title: Microeconomics

text: For a given market of a commodity, demand is the relation of the quantity that all buyers would be prepared to purchase at each unit price of the good. Demand is often represented by a table or a graph showing price and quantity demanded (as in the figure). Demand theory describes individual consumers as rationally choosing the most preferred quantity of each good, given income, prices, tastes, etc. A term for this is "constrained utility maximization" (with income and wealth as the constraints on demand). Here, utility refers to the hypothesized relation of each individual consumer for ranking different commodity bundles as more or less preferred.


title: Microeconomics

text: The law of demand states that, in general, price and quantity demanded in a given market are inversely related. That is, the higher the price of a product, the less of it people would be prepared to buy (other things unchanged). As the price of a commodity falls, consumers move toward it from relatively more expensive goods (the substitution effect). In addition, purchasing power from the price decline increases ability to buy (the income effect). Other factors can change demand; for example an increase in income will shift the demand curve for a normal good outward relative to the origin, as in the figure. All determinants are predominantly taken as constant factors of demand and supply.


title: Microeconomics

text: "Supply" is the relation between the price of a good and the quantity available for sale at that price. It may be represented as a table or graph relating price and quantity supplied. Producers, for example business firms, are hypothesized to be "profit maximizers", meaning that they attempt to produce and supply the amount of goods that will bring them the highest profit. Supply is typically represented as a function relating price and quantity, if other factors are unchanged.


title: Microeconomics

text: That is, the higher the price at which the good can be sold, the more of it producers will supply, as in the figure. The higher price makes it profitable to increase production. Just as on the demand side, the position of the supply can shift, say from a change in the price of a productive input or a technical improvement. The "Law of Supply" states that, in general, a rise in price leads to an expansion in supply and a fall in price leads to a contraction in supply. Here as well, the determinants of supply, such as price of substitutes, cost of production, technology applied and various factors of inputs of production are all taken to be constant for a specific time period of evaluation of supply.


title: Microeconomics

text: Market equilibrium occurs where quantity supplied equals quantity demanded, the intersection of the supply and demand curves in the figure above. At a price below equilibrium, there is a shortage of quantity supplied compared to quantity demanded. This is posited to bid the price up. At a price above equilibrium, there is a surplus of quantity supplied compared to quantity demanded. This pushes the price down. The model of supply and demand predicts that for given supply and demand curves, price and quantity will stabilize at the price that makes quantity supplied equal to quantity demanded. Similarly, demand-and-supply theory predicts a new price-quantity combination from a shift in demand (as to the figure), or in supply.


title: Microeconomics

text: For a given quantity of a consumer good, the point on the demand curve indicates the value, or marginal utility, to consumers for that unit. It measures what the consumer would be prepared to pay for that unit. The corresponding point on the supply curve measures marginal cost, the increase in total cost to the supplier for the corresponding unit of the good. The price in equilibrium is determined by supply and demand. In a perfectly competitive market, supply and demand equate marginal cost and marginal utility at equilibrium.


title: Microeconomics

text: On the supply side of the market, some factors of production are described as (relatively) "variable" in the short run, which affects the cost of changing output levels. Their usage rates can be changed easily, such as electrical power, raw-material inputs, and over-time and temp work. Other inputs are relatively "fixed", such as plant and equipment and key personnel. In the long run, all inputs may be adjusted by management. These distinctions translate to differences in the elasticity (responsiveness) of the supply curve in the short and long runs and corresponding differences in the price-quantity change from a shift on the supply or demand side of the market.


title: Microeconomics

text: Marginalist theory, such as above, describes the consumers as attempting to reach most-preferred positions, subject to income and wealth constraints while producers attempt to maximize profits subject to their own constraints, including demand for goods produced, technology, and the price of inputs. For the consumer, that point comes where marginal utility of a good, net of price, reaches zero, leaving no net gain from further consumption increases. Analogously, the producer compares marginal revenue (identical to price for the perfect competitor) against the marginal cost of a good, with "marginal profit" the difference. At the point where marginal profit reaches zero, further increases in production of the good stop. For movement to market equilibrium and for changes in equilibrium, price and quantity also change "at the margin": more-or-less of something, rather than necessarily all-or-nothing.


title: Microeconomics

text: Other applications of demand and supply include the distribution of income among the factors of production, including labour and capital, through factor markets. In a competitive labour market for example the quantity of labour employed and the price of labour (the wage rate) depends on the demand for labour (from employers for production) and supply of labour (from potential workers). Labour economics examines the interaction of workers and employers through such markets to explain patterns and changes of wages and other labour income, labour mobility, and (un)employment, productivity through human capital, and related public-policy issues.


title: Microeconomics

text: Demand-and-supply analysis is used to explain the behaviour of perfectly competitive markets, but as a standard of comparison it can be extended to any type of market. It can also be generalized to explain variables across the economy, for example, total output (estimated as real GDP) and the general price level, as studied in macroeconomics. Tracing the qualitative and quantitative effects of variables that change supply and demand, whether in the short or long run, is a standard exercise in applied economics. Economic theory may also specify conditions such that supply and demand through the market is an efficient mechanism for allocating resources.


title: Microeconomics

text: Market structure refers to features of a market, including the number of firms in the market, the distribution of market shares between them, product uniformity across firms, how easy it is for firms to enter and exit the market, and forms of competition in the market. A market structure can have several types of interacting market systems.


title: Microeconomics

text: Different forms of markets are a feature of capitalism and market socialism, with advocates of state socialism often criticizing markets and aiming to substitute or replace markets with varying degrees of government-directed economic planning.


title: Microeconomics

text: Competition acts as a regulatory mechanism for market systems, with government providing regulations where the market cannot be expected to regulate itself. Regulations help to mitigate negative externalities of goods and services when the private equilibrium of the market does not match the social equilibrium. One example of this is with regards to building codes, which if absent in a purely competition regulated market system, might result in several horrific injuries or deaths to be required before companies would begin improving structural safety, as consumers may at first not be as concerned or aware of safety issues to begin putting pressure on companies to provide them, and companies would be motivated not to provide proper safety features due to how it would cut into their profits.


title: Microeconomics

text: The concept of "market type" is different from the concept of "market structure". Nevertheless, it is worth noting here that there are a variety of types of markets.


title: Microeconomics

text: The different market structures produce cost curves based on the type of structure present. The different curves are developed based on the costs of production, specifically the graph contains marginal cost, average total cost, average variable cost, average fixed cost, and marginal revenue, which is sometimes equal to the demand, average revenue, and price in a price-taking firm.


title: Microeconomics

text: Perfect competition is a situation in which numerous small firms producing identical products compete against each other in a given industry. Perfect competition leads to firms producing the socially optimal output level at the minimum possible cost per unit. Firms in perfect competition are "price takers" (they do not have enough market power to profitably increase the price of their goods or services). A good example would be that of digital marketplaces, such as eBay, on which many different sellers sell similar products to many different buyers. Consumers in a perfect competitive market have perfect knowledge about the products that are being sold in this market.


title: Microeconomics

text: Imperfect competition is a type of market structure showing some but not all features of competitive markets.


title: Microeconomics

text: Monopolistic competition is a situation in which many firms with slightly different products compete. Production costs are above what may be achieved by perfectly competitive firms, but society benefits from the product differentiation. Examples of industries with market structures similar to monopolistic competition include restaurants, cereal, clothing, shoes, and service industries in large cities.


title: Microeconomics

text: A monopoly is a market structure in which a market or industry is dominated by a single supplier of a particular good or service. Because monopolies have no competition, they tend to sell goods and services at a higher price and produce below the socially optimal output level. However, not all monopolies are a bad thing, especially in industries where multiple firms would result in more costs than benefits (i.e. natural monopolies).


title: Microeconomics

text: An oligopoly is a market structure in which a market or industry is dominated by a small number of firms (oligopolists). Oligopolies can create the incentive for firms to engage in collusion and form cartels that reduce competition leading to higher prices for consumers and less overall market output. Alternatively, oligopolies can be fiercely competitive and engage in flamboyant advertising campaigns.


title: Microeconomics

text: A bilateral monopoly is a market consisting of both a monopoly (a single seller) and a monopsony (a single buyer).


title: Microeconomics

text: Game theory is a major method used in mathematical economics and business for modeling competing behaviors of interacting agents. The term "game" here implies the study of any strategic interaction between people. Applications include a wide array of economic phenomena and approaches, such as auctions, bargaining, mergers & acquisitions pricing, fair division, duopolies, oligopolies, social network formation, agent-based computational economics, general equilibrium, mechanism design, and voting systems, and across such broad areas as experimental economics, behavioral economics, information economics, industrial organization, and political economy.


title: Microeconomics

text: Information economics is a branch of microeconomic theory that studies how information and information systems affect an economy and economic decisions. Information has special characteristics. It is easy to create but hard to trust. It is easy to spread but hard to control. It influences many decisions. These special characteristics (as compared with other types of goods) complicate many standard economic theories. The economics of information has recently become of great interest to many - possibly due to the rise of information-based companies inside the technology industry. From a game theory approach, the usual constraints that agents have complete information can be loosened to further examine the consequences of having incomplete information. This gives rise to many results which are applicable to real life situations. For example, if one does loosen this assumption, then it is possible to scrutinize the actions of agents in situations of uncertainty. It is also possible to more fully understand the impacts – both positive and negative – of agents seeking out or acquiring information.


title: Microeconomics

text: Applied microeconomics includes a range of specialized areas of study, many of which draw on methods from other fields.


title: Blue Lagoon: The Awakening

text: Blue Lagoon: The Awakening is a 2012 American made-for-television romance film that premiered on Lifetime on June 16, 2012. Indiana Evans and Brenton Thwaites star in the film, which is based on the 1908 novel "The Blue Lagoon" and its previous film adaptations.


