened on 8 May 1954, the day after the surrender of the garrison. The resulting agreement in July partitioned Vietnam into two zones: communist North Vietnam and the State of Vietnam, which opposed the agreement, to the south. The partition was supposed to be temporary, and the two zones were meant to be reunited through national elections in 1956, which were never held. The last French forces withdrew from Vietnam in 1956.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: General Georges Catroux presided over a commission of inquiry into the defeat. The commission's final report ("Rapport concernant la conduite des opérations en Indochine sous la direction du général Navarre") concluded:


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: The fall of Dien Bien Phu, in a strictly military perspective, represented a very serious failure but one that in the immediate, that is to say, spring of 1954, did not upset the balance of forces present in Indochina. It only assumed the aspect of a definitive defeat of our forces by reason of its profound psychological effects on French public opinion, which, tired of a war that was unpopular and seemingly without end, demanded in a way that it be ended.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: The event itself was in fact, both in terms of public opinion and of the military conduct of the war and operations, merely the end result of a long process of degradation of a faraway enterprise which, not having the assent of the nation, could not receive from the authorities the energetic impulse, and the size and continuity of efforts required for success.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: If, therefore, one wishes to establish objectively the responsibilities incurred in the final phase of the Indochina war one would have to examine its origins and evoke the acts and decisions of the various governments in power, that is to say their war policies, as well as the ways in which these policies were translated by the military commanders into operations.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: Many of the flights operated by the French Air force to evacuate casualties had female flight nurses on board. A total of 15 women served on flights to Điện Biên Phủ. One, Geneviève de Galard, was stranded there when her plane was destroyed by shellfire while it was being repaired on the airfield. She remained on the ground providing medical services in the field hospital until the surrender. She was referred to as the "Angel of Điện Biên Phủ". Historians disagree regarding the moniker with Martin Windrow maintaining that de Galard was referred to by name only by the garrison; Michael Kenney and Bernard Fall also maintained that the nickname was added by outside press agencies.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: The French forces came to Điện Biên Phủ accompanied by two "bordels mobiles de campagne", ('mobile field brothels'), served by Algerian and Vietnamese women. When the siege ended, the Viet Minh sent the surviving Vietnamese women for "re-education".


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: Before the battle started both British and American missions visited Diên Biên Phu, to complete an assessment and left.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: The fall of Diên Biên Phu was a disaster not just for France but also for the United States who, by 1954, were underwriting 80% of French expenditures in Indochina. According to the Mutual Defense Assistance Act, the United States provided the French with material aid during the battle – aircraft (supplied by the ), weapons, mechanics, 24 CIA/CAT pilots, and U.S. Air Force maintenance crews.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: The United States nevertheless intentionally avoided overt direct intervention. In February 1954, following the French occupation of Điện Biên Phủ, Democratic senator Michael Mansfield asked the United States Defense Secretary, Charles Erwin Wilson, whether the United States would send naval or air units if the French were subjected to greater pressure there, but Wilson replied that "for the moment there is no justification for raising United States aid above its present level". On 31 March, following the fall of "Beatrice", "Gabrielle", and "Anne-Marie", a panel of U.S. Senators and Representatives questioned the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Arthur W. Radford, about the possibility of US involvement. Radford concluded it was too late for the U.S. Air Force which had the potential to use its Philippines based B-29s against the Viet Minh heavy artillery. A proposal for direct intervention was unanimously voted down by the committee three days later, which "concluded that intervention was a positive "casus belli" (act of war)".


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: Both Eisenhower and the Secretary of State John Foster Dulles then pressed the British and other allies in a joint military operation. Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden refused, but agreed on a collective security arrangement for the region which could be agreed at the Geneva conference. For the Americans, in particular Dulles, this wasn't enough. Britain, already for some years involved in the Malayan Emergency, was concerned at the American alarmism in the region, but was unaware of the scale of US financial aid and covert involvement in the Indochina war.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: There were already suggestions at the time, notably from French author Jules Roy, that Admiral Radford had discussed with the French the possibility of using tactical nuclear weapons in support of the French garrison. Moreover, Dulles reportedly mentioned the possibility of lending atomic bombs to the French for use at Điện Biên Phủ in April, Dulles tried to put more pressure on the British, and asked Eden for British support for American air action to save Diên Biên Phu. Eden refused, which enraged Dulles; however, Eisenhower relented. The President felt that, along with the political risks, airstrikes alone would not decide the battle, and did not want to escalate U.S. involvement by using American pilots. "Nobody is more opposed to intervention than I am".


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: The United States did covertly participate in the battle. Following a request for help from Henri Navarre, Radford provided two squadrons of B-26 Invader bomber aircraft and crew personnel to support the French. However not the Pentagon but the CIA under the leadership of Secretary Dulles' brother Allen Dulles managed the operation. Following this, 37 American transport pilots flew 682 sorties over the course of the battle. Earlier, in order to succeed the pre-Điện Biên Phủ Operation Castor of November 1953, General Chester McCarty made available twelve additional C-119 Flying Boxcars flown by French crews.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: Two of the American pilots, James McGovern Jr., and Wallace Buford, were killed in action during the siege of Điện Biên Phủ. On 25 February 2005, the seven still-living American pilots were awarded the French Legion of Honor by Jean-David Levitte, the French Ambassador to the United States. The role of CIA controlled airlines in Indo-China and their role at Dien Bien Phu was little known until they were published by Robbins after the end of the Vietnam War, and not officially acknowledged until the 21st century. A generation later the US historian Erik Kirsinger researched the case for more than a year.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: Dulles, on hearing of the news of the fall of the garrison, was furious— placing heavy blame on Eden for his "inaction". Eden, however, doubted that intervention could have saved Diên Biên Phu, and felt "it might have far reaching consequences".


