1.
1912 in music
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This is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 1912. February 28 – In a concert in Copenhagen, Carl Nielsen conducts the premiere of his Symphony No.3, march – Hart A. Wand publishes Dallas Blues, a jazz standard and an early published blues song. June 26 – Gustav Mahlers Symphony No.9 is premiered in Vienna by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Bruno Walter, handy publishes The Memphis Blues, one of the first blues songs to become a hit. October 16 – Arnold Schoenbergs Pierrot Lunaire debuts at the Berlin Choralion-Saal, aino Ackté founds an opera festival in Savonlinna, after a period of dormancy, the Savonlinna Opera Festival will become one of the most important cultural events in Finland. The Birmingham Triennial Music Festival is held for the last time, William Henry Bell becomes director of the South African College of Music in Cape Town. After All That Ive Been To You w. Jack Drislane m. Chris Smith Alexanders Ragtime Band w. m, Irving Berlin, E. Ray Goetz, A. Baldwin Sloane All Night Long w. m. Shelton Brooks And The Green Grass Grew All Around w. William Jerome m. Harry Von Tilzer At The Devils Ball w. m, Irving Berlin Baby Seals Blues m. Artie Matthews Bagdad w. Anne Caldwell m, victor Herbert Be My Little Baby Bumble Bee w. Stanley Murphy m. Henry I. W. Elmer Bowman m. Chris Smith Beckys Got A Job In A Musical Show w. m, Irving Berlin Come Back To Me, My Melody Irving Berlin, Ted Snyder Come Back To Playland With Me w. m. Irving Berlin Down In Dear Old New Orleans w. Joe Young m. Conrad & Whidden Dreams Of Long Ago w. Earl Carroll m, enrico Caruso The Elevator Man Going Up, Going Up, Going Up, Going Up. w. m. Irving Berlin Everybody Loves A Chicken w. m, bobby Jones Everybody Two-Step w. Earl C. Jones m. Wallie Herzer Florida Rag V. Lowry The Funny Little Melody w. m, Irving Berlin Giannina Mia w. Otto Harbach m. Rudolf Friml Goodnight, Nurse w. Thomas J. Gray m. W. Raymond Walker He Played It On His Fid, Fid, Fiddle-dee-dee w. m. E. Ray Goetz & Irving Berlin Hitchy-Koo w. L. Wolfe Gilbert m. Lewis F. Muir & Maurice Abrahams Im Afraid, Pretty Maid, Im Afraid w. m. Irving Berlin Im The Lonesomest Gal In Town w. Lew Brown m. Albert Von Tilzer In My Harem w. m, Irving Berlin In the Garden w. m. C. Austin Miles Its A Long Way To Tipperary w. m, Jack Judge & Harry H. Williams Keep Away From The Fellow Who Owns An Automobile w. m. Irving Berlin Kentucky Sue by Lew Brown The Land Of Golden Dreams w. C. M. Denison m. E. F. Dusenberry Last Night Was The End Of The World w. Andrew B. Sterling m. Harry Von Tilzer The Last Shot Got Him w. m, Leo Silesu Love Is Like A Firefly w. Otto Harbach m
2.