title: Blue Lagoon: The Awakening

text: It was a major departure from previous "Blue Lagoon" films in several respects. The setting is contemporary, whereas the previous films were all set in the Victorian era; the lead characters were raised in normal society and are marooned as teenagers, rather than growing up on the island; the island the main characters are stranded on is in the Caribbean, whereas the previous films took place in the Pacific Ocean; and roughly equal time is devoted to the uncivilized world of the island and the human society the characters were born into. Christopher Atkins, the male lead in the 1980 film "The Blue Lagoon", also appears in the film.


title: Blue Lagoon: The Awakening

text: The film was co-produced by Sony Pictures, whose subsidiary Columbia Pictures financed the 1980 film adaptation and its 1991 sequel, but not the 1949 film version, whose rights are controlled by ITV Studios (successor-in-interest to the Rank Organisation's General Film Distributors, the company that released that version).


title: Blue Lagoon: The Awakening

text: Two high school students, Emma and Dean, are on a class trip to Trinidad to help build a school for less fortunate children. Emma, a popular star pupil, has her life plans set out. The high school quarterback flirts with Emma, though she is instead interested in Dean, a loner who routinely gets into trouble and seldom socializes since his mother's death. After Dean's knife is confiscated, his father pulls strings to get his son back on the trip. On their second night in Trinidad, Dean and Emma separately attend a boat party. During the party, Emma falls overboard when police arrive in a surprise raid. Dean jumps into the water and helps her into a dinghy. Wanting to avoid getting into trouble, Dean severs the line attaching the dinghy to the boat, only to discover there is no motor.


title: Blue Lagoon: The Awakening

text: The pair drift to an island, avoiding dangerous rocks, with the dinghy's sole paddle. After discovering the island is deserted, they find the outgoing tide has washed away the dinghy. Unsure if they will be rescued, Emma and Dean must rely on each other for survival. Together, they learn to build a fire, fish, and find food. At first they are friends, but eventually their bond evolves into a romantic relationship. Dean's father, Jack, and Emma's mother, Barbara arrive in Trinidad. Emma reveals that her parents have predetermined her future without her ever questioning it. After an extensive search, the Trinidad government officially ends the effort. Jack and Barbara both keep searching, and Jack hires a private rescue attempt. When Dean and Emma find a human skeleton, Dean calms an upset Emma by kissing her. The two give in to their growing feelings by having sex. The morning after their sexual encounter, Emma finds Dean digging a grave for the skeleton. When questioned, he becomes irritable, but eventually admits he was hoping for closure over his mother's death, suffering guilt for inadvertently causing her fatal accident. With no trace of Emma or Dean being found, Jack and Barbara can no longer neglect their individual responsibilities and both return home. As Emma and Dean's sexual relations continue, they share further intimate details, including a mutual desire to have children, but the difficulty of life on the island and concern about her family increasingly strain Emma.


title: Blue Lagoon: The Awakening

text: After being stranded over 100 days, Emma and Dean are rescued by a tourist helicopter. They are met by family, friends, and the media. Emma is thrust into a more popular position at school while Dean, still a semi-outcast, avoids approaching her in public. Readjusting to everyday life, their relationship becomes strained and distant. Emma attends the prom, while Dean only goes because his father encouraged him. Emma spots Dean outside watching her through the window. Emma's friend, Lizzie, encourages her to go to him. Emma and Dean kiss passionately and then dance together.


title: Blue Lagoon: The Awakening

text: The film has been in development since 2004, with Heather Rutman and Matt Heller as writers. The film went into production in 2011 with plans to film in Puerto Rico in February.


title: Blue Lagoon: The Awakening

text: Male lead Brenton Thwaites recounted that he had never heard of the "Blue Lagoon" films before, and upon being cast he watched the previous two films for research, though he admitted that he could not bring himself to watch "Return to the Blue Lagoon" in its entirety.


title: Blue Lagoon: The Awakening

text: During filming of the scenes in the lagoon, Thwaites and co-star Indiana Evans were so cold that they could not talk properly, necessitating that automated dialogue replacement be applied to these scenes.


title: Blue Lagoon: The Awakening

text: "Blue Lagoon: The Awakening" received more mixed reviews than the previous two films in the franchise, and was often compared favorably to the critically reviled 1980 film. On Metacritic the film has an approval rating of 51 out of 100 based on reviews from 5 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: Blue Lagoon: The Awakening

text: Linda Stasi commented in the "New York Post", "Unlike the original where nudie scenes were followed by fornicating turtles (kill me!), here their 'awakening' is tastefully done with nothing much showing except their emotions." She assessed the film overall as silly but enjoyable. Rob Owen of the "Pittsburgh Post-Gazette" cited the lack of physical explicitness in the sex scenes as a major weak point of the film, and said the ending was "particularly weak and nonsensical". Mike Hale of "The New York Times" thought the film was a guilty pleasure, and commented that "the new film lacks the glowing cinematography of Néstor Almendros, who was nominated for an Oscar for "The Blue Lagoon". But under the direction of Mikael Salomon and Jake Newsome, "The Awakening" offers occasional honest moments of humor and adolescent angst: Ms. Evans and Mr. Thwaites are in their early 20s and better actors than Ms. Shields and Mr. Atkins were in their teens." Will Harris of The A.V. Club was highly critical of the film, saying it failed to meet even his low expectations, "When a film manages to fail to live up to the low bar set for "Blue Lagoon" movies and Lifetime movies, you know you've got something really, really awful on your hands.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: Belo Horizonte (, ; ) is the sixth-largest city in Brazil, with a population around 2.7 million and with a metropolitan area of 6 million people. It is the 13th-largest city in South America and the 18th-largest in the Americas. The metropolis is anchor to the Belo Horizonte metropolitan area, ranked as the third-most populous metropolitan area in Brazil and the 17th-most populous in the Americas. Belo Horizonte is the capital of the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil's second-most populous state. It is the first planned modern city in Brazil.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: The region was first settled in the early 18th century, but the city as it is known today was planned and constructed in the 1890s, to replace Ouro Preto as the capital of Minas Gerais. The city features a mixture of contemporary and classical buildings, and is home to several modern Brazilian architectural icons, most notably the Pampulha Complex. In planning the city, Aarão Reis and Francisco Bicalho sought inspiration in the urban planning of Washington, D.C. The city has employed notable programs in urban revitalization and food security, for which it has been awarded international accolades.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: The city is built on several hills, and is completely surrounded by mountains. There are several large parks in the immediate surroundings of Belo Horizonte. The Mangabeiras Park (Parque das Mangabeiras), southeast of the city centre in the hills of Curral Ridge (Serra do Curral), has a broad view of the city. It has an area of , of which is covered by the native forest. The Jambeiro Woods (Mata do Jambeiro) nature reserve extends over , with vegetation typical of the Atlantic Forest. More than 100 species of birds inhabit the reserve, as well as 10 species of mammals.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: Belo Horizonte was one of the host cities of the 1950 and the 2014 FIFA World Cup. Additionally, the city shared as host of the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup and the football tournament during the 2016 Summer Olympics.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: The metropolis was once a small village, founded by João Leite da Silva Ortiz, a bandeirante explorer from São Paulo. The explorer settled in the region in 1701, leading a gold rush expedition. He then established a farm called "Curral d'el Rey," archaic Portuguese for the "King's Corral," which in modern Portuguese would be spelled "Curral do Rei".


title: Belo Horizonte

text: The farm's wealth and success encouraged people from surrounding places to move into the region, and Curral del Rey became a village surrounded by farms.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: Another important factor contributing to the growth of the village was people immigrating from the São Francisco River region, who had to pass through Curral d'el Rey to reach southern parts of Brazil.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: Travelers usually visited a small wooden chapel, where they prayed for a safe trip, so the chapel was named Capela da Nossa Senhora da Boa Viagem, which means "Chapel of Our Lady of the Good Journey." After the construction of Belo Horizonte, the old baroque chapel was replaced by a neo-gothic church that became the city's cathedral.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: The previous capital of Minas Gerais, Ouro Preto (meaning "black gold," due to dark rocks with gold inside found on the region), originally called "Vila Rica" ("wealthy village"), was a symbol of both the monarchic Brazilian Empire and the period when most of Brazilian income was due to mining. That never pleased the members of the Inconfidência Mineira, republican intellectuals who conspired against the Portuguese dominion of Brazil.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: In 1889, Brazil became a republic, and it was agreed that a new state capital, in tune with a modern and prosperous Minas Gerais, had to be established.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: In 1893, due to the climatic and topographic conditions, Curral Del Rey was selected by Minas Gerais governor Afonso Pena among other cities as the location for the new economic and cultural center of the state, under the new name of "Cidade de Minas", or City of Minas.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: , an urbanist from Pará, was then chosen to design the second planned city of Brazil (the first one is Teresina). Cidade de Minas was inaugurated in 1897, with many unfinished buildings as the Brazilian government set a deadline for its completion. The local government encouraged growth through subsidies. It offered free lots and funding for building houses. An interesting feature of Reis' downtown street plan for Belo Horizonte was the inclusion of a symmetrical array of perpendicular and diagonal streets named after Brazilian states and Brazilian indigenous tribes.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: In 1906, the name was changed to Belo Horizonte. At that time, the city was experiencing a considerable industrial expansion that increased its commercial and service sectors. From its very beginning, the city's original plan prohibited workers from living inside the urban area, which was defined by Avenida do Contorno (a long avenue that goes around the city's central areas).


