The Roland Levinsky building, the landmark building of the University of Plymouth, is located in the city's central quarter. Designed by leading architect Henning Larsen, the building was opened in 2008 and houses the University's Arts faculty. It has been consistently considered one of the UK's most beautiful university buildings.


People from Plymouth are known as Plymothians or less formally as Janners. Its meaning is described as a person from Devon, deriving from Cousin Jan (the Devon form of John), but more particularly in naval circles anyone from the Plymouth area.


The Elizabethan navigator, Sir Francis Drake was born in the nearby town of Tavistock and was the mayor of Plymouth. He was the first Englishman to circumnavigate the world and was known by the Spanish as El Draco meaning "The Dragon" after he raided many of their ships. He died of dysentery in 1596 off the coast of Puerto Rico. In 2002 a mission to recover his body and bring it to Plymouth was allowed by the Ministry of Defence. His cousin and contemporary John Hawkins was a Plymouth man. Painter Sir Joshua Reynolds, founder and first president of the Royal Academy was born and educated in nearby Plympton, now part of Plymouth. William Cookworthy born in Kingsbridge set up his successful porcelain business in the city and was a close friend of John Smeaton designer of the Eddystone Lighthouse. On 26 January 1786, Benjamin Robert Haydon, an English painter who specialised in grand historical pictures, was born here. The naturalist Dr William Elford Leach FRS, who did much to pave the way in Britain for Charles Darwin, was born at Hoe Gate in 1791.


Antarctic explorers Robert Falcon Scott and Frank Bickerton both lived in the city. Artists include Beryl Cook whose paintings depict the culture of Plymouth and Robert Lenkiewicz, whose paintings investigated themes of vagrancy, sexual behaviour and suicide, lived in the city from the 1960s until his death in 2002. Illustrator and creator of children's series Mr Benn and King Rollo, David McKee, was born and brought up in South Devon and trained at Plymouth College of Art. Jazz musician John Surman, born in nearby Tavistock, has close connections to the area, evidenced by his 2012 album Saltash Bells. The avant garde prepared guitarist Keith Rowe was born in the city before establishing the jazz free improvisation band AMM in London in 1965 and MIMEO in 1997. The musician and film director Cosmo Jarvis has lived in several towns in South Devon and has filmed videos in and around Plymouth. In addition, actors Sir Donald Sinden and Judi Trott. George Passmore of Turner Prize winning duo Gilbert and George was born in the city, as was Labour politician Michael Foot whose family reside at nearby Trematon Castle.


Notable athletes include swimmer Sharron Davies, diver Tom Daley, dancer Wayne Sleep, and footballer Trevor Francis. Other past residents include composer journalist and newspaper editor William Henry Wills, Ron Goodwin, and journalist Angela Rippon and comedian Dawn French. Canadian politician and legal scholar Chris Axworthy hails from Plymouth. America based actor Donald Moffat, whose roles include American Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson in the film The Right Stuff, and fictional President Bennett in Clear and Present Danger, was born in Plymouth.


Heresy is any provocative belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs or customs. A heretic is a proponent of such claims or beliefs. Heresy is distinct from both apostasy, which is the explicit renunciation of one's religion, principles or cause, and blasphemy, which is an impious utterance or action concerning God or sacred things.


The term is usually used to refer to violations of important religious teachings, but is used also of views strongly opposed to any generally accepted ideas. It is used in particular in reference to Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Marxism.


In certain historical Christian, Islamic and Jewish cultures, among others, espousing ideas deemed heretical has been and in some cases still is subjected not merely to punishments such as excommunication, but even to the death penalty.


The term heresy is from Greek αἵρεσις originally meant "choice" or "thing chosen", but it came to mean the "party or school of a man's choice" and also referred to that process whereby a young person would examine various philosophies to determine how to live. The word "heresy" is usually used within a Christian, Jewish, or Islamic context, and implies slightly different meanings in each. The founder or leader of a heretical movement is called a heresiarch, while individuals who espouse heresy or commit heresy are known as heretics. Heresiology is the study of heresy.


According to Titus 3:10 a divisive person should be warned two times before separating from him. The Greek for the phrase "divisive person" became a technical term in the early Church for a type of "heretic" who promoted dissension. In contrast correct teaching is called sound not only because it builds up in the faith, but because it protects against the corrupting influence of false teachers.


The Church Fathers identified Jews and Judaism with heresy. They saw deviations from Orthodox Christianity as heresies that were essentially Jewish in spirit. Tertullian implied that it was the Jews who most inspired heresy in Christianity: "From the Jew the heretic has accepted guidance in this discussion [that Jesus was not the Christ.]" Saint Peter of Antioch referred to Christians that refused to venerate religious images as having "Jewish minds".


The use of the word "heresy" was given wide currency by Irenaeus in his 2nd century tract Contra Haereses (Against Heresies) to describe and discredit his opponents during the early centuries of the Christian community.[citation needed] He described the community's beliefs and doctrines as orthodox (from ὀρθός, orthos "straight" + δόξα, doxa "belief") and the Gnostics' teachings as heretical.[citation needed] He also pointed out the concept of apostolic succession to support his arguments.


Constantine the Great, who along with Licinius had decreed toleration of Christianity in the Roman Empire by what is commonly called the "Edict of Milan", and was the first Roman Emperor baptized, set precedents for later policy. By Roman law the Emperor was Pontifex Maximus, the high priest of the College of Pontiffs (Collegium Pontificum) of all recognized religions in ancient Rome. To put an end to the doctrinal debate initiated by Arius, Constantine called the first of what would afterwards be called the ecumenical councils and then enforced orthodoxy by Imperial authority.


The first known usage of the term in a legal context was in AD 380 by the Edict of Thessalonica of Theodosius I, which made Christianity the state church of the Roman Empire. Prior to the issuance of this edict, the Church had no state-sponsored support for any particular legal mechanism to counter what it perceived as "heresy". By this edict the state's authority and that of the Church became somewhat overlapping. One of the outcomes of this blurring of Church and state was the sharing of state powers of legal enforcement with church authorities. This reinforcement of the Church's authority gave church leaders the power to, in effect, pronounce the death sentence upon those whom the church considered heretical.


Within six years of the official criminalization of heresy by the Emperor, the first Christian heretic to be executed, Priscillian, was condemned in 386 by Roman secular officials for sorcery, and put to death with four or five followers. However, his accusers were excommunicated both by Ambrose of Milan and Pope Siricius, who opposed Priscillian's heresy, but "believed capital punishment to be inappropriate at best and usually unequivocally evil". For some years after the Reformation, Protestant churches were also known to execute those they considered heretics, including Catholics. The last known heretic executed by sentence of the Roman Catholic Church was Spanish schoolmaster Cayetano Ripoll in 1826. The number of people executed as heretics under the authority of the various "ecclesiastical authorities"[note 1] is not known.[note 2] One of the first examples of the word as translated from the Nag Hammadi's Apocalypse of Peter was" they will cleave to the name of a dead man thinking that they will become pure. But they will become greatly defiled and they will fall into the name of error and into the hands of an evil cunning man and a manifold dogma, and they will be ruled heretically".


In the Roman Catholic Church, obstinate and willful manifest heresy is considered to spiritually cut one off from the Church, even before excommunication is incurred. The Codex Justinianus (1:5:12) defines "everyone who is not devoted to the Catholic Church and to our Orthodox holy Faith" a heretic. The Church had always dealt harshly with strands of Christianity that it considered heretical, but before the 11th century these tended to centre around individual preachers or small localised sects, like Arianism, Pelagianism, Donatism, Marcionism and Montanism. The diffusion of the almost Manichaean sect of Paulicians westwards gave birth to the famous 11th and 12th century heresies of Western Europe. The first one was that of Bogomils in modern day Bosnia, a sort of sanctuary between Eastern and Western Christianity. By the 11th century, more organised groups such as the Patarini, the Dulcinians, the Waldensians and the Cathars were beginning to appear in the towns and cities of northern Italy, southern France and Flanders.


In France the Cathars grew to represent a popular mass movement and the belief was spreading to other areas. The Cathar Crusade was initiated by the Roman Catholic Church to eliminate the Cathar heresy in Languedoc. Heresy was a major justification for the Inquisition (Inquisitio Haereticae Pravitatis, Inquiry on Heretical Perversity) and for the European wars of religion associated with the Protestant Reformation.


Galileo Galilei was brought before the Inquisition for heresy, but abjured his views and was sentenced to house arrest, under which he spent the rest of his life. Galileo was found "vehemently suspect of heresy", namely of having held the opinions that the Sun lies motionless at the centre of the universe, that the Earth is not at its centre and moves, and that one may hold and defend an opinion as probable after it has been declared contrary to Holy Scripture. He was required to "abjure, curse and detest" those opinions.


Pope St. Gregory stigmatized Judaism and the Jewish People in many of his writings. He described Jews as enemies of Christ: "The more the Holy Spirit fills the world, the more perverse hatred dominates the souls of the Jews." He labeled all heresy as "Jewish", claiming that Judaism would "pollute [Catholics and] deceive them with sacrilegious seduction." The identification of Jews and heretics in particular occurred several times in Roman-Christian law,


In Eastern Christianity heresy most commonly refers to those beliefs declared heretical by the first seven Ecumenical Councils.[citation needed] Since the Great Schism and the Protestant Reformation, various Christian churches have also used the concept in proceedings against individuals and groups those churches deemed heretical. The Orthodox Church also rejects the early Christian heresies such as Arianism, Gnosticism, Origenism, Montanism, Judaizers, Marcionism, Docetism, Adoptionism, Nestorianism, Monophysitism, Monothelitism and Iconoclasm.


In his work "On the Jews and Their Lies" (1543), German Reformation leader Martin Luther claims that Jewish history was "assailed by much heresy", and that Christ the logos swept away the Jewish heresy and goes on to do so, "as it still does daily before our eyes." He stigmatizes Jewish Prayer as being "blasphemous" (sic) and a lie, and vilifies Jews in general as being spiritually "blind" and "surely possessed by all devils." Luther calls the members of the Orthodox Catholic Church "papists" and heretics, and has a special spiritual problem with Jewish circumcision.


