title: Bison hunting

text: A Native American conservation effort that has been gaining ground is the Buffalo Field Campaign. Founded in 1996 by Mike Mease, Sicango Lakota, and Rosalie Little Thunder, the Buffalo Field Campaign hopes to get bison migrating freely in Montana and beyond. The Buffalo Field Campaign challenges Montana's DOL officials, who slaughtered 1631 bison in the winter of 2007-2008 in a search for food away from Yellowstone National Park. Founder Mike Mease commented in regards to DOL officials: "It's disheartening what they're doing to buffalo. It's marked with prejudice that exists from way back. I think the whole problem with white society is there's this fear of anything wild. They're so scared of anything they can't control, whereas the First Nations take pride in being part of it and protecting the wild because of its importance. Our culture is so far removed from that, and afraid of it."


title: Bison hunting

text: Additionally, many smaller tribal groups aim to reintroduce bison to their native lands. The Ponca Tribe of Nebraska, which was restored in 1990, has a herd of roughly 100 bison in two pastures. Similarly, the Southern Ute Tribe in Colorado has raised nearly 30 bison in a 350-acre fenced pasture.


title: Bison hunting

text: According to Rutgers University Professor Frank Popper, bison restoration brings better meat and ecological health to the plains region, in addition to restoring bison-Native American relations. However, there is a considerable risk involved with restoring the bison population: brucellosis. If bison are introduced in large numbers, the risk of brucellosis is high.


title: Bison hunting

text: For some spokesmen, the resurgence of the bison population reflects a cultural and spiritual recovery from the effects of bison hunting in mid-1800s. By creating groups such as the Inter-Tribal Bison Cooperative and the Buffalo Field Campaign, Native Americans are hoping to not only restore the bison population but also improve solidarity and morale among their tribes. "We recognize the bison as a symbol of strength in unity," stated Fred Dubray, former president of the Inter-Tribal Bison Cooperative. "We believe that reintroduction of the buffalo to tribal lands will help heal the spirit of both the Indian people and the buffalo. To reestablish healthy buffalo populations is to reestablish hope for Indian people."


title: Bison hunting

text: Hunting of wild bison is legal in some states and provinces where public herds require culling to maintain a target population. In Alberta, where one of only two continuously wild herds of bison exist in North America at Wood Buffalo National Park, bison are hunted to protect disease-free public (reintroduced) and private herds of bison.


title: Bison hunting

text: In Montana, a public hunt was reestablished in 2005, with 50 permits being issued. The Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks Commission increased the number of tags to 140 for the 2006/2007 season. Advocacy groups claim that it is premature to reestablish the hunt, given the bison's lack of habitat and wildlife status in Montana.


title: Bison hunting

text: Though the number is usually several hundred, up to more than a thousand bison from the Yellowstone Park Bison Herd have been killed in some years when they wander north from the Lamar Valley of Yellowstone National Park into private and state lands of Montana. This hunting is done because of fears that the Yellowstone bison, which are often infected with Brucellosis will spread that disease to local domestic cattle. To date no credible instance of bison to cattle transmission has ever been established, recorded or proven although there is some evidence of transmission between wild caribou and bison.


title: Bison hunting

text: The State of Utah maintains two bison herds. Bison hunting in Utah is permitted in both the Antelope Island bison herd and the Henry Mountains bison herd though the licenses are limited and tightly controlled. A Game Ranger is also generally sent out with any hunters to help them find and select the right bison to kill. In this way, the hunting is used as a part of the wildlife management strategy and to help cull less desirable individuals.


title: Bison hunting

text: Every year all the bison in the Antelope Island bison herd are rounded up to be examined and vaccinated. Then most of them are turned loose again, to wander Antelope Island but approximately 100 bison are sold at an auction, and hunters are allowed to kill a half dozen bison. This hunting takes place on Antelope Island in December each year. Fees from the hunters are used to improve Antelope Island State Park and to help maintain the bison herd.


title: Bison hunting

text: Hunting is also allowed every year in the Henry Mountains bison herd in Utah. The Henry Mountains herd has sometimes numbered up to 500 individuals but the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources has determined that the carrying capacity for the Henry Mountains bison herd is 325 individuals. Some of the extra individuals have been transplanted, but most of them are not transplanted or sold, so hunting is the major tool used to control their population. "In 2009, 146 public once-in-a-lifetime Henry Mountain bison hunting permits were issued." Most years, 50 to 100 licenses are issued to hunt bison in the Henry Mountains.


title: Bison hunting

text: Bison were also reintroduced to Alaska in 1928, and both domestic and wild herds subsist in a few parts of the state. The state grants limited permits to hunt wild bison each year.


title: Bison hunting

text: In 2001 the United States government donated some bison calves from South Dakota and Colorado to the Mexican government for the reintroduction of bison to Mexico's nature reserves. These reserves included El Uno Ranch at Janos and Santa Elena Canyon, Chihuahua, and Boquillas del Carmen, Coahuila, which are located on the southern shore of the Rio Grande and the grasslands bordering Texas and New Mexico.


The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption is a 2012 direct-to-video sword and sorcery action adventure film released on January 10, 2012. It is the third installment in "The Scorpion King" series and stars Victor Webster in the title role with supporting roles by Bostin Christopher, Temuera Morrison, Krystal Vee, Selina Lo, Kimbo Slice, Dave Bautista, Billy Zane, and Ron Perlman. The film continues the story of Mathayus, after he becomes the Scorpion King at the end of "The Scorpion King" and focuses on Mathayus battling Talus and trying to stop him from claiming the Book of the Dead, this was the first film produced by Universal 1440 Entertainment.


title: The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption

text: A handful of years after giving Mathayus the prophecy that his peaceful kingdom wouldn't last forever, Cassandra dies. Mathayus allows his kingdom to fall apart in the aftermath of the deadly plague which claimed his wife's life and he believes his reign of nobility to be over. Mathayus then becomes a mercenary once more, just as he was prior to his war with Memnon. The younger brother of Horus, a powerful king of Egypt, is Talus, and he wishes to conquer his brother's kingdom since Horus was made king over him. In order to do so, Talus, along with his army, goes to the Far East to steal the "Book of the Dead" from Ramusan, a king who is an ally of Horus. To stop Talus, Horus hires Mathayus and pairs him with the Teutonic warrior Olaf.


text: Talus kidnaps Ramusan's daughter, Silda. Ramusan then tells Mathayus that if he can save his daughter, he will have the right to wed her and once again raise a kingdom. Before Mathayus manages to rescue Silda, she is whisked away by the ninja army of the mysterious "Cobra". Talus hires Mathayus and Olaf to bring back the princess as well as Cobra's head. They wind up in an exiles' camp led by Cobra, who turns out to be Silda herself.


text: Talus arrives at Ramusan's palace and takes the "Book of the Dead" while injuring Ramusan. With this, he reanimates the dead warriors Zulu Kondo, Agromael and Tsukai. In a test to see their strength, Talus orders them to kill his best men which they do easily. Tsukai and Zulu Kondo are ordered to attack the exiles' camp. Working together, Mathayus, Olaf, and Silda's ninjas manage to defeat Zulu Kondo in battle. However, Tsukai manages to escape.


text: Mathayus and Olaf return to Ramusan's palace, now Talus' headquarters. They pretend to have rescued Silda and present a severed head supposedly belonging to Cobra. Talus still intends to marry Silda and takes her to his sleeping chambers. Mathayus attacks Talus, who is saved by the timely intervention of Tsukai. Mathayus pursues Talus while Silda faces Tsukai. At the same time, Olaf attempts to get the "Book of the Dead" but has to fight Agromael. The ninjas stop Talus, and Mathayus somehow finds the ailing Ramusan and together they use the "Book of the Dead" to prevent Tsukai and Agromael from killing Silda and Olaf, respectively.


text: With Ramusan dying in his daughter's arms and Talus left to face the wrath of the ninjas, Tsukai and Agromael bow down to Mathayus as the new ruler of Ramusan and Talus' kingdoms. When Horus arrives at the city gates, he is greeted by Mathayus, who has taken up the mantle of Scorpion King once more.


text: During the credits, it's revealed Mathayus and Silda shared a kiss on the night of their earlier party but they part ways with the deleted scenes providing dialogue that Mathyus was leaving as he brought death and destruction wherever he goes. While Mathayus may still have a while before deciding to lead his people on his fated quest to take over the known world, his destiny is now more clear than ever in the subtly more militant stance he has taken compared to where he was at the end of the prior original film, with the "Book of the Dead" left intact for the subsequent events in "The Mummy" and the Scorpion King's own journey paved for the opening sequence of "The Mummy Returns".


text: The script originally called for most of the movie to be set in Europe. But because of the movie's limited budget, the director moved the movie to Thailand, where it was cheaper to shoot. They used CGI to add the sand around Horus's city, which is supposed to be in a desert.


text: They had 400 extras for the battle scenes, but most of the fighting was done with the main cast plus just 12 stunt men, who played multiple roles in different costumes so they could be in all of the battles. The rest of the extras weren't trained to fight, so they stayed in the background, and careful observers can see that they aren't actually doing any dangerous fighting themselves.


text: They were originally planning for Zulu Kondo to throw his hammer, then have it magically fly back to his hand. But they decided to cut that bit when they saw the 2011 movie Thor had already done the same thing.


text: Many of the movie's scenes were done at tourist locations, which they weren't able to reserve just for themselves. So they frequently had to stop filming because tourists walked through the scene.


text: IGN, who gave the film a 4/10 rating, criticized it for "wretched dialogue, awful acting (Victor Webster stumbles over every sentence he's handed), and stagey action, much of which plays more like rehearsal than the real deal. [...] My bar was very low, and yet the film somehow found a way to sink beneath it." Jason Best of "TVTimes": "The storytelling is so ham-fisted that you really need to be a confirmed fan of the action fantasy genre to sit through all the boring stuff in between." Conversely, CraveOnline gave the film a 7/10 rating and commented: "If I had to rank them, I'd say "The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption" is the least of the Scorpion King movies (they've been subtly deteriotating since the first one), lacking as it does a dashing lead performance or a particularly involving storyline. but it's still a damned fun B-movie, with likable characters and a series of entertainingly produced action sequences for fantasy movie fans of all stripes."