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: Dien Bien Phu or DBP has become an acronym or shorthand symbol for defeat of the West by the East, for the triumph of primitive... Dien Bien Phu resulted in severe political consequences.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: In January 1968, during the Vietnam War, the North Vietnamese Army under Võ Nguyên Giáp's command initiated a siege and artillery bombardment on the U.S. Marine Corps base at Khe Sanh in South Vietnam, as they did at Điện Biên Phủ. A number of factors were significantly different between Khe Sanh and Điện Biên Phủ. Khe Sanh was much closer to a US supply base () compared to a French one at Điện Biên Phủ (). At Khe Sanh, the U.S. Marines held the high ground, and their artillery forced the North Vietnamese to use their own artillery from a much greater distance. By contrast, at Điện Biên Phủ, the French artillery (six 105 mm batteries and one battery of four 155 mm howitzers and mortars) was only sporadically effective. Furthermore, by 1968, the US military presence in Vietnam dwarfed that of the French, and included numerous technological advances such as effective helicopters.


title: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

text: Khe Sanh received 18,000 tons of aerial resupplies during the 77-day battle, whereas during the 167 days that the French forces at Điện Biên Phủ held out, they received only 4,000 tons. Also, the US Air Force dropped 114,810 tons of bombs on the North Vietnamese at Khe Sanh, roughly as many as on Japan in 1945 during World War II.


title: Chaos (cosmogony)

text: Chaos () is the mythological void state preceding the creation of the universe (the cosmos) in Greek creation myths. In Christian theology, the same term is used to refer to the gap or the abyss created by the separation of heaven and earth.


title: Chaos (cosmogony)

text: Greek "kháos" () means 'emptiness, vast void, chasm, abyss', related to the verbs "kháskō" () and "khaínō" () 'gape, be wide open', from Proto-Indo-European "", cognate to Old English "geanian", 'to gape', whence English "yawn".


title: Chaos (cosmogony)

text: It may also mean space, the expanse of air, the nether abyss or infinite darkness. Pherecydes of Syros (fl. 6th century BC) interprets "chaos" as water, like something formless that can be differentiated.


title: Chaos (cosmogony)

text: The motif of "Chaoskampf" (; ) is ubiquitous in myth and legend, depicting a battle of a culture hero deity with a "chaos monster", often in the shape of a serpent or dragon. Parallel concepts appear in the Middle East and North Africa, such as the abstract conflict of ideas in the Egyptian duality of Maat and Isfet or the battle of Horus and Set.


title: Chaos (cosmogony)

text: Hesiod and the Pre-Socratics use the Greek term in the context of cosmogony. Hesiod's Chaos has been interpreted as either "the gaping void above the Earth created when Earth and Sky are separated from their primordial unity" or "the gaping space below the Earth on which Earth rests." Passages in Hesiod's "Theogony" suggest that Chaos was located below Earth but above Tartarus. Primal Chaos was sometimes said to be the true foundation of reality, particularly by philosophers such as Heraclitus.


title: Chaos (cosmogony)

text: In Hesiod's "Theogony", Chaos was the first thing to exist: "at first Chaos came to be" (or was), but next (possibly out of Chaos) came Gaia, Tartarus, and Eros (elsewhere the name Eros is used for a son of Aphrodite). Unambiguously "born" from Chaos were Erebus and Nyx. For Hesiod, Chaos, like Tartarus, though personified enough to have borne children, was also a place, far away, underground and "gloomy," beyond which lived the Titans. And, like the earth, the ocean, and the upper air, it was also capable of being affected by Zeus's thunderbolts.


title: Chaos (cosmogony)

text: The notion of the temporal infinity was familiar to the Greek mind from remote antiquity in the religious conception of immortality. The main object of the first efforts to explain the world remained the description of its growth, from a beginning. They believed that the world arose out from a primal unity, and that this substance was the permanent base of all its being. Anaximander claims that the origin is apeiron (the unlimited), a divine and perpetual substance less definite than the common elements (water, air, fire, and earth) as they were understood to the early Greek philosophers. Everything is generated from "apeiron", and must return there according to necessity. A conception of the nature of the world was that the earth below its surface stretches down indefinitely and has its roots on or above Tartarus, the lower part of the underworld. In a phrase of Xenophanes, "The upper limit of the earth borders on air, near our feet. The lower limit reaches down to the "apeiron" (i.e. the unlimited)." The sources and limits of the earth, the sea, the sky, Tartarus, and all things are located in a great windy-gap, which seems to be infinite, and is a later specification of "chaos".


title: Chaos (cosmogony)

text: In Aristophanes's comedy "Birds", first there was Chaos, Night, Erebus, and Tartarus, from Night came Eros, and from Eros and Chaos came the race of birds.


title: Chaos (cosmogony)

text: In Plato’s Timaeus, the main work of Platonic cosmology, the concept of chaos finds its equivalent in the Greek expression "chôra", which is interpreted, for instance, as shapeless space ("chôra") in which material traces ("ichnê") of the elements are in disordered motion (Timaeus 53a–b). However, the Platonic "chôra" is not a variation of the atomistic interpretation of the origin of the world, as is made clear by Plato's statement that the most appropriate definition of the chôra is "a receptacle of all becoming – its wetnurse, as it were" (Timaeus 49a), notabene a receptacle for the creative act of the demiurge, the world-maker.


title: Chaos (cosmogony)

text: Aristotle, in the context of his investigation of the concept of space in physics, "problematizes the interpretation of Hesiod’s chaos as 'void' or 'place without anything in it'. Aristotle understands chaos as something that exists independently of bodies and without which no perceptible bodies can exist. 'Chaos' is thus brought within the framework of an explicitly physical investigation. It has now outgrown the mythological understanding to a great extent and, in Aristotle’s work, serves above all to challenge the atomists who assert the existence of empty space."


title: Chaos (cosmogony)

text: For Ovid, (43 BC – 17/18 AD), in his "Metamorphoses", Chaos was an unformed mass, where all the elements were jumbled up together in a "shapeless heap".


title: Chaos (cosmogony)

text: According to Hyginus: "From Mist ("Caligo") came Chaos. From Chaos and Mist, came Night ("Nox"), Day ("Dies"), Darkness ("Erebus"), and Ether ("Aether")." An Orphic tradition apparently had Chaos as the son of Chronus and Ananke.


