title: Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship

text: The province borders the Podlaskie Voivodeship to the east, the Masovian Voivodeship to the south, the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship to the south-west, the Pomeranian Voivodeship to the west, the Vistula Lagoon to the northwest, and the Kaliningrad Oblast (an exclave of Russia) to the north. Its borders largely overlap with the southern two-thirds of former East Prussia, which was assigned to Poland after World War II.


title: Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship

text: The region was originally inhabited by the Old Prussian clan of the Warmians from whom the name Warmia originated. During the northern Crusade, the Old Prussians were conquered by the Teutonic Order and their land was granted to the order by the pope and the region became part of the State of the Teutonic Order. The Order encouraged the colonization by German settlers in Warmia (Ostsiedlung) and Polish colonists from the region of Masovia, called Masurians ("Mazurzy"), hence the name Masuria. The Old Prussians became assimilated into the newcomers and thus became extinct.


title: Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship

text: During the Teutonic rule, the region experienced a process of urbanization and economic boost due to the expansion of the Hanseatic League into the region. The Order later attacked their former ally Poland and conquered the region of Pomerelia, thus entered a long-lasting conflict with Poland, which subsequently entered an alliance with Lithuania. In Masuria, the Poles and Lithuanians defeated the Order at the Battle of Grunwald. The wars finally resulted in a rebellion of the urban population of Pomerelia and Warmia, who were affected by the Teuton's numerous wars; upon their request the region was incorporated to Poland by King Casimir IV Jagiellon, and after the Thirteen Years' War it remained under Polish suzerainty, but was divided into two parts: Elbląg and Warmia were incorporated directly into the Kingdom of Poland, Masuria became a Polish fief under the control of the Teutonic Order.


title: Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship

text: The state of the Teutonic Order ceased to exist in 1525 when Grandmaster Albert Hohenzollern introduced secularisation, proclaimed the Duchy of Prussia and became a vassal of Sigismund I of Poland. The Prussian line of Hohenzollern was extinct by 1618 with the death of Albert Frederick and the Duchy was inherited by the Brandenburgian line; Prussia simultaneously entered a personal union with the electorate of Brandenburg known as Brandenburg-Prussia, remaining under Polish suzerainty until the Treaty of Oliva in 1660. The throne was inherited by Frederick I of Prussia who wanted to unite the Duchy with Brandenburg and also wanted to proclaim himself king of Prussia and therefore participated in the Russian-initiated Partitions of Poland in which Warmia was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia, and henceforth became part of the newly established province of East Prussia until 1945. Together with the rest of the Kingdom, the region became part of the North German Confederation, the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, and Nazi Germany. After the end of World War II, both the German as well as the Slavic Masurian population were expelled by the Polish government. In 1914, the province turned into a battlefield, seeing notable battles such as the Battle of Tannenberg as part of the Eastern Front of World War I.


title: Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship

text: Amongst the most visited sights is the Masurian Lake District, which contains more than 2,000 lakes, including the largest lakes of Poland, Śniardwy and Mamry. Other recognizable landmarks are the Warmian castles (Lidzbark Warmiński Castle, Pieniężno Castle, Olsztyn Castle) and the Cathedral Hill in Frombork, where Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus lived and worked. The Lidzbark Warmiński Castle was later the residence of Ignacy Krasicki, nicknamed "the Prince of Polish Poets". The Grunwald battlefield in Masuria is site of the annual reenactment of one of the largest battles of Medieval Europe. Święta Lipka in Masuria and Gietrzwałd in Warmia are popular pilgrimage sites.


title: Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship

text: The Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship has the largest number of ethnic Ukrainians living in Poland due to forced relocations (such as Operation Vistula) carried out by the Soviet and Polish Communist authorities.


title: Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship

text: In year 1824, shortly before its merger with West Prussia, the population of East Prussia was 1,080,000 people. Of that number, according to Karl Andree, Germans were slightly more than half, while 280,000 (~26%) were ethnically Polish and 200,000 (~19%) were ethnically Lithuanian. As of year 1819 there were also 20,000 strong ethnic Kursenieki and Latvian minorities as well as 2,400 Jews, according to Georg Hassel. Similar numbers are given by August von Haxthausen in his 1839 book, with a breakdown by county. However, the majority of East Prussian Polish and Lithuanian inhabitants were Lutherans, not Roman Catholics like their ethnic kinsmen across the border in the Russian Empire. Only in Southern Warmia (German: Ermland) Catholic Poles – so called Warmiaks (not to be confused with predominantly Protestant Masurians) – comprised the majority of population, numbering 26,067 people (~81%) in county Allenstein (Polish: Olsztyn) in 1837. Another minority in 19th-century East Prussia, were ethnically Russian Old Believers, also known as Philipponnen – their main town was Eckersdorf (Wojnowo).


title: Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship

text: In year 1817, East Prussia had 796,204 Evangelical Christians, 120,123 Roman Catholics, 864 Mennonites and 2,389 Jews.


title: Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship

text: The Voivodeship contains 3 cities and 47 towns. These are listed below in descending order of population (according to official figures for 2019):


title: Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship

text: Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship is divided into 21 counties (powiaty): 2 city counties and 19 land counties. These are further divided into 116 gminas.


title: Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship

text: The counties are listed in the following table (ordering within categories is by decreasing population).


title: Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship

text: Palaces and Gothic castles, former seats of the Teutonic Order, seats of Chapter houses and bishops provide a number of attractions for tourists. Gothic churches such as the Archcathedral of Frombork and the collegiate church in Dobre Miasto, as well as churches in Orneta and Kętrzyn delight visitors with the uniqueness of their architectonic details. In collections of the Warmia and Mazury Museum in Olsztyn, visitors can find numerous tokens from the time when Nicolaus Copernicus lived in Warmia.


title: Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship

text: Protected areas in Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship include eight areas designated as Landscape Parks, as listed below:


title: Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship

text: The Łuknajno Lake nature reserve (part of Masurian Landscape Park) is a protected wetland site under the Ramsar convention, as well as being designated by UNESCO as a biosphere reserve.


title: Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship

text: Unicode consortium defined a way for software vendors to encode regional flags in their Emoji 5.0 standard in 2017. Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship flag would be represented as U+1F3F4, U+E0070, U+E006C, U+E0032, U+E0038, U+E007F, i.e. 🏴, somewhat based on the PL-28 code. Between the standard publication in 2017 and ISO 3166-2:PL update in 2018 the code was PL-WN, therefore the corresponding flag sequence would be U+1F3F4, U+E0070, U+E006C, U+E0077, U+E006E, U+E007F, i.e. 🏴.


title: Jacquie O'Sullivan

text: Jacquie O'Sullivan (born 7 August 1960) is an English singer and songwriter, best known as a member of the pop group Bananarama from 1988 until 1991, replacing Siobhan Fahey, who left in early 1988. The line-up with O'Sullivan had UK top five hits with "I Want You Back" (1988) and a cover of The Beatles' "Help!" (1989), recorded with comedy duo French and Saunders for the charity Comic Relief. In 1989, O'Sullivan joined the group on their first world tour. Prior to Bananarama, O'Sullivan was the lead singer of the band Shillelagh Sisters.


title: Jacquie O'Sullivan

text: O'Sullivan appeared in the music video for the song "Visage" performed Visage, in 1981. She also appeared in the music video for Eurythmics' 1983 hit single ""Who's That Girl?"", with the original Bananarama members also being featured in the video. O'Sullivan joined the country/punk/rockabilly group Shillelagh Sisters in early 1983. It was "a sort of a fun band, a kind of trendy band". The band name came about courtesy of their Irish connections. They released their first single "Give Me My Freedom" in April 1984. The band's dissatisfaction with their record label CBS, along with differences between the band members, led to the band's demise in late 1984. O'Sullivan later stated that she felt the records they released "weren't very good".


title: Jacquie O'Sullivan

text: In March 1988, she was chosen by Sara Dallin and Keren Woodward (who had known O'Sullivan since they were eighteen) to become a member of Bananarama, as a replacement for outgoing member Siobhan Fahey, who also approved of the choice. Bananarama's hit streak continued with the addition of O'Sullivan. They re-recorded the vocals for the songs "I Want You Back" and "Nathan Jones" with O'Sullivan to replace versions previously recorded by Fahey. The group scored eight consecutive Top 40 hits in the UK with O'Sullivan.


title: Jacquie O'Sullivan

text: She appeared on Bananarama's fund-raising cover of The Beatles' "Help!" for Comic Relief alongside comedians French and Saunders and Kathy Burke, who appeared as "Lananenenoonoo". The record peaked at number three on the UK Singles Chart in 1989. She also participated in Band Aid II's 1989 re-recording of "Do They Know It's Christmas?".


title: Jacquie O'Sullivan

text: O'Sullivan's only songwriting credits with Bananarama appeared on the song "Love, Truth and Honesty" from the compilation album "Greatest Hits Collection" and on the song "Only Your Love".


title: Jacquie O'Sullivan

text: In 1991, Bananarama recorded the album "Pop Life", the only full-length album on which O'Sullivan appeared. Later that year, O'Sullivan left the group, a decision that was amicable with Dallin and Woodward. O'Sullivan later stated in interviews that her role in Bananarama was that of a paid employee and that she was given no say in the creative, musical or visual direction of the group. She said that this lack of input, along with the continued emphasis by the music press that she was the "new girl" and constant questions of "How does it feel to replace Siobhan?", contributed to her exit.


title: Jacquie O'Sullivan

text: When French and Saunders parodied Bananarama in their 1988 Christmas special as "Lananenenoonoo", O'Sullivan was portrayed by Kathy Burke as "Kim". O'Sullivan's perceived lack of input into the group was used as a source of humour, with Kim ignored and dismissed in interviews and group discussions.


title: Jacquie O'Sullivan

text: When she left Bananarama, O'Sullivan formed the disco act Slippry Feet from 1992 to 1996. They recorded songs for a record titled "Freak Time Viewing" and then disbanded.


title: Jacquie O'Sullivan

text: In 2001, O'Sullivan signed a three-album deal with AlmaFame Records, featuring unreleased songs from throughout her music career. The first release in late 2001 was the Slippry Feet album "Freak Time Viewing". In early 2002, the Shillelagh Sisters album, "Sham'Rock & Roll", was released and a third album, tentatively titled "The Jacquie O Collection", featuring new songs and re-recordings of her hits with Bananarama, was announced but the record label folded and nothing was released.


title: Jacquie O'Sullivan

text: In 2005, she appeared briefly on the second video clip (also called 'whitey version') of Siobhan Fahey's song "Pulsatron".


