title: Quantum suicide and immortality

text: Interviewed for the 2004 book "Schrödinger's Rabbits", Tegmark rejected this scenario for the reason that "the fading of consciousness is a continuous process. Although I cannot experience a world line in which I am altogether absent, I can enter one in which my speed of thought is diminishing, my memories and other faculties fading [...] [Tegmark] is confident that even if he cannot die all at once, he can gently fade away." In the same book, philosopher of science and many-worlds proponent David Wallace undermines the case for real-world quantum immortality on the basis that death can be understood as a continuum of decreasing states of consciousness not only in time, as argued by Tegmark, but also in space: "our consciousness is not located at one unique point in the brain, but is presumably a kind of emergent or holistic property of a sufficiently large group of neurons [...] our consciousness might not be able to go out like a light, but it can dwindle exponentially until it is, for all practical purposes, gone."


title: Quantum suicide and immortality

text: Directly responding to Lewis' lecture, British philosopher and many-worlds proponent David Papineau, while finding Lewis' other objections to the many-worlds interpretation lacking, strongly denies that any modification to the usual probability rules is warranted in death situations. Assured subjective survival can follow from the quantum suicide idea only if an agent reasons in terms of "what will be experienced next" instead of the more obvious "what will happen next, whether will be experienced or not". He writes: "[...] it is by no means obvious why Everettians should modify their intensity rule in this way. For it seems perfectly open for them to apply the unmodified intensity rule in life-or-death situations, just as elsewhere. If they do this, then they can expect all futures in proportion to their intensities, whether or not those futures contain any of their live successors. For example, even when you know you are about to be the subject in a fifty-fifty Schrödinger’s experiment, you should expect a future branch where you perish, to just the same degree as you expect a future branch where you survive."


title: Quantum suicide and immortality

text: On a similar note, quoting Lewis' position that death should not be expected as an experience, philosopher of science Charles Sebens concedes that, in a quantum suicide experiment, "[i]t is tempting to think you should expect survival with certainty." However, he remarks that expectation of survival could follow only if the quantum branching and death were absolutely simultaneous, otherwise normal chances of death apply: "[i]f death is indeed immediate on all branches but one, the thought has some plausibility. But if there is any delay it should be rejected. In such a case, there is a short period of time when there are multiple copies of you, each (effectively) causally isolated from the others and able to assign a credence to being the one who will live. Only one will survive. Surely rationality does not compel you to be maximally optimistic in such a scenario." Sebens also explores the possibility that death might not be simultaneous to branching, but still faster than a human can mentally realize the outcome of the experiment. Again, an agent should expect to die with normal probabilities: "[d]o the copies need to last long enough to have thoughts to cause trouble? I think not. If you survive, you can consider what credences you should have assigned during the short period after splitting when you coexisted with the other copies."


title: Quantum suicide and immortality

text: Writing in the journal "Ratio", philosopher István Aranyosi, while noting that "[the] tension between the idea of states being both actual and probable is taken as the chief weakness of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics," summarizes that most of the critical commentary of Lewis' immortality argument has revolved around its premises. But even if, for the sake of argument, one were willing to entirely accept Lewis' assumptions, Aranyosi strongly denies that the "terrifying corollary" would be the correct implication of said premises. Instead, the two scenarios that would most likely follow would be what Aranyosi describes as the "comforting corollary", in which an observer should never expect to get very sick in the first place, or the "momentary life" picture, in which an observer should expect "eternal life, spent almost entirely in an unconscious state", punctuated by extremely brief, amnesiac moments of consciousness. Thus, Aranyosi concludes that while "[w]e can't assess whether one or the other [of the two alternative scenarios] gets the lion's share of the total intensity associated with branches compatible with self-awareness, [...] we can be sure that they together (i.e. their disjunction) do indeed get the lion's share, which is much reassuring."


title: Quantum suicide and immortality

text: Physicist David Deutsch, though a proponent of the many-worlds interpretation, states regarding quantum suicide that "that way of applying probabilities does not follow directly from quantum theory, as the usual one does. It requires an additional assumption, namely that when making decisions one should ignore the histories in which the decision-maker is absent...[M]y guess is that the assumption is false."


title: Quantum suicide and immortality

text: Tegmark now believes experimenters should only expect a normal probability of survival, not immortality. The experimenter's probability amplitude in the wavefunction decreases significantly, meaning they exist with a much lower measure than they had before. Per the anthropic principle, a person is less likely to find themselves in a world where they are less likely to exist, that is, a world with a lower measure has a lower probability of being observed by them. Therefore, the experimenter will have a lower probability of observing the world in which they survive than the earlier world in which they set up the experiment. This same problem of reduced measure was pointed out by Lev Vaidman in the "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy". In the 2001 paper, "Probability and the many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory", Vaidman writes that an agent should not agree to undergo a quantum suicide experiment: "The large 'measures' of the worlds with dead successors is a good reason not to play." Vaidman argues that it is the instantaneity of death that may seem to imply subjective survival of the experimenter, but that normal probabilities nevertheless must apply even in this special case: "[i]ndeed, the instantaneity makes it difficult to establish the probability postulate, but after it has been justified in the wide range of other situations it is natural to apply the postulate for all cases."


title: Quantum suicide and immortality

text: In his 2013 book "The Emergent Multiverse", Wallace opines that the reasons for expecting subjective survival in the thought experiment "do not really withstand close inspection", although he concedes that it would be "probably fair to say [...] that precisely because death is philosophically complicated, my objections fall short of being a knock-down refutation". Besides re-stating that there appears to be no motive to reason in terms of expectations of experience instead of expectations of what will happen, he suggests that a decision-theoretic analysis shows that "an agent who prefers certain life to certain death is rationally compelled to prefer life in high-weight branches and death in low-weight branches to the opposite."


title: Quantum suicide and immortality

text: Physicist Sean M. Carroll, another proponent of the many-worlds interpretation, states regarding quantum suicide that neither experiences nor rewards should be thought of as being shared between future versions of oneself, as they become distinct persons when the world splits. He further states that one cannot pick out some future versions of oneself as "really you" over others, and that quantum suicide still cuts off the existence of some of these future selves, which would be worth objecting to just as if there were a single world.


title: Quantum suicide and immortality

text: Cosmologist Anthony Aguirre, while personally skeptical of most accounts of the many-worlds interpretation, in his book "Cosmological Koans" writes that "[p]erhaps reality actually is this bizarre, and we really do subjectively 'survive' any form of death that is both instantaneous and binary." Aguirre notes, however, that most causes of death do not fulfill these two requirements: "If there are degrees of survival, things are quite different." If loss of consciousness was binary like in the thought experiment, the quantum suicide effect would prevent an observer from subjectively falling asleep or undergoing anesthesia, conditions in which mental activities are greatly diminished but not altogether abolished. Consequently, upon most causes of death, even outwardly sudden, if the quantum suicide effect holds true an observer is more likely to progressively slip into an attenuated state of consciousness, rather than remain fully awake by some very improbable means. Aguirre further states that quantum suicide as a whole might be characterized as a sort of "reductio ad absurdum" against the current understanding of both the many-worlds interpretation and theory of mind. He finally hypothesizes that a different understanding of the relationship between the mind and time should remove the bizarre implications of necessary subjective survival.


title: Quantum suicide and immortality

text: Physicist and writer Philip Ball, a critic of the many-worlds interpretation, in his book "Beyond Weird", describes the quantum suicide experiment as "cognitively unstable" and exemplificatory of the difficulties of the many-worlds theory with probabilities. While he acknowledges Lev Vaidman's argument that an experimenter should subjectively expect outcomes in proportion of the "measure of existence" of the worlds in which they happen, Ball ultimately rejects this explanation. "What this boils down to is the interpretation of probabilities in the MWI. If all outcomes occur with 100% probability, where does that leave the probabilistic character of quantum mechanics?" Furthermore, Ball explains that such arguments highlight what he recognizes as another major problem of the many-worlds interpretation, connected but independent from the issue of probability: the incompatibility with the notion of selfhood. Ball ascribes most attempts of justifying probabilities in the many-worlds interpretation to "saying that quantum probabilities are just what quantum mechanics look like "when consciousness is restricted to only one world"" but that "there is in fact no meaningful way to explain or justify such a restriction." Before performing a quantum measurement, an "Alice before" experimenter "can't use quantum mechanics to predict what will happen to her in a way that can be articulated - because there is no logical way to talk about 'her' at any moment except the conscious present (which, in a frantically splitting universe, doesn't exist). Because it is logically impossible to connect the perceptions of Alice Before to Alice After [the experiment], "Alice" has disappeared. [...] [The MWI] eliminates any coherent notion of what we can experience, or have experienced, or are experiencing right now."


title: Quantum suicide and immortality

text: Philosopher of science Peter J. Lewis, a critic of the many-worlds interpretation, considers the whole thought experiment an example of the difficulty of accommodating probability within the many-worlds framework: "[s]tandard quantum mechanics yields probabilities for various future occurrences, and these probabilities can be fed into an appropriate decision theory. But if every physically possible consequence of the current state of affairs is certain to occur, on what basis should I decide what to do? For example, if I point a gun at my head and pull the trigger, it looks like Everett's theory entails that I am certain to survive—and that I am certain to die. This is at least worrying, and perhaps rationally disabling." In his book "Quantum Ontology", Lewis explains that for the subjective immortality argument to be drawn out of the many-worlds theory, one has to adopt an understanding of probability - the so-called "branch-counting" approach, in which an observer can meaningfully ask "which post-measurement branch will I end up on?" - that is ruled out by experimental, empirical evidence as it would yield probabilities that do not match with the well-confirmed Born rule. Lewis identifies instead in the Deutsch-Wallace decision-theoretic analysis the most promising (although still, to his judgement, incomplete) way of addressing probabilities in the many-worlds interpretation, in which it is not possible to count branches (and, similarly, the persons that "end up" on each branch). Lewis concludes that "[t]he immortality argument is perhaps best viewed as a dramatic demonstration of the fundamental conflict between branch-counting (or person-counting) intuitions about probability and the decision theoretic approach. The many-worlds theory, to the extent that it is viable, does not entail that you should expect to live forever."


title: Andrew Bogut

text: Andrew Michael Bogut (born 28 November 1984) is an Australian former basketball player who spent the majority of his professional career playing in the National Basketball Association (NBA). The tall center was selected by the Milwaukee Bucks with the first overall pick in the 2005 NBA draft. He earned All-NBA Third Team honors with the Bucks in 2010. He was traded to the Golden State Warriors in 2012, and was named NBA All-Defensive Second Team in 2015, when he won an NBA championship with the Warriors.


