1.
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
2.
France
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France, officially the French Republic, is a country with territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The European, or metropolitan, area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, Overseas France include French Guiana on the South American continent and several island territories in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. France spans 643,801 square kilometres and had a population of almost 67 million people as of January 2017. It is a unitary republic with the capital in Paris. Other major urban centres include Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Nice, Toulouse, during the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic people. The area was annexed in 51 BC by Rome, which held Gaul until 486, France emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years War strengthening state-building and political centralisation. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a colonial empire was established. The 16th century was dominated by civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. France became Europes dominant cultural, political, and military power under Louis XIV, in the 19th century Napoleon took power and established the First French Empire, whose subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War, the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, was formed in 1958 and remains to this day. Algeria and nearly all the colonies became independent in the 1960s with minimal controversy and typically retained close economic. France has long been a centre of art, science. It hosts Europes fourth-largest number of cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites and receives around 83 million foreign tourists annually, France is a developed country with the worlds sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, France remains a great power in the world, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a member state of the European Union and the Eurozone. It is also a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or country of the Franks
3.
Rock music
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It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by blues, rhythm and blues and country music. Rock music also drew strongly on a number of genres such as electric blues and folk. Musically, rock has centered on the guitar, usually as part of a rock group with electric bass guitar. Typically, rock is song-based music usually with a 4/4 time signature using a verse-chorus form, like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political in emphasis. Punk was an influence into the 1980s on the subsequent development of subgenres, including new wave, post-punk. From the 1990s alternative rock began to rock music and break through into the mainstream in the form of grunge, Britpop. Similarly, 1970s punk culture spawned the visually distinctive goth and emo subcultures and this trio of instruments has often been complemented by the inclusion of other instruments, particularly keyboards such as the piano, Hammond organ and synthesizers. The basic rock instrumentation was adapted from the blues band instrumentation. A group of musicians performing rock music is termed a rock band or rock group, Rock music is traditionally built on a foundation of simple unsyncopated rhythms in a 4/4 meter, with a repetitive snare drum back beat on beats two and four. Melodies are often derived from older musical modes, including the Dorian and Mixolydian, harmonies range from the common triad to parallel fourths and fifths and dissonant harmonic progressions. Critics have stressed the eclecticism and stylistic diversity of rock, because of its complex history and tendency to borrow from other musical and cultural forms, it has been argued that it is impossible to bind rock music to a rigidly delineated musical definition. These themes were inherited from a variety of sources, including the Tin Pan Alley pop tradition, folk music and rhythm, as a result, it has been seen as articulating the concerns of this group in both style and lyrics. Christgau, writing in 1972, said in spite of some exceptions, rock and roll usually implies an identification of male sexuality, according to Simon Frith rock was something more than pop, something more than rock and roll. Rock musicians combined an emphasis on skill and technique with the concept of art as artistic expression, original. The foundations of music are in rock and roll, which originated in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Its immediate origins lay in a melding of various musical genres of the time, including rhythm and blues and gospel music, with country. In 1951, Cleveland, Ohio disc jockey Alan Freed began playing rhythm and blues music for a multi-racial audience, debate surrounds which record should be considered the first rock and roll record. Other artists with rock and roll hits included Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis
4.
