query: Does Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War have a second game?

title: FreeSpace 2

text: FreeSpace 2 is a 1999 space combat simulation computer game developed by Volition as the sequel to Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War. It was completed ahead of schedule in less than a year, and released to very positive reviews. However, the game became a commercial failure, and was described by certain critics as one of 1999's most unfairly overlooked titles.

title: FreeSpace 2

text: The news of FreeSpace 2 being in development was confirmed in a chat on November 6, 1998. FreeSpace 2 was developed in less than one year. The Volition team revealed they had written up a story and will be targeting high-end hardware with dogfights for a greater number of ships and even larger and more deadly capital ships.[28] The team set themselves the goals of setting new standards for both single-player and multiplayer space combat simulations,[17] and started to modify the FreeSpace game engine for FreeSpace 2.[29] This team was the same team which had worked on Descent: FreeSpace, plus several new members. In order to flesh out the story, Volition hired Jason Scott as a full-time writer before work even started.[30][31] The linear mission structure was adopted as it was decided it would help the immersion factor of the story greatly.[8] As the relations between the Terrans and Vasudans dominated the first game, it was decided to scale the focus down to a personal level with Admiral Bosch and his decisions to rebel. Scott's close work with the designers, and co-ordination of the voice recording process helped to tightly integrate the story into the missions, giving a more sophisticated feel to the story.

title: Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War

text: "Descent: FreeSpace" features two distinctive modes of play - a single player campaign and multiplayer matches - with the game's main menu designed around the interior of a ship's quarterdeck, with various elements (mostly doors) leading to different options, such as starting a new game, configuring the game, reviewing the crafts featured in the game and various story elements, and replaying completed single player missions. In both modes, the player controls their craft and other commands through either a joystick, or a keyboard (either on its own or with a mouse), and primarily view the game's environments from the first-person perspective of a cockpit within a starfighter. While the game features additional 3rd-person camera viewpoints, the game's interface - the head-up display (HUD) - can only be viewed from the primary viewpoint, and can be customised with different colours. Because of the flexibility in the control scheme, some have categorised the game as being a flight simulator, since it has more controls and commands than a typical arcade game, yet its flight model is simple, akin to that of the game "", and incorporates some elements of Newtonian physics such as precise collision physics.

title: Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War

text: The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences nominated "Descent: FreeSpace" for its 1998 "Simulation Game of the Year" award, although it lost to "". "Descent: FreeSpace" was a finalist for "Computer Games Strategy Plus"s "Sci-Fi Simulation of the Year" and "Computer Gaming World"s "Best Space Sim" awards in 1998, both of which ultimately went to "I-War". The editors of "Computer Gaming World" called it "an excellent game, featuring some of the best wing-man AI to hit the genre, but it was too derivative of previous space sims." "PC Gamer US" nominated it as the year's best action game, and its editors wrote that ""Freespace" came from nowhere to wrest the 3D space combat crown from the "Wing Commander" series with style." However, this award went to "Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six".

title: FreeSpace 2

text: The game begins 32 years after the events in Descent: FreeSpace. Following the end of the Great War, both the GTA and PVE cemented their alliance by combining together to form the Galactic Terran–Vasudan Alliance (GTVA)—a single entity formed to cement the alliance between the Terran and Vasudan races after the destruction of Vasuda Prime by the Lucifer and the subsequent collapse of all subspace nodes to the Sol system as a result of the superdestroyer's destruction inside the Sol–Delta Serpentis jump node.[14] Despite this alliance, however, opposition still exists to this union in the form of a faction of Terrans led by Great War veteran, Admiral Aken Bosch, who leads the rebel group under the banner of the Neo-Terran Front (NTF). The NTF's rebellion led to the faction gaining control over the Sirius, Polaris and Regulus star systems, while engaging the GTVA for 18 months, before launching attacks on the Vasudan systems of Deneb and Alpha Centauri.

title: Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War

text: Begun with a crew of five, the project grew to a staff of 17. The game's code was built from scratch. Most of the software modules were interlinked with each other, increasing the job's complexity and difficulty. The code incorporated small portions of "Descent"'s code for specific functions. Kulas, who had worked on several versions of "Flight Simulator" and "Descent", brought his experience into the game's artificial intelligence (AI). The game's difficulty levels are based on advancing the enemy AI, rather than simply increasing damage and "hit points" of enemies. Some realism was incorporated into the game's physics, such that an impact on one part of a starfighter's body will send it spinning appropriately, unlike sphere-based collision detection, in which an impact would simply 'push' the starfighter in a particular direction. Due to time and budget constraints, many of the initially planned cutscenes and stories were cut from the final product. Examples of such cuts include a campaign path where the Terran-Vasudan alliance goes on a retreat, and scenes of racial tension within the alliance. Despite the promise of a deathmatch mode for multiplayer, it was cut from the final product. The expansion "Silent Threat" also suffered the same fate of cuts due to budgetary and time concerns.

title: Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War

text: PC Data, which tracked computer game sales in the United States, reported that "Descent: FreeSpace" earned nearly $4 million and sold around 100,000 copies by October 1999.

title: Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War

text: "Descent: FreeSpace" was well received as a single-player space simulation that integrated all the desired features of its genre, from competent AI wingmen, to the presence of large capital ships that not only dwarf the fighters piloted by the player, but also explode spectacularly when destroyed. However, the game's multiplayer mode was criticised, as it was plagued by lag and inaccurate tracking of statistics. An expansion for the game, which was less well received, was also released in 1998 under the title of "Silent Threat", and focuses on events after the main game's campaign with the player working for an intelligence branch of the Terrans' armed forces that later attempt to overthrow the Terran government. A sequel to "Descent: FreeSpace" entitled "FreeSpace 2", was released in 1999 to critical acclaim.

title: Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War

text: "FreeSpace" was Volition's first project after the split from Parallax Software, which also spawned Outrage Entertainment. It is not part of the canon of the "Descent" computer game series, and contained none of its ideas and only small portions of its code. It was only prefixed with "Descent" to avoid trademark issues with Mijenix Corporation's "FreeSpace", a disk compression utility. Volition also used the term "FreeSpace" in the game to initially describe what became later known as subspace. The game was conceived by Adam Pletcher, with all the features of space simulator games his team had found to be fun. The games "" and "Wing Commander" were their primary inspirations, and those influences made their way into the game's flight model, along with the influence of historical WWII dogfights. Themes from the fiction of "Star Wars", "", and "Ender's Game" form a part in shaping the background and story of the "FreeSpace" world. The chaotic battles between masses of ships commonly found in science-fiction anime became one of the features of "FreeSpace".

title: Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War

text: In an epilogue, a narrator speculates the Shivans were not necessarily evil, stating that they were "great destroyers but also the great preservers", and that their role was to exterminate other species who advanced beyond their ordained place in the cosmic order; the Ancients were targeted as they subdued or exterminated countless other species in building their vast empire. The narrator postulates that had it not been for the Shivan's intervention, the Ancients would have likely grown too powerful for the Terrans and Vasudans to survive against, and thus theorises that the Terrans' expansion would have made them a threat to any other fledgling species.

title: FreeSpace 2

text: Despite Volition's interest and desire to develop add-ons and expansions for FreeSpace 2, Interplay told them to stop.[38] Volition was then acquired by THQ in 2000. As Interplay owns the rights to the FreeSpace series (as well as the Descent series) and Volition's owners, THQ, is only interested in pursuing development on what they own, Volition was unable to continue developing the FreeSpace franchise.[39] Faced with source code which became practically useless to them, Volition released the source code for only game engines to the public under a noncommercial license on April 25, 2002.[40][41] Mike Kulas, the President of Volition, said this was to give those outside the game industry a chance to look at the code of a commercial software product, a desire he and Matt Toschlog had when they were not yet in the industry. In the years since, no sequels to FreeSpace 2 have been made and Interplay has only published a limited re-release of it on February 2, 2004, to commemorate the company's 20th anniversary.[9] Interplay, by that time, was in financial trouble, failing to pay rent and wages to its workers. Seeking investors to inject it with funds, Interplay changed business strategies: instead of developing and publishing single-player games, it sold licenses to those games and looked towards developing massive multi-player online games.[42][43][44] Derek Smart, creator of Battlecruiser 3000AD, had casually mentioned his interest in the Freespace license, but nothing significant came out of this.[45][46] In 2013, Interplay acquired the remaining rights to the FreeSpace franchise for $7,500 after THQ went to bankruptcy court.[47]

title: Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War

text: Other splits included comparisons between the game and that of "" and ""; while some felt the game combined elements of both with better qualities and a strong story, others felt it had simply taken inspiration from space simulation classics, offered very little in original ideas, lacked depth in the story, with some suggesting the player could have had a greater role in the outcome of the game's story, and that they were simply playing a "very sweet looking arcade title" with considerable detachment from some of the game's elements. Despite the splits in opinion, many felt the game's AI was well designed, from the wingmen being competent and performing orders without issues, to the enemy vessels acting in concert with each other during missions, yet one reviewer was dismayed that the game's screen size was fixed and could not be changed.

title: Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War

text: The setting of the game takes place in the 24th century when humanity has discovered interstellar travel through the use of interstellar subspace jump nodes that function in the same manner as wormholes, allowing it to spread out across the stars and colonise new worlds. Prior to the game beginning, humanity (referred to as Terrans) formed the Galactic Terran Alliance (GTA) as the central power of all of their systems' governments and military, and became engaged in a war over systems and resources against the Vasudans of the Parliamentary Vasudan Empire (PVE). By the time the story begins, this war has entered its fourteenth year, as a third species, dubbed Shivans, makes an unprovoked attack on the Terran system of Ross 128. The player, acting as a new Terran pilot in the GTA, is initially involved in the conflict with the PVE before the fights focus on the new species' arrival and subsequent assaults.