title: Andrew Bogut

text: Bogut played college basketball for two years with the Utah Utes, and earned national player of the year honors in 2005. He declared for the NBA draft, and became the first Australian to be the NBA's first overall pick. In his first year with the Bucks, Bogut was named to the NBA All-Rookie First Team in 2006. He earned all-league honors in 2010 after averaging a career-high 15.9 points along with 10.2 rebounds per game. He missed most of 2011–12 with an ankle injury, when he was traded to Golden State. After the Warriors won the NBA Finals in 2015, Bogut helped the Warriors win an NBA-record 73 games in 2015–16. He was traded to the Dallas Mavericks, where he played briefly before other short stints with the Cleveland Cavaliers and Los Angeles Lakers. In 2018, he returned to his home country to play for the Sydney Kings of the National Basketball League (NBL) and won the NBL MVP honours. Following the 2018–19 NBL season, Bogut signed back with the Warriors. He then returned to the Kings for a second season before retiring in 2020.


title: Andrew Bogut

text: Described as one of the leading faces of Australian basketball, Bogut has been credited for serving as a cornerstone of the Australian national team, for paving the way for an entire generation of Australian players in the NBA and in playing a leading role in re-vitalising the Australian NBL.


title: Andrew Bogut

text: Bogut was born in Melbourne in 1984. His parents, Michael and Anne, immigrated to Australia from Croatia in the 1970s. Bogut grew up playing Australian rules football and tennis in addition to basketball. As a child, he patterned his basketball game after Toni Kukoč, a Croatian NBA player who spent the majority of the 1990s playing for the Chicago Bulls. As a 15-year-old, he was cut from the Victoria junior state representative team. In response to this setback, Bogut began to improve his game with the help of Siniša Marković, a professional basketball player from Yugoslavia. Bogut's emergence began after he earned a roster spot with the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) in 2002. He competed in the South East Australian Basketball League (SEABL) in 2002 and 2003, helping the AIS win the East Conference title in his first season. He later joined the U-19 Australian junior national team, and was named the most valuable player of the 2003 FIBA Under-19 World Cup, in Greece, after leading the Emus to the title. In eight games, he averaged 26.3 points, 17 rebounds, 2.5 assists and 1.5 blocks per game, and he shot 61 percent from the field and 74 percent from the free throw line. One of the highlights of his MVP conquest was a 22-point, 18-rebound performance, in a 106–85 win over the US, in the quarter-finals of the medal round.


title: Andrew Bogut

text: As a freshman at Utah in 2003–04, Bogut averaged 12.5 points and 9.9 rebounds in 33 games. He subsequently earned CollegeInsider.com All-Freshman Team honours, Mountain West Conference Freshman of the Year, second-team All-Mountain West Conference, and NABC second-team All-District 13.


title: Andrew Bogut

text: As a sophomore in 2004–05, Bogut started all 35 games for the Utes, leading them to a 29–6 record, the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament, and a Mountain West Conference championship. He led the nation with 26 double-doubles and scored in double figures in 37 consecutive games dating back to the final two games of the 2003–04 season to have the sixth-longest streak in the country. He ranked 19th in the NCAA in scoring (20.4 ppg), second in rebounding (12.2 rpg) and eighth in field goal percentage (62.0), and led the Mountain West Conference in scoring, rebounding and field goal percentage. He became one of 31 Utah players all-time to score 1,000 points in his career, but just the third to reach that mark in two seasons. He was named the 2004–05 national player of the year by ESPN.com and Basketball Times, and earned Associated Press first-team All-American and leading vote getter, becoming the 11th Ute all-time to earn All-America honours. He also earned Naismith College Player of the Year honours and the John R. Wooden Award. He later had his No. 4 jersey retired by Utah.


title: Andrew Bogut

text: Bogut was selected by the Milwaukee Bucks with the first overall pick in the 2005 NBA draft, becoming the first Australian player and the second Utah player (the first being Bill McGill) to be drafted number one overall. As a rookie in 2005–06, he earned All-Rookie First Team honours and finished third in votes for the NBA Rookie of the Year Award. He played in all 82 regular season games for the Bucks in his first season, averaging 9.4 points and 7.0 rebounds per game.


title: Andrew Bogut

text: Bogut's second season in the league was cut short after he sprained his left foot and was put on the injured reserve for the final 15 games. He had previously played in 153 consecutive games. He improved his numbers in 2006–07 to 12.3 points and 8.8 rebounds per game.


title: Andrew Bogut

text: In the 2007–08 NBA season, Bogut set career-highs in points (14.3), rebounds (9.8), blocks (1.7), steals (0.8) and minutes (34.9) per game. He tallied a career-high 29 points against the Phoenix Suns in December and finished 9th in the NBA in blocks, 11th in rebounding and 12th in double-doubles (38). He started in 78 games for the Bucks, missing just four games through injury.


title: Andrew Bogut

text: Bogut appeared in just 36 games for the Bucks in 2008–09, missing the final 31 games of the season with a stress fracture in his lower back. He faced more time on the sidelines during the 2009–10 season due to a strained ligament and bruise in his left leg. On 3 April 2010, near the end of a breakout season, Bogut suffered a major injury. That night, in a game against the Phoenix Suns at the Bradley Center, Bogut had a chance to score on a fast break attempt. As he went up, Amar'e Stoudemire appeared to make some contact with Bogut and he lost his balance while completing the dunk. He hung onto the rim for a brief moment to try to right himself but could not, and fell at an awkward angle. Placing his right arm out to break the fall, Bogut landed with all of his weight on top of his wrist and his arm twisted as he landed. The next day, Bogut was diagnosed with a broken hand, dislocated elbow and sprained wrist, injuries that kept him out of for the remainder of the 2009–10 season. In what was a breakout season for Bogut, he finished with averages of 15.9 points, 10.2 rebounds and 2.5 blocks per game, earning All-NBA Third Team honours, becoming first Bucks player named to the squad since Michael Redd in 2003–04. Bogut helped the Bucks to a 46–36 record, their most wins since going 50–32 in 2000–01, and their first playoff appearance since 2006.


title: Andrew Bogut

text: Bogut returned to the Bucks' line-up in 2010–11, playing in 65 games and leading the league in blocks with 2.6 per game.


title: Andrew Bogut

text: During the 2011 NBA lockout, Bogut chose to return home to Australia and play in the NBL for the 2011–12 season. He was linked to the Gold Coast Blaze, Adelaide 36ers and the team he supported when growing up, the Sydney Kings. Ultimately, he chose the Kings (who finished last in 2010–11), but the insurance to cover his remaining $39m contract with the Bucks could not be resolved, leaving the Kings and the NBL without his on-court services. Following the breakdown in contract negotiations over the insurance money, Bogut stated he would like to join the Kings coaching staff in a bid not only to help the club, but help raise the NBL's profile. This, however, did not occur and he later returned to the Bucks following the conclusion of the lockout. On 25 January 2012, he fractured his ankle, ruling him out for the rest of the season.


title: Andrew Bogut

text: On 13 March 2012, Bogut and Stephen Jackson were traded to the Golden State Warriors in exchange for Monta Ellis, Ekpe Udoh and Kwame Brown. According to the Warriors, he underwent surgery in April to "clean out loose particles and bone spurs in the ankle". He sat out the 2012–13 preseason, but played in four of the first five regular season games, averaging just 6.0 points and 3.8 rebounds. He was then declared out indefinitely. He received Regenokine treatment to aid his recovery in late November, and it was also revealed that his procedure in April was more serious microfracture surgery than previously thought. Bogut returned on 28 January 2013, recording 12 points, 8 rebounds, 2 assists and 4 blocks in a road win over the Toronto Raptors. On 2 May 2013, in Game 6 of the first round of the playoffs, Bogut recorded playoff career-highs of 14 points and 21 rebounds. He also became the first Warriors player with 20 playoff rebounds since Larry Smith had 23 on 12 May 1987 against the Los Angeles Lakers.


title: Andrew Bogut

text: On 25 October 2013, Bogut signed a three-year contract extension with the Warriors. Despite another injury-riddled season in 2013–14, Bogut still finished 10th in NBA Defensive Player of the Year voting and became the first player in franchise history to average at least 10 rebounds per game while shooting 60 percent from the field.


title: Andrew Bogut

text: After playing well through the first 19 games of the 2014–15 season, Bogut injured his right knee on 8 December 2014 against the Minnesota Timberwolves and subsequently missed 12 games. He returned to action off the bench against Indiana on 7 January 2015, recording 4 points and 8 rebounds in a 117–102 win. On 2 March 2015, he scored a season-high 16 points in a loss to the Brooklyn Nets. On 7 April 2015, he recorded 8 points and a career-high 9 blocks in a loss to the New Orleans Pelicans. Bogut and the Warriors won the 2015 NBA Finals after defeating the Cleveland Cavaliers in six games.


title: Andrew Bogut

text: Disappointed in the way he ended the 2014–15 season, Bogut removed all processed sugars from his diet during the 2015 off-season and subsequently came into training camp in October 2015 with improved athleticism, having dropped 10 kilograms. On 9 February 2016, Bogut had a season-best game with 13 points, 11 rebounds, three steals and a season-high six blocked shots in a 123–110 win over the Houston Rockets. The Warriors broke the NBA record for most wins in a season with 73, eclipsing the 72 wins set by the 1995–96 Chicago Bulls. In Game 5 of the Warriors' Conference Finals match-up with the Oklahoma City Thunder, Bogut recorded a playoff career-high 15 points and 14 rebounds to help the Warriors send the series to a Game 6 with a 120–111 win at home, cutting the Thunder's advantage in the series to 3–2. The Warriors went on to win the series in seven games and advanced to the NBA Finals for the second straight year. The Warriors would again face the Cleveland Cavaliers. On 15 June 2016, he was ruled out for six to eight weeks with a left knee injury. The injury occurred during Game 5 of the NBA Finals. The Warriors went on to lose the series in seven games.


title: Andrew Bogut

text: On 7 July 2016, Bogut was traded, along with a future second-round pick, to the Dallas Mavericks in exchange for a future conditional second-round pick. The trade was made by the Warriors to free up salary cap space for their signing of Kevin Durant. Bogut made his debut for the Mavericks in their season opener on 26 October 2016, recording six points, six rebounds, three assists and one block in a 130–121 overtime loss to the Indiana Pacers. On 3 December, he had a game-high 11 rebounds and a season-high eight points in a 107–82 win over the Chicago Bulls. He went on to miss 11 games in December with a right knee injury, and a further six games in January with a right hamstring strain.


