title: Sunderland

text: In 2008, Sunderland City Council offered the residents of Sunderland the opportunity to vote on the design of the bridge. The choices were a iconic cable-stayed bridge, which would result in a temporary increase in council tax, or a simple box structure which would be within the council's budget.


title: Sunderland

text: The results of the consultation were inconclusive, with residents keen to have an iconic bridge, but reluctant to have a subsequent increase in tax to fund it.


title: Sunderland

text: Regardless of the ultimate design of the new bridge, the landing point will be the former Grove Cranes site in Pallion. Plans for this site focus around the creation of a new residential area, with homes, community buildings, commercial and retail space.


title: Sunderland

text: The Port of Sunderland, owned by the city council, has been earmarked for medium-term redevelopment with a focus on mixed-use industry.


title: Sunderland

text: Once hailed as the "Largest Shipbuilding Town in the World", ships were built on the Wear from at least 1346 onwards and by the mid-18th century Sunderland was one of the chief shipbuilding towns in the country. Sunderland Docks was the home of operations for the shipbuilding industry on Wearside. The Port of Sunderland was significantly expanded in the 1850s with the construction of Hudson Dock to designs by River Wear Commissioner's Engineer John Murray, with consultancy by Robert Stephenson. One famous vessel was the "Torrens", the clipper in which Joseph Conrad sailed, and on which he began his first novel. She was one of the most famous ships of her time and can claim to be the finest ship ever launched from a Sunderland yard.


title: Sunderland

text: Between 1939 and 1945 the Wear yards launched 245 merchant ships totalling 1.5 million tons, a quarter of the merchant tonnage produced in the UK at this period. Competition from overseas caused a downturn in demand for Sunderland built ships toward the end of the 20th century. The last shipyard in Sunderland closed on 7 December 1988.


title: Sunderland

text: Sunderland, part of the Durham coalfield, has a coal-mining heritage that dates back centuries. At its peak in 1923, 170,000 miners were employed in County Durham alone, as labourers from all over Britain, including many from Scotland and Ireland, entered the region. As demand for coal slipped following World War II, mines began to close across the region, causing mass unemployment. The last coal mine closed in 1994. The site of the last coal mine, Wearmouth Colliery, is now occupied by the Stadium of Light, and a miner's Davy lamp monument stands outside of the ground to honour the site's mining heritage. Documentation relating to the region's coalmining heritage are stored at the North East England Mining Archive and Resource Centre (NEEMARC).


title: Sunderland

text: As with the coal-mining and shipbuilding, overseas competition has forced the closure of all of Sunderland's glass-making factories. Corning Glass Works, in Sunderland for 120 years, closed on 31 March 2007 and in January 2007, the Pyrex manufacturing site also closed, bringing to an end commercial glass-making in the city. However, there has been a modest rejuvenation with the opening of the National Glass Centre which, amongst other things, provides international glass makers with working facilities and a shop to showcase their work, predominantly in the artistic rather than functional field.


title: Sunderland

text: Vaux Breweries was established in the town centre in the 1880s and for 110 years was a major employer. Following a series of consolidations in the British Brewing industry, however, the brewery was finally closed in July 1999. Vaux in Sunderland and Wards in Sheffield had been part of the Vaux Group, but with the closure of both breweries it was re-branded The Swallow Group, concentrating on the hotel side of the business. This was subject to a successful take-over by Whitbread PLC in the autumn of 2000. It is now a brownfield site and this is a derelict site in an urban area.


title: Sunderland

text: In 1855, John Candlish opened a bottleworks, producing glass bottles, with 6 sites at nearby Seaham and at Diamond Hall, Sunderland.


title: Sunderland

text: Sunderland Polytechnic was founded in 1969, becoming the University of Sunderland in 1992. The institution currently has over 17,000 students. The university is split into two campuses; the City Campus (site of the original Polytechnic) is just to the west of the city centre, as is the main university library and the main administrative buildings. The 'Award-Winning' St Peter's Riverside Campus is located on the north banks of the river Wear, next to the National Glass Centre and houses the School of Business, Law and Psychology, as well as Computing and Technology and The Media Centre. The University of Sunderland was named the top university in England for providing the best student experience by "The Times Higher Education Supplement" (THES) in 2006. Since 2001 Sunderland has been named the best new university in England by "The Guardian" and Government performance indicators showed Sunderland as the best new university in England for the quality, range and quantity of its research.


title: Sunderland

text: Sunderland College is a further education establishment with campuses located at the Bede centre on Durham Road, Hylton, Doxford International Business Park and 'Phoenix House' in the city centre. It has over 14,000 students, and based on exam results is one of the most successful colleges. St Peter's Sixth Form College, next to St Peter's Church and the University, opened in September 2008. The college is a partnership between the three Sunderland North schools and City of Sunderland College.


title: Sunderland

text: There are eighteen secondary schools in the Sunderland area, predominantly comprehensives. According to exam results, the most successful was St Robert of Newminster Catholic School, a coeducational secondary school and sixth form in Washington. However, comprehensive schools also thrive, notably the Roman Catholic single-sex schools St Anthony's (for girls) and St Aidan's (for boys). Both continue to attain high exam results.


title: Sunderland

text: There are seventy-six primary schools in Sunderland. According to the 'Value Added' measure, the most successful is Mill Hill Primary School, in Doxford Park.


title: Sunderland

text: In May 2002, the Tyne and Wear Metro was extended to Sunderland in an official ceremony attended by The Queen, 22 years after it originally opened in Newcastle upon Tyne. The Green line now stretches deeper into South Tyneside and into Sunderland; it incorporates Seaburn, Millfield, Pallion, as well as Sunderland's mainline railway station and stations at the Park Lane Transport Interchange and both campuses of the University of Sunderland, before terminating at South Hylton. The trains run every 12–15 minutes, depending on the time of day, and call at all stations. All-zones Metro tickets cost £5.20 for a daily and £22.40 for a weekly, as of October 2019.


title: Sunderland

text: In March 2014, Metro owner Nexus proposed an extension of the network by the creation of an 'on-street' tram link which would connect the city centre to South Shields to the north and Doxford Park to the west.


title: Sunderland

text: Sunderland station has 5 direct trains to London King's Cross on weekdays (5 on Saturday / 4 on Sunday), taking about 3 hours 30 minutes. is a 30-minute Tyne & Wear Metro ride (see above) from Sunderland city centre, and has connecting services to London every half hour that take approximately 2 hours 45 minutes and also regular services to , , , Manchester Piccadilly, , and beyond.


title: Sunderland

text: Sunderland station opened in 1879 but was completely redesigned to facilitate football teams and officials from countries who were drawn to play at Roker Park during England's hosting of the 1966 World Cup. It is situated on an underground level. It was renovated in 2005, backed by the artistic team which designed the stations along the Wearside extension of the Tyne & Wear Metro in 2002. It is situated on the Durham Coast Line served by direct Northern services to Newcastle, , and , as well as further afield to , and . These services run hourly in each direction, cut from half-hourly on 12 December 2005 (but towards Newcastle there is also the option of taking the Metro – see the Metro subsection above).


title: Sunderland

text: From 1998 to 2004, Northern Spirit and subsequently Arriva Trains Northern ran two-hourly direct trains from Sunderland to Liverpool Lime Street via , , , Leeds and Manchester Piccadilly. The services were withdrawn due to a change of franchise which saw the First TransPennine Express route gain a franchise in its own right, distinct from the Regional Railways network which Arriva had inherited. Services now terminate at Newcastle and a separate service also travels to Middlesbrough, but both only stretch as far as .


title: Sunderland

text: In 2006, Grand Central announced plans to operate a direct service between Sunderland and London King's Cross via York, a service which had been stripped from Wearside twenty years earlier. A scaled-down service of one train each day began in December 2007, twelve months after the initial launch date, due to delays caused by restoring rolling stock and a protracted court case against GNER (which Grand Central won). The service increased to three departures daily each way on 1 March 2008, connecting a line which can run from Edinburgh to London. The service has proved so popular that daily fourth and fifth direct trains are now in operation.


title: Sunderland

text: When Virgin Trains East Coast were announced as the winners of the InterCity East Coast franchise in November 2014, their plans included a daily service from Sunderland to London Kings Cross that commenced in December 2015.


title: Sunderland

text: The fastest, largest and busiest road is the A19, which is a dual carriageway running north-to-south along the western edge of the urban area, crossing the River Wear at Hylton, and providing access north to the Tyne Tunnel, joining up with the A1 to Edinburgh, and south through Teesside, joining up with the A1M via the A168 at Thirsk, providing an entirely grade separated connection between Sunderland and the M1 motorway. The A19 originally ran through Sunderland city centre until the bypass was built in the 1970s; this route is now the A1018.


title: Sunderland

text: The A690 "Durham Road" terminates in the city centre and runs to Crook, County Durham via the city of Durham.


title: Sunderland

text: The A1231 (Sunderland Highway) begins in the city centre, crosses the Queen Alexandra Bridge and runs west through Washington to the A1. Most of this road is national speed limit dual carriageway.


title: Sunderland

text: The A1018 and A183 roads both start in the centre of South Shields and enter Sunderland from the north, before merging to cross the Wearmouth Bridge. The A1018 follows a direct route from Shields to Sunderland, the A183 follows the coast. After crossing the bridge, the A1018 follows a relatively straight path to the south of Sunderland where it merges with the A19. The A183 becomes "Chester Road" and heads west out of the city to the A1 at Chester-le-Street.


title: Sunderland

text: In Autumn 2007, the "Southern Radial Route" was opened. This is a bypass of the A1018 through Grangetown and Ryhope – a stretch that commonly suffered from congestion, especially during rush hour. The bypass starts just south of Ryhope, and runs parallel to the cliff tops into Hendon, largely avoiding residential areas.


title: Sunderland

text: The Sunderland strategic transport corridor project is an ongoing investment to the city's road infrastructure. The scheme will improve transport links around the city ensuring continuous dual carriageway between the A19 road and the port of Sunderland. The scheme also includes the building of a new wear bridge between Pallion on the south embankment and Castletown to the north.