title: Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War

text: However, much criticism was made of the game's multiplayer mode. Despite a reviewer giving a glowing praise to it over cable modems, the majority, who played it over dial-up access, roundly condemned it. Many chiefly complained about lag in the game; some found themselves facing a similar situation in which the ship's gun fired only seconds after they depressed the trigger and that their ship randomly jumped over the multiplayer battlegrounds, while one reviewer called the mode "bug ridden" after finding many of their shots did not register hits or kills on enemy ships after over 40 minutes of play. One reviewer on "GameSpot" questioned the game's claims it could support 16 players online when they found it couldn't support just two over a 56k modem.

title: Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War

text: In the game's multiplayer mode, players compete in multiplayer matches online or over a local area network (LAN), in which they can band together to complete cooperative missions, or split up into teams to battle against one another. At the time the game was released, online gameplay was free over the services offered by Parallax Online, which also kept track of players' statistics and rankings, while Voice chat is available, although reviewers advised it to be used only on broadband or LAN.

title: Descent (1995 video game)

text: "" was released by Volition in 1998. It shared the "Descent" name, but otherwise had no connection to the series; it was given the "Descent" prefix to avoid trademark issues with "FreeSpace", a disk compression utility (in Europe, it was released as "Conflict: FreeSpace – The Great War"). "FreeSpace" was a space simulator, and while it was still technically a 3D shooter, it did not retain "Descent"s characteristic "six degrees of freedom" control scheme, save for a cheat code that would force the player's ship to loosely mimic "Descent"s physics. Some early drafts of the "FreeSpace" story had the pilot searching for "Descent"s "Material Defender", but the story of the finished game was unrelated.

title: Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War

text: On December 14, 1999, Hyperion Entertainment announced their acquisition of the license to port "FreeSpace" to the Amiga system. The publisher was changed to Haage & Partner Computer on October 18, 2001. Despite the game's official release being announced for December 2001, the approval to do so could only be gotten on January 7, 2002. The game was shipped without a printed manual, but had additional German and French language support. Hyperion had stated they would port over "Silent Threat" if the "FreeSpace" port sold well. To date, "Silent Threat" has yet to be ported over to the Amiga platform.

title: Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War

text: Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War, also known as Conflict: FreeSpace – The Great War in Europe, or simply just FreeSpace; is a 1998 space combat simulation IBM PC compatible computer game developed by Volition, when it was split off from Parallax Software, and published by Interplay Productions. In 2001, it was ported to the Amiga platform as FreeSpace: The Great War by Hyperion Entertainment. The game places players in the role of a human pilot, who operates in several classes of starfighter and combats against opposing forces, either human or alien, in various space-faring environments, such as in orbit above a planet or within an asteroid belt. The story of the game's single player campaign focuses on a war in the 24th century between two factions, one human and the other alien, that is interrupted in its fourteenth year by the arrival of an enigmatic and militant alien race, whose genocidal advance forces the two sides into a ceasefire in order to work together to halt the threat.

title: FreeSpace 2

text: FreeSpace 2's sales were acknowledged as disappointing, and described as awful by Kulas. He, however, stated that as the team had stayed within budget by sticking to schedule, Volition should at least be breaking even with the estimated final sales of the game.[72] In NowGamer's interview with Jim Boone, a producer at Volition, he stated that this could have been due to joysticks' being sold poorly because they were "going out of fashion" because more modern first-person shooters, such as Quake, were "very much about the mouse and [the] keyboard". He went further on to state "Before that, when we did Descent for example, it was perfectly common for people to have joysticks – we sold a lot of copies of Descent. It was around that time [when] the more modern FPS with mouse and keyboard came out, as opposed to just keyboard like Wolfenstein [3D] or something.".[73]

title: Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War

text: The setting of the expansion takes place after the events of the "Great War", with both the GTA and PVE working together to rebuild their systems and deal with the remnants of the Shivan Armada. In the story, players assume the role of a pilot from the GTA, who has recently joined one of the fleets for Galactic Terran Intelligence (GTI), the GTA's intelligence service, which consists of three branches - Research & Development (R&D), Intelligence, and Special Operations. The player's character is assigned as a pilot for Special Operations during the storyline.

title: FreeSpace 2 Source Code Project

text: Some notable original mods and campaigns have been created, such as "Wings of Dawn" which takes place in an anime-style world, and "Blue Planet" which offers a continuation of "Freespace 2", telling of a civil war between Earth and the GTVA. "The FreeSpace Port", sometimes called FSPort, ports the original "Descent: FreeSpaceThe Great War" to the "FreeSpace 2" and SCP engine with many graphical enhancements, and serves as a base for many mods set in the FreeSpace: Great War era, such as "Shrouding the Light" and "Awakenings". "Silent Threat: Reborn" similarly ports the "Silent Threat" expansion for Descent: Freespace into the Freespace 2 SCP engine.

title: Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War

text: The game's expansion "Silent Threat", received generally less favourable reviews. While its stand-alone missions were complemented well for being conceived as part of a contest by the game's developers - Volition put in a call to the "FreeSpace" community to stop creating "Battle of Endor"-type missions through FRED, and instead create missions based on Volition's Jason Hoffoss' Zen philosophy of accomplishing more with less - the expansion was judged as decent but uninspiring, with many noting that the campaign missions lacked variety than those of standard escort or destroy missions, and offering no new equipment which were unable to compete against the older equipment, with some feeling that the story was worse than the main game due to its "cold and inhuman" briefings and non-player characters.

title: FreeSpace 2

text: FreeSpace 2 was released on September 30, 1999, one month ahead of schedule.[35] However, the team had to quickly come up with and release a patch (version 1.01) for a software bug which prevented recognition of a CD during the installation process.[36] Three months later, they released the next and final patch (version 1.20) to fix several other bugs.[37] The release of FreeSpace 2 was considerably muted compared to its predecessor Descent: FreeSpace.[38] Its publisher, Interplay, did not organize contests for it, nor did they generate pre-release hype up with the same drive as before. They also posted the incorrect system requirements for the game on their site. FreeSpace 2 was also placed on less-visible shelves than Descent 3. However, when GameSpot awarded FreeSpace 2 the "Sci-Fi Simulation of the Year" award, Interplay pushed out the "Sci-Fi Sim of the Year Edition" to capitalize on it.

title: Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War

text: Before committing to a mission in the campaign, players are given control to denote what craft and weapons are used by both themselves and the wingmen they have control over at the start of the mission, which adds an element of strategy to the campaign, though what ships and weapons are available depend upon what stage of the campaign the player is on. Not all missions allow the load-out to be changed - in some missions, it is fixed; in others, it is whatever the player had for themselves and their wingmen from the previous mission, including the conditions their crafts were in. Once a mission is completed, the player receives a debriefing which outlays the result of the player's actions and what could have been done better; players can get a hint, defined as "Recommendations" in the game, that can detail what exactly they could do to improve their performance in the mission, and have the ability to restart a mission in order to approach it differently. In some missions, the results of the player's action can often affect later missions - for example, an enemy capital ship allowed to flee in a particular mission may return in a later mission. Players can earn medals in the campaign, either by completing specific missions, or completing hidden bonus objectives, along with promotions based on kills - each kill earns points depending on the type of craft destroyed, with the amount affected by the difficulty the player is set at - and badges based on total number of kills made. Any mission completed in the campaign, can be played again through in-game mission simulator found in the game's main menu. In addition to the game's standard campaign, the player may also make their own missions and campaigns through the use of a free editor bundled with the game - the "FreeSpace Editor" (FRED for short) - which allows players to have the same capabilities as Volition's development team in making their own missions, with the ability to import personal audio and 3D animation files.

title: FreeSpace 2 Source Code Project

text: Volition, the company responsible for developing the game "FreeSpace 2" was bought by THQ in 2000. With Interplay Entertainment holding the licenses for the "FreeSpace" series, Volition could not continue to develop the series. Without any viable use for the source code, Volition's Dave Baranec released the source code for "FreeSpace 2"s game engine on 25 April 2002. This allowed modders the possibility of modifying the game engine almost without limitations. However, because the source code is under a noncommercial license, it does not qualify as free and open source software.

title: Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War

text: Apogee Software announced on December 12, 1997 that they would be exclusively publishing "FreeSpace" for the first three months before handing the publishing rights back to Interplay Entertainment. This was part of their agreement with Interplay for the latter's purchase of the rights to "Descent", and Apogee decided to release "FreeSpace" as shareware, with themselves as the merchant of the registered version. Interplay, however, bought the full rights to "FreeSpace" from Apogee in late April, 1998, keeping the ownership of the game solely to themselves.

title: Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War

text: "Descent: FreeSpace" received generally good reviews following its launch, with "PC Gamer UK" placing it 20th in its 1999 Top 100 Awards. However reviewers were split on several aspects of the game. While many praised the graphics of the game, some approving of how well rendered an in-game asteroid stood out before the background of softly glowing nebulae, galaxies and stars, others felt the 3D effects were not "spectacular" to those of the software rendered version, commenting that rendered nebulae were unconvincing and that the models of in-game ships lacked detail and had blurry textures. Despite the differences between them, all reviewers unanimously agreed that the explosions effects in the game, including the many small details of the capital ships upon breaking up, were the most impressive they had seen (at the time).

title: Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War

text: Following the end of the "Great War", both the GTA and the PVE attempt to focus on the rebuilding of their systems and dealing with the remnants of the Shivan forces, although the alliance between them is in a fragile state. In order to ensure the alliance does not collapse, GTA command assigns the GTI to the task of preserving it, while assisting in protecting valuable research projects and dealing with the remaining Shivan forces. During engagements, a science vessel that had been recorded as being officially destroyed during the war with the Shivans, the "Einstein", turns up during an operation to protect Vasudan craft. Although the crew escape before the vessel is destroyed, suspicions surrounding the science vessel's appearance are aroused, when recovery of the ship's escapes pods is compounded by confusion in communications that lead to two of the GTI's destroyers, the "Krios" and the "Repulse", arriving and claiming to be there to recover the pods; the latter later proves they were assigned to this responsibility.

