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49,325,356 | Battalia pie | 1,064,073,538 | Large game pie | [
"English cuisine"
]
| Battalia pie (obsolete spelling battaglia pye) is an English large game pie, or occasionally a fish pie, filled with many small "blessed" pieces, beatilles, of offal, in a gravy made from meat stock flavoured with spices and lemon. The dish was described in cookery books of the 17th and 18th centuries.
Confusion with words for battle led to the pie being crenellated, or shaped to resemble a castle with towers.
## Etymology
A battalia pie was so named because it was filled with beatilles, small blessed objects (from Latin beatus, blessed) such as, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, "Cocks-combs, Goose-gibbets, Ghizzards, Livers, and other Appurtenances of Fowls (1706)". It is not connected with Italian battaglia, battle, but it was regularly confused with that meaning, and battalia pies were built with crenellated battlements around the edges, and sometimes as castles complete with towers.
## Recipe
The 1658 cookery book The Compleat Cook by "W. M." gives an early recipe for battalia pie:
> Take four tame Pigeons and Trusse them to bake, and take foure Oxe Pallats well boyled and blanched, and cut it in little pieces; take six Lamb stones, and as many good Sweet breads of Veale cut in halfs and parboyl'd, and twenty Cockscombs boyled add blanched, and the bottoms of four Hartichoaks, and a Pint of Oysters parboyled and bearded, and the Marrow of three bones, so season all with Mace, Nutmeg and Salt; so put your meat in a Coffin of Fine Paste proportionable to your quantity of meat; put halfe a pound of Butter upon your meat, put a little water in the Pye, before it be set in the Oven, let it stand in the Oven an houre and a halfe, then take it out, pour out the butter at the top of the Pye, and put it in leer of Gravy, butter, and Lemons, and serve it up.
In his 1660 cookery book The Accomplisht Cook, Robert May gives a recipe "To make a Bisk or Batalia Pie", which instructs:
> Take six peeping Pigeons, and as many peeping small chickens, truss them to bake; then have six oxe pallets well boil'd and blancht, and cut in little pieces; then take six lamb-stones, and as many good veal sweet-breads cut in halves and parboil'd, twenty cocks-combs boil'd and blanch'd, the bottoms of four artichocks boiled and blanched, a quart of great oysters parboil'd and bearded, also the marrow of four bones seasoned with pepper, nutmeg, mace, and salt; fill the pye with the meat, and mingle some pistaches amongst it, cock-stones, knots, or yolks of hard eggs, and some butter, close it up and bake it (an hour and half will bake it) but before you set it in the oven, put into it a little fair water: Being baked pour out the butter, and liquor it with gravy, butter beaten up thick, slic't lemon, and serve it up. Or you may bake this bisk in a patty-pan or dish. Sometimes use sparagus and interlarded bacon. For the paste of this dish, take three quarts of flour, and three quarters of a pound of butter, boil the butter in fair water, and make up the paste hot and quick. Otherways in the summer time, make the paste of cold butter; to three quarts of flour take a pound and a half of butter, and work it dry into the flour, with the yolks of four eggs and one white, then put a little water to it, and make it up into a stiff paste.
John Nott's 1723 The Cooks and Confectioners Dictionary gives a recipe for battalia pie with fish:
> Make a very large Pye, and cut with Battlements, garnish the Coffing with as many Towers as will contain your several sorts of Fish; dry your Coffin well, and wash it over on the inside with Yolks of Eggs, and flour it in the bottom; then having either broil’d or fry’d your Fish brown, place the Head of a Salmon, cut pretty large beyond the Gills, in the middle of your Pye, forc’d, and bak’d in an Oven: Set the Heads of your other Fish upon forced Meat, and place your several sorts of Fish one opposite to the other in their several Partitions, and pour all over your Fish, Cockles, Prawns, Oysters, and Periwinkles boil’d up in their proper Lairs, and thicken’d with drawn Butter. Remember to lay your forced Heads over the Battlements.
In her 1727 cookery book The Compleat Housewife, Eliza Smith describes battalia pie as follows:
> Take four small chickens, four squab pigeons, four sucking rabbets; cut them in pieces, season them with savoury spice, and lay 'em in the pye, with four sweetbreads sliced, and as many sheep's tongues, two shiver'd palates, two pair of lamb-stones, twenty or thirty coxcombs, with savoury balls and oysters. Lay on butter, and close the pye. A Lear.
Smith's recipe was republished in Michael Willis's 1831 Cookery Made Easy, and in Anne Walbank Buckland's 1893 book, Our Viands: Whence they Come and How they are Cooked.
## In literature
Former prime minister of the United Kingdom and author Benjamin Disraeli describes an English dinner of the previous century in his 1837 novel Venetia, with
> that masterpiece of the culinary art, a great battalia pie, in which the bodies of chickens, pigeons, and rabbits, were embalmed in spices, cock's combs, and savoury balls, and well bedewed with one of those rich sauces of claret, anchovy, and sweet herbs ... [on] the cover of this pastry ... the curious cook had contrived to represent all the once-living forms that were now entombed in that gorgeous sepulchre.
## Recreations
Battalia pies were recreated at Naworth Castle in 2006 and at Westport House, Ireland in 2015. |
18,247,224 | Ken Livingstone | 1,166,873,002 | English politician and former Mayor of London (born 1945) | [
"1945 births",
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| Kenneth Robert Livingstone (born 17 June 1945) is an English politician who served as the Leader of the Greater London Council (GLC) from 1981 until the council was abolished in 1986, and as Mayor of London from the creation of the office in 2000 until 2008. He also served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Brent East from 1987 to 2001. A former member of the Labour Party, he was on the party's hard left, ideologically identifying as a socialist.
Born in Lambeth, South London, to a working-class family, Livingstone joined Labour in 1968 and was elected to represent Norwood at the GLC in 1973, Hackney North and Stoke Newington in 1977, and Paddington in 1981. That year, Labour representatives on the GLC elected him as the council's leader. Attempting to reduce London Underground fares, his plans were challenged in court and declared unlawful; more successful were his schemes to benefit women and several minority groups, despite stiff opposition. The mainstream press gave him the moniker "Red Ken" in reference to his socialist beliefs and criticised him for supporting republicanism, LGBT rights, and a United Ireland. Livingstone was a vocal opponent of the Conservative Party government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, which in 1986 abolished the GLC. Elected as MP for Brent East in 1987, he became closely associated with anti-racist campaigns. He attempted to stand for the position of Labour Party leader following Neil Kinnock's resignation in 1992, but failed to get enough nominations. Livingstone became a vocal critic of Tony Blair's New Labour project that pushed the party closer to the political centre and won the 1997 general election.
After failing to become Labour's candidate in the 2000 London mayoral election, Livingstone successfully contested the election as an independent candidate. In his first term as Mayor of London, he introduced the congestion charge, Oyster card, and articulated buses, and unsuccessfully opposed the privatisation of London Underground. Despite his opposition to Blair's government on issues like the Iraq War, Livingstone was invited to stand for re-election as Labour's candidate. Re-elected in 2004, he expanded his transport policies, introduced new environmental regulations, and enacted civil rights reforms. Overseeing London's winning bid to host the 2012 Summer Olympics and ushering in a major redevelopment of the city's East End, his leadership after the 7 July 2005 London bombings was widely praised. After losing both the 2008 and 2012 London mayoral elections to the Conservative candidate Boris Johnson, Livingstone became a key ally of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in 2015. A longstanding critic of Israeli policy regarding Palestinians, his comments about the relationship between Adolf Hitler and Zionism resulted in his 2016 suspension from Labour, after which he resigned from the party in 2018.
Characterised by Charles Moore as "the only truly successful left-wing British politician of modern times", Livingstone was a controversial and polarising figure. Supporters praised his efforts to improve rights for women, LGBT people, and ethnic minorities in London, but critics emphasised allegations of cronyism and antisemitism, and criticised him for his connections to Islamists, Marxists, and Irish republicans.
## Early life
### Childhood and young adulthood: 1945–1967
Livingstone was born in his grandmother's house at 21 Shrubbery Road Streatham, South London, on 17 June 1945. His family was working class; his mother, Ethel Ada (née Kennard, 1915–1997), had been born in Southwark before training as an acrobatic dancer and working on the music hall circuit prior to the Second World War. Ken's Scottish father, Robert "Bob" Moffat Livingstone (1915–1971), had been born in Dunoon before joining the Merchant Navy in 1932 and becoming a ship's master.
Having first met in April 1940 at a music hall in Workington, they married within three months. After the war the couple moved in with Ethel's aggressive mother, Zona Ann (Williams), whom Livingstone considered "tyrannical". Livingstone's sister Lin was born 21⁄2 years later. Robert and Ethel went through various jobs in the post-war years, with the former working on fishing trawlers and English Channel ferries, while the latter worked in a bakers, at Freemans catalogue dispatch and as a cinema usherette. Livingstone's parents were "working class Tories", and unlike many Conservative voters at the time did not hold to socially conservative views on race and sexuality, opposing racism and homophobia. The family was nominally Anglican, although Livingstone abandoned Christianity when he was 11, becoming an atheist.
Moving to a Tulse Hill council housing estate, Livingstone attended St. Leonard's Primary School, and after failing his 11-plus exam, in 1956 began secondary education at Tulse Hill Comprehensive School. In 1957, his family purchased their own property at 66 Wolfington Road, West Norwood. Rather shy at school, he was bullied, and got into trouble for truancy. One year, his form master was Philip Hobsbaum, who encouraged his pupils to debate current events, first interesting Livingstone in politics. He related that he became "an argumentative cocky little brat" at home, bringing up topics at the dinner table to enrage his father. His interest in politics was furthered by the 1958 Papal election of Pope John XXIII – a man who had "a strong impact" on Livingstone – and the 1960 United States presidential election. At Tulse Hill Comprehensive he gained an interest in amphibians and reptiles, keeping several as pets; his mother worried that rather than focusing on school work all he cared about was "his pet lizard and friends". At school he attained four O-levels in English Literature, English Language, Geography and Art, subjects he later described as "the easy ones". He started work rather than stay on for the non-compulsory sixth form, which required six O-levels.
From 1962 to 1970, he worked as a technician at the Chester Beatty cancer research laboratory in Fulham, looking after animals used in experimentation. Most of the technicians were socialists, and Livingstone helped found a branch of the Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs to fight redundancies imposed by company bosses. Livingstone's leftist views solidified upon the election of Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson in 1964. With a friend from Chester Beatty, Livingstone toured West Africa in 1966, visiting Algeria, Niger, Nigeria, Lagos, Ghana and Togo. Interested in the region's wildlife, Livingstone rescued an infant ostrich from being eaten, donating it to the Lagos children's zoo. Returning home, he took part in several protest marches as a part of the anti-Vietnam War movement, becoming increasingly interested in politics and briefly subscribing to the publication of a libertarian socialist group, Solidarity.
### Political activism: 1968–1970
Livingstone joined the Labour Party in March 1968, when he was 23 years old, later describing it as "one of the few recorded instances of a rat climbing aboard a sinking ship". At the time, many leftists were leaving due to the Labour government's support for the U.S. in the Vietnam War, cuts to the National Health Service budget, and restrictions on trade unions; some joined far-left parties like the International Socialists or the Socialist Labour League, or single-issue groups like the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Child Poverty Action Group. The party was suffering mass electoral defeat at the local elections. In London, Labour lost 15 boroughs, including Livingstone's London Borough of Lambeth, which came under Conservative control. Contrastingly, Livingstone believed that grassroots campaigning – such as the 1968 student protests – were ineffective, joining Labour because he considered it the best chance for implementing progressive political change in the UK.
Joining his local Labour branch in Norwood, he involved himself in their operations, within a month becoming chair and secretary of the Norwood Young Socialists, gaining a place on the constituency's General Management and Executive Committees, and sitting on the Local Government Committee who prepared Labour's manifesto for the next borough election. Hoping for better qualifications, he attended night school, gaining O-levels in Human Anatomy, Physiology and Hygiene, and an A-level in Zoology. Leaving his job at Chester Beatty, in September 1970 he began a 3-year course at the Philippa Fawcett Teacher Training College (PFTTC) in Streatham; his attendance was poor, and he considered it "a complete waste" of time. Beginning a romantic relationship with Christine Chapman, president of the PFTTC student's union, the couple married in 1973.
Realising the Conservative governance of Lambeth Borough council was hard to unseat, Livingstone aided Eddie Lopez in reaching out to members of the local populace disenfranchised from the traditional Labour leadership. Associating with the leftist Schools' Action Union (SAU) founded in the wake of the 1968 student protests, he encouraged members of the Brixton branch of the Black Panthers to join Labour. His involvement in the SAU led to his dismissal from the PFTCC student's union, who disagreed with politicising secondary school pupils.
### Lambeth Housing Committee: 1971–1973
In 1971, Livingstone and his comrades developed a new strategy for obtaining political power in Lambeth borough. Focusing on campaigning for the marginal seats in the south of the borough, the safe Labour seats in the north were left to established party members. Public dissatisfaction with the Conservative government of Prime Minister Edward Heath led to Labour's best local government results since the 1940s; Labour leftists gained every marginal seat in Lambeth, and the borough returned to Labour control. In October 1971, Livingstone's father died of a heart attack; his mother soon moved to Lincoln. That year, Labour members voted Livingstone vice-chairman of the Housing Committee on the Lambeth London Borough Council, his first job in local government. Reforming the housing system, Livingstone and Committee Chairman Ewan Carr cancelled the proposed rent increase for council housing, temporarily halting the construction of Europe's largest tower blocks, and founded a Family Squatting Group to ensure that homeless families would be immediately rehoused through squatting in empty houses. He increased the number of compulsory purchase orders for private-rented properties, converting them to council housing. They faced opposition to their reforms, which were cancelled by central government.
Livingstone and the leftists became embroiled in factional in-fighting within Labour, vying with centrist members for powerful positions. Although never adopting Marxism, Livingstone became involved with a number of Trotskyist groups active within Labour; viewing them as potential allies, he became friends with Chris Knight, Graham Bash and Keith Veness, members of the Socialist Charter, a Trotskyist cell affiliated with the Revolutionary Communist League that had infiltrated the Labour party. In his struggle against Labour centrists, Livingstone was influenced by Trotskyist Ted Knight, who convinced him to oppose the use of British troops in Northern Ireland, believing they would simply be used to quash nationalist protests against British rule. Livingstone stood as the leftist candidate for the Chair of the Lambeth Housing Committee in April 1973, but was defeated by David Stimpson, who undid many of Livingstone and Carr's reforms.
### Early years on the Greater London Council: 1973–1977
In June 1972, after a campaign orchestrated by Eddie Lopez, Livingstone was selected as the Labour candidate for Norwood in the Greater London Council (GLC). In the 1973 GLC elections, he won the seat with 11,622 votes, a clear lead over his Conservative rival. Led by Reg Goodwin, the GLC was dominated by Labour, who had 57 seats, compared to 33 held by the Conservatives and 2 by the Liberal Party. Of the Labour GLC members, around 16, including Livingstone, were staunch leftists. Representing Norwood in the GLC, Livingstone continued as a Lambeth councillor and Vice Chairman of the Lambeth Housing Committee, criticising Lambeth council's dealings with the borough's homeless. Learning that the council had pursued a discriminatory policy of allocating the best housing to white working-class families, Livingstone went public with the evidence, which was published in the South London Press. In August 1973, he publicly threatened to resign from the Lambeth Housing Committee if the council failed "to honour longstanding promises" to rehouse 76 homeless families then staying in dilapidated and overcrowded halfway accommodation. Frustrated at the council's failure to achieve this, he resigned from the Housing Committee in December 1973.
Considered a radical by the GLC's Labour leadership, Livingstone was allocated the unimportant position of Vice Chairman of the Film Viewing Board, monitoring the release of soft pornography. Like most board members, Livingstone opposed censorship, a view he changed with the increasing availability of extreme pornography. With growing support from Labour leftists, in March 1974 he was elected to the executive of the Greater London Labour Party (GLLP), responsible for drawing up the manifesto for the GLC Labour group and the lists of candidates for council and parliamentary seats. Turning his attention once more to housing, he became Vice Chairman of the GLC's Housing Management Committee, but was sacked in April 1975 for his opposition to the Goodwin administration's decision to cut £50 million from the GLC's house-building budget. With the 1977 GLC elections approaching, Livingstone recognised the difficulty of retaining his Norwood seat, instead being selected for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, a Labour safe seat, following the retirement of David Pitt. Accused of being a "carpetbagger", it ensured he was one of the few leftist Labour councillors to remain on the GLC, which fell into Conservative hands under Horace Cutler.
### Hampstead: 1977–1980
Turning towards the Houses of Parliament, Livingstone and Christine moved to West Hampstead, north London; in June 1977 he was selected by local party members as the Labour parliamentary candidate for the Hampstead constituency, beating Vince Cable. He gained notoriety in the Hampstead and Highgate Express for publicly reaffirming his support for the controversial issue of LGBT rights, declaring he supported the reduction of the age of consent for male same-sex activity from 21 to 16, in line with the different-sex age of consent. Becoming active in the politics of the London Borough of Camden, Livingstone was elected Chair of Camden's Housing Committee; putting forward radical reforms, he democratised council housing meetings by welcoming local people, froze rents for a year, reformed the rate collection system, changed rent arrears procedures and implemented further compulsory purchase orders to increase council housing. Criticised by some senior colleagues as incompetent and excessively ambitious, some accused him of encouraging leftists to move into the borough's council housing to increase his local support base.
In 1979, internal crisis rocked Labour as activist group, the Campaign for Labour Democracy, struggled with the Parliamentary Labour Party for a greater say in party management. Livingstone joined the activists, on 15 July 1978 helping unify small left wing groups as the Socialist Campaign for a Labour Victory (SCLV). Producing a sporadically published paper, Socialist Organiser, as a mouthpiece for Livingstone's views, it criticised Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan as "anti-working class". In January 1979, Britain was hit by a series of public sector worker strikes that came to be known as the "Winter of Discontent." In Camden Borough, council employees unionised under the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) went on strike, demanding a 35-hour limit to their working week and a weekly wage increase to £60. Livingstone backed the strikers, urging Camden Council to grant their demands, eventually getting his way. District auditor Ian Pickwell, a government-appointed accountant who monitored council finances, claimed that this move was reckless and illegal, taking Camden Council to court. If found guilty, Livingstone would have been held personally responsible for the measure, forced to pay the massive surcharge, and been disqualified for public office for five years; ultimately the judge threw out the case.
In May 1979, a general election was held in the United Kingdom. Standing as Labour candidate for Hampstead, Livingstone was defeated by the incumbent Conservative, Geoffrey Finsberg. Weakened by the Winter of Discontent, Callaghan's government lost to the Conservatives, whose leader, Margaret Thatcher, became Prime Minister. A staunch right winger and free market advocate, she became a bitter opponent of the labour movement and Livingstone. Following the electoral defeat, Livingstone told Socialist Organiser that the blame lay solely with the "Labour government's policies" and the anti-democratic attitude of Callaghan and the Parliamentary Labour Party, calling for greater party democracy and a turn towards a socialist platform. This was a popular message among many Labour activists amassed under the SCLV. The primary figurehead for this leftist trend was Tony Benn, who narrowly missed being elected deputy leader of Labour in September 1981, under new party leader Michael Foot. The head of the "Bennite left", Benn became "an inspiration and a prophet" to Livingstone; the two became the best known left-wingers in Labour.
## Greater London Council leadership
### Becoming leader of the GLC: 1979–1981
Inspired by the Bennites, Livingstone planned a GLC take-over; on 18 October 1979, he called a meeting of Labour leftists entitled "Taking over the GLC", beginning publication of monthly newsletter the London Labour Briefing. Focused on increasing leftist power in the London Labour Party, he urged socialists to stand as candidates in the upcoming GLC election. When the time came to choose who would lead London Labour in that election, Livingstone put his name down, but was challenged by the moderate Andrew McIntosh; in the April 1980 vote, McIntosh beat Livingstone by 14 votes to 13. In September 1980, Livingstone separated from his wife Christine, though they remained amicable. Moving into a small flat at 195 Randolph Avenue, Maida Vale with his pet reptiles and amphibians, he divorced in October 1982 and began a relationship with Kate Allen, chair of Camden Council Women's Committee.
Livingstone turned his attention to achieving a GLC Labour victory, exchanging his safe seat in Hackney North for the marginal Inner London seat of Paddington; in May 1981 he won the seat by 2,397 votes. Cutler and the Conservatives learned of Livingstone's plans, proclaiming that a GLC Labour victory would lead to a Marxist takeover of London and then Britain; the Conservative press picked up the story, with the Daily Express using the headline of "Why We Must Stop These Red Wreckers". The media coverage was ineffective, and the GLC election of May 1981 led to Labour gaining power, with McIntosh installed as Head of the GLC; within 24 hours he was deposed by members of his own party, and replaced by Livingstone.
On 7 May, Livingstone called a caucus of his supporters; announcing his intent to challenge McIntosh's leadership, he invited those assembled to stand for other GLC posts. The meeting ended at 4:45pm having agreed on a full slate of candidates. At 5 o'clock, McIntosh held a GLC Labour meeting; the attendees called an immediate leadership election, in which Livingstone defeated him by 30 votes to 20. The entire left caucus slate was then elected. The next day, a leftist coup deposed Sir Ashley Bramall on the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA), replacing him with Bryn Davies; the left group now controlled both the GLC and the ILEA.
McIntosh proclaimed the GLC coup illegitimate, asserting that Labour was in danger from a leftist take-over. The mainstream press criticised the coup; the Daily Mail called Livingstone a "left wing extremist", and The Sun nicknamed him "Red Ken", stating his victory meant "full-steam-ahead red-blooded Socialism for London." The Financial Times issued a "warning" that leftists could use such tactics to take control of the government, when "the erosion of our democracy will surely begin." Thatcher joined the rallying call, proclaiming that leftists like Livingstone had "no time for parliamentary democracy", but were plotting "To impose upon this nation a tyranny which the peoples of Eastern Europe yearn to cast aside."
### Leader of the GLC: 1981–1983
Entering County Hall as GLC leader on 8 May 1981, Livingstone initiated changes, converting the building's Freemasonic temple into a meeting room and removing many of the privileges enjoyed by GLC members and senior officers. He initiated an open-door policy allowing citizens to hold meetings in the committee rooms free of charge, with County Hall gaining the nickname of "the People's Palace". Livingstone took great pleasure watching the disgust expressed by some Conservative GLC members when non-members began using the building's restaurant. In the London Labour Briefing, Livingstone announced "London's ours! After the most vicious GLC election of all time, the Labour Party has won a working majority on a radical socialist programme." He stated that their job was to "sustain a holding operation until such time as the Tory [Conservative] government can be brought down and replaced by a left-wing Labour government." There was a perception among Livingstone's allies that they constituted the genuine opposition to Thatcher's government, with Foot's Labour leadership dismissed as ineffectual; they hoped Benn would soon replace him.
There was a widespread public perception that Livingstone's GLC leadership was illegitimate, while the mainstream British media remained resolutely hostile. Livingstone received the levels of national press attention normally reserved for senior Members of Parliament. A press interview was arranged with Max Hastings for the Evening Standard, in which Livingstone was portrayed as affable but ruthless. The Sun'''s editor Kelvin MacKenzie took a particular interest in Livingstone, establishing a reporting team to 'dig up the dirt' on him; they were unable to uncover any scandalous information, focusing on his interest in amphibians, a hobby mocked by other media sources. The satirical journal Private Eye referred to him as "Ken Leninspart", a combination of Vladimir Lenin and the German left-wing group, the Spartacus League, proceeding to erroneously claim that Livingstone received funding from the Libyan Jamahiriya. After Livingstone sued them for libel, in November 1983 the journal apologised, paying him £15,000 in damages in an out-of-court settlement.
During 1982, Livingstone made new appointments to the GLC governance, with John McDonnell appointed key chair of finance and Valerie Wise chair of the new Women's Committee, while Sir Ashley Bramall became GLC chairman and Tony McBrearty was appointed chair of housing. Others stayed in their former positions, including Dave Wetzel as transport chair and Mike Ward as chair of industry; thus was created what biographer John Carvel described as "the second Livingstone administration", leading to a "more calm and supportive environment". Turning his attention once more to Parliament, Livingstone sought to be selected as the Labour candidate for the constituency of Brent East, a place which he felt an "affinity" for and where several of his friends lived. At the time, the Brent East Labour Party was characterised by competing factions, with Livingstone attempting to gain the support of both the hard and soft left. Securing a significant level of support from local party members, he nonetheless failed to apply for the candidacy in time, and so the incumbent centrist Reg Freeson was once more selected as Labour candidate for Brent East. A subsequent vote at the council meeting revealed that 52 local Labour members would have voted for Livingstone, with only 2 for Freeson and 3 abstentions. Nevertheless, in the 1983 United Kingdom general election, Freeson went on to win the Brent East constituency for Labour. In 1983, Livingstone began co-presenting a late night television chat show with Janet Street-Porter for London Weekend Television.
#### Fares Fair and transport policy
The Greater London Labour Manifesto for the 1981 elections, although written under McIntosh's leadership, had been determined by a special conference of the London Labour Party in October 1980 in which Livingstone's speech had been decisive on transport policy. The manifesto focused on job creation schemes and cutting London Transport fares, and it was to these issues that Livingstone's administration turned. One primary manifesto focus had been a pledge known as Fares Fair, which focused on reducing London Underground fares and freezing them at that lower rate. Based on a fare freeze implemented by the South Yorkshire Metropolitan County Council in 1975, it was widely considered to be a moderate and mainstream policy by Labour, which it was hoped would get more Londoners using public transport, thereby reducing congestion. In October 1981, the GLC implemented their policy, cutting London Transport fares by 32%; to fund the move, the GLC planned to increase the London rates.
The legality of the Fares Fair policy was challenged by Dennis Barkway, Conservative leader of the London Borough of Bromley council, who complained that his constituents were having to pay for cheaper fares on the London Underground when it did not operate in their borough. Although the Divisional Court initially found in favour of the GLC, Bromley Borough took the issue to the Court of Appeal, where three judges – Lord Denning, Lord Justice Oliver and Lord Justice Watkins – reversed the previous decision, finding in favour of Bromley Borough on 10 November. They proclaimed that the Fares Fair policy was illegal because the GLC was expressly forbidden from choosing to run London Transport at a deficit, even if this was in the perceived interest of Londoners. The GLC appealed this decision, taking the case to the House of Lords; on 17 December five Law Lords unanimously ruled in favour of Bromley Borough Council, putting a permanent end to the Fares Fair policy. GLC transport chairman Dave Wetzel labelled the judges "Vandals in Ermine" while Livingstone maintained his belief that the judicial decision was politically motivated.
Initially presenting a motion to the GLC Labour groups that they refuse to comply with the judicial decision and continue with the policy regardless, but was out-voted by 32–22; many commentators claimed that Livingstone had only been bluffing in order to save face among the Labour Left. Instead, Livingstone got on board with a campaign known as "Keep Fares Fair" in order to bring about a change in the law that would make the Fares Fair policy legal; an alternate movement, "Can't Pay, Won't Pay", accused Livingstone of being a sell-out and insisted that the GLC proceed with its policies regardless of their legality. One aspect of the London Transport reforms was however maintained; the new system of flat fares within ticket zones, and the inter-modal Travelcard ticket continues as the basis of the ticketing system. The GLC then put together new measures in the hope of reducing London Transport fares by the more modest amount of 25%, taking them back to roughly the price that they were when Livingstone's administration took office; it was ruled legal in January 1983, and subsequently implemented.
