title: Bernadette Devlin McAliskey

text: Thirteen years later, former British Prime Minister Edward Heath recalled the event: "I remember very well when an hon. Lady rushed from the Opposition Benches and hit Mr. Maudling. I remember that vividly because I thought that she was going to hit me. She could not stretch as far as that, so she had to make do with him."


title: Bernadette Devlin McAliskey

text: Devlin helped to form the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) with Seamus Costello in 1974. This was a revolutionary socialist breakaway from Official Sinn Féin and, on the afternoon after the morning the party was established, Costello also created the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) as a split from the Official Irish Republican Army. Devlin did not join the INLA and while she served on the party's national executive in 1975, she resigned when a proposal that the INLA become subordinate to the party executive was defeated. In 1977, she joined the Independent Socialist Party, but it disbanded the following year.


title: Bernadette Devlin McAliskey

text: Devlin stood as an independent candidate in support of the prisoners on the blanket protest and dirty protest at Long Kesh prison in the 1979 elections to the European Parliament in the Northern Ireland constituency, and won 5.9% of the vote. She was a leading spokesperson for the Smash H-Block Campaign, which supported the hunger strikes in 1980 and 1981.


title: Bernadette Devlin McAliskey

text: On 16 January 1981, Devlin and her husband were shot by members of the Ulster Freedom Fighters, a cover name of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), who broke into their home near Coalisland, County Tyrone. The gunmen shot Devlin nine times in front of her children.


title: Bernadette Devlin McAliskey

text: British soldiers were watching the McAliskey home at the time, but they failed to prevent the assassination attempt. Allegations were subsequently made that elements of the security forces had colluded with the UDA in planning the assassination. An army patrol from 3 Para entered the house before waiting outside for half an hour. Devlin has claimed that the patrol "were there to make sure that the gunmen got into my house and that they were caught on the way out." Soldiers from the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders (ASH) then arrived and transported her by helicopter to a nearby hospital.


title: Bernadette Devlin McAliskey

text: The paramilitaries had torn out the telephone and, while the wounded couple were being given first aid by the newly arrived troops, an ASH soldier ran to a neighbour's house, commandeered a car, and drove to the home of a councillor to telephone for help. The couple were taken by helicopter to hospital in nearby Dungannon for emergency treatment and then to the Musgrave Park Hospital, Military Wing, in Belfast, under intensive care.


title: Bernadette Devlin McAliskey

text: The attackers—Ray Smallwoods, Tom Graham (38), both from Lisburn, and Andrew Watson (25) from Seymour Hill, Dunmurry—were captured by the army patrol and subsequently jailed. All three were members of the South Belfast UDA. Smallwoods was the driver of the getaway car.


title: Bernadette Devlin McAliskey

text: She twice failed, in February and November 1982, in attempts to be elected to the Dublin North-Central constituency of the Irish parliament, Dáil Éireann.


title: Bernadette Devlin McAliskey

text: In 2003 she was barred from entering the United States and deported on the grounds that the United States Department of State had declared her to pose "a serious threat to the security of the United States" – apparently referring to her conviction for incitement to riot in 1969 – although she protested that she had no terrorist involvement and had frequently been permitted to travel to the United States in the past.


title: Bernadette Devlin McAliskey

text: McAliskey is chief executive of the South Tyrone Empowerment Programme (STEP) and was involved in its founding in 1997. STEP provides a range of services and advocacy in areas including community development, training, support and advice for migrants, policy work, and community enterprise.


title: Bernadette Devlin McAliskey

text: In 1994, McAliskey attended the funeral of former Irish National Liberation Army Chief of Staff Dominic McGlinchey. The INLA had been the armed wing of the Irish Republican Socialist Party, which McAliskey had helped found. McAliskey kissed the coffin, which was carried by her, Sean McGlinchey, Dominic junior and Father O'Daly, who had given McGlinchey the last rites on Hardman's Gardens. During the funeral oration, she condemned the recent press coverage which had accused McGlinchey of drug dealing and criminality and said of the journalists responsible that they were "curs and dogs. May every one of them rot in hell. They have taken away Dominic McGlinchy's character and they will stand judgement for it. He was the finest Republican of them all. He never dishonoured the cause he believed in. His war was with the armed soldiers and the police of this state".


title: Bernadette Devlin McAliskey

text: Following this speech, some of the mourners turned on the observing press corps and shouted abuse, reported The Times. A couple of months after the funeral, McAliskey later explained her thinking to The Guardian. Their reporter, David Sharrock, asked if her tirade had been intended to counteract the negative stories about McGlinchey that had recently appeared in the press. McAliskey said "It's very difficult to conduct a conversation about a person who bore no resemblance in the media to the person I knew for 10 years. His thinking was just fundamentally democratic and to acknowledge that Dominic McGlinchey had an intellect was to acknowledge the reality of this conflict here. Republicanism is not simply anti-partitionist and confined to Ireland. It is a tradition of secular egalitarian democracy. So yes. Dominic was the finest republican of his generation. The rest of it I might take back...I don't even believe in hell."


title: Bernadette Devlin McAliskey

text: In 1971, while still unmarried, she gave birth to a daughter, Róisín, which cost her some political support. She married Michael McAliskey on her 26th birthday on 23 April 1973.


title: Bernadette Devlin McAliskey

text: On 12 May 2007, she was a guest speaker at the socialist republican political party Éirígí's first Annual James Connolly commemoration in Arbour Hill, Dublin. She works with migrant workers to improve their treatment in Northern Ireland.


title: Bernadette Devlin McAliskey

text: In 1969, director and producer John Goldschmidt made the documentary film "Bernadette Devlin" for ATV, which was shown on the British television channel ITV and on the American television channel CBS's "60 Minutes" programme, and included footage of Devlin during the Battle of the Bogside. She was also interviewed at length by Marcel Ophüls in "A Sense of Loss" (1972). Another documentary, "Bernadette: Notes on a Political Journey", directed by Irish programme-maker Leila Doolan, was released in 2011. At the 2008 Cannes Film Festival a biographical film of Devlin was announced, but she stated that "the whole concept is abhorrent to me" and the film was not made.


title: Bernadette Devlin McAliskey

text: McAliskey, and her assault on the British Home Secretary, Reginald Maudling, after the Bloody Sunday massacre, were the subject of the title song of the 1990 music album, "Slap!" by anarchist pop/punk band Chumbawamba.


title: Land of Oz

text: The Land of Oz is a magical country introduced in the 1900 children's novel "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" written by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W. W. Denslow.


title: Land of Oz

text: Oz consists of four vast quadrants, the Gillikin Country in the north, Quadling Country in the south, Munchkin Country in the east, and Winkie Country in the west. Each province has its own ruler, but the realm itself has always been ruled by a single monarch. According to "The Marvelous Land of Oz", this monarch is Princess Ozma.


title: Land of Oz

text: Baum did not intend for "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" to have any sequels, but it achieved greater popularity than any of the other fairylands he created, including the land of Merryland in Baum's children's novel "Dot and Tot in Merryland", written a year later. Due to Oz's worldwide success, Baum decided to return to it four years after "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" was published. For the next two decades, he described and expanded upon the land in the Oz Books, a series which introduced many fictional characters and creatures. Baum intended to end the series with the sixth Oz book "The Emerald City of Oz" (1910), in which Oz is forever sealed off and made invisible to the outside world, but this did not sit well with fans, and he quickly abandoned the idea, writing eight more successful Oz books, and even naming himself the "Royal Historian of Oz."


title: Land of Oz

text: In all, Baum wrote fourteen best-selling children's books about Oz and its enchanted inhabitants, as well as a spin-off series of six early readers. After his death in 1919, author Ruth Plumly Thompson, illustrator John R. Neill (who had previously collaborated with Baum on his Oz books) and several other writers and artists continued the series. There are now over 50 novels based upon Baum's original Oz saga.


title: Land of Oz

text: Baum characterized Oz as a real place, unlike MGM's 1939 musical movie adaptation, which presents it as a dream of lead character Dorothy Gale. According to the Oz books, it is a hidden fairyland cut off from the rest of the world by the Deadly Desert.


title: Land of Oz

text: A shorthand reference for a person living in Oz is "Ozite". The term appears in "Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz", "The Road to Oz", and "The Emerald City of Oz". Elsewhere in the books, "Ozmie" is also used. In the animated 1974 semi-sequel to the MGM film, "Journey Back to Oz", "Ozonian" is in the script. The term "Ozian" appears in the Royal Shakespeare Company's stage adaptation of the MGM movie and in the work "Wicked". "Ozmite" was used in Reilly & Lee marketing in the 1920s, a fact which has suggested to some critics that "Ozmie" may have been a typographical error.


title: Land of Oz

text: Oz is, in the first book "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz", distinguished from Dorothy's native Kansas by not being civilized; this explains why Kansas does not have witches and wizards, while Oz does. In the third book, "Ozma of Oz", Oz is described as a "fairy country", new terminology that remained to explain its wonders.


title: Land of Oz

text: Oz is roughly rectangular in shape, and divided along the diagonals into four countries: Munchkin Country (but commonly referred to as 'Munchkinland' in adaptations) in the East, Winkie Country in the West (sometimes West and East are reversed on maps of Oz, see West and East below), Gillikin Country in the North, and Quadling Country in the South. In the center of Oz, where the diagonals cross, is the fabled Emerald City, capital of the land of Oz and seat to the monarch of Oz, Princess Ozma.


title: Land of Oz

text: The regions have a color scheme: blue for Munchkins, yellow for Winkies, red for Quadlings, green for the Emerald City, and (in works after the first) purple for the Gillikins, which region was also not named in the first book. This emphasis on color is in contrast with Kansas; Baum, describing it, used "gray" nine times in four paragraphs. In "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz", this is merely the favorite color, used for clothing and other man-made objects, and having some influence on their choice of crops, but the basic colors of the world are natural colors. The effect is less consistent in later works. In "The Marvelous Land of Oz", the book states that everything in the land of the Gillikins is purple, including the plants and mud, and a character can see that he is leaving when the grass turns from purple to green, but it also describes pumpkins as orange and corn as green in that land. Baum, indeed, never used the color scheme consistently; in many books, he alluded to the colors to orient the characters and readers to their location, and then did not refer to it again. His most common technique was to depict the man-made articles and flowers as the color of the country, leaving leaves, grass, and fruit their natural colors.