1917 in music
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This is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 1917. S. See Category, Musical groups established in 1917 All The World Will Be Jealous Of Me w. Al Dubin m. Ernest R. Ball Any Time Is Kissing Time w. Oscar Asche m, frederic Norton from the musical Chu Chin Chow Are You From Heaven. W. m. L. Wolfe Gilbert & Anatole Friedland A Bachelor Gay w. Frank Clifford Harris & Valentine m. James W. Tate from the musical The Maid of the Mountains Barnyard Blues w. m. Edwin B. Charles Shisler Cheer Up, Liza John L. Golden, Raymond Hubbell Cleopatra Had A Jazz Band w. Jack Coogan m, jimmy Morgan Come To The Fair w. Helen Taylor m. Easthope Martin The Darktown Strutters Ball w. m, shelton Brooks Dixie Jass Band One-Step Original Dixieland Jass Band Down in the Valley trad US Eileen w. Henry Blossom m. Victor Herbert For Me And My Gal w. Edgar Leslie & E. Ray Goetz m. George W. Meyer For Your Country and My Country w. m. Irving Berlin Give a Man a Horse He Can Ride w. James Thomson m. Geoffrey OHara Give Me the Moonlight, Hirsch Good Luck and God Be With You, Laddie Boy w. Gus Edwards Good Bye Broadway, Hello France w. C. Francis Reisner & Benny Davis m, goodbye, Mule, with Yer Old Hee-Haw. w. William Herschell m. Barclay Walker Good-bye, That Means You w. Andrew B, sterling m. Arthur Lange Good-bye-ee w. m. R. P. Weston & Bert Lee Hail, the Gangs All Here w. D. A. Esrom m. Theodore F. Morse & Arthur Sullivan Have A Heart w. P. G. Wodehouse m. Jerome Kern Hawaiian Butterfly w. George A. Billy Baskette & Joseph H. Santley Homeward Bound m. George Meyer w. Howard Johnson, teresa del Riego How Can I Forget When Theres So Much To Remember w. m. Irving Berlin Huckleberry Finn by Cliff Hess I Dont Know Where Im Going But Im On My Way w. m, willie White Ill Take You Back To Italy w. m. Irving Berlin Im All Bound Round With The Mason-Dixon Line w. Sam M. Lewis & Joe Young m, irving Berlin, Edgar Leslie & George W. Meyer Lily Of The Valley w. L. Wolfe Gilbert m. Fred Fisher Love Will Find A Way w. Harry Graham m, introduced by José Collins in the musical The Maid of the Mountains Madmoiselle From Armentieres w. m. anon McNamaras Band w. John J. Stamford m. Shamus OConnor The Modern Maidens Prayer w. Ballard MacDonald m. James F. Hanley My Sunshine Jane w. J. Keirn Brennan m. Ernest R. Ball My Sweetie w. m. Al Jolson, B. G. DeSylva & Gus Kahn Napoleon w. P. G, Wodehouse m. Jerome Kern Nesting Time In Flatbush w. P. G. Wodehouse m. Jerome Kern Oh Its A Lovely War w. m. Maurice Scott Oh Johnny, Oh Johnny, Oh, abe Olman Ole Miss Rag w. m. Handy On The Road To Home Sweet Home w. Gus Kahn m, egbert van Alstyne Ostrich Walk m. Edwin B
3.
1908 in art
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February – The Ashcan School give their first and only exhibition, opening at the Macbeth Gallery in New York. March 20–May 2 – Salon des Indépendants in Paris gives rise to the term Cubism, may – Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky produces a color photographic portrait of Leo Tolstoy. July – Allied Artists Association holds its first exhibition, at the Royal Albert Hall in London, july 29 – The Whitworth Art Gallery building in Manchester is formally opened. November – Georges Braque exhibits at Daniel-Henry Kahnweilers Paris gallery, critic Louis Vauxcelles describes him as reducing everything, hugh Lane founds the Dublin City Gallery, the worlds first to display only modern art. Paul Ranson founds the Académie Ranson in Paris, the British Medical Association Building, London, designed by Charles Holden with eighteen controversial nude sculptures by Jacob Epstein, is completed. Wassily Kandinsky settles in the Bavarian town of Murnau am Staffelsee, the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna rejects Adolf Hitlers application to study painting. Australian painter Arthur Streeton marries violinist Nora Clench, W. M. W. February 28 – William Coldstream, English realist painter. July 22 – Claire Falkenstein, American sculptor and painter, august 22 – Henri Cartier-Bresson, French photographer. August 28 Edith Tudor Hart, born Edith Suschitzky, Austrian-born photojournalist and communist agent in Britain, roger Tory Peterson, American naturalist, ornithologist, artist and educator. August 30 – Leonor Fini, Argentine surrealist painter, september 6 – Korczak Ziolkowski, Polish American sculptor. September 14 – Peter Watson, English arts benefactor October 1 – Nicholas Marsicano, October 21 – Jorge Oteiza, Spanish sculptor, painter, designer and writer. October 27 – Lee Krasner, American abstract expressionist painter, november 4 – EQ Nicholson, born Elsie Q. Myers, English textile designer and painter, november 19 – Gisèle Freund, born Gisela Freund, German-born photographer. December 3 – Victor Pasmore, English artist and architect, december 23 – Yousuf Karsh, Armenian-Canadian photographer. Myron Stout, American abstract painter Umaña, Colombian artist
4.
