[β]; /t/ > [θ] or [h]; /d/ > [ð]; /k/ > [ç] or [ʃ]; and /ɡ/ > [ʝ], [ʃ] or [j] is apparent in Berber languages in central and northern Morocco and Algeria, as in many Middle Atlas dialects, it is more rare in High Atlas Tamazight speakers, and is absent in Tamazight speakers from the foothills of Jbel Saghro. Southern dialects (e.g. Ayt Atta) may also be differentiated syntactically: while other dialects predicate with the auxiliary /d/ (e.g. /d argaz/ \"it's a man\"), Southern dialects use the typically (High Atlas, Souss-Basin rural country, Jbel Atlas Saghro) auxiliary verb /g/ (e.g. /iga argaz/ \"it's a man\"). The differences between each of the three groups are primarily phonological.\nGroups speaking Tamazight include: Ait Ayache, Ait Morghi, Ait Alaham, Ait Youb, Marmoucha, Ait Youssi, Beni Mguild, Zayane, Zemmour, Ait Rbaa, Ait Seri, Guerouane, Ait Segougou, Ait Yafelman, Ait Sikhmane, Ayt Ndhir (Beni Mtir).\nThere is some ambiguity as to the eastern boundary of Central Atlas Tamazight. The dialect of the Ait Seghrouchen and Ait Ouarain tribes are commonly classed as Central Atlas Tamazight, and Ait Seghrouchen is reported to be mutually intelligible with the neighbouring Tamazight dialect of Ait Ayache. Genetically, however, they belong to the Zenati subgroup of Northern Berber, rather than to the Atlas subgroup to which the rest of Central Atlas Tamazight belongs, and are therefore excluded by some sources from Central Atlas Tamazight. The Ethnologue lists another group of Zenati dialects, South Oran Berber (ksours sud-oranais), as a dialect of Central Atlas Tamazight, but these are even less similar, and are treated by Berber specialists as a separate dialect group.\n\nHistory\nThe Berbers have lived in North Africa between western Egypt and the Atlantic Ocean since before recorded history began in the region about 33 centuries ago. By the 5th century BC, the city of Carthage, founded by Phoenicians, had extended its hegemony across much of North Africa; in the wake of the Punic Wars, Rome replaced it as regional hegemon. The Central Atlas region itself remained independent throughout the classical period, but occasional loanwords into Central Atlas Tamazight, such as ayugu, \"plough ox\", from Latin iugum, \"team of oxen\" and aẓalim \"onion\" < Punic bṣal-im, bear witness to their ancestors' contact with these conquerors.\nArabs conquered the area of modern-day Morocco and Algeria around the 7th century, prompting waves of Arab migration and Berber adoption of Islam. Particularly following the arrival of the Banu Hilal in modern-day Tunisia in the 11th century, more and more of North Africa became Arabic-speaking over the centuries. However, along with other high mountainous regions of North Africa, the Middle Atlas continued to speak Berber.\n\nBetween the 12th and 15th centuries, the Central Atlas, along with the rest of Morocco, successively fell within the domain of the Berber Almoravid, Almohad, and Marinid dynasties. Since the 17th century the region has acknowledged the rule of the Alaouite Dynasty, the current Moroccan royal family. However, effective control of the region was limited; until the 20th century much of the Central Atlas was in a condition of siba, recognising the spiritual legitimacy of royal authority but rejecting its political claims. The expansion of the Ait Atta starting from the 16th century brought Tamazight back into the already Arabised Tafilalt region and put other regional tribes on the defensive, leading to the formation of the Ait Yafelman alliance.\nThe 1912 Treaty of Fez made most of Morocco a French-Spanish protectorate (under French and Spanish military occupation), leaving the Alaouite monarchy but establishing a French military presence in the Atlas region and installing a French commissioner-general. However, the Berber tribes of the Middle Atlas, as in other areas, put up stiff military resistance to French rule, lasting until 1933 in the case of the Ait Atta.\nAfter Morocco's independence in 1956, a strong emphasis was laid on the country's Arab identity, and a national Arabic language educational system was instituted, in which Berber languages, including Middle Atlas Tamazight, had no place. However, in 1994 the government responded to Berber demands for recognition by decreeing that Berber should be taught and establishing television broadcasts in three Berber languages, including Central Atlas Tamazight. For the promotion of Tamazight and other Berber languages and cultures, the government created the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture (IRCAM) in 2001.\n\nGeographic distribution\nCentral Atlas Tamazight is mostly spoken in the entire Middle Atlas and its outcroppings, reaching east to Taza and west to the region near Rabat. It is also spoken in the central and eastern High Atlas mountains in Morocco. It is thus spoken across areas with widely varying ecological conditions — from the mountainous and forested regions of the Middle Atlas mountains to the oases of the northwestern Sahara (Tafilalt). Berber in Morocco is spread into three areas: Riff in the north, Central Atlas in the center, and Shilha in the south/southwest. Central Atlas is mutually intelligible with the dialects Riff and Shilha; but Shilha- and Riff-speakers cannot understand each other, although transitional varieties exist between these dialects, creating a smooth transition.\nFigures for the number of speakers of Berber languages are generally a matter of estimates rather than linguistic censuses. At least a third of Moroccans seem to speak Berber languages,. Tamazight is estimated to be spoken by about 40~49% of Morocco's Berber-speakers, while Shilha commands 32~40% and Riff 20~25%.\n\nStatus\nTamazight, along with other Berber languages of Morocco, has a low sociolinguistic status, used mainly in the home, and rarely in official or formal contexts. Media broadcasts and music are available in it, and there is a policy of teaching it in schools, although it is not always applied.\nOf the Central Atlas Tamazight speakers, 40–45% are monolingual, while the others use Arabic as a second language. Monolingual speakers consist mostly of older generations and children. Women are more likely to be monolingual than men, since they typically stay in the village while the men go to work in the cities. Since Tamazight is the language of the home, girls grow up speaking Berber languages and pass them on to their children — this gender stratification helps to preserve the language. Bilingual Berber speakers have learned Moroccan Arabic via schooling, migration, media, or through the government. Most rural Berber children are monolingual. They struggle to succeed in schools where the teachers do not speak Berber, and require them to learn both Arabic and French.\nRural Morocco, including the Central Atlas area, suffers from poverty. Tamazight along with its relative Shilha are undergoing \"contraction\" as rural families, motivated by economic necessity, move to cities and stop speaking Tamazight, leading many intellectuals to fear Berber language shift or regression. However, Tamazight speakers are reported to immigrate less than many other Berber groups. Moreover, Tamazight has a large enough body of native speakers not to be considered under risk of endangerment, although Tamazight speakers reportedly have a lower birth rate than the country of Morocco as a whole.\n\nOfficial status\nAs of the Moroccan constitutional referendum, 2011, the Berber languages are official in Morocco alongside Arabic. In 1994, King Hassan II declared that a national Berber dialect would acquire a formal status; television broadcasts are summarized in Tamazight, as well as Shilha and Rif, three times a day; and educational materials for schools are being developed. On October 17, 2001 King Mohammed VI sealed the decree (Dahir 1–01–299) creating and organizing the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture (IRCAM). IRCAM's board is composed of Amazigh experts, artists, and activists, all of whom are appointed by the king. The institute, located in Rabat, has played an important role in the establishment of the Tifinagh script in Morocco. There are multiple political parties and cultural associations in Morocco that advocate for the advancement of Berber, calling for it to be recognized as an official language, used more extensively in the mass media, and taught more in schools.\nA legal issue affecting Tamazight speakers is restrictions on naming - Moroccan law stipulates that first names must have a \"Moroccan character\", and uncommon names, including some Berber ones used in the Central Atlas, are often rejected by the civil registry.\n\nOrthography\nUntil the 20th century Tamazight, like many other Berber languages but in contrast with neighbouring Tashelhiyt, was basically unwritten (although sporadic cases, using Arabic script, are attested.) It was preserved through oral use in rural areas, isolated from urban hubs. Scholars from the Middle Atlas, as elsewhere in North Africa, usually wrote in the more prestigious Arabic language, rather than their vernacular.\nAt present three writing systems exist for Berber languages, including Tamazight: Neo-Tifinagh, the Latin alphabet and the Arabic script. To some extent, the choice of writing system is a political one, with various subgroups expressing preference based on ideology and politics. The orthography used for government services including schooling is Neo-Tifinagh, rendered official by a Dahir of King Mohammed VI based on the recommendation of IRCAM. However, various Latin transcriptions have been used in a number of linguistic works describing Central Atlas Tamazight, notably the dictionary of Taïfi (1991).\n\nPhonology\nConsonants\nCentral Atlas Tamazight has a contrastive set of \"flat\" consonants, manifested in two ways:\n\nFor front segments, pharyngealization: /tˤ dˤ sˤ zˤ lˤ nˤ rˤ/)\nFor back segments, labialization: /xʷ ɣʷ qʷ χʷ ʁʷ/)\nNote that pharyngealization may spread to a syllable or even a whole word. Historically Proto-Berber only had two pharyngealized phonemes (/dˤ, zˤ/), but modern Berber languages have borrowed others from Arabic and developed new ones through sound shifts. In addition, Tamazight has uvular and pharyngeal consonants, as well as a lack of /p/ in its plosive inventory, unusual globally but characteristic of the region.\nAll segments may be geminated except for the pharyngeals /ʕ ħ/. In Ayt Ndhir, which is a dialect of Tamazight with spirantization, the consonants that can be spirantized appear in their stop forms when geminated, and additionally the geminate correspondents of /ʁ, dˤ, ʃ, ʒ, w, j/ are usually /qː, tˤː, t͡ʃː, d͡ʒː, ɣʷː, ɣː/ respectively. However some native Berber words have /ʁː/ (not /qː/) where other dialects have singleton /ʁ/, and similarly for /ʃː, ʒː/. In addition, in Arabic loans singleton non-spirantized [b, t, tˤ, d, k, ɡ, q] occur (though [b t d] and to an extent [tˤ] often alternate with their spirantized versions in loans), giving this alternation marginal phonemic status.\n\nPhonetic notes:\n\n/k ɡ/ are fricatives [x ɣ] in the Ayt Ayache dialect\n/χʷ/ and /ʁʷ/ rare—native speakers can freely substitute /χ ʁ/\nFor a small number of speakers, /b/ is sometimes lenited to [β].\n/t/ is aspirated.\n\nVowels\nTamazight has a typical phonemic three-vowel system:\n\nThese phonemes have numerous allophones, conditioned by the following environments:\n(# denotes word boundary, C̊ denotes C[−flat −/χ/ −/ʁ/], Ç denotes C[+flat], G denotes {Ç, /χ/, /ʁ/})\n\nPhonetic schwa\nThere is a predictable non-phonemic vowel inserted into consonant clusters, realized as [ɪ̈] before front consonants (e.g. /b t d .../) and [ə] before back consonants (e.g. /k χ .../). It is voiced before voiced consonants and voiceless before voiceless consonants, or alternatively it can be realized as a voiced or unvoiced consonant release. It also may be realized as the syllabicity of a nasal, lateral, or /r/.\nThe occurrence of schwa epenthesis is governed morphophonemically. These are some of the rules governing the occurrence of [ə]:\n(# denotes word boundary, R denotes /l r m n/, H denotes /h ħ ʕ w j/, ℞ denotes R or H, and B denotes not R or H.)\n\nExamples:\n\n/tbrˤːmnt/ > [tbərːəmənt] ('you (fp) turned')\n/datːħadˤar/ > [datːəħadˤar] ('she is present')\n/ʕadˤːrˤ/ > [ʕadˤːərˤ] ('to meet')\nHowever note that word-initial initial /j, w/ are realized as /i, u/ before consonants. In word-medial or -final position [əj], [əʝ], and [əw] are realized as [ij], [ij], and [uw] respectively, and may become [i] and [u] in rapid speech.\nTamazight in fact has numerous words without phonemic vowels, and those consisting entirely of voiceless consonants will not phonetically contain voiced vowels.\n[ə] is written as ⟨ⴻ⟩ in neo-Tifinagh and as ⟨e⟩ in the Berber Latin alphabet. French publications tended to include [ə] in their transcriptions of Berber forms despite their predictability, perhaps due to the French vowel system. This can cause problems because alternations such as /iʁ(ə)rs/ 'he slaughtered' – /uriʁris/ 'he did not slaughter' would then have to be morphologically conditioned.\n\nStress\nWord stress is non-contrastive and predictable, and falls on the last vowel in a word (including schwa).\nExamples:\n\n/sal/ > [ˈsal] ('to ask')\n/dajtːħadˤarˤ/ > [dajtːəħaˈdˤarˤ] ('he is present')\n/fsːr/ > [fəsːˈər] ('to explain')\n/tfsːrnt/ > [təfəsːəˈrənt] ('you (fp) explained')\n\nGrammar\nCentral Atlas Tamazight grammar has many features typical of Afro-Asiatic languages, including extensive apophony in both the derivational and inflectional morphology, gender, possessive suffixes, VSO typology, the causative morpheme /s/, and the use of the status constructus.\n\nMorphology\nTamazight nouns are inflected for gender, number, and state. Singular masculine nouns usually have the prefix /a-/, and singular feminines the circumfix /t...t. Plurals may either involve a regular change (\"sound plurals\"), internal vowel change (\"broken plurals\"), or a combination of the two. Masculine plurals usually take the prefix /i-/, feminines /ti-/, and sound plurals also take the suffix /-n/ in the masculine and /-in/} in the feminine, but many other plural patterns are found.\nExamples:\n\n/axam/ → /ixamn/ 'big tent(s)' (m)\n/amaziɣ/ → /imaziɣn/ 'Berber(s)' (m)\n/adaʃu/ → /iduʃa/ 'sandal(s)' (m)\n/asrdun/ → /isrdan/ 'mule(s)' (m)\n/taxamt/ → /tixamin/ 'tent(s)' (f)\n/tafunast/ → /tifunasin/ 'cow(s)' (f)\n/taɡrtilt/ → /tiɡrtal/ 'mat(s)' (f)\n/tamazirt/ → /timizar/ 'property(ies)' (f)\nNouns may be put into the construct state (contrasting with free state) to indicate possession or when the subject of a verb follows the verb. This is also used for nouns after numerals and some prepositions, as well as the conjunction /d-/ ('and'). The construct state is formed as follows: in masculines, initial /a/ becomes /u, wː, wa/, initial /i/ becomes /i, j, ji/, and initial /u/ becomes /wu/. In feminines, initial /ta/ usually becomes /t/, initial /ti/ usually becomes /t/, and initial /tu/ remains unchanged.\nExamples (in Ayt Ayache):\n\n/babuxam/ ( ← /axam/) 'head of the house'\n/ijːs ntslit/ ( ← /tislit/) 'the horse of the bride'\nCentral Atlas Tamazight's personal pronouns distinguish three persons and two genders. Pronouns appear in three forms: an independent form used in the subject position, a possessive suffix (and a derived independent possessive pronoun), and an object form affixed to the controlling verb.\nDemonstrative pronouns distinguish between proximate and remote. When they occur independently, they inflect for number. They may also be suffixed to nouns: /tabardaja/ 'this pack-saddle'.\n\nCentral Atlas Tamazight verbs are heavily inflected and are marked for tense, aspect, mode, voice, person, and polarity. Tamazight verbs have at their core a stem, modified by prefixes, suffixes, moveable affixes, circumfixes, and ablaut. The prefixes indicate voice, tense, aspect, and polarity, while the suffixes indicate mood (normal, horatory, or imperative). Subject markers are circumfixed to the verb, and object marking and satellite framing are accomplished via either prefixing or suffixing depending on environment Some verb forms are accompanied by ablaut, and sometimes metathesis.\nPronominal complement markers cliticize to the verb, with the indirect object preceding the direct object:/iznz-as-t/ \"he sold it to him\".\nAttributive adjectives occur after the noun they modify and are inflected for number and gender. Adjectives may also occur alone in which case they become an NP. Practically all adjectives also have a verbal form used for predicative purposes, which behaves just like a normal verb.\n\n/argaz amʕdur/ 'the foolish man' (lit. 'man foolish')\n/tamtˤut tamʕdur/ 'the foolish woman'\n/irgzen imʕdar/ 'the foolish men'\n/tajtʃin timʕdar/ 'the foolish women'\n/i-mmuʕdr urgaz/ 'the man is foolish' (lit. '3ps–foolish man')\n/argaz i-mmuʕdr-n/ 'the foolish man' [using a non-finite verb]\nPrepositions include /xf/ ('on'), /qbl/ ('before'), /ɣr/ ('to'), and the proclitics /n/ ('of') and /d/ ('with, and'). They may take pronominal suffixes. Some prepositions require the following noun to be in the construct state, but others do not.\n\nSyntax\nWord order is usually VSO (with the subject in construct state) but is sometimes SVO (with the subject in free state), e.g. (/ifːɣ umaziɣ/ vs. /amaziɣ ifːɣ/ 'the Berber went out'). Tamazight also exhibits pro-drop behavior.\n\nTamazight may use a null copula, but the word /ɡ/ 'to be, to do' may function as a copula in Ayt Ayache, especially in structures preceded by /aj/ 'who, which, what'.\nwh- questions are always clefts, and multiple wh-questions do not occur. Consequently, Tamazight's clefting, relativisation, and wh-interrogation contribute to anti-agreement effects, similar to Shilha, and causes deletion of the verbal person marker in certain situations.\n\nVocabulary\nAs a result of relatively intense language contact, Central Atlas Tamazight has a large stratum of Arabic loans. Many borrowed words in Berber also have native synonyms (/lbab/ or /tiflut/ 'door'), with the latter being used more in rural areas. The contact was unequal, as Moroccan Arabic has not borrowed as much from Berber languages, but Berber has contributed to the very reduced vowel systems of Moroccan and Algerian Arabic.\nArabic loans span a wide range of lexical clasees. Many nouns begin with /l-/, from the Arabic definite prefix, and some Arabic feminines may acquire the native Berber feminine ending /-t/, e.g. /lʕafit/ for /lʕafia/ 'fire'. Many Arabic loans have been integrated into the Tamazight verb lexicon. They adhere fully to inflectional patterns of native stems, and may even undergo ablaut. Even function words are borrowed: /blli/ or /billa/ 'that', /waxxa/ 'although', /ɣir/ 'just', etc.\nThe first few (1–3 in Ayt Ayache and Ayt Ndhir) cardinal numerals have native Berber and borrowed Arabic forms. All higher cardinals are borrowed from Arabic, consistent with the linguistic universals that the numbers 1–3 are much more likely to be retained, and that a borrowed number generally implies that numbers greater than it are also borrowed. The retention of one is also motivated by the fact that Berber languages nearly universally use unity as a determiner.\nCentral Atlas Tamazight uses a bipartite negative construction (e.g. /uriffiɣ ʃa/ 'he did not go out'), which was apparently modelled after proximate |Arabic varieties, in a common development known as Jespersen's Cycle. It is present in multiple Berber varieties and is argued to have originated in neighbouring Arabic varietes and to have been adopted by contact.\n\nExamples\nSee also\nLanguages of Morocco\nShilha language\n\nNotes\n(from \"[nb 1]\")\n\nReferences\nBibliography\nExternal links\n\n(in French) INALCO report on Central Atlas Tamazight: maps, extension, dialectology, name\nUCLA Archive for Tamazight\nBerber (Middle Atlas)\nTamazight Dictionary (southern variety)","title":"Central_Atlas_Tamazight"}],"string":"[\n {\n \"idx\": 0,\n \"is_supporting\": true,\n \"paragraph_text\": \"The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic, sometimes Afrasian), also known as Hamito-Semitic or Semito-Hamitic, are a language family (or \\\"phylum\\\") of about 400 languages spoken predominantly in West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Sahara and Sahel. Over 500 million people are native speakers of an Afroasiatic language, constituting the fourth-largest language family after Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, and Niger–Congo. Most linguists divide the family into six branches: Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, Semitic, and Omotic. The vast majority of Afroasiatic languages are considered indigenous to the African continent, including all those not belonging to the Semitic branch.\\nArabic, if counted as a single language, is by far the most widely spoken within the family, with around 300 million native speakers concentrated primarily in the Middle East and North Africa. Other major Afroasiatic languages include the Cushitic Oromo language with 45 million native speakers, Chadic Hausa language with over 34 million, the Semitic Amharic language with 25 million, and the Cushitic Somali language with 15 million. Other Afroasiatic languages with millions of native speakers include the Semitic Tigrinya and Modern Hebrew, the Cushitic Sidaama, and the Omotic Wolaitta language, though most languages within the family are much smaller in size. There are many well-attested Afroasiatic languages from antiquity that have since died or gone extinct, including Egyptian and the Semitic languages Akkadian, Biblical Hebrew, Phoenician, Amorite, and Ugaritic. There is no consensus among historical linguists as to precisely where or when the common ancestor of all Afroasiatic languages, known as Proto-Afroasiatic, was originally spoken. However, most agree that the Afroasiatic homeland was located somewhere in northeastern Africa, with specific proposals including the Horn of Africa, Egypt, and the eastern Sahara. A significant minority of scholars argues for an origin in the Levant. The reconstructed timelines of when Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken vary extensively, with dates ranging from 18,000 BC to 8,000 BC. Even the latest plausible dating makes Afroasiatic the oldest language family accepted by contemporary linguists.\\nComparative study of Afroasiatic is hindered by the massive disparities in textual attestation between its branches: while the Semitic and Egyptian branches are attested in writing as early as the fourth millennium BC, Berber, Cushitic, and Omotic languages were often not recorded until the 19th or 20th centuries. While systematic sound laws have not yet been established to explain the relationships between the various branches of Afroasiatic, the languages share a number of common features. One of the most important for establishing membership in the branch is a common set of pronouns. Other widely shared features include a prefix m- which creates nouns from verbs, evidence for alternations between the vowel \\\"a\\\" and a high vowel in the forms of the verb, similar methods of marking gender and plurality, and some details of phonology such as the presence of pharyngeal fricatives. Other features found in multiple branches include a specialized verb conjugation using suffixes (Egyptian, Semitic, Berber), a specialized verb conjugation using prefixes (Semitic, Berber, Cushitic), verbal prefixes deriving middle (t-), causative (s-), and passive (m-) verb forms (Semitic, Berber, Egyptian, Cushitic), and a suffix used to derive adjectives (Egyptian, Semitic).\\n\\nName\\nIn current scholarship, the most common names for the family are Afroasiatic (or Afro-Asiatic), Hamito-Semitic, and Semito-Hamitic. Other proposed names that have yet to find widespread acceptance include Erythraic/Erythraean, Lisramic, Noahitic, and Lamekhite.\\nFriedrich Müller introduced the name Hamito-Semitic to describe the family in his Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft (1876). The variant Semito-Hamitic is mostly used in older Russian sources. The elements of the name were derived from the names of two sons of Noah as attested in the Book of Genesis's Table of Nations passage: \\\"Semitic\\\" from the first-born Shem, and \\\"Hamitic\\\" from the second-born Ham (Genesis 5:32). Within the Table of Nations, each of Noah's sons is presented as the common progenitor of various people groups deemed to be closely related: among others Shem was the father of the Jews, Assyrians, and Arameans, while Ham was the father of the Egyptians and Cushites. This genealogy does not reflect the actual origins of these peoples' languages: for example, the Canaanites are descendants of Ham according to the Table, even though Hebrew is now classified as a Canaanite language, while the Elamites are ascribed to Shem despite their language being totally unrelated to Hebrew. The term Semitic for the Semitic languages had already been coined in 1781 by August Ludwig von Schlözer, following an earlier suggestion by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in 1710. Hamitic was first used by Ernest Renan in 1855 to refer to languages that appeared similar to the Semitic languages, but were not themselves provably a part of the family. The belief in a connection between Africans and the Biblical Ham, which had existed at least as far back as Isidore of Seville in the 6th century AD, led scholars in the early 19th century to speak vaguely of \\\"Hamian\\\" or \\\"Hamitish\\\" languages.\\nThe term Hamito-Semitic has largely fallen out of favor among linguists writing in English, but is still frequently used in the scholarship of various other languages, such as German. Several issues with the label Hamito-Semitic have led many scholars to abandon the term and criticize its continued use. One common objection is that the Hamitic component inaccurately suggests that a monophyletic \\\"Hamitic\\\" branch exists alongside Semitic. In addition, Joseph Greenberg has argued that Hamitic possesses racial connotations, and that \\\"Hamito-Semitic\\\" overstates the centrality of the Semitic languages within the family. By contrast, Victor Porkhomovsky suggests that the label is simply an inherited convention, and doesn't imply a duality of Semitic and \\\"Hamitic\\\" any more than Indo-European implies a duality of Indic and \\\"European\\\". Because of its use by several important scholars and in the titles of significant works of scholarship, the total replacement of Hamito-Semitic is difficult.\\nWhile Greenberg ultimately popularized the name \\\"Afroasiatic\\\" in 1960, it appears to have been coined originally by Maurice Delafosse, as French afroasiatique, in 1914. The name refers to the fact that it is the only major language family with large populations in both Africa and Asia. Due to concerns that \\\"Afroasiatic\\\" could imply the inclusion of all languages spoken across Africa and Asia, the name \\\"Afrasian\\\" (Russian: afrazijskije) was proposed by Igor Diakonoff in 1980. At present it predominantly sees use among Russian scholars.\\nThe names Lisramic—based on the Afroasiastic root *lis- (\\\"tongue\\\") and the Egyptian word rmṯ (\\\"person\\\")—and Erythraean—referring to the core area around which the languages are spoken, the Red Sea—have also been proposed.\\n\\nDistribution and branches\\nScholars generally consider Afroasiatic to have between five and eight branches. The five that are universally agreed upon are Berber (also called \\\"Libyco-Berber\\\"), Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, and Semitic. Most specialists consider the Omotic languages to constitute a sixth branch. Due to the presumed distance of relationship between the various branches, many scholars prefer to refer to Afroasiatic as a \\\"linguistic phylum\\\" rather than a \\\"language family\\\".\\nM. Victoria Almansa-Villatoro and Silvia Štubňová Nigrelli write that there are about 400 languages in Afroasiatic; Ethnologue lists 375 languages. Many scholars estimate fewer languages; exact numbers vary depending on the definitions of \\\"language\\\" and \\\"dialect\\\".\\n\\nBerber\\nThe Berber (or Libyco-Berber) languages are spoken today by perhaps 16 million people. They are often considered to constitute a single language with multiple dialects. Other scholars, however, argue that they are a group of around twelve languages, about as different from each other as the Romance or Germanic languages. In the past, Berber languages were spoken throughout North Africa except in Egypt; since the 7th century CE, however, they have been heavily affected by Arabic and have been replaced by it in many places.\\nThere are two extinct languages potentially related to modern Berber. The first is the Numidian language, represented by over a thousand short inscriptions in the Libyco-Berber alphabet, found throughout North Africa and dating from the 2nd century BCE onward. The second is the Guanche language, which was formerly spoken on the Canary Islands and went extinct in the 17th century CE. The first longer written examples of modern Berber varieties only date from the 16th or 17th centuries CE.\\n\\nChadic\\nChadic languages number between 150 and 190, making Chadic the largest family in Afroasiatic by number of extant languages. The Chadic languages are typically divided into three major branches, East Chadic, Central Chadic, and West Chadic. Most Chadic languages are located in the Chad Basin, with the exception of Hausa. Hausa is the largest Chadic language by native speakers, and is spoken by a large number of people as a lingua franca in Northern Nigeria. It may have as many as 80 to 100 million first and second language speakers. Eight other Chadic languages have around 100,000 speakers; other Chadic languages often have few speakers and may be in danger of going extinct. Only about 40 Chadic languages have been fully described by linguists.\\n\\nCushitic\\nThere are about 30 Cushitic languages, more if Omotic is included, spoken around the Horn of Africa and in Sudan and Tanzania. The Cushitic family is traditionally split into four branches: the single language of Beja (c. 3 million speakers), the Agaw languages, Eastern Cushitic, and Southern Cushitic. Only one Cushitic language, Oromo, has more than 25 million speakers; other languages with more than a million speakers include Somali, Afar, Hadiyya, and Sidaama. Many Cushitic languages have relatively few speakers. Cushitic does not appear to be related to the written ancient languages known from its area, Meroitic or Old Nubian. The oldest text in a Cushitic language probably dates from around 1770; written orthographies were only developed for a select number of Cushitic languages in the early 20th century.\\n\\nEgyptian\\nThe Egyptian branch consists of a single language, Egyptian (often called \\\"Ancient Egyptian\\\"), which was historically spoken in the lower Nile Valley. Egyptian is first attested in writing around 3000 BCE and finally went extinct around 1300 CE, making it the language with the longest written history in the world. Egyptian is usually divided into two major periods, Earlier Egyptian (c. 3000–1300 BCE), which is further subdivided into Old Egyptian and Middle Egyptian, and Later Egyptian (1300 BCE-1300 CE), which is further subdivided into Late Egyptian, Demotic, and Coptic. Coptic is the only stage written alphabetically to show vowels, whereas Egyptian was previously written in Egyptian hieroglyphs, which only represent consonants. In the Coptic period, there is evidence for six major dialects, which presumably existed previously but are obscured by pre-Coptic writing; additionally, Middle Egyptian appears to be based on a different dialect than Old Egyptian, which in turn shows dialectal similarities to Late Egyptian. Egyptian was replaced by Arabic as the spoken language of Egypt, but Coptic continues to be the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church.\\n\\nOmotic\\nThe c. 30 Omotic languages are still mostly undescribed by linguists. They are all spoken in southwest Ethiopia except for the Ganza language, spoken in Sudan. Omotic is typically split into North Omotic (or Aroid) and South Omotic, with the latter more influenced by the Nilotic languages; it is unclear whether the Dizoid group of Omotic languages belongs to the Northern or Southern group. The two Omotic languages with the most speakers are Wolaitta and Gamo-Gofa-Dawro, with about 1.2 million speakers each.\\nA majority of specialists consider Omotic to constitute a sixth branch of Afroasiatic. Omotic was formerly considered part of the Cushitic branch; some scholars continue to consider it part of Cushitic. Other scholars have questioned whether it is Afroasiatic at all, due its lack of several typical aspects of Afroasiatic morphology.\\n\\nSemitic\\nThere are between 40 and 80 languages in the Semitic family. Today, Semitic languages are spoken across North Africa, West Asia, and the Horn of Africa, as well as on the island of Malta, making them the sole Afroasiatic branch with members originating outside Africa. Arabic, spoken in both Asia and Africa, is by far the most widely spoken Afroasiatic language today, with around 300 million native speakers, while the Ethiopian Amharic language has around 25 million; collectively, Semitic is the largest branch of Afroasiatic by number of current speakers. \\nMost authorities divide Semitic into two branches: East Semitic, which includes the extinct Akkadian language, and West Semitic, which includes Arabic, Aramaic, the Canaanite languages (including Hebrew), as well as the Ethiopian Semitic languages such as Ge'ez and Amharic. The classification within West Semitic remains contested. The only group with an African origin is Ethiopian Semitic. The oldest written attestations of Semitic languages come from Mesopotamia, Northern Syria, and Egypt and date as early as c. 3000 BCE.\\n\\nOther proposed branches\\nThere are also other proposed branches, but none has so far convinced a majority of scholars:\\n\\nLinguist H. Fleming proposed that the near-extinct Ongota language is a separate branch of Afroasiatic; however, this is only one of several competing theories. About half of current scholarly hypotheses on Ongota's origins align it with Afroasiatic in some way.\\nRobert Hetzron proposed that Beja is not part of Cushitic, but a separate branch. The prevailing opinion, however, is that Beja is a branch of Cushitic.\\nThe extinct Meroitic language has been proposed to represent a branch of Afroasiatic. Although an Afroasiatic connection is sometimes viewed as refuted, it continues to be defended by scholars such as Edward Lipiński.\\nThe Kujarge language is usually considered part of the Chadic languages; however, Roger Blench has proposed that it may be a separate branch of Afroasiatic.\\n\\nFurther subdivisions\\nThere is no agreement on the relationships between and subgrouping of the different Afroasiatic branches. Whereas Marcel Cohen (1947) claimed he saw no evidence for internal subgroupings, numerous other scholars have made proposals, with Carsten Peust counting 27 as of 2012.\\nCommon trends in proposals as of 2019 include using common or lacking grammatical features to argue that Omotic was the first language to branch off, often followed by Chadic. In contrast to scholars who argue for an early split of Chadic from Afroasiatic, scholars of the Russian school tend to argue that Chadic and Egyptian are closely related, and scholars who rely on percentage of shared lexicon often group Chadic with Berber. Three scholars who agree on an early split between Omotic and the other subbranches, but little else, are Harold Fleming (1983), Christopher Ehret (1995), and Lionel Bender (1997). In contrast, scholars relying on shared lexicon often produce a Cushitic-Omotic group. Additionally, the minority of scholars who favor an Asian origin of Afroasiatic tend to place Semitic as the first branch to split off. Disagreement on which features are innovative and which are inherited from Proto-Afroasiatic produces radically different trees, as can be seen by comparing the trees produced by Ehret and Igor Diakonoff.\\nResponding to the above, Tom Güldemann criticizes attempts at finding subgroupings based on common or lacking morphology by arguing that the presence or absence of morphological features is not a useful way of discerning subgroupings in Afroasiatic, because it can not be excluded that families currently lacking certain features did not have them in the past; this also means that the presence of morphological features cannot be taken as defining a subgroup. Peust notes that other factors that can obscure genetic relationships between languages include the poor state of present documentation and understanding of particular language families (historically with Egyptian, presently with Omotic). Gene Gragg likewise argues that more needs to be known about Omotic still, and that Afroasiatic linguists have still not found convincing isoglosses on which to base genetic distinctions.\\nOne way of avoiding the problem of determining which features are original and which are inherited is to use a computational methodology such as lexicostatistics, with one of the earliest attempts being Fleming 1983. This is also the method used by Alexander Militarev and Sergei Starostin to create a family tree. Fleming (2006) was a more recent attempt by Fleming, with a different result from Militarev and Starostin. Hezekiah Bacovcin and David Wilson argue that this methodology is invalid for discerning linguistic sub-relationship. They note the method's inability to detect various strong commonalities even between well-studied branches of AA.\\n\\nClassification history\\nA relationship between Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic and the Berber languages was perceived as early as the 9th century CE by the Hebrew grammarian and physician Judah ibn Quraysh, who is regarded as a forerunner of Afroasiatic studies. The French orientalist Guillaume Postel had also pointed out similarities between Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic in 1538, and Hiob Ludolf noted similarities also to Ge'ez and Amharic in 1701. This family was formally described and named \\\"Semitic\\\" by August Ludwig von Schlözer in 1781. In 1844, Theodor Benfey first described the relationship between Semitic and the Egyptian language and connected both to the Berber and the Cushitic languages (which he called \\\"Ethiopic\\\"). In the same year T.N. Newman suggested a relationship between Semitic and the Hausa language, an idea that was taken up by early scholars of Afroasiatic. In 1855, Ernst Renan named these languages, related to Semitic but not Semitic, \\\"Hamitic,\\\" in 1860 Carl Lottner proposed that they belonged to a single language family, and in 1876 Friedrich Müller first described them as a \\\"Hamito-Semitic\\\" language family. Müller assumed that there existed a distinct \\\"Hamitic\\\" branch of the family that consisted of Egyptian, Berber, and Cushitic. He did not include the Chadic languages, though contemporary Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius argued for the relation of Hausa to the Berber languages. Some scholars would continue to regard Hausa as related to the other Afroasiatic languages, but the idea was controversial: many scholars refused to admit that the largely unwritten, \\\"Negroid\\\" Chadic languages were in the same family as the \\\"Caucasian\\\" ancient civilizations of the Egyptians and Semites.\\n\\nAn important development in the history of Afroasiatic scholarship – and the history of African linguistics – was the creation of the \\\"Hamitic theory\\\" or \\\"Hamitic hypothesis\\\" by Lepsius, fellow Egyptologist Christian Bunsen, and linguist Christian Bleek. This theory connected the \\\"Hamites\\\", the originators of Hamitic languages, with (supposedly culturally superior) \\\"Caucasians\\\", who were assumed to have migrated into Africa and intermixed with indigenous \\\"Negroid\\\" Africans in ancient times. The \\\"Hamitic theory\\\" would serve as the basis for Carl Meinhof's highly influential classification of African languages in his 1912 book Die Sprache der Hamiten. On one hand, the \\\"Hamitic\\\" classification was justified partially based on linguistic features: for example, Meinhof split the presently-understood Chadic family into \\\"Hamito-Chadic\\\", and an unrelated non-Hamitic \\\"Chadic\\\" based on which languages possessed grammatical gender. On the other hand, the classification also relied on non-linguistic anthropological and culturally contingent features, such as skin color, hair type, and lifestyle. Ultimately, Meinhof's classification of Hamitic proved to include languages from every presently-recognized language family within Africa.\\nThe first scholar to question the existence of \\\"Hamitic languages\\\" was Marcel Cohen in 1924, with skepticism also expressed by A. Klingenheben and Dietrich Westermann during the 1920s and '30s. However, Meinhof's \\\"Hamitic\\\" classification remained prevalent throughout the early 20th century until it was definitively disproven by Joseph Greenberg in the 1940s, based on racial and anthropological data. Instead, Greenberg proposed an Afroasiatic family consisting of five branches: Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, and Semitic. Reluctance among some scholars to recognize Chadic as a branch of Afroasiatic persisted as late as the 1980s. In 1969, Harold Fleming proposed that a group of languages classified by Greenberg as Cushitic were in fact their own independent \\\"Omotic\\\" branch—a proposal that has been widely, if not universally, accepted. These six branches now constitute an academic consensus on the genetic structure of the family.\\nGreenberg relied on his own method of mass comparison of vocabulary items rather than the comparative method of demonstrating regular sound correspondences to establish the family. An alternative classification, based on the pronominal and conjugation systems, was proposed by A.N. Tucker in 1967. As of 2023, widely accepted sound correspondences between the different branches have not yet been firmly established. Nevertheless, morphological traits attributable to the proto-language and the establishment of cognates throughout the family have confirmed its genetic validity.\\n\\nOrigin\\nTimeline\\nThere is no consensus as to when Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken. The absolute latest date for when Proto-Afroasiatic could have been extant is c. 4000 BCE, after which Egyptian and the Semitic languages are firmly attested. However, in all likelihood these languages began to diverge well before this hard boundary. The estimations offered by scholars as to when Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken vary widely, ranging from 18,000 BCE to 8,000 BCE. An estimate at the youngest end of this range still makes Afroasiatic the oldest proven language family. Contrasting proposals of an early emergence, Tom Güldemann has argued that less time may have been required for the divergence than is usually assumed, as it is possible for a language to rapidly restructure due to areal contact, with the evolution of Chadic (and likely also Omotic) serving as pertinent examples.\\n\\nLocation\\nLikewise, no consensus exists as to where proto-Afroasiatic originated. Scholars have proposed locations for the Afroasiatic homeland across Africa and West Asia. Roger Blench writes that the debate possesses \\\"a strong ideological flavor\\\", with associations between an Asian origin and \\\"high civilization\\\". An additional complicating factor is the lack of agreement on the subgroupings of Afroasiatic (see Further subdivisions) – this makes associating archaeological evidence with the spread of Afroasiatic particularly difficult. Nevertheless, there is a long-accepted link between the speakers of Proto-Southern Cushitic languages and the East African Savanna Pastoral Neolithic (5,000 years ago), and archaeological evidence associates the Proto-Cushitic speakers with economic transformations in the Sahara dating c. 8,500 ago, as well as the speakers of the Proto-Zenati variety of the Berber languages with an expansion across the Maghreb in the 5th century CE.\\nAn origin somewhere on the African continent has broad scholarly support, and is seen as being well-supported by the linguistic data. Most scholars more narrowly place the homeland near the geographic center of its present distribution, \\\"in the southeastern Sahara or adjacent Horn of Africa.\\\" The Afroasiatic languages spoken in Africa are not more closely related to each other than they are to Semitic, as one would expect if only Semitic had remained in a West Asian homeland while all other branches had spread from there. Likewise, all Semitic languages are fairly similar to each other, whereas the African branches of Afroasiatic are very diverse; this suggests the rapid spread of Semitic out of Africa. Proponents of an origin of Afroasiatic within Africa assume the proto-language to have been spoken by pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherers, arguing that there is no evidence of words in Proto-Afroasiatic related to agriculture or animal husbandry. Christopher Ehret, S.O. Y. Keita, and Paul Newman also argue that archaeology does not support a spread of migrating farmers into Africa, but rather a gradual incorporation of animal husbandry into indigenous foraging cultures. Ehret, in a separate publication, argued that the two principles in linguistic approaches for determining the origin of languages which are the principles of fewest moves and greatest diversity had put “beyond reasonable doubt” that the language family “had originated in the Horn of Africa”.\\nA significant minority of scholars supports an Asian origin of Afroasiatic, most of whom are specialists in Semitic or Egyptian studies. The main proponent of an Asian origin is the linguist Alexander Militarev, who argues that Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken by early agriculturalists in the Levant and subsequently spread to Africa. Militarev associates the speakers of Proto-Afroasiatic with the Levantine Post-Natufian Culture, arguing that the reconstructed lexicon of flora and fauna, as well as farming and pastoralist vocabulary indicates that Proto-AA must have been spoken in this area. Scholar Jared Diamond and archaeologist Peter Bellwood have taken up Militarev's arguments as part of their general argument that the spread of linguistic macrofamilies (such as Indo-European, Bantu, and Austro-Asiatic) can be associated with the development of agriculture; they argue that there is clear archaeological support for farming spreading from the Levant into Africa via the Nile valley.\\n\\nPhonological characteristics\\nAfroasiatic languages share a number of phonetic and phonological features.