title: Land of Oz

text: Most of these regions are settled with prosperous and contented people. However, this naturally is lacking in scope for plot. Numerous pockets throughout the Land of Oz are cut off from the main culture, for geographic or cultural reasons. Many have never heard of Ozma, making it impossible for them to acknowledge her as their rightful queen. These regions are concentrated around the edges of the country, and constitute the main settings for books that are set entirely within Oz. "The Lost Princess of Oz", for instance, is set entirely in rough country in Winkie Country, between two settled areas. In "Glinda of Oz", Ozma speaks of her duty to discover all these stray corners of Oz.


title: Land of Oz

text: In "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz", a yellow brick road leads from the lands of the Munchkins to the Emerald City. Other such roads featured in other works: one from Gillikin Country in "The Marvelous Land of Oz", and a second one from Munchkin Land in "The Patchwork Girl of Oz".


title: Land of Oz

text: Oz is completely surrounded on all four sides by a desert which insulates the citizens of the Land of Oz from discovery and invasion. In the first two books, this is merely a natural desert, with only its extent making it dangerous to the traveler, but in "The Road to Oz," it is said to turn anyone who touches it to sand. Indeed, in "The Marvelous Land of Oz", Mombi tries to escape through it and Glinda chases her over the sands. Still, it is the dividing land between the magic of Oz and the outside world, and the Winged Monkeys can not obey Dorothy's command to carry her home because it would take them outside the lands of Oz. In "Ozma of Oz", it has become a magical desert called the Deadly Desert with life-destroying sands and noxious fumes, a feature that remained constant through the rest of the series, although no actual destruction is depicted in the Oz books, unlike in the film "Return to Oz". The desert has nonetheless been breached numerous times, both by children from our world (mostly harmless), by the Wizard of Oz himself, and by more sinister characters, such as the Nome King, who attempted to conquer Oz. After such an attempt in "The Emerald City of Oz", the book ends with Glinda creating a barrier of invisibility around the Land of Oz, for further protection. This was, indeed, an earnest effort on Baum's part to end the series, but the insistence of readers meant the continuation of the series, and therefore the discovery of many ways for people to pass through this barrier as well as over the sands. Despite this continual evasion, the barrier itself remained; nowhere in any Oz book did Baum hint that the inhabitants were even considering removing the magical barrier.


title: Land of Oz

text: The first known map of Oz was a glass slide used in Baum's "Fairylogue and Radio-Play" traveling show, showing the blue land of the Munchkins in the east and the yellow land of the Winkies in the west. These directions are confirmed by the text of all of Baum's Oz books, especially the first, in which the Wicked Witch of the East rules over the Munchkins, and the Wicked Witch of the West rules over the Winkies.


title: Land of Oz

text: Like traditional western maps, the "Fairylogue and Radio-Play" map showed the west on the left, and the east on the right. However, the first map of Oz to appear in an Oz book had those directions reversed, and the compass rose adjusted accordingly. It is believed that this is a result of Baum copying the map from the wrong side of the glass slide, effectively getting a mirror image of his intended map. When he realized he was copying the slide backward, he reversed the compass rose to make the directions correct. However, an editor at Reilly and Lee reversed the compass rose, thinking he was fixing an error, and resulting in further confusion. Most notably, this confused Ruth Plumly Thompson, who frequently reversed directions in her own Oz books as a result.


title: Land of Oz

text: Another speculation stems from the original conception of Oz, which at first appeared to be situated in an American desert. If Baum thought of the country of the Munchkins as the nearest region to him, it would have been in the east while he lived in Chicago, but when he moved to California, it would have been in the west.


title: Land of Oz

text: Modern maps of Oz are almost universally drawn with the Winkies in the west and the Munchkins in the east, although west and east often appear reversed. Many Oz fans believe this is the correct orientation, perhaps as a result of Glinda's spell, which has the effect of confusing most standard compasses; perhaps resembling its similarity to the world Alice found through the looking glass in which everything was a mirror image, or perhaps just reflecting the alien nature of Oz. In Robert A. Heinlein's book "The Number of the Beast" he posits that Oz is on a retrograde planet, meaning that it spins in the opposite direction of Earth so that the sun seems to rise on one's left as one faces north. March Laumer's "The Magic Mirror of Oz" attributes the changes to a character named Till Orangespiegel attempting to turn the Land of Oz orange.


title: Land of Oz

text: Oz, like all of Baum's fantasy countries, was presented as existing as part of the real world, albeit protected from civilization by natural barriers. Indeed, in the first books, nothing indicated that it was not hidden in the deserts of the United States. It gradually acquired neighboring magical countries, often from works of Baum's that had been independent, as Ix from "Queen Zixi of Ix", and Mo from "The Magical Monarch of Mo". The first of these is Ev, introduced in "Ozma of Oz".


title: Land of Oz

text: In "Tik-Tok of Oz" (1914), Baum included maps in the endpapers (see above) which definitively situated Oz on a continent with its neighboring countries. Oz is the largest country on the continent unofficially known as Nonestica (this name was proposed by Robert R. Pattrick for the whole of the countries surrounding Oz; Pattrick proposed "Ozeria" for the whole continent, but that name is generally unused in fan discussions), which also includes the countries of Ev, Ix, and Mo, which has also been known as Phunniland, among others. Nonestica is, according to the map, in the Nonestic Ocean. A fair amount of evidence in the books points to this continent as being envisioned as somewhere in the southern Pacific Ocean. At the opening of "Ozma of Oz," Dorothy Gale is sailing to Australia with her Uncle Henry when she is washed overboard (in a chicken coop, with Billina the yellow hen), and lands on the shore of Ev—a rare instance in which an outsider reaches the Oz landmass through non-magical (or "apparently" non-magical) means. Palm trees grow outside the Royal Palace in the Emerald City, and horses are not native to Oz, both points of consistency with a South-Pacific location; illustrations and descriptions of round-shaped and domed Ozite houses suggest a non-Western architecture. Conversely, Oz has technological, architectural, and urban elements typical of Europe and North America around the turn of the twentieth century; but this may involve cultural input from unusual external sources (see History below). Ruth Plumly Thompson asserts in her first Oz book, "The Royal Book of Oz", that the language of Oz is English, which also suggests European or American influence.


title: Land of Oz

text: An argument against the South Pacific is that the seasons in Oz are shown as the same seasons in the United States at the same time. In addition, in "The Wishing Horse of Oz", Pigasus follows the North Star when he flies to Thunder Mountain, which could only be done in the Northern Hemisphere.


title: Land of Oz

text: Baum's creation of the Emerald City may have been inspired by the White City of the World Columbian Exposition, which he visited frequently. Its quick building, in less than a year, may have been an element in the quick construction of the Emerald City in the first book.


title: Land of Oz

text: Schematically, Oz is much like the United States, with the Emerald City taking the place of Chicago: to the East, mixed forest and farmland; to the West, treeless plains and fields of wheat; to the South, warmth and lush growth, and red earth.


title: Land of Oz

text: Ruth Plumly Thompson took a different direction with her Oz books, introducing European elements such as the title character of "The Yellow Knight of Oz", a knight straight out of Arthurian Legend.


title: Land of Oz

text: At the time of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz", the lands in the North, South, East, and West of Oz are each ruled by a Witch. The Witches of the North and South are good, while the Witches of the East and West are wicked. Glinda (the Good Witch of the South) is later revealed to be the most powerful of the four, although later Oz books reveal that the Wicked Witch of the West was so powerful, even Glinda feared her. After Dorothy's house crushes the Wicked Witch of the East, thereby liberating the Munchkins from bondage, the Good Witch of the North tells Dorothy that she (the Witch of the North) is not as powerful as the Wicked Witch of the East had been, or she would have freed the Munchkins herself.


title: Land of Oz

text: During the first scene in Oz in "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz", the Good Witch of the North (Locasta or Tattypoo) explains to Dorothy that Oz still has witches and wizards, not being civilized, and goes on to explain that witches and wizards can be both good and evil, unlike the evil witches that Dorothy had been told of. That book contained only the four witches (besides the humbug wizard), but despite Ozma's prohibition on magic, many more magicians feature in later works.


title: Land of Oz

text: Baum tended to capitalize the word "Witch" when referring to the Witches of the North, South, East, or West but did not do so when referring to witches in general. For example, in the aforementioned first scene of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz", Locasta (or Tattypoo) thanks Dorothy for killing the "Wicked Witch of the East", and introduces herself as "the Witch of the North", with the word "Witch" capitalized in both cases. However, when she goes on to tell Dorothy that "I [the Witch of the North] am a good witch, and the people love me", the word "witch" is not capitalized.


title: Land of Oz

text: White is the traditional color of witches in Oz. The Good Witch of the North wears a pointed white hat and a white gown decorated with stars, while Glinda, the Good Witch of the South (called a "sorceress" in later books), wears a pure white dress. Dorothy is taken for a witch not only because she had killed the Wicked Witch of the East, but because her dress is blue and white checked.


title: Land of Oz

text: Ozma, once on the throne, prohibits the use of magic by anyone other than Glinda the Good, the Wizard of Oz, and herself – as, earlier, the Good Witch of the North had prohibited magic by any other witch in her domains. The illicit use of magic is a frequent feature of villains in later works in the series, appearing in "The Scarecrow of Oz", "Rinkitink in Oz", "The Lost Princess of Oz", "The Tin Woodman of Oz", and "The Magic of Oz".


title: Land of Oz

text: There are different kinds of animals living in Oz. According to Baum, all animals in Oz have the ability to speak because it is a "fairy" kingdom. When asked by his readers why Dorothy's dog Toto did not speak, Baum insisted that he had the ability to, but did not choose to speak. Toto finally does so in "Tik-Tok of Oz".


title: Land of Oz

text: There is a multitude of other races living in the land of Oz, many of which only appear once. Among the known races are:


title: Land of Oz

text: Outside of them are many other strange races who are often found living in the wilderness of Oz. Despite the overlordship of Ozma, many of the communities live autonomously. Oz has great tolerance for eccentricity and oddness.


title: Land of Oz

text: Many characters in Oz are animated objects. Such figures as the Glass Cat, the Scarecrow, Jack Pumpkinhead, the Sawhorse, and others are common. Entire regions are the homes of such animated beings. The Dainty China Country is entirely filled with creatures made of china, who would freeze into figurines if removed. The China Princess lives in fear of breaking because she would never be as pretty again, even if repaired.