title: Jacquie O'Sullivan

text: O'Sullivan went to India and in 1994 trained to be a yoga teacher. She continued to teach and on her travels has taught yoga all over the world. She continued with her yoga education, taking teacher training with the prestigious Prana Yoga College. She completed her two-year teacher training with the life centre, earning a distinction. O'Sullivan still teaches all over the world, but is now based in Bloomsbury, teaching many classes in various locations, gyms, dedicated yoga centres, corporate clients and many private clients. She is also a certified Level 2 Reiki Teacher as well as a massage therapist, specialising in Swedish and Deep Tissue massage.


title: Dino Ciccarelli

text: Dino Ciccarelli (born February 8, 1960) is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player who played 19 seasons in the National Hockey League, primarily with the Minnesota North Stars, but also notably with the Detroit Red Wings, with whom he had his third-highest scoring season. He scored 1,200 points in his NHL career. His 608 career NHL goals are also the most goals scored by a draft-eligible player who was not drafted by an NHL team. Ciccarelli was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2010.


title: Dino Ciccarelli

text: Ciccarelli grew up playing minor hockey in his hometown of Sarnia, Ontario, in the Southwestern Ontario Minor Hockey League of the Ontario Minor Hockey Association. He made Sarnia's Jr. 'B' hockey team as a 15-year-old in the fall of 1975 and ended up leading it in scoring with 45 goals and 43 assists for 88 points in just 40 games. He is one of two Sarnia Jr. 'B' graduates to go on to be elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame (the other being Phil Esposito, who led the Sarnia Legionnaires in scoring in 1961).


title: Dino Ciccarelli

text: Ciccarelli joined the London Knights of the OMJHL as a 16-year-old for the 1976–77 season. In his first season with the Knights, Ciccarelli had 39 goals and 82 points in 66 games, finishing fifth in team scoring. In the playoffs, Ciccarelli had 11 goals and 24 points in 20 games, as London lost to the Ottawa 67's in the J. Ross Robertson Cup finals.


title: Dino Ciccarelli

text: In his second season with the Knights in 1977–78, Ciccarelli scored a league high 72 goals, and added 70 assists for 142 points, which was third highest total in the OMJHL. In the post-season, Ciccarelli contributed six goals and 16 points in nine games. After the season, Ciccarelli was awarded the Jim Mahon Memorial Trophy, which is given to the highest scoring right winger in the OMJHL.


title: Dino Ciccarelli

text: Injuries cut short Ciccarelli's 1978–79 season, as he appeared in only 30 games, scoring eight goals and 19 points. In seven playoff games, Ciccarelli scored three goals and eight points. After not being selected in the NHL Entry Draft, Ciccarelli signed a contract with the Minnesota North Stars on September 28, 1979.


title: Dino Ciccarelli

text: The North Stars kept Ciccarelli with the Knights for the 1979–80, and Ciccarelli rebounded, scoring 50 goals and 103 points. In five games in the playoffs, Ciccarelli scored two goals, and finished with eight points.


title: Dino Ciccarelli

text: Ciccarelli made his professional hockey debut with the Oklahoma City Stars of the CHL at the end of the 1979–80 season. In six games with Oklahoma City, Ciccarelli had three goals and five points.


title: Dino Ciccarelli

text: He spent most of the 1980–81 season with Oklahoma City, playing in 48 games, scoring 32 goals and 57 points. Ciccarelli was brought up to the National Hockey League, and in 32 games with the Minnesota North Stars, Ciccarelli had 18 goals and 30 points. In the playoffs, Ciccarelli scored 14 goals and 21 points in 19 games, as the North Stars lost to the New York Islanders in the 1981 Stanley Cup Finals.


title: Dino Ciccarelli

text: Ciccarelli spent the entire 1981–82 NHL season with the North Stars, playing in 76 games, scoring a team high 55 goals, while earning 106 points for the season. During the season, Ciccarelli played in the 1982 NHL All-Star Game, hosted by the Washington Capitals, with the Campbell Conference, where he assisted on a goal by Wayne Gretzky in a 4–2 loss to the Wales Conference. In the playoffs, Ciccarelli had three goals and four points in four games.


title: Dino Ciccarelli

text: He saw a decrease in offensive production during the 1982–83 season, scoring 37 goals and 75 points in 77 games, which was 18 fewer goals and 31 fewer points than the previous season. Ciccarelli did appear in the 1983 NHL All-Star Game, hosted by the New York Islanders. Ciccarelli had a goal and an assist as the Campbell Conference defeated the Wales Conference 9–3. In the post-season, Ciccarelli appeared in nine games, scoring four goals and 10 points.


title: Dino Ciccarelli

text: Ciccarelli had another solid season with Minnesota in 1983–84, scoring 38 goals and 71 points in 79 games, helping the North Stars into the playoffs once again. In 16 playoff games, Ciccarelli had four goals and nine points, as the North Stars lost to the Edmonton Oilers in the Campbell Conference finals.


title: Dino Ciccarelli

text: Injuries cut short Ciccarelli's season in 1984–85, playing in only 51 games, Ciccarelli scored 15 goals and 32 points, his lowest point total since his rookie season in 1980–81, and the lowest goal total of his NHL career. In nine playoff games, Ciccarelli had three goals and six points.


title: Dino Ciccarelli

text: Ciccarelli had a healthy 1985–86 season, playing in 75 games, he led the North Stars with 44 goals, while finishing second in points with 89, which were his highest totals since 1981–82. In five playoff games, Ciccarelli was held to an assist.


title: Dino Ciccarelli

text: In 1986–87, Ciccarelli improved his offensive numbers once again, scoring 52 goals and 103 points in 80 games, which both led the club in scoring. The North Stars struggled during the season, and failed to qualify for the post season.


title: Dino Ciccarelli

text: Ciccarelli had his third straight 40+ goal season in 1987–88, as he once again led Minnesota with 41 goals and 86 points in 67 games. It was another tough season for the team though, as they missed the playoffs for the second straight season.


title: Dino Ciccarelli

text: In 1988–89, Ciccarelli made his first all-star game appearance in six years, as he played with the Campbell Conference in the 1989 NHL All-Star Game held in Edmonton, Alberta. In the game, Ciccarelli assisted on a goal by Steve Yzerman, as the Campbell Conference won the game over the Wales Conference by a score of 9–5. Overall with Minnesota, Ciccarelli played in 65 games, scoring 32 goals and 59 points. On March 7, 1989, the North Stars traded Ciccarelli and Bob Rouse to the Washington Capitals for Mike Gartner and Larry Murphy.


title: Dino Ciccarelli

text: Ciccarelli finished the 1988–89 season with the Washington Capitals, playing just 11 games, Ciccarelli scored 12 goals and 15 points, helping the team into the playoffs. He played his first game as a Capital on March 8, 1989, getting no points in a 3–2 loss to the Montreal Canadiens. He scored his first goal with Washington on March 11, 1989, scoring against John Vanbiesbrouck in a 4–2 win over the New York Rangers. On March 18, 1989, Ciccarelli had a four-goal, seven point game in a huge 8–2 victory over the Hartford Whalers. Ciccarelli appeared in his first playoff game with the Capitals on April 5, 1989, getting no points in a 3–2 win over the Philadelphia Flyers. He scored his first playoff goal with Washington on April 6, 1989, scoring against Ron Hextall in a 3–2 loss. Ciccarelli played in six games, scoring three goals and six points as the Capitals were eliminated by the Flyers.


title: Dino Ciccarelli

text: In Ciccarelli's first full season with the Capitals, he scored 41 goals in 1989–90, which marked his fifth consecutive season of 40+ goals, while finishing with a team high 79 points. Ciccarelli had a four-goal game against the Quebec Nordiques on February 6, 1990 in a 12–2 victory. In the playoffs, Ciccarelli had eight goals and 11 points in eight games before suffering an injury on April 21, 1990 against the New York Rangers that would end his season. Ciccarelli had a hat trick in the playoffs, scoring three goals and an assist against the New Jersey Devils in a 5–4 overtime win on April 5, 1990.


title: Dino Ciccarelli

text: Ciccarelli missed 26 games during the 1990–91, in which he scored 21 goals and 39 points, his lowest totals since 1984–85. He did score a hat trick against the Edmonton Oilers on February 8, 1991 in a 6–3 win. Ciccarelli was productive in the playoffs, scoring five goals and nine points in 11 games.


title: Dino Ciccarelli

text: He rebounded in the 1991–92, as Ciccarelli scored 38 goals, which was a team high, while earning 76 points, helping the Capitals into the playoffs once again. In the playoffs, Ciccarelli had a four-goal game on April 25, 1992, as Washington defeated the Pittsburgh Penguins 7–2. In seven games, he scored five goals and nine points. On June 20, 1992, Ciccarelli was traded from the Capitals to the Detroit Red Wings for Kevin Miller.


title: Dino Ciccarelli

text: Ciccarelli made his debut with the Detroit Red Wings on October 6, 1992, getting no points in a 4–1 loss to the Winnipeg Jets. On October 8, 1992, Ciccarelli earned his first goal as a Red Wing, scoring against Kelly Hrudey of the Los Angeles Kings in a 5–3 victory. Ciccarelli finished his first season with Detroit with 41 goals and 97 points, which were both the second highest totals on the team. Ciccarelli's 97 points were his highest since 1986–87, when he recorded 103 with the Minnesota North Stars. Ciccarelli played his first Playoff game with the Red Wings on April 19, 1993, earning an assist in a 6–3 win over the Toronto Maple Leafs. Ciccarelli scored his first playoff goal as a member of the Red Wings on April 27, 1993 against Felix Potvin in a 5–4 loss to the Maple Leafs. On April 29, 1993, Ciccarelli had a hat trick for the Red Wings in a 7–3 win over Toronto. Overall, Ciccarelli appeared in seven playoff games, scoring four goals and six points.


title: Dino Ciccarelli

text: Ciccarelli saw his point total decline by 40 in the 1993–94 season, as he scored 28 goals and 57 points in 66 games. He did have a six-point game against the Vancouver Canucks on April 5, 1994, scoring four goals and adding two assists in an 8–3 victory. In the post-season, Ciccarelli had five goals and seven points in seven games.


title: Dino Ciccarelli

text: With a shortened 1994–95 due to the lockout, Ciccarelli appeared in 42 games, scoring 16 goals and 43 points, which placed him third in team scoring. Ciccarelli had a four assist game against the Winnipeg Jets on March 22, 1995 in a 6–3 win. In the playoffs, Ciccarelli had a hat trick against the Dallas Stars on May 11, 1995 in a 5–1 victory. He finished the playoffs with nine goals and 11 points in 16 games, as the Red Wings lost to the New Jersey Devils in the 1995 Stanley Cup Finals.


