title: Whitby

text: Since 1974 Whitby has been administered by Scarborough Borough Council, one of the seven district councils in North Yorkshire. For borough council purposes the town comprises three wards, Mayfield, Streonshalh and Whitby West Cliff. The borough council is a non-metropolitan district, responsible for housing, planning, leisure and recreation, waste collection, environmental health and revenue collection. North Yorkshire County Council is a non-metropolitan county providing education, transport, highways, fire, waste disposal, social and library services. At the lowest level of governance Whitby has a town council which, for election and administrative purposes, is divided into six electoral wards represented by 19 councillors responsible for burial grounds, allotments, play areas and street lighting. Elections to the town council are held every four years.


title: Whitby

text: In the UK parliament the town is represented by a Conservative, Robert Goodwill, who was elected member for the Scarborough and Whitby constituency in 2010.


title: Whitby

text: In the three wards that make up the Whitby district of North Yorkshire, out of a population of 13,596 there are 10,286 who stated that their religion was Christian in the 2001 UK census. There were 19 Muslims, 17 Buddhists, 12 Jews, 3 Sikhs and 499 people had no religious affiliations.


title: Whitby

text: St Mary's Church is an ancient foundation, St Ninian's opened in Baxtergate in 1778 and St John's, also on Baxtergate, was consecrated in 1850. St Michael's was opened in 1856 and St Hilda's on the West Cliff was built in 1885. The Roman Catholic church dedicated to St Hilda was built in 1867 on Baxtergate. There are places of worship for nonconformists including a United Reformed Church; two Methodist chapels are no longer used. The Mission to Seafarers maintains a Christian ministry and has a chapel, reading room and recreational facilities.


title: Whitby

text: The Bishop of Whitby is a suffragan bishop of the Church of England Diocese of York, in the Province of York. The town lies within the Central Vicariate of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Middlesbrough.


title: Whitby

text: Whitby is situated on the east coast of Yorkshire facing the North Sea in a deep valley at the mouth of the River Esk. It has been a bridging point since at least medieval times and several bridges have spanned the river. The current bridge, built in 1908, is a swing bridge with a span that separates the upper and lower harbours which have a total area of around . The houses are built of brick or stone, often with red pantiled roofs, in narrow, steep streets, on both sides of the river.


title: Whitby

text: The town is surrounded on its landward sides by the moorland of the North York Moors National Park and the North Sea abuts it on the seaward side. The coastal areas are designated part of the North Yorkshire and Cleveland Heritage Coast.


title: Whitby

text: The harbour and the mouth of the River Esk are on a geological fault. On the east side the cliff is tall, , and consists of alternating layers of shale, sandstone and clay. On the west side the cliff is much lower and has a deep capping of boulder clay over a sandstone base making it less stable and liable to slippage. Both cliffs are being eroded quite rapidly.


title: Whitby

text: The town is a coastal stretch known as the 'Dinosaur Coast' or the 'Fossil Coast', the area is around long and stretches from Staithes in the north and south to Flamborough. At Whitby dinosaur footprints are visible on the beach. The rock strata contain fossils and organic remains including jet. Fossils include the petrified bones of an almost complete crocodile and a specimen of plesiosaurus measuring in length, and in breadth was discovered in 1841. The Rotunda Museum in Scarborough has a comprehensive collection of fossils from the area.


title: Whitby

text: Smaller fossils include numerous species of ammonites, or "snake stones", from the Whitby Mudstone Formation (Alum Shale Member) and at Whitby Scar nautiloids in the lower beds of the lias strata. The town's "snakestones" folklore (similar to Keynsham's in Somerset) has it that fossils were once living serpents that were common in the area. This was until the 7th century AD when Anglo-Saxon Abbess St Hilda of Whitby (614–680), first had to rid the region of snakes. She did so by casting a spell that turned them to stone and then threw them from the cliff tops.


title: Whitby

text: Local collectors and dealers in fossils often carved heads on ammonites to increase curiosity value and improve sales. Since 1935, the Whitby Coat of Arms incorporates three snakestones due to this folklore. The Hildoceras genus of ammonite is named in St Hilda's honour.


title: Whitby

text: Tourism supported by fishing is the mainstay of Whitby's economy in an isolated community with poor transport infrastructure and restricted by building constraints in the surrounding North York Moors National Park. The economy is governed by the changing fortunes of fishing, tourism and to some extent, manufacturing. Structural changes have led to concentrations of deprivation, unemployment and benefit dependence. A narrowing employment base and dependence on low wage and low skill sectors has resulted in younger age groups leaving the area. There are few business start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises. Older people who make increasing demands on the area's health and social care capacity have moved into the area. Demographic changes, Whitby's relative isolation from the region's main growth areas and decline in traditional employment sectors pose an economic challenge.


title: Whitby

text: The town has a variety of self-catering accommodation, holiday cottages, caravans and campsites, and guest houses, inns, bed & breakfast establishments and hotels. The jet industry declined at the end of the 19th century, but eight shops sell jet jewellery, mainly as souvenirs to tourists. In 1996, Whitby West Cliff qualified for a 'Tidy Britain Group Seaside Award'. The town was awarded "Best Seaside Resort 2006", by "Which? Holiday" magazine.


title: Whitby

text: The harbour has a total area of about and is used by commercial, fishing and pleasure craft. Inshore fishing, particularly for crustaceans and line fish, takes place along the coast. Lobsters, brown and velvet crabs are important to the local fishery. From May to August, salmon is found in the Esk, and small open boats are licensed to net these off the harbour entrance. There are around 40 licensed angling party boats. The commercial catch is no longer herring but has been replaced by cod, haddock, and other fish caught within of the coast. A fish market on the quayside operates as need arises. The ready supply of fresh fish has resulted in an abundance of "chippies" in the town, including the Magpie Cafe which Rick Stein has described as the best fish and chip shop in Britain.


title: Whitby

text: The Whitby Marina project, jointly funded by Scarborough Borough Council, Yorkshire Forward and the European Regional Development Fund, was developed to diversify the local economy. The remaining shipbuilding firm, Parkol Marine, is a family-run business on the east side of the river. Founded in 1988, the boatyard has two berths for new build and a dry dock for repairs. St Hilda's Business Centre provides office space for a range of businesses. Whitby Business Park is a site located by the A171 road, from the harbour on the southern outskirts of the town. Companies on the park include Supreme Plastics, Whitby Seafoods Ltd and Botham's of Whitby alongside major retailers, Homebase and Sainsbury's.


title: Whitby

text: The east coast has limited conventional energy generation capacity, but Whitby is the closest port to a proposed development on Dogger Bank, ideally placed to provide the offshore wind power industry with support vessel operations and logistics. The Dogger Bank wind farm could include up to 2,600 giant turbines covering more than .


title: Whitby

text: Whitby is on the River Esk and has a port used for shipping to Europe, especially Scandinavia, and it mainly handles grain, steel products, timber and potash cargo. Vessels limited to 3,000 tonnes deadweight tonnage can dock at the wharf, which is able to load or unload two ships simultaneously. , of dock space is used to store all-weather cargo, with a warehouse.


title: Whitby

text: The town is served by Whitby railway station which is the terminus of the Esk Valley Line from Middlesbrough, operated by Northern. It was formerly the northern terminus of the Whitby, Pickering and York Line. In 2007, the North Yorkshire Moors Railway began a summer service between Pickering and Whitby operated by steam locomotives, as an extension of their long-standing Pickering-Grosmont service. The Scarborough and Whitby Railway, which follows a scenic route along the coast, was built in 1885; it required construction of the red brick Larpool Viaduct across the Esk Valley into Whitby. The line closed as a result of the Beeching axe in 1965; the trackbed is now used as a footpath, bridleway and by cyclists. The Whitby, Redcar and Middlesbrough Union Railway had a station at Whitby West Cliff and ran close to the cliffs to the north of the town. It opened in 1883 and closed in 1958.


title: Whitby

text: Whitby is situated on the A171 road from Scarborough to Guisborough, which originally passed over the swing bridge. A high level bridge over the Esk Valley was built in 1980 to avoid the bridge and ease congestion in the town centre. The A174 accesses coastal towns to the north and the A169 crosses the moors to Pickering.


title: Whitby

text: Whitby is served by the Yorkshire Coastliner bus line, operating from Leeds, Tadcaster, York, Scarborough, Bridlington, Pickering and Malton, with connections beyond Yorkshire. In 2018, this was voted Britain's most scenic bus route. Arriva North East runs bus services connecting Whitby to Scarborough and Middlesbrough.


title: Whitby

text: The nearest airport, about from Whitby, is Teesside International Airport, which has a regular service from Amsterdam, Schiphol airport.


title: Whitby

text: A wide range of health care services is provided by Whitby Community Hospital, formerly run by the Scarborough and North East Yorkshire Health Care NHS Trust and now by the Humber NHS Foundation Trust. In February 2018 it was agreed to redevelop the hospital site at a cost of £12 million into a "health and wellbeing hub" with an urgent care centre and 19 inpatient beds.


title: Whitby

text: There are five general practitioners and five dentists in the area. Yorkshire Ambulance Service provides hospital transport throughout Yorkshire.


title: Whitby

text: Whitby fire station, run by North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service, is crewed between 8 am and 6 pm. The town's two police stations are provided by the North Yorkshire Police Authority. The lifeboat station built in 2007, on the east bank, is operated by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. The crew members are unpaid volunteers and the station has two lifeboats, an inshore D class lifeboat the "Warter Priory" which was donated to the station in 2017, and an all-weather Trent class lifeboat, the "George and Mary Webb".


title: Whitby

text: North Yorkshire County Council waste management services provide a household waste recycling centre at Whitby Industrial Estate, and operates an alternate weekly collection of household waste, whereby the type of waste collected alternates between recyclables and landfill waste. The water supply, predominantly from the River Esk, is treated at Ruswarp Water Treatment Works and distributed from there by Yorkshire Water who also deal with the town's sewerage.


title: Whitby

text: Whitby has a three-tier school system, primary, middle (11–14) and Caedmon College (11–19), which was formed in 2014 from the merger of Caedmon School (11–14) and Whitby Community College (14–19). Eskdale School continues to operate as a middle school, but is currently consulting on raising its age range to 16. In February 2018 Caedmon College and Eskdale School agreed to federate and plan to provide a joint sixth form operation in the town.