title: Chaos (cosmogony)

text: "Chaos" has been linked with the term "abyss" / "tohu wa-bohu" of . The term may refer to a state of non-being prior to creation or to a formless state. In the Book of Genesis, the spirit of God is moving upon the face of the waters, displacing the earlier state of the universe that is likened to a "watery chaos" upon which there is "choshek" (which translated from the Hebrew is darkness/confusion).


title: Chaos (cosmogony)

text: The Septuagint makes no use of in the context of creation, instead using the term for , "cleft, gorge, chasm", in Micah 1:6 and Zacharia 14:4. The Vulgate, however, renders the χάσμα μέγα or "great gulf" between heaven and hell in Luke 16:26 as "chaos magnum".


title: Chaos (cosmogony)

text: This model of a primordial state of matter has been opposed by the Church Fathers from the 2nd century, who posited a creation "ex nihilo" by an omnipotent God.


title: Chaos (cosmogony)

text: In modern biblical studies, the term "chaos" is commonly used in the context of the Torah and their cognate narratives in Ancient Near Eastern mythology more generally. Parallels between the Hebrew Genesis and the Babylonian Enuma Elish were established by Hermann Gunkel in 1910. Besides Genesis, other books of the Old Testament, especially a number of Psalms, some passages in Isaiah and Jeremiah and the Book of Job are relevant.


title: Chaos (cosmogony)

text: In Hawaiian folklore, a triad of deities known as the "Ku-Kaua-Kahi" (a.k.a. "Fundamental Supreme Unity") were said to have existed prior to and during Chaos ever since eternity, or put in Hawaiian terms, "mai ka po mai," meaning "from the time of night, darkness, Chaos."


title: Chaos (cosmogony)

text: They eventually broke the surrounding "Po" ("night"), and light entered the universe. Next the group created three heavens for dwelling areas together with the Earth, Sun, Moon, stars, and assistant spirits.


title: Chaos (cosmogony)

text: According to the Gnostic "On the Origin of the World", Chaos was not the first thing to exist. When the nature of the immortal aeons was completed, Sophia desired something like the light which first existed to come into being. Her desire appears as a likeness with incomprehensible greatness that covers the heavenly universe, diminishing its inner darkness while a shadow appears on the outside which causes Chaos to be formed. From Chaos every deity including the Demiurge is born.


title: Chaos (cosmogony)

text: The Greco-Roman tradition of "prima materia", notably including the 5th- and 6th-century Orphic cosmogony, was merged with biblical notions ("Tehom") in Christianity and inherited by alchemy and Renaissance magic.


title: Chaos (cosmogony)

text: The cosmic egg of Orphism was taken as the raw material for the alchemical magnum opus in early Greek alchemy. The first stage of the process of producing the philosopher's stone, i.e., nigredo, was identified with chaos. Because of association with the Genesis creation narrative, where "the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters" (Gen. 1:2), Chaos was further identified with the classical element of Water.


title: Chaos (cosmogony)

text: Ramon Llull (1232–1315) wrote a "Liber Chaos", in which he identifies Chaos as the primal form or matter created by God. Swiss alchemist Paracelsus (1493–1541) uses "chaos" synonymously with "classical element" (because the primeval chaos is imagined as a formless congestion of all elements). Paracelsus thus identifies Earth as "the chaos of the "gnomi"", i.e., the element of the gnomes, through which these spirits move unobstructed as fish do through water, or birds through air. An alchemical treatise by Heinrich Khunrath, printed in Frankfurt in 1708, was entitled "Chaos". The 1708 introduction states that the treatise was written in 1597 in Magdeburg, in the author's 23rd year of practicing alchemy. The treatise purports to quote Paracelsus on the point that "The light of the soul, by the will of the Triune God, made all earthly things appear from the primal Chaos." Martin Ruland the Younger, in his 1612 "Lexicon Alchemiae", states, "A crude mixture of matter or another name for "Materia Prima" is "Chaos", as it is in the Beginning."


title: Chaos (cosmogony)

text: The term "gas" in chemistry was coined by Dutch chemist Jan Baptist van Helmont in the 17th century directly based on the Paracelsian notion of chaos. The "g" in "gas" is due to the Dutch pronunciation of this letter as a spirant, also employed to pronounce Greek χ.


title: Chaos (cosmogony)

text: The term "chaos" has been adopted in modern comparative mythology and religious studies as referring to the primordial state before creation, strictly combining two separate notions of primordial waters or a primordial darkness from which a new order emerges and a primordial state as a merging of opposites, such as heaven and earth, which must be separated by a creator deity in an act of cosmogony. In both cases, chaos referring to a notion of a primordial state contains the cosmos "in potentia" but needs to be formed by a demiurge before the world can begin its existence.


title: Chaos (cosmogony)

text: Use of "chaos" in the derived sense of "complete disorder or confusion" first appears in Elizabethan Early Modern English, originally implying satirical exaggeration. "Chaos" in the well-defined sense of chaotic complex system is in turn derived from this usage.


title: Chaos (cosmogony)

text: Popular culture has depicted the Chaos Greek deity in multiple instances. A modern instance is the popular 2020 video game "Hades" in which Chaos is represented as a genderless non-binary deity which dwells above the foundation of the underworld or "creation" itself.


title: Hudson Bay

text: Hudson Bay (; ; or ; ), sometimes called Hudson's Bay (usually historically), is a large body of saltwater in northeastern Canada with a surface area of . It is located north of Ontario, west of Quebec, northeast of Manitoba and southeast of Nunavut, but politically entirely part of Nunavut. Although not geographically apparent, it is for climatic reasons considered to be a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean. It drains a very large area, about , that includes parts of southeastern Nunavut, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec, all of Manitoba, and parts of the U.S. states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, and Montana. Hudson Bay's southern arm is called James Bay.


title: Hudson Bay

text: The Eastern Cree name for Hudson and James Bay is (Southern dialect) or (Northern dialect), meaning muddy or brackish water. Lake Winnipeg is similarly named by the local Cree, as is the location for the city of Winnipeg.


