Leeds
Leeds is a city in West Yorkshire, England. Leeds has one of the most diverse economies of all the UK's main employment centres and has seen the fastest rate of private-sector jobs growth of any UK city, it has the highest ratio of private to public sector jobs of all the UK's Core Cities, with 77% of its workforce working in the private sector. Leeds has the third-largest jobs total by local authority area, with 480,000 in employment and self-employment at the beginning of 2015. Leeds is ranked as a gamma world city by World Cities Research Network. Leeds is the cultural and commercial heart of the West Yorkshire Urban Area. Leeds is served by four universities, has the fourth largest student population in the country and the country's fourth largest urban economy. Leeds was a small manorial borough in the 13th century, in the 17th and 18th centuries it became a major centre for the production and trading of wool, in the Industrial Revolution a major mill town. From being a market town in the valley of the River Aire in the 16th century, Leeds expanded and absorbed the surrounding villages to become a populous urban centre by the mid-20th century.
It now lies within the West Yorkshire Urban Area, the United Kingdom's fourth-most populous urban area, with a population of 2.6 million. Today, Leeds has become the largest legal and financial centre, outside London with the financial and insurance services industry worth £13 billion to the city's economy; the finance and business service sector account for 38% of total output with more than 30 national and international banks located in the city, including an office of the Bank of England. Leeds is the UK's third-largest manufacturing centre with around 1,800 firms and 39,000 employees, Leeds manufacturing firms account for 8.8% of total employment in the city and is worth over £7 billion to the local economy. The largest sub-sectors are engineering and publishing, food and drink and medical technology. Other key sectors include retail and the visitor economy and the creative and digital industries; the city saw several firsts, including the oldest-surviving film in existence, Roundhay Garden Scene, the 1767 invention of soda water.
Public transport and road communications networks in the region are focused on Leeds, the second phase of High Speed 2 will connect it to London via East Midlands Hub and Sheffield Meadowhall. Leeds has the third busiest railway station and the tenth busiest airport outside London; the name derives from the old Brythonic word Ladenses meaning "people of the fast-flowing river", in reference to the River Aire that flows through the city. This name referred to the forested area covering most of the Brythonic kingdom of Elmet, which existed during the 5th century into the early 7th century. Bede states in the fourteenth chapter of his Ecclesiastical History, in a discussion of an altar surviving from a church erected by Edwin of Northumbria, that it is located in...regione quae vocatur Loidis. An inhabitant of Leeds is locally known as a word of uncertain origin; the term Leodensian is used, from the city's Latin name. The name has been explained as a derivative of Welsh lloed, meaning "a place".
Leeds developed as a market town in the Middle Ages as part of the local agricultural economy. Before the Industrial Revolution, it became a co-ordination centre for the manufacture of woollen cloth, white broadcloth was traded at its White Cloth Hall. Leeds handled one sixth of England's export trade in 1770. Growth in textiles, was accelerated by the building of the Aire and Calder Navigation in 1699 and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal in 1816. In the late Georgian era, William Lupton, Lord of the Manor of Leeds, was one of a number of central Leeds landowners with the mesne lord title, some of whom, like him, were textile manufacturers. At the time of his death in 1828, Lupton's land in Briggate in central Leeds included a mill, manor house and outbuildings; the railway network constructed around Leeds, starting with the Leeds and Selby Railway in 1834, provided improved communications with national markets and for its development, an east-west connection with Manchester and the ports of Liverpool and Hull giving improved access to international markets.
Alongside technological advances and industrial expansion, Leeds retained an interest in trading in agricultural commodities, with the Corn Exchange opening in 1864. Marshall's Mill was one of the first of many factories constructed in Leeds from around 1790 when the most significant were woollen finishing and flax mills. Manufacturing diversified by 1914 to printing, engineering and clothing manufacture. Decline in manufacturing during the 1930s was temporarily reversed by a switch to producing military uniforms and munitions during World War II. However, by the 1970s, the clothing industry was in irreversible decline, facing cheap foreign competition; the contemporary economy has been shaped by Leeds City Council's vision of building a'24-hour European city' and'capital of the north'. The city has developed from the decay of the post-industrial era to become a telephone banking centre, connected to the electronic infrastructure of the modern global economy. There has been growth in the corporate and legal sectors, increased local affluence has led to an expanding retail sector, including the luxury goods market.
