The Iron Bowl is the name given to the Alabama vs Auburn college football rivalry. It is an American college football rivalry game between the Auburn University Tigers and University of Alabama Crimson Tide, both charter members of the Southeastern Conference; the series is considered one of the most important football rivalries in the annals of American sports. As the rivalry was played for many years at Legion Field in Birmingham, the name of the Iron Bowl comes from Birmingham's historic role in the steel industry. Auburn Coach Ralph "Shug" Jordan is credited with coining it—when asked by reporters in 1964 how he would deal with the disappointment of not taking his team to a bowl game, he responded, "We've got our bowl game. We have it every year. It's the Iron Bowl in Birmingham."Alabama has a winning record against all Southeastern Conference teams and leads the series with Auburn 46–37–1. The game is traditionally played on Thanksgiving weekend. In 1993, the schools agreed to move the game up to the week before Thanksgiving to give themselves a bye for a potential SEC Championship Game berth.

In 2007 the conference voted to disallow any team from having a bye before the league championship game, returning the game to its traditional Thanksgiving weekend spot. For much of the 20th century, the game was played every year in Birmingham, with Alabama winning 34 games and Auburn 19. Four games were played in Montgomery, with each team winning two. Since 2000, the games have been played at Jordan–Hare Stadium in Auburn every odd-numbered year and at Bryant–Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa every even-numbered year; the rivalry has long been one of the most heated collegiate rivalries in the country. For many years, the two schools were the only Alabama colleges in what is now Division I Football Bowl Subdivision. Together, they account for 25 with Alabama and eight with Auburn. Both are among the winningest programs in major college football history; the two schools have been fixtures on national television for the better part of the last four decades, the season-ending clash has been nationally televised for all but one year since the late 1970s, the lone exception being 1993, when Auburn was barred from live TV due to NCAA sanctions.

Between them, one of the two teams played in the final five BCS National Championship Games, with Alabama winning in 2009, 2011, 2012 and Auburn winning in 2010 and losing in 2013. Alabama has made the four-team field of the successor to the BCS, the College Football Playoff, in each of its first five editions, losing in a semifinal in 2014, winning the title game in 2015 and 2017, losing the title game in 2016 and 2018. Auburn has yet to participate in a playoff game; the contest became the extension of a bitter political debate which took place in the Alabama State Legislature regarding the location of the new land-grant college under the state's application under the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862 during the Civil War Reconstruction Era. The state legislature, influenced by a heavy contingent of representatives who were University of Alabama alumni, pushed to sell the land scripts of 240,000 acres acquired from the Morrill Act or have any new land holdings held in conjunction with the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.

The debate lasted over four years, until Lee County and the City of Auburn won the location of the new university in 1872, after donating more than a hundred acres and the remaining buildings and property of the East Alabama Male College. At the time of the Auburn decision the state legislature and governorship was controlled by Radical Republicans such as "Scalawag" Southern Republicans and Freedman African-Americans. By 1874, former Confederate and "Redeemer" forces from the Democratic Party overturned the Radicals' control of the legislature; the Democrats attempted to overturn most legislation passed during the Reconstruction Period, including the founding of the new land-grant college at Auburn. During the 1870s, Auburn which received no appropriated funds from the state, was on the edge of financial collapse. Collapse of Auburn meant that the University of Alabama could assume the remaining land scripts, thus profiting from the closure of the new land-grant college. After its closure and burning during the Civil War, the University of Alabama would reopen in 1871 and in 1880 the U.

S. Congress granted the university 40,000 acres of coal land in partial compensation for $250,000 in war damages. "By 1877, competition between the University of Alabama and the Agricultural & Mechanical College for patronage had intensified. In January, Auburn President Isaac Tichenor, reported to the board of trustees that Alabama had reduced its tuition and lowered its graduation standards. Tichenor responded by requesting that the board drop tuition and create a boarding department to further lower expenses." Alabama and Auburn played their first football game in Lakeview Park in Birmingham, Alabama, on February 22, 1893. Auburn won 32–22, before an estimated crowd of 5,000. Alabama considered the game to be the final matchup of the 1892 season while Auburn recorded it as the first matchup of 1893. In 1902, a bill was introduced into both houses of the U. S. Congress to fund the creation of a "School of Mines and Mining Engineering" at each land-grant college. Under the provision of the bill, each participating land-grant college would receive $5,000 annually with $500 each additional year for 10 years.