#### GLEB and nuclear disarmament
Livingstone's administration founded the Greater London Enterprise Board (GLEB) to create employment by investing in the industrial regeneration of London, with the funds provided by the council, its workers' pension fund and the financial markets. Livingstone later claimed that GLC bureaucrats obstructed much of what GLEB tried to achieve. Other policies implemented by the Labour Left also foundered. Attempts to prevent the sale-off of GLC council housing largely failed, in part due to the strong opposition from the Conservative government. ILEA attempted to carry through with its promise to cut the price of school meals in the capital from 35p to 25p, but was forced to abandon its plans following legal advice that the councillors could be made to pay the surcharge and disqualified from public office.
The Livingstone administration took a strong stance on the issue of nuclear disarmament, proclaiming London a "nuclear-free zone". On 20 May 1981, the GLC halted its annual spending of £1 million on nuclear war defence plans, with Livingstone's deputy, Illtyd Harrington, proclaiming that "we are challenging... the absurd cosmetic approach to Armageddon." They published the names of the 3000 politicians and administrators who had been earmarked for survival in underground bunkers in the event of a nuclear strike on London. Thatcher's government remained highly critical of these moves, putting out a propaganda campaign explaining their argument for the necessity of Britain's nuclear deterrent to counter the Soviet Union.
#### Egalitarian policies
Livingstone's administration advocated measures to improve the lives of minorities within London, who together made up a sizeable percentage of the city's population; what Reg Race called "the Rainbow Coalition". The GLC allocated a small percentage of its expenditure on funding minority community groups, including the London Gay Teenage Group, English Collective of Prostitutes, Women Against Rape, Lesbian Line, A Woman's Place, and Rights of Women. Believing these groups could initiate social change, the GLC increased its annual funding of voluntary organisations from £6 million in 1980 to £50 million in 1984. They provided loans to such groups, coming under a barrage of press criticism for awarding a loan to the Sheba Feminist Publishers, whose works were widely labelled pornographic. In July 1981, Livingstone founded the Ethnic Minorities Committee, the Police Committee, and the Gay and Lesbian Working Party, and in June 1982, a Women's Committee was also established. Believing the Metropolitan Police to be a racist organisation, he appointed Paul Boateng to head the Police Committee and monitor the force's activities. Considering the police a highly political organisation, he publicly remarked that "When you canvas police flats at election time, you find that they are either Conservatives who think of Thatcher as a bit of a pinko or they are National Front."
The Conservatives and mainstream press were largely critical of these measures, considering them symptomatic of what they termed the "loony left". Claiming that these only served "fringe" interests, their criticisms often exhibited racist, homophobic and sexist sentiment. A number of journalists fabricated stories designed to discredit Livingstone and the "loony left", for instance claiming that the GLC made its workers drink only Nicaraguan coffee in solidarity with the country's socialist government, and that Haringey Council leader Bernie Grant had banned the use of the term "black bin liner" and the rhyme "Baa Baa Black Sheep", because they were perceived as racially insensitive. Writing in 2008, BBC reporter Andrew Hosken noted that although most of Livingstone's GLC administration's policies were ultimately a failure, its role in helping change social attitudes towards women and minorities in London remained its "enduring legacy".
#### Republicanism, Ireland and the Labour Herald
Invited to the Wedding of Charles, Prince of Wales, and Lady Diana Spencer at St Paul's Cathedral in July 1981, Livingstone – a republican critical of the monarchy – wished the couple well but turned down the offer. He also permitted Irish republican protesters to hold a vigil on the steps of County Hall throughout the wedding celebrations, both actions that brought strong press criticism. His administration supported the People's March for Jobs, a demonstration of 500 anti-unemployment protesters who marched to London from Northern England, allowing them to sleep in County Hall and catering for them. Costing £19,000, critics argued that Livingstone was illegally using public money for his own political causes. The GLC orchestrated a propaganda campaign against Thatcher's government, in January 1982 erecting a sign on the top of County Hall – clearly visible from the Houses of Parliament – stating the number of unemployed in London.
In September 1981, a weekly newspaper, the Labour Herald, was announced with Livingstone, Ted Knight and Matthew Warburton as co-editors. It was published by a press owned by the Trotskyist Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP), who had financed it with funding from Libya and other countries in the middle east. Evidence is lacking to indicate Livingstone knew about the funding at the time. Livingstone's commercial relationship with WRP leader Gerry Healy was controversial among British socialists, many of whom disapproved of Healy's reputation for violence. In the newspaper in 1982, perceiving a neglect by Labour of the Israel-Palestine conflict, Livingstone wrote of "a distortion running right the way through British politics" because "a majority of Jews in this country supported the Labour Party and elected a number of Jewish Labour MPs". The Labour Herald folded in 1985, after Healy was accused of being a sex offender and he was expelled from the WRP.
A supporter of Irish reunification, Livingstone had connections with the left-wing Irish republican party Sinn Féin and in July, met with the mother of an imprisoned Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) militant Thomas McElwee, then taking part in the 1981 Irish hunger strike. That day, Livingstone publicly proclaimed his support for those prisoners on hunger strike, claiming that the British government's fight against the IRA was not "some sort of campaign against terrorism" but was "the last colonial war." He was criticised for this meeting and his statements in the mainstream press, while Prime Minister Thatcher claimed that his comments constituted "the most disgraceful statement I have ever heard." Soon after, he also met with the children of Yvonne Dunlop, an Irish Protestant who had been killed in McElwee's bomb attack.
On 10 October, the IRA bombed London's Chelsea Barracks, killing 2 and injuring 40. Denouncing the attack, Livingstone informed members of the Cambridge University Tory Reform Group that it was a misunderstanding to view the IRA as "criminals or lunatics" because of their political motives and that "violence will recur again and again as long as we are in Ireland." Mainstream press criticised him for these comments, with The Sun labeling him "the most odious man in Britain". In response, Livingstone proclaimed that the press coverage had been "ill-founded, utterly out of context and distorted", reiterating his opposition both to IRA attacks and British rule in Northern Ireland. Anti-Livingstone pressure mounted and on 15 October he was attacked in the street by members of unionist militia, The Friends of Ulster. In a second incident, Livingstone was attacked by far right skinheads shouting "commie bastard" at the Three Horseshoes Pub in Hampstead. Known as "Green Ken" among Ulster Unionists, Unionist paramilitary Michael Stone of the Ulster Defence Association plotted to kill Livingstone, only abandoning the plan when he became convinced that the security services were monitoring him.
Livingstone agreed to meet Gerry Adams, Sinn Féin President and IRA-supporter, after Adams was invited to London by Labour members of the Troops Out campaign in December 1982. The same day as the invitation was made, the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) bombed The Droppin Well bar in Ballykelly, County Londonderry, killing 11 soldiers and 6 civilians; in the aftermath, Livingstone was pressured to cancel the meeting. Expressing his horror at the bombing, Livingstone insisted that the meeting proceed, for Adams had no connection with the INLA, but Conservative Home Secretary Willie Whitelaw banned Adams' entry to Britain with the 1976 Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act. In February 1983, Livingstone visited Adams in his constituency of West Belfast, receiving a hero's welcome from local republicans. In July 1983, Adams finally came to London by invitation of Livingstone and MP Jeremy Corbyn, allowing him to present his views to a mainstream British audience through televised interviews. In August, Livingstone was interviewed on Irish state radio, proclaiming that Britain's 800-year occupation of Ireland was more destructive than the Holocaust; he was publicly criticised by Labour members and the press. He also controversially expressed solidarity with the Marxist–Leninist government of Fidel Castro in Cuba against the U.S. economic embargo, in return receiving an annual Christmas gift of Cuban rum from the Cuban embassy.
Courting further controversy, in the Falklands War of 1982, during which the United Kingdom battled Argentina for control of the Falkland Islands, Livingstone stated his belief that the islands rightfully belonged to the Argentinian people, but not the military junta then ruling the country. Upon British victory, he sarcastically remarked that "Britain had finally been able to beat the hell out of a country smaller, weaker and even worse governed than we were." Challenging the Conservative government's militarism, the GLC proclaimed 1983 to be "Peace Year", solidifying ties with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in order to advocate international nuclear disarmament, a measure opposed by the Thatcher government. In keeping with this pacifistic outlook, they banned the Territorial Army from marching past County Hall that year. The GLC then proclaimed 1984 to be "Anti-Racism Year". In July 1985, the GLC twinned London with the Nicaraguan city of Managua, then under the control of the socialist Sandinista National Liberation Front. The press continued to criticise the Livingstone administration's funding of volunteer groups that they perceived represented only "fringe interests". As Livingstone biographer Andrew Hosken remarked, "by far the most contentious grant" was given in February 1983 to a group called Babies Against the Bomb, founded by a group of mothers who had united to campaign against nuclear weapons.
Members of London Labour groups chastised Livingstone for his controversial statements, believing them detrimental to the party, leading Labour members and supporters to defect to the Social Democratic Party (SDP). Many highlighted Labour's failure to secure the seat in the 1981 Croydon North West by-election as a sign of Labour's prospects under Livingstone. Some called for Livingstone's removal, but Michael Foot's assistant Una Cooze defended Livingstone's position. Television and radio outlets invited Livingstone for interviews; described by biographer John Carvel as having "one of the best television styles of any contemporary politician", Livingstone used this medium to speak to a wider audience, gaining widespread public support, something Carvel attributed to his "directness, self-deprecation, colourful language, complete unflappability under fire and lack of pomposity", coupled with popular policies like Fares Fair.
### Abolition of the GLC: 1983–1986
The 1983 general election proved disastrous for Labour, as much of their support went to the Social Democrat-Liberal Alliance, and Thatcher entered her second term in office. Foot was replaced by Neil Kinnock, a man Livingstone considered "repellent". Livingstone publicly attributed Labour's electoral failure to the leading role that the party's capitalist wing had played, arguing that the party should promote a socialist program of "national reconstruction", overseeing the nationalisation of banks and major industry and allowing for the investment in new development.
Considering it a waste of rate payer's money, Thatcher's government was keen to abolish the GLC and devolve control to the Greater London boroughs, stating its intention to do so in its 1983 electoral manifesto. Secretary of State for Employment Norman Tebbit lambasted the GLC as "Labour-dominated, high-spending and at odds with the government's view of the world"; Livingstone commented that there was "a huge gulf between the cultural values of the GLC Labour group and everything that Mrs Thatcher considered right and proper." The government felt confident that there was sufficient opposition to Livingstone's administration that they could abolish the GLC: according to a MORI poll in April 1983, 58% of Londoners were dissatisfied and 26% satisfied with Livingstone.
Attempting to fight the proposals, the GLC devoted £11 million to a campaign led by Reg Race focusing on press campaigning, advertising, and parliamentary lobbying. The campaign sent Livingstone on a party roadshow conference in which he convinced the Liberal and Social Democratic parties to oppose abolition. Using the slogan "say no to no say", they publicly highlighted that without the GLC, London would be the only capital city in Western Europe without a directly elected body. The campaign was successful, with polls indicating majority support among Londoners for retaining the Council, and in March 1984, 20,000 public servants held a 24-hour strike in support. The government nevertheless remained committed to abolition, and in June 1984 the House of Commons passed the Local Government Act 1985 with 237 votes in favour and 217 against. Livingstone and three senior GLC members resigned their seats in August 1984, to force byelections on the issue of abolition, but the Conservatives declined to contest them and all four were comfortably re-elected on a low turnout.
The GLC was formally abolished at midnight on 31 March 1986, with Livingstone marking the occasion by holding a free concert at Festival Hall. In his capacity as former leader of the GLC, Livingstone was invited to visit Australia, Israel, and Zimbabwe in the following months by leftist groups in those countries, before he and Allen undertook a 5-week Himalayan trek to the base camp of Mount Everest.
## Member of Parliament
Livingstone defeated Reg Freeson in the selection process to represent Labour for the north-west London constituency of Brent East in the 1987 general election. When the election came, he narrowly defeated Conservative candidate Harriet Crawley to become Brent East's MP, while Thatcher retained the Premiership for a third term. Livingstone found the atmosphere of the Houses of Parliament uncomfortable, labeling it "absolutely tribal", and asserting that "It's like working in the Natural History Museum, except not all the exhibits are stuffed." There was much hostility between him and the Parliamentary Labour Party, who allocated him a windowless office with fellow leftist MP Harry Barnes. He took on Maureen Charleson as his personal secretary, who would remain with him for the next 20 years.
In his maiden speech to Parliament in July 1987, Livingstone used parliamentary privilege to raise a number of allegations made by Fred Holroyd, a former Special Intelligence Service operative in Northern Ireland. Despite the convention of maiden speeches being non-controversial, Livingstone alleged that Holroyd had been mistreated when he tried to expose MI5 collusion with Ulster loyalist paramilitaries in the 1970s. Thatcher denounced his claims as "utterly contemptible". In September 1987 Livingstone was elected to Labour's National Executive Committee (NEC), although he was voted off in October 1989, to be replaced by John Prescott. As Kinnock tried to pull Labour to the centre, Livingstone worked to strengthen its socialist elements. He refused to pay the controversial poll tax until it was revoked, and was one of the 55 Labour MPs to oppose British involvement in the Gulf War in January 1991. Conversely, he supported NATO intervention in the Balkans, and the bombing of Serbia.
In the 1992 general election, John Major led the Conservatives to a narrow victory, resulting in Kinnock's resignation as Labour leader. The Socialist Campaign Group put Livingstone's name forward to succeed Kinnock, with Bernie Grant as his deputy, but they were not elected, with John Smith and Margaret Beckett taking the positions. After Smith died in May 1994, Livingstone endorsed Beckett to succeed him. However, Tony Blair was selected, with Livingstone predicting that he would be "the most right-wing leader" in Labour history. Blair and his supporters sought to further expunge leftist elements and taking it to the centre, thus creating "New Labour", with Peter Mandelson asserting that figures like Livingstone represented "the enemy" of reform. Throughout 1995, Livingstone unsuccessfully fought Blair's attempts to remove Clause Four (promoting nationalised industry) from the Labour constitution, which he saw as a betrayal of the party's socialist roots. In 1996, he warned of the growing influence of spin doctors in the party, and called for Blair to sack Alastair Campbell after a High Court judge criticised Campbell in a libel trial. Nevertheless, Blair led Labour to a landslide victory in the 1997 general election, resulting in the formation of the first Labour government since 1979. In December 1997, Livingstone joined a Labour revolt against Blair's attempts to cut benefits to single mothers and, in March 1998, publicly criticised Gordon Brown for advocating "an awful lot of Thatcherite nonsense" and attempting to privatise the London Underground through the PPP scheme. In 1997 he was re-elected to the NEC, beating Mandelson to the position.
Livingstone continued his association with members of Trotskyite group Socialist Action, with the group's leader John Ross becoming his most important adviser, teaching him about economics. Investing in an advanced £25,000 computer, he and Ross used the machine to undertake economic analysis, on the basis of which they began publishing the Socialist Economic Bulletin in 1990. Two other members of the group, Redmond O'Neill and Simon Fletcher, also became trusted advisers. When Socialist Action founded a campaign group, the Anti-Racist Alliance, Livingstone came to be closely associated with it. They campaigned on the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence and the rise of the far right British National Party, but were disadvantaged by an ongoing rivalry with the Anti-Nazi League.
As his political significance waned, Livingstone gained more work in the media, commenting that the press "started to use me only once they thought I was harmless". To receive these outside earnings, he founded a company known as Localaction Ltd. In 1987 he authored an autobiography for HarperCollins, If Voting Changed Anything They'd Abolish It, wrote articles for the London Daily News, stood in for BBC Radio 2 disk-jockey Jimmy Young, and served as a judge for that year's Whitbread Prize. In 1989, Unwin Hyman published his second book, Livingstone's Labour: A Programme for the 90s, in which he expressed his views on a variety of issues, while that same year he was employed to promote Red Leicester cheese in adverts for the National Dairy Council and to appear in adverts for British Coal alongside Edwina Currie. In October 1991 Livingstone began writing a column for Rupert Murdoch's right-wing tabloid The Sun, a controversial move among British socialists. In his column, he often discussed his love of amphibians and campaigned for the protection of the great crested newt, on the basis of which he was appointed vice president of the London Zoological Society in 1996–97. He subsequently wrote a food column for Esquire and then the Evening Standard, also making regular appearances on the BBC quiz show Have I Got News For You?. In 1995, Livingstone was invited to appear on the track "Ernold Same" by the band Blur.
## Mayor of London
### Mayoral election: 2000
By 1996, various prominent public figures were arguing for the implementation of directly-elected mayors for large UK cities like London. The idea of a London mayor of a Greater London Authority (GLA) had been included in Labour's 1997 election manifesto, and after their election a referendum was scheduled for May 1998, in which there was a 72% yes vote with a 34% turnout. With the first mayoral election scheduled for May 2000, in March 1998 Livingstone stated his intention to stand as a potential Labour candidate for the position.
Blair did not want Livingstone as London Mayor, claiming the latter was one of those who "almost knocked [the party] over the edge of the cliff into extinction" during the 1980s. He and the Labour spin doctors organised a campaign against Livingstone to ensure that he was not selected, with Campbell and Sally Morgan unsuccessfully attempting to get Oona King to denounce Livingstone. They failed to convince Mo Mowlam to stand for the mayorship, and instead encouraged the reluctant Frank Dobson to stand. Recognising that a 'one member, one vote' election within the London Labour Party would probably see Livingstone selected over Dobson, Blair ensured that a third of the votes would come from the rank-and-file members, a third from the trade unions, and a third from Labour MPs and MEPs, the latter two of which he could pressure into voting for his own preferred candidate, something that Dobson was deeply uncomfortable with. Information on the Blairite campaign against Livingstone became public, costing Dobson much support; nevertheless, due to the impact of the MPs and MEPs, Dobson won the candidacy with 51% to Livingstone's 48%.
Livingstone proclaimed Dobson to be "a tainted candidate" and stated his intention to run for the Mayoralty as an independent candidate. Aware that this would result in his expulsion from Labour, he publicly stated that "I have been forced to choose between the party I love and upholding the democratic rights of Londoners." The polls indicated clear support for Livingstone among the London electorate, with his campaign being run by his Socialist Action associates. He gained the support of a wide range of celebrities, from musicians like Fatboy Slim, Pink Floyd, The Chemical Brothers, and Blur, artists like Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, and those from other fields, among them Ken Loach, Jo Brand, and Chris Evans, the latter of whom donated £200,000 to the campaign; half of what Livingstone required. In March 2000, Livingstone agreed to make a public apology to the House of Commons, after he was criticised over his failure to properly register outside interests worth more than £150,000. The election took place on 4 May 2000, at which Livingstone came first with 58% of first and second-preference votes; Conservative candidate Steven Norris came second and Dobson third. Livingstone started his acceptance speech with "As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted 14 years ago..."
### First mayoral term: 2000–04
Livingstone now had "the largest and most direct mandate of any politician in British history", receiving an annual salary of £87,000. It was the Mayor's job to oversee a number of subordinate bodies, including the Metropolitan Police, Transport for London (TfL), the London Development Agency, and the London Fire Brigade, and in doing so he was granted a number of executive powers. He would be scrutinised by the elected London Assembly, whose first chairman was Trevor Phillips, a Labour politician who had a reciprocated dislike of Livingstone. Livingstone was permitted twelve principal advisers, many of whom were members of Socialist Action or people whom he had worked with on the GLC. Ross and Fletcher became two of his closest confidants, with Livingstone commenting that "They aren't just my closest political advisers... they're also mostly my best friends." In 2002, he promoted six of his senior aides, resulting in allegations of cronyism from Assembly members. The Mayoral office was initially based in temporary headquarters at Romney House in Marsham Street, Westminster, while a purpose-built building was constructed in Southwark; termed City Hall, it was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II in July 2002, with Livingstone commenting that it resembled a "glass testicle."
Much of Livingstone's first two years were devoted to setting up the Mayoral system and administration. He also devoted much time to battling New Labour's plans to upgrade the London Underground system through a public–private partnership (PPP) program, believing it to be too expensive and tantamount to the privatisation of a state-owned service. He furthermore had strong concerns about safety; PPP would divide parts of the Underground among various companies, something that he argued threatened a holistic safety and maintenance program. These concerns were shared by the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) and the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen (ASLEF) trade union, who went on strike over the issue, being joined on the picket line by Livingstone. Appointing Bob Kiley as transport commissioner — previously chief executive of the MBTA in Greater Boston and the MTA in Greater New York City — the duo argued that the upgrade should be carried out in state hands through a public bond issue, as had been done in the case of the New York City Subway. They launched court cases against the government over PPP in 2001–02, but were ultimately unsuccessful, and the project went ahead, with the Underground being privatised in January 2003.
Although he had initially stated that he would not do so, Livingstone's administration sought to phase out use of the Routemaster buses, the design for which dated to the 1950s. Although iconic, they were deemed hazardous and responsible for a high number of deaths and serious injuries as passengers climbed onto them, also being non-wheelchair accessible and thus not meeting the requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. The process was gradual, with the last Routemaster being decommissioned in December 2005. The Routemasters were replaced by a new fleet of 103 articulated buses, known colloquially as "bendy buses", which were launched in June 2002. While the Routemasters fitted 80 people on at one time, the articulated buses fitted up to 140 passengers, however they were deemed dangerous for cyclists. Attempting to reduce London's environmental impact, Livingstone created the London Hydrogen Partnership and the London Energy Partnership in his first term as Mayor of London. The Mayor's Energy Strategy, "green light to clean power," committed London to reducing its emissions of carbon dioxide by 20%, relative to the 1990 level, by 2010.
Livingstone sought to remove the pigeons from Trafalgar Square; he tried to evict seed sellers and introduced hawks to scare the pigeons off. He pedestrianised the north side of the Square, transforming it into a public space with a cafe, public toilets, and a lift for the disabled. He introduced an annual Saint Patrick's Day festival to celebrate the contributions of the Irish to London, and revived London's free anti-racism music festival, now called Rise: London United, later attributing London's 35% decrease in racist attacks to this and other anti-racist policies. Continuing his support for LGBT rights, in 2001 he set up the London Partnership Register, Britain's first register for same-sex couples; while falling short of legal marriage rights, the register was seen as a step towards the Civil Partnership Act 2004.
Livingstone's relationship with Kate Allen ended in November 2001, although they remained friends. He then started a relationship with Emma Beal, together having two children, Thomas (born December 2002) and Mia (born March 2004). At a May 2002 party in Tufnell Park, Livingstone got into an argument with Beal's friend Robin Hedges, a reporter for the Evening Standard. Hedges subsequently fell from a wall, bruised his ribs and went to hospital; the press claimed that Livingstone had pushed him, although he insisted that he did not. Liberal Democrats on the London Assembly referred the matter to the Standards Board for England, who ruled that there was no evidence for any wrongdoing on Livingstone's behalf.
As proposed in their election manifesto, in February 2003 Livingstone's administration introduced a congestion charge covering 8 square miles in central London, charging motorists £5 a day for driving through the area. It was introduced in an attempt to deter traffic and reduce congestion; Livingstone himself took the London Underground to work, and tried to inspire more Londoners to use public transport rather than cars. The policy was strongly opposed by businesses, resident groups, the roads lobby and the Labour government; many commentators recognised that, if opposition resulted in the policy being abandoned, it could lead to the end of Livingstone's political career. That year, the Political Studies Association named Livingstone 'Politician of the Year' due to his implementation of the 'bold and imaginative' scheme. The scheme resulted in a marked reduction on traffic in central London, resulting in improved bus services, and by 2007, TfL could claim that the charge had reduced congestion by 20%. To further encourage the use of public transport, in June 2003, the Oyster card system was introduced, while bus and Underground journeys were made free for people aged 11 to 18.
In 2002, Livingstone came out in support of a proposal for the 2012 Olympic Games to be held in London. He insisted however that the Games must be held in the East End, and result in an urban regeneration program centred on the Lea Valley. He gained the support of Labour's culture secretary Tessa Jowell, who convinced the government to back the plans in May 2003. In May 2004, the International Olympic Commission put London on the shortlist of potential locations for the Games, alongside Paris, Madrid, Moscow, and New York City; although Paris was widely expected to be the eventual victor, London would prove successful in its nomination. Another major development project was launched in February 2004 as the London Plan, in which Livingstone's administration laid out their intentions to deal with the city's major housing shortage by ensuring the construction of 30,000 new homes a year. It stressed that 50% of these should be deemed "affordable housing" although later critics would highlight that in actuality, the amount of "affordable housing" in these new constructions did not exceed 30%.
Livingstone had no control over government policy regarding immigration, which had resulted in a significant growth in foreign arrivals coming to London during his administration; from 2000 to 2005 London's population grew by 200,000 to reach 7.5 million. He did not oppose this, encouraging racial equality and celebrating the city's multiculturalism. Livingstone condemned the UK's involvement in the Iraq War and involved himself in the Stop the War campaign. In November 2003, he made headlines for referring to US President George W. Bush as "the greatest threat to life on this planet," just before Bush's official visit to the UK. Livingstone also organised an alternative "Peace Reception" at City Hall "for everybody who is not George Bush," with anti-war Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic as the guest of honour.
Livingstone's success with the congestion charge and rejuvenation of Trafalgar Square led the Labour leadership to reconsider their position on him, with Blair re-admitting him to the party and asking that he stand as their Mayoral candidate for the 2004 election. Livingstone accepted, and Labour Mayoral candidate Nicky Gavron volunteered to take a subordinate position as his deputy. In campaigning for the election, Livingstone highlighted his record: the congestion charge, free bus travel for under 11s, 1000 extra buses, and 5000 extra police officers, whereas his main competitor, the Conservative Steven Norris, campaigned primarily on a policy of abolishing the congestion charge. Livingstone continued to court controversy throughout the campaign; in June 2004 he was quoted on The Guardian's website as saying: "I just long for the day I wake up and find that the Saudi Royal Family are swinging from lamp-posts and they've got a proper government that represents the people of Saudi Arabia", for which he was widely criticised. That same month, he came under criticism from sectors of the left for urging RMT members to cross picket lines in a proposed Underground strike because the latest offer had been "extremely generous", leading RMT general secretary Bob Crow to step down as a TfL board member. In the 2004 London mayoral election, Livingstone was announced as the winner on 10 June 2004. He won 36% of first preference votes to Norris's 28% and Liberal Democrat Simon Hughes's 15%. When all the candidates except Livingstone and Norris were eliminated and the second preferences of those voters who had picked neither Livingstone nor Norris as their first choice were counted, Livingstone won with 55% to Norris's 45%.
### Second mayoral term: 2004–08
Amidst the War on Terror and threat from Al Qaeda, Livingstone sought to improve ties with London's Muslim community, agreeing to meet with Islamist groups like the Muslim Association of Britain alongside moderate organisations. In July 2004, he attended a conference discussing France's ban on the burka at which he talked alongside Islamist cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Livingstone described al-Qaradawi as "one of the most authoritative Muslim scholars in the world today" and argued that his influence could help stop the radicalisation of young British Muslims. Jewish and LGBT organisations criticised Livingstone for this, citing al-Qaradawi's record of antisemitic and homophobic remarks, with the meeting leading to an argument between Livingstone and former supporter Peter Tatchell. Livingstone continued to champion the Palestinian cause in the Israel-Palestine conflict, in March 2005 accusing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of being a "war criminal" responsible for the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre.