title: Land of Oz

text: Many other characters are highly individual, even unique members of a species. Many such people from the outer worlds find refuge in Oz, which is highly tolerant of eccentricity.


title: Land of Oz

text: The history of Oz before "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" (often called the prehistory of Oz as it takes place before Baum's "histories") is often the subject of dispute, as Baum himself gave conflicting accounts. In "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz", the title character recounts that he was a ventriloquist and a circus balloonist from Omaha, and during one flight the rope for his parachute vent became tangled, preventing him from descending until the next morning, and he awoke to find that he was floating over a strange land. When he landed, the people thought he was a great wizard because of his ability to fly. He did not disabuse them of this notion, and with his new power over them, he had them build a city with a palace in the center of Oz. He also ordered them to wear green glasses so it would appear to be made entirely of emeralds. However, in the later Oz books the city is depicted as actually being made of emerald or other green materials. The Wizard was a young man when he first arrived in Oz and grew old while he was there. Afraid of the Wicked Witches of the West and the East, who, unlike him, could do real magic, the Wizard hid away in a room of his palace and refused to see visitors. He lived in this way until the arrival of Dorothy in the first book.


title: Land of Oz

text: In "The Marvelous Land of Oz" the prehistory was changed slightly. Glinda, the Good Witch of the South, reveals that the Wizard usurped the previous king of Oz Pastoria and hid away his daughter Ozma. This was Baum's reaction to the popular 1903 Broadway extravaganza Baum adapted from his book, "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz", in which the Wizard took the role of the main antagonist and the Wicked Witch of the West was left out.


title: Land of Oz

text: The Wizard, however, had been more popular with his readers than he thought. In "Ozma of Oz", he omitted any mention of the Wizard's having usurped the throne of Ozma's father, but the largest changes occurred in the next book.


title: Land of Oz

text: In the preface to "Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz", Baum remarks that the Wizard had turned out to be a popular character with the children who had read the first book and so he brought the Wizard back. During it, the Wizard relates yet another account of his history in Oz, telling Ozma that his birth name was Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkle Emmanuel Ambroise Diggs, which, being a very long and cumbersome name, and as his other initials spelled out "PINHEAD," he preferred to leave just as O.Z. The balloon part of his story was unchanged, except for the detail added by Ozma, that the people probably saw his initials on his balloon and took them as a message that he was to be their king. She relates that the country was already named Oz (a word which in their language means "great and good") and that it was typical for the rulers to have names that are variations of Oz (King Pastoria being a notable exception to this rule).


title: Land of Oz

text: Ozma elaborates further, saying that there were once four Wicked Witches in Oz, who leagued together to depose the King, but the Wicked Witches of the North and South were defeated by Good Witches before the Wizard arrived in Oz. According to this version, the King at the time was Ozma's grandfather. This version of prehistory restores the Wizard's reputation, but adds the awkwardness of both Ozma and her father having been born in captivity.


title: Land of Oz

text: Thenceforward, no one in Oz would ever age, get sick, or die. After becoming a fairyland, Oz harbored many Witches, Magicians, and Sorcerers until the time when Ozma made magic illegal without a permit. In yet another inconsistency, it is implied that Ozma was the fairy left behind by Queen Lurline to rule the country, contradicting the story where she was Pastoria's daughter. This is later confirmed in "Glinda of Oz":


title: Land of Oz

text: While this explains why no one dies or ages, and nevertheless there are people of different ages in Oz, it is completely inconsistent with the earlier versions of the prehistory.


title: Land of Oz

text: Maguire, author of "" addresses this inconsistency by saying that the people of Oz believe that Ozma is reincarnated—that her spirit was left behind by Lurline, but her body is reborn to different mortal queens.


title: Land of Oz

text: In Jack Snow's "The Magical Mimics in Oz", the prehistory story is retold. This version relates that Ozma was given to the king of Oz as an adoptive daughter, for he was old and had no children.


title: Land of Oz

text: In the Magic Land stories of Alexander Melentyevich Volkov, the prehistory is quite different. The land was created 6,000–7,000  years ago by a wizard named Hurricap, who was tired of people coming to him with requests, so he decided to find a place without them annoying him. He found a remote land and separated it from the rest of the world, along with putting the enchantments of eternal spring and talking animals (Volkov's version doesn't include any forms of immortality). However, he failed to notice that the land already contained people (since he was a giant, already suffering from nearsightedness in his advanced age, and the people in the Magic Land were much shorter than in other places), but, upon discovering the fact, decided that removing the enchantments would be unnecessary. Instead, he ordered the people to keep away from his castle. After that, the notable events included a conquest attempt by a sorceress named Arachna (Gurrikap was still alive, and put her in an enchanted sleep for 5,000  years. Her awakening formed the story for the fifth book in Volkov's series), an unsuccessful coup by a prince named Bofaro to overthrow his father about 1,000  years ago (He and his accomplices were banished to a cave and became the Magic Land's main source of metal and gems, an analog to the Nomes), and the arrival of the Four Witches (which only occurred about 500  years ago in this continuity).


title: Land of Oz

text: Eventually, Dorothy Gale and her whole house are blown into Oz from Kansas by a tornado. When the house lands, it crushes the Wicked Witch of the East, ruler of the Munchkins. In an attempt to get back to her home, she journeys to the Emerald City. Along the way, she meets the Tin Woodman, the Cowardly Lion, and the Scarecrow, all of whom accompany her. Once there, they become the first people to gain an audience with the Wizard since he went into seclusion, although he disguises himself because Dorothy now has the Wicked Witch of the East's magic silver shoes, and he is afraid of her. The Wizard sends Dorothy and her party to destroy the Wicked Witch of the West and in exchange promises to grant her request to be sent home. Surprisingly, Dorothy "destroys" the Witch by throwing a pail of water on her, causing her to melt. Defeated, the Wizard reveals to the group that he is in fact not a real wizard and has no magical powers, but he promises to grant Dorothy's wish and take her home himself in his balloon. He leaves the Scarecrow in his place to rule Oz.


title: Land of Oz

text: Finally, it is discovered that the wizard had given the daughter of the last king of Oz, Princess Ozma, to the old witch Mombi to have her hidden away. Mombi had turned Ozma into a boy named Tip, whom she raised. When all of this is revealed Tip is turned back into Ozma and takes her rightful place as the benevolent ruler of all of Oz. Ozma successfully wards off several attempts by various armies to overthrow her. To prevent any upheaval of her rule over Oz, she outlaws the practice of all magic in Oz except by herself, the returned and reformed wizard, and by Glinda, and she has Glinda make all of Oz invisible to outsiders. Ozma remains the ruler of Oz for the entire series.


title: Land of Oz

text: Some political analysts have claimed that Oz is a thinly disguised socialist utopia, though some Baum scholars disagree. Advocates of this theory support it using this quotation from "The Emerald City of Oz":


title: Land of Oz

text: This is a revision of the original society: in the first two books, the people of Oz lived in a money-based economy. For instance, the people of the Emerald City use "green pennies" as coinage. Money was not abolished in the course of the series, but excised from the conception of Oz. Indeed, in "The Magic of Oz", a character from Oz gets into trouble when he goes to Ev because he was unaware of the concept of money. This decision to remove money from Oz may reflect Baum's own financial difficulties in the times when he was writing these books.


title: Land of Oz

text: Since Oz is ruled by a monarch, benevolent though she may be, Oz is closer in nature to an absolute monarchy than a communist or Marxist state. When she was first introduced, Ozma was the monarch specifically of the Emerald City, but in the description of "Ozma of Oz", Oz is presented as a federal state, rather like the German Empire, in monarchies rather than republics: having an overall ruler in Ozma, and individual kings and queens of smaller portions.


title: Land of Oz

text: The society grew steadily more utopian, in that its peace and prosperity were organized, but from the first book, it was a stupendously wealthy country, in contrast to Kansas's crop failures, droughts, and mortgages—just as it also is colorful to contrast with Kansas's gray. On the other hand, despite the presence of the Emerald City, Oz is an agrarian country, similar to Kansas; the story has been interpreted as a populist parable, and certainly contains many populist themes.


title: Land of Oz

text: In "The Wonder City of Oz", Princess Ozma (called "Queen Ozma" in this book) is seen running for election ("ozlection") to her office as a ruler against Jenny Jump, a half-fairy newcomer from New Jersey. However, this book was not written by Baum, but by John R. Neill, Baum's second successor. Further, the concept of the "ozlection" was not in Neill's manuscript for the book but was added by an editor at Reilly and Lee, the publisher.


title: Land of Oz

text: At times the rulers of Oz's territories have grander titles than would normally be customary, but this is done mostly for the satisfaction of the incumbents. The ruler of the Winkie Country is the Emperor, the Tin Woodman. The ruler of the Quadling Country is Glinda the Good. The Munchkin Country is ruled by a king, later identified as Cheeriobed, who is revealed to be married to the Good Witch of the North, who, a spell broken, abdicates leadership of the Gillikin Country to Joe King and Queen Hyacinth of Up Town.


title: Land of Oz

text: The Royal Flag of Oz is based on the map of the Land of Oz; the four colors represent the four countries, and the green star represents the Emerald City.


title: Land of Oz

text: Oz is mostly a peaceful land and the idea of subversion is largely unknown to its people. Most military positions are only formal. This has caused many problems, such as in "The Marvelous Land of Oz" when the Emerald City (which was only guarded by an elderly doorman and one soldier who was the entire Army of Oz at the time) was easily conquered by the Army of Revolt led by General Jinjur. This army was in turn overwhelmed by another army of girls led by Glinda.


title: Land of Oz

text: Security of Oz is mostly maintained by magic such as Glinda's spell making Oz completely invisible. Oz also has a natural barrier in the form of a desert that surrounds the land: anyone who touches the desert turns to sand. The Nome King has tried to conquer Oz on several occasions. A nominal army once existed, but it had an extremely large officers/privates ratio; other than its commander the Tin Woodman and one private, the portion of it seen in "Ozma of Oz" was composed entirely of cowardly officers. At the end of the book, it was said that there are three privates all in all, and it is unknown how many—if any—officers were left at home during Ozma's travel to Ev. The private seen in the book named Omby Amby, is later promoted to Captain-General.


title: Land of Oz

text: In the book "The Emerald City of Oz", there are 2 towns called Rigmarole Town and Flutterbudgets that are the defensive settlements of Oz.