title: Sunderland

text: A multimillion-pound transport interchange at Park Lane was opened on 2 May 1999 by the then "Brookside" actor Michael Starke. With 750,000 passengers per year, it is the busiest bus and coach station in Britain after Victoria Coach Station in Central London and has won several awards for innovative design. The majority of bus services in Sunderland are provided by Stagecoach in Sunderland and Go North East, with a handful of services provided by Arriva North East. Besides these, there are also cross-country and inter-city route buses mainly operated by National Express and Megabus. A new Metro station was built underneath the bus concourse to provide a direct interchange as part of the extension to South Hylton in 2002.


title: Sunderland

text: There are a number of cycle routes that run through and around Sunderland. The National Cycle Network National Route 1 runs from Ryhope in the south, through the centre of the city and then along the coast towards South Shields. Britain's most popular long-distance cycle route – The 'C2C' Sea to Sea Cycle Route – traditionally starts or ends when the cyclist dips their wheel in the sea on Roker beach. The 'W2W' 'Wear-to-Walney' route and the 'Two-Rivers' (Tyne and Wear) route also terminate in Sunderland.


title: Sunderland

text: Newcastle Airport is a 55-minute Metro ride from Sunderland city centre; there is a Metro train connecting with the airport every 12–15minutes in both directions until about 11pm, Monday-Sunday. Teesside International Airport can be reached in less than one hour by car. Each year on the last weekend in July, the city hosted the Sunderland International Airshow. It took place primarily along the sea front at Roker and Seaburn.


title: Sunderland

text: The port offers a total of 17 quays, which handle cargoes including forest products, non-ferrous metals, steel, aggregates and refined oil products, limestone, chemicals and maritime cranes. It also handles offshore supply vessels and has ship repair and drydocking facilities.


title: Sunderland

text: The river berths are deepwater and tidal, while the South Docks are entered via a lock with an beam restriction.


title: Sunderland

text: The dialect of Sunderland is known as Mackem, and contains a large amount of vocabulary and distinctive words and pronunciations not used in other parts of the United Kingdom. The Mackem dialect has much of its origins in the language spoken by the Anglo-Saxon population. Although the accent has much in common with Geordie, the dialect spoken in Newcastle, there are some distinctive differences.


title: Sunderland

text: Notable attractions for visitors to Sunderland include the 14th century Hylton Castle and the beaches of Roker and Seaburn.


title: Sunderland

text: The National Glass Centre opened in 1998, reflecting Sunderland's distinguished history of glass-making. Despite sustained support from the Arts Council the centre has struggled to meet visitor targets since it opened.


title: Sunderland

text: Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens, on Borough Road, was the first municipally funded museum in the country outside London. It houses a comprehensive collection of the locally produced Sunderland Lustreware pottery. The City Library Arts Centre, on Fawcett Street, housed the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art until the library was closed in January 2017. The library service was relocated to the Museum and Winter Gardens and the Gallery for Contemporary Art transferred to Sunderland University.


title: Sunderland

text: Every year the city hosts a large Remembrance Day memorial service, the largest in the UK outside London in 2006.


title: Sunderland

text: Sunderland celebrates an annual Restaurant week, where city centre restaurants provide some of the best plates at low costs.


title: Sunderland

text: Lewis Carroll was a frequent visitor to the area. He wrote most of "Jabberwocky" at Whitburn as well as "The Walrus and the Carpenter". Some parts of the area are also widely believed to be the inspiration for his Alice in Wonderland stories, such as Hylton Castle and Backhouse Park. There is a statue to Carroll in Whitburn library. Lewis Carroll was also a visitor to the Rectory of Holy Trinity Church, Southwick; then a township independent of Sunderland. Carroll's connection with Sunderland, and the area's history, is documented in Bryan Talbot's 2007 graphic novel "Alice in Sunderland". More recently, Sunderland-born Terry Deary, writer of the series of "Horrible Histories" books, has achieved fame and success, and many others such as thriller writer Sheila Quigley, are following his lead.


title: Sunderland

text: The Salford-born painter L. S. Lowry was a frequent visitor, staying in the Seaburn Hotel in Sunderland. Many of his paintings of seascapes and shipbuilding are based on Wearside scenes. The Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art on Fawcett Street and Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens showcase exhibitions and installations from up-and-coming and established artists alike, with the latter holding an extensive collection of Lowry. The National Glass Centre on Liberty Way also exhibits a number of glass sculptures.


title: Sunderland

text: Sunderland has two local newspapers: the daily evening tabloid "The Sunderland Echo", founded in 1873, and the "Sunderland Star" – a free newspaper.


title: Sunderland

text: It also has its own commercial station, Sun FM, formerly an independent station but now owned by Nation Broadcasting who acquired the station from the UKRD Group, a student-led community radio station, Spark, and a hospital radio station – Radio Sunderland for Hospitals, and can receive other north-eastern independent radio stations Metro Radio, Greatest Hits Radio North East, Capital North East, Smooth North East and Heart North East. The regional BBC radio station is BBC Radio Newcastle. The city is covered by BBC North East and Cumbria and ITV's Tyne Tees franchise, which has a regional office in the university's media centre.


title: Sunderland

text: Sunderland's inaugural film festival took place in December 2003 at the Bonded Warehouse building on Sunderland riverside, in spite of the lack of any cinema facilities in the city at that time, featuring the films of local and aspiring directors as well as re-showings of acclaimed works, such as Alan Bleasdale's "The Monocled Mutineer", accompanied by analysis. By the time of the second festival commencing on 21 January 2005, a new cinema multiplex had opened in Sunderland to provide a venue which allowed the festival to showcase over twenty films.


title: Sunderland

text: Sunderland musicians that have gone on to reach international fame include Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics and all four members of Kenickie, whose vocalist Lauren Laverne later became known as a TV presenter. In recent years, the underground music scene in Sunderland has helped promote the likes of Frankie & the Heartstrings, The Futureheads, The Golden Virgins and Field Music.


title: Sunderland

text: Other Mackem musicians include punk rockers The Toy Dolls ("Nellie the Elephant", December 1984), oi! punk band Red Alert, punk band Leatherface, the lead singer of dance outfit Olive, Ruth Ann Boyle ("You're Not Alone", May 1997) and A Tribe of Toffs ("John Kettley is a Weatherman", December 1988).


title: Sunderland

text: In May 2005, Sunderland played host to BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend concert at Herrington Country Park, attended by 30,000 visitors and which featured Foo Fighters, Kasabian, KT Tunstall, Chemical Brothers and The Black Eyed Peas.


title: Sunderland

text: The Sunderland Stadium of Light, home to Sunderland AFC, is recognised internationally as a major stadium concert venue. Headlining acts have included Oasis, Take That, Pink, Kings of Leon, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Coldplay, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Bon Jovi, Rihanna, One Direction, Foo Fighters and Beyonce. The Empire Theatre sometimes plays host to music acts. Independent, a city-centre nightclub/music venue, satisfies underground music lovers.


title: Sunderland

text: The Manor Quay' the students' union nightclub on St Peter's Riverside at the University of Sunderland, has also hosted the Arctic Monkeys, Maxïmo Park, 911, the Levellers and Girls Aloud. In 2009, the club was taken into private ownership under the name Campus and hosted N-Dubz, Ocean Colour Scene, Little Boots, Gary Numan and Showaddywaddy but has since been returned to the university. The former students' union Wearmouth Hall hosted Voice of the Beehive, Manic Street Preachers, The Primitives and Radiohead before closing in 1992.


title: Sunderland

text: Since 2009, Sunderland: Live in the City has played host to a series of free and ticketed live music events throughout venues in the city centre. Sunderland also hosts the yearly Split Music Festival at Ashbrooke Cricket Club which was first celebrated in October 2009 and will return in 2010 with Maxïmo Park and The Futureheads headlining.


title: Sunderland

text: In 2013 local band Frankie and The Heartstrings opened a temporary pop up record store in the city, Pop Recs Ltd. Initially only intended to remain open for a fortnight, the store remains open and has hosted live performances from acts including The Cribs, The Vaccines and The Charlatans.


title: Sunderland

text: Sunderland also hosts the free International Festival of Kites, Music and Dance, which attracts kite-makers from around the world to Northumbria Playing Fields, Washington.


title: Sunderland

text: The Sunderland Empire Theatre opened in 1907 on High Street West in the city centre. It is the largest theatre in between Edinburgh and London, and completed a comprehensive refurbishment in 2004. Operated by international entertainment group Live Nation, the Empire is the only theatre between Glasgow and Leeds with sufficient capacity to accommodate large West End productions. It is where British comic actor Sid James who died of a heart attack whilst on stage in 1976.


title: Sunderland

text: The Royalty Theatre on Chester Road is the home to the amateur Royalty Theatre Group who also put on a number of low-budget productions throughout the year. Film producer David Parfitt belonged to this company and is now a patron of the theatre.


title: Sunderland

text: The Sunniside area plays host to a number of smaller theatrical workshops and production houses, as well as the Theatre Restaurant, which combines a dining experience with a rolling programme of musical theatre.


title: Sunderland

text: Sunderland is the only city that is not a capital of country twinned with Washington, D.C., as it includes the town of Washington, the ancestral home of George Washington's family.


title: Sunderland

text: The only professional sporting team in Sunderland is the football team, Sunderland A.F.C., and was elected to the Football League in 1890. Sunderland supporters are one of the oldest fan bases in England, and in 2019 it was reported that despite being in League One, Sunderland's average gates were higher than those of such teams as Lyon, Napoli, Roma, Valencia, Juventus, and Porto. After relegations from the FA Premier League and the EFL Championship, the club has played four consecutive seasons in EFL League One, but will again play in the EFL Championship in the 2022-23 season following their promotion in 2021-22. It is based at the 49,000-seat Stadium of Light, which was opened in 1997. Sunderland A.F.C also has the north-east's top women's football team, Sunderland A.F.C. Women, They currently play in the 3rd tier of English women's football – FA Women's National League North. Despite their financial struggles, Sunderland were league champions six times within the Football League's first half century, but have not achieved this accolade since 1936. Their other notable successes include FA Cup glory in 1937 and 1973 and winning the Division One title with a (then) English league record of 105 points in 1999.


