document_title: Blackjack

question_text: what advantage does the dealer have in blackjack

question_tokens: what advantage does the dealer have in blackjack

text: Blackjack

text: History[edit]

text: Blackjack's precursor was twenty-one, a game of unknown origin. The first written reference is found in a book by the Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes, most famous for writing Don Quixote. Cervantes was a gambler, and the main characters of his tale "Rinconete y Cortadillo", from Novelas Ejemplares, are a couple of cheats working in Seville. They are proficient at cheating at veintiuna (Spanish for twenty-one), and state that the object of the game is to reach 21 points without going over and that the ace values 1 or 11. The game is played with the Spanish baraja deck, which lacks eights and nines. This short story was written between 1601 and 1602, implying that ventiuna was played in Castile since the beginning of the 17th century or earlier. Later references to this game are found in France and Spain.[2]

text: When twenty-one was introduced in the United States, gambling houses offered bonus payouts to stimulate players' interest. One such bonus was a ten-to-one payout if the player's hand consisted of the ace of spades and a black jack (either the jack of clubs or the jack of spades). This hand was called a "blackjack", and the name stuck to the game even though the ten-to-one bonus was soon withdrawn. In the modern game, a blackjack refers to any hand of an ace plus a ten or face card regardless of suits or colours.[3]

text: The first scientific and mathematically sound attempt to devise an optimal blackjack playing strategy was revealed in September 1956. Roger Baldwin, Wilbert Cantey, Herbert Maisel and James McDermott published a paper titled The Optimum Strategy in Blackjack in the Journal of the American Statistical Association. This paper would become the foundation of all future sound efforts to beat the game of blackjack. Ed Thorp would use Baldwin’s hand calculations to verify the basic strategy and later publish (in 1963) his famous book Beat the Dealer.[4]

text: Rules of play at casinos[edit]

text: At a casino blackjack table, the dealer faces five to seven playing positions from behind a semicircular table. Between one and eight standard 52-card decks are shuffled together. At the beginning of each round, up to three players can place their bets in the "betting box" at each position in play. That is, there could be up to three players at each position at a table in jurisdictions that allow back betting. The player whose bet is at the front of the betting box is deemed to have control over the position, and the dealer will consult the controlling player for playing decisions regarding the hand; the other players of that box are said to "play behind". Any player is usually allowed to control or bet in as many boxes as desired at a single table, but it is prohibited for an individual to play on more than one table at a time or to place multiple bets within a single box. In many U.S. casinos, however, players are limited to playing two or three positions at a table and often only one person is allowed to bet on each position.

text: The dealer deals cards from his/her left (the position on the dealer's far left is often referred to as "first base") to his/her far right ("third base"). Each box is dealt an initial hand of two cards visible to the people playing on it, and often to any other players. The dealer's hand receives its first card face up, and in "hole card" games immediately receives its second card face down (the hole card), which the dealer peeks at but does not reveal unless it makes the dealer's hand a blackjack. Hole card games are sometimes played on tables with a small mirror or electronic sensor that is used to peek securely at the hole card. In European casinos, "no hole card" games are prevalent; the dealer's second card is neither drawn nor consulted until the players have all played their hands.

text: Cards are dealt either from one or two handheld decks, from a dealer's shoe, or from a shuffling machine. Single cards are dealt to each wagered-on position clockwise from the dealer's left, followed by a single card to the dealer, followed by an additional card to each of the positions in play. The players' initial cards may be dealt face up or face down (more common in single-deck games).

text: The players' object is to win money by creating card totals that turn out to be higher than the dealer's hand but do not exceed 21 ("busting"/"breaking"), or alternatively by allowing the dealer to take additional cards until he/she busts. On their turn, players must choose whether to "hit" (take a card), "stand" (end their turn), "double" (double wager, take a single card and finish), "split" (if the two cards have the same value, separate them to make two hands) or "surrender" (give up a half-bet and retire from the game). Number cards count as their natural value; the jack, queen, and king (also known as "face cards" or "pictures") count as 10; aces are valued as either 1 or 11 according to the player's choice. If the hand value exceeds 21 points, it busts, and all bets on it are immediately forfeit. After all boxes have finished playing, the dealer's hand is resolved by drawing cards until the hand busts or achieves a value of 17 or higher (a dealer total of 17 including an ace, or "soft 17", must be drawn to in some games and must stand in others). The dealer never doubles, splits, or surrenders. If the dealer busts, all remaining player hands win. If the dealer does not bust, each remaining bet wins if its hand is higher than the dealer's, and loses if it is lower. If a player receives 21 on the 1st and 2nd card it is considered a "natural" or "blackjack" and the player is paid out immediately unless dealer also has a natural, in which case the hand ties. In the case of a tied score, known as "push" or "standoff", bets are normally returned without adjustment; however, a blackjack beats any hand that is not a blackjack, even one with a value of 21. Wins are paid out at 1:1, or equal to the wager, except for winning, player blackjacks, which are traditionally paid at 3:2 (meaning the player receives three dollars for every two bet), or one-and-a-half times the wager. Many casinos today pay blackjacks at less than 3:2 at some tables; for instance, single-deck blackjack tables often pay 6:5 for a blackjack instead of 3:2.[5]

text: Blackjack games almost always provide a side bet called insurance, which may be played when dealer's upcard is an ace. Additional side bets, such as "Dealer Match" which pays when the player's cards match the dealer's up card, are sometimes available.

text: Player decisions[edit]

text: After receiving an initial two cards, the player has up to four standard options: "hit", "stand", "double down", or "split". Each option has a corresponding hand signal. Some games give the player a fifth option, "surrender".

text: Hit: Take another card from the dealer.

text: Stand: Take no more cards, also known as "stand pat", "stick", or "stay".

text: Double down: The player is allowed to increase the initial bet by up to 100% in exchange for committing to stand after receiving exactly one more card. The additional bet is placed in the betting box next to the original bet. Some games do not permit the player to increase the bet by amounts other than 100%. Non-controlling players may double their wager or decline to do so, but they are bound by the controlling player's decision to take only one card.

text: Split: If the first two cards of a hand have the same value, the player can split them into two hands, by moving a second bet equal to the first into an area outside the betting box. The dealer separates the two cards and draws an additional card on each, placing one bet with each hand. The player then plays out the two separate hands in turn; except for a few restrictions, the hands are treated as independent new hands, with the player winning or losing their wager separately for each hand. Occasionally, in the case of ten-valued cards, some casinos allow splitting only when the cards have the identical ranks; for instance, a hand of 10-10 may be split, but not one of 10-king. However, usually all 10-value cards are treated the same. Doubling and further splitting of post-split hands may be restricted, and an ace and ten value card after a split are counted as a non-blackjack 21. Hitting split aces is usually not allowed. Non-controlling players may follow the controlling player by putting down an additional bet or decline to do so, instead associating their existing wager with one of the two post-split hands. In that case they must choose which hand to play behind before the second cards are drawn. Some casinos do not give non-controlling players this option, and require that the wager of a player not electing to split remains with the first of the two post-split hands.

text: Surrender (only available as first decision of a hand): Some games offer the option to "surrender" directly after the dealer has checked for blackjack (see below for variations). When the player surrenders, the house takes half the player's bet and returns the other half to the player; this terminates the player's interest in the hand.

text: Hand signals are used to assist the "eye in the sky", a person or video camera located above the table and sometimes concealed behind one-way glass. The eye in the sky usually makes a video recording of the table, which helps in resolving disputes and identifying dealer mistakes, and is also used to protect the casino against dealers who steal chips or players who cheat. The recording can further be used to identify advantage players whose activities, while legal, make them undesirable customers. In the event of a disagreement between a player's hand signals and their words, the hand signal takes precedence.[citation needed]

text: Each hand may normally "hit" as many times as desired so long as the total is not above hard 20. On reaching 21 (including soft 21), the hand is normally required to stand; busting is an irrevocable loss and the players' wagers are immediately forfeited to the house. After a bust or a stand, play proceeds to the next hand clockwise around the table. When the last hand has finished being played, the dealer reveals the hole card, and stands or draws further cards according to the rules of the game for dealer drawing. When the outcome of the dealer's hand is established, any hands with bets remaining on the table are resolved (usually in counterclockwise order): bets on losing hands are forfeited, the bet on a push is left on the table, and winners are paid out.

text: Insurance[edit]

text: If the dealer's upcard is an ace, the player is offered the option of taking "insurance" before the dealer checks the hole card.

text: Insurance is a side bet that the dealer has blackjack and is treated independently of the main wager. It pays 2:1 (meaning that the player receives two dollars for every dollar bet) and is available when the dealer's exposed card is an ace. The idea is that the dealer's second card has a fairly high probability (nearly one-third) to be ten-valued, giving the dealer blackjack and disappointment for the player. It is attractive (although not necessarily wise) for the player to insure against the possibility of a dealer blackjack by making a maximum "insurance" bet, in which case the "insurance proceeds" will make up for the concomitant loss on the original bet. The player may add up to half the value of their original bet to the insurance and these extra chips are placed on a portion of the table usually marked "Insurance pays 2 to 1".

text: Players with a blackjack may also take insurance, and in taking maximum insurance they commit themselves to winning an amount exactly equal to their main wager, regardless of the dealer's outcome. Fully insuring a blackjack against blackjack is thus referred to as "taking even money", and paid out immediately, before the dealer's hand is resolved; the players do not need to place more chips for the insurance wager.

text: Insurance bets are expected to lose money in the long run, because the dealer is likely to have blackjack less than one-third of the time. However the insurance outcome is strongly anti-correlated with that of the main wager, and if the player's priority is to reduce variation, they might choose to pay for this.

text: Furthermore, the insurance bet is susceptible to advantage play. It is advantageous to make an insurance bet whenever the hole card has more than a chance of one in three of being a ten. Advantage play techniques can sometimes identify such situations. In a multi-hand, face-up, single deck game, it is possible to establish whether insurance is a good bet simply by observing the other cards on the table after the deal; even if there are just 2 player hands exposed, and neither of their two initial cards is a ten, then 16 in 47 of the remaining cards are tens, which is larger than 1 in 3, so insurance is a good bet. This is an elementary example of the family of advantage play techniques known as card counting.