title: Land of Oz

text: Attempts by outsiders to conquer the Land of Oz are frequent, particularly in the Oz books by Ruth Plumly Thompson. But these attempts are always successfully thwarted in the end, usually by Ozma or by forces sympathetic to her.


title: Land of Oz

text: The Land of Oz as portrayed in the classic MGM musical movie of 1939, is quite different from that portrayed in Baum's books. The most notable difference is that in the film the entire land of Oz appears to be dreamed up by Dorothy Gale (thus making it a dream world), although, Dorothy earnestly corrects the adults at the end that she was indeed there, and an image of Dorothy's falling farmhouse returning to earth is presented. The apparent message is that one should appreciate one's home, no matter how dull it may look or uninteresting its surroundings may be, for having a home and a family is not something that should be taken for granted. This contrasts sharply with the books, in which Dorothy and her family are eventually invited to move to Oz due to a bank foreclosure on the farm, showing both that Oz is a real place, and that it is a utopia compared to the prairies of Kansas.


title: Land of Oz

text: There are many other small differences between the books and the movie. For example, when Dorothy arrives in Munchkinland the Munchkins are seen wearing colorful costumes, but in the book, Munchkins are said to only wear blue as blue is the official dominant color of the east. The first witch Dorothy meets in Oz in the book is the Good Witch of the North, a minor character that only had one other appearance in Baum's books but is an important figure of Oz nonetheless. In the movie, this character is conflated with that of Glinda, who is the Good Witch of the South and does not make an appearance until the very end of Baum's story. The character of Glinda in the books dresses in all white silk, as white is the traditional color for good witches, whereas in the film she is seen in pink.


title: Land of Oz

text: It is also worthy of note that the Dorothy of the books is only a little girl who is no older than twelve-years-old. However, she is mature and very resourceful, only crying when faced with ultimate despair, whereas the older Dorothy of the movie (portrayed as a twelve-year-old by sixteen-year-old Judy Garland) spends several portions of the film crying and being told by others what to do, however, her fear was overshadowed by the Cowardly Lion's. This is more consistent with Thompson's portrayal of Dorothy—Baum is known for his strong and independent female characters.


title: Land of Oz

text: The Wicked Witch of the West is portrayed in the book as having only one eye, which is so powerful it could see distant objects like a telescope, but in the movie, she uses a crystal ball to watch Dorothy and her friends from afar. The 1939 MGM film makes the first reference to The Witches of the East and West being sisters, which was not the case in the book; none of the Witches in Baum's Oz are related.


title: Land of Oz

text: The Wizard of Oz does not resort to anywhere near as much trickery in the movie as in the book. In the book he entertains each member of Dorothy's party on a different day, and takes a different form for each; appearing as a giant green head, a beautiful fairy, a great beast, and a levitating ball of fire. In the movie, he takes only one of these forms—that of the giant green head.


title: Land of Oz

text: The nature of the Emerald City is changed in the film. In the book, the city is not actually all green, but everyone is forced to wear green-tinted spectacles (ostensibly to protect their eyes from the glory and splendor of the luxurious city), thus making everything appear green. In the film, the city is actually green. The architecture of the Emerald City in the movie uses a much more contemporary Art Deco style than Baum could have imagined. In the book, a giant green wall studded in glittering emeralds surrounds the entire city, whereas in the movie there is only a gate opening.


title: Land of Oz

text: The movie replaces the charmed Silver Shoes with pointed toes of the book with Ruby-Red Slippers. This was because full-color motion pictures were still a relatively new technology in 1939, and MGM wanted to show off the visually dazzling process. Shiny red shoes were more impressive in a color motion picture compared to silver ones. Due to the popularity of the movie, the green witch and the Ruby Slippers are more well known to the general public and pop culture than their book counterparts and are even considered iconic.


title: Land of Oz

text: In his revisionist Oz novels "", "Son of a Witch", "A Lion Among Men" and "Out of Oz", Gregory Maguire portrays a very different version of the Land of Oz. Maguire's Oz is not Baum's utopia, but a land troubled by political unrest and economic hardship. One political issue in Maguire's novels is the oppression of the Animals (Maguire distinguishes speaking Animals from non-speaking animals by the use of initial capital letters). There are many religious traditions in Maguire's Oz, including Lurlinism (which regards the Fairy Lurline as Oz's creator), Unionism, which worships the Unnamed God, and the pleasure faiths which had swept Oz during the time that the witches were at Shiz. An example of the pleasure faiths was tic-tok (where creatures were enchanted to tell secrets or the future and run by clockwork), and sorcery.


title: Land of Oz

text: Maguire's presentation of Oz's geography is also tinged with politics. A large political prison, Southstairs, exists in caverns below the Emerald City. Gillikin, home of Shiz University, has more industrial development than other parts of Oz. Munchkinland is Oz's breadbasket and at one point declares its independence from the rule of the Emerald City. Quadling Country is largely marshland, inhabited by the artistic and sexually free Quadlings. The Vinkus (Maguire's name for Winkie Country) is largely open grassland, populated by semi-nomadic tribes with brown skin.


title: Land of Oz

text: The musical "Wicked", based on Maguire's first Oz novel, portrays an Oz slightly closer to the version seen in Baum's novels and 1939 film. The oppression of the Animals is still a theme, but the geographical and religious divisions portrayed in Maguire's novel are barely present.


title: Land of Oz

text: In both the book and musical, several characters from the traditional Oz stories are present with different names. Glinda was called Galinda but changed her name. The Wicked Witch of the West is called Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the East is called Nessarose. In the musical, but not in the book, Boq becomes the Tin Man, and Fiyero becomes the Scarecrow.


title: Land of Oz

text: Alexander Melentyevich Volkov was a Russian author best known for his translation of "The Wizard of Oz" into Russian, and for writing his own original sequels, which were based only loosely on Baum's. Volkov's books have been translated into many other languages, and are better known than Baum's in some countries. The books, while still aimed at children, feature many mature political and ethical elements. They have been retranslated into English by Peter L. Blystone and partially by March Laumer, who used elements of them in his own books.


title: Land of Oz

text: March Laumer was one of the first authors to continue the Oz series after the Famous Forty. His books were written with the permission of Contemporary Books, who owned Reilly & Lee, the original publisher. His canon includes everything he knew of that was set in the land of Oz, including Volkov's Russian Oz, the MGM movie, the Disney sequel, and many of Baum's own books that most fans do not consider canonical.


title: Land of Oz

text: Laumer also made several controversial changes to Oz. He married off several of the major characters, often to unlikely prospects. For example, the intelligent and mature sorceress Glinda was married to Button-Bright, who had been a small and dim-witted child throughout Baum's books. He also aged Dorothy to a teenager to make her a romantic prospect for several characters, made Ozma a lesbian based on her upbringing as a boy, and made the Shaggy Man an ephebophile based on his frequent travels with young girls.


title: Land of Oz

text: Laumer's books do not portray one consistent version of Oz. Because most of his books were collaborations, he often included elements of other author's visions of Oz which may have been inconsistent with his own. For example, while he explicitly made Dorothy sixteen in "A Fairy Queen in Oz", he had her physically eight in "Aunt Em and Uncle Henry in Oz"; and while he portrayed Volkov's Oz as a parallel universe in "Farewell to Oz" he also showed Volkov's characters living in Baum's Oz in many of his other books, such as "Aunt Em and Uncle Henry in Oz". Despite these discrepancies, many of his books are consistent with each other, and characters introduced in some often appear in others.


title: Land of Oz

text: Philip José Farmer portrays a very different Oz in his book "A Barnstormer in Oz". The premise is that nothing after the first book occurred—Dorothy never returned to Oz, and instead grew up, got married, and had a son. Her son, Hank Stover, is the main character, a World War I veteran flier and the titular barnstormer. While flying in his Curtiss JN-4 biplane he enters a green haze and emerges in the civil war-stricken land of Oz.


title: Land of Oz

text: Farmer portrays the land of Oz as a science fiction author, attempting to explain scientifically many of the "magical" elements of Baum's story.


title: Land of Oz

text: The main characters of Robert A. Heinlein's books "The Number of the Beast" and "The Pursuit of the Pankera" pass through many famous fictional worlds including those of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"; "Gulliver's Travels", specifically Lilliput; E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman universe; Asgard, connected to Heinlein's own Future History universe by the Rainbow Bridge for one specific reason in one specific location; and Ringworld; as well as some of Heinlein's own works, specifically those set in his Future History through which Lazarus Long moves; and of course the Land of Oz itself.


title: Land of Oz

text: The Oz portrayed in the book is very close to Baum's Oz, although Heinlein does make an attempt to explain some things from the standpoint of a science fiction author. He explains that Oz is on a retrograde planet, where the direction of rotation relative to the poles is reversed, resulting in the sun seeming to rise in what would normally be the west.


title: Land of Oz

text: Heinlein also explains that the population remains steady in Oz despite the lack of death because it is impossible for children to be born in Oz. When the population does increase through immigration, Glinda just extends the borders an inch or two in each direction, which makes more than enough space for all additional people.


title: Land of Oz

text: L. Sprague de Camp, like Heinlein, brings his own characters to Oz in his book "Sir Harold and the Gnome King", part of the collaborative Harold Shea series. Unlike Heinlein, he does not attempt to explain Oz as science fiction, though he does deviate from the original corpus. He follows Thompson's Oz books, thus using her spelling of "Gnome" and her final fate of the character, but he postulates an incident that has removed the Ozites' immortality, with the result that both Ozma and Dorothy have aged and married by the time his story takes place.


title: Land of Oz

text: In the "Otherland" series, by Tad Williams, a virtual reality version of Oz exists, wherein real-world antagonists play sadistic versions of the roles of the Tin Man, The Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion, in a twisted, martial, and post-apocalyptic version of Oz, populated both by characters from the novels, and a large quantity of male and female humans who go by the names "Henry" and "Em" respectively. The humans, computer-generated characters based on the lost minds of children drawn into the Otherland program, look forward to a messianic prophecy foretelling the coming of "The Dorothy," where a child would be born among them.