In England, the 16th-century European Reformation resulted in a number of executions on charges of heresy. During the thirty-eight years of Henry VIII's reign, about sixty heretics, mainly Protestants, were executed and a rather greater number of Catholics lost their lives on grounds of political offences such as treason, notably Sir Thomas More and Cardinal John Fisher, for refusing to accept the king's supremacy over the Church in England. Under Edward VI, the heresy laws were repealed in 1547 only to be reintroduced in 1554 by Mary I; even so two radicals were executed in Edward's reign (one for denying the reality of the incarnation, the other for denying Christ's divinity). Under Mary, around two hundred and ninety people were burned at the stake between 1555 and 1558 after the restoration of papal jurisdiction. When Elizabeth I came to the throne, the concept of heresy was retained in theory but severely restricted by the 1559 Act of Supremacy and the one hundred and eighty or so Catholics who were executed in the forty-five years of her reign were put to death because they were considered members of "...a subversive fifth column." The last execution of a "heretic" in England occurred under James VI and I in 1612. Although the charge was technically one of "blasphemy" there was one later execution in Scotland (still at that date an entirely independent kingdom) when in 1697 Thomas Aikenhead was accused, among other things, of denying the doctrine of the Trinity.


Another example of the persecution of heretics under Protestant rule was the execution of the Boston martyrs in 1659, 1660, and 1661. These executions resulted from the actions of the Anglican Puritans, who at that time wielded political as well as ecclesiastic control in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. At the time, the colony leaders were apparently hoping to achieve their vision of a "purer absolute theocracy" within their colony .[citation needed] As such, they perceived the teachings and practices of the rival Quaker sect as heretical, even to the point where laws were passed and executions were performed with the aim of ridding their colony of such perceived "heresies".[citation needed] It should be noticed that the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox communions generally regard the Puritans themselves as having been heterodox or heretical.


The era of mass persecution and execution of heretics under the banner of Christianity came to an end in 1826 with the last execution of a "heretic", Cayetano Ripoll, by the Catholic Inquisition.


Although less common than in earlier periods, in modern times, formal charges of heresy within Christian churches still occur. Issues in the Protestant churches have included modern biblical criticism and the nature of God. In the Catholic Church, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith criticizes writings for "ambiguities and errors" without using the word "heresy".


Perhaps due to the many modern negative connotations associated with the term heretic, such as the Spanish inquisition, the term is used less often today. The subject of Christian heresy opens up broader questions as to who has a monopoly on spiritual truth, as explored by Jorge Luis Borges in the short story "The Theologians" within the compilation Labyrinths.


Ottoman Sultan Selim the Grim, regarded the Shia Qizilbash as heretics, reportedly proclaimed that "the killing of one Shiite had as much otherworldly reward as killing 70 Christians."


In some modern day nations and regions in which Sharia law is ostensibly practiced, heresy remains an offense punishable by death. One example is the 1989 fatwa issued by the government of Iran, offering a substantial bounty for anyone who succeeds in the assassination of author Salman Rushdie, whose writings were declared as heretical.


Orthodox Judaism considers views on the part of Jews who depart from traditional Jewish principles of faith heretical. In addition, the more right-wing groups within Orthodox Judaism hold that all Jews who reject the simple meaning of Maimonides's 13 principles of Jewish faith are heretics. As such, most of Orthodox Judaism considers Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism heretical movements, and regards most of Conservative Judaism as heretical. The liberal wing of Modern Orthodoxy is more tolerant of Conservative Judaism, particularly its right wing, as there is some theological and practical overlap between these groups.


The act of using Church of Scientology techniques in a form different than originally described by Hubbard is referred to within Scientology as "squirreling" and is said by Scientologists to be high treason. The Religious Technology Center has prosecuted breakaway groups that have practiced Scientology outside the official Church without authorization.


In other contexts the term does not necessarily have pejorative overtones and may even be complimentary when used, in areas where innovation is welcome, of ideas that are in fundamental disagreement with the status quo in any practice and branch of knowledge. Scientist/author Isaac Asimov considered heresy as an abstraction, Asimov's views are in Forward: The Role of the Heretic. mentioning religious, political, socioeconomic and scientific heresies. He divided scientific heretics into endoheretics (those from within the scientific community) and exoheretics (those from without). Characteristics were ascribed to both and examples of both kinds were offered. Asimov concluded that science orthodoxy defends itself well against endoheretics (by control of science education, grants and publication as examples), but is nearly powerless against exoheretics. He acknowledged by examples that heresy has repeatedly become orthodoxy.


The revisionist paleontologist Robert T. Bakker, who published his findings as The Dinosaur Heresies, treated the mainstream view of dinosaurs as dogma. "I have enormous respect for dinosaur paleontologists past and present. But on average, for the last fifty years, the field hasn't tested dinosaur orthodoxy severely enough." page 27 "Most taxonomists, however, have viewed such new terminology as dangerously destabilizing to the traditional and well-known scheme..." page 462. This book apparently influenced Jurassic Park. The illustrations by the author show dinosaurs in very active poses, in contrast to the traditional perception of lethargy. He is an example of a recent scientific endoheretic.


Immanuel Velikovsky is an example of a recent scientific exoheretic; he did not have appropriate scientific credentials or did not publish in scientific journals. While the details of his work are in scientific disrepute, the concept of catastrophic change (extinction event and punctuated equilibrium) has gained acceptance in recent decades.


The term heresy is also used as an ideological pigeonhole for contemporary writers because, by definition, heresy depends on contrasts with an established orthodoxy. For example, the tongue-in-cheek contemporary usage of heresy, such as to categorize a "Wall Street heresy" a "Democratic heresy" or a "Republican heresy," are metaphors that invariably retain a subtext that links orthodoxies in geology or biology or any other field to religion. These expanded metaphoric senses allude to both the difference between the person's views and the mainstream and the boldness of such a person in propounding these views.


The Warsaw Pact (formally, the Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation, and Mutual Assistance, sometimes, informally WarPac, akin in format to NATO) was a collective defense treaty among Soviet Union and seven Soviet satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe in existence during the Cold War. The Warsaw Pact was the military complement to the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CoMEcon), the regional economic organization for the communist states of Central and Eastern Europe. The Warsaw Pact was created in reaction to the integration of West Germany into NATO in 1955 per the Paris Pacts of 1954, but it is also considered to have been motivated by Soviet desires to maintain control over military forces in Central and Eastern Europe.


While the Warsaw Pact was established as a balance of power or counterweight to NATO, there was no direct confrontation between them. Instead, the conflict was fought on an ideological basis. Both NATO and the Warsaw Pact led to the expansion of military forces and their integration into the respective blocs. The Warsaw Pact's largest military engagement was Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia (with the participation of all Pact nations except Romania and Albania). The Pact failed to function when the Revolutions of 1989 spread through Eastern Europe, beginning with the Solidarity movement in Poland and its success in June 1989.


On 25 February 1991, the Pact was declared at an end at a meeting of defense and foreign ministers from the remaining member states meeting in Hungary. On 1 July 1991, the Czechoslovak President Václav Havel formally declared an end to the Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Co-operation, and Mutual Assistance which had been established in 1955. The USSR itself was dissolved in December 1991.


The Warsaw Treaty's organization was two-fold: the Political Consultative Committee handled political matters, and the Combined Command of Pact Armed Forces controlled the assigned multi-national forces, with headquarters in Warsaw, Poland. Furthermore, the Supreme Commander of the Unified Armed Forces of the Warsaw Treaty Organization which commands and controls all the military forces of the member countries was also a First Deputy Minister of Defense of the USSR, and the Chief of Combined Staff of the Unified Armed Forces of the Warsaw Treaty Organization was also a First Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the USSR. Therefore, although ostensibly an international collective security alliance, the USSR dominated the Warsaw Treaty armed forces.


The strategy behind the formation of the Warsaw Pact was driven by the desire of the Soviet Union to dominate Central and Eastern Europe. This policy was driven by ideological and geostrategic reasons. Ideologically, the Soviet Union arrogated the right to define socialism and communism and act as the leader of the global socialist movement. A corollary to this idea was the necessity of intervention if a country appeared to be violating core socialist ideas and Communist Party functions, which was explicitly stated in the Brezhnev Doctrine. Geostrategic principles also drove the Soviet Union to prevent invasion of its territory by Western European powers.


Before creation of Warsaw Pact, fearing Germany rearmed, Czechoslovak leadership sought to create security pact with East Germany and Poland. These states protested strongly against re-militarization of West Germany. The Warsaw Pact was primarily put in place as a consequence of the rearming of West Germany inside NATO. Soviet leaders, as many European countries in both western and eastern side, feared Germany being once again a military power as a direct threat and German militarism remained a fresh memory among Soviets and Eastern Europeans. As Soviet Union had already bilateral treaties with all of its eastern satellites, the Pact has been long considered 'superfluous', and because of the rushed way in which it was conceived, NATO officials labeled it as a 'cardboard castle'. Previously, in March 1954, the USSR, fearing the restoration of German Militarism in West Germany, requested admission to NATO.


The Soviet request to join NATO arose in the aftermath of the Berlin Conference of January–February 1954. Soviet foreign minister Molotov made proposals to have Germany reunified and elections for a pan-German government, under conditions of withdrawal of the four powers armies and German neutrality, but all were refused by the other foreign ministers, Dulles (USA), Eden (UK) and Bidault (France). Proposals for the reunification of Germany were nothing new: earlier on 20 March 1952, talks about a German reunification, initiated by the socalled 'Stalin Note', ended after the United Kingdom, France, and the United States insisted that a unified Germany should not be neutral and should be free to join the European Defence Community and rearm. James Dunn (USA), who met in Paris with Eden, Adenauer and Robert Schuman (France), affirmed that "the object should be to avoid discussion with the Russians and to press on the European Defense Community". According to John Gaddis "there was little inclination in Western capitals to explore this offer" from USSR. While historian Rolf Steininger asserts that Adenauer's conviction that “neutralization means sovietization” was the main factor in the rejection of the soviet proposals, Adenauer also feared that unification might have resulted in the end of the CDU's dominance in the Bundestag.