title: Hudson Bay

text: The bay is named after Henry Hudson, an Englishman sailing for the Dutch East India Company, and after whom the river that he explored in 1609 is also named. Hudson Bay encompasses , making it the second-largest water body using the term "bay" in the world (after the Bay of Bengal). The bay is relatively shallow and is considered an epicontinental sea, with an average depth of about (compared to in the Bay of Bengal). It is about long and wide. On the east it is connected with the Atlantic Ocean by Hudson Strait; on the north, with the Arctic Ocean by Foxe Basin (which is not considered part of the bay), and Fury and Hecla Strait.


title: Hudson Bay

text: Hudson Bay is often considered part of the Arctic Ocean: the International Hydrographic Organization, in its 2002 working draft of "Limits of Oceans and Seas", defined Hudson Bay, with its outlet extending from 62.5 to 66.5 degrees north (just a few miles south of the Arctic Circle) as being part of the Arctic Ocean, specifically "Arctic Ocean Subdivision 9.11". Other authorities include it in the Atlantic, in part because of its greater water budget connection with that ocean.


title: Hudson Bay

text: The search for a western route to Cathay and the Indies, which had been actively pursued since the days of Columbus and the Cabots, in the latter part of the 15th century, directly resulted in the first sighting of Hudson Bay by Europeans. English explorers and colonists named Hudson Bay after Sir Henry Hudson who explored the bay beginning August 2, 1610 on his ship "Discovery". On his fourth voyage to North America, Hudson worked his way around Greenland's west coast and into the bay, mapping much of its eastern coast. "Discovery" became trapped in the ice over the winter, and the crew survived onshore at the southern tip of James Bay. When the ice cleared in the spring, Hudson wanted to explore the rest of the area, but the crew mutinied on June 22, 1611. They left Hudson and others adrift in a small boat. The fate of Hudson and the crew members stranded with him is unknown, but historians have found no evidence that they survived for long afterward. In May 1612, Sir Thomas Button sailed from England with two ships to look for Henry Hudson, and to continue the search for the north-west passage to Asia.


title: Hudson Bay

text: In 1668, "Nonsuch" reached the bay and traded for beaver pelts, leading to the creation of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) which still bears the historic name. The HBC negotiated a trading monopoly from the English crown for the Hudson Bay watershed, called Rupert's Land. France contested this grant by sending several military expeditions to the region, but abandoned its claim in the Treaty of Utrecht (April 1713).


title: Hudson Bay

text: During this period, the Hudson's Bay Company built several factories (forts and trading posts) along the coast at the mouth of the major rivers (such as Fort Severn, Ontario; York Factory, Churchill, Manitoba; and the Prince of Wales Fort). The strategic locations were bases for inland exploration. More importantly, they were trading posts with Indigenous peoples who came to them with furs from their trapping season. The HBC shipped the furs to Europe and continued to use some of these posts well into the 20th century.


title: Hudson Bay

text: HBC's trade monopoly was abolished in 1870, and it ceded Rupert's Land to Canada, an area of approximately , as part of the Northwest Territories. Starting in 1913, the Bay was extensively charted by the Canadian Government's to develop it for navigation. This mapping progress led to the establishment of Churchill, Manitoba, as a deep-sea port for wheat exports in 1929, after unsuccessful attempts at Port Nelson.


title: Hudson Bay

text: The Port of Churchill was an important shipping link for trade with Europe and Russia until its closure in 2016 by owner OmniTRAX. The Port and the Hudson Bay Railway were then sold to the Arctic Gateway Group—a consortium of First Nations, local governments, and corporate investors—in 2018. On July 9, 2019, ships on missions to resupply arctic communities began stopping at the port for additional cargo, and the port began shipping grain again on September 7, 2019.


title: Hudson Bay

text: Northern Hudson Bay has a polar climate (Köppen: "ET") being one of the few places in the world where this type of climate is found south of 60 °N, going farther south towards Quebec, where Inukjuak is still dominated by the tundra. From Arviat, Nunavut, to the west to the south and southeast prevails the subarctic climate (Köppen: "Dfc"). This is because in the central summer months, heat waves can advance from the hot land and make the weather milder, with the result that the average temperature surpasses . At the extreme southern tip of the extension known as James Bay arises a humid continental climate with a longer and generally hotter summer. (Köppen: "Dfb") The average annual temperature in almost the entire bay is around or below. In the extreme northeast, winter temperatures average as low as .


title: Hudson Bay

text: The Hudson Bay region has very low year-round average temperatures. The average annual temperature for Churchill at 59°N is and Inukjuak, facing cool westerlies in summer at 58°N, an even colder . By comparison, Magadan, in a comparable position at 59°N on the Eurasian landmass in the Russian Far East and with a similar subarctic climate, has an annual average of . Vis-à-vis geographically closer Europe, contrasts stand much more extreme. Arkhangelsk at 64°N in northwestern Russia has an average of , while the mild continental coastline of Stockholm at 59°N on the shore of an analogous large hyposaline marine inlet – the Baltic Sea – has an annual average of .


title: Hudson Bay

text: Water temperature peaks at on the western side of the bay in late summer. It is largely frozen over from mid-December to mid-June, when it usually clears from its eastern end westwards and southwards. A steady increase in regional temperatures over the last 100 years has been reflected in a lengthening of the ice-free period, which was as short as four months in the late 17th century.


title: Hudson Bay

text: Hudson Bay has a lower average salinity level than that of ocean water. The main causes are the low rate of evaporation (the bay is ice-covered for much of the year), the large volume of terrestrial runoff entering the bay (about annually, the Hudson Bay watershed covering much of Canada, many rivers and streams discharging into the bay), and the limited connection with the Atlantic Ocean and its higher salinity. Sea ice is about three times the annual river flow into the bay, and its annual freezing and thawing significantly alters the salinity of the surface layer. Although its exact effects are not fully understood currently, the cyclonic storms in the bay are responsible for synoptic variability of salinity along the coast.


