Bergen
Bergen Bjørgvin, is a city and municipality in Hordaland on the west coast of Norway. At the end of the first quarter of 2018, the municipality's population was 280,216, the Bergen metropolitan region has about 420,000 inhabitants. Bergen is the second-largest city in Norway; the municipality is on the peninsula of Bergenshalvøyen. The city centre and northern neighbourhoods are on Byfjorden,'the city fjord', the city is surrounded by mountains. Many of the extra-municipal suburbs are on islands. Bergen is the administrative centre of Hordaland, consists of eight boroughs: Arna, Fana, Laksevåg, Ytrebygda, Årstad, Åsane. Trading in Bergen may have started as early as the 1020s. According to tradition, the city was founded in 1070 by king Olav Kyrre and was named Bjørgvin,'the green meadow among the mountains', it served as Norway's capital in the 13th century, from the end of the 13th century became a bureau city of the Hanseatic League. Until 1789, Bergen enjoyed exclusive rights to mediate trade between Northern Norway and abroad and it was the largest city in Norway until the 1830s when it was overtaken by the capital, Christiania.
What remains of the quays, Bryggen, is a World Heritage Site. The city was hit by numerous fires over the years; the Bergen School of Meteorology was developed at the Geophysical Institute starting in 1917, the Norwegian School of Economics was founded in 1936, the University of Bergen in 1946. From 1831 to 1972, Bergen was its own county. In 1972 the municipality absorbed four surrounding municipalities and became a part of Hordaland county; the city is an international center for aquaculture, the offshore petroleum industry and subsea technology, a national centre for higher education, media and finance. Bergen Port is Norway's busiest in terms of both freight and passengers, with over 300 cruise ship calls a year bringing nearly a half a million passengers to Bergen, a number that has doubled in 10 years. Half of the passengers are German or British; the city's main football team is SK Brann and a unique tradition of the city is the buekorps. Natives speak a distinct dialect, known as'Bergensk'.
The city features Bergen Airport and Bergen Light Rail, is the terminus of the Bergen Line. Four large bridges connect Bergen to its suburban municipalities. Bergen has a mild winter climate, though with a lot of precipitation. From December to March, Bergen can be, in rare cases, up to 30°C warmer than Oslo though both cities are at about 60° North; the Gulf Stream keeps the sea warm, considering the latitude, the mountains protect the city from cold winds from the north, north-east and east. The city of Bergen was traditionally thought to have been founded by king Olav Kyrre, son of Harald Hardråde in 1070 AD, four years after the Viking Age in England ended with the Battle of Stamford Bridge. Modern research has, discovered that a trading settlement had been established in the 1020s or 1030s. Bergen assumed the function of capital of Norway in the early 13th century, as the first city where a rudimentary central administration was established; the city's cathedral was the site of the first royal coronation in Norway in the 1150s, continued to host royal coronations throughout the 13th century.
Bergenhus guards the entrance to the harbour in Bergen. The functions of the capital city were lost to Oslo during the reign of King Haakon V. In the middle of the 14th century, North German merchants, present in substantial numbers since the 13th century, founded one of the four Kontore of the Hanseatic League at Bryggen in Bergen; the principal export traded from Bergen was dried cod from the northern Norwegian coast, which started around 1100. The city was granted a monopoly for trade from the north of Norway by King Håkon Håkonsson. Stockfish was the main reason. By the late 14th century, Bergen had established itself as the centre of the trade in Norway; the Hanseatic merchants lived in their own separate quarter of the town, where Middle Low German was used, enjoying exclusive rights to trade with the northern fishermen who each summer sailed to Bergen. Today, Bryggen, is on UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites. In 1349, the Black Death was brought to Norway by an English ship arriving in Bergen.