Leeds City Region Enterprise Zone was launched in April 2012 to promote development in four sites along the A63 East Leeds Link Road. Leeds was a manor and townshi
Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne known as Newcastle, is a city in Tyne and Wear, North East England, 103 miles south of Edinburgh and 277 miles north of London on the northern bank of the River Tyne, 8.5 mi from the North Sea. Newcastle is the most populous city in the North East, forms the core of the Tyneside conurbation, the eighth most populous urban area in the United Kingdom. Newcastle is a member of the UK Core Cities Group and is a member of the Eurocities network of European cities. Newcastle was part of the county of Northumberland until 1400, when it became a county of itself, a status it retained until becoming part of Tyne and Wear in 1974; the regional nickname and dialect for people from Newcastle and the surrounding area is Geordie. Newcastle houses Newcastle University, a member of the Russell Group, as well as Northumbria University; the city developed around the Roman settlement Pons Aelius and was named after the castle built in 1080 by Robert Curthose, William the Conqueror's eldest son.
The city grew as an important centre for the wool trade in the 14th century, became a major coal mining area. The port developed in the 16th century and, along with the shipyards lower down the River Tyne, was amongst the world's largest shipbuilding and ship-repairing centres. Newcastle's economy includes corporate headquarters, digital technology, retail and cultural centres, from which the city contributes £13 billion towards the United Kingdom's GVA. Among its icons are Newcastle United football club and the Tyne Bridge. Since 1981 the city has hosted the Great North Run, a half marathon which attracts over 57,000 runners each year; the first recorded settlement in what is now Newcastle was Pons Aelius, a Roman fort and bridge across the River Tyne. It was given the family name of the Roman Emperor Hadrian, who founded it in the 2nd century AD; this rare honour suggests Hadrian may have visited the site and instituted the bridge on his tour of Britain. The population of Pons Aelius is estimated at 2,000.
Fragments of Hadrian's Wall are visible in parts of Newcastle along the West Road. The course of the "Roman Wall" can be traced eastwards to the Segedunum Roman fort in Wallsend—the "wall's end"—and to the supply fort Arbeia in South Shields; the extent of Hadrian's Wall was 73 miles. After the Roman departure from Britain, completed in 410, Newcastle became part of the powerful Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, was known throughout this period as Munucceaster. Conflicts with the Danes in 876 left its settlements in ruin. After the conflicts with the Danes, following the 1088 rebellion against the Normans, Monkchester was all but destroyed by Odo of Bayeux; because of its strategic position, Robert Curthose, son of William the Conqueror, erected a wooden castle there in the year 1080. The town was henceforth known as New Castle; the wooden structure was replaced by a stone castle in 1087. The castle was rebuilt again in 1172 during the reign of Henry II. Much of the keep which can be seen in the city today dates from this period.
Throughout the Middle Ages, Newcastle was England's northern fortress. Incorporated first by Henry II, the city had a new charter granted by Elizabeth in 1589. A 25-foot high stone wall was built around the town in the 13th century, to defend it from invaders during the Border war against Scotland; the Scots king William the Lion was imprisoned in Newcastle in 1174, Edward I brought the Stone of Scone and William Wallace south through the town. Newcastle was defended against the Scots three times during the 14th century, was created a county corporate with its own sheriff by Henry IV in 1400. From 1530, a royal act restricted all shipments of coal from Tyneside to Newcastle Quayside, giving a monopoly in the coal trade to a cartel of Newcastle burgesses known as the Hostmen; this monopoly, which lasted for a considerable time, helped Newcastle prosper and develop into a major town. The phrase taking coals to Newcastle was first recorded contextually in 1538; the phrase itself means a pointless pursuit.
