The European Council is a collective body that defines the European Union's overall political direction and priorities. It comprises the heads of state or government of the EU member states, along with the President of the European Council and the President of the European Commission; the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy takes part in its meetings. Established as an informal summit in 1975, the European Council was formalised as an institution in 2009 upon the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon, its current president is Charles Michel, former Prime Minister of Belgium. While the European Council has no legislative power, it is a strategic body that provides the union with general political directions and priorities, acts as a collective presidency; the European Commission remains the sole initiator of legislation, but the European Council is able to provide an impetus to guide legislative policy. The meetings of the European Council, still referred to as EU summits, are chaired by its president and take place at least twice every six months.

Decisions of the European Council are taken by consensus, except where the Treaties provide otherwise. The European Council gained the status of an EU institution after the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007, distinct from the Council of the European Union. Before that, the first summits of EU heads of state or government were held in February and July 1961, they were informal summits of the leaders of the European Community, were started due to then-French President Charles de Gaulle's resentment at the domination of supranational institutions over the integration process, but petered out. The first influential summit held, after the departure of de Gaulle, was the Hague summit of 1969, which reached an agreement on the admittance of the United Kingdom into the Community and initiated foreign policy cooperation taking integration beyond economics; the summits were only formalised in the period between 1974 and 1988. At the December summit in Paris in 1974, following a proposal from then-French president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, it was agreed that more high level, political input was needed following the "empty chair crisis" and economic problems.

The inaugural European Council, as it became known, was held in Dublin on 10 and 11 March 1975 during Ireland's first Presidency of the Council of Ministers. In 1987, it was included in the treaties for the first time and had a defined role for the first time in the Maastricht Treaty. At first only a minimum of two meetings per year were required, which resulted in an average of three meetings per year being held for the 1975-1995 period. Since 1996, the number of meetings were required to be minimum four per year. For the latest 2008-2014 period, this minimum was well exceeded, by an average of seven meetings being held per year; the seat of the Council was formalised in 2002. Three types of European Councils exist: Informal and Extraordinary. While the informal meetings are scheduled 1½ years in advance, they differ from the scheduled ordinary meetings by not ending with official Council conclusions, as they instead end by more broad political Statements on some cherry picked policy matters.

The extraordinary meetings always end with official Council conclusions - but differs from the scheduled meetings by not being scheduled more than a year in advance, as for example in 2001 when the European Council gathered to lead the European Union's response to the 11 September attacks. Some meetings of the European Council—and, before the European Council was formalised, meetings of the heads of government—are seen by some as turning points in the history of the European Union. For example: 1969, The Hague: Foreign policy and enlargement. 1974, Paris: Creation of the Council. 1985, Milan: Initiate IGC leading to the Single European Act. 1991, Maastricht: Agreement on the Maastricht Treaty. 1992, Edinburgh: Agreement to retain at Strasbourg the plenary seat of the European Parliament. 1993, Copenhagen: Leading to the definition of the Copenhagen Criteria. 1997, Amsterdam: Agreement on the Amsterdam Treaty. 1998, Brussels: Selected member states to adopt the euro. 1999. 1999, Tampere: Institutional reform 2000, Lisbon: Lisbon Strategy 2002, Copenhagen: Agreement for May 2004 enlargement.

2007, Lisbon: Agreement on the Lisbon Treaty. 2009, Brussels: Appointment of first president and merged High Representative. 2010, European Financial Stability FacilityAs such, the European Council had existed before it gained the status as an institution of the European Union with the entering into force of the Treaty of Lisbon, but after it had been mentioned in the treaties it could only take political decisions, not formal legal acts. However, when necessary, the Heads of State or Government could meet as the Council of Ministers and take formal decisions in that role. Sometimes, this was compulsory, e.g. Article 214 of the Treaty establishing the European Community provided that ‘the Council, meeting in the composition of Heads of State or Government and acting by a qualified majority, shall nominate the person it intends to appoint as President of the Commission’. In that case, what was politically part of a European Council meeting was a meeting of the Council of Ministers; when the

Henry James Anderson was an American scientist and educator. He was born in New York City, graduated from Columbia College in 1818 he subsequently studied medicine at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York, he did not practice medicine for long however, instead devoting himself to scientific and literary pursuits. He was appointed professor of mathematics and astronomy at Columbia College in 1825, when he was twenty-six years old. Anderson was elected an Associate Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1831, he married the daughter of Lorenzo Da Ponte. They had Edward Henry. In 1848, he accompanied the United States Dead Sea exploration expedition, commanded by Captain William F. Lynch, as a geologist, his reports from the expedition, Geological Reconnaissance of Part of the Holy Land, were published by the United States government in 1848 and 1849. Under the aegis of the American Geographical and Statistical Society, Anderson circulated a petition urging the United States to promote Jewish colonization in Palestine, part of the Jewish restoration movement that flowered at the time.

Anderson converted to Catholicism in 1849. He was made president of the Particular Council of New York in 1856, the head of the Supreme Council in 1860, he visited Pope Pius XI in Rome several times, was made a Knight Commander of the order of St. Gregory the Great, he made a pilgrimage to Lourdes and Rome in 1875. He planned to return home by way of India, after mountain-climbing in the Himalayas, he died of a disease in Lahore on October 19, he is buried in a vault under the Church of the Madonna in Fort Lee, New Jersey, a church in whose construction he had been involved. Meehan, Thomas Francis. "Henry James Anderson". In Herbermann, Charles. Catholic Encyclopedia. 1. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Russo, Joseph Louis. Lorenzo Da Ponte Poet and Adventurer. Columbia University studies in romance literature. New York: AMS Press, 1966. Googlebooks.com Accessed October 15, 2007 Michael Oren. Power and Fantasy: The United States in the Middle East, 1776 to 2006 ISBN 0-393-05826-3

Wheeler Field is a planned 5,000-seat baseball park in Virginia Beach, Virginia. It will host the Virginia Beach Neptunes of the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball, an unspecified team in a summer wooden-bat league, a junior college team from Tidewater Community College's Virginia Beach campus. Wheeler Capital, a limited liability company that specializes in venture capital financing and small business loans throughout the Mid-Atlantic states, purchased the naming rights for the stadium for an undisclosed amount through 2025. In February 2014 Virginia Beach Professional Baseball received city council approval for a ballpark near the Virginia Beach Sportsplex with completion expected by April 2015; the proposal included a 60,000 square feet building designed for Sentara sports medicine, team offices, 13 recreational athletic fields surrounding Wheeler Field. Subsequent changes deferred three of the fields to a second phase of the project with the ballpark opening in 2017 and the entire project estimated to cost $37 million.

"Ballpark & Tournament Complex". Virginia Beach Neptunes. Archived from the original on February 24, 2015. Virginia Beach baseball stadium gets naming rights on YouTube, WAVY TV 10, April 21, 2015