title: Space warfare

text: The distinct fictional settings in which space warfare occurs are far too numerous to list, but popular examples include "Star Trek" (in all of its various incarnations), "Star Wars", "Halo", "Stargate", "Warhammer 40,000", "Babylon 5", "Buck Rogers", "Flash Gordon", "Battlestar Galactica", "Mass Effect", "Freespace" and many comic book franchises. Video games have frequently touched the subject, with the "Wing Commander" franchise serving as a prototypical example.Few games attempt to simulate an environment with realistic distances and speeds, though "Independence War" and "" both do, as does the board game "".Related to specific countries and facilities:

title: Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War

text: Volition aimed for a quality release, and promised to deliver a product without major bugs. Minor bugs would be fixed in a prompt manner. The shipped game, however, had deficiencies admitted by the team, such as problems with the multiplayer code, and a few design issues. The game underwent four patches, which resolved most of the bugs, and improved the multiplayer performance. Complaints about an online mission giving unfair scores led to Volition removing the mission from scoring play. Another patch allowed EAX capability to be enabled for Creative Sound Blaster sound cards. Interplay played its part in drumming up the community's interest by holding contests, and expanding material for the "FreeSpace" universe. Meanwhile, Volition created official star maps, and released Vasudan voice clips and story development notes. Interplay hired science-fiction writers such as Fred Saberhagen, Simon Hawke, and Jeff Grubb to write weekly "FreeSpace" stories for two months. Preparing for "Silent Threat"s release, Interplay held a contest from July 28 to August 25, 1998, in which the submitted fan-designed missions could win their authors prizes such as free copies of "Silent Threat", "FreeSpace" apparel, and gaming hardware. Entries were judged by a panel from "PC Gamer", and qualified entries constituted half of the missions in "Silent Threat".


query: What is the newest member country to join NATO?

title: Member states of NATO

text: NATO has added new members seven times since its founding in 1949, and since 2017 NATO has had 29 members. Twelve countries were part of the founding of NATO: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In 1952, Greece and Turkey became members of the Alliance, joined later by West Germany (in 1955) and Spain (in 1982). In 1990, with the reunification of Germany, NATO grew to include the former country of East Germany. Between 1994 and 1997, wider forums for regional cooperation between NATO and its neighbors were set up, including the Partnership for Peace, the Mediterranean Dialogue initiative and the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council. In 1997, three former Warsaw Pact countries, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland, were invited to join NATO. After this fourth enlargement in 1999, the Vilnius group of the Baltics and seven East European countries formed in May 2000 to cooperate and lobby for further NATO membership. Seven of these countries joined in the fifth enlargement in 2004. The Adriatic States Albania and Croatia joined in the sixth enlargement in 2009, Montenegro in 2017.

title: 1986 Spanish NATO membership referendum

text: A Spanish NATO membership referendum was held on Wednesday, 12 March 1986, to gauge support for the country either remaining a member of, or leaving, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which it had joined in 1982. The question asked was "In your view, should Spain continue to be a member of the Atlantic Alliance subject to the terms agreed by the national Government?" (). The referendum resulted in 56.9% of voters voting in favour of remaining within NATO on a turnout of 59.4%.

title: Enlargement of NATO

text: Enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is the process of including new member states in NATO. NATO is a military alliance of twenty-seven European and two North American countries that constitutes a system of collective defense. The process of joining the alliance is governed by Article 10 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which allows only for the invitation of "other European States", and by subsequent agreements. Countries wishing to join have to meet certain requirements and complete a multi-step process involving political dialogue and military integration. The accession process is overseen by the North Atlantic Council, NATO's governing body.

title: Ukraine

text: Following independence, Ukraine declared itself a neutral state. The country has had a limited military partnership with Russian Federation, other CIS countries and a partnership with NATO since 1994. In the 2000s, the government was leaning towards NATO, and a deeper cooperation with the alliance was set by the NATO-Ukraine Action Plan signed in 2002. It was later agreed that the question of joining NATO should be answered by a national referendum at some point in the future. Recently deposed President Viktor Yanukovych considered the current level of co-operation between Ukraine and NATO sufficient, and was against Ukraine joining NATO. During the 2008 Bucharest summit, NATO declared that Ukraine would eventually become a member of NATO when it meets the criteria for the accession.

title: Foreign relations of NATO

text: Five EU member states, all who have declared their non-alignment with military alliances, are not NATO members: Austria, Finland, Ireland, Malta, and Sweden. Switzerland, which is surrounded by the EU, has also maintained their neutrality by staying out of the bloc. All these countries, however, have joined the Partnership for Peace programme and at least Sweden and Finland signed a specific host country support agreement with NATO in 2014.

title: Enlargement of NATO

text: As of 2018, NATO officially recognizes four aspiring members: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Macedonia and Ukraine. The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina within Bosnia and Herzegovina has expressed willingness to join NATO, however, it faces consistent political pressure from Republika Srpska, the other political entity in the country, alongside its partners in Moscow. Macedonia has been prevented from joining the alliance by Greece, one effect of the Macedonian naming dispute. Future expansion is currently a topic of debate in several countries outside the alliance, and countries like Sweden, Finland, and Serbia have open political debate on the topic of membership, while in countries like Ukraine, support and opposition to membership is tied to ethnic and nationalist ideologies. The incorporation of countries formerly part of the Eastern Bloc and the Soviet Union has been a cause of increased tension between NATO countries and Russia.

title: European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education

text: The Agency now has 30 member countries. Since 2007 it has welcomed Slovenia and the Slovak Republic as member countries. The newest member is Bulgaria, who joined in 2017.

title: 2006 Riga summit

text: The NATO Heads of State and Government congratulated the efforts of the three Balkan states currently in NATO's Membership Action Plan: Albania, Croatia and Macedonia, and declared that the Alliance intends to extend further invitations to these countries during the 2008 Bucharest Summit, on condition that these countries meet NATO standards. The Alliance also affirmed that NATO remained open to new European members under Article X of the North Atlantic Treaty, but remained largely silent on the prospects of Georgia and Ukraine, two countries that had declared membership as a goal, as the summit limited itself to noting the efforts of both countries to conduct an "intensified dialogue" with NATO. Nevertheless, Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip said after the summit that he had discussed Georgia's membership with US president Bush on 28 November. He further added that in his view Georgia had "very good chances" to join NATO if the planned reforms would continue and that a Membership Action Plan, the next necessary step on Georgia's way towards membership, was only "a small step away". Preceding the summit, it was expected that Ukraine was on a fast track to membership: it was believed that Ukraine would have received an invitation to a Membership Action Plan during the summit, followed by an invitation to join in 2008 and membership in 2010. According to political scientist Taras Kuzio the summit showed that Georgia rapidly moved ahead of Ukraine in its drive to join NATO, even though it joined the Intensified Dialogue program a year later than Ukraine, because president of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko failed to support a pro-Western Orange revolution coalition following the Ukraine's parliamentary elections of March 2006. In other words, Ukraine showed more ambivalence in its desire to join NATO, whereas in Georgia the pro-Western Rose Revolution coalition remained united.

title: Accession of Macedonia to NATO

text: In 2008 a poll following the NATO summit showed that 82.5% of Macedonian citizens surveyed opposed changing their country's constitutional name in order to join NATO. NATO membership in general in 2008 was supported by 85.2% of the population. Elections were called following the 2008 summit, resulting in further support for the center-right pro-NATO party, VMRO–DPMNE. The elections were marred by violence that was criticized by NATO members.

title: Georgia–NATO relations

text: During the NATO summit in Bucharest, United States and Poland called for Georgia to be allowed to join the Membership Action Plan (MAP). The alliance decided not to offer Georgia a MAP due to opposition from several countries, led by Germany and France, who feared the decision would anger Russia. Instead NATO countries assured the Georgian side in a special communiqué that they would eventually join the alliance once the requirement for membership were met. Members further pledged to review the decision in December 2008 at the meeting of NATO foreign ministers.

title: World government

text: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on 4 April 1949. The organization constitutes a system of collective defence whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party. NATO's headquarters are in Brussels, Belgium, one of the 28 member states across North America and Europe, the newest of which, Albania and Croatia, joined in April 2009. An additional 22 countries participate in NATO's "Partnership for Peace", with 15 other countries involved in institutionalized dialogue programs. The combined military spending of all NATO members constitutes over 70% of the world's defence spending.

title: Albania

text: Previously a member of the Warsaw Pact, the newly established democratic country broadly pursued an integrationist agenda in becoming a member of the NATO. The organisation invited Albania and Croatia to join the alliance at the 2008 Bucharest summit. In April 2014, it became a full member of the organisation and was among the first Southeast European countries to join the partnership for peace programme.

title: NATO

text: New membership in the alliance has been largely from Central and Eastern Europe, including former members of the Warsaw Pact. Accession to the alliance is governed with individual Membership Action Plans, and requires approval by each current member. NATO currently has two candidate countries that are in the process of joining the alliance: Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republic of Macedonia. In NATO official statements, the Republic of Macedonia is always referred to as the "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia", with a footnote stating that "Turkey recognizes the Republic of Macedonia under its constitutional name". Though Macedonia completed its requirements for membership at the same time as Croatia and Albania, who joined NATO in 2009, its accession was blocked by Greece pending a resolution of the Macedonia naming dispute.[81] In order to support each other in the process, new and potential members in the region formed the Adriatic Charter in 2003.[82] Georgia was also named as an aspiring member, and was promised "future membership" during the 2008 summit in Bucharest,[83] though in 2014, US President Barack Obama said the country was not "currently on a path" to membership.[84]

title: Georgia–NATO relations

text: Georgia and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) relations officially began in 1994 when Georgia joined the NATO-run Partnership for Peace. Georgia has moved quickly following the Rose Revolution in 2003 to seek closer ties and eventual membership with NATO. Georgia's powerful northern neighbor, Russia, has opposed the closer ties, including those expressed at the 2008 Bucharest summit where NATO members promised that Georgia would eventually join the organization. In the 7 December 2011 statement of the North Atlantic Council Georgia was designated as an "aspirant country".

title: Foreign relations of Bulgaria

text: Bulgaria joined NATO's Partnership for Peace in 1994 and applied for NATO membership in 1997. During the November 2002 Prague Summit Bulgaria was one of seven former socialist countries invited to join the Alliance. Bulgaria became a member of NATO in March 2004. The country is also working toward NATO compatibility in communications and training, and has established a Peacekeeping Training Center.