title: Whitby

text: The primary schools are St Hilda's Roman Catholic Primary School, Stakesby Community Primary School, West Cliff Primary School, Airy Hill Community Primary School and East Whitby Community Primary School. North Yorkshire County Council provides education services.


title: Whitby

text: The Whitby and District Fishing Industry Training School offers training for new entrants to the fishing industry and experienced fishermen.


title: Whitby

text: The swing bridge spanning the Esk divides the upper and lower harbours and joins the east and west sides of the town. Whitby developed as an important bridging point of the River Esk and in 1351 permission was granted for tolls to be taken on the bridge for its maintenance. In 1609 a survey for a new bridge was commissioned while in 1628 it was described as a drawbridge where men raised planks to let vessels pass and tolls were collected. The bridge posts were rebuilt in stone at a cost of £3,000 in 1766. This structure was replaced by a four-arched bridge between 1833 and 1835, one arch made of cast iron swivelled to allow vessels to pass. This bridge was replaced between 1908 and 1909 by the current electric swing bridge.


title: Whitby

text: The bridge allowed the town to spread onto the west bank, whilst the east bank, the Haggerlythe, is dominated by St Mary's Church and the ruins of Whitby Abbey which is owned by English Heritage. St Mary's Church is a grade I listed building on the site of a Saxon church. The church's ancient foundation dates from the 12th century. Over time it has been extensively altered and enlarged but retains several features including box pews. The East Cliff is quite a distance by road from the church, the alternative is to climb the 199 steps of the "Church Stairs" or use the footpath called "Caedmon's Trod". The stone stairs, which replaced the original wooden steps, were built about 200 years ago and renovated between 2005 and 2006. There are landings originally assisting coffin bearers on their journey to the graveyard on the cliff top.


title: Whitby

text: The harbour is sheltered by the grade II listed east and west piers each with a lighthouse and beacon. The west lighthouse, of 1831, is the taller at and the east lighthouse, built in 1855, is high. On the west pier extension is a foghorn that sounds a blast every 30 seconds during fog. New lights were fitted to both the lighthouse towers and the beacons in 2011. Whitby Lighthouse, operated by Trinity House, is located outside the town, to the south-east, on Ling Hill.


title: Whitby

text: On the West Cliff is a statue of Captain James Cook who served his apprenticeship in the town, and a whalebone arch, commemorates the whaling industry. It is the second such arch, the original is preserved in Whitby Archives Heritage Centre. By the inner harbour is a statue commemorating William Scoresby Sr. (father of William Scoresby Jr.), designer of the crow's nest.


title: Whitby

text: On the outskirts of town to the west is the 19th-century Sneaton Castle built by James Wilson who sold his sugar plantation where he had over 200 slaves and moved to Whitby. Alongside it is St Hilda's Priory, the mother house of the Order of the Holy Paraclete. The castle was used as a school and is now a conference centre and hotel in association with the priory.


title: Whitby

text: Frank Meadow Sutcliffe left a photographic record of the town, harbour, fishing and residents in late-Victorian times. His most famous photograph entitled "Water Rats" was taken in 1886. He became famous internationally as a great exponent of pictorial photography. He exhibited his work in Tokyo, Vienna, France, the US and Great Britain winning over 60 gold, silver and bronze medals. He retired in 1922 and became curator of Whitby Museum. The Royal Photographic Society made him an honorary member in 1935. A gallery of his work is located on Flowergate.


title: Whitby

text: Pannett Park was built on land purchased by a local philanthropist and politician Alderman Robert Pannett in 1902. After his death in 1928, the trust he set up created a public park and art gallery. In 1931 Whitby Museum was built behind the gallery by the Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society. It holds a collection of the archaeological and social history of jet and has on display a "Hand of Glory". The Friends of Pannett Park, formed in 2005, successfully bid for a Heritage Lottery Fund grant to refurbish the park.


title: Whitby

text: There has been a lifeboat in Whitby since 1802 and the old boathouse, built in 1895 and used until 1957, is a museum displaying the "Robert and Ellen Robson" lifeboat, built in 1919.


title: Whitby

text: The ancient Penny Hedge ceremony is performed on the eve of Ascension Day commemorating a penance imposed by the abbot on miscreant hunters in the Middle Ages. The hunters using a knife costing a penny had to cut wood in Eskdaleside and take it to Whitby harbour where it was made into a hedge that would survive three tides. This tradition is carried out annually on the east side of the upper harbour.


title: Whitby

text: The "Whitby Gazette" was founded in 1854 by Ralph Horne, a local printer. The first issues were records of visitors and lodgings rather than a newspaper. The publication became a weekly newspaper in 1858, with a short spell of being published twice weekly between 2000 and 2012. The local radio stations are BBC Tees, This is The Coast and Coast & County Radio


title: Whitby

text: The Pavilion Theatre built in the 1870s in West Cliff hosts a range of events during the summer months. For over four decades the town has hosted the Whitby Folk Week, and since 1993 the bi-annual Whitby Goth Weekend for members of the Goth subculture. "Whitby Now" is an annual live music event featuring local bands in the Pavilion which has taken place since 1991. Since 2008, the Bram Stoker Film Festival has taken place in October.


title: Whitby

text: The town has a strong literary tradition; it can even be said that the earliest English literature comes from Whitby as Cædmon, the first known Anglo Saxon poet was a monk at the order that used Whitby Abbey during the abbacy of St Hilda (657–680). Part of Bram Stoker's novel "Dracula" was set in Whitby, incorporating pieces of local folklore, including the beaching of the Russian ship "Dmitri". Stoker discovered the name "Dracula" at the old public library. One scholar has suggested that Stoker chose Whitby as the site of Dracula's first appearance in England because of the Synod of Whitby, given the novel's preoccupation with timekeeping and calendar disputes. Elizabeth Gaskell set her novel "Sylvia's Lovers" partly in the town which she visited in 1859 and Lewis Carroll stayed at 5, East Terrace between July and September 1854: his first publications may have been published in the "Whitby Gazette".


title: Whitby

text: Charles Dickens is known to have visited Whitby, and in a letter of 1861 to his friend Wilkie Collins, who was at the time in Whitby, Dickens says:


title: Whitby

text: In my time that curious railroad by the Whitby Moor was so much the more curious, that you were balanced against a counter-weight of water, and that you did it like Blondin. But in these remote days the one inn of Whitby was up a back-yard, and oyster-shell grottoes were the only view from the best private room.


title: Whitby

text: Wilkie Collins stayed in Whitby to work on his novel, "No Name". He was accompanied by Caroline Graves, the inspiration for "The Woman in White".


title: Whitby

text: Mary Linskill was born in a small house at Blackburn's Yard in 1840. She reached a wide readership when her second novel, "Between the Heather and the Northern Sea", was published in 1884. Her last novel "For Pity's Sake", was published posthumously in 1891. James Russell Lowell, the American writer, visited Whitby while ambassador in London 1880–85, staying at 3 Wellington Terrace, West Cliff. On his last visit in 1889, he wrote:


title: Whitby

text: G. P. Taylor, a former Church of England curate in Whitby, is now a celebrated author. His best-selling book "Shadowmancer" was set in Whitby. Theresa Tomlinson, a writer of historical and other fiction for children and young adults, has retired to the town.


title: Whitby

text: The novel "Possession: A Romance" by A. S. Byatt, set in the town, was adapted into a 2002 feature film called "Possession" starring Gwyneth Paltrow.


title: Whitby

text: A crime novel series by James Whitworth is set in Whitby. The first two novels are "Death's Disciple" and "The Eve of Murder". These were followed by Bidding to Die, Better the Devil you Know and Murder on the Record.


title: Whitby

text: A trilogy of young adult novels, "The Whitby Witches", makes much of the town's setting and history, embellishing local traditions whilst incorporating them into the narrative. The author, Robin Jarvis, recalls "The first time I visited Whitby, I stepped off the train and knew I was somewhere very special. It was a grey, drizzling day but that only added to the haunting beauty and lonely atmosphere of the place. Listening to Carmina Burana on my headphones, I explored the ruined abbey on the clifftop. The place was a fantastic inspiration. In "The Whitby Witches" I have interwoven many of the existing local legends, such as the frightening Barguest, whilst inventing a few of my own, most notably the aufwaders." Jarvis returned to Whitby for his 2016 novel, "The Power of Dark", the first in The Witching Legacy series.


title: Whitby

text: Wind surfing, sailing and surfing take place off the beaches between Whitby and Sandsend and the area is visited by divers. Whitby has various sports facilities including the town cricket and football pitches and tennis courts.


title: Whitby

text: The Whitby Regatta takes place annually over three days in August. The competition between three rowing clubs – Whitby Friendship ARC, Whitby Fishermen's ARC and Scarborough ARC – forms the backbone of the weekend. The event has expanded to include a fair on the pier, demonstrations, fireworks and military displays – including the spectacle of the Red Arrows aerobatics display team of the Royal Air Force.


title: Whitby

text: Golfing facilities range from "pitch and putt" to Whitby Golf Club. The golf club formed in 1891 and has been at its current site, a 18-hole course situated on the cliff tops to the north-west of the town, in 1895.


title: Whitby

text: Whitby Town F.C., formed in 1892, is a semi-professional football club which plays in the Northern Premier League at the 3,200 capacity Turnbull Ground on Upgang Lane. England international footballer Beth Mead was born in the town.


title: Whitby

text: Whitby Cricket Club has been in existence since the 1920s and is located on Whitby's West Cliff, on the Turnbull Ground. Two senior Saturday teams compete in the North Yorkshire & South Durham Cricket League and a junior section play in the Derwent Valley Junior Cricket League.


