title: Nous

text: In this belief, the soul is created in the image of God. Since God is Trinitarian, Mankind is "Nous", reason, both "logos" and "dianoia", and Spirit. The same is held true of the soul (or heart): it has "nous", word and spirit. To understand this better first an understanding of Saint Gregory Palamas's teaching that man is a representation of the trinitarian mystery should be addressed. This holds that God is not meant in the sense that the Trinity should be understood anthropomorphically, but man is to be understood in a triune way. Or, that the Trinitarian God is not to be interpreted from the point of view of individual man, but man is interpreted on the basis of the Trinitarian God. And this interpretation is revelatory not merely psychological and human. This means that it is only when a person is within the revelation, as all the saints lived, that he can grasp this understanding completely (see "theoria"). The second presupposition is that mankind has and is composed of "nous", word and spirit like the trinitarian mode of being. Man's "nous", word and spirit are not hypostases or individual existences or realities, but activities or energies of the soul - whereas in the case with God or the Persons of the Holy Trinity, each are indeed hypostases. So these three components of each individual man are 'inseparable from one another' but they do not have a personal character" when in speaking of the being or ontology that is mankind. The "nous" as the eye of the soul, which some Fathers also call the heart, is the centre of man and is where true (spiritual) knowledge is validated. This is seen as true knowledge which is "implanted in the "nous" as always co-existing with it".


title: Nous

text: The so-called "early modern" philosophers of western Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries established arguments which led to the establishment of modern science as a methodical approach to improve the welfare of humanity by learning to control nature. As such, speculation about metaphysics, which cannot be used for anything practical, and which can never be confirmed against the reality we experience, started to be deliberately avoided, especially according to the so-called "empiricist" arguments of philosophers such as Bacon, Hobbes, Locke and Hume. The Latin motto ""nihil in intellectu nisi prius fuerit in sensu"" (nothing in the intellect without first being in the senses) has been described as the "guiding principle of empiricism" in the "Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy". (This was in fact an old Aristotelian doctrine, which they took up, but as discussed above Aristotelians still believed that the senses on their own were not enough to explain the mind.)


title: Nous

text: These philosophers explain the intellect as something developed from experience of sensations, being interpreted by the brain in a physical way, and nothing else, which means that absolute knowledge is impossible. For Bacon, Hobbes and Locke, who wrote in both English and Latin, ""intellectus"" was translated as "understanding". Far from seeing it as secure way to perceive the truth about reality, Bacon, for example, actually named the "intellectus" in his "Novum Organum", and the proœmium to his "Great Instauration", as a major source of wrong conclusions, because it is biased in many ways, for example towards over-generalizing. For this reason, modern science should be methodical, in order not to be misled by the weak human intellect. He felt that lesser known Greek philosophers such as Democritus "who did not suppose a mind or reason in the frame of things", have been arrogantly dismissed because of Aristotelianism leading to a situation in his time wherein "the search of the physical causes hath been neglected, and passed in silence". The intellect or understanding was the subject of Locke's "Essay Concerning Human Understanding".


title: Nous

text: These philosophers also tended not to emphasize the distinction between reason and intellect, describing the peculiar universal or abstract definitions of human understanding as being man-made and resulting from reason itself. Hume even questioned the distinctness or peculiarity of human understanding and reason, compared to other types of associative or imaginative thinking found in some other animals. In modern science during this time, Newton is sometimes described as more empiricist compared to Leibniz.


title: Nous

text: On the other hand, into modern times some philosophers have continued to propose that the human mind has an in-born (""a priori"") ability to know the truth conclusively, and these philosophers have needed to argue that the human mind has direct and intuitive ideas about nature, and this means it can not be limited entirely to what can be known from sense perception. Amongst the early modern philosophers, some such as Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Kant, tend to be distinguished from the empiricists as rationalists, and to some extent at least some of them are called idealists, and their writings on the intellect or understanding present various doubts about empiricism, and in some cases they argued for positions which appear more similar to those of medieval and classical philosophers.


title: Nous

text: The first in this series of modern rationalists, Descartes, is credited with defining a "mind-body problem" which is a major subject of discussion for university philosophy courses. According to the presentation his , the human mind and body are different in kind, and while Descartes agrees with Hobbes for example that the human body works like a clockwork mechanism, and its workings include memory and imagination, the real human is the thinking being, a soul, which is not part of that mechanism. Descartes explicitly refused to divide this soul into its traditional parts such as intellect and reason, saying that these things were indivisible aspects of the soul. Descartes was therefore a dualist, but very much in opposition to traditional Aristotelian dualism. In his he deliberately uses traditional terms and states that his active faculty of giving ideas to his thought must be corporeal, because the things perceived are clearly external to his own thinking and corporeal, while his passive faculty must be incorporeal (unless God is deliberately deceiving us, and then in this case the active faculty would be from God). This is the opposite of the traditional explanation found for example in Alexander of Aphrodisias and discussed above, for whom the passive intellect is material, while the active intellect is not. One result is that in many Aristotelian conceptions of the "nous", for example that of Thomas Aquinas, the senses are still a source of all the intellect's conceptions. However, with the strict separation of mind and body proposed by Descartes, it becomes possible to propose that there can be thought about objects never perceived with the body's senses, such as a thousand sided geometrical figure. Gassendi objected to this distinction between the imagination and the intellect in Descartes. Hobbes also objected, and according to his own philosophical approach asserted that the "triangle in the mind comes from the triangle we have seen" and "essence in so far as it is distinguished from existence is nothing else than a union of names by means of the verb is". Descartes, in his reply to this objection insisted that this traditional distinction between essence and existence is "known to all".


title: Nous

text: His contemporary Blaise Pascal, criticised him in similar words to those used by Plato's Socrates concerning Anaxagoras, discussed above, saying that "I cannot forgive Descartes; in all his philosophy, Descartes did his best to dispense with God. But Descartes could not avoid prodding God to set the world in motion with a snap of his lordly fingers; after that, he had no more use for God."


title: Nous

text: Descartes argued that when the intellect does a job of helping people interpret what they perceive, not with the help of an intellect which enters from outside, but because each human mind comes into being with innate God-given ideas, more similar then, to Plato's theory of "anamnesis", only not requiring reincarnation. Apart from such examples as the geometrical definition of a triangle, another example is the idea of God, according to the 3rd "Meditation". Error, according to the 4th "Meditation", comes about because people make judgments about things which are not in the intellect or understanding. This is possible because the human will, being free, is not limited like the human intellect.


title: Nous

text: Spinoza, though considered a Cartesian and a rationalist, rejected Cartesian dualism and idealism. In his "pantheistic" approach, explained for example in his "Ethics", God is the same as nature, the human intellect is just the same as the human will. The divine intellect of nature is quite different from human intellect, because it is finite, but Spinoza does accept that the human intellect is a part of the infinite divine intellect.


title: Nous

text: Leibniz, in comparison to the guiding principle of the empiricists described above, added some words "nihil in intellectu nisi prius fuerit in sensu", nisi intellectus ipsi ("nothing in the intellect without first being in the senses" "except the intellect itself"). Despite being at the forefront of modern science, and modernist philosophy, in his writings he still referred to the active and passive intellect, a divine intellect, and the immortality of the active intellect.


title: Nous

text: Berkeley, partly in reaction to Locke, also attempted to reintroduce an "immaterialism" into early modern philosophy (later referred to as "subjective idealism" by others). He argued that individuals can only know sensations and ideas of objects, not abstractions such as "matter", and that ideas depend on perceiving minds for their very existence. This belief later became immortalized in the dictum, "esse est percipi" ("to be is to be perceived"). As in classical and medieval philosophy, Berkeley believed understanding had to be explained by divine intervention, and that all our ideas are put in our mind by God.


title: Nous

text: Hume accepted some of Berkeley's corrections of Locke, but in answer insisted, as had Bacon and Hobbes, that absolute knowledge is not possible, and that all attempts to show how it could be possible have logical problems. Hume's writings remain highly influential on all philosophy afterwards, and are for example considered by Kant to have shaken him from an intellectual slumber.


title: Nous

text: Kant, a turning point in modern philosophy, agreed with some classical philosophers and Leibniz that the intellect itself, although it needed sensory experience for understanding to begin, needs something else in order to make sense of the incoming sense information. In his formulation the intellect ("Verstand") has "a priori" or innate principles which it has before thinking even starts. Kant represents the starting point of German idealism and a new phase of modernity, while empiricist philosophy has also continued beyond Hume to the present day.


title: Nous

text: One of the results of the early modern philosophy has been the increasing creation of specialist fields of science, in areas that were once considered part of philosophy, and infant cognitive development and perception now tend to be discussed more within the sciences of psychology and neuroscience than in philosophy.


title: Nous

text: Modern mainstream thinking on the mind is not dualist, and sees anything innate in the mind as being a result of genetic and developmental factors which allow the mind to develop. Overall it accepts far less innate "knowledge" (or clear pre-dispositions to particular types of knowledge) than most of the classical and medieval theories derived from philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus and Al Farabi.


title: Nous

text: Apart from discussions about the history of philosophical discussion on this subject, contemporary philosophical discussion concerning this point has continued concerning what the ethical implications are of the different alternatives still considered likely.


title: Nous

text: Classical conceptions of nous are still discussed seriously in theology. There is also still discussion of classical nous in non-mainstream metaphysics or spiritualism, such as Noetics, promoted for example by the Institute of Noetic Sciences.


title: National Games of India

text: The National Games of India consist of various disciplines in which athletes from the different states of India participate against each other.


title: National Games of India

text: The country's first few Olympic Games, now renamed as National Games, were held in North India (Delhi, Allahabad (now Prayagraj), Patiala, Madras (now Chennai), Calcutta (now Kolkata) and Bombay (now Mumbai).