\\n\\nSyllable structure\\nEgyptian, Cushitic, Berber, Omotic, and most languages in the Semitic branch all require a syllable to begin with a consonant (with the exception of some grammatical prefixes). Igor Diakonoff argues that this constraint goes back to Proto-Afroasiatic. Some Chadic languages allow a syllable to begin with a vowel, however in many Chadic languages verbs must begin with a consonant. In Cushitic and Chadic languages, a glottal stop or glottal fricative may be inserted to prevent a word from beginning with a vowel. Typically, syllables only begin with a single consonant. Diakonoff argues that proto-Afroasiatic did not have consonant clusters within a syllable.\\nWith the exception of some Chadic languages, all Afroasiatic languages allow both closed and open syllables; many Chadic languages do not allow a syllable to end in a consonant. Most words end in a vowel in Omotic and Cushitic, making syllable-final consonant clusters rare. \\nSyllable weight plays an important role in AA, especially in Chadic; it can affect the form of affixes attached to a word.\\n\\nConsonant systems\\nSeveral Afroasiatic languages have large consonant inventories, and it is likely that this is inherited from proto-Afroasiatic. All Afroasiatic languages contain stops and fricatives; some branches have additional types of consonants such as affricates and lateral consonants. AA languages tend to have pharyngeal fricative consonants, with Egyptian, Semitic, Berber, and Cushitic sharing ħ and ʕ. In all AA languages, consonants can be bilabial, alveolar, velar, and glottal, with additional places of articulation found in some branches or languages. Additionally, the glottal stop (ʔ) usually exists as a phoneme, and there tends to be no phonemic contrast between [p] and [f] or [b] and [v]. In Cushitic, the Ethiopian Semitic language Tigrinya, and some Chadic languages, there is no underlying phoneme [p] at all.\\nMost, if not all branches of Afroasiatic distinguish between voiceless, voiced, and \\\"emphatic\\\" consonants. The emphatic consonants are typically formed deeper in the throat than the others; they can be realized variously as glottalized, pharyngealized, uvularized, ejective, and/or implosive consonants in the different branches. It is generally agreed that only the obstruents had a contrast between voiceless and voiced forms in Proto-Afroasiatic, whereas continuants were voiceless.\\nA form of long-distance consonant assimilation known as consonant harmony is attested in Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, and Semitic: it usually affects features such as pharyngealization, palatalization, and labialization. Several Omotic languages have \\\"sibilant harmony\\\", meaning that all sibilants (s, sh, z, ts, etc.) in a word must match.\\n\\nConsonant incompatibility\\nRestrictions against the co-occurrence of certain, usually similar, consonants in verbal roots can be found in all Afroasiatic branches, though they are only weakly attested in Chadic and Omotic. The most widespread constraint is against two different labial consonants (other than w) occurring together in a root, a constraint which can be found in all branches but Omotic. Another widespread constraint is against two non-identical lateral obstruents, which can be found in Egyptian, Chadic, Semitic, and probably Cushitic. Such rules do not always apply for nouns, numerals, or denominal verbs, and do not affect prefixes or suffixes added to the root. Roots that may have contained sequences that were possible in Proto-Afroasiatic but are disallowed in the daughter languages are assumed to have undergone consonant dissimilation or assimilation.\\nA set of constraints, developed originally by Joseph Greenberg on the basis of Arabic, has been claimed to be typical for Afroasiatic languages. Greenberg divided Semitic consonants into four types: \\\"back consonants\\\" (glottal, pharyngeal, uvular, laryngeal, and velar consonants), \\\"front consonants\\\" (dental or alveolar consonants), liquid consonants, and labial consonants. He showed that, generally, any consonant from one of these groups could combine with consonants from any other group, but could not be used together with consonants from the same group. Additionally, he showed that Proto-Semitic restricted a sequence of two identical consonants in the first and second position of the triliteral root. These rules also have a number of exceptions:\\n\\nvelar consonants can occur with pharyngeals or laryngeals;\\ndental consonants can co-occur with sibilants; However, there are no Proto-Semitic verbal roots with ḍ and a sibilant, and roots with d and a sibilant are uncommon. In all attested cases of a dental and a sibilant, the sibilant occurs in first position and the dental in second.\\nSimilar exceptions can be demonstrated for the other AA branches that have these restrictions to their root formation. James P. Allen has demonstrated that slightly different rules apply to Egyptian: for instance, Egyptian allows two identical consonants in some roots, and disallows velars from occurring with pharyngeals.\\n\\nVowel systems\\nThere is a large variety of vocalic systems in AA, and attempts to reconstruct the vocalic system of Proto-Afroasiatic vary considerably.\\nAll branches of Afroasiatic have a limited number of underlying vowels (between two and seven), but the number of phonetic vowels can be much larger. The quality of the underlying vowels varies considerably by language; the most common vowel throughout AA is schwa. In the different languages, central vowels are often inserted to break up consonant clusters (a form of epenthesis). Various Semitic, Cushitic, Berber, and Chadic languages, including Arabic, Amharic, Berber, Somali, and East Dangla, also exhibit various types of vowel harmony.\\n\\nTones\\nThe majority of AA languages are tonal languages: phonemic tonality is found in Omotic, Chadic, and Cushitic languages, but absent in Berber and Semitic. There is no information on whether Egyptian had tones. In contemporary Omotic, Chadic, and Cushitic languages, tone is primarily a grammatical feature: it encodes various grammatical functions, only differentiating lexical roots in a few cases. In some Chadic and some Omotic languages every syllable has to have a tone, whereas in most Cushitic languages this is not the case. Some scholars postulate that Proto-Afroasiatic may have had tone, while others believe it arose later from a pitch accent.\\n\\nSimilarities in grammar, syntax, and morphology\\nAt present, there is no generally accepted reconstruction of Proto-Afroasiatic grammar, syntax, or morphology, nor one for any of the sub-branches besides Egyptian. This means that it is difficult to know which features in Afroasiatic languages are retentions, and which are innovations. Moreover, all Afroasiatic languages have long been in contact with other language families and with each other, leading to the possibility of widespread borrowing both within Afroasiatic and from unrelated languages. There are nevertheless a number of commonly observed features in Afroasiatic morphology and derivation, including the use of suffixes, infixes, vowel lengthening and shortening as a morphological change, as well as the use of tone changes to indicate morphology. Further commonalities and differences are explored in more detail below.\\n\\nGeneral features\\nConsonantal root structures\\nA widely attested feature in AA languages is a consonantal structure into which various vocalic \\\"templates\\\" are placed. This structure is particularly visible in the verbs, and is particularly noticeable in Semitic. Besides for Semitic, vocalic templates are well attested for Cushitic and Berber, where, along with Chadic, it is less productive; it is absent in Omotic. For Egyptian, evidence for the root-and-template structure exists from Coptic. In Semitic, Egyptian, Berber, verbs have no inherent vowels at all; the vowels found in a given stem are dependent on the vocalic template. In Chadic, verb stems can include an inherent vowel as well.\\nMost Semitic verbs are triliteral (have three consonants), whereas most Chadic, Omotic, and Cushitic verbs are biliteral (having two consonants). The degree to which the Proto-AA verbal root was triliteral is debated. It may have originally been mostly biconsonantal, to which various affixes (such as verbal extensions) were then added and lexicalized. Although any root could theoretically be used to create a noun or a verb, there is evidence for the existence of distinct noun and verb roots, which behave in different ways.\\n\\nAs part of these templates, the alternation (apophony) between high vowels (e.g. i, u) and a low vowel (a) in verbal forms is usually described as one of the main characteristics of AA languages: this change codes a variety of different functions. It is unclear whether this system is a common AA trait; the Chadic examples, for instance, show signs of originally deriving from affixes, which could explain the origins of the alterations in other languages as well.\\n\\nWord order\\nIt remains unclear what word order Proto-Afroasiatic had. Berber, Egyptian, and most Semitic languages are verb-initial languages, whereas Cushitic, Omotic and some Semitic subgroups are verb-final languages. Proto-Chadic is reconstructed as having verb-initial word order, but most Chadic languages have subject-verb-object word order.\\n\\nReduplication and gemination\\nAfroasiatic Languages use the processes of reduplication and gemination (which often overlap in meaning) to derive nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs throughout the AA language family. Gemination in particular is one of the typical features of AA. Full or partial reduplication of the verb is often used to derive forms showing repeated action (pluractionality), though it is unclear if this is an inherited feature or has been widely borrowed.\\n\\nNouns\\nGrammatical gender and number\\nThe assignment of nouns and pronouns to either masculine or feminine gender is present in all branches – but not all languages – of the Afroasiatic family. This sex-based gender system is widely agreed to derive from Proto-Afroasiatic. In most branches, gender is an inherent property of nouns. Additionally, even when nouns are not cognates, they tend to have the same gender throughout Afroasiatic (\\\"gender stability\\\"). In Egyptian, Semitic, and Berber, a feminine suffix -t is attested to mark feminine nouns; in some Cushitic and Chadic languages, a feminine -t suffix or prefix (lexicalized from a demonstrative) is used to mark definiteness. In addition to these uses, -t also functions as a diminutive, pejorative, and/or singulative marker in some languages.\\n\\nAfroasiatic languages have a variety of ways of marking plurals; in some branches, nouns change gender from singular to plural (gender polarity), while in others, plural forms are ungendered. In addition to marking plurals via a number of affixes (with the suffixes -*uu/-*w and -*n(a) widely attested), several AA languages make use of internal vowel change (apophony) and/or insertion (epenthesis). These so-called \\\"internal-a\\\" or \\\"broken\\\" plurals are securely attested in Semitic, Berber, Cushitic, and Chadic, although it is unclear if the Chadic examples are an independent development. Another common method of forming plurals is reduplication.\\n\\nNoun cases and states\\nNouns cases are found in the Semitic, Berber, Cushitic, and Omotic branches. They are not found in Chadic languages, and there is no evidence for cases in Egyptian. A common pattern in AA languages with case is for the nominative to be marked by -u or -i, and the accusative to be marked by -a. However, the number and types of cases varies across AA and also within the individual branches. Some languages in AA have a marked nominative alignment, a feature which may date back to Proto-Afroasiatic. Zygmont Frajzyngier states that a general characteristic of case marking in AA languages is that it tends to mark roles such as genitive, dative, locative, etc. rather than the subject and object.\\n\\nA second category, which partially overlaps with case, is the AA linguistic category of \\\"state\\\". Linguists use the term \\\"state\\\" to refer to different things in different languages. In Cushitic and Semitic, nouns exist in the \\\"free state\\\" or the \\\"construct state\\\". The construct state is a special, usually reduced form of a noun, which is used when the noun is possessed by another noun (Semitic) or is modified by an adjective or relative clause (Cushitic). Edward Lipiński refers to Semitic nouns as having four states: absolute (free/indeterminate), construct, determinate, and predicate. Coptic and Egyptian grammar also refers to nouns having a \\\"free\\\" (absolute) state, a \\\"construct state\\\", and a \\\"pronominal state\\\". The construct state is used when a noun becomes unstressed as the first element of a compound, whereas the pronominal state is used when the noun has a suffixed possessive pronoun. Berber instead contrasts between the \\\"free state\\\" and the \\\"annexed state\\\", the latter of which is used for a variety of purposes, including for subjects placed after a verb and after certain prepositions.\\n\\nModifiers and agreement\\nThere is no strict distinction between adjectives, nouns, and adverbs in Afroasiatic. All branches of Afroasiatic have a lexical category of adjectives except for Chadic; some Chadic languages do have adjectives, however. In Berber languages, adjectives are rare and are mostly replaced by nouns of quality and stative verbs. In different languages, adjectives (and other modifiers) must either precede or follow the noun. In most AA languages, numerals precede the noun.\\nIn those languages that have adjectives, they can take gender and number markings, which, in some cases, agree with the gender and number of the noun they are modifying. However, in Omotic, adjectives do not agree with nouns: sometimes, they only take gender and number marking when they are used as nouns, in other cases, they take gender and number marking only when they follow the noun (the noun then receives no marking).\\nA widespread pattern of gender and number marking in Afroasiatic, found on demonstratives, articles, adjectives, and relative markers, is a consonant N for masculine, T for feminine, and N for plural. This can be found in Semitic, Egyptian, Beja, Berber, and Chadic. A system K (masculine), T (feminine), and H (plural) can be found in Cushitic, Chadic, with masculine K also appearing in Omotic. The feminine marker T is one of the most consistent aspects across the different branches of AA.\\n\\nVerb forms\\nTenses, aspects, and moods (TAMs)\\nThere is no agreement about which tenses, aspects, or moods (TAMs) Proto-Afroasiatic might have had. Most grammars of AA posit a distinction between perfective and imperfective verbal aspects, which can be found in Cushitic, Berber, Semitic, most Chadic languages, and some Omotic languages. The Egyptian verbal system diverges greatly from that found in the other branches. Additionally, it is common in Afroasiatic languages for the present/imperfective form to be a derived (marked) form of the verb, whereas in most other languages and language families the present tense is the default form of the verb. Another common trait across the family is the use of a suppletive imperative for verbs of motion.\\n\\n\\\"Prefix conjugation\\\"\\nConjugation of verbs using prefixes that mark person, number, and gender can be found\\nin Semitic, Berber, and in Cushitic, where it is only found on a small set of frequent verbs. These prefixes are clearly cognate across the branches, although their use within the verbal systems of the individual languages varies. There is a general pattern in which n- is used for the first person plural, whereas t- is used for all forms of the second person regardless of plurality or gender, as well as feminine singular. Prefixes of ʔ- (glottal stop) for the first person singular and y- for the third person masculine can also be reconstructed. As there is no evidence for the \\\"prefix conjugation\\\" in Omotic, Chadic, or Egyptian, it is unclear whether this was a Proto-Afroasiatic feature that has been lost in those branches or is a shared innovation among Semitic, Berber, and Cushitic.\\n\\n\\\"Suffix conjugation\\\"\\nSome AA branches have what is called a \\\"suffix conjugation\\\", formed by adding pronominal suffixes to indicate person, gender, and number to a verbal adjective. In Akkadian, Egyptian, Berber, and Cushitic this forms a \\\"stative conjugation\\\", used to express the state or result of an action; the same endings as in Akkadian and Egyptian are also present in the West Semitic perfective verb form. In Akkadian and Egyptian, the suffixes appear to be reduced forms of the independent pronouns (see Pronouns); the obvious correspondence between the endings in the two branches has been argued to show that Egyptian and Semitic are closely related. While some scholars posit an AA origin for this form, it is possible that the Berber and Cushitic forms are independent developments, as they show significant differences from the Egyptian and Semitic forms. The Cushitic forms in particular may be derived from morphology found in subordinate clauses.\\n\\nCommon derivational affixes\\nM-prefix noun derivation\\nA prefix in m- is the most widely attested affix in AA that is used to derive nouns, and is one of the features Joseph Greenberg used to diagnose membership in the family. It forms agent nouns, place nouns, and instrument nouns. In some branches, it can also derive abstract nouns and participles. Omotic, meanwhile, shows evidence for a non-productive prefix mV- associated with the feminine gender. Christopher Ehret has argued that this prefix is a later development that was not present in Proto-Afro-Asiatic, but rather derived from a PAA indefinite pronoun *m-. Such an etymology is rejected by A. Zaborski and Gábor Takács, the latter of whom argues for a PAA *ma- that unites all or some of the meanings in the modern languages.\\n\\nVerbal extensions\\nMany AA languages use prefixes or suffixes (verbal extensions) to encode various pieces of information about the verb. Three derivational prefixes can be reconstructed for Proto-Afroasiatic: *s- 'causative', *t- 'middle voice' or 'reflexive', and *n- 'passive'; the prefixes appear with various related meanings in the individual daughter languages and branches. Christopher Ehret has proposed that Proto-Afroasiatic originally had as many as thirty-seven separate verbal extensions, many of which then became fossilized as third consonants. This theory has been criticized by some, such as Andrzej Zaborski and Alan Kaye, as being too many extensions to be realistic, though Zygmont Frajzyngier and Erin Shay note that some Chadic languages have as many as twelve extensions.\\n\\n\\\"Nisba\\\" derivation\\nThe so-called \\\"Nisba\\\" is a suffix used to derive adjectives from nouns and, in Egyptian, also from prepositions. It is found in Egyptian, Semitic, and possibly, in some relic forms, Berber. The suffix has the same basic form in Egyptian and Semitic, taking the form -i(y) in Semitic and being written -j in Egyptian. The Semitic and Cushitic genitive case in -i/-ii may be related to \\\"nisba\\\" adjective derivation.\\n\\nDue to its presence in the oldest attested and best-known AA branches, nisba derivation is often thought of as a \\\"quintessentially Afroasiatic feature\\\". Christopher Ehret argues for its presence in Proto-Afroasiatic and for its attestation in some form in all branches, with a shape -*ay in addition to -*iy in some cases.\\n\\nVocabulary comparison\\nPronouns\\nThe forms of the pronouns are very stable throughout Afroasiatic (excluding Omotic), and they have been used as one of the chief tools for determining whether a language belongs to the family. However, there is no consensus on what the reconstructed set of Afroasiatic pronouns might have looked like. A common characteristic of AA languages is the existence of a special set of \\\"independent\\\" pronouns, which are distinct from subject pronouns. They can occur together with subject pronouns but cannot fulfill an object function. Also common are dependent/affix pronouns (used for direct objects and to mark possession). For most branches, the first person pronouns contain a nasal consonant (n, m), whereas the third person displays a sibilant consonant (s, sh). Other commonalities are masculine and feminine forms used in both the second and third persons, except in Cushitic and Omotic. These pronouns tend to show a masculine \\\"u\\\" and a feminine \\\"i\\\". The Omotic forms of the personal pronouns differ from the others, with only the plural forms in North Omotic appearing potentially to be cognate.\\n\\nNumerals\\nUnlike in the Indo-European or Austronesian language families, numerals in AA languages cannot be traced to a proto-system. The Cushitic and Chadic numeral systems appear to have originally been base 5. The system in Berber, Egyptian, and Semitic, however, has independent words for the numbers 6–9. Thus, it is possible that the numerals in Egyptian, Berber, and Semitic are more closely related, whereas the Cushitic and Chadic numerals are more closely related to each other. Modern Chadic numeral systems are sometimes decimal, having separate names for the numbers 1–10, and sometimes base-5, deriving the numbers 6–9 from the numbers 1–5 in some way. Some families show more than one word for a numeral: Chadic, Semitic, and Berber each have two words for two, and Semitic has four words for one. Andrzej Zaborski further notes that the numbers \\\"one\\\", \\\"two\\\", and \\\"five\\\" are particularly susceptible to replacement by new words, with \\\"five\\\" often based on a word meaning \\\"hand\\\".\\nAnother factor making comparisons of AA numeral systems difficult is the possibility of borrowing. Only some Berber languages maintain the native Berber numeral system, with many using Arabic loans for higher numbers and some from any numeral beyond two. In some Berber languages, the roots for one and two are also borrowed from Arabic. Some South Cushitic numerals are borrowed from Nilotic languages, other Cushitic numerals have been borrowed from Ethiopian Semitic languages.\\n\\nCognates\\nAfroasiatic languages share a vocabulary of Proto-Afroasiatic origin to varying extents. Writing in 2004, John Huehnergard notes the great difficulty in establishing cognate sets across the family. Identifying cognates is difficult because the languages in question are often separated by thousands of years of development and many languages within the family have long been in contact with each other, raising the possibility of loanwords. Work is also hampered because of the poor state of documentation of many languages.\\nThere are two etymological dictionaries of Afroasiatic, one by Christopher Ehret, and one by Vladimir Orel and Olga Stolbova, both from 1995. Both works provide highly divergent reconstructions and have been heavily criticized by other scholars. Andrzej Zaborski refers to Orel and Stolbova's reconstructions as \\\"controversial\\\", and Ehret's as \\\"not acceptable to many scholars\\\". Tom Güldemann argues that much comparative work in Afroasiatic suffers from not attempting first to reconstruct smaller units within the individual branches, but instead comparing words in the individual languages. Nevertheless, both dictionaries agree on some items and some proposed cognates are uncontroversial. Such cognates tend to rely on relatively simple sound correspondences.\\n\\nAbbreviations: PEC='Proto-Eastern Cushtic'.\\n\\nSee also\\nNotes\\nCitations\\nWorks cited\\nExternal links\\nAfro-Asiatic at the Linguist List MultiTree Project: Genealogical trees attributed to Delafosse 1914, Greenberg 1950–1955, Greenberg 1963, Fleming 1976, Hodge 1976, Orel & Stolbova 1995, Diakonoff 1996–1998, Ehret 1995–2000, Hayward 2000, Militarev 2005, Blench 2006, and Fleming 2006\\nAfro-Asiatic and Semitic genealogical trees, presented by Alexander Militarev at his talk \\\"Genealogical classification of Afro-Asiatic languages according to the latest data\\\" at the conference on the 70th anniversary of V.M. Illich-Svitych, Moscow, 2004; short annotations of the talks given there (in Russian)\\nRoot Extension And Root Formation In Semitic And Afrasian, by Alexander Militarev in \\\"Proceedings of the Barcelona Symposium on comparative Semitic\\\", 19-20/11/2004. Aula Orientalis 23/1-2, 2005, pp. 83–129.\\nAkkadian-Egyptian lexical matches, by Alexander Militarev in \\\"Papers on Semitic and Afroasiatic Linguistics in Honor of Gene B. Gragg.\\\" Ed. by Cynthia L. Miller. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 60. Chicago: The Oriental Institute, 2007, p. 139–145.\\nA comparison of Orel-Stolbova's and Ehret's Afro-Asiatic reconstructions\\n\\\"Is Omotic Afro-Asiatic?\\\" by Rolf Theil (2006)\\nAfro-Asiatic webpage of Roger Blench (with family tree).\",\n \"title\": \"Afroasiatic_languages\"\n },\n {\n \"idx\": 1,\n \"is_supporting\": true,\n \"paragraph_text\": \"Central Atlas Tamazight or Atlasic (native name: ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵜ Tamazight [tæmæˈzɪxt, θæmæˈzɪxθ]; Arabic: أمازيغية أطلس الأوسط) is a Berber language of the Afroasiatic language family spoken by 3.1 million speakers.\\nCentral Atlas Tamazight is one of the most-spoken Berber languages, along with Tachelhit, Kabyle, Riffian, Shawiya and Tuareg. In Morocco, it comes second as the most-spoken after Tachelhit. All five languages may be referred to as \\\"Tamazight\\\", but Central Atlas speakers are the only ones who use the term exclusively. As is typical of Afroasiatic languages, Tamazight has a series of \\\"emphatic consonants\\\" (realized as pharyngealized), uvulars, pharyngeals and lacks the phoneme /p/. Tamazight has a phonemic three-vowel system but also has numerous words without vowels.\\nCentral Atlas Tamazight (unlike neighbouring Tashelhit) had no known significant writing tradition until the 20th century. It is now officially written in the Tifinagh script for instruction in Moroccan schools, while descriptive linguistic literature commonly uses the Latin alphabet, and the Arabic alphabet has also been used.\\nThe standard word order is verb–subject–object but sometimes subject–verb–object. Words inflect for gender, number and state, using prefixes, suffixes and circumfixes. Verbs are heavily inflected, being marked for tense, aspect, mode, voice, person of the subject and polarity, sometimes undergoing ablaut. Pervasive borrowing from Arabic extends to all major word classes, including verbs; borrowed verbs, however, are conjugated according to native patterns, including ablaut.\\n\\nClassification\\nCentral Atlas Tamazight is one of the four most-spoken Berber languages, in addition to Kabyle, Tachelhit, and Riffian, and it comes second as the most-spoken Berber language after Tachelhit in Morocco. Differentiating these dialects is complicated by the fact that speakers of other languages may also refer to their language as 'Tamazight'. The differences between all three groups are largely phonological and lexical, rather than syntactic. Tamazight itself has a relatively large degree of internal diversity, including whether spirantization occurs.\\nCentral Atlas Tamazight speakers refer to themselves as Amazigh (pl. Imazighen), an endonymic ethnonym whose etymology is uncertain, but may translate as \\\"free people\\\". The term Tamazight, the feminine form of Amazigh, refers to the language. Both words are also used self-referentially by other Berber groups, although Central Atlas Tamazight speakers use them regularly and exclusively.\\nIn older studies, Central Atlas Tamazight is sometimes referred to as \\\"Braber\\\" / \\\"Beraber\\\", a dialectical Arabic term, or its Tamazight equivalent \\\"Taberbrit\\\". This is related to the Standard Arabic and English term \\\"Berber\\\", used to refer to all Berber dialects/languages, though eschewed by many Berbers because its etymology is pejorative.\\nTamazight belongs to the Berber branch of the Afroasiatic language family; Afroasiatic subsumes a number of languages in North Africa and Southwest Asia including the Semitic languages, the Egyptian language, and the Chadic and Cushitic languages. Along with most other Berber languages, Tamazight has retained a number of widespread Afroasiatic features, including a two-gender system, verb–subject–object (VSO) typology, emphatic consonants (realized in Tamazight as pharyngealized), a templatic morphology, and a causative morpheme /s/ (the latter also found in other macrofamilies, such as the Niger–Congo languages). Within Berber, Central Atlas Tamazight belongs, along with neighbouring Tashelhiyt, to the Atlas branch of the Northern Berber subgroup.\\nTamazight is in the middle of a dialect continuum between Riff to its north-east and Shilha to its south-west. The basic lexicon of Tamazight differs markedly from Shilha, and its verbal system is more similar to Riff or Kabyle. Moreover, Tamazight has a greater amount of internal diversity than Shilha.\\nTamazight's dialects are divided into three distinct subgroups and geographic regions: those spoken in the Middle Atlas mountains; those spoken in the High Atlas mountains; and those spoken in Jbel Saghro and its foothills. Although the characteristic spirantization of /b/ > [β]; /t/ > [θ] or [h]; /d/ > [ð]; /k/ > [ç] or [ʃ]; and /ɡ/ > [ʝ], [ʃ] or [j] is apparent in Berber languages in central and northern Morocco and Algeria, as in many Middle Atlas dialects, it is more rare in High Atlas Tamazight speakers, and is absent in Tamazight speakers from the foothills of Jbel Saghro. Southern dialects (e.g. Ayt Atta) may also be differentiated syntactically: while other dialects predicate with the auxiliary /d/ (e.g. /d argaz/ \\\"it's a man\\\"), Southern dialects use the typically (High Atlas, Souss-Basin rural country, Jbel Atlas Saghro) auxiliary verb /g/ (e.g. /iga argaz/ \\\"it's a man\\\"). The differences between each of the three groups are primarily phonological.\\nGroups speaking Tamazight include: Ait Ayache, Ait Morghi, Ait Alaham, Ait Youb, Marmoucha, Ait Youssi, Beni Mguild, Zayane, Zemmour, Ait Rbaa, Ait Seri, Guerouane, Ait Segougou, Ait Yafelman, Ait Sikhmane, Ayt Ndhir (Beni Mtir).\\nThere is some ambiguity as to the eastern boundary of Central Atlas Tamazight. The dialect of the Ait Seghrouchen and Ait Ouarain tribes are commonly classed as Central Atlas Tamazight, and Ait Seghrouchen is reported to be mutually intelligible with the neighbouring Tamazight dialect of Ait Ayache. Genetically, however, they belong to the Zenati subgroup of Northern Berber, rather than to the Atlas subgroup to which the rest of Central Atlas Tamazight belongs, and are therefore excluded by some sources from Central Atlas Tamazight. The Ethnologue lists another group of Zenati dialects, South Oran Berber (ksours sud-oranais), as a dialect of Central Atlas Tamazight, but these are even less similar, and are treated by Berber specialists as a separate dialect group.\\n\\nHistory\\nThe Berbers have lived in North Africa between western Egypt and the Atlantic Ocean since before recorded history began in the region about 33 centuries ago. By the 5th century BC, the city of Carthage, founded by Phoenicians, had extended its hegemony across much of North Africa; in the wake of the Punic Wars, Rome replaced it as regional hegemon. The Central Atlas region itself remained independent throughout the classical period, but occasional loanwords into Central Atlas Tamazight, such as ayugu, \\\"plough ox\\\", from Latin iugum, \\\"team of oxen\\\" and aẓalim \\\"onion\\\" < Punic bṣal-im, bear witness to their ancestors' contact with these conquerors.\\nArabs conquered the area of modern-day Morocco and Algeria around the 7th century, prompting waves of Arab migration and Berber adoption of Islam. Particularly following the arrival of the Banu Hilal in modern-day Tunisia in the 11th century, more and more of North Africa became Arabic-speaking over the centuries. However, along with other high mountainous regions of North Africa, the Middle Atlas continued to speak Berber.\\n\\nBetween the 12th and 15th centuries, the Central Atlas, along with the rest of Morocco, successively fell within the domain of the Berber Almoravid, Almohad, and Marinid dynasties. Since the 17th century the region has acknowledged the rule of the Alaouite Dynasty, the current Moroccan royal family. However, effective control of the region was limited; until the 20th century much of the Central Atlas was in a condition of siba, recognising the spiritual legitimacy of royal authority but rejecting its political claims. The expansion of the Ait Atta starting from the 16th century brought Tamazight back into the already Arabised Tafilalt region and put other regional tribes on the defensive, leading to the formation of the Ait Yafelman alliance.\\nThe 1912 Treaty of Fez made most of Morocco a French-Spanish protectorate (under French and Spanish military occupation), leaving the Alaouite monarchy but establishing a French military presence in the Atlas region and installing a French commissioner-general. However, the Berber tribes of the Middle Atlas, as in other areas, put up stiff military resistance to French rule, lasting until 1933 in the case of the Ait Atta.\\nAfter Morocco's independence in 1956, a strong emphasis was laid on the country's Arab identity, and a national Arabic language educational system was instituted, in which Berber languages, including Middle Atlas Tamazight, had no place. However, in 1994 the government responded to Berber demands for recognition by decreeing that Berber should be taught and establishing television broadcasts in three Berber languages, including Central Atlas Tamazight. For the promotion of Tamazight and other Berber languages and cultures, the government created the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture (IRCAM) in 2001.\\n\\nGeographic distribution\\nCentral Atlas Tamazight is mostly spoken in the entire Middle Atlas and its outcroppings, reaching east to Taza and west to the region near Rabat. It is also spoken in the central and eastern High Atlas mountains in Morocco. It is thus spoken across areas with widely varying ecological conditions — from the mountainous and forested regions of the Middle Atlas mountains to the oases of the northwestern Sahara (Tafilalt). Berber in Morocco is spread into three areas: Riff in the north, Central Atlas in the center, and Shilha in the south/southwest. Central Atlas is mutually intelligible with the dialects Riff and Shilha; but Shilha- and Riff-speakers cannot understand each other, although transitional varieties exist between these dialects, creating a smooth transition.\\nFigures for the number of speakers of Berber languages are generally a matter of estimates rather than linguistic censuses. At least a third of Moroccans seem to speak Berber languages,. Tamazight is estimated to be spoken by about 40~49% of Morocco's Berber-speakers, while Shilha commands 32~40% and Riff 20~25%.\\n\\nStatus\\nTamazight, along with other Berber languages of Morocco, has a low sociolinguistic status, used mainly in the home, and rarely in official or formal contexts. Media broadcasts and music are available in it, and there is a policy of teaching it in schools, although it is not always applied.\\nOf the Central Atlas Tamazight speakers, 40–45% are monolingual, while the others use Arabic as a second language. Monolingual speakers consist mostly of older generations and children. Women are more likely to be monolingual than men, since they typically stay in the village while the men go to work in the cities. Since Tamazight is the language of the home, girls grow up speaking Berber languages and pass them on to their children — this gender stratification helps to preserve the language. Bilingual Berber speakers have learned Moroccan Arabic via schooling, migration, media, or through the government. Most rural Berber children are monolingual. They struggle to succeed in schools where the teachers do not speak Berber, and require them to learn both Arabic and French.\\nRural Morocco, including the Central Atlas area, suffers from poverty. Tamazight along with its relative Shilha are undergoing \\\"contraction\\\" as rural families, motivated by economic necessity, move to cities and stop speaking Tamazight, leading many intellectuals to fear Berber language shift or regression. However, Tamazight speakers are reported to immigrate less than many other Berber groups. Moreover, Tamazight has a large enough body of native speakers not to be considered under risk of endangerment, although Tamazight speakers reportedly have a lower birth rate than the country of Morocco as a whole.\\n\\nOfficial status\\nAs of the Moroccan constitutional referendum, 2011, the Berber languages are official in Morocco alongside Arabic. In 1994, King Hassan II declared that a national Berber dialect would acquire a formal status; television broadcasts are summarized in Tamazight, as well as Shilha and Rif, three times a day; and educational materials for schools are being developed. On October 17, 2001 King Mohammed VI sealed the decree (Dahir 1–01–299) creating and organizing the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture (IRCAM). IRCAM's board is composed of Amazigh experts, artists, and activists, all of whom are appointed by the king. The institute, located in Rabat, has played an important role in the establishment of the Tifinagh script in Morocco. There are multiple political parties and cultural associations in Morocco that advocate for the advancement of Berber, calling for it to be recognized as an official language, used more extensively in the mass media, and taught more in schools.\\nA legal issue affecting Tamazight speakers is restrictions on naming - Moroccan law stipulates that first names must have a \\\"Moroccan character\\\", and uncommon names, including some Berber ones used in the Central Atlas, are often rejected by the civil registry.\\n\\nOrthography\\nUntil the 20th century Tamazight, like many other Berber languages but in contrast with neighbouring Tashelhiyt, was basically unwritten (although sporadic cases, using Arabic script, are attested.) It was preserved through oral use in rural areas, isolated from urban hubs. Scholars from the Middle Atlas, as elsewhere in North Africa, usually wrote in the more prestigious Arabic language, rather than their vernacular.\\nAt present three writing systems exist for Berber languages, including Tamazight: Neo-Tifinagh, the Latin alphabet and the Arabic script. To some extent, the choice of writing system is a political one, with various subgroups expressing preference based on ideology and politics. The orthography used for government services including schooling is Neo-Tifinagh, rendered official by a Dahir of King Mohammed VI based on the recommendation of IRCAM. However, various Latin transcriptions have been used in a number of linguistic works describing Central Atlas Tamazight, notably the dictionary of Taïfi (1991).\\n\\nPhonology\\nConsonants\\nCentral Atlas Tamazight has a contrastive set of \\\"flat\\\" consonants, manifested in two ways:\\n\\nFor front segments, pharyngealization: /tˤ dˤ sˤ zˤ lˤ nˤ rˤ/)\\nFor back segments, labialization: /xʷ ɣʷ qʷ χʷ ʁʷ/)\\nNote that pharyngealization may spread to a syllable or even a whole word. Historically Proto-Berber only had two pharyngealized phonemes (/dˤ, zˤ/), but modern Berber languages have borrowed others from Arabic and developed new ones through sound shifts. In addition, Tamazight has uvular and pharyngeal consonants, as well as a lack of /p/ in its plosive inventory, unusual globally but characteristic of the region.\\nAll segments may be geminated except for the pharyngeals /ʕ ħ/. In Ayt Ndhir, which is a dialect of Tamazight with spirantization, the consonants that can be spirantized appear in their stop forms when geminated, and additionally the geminate correspondents of /ʁ, dˤ, ʃ, ʒ, w, j/ are usually /qː, tˤː, t͡ʃː, d͡ʒː, ɣʷː, ɣː/ respectively. However some native Berber words have /ʁː/ (not /qː/) where other dialects have singleton /ʁ/, and similarly for /ʃː, ʒː/. In addition, in Arabic loans singleton non-spirantized [b, t, tˤ, d, k, ɡ, q] occur (though [b t d] and to an extent [tˤ] often alternate with their spirantized versions in loans), giving this alternation marginal phonemic status.\\n\\nPhonetic notes:\\n\\n/k ɡ/ are fricatives [x ɣ] in the Ayt Ayache dialect\\n/χʷ/ and /ʁʷ/ rare—native speakers can freely substitute /χ ʁ/\\nFor a small number of speakers, /b/ is sometimes lenited to [β].\\n/t/ is aspirated.\\n\\nVowels\\nTamazight has a typical phonemic three-vowel system:\\n\\nThese phonemes have numerous allophones, conditioned by the following environments:\\n(# denotes word boundary, C̊ denotes C[−flat −/χ/ −/ʁ/], Ç denotes C[+flat], G denotes {Ç, /χ/, /ʁ/})\\n\\nPhonetic schwa\\nThere is a predictable non-phonemic vowel inserted into consonant clusters, realized as [ɪ̈] before front consonants (e.g. /b t d .../) and [ə] before back consonants (e.g. /k χ .../). It is voiced before voiced consonants and voiceless before voiceless consonants, or alternatively it can be realized as a voiced or unvoiced consonant release. It also may be realized as the syllabicity of a nasal, lateral, or /r/.\\nThe occurrence of schwa epenthesis is governed morphophonemically. These are some of the rules governing the occurrence of [ə]:\\n(# denotes word boundary, R denotes /l r m n/, H denotes /h ħ ʕ w j/, ℞ denotes R or H, and B denotes not R or H.)\\n\\nExamples:\\n\\n/tbrˤːmnt/ > [tbərːəmənt] ('you (fp) turned')\\n/datːħadˤar/ > [datːəħadˤar] ('she is present')\\n/ʕadˤːrˤ/ > [ʕadˤːərˤ] ('to meet')\\nHowever note that word-initial initial /j, w/ are realized as /i, u/ before consonants. In word-medial or -final position [əj], [əʝ], and [əw] are realized as [ij], [ij], and [uw] respectively, and may become [i] and [u] in rapid speech.\\nTamazight in fact has numerous words without phonemic vowels, and those consisting entirely of voiceless consonants will not phonetically contain voiced vowels.\\n[ə] is written as ⟨ⴻ⟩ in neo-Tifinagh and as ⟨e⟩ in the Berber Latin alphabet. French publications tended to include [ə] in their transcriptions of Berber forms despite their predictability, perhaps due to the French vowel system. This can cause problems because alternations such as /iʁ(ə)rs/ 'he slaughtered' – /uriʁris/ 'he did not slaughter' would then have to be morphologically conditioned.\\n\\nStress\\nWord stress is non-contrastive and predictable, and falls on the last vowel in a word (including schwa).\\nExamples:\\n\\n/sal/ > [ˈsal] ('to ask')\\n/dajtːħadˤarˤ/ > [dajtːəħaˈdˤarˤ] ('he is present')\\n/fsːr/ > [fəsːˈər] ('to explain')\\n/tfsːrnt/ > [təfəsːəˈrənt] ('you (fp) explained')\\n\\nGrammar\\nCentral Atlas Tamazight grammar has many features typical of Afro-Asiatic languages, including extensive apophony in both the derivational and inflectional morphology, gender, possessive suffixes, VSO typology, the causative morpheme /s/, and the use of the status constructus.\\n\\nMorphology\\nTamazight nouns are inflected for gender, number, and state. Singular masculine nouns usually have the prefix /a-/, and singular feminines the circumfix /t...t. Plurals may either involve a regular change (\\\"sound plurals\\\"), internal vowel change (\\\"broken plurals\\\"), or a combination of the two. Masculine plurals usually take the prefix /i-/, feminines /ti-/, and sound plurals also take the suffix /-n/ in the masculine and /-in/} in the feminine, but many other plural patterns are found.\\nExamples:\\n\\n/axam/ → /ixamn/ 'big tent(s)' (m)\\n/amaziɣ/ → /imaziɣn/ 'Berber(s)' (m)\\n/adaʃu/ → /iduʃa/ 'sandal(s)' (m)\\n/asrdun/ → /isrdan/ 'mule(s)' (m)\\n/taxamt/ → /tixamin/ 'tent(s)' (f)\\n/tafunast/ → /tifunasin/ 'cow(s)' (f)\\n/taɡrtilt/ → /tiɡrtal/ 'mat(s)' (f)\\n/tamazirt/ → /timizar/ 'property(ies)' (f)\\nNouns may be put into the construct state (contrasting with free state) to indicate possession or when the subject of a verb follows the verb. This is also used for nouns after numerals and some prepositions, as well as the conjunction /d-/ ('and'). The construct state is formed as follows: in masculines, initial /a/ becomes /u, wː, wa/, initial /i/ becomes /i, j, ji/, and initial /u/ becomes /wu/. In feminines, initial /ta/ usually becomes /t/, initial /ti/ usually becomes /t/, and initial /tu/ remains unchanged.\\nExamples (in Ayt Ayache):\\n\\n/babuxam/ ( ← /axam/) 'head of the house'\\n/ijːs ntslit/ ( ← /tislit/) 'the horse of the bride'\\nCentral Atlas Tamazight's personal pronouns distinguish three persons and two genders. Pronouns appear in three forms: an independent form used in the subject position, a possessive suffix (and a derived independent possessive pronoun), and an object form affixed to the controlling verb.\\nDemonstrative pronouns distinguish between proximate and remote. When they occur independently, they inflect for number. They may also be suffixed to nouns: /tabardaja/ 'this pack-saddle'.\\n\\nCentral Atlas Tamazight verbs are heavily inflected and are marked for tense, aspect, mode, voice, person, and polarity. Tamazight verbs have at their core a stem, modified by prefixes, suffixes, moveable affixes, circumfixes, and ablaut. The prefixes indicate voice, tense, aspect, and polarity, while the suffixes indicate mood (normal, horatory, or imperative). Subject markers are circumfixed to the verb, and object marking and satellite framing are accomplished via either prefixing or suffixing depending on environment Some verb forms are accompanied by ablaut, and sometimes metathesis.\\nPronominal complement markers cliticize to the verb, with the indirect object preceding the direct object:/iznz-as-t/ \\\"he sold it to him\\\".\\nAttributive adjectives occur after the noun they modify and are inflected for number and gender. Adjectives may also occur alone in which case they become an NP. Practically all adjectives also have a verbal form used for predicative purposes, which behaves just like a normal verb.\\n\\n/argaz amʕdur/ 'the foolish man' (lit. 'man foolish')\\n/tamtˤut tamʕdur/ 'the foolish woman'\\n/irgzen imʕdar/ 'the foolish men'\\n/tajtʃin timʕdar/ 'the foolish women'\\n/i-mmuʕdr urgaz/ 'the man is foolish' (lit. '3ps–foolish man')\\n/argaz i-mmuʕdr-n/ 'the foolish man' [using a non-finite verb]\\nPrepositions include /xf/ ('on'), /qbl/ ('before'), /ɣr/ ('to'), and the proclitics /n/ ('of') and /d/ ('with, and'). They may take pronominal suffixes. Some prepositions require the following noun to be in the construct state, but others do not.\\n\\nSyntax\\nWord order is usually VSO (with the subject in construct state) but is sometimes SVO (with the subject in free state), e.g. (/ifːɣ umaziɣ/ vs. /amaziɣ ifːɣ/ 'the Berber went out'). Tamazight also exhibits pro-drop behavior.\\n\\nTamazight may use a null copula, but the word /ɡ/ 'to be, to do' may function as a copula in Ayt Ayache, especially in structures preceded by /aj/ 'who, which, what'.