text: Bets to insure against blackjack are slightly less likely to be advantageous than insurance bets in general, since the ten in the player's blackjack makes it less likely that the dealer has blackjack too.[6]

text: Rule variations and effects on house edge[edit]

text: Note: where changes in the house edge due to changes in the rules are stated in percentage terms, the difference is usually stated here in percentage points, not percentage; strictly speaking if, say, an edge of 10% is reduced to 9%, the amount is reduced by ten percent, or by one percentage point.

text: The rules of casino blackjack are generally determined by law or regulation, which establishes certain rule variations allowed at the discretion of the casino. The rules of any particular game are generally posted on or near the table, failing which there is an expectation that casino staff will provide them on request. Over 100 variations of blackjack have been documented.[7]

text: As with all casino games, blackjack incorporates a "house edge", a statistical advantage for the casino that is built into the game. The advantage of the dealer's position in blackjack relative to the player comes from the fact that if the player busts, the player loses, regardless of whether the dealer subsequently busts. Nonetheless, blackjack players using basic strategy will lose less than 1% of their total wagered amount with strictly average luck; this is very favorable to the player compared to other casino games. The loss rate of players who deviate from basic strategy through ignorance is generally expected to be greater.

text: Dealer hits soft 17

text: Number of decks

text:
Number of decks
House advantage

Single deck
0.17%

Double deck
0.46%

Four decks
0.60%

Six decks
0.64%

Eight decks
0.65%

text: Surrender, for those games that allow it, is usually not permitted against a dealer blackjack; if the dealer's first card is an ace or ten, the hole card is checked to make sure there is no blackjack before surrender is offered. This rule protocol is consequently known as "late" surrender. The alternative, "early" surrender, gives player the option to surrender before the dealer checks for blackjack, or in a no-hole-card game. Early surrender is much more favorable to the player than late surrender. Most medium-strength hands should be surrendered against a dealer Ace if the hole card has not been checked.

text: For late surrender, however, while it is tempting to opt for surrender on any hand which will probably lose, the correct strategy is to only surrender on the very worst hands, because having even a one in four chance of winning the full bet is better than losing half the bet and pushing the other half, as entailed by surrendering.

text: In most non-U.S. casinos, a 'no hole card' game is played, meaning that the dealer does not draw nor consult his or her second card until after all players have finished making decisions. With no hole card, it is almost never correct basic strategy to double or split against a dealer ten or ace, since a dealer blackjack will result in the loss of the split and double bets; the only exception is with a pair of A's against a dealer 10, where it is still correct to split. In all other cases, a stand, hit or surrender is called for. For instance, holding 11 against a dealer 10, the correct strategy is to double in a hole card game (where the player knows the dealer's second card is not an ace), but to hit in a no hole card game. The no hole card rule adds approximately 0.11% to the house edge.

text: The "original bets only" rule variation appearing in certain no hole card games states that if the player's hand loses to a dealer blackjack, only the mandatory initial bet ("original") is forfeited, and all optional bets, meaning doubles and splits, are pushed. "Original bets only" is also known by the acronym OBO; it has the same effect on basic strategy and house edge as reverting to a hole card game.[8]

text: Blackjack strategy[edit]

text: Basic strategy[edit]

text: Each blackjack game has a basic strategy, which is playing a hand of any total value against any dealer's up-card, which loses the least money to the house in the long term.

text: An example of basic strategy is shown in the table below, and includes the following parameters:[9]

text:
Four to eight decks
The dealer hits on a soft 17
A double is allowed after a split
Only original bets are lost on dealer blackjack

text:
Player hand
Dealer's face-up card

2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
A

Hard totals (excluding pairs)

17–20
S
S
S
S
S
S
S
S
S
S

16
S
S
S
S
S
H
H
SU
SU
SU

15
S
S
S
S
S
H
H
H
SU
H

13–14
S
S
S
S
S
H
H
H
H
H

12
H
H
S
S
S
H
H
H
H
H

11
Dh
Dh
Dh
Dh
Dh
Dh
Dh
Dh
Dh
Dh

10
Dh
Dh
Dh
Dh
Dh
Dh
Dh
Dh
H
H

9
H
Dh
Dh
Dh
Dh
H
H
H
H
H

5–8
H
H
H
H
H
H
H
H
H
H

Soft totals

2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
A

A,9
S
S
S
S
S
S
S
S
S
S

A,8
S
S
S
S
Ds
S
S
S
S
S

A,7
Ds
Ds
Ds
Ds
Ds
S
S
H
H
H

A,6
H
Dh
Dh
Dh
Dh
H
H
H
H
H

A,4–A,5
H
H
Dh
Dh
Dh
H
H
H
H
H

A,2–A,3
H
H
H
Dh
Dh
H
H
H
H
H

Pairs

2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
A

A,A
SP
SP
SP
SP
SP
SP
SP
SP
SP
SP

10,10
S
S
S
S
S
S
S
S
S
S

9,9
SP
SP
SP
SP
SP
S
SP
SP
S
S

8,8
SP
SP
SP
SP
SP
SP
SP
SP
SP
SP

7,7
SP
SP
SP
SP
SP
SP
H
H
H
H

6,6
SP
SP
SP
SP
SP
H
H
H
H
H

5,5
Dh
Dh
Dh
Dh
Dh
Dh
Dh
Dh
H
H

4,4
H
H
H
SP
SP
H
H
H
H
H

2,2–3,3
SP
SP
SP
SP
SP
SP
H
H
H
H

text: Key:

text: The bulk of basic strategy is common to all blackjack games, with most rule variations calling for changes in only a few situations. For example, if the above game used the hit on soft 17 rule, common in Las Vegas Strip casinos, only 6 cells of the table would need to be changed: double on 11 vs. A, surrender 15 or 17 vs. A, double on A,7 vs. 2, double on A,8 vs. 6, surrender (if not allowed, then hit) on 8,8 vs. A. Also when playing basic strategy never take insurance or "even money."[9]

text: Estimates of the house edge for blackjack games quoted by casinos and gaming regulators are generally based on the assumption that the players follow basic strategy and do not systematically change their bet size.

text: Most blackjack games have a house edge of between 0.5% and 1%, placing blackjack among the cheapest casino table games. Casino promotions such as complimentary matchplay vouchers or 2:1 blackjack payouts allow the player to acquire an advantage without deviating from basic strategy.

text: Composition-dependent strategy[edit]

text: Basic strategy is based upon a player's point total and the dealer's visible card. Players may be able to improve on this decision by considering the precise composition of their hand, not just the point total. For example, players should ordinarily stand when holding 12 against a dealer 4. However, in a single deck game, players should hit if their 12 consists of a 10 and a 2. The presence of a 10 in the player's hand has two consequences:[10]

text:
It makes the player's 12 a worse hand to stand on (since the only way to avoid losing is for the dealer to go bust, which is less likely if there are fewer 10s left in the shoe).
It makes hitting safer, since the only way of going bust is to draw a 10, and this is less likely with a 10 already in the hand.

text: However, even when basic and composition-dependent strategy lead to different actions, the difference in expected reward is small, and it becomes even smaller with more decks. Using a composition-dependent strategy rather than basic strategy in a single deck game reduces the house edge by 4 in 10,000, which falls to 3 in 100,000 for a six-deck game.[11]

text: Advantage play[edit]

text: Blackjack has been a high-profile target for advantage players since the 1960s. Advantage play is the attempt to win more using skills such as memory, computation, and observation. These techniques, while generally legal, can be powerful enough to give the player a long-term edge in the game, making them an undesirable customer for the casino and potentially leading to ejection or blacklisting if they are detected. The main techniques of advantage play in blackjack are as follows:

text: Card counting[edit]

text: During the course of a blackjack shoe, the dealer exposes the dealt cards. Careful accounting of the exposed cards allows a player to make inferences about the cards which remain to be dealt. These inferences can be used in the following ways:

text:
Players can make larger bets when they have an advantage. For example, the players can increase the starting bet if there are many aces and tens left in the deck, in the hope of hitting a blackjack.
Players can deviate from basic strategy according to the composition of their undealt cards. For example, with many tens left in the deck, players might double down in more situations since there is a better chance of getting a good hand.

text: A card counting system assigns a point score to each rank of card (e.g., 1 point for 2–6, 0 points for 7–9 and −1 point for 10–A). When a card is exposed, a counter adds the score of that card to a running total, the 'count'. A card counter uses this count to make betting and playing decisions according to a table which they have learned. The count starts at 0 for a freshly shuffled deck for "balanced" counting systems. Unbalanced counts are often started at a value which depends on the number of decks used in the game.

text: Blackjack's house edge is usually between 0.5%–1% when players use basic strategy.[12] Card counting can give the player an edge of up to 2% over the house.[13]

text: Card counting is most rewarding near the end of a complete shoe when as few as possible cards remain. Single-deck games are therefore particularly susceptible to card counting. As a result, casinos are more likely to insist that players do not reveal their cards to one another in single-deck games. In games with more decks of cards, casinos limit penetration by ending the shoe and reshuffling when one or more decks remain undealt. Casinos also sometimes use a shuffling machine to reintroduce the exhausted cards every time a deck has been played.

text: Card counting is legal and is not considered cheating as long as the counter isn't using an external device,[14] but if a casino realizes a player is counting, the casino might inform them that they are no longer welcome to play blackjack. Sometimes a casino might ban a card counter from the property.[15]

text: The use of external devices to help counting cards is illegal in all US states that license blackjack card games.[16]

text: Shuffle tracking[edit]

text: Techniques other than card counting can swing the advantage of casino blackjack toward the player. All such techniques are based on the value of the cards to the player and the casino as originally conceived by Edward O. Thorp.[17] One technique, mainly applicable in multi-deck games, involves tracking groups of cards (also known as slugs, clumps, or packs) during the play of the shoe, following them through the shuffle, and then playing and betting accordingly when those cards come into play from the new shoe. Shuffle tracking requires excellent eyesight and powers of visual estimation but is more difficult to detect since the player's actions are largely unrelated to the composition of the cards in the shoe.[18]

text: Arnold Snyder's articles in Blackjack Forum magazine brought shuffle tracking to the general public. His book, The Shuffle Tracker's Cookbook, mathematically analyzed the player edge available from shuffle tracking based on the actual size of the tracked slug. Jerry L. Patterson also developed and published a shuffle-tracking method for tracking favorable clumps of cards and cutting them into play and tracking unfavorable clumps of cards and cutting them out of play.[19][20][21]

text: Identifying concealed cards[edit]

text: The player can also gain an advantage by identifying cards from distinctive wear markings on their backs, or by hole carding (observing during the dealing process the front of a card dealt face down). These methods are generally legal although their status in particular jurisdictions may vary.