title: Andrew Bogut

text: On 23 February 2017, Bogut was traded, along with Justin Anderson and a protected first-round pick, to the Philadelphia 76ers in exchange for Nerlens Noel. Four days later, he was waived by the 76ers.


title: Andrew Bogut

text: On 2 March 2017, Bogut signed with the Cleveland Cavaliers. Four days later, Bogut broke his left leg 56 seconds into his Cleveland debut. Initial X-rays revealed a fractured tibia; he was subsequently taken to the Cleveland Clinic for further tests. There his tibia was set, and was scheduled to undergo a non-surgical treatment and recovery plan. He was subsequently ruled out for the remainder of the regular season and playoffs. As a result, on 13 March 2017, he was waived by the Cavaliers.


title: Andrew Bogut

text: On 19 September 2017, Bogut signed with the Los Angeles Lakers. He made his debut for the Lakers in their season opener on 19 October 2017, committing three fouls and three turnovers in a 108–92 loss to the Los Angeles Clippers. On 6 January 2018, Bogut was waived by the Lakers. He did not return to the NBA that season in order to remain in Australia with his pregnant wife.


title: Andrew Bogut

text: On 24 April 2018, Bogut signed a two-year deal with the Sydney Kings of the Australian National Basketball League. At the conclusion of the 2018–19 regular season, Bogut was named the NBL Most Valuable Player after averaging 11.6 points per game to go with 329 rebounds, 98 assists and 77 blocked shots. He was also named the Best Defensive Player and earned All-NBL First Team honours. He helped the Kings reach the playoffs with an 18–10 record and a third-place finish, before losing 2–0 to Melbourne United in the semi-finals. In 30 total games, he averaged 11.4 points, a league-high 11.6 rebounds, 3.4 assists and 2.7 blocks in 29.7 minutes per game.


title: Andrew Bogut

text: On 6 March 2019, after the conclusion of the 2018–19 NBL season, Bogut signed with the Golden State Warriors for the remainder of the 2018–19 NBA season. His deal with the Warriors was allowed by the Kings with the condition that he honoured the second year of his two-year contract. The Warriors reached the 2019 NBA Finals, where they lost in six games to the Toronto Raptors.


title: Andrew Bogut

text: Bogut rejoined the Sydney Kings for the 2019–20 NBL season and helped them win the minor premiership with a first-place finish and a 20–8 record. He was named to the All-NBL Second Team. On 25 May 2020, Bogut announced that he would not be re-signing with the Kings.


title: Andrew Bogut

text: Bogut had two surgeries throughout 2020, one to remove a bone spur in his ankle and the other to help with sciatica in his lower back.


title: Andrew Bogut

text: On 1 December 2020, Bogut announced his retirement from basketball, citing numerous injury issues as the main reason.


title: Andrew Bogut

text: Bogut started for the Boomers at the 2004 Athens Olympics, averaging 13.7 points, 9 rebounds and 1.2 blocked shots and shooting 58.0% from the field. He represented Australia again in the 2006 FIBA World Championship. Australia advanced to the Round of 16 before losing to the United States. He averaged 12.8 points per game and 6.2 rebounds per game during the tournament, leading Australia in both categories. He started for the Boomers at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. In 2012, he was unable to play for the Boomers in the London Olympics, as he had previously broken his left ankle in January during the 2011–12 NBA season.


title: Andrew Bogut

text: On 14 July 2015, Bogut was named in the Australian Boomers squad for their European tour and the 2015 FIBA Oceania Championship. The following year, he was a member of the Boomers team that finished in fourth place at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. This equaled Australia's best ever finish at the Olympics, with the Boomers having also finished fourth in 1988, 1996 and 2000. In 2019, the Boomers again finished fourth, this time at the FIBA Basketball World Cup in China.


title: Andrew Bogut

text: In November and December 2016, on Twitter, Bogut made a series of tweets in which he implied he believed elements of the Pizzagate hoax were real. At the time, the hoax had rapidly evolved into an elaborate conspiracy theory that involved ostensible child sex trafficking, Hillary Clinton, political strategist John Podesta and other Democrats and it was supposedly centered in the (actually nonexistent) basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza parlor.


title: Andrew Bogut

text: In 2021, via his Instagram account, Bogut posted conspiracy theories about coronavirus lockdowns. The lockdown, Victoria's sixth, prompted Bogut to vent his frustration due to Foodbank Victoria being closed because of concerns it was a coronavirus hotspot. He also believed that the lockdowns were already disproportionately affecting the working class. Bogut also claimed in his post that he had been approached to promote public health measures for money but declined, further stating without significant evidence that many other unnamed Australian celebrities were being compensated for urging that the public adhere to pandemic control measures despite many celebrities not being subject to the same rules as the working class. Bogut then urged other celebrities to speak out for residents proclaiming "The silence was deafening".


title: Andrew Bogut

text: Bogut is a staunch skeptic of vaccines and COVID-19 safety protocols, often posting said content on his social media platforms. In January 2022, Bogut claimed on his social media that the Victorian government was attempting to 'silence him' after receiving a letter from the Victorian Electoral Commission over social media posts he had posted supporting the passing of a bill aimed at diminishing the pandemic powers of the government. The electoral commission denied the claims, stating that the basis of the letter was over Bogut's failure to have his posts authorised.


title: A Rush of Blood to the Head

text: A Rush of Blood to the Head is the second studio album by British rock band Coldplay. It was released on 26 August 2002 by Parlophone in the United Kingdom, and a day later by Capitol Records in the United States. Recording started after the band became popular worldwide with the release of their debut album "Parachutes" (2000), and one of its singles in particular, "Yellow". The album was produced by the band and Ken Nelson, and makes greater use of the electric guitar and piano than its predecessor.


title: A Rush of Blood to the Head

text: The album topped the UK Albums Chart upon its first week of release in the United Kingdom, and became the eighth biggest-selling album of the 21st century in the UK. The British Phonographic Industry has since certified the album 10× Platinum for its accumulated sales of over 3 million units in the UK, while over 17 million copies were sold worldwide. The album spawned the hit singles "In My Place", "The Scientist", and "Clocks". "God Put a Smile upon Your Face" was also released, but was significantly less successful.


title: A Rush of Blood to the Head

text: "A Rush of Blood to the Head" has been critically acclaimed, and the band received three Grammy Awards for the album; the 2003 Grammy for Best Alternative Album, which was the band's second win in a row, the 2003 Grammy for Best Rock Performance with the song "In My Place", and the 2004 Grammy for Record of the Year with the song "Clocks". In 2020, it was ranked number 324 on "Rolling Stone"s "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". It was also among ten albums nominated for the best British album of the previous 30 years by the Brit Awards in 2010, ultimately losing to "(What's the Story) Morning Glory?" by Oasis. The same year, it was one of ten classic album covers from British artists commemorated on a UK postage stamp issued by the Royal Mail.


title: A Rush of Blood to the Head

text: Authors and reviewers have praised "A Rush of Blood to the Head" as one of the best albums of the 21st century. "In My Place", "The Scientist" and "Clocks" became the band's signature songs, by their commercial performance. As of October 2022, the album remains Coldplay's highest-charting album, including worldwide sales of over 20 million copies.


title: A Rush of Blood to the Head

text: The band started recording the album in London on 17 September 2001, but later relocated to Liverpool, where they had recorded some of the songs on "Parachutes". Lead singer Chris Martin said that once there they "became obsessed with recording". "In My Place" was the first song recorded for the album and the one that the band released as the album's lead single because it was the song that made them want to do a second album. It kept them going and made them think they could still write songs, following a strange period of not really knowing what they were doing three months after the success of "Parachutes".


title: A Rush of Blood to the Head

text: The opening track "Politik" was recorded two days following the September 11 attacks in 2001. According to an interview with lead singer Chris Martin, "I wrote the song on 9/11 and we recorded it on 9/13. We were all, like everyone else, I suppose, a little confused and frightened. I get off tour and had a rest for one or two days. But then I get antsy again. I want to write songs and do things, 'cause you never know what might happen." The band wrote more than twenty songs in the months following for the album and some of those, including "In My Place" and "Animals", were performed live during the tours promoting "Parachutes". The album's title was revealed through a post on the band's official website.


title: A Rush of Blood to the Head

text: During initial recording sessions in Liverpool, lead singer Chris Martin and guitarist Jonny Buckland worked alone, and only on weekends. Each Monday, they would present the song ideas that they had developed to their bandmates. With "A Rush of Blood to the Head" nearly completed, Martin went into the studio late one night and wrote a piano riff that he has stated "just came out". The band recognised that this early version of the song, that would become "Clocks", was special the first time Martin played it to them. Reasoning that it was too late to include the song on the album, they recorded a demo version and included it on a CD marked "Songs for #3", featuring unfinished tracks they intended to work on for their third studio album.


title: A Rush of Blood to the Head

text: By June 2002, the band had completed "A Rush of Blood to the Head", but thought their output sounded "rubbish" and reached an agreement with the label to postpone the release of the album until they were completely satisfied. Subsequently, many songs were discarded because they sounded like they could have been on "Parachutes". Martin has claimed that it would have been uninteresting: "It would have shown that we're happy to sit back on what we'd done, and we're not. For us, it was important to progress and try to improve upon our abilities as musicians." Such ambitions put the band under strain: "sometimes practice sessions ended abruptly with one or more members of Coldplay threatening to quit".


title: A Rush of Blood to the Head

text: After headlining the 2002 Glastonbury Festival, Coldplay returned to the studio and worked on some tracks from the "Songs for #3" CD they had produced earlier. Phil Harvey, the band's manager, heard "Clocks" and urged them to rework it immediately: "No, you must do that song now 'cause you're going on [in the lyrics] about urgency, and you're talking about keeping this song back. That doesn't make sense."


title: A Rush of Blood to the Head

text: Production of the album began quickly with the writing of the track "Politik", which was a song seen as a reflection of the world at the time, giving the band a renewed perspective on their lives and society. Many of the song lyrics on the album relate strongly to the theme of urgency. Martin has commented that previous songs were more relaxed since they were in a comfortable state of mind: "Perhaps there's a bit more urgency on some of these songs. And that's born from all the places we've been and the things we've experienced." Martin has explained. In relation to the theme of urgency, Martin has also stated that the album's title means "doing something on impulse".