Progressive rock
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Progressive rock is a broad subgenre of rock music that developed in the United Kingdom and United States throughout the mid to late 1960s. Prog is based on fusions of styles, approaches and genres, Prog saw a high level of popularity in the early-to-mid 1970s, but faded soon after. Conventional wisdom holds that the rise of rock caused this. Music critics, who labelled the concepts as pretentious and the sounds as pompous and overblown. Early groups who exhibited progressive features are described as proto-prog. In 1967, progressive rock constituted a diversity of loosely associated style codes, the Canterbury scene, originating in the late 1960s, denoted a subset of prog bands who emphasised the use of wind instruments, complex chord changes and long improvisations. Rock in Opposition, from the late 1970s, was more avant-garde, in the 1980s, a new subgenre, neo-progressive rock, enjoyed some commercial success, although it was also accused of being derivative and lacking in innovation. Post-progressive draws upon newer developments in music and the avant-garde since the mid 1970s. The term progressive rock is synonymous with art rock, classical rock, historically, art rock has been used to describe at least two related, but distinct, types of rock music. Similarities between the two terms are that they describe a mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility. However, art rock is likely to have experimental or avant-garde influences. Prog was devised in the 1990s as a term, but later became a transferable adjective. Although a unidirectional English progressive style emerged in the late 1960s, by 1967, critics of the genre often limit its scope to a stereotype of long solos, overlong albums, fantasy lyrics, grandiose stage sets and costumes, and an obsessive dedication to technical skill. Author Kevin Holm-Hudson believes that rock is a style far more diverse than what is heard from its mainstream groups. They each do so largely unconsciously, academic John S. Cotner contests Macans view that progressive rock cannot exist without the continuous and overt assimilation of classical music into rock. Debate about the criteria and scope of the genre continues in the 2010s. In early references to the music, progressive was partly related to progressive politics, Cotner also says that progressive rock incorporates both formal and eclectic elements, It consists of a combination of factors – some of them intramusical, others extramusical or social. One way of conceptualising rock and roll in relation to music is that progressive music pushed the genre into greater complexity while retracing the roots of romantic
5.
New wave music
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New wave is a genre of rock music popular from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s with ties to 1970s punk rock. New wave moved away from smooth blues and rock and roll sounds to create pop music that incorporated electronic and experimental music, mod, initially new wave was similar to punk rock, before becoming a distinct genre. It subsequently engendered subgenres and fusions, including synth-pop, college rock, common characteristics of new wave music include the use of synthesizers and electronic productions, the importance of styling and the arts, as well as diversity. In the mid-1980s, differences between new wave and other genres began to blur. New wave has enjoyed resurgences since the 1990s, after a rising nostalgia for several new wave-influenced artists, subsequently, the genre influenced other genres. During the 2000s, a number of acts explored new wave and post-punk influences, such as the Strokes, Interpol, Franz Ferdinand and these acts were sometimes labeled new wave of new wave. The catch-all nature of new music has been a source of much confusion. The 1985 discography Whos New Wave in Music listed artists in over 130 separate categories, the New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock calls the term virtually meaningless, while AllMusic mentions stylistic diversity. New wave first emerged as a genre in the early 1970s, used by critics including Nick Kent and Dave Marsh to classify such New York-based groups as the Velvet Underground. It gained currency beginning in 1976 when it appeared in UK punk fanzines such as Sniffin Glue and newsagent music weeklies such as Melody Maker and New Musical Express. In November 1976 Caroline Coon used Malcolm McLarens term new wave to designate music by bands not exactly punk, the term was also used in that sense by music journalist Charles Shaar Murray in his comments about the Boomtown Rats. For a period of time in 1976 and 1977, the new wave. By the end of 1977, new wave had replaced punk as the definition for new music in the UK. As radio consultants in the United States had advised their clients that punk rock was a fad, like the filmmakers of the French new wave movement, its new artists were anti-corporate and experimental. At first, most U. S. writers exclusively used the new wave for British punk acts. Music historian Vernon Joynson claimed that new wave emerged in the UK in late 1976, in the U. S. the first new wavers were the not-so-punk acts associated with the New York club CBGB. CBGB owner Hilly Kristal, referring to the first show of the band Television at his club in March 1974, said, furthermore, many artists who would have originally been classified as punk were also termed new wave. A1977 Phonogram Records compilation album of the same name features US artists including the Dead Boys, Ramones, Talking Heads, New wave is much more closely tied to punk and came and went more quickly in the United Kingdom than in the United States
6.