text: Side bets[edit]

text: Many blackjack tables offer a side bet on various outcomes including:[22]

text:
Player hand and dealer's up card sum to 19, 20, or 21 ("Lucky Lucky")
Player initial hand is a pair ("Perfect pairs")
Player initial hand is suited, suited and connected, or a suited K-Q ("Royal match")
Player initial hand plus dealer's card makes a flush, straight, or three-of-a-kind poker hand ("21+3")
Player initial hand totals 20 ("Lucky Ladies")
Dealer upcard is in between the value of the players two cards ("In Bet")
First card drawn to the dealer will result in a dealer bust ("Bust It!")
One or both of the players cards is the same as the dealers card ("Match the Dealer")
Player allowed to make optional second hand, and effectively receive the hand of 10,8, or 18 without drawings cards ("Instant 18")

text: The side wager is typically placed in a designated area next to the box for the main wager. A player wishing to wager on a side bet is usually required to place a wager on blackjack. Some games require that the blackjack wager should equal or exceed any side bet wager. A non-controlling player of a blackjack hand is usually permitted to place a side bet regardless of whether the controlling player does so.

text: The house edge for side bets is generally far higher than for the blackjack game itself. Nonetheless side bets can be susceptible to card counting. A side count, designed specifically for a particular side bet, can improve the player edge. Most side games do not offer a sufficient win rate to justify the effort of advantage play; exceptions include "Lucky ladies" and "Over/Under".

text: In team play it is common for team members to be dedicated toward counting only a sidebet using a specialized count.

text: Blackjack tournaments[edit]

text: Blackjack can be played in tournament form. Players start with an equal numbers of chips; the goal is to finish among the top chip-holders. Depending on the number of competitors, tournaments may be held over several rounds, with one or two players qualifying from each table after a set number of deals to meet the qualifiers from the other tables in the next round. Another tournament format, Elimination Blackjack, drops the lowest-stacked player from the table at pre-determined points in the tournament. Good strategy for blackjack tournaments can differ from non-tournament strategy because of the added dimension of choosing the amount to be wagered. As in poker tournaments, players pay the casino an initial entry fee to participate in a tournament, and re-buys are sometimes permitted.

text: Video blackjack[edit]

text: Some casinos, as well as general betting outlets, provide blackjack among a selection of casino-style games at electronic consoles. Video blackjack game rules are generally more favorable to the house; e.g., paying out only even money for winning blackjacks. Video and online blackjack games deal each coup from a fresh shoe, rendering card counting much less effective.

text: Variants of the game[edit]

text: Blackjack is a member of a large family of traditional card games played recreationally all around the world. Most of these games have not been adapted for casino play. Furthermore, the casino game development industry is very active in producing blackjack variants, most of which are ultimately not adopted for widespread use in casinos. The following are the prominent twenty-one themed comparing card games which have been adapted or invented for use in casinos and have become established in the gambling industry.

text:
Spanish 21 provides players with many liberal blackjack rules, such as doubling down any number of cards (with the option to rescue, or surrender only one wager to the house), payout bonuses for five or more card 21s, 6–7–8 21s, 7–7–7 21s, late surrender, and player blackjacks always winning and player 21s always winning, at the cost of having no 10 cards in the deck (though there are jacks, queens, and kings). An unlicensed version of Spanish 21 played without a hole card is found in Australian casinos under the name "Pontoon" (presumably borrowed from the British recreational blackjack-like game "Pontoon" which has substantially different rules).
21st-Century Blackjack (also known as "Vegas Style" Blackjack) is found in California card rooms. In this form of the game, a player bust does not always result in an automatic loss; depending on the casino, the player can still push if the dealer busts as well, although the dealer typically has to bust with a higher total.
Double Exposure Blackjack deals the first two cards of the dealer's hand face up. Blackjacks pay even money, and players lose on ties; also, they can neither buy insurance nor can they surrender their hand (as both dealer's cards are exposed at the outset).
Double Attack Blackjack has very liberal blackjack rules and the option of increasing one's wager after seeing the dealer's up card. This game is dealt from a Spanish shoe, and blackjacks only pay even money.
Blackjack Switch is played over two hands whose second cards the player is allowed to interchange. For example, if the player is dealt 10–6 and 5–10, then the player can switch two cards to make hands of 10–10 and 6–5. Natural blackjacks are paid 1:1 instead of the standard 3:2, and a dealer 22 is a push.
Super Fun 21 allows a player to split a hand up to four times. If the player has six cards totaling 20, he automatically wins. Wins are paid 1:1.

text: Examples of the many local traditional and recreational blackjack-like games include French/German Blackjack, called Vingt-et-un (French: Twenty-one) or "Siebzehn und Vier" (German: Seventeen and Four). The French/German game does not allow splitting. An ace can only count as eleven, but two aces count as a blackjack. It is mostly played in private circles and barracks. A British variation is called "Pontoon", the name being probably a corruption of "Vingt-et-un".

text: TV show variations[edit]

text: Blackjack is also featured in various television shows. Here are a few shows inspired by the game.

text:
Gambit was a game show with Wink Martindale where couples answer questions to collect cards that could add up to 21.
Catch 21 is a game show with Alfonso Ribeiro from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. On this show, three players answer questions to earn cards in order to win cash and ties are not allowed.
From 1980 to 2006, there was a blackjack-based pricing game on The Price is Right, called Hit Me. In this game, six grocery products were used, and five of those products' prices were multiplied by various numbers from 2 to 10, but with the one remaining product having the exact price. In order to win a large prize, the contestant had to achieve a score of 21 (which was usually done by picking a product whose price was multiplied by ten and the one that was correctly priced), or beat the house with any score that did not exceed 21.

text: Blackjack Hall of Fame[edit]

text: In 2002, professional gamblers around the world were invited to nominate great blackjack players for admission into the Blackjack Hall of Fame. Seven members were inducted in 2002, with new people inducted every year after. The Hall of Fame is at the Barona Casino in San Diego. Members include Edward O. Thorp, author of the 1960s book Beat the Dealer which proved that the game could be beaten with a combination of basic strategy and card counting; Ken Uston, who popularized the concept of team play; Arnold Snyder, author and editor of the Blackjack Forum trade journal; Stanford Wong, author and popularizer of the "Wonging" technique of only playing at a positive count, and several others.

text: Blackjack in the arts[edit]

text: Novels have been written around blackjack and the possibility of winning games via some kind of method. Among these were The Blackjack Hijack (Charles Einstein, 1976), later produced as the TV movie Nowhere to Run, and Bringing Down the House (Ben Mezrich), also filmed as 21. An almost identical theme was shown in the 2004 Canadian film The Last Casino.

text: In The Hangover, an American comedy, four friends try to count cards to win back enough money to secure the release of their friend from the clutches of a notorious criminal they stole from the previous night while blacked out. A central part of the plot of Rain Man is that Raymond (Dustin Hoffman), an autistic savant, is able to win at blackjack by counting cards. In the 2014 film The Gambler we see Jim Bennett (Mark Wahlberg) playing high stakes Blackjack in order to win large sums of money. This movie displays different blackjack lingo and risky moves that have high rewards.


document_title: Black Death

question_text: where did the name black death come from

root

text: Black Death

text: Chronology

text: Origins of the disease

text: The plague disease, caused by Yersinia pestis, is enzootic (commonly present) in populations of fleas carried by ground rodents, including marmots, in various areas including Central Asia, Kurdistan, Western Asia, Northern India and Uganda.[10] Due to climate change in Asia, rodents began to flee the dried out grasslands to more populated areas, spreading the disease.[11] Nestorian graves dating to 1338–1339 near Lake Issyk Kul in Kyrgyzstan have inscriptions referring to plague and are thought by many epidemiologists to mark the outbreak of the epidemic, from which it could easily have spread to China and India.[12] In October 2010, medical geneticists suggested that all three of the great waves of the plague originated in China.[13] In China, the 13th-century Mongol conquest caused a decline in farming and trading. However, economic recovery had been observed at the beginning of the 14th century. In the 1330s, a large number of natural disasters and plagues led to widespread famine, starting in 1331, with a deadly plague arriving soon after.[14] Epidemics that may have included plague killed an estimated 25 million Chinese and other Asians during the 15 years before it reached Constantinople in 1347.[15][16]

tag: p

text: The disease may have travelled along the Silk Road with Mongol armies and traders or it could have come via ship.[17] By the end of 1346, reports of plague had reached the seaports of Europe: "India was depopulated, Tartary, Mesopotamia, Syria, Armenia were covered with dead bodies".[18]

text: Plague was reportedly first introduced to Europe via Genoese traders at the port city of Kaffa in the Crimea in 1347. After a protracted siege, during which the Mongol army under Jani Beg was suffering from the disease, the army catapulted the infected corpses over the city walls of Kaffa to infect the inhabitants. The Genoese traders fled, taking the plague by ship into Sicily and the south of Europe, whence it spread north.[19] Whether or not this hypothesis is accurate, it is clear that several existing conditions such as war, famine, and weather contributed to the severity of the Black Death.

text: European outbreak

text:
The seventh year after it began, it came to England and first began in the towns and ports joining on the seacoasts, in Dorsetshire, where, as in other counties, it made the country quite void of inhabitants so that there were almost none left alive.
... But at length it came to Gloucester, yea even to Oxford and to London, and finally it spread over all England and so wasted the people that scarce the tenth person of any sort was left alive.

