title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: The US Labor Department attempted to ban the Beatles from performing in the country, motivated by cultural conservatism and after lobbying from the American Federation of Musicians. The government sought to ban all British acts in 1965, but the financial opportunities presented by the Beatles ensured that their second North American tour went ahead. From that year onwards, right-wing Christian leaders such as Bob Larson and David Noebel were vocal in their condemnation of the Beatles' influence in the US. As a spokesman for the anti-communist Christian Crusade, Noebel denounced the band as "four mop-headed anti-Christ beatniks", and published pamphlets warning that they were destroying the morals of America's youth to facilitate a communist takeover orchestrated from Moscow. By contrast, "Pravda", the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, said the Beatles represented "a plot by the ruling classes to distract ... youngsters from politics and bitter pondering over disgraced and shattered hopes".


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: In the UK, criticism largely faded with the band's international breakthrough, as commentators recognised the Beatles' value to the economy. Some traditionalists were nevertheless outraged by the group being awarded MBEs, and the Beatles, as with rock music in general, remained the target of figures such as "Daily Mail" columnist Monica Furlong and conservative activist Mary Whitehouse. In 1967, Whitehouse campaigned against the lyric "Boy, you've been a naughty girl, you let your knickers down" in the Beatles' song "I Am the Walrus" after the BBC had aired the song as part of the band's TV film "Magical Mystery Tour". The BBC duly banned the song. The following year, Lennon's relationship with Japanese avant-garde artist Yoko Ono, for whom he abandoned his wife and son, was met with strong public disapproval and racial abuse. Lennon received further condemnation from conservatives when he returned his MBE to the Queen in November 1969. He cited his opposition to the British government's support of both US involvement in the Vietnam War and Nigeria's role in the Biafra conflict, in addition to the poor chart performance of his and Ono's second Plastic Ono Band single, "Cold Turkey".


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: The Japanese authorities viewed the band as subversive before they were appointed as MBEs in 1965. In the lead-up to the Beatles' concerts in Tokyo the following year, the visit was the subject of national debate as traditionalists were opposed to the group's influence and the decision to allow them to perform at the Nippon Budokan,<ref name="Nabhan/JT"></ref> a venue reserved for martial arts and a shrine to Japan's war dead. The Beatles received death threats<ref name="Irvin/Strokes">Irvin, Jim. "Different Strokes". In: .</ref> and ultranationalist students demonstrated outside the Budokan during their stay.


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: Shortly afterwards, the band played in Manila in the Philippines, at a time when the country was keen to project a pro-Western image with the recent inauguration of President Ferdinand Marcos. There, the Beatles' nonattendance at an official function organised by Imelda Marcos was perceived as an insult to the nation's first family; it led to recrimination in the local press, the band's security detail being withdrawn, and mob violence against them as they attempted to leave the country. Filipino writer Nick Joaquin said the situation was indicative of how the Philippines had been attracted to the Beatles' image without appreciating that their message was one advocating individuality, adventurousness and originality over the qualities that still defined the country: tradition and order. Joaquin likened the group's presence in Manila to Batman being transplanted to Thebes in Ancient Greece.


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: The band enjoyed what Epstein termed a "special relationship" with the US until late July 1966, when "Datebook" magazine published an interview that Lennon gave for the London "Evening Standard" "How Does a Beatle Live?" series. In the interview, Lennon said the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus", such was the decline of Christianity. His comments caused no significant reaction in the UK, but radio stations in the US Bible Belt soon launched a boycott of Beatles music and organised bonfires of the band's records and merchandise. For some Southern commentators, the furore over Lennon's alleged blasphemy allowed them to air their suppressed grievances regarding the Beatles' long hair and the group's support for African-American musicians. Spain and South Africa joined in the radio ban, as did other stations in the US, and the Vatican issued a statement condemning Lennon's remark.


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: At Epstein's insistence, Lennon apologised during a press conference at the start of the band's US tour. Members of the Ku Klux Klan threatened reprisals against the Beatles, particularly when they were due to play in Memphis, but the tour passed without major incident.<ref name="Runtagh/RS"></ref> Further to their experiences in Tokyo and Manila, the "Jesus" controversy confirmed the Beatles' decision to retire as live performers in 1966. Another religious controversy ensued in the US in reaction to the band's 1969 single "The Ballad of John and Yoko", due to Lennon's use of the word "Christ" and reference to crucifixion.


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: "Rubber Soul" included Lennon's "The Word", the lyrics of which anticipated the ethos behind the counterculture's 1967 Summer of Love, while "Revolver" included a number of songs whose lyrics address themes of death, isolation and transcendence from material concerns. Of "Tomorrow Never Knows", Lennon's evocation of an LSD trip, MacDonald writes that the song's message "launched the till-then élite-preserved concept of mind-expansion into pop, simultaneously drawing attention to consciousness-enhancing drugs and the ancient religious philosophies of the Orient, utterly alien to Western thought in their anti-materialism, rapt passivity, and world-sceptical focus on visionary consciousness". In author Shawn Levy's description, "Revolver" presented the Beatles as "the world's first household psychedelics, avatars of something wilder and more revolutionary than anything pop culture had ever delivered before".


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: From 1966, the Beatles began to promulgate a world view espousing LSD-inspired higher consciousness, led by Lennon and Harrison defying Epstein's insistence that the group refrain from commenting on political issues such as the Vietnam War. The controversy surrounding Lennon's "more popular than Jesus" remark reinforced their determination to speak out and furthered their standing in the emerging counterculture. Cultural commentator Mark Hertsgaard writes that the band did not directly address racism, war or social justice in their songs from this period, yet a "sensibility ... permeated their music" and "The essence of the Beatles' message was not simply that the world "had" to change, but, more importantly, that it "could" change." He sees this best exemplified in "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and says that Harrison's song "Within You Without You" "contained the album's most overt expression of the Beatles' shared belief in spiritual awareness and social change". Abbie Hoffman likened "Sgt. Pepper" to "Beethoven coming to the supermarket", adding: "It summed up so much of what we were saying politically, culturally, artistically, expressing our inner feelings and our view of the world in a way that was so revolutionary."


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: On 25 June 1967, the Beatles premiered "All You Need Is Love" live on the BBC's "Our World" satellite broadcast before an international audience estimated at 400 million. In his feature on the song in "Rolling Stone", Gavin Edwards writes that when "All You Need Is Love" was issued as a single weeks later, it reached "Number One all over the world, providing the sing-song anthem for the Summer of Love, with a sentiment that was simple but profound". Simonelli credits the song with formally announcing the arrival of flower power ideology as a mainstream concept. Psychiatrist R.D. Laing, who incorporated the Beatles' and Dylan's music and LSD in his treatment at his Kingsley Hall practice, recalled of the song's relevance: "Everyone was getting the feel of the world as a global village – as us, one species ... One of the most heartening things about the Beatles was that they gave expression to a shared sense of celebration around the world, a sense of the same sensibility."


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: In response to the political events and more turbulent atmosphere of 1968, the Beatles released "Revolution", in the lyrics to which Lennon espoused a pacifist agenda over violent confrontation. The song inspired the first in-depth debate regarding the connection between rock music and politics, where beforehand music journalists and political radicals in the US had mostly viewed their respective fields in isolation. Lennon's stance drew heavy criticism from New Left writers as the single's release coincided with the violent subjugation of Vietnam War protestors at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and condemnation in the West of the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia and its crushing of attempts to introduce democratic reforms there. With its more universal message, McCartney's "Hey Jude", the A-side of the single, was adopted as an anthem by Czech citizens in their struggle. "The Beatles" was similarly attacked by the radical left. While the counterculture adopted "Piggies" as an anti-establishment anthem, many radicals viewed the band's use of parody and satire throughout the album as evidence of their disengagement with pressing political issues.


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: The Beatles' influence on the more radicalised sectors of the counterculture and the New Left declined as the band refused to engage in direct activism against the establishment. Lennon furthered his stance by campaigning for world peace with Ono in 1969 and, in Simonelli's description, remained the "most popular political voice in rock music" until 1972. The Beatles retained their social influence through to the band's break-up, and their idealism continued to resonate in the politics of the Vietnam War era. Released in September 1969, "Abbey Road" included "Come Together", which Lennon began writing as a campaign song for Timothy Leary's bid to become governor of California. Harrison's "Here Comes the Sun" was adopted by George McGovern in his campaign for the US presidency, the initial success of which, according to Schaffner, was a "triumph for the counterculture's attempt to wield power via conventional electoral politics".


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: From "Revolver" onwards, analysing the Beatles' lyrics for hidden meaning became a popular trend in the US. The lyrics on the band's 1968 double album progressed from being vague to open-ended and prone to misinterpretation, such as "Glass Onion" (the line "the walrus was Paul") and "Piggies" ("what they need's a damn good whacking"). In August 1969, Hollywood actress Sharon Tate and six other individuals were murdered by members of the Manson Family, acting on Charles Manson's interpretation of White Album songs such as "Helter Skelter", "Piggies" and "Revolution 9". Within weeks, unrelated rumours of McCartney's death began to spread, based on perceived clues left in the Beatles' lyrics and record sleeves. It was alleged that he had been replaced by a look-alike.


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: MacDonald cites Manson's Helter Skelter scenario as an example of the many "crackpot fixations" that the Beatles inspired in their drug-influenced audience, and a dangerous escalation of the otherwise harmless obsession that encouraged rumours such as the "Paul is dead" conspiracy theory. Schaffner described the latter as "the most monumental hoax since Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" broadcast persuaded thousands of panicky New Jerseyites that Martian invaders were in the vicinity". Its escalation in 1969, particularly in the US, was informed by the counterculture's disillusionment with society and, according to American broadcaster Vin Scelsa, indicative of how songs by the Beatles, Dylan and the Rolling Stones were received as "personal message[s], worthy of endless scrutiny" and "guidelines on how to live your life".<ref name="Noden/MojoSpecialRevolution"></ref>


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: Both the Manson murders and the Beatles' break-up are often cited as marking the decade's closure. According to Burns, the break-up in April 1970 was "like the Kennedy assassination all over again, or one's parents divorcing". The event was afforded the attention of a presidential assassination or the 1969 Moon landing, as commentators analysed the causes and speculated about the possibilities of a reunion. Burns writes that, throughout the 1970s, there persisted a sense that if the Beatles re-formed, it might revive "the 'era' that had seemed to have passed. When Lennon died, that truly was the end of ... the innocent, comforting, naive belief that the world at large could, somehow, be 'together' in the 1960s sense of the term."