title: A Rush of Blood to the Head

text: Several songs on the album are about the themes of love and relationships. These tracks are based on reality, but according to Martin, they were written with a fictional twist: "Songs are like fairy tales: they have a beginning and an end and you can make it all work perfectly. Real life doesn't work like that".


title: A Rush of Blood to the Head

text: The album includes ballads and acoustic songs featuring extensive use of guitar and piano. The U2-esque "epic rock" of the album's opening track "Politik", the piano-driven "Clocks", the loud guitars of "A Whisper", and the country rock-inspired guitar in "Warning Sign" were seen as an extension of the band's musical range. Chris Martin has also stated that the album's title track is an homage to American singer-songwriter Johnny Cash, whom he considered one of "the greatest ... men with just guitars". The title track is about uncertainties faced in life.


title: A Rush of Blood to the Head

text: According to Martin, the song "Green Eyes" was composed for two individuals: An "American friend" (speculated to be a woman of Chris' romantic desire), and bandmate Jonny Buckland.


title: A Rush of Blood to the Head

text: The album cover for "A Rush of Blood to the Head" was designed by photographer Sølve Sundsbø. Sundsbø had been hired by fashion magazine "Dazed & Confused" in the late 1990s to produce a shot with a "technological feel, something all white", according to himself. As an artist, Sundsbø attempted to do a unique original piece, creating a shot that had never been seen before; He suggested taking shots using a three-dimensional scanning machine - used to measure head sizes for USAF fighter jet helmets - to fulfil his vision.


title: A Rush of Blood to the Head

text: The model for the shots, named Mim, wore all-white cosmetic makeup, along with a coloured twill cape, to aesthetically produce optimal and desired results. The scanner could not properly identify some of the colors on the cape, so they were replaced with digital spikes, and the head in the image was chopped as the machine was unable to scan more than about thirty centimeters in height at a time. At first, Sundsbø had mixed feelings about the image, stating that when he first saw the result, he was terrified. "I thought it was so beautiful, but I was sure the magazine was never going to run it." The editor of the magazine, however, absolutely loved the image, and eventually featured it in one of their publications. After seeing the image in a publication of the magazine, Chris Martin approached Sundsbø for proper permission to use the image as the cover of "A Rush of Blood to the Head". For the album's singles, Martin asked Sundsbø for any ideas; Sundsbø suggested scanning the head of each member of the band.


title: A Rush of Blood to the Head

text: The album booklet contains only two photos; One with Coldplay in a location that was rumoured to be a forest, and one with the band in a recording studio. The album cover was among the ten chosen by the Royal Mail for a set of "Classic Album Cover" postage stamps issued in January 2010.


title: A Rush of Blood to the Head

text: "A Rush of Blood to the Head" was released on 26 August 2002 by Parlophone in the United Kingdom, and a day later 27 August 2002 by Capitol Records in the United States. The album was completed and originally ready to hand over to the record company and released in June 2002, however, after recording a demo of "Clocks" intended for the third album, the band delayed release by two months to allow them to work it into a finished track and include it on "A Rush of Blood to the Head". Capitol released a remastered version of the album in 2008 on a 180-gram vinyl record as part of its "From the Capitol Vaults" series.


title: A Rush of Blood to the Head

text: Upon release, "A Rush of Blood to the Head" received positive reviews from contemporary critics. Review aggregating website Metacritic reports a normalised score of 80 out of 100 based on 25 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". This makes "A Rush of Blood to the Head" Coldplay's highest-scoring album on the website as of 2021. Many reviewers felt that it built upon their previous album, "Parachutes". Alexis Petridis of the newspaper "The Guardian" wrote that the band's "new assurance is everywhere ... the timidity of "Parachutes" is nowhere to be found". He concludes, "It sounds like an album ready to take on the world, and win."


title: A Rush of Blood to the Head

text: Kelefa Sanneh of "The New York Times" praised the album, commenting that it is "one of the year's best albums" and describing it as "sparser, stranger and even catchier than its predecessor". "Rolling Stone"s Rob Sheffield said that ""A Rush of Blood to the Head" is a nervier, edgier, thoroughly surprising album", adding, "where "Parachutes" was the clumsy diary of a high-strung kid, "A Rush of Blood" sounds more like a band with the confidence to test its own limits." Ted Kessler of "NME" lauded the album, calling it "an album of outstanding natural beauty, an organic, wholesome work." MacKenzie Wilson of AllMusic echoed the above comments, saying that it is a "strong album". Wilson, who compliments Martin for his "sharpened" falsetto and refined "haunting delivery" and Buckland for his "riveting guitar work", notes that "regardless of the band still being in their mid-twenties, they've made an amazing record". Emma Pearse of the American newspaper "The Village Voice" has the same sentiments, stating that it is "a little edgier, trancier, and more conversational" compared to "Parachutes". Conversely, Robert Christgau gave the album a one-star honorable mention () and quipped "Let Green Eyes dump him for real and we'll see how long he hums in the void."


title: A Rush of Blood to the Head

text: "A Rush of Blood to the Head" has earned the band several awards from both the domestic and international music press. In 2002 it was awarded Best Album at the "Q" Awards. In the same year, the band won two Grammy Awards: Best Alternative Music Album and Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal for the song "In My Place". In 2003, "A Rush of Blood to the Head" won Best British Album at the BRIT Awards, and the following year the band earned their first Grammy Award for Record of the Year for the song "Clocks" for a total of three Grammys for the album. The band also won three VMAs at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards for Best Group Video, Breakthrough Video and Best Direction in a Video for "The Scientist". The same year, they won the awards best NME album of the year, and best album of the year at the NME Awards.


title: A Rush of Blood to the Head

text: The album was chosen in 2002 as "Billboard" magazine's Critics' Choice. "Kludge" included it on their list of best albums of 2002. In 2012, it was ranked number 466 on "Rolling Stone"s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, with its ranking climbing to number 324 in the 2020 update. It was also ranked 21st on "Rolling Stone"s list of top 100 albums of the 2000s. In 2007 The National Association of Recording Merchandisers and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame released a list of what they term "The Definitive 200 Albums of All Time"; "A Rush of Blood to the Head" ranks at number 65 on the list. The album was nominated for the BRITs Album of 30 Years at the 2010 BRIT Awards. Spin later included it at 278th in their list of The 300 Best Albums of 1985–2014.


title: A Rush of Blood to the Head

text: In a BBC Radio poll in 2013, the album topped the list ahead of "Hopes and Fears" by Keane, "Rio" by Duran Duran and "The Dark Side of the Moon" by Pink Floyd. The album was also included in the book "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die".


title: A Rush of Blood to the Head

text: "A Rush of Blood to the Head" topped the charts of 11 countries around the world. It debuted at number-one on the UK Albums Chart selling 273,924 copies. The British Phonographic Industry has since certified the album 10× Platinum for accumulated sales of over 3 million copies. With the subsequent release of "Clocks" and "The Scientist", the album spent over one year on the chart. "A Rush of Blood to the Head" has been placed at number seven on the list of United Kingdom's 20 biggest-selling albums of the 21st century, published by the British trade paper "Music Week". In July 2011, "A Rush of Blood to the Head" climbed from No. 176 back to No. 44 in the album's 250th charting week there. As of October 2018, the album has sold over 2,960,000 copies in the UK, making it Coldplay's best-selling studio album. It is the tenth best-selling album of the 21st century.


title: A Rush of Blood to the Head

text: In the United States, "A Rush of Blood" was Coldplay's first venture into the top 5 with 144,000 copies sold initially, stronger than its predecessor, "Parachutes", which debuted at number 189 in December 2000. "A Rush of Blood" debuted at number-one on the Canadian Albums Chart, selling 28,200 copies in its first week. The album has been certified 4x times platinum by the Canadian Recording Industry Association for shipments of over 400,000. It has been certified 7× platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association, having accumulated shipments of over 490,000 units.


title: A Rush of Blood to the Head

text: All tracks written and co-produced by Coldplay (Guy Berryman, Jonny Buckland, Will Champion, and Chris Martin). All tracks produced by Ken Nelson.


title: Katowice

text: Katowice ( , , ; ; , ) is the capital city of the Silesian Voivodeship in southern Poland and the central city of the Upper Silesian metropolitan area. It is the 11th most populous city in Poland, while its urban area is the most populous in the country and one of the most populous in the European Union.


title: Katowice

text: Katowice has a population of 286,960 according to a 31 December 2021 estimate. Katowice is a central part of the Metropolis GZM, with a population of 2.3 million, and a part of a larger Upper Silesian metropolitan area that extends into the Czech Republic and has a population of 5-5.3 million people.


title: Katowice

text: Throughout the mid-18th century, Katowice developed into a village following the discovery of rich coal reserves in the area. In the first half of the 19th century, intensive industrialization transformed local mills and farms into industrial steelworks, mines, foundries and artisan workshops. The city has since reshaped its economy from a heavy industry-based one to professional services, education and healthcare. The entire metropolitan area is the 16th most economically powerful city by GDP in the European Union with an output amounting to $114.5 billion.


title: Katowice

text: Katowice has been classified as a Gamma - global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network and is a centre of commerce, business, transportation, and culture in southern Poland, with numerous public companies headquartered in the city or in its suburbs including energy group Tauron and metal industry corporation Fasing, important cultural institutions such as Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, award-winning music festivals such as Off Festival and , and transportation infrastructure such as Katowice Korfanty Airport. It also hosts the finals of Intel Extreme Masters, an Esports video game tournament. Katowice is also home to several institutions of higher learning, notably the University of Silesia, the Silesian University of Technology and the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music.


title: Katowice

text: The area around Katowice, in Upper Silesia, has been inhabited by ethnic Silesian tribes from its earliest documented history. While the name Katowice ("Katowicze") is mentioned for the first time in 1598, other villages and settlements that would eventually become parts of modern Katowice have been established earlier, with "Dąb" being the oldest, mentioned in 1299 for the first time in a document issued by Duke Casimir of Bytom. "Bogucice", "Ligota", "Szopenice" and "Podlesie" were all established in early 14th century. Aside from farming, people living in the area would also work in hammer mills: the first one, "Kuźnica Bogucka", is mentioned in 1397.