Geoffrey the Baker, Chronicon Angliae

tag: div

text: There appear to have been several introductions into Europe. The plague reached Sicily in October 1347, carried by twelve Genoese galleys,[20] and rapidly spread all over the island. Galleys from Kaffa reached Genoa and Venice in January 1348, but it was the outbreak in Pisa a few weeks later that was the entry point to northern Italy. Towards the end of January, one of the galleys expelled from Italy arrived in Marseille.[21]

text: From Italy, the disease spread northwest across Europe, striking France, Spain, Portugal and England by June 1348, then turned and spread east through Germany and Scandinavia from 1348 to 1350. It was introduced in Norway in 1349 when a ship landed at Askøy, then spread to Bjørgvin (modern Bergen) and Iceland.[22] Finally it spread to northwestern Russia in 1351. The plague was somewhat less common in parts of Europe that had smaller trade relations with their neighbours, including the majority of the Basque Country, isolated parts of Belgium and the Netherlands, and isolated alpine villages throughout the continent.[23][24]

text: Modern researchers do not think that the plague ever became endemic in Europe or its rat population. The disease repeatedly wiped out the rodent carriers so that the fleas died out until a new outbreak from Central Asia repeated the process. The outbreaks have been shown to occur roughly 15 years after a warmer and wetter period in areas where plague is endemic in other species such as gerbils.[25][26]

text: Middle Eastern outbreak

text: The plague struck various regions in the Middle East during the pandemic, leading to serious depopulation and permanent change in both economic and social structures. As it spread to western Europe, the disease entered the region from southern Russia also. By autumn 1347, the plague reached Alexandria in Egypt, probably through the port's trade with Constantinople, and ports on the Black Sea. During 1347, the disease travelled eastward to Gaza, and north along the eastern coast to cities in Lebanon, Syria and Palestine, including Ashkelon, Acre, Jerusalem, Sidon, Damascus, Homs, and Aleppo. In 1348–1349, the disease reached Antioch. The city's residents fled to the north, most of them dying during the journey, but the infection had been spread to the people of Asia Minor.[citation needed]

text: Mecca became infected in 1349. During the same year, records show the city of Mawsil (Mosul) suffered a massive epidemic, and the city of Baghdad experienced a second round of the disease. In 1351 Yemen experienced an outbreak of the plague, coinciding with the return of Sultan al-Mujahid Ali of Yemen from imprisonment in Cairo. His party may have brought the disease with them from Egypt.[citation needed]

text: Signs and symptoms

text: Contemporary accounts of the plague are often varied or imprecise. The most commonly noted symptom was the appearance of buboes (or gavocciolos) in the groin, the neck and armpits, which oozed pus and bled when opened.[27] Boccaccio's description is graphic:

text: In men and women alike it first betrayed itself by the emergence of certain tumours in the groin or armpits, some of which grew as large as a common apple, others as an egg...From the two said parts of the body this deadly gavocciolo soon began to propagate and spread itself in all directions indifferently; after which the form of the malady began to change, black spots or livid making their appearance in many cases on the arm or the thigh or elsewhere, now few and large, now minute and numerous. As the gavocciolo had been and still was an infallible token of approaching death, such also were these spots on whomsoever they showed themselves.[28]

text: The only medical detail that is questionable in Boccaccio's description is that the gavocciolo was an 'infallible token of approaching death', as, if the bubo discharges, recovery is possible.[29]

text: This was followed by acute fever and vomiting of blood. Most victims died two to seven days after initial infection. Freckle-like spots and rashes,[30] which could have been caused by flea-bites, were identified as another potential sign of the plague.

text: Some accounts, like that of Lodewijk Heyligen, whose master the Cardinal Colonna died of the plague in 1348, noted a distinct form of the disease that infected the lungs and led to respiratory problems[27] and is identified with pneumonic plague.

text: It is said that the plague takes three forms. In the first people suffer an infection of the lungs, which leads to breathing difficulties. Whoever has this corruption or contamination to any extent cannot escape but will die within two days. Another form...in which boils erupt under the armpits,...a third form in which people of both sexes are attacked in the groin.[31]

text: Causes

text: Medical knowledge had stagnated during the Middle Ages. The most authoritative account at the time came from the medical faculty in Paris in a report to the king of France that blamed the heavens, in the form of a conjunction of three planets in 1345 that caused a "great pestilence in the air".[33] This report became the first and most widely circulated of a series of plague tracts that sought to give advice to sufferers. That the plague was caused by bad air became the most widely accepted theory. Today, this is known as the miasma theory. The word plague had no special significance at this time, and only the recurrence of outbreaks during the Middle Ages gave it the name that has become the medical term.

text: The importance of hygiene was recognised only in the nineteenth century; until then it was common that the streets were filthy, with live animals of all sorts around and human parasites abounding. A transmissible disease will spread easily in such conditions. One development as a result of the Black Death was the establishment of the idea of quarantine in Dubrovnik in 1377 after continuing outbreaks.[34]

text: The dominant explanation for the Black Death is the plague theory, which attributes the outbreak to Yersinia pestis, also responsible for an epidemic that began in southern China in 1865, eventually spreading to India. The investigation of the pathogen that caused the 19th-century plague was begun by teams of scientists who visited Hong Kong in 1894, among whom was the French-Swiss bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin, after whom the pathogen was named Yersinia pestis.[35] The mechanism by which Y. pestis was usually transmitted was established in 1898 by Paul-Louis Simond and was found to involve the bites of fleas whose midguts had become obstructed by replicating Y. pestis several days after feeding on an infected host. This blockage results in starvation and aggressive feeding behaviour by the fleas, which repeatedly attempt to clear their blockage by regurgitation, resulting in thousands of plague bacteria being flushed into the feeding site, infecting the host. The bubonic plague mechanism was also dependent on two populations of rodents: one resistant to the disease, which act as hosts, keeping the disease endemic, and a second that lack resistance. When the second population dies, the fleas move on to other hosts, including people, thus creating a human epidemic.[35]

text: The historian Francis Aidan Gasquet wrote about the Great Pestilence in 1893[36] and suggested that "it would appear to be some form of the ordinary Eastern or bubonic plague". He was able to adopt the epidemiology of the bubonic plague for the Black Death for the second edition in 1908, implicating rats and fleas in the process, and his interpretation was widely accepted for other ancient and medieval epidemics, such as the Justinian plague that was prevalent in the Eastern Roman Empire from 541 to 700 CE.[35]

text: An estimate of the mortality rate for the modern bubonic plague, following the introduction of antibiotics, is 11%, although it may be higher in underdeveloped regions.[37] Symptoms of the disease include fever of 38–41 °C (100–106 °F), headaches, painful aching joints, nausea and vomiting, and a general feeling of malaise. Left untreated, of those that contract the bubonic plague, 80 per cent die within eight days.[38] Pneumonic plague has a mortality rate of 90 to 95 per cent. Symptoms include fever, cough, and blood-tinged sputum. As the disease progresses, sputum becomes free-flowing and bright red. Septicemic plague is the least common of the three forms, with a mortality rate near 100%. Symptoms are high fevers and purple skin patches (purpura due to disseminated intravascular coagulation). In cases of pneumonic and particularly septicemic plague, the progress of the disease is so rapid that there would often be no time for the development of the enlarged lymph nodes that were noted as buboes.[39]

text: A number of alternative theories – implicating other diseases in the Black Death pandemic – have also been proposed by some modern scientists (see below – "Alternative Explanations").

text: DNA evidence

text: In October 2010, the open-access scientific journal PLoS Pathogens published a paper by a multinational team who undertook a new investigation into the role of Yersinia pestis in the Black Death following the disputed identification by Drancourt and Raoult in 1998. They assessed the presence of DNA/RNA with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) techniques for Y. pestis from the tooth sockets in human skeletons from mass graves in northern, central and southern Europe that were associated archaeologically with the Black Death and subsequent resurgences. The authors concluded that this new research, together with prior analyses from the south of France and Germany,[40] "ends the debate about the cause of the Black Death, and unambiguously demonstrates that Y. pestis was the causative agent of the epidemic plague that devastated Europe during the Middle Ages".[41]

text: The study also found that there were two previously unknown but related clades (genetic branches) of the Y. pestis genome associated with medieval mass graves. These clades (which are thought to be extinct) were found to be ancestral to modern isolates of the modern Y. pestis strains Y. p. orientalis and Y. p. medievalis, suggesting the plague may have entered Europe in two waves. Surveys of plague pit remains in France and England indicate the first variant entered Europe through the port of Marseille around November 1347 and spread through France over the next two years, eventually reaching England in the spring of 1349, where it spread through the country in three epidemics. Surveys of plague pit remains from the Dutch town of Bergen op Zoom showed the Y. pestis genotype responsible for the pandemic that spread through the Low Countries from 1350 differed from that found in Britain and France, implying Bergen op Zoom (and possibly other parts of the southern Netherlands) was not directly infected from England or France in 1349 and suggesting a second wave of plague, different from those in Britain and France, may have been carried to the Low Countries from Norway, the Hanseatic cities or another site.[41]

text: The results of the Haensch study have since been confirmed and amended. Based on genetic evidence derived from Black Death victims in the East Smithfield burial site in England, Schuenemann et al. concluded in 2011 "that the Black Death in medieval Europe was caused by a variant of Y. pestis that may no longer exist."[42] A study published in Nature in October 2011 sequenced the genome of Y. pestis from plague victims and indicated that the strain that caused the Black Death is ancestral to most modern strains of the disease.[43]

text: DNA taken from 25 skeletons from the 14th century found in London have shown the plague is a strain of Y. pestis that is almost identical to that which hit Madagascar in 2013.[44][45]

text: Alternative explanations

text: The plague theory was first significantly challenged by the work of British bacteriologist J. F. D. Shrewsbury in 1970, who noted that the reported rates of mortality in rural areas during the 14th-century pandemic were inconsistent with the modern bubonic plague, leading him to conclude that contemporary accounts were exaggerations.[35] In 1984 zoologist Graham Twigg produced the first major work to challenge the bubonic plague theory directly, and his doubts about the identity of the Black Death have been taken up by a number of authors, including Samuel K. Cohn, Jr. (2002 and 2013), David Herlihy (1997), and Susan Scott and Christopher Duncan (2001).[35]

text: It is recognised that an epidemiological account of the plague is as important as an identification of symptoms, but researchers are hampered by the lack of reliable statistics from this period. Most work has been done on the spread of the plague in England, and even estimates of overall population at the start vary by over 100% as no census was undertaken between the time of publication of the Domesday Book and the year 1377.[46] Estimates of plague victims are usually extrapolated from figures from the clergy.

