Piccadilly Circus is a road junction and public space of London's West End in the City of Westminster. It was built in 1819 to connect Regent Street with Piccadilly. In this context, a circus, from the Latin word meaning "circle", is a round open space at a street junction. Piccadilly now links directly to the theatres on Shaftesbury Avenue, as well as the Haymarket, Coventry Street and Glasshouse Street; the Circus is close to major entertainment areas in the West End. Its status as a major traffic junction has made Piccadilly Circus a busy meeting place and a tourist attraction in its own right; the Circus is known for its video display and neon signs mounted on the corner building on the northern side, as well as the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain and statue, popularly, though mistakenly, believed to be of Eros. It is surrounded by several notable buildings, including the London Criterion Theatre. Directly underneath the plaza is Piccadilly Circus Underground station, part of the London Underground system.

Piccadilly Circus connects to Piccadilly, a thoroughfare whose name first appeared in 1626 as Piccadilly Hall, named after a house belonging to one Robert Baker, a tailor famous for selling piccadills, or piccadillies, a term used for various kinds of collars. The street was known as Portugal Street in 1692 in honour of Catherine of Braganza, the queen consort of King Charles II but was known as Piccadilly by 1743. Piccadilly Circus was created in 1819, at the junction with Regent Street, being built under the planning of John Nash on the site of a house and garden belonging to a Lady Hutton. In the same period the circus lost its circular form; the junction has been a busy traffic interchange since construction, as it lies at the centre of Theatreland and handles exit traffic from Piccadilly, which Charles Dickens Jr. described in 1879: "Piccadilly, the great thoroughfare leading from the Haymarket and Regent-street westward to Hyde Park-corner, is the nearest approach to the Parisian boulevard of which London can boast."

Piccadilly Circus tube station was opened on 10 March 1906, on the Bakerloo line, on the Piccadilly line in December of that year. In 1928, the station was extensively rebuilt to handle an increase in traffic; the junction's first electric advertisements appeared in 1910, from 1923, electric billboards were set up on the façade of the London Pavilion. Electric street lamps, did not replace the gas ones until 1932. Traffic lights were first installed on 3 August 1926. During World War II many servicemen's clubs in the West End served American soldiers based in Britain. So many prostitutes roamed the area approaching the soldiers that they received the nickname "Piccadilly Commandos", both Scotland Yard and the Foreign Office discussed possible damage to Anglo-American relations. At the start of the 1960s, it was determined that the Circus needed to be redeveloped to allow for greater traffic flow. In 1962, Lord Holford presented a plan; this concept was kept alive throughout the rest of the 1960s.

A final scheme in 1972 proposed three octagonal towers to replace the Trocadero, the Criterion and the "Monico" buildings. The plans were permanently rejected by Sir Keith Ernest Marples; the Holford plan is referenced in the short-form documentary film "Goodbye, Piccadilly", produced by the Rank Organisation in 1967 as part of their Look at Life series when it was still expected that Holford's recommendations would be acted upon. Piccadilly Circus has since escaped major redevelopment, apart from extensive ground-level pedestrianisation around its south side in the 1980s; the Circus has been targeted by Irish republican terrorists multiple times. On 24 June 1939 an explosion occurred. On 25 November 1974 a bomb injured 16 people. A 2 lb bomb exploded on 6 October 1992; the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain in Piccadilly Circus was erected in 1893 to commemorate the philanthropic works of Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury. It was moved from the centre once; the first time was in 1922, so that Charles Holden's new tube station could be built directly below it.

The fountain returned in 1931. During the Second World War, the fountain was removed for the second time and replaced by advertising hoardings, it was returned again in 1948. When the Circus underwent reconstruction work in the late 1980s, the entire fountain was moved from the centre of the junction at the beginning of Shaftesbury Avenue to its present position at the southwestern corner. Piccadilly Circus is surrounded by tourist attractions, including the Shaftesbury Memorial, Criterion Theatre, London Pavilion and retail stores. Nightclubs and bars are located in the area and neighbouring Soho, including the former Chinawhite club. Piccadilly Circus was surrounded by illuminated advertising hoardings on buildings, starting in 1908 with a Perrier sign, but only one building now carries them, the one in the northwestern

Erik Grendel is a Slovak footballer who plays for Spartak Trnava as a midfielder. He started his senior career in Dubnica, making his league debut in July 2005 at the age of 16. After four years in Dubnica, he signed with Slovan Bratislava in September 2009. After a spell in Poland with Górnik Zabrze, he returned to his native Slovakia, joining Spartak Trnava in July 2018. Slovan Bratislava Slovak Super Liga: 2010–11, 2012–13, 2013–14 Slovak Cup: 2009–10, 2010–11, 2012–13Spartak Trnava Slovak Cup: 2018–19 Erik Grendel at 90minut.pl Slovan Bratislava profile Profile at football-lineups.com Erik Grendel at Soccerway

Morioka Hachimangū is a Shinto shrine in the city of Morioka, Iwate in northern Japan. The shrine is noted for its annual festival on the second Saturday in June, famous for the Chagu Chagu Umakko, a horse parade, recognized in 1978 as an Intangible Folk Cultural Property. In 1996 the sound of the bells of the Chagu Chagu Umakko was selected by the Ministry of the Environment as one of the 100 Soundscapes of Japan; the shrine is noted for its displays of yabusame horse archery during its annual festival on September 15. The Morioka Hachimangū was established in 1062 during the late Heian period when Minamoto no Yoriyoshi brought a bunrei of the Minamoto clan’s tutelary shrine, the Iwashimizu Hachimangū in Kyoto to pray for victory in his campaign against the Abe clan in the Former Nine Years War, it was called the Hatomori Hachimangū. The shrine was rebuilt in 1593 by the Nanbu clan to be the protective shrine for Morioka Castle. Under the State Shinto system of shrine ranking from 1871 through 1946, the Morioka Hachimangū was designated as a "prefectural shrine".

The Edo-period shrine structures burned down in 1884. The present main structure dates from 2006; the shrine is dedicated to the veneration of the Shinto kami Hachiman. Hachiman has been recognized as an amalgamation of the semi-legendary Emperor Ojin and his consort, Empress Jingū. List of Shinto shrines Modern system of ranked Shinto Shrines Breen and Mark Teeuwen.. Shinto in History: Ways of the Kami. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-2362-7; the Imperial House of Japan. Kyoto: Ponsonby Memorial Society. OCLC 194887 Ponsonby-Fane, Richard.. Studies in Shinto and Shrines. Kyoto: Ponsonby Memorial Society. OCLC 399449 Official website