In the 18th century, the American entrepreneur Timothy Dexter, regarded as an eccentric, defied this idiom. He was persuaded to sail a shipment of coal to Newcastle by merchants plotting to ruin him. In the Sandgate area, to the east of the city, beside the river, resided the close-knit community of keelmen and their families, they were so called because they worked on the keels, boats that were used to transfer coal from the river banks to the waiting colliers, for export to London and elsewhere. In the 1630s, about 7,000 out of 20,000 inhabitants of Newcastle died of plague, more than one-third of the population. Within the year 1636, it is estimated with evidence held by the Society of Antiquaries that 47% of the population of Newcastle died from the epidemic. During the English Civil War, the North declared for the King. In a bid to gain Newcastle and the Tyne, Cromwell's allies, the Scots, captured the town of Newburn. In 1644, the Scots captured the reinforced fortification on the Lawe in South Shields following a siege. and the city was besieged for many months.
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Tenerife
Tenerife is the largest and most populated island of the seven Canary Islands. It is the most populated island of Spain, with a land area of 2,034.38 square kilometres and 904,713 inhabitants, 43 percent of the total population of the Canary Islands. Tenerife is the largest and most populous island of Macaronesia. Five million tourists visit Tenerife each year, the most visited island of the archipelago, it is one of the most important tourist destinations in the world. Tenerife hosts one of the world's largest carnivals and the Carnival of Santa Cruz de Tenerife is working to be designated UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of the World. Tenerife is served by Tenerife-North Airport and Tenerife-South Airport. Tenerife is the economic capital of the Canary Islands; the capital of the island, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, is the seat of the island council. The city is capital of the autonomous community of Canary Islands, sharing governmental institutions such as presidency and ministries. Between the 1833 territorial division of Spain and 1927, Santa Cruz de Tenerife was the sole capital of the Canary Islands.
In 1927 the Crown ordered that the capital of the Canary Islands be shared, as it remains at present. Santa Cruz contains the modern Auditorio de Tenerife, the architectural symbol of the Canary Islands; the island is home to the University of La Laguna. The city of La Laguna is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, it is the second city most populated on the third in the archipelago. It was capital of the Canary Islands before Santa Cruz replaced it in 1833. Teide National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is located in the center of the island. In it, the Mount Teide rises as the highest elevation of Spain, the highest of the islands of the Atlantic Ocean, the third-largest volcano in the world from its base. On the island, the Macizo de Anaga has been a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve since 2015, it has the largest number of endemic species in Europe. The island's indigenous people, the Guanche Berbers, referred to the island as Achinet or Chenet in their language. According to Pliny the Younger, Berber king Juba II sent an expedition to the Canary Islands and Madeira.
Juba II and Ancient Romans referred to the island of Tenerife as Nivaria, derived from the Latin word nix, meaning snow, referring to the snow-covered peak of the Teide volcano. Maps dating to the 14th and 15th century, by mapmakers such as Bontier and Le Verrier, refer to the island as Isla del Infierno meaning "Island of Hell," referring to the volcanic activity and eruptions of Mount Teide; the Benahoaritas are said to have named the island, deriving it from the words ife. After colonisation, the Hispanisation of the name resulted in adding the letter "r" to unite both words, producing Tenerife. However, throughout history there have been other explanations to reveal the origin of the name of the island. For example, the 18th-century historians Juan Núñez de la Peña and Tomás Arias Marín de Cubas, among others, state that the island was named by natives for the legendary Guanche king, nicknamed "the Great." He ruled the entire island in the days before the conquest of the Canary Islands by Castilla.
The formal demonym used to refer to the people of Tenerife is Tinerfeño/a. In modern society, the latter term is applied only to inhabitants of the capital, Santa Cruz; the term "chicharrero" was once a derogatory term used by the people of La Laguna when it was the capital, to refer to the poorer inhabitants and fishermen of Santa Cruz. The fishermen caught mackerel and other residents ate potatoes, assumed to be of low quality by the elite of La Laguna; as Santa Cruz grew in commerce and status, it replaced La Laguna as capital of Tenerife in 1833 during the reign of Fernando VII. The inhabitants of Santa Cruz used the former insult to identify as residents of the new capital, at La Laguna's expense; the earliest known human settlement in the islands date to around 200 BC, by Berbers known as the Guanches. However, the Cave of the Guanches in the municipality of Icod de los Vinos in the north of Tenerife, has provided the oldest chronologies of the Canary Islands, with dates around the sixth century BC.