title: Whitby

text: The area generally has warm summers and relatively mild winters. Weather conditions vary from day to day as well as from season to season. Its latitude means that it is influenced by predominantly westerly winds with depressions and their associated fronts, bringing unsettled and windy weather particularly in winter. Between depressions there are often small mobile anticyclones that bring periods of fine weather. In winter anticyclones bring cold dry weather. In summer the anticyclones tend to bring dry settled conditions which can lead to drought. The two dominant influences on the climate of the Whitby area are shelter against the worst of the moist westerly winds provided by the North York Moors and the proximity of the North Sea. Late, chilly springs and warm summers are a feature of the area but there are often spells of fine autumn weather. Onshore winds in spring and early summer bring mists or low stratus clouds (known locally as sea frets) to the coast and moors.


title: Whitby

text: On 5 January 2016 the town became "virtually cut off" after flash floods. North Yorkshire Police warned on the night of 4 January that the town was only accessible through one route by 4x4 vehicles. It urged motorists to use "extreme caution" and avoid the area unless "absolutely necessary".


title: Whitby

text: According to the 2011 UK census, Whitby parish had a population of 13,213 living in 6,097 households.


title: Whitby

text: In the 2001 UK census of the total number of 5,973 homes 2,034 were rented and 3,939 were owner occupied.


title: Whitby

text: Of the 5,506 economically active persons aged between 16 and 74, 420 were unemployed. The number of people working in the service industry was 4,113. Approximately 2,500 people were aged under 16, 8,400 were aged 16–64, and 2,700 aged 65 and over. The mean age of the population was 41.78 years. The number of people who travel to work by motorised transport is 3,134 but 2,190 households have no cars or vans.


title: Whitby

text: Note: Between 1801 and 1925 Whitby comprised Whitby, Ruswarp and part of Hawsker civil parishes and (between 1894 and 1925) Helredale civil parish, all of which were merged on 1 April 1925 into the current Whitby area.


title: Whitby

text: Whitby is twinned with a number of towns across the globe. Most were either visited by Captain Cook in ships that were built in Whitby – and one was named after Whitby by settlers from England.


title: Disinformation

text: Disinformation is false information deliberately spread to deceive people. It is sometimes confused with misinformation, which is false information but is not deliberate.


title: Disinformation

text: The English word "disinformation" comes from the application of the Latin prefix "dis-" to "information" making the meaning "reversal or removal of information". The rarely used word had appeared with this usage in print at least as far back as 1887. Some consider it a loan translation of the Russian "dezinformatsiya", derived from the title of a KGB black propaganda department. Defector Ion Mihai Pacepa claimed Joseph Stalin coined the term, giving it a French-sounding name to claim it had a Western origin. Russian use began with a "special disinformation office" in 1923. Disinformation was defined in "Great Soviet Encyclopedia" (1952) as "false information with the intention to deceive public opinion". Operation INFEKTION was a Soviet disinformation campaign to influence opinion that the U.S. invented AIDS. The U.S. did not actively counter disinformation until 1980, when a fake document reported that the U.S. supported apartheid.


title: Disinformation

text: The English word "disinformation" is a translation of the Russian дезинформация, transliterated as , which Soviet planners in the 1950s defined as “dissemination (in


title: Disinformation

text: the press, on the radio, etc.) of false reports intended to mislead public opinion.” In order to distinguish between similar terms, including misinformation and malinformation, scholars collectively agree on the definitions for each term as follows: (1) misinformation represents the unintentional spread of false information; (2) malinformation is factual information disseminated with the intention to cause harm; and (3) disinformation is the strategic dissemination of false information with the intention to cause public harm. Where misinformation refers to inaccuracies that stem from error, disinformation is a deliberate falsehood promulgated by design. Misinformation can be used to create disinformation when known misinformation is purposefully and intentionally disseminated.


title: Disinformation

text: The tactic has been used throughout history, being deployed during the long Roman-Persian Wars, at the Battle of Mount Gindarus, the Battle of Telephis–Ollaria, and Heraclius assault on Persia, for instance.


title: Disinformation

text: Disinformation is primarily carried out by government intelligence agencies, but has also been used by non-governmental organizations and businesses. Front groups are a form of disinformation, as they mislead the public about their true objectives and who their controllers are. Most recently, disinformation has been deliberately spread through social media in the form of "fake news", disinformation masked as legitimate news articles and meant to mislead readers or viewers. Disinformation may include distribution of forged documents, manuscripts, and photographs, or spreading dangerous rumours and fabricated intelligence. Use of these tactics can lead to blowback, however, causing such unintended consequences such as defamation lawsuits or damage to the dis-informer's reputation.


title: Disinformation

text: Use of the term related to a Russian tactical weapon started in 1923, when the deputy chairman of the KGB-precursor the State Political Directorate (GPU), Józef Unszlicht, called for the foundation of "a special disinformation office to conduct active intelligence operations". The GPU was the first organization in the Soviet Union to use the term disinformation for their intelligence tactics. William Safire wrote in his 1993 book, "Quoth the Maven", that disinformation was used by the KGB predecessor to indicate: "manipulation of a nation's intelligence system through the injection of credible, but misleading data". From this point on, disinformation became a tactic used in the Soviet political warfare called active measures. Active measures were a crucial part of Soviet intelligence strategy involving forgery as covert operation, subversion, and media manipulation. The 2003 encyclopedia "Propaganda and Mass Persuasion" states that "disinformation" came from , a term used by the Russian black propaganda unit known as Service A that referred to active measures. The term was used in 1939, related to a "German Disinformation Service". The 1991 edition of "The Merriam-Webster New Book of Word Histories" defines "disinformation" as a probable translation of the Russian . This dictionary notes that it was possible the English version of the word and the Russian-language version developed independently in parallel to each other—out of ongoing frustration related to the spread of propaganda before World War II.


title: Disinformation

text: Ion Mihai Pacepa, former senior official from the Romanian secret police, said the word was coined by Joseph Stalin and used during World War II. The Stalinist government then used disinformation tactics in both World War II and the Cold War. Soviet intelligence used the term "maskirovka" (Russian military deception) to refer to a combination of tactics including disinformation, simulation, camouflage, and concealment. Pacepa and Ronald J. Rychlak authored a book entitled "Disinformation", in which Pacepa wrote that Stalin gave the tactic a French-sounding title in order to put forth the ruse that it was a technique used by the Western world. Pacepa recounted reading Soviet instruction manuals while working as an intelligence officer, that characterized disinformation as a strategy used by the Russian government that had early origins in Russian history. Pacepa recalled that the Soviet manuals said the origins of disinformation stemmed from phony towns constructed by Grigory Potyomkin in Crimea to wow Catherine the Great during her 1783 journey to the region—subsequently referred to as Potemkin villages.


title: Disinformation

text: In their book "Propaganda and Persuasion", authors Garth Jowett and Victoria O'Donnell characterized "disinformation" as a cognate from , and was developed from the same name given to a KGB black propaganda department. The black propaganda division was reported to have formed in 1955 and was referred to as the Dezinformatsiya agency. Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director William Colby explained how the Dezinformatsiya agency operated, saying that it would place a false article in a left-leaning newspaper. The fraudulent tale would make its way to a communist periodical, before eventually being published by a Soviet newspaper, which would say its sources were undisclosed individuals. By this process a falsehood was globally proliferated as a legitimate piece of reporting.


title: Disinformation

text: According to "Oxford Dictionaries" the English word "disinformation", as translated from the Russian , began to see use in the 1950s. The term "disinformation" began to see wider use as a form of Soviet tradecraft, defined in the 1952 official "Great Soviet Encyclopedia" as "the dissemination (in the press, radio, etc.) of false information with the intention to deceive public opinion." During the most-active period of the Cold War, from 1945 to 1989, the tactic was used by multiple intelligence agencies including the Soviet KGB, British Secret Intelligence Service, and the American CIA. The word "disinformation" saw increased usage in the 1960s and wider purveyance by the 1980s. A major disinformation effort in 1964, Operation Neptune, was designed by the Czechoslovak secret service, the StB, to defame West European politicians as former Nazi collaborators. Former Soviet bloc intelligence officer Ladislav Bittman, the first disinformation practitioner to publicly defect to the West, described the official definition as different from the practice: "The interpretation is slightly distorted because public opinion is only one of the potential targets. Many disinformation games are designed only to manipulate the decision-making elite, and receive no publicity." Bittman was deputy chief of the Disinformation Department of the Czechoslovak Intelligence Service, and testified before the United States Congress on his knowledge of disinformation in 1980.


title: Disinformation

text: The extent of Soviet disinformation covert operation campaigns came to light through the defections of KGB officers and officers of allied Soviet bloc services from the late 1960s to the 1980s. Stanislav Levchenko and Ilya Dzerkvilov were among the Soviet defectors. By 1990, both men had written books recounting their work on disinformation operations for the KGB. Archival documentation revealed in the disorder of the fall of the Soviet Union later confirmed their testimonials.


title: Disinformation

text: An early example of successful Soviet disinformation was the 1961 pamphlet, "A Study of a Master Spy (Allen Dulles)". It was published in the United Kingdom and was highly critical of U.S. CIA director Allen Dulles. The purported authors were given as Independent Labour Party Member of Parliament Bob Edwards and the reporter Kenneth Dunne, but the real author was senior disinformation officer KGB Colonel Vassily Sitnikov. in 1968, the fake "Who's Who in the CIA" was published, which was quoted as authoritative in the West until the early 1990s.


title: Disinformation

text: According to American journalist Max Holland, Soviet archives, particularly those released by Vasili Mitrokhin, "prove that the KGB played a central, pernicious role in fomenting the belief that the CIA was involved in Kennedy's assassination." Among other incidents, Holland stated that the KGB planted a false story in the Italian newspaper "Paese Sera" alleging that Clay Shaw, whom New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison indicted in connection with the assassination, was a high-level "CIA operative". The KGB disinformation influenced Garrison's subsequent arguments during the trial of Clay Shaw and was later referenced in Oliver Stone's 1991 film "JFK", notwithstanding Shaw's acquittal. Holland writes that "Arguably, ["JFK"] is the only American feature film made during the Cold War to have, as its very axis, a lie concocted in the KGB's disinformation factories."