1908 in literature
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This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1908. March – Ezra Pound leaves America for Europe, in April, he moves to Venice, where in July he self-publishes his first collection of poems, A Lume Spento. In August he settles in London, where he will remain until 1920, june 18 – Mark Twain purchases a house in Redding, Connecticut. Summer – The Marlowe Society stages a production at the New Theatre, Cambridge, July – Katherine Mansfield moves to London, she will never return to her native New Zealand. September 30 – Maurice Maeterlincks The Blue Bird is premièred at Konstantin Stanislavskys Moscow Art Theatre, october 3 – The Avenida Theatre opens on Buenos Aires Avenida de Mayo with a production of Lope de Vegas El castigo sin venganza directed by María Guerrero. December – Ford Madox Hueffer begins publication of the literary magazine The English Review in London, yeats, produces its first publication, Poetry and Ireland, essays by W. B. Ethiopian linguist Afevork Ghevre Jesuss ልብ ፡ ወለድ ፡ ታሪክ ።, malay tale Hikayat Hang Tuah is first published, edited by Sulaiman bin Muhammed Nur and William Shellabear. Romanian writer Urmuz is known to be working on his manuscript stories, K. M. Forster – A Room with a View John Fox, Jr. Madero – La sucesión presidencial en 1910 Friedrich Nietzsche – Ecce homo, Wie man wird, was man ist Alfred R. M
5.
Sergei Rachmaninoff
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Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian pianist, composer, and conductor of the late-Romantic period, some of whose works are among the most popular in the classical repertoire. Born into a family, Rachmaninoff took up the piano at age four. He graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1892 and had composed several piano, in 1897, following the critical reaction to his Symphony No. 1, Rachmaninoff entered a depression and composed little until successful therapy allowed him to complete his enthusiastically received Piano Concerto No.2 in 1901. After the Russian Revolution, Rachmaninoff and his family left Russia and resided in the United States, in 1942, Rachmaninoff moved to Beverly Hills, California. One month before his death from advanced melanoma, Rachmaninoff acquired American citizenship, the piano is featured prominently in Rachmaninoffs compositional output, and through his own skills as a performer he explored the expressive possibilities of the instrument. Rachmaninoff was born at an estate in the Novgorod province in north-western Russia. It is unclear if he was born in the estate of Oneg, near Veliky Novgorod, or Semyonovo, near Staraya Russa, the Rachmaninoffs had strong musical and military leanings. The composers grandfather on the line, Arkady Alexandrovich, was a musician. His father, Vasily Arkadyevich Rachmaninoff, was an army officer and he married Lyubov Petrovna Butakova, the daughter of a wealthy army general who gave her five estates as part of her dowry. The couple had three sons and three daughters, Rachmaninoff being their fourth child, Rachmaninoff began piano and music lessons organised by his mother at the age of four. She became impressed with her sons musical ability to recite passages from memory without playing a wrong note. Rachmaninoff later dedicated Spring Waters, Song No.32 to Ornatskaya, in 1882, Rachmaninoffs father had to auction off their Oneg estate due to his financial incompetence—the familys five estates had been reduced to one. Rachmaninoff described his father as a wastrel, a gambler, a pathological liar. The family moved to a flat in Saint Petersburg. When Rachmaninoffs course of lessons with Ornatskaya neared its end, she arranged for him to music at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. That year, his sister Sofia died of diphtheria and his left the family, with their approval. In 1885, Rachmaninoffs sister Yelena died of pernicious anemia at eighteen and she was an important musical influence to Rachmaninoff who introduced him to the works of Tchaikovsky
6.