Celine Dion
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Céline Marie Claudette Dion, CC OQ ChLD is a Canadian singer and businesswoman. Dion first gained recognition in the 1980s by winning both the 1982 Yamaha World Popular Song Festival and the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest where she represented Switzerland. Following a series of French albums during the 1980s, she signed on to Epic Records in the United States, in 1990, Dion released her debut English-language album, Unison, establishing herself as a viable pop artist in North America and other English-speaking areas of the world. During the 1990s, with the help of Angélil, she achieved fame after releasing several English albums along with additional French albums. Her albums, Falling into You and Lets Talk About Love, were certified diamond in the US while Deux became the best-selling French-language album of all time. However, in 1999 at the height of her success, Dion announced a hiatus from entertainment to start a family and spend time with her husband and she returned to the top of pop music in 2002 and signed to perform nightly in A New Day. A five-star theatrical show at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace, Paradise and it became the most successful residency show of all time, grossing US $385 million. Dions music has influenced by genres ranging from rock and R&B to gospel. Her recordings are mainly in French and English, although she sings in Spanish, Italian, German, Latin, Japanese. While her releases have received mixed critical reception, she is regarded as one of pop musics most influential voices. Dion has won five Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year and she is the second best-selling female artist in the US during the Nielsen SoundScan era. In 2003, Dion was honoured by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry for selling over 50 million albums in Europe, Dion remains the best-selling Canadian artist and one of the best-selling artists of all time with record sales of over 200 million copies worldwide. Dion was born in Charlemagne, Quebec, Canada, the youngest of 14 children of Thérèse, a homemaker, and Adhémar Dion, Dion was raised a Roman Catholic in a poverty-stricken, but, by her own account, happy home in Charlemagne. Music had always been a part of the Dion family, indeed, Dion herself was named after the song Céline. Thereafter, she continued to perform with her siblings in her parentss small piano bar called Le Vieux Baril, from an early age, Dion had dreamed of being a performer. In a 1994 interview with People magazine, she recalled, I missed my family and my home, I had one dream, I wanted to be a singer. At age 12, Dion collaborated with her mother and her brother Jacques to write and compose her first song, Ce nétait quun rêve, whose title translates as It Was Only a Dream or Nothing But A Dream. Her brother, Michel Dion, sent the recording to music manager René Angélil, Angélil was moved to tears by Dions voice and decided to make her a star
7.
Johnny Hallyday
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Johnny Hallyday is a French singer and actor. He has been called the French Elvis and he was married for 15 years to popular Bulgarian-French singer Sylvie Vartan and the two were considered a golden couple for 20 years. Hallyday has completed 181 tours, had 18 platinum albums, and has more than 80 million records worldwide. Hallyday remains largely unknown outside of the Francophone world, thus earning the nickname the biggest rock star youve never heard of in English-speaking countries, nevertheless, at an international level he is still considered as the only non-Anglophone rock musician having a large international reputation. He was made Chevalier of the Légion dhonneur in 1997, Hallydays father, Léon Smet, was Belgian, his mother, Huguette Clerc, was French. Johnny was raised by Desta and Lee from a young age. Johnny was always loyal to Lee and secured him a permanent job as a producer and A&R man with his label, Philips Records until Lees retirement. Influenced by Elvis Presley and the 1950s rock n roll revolution, Hallyday became famous in the 1960s for singing rock and his debut single, Laisse les filles was released on the Vogue label in March 1960. His first album, Hello Johnny, was released in 1960, in 1961 his cover of Lets Twist Again sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc. It topped almost every European chart, although the track did not appear in the UK Singles Chart and he appeared on the American The Ed Sullivan Show with American singing star Connie Francis in a show that was taped at the Moulin Rouge nightclub in Paris. He also staged many appearances in the Paris Olympia under the management of the late Bruno Coquatrix, for their first concert, The Jimi Hendrix Experience opened for Johnny Hallyday in Évreux on 13 October 1966. Black-and-white footage, also from October 1966, exists of Hallyday partying with Hendrix, his manager Chas Chandler, there also is a widely published monochrome photograph of Hallyday walking somewhere in Paris in late May 1966 with Bob Dylan. At the end of the 1960s, Hallyday made a string of albums with Mick Jones and Tommy Brown as musical directors, on Je suis né dans la rue, Hallyday also hired both Peter Frampton and the Small Faces. Amongst their contributions are the songs Amen, Reclamation, and Regarde Pour Moi, often forgotten is Hallydays non-LP single and EP track Que Je Taime from the same sessions. By 1969 alone, his sales of records exceeded twelve million, one of Hallydays later concerts, 100% Johnny, Live à La Tour Eiffel in 2000, attracted an audience of 500,000 and 9.5 million television viewers. In December 2005, Hallyday had his third single in France, Mon Plus Beau Noël. Shortly before announcing his retirement from touring, he released an album, Le Cœur dun homme. The album hit No.1 in both France and French-speaking Belgium and his next album, Ça ne finira jamais, released in 2008, another No.1 on the French album chart, and its lead single, Ça nfinira jamais, also reached No.1
8.