\\nwh- questions are always clefts, and multiple wh-questions do not occur. Consequently, Tamazight's clefting, relativisation, and wh-interrogation contribute to anti-agreement effects, similar to Shilha, and causes deletion of the verbal person marker in certain situations.\\n\\nVocabulary\\nAs a result of relatively intense language contact, Central Atlas Tamazight has a large stratum of Arabic loans. Many borrowed words in Berber also have native synonyms (/lbab/ or /tiflut/ 'door'), with the latter being used more in rural areas. The contact was unequal, as Moroccan Arabic has not borrowed as much from Berber languages, but Berber has contributed to the very reduced vowel systems of Moroccan and Algerian Arabic.\\nArabic loans span a wide range of lexical clasees. Many nouns begin with /l-/, from the Arabic definite prefix, and some Arabic feminines may acquire the native Berber feminine ending /-t/, e.g. /lʕafit/ for /lʕafia/ 'fire'. Many Arabic loans have been integrated into the Tamazight verb lexicon. They adhere fully to inflectional patterns of native stems, and may even undergo ablaut. Even function words are borrowed: /blli/ or /billa/ 'that', /waxxa/ 'although', /ɣir/ 'just', etc.\\nThe first few (1–3 in Ayt Ayache and Ayt Ndhir) cardinal numerals have native Berber and borrowed Arabic forms. All higher cardinals are borrowed from Arabic, consistent with the linguistic universals that the numbers 1–3 are much more likely to be retained, and that a borrowed number generally implies that numbers greater than it are also borrowed. The retention of one is also motivated by the fact that Berber languages nearly universally use unity as a determiner.\\nCentral Atlas Tamazight uses a bipartite negative construction (e.g. /uriffiɣ ʃa/ 'he did not go out'), which was apparently modelled after proximate |Arabic varieties, in a common development known as Jespersen's Cycle. It is present in multiple Berber varieties and is argued to have originated in neighbouring Arabic varietes and to have been adopted by contact.\\n\\nExamples\\nSee also\\nLanguages of Morocco\\nShilha language\\n\\nNotes\\n(from \\\"[nb 1]\\\")\\n\\nReferences\\nBibliography\\nExternal links\\n\\n(in French) INALCO report on Central Atlas Tamazight: maps, extension, dialectology, name\\nUCLA Archive for Tamazight\\nBerber (Middle Atlas)\\nTamazight Dictionary (southern variety)\",\n \"title\": \"Central_Atlas_Tamazight\"\n }\n]","isConversational":false},"question":{"kind":"string","value":"As of 2024, what percentage of Afroasiatic language speakers speak Central Atlas Tamazight?"},"question_decomposition":{"kind":"list like","value":[],"string":"[]","isConversational":false},"answer":{"kind":"string","value":"0.49%"},"answer_aliases":{"kind":"list like","value":[],"string":"[]","isConversational":false},"answerable":{"kind":"bool","value":true,"string":"true"}}},{"rowIdx":98,"cells":{"id":{"kind":"string","value":"670"},"paragraphs":{"kind":"list like","value":[{"idx":0,"is_supporting":true,"paragraph_text":"HMHS Britannic (originally to be the RMS Britannic) () was the third and final vessel of the White Star Line's Olympic class of steamships and the second White Star ship to bear the name Britannic. She was the youngest sister of the RMS Olympic and the RMS Titanic and was intended to enter service as a transatlantic passenger liner. She was operated as a hospital ship from 1915 until her sinking near the Greek island of Kea, in the Aegean Sea, in November 1916. At the time she was the largest hospital ship in the world.\nBritannic was launched just before the start of the First World War. She was designed to be the safest of the three ships with design changes made during construction due to lessons learned from the sinking of the Titanic. She was laid up at her builders, Harland and Wolff, in Belfast for many months before being requisitioned as a hospital ship. In 1915 and 1916 she served between the United Kingdom and the Dardanelles. \nOn the morning of 21 November 1916 she hit a naval mine of the Imperial German Navy near the Greek island of Kea and sank 55 minutes later, killing 30 people. There were 1,066 people on board; the 1,036 survivors were rescued from the water and lifeboats. Britannic was the largest ship lost in the First World War.\nAfter the First World War, the White Star Line was compensated for the loss of Britannic by the award of SS Bismarck as part of postwar reparations; she entered service as RMS Majestic.\nThe wreck was located and explored by Jacques Cousteau in 1975. The vessel is the largest intact passenger ship on the seabed in the world. It was bought in 1996 and is currently owned by Simon Mills, a maritime historian.\n\nCharacteristics\nThe original dimensions of Britannic were similar to those of her older sisters, but her dimensions were altered whilst still on the building stocks after the loss of Titanic. With a gross tonnage of 48,158, she surpassed her older sisters in terms of internal volume, but this did not make her the largest passenger ship in service at that time; the German SS Vaterland held this title with a significantly higher tonnage.\nThe Olympic-class ships were propelled by a combined system of two triple-expansion steam engines which powered the three-bladed outboard wing propellers whilst a low-pressure steam turbine used steam exhausted from the two reciprocating engines to power the central four-bladed propeller giving a maximum speed of 23 knots.\n\nPost-Titanic design changes\nBritannic had a similar layout to her sister ships. Following the Titanic disaster and the subsequent inquiries, several design changes were made to the remaining Olympic-class liners. With Britannic, these changes made before launch included increasing the ship's beam to 94 feet (29 m) to allow for a double hull along the engine and boiler rooms and raising six out of the 15 watertight bulkheads up to B Deck. Additionally, a larger 18,000 horsepower (13,000 kW) turbine was added instead of the 16,000 horsepower (12,000 kW) units installed on the earlier vessels to make up for the increase in hull width. The central watertight compartments were enhanced, allowing the ship to stay afloat with six compartments flooded.\nExternally the largest visual change was the fitting of large crane-like gantry davits, each powered by an electric motor and capable of launching six lifeboats which were stored on gantries; the ship was designed to have eight sets of gantry davits but only five were installed before Britannic entered war service, with the difference being made up with boats launched by manually operated Welin-type davits as on Titanic and Olympic.\nAdditional lifeboats could be stored within reach of the davits on the deckhouse roof, and the gantry davits could reach lifeboats on the other side of the ship, providing that none of the funnels was obstructing the way. This design enabled all the lifeboats to be launched, even if the ship developed a list that would normally prevent lifeboats from being launched on the side opposite to the list. Several of these davits were placed abreast of funnels, defeating that purpose. The elevators, which previously stopped at A deck, could now reach the boat deck. The ship carried 48 lifeboats, capable of carrying at least 75 people each. Thus, at least 3,600 people could be carried by the lifeboats, which was well above the ship's maximum capacity of 3,309.\n\nHistory\nConception\nIn 1907, J. Bruce Ismay, director general of the White Star Line, and Lord Pirrie, chairman of the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast had decided to build a trio of ocean liners of unmatched size to compete with the Cunard Line's Lusitania and Mauretania not in terms of speed but in terms of luxury and safety. The names of the three vessels were decided at a later date and they showed the intention of the designers regarding their size: Olympic, Titanic and Britannic.\nConstruction of the Olympic and the Titanic began in 1908 and 1909 respectively. Their sizes were so large that it was necessary to build the Arrol Gantry to shelter them, wide enough to span the two new building slips and allow two ships to be built at a time. The three ships were designed to be 270 metres long and to have a gross tonnage of over 45,000. Their designed speed was approximately 22 knots, well below that of the Lusitania and Mauretania, but still allowing for a transatlantic crossing of less than one week.\n\nRumoured name-change\nAlthough the White Star Line and the Harland and Wolff shipyard always denied it, some sources claim that Britannic was to be named Gigantic, but her name was changed so as not to compete with Titanic or create comparisons. One source is a poster of the ship with the name Gigantic at the top. Other sources are November 1911 American newspapers stating the White Star order for Gigantic being placed, as well as other newspapers from around the world both during construction and immediately after the sinking of the Titanic.\nTom McCluskie stated that in his capacity as archive manager and historian at Harland and Wolff, he \"never saw any official reference to the name Gigantic being used or proposed for the third of the Olympic-class vessels\". Some hand-written changes were added to the order book and dated January 1912. These only dealt with the ship's moulded width, not her name.\n\nConstruction\nBritannic's keel was laid on 30 November 1911 at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, on the gantry slip previously occupied by Olympic, 13 months after the launch of that ship, and Arlanza, launched seven days before. The acquisition of the ship was planned to be at the beginning of 1914. Due to improvements introduced as a consequence of the Titanic's disaster, Britannic was not launched until 26 February 1914, which was filmed along with the fitting of a funnel. Several speeches were given in front of the press, and a dinner was organised in honour of the launching. Fitting out began subsequently. The ship entered dry dock in September and her propellers were installed.\nReusing Olympic's space saved the shipyard time and money by not clearing out a third slip similar in size to those used for the two previous vessels. In August 1914, before Britannic could commence transatlantic service between New York and Southampton, the First World War began. Immediately, all shipyards with Admiralty contracts were given priority to use available raw materials. All civil contracts including Britannic were slowed.\nThe naval authorities requisitioned a large number of ships as armed merchant cruisers or for troop transport. The Admiralty paid the companies for the use of their ships but the risk of losing a ship in naval operations was high. The larger ocean liners were not initially taken for naval use, because smaller ships were easier to operate. Olympic returned to Belfast on 3 November 1914, while work on Britannic continued slowly.\n\nRequisition\nThe need for increased tonnage grew critical as naval operations extended to the Eastern Mediterranean. In May 1915, Britannic completed mooring trials of her engines, and was prepared for emergency entrance into service with as little as four weeks' notice. The same month also saw the first major loss of a civilian ocean liner when Cunard's RMS Lusitania was torpedoed near the Irish coast by SM U-20.\nThe following month, the Admiralty decided to use recently requisitioned passenger liners as troop transports in the Gallipoli Campaign (also called the Dardanelles service). The first to sail were Cunard's RMS Mauretania and RMS Aquitania. As the Gallipoli landings proved to be disastrous and the casualties mounted, the need for large hospital ships for treatment and evacuation of wounded became evident. Aquitania was diverted to hospital ship duties in August (her place as a troop transport would be taken by Olympic in September). Then on 13 November 1915, Britannic was requisitioned as a hospital ship from her storage location at Belfast.\nRepainted white with large red crosses and a horizontal green stripe, she was renamed HMHS (His Majesty's Hospital Ship) Britannic and placed under the command of Captain Charles Alfred Bartlett. In the interior, 3,309 beds and several operating rooms were installed. The common areas of the upper decks were transformed into rooms for the wounded. The cabins of B Deck were used to house doctors. The first-class dining room and the first-class reception room on D Deck were transformed into operating rooms. The lower bridge was used to accommodate the lightly wounded. The medical equipment was installed on 12 December 1915.\n\nFirst service\nWhen declared fit for service on 12 December 1915 at Liverpool, Britannic was assigned a medical team consisting of 101 nurses, 336 non-commissioned officers and 52 commissioned officers as well as a crew of 675 people. On 23 December, she left Liverpool to join the port of Mudros on the island of Lemnos on the Aegean Sea to bring back sick and wounded soldiers. She joined with several ships on the same route, including Mauretania, Aquitania, and her sister ship Olympic. The four ships were joined a little later by Statendam. She made a stopover at Naples before continuing to Mudros, in order for her stock of coal to be replenished. After she returned, she spent four weeks as a floating hospital off the Isle of Wight.\nThe third voyage was from 20 March 1916 to 4 April. The Dardanelles was evacuated in January. At the end of her military service on 6 June 1916, Britannic returned to Belfast to undergo the necessary modifications for transforming her into a transatlantic passenger liner. The British government paid the White Star Line £75,000 to compensate for the conversion. The transformation took place for several months before being interrupted by a recall of the ship back into military service.\n\nRecalled\nThe Admiralty recalled Britannic back into service as a hospital ship on 26 August 1916, and the ship returned to the Mediterranean Sea for a fourth voyage on 24 September of that year. On 29 September on her way to Naples, she encountered a violent storm from which she emerged unscathed. She left on 9 October for Southampton. Then, she made a fifth trip, which was marked by a quarantining of the crew when the ship arrived at Mudros (now Moudros) because of food-borne illness.\nLife aboard the ship followed a routine. At six o'clock, the patients were awakened and the premises were cleaned up. Breakfast was served at 6:30 AM, then the captain toured the ship for an inspection. Lunch was served at 12:30 PM and tea at 4:30 PM. Patients were treated between meals and those who wished to go for a walk could do so. At 8:30 PM, the patients went to bed and the captain made another inspection tour. There were medical classes available for training the nurses.\n\nLast voyage\nAfter completing five successful voyages to the Middle Eastern theatre and back to the United Kingdom transporting the sick and wounded, Britannic departed Southampton for Lemnos at 14:23 on 12 November 1916, her sixth voyage to the Mediterranean Sea. The ship passed Gibraltar around midnight on 15 November and arrived at Naples on the morning of 17 November, for her usual coaling and water-refuelling stop, completing the first stage of her mission.\nA storm kept the ship at Naples until Sunday afternoon when Captain Bartlett decided to take advantage of a brief break in the weather and continue. The seas rose once again as Britannic left the port. By the next morning, the storms died and the ship passed the Strait of Messina without problems. Cape Matapan was rounded in the first hours of 21 November. By morning, Britannic was steaming at full speed into the Kea Channel, between Cape Sounion (the southernmost point of Attica, the prefecture that includes Athens) and the island of Kea.\nThere were 1,066 people on board: 673 crew, 315 Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC), 77 nurses, and the captain.\n\nExplosion\nAt 08:12 am European Eastern Time Britannic was rocked by an explosion after hitting a mine. The mines had been planted in the Kea Channel on 21 October 1916 by SM U-73 under the command of Gustav Sieß.\nThe reaction in the dining room was immediate; doctors and nurses left instantly for their posts but not everybody reacted the same way, as further aft, the power of the explosion was less felt, and many thought the ship had hit a smaller boat. Captain Bartlett and Chief Officer Hume were on the bridge at the time and the gravity of the situation was soon evident. The explosion was on the starboard side, between holds two and three. The force of the explosion damaged the watertight bulkhead between hold one and the forepeak. The first four watertight compartments were filling rapidly with water, the boiler-man's tunnel connecting the firemen's quarters in the bow with boiler room six was seriously damaged, and water was flowing into that boiler room.\nBartlett ordered the watertight doors closed, sent a distress signal, and ordered the crew to prepare the lifeboats. An SOS signal was immediately sent out and was received by several other ships in the area, among them HMS Scourge and HMS Heroic, but Britannic heard nothing in reply. Unknown to either Bartlett or the ship's wireless operator, the force of the first explosion had caused the antenna wires slung between the ship's masts to snap. This meant that although the ship could still send out transmissions by radio, she could no longer receive them.\nAlong with the damaged watertight door of the firemen's tunnel, the watertight door between boiler rooms six and five failed to close properly. Water was flowing further aft into boiler room five. Britannic had reached her flooding limit. She could stay afloat (motionless) with her first six watertight compartments flooded. There were five watertight bulkheads rising all the way up to B Deck. Those measures had been taken after the Titanic disaster (Titanic could float with only her first four compartments flooded).\nThe next crucial bulkhead between boiler rooms five and four and its door were undamaged and should have guaranteed the ship's survival. However, there were open portholes along the front lower decks, which tilted underwater within minutes of the explosion. The nurses had opened most of those portholes to ventilate the wards, against standing orders. As the ship's angle of list increased, water reached this level and began entering aft from the bulkhead between boiler rooms five and four. With more than six compartments flooded, Britannic could not stay afloat.\n\nEvacuation\nOn the bridge, Captain Bartlett was already considering efforts to save the ship. Only two minutes after the blast, boiler rooms five and six had to be evacuated. In about ten minutes, Britannic was roughly in the same condition Titanic had been in one hour after the collision with the iceberg. Fifteen minutes after the ship was struck, the open portholes on E Deck were underwater. With water also entering her aft section from the bulkhead between boiler rooms four and five, Britannic quickly developed a serious list to starboard.\nBartlett gave the order to turn starboard towards the island of Kea in an attempt to beach her. The effect of Britannic's starboard list and the weight of the rudder made attempts to navigate the ship under her own power difficult, and the steering gear had been knocked out by the explosion, which eliminated steering by the rudder. The captain ordered the port shaft driven at a higher speed than the starboard side, which helped the ship move towards Kea.\nAt the same time, the hospital staff prepared to evacuate. Bartlett had given the order to prepare the lifeboats, but he did not allow them to be lowered into the water. Everyone took their most valuable belongings with them before they evacuated. The chaplain of the ship recovered his Bible. The few patients and nurses on board were assembled. Major Harold Priestley gathered his detachments from the Royal Army Medical Corps to the back of the A deck and inspected the cabins to ensure no one was left behind.\nWhile Bartlett continued his desperate manoeuvre, Britannic's list steadily increased. Fearing that the list would become too large to launch, some crew decided to launch lifeboats without waiting for the order to do so. Two lifeboats were put onto the water on the port side without permission by Third Officer Francis Laws. These boats were drawn towards the still-turning, partly surfaced propellers. Bartlett ordered the engines to stop but before this could take effect, the two boats were drawn into the propellers, completely destroying both and killing 30 people. Bartlett was able to stop the engines before any more boats were lost.\n\nFinal moments\nBy 08:50, most of those on board had escaped in the 35 successfully launched lifeboats. At this point, Bartlett concluded that the rate at which Britannic was sinking had slowed so he called a halt to the evacuation and ordered the engines restarted in the hope that he might still be able to beach the ship. At 09:00 Bartlett was informed that the rate of flooding had increased due to the ship's forward motion and that the flooding had reached D-deck. Realising that there was now no hope of reaching land in time, Bartlett gave the final order to stop the engines and sounded two final long blasts of the whistle, the signal to abandon ship. As water reached the bridge, he and Assistant Commander Dyke walked off onto the deck and entered the water, swimming to a collapsible boat from which they continued to coordinate the rescue operations.\nBritannic gradually capsized to starboard, and the funnels collapsed one after the other as the ship rapidly sank. By the time the stern was out of the water, the bow had already slammed into the seabed. As Britannic's length was greater than the depth of the water, the impact caused major structural damage to the bow before she slipped completely beneath the waves at 09:07, 55 minutes after the explosion. Violet Jessop (who was one of the survivors of the Titanic, and had also been on board when the Olympic collided with HMS Hawke) described the last seconds:\n\nShe dipped her head a little, then a little lower and still lower. All the deck machinery fell into the sea like a child's toys. Then she took a fearful plunge, her stern rearing hundreds of feet into the air until with a final roar, she disappeared into the depths, the noise of her going resounding through the water with undreamt-of violence....\nWhen the Britannic came to rest, she became the largest ship lost in the First World War and the world's largest sunken passenger ship.\n\nRescue\nCompared to Titanic, the rescue of Britannic was facilitated by three factors: The water temperature was higher (20 °C (68 °F) compared to −2 °C (28 °F) for Titanic), more lifeboats were available (35 were successfully launched and stayed afloat compared to Titanic's 20), and help was closer (it arrived less than two hours after first distress call compared to three and a half hours for Titanic).\nThe first to arrive on the scene were fishermen from Kea on their caïque, who picked many survivors from the water. At 10:00, HMS Scourge sighted the first lifeboats and 10 minutes later stopped and picked up 339 survivors. Armed boarding steamer HMS Heroic had arrived some minutes earlier and picked up 494. Some 150 had made it to Korissia, Kea, where surviving doctors and nurses from Britannic were trying to save the injured, using aprons and pieces of lifebelts to make dressings. A little barren quayside served as their operating room.\nScourge and Heroic had no deck space for more survivors, and they left for Piraeus signalling the presence of those remaining at Korissia. HMS Foxhound arrived at 11:45 and, after sweeping the area, anchored in the small port at 13:00 to offer medical assistance and take on board the remaining survivors. At 14:00 the light cruiser HMS Foresight arrived. Foxhound departed for Piraeus at 14:15 while Foresight remained to arrange the burial on Kea of RAMC Sergeant William Sharpe, who had died of his injuries. Another two survivors died on the Heroic and one on the French tug Goliath. The three were buried with military honours in the Piraeus Naval and Consular Cemetery. The last fatality was G. Honeycott, who died at the Russian Hospital at Piraeus shortly after the funerals.\nIn total, out of the 1,066 people on board, 1,036 people survived the sinking. Thirty people lost their lives in the disaster but only five were buried; others were not recovered and are honoured on memorials in Thessaloniki (the Mikra Memorial) and London. Another 38 were injured (18 crew, 20 RAMC). Survivors were accommodated in the warships that were anchored at the port of Piraeus while nurses and officers were hosted in separate hotels at Phaleron. Many Greek citizens and officials attended the funerals. Survivors were sent home and few arrived in the United Kingdom before Christmas.\nIn November 2006, Britannic researcher Michail Michailakis discovered that one of the 45 unidentified graves in the New British Cemetery in the town of Hermoupolis on the island of Syros contained the remains of a soldier collected from the church of Ag. Trias at Livadi (the former name of Korissia). Maritime historian Simon Mills contacted the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Further research established that this soldier was a Britannic casualty and his remains had been registered in October 1919 as belonging to a certain \"Corporal Stevens\".\nWhen the remains were moved to the new cemetery at Syros in June 1921, it was found that there was no record relating this name with the loss of the ship, and the grave was registered as unidentified. Mills provided evidence that this man could be Sergeant Sharpe and the case was considered by the Service Personnel and Veterans Agency. A new headstone for Sharpe was erected and the CWGC has updated its database.\n\nVisualised as an ocean liner\nThe plan of Britannic showed that she was intended to be more luxurious than her sister ships in order to compete with SS Imperator, SS Vaterland and RMS Aquitania. Enough cabins were provided for passengers divided into three classes. The White Star Line anticipated a considerable change in its customer base. Thus, the quality of the Third Class (intended for migrants) was lowered when compared to that of her sisters, while the quality of the Second Class increased. In addition, the number of crew planned was increased from about 860 – 880 onboard Olympic and Titanic to 950 aboard Britannic.\nThe quality of the First Class was also improved. Children began to appear as part of the clientele that needed to be satisfied, and thus a playroom for them was built on the boat deck. Similar to her two sister ships, the first class amenities included the Grand Staircase, but Britannic's amenities were more sumptuous, with worked balustrades, decorative panels and a pipe organ. The A Deck of the ship was devoted in its entirety to the First Class, being fitted with a salon, two veranda cafes, a smoking room and a reading room. The B Deck included a hair salon, post office, and redesigned deluxe Parlour Suites, dubbed Saloons in the Builder's Plans. The most important addition was that of individual bathrooms in almost every First Class cabin, which would have been a first on an ocean liner. Aboard the Olympic and Titanic, most passengers had to use public bathrooms.\nThese facilities were installed but were soon removed because the ship was converted to a hospital ship and were never re-installed because the ship sank before she could enter transatlantic service, so the planned facilities were either cancelled, destroyed, reused on other vessels, like the Olympic or Majestic, or just never used. Of these accessories, only a large staircase and a children's playroom remained installed. Under the glass dome was a white wall above the first-class staircase instead of a clock and a large painting.\n\nPipe organ\nA Welte philharmonic organ was planned to be installed on board Britannic but because of the outbreak of war, the instrument never made its way to Belfast from Germany. After the war, it was not claimed by Harland and Wolff since Britannic sank before she could have ever entered transatlantic service. It also was not installed on Olympic or Majestic since White Star Line did not want it. For a long time, it was thought that the organ was lost or destroyed.\nIn April 2007, the restorers of a Welte organ, now in the Museum für Musikautomaten in Seewen, Switzerland, detected that the main parts of the instrument were signed by the German organ builders with \"Britanik\". A photograph of a drawing in a company prospectus, found in the Welte-legacy in the Augustiner Museum in Freiburg, proved that this was the organ intended for Britannic. It was found that Welte had first sold the organ to a private owner in Stuttgart instead. Later, in 1937 it had been transferred to a company's concert hall in Wipperfürth, where it was eventually acquired by the founder of the Swiss Museum of Music Automatons in 1969. At the time, the museum was still unaware of the organ's original history. The museum maintains the organ in working condition and it is still used for fully automated and manual performances.\n\nWreck\nThe wreck of HMHS Britannic is at 37°42′05″N 24°17′02″E in about 400 feet (122 m) of water. It was discovered on 3 December 1975 by Jacques Cousteau, who explored it. In filming the expedition, Cousteau also held conference on camera with several surviving personnel from the ship including Sheila MacBeth Mitchell, a survivor of the sinking. In 1976, Cousteau entered the wreck with his divers for the first time. He expressed the opinion that the ship had been sunk by a single torpedo, basing this opinion on the damage to her plates.\nThe giant liner lies on her starboard side relatively intact, hiding the large hole that was torn open by the mine. There is a huge hole just beneath the forward well deck. The bow is heavily deformed and attached to the rest of the hull only by some pieces of C-Deck. The crew's quarters in the forecastle were found to be in good shape with many details still visible. The holds were found empty.\nThe forecastle machinery and the two cargo cranes in the forward well deck are well preserved. The foremast is bent and lies on the seabed near the wreck with the crow's nest still attached. The bell, thought to be lost, was found in a dive in 2019, having fallen from the mast and is now lying directly below the crow's nest on the seabed. Funnel number 1 was found a few metres from the Boat Deck. Funnel numbers two, three, and four were found in the debris field (located off the stern). Pieces of coal lie beside the wreck.\nIn mid-1995, in an expedition filmed by NOVA, Dr Robert Ballard, best known for having discovered the wrecks of Titanic in 1985, and the German battleship Bismarck in 1989, visited the wreck, using advanced side-scan sonar. Images were obtained from remotely controlled vehicles, but the wreck was not penetrated. Ballard found all the ship's funnels in surprisingly good condition. Attempts to find mine anchors failed.\nIn August 1996, the wreck was bought by Simon Mills, who has written two books about the ship: Britannic – The Last Titan and Hostage To Fortune.\nIn November 1997, an international team of divers led by Kevin Gurr used open-circuit trimix diving techniques to visit and film the wreck in the newly available DV digital video format.\nIn September 1998, another team of divers made an expedition to the wreck. Using diver propulsion vehicles, the team made more man-dives to the wreck and produced more images than ever before, including video of four telegraphs, a helm and a telemotor on the captain's bridge.\nIn 1999 GUE divers acclimated to cave diving and ocean discovery led the first dive expedition to include extensive penetration into Britannic. Video of the expedition was broadcast by National Geographic, BBC, the History Channel and the Discovery Channel.\nIn September 2003, an expedition led by Carl Spencer dived into the wreck. This was the first expedition to dive Britannic where all the bottom divers were using closed circuit rebreathers (CCR). Diver Leigh Bishop brought back some of the first photographs from inside the wreck and his diver partner Rich Stevenson found that several watertight doors were open. It has been suggested that this was because the mine strike coincided with the change of watches. Alternatively, the explosion may have distorted the doorframes. A number of mine anchors were located off the wreck by sonar expert Bill Smith, confirming the German records of U-73 that Britannic was sunk by a single mine and the damage was compounded by open portholes and watertight doors. Spencer's expedition was broadcast extensively across the world for many years by National Geographic and the UK's Channel 5.\nIn 2006, an expedition, funded and filmed by the History Channel, brought together fourteen skilled divers to help determine what caused the quick sinking of Britannic. After preparation the crew dived on the wreck site on 17 September. Time was cut short when silt was kicked up, causing zero visibility conditions, and the two divers narrowly escaped with their lives. One last dive was to be attempted on Britannic's boiler room, but it was discovered that photographing this far inside the wreck would lead to violating a permit issued by the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities, a department within the Greek Ministry of Culture.\nPartly because of a barrier in languages, a last-minute plea was turned down by the department. The expedition was unable to determine the cause of the rapid sinking, but hours of footage were filmed and important data was documented. The Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities later recognised the importance of this mission and extended an invitation to revisit the wreck under less stringent rules.\nOn 24 May 2009, Carl Spencer, drawn back to his third underwater filming mission of Britannic, died in Greece due to equipment difficulties while filming the wreck for National Geographic.\nIn 2012, on an expedition organised by Alexander Sotiriou and Paul Lijnen, divers using rebreathers installed and recovered scientific equipment used for environmental purposes, to determine how fast bacteria are eating Britannic's iron compared to Titanic.\nOn 29 September 2019, a British technical diver, Tim Saville, died during a 120 m / 393 ft dive on Britannic's wreck.\n\nLegacy\nHaving her career cut short in wartime, never having entered commercial service, and having had few victims, Britannic did not experience the same notoriety as her sister ship Titanic. After being largely forgotten by the public, she finally gained fame when her wreck was discovered. Her name was reused by the White Star Line when it put MV Britannic into service in 1930. That ship was the last to fly the flag of the company when it retired in 1960.\nAfter Germany capitulated at the end of the First World War followed by the Treaty of Versailles, it handed over some of its ocean liners as war reparations, two of which were given to the company. The first, the Bismarck, renamed Majestic, replaced the Britannic. The second, the Columbus, renamed the Homeric, compensated for other ships lost in the conflict.\nThe last survivor, George Perman, died on the 24th of May 2000, just shy of his 100th birthday. At the time of the sinking, he was a 15-year-old Scout working on Britannic, and the youngest person onboard the ship.\n\nIn popular culture\nThe sinking of the ship was dramatised in a 2000 television film called Britannic that featured Edward Atterton, Amanda Ryan, Jacqueline Bisset and John Rhys-Davies. The film was an entirely fictitious account featuring a German agent sabotaging the ship, because the Britannic was secretly carrying munitions. Titanic has a cameo during the flashback sequence of Violet Jessop's account of the sinking.\nA BBC2 documentary, Titanic's Tragic Twin – the Britannic Disaster, was broadcast on 5 December 2016; presented by Kate Humble and Andy Torbet, it used up-to-date underwater film of the wreck and spoke to relatives of survivors.\nThe historical docudrama The Mystery Of The Britannic was released in 2017, in which the maritime explorer Richard Kohler investigates the ship's last voyage.\nAlma Katsu's 2020 novel The Deep was set partly on the Britannic, and on its sister ship the Titanic, and centred around the sinking of both ships.\nThe Gigantic, the apparent setting of the 2009 escape-room game Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, references the Britannic as a sister ship of the Titanic retrofitted as a hospital ship.\n\nPostcards\nReferences\nBibliography\nBrewster, Hugh; Coulter, Laurie (1998). 882 1/2 Amazing Answers to your Questions about the Titanic. Madison Press Book. ISBN 978-0-590-18730-5.\nChirnside, Mark (2011) [2004]. The Olympic-Class Ships. Stroud: Tempus. ISBN 978-0-7524-2868-0.\nLord, Walter (2005) [1955]. A Night to Remember. New York: St. Martin's Griffin. ISBN 978-0-8050-7764-3.\nLe Goff, Olivier (1998). Les Plus Beaux Paquebots du Monde (in French). Solar. ISBN 9782263027994.\nLynch, John (2012). Belfast Built Ships. The History Press. ISBN 978-0-7524-6539-5.\nPiouffre, Gérard (2009). Le Titanic ne répond plus (in French). Larousse. ISBN 978-2-263-02799-4.\n\nFurther reading\nMills, Simon (1992). H.M.H.S. \"Britannic\": Last Titan. Dorset: Waterfront Publications. ISBN 0-946184-71-2.\nMills, Simon (2002). Hostage to Fortune: the dramatic story of the last Olympian, HMHS Britannic. Chesham, England: Wordsmith. ISBN 1-899493-03-4.\nMills, Simon (2019). Exploring the Britannic: The Life, Last Voyage and Wreck of Titanic's Tragic Twin. London: Adlard Coles. ISBN 978-1-4729-5492-3.\nLayton, J. Kent (2013). The Edwardian Superliners: a trio of trios. Amberley. ISBN 978-1-4456-1438-0.\nKohler, Richie; Hudson, Charlie (2016). Mystery of the Last Olympian: Titanic's Tragic Sister Britannic. Best Publishing Company. ISBN 978-1930536869.\n\nExternal links\n\nNewsreel footage of the construction of HMHS Britannic, 1914\nMaritimequest HMHS Britannic Photo Gallery\nBritannic Home at Atlantic Liners\nNOVA Online-Titanic's Lost Sister (Companion website to the PBS special Titanic's Lost Sister)\nHospital Ship Britannic\nAbout the origins of the Britannic Organ Archived 10 July 2021 at the Wayback Machine\nImages of HMHS Britannic Archived 22 April 2014 at the Wayback Machine at the English Heritage Archive\nBritish Pathé gallery on the Olympic class\nDeck plans of Britannic as an ocean liner","title":"HMHS_Britannic"},{"idx":1,"is_supporting":true,"paragraph_text":"Belfast ( BEL-fast, -fahst; from Irish: Béal Feirste [bʲeːlˠ ˈfʲɛɾˠ(ə)ʃtʲə]) is the capital city and principal port of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan and connected to the open sea through Belfast Lough and the North Channel. It is the second-largest city on the island of Ireland (after Dublin), with an estimated population of 348,005 in 2022, and a metropolitan area population of 671,559.\nFirst chartered as an English settlement in 1613, the town's early growth was driven by an influx of Scottish Presbyterians. Their descendants' disaffection with Ireland's Anglican establishment contributed to the rebellion of 1798, and to the union with Great Britain in 1800 — later regarded as a key to the town's industrial transformation. When granted city status in 1888, Belfast was the world's largest centre of linen manufacture, and by the 1900s her shipyards were building up to a quarter of total United Kingdom tonnage.\nSectarian tensions accompanied the growth of an Irish Catholic population drawn by mill and factory employment from western districts. Heightened by division over Ireland's future in the United Kingdom, these twice erupted in periods of sustained violence: in 1920–22, as Belfast emerged as the capital of the six northeast counties retaining the British connection, and over three decades from the late 1960s during which the British Army was continually deployed on the streets. A legacy of conflict is the barrier-reinforced separation of Protestant and Catholic working-class districts.\nSince the 1998 Belfast Agreement, the electoral balance in the once unionist-controlled city has shifted, albeit with no overall majority, in favour of Irish nationalists. At the same time, new immigrants are adding to the growing number of residents unwilling to identify with either of the two communal traditions.\nBelfast has seen significant services sector growth, with important contributions from financial technology (fintech), from tourism and, with facilities in the redeveloped Harbour Estate, from film. It retains a port with commercial and industrial docks, including a reduced Harland & Wolff shipyard and aerospace and defence contractors. Post Brexit, Belfast and Northern Ireland remain, uniquely, within both the British domestic and European Single trading areas for goods.\nThe city is served by two airports: George Best Belfast City Airport on the Lough shore and Belfast International Airport 15 miles (24 kilometres) west of the city. It supports two universities: on the north-side of the city centre, Ulster University, and on the southside the longer established Queens University. Since 2021, Belfast has been a UNESCO designated City of Music.\n\nHistory\nName\nThe name Belfast derives from the Irish Béal Feirste (Irish pronunciation: [bʲeːlˠ ˈfʲɛɾˠ(ə)ʃtʲə]), \"Mouth of the Farset\" a river whose name in the Irish, Feirste, refers to a sandbar or tidal ford. This was formed where the river ran—until culverted late in the 18th century, down High Street— into the Lagan. It was at this crossing, located under or close to the current Queen's Bridge, that the early settlement developed.: 74–77 \nThe compilers of Ulster-Scots use various transcriptions of local pronunciations of \"Belfast\" (with which they sometimes are also content) including Bilfawst, Bilfaust or Baelfawst.\n\nEarly settlements\nThe site of Belfast has been occupied since the Bronze Age. The Giant's Ring, a 5,000-year-old henge, is located near the city,: 42–45 and the remains of Iron Age hill forts can still be seen in the surrounding hills. At the beginning of the 14th century, Papal tax rolls record two churches: the \"Chapel of Dundela\" at Knock (Irish: Cnoc; from cnoc, meaning 'hill') in the east, connected by some accounts to the 7th-century evangelist St. Colmcille,: 11 and, the \"Chapel of the Ford\", which may have been a successor to a much older parish church on the present Shankill (Seanchill, \"Old Church\") Road,: 63–64 dating back to the 9th, and possibly to St. Patrick in the mid 5th, century.\nA Norman settlement at the ford, comprising the parish church (now St. George's), a watermill, and a small fort, was an outpost of Carrickfergus Castle. Established in the late 12th century, 11 miles (18 km) out along the north shore of the Lough, Carrickfergus was to remain the principal English foothold in the north-east until the scorched- earth Nine Years' War at the end of the 16th century broke the remaining Irish power, the O'Neills.\n\nDeveloping port, radical politics\nWith a commission from James I, in 1613 Sir Arthur Chichester undertook the Plantation of Belfast and the surrounding area, attracting mainly English and Manx settlers. The subsequent arrival of Scottish Presbyterians embroiled Belfast in its only recorded siege: denounced from London by John Milton as \"ungrateful and treacherous guests\", in 1649 the newcomers were temporarily expelled by an English Parliamentarian army.: 21 In 1689, Catholic Jacobite forces, briefly in command of the town, abandoned it in advance of the landing at Carrickfergus of William, Prince of Orange, who proceeded through the Belfast to his celebrated victory on 12 July 1690 at the Boyne.\n\nTogether with French Huguenots, the Scots introduced the production of linen, a flax-spinning industry that in the 18th century carried Belfast trade to the Americas. Fortunes were made carrying rough linen clothing and salted provisions to the slave plantations of the West Indies; sugar and rum to Baltimore and New York; and for the return to Belfast flaxseed and tobacco from the colonies. From the 1760s, profits from the trade financed improvements in the town's commercial infrastructure, including the Lagan Canal, new docks and quays, and the construction of the White Linen Hall which together attracted to Belfast the linen trade that had formerly gone through Dublin. Abolitionist sentiment, however, defeated the proposal of the greatest of the merchant houses, Cunningham and Greg, in 1786 to commission ships for the Middle Passage.As \"Dissenters\" from the established Anglican church (with its episcopacy and ritual), Presbyterians were conscious of sharing, if only in part, the disabilities of Ireland's dispossessed Roman Catholic majority; and of being denied representation in the Irish Parliament. Belfast's two MPs remained nominees of the Chichesters (Marquesses of Donegall). With their emigrant kinsmen in America, the region's Presbyterians were to share a growing disaffection from the Crown.: 55–61 \nWhen early in the American War of Independence, Belfast Lough was raided by the privateer John Paul Jones, the townspeople assembled their own Volunteer militia. Formed ostensibly for defence of the Kingdom, Volunteer corps were soon pressing their own protest against \"taxation without representation\". Further emboldened by the French Revolution, a more radical element in the town, the Society of United Irishmen, called for Catholic emancipation and a representative national government. In hopes of French assistance, in 1798 the Society organised a republican insurrection. The rebel tradesmen and tenant farmers were defeated north of the town at the Battle of Antrim and to the south at the Battle of Ballynahinch.\nBritain seized on the rebellion to abolish the Irish Parliament, unlamented in Belfast, and to incorporate Ireland in a United Kingdom. In 1832, British parliamentary reform permitted the town its first electoral contest – an occasion for an early and lethal sectarian riot.: 87\n\nIndustrial expansion, sectarian division\nWhile other Irish towns experienced a loss of manufacturing, and after a cotton boom and bust, from the 1820s Belfast underwent rapid industrial expansion. As the global leader in the production of linen goods—mill, and finishing, work largely employing women and children— it won the moniker \"Linenopolis\". Shipbuilding led the development of heavier industry. By the 1900s, her shipyards were building up to a quarter of the total United Kingdom tonnage. This included from the yard of Harland & Wolff the ill-fated RMS Titanic, at the time of her launch in 1911 the largest ship afloat. Other major export industries included textile machinery, rope, tobacco and mineral waters.: 59–88 \nIndustry drew in a new Catholic population settling largely in the west of the town—refugees from a rural poverty intensified by Belfast's mechanisation of spinning and weaving and, in the 1840s, by famine. The plentiful supply of cheap labour helped attract English and Scottish capital to Belfast, but it was also a cause of insecurity. Protestant workers organised and dominated the apprenticed trades and gave a new lease of life to the once largely rural Orange Order. Sectarian tensions, which frequently broke out in riots and workplace expulsions, were also driven by the \"constitutional question\": the prospect of a restored Irish parliament in which Protestants (and northern industry) feared being a minority interest.