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: According to music critic Jim DeRogatis, the Beatles are seen as the "Acid Apostles of the New Age". The band's connection with recreational drugs was important to their position as leaders of the counterculture, as was their embrace of Indian religion. According to Kureishi, drugs had long been connected to music, but "the Beatles were the first to parade their particular drug use – marijuana and LSD – without shame ... The Beatles made taking drugs seem an enjoyable, fashionable and liberating experience, like them, you would see and feel in ways you hadn't imagined possible."


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: The band's drug-taking became public knowledge with the release of "Sgt. Pepper". "A Day in the Life", the album's closing track, was banned by the BBC for an alleged drug reference in the line "I'd love to turn you on"; with "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", the title was widely read as a code for LSD. Although he had long resisted Lennon and Harrison's urging before trying the drug, McCartney announced in a "Life" article in June 1967 that he had taken LSD. When asked to confirm his statement by an ITN reporter, McCartney repeated that he had taken the drug. In the UK, according to MacDonald, the admission "brought howls of righteous anger on their heads" in a manner similar to the 1966 Jesus controversy. As a show of support, Lennon, Harrison and Epstein announced that they too had taken LSD. In July 1967, all four Beatles added their signatures to a petition demanding the legalisation of marijuana and paid for its publication in a full-page ad in "The Times".


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: McCartney's admission formalised the link between rock music and drugs, and, as in the 1966 controversy, attracted scorn from American religious leaders and conservatives. In early August 1967, Harrison made a well-publicised visit to the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, the epicentre of the counterculture during the Summer of Love, which was viewed as a further endorsement of the drug culture. Leary, an LSD advocate whose text "The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead" Lennon had used in his lyrics for "Tomorrow Never Knows", declared the Beatles to be "the wisest, holiest, most effective avatars (Divine Incarnate, God Agents) that the human race has ever produced". A United Nations report stated that the Beatles, along with the Rolling Stones and other rock bands, promoted drug use through their music, and that young listeners were following their lead. Bray writes that, rather than advocating drug-taking as a road to "mindless oblivion", the Beatles' espousal of LSD was focused on enlightenment and was therefore one of their "key legacies to the counterculture".


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: In early 1967, the Beatles' elevated status as MBEs ensured that Harrison and his wife, English model Pattie Boyd, were allowed to leave a party in Sussex before Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones were arrested on drugs charges. As a result of McCartney's LSD admission, however, the British authorities' indulgence of the band started to wane significantly. According to Harris, the turning point was "Magical Mystery Tour", which was broadcast on Boxing Day 1967 and earned the group their first scathing reviews. In October 1968, Lennon and Ono were arrested on charges of cannabis possession; Lennon maintained he had been warned of the raid and that the drugs were planted by the arresting officers from the London Drug Squad. The same senior officer, Norman Pilcher, arrested Harrison and Boyd for possession in March 1969. Harrison also said that the evidence, which was found on a carpet, was planted, since: "I keep my socks in the sock drawer and my stash in the stash box. Anything else they must have brought."


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: With the release of "Cold Turkey", which the other Beatles had rejected as a possible single, Lennon made heroin addiction the subject of a pop hit for the first time. As part of an escalating national debate that had triggered an investigation by the US Congress, Vice-president Spiro Agnew launched a campaign in 1970 to address the issue of American youth being "brainwashed" into taking drugs through the music of the Beatles and other rock artists.


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: The Beatles' interest in Eastern religions is described by MacDonald as arguably the "most striking example" of the band's ability to transform a minor social trend into a world-wide phenomenon and thereby "magnify" cultural developments during the second half of the 1960s. From 1967 to 1968, the group were promoters of Transcendental Meditation and the teachings of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, which resulted in Transcendental Meditation becoming a worldwide phenomenon. As a result of the coverage given to the Beatles' interest, words such as "mantra" and "guru" became commonly used in the West for the first time. While the band's new, anti-LSD message was met with approval, their championing of the Maharishi and his TM technique was often the subject of confusion and ridicule in the mainstream press, particularly in Britain.


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: Before departing for the Maharishi's ashram in Rishikesh in February 1968, the Beatles recorded two songs that reflected their interest in TM: Lennon's "Across the Universe" and Harrison's "The Inner Light". Philip Goldberg, in his book "American Veda", writes that the band's stay in Rishikesh "may have been the most momentous spiritual retreat since Jesus spent those forty days in the wilderness". Despite their later rejection of the Maharishi, the Beatles generated wider interest in Transcendental Meditation, which encouraged the study of Eastern spirituality in Western popular culture.


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: MacDonald credits Harrison with inspiring "the West's mainstream acquaintance with Hindu religion and creat[ing] the late-'60s so-called Spiritual Revival", and he deems this "a fundamental cultural sea-change ... [and] an abiding testimony to Harrison's importance as a counter-cultural figure". Spiritual biographer Gary Tillery also recognises the Beatles, or more specifically Harrison, as having "abruptly brought Indian spirituality to everyday awareness" through their association with the Maharishi. Tillery writes that, while the influence of Indian gurus such as Vivekananda, Yogananda, the Maharishi and Prabhupada was well established by the late 1960s, it was the Beatles' endorsement of their respective philosophies that most contributed to yoga and meditation centres becoming ubiquitous in Western cities and towns over subsequent decades. According to author Andrew Grant Jackson:


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: The Beats had promoted Buddhism since the 1950s, but it was George Harrison's songs espousing Hindu philosophy and featuring Indian musicians, and the Beatles' study of Transcendental Meditation, that truly kick-started the human potential movement of the 1970s (rebranded New Age in the 1980s). In this way, the musicians helped expand the freedom of religion the United States was founded on to encompass options outside the Judeo-Christian tradition.


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: The Beatles introduced new methods of artistic presentation for pop musicians. They were the first band to be fully marketed through television and continued to find new ways to disseminate their music through the medium. As live performers, they pioneered the world tour and stadium concerts, as sports stadiums became the primary venues for rock tours. Gould says that, aside from their influence on pop songwriting, the Beatles played "a leading role in revolutionizing the way that popular records were made, the way that popular records were listened to ... and the role that popular music itself would play in people's lives".


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: The band's achievements were a key factor in the music industry becoming a multi-million-dollar enterprise and one that approached Hollywood film-making in terms of worldwide influence and turnover. In 1965, the Beatles' music publishing company Northern Songs was floated on the London Stock Exchange, a move that was unprecedented for a band's song catalogue. The flotation defied analysts' predictions by becoming a major financial success.


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: Both sides of the Beatles' singles were often major US hits, an achievement that helped elevate the perception of a B-side from its role as a disposable song. The group's December 1965 single pairing "Day Tripper" and "We Can Work It Out" was the first example of a double A-side single in Britain. Its success popularised the format and, in giving equal treatment to two songs, allowed recording artists to show their versatility.<ref name="White/OCC"></ref> The band issued further double A-sides – "Eleanor Rigby" / "Yellow Submarine", "Strawberry Fields Forever" / "Penny Lane" and "Something" / "Come Together" – when they thought that both songs in the pairing were equally strong. Their "Magical Mystery Tour" double EP, containing the six new songs from the TV film, was also the first example of that format being used in the UK.


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: In January 1966, "Billboard" magazine cited the initial US sales of "Rubber Soul" (1.2 million copies over nine days) as evidence of teenage record-buyers increasingly moving towards the LP format. According to Gould, "Sgt. Pepper"s impact was such that it "revolutionize[d] both the aesthetics and the economics of the record business in ways that far outstripped the earlier pop explosions triggered by the Elvis phenomenon of 1956 and the Beatlemania phenomenon of 1963". Although "The Beatles" was not the first rock double album, it was the longest up to that time, at close to 94 minutes.


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: The Beatles' album covers furthered the medium as an art form and were widely imitated. Doggett recognises the cover photos for "With the Beatles" and "Rubber Soul" as examples of the band's image being used to "test the limits of the portrait", a movement that was also reflected in the cover designs for contemporary albums by Dylan and the Rolling Stones. Robert Freeman's monochrome cover shot for "With the Beatles" (or Capitol's "Meet the Beatles!" in the US) departed from convention, and alarmed EMI, by showing the band members looking austere and unsmiling. This stance was heightened in Freeman's cover portrait for "Beatles for Sale", which departed further from the standard pop LP by reducing the album title to minuscule type and otherwise making no mention of the band's name. According to Schaffner, each Beatles LP cover represented a "revolution in artwork" starting with "Rubber Soul". The latter featured a distorted image of the band's faces, which were nevertheless so instantly recognisable by 1965 that no artist credit was necessary.


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: For the US LP "Yesterday and Today" in 1966, the Beatles supplied Capitol with a cover showing them in butcher's white coats and clutching raw meat and dismembered dolls. Known as the "butcher cover", it was intended as a comment on the Vietnam War, although the photo was also interpreted as a criticism of Capitol's policy of altering the content of Beatles albums for the North American market. American disc jockeys and retailers were appalled by the image; "KRLA Beat" magazine described it as "the most nauseating album cover ever seen in the US". Capitol soon recalled all copies of the album and replaced the cover with a less provocative band portrait. The episode predated cover controversies such as those for LPs by the Rolling Stones (with "Beggars Banquet") and Blind Faith in the late 1960s and by Alice Cooper, Mom's Apple Pie, Roxy Music and Golden Earring in the 1970s.