title: National Codification Bureau

text: The National Codification Bureaus or NATO Codification Bureaux (NCB) are a NATO organization that oversees the management of the National Codification System (NCS). It is governed by NATO Allied Committee 135 (AC/135), with each member nation's National Codification Bureau controlling and issuing its own unique National Stock Numbers. NATO or European Union membership is not required to do so. Non-NATO (or "Partner") countries can be allowed to join if recommended, vetted, and approved by AC/135.

title: Enlargement of NATO

text: A poll following the 2008 summit showed that 82.5 percent of citizens surveyed opposed changing the constitutional name in order to join NATO. Elections were called following the 2008 summit, resulting in further support for the centre-right pro-NATO party, VMRO-DPMNE. The elections were marred by violence that was criticized by NATO members. Ethnic tensions have persisted in Macedonia, and NATO has called for dialogue following clashes such as those in the city of Kumanovo in 2015, which were blamed in part on the delay in NATO and European integration. NATO membership in general is supported by 81 percent according to a November 2014 poll. On 12 June 2017, Prime Minister Zoran Zaev signaled that he will consider alternatives names for the country in order to strike a compromise with Greece, settle the naming dispute, and lift Greek objections to Macedonia joining the alliance. Zaev also floated the idea of Macedonia joining the alliance under the provisional name it uses at the United Nations. After the Prespa Agreement was reached in June 2018, NATO invited Macedonia to begin membership talks on 11 July 2018, saying the country could join the organization once the naming issue was resolved. Formal accession talks began on 18 October 2018.

title: NATO

text: The NATO Parliamentary Assembly (NATO PA) is a body that sets broad strategic goals for NATO, which meets at two session per year. NATO PA interacts directly with the parliamentary structures of the national governments of the member states which appoint Permanent Members, or ambassadors to NATO. The NATO Parliamentary Assembly is made up of legislators from the member countries of the North Atlantic Alliance as well as thirteen associate members. It is however officially a different structure from NATO, and has as aim to join together deputies of NATO countries in order to discuss security policies on the NATO Council.

title: Ukraine–NATO relations

text: Relations between Ukraine and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) started in 1994. Ukraine applied to join the NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP) in 2008. Plans for NATO membership were shelved by Ukraine following the 2010 presidential election in which Viktor Yanukovych, who preferred to keep the country non-aligned, was elected President. Amid the Euromaidan unrest, Yanukovych fled Ukraine in February 2014. The interim Yatsenyuk Government which came to power, initially said, with reference to the country's non-aligned status, that it had no plans to join NATO. However, following the Russian military invasion in Ukraine and parliamentary elections in October 2014, the new government made joining NATO a priority.

title: Albania–NATO relations

text: The accession of Albania to NATO took place in 2009. Albania's relationship with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) began in 1992 when it joined the North Atlantic Cooperation Council. In 1994, it entered NATO's Partnership for Peace, which began Albania's process of accession into the alliance. In 1999, the country received a Membership Action Plan (MAP). The country received an invitation to join at the 2008 Bucharest Summit and became a full member on April 1, 2009.

title: Naval officer ranks

text: While countries outside the NATO command structure (including some NATO member countries such as France) do not strictly fall into this classification structure and there may be incidences of overlap (particularly in ranks between countries) the codes still provide a useful gauge in determining what ranks are broadly equivalent.

title: Foreign relations of NATO

text:
At the beginning of 2008, the Ukrainian President, Prime Minister and head of parliament sent an official letter to apply for the Membership Action Plan. The idea of Ukrainian membership in NATO has gained support from a number of NATO leaders. At the 2008 Bucharest summit, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer declared in a press conference that Georgia and Ukraine will join NATO. Within the NATO-Ukraine working commission, NATO officials reassured Ukraine officials that they are willing to invite their country to join the Alliance. The Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia, Alexander Grushko, announced that NATO membership for Ukraine was not in Russia's best interests and wouldn't help the relations of the two countries.
According to numerous independent polls conducted between 2002 and the events of 2014, Ukrainian public opinion on NATO membership was split, with the majority of those polled against joining the military alliance and many identifying it as a threat. According to the FOM-Ukraine pollster, as of April 2009, 57% of Ukrainians polled were against joining the alliance, while 21% were in favor. A Gallup poll conducted in October 2008 showed that 45% associated NATO as a threat to their country, while only 15% associated it with protection. Ukrainian politicians such as Yuriy Yekhanurov and Yulia Tymoshenko stated Ukraine would not join NATO as long as the public continued opposing the move. In 2008 the Ukrainian government started an information campaign, aimed at informing the Ukrainian people about the consequences of membership.

title: Enlargement of NATO

text: NATO provides feedback as well as technical advice to each country and evaluates its progress on an individual basis. Once a country is agreed to meet the requirements, NATO can issue that country an invitation to begin accession talks. Currently, two countries have a Membership Action Plan: Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia. Former MAP participants were Albania and Croatia between May 2002 and April 2009, and Montenegro between December 2009 and June 2017, when they joined NATO. The final accession process, once invited, involves five steps leading up to the signing of the accession protocols and the acceptance and ratification of those protocols by the governments of the current NATO members.

title: Albania–NATO relations

text: After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, NATO created the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC) to strengthen institutional cooperation on the political and security issues between NATO members and former Warsaw Pact countries. Albania joined in 1992.

title: Accession of Macedonia to NATO

text: Following an agreement in June 2018 to rename the country the Republic of North Macedonia, NATO agreed to consider extending an invitation to the country to join at its summit on 11–12 July. On 11 July 2018, NATO invited Macedonia to begin membership talks, saying the country could join the organization once the naming issue was resolved. Formal accession talks began on 18 October 2018. Greece is expected to be the first NATO member state to ratify Macedonia’s NATO accession protocol.

title: Enlargement of NATO

text: After its formation in 1949 with twelve founding members, NATO grew by including Greece and Turkey in 1952 and West Germany in 1955, and then later Spain in 1982. After the Cold War ended, and Germany reunited in 1990, there was a debate in NATO about continued expansion eastward. In 1999, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic joined the organization, amid much debate within the organization and Russian opposition. Another expansion came with the accession of seven Central and Eastern European countries: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. These nations were first invited to start talks of membership during the 2002 Prague summit, and joined NATO shortly before the 2004 Istanbul summit. Albania and Croatia joined on 1 April 2009, prior to the 2009 Strasbourg–Kehl summit. The most recent member state to be added to NATO is Montenegro on 5 June 2017.

title: Croatia–NATO relations

text: The accession of Croatia to NATO took place in 2009. Croatia entered into NATO's Partnership for Peace in 2000, which began the process of accession into the alliance. The country received an invitation to join at the 2008 Bucharest summit and became a full member on April 1, 2009.

title: History of NATO

text: On 15 June 2016, NATO officially recognized cyberwarfare as an operational domain of war, just like land, sea and aerial warfare. This means that any cyber attack on NATO members can trigger Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. Montenegro became the 29th and newest member of NATO on 5 June 2017, amid strong objections from Russia.

title: Enlargement of NATO

text: Currently no major political party in Ireland fully supports ascension into NATO, a reflection on public and media opinion in the country. There are a number of politicians who support Ireland joining NATO, mainly within the centre-right Fine Gael party, but the majority of politicians still do not. It is widely understood that a referendum would have to be held before any changes could be made to neutrality or to joining NATO. Former Secretary General of NATO Anders Fogh Rasmussen said during a visit to the country in 2013 that the "door is open" for Ireland to join NATO at any time.

title: Russia–NATO relations

text: In March 2009, the Polish Foreign Minister, Radosław Sikorski, suggested including Russia in NATO. Speaking to one of the main Polish daily newspapers after the lecture, Mr Sikorski explained, 'I stand by everything I said, but that doesn't mean I'm inviting Russia to join the NATO. I simply presented a certain hypothetical vision, a reference to a debate that took place in the NATO in the mid-1990s. Then, under the Clinton administration, there was a debate on whether, and on what terms, Russia could become a member of the Alliance.' Russian leadership, however, made it clear Russia did not plan to join the alliance, preferring to keep cooperation on a lower level now. In March 2009, the Russian envoy to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, in response to Radosław Sikorski′s proposal, while not ruling out NATO membership at some point in the future, was quoted as saying: "Great powers don't join coalitions, they create coalitions. Russia considers itself a great power."


query: When did Mount Victoria become a railway station?

title: Mount Victoria, New South Wales

text: After the railway station, marking the termination of the Main Western railway line, was opened in 1869 the town also became known as Mount Victoria.[10][11] The town's name was officially changed after the first Post Office was built in 1876.[8]

title: Mount Victoria railway station

text: Mount Victoria Railway Station Group is of state significance as a large complex of buildings illustrating clearly the pattern of development of railway facilities in the Blue Mountains area. It is the most substantial railway station complex in the Blue Mountains and indicates the former importance of the location with the former locomotive depot (now demolished) to service terminating trains for railway tourism associated with Jenolan Caves and handling goods trains over the steep grades of the Blue Mountains, particularly the section to Lithgow. The structures indicate the importance of Mount Victoria as a health and holiday resort, the RRR accommodation provided in the station building reinforcing this.

title: Mount Victoria railway station

text: Mount Victoria Railway Station Group is a representative example of a substantial railway station complex combining various types, periods and styles of buildings dating from the 19th Century and early 20th Century, each individually representing their standard designs and types.

title: Mount Sabine, Victoria

text: Transport remained a major problem throughout the attempts to settle the Mount Sabine area. Expectations in the 1880s and 1890s that a railway line would be extended towards Mount Sabine did not eventuate, and a strong campaign for an extension of the Forrest railway line to Barramunga, just short of Mount Sabine, from the 1890s to the 1910s would also prove unsuccessful. In 1904, the "Colac Herald" reported that there was "not one yard of metalled or formed road" to Mount Sabine, and that residents had "to use the sleigh and pack saddle, and wade through fifteen miles of mud to get to a railway station". The main road to Apollo Bay through Mount Sabine would be eventually metalled in the late 1920s, after which time a Melbourne newspaper described the road as "splendid".