title: Disinformation

text: According to senior SVR officer Sergei Tretyakov, the KGB had been responsible for creating the entire nuclear winter story as an attempt to stop the deployment of Pershing II missiles. Tretyakov said that in 1979, the KGB started work to prevent the United States from deploying the missiles in Western Europe and that they had been directed by Yuri Andropov to distribute disinformation, based on a faked "doomsday report" by the Soviet Academy of Sciences. The report contained false information on the effect of nuclear war on climate, and was distributed to peace groups, environmentalists, and the journal "Ambio: A Journal of the Human Environment".


title: Disinformation

text: During the 1970s, the U.S. intelligence apparatus made little effort to counter Soviet disinformation campaigns. That posture changed during the Carter administration, however, after the White House had been made the subject of a propaganda operation by Soviet intelligence to affect international relations between the U.S. and South Africa. On 17 September 1980, White House Press Secretary Jody Powell acknowledged that a falsified "Presidential Review Memorandum on Africa" falsely stated that the U.S. had endorsed the apartheid government in South Africa and was actively committed to discrimination against African Americans. Prior to the revelation by Powell, an advance copy of the 18 September 1980 issue of San Francisco-based publication the "Sun Reporter" had been disseminated, which carried the fake claims. "Sun Reporter" was published by Carlton Benjamin Goodlett, a Presidential Committee member of a Soviet front group, the World Peace Council. U.S. President Jimmy Carter was appalled at the lies, and his administration then displayed increased interest in the CIA's efforts to counter Soviet disinformation.


title: Disinformation

text: In 1982, the CIA issued a report on active measures used by Soviet intelligence. The report documented numerous instances of disinformation campaigns against the U.S., including planting a notion that it had organized the 1979 Grand Mosque seizure, as well as forgery of documents purporting to show the U.S. would use nuclear bombs on its NATO allies.


title: Disinformation

text: In 1985, the Soviets launched an elaborate disinformation campaign called Operation INFEKTION to influence global opinion that the U.S. had invented AIDS. The campaign included allegations that the disease had been created as an "ethnic weapon" to destroy non-whites. The head of Russian foreign intelligence, Yevgeny Primakov, admitted the existence of the Operation INFEKTION in 1992.


title: Disinformation

text: In 1985, Aldrich Ames gave the KGB a significant amount of information on CIA informants, and the Soviet government swiftly moved to arrest those individuals. Soviet intelligence feared that the rapid action would alert the CIA that Ames was a spy, however. To conceal Ames's duplicity from the CIA, the KGB manufactured disinformation as to the reasoning behind the arrests of the intelligence agents. In the summer of 1985, a KGB officer who was a double agent working for the CIA on a mission in Africa traveled to a dead drop in Moscow on his way home, but never reported in. The CIA heard from a European KGB source that its agent had been arrested. Simultaneously, the FBI and CIA learned from a second KGB source of its agent's arrest. Only after Ames had been outed as a spy for the KGB would it become apparent that the KGB had known all along that both men had been working for the U.S. government, and that Soviet disinformation had been successful in confounding the American intelligence agency.


title: Disinformation

text: Whether and to what degree these terms overlap is subject to debate. Some (like U.S. Department of State) define propaganda as the use of non-rational arguments to either advance or undermine a political ideal, and use disinformation as an alternative name for undermining propaganda. While others consider them to be separate concepts altogether. One popular distinction holds that disinformation also describes politically motivated messaging designed explicitly to engender public cynicism, uncertainty, apathy, distrust, and paranoia, all of which disincentivize citizen engagement and mobilization for social or political change.


title: Disinformation

text: During the Cold War, the Soviet Union used propaganda and disinformation as part of its "active measures...against the populations of Western nations"." During the administration of Boris Yeltsin, the first President of Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, "disinformation" was discussed in the Russian media and by Russian politicians in relation to the disinformation of the Soviet era, and to differentiate Boris Yeltsin's "new Russia" from its Soviet predecessor. However, in the post-Soviet era, disinformation evolved to become a key tactic in the military doctrine of Russia. Its use has increased under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, particularly after the 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia. This style of disinformation propaganda has been described as a "firehose of falsehood" by observers due to its high number of channels and willingness to disseminate outright falsehoods, to the point of inconsistency. It differs from Soviet-era disinformation tactics in its use of the internet, claimed amateur journalism, and social media.


title: Disinformation

text: The European Union and NATO saw Russian disinformation in the early twenty-first century as such a problem that both set up special units to analyze and debunk fabricated falsehoods. NATO founded a modest facility in Latvia to respond to disinformation and agreement by heads of state and governments in March 2015 let the EU create the European External Action Service East Stratcom Task Force, which publishes weekly reports on its website "EU vs Disinfo." The website and its partners identified and debunked more than 3,500 pro-Kremlin disinformation cases between September 2015 and November 2017.


title: Disinformation

text: Russia meanwhile used its television outlet RT (formerly known as Russia Today) and the Sputnik news agency. When explaining the 2016 annual report of the Swedish Security Service on disinformation, the representative Wilhelm Unge stated: "We mean everything from Internet trolls to propaganda and misinformation spread by media companies like RT and Sputnik." RT and Sputnik were created to focus on Western audiences and function by Western standards, and RT tends to focus on how problems are the fault of Western countries.


title: Disinformation

text: In the 2010s, as social media gained prominence, Russia then began to use platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to spread disinformation. Russian web brigades and bots, typically operated by Russia's Internet Research Agency (IRA), were commonly used to disseminate disinformation throughout these social media channels. As of late 2017, Facebook believed that as many as 126 million of its users had seen content from Russian disinformation campaigns on its platform. Twitter stated that it had found 36,000 Russian bots spreading tweets related to the 2016 U.S. elections. Elsewhere, Russia has used social media to destabilize former Soviet states such as Ukraine and Western nations such as France and Spain.


title: Disinformation

text: In 2020, the US State Department identified several "proxy sites" used by Russian state actors "to create and amplify false narratives." These sites include the Strategic Culture Foundation, online journal the "New Eastern Outlook", Crimea-based news agency NewsFront, and SouthFront, a website targeted at "military enthusiasts, veterans, and conspiracy theorists."


title: Disinformation

text: In the runup to and during the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Russia's Internet Research Agency (IRA) demonstrated evolved tactics for spreading disinformation. Probably to evade the detection mechanisms of social media platforms, the IRA co-opted activists working for a human-rights focused Ghanaian NGO to target black communities in the U.S. Russian campaigns have also evolved to become more cross-platform, with content spreading, not only on Facebook and Twitter, but also on Tumblr, Wordpress, and Medium. The IRA is also more emboldened, with evidence that they recruited U.S. journalists to write articles critical of U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden.


title: Disinformation

text: During both the 2016 and the 2020 elections, the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies (RISS) was integral to disinformation efforts from Putin and the Kremlin. Leonid Petrovich Reshetnikov headed RISS in 2016, while Mikhail Fradkov headed it in 2020. During the 2016 U.S. presidential election, George Papadopoulos met several times with Panos Kammenos, who had numerous close ties to Russian intelligence, Vladimir Putin, and the Kremlin group tasked with interfering in the 2016 U.S. elections. Kammenos formed the Athens-based "Institute of Geopolitical Studies" which in November 2014 signed a "memorandum of understanding" with the former SVR officer Reshetnikov who headed RISS. In 2009, RISS, which had been an SVR operation, was placed under control of the Russian president with Reshetnikov regularly meeting with Putin and participated in Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections by developing plans of action; with Russian intelligence assets and using a large disinformation campaign, Putin would support Republicans and Donald Trump's campaign, and disrupt Democrats and Hillary Clinton's campaign, and if Trump were likely to lose the election, then Russia would shift its efforts to focus upon voter fraud in the U.S. in order to undermine the legitimacy of its electoral system and elections. Kammenos' positions followed closely with the Kremlin's talking points.


title: Disinformation

text: During the 2020 U.S. presidential election campaign, Russia's numerous disinformation attacks including support for white supremacist activities and attacks of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden's mental fitness were utilized by Trump, senior Trump Administration officials, and his re-election campaign. Brian Murphy, who was acting chief of intelligence at the Department of Homeland Security from March 2018 until August 2020, alleged that he was instructed "to cease providing intelligence assessments on the threat of Russian interference in the United States, and instead start reporting on interference activities by China and Iran." Chad Wolf, who was acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, alleged that Robert C. O'Brien, who was Trump's national security advisor, had the assessments of Russian interference suppressed. John Cohen, who was under secretary of intelligence at the Department of Homeland Security during Barack Obama's presidency, stated: "By blocking information from being released that describes threats facing the nation... undermines the ability of the public and state and local authorities to work with the federal government to counteract the threat."


title: Disinformation

text: Lev Parnas, Igor Fruman, Yuriy Lutsenko, John Solomon, Dmytro Firtash, and his allies Victoria Toensing and Joe diGenova were noted in a Fox News internal report "Ukraine, Disinformation, & the Trump Administration: a Full Timeline of Events", which was written by Fox News senior political affairs specialist Bryan S. Murphy and made public by Marcus DiPaola, as indispensable "in the collection and domestic publication of elements of this disinformation campaign" and numerous falsehoods. Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Lou Dobbs, and Pete Sessions, who is the son of William S. Sessions, the former FBI director under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, were supportive of disinformation efforts. In September 2020, two supervisors and a quarter of the persons with Fox News "Brain Room", which was established by Roger Ailes as a fact-checking and research unit, received layoffs allegedly ordered by Joe Dorrego and organized by Porter Berry and Stefanie Wheeler Choi in order to have Fox News support Trump's information campaign; according to a Brain Room employee, "the Brain Room, in their research, came up with facts that were not used in Fox reports or were in contradiction to what Fox aired. I have to imagine that kind of tension has always existed there, between the fact-checkers and what is often reported."


title: Disinformation

text: In March 2021, Christopher A. Wray, who was the Director of the FBI during most of Trump's presidency, and the National Intelligence Council stated that numerous Russians, other individuals, proxies, and entitites, including Rudy Giuliani, Fox News, the One America News Network, the documentary film "" that was created with support from Konstantin Kilimnik, Andrii Derkach, Andrii Telizhenko, Sergey Petrushin, and Michael Caputo, and aired on 21 January 2022, two weeks before the Senate's acquittal of Trump after his first impeachment trial, supported anti-Biden, anti-Ukraine, pro-Trump, pro-Russia, pro-Kremlin, and pro-Putin disinformation efforts during the Trump presidency, including Trump's two impeachment trials and his two presidential campaigns.