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: Writing in their book "The Art of the LP", Johnny Morgan and Ben Wardle say the Beatles were arguably the leaders in "creating identity" through album artwork, an approach they consider motivated by the group's retirement as live performers, as well as the catalyst for record company art designers to incorporate drug allusions in their LP covers following the example set by "Revolver" and "Sgt. Pepper". The design for "Revolver" was markedly different from LP covers of 1966, particularly in its eschewing of vibrant psychedelic colours for black-and-white; in Gould's view, it supported the aesthetic of the music and the Beatles' determination to reinvent themselves on record. Created by Klaus Voormann, the band's friend from their years in Hamburg, the cover combined line-drawing caricatures of the Beatles' faces with a collage of older photos. In the line drawings, Voormann drew inspiration from the work of the nineteenth-century illustrator Aubrey Beardsley, who was the subject of a long-running exhibition at London's Victoria and Albert Museum and highly influential on fashion and design themes of the time. Voormann placed the various photos within the tangle of hair connecting the four faces, thereby, in Rodriguez's description, capturing both the long hair synonymous with the band's public image and "the explosion of ideas that were pouring out of their heads".


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: According to author Ian Inglis, the cover for "Sgt. Pepper" is widely recognised for demonstrating an "unprecedented correspondence between music and art, time and space", and it initiated an acceptance of album artwork as an "integral component" of the listening experience. The LP's gatefold packaging included cardboard cutouts and, for the first time in a pop album, printed lyrics. The inclusion of the lyrics infuriated sheet music publishers, who lost the revenue from sales of the songs' sheet music. In the late 1990s, the BBC included the "Sgt. Pepper" cover in its list of British masterpieces of twentieth-century art and design, placing it ahead of the red telephone box, Mary Quant's miniskirt, and the Mini motorcar. The cover of "The Beatles" contrasted with that of "Sgt. Pepper" by featuring a minimalist concept of plain white, with the title rendered in plain type. Each copy was individually numbered on the cover, thereby lending a uniqueness to each one and reflecting a tenet of conceptual art.


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: "A Hard Day's Night" broke new ground in the field of British and American musical feature films, particularly in its abandoning of the genre's standard rags-to-riches premise for a comedic presentation of the artists playing themselves. Film historian Stephen Glynn describes it as "the canonical pop music film". He highlights the innovative techniques Lester uses in the sequence for "Can't Buy Me Love", as does Saul Austerlitz, who deems it the precursor to the modern music video. Lester's use of devices from the European art-house tradition, combined with the film's comedic and satirical qualities, ensured that "A Hard Day's Night" defied easy categorisation and won critical recognition for the rock music film. Andrew Sarris of "The Village Voice" called it "the "Citizen Kane" of jukebox musicals".


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: With "Help!", Lester presented the Beatles in "one of the central surrealist texts" of the 1960s, according to Bray. The film uses pop art visuals and satirises James Bond films, particularly the latter's depiction of the British Secret Service as an efficiently run organisation, and one enjoying a level of influence equal to its US counterpart in their shared operations. In addition to inspiring "The Monkees", the film influenced the "Batman" TV series.


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: Starting with "Day Tripper" and "We Can Work It Out" in late 1965, the band filmed promotional clips for their singles to circumvent the industry norm of having to make numerous personal appearances on television shows. The Beatles' promotional clips anticipated the music video and the rise of MTV in the 1980s. The clips for "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane" are considered pioneering works in the medium. Both avoided performance of the song in response to the 1966 Musicians' Union's ban on miming on TV; in the case of "Strawberry Fields Forever", the clip employs abstract imagery and features reverse film effects, stop motion animation, jump-cuts from day- to night-time, superimposition and close-up shots. Referring to the 1968 clip for "Hey Jude" and the sight of the Beatles engulfed by a crowd made up of "young, old, male, female, black, brown, and white" fans, Hertsgaard describes it as "a quintessential sixties moment, a touching tableau of contentment and togetherness".


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: "Yellow Submarine", the Beatles' third film for United Artists, provided a revolution in animated film and allowed animators to fully express ideas using psychedelic visuals. It marked a departure from the confines of Disney's productions and was credited with saving the feature-length animated film. Austerlitz describes the Beatles' rooftop performance of "Get Back" as "legendary". Filmed in January 1969 for the finale to the United Artists documentary film "Let It Be", the clip was homaged by U2 in the video for their 1987 single "Where the Streets Have No Name" and by Red Hot Chili Peppers in the video for their 2011 single "The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie".


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: In Gould's description, the Beatles' career trajectory was largely self-determined and free of the show business considerations that had limited and defined the model of stardom represented by Presley and Sinatra. The band's decision to retire from live performance in 1966 and become a group focused solely on studio recording had no precedent. Given the premium placed on concerts, the press assumed the Beatles were due to break up. From that year onwards, according to Everett, their albums "each suggested ... a different set of rules and that these rules were dictated by the artists". Barry Miles, a leading figure in the 1960s London underground, described "Revolver" as the "step-change" that signalled "the way forward for all rock musicians who wondered if there was life after teen scream status".


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: According to Doyle Greene, while academics disagree on whether the Beatles were modernists or postmodernists, "Sgt. Pepper" "arguably marked rock's music's entry into postmodernism as opposed to high-modernism". At McCartney's suggestion, the group adopted alter egos as members of the fictitious Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, an approach that inspired similar practices by glam rock acts of the 1970s. McCartney assumed an unofficial leadership role of the Beatles following Epstein's death in August 1967, but his bandmates soon challenged this position after the critical failure of "Magical Mystery Tour". Stark cites the TV film as the first example of the Beatles being afflicted by "Michael Jordan syndrome", in that they excelled as songwriters and recording artists but mistakenly believed that their talents would transfer effectively to film and business projects.


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: The group recorded their 1968 double album in an often divisive atmosphere, which was partly a backlash against the level of McCartney's involvement in the band's activities. The postmodern traits of politics, parody and pastiche were the subject of adverse scrutiny on "The Beatles". Everett says that for the majority of baby boomers, the White Album represents "the double album" of the era. Cultural critic Camille Paglia likened the Beatles' final recording projects – the "Get Back" filmed rehearsals, which subsequently produced "Let It Be", and "Abbey Road" – to the last phase in a "tripartite pattern" that typified the early, high and late periods of painters such as Picasso and Donatello; within this final phase, just as "major artists revolt, resimplify", the band sought to abandon the studio sophistication of "Sgt. Pepper". "Abbey Road" reflected a compromise in the diverging artistic visions of Lennon and McCartney but became the Beatles' best-selling album. In Stark's description, some critics came to view the LP as the band's "farewell to their fans and an attack on 'selfishness and self-gratification'", particularly through McCartney's closing statement in the side two "Long Medley".


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: The Beatles founded Apple Corps in January 1968. The company was intended as an alternative system of cultural production and consumption, run on countercultural principles whereby artists would not have to conform to established industry practice. McCartney likened its ethos to "Western communism". Schaffner described Apple Corps as "a Pepperland of their own" and "the first multi-million dollar, multi-media conglomerate to be operated both by and for the turned-on generation without any interference from the 'men in suits'".


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: One of several divisions within the conglomerate was Apple Records, which Burns calls "the first record label of any consequence started by a band". The EMI-distributed label allowed the band members to further their individual interests and support artists of their choice, and it was a rare example of an artist-run label that progressed beyond a vanity project.<ref name="Rose/NPR"></ref> Philo writes that, with the international success of the singles "Hey Jude" and Mary Hopkin's "Those Were the Days", "Apple's launch was comfortably the most successful label launch of all time." By 1970, with Harrison and McCartney as its principal producers, it had launched the international careers of acts such as Billy Preston, James Taylor and Badfinger.


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: Along with its subsidiary Zapple Records, Apple provided an outlet for Lennon to present himself as a fully fledged avant-garde artist in his collaborations with Ono, a direction that was at odds with the Beatles' work. In doing so, according to Schaffner, Lennon attracted ridicule and admiration alike as his work resembled "a one-way mirror that offered the world a clearer, more intimate picture of a celebrity than it had ever before known on such a scale". Harrison also issued solo albums on the label in the late 1960s, starting with the "Wonderwall Music" soundtrack. Author Peter Lavezzoli's describes the top 20 UK chart placing of the Radha Krishna Temple's "Hare Krishna Mantra" single, which Harrison produced in 1969, as an "astonishing achievement" that was indicative of the Beatles' ability to influence by association. Until the label's closure in the mid-1970s, Apple had the highest success rate of any British record company with regard to UK chart hits.


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: While Apple Corps soon floundered, it provided the inspiration for corporate philosophies adopted by companies such as Ben & Jerry's, Apple Computer, Inc. and Google. Beatles historian Bruce Spizer identifies the Apple iPod as the realisation of Lennon's idea of combining music, film and electronics.


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: Music journalist Mark Kemp credits the Beatles with leading pop music's expansion into styles such as world music, psychedelia, avant-pop and electronica, and attracting a bohemian audience that had previously focused on jazz and folk. According to Luhrssen and Larson, the Beatles affected every genre of rock music except jazz rock. Together with the Byrds, they are commonly credited with launching the popularity of the "jangly" sound that defined jangle pop. Harrison was one of the first people to own a Rickenbacker 360/12, an electric guitar with twelve strings. His use of this guitar during the recording of "A Hard Day's Night" helped to popularise the model, and the jangly sound became so prominent that "Melody Maker" termed it the Beatles' "secret weapon". Roger McGuinn liked the effect so much that he made it his signature guitar sound with the Byrds.


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: Within a year of their 1964 meeting, the Beatles and Dylan adopted elements of each other's respective genres, rock and folk, into their music. Both acts became a significant influence on the folk rock movement that followed in 1965. In Jackson's view, it was Harrison's twelve-string arpeggios at the end of the Beatles' July 1964 single, "A Hard Day's Night", that "birthed" the folk-rock sound. Dubbed for the Byrds' debut single, a cover of Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man", the term "folk rock" referred to "Dylanesque lyrics combined with rock rhythm and Beatlesque harmonies". In response to the Byrds, the Beatles developed the jangle-pop sound of folk rock with the treble-heavy guitars on the "Rubber Soul" tracks "If I Needed Someone" and "Nowhere Man". Gould describes the altered US edition of "Rubber Soul" as the release that encouraged "legions of folk-music enthusiasts" to embrace pop. According to "The Encyclopedia of Country Music", building on the "Beatles for Sale" track "I Don't Want to Spoil the Party", "Rubber Soul" was as an early example of country rock, anticipating the Byrds' 1968 album "Sweetheart of the Rodeo".