text: A fourth film in the franchise has been released, entitled "". Victor Webster reprised his role from the third film. Michael Biehn, Rutger Hauer, Lou Ferrigno, and former 2007 WWE Diva Search winner Eve Torres also joined the cast.


title: Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U

text: Like the rest of the "Super Smash Bros." series, "Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS" and "Super Smash Bros. for Wii U" are non-traditional fighting games where players use different attacks to weaken their opponents and knock them out of an arena. The games are crossover titles that feature characters, items, music, and stages from various Nintendo franchises, as well as from several third-party franchises. The games began development in 2012 and were officially announced at E3 2013. The gameplay was tuned to be between that of the faster, more competition-oriented "Super Smash Bros. Melee" and the slower, more casual-friendly "Super Smash Bros. Brawl".


text: New features include having up to eight players fighting at a time on the Wii U version, support for Nintendo's line of Amiibo (being one of the first games to do so), using custom Miis as playable fighters, post-release downloadable content including additional fighters and stages, and customizable special moves. Some features from previous games in the series were removed, such as the story mode from "Brawl". Critics applauded the fine-tuning of existing "Super Smash Bros." gameplay elements but criticized some issues with online play. Both versions sold well, with the 3DS version selling over nine million copies worldwide by December 2017 and the Wii U version selling over five million during the same period. It was followed by "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate" for the Nintendo Switch in 2018.


text: Like in previous games in the series, "Super Smash Bros." is a multiplayer platform fighter where players use various attacks, techniques, and items to deal damage to their opponents and knock them out of the arena. As a character's damage percentage increases, they fly back further when attacked, and may eventually be knocked far enough out of the playing field to be knocked out. To assist players during a battle, items sometimes appear on the battlefield, most of which represent the various video games represented in the series. An item called a Smash Ball allows players to use a powerful, character-specific attack known as a "Final Smash". Another item is an Assist Trophy, which summons various non-playable characters from a represented series onto the field to assist the summoner. Like its predecessors, "Super Smash Bros." features collectible in-game trophies based on characters or items seen in various Nintendo or third-party games. Each stage now features an alternate Omega form, which replaces the stage's layout with a flat surface with ledges on both sides and removes all stage hazards, similar to the stage "Final Destination", a flat, medium-sized stage with no hazards. Certain stages, collectible trophies, and game features are exclusive to each version, with the Wii U version primarily featuring elements taken from home console titles and the 3DS version taking elements primarily from handheld titles. Both games feature revisited stages from past entries in the series and new stages representing newly introduced properties or recent entries in existing ones.


text: New to the series is the ability to customize both existing characters and custom Mii Fighters, altering their attacks and giving them unique power-ups. These characters can be transferred between the 3DS and Wii U versions of the game, as well as certain items earned in specific modes. Additionally, players can use Amiibo to train computer-controlled players and import them into a match. Both versions of the game support local and online multiplayer. Whereas local and online matches with friends have fully customizable rules, online matches with strangers are divided into two modes: "For Fun" and "For Glory." For Fun features random stages and items, with timed matches only and Omega stages omitted, while For Glory features stock matches with no items exclusively on Omega stages and features both standard Smash and 1-on-1 battles, all of which the player's wins and losses are recorded from For Glory. Customized characters, Mii Fighters, and Amiibo cannot be used in online matches against strangers. Additionally, solo play once again features Classic mode, which features an intensity setting directly influenced by Masahiro Sakurai's previous project "", in which players can make the game more difficult by spending in-game currency to earn greater rewards. The Home-Run Contest game from "Melee" also returns with a competitive variation for up to four players. Both versions share two new modes. Target Blast has players beat up a ticking bomb before launching it into a set of targets, to earn as many points as possible by causing chain reactions. Trophy Rush has players clear out falling crates to build up a Fever meter and quickly earn new trophies and customization items.


text: In addition to a moderation system to prevent griefing, the game features an online ranking system called "Global Smash Power" for a player's solo mode score, which shows how many other players someone has outscored, rather than listing their position on a leaderboard. Although the game does not feature a ranking system for online matches, matchmaking between players of similar skill levels was introduced. Online also features Spectator Mode, where spectators can place bets on other players to win more gold, and Conquest, in which players can support selected characters by playing as them online, earning rewards if their supported team wins, and earning bonus rewards for going on a winning streak.


text: The Nintendo 3DS version features stereoscopic 3D graphics with optional cel-shaded outlines to make the characters more visible. The game also features two exclusive modes; Smash Run and StreetSmash. Smash Run, based on the City Trial mode from "Kirby Air Ride", has players navigate an open environment, fighting computer-controlled enemies to earn stat-increasing power-ups, before facing each other in a randomly selected match, such as vertical or horizontal races against each other or battles with various special rules. StreetSmash is a StreetPass-based game in which players control a disc on a top-down board and attempt to knock their opponents out of the arena. The 3DS version supports the additional controls featured on the New Nintendo 3DS, such as using the C-Stick to trigger Smash Attacks, but is incompatible with the Circle Pad Pro peripheral because of hardware limitations.


text: The Wii U version features high-definition 1080p graphics and a special mode called 8-Player Smash that allows up to eight players simultaneously. This mode is restricted to certain larger stages and cannot be played online, though additional stages were made available for eight players via post-release update patches. Various modes from the 3DS version, such as Classic mode, feature various changes in the Wii U version, with some modes allowing two players to play cooperatively or against each other in other modes. The Wii U version also features three exclusive new game modes; Smash Tour, Special Orders, and Event Mode. Smash Tour is a traditional board game-type mode in which up to four players assemble a team of fighters that they pick up on the board. Players can change the size of the game board, the number of turns, and choose if they allow having custom characters on the board (excluding Miis). In this mode, players earn stat increasing power-ups, triggering various battles and events along the way. Special Orders is a series of challenges set by Master Hand and Crazy Hand, which players can attempt to earn rewards. Each time a battle is won, the reward and the stakes will rise, but if a round is lost, all accumulated prizes will be lost. In Event Mode, one or two players can participate in themed challenges, moving along the path by completion. The Wii U version has vast compatibility with controllers; Wii U GamePad, Wii Remote, Wii Remote and Nunchuk, Classic Controller, Classic Controller Pro, Wii U Pro Controller, GameCube controller through GameCube Controller Adapter for Wii U, and the Nintendo 3DS systems (using either a copy of the 3DS version, or a "Smash Controller" app released on June 14, 2015). Returning features unique to this version include Special Smash, allowing for unique rules, Stage Builder and Photo mode, which allow players to create personalized stages and dioramas (with a compatible SD card), and demo versions of classic games in a "Masterpieces" gallery. An update on April 15, 2015, added content-sharing features, with a Miiverse stage added for free on June 14, 2015. An update released on July 31, 2015, added an online tournament mode.


text: "Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U" features a roster of 58 playable characters (51 on-disc and 7 available as downloadable content) taken from both Nintendo's first-party franchises and some third-party franchises. The base game includes 17 newcomers: the "Wii Fit" Trainer, "Animal Crossing"s Villager, Rosalina and Bowser Jr. from the "Mario" series (with Rosalina being accompanied by a Luma), Little Mac from "Punch-Out!!", Greninja from "Pokémon X" and "Y", Palutena from "Kid Icarus", Dark Pit from "", Lucina and Robin from "Fire Emblem Awakening", Shulk from "Xenoblade Chronicles", the dog and duck as a duo from "Duck Hunt", Capcom's Mega Man, Bandai Namco's Pac-Man, and the Mii Fighter, which can be customized with one of three fighting styles: Brawler, , and Gunner.


text: Some characters such as Wii Fit Trainer and Bowser Jr. have multiple variations, such as different genders and alternate character skins, which are selected in the same manner as alternate colors. Some returning fighters who could change forms during a match in previous titles are now playable solely as individual characters. As such, Zelda, Sheik, Samus, and Zero Suit Samus are now all individual fighters, along with Charizard, who was previously included alongside the now-absent Squirtle and Ivysaur in the Pokémon Trainer's team in "Brawl". Dr. Mario, who first appeared in "Super Smash Bros. Melee", makes his return to the roster after his absence in "Brawl". The Ice Climbers were originally planned for inclusion, but were removed due to the technical limitations of the 3DS. Wolf O'Donnell and Solid Snake are also absent following their appearances in the previous game.


text: In addition to the main roster, seven additional characters, including three returning characters and four newcomers, were released as downloadable content between April 2015 and February 2016. Mewtwo, who last appeared in "Melee", was released on April 28, 2015, but was made available on April 15, 2015, for Club Nintendo members who purchased and registered both 3DS and Wii U versions of the game before March 31, 2015. Roy from "", who last appeared in "Melee," and Lucas from "Mother 3", who last appeared in "Brawl", along with Ryu from Capcom's "Street Fighter" franchise, were released on June 14, 2015. Cloud Strife from Square Enix's "Final Fantasy VII" was released on December 15, 2015, following increasing requests for "Final Fantasy" series characters. Finally, Corrin from "Fire Emblem Fates" and Bayonetta from Sega and Nintendo's "Bayonetta" series were released on February 3, 2016, in North America and in Europe and Japan the next day. Bayonetta was chosen as the overall winner worldwide among "negotiable and realizable" characters in a player-nominated ballot which ran between April 1, 2015, and October 3, 2015, ranking first in Europe and among the top five in North America. Sakurai and former Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata decided not to reveal the top-requested fighters of the poll, believing if they had, "people might demand them from the respective game companies" which would cause "some inconvenience" to any negotiations. In October 2021, Sakurai revealed that Sora from the "Kingdom Hearts" series and Banjo and Kazooie from the "Banjo-Kazooie" series had been the two top-requested fighters in the poll; both were ultimately added to the series as DLC characters for "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate". Corrin was developed as a downloadable character in response to the critical and commercial success of "Fire Emblem Fates" in Japan and in anticipation for the game's worldwide localization.