Maurice Ravel
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Joseph Maurice Ravel was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, in the 1920s and 1930s Ravel was internationally regarded as Frances greatest living composer. After leaving the conservatoire Ravel found his own way as a composer, developing a style of great clarity, incorporating elements of baroque, neoclassicism and, in his later works, jazz. He liked to experiment with form, as in his best-known work, Boléro. He made some arrangements of other composers music, of which his 1922 version of Mussorgskys Pictures at an Exhibition is the best known. As a slow and painstaking worker, Ravel composed fewer pieces than many of his contemporaries. Among his works to enter the repertoire are pieces for piano, chamber music, many of his works exist in two versions, a first, piano score and a later orchestration. Some of his music, such as Gaspard de la nuit, is exceptionally difficult to play. Ravel was among the first composers to recognise the potential of recording to bring their music to a wider public, from the 1920s, despite limited technique as a pianist or conductor, he took part in recordings of several of his works, others were made under his supervision. Ravel was born in the Basque town of Ciboure, France and his father, Pierre-Joseph Ravel, was an educated and successful engineer, inventor and manufacturer, born in Versoix near the Franco-Swiss border. His mother, Marie, née Delouart, was Basque but had grown up in Madrid, in 19th-century terms, Joseph had married beneath his status – Marie was illegitimate and barely literate – but the marriage was a happy one. Both Ravels parents were Roman Catholics, Marie was also something of a free-thinker, a trait inherited by her elder son and he was baptised in the Ciboure parish church six days after he was born. The family moved to Paris three months later, and there a younger son, Édouard, was born and he was close to his father, whom he eventually followed into the engineering profession. Maurice was particularly devoted to their mother, her Basque-Spanish heritage was an influence on his life. Among his earliest memories were folk songs she sang to him, the household was not rich, but the family was comfortable, and the two boys had happy childhoods. Ravel senior delighted in taking his sons to factories to see the latest mechanical devices, in later life, Ravel recalled, Throughout my childhood I was sensitive to music. My father, much better educated in art than most amateurs are, knew how to develop my taste. There is no record that Ravel received any formal schooling in his early years
7.
Paris
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Paris is the capital and most populous city of France. It has an area of 105 square kilometres and a population of 2,229,621 in 2013 within its administrative limits, the agglomeration has grown well beyond the citys administrative limits. By the 17th century, Paris was one of Europes major centres of finance, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts, and it retains that position still today. The aire urbaine de Paris, a measure of area, spans most of the Île-de-France region and has a population of 12,405,426. It is therefore the second largest metropolitan area in the European Union after London, the Metropole of Grand Paris was created in 2016, combining the commune and its nearest suburbs into a single area for economic and environmental co-operation. Grand Paris covers 814 square kilometres and has a population of 7 million persons, the Paris Region had a GDP of €624 billion in 2012, accounting for 30.0 percent of the GDP of France and ranking it as one of the wealthiest regions in Europe. The city is also a rail, highway, and air-transport hub served by two international airports, Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly. Opened in 1900, the subway system, the Paris Métro. It is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro, notably, Paris Gare du Nord is the busiest railway station in the world outside of Japan, with 262 millions passengers in 2015. In 2015, Paris received 22.2 million visitors, making it one of the top tourist destinations. The association football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris, the 80, 000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros, Paris hosted the 1900 and 1924 Summer Olympics and is bidding to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The name Paris is derived from its inhabitants, the Celtic Parisii tribe. Thus, though written the same, the name is not related to the Paris of Greek mythology. In the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps, since the late 19th century, Paris has also been known as Panam in French slang. Inhabitants are known in English as Parisians and in French as Parisiens and they are also pejoratively called Parigots. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the areas major north-south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité, this place of land and water trade routes gradually became a town
8.