Regarding the technological level, the Guanches can be framed among the peoples of the Stone Age, although this terminology is rejected due to the ambiguity that it presents. The Guanche culture is characterized by an advanced cultural development related to the Berber cultural features imported from North Africa and a poor technological development, determined by the scarcity of raw materials minerals that allow the extraction of metals; the main activity was grazing, although the population were engaged in agriculture, as well as fishing and the collection of shellfish from the shore or using fishing craft. As for beliefs, the Guanche religion was polytheistic. Beside him there was an animistic religiosity that sacralized certain places rocks and mountains. Among the main Guanche gods could be highlighted. Singular was the cult to the dead, practi
Reality television
Reality television is a genre of television programming that documents purportedly unscripted real-life situations starring unknown individuals rather than professional actors. Reality television came to prominence in the late 1990s and early 2000s with the global successes of the series Survivor and Big Brother, all of which became global franchises. Reality television shows tend to be interspersed with "confessionals", short interview segments in which cast members reflect on or provide context for the events being depicted on-screen. Competition-based reality shows feature gradual elimination of participants, either by a panel of judges or by the viewership of the show. Documentaries, television news, sports television, talk shows, traditional game shows are not classified as reality television; some genres of television programming that predate the reality television boom are retroactively labeled reality television, including hidden camera shows, talent-search shows, documentary series about ordinary people, high-concept game shows, home improvement shows, court shows featuring real-life cases.
Reality television has faced significant criticism since its rise in popularity. Critics argue reality television shows do not reflect reality, in ways both implicit, deceptive; some have been accused of underdog to win. Other criticisms of reality television shows include that they are intended to humiliate or exploit participants. Television formats portraying ordinary people in unscripted situations are as old as the television medium itself. Producer-host Allen Funt's Candid Camera, in which unsuspecting people were confronted with funny, unusual situations and filmed with hidden cameras, first aired in 1948, is seen as a prototype of reality television programming. Precedents for television that portrayed people in unscripted situations began in the late 1940s. Queen for a Day was an early example of reality-based television; the 1946 television game show Carry sometimes featured contestants performing stunts. Debuting in 1948, Allen Funt's hidden camera show Candid Camera broadcast unsuspecting ordinary people reacting to pranks.
In 1948, talent search shows Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour and Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts featured amateur competitors and audience voting. In the 1950s, game shows Beat the Clock and Truth or Consequences involved contestants in wacky competitions and practical jokes. Confession was a crime/police show which aired from June 1958 to January 1959, with interviewer Jack Wyatt questioning criminals from assorted backgrounds; the radio series Nightwatch tape-recorded the daily activities of Culver City, California police officers. The series You Asked for It incorporated audience involvement by basing episodes around requests sent in by postcard from viewers. "You're Another", a science fiction short story by American writer Damon Knight, first appeared in the June 1955 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and contains the earliest fictional depiction of what is now called reality television. First broadcast in the United Kingdom in 1964, the Granada Television documentary Seven Up!, broadcast interviews with a dozen ordinary 7-year-olds from a broad cross-section of society and inquired about their reactions to everyday life.
Every seven years, a film documented the life of the same individuals during the intervening period, titled the Up Series, episodes include "7 Plus Seven", "21 Up", etc.. The program was structured as a series of interviews with no element of plot. However, it did have the then-new effect of turning ordinary people into celebrities; the first reality show in the modern sense may have been the series The American Sportsman, which ran from 1965 to 1986 on ABC in the United States. A typical episode featured one or more celebrities, sometimes their family members, being accompanied by a camera crew on an outdoor adventure, such as hunting, hiking, scuba diving, rock climbing, wildlife photography, horseback riding, race car driving, the like, with most of the resulting action and dialogue being unscripted, except for the narration. In the 1966 Direct Cinema film Chelsea Girls, Andy Warhol filmed various acquaintances with no direction given; the 12-part 1973 PBS series An American Family showed a nuclear family going through a divorce.