title: Belo Horizonte

text: Reserved for government workers (hence the name of the trendy neighbourhood "Funcionários"), and bringing about an accelerated occupation outside the city's area well provided with infrastructure since its very beginning. Obviously, the city's original planners did not count on its ongoing population growth, which proved especially intense in the last 20 years of the 20th century.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: In the 1940s, a young Oscar Niemeyer designed the Pampulha Neighbourhood to great acclaim, a commission he got thanks to then-mayor and soon-to-be-president Juscelino Kubitschek. These two men are largely responsible for the wide avenues, large lakes, parks, and jutting skylines that characterize the city today. A 1949 American government film favorably reviewed the planning and building of the city.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: Belo Horizonte is fast becoming a regional center of commerce. The Latin American research and development center of Google, situated in Belo Horizonte, was responsible for the management and operation of the former social networking website Orkut. It continues to be a trendsetter in the arts, particularly where music, literature, architecture, and the "avant garde" are concerned.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: The term "Grande BH" ("Greater Belo Horizonte") denotes any of various definitions for the metropolitan area of Belo Horizonte. The legally defined "Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte" consists of 34 municipalities in total, and a population of around six million inhabitants (, according to Brazil's National Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE)).


title: Belo Horizonte

text: The intense process of urbanization that is taking place in the metropolitan region has made some of the political boundaries between municipalities in the region obsolete.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: The city is now composed of a relatively contiguous urban area, centred on Belo Horizonte, which extends out into municipalities such as Contagem, Betim, Nova Lima, Raposos, Ribeirão das Neves, Ibirité, Santa Luzia and Sabará, among others.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: The municipality is bounded to the north by Vespasiano, to the north east by Santa Luzia, by Sabará to the east, by Nova Lima to the southeast, Brumadinho to the south and Ribeirão das Neves, Contagem and Ibirité to the west.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: According to the current geographic classification by IBGE, the municipality belongs to the Immediate Geographic Region of Belo Horizonte, in the Intermediate Geographic Region of Belo Horizonte.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: Belo Horizonte lies on a region of contact between different geological series of the Proterozoic. The geology largely comprises crystalline rocks, which give rise to the varied morphology of the landscape. It is located in a large geological unit known as the craton of São Francisco, referring to extensive crustal nucleus of central-eastern Brazil, tectonically stable at the end of the Paleoproterozoic and bordering areas that suffered the regeneration at the Neoproterozoic.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: The archean rocks members of Belo Horizonte complex and supracrustal sequences of the Paleoproterozoic is predominant. The area of Belo Horizonte complex includes the geomorphological unit called "Depression of Belo Horizonte", which represents about 70% of the municipality area and has its greatest expression in the northern Ribeirão Arrudas pipeline. The metasedimentary rocks has its area of occurrence on the south of Ribeirão Arrudas pipeline, constituting about 30% of the area of Belo Horizonte. The characteristics of this area are lithological diversities and rugged topography, which has its maximum expression in the "Serra do Curral" (Corral Ridge), the southern boundary of the municipality.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: Its soil comprises a succession of layers of rocks of varied composition, represented by itabirite, dolomite, quartzite, phyllites and schists different from the general direction northwest–southeast and dip to the southeast. The hills of Belo Horizonte are part of the Espinhaço Mountains and belong to the larger Itacolomi mountain chain. The highest point in the municipality is in the "Serra do Curral", reaching .


title: Belo Horizonte

text: A centre for conservation and preservation of animals and plants it has also developed environmental education projects. The Zoo, which encompasses a total area of 1.4 million square meters, is located at the Foundation's headquarters and is regarded as one of the most complete in Latin America. It has a collection of close to 900 animals representing 200 species, from Brazil and other parts of the world, as well as the first public butterfly sanctuary in South America.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: Pampulha Ecological Park is administered by the Zoo-Botanical Foundation of Belo Horizonte and was inaugurated on May 21, 2004. It is of green area that offers to the population and the tourists a permanent programming of environmental, cultural and patrimonial education.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: Belo Horizonte's has a latitude at 19'55" in the South tropical zone. Yearly temperatures average between . The Köppen climate classification of the region is tropical savanna climate ("Aw"), milder due to the elevation, with humid/warm summers and dry/mild winters. Belo Horizonte is located about from the sea.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: Even though inter-seasonal differences are not as pronounced as they are in temperate places, there is a contrast between spring and summer, and between fall and winter. The coldest month is generally July, with a lowest recorded temperature of . The hottest month is usually January, with a highest recorded temperature of .


title: Belo Horizonte

text: With an elevation of , Belo Horizonte is cooled considerably by the relatively high elevation, which suppresses high maximum air temperatures experienced in nearby cities at lower altitudes. Belo Horizonte's climate is mild throughout the year. Temperatures vary between , the average being . Winter is dry and mostly sunny, and summer is rainy.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: According to the 2010 IBGE Census, there were 2,258,096 people residing in the city of Belo Horizonte. The census revealed the following numbers: 1,110,034 White people (46.7%), 995,167 Pardo (Multiracial) people (41.9%), 241,155 Black people (10.2%), 25,270 Asian people (1.1%), 3,477 Amerindian people (0.1%).