Florence
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Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the Metropolitan City of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants, Florence was a centre of medieval European trade and finance and one of the wealthiest cities of the time. It is considered the birthplace of the Renaissance, and has called the Athens of the Middle Ages. A turbulent political history includes periods of rule by the powerful Medici family, from 1865 to 1871 the city was the capital of the recently established Kingdom of Italy. The Historic Centre of Florence attracts 13 million tourists each year and it was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1982. The city is noted for its culture, Renaissance art and architecture, the city also contains numerous museums and art galleries, such as the Uffizi Gallery and the Palazzo Pitti, and still exerts an influence in the fields of art, culture and politics. Due to Florences artistic and architectural heritage, it has been ranked by Forbes as one of the most beautiful cities in the world, in 2008, the city had the 17th highest average income in Italy. Florence originated as a Roman city, and later, after a period as a flourishing trading and banking medieval commune. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, it was politically, economically, and culturally one of the most important cities in Europe, the language spoken in the city during the 14th century was, and still is, accepted as the Italian language. Starting from the late Middle Ages, Florentine money—in the form of the gold florin—financed the development of all over Europe, from Britain to Bruges, to Lyon. Florentine bankers financed the English kings during the Hundred Years War and they similarly financed the papacy, including the construction of their provisional capital of Avignon and, after their return to Rome, the reconstruction and Renaissance embellishment of Rome. Florence was home to the Medici, one of European historys most important noble families, Lorenzo de Medici was considered a political and cultural mastermind of Italy in the late 15th century. Two members of the family were popes in the early 16th century, Leo X, catherine de Medici married king Henry II of France and, after his death in 1559, reigned as regent in France. Marie de Medici married Henry IV of France and gave birth to the future king Louis XIII, the Medici reigned as Grand Dukes of Tuscany, starting with Cosimo I de Medici in 1569 and ending with the death of Gian Gastone de Medici in 1737. The Etruscans initially formed in 200 BC the small settlement of Fiesole and it was built in the style of an army camp with the main streets, the cardo and the decumanus, intersecting at the present Piazza della Repubblica. Situated along the Via Cassia, the route between Rome and the north, and within the fertile valley of the Arno, the settlement quickly became an important commercial centre. Peace returned under Lombard rule in the 6th century, Florence was conquered by Charlemagne in 774 and became part of the Duchy of Tuscany, with Lucca as capital. The population began to again and commerce prospered
9.
Gustav Mahler
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Gustav Mahler was an Austrian late-Romantic composer, and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge between the 19th century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century, born in Bohemia as a German-speaking Jew of humble circumstances, Mahler displayed his musical gifts at an early age. During his ten years in Vienna, Mahler—who had converted to Catholicism to secure the regular opposition. Late in his life he was director of New Yorks Metropolitan Opera. Mahlers œuvre is relatively limited, for much of his composing was necessarily a part-time activity while he earned his living as a conductor. Some of Mahlers immediate musical successors included the composers of the Second Viennese School, notably Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, dmitri Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten are among later 20th-century composers who admired and were influenced by Mahler. The International Gustav Mahler Institute was established in 1955 to honour the composers life, the Mahler family came from eastern Bohemia and were of humble circumstances, the composers grandmother had been a street pedlar. Bohemia was then part of the Austrian Empire, the Mahler family belonged to a German-speaking minority among Bohemians, from this background the future composer developed early on a permanent sense of exile, always an intruder, never welcomed. Bernhard Mahler, the son and the composers father, elevated himself to the ranks of the petite bourgeoisie by becoming a coachman. He bought a modest house in the village of Kalischt, halfway between Prague in Bohemia and Brno in Moravia, in the center of todays Czech Republic. Bernhards wife, Marie, gave birth to the first of the couples 14 children, a son Isidor, two years later, on 7 July 1860, their second son, Gustav, was born. In December 1860, Bernhard Mahler moved with his wife and infant son, Gustav, to the town of Iglau,25 km to the south-east, the family grew rapidly, but of the 12 children born to the family in Iglau only six survived infancy. All of these elements would later contribute to his musical vocabulary. When he was four years old, Gustav discovered his grandparents piano and he developed his performing skills sufficiently to be considered a local Wunderkind and gave his first public performance at the town theatre when he was ten years old. Although Gustav loved making music, his reports from the Iglau Gymnasium portrayed him as absent-minded. In 1871, in the hope of improving the results, his father sent him to the New Town Gymnasium in Prague. In 1874 he suffered a personal loss when his younger brother Ernst died after a long illness. Mahler sought to express his feelings in music, with the help of a friend, Josef Steiner, he work on an opera
10.