text: In addition to arguing that the rat population was insufficient to account for a bubonic plague pandemic, sceptics of the bubonic plague theory point out that the symptoms of the Black Death are not unique (and arguably in some accounts may differ from bubonic plague); that transference via fleas in goods was likely to be of marginal significance; and that the DNA results may be flawed and might not have been repeated elsewhere, despite extensive samples from other mass graves.[35] Other arguments include the lack of accounts of the death of rats before outbreaks of plague between the 14th and 17th centuries; temperatures that are too cold in northern Europe for the survival of fleas; that, despite primitive transport systems, the spread of the Black Death was much faster than that of modern bubonic plague; that mortality rates of the Black Death appear to be very high; that, while modern bubonic plague is largely endemic as a rural disease, the Black Death indiscriminately struck urban and rural areas; and that the pattern of the Black Death, with major outbreaks in the same areas separated by 5 to 15 years, differs from modern bubonic plague—which often becomes endemic for decades with annual flare-ups.[35]

text: McCormick has suggested that earlier archaeologists were simply not interested in the "laborious" processes needed to discover rat remains.[47] Walløe complains that all of these authors "take it for granted that Simond's infection model, black rat → rat flea → human, which was developed to explain the spread of plague in India, is the only way an epidemic of Yersinia pestis infection could spread", whilst pointing to several other possibilities.[48] Similarly, Green has argued that greater attention is needed to the range of (especially non-commensal) animals that might be involved in the transmission of plague.[49]

text: A variety of alternatives to the Y. pestis have been put forward. Twigg suggested that the cause was a form of anthrax, and Norman Cantor (2001) thought it may have been a combination of anthrax and other pandemics. Scott and Duncan have argued that the pandemic was a form of infectious disease that they characterise as hemorrhagic plague similar to Ebola. Archaeologist Barney Sloane has argued that there is insufficient evidence of the extinction of a large number of rats in the archaeological record of the medieval waterfront in London and that the plague spread too quickly to support the thesis that the Y. pestis was spread from fleas on rats; he argues that transmission must have been person to person.[50][51] However, no single alternative solution has achieved widespread acceptance.[35] Many scholars arguing for the Y. pestis as the major agent of the pandemic suggest that its extent and symptoms can be explained by a combination of bubonic plague with other diseases, including typhus, smallpox and respiratory infections. In addition to the bubonic infection, others point to additional septicemic (a type of "blood poisoning") and pneumonic (an airborne plague that attacks the lungs before the rest of the body) forms of the plague, which lengthen the duration of outbreaks throughout the seasons and help account for its high mortality rate and additional recorded symptoms.[27] In 2014, scientists with Public Health England announced the results of an examination of 25 bodies exhumed from the Clerkenwell area of London, as well as of wills registered in London during the period, which supported the pneumonic hypothesis.[44]

text: Consequences

text: Death toll

text: There are no exact figures for the death toll; the rate varied widely by locality. In urban centres, the greater the population before the outbreak, the longer the duration of the period of abnormal mortality.[52] It killed some 75 to 200 million people in Eurasia.[1][2][3] According to medieval historian Philip Daileader in 2007:

text: The trend of recent research is pointing to a figure more like 45–50% of the European population dying during a four-year period. There is a fair amount of geographic variation. In Mediterranean Europe, areas such as Italy, the south of France and Spain, where plague ran for about four years consecutively, it was probably closer to 75–80% of the population. In Germany and England ... it was probably closer to 20%.[53]

text: A death rate as high as 60% in Europe has been suggested by Norwegian historian Ole Benedictow:

text: Detailed study of the mortality data available points to two conspicuous features in relation to the mortality caused by the Black Death: namely the extreme level of mortality caused by the Black Death, and the remarkable similarity or consistency of the level of mortality, from Spain in southern Europe to England in north-western Europe. The data is sufficiently widespread and numerous to make it likely that the Black Death swept away around 60 per cent of Europe's population. It is generally assumed that the size of Europe's population at the time was around 80 million. This implies that around 50 million people died in the Black Death.[54]

text: The most widely accepted estimate for the Middle East, including Iraq, Iran and Syria, during this time, is for a death rate of about a third.[55] The Black Death killed about 40% of Egypt's population.[56] Half of Paris's population of 100,000 people died. In Italy, the population of Florence was reduced from 110,000–120,000 inhabitants in 1338 down to 50,000 in 1351. At least 60% of the population of Hamburg and Bremen perished,[57] and a similar percentage of Londoners may have died from the disease as well.[44] In London approximately 62,000 people died between the years between 1346 and 1353.[11] While contemporary reports account of mass burial pits being created in response to the large numbers of dead, recent scientific investigations of a burial pit in Central London found well-preserved individuals to be buried in isolated, evenly spaced graves, suggesting at least some pre-planning and Christian burials at this time.[58] Before 1350, there were about 170,000 settlements in Germany, and this was reduced by nearly 40,000 by 1450.[59] In 1348, the plague spread so rapidly that before any physicians or government authorities had time to reflect upon its origins, about a third of the European population had already perished. In crowded cities, it was not uncommon for as much as 50% of the population to die.[35] The disease bypassed some areas, and the most isolated areas were less vulnerable to contagion. Monks and priests were especially hard-hit since they cared for victims of the Black Death.[60]

text: Persecutions

text: Renewed religious fervour and fanaticism bloomed in the wake of the Black Death. Some Europeans targeted "various groups such as Jews, friars, foreigners, beggars, pilgrims",[61] lepers,[61][62] and Romani, thinking that they were to blame for the crisis. Lepers, and other individuals with skin diseases such as acne or psoriasis, were singled out and exterminated throughout Europe.

text: Because 14th-century healers were at a loss to explain the cause, Europeans turned to astrological forces, earthquakes, and the poisoning of wells by Jews as possible reasons for the plague's emergence.[63] The governments of Europe had no apparent response to the crisis because no one knew its cause or how it spread. The mechanism of infection and transmission of diseases was little understood in the 14th century; many people believed the epidemic was a punishment by God for their sins. This belief led to the idea that the cure to the disease was to win God's forgiveness[64][citation needed]

text: There were many attacks against Jewish communities.[65] In February 1349, the citizens of Strasbourg murdered 2,000 Jews.[65] In August 1349, the Jewish communities in Mainz and Cologne were annihilated. By 1351, 60 major and 150 smaller Jewish communities had been destroyed.[66]

text: Recurrence

text: The plague repeatedly returned to haunt Europe and the Mediterranean throughout the 14th to 17th centuries.[67] According to Biraben, the plague was present somewhere in Europe in every year between 1346 and 1671.[68] The Second Pandemic was particularly widespread in the following years: 1360–1363; 1374; 1400; 1438–1439; 1456–1457; 1464–1466; 1481–1485; 1500–1503; 1518–1531; 1544–1548; 1563–1566; 1573–1588; 1596–1599; 1602–1611; 1623–1640; 1644–1654; and 1664–1667. Subsequent outbreaks, though severe, marked the retreat from most of Europe (18th century) and northern Africa (19th century).[69] According to Geoffrey Parker, "France alone lost almost a million people to the plague in the epidemic of 1628–31."[70]

text: In England, in the absence of census figures, historians propose a range of preincident population figures from as high as 7 million to as low as 4 million in 1300,[71] and a postincident population figure as low as 2 million.[72] By the end of 1350, the Black Death subsided, but it never really died out in England. Over the next few hundred years, further outbreaks occurred in 1361–1362, 1369, 1379–1383, 1389–1393, and throughout the first half of the 15th century.[73] An outbreak in 1471 took as much as 10–15% of the population, while the death rate of the plague of 1479–1480 could have been as high as 20%.[74] The most general outbreaks in Tudor and Stuart England seem to have begun in 1498, 1535, 1543, 1563, 1589, 1603, 1625, and 1636, and ended with the Great Plague of London in 1665.[75]

text: In 1466, perhaps 40,000 people died of the plague in Paris.[76] During the 16th and 17th centuries, the plague was present in Paris around 30 per cent of the time.[77] The Black Death ravaged Europe for three years before it continued on into Russia, where the disease was present somewhere in the country 25 times between 1350 and 1490.[78] Plague epidemics ravaged London in 1563, 1593, 1603, 1625, 1636, and 1665,[79] reducing its population by 10 to 30% during those years.[80] Over 10% of Amsterdam's population died in 1623–1625, and again in 1635–1636, 1655, and 1664.[81] Plague occurred in Venice 22 times between 1361 and 1528.[82] The plague of 1576–1577 killed 50,000 in Venice, almost a third of the population.[83] Late outbreaks in central Europe included the Italian Plague of 1629–1631, which is associated with troop movements during the Thirty Years' War, and the Great Plague of Vienna in 1679. Over 60% of Norway's population died in 1348–1350.[84] The last plague outbreak ravaged Oslo in 1654.[85]

text: In the first half of the 17th century, a plague claimed some 1.7 million victims in Italy, or about 14% of the population.[86] In 1656, the plague killed about half of Naples' 300,000 inhabitants.[87] More than 1.25 million deaths resulted from the extreme incidence of plague in 17th-century Spain.[88] The plague of 1649 probably reduced the population of Seville by half.[89] In 1709–1713, a plague epidemic that followed the Great Northern War (1700–1721, Sweden v. Russia and allies)[90] killed about 100,000 in Sweden,[91] and 300,000 in Prussia.[89] The plague killed two-thirds of the inhabitants of Helsinki,[92] and claimed a third of Stockholm's population.[93] Europe's last major epidemic occurred in 1720 in Marseille.[84]

