White Swan

White Swan may refer to:

White (disambiguation)

White is a colour.

White(s) or The White may also refer to:

Animals

Arts

Vere Street Coterie

The Vere Street Coterie were a group of men arrested at a molly house in Vere Street, London in 1810 for sodomy and attempted sodomy. Eight men were eventually convicted. Two of them were hanged (as per the then still extant sodomy laws promulgated by Henry VIII in 1534) and six were pilloried for this offence. Along with Oscar Wilde's imprisonment for a similar offence, this episode was one of the major events in gay history in England during the 19th century.

The White Swan on Vere Street in London was established as a molly-house (that is, a gay club) in early 1810 by two men, James Cook (not the seafarer) and Yardley (full name unknown), who realised the lack of gay brothels in the city offered a business opportunity for them (Yardley claimed to be straight with a wife and purely in it for the money).

The club had been operating for less than six months when, on 8 July 1810, it was raided by the Bow Street police. Twenty-seven men were arrested, but in the end, the majority of them were released (perhaps as a result of bribes), and only eight were tried and convicted.

Swan

Swans are birds of the family Anatidae within the genus Cygnus. The swans' close relatives include the geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. There are six or seven species of swan in the genus Cygnus; in addition there is another species known as the coscoroba swan, although this species is no longer considered one of the true swans. Swans usually mate for life, though "divorce" does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure, and if a mate dies, the remaining swan will take up with another. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.

Etymology and terminology

The English word 'swan', akin to the German Schwan, Dutch zwaan and Swedish svan, is derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing). Young swans are known as swanlings or as cygnets, from Greek κύκνος, kýknos and from the Latin word cygnus ("swan") and the Old French suffix -et ("little"). An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen.

White

White is an achromatic color, literally a "color without hue", that is a mixture of the frequencies of all the colors of the visible spectrum. It is one of the most common colors in nature, the color of sunlight, snow, milk, chalk, limestone and other common minerals. In many cultures white represents or signifies purity, innocence, and light, and is the symbolic opposite of black, or darkness. According to surveys in Europe and the United States, white is the color most often associated with perfection, the good, honesty, cleanliness, the beginning, the new, neutrality, and exactitude.

In ancient Egypt and ancient Rome, priestesses wore white as a symbol of purity, and Romans wore a white toga as a symbol of citizenship. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance a white unicorn symbolized chastity, and a white lamb sacrifice and purity; the widows of kings dressed in white rather than black as the color of mourning. It sometimes symbolizes royalty; it was the color of the French kings (black being the color of the queens) and of the monarchist movement after the French Revolution as well as of the movement called the White Russians (not to be confounded with Belarus, literally "White Russia") who fought the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War (1917-1922). Greek and Roman temples were faced with white marble, and beginning in the 18th century, with the advent of neoclassical architecture, white became the most common color of new churches, capitols and other government buildings, especially in the United States of America. It was also widely used in 20th century modern architecture as a symbol of modernity, simplicity and strength.