History of the Jews in Poland
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The history of the Jews in Poland dates back over 800 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Jewish community in the world, Poland was the centre of Jewish culture thanks to a long period of statutory religious tolerance and social autonomy. This ended with the Partitions of Poland which began in 1772, in particular, from the founding of the Kingdom of Poland in 1025 through to the early years of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth created in 1569, Poland was the most tolerant country in Europe. Known as paradisus Iudaeorum, it became a shelter for persecuted and expelled European Jewish communities, according to some sources, about three-quarters of the worlds Jews lived in Poland by the middle of the 16th century. With the weakening of the Commonwealth and growing religious strife, Polands traditional tolerance began to wane from the 17th century onward. Still, as Poland regained independence in the aftermath of World War I, Antisemitism was a growing problem throughout Europe in those years, from both the political establishment and the general population. At the start of World War II, Poland was partitioned between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, one-fifth of the Polish population perished during World War II, half of them were 3,000,000 Polish Jews murdered in The Holocaust, constituting 90% of Polish Jewry. Although the Holocaust occurred largely in German-occupied Poland, there was collaboration with the Nazis by its citizens. Collaboration by individual Poles has been described as smaller than in other occupied countries, statistics of the Israeli War Crimes Commission indicate that less than 0. 1% of Polish gentiles collaborated with the Nazis. Grouped by nationality, Poles represent the largest number of people who rescued Jews during the Holocaust, britain demanded Poland to halt the exodus, but their pressure was largely unsuccessful. Most of the remaining Jews left Poland in late 1968 as the result of the Soviet-sponsored anti-Zionist campaign. After the fall of the Communist regime in 1989, the situation of Polish Jews became normalized, Religious institutions were revived, largely through the activities of Jewish foundations from the United States. The first Jews arrived in the territory of modern Poland in the 10th century, by travelling along the trade routes leading eastwards to Kiev and Bukhara, Jewish merchants, known as Radhanites, crossed the areas of Silesia. In the summer of 965 or 966 Jacob made a trade and diplomatic journey from his native Toledo in Moslem Spain to the Holy Roman Empire, the first actual mention of Jews in Polish chronicles occurs in the 11th century. It appears that Jews were then living in Gniezno, at time the capital of the Polish kingdom of the Piast dynasty. Among the first Jews to arrive in Poland were those banished from Prague, the first permanent Jewish community is mentioned in 1085 by a Jewish scholar Jehuda ha-Kohen in the city of Przemyśl. The first extensive Jewish emigration from Western Europe to Poland occurred at the time of the First Crusade in 1098. Under Bolesław III, the Jews, encouraged by the tolerant regime of this ruler, settled throughout Poland, Bolesław III recognized the utility of Jews in the development of the commercial interests of his country
9.