title: Disinformation

text: Modern Russian propaganda is different from classic Soviet Cold War techniques, relying on obfuscation and using the contemporary information environment with all the channels available to it, including the Internet, social media, professional and amateur journalism, and media outlets. They use numerous channels and messages, in order to confuse and overwhelm the audience. A RAND report labeled their propaganda model as a "firehose of falsehood".


title: Disinformation

text: Russian disinformation has been used in the Russo-Ukrainian War. In March 2022 during the Russian invasion, ProPublica reported what may be the first case of a disinformation false-flag operation. Videos were discovered purporting to show Ukrainian-produced disinformation about strikes inside Ukraine which were then "debunked" as some other event outside Ukraine. However, the original supposed "Ukraine-produced" disinformation was never disseminated by anyone, and was in fact preventive disinformation created in order to be debunked and cause confusion and mitigate the impact on the Russian public of real footage of Russian strikes within Ukraine when it eventually got past Russian-controlled media. According to Patrick Warren, head of Clemson's Media Forensics Hub, "It's like Russians actually pretending to be Ukrainians spreading disinformation. ... The reason that it’s so effective is because you don’t actually have to convince someone that it's true. It’s sufficient to make people uncertain as to what they should trust."


title: Disinformation

text: The United States Intelligence Community appropriated use of the term "disinformation" in the 1950s from the Russian "dezinformatsiya", and began to use similar strategies during the Cold War and in conflict with other nations. "The New York Times" reported in 2000 that during the CIA's effort to substitute Mohammed Reza Pahlavi for then-Prime Minister of Iran Mohammad Mossadegh, the CIA placed fictitious stories in the local newspaper. Reuters documented how, subsequent to the 1979 Soviet Union invasion of Afghanistan during the Soviet–Afghan War, the CIA put false articles in newspapers of Islamic-majority countries, inaccurately stating that Soviet embassies had "invasion day celebrations". Reuters noted a former U.S. intelligence officer said they would attempt to gain the confidence of reporters and use them as secret agents, to affect a nation's politics by way of their local media.


title: Disinformation

text: In October 1986, the term gained increased currency in the U.S. when it was revealed that two months previously, the Reagan Administration had engaged in a disinformation campaign against then-leader of Libya, Muammar Gaddafi. White House representative Larry Speakes said reports of a planned attack on Libya as first broken by "The Wall Street Journal" on August 25, 1986, were "authoritative", and other newspapers including "The Washington Post" then wrote articles saying this was factual. U.S. State Department representative Bernard Kalb resigned from his position in protest over the disinformation campaign, and said: "Faith in the word of America is the pulse beat of our democracy."


title: Disinformation

text: The executive branch of the Reagan administration kept watch on disinformation campaigns through three yearly publications by the Department of State: "Active Measures: A Report on the Substance and Process of Anti-U.S. Disinformation and Propaganda Campaigns" (1986); "Report on Active Measures and Propaganda, 1986–87" (1987); and "Report on Active Measures and Propaganda, 1987–88" (1989).


title: Disinformation

text: "Disinformation" first made an appearance in dictionaries in 1985, specifically, "Webster's New College Dictionary" and the "American Heritage Dictionary". In 1986, the term "disinformation" was not defined in "Webster's New World Thesaurus" or "New Encyclopædia Britannica". After the Soviet term became widely known in the 1980s, native speakers of English broadened the term as "any government communication (either overt or covert) containing intentionally false and misleading material, often combined selectively with true information, which seeks to mislead and manipulate either elites or a mass audience."


title: Disinformation

text: By 1990, use of the term "disinformation" had fully established itself in the English language within the lexicon of politics. By 2001, the term "disinformation" had come to be known as simply a more civil phrase for saying someone was lying. Stanley B. Cunningham wrote in his 2002 book "The Idea of Propaganda" that "disinformation" had become pervasively used as a synonym for propaganda.


title: Disinformation

text: Pope Francis condemned disinformation in a 2016 interview, after being made the subject of a fake news website during the 2016 U.S. election cycle which falsely claimed that he supported Donald Trump. He said the worst thing the news media could do was spread disinformation. He said the act was a sin, comparing those who spread disinformation to individuals who engage in coprophilia.


title: Disinformation

text: In a contribution to the 2014 book "Military Ethics and Emerging Technologies", writers David Danks and Joseph H. Danks discuss the ethical implications in using disinformation as a tactic during information warfare. They note there has been a significant degree of philosophical debate over the issue as related to the ethics of war and use of the technique. The writers describe a position whereby the use of disinformation is occasionally allowed, but not in all situations. Typically the ethical test to consider is whether the disinformation was performed out of a motivation of good faith and acceptable according to the rules of war. By this test, the tactic during World War II of putting fake inflatable tanks in visible locations on the Pacific Islands in order to falsely present the impression that there were larger military forces present would be considered as ethically permissible. Conversely, disguising a munitions plant as a healthcare facility in order to avoid attack would be outside the bounds of acceptable use of disinformation during war.


title: Disinformation

text: Research related to disinformation studies is increasing as an applied area of inquiry. The call to formally classify disinformation as a cybersecurity threat is made by advocates due to its increase in social networking sites. Researchers working for the University of Oxford found that over a three-year period the number of governments engaging in online disinformation rose from 28 in 2017, to 40 in 2018, and 70 in 2019. Despite the proliferation of social media websites, Facebook and Twitter showed the most activity in terms of active disinformation campaigns. Techniques reported on included the use of bots to amplify hate speech, the illegal harvesting of data, and paid trolls to harass and threaten journalists.


title: Disinformation

text: Whereas disinformation research focuses primarily on how actors orchestrate deceptions on social media, primarily via fake news, new research investigates how people take what started as deceptions and circulate them as their personal views. As a result, research shows that disinformation can be conceptualized as a program that encourages engagement in oppositional fantasies (i.e., culture wars), through which disinformation circulates as rhetorical ammunition for never-ending arguments. As disinformation entangles with culture wars, identity-driven controversies constitute a vehicle through which disinformation disseminates on social media. This means that disinformation thrives, not despite raucous grudges but because of them. The reason is that controversies provide fertile ground for never-ending debates that solidify points of view.


title: Disinformation

text: Scholars have pointed out that disinformation is not only a foreign threat as domestic purveyors of disinformation are also leveraging traditional media outlets such as newspapers, radio stations, and television news media to disseminate false information. Current research suggests right-wing online political activists in the United States may be more likely to use disinformation as a strategy and tactic. Governments have responded with a wide range of policies to address concerns about the potential threats that disinformation poses to democracy, however, there is little agreement in elite policy discourse or academic literature as to what it means for disinformation to threaten democracy, and how different policies might help to counter its negative implications.


title: Disinformation

text: There is a broad consensus amongst scholars that there is a high degree of disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda online; however, it is unclear to what extent such disinformation has on political attitudes in the public and, therefore, political outcomes. This conventional wisdom has come mostly from investigative journalists, with a particular rise during the 2016 U.S. election: some of the earliest work came from Craig Silverman at Buzzfeed News. Cass Sunstein supported this in "#Republic," arguing that the internet would become rife with echo chambers and informational cascades of misinformation leading to a highly polarized and ill-informed society.


title: Disinformation

text: Research after the 2016 election found: (1) for 14 percent of Americans social media was their “most important” source of election news; 2) known false news stories “favoring Trump were shared a total of 30 million times on Facebook, while those favoring Clinton were shared 8 million times”; 3) the average American adult saw fake news stories, “with just over half of those who recalled seeing them believing them”; and 4) people are more likely to “believe stories that favor their preferred candidate, especially if they have ideologically segregated social media networks.”


title: Disinformation

text: Research on this topic is continuing, and some evidence is less clear. For example, internet access and time spent on social media does not appear correlated with polarisation. Further, misinformation appears not to significantly change political knowledge of those exposed to it. There seems to be a higher level of diversity of news sources that users are exposed to on Facebook and Twitter than conventional wisdom would dictate, as well as a higher frequency of cross-spectrum discussion. Other evidence has found that disinformation campaigns rarely succeed in altering the foreign policies of the targeted states.


title: Disinformation

text: Research is also challenging because disinformation is meant to be difficult to detect and some social media companies have discouraged outside research efforts. For example, researchers found disinformation made “existing detection algorithms from traditional news media ineffective or not applicable...[because disinformation] is intentionally written to mislead readers...[and] users' social engagements with fake news produce data that is big, incomplete, unstructured, and noisy.” Facebook, the largest social media company, has been criticized by analytical journalists and scholars for preventing outside research of disinformation.


title: Disinformation

text: The research literature on how disinformation spreads is growing. Studies show that disinformation spread in social media can be classified into two broad stages: seeding and echoing. "Seeding," when malicious actors strategically insert deceptions, like fake news, into a social media ecosystem, and "echoing" is when the audience disseminates disinformation argumentatively as their own opinions often by incorporating disinformation into a confrontational fantasy. Studies show four main methods of seeding disinformation:


title: The Velvet Underground (album)

text: The Velvet Underground is the third studio album by American rock band the Velvet Underground. Released in March 1969 by MGM Records, it was their first record with Doug Yule who replaced previous member John Cale. Recorded in 1968 at TTG Studios in Los Angeles, California, the album's sound—consisting largely of ballads and straightforward rock songs—marked a notable shift in style from the band's previous recordings. Lead vocalist Lou Reed intentionally did this as a result of their abrasive previous studio album "White Light/White Heat" (1968). Reed wanted other band members to sing on the album; Yule contributed lead vocals to some tracks and closing track "After Hours" is sung by drummer Moe Tucker.


title: The Velvet Underground (album)

text: Thematically, "The Velvet Underground" discusses love, contrasting previous releases from the band. Reed devised its track order and based his songwriting upon relationships and religion. "Pale Blue Eyes" has been hailed as one of his best love songs, although "The Murder Mystery" is noted for its experimentation in a call-back to "White Light/White Heat". Billy Name took the album's photograph of the band sitting on a couch at Andy Warhol's Factory. The recording process started at short notice and while the band had a high morale, they were ultimately disappointed that Reed had created his own mix of the final product.