text: The Black Death ravaged much of the Islamic world.[94] Plague was present in at least one location in the Islamic world virtually every year between 1500 and 1850.[95] Plague repeatedly struck the cities of North Africa. Algiers lost 30,000–50,000 inhabitants to it in 1620–1621, and again in 1654–1657, 1665, 1691, and 1740–1742.[96] Plague remained a major event in Ottoman society until the second quarter of the 19th century. Between 1701 and 1750, thirty-seven larger and smaller epidemics were recorded in Constantinople, and an additional thirty-one between 1751 and 1800.[97] Baghdad has suffered severely from visitations of the plague, and sometimes two-thirds of its population has been wiped out.[98]

text: Third plague pandemic

text: The third plague pandemic (1855–1859) started in China in the mid-19th century, spreading to all inhabited continents and killing 10 million people in India alone.[99] Twelve plague outbreaks in Australia between 1900 and 1925 resulted in well over 1,000 deaths, chiefly in Sydney. This led to the establishment of a Public Health Department there which undertook some leading-edge research on plague transmission from rat fleas to humans via the bacillus Yersinia pestis.[100]

text: The first North American plague epidemic was the San Francisco plague of 1900–1904, followed by another outbreak in 1907–1908.[101][102][103][104][105][106][107] From 1944 through 1993, 362 cases of human plague were reported in the United States; approximately 90% occurred in four western states: Arizona, California, Colorado, and New Mexico.[108]

text: Modern treatment methods include insecticides, the use of antibiotics, and a plague vaccine. The plague bacterium could develop drug resistance and again become a major health threat. One case of a drug-resistant form of the bacterium was found in Madagascar in 1995.[109] A further outbreak in Madagascar was reported in November 2014.[110] In October 2017 the deadliest outbreak of the plague in modern times hit Madagascar, killing 170 people and infecting thousands.[111]

text: Names

text: The 12th-century French physician Gilles de Corbeil's On the Signs and Symptoms of Diseases (Latin: De signis et sinthomatibus egritudinum) uses the phrase "black death" (atra mors) to refer to a pestilential fever (febris pestilentialis).[112]

text: Writers contemporary with the plague referred to the event as the "Great Mortality"[113] or the "Great Plague".[63]

text: The phrase "black death" (mors nigra) was used in 1350 by Simon de Covino or Couvin, a Belgian astronomer, who wrote the poem "On the Judgment of the Sun at a Feast of Saturn" (De judicio Solis in convivio Saturni), which attributes the plague to a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn.[114] In 1908, Gasquet claimed that use of the name atra mors for the 14th-century epidemic first appeared in a 1631 book on Danish history by J. I. Pontanus: "Commonly and from its effects, they called it the black death" (Vulgo & ab effectu atram mortem vocatibant).[115] The name spread through Scandinavia and then Germany, gradually becoming attached to the mid 14th-century epidemic as a proper name.[116] In England, it was not until 1823, that the medieval epidemic was first called the Black Death.[117]


document_title: Flood control

question_text: a barrier that runs across a river or stream to control the flow of water

text: Flood control

text: Causes of floods[edit]

text: Floods are caused by many factors or a combination of any of these generally prolonged heavy rainfall, [locally concentrated or throughout a catchment area], highly accelerated snowmelt, severe winds over water, unusual high tides, tsunamis, or failure of dams, levees, retention ponds, or other structures that retained the water. Flooding can be exacerbated by increased amounts of impervious surface or by other natural hazards such as wildfires, which reduce the supply of vegetation that can absorb rainfall.

text: Periodic floods occur on many rivers, forming a surrounding region known as the flood plain.

text: During times of rain, some of the water is retained in ponds or soil, some is absorbed by grass and vegetation, some evaporates, and the rest travels over the land as surface runoff. Floods occur when ponds, lakes, riverbeds, soil, and vegetation cannot absorb all the water. Water then runs off the land in quantities that cannot be carried within stream channels or retained in natural ponds, lakes, and man-made reservoirs. About 30 percent of all precipitation becomes runoff[1] and that amount might be increased by water from melting snow. River flooding is often caused by heavy rain, sometimes increased by melting snow. A flood that rises rapidly, with little or no warning, is called a flash flood. Flash floods usually result from intense rainfall over a relatively small area, or if the area was already saturated from previous precipitation.

text: Severe winds over water[edit]

text: Even when rainfall is relatively light, the shorelines of lakes and bays can be flooded by severe winds—such as during hurricanes—that blow water into the shore areas.

text: Unusual high tides[edit]

text: Coastal areas are sometimes flooded by unusually high tides, such as spring tides, especially when compounded by high winds and storm surges.

text: Effects of floods[edit]

text: Flooding has many impacts. It damages property and endangers the lives of humans and other species. Rapid water runoff causes soil erosion and concomitant sediment deposition elsewhere (such as further downstream or down a coast). The spawning grounds for fish and other wildlife habitats can become polluted or completely destroyed. Some prolonged high floods can delay traffic in areas which lack elevated roadways. Floods can interfere with drainage and economical use of lands, such as interfering with farming. Structural damage can occur in bridge abutments, bank lines, sewer lines, and other structures within floodways. Waterway navigation and hydroelectric power are often impaired. Financial losses due to floods are typically millions of dollars each year, with the worst floods in recent U.S. history having cost billions of dollars.

text: Benefits of flooding[edit]

text: There are many disruptive effects of flooding on human settlements and economic activities. However, flooding can bring benefits, such as making soil more fertile and providing nutrients in which it is deficient. Periodic flooding was essential to the well-being of ancient communities along the Tigris-Euphrates Rivers, the Nile River, the Indus River, the Ganges and the Yellow River, among others. The viability for hydrologically based renewable sources of energy is higher in flood-prone regions.

text: Detection[edit]

text: This is the method used for remote sensing the disasters. Detection of disasters such as floods, earthquakes, and explosions are quite complex in previous days and range of detection is inappropriate. But, it came to possibilities by using Multi temporal visualization of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images. But to obtain the good SAR images perfect spatial registration and very precise calibration are necessary to specify changes that have occurred. Calibration of SAR is very complex and also a sensitive problem. Possibly errors may occur after calibration that involves data fusion and visualization process. Traditional image pre-processing cannot be used here due to the on-Gaussian of radar back scattering, but a processing method called "cross calibration/normalization" is used to solve this problem. The application generates a single disaster image called "fast-ready disaster map" from multitemporal SAR images. These maps are generated without user interaction and helps in providing immediate first aid to the people. This process also provides image enhancement and comparison between numerous images using data fusion and visualization process. This proposed processing includes filtering, histogram truncation and equalization steps. The process also helps in identifying the permanent waters and other classes by combined composition of pre-disaster and post-disaster images into a color image for better identity.[2]

text: Methods of controlling floods[edit]

text: Some methods of flood control have been practiced since ancient times.[1] These methods include planting vegetation to retain extra water, terracing hillsides to slow flow downhill, and the construction of floodways (man-made channels to divert floodwater).[1] Other techniques include the construction of levees, lakes, dams, reservoirs,[1] retention ponds to hold extra water during times of flooding.

text: Dams[edit]

text: Many dams and their associated reservoirs are designed completely or partially to aid in flood protection and control. Many large dams have flood-control reservations in which the level of a reservoir must be kept below a certain elevation before the onset of the rainy/summer melt season to allow a certain amount of space in which floodwaters can fill. The term dry dam refers to a dam that serves purely for flood control without any conservation storage (e.g. Mount Morris Dam, Seven Oaks Dam).

text: Diversion canals[edit]

text: Floods can be controlled by redirecting excess water to purpose-built canals or floodways, which in turn divert the water to temporary holding ponds or other bodies of water where there is a lower risk or impact to flooding. Examples of flood control channels include the Red River Floodway that protects the City of Winnipeg (Canada) and the Manggahan Floodway that protects the City of Manila (Philippines).

text: Floodplains and groundwater replenishment[edit]

text: Excess water can be used for groundwater replenishment by diversion onto land that can absorb the water. This technique can reduce the impact of later droughts by using the ground as a natural reservoir. It is being used in California, where orchards and vineyards can be flooded without damaging crops,[3] or in other places wilderness areas have been re-engineered to act as floodplains.[4]

text: River defences[edit]

text: In many countries, rivers are prone to floods and are often carefully managed. Defenses such as levees, bunds, reservoirs, and weirs are used to prevent rivers from bursting their banks.

text: A weir, also known as a lowhead dam, is most often used to create millponds, but on the Humber River in Toronto, a weir was built near Raymore Drive to prevent a recurrence of the flood damage caused by Hurricane Hazel in October 1954.

text: Coastal defenses[edit]

text: Coastal flooding has been addressed in Europe and the Americas with coastal defences, such as sea walls, beach nourishment, and barrier islands.

text: Tide gates are used in conjunction with dykes and culverts. They can be placed at the mouth of streams or small rivers, where an estuary begins or where tributary streams, or drainage ditches connect to sloughs. Tide gates close during incoming tides to prevent tidal waters from moving upland, and open during outgoing tides to allow waters to drain out via the culvert and into the estuary side of the dike. The opening and closing of the gates is driven by a difference in water level on either side of the gate.[5]

text: Self-closing flood barrier[edit]

text: The self-closing flood barrier (SCFB) is a flood defense system designed to protect people and property from inland waterway floods caused by heavy rainfall, gales or rapid melting snow.[citation needed] The SCFB can be built to protect residential properties and whole communities, as well as industrial or other strategic areas. The barrier system is constantly ready to deploy in a flood situation, it can be installed in any length and uses the rising flood water to deploy. Barrier systems have already been built and installed in Belgium, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Thailand, United Kingdom, Vietnam, Australia, Russia and the United States. Millions of documents at the National Archives building in Washington DC are protected by two SCFBs.[citation needed]

text: Temporary perimeter barriers[edit]

text: When permanent defenses fail, emergency measures such as sandbags, hydrosacks, Floodstop flood barriers or portable inflatable tubes are used.