title: Katowice

text: The area which would become Katowice was initially ruled by the Polish Silesian Piast dynasty until its extinction. From 1327, the region was under administration of the Kingdom of Bohemia under the Holy Roman Empire. As part of the Bohemian Crown, it was passed to the Habsburg monarchy of Austria in 1526. In 1742, along with most of Silesia, it was seized by Prussia following the First Silesian War. The two subsequent Silesian Wars left the area severely depopulated and with economy in ruins. In 1838, Franz von Winckler bought Katowice from Karl Friedrich Lehmann and in 1841, he made it the headquarters of his estate.


title: Katowice

text: On 3 October 1846, the works of the final stage of the Breslau-Myslowitz ("Wrocław-Mysłowice") rail line ended, built and operated by the Upper Silesian Railway ("Oberschlesische Eisenbahn", OSE). It was opened by the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm IV. A year later, on 6 August 1847, the first train arrived at the new Katowice station.


title: Katowice

text: The railway connection with major European cities (Katowice gained connections to Berlin, Kraków, Vienna and Warsaw, among others, between 1847 and 1848) fostered economic and population growth. The population grew enough to erect the first Lutheran church on 29 September 1858 (Church of the Resurrection), and the first Catholic church two years later, on 11 November 1860. Katowice (then: "Kattowitz") gained city status on 11 September 1865 in the Prussian Province of Silesia, by the act of the king Wilhelm I Hohenzollern.


title: Katowice

text: The city flourished due to large mineral (especially coal) deposits in the area. Extensive city growth and prosperity depended on the coal mining and steel industries, which took off during the Industrial Revolution. The city was inhabited mainly by Germans, Poles incl. Silesians, and Jews. In 1884, 36 Jewish Zionist delegates met here, forming the Hovevei Zion movement. Previously part of the Beuthen district, in 1873 it became the capital of the new Kattowitz district. On 1 April 1899, the city was separated from the district, becoming an independent city.


title: Katowice

text: In 1882, the Upper Silesian Coal and Steelworks Company ("Oberschlesischer Berg- und Hüttenmännischer Verein") moved its headquarters to Katowice, followed by creation of the Upper Silesian Coal Convention ("Oberschlesische Kohlen – Konvention") in 1898. Civic development followed industrial development: in 1851, the first post office opens in Katowice, and in 1893 the current regional post office headquarters have been opened; in 1871 the first middle school was opened (later expanded to high school); in 1889, Katowice got a district court; in 1895, the city bath opened and regional headquarters of the Prussian state railways has been established in the city; in 1907, the city theater (currently the Silesian Theatre) opened.


title: Katowice

text: Under the Treaty of Versailles after World War I, the Upper Silesia plebiscite was organised by the League of Nations. Though Kattowitz proper voted 22,774 to remain in Germany and 3,900 for Poland, it was attached to Poland as the larger district voted 66,119 for Poland and 52,992 for Germany. Following the Silesian Uprisings of 1918–21 Katowice became part of the Second Polish Republic with some autonomy for the Silesian Parliament as a constituency and the Silesian Voivodeship Council as the executive body. In 1924, the surrounding villages and towns were incorporated into Katowice, and the number of inhabitants increased to over 112,000, since then the number of Poles exceeded the number of Germans - throughout the interwar period, the number of Germans decreased (in 1925 they constituted 12% of the inhabitants of Katowice, and in 1939 only 6%, while Poles constituted 93%). At the end of the interwar period, the number of inhabitants exceeded 134,000.


title: Katowice

text: In the years 1926–1933, Katowice and the Polish part of Upper Silesia were connected with Gdynia and Polish part of Pomerania in the Polish Corridor through the Coal Trunk-Line ().


title: Katowice

text: During the early stages of World War II and the Poland Campaign, Katowice was essentially abandoned by the Polish Land Forces, which had to position itself around Kraków. Nevertheless, the city was defended by local Poles, and the invading Germans immediately carried out massacres of captured Polish defenders. In the following weeks the German "Einsatzkommando 1" was stationed in the city, and its units were responsible for many crimes against Poles committed in the region.


title: Katowice

text: Under German occupation many of the city's historical and iconic monuments were destroyed, most notably the Great Katowice Synagogue, which was burned to the ground on 4 September 1939. This was followed by the alteration of street names and the introduction of strict rules. Additionally, the use of Polish in public conversations was banned. The German administration was also infamous for organising public executions of civilians and by the middle of 1941, most of the Polish and Jewish population was expelled. The Germans established and operated a Nazi prison in the city, and multiple forced labour camps within present-day city limits, including two camps solely for Poles ("Polenlager"), four camps solely for Jews, two subcamps (E734, E750) of the Stalag VIII-B/344 prisoner-of-war camp, and a subcamp of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Eventually, Katowice was liberated by the Red Army in January 1945. Significant parts of the downtown and inner suburbs were demolished during the occupation. This, however, cannot be compared with Warsaw, where the level of destruction reached 85%. As a result, the authorities were able to preserve the central district in its prewar character.


title: Katowice

text: The postwar period of Katowice was characterised by the time of heavy industry development in the Upper Silesian region, which helped the city in regaining its status as the most industrialised Polish city and a major administrative centre. As the city developed so briskly, the 1950s marked a significant increase in its population and an influx of migrants from the Eastern Borderlands, the so-called "Kresy". The city area began to quickly expand by incorporating the neighbouring communes and counties. However, the thriving industrial city also had a dark period in its short but meaningful history. Most notably, between 7 March 1953 and 10 December 1956, Katowice was called "Stalinogród" in honour of Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union. The change was brought upon by an issued decree of the State Council. The date of the alteration of the city name was neither a coincidence or accidental as it happened on the day of Stalin's death. In this way, the Polish United Workers' Party and the socialist authority wanted to pay tribute to the dictator. The new name never got accepted by the citizens and in 1956 the former Polish name was restored.


title: Katowice

text: The following decades were more memorable in the history of Katowice. Regardless of its industrial significance, it started to become an important cultural and educational centre in Central and Eastern Europe. In 1968, the University of Silesia in Katowice, the largest and most valued college in the area, was founded. Simultaneously the construction of large housing estates began to evolve. Furthermore, many representative structures were erected at that time, including the Silesian Insurgents' Monument (1967) and Spodek (1971), which have become familiar landmarks and tourist sights. The 1960s and 1970s saw the evolution of modernist architecture and functionalism. Katowice eventually developed into one of the most modernist post-war cities of Poland.


title: Katowice

text: One of the most dramatic events in the history of the city occurred on 16 December 1981. It was then that 9 protesters died (7 were shot dead; 2 died from injury complications) and another 21 were wounded in the pacification of Wujek Coal Mine. The Special Platoon of the Motorized Reserves of the Citizens' Militia ("ZOMO") was responsible for the brutal handling of strikers protesting against Wojciech Jaruzelski's declaration of martial law and the arrest of Solidarity trade union officials. On the 10th anniversary of the event, a memorial was unveiled by the President of Poland Lech Wałęsa.


title: Katowice

text: In 1990, the first democratic local elections that took place marked a new period in the city's history. The economy of Katowice has been transforming from the heavy industry of steel and coal mines into "one of the most attractive investment areas for modern economy branches in Central Europe". Recently, the city's efficient infrastructure, rapid progress in the overall development and an increase in office space has made Katowice a popular venue for conducting business. The Katowice Expo Centre ("Katowickie Centrum Wystawiennicze") organises trade fairs or exhibitions and attracts investors from all over the world. In 2018, the city was the host of the 24th Session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP24). In 2022, the city hosted the 11th edition of the World Urban Forum, the world's most important conference on sustainable urbanization and development of cities.


title: Katowice

text: Katowice encompasses an area of . The city is situated in the Silesian Highlands, about north of the Silesian Beskids (part of the Carpathian Mountains). Kłodnica and Rawa (tributaries of the Oder and the Vistula respectively) are the largest rivers in Katowice, and the border between catchment areas of Oder and Vistula goes through the city. With a minimal elevation of and median elevation of above sea level, Katowice has the highest elevation among large cities in Poland.


title: Katowice

text: Katowice has a temperate, ocean-moderated humid continental climate (Köppen climate classification: "Dfb/Cfb"). The average temperature is 8.2 °Celsius ( in January and up to in July). Yearly rainfall averages at . Characteristic weak winds blow at about from the southwest, through the Moravian Gate.


title: Katowice

text: Katowice has 22 officially recognized neighborhoods. Śródmieście, Osiedle Paderewskiego-Muchowiec, Zawodzie and Koszutka form the dense central urban core where most cultural and educational institutions, businesses and administrative buildings are located.


title: Katowice

text: Most Northern and Eastern neighborhoods around the downtown core are more working-class and developed from worker's estates build around large industry such as coal mines, manufactures and steelworks. Each of these neighborhoods has its own dense commercial strip surrounded by mid-rise apartment buildings and some single-family homes. Szopienice, located between downtown Katowice and Mysłowice, used to be a separate town until mid-1960s. Nikiszowiec, a former mine's town, has undergone strong gentrification in recent years, and emerged as a major tourist attraction in the region thanks to its unique architecture and art galleries.


title: Katowice

text: Western and Southern neighborhoods (with the exception of Brynów-Załęska Hałda, which is a working-class neighborhood built around a coal mine) are more suburban in nature, concentrating the city's middle and upper middle classes.


title: Katowice

text: Katowice lies in the centre of the largest conurbation in Poland, one of the largest in the European Union, numbering about 2.7 million. The Katowice urban area consists of about 40 adjacent cities and towns, the whole Silesian metropolitan area (mostly within the Upper Silesian Coal Basin) over 50 cities or towns. The metropolitan area has a population of 5,294,000. In 2006, Katowice and 14 adjacent cities united as the Upper Silesian Metropolis. Its population is 2 million and its area is 1,104 km. In 2006–2007 the union planned to unite these cities in one city under the name "Silesia", but this proved unsuccessful.


title: Katowice

text: The Katowice conurbation comprises settlements which have evolved because of the mining of metal ores, coal and raw rock materials. The establishment of mining and heavy industry which have developed for the past centuries has resulted in the unique character of the cityscape; its typical aspects are the red brick housing estates constructed for the poorer working class, factory chimneys, manufacturing plants, power stations and quarries. The inhabitants of a large mining community like Katowice, and local administrations within the conurbation, which have only evolved due to mining, are a subject to overall decline after the liquidation of coal mines and factories. This is one of the reasons which led to the development of the service sector, including office spaces, shopping centres and tourism.