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: According to author Carl Caferelli, while the Who have been credited for heralding the power pop genre, "the story really begins circa 1964, with the commercial ascension of the Beatles in America." He recognises the Beatles as the embodiment of the "pop band" ideal. Only a few acts continued the tradition of Beatles-style pop during the first half of the 1970s, but late in the decade, there was a renewed interest in the music and culture of the 1960s, with examples such as the "Beatlemania" musical and the growing mod revival. From the mid-1970s onwards, power pop bands drew inspiration from the jangle guitars, vocal harmonies and sense of "teenage innocence" that had been characteristics of the Merseybeat sound first popularised by the Beatles. In a 1991 "Los Angeles Times" article covering newer power pop bands, Chris Willman wrote that many of the groups were "very" influenced by the Beatles, although "not always directly", as some of the musicians said that they were instead predominately influenced by 1970s and 1980s artists who emulated the Beatles.


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: In his role as the Beatles' record producer, George Martin is generally credited with helping to popularise the idea of the recording studio as an instrument used for in-studio composition. Although he was nominally the Beatles' producer, however, from 1964 he ceded control to the band, allowing them to use the studio as a workshop for their ideas and later as a sound laboratory. Musicologist Olivier Julien writes that the Beatles' "gradual integration of arranging and recording into one and the same process" began as early as 1963, but developed in earnest during the sessions for "Rubber Soul" and "Revolver" and "ultimately blossomed" during the sessions for "Sgt. Pepper". In acquiring control over the recording process, whereby Martin and his engineers became facilitators of the musicians' ideas, the Beatles reversed the strict hierarchy that had long been in place at EMI. In addition to inspiring other artists, their example helped break the hold that EMI and Decca Records had on the British recording industry, leading to the growth of independent studios there, including the Beatles' own Apple Studio.


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: In Everett's description, "Revolver" was both an "innovative example" of electronic music and a work that "advanced the leading edge of the rock world". The album makes full use of an assortment of studio tricks such as varispeed and backwards (or backmasked) taping; according to authors Kevin Ryan and Brian Kehew, artificial double tracking (ADT), backwards recording, and close-miked drums were among the nine techniques that the "Revolver" sessions introduced into the recording world for the first time. The 1966 B-side "Rain", recorded during the "Revolver" sessions, was the first pop recording to include reversed sounds, while the album track "I'm Only Sleeping" included the first example of backwards lead guitar on a pop recording.<ref name="McCormick/Tele"></ref>


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: Citing composer and producer Virgil Moorefield's book "The Producer as Composer", author Jay Hodgson highlights "Revolver" as representing a "dramatic turning point" in recording history through its dedication to studio exploration over the "performability" of the songs, as this and subsequent Beatles albums reshaped listeners' preconceptions of a pop recording. "Tomorrow Never Knows", according to author David Howard, was one of two pop recordings that ensured that the studio "was now its own instrument" (the other being Phil Spector's "River Deep – Mountain High"). ADT soon became a standard pop production technique, and led to related developments such as the artificial chorus effect. MacDonald credits the use of damping and close-miking on Starr's drums with creating a "three-dimensional" sound that, along with other Beatles innovations, engineers in the US would soon adopt as standard practice.


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", according to Julien, represents the "epitome of the transformation of the recording studio into a compositional tool", marking the moment when "popular music entered the era of phonographic composition." Quoting a composer from the UCLA School of Music, "Time" magazine's appreciation of "Sgt. Pepper" recognised the Beatles as having adopted concepts first pioneered by the Cologne group, thereby making an "enormous contribution to electronic music". Musician and producer Alan Parsons believed that with "Sgt. Pepper", "people then started thinking that you could spend a year making an album and they began to consider an album as a sound composition and not just a musical composition. The idea was gradually forming of a record being a performance in its own right and not just a reproduction of a live performance."


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: Released on "The Beatles", the eight-minute "Revolution 9" was an overt exercise in electronic music and the avant-garde. MacDonald identifies the track as another example of the Beatles introducing a previously elite scene to a mainstream audience and describes it as "the world's most widely distributed avant-garde artifact". In early 1969, Harrison became one of the first musicians in the UK to own a Moog synthesizer, which the Beatles went on to use on "Abbey Road" tracks such as "Here Comes the Sun" and "I Want You (She's So Heavy)". Writing in his book on electronic music, author Thom Holmes says that in this way the Beatles were "one of the first groups to effectively integrate the sounds of the Moog into their music".


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: Music critics Robert Christgau and Mark Ellen each identify "Rubber Soul" as the album that laid the foundations for psychedelia. Citing a quantitative study of tempos in music from the era, Everett identifies it as a work that was "made more to be thought about than danced to", and an album that "began a far-reaching trend" in its slowing-down of the tempos typically used in pop and rock music. Many baroque-rock works appeared soon afterwards, particularly due to Martin's harpsichord-like solo on the track "In My Life", while the album also marked the introduction into pop of the pump organ or harmonium. "Revolver" ensured that psychedelic pop emerged from its underground roots and into the mainstream, while "Rain" originated British psychedelic rock. The chamber-orchestrated "Eleanor Rigby" is cited by Simonelli as an example of the Beatles' influence being such that, whatever the style of song, it helped to define the parameters of rock music.


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: The 1967 double A-side single "Strawberry Fields Forever" / "Penny Lane" comprised two songs in which Lennon and McCartney, respectively, celebrated their Liverpool upbringing. Simonelli writes that the songs instilled the Romantic artistic tradition as a central tenet of psychedelic rock. In MacDonald's view, "Strawberry Fields Forever" launched both the "English pop-pastoral mood" typified by bands such as Pink Floyd, Family, Traffic and Fairport Convention, and English psychedelia's LSD-inspired preoccupation with "nostalgia for the innocent vision of a child". The Mellotron's appearance on the track remains the most celebrated use of the instrument on a pop or rock recording. Together with the resonant tone of Starr's drums, the cello arrangement on "Strawberry Fields Forever" (as with "I Am the Walrus" from "Magical Mystery Tour") was much admired by other musicians and producers, and proved highly influential on 1970s bands such as Electric Light Orchestra and Wizzard.


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: According to Everett, the Beatles' "experimental timbres, rhythms, tonal structures, and poetic texts" on "Rubber Soul" and "Revolver" "encouraged a legion of young bands that were to create progressive rock in the early 1970s". "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (along with "Pet Sounds") is largely viewed as originating the progressive rock genre due to the album's lyrical unity, extended structure, complexity, eclecticism, experimentalism and influences derived from classical music forms. For several years following its release, straightforward rock and roll was supplanted by a growing interest in extended form, and numerous English psychedelic bands developed characteristics of the Beatles' music (specifically their classical influence) further than either the Beatles or contemporaneous West Coast psychedelic bands.


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: Art pop is often traced to the Beatles' first recording with a string quartet ("Yesterday") in conjunction with the group's mid-1960s contemporaries. AllMusic states that the first wave of art rock musicians were inspired by "Sgt. Pepper" and believed that for rock music to grow artistically, they should incorporate elements of European and classical music to the genre. "Sgt. Pepper" is also frequently cited as the first true concept album, a medium that became central to progressive rock. According to Moore, "Even though previous albums had set a unified mood (notably Sinatra's "Songs for Swinging Lovers"), it was on the basis of the influence of "Sgt. Pepper" that the penchant for the concept album was born."


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: Progressive soul artists at the turn of the 1970s, such as Stevie Wonder, George Clinton, and War, drew on the Beatles' album-oriented approach and experimentation with non-traditional music influences. As bandleader for Parliament and Funkadelic, Clinton specifically pointed to how the Beatles "made an art out of nonsense" on songs such as "I Am the Walrus", alongside other influences from Bob Dylan's music and "Black Power" literature.


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: Indian culture, in the form of music and mysticism, was a significant component of the Beatles' image. Following on from the Kinks, the Yardbirds and the Beatles themselves (with "Ticket to Ride") incorporating droning guitars to mimic the qualities of the Indian sitar, "Rubber Soul"s "Norwegian Wood" featured the first use of the instrument by a Western pop musician. Played by Harrison, the sitar part launched a craze that Indian classical musician Ravi Shankar termed "the great sitar explosion", as the instrument became a popular feature in raga rock and psychedelic music. The song is often identified as the first example of raga rock,<ref name="Bag/LiveMint"></ref> a subgenre that was officially launched by the Byrds with their March 1966 single "Eight Miles High".


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: "Revolver" featured two overtly Indian-styled songs: "Tomorrow Never Knows", with its foundation of heavy tambura drone, and "Love You To". According to the "Garland Encyclopedia of World Music", "Revolver" was the first major American-derived popular music to incorporate Asian techniques and instrumentation. In his book "Popular World Music", Andrew Shahriari writes that the Beatles are not usually recognised as world music artists, yet their use of Indian musical instruments, which was led by Harrison's interest, was "revolutionary" in the context of 1960s European and American popular music. While Harrison was not the only rock musician to experiment with Indian styles in the mid-1960s, the Beatles' association with the genre ensured that Indian classical music reached its widest audience, through songs such as "Within You Without You". In his 1997 book "Indian Music and the West", ethnomusicologist Gerry Farrell said that "nearly thirty years on, the Beatles' 'Indian' songs remain among the most imaginative and successful examples of this type of fusion – for example, 'Blue Jay Way' and 'The Inner Light.'"


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: The Beatles' March 1968 single "Lady Madonna" was at the forefront of a contemporary rock 'n' roll revival, which marked the end of the psychedelic era. In the song, McCartney sought to create a boogie-woogie piece in the style of Fats Domino. Harris says that in addition to anticipating similar revival recordings by the Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton, "Lady Madonna" ensured that Berry and Little Richard returned to "the rarified pedestals where the British Invasion groups had originally placed them".