title: Land of Oz

text: 2007 Sci Fi television miniseries "Tin Man" reinvents Oz as the Outer Zone (O.Z.), a parallel universe that was first visited by Dorothy Gale during the latter Victorian Era and is ruled over by her descendants. It is implied, by reference to centuries having elapsed since Dorothy came to the O.Z., that time has progressed at different rates in the O.Z. and "the other side". The re-imagined Oz is described as a place where "the paint has peeled, and what was once the goodness of Oz has become the horrible bleakness of the O.Z." The scenic design of the O.Z. features elements of steampunk, particularly the "1930s fascist realist" decor of the evil sorceress's palace and the computer-generated Central City, analog of the Emerald City.


title: Land of Oz

text: The 2009 point-and-click adventure video game "Emerald City Confidential" reinvents Oz in a film noir style, with Dorothy Gale as a femme fatale, the Lion as a corrupt lawyer, and some other changes.


title: Land of Oz

text: The Land of Oz appears in the TV series "Once Upon a Time" and is the focus of the episodes "It's Not Easy Being Green", "Kansas", "Heart of Gold", "Our Decay", "Ruby Slippers", and "Where Bluebirds Fly". It was also seen briefly in the episodes "Sisters" and "Chosen".


title: Land of Oz

text: Being a fantasy series Oz is rich in magic. In particular, there are many magic items that play an important role in the series.


title: Land of Oz

text: When Dorothy leaves Oz after having several adventures there and befriending many of Oz's natives, she is magically carried over the Deadly Desert by means of the charmed Silver Shoes she had been given shortly after her unexpected arrival when her farmhouse landed on and killed the previous pair's owner, the Wicked Witch of the East. After knocking her heels together three times and wishing to return home, Dorothy is lifted into the air and transported to Kansas. The shoes, however, slip off of Dorothy's feet and are lost forever in the desert. Baum states the silver shoes are never recovered. In the 1939 film, the shoes are changed to Ruby Slippers. When Dorothy clicks her heels together she closes her eyes and says: ""There's no place like home"". She then wakes up in her bedroom in Kansas believing her experience in Oz to be an elaborate dream.


title: Land of Oz

text: The silver shoes and ruby slippers are also used in several other versions including "Wicked" by Gregory Maguire. Here the shoes are constructed as a gift and have a chameleon effect. They are decorated with thousands of glittering glass beads that change colors according to the lighting. They can also appear to be several different colors all at once. The shoes are also lost when Dorothy is teleported back home just like in Baum's novel. The Broadway musical based on Maguire's book further shows that they were all silver, but were changed to ruby red by a spell put upon them by the Witch of the West Elphaba, enabling her sister the Witch of the East Nessarose, who prior had been confined to a wheelchair, to magically walk.


title: Land of Oz

text: In in 1985's Return to Oz, the ruby slippers have been recovered from their place in the Deadly Desert by the Nome King.


title: Land of Oz

text: A little-known adaptation of the original story made for British television in the mid-90s starring Denise van Outen explained that they had belonged to a visitor from over the rainbow who came to Oz before Dorothy and they were obtained by the Witch when the visitor wished herself home and they fell off her feet on the return trip.


title: Land of Oz

text: The Powder of Life is a magic substance from the book series, which first appears in "The Marvelous Land of Oz".


title: Land of Oz

text: It is a magical powder that brings inanimate objects to life. The witch Mombi first obtained it from a "crooked magician." Later in the series, it is revealed that the substance is made by a Dr. Pipt. In order to make the substance, Dr. Pipt had to stir four large cauldrons for six years. Only a few grains of the powder could be made at a time. It is always described as being carried in a pepper box.


title: Land of Oz

text: In "The Marvelous Land of Oz", the Powder of Life was used to bring Jack Pumpkinhead, the Sawhorse, and the Gump to life. The first batch of the powder in Mombi's possession was activated by the following incantation and the action that had to be associated with:


title: Land of Oz

text: In "The Road to Oz", Dr. Pipt's sister Dyna activated the Powder of Life with a simple wish that brought the rug of her late blue bear pet to life.


title: Land of Oz

text: In "The Patchwork Girl of Oz" it brings the title character to life, also the glass cat and a phonograph.


title: Land of Oz

text: The Powder has been used by Volkov in his series. There, it is produced from a certain plant of such viability that the smallest piece can grow into a plant within a day, on any surface except for solid metal. However, if it is sun-dried on such a surface, it turns into the Powder of Life. No incantation is required to make the powder work. The second book of the series is centered around a man who animates an army of wooden soldiers with the Powder and uses them for conquering the Magic Land.


title: Land of Oz

text: In "Return to Oz", the magic words to bring the inanimate object to life were "WEAUGH, TEAUGH, PEAUGH".


title: Land of Oz

text: The Magic Belt is first introduced in "Ozma of Oz". The belt belonged to the Nome King, but Dorothy Gale stole it and defeated him. When she leaves Oz, she gives it to Ozma for safekeeping.


title: Land of Oz

text: In most Oz books, the Magic Belt grants its wearer the ability to transform anyone into any form, and the ability to transport anyone anywhere, and also makes its wearer impervious to harm. In some books, it also grants limited wishes.


title: Land of Oz

text: In Ozma's boudoir hangs a picture in a radium frame. This picture usually appears to be of pleasant countryside, but when anyone wishes for the picture to show a particular person or place, the scene will display what is wished for. Sometimes the onlooker is able to hear sounds from the scene within the Magic Picture and sometimes an additional device is necessary to transmit sound.


title: Land of Oz

text: A similar device is present in Volkov's series. There, it is given as a present to the Scarecrow by the Good Witch of the South. It is a box of pink wood with a thick frosted glass screen. The device is password activated and limited in range to the Magic Land (with the exception of deep caverns and certain types of magical interference). The box is shown to be virtually indestructible; it withstood repeated abuse from a villain attempting to use it.


title: Land of Oz

text: Glinda's "'Great Book of Records" is introduced in Chapter 29 of "The Emerald City of Oz": " 'It is a record of everything that happens,' replied the Sorceress. 'As soon as an event takes place, anywhere in the world, it is immediately found printed in my Magic Book. So when I read its pages I am well informed.' " The Book proves useful in "The Scarecrow of Oz" and "Glinda of Oz"; and it recurs in many of the stories of Baum's successors and imitators. For instance, in "The Number of the Beast", the Book is shown to cover more than simply Oz. It provided information concerning the "Black Hats" attempting to murder the four protagonists which enabled Glinda to devise a set of magical glasses requested by Hilda Burroughs that enable her to spot a Black Hat no matter how disguised. It is one of the prime magic devices of Oz; villains steal it when they can (as in "The Lost Princess of Oz" or in "Handy Mandy in Oz"). Since it covers the planet and not merely Oz, the Book's entries are compressed and sometimes cryptic, and difficult to decipher (as in "Paradox in Oz" or "Queen Ann in Oz").


title: Land of Oz

text: The book is also featured in the fantasy series "Once Upon a Time". Zelena reads the book ignoring Glinda's warning and turns green again because she felt betrayed as it was mentioned in the book that Dorothy would save Oz from a great evil (Zelena thought that evil was her but this was never revealed).


title: Land of Oz

text: A rusty-looking horseshoe magnet that causes everyone to love its owner. It is closely associated with the Shaggy Man. In "The Road to Oz", he finds that being loved by everyone can be inconvenient. In "Tik-Tok of Oz" he reveals that Ozma has modified its powers so that it only works when it is displayed and affects only the feelings of those who see it. It is an essential plot-element in "The Shaggy Man of Oz". Ozma keeps it hanging over the gate into the Emerald City so that all who enter will come with love, although this does not always seem to happen.


title: Land of Oz

text: The Magic Fan is brought to Oz by Dorothy in "The Royal Book of Oz". Several subsequent books mention it. It creates a powerful wind, capable of blowing away an invading army.


title: Land of Oz

text: A fountain in the Emerald City, erected by the witch Glinda to reform a wicked king of Oz in the past. Anyone who drinks from it forgets everything he knows, including his own name. It appears in Baum's "The Emerald City of Oz" and "The Magic of Oz", and also plays an important role in the later contributor stories "The Forbidden Fountain of Oz", "The Shaggy Man of Oz", "The Wicked Witch of Oz", and "Paradox in Oz".


title: Land of Oz

text: Created by the Red Jinn, it summons a slave named Ginger, who appears bearing a tray full of delicious food when the bell is rung. Besides providing food, the bell also provides a means of escape from danger: anyone who holds onto the slave when he disappears after bringing the food is transported with him to the Red Jinn's castle. There are actually two magic dinner bells, one in the Emerald City and another which the Red Jinn keeps for himself and uses while traveling. The bell is first introduced in "Jack Pumpkinhead of Oz" and also appears in "The Purple Prince of Oz" and "The Silver Princess in Oz".


title: Land of Oz

text: In Oz, animals such as the Cowardly Lion and the Hungry Tiger can talk, and all native animals appear to be capable of speech. "" emphasized the difference between Animals and animals. Animals (capitalized) are sentient beings that can talk. Several theories exist as to how animals gained the gift of speech.


title: Land of Oz

text: The treatment of non-native animals was inconsistent. In the first book, the dog Toto never speaks, although brought to Oz; in "The Patchwork Girl of Oz", Dorothy specifies that he cannot speak because he is not a fairy dog. However, in "Ozma of Oz", the chicken Billina acquires speech merely by being swept to the lands near Oz, and in "Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz", the same is true of the kitten Eureka and the cab horse Jim when reaching the land of Mangaboos, a similarly magical land. In "Tik-Tok of Oz", Baum restored the continuity: Toto can speak, and always could, but never bothered to, because it was unnecessary.


title: Land of Oz

text: An additional inconsistency is introduced with "Tik-Tok of Oz": Hank the Mule cannot speak until reaching the Land of Oz, although he lands on the shore of Ev first, where Billina the chicken gained the ability to speak. This might be because "Tik-Tok of Oz" was originally a stage play version of "Ozma of Oz"; Dorothy was replaced by Betsy because he had sold the stage rights for Dorothy, and Billina was replaced by Hank because a mule could more convincingly be played by two people in a costume. Hank probably could not talk because Baum already had two speaking comedy characters, the Shaggy Man and Tik-Tok. Thus Hank would fill a better niche as a visual comedy character, in the tradition of British pantomime. The part of Hank was also an analog to the part of Dorothy's cow Imogene, Toto's replacement on stage in the immensely successful 1903 Broadway version of "The Wizard of Oz", a success that Baum sought to duplicate for the rest of his life.