text: In 1988, a method of using water to control was discovered. This was accomplished by containing 2 parallel tubes within a third outer tube. When filled, this structure formed a non-rolling wall of water that can control 80 percent of its height in external water depth, with dry ground behind it. Eight foot tall water filled barriers were used to surround Fort Calhoun Nuclear Generating Station during the 2011 Missouri River Flooding. Instead of trucking in sandbag material for a flood, stacking it, then trucking it out to a hazmat disposal site, flood control can be accomplished by using the on site water. However, these are not fool proof. A 8 feet (2.4 m) high 2,000 feet (610 m) long water filled rubber flood berm that surrounded portions of the plant was punctured by a skid-steer loader and it collapsed flooding a portion of the facility.[6]

text: In 1999, A group of Norwegian Engineers founded and patented Aquafence. A transportable, removable, and reusable flood barrier which uses the water's weight against itself. In 2013, AquaFence was awarded the highest level USA ANSI Certification after more than one year of testing of the system by US ARMY Corps of Engineers as well as parts testing and production review by FM Global. Both commercial and municipal customers spanning across The United States of America, Europe and Asia. In the US alone, AquaFence removable flood panels are protecting more than $10 billion worth of real estate as well as cities and public utilities.[7][promotional language]

text: A similar technology is the Water-Gate Flood barrier, a rapid-response barrier which can be rolled out in a matter of minutes. It is unique in the way that it self deploys using the weight of water to hold it back. The product has been FM Approved following testing from the US Army. It is used in 30 countries around the world, and notably by the Environment Agency in the UK.

text: Hazard reduction[edit]

text: Strategic retreat[edit]

text: One way of reducing the damage caused by flooding is to remove buildings from flood-prone areas, leaving them as parks or returning them to wilderness. Floodplain buyout programs have been operated in places like New Jersey (both before and after Hurricane Sandy), [8] Charlotte, North Carolina,[9] and Missouri.[10]

text: In the United States, FEMA produces flood insurance rate maps that identify areas of future risk, enabling local governments to apply zoning regulations to prevent or minimize property damage.

text: Resilience[edit]

text: Buildings and other urban infrastructure can be designed so that even if a flood does happen, the city can recover quickly and costs are minimized. For example, homes can be put on stilts,[11] electrical and HVAC equipment can be put on the roof instead of in the basement, and subway entrances and tunnels can have built-in movable water barriers.[12] New York City began a substantial effort to plan and build for flood reslience after Hurricane Sandy.[13]

text: Flood control by continent[edit]

text: Americas[edit]

text: An elaborate system of flood way defenses can be found in the Canadian province of Manitoba. The Red River flows northward from the United States, passing through the city of Winnipeg (where it meets the Assiniboine River) and into Lake Winnipeg. As is the case with all north-flowing rivers in the temperate zone of the Northern Hemisphere, snow melt in southern sections may cause river levels to rise before northern sections have had a chance to completely thaw. This can lead to devastating flooding, as occurred in Winnipeg during the spring of 1950. To protect the city from future floods, the Manitoba government undertook the construction of a massive system of diversions, dikes, and flood ways (including the Red River Floodway and the Portage Diversion). The system kept Winnipeg safe during the 1997 flood which devastated many communities upriver from Winnipeg, including Grand Forks, North Dakota and Ste. Agathe, Manitoba.

text: In the United States, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is the lead flood control agency.[14] After Hurricane Sandy, New York City's Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) initiated multiple flood barrier projects to protect the transit assets in Manhattan. In one case, the MTA's New York City Transit Authority (NYCT) sealed subway entrances in lower Manhattan using a deployable fabric cover system called Flex-Gate,[15] a system that protects the subway entrances against 14 feet (4.3 m) of water.[16] Extreme storm flood protection levels have been revised based on new Federal Emergency Management Agency guidelines for 100-year and 500-year design flood elevations.[17][18]

text: In the New Orleans Metropolitan Area, 35 percent of which sits below sea level, is protected by hundreds of miles of levees and flood gates. This system failed catastrophically, with numerous breaks, during Hurricane Katrina (2005) in the city proper and in eastern sections of the Metro Area, resulting in the inundation of approximately 50 percent of the metropolitan area, ranging from a few inches to twenty feet in coastal communities.

text: The Morganza Spillway provides a method of diverting water from the Mississippi River when a river flood threatens New Orleans, Baton Rouge and other major cities on the lower Mississippi. It is the largest of a system of spillways and floodways along the Mississippi. Completed in 1954, the spillway has been opened twice, in 1973 and in 2011.

text: In an act of successful flood prevention, the federal government offered to buy out flood-prone properties in the United States in order to prevent repeated disasters after the 1993 flood across the Midwest. Several communities accepted and the government, in partnership with the state, bought 25,000 properties which they converted into wetlands. These wetlands act as a sponge in storms and in 1995, when the floods returned, the government did not have to expend resources in those areas.[19]

text: Asia[edit]

text: In India, Bangladesh and China, flood diversion areas are rural areas that are deliberately flooded in emergencies in order to protect cities.[20]

text: The consequences of deforestation and changing land use on the risk and severity of flooding are subjects of discussion. In assessing the impacts of Himalayan deforestation on the Ganges-Brahmaputra Lowlands, it was found that forests would not have prevented or significantly reduced flooding in the case of an extreme weather event.[21] However, more general or overview studies agree on the negative impacts that deforestation has on flood safety - and the positive effects of wise land use and reforestation.[22][23]

text: Many have proposed that loss of vegetation (deforestation) will lead to an increased risk of flooding. With natural forest cover the flood duration should decrease. Reducing the rate of deforestation should improve the incidents and severity of floods.[24]

text: Africa[edit]

text: In Egypt, both the Aswan Dam (1902) and the Aswan High Dam (1976) have controlled various amounts of flooding along the Nile River.

text: Europe[edit]

text: Following the misery and destruction caused by the 1910 Great Flood of Paris, the French government built a series of reservoirs called Les Grands Lacs de Seine (or Great Lakes) which helps remove pressure from the Seine during floods, especially the regular winter flooding.[25]

text: London is protected from flooding by a huge mechanical barrier across the River Thames, which is raised when the water level reaches a certain point (see: Thames Barrier).

text: Venice has a similar arrangement, although it is already unable to cope with very high tides. The defenses of both London and Venice will be rendered inadequate if sea levels continue to rise.

text: The largest and most elaborate flood defenses can be found in the Netherlands, where they are referred to as Delta Works with the Oosterschelde dam as its crowning achievement. These works were built in response to the North Sea flood of 1953, in the southwestern part of the Netherlands. The Dutch had already built one of the world's largest dams in the north of the country. The Afsluitdijk closing occurred in 1932.

text: The Saint Petersburg Flood Prevention Facility Complex was completed in 2008, in Russia, to protect Saint Petersburg from storm surges. It also has a main traffic function, as it completes a ring road around Saint Petersburg. Eleven dams extend for 25.4 kilometres (15.8 mi) and stand 8 metres (26 ft) above water level.

text: Flood clean-up safety[edit]

text: Clean-up activities following floods often pose hazards to workers and volunteers involved in the effort. Potential dangers include electrical hazards, carbon monoxide exposure, musculoskeletal hazards, heat or cold stress, motor vehicle-related dangers, fire, drowning, and exposure to hazardous materials. Because flooded disaster sites are unstable, clean-up workers might encounter sharp jagged debris, biological hazards in the flood water, exposed electrical lines, blood or other body fluids, and animal and human remains. In planning for and reacting to flood disasters, managers provide workers with hard hats, goggles, heavy work gloves, life jackets, and watertight boots with steel toes and insoles.[26]

text: Development of technology[edit]

text: Europe is at the forefront of the flood control technology, with low-lying countries such as the Netherlands and Belgium developing techniques that can serve as examples to other countries facing similar problems.[27]

text: After Hurricane Katrina, the US state of Louisiana sent politicians to the Netherlands to take a tour of the complex and highly developed flood control system in place in the Netherlands.[28] With a BBC article quoting experts as saying 70 percent more people will live in delta cities by 2050, the number of people impacted by a rise in sea level will greatly increase.[29] The Netherlands has one of the best flood control systems in the world and new ways to deal with water are constantly being developed and tested, such as the underground storage of water, storing water in reservoirs in large parking garages or on playgrounds,[29][30] Rotterdam started a project to construct a floating housing development of 120 acres (0.49 km2) to deal with rising sea levels.[31] Several approaches, from high-tech sensors detecting imminent levee failure to movable semi-circular structures closing an entire river, are being developed or used around the world. Regular maintenance of hydraulic structures, however, is another crucial part of flood control.[32]


document_title: Nest learning thermostat

question_text: when did the nest 3rd generation come out

text: Nest learning thermostat

text: Specifications[edit]

text:
Device
Photo
Version
Released
Wi-Fi
802.15.4
24 V
120–
240 V
Multiple
Zones
1 – 2
Stage
Cooling
1 – 3
Stage
Heating
Forced
Air
Radiant
Heat
Pump
Oil
Gas
Electric
Hybrid
Systems
Humidistat

1.10
Q4
2011
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Single
Stage
Only
1–2
stage
only
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
No

1.12
Q1
2012
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Single
Stage
Only
1–2
stage
only
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
No

2.6
Q3
2012
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Both
All
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

2.8
Q3
2013
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Both
All
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

5.4
Q4
2015
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Both
All
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

E
Q3
2017
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Both
1–2
stage
only
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No

tag: table

text: Note Gen E can support two-stage cooling OR two-stage heating OR heatpump due to a shared multi-use terminal.