title: Belo Horizonte

text: In 2010, the city had 428,893 opposite-sex couples and 1,090 same-sex couples. The population of Belo Horizonte was 53.1% female and 46.9% male.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: The Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte, called Greater Belo Horizonte, is the 3rd most populous of Brazil, after only Greater São Paulo (with 19,672,582 people, first in Brazil and 5th in the world) and Greater Rio de Janeiro (with 14,387,000 people). The city is the 6th most populous of the country.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: During the 18th century, Minas Gerais received many Portuguese immigrants, mainly from Northern Portugal as well as many enslaved Africans.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: Belo Horizonte has a notable Italian influence; around 30% of the city's population have some Italian origin. The Italian culture is present in the cuisine, dance, and language. People of German, Spanish, and Syrian-Lebanese ancestries also make up sizeable groups.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: In 1993, under mayor Patrus Ananias de Souza, the city started a series of innovations based on its citizens having the "right to food." These include, for example, creating farmers' markets in the town to enable direct sales and regularly surveying market prices and posting the results across the city. The city's process of participatory budgeting was linked with these innovations, as a result of which the infant mortality rate was reduced by 50% in a decade.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: There is some evidence that these programs have helped support a higher quality of life for the local farmers partnering with the city and that this may be having positive effects on biodiversity in the Atlantic rainforest around the city. The city's development of these policies garnered the first "Future Policy Award" in 2009, awarded by the World Future Council, a group of 50 activists (including Frances Moore Lappé, Vandana Shiva, Wes Jackson, and Youssou N'Dour) concerned with the development and recognition of policies to promote a just and sustainable future.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: The city has undertaken an internationally heralded project called Vila Viva ("Living Village" in Portuguese) that promises to "urbanize" the poorest areas ("favelas"), relocating families from areas with high risk of floods and landslides but keeping them in the same neighborhood, paving main avenues to allow public transportation, police and postal service to have access. All the work is done with 80% of locals, reducing unemployment and increasing family income. Former mayor Fernando da Mata Pimentel was nominated for World Mayor in 2005 on the strength of these and other programs.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: Belo Horizonte receives large numbers of visitors, as it is in the Brazilian main economic axis, exerting influence even on other states. Multinational and Brazilian companies, such as Google and Oi, maintain offices in the city. The service sector plays a very important role in the economy of Belo Horizonte, being responsible for 85% of the city's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), with other industry making up most of the remaining 15%. Belo Horizonte has a developed industrial sector, being traditionally a hub of the Brazilian siderurgical and metallurgical industries, as the state of Minas Gerais has always been very rich in minerals, specifically iron ore.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: Belo Horizonte is the distribution and processing centre of a rich agricultural and mining region and the nucleus of a burgeoning industrial complex. Production is centred on steel, steel products, automobiles, and textiles. Gold, manganese, and gemstones mined in the surrounding region are processed in the city.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: The main industrial district of the city was set during the 1940s in Contagem, a part of greater Belo Horizonte. Multinational companies like FIAT (which opened its plant in Betim in 1974), Arcelor, and Toshiba have subsidiaries in the region, along with textiles like Group Rachelle Textil, Ematex and Cedro Textil, cosmetic, food, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, furnishing and refractory companies. Among the companies headquartered in the city are steel producer Açominas (held by Gerdau, one of the largest multinationals originated in Brazil); Usiminas; Belgo-Mineira (held by Arcelor); Acesita (partially held by Arcelor); mobile communication Vivo; and Telecom Italia Mobile, Dasein Executive Search, executive coaching company, as well as the NYSE-listed electrical company CEMIG. Leading steel product makers Sumitomo Metals of Japan and Vallourec of France also have plans to construct an integrated steel works on the outskirts of the city.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: There are also a large number of small enterprises in the technology sector with regional to nationwide success, particularly in the fields of computing and biotechnology. Because of both governmental and private funding in the diversification of its economy, the city has become an international reference in Information Technology and Biotechnology, and is also cited because of the advanced corporate and university research in Biodiesel fuel. The number of jobs in the Information sector has been growing at annual rates above 50%. The Belo Horizonte Metropolitan Area, composed of 33 cities under the capital's direct influence, is home to 16% of the country's biotechnology companies, with annual sales of over R$550 million.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: Projects in these fields are likely to expand because of integration between universities, the oil company Petrobras and the Brazilian Government. One of the largest events that ever took place in the city, the Inter-American Development Bank meeting, occurred in 2005 and attracted people from all over the world.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: For a long time it was marked by the predominance of its industrial sector, but from the 1990s there has been a constant expansion of the service sector economy, particularly in computer science, biotechnology, business tourism, fashion and the jewelry-making. The city is considered to be a strategic leader in the Brazilian economy. The move towards business tourism transformed the capital into a national hub for this segment of the tourist industry.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: The city is connected to the rest of Minas Gerais state and the country by a number of roadways. Minas Gerais has the country's largest federal highway network.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: The city is also served by other minor roads such as state highways MG-020, MG-050, MG-030, and MG-433. There is also an East-West Express Way, which goes from the city to the nearby industrial centres of Contagem and Betim (together having a population of ca. 900,000), and Anel Rodoviário, a kind of "beltway" – indeed it is not circumferential, but connects many highways, such as the federal (BR-ones) so it is not necessary for a large number of cars and trucks to pass through the city centre. Many of these roads are in poor condition, but in the last years many revitalization and rebuilding projects have been started.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: The bus system has a large number of bus lines going through all parts in the city, and is administrated by "BHTRANS". Among the upcoming projects are the expansion of the integration between bus lines and the metro, with integrated stations, many already in use. And the construction of bus corridors, with lanes and bus stops exclusively for the bus lines. Keeping buses from traffic congestions, making the trips more viable for commuters.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: Belo Horizonte Metro or MetroBH started operating at the end of the 1970s. There is one line, with 19 stations, from Vilarinho to Eldorado Station, in Contagem, transporting over 160,000 people daily. The current projects of expansion include Line 2, linking the existing Calafate Station to the region of Barreiro. And Line 3, from the city's main bus terminal to São Inácio de Loyola, Savassi economical district. Line 2 is planned to be overground (similar to the current line) and Line 3 is planned to be underground, passing through the city's financial centre, Praça Sete and Afonso Pena Avenue. Also, Line 1 is planned to be extended to Novo Eldorado Station.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: The average amount of time people spend commuting with public transit in Belo Horizonte, for example to and from work, on a weekday is 85 min. 26% of public transit riders, ride for more than 2 hours every day. The average amount of time people wait at a stop or station for public transit is 23 min, while 50% of riders wait for over 20 minutes on average every day. The average distance people usually ride in a single trip with public transit is 8.7 km, while 19% travel for over 12 km in a single direction.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: Every two years, FIT BH, The International Theater Festival of Belo Horizonte, takes place in the city. This attracts artists from all over Brazil and worldwide. With the merger of two projects that would happen separately in 1994, one stage-based, organized by the Francisco Nunes Theater, and the other street-based, idealized by Grupo Galpão, came FIT-BH Palco & Rua. Produced every two years, under responsibility from the Belo Horizonte City Hall, through the Municipal Culture Office and the Association Movimento Teatro de Grupo of Minas Gerais, in the program there are street and stage shows, and also seminars, workshops, courses, talks, etc. The Annual Campaign for the Popularisation of Theatre takes place every year in January and February, offering dozens of plays in theatres all over the city at affordable prices.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: Several notable artistic groups originated in Belo Horizonte. Grupo Corpo, which is perhaps the most famous contemporary dance group in the country, was formed in the city in 1975. In March and April is the performance program from FID promoting contemporary dance in Belo Horizonte. The program presents groups from Belo Horizonte. For this project, the priority invitations go to the shows created by groups and choreographers living in the city. The purpose is to take shows and other activities such as workshops, talks and video screenings to the less privileged regions of the city regarding access to cultural assets. Belo Horizonte is also host to the Centro Mineiro de Danças Clássicas school.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: Clube da Esquina is one of the most important musical movements in the musical history of Brazil. It originated in the mid-1960s, and since then its members have been hugely influential in Brazilian and even international music, some like Milton Nascimento and Toninho Horta achieving worldwide acclaim. Other people involved in the movement include musicians, songwriters, composers, conductors and lyricists, such as Tavinho Moura, Wagner Tiso, Andersen Viana, Milton Nascimento, Lô Borges, Beto Guedes, Flávio Venturini, Toninho Horta, Márcio Borges and Fernando Brant, among others.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: The band Uakti, known for performing with self-built musical instruments, originated in Belo Horizonte under the influence of Walter Smetak and the Composition School from Bahia. Also, several nationally famous rock groups have been founded in Belo Horizonte, including Jota Quest, Pato Fu, Skank, 14 Bis and Tianastácia. In later years, Belo Horizonte has been more frequently included in Brazilian tours of foreign mainstream and independent acts.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: Belo Horizonte is also known as the Brazilian Capital of Metal music, hence the huge number of heavy metal bands (and the likes) founded there, especially in the 1980s. Most importantly, Overdose, the first metal band from BH and one of the first to gain prominence in Brazil; Sepultura, the world's best known Brazilian metal band; and Sarcófago, one of the founders of modern black metal. The contemporary Christian music band Diante do Trono, is also of Belo Horizonte. A short instrumental song by American band Earth, Wind & Fire is named after the city on their album Now, Then & Forever.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: Belo Horizonte features a number of museums including the Mineiro Museum, the Abílio Barreto Historic Museum, Arts and Workmanship Museum, a Natural History Museum and the UFMG Botanic Gardens, a telephone museum, the Pampulha Art Museum, the Professor Taylor Gramke Mineralogy Museum, and the UFMG Conservatory. The puppet theatre group Giramundo was established here in 1970, and continues to maintain a puppetry museum hosting a collection of their creations.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: The Circuito Cultural Praça da Liberdade, located in the central region of Belo Horizonte, is the largest cultural circuit in Brazil. In all, there are eleven functioning museums and cultural spaces: Arquivo Público Mineiro (Minas Gerais Public Archive), Biblioteca Pública Estadual Luiz de Bessa (Luiz de Bessa State Public Library), Cefar Liberdade, Centro de Arte Popular Cemig (Cemig Center of Popular Art), Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil (Culture Center Bank of Brazil), Espaço do Conhecimento UFMG (UFMG Knowledge Space), Horizonte Sebrae – Casa da Economia Criativa (Sebrae Horizon – The House of Creative Economy), Memorial Minas Gerais Vale (Minas Gerais Memorial), Museu das Minas e do Metal (Mines and Metal Museum), Museu Mineiro (Minas Gerais Museum) and Palácio da Liberdade (Liberty Palace). Besides these, another three spaces are already in the process of being implemented: the Casa Fiat de Cultura (Fiat Culture House), CENA and Oi Futuro. The proposal, according to the Circuit manager, Cristiana Kumaira, is to strengthen the circuit in the world cultural context. "We are already on this path and are being careful to ensure that the activities, services and assistance fulfill the needs and expectations of both the local population and the tourists who come to Belo Horizonte from around the world. The Circuit is establishing itself as one more source of pride for the people of Minas Gerais," she stresses.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: Inaugurated in 2010, the Circuito Cultural Praça da Liberdade was created with the goal of exploring cultural diversity, with interactive options open to the public, in an area of great symbolic, historical and architectural value for Belo Horizonte. The opportunity came with the transference of the Minas Gerais Government headquarters to the Cidade Administrativa (Administrative City), in Serra Verde. After they had been adapted, the old department buildings opened their doors and began to house museums and cultural spaces.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: The Circuito Cultural Praça da Liberdade is co-managed by the Instituto Sérgio Magnani (Institute) since June 2012, through a partnership signed with the Minas Gerais Government, and the museums/spaces are mostly run by private companies, which carry out investments in heritage recovery and building maintenance. According to Kumaira, this public-private partnership model allows large companies to participate and effectively contribute to the cultural advance of the city. "Beyond their fields of activities, the partners invest in the implantation and maintenance of museums, learning spaces, exhibition halls and shows, as well as memory centers that consolidate the history of Minas Gerais, presenting it either for free or at affordable prices," she adds.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: The Natural History Museum and Botanical Garden holds an important treasure of folk art, the Nativity of Pipiripau. Created during the 20th century, the craftsman Raimundo Machado, synchronizes 586 figures, distributed in 45 scenes, which tell the story of life and death of Jesus, mixed with its variety of arts and crafts. With 600,000 sq. m. of green area, the UFMG Museum of Natural History and Botanic Garden (MHN-JB) is a privileged ecological space that enables visitors to experience nature in a rich, multidisciplinary way. For 30 years, the mission of the MHN-JB has been to do research, to educate, and to meet the community's demand for service. It covers the areas of anthropology, archeology, Environmental Education, Natural History, Mineralogy, and Paleontology. It has an Ecological Amphitheater, a Free Art atelier, a greenhouse, and an Interactive Room. One of its traditional exhibitions is the Pipiripau Nativity Crèche.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: Palácio das Artes, inaugurated in 1970, comprises three theaters, three art galleries, a movie theater, a bookstore, a coffee shop and photography exhibition space. The building was designed by Oscar Niemeyer and it also houses the Minas Gerais Handcraft Center. The Pampulha Art Museum is located at the Pampulha Lake in Belo Horizonte in a building that originally housed the Pampulha Casino. The building was designed by Oscar Niemeyer, commissioned by the then-mayor and future president of Brazil Juscelino Kubitschek in the early 1940s, with external grounds by landscaper Roberto Burle Marx. The building was the first project of Oscar Niemeyer, opened as a casino, and closed in 1946. In 1957, it was re-opened as the Art Museum. His design was influenced by the principles of Le Corbusier. The gardens of Burle Marx are a tribute to the tropical green. There are three sculptures, by Ceschiatti, Zamoiski and José Pedrosa. In 1996, it won new multimedia rooms, library, café bar, a souvenir shop and technical infrastructure. The MAP has an impressive collection of 1,600 works.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: Belo Horizonte has several significant cultural landmarks, many of them situated in the Pampulha district, where there are notable examples of Brazilian contemporary architecture. Under the leadership of the then mayor of city, Juscelino Kubitschek, architects and artists such as Oscar Niemeyer, landscaper Burle Marx, and painter Candido Portinari, started a type of modern architecture and art here that was greatly developed later with the construction of Brazil's new capital, Brasilia, also led by the now president Juscelino (aka JK). It is at the Pampulha complex that one can see the routes of this new architecture movement. The modern and protomodern architecture can also be seen all over Belo Horizonte, either in emblematic 1950's buildings such as Edificio Acaiaca, Conjunto JK, Hotel Amazonas and former Hotel Excelsior, all reflecting the modernity culture of the first planned capital of Brazil.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: The Pampulha Park area includes one of the largest soccer stadiums in the world, the Mineirão stadium, and the São Francisco de Assis Church, widely known as Igreja da Pampulha, designed by Brazilian Modernist architect Oscar Niemeyer. In Pampulha there is also the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais campus, whose buildings themselves are important contributions to the city's architecture. Other notable buildings include the Mesbla and Niemeyer buildings.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: In the downtown area, landmarks include the São José Church, the Praça da Estação (Station Square), which is an old train station that now is also the Museum of Arts and Workmanship, the Municipal Park, the famous Sete de Setembro Square, where an obelisk built in 1922 marks the one hundred years of Brazilian independence from Portugal. Near Central the area, in the Lourdes neighborhood, the Lourdes Basilica, is an example of Gothic Revival style. The Nossa Senhora de Fátima Church, in Santo Agostinho neighborhood, is situated in Carlos Chagas Square. Both churches are referred to as the Assembléia Church and the Assembléia Square because of their proximity to the state's legislative assembly.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: Next to the downtown region is the Savassi district, known for fine restaurants and as a centre of cultural events as well as the best of the city's nightlife. Many landmarks are located there, such as the Praça da Liberdade (Liberty Square), and its surrounding buildings, including the former Executive Offices of the governor called the Palácio da Liberdade (Liberty Palace), the first building to be finished during the city's planned development in the late 1890s.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: The government offices moved to the "Cidade Administrativa" in 2010. This complex is made by a few massive buildings just outside the city. Nowadays, the "palaces" are being turned into museums. Still on Savassi, the meeting point of many social groups, especially the youth, is "Praça da Savassi" (Savassi Square), which is not exactly a square, and more a crossing between two major avenues (Getúlio Vargas and Cristóvão Colombo), and gathers some of the busiest bars and pubs (called locally "botecos" or "botequins") in town.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: Another important landmark is Praça do Papa (Pope's Square), located at a high point south of the downtown area, with its great view of the entire city. It is named for July 1, 1980, visit by John Paul II, who held a youth mass there. The nearby Parque das Mangabeiras (Mangabeiras Park) features extensive wildlife, and-owing to its considerable size-has its own bus service, which operates solely within the confines of the park. On Sundays, Afonso Pena Avenue hosts Latin America's biggest open-air market. This is the Market of Arts and Handicrafts, most commonly known as Feira Hippie (hippie fair). Every Sunday morning 70,000 visitors find food, drinks, clothes, furniture, earrings, shoes and almost anything else.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: The regional Minas Gerais' food and the now internationally known drink of cachaça are very popular and highly rated in the capital.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: Every year since 1999, the city hosts the Comida di Buteco festival ("Pub Foods", in an approximate translation), in which a panel selects 41 bars to be visited, and then elects the one with the best appetizers using the theme ingredient of each year.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: The Festival is so successful that its brand was already sold to other 21 regions in Brazil (Belém, Belo Horizonte, Brasília, Campinas, Curitiba, Florianópolis, Fortaleza, Goiás, Juiz de Fora, Manaus, Montes Claros, Poços de Caldas, Porto Alegre, Recife, Ribeirão Preto, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, São José do Rio Preto, São Paulo, Uberlândia e Vale do Aço).