text: Former Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata first announced that a new "Super Smash Bros." game was planned for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U at E3 2011 in June 2011, but development only officially began following the completion of series creator Masahiro Sakurai's other project, "", in March 2012. The game was later revealed to be a joint-project between Bandai Namco Studios and Sora Ltd., with various staff members from Bandai Namco's "Soulcalibur" and "Tekken" series assisting Sakurai in development. Other companies also assisted with its development, such as tri-Crescendo. Sakurai, who was previously the sole person responsible for balance in the series' multiple fighters, has involved more staff to further improve the game's competitive balance. The game was officially revealed at E3 2013 on June 11, 2013, during a Nintendo Direct. Along with screenshots being posted each weekday on the game's official website and Miiverse community, various cinematic trailers were released, introducing each of the brand new fighters. Sakurai chose to use these trailers, which benefit from Internet sharing, as opposed to including a story campaign similar to the Subspace Emissary mode featured in "Brawl", as he believed the impact of seeing the mode's cinematic cutscenes for the first time was ruined by people uploading said scenes to video sharing websites.


text: At E3 2013, Sakurai stated that the tripping mechanic introduced in "Brawl" had been omitted, with him also stating that the gameplay was between the fast-paced and competitive style of "Melee" and the slower and more casual style of "Brawl". While the game does not feature cross-platform play between the Wii U and 3DS, due to each version featuring certain exclusive stages and game modes, there is the option to transfer customized characters and items between the two versions. The game builds upon the previous game's third-party involvement with the addition of third-party characters such as Capcom's Mega Man and Bandai Namco's Pac-Man, as well as the return of Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog. This involvement expands beyond playable characters, as other third-party characters, such as Ubisoft's Rayman, are also included in the game as trophies. The addition of Mii characters was made in response to the growing number of requests from fans to have their dream characters included in the game. To prevent potential bullying, as well as to maintain game balance online, Mii Fighters cannot be used in online matches against strangers. The decision to release the Wii U version at a later date from the 3DS version was made to allow each version to receive a dedicated debugging period. Hardware limitations on the Nintendo 3DS led to various design choices, such as the removal of mid-match transformations, the lack of Circle Pad Pro support, and the absence of the Ice Climbers, from the NES game "Ice Climber", who were previously playable in both "Melee" and "Brawl".


text: In late August 2014, a series of allegedly leaked photos and videos of the 3DS version were uploaded to the Internet, revealing at the time several unannounced fighters. The original videos were removed shortly thereafter citing a copyright claim by Nintendo of America. These leaks were confirmed on September 11, 2014, when various gamers in Japan and Taiwan obtained the 3DS version two days prior to its release date and streamed footage of the game on Twitch.


text: Like previous games in the series, "Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U" features many original and re-arranged musical pieces from various gaming franchises. Both versions have multiple musical tracks that can be selected and listened to using the "My Music" feature, including pieces taken from earlier "Super Smash Bros." games. The 3DS version features less music altogether than the Wii U version, however, and only has two songs per stage because of size limitations. The 3DS version also has a "Play in Sleep Mode" option, allowing players to listen to the game's music from the sound menu while the system is in sleep mode.


text: Various well known video game composers and musicians such as Masashi Hamauzu, Yuzo Koshiro, Yasunori Mitsuda, Motoi Sakuraba, Yoko Shimomura, Mahito Yokota, Akari Kaida, Michiru Yamane, Koji Kondo, Kazumi Totaka, and Masafumi Takada, among many others, contributed arrangements for the game, while the original score was written by Bandai Namco's internal sound team. A two-disc promotional soundtrack, featuring certain selections from the game, was available for Club Nintendo members who registered both versions of the game before January 13, 2015.


text: In an announcement for the "Super Smash Bros." Invitational, a tournament which was held at E3 2014, Nintendo revealed an official GameCube controller adapter for the Wii U, which allows players to use GameCube controllers with the game, as well as a "Smash Bros." themed game controller. The adapter and controllers were released alongside the game and are also available separately, but vary depending on the region. The GameCube controller adapter has four controller ports and only works with "Super Smash Bros. for Wii U". Players can use up to two adapters on the Wii U. This adapter was later revealed to work with the Nintendo Switch in 2017.


text: "Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS" was released in Japan on September 13, 2014, in North America and Europe on October 3, 2014, and in Australia on October 4, 2014. A playable demo was released on the Nintendo eShop on September 10, 2014, in Japan and on September 19, 2014, in North America and Europe. Select Club Nintendo Platinum members in North America and Europe received early access to the 3DS demo which, unlike the public demo of the game, had an unlimited number of plays. The Wii U version was released in North America on November 21, 2014, in Europe on November 28, 2014, in Australia on November 29, 2014, and in Japan on December 6, 2014. Bundles containing Amiibo figures were available at launch, with the last batch consisting of Bayonetta, Corrin, and Cloud.


text: On April 15, 2015, a software update was released, adding the ability to purchase additional content, such as playable characters, new stages, and Mii Fighter costumes, and addressing some balancing issues in the game. It also enabled online sharing of photos, Mii fighters, replays and custom stages. An update released on July 31, 2015, added an online tournament mode and the ability to upload replays to YouTube. A "Smash Controller" app was released on the Nintendo eShop on June 14, 2015, allowing players to use the Nintendo 3DS as a controller for the Wii U version without needing a copy of the 3DS version. On July 19, 2017, a software update was released that added the ability to scan the final batch of DLC Amiibo.


text: Reception for the 3DS version was generally positive, according to review aggregator Metacritic. The game was praised for its large and diverse character roster, its improvements to game mechanics, and its variety of multiplayer options. Some criticisms include a lack of single player modes and issues concerning the 3DS hardware, such as the size of characters on the smaller screen when zoomed out and latency issues during both local and online multiplayer. There were also reports of players damaging their 3DS Circle Pads while playing the game excessively. The 3DS version sold over a million copies in its first weekend on sale in Japan and had sold more than 3.22 million copies worldwide by the end of October 2014.


text: The Wii U version received critical acclaim; critics praised its variety of gameplay modes and improvements upon features in the 3DS version. Daniel Bischoff of Game Revolution called it "the biggest leap forward Smashers have seen yet," praising the game for its graphics and "incredibly fast action." Daniel Starkey at GameSpot criticized the inconsistent performance of online multiplayer, but still called the game "incredible," noting, "With the Wii U release, "Smash Bros." has fully realized its goals." Jose Otero from IGN praised the game for "appeal[ing] to the nostalgia of long-time Nintendo fans" while also being "accessible to new players." Thomas Schulenberg of Joystiq criticized occasional "matches plagued with stuttering frame rates" during online play and discussed his "indifference toward the Amiibo experience" but praised the game for its "abundance of goals to chase."


text: "Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS" sold over two million copies in the United States by the end of 2014. In Japan, nearly 2,190,000 copies had been sold six months after release.


text: "Super Smash Bros. for Wii U" became the fastest-selling Wii U game in the U.S., with 490,000 physical and digital copies sold during its first three days of availability, beating the record previously held by "Mario Kart 8". By the end of March 2015, over 1.6 million units had been sold. By the end of September 2022, the 3DS version had sold 9.64 million copies worldwide, while the Wii U version sold 5.38 million copies worldwide.


title: Horse latitudes

text: The horse latitudes are the latitudes about 30 degrees north and south of the Equator. They are characterized by sunny skies, calm winds, and very little precipitation. They are also known as subtropical ridges, or highs. It is a high-pressure area at the divergence of trade winds and the westerlies.


title: Horse latitudes

text: A likely and documented explanation is that the term is derived from the "dead horse" ritual of seamen (see Beating a dead horse). In this practice, the seaman paraded a straw-stuffed effigy of a horse around the deck before throwing it overboard. Seamen were paid partly in advance before a long voyage, and they frequently spent their pay all at once, resulting in a period of time without income. If they got advances from the ship's paymaster, they would incur debt. This period was called the "dead horse" time, and it usually lasted a month or two. The seaman's ceremony was to celebrate having worked off the "dead horse" debt. As west-bound shipping from Europe usually reached the subtropics at about the time the "dead horse" was worked off, the latitude became associated with the ceremony.


title: Horse latitudes

text: An alternative theory, of sufficient popularity to serve as an example of folk etymology, is that the term "horse latitudes" originates from when the Spanish transported horses by ship to their colonies in the West Indies and Americas. Ships often became becalmed in mid-ocean in this latitude, thus severely prolonging the voyage; the resulting water shortages made it impossible for the crew to keep the horses alive, and they would throw the dead or dying animals overboard.


title: Horse latitudes

text: A third explanation, which simultaneously explains both the northern and southern horse latitudes and does not depend on the length of the voyage or the port of departure, is based on maritime terminology: a ship was said to be 'horsed' when, although there was insufficient wind for sail, the vessel could make good progress by latching on to a strong current. This was suggested by Edward Taube in his article "The Sense of "Horse" in the Horse Latitudes" ("Journal of Geography", October 1967). He argued the maritime use of 'horsed' described a ship that was being carried along by an ocean current or tide in the manner of a rider on horseback. The term had been in use since the end of the seventeenth century. Furthermore, "The India Directory" in its entry for Fernando de Noronha, an island off the coast of Brazil, mentions it had been visited frequently by ships "occasioned by the currents having horsed them to the westward".


title: Horse latitudes

text: Heating of the earth at the thermal equator leads to large amounts of convection along the Intertropical Convergence Zone. This air mass rises and then diverges, moving away from the equator in both northerly and southerly directions. As the air moves towards the mid-latitudes on both sides of the equator, it cools and sinks. This creates a ridge of high pressure near the 30th parallel in both hemispheres. At the surface level, the sinking air diverges again with some returning to the equator, creating the Hadley cell which during summer is reinforced by other climatological mechanisms such as the Rodwell–Hoskins mechanism. Many of the world's deserts are caused by these climatological high-pressure areas.


title: Horse latitudes

text: The subtropical ridge moves poleward during the summer, reaching its highest latitude in early autumn, before moving back during the cold season. The El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) can displace the northern hemisphere subtropical ridge, with La Niña allowing for a more northerly axis for the ridge, while El Niños show flatter, more southerly ridges. The change of the ridge position during ENSO cycles changes the tracks of tropical cyclones that form around their equatorward and western peripheries. As the subtropical ridge varies in position and strength, it can enhance or depress monsoon regimes around their low-latitude periphery.


title: Horse latitudes

text: The horse latitudes are associated with the subtropical anticyclone. The belt in the Northern Hemisphere is sometimes called the "calms of Cancer" and that in the Southern Hemisphere the "calms of Capricorn".