During his second term, Livingstone continued his support for London's bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games, playing a crucial role in securing vital Russian support for the bid. On 6 July 2005, in a ceremony held in Singapore attended by Livingstone, London was announced as the victor, resulting in widespread celebration. The following day, British-born Islamist suicide bombers undertook three attacks on the Underground and another on a bus, killing 52 civilians. Livingstone gave a speech from Singapore denouncing the attackers as terrorists, before immediately returning to London. Informing the BBC that Western foreign policy was largely to blame for the attacks, his response to the situation was widely praised, even by opponents. Fearing an Islamophobic backlash against the city's Muslim minority, he initiated an advertising campaign to counter this, holding a rally for inter-community unity in Trafalgar Square. A second, failed suicide bombing attack took place on 21 July, and in the aftermath police officers shot dead a Brazilian tourist, Jean Charles de Menezes, whom they mistook for a bomber. Police initially misrepresented the killing, resulting in widespread condemnation, although Livingstone defended the actions of Metropolitan Police commissioner Ian Blair.
While leaving a City Hall LGBT reception in February 2005, Livingstone objected to an Evening Standard photographer "harassing" other guests. When Evening Standard journalist Oliver Finegold introduced himself as working for the paper, Livingstone asked if he had been "a German war criminal." When Finegold said that he was Jewish, Livingstone said he was "just like a concentration camp guard, you are just doing it because you are paid to, aren't you?" and asserted that he (Finegold) worked for the "reactionary bigots... who supported fascism" at the Daily Mail. Although the Evening Standard initially did not deem the comments newsworthy, they were leaked to The Guardian, resulting in accusations of antisemitism against Livingstone from the Board of Deputies of British Jews. There were many calls for Livingstone to apologise, including from Tony Blair, the London Assembly, a Holocaust survivors group and his deputy Gavron (the daughter of a Holocaust survivor), but Livingstone refused, citing what he said was a hate campaign of almost a quarter of a century against him by newspapers, particularly Associated Newspapers, publisher of the Evening Standard and the Daily Mail, and their long record of bigotry and racism. The Standards Board for England asked the Adjudication Panel for England to deal with Livingstone on the issue, who in February 2006 found him guilty of bringing his office into disrepute and suspended him from office for a month. Livingstone and others argued that an unelected board should not have the power to suspend an elected official. In October 2006 at the High Court of Justice, Justice Collins overturned the decision to suspend Livingstone.
Livingstone denied he was antisemitic, holding regular meetings with Jewish groups and introducing public Hanukkah celebrations in Trafalgar Square in December 2005. He was again described as antisemitic in March 2006 for asserting, after conflict over a major building project, that Indian-born Jewish businessmen David and Simon Reuben should "go back to Iran and see if they can do better under the ayatollahs". He said later that he did not know they were Jewish. He refused to apologise to the Reubens at the time, instead offering "a complete apology to the people of Iran for the suggestion that they may be linked in any way to the Reuben brothers". The GLA rejected the accusation of misconduct against Livingstone over the incident in June 2006, but he did make a general apology for causing offence to Jews in previous years in December that year.
In March 2006, Livingstone criticised foreign embassies who refused to pay the congestion charge under the conditions of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. His criticism focused on US diplomat Robert Tuttle, condemning him as a "chiselling little crook" whose embassy was refusing to pay the £1.5 million he believed it owed. In February 2007, Livingstone's administration doubled the congestion charge zone by extending it westwards into Kensington and Chelsea, despite opposition from resident groups. In October 2007, the government agreed to go ahead with Crossrail, a £16 billion project to construct a train line under central London, linking Berkshire to Essex. Meanwhile, Livingstone felt vindicated in his former opposition to public private partnership when one of the companies who now controlled part of the Underground, Metronet, collapsed in July 2007, with the state having to intervene to protect the service. Livingstone had also welcomed the construction of skyscrapers in London, giving the go ahead for 15 to be constructed during his Mayoralty, including 30 St Mary Axe and The Shard. He considered this necessary to fill the demand for office space, but was criticised, most notably by Charles, Prince of Wales, concerned about the preservation of historic skylines.
In May 2006, Livingstone welcomed Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez to London, hosting an event for him at City Hall. Conservatives objected and said that Chávez's democratic socialist government had undermined pluralistic democracy. Livingstone proceeded to accept the presidency of the pro-Chávez Venezuelan Information Centre. In November 2006, Livingstone travelled to Latin America to visit Chávez, during which he and his entourage stayed in Cuba at a cost of £29,000; many British sources described the visit as a waste of tax-payer's money. In August 2007, it was announced that Livingstone had come to an agreement with oil-rich Venezuela; Chávez's government would supply £16 million a year worth of free oil to TfL, who would use it to subsidise half priced bus fares for 250,000 Londoners on benefits. In return, London would provide expertise in running transport, as well as other services such as CCTV and waste management.
Livingstone helped organise the first "Eid in the Square" event at Trafalgar Square in commemoration of the Islamic Eid ul-Fitr festival in October 2006. In May 2007, Livingstone travelled to New York City to attend the C40 conference of major world cities to deal with environmentalist issues. One of the leading figures of the conference, he called for other cities to adopt congestion charging as an environmental measure. In August 2007, he issued a public apology on behalf of London for its role in the transatlantic slave trade. He selected the anniversary of the Haitian Revolution on which to do it, and in his tearful speech asserted that it was the resistance of enslaved persons rather than the philanthropy of wealthy whites that led to the trade's end.
A week later he attended the unveiling of the statue of Nelson Mandela in Parliament Square, where he met with Nelson Mandela. In June 2007, he criticised the planned £200 million Thames Water Desalination Plant at Beckton, which would be the United Kingdom's first, calling it "misguided and a retrograde step in UK environmental policy", and that "we should be encouraging people to use less water, not more." In October 2007, London Councils stated Livingstone had gone back on his promise to chair the developing London Waste and Recycling Board, and to provide £6 million of funding for the project, because "the government had failed to provide him with absolute control of the Board."
Livingstone intended to stand again as Labour candidate in the 2008 London Mayoral election, this time against Conservative candidate Boris Johnson. At the start of the campaign Livingstone took Johnson more seriously than many others were doing, referring to him as "the most formidable opponent I will face in my political career." Much of Labour's campaign revolved around criticising Johnson for past perceived racist and homophobic comments, although Johnson denied that he was bigoted. Livingstone also proposed that, if he were to win a third term, he would increase the congestion charge fee to £25 for the most polluting vehicles, while removing it for the least, and would also introduce a cycling scheme based on the Vélib' system in Paris. As part of his campaign, Livingstone highlighted that, by 2008, the Metropolitan Police had 35,000 officers, 10,000 more than it had had in 2000, highlighting falling crime rates during his Mayorship. Nevertheless, there had been a recent rise in gang killing, with 27 teenagers having been killed during 2007, which was used by Johnson's campaign who emphasised that a Johnson administration would be tougher on youth crime and anti-social behaviour.
In December 2007 when Evening Standard journalist Andrew Gilligan alleged that one of Livingstone's close advisers, Lee Jasper, had used at least £2.5 million from the London Development Agency to fund black community groups associated with him. Livingstone stood by Jasper and claimed that the Evening Standard campaign was racist, but ultimately agreed to suspend Jasper while a full investigation took place. An independent report into the affair by District auditor Michael Haworth-Maden in July 2009 found no evidence of "misappropriation of funds" but noted "significant" gaps in financial paperwork. The election took place in May 2008, and witnessed a turnout of approximately 45% of eligible voters, with Johnson receiving 43.2% and Livingstone 37% of first-preference votes; when second-preference votes were added, Johnson proved victorious with 53.2% to Livingstone's 46.8%.
## Post-mayoral career
### Unsuccessful election: 2008–2014
Newly elected, Mayor Johnson paid tribute to Livingstone and his "very considerable achievements", hoping that the new administration could "discover a way in which the mayoralty can continue to benefit from your transparent love of London". Johnson's administration nevertheless reversed a number of Livingstone's policies, for instance overturning the deal for Venezuelan oil. Intent on giving Venezuela the "advice that we promised", Livingstone announced in August 2008 that he would be advising urban planning in Caracas. Livingstone predicted that in twenty years it could become a "first-world city", and hoped to help with his "very extensive network of contacts both domestically and internationally".
In January 2009, Livingstone responded to the Gaza War by calling for the European Union and the UK to recall their ambassadors to Israel. From September 2009 to March 2011, he presented the book review programme Epilogue for the Iranian state-sponsored international news channel Press TV, for which he came under criticism from Iranian exile groups. In July 2010, he spoke at the Durham Miners' Gala, using the speech to attack spending cuts by David Cameron's coalition government, claiming they were not necessary. He again criticised the cuts in September, claiming that they were "beyond Margaret Thatcher's wildest dreams" and threatened to cause widespread division and poverty across London. In May 2011, Livingstone said he was "appalled" that Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had been killed by US Special forces "in his pyjamas" and "in front of his kid," and that the values of a western democracy would have been best demonstrated if bin Laden had been put on trial.
#### 2012 Mayoral Election
Livingstone stood as Labour's candidate for the 2012 London mayoral election, again challenging Johnson. His campaign attracted criticism when he joked that the election was "a simple choice between good and evil". It again caused controversy when Livingstone was accused of antisemitism by Jewish Labour supporters after suggesting that, being largely wealthy, London's Jewish community would not vote for him. He denied making the comments, but nevertheless apologised. He also responded, "every psephological study I've seen in the 40 years I've been following politics shows the main factor that determines how people vote is their income level. And it's not anti-Semitic to say that."
Johnson's campaign emphasised the accusation that Livingstone was guilty of tax evasion, for which Livingstone called Johnson a "bare-faced liar". The political scientist Andrew Crines believed that Livingstone's campaign suffered from its focus on attacking Johnson rather than presenting an alternative, progressive vision of London's future. Crines also suggested that after decades in the public eye, Livingstone had come to be seen as an over-familiar and politically tired figure by the electorate. In the election, Johnson won with 1,054,811 votes, to Livingstone's 992,273. Criticising media bias against him, Livingstone announced his retirement from politics. Remaining a critic of Johnson, in April 2014 he stated his belief that the latter would soon become leader of the Conservative Party and advised Labour "not to make the mistake of assuming they're dealing with a hardline right-wing ideologue", but to "concentrate on the fact they're dealing with a fairly lazy tosser who just wants to be there".
### Corbyn's leadership of Labour: 2015–2020
In May 2015, Livingstone endorsed Sadiq Khan to be the Labour candidate for the 2016 London mayoral election, and, in July, endorsed Jeremy Corbyn in the 2015 Labour Party leadership election. After Corbyn was elected Labour leader, Livingstone was one of his most prominent allies; in November 2015, Corbyn appointed Livingstone to co-convene Labour's defence review alongside Maria Eagle. Shadow defence minister Kevan Jones expressed the view that Livingstone knew little about defence and that it would damage the party's reputation. Livingstone responded by claiming that Jones – who has spoken about his own clinical depression – needed "psychiatric help". Jones took offence, and while Livingstone initially refused to apologise, he subsequently did so at Corbyn's urging.
Livingstone faced further criticism following a television appearance in which he stated that the perpetrators of the 2005 London bombings carried out their actions as retribution for UK involvement in the Iraq War. In March 2016, Livingstone again courted controversy by comparing a hedge fund manager's £16,800 donation to Labour MP Dan Jarvis to "Jimmy Savile funding a children's group"; it subsequently emerged that Livingstone himself had received £8,000 from a Bermuda-based hedge fund called Meditor for a speaking engagement, leading to accusations of hypocrisy. Livingstone responded that, rather than "double standards", it was "different standards", he was paid for a speaking engagement where he would have told the room of the need for the City to invest more in the economy, which he felt was distinct from taking a political donation from a hedge fund manager.
#### Suspension from the Labour Party
Livingstone was suspended from Labour in April 2016 after being accused of "bringing the party into disrepute" following a BBC Radio London interview in which he claimed "When Hitler won his election in 1932 his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews". Livingstone had been invited to discuss the suspension of Labour MP Naz Shah, after it became known Shah had shared a satirical map on Facebook suggesting that Israel should be relocated to the United States. Livingstone described Shah's postings, which were made before she became an MP in 2015, as "rude and over-the-top" but not antisemitic, adding that he had never encountered antisemitism in Labour.
Livingstone defended his claim about Hitler and Zionism by reference to Lenni Brenner's Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, and many commentators suggested that Livingstone was referring to the Haavara Agreement between Nazi Germany and the Zionist Federation of Germany. Livingstone's statements were criticised as inaccurate by historians, including Timothy D. Snyder, Roger Moorhouse, and Andrew Roberts, although the political scientist Norman Finkelstein said that whilst "Livingstone maybe wasn't precise enough, and lacked nuance", his comments reflected Hitler's initial ambivalence towards Zionism.
Over 20 Labour MPs called for Livingstone's suspension and newly elected Labour London Mayor Sadiq Khan called for his expulsion. Jon Lansman, founder of the pro-Corbyn Momentum group, called for Livingstone to leave politics altogether. Labour MP John Mann publicly confronted Livingstone and accused him of being a "liar" and a "Nazi apologist". In a subsequent interview, Livingstone expressed regret both for mentioning Hitler and for any Jews he offended but added that "I'm not going to apologise for telling the truth". He stated that it was "absurd" to call him an antisemite because he had had two former Jewish girlfriends, and that he may have maternal Jewish ancestry. Livingstone said there was a "well-orchestrated campaign by the Israel lobby to smear anybody who criticises Israeli policy as antisemitic".
Corbyn announced that the decision whether to expel Livingstone would be made by a National Executive Committee (NEC) internal inquiry; Livingstone insisted he would be exonerated, saying "how can the truth be an offence?" In April 2017, Labour's National Constitutional Committee held that Livingstone had brought the party into disrepute, ordering his suspension be continued for another year. Labour's deputy leader Tom Watson stated that it was "incomprehensible" that the NEC had not expelled Livingstone; Corbyn, disappointed in Livingstone's failure "to acknowledge or apologise for the hurt he has caused", said a new NEC investigation would consider the comments he made after his initial suspension. As the date for the end of his suspension approached, in March 2018 the National Executive Committee extended Livingstone's suspension indefinitely, with outgoing general secretary Iain McNicol signing off on the decision shortly before standing down.
Livingstone announced his resignation from Labour on 21 May 2018, saying the issues surrounding his suspension had become a distraction. His lawyers concluded that if he had been expelled, it would take at least two years to lodge an appeal. However, he maintained his support for a prospective Labour government under Corbyn. According to LBC, Livingstone told the inquiry that, at times when he was overwhelmed by media interest, after Corbyn became leader, he asked members of Corbyn's staff how he should respond. In April 2019, Labour Against the Witchhunt announced that he had become the group's honorary president.
In October 2020, the Equality and Human Rights Commission published a report into Livingstone's comments regarding the Shah case, stating that he "denied that [Shah's] posts were antisemitic. He sought to minimise their offensive nature by stating that they were merely criticism of Israeli policy at a time of conflict with the Palestinians. He also alleged that scrutiny of Naz Shah’s conduct was part of an apparent smear campaign by ‘the Israel lobby’ to stigmatise critics of Israel as antisemitic, as well as being aimed at undermining and disrupting the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn MP." The EHRC found that these comments constituted unlawful harassment under the Equality Act 2010, and that Labour was legally responsible for the harassment because, as a member of NEC, he was an agent of the party. The Commission also found that his disciplinary case had been subject to interference from the leaders' office.
### Retirement: 2020-
In January 2022, Livingstone announced his intention of joining the Green Party of England and Wales, although urged other socialists to remain within Labour and work towards "a Green-Labour coalition" government. After being evaluated by one of the Greens' regional councils, his application for membership was rejected.
## Political views
Within the Labour Party, Livingstone was aligned with the left wing. Historian Alwyn W. Turner commented that Livingstone's entire approach to politics revolved not simply around providing public services but in trying to change society itself; in his words, he wanted to get away from the concept of "old white men coming along to general management committees and talking about rubbish collection." Biographer John Carvel, a journalist from The Guardian, wrote that Livingstone's political motivation was a "fundamental desire ... for a more participative, cooperative society", leading him to oppose "concentrations of power and... exploitation in all its forms – economic, racial and sexual." About his approach to fiscal policy, Livingstone has said: "I was a monetarist right from the beginning when I was leader of the GLC. We paid down debt every year. We had an absolutely firm rule."
Livingstone describes himself as a socialist. In 1987, he stated that "politics is my religion. It's my moral framework. I believe a socialist society is inherently the best thing, and that's like an act of faith." In 2007, he stated that "I still believe one day that the idea that the main means of production are owned by private individuals... will be considered as anti-democratic as the idea serfs could be tied to the land. But I will not be alive when that day comes." Livingstone had always worked towards a unified socialist front on the British left, and disliked the tendency towards splintering and forming rival factions, usually over issues of political theory, among the socialist community. Although rejecting Marxism, throughout his political career he has worked alongside Marxist far-left groups and has become involved with the "politics of the street". He has not worked with those Marxist groups, such as the Socialist Workers Party and the Revolutionary Communist Party, who advocate the destruction of the Labour Party as the way forward for socialism, seeing their beliefs as incompatible with his own. Livingstone has consistently opposed the actions of the Israeli government. In a 2005 interview, he said that he was not against the existence of Israel but rather Ariel Sharon's government; he recalled that on his 1986 visit to the country he got on well with its left-wing politicians.
Livingstone has consistently rejected being defined under any particular ideological current of socialism. Recognising this, the former Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock said in 2000 that Livingstone could only be defined as a Kennist. Livingstone's understanding of politics arises from his studies of non-human animal behaviour and anthropology; rejecting the idea that the human species is naturally progressing (a view advocated by socialists like the Fabian Society), Livingstone instead took the view that human society is still coming to terms with the massive socioeconomic changes that it experienced upon the development of agriculture during the Neolithic. Highlighting that a hunter-gatherer mode of subsistence is more natural to the human species, he believes that modern society has to adopt many hunter-gatherer values – namely cooperation and emphasis on human relationships rather than consumerism – in order to survive.
## Personal life
Historian Alwyn W. Turner noted that Livingstone was a "gifted communicator and self-publicist" who was able to stump his opponents using his "mischievous sense of humour". Biographer John Carvel echoed these comments, highlighting that Livingstone had a "talent for public speaking". Biographer Andrew Hosken noted that many of those who had worked with Livingstone had commented on him being an excellent boss, who was "a good delegator, decisive and supportive" as well as being "a friendly and modest colleague." Jenny McCartney, a reporter from The Spectator, expressed the view that "in person he is hard to dislike. There's a notable absence of pomposity in his manner, a propensity to laughter, and his love of an ideological scrap is allied to a calm, sometimes wry style of delivery: it looks fiercer on paper." In The Guardian, the journalist Hugh Muir described Livingstone as a man who is "happiest in the limelight, discomforted by the periphery" and who also "hates to apologise... especially when called upon [to do so]... by media or political opponents for whom he has no respect".
On the issue of nationality, Livingstone has expressed the view that he identifies as English rather than British, although his father was Scottish and he supports the continued existence of the United Kingdom. Although raised into a nominally Christian family, Livingstone renounced religious belief when he was eleven, becoming an atheist. In a 2005 interview he commented that in doing so he had rejected "mumbo-jumbo in favour of rational science." He is known for his enthusiasm for gardening and keeping and breeding newts. He was the first person to breed the Western Dwarf Clawed Frog Hymenochirus curtipes in captivity. Livingstone is a big fan of The Godfather film franchise, stating that the actions of the criminal organisations within the movies are very much akin to the world of politics.
### Family
Livingstone repeatedly attempted to keep his family life private, commenting that "I expect that my private life is not in the public domain and I'm rude to any journalist who turns up... at home". It is known that he has five children. Livingstone married Christine Pamela Chapman in 1973; the marriage ended in divorce in 1982. Around that time he became involved with Kate Allen, who became director of Amnesty International's UK Section; the couple separated in November 2001. He then entered a relationship with his office manager, Emma Beal; they have a son (Thomas) and a daughter together. Livingstone and Beal married on 26 September 2009 in the Mappin Pavilion of London Zoo. They live in North London.
Livingstone had also fathered three children prior to 2000; a boy by one mother and two girls by another. The children were born to two women while Livingstone was involved with Kate Allen, according to an article by Decca Aitkenhead:
> In his memoir, he describes how one was an old friend who was keen to have children but feared she was running out of time. "We had never been involved romantically but I knew her well enough to know she would be a wonderful mother and so I said I would like to be the father of her children." A daughter was born in 1990, and another in 1992. Then another friend said she'd like to have children: "And we agreed to have a baby." Their son was born within weeks of his daughter in 1992.
## Legacy and influence
Described in The Guardian as "a polarising and controversial figure", throughout his career, Livingstone has polarised public opinion. He was widely recognised as a risk-taker. Supporters described him as the "People's Ken" and an "anti-politician politician", opining that he had the common touch with working-class Londoners that most British politicians lacked. He was widely recognised for having improved the status of minority groups in London. He was also deemed a "formidable operator" at City Hall, with an "intimate knowledge" of London. He was also criticised during his career. During his Mayorship, he faced repeated accusations of cronyism for favouring his chosen aides over other staff. One of his supporters, Atma Singh, commented that under Livingstone's leadership, a culture of bullying pervaded at City Hall, although this was denied by many other staff there.
During the 1980s, Spitting Image featured a fictionalised version of Livingstone voiced by Harry Enfield. In 1990, BBC show The Comic Strip'' produced an episode entitled "GLC: The Carnage Continues..." in which Robbie Coltrane gave a fictionalised portrayal of Charles Bronson playing Livingstone in a Hollywood movie. Kate Bush wrote the song "Ken" for the episode, which was then released as a B-side to her single "Love and Anger". |
67,269,793 | Masia (restaurant) | 1,171,949,092 | Defunct restaurant in Portland, Oregon, U.S. | [
"2020 establishments in Oregon",
"2021 disestablishments in Oregon",
"Catalan restaurants",
"Defunct European restaurants in Portland, Oregon",
"Defunct Spanish restaurants",
"Restaurants disestablished during the COVID-19 pandemic",
"Restaurants disestablished in 2021",
"Restaurants established in 2020",
"Southwest Portland, Oregon",
"Spanish restaurants in the United States",
"Spanish-American culture in Portland, Oregon"
]
| Masia was a short-lived Spanish and Catalan restaurant in Portland, Oregon. Housed in the Hyatt Centric Downtown Portland, the restaurant was owned by married chefs José Chesa and Cristina Baez and their business partner, Emily Metivier. Shortly after opening with breakfast, lunch, and dinner service in February 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced Masia to close temporarily. The restaurant operated in various forms throughout the remainder of 2020, offering take-out service and special pre-packaged dinners for select holidays. The owners initially planned to close temporarily in January 2021 but confirmed the restaurant's permanent closure in March.
## Description
Masia was a 3,000-square-foot (280 m<sup>2</sup>) Spanish and Catalan restaurant serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the Hyatt Centric in downtown Portland. The business was named after the type of rural construction of the same name, which is common in parts of Spain; the century-old masia built by restaurant co-owner José Chesa's grandfather in Aragon remains with the family. Inspired by these agrarian spaces, Chesa wanted the restaurant to commemorate his family as well as Portland's farmers and markets. According to Portland Monthly's Benjamin Tepler, Chesa also selected the name "to represent the restaurant's devotion to the hyper-local farm-to-table movement, but also a communal, familial ethos he hopes will resonate".
Eater Portland's Brooke Jackson-Glidden described Masia as "an expansive restaurant space with multiple murals and a lengthy bar", and Willamette Week said the "sleek" interior was "at once rural and thoroughly modern". Neutral-toned European tile was patterned to resemble 19th-century Spanish tile work, and murals by two local artists provided color accents. Jackson-Glidden described Ivy Campbell's artwork as "a sprawling, abstract mural of disembodied hands reaching for olive branches and leaves, over sunset tones and pops of dark blue". Erika Lee Sears' painting by the kitchen depicted a masia amidst green shrubbery. Masia's concrete dining room included multiple neon signs of jamón, a churro, and the text "hot xurros".
The menu, inspired by traditional Spanish cuisine and recipes from Chesa's family, included mussels escabeche in vermouth, chicken and mushroom croquettes, paella, Spanish omelettes, jamón ibérico, flautas, patatas bravas, and churros with chocolate. The brunch menu included bacon-and-egg paella, churros and pastries, egg scrambles with blood sausage, tortillas españolas, and glass bread with tomato also available at Ataula. Filling options for Spanish breads included tortilla española, chorizo and tomato, Mahón cheese and quince, and confit tuna and olive. Chorizo and manchego could be added to the vegan salad. The hamburger had grass-fed ground beef with piquillo peppers, havarti, date-sherry ketchup, and mussels in vermouth. Jackson-Glidden described the happy hour as "vermouth-centric". Masia also had a churro and a coffee counter called 180 Xurros and hosted private events. The restaurateurs behind Masia had served Barcelona-style churros previously at 180 Xurros, before the business closed in 2018.
## History
Chef spouses Chesa and Cristina Baez, who also owned the Spanish and Catalan restaurant Ataula, opened Masia with business partner Emily Metivier via White Egg Hospitality on February 14, 2020. The restaurateurs were approached by Hyatt to operate the restaurant, and had hoped to open in January, in conjunction with the hotel's launch. During the week preceding the public opening, Masia served a limited breakfast and lunch menu for hotel guests. Sera Architects and Mortenson designed the restaurant's interior. Within a month of opening, the COVID-19 pandemic forced Governor Kate Brown to restrict dine-in restaurant service. Masia closed temporarily, re-opened in July and operated in various forms for the remainder of 2020. For Labor Day weekend, Masia offered pre-packaged picnic baskets with charcuterie, churros, Russian potato salad, and in-house pickles, plus the option of beer, wine, or non-alcoholic mixed drinks.
On November 13, Brown restricted restaurants to take-out service only, effective from November 18 to December 2. Baez called the restrictions "heartbreaking" and said, "It's not the worst that (Brown) made the decision to do this, it's just the situation as a whole. Anybody that's not telling you that they're hanging by a thread is lying." She compared the impact of the limitations to Mortal Kombat, saying, "That gruesome fatality at the end, that's what I think of. It's a fatality. Finish him." Unable to offer dine-in service, for Thanksgiving the restaurant offered take-out dinners for two for US\$125; the menu featured herb-roasted turkey breast, confit turkey leg, roasted turkey croquettes with Spanish cranberry aioli, French mashed potatoes, Barcelona-style crispy glass bread, turkey demi-glace, chard with jamón ibérico, vermouth, soda, and garnish. Masia accepted digital gift card orders over the phone during the pandemic.
Masia made plans to close temporarily in January 2021. However, in March, the owners confirmed the restaurant would not re-open. In an email to employees, Metivier wrote, "It's been decided that we will no longer be operating Masia beginning at the end of this month. It's been a really rough several months for us and it seems like things are not going to return to the expectations or the vision we had planned for the space."
## Reception
Reporting on the restaurant's closure, Jackson-Glidden of Eater Portland wrote, "Masia had a promising first month, showing off some of the most beloved dishes from Ataula as well as new additions. The return of 180 Xurros was a welcome one for many, and it seemed like it was joining the growing ranks of stellar hotel restaurants in downtown Portland ... Here's hoping that the group's other restaurant, Ataula, returns to its full glory, as planned."