One month later, the proposed European Treaty was rejected not only by supporters of the EDC but also by western opponents of the European Defense Community (like French Gaullist leader Palewski) who perceived it as "unacceptable in its present form because it excludes the USA from participation in the collective security system in Europe". The Soviets then decided to make a new proposal to the governments of the USA, UK and France stating to accept the participation of the USA in the proposed General European Agreement. And considering that another argument deployed against the Soviet proposal was that it was perceived by western powers as "directed against the North Atlantic Pact and its liquidation", the Soviets decided to declare their "readiness to examine jointly with other interested parties the question of the participation of the USSR in the North Atlantic bloc", specifying that "the admittance of the USA into the General European Agreement should not be conditional on the three western powers agreeing to the USSR joining the North Atlantic Pact".


Again all proposals, including the request to join NATO, were rejected by UK, US, and French governments shortly after. Emblematic was the position of British General Hastings Ismay, supporter of NATO expansion, who said that NATO "must grow until the whole free world gets under one umbrella." He opposed the request to join NATO made by the USSR in 1954 saying that "the Soviet request to join NATO is like an unrepentant burglar requesting to join the police force".


In April 1954 Adenauer made his first visit to the USA meeting Nixon, Eisenhower and Dulles. Ratification of EDC was delaying but the US representatives made it clear to Adenauer that EDC would have to become a part of NATO.


Memories of the Nazi occupation were still strong, and the rearmament of Germany was feared by France too. On 30 August 1954 French Parliament rejected the EDC, thus ensuring its failure and blocking a major objective of US policy towards Europe: to associate Germany militarily with the West. The US Department of State started to elaborate alternatives: Germany would be invited to join NATO or, in the case of French obstructionism, strategies to circumvent a French veto would be implemented in order to obtain a German rearmament outside NATO.


On 23 October 1954 – only nine years after Allies (UK, USA and USSR) defeated Nazi Germany ending World War II in Europe – the admission of the Federal Republic of Germany to the North Atlantic Pact was finally decided. The incorporation of West Germany into the organization on 9 May 1955 was described as "a decisive turning point in the history of our continent" by Halvard Lange, Foreign Affairs Minister of Norway at the time. In November 1954, the USSR requested a new European Security Treaty, in order to make a final attempt to not have a remilitarized West Germany potentially opposed to the Soviet Union, with no success.


On 14 May 1955, the USSR and other seven European countries "reaffirming their desire for the establishment of a system of European collective security based on the participation of all European states irrespective of their social and political systems" established the Warsaw Pact in response to the integration of the Federal Republic of Germany into NATO, declaring that: "a remilitarized Western Germany and the integration of the latter in the North-Atlantic bloc [...] increase the danger of another war and constitutes a threat to the national security of the peaceable states; [...] in these circumstances the peaceable European states must take the necessary measures to safeguard their security".


One of the founding members, East Germany was allowed to re-arm by the Soviet Union and the National People's Army was established as the armed forces of the country to counter the rearmament of West Germany.


The eight member countries of the Warsaw Pact pledged the mutual defense of any member who would be attacked. Relations among the treaty signatories were based upon mutual non-intervention in the internal affairs of the member countries, respect for national sovereignty, and political independence. However, almost all governments of those member states were indirectly controlled by the Soviet Union.


In July 1963 the Mongolian People's Republic asked to join the Warsaw Pact under Article 9 of the treaty. For this purpose a special protocol should have been taken since the text of the treaty applied only to Europe. Due to the emerging Sino-Soviet split, Mongolia remained on observer status. Soviet stationing troops were agreed to stay in Mongolia from 1966.


For 36 years, NATO and the Warsaw Pact never directly waged war against each other in Europe; the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies implemented strategic policies aimed at the containment of each other in Europe, while working and fighting for influence within the wider Cold War on the international stage.


In 1956, following the declaration of the Imre Nagy government of withdrawal of Hungary from the Warsaw Pact, Soviet troops entered the country and removed the government. Soviet forces crushed the nationwide revolt, leading to the death of an estimated 2,500 Hungarian citizens.


The multi-national Communist armed forces' sole joint action was the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. All member countries, with the exception of the Socialist Republic of Romania and the People's Republic of Albania participated in the invasion.


On 25 February 1991, the Warsaw Pact was declared disbanded at a meeting of defense and foreign ministers from remaining Pact countries meeting in Hungary. On 1 July 1991, in Prague, the Czechoslovak President Václav Havel formally ended the 1955 Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance and so disestablished the Warsaw Treaty after 36 years of military alliance with the USSR. In fact, the treaty was de facto disbanded in December 1989 during the violent revolution in Romania, which toppled the communist government, without military intervention form other member states. The USSR disestablished itself in December 1991.


On 12 March 1999, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland joined NATO; Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Slovakia joined in March 2004; Albania joined on 1 April 2009.


In November 2005, the Polish government opened its Warsaw Treaty archives to the Institute of National Remembrance, who published some 1,300 declassified documents in January 2006. Yet the Polish government reserved publication of 100 documents, pending their military declassification. Eventually, 30 of the reserved 100 documents were published; 70 remained secret, and unpublished. Among the documents published is the Warsaw Treaty's nuclear war plan, Seven Days to the River Rhine – a short, swift counter-attack capturing Austria, Denmark, Germany and Netherlands east of River Rhine, using nuclear weapons, in self-defense, after a NATO first strike. The plan originated as a 1979 field training exercise war game, and metamorphosed into official Warsaw Treaty battle doctrine, until the late 1980s – which is why the People's Republic of Poland was a nuclear weapons base, first, to 178, then, to 250 tactical-range rockets. Doctrinally, as a Soviet-style (offensive) battle plan, Seven Days to the River Rhine gave commanders few defensive-war strategies for fighting NATO in Warsaw Treaty territory.[citation needed]


Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all phenomena, including mental phenomena and consciousness, are identical with material interactions.


Materialism is closely related to physicalism, the view that all that exists is ultimately physical. Philosophical physicalism has evolved from materialism with the discoveries of the physical sciences to incorporate more sophisticated notions of physicality than mere ordinary matter, such as: spacetime, physical energies and forces, dark matter, and so on. Thus the term "physicalism" is preferred over "materialism" by some, while others use the terms as if they are synonymous.


Materialism belongs to the class of monist ontology. As such, it is different from ontological theories based on dualism or pluralism. For singular explanations of the phenomenal reality, materialism would be in contrast to idealism, neutral monism, and spiritualism.


Despite the large number of philosophical schools and subtle nuances between many, all philosophies are said to fall into one of two primary categories, which are defined in contrast to each other: Idealism, and materialism.[a] The basic proposition of these two categories pertains to the nature of reality, and the primary distinction between them is the way they answer two fundamental questions: "what does reality consist of?" and "how does it originate?" To idealists, spirit or mind or the objects of mind (ideas) are primary, and matter secondary. To materialists, matter is primary, and mind or spirit or ideas are secondary, the product of matter acting upon matter.


The materialist view is perhaps best understood in its opposition to the doctrines of immaterial substance applied to the mind historically, famously by René Descartes. However, by itself materialism says nothing about how material substance should be characterized. In practice, it is frequently assimilated to one variety of physicalism or another.


During the 19th century, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels extended the concept of materialism to elaborate a materialist conception of history centered on the roughly empirical world of human activity (practice, including labor) and the institutions created, reproduced, or destroyed by that activity (see materialist conception of history). Later Marxists developed the notion of dialectical materialism which characterized later Marxist philosophy and method.


Materialism developed, possibly independently, in several geographically separated regions of Eurasia during what Karl Jaspers termed the Axial Age (approximately 800 to 200 BC).


In Ancient Indian philosophy, materialism developed around 600 BC with the works of Ajita Kesakambali, Payasi, Kanada, and the proponents of the Cārvāka school of philosophy. Kanada became one of the early proponents of atomism. The Nyaya–Vaisesika school (600 BC - 100 BC) developed one of the earliest forms of atomism, though their proofs of God and their positing that the consciousness was not material precludes labelling them as materialists. Buddhist atomism and the Jaina school continued the atomic tradition.


Materialism is often associated with reductionism, according to which the objects or phenomena individuated at one level of description, if they are genuine, must be explicable in terms of the objects or phenomena at some other level of description — typically, at a more reduced level. Non-reductive materialism explicitly rejects this notion, however, taking the material constitution of all particulars to be consistent with the existence of real objects, properties, or phenomena not explicable in the terms canonically used for the basic material constituents. Jerry Fodor influentially argues this view, according to which empirical laws and explanations in "special sciences" like psychology or geology are invisible from the perspective of basic physics. A lot of vigorous literature has grown up around the relation between these views.


Ancient Greek philosophers like Thales, Anaxagoras (ca. 500 BC – 428 BC), Epicurus and Democritus prefigure later materialists. The Latin poem De Rerum Natura by Lucretius (ca. 99 BC – ca. 55 BC) reflects the mechanistic philosophy of Democritus and Epicurus. According to this view, all that exists is matter and void, and all phenomena result from different motions and conglomerations of base material particles called "atoms" (literally: "indivisibles"). De Rerum Natura provides mechanistic explanations for phenomena such as erosion, evaporation, wind, and sound. Famous principles like "nothing can touch body but body" first appeared in the works of Lucretius. Democritus and Epicurus however did not hold to a monist ontology since they held to the ontological separation of matter and space i.e. space being "another kind" of being, indicating that the definition of "materialism" is wider than given scope for in this article.


Later Indian materialist Jayaraashi Bhatta (6th century) in his work Tattvopaplavasimha ("The upsetting of all principles") refuted the Nyaya Sutra epistemology. The materialistic Cārvāka philosophy appears to have died out some time after 1400. When Madhavacharya compiled Sarva-darśana-samgraha (a digest of all philosophies) in the 14th century, he had no Cārvāka/Lokāyata text to quote from, or even refer to.


In early 12th-century al-Andalus, the Arabian philosopher, Ibn Tufail (Abubacer), wrote discussions on materialism in his philosophical novel, Hayy ibn Yaqdhan (Philosophus Autodidactus), while vaguely foreshadowing the idea of a historical materialism.