title: Dino Ciccarelli

text: In 1995–96, Ciccarelli scored 22 goals and 43 points in 64 games, helping the Red Wings set an NHL record for wins in a season with 62. In the post-season, Ciccarelli had six goals and eight points in 17 games. In game six of the 1996 Western Conference Finals, Claude Lemieux laid a vicious hit on Kris Draper. The Red Wings lost to the Avalanche in six games and Lemieux was given suspensions in the first two games of the Stanley Cup Finals. When interviewed after the game, Ciccarelli reacted and coldly stated, "I can't believe I shook this guy's friggin' hand after the game! That pisses me right off!".


title: Dino Ciccarelli

text: On August 27, 1996, the Red Wings traded Ciccarelli to the Tampa Bay Lightning for a fourth-round draft pick in the 1998 NHL Entry Draft.


title: Dino Ciccarelli

text: Ciccarelli played his first game as a member of the Tampa Bay Lightning on October 5, 1996, getting a goal and two points in a 4–3 win over the Pittsburgh Penguins. On November 8, 1996, Ciccarelli had a hat trick against the Pittsburgh Penguins in a 5–5 tie. Ciccarelli played in the 1997 NHL All-Star Game held in San Jose, California, where he had an assist for the Eastern Conference in an 11–7 win over the Western Conference. He finished the 1996–97 season playing in 77 games, scoring a team high 35 goals, while earning 60 points. Notably, he scored the final goal in the last game that the Hartford Whalers played in on April 13, 1997, scoring the only goal for the Lightning in a 2–1 loss.


title: Dino Ciccarelli

text: He began the 1997–98 season with the Lightning; he played in 34 games with Tampa Bay, scoring 11 goals and 17 points. On January 15, 1998, the Lightning traded Ciccarelli and Jeff Norton to the Florida Panthers for Mark Fitzpatrick and Jody Hull.


title: Dino Ciccarelli

text: Ciccarelli played his first game with the Florida Panthers on January 21, 1998. He scored his first goal with Florida on January 24, 1998 against Kelly Hrudey of the San Jose Sharks in a 1–1 tie. He finished the season with five goals and 16 points in 28 games with the Panthers.


title: Dino Ciccarelli

text: Ciccarelli had an injury plagued 1998–99 season, as he missed the majority of the season after suffering a back injury against the Chicago Blackhawks on November 4, 1998. He played in only 14 games, scoring six goals and seven points. On August 31, 1999, Ciccarelli announced his retirement.


title: Dino Ciccarelli

text: Ciccarelli played with Canada at various international events during his career. At the 1980 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships held in Helsinki, Finland, Ciccarelli had five goals and six points in five games, as Canada finished in fifth place. At the 1982 IIHF World Hockey Championship held in Finland, Ciccarelli had two goals and three points in nine games, as the Canadians won the Bronze Medal. Ciccarelli also played in the 1987 IIHF World Hockey Championship in Austria, getting four goals and six points in 10 games as Canada finished in fourth place.


title: Dino Ciccarelli

text: Ciccarelli's career featured some controversial moments, both on and off the ice. In 1987, he pleaded guilty to indecent exposure and received probation. Then on January 6, 1988, in a game played at Maple Leaf Gardens, Ciccarelli attacked then-Maple Leafs rookie defenceman Luke Richardson with his stick. As a result of this incident, Ciccarelli was convicted of assault, fined $1,000, and sentenced to one day in jail.


title: Dino Ciccarelli

text: In May 1990, while playing for the Capitals, Ciccarelli was accused of raping a 17-year-old girl outside a bar, alongside teammates Geoff Courtnall, Scott Stevens, and Neil Sheehy. The court case fell apart, though a spokesperson for the Metropolitan police at the time stated that the police “have sufficient grounds to believe that a criminal offense did occur.”


title: Dino Ciccarelli

text: Ciccarelli was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2010, eight years after he first became eligible. Press reports speculated that his criminal activity was the reason it took him years to gain entrance.


title: Dino Ciccarelli

text: Ciccarelli owned the nightclub Club 22 in Shelby Charter Township, named for the jersey number he wore with the Capitals, Red Wings, Lightning and Panthers. It was closed in 2011. Shortly after closing, Ciccarelli opened a sports bar in the same location. The name of the establishment is Ciccarelli's Sports Bar Theater, named after the "theater" style atmosphere. He has since opened two additional sports bars, one across from the Palace of Auburn Hills; and the other at the site of the former Post Bar in downtown Detroit, near Cobo Center. The Detroit location is only open for Red Wings home games and other special events.


title: Super Fly (soundtrack)

text: Super Fly is the third studio album by American soul musician Curtis Mayfield, released in July 1972 on Curtom Records. It was released as the soundtrack for the Blaxploitation film of the same name. Widely considered a classic of 1970s soul and funk music, "Super Fly" was a nearly immediate hit. Its sales were bolstered by two million-selling singles, "Freddie's Dead" (number 2 R&B charts, number 4 Pop charts) and the title track (number 5 R&B, number 8 Pop). "Super Fly" is one of the few soundtracks to out-gross the film it accompanied.


title: Super Fly (soundtrack)

text: "Super Fly", along with Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" (1971), was one of the pioneering soul concept albums, with its then-unique socially aware lyrics about poverty and drug abuse making the album stand out. The film and the soundtrack may be perceived as dissonant, since the film holds rather ambiguous views on drug dealers, whereas Curtis Mayfield's position is far more critical. Like "What's Going On", the album was a surprise hit that record executives felt had little chance at significant sales. Due to its success, Mayfield was tapped for several film soundtracks over the course of the decade.


title: Super Fly (soundtrack)

text: "Super Fly" was originally released in 1972 on Curtom Records in both LP and eight-track formats. It also featured distribution in countries outside of the United States, including Italy, Germany, France, Canada, and the United Kingdom. On November 11, 1997, Rhino Records released a 25th Anniversary collection of the album with a bonus disc of demo versions of songs, radio spots, and interviews. In 1999, Rhino Records reissued the album with two bonus tracks.


title: Super Fly (soundtrack)

text: On December 11, 2001, the British record label Charly Records re-released the album with several bonus tracks.


title: Super Fly (soundtrack)

text: From contemporary "Rolling Stone"s Bob Donat was favorable of Mayfield's anti-drug and self-liberation themes, and called "Super Fly" "not only a superior, imaginative soundtrack, but fine funky music as well and the best of Curtis Mayfield's four albums made since he left the Impressions". Rock critic Robert Christgau of "The Village Voice" gave the album an A- and lauded Mayfield's songwriting. Christgau also wrote that "these songs speak for (and to) the ghetto's victims rather than its achievers (cf. 'The Other Side of Town', on "Curtis"), transmitting bleak lyrics through uncompromisingly vivacious music. Message: both candor and rhythm are essential to our survival". Robin Katz of "Disc" praised the album stating to not mistake the album as a "big bad blaring instrumental LP. This is Curtis Mayfield combining a fine musical message with gentle vocals but powerful lyrics." and that the "nine tracks on the album and what never fails to amaze me is how Mayfield balances his instrumental work and lyrics without overdoing either. It is a touchy situation, but Mayfield handles it brilliantly."


title: Super Fly (soundtrack)

text: In a 2004 review of the album, "Rolling Stone" gave "Super Fly" five out of five stars and cited it as Mayfield's "creative breakthrough". John Bush of AllMusic praised the album's lyrical substance and sound, calling it a "melange of deep, dark grooves, trademarked wah-wah guitar, and stinging brass". On its significance, Bush concluded by stating:


title: Super Fly (soundtrack)

text: The singer Bilal names it among his 25 favorite albums, explaining that, "I just think that's one of the best movie soundtrack albums ever. Just the way he described the whole movie, you don't even really have to see the movie, just listen to the soundtrack and you already know the whole movie. It's just killer the way he did that."


title: British Latin

text: British Latin or British Vulgar Latin was the Vulgar Latin spoken in Great Britain in the Roman and sub-Roman periods. While Britain formed part of the Roman Empire, Latin became the principal language of the elite, especially in the more romanized south and east of the island. However, in the less romanized north and west it never substantially replaced the Brittonic language of the indigenous Britons. In recent years, scholars have debated the extent to which British Latin was distinguishable from its continental counterparts, which developed into the Romance languages.


title: British Latin

text: After the end of Roman rule, Latin was displaced as a spoken language by Old English in most of what became England during the Anglo-Saxon settlement of the fifth and sixth centuries. It survived in the remaining Celtic regions of western Britain but died out in those regions too by about 700, when it was replaced by the local Brittonic languages.


title: British Latin

text: At the inception of Roman rule in AD 43, Great Britain was inhabited by the indigenous Britons, who spoke the Celtic language known as Brittonic. Roman Britain lasted for nearly four hundred years until the early fifth century. For most of its history, it encompassed what was to become England and Wales as far north as Hadrian’s Wall, but with the addition, for shorter periods, of territories further north up to, but not including, the Scottish Highlands.


title: British Latin

text: Historians often refer to Roman Britain as comprising a "highland zone" to the north and west of the country and a "lowland zone" in the south and east, with the latter being more thoroughly romanized and having a Romano-British culture. Particularly in the lowland zone, Latin became the language of most of the townspeople, of administration and the ruling class, the army and, following the introduction of Christianity, the church. Brittonic remained the language of the peasantry, which was the bulk of the population; members of the rural elite were probably bilingual. In the highland zone, there were only limited attempts at Romanisation, and Brittonic always remained the dominant language.


title: British Latin

text: Throughout much of western Europe, from Late Antiquity, the Vulgar Latin of everyday speech developed into locally distinctive varieties which ultimately became the Romance languages. However, after the end of Roman rule in Britain during the early 5th century, Vulgar Latin died out as an everyday spoken language. The timing of its demise as a vernacular in Britain, its nature and its characteristics have been points of scholarly debate in recent years.


title: British Latin

text: An inherent difficulty in evidencing Vulgar Latin is that as an extinct spoken language form, no source provides a direct account of it. Reliance is on indirect sources of evidence such as "errors" in written texts and regional inscriptions. They are held to be reflective of the everyday spoken language. Of particular linguistic value are private inscriptions made by ordinary people, such as epitaphs and votive offerings, and "curse tablets" (small metal sheets used in popular magic to curse people).


title: British Latin

text: In relation to Vulgar Latin specifically as it was spoken in Britain, Kenneth H. Jackson put forward in the 1950s what became the established view, which has only relatively recently been challenged. Jackson drew conclusions about the nature of British Latin from examining Latin loanwords that had passed into the British Celtic languages. From the 1970s John Mann, Eric P. Hamp and others used what Mann called "the sub-literary tradition" in inscriptions to identify spoken British Latin usage.