title: Sunderland

text: Sunderland AFC's longest stadium occupancy so far was of Roker Park for 99 years beginning in 1898, with relocation taking place due to the stadium's confined location and the need to build an all-seater stadium. The initial relocation plan, announced in the early 1990s, had been for a stadium to be situated alongside the Nissan factory, but these were abandoned in favour of the Stadium of Light at Monkwearmouth on the site of a colliery on the banks of the River Wear that had closed at the end of 1993. The city also has three non-league sides, Sunderland Ryhope Community Association F.C., and Ryhope Colliery Welfare F.C., both of the Northern League Division One as well as Sunderland West End FC of the Wearside League, who play at the Ford Quarry Complex.


title: Sunderland

text: Sunderland's amateur Rugby and Cricket clubs are both based in Ashbrooke. The Ashbrooke ground was opened on 30 May 1887.


title: Sunderland

text: The Crowtree Leisure Centre has also played host to a number of important boxing matches and snooker championships including the 2003 Snooker World Trickshot and Premier League Final. In September 2005, BBC TV cameras captured international boxing bouts featuring local boxers David Dolan, Stuart Kennedy and Tony Jeffries. The latter became Sunderland's first Olympic medallist when he won a bronze medal in the light heavyweight boxing category for Great Britain and Northern Ireland at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.


title: Sunderland

text: On 18 April 2008, the Sunderland Aquatic Centre was opened. Constructed at a cost of £20 million, it is the only Olympic sized 50 m pool between Leeds and Edinburgh and has six diving boards, which stand at 1 m, 3 m and 5 m.


title: Sunderland

text: Athletics is also a popular sport in the city, with Sunderland Harriers Athletics Club based at Silksworth Sports Complex. 800 m runner Gavin Massingham represented the club at the AAA Championships in 2005. On 25 June 2006, the first Great Women's Run took place along Sunderland's coastline. Among the field which lined up to start the race were Olympic silver medallists Sonia O'Sullivan of the Republic of Ireland and Gete Wami of Ethiopia, who eventually won the race. The race quickly became an annual fixture in the city's sporting schedule, with races in 2007 and 2008. In 2009, the race will be relaunched as the Great North 10K Run, allowing male competitors to take part for the first time, on 12 July.


title: Columbus Day

text: Columbus Day is a national holiday in many countries of the Americas and elsewhere, and a federal holiday in the United States, which officially celebrates the anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the Americas on October 12, 1492.


title: Columbus Day

text: Christopher Columbus ( ) was a Genovese-born explorer who became a subject of the Hispanic Monarchy to lead a Spanish enterprise to cross the Atlantic Ocean in search of an alternative route to the Far East, only to land in the New World. Columbus's first voyage to the New World on the Spanish ships "Santa María", "Niña", and "La Pinta" took about three months. Columbus and his crew's arrival in the New World initiated the colonisation of the Americas by Spain, followed in the ensuing centuries by other European powers, as well as the transfer of plants, animals, culture, human populations, and technology between the New and Old Worlds, an event referred to by some late 20th‐century historians as the Columbian Exchange.


title: Columbus Day

text: The landing is celebrated as Columbus Day in the United States, but the name varies internationally. The Dominican Republic celebrates this day as "The Discovery of the Americas". In some Latin American countries, October 12 is known as "Día de la Raza" or "Day of the Race". This is the case for Mexico, which inspired José Vasconcelos' book celebrating the Day of the Iberoamerican race. Some countries such as Spain refer to the holiday as "Día de la Hispanidad" and "Fiesta Nacional de España", where it coincides with the religious festivity of "La Virgen del Pilar". Since 2009, Peru has celebrated "Día de los pueblos originarios y el diálogo intercultural" ("Indigenous Peoples and Intercultural Dialogue Day"). Belize and Uruguay celebrate it as "Pan American Day" and "Día de las Américas" ("Day of the Americas"). "Giornata Nazionale di Cristoforo Colombo" or "Festa Nazionale di Cristoforo Colombo" is the formal name of the celebration in Italy as well as in Little Italys around the world.


title: Columbus Day

text: The first Columbus Day celebration took place on October 12, 1792, when the Columbian Order of New York, better known as Tammany Hall, held an event to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the historic landing.


title: Columbus Day

text: Many Italian Americans observe Columbus Day as a celebration of their heritage and not of Columbus himself, and the day was celebrated in New York City on October 12, 1866. The day was first enshrined as a legal holiday in the United States through the lobbying of Angelo Noce, a first-generation American, in Denver. The first statewide holiday was proclaimed by Colorado governor Jesse F. McDonald in 1905, and it was made a statutory holiday in 1907.


title: Columbus Day

text: For the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's voyage in 1892, following a lynching in New Orleans, where a mob had murdered 11 Italian immigrants, President Benjamin Harrison declared Columbus Day as a one-time national celebration. The proclamation was part of a wider effort after the lynching incident to placate Italian Americans and ease diplomatic tensions with Italy. During the anniversary in 1892, teachers, preachers, poets, and politicians used rituals to teach ideals of patriotism. These rituals took themes such as citizenship boundaries, the importance of loyalty to the nation, and the celebration of social progress, included among them was the Pledge of Allegiance by Francis Bellamy.


title: Columbus Day

text: In 1934, as a result of lobbying by the Knights of Columbus and New York City Italian leader Generoso Pope, Congress passed a statute stating: "The President is requested to issue each year a proclamation (1) designating October 12 as Columbus Day; (2) calling on United States government officials to display the flag of the United States on all government buildings on Columbus Day; and (3) inviting the people of the United States to observe Columbus Day, in schools and churches, or other suitable places, with appropriate ceremonies that express the public sentiment befitting the anniversary of the discovery of America." President Franklin Delano Roosevelt responded by making such a proclamation. This proclamation did not lead to the modern federal holiday; it was similar to language regarding Thomas Jefferson's birthday and Gold Star Mothers Day. In 1941, Italian and Italian Americans were interned and lost rights as "enemy aliens" due to a belief they would be loyal to Italy and not America in World War II; in 1942, Franklin Roosevelt had the removal of the designation of Italian Americans as "enemy aliens" announced on Columbus Day along with a plan to offer citizenship to 200,000 elderly Italians living in the United States who had been unable to acquire citizenship due to a literacy requirement, but the implementation of the announcement was not completed until those interned in camps were released after Italy's surrender to the Allies on September 8, 1943.


title: Columbus Day

text: In 1966, Mariano A. Lucca, from Buffalo, New York, founded the National Columbus Day Committee, which lobbied to make Columbus Day a federal holiday. These efforts were successful and legislation to create Columbus Day as a federal holiday was signed by President Lyndon Johnson on June 28, 1968, to be effective beginning in 1971.


title: Columbus Day

text: Since 1971, when Columbus Day became an officially recognized Federal holiday in the United States, it has been observed on the second Monday in October, as commemorated by annual Presidential proclamation noting Columbus' achievements. It is generally observed by banks, the bond market, the U.S. Postal Service, other federal agencies, most state government offices, many businesses, and most school districts. Some businesses and some stock exchanges remain open, and some states and municipalities abstain from observing the holiday. The traditional date of the holiday also adjoins the anniversary of the United States Navy (founded October 13, 1775), and thus both occasions are customarily observed by the Navy and the Marine Corps with either a 72- or 96-hour liberty period.


title: Columbus Day

text: On October 10, 1992, Pope John Paul II visited the Dominican Republic to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the discovery of the Americas and the arrival of Christianity in the "New World". His visit ended with a mass in the nation's cathedral, the first cathedral in the Western Hemisphere.


title: Columbus Day

text: Actual observance varies in different parts of the United States, ranging from large-scale parades and events to complete nonobservance. Most states do not celebrate Columbus Day as an official state holiday. Some mark it as a "Day of Observance" or "Recognition.” Most states that celebrate Columbus Day will close state services, while others operate as normal.


title: Columbus Day

text: San Francisco claims the nation's oldest continuously existing celebration with the Italian-American community's annual Columbus Day Parade, which was established by Nicola Larco in 1868, while New York City boasts the largest, with over 35,000 marchers and one million viewers around 2010.


title: Columbus Day

text: As in the mainland United States, Columbus Day is a legal holiday in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico. In the United States Virgin Islands, the day is celebrated as both Columbus Day and "Puerto Rico Friendship Day."


title: Columbus Day

text: Virginia also celebrates two legal holidays on the day, Columbus Day and Yorktown Victory Day, which honors the final victory at the Siege of Yorktown in the Revolutionary War.


title: Columbus Day

text: The celebration of Columbus Day in the United States began to decline at the end of the 20th century, although many Americans continue to celebrate it. The states of Hawaii, Alaska, Vermont, South Dakota, New Mexico, Maine, and parts of California including, for example, Los Angeles County do not recognize it and have each replaced it with celebrations of Indigenous Peoples' Day (in Hawaii, "Discoverers' Day", in South Dakota, "Native American Day"). In the states of Oregon and Washington, Columbus Day is not an official holiday.


title: Columbus Day

text: Iowa and Nevada do not celebrate Columbus Day as an official holiday, but the states' respective governors are "authorized and requested" by statute to proclaim the day each year. Several states have removed the day as a paid holiday for state government workers, while maintaining it either as a day of recognition, or as a legal holiday for other purposes, including California and Texas.


title: Columbus Day

text: The practice of U.S. cities eschewing Columbus Day to celebrate Indigenous Peoples' Day began in 1992 with Berkeley, California. The list of cities that have followed suit as of 2018 includes Austin, Boise, Cincinnati, Denver; Los Angeles, Mankato, Philadelphia, Portland, San Francisco, Santa Fe, Seattle, Saint Paul, Phoenix, Tacoma, and "dozens of others".


title: Columbus Day

text: Columbus, Ohio, has chosen to honor veterans instead of Christopher Columbus, and removed Columbus Day as a city holiday. Various tribal governments in Oklahoma designate the day as Native American Day, or name it after their own tribe.


title: Columbus Day

text: In 2017, the city council of Akron, Ohio, became split along racial lines with the decision to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples' Day, creating pushback from the city's Italian-American community. In 2018, a compromise was reached, with the city council voting to name the first Monday of October as North American First People's Day while keeping Columbus Day, and in 2020, Columbus Day was renamed Italian-American Heritage and Culture Day.