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: The Beatles directly influenced the development of heavy metal in the late 1960s. "Helter Skelter" was a product of McCartney's attempt to create a sound as loud and dirty as possible, and the recording has been noted for its "proto-metal roar" by AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine. Recorded in the hard rock style with heavily distorted guitars, "Revolution" was the subject of complaints at retail level in 1968, since many listeners assumed the sound was the result of a manufacturing error.


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: Discussing Lennon's "I Want You (She's So Heavy)", "Guitar World"s Josh Hart and Damien Fanelli called the song a "bluesy rocker" that "might have inadvertently started doom metal". Jo Kendall of "Classic Rock" magazine similarly commented that the song predated "Black Sabbath's creation of doom rock by several months" and noted the "Santana-like Latin blues section" in the song. James Manning, of "Time Out London", describes the song as the foundation for stoner rock.


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: In his biographical article on the Beatles for AllMusic, Richie Unterberger states, "Their supremacy as rock icons remains unchallenged to this day, decades after their breakup in 1970." Writing in 2009, Gary Burns commented that the Beatles continue to "enjoy a canonized status" unprecedented for popular musicians and that they are "canonical figures" in each of the three categories within the rock canon: sociological, literary and musicological. He identifies them as a key influence in the foundation of hundreds of organisations and publications dedicated to serious appreciation of rock music, including the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cambridge University Press's journal "Popular Music", the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, and the University of Liverpool's Institute of Popular Music.


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: Hundreds of books have been written about the Beatles' career. Jonathan Gould says that the band "represent a bibliographical phenomenon as well as a musical one", with the group's history having become a folk tale that "has been put to many different uses by its many different narrators". He comments that the range and variety of literature is "all the more remarkable considering that, prior to the Beatles, not a single significant book had been written on the subject of rock 'n' roll". Burns states that the quality and preponderance of "scholarly, quasi-scholarly, journalistic, and fan attention" given to the band far surpasses that given to Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys. In her book "The Rock Canon", Carys Wyn Jones affords them an elevated status akin to Shakespeare's position of eminence in Harold Bloom's canon of Western literature.


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: Relevant scholarly studies range from discussions of the band's history and cultural impact to musicological work on such subjects as chord progressions, melody and automated analysis.


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: Since the early 2000s, historian Mark Lewisohn has been writing "", a three-part set of Beatles biographies whose first volume exceeds 1,700 pages. The impetus for the project was his disappointment that none of the group's biographies had approached a depth or breadth comparable to Robert A. Caro's ongoing book series, "The Years of Lyndon Johnson".


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: The Beatles continue to be viewed as representing the ideals of the 1960s. In Inglis's description, "their voices and faces were the most recognized symbols of the 'swinging sixties' and they became – and remain – the iconic images of the decade." In 2004, the band were the most-represented act in "Rolling Stone"s list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time", with seven out of 23 Beatles songs making the top 30. In 2009, Global Beatles Day was founded as an international celebration of the band's music and social message.<ref name="GBD/IndianExpress"></ref> The event takes place on 25 June each year in memory of the "Our World" performance of "All You Need Is Love".


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: Writing in "The New York Times Magazine" in 2016, cultural commentator Chuck Klosterman said that the group were "only slightly less popular now" than they were in the 1960s. He wrote that the group were "arguably" responsible for everything related to rock music, "including the very notion of a band's breaking up", and noted that no other rock group had faced unrelated assassination attempts against half its members. Klosterman concluded that, "In any reasonable world, the Beatles are the answer to the question "Who will be the Sousa of rock?"


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: In the 2000s, Presley had been the only other defunct musical act to generate as much continued news and interest as the Beatles. His mass appeal curtailed significantly by the end of the 2010s, while the Beatles' popularity has endured with younger generations. The amount of Google searches for "Beatles" spiked by 48.59% in 2019, relative to the previous four years. That same year, the Beatles' music was streamed on Spotify 1.7 billion times; 30% of listeners were between the ages of 18 and 24, followed by 25- to 29-year-olds, at 17%. In other words, almost half of listeners were aged under 30.


title: Cultural impact of the Beatles

text: As of June 2019, "Yesterday" remained one of the most covered songs in the history of recorded music, with over 2,200 versions. According to figures published by Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI), the song was played over 7 million times on American radio during the twentieth century.


title: Cheeseburger

text: A cheeseburger is a hamburger topped with cheese. Traditionally, the slice of cheese is placed on top of the meat patty. The cheese is usually added to the cooking hamburger patty shortly before serving, which allows the cheese to melt. Cheeseburgers can include variations in structure, ingredients and composition. As with other hamburgers, a cheeseburger may include toppings such as lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, bacon, mayonnaise, ketchup, and mustard.


title: Cheeseburger

text: In fast food restaurants, the cheese used in cheeseburgers is usually processed cheese. Other meltable cheeses may be used as alternatives. Common examples include cheddar, Swiss, mozzarella, blue cheese, and pepper jack. Popular restaurants that sell cheeseburgers include McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, and many more.


title: Cheeseburger

text: By the late 19th century, the vast grasslands of the Great Plains had been opened up for cattle ranching. This made it possible for many Americans to consume beef almost daily. The hamburger remains as one of the cheapest sources of beef in America.


title: Cheeseburger

text: Adding cheese to hamburgers became popular in 1920. There are several competing claims as to who created the first cheeseburger. Lionel Sternberger is reputed to have introduced the cheeseburger in 1924 at the age of 16. He was working as a fry cook at his father's Pasadena, California sandwich shop, "The Rite Spot", and "experimentally dropped a slab of American cheese on a sizzling hamburger."


title: Cheeseburger

text: An early example of the cheeseburger appearing on a menu is a 1928 menu for the Los Angeles restaurant O'Dell's which listed a cheeseburger smothered with chili for 25 cents.


title: Cheeseburger

text: Other restaurants also claim to have invented the cheeseburger. For example, Kaelin's Restaurant in Louisville, Kentucky, said it invented the cheeseburger in 1934. One year later, a trademark for the name "cheeseburger" was awarded to Louis Ballast of the Humpty Dumpty Drive-In in Denver, Colorado. According to Steak 'n Shake archives, the restaurant's founder, Gus Belt, applied for a trademark on the word in the 1930s.


title: Cheeseburger

text: An A&W Restaurants franchise in Lansing, Michigan is credited with inventing the bacon cheeseburger in 1963, putting it on the menu after repeated requests from the same customer.


title: Cheeseburger

text: The steamed cheeseburger, a variation almost exclusively served in central Connecticut, is believed to have been invented at a restaurant called Jack's Lunch in Middletown, Connecticut, in the 1930s.


title: Cheeseburger

text: The largest cheeseburger ever made weighed . It is said to have included " of bacon, of lettuce, of sliced onions, of pickles, and of cheese." This record was set in 2012 by Minnesota's Black Bear Casino, smashing the previous record of .


title: Cheeseburger

text: The ingredients used to create cheeseburgers follow similar patterns found in the regional variations of hamburgers, although most start with ground beef. Common cheeses used for topping are American, Swiss, Cheddar and other meltable cheeses. Popular toppings include lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, bacon, avocado or guacamole, sliced sautéed mushrooms, cheese sauce or chili, but the variety of possible toppings is broad.


title: Cheeseburger

text: A cheeseburger may have more than one patty or more than one slice of cheese—it is reasonably common, but by no means automatic, for the number to increase at the same rate with cheese and meat interleaved. A stack of two or more patties follows the same basic pattern as hamburgers: with two patties will be called a double cheeseburger; a triple cheeseburger has three, and while much less common, a quadruple has four.


title: Cheeseburger

text: Sometimes cheeseburgers are prepared with the cheese enclosed within the ground beef, rather than on top. This is sometimes known as a Jucy Lucy.


title: Cheeseburger

text: Traditionally, this dish breaches the kosher laws (; "kashrut") observed by Judaism as it combines ground beef and cheese. Mixtures of milk and meat (, "basar bechalav", literally "meat in milk") are prohibited according to Jewish religious law (; "halakha"), following a verse in the Book of Exodus in which Jews are forbidden from "boiling a (kid) goat in its mother's milk" ("Exod. 34:26"). This prohibition appears again in Deuteronomy. This dietary law sparked controversy in Jerusalem when McDonald's began opening franchises there that sold cheeseburgers. Since that time, McDonald's has opened both kosher and non-kosher restaurants in Israel.


title: Cheeseburger

text: In an attempt to provide a "kosher cheeseburger", a kosher restaurant in New York City created a controversial cheeseburger variation which replaces cheese with soy cheese.


title: Topsy (elephant)

text: Topsy (circa 1875 – January 4, 1903) was a female Asian elephant who was electrocuted at Coney Island, New York, in January 1903. Born in Southeast Asia around 1875, Topsy was secretly brought into the United States soon thereafter and added to the herd of performing elephants at the Forepaugh Circus, who fraudulently advertised her as the first elephant born in America. During her 25 years at Forepaugh, Topsy gained a reputation as a "bad" elephant and, after killing a spectator in 1902, was sold to Coney Island's Sea Lion Park. Sea Lion was leased out at the end of the 1902 season and during the construction of the park that took its place, Luna Park, Topsy was used in publicity stunts and also involved in several well-publicized incidents, attributed to the actions of either her drunken handler or the park's new publicity-hungry owners, Frederic Thompson and Elmer "Skip" Dundy.


title: Topsy (elephant)

text: Thompson and Dundy's end-of-the-year plans to advertise the opening of their new park, by euthanizing Topsy in a public hanging and charging admission to see the spectacle, were prevented by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The event was instead limited to invited guests and press only and Thompson and Dundy agreed to use a more sure method of strangling the elephant with large ropes tied to a steam-powered winch with both poison and electrocution planned as backup, a measure supported by the ASPCA. On January 4, 1903, in front of a small crowd of invited reporters and guests, Topsy was fed carrots laced with 460 grams of potassium cyanide, electrocuted and strangled, the electrocution being the final cause of death. Among the invited press that day was a crew from the Edison Manufacturing movie company who filmed the event. Their film of the electrocution part was released to be viewed in coin-operated kinetoscopes under the title "Electrocuting an Elephant". It is probably the first filmed death of an animal in history.