History of the Jews in Germany
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Jewish settlers founded the Ashkenazi Jewish community in the Early and High Middle Ages. The community survived under Charlemagne, but suffered during the Crusades, accusations of well poisoning during the Black Death led to mass slaughter of German Jews, and they fled in large numbers to Poland. The Jewish communities of the cities of Mainz, Speyer, and this was a golden age as area bishops protected the Jews resulting in increased trade and prosperity. The First Crusade began an era of persecution of Jews in Germany, Entire communities, like those of Trier, Worms, Mainz, and Cologne, were murdered. The war upon the Hussite heretics became the signal for renewed persecution of Jews, the end of the 15th century was a period of religious hatred that ascribed to Jews all possible evils. The atrocities during the Khmelnytsky Uprising committed by Khmelnytskyis Cossacks drove the Polish Jews back into western Germany, with Napoleons fall in 1815, growing nationalism resulted in increasing repression. From August to October 1819, pogroms that came to be known as the Hep-Hep riots took place throughout Germany, during this time, many German states stripped Jews of their civil rights. As a result, many German Jews began to emigrate, from the time of Moses Mendelssohn until the 20th century, the community gradually achieved emancipation, and then prospered. In January 1933, some 522,000 Jews lived in Germany, however, following the growth of Nazism and its antisemitic ideology and policies, the Jewish community was severely persecuted. Over half emigrated during the first six years of the Nazi dictatorship, in 1933, persecution of the Jews became an active Nazi policy. In 1935 and 1936, the pace of persecution of the Jews increased, in 1936, Jews were banned from all professional jobs, effectively preventing them from exerting any influence in education, politics, higher education, and industry. The SS ordered the Night of Broken Glass to be carried out the night of November 9–10,1938, the storefronts of Jewish shops and offices were smashed and vandalized, and many synagogues were destroyed by fire. Increasing antisemitism prompted a wave of a Jewish mass emigration from Germany throughout the 1930s, only roughly 214,000 Jews were left in Germany proper on the eve of World War II. Beginning in late 1941, the community was subjected to systematic deportations to ghettos. In May 1943, Germany was declared judenrein, by the end of the war, an estimated 160,000 to 180,000 German Jews had been killed under the Nazi regime, by the Germans and their collaborators. A total of about 6 million European Jews were murdered under the direction of the Nazis, after the war, the Jewish community in Germany started to slowly grow again. Currently in Germany, denial of the Holocaust or that six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust is a criminal act, violations can be punished with up to five years of prison. In 2007, the Interior Minister of Germany, Wolfgang Schäuble, pointed out the policy of Germany, We will not tolerate any form of extremism, xenophobia
10.
The Beatles
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The Beatles were an English rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960. With members John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, the Beatles built their reputation playing clubs in Liverpool and Hamburg over a three-year period from 1960, with Stuart Sutcliffe initially serving as bass player. The core of Lennon, McCartney and Harrison went through a succession of drummers, including Pete Best, before asking Starr to join them. They acquired the nickname the Fab Four as Beatlemania grew in Britain the next year, from 1965 onwards, the Beatles produced increasingly innovative recordings, including the albums Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles and Abbey Road, after their break-up in 1970, they each enjoyed successful musical careers of varying lengths. McCartney and Starr, the members, remain musically active. Lennon was shot and killed in December 1980, and Harrison died of cancer in November 2001. The Beatles are the band in history, with estimated sales of over 600 million records worldwide. They have had more number-one albums on the British charts and sold more singles in the UK than any other act, according to the RIAA, the Beatles are also the best-selling music artists in the United States, with 178 million certified units. In 2008, the group topped Billboard magazines list of the all-time most successful Hot 100 artists, as of 2016 and they have received ten Grammy Awards, an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score and fifteen Ivor Novello Awards. The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 and they were also collectively included in Time magazines compilation of the twentieth centurys 100 most influential people. In March 1957, John Lennon, then aged sixteen, formed a group with several friends from Quarry Bank school. They briefly called themselves the Blackjacks, before changing their name to the Quarrymen after discovering that a local group was already using the other name. Fifteen-year-old Paul McCartney joined as a rhythm guitarist shortly after he, in February 1958, McCartney invited his friend George Harrison to watch the band. The fourteen-year-old auditioned for Lennon, impressing him with his playing, after a month of Harrisons persistence, they enlisted him as their lead guitarist. By January 1959, Lennons Quarry Bank friends had left the group, the three guitarists, billing themselves at least three times as Johnny and the Moondogs, were playing rock and roll whenever they could find a drummer. They used the name until May, when they became the Silver Beetles, before undertaking a tour of Scotland as the backing group for pop singer. By early July, they had changed their name to the Silver Beatles, allan Williams, the Beatles unofficial manager, arranged a residency for them in Hamburg, but lacking a full-time drummer they auditioned and hired Pete Best in mid-August 1960
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