\nOn 28 September 1912, unionists massed at Belfast's City Hall to sign the Ulster Covenant, pledging to use \"all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule Parliament in Ireland\". This was followed by the drilling and eventual arming of a 100,000-strong Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). The immediate crisis was averted by the onset of the Great War. The UVF formed the 36th (Ulster) Division whose sacrifices in the Battle of the Somme continue to be commemorated in the city by unionist and loyalist organisations.\nIn 1920–22, as Belfast emerged as the capital of the six counties remaining as Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom, there was widespread violence. 8,000 \"disloyal\" workers were driven from their jobs in the shipyards: in addition to Catholics, \"rotten Prods\" – Protestants whose labour politics disregarded sectarian distinctions.: 104–108 Gunbattles, grenade attacks and house burnings contributed to as many as 500 deaths. A curfew remained in force until 1924. (see The Troubles in Ulster (1920–1922)) The lines drawn saw off the challenge to \"unionist unity\" posed by labour (industry had been paralysed by strikes in 1907 and again in 1919). Until \"troubles\" returned at the end of the 1960s, it was not uncommon in Belfast for the Ulster Unionist Party to have its council and parliamentary candidates returned unopposed.\nIn 1932, the opening of the new buildings for Northern Ireland's devolved Parliament at Stormont was overshadowed by the protests of the unemployed and ten days of running street battles with the police. The government conceded increases in Outdoor Relief, but labour unity was short lived.: 219–220 In 1935, celebrations of King George V's Jubilee and of the annual Twelfth were followed by deadly riots and expulsions, a sectarian logic that extended itself to the interpretation of darkening events in Europe.: 226–233 Labour candidates found their support for the anti-clerical Spanish Republic characterised as another instance of No-Popery. (Today, the cause of the republic in the Spanish Civil War is commemorated by a \"No Pasaran\" stained glass window in City Hall).\nIn 1938, nearly a third of industrial workers were unemployed, malnutrition was a major issue, and at 9.6% the city's infant mortality rate (compared with 5.9% in Sheffield, England) was among the highest in United Kingdom.\n\nThe Blitz and post-war development\nIn the spring of 1941, the German Luftwaffe appeared twice over Belfast. In addition to the shipyards and the Short & Harland aircraft factory, the Belfast Blitz severely damaged or destroyed more than half the city's housing stock, and devastated the old town centre around High Street. In the greatest loss of life in any air raid outside of London, more than a thousand people were killed.\nAt the end of World War II, the Unionist government undertook programmes of \"slum clearance\" (the Blitz had exposed the \"uninhabitable\" condition of much of the city's housing) which involved decanting populations out of mill and factory built red-brick terraces and into new peripheral housing estates. At the same time, a British-funded welfare state \"revolutionised access\" to education and health care. The resulting rise in expectations; together with the uncertainty caused by the decline of the city's Victorian-era industries, contributed to growing protest, and counter protest, in the 1960s over the Unionist government's record on civil and political rights.\n\nThe Troubles\nFor reasons that nationalists and unionists dispute, the public protests of the late 1960s soon gave way to communal violence (in which as many as 60,000 people were intimidated from their homes): 70 and to loyalist and republican paramilitarism. Introduced onto the streets in August 1969, the British Army committed to the longest continuous deployment in its history, Operation Banner. Beginning in 1970 with the Falls curfew, and followed in 1971 by internment, this included counterinsurgency measures directed chiefly at the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) who characterised their operations, including the bombing of Belfast's commercial centre, as a struggle against British occupation.\nPreceded by loyalist and republican ceasefires, the 1998 \"Good Friday\" Belfast Agreement returned a new power-sharing legislative assembly and executive to Stormont. In the intervening years in Belfast, some 20,000 people had been injured, and 1,500 killed.: 73 \n\nEighty-five percent of the conflict-related deaths had occurred within 1,000 metres of the communal interfaces, largely in the north and west of the city.: 73 The security barriers erected at these interfaces are an enduring physical legacy of the Troubles. The 14 neighbourhoods they separate are among the 20 most deprived wards in Northern Ireland. In May 2013, the Northern Ireland Executive committed to the removal of all peace lines by mutual consent. The target date of 2023 was passed with only a small number dismantled.\nThe more affluent districts escaped the worst of the violence, but the city centre was a major target. This was especially so during the first phase of the PIRA campaign in the early 1970s, when the organisation hoped to secure quick political results through maximum destruction.: 331–332 Including car bombs and incendiaries, between 1969 and 1977 the city experienced 2,280 explosions.: 58 In addition to the death and injury caused, they accelerated the loss of the city's Victorian fabric.\n\n21st century\nSince the turn of the century, the loss of employment and population in the city centre has been reversed. This reflects the growth of the service economy, for which a new district has been developed on former dockland, the Titanic Quarter. The growing tourism sector paradoxically lists as attractions the murals and peace walls that echo the violence of the past.: 350.352 In recent years, \"Troubles tourism\": 180–189 has presented visitors with new territorial markers: flags, murals and graffiti in which loyalists and republicans take opposing sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.\nThe demographic balance of some areas has been changed by immigration (according to the 2021 census just under 10% of the city's population was born outside the British Isles), by local differences in births and deaths between Catholics and Protestants, and by a growing number of, particularly younger, people no longer willing to self-identify on traditional lines.\nIn 1997, unionists lost overall control of Belfast City Council for the first time in its history. The election in 2011 saw Irish nationalist councillors outnumber unionist councillors for the first time, with Sinn Féin becoming the largest party, and the cross-community Alliance Party holding the balance of power.\n\nIn the 2016 Brexit referendum, Belfast's four parliamentary constituencies returned a substantial majority (60 percent) for remaining within the European Union, as did Northern Ireland as a whole (55.8), the only UK region outside London and Scotland to do so. In February 2022, the Democratic Unionist Party, which had actively campaigned for Brexit, withdrew from the power-sharing executive and collapsed the Stormont institutions to protest the 2020 UK-EU Northern Ireland Protocol. With the promise of equal access to the British and European markets, this designates Belfast as a point of entry to the European Single Market within whose regulatory framework local producers will continue to operate. After two years, the standoff was resolved with an agreement to eliminate routine checks on UK-destined goods.\n\nCityscape\nLocation and topography\nBelfast is at the mouth of the River Lagan at the head of Belfast Lough open through the North Channel to the Irish Sea and to the North Atlantic. In the course of the 19th century, the location's estuarine features were re-engineered. With dredging and reclamation, the lough was made to accommodate a deep sea port, and extensive shipyards. The lagan was banked (in 1994 a weir raised its water level to cover what remained of the tidal mud flats) and its various tributaries were culverted On the model pioneered in 2008 by the Connswater Community Greenway some are now being considered for \"daylighting\".\nIt remains the case that much of the city centre is built on an estuarine bed of \"sleech\": silt, peat, mud and—a source the city's ubiquitous red brick— soft clay, that presents a challenge for high-rise construction. (It was this soft foundation that persuaded St Anne's Cathedral to abandon plans for a bell tower and, in 2007, to substitute a lightweight steel spire). The city centre is also subject to tidal flood risk. Rising sea levels could mean, that without significant investment, flooding in the coming decades will be persistent.\nThe city is overlooked on the County Antrim side (to the north and northwest) by a precipitous basalt escarpment—the near continuous line of Divis Mountain (478 m), Black Mountain (389 m) and Cavehill (368 m)—whose \"heathery slopes and hanging fields are visible from almost any part of the city\".: 13 From County Down side (on the south and south east) it is flanked by the lower-lying Castlereagh and Hollywood hills. The sand and gravel Malone Ridge extends up river to the south-west.\n\nNorth Belfast and Shankill\nFrom 1820, Belfast began to spread rapidly beyond its 18th century limits. To the north, it stretched out along roads which drew into the town migrants from Scots-settled hinterland of County Antrim. Largely Presbyterian, they enveloped a number of Catholic-occupied \"mill-row\" clusters: New Lodge, Ardoyne and \"the Marrowbone\". Together with areas of more substantial housing in the Oldpark district, these are wedged between Protestant working-class housing stretching from Tiger's Bay out the Shore Road on one side, and up the Shankill (the original Antrim Road) on the other.\nThe Greater Shankill area, including Crumlin and Woodvale, is over the line from the Belfast North parliamentary/assembly constituency, but is physically separated from the rest of Belfast West by an extensive series of separation barriers—peace walls—owned (together with five daytime gates into the Falls area) by the Department of Justice. These include Cupar Way where tourists are informed that, at 45 feet, the barrier is \"three times higher than the Berlin Wall and has been in place for twice as long\".\nWith other working-class districts, Shankill suffered from the \"collapse of old industrial Belfast\". But it was also greatly affected from the 1960s by the city's most ambitious programme of \"slum clearance\". Red-brick, \"two up, two down\" terraced streets, typical of 19th century working-class housing, were replaced with flats, maisonettes, and car parks but few facilities. In a period of twenty years, due largely to redevelopment, 50,000 residents left the area leaving an aging population of 26,000 and more than 100 acres of wasteland.\nMeanwhile, road schemes, including the terminus of the M1 motorway and the Westlink, demolished a mixed dockland community, Sailortown and severed the streets linking the Shankill area and the rest of both north and west Belfast to the city centre.\nNew \"green field\" housing estates were built on the outer edges of the city. The onset of the Troubles overwhelmed attempts to promote these as \"mixed\" neighbourhoods so that the largest of these developments on the city's northern edge, Rathcoole rapidly solidified as a loyalist community. In 2004, it was estimated that 98% of public housing in Belfast was divided along religious lines.\nAmong the principal landmarks of north Belfast are the Crumlin Road Gaol (1845) now a major visitor attraction, Belfast Royal Academy (1785) - the oldest school in the city, St Malachy's College (1833), Holy Cross Church, Ardoyne (1902), Waterworks Park (1889), and Belfast Zoo (1934).\n\nWest Belfast\nIn the mid-19th century rural poverty and famine drove large numbers of Catholic tenant farmers, landless labourers and their families toward Belfast. Their route brought them down the Falls Road and into what are now remnants of an older Catholic enclave around St Mary's Church, the town's first Catholic chapel (opened in 1784 with Presbyterian subscriptions), and Smithfield Market. Eventually, an entire west side of the city, stretching up the Falls Road, along the Springfield Road (encompassing the new housing estates built 1950s and 60s: Highfield, New Barnsley, Ballymurphy, Whiterock and Turf Lodge) and out past Andersonstown on the Stewartstown Road toward Poleglass, became near-exclusively Catholic and, in political terms, nationalist.\nReflecting the nature of available employment as mill workers, domestics and shop assistants, the population, initially, was disproportionately female. Further opportunities for women on the Falls Road arose through developments in education and public health. In 1900, the Dominican Order opened St Mary's [Teacher] Training College, and in 1903 King Edward VII opened the Royal Victoria Hospital at the junction with the Grosvenor Road. Extensively redeveloped and expanded, the hospital has a staff of more than 8,500.\nLandmarks in the area include the Gothic-revival St Peter's Cathedral (1866, signature twin spires added in 1886); Clonard Monastery (1911), the Conway Mill (1853/1901, re-developed as a community enterprise, arts and education centre in 1983); Belfast City Cemetery (1869) and, best known for its republican graves, Milltown Cemetery (1869).\nThe area's greatest visitor attractions are its wall and gable-end murals. In contrast to those in loyalist areas, where Israel is typically the only outside reference, these range more freely beyond the local conflict frequently expressing solidarity with Palestinians, with Cuba, and with Basque and Catalan separatists.\n\nSouth Belfast\nWest Belfast is separated from South Belfast, and from the otherwise abutting loyalist districts of Sandy Row and the Donegall Road, by rail lines, the M1 Motorway (to Dublin and the west); industrial and retail parks, and the remnants of the Blackstaff (Owenvarra) bog meadows.\nBelfast began stretching up-river in the 1840s and 50s: out the Ormeau and Lisburn roads and, between them, running along a ridge of higher ground, the Malone Road. From \"leafy\" avenues of increasingly substantial (and in the course of time \"mixed\") housing, the Upper Malone broadened out into areas of parkland and villas.\nFurther out still, where they did not survive as public parks, from the 1960s the great-house demesnes of the city's former mill-owners and industrialists were developed for public housing: loyalist estates such as Seymour Hill and Belvoir. Meanwhile, in Malone and along the river embankments, new houses and apartment blocks have been squeezed in, increasing the general housing density.\nBeyond the Queen's University area the area's principal landmarks are the 15-storey tower block of Belfast City Hospital (1986) on the Lisburn Road, and the Lagan Valley Regional Park through which a towpath extends from the City-centre quayside to Lisburn.\nNorthern Ireland's three permanent diplomatic missions are situated on the Malone Road, the consulates of China, Poland and the United States.\n\nEast Belfast\nThe first district on the right bank of the Lagan (the County Down side) to be incorporated in Belfast was Ballymacarrett after 1868. Harland & Wolff, whose gantry cranes, Samson & Goliath, tower over the area, was long the mainstay of employment — although less securely so for the townland's Catholics (In 1970, when the yard still had a workforce of 10,000, only 400 Catholics were employed).: 280 Tolerated in periods of expansion as navvies and casual labourers,: 87–88 they concentrated in a small enclave, the Short Strand, which has continued into this century to feature as a sectarian flashpoint. Home to around 2,500 people, it is the only distinctly nationalist area in the east of the river.\nEast Belfast developed from the Queens Bridge (1843), through Ballymacarrett, east along the Newtownards Road and north (along the east shore of the Lough) up the Holywood Road; and from the Albert Bridge (1890) south east out the Cregagh and Castlereagh roads. The further out, the more substantial, and less religiously segregated, the housing until again encountering the city's outer ring of public housing estates: loyalist Knocknagoney, Lisnasharragh, and Tullycarnet.\nThis century, efforts have been made to add to East Belfast's two obvious visitor attractions: Samson & Goliath (the \"banana yellow cranes\" date only from the early 1970s): 79 and the Parliament Buildings at Stormont. What is marketed now as EastSide, features, at the intersection of the Connswater and Comber Greenways and next to the EastSide Visitor Centre, CS Lewis Square (2017), named and themed in honour of the local author of The Chronicles of Narnia. Next to the former the Harland & Wolff Drawing Offices (now an hotel), stands the \"cultural nucleus to Titanic Quarter\", Titanic Belfast (2012) whose interactive galleries tell the liner's ill-fated story.\n\nCity Centre\nBelfast City Centre is roughly bounded by the ring roads constructed since the 1970s: the M3 which sweeps across the dockland to the north; the Westlink that connects to the M1 for points south and west; and, with less certainty, the Bruce Street and Bankmore connectors that tie back toward the Lagan at the Gasworks Business Park and the beginning of the Ormeau Road. This embraces \"the Markets\", the one remaining inner-city area of housing. Of the various markets, including those for the sale and shipping of livestock, from which it derives its name, only one survives, the former produce market, St George's, now a food and craft market popular with visitors to the city.\n\nArchitectural heritage\nAmong surviving elements of the pre-Victorian town are the Belfast Entries, 17th-century alleyways off High Street, including, in Winecellar Entry, White's Tavern (rebuilt 1790); the elliptical First Presbyterian (Non-Subscribing) Church (1781–83) in Rosemary Street (whose members led the abolitionist charge against Greg and Cunningham); the Assembly Rooms (1769, 1776, 1845) on Bridge Street; St George's Church of Ireland (1816) on the High Street site of the old Corporation Church which had been built on a religious site dating back to 1306; St Mary's Church (1782) in Chapel Lane, which is the oldest Catholic church in the city. The oldest public building in Belfast, Clifton House (1771–74), the Belfast Charitable Society poorhouse, is on North Queen Street. It is now partly cut off from the city centre by arterial roads. In addition there are small sets of city-centre Georgian terraces.\nOf the much larger Victorian city a substantial legacy has survived the Blitz, The Troubles and planning and development. Among the more notable examples are St Malachy's Roman Catholic Church (1844) and the original college building of Queen's University Belfast (1849), both in a Tudor style; the Palm House in the Botanic Gardens (1852); the Renaissance revival Union Theological College (1853) and Ulster Bank (now Merchant Hotel) (1860); the Italianate Ulster Hall (1862), and the National Trust restored ornate Crown Liquor Saloon (1885, 1898) (a setting for the classic film, Odd Man Out, starring James Mason); the oriental-themed Grand Opera House (1895) (bombed several times during the Troubles), and the Romanesque revival St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Donegall Street (1877). \n\nThe Baroque revival City Hall was finished in 1906 on the site of the former White Linen Hall, and was built to reflect Belfast's city status, granted by Queen Victoria in 1888. Its Edwardian design influenced the Victoria Memorial in Calcutta, India, and Durban City Hall in South Africa. The dome is 173 ft (53 m) high and figures above the door state \"Hibernia encouraging and promoting the Commerce and Arts of the City\". \nNearby is the Renaissance and Baroque revival Scottish Provident Institution (1902). Opposite is a branch of the Ulster Bank which is built behind the facade of a large former Methodist church which was built in the classical style and which opened in 1846.\nBuilt around an older church dating to 1776, St Anne's Church of Ireland Cathedral was consecrated 1904 and completed in the 1920s. Its steel spire was added in 2007. The neoclassical Royal Courts of Justice were opened in 1933.\n\nRedevelopment\nThe opening Victoria Square Shopping Centre in 2008 was to symbolise the rebound of the city centre since its days as a restricted security zone during the Troubles. But retail footfall in the centre is limited by competition with out-of-town shopping centres and with internet retailing. As of November 2023, footfall had not recovered pre-COVID pandemic levels. There are compensating trends: the growth in tourism and hospitality which has included a sustained boom in hotel construction.\nThe City Council also talks of a \"residential-led regeneration\". New townhouse and apartments schemes are being developed for the city's quays, and for Titanic Quarter. The completion in 2023 of Ulster University's enhanced Belfast campus (in \"one of the largest higher education capital builds in Europe\") and the determination of Queen's University to compete with the private sector in the provision of student housing, has fostered the construction downtown of multiple new student residences.\n\nRough sleeping and homelessness\nPeople can be found sleeping rough on the streets of the city centre. Numbers, while growing, may be comparatively small for a city of its size in the British Isles. In 2022, counts and estimates by the Northern Ireland Housing Executive identified a total of 26 rough sleepers in Belfast. This is against a background (in 2023) of 2,317 people (0.67% of residents) presenting as homeless, many of whom are in temporary accommodation and shelters. Such figures, however, do not include all those living in severely overcrowded conditions, involuntarily sharing with other households on a long-term basis, or sleeping rough in hidden locations.\n\nThe \"Quarters\"\nSince 2001, buoyed by increasing numbers of tourists, the city council has promoted a number of cultural quarters.\nThe Cathedral Quarter comprises much of Belfast's old trade and warehousing district in the narrow streets and entries around St Anne's Cathedral, with a concentration of bars, beer gardens, clubs and restaurants (including two establishments claiming descent from the early town, White's and The Duke of York) and performance spaces (most notably the Black Box and Oh Yeah). It hosts a yearly visual and performing arts festival. The adjoining Custom House Square is one of the city's main outdoor venues for free concerts and street entertainment.\nWithout defined geographical boundaries, the Gaeltacht Quarter encompasses Irish-speaking Belfast. (According to the 2021 census, 15.5% of people in the city have some knowledge of Irish, 4% speak it daily). It is generally understood as an area around the Falls Road in west Belfast served by the Cultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich cultural centre. It can be said to include, at the Skainos Centre in unionist east Belfast, Turas, a project that promotes Irish through night classes and cultural events in the belief that \"the language belongs to all\".\nThe Linen Quarter', an area south of City Hall once dominated by linen warehouses, now includes, in addition to cafés, bars and restaurants, a dozen hotels (including the 23-storey Grand Central Hotel), and the city's two principal Victorian-era cultural venues, the Grand Opera House and the Ulster Hall.\nMoving further south along the so-called \"Golden Mile\" of bars and clubs through Shaftesbury Square, there is the Queen's [University] Quarter. In addition to the university (spread over 250 buildings, of which 120 are listed as being of architectural merit), it is home to Botanic Gardens and the Ulster Museum.\nFinally, the Titanic Quarter covers 0.75 km2 (185 acres) of reclaimed land adjacent to Belfast Harbour, formerly known as Queen's Island. Named after RMS Titanic, launched here in 1911, work began in 2003 to transform some former shipyard land into \"one of the largest waterfront developments in Europe\". The current area houses Titanic Belfast, the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI), two hotels, and multiple condo towers and shops, and the Titanic [film] Studios.\n\nCulture\nArts venues and festivals\nFrom Georgian Belfast, the city retains a civic legacy. In addition to Clifton House (Belfast Charitable Society, 1774), this includes the Linen Hall Library (Belfast Society for Promoting Knowledge, 1788), the Ulster Museum (founded by the Belfast Natural History Society as the Belfast Municipal Museum and Art Gallery in 1833), and the Botanic Gardens (established in 1828 by the Belfast Botanic and Horticultural Society). These remain important cultural venues: in the case of the Gardens, for outdoor festivities including the Belfast Melā, the city's annual celebration of global cultures.\nOf the many stage venues built in the nineteenth century, and film theatres built in the twentieth, there remains the Ulster Hall (1862), which hosts concerts (including those of the Ulster Orchestra), classical recitals and party-political meetings; the Grand Opera House (1895) badly damaged in bomb blasts in the early 1990s, restored and enlarged 2020; the Strand Cinema (1935) now being developed as an arts centre; and the Queens Film Theatre (QFT) (1968) focussed on art house and world cinema. The two independent cinemas offer their screens for the Belfast Film Festival and the Belfast International Arts Festival.\nThe principal stage for drama remains the Lyric Theatre (1951), the largest employer of actors and other theatre professionals in the region. At Queens University, drama students stage their productions at the Brian Friel Theatre, a 120-seat studio space (named after the renowned playwright).\nIn November 2011, Belfast became the smallest city to host the MTV Europe Music Awards. The event was made possible by the 11,000-seat Odyssey Arena (today the SSE Arena) which opened in 2000 at the entrance to the Titanic Quarter A further large-scale venue is the Waterfront Hall, a multi-purpose conference and entertainment centre that first opened in 1997. The main circular Auditorium seats 2,241 and is based on the Berlin Philharmonic Hall. In 2012, the Metropolitan Arts Centre, usually referred to as the MAC, was opened in the Cathedral Quarter, offering a performance mix of music, theatre, dance and visual art.\nThe city has a number of community arts, and arts education, centres, among them the Crescent Arts Centre in south Belfast, the Irish-language Cultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich in west Belfast, The Duncairn in north Belfast and, in the east of the city, EastSide Arts.\nFéile an Phobail, a community arts organisation born out of the Internment Commemorations in the west of the city, stages one of the largest community festivals in Europe. It has grown from its original August Féile on the Falls Road, to a year-round programme with a broad range of arts events, talks and discussions.\n\nUNESCO City of Music\nIn November 2021, Belfast became the third city in the British Isles to be designated by UNESCO as City of Music (after Glasgow in 2008 and Liverpool in 2016) and is one of 59 cities worldwide participating in the UNESCO Creative Cities Network.\nThe greater part of Belfast's music scene is accommodated in the city's pubs and clubs. Irish traditional music (\"trad\") is a staple, and is supported, along with Ulster-Scots snare drum and pipe music, by the city's TradFest summer school.\nMusic offerings also draw on the legacy of the punk and the underground club scene that developed during The Troubles (associated with the groups Stiff Little Fingers and The Undertones, and celebrated in the award-winning 2013 film, Good Vibrations). Snow Patrol's frontman Gary Lightbody led a line up of private donors that together with public funders established the Oh Yeah music centre in 2008. The Cathedral Quarter non-profit supports young musicians and these have engaged with a range of genres including Alternative rock, Indie rock, Electronica, Post rock, Post punk, Crossover, and Experimental rock.\nQueens University hosts the Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC), an institute for music-based practice and research. Its purpose designed building, Sonic Laboratory and multichannel studios were opened by Karlheinz Stockhausen, the German composer and \"father of electronic music\", in 2004.\n\nMedia\nBelfast is the home of the Belfast Telegraph, Irish News, and The News Letter, the oldest English-language daily newspaper in the world still in publication.\nThe city is the headquarters of BBC Northern Ireland, and ITV station UTV. The Irish public service broadcaster, RTÉ has a studio in the city. The national radio station is BBC Radio Ulster with commercial radio stations such as Q Radio, U105, Blast 106 and Irish-language station Raidió Fáilte. Queen's Radio, a student-run radio station broadcasts from Queen's University Students' Union. \nOne of Northern Ireland's two community TV stations, NvTv, is based in the Cathedral Quarter of the city. Broadcasting only over the Internet is Homely Planet, the Cultural Radio Station for Northern Ireland, supporting community relations.\n\nParades\nSince the lifting in 1872 of a twenty-year party processions ban, Orange parades in celebration of \"the Twelfth\" [of July] and the bonfires of the previous evening, the eleventh, have been a fixed fixture of the Belfast calendar. On what became a public holiday in 1926, Belfast and guest Orange lodges with their pipe, flute and drum bands muster at Carlisle Circus, and parade through the city centre past the City Hall and out the Lisburn Road to a gathering in \"the field\" at Barnett Demesne. While some local feeder and return marches have a history of sectarian disturbance, in recent years, events have generally passed off without serious incident.\nIn 2015, the Orange Order opened the Museum of Orange Heritage on the Cregagh Road in East Belfast with the aim of educating the wider public about \"the origins, traditions and continued relevance\" of the parading institution.\nWhat is sometimes referred to as the Catholic equivalent of the Orangemen, the much smaller Ancient Order of Hibernians, confines its parades to nationalist areas in west and north Belfast, as do republicans commemorating the Easter Rising. In August 1993, in a break with a history of nationalist exclusion from the city centre, a parade marking the introduction of internment in the 1971 proceeded up Royal Avenue toward the City Hall, where it was addressed by Sinn Féin president, Gerry Adams, in front of the statue of Queen Victoria.\nSince 1998, the Belfast City Council has funded a city-centre St. Patrick's Day (March 17) celebration. It is organised by Féile an Phobail as a \"carnival\" complete with a parade featuring dancers, circus entertainers, floats, and giant puppets. Critical of what they perceive as an evolving nationalist festival, unionists on the City Council observe that \"a lot of the Protestant Unionist Loyalist (PUL) community will stay away from the city centre on St Patrick's Day, the same as some stay away on the Twelfth of July\".\nIn 1991, Belfast hosted its first gay pride event. Belfast Pride, culminating in a city-centre parade at the end of July, is now one of the biggest annual festivals in the city and, according to its organisers, the largest LGBT+ festival in Ireland.\nThe Irish Congress of Trade Unions organises an annual city-centre May Day march and rally. The International Workers Day has been a public holiday since 1978.\n\nDemography\nIn 2021, there were 345,418 residents within the expanded 2015 Belfast local government boundary and 634,600 in the Belfast Metropolitan Area, approximately one third of Northern Ireland's 1.9 million population.\n\nAs with many cities, Belfast's inner city is currently characterised by the elderly, students and single young people, while families tend to live on the periphery. Socio-economic areas radiate out from the Central Business District, with a pronounced wedge of affluence extending out the Malone Road and Upper Malone Road to the south. Deprivation levels are notable in the inner parts of the north and the west of the city. The areas around the Falls Road, Ardoyne and New Lodge (Catholic nationalist) and the Shankill Road (Protestant loyalist) experience some of the highest levels of social deprivation including higher levels of ill health and poor access to services. These areas remain firmly segregated, with 80 to 90 percent of residents being of the one religious designation.\nConsistent with the trend across all of Northern Ireland, the Protestant population within the city has been in decline, while the non-religious, other religious and Catholic population has risen. The 2021 census recorded the following: 43% of residents as Catholic, 12% as Presbyterian, 8% as Church of Ireland, 3% as Methodist, 6% as belonging to other Christian denominations, 3% to other religions and 24% as having either no religion or no declared religion.\nIn terms of community background, 47.93% were deemed to belong to, or to have been brought up in, the Catholic faith and 36.45% in a Protestant or other Christian-related denomination. The comparable figures in 2011 were 48.60% Catholic and 42.28% Protestant or other Christian-related denomination.\nWith respondents free to indicate more than one national identity, in 2021 the largest national identity group was \"Irish only\" with 35% of the population, followed by \"British only\" 27%, \"Northern Irish only\" 17%, \"British and Northern Irish only\" 7%, \"Irish and Northern Irish only\" 2%, \"British, Irish and Northern Irish only\" 2%, British and Irish less than 1% and Other identities with 10%.\nInsofar as the city's two indigenous minority languages (Irish and Ulster Scots) are concerned, figures are made available from the decennial UK census. On census day, 21 March 2021, 14.93% (43,798) in Belfast claimed to have some knowledge of the Irish language, whilst 5.21% (15,294) claimed to be able to speak, read, write and understand spoken Irish. 3.74% (10,963) of residents claimed to use Irish daily and 0.75% (2,192) claimed Irish is their main language. 7.17% (21,025) of people in the city claimed to have some knowledge of Ulster Scots, whilst 0.75% (2,207) claimed to be able to speak, read, write and understand spoken Ulster Scots. 0.83% (2,430) claimed to use Ulster Scots daily.\nFrom the mid to late 19th century, there was a community of central European Jews (among its distinguished members, Hamburg-born Gustav Wilhelm Wolff of Harland & Wolff) and of Italians in Belfast. Today, the largest immigrant groups are Poles, Chinese and Indians. The 2011 census figures recorded a total non-white population of 10,219 or 3.3%, while 18,420 or 6.6% of the population were born outside the UK and Ireland. Almost half of those born outside the British Isles lived in south Belfast, where they comprised 9.5% of the population. The majority of the estimated 5,000 Muslims and 200 Hindu families living in Northern Ireland resided in the Greater Belfast area. In the 2021 census the percentage of the city's residents born outside the United Kingdom had risen to 9.8.\n\n\tThe Belfast City Council area in the 2011 census\n\nEconomy\nEmployment profile\nServices (including retail, health, professional & scientific) account for three quarters of jobs in Belfast. Only 6% remain in manufacturing. The balance is in distribution and construction. In recent years, unemployment has been comparatively low (under 3% in the summer of 2023) for the UK. On the other hand, Belfast has a high rate of people economically inactive (close to 30%). It is a group, encompassing homemakers, full-time carers, students and retirees, that in Belfast has been swollen by the exceptionally large proportion of the population (27%) with long-term health problems or disabilities (and who, in Northern Ireland generally, are less likely to be employed than in other UK regions).\n\nShipbuilding, aerospace and defence\nOf Belfast's Victorian-era industry, little remains. The last working linen factory—Copeland Linens Limited, based in the Shankill area—closed in 2013. In recent years Harland & Wolff, which at peak production in the Second World War had employed around 35,000 people, has had a workforce of no more than two or three hundred refurbishing oil rigs and fabricating off-shore wind turbines. A £1.6 billion Royal Navy contract has offered the yard a new lease, returning it to shipbuilding in 2025.: 261–262 \nIn 1936, Short & Harland Ltd, a joint venture of Short Brothers and Harland & Wolff, began the manufacture of aircraft in the docks area. In 1989, the British government, which had nationalised the company during the Second World War, sold it to the Canadian aerospace company Bombardier. In 2020, it was sold on to Spirit AeroSystems. Producing aircraft components, it remains the largest manufacturing concern in Northern Ireland.\nOriginating in the Short Brothers' missile division, since 2001 Thales Group owned Thales Air Defence Limited has been producing short range air defence and anti-tank missiles (including the NLAW shoulder-launched system deployed against the Russian invasion by Ukraine).\n\nFintech and cybersecurity\nFrom the 1990s, Belfast established itself as a significant location for call centres and for other back-office services. Attracting U.S. operators such as Citi, Allstate, Liberty Mutual, Aflac and FD Technologies (Kx Systems), it as since been identified by the UK Treasury as \"key fintech [financial technology] hub\". Fintech's key areas (its \"ABCD\") are artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing, and big data.\nThe sector's principal constraint, cyber security, has been addressed since 2004 by the Queens University Institute of Electronics, Communications and Information Technology (IECIT), and its Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT). The IECIT is the anchor tenant at Catalyst (science park) in the Titanic Quarter, which hosts a cluster of companies seeking to offer innovative cyber-security solutions.\n\nFilm\nBetween 2018 and 2023, film and television production based largely in Belfast, and occupying significant new studio capacity in the ports area, contributed £330m to Northern Ireland's economy. There are two 8-acre media complexes (serviced by the adjacent City Airport): the Titanic Studios on Queen's Island (the Titanic Quarter) and across the Victoria Channel in Giant's Park on the Lough's north foreshore, the Belfast Harbour Studios. Together they offer 226,000 ft2 of studio space, plus offices and workshops, and have attracted U.S. production companies such as Amazon, HBO (including all eight series of its fantasy drama Game of Thrones), Paramount, Playtone, Universal, and Warner Bros.\nAt the beginning of 2024, Ulster University, in partnership with Belfast Harbour and supported by Northern Ireland Screen, announced an £72m investment to add to the complex a new virtual production, research and development, facility, Studio Ulster. Additional studio space is available at Loop Studios (formerly Britvic) on the Castlereagh Road in East Belfast.\n\nTourism and hospitality\nNorthern Ireland's peace dividend since the 1990s, which includes a marked increase in inward investment, has contributed to a large-scale redevelopment of the city centre. Significant projects included Victoria Square, the Cathedral Quarter, Laganside with the Odyssey complex and the landmark Waterfront Hall, the new Titanic Quarter with its Titanic Belfast visitor attraction, and the development of the original Short's harbour airfield as George Best Belfast City Airport.\nThese developments reflect a boom in tourism (32 million visitors between 2011 and 2018),: 179 and related hotel construction. This has included an entirely new phenomenon for Belfast: in 1999, the port received its first cruise ship. In 2023, Belfast welcomed 153 calls, 8% up from the pre-pandemic record set in 2019. Ship from 32 different countries landed 320,000 passengers.\nBelfast has also seen growth of \"conflict tourism\".: 186–191 To the dismay of some, \"tourists take photos of the division lines that are not consigned to history, but are a part of living Belfast: children play football against the walls that tourists flock to. The places and the people themselves have become a spectacle, an attraction.\" Tourist bosses and guides, however, are satisfied that the greater draw is city's other \"must-see attractions\", and its \"convivial food and nightlife scene\".\n\nEU/GB Trade\nInvest NI, Northern Ireland's economic development agency is pitching Belfast and its hinterland to foreign investors as \"only region in the world able to trade goods freely with both GB and EU markets\". This follows the 2020 Northern Ireland Protocol and the 2023 Windsor Framework, agreements between the British government and European Union, whereby, post-Brexit, Northern Ireland would effectively remain within the European Single Market for goods while, in principle, retaining unfettered access to the British domestic market. Despite the DUP's derailment of devolved government in protest, local business leaders largely welcomed the new trade regime, hailing the promise of dual EU-GB access as a critical opportunity.\nIn February 2024, the DUP consented to a return of the devolved Assembly and Executive on the understanding that neither the EU nor the British government would defend the integrity of their respective internal markets by conducting routine checks on the bulk of goods passing through Belfast, or other Northern Ireland, ports.\n\nEducation\nPrimary and secondary education\nChildren from Catholic and Protestant homes in Belfast are taught, for the most part, separately on a pattern that, by the mid-nineteenth century, had been established throughout Ireland. Primary and secondary education is divided between (Catholic) Maintained Schools and (non-Catholic/ \"Protestant\") Controlled Schools. They are bound by the same curriculum, but their teaching staff are trained separately (in the university colleges of St Mary's and Stranmillis).: 200–202 \nSince the 1980s, two smaller school sectors have emerged: grant-maintained Integrated schools, which by design bring together children and staff from both communities, and Irish language medium schools\nThe Belfast [later Royal Belfast] Academical Institution, opened its doors in 1810 with the intention, in the words of its founder, former United Irishman, William Drennan of being \"perfectly unbiased by religious distinctions\". The principle was not embraced by the town's middle-classes: in practice \"Inst\" provided a grammar education to the town's Presbyterian families while Anglicans favoured the older Royal Belfast Academy (1785); Catholics, St Malachy's diocesan college (1833) and Wesleyans, Methodist College Belfast (1865).\nDenominational lines have since blurred, with Catholics in particular moving into the controlled grammars. But the presence of 18 selective grammar schools in Belfast is a further feature of post-primary education in Belfast that distinguishes it from that of comparable cities in Great Britain where academic selection was abandoned in the 1960s and 70s. Partly prompted by the COVID disruption of external testing in 2021/22, some the city's grammars have begun to review and amend the practice. It is not clear that this will be on terms that reduce the degree of social segregation they have represented within the system.\nIn 2006, the Belfast Education and Library Board became part of the consolidated Education Authority for Northern Ireland. In Belfast, the Authority has responsibility for 156 primary, and 48 secondary schools (including the 18 grammars). The system is marked by stark inequalities in outcome. Around 30% of school leavers in the city do not attain 5 GCSEs, A* - C (including Maths and English). For those in receipt of free school meals, the figure rises to over 50%.\n\nFurther and Higher education\nBelfast Metropolitan College (\"Belfast Met\") is a further education college with three main campuses around the city, including several smaller buildings. Formerly known as Belfast Institute of Further and Higher Education, it specialises in vocational education. The college has over 53,000 students enrolled on full-time and part-time courses, making it one of the largest further education colleges in the UK and the largest in the island of Ireland.\nBelfast has two universities. Queen's University Belfast was founded as a college in 1845. In 1908, the Catholic bishops lifted their ban on attendance and Queen's was granted university status.: 164, 166 It is a member of the Russell Group, an association of 24 leading research-intensive universities in the UK, and is one of the largest universities in the UK with over 25,000 students – among them over 4,000 international students.\nUlster University, created in its current form in 1984, is a multi-centre university with a campus on the edge of the Cathedral Quarter of Belfast. Since 2021, this original \"Arts College\" campus has undergone a £1.4bn expansion to accommodate offerings across all departments. The project promises to bring 15,500 staff and students into the city, and to generate 5,000 new jobs.\n\nGovernance\nBelfast was granted borough status by James VI and I in 1613 and official city status by Queen Victoria in 1888. Since 1973 it has been a local government district under local administration by Belfast City Council.\nBelfast has been represented in the British House of Commons since 1801, and in Northern Ireland Assembly, as presently constituted, since 1998.\n\nLocal government\nBelfast City Council is responsible for a range of powers and services, including land-use and community planning, parks and recreation, building control, arts and cultural heritage. The city's principal offices are those of the Lord Mayor of Belfast, Deputy Lord Mayor and High Sheriff. Like other elected positions within the Council such as Committee chairs, these are filled since 1998 using the D'Hondt system so that in recent years the position has rotated between councillors from the three largest factions, Sinn Féin, the DUP and the Alliance Party.