title: Land of Oz

text: A legend of uncertain validity is that when relating bedtime stories (the earliest form of the Oz books) Baum was asked by his niece, Ramona Baxter Bowden, the name of the magical land. He glanced at a nearby filing cabinet, which had three drawers, labeled A–G, H–N, and O–Z. Thus he named the land Oz. This story was first told in 1903, but his wife always insisted that the part about the filing cabinet was not true. In "Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz", the name is translated as "great and good". Several of Baum's fairy stories that take place in the United States were situated on the Ozark Plateau, and the similarity of the name may not be a coincidence.


title: Land of Oz

text: "Oz" is a common vernacular contraction of "Australia" (Australia—Aussie—Aus—Oz). Australia is a large continent predominated by desert regions, with pockets of intense green tropical, sub-tropical and sub-alpine green lands and rainforests. It is quite possible that Baum took the popular nickname of Australia as the national name for his fictional world. Also, note that many fans place Oz in the South Pacific, see Location above. However, according to the Oxford English dictionary, the first references to Australia by this name were made in 1902—after the first book had been published. Nevertheless, spoken references would certainly have been in use before first appearing in print (as noted by Oxford), hence possibly before the writing of the book.


title: Land of Oz

text: It is also possible that it is based on the "Óg" in Tír na nÓg. While no direct link between the mythology of Oz and the realm of Irish folklore has been conclusively proven, certain similarities, for instance Ogma and Princess Ozma, are compelling.


title: Land of Oz

text: In 2018, The Lost Art of Oz project was initiated to locate and catalog the surviving original artwork John R. Neill, W. W. Denslow, Frank Kramer, Richard "Dirk" Gringhuis and Dick Martin created to illustrate the Oz book series.


title: Harrow, London

text: Harrow () is a large town in Greater London, England, and serves as the principal settlement of the London Borough of Harrow. Lying about north-west of Charing Cross and south of Watford, the entire town including its localities had a population of 149,246 at the 2011 census, whereas the wider borough (which also contains Pinner and Stanmore) had a population of 250,149.


title: Harrow, London

text: The historic centre of Harrow was atop the Harrow Hill. The modern town of Harrow grew out at the foot of the settlement, in what was historically called Greenhill. With the arrival of the Metropolitan Railway in the 19th century, the centre of Harrow moved to Greenhill and it grew as the unofficial "capital" of the Metroland suburbia in the early 20th century; Harrow-on-the-Hill station is on one of the railway corridors between London and the Chilterns. Meanwhile, Harrow & Wealdstone station is on the West Coast Main Line and is the eighth oldest railway station, having opened in 1837 one and a half mile north of the hill. Workers were drawn to the area by the opening of several factories in Wealdstone; Harrow was the base of the large Kodak factory, used for the manufacture of photographic materials and R&D, which was in operation for more than a century.


title: Harrow, London

text: Historically in the hundred of Gore, county of Middlesex, the merged Harrow was a municipal borough before it became a part of Greater London in 1965. Today, the historic area is distinguished as Harrow on the Hill and is a conservation area with listed buildings of Georgian architecture and home to Harrow School, one of the seven major boys' boarding schools in England as defined by the Public Schools Act 1868. The modern-day town meanwhile is an established commercial centre of outer north-west London and houses a campus of the University of Westminster.


title: Harrow, London

text: Harrow's name comes from Old English "hearg" = '(heathen) temple', which was probably on the hill of Harrow, where St. Mary's Church now stands. The name has been studied in detail by Keith Briggs.


title: Harrow, London

text: The original Greenhill hamlet derived its name from either an unidentified local green hill, or was imported from a manorial surname. It was not recorded in the Domesday Book but was mentioned as early as 1334 as "Grenehulle". In addition, one or more families bearing the "Greenhulle" or "Greenhill" surname lived there from at least 1247, and are likely to have taken their name from this location. The name Greenhill survives and the local council has continued the name by using it for Greenhill Way, a road which by-passes the mainly-pedestrianised and modernised shopping area based around College Road and St Anns Road. The name is also still used for the local electoral ward.


title: Harrow, London

text: It is possible that Greenhill went by an even older name, "Norbury", c.1300, but the hamlet of Norbury has not been identified with certainty. The name may have been correspondent to Sudbury, being north of what was then Harrow Hill.


title: Harrow, London

text: Harrow, formerly known as Greenhill, was a small hamlet of farms at the foot of Harrow Hill. For almost a millennium, the centre of Harrow was atop the hill, but this began to change during the 19th century. Circa 1852, the village had 8 houses, 17 cottages, and one inn, with 141 people. This area was part of the hundred of Gore, in the historic county of Middlesex.


title: Harrow, London

text: By 1865, a series of roads had been built in Greenhill, including College, Roxborough, Kymberley, Headstone, Clarendon, Byron and St Anns - but few houses. A parish church, St John's Church, was built in 1866 on a farm and Greenhill became a separate parish in 1896. The church building has been Grade II listed since 1994. The Metropolitan Railway connection dates from 1880 with the building of Harrow-on-the-Hill station, which led to a housebuilding boom and a population of 4,892 by 1902. Developments westward along the railway in the Headstone and Pinner as well as Roxborough and Wealdstone engulfed Greenhill with new developments, and soon enough there was nothing left of the original village.


title: Harrow, London

text: In 1899, the junction of Grove Hill and Lowlands Road is said to have been the scene of Britain's first fatal car accident. There is a plaque to commemorate this at the top of Grove Hill where it meets the High Street and Peterborough Hill.


title: Harrow, London

text: By 1895, most of Greenhill (along with Roxeth) became part of the Harrow on the Hill Urban District, while a small part in the north became part of Wealdstone Urban District. It would remain so until 1934 with the creation of Harrow Urban District. One of the oldest surviving buildings in what is today Harrow is the Grade I listed Headstone Manor from the 15th century.


title: Harrow, London

text: Harrow contributed to the growing photographic industry in the UK; a large industrial premises was built in 1890 by the American Eastman Kodak company in Wealdstone, and by 1965 there were over 100 buildings on a 55-acre site at Kodak Harrow, employing 5,500 people, including a research centre. This facility operated for 125 years. The long chimney has been a landmark in Harrow ever since.


title: Harrow, London

text: In 1914, a major department store named Sopers opened on Station Road. The site became a Debenhams store; it closed in May 2021 after the collapse of the Debenham's chain. Its facade dated from the 1960s.


title: Harrow, London

text: During the inter-war period Harrow had grown into a suburb. Almost two-thirds of housing stock in the present day Borough of Harrow dates back to the interwar period.


title: Harrow, London

text: The modern town of Harrow and much of the borough overall has been defined historically by the growth of the railways, as Harrow expanded and saw housing developments as a result of the building of the Metropolitan Railway into what was, in early Victorian times, the rural areas to the north-west of London. The borough bow has many train stations.


title: Harrow, London

text: On 7 August 1838, Thomas Port died from injuries received in a train accident near Harrow. His gravestone in the parish churchyard of St Mary's, Harrow-on-the-Hill, states: "To the memory of Thomas Port, son of John Port of Burton-upon-Trent in the County of Stafford, Hat Manufacturer, who near this town had both legs severed from his body by the railway train. With great fortitude, he bore a second amputation by the surgeons and died from loss of blood, August 7th 1838, aged 33 years."


title: Harrow, London

text: On 8 October 1952, three trains collided at Harrow & Wealdstone station, killing 112 people. Of the dead, 64 were railway employees on their way to work.


title: Harrow, London

text: Although The Blitz is generally claimed to have started on 7 September 1940, many sources state that one of the earliest bombing raid from the Luftwaffe occurred in Harrow and Wealdstone on 22 August 1940. It caused damage to cinemas, houses and a bank, but with no fatalities. Although Harrow was then in Middlesex, it was classed as a London area by the civil defence as it came under the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Police. The very first air raid on the present day London area is believed to be the accidental bombing of Croydon Airport on 15 August 1940, which was then in Surrey.


title: Harrow, London

text: The town was part of the Harrow Urban District, a district council within the county of Middlesex, from 1934 until 1965, which also included parts of Edgware, Hendon, Wembley and Pinner. The London Borough of Harrow was formed in 1965 as the only London borough unaffected by boundary changes.


title: Harrow, London

text: By the 1950s, Harrow was described as the "capital city of Metro-land". The borough's council Civic Centre building complex was built in 1970–1972, opened 6 May 1973, on Station Road in Wealdstone. Six storeys high and designed by architect Eric Broughton, the building is considered "outdated and costly" in 2018 and was expected to be imminently redeveloped. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, many new office blocks were built in the town, especially in Lyon Road and the western end of College Road.


title: Harrow, London

text: In 1974, the Kodak Mural designed by Pentagram was completed on the first floor of the recently opened Civic Centre. It contains almost one thousand photographic tiles representing Harrow and designed to commemorate the town and borough's links with Kodak.


title: Harrow, London

text: The town underwent regeneration in the 1980s with the building of a bus station in College Road and the pedestrianisation of St Anns Road. A statue called "Skipping Katie" was unveiled by the local council in May 1987 to celebrate the completion of the pedestrianisation. The landmark was designed by James Butler inspired by watching his daughter skip. A plaque on Katie was unveiled in 2004 by Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh to mark the 50th anniversary of the London Borough of Harrow.


title: Harrow, London

text: In the autumn of 1987, Diana, Princess of Wales visited Harrow, where she officially opened the new St Anns shopping centre amid a large crowd of locals. Located opposite the central train station on College Road, the centre was built on demolished buildings including Heathfield School for Girls, which moved away to Pinner in 1982.


title: Harrow, London

text: Nearby St Anns shopping centre, another indoor retail outlet was built which was opened as St George's Shopping and Leisure Centre on St George's Day in 1996. The town's Woolworths store on Station Road closed and was replaced by a new branch inside St George's. Other landmarks built during the decade include the Hygeia building in 1991, which has an erected golden coloured sculpture of Roman goddess Hygeia facing the bus station. Furthermore, in 1991, Lower Mead stadium on Station Road, the home of Wealdstone F.C., was sold to Tesco and demolished. In its place a new large Tesco superstore was built.