title: National Games of India

text: In the early 1920s, the Indian chapter of the Olympic movement was born, and India participated in the 1920 Antwerp Olympics.


title: National Games of India

text: As part of this movement, a provisional Indian Olympic Association (IOA) came about by 1924, and the Indian Olympic Games were held in Feb 1924 in Delhi to select Indian competitors for the 1924 Paris Olympics. IOA Secretary Dr. Noehren wrote about these games as follows: "The All India Athletic Carnival, the greatest and most representative gathering of its kind ever to be held in India, was recently celebrated in Delhi...Seventy athletes, representing practically every province and State in the Empire, comprising Hindus, Muslims, Anglo-Indians and Sinhalese, ate their food around the same table and mingled intimately in the cramped and uncomfortable quarters provided."


title: National Games of India

text: The games were then held every two years, and were renamed as National Games during the 9th Games in Bombay in 1940. Indian Olympic Association, the sports organising body of the nation, mooted the concept of the National Games to promote the development of sports and of the Olympic movement in India, and was responsible for host city selection.


title: National Games of India

text: Each games was organised by the host city sports association, and each had its unique challenges. For example, in late 1949, the Bengal Provincial Olympic Association, whose turn it was to hold the next national games, could not do so, and the IOA President Maharaja of Patiala then asked Bombay to host the games; it had just three months to organise the event. Bombay government ministers and Bombay olympic association officials then worked to hold the 1950 National Games in Bombay in early February 1950.


title: National Games of India

text: While held at various cities, the organisation of each national games was roughly similar, with an overarching 'Jury of Honour and Appeal' comprising the main officials for the games; and other officials such as a General Manager and Managers; Referee; Official Surveyor; Judges; Starters; Clerks of the Course; Recorders; Announcers; Scorers; Marshals; and Photographers.


title: National Games of India

text: Moinul Haq (Chair), N. Ahmed, S. K. Mukherjee, S. de Noronha, Sohrab Bhoot, J. N. Khosla, Raja Birindra Singh, A. C. Dass, M. S. Ahluwalia, BR Kagal, CR Dhodapkar, Nawab Hussain, S. V. Lingras, Dr. Kailash Singh, N. N. Kunzru, and P. K. Varghese. And the officials included 6 Managers for various sports, General Manager Kirpa Narain, announcers Bashir Ali Sheikh and Prem Kumar, and several judges.


title: National Games of India

text: At the 13th Games in Lucknow, Feb. 1948, the Jury of Honour and Appeal comprised Moinul Haq (Chair), M. Sultan, Sohrab Bhoot, D. N. Sharma, M. G. Nageshkar, Raja Bhalinder Singh, B. C. Holanti, Rameshwar Dayal, S. de Noronha, P. K. Verghese, N. Ahmed, A. C. Das, Kirpa Narain, P. C. Joshi, G. D. Sondhi, Janki Das, Harbail Singh, Vasant Captain, and A. R. Khanna. And the officials included General Manager M. Sultan and 8 Managers for various sports; Referee G. D. Sondhi; Official Surveyors G. D. Sondhi, N. Ahmed, Sohrab Bhoot, and M. Sultan; announcer David Abraham; and several judges and other officials.


title: National Games of India

text: At the 14th Games in Bombay, Feb 1950, the Jury of Honour and Appeal comprised G. D. Sondhi (Chair), N. Ahmed, R. Narain, Sohrab Bhoot, M. Sultan, R. Dayal, F. C. Aurora, S. S. Dhawan, Bhalinder Singh, M. G. Nageshkar, A. S. de Mello, S. K. Basu, B. C. Mahante, and C. C. Abraham. And the officials included Referee Moinul Haq; Manager in Chief Sohrab Bhoot; Managers Nariman Saugar and Y. A. Gole; announcer David Abraham; and judges and other officials.


title: National Games of India

text: For several years in the mid-twentieth century, the national games were conducted on a low key note. However, the first Modern National Games on the lines of the Olympics were held in 1985 in New Delhi. Thereafter Kerala (1987), Pune, Maharashtra (1994), Bangalore, Karnataka (1997), Manipur (1999), Ludhiana, Punjab (2001), Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh (2002), Guwahati, Assam (2007), Ranchi, Jharkhand (2011), Trivandrum, Kerala (2015) and Ahemdabad, Gujarat (2022) hosted the Games. Like the early games, the modern games had their challenges: for example, a decision on the sixth modern National Games in Ludhiana, Punjab was delayed because the Central Government diverted funding for the first Afro-Asian Games. The National Games were normally to be held every two years, leaving those years in which the Olympic Games and Asian Games are scheduled. In exceptional cases or natural calamity, the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) can relax the general rule. In practice, the games were often held at three to four year intervals in the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s.


title: National Games of India

text: In recent times, the host states of National Games have consistently featured in the top 5 in the overall medal tally. Kerala had become the Champions when it hosted the event in 1987. The 1997 National Games was hosted by Karnataka and they won the largest number of medals. Manipur which had finished 9th in the 1997 National Games, became the overall champions when they hosted the event two years later. In 2001, hosts Punjab became the champions. Andhra Pradesh which had won only 11 Gold Medals in 2001 went on to become the Champions when they hosted it in 2002 winning a whopping 94 Gold Medals overall. Assam had managed to win only a single gold medal and had finished 21st position in 2001. But, in the subsequent 2007 National Games that they hosted, they were the second runners-up winning a total of 38 Gold Medals. In 2011, Assam finished 15th overall winning only 5 Gold Medals. Jharkhand had been in the 15th position in 2007 National Games. They rose to the 5th position when they hosted it in 2011. In 2015, hosts Kerala secured the second spot in the medal tally. One main reason for this trend is the higher number of participants from the host state and comparatively lesser number of participants from other states.


title: National Games of India

text: Though National Games are supposed to be held once in 2 years, it is faltering on this schedule. It took Ahemdabad seven years to conduct the games after 2015 edition in Kerala.


title: National Games of India

text: The 34th National Games had been postponed six times before finally opening on 12 February 2011. The 35th National Games were to be held at Thiruvananthapuram in 2012, it was then announced that it would be held from 31 January to 14 February 2015. The 36th National Games were to be held at Goa as announced at the closing ceremony of 35th National Games in Thiruvananthapuram, Goa contingent said the games would be held in November 2016, then it was postponed to November 2017, however Goa has now declared it inability to host the games altogether. Uttarakhand was to host the 37th National Games. The 38th National Games were to be held after that in January 2019 in Amaravati, Andhra Pradesh.


title: National Games of India

text: The 2015 National Games organised in Thiruvananthapuram were associated with green protocols. This was initiated by "Suchitwa Mission" that aimed for "zero-waste" venues. Waste Management programmes were implemented at the 29 venues. To make the event "disposable-free", there was ban on the usage of disposable water bottles. The event witnessed the usage of reusable tableware and stainless steel tumblers. Athletes were provided with refillable steel flasks. It is estimated that these green practices stopped the generation of 120 metric tonnes of disposable waste. "Suchitwa Mission" requested the help of volunteers to achieve the green objectives, and the service of these 700 volunteers were applauded by the Chief Minister.


title: Chiara Aurelia

text: Chiara Aurelia de Braconier d'Alphen (born 2002) is an American actress. She began her career as a child actress in the films "Gerald's Game" and "Back Roads". She stars as Jeanette Turner in the Freeform teen drama series "Cruel Summer".


title: Chiara Aurelia

text: Aurelia was born in Taos, New Mexico to Frederic de Braconier d'Alphen and Claudia Kleefeld. De Braconier d'Alphen, who died when Aurelia was three, was from Leuven, Belgium, the great nephew of Édouard Empain and a descendant of Peter Paul Rubens. Kleefield is the daughter of singer and actor Tony Travis/Kleefeld and author and poet Carolyn Mary Kleefeld, and the granddaughter of builder Mark Taper, of the Mark Taper Forum. Her mother's family is Jewish. Aurelia has an older sister in England.


title: Chiara Aurelia

text: Aurelia grew up in Albuquerque. She began acting in school productions and local drama classes when she was five. From the age of 11, she split her time between Albuquerque and Los Angeles pursuing her career. She studied at the Lee Strasberg Institute.


title: Chiara Aurelia

text: Aurelia began her career as a child actress with small film and television roles as well as appearances in short films such as "Dead Celebrity" (2014). She played a younger version of Carla Gugino's character in the 2017 film adaptation of Stephen King's "Gerald's Game", and portrayed Misty Altmyer in Alex Pettyfer's 2018 directorial debut "Back Roads", both earned her Young Entertainer Awards.


title: Chiara Aurelia

text: In 2021, Aurelia began starring as Jeanette Turner in the Freeform series "Cruel Summer" as well as playing Rose Lord in the TNT series "Tell Me Your Secrets". She also appeared in the film "". For her performance in "Cruel Summer", Aurelia received HCA and Critics' Choice Award nominations. In July 2021, it was announced Aurelia had joined the cast of the Netflix film adaptation of "Luckiest Girl Alive" by Jessica Knoll.


title: Mark Drakeford

text: Mark Drakeford (born 19 September 1954) is a Welsh politician serving as First Minister of Wales and Leader of Welsh Labour since 2018. He previously served in the Welsh Government as Cabinet Secretary for Finance from 2016 to 2018 and Minister for Health and Social Services from 2013 to 2016. Drakeford was first elected as the Member of the Senedd (MS) for Cardiff West in 2011.


title: Mark Drakeford

text: Drakeford was born in Carmarthen in West Wales. He studied Latin at the University of Kent and the University of Exeter. He was a lecturer at the University College of Swansea from 1991 to 1995 and at the Cardiff University from 1995 to 1999. He was a Professor of Social Policy and Applied Social Sciences at Cardiff University from 2003 to 2013.