title: Horse latitudes

text: The consistently warm, dry, and sunny conditions of the horse latitudes are the main cause for the existence of the world's major hot deserts, such as the Sahara Desert in Africa, the Arabian and Syrian deserts in the Middle East, the Mojave and Sonoran deserts in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico, all in the Northern Hemisphere; and the Atacama Desert, the Kalahari Desert, and the Australian Desert in the Southern Hemisphere.


title: Horse latitudes

text: The subtropical ridge starts migrating poleward in late spring reaching its zenith in early autumn before retreating equatorward during the late fall, winter, and early spring. The equatorward migration of the subtropical ridge during the cold season is due to increasing north–south temperature differences between the poles and tropics. The latitudinal movement of the subtropical ridge is strongly correlated with the progression of the monsoon trough or Intertropical Convergence Zone.


title: Horse latitudes

text: Most tropical cyclones form on the side of the subtropical ridge closer to the equator, then move poleward past the ridge axis before recurving into the main belt of the Westerlies. When the subtropical ridge shifts due to ENSO, so will the preferred tropical cyclone tracks. Areas west of Japan and Korea tend to experience many fewer September–November tropical cyclone impacts during El Niño and neutral years, while mainland China experiences much greater landfall frequency during La Niña years. During El Niño years, the break in the subtropical ridge tends to lie near 130°E, which would favor the Japanese archipelago, while in La Niña years the formation of tropical cyclones, along with the subtropical ridge position, shift west, which increases the threat to China. In the Atlantic basin, the subtropical ridge position tends to lie about 5 degrees farther south during El Niño years, which leads to a more southerly recurvature for tropical cyclones during those years.


title: Horse latitudes

text: When the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation's mode is favorable to tropical cyclone development (1995–present), it amplifies the subtropical ridge across the central and eastern Atlantic.


title: Horse latitudes

text: When the subtropical ridge in the northwest Pacific is stronger than normal, it leads to a wet monsoon season for Asia. The subtropical ridge position is linked to how far northward monsoon moisture and thunderstorms extend into the United States. The subtropical ridge across North America typically migrates far enough northward to begin monsoon conditions across the Desert Southwest from July to September. When the subtropical ridge is farther north than normal towards the Four Corners, monsoon thunderstorms can spread northward into Arizona. When the high pressure moves south, its circulation cuts off the moisture, and the hot, dry continental airmass returns from the northwest, and therefore the atmosphere dries out across the Desert Southwest, causing a break in the monsoon regime.


title: Horse latitudes

text: On the subtropical ridges western edge (generally on the eastern coast of continents), the high pressure cell pushes northwards a southerly flow of tropical air. In the United States the subtropical ridge Bermuda High helps create the hot, sultry summers with daily thunderstorms with buoyant airmasses typical of the Gulf of Mexico and East Coast of the United States. This flow pattern also occurs on the eastern coasts of continents in other subtropical climates such as South China, southern Japan, central-eastern South America Pampas, southern Queensland and KwaZulu-Natal province in South Africa.


title: Horse latitudes

text: When surface winds become light, the subsidence produced directly under the subtropical ridge can lead to a buildup of particulates in urban areas under the ridge, leading to widespread haze. If the low level relative humidity rises towards 100 percent overnight, fog can form.


title: Whiskers

text: Vibrissae (; singular: vibrissa; ), more generally called Whiskers, are a type of stiff, functional hair used by mammals to sense their environment. These hairs are finely specialised for this purpose, whereas other types of hair are coarser as tactile sensors. Although whiskers are specifically those found around the face, vibrissae are known to grow in clusters at various places around the body. Most mammals have them, including all non-human primates and especially nocturnal mammals.


title: Whiskers

text: Whiskers are sensitive tactile hairs that aid navigation, locomotion, exploration, hunting, social touch and perform other functions.


title: Whiskers

text: This article is primarily about the specialised sensing hairs of mammals, but some birds, fish, insects, crustaceans and other arthropods are known to have similar structures also used to sense the environment.


title: Whiskers

text: Vibrissae (from Latin 'to vibrate') from the characteristic motion seen in a small rodent that is otherwise sitting still.


title: Whiskers

text: The last universal common ancestor of all extant mammals had vibrissae. Great apes are the only extant mammal species which do not have vibrissae. All extant mammal species retain the ancestral layout of the whiskers along with the special facial muscles that move them.


title: Whiskers

text: Vibrissae are anatomically distinguished from other hair. They are easily visually identified since they are longer, stiffer, significantly larger in diameter, and stand above the surrounding fur by a considerable amount. In addition they have well-innervated follicles, and an identifiable representation in the somatosensory cortex of the brain. The largest number and the longest are found among the small, social, arboreal, and nocturnal mammals. Whiskers of aquatic mammals the most sensitive. During foraging in complex, dark habitats, whiskers are rapidly moved in a cyclic way, tracing small circles at their tips. This motion, called "whisking" can occur at speeds of 25 Hz in mice, which is one of the fastest movements that mammals can make. It is clear that these animals use whisking to position their front paws during locomotion.


title: Whiskers

text: Vibrissae typically grow in clusters. These groups vary somewhat in form and function, but they are relatively consistent among land mammals. Between land and marine mammals, there is less consistency (though commonalities are certainly present).


title: Whiskers

text: Many land mammals, like rats and hamsters, have four typical whisker groups on their heads (called "cranial vibrissae"), which might vary among animals due to different lifestyles. These cranial groups include:


title: Whiskers

text: The mystacial whiskers can be roughly identified as "macrovibrissae" (long whiskers for feeling the space around the head) and "microvibrissae" (small, down-pointing whiskers for identifying objects). Not only are these two types hard to distinguish on an animal's face (see for example the image of a rat here), there are similarly weak distinctions in how they are used, though the distinction is nonetheless referred to ubiquitously in scientific literature and is considered useful in analysis.


title: Whiskers

text: Many land mammals, including domestic cats, also have vibrissae on the underside of the leg just above the paws (called "carpal vibrissae"). Whilst these five major groups are often reported in studies of land mammals, several other groups have been reported more occasionally; for instance "nasal", "angular", and "submental whiskers".


title: Whiskers

text: Marine mammals can have substantially different arrangements of their vibrissae. For instance, whales and dolphins have lost their snout whiskers and gained vibrissae around their blowholes, whereas every single one of the body hairs of the Florida manatee may be a vibrissa (see image). Other marine mammals, like seals and sea-lions, have head vibrissae just like those on land mammals (see image), although these groups function quite differently.


title: Whiskers

text: The vibrissal hair is usually thicker and stiffer than other types of (pelagic) hair but, like other hairs, the shaft consists of an inert material (keratin) and contains no nerves. However, vibrissae are different from other hair structures because they grow from a special hair follicle incorporating a capsule of blood called a blood sinus which is heavily innervated by sensory nerves. Vibrissae are symmetrically arranged in groups on the face and supply the trigeminal nerve.


title: Whiskers

text: The mystacial macrovibrissae are shared by a large group of land and marine mammals (see images), and it is this group that has received by far the most scientific study. The arrangement of these whiskers is not random: they form an ordered grid of arcs (columns) and rows, with shorter whiskers at the front and longer whiskers at the rear (see images). In the mouse, gerbil, hamster, rat, guinea pig, rabbit, and cat, each individual follicle is innervated by 100–200 primary afferent nerve cells. These cells serve an even larger number of mechanoreceptors of at least eight distinct types. Accordingly, even small deflections of the vibrissal hair can evoke a sensory response in the animal. Rats and mice typically have approximately 30 macrovibrissae on each side of the face, with whisker lengths up to around 50 mm in (laboratory) rats, 30 mm in (laboratory) mice, and a slightly larger number of microvibrissae. Thus, an estimate for the total number of sensory nerve cells serving the mystacial vibrissal array on the face of a rat or mouse might be 25,000. Natural shapes of rat's mystacial pad vibrissae are well approximated by pieces of the Euler spiral. When all these pieces for a single rat are assembled together, they span an interval extending from one coiled domain of the Euler spiral to the other.


title: Whiskers

text: Rats and mice are considered to be "whisker specialists", but marine mammals may make even greater investment in their vibrissal sensory system. Seal whiskers, which are similarly arrayed across the mystacial region, are each served by around 10 times as many nerve fibres as those in rats and mice, so that the total number of nerve cells innervating the mystacial vibrissae of a seal has been estimated to be in excess of 300,000. Manatees, remarkably, have around 600 vibrissae on or around their lips.


title: Whiskers

text: Whiskers can be very long in some species; the length of a chinchilla's whiskers can be more than a third of its body length (see image). Even in species with shorter whiskers, they can be very prominent appendages (see images). Thus, whilst whiskers certainly could be described as "proximal sensors" in contrast to, say, eyes, they offer a tactile sense with a sensing range that is functionally very significant.


title: Whiskers

text: The follicles of some groups of vibrissae in some species are motile. Generally, the supraorbital, genal and macrovibrissae are motile, whereas the microvibrissae are not. This is reflected in anatomical reports that have identified musculature associated with the macrovibrissae that is absent for the microvibrissae. A small muscle 'sling' is attached to each macrovibrissa and can move it more-or-less independently of the others, whilst larger muscles in the surrounding tissue move many or all of the macrovibrissae together.


title: Whiskers

text: Amongst those species with motile macrovibrissae, some (rats, mice, flying squirrels, gerbils, chinchillas, hamsters, shrews, porcupines, opossums) move them back and forth periodically in a movement known as "whisking", while other species (cats, dogs, raccoons, pandas) do not appear to. The distribution of mechanoreceptor types in the whisker follicle differs between rats and cats, which may correspond to this difference in the way they are used. Whisking movements are amongst the fastest produced by mammals. In all whisking animals in which it has so far been measured, these whisking movements are rapidly controlled in response to behavioural and environmental conditions. The whisking movements occur in bouts of variable duration, and at rates between 3 and 25 whisks/second. Movements of the whiskers are closely co-ordinated with those of the head and body.