title: Katowice

text: The Polish Statistical Office estimates Katowice's population to be 292,774 as of 31 December 2020, with a population density of . There were 139,274 males and 153,500 females. Age breakdown of people in Katowice is: 12.9% 0–14 years old, 13.7% 15–29 years old, 23.8% 30–44 years old, 19.5% 45–59 years old, 20.1% 60–74 years old, and 9.9% 75 years and older.


title: Katowice

text: Katowice is a centre of the Upper Silesian metropolitan area, with a population of approx. 5.3 million. This metropolitan area extends into the neighboring Czechia, where the other centre is the city of Ostrava. 41 municipalities that constitute the core of the metropolitan area created the Silesian Metropolis association, which has 2.3 million people as of 2019.


title: Katowice

text: Katowice's population grew very fast between 1845 and 1960, fueled by the expansion of heavy industry and administrative functions. In the 60s, 70s and 80s, the city grew by another 100,000 people, reaching a height of 368,621 in 1988. Since then, the collapse of heavy industry, emigration, and suburbanization reversed the population development; Katowice lost approx. 75,000 people (20%) since the fall of communism in Poland.


title: Katowice

text: Before World War II, Katowice was mainly inhabited by Poles and Germans. The 1905 Silesian demographic census has shown that Germans made up nearly 70-75% of the total population (with German Jews) and Poles constituted 25-30% of inhabitants of Katowice. After the plebiscite in Upper Silesia, Silesian uprisings and the incorporation of Katowice into Poland in 1922, and then the incorporation of several nearby villages and towns into the city, the number of inhabitants of Katowice increased significantly, but the number of Germans in Katowice fell to 12% in 1925 and to 6% in 1939 (most Germans left Poland, and areas with a Polish majority were incorporated). Thus, in 1939 Katowice was inhabited in 93% by Poles, 6% by Germans and 1% by Jews.


title: Katowice

text: After the German aggression against Poland in 1939, some Poles were displaced from Katowice and settled with Germans, this process was interrupted during the occupation of Katowice by the Red Army in 1945, and then practically the entire German minority was displaced. After 1945, Polish exiles from Kresy ("Eastern Borderlands") and Polish people from other work regions (including for work purposes) came to the city. Most pre-war citizens (excluding Poles) were forcibly expelled by the new authorities.


title: Katowice

text: During the war, the Nazi occupant committed severe crimes against the local Roma and Jewish communities. Most of them were eventually killed or transported by cattle wagons to concentration camps such as Auschwitz for complete extermination. This led to a population drop between 1939 and 1945.


title: Katowice

text: Currently, Katowice is one of the more diverse cities in Poland. According to the 2011 census, Of 310,764 inhabitants, 81,500 (26.2%) declared a nationality other than Polish or Polish nationality and, at the same time, a different nationality (two nationalities can be declared in Polish censuses), with top other nationalities being the indigenous Silesians (78,838), but most of which declared both Silesian and Polish at the same time (possibility to declare two), and Germans (1,058). Additionally, 5,614 (1.8%) people either did not declare a nationality, or stated they have no nationality. When counting the declared two nationalities, 90.1% of the inhabitants of Katowice declared Polish nationality. Linguistic diversity is smaller in Katowice; 97.1% of people speak Polish at home, 2.9% speak only non-Polish language while 5.3% speak Polish and at least one other language. The most spoken minority languages include: Silesian (22,730, 7.3%), English (1,313, 0.4%) and German (969, 0.3%).


title: Katowice

text: Since the 2011 census, the international population have risen in Katowice with the post-2014 increase in immigration to Poland, with the primary nationality being Ukrainians. According to the Polish Ministry of Development, Labor and Technology, there have been 20,527 foreigners (7% of official population figure) on a special worker permit for citizens of Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Russia, Serbia and Ukraine in Katowice in 2020, 19,003 of them from Ukraine. By the end of 2021, this number has increased to 26,990, 23,207 of them from Ukraine. Additionally, as of June 2022, 11,568 refugees settled in Katowice since the start of the Russian invasion on Ukraine.


title: Katowice

text: The 2011 census found out that, among population aged 25 and older, 26.7% of Katowice residents had a college degree, 35% had a high school degree but no college degree, 22.3% had trade school diploma, and the rest had primary or junior high school education only. In the 25-34 age group, college graduates share is 44.9%, and an additional 31.8% has a high school degree. According to Eurostat data, Katowice and its surrounding Silesian region had one of the highest share of people who have attained at least an upper secondary level of education (more than 90%), and one of the lowest share of school dropouts in Europe (less than 5%).


title: Katowice

text: There were 134,199 households in Katowice, as of the 2011 census, with an average household size of 2.3 people. 32.7% households were single-person households, 29.4% had two people, 20.5% had three people, 12.5% had four people and 4.9% had five people or more.


title: Katowice

text: Katowice has the 3rd-highest wages in Poland, behind Jastrzębie-Zdrój and Warsaw only and slightly ahead of Gdańsk, at PLN 6,176 a month. Poverty rate places Katowice on average with other big cities in Poland, at 4.09% of inhabitants eligible for welfare benefits as of 2019.


title: Katowice

text: Roman Catholicism is the main religion in Katowice; as of the 2011 Polish census, 82.43% (256,166) people in Katowice declared to be Catholic. Other denominations with at least 1,000 worshippers include the Lutheran Church in Poland – 0.43% (1,336 people) and Jehovah's Witnesses – 0.42% (1,311 people). 4.47% (13,900) people in Katowice stated they are atheist, while 12% (37,029) people refused to state their religious affiliation. Other religions with presence and places of worship in the city include Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism, as well as other Protestant denominations.


title: Katowice

text: Katowice is the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese, with the suffragan bishoprics of Gliwice and Opole, and around 1,477,900 Catholics. The Cathedral of Christ the King, constructed between 1927 and 1955 in a classicist style, is the largest cathedral in Poland. There are 36 Catholic churches in Katowice (including two basilicas), as well as 18 monasteries. Katowice is also a seat of a diocesan Catholic seminary, as well as one of the Order of Friars Minor. Katowice Archdiocese owns several media companies headquartered in Katowice: "Księgarnia św. Jacka", a Catholic publishing company, and "Instytut Gość Media", a multi-channeled media company that owns "Radio eM", a regional Catholic radio, and a few magazines. Gość Niedzielny, owned by "Instytut Gość Media" and published in Katowice, is currently the most-popular Catholic magazine in the country with approx. 120,000 copies sold weekly.


title: Katowice

text: Katowice is also the seat of a Lutheran Diocese which covers Upper Silesia, Lesser Poland and Subcarpathian region and has 12,934 adherents as of 2019. Lutherans have two churches in Katowice, including a cathedral, which is the oldest church built originally in Katowice, completed on 29 September 1858. Historically, Lutheran population in Katowice was mostly German, and with the expulsion of Germans from Poland after the Second World War, number of Lutherans dropped in Katowice.


title: Katowice

text: Other denominations with churches or praying houses in Katowice include Seventh Day Adventists, Baptists, Christ Church in Poland, Pentecostals and other evangelical groups.


title: Katowice

text: Judaism has historically been present in Katowice since at least 1702. First synagogue, designed by a local architect Ignatz Grünfeld, was consecrated on 4 September 1862, while the Jewish cemetery was established in 1868. Dr. Jacob Cohn was the first rabbi of Katowice, appointed to this function on 6 January 1872 and holding it until 1920s. Zionism was strong in Katowice, and in 1884 the city was the place of the Katowice Conference, the first public Zionist meeting in history. On 12 September 1900, the Great Synagogue was opened.


title: Katowice

text: Following World War I and subsequent creation of the Polish state, most Katowice Jews, who identified with Germany, left the city and settled primarily in Bytom, a nearby city that was still part of Germany. They were partially replaced by Jews moving from the East, particularly the neighboring Dąbrowa Basin region that had a large Jewish population. In 1931, 60% of 5,716 Jews in Katowice were recent immigrants from other parts of Poland. On 1 September 1939, Poland was attacked by Nazi Germany, and Katowice, a border city, surrendered on 3 September. The Great Synagogue was burned by the German army the same day, and in the following months, Katowice Jews were deported to ghettos in Dąbrowa Basin (primarily Sosnowiec and Będzin) or directly to various concentration and death camps where most of them perished in the Holocaust. After the war, around 1,500 Jews were living in Katowice, but most of them left Poland and emigrated to the United States and other Western countries.


title: Katowice

text: Currently, Katowice has one Qahal with approximately 200 members. It owns houses of prayer in Katowice (along with a kosher cafeteria) and nearby Gliwice, and the current rabbi is Yehoshua Ellis.


title: Katowice

text: There are two buddhist groups in Katowice: Kwan Um School of Zen, first registered in 1982, and the Diamond Road of Karma Kagyu line association. Jehovah's Witnesses maintain 13 houses of prayer and one Kingdom Hall in Katowice. Aside from Polish-language congregations, there is one for English speakers and one for Ukrainian speakers.


title: Katowice

text: Unlike most other large Polish cities, Katowice did not originate as a medieval town, therefore it does not have an old town with a street layout and architectural styles characteristic to cities founded on Magdeburg rights. Katowice's urban layout is a result of expansion and annexation of various towns, industrial worker estates, and villages.


title: Katowice

text: Katowice city centre has an axis design, along the main railway line, developed by an industrialist Friedrich Grundman in mid-19th century. Most of the city centre in Katowice developed in late 19th and early 20th century, when it was part of the Kingdom of Prussia and had a German-speaking majority. As a result, architectural styles of that era are similar to those in other Prussian cities such as Berlin or Wrocław (then Breslau); primarily renaissance revival and baroque revival, with some buildings in gothic revival, romanesque revival, and art nouveau styles.


title: Katowice

text: In 1922, Katowice and the eastern portion of Upper Silesia were reintegrated with reborn Poland, and an autonomous Silesian Voivodeship was established, with Katowice as its capital. This event has marked the beginning of a period of unprecedented architectural development in the city. Since most traditional styles, especially gothic and gothic revival, were perceived as connected to imperial Germany by the new Polish authorities, all new development was to be built in, at first in the neoclassical, and later in functionalist/Bauhaus style. The city, which needed to build administrative buildings for the new authorities and housing for people working in regional administration, began expansion southward creating one of the largest complexes of modern architecture in Poland, comparable to Warsaw and Gdynia (newly built port on the Baltic Sea) only.