title: The Velvet Underground (album)

text: Contemporary reviews praised the album, which was a turning point for the band. Nevertheless, "The Velvet Underground" failed to chart, again suffering from a lack of promotion by the band's record label. Reed played a dominant role in the mixing process and his own mix of the album, dubbed the "closet mix", was first released in the United States. MGM staff engineer Val Valentin was credited for a different mix which has been more widely distributed since then. Retrospective reviews have labeled it one of the greatest albums of the 1960s decade and of all time, with many critics noting its subdued production and personal lyrics. In 2020, "Rolling Stone" ranked it at number 143 on its list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.


title: The Velvet Underground (album)

text: Cale was fired from the group in September 1968, and Yule was brought in as a bassist. Yule was discovered by Morrison through the band's road manager Hans Onsager. Weeks after Yule joined the Velvet Underground, they began recording their third studio album. Lou Reed, the band's principal songwriter, believed that the band should not "make another "White Light/White Heat". I thought it would be a terrible mistake, and I really believed that. I thought we had to demonstrate the other side of us. Otherwise, we would become this one-dimensional thing, and that had to be avoided at all costs."


title: The Velvet Underground (album)

text: According to Morrison, earlier in 1968 a majority of the band's equipment got stolen at JFK International Airport which influenced the album's sound. However, Yule rejects this claim, explaining that he has no recollection of such an event, clarifying that the band was simply playing more melodically—Tucker also says this. Reed during this time had a growing taste for soothing music; in an interview with Lester Bangs he singled out tracks "Jesus" and "Candy Says", declaring the latter "probably the best song I've written..." Reed considered "White Light/White Heat" to be as far as the band could go with such production and additionally called each album the band made a chapter. They started recording after touring in the West Coast and band manager Steve Sesnick obtained studio time at a short notice, so the band had provided little time to prepare. At the time, Reed was managing relationships between his girlfriend Shelley Albin and Name, which influenced his songwriting.


title: The Velvet Underground (album)

text: "The Velvet Underground" was recorded during November and through December 1968 at TTG Studios in Los Angeles. The band stayed at the hotel Chateau Marmont and toured frequently while recording. They wrote and rehearsed at the hotel in the afternoon, recording songs at night. Reed and Morrison played 12-string guitars from Fender. Morale in the studio was generally high—Yule said that recording the album "was a lot of fun. The sessions were constructive and happy and creative, everybody was working together". According to Yule, it took "a couple of weeks for the basic tracks", additionally describing it as a "studio live album". Reed intentionally tried to get Yule in the spotlight of it, and the band members suspected that this might have inflated his ego. Generally, the sessions had a happy atmosphere; Tucker said that she "was pleased with the direction we were going and with the new calmness in the group, and thinking about a good future, hoping people would smarten up and some record company would take us on and do us justice."


title: The Velvet Underground (album)

text: "The Murder Mystery" includes all four members' voices. Yule states that the song was recorded in an MGM studio on Sixth Avenue in New York, though this contradicts the record's liner notes. The album's closing song, "After Hours", has a rare solo lead vocal by Tucker, requested by Reed as he felt the sweet, innocent quality of her voice fit the song's mood better than his own. Tucker was nervous while recording the track, and after eight takes made everyone leave except herself, Reed, and Valentin. After she finished her take, she said that she wouldn't sing it live unless someone requested it. Reed recorded multiple guitar solos for "What Goes On"; when Valentin commented on how they were running out of track space, the band ultimately decided to keep all of them, as Reed could not decide which one sounded better. When Reed did his own mix for the album—which drowned out other backing parts except his vocals—Morrison and Tucker were annoyed. Morrison described the final product as "anti-production".


title: The Velvet Underground (album)

text: The restraint and subtlety of the album was a significant departure from the direct abrasiveness of "White Light/White Heat". It reduced their previous effort's explicit sexual references, horror, and references to drugs, replacing those with discussions of religion, love, and loneliness. Music critic Greg Kot of the "Chicago Tribune" characterized it as folk rock, and "Rolling Stone" magazine's Troy Carpenter said that it focused on mellow, melodic rock. According to music journalist Steve Taylor, "The Velvet Underground" is a pop album because of its more accessible songs and "has been called Lou Reed with a backing band due to the emphasis placed on songs rather than experimental sound work." Biographer Richie Unterberger commented on its dramatic shift in sound: "Having made perhaps the loudest album of all time, it's almost as if they've now decided to make the world's quietest LP." Reed said that all of the songs on the album were in order and complement each other, elaborating in an interview with Howard Smith:


title: The Velvet Underground (album)

text: There were certain questions stated in the opening song... and then it was delineated, you know, through various phases... it ended with 'Jesus,' saying now help me do this, man... And then after you went through all... from here to here, which is like what an average person goes through, you're faced with like 'The Murder Mystery,' which is a total reversal of everything. Because you shouldn't be faced with that, but you were.


title: The Velvet Underground (album)

text: Just like on the other albums... people didn't catch [the track order]. And on this one, I felt it was obvious. But maybe it wasn't... And finally he sums up, he says, 'That's the Story of My Life.' But then he was faced with something else, which is once you get past you, you got you solved, so that you don't exist... But what really is going on outside you is 'The Murder Mystery... then after that, it was just kind of, well, 'After Hours.' What could you say after 'The Murder Mystery'? Except that 'you close the door, the night could last forever.' Which is true.


title: The Velvet Underground (album)

text: Reed considered each song to be impersonal "little plays". Apart from the forceful rockers "What Goes On" and "Beginning to See the Light", the album contains reflective, melodic songs that are about various forms of love, such as "Pale Blue Eyes", "Some Kinda Love", "Jesus", "I'm Set Free" and "That's the Story of My Life". Reed and Morrison's twin-guitar playing became the band's most prominent sound, and the album had spare arrangements that lacked distortion. The only song that exhibited the band's avant-garde roots is "The Murder Mystery". The song took two sessions to record, and its poem was later included in "The Paris Review".


title: The Velvet Underground (album)

text: Opening track "Candy Says" is based on transgender actress Candy Darling who was a member of Warhol's Factory. Yule sings a tale of Darling, who hates her body and is in emotional pain. It references Darling's thoughts by ambiguously stating "I've come to hate my body/And all that it requires in this world". Darling reappears in Reed's 1972 song "Walk on the Wild Side". Morrison says that the choice for Yule singing the song was because Reed was worn down by touring. Yule is backed by doo wop harmonies and backing vocals. This was Yule's first time singing in a studio, and the song was sung by Yule at Reed's insistence.


title: The Velvet Underground (album)

text: "What Goes On" is upbeat and combines multiple lead guitar parts against an organ; this organ, played by Yule, is present in more songs on the record. Kory Grow of "Rolling Stone" described Reed's guitar solo on the song as "bagpipe-y". Described as the "anomaly" of side one by Rob Jovanovic, it is complete with a "twitchy beat", its sound as a result of Reed increasing the volume of his guitar during recording. R.C. Baker of "The Village Voice" labeled this song "one of rock 'n' roll's greatest existential anthems".


title: The Velvet Underground (album)

text: "Some Kinda Love" contains salacious lyrics, contrasting the record, but it still has subdued elements—Tucker only uses a cowbell and bass drum. It ambiguously describes love, specifically religious love. Reed references "The Hollow Men" by T.S. Eliot. He writes about two characters, Tom and Marguerita, detailing a seductive conversation between them. Victor Bockris cites this as another example "where [Reed] makes rock lyrics function as literature". Grow said that the song explains how love is uniform, while "Pale Blue Eyes" simply discussed "another kind of love", specifically adultery, according to Reed.


title: The Velvet Underground (album)

text: "Pale Blue Eyes" has been called one of Reed's greatest love songs—Morrison singled it out from the album in a 1981 interview. The composition of it dates back to 1966; it had been performed live since mid-1966. It describes adultery and sinning as an extension of the album's religious references. It was inspired by Reed's girlfriend at the time, Shelley Albin. According to Reed, he wrote it for someone he missed who had hazel eyes; it references "I'll Be Your Mirror" and "Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me" by Richard Fariña. Additionally, Sesnick speculates that some lines are about Cale's firing. Tucker plays a tambourine. Reed praised Morrison's guitar solo in the song:


title: The Velvet Underground (album)

text: It had that beautiful stutter in it. I could never do that. I always wondered how the hell he did that. But it was just the way he played – intuitive, but intuitive matched with brain.


title: The Velvet Underground (album)

text: According to Reed, "Jesus" has nothing to do with religion, though he described it as a search song. However, in the folk ballad, Reed asks Jesus for redemption in the form of a joyous sermon. Reed had little interest in religion; the message of the song is generally secular. During the course of the song Yule's bass takes on a lead role in the instrumental backing.


title: The Velvet Underground (album)

text: "Beginning to See the Light" uses a phrase associated with religious redemption. In the song, Reed discusses his imagined revelation, and affirms his distinction of being loved, this time being described in relation to religion. He addresses the free love movement with the lines "Here we go again/I thought you were my friend", later commenting "How does it feel to be loved?"


title: The Velvet Underground (album)

text: "I'm Set Free" is ambiguous, though it salutes Phil Spector; the goodbyes at the end of the song imitate those in "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" by Spector's band the Righteous Brothers. Unterberger praises the guitar solo of it as "one of the group's most tastefully underrated". This song is also sung by Yule. In the song, Reed claims that he is free from a relationship, though he eventually discovers that this is untrue.


title: The Velvet Underground (album)

text: "That's the Story of My Life" is minimal in instrumentation, though it also references Name. Originally, Cale played viola for the song in live versions, though no viola was included for this studio version. During the song four lines of lyrics are repeated. The title and lyrics were inspired by a remark from Name, who introduced Reed to one of his largest influences, Alice Bailey. Bockris summarizes the theme of this song: "The difference between right and wrong is the story of [Reed]'s life."


