title: Rick Stein

text: Stein has a brother, John, and a sister, Henrietta. He also has a half-brother, Jeremy, his mother's son from her first marriage. He is also the uncle of DJ and music producer Judge Jules.


title: Rick Stein

text: Stein is patron of the charities Padstow Youth Project, South West PESCA (Duchy Fish Quota Co.), the National Mission for Deep Sea Fishermen, the National Coastwatch Institution, the Dyslexia Research Trust, and The National Trust.


The 2022 United States House of Representatives elections in California were held on November 8, 2022, to elect representatives for the 52 seats in California (reduced from 53 in the redistricting cycle following the 2020 United States Census). This marked the first time in the state's history where it lost a seat.


title: 2022 United States House of Representatives elections in California

text: This was the second election using congressional districts drawn by the California Citizens Redistricting Commission (after 2012 following the 2010 census). The commission submitted the final maps to the California Secretary of State on December 27, 2021. These new districts are considered "enacted" as of December 27, 2021. However, there was a 90-day period that ended on March 27, 2022, for any referendum petition to be filed to prevent the maps from becoming effective. Even after becoming effective, these newly redrawn districts did not become official until the 2022 primary and general elections, and the new districts will not actually exist until the 2023 inaugurations.


text: Of the fifty-three incumbents, six retired. All remaining incumbents were re-elected, and five new representatives were elected, two of which were from newly drawn districts.


text: Republican Doug LaMalfa, who has represented the district since 2013, was re-elected with 57.0% of the vote in 2020. LaMalfa is running for re-election.


text: Democrat Jared Huffman, who has represented the district since 2013, was re-elected with 75.7% of the vote in 2020.


text: This seat is open after Democrat John Garamendi, who has represented the 3rd district since 2013, elected to run in the 8th district.


text: The boundaries of the district were redrawn during the 2020 redistricting cycle and incumbent Tom McClintock opted to run in the 5th district. Democrat Mike Thompson, who has represented the 5th district since 2013, was re-elected with 76.1% of the vote in 2020.


text: Due to redistricting, the incumbent changed from Democrat Mike Thompson to Republican Devin Nunes. Nunes initially ran for re-election, but resigned his seat on January 1, 2022, in order to become the CEO of Trump Media & Technology Group. After this, fellow Republican Tom McClintock switched to running in this district. McClintock, who has represented the 4th district since 2009, was re-elected with 55.9% of the vote in 2020.


text: Due to redistricting, 6th district incumbent Ami Bera and 7th district incumbent Doris Matsui, both Democrats, swapped districts. Bera, who has represented the 7th district since 2013, was re-elected with 56.6% of the vote in 2020.


text: Due to redistricting, 6th district incumbent Ami Bera and 7th district incumbent Doris Matsui, both Democrats, swapped districts. Matsui, who has represented the 6th district since 2013, was re-elected with 73.3% of the vote in 2020.


text: Due to redistricting, the incumbent changed from Republican Jay Obernolte to Democrat John Garamendi. Garamendi, who has represented the 3rd district since 2013, was re-elected with 54.7% of the vote in 2020. Garamendi is running for re-election.


text: Democrat Jerry McNerney, who has represented the district since 2013, was re-elected with 57.6% of the vote in 2020. McNerney decided to retire rather than seek re-election, and fellow Democrat Josh Harder then switched to run in this district.


text: Due to redistricting, the incumbent changed from Democrat Josh Harder to fellow Democrat Mark DeSaulnier. DeSaulnier, who has represented the 11th district since 2015, was re-elected with 73.0% of the vote in 2020. DeSaulnier is running for re-election.


text: Due to redistricting, the incumbent changed from Democrat Mark DeSaulnier to fellow Democrat Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi, who has represented the 12th district since 2013, was re-elected with 77.6% of the vote in 2020. Pelosi is running for re-election.


text: Due to redistricting, the incumbent changed from Democrat Nancy Pelosi to fellow Democrat Barbara Lee. Lee, who has represented the 13th district since 2013, was re-elected with 90.4% of the vote in 2020. Lee is running for re-election.


text: Due to redistricting, the incumbent changed from Democrat Barbara Lee to fellow Democrat Josh Harder. Harder, who has represented the 10th district since 2019, was re-elected with 55.2% of the vote in 2020. Harder is running for re-election in District 9, leaving this seat open. On December 2, the race was called for Duarte, leading with a margin of 584 raw votes.


text: Due to redistricting, 14th district incumbent Jackie Speier and 15th district incumbent Eric Swalwell, both Democrats, swapped districts. Swalwell, who has represented the 15th district since 2013, was re-elected with 70.9% of the vote in 2020.


text: Due to redistricting, 14th district incumbent Jackie Speier and 15th district incumbent Eric Swalwell, both Democrats, swapped districts. Jackie Speier, who has represented the 14th district since 2013, was re-elected with 79.3% of the vote in 2020. In November 2021, Speier announced that she would not seek reelection after her next term.


text: Due to redistricting, the incumbent changed from Democrat Jim Costa to fellow Democrat Anna Eshoo. Eshoo, who has represented the 18th district since 2013, was re-elected with 63.2% of the vote in 2020.


text: Democrat Ro Khanna, who has represented the district since 2017, was re-elected with 71.3% of the vote in 2020. Khanna is running for re-election.


text: Due to redistricting, the incumbent changed from Democrat Anna Eshoo to fellow Democrat Zoe Lofgren. Lofgren, who has represented the 19th district since 2013, was re-elected with 71.7% of the vote in 2020. Lofgren is running for re-election.


text: Due to redistricting, the incumbent changed from Democrat Zoe Lofgren to fellow Democrat Jimmy Panetta. Panetta, who has represented the 20th district since 2017, was re-elected with 76.8% of the vote in 2020.


text: Due to redistricting, the incumbent changed from Democrat Jimmy Panetta to Republicans Kevin McCarthy and Connie Conway. McCarthy, who has represented the 23rd district since 2013, was elected with 62.1% of the vote in 2020. Conway, who has represented the 22nd district since 2022, was elected with 62.1% of the vote in 2022. Conway, who was elected in a 2022 special election to replace Devin Nunes after his resignation to become CEO of Trump Media & Technology Group, declined to run for a full term.


text: Due to redistricting, the incumbent changed from Republican David Valadao to Democrat Jim Costa, who has represented the 16th district since 2013, was re-elected with 59.4% of the vote in 2020. Costa is running for re-election.


text: Due to redistricting, the incumbent changed from Republican Connie Conway to fellow Republican David Valadao. Conway replaced Devin Nunes, who resigned in December 2021 to become CEO of Trump Media & Technology Group, in a 2022 special election. Conway declined to run for reelection. Valadao, who has represented the 21st district since 2021, was elected with 50.4% of the vote in 2020. Valadao is running for re-election.


text: Due to redistricting, the incumbent changed from Republican Kevin McCarthy to fellow Republican Jay Obernolte. Obernolte, who has represented the 8th district since 2021, was elected with 56.1% of the vote in 2020.


text: Democrat Salud Carbajal, who has represented the district since 2017, was re-elected with 58.7% of the vote in 2020. Carbajal is running for re-election.


text: Due to redistricting, the incumbent changed from Republican Mike Garcia to Democrat Raul Ruiz. Ruiz, who has represented the 36th district since 2013, was re-elected with 60.3% of the vote in 2020.


text: Democrat Julia Brownley, who has represented the district since 2013, was re-elected with 60.6% of the vote in 2020.


text: The boundaries of the district were redrawn during the 2020 redistricting cycle and became effective on March 27, 2022, for the 2022 primary and general elections.


text: Due to redistricting, the incumbent changed from Democrat Judy Chu to Republican Mike Garcia. Garcia, who has represented the 25th district since 2020, was re-elected with 50.05% of the vote in 2020.


text: Due to redistricting, the incumbent changed from Democrat Adam Schiff to fellow Democrat Judy Chu. Chu, who has represented the 27th district since 2013, was re-elected with 69.8% of the vote in 2020.


text: Democrat Tony Cárdenas, who has represented the district since 2013, was re-elected with 56.6% of the vote in 2020.


text: Due to redistricting, the incumbent changed from Democrat Brad Sherman to fellow Democrat Adam Schiff. Schiff, who has represented the 28th district since 2013, was re-elected with 72.7% of the vote in 2020. Schiff is running for re-election.


text: Due to redistricting, the incumbent changed from Democrat Pete Aguilar to fellow Democrat Grace Napolitano. Napolitano, who has represented the 32nd district since 2013, was re-elected with 66.6% of the vote in 2020.


text: Due to redistricting, the incumbent changed from Democrat Grace Napolitano to fellow Democrat Brad Sherman. Sherman, who has represented the 30th district since 2013, was re-elected with 69.5% of the vote in 2020.


text: Due to redistricting, the incumbent changed from Democrat Ted Lieu to fellow Democrat Pete Aguilar. Aguilar, who has represented the 31st district since 2015, was re-elected with 61.3% of the vote in 2020.


text: Democrat Jimmy Gomez, who has represented the district since 2017, was re-elected with 53.0% of the vote in 2020.


text: Democrat Norma Torres, who has represented the district since 2015, was re-elected with 69.3% of the vote in 2020.


text: Due to redistricting, the incumbent changed from Democrat Raul Ruiz to fellow Democrat Ted Lieu, who has represented the 33rd district since 2015, was re-elected with 67.6% of the vote in 2020.


text: Democrat Karen Bass, who has represented the district since 2013, was re-elected with 85.9% of the vote in 2020. Bass announced that she would be retiring to run for mayor of Los Angeles.


text: Democrat Linda Sánchez, who has represented the district since 2013, was re-elected with 74.3% of the vote in 2020.


text: Due to redistricting, the incumbent changed from Republican Young Kim to Democrat Mark Takano, who has represented the 41st district since 2013. Takano was re-elected with 64.0% of the vote in 2020.


text: Due to redistricting, the incumbent changed from Democrat Lucille Roybal-Allard to Republican Young Kim. Kim, who has represented the 39th district since 2021, was elected with 50.6% of the vote in 2020. Kim is running for re-election. "The New York Times" has reported that Mahmood aired ads undermining Kim by only mentioning her primary opponent Greg Raths, as part of a Democratic strategy to support further-right Republican primary candidates to make for an easier opponent in general elections in November.