Outbreaks occurred in 1618, 1629 and 1637, on each occasion taking about 3,000 lives. In the 15th century, the city was attacked several times by the Victual Brothers, in 1429 they succeeded in burning the royal castle and much of the city. In 1665, the city's harbour was the site of the Battle of Vågen, when an English naval flotilla attacked a Dutch merchant and treasure fleet supported by the city's garrison. Accidental fires sometimes got out of control, one in 1702 reduced most of the town to ashes. Throughout the 15th and 16th centuries, Bergen remained one of the largest cities in Scandinavia, it was Norway's biggest city until the 1830s, when the capital city of Oslo became the largest. From around 1600, the Hanseatic dominance of the city's trade declined in favour of Norwegian merchants, in the 1750s, the Hanseatic Kontor closed. Bergen retained its monopoly of trade with northern Norway until 1789; the Bergen stock exchange, the Bergen børs, was established in 1813. Bergen was separated from Hordaland as a county of its own in 1831.
It was established as a municipality on 1 January 1838 (see formannskapsdis
Royal Dublin Society
The Royal Dublin Society is the name given in 1820 to a philanthropic organisation, founded as the'Dublin Society' on 25 June 1731 to see Ireland thrive culturally and economically. The RDS is synonymous with its campus in Ballsbridge in Ireland; this campus includes the "RDS Arena", "RDS Simmonscourt", "RDS Main Hall" and other venues which are used for exhibitions and sporting events, including regular use by the Leinster Rugby team. The society was founded by members of the Dublin Philosophical Society, chiefly Thomas Prior, as the'Dublin Society for improving Husbandry and other Useful Arts'. On 1 July 1731 – at the second meeting of the Society – the designation'and Sciences' was added to the end of its name; the Society's broad agenda was to stimulate economic activity and aid the creation of employment in Ireland. For the first few years of its existence, the Dublin Society concentrated on tillage technology, land reclamation, the production of dyestuffs, flax clutivation and other agricultural areas.
In 1738, following the publication of his pamphlet entitled'Reflections and Resolutions Proper for the Gentlemen of Ireland', Samuel Madden initiated a grant or'premium' scheme to create incentives for improvements in Irish agricultural and arts. He proposed a fund of £500 be raised for this and he contributed £130. By 1740 the premium scheme had raised £900, was adjudicated upon the following January and awarded to enterprises in earthenware, leatherwork, surveying, as well as a number of painters and sculpturors. In 1761 the Irish Parliament voted for £12,000 to be given to the Dublin Society for the promotion of agriculture, forestry and manufactures; this funding was used to increase the amount of premiums distributed by the Dublin Society. Further funds were given by Parliament to the Dublin Society on a sporadic basis until 1784 when an annual parliamentary vote of £5,000 was put in place and remained so until the dissolution of Grattan's Parliament in 1800; the "Royal" prefix was adopted in 1820.
On foot of the successful award of premiums to artists and the public interest in this area, the RDS decided to establish an arts school. Through successful petitioning of the Lord Lieutenant, Lord Chesterfield, it applied for Government support and was awarded an annual grant of £500 in 1746; the drawing school was established in 1750 and had an early emphasis on figure drawing and ornament, with architectural drawing added in the 1760s. Tuition was popular among people of a wide variety of trades and backgrounds. A notable student was James Hoban, who attended in the 1780s and went on to design the White House, in Washington DC. Among the artists who attended the RDS schools of art or were awarded premiums by the Society were: James Barry, George Barrett, Francis Danby, Edward Smyth, John Hogan. In 1867 as part of a wider initiative, the Government took control of the RDS art school, which subsequently became the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, became the National College of Art and Design.
The annual RDS Visual Art Awards incorporate the RDS Taylor Art Award, awarded since 1878. This award is open to Irish visual art graduates; the total prize fund for the RDS Visual Art Awards is €30,000. Former notable winners of the RDS Taylor Art Award include: Walter Osborne, William Orpen, Seán Keating, Mainie Jellet, Colin Midleton, Nora McGuinness and Louis le Brocquy, as well as more contemporary artists such as Eamon O'Kane, Dorothy Cross James Hanley and Conor Walton; the RDS association with classical music extends back to 1886 when it first organised a series of popular recital,s that took place over a phased basis from March and it included works by Corelli and Beethoven performed by teaching staff of the Royal Irish Academy of Music. In subsequent years a number of RDS recitals were recorded by RTÉ for broadcast; the RDS chamber recitals continued into 1980s and 1990s, hosting artists such as András Schiff, Jessye Norman, Isaac Stern and Nigel Kennedy. The last RDS chamber recital was featured Irish pianist Hugh Tinney.