In 1974 a counterpart program, The Family, was made in the UK, following the working class Wilkins family of Reading. Other forerunners of modern reality television were the 1970s productions of Chuck Barris: The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game, The Gong Show, all of which featured participants who were eager to sacrifice some of their privacy and dignity in a televised competition; the 1976-1980 BBC series The Big Time showed, in each of its 15 episodes, a different amateur in some field trying to succeed professionally in that field, with help from notable experts. The series is credited with starting the career of Sheena Easton, selected to appear in the episode showing an aspiring pop singer trying to enter the music business. In 1978, Living in the Past recreated life in an
Lambeth London Borough Council
Lambeth London Borough Council is the local authority for the London Borough of Lambeth in Greater London, England. It is a London borough council, one of the 32 in the United Kingdom capital of London; the council meets at Lambeth Town Hall in Brixton. Lambeth is divided into each electing three councillors; the council was first elected in 1964. The leader of the council from 2006, Steve Reed, stepped down following his election as Member of Parliament for Croydon North on 29 November 2012 and was replaced by Councillor Lib Peck. On 14 January 2019 Lib Peck announced that she would stand down from the Council and as Leader to take a role as the head of the Mayor of London's Violence Reduction Unit. In the ensuing election among Labour Councillors, Councillor Jack Hopkins was elected Leader.. Technically he will assume the position once ratified by the full council. Bishop's Brixton Hill Clapham Common Clapham Town Coldharbour Ferndale Gipsy Hill Herne Hill Knight's Hill Larkhall Oval Prince's St Leonard's Stockwell Streatham Hill Streatham South Streatham Wells Thornton Thurlow Park Tulse Hill Vassall The council was created by the London Government Act 1963.
The current local authority was first elected in 1964, a year before formally coming into its powers and prior to the creation of the London Borough of Lambeth on 1 April 1965. Lambeth London Borough Council replaced Lambeth Metropolitan Borough Council and took over some 40% of the area of the former Wandsworth Metropolitan Borough Council covering Streatham and Clapham. Both Metropolitan Boroughs were created in 1900 with Lambeth Metropolitan Borough Council replacing the Vestry of the Parish of Lambeth; the former Clapham and Streatham parishes, which became part of Lambeth in 1965, were governed by the Wandsworth District Board of Works from 1855 to 1900. It was envisaged through the London Government Act 1963 that Lambeth as a London local authority would share power with the Greater London Council; the split of powers and functions meant that the Greater London Council was responsible for "wide area" services such as fire, flood prevention, refuse disposal. This arrangement lasted until 1986 when Lambeth London Borough Council gained responsibility for some services, provided by the Greater London Council, such as waste disposal.
Lambeth was active in the Ratecapping campaign in the 1980s. Lambeth became an education authority in 1990. Since 2000 the Greater London Authority has taken some responsibility for highways and planning control from the council, but within the English local government system the council remains a "most purpose" authority in terms of the available range of powers and functions; the Labour Party had included an aspiration in their 2010 manifesto for Lambeth to become a "Co-operative Council" with greater use of mutualist models. This attracted considerable media interest in the run up to the May 2010 election, characterised as the notion of the John Lewis Council in contrast to the EasyCouncil model being promoted by the Conservative Party in Barnet. Following the 2010 election, the Council established a Commission to look at. One aspect of this is that the council aims to make Lambeth a place where there is a coproduction of public services by service users and communities Summary of council election results
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters are at Broadcasting House in Westminster, it is the world's oldest national broadcasting organisation and the largest broadcaster in the world by number of employees, it employs over 20,950 staff in total. The total number of staff is 35,402 when part-time and fixed-contract staff are included; the BBC is established under a Royal Charter and operates under its Agreement with the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture and Sport. Its work is funded principally by an annual television licence fee, charged to all British households and organisations using any type of equipment to receive or record live television broadcasts and iPlayer catch-up; the fee is set by the British Government, agreed by Parliament, used to fund the BBC's radio, TV, online services covering the nations and regions of the UK. Since 1 April 2014, it has funded the BBC World Service, which broadcasts in 28 languages and provides comprehensive TV, online services in Arabic and Persian.