title: Great Northern and London and North Western Joint Railway

text:
In 1900, the Great Central Railway opened Victoria station in Nottingham. The GNR built a connecting line and diverted all their trains to the new centrally located station, but the LNWR opted to continue terminating their trains at London Road station, now renamed London Road Low Level to distinguish it from London Road High Level on the new connecting line to Victoria.
This did nothing to encourage growth on this route, and this fault was not remedied until 1944 when these services were at last diverted to Victoria by the LMS.

title: Mount Evelyn, Victoria

text: The (now closed) railway station, opened in 1901, was originally named 'Olinda Vale'. This was changed to 'Evelyn' after the county in which it is centrally placed, possibly as part of an attempt by the Victorian Railways to shorten names of stations. In 1919, the local progress association persuaded the Railways to add the "Mount" to encourage visitors to the healthy mountain area, which is the highest point on the railway (now the Lilydale to Warburton Rail Trail).

title: Mount Victoria, New South Wales

text: Blue Mountains National Park: Blue Mountains walking tracks[12] Main Western railway: Mount Victoria railway station[13] Mount York Road (off): Cox's Road and Early Deviations - Mount York, Cox's Pass Precinct[14]

title: Mount Victoria railway station

text: Mount Victoria has always been an important railway centre since its opening in 1868. It was the first platform structure made of material other than timber built after Penrith station. The original station building still remains and was to a design consistent with the time of John Whitton, Engineer-in-Chief of the NSW Railways. Further additions were carried out in 1899 to the ladies' toilet and other areas. The parcels office was added in 1911 to the Sydney end of the building.

title: Mount Victoria railway station

text: The site of former Station Master's Cottage was built in 1868 and was constructed of stone similar to the pointsman's cottage at Glenbrook. The cottage was located a short distance to the south of the station and continued to be occupied by successive station masters until the twentieth century. It was demolished in 1934 when it became redundant and in poor condition due to vacancy for a long period. The site of the former cottage is now in a park named after Errol Barden, a Blue Mountains Shire Council employee who took a special interest in the environment of Mount Victoria.

title: Mount Victoria railway station

text: Mount Victoria has two side platforms. It is serviced by NSW TrainLink Blue Mountains Line services travelling from Sydney Central to Lithgow. Some services terminate at Mount Victoria and stable in the sidings west of the station. The "Bathurst Bullet" operates to Bathurst.

title: Moorooduc railway station

text:
Moorooduc railway station is located on Two Bays Road, Mount Eliza, Victoria, Australia. The station is home to the Mornington Railway Preservation Society. Adjacent to the station is the Mount Eliza Regional Park which incorporates the Moorooduc Quarry Flora and Fauna Reserve.
Moorooduc station has one platform, which terminates services on the line.
Only one track is currently used for services, with the other five are for train maintenance, storage, repairs and locomotives changing ends.

title: Princess Louisa Inlet

text: The inlet may have been named for Princess Louise, the fourth daughter of Queen Victoria, whose husband was the Marquess of Lorne, Governor General of Canada. The vice regal couple traveled extensively in Canada. Princess Louise spent three months in Victoria, British Columbia, in 1876 and was popular to the point that when the Governor General announced that the awaited completion of the transcontinental railway would pass through the Selkirk Range at the Kicking Horse Pass into what has since become Vancouver, rather than by the Yellowhead Pass to Bute Inlet and then to Victoria, Premier Robert Beaven asked the Duke whether it would be possible for Vancouver Island to become a separate kingdom with Princess Louise as Queen. The more accepted theory is that the inlet is named for Queen Victoria's mother, Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, who was born Mary Louise Victoria. The actual source of the name is uncertain. Adjacent Prince of Wales Reach was named after Edward VII when he was the Prince of Wales. Princess Royal Reach was named after Empress Frederick of Germany. Five mountains around Queens Reach are named after children of Queen Victoria: Mount Victoria, Mount Alfred, Mount Alice, Mount Arthur and Mount Helena.

title: Mount Victoria railway station

text: A Station Master's Cottage was also constructed in 1868 and was similar to another 11 residences on the Blue Mountains built in stone. The structure was demolished over 30 years ago but the keystone showing the date of construction is still extant. It is now located in the Baden Powell Park, Mount Victoria. The history of the cottage is important as it illustrates that residences not always reflected the status of the occupant. In this case, the Station Master received the same type and size structure as did Gatekeepers on the line.

title: Mount Waverley railway station

text: Mount Waverley railway station is located on the Glen Waverley line in Victoria, Australia. It serves the eastern Melbourne suburb of Mount Waverley opening on 5 May 1930.

title: Mount Victoria railway station

text: Blue Mountains Transit operates one route to and from Mount Victoria station:

title: Mount Victoria railway station

text: The historical importance of Mount Victoria Railway Station Group as a railway location is demonstrated by a variety of high quality buildings which clearly show the development of the Station over time, particularly between 1872 and 1912, illustrating clearly the growth and decline of railway facilities in the Blue Mountains area. Mt Victoria was a convenient place to construct a locomotive facility (now demolished) to service terminating trains to serve railway tourism associated with the Jenolan Caves and handling goods trains over the steep grades of the Blue Mountains, particularly the section to Lithgow. The structures indicate the importance of Mt Victoria as a health and holiday resort, the Railway Refreshment Rooms and accommodation provided in the station building reinforcing this. The Mount Victoria Railway Rest-House (Barracks) is associated with the duplication of the railway line over the Blue Mountains in 1910 and is significant for its continued use as accommodation. The Station Group is the most substantial railway station complex in the Blue Mountains, demonstrating clear layers of growth from its original construction as a terminus station, through its growth at the turn of the century to the duplication of the railway line.

title: Mount Victoria railway station

text: The Mount Victoria Railway Station Group has a high degree of research potential for its ability to demonstrate construction techniques and architectural character of various types of buildings in one station. The station is a fine example of railway architecture including Victorian Regency and Federation buildings and is an important landmark in the townscape of Mt Victoria being located at the lower end of the town at the termination of the main street vista. The Mount Victoria Railway barracks is an unusual surviving example of a purpose built rest-house still used by the railways for staff accommodation. The signal box is one of a few examples of brick on platform elevated signal boxes that remain in operation in the state. The footbridge is rare as an intact example of a standard Warren Truss trestle and stairway with channel iron stair stringers. The overall aesthetic character of the station is further enhanced by the setting of the station within the rock escarpment, a typical natural setting of the Blue Mountains stations, featuring a collection of numerous flora ranging from mature trees, shrubs and potted plants along both platforms.

title: Mount Victoria railway station

text: The Mount Victoria railway station is a heritage-listed former barracks and now staff accommodation, guest accommodation, railway signal box and railway station located on the Main Western line in Mount Victoria in the City of Blue Mountains local government area of New South Wales, Australia. It was designed by NSW Government Railways and built from 1868 to 1913 by Allan McClean and James Barrie . It is also known as Mount Victoria Railway Station group. The property is owned by RailCorp, an agency of the Government of New South Wales. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999. The station opened on 6 September 1869.

title: Mount Moriac, Victoria

text: The railway line was extended from Geelong to Colac in 1877, and a station was opened at nearby Moriac. A new township developed around the railway station, and over time took prominence over the older Mount Moriac settlement. The shire offices shifted to Geelong in 1949, and ceased holding meetings in the shire hall at Mount Moriac in 1976. Mount Moriac Primary School was merged into nearby Moriac Primary School in the 1990s.

title: Mount Victoria railway station

text: The Mount Victoria Railway Station is associated with John Whitton, Engineer-in-Chief of the NSW Railways, as the original station building was built to a design from his time, and with George Cowdery, Engineer-in-Chief for Existing Lines, as the two-level stone addition containing the Railway Refreshment Room was built under his supervision.Note: There are incomplete details for a number of items listed in NSW. The Heritage Division intends to develop or upgrade statements of significance and other information for these items as resources become available.

title: Mount Victoria railway station

text: The Platform 2 building dates from 1869 with a railway refreshment room added in 1884. The Platform 1 building dates from 1911 when the line was duplicated. An extensive yard including a locomotive depot existed west of the station.

title: Bowser railway station

text: The railway through the station north to Wodonga opened in November 1873, but the station did not come into being until September 1875, when work begun on the branch line to Beechworth. The station opened to traffic as Beechworth Junction on 7 July 1875. It was renamed Bowser in 1922, after John Bowser, a local politician and Premier of Victoria.

title: Mount Victoria railway station

text: The Mount Victoria Station group is a rare Victorian era railway station combining a number of individually significant buildings and structures. The signal box is one of a few brick on platform signal boxes remaining in the state. The Railway Refreshment Rooms, though no longer used for their original purpose, are rare examples of such railway facility associated with the station's important location.

title: Mount Victoria railway station

text: The Mount Victoria Railway Station Group is of aesthetic significance for its cohesive group of Victorian Regency and Federation buildings and is an important landmark in the townscape of Mt Victoria, being located at the lower end of the town at the termination of the main street vista.

title: Mount Victoria railway station

text: A locomotive depot existed at Mount Victoria in 1897 and was greatly expanded in 1911-13 when duplication of the line through Mount Victoria was completed. The depot was home to the locomotives and crews who worked the famous "The Fish" commuter train to Sydney. Mount Victoria also was the destination of the Caves Express from Sydney, which conveyed holidaymakers to the Blue Mountains.

title: Blackheath railway station, New South Wales

text: The contract for extending the railway from Lawson to Blackheath was awarded in 1863 to W. Watkins, who completed the track a year ahead of schedule in 1866, although the ballasting of the line by a separate contractor took longer. Blackheath was to be the temporary terminus because of its level site and good water supply, but before the station was finished the destruction of the road bridge over the Nepean River at Emu Plains in the flood of 1867 prompted John Whitton, in charge of railways, to open the line as far as Wentworth Falls to assist stranded travellers to the west. Wentworth Falls, therefore, was for a short time the terminus. In the meantime, Watkins had won the contract to extend the line from Blackheath to Mount Victoria and the completion of this stretch in May 1868 led to Wentworth Falls being replaced by Mount Victoria, not by Blackheath, as the temporary terminus of the Western line. Plans to build a two-storied station at Blackheath were abandoned and this grander building was erected instead at Mount Victoria.