The RDS became the main venue for Feis Ceoil in 1983 onward. In 2003 offered its first RDS Music Bursary of €10,000 to one of the winners of selected Feis Ceoil senior competitions; the RDS Music Bursary offers two prizes, one of €15,000 and the RDS Jago Award of €5,000. Both prizes offer performance engagements. An additional prize, the RDS Collins Memorial Performance Award is given to a former Music Bursary winner each year, offering them a professional performance opportunity with Blackwater Valley Opera Festival. Agriculture has been a persistent theme of endeavour since the foundation of the Dublin Society. In its first eighteen months the Society reprinted or published up-to-date material on the latest agricultural innovations, such as Jethro Tull's book on Tillage, a paper'on improvement of flax by changing the soil' and'a new method of draining marshy and boggy lands'; the Society followed this in year to come with further publications on grass cultivation, saffron planting, management of hops, bee management, wool production and tillage.
They held demonstrations on how to use a newly designed farm machinery. Forestry was encouraged from an early stage with records of the Society showing that premiums were awarded for afforestation from 1742 onwards. Between 1766 and 1806 over 55 million trees were planted in Ireland on foot of the Society's initiatives; the genesis of Dublin's Botanic Gardens can be found in the minute books of the Dublin Society as far back as 1732. From this time onwards, the Dublin Society sporadically leased land around the city to conduct
European Commission
The European Commission is an institution of the European Union, responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the EU treaties and managing the day-to-day business of the EU. Commissioners swear an oath at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg City, pledging to respect the treaties and to be independent in carrying out their duties during their mandate. Unlike in the Council of the European Union, where members are directly and indirectly elected, the European Parliament, where members are directly elected, the Commissioners are proposed by the Council of the European Union, on the basis of suggestions made by the national governments, appointed by the European Council after the approval of the European Parliament; the Commission operates with 28 members of the Commission. There is one member per member state, but members are bound by their oath of office to represent the general interest of the EU as a whole rather than their home state. One of the 28 is the Commission President proposed by the European Council and elected by the European Parliament.
The Council of the European Union nominates the other 27 members of the Commission in agreement with the nominated President, the 28 members as a single body are subject to a vote of approval by the European Parliament. The current Commission is the Juncker Commission, which took office in late 2014, following the European Parliament elections in May of the same year; the term Commission is variously used, either in the narrow sense of the 28-member College of Commissioners or to include the administrative body of about 32,000 European civil servants who are split into departments called directorates-general and services. The procedural languages of the Commission are English and German; the Members of the Commission and their "cabinets" are based in the Berlaymont building in Brussels. The European Commission derives from one of the five key institutions created in the supranational European Community system, following the proposal of Robert Schuman, French Foreign Minister, on 9 May 1950.
Originating in 1951 as the High Authority in the European Coal and Steel Community, the Commission has undergone numerous changes in power and composition under various presidents, involving three Communities. The first Commission originated in 1951 as the nine-member "High Authority" under President Jean Monnet; the High Authority was the supranational administrative executive of the new European Coal and Steel Community. It took office first on 10 August 1952 in Luxembourg City. In 1958, the Treaties of Rome had established two new communities alongside the ECSC: the European Economic Community and the European Atomic Energy Community; however their executives were called "Commissions" rather than "High Authorities". The reason for the change in name was the new relationship between the Council; some states, such as France, expressed reservations over the power of the High Authority, wished to limit it by giving more power to the Council rather than the new executives. Louis Armand led the first Commission of Euratom.
Walter Hallstein led the first Commission of the EEC, holding the first formal meeting on 16 January 1958 at the Château of Val-Duchesse. It achieved agreement on a contentious cereal price accord, as well as making a positive impression upon third countries when it made its international debut at the Kennedy Round of General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade negotiations. Hallstein notably began the consolidation of European law and started to have a notable impact on national legislation. Little heed was taken of his administration at first but, with help from the European Court of Justice, his Commission stamped its authority solidly enough to allow future Commissions to be taken more seriously. In 1965, accumulating differences between the French government of Charles de Gaulle and the other member states on various subjects triggered the "empty chair" crisis, ostensibly over proposals for the Common Agricultural Policy. Although the institutional crisis was solved the following year, it cost Etienne Hirsch his presidency of Euratom and Walter Hallstein the EEC presidency, despite his otherwise being viewed as the most'dynamic' leader until Jacques Delors.