Edward Elgar
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Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet OM GCVO was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos for violin and cello and he also composed choral works, including The Dream of Gerontius, chamber music and songs. He was appointed Master of the Kings Musick in 1924, although Elgar is often regarded as a typically English composer, most of his musical influences were not from England but from continental Europe. He felt himself to be an outsider, not only musically and he nevertheless married the daughter of a senior British army officer. His later full-length religious choral works were received but have not entered the regular repertory. In his fifties, Elgar composed a symphony and a concerto that were immensely successful. His second symphony and his cello concerto did not gain immediate public popularity, Elgars music came, in his later years, to be seen as appealing chiefly to British audiences. His stock remained low for a generation after his death and it began to revive significantly in the 1960s, helped by new recordings of his works. Some of his works have, in recent years, been taken up again internationally, Elgar has been described as the first composer to take the gramophone seriously. Between 1914 and 1925, he conducted a series of recordings of his works. Edward Elgar was born in the village of Lower Broadheath, outside Worcester. His father, William Henry Elgar, was raised in Dover and had apprenticed to a London music publisher. In 1841 William moved to Worcester, where he worked as a tuner and set up a shop selling sheet music. In 1848 he married Ann Greening, daughter of a farm worker, Edward was the fourth of their seven children. Ann Elgar had converted to Roman Catholicism shortly before Edwards birth, William Elgar was a violinist of professional standard and held the post of organist of St. Georges Roman Catholic Church, Worcester, from 1846 to 1885. At his instigation, masses by Cherubini and Hummel were first heard at the Three Choirs Festival by the orchestra in which he played the violin, all the Elgar children received a musical upbringing. Elgars mother was interested in the arts and encouraged his musical development and he inherited from her a discerning taste for literature and a passionate love of the countryside. His friend and biographer W. H, Billy Reed wrote that Elgars early surroundings had an influence that permeated all his work and gave to his whole life that subtle but none the less true and sturdy English quality
11.
Manchester
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Manchester is a major city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England, with a population of 514,414 as of 2013. It lies within the United Kingdoms second-most populous urban area, with a population of 2.55 million, Manchester is fringed by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east and an arc of towns with which it forms a continuous conurbation. The local authority is Manchester City Council and it was historically a part of Lancashire, although areas of Cheshire south of the River Mersey were incorporated during the 20th century. Throughout the Middle Ages Manchester remained a township but began to expand at an astonishing rate around the turn of the 19th century. Manchesters unplanned urbanisation was brought on by a boom in textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution, Manchester achieved city status in 1853. The Manchester Ship Canal opened in 1894, creating the Port of Manchester and its fortunes declined after the Second World War, owing to deindustrialisation. The city centre was devastated in a bombing in 1996, but it led to extensive investment, in 2014, the Globalization and World Cities Research Network ranked Manchester as a beta world city, the highest-ranked British city apart from London. Manchester is the third-most visited city in the UK and it is notable for its architecture, culture, musical exports, media links, scientific and engineering output, social impact, sports clubs and transport connections. Manchester Liverpool Road railway station was the worlds first inter-city passenger railway station and in the city scientists first split the atom, the name Manchester originates from the Latin name Mamucium or its variant Mancunium and the citizens are still referred to as Mancunians. These are generally thought to represent a Latinisation of an original Brittonic name, both meanings are preserved in languages derived from Common Brittonic, mam meaning breast in Irish and mother in Welsh. The suffix -chester is a survival of Old English ceaster and their territory extended across the fertile lowland of what is now Salford and Stretford. Central Manchester has been settled since this time. A stabilised fragment of foundations of the version of the Roman fort is visible in Castlefield. After the Roman withdrawal and Saxon conquest, the focus of settlement shifted to the confluence of the Irwell, much of the wider area was laid waste in the subsequent Harrying of the North. Thomas de la Warre, lord of the manor, founded and constructed a church for the parish in 1421. The church is now Manchester Cathedral, the premises of the college house Chethams School of Music. The library, which opened in 1653 and is open to the public today, is the oldest free public reference library in the United Kingdom. Manchester is mentioned as having a market in 1282, around the 14th century, Manchester received an influx of Flemish weavers, sometimes credited as the foundation of the regions textile industry