title: Columbus Day

text: The date Columbus arrived in the Americas is celebrated in some countries of Latin America. The most common name for the celebration in Spanish (including some Latin American communities in the United States) is the "Día de la Raza" ("day of the race" or the "day of the [Hispanic] people"), commemorating the first encounters of Europeans and the Native Americans. The day was first celebrated in Argentina in 1917, in Venezuela and Colombia in 1921, in Chile in 1922, and in Mexico, it was first celebrated in 1928. The day was also celebrated under this title in Spain until 1957, when it was changed to the "Día de la Hispanidad" ("Hispanicity Day"), and in Venezuela, it was celebrated under this title until 2002, when it was changed to the "Día de la Resistencia Indígena" (Day of Indigenous Resistance). Originally conceived of as a celebration of Hispanic influence in the Americas, as evidenced by the complementary celebrations in Spain and Latin America, "Día de la Raza" has come to be seen by nationalist activists throughout Latin America as a counter to Columbus Day – a celebration of the native races and cultures and their resistance to the arrival of Europeans in the Americas.


title: Columbus Day

text: In the United States, "Día de la Raza" has served as a time of mobilization for panethnic Latino activists, particularly since the 1960s. Since then, La Raza has served as a periodic rallying cry for Hispanic activists. The first Hispanic March on Washington occurred on Columbus Day in 1996. The name was used by the largest Hispanic social justice organization in the nation, UnidosUS, which was known as the National Council of La Raza from 1968 to 2017.


title: Columbus Day

text: The Day of the Race was established in Argentina in 1916 by a decree of President Hipólito Yrigoyen. The name was changed to "Day of Respect of Cultural Diversity" by a presidential decree in 2010 issued by President Cristina Kirchner. The statue of Columbus was removed from its original position near the Casa Rosada and replaced by one of Juana Azurduy, a patriot and leader in the struggle for independence who had indigenous ancestors.


title: Columbus Day

text: Colombia, whose name originated from Columbus himself, celebrates "El día de la Raza y de la Hispanidad" (meaning "Day of the Race and Hispanicity"), and is taken as an opportunity to celebrate the encounter of "the two worlds" and to reflect on the richness that the racial diversity has brought to the culture.


title: Columbus Day

text: In Peru, it was known as "Día del descubrimiento de América" ("Day of the discovery of America"). Since 2009, it has been celebrated as "Día de los pueblos originarios y el diálogo intercultural" (Indigenous Peoples and Intercultural Dialogue Day).


title: Columbus Day

text: Between 1921 and 2002, Venezuela celebrated "Día de la Raza" along with many other Latin American nations. The original holiday was officially established in 1921 under President Juan Vicente Gómez. In 2002, under President Hugo Chávez, the holiday was changed to "Día de la Resistencia Indígena" (Day of Indigenous Resistance) to commemorate the Indigenous peoples' resistance to European settlement.


title: Columbus Day

text: On October 12, 2004, a crowd of progovernment activists toppled a statue of Christopher Columbus by Rafael de la Cova in Caracas. The activists also sprayed allusive graffiti over its pedestal. The walk where the statue had stood was renamed in 2008 "Indigenous Resistance Walk". Later, a statue of an indigenous leader, Guaicaipuro, was erected on the plinth.


title: Columbus Day

text: On September 21, 1994, Costa Rica changed the official holiday from "Día de la Raza" to "Día del Encuentro de las Culturas" (Day of the Encounter of Cultures) to recognize the mix of European, Native American (autochthonous populations), African and Asian cultures that constitute modern Costa Rican (and Latin American) culture and ethnicity. In accordance to the Costa Rican labor law, the holiday is observed on October 12. However, should this date coincide with a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday, the employer shall agree that said holiday be postponed to the following Monday. In 2020, Costa Ricans eliminated this holiday, and in exchange they now celebrate the Military Abolition Day on December 1.


title: Columbus Day

text: In June 1915, the Official government newspaper of El Salvador published the legislative decree that states that every October 12 is a national holiday "as a reminder of gratitude and admiration for the discoverer of the New World, Christopher Columbus." On October 12, 2021, the congress of El Salvador abolished the "Fiesta de la Raza", considering that it harms the dignity of the original peoples.


title: Columbus Day

text: Only a handful of Caribbean countries observe holidays related to Columbus Day. In Belize, October 12 is celebrated as Day of the Americas or Pan American Day. In the Bahamas, it was formerly known as Discovery Day, until 2001 when it was replaced by National Heroes Day. In 1937, Cuban President Federico Laredo Brú (1936–1940) spoke to the nation and countries of America in Cuba on October 12 commemorating Christopher Columbus's voyage to the New World. Federico Laredo Brú spoke about Columbus's impact on the land and the future of its settlement. He ended his speech with venerating Christopher Columbus's efforts to colonize and establish settlements along the new front and the pride of one's nation. He added ""Por mi raza hablo mi espiritu"," which translates to "For my race my spirit called," to support the political infrastructure at the time.


title: Columbus Day

text: In December 1937, Cuban president Federico Laredo Brú and Dominican Republic president Rafael Trujillo ordered a crew of aviators to travel through Latin America collecting funds from large capital cities for a monumental light house in the Dominican Republic. The exploration "Escuadrilla Binacional Pro Faro de Colón" was inspired by Columbus's journey across the North Atlantic Ocean to America. The expedition consisted of three Stinson Reliant SR-9s borrowed from the Cuban Air Force – named "Santa María", "Niña" and "La Pinta" after the vessels commanded by Columbus – and a Curtiss Wright CW-19R from the Dominican military aviation named "Colon" after Columbus. On December 15, after visiting a majority of South America, their flight to the Peruvian capital Lima was hampered by an unexpected sandstorm. Two planes ("Colon" and "La Pinta") were forced to land in Pisco and "Niña" disappeared in the storm. The "Santa Maria" was the only plane to reach Lima as planned, landing at Las Palmas on the day of the storm. After extensive searches, "Niña" radioed their whereabouts after their radio was damaged in the storm. The aircraft restrategized in Las Palmas, and on December 29 their expedition took off from El Techo airport in Bogotá en route to El Guabito airport in Cali. Later that day, the crew flew into an unexpected storm over the Valley of Cauca. With minimal visibility and poor navigation, "Niña", "La Pinta", and "Santa Maria" crashed into high mountains, while "Colon", unaware of the other aircraft, flew over the storm and safely made it to Panama City. The plane is preserved today as remembrance of the bravery of the crew and Christopher Columbus's journey.


title: Columbus Day

text: In 1992, in remembrance of the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America, the Columbus Lighthouse, in Santo Domingo Este was inaugurated. The monument is both a mausoleum and a museum showcasing objects including a boat from Cuba and Colombian jewelry. Constructed of concrete, the monument is long. Its architecture is cross-shaped and represents the Christianization of the Americas. According to the Dominican authorities, remains of Christopher Columbus are sheltered at the lighthouse. However, Spanish authorities have proved through DNA tests that the remains in the Cathedral of Seville are the real remains of Columbus. The Dominican authorities haven't allowed the same DNA tests to be done to the remains in the lighthouse, so it is impossible to know if the remains of Columbus are divided or if the remains in the lighthouse belonged to another person.


title: Columbus Day

text: Since the 18th century, many Italian communities in the Americas have observed the Discovery of the New World as a celebration of their heritage, despite Italy did not exist when Columbus was born, and despite he publicly resigned of his genovese nationality to swear allegiance to the King of Spain


title: Columbus Day

text: In Italy, Columbus Day has been officially celebrated since 2004. It is officially named "Giornata nazionale di Cristoforo Colombo".


title: Columbus Day

text: The "Lega Navale Italiana" has created a "Regata di Colombo" as a celebration of the Columbus achievement. Italians have celebrated their "Cristoforo Colombo" naming after him many civilian and military ships, like the ocean liner SS "Cristoforo Colombo".


title: Columbus Day

text: The first celebration of the Discovery of the Américas by Columbus in Spain was as early as 1642 when the city of Zaragoza designated the Virgen del Pilar (Our Lady of the Pillar) as symbol of the Hispanidad (Hispanicity) on the date of the Spanish expedition's arrival to the New World. This holiday was declared a religious feast day throughout the Spanish Empire in 1730.


title: Columbus Day

text: In 1892, the 12 of October was declared a one-time national day in commemoration of the 4th centenary of the Discovery of America and the perpetuation of the festivity was then first considered. The Spanish government suggested other nations (Hispanic American countries, Italy and the United States of America) to join the celebration, which was followed with enthusiasm by them, with a few exceptions.


title: Columbus Day

text: The Discovery of America and the Hispanicity has been celebrated as a national day since 1918 under different names like "Día de la Hispanidad" or "Dia de la Raza", due to changes of political regimes in the 20th century. The national day emphasises Spain's ties with the "Hispanidad", the international Hispanic community and Spanish legacy to the world. In 1981 a royal decree established the "Fiesta Nacional y Día de la Hispanidad" as a national holiday. However, in 1987 the name was changed again to "Fiesta Nacional" and October 12 became one of two national celebrations, along with Constitution Day on December 6 as part of a compromise between conservatives, who wanted to emphasize the status of the monarchy and Spain's history, and Republicans, who wanted to commemorate Spain's burgeoning democracy with an official holiday. Since 2000, October 12 has also been Spain's Day of the Armed Forces, celebrated each year with a military parade in Madrid. The holiday is widely celebrated in Spain with official and cultural events throughout the country. Shops and businesses are closed as with other bank holidays. The observation is enhanced with the feast day of Our Lady of the Pillar (Fiestas del Pilar), the so-called Mother of Hispanicity, and of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Extremadura (Santa María de Guadalupe) (appointed Queen of Hispanicity in 1928 by the Vatican) from Guadalupe, Caceres, whose Monastery was the venue in June 1492 for the decisive meeting between the Catholic Monarchs and Columbus to start organizing the travel and where the latter came back in 1493, right after returning from his first voyage, to thank "Her" for his success.