title: The Velvet Underground (album)

text: "The Murder Mystery" is a spoken word track. It incorporates a raga rhythm, murmuring organ, overlapping spoken-word passages, and lilting counterpoint vocals. During the verses, Lou Reed and guitarist Sterling Morrison recite different verses of poetry simultaneously, with the voices positioned strictly to the left and right. For the choruses, Tucker and Yule sing different lyrics and melodies at the same time, also separated left and right. Unterberger noted that it has "little melody", and its narrative is repetitive, comparing it to "78rpm and 16rpm records played simultaneously", the track closing with "progressively crazed" piano. Of the song, Reed referenced "Sister Ray", elaborating that the song “is part of the novel that's a murder mystery”. It was never performed live in its entirety—Morrison elaborated that it would be too hard to play. Jovanovic described it as an "incomprehensible mix" and homage to "White Light/White Heat"; Reed labeled it as a failure, as he wanted "one vocal to be saying the [lyrical] opposite of the other".


title: The Velvet Underground (album)

text: "After Hours" resembles music predating the Great Depression. This was their only release at the time with Tucker singing lead vocals. She does not play percussion and is only backed by a guitar and bass. Tucker counts off by saying "one, two, three"; an older recording disk labeled the track "If You Close the Door (Moe's Song)". Generally, the song discusses intentional isolation.


title: The Velvet Underground (album)

text: The cover was taken by Billy Name, photographer and archivist of Warhol's Factory, featuring the band sitting sedately on a couch at The Factory. Name was paid 300 dollars for the photograph, which was the most he had been paid at the time for a picture. Yule and Tucker are looking at Reed, and Morrison is looking away—according to Tucker, this is because Reed was talking about the magazine cover. The back cover is a picture of Reed smoking, divided in two halves with one of them upside down, both only showing the left side of his face. Each side includes the track listing and credits for the record, which are also upside down in that part of the picture. Reed held an issue of "Harper's Bazaar" which was airbrushed out. The cover artwork led to the record being dubbed "The Grey Album".


title: The Velvet Underground (album)

text: The release date of the band's "third album" was given in a November 1968 article in "Los Angeles Free Press" as January 1969; the full album was previewed by Danish magazine "" in January 1969. Phil Morris of MGM told "Record World" on February 22, 1969, that the album was ready for release. When the album was released in March 1969, the songwriting credits listed the entire band as its composer, even though Reed wrote all of its songs. Later releases would instead label Reed as the sole composer. The band switched from Verve Records to parent label MGM for unknown reasons—Sesnick says that the rock division of Verve was close to closing, while Morrison says that this simply was "an administrative change". Ultimately, the decision to move to MGM was Sesnick's.


title: The Velvet Underground (album)

text: Two mixes of the album were released. The initial mix is Reed's which boosts his vocals and lowers its instruments, which was the first mix sold in the United States. Morrison noted that it sounds like it was recorded in a closet, which led to its label as the "closet mix". Valentin produced a more conventional mix, which Yule would later say he was unaware of. The more widely distributed mix is the one credited to Valentin, which was distributed throughout Europe. The two versions use entirely different performances of "Some Kinda Love", both taken from the same recording sessions. The closet mix was chosen for inclusion in the box set "Peel Slowly and See".


title: The Velvet Underground (album)

text: While Onsager didn't plan on touring until after two commercially successful singles were released, their touring schedule remained nearly uninterrupted, and only one unsuccessful single was released. "What Goes On" was released in March 1969, with "Jesus" as its B side. MGM promoted it in a full-page advertisement in "Cashbox" but its distribution was heavily limited. The album suffered from lack of promotion, though a radio ad was used for WNEW-FM in New York, and MGM also listed advertisements in publications such as "Rolling Stone", "Creem", and the "Village Voice". Ultimately it failed to chart on the "Billboard" Top LPs chart, the band's first record to do so. Tucker attributed it to lack of promotion, while Yule noted how the album was ultimately not mainstream. Due to its failure to chart, MGM was not planning on releasing another album from the band.


title: The Velvet Underground (album)

text: Unterberger noted how "The Velvet Underground" sounded far more commercial than any of the band's previous albums and labeled it as the point where critical reception of the band became more positive. Despite this, however, the album failed to chart, and was less successful than the group's previous two. Reviewing the album for "The Village Voice" in 1969, Robert Christgau viewed it as the band's best work and found it tuneful, well written, and exceptionally sung, despite "another bummer experiment" in "The Murder Mystery" which he referred to as "some stereo mystery". In his ballot for "Jazz & Pop" magazine's annual critics poll, Christgau ranked it as the sixth best album of the year. He later included it in his "Basic Record Library" of 1950s and 1960s recordings, published in "" (1981).


title: The Velvet Underground (album)

text: Lester Bangs, writing in "Rolling Stone" magazine, felt that it is not on-par with "White Light/White Heat" and has missteps with "The Murder Mystery" and "Pale Blue Eyes", but ultimately said that its combination of powerfully expressive music and profoundly sentimental lyrics will persuade the band's detractors into believing they can "write and play any kind of music they want to with equal brilliance." Paul Williams of "Crawdaddy" declared that "everybody loves" the band's new release and labeled it his personal favorite since "Forever Changes" by Love. Bob Stark for "Creem" observed how it was "as 'far out' as either of the two [previous albums]". Lenny Kaye reviewed the record for "Jazz & Pop", labeling it "almost lyrical in its beauty." Other newspapers such as "Chicago Seed", "Record World", "Cashbox", and the more mainstream "Variety" praised the album, with the latter stating that it is "an important contribution to the lyrical advancement of rock". Adrian Ribolla of "Oz", however, lamented that the "Velvet Underground don't really sound together on this album". Additionally, "Broadside" from Massachusetts longed for the older sound of the band. "Melody Maker", while praising the album, simultaneously dismissed bit by commenting it is "not sensational, but interesting". Retrospectively in October 1969, Richard Williams of the same magazine elaborated that "the old cruelty was still there", labeling the old "Melody Maker" review as erroneous and hailing the band's first three albums as "a body of work which is easily as impressive as any in rock".


title: The Velvet Underground (album)

text: "The Velvet Underground" did not impact the "Billboard" 200 until its 1985 reissue, when it reached No. 197. According to "Billboard" in 2013, "The Velvet Underground" has sold 201,000 copies since 1991, when Nielsen SoundScan began tracking record sales.


title: The Velvet Underground (album)

text: In a review of the album's 1985 reissue, "Rolling Stone"s David Fricke remarked that both "The Velvet Underground" and its predecessor lack the diverse range of the band's 1967 debut album and the precise accessibility of "Loaded" (1970). However, he felt that the album is still edifying as a tender, subtly broad song cycle whose stark production surprisingly reveals the essence of Reed's more expressive songwriting. Fricke cited the "ironic pairing" of "Pale Blue Eyes" and "Jesus" as the best summary of "the hopeful warmth at the center of the Velvets' rage."


title: The Velvet Underground (album)

text: Professional reviewers hailed the album's subdued production. Colin Larkin, writing in "The Encyclopedia of Popular Music" (1998), said that the album showcased a new subtlety because of Reed's larger role in the band and that it "unveiled a pastoral approach, gentler and more subdued, retaining the chilling, disquieting aura of previous releases." In "The Rolling Stone Album Guide" (2004), Rob Sheffield wrote that after Cale's departure, the band became "acoustic folkie balladeers" and that Reed was unexpectedly charming on the album, whose "every song is a classic". "Q" magazine called the album "a flickering, unforgettable band performance". Sputnikmusic's Nick Butler felt that, although it is not as good as the band's debut album, "The Velvet Underground" is "still a brilliant album." Greg Kot of the "Chicago Tribune" highlighted Reed's subdued contribution to the record, summarizing it as "for the first time without John Cale, [Reed] creates quiet, impossibly beautiful folk-rock." Mark Deming for AllMusic wrote that the songs on the record are the most personal and moving that the band had recorded. Brian Eno declared it his favorite album from the band.


title: The Velvet Underground (album)

text: "The Velvet Underground" was voted number 262 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's "All Time Top 1000 Albums" (2000). In 2003, it was ranked number 314 by "Rolling Stone" on its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. The 2012 edition saw it dropped to 316, and the 2020 edition moved it up to 143. "NME" magazine named it the 21st best album of all time in a list of the 100 Best Albums of All Time. "Pitchfork"s 2017 list of the 200 best albums of the 1960s ranked it at number 12, above "Electric Ladyland" by the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Ultimate Classic Rock listed it in its unranked Top 100 Albums of the 1960s. "Uncut" listed it at number 52 on its 200 Greatest Albums of All Time, above "Third/Sister Lovers" by Big Star but behind "Tapestry "by Carole King.


title: The Velvet Underground (album)

text: Robert Dimery included the album in the 2018 edition of his book "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die". Based on its appearances in professional rankings and listings, the aggregate website Acclaimed Music lists "The Velvet Underground" as the 11th most acclaimed album of 1968, the 39th most acclaimed album of the 1960s and the 188th most acclaimed album in history.


title: The Velvet Underground (album)

text: Along with the group's first three albums, "The Velvet Underground" received a reissue in 1985. These reissues were unexpectedly successful, which lead to further releases under PolyGram such as "Another View". The album was included in the box set "Peel Slowly and See", and would later be reissued as a Super Deluxe edition for its 45th Anniversary, including mono versions of tracks, demos, and live performances.


title: The Velvet Underground (album)

text: All tracks written by Lou Reed. Running times listed are for the Valentin mix; disc one of the 45th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition is the Valentin mix.


title: Josef Fares

text: Josef Fares (born 19 September 1977) is a Swedish-Lebanese film director and video game designer of Assyrian descent. His brother is the actor Fares Fares, who has appeared in many of his films. He is the founder of Hazelight Studios.


title: Josef Fares

text: Josef Fares moved to Sweden when he was 10 years old, fleeing the Lebanese Civil War with his family. "Variety" declared him one of ten upcoming directors to watch in 2006. The same year he won the Nordic Council Film Prize for his film "Zozo". In 2013, he directed his first video game, "". The game was well received by critics. Its focus is on the interaction between two brothers and on their journey to save their father. He then formed his development company named Hazelight Studios, and partnered with publisher Electronic Arts for his next video game, "A Way Out", which was released 23 March 2018.