The French cleric Pierre Gassendi (1592-1665) represented the materialist tradition in opposition to the attempts of René Descartes (1596-1650) to provide the natural sciences with dualist foundations. There followed the materialist and atheist abbé Jean Meslier (1664-1729), Julien Offray de La Mettrie, the German-French Paul-Henri Thiry Baron d'Holbach (1723-1789), the Encyclopedist Denis Diderot (1713-1784), and other French Enlightenment thinkers; as well as (in England) John "Walking" Stewart (1747-1822), whose insistence in seeing matter as endowed with a moral dimension had a major impact on the philosophical poetry of William Wordsworth (1770-1850).


Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) wrote that "...materialism is the philosophy of the subject who forgets to take account of himself". He claimed that an observing subject can only know material objects through the mediation of the brain and its particular organization. That is, the brain itself is the "determiner" of how material objects will be experienced or perceived:


The German materialist and atheist anthropologist Ludwig Feuerbach would signal a new turn in materialism through his book, The Essence of Christianity (1841), which provided a humanist account of religion as the outward projection of man's inward nature. Feuerbach's materialism would later heavily influence Karl Marx.


Many current and recent philosophers—e.g., Daniel Dennett, Willard Van Orman Quine, Donald Davidson, and Jerry Fodor—operate within a broadly physicalist or materialist framework, producing rival accounts of how best to accommodate mind, including functionalism, anomalous monism, identity theory, and so on.


The nature and definition of matter - like other key concepts in science and philosophy - have occasioned much debate. Is there a single kind of matter (hyle) which everything is made of, or multiple kinds? Is matter a continuous substance capable of expressing multiple forms (hylomorphism), or a number of discrete, unchanging constituents (atomism)? Does it have intrinsic properties (substance theory), or is it lacking them (prima materia)?


One challenge to the traditional concept of matter as tangible "stuff" came with the rise of field physics in the 19th century. Relativity shows that matter and energy (including the spatially distributed energy of fields) are interchangeable. This enables the ontological view that energy is prima materia and matter is one of its forms. On the other hand, the Standard Model of Particle physics uses quantum field theory to describe all interactions. On this view it could be said that fields are prima materia and the energy is a property of the field.


According to the dominant cosmological model, the Lambda-CDM model, less than 5% of the universe's energy density is made up of the "matter" described by the Standard Model of Particle Physics, and the majority of the universe is composed of dark matter and dark energy - with little agreement amongst scientists about what these are made of.


With the advent of quantum physics, some scientists believed the concept of matter had merely changed, while others believed the conventional position could no longer be maintained. For instance Werner Heisenberg said "The ontology of materialism rested upon the illusion that the kind of existence, the direct 'actuality' of the world around us, can be extrapolated into the atomic range. This extrapolation, however, is impossible... atoms are not things." Likewise, some philosophers[which?] feel that these dichotomies necessitate a switch from materialism to physicalism. Others use the terms "materialism" and "physicalism" interchangeably.


Some modern day physicists and science writers—such as Paul Davies and John Gribbin—have argued that materialism has been disproven by certain scientific findings in physics, such as quantum mechanics and chaos theory. In 1991, Gribbin and Davies released their book The Matter Myth, the first chapter of which, "The Death of Materialism", contained the following passage:


Davies' and Gribbin's objections are shared by proponents of digital physics who view information rather than matter to be fundamental. Their objections were also shared by some founders of quantum theory, such as Max Planck, who wrote:


According to the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1907-1912, materialism, defined as "a philosophical system which regards matter as the only reality in the world [...] denies the existence of God and the soul". Materialism, in this view, therefore becomes incompatible with most world religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. In such a context one can conflate materialism with atheism. Most of Hinduism and transcendentalism regards all matter as an illusion called Maya, blinding humans from knowing "the truth". Maya is the limited, purely physical and mental reality in which our everyday consciousness has become entangled. Maya gets destroyed for a person when s/he perceives Brahman with transcendental knowledge.


In contrast, Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, taught: "There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes; We cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified we shall see that it is all matter." This spirit element has always existed; it is co-eternal with God. It is also called "intelligence" or "the light of truth", which like all observable matter "was not created or made, neither indeed can be". Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints view the revelations of Joseph Smith as a restoration of original Christian doctrine, which they believe post-apostolic theologians began to corrupt in the centuries after Christ. The writings of many[quantify] of these theologians indicate a clear influence of Greek metaphysical philosophies such as Neoplatonism, which characterized divinity as an utterly simple, immaterial, formless, substance/essence (ousia) that transcended all that was physical. Despite strong opposition from many Christians, this metaphysical depiction of God eventually became incorporated into the doctrine of the Christian church, displacing the original Judeo-Christian concept of a physical, corporeal God who created humans in His image and likeness.


An argument for idealism, such as those of Hegel and Berkeley, is ipso facto an argument against materialism. Matter can be argued to be redundant, as in bundle theory, and mind-independent properties can in turn be reduced to subjective percepts. Berkeley presents an example of the latter by pointing out that it is impossible to gather direct evidence of matter, as there is no direct experience of matter; all that is experienced is perception, whether internal or external. As such, the existence of matter can only be assumed from the apparent (perceived) stability of perceptions; it finds absolutely no evidence in direct experience.


If matter and energy are seen as necessary to explain the physical world, but incapable of explaining mind, dualism results. Emergence, holism, and process philosophy seek to ameliorate the perceived shortcomings of traditional (especially mechanistic) materialism without abandoning materialism entirely.


Some critics object to materialism as part of an overly skeptical, narrow or reductivist approach to theorizing, rather than to the ontological claim that matter is the only substance. Particle physicist and Anglican theologian John Polkinghorne objects to what he calls promissory materialism — claims that materialistic science will eventually succeed in explaining phenomena it has not so far been able to explain. Polkinghorne prefers "dual-aspect monism" to faith in materialism.


A Christian ( pronunciation (help·info)) is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. "Christian" derives from the Koine Greek word Christós (Χριστός), a translation of the Biblical Hebrew term mashiach.


There are diverse interpretations of Christianity which sometimes conflict. However, "Whatever else they might disagree about, Christians are at least united in believing that Jesus has a unique significance." The term "Christian" is also used adjectivally to describe anything associated with Christianity, or in a proverbial sense "all that is noble, and good, and Christ-like." It is also used as a label to identify people who associate with the cultural aspects of Christianity, irrespective of personal religious beliefs or practices.


According to a 2011 Pew Research Center survey, there were 2.2 billion Christians around the world in 2010, up from about 600 million in 1910. By 2050, the Christian population is expected to exceed 3 billion. According to a 2012 Pew Research Center survey Christianity will remain the world's largest religion in 2050, if current trends continue.


Today, about 37% of all Christians live in the Americas, and about 26% live in Europe, 24% of total Christians live in sub-Saharan Africa, about 13% in Asia and the Pacific, and 1% of the world's Christians live in the Middle east and North Africa. About half of all Christians worldwide are Catholic, while more than a third are Protestant (37%). Orthodox communions comprise 12% of the world's Christians. Other Christian groups make up the remainder. Christians make up the majority of the population in 158 countries and territories. 280 million Christian live as a minority.


The Greek word Χριστιανός (Christianos), meaning "follower of Christ", comes from Χριστός (Christos), meaning "anointed one", with an adjectival ending borrowed from Latin to denote adhering to, or even belonging to, as in slave ownership. In the Greek Septuagint, christos was used to translate the Hebrew מָשִׁיחַ (Mašíaḥ, messiah), meaning "[one who is] anointed." In other European languages, equivalent words to Christian are likewise derived from the Greek, such as Chrétien in French and Cristiano in Spanish.


The first recorded use of the term (or its cognates in other languages) is in the New Testament, in Acts 11:26, after Barnabas brought Saul (Paul) to Antioch where they taught the disciples for about a year, the text says: "[...] the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch." The second mention of the term follows in Acts 26:28, where Herod Agrippa II replied to Paul the Apostle, "Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian." The third and final New Testament reference to the term is in 1 Peter 4:16, which exhorts believers: "Yet if [any man suffer] as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf."


Kenneth Samuel Wuest holds that all three original New Testament verses' usages reflect a derisive element in the term Christian to refer to followers of Christ who did not acknowledge the emperor of Rome. The city of Antioch, where someone gave them the name Christians, had a reputation for coming up with such nicknames. However Peter's apparent endorsement of the term led to its being preferred over "Nazarenes" and the term Christianoi from 1 Peter becomes the standard term in the Early Church Fathers from Ignatius and Polycarp onwards.


The earliest occurrences of the term in non-Christian literature include Josephus, referring to "the tribe of Christians, so named from him;" Pliny the Younger in correspondence with Trajan; and Tacitus, writing near the end of the 1st century. In the Annals he relates that "by vulgar appellation [they were] commonly called Christians" and identifies Christians as Nero's scapegoats for the Great Fire of Rome.


Another term for Christians which appears in the New Testament is "Nazarenes" which is used by the Jewish lawyer Tertullus in Acts 24. Tertullian (Against Marcion 4:8) records that "the Jews call us Nazarenes," while around 331 AD Eusebius records that Christ was called a Nazoraean from the name Nazareth, and that in earlier centuries "Christians," were once called "Nazarenes." The Hebrew equivalent of "Nazarenes", Notzrim, occurs in the Babylonian Talmud, and is still the modern Israeli Hebrew term for Christian.


A wide range of beliefs and practices is found across the world among those who call themselves Christian. Denominations and sects disagree on a common definition of "Christianity". For example, Timothy Beal notes the disparity of beliefs among those who identify as Christians in the United States as follows:


Linda Woodhead attempts to provide a common belief thread for Christians by noting that "Whatever else they might disagree about, Christians are at least united in believing that Jesus has a unique significance." Philosopher Michael Martin, in his book The Case Against Christianity, evaluated three historical Christian creeds (the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed) to establish a set of basic assumptions which include belief in theism, the historicity of Jesus, the Incarnation, salvation through faith in Jesus, and Jesus as an ethical role model.