title: Columbus Day

text: For years after the first Columbus Day celebration in 1892, opposition to Columbus Day recognized the suffering inflicted on American Indians with westward expansion. As annual commemorations of Columbus Day (Oct. 2022) are once again met with protest and demands to remake them as Indigenous Peoples Day, a University of Kansas literary scholar can comment on the history of explorer Christopher Columbus' popular reputation, noting that it began to suffer well before the Civil War.


title: Columbus Day

text: It also originated from anti-immigrant nativists who sought to eliminate its celebration because of its association with immigrants from the Catholic countries of Ireland and Italy, and the American Catholic fraternal organization, the Knights of Columbus. Some anti-Catholics, notably including the Ku Klux Klan and the Women of the Ku Klux Klan, opposed celebrations of Columbus or monuments about him because they thought that it increased Catholic influence in the United States, which was largely a Protestant country.


title: Columbus Day

text: More recently, mainly since the 1990s, more people oppose Columbus's and other Europeans' actions against the indigenous populations of the Americas. This opposition was initially led by Native Americans and was expanded upon by left-wing political parties.


title: Columbus Day

text: In the summer of 1990, 350 representatives from American Indian groups from all over the hemisphere, met in Quito, Ecuador, at the first Intercontinental Gathering of Indigenous People in the Americas, to mobilize against the 500th anniversary (quin-centennial) celebration of Columbus Day planned for 1992. The following summer, in Davis, California, more than a hundred Native Americans gathered for a follow-up meeting to the Quito conference. They declared October 12, 1992 to be "International Day of Solidarity with Indigenous People."


title: Columbus Day

text: Two surveys, conducted in 2013 and 2015 by Rasmussen Reports, found 26% to 38% of American adults are not in favor of celebrating Columbus Day. A similar survey by Catholic Marist Polls showed 26% opposition /


title: Columbus Day

text: There are many interrelated strands of criticism. One refers primarily to the treatment of the indigenous populations during the European colonization of the Americas, which followed Columbus's discovery. Some groups, such as the American Indian Movement, have argued that the ongoing actions and injustices against Native Americans are masked by Columbus myths and celebrations. American anthropologist Jack Weatherford says that on Columbus Day, Americans celebrate the greatest waves of genocide of the American Indians known in history.


title: Columbus Day

text: A second strain of criticism of Columbus Day focuses on the character of Columbus himself. In time for the 2004 observation of the day, the final volume of a compendium of Columbus-era documents was published by the University of California, Los Angeles' Medieval and Renaissance Center. It stated that Columbus, while a brilliant mariner, exploited and enslaved the indigenous population.


title: Columbus Day

text: Spelman College historian Howard Zinn described some of the details in his book, "A People's History of the United States", of how Columbus personally ordered the enslavement and mutilation of the native Arawak people in a bid to repay his investors.


title: Columbus Day

text: Journalist and media critic Norman Solomon reflects, in "Columbus Day: A Clash of Myth and History", that many people choose to hold on to the myths instead of reality in the events surrounding Columbus. He disputes the idea that the Spaniards' arrival was beneficial towards the Indians by quoting "History of the Indies" by the Catholic priest Bartolomé de las Casas, who observed the region where Columbus was governor. Las Casas writes that the Spaniards were driven by "insatiable greed" as they killed and tortured native populations with "the strangest and most varied new methods of cruelty" and laments that "my eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write."


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: The Brave Little Toaster is a 1987 American animated musical film directed by Jerry Rees. It is based on the 1980 novella of the same name by Thomas M. Disch. The film stars Deanna Oliver, Timothy E. Day, Jon Lovitz, Tim Stack, and Thurl Ravenscroft, with Wayne Kaatz, Colette Savage, Phil Hartman, Joe Ranft, and Jim Jackman in supporting roles. It is set in a world where domestic appliances and other consumer electronics come to life, pretending to be lifeless in the presence of humans. The story focuses on five anthropomorphic household appliances, which include a toaster, a lamp stand, a blanket, a radio and a vacuum cleaner, who go on a quest to search for their owner.


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: The film was produced by Hyperion Pictures and The Kushner-Locke Company. Many CalArts graduates, including the original members of Pixar Animation Studios, were involved with this film. The rights to the book were acquired by Walt Disney Studios in 1982. John Lasseter, then employed at Disney, wanted to do a computer-animated film based on it, but it was turned down. While the film received a limited theatrical release, "The Brave Little Toaster" received positive reviews and was popular on home video. It was followed by two sequels, "The Brave Little Toaster to the Rescue" in 1997 and "The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars" in 1998.


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: In a small wooden cottage known as Peaceful Woodland Cottage, five members of a clan of small electric appliances – a toaster, a radio, a lamp stand named "Lampy", an electric blanket named "Blanky" and a vacuum cleaner named "Kirby" – await the return of a young boy named Rob (whom they refer to as the Master) who used to vacation at the cottage with his family, but the family has not come by in many years. Then one day in July, upon seeing that the cottage is about to be sold, the appliances decide to venture out and find Rob themselves. They turn Kirby into a lawn tractor by attaching a rolling office chair, a power strip and a Junko car battery for a power source to him and travel via Kirby, and Radio serves as navigator by directing the group toward urban radio signals he picks up.


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: Along their journey, the appliances have numerous harrowing adventures. At one point, when their battery is nearly dead, the group stops for the night in a forest, with Blanky serving as a makeshift tent. During the night, a storm blows Blanky up into the trees, and Lampy uses himself as a lightning rod to recharge the battery. After recovering Blanky, the appliances try to cross a waterfall, but everyone except Kirby falls into the water below. Kirby dives in and rescues the others; but with the chair, strip and battery lost, the group resorts to pulling the disabled Kirby through a swamp. They are almost swallowed up by quicksand but are saved by Elmo St. Peters and taken to his appliance parts store, where they witness him dismantling a blender to sell its motor to a customer. When Radio is about to be taken apart for radio tubes, the others frighten St. Peters by pretending to be a ghost. With St. Peters unconscious, the group escapes and makes their way to the city.


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: Rob, now a young adult, goes out to the cottage with his girlfriend Chris to retrieve the appliances to take with him to college. When the group arrives at Rob's family's apartment, their newer appliances – resentful about Rob wanting to take the older appliances instead of themselves – demonstrate how much more technologically advanced they are and throw the group out of the apartment and into a dumpster. Rob and Chris return home empty-handed; but an old black and white television in the apartment, a friend of the five appliances who formerly resided in the cottage with them, plays fictional advertisements for the junkyard the appliances have been taken to, in the hopes that Rob and Chris will go there to find them.


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: At the junkyard, the appliances are despondent that Rob apparently no longer needs them. They are picked up by a large electromagnet and are about to be destroyed by a crusher; but when they see Rob in the junkyard, they believe he might still need them after all. They make numerous attempts to escape the magnet and place themselves so Rob will find them, until the magnet picks up a huge pile of junk and spreads it along the conveyor belt leading to the crusher, separating the group. Rob spots all the appliances except Toaster on the conveyor belt, but the magnet picks up Rob as well as the appliances and drops them back on the belt. Toaster jumps into the crusher's gears and jams them, stopping the crusher just before it flattens Rob and the others. Back at the apartment, Rob repairs the mangled Toaster, and he and Chris soon depart for college with all five appliances in tow.


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: The film rights to "The Brave Little Toaster", the original novella by Thomas M. Disch, were purchased by the Walt Disney Studios in 1982, two years after its appearance in "The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction". After animators John Lasseter and Glen Keane had finished a short 2D/3D test film based on the book "Where the Wild Things Are", Lasseter and producer Thomas L. Wilhite decided they wanted to produce a whole feature with the same technique.


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: The story they chose was "The Brave Little Toaster", and this became the first CGI film Lasseter ever pitched. But in their enthusiasm, they ran into issues pitching the idea to two high-level Disney executives, animation administrator Ed Hansen, and Disney president Ron W. Miller. Ron Miller asked about the cost after the pitch and when Lasseter replied that it would cost no more than a traditionally animated film, Miller rejected the pitch, saying that the only reason to use computers would be if it was "faster or cheaper".


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: A few minutes after the meeting, Lasseter received a phone call from Hansen and was instructed to come down to his office, where Lasseter was informed that he was dismissed. Originally set to commence at the Disney studios with a budget of $18 million, development was then transferred to the new Hyperion Pictures, which had been created by former Disney employees Tom Wilhite and Willard Carroll, who took the production along with them after Wilhite successfully requested the project from then-president Ron Miller. As a result, the film was financed as an independent production by Disney, with the aid of electronics company TDK Corporation and video distributor CBS/Fox Video.


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: The budget was reduced by $12.06 million to $5.94 million as production began, approximately a third of the budget offered when in-house. Despite providing funds to get it off the ground, Disney was not involved with production of the film. Rees later commented that there were external forces at work that had the right to say this was a cheap film that could be shipped overseas, which the staff objected to and therefore were willing to make sacrifices to improve the quality of the film despite its limited budget.


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: In 1986, Hyperion began to work on the story and character development. Jerry Rees, a crew member on two previous Disney films, "The Fox and the Hound" and "Tron", and co-writer of the screenplay along with Joe Ranft, was chosen to direct the project. He had been working on an animated adaptation of Will Eisner's "The Spirit" with Brad Bird, and received a call from Wilhite asking him to develop, write, and direct, explaining that "The Brave Little Toaster" was being adapted into a short, but that a feature film was possible if handled correctly. Joe Ranft and Rees worked on developing the story. The storyboards were designed by Jerry, Joe, along with Alex Mann and Darrell Rooney. When animators ran out of pages to storyboard, Rees sat down and wrote more of the script.


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: The work was significantly adapted from the original story. Only about four lines of dialogue from the book ended up in the finished film. Rees decided to move the junkyard sequence from the middle of the story to its end because of the junkyard's symbolism as a graveyard for appliances. He also wanted a definitive moment that earned Toaster the title of "brave", so he had Toaster jump into the gears to save the Master, a plot point that wasn't in the book. Having the character's voices in his head when writing the script helped Rees to personalize the dialogue. He even reworked some of the already-completed script in order to customize sections based on the actors' personalities. After cutting together the storyboards and scene-planning in Taipai, production manager Chuck Richardson explained the logistics issues—the film would be 110 minutes long. As a result, Rees decided to cut around 20 minutes' worth of the story—the deleted scenes have not been released to the public.