title: Belo Horizonte

text: The neighborhoods and areas of Savassi, Lourdes, Mercado Central, Santa Tereza and Pampulha concentrate most of the city's restaurants and bars.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: As in the rest of Brazil, football is the most popular sport. The city's major teams are Atlético Mineiro, Cruzeiro and América Mineiro.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: The city also has one of the biggest football stadiums in the world, the Mineirão, which opened in 1965. The older Independência Stadium was the site of the FIFA World Cup 1950 game, when the United States beat England in a 1–0 win.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: Mineirão, officially called Estádio Governador Magalhães Pinto, was built to provide the city of Belo Horizonte with a larger alternative for Independência Stadium, then the prime venue of the city. The stadium was meant to become the most modern stadium of Brazil and the new home of Atlético Mineiro and Cruzeiro. Construction took almost five years, and on September 5, 1965, Mineirão officially opened. Mineirão hardly changed in the following decades, and in the 1990s still had its original capacity. When Brazil won their bid to host the 2014 FIFA World Cup, it was clear that Mineirão needed to undergo a large redevelopment.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: The project included the complete reconstruction of the bottom tier, an extension of the roof, and further refurbishments to upgrade the stadium to FIFA standards. Building works took a total of three years, and were completed in December 2012. The first match at the reopened Mineirão was played on February 3, 2013, with a state championship match between Cruzeiro and Atlético. While Cruzeiro agreed on a lease to play the next 25 years at Mineirão, Atlético is currently building his own arena, Arena MRV, which is planned to be opened at the end of 2022. Atlético's new arena will be the most modern football stadium in Latin America and the second largest sports arena in the state of Minas Gerais, with a capacity of over 46,000 people. Mineirão hosted a total of six matches during the 2014 FIFA World Cup. The stadium also was one of the playing venues of the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup and the Olympic football tournament in 2016.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: In addition to football, Belo Horizonte has one of the largest attendances at volleyball matches in the entire country. They are played either at Mineirinho, home of Brazil's national volleyball team, or at Minas Tênis Clube.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: Belo Horizonte is home to 2015 French Open men's doubles champion and former World no. 1 doubles player Marcelo Melo as well as 2016 Australian Open men's doubles and mixed doubles champion Bruno Soares.


title: Belo Horizonte

text: The Minas Tênis Clube is a multi-sport club that plays in the Novo Basquete Brasil, Liga Nacional de Futsal, Brazilian Men's Volleyball Superliga and Brazilian Women's Volleyball Superliga.


title: Corset

text: A corset is a support garment commonly worn to hold and train the torso into a desired shape, traditionally a smaller waist or larger bottom, for aesthetic or medical purposes (either for the duration of wearing it or with a more lasting effect), or support the breasts. Both men and women are known to wear corsets, though this item was for many years an integral part of women's wardrobes.


title: Corset

text: Since the late 20th century, the fashion industry has borrowed the term "corset" to refer to tops which, to varying degrees, mimic the look of traditional corsets without acting as them. While these modern corsets and corset tops often feature lacing or boning, and generally imitate a historical style of corsets, they have very little, if any, effect on the shape of the wearer's body. Genuine corsets are usually made by a corsetmaker and are frequently fitted to the individual wearer.


title: Corset

text: The word "corset" is a diminutive of the Old French word "cors" (meaning "body", and itself derived from the Latin "corpus"): the word therefore means "little body". The craft of corset construction is known as "corsetry", as is the general wearing of them. (The word "corsetry" is sometimes also used as a collective plural form of corset). Someone who makes corsets is a "corsetier" or "corsetière" (French terms for a man and for a woman maker, respectively), or sometimes simply a "corsetmaker".


title: Corset

text: In 1828, the word corset came into general use in the English language. The word was used in "The Ladies Magazine" to describe a "quilted waistcoat" that the French called "un corset." It was used to differentiate the lighter corset from the heavier stays of the period.


title: Corset

text: The most common and well-known use of corsets is to slim the body and make it conform to a fashionable silhouette. For women, this most frequently emphasizes a curvy figure by reducing the waist and thereby exaggerating the bust and hips. However, in some periods, bodies (tudor era corsets) have been worn to achieve a tubular straight-up-and-down shape, which involved minimizing the bust.


title: Corset

text: For men, corsets are more customarily used to slim the figure. However, there was a period from around 1820 to 1835—and even until the late 1840s in some instances—when a wasp-waisted figure (a small, nipped-in look to the waist) was also desirable for men; wearing a corset sometimes achieved this.


title: Corset

text: An "overbust corset" encloses the torso, extending from just under the arms toward the hips. An "underbust corset" begins just under the breasts and extends down toward the hips. A "longline corset"—either overbust or underbust—extends past the iliac crest, or the hip bone. A longline corset is ideal for those who want increased stability, have longer torsos, or want to smooth out their hips. A "standard" length corset will stop short of the iliac crest and is ideal for those who want increased flexibility or have a shorter torso. Some corsets, in very rare instances, reach the knees. A shorter kind of corset that covers the waist area (from low on the ribs to just above the hips), is called a "waist cincher". A corset may also include garters to hold up stockings; alternatively, a separate garter belt may be worn.


title: Corset

text: Traditionally, a corset supports the visible dress and spreads the pressure from large dresses, such as the crinoline and bustle. At times, a corset cover is used to protect outer clothes from the corset and to smooth the lines of the corset. The original corset cover was worn under the corset to provide a layer between it and the body. Corsets were not worn next to the skin, possibly due to difficulties with laundering these items during the 19th century, as they had steel boning and metal eyelets that would rust. Light linen or cotton shifts (also called chemises) were worn beneath corsets to absorb sweat and protect the corset and wearer from each other, and also to function as underwear and protect other garments from the wearer and their sweat. The corset cover was generally in the form of a light chemisette, made from cotton lawn or silk. Modern corset wearers may wear corset liners for many of the same reasons. Those who lace their corsets tightly use the liners to prevent burn on their skin from the laces.


title: Corset

text: People with spinal problems, such as scoliosis, or with internal injuries, may be fitted with a back brace, which is similar to a corset. However, a back brace is not the same thing as a corset. This is usually made of plastic and/or metal. A brace is used to push the curves so that they don't progress, and sometimes they lower the curves. Braces are used mostly in children and adolescents, as they have a higher chance of the curves getting worse. Artist Andy Warhol was shot in 1968 and never fully recovered; he wore a corset for the rest of his life.


title: Corset

text: Aside from fashion and medical uses, corsets are also used in sexual fetishism, most notably in BDSM activities. In BDSM, a submissive may be required to wear a corset, which would be laced very tightly and restrict the wearer to some degree. A dominant may also wear a corset, often black, but for entirely different reasons, such as aesthetics. A specially designed corset, in which the breasts and vulva are exposed, can be worn during vanilla sex or BDSM activities.