title: Mark Drakeford

text: Drakeford was elected at the 2011 National Assembly for Wales election for Cardiff West. In 2013, First Minister Carwyn Jones appointed Drakeford to the Welsh Government as Minister for Health and Social Services. He served as Cabinet Secretary for Finance from 2016 and 2018 and as Minister for Brexit from 2017 to 2018. In 2018, he was elected to succeed Jones as Welsh Labour Leader and First Minister. He has led the Welsh Government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the 2021 Senedd election, Drakeford led Welsh Labour to win 30 seats, a working majority, and was reappointed as First Minister.


title: Mark Drakeford

text: Drakeford is widely considered to belong to the left wing of the Labour Party, and is supported by some members of Welsh Labour Grassroots and Momentum. He was the only sitting Cabinet member in any part of the UK to support Jeremy Corbyn in his bid for the national leadership of the Labour Party in 2015, while he was Minister for Health and Social Services.


title: Mark Drakeford

text: Mark Drakeford was born and brought up in Carmarthenshire, West Wales. He was educated at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, then an all-boys grammar school in Carmarthen. He studied Latin at the University of Kent, and graduated from the University of Exeter.


title: Mark Drakeford

text: After university, he trained both as a teacher and as a social worker. He moved to Cardiff in 1979 and worked as a probation officer and a youth justice worker, including as a Barnardo's project leader in the Ely and Caerau communities. His experiences working with young people in deprived areas inspired him to help establish the Welsh youth homelessness charity Llamau in the late 1980s.


title: Mark Drakeford

text: From 1991 to 1995, Drakeford was a lecturer in applied social studies at the University College of Swansea (now Swansea University). He then moved to the University of Wales, Cardiff, renamed as Cardiff University in 1999, as a lecturer in its School of Social and Administrative Studies. He was promoted to senior lecturer in 1999 and appointed as Professor of Social Policy and Applied Social Sciences in 2003. Drakeford continued in his academic posts until his appointment as a Welsh Government minister in 2013. He has published books and journal articles on various aspects of social policy.


title: Mark Drakeford

text: Drakeford has always been interested in politics, which he says was part of the fabric of life in 1960s Carmarthenshire. He has also stated that he was 'always Labour', believing that a person's ties to the economy are the great determining factor in their life chances. In addition to his membership of the Labour Party, he is a member of Unite the Union and UNISON, and a solidarity member of LGBT+ Labour. He is a staunch opponent of Britain's Trident nuclear programme and has called for its decommission.


title: Mark Drakeford

text: From 1985 to 1993, Drakeford represented the Pontcanna ward on South Glamorgan County Council, with fellow future Welsh Assembly members Jane Hutt and Jane Davidson as his ward colleagues. He served as Chair of the Education Committee and took a particular interest in Welsh-medium education.


title: Mark Drakeford

text: Having been part of the successful Yes for Wales campaign in the 1997 Welsh devolution referendum, he was selected as the Labour candidate for Cardiff Central at the first Welsh Assembly election, as part of Labour's ‘twinned seats’ policy. The seat was won by the Liberal Democrats' Jenny Randerson.


title: Mark Drakeford

text: Following Rhodri Morgan’s appointment as First Minister in 2000, Drakeford became the Welsh Government’s special advisor on health and social policy, and later served as the head of Morgan’s political office. He had been close with Morgan for a number of years, having been Morgan's election agent when he was elected to the UK Parliament. In his role as a special advisor, Drakeford was one of the principal architects of the 'Clear Red Water' philosophy, which made a distinction between Labour Party policy under Morgan in Wales and under Tony Blair in Westminster.


title: Mark Drakeford

text: Drakeford succeeded Morgan as the Assembly Member for Cardiff West when the latter retired at the 2011 election. Soon after, he became Chair of the Assembly's Health and Social Care Committee and of the All-Wales Programme Monitoring Committee for European Funds.


title: Mark Drakeford

text: In 2013, he was invited by First Minister Carwyn Jones to join the Government, replacing Lesley Griffiths as Minister for Health and Social Services. His appointment was welcomed by the British Medical Association and the Royal College of Nursing. As Health Minister, he guided both the Human Transplantation Act and the Nurse Staffing Levels Act through the Senedd.


title: Mark Drakeford

text: In a reshuffle after the 2016 election, he became Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government. His portfolio was later changed, as he assumed responsibility for the Welsh Government’s Brexit preparations and responsibility for local government was transferred to Alun Davies.


title: Mark Drakeford

text: At the UK Labour Party's conference in September 2022, Drakeford used his speech at conference to in part hail the benefits of electoral reform. He has been a long term advocate for using proportional representation at general elections.


title: Mark Drakeford

text: Immediately following Carwyn Jones' announcement on 21 April 2018 that he intended to resign as party leader and First Minister, Drakeford told BBC Wales he was giving a leadership bid ‘serious consideration’. Two days later, he announced that he would seek to be a candidate in the ensuing leadership contest. He immediately secured the public support of seven other Labour AMs, taking him beyond the threshold of nominations needed to get onto the ballot. Prior to Jones giving written notice of his resignation on 26 September, a further nine Labour AMs announced they would be nominating Drakeford, meaning a majority of the Labour Group in the Senedd would be supporting his candidacy. He later received support from 10 MPs, eight trade unions and 24 Constituency Labour Parties.


title: Mark Drakeford

text: At a special conference on 15 September 2018, it was decided that the voting system for Welsh Labour leadership elections would be changed to a variation of one member, one vote – a change for which Drakeford had been campaigning for over 20 years.


title: Mark Drakeford

text: Early policy proposals from Drakeford's leadership campaign included a pilot for universal baby bundles and a push for the devolution of the Probation Service. At the north Wales launch of his campaign, he set out plans for a Social Partnership Act to protect employment rights, and plans to establish a Community Bank for Wales. During an interview, Drakeford said that he was a republican, and had been since the age of 14. According to ITV Wales, were he elected, Drakeford would have a "working relationship with the Royal Family", but did not feel that his views would be "an issue."


title: Mark Drakeford

text: On 6 December 2018, it was announced that Drakeford had been elected as the leader of the Welsh Labour Party in succession to Carwyn Jones. He received 46.9% of the vote in the first round of the contest, and 53.9% in the second round compared to 41.4% for Vaughan Gething.


title: Mark Drakeford

text: Mark Drakeford was nominated by AMs as First Minister designate on 12 December and his nomination was approved by the Queen. He named his government the following day. He was appointed as a Privy Counsellor on 10 January 2019.


title: Mark Drakeford

text: As First Minister, Drakeford has responded to the COVID-19 pandemic in Wales. Many aspects of handling COVID-19 were the responsibility of the Welsh Government, including the setting of restrictions on everyday life designed to curtail the virus. According to research conducted by University College London for its COVID-19 Social Study, Drakeford's leadership led to better understanding of the rules in Wales than Boris Johnson's did in England.


title: Mark Drakeford

text: On 23 March 2020, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, having the agreement of all devolved governments, announced a lockdown of the United Kingdom, with only essential services remaining open. This announcement was followed by First Minister Drakeford announcing that the measures would also cover Wales and would come into effect from that evening. The measures put in place restrict people from leaving their home for non-essential travel, with outside exercise limited to once a day. The measures that controlled exercise outside the home differed from those in England, where the measures in place did not stipulate a once-a-day restriction, whereas the Welsh version specifically limited exercise outside the home to once a day, with the maximum fine being £120, compared to £960 in England. On 20 May, the Government announced that the maximum fine would be increased to £1,920.


title: Mark Drakeford

text: On 25 March the Coronavirus Act 2020 was given Royal Assent, after passing through both Houses in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The following day the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Wales) Regulations 2020 were approved by the Senedd, giving the Welsh Government emergency powers to deal with various aspects of managing the pandemic.


title: Mark Drakeford

text: Though Drakeford was supportive of a cooperative approach between the various governments of the UK, his government also at times took significantly different decisions such as introducing a two-week "firebreak" lockdown in Wales during October 2020 at a point when the UK government was still operating a system of localised restrictions in England.


title: Mark Drakeford

text: In the 2021 Senedd election, Labour ran on a manifesto which included various schemes to improve health and social care provision such as investing in mental health services, a new medical school in North Wales and an eventual move towards free-at-point-of-use social care ideally as part of a UK-wide reform. In education, promised policies included tutoring staff to help pupils catch-up after the pandemic, funding to improve school facilities, increasing eligibility for free school meals to an unspecified number of children, expanding access to Welsh-medium education and potential reform to the school routine. Other plans included more reforestation, more social housing and possible electoral reform for Senedd elections.


title: Mark Drakeford

text: Labour equalled its best ever result, falling one seat short of an overall majority, which has never been achieved in the institution. The BBC reporter Adrian Browne credited the outcome to Mark Drakeford and approval of his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in Wales. Pollster Ben Walker wrote in a piece for the New Statesman that one of the factors which had contributed to Labour's success at the election was that Drakeford had developed a greater profile among the public in Wales during the COVID-19 pandemic and was perceived as competent and the best potential First Minister. Various commentators suggested that Welsh Labour's success at the election was part of a wider trend in the round of elections which took place across Britain at the same time of incumbents being rewarded and that there were also more Longterm factors which placed Labour in a better position to succeed in Wales than elsewhere.