title: British Latin

text: In the 1980s, Colin Smith used stone inscriptions in particular in this way, although much of what Smith has written has become out of date as a result of the large number of Latin inscriptions found in Britain in recent years. The best known of these are the Vindolanda tablets, the last two volumes of which were published in 1994 and 2003, but also include the Bath curse tablets, published in 1988, and other curse tablets found at a number of other sites throughout southern England from the 1990s onwards.


title: British Latin

text: Kenneth Jackson argued for a form of British Vulgar Latin, distinctive from continental Vulgar Latin. In fact, he identified two forms of British Latin: a lower-class variety of the language not significantly different from Continental Vulgar Latin and a distinctive upper-class Vulgar Latin. This latter variety, Jackson believed, could be distinguished from Continental Vulgar Latin by 12 distinct criteria. In particular, he characterised it as a conservative, hypercorrect "school" Latin with a "sound-system [which] was very archaic by ordinary Continental standards".


title: British Latin

text: In recent years, research into British Latin has led to modification of Jackson's fundamental assumptions. In particular, his identification of 12 distinctive criteria for upper-class British Latin has been severely criticised. Nevertheless, although British Vulgar Latin was probably not substantially different from the Vulgar Latin of Gaul, over a period of 400 years of Roman rule, British Latin would almost certainly have developed distinctive traits. That and the likely impact of the Brittonic substrate both mean that a specific British Vulgar Latin variety most probably developed. However, if it did exist as a distinct dialect group, it has not survived extensively enough for diagnostic features to be detected, despite much new subliterary Latin being discovered in England in the 20th century.


title: British Latin

text: It is not known when Vulgar Latin ceased to be spoken in Britain, but it is likely that it continued to be widely spoken in various parts of Britain into the 5th century. In the lowland zone, Vulgar Latin was replaced by Old English during the course of the 5th and the 6th centuries, but in the highland zone, it gave way to Brittonic languages such as Primitive Welsh and Cornish. However, scholars have had a variety of views as to when exactly it died out as a vernacular. The question has been described as "one of the most vexing problems of the languages of early Britain."


title: British Latin

text: In most of what was to become England, the Anglo-Saxon settlement and the consequent introduction of Old English appear to have caused the extinction of Vulgar Latin as a vernacular. The Anglo-Saxons spread westward across Britain in the 5th century to the 7th century, leaving only Cornwall and Wales in the southern part of the country and the Hen Ogledd in the north under British rule.


title: British Latin

text: The demise of Vulgar Latin in the face of Anglo-Saxon settlement is very different from the fate of the language in other areas of Western Europe that were subject to Germanic migration, like France, Italy and Spain, where Latin and the Romance languages continued. One theory is that in Britain there was a greater collapse in Roman institutions and infrastructure, leading to a much greater reduction in the status and prestige of the indigenous romanized culture; and so the indigenous people were more likely to abandon their languages in favour of the higher-status language of the Anglo-Saxons. On the other hand, Richard Coates believes that the linguistic evidence points to the now little supported traditional view that there was a mass replacement of the population of southern and eastern England with Anglo-Saxon settlers. His view, based on place name evidence and the lack of loan words in English from Latin “with a Britonnic accent”, is that this is the most convincing explanation for the extinction of Latin (or Brittonic) in the lowland zone.


title: British Latin

text: From the fifth century, there are only occasional evidential hints of a continuing tradition of spoken Latin, and then only in Church contexts and among the educated. Alaric Hall has speculated that Bede’s 8th century "Ecclesiastical History of the English People" may contain indications that spoken British Latin had survived as a vernacular in some form to Bede’s time. The evidence relied on is the use of a word with a possible preserved British vulgar Latin spelling ("Garmani" for "Germani") as well as onomastic references.


title: British Latin

text: Before Roman rule ended, Brittonic had remained the dominant language in the highland zone. However, the speakers of Vulgar Latin were significantly but temporarily boosted in the 5th century by the influx of Romano-Britons from the lowland zone who were fleeing the Anglo-Saxons. These refugees are traditionally characterised as being "upper class" and "upper middle class". Certainly, Vulgar Latin maintained a higher social status than Brittonic in the highland zone in the 6th century.


title: British Latin

text: Although Latin continued to be spoken by many of the British elite in western Britain, by about 700, it had died out. The incoming Latin-speakers from the lowland zone seem to have rapidly assimilated with the existing population and adopted Brittonic. The continued viability of British Latin may have been negatively affected by the loss to Old English of the areas where it had been strongest: the Anglo-Saxon conquest of the lowland zone may have indirectly ensured that Vulgar Latin would not survive in the highland zone either.


title: Paul Valéry

text: Ambroise Paul Toussaint Jules Valéry (; 30 October 1871 – 20 July 1945) was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. In addition to his poetry and fiction (drama and dialogues), his interests included aphorisms on art, history, letters, music, and current events. Valéry was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 12 different years.


title: Paul Valéry

text: Valéry was born to a Corsican father and Genoese-Istrian mother in Sète, a town on the Mediterranean coast of the Hérault, but he was raised in Montpellier, a larger urban center close by. After a traditional Roman Catholic education, he studied law at university and then resided in Paris for most of the remainder of his life, where he was, for a while, part of the circle of Stéphane Mallarmé.


title: Paul Valéry

text: In 1900, he married Jeannine Gobillard, a friend of Stéphane Mallarmé's family, who was also a niece of the painter Berthe Morisot. The wedding was a double ceremony in which the bride's cousin, Berthe Morisot's daughter, Julie Manet, married the painter Ernest Rouart. Valéry and Gobillard had three children: Claude, Agathe and François.


title: Paul Valéry

text: Valéry served as a juror with Florence Meyer Blumenthal in awarding the Prix Blumenthal, a grant given between 1919 and 1954 to young French painters, sculptors, decorators, engravers, writers, and musicians.


title: Paul Valéry

text: Though his earliest publications date from his mid-twenties, Valéry did not become a full-time writer until 1920, when the man for whom he worked as private secretary, a former chief executive of the Havas news agency, Edouard Lebey, died of Parkinson's disease. Until then, Valéry had, briefly, earned his living at the Ministry of War before assuming the relatively flexible post as assistant to the increasingly impaired Lebey, a job he held for some twenty years.


title: Paul Valéry

text: After his election to the Académie française in 1925, Valéry became a tireless public speaker and intellectual figure in French society, touring Europe and giving lectures on cultural and social issues as well as assuming a number of official positions eagerly offered to him by an admiring French nation. He represented France on cultural matters at the League of Nations, and he served on several of its committees, including the sub-committee on Arts and Letters of the Committee on Intellectual Cooperation. The English-language collection "The Outlook for Intelligence" (1989) contains translations of a dozen essays related to these activities.


title: Paul Valéry

text: In 1931, he founded the Collège International de Cannes, a private institution teaching French language and civilization. The Collège is still operating today, offering professional courses for native speakers (for educational certification, law and business) as well as courses for foreign students.


title: Paul Valéry

text: He gave the keynote address at the 1932 German national celebration of the 100th anniversary of the death of Johann Wolfgang Goethe. This was a fitting choice, as Valéry shared Goethe's fascination with science (specifically, biology and optics).


title: Paul Valéry

text: In addition to his activities as a member of the Académie française, he was also a member of the Academy of Sciences of Lisbon, and of the "Front national des Ecrivains". In 1937, he was appointed chief executive of what later became the University of Nice. He was the inaugural holder of the Chair of Poetics at the Collège de France.


title: Paul Valéry

text: During World War II, the Vichy regime stripped him of some of these jobs and distinctions because of his quiet refusal to collaborate with Vichy and the German occupation, but Valéry continued, throughout these troubled years, to publish and to be active in French cultural life, especially as a member of the Académie française.


title: Paul Valéry

text: Valéry died in Paris in 1945. He is buried in the cemetery of his native town, Sète, the same cemetery celebrated in his famous poem "Le Cimetière marin".


title: Paul Valéry

text: Valéry is best known as a poet, and he is sometimes considered to be the last of the French symbolists. However, he published fewer than a hundred poems, and none of them drew much attention. On the night of 4 October 1892, during a heavy storm, Paul Valéry underwent an existential crisis, an event that made a huge impact on his writing career. Eventually, around 1898, he quit writing altogether, publishing not a word for nearly twenty years. This hiatus was in part due to the death of his mentor, Stéphane Mallarmé. When, in 1917, he finally broke his 'great silence' with the publication of "La Jeune Parque", he was forty-six years of age.


title: Paul Valéry

text: This obscure, but sublimely musical, masterpiece, of 512 alexandrine lines in rhyming couplets, had taken him four years to complete, and it immediately secured his fame. With "Le Cimetière marin" and "L'Ébauche d'un serpent," it is often considered one of the greatest French poems of the twentieth century.


title: Paul Valéry

text: The title was chosen late in the poem's gestation; it refers to the youngest of the three "Parcae" (the minor Roman deities also called "The Fates"), though for some readers the connection with that mythological figure is tenuous and problematic.


title: Paul Valéry

text: The poem is written in the first person, and is the soliloquy of a young woman contemplating life and death, engagement and withdrawal, love and estrangement, in a setting dominated by the sea, the sky, stars, rocky cliffs, and the rising sun. However, it is also possible to read the poem as an allegory on the way fate moves human affairs or as an attempt to comprehend the horrific violence in Europe at the time of the poem's composition. The poem is not about World War I, but it does try to address the relationships between destruction and beauty, and, in this sense, it resonates with ancient Greek meditations on these matters, especially in the plays of Sophocles and Aeschylus. There are, therefore, evident links with "le Cimetière marin", which is also a seaside meditation on comparably large themes.


title: Paul Valéry

text: Before "la Jeune Parque", Valéry's only publications of note were dialogues, articles, some poems, and a study of Leonardo da Vinci. In 1920 and 1922, he published two slim collections of verses. The first, "Album des vers anciens" (Album of old verses), was a revision of early but beautifully wrought smaller poems, some of which had been published individually before 1900. The second, "Charmes" (from the Latin "carmina", meaning "songs" and also "incantations"), further confirmed his reputation as a major French poet. The collection includes "le Cimetière marin", and many smaller poems with diverse structures.


title: Paul Valéry

text: Valéry's technique is quite orthodox in its essentials. His verse rhymes and scans in conventional ways, and it has much in common with the work of Mallarmé. His poem, "Palme", inspired James Merrill's celebrated 1974 poem "Lost in Translation", and his cerebral lyricism also influenced the American poet, Edgar Bowers.