title: Josef Fares

text: On December 7, 2017, Josef appeared on The Game Awards 2017 and gave a "passionate" speech while on stage with host Geoff Keighley, where he covered many topics including EA's microtransaction controversy with "Star Wars Battlefront II", and his game "A Way Out"; he also spent time to heavily criticize the Oscars due to their dispassionate take on video games, in what became known as his "fuck the Oscars" speech. Because of his speech, he has received international praise among fans and his speech has created a new Internet meme involving mass vandalism of relevant Wikipedia pages, usually to reference the 2003 movie "The Room", as many people compared him to the movie's director, Tommy Wiseau. Fares includes his "fuck the Oscars" speech as an Easter egg in his 2021 game "It Takes Two" and referenced the speech while accepting the game's Game of the Year Award at The Game Awards 2021


title: Josef Fares

text: In an interview to "The Washington Post" following "It Takes Two"s win at The Game Awards 2021, Fares expressed his perspective on several topics in the game industry. He said he would "rather get shot in the knee" than include NFTs in future games, he also put forward that adjusting game design to make the player pay is wrong, and stated "For me, gaming is art". Fares has also commented on the topic of sexual harassment within the gaming industry which was brought up at The Game Awards 2021 with respect to Activision Blizzard and its CEO Bobby Kotick, saying "I think sometimes you need to go through some shit to get to the other side. That’s what’s happening", as well as that unions help "but that’s just one of the things. I don’t think it solves everything. Education and knowledge, I think that’s most important."


title: Hackney carriage

text: A hackney or hackney carriage (also called a cab, black cab, hack or London taxi) is a carriage or car for hire. A hackney of a more expensive or high class was called a remise. A symbol of London and Britain, the black taxi is a common sight on the streets of the UK. The hackney carriages carry a roof sign TAXI that can be illuminated at night to indicate their availability for passengers.


title: Hackney carriage

text: In the UK, the name "hackney carriage" today refers to a taxicab licensed by the Public Carriage Office, local authority (non-metropolitan district councils, unitary authorities) or the Department of the Environment depending on region of the country.


title: Hackney carriage

text: In the United States, the police department of the city of Boston has a Hackney Carriage Unit, analogous to taxicab regulators in other cities, that issues "Hackney Carriage" medallions to its taxi operators.


title: Hackney carriage

text: The origins of the word hackney in connection with horses and carriages are uncertain. The origin is often attributed to the London borough of Hackney, whose name likely originated in Old English meaning 'Haka's Island'. There is some doubt whether the word for a horse was derived from this place-name, as the area was historically marshy and not well-suited for keeping horses. The American Hackney Horse Society favours an alternative etymology stemming from the French word "haquenée"—a horse of medium size recommended for lady riders—which was brought to England with the Norman Conquest and became fully assimilated into the English language by the start of the 14th century. The word became associated with an ambling horse, usually for hire.


title: Hackney carriage

text: The place-name, through its famous association with horses and horse-drawn carriages, is also the root of the Spanish word "jaca", a term used for a small breed of horse and the Sardinian achetta horse. The first documented hackney coach—the name later extended to the newer and smaller carriages—operated in London in 1621.


title: Hackney carriage

text: The New York City colloquial terms "hack" (taxi or taxi-driver), hackstand (taxi stand), and hack license (taxi licence) are probably derived from hackney carriage. Such cabs are now regulated by the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission.


title: Hackney carriage

text: "An Ordinance for the Regulation of Hackney-Coachmen in London and the places adjacent" was approved by Parliament in 1654, to remedy what it described as the "many Inconveniences [that] do daily arise by reason of the late increase and great irregularity of Hackney Coaches and Hackney Coachmen in London, Westminster and the places thereabouts". The first hackney-carriage licences date from a 1662 Act of Parliament establishing the Commissioners of Scotland Yard to regulate them. Licences applied literally to horse-drawn carriages, later modernised as hansom cabs (1834), that operated as vehicles for hire. The 1662 act limited the licences to 400; when it expired in 1679, extra licences were created until a 1694 act imposed a limit of 700, which was increased by later acts and abolished in 1832.


title: Hackney carriage

text: There was a distinction between a general hackney carriage and a hackney coach, a hireable vehicle with specifically four wheels, two horses and six seats, and driven by a "Jarvey" (also spelled "jarvie").


title: Hackney carriage

text: In 19th century London, private carriages were commonly sold off for use as hackney carriages, often displaying painted-over traces of the previous owner's coat of arms on the doors.


title: Hackney carriage

text: The Clarence or growler was a type of four-wheel, enclosed carriage drawn by two horses used as a hackney carriage, that is, as a vehicle for hire with a coachman. It is distinguished from a cab, hansom cab or cabriolet, in that those had only two wheels. It is distinguished from most coaches by being of slightly smaller size, nominally holding four passengers, and being much less ostentatious.


title: Hackney carriage

text: A small, usually two-wheeled, one-horse hackney vehicle called a "noddy" once plied the roads in Ireland and Scotland. The French had a small hackney coach called a "fiacre".


title: Hackney carriage

text: Electric hackney carriages appeared before the introduction of the internal combustion engine to vehicles for hire in 1897. In fact there was even London Electrical Cab Company: the cabs were informally called Berseys after the manager who designed them, Walter Bersey. Another nickname was Hummingbirds from the sound that they made. In August 1897, 25 were introduced, and by 1898, there were 50 more. During the early 20th century, cars generally replaced horse-drawn models. In 1910, the number of motor cabs on London streets outnumbered horse-drawn growlers and hansoms for the first time. At the time of the outbreak of World War I, the ratio was seven to one in favor of motorized cabs. The last horse-drawn hackney carriage ceased service in London in 1947.


title: Hackney carriage

text: UK regulations define a hackney carriage as a taxicab allowed to ply the streets looking for passengers to pick up, as opposed to private hire vehicles (sometimes called "minicabs"), which may pick up only passengers who have previously booked or who visit the taxi operator's office. In 1999, the first of a series of fuel cell powered taxis were tried out in London. The "Millennium Cab" built by ZeTek gained television coverage and great interest when driven in the Sheraton Hotel ballroom in New York by Judd Hirsch, the star of the television series "Taxi". ZeTek built three cabs but ceased activities in 2001.


title: Hackney carriage

text: Horse-drawn hackney services continue to operate in parts of the UK, for example in Cockington, Torquay. The town of Windsor, Berkshire, is believed to be the last remaining town with a continuous lineage of horse-drawn hackney carriages, currently run by Orchard Poyle Carriages, the licence having been passed down from driver to driver since 1830.


title: Hackney carriage

text: The Royal Borough now licences the carriage for rides around Windsor Castle and the Great Park; however, the original hackney licence is in place, allowing for passenger travel under the same law that was originally passed in 1662. The city of Bath has an occasional horse-drawn Hackney, principally for tourists, but still carrying hackney plates.


title: Hackney carriage

text: Though there has never been law requiring London's taxis to be black, they were, since the end of the Second World War, sold in a standard colour of black. This, in the 1970s gave rise within the minicab trade to the nickname 'black cab' and it has become common currency. However, before Second World War, London's cabs were seen in a variety of colours. They are produced in a variety of colours, sometimes in advertising brand liveries (see below). Fifty golden cabs were produced for the Queen's Golden Jubilee celebrations in 2002.


title: Hackney carriage

text: In Edwardian times, French-manufactured automobiles represented the overwhelming majority of London's motor cab trade, with Renault and Unic being the most common. Not only Renault and Unic, but also smaller players like Charron and Darracq were to be found. Fiat was also a presence, with their importer d'Arcy Baker running a fleet of 400 cars of the brand. In the 1920s, Beardmore cabs were introduced and became for a while the most popular. They were nicknamed 'the Rolls-Royce of cabs' for their comfort and robustness. The American Yellow Cabs also appeared, though only in small numbers. Maxwell Monson introduced Citroën cabs, which were cheaper, but crude in comparison to the Beardmore. In 1930 dealers Mann and Overton struck a deal with the Austin to bring modified version of the Austin 12/4 car to the London taxi market. This established the Austin make as dominant until the end of the 1970s and Mann and Overton until 2012. Morrises cabs were also seen, in small numbers, but after the Second World War, produced the Oxford, made by Wolseleys,


title: Hackney carriage

text: Outside of London, the regulations governing the hackney cab trade are different. Four-door saloon cars have been highly popular as hackney carriages, but with disability regulations growing in strength and some councils offering free licensing for disabled-friendly vehicles, many operators are now opting for wheelchair-adapted taxis such as the LEVC TX of London Electric Vehicle Company (LEVC). London taxis have broad rear doors that open very wide (or slide), and an electrically controlled ramp that is extended for access. Other models of specialist taxis include the Peugeot E7 and rivals from Fiat, Ford, Volkswagen, and Mercedes-Benz. These vehicles normally allow six or seven passengers, although some models can accommodate eight. Some of these minibus taxis include a front passenger seat next to the driver, while others reserve this space solely for luggage.


title: Hackney carriage

text: London taxis must have a turning circle not greater than . One reason for this is the configuration of the famed Savoy Hotel: the hotel entrance's small roundabout meant that vehicles needed the small turning circle in order to navigate it. That requirement became the legally required turning circles for all London cabs, while the custom of a passenger's sitting on the right, behind the driver, provided a reason for the right-hand traffic in Savoy Court, allowing hotel patrons to board and alight from the driver's side.


title: Hackney carriage

text: The design standards for London taxis are set out in the "Conditions of Fitness", which are now published by Transport for London. The first edition was published in May 1906, by the Public Carriage Office, which was then part of the Metropolitan Police. These regulations set out the conditions under which a taxi may operate and have been updated over the years to keep pace with motor car development and legislation. Changes include regulating the taximeter (made compulsory in 1907), advertisements and the turning circle of . Until the beginning of the 1980s, London Taxis were not allowed to carry any advertisements. The London Taxis fleet has been fully accessible since 1 January 2000, following the introduction of the first accessible taxi in 1987.


title: Hackney carriage

text: As part of the Transported by Design programme of activities, on 15 October 2015, after two months of public voting, the black cab was elected by Londoners as their favourite transport design icon.