text: Due to redistricting, the incumbent changed from Democrat Mark Takano to Republican Ken Calvert. Calvert, who has represented the 42nd district since 2013, was re-elected with 57.1% of the vote in 2020.


text: Due to redistricting, the incumbent changed from Republican Ken Calvert to Democrats Lucille Roybal-Allard and Alan Lowenthal, whose districts were combined. Roybal-Allard, who has represented the 40th district since 2013, was re-elected with 72.7% of the vote in 2020. Lowenthal, who has represented the 47th district since 2013, was re-elected with 63.3% of the vote in 2020. Both Roybal-Allard and Lowenthal are retiring.


text: Democrat Maxine Waters, who has represented the district since 2013, was re-elected with 71.7% of the vote in 2020.


text: Democrat Nanette Barragán, who has represented the district since 2017, was re-elected with 67.8% of the vote in 2020.


text: Due to redistricting, the incumbent changed from Democrat Katie Porter to Republican Michelle Steel. Steel, who has represented the 48th district since 2021, was elected with 51.1% of the vote in 2020. Steel is running for re-election.


text: Democrat Lou Correa, who has represented the district since 2017, was re-elected with 68.8% of the vote in 2020.


text: Due to redistricting, the incumbent changed from Democrat Alan Lowenthal to fellow Democrat Katie Porter. Porter, who has represented the 45th district since 2019, was re-elected with 53.5% of the vote in 2020.


text: Due to redistricting, the incumbent changed from Republican Michelle Steel to fellow Republican Darrell Issa, who has represented the 50th district since 2021, was elected with 54.0% of the vote in 2020.


text: Democrat Mike Levin, who has represented the district since 2019, was re-elected with 53.1% of the vote in 2020. Levin is running for re-election.


text: Due to redistricting, the incumbent changed from Republican Darrell Issa to Democrat Scott Peters. Peters, who has represented the 52nd district since 2013, was re-elected with 61.6% of the vote in 2020.


text: Due to redistricting, the incumbent changed from Democrat Juan Vargas to fellow Democrat Sara Jacobs. Jacobs, who has represented the 53rd district since 2021, was elected with 59.5% of the vote in 2020.


text: Due to redistricting, the incumbent changed from Democrat Scott Peters to fellow Democrat Juan Vargas. Vargas, who has represented the 51st district since 2013, was re-elected with 68.3% of the vote in 2020.


title: Capucine

text: Capucine (born Germaine Hélène Irène Lefebvre, 6 January 1928 – 17 March 1990) was a French fashion model and actress known for her comedic roles in "The Pink Panther" (1963) and "What's New Pussycat?" (1965). She appeared in 36 films and 17 television productions between 1948 and 1990.


title: Capucine

text: Capucine was born Germaine Hélène Irène Lefebvre on 6 January 1928 in Saint-Raphaël, Var, France. She often confused the date of her birth by saying that she was born in 1931 or 1933, and most sources indicate those years. She attended school in Saumur, France, and attained a Bachelor of Arts degree in foreign languages.


title: Capucine

text: In 1945, at age 17, while riding in a carriage in Paris, Lefebvre was noticed by a commercial photographer. Adopting the French name of a flower, "Capucine" (nasturtium, "Tropaeolum"), she became a fashion model, working for the fashion houses Givenchy and Christian Dior.


title: Capucine

text: Capucine met Audrey Hepburn while modelling for Givenchy in Paris. They remained close friends for the rest of Capucine's life.


title: Capucine

text: Capucine made her film debut in Jean Cocteau's "The Eagle with Two Heads" (1948), in a small, unbilled role. She also appeared in Jacques Becker's "Rendezvous in July" (1949) and Robert Dhéry's "Crazy Show" (1949).


title: Capucine

text: After a break of a few years, Capucine appeared in "Mademoiselle from Paris" (1955) and "Frou-Frou" (1955).


title: Capucine

text: In 1957, film producer Charles K. Feldman spotted Capucine while she was modeling in New York City. Feldman put her under contract at $150 a week. He brought her to Hollywood to learn English and study acting under Gregory Ratoff. She took the stage name "Capucine", saying, "Two names are interesting and I hope one is interesting."


title: Capucine

text: She signed a seven-year contract with Columbia Pictures in 1958. After unsuccessfully auditioning for the role of Feathers in "Rio Bravo" (1959) she landed her first English-speaking role in the film "Song Without End" (1960), a biopic of Franz Liszt, where Capucine played Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein. Producer William Goetz said, "You can teach a girl to act, but nobody can teach her how to look like a princess. You've got to start with a girl who looks like a princess."


title: Capucine

text: "Every time I get in front of the camera, I think of it as an attractive man I am meeting for the first time", she said in 1960. "I find him demanding and aloof, so I must do all I can to interest him." "I got much better as we went on", she said. "As the scenes warmed up, so did I."


title: Capucine

text: Capucine followed this with "North to Alaska" (1960), a comedy which had been set up with her in mind by Feldman at 20th Century Fox. She played a French prostitute who becomes the love interest of John Wayne. Directed by Henry Hathaway, it was successful at the box office.


title: Capucine

text: Capucine returned to Europe to co star in "Le triomphe de Michel Strogoff" (1961) with Curd Jürgens, a sequel to "Michel Strogoff" (1956).


title: Capucine

text: Back in Hollywood, she had second billing in "Walk on the Wild Side" (1962), produced by Feldman, in which she portrayed a redeemed hooker. Co-star Laurence Harvey complained that Feldman cut his part to expand Capucine's role.


title: Capucine

text: She was then William Holden's love interest in "The Lion" (1962). During filming, Capucine began a romance with Holden, which led to the end of her romantic relationship with Feldman; however, the producer remained loyal professionally.


title: Capucine

text: Feldman announced he would put Capucine in "Mary Magdalene" and "Waltz of the Toreadors" but neither happened.


title: Capucine

text: Blake Edwards cast Capucine in "The Pink Panther", playing Inspector Clouseau's wife, who is having an affair with a jewel thief, played by David Niven. It was a huge hit, and led to a number of sequels. In 1964, Capucine said the directors she had learned most from were Edwards and Henry Hathaway.


title: Capucine

text: Capucine was reunited with Holden in "The 7th Dawn" (1964) produced by Feldman; it was a box-office disappointment. Another film she did for Feldman, the comedy "What's New Pussycat?" (1965), which costarred Sellers and Peter O'Toole, was far more successful; it was filmed entirely in France.


title: Capucine

text: Capucine was one of several European stars in "Sex Quartet" (1966) for Columbia (originally "The Queens"),) then Feldman put her in "The Honey Pot" (1967), directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. She was announced for Feldman's "Casino Royale", but did not appear in the film.


title: Capucine

text: Feldman died in May 1968, and Capucine's career never regained its former momentum. She inherited the rights to the book "Zandy" from his estate and sold them to the makers of "Zandy's Bride".


title: Capucine

text: Capucine had a support role in "Fräulein Doktor" (1968) and the lead in the Spanish thriller "The Exquisite Cadaver" (1969). She was in the supporting cast of "Fellini Satyricon" (1969). Fellini said "she had a face to launch a thousand ships... but she was born too late."


title: Capucine

text: In 1968, she told an Italian magazine she wished she didn't always have to be elegant, that she longed to play a "dishevelled woman", but "since the directors know I was a model, it is obvious that they can't see me as anything else."


title: Capucine

text: Dirk Bogarde suggested her for the role of Tadzio's mother in "Death in Venice" (1971), but Luchino Visconti turned her down, saying, "She has a horrible voice and too many teeth. She looks like a horse, a beautiful horse, I know that, I was a trainer. I know all about horses, but I don't want a horse."


title: Capucine

text: Capucine had a supporting role in the Western "Red Sun" (1971) and guest starred on "Search Control" (1972), her first TV series.


title: Capucine

text: She supported Jean-Paul Belmondo in "Incorrigible" (1975) and Richard Burton in "Jackpot", which was ultimately abandoned.


title: Capucine

text: She appeared on television in "Cinéma 16", and "La pêche miraculeuse" (1976), and had roles in "The Con Artists" (1976), "Per amore" (1976), "Ecco noi per esempio" (1977), "Nest of Vipers" (1978), "From Hell to Victory" (1979), "Atrocious Tales of Love and Death" (1979), "Neapolitan Mystery" (1979), "Arabian Adventure" (1979), "Jaguar Lives!" (1979), and "Martin Eden" (1979).


title: Capucine

text: Capucine appeared in episodes of "Orient Express" (1980), "Hart to Hart" (1982) and "Murder, She Wrote" (1985), as well as the 1986 miniseries "Sins".


title: Capucine

text: She went to Europe to make "Les invités" (1982), "Aphrodite" (1982), "Trail of the Pink Panther" (1982), and "Curse of the Pink Panther" (1983).


title: Capucine

text: Capucine appears in episodes of "Série noire", "Voglia di cantare", "Murder, She Wrote", "Honor Thy Father", "Sins", "Delirium" (1987), "My First Forty Years" (1987), "Gila and Rik" (1987), "Una verità come un'altra" (1989), "Quartier nègre" (1989), "Blaues Blut" (1990) and "Il giudice istruttore".


title: Capucine

text: Capucine met Pierre Trabaud on the set of "Rendez-vous" (1949) and they married the next year. The marriage lasted only eight months, and she never married again.


title: Capucine

text: She had a relationship with Charles K. Feldman, who produced her films "What's New Pussycat?", "The 7th Dawn", and "The Honey Pot." This affair ended when Capucine met William Holden, but she and Feldman remained friends until his death in 1968. He left her $75,000 ().


title: Capucine

text: Capucine met actor William Holden in the early 1960s. They starred in the films "The Lion" (1962) and "The 7th Dawn" (1964). Holden was married to Brenda Marshall, but the two began a two-year affair, which ended in part due to Holden's increasing alcoholism. After the affair ended, she and Holden remained friends until his death in 1981. In his will he left her $50,000 ().


title: Capucine

text: On 17 March 1990, at age 62, Capucine jumped to her death from her eighth-floor apartment in Lausanne, Vaud, Switzerland, where she had lived for 28 years, having reportedly suffered from illness and depression for some time. The police said an investigation left no doubt that she committed suicide. Neighbours said she had led a reclusive life with her three cats, hardly ever leaving her apartment and spending most of her time reading.