title: Paul Valéry

text: Valéry described his “true oeuvre” to be prose, and he filled more than 28,000 notebook pages over his lifetime. His far more ample prose writings, peppered with many aphorisms and "bons mots", reveal a skeptical outlook on human nature, verging on the cynical. His view of state power was broadly liberal insofar as he believed that state power and infringements on the individual should be severely limited. Although he had flirted with nationalist ideas during the 1890s, he moved away from them by 1899, and believed that European culture owed its greatness to the ethnic diversity and universalism of the Roman Empire. He denounced the myth of "racial purity" and argued that such purity, if it existed, would only lead to stagnation—thus the mixing of races was necessary for progress and cultural development. In "America as a Projection of the European Mind", Valéry remarked that whenever he despaired about Europe's situation, he could "restore some degree of hope only by thinking of


title: Paul Valéry

text: the New World" and mused on the "happy variations" which could result from European "aesthetic ideas filtering into the powerful character of native Mexican art."


title: Paul Valéry

text: Raymond Poincaré, Louis de Broglie, André Gide, Henri Bergson, and Albert Einstein all respected Valéry's thinking and became friendly correspondents. Valéry was often asked to write articles on topics not of his choosing; the resulting intellectual journalism was collected in five volumes titled "Variétés".


title: Paul Valéry

text: Valéry's most striking achievement is perhaps his monumental intellectual diary, called the "Cahiers" (Notebooks). Early every morning of his adult life, he contributed something to the "Cahiers", prompting him to write: "Having dedicated those hours to the life of the mind, I thereby earn the right to be stupid for the rest of the day."


title: Paul Valéry

text: The subjects of his "Cahiers" entries often were, surprisingly, reflections on science and mathematics. In fact, arcane topics in these domains appear to have commanded far more of his considered attention than his celebrated poetry. The "Cahiers" also contain the first drafts of many aphorisms he later included in his books. To date, the "Cahiers" have been published in their entirety only as photostatic reproductions, and only since 1980 have they begun to receive scholarly scrutiny. The "Cahiers" have been translated into English in five volumes published by Peter Lang with the title "Cahiers/Notebooks".


title: Paul Valéry

text: In recent decades Valéry's thought has been considered a touchstone in the field of constructivist epistemology, as noted, for instance, by Jean-Louis Le Moigne in his description of constructivist history.


title: Paul Valéry

text: One of three epigraphs in Cormac McCarthy's novel Blood Meridian is from Valéry's Writing at the Yalu River (1895):


title: Paul Valéry

text: "Your ideas are terrifying and your hearts are faint. Your acts of pity and cruelty are absurd, committed with no calm, as if they were irresistible. Finally, you fear blood more and more. Blood and time".


title: Paul Valéry

text: In the book "El laberinto de la soledad" from Octavio Paz there are three verses of one of Valéry's poems:


title: Paul Valéry

text: Oscar-winning Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki's 2013 film "The Wind Rises" and the Japanese novel of the same name (on which the film was partially based) take their title from Valéry's verse "Le vent se lève... il faut tenter de vivre !" ("The wind rises… We must try to live!") in the poem "Le Cimetière marin" ("The Graveyard by the Sea"). The same quote is used in the closing sentences of Anthony Burgess's 1962 novel The Wanting Seed.


title: Party leader

text: In a governmental system, a party leader acts as the official representative of their political party, either to a legislature or to the electorate. Depending on the country, the individual colloquially referred to as the "leader" of a political party may officially be party chair, secretary, or the highest political office.


title: Party leader

text: The party leader is often responsible for managing the party's relationship with the general public and leading the competition against political rivals, similar to the role of a party spokesperson. As such, they will take a leading role in developing and communicating party platforms to the electorate.


title: Party leader

text: In many representative democracies, party leaders compete directly for high political office. It is thus typical in such states (notably in the Westminster system) for the party leader to seek election to the legislature and, if elected, to simultaneously serve as the party's parliamentary leader. In several countries utilizing the parliamentary system, if the party leader's political party emerges with a majority of seats in parliament after a general election, is the leading party in a coalition government, or (in some instances) is the largest party in a minority parliament, that party's leader often serves as the prime minister. Thus, in the politics of several countries utilizing the parliamentary system, a political party's leader is treated as a de facto candidate for prime minister by the media and the general public, even if said office is technically not directly elected.


title: Party leader

text: Party Head or leader of a political party, subject to party’s constitutional document need not be elected member of legislature and is therefore different from leader of parliamentary committee of a party.


title: Party leader

text: This is much harder to do in presidential and semi-presidential systems, where the chief executive is a president who can only be removed by a special impeachment (typically involving a legislative supermajority, an investigation by a constitutional court, or both), and removal entails either a snap election or automatic succession to office by a vice president; therefore, the party's de jure internal leader either takes a background role (such as the Chairs of the Democratic, and Republican parties in the United States, who serve more so as the chief administrative officers of their respective political parties), or the leadership may be automatically bestowed on an incumbent president who belongs to the party (such as the Democratic Progressive Party in Taiwan). In countries using the Westminster system, the leader of the largest political party not within the government serves as the leader of the opposition.


title: Party leader

text: In Canada, the leaders of all major political parties are chosen during their respective political party's leadership conventions upon the completion of a leadership election. Exceptions to this process sometimes occur when Members of Parliament leave their former party to form a new party; examples of this include when Jean-François Fortin quit the Bloc Québécois to form Strength in Democracy in 2014 and when Maxime Bernier quit the Conservative Party to form the People's Party of Canada in 2018.


title: Party leader

text: The leaders of communist parties often hold the title of general secretary (e.g. General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party) and the officeholder is usually considered the paramount leader of China. On 15 November 2012, Xi Jinping was elected General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party at the 18th Communist Party national congress.


title: Party leader

text: The party organizations themselves and also their representatives (such as the chairperson, who is the party leader, and other board members) play a much more prominent role in German politics than they do in many other countries, where the parties are mainly represented by their members and leaders in government. Although the party leaders often also hold important public offices (such as government minister or parliamentary leader), those roles are clearly separated, even by law. Consequently, it does occasionally happen that the leaders of a German party are not even members of parliament, such as Saskia Esken and Norbert Walter-Borjans, who are incumbent the chairpersons of the (governing) Social Democrats. This sometimes leads to open conflicts between the party leadership, its parliamentary group and its members of government.


title: Party leader

text: In the Netherlands, the party leaders are the most senior politicians within the political parties in the Netherlands. The leaders outwardly act as the 'figurehead' and the main representative of the party. Within the party, they must ensure political consensus. At election time the leader is always the Lijsttrekker (top candidate) of the party list. Outside election time the leaders most often serve as Parliamentary leader of their party in the House of Representatives, some party leaders opt to serve in the cabinet as a minister.


title: Party leader

text: In the Third Rutte cabinet, the only party leader in the cabinet was Prime Minister Mark Rutte the leader of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), while the leaders of the other parties in the coalition: Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) leader Sybrand van Haersma Buma, Democrats 66 (D66) leader Alexander Pechtold and Christian Union (CU) leader Gert-Jan Segers opted to remain as Parliamentary leaders in House of Representatives.


title: Party leader

text: In the Republic of Korea, Representatives of most political parties are elected through elections of party members. The representative of the Democratic Party of Korea is Song Young-gil, who was elected in May 2021, and the representative of the conservative opposition PPP is Lee Jun-seok, a famous young politician who was elected in June 2021. In the Democratic party's presidential election, it is also elected through public opinion polls, not party members. For the PPP, however, they calculate the public opinion poll and the party member poll by 50:50.


title: Party leader

text: The Democratic Progress Party's constitution stipulates that the President may serve directly as Party Chairman without an election during the ruling period, and that the Party Chairman is elected by party members during the opposition period. The Party constitution of the Kuomintang provides that the party chairman is directly elected by party members.


title: Party leader

text: The current chairman of the Democratic Progressive Party is President Tsai Ing-wen. The current chairman of the Kuomintang is former Vice Premier Eric Chu.


title: Party leader

text: In Turkey, the party chairpersons are the de facto party leaders. The leaders of all major political parties are chosen during their respective political party's leadership conventions upon the completion of a leadership election. Exceptions to this process sometimes occur when Members of Parliament leave their former party to form a new party. It is possible to co-chair a party. The party leader is the most prominent politician of the party and is usually considered to become the head of government. However, a party leader may also put forward a different candidate for the elections. The party leader (chairperson) can not be the same as the party's General Secretary.


title: Party leader

text: The method of selection of the party leader varies from party to party, though often it will involve an election involving all or part of the party membership. In some parties, only incumbent members of the parliamentary party, or particular party office-holders, may vote; in others, such as the British Labour Party, though the entire membership is eligible to vote, some electors may have a much larger share of the vote than others (see also Superdelegate for a similar concept). If only one candidate emerges, they are said to be "elected by acclamation" or "ratified" by the general membership (sometimes the term "anointed" occurs informally or in media discourse).


title: Party leader

text: The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Rishi Sunak, gained the position on 25 October 2022; he has served as the party leader of the Conservative Party since 24 October 2022. Sir Keir Starmer is leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition.


title: Party leader

text: If elected, political parties have party leaders in the executive branch of the United States government. The President becomes the de facto leader of their respective political party once elected, and the Vice President likewise holds a leadership role as both the second-highest executive officer and the President of the Senate. However, major parties also generally have a National Committee as their governing body, which has separate leadership roles.


title: Party leader

text: The legislative branch, otherwise known as the United States Congress, is made up of the upper chamber, the Senate, and the lower chamber, the House of Representatives, with party-elected leaders in each. The leader of the party with most of the representation (sometimes called the party-in-power) in each case is known as the majority leader, whereas the leader of the opposing party with the most members is known as the minority leader.


title: Party leader

text: Party leaders in the United States Senate have been elected by their respective political parties' caucuses since 1913. They include President of the Senate Kamala Harris, President Pro Tempore of the United States Senate Patrick Leahy, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin on the Democratic side, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Minority Whip John Thune on the Republican side.


title: Party leader

text: The party leaders of the House of Representatives are elected by their respective parties in the House by secret ballot. The Republican Party is represented in the House by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Minority Whip Steve Scalise, whereas the Democratic Party is represented by Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Majority Whip Jim Clyburn. In the House of Representatives, the most powerful official is the House-elected Speaker, who is Nancy Pelosi of the Democratic Party.


title: Party leader

text: Jaime Harrison serves as the chair of the Democratic Party, while Ronna McDaniel serves as the chair of the Republican Party.