## See also
- COVID-19 pandemic in Portland, Oregon
- Hispanics and Latinos in Portland, Oregon
- Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the restaurant industry in the United States
- List of defunct restaurants of the United States
- List of Spanish restaurants |
41,674,087 | Ethel Sands | 1,162,493,545 | American-born British artist, socialite, patron | [
"1873 births",
"1962 deaths",
"19th-century American women artists",
"20th-century American women artists",
"20th-century British painters",
"American expatriates in the United Kingdom",
"American lesbian artists",
"Artists from Newport, Rhode Island",
"British socialites",
"British women artists"
]
| Ethel Sands (6 July 1873 – 19 March 1962) was an American-born artist and hostess who lived in England from childhood. She studied art in Paris, where she met her life partner Anna Hope Hudson (Nan). Her works were generally still lifes and interiors, often of Château d'Auppegard that she shared with Hudson. Sands was a Fitzroy Street Group and London Group member. Her works are in London's National Portrait Gallery and other public collections. In 1916 she was made a British citizen. Although a major art patron and an artist, she is most remembered as a hostess for the cultural elite, including Henry James, Virginia Woolf, Roger Fry and Augustus John.
## Early life
Ethel Sands was born on 6 July 1873 in Newport, Rhode Island, the first child of Mary Morton Hartpence and Mahlon Day Sands, who married in 1872. Mahlon Sands was secretary of the American Free Trade League, who in 1870 advocated for civil service reform and free trade. He was partner of his deceased father's pharmaceutical importing firm, A.B. Sands and Company. Ethel had two younger brothers, Mahlon Alan and Morton Harcourt Sands, who were respectively 5 and 11 years younger than her.
In 1874 the family left the United States for England, intending to only visit the country. However, Mahlon Sands and his family stayed in England and travelled among European countries. They also visited the United States annually and were there for an extended visit from 1877 to 1879. They kept their house in Newport, Rhode Island throughout this time.
The wealthy Sands circulated amongst London society, including writer and statesman John Morley, politician William Ewart Gladstone, writer Henry James, artist John Singer Sargent, the Rothschild family, and Henry Graham White. Mahlon's sister, Katherine, was married to journalist and newspaper editor Edwin Lawrence Godkin. They were part of Edward VII, then Prince of Wales', social circle. John Singer Sargent painted the portrait of her mother, who was considered "a famous society beauty of her day." Mary Sands was "much admired" by writer Henry James, who called her "that gracious lady" and based his heroic character "Madame de Mauves" on her.
Ethel Sands was raised in a respectable upper-class household in which her parents were "happily married". While her father was considered handsome and her mother beautiful, Anthony Powell states that some people wrote in their diaries and letters that she was plain. In her later years, Powell met her and said that "so great was her elegance, charm, capacity to be amusing in a no-nonsense manner, that I could well believed her to be good-looking in her youth.
Her father had ridden horseback through Hyde Park, was thrown from the horse and died an accidental death in 1888. His widow, Mary Sands, raised Ethel and her brothers until her death on 28 July 1896.
## Art
### Education
Encouraged by artist John Singer Sargent, Sands studied painting in Paris at the Académie Carrière under Eugène Carrière for several years, beginning in 1894. There she met fellow student Nan Hudson, born Anna Hope Hudson in the United States, who became her life partner. During this time, Sands became the guardian of her two younger brothers following her mother's death in 1896.
### Painting
Sands painted still lifes and interior settings. Tate suggests that was inspired by Édouard Vuillard's dry brush technique, colour palette and depiction of "intimate" scenes. Her first exhibition was at Salon d'Automne in Paris in 1904.
In 1907, at Walter Sickert's invitation, she became a member and exhibited paintings she made at the Fitzroy Street Group. She also purchased the works of other artists. She was one of the artists that founded the London Group. According to author Kate Deepwell, her works, and those of Vanessa Bell and other women, were evaluated differently at that time from those made by men: The best critique of woman's work at the time would be that they had individuality, but they would not have been considered innovative, modern works like those made by men.
In Paris in 1911 she had her first show dedicated to her works. Hudson and Sands had a show at Carfax Gallery in 1912. The next year she was part of the "English Post-Impressionists, Cubists and Others" show in Brighton. Her works were exhibited at Goupil Gallery, and in 1922 she had her initial solo show. She also exhibited often at the Women's International Art Club and the New English Art Club.
Hudson purchased Château d'Auppegard near Dieppe, France in 1920, which was the subject of several of Sand's paintings. Some of the interior paintings are A Spare Room, Château d'Auppegard and Double Doors, Château d'Auppegard. Other examples are the landscape Auppegard Church from Château, France and one of her partner, Nan Hudson Playing Patience at Auppegard. Her works are in the collections of Tate museum Government Art Collection, and Fitzwilliam Museum.
## Socialite and patron
Like Lady Sibyl Colefax and Lady Ottoline Morrell, Sands entertained artists and writers with the intention to nurture and discuss ideas relevant to their careers. Affiliated with the Bloomsbury Group, she was most well known as "one of the leading artist hostesses of her time", her lavish affairs were financially possible due to the significant wealth she inherited from her parents. She was mainly at the Oxford, Newington house until 1920, but when in England she also entertained at her London Lowndes Street house, and between 1913 and 1937 at 15 Vale, Chelsea, London house, where she lived near her mother's friend, Henry James. Notable artists Augustus John and Walter Sickert. Henry James, Virginia Woolf, Roger Fry and Arnold Bennett were among the writers of the "cultural elite" who visited her. Her friends included artist Jacques-Émile Blanche, writer Edith Wharton, poet William Butler Yeats, essayist and critic Logan Pearsall Smith and novelist Howard Overing Sturgis.
Lytton Strachey (a founder of the Bloomsbury Group) met at Sands' house[^1] and her uncle, Edwin Lawrence Godkin wrote of his upcoming visit to Sands' house in Oxfordshire, "There one fortnight, and then back to "holy wars", patriotism, and buncombe..."
She was a patron and collector of works by other contemporary artists. For instance, she commissioned Boris Anrep, a Russian immigrant, to create mosaics and murals in her Vale, Chelsea house. Sands continued to entertain into the 1950s with her friends, including Duncan Grant and Desmond MacCarthy, until he died in 1952.
She was described as a "plain woman of immense charm, cultivation and perception, and a painter of considerable talent" in the Dictionary of Real People and Places in Fiction. It was suggested there that Henry James modelled the character Nanda in The Awkward Age after Sands.
## World wars
Sands tended to soldiers who had been injured in France during World War I, having established a hospital for soldiers near Dieppe with Hudson. It was forced to close down, and they continued their nursing efforts in both France and England. Sands was then in Britain working as a forewoman in a factory that made overalls. In 1916 she became a British citizenship. During World War II, Sands served as a nurse. The house in Chelsea, London was destroyed during The Blitz by a parachute mine, and the house in France was broken into and its contents were stolen or destroyed. The two war-time events resulted in the loss of most of Sands and Hudson's works.
## Personal life
Sands and Hudson divided their time between England and France to accommodate their lifestyle preferences. Hudson enjoyed living a relatively quiet life in France and Sands liked the London and Oxford social life.
Sands entertained people within and outside of the cultural elite throughout her life. When Hudson's health began to fail, Sands nursed her until she died in 1957. Sand continued to entertain after Hudson's death. Her date of death was 19 March 1962.
Friend Virginia Woolf wrote a sketch based upon her called "The Lady in the Looking Glass", subtitled "A Reflection", about a time that she saw her come "in from the garden and not reading her letters." The mirror symbolised the way in which art is used to take a snapshot in time, but can also cut.
Wendy Baron, an author and art historian, wrote a biography about Sands, partly based upon the letters that Sands exchanged with Hudson and others. Tate Archives now holds the correspondence.
She was made Dame Ethel Sands in 1920.
## Works
Among the works that survived World War II plunders and bombings are:
- A Dressing Room, oil on millboard, 46 x 38 cm, The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology. Before it came to The Ashmolean, it was owned by Logan Pearsall Smith. The museum commented on the similarity of this work to paintings made by Édouard Vuillard.
- A Spare Room, Château d'Auppegard, c. 1925, oil on board, 44.5 x 53.5 cm, Government Art Collection It was exhibited at British Council, Cairo & Algiers, 1944.
- Auppegard Church from the Château, France, oil on canvas, 60 x 48 cm, City of London Corporation
- Bedroom Interior, Auppegard, France, oil on canvas, 60 x 48 cm, City of London Corporation
- Double Doors, Auppegard, France, oil on canvas, 53 x 45 cm, City of London Corporation
- Figure Seated by an Open Window, oil on canvas, 60 x 48 cm, City of London Corporation
- Flowers in a Jug, 1920s, oil on canvas, Tate
- Girl Reading on a Sofa, Auppegard, France, oil on canvas, 53 x 46 cm, City of London Corporation
- Girl Sewing, Auppegard, France, oil on canvas, 49 x 60 cm, City of London Corporation
- Interior at Portland Place, London, oil on canvas, 43 x 58 cm, City of London Corporation
- Interior with Mirror and Fireplace, oil on canvas, 65 x 53 cm, City of London Corporation
- Interior with Still Life and the Statuette of the Madonna, oil on canvas, 67.3 x 58.5 cm, Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales
- (Lloyd) Logan Pearsall Smith, 1932, oil on canvas, 61.4 x 49.8 cm, National Portrait Gallery, London
- Nan Hudson Playing Patience at Auppegard, France, oil on canvas, 64 x 52 cm, City of London Corporation
- Still Life with a View over a Cemetery, oil on board, 45 x 37.5 cm, The Fitzwilliam Museum
- Still Life with Books and Flowers, oil on canvas, 36 x 44 cm, City of London Corporation
- Tea with Sickert, c. 1911–12, oil on canvas, 61 x 51 cm, Tate
- The Bedroom at Auppegard, France, Girl Reading, oil on canvas, 51 x 61 cm, City of London Corporation
- The Chintz Couch, c. 1911–12, oil on board, 46.5 x 38.5 cm, Tate
- The Open Door, Auppegard, France,'' oil on canvas, 54 x 45 cm, City of London Corporation
[^1]: Gertrude Stein. (1933) [ The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.] New York: Random House. p. 151. |
3,371,895 | Drum (2004 film) | 1,150,160,829 | 2004 film by Zola Maseko | [
"2000s American films",
"2000s German-language films",
"2000s political drama films",
"2004 drama films",
"2004 films",
"Afrikaans-language films",
"American political drama films",
"Apartheid films",
"English-language South African films",
"Films shot in South Africa",
"South African drama films"
]
| Drum is a 2004 film based on the life of South African investigative journalist Henry Nxumalo, who worked for Drum magazine, called "the first black lifestyle magazine in Africa". It was director Zola Maseko's first film and deals with the issues of apartheid and the forced removal of residents from Sophiatown. The film was originally to be a six-part television series called Sophiatown Short Stories, but Maseko could not get the funding. The lead roles of Henry Nxumalo and Drum main photographer Jürgen Schadeberg were played by American actors Taye Diggs and Gabriel Mann, while most of the rest of the cast were South African actors.
The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2004, and did the rounds of international film festivals before going on general release in South Africa in July 2006. It was released in Europe, but failed to get a distributor for the USA where it went straight to DVD.
The film was generally well received critically. It was awarded Best South African Film at the Durban International Film Festival, and director Maseko gained the top prize at the Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO).
## Plot
The story is based on real events and real people and is set in the mid-1950s freehold township of Sophiatown, Johannesburg— one of the few areas in South Africa where blacks could own property and drink alcoholic beverages. Drum begins with the central character, sportswriter Henry Nxumalo, reporting on a boxing match with Nelson Mandela. Nxumalo leaves his wife Florence at home while going out into his community's night life and has an affair with a female singer. He works for Drum magazine, which was "the first black lifestyle magazine in Africa." The magazine was financed by whites and had a multiracial staff; it was popular among the black community. Drum'''s British editor, Jim Bailey (Jason Flemyng), asks Nxumalo to write on the township crime scene, and Nxumalo, while at first unwilling, finally agrees. While on the job, he encounters Slim (Zola), a gang leader, that he had previously met in illegal township drinking places, and witnesses him kill a man in Sophiatown.
Initially Nxumalo stays away from political articles, but eventually writes about more than entertainment after his wife and Mandela encourage him. When a young man goes missing at a Boer farm and is feared enslaved, Nxumalo decides to investigate undercover. He gets employment as a labourer at the farm, where he is treated like a slave and nearly killed. He becomes a celebrity when his story is published, further reinforced by getting himself in prison and reporting about its conditions. Nxumalo decides that his destiny is to be a muckraker and, with the help of the German photographer Jürgen Schadeberg (Gabriel Mann), ventures on more risky investigations.
Nxumalo frequently fights the racism and apartheid that is beginning to creep into his hometown. He tries to tackle stories important to his society's well-being. However, he is no match to the plan to evict residents and ultimately destroy Sophiatown. Constantly harassed by the government, at the end of the film he is stabbed to death. The attacker has never been identified.
## Cast
American actor Taye Diggs played the lead role of investigative journalist Henry Nxumalo, with fellow American actor Gabriel Mann as his photographer Jürgen Schadeberg, and South African Moshidi Motshegwa as his wife, Florence Nxumalo. The South African short-story author, Can Themba, who also worked with Nxumalo at Drum magazine, was played by the little-known South African actor, Tumisho Masha. Apart from the British actor Jason Flemyng who took the part of Jim Bailey, the ex-R.A.F. pilot who owned Drum, the rest of the parts were taken by South African actors, the best known being Zola (credited as Bonginkosi Dlamini) playing the part of Slim, the Sophiatown gang leader.
Notable people portrayed in the film include Nelson Mandela, played by Lindani Nkosi; jazz columnist Todd Matshikiza played by Fezile Mpela; and the writer Casey Motsisi played by Thapelo Mokoena.
Aptly portraying the music of the day, (Manhattan Brothers) was a fresh new outfit, formally approved by Miriam Makeba and Joe Mogotsi, the Junior Manhattan Brothers from Ladysmith, Kwa Zulu Natal.
## Production
Drum is Zola Maseko's first feature film. He originally wanted to tell Sophiatown's story in a six-part television series called Sophiatown Short Stories. Unsuccessful in convincing the "South African Television Company" to pursue such a series, he decided to change the medium to that of film. He secured a large amount of his funding by convincing Taye Diggs to fill the lead role.
American screenwriter Jason Filardi was asked to write the script by production company Armada and subsequently "fell in love" with Drum's plotline. In preparation for this task, he read books on Nxumalo and the history of South Africa, and stayed for a month in Johannesburg. Filardi said that his work on the film was his fondest experience with the medium. Filming began in May 2004 and lasted for six weeks.
The soundtrack was written by Terence Blanchard and Cédric Gradus Samson. Much of it is a jazz score, which has been called "strong". This is a reflection of the music that was popular during the movie's place and time.
## Release
Drum premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on 10 September 2004. It was the lead film in the festival's Spotlight on South Africa program. The Sundance Film Festival picked up the film, for its US premiere in January 2005, as did the Cannes Film Festival in May. On 21 June, Drum was screened at the Boston International Film Festival during its first session. The film opened the 2005 Filmfest München on 25 June.
For his work with Drum, Maseko received the top prize at FESPACO, the Golden Stallion of Yennenga, in addition to a cash prize of 10 million CFA francs (US\$20,000) at its closing ceremony in March 2005. He was the first South African to do such. In addition, Drum is only the second English language film to have won the Golden Stallion at FESPACO, the first being Kwaw Ansah's Heritage Africa in 1989.
The film premièred in South Africa at the 26th Durban International Film Festival (DIFF) on 17 July 2005 where it won the Best South African Film Award. It was released at 29 South African movie theatres on 22 July. Events to help promote the film included toyi-toyi dances in various South African market places, and the production crew holding a contest in which South African schoolchildren would have to research a lost community and the winners would get to meet the actors.
Outside film festivals, the first release in the USA was at the Olde Mistick Village theater in Filardi's hometown of Mystic, Connecticut, on 22 December 2006. Despite wide releases in Europe, Drum did not obtain one in the US, mostly due to a failure to find distributors. Instead, it went straight to DVD.
## Reception
Drum was mostly met with favorable reviews. Review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 86% percent of seven critics gave the film positive write-ups, a rating that it considered "Fresh".
Sura Wood of The Hollywood Reporter called it "an intelligent, moving film steeped in an authentic sense of time and place." Her sentiments were echoed by Joe Leydon of Variety, who thought Drum was "an intelligent and affecting take on political radicalization in 1950s Johannesburg." According to Film Threat's Jeremy Matthews, Drum was "a solid work of classical storytelling." He observed that it was "heartbreaking in its portrayal of Johannesburg at a time when its rulers had convinced many people that whites were born to command and blacks were born to obey and serve."
Critic David Nussair gave the film 3 out of 4 stars and praised Diggs as "fantastic". The supporting actors also delivered "solid" performances. He believed that the film was anything but superfluous, and it moved at a fast pace. While the screenplay was predictable, Maseko's "steady" direction "ensure[d] Drum's place among better-than-average true-life tales." The Arizona Republic disagreed with Nussair's first point, not thinking Diggs looked like a South African. It called the film "a well-meaning but static look at apartheid in the 1950s."
Shadows on the Wall's Rich Kline noted that the storyline was "compelling and eye-opening" and praised the actors as "excellent" and "committed to getting the truth out." He was impressed with the "lively and fascinating sense of local culture" that dominated the film. Kline, who gave the film 3 out of 5 stars, was mainly concerned with the film's "rather clumsy" direction and screenwriting. Maseko directed with "energy and verve," though his "struggles to capture the human drama" led to the impression that Drum was "a clunky TV movie, with awkward camera angles, wonky editing and clumsy sound recording." Filardi was guilty of a dialogue which "echoes with cliches, while contrived plotting put characters into situations that may be true, but they feel corny and movie-like." Kline also criticised the wide variety of political issues that characterised the film, though added that "maybe this helps us begin to understand what life must have been like under such an oppressive government."
One of the most critical reviews was by Francesca Dinglasan of Boxoffice Magazine. Dinglasan, who gave Drum 2.5 out of 5 stars, was unimpressed by the "unoriginal plotting techniques to convey the story of an investigative journalist attempting to expose racial injustices in a society coming to grips with the newly introduced edicts of apartheid." Although Diggs's acting was "engaging", according to her the film "depends on just a few too many big-screen cliches and predictable plot turns." The "richly designed sets and costumes were not able to overcome the less-than-satisfactory" Drum''. |
53,324,270 | Knoetschkesuchus | 1,170,474,088 | Extinct genus of reptiles | [
"Fossil taxa described in 2017",
"Late Jurassic crocodylomorphs",
"Late Jurassic reptiles of Europe",
"Neosuchians",
"Prehistoric pseudosuchian genera"
]
| Knoetschkesuchus is a genus of small atoposaurid crocodylomorph from the Late Jurassic of Germany and Portugal. Two species are known: the German species K. langenbergensis, described by Schwarz and colleagues in 2017 based on two partial skeletons and various isolated bones; and the Portuguese species K. guimarotae, named from over 400 specimens including several partial skeletons. Knoetschkesuchus was a small and short-snouted crocodilian, measuring about 55 centimetres (22 in) in length, that primarily fed on small prey, including invertebrates, amphibians, and mammals. This specialization towards small prey ecologically separated Knoetschkesuchus from most of the other diverse crocodilians that it lived with in the island ecosystem of Jurassic Europe.
Both species were formerly recognized as belonging to Theriosuchus; K. guimarotae was initially named as T. guimarotae, and specimens of K. langenbergensis were initially referred to T. pusillus upon their discovery. Schwarz and colleagues recognized a number of characteristics that united these two taxa to the exclusion of other species of Theriosuchus; in particular, Knoetschkesuchus only has two distinct types of teeth, lacking the leaf-shaped teeth seen in other atoposaurids. Other distinguishing traits include the relatively wide skull, and the presence of the antorbital and mandibular fenestrae in all life stages.
## Discovery and naming
### K. langenbergensis
The material of the type species of Knoetschkesuchus, K. langenbergensis, comes from a marly limestone bed (numbered as Bed 83, not Bed 93 as reported by some publications) containing recrystallized micritic intraclasts, located within the Langenberg Quarry in the Harz Mountains near Goslar, Lower Saxony, Germany. These deposits have been dated to the Upper Kimmeridgian stage of the Jurassic—specifically, to the regional equivalent of the Upper Kimmeridgian known as the Mittleres Kimmeridge, and belong to the Süntel Formation. Although well-preserved, fossils from this quarry were recovered generally by regular blasting operations in the quarry.
Specimens belonging to Knoetschkesuchus are stored at the Dinosaurier-Freilichtmuseum Münchehagen (hereafter denoted by DFMMh/FV) in Rehburg-Loccum, Germany. They are: the type specimen DFMMh/FV 200, the partial skeleton of an adult with a skull; DFMMh/FV 605, the complete skull of a juvenile; DFMMh/FV 261, an isolated angular; DFMMh/FV 790.12, an isolated left dentary; DFMMh/FV 279, an isolated femur; DFMMh/FV 790.11, an isolated metatarsal; and DFMMh/FV 325, a partial skeleton including osteoderms, vertebrae, and ribs. Stereomicroscopy was used to examine the specimens, which were described in a 2017 paper published by Daniela Schwarz, Maik Raddatz, and Oliver Wings.
The genus name Knoetschkesuchus combines the family name of Nils Knötschke, a researcher at the DFMMh who was responsible for the collection, curation, and preparation of Langenberg Quarry specimens, with the common crocodilian suffix suchus, from the Greek souchos ("crocodile"). Meanwhile, the species name langenbergensis is in reference to the provenance of this species from the Langenberg Quarry.
### K. guimarotae
Schwarz et al. also assigned an additional species to Knoetschkesuchus, K. guimarotae, which was originally classified as a species of Theriosuchus. As reflected by the specific name, K. guimarotae originates from the lignite layers of the Guimarota quarry, located near Leiria, Portugal. There are two primary vertebrate-bearing lignite strata within the so-called Guimarota-strata, which are separated by marly limestone and respectively known as the "Fundschichten" and "Ruafolge" subunits; K. guimarotae is known from both of these layers. They have been assigned to the Alcobaça Formation, a subunit of the Abadia Formation, which has been dated to the Kimmeridgian on the basis of fossil ostracods.
The remains of K. guimarotae are stored at the Institute of Geological Sciences of the Free University of Berlin (hereafter IPFUB). Alongside the type specimen IPFUB Gui Croc 7308—which consists of a partial skull with jaws, a vertebra from the sacrum, and two osteoderms—over 400 additional specimens are known, most of them consisting of single isolated bones. Among these, the more complete specimens are IPFUB Gui Gui Croc 7352 (tail vertebrae, femur, osteoderms); 7441 (osteoderms and ulna); 7545 (dorsal vertebrae, ischia, osteoderms); 7564 (femur, humerus, osteoderms); 7634 (dorsal vertebrae, rib, osteoderms); and 8037 (cervical and dorsal vertebrae, and osteoderms). More specimens are known, but they remain unprepared. Some specimens show the marks of scavenging.
## Description
As with other members of the Atoposauridae, Knoetschkesuchus is very small, with K. guimarotae measuring only 55 centimetres (22 in) long at maximum. Typical of the group, both species were quadrupedal, bearing long and slender limbs. The backs of both of the known species are covered with two rows of bony rectangular osteoderms, centred at the midline, that are wider than they are long. Each osteoderm bears a keel running longitudinally, although the keels are less-developed in K. langenbergensis. In at least K. guimarotae, the osteoderms on the tail have sharper and higher keels; the ones near the back of the tail tend to be longer than they are wide, unlike the other osteoderms, and are also vaulted. The vertebrae of K. guimarotae are additionally amphicoelous, or concave at both ends; while initially proposed as a unique trait, Theriosuchus pusillus bears amphicoelous vertebrae as well. The skull and jaws, which exhibit a number of characteristics that separate Knoetschkesuchus from other atoposaurids, are described in further detail below.
### Snout
The skull of Knoetschesuchus is relatively short, with the snout taking up 47% of skull length in K. langenbergensis and 42% in K. guimarotae, which allows them to be classified as brevirostrine crocodilians. Along the side of the snout are two undulations, a smaller one on the premaxilla and a larger and broader one on the maxilla. The jagged suture between the premaxilla and maxilla is angled towards the front of the skull in K. langenbergensis and towards the back in K. guimarotae. Along the midline of the snout are the thin and wedge-like nasals; the nostrils, which face upwards, are clearly separated by the nasals in K. guimarotae, but it is not clear that this is the case in K. langenbergensis.
At the back, the nasals are separated by the frontal in K. langenbergensis, the back third of which is somewhat vaulted. The portion of the frontal between the eyes is one-third the width of the entire skull in both species, but it widens further back to form the front of the skull roof. The prefrontal is straight along its contact with the frontal and nasal (about half of the bone is in contact with each), but forms an angle between the margin of the eye socket and the lacrimal on the other side. This angle is rounded in K. guimarotae such that the bone is oval-shaped, but very pointed in K. langenbergensis such that the bone is triangular.
### Eye socket and skull roof
The main body of the lacrimal is a rounded square with both faces of the bone are concave. Its contact with the nasal is rather limited in both species. The oval-shaped antorbital fenestra is small, being only 9% the length of the eye socket; its presence is unique to both species of the genus among atoposaurids. Meanwhile, the eye socket is large and oval, being 54% longer than it is tall. The drop-shaped palpebrals project out from the tops of the eye sockets. In both species, the back two-thirds of the inner surface of the palpebral is slightly concave. Both species have a squamosal in which the back third is bevelled; in K. langenbergensis, the outer margin is somewhat convex.
Viewed from the top, the parietal increases in width at the back; the increase is small in K. langenbergensis, such that the bone is overall rectangular, but the difference is larger in K. guimarotae. The back of the bone bears a small notch in K. langenbergensis and a general concavity in K. guimarotae that slightly exposes the underlying supraoccipital. The postorbital bears two branches that join with a gentle curve, separated by an angle of 130° in K. langenbergensis. The supratemporal fenestra is roughly square in K. guimarotae but has a thinner back end in K. langenbergensis. In both species, the maximum distance between the supratemporal fenestrae is about a third of the total width of the top of the skull. The trapezoidal infratemporal fenestra is 1.5 times as long as it is wide in K. langenbergensis.
### Palate and braincase
On the bottom of the skull, the pterygoid is about twice as wide as it is long. At the front of the pterygoid is a small projection that extends backwards to form a ridge, on either side of which is a furrow-like depression (the choanal groove) containing the choanae. In Theriosuchus, unlike Knoetschkesuchus, the choanae are embedded in a wider bowl-like depression. Additionally, in both species, the bottom surface of the pterygoid is somewhat concave. Extending forward from either side of the pterygoid is the ectopterygoid; in both species, this bone is constricted near the middle to form an hourglass-like shape, but in K. langenbergensis it is also somewhat twisted to the side. The back of the bone is very concave in both species.
Forming the sides of the back of the skull is the exoccipital, which surrounds most of the foramen magnum. The Eustachian tube extends downwards across the basoccipital and basisphenoid; these bones are thickened on either side of the tube in K. langenbergensis. K. guimarotae has a small rounded foramen beside the tube on the basoccipital, and a tuberosity bearing a ridge above. On the front of the basoccipital in both species, there are two rounded depressions near the bottom. The basisphenoid resembles a triangular hatchet in shape when viewed from the side.
### Jaw
In K. guimarotae, the two halves of the dentary diverge from each other at an angle of 20° near the front, then 40° near the back. It also bears two convexities on the bottom of the jaw, one at the third and fourth teeth and another at the eighth to tenth teeth. The latter convexity is replaced by a concavity in K. langenbergensis. In both species, the top margin of the jaw behind the tooth row slopes upwards in a straight line. The side of the dentary is pitted, albeit much more densely so in K. langenbergensis. Near the back of the dentary in both species, the pits are replaced by longitudinal grooves. On the interior of the jaw, the splenial bears an oval foramen behind the level of the symphysis in both species, and the top of the bone bears a low and roughened crest in K. guimarotae.