\nThe first Lord Mayor of Belfast in 1892, Daniel Dixon, like every mayor but one until 1997 (Alliance in 1979), was a unionist. The first nationalist Lord Mayor of Belfast was Alban Maginness of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) in 1997. The current Lord Mayor is Micky Murray of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, who has been in the position of Lord Mayor since 3 June 2024. His duties include presiding over meetings of the council, receiving distinguished visitors to the city, representing and promoting the city on the national and international stage.\nIn 1997, unionists lost overall control of Belfast City Council for the first time in its history, with the Alliance Party holding the balance of power. In 2023, unionists retained just 17 of 60 seats on the council, leaving nationalists (Sinn Féin and the SDLP) just 4 seats short of a majority. In addition to the 11 Alliance members there are four other councillors, 3 Green and 1 People Before Profit, who refuse a nationalist/unionist designation.\n\nNorthern Ireland Assembly and Westminster elections\nAs Northern Ireland's capital city, Belfast is host to the Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont, the site of the devolved legislature for Northern Ireland. Belfast is divided into four Northern Ireland Assembly and UK parliamentary constituencies: Belfast North, Belfast West, Belfast South and Belfast East. All four extend beyond the city boundaries to include parts of Castlereagh, Lisburn and Newtownabbey districts. In United Kingdom elections, each constituency returns one MP, on a \"first past the post\" basis to Westminster. In NI Assembly elections each returns, on the basis of proportional representation, five MLAs to Stormont.\nIn the Northern Ireland Assembly Elections in 2022, Belfast elected 7 Sinn Féin, 5 DUP, 5 Alliance Party, 1 SDLP, 1 UUP and 1 PBPA MLAs. In the 2017 UK general election, the DUP won all but the Sinn Féin stronghold of Belfast West. In the 2019 and 2024 UK general elections, they retained only Belfast East, losing Belfast North to Sinn Féin and Belfast South to the SDLP.\nFor the next elections the constituencies are redrawn, with Belfast South extended as Belfast South and Mid Down to include parts of Lagan Valley and Strangford.\n\nInfrastructure\nHospitals\nThe Belfast Health & Social Care Trust is one of five trusts that were created on 1 April 2007 by the Department of Health. Belfast contains most of Northern Ireland's regional specialist centres.\nThe Royal Hospitals site in west Belfast (junction of Grosvenor and Falls roads) contains two hospitals. The Royal Victoria Hospital (its origins in a number of successive institutions, beginning in 1797 with The Belfast Fever Hospital) provides both local and regional services. Specialist services include cardiac surgery, critical care and the Regional Trauma Centre. The Children's Hospital (Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children) provides general hospital care for children in Belfast and provides most of the paediatric regional specialities.\nThe Belfast City Hospital (evolved from a 19th-century workhouse and infirmary) on the Lisburn Road is the regional specialist centre for haematology and is home to a najor cancer centre. The Mary G McGeown Regional Nephrology Unit at the City Hospital is the kidney transplant centre and provides regional renal services for Northern Ireland.\nMusgrave Park Hospital in south Belfast specialises in orthopaedics, rheumatology, sports medicine and rehabilitation. It is home to Northern Ireland's first Acquired Brain Injury Unit.\nThe Mater Hospital (founded in 1883 by the Sisters of Mercy) on the Crumlin Road provides a wide range of services, including acute inpatient, emergency and maternity services, to north Belfast and the surrounding areas.\nThe Ulster Hospital, Upper Newtownards Road, Dundonald, on the eastern edge of the city, first founded as the Ulster Hospital for Women and Sick Children in 1872, is the major acute hospital for the South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust. It delivers a full range of outpatient, inpatient and daycare medical and surgical services.\n\nTransport\nBelfast is a relatively car-dependent city by European standards, with an extensive road network including the 22.5 miles (36 km) M2 and M22 motorway route.\nBlack taxis are common in the city, operating on a share basis in some areas. These are outnumbered by private hire taxis. Bus and rail public transport in Northern Ireland is operated by subsidiaries of Translink. Bus services in the city proper and the nearer suburbs are operated by Translink Metro, with services focusing on linking residential districts with the city centre on 12 quality bus corridors running along main radial roads,\nMore distant suburbs are served by Ulsterbus. Northern Ireland Railways provides suburban services along three lines running through Belfast's northern suburbs to Carrickfergus, Larne and Larne Harbour, eastwards towards Bangor and south-westwards towards Lisburn and Portadown. This service is known as the Belfast Suburban Rail system. Belfast is linked directly to Coleraine, Portrush and Derry. Belfast has a direct rail connection with Dublin called Enterprise operated jointly by NIR and the Irish rail company Iarnród Éireann.\nThe city's Europa Bus Centre and Great Victoria Street rail station, are being replaced by a new Belfast Central Station. When completed in 2025, it will be \"the largest integrated transport facility on the island of Ireland\" with bus stands, railway platforms, and facilities for taxis and bicycles.\n\nThe city has two airports: George Best Belfast City Airport, close to the city centre on the eastern shore of Belfast Lough and Belfast International Airport 30–40 minutes to the west on the shore of Lough Neagh. Both operate UK domestic and European flights. The city is also served by Dublin Airport, two hours to the south, with direct inter-continental connections.\nIn addition to its extensive freight business, the Belfast Port offers car-ferry sailings, operated by Stena Line, to Cairnryan in Scotland (5 Sailings Daily. 2 hours 22 minutes) and to Liverpool-Birkenhead (14 sailings weekly. 8 hours). The Isle of Man Steam Packet Company provides a seasonal connection to Douglas, Isle of Man.\nThe Glider bus service is a new form of transport in Belfast. Introduced in 2018, it is a bus rapid transit system linking East Belfast, West Belfast and the Titanic Quarter from the City Centre. Using articulated buses, the £90 million service saw a 17% increase in its first month in Belfast, with 30,000 more people using the Gliders every week. The service is being recognised as helping to modernise the city's public transport.\nNational Cycle Route 9 to Newry, which will eventually connect with Dublin, starts in Belfast.\n\nUtilities\nHalf of Belfast's water is supplied via the Aquarius pipeline from the Silent Valley Reservoir in County Down, created to collect water from the Mourne Mountains. The other half is now supplied from Lough Neagh via Dunore Water Treatment Works in County Antrim. The citizens of Belfast pay for their water in their rates bill. Plans to bring in additional water tariffs were deferred by devolution in May 2007.\nPower is provided from a number of power stations via NIE Networks Limited transmission lines. (Just under a half of electricity consumption in Northern Ireland is generated from renewable sources). Phoenix Natural Gas Ltd. started supplying customers in Larne and Greater Belfast with natural gas in 1996 via the newly constructed Scotland-Northern Ireland pipeline. Rates in Belfast (and the rest of Northern Ireland) were reformed in April 2007. The discrete capital value system means rates bills are determined by the capital value of each domestic property as assessed by the Valuation and Lands Agency.\n\nRecreation and sports\nLeisure centres\nBelfast City Council owns and maintains 17 leisure centres across the city, run on its behalf by the non-profit social enterprise GLL under the 'Better' brand. These include eight large multipurposed centres complete with swimming pools: Ballysillan Leisure Centre and Grove Wellbeing Centre in North Belfast; the Andersonstown, Falls, Shankill and Whiterock leisure centres in West Belfast; Templemore Baths and Lisnasharragh Leisure Centre in East Belfast, and close to the city centre in South Belfast, the Olympia Leisure Centre and Spa,\n\nParks and gardens\nBelfast has over forty parks. The oldest (1828) and one of the most popular parks Botanic Gardens in the Queen's Quarter. Built in the 1830s and designed by Sir Charles Lanyon, its Palm House is one of the earliest examples of a curvilinear and cast iron glasshouse. Other attractions in the park include the recently restored Tropical Ravine, a humid jungle glen built in 1889, rose gardens and public events ranging from live opera broadcasts to pop concerts.\nThe largest municipal park in the city, and closest to the city centre, lies on the right bank of Lagan. The 100-acres of Ormeau Park were opened to the public in 1871 on what was the last demesne of the town's former proprietors, the Chichesters, Marquesses of Donegall.\nIn north Belfast, the Waterworks, two reservoirs to which the public have had access since 1897, are features of a park supporting angling and waterfowl. In 1906, a further water park, Victoria, opened behind industrial dockland on what had been the eastern shore of the Lough. It is now connected through east Belfast by the Connswater Community Greenway which offers 16 km of continuous cycle and walkway through east Belfast.\nThe largest green conservation area within the city's boundaries is a 2,116 hectares patchwork of \"parks, demesnes, woodland and meadows\" stretching upriver along the banks of the Lagan river and canal; Established in 1967, the Lagan Valley Regional Park envelopes in its course, Belvoir Park Forest, which contains ancient oaks and a 12th-century Norman Motte, and Sir Thomas and Lady Dixon Park, whose International Rose Garden attracts thousands of visitors each July.\nColin Glenn Forest Park, the National Trust Divis and the Black Mountain Ridge Trail, and Cave Hill Country Park. offer panoramic views over Belfast and beyond from the west. Climbing the Castlereagh Hills, the National Trust Lisnabreeny Cregagh Glen does the same from the east.\nBelow Cave Hill, the council maintains one of the few local government-funded zoos in the British Isles. The Belfast Zoo houses more than 1,200 animals of 140 species including Asian elephants, Barbary lions, Malayan sun bears (one of the few in the United Kingdom), two species of penguin, a family of western lowland gorillas, a troop of common chimpanzees, a pair of red pandas, a pair of Goodfellow's tree-kangaroos and Francois' langurs. It carries out important conservation work and takes part in European and international breeding programmes which help to ensure the survival of many species under threat.\n\nSports\nBelfast has several notable sports teams playing a diverse variety of sports such as football, Gaelic games, rugby, cricket, and ice hockey. The Belfast Marathon is run annually on May Day, The 41st Marathon in 2023, with related events (Wheelchair Race, Team Relay and 8 Mile Walk) attracted 15,000 participants.\nThe Northern Ireland national football team plays its home matches at Windsor Park. Football clubs with stadia and training grounds in the city include: Linfield, Glentoran, Crusaders, Cliftonville, Donegal Celtic, Harland & Wolff Welders, Dundela, Knockbreda, PSNI, Newington, Sport & Leisure and Brantwood.\nBelfast is home to over twenty Gaelic football and hurling clubs. Casement Park in west Belfast, home to the Antrim county teams, had a capacity of 31,500 making it the second largest Gaelic Athletic Association ground in Ulster. Listed as one of the venues for the UK and Ireland's successful UEFA Euro 2028 bid, with co-funding from the Irish government there are plans for a complete rebuild. In May 2020, the foundation of East Belfast GAA returned Gaelic Games to East Belfast after decades of its absence in the area. The current club president is Irish-language enthusiast Linda Ervine who comes from a unionist background in the area. The team currently plays in the Down Senior County League.\nThe 1999 Heineken Cup champions Ulster Rugby play at Ravenhill Stadium in the south of the city. Belfast has four teams in rugby's All-Ireland League: Belfast Harlequins in Division 1B; and Instonians, Queen's University and Malone in Division 2A.\nBelfast is home to the Stormont cricket ground since 1949 and was the venue for the Irish cricket team's first ever One Day International against England in 2006.\nThe 9,500 capacity SSE Arena accommodates the Belfast Giants, one of the biggest ice hockey clubs in the UK. Featuring Canadian, ex-NHL players, the club competes the British Elite Ice Hockey League.\nBelfast was the home town of former Manchester United player George Best, the 1968 European Footballer of the Year, who died in November 2005. On the day he was buried in the city, 100,000 people lined the route from his home on the Cregagh Road to Roselawn cemetery. Since his death the City Airport was named after him and a trust has been set up to fund a memorial to him in the city centre. Other sportspeople celebrated in the city include double world snooker champion Alex \"Hurricane\" Higgins and world champion boxers Wayne McCullough, Rinty Monaghan and Carl Frampton.\n\nClimate\nAt 54°35′49″N 05°55′45″W, its northern latitude is characterised by short winter days and long summer evenings. During the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, local sunset is before 16:00 while sunrise is around 08:45. At the summer solstice in June, the sun sets after 22:00 and rises before 05:00.\nFor this northern latitude, thanks to the influence of the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic Drift, Belfast has a comparatively mild climate. In summer the temperatures rarely range above 25 °C (77 °F) or dip in winter below −5 °C (23 °F). The maritime influence, also ensures that the city gets significant precipitation. On 157 days in an average year, rainfall is greater than 1 mm. Average annual rainfall is 846 millimetres (33.3 in), less than areas of northern England or most of Scotland, but higher than Dublin or the south-east coast of Ireland.\nWith its moderate temperatures and abundant rainfall, Belfast's climate is defined as a temperate oceanic climate (Cfb in the Köppen climate classification system), a classification it shares with most of northwest Europe.\n\nIn fiction\nJohn Greer Ervine, The Wayward Man (1927)\nF. L. Green, Odd Man Out (1945), basis of Odd Man Out, a 1947 British film noir directed by Carol Reed, and starring James Mason, Robert Newton.\nBrian Moore, The Emperor of Ice Cream (1965).\nMaurice Leitch, Silver's City (1981)\nBernard MacLaverty, Cal (1983)\nRobert McLiam Wilson, Eureka Street (1996)\nLucy Caldwell, Where They Were Missed (2005)\nAnna Burns, Milkman (2018)\nLouise Kennedy, Trespasses (2022)\nMichael Magee, Close to Home (2023)\n\nNotable people\nTwin towns – sister cities\nBelfast City Council takes part in the twinning scheme, and is twinned with the following sister cities:\n\nNashville, Tennessee, United States (since 1994)\nHefei, Anhui Province, China (since 2005)\nBoston, Massachusetts, United States (since 2014)\nShenyang, Liaoning Province, China (since 2016)\nMelbourne, Victoria, Australia\n\nFreedom of the City\nThose who have received the Freedom of the City\n\nSir Kenneth Branagh: 30 January 2018.\nAndrew Carnegie: 28 September 1910.\nSir Winston Churchill: 16 December 1955.\nBill Clinton, 9 April 2018\nSir Robert Hart, 1 July 1908\nJohn Hewitt: 26 May 1983\nSir John Jordan: 28 September 1910.\nMichael Longley: 23 March 2015\nGeorge J. Mitchell, 9 April 2018\nNurses of Belfast, 1 December 2015\nRoyal Ulster Constabulary and Reserve: 30 May 1980\nWilliam Pirrie, 1st Viscount Pirrie: 1898, the first person to be awarded Freedom Of The City of Belfast.\n\nNotes\nReferences\nBibliography\nJonathan Bardon (1982), Belfast An illustrated History. Belfast: Blackstaff Press, ISBN 0-85640-272-9\nJ. C. Beckett et al. (1983), Belfast, The Making of a City. Belfast: Appletree Press, ISBN 0-86281-100-7\nCiaran Carson (1997), The Star Factory. London: Granta Books, ISBN 9781862071179\nFeargal Cochrane (2023), Belfast: The Story of a City and its People. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-26444-9\nS. J. Connolly ed. (2012), Belfast 400: People, Place and History, Liverpool University Press. ISBN 978-1-84631-635-7\nMaurice Goldring (1991), Belfast, From Loyalty to Rebellion. London: Lawrence & Wishart, ISBN 978-0-85315-722-81\nRobert Johnstone (1990), Belfast, Portraits of a City, London: Barrie & Jenkins. ISBN 978-0-7126-3744-2\nWilliam Maguire (2009), Belfast, A History, Lancaster: Carnegie. ISBN 978-1-85936-189-4\nBill Meulemans (2013), Belfast, Both Sides Now. Create Space. ISBN 978-1-4791-9541-1\nRaymond O'Regan (2010), Hidden Belfast: Benevolence, Blackguards and Balloon Heads. Dublin: Mercier Press. ISBN 978-1-85635-683-1\nRaymond O'Regan, Arthur Magee (2014), The Little Book of Belfast. The History Press. ISBN 978-1-84588-803-9\nMarcus Patton (1993), Central Belfast, An Historical Gazetteer. Belfast: Ulster Architectural Heritage Society. ISBN 0-900457-44-9\n\n\n== External links ==","title":"Belfast"}],"string":"[\n {\n \"idx\": 0,\n \"is_supporting\": true,\n \"paragraph_text\": \"HMHS Britannic (originally to be the RMS Britannic) () was the third and final vessel of the White Star Line's Olympic class of steamships and the second White Star ship to bear the name Britannic. She was the youngest sister of the RMS Olympic and the RMS Titanic and was intended to enter service as a transatlantic passenger liner. She was operated as a hospital ship from 1915 until her sinking near the Greek island of Kea, in the Aegean Sea, in November 1916. At the time she was the largest hospital ship in the world.\\nBritannic was launched just before the start of the First World War. She was designed to be the safest of the three ships with design changes made during construction due to lessons learned from the sinking of the Titanic. She was laid up at her builders, Harland and Wolff, in Belfast for many months before being requisitioned as a hospital ship. In 1915 and 1916 she served between the United Kingdom and the Dardanelles. \\nOn the morning of 21 November 1916 she hit a naval mine of the Imperial German Navy near the Greek island of Kea and sank 55 minutes later, killing 30 people. There were 1,066 people on board; the 1,036 survivors were rescued from the water and lifeboats. Britannic was the largest ship lost in the First World War.\\nAfter the First World War, the White Star Line was compensated for the loss of Britannic by the award of SS Bismarck as part of postwar reparations; she entered service as RMS Majestic.\\nThe wreck was located and explored by Jacques Cousteau in 1975. The vessel is the largest intact passenger ship on the seabed in the world. It was bought in 1996 and is currently owned by Simon Mills, a maritime historian.\\n\\nCharacteristics\\nThe original dimensions of Britannic were similar to those of her older sisters, but her dimensions were altered whilst still on the building stocks after the loss of Titanic. With a gross tonnage of 48,158, she surpassed her older sisters in terms of internal volume, but this did not make her the largest passenger ship in service at that time; the German SS Vaterland held this title with a significantly higher tonnage.\\nThe Olympic-class ships were propelled by a combined system of two triple-expansion steam engines which powered the three-bladed outboard wing propellers whilst a low-pressure steam turbine used steam exhausted from the two reciprocating engines to power the central four-bladed propeller giving a maximum speed of 23 knots.\\n\\nPost-Titanic design changes\\nBritannic had a similar layout to her sister ships. Following the Titanic disaster and the subsequent inquiries, several design changes were made to the remaining Olympic-class liners. With Britannic, these changes made before launch included increasing the ship's beam to 94 feet (29 m) to allow for a double hull along the engine and boiler rooms and raising six out of the 15 watertight bulkheads up to B Deck. Additionally, a larger 18,000 horsepower (13,000 kW) turbine was added instead of the 16,000 horsepower (12,000 kW) units installed on the earlier vessels to make up for the increase in hull width. The central watertight compartments were enhanced, allowing the ship to stay afloat with six compartments flooded.\\nExternally the largest visual change was the fitting of large crane-like gantry davits, each powered by an electric motor and capable of launching six lifeboats which were stored on gantries; the ship was designed to have eight sets of gantry davits but only five were installed before Britannic entered war service, with the difference being made up with boats launched by manually operated Welin-type davits as on Titanic and Olympic.\\nAdditional lifeboats could be stored within reach of the davits on the deckhouse roof, and the gantry davits could reach lifeboats on the other side of the ship, providing that none of the funnels was obstructing the way. This design enabled all the lifeboats to be launched, even if the ship developed a list that would normally prevent lifeboats from being launched on the side opposite to the list. Several of these davits were placed abreast of funnels, defeating that purpose. The elevators, which previously stopped at A deck, could now reach the boat deck. The ship carried 48 lifeboats, capable of carrying at least 75 people each. Thus, at least 3,600 people could be carried by the lifeboats, which was well above the ship's maximum capacity of 3,309.\\n\\nHistory\\nConception\\nIn 1907, J. Bruce Ismay, director general of the White Star Line, and Lord Pirrie, chairman of the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast had decided to build a trio of ocean liners of unmatched size to compete with the Cunard Line's Lusitania and Mauretania not in terms of speed but in terms of luxury and safety. The names of the three vessels were decided at a later date and they showed the intention of the designers regarding their size: Olympic, Titanic and Britannic.\\nConstruction of the Olympic and the Titanic began in 1908 and 1909 respectively. Their sizes were so large that it was necessary to build the Arrol Gantry to shelter them, wide enough to span the two new building slips and allow two ships to be built at a time. The three ships were designed to be 270 metres long and to have a gross tonnage of over 45,000. Their designed speed was approximately 22 knots, well below that of the Lusitania and Mauretania, but still allowing for a transatlantic crossing of less than one week.\\n\\nRumoured name-change\\nAlthough the White Star Line and the Harland and Wolff shipyard always denied it, some sources claim that Britannic was to be named Gigantic, but her name was changed so as not to compete with Titanic or create comparisons. One source is a poster of the ship with the name Gigantic at the top. Other sources are November 1911 American newspapers stating the White Star order for Gigantic being placed, as well as other newspapers from around the world both during construction and immediately after the sinking of the Titanic.\\nTom McCluskie stated that in his capacity as archive manager and historian at Harland and Wolff, he \\\"never saw any official reference to the name Gigantic being used or proposed for the third of the Olympic-class vessels\\\". Some hand-written changes were added to the order book and dated January 1912. These only dealt with the ship's moulded width, not her name.\\n\\nConstruction\\nBritannic's keel was laid on 30 November 1911 at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, on the gantry slip previously occupied by Olympic, 13 months after the launch of that ship, and Arlanza, launched seven days before. The acquisition of the ship was planned to be at the beginning of 1914. Due to improvements introduced as a consequence of the Titanic's disaster, Britannic was not launched until 26 February 1914, which was filmed along with the fitting of a funnel. Several speeches were given in front of the press, and a dinner was organised in honour of the launching. Fitting out began subsequently. The ship entered dry dock in September and her propellers were installed.\\nReusing Olympic's space saved the shipyard time and money by not clearing out a third slip similar in size to those used for the two previous vessels. In August 1914, before Britannic could commence transatlantic service between New York and Southampton, the First World War began. Immediately, all shipyards with Admiralty contracts were given priority to use available raw materials. All civil contracts including Britannic were slowed.\\nThe naval authorities requisitioned a large number of ships as armed merchant cruisers or for troop transport. The Admiralty paid the companies for the use of their ships but the risk of losing a ship in naval operations was high. The larger ocean liners were not initially taken for naval use, because smaller ships were easier to operate. Olympic returned to Belfast on 3 November 1914, while work on Britannic continued slowly.\\n\\nRequisition\\nThe need for increased tonnage grew critical as naval operations extended to the Eastern Mediterranean. In May 1915, Britannic completed mooring trials of her engines, and was prepared for emergency entrance into service with as little as four weeks' notice. The same month also saw the first major loss of a civilian ocean liner when Cunard's RMS Lusitania was torpedoed near the Irish coast by SM U-20.\\nThe following month, the Admiralty decided to use recently requisitioned passenger liners as troop transports in the Gallipoli Campaign (also called the Dardanelles service). The first to sail were Cunard's RMS Mauretania and RMS Aquitania. As the Gallipoli landings proved to be disastrous and the casualties mounted, the need for large hospital ships for treatment and evacuation of wounded became evident. Aquitania was diverted to hospital ship duties in August (her place as a troop transport would be taken by Olympic in September). Then on 13 November 1915, Britannic was requisitioned as a hospital ship from her storage location at Belfast.\\nRepainted white with large red crosses and a horizontal green stripe, she was renamed HMHS (His Majesty's Hospital Ship) Britannic and placed under the command of Captain Charles Alfred Bartlett. In the interior, 3,309 beds and several operating rooms were installed. The common areas of the upper decks were transformed into rooms for the wounded. The cabins of B Deck were used to house doctors. The first-class dining room and the first-class reception room on D Deck were transformed into operating rooms. The lower bridge was used to accommodate the lightly wounded. The medical equipment was installed on 12 December 1915.\\n\\nFirst service\\nWhen declared fit for service on 12 December 1915 at Liverpool, Britannic was assigned a medical team consisting of 101 nurses, 336 non-commissioned officers and 52 commissioned officers as well as a crew of 675 people. On 23 December, she left Liverpool to join the port of Mudros on the island of Lemnos on the Aegean Sea to bring back sick and wounded soldiers. She joined with several ships on the same route, including Mauretania, Aquitania, and her sister ship Olympic. The four ships were joined a little later by Statendam. She made a stopover at Naples before continuing to Mudros, in order for her stock of coal to be replenished. After she returned, she spent four weeks as a floating hospital off the Isle of Wight.\\nThe third voyage was from 20 March 1916 to 4 April. The Dardanelles was evacuated in January. At the end of her military service on 6 June 1916, Britannic returned to Belfast to undergo the necessary modifications for transforming her into a transatlantic passenger liner. The British government paid the White Star Line £75,000 to compensate for the conversion. The transformation took place for several months before being interrupted by a recall of the ship back into military service.\\n\\nRecalled\\nThe Admiralty recalled Britannic back into service as a hospital ship on 26 August 1916, and the ship returned to the Mediterranean Sea for a fourth voyage on 24 September of that year. On 29 September on her way to Naples, she encountered a violent storm from which she emerged unscathed. She left on 9 October for Southampton. Then, she made a fifth trip, which was marked by a quarantining of the crew when the ship arrived at Mudros (now Moudros) because of food-borne illness.\\nLife aboard the ship followed a routine. At six o'clock, the patients were awakened and the premises were cleaned up. Breakfast was served at 6:30 AM, then the captain toured the ship for an inspection. Lunch was served at 12:30 PM and tea at 4:30 PM. Patients were treated between meals and those who wished to go for a walk could do so. At 8:30 PM, the patients went to bed and the captain made another inspection tour. There were medical classes available for training the nurses.\\n\\nLast voyage\\nAfter completing five successful voyages to the Middle Eastern theatre and back to the United Kingdom transporting the sick and wounded, Britannic departed Southampton for Lemnos at 14:23 on 12 November 1916, her sixth voyage to the Mediterranean Sea. The ship passed Gibraltar around midnight on 15 November and arrived at Naples on the morning of 17 November, for her usual coaling and water-refuelling stop, completing the first stage of her mission.\\nA storm kept the ship at Naples until Sunday afternoon when Captain Bartlett decided to take advantage of a brief break in the weather and continue. The seas rose once again as Britannic left the port. By the next morning, the storms died and the ship passed the Strait of Messina without problems. Cape Matapan was rounded in the first hours of 21 November. By morning, Britannic was steaming at full speed into the Kea Channel, between Cape Sounion (the southernmost point of Attica, the prefecture that includes Athens) and the island of Kea.\\nThere were 1,066 people on board: 673 crew, 315 Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC), 77 nurses, and the captain.\\n\\nExplosion\\nAt 08:12 am European Eastern Time Britannic was rocked by an explosion after hitting a mine. The mines had been planted in the Kea Channel on 21 October 1916 by SM U-73 under the command of Gustav Sieß.\\nThe reaction in the dining room was immediate; doctors and nurses left instantly for their posts but not everybody reacted the same way, as further aft, the power of the explosion was less felt, and many thought the ship had hit a smaller boat. Captain Bartlett and Chief Officer Hume were on the bridge at the time and the gravity of the situation was soon evident. The explosion was on the starboard side, between holds two and three. The force of the explosion damaged the watertight bulkhead between hold one and the forepeak. The first four watertight compartments were filling rapidly with water, the boiler-man's tunnel connecting the firemen's quarters in the bow with boiler room six was seriously damaged, and water was flowing into that boiler room.\\nBartlett ordered the watertight doors closed, sent a distress signal, and ordered the crew to prepare the lifeboats. An SOS signal was immediately sent out and was received by several other ships in the area, among them HMS Scourge and HMS Heroic, but Britannic heard nothing in reply. Unknown to either Bartlett or the ship's wireless operator, the force of the first explosion had caused the antenna wires slung between the ship's masts to snap. This meant that although the ship could still send out transmissions by radio, she could no longer receive them.\\nAlong with the damaged watertight door of the firemen's tunnel, the watertight door between boiler rooms six and five failed to close properly. Water was flowing further aft into boiler room five. Britannic had reached her flooding limit. She could stay afloat (motionless) with her first six watertight compartments flooded. There were five watertight bulkheads rising all the way up to B Deck. Those measures had been taken after the Titanic disaster (Titanic could float with only her first four compartments flooded).\\nThe next crucial bulkhead between boiler rooms five and four and its door were undamaged and should have guaranteed the ship's survival. However, there were open portholes along the front lower decks, which tilted underwater within minutes of the explosion. The nurses had opened most of those portholes to ventilate the wards, against standing orders. As the ship's angle of list increased, water reached this level and began entering aft from the bulkhead between boiler rooms five and four. With more than six compartments flooded, Britannic could not stay afloat.\\n\\nEvacuation\\nOn the bridge, Captain Bartlett was already considering efforts to save the ship. Only two minutes after the blast, boiler rooms five and six had to be evacuated. In about ten minutes, Britannic was roughly in the same condition Titanic had been in one hour after the collision with the iceberg. Fifteen minutes after the ship was struck, the open portholes on E Deck were underwater. With water also entering her aft section from the bulkhead between boiler rooms four and five, Britannic quickly developed a serious list to starboard.\\nBartlett gave the order to turn starboard towards the island of Kea in an attempt to beach her. The effect of Britannic's starboard list and the weight of the rudder made attempts to navigate the ship under her own power difficult, and the steering gear had been knocked out by the explosion, which eliminated steering by the rudder. The captain ordered the port shaft driven at a higher speed than the starboard side, which helped the ship move towards Kea.\\nAt the same time, the hospital staff prepared to evacuate. Bartlett had given the order to prepare the lifeboats, but he did not allow them to be lowered into the water. Everyone took their most valuable belongings with them before they evacuated. The chaplain of the ship recovered his Bible. The few patients and nurses on board were assembled. Major Harold Priestley gathered his detachments from the Royal Army Medical Corps to the back of the A deck and inspected the cabins to ensure no one was left behind.\\nWhile Bartlett continued his desperate manoeuvre, Britannic's list steadily increased. Fearing that the list would become too large to launch, some crew decided to launch lifeboats without waiting for the order to do so. Two lifeboats were put onto the water on the port side without permission by Third Officer Francis Laws. These boats were drawn towards the still-turning, partly surfaced propellers. Bartlett ordered the engines to stop but before this could take effect, the two boats were drawn into the propellers, completely destroying both and killing 30 people. Bartlett was able to stop the engines before any more boats were lost.\\n\\nFinal moments\\nBy 08:50, most of those on board had escaped in the 35 successfully launched lifeboats. At this point, Bartlett concluded that the rate at which Britannic was sinking had slowed so he called a halt to the evacuation and ordered the engines restarted in the hope that he might still be able to beach the ship. At 09:00 Bartlett was informed that the rate of flooding had increased due to the ship's forward motion and that the flooding had reached D-deck. Realising that there was now no hope of reaching land in time, Bartlett gave the final order to stop the engines and sounded two final long blasts of the whistle, the signal to abandon ship. As water reached the bridge, he and Assistant Commander Dyke walked off onto the deck and entered the water, swimming to a collapsible boat from which they continued to coordinate the rescue operations.\\nBritannic gradually capsized to starboard, and the funnels collapsed one after the other as the ship rapidly sank. By the time the stern was out of the water, the bow had already slammed into the seabed. As Britannic's length was greater than the depth of the water, the impact caused major structural damage to the bow before she slipped completely beneath the waves at 09:07, 55 minutes after the explosion. Violet Jessop (who was one of the survivors of the Titanic, and had also been on board when the Olympic collided with HMS Hawke) described the last seconds:\\n\\nShe dipped her head a little, then a little lower and still lower. All the deck machinery fell into the sea like a child's toys. Then she took a fearful plunge, her stern rearing hundreds of feet into the air until with a final roar, she disappeared into the depths, the noise of her going resounding through the water with undreamt-of violence....\\nWhen the Britannic came to rest, she became the largest ship lost in the First World War and the world's largest sunken passenger ship.\\n\\nRescue\\nCompared to Titanic, the rescue of Britannic was facilitated by three factors: The water temperature was higher (20 °C (68 °F) compared to −2 °C (28 °F) for Titanic), more lifeboats were available (35 were successfully launched and stayed afloat compared to Titanic's 20), and help was closer (it arrived less than two hours after first distress call compared to three and a half hours for Titanic).\\nThe first to arrive on the scene were fishermen from Kea on their caïque, who picked many survivors from the water. At 10:00, HMS Scourge sighted the first lifeboats and 10 minutes later stopped and picked up 339 survivors. Armed boarding steamer HMS Heroic had arrived some minutes earlier and picked up 494. Some 150 had made it to Korissia, Kea, where surviving doctors and nurses from Britannic were trying to save the injured, using aprons and pieces of lifebelts to make dressings. A little barren quayside served as their operating room.\\nScourge and Heroic had no deck space for more survivors, and they left for Piraeus signalling the presence of those remaining at Korissia. HMS Foxhound arrived at 11:45 and, after sweeping the area, anchored in the small port at 13:00 to offer medical assistance and take on board the remaining survivors. At 14:00 the light cruiser HMS Foresight arrived. Foxhound departed for Piraeus at 14:15 while Foresight remained to arrange the burial on Kea of RAMC Sergeant William Sharpe, who had died of his injuries. Another two survivors died on the Heroic and one on the French tug Goliath. The three were buried with military honours in the Piraeus Naval and Consular Cemetery. The last fatality was G. Honeycott, who died at the Russian Hospital at Piraeus shortly after the funerals.\\nIn total, out of the 1,066 people on board, 1,036 people survived the sinking. Thirty people lost their lives in the disaster but only five were buried; others were not recovered and are honoured on memorials in Thessaloniki (the Mikra Memorial) and London. Another 38 were injured (18 crew, 20 RAMC). Survivors were accommodated in the warships that were anchored at the port of Piraeus while nurses and officers were hosted in separate hotels at Phaleron. Many Greek citizens and officials attended the funerals. Survivors were sent home and few arrived in the United Kingdom before Christmas.\\nIn November 2006, Britannic researcher Michail Michailakis discovered that one of the 45 unidentified graves in the New British Cemetery in the town of Hermoupolis on the island of Syros contained the remains of a soldier collected from the church of Ag. Trias at Livadi (the former name of Korissia). Maritime historian Simon Mills contacted the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Further research established that this soldier was a Britannic casualty and his remains had been registered in October 1919 as belonging to a certain \\\"Corporal Stevens\\\".\\nWhen the remains were moved to the new cemetery at Syros in June 1921, it was found that there was no record relating this name with the loss of the ship, and the grave was registered as unidentified. Mills provided evidence that this man could be Sergeant Sharpe and the case was considered by the Service Personnel and Veterans Agency. A new headstone for Sharpe was erected and the CWGC has updated its database.\\n\\nVisualised as an ocean liner\\nThe plan of Britannic showed that she was intended to be more luxurious than her sister ships in order to compete with SS Imperator, SS Vaterland and RMS Aquitania. Enough cabins were provided for passengers divided into three classes. The White Star Line anticipated a considerable change in its customer base. Thus, the quality of the Third Class (intended for migrants) was lowered when compared to that of her sisters, while the quality of the Second Class increased. In addition, the number of crew planned was increased from about 860 – 880 onboard Olympic and Titanic to 950 aboard Britannic.\\nThe quality of the First Class was also improved. Children began to appear as part of the clientele that needed to be satisfied, and thus a playroom for them was built on the boat deck. Similar to her two sister ships, the first class amenities included the Grand Staircase, but Britannic's amenities were more sumptuous, with worked balustrades, decorative panels and a pipe organ. The A Deck of the ship was devoted in its entirety to the First Class, being fitted with a salon, two veranda cafes, a smoking room and a reading room. The B Deck included a hair salon, post office, and redesigned deluxe Parlour Suites, dubbed Saloons in the Builder's Plans. The most important addition was that of individual bathrooms in almost every First Class cabin, which would have been a first on an ocean liner. Aboard the Olympic and Titanic, most passengers had to use public bathrooms.\\nThese facilities were installed but were soon removed because the ship was converted to a hospital ship and were never re-installed because the ship sank before she could enter transatlantic service, so the planned facilities were either cancelled, destroyed, reused on other vessels, like the Olympic or Majestic, or just never used. Of these accessories, only a large staircase and a children's playroom remained installed. Under the glass dome was a white wall above the first-class staircase instead of a clock and a large painting.\\n\\nPipe organ\\nA Welte philharmonic organ was planned to be installed on board Britannic but because of the outbreak of war, the instrument never made its way to Belfast from Germany. After the war, it was not claimed by Harland and Wolff since Britannic sank before she could have ever entered transatlantic service. It also was not installed on Olympic or Majestic since White Star Line did not want it. For a long time, it was thought that the organ was lost or destroyed.\\nIn April 2007, the restorers of a Welte organ, now in the Museum für Musikautomaten in Seewen, Switzerland, detected that the main parts of the instrument were signed by the German organ builders with \\\"Britanik\\\". A photograph of a drawing in a company prospectus, found in the Welte-legacy in the Augustiner Museum in Freiburg, proved that this was the organ intended for Britannic. It was found that Welte had first sold the organ to a private owner in Stuttgart instead. Later, in 1937 it had been transferred to a company's concert hall in Wipperfürth, where it was eventually acquired by the founder of the Swiss Museum of Music Automatons in 1969. At the time, the museum was still unaware of the organ's original history. The museum maintains the organ in working condition and it is still used for fully automated and manual performances.\\n\\nWreck\\nThe wreck of HMHS Britannic is at 37°42′05″N 24°17′02″E in about 400 feet (122 m) of water. It was discovered on 3 December 1975 by Jacques Cousteau, who explored it. In filming the expedition, Cousteau also held conference on camera with several surviving personnel from the ship including Sheila MacBeth Mitchell, a survivor of the sinking. In 1976, Cousteau entered the wreck with his divers for the first time. He expressed the opinion that the ship had been sunk by a single torpedo, basing this opinion on the damage to her plates.\\nThe giant liner lies on her starboard side relatively intact, hiding the large hole that was torn open by the mine. There is a huge hole just beneath the forward well deck. The bow is heavily deformed and attached to the rest of the hull only by some pieces of C-Deck. The crew's quarters in the forecastle were found to be in good shape with many details still visible. The holds were found empty.\\nThe forecastle machinery and the two cargo cranes in the forward well deck are well preserved. The foremast is bent and lies on the seabed near the wreck with the crow's nest still attached. The bell, thought to be lost, was found in a dive in 2019, having fallen from the mast and is now lying directly below the crow's nest on the seabed. Funnel number 1 was found a few metres from the Boat Deck. Funnel numbers two, three, and four were found in the debris field (located off the stern). Pieces of coal lie beside the wreck.\\nIn mid-1995, in an expedition filmed by NOVA, Dr Robert Ballard, best known for having discovered the wrecks of Titanic in 1985, and the German battleship Bismarck in 1989, visited the wreck, using advanced side-scan sonar. Images were obtained from remotely controlled vehicles, but the wreck was not penetrated. Ballard found all the ship's funnels in surprisingly good condition. Attempts to find mine anchors failed.\\nIn August 1996, the wreck was bought by Simon Mills, who has written two books about the ship: Britannic – The Last Titan and Hostage To Fortune.\\nIn November 1997, an international team of divers led by Kevin Gurr used open-circuit trimix diving techniques to visit and film the wreck in the newly available DV digital video format.\\nIn September 1998, another team of divers made an expedition to the wreck. Using diver propulsion vehicles, the team made more man-dives to the wreck and produced more images than ever before, including video of four telegraphs, a helm and a telemotor on the captain's bridge.\\nIn 1999 GUE divers acclimated to cave diving and ocean discovery led the first dive expedition to include extensive penetration into Britannic. Video of the expedition was broadcast by National Geographic, BBC, the History Channel and the Discovery Channel.\\nIn September 2003, an expedition led by Carl Spencer dived into the wreck. This was the first expedition to dive Britannic where all the bottom divers were using closed circuit rebreathers (CCR). Diver Leigh Bishop brought back some of the first photographs from inside the wreck and his diver partner Rich Stevenson found that several watertight doors were open. It has been suggested that this was because the mine strike coincided with the change of watches. Alternatively, the explosion may have distorted the doorframes. A number of mine anchors were located off the wreck by sonar expert Bill Smith, confirming the German records of U-73 that Britannic was sunk by a single mine and the damage was compounded by open portholes and watertight doors. Spencer's expedition was broadcast extensively across the world for many years by National Geographic and the UK's Channel 5.