title: NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Award

text: The Bill Russell NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Award (formerly known as the NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Award) is an annual National Basketball Association (NBA) award given since the 1969 NBA Finals. The award is decided by a panel of eleven media members, who cast votes after the conclusion of the Finals. The person with the highest number of votes wins the award. The award was originally a black trophy with a gold basketball-shaped sphere at the top, similar to the Larry O'Brien Trophy, until a new trophy was introduced in 2005 to commemorate Bill Russell.


title: NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Award

text: Since its inception, the award has been given 54 times to 33 players. Michael Jordan is a record six-time award winner. LeBron James has won the award four times in his career, and Magic Johnson, Shaquille O'Neal, and Tim Duncan won three times each. Jordan and O'Neal are the only players to win the award in three consecutive seasons (Jordan accomplished the feat on two occasions). Johnson is the only rookie ever to win the award, as well as the youngest at 20 years and 276 days old. In 1985, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar became the oldest to win at 38 years and 54 days old. Andre Iguodala is the only winner to have not started every game in the series. In the 1969 finals, Jerry West, the first-ever awardee, is the only person to win the award while being on the losing team.


title: NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Award

text: Willis Reed, Abdul-Jabbar, Larry Bird, Hakeem Olajuwon, Kobe Bryant, Kawhi Leonard and Kevin Durant won the award twice. Olajuwon, Durant, Bryant, and James have won the award in two consecutive seasons. James is the only player to have won the award with three different teams, while he and Leonard are the only players to have won the award in both conferences. Johnson, Moses Malone, Durant, and Leonard are the only players to have been named Finals MVP in their first season with a team. Olajuwon of Nigeria (who became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1993), Tony Parker of France, Dirk Nowitzki of Germany and Giannis Antetokounmpo of Greece are the only international players to win the award. Duncan is an American citizen, but is considered an "international" player by the NBA because he was not born in one of the fifty states or Washington, D.C. Parker, Nowitzki and Antetokounmpo are the only winners to have been trained totally outside the U.S.; Olajuwon played college basketball at Houston and Duncan at Wake Forest. Cedric Maxwell and Chauncey Billups are the only Finals MVP winners eligible for the Hall of Fame who have not been voted in.


title: NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Award

text: On February 14, 2009, during the 2009 NBA All-Star Weekend in Phoenix, then-NBA Commissioner David Stern announced that the award would be renamed the "Bill Russell NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Award" in honor of 11-time NBA champion Bill Russell.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: LOT Polish Airlines, legally incorporated as Polskie Linie Lotnicze LOT S.A. (, "flight"), is the flag carrier of Poland. Established in 1928, LOT was a founding member of IATA and remains one of the world's oldest airlines in operation. With a fleet of 75 aircraft as of 2021, LOT Polish Airlines is the 18th largest operator in Europe with over 120 destinations across Europe, Asia and North America.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: The airline was founded on 29 December 1928 by the Polish government during the Second Polish Republic as a self-governing limited liability corporation, taking over existing domestic airlines Aerolot (founded in 1922) and Aero (founded in 1925), and began operations on 1 January 1929. The first aircraft used by LOT were Junkers F.13 and Fokker F.VII with the inaugural international service to Vienna, Austria, beginning on 2 August 1929.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: Most of the destinations originate from its hub at Warsaw Chopin Airport. Since 2018, LOT has maintained two long-haul routes from Budapest Ferenc Liszt International Airport in Hungary where it operates regularly scheduled flights to New York during summer season and Seoul all year round. LOT has been a member of Star Alliance since 2003.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: When the airline was founded in 1928, Poland's State Treasury had 86% shares in the line, with the rest belonging to the Province of Silesia and the city of Poznań. At the beginning of the 1930s, in addition to existing services from Warsaw to Kraków, Poznań, Gdańsk and Lwów, new service to Bydgoszcz and Katowice was introduced. In 1932, LOT began flying to Wilno. It was also at this point, in 1931, that LOT's well-renowned logo, the "Flying Crane" (designed by a visual artist from Warsaw, Tadeusz Gronowski, and still in use today) was picked as the winning entry of the airline's logo design competition.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: In the same year, the company's first multi-segment international flight along the route Warsaw – Lwów – Czerniowce – Bucharest was launched. In next years there followed services to Berlin, Athens, Helsinki, Budapest, including some waypoints. By 1939 the lines were extended to Beirut, Rome, Copenhagen, reaching of routes. The Douglas DC-2, Lockheed Model 10A Electra and Model 14H Super Electra joined the fleet in 1935, 1936 and 1938 respectively (During this period, LOT had 10 Lockheed 10, 10 Lockheed 14, 3 DC-2 and 1 Ju 52/3mge). Several Polish aircraft designs were tested, but only the single-engined PWS-24 airliner was acquired in any number. In 1934, after five years of operating under the LOT name, the airline received new head offices, technical facilities, hangars, workshops, and warehouses located at the new, modern Warsaw Okęcie Airport. This constituted a move from the airline's previous base at Pole Mokotowskie, as this airport had become impossible to operate safely due it gradually becoming absorbed into Warsaw's outlying urban and residential areas.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: In 1938 LOT changed its name, following the Polish spelling reform of that year from Polskie Linje Lotnicze 'LOT' to Polskie Linie Lotnicze 'LOT'. That same year, a well-publicised transatlantic test flight from Los Angeles via Buenos Aires, Natal, Dakar to Warsaw, aimed at judging the feasibility of introducing passenger service on the Poland-United States route, was successfully executed. There were plans to open services to London and Moscow, and even transatlantic service in 1940. The airline had carried 218,000 passengers before the servies were suspended after the outbreak of the Second World War on 1 September 1939 and during the following German occupation of Poland; most of LOT's aircraft were evacuated to Romania, two to Baltic states, and three L-14H to Great Britain. In 1939 there were 697 employees, including 25 pilots, most of which were evacuated along with the planes. 13 airliners that got to Romania were seized by the Romanian government. For the duration of the Second World War, the airline suspended operations.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: After the Soviet occupation of Poland, from August 1944 until December 1945 the Polish Air Force maintained basic transport in the country; from March 1945 there were regular routes maintained by Civil Aviation Department of the Air Force. On 10 March 1945 the Polish government recreated the LOT airline, as a state-owned enterprise (Przedsiębiorstwo Państwowe Polskie Linie Lotnicze 'LOT'), which would mainly fly Soviet-built aircraft, owing to the tensions of the Cold War and Poland being a member of the Warsaw Pact. In 1946, seven years after service was first suspended, the airline restarted its operations after receiving ten Soviet-built ex-Air Force Lisunov Li-2Ts, then further passenger Li-2Ps and nine Douglas C-47s. Both domestic and international services restarted that year, first to Berlin, Paris, Stockholm and Prague. In 1947 there were added routes to Bucharest, Budapest, Belgrad and Copenhagen.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: Five modern, although troublesome SE.161 Languedoc joined the fleet for a short period in 1947–1948, followed by five Ilyushin Il-12B in 1949; 13–20 Ilyushin Il-14s then followed in 1955–1957. After the end of Stalinism in Poland, few Western aircraft would be acquired; five Convair 240s in 1957 and three Vickers Viscounts in 1962 proved to be the last until the 1990s. After that, the composition of the airline's fleet shifted exclusively to Soviet-produced aircraft. Only in 1955 LOT inaugurated services to Moscow, being the centre of the Marxist–Leninist world, and to Vienna. Services to London and Zürich were not re-established until 1958, and to Rome until 1960.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: Nine Ilyushin Il-18 turboprop airliners were introduced in June 1961, leading to the establishment of routes to Africa and the Middle East, and in 1963 LOT expanded its routes to serve Cairo. In the 1970s there were added lines to Baghdad, Beirut, Benghazi, Damascus and Tunis. The Antonov An-24 was delivered from April 1966 (20 used, on domestic routes), followed by the first jet airliners Tupolev Tu-134 in November 1968 (which coincided with the opening of a new international terminal at Warsaw's Okęcie Airport). The Tu-134s were operated on European routes. The Ilyushin Il-62 long-range jet airliner inaugurate the first transatlantic routes in the history of Polish air transport to Toronto in 1972 as a charter flight and a regular flight to New York City in 1973. LOT began service on its first Far East destination – Bangkok via Dubai and Bombay in 1977.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: In 1977 the airline's current livery (despite occasional changes, notably in corporate typography) designed by Roman Duszek and Andrzej Zbrożek, with the large 'LOT' inscription in blue on the front fuselage, and a blue tailplane was introduced, the 1929-designed Tadeusz Gronowski logo, however, despite many changes in livery, was kept through the years, and to this day remains the same.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: In the Autumn of 1981, commercial air traffic in Poland neared collapse in the wake of the communist government's crackdown on dissenters in the country after the rise of the banned 'trade union' dissident Solidarity movement, and some Western airlines suspended their flights to Warsaw. With 13 December declaration of Martial Law that same year, all LOT connections were suspended. Charter flights to New York and Chicago resumed only in 1984, and eventually, regular flight connections were restored on 28 April 1985. Tupolev Tu-154 mid-range airliners were acquired, after the withdrawal of Il-18 and Tu-134 aircraft from LOT's fleet in the 1980s, and were deployed successively on most European and Middle East routes. In 1986 transatlantic charter flights also reached Detroit and Los Angeles.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: After the fall of the communist system in Poland in 1989 the fleet shifted back to Western aircraft, beginning with acquisitions of the Boeing 767–200 in April 1989, followed by the Boeing 767–300 in March 1990, ATR 72 in August 1991, Boeing 737–500 in December 1992 and finally the Boeing 737–400 in April 1993. From the mid-1980s to early 1990s LOT flew from Warsaw to Chicago, Edmonton, Montreal, Newark, New York City and Toronto. These routes were primarily inaugurated to serve the large Polish communities (Polonia) present in North America.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: LOT was among the first Central European airlines to operate American aircraft when the Boeing 767 was introduced; the 767s were used to operate LOT's longest-ever connection, to Singapore. By the end of 1989 LOT had achieved much: it had hosted that year's IATA congress and achieved a milestone annual load-factor of 2.3 million passengers carried over the year.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: In 1990 LOT's third Boeing 767–300 landed at Warsaw Chopin Airport and not long after Boeing 737 and ATR 72 aircraft were acquired for use on LOT's expanded route network, which began to include new international destinations such as Kyiv, Lviv, Minsk and Vilnius. Soon thereafter, in 1993, LOT began to expand its Western-European operations, inaugurating, in quick succession, flights to Oslo, Frankfurt and Düsseldorf; operations at Poland's other regional airports outside Warsaw were also duly expanded around this time.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: In 1994 the airline signed a codesharing agreement with American Airlines on flights to and from Warsaw as well as onward flights in the United States and Poland operated by both companies; flights to Thessaloniki, Zagreb and Nice were inaugurated, and according to an IATA report, in this year LOT had the youngest fleet of any airline in the world. After years of planning, in 1997 LOT set up a sister airline, EuroLOT, which, essentially operating as its parent airline's regional subsidiary, took over domestic flights. The airline was developed with the hope that it would increase transit passenger-flow through Warsaw's Chopin Airport, whilst at the same time providing capacity on routes with smaller load factors and play a part in developing LOT's reputation as the largest transit airline in Central and Eastern Europe. By 1999 LOT had purchased a number of small Embraer 145 regional jets in order to expand its short-haul fleet, and had, with the approval of the Minister of the State Treasury, begun a process of selling shares to the Swiss company SAirGroup Holding, this then led to the airline's incorporation into the then-nascent Qualiflyer Group.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: Expansion of LOT's route network continued in the early 2000s and the potential of the airline's hub at Warsaw Chopin Airport to become a major transit airport was realised with more and more success. In 2000 LOT took delivery of its largest-ever order of 11 aircraft and by 2001 had reached a milestone passengers-carried figure of 3 million customers in one year; such an expansion led to the reconstruction of much of LOT's ground infrastructure, and by 2002 a new central Warsaw head office was opened on Ul. 17 Stycznia. On 26 October 2003, LOT, after the collapse of the Qualiflyer Group, became the 14th member of the Star Alliance. By 2006 a new base of operations, with the reconstruction of Warsaw Chopin Airport, had opened, thus allowing LOT's full transit airline potential to be developed for the first time. The new airport is much larger than any previous airport in Poland. In that same year, Pope Benedict XVI returned to Rome on a LOT flight following his pilgrimage to Poland.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: LOT created low-cost arm Centralwings in 2004, however, the company was dissolved and reincorporated into LOT after just five years of operating due to its long-term unprofitability and LOT's wish to redeploy aircraft within its fleet.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: In 2008 LOT opened a new flight to Beijing, however, this lasted just a month, in the period before the Olympics. The reason for failure to continue this service was given as the need to route aircraft via an air corridor to the south of Kazakhstan (as LOT did not have permission for flights over Siberia from the Russian government) which was making the services too long and thus unprofitable.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: LOT started new services to Yerevan, Armenia, Beirut, Lebanon and resumed Tallinn, Estonia, Kaliningrad, Russia, Gothenburg, Sweden and Bratislava, Slovakia with its newly acquired Embraer aircraft in summer 2010, and in October of the same year LOT resumed service to Asia, with three weekly flights on the Warsaw – Hanoi route. In addition to this, new services to Tbilisi, Damascus and Cairo were inaugurated.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: In 2010 LOT cancelled flights, after 14 years of operation, between Kraków and the US destinations of Chicago and New York, citing profitability concerns and lack of demand. The last US-Kraków flight departed on 27 October 2010 from Chicago O'Hare. The aircraft previously used on this route were then re-deployed to serve LOT's Warsaw-Hanoi route. This route to Hanoi (the Vietnamese capital) was largely under-utilised by European carriers and has proved very successful for LOT in the beginning.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: On 31 May 2010, CEO of LOT Sebastian Mikosz stated that the airline will be replacing its fleet to meet a goal of one-third new by 2011. Replacement already started with Embraer E-Jets 175/170. For domestic expanded operations, LOT purchased Dash 8-Q400 over ATR 72-600 aircraft.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: On 5 February 2011, the new CEO of LOT, Marcin Piróg, announced that the airline was considering to open services to Baku, Sochi, Stuttgart, Oslo, Gothenburg, Dubai, Kuwait and Ostrava from its Warsaw hub in the near future. Previously planned flights to Donetsk in Ukraine had already been inaugurated, as had Tokyo, and the resumption of Beijing flights. This became feasible since the finalizing of an agreement on Siberian overflight permits for LOT by the Polish and Russian governments in November 2011. As a result of the new agreement, LOT received new take-off and landing slots at Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport. Although delayed from the original plans, LOT began flights to Tokyo on 13 January 2016, with flights three times per week.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: In 2010/11 LOT also announced its new 'East meets West' route expansion policy, which saw the airline add several new Asian destinations to its schedule over the coming years. The policy aimed to take advantage of LOT's perspectives as a transit airline and the substantial passenger growth seen on Europe-Asia flights in recent years. Also, in line with this policy LOT introduced premium economy class on all Boeing 787 aircraft. Additionally, lie-flat seats are available in business class and all of the airline's new long-haul aircraft have been fitted with Thales personal entertainment systems.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: In June 2012 LOT announced all services to New York would be centralized from Newark and JFK Terminal 4 to JFK Terminal 1 from October 2012. It would also enter into a codeshare agreement with JetBlue to increase the number of onward connections available to its customers.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: In July 2012 it was announced that a planned sale of a major stake in the airline to Turkish Airlines would not go ahead. The main problem was the inability of Turkish Airlines to own a majority stake as it is a non-European Union company.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: Amidst a restructuring plan which saw the airline return to profitability for the first time in seven years, a 22 June 2015 press conference revealed details about the airline's prospects. These include reinstating routes renounced as part of EU sanctions imposed following Polish government aid granted to ensure the airline's survival, as well as new long haul routes to Asia and North America.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: Air Lease Corporation confirmed on 13 October 2016, the placement of six Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft with LOT, and options to lease five further aircraft of the same type. Long haul plans saw the addition of further Boeing 787 aircraft, increasing the total to 16. The airline is currently evaluating the economics of future narrow body and wide body acquisitions to broaden expansion initiatives. The airline's CEO stated they are evaluating the Airbus A220 and Embraer E-Jet-E2 families, as well as the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and Airbus A350 XWB offerings.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: In May 2018, LOT Polish Airlines started scheduled flights from outside Poland beginning with long-haul routes to New York and Chicago from Budapest airport in Hungary. In May 2019, it started flying from Lithuanian capital Vilnius to London City airport and from Estonian capital Tallinn to Brussels and Stockholm two months later. The latter two flights were suspended in early 2020 due to coronavirus pandemic