Around a quarter of BBC revenues come from its commercial arm BBC Studios Ltd, which sells BBC programmes and services internationally and distributes the BBC's international 24-hour English-language news services BBC World News, from BBC.com, provided by BBC Global News Ltd. From its inception, through the Second World War, to the 21st century, the BBC has played a prominent role in British culture, it is known colloquially as "The Beeb", "Auntie", or a combination of both. Britain's first live public broadcast from the Marconi factory in Chelmsford took place in June 1920, it was sponsored by the Daily Mail's Lord Northcliffe and featured the famous Australian soprano Dame Nellie Melba. The Melba broadcast caught the people's imagination and marked a turning point in the British public's attitude to radio. However, this public enthusiasm was not shared in official circles where such broadcasts were held to interfere with important military and civil communications. By late 1920, pressure from these quarters and uneasiness among the staff of the licensing authority, the General Post Office, was sufficient to lead to a ban on further Chelmsford broadcasts.
But by 1922, the GPO had received nearly 100 broadcast licence requests and moved to rescind its ban in the wake of a petition by 63 wireless societies with over 3,000 members. Anxious to avoid the same chaotic expansion experienced in the United States, the GPO proposed that it would issue a single broadcasting licence to a company jointly owned by a consortium of leading wireless receiver manufactures, to be known as the British Broadcasting Company Ltd. John Reith, a Scottish Calvinist, was appointed its General Manager in December 1922 a few weeks after the company made its first official broadcast; the company was to be financed by a royalty on the sale of BBC wireless receiving sets from approved domestic manufacturers. To this day, the BBC aims to follow the Reithian directive to "inform and entertain"; the financial arrangements soon proved inadequate. Set sales were disappointing as amateurs made their own receivers and listeners bought rival unlicensed sets. By mid-1923, discussions between the GPO and the BBC had become deadlocked and the Postmaster-General commissioned a review of broadcasting by the Sykes Committee.
The Committee recommended a short term reorganisation of licence fees with improved enforcement in order to address the BBC's immediate financial distress, an increased share of the licence revenue split between it and the GPO. This was to be followed by a simple 10 shillings licence fee with no royalty once the wireless manufactures protection expired; the BBC's broadcasting monopoly was made explicit for the duration of its current broadcast licence, as was the prohibition on advertising. The BBC was banned from presenting news bulletins before 19.00 and was required to source all news from external wire services. Mid-1925 found the future of broadcasting under further consideration, this time by the Crawford committee. By now, the BBC, under Reith's leadership, had forged a consensus favouring a continuation of the unified broadcasting service, but more money was still required to finance rapid expansion. Wireless manufacturers were anxious to exit the loss making consortium with Reith keen that the BBC be seen as a public service rather than a commercial enterprise.
The recommendations of the Crawford Committee were published in March the following year and were still under consideration by the GPO when the 1926 general strike broke out in May. The strike temporarily interrupted newspaper production, with restrictions on news bulletins waived, the BBC became the primary source of news for the duration of the crisis; the crisis placed the BBC in a delicate position. On one hand Reith was acutely aware that the Government might exercise its right to commandeer the BBC at any time as a mouthpiece of the Government if the BBC were to step out of line, but on the other he was anxious to maintain public trust by appearing to be acting independently; the Government was divided on how to handle the BBC but ended up trusting Reith, whose opposition to the strike mirrored the PM's own. Thus the BBC was granted sufficient leeway to pursue the Government's objectives in a manner of its own choosing; the resulting coverage of both striker and government viewpoints impressed millions of listeners who were unaware that the PM had broadcast to the nation from Reith's home, using one of Reith's sound bites inserted at the last moment
Glasgow
Glasgow is the most populous city in Scotland, the third most populous city in the United Kingdom, as of the 2017 estimated city population of 621,020. Part of Lanarkshire, the city now forms the Glasgow City council area, one of the 32 council areas of Scotland. Glasgow is situated on the River Clyde in the country's West Central Lowlands. Inhabitants of the city are referred to as "Glaswegians" or "Weegies", it is the fourth most visited city in the UK. Glasgow is known for the Glasgow patter, a distinct dialect of the Scots language, noted for being difficult to understand by those from outside the city. Glasgow grew from a small rural settlement on the River Clyde to become the largest seaport in Scotland, tenth largest by tonnage in Britain. Expanding from the medieval bishopric and royal burgh, the establishment of the University of Glasgow in the fifteenth century, it became a major centre of the Scottish Enlightenment in the eighteenth century. From the eighteenth century onwards, the city grew as one of Great Britain's main hubs of transatlantic trade with North America and the West Indies.