title: Whiskers

text: Generally, vibrissae are considered to mediate a tactile sense, complementary to that of skin. This is presumed to be advantageous in particular to animals that cannot always rely on sight to navigate or to find food, for example, nocturnal animals or animals which forage in muddy waters. Sensory function aside, movements of the vibrissae may also indicate something of the state of mind of the animal, and the whiskers play a role in social behaviour of rats.


title: Whiskers

text: The sensory function of vibrissae is an active research area—experiments to establish the capabilities of whiskers use a variety of techniques, including temporary deprivation either of the whisker sense or of other senses. Animals can be deprived of their whisker sense for a period of weeks by whisker trimming (they soon grow back), or for the duration of an experimental trial by restraining the whiskers with a flexible cover like a mask (the latter technique is used, in particular, in studies of marine mammals). Such experiments have shown that whiskers are required for, or contribute to: object localization, orienting of the snout, detection of movement, texture discrimination, shape discrimination, exploration, thigmotaxis, locomotion, maintenance of equilibrium, maze learning, swimming, locating food pellets, locating food animals, and fighting, as well as nipple attachment and huddling in rat pups.


title: Whiskers

text: Whisking—the periodic movement of the whiskers—is also presumed to serve tactile sensing in some way. However, exactly why an animal might be driven "to beat the night with sticks", as one researcher once put it, is a matter of debate, and the answer is probably multi-faceted. Scholarpedia offers:


title: Whiskers

text: Animals that do not whisk, but have motile whiskers, presumably also gain some advantage from the investment in musculature. Dorothy Souza, in her book "Look What Whiskers Can Do" reports some whisker movement during prey capture (in cats, in this case):


title: Whiskers

text: Anecdotally, it is often stated that cats use their whiskers to gauge whether an opening is wide enough for their body to pass through. This is sometimes supported by the statement that the whiskers of individual cats extend out to about the same width as the cat's body, but at least two informal reports indicate that whisker length is genetically determined and does not vary as the cat grows thinner or fatter. In the laboratory, rats are able to accurately (within 5–10%) discriminate the size of an opening, so it seems likely that cats can use their whiskers for this purpose. However, reports of cats, particularly kittens, with their heads firmly stuck in some discarded receptacle are commonplace indicating that if a cat has this information available, it does not always make best use of it.


title: Whiskers

text: Pinnipeds have well-developed tactile senses. Their mystacial vibrissae have ten times the innervation of terrestrial mammals, allowing them to effectively detect vibrations in the water. These vibrations are generated, for example, when a fish swims through water. Detecting vibrations is useful when the animals are foraging and may add to or even replace vision, particularly in darkness.


title: Whiskers

text: Harbor seals have been observed following varying paths of other organisms that swam ahead several minutes before, similar to a dog following a scent trail, and even to discriminate the species and the size of the fish responsible for the trail. Blind ringed seals have even been observed successfully hunting on their own in Lake Saimaa, likely relying on their vibrissae to gain sensory information and catch prey. Unlike terrestrial mammals, such as rodents, pinnipeds do not move their vibrissae over an object when examining it but instead extend their moveable whiskers and keep them in the same position. By holding their vibrissae steady, pinnipeds are able to maximize their detection ability. The vibrissae of seals are undulated and wavy while sea lion and walrus vibrissae are smooth. Research is ongoing to determine the function, if any, of these shapes on detection ability. The vibrissa's angle relative to the flow, and not the fiber shape, however, seems to be the most important factor.


title: Whiskers

text: Most cetaceans have whiskers at birth but they are typically lost during maturation. The follicles and any vestigial hair sometimes function as touch or electrical sense organs.


title: Whiskers

text: A large part of the brain of whisker-specialist mammals is involved in the processing of nerve impulses from vibrissae, a fact that presumably corresponds to the important position the sense occupies for the animal. Information from the vibrissae arrives in the brain via the trigeminal nerve and is delivered first into the trigeminal sensory complex of brainstem. From there, the most studied pathways are those leading up through parts of thalamus and into barrel cortex, though other major pathways through the superior colliculus in midbrain (a major visual structure in visual animals) and the cerebellum, to name but a couple, are increasingly coming under scrutiny. Neuroscientists, and other researchers, studying sensory systems favour the whisker system for a number of reasons (see Barrel cortex), not least the simple fact that laboratory rats and mice are whisker, rather than visual, specialists.


title: Whiskers

text: The presence of mystacial vibrissae in distinct lineages (Rodentia, Afrotheria, marsupials) with remarkable conservation of operation suggests that they may be an old feature present in a common ancestor of all therian mammals. Indeed, some humans even still develop vestigial vibrissal muscles in the upper lip, consistent with the hypothesis that previous members of the human lineage had mystacial vibrissae. Thus, it is possible that the development of the whisker sensory system played an important role in mammalian development, more generally.


title: Whiskers

text: Researchers have begun to build artificial whiskers of a variety of types, both to help them understand how biological whiskers work and as a tactile sense for robots. These efforts range from the abstract, through feature-specific models, to attempts to reproduce complete whiskered animals in robot form (ScratchBot and ShrewBot, both robots by Bristol Robotics Laboratory).


title: Whiskers

text: A range of non-mammalian animals possess structures which resemble or function similarly to mammalian whiskers.


title: Whiskers

text: Some birds possess specialized hair-like feathers called rictal bristles around the base of the beak which are sometimes referred to as whiskers.


title: Whiskers

text: The whiskered auklet ("Aethia pygmaea") has striking, stiff white feathers protruding from above and below the eyes of the otherwise slate-grey bird, and a dark plume which swoops forward from the top of its head. Whiskered auklets sent through a maze of tunnels with their feathers taped back bumped their heads more than twice as often as they did when their feathers were free, indicating they use their feathers in a similar way to cats.


title: Whiskers

text: Other birds that have obvious "whiskers" are kiwis, flycatchers, swallows, nightjars, whip-poor-wills, the kakapo and the long-whiskered owlet ("Xenoglaux loweryi").


title: Whiskers

text: Some fish have slender, pendulous tactile organs near the mouth. These are often referred to as "whiskers", although they are more correctly termed barbels. Fish that have barbels include the catfish, carp, goatfish, hagfish, sturgeon, zebrafish and some species of shark.


title: Whiskers

text: The Pimelodidae are a family of catfishes (order Siluriformes) commonly known as the long-whiskered catfishes.


title: Whiskers

text: Anurognathid pterosaurs had a rugose (wrinkled) jaw texture that has been interpreted as the attachment sites for vibrissae, though actual vibrissae have not been recorded. More recently, a specific type of feathers, has been found around anurognathid mouths.


title: Jacob Riis

text: Jacob August Riis ( ; May 3, 1849 – May 26, 1914) was a Danish-American social reformer, "muckraking" journalist and social documentary photographer. He contributed significantly to the cause of urban reform in America at the turn of the twentieth century. He is known for using his photographic and journalistic talents to help the impoverished in New York City; those impoverished New Yorkers were the subject of most of his prolific writings and photography. He endorsed the implementation of "model tenements" in New York with the help of humanitarian Lawrence Veiller. Additionally, as one of the most famous proponents of the newly practicable casual photography, he is considered one of the fathers of photography due to his very early adoption of flash.


title: Jacob Riis

text: While living in New York, Riis experienced poverty and became a police reporter writing about the quality of life in the slums. He attempted to alleviate the bad living conditions of poor people by exposing their living conditions to the middle and upper classes.


title: Jacob Riis

text: Born in 1849 in Ribe, Denmark, Jacob Riis was the third of the 15 children (one of whom, an orphaned niece, was fostered) of Niels Edward Riis, a schoolteacher and writer for the local Ribe newspaper, and Carolina Riis ("née" Bendsine Lundholm), a homemaker. Among the 15, only Jacob, one sister, and the foster sister survived into the twentieth century. Riis was influenced by his father, whose school Riis delighted in disrupting. His father persuaded him to read (and improve his English via) Charles Dickens's magazine "All the Year Round" and the novels of James Fenimore Cooper.


title: Jacob Riis

text: Jacob had a happy childhood but experienced tragedy at the age of eleven when his brother Theodore, a year younger, drowned. He never forgot his mother's grief.


title: Jacob Riis

text: At age eleven or twelve, he donated all the money he had and gave it to a poor Ribe family living in a squalid house if they cleaned it. The tenants took the money and obliged; when he told his mother, she went to help.


title: Jacob Riis

text: Though his father had hoped that Jacob would have a literary career, Jacob wanted to be a carpenter. When he was 16, he became fond of Elisabeth Gjørtz, the 12-year-old adopted daughter of the owner of the company for which he worked as an apprentice carpenter. The father disapproved of the boy's blundering attentions, and Riis was forced to travel to Copenhagen to complete his carpentry apprenticeship. Riis returned to Ribe in 1868 at age 19. Discouraged by poor job availability in the region and Gjørtz's disfavor of his marriage proposal, Riis decided to emigrate to the United States.


title: Jacob Riis

text: Riis immigrated to America in 1870, when he was 21 years old, seeking employment as a carpenter. He first traveled in a small boat from Copenhagen to Glasgow, where on May 18 he boarded the steamer "Iowa", traveling in steerage. He carried $40 donated by friends (he had paid $50 for the passage himself); a gold locket with a strand of Elisabeth's hair, presented by her mother; and letters of introduction to the Danish Consul, Mr. Goodall (later president of the American Bank Note Company), a friend of the family since his rescue from a shipwreck at Ribe.


title: Jacob Riis

text: Riis disembarked in New York on June 5, on that day spending half of the $40 his friends had given him on a revolver for defense against human or animal predators.


title: Jacob Riis

text: When Riis arrived in New York City, he was one of a large number of migrants and immigrants, seeking prosperity in a more industrialized environment, who came to urban areas during the years after the American Civil War. Twenty-four million people relocated to urban areas, causing their population to increase eightfold. The demographics of American urban areas became significantly more heterogeneous as many immigrants arrived, creating ethnic enclaves often more populous than many of the cities of their homelands. "In the 1880s 334,000 people were crammed into a single square mile of the Lower East Side, making it the most densely populated place on earth. They were packed into filthy, disease-ridden tenements, 10 or 15 to a room, and the well-off knew nothing about them and cared less."