title: Manila Cathedral

text: The Minor Basilica and Metropolitan Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception (; ), also known as the Manila Cathedral (), is the cathedral of Manila and basilica located in Intramuros, the historic walled city within today's modern city of Manila, Philippines. It is dedicated to the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary as the Patroness of the country. The cathedral serves as the episcopal seat of the Archbishop of Manila.


title: Manila Cathedral

text: The cathedral was originally a parish church in Manila under the Archdiocese of Mexico in 1571, until it became a separate diocese on February 6, 1579, upon the issuance of the papal bull, by Pope Gregory XIII. The cathedral was damaged and destroyed several times since the original structure was built in 1581 while the eighth and current structure of the cathedral was completed in 1958.


title: Manila Cathedral

text: The basilica has merited a papal endorsement from Pope Gregory XIII and three apostolic visits from Pope Paul VI, Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis. On April 27, 1981, Pope John Paul II issued papal bull designating the cathedral as a minor basilica by his own .


title: Manila Cathedral

text: The cathedral was originally the "church of Manila" officially established in 1571 by a secular priest, Fray Juan de Vivero, who arrived in Manila Bay in 1566. De Vivero, the chaplain on the galleon of "San Gerónimo", was sent by the Archbishop of Mexico, Alonso de Montúfar, to establish Christianity as the spiritual and religious administration in newly colonized Philippines. De Vivero later became the vicar-general and the first ecclesiastical judge of the city of Manila.


title: Manila Cathedral

text: Spanish conquistador Miguel López de Legazpi chose the location of the church and placed it under the patronage of Santa Potenciana. The first parish priest of the church was Fray Juan de Villanueva.


title: Manila Cathedral

text: When the church was elevated to a cathedral in 1579 (coinciding with the canonical erection of the Diocese of Manila), a new structure made from nipa, wood, and bamboo was constructed in 1581 by Domingo de Salazar, the first-ever bishop of Manila. The new structure was consecrated on December 21, 1581; formally becoming a cathedral. The structure was destroyed by fire in 1583, which started during the funeral Mass for Governor-General Gonzalo Ronquillo de Peñalosa in San Agustin Church that razed much of the city.


title: Manila Cathedral

text: The second cathedral, which was made of stone, was built in 1592. However, it was destroyed by an earthquake in 1600.


title: Manila Cathedral

text: Construction of the third cathedral began in 1614. The new structure, consisting of three naves and seven chapels, was blessed in 1614. It again toppled by another earthquake which shook Manila in 1645.


title: Manila Cathedral

text: The fourth cathedral was constructed from 1654 to 1671. In 1750, a "media naranja" ("half orange") dome was added to the crossing by the Florentine friar Juan de Uguccioni, who also introduced a transept to the structure. It was severely damaged in 1863 by a very strong earthquake, that also damaged the palace of the governor general of the Philippines.


title: Manila Cathedral

text: The seventh cathedral was constructed from 1870 to 1879. It was solemnly consecrated in December 1879. The cross atop the central dome is a reference point of astronomical longitudes of the archipelago. In 1880, another earthquake toppled its bell tower, rendering the cathedral towerless until 1958.


title: Manila Cathedral

text: In 1937, the International Eucharistic Congress was held in the Philippines in which the cathedral played an integral part in promoting eucharistic beliefs. Both a cathedral stamp and medal were unveiled in commemoration of the event and was made by the official manufacturer of medals for the Congress of the Philippines at the time, the sculptor Críspulo Zamora.This incarnation of the cathedral was reduced to rubble by the Japanese in a scorched-earth defense in 1945 during the Battle of Manila, as the Second World War neared its conclusion.


title: Manila Cathedral

text: The cathedral's present incarnation was constructed from 1954 to 1958 under Most Rev. Rufino J. Cardinal Santos, ; and under the supervision of the notable Kapampangan architect Fernando H. Ocampo.


title: Manila Cathedral

text: Pope Paul VI made an apostolic visit and celebrated Mass in the cathedral in 1970. Pope John Paul II issued a papal bull "Quod Ipsum" on April 27, 1981; elevating the shrine to a minor basilica through his own "Motu Proprio". In the same papal bull, he reiterated that Pope Paul VI's papal decree of June 6, 1968, be eternally preserved and enforced to the merits and titles of the cathedral as its own basilica.


title: Manila Cathedral

text: The cathedral's 50th restoration anniversary was celebrated in 2008, highlighted by the second Manila Cathedral Pipe Organ Festival from December 2 to 10, organized by the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines. The cathedral's pipe organ itself, which consists of 5,584 pipes, is one of the largest pipe organs in the country and in Southeast Asia.


title: Manila Cathedral

text: In February 2011, the cathedral's bells were moved to the ground level to prevent the bell tower from collapsing, as had occurred in past earthquakes. In January 2012, the bells were replaced with new ones personally cast by blacksmith Friedrich Wilhelm Schilling from Heidelberg, Germany in 1958. According to the new marker installed by Manila Archbishop Most Rev. Gaudencio B. Cardinal Rosales, , the newly installed bells are the largest bells actively used in the Philippines. A total of seven carillon bells were permanently installed in the ground level of the belfry, weighing at .


title: Manila Cathedral

text: The cathedral underwent repairs for earthquake retrofitting and subsidence prevention in 2012. During this time, the San Fernando de Dilao Church was designated as the temporary official church (pro-cathedral) of the Archdiocese of Manila. However, Msgr. Nestor Cerbo stated that the cathedral would finish its renovations on March 25, 2014. Some added features and changes include the installation of CCTV cameras, large flat screen television screens (similar to those found in Baclaran Church), improved audio-video systems, and improved interior and exterior LED lightings. The cathedral completed its restoration on the said date and was reopened to the general public on April 9, 2014, after two years of renovation. Manila Archbishop Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle presided a Holy Mass, after the reopening of the cathedral, attended by President Benigno Aquino III.


title: Manila Cathedral

text: In the baptistery of Saint John the Baptist, at the left side of the vestibule from the side entrance, is preserved a reliquary-calendar containing 365 relics of the saints; at November 1 there is a bone fragment of Saint Caesarius of Terracina, the saint protectors of the emperors, who replaced and Christianized the cult of Julius Caesar.


title: Manila Cathedral

text: On January 16, 2015, Pope Francis celebrated his first Papal Mass in the country at the cathedral as part of his apostolic visit to the Philippines. The mass was celebrated for the bishops, priests, and the clergy in three languages: Latin, English, and Filipino.


title: Manila Cathedral

text: The cathedral crypt is the resting place for former archbishops of Manila and a few other prelates, located underneath the church complex and accessible by a stairway to the right of the altar:


title: Manila Cathedral

text: President Aguinaldo was the first president to have a requiem mass said in the restored cathedral. Although he was a freemason and was closely associated with the Aglipayan Church, his remains were brought to the cathedral and laid beneath the dome on February 14, 1964. Rufino J. Cardinal Santos officiated the requiem mass before the remains were brought to the Legislative Building for the state vigil. President Garcia was the first layman to lie-in-state and have his Requiem Mass said at the cathedral; President Aquino was the third layperson and the first woman given this honour during her funeral. This broke with centuries of tradition that reserved the right of lying-in-state beneath the dome to archbishops of Manila.


title: Manila Cathedral

text: The northwest façade is a replica of the façade of the previous cathedral, along with statues of famous saints sculpted in Roman travertine stone. Several of the artworks inside the basilica were made by Italian artists. In the previous cathedral, they were originally made of molave wood. The statue of Saint Rose of Lima was sculpted by Angelo Fattinanzi; Saint Jacob, Saint Andrew, and Saint Anthony the Abbot by Livia Papini; and Saint Francis Xavier and Saint Polycarp by Alcide Tico.


title: Manila Cathedral

text: The tympanum above the central northwest doors bears the Latin inscription "Tibi cordi tuo immaculato concredimus nos ac consecramus" (English: "To thy Immaculate Heart, entrust us and consecrate us").


title: Manila Cathedral

text: Since Pope John Paul II's apostolic visit to the basilica in 1981, a medallion bearing the papal arms has been placed beneath the cross of the façade. The scarlet galeros of Cardinals Rufino Santos and Jaime Sin are also suspended from the ceiling of the dome. In addition, a copy of the "Saint Peter Enthroned" statue of St. Peter's Basilica is enshrined inside, across a polychrome life-sized statue of the Immaculate Conception.


title: Manila Cathedral

text: Prior to 1988, the bronze statue of the Immaculate Conception in the main altar, by national Italian sculptor Vincenzo Assenza, was painted gold until 1988 (though the twelve star halo-aureola is solid gold). Inscribed on the baldachin above the statue of the Immaculate Conception is the Latin antiphon "Tota pulchra es, Maria, et macula originalis non est in Te" (English: "Thou art all-beautiful, Mary, and the original stain [spot] (of sin) is not in thee.").


title: Manila Cathedral

text: The baptismal font and angel-shaped holy water fonts are also made of solid bronze by Publio Morbiducci; the prominent mosaic of Saint Jude Thaddeus was made by Marcello Mazzoli. The 134 modern stained glass windows were made in 1964 by Filipino artist Galo Ocampo. The window set, which was a programme of Marian themes, was commissioned and funded by Cardinal Santos.


title: Manila Cathedral

text: The artistic designs of the stained glass windows of the Manila Cathedral are mostly products of the creative genius of Ocampo, one of the most versatile contemporary Filipino artists during his time and a recipient of the 1964 Patnubay ng Sining at Kalinangan Award from the city government of Manila.


title: Manila Cathedral

text: The marble floors on the center aisle near the altar bears the coat of arms of four cardinal archbishops of Manila: Rufino Santos, Jaime Sin, Gaudencio Rosales, and Luis Antonio Tagle.


title: Manila Cathedral

text: The cathedra or episcopal throne of the Archbishop of Manila was installed during the postwar reconstruction in 1958. It is made of Mexican onyx and marble from Carrara, Italy, and was designed and made by the Istituto Internazionale d’Arte Liturgica in Rome.


title: Manila Cathedral

text: The original cathedra bears the coat of arms of then Archbishop Rufino Santos before he was created a cardinal. His coat of arms and the Mexican onyx was covered by a stone until its restoration in 2021.


title: Manila Cathedral

text: The restored cathedra now bears a carving of the coat of arms Cardinal Jose Advincula, the present archbishop, imposed on top of white Indian marble.