title: Hudson Bay

text: One consequence of the lower salinity of the bay is that the freezing point of the water is higher than in the rest of the world's oceans, thus decreasing the time that the bay remains ice-free. The increase of river inflows during the winter has decreased the season of sea ice by more than 1 month since the 1960s.


title: Hudson Bay

text: The lower salinity of the bay also has effects on the distribution and prevalence of common marine life such as micro algae. Research has shown that the lower salinity of the Hudson Bay limits the growth of micro algae, which causes a notable change in biomass along the bay's salinity gradient.


title: Hudson Bay

text: The western shores of the bay are a lowland known as the Hudson Bay Lowlands which covers . The area is drained by a large number of rivers and has formed a characteristic vegetation known as muskeg. Much of the landform has been shaped by the actions of glaciers and the shrinkage of the bay over long periods of time. Signs of numerous former beachfronts can be seen far inland from the current shore. A large portion of the lowlands in the province of Ontario is part of the Polar Bear Provincial Park, and a similar portion of the lowlands in Manitoba is contained in Wapusk National Park, the latter location being a significant polar bear maternity denning area.


title: Hudson Bay

text: In contrast, most of the eastern shores (the Quebec portion) form the western edge of the Canadian Shield in Quebec. The area is rocky and hilly. Its vegetation is typically boreal forest, and to the north, tundra.


title: Hudson Bay

text: Measured by shoreline, Hudson Bay is the largest bay in the world (the largest in area being the Bay of Bengal).


title: Hudson Bay

text: The distinctive arculate segment on the eastern shore of Hudson Bay is referred to as the Nastapoka arc.


title: Hudson Bay

text: There are many islands in Hudson Bay, mostly near the eastern coast. All the islands, including those in James Bay, are part of Nunavut and lie in the Arctic Archipelago. Several are disputed by the Cree. One group of islands is the Belcher Islands. Another group includes the Ottawa Islands.


title: Hudson Bay

text: Hudson Bay occupies a large structural basin, known as the Hudson Bay basin, that lies within the Canadian Shield. The collection and interpretation of outcrop, seismic and drillhole data for exploration for oil and gas reservoirs within the Hudson Bay basin found that it is filled by, at most, of Ordovician to Devonian limestone, dolomites, evaporites, black shales, and various clastic sedimentary rocks that overlie less than of Cambrian strata that consist of unfossiliferous quartz sandstones and conglomerates, overlain by sandy and stromatolitic dolomites. In addition, a minor amount of terrestrial Cretaceous fluvial sands and gravels are preserved in the fill of a prominent ring-like depression about across created by the dissolution of Silurian evaporites during the Cretaceous Period.


title: Hudson Bay

text: From the large quantity of published geologic data that has been collected as the result of hydrocarbon exploration, academic research, and related geologic mapping, a detailed history of the Hudson Bay basin has been reconstructed. During the majority of the Cambrian Period, this basin did not exist. Rather, this part of the Canadian Shield area was still topographically high and emergent. It was only during the later part of the Cambrian that the rising sea level of the Sauk marine transgression slowly submerged it. During the Ordovician, this part of the Canadian Shield continued to be submerged by rising sea levels except for a brief middle Ordovician marine regression. Only starting in the Late Ordovician and continuing into the Silurian did the gradual regional subsidence of this part of the Canadian Shield form the Hudson Bay basin. The formation of this basin resulted in the accumulation of black bituminous oil shale and evaporite deposits within its centre, thick basin-margin limestone and dolomite, and the development of extensive reefs that ringed the basin margins that were tectonically uplifted as the basin subsided. During Middle Silurian times, subsidence ceased and this basin was uplifted. It generated an emergent arch, on which reefs grew, that divided the basin into eastern and western sub-basins. During the Devonian Period, this basin filled with terrestrial red beds that interfinger with marine limestone and dolomites. Before deposition was terminated by marine regression, Upper Devonian black bituminous shale accumulated in the south-east of the basin.


title: Hudson Bay

text: The remaining history of the Hudson Bay basin is largely unknown as a major unconformity separates Upper Devonian strata from glacial deposits of the Pleistocene. Except for poorly known terrestrial Cretaceous fluvial sands and gravels that are preserved as the fills of a ring of subsided strata around the centre of this basin, strata representing this period of time are absent from the Hudson Bay basin and the surrounding Canadian Shield.


title: Hudson Bay

text: The Precambrian Shield underlying Hudson Bay and in which Hudson Bay basin formed is composed of two Archean proto-continents, the Western Churchill and Superior cratons. These cratons are separated by a tectonic collage that forms a suture zone between these cratons and the Trans-Hudson Orogen. The Western Churchill and Superior cratons collided at about 1.9–1.8 Ga in the Trans-Hudson orogeny. Because of the irregular shapes of the colliding cratons, this collision trapped between them large fragments of juvenile crust, a sizable microcontinent, and island arc terranes, beneath what is now the centre of modern Hudson Bay as part of the Trans-Hudson Orogen. The Belcher Islands are the eroded surface of the Belcher Fold Belt, which formed as a result of the tectonic compression and folding of sediments that accumulated along the margin of the Superior Craton before its collision with the Western Churchill Craton.


title: Hudson Bay

text: Hudson Bay and the associated structural basin lies within the centre of a large free-air gravity anomaly that lies within the Canadian Shield. The similarity in areal extent of the free-air gravity anomaly with the perimeter of the former Laurentide Ice Sheet that covered this part of Laurentia led to a long-held conclusion that this perturbation in the Earth's gravity reflected still ongoing glacial isostatic adjustment to the melting and disappearance of this ice sheet. Data collected over Canada by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission allowed geophysicists to isolate the gravity signal associated with glacial isostatic adjustment from longer–time scale process of mantle convection occurring beneath the Canadian Shield. Based upon this data, geophysicists and other Earth scientists concluded that the Laurentide Ice Sheet was composed of two large domes to the west and east of Hudson Bay. Modelling glacial isostatic adjustment using the GRACE data, they concluded that ~25 to ~45% of the observed free-air gravity anomaly was due to ongoing glacial isostatic adjustment, and the remainder likely represents longer time-scale effects of mantle convection.