title: Jacob Riis

text: After five days, during which he used almost all his money, Riis found work as a carpenter at Brady's Bend Iron Works on the Allegheny River above Pittsburgh. After a few days of that, he began mining for increased pay but quickly resumed carpentry. Learning on July 19, 1870, that France had declared war on Germany, he expected that Denmark would join France to avenge the Prussian seizure of Schleswig, and determined to fight for France. He returned to New York, and, having pawned most of his possessions and without money, attempted to enlist at the French consulate, but was told that there was no plan to send a volunteer army from America. Pawning his revolver, he walked out of New York City and collapsed from exhaustion. On waking, he walked to Fordham College where a Catholic priest served him breakfast.


title: Jacob Riis

text: After a brief period of farm working and odd jobs at Mount Vernon, New York, Riis returned to New York City, where he read in The New York "Sun" that the newspaper was recruiting soldiers for the war. Riis rushed there to enlist, but the editor (whom he later realized was Charles Anderson Dana) claimed or affected ignorance but offered the famished Riis a dollar for breakfast; Riis indignantly refused. Riis was destitute, at one time sleeping on a tombstone and surviving on windfall apples. Still, he found work at a brickyard at Little Washington in New Jersey, and was there for six weeks until he heard that a group of volunteers was going to the war. Thereupon he left for New York.


title: Jacob Riis

text: On arrival, Riis found that the rumor was true but that he had arrived too late. He pleaded with the French consul, who expelled him. He made various other attempts to enlist, none successful. As autumn began, Riis was destitute, without a job. He survived on scavenged food and handouts from Delmonico's Restaurant, and slept in public areas or in a foul-smelling police lodging-houses. At one point, Riis's only companion was a stray dog. One morning he awoke in a police lodging-house to find that his gold locket (with its strand of Elisabeth's hair) had been stolen. He complained to the sergeant, who became enraged and expelled him. Riis was devastated. The story became a favorite of Riis's. One of his personal victories, he later confessed, was not using his eventual fame to ruin the career of the offending officer. Disgusted, he left New York, buying a passage on a ferry with the silk handkerchief that was his last possession. By doing odd jobs and stowing away on freight trains, Riis eventually reached Philadelphia, where he appealed to the Danish Consul, Ferdinand Myhlertz, for help and was cared for, for two weeks by the Consul and his wife.


title: Jacob Riis

text: Myhlertz sent Riis, now dressed properly in a suit, to the home of an old classmate in Jamestown, New York, in the western part of the state. Riis worked as a carpenter throughout the Scandinavian enclave in surrounding communities, as well as performing a variety of other assorted jobs. He achieved sufficient financial stability to find the time to experiment as a writer, in both Danish and English, although his attempt to get a job at a Buffalo, New York newspaper was unsuccessful, and magazines repeatedly rejected his submissions.


title: Jacob Riis

text: Riis was in much demand as a carpenter, a major reason being the low prices he charged. After a while, Riis returned to New York City. He was most successful as a salesman, particularly of flatirons and fluting irons, becoming promoted to the sales representative of them for the state of Illinois. In Chicago, he was cheated of both his money and his stock and had to return to an earlier base in Pittsburgh where he found that the subordinates he had left to sell in Pennsylvania had cheated him in the same manner. With funds tight, and while bedridden with a fever, Riis learned from a letter that Elisabeth, the former object of his affection, was engaged to a cavalry officer. Once recovered from his illness, Riis returned to New York City, selling flatirons along the way.


title: Jacob Riis

text: Riis noticed an advertisement by a Long Island newspaper for an editor, applied for and was appointed city editor. He quickly realized why the job had been available: the editor in chief was dishonest and indebted. Riis left in two weeks.


title: Jacob Riis

text: Again unemployed, Riis returned to the Five Points neighborhood. He was sitting outside the Cooper Union one day when the principal of the school where he had earlier learned telegraphy happened to notice him. He said that if Riis had nothing better to do, then the New York News Association was looking for a trainee. After one more night and a hurried wash in a horse trough, Riis went for an interview. Despite his disheveled appearance, he was sent for a test assignment: to observe and write about a luncheon at the Astor House. Riis covered the event competently and got the job.


title: Jacob Riis

text: Riis was able to write about both the rich and impoverished immigrant communities. He did his job well and was promoted to editor of a weekly newspaper, the "News." However, this newspaper, the periodical of a political group, soon became bankrupt. Simultaneously, Riis got a letter from home which related that both his older brothers, an aunt, and Elisabeth Gjørtz's fiancé had died. Riis wrote to Elisabeth to propose, and with $75 of his savings and promissory notes, he bought the "News" company.


title: Jacob Riis

text: Riis worked hard at his newspaper and soon paid his debts. Newly independent, he was able to target the politicians who had previously been his employers. Meanwhile, he received a provisional acceptance from Elisabeth, who asked him to come to Denmark for her, saying "We will strive together for all that is noble and good". Conveniently, the politicians offered to buy back the newspaper for five times the price Riis had paid; he was thus able to arrive in Denmark with a substantial amount of money.


title: Jacob Riis

text: After some months in Denmark, the newly married couple arrived in New York. Riis worked briefly as editor of a south Brooklyn newspaper, the "Brooklyn News." To supplement his income, he used a "magic lantern" projector to advertise in Brooklyn, projecting either onto a sheet hung between two trees or onto a screen behind a window. The novelty was a success, and Riis and a friend relocated to upstate New York and Pennsylvania as itinerant advertisers. However, this enterprise ended when the pair became involved in an armed dispute between striking railroad workers and the police, after which Riis quickly returned to New York City.


title: Jacob Riis

text: A neighbor of Riis, who was the city editor of the "New-York Tribune", recommended Riis for a short-term contract. Riis did well and was offered the job of a police reporter. He was based in a press office across from police headquarters on Mulberry Street. "Nicknamed 'Death's Thoroughfare'", Riis's biographer Alexander Alland writes, "It was here, where the street crooks its elbow at the Five Points, that the streets and numerous alleys radiated in all directions, forming the foul core of the New York slums."


title: Jacob Riis

text: During these stints as a police reporter, Riis worked the most crime-ridden and impoverished slums of the city. Through his own experiences in the poorhouses, and witnessing the conditions of the poor in the city slums, he decided to make a difference for them. Working night-shift duty in the immigrant communities of Manhattan's Lower East Side, Riis developed a tersely melodramatic writing style and he became one of the earliest reformist journalists.


title: Jacob Riis

text: Riis had for some time been wondering how to show the squalor of which he wrote more vividly than his words could express. He tried sketching, but was incompetent at this. Camera lenses of the 1880s were slow as was the emulsion of photographic plates; photography thus did not seem to be of any use for reporting about conditions of life in dark interiors. In early 1887, however, Riis was startled to read that "a way had been discovered to take pictures by flashlight. The darkest corner might be photographed that way." The German innovation, by Adolf Miethe and Johannes Gaedicke, flash powder was a mixture of magnesium with potassium chlorate and some antimony sulfide for added stability; the powder was used in a pistol-like device that fired cartridges. This was the introduction of flash photography.


title: Jacob Riis

text: Recognizing the potential of the flash, Riis informed a friend, Dr. John Nagle, chief of the Bureau of Vital Statistics in the City Health Department who was also a keen amateur photographer. Nagle found two more photographer friends, Henry Piffard and Richard Hoe Lawrence, and the four of them began to photograph the slums. Their first report was published in the New York newspaper "The Sun" on February 12, 1888; it was an unsigned article by Riis which described its author as "an energetic gentleman, who combines in his person, though not in practice, the two dignities of deacon in a Long Island church and a police reporter in New York". The "pictures of Gotham's crime and misery by night and day" are described as "a foundation for a lecture called 'The Other Half: How It Lives and Dies in New York.' to give at church and Sunday school exhibitions, and the like." The article was illustrated by twelve line drawings based on the photographs.


title: Jacob Riis

text: Riis and his photographers were among the first Americans to use flash photography. Pistol lamps were dangerous and looked threatening, and would soon be replaced by another method for which Riis lit magnesium powder on a frying pan. The process involved removing the lens cap, igniting the flash powder and replacing the lens cap; the time taken to ignite the flash powder sometimes allowed a visible image blurring created by the flash.


title: Jacob Riis

text: Riis's first team soon tired of the late hours, and Riis had to find other help. Both his assistants were lazy and one was dishonest, selling plates for which Riis had paid. Riis sued him in court successfully. Nagle suggested that Riis should become self-sufficient, so in January 1888 Riis paid $25 for a 4×5 box camera, plate holders, a tripod and equipment for developing and printing. He took the equipment to the potter's field cemetery on Hart Island to practice, making two exposures. The result was seriously overexposed but successful.


title: Jacob Riis

text: For three years, Riis combined his own photographs with others commissioned of professionals, donations by amateurs and purchased lantern slides, all of which formed the basis for his photographic archive.


title: Jacob Riis

text: Because of the nighttime work, he was able to photograph the worst elements of the New York slums, the dark streets, tenement apartments, and "stale-beer" dives, and documented the hardships faced by the poor and criminal, especially in the vicinity of notorious Mulberry Street.


title: Jacob Riis

text: Riis accumulated a supply of photography and attempted to submit illustrated essays to magazines. But when an editor at "Harper's New Monthly" Magazine said that he liked the photographs but not the writing, and would find another writer, Riis was despondent about magazine publication and instead thought of speaking directly to the public.


title: Jacob Riis

text: This was not easy. The obvious venue would be a church, but several churches—including Riis's own—demurred, fearing either that the talks would offend the churchgoers' sensibilities or that they would offend rich and powerful landlords. However, Adolph Schauffler (of the City Mission Society) and Josiah Strong arranged to sponsor Riis's lecture at the Broadway Tabernacle church. Lacking money, Riis partnered with W. L. Craig, a Health Department clerk.


title: Jacob Riis

text: Riis and Craig's lectures, illustrated with lantern slides, made little money for the pair, but they both greatly increased the number of people exposed to what Riis had to say and also enabled him to meet people who had the power to effect change, notably Charles Henry Parkhurst and an editor of "Scribner's Magazine", who invited him to submit an illustrated article.