The identification of Jesus as the Messiah is not accepted by Judaism. The term for a Christian in Hebrew is נוּצְרי (Notzri—"Nazarene"), a Talmudic term originally derived from the fact that Jesus came from the Galilean village of Nazareth, today in northern Israel. Adherents of Messianic Judaism are referred to in modern Hebrew as יְהוּדִים מָשִׁיחַיים (Yehudim Meshihi'im—"Messianic Jews").


In Arabic-speaking cultures, two words are commonly used for Christians: Naṣrānī (نصراني), plural Naṣārā (نصارى) is generally understood to be derived from Nazareth through the Syriac (Aramaic); Masīḥī (مسيحي) means followers of the Messiah. The term Nasara rose to prominence in July 2014, after the Fall of Mosul to the terrorist organization Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The nun or ن— the first letter of Nasara—was spray-painted on the property of Christians ejected from the city.


Where there is a distinction, Nasrani refers to people from a Christian culture and Masihi means those with a religious faith in Jesus. In some countries Nasrani tends to be used generically for non-Muslim Western foreigners, e.g. "blond people."


Another Arabic word sometimes used for Christians, particularly in a political context, is Ṣalībī (صليبي "Crusader") from ṣalīb (صليب "cross") which refers to Crusaders and has negative connotations. However, Salibi is a modern term; historically, Muslim writers described European Christian Crusaders as al-Faranj or Alfranj (الفرنج) and Firinjīyah (الفرنجيّة) in Arabic" This word comes from the Franks and can be seen in the Arab history text Al-Kamil fi al-Tarikh by Ali ibn al-Athir.


The most common Persian word is Masīhī (مسیحی), from Arabic.,Other words are Nasrānī (نصرانی), from Syriac for "Nazarene", and Tarsā (ترسا), from Middle Persian word Tarsāg, also meaning "Christian", derived from tars, meaning "fear, respect".


The Syriac term Nasrani (Nazarene) has also been attached to the Saint Thomas Christians of Kerala, India. In the Indian subcontinent, Christians call themselves Isaai (Hindi: ईसाई, Urdu: عیسائی), and are also known by this term to adherents of other religions. This is related to the name they call Jesus, 'Isa Masih, and literally means 'the followers of 'Isa'.


In the past, the Malays used to call the Portuguese Serani from the Arabic Nasrani, but the term now refers to the modern Kristang creoles of Malaysia.


The Chinese word is 基督徒 (pinyin: jīdū tú), literally "Christ follower." The two characters now pronounced Jīdū in Mandarin Chinese, were originally pronounced Ki-To in Cantonese as representation of Latin "Cristo".[citation needed] In Vietnam, the same two characters read Cơ đốc, and a "follower of Christianity" is a tín đồ Cơ đốc giáo.


In Japan, the term kirishitan (written in Edo period documents 吉利支丹, 切支丹, and in modern Japanese histories as キリシタン), from Portuguese cristão, referred to Roman Catholics in the 16th and 17th centuries before the religion was banned by the Tokugawa shogunate. Today, Christians are referred to in Standard Japanese as キリスト教徒, Kirisuto-kyōto or the English-derived term クリスチャン kurisuchan.


Korean still uses 기독교도, Kidok-kyo-do for "Christian", though the Greek form Kurisudo 그리스도 has now replaced the old Sino-Korean Kidok, which refers to Christ himself.


The region of modern Eastern Europe and Central Eurasia (Russia, Ukraine and other countries of the ex-USSR) have a long history of Christianity and Christian communities on its lands. In ancient times, in the first centuries after the birth of Christ, when this region was called[by whom?] Scythia - Christians already lived there. Later the region saw the first states to adopt Christianity officially - initially in Armenia (301 AD) and in Georgia (337 AD), later in the Great Russian Principality (Kyivan Rus, Russian: Великое княжество Русское, ca 988 AD). People of that time used to denote themselves Christians (христиане, крестьяне) and Russians (русские). Both terms had strong Christian connotations.[citation needed] It is also interesting that in time the term "крестьяне" acquired the meaning "peasants of Christian faith" and later "peasants" (the main part of the population of the region), while the term "христиане" retained its religious meaning and the term "русские" began to mean representatives of the heterogeneous Russian nation formed on the basis of common Christian faith and language,[citation needed] which strongly influenced the history and development of the region. In the region the "Pravoslav faith" (православная вера - Orthodox faith) or "Russian faith" (русская вера) from earliest times became almost as known as the original "Christian faith" (христианская, крестьянская вера). Also in some contexts the term "cossack" (козак, казак - free man by the will of God) was used[by whom?] to denote "free" Christians of steppe origin and Russian language.


As of the early 21st century, Christianity has approximately 2.4 billion adherents. The faith represents about a third of the world's population and is the largest religion in the world. Christians have composed about 33 percent of the world's population for around 100 years. The largest Christian denomination is the Roman Catholic Church, with 1.17 billion adherents, representing half of all Christians.


Christianity remains the dominant religion in the Western World, where 70% are Christians. A 2011 Pew Research Center survey found that 76.2% of Europeans, 73.3% in Oceania, and about 86.0% in the Americas (90% in Latin America and 77.4% in North America) described themselves as Christians.


According to 2012 Pew Research Center survey if current trends continue, Christianity will remains the world's largest religion by year 2050. By 2050, the Christian population is expected to exceed 3 billion. While Muslims have an average of 3.1 children per woman—the highest rate of all religious groups. Christians are second, with 2.7 children per woman. High birth rates and conversion were cited as the reason for the Christian population growths. A 2015 study found that approximately 10.2 million Muslim converted to Christianity. Christianity is growing in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Muslim world, and Oceania.


According to Scientific Elite: Nobel Laureates in the United State by Harriet Zuckerman, a review of American Nobel prizes awarded between 1901 and 1972, 72% of American Nobel Prize laureates identified a Protestant background. Overall, Protestants have won a total of 84.2% of all the Nobel Prizes in Chemistry, 60% in Medicine, and 58.6% in Physics awarded to Americans between 1901 and 1972.


Sony Music Entertainment Inc. (sometimes known as Sony Music or by the initials, SME) is an American music corporation managed and operated by Sony Corporation of America (SCA), a subsidiary of Japanese conglomerate Sony Corporation. In 1929, the enterprise was first founded as American Record Corporation (ARC) and, in 1938, was renamed Columbia Recording Corporation, following ARC's acquisition by CBS. In 1966, the company was reorganized to become CBS Records. In 1987, Sony Corporation of Japan bought the company, and in 1991, renamed it SME. It is the world's second largest recorded music company, after Universal Music Group.


In 2004, SME and Bertelsmann Music Group merged as Sony BMG Music Entertainment. When Sony acquired BMG's half of the conglomerate in 2008, Sony BMG reverted to the SME name. The buyout led to the dissolution of BMG, which then relaunched as BMG Rights Management. Out of the "Big Three" record companies, with Universal Music Group being the largest and Warner Music Group, SME is middle-sized.


In 1929, ARC was founded through a merger of several smaller record companies, which, ultimately, transformed into one enterprise known as SME. In the depths of the Great Depression, the Columbia Phonograph Company (founded in 1888) in the U.S. (including its Okeh Records subsidiary) was acquired by ARC in 1934.


ARC was acquired in 1938 by the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS, which, in turn, had been formed by the Columbia Phonograph Company, but then sold off). ARC was renamed Columbia Recording Corporation. The Columbia Phonograph Company had international subsidiaries and affiliates such as the Columbia Graphophone Company in the United Kingdom, but they were sold off prior to CBS acquiring American Columbia. RCA Victor Records executive Ted Wallerstein convinced CBS head William S. Paley to buy ARC and Paley made Wallerstein head of the newly acquired record company. The renamed company made Columbia its flagship label with Okeh its subsidiary label while deemphasizing ARC's other labels. This allowed ARC's leased labels Brunswick Records and Vocalion Records to revert to former owner Warner Bros. which sold the labels to Decca Records. Columbia kept the Brunswick catalogue recorded from December 1931 onward which was reissued on the Columbia label as well as the Vocalion label material from the same time period which was reissued on the Okeh label. Wallerstein, who was promoted at the end of 1947 from president to chairman of the record company, restored Columbia's status as a leading record company and spearheaded the successful introduction of the long playing (LP) record before he retired as Columbia's chairman in 1951. James Conkling then became head of Columbia Records. Also in 1951, Columbia severed its ties with the EMI-owned record label of the same name and began a UK distribution deal with Philips Records, whereas Okeh Records continued to be distributed by EMI on the Columbia label.


Columbia founded Epic Records in 1953. In 1956, Conkling left Columbia, he would help establish the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences before eventually becoming the first president of the newly launched Warner Bros. Records, and Goddard Lieberson began the first of two stints as head of the record company. In 1958, Columbia founded another label, Date Records, which initially issued rockabilly music.


In 1960, Columbia/CBS began negotiations with its main international distributor Philips Records with the goal of CBS starting its own global record company. Philips' acquisition of Mercury Records in the US in 1961 paved the way for this. CBS only had the rights to the Columbia name in North America; therefore the international arm founded in 1961 and launched in 1962 utilized the "CBS Records" name only, with Philips Records distributing the label in Europe. CBS's Mexican record company, Discos Columbia, was renamed Discos CBS by 1963.


By 1962, their Columbia Record Productions unit was operating four plants around the United States located in Los Angeles; Terre Haute, Indiana; Bridgeport, Connecticut; and Pitman, New Jersey, which manufactured records for not only Columbia's own labels, but also for independent record labels.


In 1964, CBS established its own UK distribution with the acquisition of Oriole Records. EMI continued to distribute Epic and Okeh label material on the Columbia label in the UK until the distribution deal with EMI expired in 1968 when CBS took over distribution.


With the record company a global operation in 1965, the Columbia Broadcasting System upper management started pondering changing the name of their record company subsidiary from Columbia Records to CBS Records.


Also in late 1965, the Date subsidiary label was revived. This label released the first string of hits for Peaches & Herb and scored a few minor hits from various other artists. Date's biggest success was "Time of the Season" by the Zombies, peaking at #2 in 1969. The label was discontinued in 1970.