The tip of the angular is situated close to the midpoint of the bone in K. langenbergensis rather than being at the back as in K. guimarotae. In both species, the back of the angular contributes to the retroarticular process. The inner surface of the angular is roughened in K. guimarotae, and the top margin of the inner wall transitions from an upward-projecting tip at the front to a low, rounded crest at the back; the same margin maintains its height along the angular in K. langenbergensis. The surangular bears a thin, forward-projecting process that, in K. langenbergensis, extends forward to the back of the tooth row and bears a groove on the bottom. The presence of the oval-shaped external mandibular fenestra is unique to the genus among atoposaurids.
### Teeth
Both species of Knoetschkesuchus have only two distinct types of teeth, uniquely among atoposaurids. Other atoposaurids have a third type of leaf-shaped teeth. The first type of teeth, found near the front of the jaw, are conical, slightly constricted at the base, and curved slightly inwards. A subtype is represented by the canine-like or pseudocaniniform teeth. They are the fourth and fifth maxillary teeth, and are enlarged (about twice the size of the other maxillary teeth), more pointed, and more constricted at the base. The second type of teeth, which constitutes the rest of the teeth, are shaped like thin lanceheads, with a wide base and a narrower tip; in K. guimarotae all of the tips are sharp, but in K. langenbergensis they gradually become blunter.
There are 5 premaxillary teeth in both species, the fourth of which is about a third larger relative to the others. The maxilla has 12 distinct sockets in K. langenbergensis. Excluding the pseudocaniniforms, the maxillary tooth size remains roughly constant but gradually decreases after the pseudocaniniforms in both species; all tooth sockets after the twelfth are replaced by a continuous trough. In total, K. guimarotae had at least 15 maxillary teeth, and K. langenbergensis 17 or 18. Meanwhile, the dentary exhibits 21 teeth in K. langenbergensis and at least 20 in K. guimarotae. Like the maxilla, distinct sockets for dentary teeth are replaced by a groove from the eleventh tooth backwards in K. langenbergensis.
## Classification
When the known specimens of K. langenbergensis were first described in a preliminary fashion by a 2006 paper from Hans-Volker Karl et al., they were referred to the genus Theriosuchus. This was on the basis of the short skull, divided nostrils, large eye sockets compared to the supratemporal fenestrae, and the bevelled side of the squamosal. Specifically, they recognized its similarity to T. pusillus on the basis of its osteoderms and teeth, although they noted that the orientation of the back of the skull was different and that leaf-shaped teeth were absent. These differences were attributed to K. langenbergensis probably representing a different life stage of T. pusillus compared to the type specimen. A 2016 analysis of the relationships of the Atoposauridae, from Jonathan Tennant et al., tentatively supported the affinity of these specimens with T. pusillus on account of the teeth being situated in a groove (a trait uniting T. pusillus and "T." guimarotae in their analysis), the presence of pseudocaniniform teeth, and the lance head-shaped teeth near the back of the jaw. However, they noted that the nasals essentially completely divide the nostrils to the exclusion of other bones, which is not seen in the genus of Theriosuchus.
However, the taxonomy of Theriosuchus itself is somewhat convoluted. Many recent taxonomic studies have not provided an explicit set of characteristics that unite species of Theriosuchus and separate them from other atoposaurids; the only such diagnoses that have been produced were given by Steve Salisbury and Darren Naish in 2011, and Jeremy Martin et al. in 2010. In 2016 Mark Young et al. criticized these diagnoses, noting that many characters were either more widely distributed among the Atoposauridae, difficult to assess, or—in the case of the latter diagnosis—not present at all. Young et al. provided an alternative diagnosis containing nine traits, mostly involving teeth; however, they also noted that there was variation among the expression of these traits, which calls into question the monophyly of Theriosuchus. K. langenbergensis differs from this diagnosis in four out of nine traits, which Schwarz et al. cited as a basis for both the generic separation of Knoetschkesuchus and the necessity of revising the diagnosis further.
According to Schwarz et al., seven traits unite K. langenbergensis and K. guimarotae, and separate them from other species referred to Theriosuchus. These include the presence of only two unique tooth morphotypes; the choanae being placed in shallow grooves rather than a bowl-like depression; the relatively wide top of the skull; the presence of antorbital and mandibular fenestrae in all life stages; and the relatively limited contact between the lacrimal and nasal. Additionally, K. langenbergensis differs from other species in lacking teeth with low crowns; having a longer maxillary symphysis; having a crest on the side of the downward-projecting process of the postorbital; having overlap between the postorbital and the front of the squamosal; and a rectangular parietal that does not form part of the supratemporal fenestra.
In the 2017 description of K. langenbergensis, Schwarz et al. used the 2015 phylogenetic dataset of Alan Turner, which was revised to remove irrelevant characteristics, add K. langenbergensis and T. grandinaris, and correct flaws in the coded traits of K. guimarotae (due to low-resolution images, inaccuracies in the original reconstruction, and the acquirement of new data). The phylogenetic trees recovered by this analysis consistently found that Atoposauridae, represented by Knoetschkesuchus, Theriosuchus, and Alligatorium, forms a monophyletic clade. Within this clade, a close relationship between K. langenbergensis and K. guimarotae, excluding other Theriosuchus species, was strongly supported, providing further evidence of these two species forming a separate genus. In some trees, T. grandinaris was also close to Knoetschkesuchus. The most parsimonious arrangement is reproduced below.
## Paleoecology
Being relatively small, Knoetschkesuchus would have mainly fed on invertebrates and possibly small vertebrates (including amphibians and mammals). The same diet is observed in modern juvenile crocodilians of the same size class.
During the Kimmeridgian, Europe was covered by the shallow inland Tethys Ocean, with exposed landmasses being a series of scattered archipelagos. Highly variable sea levels supported a highly diverse insular crocodilian fauna, with biodiversity (that of atoposaurids in particular) being driven strongly by allopatric speciation. The two species of Knoetschkesuchus were part of similar faunas, in both of which they functioned as small predators ecologically partitioned from the other contemporary crocodilians; it is likely that these faunas originated through dispersal over larger landmasses. A similar faunal exchange occurred with the Wessex-Weald Basin of England.
### K. langenbergensis
The Langenberg Quarry, where K. langenbergensis is known from, is part of the Lower Saxony Basin, which would have been part of the landmass associated with the Rhenisch, Bohemian, and London-Brabant Massifs. During the Kimmeridgian, it would have been a shallow marine environment; however, this does not imply that K. langenbergensis was marine, since the animals and plants of the Langenberg Quarry were probably transported allochthonously (albeit only by a short distance) from the surrounding islands. Brackish and freshwater sediments are also present in the quarry, which implies that there was occasional freshwater influx. Twigs and conifer cones indicate that the araucarian Brachyphyllum was present at the site.
Besides K. langenbergensis, other crocodilians from the Langenberg Quarry include the marine Machimosaurus hugii and Steneosaurus aff. brevirostris, which would have lived offshore and fed on turtles and fish; and the amphibious generalist Goniopholis simus, which subsisted on a diet of both shelly and soft prey like modern alligators. The quarry is best known as the type locality of the brachiosaurid sauropod dinosaur Europasaurus holgeri, which was an insular dwarf. Isolated teeth show that there were at least four different types of theropods present at the locality, including the megalosaurid Torvosaurus sp. as well as an additional megalosaurid and indeterminate members of the Allosauridae and Ceratosauria; theropod tracks from two different species (not identifiable to the family level) are also known. Remains attributable to diplodocids (possibly also dwarfed) and stegosaurs have also been found, alongside an indeterminate dsungaripterid pterosaur.
Non-archosaurs are also present in the Langenberg Quarry. These include a paramacellodid lizard; the turtles Thalassemys sp., Plesiochelys etalloni, and a juvenile eucryptodiran; plagiaulacid multituberculate, dryolestid, and docodont mammals known from teeth; the mammaliaform Storchodon; a diverse actinopterygian fish fauna dominated by Lepidotes sp. but also including Macromesodon sp., Proscinetes sp., Coelodus sp., Macrosemius sp. (or Notagogus sp.), Histionotus sp., Ionoscopus sp., Callopterus sp., Caturus sp., Sauropsis sp., Belonostomus sp., and Thrissops subovatus; and five morphotypes of hybodonts plus the neoselachians Palaeoscyllium sp., two distinct Synechodus sp., and two distinct Asterodermus sp.
### K. guimarotae
The Guimarota locality is located in the eastern Lusitanian Basin, which is part of the Iberian Meseta. The vertebrate-bearing Guimarota-strata was deposited in a brackish lagoon that periodically received both freshwater and saltwater influxes. Ecologically, the environment would have been akin to a modern mangrove swamp. Plants known from megafossils include the horsetails Equisetum and Schizoneura; the seed fern Caytonia; the cycad Otozamites; the araucaria Brachyphyllum; Ginkgo; and the charophyte algae Porochara. Additionally, plant families known only from pollen include lycopods, forked ferns, possible scaly tree ferns (which may be matoniaceans or dicksoniaceans instead), royal ferns, the seed fern Sphenopteris, cypresses, and pines. Most of the preserved organisms probably originated from around the swamp, although there may have been minimal transportation by water currents.
Many crocodilians are known from the Guimarota mine. The marine Machimosaurus hugii is again present, as is Goniopholis (although as a different species, G. baryglyphaeus). Additionally, Bernissartia sp., Lisboasaurus estesi, and Lusitanisuchus mitracostatus have also been found; the latter two were small, being less than 50 centimetres (20 in) in length, and likely also fed on insects like K. guimarotae. Dinosaurs from Guimarota are mainly known from teeth, and include a brachiosaurid, which is also rather small in size; theropods, including Stokesosaurus sp. (known from body fossils), Compsognathus sp., allosaurids, a ceratosaur similar to Ceratosaurus, a taxon similar to the phylogenetically problematic Richardoestesia, dromaeosaurids, troodontids, and archaeopterygiforms; and the ornithopods Phyllodon henkeli and an iguanodont similar to Camptosaurus. Other diverse vertebrates, including chondrichthyans, osteichthyans, albanerpetontid amphibians, turtles, lizards, rhamphorhynchid pterosaurs, and docodont and dryolestid mammals (including Henkelotherium guimarotae) are also present. Invertebrates are represented by ostracods and molluscs. |
25,874,606 | Today Was a Fairytale | 1,165,974,698 | 2010 single by Taylor Swift | [
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| "Today Was a Fairytale" is a song written and recorded by American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. Produced by Swift and Nathan Chapman, it was released digitally on January 19, 2010, by Big Machine Records as a single from the corresponding soundtrack for the 2010 film Valentine's Day, in which she acted. Swift had previously written the song and offered it to producers for the film's soundtrack. Musically, "Today Was a Fairytale" is country pop-influenced and, lyrically, speaks of a magical date.
Some critics deemed "Today Was a Fairytale" the best song on the Valentine's Day soundtrack, but some others deemed it bland. The song peaked at number one in Canada, number two in the United States, and number six in Australia. Swift included the track on a revised set list for the continuation of her Fearless Tour in 2010. The song was re-recorded and released as "Today Was a Fairytale (Taylor's Version)", as part of Swift's 2021 re-recorded album, Fearless (Taylor's Version).
## Background and release
Swift solely penned "Today Was a Fairytale" in the summer of 2008 and stored it away for a while. After being cast as Felicia Miller on Valentine's Day, Swift offered the song to the film producers for the soundtrack as she did not believe it fit on her upcoming album. "When this movie opportunity came about, I reached back into my pocket and thought, 'I think this is perfect for the soundtrack. I hope it's perfect for the soundtrack'", Swift told The Tennessean. "Today Was a Fairytale" was released as a single from the Valentine's Day soundtrack on January 19, 2010, exclusively through the iTunes Store. The single was re-released on February 15, 2011. Swift released a re-recorded version, "Today Was a Fairytale (Taylor's Version)", as the twentieth track on her re-recorded album Fearless (Taylor's Version), on April 9, 2021.
## Composition
"Today Was a Fairytale" has a length of four minutes and two seconds. It is set in common time and has a ballad tempo of 80 beats per minute. It is written in the key of G major and Swift's vocals span a little more than one octave, from G<sub>3</sub> to C<sub>5</sub>. It follows the chord progression G–C–Em–D. Jody Rosen and Jonas Weiner of Slate magazine noted that although Swift typically sings country pop, "with the possible exception of that woodsy acoustic guitar" in the song's introduction "Today Was a Fairytale" displays no aspects of country music in either its instrumentation or vocals. "Taylor's vowels have gotten flattened and Yankee-ified," commented Rosen, though Weiner pointed out that Swift's pop-heavy music was the primary reason for her success. Hannah Mylrea from NME, meanwhile, described it as a country song. Melanie Bertoldi of Billboard believed Swift's vocals displayed a newfound maturity. There are two different versions of the song's intro: the first one having much more electronic production while the second one is only accompanied by an acoustic guitar.
The song's lyrics describe a magical date. Like many of Swift's songs, the lyrics invoke princess imagery with lines such as "Today was a fairytale/You were the prince/I used to be a damsel in distress." Bertoldi said the lyrics were "driven more by sweeping emotion than [...] specific, youth-focused imagery". Occasionally, Swift does interrupt the fairytale construct with modern day, real world details like the time her date arrives or the color of his shirt.
## Critical reception
The song received generally positive reviews from contemporary critics. Melanie Bertoldi of Billboard compared the song's lyrics to those of Swift's previous singles "You Belong with Me" and "Fifteen"; she was convinced that "Today Was a Fairytale" would "help [Swift] reach an even broader audience." Leah Greenblatt of Entertainment Weekly did not see a departure from Swift, recalling lyrics to be familiar of those of "Love Story" and "You Belong with Me". However, she ended with "What do we know? The song sounds Taylor-made (oh, the wit!) for her fans, and we’re just happy she's still sweet, neat, and [...] age-appropriate." An uncredited review from People magazine said the track led the Valentine's Day soundtrack. Brittany Talarico of British magazine OK! called the song's refrains "catchy" and described the overall feel as "sweet." Andrew Leahey of AllMusic said that there was special attention placed on Swift's tracks on the soundtrack, particularly on the song. Jody Rosen of Slate magazine declared "Today Was a Fairytale" "track of the week", highlighting its imagery that, according to her, "sharpen the focus instead of softening it." Jonah Weiner, also of Slate, wrote, "This song is a funny mix: some of her tightest songwriting to date, but some of her laziest lyrics." He mentioned that in the lyrics, Swift mainly "invoke[d] the cliché and hope[d] it [did] her heavy lifting for her." In June 2022, Insider ranked "Today Was a Fairytale" as Swift's second worst soundtrack song.
## Commercial performance
On the week ending February 6, 2010, "Today Was a Fairytale" debuted at number two on the Billboard Hot 100 (blocked from number one by Kesha's "Tik Tok"). This was due to the sales of 325,000 digital downloads, which broke the record for largest first-week download sales by a female artist previously set by Britney Spears' "Womanizer". In the succeeding week, the song descended to number 22. It spent a total of 18 weeks on the chart. "Today Was a Fairytale" additionally peaked at number one on the Digital Song Sales chart, number 20 on the Mainstream Top 40 chart, number 21 on the Adult Contemporary chart, and number 41 on the Hot Country Songs chart. It was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for the sales of over one million units. As of November 2014, "Today Was a Fairytale" had sold 1.6 million digital downloads in the United States.
"Today Was a Fairytale" was Swift's first song to peak at number one on the Canadian Hot 100. The song peaked at number six in Australia and was certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) for sales of 70,000 units. It peaked at number 29 in New Zealand, number 41 in Ireland, number 57 in the United Kingdom, and number 63 in Japan.
## Live performances
Swift performed a medley, which included the song, at the 52nd Grammy Awards. Wearing casual white blouse and black skinny jeans, Swift performed "Today Was a Fairytale", where she took center stage with a wooden acoustic guitar strapped to her shoulder. After performing the track, she announced. "It's a fairy tale and an honor to share the stage with Stevie Nicks". Following, the two performed a cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Rhiannon" (1976). Swift and Nicks then jumped into the third and final part in her medley, a twangy version of "You Belong with Me". Eric Ditzian of MTV News was disappointed at Swift's and Nicks' harmonies, but said the two "made for a compelling twosome". The performance followed much backlash in regards to Swift's off key singing, which caused Scott Borchetta, CEO of Big Machine Records, to issue a statement defending the performance.
Swift annexed "Today Was a Fairytale" to a revised set list for the continuation of her Fearless Tour in 2010. During the performances, which was the penultimate of each concert, Swift was usually costumed in a black cocktail dress with a v-neck cut and black, leather boots. She performed with a rhinestoned acoustic guitar center-stage as a forest was projected on the stage; concluding the performance, clips from Valentine's Day were depicted and, following its completion, confetti dropped from the ceiling. At the May 22, 2010 concert at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Jane Stevenson of The Toronto Sun said that Swift wearing a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey "didn't hurt [her] popularity either in this hockey-mad town." Molly Trust of Billboard noted the performance at the tour's final concert on June 5, 2010 at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts "sported a touch of a hometown feel, as Swift literally and figuratively played to the crowd in a Patriots shirt." Swift later performed the song on select dates on the Red Tour (2013–2014) in place of "I Almost Do"; and during the Eras Tour (2023–2024) as a surprise song for the second Houston show.
## Chart performance
### Weekly charts
### Year-end charts
## Certifications
## Release history
## See also
- List of Billboard Hot 100 top-ten singles in 2010
- List of number-one digital songs of 2010 (U.S.)
- List of Hot 100 number-one singles of 2010 (Canada) |
9,976,414 | Marian Breland Bailey | 1,171,828,857 | American psychologist | [
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| Marian Breland Bailey, born Marian Ruth Kruse (December 2, 1920 – September 25, 2001) and nicknamed "Mouse", was an American psychologist, an applied behavior analyst who played a major role in developing empirically validated and humane animal training methods and in promoting their widespread implementation. She and her first husband, Keller Breland (1915–1965), studied at the University of Minnesota under behaviorist B. F. Skinner and became "the first applied animal psychologists." Together they wrote the book Animal Behavior which was first published in 1966, after Keller's death.
## Childhood and education
Born to Christian and Harriet (Prime) Kruse, Marian Ruth Kruse grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Christian, a German immigrant, worked for an automotive supply store, and Harriet was a registered nurse. Bailey's father and then others called her "Maus" ("mouse"), a common German nickname for little girls. After graduating from Washburn High School as her senior class's valedictorian, Bailey went to the University of Minnesota to major in Latin and minor in Greek. Although financial times were difficult as her family had lost everything during the banking collapse of the Great Depression, a full scholarship and a Works Progress Administration award for writers supported her undergraduate education. Before long, she also became a research assistant for B. F. (Fred) Skinner.
To meet a science requirement, Bailey took psychology because, as she later explained, "I thought it the least painful science." As a straight-A student, she was recommended for a highly selective psychology class taught by Skinner (the first of what Skinner later called "pro-seminars"), under whom she studied along with George Collier, W. K. Estes, Norman Guttman, Kenneth MacCorquodale, Paul Everett Meehl, and others bound for later fame in their field. With its emphasis on Skinner's new operant training techniques, the course inspired Bailey to major in psychology with a minor in child psychology and to study operant conditioning.
Bailey worked as Skinner's teaching and laboratory assistant when he published his pivotal work The Behavior of Organisms in 1938. She trained rats for Skinner, typed lecture notes for him, proofread his book, and even babysat his children. Skinner gave her the final galley proof of his book, which she considered a prized possession. While still an undergraduate student, Bailey met her future husband Keller Breland, who came to call her "Mouse" without knowing that her family called her "Maus". Bailey and others soon decided that her name was Mouse.
In 1940, Bailey joined Psi Chi, the national honor society in psychology. She graduated with her bachelor of arts degree summa cum laude in 1941, the only member of her graduating class with an A average.
## Work with Keller Breland
After Bailey earned her bachelor's degree, she married psychologist Keller Bramwell Breland (1915–1965) on August 1, 1941. Together, they had three children: Bradley (1946), Frances (1948), and Elizabeth (1952).
Bailey became the second graduate student to work under the renowned Skinner. Her husband soon came to work with Skinner as well. While graduate students, they collaborated with Skinner on military research during World War II. Their work involved training pigeons for use by the U.S. Navy, teaching the birds to guide bombs. This was never actually used. Although many sources incorrectly refer to the work as Project Pigeon or the Pigeon Project, Bailey assured colleagues that its name had actually been "Pigeon in a Pelican", with pelican referring to the missile each pigeon was to guide.
Bailey and Breland saw the commercial possibilities of operant training. So they left the University of Minnesota without completing their doctorates, and founded Animal Behavior Enterprises (ABE) on a farm in Minnesota. Skinner tried to dissuade the couple from abandoning their graduate education for an untested commercial endeavor. Classmate Paul Meehl bet \$10 they would fail. (His 1961 check for \$10 later hung framed on Bailey's office wall.)
ABE's first project was training farm animals to appear in feed advertisements for General Mills. Bailey and Breland went on to train "more animals and different species of animals than any other animal trainers" of their time, including animals of the land (cats, cattle, chickens, dogs, goats, pigs, rabbits, raccoons, rats, and sheep), the air (ducks, parrots, and ravens), and the sea (dolphins and whales). At their busiest, they trained "more than 1,000 animals at a given time". In training animals for recreational facilities such as Marineland of Florida, Parrot Jungle, SeaWorld, and Six Flags, they created the very first dolphin and bird shows, a form of program now considered traditional entertainment fare. Most major theme parks' animal programs can be traced back to the couple's pioneering work. They also established the first coin-operated animal shows. The Buck Bunny commercial featured their trained rabbits for a Coast Federal Savings television ad that ran for twenty years and which still holds the record for longest running TV commercial advertisement. They trained animals for many other venues including circuses, motion pictures, museums, stores, and zoos.
Earlier animal trainers had historically relied primarily on punishment when teaching animals. Bailey and Breland instead followed Skinner's emphasis on the use of positive reinforcement to train animals, using rewards for desired behavior. Although other students of Skinner's later entered commercial animal training as well, the pair's techniques dominated the field because they found ways to simplify the training of complex behaviors. The couple did not just train the animals. They also trained other animal trainers, establishing in 1947 "the first school and instruction manual for teaching animal trainers the applied technology of behavior analysis." Marlin Perkins of Wild Kingdom and Walt Disney were among those who learned from them.
Bailey led ABE's government research, some of which remains classified to this day. Known projects included the development of an avian ambush detection system. In 1950, Bailey and Breland relocated ABE to a farm near Hot Springs, Arkansas. In 1955, they opened the "I.Q. Zoo" in Hot Springs as both a training facility and a showcase of trained animals. "Popular acts included chickens that walked tightropes, dispensed souvenirs and fortune cards, danced to music from jukeboxes, played baseball and ran the bases; rabbits that kissed their (plastic) girlfriends, rode fire trucks and sounded sirens, and rolled wheels of fortune; ducks that played pianos and drums; and raccoons that played basketball."
Bailey and Breland were also "the first to introduce the public to the applied technology of behavior analysis via numerous personal appearances at fairs, exhibitions, and theme parks across the country". They appeared on well known television shows such as The Today Show, The Tonight Show, Wild Kingdom, and You Asked For It. Publications including Colliers, Life, Popular Mechanics, Reader's Digest, Saturday Evening Post, Time, and even The Wall Street Journal featured them and their work. Although Breland was often the public face of ABE with some ads referring to "Keller Breland's I.Q. Zoo," both of them collaborated equally in ABE's endeavors.
The couple stirred controversy among behaviorists with their 1961 article, "The misbehavior of organisms" – the title of which involved a play on words referring to Skinner's The Behavior of Organisms. Bailey and Breland outlined training difficulties in which instinct or instinctive drift might occur as tendencies biologically inherent in a species intrude into the behaviors a trainer was attempting to teach an animal. The article is recognized as a milestone in the history of psychology.
In 1963, Bailey designed and implemented a program to improve techniques for working with profoundly mentally retarded individuals at a human development center in Alexandria, Louisiana. She emphasized the value of positive reinforcement, and taught ward attendants humane practices that became the standard for institutions of this kind. The 1965 training manual Teaching the Mentally Retarded, which she and others prepared, remained in use for decades.
On June 16, 1965, Breland died of a heart attack. In their 1966 textbook, Bailey described him as the "dreamer" and herself as the "engineer". She continued writing, researching, and training animals.
## Work with Bob Bailey
In 1976, she married Robert (Bob) E. Bailey. He had been the first Director of Training in the Navy's Marine Mammal Program, then became ABE's General Manager. The two of them had founded the facility "Animal Wonderland" in 1972. Among their many activities, the Baileys worked with the Canine Companions for Independence nonprofit organization which trained dogs to assist disabled individuals. Together, the Baileys trained animals from over 140 species.
Bailey's graduate studies had stopped when she and Breland left to found ABE. She returned to graduate school and earned her Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Arkansas in 1978. She then served as a professor of psychology at Henderson State University from 1981 until her retirement in 1998. During these years, the Baileys produced educational films on topics such as the history of behaviorism. Their film work included The History of Behavioral Analysis Biographies, the ABE documentary Patient Like the Chipmunks, and An Apple for the Student: How Behavioral Psychology Can Change the American Classroom.
Bailey continued writing about the "misbehavior" of animals during operant conditioning for publications such as American Psychologist, the official journal of the American Psychological Association (APA). The Baileys were chief among the behaviorists who began using the Internet for instruction, problem solving, and promotion of their science.
In 1996, the Baileys began the Bailey & Bailey Operant Conditioning Workshops, which provided training to animal trainers, psychologists, students, and many others from throughout the world. The program of study involved four increasingly advanced levels of the "physically, mentally, and emotionally demanding" workshops. In 1998, the University of Arkansas inducted Bailey into the university's Fulbright College Alumni Academy as one of their first Distinguished Alumni Award recipients.
On September 25, 2001, Bailey died at St. Joseph's Hospital in Hot Springs.
## Remembering Mouse
After Bailey's death, numerous professionals in the field recognized her death with obituaries and biographies. Dr. Art Gillaspy and Dr. Elson Bihm of the University of Central Arkansas wrote an obituary for the American Psychologist. Psi Chi's journal Eye on Psi Chi honored Bailey, who had been a member for over sixty years, with a biography by Dr. Todd Wiebers of Henderson State. The year after her death, the Arkansas Historical Quarterly featured a retrospective on Bailey, who had been a figure in the state of Arkansas for decades. Her husband Bob provided a biographical tribute for the Division 25 Recorder, the official publication of the APA's Division 25 for Behavior Analysis. Other obituaries and biographies have appeared online.
In her name, Henderson State University presents the Marian Breland Bailey Endowed Scholarship in Psychology to select psychology undergraduates. Memorial contributions in Bailey's memory go to this scholarship and to the Arkansas Kidney Foundation.
Bailey's husband Bob continued to teach seminars they developed and the Bailey & Bailey Operant Conditioning Workshops which they began together.
The Archives of the History of Psychology in Akron, Ohio, and the Smithsonian Math and Science Museum in Washington, D.C., now house collections of Bailey's documents and items. |
14,405,704 | Leonore Annenberg | 1,171,550,849 | American businesswoman | [
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| Leonore Cohn Annenberg (February 20, 1918 – March 12, 2009), also known as Lee Annenberg, was an American businesswoman, diplomat, and philanthropist. She was noted for serving as Chief of Protocol of the United States from 1981 to 1982. Annenberg was married to Walter Annenberg, who was an Ambassador to the United Kingdom and newspaper publisher. She also served as the chairman and president of the Annenberg Foundation from 2002 until 2009.