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: On January 24, 2020, Owner of LOT, the Polish Aviation Group (Polska Grupa Lotnicza or PGL) announced that it would acquire Condor Flugdienst. On 2 April 2020 it was announced that the sale had fallen through.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: The company temporarily suspended operations on 15 March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and domestic Polish flights restarted only on 1 June 2020, while international flights were resumed on a very limited basis from 1 July 2020.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: In July 2021, LOT Polish Airlines recorded a net loss of US$365.2 million in 2020, with a loss on sales of $138.1 million.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: Currently, the airline is wholly owned by Polish Aviation Group (Polish: "Polska Grupa Lotnicza S. A."), a Polish state-owned holding company.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: LOT was intended to be privatised in 2011. Although advanced talks were undertaken with Turkish Airlines a deal failed to materialise. This was largely due to the inability of Turkish Airlines, as a non-EU airline, to buy a majority of the airline. LOT lost 145.5 million złote (PLN) in 2011, compared to a 163.1 million PLN loss in 2010.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: LOT saw a return to profitability in 2016, with profits of 183.5 million and more than 280 million PLN respectively. The profits led the then finance minister Mateusz Morawiecki to suggest they were a result of his government's policies. He also accused the previous Civic Platform government of leading the airline to either bankruptcy or "accelerated privatisation".


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: Polish Airlines LOT has a dense European network in addition to flights in Asia, the Middle East, and North America.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: With the delivery of new Boeing 787 long-haul aircraft in 2011/12, LOT introduced a new livery. This design was intended to retain the tradition and spirit of LOT with no major or radical changes to the livery applied to the airline's aircraft. The blue nose and broad cheat-line were removed; the 'POLSKIE LINIE LOTNICZE' title on each aircraft's starboard side was replaced with the words 'POLISH AIRLINES'. The tailplane's design was changed only slightly, with the colours of the traditional encircled crane logo being inverted and the circle becoming a more simple outline ring.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: Several Embraer aircraft have special advertising liveries, while one E-175 was repainted as a retrojet into the 1945 livery that was used with some modifications until the 1970s.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: Airliners featured all-natural metal silvery color, with a black crane logo on the tail, and a small black inscription: POLSKIE LINIE LOTNICZE „LOT" under or above the window line. Before 1939, there was also a rounded inscription: LOT above passenger doors (apart from Ju 52, which also differed in having black engine covers and nacelles).


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: After World War II, the aircraft mostly wore a similar all-natural metal scheme, with the airline name above the window line. In the late 1940s, the Polish white and red flag was added on a rudder. From the early 1950s, a thin blue cheatline was introduced below the window line, starting with a stylized bird in front. Some aircraft flew in military schemes (green and light blue or olive drab and grey).