\\nIn 2006, an expedition, funded and filmed by the History Channel, brought together fourteen skilled divers to help determine what caused the quick sinking of Britannic. After preparation the crew dived on the wreck site on 17 September. Time was cut short when silt was kicked up, causing zero visibility conditions, and the two divers narrowly escaped with their lives. One last dive was to be attempted on Britannic's boiler room, but it was discovered that photographing this far inside the wreck would lead to violating a permit issued by the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities, a department within the Greek Ministry of Culture.\\nPartly because of a barrier in languages, a last-minute plea was turned down by the department. The expedition was unable to determine the cause of the rapid sinking, but hours of footage were filmed and important data was documented. The Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities later recognised the importance of this mission and extended an invitation to revisit the wreck under less stringent rules.\\nOn 24 May 2009, Carl Spencer, drawn back to his third underwater filming mission of Britannic, died in Greece due to equipment difficulties while filming the wreck for National Geographic.\\nIn 2012, on an expedition organised by Alexander Sotiriou and Paul Lijnen, divers using rebreathers installed and recovered scientific equipment used for environmental purposes, to determine how fast bacteria are eating Britannic's iron compared to Titanic.\\nOn 29 September 2019, a British technical diver, Tim Saville, died during a 120 m / 393 ft dive on Britannic's wreck.\\n\\nLegacy\\nHaving her career cut short in wartime, never having entered commercial service, and having had few victims, Britannic did not experience the same notoriety as her sister ship Titanic. After being largely forgotten by the public, she finally gained fame when her wreck was discovered. Her name was reused by the White Star Line when it put MV Britannic into service in 1930. That ship was the last to fly the flag of the company when it retired in 1960.\\nAfter Germany capitulated at the end of the First World War followed by the Treaty of Versailles, it handed over some of its ocean liners as war reparations, two of which were given to the company. The first, the Bismarck, renamed Majestic, replaced the Britannic. The second, the Columbus, renamed the Homeric, compensated for other ships lost in the conflict.\\nThe last survivor, George Perman, died on the 24th of May 2000, just shy of his 100th birthday. At the time of the sinking, he was a 15-year-old Scout working on Britannic, and the youngest person onboard the ship.\\n\\nIn popular culture\\nThe sinking of the ship was dramatised in a 2000 television film called Britannic that featured Edward Atterton, Amanda Ryan, Jacqueline Bisset and John Rhys-Davies. The film was an entirely fictitious account featuring a German agent sabotaging the ship, because the Britannic was secretly carrying munitions. Titanic has a cameo during the flashback sequence of Violet Jessop's account of the sinking.\\nA BBC2 documentary, Titanic's Tragic Twin – the Britannic Disaster, was broadcast on 5 December 2016; presented by Kate Humble and Andy Torbet, it used up-to-date underwater film of the wreck and spoke to relatives of survivors.\\nThe historical docudrama The Mystery Of The Britannic was released in 2017, in which the maritime explorer Richard Kohler investigates the ship's last voyage.\\nAlma Katsu's 2020 novel The Deep was set partly on the Britannic, and on its sister ship the Titanic, and centred around the sinking of both ships.\\nThe Gigantic, the apparent setting of the 2009 escape-room game Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, references the Britannic as a sister ship of the Titanic retrofitted as a hospital ship.\\n\\nPostcards\\nReferences\\nBibliography\\nBrewster, Hugh; Coulter, Laurie (1998). 882 1/2 Amazing Answers to your Questions about the Titanic. Madison Press Book. ISBN 978-0-590-18730-5.\\nChirnside, Mark (2011) [2004]. The Olympic-Class Ships. Stroud: Tempus. ISBN 978-0-7524-2868-0.\\nLord, Walter (2005) [1955]. A Night to Remember. New York: St. Martin's Griffin. ISBN 978-0-8050-7764-3.\\nLe Goff, Olivier (1998). Les Plus Beaux Paquebots du Monde (in French). Solar. ISBN 9782263027994.\\nLynch, John (2012). Belfast Built Ships. The History Press. ISBN 978-0-7524-6539-5.\\nPiouffre, Gérard (2009). Le Titanic ne répond plus (in French). Larousse. ISBN 978-2-263-02799-4.\\n\\nFurther reading\\nMills, Simon (1992). H.M.H.S. \\\"Britannic\\\": Last Titan. Dorset: Waterfront Publications. ISBN 0-946184-71-2.\\nMills, Simon (2002). Hostage to Fortune: the dramatic story of the last Olympian, HMHS Britannic. Chesham, England: Wordsmith. ISBN 1-899493-03-4.\\nMills, Simon (2019). Exploring the Britannic: The Life, Last Voyage and Wreck of Titanic's Tragic Twin. London: Adlard Coles. ISBN 978-1-4729-5492-3.\\nLayton, J. Kent (2013). The Edwardian Superliners: a trio of trios. Amberley. ISBN 978-1-4456-1438-0.\\nKohler, Richie; Hudson, Charlie (2016). Mystery of the Last Olympian: Titanic's Tragic Sister Britannic. Best Publishing Company. ISBN 978-1930536869.\\n\\nExternal links\\n\\nNewsreel footage of the construction of HMHS Britannic, 1914\\nMaritimequest HMHS Britannic Photo Gallery\\nBritannic Home at Atlantic Liners\\nNOVA Online-Titanic's Lost Sister (Companion website to the PBS special Titanic's Lost Sister)\\nHospital Ship Britannic\\nAbout the origins of the Britannic Organ Archived 10 July 2021 at the Wayback Machine\\nImages of HMHS Britannic Archived 22 April 2014 at the Wayback Machine at the English Heritage Archive\\nBritish Pathé gallery on the Olympic class\\nDeck plans of Britannic as an ocean liner\",\n \"title\": \"HMHS_Britannic\"\n },\n {\n \"idx\": 1,\n \"is_supporting\": true,\n \"paragraph_text\": \"Belfast ( BEL-fast, -fahst; from Irish: Béal Feirste [bʲeːlˠ ˈfʲɛɾˠ(ə)ʃtʲə]) is the capital city and principal port of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan and connected to the open sea through Belfast Lough and the North Channel. It is the second-largest city on the island of Ireland (after Dublin), with an estimated population of 348,005 in 2022, and a metropolitan area population of 671,559.\\nFirst chartered as an English settlement in 1613, the town's early growth was driven by an influx of Scottish Presbyterians. Their descendants' disaffection with Ireland's Anglican establishment contributed to the rebellion of 1798, and to the union with Great Britain in 1800 — later regarded as a key to the town's industrial transformation. When granted city status in 1888, Belfast was the world's largest centre of linen manufacture, and by the 1900s her shipyards were building up to a quarter of total United Kingdom tonnage.\\nSectarian tensions accompanied the growth of an Irish Catholic population drawn by mill and factory employment from western districts. Heightened by division over Ireland's future in the United Kingdom, these twice erupted in periods of sustained violence: in 1920–22, as Belfast emerged as the capital of the six northeast counties retaining the British connection, and over three decades from the late 1960s during which the British Army was continually deployed on the streets. A legacy of conflict is the barrier-reinforced separation of Protestant and Catholic working-class districts.\\nSince the 1998 Belfast Agreement, the electoral balance in the once unionist-controlled city has shifted, albeit with no overall majority, in favour of Irish nationalists. At the same time, new immigrants are adding to the growing number of residents unwilling to identify with either of the two communal traditions.\\nBelfast has seen significant services sector growth, with important contributions from financial technology (fintech), from tourism and, with facilities in the redeveloped Harbour Estate, from film. It retains a port with commercial and industrial docks, including a reduced Harland & Wolff shipyard and aerospace and defence contractors. Post Brexit, Belfast and Northern Ireland remain, uniquely, within both the British domestic and European Single trading areas for goods.\\nThe city is served by two airports: George Best Belfast City Airport on the Lough shore and Belfast International Airport 15 miles (24 kilometres) west of the city. It supports two universities: on the north-side of the city centre, Ulster University, and on the southside the longer established Queens University. Since 2021, Belfast has been a UNESCO designated City of Music.\\n\\nHistory\\nName\\nThe name Belfast derives from the Irish Béal Feirste (Irish pronunciation: [bʲeːlˠ ˈfʲɛɾˠ(ə)ʃtʲə]), \\\"Mouth of the Farset\\\" a river whose name in the Irish, Feirste, refers to a sandbar or tidal ford. This was formed where the river ran—until culverted late in the 18th century, down High Street— into the Lagan. It was at this crossing, located under or close to the current Queen's Bridge, that the early settlement developed.: 74–77 \\nThe compilers of Ulster-Scots use various transcriptions of local pronunciations of \\\"Belfast\\\" (with which they sometimes are also content) including Bilfawst, Bilfaust or Baelfawst.\\n\\nEarly settlements\\nThe site of Belfast has been occupied since the Bronze Age. The Giant's Ring, a 5,000-year-old henge, is located near the city,: 42–45 and the remains of Iron Age hill forts can still be seen in the surrounding hills. At the beginning of the 14th century, Papal tax rolls record two churches: the \\\"Chapel of Dundela\\\" at Knock (Irish: Cnoc; from cnoc, meaning 'hill') in the east, connected by some accounts to the 7th-century evangelist St. Colmcille,: 11 and, the \\\"Chapel of the Ford\\\", which may have been a successor to a much older parish church on the present Shankill (Seanchill, \\\"Old Church\\\") Road,: 63–64 dating back to the 9th, and possibly to St. Patrick in the mid 5th, century.\\nA Norman settlement at the ford, comprising the parish church (now St. George's), a watermill, and a small fort, was an outpost of Carrickfergus Castle. Established in the late 12th century, 11 miles (18 km) out along the north shore of the Lough, Carrickfergus was to remain the principal English foothold in the north-east until the scorched- earth Nine Years' War at the end of the 16th century broke the remaining Irish power, the O'Neills.\\n\\nDeveloping port, radical politics\\nWith a commission from James I, in 1613 Sir Arthur Chichester undertook the Plantation of Belfast and the surrounding area, attracting mainly English and Manx settlers. The subsequent arrival of Scottish Presbyterians embroiled Belfast in its only recorded siege: denounced from London by John Milton as \\\"ungrateful and treacherous guests\\\", in 1649 the newcomers were temporarily expelled by an English Parliamentarian army.: 21 In 1689, Catholic Jacobite forces, briefly in command of the town, abandoned it in advance of the landing at Carrickfergus of William, Prince of Orange, who proceeded through the Belfast to his celebrated victory on 12 July 1690 at the Boyne.\\n\\nTogether with French Huguenots, the Scots introduced the production of linen, a flax-spinning industry that in the 18th century carried Belfast trade to the Americas. Fortunes were made carrying rough linen clothing and salted provisions to the slave plantations of the West Indies; sugar and rum to Baltimore and New York; and for the return to Belfast flaxseed and tobacco from the colonies. From the 1760s, profits from the trade financed improvements in the town's commercial infrastructure, including the Lagan Canal, new docks and quays, and the construction of the White Linen Hall which together attracted to Belfast the linen trade that had formerly gone through Dublin. Abolitionist sentiment, however, defeated the proposal of the greatest of the merchant houses, Cunningham and Greg, in 1786 to commission ships for the Middle Passage.As \\\"Dissenters\\\" from the established Anglican church (with its episcopacy and ritual), Presbyterians were conscious of sharing, if only in part, the disabilities of Ireland's dispossessed Roman Catholic majority; and of being denied representation in the Irish Parliament. Belfast's two MPs remained nominees of the Chichesters (Marquesses of Donegall). With their emigrant kinsmen in America, the region's Presbyterians were to share a growing disaffection from the Crown.: 55–61 \\nWhen early in the American War of Independence, Belfast Lough was raided by the privateer John Paul Jones, the townspeople assembled their own Volunteer militia. Formed ostensibly for defence of the Kingdom, Volunteer corps were soon pressing their own protest against \\\"taxation without representation\\\". Further emboldened by the French Revolution, a more radical element in the town, the Society of United Irishmen, called for Catholic emancipation and a representative national government. In hopes of French assistance, in 1798 the Society organised a republican insurrection. The rebel tradesmen and tenant farmers were defeated north of the town at the Battle of Antrim and to the south at the Battle of Ballynahinch.\\nBritain seized on the rebellion to abolish the Irish Parliament, unlamented in Belfast, and to incorporate Ireland in a United Kingdom. In 1832, British parliamentary reform permitted the town its first electoral contest – an occasion for an early and lethal sectarian riot.: 87\\n\\nIndustrial expansion, sectarian division\\nWhile other Irish towns experienced a loss of manufacturing, and after a cotton boom and bust, from the 1820s Belfast underwent rapid industrial expansion. As the global leader in the production of linen goods—mill, and finishing, work largely employing women and children— it won the moniker \\\"Linenopolis\\\". Shipbuilding led the development of heavier industry. By the 1900s, her shipyards were building up to a quarter of the total United Kingdom tonnage. This included from the yard of Harland & Wolff the ill-fated RMS Titanic, at the time of her launch in 1911 the largest ship afloat. Other major export industries included textile machinery, rope, tobacco and mineral waters.: 59–88 \\nIndustry drew in a new Catholic population settling largely in the west of the town—refugees from a rural poverty intensified by Belfast's mechanisation of spinning and weaving and, in the 1840s, by famine. The plentiful supply of cheap labour helped attract English and Scottish capital to Belfast, but it was also a cause of insecurity. Protestant workers organised and dominated the apprenticed trades and gave a new lease of life to the once largely rural Orange Order. Sectarian tensions, which frequently broke out in riots and workplace expulsions, were also driven by the \\\"constitutional question\\\": the prospect of a restored Irish parliament in which Protestants (and northern industry) feared being a minority interest.\\nOn 28 September 1912, unionists massed at Belfast's City Hall to sign the Ulster Covenant, pledging to use \\\"all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule Parliament in Ireland\\\". This was followed by the drilling and eventual arming of a 100,000-strong Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). The immediate crisis was averted by the onset of the Great War. The UVF formed the 36th (Ulster) Division whose sacrifices in the Battle of the Somme continue to be commemorated in the city by unionist and loyalist organisations.\\nIn 1920–22, as Belfast emerged as the capital of the six counties remaining as Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom, there was widespread violence. 8,000 \\\"disloyal\\\" workers were driven from their jobs in the shipyards: in addition to Catholics, \\\"rotten Prods\\\" – Protestants whose labour politics disregarded sectarian distinctions.: 104–108 Gunbattles, grenade attacks and house burnings contributed to as many as 500 deaths. A curfew remained in force until 1924. (see The Troubles in Ulster (1920–1922)) The lines drawn saw off the challenge to \\\"unionist unity\\\" posed by labour (industry had been paralysed by strikes in 1907 and again in 1919). Until \\\"troubles\\\" returned at the end of the 1960s, it was not uncommon in Belfast for the Ulster Unionist Party to have its council and parliamentary candidates returned unopposed.\\nIn 1932, the opening of the new buildings for Northern Ireland's devolved Parliament at Stormont was overshadowed by the protests of the unemployed and ten days of running street battles with the police. The government conceded increases in Outdoor Relief, but labour unity was short lived.: 219–220 In 1935, celebrations of King George V's Jubilee and of the annual Twelfth were followed by deadly riots and expulsions, a sectarian logic that extended itself to the interpretation of darkening events in Europe.: 226–233 Labour candidates found their support for the anti-clerical Spanish Republic characterised as another instance of No-Popery. (Today, the cause of the republic in the Spanish Civil War is commemorated by a \\\"No Pasaran\\\" stained glass window in City Hall).\\nIn 1938, nearly a third of industrial workers were unemployed, malnutrition was a major issue, and at 9.6% the city's infant mortality rate (compared with 5.9% in Sheffield, England) was among the highest in United Kingdom.\\n\\nThe Blitz and post-war development\\nIn the spring of 1941, the German Luftwaffe appeared twice over Belfast. In addition to the shipyards and the Short & Harland aircraft factory, the Belfast Blitz severely damaged or destroyed more than half the city's housing stock, and devastated the old town centre around High Street. In the greatest loss of life in any air raid outside of London, more than a thousand people were killed.\\nAt the end of World War II, the Unionist government undertook programmes of \\\"slum clearance\\\" (the Blitz had exposed the \\\"uninhabitable\\\" condition of much of the city's housing) which involved decanting populations out of mill and factory built red-brick terraces and into new peripheral housing estates. At the same time, a British-funded welfare state \\\"revolutionised access\\\" to education and health care. The resulting rise in expectations; together with the uncertainty caused by the decline of the city's Victorian-era industries, contributed to growing protest, and counter protest, in the 1960s over the Unionist government's record on civil and political rights.\\n\\nThe Troubles\\nFor reasons that nationalists and unionists dispute, the public protests of the late 1960s soon gave way to communal violence (in which as many as 60,000 people were intimidated from their homes): 70 and to loyalist and republican paramilitarism. Introduced onto the streets in August 1969, the British Army committed to the longest continuous deployment in its history, Operation Banner. Beginning in 1970 with the Falls curfew, and followed in 1971 by internment, this included counterinsurgency measures directed chiefly at the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) who characterised their operations, including the bombing of Belfast's commercial centre, as a struggle against British occupation.\\nPreceded by loyalist and republican ceasefires, the 1998 \\\"Good Friday\\\" Belfast Agreement returned a new power-sharing legislative assembly and executive to Stormont. In the intervening years in Belfast, some 20,000 people had been injured, and 1,500 killed.: 73 \\n\\nEighty-five percent of the conflict-related deaths had occurred within 1,000 metres of the communal interfaces, largely in the north and west of the city.: 73 The security barriers erected at these interfaces are an enduring physical legacy of the Troubles. The 14 neighbourhoods they separate are among the 20 most deprived wards in Northern Ireland. In May 2013, the Northern Ireland Executive committed to the removal of all peace lines by mutual consent. The target date of 2023 was passed with only a small number dismantled.\\nThe more affluent districts escaped the worst of the violence, but the city centre was a major target. This was especially so during the first phase of the PIRA campaign in the early 1970s, when the organisation hoped to secure quick political results through maximum destruction.: 331–332 Including car bombs and incendiaries, between 1969 and 1977 the city experienced 2,280 explosions.: 58 In addition to the death and injury caused, they accelerated the loss of the city's Victorian fabric.\\n\\n21st century\\nSince the turn of the century, the loss of employment and population in the city centre has been reversed. This reflects the growth of the service economy, for which a new district has been developed on former dockland, the Titanic Quarter. The growing tourism sector paradoxically lists as attractions the murals and peace walls that echo the violence of the past.: 350.352 In recent years, \\\"Troubles tourism\\\": 180–189 has presented visitors with new territorial markers: flags, murals and graffiti in which loyalists and republicans take opposing sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.\\nThe demographic balance of some areas has been changed by immigration (according to the 2021 census just under 10% of the city's population was born outside the British Isles), by local differences in births and deaths between Catholics and Protestants, and by a growing number of, particularly younger, people no longer willing to self-identify on traditional lines.\\nIn 1997, unionists lost overall control of Belfast City Council for the first time in its history. The election in 2011 saw Irish nationalist councillors outnumber unionist councillors for the first time, with Sinn Féin becoming the largest party, and the cross-community Alliance Party holding the balance of power.\\n\\nIn the 2016 Brexit referendum, Belfast's four parliamentary constituencies returned a substantial majority (60 percent) for remaining within the European Union, as did Northern Ireland as a whole (55.8), the only UK region outside London and Scotland to do so. In February 2022, the Democratic Unionist Party, which had actively campaigned for Brexit, withdrew from the power-sharing executive and collapsed the Stormont institutions to protest the 2020 UK-EU Northern Ireland Protocol. With the promise of equal access to the British and European markets, this designates Belfast as a point of entry to the European Single Market within whose regulatory framework local producers will continue to operate. After two years, the standoff was resolved with an agreement to eliminate routine checks on UK-destined goods.\\n\\nCityscape\\nLocation and topography\\nBelfast is at the mouth of the River Lagan at the head of Belfast Lough open through the North Channel to the Irish Sea and to the North Atlantic. In the course of the 19th century, the location's estuarine features were re-engineered. With dredging and reclamation, the lough was made to accommodate a deep sea port, and extensive shipyards. The lagan was banked (in 1994 a weir raised its water level to cover what remained of the tidal mud flats) and its various tributaries were culverted On the model pioneered in 2008 by the Connswater Community Greenway some are now being considered for \\\"daylighting\\\".\\nIt remains the case that much of the city centre is built on an estuarine bed of \\\"sleech\\\": silt, peat, mud and—a source the city's ubiquitous red brick— soft clay, that presents a challenge for high-rise construction. (It was this soft foundation that persuaded St Anne's Cathedral to abandon plans for a bell tower and, in 2007, to substitute a lightweight steel spire). The city centre is also subject to tidal flood risk. Rising sea levels could mean, that without significant investment, flooding in the coming decades will be persistent.\\nThe city is overlooked on the County Antrim side (to the north and northwest) by a precipitous basalt escarpment—the near continuous line of Divis Mountain (478 m), Black Mountain (389 m) and Cavehill (368 m)—whose \\\"heathery slopes and hanging fields are visible from almost any part of the city\\\".: 13 From County Down side (on the south and south east) it is flanked by the lower-lying Castlereagh and Hollywood hills. The sand and gravel Malone Ridge extends up river to the south-west.\\n\\nNorth Belfast and Shankill\\nFrom 1820, Belfast began to spread rapidly beyond its 18th century limits. To the north, it stretched out along roads which drew into the town migrants from Scots-settled hinterland of County Antrim. Largely Presbyterian, they enveloped a number of Catholic-occupied \\\"mill-row\\\" clusters: New Lodge, Ardoyne and \\\"the Marrowbone\\\". Together with areas of more substantial housing in the Oldpark district, these are wedged between Protestant working-class housing stretching from Tiger's Bay out the Shore Road on one side, and up the Shankill (the original Antrim Road) on the other.\\nThe Greater Shankill area, including Crumlin and Woodvale, is over the line from the Belfast North parliamentary/assembly constituency, but is physically separated from the rest of Belfast West by an extensive series of separation barriers—peace walls—owned (together with five daytime gates into the Falls area) by the Department of Justice. These include Cupar Way where tourists are informed that, at 45 feet, the barrier is \\\"three times higher than the Berlin Wall and has been in place for twice as long\\\".\\nWith other working-class districts, Shankill suffered from the \\\"collapse of old industrial Belfast\\\". But it was also greatly affected from the 1960s by the city's most ambitious programme of \\\"slum clearance\\\". Red-brick, \\\"two up, two down\\\" terraced streets, typical of 19th century working-class housing, were replaced with flats, maisonettes, and car parks but few facilities. In a period of twenty years, due largely to redevelopment, 50,000 residents left the area leaving an aging population of 26,000 and more than 100 acres of wasteland.\\nMeanwhile, road schemes, including the terminus of the M1 motorway and the Westlink, demolished a mixed dockland community, Sailortown and severed the streets linking the Shankill area and the rest of both north and west Belfast to the city centre.\\nNew \\\"green field\\\" housing estates were built on the outer edges of the city. The onset of the Troubles overwhelmed attempts to promote these as \\\"mixed\\\" neighbourhoods so that the largest of these developments on the city's northern edge, Rathcoole rapidly solidified as a loyalist community. In 2004, it was estimated that 98% of public housing in Belfast was divided along religious lines.\\nAmong the principal landmarks of north Belfast are the Crumlin Road Gaol (1845) now a major visitor attraction, Belfast Royal Academy (1785) - the oldest school in the city, St Malachy's College (1833), Holy Cross Church, Ardoyne (1902), Waterworks Park (1889), and Belfast Zoo (1934).\\n\\nWest Belfast\\nIn the mid-19th century rural poverty and famine drove large numbers of Catholic tenant farmers, landless labourers and their families toward Belfast. Their route brought them down the Falls Road and into what are now remnants of an older Catholic enclave around St Mary's Church, the town's first Catholic chapel (opened in 1784 with Presbyterian subscriptions), and Smithfield Market. Eventually, an entire west side of the city, stretching up the Falls Road, along the Springfield Road (encompassing the new housing estates built 1950s and 60s: Highfield, New Barnsley, Ballymurphy, Whiterock and Turf Lodge) and out past Andersonstown on the Stewartstown Road toward Poleglass, became near-exclusively Catholic and, in political terms, nationalist.\\nReflecting the nature of available employment as mill workers, domestics and shop assistants, the population, initially, was disproportionately female. Further opportunities for women on the Falls Road arose through developments in education and public health. In 1900, the Dominican Order opened St Mary's [Teacher] Training College, and in 1903 King Edward VII opened the Royal Victoria Hospital at the junction with the Grosvenor Road. Extensively redeveloped and expanded, the hospital has a staff of more than 8,500.\\nLandmarks in the area include the Gothic-revival St Peter's Cathedral (1866, signature twin spires added in 1886); Clonard Monastery (1911), the Conway Mill (1853/1901, re-developed as a community enterprise, arts and education centre in 1983); Belfast City Cemetery (1869) and, best known for its republican graves, Milltown Cemetery (1869).\\nThe area's greatest visitor attractions are its wall and gable-end murals. In contrast to those in loyalist areas, where Israel is typically the only outside reference, these range more freely beyond the local conflict frequently expressing solidarity with Palestinians, with Cuba, and with Basque and Catalan separatists.\\n\\nSouth Belfast\\nWest Belfast is separated from South Belfast, and from the otherwise abutting loyalist districts of Sandy Row and the Donegall Road, by rail lines, the M1 Motorway (to Dublin and the west); industrial and retail parks, and the remnants of the Blackstaff (Owenvarra) bog meadows.\\nBelfast began stretching up-river in the 1840s and 50s: out the Ormeau and Lisburn roads and, between them, running along a ridge of higher ground, the Malone Road. From \\\"leafy\\\" avenues of increasingly substantial (and in the course of time \\\"mixed\\\") housing, the Upper Malone broadened out into areas of parkland and villas.\\nFurther out still, where they did not survive as public parks, from the 1960s the great-house demesnes of the city's former mill-owners and industrialists were developed for public housing: loyalist estates such as Seymour Hill and Belvoir. Meanwhile, in Malone and along the river embankments, new houses and apartment blocks have been squeezed in, increasing the general housing density.\\nBeyond the Queen's University area the area's principal landmarks are the 15-storey tower block of Belfast City Hospital (1986) on the Lisburn Road, and the Lagan Valley Regional Park through which a towpath extends from the City-centre quayside to Lisburn.\\nNorthern Ireland's three permanent diplomatic missions are situated on the Malone Road, the consulates of China, Poland and the United States.\\n\\nEast Belfast\\nThe first district on the right bank of the Lagan (the County Down side) to be incorporated in Belfast was Ballymacarrett after 1868. Harland & Wolff, whose gantry cranes, Samson & Goliath, tower over the area, was long the mainstay of employment — although less securely so for the townland's Catholics (In 1970, when the yard still had a workforce of 10,000, only 400 Catholics were employed).: 280 Tolerated in periods of expansion as navvies and casual labourers,: 87–88 they concentrated in a small enclave, the Short Strand, which has continued into this century to feature as a sectarian flashpoint. Home to around 2,500 people, it is the only distinctly nationalist area in the east of the river.\\nEast Belfast developed from the Queens Bridge (1843), through Ballymacarrett, east along the Newtownards Road and north (along the east shore of the Lough) up the Holywood Road; and from the Albert Bridge (1890) south east out the Cregagh and Castlereagh roads. The further out, the more substantial, and less religiously segregated, the housing until again encountering the city's outer ring of public housing estates: loyalist Knocknagoney, Lisnasharragh, and Tullycarnet.\\nThis century, efforts have been made to add to East Belfast's two obvious visitor attractions: Samson & Goliath (the \\\"banana yellow cranes\\\" date only from the early 1970s): 79 and the Parliament Buildings at Stormont. What is marketed now as EastSide, features, at the intersection of the Connswater and Comber Greenways and next to the EastSide Visitor Centre, CS Lewis Square (2017), named and themed in honour of the local author of The Chronicles of Narnia. Next to the former the Harland & Wolff Drawing Offices (now an hotel), stands the \\\"cultural nucleus to Titanic Quarter\\\", Titanic Belfast (2012) whose interactive galleries tell the liner's ill-fated story.\\n\\nCity Centre\\nBelfast City Centre is roughly bounded by the ring roads constructed since the 1970s: the M3 which sweeps across the dockland to the north; the Westlink that connects to the M1 for points south and west; and, with less certainty, the Bruce Street and Bankmore connectors that tie back toward the Lagan at the Gasworks Business Park and the beginning of the Ormeau Road. This embraces \\\"the Markets\\\", the one remaining inner-city area of housing. Of the various markets, including those for the sale and shipping of livestock, from which it derives its name, only one survives, the former produce market, St George's, now a food and craft market popular with visitors to the city.\\n\\nArchitectural heritage\\nAmong surviving elements of the pre-Victorian town are the Belfast Entries, 17th-century alleyways off High Street, including, in Winecellar Entry, White's Tavern (rebuilt 1790); the elliptical First Presbyterian (Non-Subscribing) Church (1781–83) in Rosemary Street (whose members led the abolitionist charge against Greg and Cunningham); the Assembly Rooms (1769, 1776, 1845) on Bridge Street; St George's Church of Ireland (1816) on the High Street site of the old Corporation Church which had been built on a religious site dating back to 1306; St Mary's Church (1782) in Chapel Lane, which is the oldest Catholic church in the city. The oldest public building in Belfast, Clifton House (1771–74), the Belfast Charitable Society poorhouse, is on North Queen Street. It is now partly cut off from the city centre by arterial roads. In addition there are small sets of city-centre Georgian terraces.\\nOf the much larger Victorian city a substantial legacy has survived the Blitz, The Troubles and planning and development. Among the more notable examples are St Malachy's Roman Catholic Church (1844) and the original college building of Queen's University Belfast (1849), both in a Tudor style; the Palm House in the Botanic Gardens (1852); the Renaissance revival Union Theological College (1853) and Ulster Bank (now Merchant Hotel) (1860); the Italianate Ulster Hall (1862), and the National Trust restored ornate Crown Liquor Saloon (1885, 1898) (a setting for the classic film, Odd Man Out, starring James Mason); the oriental-themed Grand Opera House (1895) (bombed several times during the Troubles), and the Romanesque revival St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Donegall Street (1877). \\n\\nThe Baroque revival City Hall was finished in 1906 on the site of the former White Linen Hall, and was built to reflect Belfast's city status, granted by Queen Victoria in 1888. Its Edwardian design influenced the Victoria Memorial in Calcutta, India, and Durban City Hall in South Africa. The dome is 173 ft (53 m) high and figures above the door state \\\"Hibernia encouraging and promoting the Commerce and Arts of the City\\\". \\nNearby is the Renaissance and Baroque revival Scottish Provident Institution (1902). Opposite is a branch of the Ulster Bank which is built behind the facade of a large former Methodist church which was built in the classical style and which opened in 1846.\\nBuilt around an older church dating to 1776, St Anne's Church of Ireland Cathedral was consecrated 1904 and completed in the 1920s. Its steel spire was added in 2007. The neoclassical Royal Courts of Justice were opened in 1933.\\n\\nRedevelopment\\nThe opening Victoria Square Shopping Centre in 2008 was to symbolise the rebound of the city centre since its days as a restricted security zone during the Troubles. But retail footfall in the centre is limited by competition with out-of-town shopping centres and with internet retailing. As of November 2023, footfall had not recovered pre-COVID pandemic levels. There are compensating trends: the growth in tourism and hospitality which has included a sustained boom in hotel construction.\\nThe City Council also talks of a \\\"residential-led regeneration\\\". New townhouse and apartments schemes are being developed for the city's quays, and for Titanic Quarter. The completion in 2023 of Ulster University's enhanced Belfast campus (in \\\"one of the largest higher education capital builds in Europe\\\") and the determination of Queen's University to compete with the private sector in the provision of student housing, has fostered the construction downtown of multiple new student residences.\\n\\nRough sleeping and homelessness\\nPeople can be found sleeping rough on the streets of the city centre. Numbers, while growing, may be comparatively small for a city of its size in the British Isles. In 2022, counts and estimates by the Northern Ireland Housing Executive identified a total of 26 rough sleepers in Belfast. This is against a background (in 2023) of 2,317 people (0.67% of residents) presenting as homeless, many of whom are in temporary accommodation and shelters. Such figures, however, do not include all those living in severely overcrowded conditions, involuntarily sharing with other households on a long-term basis, or sleeping rough in hidden locations.\\n\\nThe \\\"Quarters\\\"\\nSince 2001, buoyed by increasing numbers of tourists, the city council has promoted a number of cultural quarters.\\nThe Cathedral Quarter comprises much of Belfast's old trade and warehousing district in the narrow streets and entries around St Anne's Cathedral, with a concentration of bars, beer gardens, clubs and restaurants (including two establishments claiming descent from the early town, White's and The Duke of York) and performance spaces (most notably the Black Box and Oh Yeah). It hosts a yearly visual and performing arts festival. The adjoining Custom House Square is one of the city's main outdoor venues for free concerts and street entertainment.\\nWithout defined geographical boundaries, the Gaeltacht Quarter encompasses Irish-speaking Belfast. (According to the 2021 census, 15.5% of people in the city have some knowledge of Irish, 4% speak it daily). It is generally understood as an area around the Falls Road in west Belfast served by the Cultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich cultural centre. It can be said to include, at the Skainos Centre in unionist east Belfast, Turas, a project that promotes Irish through night classes and cultural events in the belief that \\\"the language belongs to all\\\".\\nThe Linen Quarter', an area south of City Hall once dominated by linen warehouses, now includes, in addition to cafés, bars and restaurants, a dozen hotels (including the 23-storey Grand Central Hotel), and the city's two principal Victorian-era cultural venues, the Grand Opera House and the Ulster Hall.\\nMoving further south along the so-called \\\"Golden Mile\\\" of bars and clubs through Shaftesbury Square, there is the Queen's [University] Quarter. In addition to the university (spread over 250 buildings, of which 120 are listed as being of architectural merit), it is home to Botanic Gardens and the Ulster Museum.\\nFinally, the Titanic Quarter covers 0.75 km2 (185 acres) of reclaimed land adjacent to Belfast Harbour, formerly known as Queen's Island. Named after RMS Titanic, launched here in 1911, work began in 2003 to transform some former shipyard land into \\\"one of the largest waterfront developments in Europe\\\". The current area houses Titanic Belfast, the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI), two hotels, and multiple condo towers and shops, and the Titanic [film] Studios.\\n\\nCulture\\nArts venues and festivals\\nFrom Georgian Belfast, the city retains a civic legacy. In addition to Clifton House (Belfast Charitable Society, 1774), this includes the Linen Hall Library (Belfast Society for Promoting Knowledge, 1788), the Ulster Museum (founded by the Belfast Natural History Society as the Belfast Municipal Museum and Art Gallery in 1833), and the Botanic Gardens (established in 1828 by the Belfast Botanic and Horticultural Society). These remain important cultural venues: in the case of the Gardens, for outdoor festivities including the Belfast Melā, the city's annual celebration of global cultures.\\nOf the many stage venues built in the nineteenth century, and film theatres built in the twentieth, there remains the Ulster Hall (1862), which hosts concerts (including those of the Ulster Orchestra), classical recitals and party-political meetings; the Grand Opera House (1895) badly damaged in bomb blasts in the early 1990s, restored and enlarged 2020; the Strand Cinema (1935) now being developed as an arts centre; and the Queens Film Theatre (QFT) (1968) focussed on art house and world cinema. The two independent cinemas offer their screens for the Belfast Film Festival and the Belfast International Arts Festival.\\nThe principal stage for drama remains the Lyric Theatre (1951), the largest employer of actors and other theatre professionals in the region. At Queens University, drama students stage their productions at the Brian Friel Theatre, a 120-seat studio space (named after the renowned playwright).\\nIn November 2011, Belfast became the smallest city to host the MTV Europe Music Awards. The event was made possible by the 11,000-seat Odyssey Arena (today the SSE Arena) which opened in 2000 at the entrance to the Titanic Quarter A further large-scale venue is the Waterfront Hall, a multi-purpose conference and entertainment centre that first opened in 1997. The main circular Auditorium seats 2,241 and is based on the Berlin Philharmonic Hall. In 2012, the Metropolitan Arts Centre, usually referred to as the MAC, was opened in the Cathedral Quarter, offering a performance mix of music, theatre, dance and visual art.\\nThe city has a number of community arts, and arts education, centres, among them the Crescent Arts Centre in south Belfast, the Irish-language Cultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich in west Belfast, The Duncairn in north Belfast and, in the east of the city, EastSide Arts.\\nFéile an Phobail, a community arts organisation born out of the Internment Commemorations in the west of the city, stages one of the largest community festivals in Europe. It has grown from its original August Féile on the Falls Road, to a year-round programme with a broad range of arts events, talks and discussions.\\n\\nUNESCO City of Music\\nIn November 2021, Belfast became the third city in the British Isles to be designated by UNESCO as City of Music (after Glasgow in 2008 and Liverpool in 2016) and is one of 59 cities worldwide participating in the UNESCO Creative Cities Network.\\nThe greater part of Belfast's music scene is accommodated in the city's pubs and clubs. Irish traditional music (\\\"trad\\\") is a staple, and is supported, along with Ulster-Scots snare drum and pipe music, by the city's TradFest summer school.\\nMusic offerings also draw on the legacy of the punk and the underground club scene that developed during The Troubles (associated with the groups Stiff Little Fingers and The Undertones, and celebrated in the award-winning 2013 film, Good Vibrations). Snow Patrol's frontman Gary Lightbody led a line up of private donors that together with public funders established the Oh Yeah music centre in 2008. The Cathedral Quarter non-profit supports young musicians and these have engaged with a range of genres including Alternative rock, Indie rock, Electronica, Post rock, Post punk, Crossover, and Experimental rock.\\nQueens University hosts the Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC), an institute for music-based practice and research. Its purpose designed building, Sonic Laboratory and multichannel studios were opened by Karlheinz Stockhausen, the German composer and \\\"father of electronic music\\\", in 2004.\\n\\nMedia\\nBelfast is the home of the Belfast Telegraph, Irish News, and The News Letter, the oldest English-language daily newspaper in the world still in publication.\\nThe city is the headquarters of BBC Northern Ireland, and ITV station UTV. The Irish public service broadcaster, RTÉ has a studio in the city. The national radio station is BBC Radio Ulster with commercial radio stations such as Q Radio, U105, Blast 106 and Irish-language station Raidió Fáilte. Queen's Radio, a student-run radio station broadcasts from Queen's University Students' Union. \\nOne of Northern Ireland's two community TV stations, NvTv, is based in the Cathedral Quarter of the city. Broadcasting only over the Internet is Homely Planet, the Cultural Radio Station for Northern Ireland, supporting community relations.\\n\\nParades\\nSince the lifting in 1872 of a twenty-year party processions ban, Orange parades in celebration of \\\"the Twelfth\\\" [of July] and the bonfires of the previous evening, the eleventh, have been a fixed fixture of the Belfast calendar. On what became a public holiday in 1926, Belfast and guest Orange lodges with their pipe, flute and drum bands muster at Carlisle Circus, and parade through the city centre past the City Hall and out the Lisburn Road to a gathering in \\\"the field\\\" at Barnett Demesne. While some local feeder and return marches have a history of sectarian disturbance, in recent years, events have generally passed off without serious incident.\\nIn 2015, the Orange Order opened the Museum of Orange Heritage on the Cregagh Road in East Belfast with the aim of educating the wider public about \\\"the origins, traditions and continued relevance\\\" of the parading institution.\\nWhat is sometimes referred to as the Catholic equivalent of the Orangemen, the much smaller Ancient Order of Hibernians, confines its parades to nationalist areas in west and north Belfast, as do republicans commemorating the Easter Rising. In August 1993, in a break with a history of nationalist exclusion from the city centre, a parade marking the introduction of internment in the 1971 proceeded up Royal Avenue toward the City Hall, where it was addressed by Sinn Féin president, Gerry Adams, in front of the statue of Queen Victoria.\\nSince 1998, the Belfast City Council has funded a city-centre St. Patrick's Day (March 17) celebration. It is organised by Féile an Phobail as a \\\"carnival\\\" complete with a parade featuring dancers, circus entertainers, floats, and giant puppets. Critical of what they perceive as an evolving nationalist festival, unionists on the City Council observe that \\\"a lot of the Protestant Unionist Loyalist (PUL) community will stay away from the city centre on St Patrick's Day, the same as some stay away on the Twelfth of July\\\".