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: Rees was still in the process of writing when he decided to find actors. Many auditioners presented cartoony, exaggerated voices, which displeased him, because they did not believe their characters or bring a reality to the role. As a result, he sought out voice talent from The Groundlings improvisational group upon recommendation by Ranft, and he appreciated the honesty and naturalism they gave to their performances. Many of their members, including Jon Lovitz (Radio), Phil Hartman (Air Conditioner/Hanging Lamp), Tim Stack (Lampy), Judy Toll (Mishmash), and Mindy Sterling (Rob's mother) voiced characters in the film. Already established as an actor through Tony the Tiger and "Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas!" Thurl Ravenscroft was cast as Kirby the vacuum cleaner. Heading the ensemble cast were Groundlings performer Deanna Oliver as Toaster, and newcomer Timothy E. Day as Blanky.


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: Oliver originally auditioned for Air Conditioner using a Bette Davis impression, but accepted the lead when offered. Rees, who had conceived Toaster as a female character, later recalled an anecdote where a crew member "slammed the door and walked out" because he had hired a woman to play the lead role. Day had never done acting work before, and had asked his mother to take him to auditions after becoming fascinated with a child actor voice-over.


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: Recording sessions did take place at Disney; the crew found and renovated a small derelict property in Hollywood. Rees's direction primarily consisted of ensuring the performances were as natural and realistic as possible. When recording, Rees first had each scene delivered as written, and then allowed the voice actors to play around with the dialogue and ended up using many of the improvised lines in the final film. Unusual for the time, some of the recordings were done in group sessions.


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: After being cast, Jon Lovitz got an opportunity to appear on "Saturday Night Live". Because Rees had written the part of Radio specifically for Lovitz, he tried to find a way to keep Lovitz in the film. They ended up doing a marathon recording session, recording all of Lovitz's lines of dialogue in one night. Rees then stood in for Lovitz when the others were recording.


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: Rees described Timothy Day as an "amazing performer", who would ask about his character's motivation and the context of each scenario before recording his lines. Day was nicknamed "one-take Timmy" due to nailing the emotional truth of the text so quickly, such as crying loudly or delivering a line with a quiver in his voice. Comparing this film to the sequels, where a high note was dubbed by another singer due to being off-key, Oliver noted that in this film it would have been kept in due to being part of the character.


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: The crew initially worked on pre-production for six months in Los Angeles in 1985, and then a staff of ten people moved to Taiwan with Rees for another six months to work with Wang Film Productions Company Limited in Taipei (headed by James Wang) for the principal animation, then returned for a third six-month work period for post-production in the U.S. Rees's wife Rebecca was the film's directing animator, and she taught classes to the Taiwanese animators in order to improve the quality of their output.


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: The animators also had a mixture of ex-Disney employees and college graduates from CalArts. Every day, they had to do what would normally be done across a two-week period at Disney. The colour stylist was veteran Disney animator A. Kendall O'Connor, a member of Disney's feature animation department from its first feature "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", and Oliver likened the light-hearted frog sequence to "Merrie Melodies". A massive TDK sign was included by Rees as the company was a big sponsor. The animators used many visual cues to help inform the audience about plot and character. For example, during the nightmare sequence at the beginning of the film, Toaster burns toast and emits smoke, which symbolizes guilt and fear of being responsible.


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: They deduced toasters would be afraid of things like forks and falling into the bathtub while plugged in, so they included them in this sequence. Oliver described the transition from bathtub sparks to lightning outside the house as proper filmmaking. Similarly, Blanky being a certain shade of yellow bears significance to the plot. In the beginning of their journey, the other characters dismiss him, even Toaster. Then Toaster encounters a flower that is the same color, who also wants to snuggle. After explaining it is just a reflection, he walks away, thereby making the flower wilt. The next moment shows Toaster proactively rescuing Blanky. The idea is that the flower informs Toaster that his actions will make Blanky wilt too.


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: The film score of "The Brave Little Toaster" was composed and conducted by David Newman and performed by the New Japan Philharmonic. Newman's score for this movie was one of his earlier works and apparently one that he felt very close to. He did not view it as a cheerful one and decided to give the film a dramatic score to reinforce the serious nature of many of the film's themes. Rees admired his "rich, classical style", and chose him so that the film wouldn't have "cartoon music". Rees stated that Newman would attempt to get into the headspace of the characters and thought in the terms of the inanimate objects being real characters.


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: Rees said that Newman's score was as "grand as anything he would ever do", rather than composing the music differently due to the medium being animation. He wove death, joy, love, loss, and struggle into the work. Newman's composing style was influenced by his philosophy that behind every "chord of joy" lies an element of sadness, whether it being the knowledge it won't last forever, that it is a facade for a deeper emotion, or that joy itself comes from sadness. He used lush strings in the opening scenes to convey a sense of longing. As the characters are introduced, the score becomes more lively, and each character has their own theme, influenced by their personality. For example, Kirby is a grumpy and old vacuum cleaner, and so Newman provides a theme consisting of low chords, whereas Radio was given a brassy fanfare to reflect his self-important personality. These musical motifs wove their way into the entire movie score.


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: At some points, the style of music was used to provoke an emotional response, for example when the Air Conditioner breaks down, the orchestra first trembles and then bursts with energy. After this the music returns to a somber tone, as the appliances start to realize that there is truth to what he said. When they explore the outside world for the first time, the music fills with a "pastoral grandeur", and when they enter the woods, strings, flutes, bells and brass are used to convey the simultaneous magic and danger of the outdoors. The film also contains a Busby Berkeley Italian opera-esque sequence containing a fish. The score was finally given a limited release in 2004. The film contains four original songs ("City of Light", "It's a B-Movie", "Cutting Edge", and "Worthless") that were written by Van Dyke Parks. Rees "felt uncomfortable with the full Broadway book musical approach", and his philosophy was that the songs should be part of the action and plot without stopping for a big production number.


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: Rees specifically wanted characters to be able to break out into song whenever they wanted to, similar to the films of the Hollywood Golden Age. Once they were written, Newman used the songs in his own score. For example, the first song in the film, "City of Light", displays the character's naivety and apprehension, and contains a motif that gets more complex as the film goes on. This approach made the score more cohesive. "It's a B-Movie" is filled with black humor and an ominous pipe organ as the mutant appliances scare the main characters. The synthesizer driven "Cutting Edge" sees the master's state-of-the-art appliances boast about how great they are. The poignant number "Worthless" is a track filled with piano, strings, guitar, and vocals which are abruptly cut off when the singing cars are crushed. The junkyard sequence's climax evokes feelings of desperation, danger, suspense and real-world peril. Newman "reprises the score's subtle and varied themes over the end credits". Newman wrote and orchestrated the score over a 50-hour period, which included embarking on a 12-hour flight to Japan to record with the orchestra in Maeda Hall.


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: The New Japan Philharmonic gave the score a "luxurious sound" that was impressive given the limited resources available. The sound effects were not from a library, and were instead, exclusively made Foley sounds, with various real-world objects around Los Angeles being used in the score, such as objects in antique stores. This technique was used because Rees wanted to create new characters with new sounds. The sound mixers, including former Disney studio mixer Shawn Murphy who recorded the score, asked how they would do their job due to the film being animated, and Rees explained that they should mix it like any other film, instead of thinking of it like it were a cartoon.


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: David Newman composed the score for the film. The music and lyrics for the songs were written by Van Dyke Parks. In most of the songs, Beth Anderson, Janice Liebhart, and Darryl Phinnessee perform the singing voices of various background characters, while also doubling as the chorus. In addition, the songs Tutti Frutti and My Mammy are played by the character Radio during the film.


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: Director Jerry Rees described the main message is the film asks is: "what would it be like to be an appliance, and feel good when you're useful, and help people..."? He also explained that the film's themes included a "fear of being abandoned and wanting to be reunited with somebody that you love..."—the opposing forces of feeling like you're worthless and the joy of redemption. Another important notion was that of "valuing things from the past and taking them...into the future", both in terms of objects and relationships. All of the main characters have personalities that are unique twists on the appliance functionality.


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: Blanky is an electric security blanket but is insecure without its owner, the bright Lampy is mentally dim, Kirby is supposed to hold everything inside but has a nervous breakdown, Toaster is warm and reflective so can easily empathize, and Radio is constantly switched on and entertaining. He has the philosophy that despite being inanimate, they each symbolized thing we actually feel. As the foundation for writing the story, Rees reasoned that the characters would only be happy if they were being used by the Master. As a result of this, a major aspect of the film is about inanimate objects becoming alive when you are not observing them.


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: As opposed to other films of the time, "The Brave Little Toaster" was able to include dark, scary, edgy, or risqué content due to being an independent feature. They were able to explore the "wouldn't it be fun if" places that Disney wouldn't allow. They rejected the false dichotomy of being joke-driven or overly sincere, and instead incorporated both elements as that is how real conversations work.


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: The film's premiere was at Wadsworth Theatre in Los Angeles on July 13, 1987. With the producer help, the film premiered in various festivals, including the Los Angeles International Animation Celebration in 1987, and the Sundance Film Festival in 1988. It made history as the first animated film ever exhibited at Sundance and remained the only one until 2001's "Waking Life".


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: Though the prize went to Rob Nilsson's "Heat and Sunlight", before the awards ceremony, Rees claims he was told by the judges that they considered "Toaster" the best film, but they decided not to give the award to a cartoon as they considered people would not take the festival seriously afterwards. Though it is sometimes thought that the film was not released in cinemas because it failed to find a distributor, in reality arthouse film distributor Skouras Pictures took on the distributing rights for the theatrical release, and was going to do evening screenings, noting it was more for college and young adult than kids.


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: However, Disney, who had invested in the video and television rights, according to Rees did not want competition so moved their television premiere date up and ended up preventing it from being financially successful in theatres, forcing Skouras to withdraw their deal. The film premiered on the Disney Channel on February 27, 1988. To compensate, Hyperion continued its plan to enter the film into various festivals and managed to secure limited theatrical airings at arthouse facilities across the United States, such as spending two weeks at New York's Film Forum in May 1989, and shortly in Washington, D.C. in March 1990. This helped to give the film a cult following.