title: Hudson Bay

text: Earth scientists have disagreed about what created the semicircular feature known as the Nastapoka arc that forms a section of the shoreline of southeastern Hudson Bay. Noting the paucity of impact structures on Earth in relation to the Moon and Mars, Carlyle Smith Beals proposed that it is possibly part of a Precambrian extraterrestrial impact structure that is comparable in size to the Mare Crisium on the Moon. In the same volume, John Tuzo Wilson commented on Beals' interpretation and alternately proposed that the Nastapoka arc may have formed as part of an extensive Precambrian continental collisional orogen, linked to the closure of an ancient ocean basin. The current general consensus is that it is an arcuate boundary of tectonic origin between the Belcher Fold Belt and undeformed basement of the Superior Craton created during the Trans-Hudson orogeny. This is because no credible evidence for such an impact structure has been found by regional magnetic, Bouguer gravity, or other geologic studies. However, other Earth scientists have proposed that the evidence of an Archean impact might have been masked by deformation accompanying the later formation of the Trans-Hudson orogen and regard an impact origin as a plausible possibility.


title: Hudson Bay

text: The longer periods of ice-free navigation and the reduction of Arctic Ocean ice coverage have led to Russian and Canadian interest in the potential for commercial trade routes across the Arctic and into Hudson Bay. The so-called Arctic Bridge would link Churchill, Manitoba, and the Russian port of Murmansk.


title: Hudson Bay

text: The biggest port in the Hudson bay is the city of Churchill, which lies on the river with the same name, Churchill River. The Port of Churchill is a privately owned port on Hudson Bay in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada. Routes from the port connect to the North Atlantic through the Hudson Strait. As of 2008, the port had four deep-sea berths capable of handling Panamax-size vessels for the loading and unloading of grain, bulk commodities, general cargo, and tanker vessels. The port is connected to the Hudson Bay Railway, which shares the same parent company, and cargo connections are made with the Canadian National Railway system at HBR's southern terminus in The Pas. It is the only port of its size and scope in Canada that does not connect directly to the country's road system; all goods shipped overland to and from the port must travel by rail.


title: Hudson Bay

text: The port was originally owned by the Government of Canada but was sold in 1997 to the American company OmniTRAX to run privately. In December 2015, OmniTRAX announced it was negotiating a sale of the port, and the associated Hudson Bay Railway, to a group of First Nations based in northern Manitoba. With no sale finalized by July 2016, OmniTRAX shut down the port and the major railroad freight operations in August 2016. The railway continued to carry cargo to supply the town of Churchill itself until the line was damaged by flooding on May 23, 2017. The Port and the Hudson Bay Railway were sold to Arctic Gateway Group—a consortium of First Nations, local governments, and corporate investors—in 2018. On July 9, 2019, ships on missions to resupply arctic communities began stopping at the port for additional cargo, and the port began shipping grain again on September 7, 2019.


title: Hudson Bay

text: The coast of Hudson Bay is extremely sparsely populated; there are only about a dozen communities. Some of these were founded as trading posts in the 17th and 18th centuries by the Hudson's Bay Company, making them some of the oldest settlements in Western Canada. With the closure of the HBC posts and stores, although many are now run by The North West Company, in the second half of the 20th century, many coastal villages are now almost exclusively populated by Cree and Inuit. Two main historic sites along the coast were York Factory and Prince of Wales Fort.


title: Hudson Bay

text: Communities along the Hudson Bay coast or on islands in the bay are (all populations are as of 2016):


title: Hudson Bay

text: The Hudson's Bay Company built forts as fur trade strongholds against the French or other possible invaders. One example is York Factory with angled walls to help defend the fort. In the 1950s, during the Cold War, a few sites along the coast became part of the Mid-Canada Line, watching for a potential Soviet bomber attack over the North Pole. The only Arctic deep-water port in Canada is the Port of Churchill, located at Churchill, Manitoba.


title: Emily V. Gordon

text: Emily V. Gordon (born May 3, 1979) is an American writer, producer and podcast host. She co-wrote the 2017 romantic comedy film "The Big Sick", based on her relationship with her husband and frequent collaborator, comic Kumail Nanjiani. Gordon and Nanjiani won an Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay for "The Big Sick"; they were also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, among many other nominations.


title: Emily V. Gordon

text: Gordon began her career as a family and couples therapist before becoming a writer and comedy producer. She co-created the live show "The Meltdown with Jonah and Kumail" and its television counterpart for Comedy Central, and has written for television ("The Carmichael Show"), a book ("Super You"), and for several online and print publications.


title: Emily V. Gordon

text: Gordon was born and raised in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She received a BA in psychology from the East Carolina University and an MS/EdS in couples and family counseling from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.


title: Emily V. Gordon

text: Gordon was a practicing therapist from 2004 to 2009, working in North Carolina, Chicago, Illinois (where she moved in 2005) and Brooklyn, New York (where she moved in 2007).


title: Emily V. Gordon

text: Gordon began her comedy career in New York, where she worked at Comix comedy club and produced a live show with Pete Holmes. By the time she moved to Los Angeles in 2010, Gordon was pursuing comedy and freelance writing full-time.


title: Emily V. Gordon

text: Gordon has written two webseries aimed at teenagers, called "Power Up" and "ExploreD", at Disney.com. She wrote for the second season of "The Carmichael Show" on NBC, writing an episode called "New Neighbors". In addition to writing, Gordon also produces comedy. In 2010, she created a weekly live show co-hosted by Jonah Ray and Kumail Nanjiani called "The Meltdown with Jonah and Kumail", located in the back of comic bookstore Meltdown Comics; Gordon served as producer and booker. In 2011, she was asked by Chris Hardwick, who wanted to turn the space into a curated comedy venue, to act as program director. She served as program director of the Nerdist Showroom at Meltdown Comics from 2011 to 2012. In 2013, Comedy Central ordered a pilot for "The Meltdown with Jonah and Kumail", which was made a series in 2014; Gordon was an executive producer.