title: Topsy (elephant)

text: The story of Topsy fell into obscurity for the next 70 years but has become more prominent in popular culture, partly due to the fact that the film of the event still exists. In popular culture, Thompson and Dundy's killing of Topsy has switched attribution, with claims it was an anti-alternating current demonstration organized by Thomas A. Edison during the war of the currents. Edison was never at Luna Park and the electrocution of Topsy took place ten years after the war of currents.


title: Topsy (elephant)

text: Topsy was born in the wild around 1875 in Southeast Asia and was captured soon after by elephant traders.


title: Topsy (elephant)

text: Adam Forepaugh, owner of the Forepaugh Circus, had the elephant secretly smuggled into the United States with plans that he would advertise the baby as the first elephant born in America. At the time Forepaugh Circus was in competition with the Barnum & Bailey Circus over who had the most and largest elephants. The name "Topsy" came from a slave girl character in "Uncle Tom's Cabin".


title: Topsy (elephant)

text: Forepaugh announced to the press in February 1877 that his circus now boasted "the only baby elephant ever born on American soil". The elephant trader who sold Topsy to Forepaugh also sold elephants to P. T. Barnum and tipped Barnum off about the deception. Barnum exposed the hoax publicly and Forepaugh stopped claiming that Topsy was born in America, only advertising that she was the first elephant born outside a tropical zone.


title: Topsy (elephant)

text: At maturity, Topsy was high and long, with claims she weighed between . Over the years, Topsy gained a reputation as a "bad" elephant. In 1902, another event brought her again to prominence: the killing of spectator James Fielding Blount in Brooklyn, New York, at what was then the Forepaugh & Sells Brothers' Circus. Accounts vary as to what happened but the common story is that on the morning of May 27, 1902, a possibly drunk Blount wandered into the menagerie tent where all the elephants were tied in a line and began teasing them in turn, offering them a bottle of whiskey. He reportedly threw sand in Topsy's face and then burnt the extremely sensitive tip of her trunk with a lit cigar. Topsy threw Blount to the ground with her trunk and then crushed him with her head, knees, or foot. Newspaper reports on Blount's death contained what seem to be exaggerated accounts of Topsy's man-killing past, with claims that she killed up to 12 men, but with more common accounts that, during the 1900 season, she had killed two Forepaugh & Sells Brothers' Circus workers, one in Paris, Texas and one in Waco, Texas. Journalist Michael Daly, in his 2013 book on Topsy, could find no record of anyone being killed by an elephant in Waco; and a handler named Mortimer Loudett of Albany, New York attacked by Topsy in Paris, Texas suffered injuries but there is no record of him dying. The publicity generated by Topsy's man killing brought very large crowds to the circus to see the elephant. In June 1902 during the unloading of Topsy from a train in Kingston, New York, a spectator named Louis Dondero used a stick in his hand to "tickle" Topsy behind the ear. Topsy seized Dondero around the waist with her trunk, hoisted him high in the air and threw him back down before being stopped by a handler. Because of this attack, the owners of Forepaugh & Sell Circus decided to sell Topsy.


title: Topsy (elephant)

text: Topsy was sold in June 1902 to Paul Boyton, owner of Coney Island's Sea Lion Park, and added to the menagerie of animals on display there. The elephant's handler from Forepaugh, William "Whitey" Alt, came along with Topsy to work at the park. A bad summer season and competition with the nearby Steeplechase Park made Boyton decide to get out of the amusement park business. At the end of the year he leased Sea Lion Park to Frederick Thompson and Elmer Dundy who proceeded to redevelop it into a much larger attraction and renamed it Luna Park. Topsy was used in publicity, moving timbers and even the fanciful airship "Luna", part of the amusement ride "A Trip to the Moon", from Steeplechase to Luna Park, characterized in the media as "penance" for her rampaging ways.


title: Topsy (elephant)

text: During the moving of the "Luna" in October 1902, handler William Alt was involved in an incident where he stabbed Topsy with a pitchfork trying to get her to pull the amusement ride. When confronted by a police officer, Alt turned Topsy loose from her work harness to run free in the streets, leading to Alt's arrest. The occurrence was attributed to the handler's drinking. In December 1902, a drunk Alt rode Topsy down the town streets of Coney Island and walked, or tried to ride, Topsy into the local police station. Accounts say Topsy tried to batter her way through the station door and "she set up a terrific trumpeting", leading the officers to take refuge in the cells. The handler was fired after the incident.


title: Topsy (elephant)

text: Without Alt to handle Topsy, the owners of Luna Park, Frederick Thompson and Elmer Dundy, claimed they could no longer handle the elephant and tried to get rid of her, but they could not even give her away and no other circus or zoo would take her. On December 13, 1902, Luna Park press agent Charles Murray released a statement to the newspapers that Topsy would be put to death within a few days by electrocution. At least one local paper noted that the steady drone of events and reports regarding Topsy from the park had the hallmarks of a publicity campaign designed to get the new park continually mentioned in the papers. On January 1, 1903, Thompson and Dundy announced plans to conduct a public hanging of the elephant, set for January 3 or 4, and collect a twenty-five cents a head admission to see the spectacle. The site they chose was an island in the middle of the lagoon for the old Shoot the Chute ride where they were building the centerpiece of their new park, the 200-foot Electric Tower (the structure had reached a height of 75 feet at the time of the killing). Press agent Murray arranged media coverage and posted banners around the park and on all four sides of the makeshift gallows advertising, "OPENING MAY 2ND 1903 LUNA PARK $1,000,000 EXPOSITION, THE HEART OF CONEY ISLAND".


title: Topsy (elephant)

text: On hearing Thompson and Dundy's plans, the President of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, John Peter Haines, stepped in and forbade hanging as a "needlessly cruel means of killing [Topsy]" and also told Thompson and Dundy they could not conduct a public spectacle and charge admission. Thompson and Dundy discussed alternatives with Haines, going over methods used in previous attempts to euthanize elephants including poisoning, but that, as well as a 1901 attempt to electrocute an elephant named Jumbo II two years earlier in Buffalo, New York, were botched. After much negotiation, which included Thompson and Dundy trying to give the elephant to the ASPCA, a method of strangling the elephant with large ropes tied to a steam-powered winch was agreed upon. They also agreed they would use poisoning and electricity as well.


title: Topsy (elephant)

text: The date of Topsy's demise was finally set for Sunday, January 4, 1903. The press attention the event had received brought out an estimated 1,500 spectators and 100 press photographers as well as agents from the ASPCA to inspect the proceedings. Thompson and Dundy allowed 100 spectators into the park although more climbed through the park fence. Many more were on the balconies and roofs of nearby buildings, which were charging admission to see the event. The Electric Tower had been re-rigged with large ropes set up to strangle the elephant, which were inspected by the ASPCA agents to make sure they conformed to what had been agreed. The details of the electrocution part of the execution were handled by workers from the local power company, Edison Electric Illuminating Company of Brooklyn, under the supervision of chief electrician P. D. Sharkey. They spent the night before stringing power lines from the Coney Island electrical substation nine blocks to the park to carry alternating current they planned to redirect from a much larger plant in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. At Bay Ridge the staff was told to "get an engine ready and clear a feeder and bus to Coney Island Station".


title: Topsy (elephant)

text: Topsy was led out of her pen into the unfinished Luna Park by Carl Goliath, an expert on elephants who formerly worked for animal showman Carl Hagenbeck. Newspaper accounts of the events noted that Topsy refused to cross the bridge over the lagoon, ignoring prodding by Goliath and even bribes of carrots and apples. The owners of Luna Park then tried to get William Alt, who would not watch the killing, to lead Topsy across the bridge, but he declined an offer of $25 to coax her to her death saying he would “not for $1,000”. They finally gave up trying to get Topsy across the bridge and decided to "bring death to her". The steam engine, ropes, and the electrical lines were re-rigged to the spot where Topsy stood. The electricians attached copper-lined sandals connected to AC lines to Topsy's right fore foot and left hind foot so the charge would flow through the elephant's body. With chief electrician Sharkey making sure everyone was clear, Topsy was fed carrots laced with 460 grams of potassium cyanide by press agent Charles Murray who then backed away. At 2:45p.m. Sharkey gave a signal and an electrician on a telephone told the superintendent at Coney Island station nine blocks away to close a switch and Luna Park chief electrician Hugh Thomas closed another one at the park, sending 6,600 volts from Bay Ridge across Topsy's body for 10 seconds, toppling her to the ground. According to at least one contemporary account, she died "without a trumpet or a groan". After Topsy fell, the steam-powered winch tightened two nooses placed around her neck for 10 minutes. At 2:47, Topsy was pronounced dead. An ASPCA official and two veterinarians employed by Thompson and Dundy determined that the electric shock had killed Topsy. During the killing, the superintendent of the Coney Island station, Joseph Johansen, became "mixed up in the apparatus" when he threw the switch sending power to the park and was nearly electrocuted. He was knocked out and left with small burns from the power traveling from his right arm to his left leg.


title: Topsy (elephant)

text: Among the press the day Topsy was killed was a film crew from the Edison film company, possibly directed by Edwin S. Porter or Jacob Blair Smith. The crew shot a 74-second film of Topsy's electrocution. Within a few weeks, it was added to the films viewable in Edison kinetoscopes under the title "Electrocuting an Elephant". This was one of many short "actuality" films shot by the Edison Manufacturing Company from 1897 at Coney Island, depicting rides, bathing scenes, diving horses, and elephants. The Edison company submitted the film to the Library of Congress as a "paper print" (a photographic record of each frame of the film) for copyright purposes. The submission may have saved the film for posterity, since most films and negatives of this period decayed or were destroyed over time.