title: Mark Drakeford

text: In November 2021, Drakeford and Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price reached a co-operation agreement on policy in a wide range of areas. Ideas they planned to implement included free-at-the-point-of-use social care, expanding services for children and restrictions on second homes. The deal was the third time Welsh Labour and Plaid Cymru had agreed to work together in the era of devolution.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: Pennsylvania Station, often abbreviated to Penn Station, was a historic railroad station in New York City, named for the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR), its builder and original tenant. The station occupied an plot bounded by Seventh and Eighth Avenues and 31st and 33rd Streets in Midtown Manhattan. As the station shared its name with several stations in other cities, it was sometimes called New York Pennsylvania Station.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: The building was designed by McKim, Mead, and White and completed in 1910, enabling direct rail access to New York City from the south for the first time. Its head house and train shed were considered a masterpiece of the Beaux-Arts style and one of the great architectural works of New York City. The station contained 11 platforms serving 21 tracks, in approximately the same layout as the current Penn Station. The original building was one of the first stations to include separate waiting rooms for arriving and departing passengers, and when built, these were among the city's largest public spaces.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: Passenger traffic began to decline after World War II, and in the 1950s, the Pennsylvania Railroad sold the air rights to the property and shrank the railroad station. Starting in 1963, the above-ground head house and train shed were demolished, a loss that galvanized the modern historic preservation movement in the United States. Over the next six years, the below-ground concourses and waiting areas were heavily renovated, becoming the modern Penn Station, while Madison Square Garden and Pennsylvania Plaza were built above them. The sole remaining portions of the original station are the underground platforms and tracks, as well as scattered artifacts on the mezzanine level above it.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: Occupying two city blocks from Seventh Avenue to Eighth Avenue and from 31st to 33rd Streets, the original Pennsylvania Station building was designed by McKim, Mead & White. The overall plan was created by Charles Follen McKim. After McKim's health declined, William Symmes Richardson oversaw the completion of the design, while Teunis J. Van Der Bent oversaw the engineering. Covering an area of about , it had frontages of along the side streets and long along the main avenues. The land lot occupied about along 31st and 33rd Streets.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: Over of dirt had been excavated during construction. The original structure was made of of pink granite, of interior stone, of steel, of brick, and 30,000 light bulbs. The superstructure consisted of about 650 steel columns. The building had an average height of above the street, though its maximum height was . Some or of track surrounded Penn Station. At the time of Penn Station's completion, "The New York Times" called it "the largest building in the world ever built at one time".


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: The exterior of Penn Station was marked by colonnades of Roman unfluted columns based on the Classical Greek-style Doric order. These columns, in turn, were modeled after landmarks such as the Acropolis of Athens. The rest of the facade was modeled on St. Peter's Square in Vatican City, as well as the Bank of England headquarters. The colonnades embodied the sophisticated integration of multiple functions and the circulation of people and goods. The colonnades had a strongly horizontal orientation, interrupted only by the lunette windows and the roof of the waiting room. The ornamentation was intentionally simple, with emphasis being placed on the "unity and simplicity" of different parts of the design. The roof was made of Monel alloy, an Inco product.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: The building had entrances from all four sides. The main entrance was at the intersection of Seventh Avenue and 32nd Street, at the center of the Seventh Avenue facade. It was the most elaborate of Penn Station's entrances. Above the center of the entrance, above the sidewalk, was a clock with faces. Two plaques were placed above the arcade entrance. One plaque contained inscriptions of the names of individuals who had led the New York Tunnel Extension project, while the other included carvings of franchise dates and the names of contractors.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: Twin carriageways from either northeast and southeast corners, modeled after Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, led to the two railroads served by the station. One carriageway led from the north side of the building, serving LIRR trains, while the other led from the south side, serving PRR trains. The walls of each carriageway were flanked by pilasters for a distance of . Ramps spanned the carriageways and led into the waiting room and concourse. The carriageways descended to the exit concourse at the middle of the station. From there, vehicles could travel to the baggage drop on the eastern end or return to Seventh Avenue. A separate passageway along the south side of the station carried baggage to the Eighth Avenue end of the station.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: An open colonnade was used along the north, east, and south facades. The entirety of the east facade had a Doric-style colonnade. The easternmost portions of the north and south facades, adjacent to the carriageways, also contained colonnades. Each column measured high by across. The remainder of the facade contained pilasters rather than columns. An approximately section of the Eighth Avenue facade was divided into three large openings, which comprised a large rear entrance to the main concourse.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: The station contained four pairs of sculptures designed by Adolph Weinman, each of which consists of two female personifications, "Day" and "Night". These sculptural pairs, whose figures were based on model Audrey Munson, flanked large clocks on the top of each side of the building. "Day" was depicted with a garland of sunflowers in her hand, looking down at passengers, while "Night" was depicted with a serious expression and a cloak over her head. The "Day" and "Night" sculptures were each accompanied by two small stone eagles. There were also 14 larger, freestanding stone eagles placed on Penn Station's exterior.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: Penn Station was the largest indoor space in New York City and one of the largest public spaces in the world. The "Baltimore Sun" said in April 2007 that the station was "as grand a corporate statement in stone, glass and sculpture as one could imagine." Historian Jill Jonnes called the original edifice a "great Doric temple to transportation". The interior design was inspired by several sources, including French and German railway stations; St. Peter's Basilica; and the Bank of England.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: The main entrance on Seventh Avenue led to a shopping arcade that led westward into the station. The arcade measured wide by long, with a similar width to 32nd Street. Cassatt modeled the arcade after those in Milan and Naples, filling it with high-end boutiques and shops. The stores were included because Cassatt wanted to give passengers a cultural experience upon their arrival in New York. At the western end of the arcade, a statue of Alexander Johnston Cassatt stood in a niche on the northern wall where stairs descended to a waiting room where passengers could wait for their trains. There was also a statue of PRR president Samuel Rea directly across from Cassatt's statue, on the southern wall, which was installed in 1930.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: The expansive waiting room, which spanned Penn Station's entire length from 31st to 33rd Streets, contained traveler amenities such as long benches, men's and women's smoking lounges, newspaper stands, telephone and telegraph booths, and baggage windows. The main waiting room was inspired by Roman structures such as the Baths of Caracalla, Diocletan, and Titus. The room measured long, wide, and tall. Additional waiting rooms for men and women, each measuring , were on either side of the main waiting room.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: The room approximated the scale of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. The lower walls were of travertine, while the upper walls were expressed in a steel framework clad in plaster, decorated to resemble the lower walls. The travertine was sourced from Campagna in Italy. This made Penn Station the first major American building to use travertine. The north and south walls each contained small colonnades of six Ionic columns, which flanked the staircases on those walls. There were also larger Corinthian columns on pedestals, measuring about tall from the tops of the pedestals to the tops of the capitals. There were eight lunette windows on top of the waiting room's walls: one each above the north and south walls and three each above the west and east walls. The lunettes had a radius of .


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: The artist Jules Guérin was commissioned to create six murals for Penn Station's waiting room. Each of his works were over high, placed above the tops of the Corinthian columns. The murals themselves measured tall and across. They contained maps depicting the extent of the PRR system.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: Penn Station was one of the first rail stations to separate arriving and departing passengers on two concourses. Directly adjoining the waiting room was the main concourse area for departing passengers, with stairs directly to each platform. The floor area of the main concourse was variously cited as having floor measurements of or . This concourse was covered by glass vaults that were held up by a plain steel framework. The glass roof measured . McKim wanted to give "an appropriate transition" between the decorated nature of the waiting room and the utilitarian design of the tracks below. After the general shape of the vaults was determined, Purdy and Henderson designed the steelwork. The steel frame was less heavy at the top.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: LIRR commuters could also use an entrance on the northern side, along 34th Street. The LIRR commuter concourse was above the tracks. There was an additional mezzanine level below the main concourse and waiting room for arriving passengers; it contained two smaller concourses, one for each railroad. The smaller northern mezzanine, used by the LIRR, connected to the LIRR platforms via short stairs and to the 34th Street entrance via escalators. The smaller southern mezzanine, used by the PRR, contained stairs and elevators between the PRR platforms and the level of the main concourse and waiting room.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: Running from north to south was a separate exit concourse, measuring wide. This concourse led to both 31st and 33rd Streets and was subsequently connected to the subway stations on Seventh and Eighth Avenues. Two stairways and one elevator led to the exit concourse from each platform.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: The tracks were variously cited as being or below ground. At platform level, there were 21 tracks serving 11 platforms. LIRR trains had exclusive use of the station's northernmost four tracks, while the PRR was exclusively assigned the southernmost tracks. The two railroads shared the center tracks as necessary. An estimated of storage tracks in and around the station could store up to 386 train carriages. The station contained 25 elevators for baggage and passenger use. The storage yards were located between Ninth and Tenth Avenues in a cut that was later covered and built over. The structure above it was supported by 650 steel columns, each supporting a weight of up to .