title: Emily V. Gordon

text: From 2011 to 2015, Gordon and Nanjiani co-hosted a Nerdist network podcast called "The Indoor Kids", which "isn't just about video games, but it isn't not about video games." In 2020, Gordon and Nanjiani co-hosted a podcast called "Staying In with Emily and Kumail", about the quarantine due to COVID-19.


title: Emily V. Gordon

text: Gordon was signed to adapt Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney's 2016 novel "The Nest" for Amazon's film studio. Joey Soloway and Andrea Sperling will produce the feature film.


title: Emily V. Gordon

text: Gordon's first book, "Super You: Release Your Inner Superhero", a tongue-in-cheek self-improvement guide, was released in 2015.


title: Emily V. Gordon

text: Gordon also co-wrote the screenplay of and co-executive produced the 2017 film "The Big Sick", with her husband Kumail Nanjiani. The critically acclaimed film is based on the beginning of their relationship, with Nanjiani playing himself, and Gordon (renamed Emily Gardner) played by Zoe Kazan. "The Big Sick" was directed by Michael Showalter and produced by Judd Apatow.


title: Emily V. Gordon

text: Gordon and Nanjiani's script won the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay. It was also nominated for a 2018 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, as well as screenwriting awards from the Writers Guild of America, the Gotham Awards, and a dozen critics' associations.


title: Emily V. Gordon

text: Gordon has been married to actor and comedian Kumail Nanjiani since 2007. It is her second marriage. She met Nanjiani at a comedy show in Chicago where he was performing and she lightly heckled him, an encounter depicted in "The Big Sick". In the ensuing months, they began dating but Gordon fell seriously ill and was put into a medically induced coma before being diagnosed with Still's disease. Gordon recovered and three months later—a year after meeting—they married. They previously lived in Chicago and New York but later moved to Los Angeles.


title: College football

text: College football () refers to gridiron football played by teams of student athletes. It was through college football play that American football rules first gained popularity in the United States.


title: College football

text: Unlike most other sports in North America, no official minor league farm organizations exist in American or Canadian football. Therefore, college football is generally considered to be the second tier of American and Canadian football; one step ahead of high school competition, and one step below professional competition (the NFL). In some areas of the US, especially the South and the Midwest, college football is more popular than professional football, and for much of the 20th century college football was seen as more prestigious.


title: College football

text: A player's performance in college football directly impacts his chances of playing professional football. The best collegiate players will typically declare for the professional draft after three to four years of collegiate competition, with the NFL holding its annual NFL draft every spring in which 256 players are selected annually. Those not selected can still attempt to land an NFL roster spot as an undrafted free agent.


title: College football

text: Even after the emergence of the professional National Football League (NFL), college football has remained extremely popular throughout the U.S. Although the college game has a much larger margin for talent than its pro counterpart, the sheer number of fans following major colleges provides a financial equalizer for the game, with Division I programs — the highest level — playing in huge stadiums, six of which have seating capacity exceeding 100,000 people. In many cases, college stadiums employ bench-style seating, as opposed to individual seats with backs and arm rests (although many stadiums do have a small number of chair back seats in addition to the bench seating). This allows them to seat more fans in a given amount of space than the typical professional stadium, which tends to have more features and comforts for fans. (Only three stadiums owned by U.S. colleges or universities — Cardinal Stadium at the University of Louisville, Center Parc Stadium at Georgia State University, and FAU Stadium at Florida Atlantic University — consist entirely of chair back seating.)


title: College football

text: College athletes, unlike players in the NFL, are not permitted by the NCAA to be paid salaries. Colleges are only allowed to provide non-monetary compensation such as athletic scholarships that provide for tuition, housing, and books.


title: College football

text: Modern North American football has its origins in various games, all known as "football", played at public schools in Great Britain in the mid-19th century. By the 1840s, students at Rugby School were playing a game in which players were able to pick up the ball and run with it, a sport later known as rugby football. The game was taken to Canada by British soldiers stationed there and was soon being played at Canadian colleges.


title: College football

text: The first documented gridiron football match was played at University College, a college of the University of Toronto, November 9, 1861. One of the participants in the game involving University of Toronto students was (Sir) William Mulock, later Chancellor of the school. A football club was formed at the university soon afterward, although its rules of play at this stage are unclear.


title: College football

text: In 1864, at Trinity College, also a college of the University of Toronto, F. Barlow Cumberland and Frederick A. Bethune devised rules based on rugby football. Modern Canadian football is widely regarded as having originated with a game played in Montreal, in 1865, when British Army officers played local civilians. The game gradually gained a following, and the Montreal Football Club was formed in 1868, the first recorded non-university football club in Canada.


title: College football

text: Early games appear to have had much in common with the traditional "mob football" played in Great Britain. The games remained largely unorganized until the 19th century, when intramural games of football began to be played on college campuses. Each school played its own variety of football. Princeton University students played a game called "ballown" as early as 1820. A Harvard tradition known as "Bloody Monday" began in 1827, which consisted of a mass ballgame between the freshman and sophomore classes. In 1860, both the town police and the college authorities agreed the Bloody Monday had to go. The Harvard students responded by going into mourning for a mock figure called "Football Fightum", for whom they conducted funeral rites. The authorities held firm and it was a dozen years before football was once again played at Harvard. Dartmouth played its own version called "Old division football", the rules of which were first published in 1871, though the game dates to at least the 1830s. All of these games, and others, shared certain commonalities. They remained largely "mob" style games, with huge numbers of players attempting to advance the ball into a goal area, often by any means necessary. Rules were simple, violence and injury were common. The violence of these mob-style games led to widespread protests and a decision to abandon them. Yale, under pressure from the city of New Haven, banned the play of all forms of football in 1860.


title: College football

text: American football historian Parke H. Davis described the period between 1869 and 1875 as the 'Pioneer Period'; the years 1876–93 he called the 'Period of the American Intercollegiate Football Association'; and the years 1894–1933 he dubbed the "Period of Rules Committees and Conferences".