title: Topsy (elephant)

text: "Electrocuting an Elephant" does not seem to have been as popular as other Edison films, and could not be viewed at Luna Park because the attraction did not have the necessary coin-operated kinetoscopes. The film and Topsy's story fell into relative obscurity in the intervening years, and appeared as an out-of-context clip in the 1979 film "Mr. Mike's Mondo Video". In 1991, documentary maker Ric Burns made the film "Coney Island," which included a segment recounting the death of Topsy, including clips from the film "Electrocuting an Elephant".


title: Topsy (elephant)

text: In 1999 Topsy was commemorated in the Coney Island Mermaid Parade in a parade float by artist Gavin Heck. In 2003 Heck and a local arts group held a competition to select a memorial arts piece to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Topsy's death. The chosen piece, created by New Orleans artist Lee Deigaard and exhibited at the Coney Island USA museum, allowed the public to view "Electrocuting an Elephant" on a hand-cranked mutoscope while surrounded by hanging chains and standing on a copper plate.


title: Topsy (elephant)

text: In later years, portions of "Electrocuting an Elephant" have appeared in movies, music videos, TV shows, and video games. The theme of Topsy's electrocution also appears in songs, in the plot-line of several novels, and in poems such as U.S. poet laureate W. S. Merwin's "The Chain to Her Leg".


title: Topsy (elephant)

text: In popular culture, Topsy is often portrayed as being electrocuted in a public demonstration organized by Thomas Edison during the war of the currents to show the dangers of alternating current.


title: Topsy (elephant)

text: Examples of this view include a 2008 "Wired" magazine article titled "Edison Fries an Elephant to Prove His Point" and a 2013 episode of the animated comedy series "Bob's Burgers" titled "Topsy". The events surrounding Topsy took place ten years after the end of the "War". At the time of Topsy's death, Edison was no longer involved in the electric lighting business. He had been forced out of control of his company by its 1892 merger into General Electric and sold all his stock in GE during the 1890s to finance an iron ore refining venture. The Brooklyn company that still bore his name mentioned in newspaper reports was a privately owned power company no longer associated with his earlier Edison Illuminating Company. Edison himself was not present at Luna Park, and it is unclear as to the input he had in Topsy's death or even its filming since the Edison Manufacturing film company made 1,200 short films during that period with little guidance from Edison as to what they filmed. Journalist Michael Daly, in his 2013 book on Topsy, surmises that Edison would have been pleased by the proper positioning of the copper plates and that the elephant was killed by the large Westinghouse AC generators at Bay Ridge, but he shows no actual contact or communication between the owners of Luna Park and Edison over Topsy.


title: Topsy (elephant)

text: Two things that may have indelibly linked Thomas Edison with Topsy's death were the primary newspaper sources describing it as being carried out by "electricians of the Edison Company” (leading to an eventual confusing of the unrelated power company with the man), and the fact that the film of the event (like many Edison films from that period) was credited on screen to "Thomas A. Edison".


title: Polkadot (cryptocurrency)

text: Polkadot is a blockchain platform and cryptocurrency. It is designed to allow blockchains to exchange messages and perform transactions with each other without a trusted third-party. This allows for cross-chain transfers of data or assets, between different blockchains, and for decentralized applications to be built using the Polkadot Network.


title: Polkadot (cryptocurrency)

text: The Polkadot network has a primary blockchain named "relay chain" and many user-created parallel chains called "parachains". The relay chain acts as the governance layer of the network, while parachains are auctioned, enabling independent projects to create and operate their own blockchains that live within the Polkadot infrastructure.


title: Polkadot (cryptocurrency)

text: The protocol was created by the Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood, and raised over $144.3 million in its Initial coin offering in October 2017.


title: Polkadot (cryptocurrency)

text: The network uses a proof of stake consensus algorithm. The protocol used, Blind Assignment for Blockchain Extension (BABE), is derived from Ouroboros. The protocol was adapted by Gavin Wood and is developed by the Web3 Foundation with the initial implementation by Parity Technologies.


title: Polkadot (cryptocurrency)

text: Polkadot's initial block (the "genesis block") was released in May 2020. The DOT is its native token, and DOTs were released with the launch of the genesis block.


title: Selim III

text: Selim III (; ; 24 December 1761 – 28 July 1808) was the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1789 to 1807. Regarded as an enlightened ruler, the Janissaries eventually deposed and imprisoned him, and placed his cousin Mustafa on the throne as Mustafa IV. Selim was subsequently killed by a group of assassins.


title: Selim III

text: Selim III was the son of Sultan Mustafa III and his wife Mihrişah Sultan. His mother Mihrişah Sultan originated in Georgia, and when she became the Valide Sultan, she participated in reforming the government schools and establishing political corporations. His father Ottoman Sultan Mustafa III was very well educated and believed in the necessity of reforms. Mustafa III attempted to create a powerful army during the peacetime with professional, well-educated soldiers. This was primarily motivated by his fear of a Russian invasion. During the Russo-Turkish War, he fell ill and died of a heart attack in 1774. Sultan Mustafa was aware of the fact that a military reform was necessary. He declared new military regulations and opened maritime and artillery academies.


title: Selim III

text: Sultan Mustafa was very influenced by mysticism. Oracle predicted his son Selim would be a world-conqueror, so he organized a joyous feast lasting seven days. Selim was very well educated in the palace. Sultan Mustafa III bequeathed his son as his successor; however, Selim's uncle Abdul Hamid I ascended the throne after Mustafa's death. Sultan Abdul Hamid I took care of Selim and put great emphasis on his education.


title: Selim III

text: After Abdul Hamid's death, Selim succeeded him on 7 April 1789, 27 years old. Sultan Selim III was very fond of literature and calligraphy; many of his works were put on the walls of mosques and convents. He wrote many poems, especially about Crimea's occupation by Russia. He spoke Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Old Bulgarian fluently. Selim III showed great importance to patriotism and religion. He demonstrated his skills in poetry, music and was fond of fine arts and the army.


title: Selim III

text: The talents and energy with which Selim III was endowed had endeared him to the people, and great hopes were founded on his accession. He had associated much with foreigners, and was thoroughly persuaded of the necessity of reforming his state.


title: Selim III

text: However, Austria and Russia gave him no time for anything but defense, and it was not until the Peace of Iaşi (1792) that a breathing space was allowed him in Europe, while Napoleon's invasion of Egypt and Syria soon called for the empire's strongest efforts.


title: Selim III

text: Ottoman provinces from Egypt to Syria began to implement French policies and began to differ away from Istanbul after Napoleon attack.


title: Selim III

text: Selim III profited by the respite to abolish the military tenure of fiefs; he introduced salutary reforms into the administration, especially in the fiscal department, sought by well-considered plans to extend the spread of education, and engaged foreign officers as instructors, by whom a small corps of new troops called "nizam-i-jedid" were collected and drilled in 1797. This unit was composed of Turkish peasant youths from Anatolia and supplied with modern weaponry.


title: Selim III

text: These troops were able to hold their own against rebellious Janissaries in the Balkan provinces such as the Sanjak of Smederevo against its appointed Vizier Hadži Mustafa Pasha, where disaffected governors made no scruple of attempting to make use of them against the reforming sultan.


title: Selim III

text: Emboldened by this success, Selim III issued an order that in future picked men should be taken annually from the Janissaries to serve in the "nizam-i-jedid". Selim III was unable to integrate the nizam-i jedid with the rest of the army which overall limited its role in the defense of the state.


title: Selim III

text: Selim III ascended the throne only to find that the Ottoman Empire of old had been considerably reduced due to conflicts outside the realm. From the north Russia had taken the Black Sea through the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca in 1774. Selim realized the importance of diplomatic relations with other nations, and pushed for permanent embassies in the courts of all the great nations of Europe, a hard task because of religious prejudice towards Muslims. Even with the religious obstacles, resident embassies were established in Britain, France, Prussia and Austria. Selim, a cultured poet and musician, carried on an extended correspondence with Louis XVI. Although distressed by the establishment of the republic in France, Ottoman government was soothed by French representatives in Constantinople who maintained the goodwill of various influential personages.


title: Selim III

text: On 1 July 1798, however, French forces landed in Egypt, and Selim declared war on France. In alliance with Russia and Britain, the Turks were in periodic conflict with the French on both land and sea until March 1801. Peace came in June 1802, The following year brought trouble in the Balkans. For decades a sultan's word had had no power in outlying provinces, prompting Selim's reforms of the military in order to reimpose central control. This desire was not fulfilled. One rebellious leader was Austrian-backed Osman Pazvantoğlu, whose invasion of Wallachia in 1801 inspired Russian intervention, resulting in greater autonomy for the Dunubian provinces. Serbian conditions also deteriorated. They took a fateful turn with the return of the hated Janissaries, ousted 8 years before. These forces murdered Selim's enlightened governor, ending the best rule this province had had in the last 100 years. Neither arms nor diplomacy could restore Ottoman authority.


title: Selim III

text: French influence with the "Sublime Porte" (the European diplomatic designation of the Ottoman state) did not revive but it then led the Sultan into defying both St. Petersburg and London, and Turkey joined Napoleon's Continental System. War was declared on Russia on 27 December and on Britain in March 1807.


title: Selim III

text: The Sultan's most ambitious military project was the creation of an entirely new infantry corps fully trained and equipped according to the latest European standards. This unit, called the "nizam-i jedid" (the new order), was formed in 1797 and adopted a pattern of recruitment that was uncommon for the imperial forces; it was composed of Turkish peasant youths from Anatolia, a clear indication that the "devshirme" system was no longer functional. Officered and trained by Europeans, the "nizam-i jedid" was outfitted with modern weapons and French-style uniforms. By 1806 the new army numbered around 23,000 troops, including a modern artillery corps, and its units performed effectively in minor actions. But Selim III's inability to integrate the force with the regular army and his reluctance to deploy it against his domestic opponents limited its role in defending the state it was created to preserve.


title: Selim III

text: From the start of Selim's reign, the Janissaries had viewed this entire program of military reform as a threat to their independence, and they refused to serve alongside the new army in the field. The powerful "derebeys" were alarmed by the way in which the sultan financed his new forces—he confiscated "timars" and directed the other revenue toward the "nizam-i jedid". Further opposition came from the ulama and other members of the ruling elite who objected to the European models on which Selim based his military reforms.