title: Corset

text: Corsets are typically constructed of a stiff material, such as buckram, structured with boning (also called ribs or stays) inserted into channels in the cloth or leather. In the 18th and early 19th century, thin strips of baleen (also known as whalebone) were favoured for the boning. Plastic is the most commonly used material for modern corsets and the majority of poor-quality corsets. Spring and/or spiral steel or synthetic whalebone is preferred for stronger and generally better quality corsets. Other materials used for boning have included ivory, wood, and cane.


title: Corset

text: Corsets are held together by lacing, usually (though not always) at the back. Tightening or loosening the lacing produces corresponding changes in the firmness of the corset. Depending on the desired effect and time period, corsets can be laced from the top down, from the bottom up, or both up from the bottom and down from the top, using the bunny ears lacing method. Victorian corsets also had a buttoned or hooked front opening called a busk. If the corset was worn loosely, it was possible to leave the lacing as adjusted and take the corset on and off using the front opening. (If the corset is worn snugly, this method will damage the busk if the lacing is not significantly loosened beforehand). Self-lacing was how women would dress as help was usually unnecessary as long as a mirror was handy.


title: Corset

text: In the past, a woman's corset was usually worn over a chemise, a sleeveless low-necked gown made of washable material (usually cotton or linen). It absorbed perspiration and kept the corset and the gown clean. In modern times, a tee shirt, camisole, or corset liner may be worn.


title: Corset

text: Moderate lacing is not incompatible with vigorous activity. During the second half of the 19th century, when corset wearing was common among women, sport corsets were specifically designed for wear while bicycling, playing tennis, or horseback riding, as well as for maternity wear.


title: Corset

text: Until 1998, the Guinness Book of World Records listed Ethel Granger as having the smallest waist on record at . After 1998, the category changed to "smallest waist on a living person". Cathie Jung took the title with a waist measuring . Other women, such as Polaire, also have achieved such reductions ( in her case). However, these are extreme cases. Corsets were and are still usually designed for support, with freedom of body movement an important consideration in their design.


title: Corset

text: For nearly 500 years, women's primary means of support were bodies, stays and corset, with boning made of reeds, whalebone, or metal. Researchers have found evidence of the use of corsets in the Minoan civilization of early Crete.


title: Corset

text: The corset has undergone many changes. Originally, it was known as "a pair of bodys" in the late 16th century. It was a simple bodice, stiffened with boning of reed or whalebone. A busk made of wood, horn, whalebone, metal, or ivory further reinforced the central front. It was most often laced in the back, and was, at first, a garment reserved for the aristocracy. Later, the term "pair of bodies" would be replaced with the term "stays" and was generally used during the 17th and 18th centuries. Stays essentially turned the upper torso into a cone or cylinder shape. In the 17th century, tabs (called "fingers") at the waist were added.


title: Corset

text: Stays evolved in the 18th century, during which whalebone was used more, and increased boning was used in the garment. The shape of the stays changed as well. While they were low and wide in the front, they could reach as high as the upper shoulder in the back. Stays could be strapless or use shoulder straps. The straps of the stays were generally attached in the back and tied at the front.


title: Corset

text: The purpose of 18th century stays was to support the bust and confer the fashionable conical shape, while drawing the shoulders back. At that time, the eyelets were reinforced with stitches and were not placed across from one another, but staggered. That allowed the stays to be spiral laced. One end of the stay lace was inserted into the bottom eyelet and knotted, and the other end was wound through the eyelets of the stays and tightened on the top. Tight-lacing was not the purpose of stays at that time. It was not possible until metal eyelets were introduced, in the mid-1800s. Women of all levels of society wore stays, from ladies of the court to street vendors.


title: Corset

text: During that time, there is evidence of a variant of stays, called "jumps", which were looser than stays and had attached sleeves, like a jacket.


title: Corset

text: Corsets were originally quilted waistcoats, which French women wore as an alternative to stiff corsets. They were only quilted linen, laced in the front, and unboned. That garment was meant to be worn on informal occasions, while stays were worn for court dress. In the 1790s, stays began to fall out of fashion. That coincided with the French Revolution and the adoption of neoclassical styles of dress. It was the men, so-called dandies, who began to wear corsets. The fashion persisted through the 1840s, though, after 1850, men who wore corsets claimed they needed them for back pain.


title: Corset

text: In the early 19th century, when gussets were added for room for the bust, stays became known as corsets. They also lengthened to the hip, and the lower tabs were replaced by gussets at the hip and had less boning. Shoulder straps disappeared in the 1840s for normal wear. In the 1820s, fashion changed again, with the waistline lowered to almost the natural position. That was to allow for more ornamentation on the bodice, which, in turn, saw the return of the corset to modern fashion. Corsets began to be made with some padding, for a waist-slimming effect, and more boning. Some women made their own, while others bought their corsets. Corsets were one of the first mass-produced garments for women. They began to be more heavily boned in the 1840s. By 1850, steel boning became popular.


title: Corset

text: With the advent of metal eyelets, in 1827 tightlacing became possible. The position of the eyelets changed. They were situated opposite one another at the back. The front was fastened with a metal busk. Corsets were mostly white. The corsets of the 1850s–1860s were shorter, because of a change in the silhouette of women's fashion, with the advent of the hoop skirt or crinoline. After the 1860s, as the crinoline fell out of style, the corset became longer, to shape the abdomen, exposed by the new lines of the princess or cuirass style.


title: Corset

text: In 1855, a woman named Frances Egbert had trouble with her corsets, due to the front steel pieces constantly breaking as a result of strain. Consequently, her husband, Samuel Barnes, designed "reinforced steels" for Egbert's corsets. Barnes filed a patent for the invention 11 years later, and Egbert collected the royalties on this patent for 15 years following his death. Following the case of "Egbert v. Lippmann", the US Supreme court deemed Barnes's and Egbert's patent as "public".


title: Corset

text: For dress reformists of the late 19th century, corsets were a dangerous moral evil, promoting promiscuous views of female bodies and superficial dalliance with fashion whims. Health risks, such as damaged or rearranged internal organs, infertility, and inability to perform "womanly" duties, such as caring for children or cleaning house, were said to be caused by tightlacing, and that has been acknowledged by experts. However, tightlacing was very scandalous and was extremely uncommon. The large majority of women wore corsets every day without extreme detrimental effects. Eventually, the reformers' critique of the corset joined a throng of voices clamoring against tightlacing. Doctors counseled patients against it and journalists wrote articles condemning the vanity and frivolity of women who would sacrifice their health for the sake of fashion. While tightlacing is dangerous, it was fairly uncommon, and was seen as quite shocking by the majority of women, in addition to men. Whereas for many, corseting was accepted as necessary for health, support, and an upright military-style posture, dress reformers viewed tightlacing, especially at the height of the era of Victorian morality, as a sign of moral indecency.


title: Corset

text: American women active in the anti-slavery and temperance movements, with experience in public speaking and political agitation, wore sensible clothing that would not restrict their movement, although corsets were a part of their wardrobe. While supporters of fashionable dress contended that corsets maintained an upright, "good figure", and were a necessary physical structure for a moral and well-ordered society, dress reformers maintained that women's fashions were not only physically detrimental, but "the results of male conspiracy to make women subservient by cultivating them in slave psychology". They believed a change in fashions could change the position of women in society, allowing for greater social mobility, independence from men and marriage, and the ability to work for wages, as well as physical movement and comfort.


title: Corset

text: Despite those protests, little changed in fashion and undergarments up to 1900. During the Edwardian period, the straight-front corset (also known as the S-Curve corset) was introduced. That corset was straight in front, with a pronounced curve at the back that forced the upper body forward and the buttocks out. The style was worn from 1900 to 1908, and was originally conceived as a health corset, which was a type of corset made of wool and reinforced with cording, and promoted the alleged health benefits of wearing wool next to skin. It was sold as an alternative to the boned corset. However, the S-Curve corset became the framework for many ornate fashions in the late 1890s and 1900s.


title: Corset

text: The corset reached its greatest length in the early 20th century. At first, the longline corset reached from the bust down to the upper thigh. There was also a style of longline corset that started under the bust, and necessitated the wearing of a brassiere, a style that was meant to complement the new silhouette. It was a boneless style, much closer to a modern girdle than the traditional corset. The longline style was abandoned during World War I.


title: Corset

text: The corset fell from fashion in the 1920s in Europe and North America, replaced by girdles and elastic brassieres, but survived as an article of costume. Originally an item of lingerie, the corset has become a popular item of outerwear in the fetish, BDSM, and goth subcultures. In the fetish and BDSM literature, there is often much emphasis on tightlacing, and many corset makers cater to the fetish market.


title: Corset

text: Outside the fetish community, living history reenactors and historic costume enthusiasts still wear stays and corsets according to their original purpose to give the proper shape to the figure when wearing historic fashions. In this case, the corset is underwear rather than outerwear. Skilled corset makers are available to make reproductions of historic corset shapes or to design new styles.


title: Corset

text: In the late 1940s and early 1950s, there was a brief revival of the corset in the form of the waist cincher sometimes called a "waspie". This was used to give the hourglass figure as dictated by Christian Dior's "New Look". However, use of the waist cincher was restricted to haute couture, and most women continued to use girdles. Waspies were also met with push-back from women's organizations in the United States, as well as female members of the British Parliament, because corsetry had been forbidden under rationing during World War II. The revival ended when the New Look gave way to a less dramatically-shaped silhouette.


title: Corset

text: In 1968, at the feminist Miss America protest, protestors symbolically threw a number of feminine products into a "Freedom Trash Can". They included corsets, which were among items the protestors called "instruments of female torture", and accoutrements which they perceived to enforce femininity.


title: Corset

text: Since the late 1980s, the corset has experienced periodic revivals, all which have usually originated in haute couture and have occasionally trickled through to mainstream fashion. Fashion designer Vivienne Westwood's use of corsets contributed to the push-up bust trend that lasted from the late 1980s throughout the 1990s. Those revivals focussed on the corset as an item of outerwear rather than underwear. The strongest of the revivals was seen in the Autumn 2001 fashion collections and coincided with the release of the film "Moulin Rouge!", in which the costumes featured many corsets as characteristic of the era. Another fashion movement, which has renewed interest in the corset, is the steampunk culture that utilizes late-Victorian fashion shapes in new ways.