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: This livery featured blue mid-level broad cheatline on the window line, with the fuselage a white colour above the cheatline and unpainted below. Early versions of this livery also featured thin blue stripes above and below the cheatline and a white tail, with small black crane logo on the fin and medium-size Polish flag on the rudder. Above the cheatline there was black inscription in italics: "POLSKIE LINIE LOTNICZE »LOT«". There was also a long black stylized crane below the cockpit on most aircraft. In the early 1960s, the scheme was modernized and featured the blue cheatline without upper and lower stripes, and a blue tail fin and rudder. The Polish flag was much larger on the tail, while the crane logo was above the flag, on a white circle. There was also another Polish flag on the cheatline, behind the cockpit. On Il-18s and Il-62s, the cheatline was narrower, below the window line.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: LOT's iconic livery was introduced in 1977 and has undergone no major changes. The livery is essentially a predominantly white scheme with elements of traditional aviation design incorporated. The latter elements were visible in the design of the LOT livery as an area of dark blue under the cockpit windscreen, the long cheat-line painted down the side of the fuselage and the large traditional logo which is emblazoned on the tailplane.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: Ilyushin Il-62 aircraft were named after famous Polish people, with the first-named "Mikołaj Kopernik". The five Boeing 767s LOT ordered from Boeing were named after Polish cities. The used and short term leased 767s LOT operated did not get names. This practise was not continued upon arrival of LOT's Boeing 787s and the introduction of the airline's updated livery.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: LOT uses Lufthansa's frequent-flyer program, called Miles & More. Miles & More members can earn miles on LOT flights and Star Alliance partner flights, as well as through LOT credit cards and purchases made through LOT Polish Airlines shops. Status within Miles & More is determined by miles flown during one calendar year with specific partners. Membership levels include Basic (no minimal threshold), Frequent Traveller (Silver, 35,000-mile threshold), Senator (Gold, 100,000-mile threshold), and HON Circle (Black, 600,000-mile threshold over two calendar years). All non-basic Miles & More status levels offer lounge access and executive bonus miles, with the higher levels offering more exclusive benefits.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: LOT operates, in cooperation with PPL (Polish State Airports), the 'Polonez' Business Lounge at Warsaw Chopin Airport. The lounge is accessible to anyone with a business class ticket for travel with LOT or any other Star Alliance member airline, and those who are members of a Star Alliance 'Gold' loyalty program (such as Miles & More Senator status) or the Polish State Airports authority's 'Good Start' program. Some examples of services offered to passengers include business conferencing facilities, internet access, workspace, local, national and foreign-language media (newspapers and television) and individual access to an Apple iPad. LOT also opened a Polonez Lounge at Budapest Ferenc Liszt International Airport in 2018.


title: LOT Polish Airlines

text: During the Cold War, when Europe was divided by the Iron Curtain, several LOT aircraft were hijacked and forced to land in a Western country, predominantly in West Germany and especially in West Berlin, because of it being situated like an island in the Eastern Bloc. The hijackers were usually not prosecuted there but could claim political asylum, along with all other passengers who wished to do so.


title: Old World monkey

text: Old World monkey is the common English name for a family of primates known taxonomically as the Cercopithecidae (). Twenty-four genera and 138 species are recognized, making it the largest primate family. Old World monkey genera include baboons (genus "Papio"), red colobus (genus "Piliocolobus") and macaques (genus "Macaca"). Common names for other Old World monkeys include the talapoin, guenon, colobus, douc (douc langur, genus "Pygathrix"), vervet, gelada, mangabey (a group of genera), langur, mandrill, surili ("Presbytis"), patas, and proboscis monkey. Phylogenetically, they are more closely related to apes than to New World monkeys. They diverged from a common ancestor of New World monkeys around 45 to 55 million years ago.


title: Old World monkey

text: The smallest Old World monkey is the talapoin, with a head and body 34–37 cm in length, and weighing between 0.7 and 1.3 kg. The largest is the male mandrill, around 70 cm in length, and weighing up to 50 kg. Old World monkeys have a variety of facial features; some have snouts, some are flat nosed, and many exhibit coloration. Most have tails, but they are not prehensile.


title: Old World monkey

text: Old World monkeys are native to Africa and Asia today, inhabiting numerous environments: tropical rain forests, savannas, shrublands, and mountainous terrain. They inhabited much of Europe in the past; today, the only survivors in Europe are the Barbary macaques of Gibraltar. Whether they are native to Gibraltar or were brought by humans is unknown.


title: Old World monkey

text: Some Old World monkeys are arboreal, such as the colobus monkeys; others are terrestrial, such as the baboons. Most are at least partially omnivorous, but all prefer plant matter, which forms the bulk of their diets. Most are highly opportunistic, primarily eating fruit, but also consuming almost any food items available, such as flowers, leaves, bulbs and rhizomes, insects, snails, small mammals, and garbage and handouts from humans.


title: Old World monkey

text: Two subfamilies are recognized, the Cercopithecinae, which are mainly African, but include the diverse genus of macaques, which are Asian and North African, and the Colobinae, which includes most of the Asian genera, but also the African colobus monkeys.


title: Old World monkey

text: The distinction between apes and monkeys is complicated by the traditional paraphyly of monkeys: Apes emerged as a sister group of Old World monkeys in the catarrhines, which are a sister group of New World monkeys. Therefore, cladistically, apes, catarrhines and related contemporary extinct groups, such as Parapithecidae, are monkeys as well, for any consistent definition of "monkey".


title: Old World monkey

text: "Old World monkey" may also legitimately be taken to be meant to include all the catarrhines, including apes and extinct species such as "Aegyptopithecus", in which case the apes, Cercopithecoidea and "Aegyptopithecus" as well as (under an even more expanded definition) even the Platyrrhini emerged within the Old World monkeys. Historically, monkeys from the "Old World" (Afro-Arabia), somehow drifted to the "New World" some 40 million years ago, forming the "New World monkeys" (platyrrhines). Apes would emerge later within the Afro-Arabia group.


title: Old World monkey

text: Old World monkeys are medium to large in size, and range from arboreal forms, such as the colobus monkeys, to fully terrestrial forms, such as the baboons. The smallest is the talapoin, with a head and body 34–37 cm in length, and weighing between 0.7 and 1.3 kilograms, while the largest is the male mandrill (the females of the species being significantly smaller), at around 70 cm in length, and weighing up to 50 kilograms.


title: Old World monkey

text: Most Old World monkeys have tails (the family name means "tailed ape"), unlike the tailless apes. The tails of Old World monkeys are not prehensile, unlike those of the New World monkeys (platyrrhines).


title: Old World monkey

text: The distinction of catarrhines from platyrrhines depends on the structure of the rhinarium, and the distinction of Old World monkeys from apes depends on dentition (the number of teeth is the same in both, but they are shaped differently). In platyrrhines, the nostrils face sideways, while in catarrhines, they face downward. Other distinctions include both a tubular ectotympanic (ear bone), and eight, not twelve, premolars in catarrhines, giving them a dental formula of:


title: Old World monkey

text: Several Old World monkeys have anatomical oddities. For example, the colobus monkeys have stubs for thumbs to assist with their arboreal movement, the proboscis monkey has an extraordinary nose, while the snub-nosed monkeys have almost no nose at all.


title: Old World monkey

text: The penis of the male mandrill is red and the scrotum is lilac; the face is also brightly colored. The coloration is more pronounced in dominant males.


title: Old World monkey

text: The Old World monkeys are native to Africa and Asia today, inhabiting numerous environments: tropical rain forests, savannas, shrublands, and mountainous terrain. They inhabited much of Europe during the Neogene period; today the only survivors in Europe are the Barbary macaques of Gibraltar.


title: Old World monkey

text: Most Old World monkeys are at least partially omnivorous, but all prefer plant matter, which forms the bulk of their diet. Leaf monkeys are the most vegetarian, subsisting primarily on leaves, and eating only a small number of insects, while the other species are highly opportunistic, primarily eating fruit, but also consuming almost any food items available, such as flowers, leaves, bulbs and rhizomes, insects, snails, and even small vertebrates. The Barbary macaque's diet consists mostly of leaves and roots, though it will also eat insects and uses cedar trees as a water source.


title: Old World monkey

text: Gestation in the Old World monkeys lasts between five and seven months. Births are usually single, although, as with humans, twins occur occasionally. The young are born relatively well-developed, and are able to cling onto their mother's fur with their hands from birth. Compared with most other mammals, they take a long time to reach sexual maturity, with four to six years being typical of most species.


title: Old World monkey

text: In most species, daughters remain with their mothers for life, so that the basic social group among Old World monkeys is a matrilineal troop. Males leave the group on reaching adolescence, and find a new troop to join. In many species, only a single adult male lives with each group, driving off all rivals, but others are more tolerant, establishing hierarchical relationships between dominant and subordinate males. Group sizes are highly variable, even within species, depending on the availability of food and other resources.


title: Religion in Egypt

text: Religion in Egypt controls many aspects of social life and is endorsed by law. The state religion of Egypt is Islam. Although estimates vary greatly in the absence of official statistics. Since the 2006 census religion has been excluded, and thus available statistics are estimates made by religious and non-governmental agencies. The country is majority Sunni Muslim (estimated to be 85-95% of the population), with the next largest religious group being Coptic Orthodox Christians (with estimates ranging from 5-15%). The exact numbers are subject to controversy, with Christians alleging that they have been systemically under-counted in existing censuses.


title: Religion in Egypt

text: Egypt hosts two major religious institutions. Al-Azhar Mosque, founded in 970 CE by the Fatimids as the first Islamic university in Egypt and the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria established in the middle of the 1st century by Saint Mark.


title: Religion in Egypt

text: In Egypt, Muslims and Christians share a common history, national identity, ethnicity, race, culture, and language.


title: Religion in Egypt

text: In 2002, under the Mubarak government, Coptic Christmas (January 7) was recognized as an official holiday, though Christians complain of being minimally represented in law enforcement, state security and public office, and of being discriminated against in the workforce on the basis of their religion.


title: Religion in Egypt

text: In 2010, based on the contested 2006 Census data, estimated that 94.9% of Egyptians are Muslims, 5.1% are Christians, and less than 1% are Jewish, Buddhists, or other religions. The share of Christians in the Egyptian population has according to official statistics been declining with the highest share reported in the past century being in 1927, when the official census put the percentage of Egyptian Christians at 8.3%. In each of the seven subsequent censuses, the percentage shrank, ending at 5.7% in 1996.


title: Religion in Egypt

text: However, most Christians refuted these figures, claiming they have been under-counted. Christians maintain that they represent up to 15% or even 25% of the Egyptian population. In 2017 state-owned newspaper Al Ahram claimed that the percentage of Christians ranged from 10 to 15%, similar to the range claimed by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.


title: Religion in Egypt

text: Recent self-identification surveys put the Christian percentage at around 10%, as found by Afrobarometer in 2016 (which estimated the country to be 10.3% Christian and 89.4% Muslim) and by Arab Barometer in 2019 (which estimated it to be 9.6% Christian and 90.3% Muslim).


title: Religion in Egypt

text: According to 2015 figures from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Sunni Muslims make up 90% of the population, with Christians making up the remaining 10%.<ref name="The world factbook/Egypt/">.</ref><ref name="U.S.Dept of State/Egypt"></ref><ref name="FCO/Egypt/"></ref><ref name="LOOKLEX Encyclopedia/Egypt/Religions&Peoples"></ref><ref name="msn encarta/Egypt"></ref> A significant number of Sunni Muslims follow native Sufi orders. There are reportedly close to fifty thousand Ahmadi Muslims in Egypt. Estimates of Egypt's Shia Twelvers and Ismaili community range from 800,000 to about two to three million members.