title: Mount Victoria railway station

text: Mount Victoria railway station was listed on the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999 having satisfied the following criteria.

title: Mount Victoria railway station

text: The Mount Victoria Railway Station Group has a high degree of research potential for its demonstrative ability in providing construction techniques and architectural character of various types of buildings in one station. The station building on Platform 2 is of particular research significance for its staged construction over time to accommodate different staff and passenger needs. The site of the former SM's cottage also has archaeological potential.

title: Mount Victoria railway station

text: Great Southern Rail's weekly "Indian Pacific" also calls at Mount Victoria.

title: Mount Victoria railway station

text: The Mount Victoria Railway Station is associated with John Whitton, Engineer-in-Chief of the NSW Railways, as the original Station building was built to a design from his time, and with George Cowdery, Engineer-in-Chief for Existing Lines, as the two-level stone addition containing the Railway Refreshment Room was built under his supervision.


query: Who was King Zhaoxiang of Qin's mother?

title: King Zhaoxiang of Qin

text: Because King Zhaoxiang had not yet legally come of age (traditionally at the age of 20), his mother, who was now known as Queen Dowager Xuan, became the regent. She was supported by her brothers, Wei Ran and Mi Rong (羋戎), as well as two other sons, Prince Yi (公子悝) and Prince Fu (公子巿), the four of them collectively known as the "Four Nobles" (四貴).

title: King Zhaoxiang of Qin

text: In 299 BC, King Zhaoxiang invited Lord Mengchang to Qin with the intention of appointing him as chancellor. However, after hearing (perhaps ill-intended) warnings from his ministers that Lord Mengchang was still loyal to his home state of Qi (which had just soured its diplomatic relationship with Qin), King Zhaoxiang ordered Lord Mengchang to be put under house arrest. Desperate, Lord Mengchang sent a messenger to bribe King's Zhaoxiang's favourite concubine, who demanded a snow fox fur coat, which Lord Mengchang had already given to King Zhaoxiang as a gift when he first arrived and had to steal back from the royal vault. Thanks to the pleas of the concubine, Lord Mengchang was released within two days, and he quickly smuggled himself out of Qin, narrowly evading a small army that King Zhaoxiang had ordered to pursue him. In 298 BC, the disgrunted Lord Mengchang, who was now the newly appointed chancellor of Qi, lobbied for a combined force of Qi, Han and Wei and laid siege to the Qin fortification of Hangu Pass. The allied army managed to penetrate past the Hangu Pass all the way to Yanshi (盐氏), forcing Qin to negotiate an armistice that involved returning the previously occupied Fengling and Wusui back to Wei and Han.

title: King Zhaoxiang of Qin

text: In 301 BC, Qin again attacked Han, led by King Zhaoxiang's uncle, Wei Ran, and occupied the city of Rang (穰城). The city was later given to Wei Ran, who was made chancellor six years later, as his fief. However, in 298 BC, Qin suffered a setback at Hangu Pass under the combined attack from a three-state alliance of Qi, Han and Wei, and was forced to concede the recently occupied Fengling and Wusui back to Wei and Han.

title: Qin (state)

text: In the middle of the 3rd century , Zheng Guo, a hydraulic engineer from the Han state, was sent to Qin to advise King Zhaoxiang of Qin on constructing irrigation canals. Qin had a penchant for building large-scale canals, as evident from its Min River irrigation system. King Zhaoxiang approved Zheng Guo's idea on constructing an even bigger canal. The project was completed in 264  and the canal was named after Zheng. Qin benefitted from the project as it became one of the most fertile states in China due to the good irrigation system, and also because it could now raise more troops as a consequence of increased agricultural yield.

title: King Wu of Qin

text: After King Wu's death, Gan Mao left Qin to serve Wei. Since King Wu died young without issue, it threw Qin into a succession crisis, with multiple brother-princes contending for the throne. Eventually, King Wu's younger half-brother Prince Ji, who was serving as a political hostage at the state of Yan at the time, returned to Qin with the support of his uncle Wei Ran (魏冉) and King Wuling of Zhao and ascended to the throne as King Zhaoxiang.

title: Qin (state)

text: Subsequently, King Zhaoxiang's foreign advisor, Fan Sui, advised the king to abandon those fruitless campaigns against distant states. King Zhaoxiang heeded Fan's advice and changed Qin's foreign policy to adopting good diplomatic relations with distant states (Yan and Qi), while concentrating on attacking nearby states (Zhao, Han and Wei). As a consequence, Qin began to launch constant attacks on Han and Wei over the next decades, conquering several territories in its campaigns. By then, Qin's territories had expanded to beyond the eastern shore of the Yellow River and Han and Wei were reduced to the status of "buffers" from Qin for the other states in the east.

title: King Zhaoxiang of Qin

text: In 256 BC, Qin struck back at Zhao again, with general Zhao Chan (趙摻) killing 90,000 men and capturing over 20 counties. Zhao would continue to be at war with Qin into the years following King Zhaoxiang's death, including participating in a fruitless anti-Qin offensive by the five-state alliance in 247 BC, and two major victories against Qin invasions in 240 BC and 231 BC (the latter won by general Li Mu), but it never recovered to its formal glory prior to the Battle of Changping. Meanwhile, Qin had fully regained its strength to become the only dominant military power, and went on to capture the Zhao capital Handan in 229 BC and eventually conquer the whole of Zhao in 222 BC.

title: King Zhaoxiang of Qin

text: In 288 BC, King Zhaoxiang contacted King Min of Qi and proposed an alliance where both would claim the title "Di", and planned to attack the newly strengthened state of Zhao together. However, King Min was persuaded by Su Qin to renounce his Di title, and instead allied with other states to attack Qin, forcing King Zhaoxiang to also renounce his Di title. At the same time, Qi took the opportunity to conquer its rival state of Song, which made itself a major immediate threat in the eyes of other states.

title: King Zhaoxiang of Qin

text: King Zhaoxiang of Qin (Chinese:秦昭襄王; 325–251 BC), or King Zhao of Qin (秦昭王), born Ying Ji (Chinese:嬴稷, was the king of Qin from 306 BC to 251 BC. He was the son of King Huiwen and younger brother of King Wu.

title: King Zhaoxiang of Qin

text: In 289 BC, King Zhaoxiang sent Bai Qi and Sima Cuo to attack Wei, capturing 61 villages around Zhi. However, in 288 BC, Qin was forced to back down when the five eastern states allied together and threatened to attack Qin again. It did not take long for Qin to strike back, capturing Xinyuan (新垣) and Quyang (曲陽) from Wei in 287 BC, and the former Wei capital Anyi (安邑) in 286 BC. In 283 BC, Qin allied with Zhao and attacked Wei again, capturing Ancheng (安城) with its vanguard reaching near the Wei capital Daliang (大梁).

title: King Zhaoxiang of Qin

text: In 284 BC, King Zhaoxiang sent troops in a five-state alliance of Qin, Yan, Zhao, Wei and Han, led by the Yan general Yue Yi, to attack Qi. Over 70 cities were captured including its capital Linzi (臨淄), leading to the murder of King Min of Qi by his supposed Chu ally.

title: King Zhaoxiang of Qin

text: In 266 BC, the Wei national Fan Ju (范雎) fled to Qin after being persecuted and tortured by the Wei chancellor, Wei Qi (魏齊), and vowed revenge upon his home state. He advised King Zhaoxiang about the strategy of "allying distant states while attacking nearby states" (遠交近攻). This advice impressed King Zhaoxiang so much that he appointed him as the chancellor of Qin. In 264 BC, King Zhaoxiang sent Bai Qi to attack Han, capturing nine cities including Xingcheng (陘城) and killing 50,000 of the enemy, enabling Qin to blockade the routes around southern Taihang Mountains. In 262 BC, Bai Qi attacked Han and captured Yewang (野王), cutting off the Shangdang region from the Han mainland. King Huanhui of Han was fearful of the Qin military prowess and decided to concede Shangdang, but the local commanders refused to do so and instead surrendered the region to the state of Zhao. The struggle for control of Shangdang triggered direct conflicts between Qin and Zhao, then the two largest military powers among the warring states, leading to the devastating Battle of Changping.

title: Lord Mengchang

text: In 299 BC, Lord Mengchang was sent to Qin on an official journey. King Zhaoxiang had heard so much about the young lord that he wanted to appoint him as the new Chancellor of Qin. However, King Zhaoxiang was warned by his ministers that Lord Mengchang was still loyal to his homeland of Qi, and soon put Lord Mengchang under house arrest. Desperate, Lord Mengchang sent a messenger to the king of Qin's beloved concubine for help. In exchange for her aid, the woman asked for the snow fox fur coat which Lord Mengchang had already given to the king as a gift when he first arrived in Qin. It was worth a thousand pieces of gold and there was not its like anywhere. King Zhaoxiang kept it in the royal treasury. One of Lord Mengchang's entourage in Qin was a skilled thief. He disguised himself as a dog and sneaked into the treasury under cover of darkness and retrieved the coat. Within two days, Lord Mengchang was released thanks to the pleas of the concubine. Lord Mengchang hired a chariot, forged his documents and dashed to the borders. By midnight of the next day, he had reached Hangu Pass—the last checkpoint of Qin before entering the territories of Qi. King Zhaoxiang had immediately regretted letting Lord Mengchang go and a small army was chasing him to bring him back. The guards at Hangu Pass would not let anyone pass through until the cock-crow at dawn. Lord Mengchang turned to his entourage for help. One of his aides could imitate all types of sounds. He crowed like a rooster, and this woke up the rest of the roosters. Not knowing that Lord Mengchang was being hunted, the guards at the pass then allowed Lord Mengchang and his entourage to enter Qi territory to safety.