title: Corset

text: A corset dress (also known as hobble corset because it produces similar restrictive effects to a hobble skirt) is a long corset. It is like an ordinary corset, but it is long enough to cover the legs, partially or totally. It thus looks like a dress, hence the name. A person wearing a corset dress can have great difficulty in walking up and down the stairs (especially if wearing high-heeled footwear) and may be unable to sit down if the boning is too stiff.


title: Corset

text: Other types of corset dresses are created for unique high fashion looks by a few modern corset makers. These modern styles are functional as well as fashionable and are designed to be worn with comfort for a dramatic look.


title: Corset

text: A neck corset is a type of posture collar incorporating stays and it is generally not considered to be a true corset. This type of corset and its purpose of improving posture does not have long term results. Since certain parts of the neck are being pulled towards the head, a band in the neck, called the platysmal band, will most likely disappear. Like the neck corset, a collar serves some of the same purposes. According to G. J. Huston, collars are worn to allow minimal neck movement after road accidents. Furthermore, he concluded that wearing a collar in order to improve the structure of the neck was more cheap than physiotherapy. Neck corsets and collars have become a fashion statement instead of assets to improve posture.


title: Devil's Island

text: The penal colony of Cayenne (French: "Bagne de Cayenne"), commonly known as Devil's Island ("Île du Diable"), was a French penal colony that operated for 100 years, from 1852 to 1952, and officially closed in 1953 in the Salvation Islands of French Guiana.


title: Devil's Island

text: Opened in 1852, the Devil's Island system received convicts from the Prison of St-Laurent-du-Maroni, who had been deported from all parts of the Second French Empire. It was notorious both for the staff's harsh treatment of detainees and the tropical climate and diseases that contributed to high mortality. The prison system had a death rate of 75% at its worst, and was finally closed down in 1953.


title: Devil's Island

text: Devil's Island was also notorious for being used for the exile of French political prisoners, with the most famous being Captain Alfred Dreyfus, accused of spying for Germany. The Dreyfus affair was a scandal extending for several years in late 19th and early 20th century France, exposing antisemitism and corruption in the French military.


title: Devil's Island

text: The prison system encompassed several locations, both on the mainland and in the off-shore Salvation Islands. Île Royale was the reception centre for the general population of the penal colony; they were housed in moderate freedom due to the difficulty of escape from the island. Saint-Joseph Island was the "Reclusion", where inmates were sent to be punished by solitary confinement in silence and darkness, for attempted escapes or offences committed in the penal colony. Devil's Island was for political prisoners. In the 19th century; the most famous such prisoner was Captain Alfred Dreyfus.


title: Devil's Island

text: In addition to the prisons on each of the three islands in the Salut island group, the French constructed three related prison facilities on the South American mainland: just across the straits at Kourou, east in Cayenne (which later became the capital of French Guiana), and St. Laurent, to the west.


title: Devil's Island

text: Prisoners convicted of felonies in the 17th and 18th centuries were sentenced to serve as oarsmen in the French Mediterranean galley fleet. Given the harsh conditions, this was virtually a death sentence. Following the decommissioning of the Mediterranean galley fleet in 1666, the French detained the majority of prisoners in pairs, held in chains aboard galley hulks ("bagnes") moored in French harbours, until the bagnes rotted and sank. The prisoners were transferred to live on the adjacent pontoons. Prisoners relied on charity or their families for food, bedding and clothing. They were required to work 12 hours a day in the docks, earning 10–15 centimes, which they could spend on food and wine. Other prisoners were housed in prisons onshore, but conditions were reportedly so bad that many prisoners would beg to be transferred to the hulks.


title: Devil's Island

text: By the early 19th century, the French urban population had increased from under six million to over 16 million, and crime kept pace. In 1832 legislation was passed mandating the state's provision of basic necessities to prisoners. Prison reform changed the previous reliance on corporal punishment through hard labor, to imprisonment with a goal of punishment and deterrence. Imprisonment was considered a way to remove offenders from society. Recidivism of up to 75% had become a major problem; released and unemployed prisoners entered cities to seek a way to live.


title: Devil's Island

text: In the 1840s, the state set up internal agricultural penal colonies as a place to receive prisoners, thereby removing them from urban environments and giving them work. Prisoners were commonly sentenced under "doublage" by which, on completion of their sentence, they were required to work as employees at the penal colony for an additional period equal to their original sentence.


title: Devil's Island

text: The French Navy, which had been tasked with managing the prison hulks, complained strongly about the cost of guarding the hulks and the disruption they caused to the work of the shipyards. Following his coup in 1851, Emperor Napoleon III ordered that the hulks be permanently closed and that civil law convicts be transferred overseas to colonies. Debate over where the convicts would be sent was prolonged. Algeria was ruled out by the Navy as it was controlled by the French Army; Haiti, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Texas in the United States were considered, but the government eventually chose its own colony of French Guiana.


title: Devil's Island

text: Since 1604 France had repeatedly failed to colonize French Guiana. The last attempt at colonization was in 1763. Some 75% of the 12,000 colonists who had been sent there died in their first year, often from tropical diseases. By the 1850s, the declining number of survivors were on the brink of extinction. In 1852, Napoleon called for volunteer prisoners from the hulks to transfer to the new "Bagne de Cayenne" (Cayennes penal colony) at French Guiana; 3,000 convicts applied. Two categories of prisoners were eligible for transportation: "transportés," those civil-law prisoners sentenced under "doublage," and "déportés," prisoners convicted of political crimes, such as espionage or conspiracy. France also continued to use the hulks, housing an average of 5,400 prisoners at a time, until they were finally closed around the end of the 19th century. The agricultural penal colonies continued to be used for juveniles until the last was closed in 1939.


title: Devil's Island

text: The islands were part of a penal colony from 1852 onward for French criminals: those convicted by juries rather than magistrates. The main part of the penal colony was a labor camp that stretched along the border with Dutch Guiana (present-day Suriname). This penal colony developed a reputation for harshness and brutality, and generated periodic calls for reform. Prisoner-on-prisoner violence was common; tropical diseases were rife. Only a small minority of broken survivors returned to France to tell how horrible it was; they sometimes scared other potential criminals to go straight. This system was gradually phased out and closed completely in 1953.


title: Devil's Island

text: Since the late 20th century, the islands have become tourist destinations with areas of the former prisons open for tours.


title: Devil's Island

text: Devil's Island and associated prisons eventually became one of the most infamous prison systems in history. While the prison system was in use (1852–1952), inmates included political prisoners (such as 239 republicans who opposed Napoleon III's coup d'état in 1851) and the most hardened of thieves and murderers. The vast majority of the more than 80,000 prisoners sent to the Devil's Island prison system never returned to France. Many died due to disease and harsh conditions. Sanitary systems were limited, and the region was mosquito-infested, with the insects transmitting endemic tropical diseases. The only exit from the island prisons was by water, and few convicts escaped.


title: Devil's Island

text: Convicts who were lucky enough to have family or friends willing to send them money had to have it sent to them in care of a prison guard. The standard practice was for the guard to keep for himself a quarter of the amount sent and give the rest to the prisoner.


title: Devil's Island

text: On 30 May 1854, France passed a new law of forced residency. It required convicts to stay in French Guiana after completion of sentence for a time equal to their forced labour time. If the original sentence exceeded eight years, they were forced to stay as residents for the remainder of their lives and were provided land to settle on. In time, a variety of penal regimes emerged, as convicts were divided into categories according to the severity of their crimes and the terms of their imprisonment or "forced residence" regime.


title: Devil's Island

text: An 1885 law provided for repeat offenders for minor crimes to be sent to the French Guiana prison system, previously reserved for serious offenders and political prisoners. A limited number of convicted women were also sent to French Guiana, with the intent that they marry freed male inmates to aid in settlement and development of the colony. As the results were poor, the government discontinued the practice in 1907. On Devil's Island itself, the small prison facility did not usually house more than 12 persons.


title: Devil's Island

text: The horrors of the penal settlement were publicized during the Dreyfus affair, as the French army captain Alfred Dreyfus was unjustly convicted of treason and sent to Devil's Island on 5 January 1895. In 1938 the penal system was strongly criticized in René Belbenoît's book "Dry Guillotine".


title: Devil's Island

text: Shortly after the release of Belbenoît's book, which aroused public outrage about the conditions, the French government announced plans to close the "bagne de Cayennes". The outbreak of World War II delayed this operation but, from 1946 until 1953, one by one the prisons were closed. The Devil's Island facility was the last to be closed.


title: Devil's Island

text: The cable car system that provided access to Devil's Island from Royale Island deteriorated and Devil's Island is now closed to public access. It can be viewed from off shore by use of charter boats. The two larger islands in the Salut island group are open to the public, with some of the old prison buildings restored as museums. They have become tourist destinations.


title: Devil's Island

text: Around the middle of the 19th century, an experiment was carried out in which 15 prostitutes were brought to Devil's Island, who were thought to encourage prisoners to live a dignified life and start a family. The women were guarded by nuns. No families were born, but the women offered sexual favors to anyone who could offer them rum. Disputes arose among the men, and eventually a syphilis epidemic raged on the island.


title: Devil's Island

text: After an attempt on January 14, 1858, to assassinate Emperor Napoleon III, Charles DeRudio was sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island. He escaped with twelve others, making their way to British Guiana. In later life he joined the American Army and survived the Battle of the Little Bighorn.


title: Devil's Island

text: Clément Duval, an anarchist, was sent to Devil's Island in 1886. Originally sentenced to death, he later received a commuted sentence of hard labour for life. He escaped in April 1901 and fled to New York City, where he remained for the rest of his life. He eventually wrote a book about his imprisonment called "Revolte".