title: Religion in Egypt

text: Most Egyptian Christians belong to the native Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, an Oriental Orthodox Christian church. Other Christian denominations include Armenian Apostolic, Catholic, Maronite and Anglican. The Greek Orthodox Church of Alexandria (an Eastern Orthodox Church) has around 350,000 adherents. The most recent declarations, made by Pope Shenouda III and bishop Morkos of Shubra in 2008, claimed that the number of Orthodox Christians in Egypt was over 12 million. Other estimates made by church officials put this number at 16 million. The Coptic Orthodox Church claimed that these figures are based on regularly updated membership records. Protestant churches claim a membership of about 300,000 Egyptians, and the Coptic Catholic Church is estimated to have similar membership figures. These figures would put the percentage of Christians in Egypt between 10% and 20% of the total population.


title: Religion in Egypt

text: There is a small but historically significant non-immigrant population of the Baháʼí Faith, with estimates in 2008 placing the number at around 2,000 people, along with a far smaller community of Jews, with an estimated 13 adherents in 2014 (down from 80,000 prior to the 1953 dissolution of the monarchy and persecution during the decades long Arab–Israeli conflict).


title: Religion in Egypt

text: A varying number of Egyptians will openly identify as atheist and agnostic, since public expressions of irreligion risk harassment and legal sanctions; most sources estimate the number of Egyptian atheists who openly identify as such to be in the millions, see Atheism and agnosticism below.


title: Religion in Egypt

text: Freedom of belief and worship are formally recognized as absolute by the Egyptian Constitution under Article 64, but are effectively limited by government intervention and sectarian conflict. Some aspects of the country's laws are heavily founded on Islamic principles. Egyptian authorities only recognize Judaism, Islam and Christianity, allowing them public worship unlike other faiths. President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and other senior figures have emphasized religious tolerance. In 2019, Sisi's cabinet approved a number of churches. Authorities however, have often failed to sanction or take stringent action against mobs who have indulged in violence against Christians. While construction of mosques is freely allowed by the authorities without any intervention, they have sometimes let mob rule dictate that even registered churches be closed down. Christians have also been consistently targeted by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Contempt or blasphemy against a religion can be charged under section 98 (f) of the Egyptian Penal Code. Conversion from Islam to any other faith is not recognized officially, though issues have also occurred for those converting to Islam. The government also discriminates against Islamic religious minority groups, most notably Shi'a Muslims, who face open official discrimination, including being barred from admission to Al-Azhar University.


title: Religion in Egypt

text: In 2006 Egypt's Supreme Administrative Court made a clear legal distinction between "recognized religions" (i.e., Islam, Christianity, and Judaism) and all other religious beliefs. This ruling effectively delegitimizes and forbids practice of all but the three Abrahamic religions, and made it necessary for non-Abrahamic religious communities to either commit perjury or be denied Egyptian identification cards (see Egyptian identification card controversy), until a 2008 Cairo court case ruled that unrecognized religious minorities may obtain birth certificates and identification documents, so long as they omit their religion on court documents.


title: Religion in Egypt

text: While freedom of religion is guaranteed by the Egyptian constitution, according to Human Rights Watch, "Egyptians are able to convert to Islam generally without difficulty, but Muslims who convert to Christianity face difficulties in getting new identity papers and some have been arrested for allegedly forging such documents. The Coptic community, however, takes pains to prevent conversions from Christianity to Islam due to the ease with which Christians can often become Muslim. Public officials, being conservative themselves, intensify the complexity of the legal procedures required to recognize the religion change as required by law. Security agencies will sometimes claim that such conversions from Islam to Christianity (or occasionally vice versa) may stir social unrest, and thereby justify themselves in wrongfully detaining the subjects, insisting that they are simply taking steps to prevent likely social troubles from happening. In 2007, a Cairo administrative court denied 45 citizens the right to obtain identity papers documenting their reversion to Christianity after converting to Islam. However, in February 2008 the Supreme Administrative Court overturned the decision, allowing 12 citizens who had reverted to Christianity to re-list their religion on identity cards, but they will specify that they had adopted Islam for a brief period of time.


title: Religion in Egypt

text: Egyptian state laws allow Muslim men to marry Christian or Jewish women but do not allow Christian or Jewish men to marry Muslim women.


title: Religion in Egypt

text: Coptic Christians, being the largest religious minority in Egypt, are the most negatively affected by possibly discriminatory legislation. Copts in Egypt have faced increasing marginalization since the 1952 coup d'état led by Gamal Abdel Nasser. Until recently, the Christians in Egypt were required to obtain presidential approval for even minor repairs in churches. Although the law was eased in 2005 by handing down the authority of approval to the governors, Copts continue to face many obstacles in building new churches. These obstacles are not as much in building mosques.


title: Religion in Egypt

text: Muslims and Christians share a common history and national identity; however, at times religious tensions have arisen, and individual acts of prejudice and violence occur. The most significant was the 2000–2001 El Kosheh attacks, In which Muslims and Christians were involved in bloody, inter-religious clashes following a dispute between a Muslim and a Christian. "Twenty Christians and one Muslim were killed after violence broke out in the town of el-Kosheh, 440 kilometres (275 miles) south of Cairo." In 2005, in Kafr Salama village, Sharqiya governorate, an altercation between a Muslim and a Christian resulted in the death of the Muslim. Muslim villagers later attacked the Abu Sifin Church and several Christian homes and looted several shops before the authorities restored order. In 2006, one person, described by police as drunk and mad, attacked three churches in Alexandria, leaving one dead and from 5 to 16 injured, although the attacker was not linked to any organisation. On January 7, 2010, Muslim gunmen open fire on Christian worshipers leaving a church in Nag Hammadi resulting in the murder of nine Coptic Christians.


title: Religion in Egypt

text: On January 1, 2011, at least 21 people were killed and 83 injured when a car bomb exploded outside a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria. On 7 May 2011, a church was burnt down in Cairo. Then on 14 October 2012 in the absence of security officials 2 Muslims from a group were killed after they tried to kidnap a woman from a Christian family.


title: Religion in Egypt

text: In January 2013 when the Muslim Brotherhood was in power, Christian nonprofit organization Open Doors ranked Egypt as the 25th most difficult place to be a Christian, on their annual World Watch List.


title: Religion in Egypt

text: Islam has been the state religion in Egypt since the amendment of the second article of the Egyptian constitution in the year 1980, before which Egypt was recognized as a secular country. The vast majority of Egyptian Muslims are Sunni, with a small Mu'tazila, Shia Twelvers and Ismailism communities making up the remainder. A significant number of Sunni Egyptians also follow native Sufi orders. Egypt hosts the most important Sunni institution in the world, Al-Azhar University. It is the oldest Islamic institution of higher studies (founded around 970 CE), and is considered by many to be the oldest extant university in the world.


title: Religion in Egypt

text: The Shia Ismaili caliphate of the Fatimids made Egypt their center, and made Cairo their capital. Egypt's various social groups and classes apply Islam differently in their daily lives. The literate theologians of Al-Azhar generally reject the popular version of Islam practised by religious preachers and peasants in the countryside, which is heavily Sufi-influenced. Sufism has flourished in Egypt since Islam was first adopted. Most upper- and middle-class Muslims believed either that religious expression is a private matter for each individual or that Islam should play a more dominant role in public life. Islamic religious revival movements, whose appeal cuts across class lines, have been present in most cities and in many villages for a long time.


title: Religion in Egypt

text: According to the constitution of Egypt, any new legislation must at least implicitly agree with Islamic law. The mainstream Hanafi school of Sunni Islam is largely controlled by the state, through "Wizaret Al-Awkaf" (Ministry of Religious Affairs). "Al-Awkaf" controls all mosques and supervises Muslim clerics, but the Shafi'i and Maliki madhhabs were mixed together. Imams are trained in Imam vocational schools and at Al-Azhar. The ministry supports Sunni Islam and has commissions authorized to give "Fatwā" judgements on Islamic issues.


title: Religion in Egypt

text: Scholars estimate that Shia Muslims comprise 1 percent of the population. There are very small numbers of Dawoodi Bohra Muslims, Ahmadi Muslims, and expatriate members of various groups in Egypt


title: Religion in Egypt

text: The Coptic Christian population in Egypt is the largest Christian community in the Middle East and North Africa standing at between 5% – 15% of Egypt's population according to different statistics. About 95% of Egypt's Christians are members of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. an Oriental Orthodox Church, Traditionally believed to be established in the 1st century C.E. by Saint Mark. The Church is headed by the Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, attests to Egypt's strong Christian heritage. It has a followers of approximately 10 million Christians worldwide.


title: Religion in Egypt

text: Other native Egyptian Christians are adherents of the Coptic Catholic Church, the Coptic Evangelical Church and various Coptic Protestant denominations. Non-native Christian communities are largely found in the urban regions of Alexandria and Cairo, and are members of the Greek Orthodox Church of Alexandria, the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Latin Catholic Church, the Episcopal/Anglican Province of Alexandria, the Maronite Church, the Armenian Catholic Church, the Chaldean Catholic Church, the Syriac Catholic Church, or the Syriac Orthodox Church.


title: Religion in Egypt

text: Before 1956 and according to the 1948 census there were 65,639 Egyptian Jews, including Karaites. Jews participated in all aspects of Egypt's social, economic and political life; one of the most ardent Egyptian nationalists, Yaqub Sanu' (Abu Naddara), was Jewish, as were the musician Dawoud Husni, popular singer Leila Mourad and filmmaker Togo Mizrahi. For a while, Jews from across the Ottoman Empire and Europe were attracted to Egypt due to the relative harmony that characterized the local religious landscape in the 19th and early 20th centuries. After the 1956 Suez Crisis, a great number of Jews were expelled by Gamal Abdel Nasser. Their Egyptian citizenship was revoked and their properties were confiscated. A steady stream of emigration of Egyptian Jews followed, reaching a peak after the Six-Day War with Israel in 1967. As of mid-2016, there were a total of 6 Jews remaining in Cairo, including their spiritual leader, Magda Tania Haroun, all women over the age of 65. There are a further 12 Jews in the city of Alexandria, whose spiritual leader is Ben Youssef Gaon.