Born in New York City and raised in Los Angeles, she graduated from Stanford University. After her first two marriages ended in divorce, she married noted businessman Walter Annenberg, who was appointed U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom in 1969 under President Richard Nixon. In her role as the ambassador's wife, Leonore directed a major renovation of the ambassador's official residence. The Annenbergs contributed to Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign and upon his inauguration, Leonore was named Chief of Protocol, placing her in charge of advising the president, vice president, and Secretary of State on matters relating to diplomatic protocol.
The Annenbergs became major philanthropists, donating money to education facilities, charitable causes, and the arts. Leonore Annenberg served on many committees and boards as well. After her husband's death in 2002, she continued to donate money and succeeded him as chairman and president of the Annenberg Foundation.
## Early life and family
Leonore Cohn was born into a Jewish family in New York City on February 20, 1918, to Maxwell and Clara Cohn. Nicknamed "Lee", her father operated a textile business. She was seven years old when her mother died. She and her younger sister were raised in Fremont Place, an upper-class neighborhood of Los Angeles, by her uncle Harry Cohn, the founder of Columbia Pictures. Leonore and her younger sister, Judith, attended the Page Boarding School for Girls in Pasadena. Harry Cohn's wife, Rose, raised the girls as Christian Scientists.
Leonore Cohn graduated from Stanford University in 1940 with a bachelor's degree. After graduating, she married Beldon Katleman, whose family owned real estate and a national parking lot chain; they had a daughter, Diane, but the marriage ended in divorce after a few years. In 1946, she married Lewis Rosenstiel, the multimillionaire founder of the Schenley liquor distillery, and they had a daughter named Elizabeth; that marriage, too, ended in divorce.
She and Walter Annenberg, then editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer, met in 1950 at a party in Florida and the two were married the following year.
## Ambassador's wife
Upon her husband's appointment as the United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom in 1969, Mrs. Annenberg ordered a renovation of the thirty-five room Winfield House, the ambassador's official London residence. The total cost of the project was about US\$1 million and took six months to complete. While in London, Leonore founded the American Friends of Covent Garden, an organization designed to foster goodwill between the U.S. and Great Britain through musical expression.
## Chief of Protocol
The Annenbergs contributed substantially to Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign, and upon Reagan's election in 1981, Lee Annenberg was named as Chief of Protocol of the United States. This position placed her in charge of advising the President, Vice President, and Secretary of State on matters dealing with diplomatic protocol, and formally welcoming foreign dignitaries upon their arrival to the United States. Annenberg oversaw a staff of 60 who worked on myriad details, ranging from the choice of the state gifts that will be given to the guest, to the bathrooms the foreign delegation may visit. She said of her position, "It's all about making your guests feel respected and welcome". Annenberg attracted some controversy during her tenure when she curtsied before the visiting Prince Charles upon arriving for a diplomatic visit, commentators saying it was unseemly in a republic which gained its independence from the same monarchy.
As Chief of Protocol, she achieved the rank of Ambassador. Friends of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, the Annenbergs hosted the Reagans annually at their Rancho Mirage, California, estate, "Sunnylands". Annenberg resigned her post in January 1982, stating that she wanted to spend more time with her husband.
## Philanthropy and committee work
After leaving her post at the State Department, Lee Annenberg began work to promote and enhance cultural appreciation in the United States. She and her husband continued to donate money to worthy causes as philanthropists. In 2001, Annenberg was awarded the Andrew Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy. Upon being presented the award, she explained why she and her husband donated to causes as philanthropists:
> Walter and I believe that education is the foundation of a democratic society. When asked what motivates his philanthropic work, my husband has responded with a very powerful statement: 'I regard my philanthropic work as an investment in the future of America. It is the most effective way I can serve my country and help to ensure its benefits for the next generation.'
Mrs. Annenberg served many charitable organizations and on many committees. Stemming from her interest in and endowments to the arts, she was a trustee emerita and a member of the Acquisitions Committee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, member of the Board of Trustees of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, one of the managing directors of The Metropolitan Opera, honorary trustee and former board president of the Palm Springs Art Museum, and a member of the American Philosophical Society. Mrs. Annenberg was chairwoman emerita of the Foundation of Art and Preservation in Embassies, and a member of the Committee for the Preservation of the White House.
She was also a member of the Distinguished Daughters of Pennsylvania and an active trustee emeritus of the University of Pennsylvania. She served on the governing boards of both Annenberg Schools for Communication. In 1993, she and her husband, Walter, were awarded the National Medal of Arts. She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004.
## Later life
Walter Annenberg died on October 1, 2002, aged 94. Lee Annenberg succeeded her husband as chairman and president of the Annenberg Foundation, an organization founded by her late husband which funds nonprofit organizations as well as education institutes and programs of the arts. She continued to donate money to worthy causes in the fields of science, education, and art until her death. In 2006, she was ranked as the 382nd wealthiest person in the world by Forbes magazine, and the 488th in 2007. Annenberg, in 2007, was the 165th richest person in the United States, according to Forbes, with a net worth of 2.5 billion dollars. Annenberg traveled to Washington, D.C., in May 2007 to attend the state dinner for Queen Elizabeth II, hosted by President George W. Bush. The following month, she accepted the prestigious Philadelphia Award, an honor given to those in the Philadelphia region who worked to better the area.
Most recently before her death, Annenberg became an honorary board member of the Richard Nixon Foundation and an honorary fellow of the Royal Academy of Arts.
## Death
Lee Annenberg resided in Rancho Mirage, California, prior to her death on March 12, 2009, aged 91. According to a family spokesperson, Leonore Annenberg died at Eisenhower Medical Center of natural causes.
`At the time of her death, Annenberg had been in declining health.`
At the announcement of her death, statements were issued by former President George H. W. Bush and Barbara Bush, as well as former First Lady Nancy Reagan, who called Annenberg "a dear and longtime friend" and praised the Annenbergs' philanthropic work as having "left an indelible print on education in the United States".
## See also
- Annenberg Public Policy Center |
345,296 | White Castle, Monmouthshire | 1,150,258,948 | Ruined castle in Monmouthshire, Wales | [
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"Tourist attractions in Monmouthshire"
]
| White Castle (Welsh: Castell Gwyn), also known historically as Llantilio Castle, is a ruined castle near the village of Llantilio Crossenny in Monmouthshire, Wales. The fortification was established by the Normans in the wake of the invasion of England in 1066, to protect the route from Wales to Hereford. Possibly commissioned by William fitz Osbern, the Earl of Hereford, it comprised three large earthworks with timber defences. In 1135, a major Welsh revolt took place and in response King Stephen brought together White Castle and its sister fortifications of Grosmont and Skenfrith to form a lordship known as the "Three Castles", which continued to play a role in defending the region from Welsh attack for several centuries.
King John gave the castle to a powerful royal official, Hubert de Burgh, in 1201. Over the next few decades, it passed back and forth between several owners, as Hubert, the rival de Braose family, and the Crown took control of the property. During this period, White Castle was substantially rebuilt, with stone curtain walls, mural towers and gatehouses, forming what the historian Paul Remfry considers to be "a masterpiece of military engineering". In 1267 it was granted to Edmund, the Earl of Lancaster, and remained in the hands of the earldom, and later duchy, of Lancaster until 1825.
Edward I's conquest of Wales in 1282 removed much of White Castle's military utility, and by the 16th century it had fallen into disuse and ruin. The castle was placed into the care of the state in 1922, and is now managed by Cadw, the Welsh heritage agency.
## History
### 11th–12th centuries
White Castle was built in the wake of the Norman invasion of England in 1066. Shortly after the invasion, the Normans pushed into the Welsh Marches, where William the Conqueror made William fitz Osbern the Earl of Hereford; Earl William added to his new lands by capturing the towns of Monmouth and Chepstow. The Normans used castles extensively to subdue the Welsh, establish new settlements and exert their claims of lordship over the territories.
Originally called Llantilio Castle, White Castle was one of three fortifications built in the Monnow valley around the same time, possibly by Earl William himself, to protect the route from Wales to Hereford, and overlooked the manor of Llantilio Crossenny and the River Monnow. The first castle on the site was built from earth and timber, with three large earthworks forming an inner and outer ward, and a hornwork protecting the main entrance to the south. A mill was constructed at Great Trerhew to grind corn for the castle garrison.
The earldom's landholdings in the region were slowly broken up after William's son, Roger de Breteuil, rebelled against the Crown in 1075. In 1135, a major Welsh revolt took place, and in response King Stephen restructured the landholdings along this section of the Marches, bringing White Castle and its sister fortifications of Grosmont and Skenfrith back under the control of the Crown to form a lordship known as the "Three Castles".
Conflict with the Welsh continued, and following a period of detente under Henry II in the 1160s, the de Mortimer and de Braose Marcher families attacked their Welsh rivals during the 1170s, leading to a Welsh assault on nearby Abergavenny Castle in 1182. In response, the Crown readied the castle to face an attack and, between 1184 and 1186, work costing £128 was carried out by Ralph of Grosmont, a royal official, probably to build a stone curtain wall around the inner ward and to add a small stone keep to the defences.
### 13th–17th centuries
In 1201, King John gave the Three Castles to Hubert de Burgh. Hubert was a minor landowner who had become John's household chamberlain when he was still a prince, and went on to become an increasingly powerful royal official once John inherited the throne. At this time, White Castle was primarily a military fortification, holding a garrison and stores of arrows and crossbow bolts. It was relatively exposed to the elements and had, at best, only basic accommodation; the historian Cathcart King describes the conditions in the castle as likely to have been "miserable", "squalid" and "unpleasant".
Hubert began to upgrade his new castles, starting with Grosmont, but was captured while fighting in France. During Hubert's captivity, King John took back the Three Castles and gave them to William de Braose, a rival of Hubert's. King John subsequently fell out with William and dispossessed him of his lands in 1207, but de Braose's son, also called William, took the opportunity presented by the First Barons' War to retake the castles.
Once released, Hubert regained his grip on power, becoming the royal justiciar and being made the Earl of Kent, before finally recovering the Three Castles in 1219 during the reign of King Henry III. Hubert fell from power in 1232 and was stripped of the castles, which were placed under the command of Walerund Teutonicus, a royal servant; having been reconciled with the King in 1234, the castles were briefly returned to Hubert, but he fell out with King Henry III again in 1239 and they were taken back and assigned to Walerund. Walerund built a new hall, buttery and pantry at the castle in 1244. In 1254, White Castle and its sister fortifications were granted to King Henry's eldest son, and later King, Prince Edward.
During the 13th century, the castle was almost entirely rebuilt, although historians have put forward two possible timelines for when this work was carried out. The conventional historical dating places the construction in the 1250s and 1260s, as a single programme of work consisting in the keep being demolished, a new gatehouse and four mural towers constructed and the outer ward reinforced with a stone wall and gatehouse of its own. Paul Remfry argues that the work occurred somewhat earlier during Hubert's tenure, being carried out in two waves between 1229–1231 and 1234–1239. Around this time the fortification is first described in the records as the "White Castle", due to the white rendering applied to its external walls.
The Welsh threat persisted, and in 1262 the castle was readied in response to Prince Llywelyn ap Gruffudd's attack on Abergavenny in 1262; commanded by its constable Gilbert Talbot, Grosmont was ordered to be garrisoned "by every man, and at whatever cost". The threat passed without incident.
Edmund, the Earl of Lancaster and the capitaneus of the royal forces in Wales, was given the Three Castles in 1267 and for many centuries they were held by the earldom, later duchy, of Lancaster. King Edward I's conquest of Wales in 1282 removed much of White Castle's military utility, although it continued to be used in the administration of the surrounding manor, and for mustering military levies. Little further work was carried out on the fortification, although one of the gatehouse towers was repaired at some point, and repairs were carried out to the chapel tower and gatehouse under King Henry VI. By 1538, White Castle had fallen into disuse and then into ruin; a 1613 description noted that it was "ruynous and decayed".
### 18th–21st centuries
In 1825, the Three Castles were sold off to Henry Somerset, the Duke of Beaufort. In 1902, Henry Somerset, the 9th Duke, sold White Castle to Sir Henry Mather Jackson. Evidence was given to the Royal Commission on Ancient Monuments in Wales and Monmouthshire in 1909, stating that Sir Henry had taken steps to strip the castle of ivy and that it was now in a good condition; the site was apparently looked after by an old woman, who charged visitors for entry. The castle was placed into the care of the state in 1922. In the 21st century, White Castle is managed by the Welsh heritage agency Cadw and is protected under UK law as a grade I listed building.
## Architecture
White Castle occupies a hill near the village of Llantilio Crossenny, overlooking the surrounding landscape. The castle dates mainly from the 13th century and is made up of a central inner ward, a crescent-shaped hornwork to the south, and an outer ward to the north, with its stonework constructed from red sandstone. The outer ward was originally much larger, extending around the castle further to the east, but only limited traces of these earthworks survive. It is now entered from the north-east although, before the 13th century, the entrance was originally on the south side. The historian Paul Remfry considers the castle to be "a masterpiece of military engineering" for the period.
The outer ward is 320 by 170 feet (98 by 52 m) across, accessed by a gatehouse on the eastern edge and defended by a stone curtain wall, a dry ditch and four mural towers. The gatehouse, which survives up to 5 metres (16 ft) in height, originally had a portcullis and a drawbridge. Three of the towers were circular in design, but one was rectangular and would have been used as lodgings for a household official. There was a large building, probably a barn, 115 by 66 feet (35 by 20 m) across, on the north-western edge of the ward, alongside a group of smaller buildings, but all have since been lost.
The inner ward is approximately 150 by 110 feet (46 by 34 m) across, protected by a deep, revetted, water-filled moat, dug out of the rock. The curtain wall has four circular, four-storey towers and a gatehouse, with domestic buildings reaching around the insides of the defences. The four-storey gatehouse is flanked by two circular towers and would originally have had a portcullis and a drawbridge. It would originally have been used by the castle's constable or steward. Stretching eastwards from the gatehouse are the castle's hall, the constable's living quarters, the chapel – partially contained in one of the towers- the remains of the earlier keep, service buildings and the kitchen block. Only the foundations of these buildings survive. A postern gate in the inner ward leads through to the southern hornwork, which would originally have been linked by a wooden bridge, protected by timber defences and towers, with later stone additions, of which only traces remain.
White Castle has unusual arrow loops, with the two arms of a conventional cross-shaped loop offset vertically, so that one side is higher than the other. Historians have contrasting views of the effectiveness of this design; they might have been a sensible way to ensure that the defenders could fire down the slopes around the castle, or to give better protection from incoming shot, although tests in 1980 showed them to have been extremely vulnerable to incoming shots.
## See also
- Castles in Great Britain and Ireland
- List of castles in Wales
- Three Castles walk |
56,522,373 | Barbara Howard (athlete) | 1,154,239,961 | Canadian sprinter (1920–2017) | [
"1920 births",
"2017 deaths",
"Athletes (track and field) at the 1938 British Empire Games",
"Athletes from Vancouver",
"Black Canadian female track and field athletes",
"Canadian female sprinters",
"Canadian people of American descent",
"Canadian schoolteachers",
"Commonwealth Games bronze medallists for Canada",
"Commonwealth Games medallists in athletics",
"Commonwealth Games silver medallists for Canada",
"History of Black people in British Columbia",
"Medallists at the 1938 British Empire Games",
"University of British Columbia Faculty of Education alumni"
]
| Barbara Howard (May 8, 1920 – January 26, 2017) was a Canadian sprinter and educator. Growing up in Vancouver, British Columbia, Howard gained national media attention as a sprinter in high school when she completed a time trial that broke the standing British Empire Games record for the 100-yard dash. She was selected as a member of the Canadian track and field team for the 1938 British Empire Games, becoming the first Black woman to represent Canada in international athletic competition. Although she did not place in the 100-yard dash, she helped her team win silver and bronze in the 440-yard and 660-yard relay events. The outbreak of the Second World War meant that most international sporting events over the next decade were cancelled, and Howard's window of opportunity as a sprinter ended before she could compete again.
After high school, Howard completed Normal School training and a Bachelor of Education degree, teaching at elementary schools for more than 40 years. She was the first member of a visible minority to be hired by the Vancouver School Board.
Howard is an inductee of the Burnaby Sports Hall of Fame (2011), the BC Sports Hall of Fame (2012), and the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame (2015).
## Early life
Barbara Howard was born on May 8, 1920, in Vancouver, British Columbia. She had four older siblings – a brother and three sisters – and her parents were dressmaker Catherine "Cassie" Scurry and American-born stationary engineer Samuel Howard. According to family lore, Scurry's father had owned one of the earliest barbershops in the City of Vancouver, the Abbott Street Shaving Parlour and Baths, and during the Great Vancouver Fire of 1886 he had escaped the flames by taking his barber chair and running to the nearby harbour waters.
The family lived in East Vancouver's Grandview neighbourhood. When Howard was eight years old, her father died, and her maternal uncle stepped in to support the family.
## Sprinting
Howard's sprinting abilities were first noticed during her elementary school years, when she often ran the final blocks between her house and the school to reach the classroom in time. She became the school running champion for Laura Secord Elementary, and at Britannia High she was known as one of the fastest sprinters in Vancouver. In September 1937, she gained national media attention when she completed a time trial and achieved a running time of 100 yards in only 11.2 seconds – exceeding the standing British Empire Games' record by one tenth of a second. Howard, only 17 years old, subsequently received a spot on the Canadian women's track and field team for the 1938 British Empire Games. She is believed to be the first Black woman to represent Canada in international athletic competition.
Travelling to Sydney, Australia for the Games, Howard and her teammates completed a 28-day journey aboard the ocean liner Aorangi. It was the first time Howard had left Vancouver. They arrived at Sydney in mid-January 1938, and over the next few weeks Howard found herself showered with attention from Australian media and sports fans, who were both taken by her personality and fascinated by the "novelty" of meeting a Black athlete. The Australian Women's Weekly called her the "most popular girl in the Canadian team". Howard enjoyed her time there and was the recipient of many gifts, including a koala bear toy. However, the immense pressure of the Games, combined with a diet of unfamiliar Australian foods, meant that Howard struggled to perform her best during the 100-yard dash, and she finished in sixth place behind Australian sprinter Decima Norman. Howard was disappointed with her result, but she helped Canada's 440-yard and 660-yard relay teams win silver and bronze medals respectively, running with teammates Jeanette Dolson, Aileen Meagher and Violet Montgomery.
Although Howard intended to continue in her international track career, the outbreak of the Second World War meant that the Olympics in both 1940 and 1944 were cancelled, and her window of opportunity as a sprinter passed.
## Teaching career
After high school, Howard completed training as a teacher at Normal School, and was hired for her first teaching position at Port Alberni soon after graduation. Returning to Vancouver in 1941, she became the first member of a visible minority to be hired by the Vancouver School Board, where she went on to teach for 43 years across multiple elementary schools. She was a member of the Delta Kappa Gamma sorority and volunteered with Canadian Girls in Training. In 1959, Howard graduated from the University of British Columbia with a Bachelor of Education degree.
According to the later recollections of Howard's former students, her dedication and inventive curriculum made a lasting impression. When asked to teach a class of "brilliant, but underperforming kids," she devised lessons that included having students plan field trips, shadow working professionals, and create their own films. She didn't often speak about her past as a sprinter, but her students from the early 1970s recalled one memorable occasion:
> Physical fitness was a priority and softball was our daily game. We hadn't known her impressive sports background, until the day she suggested boys versus girls, with her as captain and she ran round the bases in skirt and heels, laughing her head off as she hit the winning home run for the girls team!
Howard retired from teaching in 1984, but remained active as a volunteer through the United Church. At her local community centre, she led exercise classes and peer counselling courses. In 2010, the Vancouver Park Board gave Howard a Remarkable Woman Award in recognition of "her passionate dedication to inspire others to make a positive difference in their community."
## Death and legacy
In the last decade of Howard's life, research into Canadian sports history had triggered new public interest in her story, and her athletic achievements were recognized by an induction into the Burnaby Sports Hall of Fame (2011), the BC Sports Hall of Fame (2012), and the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame (2015). In 2018, the City of Vancouver announced that it would rename a park near the Cambie Street Bridge as Barbara Howard Plaza.
Howard died on January 26, 2017. |
60,089,033 | Filial piety in Buddhism | 1,148,435,818 | Aspect of Buddhist ethics, story-telling traditions, apologetics and history | [
"Buddhism and society",
"Buddhism in East Asia",
"Buddhist belief and doctrine",
"Buddhist ethics",
"Filial piety"
]
| Filial piety has been an important aspect of Buddhist ethics since early Buddhism, and was essential in the apologetics and texts of Chinese Buddhism. In the Early Buddhist Texts such as the Nikāyas and Āgamas, filial piety is prescribed and practiced in three ways: to repay the gratitude toward one's parents; as a good karma or merit; and as a way to contribute to and sustain the social order. In Buddhist scriptures, narratives are given of the Buddha and his disciples practicing filial piety toward their parents, based on the qualities of gratitude and reciprocity. Initially, scholars of Buddhism like Kenneth Ch'en saw Buddhist teachings on filial piety as a distinct feature of Chinese Buddhism. Later scholarship, led by people such as John Strong and Gregory Schopen, has come to believe that filial piety was part of Buddhist doctrine since early times. Strong and Schopen have provided epigraphical and textual evidence to show that early Buddhist laypeople, monks and nuns often displayed strong devotion to their parents, concluding that filial piety was already an important part of the devotional life of early Buddhists.
When Buddhism was introduced in China, it had no organized celibacy. Confucianism emphasized filial piety to parents and loyalty to the emperor, and Buddhist monastic life was seen to go against its tenets. In the 3rd–5th century, as criticism of Buddhism increased, Buddhist monastics and lay authors responded by writing about and translating Buddhist doctrines and narratives that supported filiality, comparing them to Confucianism and thereby defending Buddhism and its value in society. The Mouzi Lihuolun referred to Confucian and Daoist classics, as well as historical precedents to respond to critics of Buddhism. The Mouzi stated that while on the surface the Buddhist monk seems to reject and abandon his parents, he is actually aiding his parents as well as himself on the path towards enlightenment. Sun Chuo (c.300–380) further argued that monks were working to ensure the salvation of all people and making their family proud by doing so, and Liu Xie stated that Buddhists practiced filial piety by sharing merit with their departed relatives. Buddhist monks were also criticized for not expressing their respect to the Chinese emperor by prostrating and other devotion, which in Confucianism was associated with the virtue of filial piety. Huiyuan (334–416) responded that although monks did not express such piety, they did pay homage in heart and mind; moreover, their teaching of morality and virtue to the public helped support imperial rule.
From the 6th century onward, Chinese Buddhists began to realize that they had to stress Buddhism's own particular ideas about filial piety in order to for Buddhism to survive. Śyāma, Sujāti and other Buddhist stories of self-sacrifice spread a belief that a filial child should even be willing to sacrifice its own body. The Ullambana Sūtra introduced the idea of transfer of merit through the story of Mulian Saves His Mother and led to the establishment of the Ghost Festival. By this Buddhists attempted to show that filial piety also meant taking care of one's parents in the next life, not just this life. Furthermore, authors in China—and to some extent Japan—wrote that in Buddhism, all living beings have once been one's parents, and that practicing compassion to all living beings as though they were one's parents is the more superior form of filial piety. Another aspect emphasized was the great suffering a mother goes through when giving birth and raising a child. Chinese Buddhists described how difficult it is to repay the goodness of one's mother, and how many sins mothers often committed in raising her children. The mother became the primary source of well-being and indebtedness for the son, which was in contrast with pre-Buddhist perspectives emphasizing the father. Nevertheless, although some critics of Buddhism did not have much impact during this time, this changed in the period leading up to the Neo-Confucianist revival, when Emperor Wu Zong (841–845) started the Great Anti-Buddhist Persecution, citing lack of filial piety as one of his reasons for attacking Buddhist institutions.
Filial piety is still an important value in a number of Asian cultures. In China, Buddhism continued to uphold a role in state rituals and mourning rites for ancestors, up until late imperial times (13th–20th century). Also, sūtras and narratives about filial piety are still widely used. The Ghost Festival is still popular in many Asian countries, especially those countries which are influenced by both Buddhism and Confucianism. Furthermore, in Theravādin countries in South and Southeast Asia, generosity, devotion and transfer of merit to parents are still widely practiced among the population.
## In Buddhist texts
In the Early Buddhist Texts such as the Nikāyas and Āgamas, filial piety is prescribed and practiced in three ways: to repay the gratitude toward one's parents; as a good karma or merit; and as a way to contribute to and sustain the social order.
### Repaying the debt of gratitude
In the Nikāyas, two qualities are often named in pair: kataññuta and katavedita. Whereas the first word refers to acknowledgement of the indebtedness towards others, the second quality is interpreted as repaying such debt. Buddhist texts often encourage children from the age of discretion to take care of their parents, remember their gratitude to them, honor them and do everything they can to repay their gratitude to them. The care and attention the parents have given the child is seen to deserve full acknowledgment from the child. In a discourse called the Sigalaka Sutta, several ways are mentioned in which a child can repay its parents: "I will perform duties incumbent on them, I will keep up the lineage and tradition (Pali: kula vaṃsa) of my family, I will make myself worthy of my heritage." The deity Sakka is reported to have had seven rules of conduct according to which he lived his life, the first of which being "As long as I live, may I maintain my parents". This rule is also cited in the commentary to the Dhammapada, indicating the impact of filiality during that period.
However, in the early discourse called Kataññu Sutta, the Buddha describes through several metaphors the difficulty in repaying the gratitude of one's parents through material means only. The discourses say that even if children were to carry their parents on their backs their entire lives, or let them be kings and queens of the country, they would still not have repaid the large debt to their parents. Eventually, he concludes that it is only possible to repay one's gratitude by teaching them Buddhism through spiritual qualities, such as faith in Buddhism, morality, generosity and wisdom. Though this discourse was translated and cited in many Buddhist traditions and schools, it came to be more emphasized with the arising of Mahāyāna Buddhism in India in the 1st century CE.
In a third early discourse called Sabrahmā Sutta, parents are described as worthy of respect and gifts, because they have created their children, and were the ones who educated their children in their formative years. Furthermore, parents have provided the basic requirements for the child to survive. Children who attempt to pay back their debt to their parents by providing for them, are considered "superior people" [th] (Pali: sappurisa) expected to go to a heavenly rebirth in their afterlife, whereas people who are negligent in this, are called "outcasts" (Pali: vasala). Buddhist studies scholar Guang Xing believes a comparison is drawn here between the devotion to Brahma, and the devotion toward one's parents, of which the latter is considered better, because they are considered the real creators. Parents are also compared to "Worthy Ones" and Buddhas, which is similar to the filial devotion expressed in the Hindu Taittirı̄ya Upaniśad.
In a fourth discourse Mahāyañña ('great sacrifice') in the Aṅguttara Nikāya, the Buddha compares reverence toward one's parents, family and religious leaders to fire worship, and concludes that those people are much more useful and meaningful to tend to than the fire. The parents are mentioned here as first and foremost.
Buddhist studies scholar Reiko Ohnuma does point out, however, that Buddhist texts describe the ideal monk as a person who detaches himself from his parents, which is seen as a hindrance to his spiritual progress. He is to develop even-mindedness, feeling the same for his loved ones and foes. On a similar note, the texts say a monk should see all women as his mother, not only his biological mother. This is considered a helpful method to practice the celibate life.