title: Devil's Island

text: Four escapees from Devil's Island arrived in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands on 18 October 1936. Their native boat was nearly wrecked on the reef and the convicts were initially entertained as guests and treated for injuries at the Municipal Hospital. The fugitives, François Frean, 37, Paul Renuci, 32, Raymond Vaude, 35, all French, and Giovanni Batistoti, 35, Italian, were reported to have suffered hardships.


title: Devil's Island

text: Henri Charrière's bestselling book "Papillon" (1969) describes his successful escape from Devil's Island, with a companion, Sylvain. They used two sacks filled with coconuts to act as lifeboats. According to Charrière, the two men leaped into heavy seas from a cliff and drifted to the mainland over a period of three days. Sylvain died in quicksand a short distance from the shore. From there, Charrière was to meet a man by the name of Cuic-Cuic who would help him continue and complete his escape to freedom; instead Charrière was caught again and served for a time in the Bagne at El Dorado, Venezuela. Once finally freed, he remained in Venezuela.


title: Devil's Island

text: Charrière's account aroused considerable controversy. French authorities disputed it and released penal colony records that contradicted his account. Charrière had never been imprisoned on Devil's Island. He had escaped from a mainland prison. French journalists or prison authorities disputed other elements of his book and said that he had invented many incidents or appropriated experiences of other prisoners. Critics said he should have admitted his book was fiction.


title: Devil's Island

text: Felix Milani travelled on the same ship over as Henri Charrière and wrote a book about his experiences titled "The Convict".


title: Devil's Island

text: René Belbenoît is perhaps the most renowned escapee of the penal colony, who wrote about his experiences in two well-received memoirs: "Hell on Trial" (1940) and " The Dry Guillotine: Fifteen Years Among the Living Dead" (1938). After leaving the colony with temporary permission in 1930, he eventually made his way to the Panama Canal where he worked for nearly a year. In late 1930, he decided to return to France to argue for his freedom. However, it was a crime for a Devil's Island convict to return to France. He was sent back to French Guiana in 1931 to the prison colony. This time he was sent to Île Royale rather than Devil's Island. He was put into solitary confinement for almost one year. In 1934, he was again released, but as a "libéré", or free prisoner, he was, as before in 1930, not allowed to return to France. He eventually made his way to the United States. He gained US citizenship in 1956. He died in California in 1959, age 59.


title: Devil's Island

text: According to the second memoir of American sailor and writer William Willis ("Damned and Damned Again)", a few days after New Years in 1938, he rented a room in New York City from a French immigrant named Madame Carnot. Her son, Bernard Carnot, had been sent to Devil's Island in 1922 for a murder that he did not commit, and the Carnot family had since moved to the United States. Out of compassion and a sense of adventure, Willis set out to the penal colony to effect Bernard Carnot's escape, which he eventually accomplished. The subtitle of the book indicates that it documents the 'true story of the last escape from Devil's Island'.


title: Devil's Island

text: Having been smuggled to Brazil aboard a supply ship, Carnot would never reunite with his family, although they learned via Willis that he had gained his freedom. On the outbreak of WW2 he returned to Europe and joined the French forces. He is believed to have been killed in action shortly before the liberation of Strasbourg.


title: Devil's Island

text: In 1938, the French government stopped sending prisoners to Devil's Island. In 1953, the prison system was finally closed entirely.


title: Devil's Island

text: Most of the prisoners at the time were repatriated to metropolitan France by the Salvation Army. Some chose to stay and resettle in French Guiana.


title: Devil's Island

text: In 1965, the French government transferred responsibility for most of the islands to its newly founded Guiana Space Centre. The islands are under the trajectory of the space rockets launched from the Centre eastward, toward the sea (to geostationary orbit). They must be evacuated during each launch. The islands host a variety of measurement apparatus for space launches.


title: Devil's Island

text: The CNES space agency, in association with other agencies, has restored buildings that are classified as historical monuments. Since the addition of tourism facilities, the islands now receive more than 50,000 tourists each year.


title: Devil's Island

text: In Rob Zombies 2022 movie The Munsters. Herman and Lilly vacation on the beach at Devils Island Hotel. Herman wears a prison uniform that says property of devils island penal colony.


title: M40 rifle

text: The M40 rifle is a bolt-action sniper rifle used by the United States Marine Corps. It has had four variants: the M40, M40A1, M40A3, and M40A5. The M40 was introduced in 1966. The changeover to the A1 model was completed in the 1970s, the A3 in the 2000s, and the A5 in 2009.


title: M40 rifle

text: Each M40 is built from a Remington Model 700 bolt-action rifle, and is modified by USMC armorers at Marine Corps Base Quantico, using components from a number of suppliers. New M40A5s are being built, and A1s are upgraded to A3s and A5s as they rotate into the armory for service and repair. The rifles have had many sub-variations in telescopic sights, and smaller user modifications. The M40A5 incorporates a detachable magazine and a threaded barrel to allow for the use of a sound suppressor or another muzzle device.


title: M40 rifle

text: The original M40 was a military type-classified version of the Remington 700; it was factory-made, and had a one-piece wooden stock. The M40A1 and A3 switched to fiberglass stocks made by McMillan, with new scopes. The trigger pull on both models (M40A1/A3) is .


title: M40 rifle

text: During the Vietnam War, the Marine Corps decided they needed a standard sniper rifle. After testing several possibilities, they ordered seven hundred Remington Model 40x rifles (target/varmint version of the Remington Model 700 bolt-action rifle), and gave them the M40 designation. Most had a Redfield 3–9x Accurange variable scope mounted. With time, certain weaknesses, primarily warping of the all-wood stock, became apparent.


title: M40 rifle

text: Sometime in the early 1970s, the USMC armorers at MCB Quantico began rebuilding the original M40s into M40A1s. The process involved, among other improvements, replacing the original wood stocks with McMillan A1 fiberglass stocks, as well as replacing the original 3–9× Redfield variable-power scopes with 10× Unertl fixed-power scopes. The M40 was originally designed by Jack Cuddy and Neill Goddard. The stock featured Wichita sling swivels and a Pachmayr buttpad.


title: M40 rifle

text: The Corps began looking at a replacement for the M40 series in 2004, but did not draft requirements until 2009 while working with SOCOM. The plans for a "21st century sniper rifle" were paused while the Army's results of SOCOM's Precision Sniper Rifle program were finalized in 2013. The Marine Corps eventually decided to continue upgrading the M40A-series and keep the 7.62 NATO round, primarily due to the higher cost of larger rounds and scout sniper training that can achieve kills beyond the weapon's effective range.


title: M40 rifle

text: In April 2018, the U.S. Marine Corps announced they would be replacing the M40 with the Mk 13 Mod 7. The Mk 13 chambered in .300 Winchester Magnum increases range from 1,000 meters with the M40 to 1,300 meters, giving Marine snipers similar capabilities to the U.S. Army M2010 Enhanced Sniper Rifle.


title: M40 rifle

text: Development of the M40A3 began in 1996 and concluded in 2001, when it was placed into service during Operation Enduring Freedom. It served in Operation Iraqi Freedom and other subsequent conflicts. Though its designation would remain M40A3 until 2009, its exact configuration varied with time. Listed here is a description of the components used in the M40A3.


title: M40 rifle

text: Action: The M40 has always been based on the Remington 700 Short Action with .308 bolt face, and this is no different in the M40A3. These actions are tuned by Marine armorers; the trigger guard assembly is manufactured by the DD Ross Company, though several M40A3s use Badger Ordnance trigger guards. In 2007, the Marine Corps began replacing the DD Ross trigger guard assemblies with the M5 detachable magazine trigger guard manufactured by Badger Ordnance.


title: M40 rifle

text: Stock: All service M40A3s are based upon the A4 Tactical Riflestock, a benchrest-style fiberglass riflestock made by McMillan Fiberglass Stocks and cast molded in an OD Green color. The action is glass bedded into the stock with aluminum pillars, while the barrel is allowed to "float" (it is attached only to the action), ensuring it is stress free during operation. The stock has adjustable length-of-pull (through a buttstock spacer system) and a Marine manufactured adjustable saddle-type cheekpiece. The stock also has six flush mount sling swivel cups, two on each side front and back and one each on the front and rear underside. One bipod stud is located on the underside of the forend.


title: M40 rifle

text: Sling: The Model 1907 sling that has been historically used on M40A3s has been replaced with the Quick Cuff Model Two sling manufactured by Tactical Intervention Specialists.


title: M40 rifle

text: Bipod: The M40A3s use a 6–9" Harris notched swivel type bipod, model S-BRM, with a KMW Pod-Loc, which is a push button ratcheting bipod swivel locking mechanism.


title: M40 rifle

text: Dayscope: The M8541 Scout Sniper Day Scope is a Schmidt and Bender Police Marksman II LP 3–12×50 modified by Premier Reticles. Starting in 2007, this model replaced the Unertl MST-100 10× fixed day scope. This dayscope is mounted with Badger Ordnance USMC M40A3 34mm scope rings, which use a standard ring in the rear and a wider MAX-50 ring in front. The standard front ring cap is replaced with a SPA-Defense B634 34mm Male Dovetail, as a mounting platform for the Simrad KN200 Night Vision Weapon Sight. The scope and rings are mounted on a DD Ross 30-minute-of-angle lugged Picatinny rail.


title: M40 rifle

text: The M40A5 superseded the M40A3 in 2009, though the evolution between the two systems occurred gradually over a longer period. The primary difference between the M40A5 and the M40A3 is the barrel: The A3's target crown has been replaced with a threaded muzzle and straight tapered barrel to allow the installation of a Surefire muzzle brake and sound suppressor. All M40A5s are fitted with a Badger Ordnance detachable magazine system and a forward rail mount for the AN/PVS-22 night vision optic.