The three bodies, collectively named the European Executives, co-existed until 1 July 1967 when, under the Merger Treaty, they were combined into a single administration under President Jean Rey. Owing to the merger, the Rey Commission saw a temporary increase to 14 members—although subsequent Commissions were reduced back to nine, following the formula of one member for small states and two for larger states; the Rey Commission completed the Community's customs union in 1968, campaigned for a more powerful, European Parliament. Despite Rey being the first President of the combined communities, Hallstein is seen as the first President of the modern Commission; the Malfatti and Mansholt Commissions followed with work on monetary co-operation and the first enlargement to the north in 1973. With that enlargement, the Commission's membership increased to thirteen under the Ortoli Commission, which dealt with the enlarged community during economic and international instability at that time; the external representation of the Community took a step forward when President Roy Jenkins, recruited to the presidency in January 1977 from his role as Home Secretary of the United Kingdom's Labour government, became the first President to att
Eurovision Song Contest 1959
The Eurovision Song Contest 1959 was the fourth edition of the annual Eurovision Song Contest. It took place in Cannes, following André Claveau's win at the 1958 contest in Hilversum, Netherlands with the song "Dors, mon amour", it was the first time. The contest was held at Palais des Festivals et des Congrès on Wednesday 11 March 1959, was hosted by Jacqueline Joubert. Eleven countries participated in the contest. Monaco made its début this year; the United Kingdom returned after their absence from the previous edition. The winner was the Netherlands with the song "Een beetje", performed by Teddy Scholten, written by Willy van Hemert and composed by Dick Schallies; this was the Netherlands' second victory in the contest, following their win in 1957 - marking the first time a country had won more than once. Willy van Hemert wrote the first Dutch winner that year; the event took place in Cannes, with the venue being the original building of Palais des Festivals et des Congrès, after France got the right to host this edition of the Eurovision Song Contest for winning its previous 1958 edition with the song "Dors, mon amour" performed by André Claveau.
Cannes, a city located on the French Riviera, is a busy tourist destination and known worldwide for hosting the annual Cannes Film Festival, with the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès hosting the Film Festival. The original building was built in 1949 and was located on the boulevard of Promenade de la Croisette, on the present site of the JW Marriott Cannes. A new rule was created for this Eurovision, ensuring that no professional publishers or composers were allowed in the national juries. During the voting, Italy gave one point to France, no points to the UK and seven points to the Netherlands placing them just three points ahead of the UK. On, France gave only three points to Italy and four points to the Netherlands thus giving them a five-point lead over the UK, who were only one point ahead of France, leaving Italy behind in sixth position, behind Denmark, on nine points. Something that occurred this year, but never again, was that more than the winning entry was performed once again.
The third- and second-placed songs and United Kingdom were allowed to sing again at the end of the show, together with the eventual winner, the Netherlands. Luxembourg withdrew from the contest for the first time; the United Kingdom returned after missing the previous contest and finished second for the first time. The UK would have 15 second-place finishes in the country's history in the contest. Monaco came last; each performance had a conductor. France - Franck Pourcel Denmark - Kai Mortensen Italy - William Galassini Monaco - Franck Pourcel Netherlands - Dolf van der Linden Germany - Franck Pourcel Sweden - Franck Pourcel Switzerland - Franck Pourcel Austria - Franck Pourcel United Kingdom - Eric Robinson Belgium - Francis Bay The contest saw the return of two artists who had participated in previous editions of the contest: Birthe Wilke for Denmark and Domenico Modugno for Italy; the table above shows the order in which votes were cast during the 1959 contest along with the spokesperson, responsible for announcing the votes for their respective country.