title: Katowice

text: The modernist district is centered around the monumental Silesian Parliament building (1923-1929), which architecture is mostly functionalist but still will neoclassical references on the facades. During World War II, the building became headquarters of the Reichsgau Oberschlesien and part of the interior was redesigned by Albert Speer, Hitler's favorite architect, to resemble the interior of the Reich Chancellery. The nearby Cathedral of Christ the King (1927-1955, with dome lowered by 34 meters compared to original design) is also neoclassical but with an ascetic interior (including a tabernacle and a golden mosaic funded by future pope, Joseph Ratzinger). Other buildings, designed in mid-to-late 1920s and 1930s, are mostly modernist or functionalist. A symbol of the city in the interwar period, Drapacz Chmur (literally: "The Skyscraper"), was the first skyscraper built in Poland after World War I, and the first building in the country to be based on a steel frame.


title: Katowice

text: After World War II, Katowice again expected a period of rapid growth, particularly under the regional leadership of Marshall Jerzy Ziętek. Pałac Młodzieży ("Youth Palace") became the first major new building completed in Katowice after the war, erected in the socrealist style with elements of late modernism in 1949–1951. The largest development of the 1950s in Katowice was the expansion of the Koszutka neighborhood, also in the socialist realist style, in early 1950s.


title: Katowice

text: Following the death of Stalin in 1956, and the end of socrealism, Jerzy Ziętek and city authorities commissioned a group of young architects and urbanists to create a project of the new urban design of Katowice. The collective, called "Miastoprojekt Katowice", came up with a design heavily influenced by Le Corbusier's ideas. The project was centered around a grand avenue (current "Aleja Korfantego") surrounded by simple, modern blocks and monuments, scattered in distance to each other according to modernist ideals. The most important buildings from that time include:


title: Katowice

text: Following the collapse of communism in Poland and other Eastern Bloc countries, and the centrally-planned economy with it, Katowice's economy suffered a downturn, due to reduced significance of heavy industry. As a result, except for residential (primarily suburban) construction, not many buildings were built. One of the most significant buildings of the 1990s was the new branch of the Silesian Library, in postmodernism style.


title: Katowice

text: Another wave of architectural revival came after Poland joined the European Union in 2004. European cohesion funds, along with private capital investment, flew into the city resulting in a number of architecturally interesting buildings and complexes, including:


title: Katowice

text: Katowice has been classified as a Gamma - global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network and is considered as an emerging metropolis. Katowice's metropolitan area is the 16th most economically powerful urban area in the European Union by GDP, with an output amounting to $114.5 billion. The city is one of the major industrial, commerce and financial hubs of Poland and has successfully transformed its economy from heavy industry-based to knowledge-based one.


title: Katowice

text: Katowice has a diversified economy with one of the strongest job markets in Poland. 171,839 Katowice residents are employed as of 2019, and 113,830 commute to work in the city - making Katowice second only to Warsaw in terms of commuter inflows in the country. Unemployment rate is extremely low at 1.8%, as of June 2022. The broader Katowice subregion (NUTS-3 level in European statistics) which includes neighboring towns of Chorzów, Siemianowice Śląskie, Mysłowice, Ruda Śląska, and Świętochłowice had 377,600 employed persons as of 2019, of which 22% in industry, 6% in construction, 23% in retail and services, 5% in information and communication, 5% in finance and insurance, 2% in real estate, 10% in professional services and science, 23% in education, health and administration and 4% in arts and entertainment.


title: Katowice

text: Katowice is a large business, convention and trade fair centre. Katowice is headquarters to 18 public companies traded on the Warsaw Stock Exchange, with total market value of PLN 24.2 billion as of 2016, with the largest being ING Bank Śląski. As of 2019, 38 companies from Katowice make the list of 2000 largest enterprises in Poland according to Rzeczpospolita, with largest one being Tauron Polska Energia S.A. (10th place). As of 2012, 44,050 companies were registered in Katowice, almost 10% of all companies in the Silesian Voivodeship.


title: Katowice

text: Retail is a very strong sector in Katowice. The city is home to several shopping centres and department stores, with Silesia City Center and Galeria Katowicka being the largest ones. Silesia City Center, located on a brownfield in place of a former coal mine, is the largest shopping centre in Poland when number of stores is considered (310 different brands) and 7th largest in terms of retail space for rent (86,000 sq. m). It is also a part of a broader revitalization complex, that features an apartment complex and office space (under construction as of October 2020) as well.


title: Katowice

text: Katowice is also the seat of Katowice Special Economic Zone (Katowicka Specjalna Strefa Ekonomiczna).


title: Katowice

text: Since its creation, Katowice's development was tightly connected to heavy industry, especially coal mining, steelworks and machine production. In 1931, 49.5% of inhabitants worked in industry, and 12.5% in coal mining alone. In 1989 industry accounted for 36% of all jobs in the city (112,000 employees). As of 2018, 34,294 people worked in industry in Katowice, 20.4% of total, below the national average.


title: Katowice

text: The first reported coal mine in Katowice ("Murcki" coal mine) was established in 1740, and in 1769 construction on "Emanuelssegen" mine started. As the demand for coal kept rising in the Kingdom of Prussia, further mines were opened: "Beata" (1801), "Ferdinand" (1823), "Kleofas" (1845). Later in 19th and early 20th century additional mines were opened: "Katowice", "Wujek", "Eminenz" (later renamed "Gottwald" and merged with "Kleofas"), "Wieczorek", "Boże Dary", "Staszic" and renewed "Murcki". Currently only one ("Murcki-Staszic") remains in operation. Katowice is also the seat of , the largest coal mining corporation in Europe. Metallurgy was another important part of Katowice's economy. In 1863 a dozen zinc metallurgy facilities were reported in Katowice, with "Wilhelmina" (founded in 1834) being the largest. In early 1900s, "Wilhelmina" (later renamed "Huta Metali Niezależnych Szopienice") was enlarged and became the largest Silesian producer of non-ferrous metals and world's largest producer of cadmium. Two major steelworks existed in the city: "Huta Baildon", established in 1823 by the Scottish engineer and industrialist John Baildon (declared bankruptcy in 2001), and "Huta Ferrum", established in 1874 and operating to this date in limited capacity.


title: Katowice

text: A vibrant and progressive artistic communities, particularly around musical arts, make Katowice one of the leading cultural spots in Poland. Since mid-2000s, Katowice has established a strategy to redevelop the post-industrial areas using culture - the pinnacle of which was a massive development on the site of a former coal mine known as (the "Zone of Culture"), where numerous cultural and convention institutions are located.


title: Katowice

text: Katowice's status as the UNESCO City of Music, designated when Katowice joined UNESCO Creative Cities Network in 2015, comes from a long and rich history of musical arts. Katowice is the seat of an internationally renowned Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music, whose faculty and graduates created the nationally important informal group called the Silesian school of composers. Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra has been located in Katowice since 1945 and has gotten a new internationally acclaimed concert hall in 2014, built on a site of a former coal mine near Katowice's city center. The Silesian Philharmonic also has its seat in Katowice. The city is a venue for numerous classical concerts and festivals, such as: the International Festival of Young Music Competition Laureates, Grzegorz Fitelberg International Competition for Conductors, Chamber Music Festival, Ars Cameralis Festival and Katowice's opera, operettas and most of all ballet.


title: Katowice

text: There are currently 6 theater buildings in Katowice, and some theater groups without a permanent location. Teatr Śląski is the oldest still-functioning theater in Katowice, first opened for audience in 1907 and located on the main square. It was the first theater to give plays in Silesian dialect of Polish. Every first Monday of the month, the Silesian Opera singers from nearby Bytom give a performance there, as Katowice does not have an opera house of its own. Teatr Ateneum is an important puppetry theater, while Teatr Korez was one of the first non-public theaters in post-war Poland.


title: Katowice

text: Katowice is home to many nationally and internationally renowned popular music festivals. Rawa Blues, named after a stream that passes through Katowice's city center, is one of the largest blues festivals in Europe. Electronic music's Mayday Festival takes place every year in early November and is a sister event to its namesake in Dortmund. OFF Festival, dedicated to alternative music, moved to Katowice in 2010 and has been held every August. Tauron Nowa Muzyka festival, oriented more towards dance and techno has been named one of the major European festivals to attend. Other music festivals, such as the Silesian Jazz Festival, KatoHej (dedicated to chants and touristic music), and Gardens of Sound, are also organized. In 2019, 475,806 people attended various big cultural events such as concerts and festivals, which gave the city the third place in Poland, behind Warsaw and Kraków. Nearby Chorzów, with the Silesian Stadium right across the street from Katowice, gathered another 319,783 attendees.


title: Katowice

text: The Silesian Museum is the largest and most-important museum in Katowice. It originally opened in 1929, and its radically modern, Bauhaus-style new building was demolished immediately after the Nazis seized Katowice in 1939, considering it too degenerate and too Polish. The museum has been placed in temporary buildings with its collections dispersed until 2015, when a new, mostly underground building has been constructed in the Zone of Culture. The museum exhibits works by famous and renowned Polish artists like Józef Chełmoński, Artur Grottger, Tadeusz Makowski, Jacek Malczewski, Jan Matejko, Józef Mehoffer and Stanisław Wyspiański. It is also well known for its collection of naïve art paintings, including local coal miners from Katowice area. The museum has a number of sketches of globally recognizable artists such as Albrecht Dürer and Rembrandt.


title: Katowice

text: The City History Museum of Katowice exhibitions include: immersive typical urban apartments from early 20th century, naïve art paintings from local artists and the history of Katowice from a village to an industrial center. Other museums in Katowice include Museum of the History of Computers and Informatics and the Museum of Smallest Books in the World.


title: Katowice

text: The BWA Contemporary Art Gallery in Katowice, established in 1949, is a notable institution concerning the Contemporary arts. Every three years, it is responsible for organizing the Polish Graphic Art Triennial. Several other galleries feature exhibitions of the works by artists from abroad along with film screenings, workshops for children and public fairs.


title: Katowice

text: Katowice is a large scientific centre. It has over 20 schools of higher education, at which over 100,000 people study.


title: Katowice

text: The public transportation system of the Katowice consists of commuter and long-distance trains, trams, buses and city bikes. Around 38 percent of people in Katowice use trams and buses on their daily commute (40 percent if counted those using the park-and-ride facilities), 10 percent walk, 4 percent cycle, and 2 percent takes the train, according to a 2020 report. There are also three park-and-ride centers in Katowice with over 1,000 parking spaces.