tag: ul

text: SKUs / Model numbers[edit]

text:
T100577 is 1st Generation, released only in the US
T200377 is 2nd Generation, UK release
T200477 is 2nd Generation, Canada release
T200577 is 2nd Generation, US release
T200677 is 2nd Generation, France, Netherlands, and Belgium release
T3007ES is 3rd Generation, US release[6][7]
T3010FD is 3rd Generation, France release[8]
T3010GB is 3rd Generation, UK release[9][10]
T3016US is 3rd Generation - black ring, US release[11]
T3017US is 3rd Generation - white ring, US release
T3021US is 3rd Generation - copper ring, US release
T4000ES is Thermostat E, US release[12][13]

text:
T200477 and T200577 are technically the same[14]
T200377 and T200677 are technically the same, except for the power plug used for the USB charger[15]

text: Hardware[edit]

text:
Generation
Release Date

1st
October 25, 2011

2nd
October 2, 2012

3rd
September 1, 2015

E
August 31, 2017

text: Nest is compatible with most standard HVAC systems that use central heating and cooling and uses industry standard connections to facilitate the control of these appliances.[16]

text: Nest consists of two primary pieces of hardware. The display contains the main printed circuit board (PCB) and rotating ring, and the base (pictured) houses the connection terminals, bubble level, and holes for wall anchors. Neither can function independently; if separated, the display becomes inactive until reconnected to the base.[17]

text: A special version of Nest is available in Europe, which is capable of controlling 120–240 V heating systems. The Nest is paired with a "Heat Link" device, which contains the circuitry required for controlling the mains-voltage heating system.[18]

text: Software[edit]

text: The Nest Thermostat is built around an operating system that allows interaction with the thermostat via spinning and clicking of its control wheel, which brings up option menus for switching from heating to cooling, access to device settings, energy history, and scheduling. Users can control Nest without a touch screen or other input device[19] . As the thermostat is connected to the Internet, the company can push updates to fix bugs, improve performance and add additional features. For updates to occur automatically, the thermostat must be connected to Wi‑Fi and the battery must have at least a 3.7 V charge to give enough power to complete the download and installation of the update.[20]

text: The Nest Thermostat has had a number of software updates.[21] A recent security update enables two factor authentication.[22]

text: Many have commented on the company's "Nest Community" regarding the lack of prominent display of the current temperature.[20]

text: The operating system itself is based on Linux 2.6.37 and many other free software components.[23] To comply with the terms of the GPLv3 license under which some components are available, Nest Labs also provides a special firmware image which will unlock the system so that it will accept unsigned firmware images. While the thermostat software by Nest Labs itself remains proprietary, a third party has reimplemented the basic logic in an open source replacement called FreeAbode.

text: Weave[edit]

text: Nest devices interconnect with each other using a protocol called Weave, which is based on IEEE 802.15.4 and Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n.[24]

text: Availability[edit]

text: Nest is available for sale in the United States, Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Belgium, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Italy, and Spain.[25] It is, however, compatible with many heating and cooling automation systems in other countries.[26] Nest Labs have surveyed existing users known to be outside the areas where it is officially available. Use of the thermostat outside the United States and Canada is complicated by the software setting time and other functions based on the ZIP code. For international users this means they must either disable Wi‑Fi to set the time correctly or use the nearest U.S. zipcode which may result in erratic behavior as the thermostat makes faulty assumptions about inactivity corresponding with either sleep or the home's occupants being away.[27]

text: In 2013 a man-in-the-middle hack potentially allowed worldwide users to set up their timezone and local weather.[28]

text: In an effort to increase the number of homes using their learning thermostats, Nest began to partner with energy companies. In February 2014, Direct Energy and Nest laboratories launched their Comfort and Control plan. The plan allowed Canadian customers in Alberta to receive a learning thermostat when they signed up for a five-year electricity contract.[29] In April 2014, Nest announced a partnership with the United Kingdom energy supplier nPower. The partnership offers customers a cut on the Nest installation price and locked energy prices for 5 years, when customers receive both gas and electricity from nPower and paying with direct debit.[30] In June 2014, Direct Energy and Nest Laboratories expanded the package to Direct Energy's United States market.[31]


document_title: 101 Dalmatians (1996 film)

question_text: who played cruella de vil in 101 dalmatians

text: 101 Dalmatians (1996 film)

text: Plot[edit]

text: American video game designer Roger Dearly (Jeff Daniels) lives with his pet dalmatian Pongo in London. One day, Pongo sets his eyes on a beautiful female dalmatian named Perdy. After a frantic chase through the streets of London that ends in St. James's Park, Roger discovers that Pongo likes Perdy. Her owner, Anita Campbell-Green (Joely Richardson) falls in love with Roger when they meet. They both fall into the lake as a result of their dogs chasing each other, but they return to Roger's home and Anita accepts his proposal. They get married along with Perdita and Pongo. Anita works as a fashion designer at the House of de Vil. Her boss, the pampered and very glamorous Cruella de Vil (Glenn Close), has a deep passion for fur, going so far as to have a taxidermist, Mr Skinner, skin a white tiger at the London Zoo to make it into a rug for her. Anita, inspired by her dalmatian, designs a coat made with spotted fur. Cruella is intrigued by the idea of making garments out of actual dalmatians, and finds it amusing that it would seem as if she was wearing Anita's dog.

text: Anita soon discovers that Perdy is pregnant and is then informed by Nanny (Joan Plowright) that she (Anita) is, too, much to her shock. Some time later, Cruella visits their home and expresses contempt upon meeting Roger. Her initial disgust at them having a baby turns to excitement when she finds out Perdy is expecting too. Several weeks later, she returns when a litter of 15 puppies are born and offers Roger and Anita £7,500 for them, but they declined her offer. Enraged, Cruella fires Anita and vows revenge against her and Roger. One winter evening, she has her henchmen, Jasper and Horace (Hugh Laurie and Mark Williams) break into their home and steal the puppies, while Roger and Anita are walking in the park with Pongo and Perdy. Along with 84 other dalmatians that were previously stolen, they deliver them to her ancient country estate, De Vil Mansion. Cruella also hires Skinner to kill and skin them to create her coat.

text: With the family devastated at the loss of their puppies, Pongo uses the twilight bark to carry the message via the dogs and other animals of Britain, while Roger and Anita notify the Metropolitan Police. A dog who had witnessed the stolen puppies follows Jasper and Horace to the mansion, and finds all of them inside, before helping them escape under the duo's noses. They make their way to a nearby farm, where they are later joined by Pongo and Perdy. Cruella arrives at the mansion and soon discovers what has happened. Angry with the thieves' failure, she decides to carry out the job herself, while Jasper and Horace attempt to search for them also. After several mishaps, Jasper and Horace discover nearby police on the hunt for Cruella and her henchmen and hand themselves in, joining Skinner who was beaten earlier while trying to kill Lucky (one of the 15 puppies), who had been left behind. Meanwhile, Cruella tracks the puppies to the farm where they are hiding and tries to retrieve them. However, the animals outwit her, cause her to fall into a vat of molasses and get thrown through a window into a pig pen. Shortly afterwards, the fleeing dalmatians (including Lucky) are found and sent home via the Suffolk Constabulary, while those looking for Cruella arrive at the farm to arrest her. In the police van, she belittles Jasper, Horace, and Skinner for their incompetence before they are sprayed by a skunk which she had mistaken for her bag. Pongo, Perdy and their puppies are reunited with Roger and Anita.

text: After being informed that the remaining 84 puppies have no home to go to, as they have not been claimed by their original owners, they decide to adopt them, bringing the total to 101. Roger designs a successful video game featuring dalmatian puppies as the protagonists and Cruella as the villain and they move to the countryside with their millions. Roger and Anita have a baby daughter, and a year later Anita becomes pregnant again and the puppies grew up.

text: Cast[edit]

text:
Glenn Close as Cruella De Vil
Jeff Daniels as Roger Dearly
Joely Richardson as Anita Campbell-Green-Dearly
Joan Plowright as Nanny The Housekeeper
Hugh Laurie as Jasper
Mark Williams as Horace
Tim McInnerny as Alonzo
John Shrapnel as Mr. Skinner
Hugh Fraser as Frederick
Zohren Weiss as Herbert
Frank Welker as Pongo & Perdy (voice)

text: Production[edit]

text: The role of Cruella had been previously offered to Sigourney Weaver (Close took it after finishing her run in the musical Sunset Boulevard). Cathy Moriarty was briefly considered for the role, but was later deemed too frightening for a children's film after doing a screen test.[5] The animatronic creatures used in the film are provided by Jim Henson's Creature Shop.[6]

text: Minster Court was used as the exterior of Cruella De Vil's fashion house.[7] Sarum Chase was used as the exterior of her home.[7]

text: Release[edit]

text: Box office[edit]

text: 101 Dalmatians was released on November 27, 1996. The UK premiere of the film was held on December 4, 1996, at the Royal Albert Hall, London, and the exterior of the Hall was lit with dalmatian spots. It grossed $136.2 million in the United States and $320.7 million worldwide.[8][3]

text: Home media[edit]

text: 101 Dalmatians was released on VHS for the first time on April 15, 1997, and on DVD on December 12, 2000.[9] Due to the high sales of the One Hundred and One Dalmatians Platinum Edition DVD, Disney re-released it on September 16, 2008, in the U.S., along with its sequel, 102 Dalmatians and that to the original 1961 animated version, 101 Dalmatians II: Patch's London Adventure.

text: Video game[edit]

text: A video game based on the film entitled 101 Dalmatians: Escape from DeVil Manor was released in May 1997.

text: Reception[edit]

text: On review aggregate Rotten Tomatoes, it has an approval rating of 38% and an average rating of 5.4 out of 10 from 33 reviews.[10] Animal rights organizations protested the film's release, saying that Dalmatian sales shot up after the premiere, fueled by impulsive purchases of puppies by parents for their children. Being ill-prepared to care for a relatively difficult breed of dog past puppy-hood, many of these new owners eventually surrendered their animals to pounds, where many dogs ended up being euthanized.[11]

text: Sequels[edit]

text: A sequel, 102 Dalmatians, was released on November 22, 2000. The film's early working title was 101 Dalmatians Returns.

text: Disney is planning a live-action Cruella de Vil film origin story titled Cruella directed by Alex Timbers. Marc Platt and[12] Andrew Gunn will produce; Glenn Close is executive producer.[13] Screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna was set to write it,[14] but Kelly Marcel replaced her.[15] Emma Stone will play the eponymous role.[16]