The University of Alabama secretly sent Professor Dr. Eugene Smith to lobby against passage of the bill or to amend the bill to allow other unive

In Norse mythology, Auðumbla is a primeval cow. The primordial frost jötunn Ymir fed from her milk, over the course of three days she licked away the salty rime rocks and revealed Búri, grandfather of the gods and brothers Odin, Vili and Vé; the creature is attested in the Prose Edda, composed in the 13th century by Icelander Snorri Sturluson. Scholars identify her as stemming from a early stratum of Germanic mythology, belonging to larger complex of primordial bovines or cow-associated goddesses; the cow's name variously appears in Prose Edda manuscripts as Auðumbla, Auðhumla, Auðumla, is accepted as meaning'hornless cow rich in milk'. The compound presents some level of semantic ambiguity. A parallel occurs in Scottish English humble-cow'hornless cow', Northern Europeans have bred hornless cows since prehistoric times; as highlighted above, Auð- may mean'rich' and in turn'rich hornless cow' remains accepted among scholars as a gloss of the Old Icelandic animal name. However, auðr can mean'fate' and'desolate.

This semantic ambiguity may have been intentional. Auðumbla's sole attested narrative occurs in the Gylfaginning section of the Prose Edda, her name appears among ways to refer to cows in the Nafnaþulur section of the book. In Gylfaginning, Gangleri asks what he ate. High says. Gylfi asks what Auðumbla ate, High says that she licked salty rime stones for sustenance, he recounts that Auðumbla once licked salts for three days, revealing Búri: The first day she licked free his hair, the second day his head, the third day his entire body. The second and final mention of Auðumbla occurs in the Nafnaþulur, wherein the author provides a variety of ways to refer to cows. Auðumbla is the only cow mentioned by name, the author adds that "she is the noblest of cows". On the topic of Auðumbla, John Lindow says that cows appear in creation narratives around the world, yet "what is most striking about Audhumla is that she unites the two groups of warring groups in the mythology, by nourishing Ymir, ancestor of all the giants, bringing into the light Búri, progenitor of the æsir."Rudolf Simek highlights that Roman senator Tacitus's first century CE work ethnography of the Germanic peoples Germania mentions that they maintained hornless cattle, notes that the Germania describes that an image of the Germanic goddess Nerthus was led through the countryside by way of a cattle-driven wagon.

Simek compares the deity to a variety of cow-associated deities among non-Germanic peoples, such as the Egyptian goddess Hathor and Isis, the Ancient Greek Hera. Heiðrún, a nanny goat in Norse mythology whose teats produce mead for the Einherjar Swedish Red Polled, a hornless breed of domestic cattle in Sweden Amalthea, goat who raised Zeus, who suckled on her breast milk, in Classical Greek mythology Gavaevodata, primordial cow in Zoroastrian mythology Kamadhenu, cow from Hindu mythology MyNDIR Illustrations of Auðhumbla from manuscripts and early print books. Clicking on the thumbnail will give you the full image and information concerning it

The Northern Party was a regionalist political party in Northern England, founded by leader Michael Dawson and former Blackpool MP Harold Elletson in March 2015 to contest five marginal seats in Lancashire at the 2015 general election. The party was one of three regionalist parties contesting the general election in the north of England. Members included former activists from the Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Green parties. Michael Dawson, a former Executive Committee member of the Labour Campaign for Human Rights, is the nephew of former MP for Lancaster Hilton Dawson who now runs the North East Party. At the launch of the party he said "We've been planning this for months; this is a Northern rebellion against a system that has failed the North." The party argued for devolution of power to an autonomous Northern region, for business investment and environmental protection. The party described its symbol as "a Norse raven associated with the ancient kingdom of Northumbria and the struggle for autonomy".

The party stood candidates in five seats in Lancashire: Lunesdale: Michael Dawson. Dawson appeared on the ballot as an independent. Lancaster and Fleetwood: Harold Elletson. Elletson was the Conservative MP for Blackpool Fleetwood. Blackpool North and Cleveleys: James Walsh. Walsh is an ecologist, former Green Party member, part of Frack Free Lancashire Fylde: Elizabeth Clarkson. Clarkson had been a Conservative councillor in Preston. Rossendale & Darwen: Shaun Hargreaves. Hargreaves was in the Green Party. Paul Salveson noted the smaller vote share than the North East Party and Yorkshire First at the same General Election and a lack of parish councillors versus those other parties, suggested this was because the Northern Party, though they stood in Lancashire, had a Northern identity rather than a Lancashire identity; the party was registered with the Electoral Commission on 1 April 2015, with Michael Dawson as Leader and Treasurer and Stephen Gilpin as Nominating Officer and an address in Liverpool.

Chairman Ron Bell was a former Conservative councillor and prospective parliamentary candidate in Blackpool South. The Northern Party voluntarily deregistered as a party on 8 April 2016. Official website Archived website on archive.is, April 26, 2015 Posts about the Northern Party on The Northern Spring, blog of candidate James Walsh