title: King Zhaoxiang of Qin

text: Bai Qi wanted to take advantage of the victory at Changping and immediately lay siege to the Zhao capital of Handan (邯鄲). This frightened the states of Zhao and Han greatly, so they sent Su Dai (蘇代, Su Qin's brother) to bribe Fan Ju (范雎, or Fan Sui 范睢), who was then the Qin chancellor and jealous of Bai Qi's military achievement. Fan Ju persuaded King Zhaoxiang to halt the offensives, citing as the reason that the soldiers needed to rest after years of war. Qin agreed to an armistice in exchange of the states of Zhao and Han conceding lands.

title: King Zhaoxiang of Qin

text: In 306 BC, the young King Zhaoxiang ascended to the throne, with his mother Queen Dowager Xuan serving as regent. Knowing Qin could not focus on eradicating Yiqu when it had the hostile eastern states to deal with, and her son's rule was still shaky due to numerous rival princes keen to capture the throne, Queen Dowager Xuan decided to use an approach of pretended conciliation. She invited the king of Yiqu to live long-term in the Ganquan Palace, and consummated a seductive liaison that produced two sons with him. This completely removed the Yiqu King's hostility towards Qin, as the beguiled king had lost all cautiousness around the Queen Dowager. At the same time, King Zhaoxiang was aggressively acting to weaken rival warring states in the east and south, and Queen Dowager Xuan was secretly planning with her son the eventual annihilation of Yiqu.

title: Qin dynasty

text: Note: King Zhaoxiang of Qin (秦昭襄王) had already been ruling Qin for 51 years when Qin annihilated the Zhou dynasty; however the other six warring states were still independent regimes. Some Chinese historiographers thus used the next year (the 52nd year of King Zhaoxiang of Qin) as the official succession from the Zhou dynasty.

title: King Zhaoxiang of Qin

text: In 307 BC, King Nan of Zhou hosted King Wu of Qin, who just returned victorious against Han at the Battle of Yiyang. During the visit, King Wu, a keen wrestler, decided to try lifting the "dragon-patterned red cauldron" (龍紋赤鼎) in the Zhou palace. He died from the attempt, bleeding from his eyes and breaking his shin bones. After the childless King Wu died, his hostage half-brother Ying Ji returned to claim the throne as King Zhaoxiang.

title: King Zhaoxiang of Qin

text: Wang Ling's attack on Handan did not go well due to the fierce Zhao resistance, and King Zhaoxiang again decided to invite Bai Qi to command the siege, but Bai Qi again advised him that Qin had a very low chance of winning this campaign. King Zhaoxiang was unhappy to hear Bai Qi's counsel, so he replaced Wang Lin with Wang He and continued the siege. In 257 BC, the Qin army was suffering losses inflicted by reinforcements from the states of Chu and Wei. King Zhaoxiang then personally visited Bai Qi and attempted to coerce him into taking the command position with royal authority. When Bai Qi once again advised abandoning the siege, King Zhaoxiang was so angry that he stripped Bai Qi's titles and exiled him. Fan Ju then falsely accused to King Zhaoxiang that Bai Qi was cursing the King behind his back, so King Zhaoxiang decreed the forced suicide of Bai Qi. This did not improve the situation for the Qin offensive, and the Qin sustained heavy casualties under the combined assault of Wei, Chu and Zhao, and the Qin army was routed and went into a general retreat. The three-state alliance then pursued and attacked Qin, reinforced by the Han army that had recently joined them. The combined forces recaptured Hedong, Anyang, Taiyuan, Pilao, Wu'an, Shangdang and Runan. The Qin expeditionary force lost most of its men in the retreat. King Zhaoxiang's ignoring of Bai Qi's advice had sown bitter fruits at the end.

title: King Zhaoxiang of Qin

text: Parents: Prince Si (公子駟; 356–311 BC), ruled as King Huiwen of Qin (秦惠文王) from 338–311 BC Queen Dowager Xuan, of the Mi clan of Chu (宣太后 羋姓; d. 265 BC) Consorts: Queen Yeyang (葉陽王后) Queen Dowager Tang, of the Tang lineage (唐太后 唐氏), the mother of Prince Zhu Issue: King Zhaoxiang's first son (d. 267 BC). He is also known by his posthumous title, Crown Prince Dao (悼太子). King Zhaoxiang's second son, Prince Zhu (公子柱; 303–251 BC), ruled as King Xiaowen of Qin (秦孝文王) in 251 BC. He is also known by his prior title, Lord Anguo (安國君). A daughter who married King Kaolie of Chu (楚考烈王) and bore Lord Changping (昌平君) in 271 BC

title: King Zhaoxiang of Qin

text: In 283 BC, King Zhaoxiang offered to trade 15 cities in exchange of the jade disc of He, which was in the state of Zhao's possession. King Huiwen of Zhao was attracted by the offer and agreed to the trade. However, the Zhao ambassador Lin Xiangru (藺相如) figured out that Qin never meant to hold up their end of the deal, and managed to return the jade back to Zhao. During the following three years (282 BC to 280 BC), Qin attacked Zhao multiple times, capturing cities such as Shicheng (石城), Lin (藺), Lishi (離石), Qi (祁) and Guanglang (光狼城), killing 20,000 men, and forcing Zhao to agree to send hostages and concede lands in exchange for returning the captured cities. During the armistice meeting held at Mianchi (澠池), King Zhaoxiang attempted to humiliate King Huiwen, but was forced to back down when Lin Xiangru threatened to physically harm the Qin king.

title: King Zhaoxiang of Qin

text: King Zhaoxiang reigned as the King of Qin for 57 years, and was responsible for the state of Qin achieving strategic dominance over the other six major states. During his reign, Qin captured the Chu capital Ying in 278 BC, conquered the Xirong state of Yiqu in 272 BC, slaughtered a 450,000-strong Zhao army at Changping in 260 BC, and overthrew the Eastern Zhou dynasty in 256 BC. These aggressive territorial expansions and the strategic weakening of other rival states paved the path for Qin's eventual unification of China three decades later by his great-grandson Ying Zheng.

title: Qin (state)

text: In the next five decades after King Huiwen's death, King Zhaoxiang of Qin shifted his attention to northern China after Qin's victories in the south against Chu. In the early years of King Zhaoxiang's reign, the Marquis of Rang (穰侯) served as Qin's chancellor and he actively pushed for military campaigns against the Qi state in the far eastern part of China. However, the marquis had his personal motives, as he intended to use Qin's powerful military to help him conquer a fief in Qi territories, since the lands were not directly linked to Qin and would not be under the Qin government's direct administration.

title: King Zhaoxiang of Qin

text: Bai Qi was furious at this because he believed Qin had just forfeited a chance to annihilate Zhao once and for all, and resigned his position in protest. However, Zhao soon changed its mind and refused to cede the lands it promised, and attempted to lobby an anti-Qin alliance with the other states. King Zhaoxiang then ordered an attack on Zhao in late 259 BC, laying siege to Handan. He wanted Bai Qi to lead the attack, but the still angry Bai Qi bluntly refused to assume the position citing illness. Instead, he advised King Zhaoxiang to call off the siege as the window of opportunity for an easy victory was already gone, because Lord Pingyuan had managed to secure military reinforcements from Chu and Wei, led by the famous Lord Chunshen and Lord Xinling. King Zhaoxiang did not take in his advice and instead appointed Wang Ling (王陵) as the commander of the siege.

title: King Zhaoxiang of Qin

text: In 256 BC, Duke Wu of West Zhou (西周武公) allied with other states to stop the Qin offensive on the Han city of Yangcheng. In retaliation, King Zhaoxiang of Qin sent general Jiu to invade West Zhou, successfully breaking into Wangcheng. The Duke Wu was taken to Xianyang to beg for mercy, conceding all his lands. Both King Nan and Duke Wu would die later that year, and the subsequent Duke of West Zhou, Duke Wen (西周文公), was exiled to Danhuju (憚狐聚). Because the Zhou royal court had fallen from power and King Nan had died without a successor, the Eastern Zhou Dynasty collapsed, ending 879 years of Zhou monarchy. The remaining East Zhou state was also conquered by Qin chancellor Lü Buwei seven years later in 249 BC during the reign of King Zhaoxiang's grandson King Zhuangxiang, after Duke Jing of East Zhou attempted to form an anti-Qin alliance with other states.

title: King Zhaoxiang of Qin

text: In his first year as ruler (306 BC), King Zhaoxiang accepted the counsel of the Right Chancellor, Gan Mao (甘茂), who advocated the return of the Wusui (武遂) region back to the state of Han. The plan was opposed by two other officials Xiang Shou (向壽) and Gongsun Shi (公孫奭), who both despised Gan Mao greatly and proceeded to badmouth him repeatedly. This led Gan Mao to flee Qin in fear of his life and defect to the state of Qi.

title: King Zhaoxiang of Qin

text: In 305 BC, two of King Zhaoxiang's older half-brothers, Prince Zhuang (公子壯) and Prince Yong (公子雍), who a year ago were both rival contenders for the throne, conspired to carry out a coup with Queen Huiwen (惠文后, the mother of the late King Wu) and Queen Wu (悼武王后, King Wu's childless wife, who was a princess from Wei) as well as a dozen other lords and court officials who were against King Zhaoxiang's ascension. The rebellion was quickly crushed by Wei Ran, who slaughtered all the conspirators except Queen Wu, who was exiled back to Wei. With the annihilation of the dissidents, King Zhaoxiang's hold to the throne was secured. In the same year, King Zhaoxiang had his coming-of-age ceremony, and began to personally attend state affairs.

title: Qin Shi Huang

text: The rulers of Qin had styled themselves kings from the time of King Huiwen in 325BC. Upon his ascension, Zheng became known as the King of Qin[9][10] or King Zheng of Qin.[14][15] This title made him the nominal equal of the rulers of Shang and of Zhou, the last of whose kings had been deposed by King Zhaoxiang of Qin in 256BC.