### Other early discourses
Some early Buddhist texts describe the children's devotion toward their parents as a good deed that will reap religious merit, lead to praise by the wise, and finally, a rebirth in heaven. It is described as a fundamental good deed, and is in some Āgama texts compared to making offerings to a Buddha-to-be (Sanskrit: bodhisattva). By contrast, killing one's parents is considered one of the most gravest deeds to do, leading to an immediate destiny to hell. According to Buddhist texts, people who had done so were not allowed to become members of the monastic community, and if they already were but were found out later to have killed a parent, they were expelled. This sentiment is echoed in the later Milindapañhā, which states that a person who committed matricide or patricide cannot attain to insight in Buddhist teachings.
Apart from merit, in many Āgama texts, filial piety is said to lead to an orderly and harmonious society. In Pāli texts, the belief that children are indebted to their parents is a form of right view, part of the Buddhist Noble Eightfold Path.
### In canonical and post-canonical narratives
A well-known story that expresses filial piety is the Buddha's journey to the second Buddhist heaven to teach his mother, who died when giving birth to him. It is found in both the Pāli commentaries Aṭṭhasālinī and the commentary to the Dhammapada, as well as the Ekottara and Saṃyukta Āgamas. On a similar note, the Pāli tradition relates how the Buddha teaches his father Suddhodana on several occasions, eventually helping his father to attain enlightenment. Further, the Mahāyāna tradition has it that the Buddha organizes a funeral ceremony for his father out of piety. The Buddha is not only depicted as showing filial piety to his natural parents, but also his foster mother Mahāpajāpatī. Ohnuma has argued that a major reason for the Buddha to allow his foster mother to become a full-fledged Buddhist nun, and thereby starting the order of nuns, was gratitude toward her.
In stories of the previous lives of the Buddha, there are several examples that illustrate filial piety. In one life found in several Buddhist collections, the Buddha-to-be is Śyāma, a filial son who takes care of his blind parents in their old age. This story was very popular in Buddhist India, as derived from epigraphical evidence from the first centuries CE, and can be found in both the Pāli and Chinese Buddhist scriptures. In the Pāli version of the story, it is prefaced by the life of a man who is ordained as a monk. After having been a monk for 17 years, he discovers his parents are abused by their servants and are starving. He then feels he needs to choose between the monastic vocation and taking care of his destitute parents as a lay person, since he assumes he cannot do so as a monk. The Buddha is able to prevent him from disrobing, however, and teaches him he can take care of his parents while still in monk's robes. The monk then decides to share gifts of food and cloth with them regularly, for which he is criticized by his fellow monks. His fellow monks consider this inappropriate for a Buddhist monk and report this to the Buddha. The Buddha, however, speaks high praise of the monk's filial piety, and he relates a discourse called the Mātuposaka Sutta, as well his own previous life as Śyāma. In this previous life, the Buddha-to-be was taking care of his blind parents, but was accidentally shot by a king hunting. Whilst his last thoughts went out to his parents who would no longer have any one to take care of them, a deity intervened and Śyāma came back to life. In some versions of the story, it is the mother who makes an "act of truth" referring to the virtue of her son, and by doing so magically revives him.
There is also a story of the elder Maudgalyayāna, one of the main disciples of the Buddha, who is described saving his mother from hell by sharing his religious merits. In this story, Maudgalyayāna sees through meditative vision that his mother who has just died is reborn in hell. Shocked by this, he tries to use his meditative psychic powers to help his mother, but to no avail. Then the Buddha advises him to do meritorious acts toward the monastic community on behalf of his mother, which does help.
### In Mahāyāna texts
Early Buddhist texts, such as the Māta Sutta of the Saṃyutta Nikāya, mention that every living being has once been one's relative in a previous life in the cycle of birth and rebirth. In Mahāyāna Buddhism, therefore, helping to liberate other living beings from suffering came to be seen as a form of filial piety, since it was believed that all beings could have once been one's parents. This doctrine has affected Buddhist practice as well. For example, in some forms of Tibetan meditation, practitioners are instructed to develop loving-kindness to all living beings by remembering that all could have been their mother in previous lifetimes. Just as in Pāli texts, Mahāyāna texts compare particularistic love negatively to universal love, which is seen as superior.
## History
### Early Buddhist history
In the early days of Western Buddhist scholarship, a number of scholars, among which Indologist I.B. Horner (1896–1981) and linguist Jean Przyluski (1885–1944), emphasized the role of filial piety in Indian Buddhism. However, in later years, scholars such as Hajime Nakamura, Michihata Ryōshū, Miyakawa Hasayuki and Kenneth Ch'en developed the perspective that filial piety was unique for the period in which Buddhism was introduced in China, and had not been part of Indian Buddhism before that. But in a more recent development, starting with Buddhist studies scholars such as John Strong and Gregory Schopen, it has been shown that filial piety was part of Buddhist teaching since early times, though Strong did regard it as a compromise to Brahmanical ethics. In early Buddhism, filial piety was an important part of Buddhist ethics, though not as fundamental to ethics as it was in Confucianism.
At the time when Buddhism developed in India, there was criticism that Buddhist otherworldly ideals did not fit in with expectations of filial piety. Devotion to the mother was seen as a fundamental virtue, and early Buddhists had to reconcile Buddhist doctrine and practice with Indian social institutions. Schopen found much epigraphic evidence and some textual evidence showing that early Buddhist laypeople, monks and nuns often displayed strong devotion to their deceased parents, concluding filial piety was already an important part of the devotional life of early Buddhists. Contrary to the general scholarly view, devotional practices like dedicating the merit of a building to one's parents were common among Buddhist monastics, even more so than among laypeople. There is also textual evidence to suggest that the ties monastics had with their parents were not absolutely severed as ideally prescribed. For example, in some texts of monastic discipline there are anecdotes that suggest monastics regularly kept contact with their parents, expressed concern for them, and even borrowed money to support them. Also, in many Jātaka stories monks are mentioned that take care of their parents, sometimes financially. Lastly, John Strong and Kenneth Ch'en have argued that the doctrine of the transfer of merit, so much emphasized in the filial story of Mulian Saves His Mother, originated in Indian Buddhism, within the context of ancestor worship and offerings to hungry ghosts. Scholar of religion Stephen F. Teiser has stated, however, that there is no evidence of an Indian predecessor to the Chinese Ghost Festival with its emphasis on salvation of ancestors.
Although many similarities can be found between the contexts in which Indian and Chinese Buddhism arose, it was only in China that Buddhism would, in Strong's words, "systematically and self-consciously" develop its response to the question of filial piety.
### Introduction of Buddhism in China
Buddhism stressed individual salvation, which went against the Confucian tenets, that mostly focused on family life and society. Buddhism advocated monasticism and celibacy, and emphasized the suffering inherent in family life, which was unacceptable in the Confucian world view. Confucianism considered it a child's duty to continue the parental line. Moreover, celibacy did not exist in China before the arrival of Buddhism. Therefore, in early medieval China (c. 100–600), Buddhism was heavily criticized for what Confucianists perceived as a disregard for Confucian virtues and role ethics among family members. In addition, Buddhist monks were without descendants, and therefore did not create the offspring necessary to continue the ancestor worship in next generations. Furthermore, Buddhist monks shaved their heads, which was perceived as a lack of filial piety, because Confucianism saw the human body as a "living monument of filial piety" and considered tonsure a form of mutilation.
Another problem was that early Chinese Buddhist monks did not formally pay homage to the emperor, which was seen as going against social propriety and was connected with the idea that Buddhism did not adhere to filial piety. This already became a problem in the Eastern Jin Dynasty (266–420). Furthermore, during the Wei (386–550) and Jin Dynasties, many Chinese women became ordained as nuns and left their families behind, which was very disturbing for Buddhism's critics.
Nevertheless, many Chinese Buddhists still adhered strongly to Confucian values, and attempted to reconcile the two value systems. In the process of introducing and integrating Buddhism in China, historian Kenneth Ch'en distinguished three stages. In the first stage, Buddhism actively advocated filial piety as a Confucian virtue. In the second stage, Buddhists referred to their own tradition to make an argument that filial piety had always been part of it. In the last stage, they argued that Buddhist ethics were more universal and therefore more superior than Confucian kinship-oriented filial piety. Over time, the debate between critics and Buddhists became more refined as more Buddhist texts were translated and Buddhism became better known in China.
#### Apologetics and adaptation (3rd–5th century)
When Buddhism was introduced to China, it was redefined to support filial piety. Many elements of Buddhist teaching were once secondary in Indian Buddhism, but now gained new importance and a new function in a process of apologetics.
For example, the Mouzi Lihuolun (牟子理惑論) presented arguments why Buddhist practices did not go against Confucius, but were actually praised by him. The Mouzi does this by referring to the Confucian and Daoist classics, as well as historical precedents. In one passage, the text compares the life of a Buddhist monk with a pious son who saves his father from drowning:
> "A long time ago, the Ch'i people crossed a large river in a boat and it happened that their father fell into the water. His sons rolled up their sleeves, seized his head, and turned him upside down, forcing the water out of his mouth, thus bringing their father back to life. Now, to seize one's father's head and turn him upside down is certainly not very filial. Yet they could have done nothing better to save their father's life. If they had folded their hands and practiced the norm of filial sons, their father's life would have been lost in the waters."
The behavior of a Buddhist monk is similar. While on the surface the Buddhist seems to reject and abandon his parents, the pious Buddhist is actually aiding his parents as well as himself on the path towards enlightenment. In this regard, the Mouzi cites Confucius saying that judgments should be made appropriately, weighing circumstances. In a way, Buddhists claimed therefore that a Buddhist monk benefited his parents, and in superior ways than Confucianism, because their renunciation was the "height of self-giving".
The Mouzi Lihuolun also attempted to counter charges that not having children was a violation of good ethics. It was pointed out that Confucius himself had praised a number of ascetic sages who had not had children or family, but because of their wisdom and sacrifice were still perceived as ethical by Confucius. The argument that Buddhist filial piety concerns itself with the parent's soul is the most important one. Later, Sun Chuo (c.300–380), made an even stronger argument, by stating that Buddhists monks (far from working solely for their own benefit) were working to ensure the salvation of all people and making their family proud by doing so. Any change in the son's status would reflect on the parent, therefore the spiritual achievements of the monk were at the same time a form of filial piety toward his parents. In that sense, Sun Chuo claimed that Buddhism teaches what amounts to a perfect form of filial piety, which he further amplified by referring to the Buddha's conversion of his father. Sun Chuo also responded to criticism with regard to the story of Sudāna (Sanskrit: Viśvantara), a previous life of the Buddha, in which a prince becomes an ascetic and gives away his father's possessions, his own wife and children as a practice of generosity. Sun Chuo's opponent critic described Sudāna as an "inhuman creature", but Sun Chuo argued that Sudāna had realized the highest form of filial piety, because in his final lifetime as Gautama Buddha he would eventually help his family to attain enlightenment. Sun Chuo concluded: "If this is not filial piety and humanity, then what is piety and humanity?"
Responding to criticism from emperor Huan Xuan (369–404), Huiyuan (334–416) argued that Buddhist monks did not have to pay homage to the emperor in "a manifested way", but just in heart and mind. Buddhist monks did in fact support imperial rule, he continued, but do so by teaching virtue to the people and in that way "all the six relationships, father and son, older and younger brother, husband and wife, will be benefited". He further stated that in order to become a monk, a devotee had to ask permission from his parents and emperor first—ordination as a monk was therefore not against filial piety, he argued. This argument was supported by certain rules in the Indian Buddhist monastic discipline, but the intention behind these rules was redefined to show that Buddhism was congruent with traditions of piety and loyalty. In his arguments Huiyuan was supported by some government officials and prominent lay people. His writings effectively stopped the debate with regard to monks not prostrating for the emperor, but the more general issue of the Buddhist monastic order being exempt from certain duties and obligations still remained.
During the Northern and Southern dynasties (420–577), Buddhism developed much in China, and conflicts arose with Daoists and Confucianists. A Daoist wrote a polemic called the Sanpo Lun attacking Buddhism for destroying the nation and the family. He argued that monks did not do anything productive, and resources were wasted on building Buddhist monasteries. He also criticized the shaving of hair as "destructive to the person". Again, Buddhist writers responded in defense. Sengshun replied that Buddhist supported imperial rule by promoting virtuous behavior, referring to the Shanshengzi Jing (Chinese: 善生子經, i.e. the Chinese translation of the Sigalaka Sutta) to show that Buddhists observed social norms. In addition, Liu Xie argued that Buddhist monks and lay people did practice filial piety, but monks did so by sharing merit with their departed relatives. Responding to the criticism that monks shave their hair, Liu Xie stated they abandoned minor filial acts in order to perform greater ones.
The adaptation of Buddhism to fit in with Confucian expectations of filial piety did not only take place on an academic level. Even on the grassroots level, in folk religion, Buddhism was adapted to fit in with Confucian values, as evidenced in the 5th-century text Tiwei Boli Jing.
#### Reinvention (6th–13th century)
In the process of integrating Buddhism in Chinese culture, Buddhists soon realized that refutation of criticism by Confucianists was not sufficient to hold their own. Chinese Buddhism had to stress its own ideas about filial piety. To more directly point out the Buddhist's filial nature, passages and parables about filial piety in Northwest Indian and Central Asian Buddhism became very prominent in Chinese Buddhism. The story of Śyāma (Chinese: 晱子; pinyin: Shanzi or Yamuku) was an example of this. The story was often mentioned in the Chinese canon of Buddhist texts, was included in a number of different anthologies such as the Liudu Jijing and even the Confucian tradition of twenty-four stories of filial piety (1260–1368). A similar story of Sujāti (Chinese: 須闍提; pinyin: Xusheti) relates that she cut off her own flesh to feed her parents, to keep them alive. During the T'ang dynasty (618–907), the story gained much popularity and it was eventually transformed into a Confucian classic tale as well. Furthermore, it was a way for Chinese Buddhists to make a statement that Buddhist filial piety was superior to Confucian filial piety. Sujāti and other Buddhist stories of self-sacrifice spread a belief that a filial child should even be willing to sacrifice its own body.
As for the story of Maudgalyayāna, this was incorporated in the Ullambana Sūtra, and led to the establishment of the Ghost Festival in China in the 6th century. The festival was held in the seventh moon of the Chinese calendar, and commemorated Maudgalyayāna (pinyin: Mulian) saving his mother. The festival became very popular throughout Chinese society, even to the point of imperial families and government officers becoming involved. The story also became very popular: though already part of the Indian Buddhist tradition, East Asian Buddhism raised it from a peripheral role to a central one. Buddhists attempted to show that filial children could still take care of their parents in the afterlife, a concept which they believed Confucianists overlooked. Some Buddhist authors like Ch'i-sung proclaimed that Buddhists not only practiced filial piety, but also did so at a more deeper level than Confucianists, because they took care of their parents in both this life and the next. The Sutra on a Filial Son stated in this regard that the best way to repay one's parents' kindness was by helping them to develop faith in Buddhism, not just by taking care of them materially. On a similar note, the monk Zongmi (780-841) argued that the main motivation for Prince Siddhārtha leaving his parents and becoming a monk was so he could teach them later on and thereby repay his debt of gratitude to them. Zongmi described the Ghost Festival as the highest expression of filial piety, in which Buddhist and Confucian doctrine could meet.
Apart from religious texts, the first generations of Buddhists in China responded to criticism from Confucianists by emphasizing the lay life more and the monastic life less in their teachings, and for those who did become ordained as monastics, they decided to erect monasteries in populated areas, instead of retreating to the remote wilderness. This also helped to contribute to the social expectations of Chinese Confucian culture. By the end of the 6th century, Buddhist monks were paying homage to the Chinese emperor through rituals and services, which also helped to stop the argument whether monks should prostrate themselves. Nevertheless, in 662 emperor Gaozong issued decrees obliging monks to prostrate before their parents and the emperor. Dao Xuan and Fa Lin, standing in the tradition of Huiyuan, argued that monks paid respects internally, and that such internal respect was more important than outward expression. There was so much opposition that Gaozong had to adjust the decree and eventually fully rescind it.
Later, in the middle of the T'ang Dynasty, Han Yu attempted to criticize Buddhism for lack of filial piety in a memorandum, but his protests were suppressed by emperor Xian Zong and not much responded to. Han Yu was nearly executed and banished. His popularity later rose, however. During the 10th-century neo-Confucianist revival, Han Yu's writings were rediscovered and he became a saintly figure. Already in the 9th century, Emperor Wu Zong took Han Yu's arguments to heart and began a campaign to extinguish Buddhism (841–845), citing as one of the justifications that Buddhists would "abandon their rulers and parents for the company of teachers". Monastics were defrocked and monasteries were destroyed at a large scale. Although Wu Zong's successor Emperor Xuan Zong (810–859) attempted to recover the damage done, since that time Chinese Buddhism has never completely recovered to its former status. It did continue to uphold a role in state rituals and mourning rites for ancestors, up until late imperial times (13th–20th century). Monasteries were given names like "Monastery for Honoring Loyalty [to the State]" and "Monastery for the Glorification of Filial Piety".
Neo-Confucianism upheld the principle of "gradational love" (pinyin: ren-yi), which argued that good people should develop filial piety for their parents and neighbors first, and only in a later stage develop love for humankind. Although this idea was influenced by Mahāyāna Buddhist doctrine, the principle was eventually used as a criticism against Buddhism, which was seen to disregard filial piety in favor of universal kindness.
##### New elements
During this period, in response to attacks from Confucianists and Daoists, works written in defense of filial piety in Buddhism reflected a higher level of maturity. For example, in response to Daoist criticism that Buddhism teaches abandonment of one's parents, Fa Lin responded by referring to the Buddhist idea that all living beings might have been our parents, but also our enemies. A wise man therefore practices impartiality and seeks enlightenment. This is the Buddhist way to benefit one's parents and all living beings. The Zen master Qisong (1007 – 1072) criticized Han Yu's writings for not conforming to Confucian doctrine. Also, during this time some Buddhist writers started to argue that the five moral precepts in Buddhism were an expression of filial piety. Although the promotion of the five precepts by Buddhist monks had previously been referred to as a way to support imperial rule and therefore a form of filial piety, Buddhist writers now took this further. In particular, Qisong in his work the Xiaolun equated each of the precepts with a Confucian virtue (known as "five constants"), but argued that Buddhist ethics were superior to Confucian ethics, because of the virtue of compassion for all living beings. This is a higher form of filial piety, he argued, because one presumes that all living beings have once been our parents and tries to repay the debt of gratitude to them. Qisong summarized his argument by stating that "[f]ilial piety is venerated in all religious teachings, but it is especially true in Buddhism". On a similar note, the Fanwang Jing (Chinese: 梵網經) contained a phrase stating that "filial piety is called precepts", which inspired writings by Buddhist scholars on the subject and made the Fanwang Jing very popular.
Furthermore, in order for Confucianists to accept Buddhism more easily, new elements were introduced in the Buddhist doctrine. During the Han dynasty (202 BCE–9 CE), Chinese Buddhist leaders introduced the teaching of the four debts that a person should repay: the moral debt to one's parents, to all living beings, to one's ruler and to the Triple Gem (the Buddha, his teaching and the monastic community). Perhaps inspired by Brahmanical teachings, Chinese Buddhists hoped that edifying people about the four debts would help for Buddhism to become more accepted in China. However, the teaching of the four debts only gained much popularity during the 8th century, when the Mahāyāna Discourse on the Concentration of Mind Ground was translated in Chinese (pinyin: Dacheng Ben Shengxin Di Guan Jing) by Prajñā.
In the 2nd century CE, another text was composed based on the Kataññnu Sutta (Sanskrit: Katajña Sūtra), called the Fumuen Nanbao Jing, the Discourse on the Difficulties in Repaying Parents' Debts. The text emphasized the compassion parents have towards their children. It later became highly popular in East Asian countries, as it was cited in at least ten Chinese translations of Indian texts. Based on this text, the more popular Fumu Enzhong Jing was composed (Chinese: 父母恩重經, title has similar meaning). In the T'ang Dynasty, the Fumu was depicted in illustrations found in the Dunhuang caves dating back to the T'ang (618–907) and Song dynasties (960–1279). Popular preaching and lectures, mural and cave paintings and stone carvings indicate that it once was very popular among the common people.
#### The role of women
When Buddhism developed in China, not only filial piety itself was redefined, but also the role of women in Chinese culture: in texts such as the Yuyenü Jing women, especially daughters-in-law, were described as pious children, a description that had hardly been used for women. This changed all genres of writing from the early medieval period onward. Buddhist doctrine helped fulfill the need for changing post-Han society to deal with daughters-in-law perceived as unruly, by providing a role for her as a filial daughter where indigenous tradition was silent or ambiguous. In edifying stories about virtuous daughters-in-law, women were given a pivotal role in creating harmony in the family, which was unprecedented. However, although daughters' expression of filial piety was basically the same as that of sons, daughters expressed it in more extreme forms, including infanticide or suicide. Often their role only became important in the absence of any sons.
On a similar note, in 517, the monk Shi Baochang wrote a number of hagiographies of virtuous nuns. In these stories, a new ideal Chinese woman was constructed, who was both filial yet also practiced Buddhist virtues. In Baochang's stories, he depicted women that excelled at both Confucian and Buddhist virtue and practices, by either combining such practices, practicing them at different periods in life (e.g. being a filial daughter and later choosing the nun's life), or by transforming Confucian practices in Buddhist practices. Though the ideal of self-sacrifice agreed with Confucian values, such sacrifice was redefined fitting with Buddhist values. Through these writings, Chinese Buddhists attempted to connect the family with the monastery in a mutually supportive relationship. Inscriptions show that female donors of Buddhist monasteries often dedicated their generosity to their parents, effectively helping to establish a new ideal of female filial piety. Also, the legend of Miaoshan became quite popular, which related how the bodhisattva Guanyin is born as a princess and refuses to marry following her father's wishes. She eventually manages to find salvation for herself and her father, when she heals her father from his illness by sacrificing some of her body parts to be used for medicine. This story is still used by Buddhist women in Singapore to justify their resistance to marriage. Another story that connects filial piety with the bodhisattva figure is that of Dizang's previous lives, both as filial daughters.
Buddhist writings on filial piety influenced Confucianism and Chinese culture at large. In India, where Buddhism originated, women had different social roles than in China, and devotion of the child to the mother was an important virtue. The debt of a child to its mother was seen as more important than the debt to its father, and hurting one's mother was considered more severe than hurting one's father. Although a child was seen to be indebted to both parents, "[t]he obligation to the father is a call of duty, whereas the obligation to the mother is a pull of love". In T'ang dynasty China, a number of apocryphal texts were written that spoke of the Buddha's respect for his parents, and the parent–child relationship. The most important of these, the Sūtra of Filial Piety, was written early in the T'ang dynasty. This discourse has the Buddha make the argument that parents bestow kindness to their children in many ways, and put great efforts into ensuring the well-being of their child. The discourse continues by describing how difficult it is to repay one's parents' kindness, but concludes that this can be done, in a Buddhist way. The Fumu Enzhong Jing contained a similar message.
The Sūtra of Filial Piety was not only a way for Chinese Buddhists to adapt to Confucian ideals, it added its own Buddhist contribution to the concept of filial piety. It added the role of women and poor people in practicing filial piety, and regarded filial piety as a quality to be practiced toward all living beings in this and the next life. Therefore, the sūtra served not only as an adaptation to Confucian values, but also served Buddhist ideals of edification. In their teachings about filial piety, Chinese Buddhists emphasized the great suffering a mother goes through when giving birth and raising a child. They described how difficult it is to repay one's parents, and how many sins the mother often would commit in raising her children. They even went so far that she might even go to hell as a result of the sins she committed. The mother became the primary source of well-being and indebtedness for the son, which was in contrast with pre-Buddhist perspectives. This emphasis on the son's obligation to the mother was a new addition to the Chinese concept of filial piety, as the bond between mother and son became the primary relationship. According to scholar Nomura Shin'ichi, the ideal of the son repaying the gratitude to his mother played an important part in uniting two contrasting ideas in East Asian culture at the time, that is, the concept of feminine impurity on the one hand and the ideal of pure motherhood on the other hand. The son was taught to deal with this indebtedness to his mother by making donations to the local monastery. The monastery would then perform recitation of texts and dedicate the merit to the mother, which would help her. In other words, to be a good son, one also had to be a good Buddhist. Religious studies scholar Alan Cole has attempted to describe the role of women in Chinese Buddhism using a Freudian framework. Cole states that Chinese Buddhist texts depicted women as examples of virtue and sacrifice, but also as lustful and greedy people. However, Cole's monograph about the family in Chinese Buddhism has received mixed reviews and his conclusions are disputed.
Chinese Buddhists urged people to stop killing animals for ancestor worship, because this would create only bad karma; rather, people were encouraged to practice devotion and make merit, especially making donations to the Buddhist clergy and in that way to help their mothers from a bad rebirth in hell. The traditional ancestral sacrifices were therefore discouraged by Chinese Buddhists.
### Development in other parts of Asia
The Discourse on the Difficulty in Paying the Debt to Parents was introduced and translated in Korea in the Koryo period, in the 17th century. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Confucian value of filial piety toward parents and emperor became strongly associated with Buddhism. Important in this process was the spread of edifying vernacular songs, in which filial children were encouraged to chant invocations of the Buddha Amitabha for their parents' rebirth in a Pure Land. Further, the songs, meant for Buddhists, urged people to respectfully serve social relationships including parents, in agreement with Confucian social ethics. In an 18th-century shaman song informed by Buddhist principles, a princess called Pari kongju is abandoned by her parents because they want a male heir. She is later saved by the Buddha and raised by others. Despite being abandoned, she later finds medicine for her ill royal parents and cures them out of filial piety.
During the Edo period in Japan (1603–1868), large quantities of biographies of filial people were written, as Japanese authors were inspired by Ming dynasty Chinese texts and started writing extensively about filial piety. Some of these works were written by Japanese Buddhist monks, writing about filial Buddhist lay people or monks. Others were written by Chinese Buddhist monks that had moved to Japan as part of initiatives to revitalize Buddhism for Chinese residents in Japan. Bankei Yōtaku (1622–1693) emphasized filial piety in his teachings, considering it part of Buddhahood. In the 18th-century, filial piety was reinterpreted by Japanese writers such as Fórì and Tōrei Enji. Just like in Song Dynasty China, filial piety was not seen as just a virtue to be practiced towards parents, relatives and ancestors, but to all living beings. Since all living beings were seen to have been one's parents from previous lives, the filial role of the individual was more broadly construed, and blood lines were interpreted in a more spiritual sense rather than only blood relations. With this, Tōrei meant to emphasize the role of religion and its lineage. Therefore, in Japan, Buddhists regarded the position of Buddhism on filial piety as either the same as in Confucianism, or as broader and deeper than in Confucianism.
In South and Southeast Asia, the example of the Buddha maintaining a loving relationship with his family, as depicted in a wide range of narratives, had a profound effect in countries where Theravāda Buddhism took hold. In devotional texts, parents were mentioned in the same list with the Triple Gem as object of devotion. Vernacular narratives warned of the dangers of treating one's parents with disrespect and encouraged the listeners a life-long respect for mothers and mother-like figures. Buddhist rituals marking the period of adulthood of a young male emphasized gratitude and honor to the mother. A common metaphor found in popular Sinhalese verse and religious prose dating from medieval times is that of the Buddha as a caring, loving mother. In another example, vernacular post-canonical Pāli texts in several Theravādin countries mention a previous life of the Buddha in which he first conceived the idea of becoming a Buddha (Sanskrit: manopraṇidhānaya). The story depicts the Buddha-to-be as a filial and grateful son, which the text says is a habit of Buddhas-to-be in general. The mother is part of the reason the Buddha-to-be aspires to become a Buddha in a future life.