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: Rees thinks most people discovered the film through syndication on the Disney Channel, or through home video releases. In July 1991, Walt Disney Home Video released the film to home video format via VHS and Laserdisc. In the UK, the VHS tapes were released under PolyGram Video (1990s) and Carlton Video (2000s), while in Australia, Roadshow Home Video held the rights. ITC Entertainment syndicated the film internationally as of the NATPE 1991 TV trade show.


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: In Spain, Divisa Home Video and Aurum Produccines were in charge of distribution, the former during the 2000s. Disney's VHS was re-printed throughout the '90s onward, and it enjoyed popularity as a rental amongst children. The DVD was released in September 2003, to tie in with the film's 15th anniversary. In the UK, Prism Leisure Corporation was in charge of distribution. Their license has since expired, but the disc can still be found on UK shopping sites. Disney's releases commonly use a LaserDisc transfer from the early 1990s, while Prism Leisure's DVD uses a fresh transfer from an international print.


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: While the sequels, "The Brave Little Toaster to the Rescue" and "The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars", are available, the original film has yet to appear on Disney+, or any video on demand services for that matter.


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: The film has garnered a 77% rating on the reviews website Rotten Tomatoes based on 13 reviews, with a weighted average of 7.31/10. Mary Houlihan-Skilton of "Chicago Sun-Times" gave a positive review, but found a problem with the storytellers using caricatures of Bette Davis, Peter Lorre, Jack Nicholson, Mae West, Joan Rivers and others to portray them. This became so old that it has been used forever and should be given a rest.


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: "The Washington Post" called it "a kid's film made without condescension", while "The New York Times" said "visually the movie has a smooth-flowing momentum and a lush storybook opulence". "Time Out" said the film had "a winning combination of inventive characters, amusing dialogue, excellent voice-overs, likeable tune and first-rate animation". "Deseret News" wrote it is "a wonder of the movie industry...a funny, occasionally thrilling animated feature aimed at kids, but with a sophisticated sensibility intended to reach their parents as well." "Halliwell's Film Guide" called it an "odd fantasy of pots and pans with no more than adequate animation".


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: Projection Booth, Film Freak Central, "Arizona Daily Star", and Leonard Maltin all gave the film similar praise, describing it as "among the finest animated films Disney never made", "Blade Runner for children", "an overlooked classic [and] utterly rewatchable fable", and "a real breath of fresh air in contemporary cartoons" respectively. Needcoffee.com gave the film a 4/5, writing that despite a questionable premise, "it's an actually cute and extremely fun animated flick". "Las Vegas Review-Journal", Movie Mom at Yahoo! Movies, and eFilmCritic.com all gave the same score, the latter describing it as a "perfectly charming kid's flick about adventuring appliances". Northwest Herald gave a 3/5, EmanuelLevy.Com and Talking Pictures gave a 2/5 rating.


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: This film is unique in that it attracted a substantial amount of talent from both old and new sources. Many of the cast and crew members went on to have successful careers in the animation industry. Co-writer Joe Ranft became a script supervisor at Pixar, while animators Glen Keane, Kirk Wise and Kevin Lima went on to animate and co-direct films of the Disney Renaissance, such as "The Little Mermaid", "Beauty and the Beast", "Aladdin", "Pocahontas", "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" and "Tarzan". Keane would also go on to serve as executive producer for the 2010 animated film "Tangled" and director for the 2020 animated film Over the Moon. Effects animator Mark Dindal directed Disney's "The Emperor's New Groove" and "Chicken Little", as well as Warner Bros.' "Cats Don't Dance". Character designer Rob Minkoff directed "The Lion King", "Stuart Little", "Stuart Little 2", "Mr. Peabody & Sherman" and . After directing a financially unsuccessful film "The Marrying Man" in 1991, Jerry Rees went on to direct Disney theme park films. Voice actors Jon Lovitz and Phil Hartman wound their way onto animated series such as "The Simpsons" and "The Critic". Many have noted that this film shares similarities to the "Toy Story" franchise, also worked on by John Lasseter. Rees saw it as "the next inanimate object feature".


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: "The Brave Little Toaster" was followed by two sequels a decade later: "The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars" and "The Brave Little Toaster to the Rescue". The latter ("Mars") is based on the sequel to Disch's novella while the former ("Rescue") is a brand new story. While reuniting most of the cast, they had a new director and crew. Rees noted that the original film was made out of pure love and not thought of as a kids' film or a product, and that he had heard the new approach was a more commercial venture. Deanna Oliver felt that despite Ramirez being a talented director who handled the franchise with care, instead of "film" and "character-driven", the project seemed more about getting it done because it could be made. Neither Rees nor Oliver have watched the finished sequels.


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: In 2006, the official website of Hyperion Pictures posted an image of a possible fourth film in CGI; however, that film was never produced. The website has been inactive since then but was recently updated in 2019. Waterman Entertainment planned a remake, but it was never produced.


title: The Brave Little Toaster

text: Despite its limited release, the cult following of the film has seen the cast and crew get substantial recognition throughout the world. Rees recalled a situation where a person he was doing an online project with messaged him on IMDb, discovering his work on "TBLT", and explained how deeply the film affected him due to teaching life lessons. He appreciated this genuine reaction from a real person. Oliver went to the Afghanistan deployment ceremony for her son in June 2010, and he had told Brave Company his mother played Toaster, so they brought toasters with them for her to sign, which the soldiers took to the country with them. She also received fan art from one of the soldiers. The consensus among people who worked on the film such as Tom Wilhite and Donald Kushner is that the original is the one that has the cult following as opposed to the sequels. Rees said that when his future Pixar friends saw the film, they appreciated it despite the animation due to the heavy financial and time constraints.


title: Pope Gregory I

text: Pope Gregory I (; – 12 March 604), commonly known as Saint Gregory the Great, was the bishop of Rome from 3 September 590 to his death. He is known for instigating the first recorded large-scale mission from Rome, the Gregorian mission, to convert the then largely pagan Anglo-Saxons to Christianity. Gregory is also well known for his writings, which were more prolific than those of any of his predecessors as pope. The epithet Saint Gregory the Dialogist has been attached to him in Eastern Christianity because of his "Dialogues". English translations of Eastern texts sometimes list him as Gregory "Dialogos", or the Anglo-Latinate equivalent "Dialogus".


title: Pope Gregory I

text: A Roman senator's son and himself the prefect of Rome at 30, Gregory lived in a monastery he established on his family estate before becoming a papal ambassador and then pope. Although he was the first pope from a monastic background, his prior political experiences may have helped him to be a talented administrator. During his papacy, his administration greatly surpassed that of the emperors in improving the welfare of the people of Rome, and he challenged the theological views of Patriarch Eutychius of Constantinople before the emperor Tiberius II. Gregory regained papal authority in Spain and France and sent missionaries to England, including Augustine of Canterbury and Paulinus of York. The realignment of barbarian allegiance to Rome from their Arian Christian alliances shaped medieval Europe. Gregory saw Franks, Lombards, and Visigoths align with Rome in religion. He also combated the Donatist heresy, popular particularly in North Africa at the time.


title: Pope Gregory I

text: Throughout the Middle Ages, he was known as "the Father of Christian Worship" because of his exceptional efforts in revising the Roman worship of his day. His contributions to the development of the Divine Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, still in use in the Byzantine Rite, were so significant that he is generally recognized as its "de facto" author.


title: Pope Gregory I

text: Gregory is one of the Latin Fathers and a Doctor of the Church. He is considered a saint in the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, Anglican Communion, various Lutheran denominations, and other Protestant denominations. Immediately after his death, Gregory was canonized by popular acclaim. The Protestant reformer John Calvin admired Gregory greatly and declared in his "Institutes" that Gregory was the last good pope. He is the patron saint of musicians, singers, students, and teachers.


title: Pope Gregory I

text: Gregory was born around 540 in Rome, then recently reconquered by the Eastern Roman Empire from the Ostrogoths. His parents named him "Gregorius", which according to Ælfric of Eynsham in "An Homily on the Birth-Day of S. Gregory," "... is a Greek Name, which signifies in the Latin Tongue, "Vigilantius", that is in English, Watchful..." The medieval writer who provided this etymology did not hesitate to apply it to the life of Gregory. Ælfric states, "He was very diligent in God's Commandments."


title: Pope Gregory I

text: Gregory was born into a wealthy noble Roman family with close connections to the church. His father, Gordianus, a patrician who served as a senator and for a time was the Prefect of the City of Rome, also held the position of Regionarius in the church, though nothing further is known about that position. Gregory's mother, Silvia, was well-born, and had a married sister, Pateria, in Sicily. His mother and two paternal aunts are honored by Catholic and Orthodox churches as saints. Gregory's great-great-grandfather had been Pope Felix III, the nominee of the Gothic king, Theodoric. Gregory's election to the throne of St. Peter made his family the most distinguished clerical dynasty of the period.


title: Pope Gregory I

text: The family owned and resided in a "villa suburbana" on the Caelian Hill, fronting the same street (now the Via di San Gregorio) as the former palaces of the Roman emperors on the Palatine Hill opposite. The north of the street runs into the Colosseum; the south, the Circus Maximus. In Gregory's day the ancient buildings were in ruins and were privately owned. Villas covered the area. Gregory's family also owned working estates in Sicily and around Rome. Gregory later had portraits done in fresco in their former home on the Caelian and these were described 300 years later by John the Deacon. Gordianus was tall with a long face and light eyes. He wore a beard. Silvia was tall, had a round face, blue eyes and a cheerful look. They had another son whose name and fate are unknown.