title: Selim III

text: Led by the rebellious Janissaries, these forces came together in 1806, deposed Selim III, and selected a successor, Mustafa IV, who pledged not to interfere with their privileges. The decree of deposition accused Selim III of failing to respect the religion of Islam and the tradition of the Ottomans. Over the course of the next year, the embassies in Europe were dismantled, the "nizam-i jedid" troops were dispersed, and the deposed sultan, whose cautious military reforms were intended to do no more than preserve the tradition of the Ottomans, was murdered.


title: Selim III

text: The Austro-Turkish War of 1787 was an inconclusive struggle between the Austrian and Ottoman Empires. It took place concomitantly with the Russo-Turkish War of 1787-1792 during the reign of the Ottoman Sultan Selim III.


title: Selim III

text: The first major Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774) began after Turkey demanded that Russia’s ruler, Catherine II the Great, abstain from interfering in Poland’s internal affairs. The Russians went on to win impressive victories over the Turks. They captured Azov, the Crimea, and Bessarabia, and under Field Marshal Pyotr Rumyantsev they overran Moldavia and also defeated the Turks in Bulgaria. The Turks were compelled to seek peace, which was concluded in the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca. This treaty made the Crimean khanate independent of the Turkish sultan advanced the Russian frontier. Russia was now in a much stronger position to expand, and in 1783 Catherine annexed the Crimean Peninsula outright.


title: Selim III

text: War broke out in 1787, with Austria again on the side of Russia. Under General Alexander Suvorov, the Russians won several victories that gave them control of the lower Dniester and Danube rivers, and further Russian successes compelled the Turks to sign the Treaty of Jassy on 9 January 1792. By this treaty Turkey ceded the entire western Ukrainian Black Sea coast to Russia. When Turkey deposed the Russophile governors of Moldavia and Walachia in 1806, war broke out again, though in a desultory fashion, since Russia was reluctant to concentrate large forces against Turkey while its relations with Napoleonic France were so uncertain. But in 1811, with the prospect of a war between France and Russia in sight, the latter sought a quick decision on its southern frontier. The Russian field marshal Mikhail Kutuzov’s victorious campaign of 1811–12 forced the Turks to sign the Treaty of Bucharest on 18 May 1812. Ending the war that had begun in 1806, this peace agreement established the Ottoman cession of Bessarabia to Russia.


title: Selim III

text: The Russians also secured amnesty and a promise of autonomy for the Serbs, who had been rebelling against Turkish rule, but Turkish garrisons were given control of the Serbian fortresses. Implementation of the treaty was forestalled by a number of disputes, and Turkish troops invaded Serbia again the following year.


title: Selim III

text: Tipu Sultan was an independent ruler of the Sultanate of Mysore, with high regards of loyalty to the Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II. He had urgently requested Ottoman assistance during the Third Anglo-Mysore War, in which he had suffered an irreversible defeat. Tipu Sultan then began to consolidate his relations with France. In an attempt to junction with Tipu Sultan, Napoleon invaded Ottoman Egypt in the year 1798, causing a furor in Constantinople.


title: Selim III

text: The British then appealed to Selim III to send a letter to Tipu Sultan requesting the Sultanate of Mysore to halt its state of war against the British East India Company. Selim III then wrote a letter to Tipu Sultan criticizing the French, and also informed Tipu Sultan that the Ottomans would act as intermediary between the Sultanate of Mysore and the British. Tipu Sultan wrote twice to Selim III, rejecting the advice of the Ottomans, unfortunately before most of his letters could arrive in Constantinople, the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War broke out and Tipu Sultan was killed during the Siege of Seringapatam (1799).


title: Selim III

text: Many of the Ottoman sultans imposed alcohol bans (often with limited success). Despite Selim III's hardline stance on alcohol consumption, and threats to execute Christians and Jews caught selling wine or "rakı" to Muslims, it proved extremely difficult to curtail alcohol consumption in Istanbul, where wines were locally produced and the city had many established wine-houses serving its non-Muslim residents.


title: Selim III

text: The 1806 Edirne Incident was an armed confrontation between the New Order Troops ("Nizam-I Cedid") of Ottoman Sultan Selim III and a coalition of Balkan magnates, the ayans, and the region's Janissary garrisons that occurred in Thrace throughout the summer of 1806. The cause of the incident was Selim III's attempt to expand the New Order's permanent presence into Rumelia through the establishment of New Order barracks in the region's cities. The ultimate outcome of the confrontation was the retreat of imperial forces back to Istanbul and to Anatolia, constituting a deathblow to Selim III's ambitions of expanding his reformed army, as well as a major blow to his legitimacy. This deteriorated image would result in his deposition the following May.


title: Selim III

text: Selim III was, however, thoroughly under the influence of French ambassador to the Porte Horace Sébastiani, and the fleet was compelled to retire without effecting its purpose. But the anarchy, manifest or latent, existing throughout the provinces proved too great for Selim III to cope with. The Janissaries rose once more in revolt, induced the Sheikh ul-Islam to grant a fetva against the reforms, dethroned and imprisoned Selim III, and placed his cousin Mustafa on the throne, as Mustafa IV (1807–08), on 29 May 1807.


title: Selim III

text: The ayan of Rustchuk, Alemdar Mustafa, a strong partisan of the reforms, collected an army of 40,000 men and marched on Constantinople with the purpose of reinstating Selim III, but he came too late. The ill-fated reforming Sultan had been stabbed in the seraglio by the Chief Black Eunuch and his men. Upon his arrival in the capital, Bairakdar's only recourse was to wreak his vengeance on Mustafa IV and to place on the throne Mahmud II (1808–1839), the sole surviving member of the house of Osman.


title: Selim III

text: Another version about his murder states that at the time of his deposition, Selim was staying at the Harem. The night of Thursday, 28 July 1808, he was with two of his consorts, Refet Kadın and Pakize Hanım. Alemdar Mustafa Pasha, a loyalist of Selim, was approaching the city with his army to reinstate Selim. Therefore, Mustafa IV gave orders to murder him and his brother Prince Mahmud.


title: Selim III

text: The assassins were apparently a group of men, including the Master of the Wardrobe called Fettah the Georgian, the Treasury steward Ebe Selim, and black eunuch named Nezir Ağa. Selim apparently knew his end was coming when he saw their swords drawn. Pakize Hanım threw herself between them and her lord, she was cut in her hand. Refet Kadın started screaming in terror, another slave girl who rushed in fainted when she saw what was about to happen. A struggle ensued and the former sultan was cut down and murdered, his last words apparently being ""Allahu Akbar"" ("God is great").


title: Selim III

text: Refet Kadın threw herself on the body but was dragged away. The body was quickly wrapped in a quilt. The assassins moved on to find Prince Mahmud and attempt to murder him too. He was more fortunate though and later ordered the assassins to be executed. Selim III would be the only Ottoman sultan to be killed by the sword. He was buried in Laleli Mosque near his father's tomb.


title: Selim III

text: A great lover of music, Sultan Selim III was a composer and performer of significant talent. He created fourteen makam-s (melodic types), three of which are in current use today. Sixty-four compositions by Selim III are known today, some of which are part of the regular repertory of Turkish classical music performerance. Aside from composing music, Selim III also performed on the ney (reed flute) and tanbur (long-necked, fretted lute).


title: Selim III

text: Selim III's interest in music started in his days as a prince (shahzade) when he studied under Kırımlı Ahmet Kamil Efendi and Tanburi İzak Efendi. He was especially respectful of Tanburi İzak Efendi, and it is recounted that the Sultan rose in respect when Tanburi İzak Efendi entered the court.


title: Selim III

text: As a patron of the arts, Selim III encouraged musicians of his day, including Dede Efendi and Baba Hamparsum. The Hamparsum notation system that Selim commissioned became the dominant notation for Turkish and Armenian music. His name is associated with a school in Classical Turkish Music due to the revival and rebirth of music at his court. Selim III was also interested in western music and in 1797 invited an opera troupe for the first opera performance in the Ottoman Empire.


title: Selim III

text: Writing under the "nom de plume" ″İlhami″, Selim's poetry is collected in a divan. Among regular attendees of his court were Şeyh Galib, considered one of the four greatest Ottoman poets. Galib is now considered to have been not only an intimate friend of the Sultan, as they were both quite close in age, but through Galib's poetry you find an overwhelming support for his new military reforms


title: Selim III

text: Selim III was a member of the Mevlevi Order of Sufi Whirling Dervishes, and entered into the order at the Galata Mevlevihanesi under the name ″Selim Dede". He was a renowned composer, creating many musical compositions, including a Mevlevi "ayin", a long and complex liturgical form performed during the semâ (religious ceremonies) of the Mevlana (Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Balkhi-Rumi) Tariqah of Sufi Whirling Mystics, in makam "Suzidilara."


title: Selim III

text: He extended his patronage to Antoine Ignace Melling, whom he appointed as the court architect in 1795. Melling constructed a number of palaces and other buildings for the Sultan and created engravings of contemporary Constantinople.


title: World Naked Bike Ride

text: The World Naked Bike Ride (WNBR) is an international clothing-optional bike ride in which participants plan, meet and ride together "en masse" on human-powered transport (the vast majority on bicycles, but some on skateboards and inline skates), to "deliver a vision of a cleaner, safer, body-positive world." The first ride happened in Zaragoza (Spain) in 2001.


title: World Naked Bike Ride

text: In 2003, Conrad Schmidt conceived the World Naked Bike Ride after organizing the Naked Bike Rides of the group Artists for Peace/Artists Against War (AFP/AAW). Initially, the message of the WNBR was protesting against oil dependency and celebrating the power and individuality of the human body. In 2006, there was a shift towards simplifying the message and focusing on cycling advocacy.


title: World Naked Bike Ride

text: The 2004 WNBR saw events in 28 cities, in ten countries on four continents. By 2010, WNBR had expanded to stage rides in 74 cities, in 17 countries, from the United States to the United Kingdom and Hungary to Paraguay.