\\nIn 1991, Belfast hosted its first gay pride event. Belfast Pride, culminating in a city-centre parade at the end of July, is now one of the biggest annual festivals in the city and, according to its organisers, the largest LGBT+ festival in Ireland.\\nThe Irish Congress of Trade Unions organises an annual city-centre May Day march and rally. The International Workers Day has been a public holiday since 1978.\\n\\nDemography\\nIn 2021, there were 345,418 residents within the expanded 2015 Belfast local government boundary and 634,600 in the Belfast Metropolitan Area, approximately one third of Northern Ireland's 1.9 million population.\\n\\nAs with many cities, Belfast's inner city is currently characterised by the elderly, students and single young people, while families tend to live on the periphery. Socio-economic areas radiate out from the Central Business District, with a pronounced wedge of affluence extending out the Malone Road and Upper Malone Road to the south. Deprivation levels are notable in the inner parts of the north and the west of the city. The areas around the Falls Road, Ardoyne and New Lodge (Catholic nationalist) and the Shankill Road (Protestant loyalist) experience some of the highest levels of social deprivation including higher levels of ill health and poor access to services. These areas remain firmly segregated, with 80 to 90 percent of residents being of the one religious designation.\\nConsistent with the trend across all of Northern Ireland, the Protestant population within the city has been in decline, while the non-religious, other religious and Catholic population has risen. The 2021 census recorded the following: 43% of residents as Catholic, 12% as Presbyterian, 8% as Church of Ireland, 3% as Methodist, 6% as belonging to other Christian denominations, 3% to other religions and 24% as having either no religion or no declared religion.\\nIn terms of community background, 47.93% were deemed to belong to, or to have been brought up in, the Catholic faith and 36.45% in a Protestant or other Christian-related denomination. The comparable figures in 2011 were 48.60% Catholic and 42.28% Protestant or other Christian-related denomination.\\nWith respondents free to indicate more than one national identity, in 2021 the largest national identity group was \\\"Irish only\\\" with 35% of the population, followed by \\\"British only\\\" 27%, \\\"Northern Irish only\\\" 17%, \\\"British and Northern Irish only\\\" 7%, \\\"Irish and Northern Irish only\\\" 2%, \\\"British, Irish and Northern Irish only\\\" 2%, British and Irish less than 1% and Other identities with 10%.\\nInsofar as the city's two indigenous minority languages (Irish and Ulster Scots) are concerned, figures are made available from the decennial UK census. On census day, 21 March 2021, 14.93% (43,798) in Belfast claimed to have some knowledge of the Irish language, whilst 5.21% (15,294) claimed to be able to speak, read, write and understand spoken Irish. 3.74% (10,963) of residents claimed to use Irish daily and 0.75% (2,192) claimed Irish is their main language. 7.17% (21,025) of people in the city claimed to have some knowledge of Ulster Scots, whilst 0.75% (2,207) claimed to be able to speak, read, write and understand spoken Ulster Scots. 0.83% (2,430) claimed to use Ulster Scots daily.\\nFrom the mid to late 19th century, there was a community of central European Jews (among its distinguished members, Hamburg-born Gustav Wilhelm Wolff of Harland & Wolff) and of Italians in Belfast. Today, the largest immigrant groups are Poles, Chinese and Indians. The 2011 census figures recorded a total non-white population of 10,219 or 3.3%, while 18,420 or 6.6% of the population were born outside the UK and Ireland. Almost half of those born outside the British Isles lived in south Belfast, where they comprised 9.5% of the population. The majority of the estimated 5,000 Muslims and 200 Hindu families living in Northern Ireland resided in the Greater Belfast area. In the 2021 census the percentage of the city's residents born outside the United Kingdom had risen to 9.8.\\n\\n\\tThe Belfast City Council area in the 2011 census\\n\\nEconomy\\nEmployment profile\\nServices (including retail, health, professional & scientific) account for three quarters of jobs in Belfast. Only 6% remain in manufacturing. The balance is in distribution and construction. In recent years, unemployment has been comparatively low (under 3% in the summer of 2023) for the UK. On the other hand, Belfast has a high rate of people economically inactive (close to 30%). It is a group, encompassing homemakers, full-time carers, students and retirees, that in Belfast has been swollen by the exceptionally large proportion of the population (27%) with long-term health problems or disabilities (and who, in Northern Ireland generally, are less likely to be employed than in other UK regions).\\n\\nShipbuilding, aerospace and defence\\nOf Belfast's Victorian-era industry, little remains. The last working linen factory—Copeland Linens Limited, based in the Shankill area—closed in 2013. In recent years Harland & Wolff, which at peak production in the Second World War had employed around 35,000 people, has had a workforce of no more than two or three hundred refurbishing oil rigs and fabricating off-shore wind turbines. A £1.6 billion Royal Navy contract has offered the yard a new lease, returning it to shipbuilding in 2025.: 261–262 \\nIn 1936, Short & Harland Ltd, a joint venture of Short Brothers and Harland & Wolff, began the manufacture of aircraft in the docks area. In 1989, the British government, which had nationalised the company during the Second World War, sold it to the Canadian aerospace company Bombardier. In 2020, it was sold on to Spirit AeroSystems. Producing aircraft components, it remains the largest manufacturing concern in Northern Ireland.\\nOriginating in the Short Brothers' missile division, since 2001 Thales Group owned Thales Air Defence Limited has been producing short range air defence and anti-tank missiles (including the NLAW shoulder-launched system deployed against the Russian invasion by Ukraine).\\n\\nFintech and cybersecurity\\nFrom the 1990s, Belfast established itself as a significant location for call centres and for other back-office services. Attracting U.S. operators such as Citi, Allstate, Liberty Mutual, Aflac and FD Technologies (Kx Systems), it as since been identified by the UK Treasury as \\\"key fintech [financial technology] hub\\\". Fintech's key areas (its \\\"ABCD\\\") are artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing, and big data.\\nThe sector's principal constraint, cyber security, has been addressed since 2004 by the Queens University Institute of Electronics, Communications and Information Technology (IECIT), and its Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT). The IECIT is the anchor tenant at Catalyst (science park) in the Titanic Quarter, which hosts a cluster of companies seeking to offer innovative cyber-security solutions.\\n\\nFilm\\nBetween 2018 and 2023, film and television production based largely in Belfast, and occupying significant new studio capacity in the ports area, contributed £330m to Northern Ireland's economy. There are two 8-acre media complexes (serviced by the adjacent City Airport): the Titanic Studios on Queen's Island (the Titanic Quarter) and across the Victoria Channel in Giant's Park on the Lough's north foreshore, the Belfast Harbour Studios. Together they offer 226,000 ft2 of studio space, plus offices and workshops, and have attracted U.S. production companies such as Amazon, HBO (including all eight series of its fantasy drama Game of Thrones), Paramount, Playtone, Universal, and Warner Bros.\\nAt the beginning of 2024, Ulster University, in partnership with Belfast Harbour and supported by Northern Ireland Screen, announced an £72m investment to add to the complex a new virtual production, research and development, facility, Studio Ulster. Additional studio space is available at Loop Studios (formerly Britvic) on the Castlereagh Road in East Belfast.\\n\\nTourism and hospitality\\nNorthern Ireland's peace dividend since the 1990s, which includes a marked increase in inward investment, has contributed to a large-scale redevelopment of the city centre. Significant projects included Victoria Square, the Cathedral Quarter, Laganside with the Odyssey complex and the landmark Waterfront Hall, the new Titanic Quarter with its Titanic Belfast visitor attraction, and the development of the original Short's harbour airfield as George Best Belfast City Airport.\\nThese developments reflect a boom in tourism (32 million visitors between 2011 and 2018),: 179 and related hotel construction. This has included an entirely new phenomenon for Belfast: in 1999, the port received its first cruise ship. In 2023, Belfast welcomed 153 calls, 8% up from the pre-pandemic record set in 2019. Ship from 32 different countries landed 320,000 passengers.\\nBelfast has also seen growth of \\\"conflict tourism\\\".: 186–191 To the dismay of some, \\\"tourists take photos of the division lines that are not consigned to history, but are a part of living Belfast: children play football against the walls that tourists flock to. The places and the people themselves have become a spectacle, an attraction.\\\" Tourist bosses and guides, however, are satisfied that the greater draw is city's other \\\"must-see attractions\\\", and its \\\"convivial food and nightlife scene\\\".\\n\\nEU/GB Trade\\nInvest NI, Northern Ireland's economic development agency is pitching Belfast and its hinterland to foreign investors as \\\"only region in the world able to trade goods freely with both GB and EU markets\\\". This follows the 2020 Northern Ireland Protocol and the 2023 Windsor Framework, agreements between the British government and European Union, whereby, post-Brexit, Northern Ireland would effectively remain within the European Single Market for goods while, in principle, retaining unfettered access to the British domestic market. Despite the DUP's derailment of devolved government in protest, local business leaders largely welcomed the new trade regime, hailing the promise of dual EU-GB access as a critical opportunity.\\nIn February 2024, the DUP consented to a return of the devolved Assembly and Executive on the understanding that neither the EU nor the British government would defend the integrity of their respective internal markets by conducting routine checks on the bulk of goods passing through Belfast, or other Northern Ireland, ports.\\n\\nEducation\\nPrimary and secondary education\\nChildren from Catholic and Protestant homes in Belfast are taught, for the most part, separately on a pattern that, by the mid-nineteenth century, had been established throughout Ireland. Primary and secondary education is divided between (Catholic) Maintained Schools and (non-Catholic/ \\\"Protestant\\\") Controlled Schools. They are bound by the same curriculum, but their teaching staff are trained separately (in the university colleges of St Mary's and Stranmillis).: 200–202 \\nSince the 1980s, two smaller school sectors have emerged: grant-maintained Integrated schools, which by design bring together children and staff from both communities, and Irish language medium schools\\nThe Belfast [later Royal Belfast] Academical Institution, opened its doors in 1810 with the intention, in the words of its founder, former United Irishman, William Drennan of being \\\"perfectly unbiased by religious distinctions\\\". The principle was not embraced by the town's middle-classes: in practice \\\"Inst\\\" provided a grammar education to the town's Presbyterian families while Anglicans favoured the older Royal Belfast Academy (1785); Catholics, St Malachy's diocesan college (1833) and Wesleyans, Methodist College Belfast (1865).\\nDenominational lines have since blurred, with Catholics in particular moving into the controlled grammars. But the presence of 18 selective grammar schools in Belfast is a further feature of post-primary education in Belfast that distinguishes it from that of comparable cities in Great Britain where academic selection was abandoned in the 1960s and 70s. Partly prompted by the COVID disruption of external testing in 2021/22, some the city's grammars have begun to review and amend the practice. It is not clear that this will be on terms that reduce the degree of social segregation they have represented within the system.\\nIn 2006, the Belfast Education and Library Board became part of the consolidated Education Authority for Northern Ireland. In Belfast, the Authority has responsibility for 156 primary, and 48 secondary schools (including the 18 grammars). The system is marked by stark inequalities in outcome. Around 30% of school leavers in the city do not attain 5 GCSEs, A* - C (including Maths and English). For those in receipt of free school meals, the figure rises to over 50%.\\n\\nFurther and Higher education\\nBelfast Metropolitan College (\\\"Belfast Met\\\") is a further education college with three main campuses around the city, including several smaller buildings. Formerly known as Belfast Institute of Further and Higher Education, it specialises in vocational education. The college has over 53,000 students enrolled on full-time and part-time courses, making it one of the largest further education colleges in the UK and the largest in the island of Ireland.\\nBelfast has two universities. Queen's University Belfast was founded as a college in 1845. In 1908, the Catholic bishops lifted their ban on attendance and Queen's was granted university status.: 164, 166 It is a member of the Russell Group, an association of 24 leading research-intensive universities in the UK, and is one of the largest universities in the UK with over 25,000 students – among them over 4,000 international students.\\nUlster University, created in its current form in 1984, is a multi-centre university with a campus on the edge of the Cathedral Quarter of Belfast. Since 2021, this original \\\"Arts College\\\" campus has undergone a £1.4bn expansion to accommodate offerings across all departments. The project promises to bring 15,500 staff and students into the city, and to generate 5,000 new jobs.\\n\\nGovernance\\nBelfast was granted borough status by James VI and I in 1613 and official city status by Queen Victoria in 1888. Since 1973 it has been a local government district under local administration by Belfast City Council.\\nBelfast has been represented in the British House of Commons since 1801, and in Northern Ireland Assembly, as presently constituted, since 1998.\\n\\nLocal government\\nBelfast City Council is responsible for a range of powers and services, including land-use and community planning, parks and recreation, building control, arts and cultural heritage. The city's principal offices are those of the Lord Mayor of Belfast, Deputy Lord Mayor and High Sheriff. Like other elected positions within the Council such as Committee chairs, these are filled since 1998 using the D'Hondt system so that in recent years the position has rotated between councillors from the three largest factions, Sinn Féin, the DUP and the Alliance Party.\\nThe first Lord Mayor of Belfast in 1892, Daniel Dixon, like every mayor but one until 1997 (Alliance in 1979), was a unionist. The first nationalist Lord Mayor of Belfast was Alban Maginness of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) in 1997. The current Lord Mayor is Micky Murray of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, who has been in the position of Lord Mayor since 3 June 2024. His duties include presiding over meetings of the council, receiving distinguished visitors to the city, representing and promoting the city on the national and international stage.\\nIn 1997, unionists lost overall control of Belfast City Council for the first time in its history, with the Alliance Party holding the balance of power. In 2023, unionists retained just 17 of 60 seats on the council, leaving nationalists (Sinn Féin and the SDLP) just 4 seats short of a majority. In addition to the 11 Alliance members there are four other councillors, 3 Green and 1 People Before Profit, who refuse a nationalist/unionist designation.\\n\\nNorthern Ireland Assembly and Westminster elections\\nAs Northern Ireland's capital city, Belfast is host to the Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont, the site of the devolved legislature for Northern Ireland. Belfast is divided into four Northern Ireland Assembly and UK parliamentary constituencies: Belfast North, Belfast West, Belfast South and Belfast East. All four extend beyond the city boundaries to include parts of Castlereagh, Lisburn and Newtownabbey districts. In United Kingdom elections, each constituency returns one MP, on a \\\"first past the post\\\" basis to Westminster. In NI Assembly elections each returns, on the basis of proportional representation, five MLAs to Stormont.\\nIn the Northern Ireland Assembly Elections in 2022, Belfast elected 7 Sinn Féin, 5 DUP, 5 Alliance Party, 1 SDLP, 1 UUP and 1 PBPA MLAs. In the 2017 UK general election, the DUP won all but the Sinn Féin stronghold of Belfast West. In the 2019 and 2024 UK general elections, they retained only Belfast East, losing Belfast North to Sinn Féin and Belfast South to the SDLP.\\nFor the next elections the constituencies are redrawn, with Belfast South extended as Belfast South and Mid Down to include parts of Lagan Valley and Strangford.\\n\\nInfrastructure\\nHospitals\\nThe Belfast Health & Social Care Trust is one of five trusts that were created on 1 April 2007 by the Department of Health. Belfast contains most of Northern Ireland's regional specialist centres.\\nThe Royal Hospitals site in west Belfast (junction of Grosvenor and Falls roads) contains two hospitals. The Royal Victoria Hospital (its origins in a number of successive institutions, beginning in 1797 with The Belfast Fever Hospital) provides both local and regional services. Specialist services include cardiac surgery, critical care and the Regional Trauma Centre. The Children's Hospital (Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children) provides general hospital care for children in Belfast and provides most of the paediatric regional specialities.\\nThe Belfast City Hospital (evolved from a 19th-century workhouse and infirmary) on the Lisburn Road is the regional specialist centre for haematology and is home to a najor cancer centre. The Mary G McGeown Regional Nephrology Unit at the City Hospital is the kidney transplant centre and provides regional renal services for Northern Ireland.\\nMusgrave Park Hospital in south Belfast specialises in orthopaedics, rheumatology, sports medicine and rehabilitation. It is home to Northern Ireland's first Acquired Brain Injury Unit.\\nThe Mater Hospital (founded in 1883 by the Sisters of Mercy) on the Crumlin Road provides a wide range of services, including acute inpatient, emergency and maternity services, to north Belfast and the surrounding areas.\\nThe Ulster Hospital, Upper Newtownards Road, Dundonald, on the eastern edge of the city, first founded as the Ulster Hospital for Women and Sick Children in 1872, is the major acute hospital for the South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust. It delivers a full range of outpatient, inpatient and daycare medical and surgical services.\\n\\nTransport\\nBelfast is a relatively car-dependent city by European standards, with an extensive road network including the 22.5 miles (36 km) M2 and M22 motorway route.\\nBlack taxis are common in the city, operating on a share basis in some areas. These are outnumbered by private hire taxis. Bus and rail public transport in Northern Ireland is operated by subsidiaries of Translink. Bus services in the city proper and the nearer suburbs are operated by Translink Metro, with services focusing on linking residential districts with the city centre on 12 quality bus corridors running along main radial roads,\\nMore distant suburbs are served by Ulsterbus. Northern Ireland Railways provides suburban services along three lines running through Belfast's northern suburbs to Carrickfergus, Larne and Larne Harbour, eastwards towards Bangor and south-westwards towards Lisburn and Portadown. This service is known as the Belfast Suburban Rail system. Belfast is linked directly to Coleraine, Portrush and Derry. Belfast has a direct rail connection with Dublin called Enterprise operated jointly by NIR and the Irish rail company Iarnród Éireann.\\nThe city's Europa Bus Centre and Great Victoria Street rail station, are being replaced by a new Belfast Central Station. When completed in 2025, it will be \\\"the largest integrated transport facility on the island of Ireland\\\" with bus stands, railway platforms, and facilities for taxis and bicycles.\\n\\nThe city has two airports: George Best Belfast City Airport, close to the city centre on the eastern shore of Belfast Lough and Belfast International Airport 30–40 minutes to the west on the shore of Lough Neagh. Both operate UK domestic and European flights. The city is also served by Dublin Airport, two hours to the south, with direct inter-continental connections.\\nIn addition to its extensive freight business, the Belfast Port offers car-ferry sailings, operated by Stena Line, to Cairnryan in Scotland (5 Sailings Daily. 2 hours 22 minutes) and to Liverpool-Birkenhead (14 sailings weekly. 8 hours). The Isle of Man Steam Packet Company provides a seasonal connection to Douglas, Isle of Man.\\nThe Glider bus service is a new form of transport in Belfast. Introduced in 2018, it is a bus rapid transit system linking East Belfast, West Belfast and the Titanic Quarter from the City Centre. Using articulated buses, the £90 million service saw a 17% increase in its first month in Belfast, with 30,000 more people using the Gliders every week. The service is being recognised as helping to modernise the city's public transport.\\nNational Cycle Route 9 to Newry, which will eventually connect with Dublin, starts in Belfast.\\n\\nUtilities\\nHalf of Belfast's water is supplied via the Aquarius pipeline from the Silent Valley Reservoir in County Down, created to collect water from the Mourne Mountains. The other half is now supplied from Lough Neagh via Dunore Water Treatment Works in County Antrim. The citizens of Belfast pay for their water in their rates bill. Plans to bring in additional water tariffs were deferred by devolution in May 2007.\\nPower is provided from a number of power stations via NIE Networks Limited transmission lines. (Just under a half of electricity consumption in Northern Ireland is generated from renewable sources). Phoenix Natural Gas Ltd. started supplying customers in Larne and Greater Belfast with natural gas in 1996 via the newly constructed Scotland-Northern Ireland pipeline. Rates in Belfast (and the rest of Northern Ireland) were reformed in April 2007. The discrete capital value system means rates bills are determined by the capital value of each domestic property as assessed by the Valuation and Lands Agency.\\n\\nRecreation and sports\\nLeisure centres\\nBelfast City Council owns and maintains 17 leisure centres across the city, run on its behalf by the non-profit social enterprise GLL under the 'Better' brand. These include eight large multipurposed centres complete with swimming pools: Ballysillan Leisure Centre and Grove Wellbeing Centre in North Belfast; the Andersonstown, Falls, Shankill and Whiterock leisure centres in West Belfast; Templemore Baths and Lisnasharragh Leisure Centre in East Belfast, and close to the city centre in South Belfast, the Olympia Leisure Centre and Spa,\\n\\nParks and gardens\\nBelfast has over forty parks. The oldest (1828) and one of the most popular parks Botanic Gardens in the Queen's Quarter. Built in the 1830s and designed by Sir Charles Lanyon, its Palm House is one of the earliest examples of a curvilinear and cast iron glasshouse. Other attractions in the park include the recently restored Tropical Ravine, a humid jungle glen built in 1889, rose gardens and public events ranging from live opera broadcasts to pop concerts.\\nThe largest municipal park in the city, and closest to the city centre, lies on the right bank of Lagan. The 100-acres of Ormeau Park were opened to the public in 1871 on what was the last demesne of the town's former proprietors, the Chichesters, Marquesses of Donegall.\\nIn north Belfast, the Waterworks, two reservoirs to which the public have had access since 1897, are features of a park supporting angling and waterfowl. In 1906, a further water park, Victoria, opened behind industrial dockland on what had been the eastern shore of the Lough. It is now connected through east Belfast by the Connswater Community Greenway which offers 16 km of continuous cycle and walkway through east Belfast.\\nThe largest green conservation area within the city's boundaries is a 2,116 hectares patchwork of \\\"parks, demesnes, woodland and meadows\\\" stretching upriver along the banks of the Lagan river and canal; Established in 1967, the Lagan Valley Regional Park envelopes in its course, Belvoir Park Forest, which contains ancient oaks and a 12th-century Norman Motte, and Sir Thomas and Lady Dixon Park, whose International Rose Garden attracts thousands of visitors each July.\\nColin Glenn Forest Park, the National Trust Divis and the Black Mountain Ridge Trail, and Cave Hill Country Park. offer panoramic views over Belfast and beyond from the west. Climbing the Castlereagh Hills, the National Trust Lisnabreeny Cregagh Glen does the same from the east.\\nBelow Cave Hill, the council maintains one of the few local government-funded zoos in the British Isles. The Belfast Zoo houses more than 1,200 animals of 140 species including Asian elephants, Barbary lions, Malayan sun bears (one of the few in the United Kingdom), two species of penguin, a family of western lowland gorillas, a troop of common chimpanzees, a pair of red pandas, a pair of Goodfellow's tree-kangaroos and Francois' langurs. It carries out important conservation work and takes part in European and international breeding programmes which help to ensure the survival of many species under threat.\\n\\nSports\\nBelfast has several notable sports teams playing a diverse variety of sports such as football, Gaelic games, rugby, cricket, and ice hockey. The Belfast Marathon is run annually on May Day, The 41st Marathon in 2023, with related events (Wheelchair Race, Team Relay and 8 Mile Walk) attracted 15,000 participants.\\nThe Northern Ireland national football team plays its home matches at Windsor Park. Football clubs with stadia and training grounds in the city include: Linfield, Glentoran, Crusaders, Cliftonville, Donegal Celtic, Harland & Wolff Welders, Dundela, Knockbreda, PSNI, Newington, Sport & Leisure and Brantwood.\\nBelfast is home to over twenty Gaelic football and hurling clubs. Casement Park in west Belfast, home to the Antrim county teams, had a capacity of 31,500 making it the second largest Gaelic Athletic Association ground in Ulster. Listed as one of the venues for the UK and Ireland's successful UEFA Euro 2028 bid, with co-funding from the Irish government there are plans for a complete rebuild. In May 2020, the foundation of East Belfast GAA returned Gaelic Games to East Belfast after decades of its absence in the area. The current club president is Irish-language enthusiast Linda Ervine who comes from a unionist background in the area. The team currently plays in the Down Senior County League.\\nThe 1999 Heineken Cup champions Ulster Rugby play at Ravenhill Stadium in the south of the city. Belfast has four teams in rugby's All-Ireland League: Belfast Harlequins in Division 1B; and Instonians, Queen's University and Malone in Division 2A.\\nBelfast is home to the Stormont cricket ground since 1949 and was the venue for the Irish cricket team's first ever One Day International against England in 2006.\\nThe 9,500 capacity SSE Arena accommodates the Belfast Giants, one of the biggest ice hockey clubs in the UK. Featuring Canadian, ex-NHL players, the club competes the British Elite Ice Hockey League.\\nBelfast was the home town of former Manchester United player George Best, the 1968 European Footballer of the Year, who died in November 2005. On the day he was buried in the city, 100,000 people lined the route from his home on the Cregagh Road to Roselawn cemetery. Since his death the City Airport was named after him and a trust has been set up to fund a memorial to him in the city centre. Other sportspeople celebrated in the city include double world snooker champion Alex \\\"Hurricane\\\" Higgins and world champion boxers Wayne McCullough, Rinty Monaghan and Carl Frampton.\\n\\nClimate\\nAt 54°35′49″N 05°55′45″W, its northern latitude is characterised by short winter days and long summer evenings. During the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, local sunset is before 16:00 while sunrise is around 08:45. At the summer solstice in June, the sun sets after 22:00 and rises before 05:00.\\nFor this northern latitude, thanks to the influence of the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic Drift, Belfast has a comparatively mild climate. In summer the temperatures rarely range above 25 °C (77 °F) or dip in winter below −5 °C (23 °F). The maritime influence, also ensures that the city gets significant precipitation. On 157 days in an average year, rainfall is greater than 1 mm. Average annual rainfall is 846 millimetres (33.3 in), less than areas of northern England or most of Scotland, but higher than Dublin or the south-east coast of Ireland.\\nWith its moderate temperatures and abundant rainfall, Belfast's climate is defined as a temperate oceanic climate (Cfb in the Köppen climate classification system), a classification it shares with most of northwest Europe.\\n\\nIn fiction\\nJohn Greer Ervine, The Wayward Man (1927)\\nF. L. Green, Odd Man Out (1945), basis of Odd Man Out, a 1947 British film noir directed by Carol Reed, and starring James Mason, Robert Newton.\\nBrian Moore, The Emperor of Ice Cream (1965).\\nMaurice Leitch, Silver's City (1981)\\nBernard MacLaverty, Cal (1983)\\nRobert McLiam Wilson, Eureka Street (1996)\\nLucy Caldwell, Where They Were Missed (2005)\\nAnna Burns, Milkman (2018)\\nLouise Kennedy, Trespasses (2022)\\nMichael Magee, Close to Home (2023)\\n\\nNotable people\\nTwin towns – sister cities\\nBelfast City Council takes part in the twinning scheme, and is twinned with the following sister cities:\\n\\nNashville, Tennessee, United States (since 1994)\\nHefei, Anhui Province, China (since 2005)\\nBoston, Massachusetts, United States (since 2014)\\nShenyang, Liaoning Province, China (since 2016)\\nMelbourne, Victoria, Australia\\n\\nFreedom of the City\\nThose who have received the Freedom of the City\\n\\nSir Kenneth Branagh: 30 January 2018.\\nAndrew Carnegie: 28 September 1910.\\nSir Winston Churchill: 16 December 1955.\\nBill Clinton, 9 April 2018\\nSir Robert Hart, 1 July 1908\\nJohn Hewitt: 26 May 1983\\nSir John Jordan: 28 September 1910.\\nMichael Longley: 23 March 2015\\nGeorge J. Mitchell, 9 April 2018\\nNurses of Belfast, 1 December 2015\\nRoyal Ulster Constabulary and Reserve: 30 May 1980\\nWilliam Pirrie, 1st Viscount Pirrie: 1898, the first person to be awarded Freedom Of The City of Belfast.\\n\\nNotes\\nReferences\\nBibliography\\nJonathan Bardon (1982), Belfast An illustrated History. Belfast: Blackstaff Press, ISBN 0-85640-272-9\\nJ. C. Beckett et al. (1983), Belfast, The Making of a City. Belfast: Appletree Press, ISBN 0-86281-100-7\\nCiaran Carson (1997), The Star Factory. London: Granta Books, ISBN 9781862071179\\nFeargal Cochrane (2023), Belfast: The Story of a City and its People. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-26444-9\\nS. J. Connolly ed. (2012), Belfast 400: People, Place and History, Liverpool University Press. ISBN 978-1-84631-635-7\\nMaurice Goldring (1991), Belfast, From Loyalty to Rebellion. London: Lawrence & Wishart, ISBN 978-0-85315-722-81\\nRobert Johnstone (1990), Belfast, Portraits of a City, London: Barrie & Jenkins. ISBN 978-0-7126-3744-2\\nWilliam Maguire (2009), Belfast, A History, Lancaster: Carnegie. ISBN 978-1-85936-189-4\\nBill Meulemans (2013), Belfast, Both Sides Now. Create Space. ISBN 978-1-4791-9541-1\\nRaymond O'Regan (2010), Hidden Belfast: Benevolence, Blackguards and Balloon Heads. Dublin: Mercier Press. ISBN 978-1-85635-683-1\\nRaymond O'Regan, Arthur Magee (2014), The Little Book of Belfast. The History Press. ISBN 978-1-84588-803-9\\nMarcus Patton (1993), Central Belfast, An Historical Gazetteer. Belfast: Ulster Architectural Heritage Society. ISBN 0-900457-44-9\\n\\n\\n== External links ==\",\n \"title\": \"Belfast\"\n }\n]","isConversational":false},"question":{"kind":"string","value":"As of 1st August 2024 The three British Olympic Class ocean liners were manufactured in a city that lies at the mouth of what river?"},"question_decomposition":{"kind":"list like","value":[],"string":"[]","isConversational":false},"answer":{"kind":"string","value":"River Lagan"},"answer_aliases":{"kind":"list like","value":[],"string":"[]","isConversational":false},"answerable":{"kind":"bool","value":true,"string":"true"}}},{"rowIdx":99,"cells":{"id":{"kind":"string","value":"333"},"paragraphs":{"kind":"list like","value":[{"idx":0,"is_supporting":true,"paragraph_text":"The Copa América is an international association football competition established in 1916. It is contested by the men's national teams of the members of the Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol (CONMEBOL), the sport's continental governing body.\nEarly editions of the tournament, then known as the South American Football Championship, consisted of a round-robin group, where the team with the most points was declared the champion (with a play-off to break a tie if necessary). In 1975, when the tournament was rebranded to its current title, a final stage using the single-elimination format was introduced, which culminates with a final match between the last two teams remaining in contention. This type of format has been used ever since, except in 1989 and 1991, which featured a final group stage.\nArgentina defeated Colombia in the final of the latest competition, held in 2024.\n\nFinals\nKeys\naet: after extra time\np: penalty shoot-out\n Final played in two-legged format (with a playoff if necessary).\n Defined on penalties after 90 minutes.\n Defined on penalties after extra time\nTeams in italics are non-CONMEBOL members that participated as invitees.\n\nResults by nation\n* Indicates host country\n\nSee also\nList of FIFA World Cup finals\nList of UEFA European Championship finals\nList of AFC Asian Cup finals\nList of Africa Cup of Nations finals\nList of CONCACAF Gold Cup finals\nList of OFC Nations Cup finals\n\nReferences\nExternal links\nThe Copa América Archive by Martín Tabeira on the RSSSF","title":"List_of_Copa_Am%C3%A9rica_finals"},{"idx":1,"is_supporting":true,"paragraph_text":"The president of the United States is the head of state and head of government of the United States, indirectly elected to a four-year term via the Electoral College. The officeholder leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces. Since the office was established in 1789, 45 men have served in 46 presidencies. The first president, George Washington, won a unanimous vote of the Electoral College. Grover Cleveland served two non-consecutive terms and is therefore counted as the 22nd and 24th president of the United States, giving rise to the discrepancy between the number of presidencies and the number of individuals who have served as president.\nThe presidency of William Henry Harrison, who died 31 days after taking office in 1841, was the shortest in American history. Franklin D. Roosevelt served the longest, over twelve years, before dying early in his fourth term in 1945. He is the only U.S. president to have served more than two terms. Since the ratification of the Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1951, no person may be elected president more than twice, and no one who has served more than two years of a term to which someone else was elected may be elected more than once.\nFour presidents died in office of natural causes (William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Warren G. Harding, and Franklin D. Roosevelt), four were assassinated (Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, William McKinley, and John F. Kennedy), and one resigned (Richard Nixon, facing impeachment and removal from office). John Tyler was the first vice president to assume the presidency during a presidential term, and set the precedent that a vice president who does so becomes the fully functioning president with their own administration.\nThroughout most of its history, American politics has been dominated by political parties. The Constitution is silent on the issue of political parties, and at the time it came into force in 1789, no organized parties existed. Soon after the 1st Congress convened, political factions began rallying around dominant Washington administration officials, such as Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. Concerned about the capacity of political parties to destroy the fragile unity holding the nation together, Washington remained unaffiliated with any political faction or party throughout his eight-year presidency. He was, and remains, the only U.S. president never affiliated with a political party.\nThe incumbent president is Joe Biden, who assumed office on January 20, 2021.\n\nPresidents\nSee also\nActing President of the United States\nFounding Fathers of the United States\nList of vice presidents of the United States\nPresident of the Continental Congress\n\nNotes\nReferences\nWorks cited\nExternal links\n Media related to President of the United States at Wikimedia Commons\n Quotations related to List of presidents of the United States at Wikiquote","title":"List_of_presidents_of_the_United_States"}],"string":"[\n {\n \"idx\": 0,\n \"is_supporting\": true,\n \"paragraph_text\": \"The Copa América is an international association football competition established in 1916. It is contested by the men's national teams of the members of the Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol (CONMEBOL), the sport's continental governing body.\\nEarly editions of the tournament, then known as the South American Football Championship, consisted of a round-robin group, where the team with the most points was declared the champion (with a play-off to break a tie if necessary). In 1975, when the tournament was rebranded to its current title, a final stage using the single-elimination format was introduced, which culminates with a final match between the last two teams remaining in contention. This type of format has been used ever since, except in 1989 and 1991, which featured a final group stage.\\nArgentina defeated Colombia in the final of the latest competition, held in 2024.\\n\\nFinals\\nKeys\\naet: after extra time\\np: penalty shoot-out\\n Final played in two-legged format (with a playoff if necessary).\\n Defined on penalties after 90 minutes.\\n Defined on penalties after extra time\\nTeams in italics are non-CONMEBOL members that participated as invitees.\\n\\nResults by nation\\n* Indicates host country\\n\\nSee also\\nList of FIFA World Cup finals\\nList of UEFA European Championship finals\\nList of AFC Asian Cup finals\\nList of Africa Cup of Nations finals\\nList of CONCACAF Gold Cup finals\\nList of OFC Nations Cup finals\\n\\nReferences\\nExternal links\\nThe Copa América Archive by Martín Tabeira on the RSSSF\",\n \"title\": \"List_of_Copa_Am%C3%A9rica_finals\"\n },\n {\n \"idx\": 1,\n \"is_supporting\": true,\n \"paragraph_text\": \"The president of the United States is the head of state and head of government of the United States, indirectly elected to a four-year term via the Electoral College. The officeholder leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces. Since the office was established in 1789, 45 men have served in 46 presidencies. The first president, George Washington, won a unanimous vote of the Electoral College. Grover Cleveland served two non-consecutive terms and is therefore counted as the 22nd and 24th president of the United States, giving rise to the discrepancy between the number of presidencies and the number of individuals who have served as president.\\nThe presidency of William Henry Harrison, who died 31 days after taking office in 1841, was the shortest in American history. Franklin D. Roosevelt served the longest, over twelve years, before dying early in his fourth term in 1945. He is the only U.S. president to have served more than two terms. Since the ratification of the Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1951, no person may be elected president more than twice, and no one who has served more than two years of a term to which someone else was elected may be elected more than once.\\nFour presidents died in office of natural causes (William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Warren G. Harding, and Franklin D. Roosevelt), four were assassinated (Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, William McKinley, and John F. Kennedy), and one resigned (Richard Nixon, facing impeachment and removal from office). John Tyler was the first vice president to assume the presidency during a presidential term, and set the precedent that a vice president who does so becomes the fully functioning president with their own administration.\\nThroughout most of its history, American politics has been dominated by political parties. The Constitution is silent on the issue of political parties, and at the time it came into force in 1789, no organized parties existed. Soon after the 1st Congress convened, political factions began rallying around dominant Washington administration officials, such as Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. Concerned about the capacity of political parties to destroy the fragile unity holding the nation together, Washington remained unaffiliated with any political faction or party throughout his eight-year presidency. He was, and remains, the only U.S. president never affiliated with a political party.\\nThe incumbent president is Joe Biden, who assumed office on January 20, 2021.\\n\\nPresidents\\nSee also\\nActing President of the United States\\nFounding Fathers of the United States\\nList of vice presidents of the United States\\nPresident of the Continental Congress\\n\\nNotes\\nReferences\\nWorks cited\\nExternal links\\n Media related to President of the United States at Wikimedia Commons\\n Quotations related to List of presidents of the United States at Wikiquote\",\n \"title\": \"List_of_presidents_of_the_United_States\"\n }\n]","isConversational":false},"question":{"kind":"string","value":"Who was the United States President when Chile won their first Copa America?"},"question_decomposition":{"kind":"list like","value":[],"string":"[]","isConversational":false},"answer":{"kind":"string","value":"Barack Obama"},"answer_aliases":{"kind":"list like","value":[],"string":"[]","isConversational":false},"answerable":{"kind":"bool","value":true,"string":"true"}}}],"truncated":false,"partial":false},"paginationData":{"pageIndex":0,"numItemsPerPage":100,"numTotalItems":100,"offset":0,"length":100}},"jwt":"eyJhbGciOiJFZERTQSJ9.eyJyZWFkIjp0cnVlLCJwZXJtaXNzaW9ucyI6eyJyZXBvLmNvbnRlbnQucmVhZCI6dHJ1ZX0sImlhdCI6MTc3NDkzNjUyMywic3ViIjoiL2RhdGFzZXRzL2Jkc2FnbGFtL2ZyYW1lcy1tdXNpcXVlLW1pbmkiLCJleHAiOjE3NzQ5NDAxMjMsImlzcyI6Imh0dHBzOi8vaHVnZ2luZ2ZhY2UuY28ifQ.TtTkm-UAL2FR4fqG2_5fxonhXn-upQmQgheCxRaBS5cRfMO9xxH_TtFRvPnYFKHnPEmqBpixnsA2k54kdgIKDw","displayUrls":true,"splitSizeSummaries":[{"config":"default","split":"test","numRows":100,"numBytesParquet":5138821}]},"discussionsStats":{"closed":0,"open":1,"total":1},"fullWidth":true,"hasGatedAccess":true,"hasFullAccess":true,"isEmbedded":false,"savedQueries":{"community":[],"user":[]}}">
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"paragraph_text": "The 2021 Scottish Parliament election took place on 11 May 2021, under the provisions of the Scotland Act 1998. All 129 Members of the Scottish Parliament were elected in the sixth election since the parliament was re-established in 1999. The electio... | How many more votes did the Conservatives receive in the Highlands and Islands region in the 2021 Scottish Parliamentary Elections than in 2016? | [] | 16,086 | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "On March 30, 1981, then President of the United States Ronald Reagan was shot and wounded by John Hinckley Jr. in Washington, D.C., as he was returning to his limousine after a speaking engagement at the Washington Hilton. Hinckley believed the attac... | Which horse won the Kentucky Derby during the same calendar year in which John Hinckley Jr. attempted to assassinate U.S. President Ronald Reagan? | [] | Pleasant Colony | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "The Australian Poker Championship, commonly known as Aussie Millions, is a series of poker tournaments held at the Crown Casino, in Melbourne, Australia. The Main Event of the series is the Southern Hemisphere's richest poker tournament with a prize ... | How many player entries were in the event that the winner of the 2008 Aussie Millions also won in 2010 at the PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker? | [] | 1,240 | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "Istiklal Mosque (Bosnian: Istiklal Džamija) is one of the largest mosques in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was named after Istiqlal Mosque, Jakarta, the national mosque of Indonesia, since the mosque was a gift from the Indonesian people and g... | Please consider the following clues and answer the question that follows: 1. This mosque is located in the city dubbed the "Jerusalem of the Balkans." 2, The mosque was commissioned by an authoritarian dictator born in a small village 10 km west of Yogyakarta. Question: What is the height difference between the twin towers of the mosque and its dome? | [] | 21 meters | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "Below is a list of European countries and dependencies by area in Europe. As a continent, Europe's total geographical area is about 10 million square kilometres. Transcontinental countries are ranked according to the size of their European part only,... | As of August 1, 2024, what is the largest city of the 9th largest country by land area in Europe? | [] | The largest city of the 9th largest country in Europe is Warsaw. | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "Michigan ( MISH-ig-ən) is a state in the Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest region of the United States. It borders Wisconsin to the southwest in the Upper Peninsula, and Indiana and Ohio to the south in the Lower Peninsula; it is also connecte... | Who was the British monarch when Michigan was admitted as a state in the United States of America? | [] | King William IV. | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was one of the key events that led to World War I. Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, were assassinated on 28... | The band Franz Ferdinand is named after Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and a racehorse that the band watched win a race. How many years before the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was that race established? | [] | The Northumberland Plate horse race was established 81 years before the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "Lee Vaughn (born November 27, 1974) is a former American football cornerback in the National Football League (NFL) for the Dallas Cowboys. He also was a member of the BC Lions in the Canadian Football League (CFL). He played college football at the U... | What is the birth date of the person picked right after Lee Vaughn in the 1997 NFL draft? | [] | August 24, 1974 | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "The Basibasy mine is one of the largest titanium mines in Madagascar. The mine is located in Basibasy, Atsimo-Andrefana. The mine has reserves amounting to 446 million tonnes of ore grading 5.5% titanium.\n\n\n== References ==",