title: Jacob Riis

text: An eighteen-page article by Riis, "How the Other Half Lives", appeared in the Christmas 1889 edition of "Scribner's Magazine". It included nineteen of his photographs rendered as line drawings. Its publication brought an invitation to expand the material into an entire book. Riis, who favored Henry George's 'single tax' system and absorbed George's theories and analysis, used that opportunity to attack landlords "with Georgian fervor".


title: Jacob Riis

text: Riis had already been thinking of writing a book and began writing it during nights. (Days were for reporting for the "New York Sun", evenings for public speaking.) "How the Other Half Lives", subtitled "Studies Among the Tenements of New York", was published in 1890. The book reused the eighteen line drawings that had appeared in the "Scribner's" article and also seventeen reproductions using the halftone method, and thus "[representing] the first extensive use of halftone photographic reproductions in a book". (The magazine "Sun and Shade" had done the same for a year or so beginning 1888.)


title: Jacob Riis

text: "How the Other Half Lives" sold well and was much quoted. Reviews were generally good, although some reviewers criticized it for oversimplifying and exaggerating. Riis attributed the success to a popular interest in social amelioration stimulated by William Booth's "In Darkest England and the Way Out", and also to Ward McAllister's "Society as I Have Found It", a portrait of the moneyed class. The book encouraged imitations such as "Darkness and Daylight; or, Lights and Shadows of New York Life" (1892), which somehow appropriated Riis's own photographs.


title: Jacob Riis

text: "Children of the Poor" (1892) was a sequel in which Riis wrote of particular children that he had encountered.


title: Jacob Riis

text: "The Making of an American" (1901), an autobiography, follows Riis's early life in Denmark and his struggles as an immigrant in the United States. The book also describes how Riis became a reporter and how his work in immigrant enclaves kindled his desire for social reforms. Riis organized his autobiography chronologically, but each chapter illustrates a broader theme that America is a land of opportunity for those who are bold enough to take chances on their future. The autobiography is mostly straightforward, but Riis is not sure if his past should be told as a "love story", "if I am, to tell the truth ... I don't see how it can be helped." Although much of it is biographical, Riis also lays out his opinions about how immigrants like himself can succeed in the United States. Chapter 7 is distinct because Riis's wife, Elizabeth, describes her life in Denmark before she married Riis.


title: Jacob Riis

text: Whereas "How the Other Half Lives", and some of Riis's other books received praise from critics, he received a mixed reception for his autobiography. A "New York Times" reviewer dismissed it as a vanity project written for "close and intimate friends". He admired Riis's "dogged pluck" and "indomitable optimism", but dismissed an "almost colossal egotism—made up of equal parts of vanity and conceit" as a major characteristic of the author. The reviewer anticipated the book would be "eagerly read by that large majority who have a craving and perennial interest in the personal and emotional incidents" within Riis's life. Riis anticipated such a critique, "I have never been able to satisfactorily explain the great run 'How The Other Half Lives' had ... like Topsy, it grew." Other newspapers, such as the "New York Tribune", published kinder reviews. Two years later, another reviewer reported that Riis's story was widely reprinted and dubbed him as one of the "best-known authors and ... one of the most popular lecturers in the United States."


title: Jacob Riis

text: The value of Riis's autobiography lies in the description of his origins as a social reformer. His early experiences in Ribe gave Riis a yardstick with which to measure tenement dwellers' quality of life. The account of the development of his powers of observation through his experiences as a poor immigrant lent authenticity to his news articles and larger works. Its themes of self-sufficiency, perseverance, and material success are prime examples of an archetype that successful Europeans like Riis used to demonstrate the exceptional opportunities that seem to exist only in the United States. In spite of its triumphalist outlook, "The Making of an American" remains useful as a source for students of immigration history and sociology who want to learn more about the author of "How The Other Half Lives" and the social reform movement that he helped to define.


title: Jacob Riis

text: Jacob Riis had both a close friendship and on-going, professional relationship with political figure Theodore Roosevelt. Their relationship began in 1895 when Roosevelt was appointed as president of the Board of Commissioners of the New York City Police Department. He asked Riis to show him nighttime police work. During their first tour, the pair found that nine out of ten patrolmen were missing. Riis wrote about this for the next day's newspaper, and for the rest of Roosevelt's term the force was more attentive. Riis then continued to serve as an advisor to Roosevelt both on the local and eventually federal level.


title: Jacob Riis

text: Roosevelt was greatly inspired by Riis' work. He personally ensured the closure of the police-managed lodging rooms in which Riis had suffered during his first years in New York. After reading the exposés, Roosevelt was so deeply affected by Riis's sense of justice that he befriended Riis for life, later remarking, "Jacob Riis, whom I am tempted to call the best American I ever knew, although he was already a young man when he came hither from Denmark".


title: Jacob Riis

text: After Roosevelt became president, he wrote a tribute to Riis in the March 1901 edition of McClure's Magazine. He wrote:


title: Jacob Riis

text: Roosevelt's three page tribute honored Jacob Riis for his gift of expression and his ability to make others see what he saw and feel what he felt. Roosevelt viewed Riis as a powerful promoter of change who allowed no failure to stop him from seeking reform. As long as Riis continued pursuing useful work, Roosevelt believed he would have no trouble receiving more than enough support.


title: Jacob Riis

text: Roosevelt believed society would benefit from more active reformers such as Riis. In fact, it was in part due to Riis' influence that Roosevelt instituted the White House Conference on Children as a means to aid the children exposed in "How the Other Half Lives" and "Children of the Tenements".


title: Jacob Riis

text: A particularly important effort by Riis was his exposure of the condition of New York's water supply. His five-column story "Some Things We Drink", in the August 21, 1891, edition of the New York "Evening Sun", included six photographs (later lost). Riis wrote:


title: Jacob Riis

text: The story resulted in the purchase by New York City of areas around the New Croton Reservoir, and may well have saved New Yorkers from an epidemic of cholera.


title: Jacob Riis

text: Riis tried hard to have the slums around Five Points demolished and replaced with a park. His writings resulted in the Drexel Committee investigation of unsafe tenements; this resulted in the Small Park Act of 1887. Riis was not invited to the eventual opening of the park on June 15, 1897, but went all the same, together with Lincoln Steffens. In the last speech, the street cleaning commissioner credited Riis for the park and led the public in giving him three cheers of "Hooray, Jacob Riis!" Other parks also were created, and Riis was popularly credited with them as well.


title: Jacob Riis

text: Riis wrote his autobiography, "The Making of an American", in 1901. His daughter, Clara C. Riis, married Dr. William Clarence Fiske. His son, John Riis (1882–1946), served in Gifford Pinchot's new United States Forest Service from 1907 to 1913 as a ranger and forest supervisor on national forests in Utah, California and Oregon. He chronicled his time in the Forest Service in his 1937 book, "Ranger Trails". Another son, Edward V. Riis, was appointed US Director of Public Information in Copenhagen toward the end of World War I; he spoke against antisemitism. A third son, Roger Williams Riis (1894–1953), was also a reporter and activist. In 1905, Jacob Riis's wife Elisabeth became ill and died. Riis remarried in 1907, and with his new wife, Mary Phillips, relocated to a farm in Barre, Massachusetts. Riis died at the farm on May 26, 1914. His second wife lived until 1967, continuing work on the farm, working on Wall Street and teaching classes at Columbia University.


title: Jacob Riis

text: Riis's grave is marked by an unmarked granite boulder in Riverside Cemetery, in Barre, Massachusetts.


title: Jacob Riis

text: Riis's concern for the poor and destitute often caused people to assume he disliked the rich. However, Riis showed no sign of discomfort among the affluent, often asking them for their support. Although seldom involved with party politics, Riis was sufficiently disgusted by the corruption of Tammany Hall to change from being an endorser of the Democratic Party to endorse the Republican Party. The period just before the Spanish–American War was difficult for Riis. He was approached by liberals who suspected that protests of alleged Spanish mistreatment of the Cubans was merely a ruse intended to provide a pretext for US expansionism; perhaps to avoid offending his friend Roosevelt, Riis refused the offer of good payment to investigate this and made nationalist statements.


title: Jacob Riis

text: Riis emphatically supported the spread of wealth to lower classes through improved social programs and philanthropy, but his personal opinion of the natural causes for poor immigrants' situations tended to display the trappings of a racist ideology. Several chapters of "How the Other Half Lives", for example, open with Riis' observations of the economic and social situations of different ethnic and racial groups via indictments of their perceived natural flaws; often prejudices that may well have been informed by scientific racism.


title: Jacob Riis

text: Riis's sincerity for social reform has seldom been questioned, but critics have questioned his right to interfere with the lives and choices of others. His audience comprised middle-class reformers, and critics say that he had no love for the traditional lifestyles of the people he portrayed. Stange (1989) argues that Riis "recoiled from workers and working-class culture" and appealed primarily to the anxieties and fears of his middle-class audience. Swienty (2008) says, "Riis was quite impatient with most of his fellow immigrants; he was quick to judge and condemn those who failed to assimilate, and he did not refrain from expressing his contempt." Gurock (1981) says Riis was insensitive to the needs and fears of East European Jewish immigrants who flooded into New York at this time.


title: Jacob Riis

text: Libertarian economist Thomas Sowell (2001) argues that immigrants during Riis's time were typically willing to live in cramped, unpleasant circumstances as a deliberate short-term strategy that allowed them to save more than half their earnings to help family members come to America, with every intention of relocating to more comfortable lodgings eventually. Many tenement renters physically resisted the well-intentioned relocation efforts of reformers like Riis, states Sowell, because other lodgings were too costly to allow for the high rate of savings possible in the tenements. Moreover, according to Sowell, Riis's own personal experiences were the rule rather than the exception during his era: like most immigrants and low-income persons, he lived in the tenements only temporarily before gradually earning more income and relocating to different lodgings.


title: Jacob Riis

text: Riis's depictions of various ethnic groups can be harsh. In Riis's books, according to some historians, "The Jews are nervous and inquisitive, the Orientals are sinister, the Italians are unsanitary."


title: Jacob Riis

text: Riis was also criticized for his depiction of African Americans. He was said to portray them as falsely happy with their lives in the "slums" of New York City. This criticism didn't come until much later after Riis had died. His writing was overlooked because his photography was so revolutionary in his early books.