title: College football

text: On November 6, 1869, Rutgers University faced Princeton University (then known as the College of New Jersey) in the first game of intercollegiate football that resembled more the game of soccer than "football" as it is played today. It was played with a round ball and, like all early games, used a set of rules suggested by Rutgers captain William J. Leggett, based on The Football Association's first set of rules, which were an early attempt by the former pupils of England's public schools, to unify the rules of their public schools games and create a universal and standardized set of rules for the game of football and bore little resemblance to the American game which would be developed in the following decades. It is still usually regarded as the first game of college football. The game was played at a Rutgers field. Two teams of 25 players attempted to score by kicking the ball into the opposing team's goal. Throwing or carrying the ball was not allowed, but there was plenty of physical contact between players. The first team to reach six goals was declared the winner. Rutgers won by a score of six to four. A rematch was played at Princeton a week later under Princeton's own set of rules (one notable difference was the awarding of a "free kick" to any player that caught the ball on the fly, which was a feature adopted from The Football Association's rules; the fair catch kick rule has survived through to modern American game). Princeton won that game by a score of 8 – 0. Columbia joined the series in 1870 and by 1872 several schools were fielding intercollegiate teams, including Yale and Stevens Institute of Technology.


title: College football

text: Columbia University was the third school to field a team. The Lions traveled from New York City to New Brunswick on November 12, 1870, and were defeated by Rutgers 6 to 3. The game suffered from disorganization and the players kicked and battled each other as much as the ball. Later in 1870, Princeton and Rutgers played again with Princeton defeating Rutgers 6–0. This game's violence caused such an outcry that no games at all were played in 1871. Football came back in 1872, when Columbia played Yale for the first time. The Yale team was coached and captained by David Schley Schaff, who had learned to play football while attending Rugby School. Schaff himself was injured and unable to play the game, but Yale won the game 3-0 nonetheless. Later in 1872, Stevens Tech became the fifth school to field a team. Stevens lost to Columbia, but beat both New York University and City College of New York during the following year.


title: College football

text: By 1873, the college students playing football had made significant efforts to standardize their fledgling game. Teams had been scaled down from 25 players to 20. The only way to score was still to bat or kick the ball through the opposing team's goal, and the game was played in two 45 minute halves on fields 140 yards long and 70 yards wide. On October 20, 1873, representatives from Yale, Columbia, Princeton, and Rutgers met at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City to codify the first set of intercollegiate football rules. Before this meeting, each school had its own set of rules and games were usually played using the home team's own particular code. At this meeting, a list of rules, based more on the Football Association's rules than the rules of the recently founded Rugby Football Union, was drawn up for intercollegiate football games.


title: College football

text: Old "Football Fightum" had been resurrected at Harvard in 1872, when Harvard resumed playing football. Harvard, however, preferred to play a rougher version of football called "the Boston Game" in which the kicking of a round ball was the most prominent feature though a player could run with the ball, pass it, or dribble it (known as "babying"). The man with the ball could be tackled, although hitting, tripping, "hacking" and other unnecessary roughness was prohibited. There was no limit to the number of players, but there were typically ten to fifteen per side. A player could carry the ball only when being pursued.


title: College football

text: As a result of this, Harvard refused to attend the rules conference organized by Rutgers, Princeton and Columbia at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City on October 20, 1873 to agree on a set of rules and regulations that would allow them to play a form of football that was essentially Association football; and continued to play under its own code. While Harvard's voluntary absence from the meeting made it hard for them to schedule games against other American universities, it agreed to a challenge to play the rugby team of McGill University, from Montreal, in a two-game series. It was agreed that two games would be played on Harvard's Jarvis baseball field in Cambridge, Massachusetts on May 14 and 15, 1874: one to be played under Harvard rules, another under the stricter rugby regulations of McGill. Jarvis Field was at the time a patch of land at the northern point of the Harvard campus, bordered by Everett and Jarvis Streets to the north and south, and Oxford Street and Massachusetts Avenue to the east and west. Harvard beat McGill in the "Boston Game" on the Thursday and held McGill to a 0–0 tie on the Friday. The Harvard students took to the rugby rules and adopted them as their own, The games featured a round ball instead of a rugby-style oblong ball. This series of games represents an important milestone in the development of the modern game of American football. In October 1874, the Harvard team once again traveled to Montreal to play McGill in rugby, where they won by three tries.


title: College football

text: In as much as Rugby football had been transplanted to Canada from England, the McGill team played under a set of rules which allowed a player to pick up the ball and run with it whenever he wished. Another rule, unique to McGill, was to count tries (the act of grounding the football past the opposing team's goal line; it is important to note that there was no end zone during this time), as well as goals, in the scoring. In the Rugby rules of the time, a try only provided the attempt to kick a free goal from the field. If the kick was missed, the try did not score any points itself.


title: College football

text: Harvard quickly took a liking to the rugby game, and its use of the try which, until that time, was not used in American football. The try would later evolve into the score known as the touchdown. On June 4, 1875, Harvard faced Tufts University in the first game between two American colleges played under rules similar to the McGill/Harvard contest, which was won by Tufts. The rules included each side fielding 11 men at any given time, the ball was advanced by kicking or carrying it, and tackles of the ball carrier stopped play – actions of which have carried over to the modern version of football played today


title: College football

text: Harvard later challenged its closest rival, Yale, to which the Bulldogs accepted. The two teams agreed to play under a set of rules called the "Concessionary Rules", which involved Harvard conceding something to Yale's soccer and Yale conceding a great deal to Harvard's rugby. They decided to play with 15 players on each team. On November 13, 1875, Yale and Harvard played each other for the first time ever, where Harvard won 4–0. At the first The Game (as the annual contest between Harvard and Yale came to be named) the future "father of American football" Walter Camp was among the 2000 spectators in attendance. Walter, who would enroll at Yale the next year, was torn between an admiration for Harvard's style of play and the misery of the Yale defeat, and became determined to avenge Yale's defeat. Spectators from Princeton also carried the game back home, where it quickly became the most popular version of football.