Each national broadcaster sent a commentator to the contest, in order to provide coverage of the contest in their own native language. Details of the commentators and the broadcasting station for which they represented are included in the table below. Official website
Brussels and the European Union
Brussels in Belgium is considered the de facto capital of the European Union, having a long history of hosting the institutions of the European Union within its European Quarter. The EU has no official capital, no plans to declare one, but Brussels hosts the official seats of the European Commission, Council of the European Union, European Council, as well as a seat of the European Parliament. In 1951, the leaders of six European countries signed the Treaty of Paris which created the European Coal and Steel Community, with this new community came the first institutions: the High Authority, Council of Ministers, Court of Justice and Common Assembly. A number of cities were considered, Brussels would have been accepted as a compromise, but the Belgian government put all its effort into backing Liège, opposed by all the other members, was unable to formally back Brussels due to internal instability. Agreement remained elusive and a seat had to be found before the institutions could begin work, hence Luxembourg was chosen as a provisional seat, though with the Common Assembly in Strasbourg as, the only city with a large enough hemicycle.
This agreement was temporary, plans were set to relocate the institutions to Saarbrücken which would serve as a "European District", but this did not occur. The 1957 Treaties of Rome established two new communities, the European Economic Community and the European Atomic Energy Community; these shared the Assembly and Court of the ECSC but created two new sets of Councils and Commissions. Discussions on the seats of the institutions were left till the last moment before the treaties came into force, so as not to interfere with ratification. Brussels waited until only a month before talks to enter its application, unofficially backed by several member states; the members agreed in principle to locate the executives and the assembly in one city, though could still not decide which city, so they put the decision off for six months. In the meantime, the Assembly would stay in Strasbourg and the new commissions would meet alternatively at the ECSC seat and at the Château of Val-Duchesse, in Brussels.
The Councils would meet. In practice, this was the Castle in Brussels until autumn 1958 when it moved to central Brussels: 2 Rue Ravensteinstraat. Brussels missed out in its bid for a single seat due to a weak campaign from the government in negotiations, despite widespread support from the people; the Belgian government pushed its campaign and started large-scale construction, renting office space in the east of the city for use by the institutions. On 11 February 1958, the six governments concluded an unofficial agreement on the setting-up of community offices. On the principle that it would take two years after a final agreement to prepare the appropriate office space, full services were set up in Brussels in expectation of a report from the Committee of Experts looking into the matter of a final seat. While waiting for the completion of the building on Avenue de la Joyeuse Entrée/Blijde Inkomstlaan, offices moved to 51–53 Rue Belliard on 1 April 1958, though with the numbers of civil servants expanding, services were set up in buildings on Rue de Marais/Broekstraat, Avenue de Broquevillelaan, Avenue de Tervuerenlaan, Rue d'Arlon/Aarlenstraat, Rue Joseph II/Jozef II-straat, Rue de la Loi/Wetstraat and Avenue de Kortenberglaan.
The Belgian government further provided newly built offices on the Mont des Arts/Kunstberg for the Council of Ministers' Secretariat and European Investment Bank. A Committee of Experts deemed Brussels to be the one option to have all the necessary features for a European capital: a large, active metropolis, without a congested centre or poor quality of housing. Furthermore, it was located on the border between the two major European civilisations and Germanic, was at the centre of the first post-war integration experiment: the Benelux; as a capital of a small country, it could not claim to use the presence of institutions to exert pressure on other member states, it being more of a neutral territory between the major European powers. The Committee's report was approved of by the Council and Commissions, however the Council was still unable to achieve a final vote on the issue and hence put off the issue for a further three years despite all the institutions now leading in moving to Brussels.
The decision was put off due to the varied national positions preventing a unanimous decision. Luxembourg fought to keep the ECSC or have compensation, France fought for Strasbourg and Italy backing Paris, fought for any Italian city to thwart Luxembourg and Strasbourg. Meanwhile, Parliament passed a series of resolutions complaining about the whole situation of spreading itself across three cities, though unable to do anything about it; the 1965 Merger Treaty was seen as an appropriate moment to resolve the issue, the separate Commissions and Councils were to be merged. Luxembourg, concerned about losing the High Authority, proposed a split between Brussels and Luxembourg; the Commission and Council in the former with Luxembourg keeping the Court and Parliamentary Assembly, together wit
Atomium
The Atomium is a landmark building in Brussels constructed for the 1958 Brussels World's Fair. It is located on the Heysel Plateau, it is now a museum. Designed by the engineer André Waterkeyn and architects André and Jean Polak, it stands 102 m tall, its nine 18 m diameter stainless steel clad spheres are connected, so that the whole forms the shape of a unit cell of an iron crystal magnified 165 billion times. Tubes of 3 m diameter connect the spheres along the 12 edges of the cube and all eight vertices to the centre, they enclose stairs, escalators and a lift to allow access to the five habitable spheres, which contain exhibit halls and other public spaces. The top sphere includes a restaurant; the Atomium was built as the main icon of the 1958 World's Fair of Brussels. In the 1950s, faith in scientific progress was great, a structure depicting atoms was chosen to embody this; the Atomium depicts nine iron atoms in the shape of the body-centred cubic unit cell of an iron crystal, magnified 165 billion times.