With the onset of the Industrial Revolution, the population and economy of Glasgow and the surrounding region expanded to become one of the world's pre-eminent centres of chemicals and engineering. Glasgow was the "Second City of the British Empire" for much of the Victorian era and Edwardian period, although many cities argue the title was theirs. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Glasgow's population grew reaching a peak of 1,127,825 people in 1938. Comprehensive urban renewal projects in the 1960s, resulting in large-scale relocation of people to designated new towns; the wider metropolitan area is home to over 1,800,000 people, equating to around 33% of Scotland's population. The city has one of the highest densities of any locality in Scotland at 4,023/km2. Glasgow hosted the 2014 Commonwealth Games and the first European Championships in 2018; the origin of the name'Glasgow' is disputed. It is common to derive the toponym from the older Cumbric glas cau or a Middle Gaelic cognate, which would have meant green basin or green valley.
The settlement had an earlier Cumbric name, Cathures. It is recorded that the King of Strathclyde, Rhydderch Hael, welcomed Saint Kentigern, procured his consecration as bishop about 540. For some thirteen years Kentigern laboured in the region, building his church at the Molendinar Burn where Glasgow Cathedral now stands, making many converts. A large community became known as Glasgu; the area around Glasgow has hosted communities for millennia, with the River Clyde providing a natural location for fishing. The Romans built outposts in the area and, to keep Roman Britannia separate from the Celtic and Pictish Caledonia, constructed the Antonine Wall. Items from the wall like altars from Roman forts like Balmuildy can be found at the Hunterian Museum today. Glasgow itself was reputed to have been founded by the Christian missionary Saint Mungo in the 6th century, he established a church on the Molendinar Burn, where the present Glasgow Cathedral stands, in the following years Glasgow became a religious centre.
Glasgow grew over the following centuries. The Glasgow Fair began in the year 1190; the first bridge over the River Clyde at Glasgow was recorded from around 1285, giving its name to the Briggait area of the city, forming the main North-South route over the river via Glasgow Cross. The founding of the University of Glasgow in 1451 and elevation of the bishopric to become the Archdiocese of Glasgow in 1492 increased the town's religious and educational status and landed wealth, its early trade was in agriculture and fishing, with cured salmon and herring being exported to Europe and the Mediterranean. Following the European Protestant Reformation and with the encouragement of the Convention of Royal Burghs, the 14 incorporated trade crafts federated as the Trades House in 1605 to match the power and influence in the town council of the earlier Merchants' Guilds who established their Merchants House in the same year. Glasgow was subsequently raised to the status of Royal Burgh in 1611. Glasgow's substantial fortunes came from international trade and invention, starting in the 17th century with sugar, followed by tobacco, cotton and linen, products of the Atlantic triangular slave trade.
Daniel Defoe visited the city in the early 18th century and famously opined in his book A tour thro' the whole island of Great Britain, that Glasgow was "the cleanest and beautifullest, best built city in Britain, London excepted". At that time the city's population was about 12,000, the city was yet to undergo the massive expansionary changes to its economy and urban fabric, brought about by the Scottish Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution. After the Acts of Union in 1707, Scotland gained further access to the vast markets of the new British Empire, Glasgow became p