In 1966, CBS reorganized its corporate structure with Leiberson promoted to head the new "CBS-Columbia Group" which made the now renamed CBS Records company a separate unit of this new group run by Clive Davis.


In March 1968, CBS and Sony formed CBS/Sony Records, a Japanese business joint venture. With Sony being one of the developers behind the compact disc digital music media, a compact disc production plant was constructed in Japan under the joint venture, allowing CBS to begin supplying some of the first compact disc releases for the American market in 1983.


The CBS Records Group was led very successfully by Clive Davis until his dismissal in 1972, after it was discovered that Davis has used CBS funds to finance his personal life, including an expensive bar mitzvah party for his son. He was replaced first by former head Goddard Lieberson, then in 1975 by the colourful and controversial lawyer Walter Yetnikoff, who led the company until 1990.


In February 2016, over a hundred thousand people signed a petition in just twenty-four hours, calling for a boycott of Sony Music and all other Sony-affiliated businesses after rape allegations against music producer Dr. Luke were made by musical artist Kesha. Kesha asked a New York City Supreme Court to free her from her contract with Sony Music but the court denied the request, prompting widespread public and media response.


Over the past two years,[clarification needed] dozens of rights-holders, including Sony Music, have sent complaints about Wikipedia.org directly to Google to have content removed.


In July 2013, Sony Music withdrew from the Greek market due to an economic crisis. Albums released by Sony Music in Greece from domestic and foreign artists are carried by Feelgood Records.


In March 2012, Sony Music reportedly closed its Philippines office due to piracy, causing to move distribution of SME in the Philippines to Ivory Music.


Doug Morris, who was head of Warner Music Group, then Universal Music, became chairman and CEO of the company on July 1, 2011. Sony Music underwent a restructuring after Morris' arrival. He was joined by L.A. Reid, who became the chairman and CEO of Epic Records. Under Reid, multiple artists from the Jive half of the former RCA/Jive Label Group moved to Epic. Peter Edge became the new CEO of the RCA Records unit. The RCA Music Group closed down Arista, J Records and Jive Records in October 2011, with the artists from those labels being moved to RCA Records.


In the 1980s to early 1990s, there was a CBS imprint label in the US known as CBS Associated Records. Tony Martell, veteran CBS and Epic Records A&R Vice President was head of this label and signed artists including Ozzy Osbourne, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Electric Light Orchestra, Joan Jett, and Henry Lee Summer. This label was a part of (Epic/Portrait/Associated) wing of sub labels at CBS which shared the same national and regional staff as the rest of Epic Records and was a part of the full CBS Records worldwide distribution system.


In 1986, CBS sold its music publishing arm, CBS Songs, to Stephen Swid, Martin Bandier, and Charles Koppelman for $125 million making it the foundation of their SBK Entertainment.


By 1987, CBS was the only "big three" American TV network to have a co-owned record company. ABC had sold its record division to MCA Records in 1979, and in 1986, NBC's parent company RCA was sold to General Electric, who then sold off all other RCA units, including the record division (which was bought by Ariola Records, later known as BMG).


On November 17, 1987, SCA acquired CBS Records, which hosted such acts as Michael Jackson, for US$2 billion. CBS Inc., now CBS Corporation, retained the rights to the CBS name for music recordings but granted Sony a temporary license to use the CBS name. CBS Corporation founded a new CBS Records in 2006, which is distributed by Sony through its RED subsidiary.


In 1989, CBS Records re-entered the music publishing business by acquiring Nashville music publisher Tree International Publishing for more than $30 million.


RCA/Jive Label Group CEO Barry Weiss left the company in March 2011 to become the new CEO of Island Def Jam and Universal Republic, which were both part of Universal Music Group. Weiss had been the RCA/Jive Label Group CEO since 2008 and was head of Jive Records since 1991.


On October 11, 2011, Doug Morris announced that Mel Lewinter had been named Executive Vice President of Label Strategy. Lewinter previously served as chairman and CEO of Universal Motown Republic Group. In January 2012, Dennis Kooker was named President of Global Digital Business and US Sales.


In August 2004, Sony entered joint venture with equal partner Bertelsmann, by merging Sony Music and Bertelsmann Music Group, Germany, to establish Sony BMG Music Entertainment. However Sony continued to operate its Japanese music business independently from Sony BMG while BMG Japan was made part of the merger.


On August 5, 2008, SCA and Bertelsmann announced that Sony had agreed to acquire Bertelsmann's 50% stake in Sony BMG. Sony completed its acquisition of Bertelsmann's 50% stake in the companies' joint venture on October 1, 2008. The company, once again named Sony Music Entertainment Inc., became a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony Corporation through its US subsidiary SCA. The last few albums to feature a Sony BMG logo were Thriller 25 by Michael Jackson, I Am... Sasha Fierce by Beyoncé, Keeps Gettin' Better: A Decade of Hits by Christina Aguilera, and Safe Trip Home by Dido. A temporary logo was unveiled beginning December 1, 2008. The present logo was unveiled in March 2009.


On July 1, 2009, SME and IODA announced their global strategic partnership to leverage combined worldwide online retail distribution networks and complementary technologies to support independent labels and music rightsholders.


In March 2010, Sony Corp has partnered with The Michael Jackson Company with a contract of more than $250 million, the largest deal in recorded music history.


The merger made Columbia and Epic sister labels to RCA Records, which was once owned by RCA which also owned CBS rival NBC. It also started the process of bringing BMG's Arista Records back under common ownership with its former parent Columbia Pictures, a Sony division since 1989, and also brought Arista founder Clive Davis back into the fold. Davis is still with Sony Music as Chief Creative Officer.


In 1995, Sony and Michael Jackson formed a joint venture which merged Sony's music publishing operations with Jackson's ATV Music to form Sony/ATV Music Publishing.


Sony renamed the record company Sony Music Entertainment (SME) on January 1, 1991, fulfilling the terms set under the 1988 buyout, which granted only a transitional license to the CBS trademark. The CBS Associated label was renamed Epic Associated. Also on January 1, 1991, to replace the CBS label, Sony reintroduced the Columbia label worldwide, which it previously held in the United States and Canada only, after it acquired the international rights to the trademark from EMI in 1990. Japan is the only country where Sony does not have rights to the Columbia name as it is controlled by Nippon Columbia, an unrelated company. Thus, until this day, Sony Music Entertainment Japan does not use the Columbia trademark for Columbia label recordings from outside Japan which are issued in Japan. The Columbia Records trademark's rightsholder in Spain was Bertelsmann Music Group, Germany, which Sony Music subsequently subsumed via a 2004 merger, followed by a 2008 buyout.


Oklahoma City is the capital and largest city of the state of Oklahoma. The county seat of Oklahoma County, the city ranks 27th among United States cities in population. The population grew following the 2010 Census, with the population estimated to have increased to 620,602 as of July 2014. As of 2014, the Oklahoma City metropolitan area had a population of 1,322,429, and the Oklahoma City-Shawnee Combined Statistical Area had a population of 1,459,758 (Chamber of Commerce) residents, making it Oklahoma's largest metropolitan area. Oklahoma City's city limits extend into Canadian, Cleveland, and Pottawatomie counties, though much of those areas outside of the core Oklahoma County area are suburban or rural (watershed). The city ranks as the eighth-largest city in the United States by land area (including consolidated city-counties; it is the largest city in the United States by land area whose government is not consolidated with that of a county or borough).


Oklahoma City, lying in the Great Plains region, features one of the largest livestock markets in the world. Oil, natural gas, petroleum products and related industries are the largest sector of the local economy. The city is situated in the middle of an active oil field and oil derricks dot the capitol grounds. The federal government employs large numbers of workers at Tinker Air Force Base and the United States Department of Transportation's Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center (these two sites house several offices of the Federal Aviation Administration and the Transportation Department's Enterprise Service Center, respectively).


Oklahoma City is on the I-35 Corridor and is one of the primary travel corridors into neighboring Texas and Mexico. Located in the Frontier Country region of the state, the city's northeast section lies in an ecological region known as the Cross Timbers. The city was founded during the Land Run of 1889, and grew to a population of over 10,000 within hours of its founding. The city was the scene of the April 19, 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, in which 168 people died. It was the deadliest terror attack in the history of the United States until the attacks of September 11, 2001, and remains the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history.


Oklahoma City was settled on April 22, 1889, when the area known as the "Unassigned Lands" was opened for settlement in an event known as "The Land Run". Some 10,000 homesteaders settled the area that would become the capital of Oklahoma. The town grew quickly; the population doubled between 1890 and 1900. Early leaders of the development of the city included Anton Classen, John Shartel, Henry Overholser and James W. Maney.


By the time Oklahoma was admitted to the Union in 1907, Oklahoma City had surpassed Guthrie, the territorial capital, as the population center and commercial hub of the new state. Soon after, the capital was moved from Guthrie to Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City was a major stop on Route 66 during the early part of the 20th century; it was prominently mentioned in Bobby Troup's 1946 jazz classic, "(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66", later made famous by artist Nat King Cole.


Before World War II, Oklahoma City developed major stockyards, attracting jobs and revenue formerly in Chicago and Omaha, Nebraska. With the 1928 discovery of oil within the city limits (including under the State Capitol), Oklahoma City became a major center of oil production. Post-war growth accompanied the construction of the Interstate Highway System, which made Oklahoma City a major interchange as the convergence of I-35, I-40 and I-44. It was also aided by federal development of Tinker Air Force Base.


Patience Latting was elected Mayor of Oklahoma City in 1971, becoming the city's first female mayor. Latting was also the first woman to serve as mayor of a U.S. city with over 350,000 residents.


In 1993, the city passed a massive redevelopment package known as the Metropolitan Area Projects (MAPS), intended to rebuild the city's core with civic projects to establish more activities and life to downtown. The city added a new baseball park; central library; renovations to the civic center, convention center and fairgrounds; and a water canal in the Bricktown entertainment district. Water taxis transport passengers within the district, adding color and activity along the canal. MAPS has become one of the most successful public-private partnerships undertaken in the U.S., exceeding $3 billion in private investment as of 2010. As a result of MAPS, the population living in downtown housing has exponentially increased, together with demand for additional residential and retail amenities, such as grocery, services, and shops.