The construction of the Atomium was a technical feat. Of the nine spheres, six are accessible to the public, each with two main floors and a lower floor reserved for service; the central tube contains the fastest elevator of the time at 5 m/s, installed by the Belgian branch of the Swiss firm Schlieren. It allows 22 people to reach the summit in 23 seconds; the escalators installed in the oblique tubes are among the longest in Europe. The biggest is 35 m long. Three of the four top spheres lack vertical support and hence are not open to the public for safety reasons, although the sphere at the pinnacle is open to the public; the original design called for no supports. Wind tunnel tests proved. Support columns were added to achieve enough resistance against overturning; the Atomium, designed to last six months, was not destined to survive the 1958 World's Fair, but its popularity and success made it a major element of the Brussels landscape. Its destruction was therefore postponed year after year, until the city's authorities decided to keep it.
However, for thirty years, little maintenance work was done. By the turn of the millennium, the state of the building had become quite deteriorated and a comprehensive renovation was sorely needed. Renovation of the Atomium began in March 2004; the renovations included replacing the faded aluminium sheets on the spheres with stainless steel. On 21 December 2005, the new Atomium outdoor lighting was tested; the meridians of each sphere were covered with rectangular steel plates, in which LED lighting was integrated. The LED application illuminates the bulbs at night; the lights can flash or in turns at each meridian, symbolising the range of an electron around its core. On 14 February 2006, the Atomium was reopened by Prince Philippe, on 18 February 2006, it opened again to the public; the renovation cost €26 million. Brussels and the Atomium Association paid one-third of the costs, the Belgian government financed two thirds. To help pay for renovations, pieces of the old aluminium plates were sold to the public as souvenirs.
One triangular piece about 2 m long sold for €1,000. On the occasion of the reopening, a 2 euro commemorative coin depicting the building was issued, in March 2006, to celebrate the renovation. Though the Atomium depicts an iron unit cell, the balls were clad with aluminium. Following the 2004–2007 renovations, the aluminium was replaced with stainless steel, iron. While the subject of Atomium was chosen to depict the enthusiasm of the Atomic Age, iron is not and cannot be used as fuel in nuclear reactions. Of the six spheres accessible to the public: the bottom sphere is reserved for permanent exhibitions dedicated to the 1950s, the 1958 World's Fair and the construction of the Atomium. SABAM, Belgium's society for collecting copyrights, has claimed worldwide intellectual property rights on all reproductions of the image via the United States Artists Rights Society. For example, SABAM issued a demand that a United States website remove all images of the Atomium from its pages; the website responded by replacing all such images with a warning not to take photographs of the Atomium, that A.
S. B. L. Atomium will sue. SABAM confirmed. Ralf Ziegermann remarked on the complicated copyright instructions on the Atomium's website specific to "private pictures"; the organisers of Belgian heritage, Anno Expo, in the city of Mechelen announced a "cultural guerrilla strike" by asking people to send in their old photographs of the Atomium and requested 100 photoshoppers to paint over the balls. SABAM responded that they would make an exception for 2008 and that people could publish private photographs for one year only on condition they were for non-commercial purposes. Anno Expo announced they
Eurovision Song Contest 1958
The Eurovision Song Contest 1958 was the third edition of the annual Eurovision Song Contest. It took place in Hilversum, following Corry Brokken's win at the 1957 contest in Frankfurt-am-Main, West Germany, with the song "Net als toen"; this formed the convention that the winning country of the previous year's event would host the following year. The contest was held at the AVRO Studios on Wednesday 12 March 1958, was hosted by Hannie Lips. Ten countries participated in the contest. Sweden made its début; this withdrawal came. Failing to get an agreement from various artistic unions, the BBC withdrew their bid to host in the summer of 1957 and the United Kingdom did not enter for the second and last time to date, having missed the first contest two years earlier; the winner was France with the song "Dors, mon amour", performed by André Claveau, written by Pierre Delanoë and composed by Hubert Giraud. This was France's first victory in the contest. At 46 years and 76 days of age, Claveau became the oldest victor of the contest until 1990.