"title": "Basibas... | The Basibasy mine is located in Madagascar. This mine is abundant in a specific chemical element that was discovered for the first time in 1791. The person who discovered this element was born on what is now known as a major US holiday - what holiday is this? | [] | Christmas | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "The Willis Tower, originally and still commonly referred to as the Sears Tower, is a 110-story, 1,451-foot (442.3 m) skyscraper in the Loop community area of Chicago in Illinois, United States. Designed by architect Bruce Graham and engineer Fazlur R... | How many copies of Coit Tower would have to be stacked on top of the Willis Tower in order to exceed the height of the Chicago Spire, had it been completed? Give your answer as the lowest possible whole number of Coit Towers. | [] | 3 | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, often shortened to Hamlet (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play. Set in Denmark, the play depicts Prince Hamlet and his attempts to e... | What are the first three letters of the capital city of the country where Shakespeare's longest play is set? | [] | Cop | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "Jordan William Hunter Luck (born 15 October 1961) is the former lead singer and songwriter of the New Zealand rock band the Exponents. He was born in Vanderhoof in the province of British Columbia, Canada. His family moved to Tokarahi (near Oamaru)... | What is the 7th track on the 3rd album released by the band formed in 1981 and fronted by Jordan Luck? | [] | As I Love You | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "General der Luftwaffe (en: General of the air force) was a General of the branch rank of the Deutsche Luftwaffe (en: German Air Force) in Nazi Germany. Until the end of World War II in 1945, this particular general officer rank was on three-star leve... | What rank did Hermann Goring hold in the Luftwaffe during World War II, before Robert Ritter von Greim, and how does this rank compare to the equivalent ranks in other branches of the German military? | [] | Reichsmarschall, which was a rank above "General de Luftwaffe." This rank does not exist in other branches of the German military and was unique to Goring himself as Robert Ritter von Greim held the title of Generalfeldmarschall after Hermann. | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "BomBora is a family steel roller coaster currently operating at Lagoon in Farmington, Utah. It is located just outside Lagoon-A-Beach, Lagoon's water park. The name of the coaster comes from an indigenous Australian term for \"a submerged reef\" or \... | Who was the president of the United States when the resort housing the BomBora steel roller coaster first opened? | [] | Grover Cleveland | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "The Millennium Stadium (Welsh: Stadiwm y Mileniwm), known since 2016 as the Principality Stadium (Welsh: Stadiwm Principality) for sponsorship reasons, is the national stadium of Wales. Located in Cardiff, it is the home of the Wales national rugby u... | How many letters were in the name of the first single by the artist who played the first concert at Principality Stadium? | [] | 12 | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "Colosteidae is a family of stegocephalians (stem-group tetrapods) that lived in the Carboniferous period. They possessed a variety of characteristics from different tetrapod or stem-tetrapod groups, which made them historically difficult to classify.... | As of August 1 2024, what is the most recently described genus of Colosteidae? | [] | Deltaherpeton, first described in 2010 | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "Shogi (将棋, shōgi, English: , Japanese: [ɕoːɡi]), also known as Japanese chess, is a strategy board game for two players. It is one of the most popular board games in Japan and is in the same family of games as Western chess, chaturanga, xiangqi, Indi... | As of 2024, how many times could the country where shogi was invented fit inside the country where xiangqi was invented? Round to the nearest whole number. | [] | 25 | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "Snoopy is an anthropomorphic beagle in the comic strip Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz. He can also be found in all of the Peanuts films and television specials. Since his debut on October 4, 1950, Snoopy has become one of the most recognizable and icon... | What was the birthday of the man who was mayor of New York City the year Snoopy debuted in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade? | [] | November 24, 1921 | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "Sir Peter Cook (born 22 October 1936) is an English architect, lecturer and writer on architectural subjects. He was a founder of Archigram, and was knighted in 2007 by the Queen for his services to architecture and teaching. He is also a Royal Acad... | What is the name of the "pseudo label" that collected the early collaborations of English architect Sir Peter Cook's son? | [] | Gamsonite | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "Marion Couthouy Smith (1853–1931) was a poet from the United States. She published three books of poetry between 1906 and 1918 and individual poems through the Harper's Magazine, Century Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, and The New England Magazine.\n\nBi... | Where did Marion Couthouy Smith publish her books and poems between 1906 and 1918? Which years did each of these magazine companies first start? | [] | Marion Couthouy Smith published her books and poems in Harper's Magazine, Century Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, and The New England Magazine. Harpers Magazine was first published in 1850. Century Magazine was published in 1881. The Atlantic was founded in 1857. Lastly, The New England Magazine was first published in 1884. | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "On January 6, 1994, Nancy Kerrigan, an American figure skater, was struck on the lower right thigh with a baton by assailant Shane Stant as she walked down a corridor in Cobo Arena in Detroit, Michigan. Kerrigan had been practicing skating on an ice ... | Which of the following albums came out on a date closest to the date that Nancy Kerrigan was assaulted? What about which album was closest to the date of Harding's plea deal? Awake by Dream Theater Inside Out by Fates Warning Promised Land by Queensryche Dreamspace by Stratovarius | [] | Dreamspace' by Stratovarius. | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "The United States of America is a federal republic consisting of 50 states, a federal district (Washington, D.C., the capital city of the United States), five major territories, and various minor islands. Both the states and the United States as a wh... | What is the difference between the number of years served in the seventh-ratified US state's House of Delegates between that state's senator elected in 2007 and his uncle? | [] | The seventh-ratified US state is Maryland. The senator of Maryland elected in 2007 is Ben Cardin. Ben Cardin served 20 years (1967 to 1987) and his uncle, Maurice Cardin, served 15 years (1951 to 1966) in the Maryland House of Delegates. 20 - 15 = 5 years difference, with Ben serving 5 more years. | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "Lego Avatar (stylized as LEGO Avatar) is a Lego theme based on the film series of the same name created by James Cameron. It is licensed from 20th Century Studios, The Walt Disney Company and Lightstorm Entertainment. The theme was first introduced o... | What date did the Lego Avatar theme debut? How many years are there between the release of the original movie and the release of the Lego theme? | [] | The debut date was October 1st, 2022. It debuted 13 years after the release of the movie. | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "Mark William Calaway (born March 24, 1965), better known by his ring name The Undertaker, is an American retired professional wrestler. Widely regarded as one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time, Calaway spent the vast majority of his ... | How many of Mark Calaway's consecutive Wrestlemania wins occurred in matches that were longer than the final match result in the same year's competition, not including years where Calaway was part of the final result? | [] | Five | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "The Day of the Jackal is a 1973 political thriller film directed by Fred Zinnemann and starring Edward Fox and Michael Lonsdale. Based on the 1971 novel of the same name by Frederick Forsyth, the film is about a professional assassin known only as th... | In 1973, Edward Fox starred in The Day of the Jackal. He beat out a James Bond actor to the part, but what was the name of another James Bond actor he appeared with in an 'unofficial' 80s Bond film? | [] | Sean Connery | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "This is a list of the longest-reigning monarchs in history, detailing the monarchs and lifelong leaders who have reigned the longest, ranked by length of reign.\n\nMonarchs of sovereign states with verifiable reigns by exact date\nThe following are t... | As of 1st January 2023, If I am 7 years younger than the eldest granddaughter of the female monarch with the longest reign in confirmed history was at the time of the monarch's death, how old am I? | [] | 34 | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, commonly known as the Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT, is an international treaty whose objective is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology, to promote cooperation in th... | What album by the band named 'The Band' was released on the same day as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was opened for signature? | [] | Music from Big Pink | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "The Nobel Prizes ( noh-BEL; Swedish: Nobelpriset [nʊˈbɛ̂lːˌpriːsɛt]; Norwegian: Nobelprisen Norwegian: [nʊˈbɛ̀lːˌpriːsn̩] ) are five separate prizes awarded to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind, as... | What is the age difference between the youngest and oldest person, in the 20th Century, to win two Nobel Prizes? | [] | 20 years. | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "The 2014 Stanley Cup Finals was the championship series of the National Hockey League's (NHL) 2013–14 season, and the culmination of the 2014 Stanley Cup playoffs. The League realigned its divisions prior to the season, and changed the structure of t... | As of August 3, 2024, what is the hometown of the captain of the team that won the Stanley Cup three years before 2017? | [] | Manhattan Beach, CA | [] | true |
658 | [
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"paragraph_text": "Victory Salute, commonly referred to as the Olympic Black Power Statue, is a monument depicting the 1968 Olympics Black Power salute performed by African-American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos. The monument consists of two fiberglass statues ... | What is the birth town of the absent athlete from the Victory Salute statue in San Jose, California? | [] | Peter Norman was born in Coburg, Victoria, Australia. | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "The following is a list of African-American United States presidential and vice presidential nominees and candidates for nomination. Nominees are candidates nominated or otherwise selected by political parties for particular offices. Listed are the A... | What year was the person born who was Prime Minister of The United Kingdom during the year that the first African American ran for president of the United States? | [] | 1792 | [] | true |
745 | [
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"paragraph_text": "The Academy Award for Best Director (officially known as the Academy Award of Merit for Directing) is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It is given in honor of a film director who has exhibited ou... | How many Best Director winners from the Academy Awards in the 1990s were born before 1950? | [] | Three. Steven Spielberg, Jonathan Demme, Clint Eastwood. | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "The Brazil national football team (Portuguese: Seleção Brasileira de Futebol), nicknamed Seleção Canarinho (\"Canary Squad\", after their bright yellow jersey), represents Brazil in men's international football and is administered by the Brazilian Fo... | I'm a concert venue in Washington, D.C. Blink-182 played here on their tour the same year Brazil won their fifth FIFA World Cup. What was my name in 2010? | [] | Verizon Center | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "Zooey Claire Deschanel ( ZO-ee day-shə-NEL; born January 17, 1980) is an American actress and musician. She made her film debut in Mumford (1999) and had a supporting role in Cameron Crowe's film Almost Famous (2000). Deschanel is known for her deadp... | As of August 2, 2024, what is the title of the most viewed episode in the second most viewed season of the TV show that Zooey Deschanel stars in as a character named "Jess Day"? | [] | The most viewed episode of the second season (second most viewed) is its first episode, "Re-Launch". | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "The Gods Must Be Crazy is a 1980 comedy film written, produced, edited and directed by Jamie Uys. An international co-production of South Africa and Botswana, it is the first film in The Gods Must Be Crazy series. Set in Southern Africa, the film sta... | What is the name of the popular vantage point that is featured in the 1980 comedy film "The Gods Must Be Crazy", and which provincial nature reserve is it located in as of 2024? | [] | God's Window in Blyde River Canyon Nature Reserve | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "Brokeback Mountain is a 2005 American neo-Western romantic drama film directed by Ang Lee and produced by Diana Ossana and James Schamus. Adapted from the 1997 short story by Annie Proulx, the screenplay was written by Ossana and Larry McMurtry. The ... | What horror movie remake did the director who was the first to attempt and failed to make Brokeback Mountian into a film direct in the 90's? | [] | Psycho | [] | true |
580 | [
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"paragraph_text": "Miss Venezuela (Spanish: Organización Miss Venezuela) is a Venezuelan beauty pageant operated by the Cisneros Group. Founded in 1952, it currently selects Venezuelan representatives to Miss Universe, Miss World, and Miss International. The current na... | How old was the Miss Miss Venezuela 1970 winner on the day the 68th Academy Awards was held? | [] | Bella La Rosa was 46 years old on March 25, 1996. | [] | true |
519 | [
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"paragraph_text": "The Nobel Prize in Literature (Swedish: Nobelpriset i litteratur) is awarded annually by the Swedish Academy to authors for outstanding contributions in the field of literature. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the 1895 will of Alfre... | Who won the Academy Award for Best Actor the year that John Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel prize for Literature? | [] | Gregory Peck | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "The Sweden Democrats (Swedish: Sverigedemokraterna [ˈsvæ̂rjɛdɛmʊˌkrɑːtɛɳa] , SD [ˈɛ̂sːdeː] ) is a nationalist and right-wing populist political party in Sweden founded in 1988. As of 2024, it is the largest member of Sweden's right-wing bloc and the ... | This singer represented Sweden in Eurovision four years before the Sweden Democrats entered Parliament for the first time. What astrological sign was the real person behind the character she played in her first musical? | [] | Aquarius | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "RMS Titanic was a British ocean liner that sank on 15 April 1912 as a result of striking an iceberg on her maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City, United States. Of the estimated 2,224 passengers and crew aboard, approximately 1,50... | Which one was longer and by how much? James Cameron's film Titanic (1997) or the actual sinking of the Titanic in 1912? | [] | James Cameron's film Titanic was longer than the actual sinking Titanic, with a running time of 195 minutes, 35 minutes longer than the actual sinking of the Titanic in 1912. | [] | true |
788 | [
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"paragraph_text": "Hiyō (Japanese: 飛鷹, \"Flying Hawk\") was the name ship of her class of two aircraft carriers of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN). Originally planned as the ocean liner Izumo Maru (出雲丸) in 1939, she was purchased by the Navy Ministry in 1941 for conve... | A Japanese aircraft carrier that was first built to become a luxury ocean liner was sunk by the U.S. torpedos in a battle four months prior to the Battle of Leyte Gulf in World War II. What is the name of the aircraft carrier and what battle did it sink in? | [] | The aircraft carrier Hiyō was sunk in the Battle of the Philippine Sea. | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "The Treasury of Atreus or Tomb of Agamemnon is a large tholos or beehive tomb constructed between 1300 and 1250 BCE in Mycenae, Greece.\nIt is the largest and most elaborate tholos tomb known to have been constructed in the Aegean Bronze Age, and one... | Who was the successor of the Egyptian Pharaoh that was in power when the Treasury of Atreus was completed? | [] | Merneptah | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "Rahul Ligma is a fictional fired Twitter employee, a character played by one of a pair of amateur improvisational actors that pranked multiple major media outlets on October 28, 2022. Ligma, the fictional character's surname, is a reference to the Li... | The person who posted a photo with Rahul Ligma and Daniel Johnson at the headquarters of a social media company claims to have a certain syndrome, despite never receiving a formal diagnosis. Who was this syndrome named after? | [] | Hans Asperger | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "The Grammy Award for Song of the Year is an honor presented at the Grammy Awards, a ceremony that was established in 1958 and originally called the Gramophone Awards. The Song of the Year award is one of the four most prestigious categories at the aw... | A certain singer won the Grammy Award for Song of the Year in 2008 and in the same year, sang at a prominent person's 90th Birthday Party concert in London. How many vowels are in the given first name of the person who the birthday party was for? | [] | 4 | [] | true |
786 | [
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"paragraph_text": "The periodic table, also known as the periodic table of the elements, is an ordered arrangement of the chemical elements into rows (\"periods\") and columns (\"groups\"). It is an icon of chemistry and is widely used in physics and other sciences. It... | Which element of the periodic table is a homonym of a synonym of a tool commonly used in dog walking? | [] | Lead | [] | true |
469 | [
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"paragraph_text": "South Korea competed as Republic of Korea at the 2006 Winter Olympics, while North Korea competed as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. At the opening ceremony, the athletes of both North and South Korea entered the stadium together behind th... | Which South Korean Cross-country skier had the highest rank at the Olympics in the Men's 15 km, among South Korean skiers only, between 2002 and 2006? | [] | Park Byeong-ju | [] | true |
513 | [
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"paragraph_text": "Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until her death in 2022. She had been queen regnant of 32 sovereign states during her lifetim... | What lasted longer: the reign of Queen Elizabeth II or the life of Julius Caesar? | [] | The reign of Queen Elizabeth II | [] | true |
291 | [
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"paragraph_text": "The Marilyn Diptych (1962) is a silkscreen painting by American pop artist Andy Warhol depicting Marilyn Monroe. The monumental work is one of the artist's most noted of the movie star. \nThe painting consists of 50 images. Each image of the actres... | Andy Warhol made the painting Marilyn Diptych from a publicity photo of Marilyn Monroe for a film. What was the name of Monroe's character in that film? | [] | Rose Loomis | [] | true |
549 | [
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"paragraph_text": "The FGM-148 Javelin, or Advanced Anti-Tank Weapon System-Medium (AAWS-M), is an American-made man-portable anti-tank system in service since 1996 and continuously upgraded. It replaced the M47 Dragon anti-tank missile in US service. Its fire-and-forg... | Out of the following man-portable launchers, which entered service with their respective military last? A) FGM-148 Javelin B) 9K38 Igla C) FIM-92 Stinger. | [] | A) FGM-148 Javelin | [] | true |
451 | [
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"paragraph_text": "Novake (pronounced [nɔˈʋaːkɛ]) is a village on the left bank of the Dravinja River in the Municipality of Poljčane in northeastern Slovenia. The area belongs to the traditional region of Styria. It is now included with the rest of the municipality in... | How many times taller is the 7th highest mountain the world than Novake, Poljčane in Slovenia? Round your answer to one decimal place. | [] | 31.5 | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "Resident Evil: Revelations 2 is an episodic survival horror video game developed and published by Capcom as part of the Resident Evil series. The game is a follow-up to Resident Evil: Revelations and Resident Evil 5. It marks the return of Claire Re... | How many years were between the publication of a book considered 'one of the seminal works of fiction of the 20th century', and the Japanese release of the retail version of the game "Resident Evil: Revelations 2" for the PS3, of which the author of the 20th century book was a great inspiration for the plot? | [] | 100 | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "\"I Think I'm Go Go\" is a 1980 song by the British new wave band Squeeze, released on their third album Argybargy. The lyrics were written by Chris Difford and the music was written by Glenn Tilbrook.\n\nBackground\nChris Difford said about the lyri... | How many years elapsed between the release of the song "I Think I'm Go Go" by the band Squeeze and the theatrical premier of E.T. the movie? | [] | 2 | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "BTS (Korean: 방탄소년단; RR: Bangtan Sonyeondan; lit. Bulletproof Boy Scouts), also known as the Bangtan Boys, is a South Korean boy band formed in 2010. The band consists of Jin, Suga, J-Hope, RM, Jimin, V, and Jungkook, who co-write or co-produce much o... | In what year was the former South Korean prime minister who is from the same clan as the oldest member of the band BTS born? | [] | 1948 | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "Olgivanna Lloyd Wright (born Olga Ivanovna Lazović; December 27, 1898 – March 1, 1985) was the third and final wife of architect Frank Lloyd Wright. They first met in November 1924 and married in 1928. In 1932, the couple established Wright's archite... | Who was the building named after on South Forest Avenue, which was built around 1959-1964 and designed by the architect married to Olga Lazovic? | [] | Grady Gammage | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "Softball is a popular variation of baseball, the difference being that it is played with a larger ball, on a smaller field, and with only underhand pitches (where the ball is released while the hand is primarily below the ball) permitted. Softball is... | In feet, subtract the diameter of the pitching plate ("rubber") in softball, from the distance between the "points" of the bases in baseball, and multiply that figure by the year that Joe DiMaggio married Marilyn Monroe. | [] | 144,596. The distance between the points of bases in baseball is 90 feet, subtract the diameter of the pitching plate in softball (16 feet), to get 74, and multiply that by 1954. | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "The president of the United States is the head of state and head of government of the United States, indirectly elected to a four-year term via the Electoral College. The officeholder leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the co... | How old was the 31st President of the United States when the second nuclear weapon ever used in warfare was dropped? | [] | 70 years old | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "Harry Potter is a series of seven fantasy novels written by British author J. K. Rowling. The novels chronicle the lives of a young wizard, Harry Potter, and his friends, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School o... | As of August 1 2024, what books has the author of the Harry Potter series written under an alias? | [] | The Cuckoo's Calling, The Silkworm, Career of Evil, Lethal White, Troubled Blood, The Ink Black Heart, The Running Grave | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "Barbie is a fashion doll created by American businesswoman Ruth Handler, manufactured by American toy and entertainment company Mattel and introduced on March 9, 1959. The toy was based on the German Bild Lilli doll which Handler had purchased while ... | What was the age difference between the inventor of Barbie and the inventor of Hot Wheels? | [] | 6 months and 26 days. | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "Dippin' Dots is an American ice cream snack invented by Curt Jones in 1988. The confection is created by flash freezing ice cream mix in liquid nitrogen. The snack is made by Dippin' Dots, Inc., headquartered in Paducah, Kentucky. Dippin' Dots are so... | As of 2020, what was the population of the city where Dippin' Dots were founded? | [] | 27,137 | [] | true |
459 | [
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"paragraph_text": "David Andrew Leo Fincher (born August 28, 1962) is an American film director. His films, most of which are psychological thrillers, have collectively grossed over $2.1 billion worldwide and have received numerous accolades, including three nomination... | David Fincher has two movies in the 90's that have numbers in the title. What is the number in the title of David Fincher's later-released movie multiplied by the ratio of the sum of all of the molars in an aardvark over the number of adult teeth in a dog? | [] | 13/3 or 4.333... (infinitely repeating decimal) | [] | true |
715 | [
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"paragraph_text": "The Conquest of Bread (French: La Conquête du Pain; Russian: Хлѣбъ и воля, romanized: Khleb i volja, 'Bread and Freedom'; Хлеб и воля in contemporary spelling) is an 1892 book by the Russian anarchist communist Peter Kropotkin. Originally written in ... | What year did the author of "The Conquest for Bread" write about "Mutual Aid"? Who was the author? | [] | Peter Kropotkin wrote the series of essays "Mutual Aid" in 1902. | [] | true |
514 | [
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"paragraph_text": "Herbert Marshall McLuhan (, mə-KLOO-ən; July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980) was a Canadian philosopher whose work is among the cornerstones of the study of media theory. He studied at the University of Manitoba and the University of Cambridge. He beg... | What is the birthday of the actor that portrayed the character David Cronenberg based on Marshall McLuhan? | [] | March 6, 1926 | [] | true |
664 | [
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"paragraph_text": "The Red Hot Chili Peppers are an American rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1982, comprising vocalist Anthony Kiedis, bassist Flea, drummer Chad Smith, and guitarist John Frusciante. Their music incorporates elements of alternative rock, funk, punk ... | How many Red Hot Chili Peppers albums were released while Nelson Mandela was in prison? | [] | 4 | [] | true |
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"paragraph_text": "The World Series is the annual championship series of Major League Baseball (MLB) and concludes the MLB postseason. First played in 1903, the World Series championship is a best-of-seven playoff and is a contest between the champions of baseball's Na... | As of August 2024, the Atlanta Braves beat the Houston Astros the last time they won the World Series. How many years before this did Jackie Robinson join the Brooklyn Dodgers? | [] | 74 years | [] | true |
267 | [
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"paragraph_text": "This is a list of the costliest land battles of the American Civil War, measured by casualties (killed, wounded, captured, and missing) on both sides.\n\nHighest casualty battles\nSee also\n\nList of American Civil War battles\nTimeline of events lea... | Twenty-three years after the deadliest battle in the US Civil War, who served as governor in the state in which this battle was fought? | [] | Robert E Pattison | [] | true |
632 | [
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"paragraph_text": "Damon Kyle Wayans Sr. (; born September 4, 1960) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, producer, and writer. He performed as a comedian and actor throughout the 1980s, including a year-long stint on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live... | How many days is it from Damon Wayans's first episode as a cast member of Saturday Night Live to Damon Wayans's first episode as a cast member of In Living Color, including the days the first episodes premiered? | [] | 1619 days. | [] | true |
181 | [
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"paragraph_text": "The Clash were an English rock band that formed in London in 1976 and were key players in the original wave of British punk rock. Billed as \"The Only Band That Matters\", they used elements of reggae, dub, funk, ska, and rockabilly, and they contrib... | What is so distinctive about the label design of an Australian record label which was purchased in 1960 by another record label which produced the debut album for The Clash? | [] | The octagonal shape | [] | true |
342 | [
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"paragraph_text": "Uduak Amimo is a journalist of Kenyan origin. She hosted the current affairs talk show, Cheche, on Citizen TV, which is part of the Royal Media Services stable between 2012 and 2017. Before returning to Kenya, Amimo worked for several international ... | Who was the president of Kenya when Uduak Amimo took a break from her talk show and the media to pursue her interest in coaching and social impact projects? | [] | Uhuru Kenyatta | [] | true |
202 | [
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"paragraph_text": "National Peace Corps Association (NPCA) is a North American nonprofit organization supporting the Peace Corps Agency community. Founded in 1979, the NPCA is headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States \nThe NPCA maintains a database comprising a... | The National Peace Corps Association was founded in 1979 by a United States politician. This founder then appointed the very first director of the Peace Corps, his brother-in-law. What is the first name of this director? | [] | Robert | [] | true |
572 | [
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"paragraph_text": "Condor (possibly from Quechua for condor) is a mountain in the Andes of Peru, about 5,200 metres (17,060 ft) high. It is located in the Arequipa Region, Caylloma Province, Choco District. It lies in the Chila mountain range north of the Colca River. ... | What is the difference in elevation between Mount Rainier and Condor Mountain? What is the answer in feet? | [] | 2,689 feet. | [] | true |
475 | [
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"paragraph_text": "Hannah Arendt (, US also ; German: [ˌhana ˈaːʁənt] ; born Johanna Arendt; 14 October 1906 – 4 December 1975) was a German-American historian and philosopher. She was one of the most influential political theorists of the 20th century.\nHer works cove... | As of 2020, who is the longest-serving president of the university where Hannah Arendt is buried? | [] | Leon Botstein | [] | true |
596 | [
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"paragraph_text": "Kwon Bo-ah (Korean: 권보아; born November 5, 1986), known professionally as BoA and often referred to as the \"Queen of K-pop\", is a South Korean singer, songwriter, dancer, producer, and actress. \nBorn and raised in Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, BoA was ... | What BTS member turned 5 years old the soonest after BoA's first album was released? | [] | Jimin | [] | true |
90 | [
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"paragraph_text": "There are 30 stadiums in use by Major League Baseball (MLB) teams. The oldest ballpark is Fenway Park in Boston, home of the Boston Red Sox, which opened in 1912. The newest stadium is Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas, home of the Texas Rangers, ... | What is the average distance for the left field line in MLB stadiums with a retractable roof as of August 2024? Round to the nearest whole number. | [] | 331 feet | [] | true |
49 | [
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"paragraph_text": "Since Alaska's admission to the Union in January 1959, it has participated in 16 United States presidential elections, always having 3 electoral votes. In the 1960 presidential election, Alaska was narrowly won by the Republican Party's candidate and... | As of 2024, at the time of his birth, what was the middle name of the U.S. president who won Alaska, graduated from Yale University, and had a son named Michael? | [] | Lynch | [] | true |
635 | [
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"paragraph_text": "Connor Andrew McDavid (born January 13, 1997) is a Canadian professional ice hockey centre and captain of the Edmonton Oilers of the National Hockey League (NHL). Born and raised in Richmond Hill, Ontario, the Oilers selected him first overall in the... | Who was team captain of the team that won the Stanley Cup the year Connor McDavid was born? | [] | Steve Yzerman | [] | true |
268 | [
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"paragraph_text": "The cent, the United States of America one-cent coin (symbol: ¢), often called the \"penny\", is a unit of currency equaling one-hundredth of a United States of America dollar. It has been the lowest face-value physical unit of U.S. currency since th... | Which president featured on a U.S. coin in 1972 served the longest as President of the United States of America? | [] | Franklin Delano Roosevelt (12 years). | [] | true |
13 | [
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"paragraph_text": "Barbara Ellen Kingsolver (born April 8, 1955) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, essayist, and poet. Her widely known works include The Poisonwood Bible, the tale of a missionary family in the Congo, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a nonf... | One of Barbara Kingsolver's best known novels is about an American missionary family which moves to Africa. At the time, the country they move to was a Belgian colony. Which year did it become independent? | [] | 1960 | [] | true |
606 | [
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"paragraph_text": "Muhammad Ali (; born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr.; January 17, 1942 – June 3, 2016) was an American professional boxer and activist. Nicknamed \"the Greatest\", he is regarded as one of the most significant sports figures of the 20th century and is oft... | How many more knock-outs did Joe Louis have than Muhammad Ali? | [] | 15 | [] | true |
805 | [
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"paragraph_text": "Tate Rosner McRae (born July 1, 2003) is a Canadian singer, songwriter, and dancer. At the age of 13, she gained prominence as the first Canadian finalist on the American reality television series So You Think You Can Dance. McRae was signed by RCA R... | Who won the season of the dance show that Tate McRae placed third in back in 2016? | [] | Leon "Kida" Burns | [] | true |
524 | [
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"paragraph_text": "Director Special Forces (DSF) is the senior British Armed Forces officer responsible for the United Kingdom Special Forces. The post is a senior role within the Ministry of Defence (MoD). As director, the incumbent is responsible for the provision of... | How many more letters are in the first name of the eighth Director of Special Forces (United Kingdom) than the runner who won Silver in the 1985 UK Athletics Championship 10,000 meters event? Give the answer in morse code. | [] | ....- | [] | true |
293 | [
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"paragraph_text": "Catwoman is a character appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. Created by Bill Finger and Bob Kane, she debuted as \"the Cat\" in Batman #1 (spring 1940). She has become one of the superhero Batman's most prominent enemies, belongi... | How old was the New-York born comic book writer who created the character Catwoman when he died? | [] | 83 | [] | true |
397 | [
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"paragraph_text": "The 2007 NHL Entry Draft was the 45th NHL Entry Draft. It was hosted at Nationwide Arena in the city of Columbus, Ohio, on June 22, 2007. The draft consisted of seven rounds with rounds two through seven taking place on June 23, 2007. The draft was t... | What were the names of the parents of the first overall pick in the 2007 NHL entry draft? | [] | Donna and Patrick were the names of Patrick Kane's parents. | [] | true |
3 | [
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"paragraph_text": "The FIFA World Cup, often called the World Cup, is an international association football competition among the senior men's national teams of the members of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the sport's global governing bo... | As of August 1, 2024, which country were holders of the FIFA World Cup the last time the UEFA Champions League was won by a club from London? | [] | France | [] | true |
125 | [
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"paragraph_text": "This list of Academy Award records is current as of the 96th Academy Awards, with the ceremony taking place on March 10, 2024.\n\nMost awards or nominations\nMost awards won by a single film: 11\nThree films have won 11 Academy Awards:\nBen-Hur (1959... | How many days after the United States release of the record holder for largest sweep at the 2004 Oscars was the death of that movie's cinematographer? | [] | 4149 days | [] | true |
290 | [
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"paragraph_text": "The Good Place is an American fantasy-comedy television series created by Michael Schur. It premiered on NBC on September 19, 2016, and concluded on January 30, 2020, after four seasons and 53 episodes.\nAlthough the plot evolves significantly over t... | The lead actress of the television show The Good Place who played protagonist Eleanor Shellstop, is married to a man who has been in many TV series and Films in his career. What was the name of the character he provided the voice for in a 2021 animated movie? | [] | Ruben | [] | true |
674 | [
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"paragraph_text": "Wicked is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and a book by Winnie Holzman. It is a loose adaptation of the 1995 Gregory Maguire novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, which is in turn based on L. Frank Baum... | Who composed the Broadway musical that premiered in 2003 and starred the actress who would later voice Elsa in Disney's Frozen? | [] | Stephen Schwartz | [] | true |
1 | [
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"paragraph_text": "Charlotte Nicholls (née Brontë; 21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855), commonly known as Charlotte Brontë (, commonly ), was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels became classics of... | Imagine there is a building called Bronte tower whose height in feet is the same number as the dewey decimal classification for the Charlotte Bronte book that was published in 1847. Where would this building rank among tallest buildings in New York City, as of August 2024? | [] | 37th | [] | true |
172 | [
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"paragraph_text": "The Northern Ireland national football team represents Northern Ireland in international association football. It is organised by the Irish Football Association (IFA), which was formed in 1880, prior to the partition of Ireland. The original Ireland ... | Which Northern Irish footballer who started in the 90s played for 9 English clubs, 8 of which were FA Cup winners? | [] | Keith Gillespie | [] | true |
389 | [
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"paragraph_text": "The Sydney Peace Prize is awarded by the Sydney Peace Foundation,\na non profit organisation associated with the University of Sydney. The prize promotes peace with justice and the practice of nonviolence. It aims to encourage public interest and dis... | What was the word that featured the least in the longest recorded quotation by the chimpanzee named after the recipient of the 2011 Sydney Peace Prize? | [] | You | [] | true |
260 | [
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"paragraph_text": "William Keir Clark (May 30, 1910 – November 28, 2010) was a Canadian merchant and political figure in Prince Edward Island. After serving as mayor of Montague in 1941 and 1942, he represented 3rd Kings in the Legislative Assembly of Prince Edward Isl... | Canadian politician Keir Clark attended a now defunct university college, which shut its doors in 1969. Who served as the first President of its successor institution? | [] | Ronald James Baker | [] | true |
169 | [
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"paragraph_text": "Joe Frans (born Kojo Frans in Takoradi, Ghana) is a Swedish politician of Ghanaian descent, social activist, board professional and former member of parliament.\n\nCareer\nJoe Frans came to Sweden to attend university. During his studies he met his w... | I am thinking of a country. A former member of Swedish Parliament during 2002 – 2006 was born there. English is the official language but many other languages are spoken there. The Trans–West African Coastal Highway passes through this country. In June 2020, Democratic Party leaders in the United States caused controversy by wearing stoles made of cloth from this country. | [] | Ghana | [] | true |
424 | [
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"paragraph_text": "The president of the United States is the head of state and head of government of the United States, indirectly elected to a four-year term via the Electoral College. The officeholder leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the co... | How old was the vice president to the fifth US president when he died? | [] | 50 | [] | true |
329 | [
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"paragraph_text": "Jackson Hole Mountain Resort (JHMR) is a ski resort in the western United States, at Teton Village, Wyoming. In the Teton Range of the Rocky Mountains, it is located in Teton County, twelve miles (20 km) northwest of Jackson and due south of Grand Te... | What compass direction (of the 4 cardinal and 4 ordinal directions) is the capital city of the state which houses the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort in relation to the centre of the state? | [] | Southeast | [] | true |
684 | [
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"paragraph_text": "The first series of the 2005 revival of the British science fiction programme Doctor Who began on 26 March 2005 with the episode \"Rose\". This marked the end of the programme's 16 year absence from episodic television following its cancellation in 1... | What Doctor Who episode aired on a date closest to the 441st launch of the Skylark rocket? | [] | Dalek | [] | true |
103 | [
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"paragraph_text": "The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic, sometimes Afrasian), also known as Hamito-Semitic or Semito-Hamitic, are a language family (or \"phylum\") of about 400 languages spoken predominantly in West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and par... | As of 2024, what percentage of Afroasiatic language speakers speak Central Atlas Tamazight? | [] | 0.49% | [] | true |
670 | [
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"paragraph_text": "HMHS Britannic (originally to be the RMS Britannic) () was the third and final vessel of the White Star Line's Olympic class of steamships and the second White Star ship to bear the name Britannic. She was the youngest sister of the RMS Olympic and t... | As of 1st August 2024 The three British Olympic Class ocean liners were manufactured in a city that lies at the mouth of what river? | [] | River Lagan | [] | true |
333 | [
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"paragraph_text": "The Copa América is an international association football competition established in 1916. It is contested by the men's national teams of the members of the Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol (CONMEBOL), the sport's continental governing body.\nEar... | Who was the United States President when Chile won their first Copa America? | [] | Barack Obama | [] | true |
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