title: Harrow, London

text: The town centre has undergone a new wave of redevelopment. In 2011, the one-way single lane section of Station Road was widened to allow two-way bus traffic. The 11 storey luxury apartments of Bradstowe House was completed in 2016 after long delays. Former office buildings on Lyon Road (including Coal House, once belonging to the National Coal Board) have been regenerated into new mixed use buildings in the 2010s, whereas on Pinner Road behind St George's centre a new eight storey development called Trident Point was built which includes a Morrisons supermarket opened in 2013. The former post-office sorting building on College Road, next to the train station, remained vacant for some years until plans for a 19-storey skyscraper was approved by the council in 2015. The development, called Harrow Square, was partly completed with 318 apartments across four buildings in 2018. It includes a bottom floor library still under construction which will replace the current Gayton Library on St John's Road. The building next to it, formerly First National House, has been refurbished into luxury apartments called The Hub.


title: Harrow, London

text: The borough received a £1 million grant from the Mayor of London that will go towards a new public square and a "pop-up test eatery" at the site of the former Cumberland Hotel on Lyon Road, expected to be completed by 2020. The 1930s art deco facade of the Safari Cinema, which has been hidden since the 1960s, is set to be restored from 2020. The council aims to invest over a billion in the town centres of Harrow and Wealdstone and the Station Road corridor in between.


title: Harrow, London

text: The borough of Harrow has a leafy, suburban character, much of which is a legacy of it being at the centre of the Metroland developments of the early 20th century.


title: Harrow, London

text: The town centre is about above sea level, almost below the top of Harrow Hill, which is an outlying knoll. The hill is half a mile south of the town centre, and the settlement contains historic architecture and has a village atmosphere. The steep climb towards the hill is clearly visible from Lowlands Road. Other parts of Harrow are not as affluent but are still mostly leafy, particularly the northern part called Harrow Weald. The rural northern slopes of Harrow, around Harrow Weald Common, are part of the Green Belt and contain a conservation area and a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) adjacent to another SSSI called Bentley Priory Nature Reserve which comes under Stanmore. The area also has the highest elevation in Harrow, as high as above sea level.


title: Harrow, London

text: There is also agricultural land close by the town, on fields at the eastern side of Harrow on the Hill, on Watford Road. This open farmland is only half a mile away from Harrow's town centre and is adjacent to Northwick Park Hospital and Northwick Park open space. The farm borders Harrow Park and other open spaces and golf courses that are within Harrow on the Hill; other open spaces include: The Grove open space and Harrow Recreation Ground near the town centre; West Harrow Recreation Ground; Kenton Recreation Ground; Alexandra Park in South Harrow; Newton Park in Rayners Lane; Byron Recreation Ground in Wealdstone; and the grounds of Headstone Manor.


title: Harrow, London

text: Much of Kenton, and before 1716 all of Pinner, were parts of Harrow. Pinner is now a separate district within the borough of Harrow. Harrow Weald is the district north of Wealdstone, and both of these are historically also part of Harrow. It is the principal settlement of the London Borough of Harrow, which also includes the towns of Pinner and Stanmore.


title: Harrow, London

text: The Harrow postcode area covers the entire borough and stretches into neighbouring boroughs: west into Ruislip and Northwood, and east to Edgware and Wembley. The postcodes for Harrow town itself are HA1, HA2 and HA3.


title: Harrow, London

text: Central Harrow forms a commercial hub in the north-west of Greater London, with many retail outlets and commercial offices, and increasingly residential apartments in more recent regeneration schemes. Harrow is classified as one of 13 metropolitan centres in the London Plan.


title: Harrow, London

text: The area has two shopping centres, St Anns and St George's, containing chain stores typical of British high streets. There are also parades of shops throughout Station Road and the ascending, traditional College Road, and over of a fully pedestranised shopping/café streets roads (north of St Anns). A large Debenhams department store ( of floorspace) was on Station Road. After Debenhams was liquidated, the site is to become an independent department store called The Landmark due to open on 14 October 2021. There are also large Morrisons and Tesco superstores. As of 2012, Harrow has of total town centre floorspace, the lowest of London's metropolitan centres.


title: Harrow, London

text: The creation of St George's in 1996, less than a decade after St Anns, gave Harrow a stronger competitive retail standing. On one index, the town centre's league position went from 106th (out of 1,000) to 71st (out of 1,400) from the mid-1980s to mid-1990s. Harrow's competing shopping centres were recognised to be Watford, Uxbridge and Brent Cross Shopping Centre. A 2003 council report showed that Harrow was less competitive as a retail centre by comparison.


title: Harrow, London

text: In 2015, Harrow ranked 99th in the Hot 100 UK retail locations published by CACI; it was 5th in Greater London, behind Croydon, Kingston upon Thames, Bromley and Enfield Town. In 2018, Harrow was ranked 59th in the nationwide "High Street Investment Ranking" carried out by Knight Frank, and 6th in Greater London beaten by Uxbridge and Richmond.


title: Harrow, London

text: The Wealdstone district has a strong industrial connection, having been the location for the manufactures Winsor & Newton (artists' materials), Whitefriars Glass, and Kodak.


title: Harrow, London

text: The town includes its localities within the Harrow post town: Harrow on the Hill, Harrow Weald, Headstone, North Harrow, Kenton, Rayners Lane, South Harrow, Wealdstone and West Harrow. The Borough's population was 250,149 in 2011.


title: Harrow, London

text: Harrow Borough's proportion of Jewish, Muslim and Hindu residents is above average. The ethnic minority population includes a large and established Gujarati Indian community, who originally settled in large numbers in the borough after their expulsion from Uganda in 1972.


title: Harrow, London

text: The highest life expectancy (as of 2009–2013) for females was 89.5 years in Headstone North, and for males was 83.8 years in West Harrow. The lowest expectancies were 82.4 years in Wealdstone and 78.6 years in Greenhill respectively. The median age was highest in Headstone North (40 years) and lowest in Greenhill and Wealdstone (both 33 years). The life expectancies for Harrow are lower than both Pinner and Stanmore in the borough.


title: Harrow, London

text: According to a 2018 survey by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the borough of Harrow was the "happiest" in London and scored higher than the English average. Adversely, in another survey by an estate agent in 2019 the borough was found to be the "least friendly" in London.


title: Harrow, London

text: Harrow Council has been governed by the Labour Party since 2014. The town of Harrow generally is represented by 13 wards, each represented by three councillors.


title: Harrow, London

text: Harrow is in the Brent and Harrow constituency for the London Assembly which has been represented since May 2021 by Krupesh Hirani (Labour). Prior to this, it was represented by Navin Shah (Labour) between 2008 and 2021.


title: Harrow, London

text: Keekira Thammaih was the first Indian and a first Asian  to be the Mayor of Harrow, England in 2000 – 2001.


title: Harrow, London

text: Since the 2010 general election, most of Harrow town has been part of the Harrow West parliamentary constituency, most recently represented by Gareth Thomas (Labour), but eastern districts such as Kenton fall within the Harrow East constituency which is represented by Bob Blackman (Conservative).


title: Harrow, London

text: Harrow is best known for Harrow School. An independent boarding school for boys, founded in 1572, Harrow School is considered one of the finest secondary schools in the world. The nearby John Lyon School is another boys' independent school, while another known school is the North London Collegiate School for girls located further in the borough in Edgware.


title: Harrow, London

text: Harrow is also home to a large University of Westminster campus, located near Northwick Park and the hospital. It serves as the university's base for Media, Arts and Design. The school dates back to 1897 specialising in art, photography and fashion, becoming a college in the 1960s under the name Harrow College of Higher Education. It merged with Polytechnic of Central London (PCL) in 1990, now known as the University of Westminster.


title: Harrow, London

text: Other educational institutes in or near central Harrow include: Harrow High School, Whitmore High School, St Dominic's Sixth Form College, Salvatorian College and Harrow College.


title: Harrow, London

text: Greenhill School was built in the 1880s, but the building was demolished in 1967 to make way for shops on St Anns Road. The site is now home to a Marks & Spencer.


title: Harrow, London

text: The borough's Harrow Arts Centre is located in Pinner and includes a theatre and several meeting rooms for various arts groups.


title: Harrow, London

text: The St George's centre has a large Vue cinema. Formerly Sheepcote Road was home to Granada Theatre, opened in 1937, which became a 3 screen cinema in 1973. The building, interior designed by Theodore Komisarjevsky, was Grade II listed in 1988. The cinema went through ownership and name changes from 1989 until it was permanently closed in 1996, six months after the other cinema opening at St George's. After a few years in a derelict condition, the building became a health club gymnasium operated by Gold's Gym. The theatre's original Wurlitzer organ is retained in the building, although currently not accessible to the public, although it reported to remain in perfect working condition.


title: Harrow, London

text: An art-deco cinema called Dominion opened in 1936 adjoining Lower Mead football ground, on much of tge site of Greenhill Farm. It was later purchased by ABC Cinemas, and the Dominion's original art deco design was covered in new metal cladding in 1962. In the 1970s the lower floor was converted to a bingo hall and in the 1990s the cinema became the Safari, showing Bollywood films. This closed in the 20teens and it was not until January 2020 when plans to restore the art deco (and building 78 flats at the site) were approved by Harrow council. This is currently under re-construction.


title: Harrow, London

text: Some of the major churches in Harrow include the Grade I listed St Mary's Church, St John's Greenhill, All Saints Harrow Weald, Holy Trinity Wealdstone, Christ Church Roxeth, and Kenton Methodist Church.


title: Harrow, London

text: Harrow has a Hindu temple dedicated to Sri Lord Ayyappa and is known as Sri Ayyappan Kovil, located in the Wealdstone neighbourhood. In the same area is the large Harrow Central Mosque, and a smaller local mosque, Masjid Imam Muqbil, is located in South Harrow. On Bessborough Road in the town is the Mosaic Reform Synagogue, and there is a United Synagogue in the Kenton part of Harrow. There is a Zoroastrianism centre in Rayners Lane.


title: Harrow, London

text: The wedding of characters Peggy Mitchell and Frank Butcher of "EastEnders" in 1999 was filmed in Harrow. The classroom in "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" was filmed at the Fourth Form Room of Harrow School. The school was also used to shoot many scenes of the drama "The Crown". The British Asian soap drama "Cloud 9" was shot in Harrow in 2013. The exterior of Clark's house in the 2016 film "Me Before You" was shot in Harrow.


title: Harrow, London

text: The "Harrow Times" is a local newspaper for the borough, and formerly the historic "Harrow Observer" that dates back to the 19th century. The "Brent & Kilburn Times" and "Watford Observer" also cover Harrow.