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha (, ; ; ; 1506 – 11 October 1579) was an Ottoman statesman most notable for being the Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire. Born in Ottoman Herzegovina into an Orthodox Christian Serbian family, Mehmed was abducted at an early age as part of the Ottoman devşirme system of forcibly recruiting Christian boys to be raised to serve as a janissary. He rose through the ranks of the Ottoman imperial system, eventually holding positions as commander of the imperial guard (1543–1546), High Admiral of the Fleet (1546–1551), Governor-General of Rumelia (1551–1555), Third Vizier (1555–1561), Second Vizier (1561–1565), and as Grand Vizier (1565–1579, for a total of 14 years, three months, 17 days) under three sultans: Suleiman the Magnificent, Selim II, and Murad III. He was assassinated in 1579, ending his near 15-years of service to several Sultans, as sole legal representative in the administration of state affairs.


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: Although Sokullu was Muslim, he remembered his Serbian Orthodox roots and his family. He persuaded the Sultan to restore the Serbian Patriarchate of Peć as a "gesture of reconciliation". He appointed members of his family (both Muslim and Christian) to important positions in Ottoman Empire, including Makarije Sokolović, Ferhad Pasha Sokolović, Sinan-beg Boljanić, Sokolluzade Lala Mehmed Pasha and Lala Mustafa Pasha.


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: Sokollu's birth name was probably "Bajica", and he was of ethnic Serb origin. He was said to be born into a modest shepherd family, adherent to the Serbian Orthodox Church, in or near Sokolovići (tr. "Sokol") in the vicinity of modern-day Rudo. "Sokollu" is a demonym, derived from his place of birth, whereas the suffix "-lu" means "from" in Turkish. His father was named Dimitrije. He had two brothers and a sister, who married the older brother of Hüseyin Pasha Boljanić, as well as at least one uncle. However, details about his family and relations are disputed on two major counts. One is his relationship to Makarije Sokolović. Traditionally identified as his brother, today some historians consider him to have been either a nephew or distant relative. The second is the matter of Mehmed's uncle. By some accounts, his uncle was a monk at the Mileševa monastery who had his two nephews, Bajica and Makarije (taken to be brothers according to this view), educated there. Other sources suggest that his uncle converted to Islam early.


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: Though Sokollu had embraced Islam, he remembered his family and Serbian Orthodox roots. He would appoint his relatives (both Muslim and Christian) to important positions, including Makarije Sokolović, Ferhad Pasha Sokolović, Sinan-beg Boljanić, Sokolluzade Lala Mehmed Pasha and Lala Mustafa Pasha.


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: He was renamed Mehmed and, first in Edirne and then in Constantinople, received a thorough Ottoman indoctrination as a recruit, first as an apprentice Janissary (in Turkish "Acemi Oğlan"); then in the "Enderun" or palace school in Topkapı Palace.


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: As proclaimed in Baghdad on 13 March 1535, Mehmed was sent to be one of the seven retainers of the Imperial Treasurer Iskender Çelebi. Upon Iskender's death, Mehmed returned to Constantinople. In addition to Turkish, he spoke Serbian, Persian, Arabic, Venetian-Italian and Latin language.


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: Mehmed in 1541 first became an Imperial Chamberlain and then the head of the Sultan's squires. In these positions he became very close to Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and learned from him.


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: As a soldier, Mehmed excelled at the Battle of Mohács and the first Siege of Vienna. In 1546 the Kapudan Pasha Hayreddin Barbarossa died and Mehmed was appointed his successor. In this capacity he was present at the naval expedition against Trablus (present-day Tripoli in Libya). During his five years in this position, Mehmed Pasha greatly strengthened the arsenal of the naval fleet.


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: Mehmed became "Beylerbey" (Governor-General) of Rumelia in 1551, headquartered in Sofia. While he was visiting the area of his birth, his mother recognized him by the birthmark on his face and embraced her child for the first time in more than thirty years.


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: After the death of John Zápolya, king of Hungary as an Ottoman vassal, in 1540, Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor looked to annex Zápolya's lands (the Eastern Hungarian Kingdom). The Hungarian diet had elected infant John Sigismund Zápolya, the son of Zápolya and Isabella Jagiellon, as King of Hungary, which broke the Treaty of Nagyvárad, and Ferdinand I invaded Hungary. Queen Isabella struggled to rule Hungary for her son. Frater George Martinuzzi, appointed by John as regent, opposed her (he would later be created a Cardinal as reward for his accomplishments in this conflict). Ferdinand I sent mercenary leader ("condottiero") Bartolomeo Castoldo with more than 7,000 mercenaries who beat a contingent led by Péter Petrovics, killing more than 2,500 of them, near Csanád. The Sultan immediately ordered Sokollu Mehmed Pasha to move into Hungary, so he assembled an army of 90,000 soldiers and fifty-four cannons and also summoned the pashas of Smederevo, Vidin and Nicopolis. When his forces reached Slankamen in Syrmia, George Martinuzzi begged Mehmed not to attack Transylvania, arguing that it had remained in the possession of the Sultan. Mehmed rejected negotiation proposals, led Ottoman forces into Transylvania and soon captured 16 cities, including Bečej, Becskerek, Csanád and Lippa. In this campaign, Sokollu won over to his side local Serb-manned garrisons by pointing out to his common ethnicity with them. Martinuzzi responded by raising a rebellion in Transylvania, mustering one soldier from every household. Mehmed had to fall back and once again laid siege to Temesvár on 14 October with the main part of his army and 50 cannons. Mehmed demanded surrender, but the city's commander, István Losonci, replied with a recommendation for Mehmed's return to Rumelia.


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: Mehmed besieged the city until 28 October but could not seize it. Retreating to Belgrade, he initiated peace negotiations with the Monk-Viceroy. Martinuzzi was assassinated on 17 December 1551, and peace talks ended. Sokollu Mehmed renewed his military campaign in 1552, seizing Temesvár (see Siege of Temesvár (1552)), Hollókő, Buják, Rétság, Balassagyarmat, the whole of Banat and Szolnok. Sokollu Mehmed's forces then joined with those of Ahmet Pasha advancing towards Eger. Mehmed's army assembled on the Hill of Egid but could not take the city itself.


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: In 1532, Sultan Suleiman had declared war on Safavid Persia following two decades of peace after the climactic Battle of Chaldiran, when the Persian Shah Tahmasp wanted to take advantage of the Sultan's preoccupation with Hungary and started making armed incursions into Ottoman territory. Sokollu Mehmed was dispatched to spend the winter of 1553/1554 in Tokat to take charge of the final stages of the war against Persia. In June 1554, Mehmed Pasha and the Rumelian troops joined the Sultan's army and took part in the Safavid Campaign (1554–55).


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: Impressed by Sokollu Mehmed's skills, the Sultan made him the Third Vizier in 1555 and he was given a place in the Imperial Council ("Divan"). His position as Governor-General of Rumelia was given to a Herzegovinian Janissary "agha", Pertev Pasha, an old companion of Mehmed's from when they had both served under Iskender Çelebi.


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: Almost immediately Sokollu Mehmed had to quell a rebellion around Salonica, led by Mustafa Bey, who pretended to be the Sultan's late son Mustafa. Sokollu Mehmed took 4,000 horsemen and 3,000 janissaries and quelled the rebellion. Mustafa Bey was hanged.


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: Mehmed's brother, Topuzli-Makarije, became a monk of the Serb Chilandar Monastery on Mount Athos. Makarije Sokolović paid a visit to his brother's palace in Constantinople in 1557, where the two brothers discussed the possibility of re-establishing the autocephaly of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Later that same year, Sokollu Mehmed issued an edict ("firman") declaring the restoration of the Serbian Patriarchate of Peć, with Makarije Sokolović as Serbian Patriarch Makarije I. The edict also guaranteed the rights and religious freedom of all inhabitants of the Ottoman Empire.


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: When the former Grand Vizier Ahmet Pasha was deposed and hanged, he was replaced by Rüstem Pasha, who had numerous enemies. One of them was Lala Mustafa, who instigated the Sultan's third son, Bayezid, then "Beylerbey" of Karaman, to raise a rebellion against his brother and heir-apparent Selim. Sokollu Mehmed mustered an army and went to Konya, where he decisively defeated Bayezid's forces in May 1559. Bayezid fled to Persia. Sokollu Mehmed remained in Asia and spent the winter negotiating with the Persian Shah regarding Bayezid's extradition. After long negotiations, the Shah handed over Bayezid and his four sons, who were subsequently executed.


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: In 1561, Grand Vizier Rüstem Pasha died and was succeeded by the Second Vizier, Semiz Ali Pasha. Sokollu Mehmed Pasha in turn became Second Vizier, while Pertev Pasha became Third Vizier.


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: On 17 August 1562, Sokollu Mehmed married Sultan Suleiman's granddaughter – Prince Selim's daughter – Ismihan Sultan (some sources read her name as Esma Han Sultan) . Mehmed spent the following years in peace, governing and administrating the realm.


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: In June 1565, Grand Vizier Semiz Ali Pasha died. Sultan Suleiman had much confidence in Sokollu Mehmed Pasha and promoted him to this position.


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: In late 1565 and early 1566, tensions between the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II and Sultan Suleiman grew. Maximilian wanted the cities previously taken by Telli Hasan Pasha restored to him. When negotiations failed, Maximilian declared war and Grand Vizier Sokollu Mehmed Pasha ordered his nephew, Sokollu Mustafa Bey of Bosnia, to advance against Maximilian. Mustafa managed to capture the cities of Krupa and Dvor na Uni. The Sultan immediately declared war against the Holy Roman Empire, and Sokollu Mehmed began the preparations for the army's advance. The Grand Vizier went ahead, preparing for the arrival of the Sultan, who was leading the main part of the Ottoman forces. After 50 days, they arrived in Belgrade.


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: Passing through Zemun, one part of the army crossed Varaždin and struck Egar before proceeding towards Vienna. Nikola Šubić Zrinski (Miklós Zrínyi) had defeated the "sanjakbey" Tirhal Mohammed, executing him and his son, and capturing 17,000 ducats. This incurred the Sultan's wrath, and he dispatched Sokollu Mehmed's forces to besiege Szigetvár, while Suleiman remained in Harsang. The commander of Buda, Arslan Pasha, lost the cities of Várpalota, Veszprém and Tata. The Sultan sent a platoon of fifteen troopers to bring him Arslan Pasha's head, but Arslan had already left his forces three days earlier and was on his way to the Sultan. The Sultan showed Sokollu Mehmed a letter in which Arslan had insulted him, and on 3 August, when Arslan reported to Mehmed's tent with 15 heavily armed horsemen, Sokollu Mehmed criticized Arslan for his conduct, accused him of treason and stripped him of his post, giving it instead to his nephew Sokollu Mustafa Bey.