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: East of the station, tracks 5–21 merged into two three-track tunnels, which then merged into the East River Tunnels' four tracks. West of the station, at approximately Ninth Avenue, all 21 tracks merged into the North River Tunnels' two tracks. Tracks 1–4, the station's southernmost tracks, terminated at bumper blocks at the east end of the station, so they could only be used by trains from New Jersey. Four switch towers, lettered from A to D, controlled train movements around the station. The main switch tower was Tower A, located between Eighth and Ninth Avenues; it still exists, although it is now located below the Farley Post Office.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: Before 1910, there was no direct rail link from points west of the Hudson River into Manhattan. The Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR)'s rail network terminated on the western side of the Hudson River, once known locally as the North River, at Exchange Place in Jersey City, New Jersey. Manhattan-bound passengers boarded ferries to cross the Hudson River for the final stretch of their journey. In 1896 alone, there were 94 million passengers traveling to Manhattan from railroad terminals in Jersey City. Ferries were not a viable solution in the long term; a ferry trip across the Hudson River lasted 20 minutes in good weather. The rival New York Central Railroad (NYC)'s line transported passengers from the Hudson Valley in the city's north, ran along Park Avenue in Manhattan, and terminated at Grand Central Depot (later Grand Central Terminal) at 42nd Street and Park Avenue. PRR president Alexander Johnston Cassatt wanted to build a terminal that surpassed Grand Central Depot in scale.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: Many proposals for a cross-Hudson connection were advanced in the late 19th century, but financial panics in the 1870s and 1890s scared off potential investors. In any event, none of the proposals advanced during this time were considered feasible. The PRR considered building a rail bridge across the Hudson, but the state of New York insisted that a cross-Hudson bridge had to be a joint project with other New Jersey railroads, which were not interested. The alternative was to tunnel under the river, but steam locomotives could not use such a tunnel due to the accumulation of pollution in a closed space, and the New York State Legislature prohibited steam locomotives in Manhattan after July 1, 1908.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: The idea of a Midtown Manhattan railroad hub was first formulated in 1901, when the Pennsylvania Railroad took interest in a new railroad approach recently completed in Paris. In the Parisian railroad scheme, electric locomotives were substituted for steam locomotives prior to the final approach into the city. Cassatt adapted this method for the New York City area in the form of the New York Tunnel Extension project. He created and led the overall planning effort for it. The PRR, which had been working with the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) on the Tunnel Extension plans, made plans to acquire majority control of the LIRR so one new terminal could be built in Manhattan, rather than two. The project was to include New York Penn Station; the North River Tunnels, crossing the Hudson River to the west; and the East River Tunnels, crossing the East River to the east. Cassatt's vision for the terminal itself was inspired by the Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts style station in Paris.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: The original proposal for the station, which was published in June 1901, called for the construction of a bridge across the Hudson River between 45th and 50th Streets in Manhattan, as well as two closely spaced terminals for the LIRR and PRR. This would allow passengers to travel between Long Island and New Jersey without having to switch trains. In December 1901, the plans were modified so that the PRR would construct the North River Tunnels under the Hudson River, instead of a bridge over it. The PRR cited costs and land value as a reason for constructing a tunnel rather than a bridge, since the cost of a tunnel would be one-third that of a bridge. The New York Tunnel Extension was quickly opposed by the New York City Board of Rapid Transit Commissioners who objected that they would not have jurisdiction over the new tunnels, as well as from the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, which saw the New York Tunnel Extension as a potential competitor to its as-yet-incomplete rapid transit service. The city had initially declined to give the PRR a franchise because city officials believed that the PRR needed to grant thirteen concessions to protect city interests; the PRR ultimately conceded to nine of the city's requests. The project was approved by the New York City Board of Aldermen in December 1902 by a 41–36 vote.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: In April 1902, Cassatt sent a telegram to Charles McKim of the New York architectural firm McKim, Mead & White. According to one account, when McKim received the telegram, he said: "I suppose President Cassatt wants a new stoop for his house". After McKim talked with Cassatt, the architect learned that he had received the commission for the new Pennsylvania Station. McKim was pleased to receive the commission, writing to his friend Daniel Burnham, who had congratulated him. The historian Mosette Broderick wrote that McKim faced an "internal conflict" because Burnham and Cassatt had collaborated on the development of Chicago Union Station, which indicated that Cassatt had some type of "loyalty" to Burnham. McKim may have received the commission for New York Penn Station because of his friendship with Daniel Smith Newhall, the PRR's purchasing agent, who had praised McKim's work.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: The plans approved in December 1902 called for an "immense passenger station" on the east side of Eighth Avenue between 31st and 33rd Streets in Manhattan. The project was expected to cost over $100 million. Though the tracks were to be entirely underground, the plans had to resemble a typical railway station while also serving as a major gateway to New York City. The new design also had to compete with that of the new Grand Central Terminal, designed by Reed & Stem. McKim studied the role of public buildings in Ancient Rome, including the Baths of Diocletian. Cassatt and McKim collaborated closely to define the structure of the station. Their original plan called for a structure measuring long by wide, with three floors open to passengers and 25 tracks. Cassatt had wanted to build a hotel above the station, but McKim had dismissed the proposal, having been opposed to high-rise buildings. According to architectural writer Leland Roth, the absence of the hotel eliminated income that could have helped the station's preservation in later years.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: As part of the station's construction, the PRR proposed that the United States Postal Service construct a post office across from the station on the west side of Eighth Avenue. In February 1903, the U.S. government accepted the PRR's proposal and made plans to construct what would later become the Farley Post Office, which was also designed by McKim, Mead & White. The PRR would also build a train storage yard in Queens east of Penn Station, to be used by both PRR trains from the west and LIRR trains from the east. The yard was to store passenger-train cars at the beginning or end of their trips, as well as to reverse the direction of the locomotives that pulled these train cars.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: Land purchases for the station started in late 1901 or early 1902. The PRR purchased a site bounded by Seventh and Ninth Avenues between 31st and 33rd Streets. This site was chosen over other sites farther east, such as Herald Square, because these parts of Manhattan were already congested. Penn Station proper would be located along the eastern part of the site between Seventh and Eighth Avenue. The northwestern block, bounded by Eighth Avenue, Ninth Avenue, 32nd Street, and 33rd Street, was not part of the original plan.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: The condemnation of 17 city-owned buildings on the station's future site, an area of four blocks, began in June 1903. All 304 parcels within the four-block area, which were collectively owned by between 225 and 250 entities, had been purchased by November 1903. The PRR purchased land west of Ninth Avenue in April 1904, such that it owned all the land between Seventh and Tenth Avenues from 31st to 33rd Street. This land would allow the PRR to build extra railroad switches for the tracks around Penn Station. The PRR also purchased land along the north side of the future station between 33rd and 34th Streets, so the company could create a pedestrian walkway leading directly to 34th Street, a major crosstown thoroughfare. The properties between 33rd and 34th Street that the PRR had purchased were transferred to PRR ownership in 1908. Clearing the site entailed "displacing thousands of residents from the largely African-American community in what was once known as the Tenderloin district in Manhattan."


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: The details of the track layout were finalized by 1904. A $5 million contract to excavate the site was awarded that June, marking the start of the construction. Overall, some 500 buildings had to be demolished to make way for the station. By early 1905, contractors were installing granite in the station's lower levels, and an adjacent power station on 31st Street was finished. During this time, McKim's health began to decline as he experienced stress in his personal and professional life. McKim withdrew from the project in 1906 as his health worsened, and Richardson replaced him as lead architect.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: Even as excavation proceeded, the federal government was still deciding whether to build a post office next to the PRR station. The PRR planned to turn over the air rights to the blocks between Eighth and Ninth Avenues to the federal government once excavations were completed. However, the PRR would still own the land below the post office leading some Congress members to oppose the post office plan, as they believed that the government would only own "a chunk of space in the air" above the tracks. The Postmaster of New York City, William Russell Willcox, ultimately approved the post office anyway. McKim, Mead & White was selected to design the post office in 1908. By this time, the excavations were near completion and the structural steel for the post office building was being laid.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: The North River and East River Tunnels ran almost in a straight line between Queens and New Jersey, interrupted only by the proposed Pennsylvania Railroad station. The technology for the tunnels connecting to Penn Station was so innovative that the PRR shipped an actual diameter section of the new East River Tunnels to the Jamestown Exposition in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1907, to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the nearby founding of the colony at Jamestown. The same tube, with an inscription indicating that it had been displayed at the Exposition, was later installed under water and remains in use. Construction was completed on the Hudson River tunnels on October 9, 1906, and on the East River tunnels on March 18, 1908. Construction also progressed on Penn Station during this time. Workers began laying the stonework for the station in June 1908; they had completed it thirteen months later.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: New York Penn Station was officially declared complete on August 29, 1910. A small portion of Penn Station was opened nearly two weeks later, on September 8, in conjunction with the opening of the East River Tunnels. As a result, LIRR riders gained direct railroad service to Manhattan. Prior to the opening of Penn Station, LIRR riders entered Manhattan via the 34th Street Ferry Terminal, where they could transfer to an elevated shuttle station. The rest of the station opened on November 27, 1910. One hundred thousand people visited the station during its first day of full service, excluding the 25,000 commuters and intercity riders. With the station's full opening, the PRR became the only railroad to enter New York City from the south. All of the architectural details were completed by October 1911.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: At the station's completion, the total project cost to the Pennsylvania Railroad for the station and associated tunnels was $114 million (equivalent to $ billion in ), according to an Interstate Commerce Commission report. The railroad paid tribute to Cassatt, who died in 1906, with a statue designed by Adolph Alexander Weinman in the station's grand arcade, subsequently moved to the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania after the station's demolition. An inscription below it read:


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: When Penn Station opened, it had a capacity of 144 trains per hour on its 21 tracks and 11 platforms. At the start of operations, there were 1,000 trains scheduled every weekday: of these, 600 were LIRR trains, while the other 400 were PRR trains. The commuting times of LIRR riders were cut by up to a half-hour. The station was so heavily used that the PRR soon added 51 trains to its daily schedule. The station also served New Haven trains to Westchester County and Connecticut after the Hell Gate Bridge opened in 1917. During half a century of operation, many intercity passenger trains arrived and departed daily to Chicago and St. Louis, where passengers could make connections to other railroads. Along with Long Island Rail Road trains, Penn Station saw trains of the New Haven and the Lehigh Valley Railroads. A side effect of the tunneling project was to open the city up to the suburbs, and, within 10 years of opening, two-thirds of the daily passengers coming through Penn Station were commuters. Richard Guy Wilson wrote that "in catching or meeting a train at Pennsylvania Station one became part of a pageant".