Since the MAPS projects' completion, the downtown area has seen continued development. Several downtown buildings are undergoing renovation/restoration. Notable among these was the restoration of the Skirvin Hotel in 2007. The famed First National Center is being renovated.


Residents of Oklahoma City suffered substantial losses on April 19, 1995 when Timothy McVeigh detonated a bomb in front of the Murrah building. The building was destroyed (the remnants of which had to be imploded in a controlled demolition later that year), more than 100 nearby buildings suffered severe damage, and 168 people were killed. The site has been commemorated as the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum. Since its opening in 2000, over three million people have visited. Every year on April 19, survivors, families and friends return to the memorial to read the names of each person lost.


The "Core-to-Shore" project was created to relocate I-40 one mile (1.6 km) south and replace it with a boulevard to create a landscaped entrance to the city. This also allows the central portion of the city to expand south and connect with the shore of the Oklahoma River. Several elements of "Core to Shore" were included in the MAPS 3 proposal approved by voters in late 2009.


According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 620.34 square miles (1,606.7 km2), of which, 601.11 square miles (1,556.9 km2) of it is land and 19.23 square miles (49.8 km2) of it is water. The total area is 3.09 percent water.


Oklahoma City lies in the Sandstone Hills region of Oklahoma, known for hills of 250 to 400 feet (120 m) and two species of oak: blackjack oak (Quercus marilandica) and post oak (Q. stellata). The northeastern part of the city and its eastern suburbs fall into an ecological region known as the Cross Timbers.


The city is roughly bisected by the North Canadian River (recently renamed the Oklahoma River inside city limits). The North Canadian once had sufficient flow to flood every year, wreaking destruction on surrounding areas, including the central business district and the original Oklahoma City Zoo. In the 1940s, a dam was built on the river to manage the flood control and reduced its level. In the 1990s, as part of the citywide revitalization project known as MAPS, the city built a series of low-water dams, returning water to the portion of the river flowing near downtown. The city has three large lakes: Lake Hefner and Lake Overholser, in the northwestern quarter of the city; and the largest, Lake Stanley Draper, in the sparsely populated far southeast portion of the city.


The population density normally reported for Oklahoma City using the area of its city limits can be a bit misleading. Its urbanized zone covers roughly 244 sq mi (630 km2) resulting in a density of 2,500 per square mile (2013 est), compared with larger rural watershed areas incorporated by the city, which cover the remaining 377 sq mi (980 km2) of the city limits.


The city is bisected geographically and culturally by the North Canadian River, which basically divides North Oklahoma City and South Oklahoma City. The two halves of the city were actually founded and plotted as separate cities, but soon grew together. The north side is characterized by very diverse and fashionable urban neighborhoods near the city center and sprawling suburbs further north. South Oklahoma City is generally more blue collar working class and significantly more industrial, having grown up around the Stockyards and meat packing plants at the turn of the century, and is currently the center of the city's rapidly growing Latino community.


Downtown Oklahoma City, which has 7,600 residents, is currently seeing an influx of new private investment and large scale public works projects, which have helped to resuscitate a central business district left almost deserted by the Oil Bust of the early 1980s. The centerpiece of downtown is the newly renovated Crystal Bridge and Myriad Botanical Gardens, one of the few elements of the Pei Plan to be completed. In the next few years a massive new central park will link the gardens near the CBD and the new convention center to be built just south of it to the North Canadian River, as part of a massive works project known as Core to Shore; the new park is part of MAPS3, a collection of civic projects funded by a 1-cent temporary (seven-year) sales tax increase.


Oklahoma City has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen: Cfa), with frequent variations in weather daily and seasonally, except during the consistently hot and humid summer months. Prolonged and severe droughts (sometimes leading to wildfires in the vicinity) as well as very heavy rainfall leading to flash flooding and flooding occur with some regularity. Consistent winds, usually from the south or south-southeast during the summer, help temper the hotter weather. Consistent northerly winds during the winter can intensify cold periods. Severe ice storms and snowstorms happen sporadically during the winter.


The average temperature is 61.4 °F (16.3 °C), with the monthly daily average ranging from 39.2 °F (4.0 °C) in January to 83.0 °F (28.3 °C) in July. Extremes range from −17 °F (−27 °C) on February 12, 1899 to 113 °F (45 °C) on August 11, 1936 and August 3, 2012; the last sub-zero (°F) reading was −5 °F (−21 °C) on February 10, 2011. Temperatures reach 100 °F (38 °C) on 10.4 days of the year, 90 °F (32 °C) on nearly 70 days, and fail to rise above freezing on 8.3 days. The city receives about 35.9 inches (91.2 cm) of precipitation annually, of which 8.6 inches (21.8 cm) is snow.


Oklahoma City has a very active severe weather season from March through June, especially during April and May. Being in the center of what is colloquially referred to as Tornado Alley, it is prone to especially frequent and severe tornadoes, as well as very severe hailstorms and occasional derechoes. Tornadoes have occurred in every month of the year and a secondary smaller peak also occurs during autumn, especially October. The Oklahoma City metropolitan area is one of the most tornado-prone major cities in the world, with about 150 tornadoes striking within the city limits since 1890. Since the time weather records have been kept, Oklahoma City has been struck by thirteen violent tornadoes, eleven F/EF4s and two F/EF5. On May 3, 1999 parts of southern Oklahoma City and nearby suburban communities suffered from one of the most powerful tornadoes on record, an F5 on the Fujita scale, with wind speeds estimated by radar at 318 mph (510 km/h). On May 20, 2013, far southwest Oklahoma City, along with Newcastle and Moore, was hit again by a EF5 tornado; it was 0.5 to 1.3 miles (0.80 to 2.09 km) wide and killed 23 people. Less than two weeks later, on May 31, another outbreak affected the Oklahoma City area, including an EF1 and an EF0 within the city and a tornado several miles west of the city that was 2.6 miles (4.2 km) in width, the widest tornado ever recorded.


With 19.48 inches of rainfall, May 2015 was by far Oklahoma City's record-wettest month since record keeping began in 1890. Across Oklahoma and Texas generally, there was record flooding in the latter part of the month


As of the 2010 census, there were 579,999 people, 230,233 households, and 144,120 families residing in the city. The population density was 956.4 inhabitants per square mile (321.9/km²). There were 256,930 housing units at an average density of 375.9 per square mile (145.1/km²).


There were 230,233 households, 29.4% of which had children under the age of 18 living with them, 43.4% were married couples living together, 13.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 37.4% were non-families. One person households account for 30.5% of all households and 8.7% of all households had someone living alone who is 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.47 and the average family size was 3.11.


In the 2000 Census Oklahoma City's age composition was 25.5% under the age of 18, 10.7% from 18 to 24, 30.8% from 25 to 44, 21.5% from 45 to 64, and 11.5% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 34 years. For every 100 females there were 95.6 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 92.7 males.


Oklahoma City has experienced significant population increases since the late 1990s. In May 2014, the U.S. Census announced Oklahoma City had an estimated population of 620,602 in 2014 and that it had grown 5.3 percent between April 2010 and June 2013. Since the official Census in 2000, Oklahoma City had grown 21 percent (a 114,470 raw increase) according to the Bureau estimates. The 2014 estimate of 620,602 is the largest population Oklahoma City has ever recorded. It is the first city in the state to record a population greater than 600,000 residents and the largest municipal population of the Great Plains region (OK, KS, NE, SD, ND).


Oklahoma City is the principal city of the eight-county Oklahoma City Metropolitan Statistical Area in Central Oklahoma and is the state's largest urbanized area. Based on population rank, the metropolitan area was the 42nd largest in the nation as of 2012.


With regards to Mexican drug cartels, Oklahoma City has traditionally been the territory of the notorious Juárez Cartel, but the Sinaloa Cartel has been reported as trying to establish a foothold in Oklahoma City. There are many rival gangs in Oklahoma City, one whose headquarters has been established in the city, the Southside Locos, traditionally known as Sureños.


Oklahoma City also has its share of very brutal crimes, particularly in the 1970s. The worst of which occurred in 1978, when six employees of a Sirloin Stockade restaurant on the city's south side were murdered execution-style in the restaurant's freezer. An intensive investigation followed, and the three individuals involved, who also killed three others in Purcell, Oklahoma, were identified. One, Harold Stafford, died in a motorcycle accident in Tulsa not long after the restaurant murders. Another, Verna Stafford, was sentenced to life without parole after being granted a new trial after she had previously been sentenced to death. Roger Dale Stafford, considered the mastermind of the murder spree, was executed by lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in 1995.


The Oklahoma City Police Department, has a uniformed force of 1,169 officers and 300+ civilian employees. The Department has a central police station and five substations covering 2,500 police reporting districts that average 1/4 square mile in size.


On April 19, 1995, the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was destroyed by a fertilizer bomb manufactured and detonated by Timothy McVeigh. The blast and catastrophic collapse killed 168 people and injured over 680. The blast shockwave destroyed or damaged 324 buildings within a 340-meter radius, destroyed or burned 86 cars, and shattered glass in 258 nearby buildings, causing at least an estimated $652 million worth of damage. The main suspect- Timothy McVeigh, was executed by lethal injection on June 11, 2001. It was the deadliest single domestic terrorist attack in US history, prior to 9/11.


While not in Oklahoma City proper, other large employers within the MSA region include: Tinker Air Force Base (27,000); University of Oklahoma (11,900); University of Central Oklahoma (2,900); and Norman Regional Hospital (2,800).


According to the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce, the metropolitan area's economic output grew by 33 percent between 2001 and 2005 due chiefly to economic diversification. Its gross metropolitan product was $43.1 billion in 2005 and grew to $61.1 billion in 2009.