title: Harrow, London

text: Radio Harrow is a local charity radio that broadcasts from Northwick Park Hospital. Launched in 2015 in its current form, its predecessor Radio Northwick Park had already been broadcasting for four decades before. A student radio called Smoke Radio broadcasts from the University of Westminster campus since 2004.


title: Harrow, London

text: Harrow is represented by the association football club Wealdstone F.C., who play in the National League (fifth tier); they are based in Ruislip, moving from their original stadium in Harrow in 1991. Another local club is Harrow Borough F.C. who are based at Earlsmead Stadium and currently play in the Isthmian League Premier Division (seventh tier).


title: Harrow, London

text: Harrow borough is patrolled by the Metropolitan Police (the territorial police force in Greater London). The service is mainly provided through Harrow Police Station on Northolt Road in South Harrow, and the borough overall has contact points supported by 22 Safer Neighbourhoods teams. Previous police stations at Kirkland House and in Wealdstone have closed down in the 2010s. The borough's basic command unit is combined with the London boroughs of Barnet and Brent.


title: Harrow, London

text: Harrow is served by Northwick Park Hospital and specialists St Mark's Hospital and Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital (in Stanmore), which are run by National Health Service. The local Harrow CCG manages public provision of homecare throughout Harrow which is state funded. A private hospital called Clementine Churchill is located in Harrow-on-the-Hill.


title: Harrow, London

text: Harrow-on-the-Hill is the town's central station, located on College Road/Lowlands Road. The station provides direct Underground and rail links to the West End, the City, Uxbridge, and through the Chiltern Hills to Aylesbury. The other major station - and both the largest and busiest of Harrow - is Harrow & Wealdstone, a short distance north from the town, which has direct trains to the West End, Croydon, Gatwick Airport, Watford, Hemel Hempstead and beyond towards Brighton and Birmingham respectively. Both stations are in Travelcard zone 5. Trains towards Gerrards Cross are served by the smaller Sudbury Hill Harrow station which also provides an alternative route towards the West Midlands.


title: Harrow, London

text: Harrow-on-the-Hill is a much busier tube station compared with the town's other principal station, Harrow & Wealdstone, recording over 10.3 million London Underground passengers in 2018/2019. However, the latter is served more extensively by National Rail services, as well as the London Overground and because of this it's a busier National Rail station.


title: Harrow, London

text: A short railway line called the Stanmore branch line formerly ran from Harrow & Wealdstone via Belmont to , but this line was closed in 1964.


title: Harrow, London

text: On 23 December 1991, the IRA exploded a bomb on a train at Harrow-on-the-Hill station; there were no injuries.


title: Harrow, London

text: Harrow bus station is adjacent to St Anns shopping centre and Harrow on the Hill railway station. All buses are managed by Transport for London and links are provided to Ruislip, Watford, Edgware, Northwood, Golders Green, Wembley, Ealing, Hayes and Heathrow Airport. Many local buses have a H-prefix in the range 9–19.


title: Harrow, London

text: During the privatisation of London bus services, Harrow was one of the first places with its own London Regional Transport operating unit, called Harrow Buses and operating from November 1987 in red and cream branded livery. The scheme was not successful and the service gained the nickname "Harrowing Buses" from the local press.


title: Harrow, London

text: Harrow was the place where the first major electronic contactless smart card technology was being tested on buses. In a £2 million trial that started in February 1994, cards were provided by London Transport at the bus station and could be used on 21 bus routes in Harrow, the largest trial of its kind in the world. Within two months, 9,000 smart photocards were issued. The scheme was a success by the time it ended in December 1995, and led to the development of the Oyster card in 2003.


title: Harrow, London

text: There are no trunk roads in the vicinity of Harrow. The A312 road starts in Harrow as Bessborough Road - however the A312's section in Harrow is merely an urban road, and the primary trunk road starts over 3 miles away in Northolt. It is here where there is a crossing with the A40 Western Avenue. The A406 is 5 miles away via Neasden, Wembley or Hanger Lane Gyratory. There is access to junction 2 of the M1 motorway 6 miles away via the A41 in Edgware.


title: Opera (company)

text: Opera is a Norwegian multinational technology company and subsidiary of Kunlun that specializes in web browser development, fintech, as well as services such as Opera News and YoYo Games. The company's total user base, including users of its desktop browsers, mobile browsers and other services exceeds 380 million monthly active users.


title: Opera (company)

text: Opera is headquartered in Oslo, Norway, with additional offices in Europe, China, and Africa. In 2016, Opera was acquired by an investment group led by a Chinese consortium. On July 27, 2018, Opera Software went public on the NASDAQ stock exchange, raising $115 million in its initial public offering.


title: Opera (company)

text: Opera Software was founded as an independent company in Norway in 1995 by Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner and Geir Ivarsøy. They had initially begun development of the Opera web browser while both working at Norwegian telecommunications company Telenor.


title: Opera (company)

text: Opera Software's first product, the Opera web browser version 2.10 for Windows, was publicly released in 1996. Opera began development of its first browser for mobile device platforms in 1998. Opera 4.0, released in 2000, included a new cross-platform core that facilitated creation of editions of Opera for multiple operating systems and platforms.


title: Opera (company)

text: Up to this point, the Opera browser was trialware and had to be purchased after the trial period ended, however, this ended with version 5.0, released in 2000. Instead, Opera became ad-sponsored, displaying advertisements to users without a license, which was commonly criticized as a barrier to gaining market share. In newer versions, the user was allowed a choice of generic graphical banners or text-based targeted advertisements provided by Google based upon the page being viewed.


title: Opera (company)

text: In February 2004, Opera Software announced it was preparing for an initial public offering on the Oslo Stock Exchange in March. On March 11, Opera’s IPO opened, trading under the symbol OPERA.


title: Opera (company)

text: In 2004, Opera Software settled a lawsuit with an "international corporation" paying to Opera. It was speculated that the "international corporation" named in the statement announcing the settlement was Microsoft, which had previously blocked Opera users from correctly viewing MSN.com.


title: Opera (company)

text: On 12 January 2005, Opera Software announced that it would offer free licenses to higher education institutions — a change from the previous cost of US$1,000 for unlimited licenses. Schools that opted for the free license included Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard University, University of Oxford, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Duke University.


title: Opera (company)

text: With version 8.5 (released in 2005) the advertisements were removed entirely and primary financial support came through revenue from Google (Opera's default search engine). In August 2005, the company introduced Opera Mini, a new Java ME based web browser for mobile phones originally marketed not to end users but to mobile network operators to pre-load on phones or offer for their subscribers. In 2007, Opera filed a complaint against Microsoft in the European Commission, alleging that bundling Internet Explorer with Microsoft Windows is harmful to both the consumer and to other web browser companies. The complaint resulted in the creation of BrowserChoice.eu.


title: Opera (company)

text: In 2012, Opera Software and Bharti Airtel signed an agreement to provide Opera Mini browsers to Airtel mobile customers. In 2013 Opera Software decided to not use their in-house rendering engine for the Desktop Browser anymore. From Version 15, the Opera browser for computers would be using the Blink rendering engine, a fork of Webkit developed together with Google.


title: Opera (company)

text: In March 2015, Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Opera won Global Mobile Award of Best Mobile Product, Initiative or Service in Emerging Markets for Opera Web Pass and Sponsored Web Pass. In April Opera Software decided to centre development of the Opera Desktop browser in Poland. On April 12, Opera TV AS (now Vewd Software AS) was established to separate TV-related business from all other assets, which became part of Opera Software AS; both companies became wholly owned subsidiaries of Opera Software ASA (now Otello). In September, the company announced a rebrand with a new three-dimensional “O” logo and brand identity. In the process, the company logotype changed from "Opera Software" to “Opera”.


title: Opera (company)

text: In 2016, the company changed ownership when a group of Chinese investors purchased the web browser, consumer business, and brand of Opera Software ASA. The remaining assets were renamed as the Otello Corporation. The ownership change was initiated in February 2016 when a group of Chinese investors offered US$1.2 billion ($8.31 per share) to buy Opera Software ASA, though the deal reportedly did not meet regulatory approval. On 18 July 2016, Opera Software ASA announced it had sold its browser, privacy and performance apps, and the Opera brand to Golden Brick Capital Private Equity Fund I Limited Partnership (a consortium of Chinese investors led by "Beijing Kunlun Tech Co" and Qihoo 360) for an amount of US$600 million. The transaction for sale of Opera's consumer business was approved on 31 October 2016 by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. An earlier deal was not approved by Norwegian regulators. On 4 November 2016, Golden Brick Capital Private Equity Fund I L.P. completed the acquisition. After divesting itself of the Opera browser and brand, Opera Software ASA changed its name to Otello Corporation ASA.


title: Opera (company)

text: In January 2017, the company introduced Opera Neon, a new concept browser that is intended as an exploration of browser design alternatives. The browser is built on top of the Blink engine similar to the original Opera browser, and it is available for Windows and macOS. In January 2018, Opera launched "Opera News", an AI-driven news app dedicated to African users. It reached more than a million downloads in less than a month. In April, the company released a new mobile browser called "Opera Touch". It includes an innovative user interface focused on ease of use and one-handed browsing. In July 2018, Opera filed for an IPO. The company went public on the NASDAQ on July 27 and raised over $115 million.


title: Opera (company)

text: In November 2019, Opera launched a new project called "Opera News Hub". The platform helps bloggers create and share content. In January 2020, Opera acquired PocoSys, an Estonian startup that developed banking-as-a-service software. The deal also included an agreement to take over Pocopay, PocoSys’s sister company. In June 2020, Opera partnered with APO Group to provide accurate information about COVID-19 in Africa. News articles from different health authorities are collected by APO and made available to Opera users through the Opera Mini browser and Opera News app.


title: Opera (company)

text: Opera acquired YoYo Games from Playtech in January 2021, for , from which the company also announced the launch of its Opera Gaming division to promote game development within the Opera GX browser with YoYo Games and its GameMaker game development software.


title: Opera (company)

text: In February 2021, Opera launched the fintech Dify, an in-browser payment app that includes cashback service and a digital wallet. Customers who use Dify get reimbursed when purchasing items from partner websites like Nike, Asos, and eDreams. The fintech was first offered in beta in Spain.


title: Opera (company)

text: In February 2018, after previously announcing that the service and app would be shut down, the Opera Max app, a VPN based mobile data compression service, was sold to Samsung. It was rebranded as Samsung Max, but will only be compatible with eligible Samsung Galaxy smartphones going forward.