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: The station put the Pennsylvania Railroad at a comparative advantage to its competitors offering service to the west and south. The Baltimore & Ohio (B&O), Central of New Jersey (CNJ), Erie, and the Lackawanna railroads began their routes at terminals in New Jersey, requiring travelers bound for New York City to use ferries or the interstate Hudson Tubes to traverse the Hudson River. During World War I and the early 1920s, the rival B&O passenger trains to Washington, D.C., Chicago, and St. Louis also used Penn Station, initially by order of the United States Railroad Administration, until the Pennsylvania Railroad terminated the B&O's access in 1926. Atypically for a public building, Penn Station was well maintained during its heyday. Such was the station's status that whenever the President of the United States arrived in New York by rail, he would arrive and depart on tracks 11 and 12. Royalty and leaders of other countries also traveled via Penn Station.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: Over the next few decades, alterations were made to Penn Station to increase its capacity. The LIRR concourse, waiting room, amenities and platforms were expanded. Connections were provided to the New York City Subway stations at Seventh Avenue and Eighth Avenue. The electrification of Penn Station was initially third rail, which provided 600 volts of direct current. It was later changed to 11,000-volt alternating current overhead catenary when electrification of PRR's mainline was extended to Washington, D.C., in the early 1930s. The expansion of electrification also allowed the PRR to begin running electric-powered commuter trains from Trenton via Newark starting in 1933; previously, steam-powered commuter trains continued to originate and terminate at Exchange Place. By 1935, Penn Station had served over a billion passengers.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: A Greyhound Lines bus terminal was built to the north of Penn Station, facing 34th Street, in 1935. However, within a decade, the bus terminal had gone into decline, and was frequented by low-level criminals and the homeless. The Greyhound bus terminal soon saw competition from the Port Authority Bus Terminal, located seven blocks north of Penn Station. Opened in 1950, it was intended to consolidate bus service. Greyhound resisted for almost a decade afterward, but by 1962 it had closed the Penn Station bus terminal and moved to the Port Authority Bus Terminal.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: Penn Station had started to decline in the 1930s. The station was busiest during World War II: in 1945, more than 100 million passengers traveled through Penn Station. The station's decline came soon afterward with the beginning of the Jet Age and the construction of the Interstate Highway System. The PRR recorded its first-ever annual operating losses in 1947, and intercity rail passenger volumes continued to decline dramatically over the next decade. By the 1950s, its ornate pink granite exterior had become coated with grime. During the decade, the PRR relied increasingly on real estate to keep it profitable.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: A renovation in the late 1950s covered some of the grand columns with plastic and blocked off the spacious central hallway with the "Clamshell", a new ticket office designed by Lester C. Tichy. Architectural critic Lewis Mumford wrote in "The New Yorker" in 1958 that "nothing further that could be done to the station could damage it". Advertisements surrounded the station's Seventh Avenue concourse, while stores and restaurants were crammed around the Eighth Avenue side's mezzanine. A layer of dirt covered the interior and exterior of the structure, and the pink granite was stained with gray. Another architectural critic, Ada Louise Huxtable, wrote in "The New York Times" in 1963: "The tragedy is that our own times not only could not produce such a building, but cannot even maintain it."


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: The Pennsylvania Railroad optioned the air rights of New York Penn Station to real estate developer William Zeckendorf in 1954. He had previously suggested that the two-block site of the main building could be used for a "world trade center". The option allowed for the demolition of the main building and train shed, which could be replaced by an office and sports complex. The station's underground platforms and tracks would not be modified, but the station's mezzanines would be reconfigured. A blueprint for a "Palace of Progress" was released in 1955 but was not acted upon.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: Plans for the new Madison Square Garden above Penn Station were announced in 1962 by Irving Mitchell Felt, the president of Graham-Paige, the company that purchased the air rights to Penn Station. In exchange for the air rights, the Pennsylvania Railroad would get a brand-new, air-conditioned, smaller station completely below street level at no cost, and a 25 percent stake in the new Madison Square Garden Complex. A 28-story hotel and 34-story office building, now part of Penn Plaza, would be built on the eastern side of the block, facing Seventh Avenue. The arena proper would take up most of the block, facing Eighth Avenue to the west. At the time, one argument made in favor of the old Penn Station's demolition was that the cost of maintaining the structure had become prohibitive. Its grand scale made the PRR devote a "fortune" to its upkeep, and the head house's exterior had become somewhat grimy. Those who opposed demolition considered whether it made sense to preserve a building, intended to be a cost-effective and functional piece of the city's infrastructure, simply as a monument to the past. As a "New York Times" editorial critical of the demolition noted at the time, "any city gets what it wants, is willing to pay for, and ultimately deserves."


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: The architectural community in general was surprised by the announcement of the head house's demolition. Modern architects rushed to save the ornate building, although it was contrary to their own styles. They called the station a treasure and chanted "Don't Amputate – Renovate" at rallies. Despite the controversy generated over the demolition, Felt stated that he "believed that the gain from the new buildings and sports center would more than offset any aesthetic loss." He elaborated, "Fifty years from now, when it's time for [Madison Square Garden] to be torn down, there will be a new group of architects who will protest." Despite large public opposition to Penn Station's demolition, the New York City Department of City Planning voted in January 1963 to start demolishing the station that summer. Architects protested against the decision, but to no effect.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: Under the leadership of PRR president Stuart T. Saunders (who later headed Penn Central Transportation), demolition of the above-ground station house began on October 28, 1963. A giant steel deck was placed above the tracks and platforms, allowing rail service to continue with only minor disruptions. This was possible because most of the rail infrastructure, including the waiting room, concourses and platforms, was below street level. Around five hundred columns were sunk into the platforms, while passengers were routed around work areas surrounded by plywood. Madison Square Garden and two office towers were built above the extensively renovated concourses and waiting area.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: The first girders for Madison Square Garden were placed in late 1965, and, by mid-1966, much of the station had been demolished except for the Seventh Avenue entrance. By late 1966, much of the new station had been built. There were three new entrances: one from 31st Street and Eighth Avenue, another from 33rd Street and Eighth Avenue, and a third from a driveway running mid-block between Seventh and Eighth Avenues from 31st to 33rd Streets. Permanent electronic signs were being erected, shops were being renovated, new escalators were being installed, and platforms that were temporarily closed during renovations had been reopened. A 1968 advertisement depicted architect Charles Luckman's model of the final plan for the Madison Square Garden Center complex.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: Although the demolition of the head house was justified as progressive at a time of declining rail passenger service, it also created international outrage. One of the most outspoken critics was Huxtable, who published numerous editorials in "The New York Times" decrying the demolition of the station. As the dismantling of the structure began, "The New York Times" editorial board wrote, "Until the first blow fell, no one was convinced that Penn Station really would be demolished, or that New York would permit this monumental act of vandalism against one of the largest and finest landmarks of its age of Roman elegance." "New York Times" reporter Eddie Hausner's photograph of the sculpture "Day" by Adolph Alexander Weinman, lying in a landfill in the New Jersey Meadowlands, inspired New Jersey Conservation and Economic Development Commissioner Robert A. Roe to salvage some of the head house's sculptures. "New York Times" architecture critic Michael Kimmelman compared the demolition of the head house unfavorably to that of Lenox Library, destroyed to make way for the Frick Collection, or the old Waldorf–Astoria, razed for the construction of the Empire State Building. He claimed that it broke a long tradition of New Yorkers accepting that "what replaced a beloved building would be as good or better."


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: The controversy over the original head house's demolition is cited as a catalyst for the architectural preservation movement in the United States, particularly in New York City. In 1965, two years after Penn Station's demolition commenced, the city passed a landmarks preservation act, thereby creating the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC). New York City's other major railroad station, Grand Central Terminal, was also proposed for demolition in 1968 by its owner, Penn Central. Grand Central Terminal was ultimately preserved by the LPC, despite an unsuccessful challenge from Penn Central in 1978.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: The replacement Penn Station was built underneath Madison Square Garden at 33rd Street and Two Penn Plaza. The station spans three levels, with the concourses on the upper two levels and the train platforms on the lowest level. The two levels of concourses, while original to the 1910 station, were renovated extensively during the construction of Madison Square Garden and expanded in subsequent decades. The tracks and platforms are also largely original, except for newer track connections to the West Side Rail Yard and the Amtrak Empire Corridor serving Albany and Buffalo. The station is arranged into separate concourses for Amtrak, NJ Transit (which operates the former PRR commuter lines from New Jersey), and the LIRR.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: General reception of the replacement station has been largely negative. Comparing the new and old stations, Yale architectural historian Vincent Scully once wrote, "One entered the city like a god; one scuttles in now like a rat." Despite having undergone improvements since the 1960s, Penn Station is criticized as a low-ceilinged "catacomb" lacking charm, especially when compared to the larger and more ornate Grand Central Terminal. "The New York Times", in a November 2007 editorial supporting development of an enlarged railroad station, said that "Amtrak's beleaguered customers ... now scurry through underground rooms bereft of light or character."