title: King Zhaoxiang of Qin

text: In 293 BC, the states of Han, Wei and East Zhou allied together to attack Qin. King Zhaoxiang appointed the young Bai Qi as general, and defeated the two major states at Yique, killing 240,000 of the enemy and capturing (then executing) the enemy's supreme commander Gongsun Xi (公孫喜). This was the most devastating blow Qin delivered to the two eastern states to date. In 292 BC，Bai Qi again led the army and attacked Wei, capturing Weicheng (魏城) and sacking Yuanqu (垣邑). Then in 291 BC, Qin attacked Han again and seized the city of Wan (宛城) and Ye (葉). In 290 BC，King Zhaoxiang sent Sima Cuo (司馬錯), who captured Zhi (軹) from Wei and Deng (鄧) from Han, before joining with Bai Qi to seize Yuanqu again. These successive victories forced Wei to concede 400 li of Hedong lands, and Han to concede 200 li of Wusui lands to Qin.

title: King Zhaoxiang of Qin

text: King Zhaoxiang died at age 75 in 251 BC, having outlived his eldest son, who died in 267 BC while serving as a hostage in the state of Wei. He was succeeded by his second son King Xiaowen.

title: King Zhaoxiang of Qin

text: In 304 BC, King Zhaoxiang met with King Huai of Chu in Huangqi (黃棘) to negotiate an alliance, ceding Shangyong (上庸) as a gesture. In 303 BC, the states of Qi, Wei and Han broke off their previous alliance with Chu and invaded Chu, forcing Chu to send its crown prince Xiong Heng to Qin as a hostage in exchange for Qin assistance. King Zhaoxiang sent troops to attack Wei and Han, capturing Puban (蒲阪), Yangchun (陽春) and Fengling (封陵) from Wei, and re-capturing Wusui from Han. In 302 BC, King Zhaoxiang met with King Xiang of Wei and Crown Prince Yin of Han (韓太子嬰) in Linjin (臨晉), and agreed to return the seized lands in exchange for the two states denouncing their previous anti-Qin alliance. At the same time, the Chu crown prince secretly fled from Qin back to Chu.


query: When did The Prizefighter series begin?

title: Prizefighter series

text: The Prizefighter series was a professional boxing tournament created by boxing promoter Barry Hearn and aired on Sky Sports. The format has an initial eight fighters, who compete in four quarter-finals of 3 x 3 minute rounds (number and length of the rounds is same as in amateur boxing) followed by two semi-finals and one final all on the same night.[1] The total prize money of the tournament is £80,000 with the winner of the tournament taking home £32,000, a figure that has increased from the initial top prize of £25,000 when the tournament first aired in April 2008. There have been 34 Prizefighter tournaments so far featuring 14 different weight divisions. The last tournament was held in 2015.

title: Prizefighter series

text: — Sam Sexton, winner of the 2nd Prizefighter tournament

title: Prizefighter series

text: On 5 May 2012, the Prizefighter series went to Belfast for the first time. At the King's Hall, Belfast, the 24th installment of the Prizefighter competition showcased Irish fighters from the middleweight division. It was the first Prizefighter event that Betfair were title sponsors.

title: Prizefighter series

text: On 6 July 2013, at York Hall in Bethnal Green, London, the 31st installment of the Prizefighter competition showcased a field of eight light-welterweight fighters from the UK.

title: Prizefighter series

text: The first Prizefighter took place at York Hall, Bethnal Green in April 2008. The event was televised live on Sky Sports and saw 8 heavyweight fighters compete for the title. Competitors for the first series were Martin Rogan, David Dolan, Dave Ferguson, Billy Bessey, Alex Ibbs, Darren Morgan, Paul Butlin and Colin Kenna.[2]

title: Prizefighter series

text: On 20 June 2012, at York Hall, Bethnal Green, the 25th installment of the Prizefighter competition showcased an international field of fighters from the heavyweight division for the second time. In a first for Prizefighter, grime star Clement Marfo performed his single 'Champion' in the ring before the action begun.[38]

title: Prizefighter series

text: The tournament saw two fighters hoping to become second time Prizefighter champions, Audley Harrison and Martin Rogan. The other six participants were: Derric Rossy, Ian Lewison, Travis Walker, Albert Sosnowski, Claus Bertino and Timo Hoffmann.

title: Prizefighter series

text: On 15 September 2011, at York Hall, Bethnal Green, the 20th installment of the Prizefighter competition showcased a field of boxers from the light middleweight division.

title: Prizefighter series

text: On 7 June 2011, at York Hall, Bethnal Green, the 19th installment of the Prizefighter competition showcased a field of boxers from the welterweight division for the second time that included former world champion Junior Witter.

title: Prizefighter series

text: On 29 October 2011, at York Hall, Bethnal Green, the 22nd installment of the Prizefighter competition showcased another weight division first, this time it was a field of boxers from the featherweight division.

title: Prizefighter series

text: On 23 February 2013, at York Hall in Bethnal Green, London, the 29th installment of the Prizefighter competition showcased an international field of eight heavyweight fighters from five different countries.

title: Prizefighter series

text: Moroccan fighter Yassine El maachi won the tournament, beating Peter McDonagh, Colin Lynes and pre-tournament favourite Junior Witter by unanimous, split and majority decisions respectively to claim the Prizefighter trophy.[37]

title: Patrick Mendy

text:
On 30 June 2010 Mendy competed in the 13th series of Prizefighter and came out the eventual winner of the competition. He came into the competition following a loss from undefeated Kenny Anderson. In his first fight he beat Sam Horton by TKO in the 1st round and broke the record for the fastest ever knockout in Prizefighter at 82 seconds (1:22min). In the semi-final he beat Daniel Cadman by unanimous decision with all the scorecards reading 29-28 in favour of Mendy. In the final he fought in form Paul David and won on unanimous decision again and received £32,000 for his win, the judges scorecards were all in favour of Mendy, 29-28, 29-28, 30-27.
In this series he broke an outstanding 3 Prizefighter records:

title: Prizefighter series

text: On 5 April 2014, at York Hall in Bethnal Green, London, the 34th installment of the Prizefighter competition showcased a field of eight welterweight fighters from the UK.

title: Prizefighter series

text: On 14 February 2015, at the Winter Gardens in Blackpool, the 35th installment of the Prizefighter competition showcased a field of eight middleweight fighters from the UK.

title: Prizefighter series

text: On 12 October 2011, at the Liverpool Olympia, the 21st installment of the Prizefighter competition showcased a field of boxers from the super flyweight division for the first time.

title: Prizefighter series

text: Mendy was the eventual winner of the tournament, breaking the record for fastest Prizefighter knockout when he defeated Sam Horton after 82 seconds, and then became the youngest Prizefighter winner as well as competitor when he defeated Paul David in the final.[29]

title: Prizefighter series

text: On 6 October 2012, at Liverpool Olympia, the 26th installment of the Prizefighter competition showcased field of Liverpudlian and Mancunian fighters from the lightweight division. Dubbed 'Rocky and the Betfair Prizefighters', previous Prizefighter winner Rocky Fielding took on Carl Dilks for the vacant English super-middleweight title after the Prizefighter tournament. The eight man line-up was described by many in the build-up as the best ever and included former British title holders Derry Mathews, Gary Sykes and Anthony Crolla.[40]

title: Prizefighter series

text: On 4 December 2009, the tournament saw the light welterweight's competing for the first time. Amongst the contestants was Gavin Rees, the first former World champion to compete in the tournament's history. The competition also had a number of European champions competing with Colin Lynes, Jason Cook and Ted Bami, a man who had also reached the final of the Welterweight prizefighter tournament in October 2008. Former British champions David Barnes and Young Mutley also took part as did unbeaten fighter Michael Grant and Welshman Barrie Jones. The draw for the competition was conducted by Floyd Mayweather, Jr..[23]

title: Prizefighter series

text: The tournament saw a field of eight fighters, four from the UK and four from the USA, take part in this special edition of Prizefighter.

title: Prizefighter series

text: On 7 May 2011, at Alexandra Palace, London, the 18th installment of the Prizefighter competition showcased an international field of boxers from heavyweight division for the first time.

title: Prizefighter series

text: Audley Harrison, 2000 Olympics gold medalist, rolled back the years to become the first ever two-time Prizefighter champion and win the new-look Betfair Prizefighter trophy. He claimed the £32,000 winner’s cheque as well as £4,000 in stoppage bonuses the 41-year-old earned after TKO victories in the quarter-final and the final. Harrison overcome Martin Rogan, keeping the Belfast fighter at the end of his jab, in an absorbing semi-final contest before stopping American Derric Rossy in the second round of the final.[46]

title: Rocky Fielding

text: He turned professional in 2010 and after winning his first three professional bouts as a Light Heavyweight, Fielding was offered the chance to drop down a weight to take part in The Super Middleweight Prizefighter Series after Kenny Anderson pulled out at short notice. Fielding went on to win the tournament causing a stoppage in each of his three fights and becoming the first boxer in a Prizefighter series to do so.

title: Prizefighter series

text: On 18 May 2013, at York Hall in Bethnal Green, London, the 30th installment of the Prizefighter competition showcased a field of eight Cruiserweight fighters from the UK.

title: Prizefighter series

text: In the Prizefighter prospect slots, Olympic Gold medal hero Anthony Joshua MBE fought Croatian Hrvoje Kisicek in his third pro fight while Cruiserweight prospect Ben Ileyemi clashed with Moses Matovu in his second pro outing.

title: Prizefighter series

text: On 29 January 2011, at the Olympia, London, the 16th installment of the Prizefighter competition showcased boxers from the light heavyweight division for the second time. Former British champion Tony Dodson was the biggest name involved.

title: Prizefighter series

text: On 11 February 2012, at Civic Hall, Wolverhampton, the 23rd installment of the Prizefighter competition showcased fighters from the light-welterweight division for the second time.

title: Prizefighter series

text: On 14 November 2013, at York Hall in Bethnal Green, London, the 32nd installment of the Prizefighter competition showcased a field of eight heavyweight fighters from the UK and the USA.

title: Prizefighter series

text: On 6 December 2014, at York Hall in Bethnal Green, London, the 33rd installment of the Prizefighter competition showcased a field of eight lightweight fighters from the UK and Ireland.

title: Prizefighter series

text: — Michael Lomax, winner of the 3rd Prizefighter tournament