title: Religion in Egypt

text: The Ahmadiyya movement in Egypt, which numbers up to 7,000 to 50,000 adherents in the country, was established in 1922 but has seen an increase in hostility and government repression as of the 21st century. The Al-Azhar University has denounced the Ahmadis and Ahmadis have been hounded by police along with other Muslim groups deemed to be deviant under Egypt's defamation laws. On 15 March 2010, nine Ahmadis were detained due to their adherence to the movement.


title: Religion in Egypt

text: In 1925, the Kingdom of Egypt became the first Islamic state to legally recognize the Baháʼísm Faith as an independent religion apart from Islam. The state-sanctioned persecution of Baháʼís started to emerge after the 1953 dissolution of the monarchy, culminating in Law 263 in 1960, banning all Baháʼí institutions and community activities in Egypt. Reports in 2006 revealed that, as followers of the Baháʼí Faith had difficulty obtaining documentation from government authorities, and police regularly detain people who do not have correct documentation, some Baháʼís frequently stayed home to avoid possible arrest. In 2008 a court case allowed Baháʼís to obtain birth certificates and identification documents, so long as they omit their religion on court documents.


title: Religion in Egypt

text: Informal estimates about the Baháʼí population in Egypt suggest that, in 2006, there were approximately 2,000 Baháʼís resident in Egypt, though other estimates go as high as 6,900 adherents in 2010.


title: Religion in Egypt

text: Since their faith is not officially recognized by the state, they were not allowed to use it on their national identity cards. Without valid identity cards Baháʼís encounter difficulty registering their children in school, opening bank accounts, and establishing businesses. On 16 December 2006, after only one hearing, the High Court of Egypt ruled against the Baháʼís, stating that the government would not recognize their religion in official identification cards. The ruling left Baháʼís unable to obtain ID cards, birth certificates, or death certificates. However, on January 29, 2008 Cairo's court of Administrative Justice, ruling on two related court cases, ruled in favour of the Baháʼís, allowing them to obtain birth certificates and identification documents, so long as they omit their religion on court documents. The ruling accepted the compromise solution offered by the Baháʼís, allowing for them to obtain identification papers without the Baháʼí Faith being officially recognized.


title: Religion in Egypt

text: During and since the 2011 Egyptian revolution tensions have remained high, including homes being burnt, though Baháʼís made ongoing efforts to contribute to the dialog. Since 2011 Baháʼís remain concerned, noting such things as a 2012 statement by a Salafi spokesman that "We will prosecute the Bahai's on charge of treason".


title: Religion in Egypt

text: It is difficult to quantify number of atheist or agnostic Egyptians due to social stigma against publicly identifying as non-religious and a lack of official statistics. Public statements deemed critical of Islam or Christianity can be tried under the country's blasphemy law. Outspoken atheists, like Alber Saber, have been convicted under this law. Blasphemy cases are not initiated by the general prosecutor, and only occur if a citizen takes the step of suing the person engaging in blasphemy, a procedure similar to Antragsdelikt in civil law legal systems. In 2000, an openly atheist Egyptian writer, who called for the establishment of a local association for atheists, was tried on charges of insulting Islam in four of his books.


title: Religion in Egypt

text: According to the 2020 US report on international religious freedom there is no reliable estimates of the number of atheists in Egypt. A study at the University of Kent, citing a 2018 survey by Arab Barometer, stated that around 11% of Egyptians identified themselves as not religious. According to the same Arab Barometer survey Wave V only 0.1% of Egyptians said they were Atheist while 9.6% said they were Christian and 90.4% said they were Muslim In the same Arab Barometer survey, about 20% of young Egyptians described themselves as not religious. Absent official figures, sources consistently report that the number is increasing steadily. Egyptian media has since 2011 reported increases in the number of nonbelievers and atheists publicly coming out; however, atheism or skepticism is not a recent phenomenon in Egypt. Despite the lack of clarity with regard to absolute numbers, there is a noticeable increase in young Egyptians coming out for nonbelieving and publicly testifying they have left the faith, especially on the internet. Many Egyptian irreligious/atheist intellectuals encourage irreligious Egyptians and Egyptian atheists to speak up and come out of the closet, a trend which is visible across both Islam and Christianity, and involves both Egyptian men and women.


title: Religion in Egypt

text: Discrimination against atheists in Egypt is mainly the result of conservative social traditions and the religious establishments in the country, as the laws and policies in Egypt protect religious freedom but punish those who ridicule or insult the Abrahamic religions by words or writing, whereas insulting other faiths like Buddhism or Hinduism is not punishable by Egyptian law but insulting Islam, Christianity, or Judaism is. Atheists or irreligious people cannot change their official religious status, thus statistically they are counted as followers of their parent's religion, whether it is Islam or Christianity.


title: Religion in Egypt

text: In a 2011 Pew Research poll of 1,798 Muslims in Egypt, 63% of those surveyed supported "the death penalty for people who leave the Muslim religion" However, no such punishment actually exists in the country. In January 2018 the head of the parliament's religious committee, Amr Hamroush, suggested a bill to make atheism illegal, stating that "it [atheism] must be criminalised and categorised as contempt of religion because atheists have no doctrine and try to insult the Abrahamic religions". In 2014 the Ministry of Youth and the Ministry of Awqaf announced a joint strategy to combat the spread of what they categorized as "harmful ideas" among the nation's youth, including atheism. Despite hostility towards them, atheists in Egypt have become increasingly vocal online since the Egyptian revolution of 2011 and particularly after the ouster of Morsi in 2013.


title: Sodder children disappearance

text: On Christmas Eve, December 24, 1945, a fire destroyed the Sodder residence in Fayetteville, West Virginia, United States. At the time, it was occupied by George Sodder, his wife Jennie, and nine of their ten children. During the fire, George, Jennie, and four of the nine children escaped. The bodies of the other five children have never been found. The surviving Sodder family believed for the rest of their lives that the five missing children survived.


title: Sodder children disappearance

text: The Sodders never rebuilt the house, instead converting the site into a memorial garden to the lost children. In the 1950s, as they came to doubt that the children had perished, the family put up a billboard at the site along State Route 16 with pictures of the five, offering a reward for information that would bring closure to the case. It remained standing until shortly after Jennie Sodder's death in 1989.


title: Sodder children disappearance

text: In support of their belief that the children survived, the Sodders had pointed to a number of unusual circumstances before and during the fire. George disputed the Fayetteville fire department's finding that the blaze was electrical in origin, noting that he had recently had the house rewired and inspected. George and his wife suspected arson, leading to theories that the children had been taken by the Sicilian Mafia, perhaps in retaliation for George's outspoken criticism of the fascist government of his native Italy.


title: Sodder children disappearance

text: State and federal efforts to investigate the case further in the early 1950s yielded no new information. The family did, however, later receive what may have been a picture of one of the boys as an adult during the 1960s. The last surviving daughter, along with their grandchildren, continued to publicize the case in the 21st century in the media and online.


title: Sodder children disappearance

text: George Sodder was born with the name Giorgio Soddu in Tula, Sardinia, Italy, in 1895. He immigrated to the United States 13 years later, with an older brother who went back home as soon as both boys had cleared customs at Ellis Island. For the rest of his life George, as he came to be known, would not talk much about why he had left his homeland.


title: Sodder children disappearance

text: Sodder eventually found work on the railroads in Pennsylvania, carrying water and other supplies to workers. After a few years he took more permanent work as a driver in Smithers, West Virginia. He then started his own trucking company, initially hauling fill dirt to construction sites and later hauling coal mined in the region. Jennie Cipriani, a storekeeper's daughter in Smithers who had also emigrated from Italy in her childhood, became George's wife.


title: Sodder children disappearance

text: The Sodders settled outside nearby Fayetteville, which had a large population of Italian immigrants, in a two-story timber frame house north of town. In 1923, they had the first of their 10 children. George's business prospered, and they became "one of the most respected middle-class families around" in the words of one local official. However, George had strong opinions about many subjects and was not shy about expressing them, sometimes alienating people. In particular, his strident opposition to Italian dictator Benito Mussolini had led to some strong arguments with other members of the immigrant community.


title: Sodder children disappearance

text: The last of the Sodder children, Sylvia, was born in 1942. By then, their second-oldest son Joe (21) had left home to serve in the military during World War II. The following year, Mussolini was deposed and executed. However, George's criticism of the late dictator had left some hard feelings. In October 1945, a visiting life insurance salesman, after being rebuffed, warned George that his house "[would go] up in smoke ... and your children are going to be destroyed", attributing this all to "the dirty remarks you have been making about Mussolini." Another visitor to the house, ostensibly seeking work, took the occasion to go around to the back and warned George that a pair of fuse boxes would "cause a fire someday." George was puzzled by the observation, since he had just had the house rewired when an electric stove was installed, and the local electric company had said afterwards it was safe. In the weeks before Christmas that year, George's older sons had also noticed a strange car parked along the main highway through town, its occupants watching the younger Sodder children as they returned from school.


title: Sodder children disappearance

text: The Sodder family celebrated on Christmas Eve 1945. Marion (19), the oldest daughter, had been working at a dime store in downtown Fayetteville, and she surprised three of her younger sisters—Martha (12), Jennie (8), and Betty (5)—with new toys she had bought for them as gifts. The younger children were so excited that they asked their mother if they could stay up past what would have been their usual bedtime.


title: Sodder children disappearance

text: At 10 p.m., Jennie told them they could stay up a little later, as long as the two oldest boys who were still awake, 14-year-old Maurice and his 9-year-old brother Louis, remembered to put the cows in and feed the chickens before going to bed themselves. George and the two oldest boys, John (22) and George Jr. (16), who had spent the day working with their father, were already asleep. After reminding the children of those remaining chores, she took Sylvia (2) upstairs with her and they went to bed together.


title: Sodder children disappearance

text: The telephone rang at 12:30 a.m. Jennie woke and went downstairs to answer it. The caller was a woman whose voice she did not recognize, asking for a name she was not familiar with, with the sound of laughter and clinking glasses in the background. Jennie told the caller she had reached a wrong number, later recalling the woman's "weird laugh". She hung up and returned to bed. As she did, she noticed that the lights were still on and the curtains were not drawn, two things the children normally attended to when they stayed up later than their parents. Marion had fallen asleep on the living room couch, so Jennie assumed the other children who had stayed up later had gone back up to the attic where they slept. She closed the curtains, turned out the lights, and returned to bed.