title: Pope Gregory I

text: Gregory was born into a period of upheaval in Italy. From 542 the so-called Plague of Justinian swept through the provinces of the empire, including Italy. The plague caused famine, panic, and sometimes rioting. In some parts of the country, over a third of the population was wiped out or destroyed, with heavy spiritual and emotional effects on the people of the empire. Politically, although the Western Roman Empire had long since vanished in favor of the Gothic kings of Italy, during the 540s Italy was gradually retaken from the Goths by Justinian I, emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire ruling from Constantinople. As the fighting was mainly in the north, the young Gregory probably saw little of it. Totila sacked and vacated Rome in 546, destroying most of its population, but in 549 he invited those who were still alive to return to the empty and ruined streets. It has been hypothesized that young Gregory and his parents retired during that intermission to their Sicilian estates, to return in 549. The war was over in Rome by 552, and a subsequent invasion of the Franks was defeated in 554. After that, there was peace in Italy, and the appearance of restoration, except that the central government now resided in Constantinople.


title: Pope Gregory I

text: Like most young men of his position in Roman society, Gregory was well educated, learning grammar, rhetoric, the sciences, literature, and law; he excelled in all these fields. Gregory of Tours reported that "in grammar, dialectic and rhetoric ... he was second to none..." He wrote correct Latin but did not read or write Greek. He knew Latin authors, natural science, history, mathematics and music and had such a "fluency with imperial law" that he may have trained in it "as a preparation for a career in public life". Indeed, he became a government official, advancing quickly in rank to become, like his father, Prefect of Rome, the highest civil office in the city, when only thirty-three years old.


title: Pope Gregory I

text: The monks of the Monastery of St. Andrew, established by Gregory at the ancestral home on the Caelian, had a portrait of him made after his death, which John the Deacon also saw in the 9th century. He reports the picture of a man who was "rather bald" and had a "tawny" beard like his father's and a face that was intermediate in shape between his mother's and father's. The hair that he had on the sides was long and carefully curled. His nose was "thin and straight" and "slightly aquiline". "His forehead was high." He had thick, "subdivided" lips and a chin "of a comely prominence" and "beautiful hands".


title: Pope Gregory I

text: In the modern era, Gregory is often depicted as a man at the border, poised between the Roman and Germanic worlds, between East and West, and above all, perhaps, between the ancient and medieval epochs.


title: Pope Gregory I

text: On his father's death, Gregory converted his family "villa" into a monastery dedicated to Andrew the Apostle (after his death it was rededicated as San Gregorio Magno al Celio). In his life of contemplation, Gregory concluded that "in that silence of the heart, while we keep watch within through contemplation, we are as if asleep to all things that are without."


title: Pope Gregory I

text: Gregory had a deep respect for the monastic life and particularly the vow of poverty. Thus, when it came to light that a monk lying on his death bed had stolen three gold pieces, Gregory, as a remedial punishment, forced the monk to die alone, then threw his body and coins on a manure heap to rot with a condemnation, "Take your money with you to perdition." Gregory believed that punishment of sins can begin, even in this life before death. However, in time, after the monk's death, Gregory had 30 Masses offered for the man to assist his soul before the final judgment. He viewed being a monk as the "ardent quest for the vision of our Creator." His three paternal aunts were nuns renowned for their sanctity. However, after the eldest two, Trasilla and Emiliana, died after seeing a vision of their ancestor Pope Felix III, the youngest soon abandoned the religious life and married the steward of her estate. Gregory's response to this family scandal was that "many are called but few are chosen." Gregory's mother, Silvia, is herself a saint.


title: Pope Gregory I

text: Eventually, Pope Pelagius II ordained Gregory a deacon and solicited his help in trying to heal the schism of the Three Chapters in northern Italy. However, this schism was not healed until well after Gregory was gone.


title: Pope Gregory I

text: In 579, Pelagius II chose Gregory as his "apocrisiarius" (ambassador to the imperial court in Constantinople), a post Gregory would hold until 586. Gregory was part of the Roman delegation (both lay and clerical) that arrived in Constantinople in 578 to ask the emperor for military aid against the Lombards. With the Byzantine military focused on the East, these entreaties proved unsuccessful; in 584, Pelagius II wrote to Gregory as "apocrisiarius", detailing the hardships that Rome was experiencing under the Lombards and asking him to ask Emperor Maurice to send a relief force. Maurice, however, had long ago determined to limit his efforts against the Lombards to intrigue and diplomacy, pitting the Franks against them. It soon became obvious to Gregory that the Byzantine emperors were unlikely to send such a force, given their more immediate difficulties with the Persians in the East and the Avars and Slavs to the North.


title: Pope Gregory I

text: According to Ekonomou, "if Gregory's principal task was to plead Rome's cause before the emperor, there seems to have been little left for him to do once imperial policy toward Italy became evident. Papal representatives who pressed their claims with excessive vigor could quickly become a nuisance and find themselves excluded from the imperial presence altogether". Gregory had already drawn an imperial rebuke for his lengthy canonical writings on the subject of the legitimacy of John III Scholasticus, who had occupied the Patriarchate of Constantinople for twelve years prior to the return of Eutychius (who had been driven out by Justinian). Gregory turned to cultivating connections with the Byzantine elite of the city, where he became extremely popular with the city's upper class, "especially aristocratic women". Ekonomou surmises that "while Gregory may have become spiritual father to a large and important segment of Constantinople's aristocracy, this relationship did not significantly advance the interests of Rome before the emperor". Although the writings of John the Deacon claim that Gregory "labored diligently for the relief of Italy", there is no evidence that his tenure accomplished much towards any of the objectives of Pelagius II.


title: Pope Gregory I

text: Gregory's theological disputes with Patriarch Eutychius would leave a "bitter taste for the theological speculation of the East" with Gregory that continued to influence him well into his own papacy. According to Western sources, Gregory's very public debate with Eutychius culminated in an exchange before Tiberius II where Gregory cited a biblical passage in support of the view that Christ was corporeal and palpable after his Resurrection; allegedly as a result of this exchange, Tiberius II ordered Eutychius's writings burned. Ekonomou views this argument, though exaggerated in Western sources, as Gregory's "one achievement of an otherwise fruitless "apokrisiariat"". In reality, Gregory was forced to rely on Scripture because he could not read the untranslated Greek authoritative works.


title: Pope Gregory I

text: Gregory left Constantinople for Rome in 585, returning to his monastery on the Caelian Hill. Gregory was elected by acclamation to succeed Pelagius II in 590, when the latter died of the plague spreading through the city. Gregory was approved by an Imperial "iussio" from Constantinople the following September (as was the norm during the Byzantine Papacy).


title: Pope Gregory I

text: In Constantinople, Gregory took issue with the aged Patriarch Eutychius of Constantinople, who had recently published a treatise, now lost, on the General Resurrection. Eutychius maintained that the resurrected body "will be more subtle than air, and no longer palpable". Gregory opposed with the palpability of the risen Christ in Luke 24:39. As the dispute could not be settled, the Byzantine emperor, Tiberius II Constantine, undertook to arbitrate. He decided in favor of palpability and ordered Eutychius' book to be burned. Shortly after both Gregory and Eutychius became ill; Gregory recovered, but Eutychius died on 5 April 582, at age 70. On his deathbed Eutychius recanted impalpability and Gregory dropped the matter.


title: Pope Gregory I

text: Gregory was more inclined to remain retired into the monastic lifestyle of contemplation. In texts of all genres, especially those produced in his first year as pope, Gregory bemoaned the burden of office and mourned the loss of the undisturbed life of


title: Pope Gregory I

text: When he became pope in 590, among his first acts was writing a series of letters disavowing any ambition to the throne of Peter and praising the contemplative life of the monks. At that time, for various reasons, the Holy See had not exerted effective leadership in the West since the pontificate of Gelasius I. The episcopacy in Gaul was drawn from the great territorial families, and identified with them: the parochial horizon of Gregory's contemporary, Gregory of Tours, may be considered typical; in Visigothic Spain the bishops had little contact with Rome; in Italy the territories which had "de facto" fallen under the administration of the papacy were beset by the violent Lombard dukes and the rivalry of the Byzantines in the Exarchate of Ravenna and in the south.


title: Pope Gregory I

text: Pope Gregory had strong convictions on missions: "Almighty God places good men in authority that He may impart through them the gifts of His mercy to their subjects. And this we find to be the case with the British over whom you have been appointed to rule, that through the blessings bestowed on you the blessings of heaven might be bestowed on your people also." He is credited with re-energizing the Church's missionary work among the non-Christian peoples of northern Europe. He is most famous for sending a mission, often called the Gregorian mission, under Augustine of Canterbury, prior of Saint Andrew's, where he had perhaps succeeded Gregory, to evangelize the pagan Anglo-Saxons of England. It seems that the pope had never forgotten the English slaves whom he had once seen in the Roman Forum. The mission was successful, and it was from England that missionaries later set out for the Netherlands and Germany. The preaching of non-heretical Christian faith and the


title: Pope Gregory I

text: elimination of all deviations from it was a key element in Gregory's worldview, and it constituted one of the major continuing policies of his pontificate. Pope Gregory the Great urged his followers on the value of bathing as a bodily need.


title: Pope Gregory I

text: In his official documents, Gregory was the first to make extensive use of the term "Servant of the Servants of God" ("servus servorum Dei") as a papal title, thus initiating a practice that was to be followed by most subsequent popes.


title: Pope Gregory I

text: The Church had a practice from early times of passing on a large portion of the donations it received from its members as alms. As pope, Gregory did his utmost to encourage that high standard among church personnel. Gregory is known for his extensive administrative system of charitable relief of the poor at Rome. The poor were predominantly refugees from the incursions of the Lombards. The philosophy under which he devised this system is that the wealth belonged to the poor and the church was only its steward. He received lavish donations from the wealthy families of Rome, who, following his own example, were eager, by doing so, to expiate their sins. He gave alms equally as lavishly both individually and en masse. He wrote in letters: "I have frequently charged you ... to act as my representative ... to relieve the poor in their distress ..." and "... I hold the office of steward to the property of the poor ..."


title: Pope Gregory I

text: In Gregory's time, the Church in Rome received donations of many different kinds: consumables such as food and clothing; investment property: real estate and works of art; and capital goods, or revenue-generating property, such as the Sicilian latifundia, or agricultural estates. The Church already had a system for circulating the consumables to the poor: associated with each of the main city churches was a "diaconium" or office of the deacon. He was given a building from which the poor could apply for assistance at any time.