title: Katowice

text: The transit authority of the Upper Silesian Metropolis, Zarząd Transportu Metropolitalnego (ZTM), operates the city trams and buses.


title: Katowice

text: The Silesian Interurban tram system is one of the largest and oldest in Europe, in operation since 1894 and covering over 200 km of rails, including 62 km in Katowice proper. The network in Katowice is mostly located in the northern part of the city has a star-like shape, with most lines converging on the Rynek square and expanding to all directions. There are 13 tram lines in Katowice, all but 2 expanding into neighboring cities. 116 tram stops are located in Katowice proper, as of 2020. A new tram line is planned to the southern suburbs since 2016.


title: Katowice

text: In addition to trams, bus lines are organized by ZTM. There are currently 63 regular lines in Katowice (including night lines), and additional 10 express metropolitan lines, with 609 bus stops as of 2020. ZTM organizes a bus line to their airport as well, which runs every 30 minutes between 4am and 9:30pm and every hour at night.


title: Katowice

text: Koleje Śląskie (Silesian Railways), a regional railway authority, connects Katowice with its suburbs and other major cities in Silesian and Lesser Poland voivodeships: Gliwice, Rybnik, Częstochowa, Bielsko-Biała, Kraków, and Oświęcim, among others. It operates 9 regular lines and 1 tourist weekend line (to Zakopane).


title: Katowice

text: Polregio operates commuter trains from Katowice to cities and towns in Lesser Poland and Świętokrzyskie voivodeships: Trzebinia, Olkusz, and Kielce, among others.


title: Katowice

text: Katowice is the main railway hub in southern Poland. Katowice's main railway station is the fifth-busiest train station in Poland as of 2019 (and third outside Warsaw), with 17.6 million passengers and growing 47 percent since 2015. 16% of the passengers travelled on PKP Intercity train, the main long-distance train operator in Poland.


title: Katowice

text: Katowice has a direct Express Intercity Premium (high-speed) connection to Warsaw through the Centralna Magistrala Kolejowa, with a run time of 2 hours 21 minutes. PKP Intercity also offers direct standard connections to Kraków (under 1 hour), Wrocław, Kielce and Ostrava (under 2 hours), Warsaw, Rzeszów, Olomouc, and Łódź (under 3 hours), Poznań (under 4 hours), Brno, Vienna and Bratislava (under 5 hours), as well as Prague, Budapest, and Berlin.


title: Katowice

text: Katowice has a modern international bus station located close to the city center. There are over 400 connections on a typical weekday, with the most-popular ones being domestic destinations in Poland and cities in Ukraine.


title: Katowice

text: Cycling is becoming a more popular mode of transportation in Katowice. As of 2021, the city had of dedicated bicycle lanes, up from in 2015. The municipal bicycle system is operated by Nextbike and has 83 stations with over 600 bicycles. Rides under 15 minutes are free, those 15–60 minutes are PLN 1 and each additional hour becomes more expensive.


title: Katowice

text: Bolt and Blinkee operate commercial systems of scooter share. Traficar and Panek Car Share operate commercial carshare systems.


title: Katowice

text: Katowice has an extensive network of freeways, roads and streets, totaling over 1,120 km in length. The well-developed network supports over 200,000 cars registered in Katowice, and 49 percent of commuters that drive alone, a high share compared to other major cities in Poland. Several freeways in Katowice are among the busiest in Poland: expressway S86 between Sosnowiec and Katowice's city center and highway A4 between Murckowska and Mikołowska interchanges both see over 100,000 cars passing each day.


title: Katowice

text: Katowice has a ring around its city center, consisting of highway A4, Murckowska freeway, Drogowa Trasa Średnicowa (a freeway-style road connecting downtowns of cities in the Upper Silesian Metropolitan Area) that partly goes in a tunnel underground and Bocheńskiego road. Many of the roads and freeways in Katowice expand radially from the city center and replaced old local roads.


title: Katowice

text: European route E40 passes through Katowice as highway A4. It enters the city from Chorzów and continues eastward, with three lanes in each direction on the main road and two to three lanes in parallel access roads. It meets Bocheńskiego road and continues towards Mikołowska interchange, which is one of the only combination interchanges in Poland and the main exit towards the city center. After that interchange, the highway loses its access roads due to lack of space in the dense urban area and continues east with four lanes in each direction. Access roads appear again (only on the south side, though) after around 500 meters and there is an exit towards Francuska Street. After another 1.5 kilometer, access roads appear again on the north side, too, and there is a tight exit towards Pułaskiego Street. The highway then runs into Murckowska interchange, before exiting the city.


title: Katowice

text: National road 79 (DK79) enters Katowice from Chorzów and separates the Silesian Park and Osiedle Tysiąclecia in Katowice. It then merges with Drogowa Trasa Średnicowa (DTŚ) at the junction with Bocheńskiego road and Złota Street. It continues with DTŚ through the Katowice city center and descents into a tunnel under the Rondo roundabout. It then emerges overground again, right before an interchange with DK86. The road continues eastward as a freeway with exits towards Zawodzie and Szopienice neighborhoods for several more kilometers, before entering Mysłowice and becoming a standard-access road.


title: Katowice

text: National road 81 (DK81) enters Katowice from Mikołów and runs through the southern residential neighborhoods as an arterial road with two lanes in each direction, named Kościuszki Street. In the Brynów neighborhood, Kościuszki Street continues towards Katowice's city center while NR 81 turns east, to run through the forest towards the interchange with DK86.


title: Katowice

text: National road 86 (DK86) enters Katowice from Sosnowiec as expressway S86 up until Roździeńskiego interchange where it meets DK79 and loses its expressway status. It then continues south as Murckowska freeway east of the city center. It meets highway A4 and then passes by Giszowiec neighborhood and continues through the woods southward, with exits towards Murcki neighborhood (from which it gets its name) and Kostuchna. It bypasses Murcki from the east and continues south towards Tychy.


title: Katowice

text: In 2015, Katowice designated most of its city center as a zone, in an effort to curb traffic fatalities and crashes. Within 3 years of operation, the number of accidents dropped by 41 percent, including 37 percent drop in accidents involving pedestrians and cyclists. The accidents are also less severe: there was a 55 percent drop in injured pedestrians and cyclists.


title: Katowice

text: Located approximately north of the city center, Katowice Airport is the main airport serving Katowice. The airport is a focus city for LOT Polish Airlines, Ryanair and its subsidiary Buzz, Wizz Air, Smartwings, and Enter Air. The busiest routes are: London, Dortmund, Antalya, Eindhoven, Warsaw and Frankfurt. Katowice is the largest leisure travel airport in Poland. Long-haul flights are operated from Katowice to Varadero in Cuba, Bangkok in Thailand, Cancún in Mexico, Malé in Maldives and to Puerto Plata as well as Punta Cana in Dominican Republic. Katowice is also the second-largest cargo airport, after Warsaw Chopin. The airport is accessed through a metropolitan express bus line, running every 30 minutes between 4am and 9:30pm and every hour at night. A new train station at the airport is under construction, scheduled to be operational in 2023.


title: Katowice

text: Katowice is also within an hour drive from Kraków Airport, which offers additional destinations and airlines such as Amsterdam (KLM), Paris (Air France), Helsinki (Finnair), Chicago and Newark (LOT Polish Airlines), Copenhagen and Stockholm (SAS) and Zurich (Swiss). The airport can be access through scheduled buses leaving from Katowice bus station every 30–60 minutes.


title: Katowice

text: Katowice has a long sporting tradition and hosted the final of EuroBasket 2009 and 1975 European Athletics Indoor Championships, 1975 European Amateur Boxing Championships, 1976 World Ice Hockey Championships, 1957, 1985 European Weightlifting Championships, 1974, 1982 World Wrestling Championships, 1991 World Amateur Bodybuilding Championships, 2011 Women's European Union Amateur Boxing Championships, 2014 FIVB Men's World Championship and others.


title: Katowice

text: The Stadion Śląski is between Chorzów and Katowice. It was a national stadium of Poland, with more than 50 international matches of the Poland national football team played here and around 30 matches in UEFA competitions. There were also a Speedway World Championship, Speedway Grand Prix of Europe and many concerts featuring international stars.


title: Katowice

text: Tourists can relax playing tennis or squash, doing water sports also sailing (for example—in ), horse-riding (in and Silesian culture and refreshment park), cycling or going to one of numerous excellently equipped fitness clubs. Near the city centre are sporting facilities like swimming pools (for example "Bugla", "Rolna") and in neighbourhood—Golf courses (in Siemianowice Śląskie).


title: Louis, Grand Dauphin

text: Louis (1 November 1661 – 14 April 1711) was Dauphin of France (heir apparent to the throne) as the eldest son of King Louis XIV and his spouse, Maria Theresa of Spain. He became known as the Grand Dauphin after the birth of his own son, Louis, Duke of Burgundy, the Petit Dauphin. As he died before his father, he never became king. His grandson became Louis XV of France, while his second son inherited the Spanish throne as Philip V through his grandmother.


title: Louis, Grand Dauphin

text: Louis was born on 1 November 1661 at the Château de Fontainebleau, the eldest son of Louis XIV of France and Maria Theresa of Austria (who were double first-cousins to each other). As a "Fils de France" ("Son of France") he was entitled to the style of "Royal Highness." He was baptised on 24 March 1662 at the chapel of the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye and given his father's name of Louis. At the ceremony, the Cardinal de Vendôme and the Princess of Conti acted as proxies for the godparents, Pope Clement IX and Queen Henrietta Maria of England. The latter was Louis's great-aunt. It was for this occasion that Jean-Baptiste Lully composed the motet "Plaude Laetare Gallia".


title: Louis, Grand Dauphin

text: He was initially under the care of royal governesses, among them being Julie d'Angennes and Louise de Prie de La Mothe-Houdancourt. When Louis reached the age of seven, he was removed from the care of women and placed in the society of men. He received Charles de Sainte-Maure, duc de Montausier, as his governor and was tutored by Jacques Bénigne Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux, the great French preacher and orator, without positive result:


title: Louis, Grand Dauphin

text: It was said that when Louis was an adult, he could pass a whole day simply tapping his cane against his foot in an armchair. Nonetheless, his generosity, affability, and liberality gave him great popularity in Paris and with the French people in general. Louis was one of six legitimate children of his parents. The others all died in early childhood; the second longest-lived, Marie Thérèse of France, died at the age of five when Louis was 11.