Along with 1956, it was the second contest that has not featured a single song in the English language. The 1958 contest continued with the policy implemented the year before where each country was limited to one song entry; this policy has been retained to date. Hilversum, a municipality and a town in the province of North Holland, is known as the "Media Capital" of the Netherlands. Hilversum had become the centre of broadcasting and radio in the Netherlands in the 1920s when Dutch radio company Nederlandse Seintoestellen Fabriek settled there, today the media sector stands as one of the top employers in the municipality of Hilversum. After the establishment of the Dutch Radio Company in Hilversum in the 1920s all other radio stations in the Netherlands followed suit with television following in the 1950s, thus making Hilversum at the end of the 1950s the best venue in the Netherlands to produce and broadcast such an international TV-transmitted event as the Eurovision Song Contest, while on the other hand TV was still a challenging advanced technology in general within Europe.
One such media network was the host of Nederlandse Televisie Stichting. The venue of the contest was the studio of AVRO, a building complex for the media's network among the media buildings within Hilversum, which belonged to the Dutch public broadcasting association operating within the framework of the Nederlandse Publieke Omroep system; the contest was held in one of the Avro studio halls. The hall contained a small stage to function as a higher stand for the singers, with the program being shot from the stage floor up. Outside of frame were the microphones' and other technical devices' wires which went through the studio's lower floor at the foot of the stage; the decorative emphasis was on the stage background, the stage front and the left side from the stage from the spectator's view where the orchestra and where the performers and host's stairway entrance were located. The rear of the stage had interchangeable backgrounds for each song to add context to each song's lyrics; the centre-front of the stage, the left area from the stage with the orchestra and stairway entrance were decorated with tulips, of which the Netherlands are known for.
The juries were not in the studio as in 1956. For the 1958 event, they remained in their own countries. Once the songs had all been sung, juries announced their results via telephone in reverse order of presentation, as in the previous year; the Italian entry was not picked up properly in some of the other countries, which meant that after all the other songs had been presented, Domenico Modugno had to perform his song again. It was the only year that the host country finished in last place until 57 years in 2015 and again in 2018, the first time more than one country was placed last; the interval act was music by the Metropole Orkest, under the direction of maestro Dolf van der Linden. There were two interval acts, one in the middle of the competing songs performances and one after all the rest of the competing performances were shown. Sweden, a country that would be one of the most successful in the contest, debuted this year; the United Kingdom decided to withdraw from the contest after planning to submit an entry.
After the contest, the Italian entry "Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu" by Domenico Modugno went on to become a worldwide hit. During the 1st Grammy Awards, held on 4 May 1959 at Hollywood's Beverly Hilton Hotel, "Nel blu dipinto di blu" received two awards, for Record of the Year and Song of the Year; the song is the only foreign-language recording to achieve this honour, it is the only song to have competed in the Eurovision Song Contest and received a Grammy Award. The song reached the No.1 spot in the US-American Billboard Charts, making it one of the most successful Eurovision songs in the history of the contest. The song was voted the second best Eurovision entry of all time at the 50th anniversary show "Congratulations" in 2005; each performance had a conductor. Italy – Alberto Semprini Netherlands – Dolf van der Linden France – Franck Pourcel Luxembourg – Dolf van der Linden Sweden – Dolf van der Linden Denmark – Kai Mortensen Belgium – Dolf van der Linden Germany – Dolf van der Linden Austria – Willy Fantl Switzerland – Paul Burkhard Four artists who had participated in previous editions of the contest returned in 1958: Fud Leclerc, who represented Belgium in 1956.
listen)) is the area in the north of Brussels, Belgium, where the Brussels International Exposition (1935) and the Expo '58 took place.
Media related to Heysel Park at Wikimedia Commons