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: "Times" transit reporter Michael M. Grynbaum wrote that Penn Station was "the ugly stepchild of the city's two great rail terminals." Along similar lines, Michael Kimmelman wrote in 2019 that while downsizing Penn Station and moving it underground may have made a modicum of sense at the time, in hindsight it was a sign that New York was "disdainful of its gloried architectural past." He also claimed that the remodeled station is not commensurate with its status as the main rail gateway to New York.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: The General Post Office, directly west of the station, remained largely intact through the 20th century; the LPC had designated the post office as one of the city's earliest landmarks in 1966. In the early 1990s, U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan began promoting a plan to build a replica of the historic Penn Station, since he had shined shoes in the original station during the Great Depression. He proposed erecting it in the nearby Farley Post Office building. The project, later renamed "Moynihan Train Hall", was split into two phases. The West End Concourse, opened in the eastern part of the former post office in June 2017. The second phase, an expansion of Penn Station's facilities into parts of the post office building, opened in January 2021.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: Following the demolition of the original Penn Station, many of its architectural elements were lost or buried in the New Jersey Meadowlands. Some elements were salvaged and relocated. Additional architectural elements remain in the present-day station: some were covered over, while others remain visible throughout the current station.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: Of the 22 eagle sculptures around the station exterior, the locations of all 14 larger, freestanding eagles are known. Three remain in New York City: two at Penn Plaza along Seventh Avenue flanking the main entrance, and one at Cooper Union, Adolph Weinman's alma mater. Cooper Union's eagle had been located in the courtyard of the Albert Nerken School of Engineering at 51 Astor Place, but was relocated in the summer of 2009, along with the engineering school, to a new academic building at 41 Cooper Square. This eagle is no longer visible from the street, as it is located on the building's eighth-floor green roof.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: Three eagles are on Long Island: two at the United States Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, and one at the LIRR station in Hicksville, New York. Four reside on the Market Street Bridge in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, across from that city's 30th Street Station. There are also individual eagles at four locations. One is positioned near the end zone at the football field of Hampden-Sydney College near Farmville, Virginia. Another is located on the grounds of the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. The other individual eagles are located in Vinalhaven, Maine, as well as at the Valley Forge Military Academy in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: Of the eight smaller eagles, which surrounded the four "Day" and "Night" sculptures, four are accounted for. Two are located at the entrance to Skylands in Ringwood, New Jersey. The other two are part of the Eagle Scout Memorial Fountain in Kansas City, Missouri. The family of Albert Fritsch, a PRR mechanic, owns a fragment of another eagle.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: Three pairs of the "Day" and "Night" sculptures have been located. One of the four "Day" and "Night" sculptures still survives complete at Kansas City's Eagle Scout Memorial Fountain. A "Night" sculpture was moved to the sculpture garden at the Brooklyn Museum. The other pairs of "Day" and "Night" sculptures were discarded in the Meadowlands. One of these pairs, recovered by Robert A. Roe, was stored at Ringwood State Park in Passaic County, New Jersey.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: In the late 1990s, NJ Transit wanted to install the sculptures at Newark Broad Street station. However, this did not happen, and a writer for the website "Untapped Cities" found the sculpture pair in a Newark parking lot in mid-2017. Another "Day" sculpture was found in 1998 at the Con-Agg Recycling Corporation plant in the Bronx; the damaged sculpture had been stored at the recycling plant since at least the mid-1990s.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: The Brooklyn Museum also owns part of one of the station's Ionic columns as well as some plaques from the station. The largest piece of the station that is known to had been salvaged, a Doric column, was transported upstate to Woodridge, New York, circa 1963. The Doric column had been intended for an unbuilt college in Woodridge, the Verrazano College. However, the column remained in Woodridge once plans for the college were canceled, since it was very unwieldy to bring the column back downstate. In addition, eighteen of the station's 84 columns were supposed to be placed in Battery Park in Lower Manhattan. However, the columns were dumped in a landfill in New Jersey instead.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: The statue of Samuel Rea still exists and is located outside the modern Penn Station entrance on Seventh Avenue.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: Other small architectural details remain in the station. Some of the original staircases to platform level, with brass and iron handrails, still exist, though others have been replaced with escalators. The original cast iron partition that separates the Long Island Rail Road waiting area on the lower concourse was uncovered during renovations in 1994. Original granite becomes exposed every so often in heavily trafficked corridors where modern flooring has worn, and the modern waiting areas and ticket booths occupy roughly the same spaces as the original 1910 configuration. Vestiges of the northern entrance carriageway also exist. The modern station still maintains the structural underpinnings of the original station. From platform level, glass vault lights can still be seen embedded within the ceiling (the floor of the lower concourse) that once let light pass through the concourse from the glass ceilings of the original train shed.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: The Penn Station Services Building, located just south of the station at 242 West 31st Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues, was constructed in 1908 to provide electricity and heat for the station. The building measures long by tall, with a pink granite facade in the Roman Doric style, and was designed by McKim, Mead and White. A wall runs from north to south, bisecting the building, with power-generating boilers west of the wall and power distributing equipment and offices to the east.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: The structure survived the demolition of the main station building, but was downgraded so that it only provided compressed air for the switches in the interlockings under the station. In January 2020, a southward expansion of Pennsylvania Station, to be called Penn South, was proposed. The proposal would expand the track area south to West 30th Street and require demolition of the entire block upon which the building is located.


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: The original Pennsylvania Station has been featured in several works of media. For instance, Rouben Mamoulian's 1929 film "Applause" depicted the station in a scene between the main character and her daughter. Several scenes in the 1945 film "The Clock" also take place in Pennsylvania Station, though they were shot on MGM Stage 27 due to World War II cost constraints. By contrast, the 1951 Alfred Hitchcock film "Strangers on a Train", which has a chase scene in Pennsylvania Station, was filmed on site. The glass concourse is also shown in the opening and ending scenes of Stanley Kubrick's 1955 noir film "Killer's Kiss".


title: Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963)

text: After Pennsylvania Station was demolished, it was recreated for a scene in the 2019 film "Motherless Brooklyn". Visual effects were combined with an actual set and actors in period costume, although the version shown reflects its more pristine image in the 1920s and 1930s rather than its more dilapidated condition by the film's 1957 setting.


title: Billie Whitelaw

text: Billie Honor Whitelaw (6 June 1932 – 21 December 2014) was an English actress. She worked in close collaboration with Irish playwright Samuel Beckett for 25 years and was regarded as one of the foremost interpreters of his works. She was also known for her portrayal of Mrs. Baylock, the demonic nanny in the 1976 horror film "The Omen".


title: Billie Whitelaw

text: Whitelaw was born in Coventry, Warwickshire, the daughter of Frances Mary (née Williams) and Gerry Whitelaw. She had one sister, Constance, who was 10 years older. Whitelaw grew up in a working class part of Bradford and later attended Grange Girls' Grammar School in Bradford.


title: Billie Whitelaw

text: At age 11, she began performing as a child actress on radio programmes, including the part of Bunkle, an extrovert prep-schoolboy on Children's Hour from Manchester, and later worked as an assistant stage manager and acted with the repertory company at the Prince's Theatre in Bradford during high school. Her father died of lung cancer when Billie was 9 years old. Money was tight, and her mother struggled to support the family. "It's something I haven't come to terms with ... I'm rather ashamed of having the good life I have", she later recalled.


title: Billie Whitelaw

text: At the age of sixteen, Whitelaw met the director Joan Littlewood at the BBC in Manchester, and was invited to join her Theatre Workshop troupe. She was encouraged by her mother to join Harry Hanson's Leeds company in 1948, and then went on to play in repertory theatres in Dewsbury, New Brighton in Liverpool, and Oxford, eventually making her London debut in 1950.


title: Billie Whitelaw

text: Whitelaw made her film debut in "The Sleeping Tiger" (1954), followed by roles in "Carve Her Name with Pride" (1958) and "Hell Is a City" (1960). Whitelaw soon became a regular in British films of the 1950s and early 1960s. In her early film work, she specialised in blousy blondes and secretaries, but her dramatic range began to emerge by the late 1960s. She starred with Albert Finney in "Charlie Bubbles" (1967), a performance which won her a BAFTA award as Best Actress in a Supporting Role. She would win her second BAFTA as the sensuous mother of college student Hayley Mills in the psychological study "Twisted Nerve" (1969). She continued in film roles including "Leo the Last" (1970), "Start the Revolution Without Me" (1970), "Gumshoe" (1971), and the Alfred Hitchcock thriller "Frenzy" (1972).


title: Billie Whitelaw

text: Whitelaw gained international acclaim for her chilling role as Mrs. Baylock, the evil guardian of the demon child Damien in "The Omen" (1976). Her performance was considered one of the more memorable of the film, winning her the "Evening Standard" British Film Award for Best Actress. Other films included performing the voice of Aughra in "The Dark Crystal", as the hopelessly naive Mrs. Hall in "Maurice" (1987), one of two sisters, with Joan Plowright, struggling to survive in war-time Liverpool in "The Dressmaker" (1988), the fiercely domineering and protective mother of psychopathic twin murderers in "The Krays" (1990), a performance that earned her a BAFTA nomination, as the nurse Grace Poole in "Jane Eyre" (1996), and the blind laundress in "Quills" (2000). She returned to film, in a comedy turn, as Joyce Cooper in "Hot Fuzz" (2007).


title: Billie Whitelaw

text: In 1963, Billie Whitelaw met Irish playwright Samuel Beckett. She and Beckett enjoyed an intense professional relationship until his death in 1989. He wrote many of his more experimental plays especially for her, referring to Whitelaw as "a perfect actress". Whitelaw became Beckett's muse, as he created, reworked and revised each play while she physically, at times to the point of total exhaustion, acted each movement.


title: Billie Whitelaw

text: Whitelaw remained the foremost interpreter of the man and his work. She gave lectures on the Beckettian technique, and explained, "He used me as a piece of plaster he was moulding until he got just the right shape". They collaborated on Beckett plays such as "Play", "Eh Joe", "Happy Days", "Not I", "Footfalls" and "Rockaby" for both stage and screen. For her performance in "Rockaby" Whitelaw was nominated for a Drama Desk Award.


title: Billie Whitelaw

text: From 1964 to 1966, she was a member of Britain's National Theatre Company. In 1965, she took over the part of Desdemona opposite Laurence Olivier's Othello from Maggie Smith.


title: Billie Whitelaw

text: Whitelaw also appeared frequently on television and won acclaim for her work. A very early TV appearance was in the first series of the long-running BBC1 police series "Dixon of Dock Green" (1955), as Mary Dixon, daughter of George (Jack Warner). She also appeared as a woman who tries to join Robin Hood's outlaw band in a 1957 episode of "The Adventures of Robin Hood", "The Bride of Robin Hood", and won a BAFTA award as Best Actress for her performance in "The Sextet" (1972). She starred on the 1958–59 sitcom "Time Out for Peggy". She also appeared in an episode of "Wicked Women" (1970), the BBC adaptation of Thomas Hardy's "Wessex Tales" (1973), "A Tale of Two Cities" (1980), "Private Schulz" (1982), "A Murder of Quality" (1991), "Duel of Hearts" (1991), "Firm Friends" (1992–1994) with Madhur Jaffrey, "Jane Eyre" (1996), "Born to Run" (1997), "Merlin" (1998) and "A Dinner of Herbs" (2000).