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: The Sultan arrived with Sokollu Mehmed's sons, Kurt Bey and Hasan Bey, at Pécs. Finally, the large Ottoman force, which numbered between 100,000 and 300,000 soldiers and 300 cannons, laid siege to Szigetvár. The Battle of Szigetvár was an Ottoman victory, with heavy losses on both sides. Both commanders died during the battle: while Zrinsky was killed in the final charge, Suleiman the Magnificent died in his tent from natural causes, before the Turks achieved victory. According to Robert William Fraser, more than 10,000 large cannonballs where shot into the fortress during the siege.


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha had all witnesses to the Sultan's death executed, and announced that Suleiman was too sick to perform his duties and that he would be healing in Szigetvár, while he would be acting on the Sultan's behalf. Sokollu Mehmed rewarded those involved in the capture of Szigetvár and increased the soldiers' wages. He sent a part of the army to capture Babócsa. The Tartars, however, spread the news of the Sultan's death, and Sokollu Mustafa Bey wrote to Prince Selim about his father's death. Selim marched immediately towards Srem. Upon his arrival in Vukovar, Sokollu Mehmed wrote him that it would be best if he went to Belgrade to greet his army for a more formal and effective take-over of the Empire. Selim returned to Belgrade, and Mehmed ordered the army to march towards the town. Forty days after the Sultan's death, in October 1566, the army set out for Belgrade. At the fourth stop on the way to Belgrade, forty-eight days after Suleiman's death, Sokollu Mehmed announced the Sultan's death ceremonially, during the traditional reading of the Koran. Sokollu Mehmed had Suleiman's body embalmed and ordered the army to proceed to meet the new Sultan in Belgrade. After three marches, the army arrived in Sremska Mitrovica. Mehmed reminded Selim to send gifts to the viziers, pashas and the army, but Selim's advisors convinced the new Sultan not to do so. Sokollu Mehmed went to Belgrade and swore allegiance to Selim II as his Sultan, and Selim confirmed him as his Grand Vizier.


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: Expecting a mutiny among the military in the capital, Sokollu Mehmed had Suleiman's body sent to Constantinople to restore order amongst the janissaries and other officials, who now demanded more compensation for their past efforts. In Belgrade, Sultan Selim II called a council, as even some of his closest officials were openly mocking him. Sokollu Mehmed assured him that he would manage everything effectively, and distributed gifts to the troops, rewarding them handsomely to regain their loyalty.


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: On the fifth day of their stay in Belgrade, the Sultan, Sokollu Mehmed and the army departed for Constantinople. Before they managed to return to the Empire's capital, a mutiny broke out and the road to the city was blocked, and Sokollu Mehmed and Ahmed Pasha had to bribe their way into the city. Order was restored after Sokollu Mehmed convinced the Sultan to promise to send handsome gifts and higher wages to the janissaries. The next morning, each janissary was given standard pay of 40 ducats and an additional 20 ducats as an accession bonus. Soon, the other branches of the military, the sipahis and mercenaries, demanded higher wages as well. Mehmed arrested and replaced their "aghas" at once, finally stopping all dissent.


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: Two years after Selim's accession, on 17 February 1568, Sokollu Mehmed succeeded in concluding at Edirne a peace treaty with Emperor Maximilian II, whereby the Emperor agreed to pay an annual "honorary present" of 30,000 ducats.


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: One of Sokollu's greatest responsibilities was planning an Ottoman invasion of Sumatra in 1567. Historical records from the time show that Sokollu played an active role in the strategic execution of the invasion and that he was extremely detailed in the logistics. Later on, Sokollu would also participate in the expedition as a commander. According to these historical records, between November and December 1567 Sokollu and his expedition took sail to Aceh with fifteen fully armed war galleys and two transport galleys. Upon a seemingly friendly arrival to Aceh, the sultan of Sumatra requested that all the members of the expedition follow his orders. The sultan later offered his loyalty to the Ottoman Empire and forged a bond of mutual understanding between Istanbul and Aceh.


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: Immediately after the expedition to Sumatra, the Ottoman Empire suffered a major rebellion from one of their most important settlements. An uprising led by Zaydi Imam in Yemen created substantial uncertainty in the region which Sokollu had to give imminent priority before taking any further action in Aceh. While the insurrection in Yemen started in the summer of 1567, it was not taking seriously by the Ottoman regime until later in the year, when most of the major cities in the region came under fire by the rebellious factions. It is believed that the cause of the dissatisfaction in Yemen was the intensified Ottoman involvement in the region as a prelude for an expansion in the Indian Ocean. The unhappiness in the Ottoman Yemen also went back to the rule of Governor Mahmud Pasha, a compatriot of Sokollu, who managed to produce large economic gains in the region at the expense of the wellbeing of the population. After Mahmud's wrongdoings in Yemen had been revealed, Sokollu decided to appoint Koja Sinan, who was assigned the responsibilities to appease the turmoils in Yemen.


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: Although the rebellions in Yemen once again forced Sokollu to postpone any further military action in Sumatra and the Indian Ocean, it also opened the possibility to promote one of his favorite projects: and attempt to build a canal from the Mediterranean to Suez. He instructed the governor of Egypt to send architects engineers to assess the possibility of this canal, with the purpose of allowing a better connection from Muslims attempting to visit the Holy Cities. Sokollu also was concerned about Muslims from the northeast, Crimea and Anatolia, who had to cross the Black Sea in order to visit the Holy Cities. Thus, he took actions for the construction of an open canal between the Don and the Volga in the north.


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: Mehmed Pasha had little success against Russia, and the first encounter between the Ottoman Empire and her future northern rival presaged the disaster to come. A plan had been devised at Constantinople for connecting the Volga and Don by a canal, and in the summer of 1569 a large force of janissaries and cavalry was sent to lay siege to Astrakhan and begin the canal works, while an Ottoman fleet besieged Azov. However, a sortie of the garrison of Astrakhan drove back the besiegers. A Russian army of 15,000 men attacked and scattered the workmen and the Tatar force sent for their protection, and the Ottoman fleet was destroyed by a storm. Early in 1570 the ambassadors of Ivan the Terrible concluded at Constantinople a treaty which restored friendly relations between the Sultan and the Tsar.


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: Although the government was weakening, Sokollu Mehmed Paşa managed to expand the borders of the Ottoman Empire greatly. In 1570 he dispatched Sinan Pasha to conquer Arabia. Sinan Pasha solemnly declared the reign of Sultan Selim II in Mecca upon finishing his military campaign in Hejaz and Yemen.


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: In 1571–1572, on the order Mehmed's wife Ismihan Sultan (or Esma Han Sultan), the famous architect Mimar Sinan built the Sokollu Mehmed Paşa Mosque, which an authoritative guide to Constantinople states to be "The most beautiful of the smaller mosques in Istanbul, a minor masterpiece by Sinan".


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: During the rule of Sokollu Mehmed Pasha as Grand Vizier, the Ottoman navy and army took Cyprus in 1571 from Venice. The administration of Cyprus was given to Mehmed's old friend, the Arab Ahmed Pasha. The invasion of Cyprus led to the formation of a so-called Holy League, comprising the Pope, Spain with Naples and Sicily, the Republic of Venice, Genoa, Tuscany, and the Knights of Malta. On 7 October 1571, the coalition's fleet under the command of Don Juan of Austria decisively defeated the Ottoman fleet under Müezzinzade Ali Pasha in the Battle of Lepanto.


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha immediately ensured that Piyale Pasha and Uluç Ali Reis, the new Grand Admiral, were provided with all the necessary means and resources to rebuild the Empire's shattered fleet. By July 1572 the Ottoman fleet already numbered 250 fully equipped warships "including eight of the largest capital ships ever seen in the Mediterranean". It is reported in Turkish chronicles that Sokollu Mehmed Pasha had said to the Venetian Ambassador "By conquering Cyprus we have cut off one of your arms; at Lepanto by defeating our navy you have only shaved off our beard. However, you know that a cut-off arm cannot be replaced but shaved-off beard grows thicker." Indeed, the Holy League ships had to retire to ports and Ottoman naval supremacy in the Mediterranean was restored. The new Ottoman Navy that started a naval expedition in summer of 1573 under Uluç Ali Reis found no rivals in the Mediterranean and ravaged the coasts of Sicily and southern Italy and in 1574 it captured Tunis from the Hafsids, who for some time had been supported by Spanish troops, thus restoring Ottoman domination in the Western Mediterranean.


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: On 3 March 1573, the Venetian Republic signed a new peace treaty with the Ottomans under Mehmed Pasha, thereby bringing the Holy League to an end, accepting the loss of Cyprus and increasing the tribute payments. He also extended for eight more years the peace treaty with the Holy Roman Empire and maintained good relations with France, Poland-Lithuania and Russia. He was preparing for a fresh attack on Venice when the Sultan's death on 12 December 1574 cut short his plans.


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha's wealth reached its peak around 1573, when the value of his personal property (cash, goods, accounts, objects) amounted to 18 million ducats. Mehmed received the standard Grand Vizier's wage of 20 ducats every day. His wealth increased greatly through gifts and taxes of Ottoman officials: anyone who became a vizier had to pay Mehmed Pasha 50,000-60,000 ducats, and every Governor-General had to pay 15,000-20,000 or even sometimes 30,000-40,000 ducats upon ascending to the office. The provincial governor of Egypt at Cairo alone dispatched 100,000 ducats to the Grand Vizier every year.


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: On 30 August 1574, Grand Vizier Sokollu Mehmed Pasha installed his nephew Antonije Sokolović, then the Metropolitan of Hum, as the new Eastern Orthodox Archbishop of Ohrid. On 23 October the same year, upon the death of Patriarch Makarije's death, Antonije became the new Serbian Patriarch. Antonije died soon, in 1575, and was replaced by yet another one of Mehmed's nephews, Gerasim Sokolović.


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: When Sultan Selim II died, Sokollu Mehmed Pasha again kept this secret until Selim's oldest son Murad arrived from his governor's post in Manisa. Sokollu Mehmed Pasha acknowledged the new Sultan, Murad III, and remained Grand Vizier, but now he had to cope with the rising political influence of the palace women, first with Sultan's mother Nurbanu Sultan and then his wife, of Albanian origin, Safiye Sultan. Murad III gradually soured on Sokollu Mehmed's overwhelming power within the Empire, and the Grand Vizier's influence declined.


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha was involved in the succession disputes of the Polish Crown in 1576 and 1577, but this did not reach greater measures.


title: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

text: Sokollu Mehmed signed numerous treaties of friendship with Venice, Florence, Spain, England and Switzerland. He also managed to force a number of European states to pay tribute: Austria paid 9,000 ducats; Transylvania 3,000; Wallachia 7,000; Moldavia 3,000. Eventually, even Venice had to pay him 4,000 ducats annually. This altogether gave him an annual income of 31,000 gold ducats.