title: Lowestoft

text: Lowestoft ( ) is a coastal town and civil parish in the East Suffolk district of Suffolk, England. As the most easterly UK settlement, it is north-east of London, north-east of Ipswich and south-east of Norwich, and the main town in its district. The estimated population in the built-up area exceeds 70,000. Its development grew with the fishing industry and as a seaside resort with wide sandy beaches. As fishing declined, oil and gas exploitation in the North Sea in the 1960s took over. While these too have declined, Lowestoft is becoming a regional centre of the renewable energy industry.


title: Lowestoft

text: Some of the earliest signs of settlement in Britain have been found here. Flint tools discovered in the Pakefield cliffs of south Lowestoft in 2005 allow human habitation of the area to be traced back 700,000 years.


title: Lowestoft

text: Habitation occurred in the Neolithic, Bronze and Iron ages and in the Roman and Saxon times. Several finds have been made at a Saxon cemetery at Bloodmoor Hill in south Lowestoft. The place name derives from a Norse personal name, "Hlothver", and "toft", an Old Norse word for homestead. It has been spelt historically as "Lothnwistoft", "Lothuwistoft", "Lestoffe", "Laistoe", "Loystoft" and "Laystoft".


title: Lowestoft

text: The 1086 Domesday Book gives Lothuwistoft village some 16 households in three families, with ten smallholders and three slaves. The manor formed part of the king's holding in the Hundred of Lothingland, worth about four geld in tax income. Roger Bigod was the tenant in chief. The lost village of Akethorpe may have lain close by.


title: Lowestoft

text: In the Middle Ages, Lowestoft became an important fishing town that came to challenge its neighbour, Great Yarmouth. The trade, particularly for herring, continued as the town's main identity into the 20th century.


title: Lowestoft

text: The naval Battle of Lowestoft in June 1665 was the first in the Second Anglo-Dutch War. Held off the coast, it was a victory for the English.


title: Lowestoft

text: Lowestoft Porcelain Factory, in 1757–1802, was in production for longer than any English soft-paste porcelain manufacturer other than Royal Worcester and Royal Crown Derby, producing domestic pots, teapots and jugs. It stood on the site of an existing pottery or brick kiln, and used later as a brewery and malt kiln. Most of its remaining buildings were demolished in 1955.


title: Lowestoft

text: Sir Samuel Morton Peto's arrival in 19th-century Lowestoft brought a change in the town's fortunes, including its fishing industry. To help stimulate this, Peto was given the task of building a line for the Lowestoft Railway and Harbour Company, connecting with Reedham and the city of Norwich. This had a profound impact on the town's industrial development – its fishing fleets could sell to markets further inland, and other industries such as engineering gained from increased trade with the continent. Peto's railway enabled Lowestoft to become a flourishing seaside holiday resort; much of Peto's seaside resort in south Lowestoft still exists, including the Grade II listed Kirkley Cliff and Wellington Esplanade terraces.


title: Lowestoft

text: During World War I, Lowestoft was bombarded by the German Navy on 24 April 1916 in conjunction with the Easter Rising. The port was a major naval base during the war, including for armed trawlers such as "Ethel & Millie" and "Nelson" used to combat German U-boat actions in the North Sea such as that of 15 August 1917. In World War II the town was heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe for its engineering industry and role as a naval base. It is sometimes placed among the UK's most heavily bombed towns per head of population. The Royal Naval Patrol Service was mobilised in August 1939, mainly by trawlermen and fishermen of the Royal Naval Reserve. Its depot, "HMS Europa", was also known locally as the "Sparrow's Nest".


title: Lowestoft

text: Lowestoft is the major settlement in the East Suffolk district. It lost its status as a municipal borough in 1974, but retained a ceremonial mayor elected annually by its district councillors and acting as charter trustees until 2017. Suffolk County Council is the county authority. A civil parish of Lowestoft was created on 1 April 2017, governed by Lowestoft Town Council, which elects a town mayor annually.


title: Lowestoft

text: The town is part of the Waveney parliamentary constituency, represented at Westminster by the Conservative Peter Aldous. Former MPs include Bob Blizzard, David Porter and Jim Prior, a cabinet minister and Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in the Thatcher governments. Prior also represented the earlier constituency of Lowestoft. For European Union elections, Lowestoft lay in the East of England constituency.


title: Lowestoft

text: Before 1 April 2019, Lowestoft as part of Waveney District Council was divided into ten electoral wards, with Carlton Colville treated as a separate electoral area. Harbour, Kirkley, Normanston, Pakefield, St Margarets and Whitton wards elected three councillors each, and Carlton, Gunton and Corton, Oulton and Oulton Broad wards two. Of the 48 council seats in the district, 26 represented wards within Lowestoft and 3 Carlton Colville. In 2010 the council changed to a system of all seats being elected every four years.


title: Lowestoft

text: On 1 April 2019, governance arrangements for Lowestoft changed with the merger of Waveney and Suffolk Coastal District Councils to form a new district council of East Suffolk. Elections were held on 2 May 2019 for the six new Lowestoft wards. The seats, 14 in all, are allocated to Carlton and Whitton (2), Gunton and St. Margarets (2), Harbour and Normanston (3), Kirkley and Pakefield (3), Lothingland (1), and Oulton Broad (3). There are also changes to wards adjacent to Lowestoft. After the inaugural 2019 East Suffolk District Council election of 2 May, eight of the 14 Lowestoft seats over the six new wards went to the Conservatives and six to Labour.


title: Lowestoft

text: On Suffolk County Council, Lowestoft and its district are represented by eight councillors, split equally between four divisions: Gunton, Lowestoft South, Oulton and Pakefield. For county council elections, held every four years, Pakefield division includes Carlton Colville. After the 2017 election, seven of Lowestoft's county councillors represented the Conservatives and one Labour. In 2018, one Conservative councillor left the party and became an Independent.


title: Lowestoft

text: Lowestoft, the easternmost town in the United Kingdom, lies on the North Sea coast. The town is divided by Lake Lothing, which forms the inner part of Lowestoft Harbour and gives access via Oulton Broad and Oulton Dyke to the River Waveney and the Broads. The northern half is on the island of Lothingland.


title: Lowestoft

text: Lowestoft is mainly low-lying, with hilly areas in the north and high points of 20–30 metres (66–98 ft) above sea level. The rock beneath is crag-sand with overlying sand and glacial till deposits with gravel, with the crag exposed at coastal cliffs such as Pakefield's. Areas around Lake Lothing feature alluvium silt; some marshland remains west of Oulton Broad. The sandy beaches south of the harbour have Blue Flag status. To the north of the harbour is an area of old sand dunes known as the Denes, along with more beaches and Ness Point, the easternmost point of the UK.


title: Lowestoft

text: Lowestoft has been subject to periodic flooding, notably in January 1953, when a North Sea swell driven by low pressure and an extreme high tide swept away many earlier sea defences and deluged most of the southern town. Heavy rain caused flash flooding in the town in September 2006. In December 2013, a storm surge caused severe flooding of Lowestoft and its suburbs.


title: Lowestoft

text: Lowestoft is among the UK's driest areas: annual rainfall averages under 600 mm distributed fairly evenly through the year. Mean daily summer temperatures peak at 21°C in August, when the town averages over 200 hours of sunshine, while in winter minima average 2°C. Marked snowfall is rare. Sea fog and cool onshore breezes can affect the town.


title: Lowestoft

text: Lowestoft is Suffolk's second largest town after Ipswich, with an estimated population of 58,560 in 2010. Including the suburban areas of Oulton and Carlton Colville, which are part of the wider urban area, brought the estimated population of the built-up area to 73,755 in 2018 from 68,850 at the 2001 census. The town contains business and residential areas, with a main shopping centre just to the north of Lake Lothing. Its wider urban area includes the suburbs of Carlton Colville, Gunton, Pakefield, Oulton and Oulton Broad and the district of Kirkley. Associated outlying villages include Blundeston, Corton, Gisleham, Kessingland and Somerleyton.


title: Lowestoft

text: About 10 per cent of the area population at the 2001 census was aged 75 or over and 20 per cent under 16. In general the population of several wards is slightly skewed towards the elderly. The population is mainly classed as "white", with minority ethnicities making up 1.4 per cent, compared with 8.7 per cent nationally.


title: Lowestoft

text: At the 2001 census there were 27,777 households, giving an average household size of 2.40. In total 8,430 (30 per cent) were classified as one-person households, while 26 per cent included children aged 15 or under. The proportion of households without a private car was 29 per cent, whilst 22 per cent had two or more. In housing tenure, 72 per cent of homes were owner-occupied.


title: Lowestoft

text: Originally based on fishing and engineering, the economy of Lowestoft has declined over the years. Although the tourism sector has grown, the major employers in the town are the wholesale and retail sector, with 18 per cent of employment.


title: Lowestoft

text: Service industries, including health, social care and education are significant employers, while manufacturing employs about 10 per cent of the workforce.


title: Lowestoft

text: Employment can vary seasonally due to the importance of tourism to the economy. In early 2011, around 10 per cent of the working population of the town claimed Jobseekers Allowance.


title: Lowestoft

text: Until the mid-1960s, fishing was seen as Lowestoft's main industry, although from the 1930s the percentage so employed directly and in trades associated with fishing was actually only about 10 per cent. Fleets of drifters and trawlers caught fish such as herring, cod and plaice. Catches have diminished since the 1960s and although 100 boats remained by the 1980s, there are now only a few small boats operating out of Lowestoft, with no large trawlers. By 2011 just three traders remained at the town's fish market, which is under threat of closure due to redevelopment of the port. The Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (CEFAS), a large fisheries research centre that is a part of Defra, is still located in Lowestoft.


title: Lowestoft

text: Other major traditional employers included Eastern Coach Works and engineering and shipbuilding companies clustered around the harbour. These included the Brooke Marine and Richards shipbuilding companies, which together employed over a thousand men but went out of business in the 1990s, and the Norwich-based engineering company Boulton and Paul. Some shipbuilding and repair still goes on at the harbour.


title: Lowestoft

text: Major local employers include Birds Eye frozen foods, with 700 workers. This has been located in the town for over 60 years. The food-processing company Wessex Foods closed its Lowestoft plant in 2010 after a fire destroyed the factory and it failed to find alternative premises.