title: Sodder children disappearance

text: At 1 a.m., Jennie was again awakened by the sound of an object hitting the house's roof with a loud bang, then a rolling noise. After hearing nothing further, she went back to sleep. After another half hour she woke up again, smelling smoke. When she got up again she found that the room George used for his office was on fire, around the telephone line and fuse box. Jennie woke him and he in turn woke his older sons.


title: Sodder children disappearance

text: Both parents and four of their children—Marion, Sylvia, John and George Jr—escaped the house. They frantically yelled to the children upstairs but heard no response; they could not go up there as the stairway itself was already aflame. John said in his first police interview after the fire that he went up to the attic to alert his siblings sleeping there, though he later changed his story to say that he only called up there and did not actually see them.


title: Sodder children disappearance

text: Efforts to find aid and rescue the children were unexpectedly complicated. The phone did not work, so Marion ran to a neighbor's house to call the Fayetteville fire department. A driver on the nearby road had also seen the flames and called from a nearby tavern; they too were unsuccessful either because they could not reach the operator or because the phone there turned out to be broken. Either the neighbor or the passing motorist was eventually successful in reaching the fire department from another phone in the center of town.


title: Sodder children disappearance

text: George, barefoot, climbed the house's outside wall and broke open an attic window, cutting his arm in the process. He and his sons intended to use a ladder to the attic to rescue the other children, but it was not in its usual spot resting against the house and could not be found anywhere nearby. A water barrel that could have been used to extinguish the fire was frozen solid. George then tried to pull both of the trucks he used in his business up to the house and use them to climb to the attic window, but neither of them would start despite having worked perfectly during the previous day.


title: Sodder children disappearance

text: Frustrated, the six Sodders who had escaped had no choice but to watch the house burn down and collapse over the next 45 minutes. They assumed the other five children had perished in the blaze. The fire department, low on manpower due to the war and relying on individual firefighters to call each other, did not respond until later that morning. Chief F.J. Morris said the next day that the already slow response was further hampered by his inability to drive the fire truck, requiring that he wait until someone who could drive was available.


title: Sodder children disappearance

text: The firefighters, one of whom was a brother of Jennie's, could do little but look through the ashes that were left in the Sodders' basement. By 10 a.m., Morris told the Sodders that they had not found any bones, as might have been expected if the other children had been in the house as it burned. According to another account, they did find a few bone fragments and internal organs, but chose not to tell the family; it has also been noted by modern fire professionals that their search was cursory at best. Nevertheless, Morris believed that the five children unaccounted for had died in the fire, suggesting it had been hot enough to burn their bodies completely.


title: Sodder children disappearance

text: Morris told George to leave the site undisturbed so that the state fire marshal's office could conduct a more thorough investigation. However, after four days, George and his wife could not bear the sight anymore, so he bulldozed of dirt over the site with the intention of converting it to a memorial garden for the lost children. The local coroner convened an inquest the next day, which held that the fire was an accident caused by "faulty wiring". Among the jurors was the man who had threatened George that his house would be burned down and his children "destroyed" in retribution for his anti-Mussolini remarks.


title: Sodder children disappearance

text: Death certificates for the five children were issued December 30. The local newspaper contradicted itself, stating that all the bodies had been found, but then later in the same story reporting that only part of one body was recovered. George and Jennie were too grief-stricken to attend the funeral on January 2, 1946, although their surviving children did.


title: Sodder children disappearance

text: Not long afterward, as they began to rebuild their lives, the Sodder family started to question all the official findings about the fire. They wondered why, if it had been caused by an electrical problem, the family's Christmas lights had remained on throughout the fire's early stages, when the power should have gone out. Then they found the ladder that had been missing from the side of the house on the night of the fire at the bottom of an embankment away.


title: Sodder children disappearance

text: A telephone repairman told the Sodders that the house's phone line had not been burned through in the fire, as they had initially thought, but cut by someone who had been willing and able to climb up the pole and reach away from it to do so. A man whom neighbors had seen stealing a block and tackle from the property around the time of the fire was identified and arrested. He admitted to the theft, and claimed he had been the one who cut the phone line, thinking it was a power line, but denied having anything to do with the fire. However, no record identifying the suspect exists, and why he would have wanted to cut any utility lines to the Sodder house while stealing the block and tackle has never been explained. Jennie said in 1968 that if he had cut the power line, she and her husband, along with their other four children, would never have been able to make it out of the house.


title: Sodder children disappearance

text: Jennie also had trouble accepting Morris's belief that all traces of the children's bodies had been burned completely in the fire. Many of the household appliances had been found, still recognizable, in the ash, along with fragments of the tin roof. She contrasted the results of the fire with a newspaper account of a similar house fire that she read around the same time that killed a family of seven; skeletal remains of all the victims were reported to have been found in that case. Jennie burned small piles of animal bones to see if they would be completely consumed; none ever were. An employee of a local crematorium she contacted told her that human bones remain even after bodies are burned at for two hours, far longer and hotter than the house fire could have been.


title: Sodder children disappearance

text: The Sodders' trucks' failure to start was also considered. George believed they had been tampered with, perhaps by the same man who stole the block and tackle and cut the phone line. However, one of George's sons-in-law told the "Charleston Gazette-Mail" in 2013 that he had come to believe that Sodder and his sons might have, in their haste to start the trucks, flooded the engines.


title: Sodder children disappearance

text: Some accounts have suggested the wrong-number phone call to the Sodder house might have also somehow been connected to the fire. However, investigators later located the woman who had made the call. She confirmed it had been a wrong number on her part.


title: Sodder children disappearance

text: As spring approached, the Sodders, as they had said they would, planted flowers in the soil bulldozed over the house. Jennie tended it carefully for the rest of her life. However, further developments in early 1946 reinforced the family's belief that the children they were memorializing might, in fact, be alive somewhere.


title: Sodder children disappearance

text: Evidence soon emerged indicating that the fire had not started in the electrical fault and was instead set deliberately. The driver of a bus that passed through Fayetteville late Christmas Eve said he had seen some people throwing "balls of fire" at the house. A few months later, when the snow had melted, Sylvia found a small, hard, dark-green, rubber ball-like object in the brush nearby. George, recalling his wife's account of a loud thump on the roof before the fire, said it looked like a "pineapple bomb" hand grenade or some other incendiary device used in combat. The family later claimed that, contrary to the fire marshal's conclusion, the fire had started on the roof, although by then there was no way to prove it.


title: Sodder children disappearance

text: Other witnesses claimed to have seen the missing Sodder children themselves. One woman who had been watching the fire from the road said she had seen some of them peering out of a passing car while the house was burning. Another woman at a rest stop between Fayetteville and Charleston said she had served them breakfast the next morning, and noted the presence of a car with Florida license plates in the rest stop's parking lot as well.


title: Sodder children disappearance

text: The Sodders hired a private investigator named C.C. Tinsley from the nearby town of Gauley Bridge to look into the case. Tinsley informed the family that the insurance salesman who had threatened George over his anti-Mussolini sentiments had been on the coroner's jury that ruled the fire an accident. He also learned of rumors around Fayetteville that despite his report to the Sodders that no remains had been found in the ashes, Morris had found a heart which he later packed into a metal box and secretly buried.


title: Sodder children disappearance

text: Morris had apparently confessed this to a local minister, who in turn confirmed it to George. George and Tinsley went to Morris and confronted him with this news. Morris agreed to show the two where he had buried the metal box and they dug it up. They took what they found inside the box to a local funeral director, who after examining it told them it was in reality fresh beef liver that had never been exposed to fire. Later, more rumors circulated around Fayetteville—that Morris had afterwards admitted the box with the liver had indeed not come from the fire originally; he had supposedly placed it there in the hope that the Sodders would find it and be satisfied that the missing children had indeed died in the fire.


title: Sodder children disappearance

text: On one occasion, George saw a magazine photo of a group of young ballet dancers in New York City, one of whom looked like his missing daughter Betty. He drove all the way to the girl's school, where his repeated demands to see the girl himself were refused.


title: Sodder children disappearance

text: George also tried to interest the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in investigating what he considered a kidnapping. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover personally responded to his letters: "Although I would like to be of service, the matter related appears to be of local character and does not come within the investigative jurisdiction of this bureau." If the local authorities requested the bureau's assistance, he added, he would of course direct agents to assist, but the Fayetteville police and fire departments declined to do so.


title: Sodder children disappearance

text: In August 1949, George was able to persuade Oscar Hunter, a Washington, D.C. pathologist, to supervise a new search through the dirt at the house site. After a very thorough search, artifacts including a dictionary that had belonged to the children and some coins were found. Several small bone fragments were unearthed, determined to have been human vertebrae. The bone fragments were sent to Marshall T. Newman, a specialist at the Smithsonian Institution. They were confirmed to be lumbar vertebrae, all from the same person. "Since the transverse recesses are fused, the age of this individual at death should have been 16 or 17 years", Newman's report said. "The top limit of age should be about 22 since the centra, which normally fuse at 23, are still unfused". Thus, given this age range, it was not very likely that these bones were from any of the five missing children, since the oldest, Maurice, had been 14 at the time (although the report allowed that vertebrae of a boy his age sometimes were advanced enough to appear to be at the lower end of the range).


title: Sodder children disappearance

text: Newman added that the bone showed no sign of exposure to flame. Further, he agreed that it was "very strange" that those bones were the only ones found, since a wood fire of such short duration should have left full skeletons of all of the children behind. The report concluded that the vertebrae had, instead, most likely come from the dirt that George had used to bulldoze the site. Later, Tinsley supposedly confirmed that the bone fragments had come from a cemetery in nearby Mount Hope, but could not explain why they had been taken from there or how they came to be at the fire site. The Smithsonian returned the bone fragments to George in September 1949, according to its records; their current location is unknown.


title: Sodder children disappearance

text: The investigation and its findings attracted national attention, and the West Virginia Legislature held two hearings on the case in 1950. Afterwards, however, Governor Okey L. Patteson and state police superintendent W.E. Burchett told the Sodders the case was "hopeless" and closed it at the state level. The FBI decided it had jurisdiction as a possible interstate kidnapping, but dropped the case after two years of following fruitless leads.