title: Billie Whitelaw

text: Whitelaw was married to the actor Peter Vaughan from 1952 to 1966 then to the writer and drama critic Robert Muller, with whom she had a son, until his death in 1998. Her autobiography "Billie Whitelaw... Who He?" was published by St. Martin's Press in 1996.


title: Billie Whitelaw

text: Having divided her time between a home in Hampstead, north London, and a cottage in Suffolk, Whitelaw spent the last four years of her life as a resident of Denville Hall, the actors’ retirement and nursing home in Northwood, Hillingdon. She died there following a bout of pneumonia on 21 December 2014, aged 82.


title: Billie Whitelaw

text: Whitelaw was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in the 1991 Birthday Honours.


title: Aretha Franklin discography

text: This discography documents the releases of albums and singles by Aretha Franklin. Widely regarded as the ""Queen of Soul"", she has sold over 75 million records worldwide, making her one of the best-selling R&B female artists of all time. Billboard ranks her as the 34th Greatest Artist of all time. Franklin has scored 73 entries on the Billboard Hot 100, the most among women for nearly 40 years until Nicki Minaj passed her in 2017. "Billboard" listed her as the 41st Top Gospel Artist of the 2010s. She has accumulated 20 No. 1 hits on Billboard's Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs.


title: Aretha Franklin discography

text: Amazing Grace remains the biggest-selling live gospel album of all time, being certified 2× Platinum in the US. According to RIAA database, Franklin has sold 16.5 million albums and singles in the US (based on certifications).


title: Aretha Franklin discography

text: She is ranked first among female vocalists with the most "Billboard" chart hits during the rock era (1955–2012) with a total of 88 according to Joel Whitburn's Record Research.


title: Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick

text: Ernest Augustus (Ernest Augustus Christian George; ; 17 November 1887 – 30 January 1953) was the reigning Duke of Brunswick from 2 November 1913 to 8 November 1918. He was a grandson of George V of Hanover, whom the Prussians had deposed from the Hanoverian throne in 1866, and a maternal grandson of Christian IX of Denmark.


title: Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick

text: Ernest Augustus was born at Penzing near Vienna, the sixth and youngest child of former Crown Prince Ernest Augustus of Hanover and his wife, Princess Thyra of Denmark. His great-grandfather, Prince Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, the fifth son of George III of the United Kingdom, became king of Hanover in 1837 because Salic Law barred Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom, from inheriting the Hanoverian throne.


title: Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick

text: His father succeeded as pretender to the Hanoverian throne and as Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale in the peerage of Great Britain in 1878. The younger Ernest Augustus became heir apparent to the dukedom of Cumberland and to the Hanoverian claim upon the deaths of his two elder brothers, George and Christian. Through his mother, he was a first cousin of Christian X of Denmark, Haakon VII of Norway, George V of the United Kingdom, Constantine I of Greece and Nicholas II of Russia.


title: Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick

text: In 1884, the reigning Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, a distant cousin, died. Since the younger branch of the House of Guelph ended with him, under house rules it would have passed to the Duke of Cumberland, who immediately claimed the throne. However, the Imperial Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, managed to get the Federal Council (Bundesrat) of the German Empire to rule that the Duke of Cumberland would disturb the peace of the empire if he ascended the throne of Brunswick. Bismarck did this because the duke had never formally renounced his claims to the kingdom of Hanover, which had been annexed to Prussia in 1866 following the end of the Austro-Prussian War (Hanover had sided with losing Austria). Instead, Prince Albrecht of Prussia became the regent of Brunswick. After Prince Albrecht's death in 1906, the duke offered that he and his elder son, Prince George, would renounce their claims to the Duchy in order to allow Ernest Augustus, his only other surviving son, to take possession of the Duchy, but this option was rejected by the Bundesrat and the regency continued, this time under Duke Johann Albrecht of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, who had previously acted as regent for his nephew in Mecklenburg.


title: Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick

text: When Ernest Augustus's older brother George died in an automobile accident on 20 May 1912, the German Emperor, Wilhelm II, sent a message of condolence to the Duke of Cumberland. In response to this friendly gesture, the Duke sent his only surviving son, Ernest Augustus, to Berlin to thank the Emperor for his message. Ernest Augustus and Wilhelm II were third cousins through George III of the United Kingdom. In Berlin, Ernest Augustus met and fell in love with the emperor's only daughter, Princess Victoria Louise of Prussia.


title: Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick

text: On 24 May 1913, Ernest Augustus and Victoria Louise, third cousins once removed through descent from George III's sons King Ernest Augustus of Hanover and Edward, Duke of Kent, were married to each other. This marriage ended the decades-long rift between the Houses of Hohenzollern and Hanover. The wedding of Prince Ernest Augustus and Princess Victoria Louise was also the last great gathering of European sovereigns before the outbreak of the Great War. In addition to the German Emperor and Empress and the Duke and Duchess of Cumberland, King George V and Queen Mary of the United Kingdom and Tsar Nicholas II attended. Upon the announcement of his betrothal to Princess Victoria Louise in February 1913, Ernest Augustus swore allegiance to the German Empire and accepted a commission as a cavalry captain and company commander in the Zieten–Hussars, a Prussian Army regiment in which his grandfather (George V) and great-grandfather (Ernest Augustus) had been colonels. Two imprisoned British spies, Captain Stewart and Captain Trench, were pardoned and released by the German Emperor as a wedding present to the United Kingdom. George V of the United Kingdom had given consent to the marriage on 17 March 1913, as required by the Royal Marriages Act.


title: Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick

text: On 27 October 1913, the Duke of Cumberland formally renounced his claims to the duchy of Brunswick in favor of his surviving son. The following day, the Federal Council voted to allow Ernest Augustus to become the reigning Duke of Brunswick. The new Duke of Brunswick formally took possession of his duchy on 1 November. He received a promotion to colonel in the Prussian Zieten Hussars. The new duke and duchess of Brunswick moved into Brunswick Palace in the capital of Brunswick and began their family with the birth of their eldest son, Prince Ernest Augustus, less than a year after their wedding.


title: Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick

text: In 1917, the British dukedom of Ernest Augustus's father, and his own title as a Prince of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, were suspended by the Titles Deprivation Act 1917, which took effect in 1919, as a result of the Duke's service in the German army during the war. On 8 November 1918, Ernest Augustus was forced to abdicate his throne, as were all the other German kings, grand dukes, dukes, and princes during the German Revolution of 1918–1919. Thus, when his father died in 1923, Ernest Augustus did not succeed to his father's title of Duke of Cumberland. For the next thirty years, Ernest Augustus remained as head of the House of Hanover, living in retirement on his various estates, mainly Blankenburg Castle in Germany and Cumberland Castle in Gmunden, Austria. He also owned Marienburg Castle near Hanover, although rarely ever living there until 1945.


title: Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick

text: While Ernest Augustus never officially joined the Nazi Party, he donated funds and was close to several leaders. As a former British prince, Ernest Augustus, as well as Victoria Louise, desired a "rapprochement" between England and Germany. Ostensibly desiring to pursue an alliance with the UK, in the mid-1930s, Adolf Hitler took advantage of their sentiment by asking the couple to arrange a match between their daughter Princess Frederica and the Prince of Wales. The Duke and Duchess of Brunswick refused, believing that the age difference was too great. After his abdication in 1936, Edward VIII and his wife visited "the Cumberlands" at Cumberland Castle in Gmunden, Austria. In 1938 Princess Frederica married Prince Paul of Greece, brother and heir-presumptive of King George II of Greece.


title: Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick

text: By the time the Second World War ended in Europe in April 1945, he and his family were staying at Blankenburg. A few days before Blankenburg was handed over to the Red Army by British and U.S. forces in late 1945, to become part of East Germany, the family was able to move to Marienburg Castle, at the time located in the British Occupation Zone, with all their furniture, transported by British Army trucks, on the order of .


title: Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick

text: He lived to see one of his children become a consort to a monarch – in 1947 his daughter Frederica became Queen of the Hellenes when her husband Prince Paul of Greece and Denmark succeeded his brother as King. The Duke of Brunswick is also the maternal grandfather of Queen Sophia of Spain and the former King Constantine II of Greece.


title: Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick

text: Ernest Augustus died at Marienburg Castle in 1953. He was interred, later to be joined by the remains of his wife, in front of the Royal Mausoleum in the Berggarten at Herrenhausen Gardens in Hanover, which is the burial chapel of King Ernest Augustus of Hanover and his wife. After the destruction of the former Leine Palace during the Second World War, the remains of the Duke's ancestors King George I of Great Britain and his parents were also moved to the mausoleum.


title: Stade Brestois 29

text: Stade Brestois 29 or simply Brest, is a French football club based in Brest. It was founded in 1950 following the merger of five local patronages, including Armoricaine de Brest, founded in 1903.


title: Stade Brestois 29

text: In its early years, the club made a rapid rise in the hierarchy of regional football, to the point of being promoted to the French Amateur Championship, the third level of French football, in 1958. The club joined the Second Division in 1970, then finally reached the First Division in 1979. It experienced its sporting peak between 1981 and 1991 under the presidency of François Yvinec, playing nine seasons in the elite in ten years. In 1991, the club was demoted before filing for bankruptcy a few months later. The club only returned to the second division in 2004 and Ligue 1 in 2010. At the end of the 2012–2013 season, it had respectively thirteen and seventeen seasons in the French First and Second divisions.


title: Stade Brestois 29

text: The Brest club has been chaired, since 10 May 2016, by entrepreneur Denis Le Saint and led by tactician Michel Der Zakarian since 1 July 2021.


title: Stade Brestois 29

text: Sources do not agree as to the date of the club's creation. According to the version presented by the current club, it was born in 1950 from the merger of five local patronages. However, the Stade Brestois when it was created took over the structures and the place of Armoricaine de Brest, founded in 1903, of which it would therefore be the direct heir.