In 2008, Forbes magazine named Oklahoma City the most "recession proof city in America". The magazine reported that the city had falling unemployment, one of the strongest housing markets in the country and solid growth in energy, agriculture and manufacturing. However, during the early 1980s, Oklahoma City had one of the worst job and housing markets due to the bankruptcy of Penn Square Bank in 1982 and then the post-1985 crash in oil prices.[citation needed]


Other theaters include Lyric Theatre, Jewel Box Theatre, Kirkpatrick Auditorium, the Poteet Theatre, the Oklahoma City Community College Bruce Owen Theater and the 488-seat Petree Recital Hall, at the Oklahoma City University campus. The university also opened the Wanda L Bass School of Music and auditorium in April 2006.


The Science Museum Oklahoma (formerly Kirkpatrick Science and Air Space Museum at Omniplex) houses exhibits on science, aviation, and an IMAX theater. The museum formerly housed the International Photography Hall of Fame (IPHF) that exhibits photographs and artifacts from a large collection of cameras and other artifacts preserving the history of photography. IPHF honors those who have made significant contributions to the art and/or science of photography and relocated to St. Louis, Missouri in 2013.


The Museum of Osteology houses more than 300 real animal skeletons. Focusing on the form and function of the skeletal system, this 7,000 sq ft (650 m2) museum displays hundreds of skulls and skeletons from all corners of the world. Exhibits include adaptation, locomotion, classification and diversity of the vertebrate kingdom. The Museum of Osteology is the only one of its kind in America.


The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum has galleries of western art and is home to the Hall of Great Western Performers. In contrast, the city will also be home to The American Indian Cultural Center and Museum that began construction in 2009 (although completion of the facility has been held up due to insufficient funding), on the south side of Interstate 40, southeast from Bricktown.


The Oklahoma City National Memorial in the northern part of Oklahoma City's downtown was created as the inscription on its eastern gate of the Memorial reads, "to honor the victims, survivors, rescuers, and all who were changed forever on April 19, 1995"; the memorial was built on the land formerly occupied by the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building complex prior to its 1995 bombing. The outdoor Symbolic Memorial can be visited 24 hours a day for free, and the adjacent Memorial Museum, located in the former Journal Record building damaged by the bombing, can be entered for a small fee. The site is also home to the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, a non-partisan, nonprofit think tank devoted to the prevention of terrorism.


The American Banjo Museum located in the Bricktown Entertainment district is dedicated to preserving and promoting the music and heritage of America's native musical instrument – the banjo. With a collection valued at $3.5 million it is truly a national treasure. An interpretive exhibits tells the evolution of the banjo from its humble roots in American slavery, to bluegrass, to folk and world music.


The Oklahoma History Center is the history museum of the state of Oklahoma. Located across the street from the governor's mansion at 800 Nazih Zuhdi Drive in northeast Oklahoma City, the museum opened in 2005 and is operated by the Oklahoma Historical Society. It preserves the history of Oklahoma from the prehistoric to the present day.


Oklahoma City is home to several professional sports teams, including the Oklahoma City Thunder of the National Basketball Association. The Thunder is the city's second "permanent" major professional sports franchise after the now-defunct AFL Oklahoma Wranglers and is the third major-league team to call the city home when considering the temporary hosting of the New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets for the 2005–06 and 2006–07 NBA seasons.


Other professional sports clubs in Oklahoma City include the Oklahoma City Dodgers, the Triple-A affiliate of the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Oklahoma City Energy FC of the United Soccer League, and the Crusaders of Oklahoma Rugby Football Club USA Rugby.


Chesapeake Energy Arena in downtown is the principal multipurpose arena in the city which hosts concerts, NHL exhibition games, and many of the city's pro sports teams. In 2008, the Oklahoma City Thunder became the major tenant. Located nearby in Bricktown, the Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark is the home to the city's baseball team, the Dodgers. "The Brick", as it is locally known, is considered one of the finest minor league parks in the nation.[citation needed]


Oklahoma City is the annual host of the Big 12 Baseball Tournament, the World Cup of Softball, and the annual NCAA Women's College World Series. The city has held the 2005 NCAA Men's Basketball First and Second round and hosted the Big 12 Men's and Women's Basketball Tournaments in 2007 and 2009. The major universities in the area – University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma City University, and Oklahoma State University – often schedule major basketball games and other sporting events at Chesapeake Energy Arena and Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark, although most home games are played at their campus stadiums.


Other major sporting events include Thoroughbred and Quarter horse racing circuits at Remington Park and numerous horse shows and equine events that take place at the state fairgrounds each year. There are numerous golf courses and country clubs spread around the city.


The state of Oklahoma hosts a highly competitive high school football culture, with many teams in the Oklahoma City metropolitan area. The Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association (OSSAA) organizes high school football into eight distinct classes based on the size of school enrollment. Beginning with the largest, the classes are: 6A, 5A, 4A, 3A, 2A, A, B, and C. Class 6A is broken into two divisions. Oklahoma City area schools in this division include: Edmond North, Mustang, Moore, Yukon, Edmond Memorial, Edmond Santa Fe, Norman North, Westmoore, Southmoore, Putnam City North, Norman, Putnam City, Putnam City West, U.S. Grant, Midwest City.


The Oklahoma City Thunder of the National Basketball Association (NBA) has called Oklahoma City home since the 2008–09 season, when owner Clayton Bennett relocated the franchise from Seattle, Washington. The Thunder plays home games at the Chesapeake Energy Arena in downtown Oklahoma City, known affectionately in the national media as 'the Peake' and 'Loud City'. The Thunder is known by several nicknames, including "OKC Thunder" and simply "OKC", and its mascot is Rumble the Bison.


After a lackluster arrival to Oklahoma City for the 2008–09 season, the Oklahoma City Thunder secured a berth (8th) in the 2010 NBA Playoffs the next year after boasting its first 50-win season, winning two games in the first round against the Los Angeles Lakers. In 2012, Oklahoma City made it to the NBA Finals, but lost to the Miami Heat in five games. In 2013 the Thunder reached the Western Conference semifinals without All-Star guard Russell Westbrook, who was injured in their first round series against the Houston Rockets, only to lose to the Memphis Grizzlies. In 2014 Oklahoma City again reached the NBA's Western Conference Finals but eventually lost to the San Antonio Spurs in six games.


The Oklahoma City Thunder has been regarded by sports analysts as one of the elite franchises of the NBA's Western Conference and that of a media darling as the future of the league. Oklahoma City has earned Northwest Division titles every year since 2009 and has consistently improved its win record to 59-wins in 2014. The Thunder is led by first year head coach Billy Donovan and is anchored by several NBA superstars, including perennial All-Star point guard Russell Westbrook, 2014 MVP and four-time NBA scoring champion Kevin Durant, and Defensive Player of the Year nominee and shot-blocker Serge Ibaka.


In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the NBA's New Orleans Hornets (now the New Orleans Pelicans) temporarily relocated to the Ford Center, playing the majority of its home games there during the 2005–06 and 2006–07 seasons. The team became the first NBA franchise to play regular-season games in the state of Oklahoma.[citation needed] The team was known as the New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets while playing in Oklahoma City. The team ultimately returned to New Orleans full-time for the 2007–08 season. The Hornets played their final home game in Oklahoma City during the exhibition season on October 9, 2007 against the Houston Rockets.


One of the more prominent landmarks downtown is the Crystal Bridge at the Myriad Botanical Gardens, a large downtown urban park. Designed by I. M. Pei, the Crystal Bridge is a tropical conservatory in the area. The park has an amphitheater, known as the Water Stage. In 2007, following a renovation of the stage, Oklahoma Shakespeare in the Park relocated to the Myriad Gardens. The Myriad Gardens will undergo a massive renovation in conjunction with the recently built Devon Tower directly north of it.


The Oklahoma City Zoo and Botanical Garden is home to numerous natural habitats, WPA era architecture and landscaping, and hosts major touring concerts during the summer at its amphitheater. Oklahoma City also has two amusement parks, Frontier City theme park and White Water Bay water park. Frontier City is an 'Old West'-themed amusement park. The park also features a recreation of a western gunfight at the 'OK Corral' and many shops that line the "Western" town's main street. Frontier City also hosts a national concert circuit at its amphitheater during the summer. Oklahoma City also has a combination racetrack and casino open year-round, Remington Park, which hosts both Quarter horse (March – June) and Thoroughbred (August – December) seasons.


Walking trails line Lake Hefner and Lake Overholser in the northwest part of the city and downtown at the canal and the Oklahoma River. The majority of the east shore area is taken up by parks and trails, including a new leashless dog park and the postwar-era Stars and Stripes Park. Lake Stanley Draper is the city's largest and most remote lake.


Oklahoma City has a major park in each quadrant of the city, going back to the first parks masterplan. Will Rogers Park, Lincoln Park, Trosper Park, and Woodson Park were once connected by the Grand Boulevard loop, some sections of which no longer exist. Martin Park Nature Center is a natural habitat in far northwest Oklahoma City. Will Rogers Park is home to the Lycan Conservatory, the Rose Garden, and Butterfly Garden, all built in the WPA era. Oklahoma City is home to the American Banjo Museum, which houses a large collection of highly decorated banjos from the early 20th century and exhibits on the history of the banjo and its place in American history. Concerts and lectures are also held there.


In April 2005, the Oklahoma City Skate Park at Wiley Post Park was renamed the Mat Hoffman Action Sports Park to recognize Mat Hoffman, an Oklahoma City area resident and businessman that was instrumental in the design of the skate park and is a 10-time BMX World Vert champion. In March 2009, the Mat Hoffman Action Sports Park was named by the National Geographic Society Travel Guide as one of the "Ten Best."


The City of Oklahoma City has operated under a council-manager form of city government since 1927. Mick Cornett serves as Mayor, having first been elected in 2004, and re-elected in 2006, 2010, and 2014. Eight councilpersons represent each of the eight wards of Oklahoma City. City Manager Jim Couch was appointed in late 2000. Couch previously served as assistant city manager, Metropolitan Area Projects Plan (MAPS) director and utilities director prior to his service as city manager.


The city is home to several colleges and universities. Oklahoma City University, formerly known as Epworth University, was founded by the United Methodist Church on September 1, 1904 and is renowned for its performing arts, science, mass communications, business, law, and athletic programs. OCU has its main campus in the north-central section of the city, near the city's chinatown area. OCU Law is located in the Midtown district near downtown, in the old Central High School building.