## Practice in the present day
The Discourse on the Difficulty in Paying the Debt to Parents is still popular in East Asia and is often referred to in preaching by monks. The story of the monk Mulian saving his beloved mother is still depicted in Chinese opera to this day, which is especially popular in the countryside. Throughout Asia, the Ghost Festival is still celebrated, though its importance is most felt in countries which have been influenced by both Buddhism and Confucianism.
Filial piety is still an important part of moral education in Buddhist countries. It is an important value in a number of Asian cultures, some of which are based on Buddhism, such as Thailand. In the context of care-giving in Thailand, the parents of a child are compared to an enlightened Buddhist monk from the perspective of the family. The children of a parent are seen to have a relationship of bunkhun with the parents, which is a value that informs their filial piety, and gives it a sense of "respect, honor, fidelity, devotion, dutifulness, and sacrifice". Furthermore, there is a custom among Theravādin Buddhists in Asia for male children to temporarily become ordained as a Buddhist monks in order to dedicate the religious merit to their parents. Having passed this rite is regarded by the Thai as a sign of maturity and as an expression of filial piety. in Thailand, women cannot receive full ordination, however, and therefore practice their filial role mostly economically. Even Thai women who emigrate abroad tend to still send money to their aging parents. The custom of sending money to one's parents is common among rural Thai, who often work in big cities to earn money. During the Thai New Year festival, gratitude is widely and publicly expressed as elderly parents are honored by gifts. Among Sri Lankans, commemoration of one's deceased parents is an important part of daily routine of many people. This may be done by a simple daily act of lighting incense. There still is a common expression among Sri Lankans that "the mother is the Buddha of the home".
Among some Buddhists, there is a custom of prostrating to parents. In a 2015 study among British teens who self-identify as Buddhist, 78% of heritage (ethnic) Buddhists indicated they prostrated to their parents, and 13% of convert Buddhist teens. |
3,551,561 | Ihr werdet weinen und heulen, BWV 103 | 1,161,441,621 | Church cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach | [
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| Ihr werdet weinen und heulen (You shall weep and wail), BWV 103, is a cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach, a church cantata for the third Sunday after Easter, called Jubilate.
Bach composed the cantata in his second year as Thomaskantor in Leipzig and first performed it on 22 April 1725. It is the first of nine cantatas on texts by Christiana Mariana von Ziegler, which Bach composed at the end of his second annual cycle of cantatas in Leipzig. Based on the Gospel reading from the Farewell Discourse, where Jesus, announcing that he will leave, says "your sorrow shall be turned into joy", Bach contrasts music of sorrow and joy, notably in the unusual first movement, where he inserts an almost operatic recitative of Jesus in the fugal choral setting. The architecture of the movement combines elements of the usual concerto form with the more text-related older form of a motet. Bach scores an unusual flauto piccolo (descant recorder in D) as an obbligato instrument in an aria contemplating the sorrow of missing Jesus, who is addressed as a doctor who shall heal the wounds of sins. Bach scores a trumpet in only one movement, an aria expressing the joy about the predicted return of Jesus. The cantata in six movements closes with a chorale, the ninth stanza of Paul Gerhardt's hymn "Barmherzger Vater, höchster Gott".
## History and words
Bach composed the cantata in Leipzig for the Third Sunday after Easter, called Jubilate. The prescribed readings for the Sunday were from the First Epistle of Peter, "Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man" (), and from the Gospel of John, Jesus announcing his second coming in the so-called Farewell Discourse, saying "your sorrow shall be turned into joy" (). For this occasion Bach had already composed in 1714 Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen, BWV 12, which he used later as the basis for the movement Crucifixus in his Mass in B minor.
In his second year in Leipzig, Bach composed chorale cantatas between the first Sunday after Trinity and Palm Sunday, but for Easter he returned to cantatas on more varied texts, possibly because he lost his librettist. Nine of his cantatas for consecutive occasions in the period between Easter and Pentecost are based on texts by Christiana Mariana von Ziegler, this one being the first of the series especially written for Bach. He had possibly commissioned them in 1724 for his first cantata cycle but not composed them at that time, because of his exceptional workload in creating the St John Passion.
The librettist begins with a quotation from the Gospel, verse 20, and concludes with the ninth stanza of Paul Gerhardt's hymn "Barmherzger Vater, höchster Gott" (1653). Her own poetry reflects, in a sequence of recitatives and arias, in two movements sadness at the loss of Jesus, and in two others joy at his predicted return. Bach edited her writing considerably, for example in movement 4, excising two lines of four and rephrasing the others.
Bach first performed the cantata on 22 April 1725 with the Thomanerchor. For later performances, he revised the instrumentation, replacing the flauto piccolo by a flauto traverso.
## Scoring and structure
The cantata in six movements is scored for three vocal soloists (alto, tenor and bass), a four-part choir, trumpet, flauto piccolo (descant recorder in D), two oboes d'amore, two violins, viola and continuo.
1. Chorus and arioso (bass): Ihr werdet weinen und heulen
2. Recitative (tenor): Wer sollte nicht in Klagen untergehn
3. Aria (alto): Kein Arzt ist außer dir zu finden
4. Recitative (alto): Du wirst mich nach der Angst auch wiederum erquicken
5. Aria (tenor): Erholet euch, betrübte Sinnen
6. Chorale: Ich hab dich einen Augenblick
## Music
The cantata begins in B minor, illustrating sorrow, but in movement 4 shifts to the relative major key of D major, illustrating the theme of consolation in Ziegler's text.
The opening chorus has an unusual structure, which includes an arioso passage for the bass voice. All instruments except the trumpet play a ritornello, after which a choral fugue pictures the weeping and wailing of the text in unrelated musical material, rich in chromaticism. In great contrast the following line, "aber die Welt wird sich freuen" (But the world will rejoice), is conveyed by the chorus embedded in a repeat of the first part of the ritornello. The sequence is repeated on a larger scale: this time the fugue renders both lines of the text as a double fugue with the second theme taken from the ritornello, then the ritornello is repeated in its entirety. The bass as the vox Christi (voice of Christ) sings three times, with a sudden tempo change to adagio, "Ihr aber werdet traurig sein" (But you will be sad) as an accompagnato recitative. Musicologist Julian Mincham notes: "This recitative is a mere eight bars long but its context and piteousness give it enormous dramatic impact. Bach's lack of respect for the conservative Leipzig authorities' dislike of operatic styles in religious music was never more apparent!" Klaus Hofmann compares the recitative's "highly expressive melody and harmony" to Bach's Passions. Finally, the extended sequence of fugue and ritornello with chorus returns transposed, on the text "Doch eure Traurigkeit soll in Freude verkehret werden" (Yet your sorrow shall be changed into joy). According to Alfred Dürr, the architecture of the movement is a large scale experiment combining elements of the older style of a text-related motet with the form of a concerto of instrumental groups and voices, as typically used by Bach.
John Eliot Gardiner, who conducted the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage with the Monteverdi Choir in 2000, notes that Bach's "strategy is to superimpose these opposite moods, binding them in a mutually enlightening whole and emphasising that it is the same God who both dispenses and then ameliorates these conditions.
Movement 2 is a secco recitative for tenor, concluding in an arioso section with a "deeply moving" melisma on the word "Schmerzen" (sorrows). Movement 3, "Kein Arzt ist außer dir zu finden" (Besides You is no doctor to be found) is an aria for alto with the obbligato flauto piccolo, which according to Mincham, employs a "figuration ever striving upwards, moderates the underlying sense of potential tragedy". The alto recitative "marks a change of scene", it begins in B minor, like the opening chorus, but modulates to D-major and ends with a wide-ranging coloratura marking the word "Freude" (joy). Movement 5, "Erholet euch, betrübte Sinnen" (Recover now, O troubled feelings), picks up the joyful coloraturas, supported by the trumpet and fanfares in triads in the orchestra, Mincham notes that the trumpet "bursts upon us with an energy, acclamation and jubilation unheard, so far, in this work". The cantata is closed with a four-part setting of the chorale, sung to the melody of "Was mein Gott will, das g'scheh allzeit" which Bach used frequently, including in his St Matthew Passion.
## Recordings
The entries of the following table are taken from the listing on the Bach Cantatas Website. For several recordings, the name of the bass soloist is not provided. Ensembles playing period instruments in historically informed performance are marked by green background. |
291,592 | John Stossel | 1,171,332,452 | American reporter, investigative journalist, author, and libertarian columnist | [
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| John Frank Stossel (born March 6, 1947) is an American libertarian television presenter, author, consumer journalist, political activist, and pundit. He is known for his career as a host on ABC News, Fox Business Network, and Reason TV.
Stossel's style combines reporting and commentary. It reflects a libertarian political philosophy and views on economics which are largely supportive of the free market. He began his journalism career as a researcher for KGW-TV, was a consumer reporter at WCBS-TV in New York City, and then joined ABC News as a consumer editor and reporter on Good Morning America. Stossel became an ABC News correspondent, joining the weekly news magazine program 20/20, and later became a co-anchor. In October 2009, Stossel left ABC News to join the Fox Business Network. He hosted a weekly news show on Fox Business, Stossel, from December 2009 to December 2016. In 2019, Stossel launched StosselTV, an online channel distributed on social media.
Stossel has received 19 Emmy Awards and five awards from the National Press Club. He has written three books: Give Me a Break (2004), Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity (2007), and No, They Can't: Why Government Fails – But Individuals Succeed (2012).
## Early life
John F. Stossel was born on March 6, 1947, in Chicago Heights, Illinois, the younger of two sons, to Jewish parents who left Germany before Hitler rose to power. The family joined a Congregationalist church in the U.S., and Stossel was raised Protestant. He grew up on Chicago's affluent North Shore and graduated from New Trier High School. Stossel characterizes his older brother, Thomas P. Stossel, as "the superstar of the family", commenting, "While I partied and played poker, he studied hard, got top grades, and went to Harvard Medical School." Stossel characterizes himself as having been "an indifferent student" while in college, commenting, "I daydreamed through half my classes at Princeton, and applied to grad school only because I was ambitious, and grad school seemed like the right path for a 21-year-old who wanted to get ahead." Although he had been accepted to the University of Chicago's School of Hospital Management, Stossel was "sick of school" and thought taking a job would inspire him to embrace graduate studies with renewed vigor. Stossel recalled in an interview that after graduating college, "like a lot of young people I thought capitalism was ok it brings us some stuff but it's cruel and unfair".
## Career
### Early career
In school, Stossel aspired to work at Seattle Magazine, but it went out of business by the time he graduated. His contacts there assisted him in getting a job at KGW-TV in Portland, Oregon, where Stossel began as a newsroom gofer, working his way up to researcher and then writer. After a few years, the news director told Stossel to go on the air and read what he wrote. Despite his stage fright, Stossel says his fear spurred him to improve, examining and imitating broadcasts of David Brinkley and Jack Perkins. Stossel had also stuttered since childhood. After a few years of on-air reporting, Stossel was hired by WCBS-TV in New York City, by Ed Joyce, the same news director who hired Arnold Diaz, Linda Ellerbee, Dave Marash, Joel Siegel and Lynn Sherr. Stossel was disappointed at CBS, feeling that the more limited amount of time spent there on research lowered the quality of its journalism compared to Portland. Stossel cites union work rules that discouraged the extra work that Stossel felt allowed employees to be creative, which he says represented his "first real introduction to the deals made by special interests". Stossel also "hated" Joyce, who he felt was "cold and critical", though Stossel credits Joyce with allowing him the freedom to pursue his own story ideas, and with recommending the Hollins Communications Research Institute in Roanoke, Virginia, that helped Stossel manage his stutter.
Stossel grew continuously more frustrated with having to follow the assignment editor's vision of what was news. Perhaps because of his stuttering, he had always avoided covering what others covered, feeling he could not succeed if he were forced to compete with other reporters by shouting out questions at news conferences. However, this led to the unexpected realization for Stossel that more important events were those that occurred slowly, such as the women's movement, the growth of computer technology, and advancements in contraception, rather than daily events like government pronouncements, elections, fires, or crime. One day, Stossel bypassed the assignment editor to give Ed Joyce a list of story ideas the assignment editor had rejected. Joyce agreed that Stossel's ideas were better, and approved them. Stossel has served as a spokesman for the Stuttering Foundation of America.
### 20/20
In 1981 Roone Arledge offered Stossel a job at ABC News, as a correspondent for 20/20 and consumer reporter for Good Morning America. His "Give Me a Break" segments for the former featured a skeptical look at subjects from government regulations and pop culture to censorship and unfounded fear. The series was spun off into a series of one-hour specials with budgets of half a million dollars that began in 1994. During the course of his work on 20/20, Stossel wrote, he discovered Reason magazine, whose libertarian ideas appealed to him. Stossel later said in an interview that the regulations he urged governments to pass did not work. After coming out as a libertarian, Stossel said, he angered members of the political left, his news colleagues and others. Stossel was named co-anchor of 20/20 in May 2003, while he was writing his first book, Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media, which was published in 2004. In it, he details his start in journalism and consumer reporting, and how he evolved to harbor libertarian beliefs.
### Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network
In September 2009, it was announced that Stossel was leaving Disney's ABC News and joining News Corp.'s Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network. In addition to appearing on The O'Reilly Factor every Tuesday night, he also hosted a one-hour weekly program for Fox Business Network and a series of one-hour specials for Fox News Channel, as well as making regular guest appearances on Fox News programs.
The program, Stossel, debuted December 10, 2009, on Fox Business Network. The program examined issues related to individual freedom, free market capitalism and small government, such as civil liberties, the business of health care, and free trade. The final episode premiered on December 16, 2016. At the end of that episode, a retrospective that spotlighted moments from seven years of the program, Stossel explained that due to his age, he wanted to help develop a younger generation of journalists with his views, and would continue to appear as a guest on Fox programs, and also help produce content for Reason TV. His blog, "Stossel's Take", is published on both FoxBusiness.com and FoxNews.com.
### Stossel TV
In 2019, Stossel launched Stossel TV, an online channel which distributes weekly videos via social media platforms.
### Publications
Stossel has written three books. Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media is a 2005 autobiography from Harper Perennial documenting his career and philosophical transition from liberalism to libertarianism. It describes his opposition to government regulation, his belief in free market and private enterprise, support for tort reform, and advocacy for shifting social services from the government to private charities. It was a New York Times bestseller for 11 weeks. Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel – Why Everything You Know Is Wrong, which was published in 2007 by Hyperion, questions the validity of various conventional wisdoms, and argues that the belief he is conservative is untrue. On April 10, 2012, Threshold Editions, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, published Stossel's third book No, They Can't: Why Government Fails – But Individuals Succeed. It argues that government policies meant to solve problems instead produce new ones, and that free individuals and the private sector perform tasks more efficiently than the government does.
With financial support from the libertarian Palmer R. Chitester Fund, Stossel and ABC News launched a series of educational materials for public schools in 1999 entitled "Stossel in the Classroom". It was taken over in 2006 by the Center for Independent Thought and releases a new DVD of teaching materials annually. In 2006, Stossel and ABC released Teaching Tools for Economics, a video series based on the National Council of Economics Education standards.
Since February 2011, Stossel has written a weekly newspaper column for Creators Syndicate. His articles appear in such online publications as Newsmax, Reason, and Townhall.
## Political positions
Stossel purports to debunk myths in his journalism. His Myths and Lies series of 20/20 specials challenges a range of liberal beliefs. He also hosted The Power of Belief (October 6, 1998), an ABC News Special that focused on assertions of the paranormal and people's desire to believe. Another report put forward the argument that opposition to DDT is misplaced and that the ban on DDT has resulted in the deaths of millions of children, mostly in poor nations.
### Libertarianism
As a libertarian who has said he usually votes for the Libertarian Party, Stossel says that he believes in both personal freedom and the free market. He frequently uses television airtime to advance these views and challenge viewers' distrust of free-market capitalism and economic competition. He received an Honoris Causa Doctorate from Francisco Marroquin University, a libertarian university in Guatemala, in 2008.
Stossel argues that individual self-interest, or "greed", creates an incentive to work harder and to innovate. He argues that this innovation makes the poor richer and the only way people "can get rich is to offer us something that we believe is better than we had before." He promoted school choice as a way to improve American public schools akin to the Belgian voucher system.
Stossel has criticized government programs for being inefficient, wasteful, and harmful. He has also criticized the American legal system, opining that it provides lawyers and vexatious litigators the incentive to file frivolous lawsuits indiscriminately. Although Stossel concedes that some lawsuits are necessary in order to provide justice to people genuinely injured by others with greater economic power, he advocates the adoption in the U.S. of the English rule as one method to reduce the more abusive or frivolous lawsuits.
Stossel opposes the minimum wage, corporate welfare and welfare more broadly, bailouts, seat belt laws, occupational licensing and the war in Iraq. He also opposes legal prohibitions against pornography, marijuana, recreational drugs, gambling, ticket scalping, prostitution, polygamy, and assisted suicide, and believes most abortions should be legal. He has said he supports the rule of law, gun rights, pollution control, and lower and simpler taxes. He has endorsed or explored various ideas in his specials and on his TV series for changing the tax system, including switching to a flat tax, and replacing the income tax with the FairTax.
Stossel argues that a country needs to have police and a national defense as laid out by the United States Constitution. Stossel acknowledges that Scandinavian countries have large welfare states, but says that they can only afford them "because they have a homogeneous culture and they have a fairly free private market to pay for it" while also noting that they have no government-mandated minimum wage.
When the Department of Labor reissued federal guidelines in April 2010 governing the employment of unpaid interns under the Fair Labor Standards Act based on a 1947 Supreme Court decision, Stossel criticized the guidelines, appearing in a police uniform during an appearance on the Fox News program America Live, commenting, "I've built my career on unpaid interns, and the interns told me it was great – I learned more from you than I did in college." Asked why he did not pay them if they were so valuable, he said he could not afford to.
Stossel is a faculty member of the Charles Koch Institute.
Stossel has advocated in favor of abolishing the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
On April 1, 2016, Stossel moderated the first-ever nationally televised Libertarian presidential debate. The second part of the debate aired on April 8. On May 21, 2020, he moderated the Libertarian Party National Convention Presidential Debate between Jacob Hornberger, Vermin Supreme, Jo Jorgensen, Jim Gray, and John Monds.
### Science
In 2001, the progressive media watchdog organization FAIR criticized Stossel's reportage of global warming in his documentary, Tampering with Nature, accusing it of using "highly selective...information" that placed undue emphasis on three dissenters from among the 2,000 members of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which had recently released a report stating that global temperatures were rising almost twice as fast as previously thought.
In December 2014, Stossel stated that "There is no good data showing secondhand smoke kills people." The fact-checker website Politifact rated this statement "False", citing considerable levels of scientific research showing that secondhand smoke has caused deaths.
## Praise and criticism
### Awards
As of 2001, Stossel had won 19 Emmy Awards. He was honored five times for excellence in consumer reporting by the National Press Club, has received a George Polk Award for Outstanding Local Reporting and a Peabody Award. On April 23, 2012, Stossel was awarded the Chapman University Presidential Medal, by the current president, James Doti, and chancellor, Danielle Struppa. The award has been presented to only a handful of people over the past 150 years. Stossel received an honorary doctorate from Universidad Francisco Marroquín.
### Praise
In promotional copy for one of Stossel's books, the Nobel Prize–winning Chicago School monetarist economist Milton Friedman wrote: "Stossel is that rare creature, a TV commentator who understands economics, in all its subtlety." Steve Forbes, the editor of Forbes magazine, described Stossel as "one of America's ablest and most courageous journalists." The author P. J. O'Rourke said, "He seeks the truths that destroy truisms, wields reason against all that's unreasonable, and uses and upholds the ideals that puncture sanctimonious idealism".
An article published by the libertarian group Advocates for Self Government notes praise for Stossel. Independent Institute Research Analyst Anthony Gregory, writing on the libertarian blog LewRockwell.com, described Stossel as a "heroic rogue... a media maverick and proponent of freedom in an otherwise statist, conformist mass media." Libertarian investment analyst Mark Skousen said Stossel is "a true libertarian hero".
### Criticism and controversy
Progressive organizations such as Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) and Media Matters for America (MMfA) have criticized Stossel's work, for what they described as a lack of balance of coverage and distortion of facts on his part. For example, Stossel was criticized for a segment on his October 11, 1999, show during which he argued that AIDS research has received too much funding, "25 times more than on Parkinson's, which kills more people." FAIR pointed out that AIDS had in fact killed more people in the United States in 1999.
In a February 2000 Salon feature on Stossel titled "Prime-time propagandist", David Mastio wrote that Stossel has a conflict of interest in donating profits from his public speaking engagements to, among others, a non-profit called "Stossel in the Classroom" which includes material for use in schools, some of which uses material made by Stossel.
University of Texas economist James K. Galbraith has alleged that Stossel, in his September 1999 special Is America \#1?, used an out-of-context clip of Galbraith to convey the notion that Galbraith advocated the adoption by Europe of the free market economics practiced by the United States, when in fact Galbraith actually advocated that Europe adopt some of the United States' social benefit transfer mechanisms such as Social Security, which is the economically opposite view. Stossel denied any misrepresentation of Galbraith's views and stated that it was not his intention to convey that Galbraith agreed with all of the special's ideas. However, he re-edited that portion of the program for its September 2000 repeat, in which Stossel paraphrased, "Even economists who like Europe's policies, like James Galbraith, now acknowledge America's success."
#### David Schultz incident
On December 28, 1984, during an interview for 20/20 on professional wrestling, wrestler David Schultz struck Stossel twice after Stossel said professional wrestling was "fake". Stossel said he suffered from pain and buzzing in his ears eight weeks after the assault. Stossel sued and obtained a settlement of \$280,000 from the World Wrestling Federation (WWF). In his book, Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity, Stossel noted his regret, believing lawsuits harm innocent people. Schultz maintains that he attacked Stossel on orders from Vince McMahon, the head of the then-WWF. This was later re-visited on the second season episode of Dark Side of the Ring, aired on April 28, 2020.
#### Organic vegetables
A February 2000 story about organic vegetables on 20/20 included statements by Stossel that tests had shown that neither organic nor conventional produce samples contained any pesticide residue, and that organic food was more likely to be contaminated by E. coli bacteria. The Environmental Working Group objected to his report, mainly questioning his statements about bacteria, but also managed to determine that the produce had never been tested for pesticides. They communicated this to Stossel, but after the story's producer backed Stossel's statement that the test results had been as described, the story was rebroadcast months later, unchanged, and with a postscript in which Stossel reiterated his claim. Later, after a report in The New York Times confirmed the Environmental Working Group's claims, ABC News suspended the producer of the segment for a month and reprimanded Stossel. Stossel apologized, saying that he had thought the tests had been conducted as reported. However, he asserted that the gist of his report had been accurate.
#### Frederick K. C. Price
In a March 2007 segment about finances and lifestyles of televangelists, 20/20 aired a segment by Stossel that included a clip of television minister Frederick K. C. Price, which had originally been broadcast by the Lifetime Network in 1997. Price alleged that the clip portrayed him describing his wealth in extravagant terms, when he was actually telling a parable about a rich man. ABC News twice aired a retraction and apologized for the error. The suit concluded with an out of court settlement including a public apology by ABC.
#### Lawsuit against fact-checkers
In September 2021, Stossel sued Facebook, alleging defamation for labels applied by fact checkers to two of his videos, but his lawsuit was dismissed in October 2022. The fact-checking organizations Science Feedback and Climate Feedback were also named as defendants in Stossel's lawsuit. Stossel's video titled "Government Fueled Fires" had been labeled on Facebook as "missing context" and "misleading", and another video titled "Are We Doomed?" had been labeled as "partly false" and "factual inaccuracies". Stossel's lawsuit said that the labels harmed his viewership, advertisement revenue, and reputation, and that Facebook and its fact-checking partners "falsely attributed to Stossel a claim he never made". In the first video, Stossel featured a guest who opined that climate change was not the primary cause of the 2020 California fires. In the second video, Stossel questioned statements made by those he refers to as "environmental alarmists", including "claims that hurricanes are getting stronger, that sea level rise poses a catastrophic threat, and that humans will be unable to cope with the fallout." A Facebook spokesperson called Stossel's lawsuit "without merit", and Facebook attorneys said in 2021 that "The labels themselves are neither false nor defamatory; to the contrary, they constitute protected opinion." In October 2022, a federal court dismissed Stossel's lawsuit, saying that Facebook did not defame him because the Facebook fact check program "reflects a subjective judgment about the accuracy and reliability of assertions". The court also ruled that Stossel's lawsuit could be dismissed under California's anti-SLAPP statute.
## Personal life
Stossel lives in New York City with his wife, Ellen Abrams and children, Lauren and Max. They also own a home in Massachusetts.
Stossel came to embrace his family's Ashkenazi Jewish heritage after marrying his wife, who is also Jewish. They also raised their children Jewish. Stossel identified himself as an agnostic in "Skeptic or Believer", the December 16, 2010 episode of Stossel, explaining that he had no belief in God but was open to the possibility.
Stossel's brother, Thomas P. Stossel, was a Harvard Medical School professor and co-director of the Hematology Division at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital. He has served on the advisory boards of pharmaceutical companies such as Merck and Pfizer. Stossel's nephew is journalist and magazine editor Scott Stossel.
On April 20, 2016, Stossel announced he had lung cancer despite never having smoked, and that as a result of its early detection, he would have a fifth of one of his lungs surgically removed.
## Books
## See also
- List of newspaper columnists |
2,234,363 | 2 Columbus Circle | 1,168,641,198 | Building in Manhattan, New York | [
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"Art museums and galleries in Manhattan",
"Broadway (Manhattan)",
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"Columbus Circle",
"Edward Durell Stone buildings",
"Eighth Avenue (Manhattan)",
"Gulf and Western Industries",
"Midtown Manhattan",
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| 2 Columbus Circle (formerly the Gallery of Modern Art and the New York Cultural Center) is a nine-story building on the south side of Columbus Circle in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. The building fills a small city block bounded by 58th Street, Columbus Circle, Broadway, and Eighth Avenue. It was originally designed by Edward Durell Stone in the modernist style for A&P heir Huntington Hartford. In the 2000s, Brad Cloepfil redesigned 2 Columbus Circle for the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), which has occupied the building since 2008.
The exterior walls are made of reinforced concrete, which double as load-bearing walls that support the concrete floor slabs inside. The original facade largely consisted of white Vermont marble slabs, with small windows only at the corner of the building, as well as loggias at the base and top of the building. The current facade consists of terracotta panels separated by deep grooves, as well as large glass panels at the top. The lower stories of the building contain museum space, while the upper stories contain offices. There were originally several mezzanine levels, though these were removed in the 2000s. The original structure and the redesigned building have been the subject of extensive architectural commentary.
Hartford announced plans for the Gallery of Modern Art on the south side of Columbus Circle in June 1956, although construction did not start until 1960 due to various delays. The museum opened on March 21, 1964, and suffered financially for several years. Fairleigh Dickinson University took over the museum in 1969, renaming it the New York Cultural Center, which operated until 1975. Gulf and Western Industries bought 2 Columbus Circle in 1976 and donated it to the New York City government, but the building remained vacant for four years due to various issues. The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau occupied 2 Columbus Circle from 1980 to 1998, when the city government offered up the building for redevelopment. Following a controversy over the building's proposed renovation in the early 2000s, MAD renovated the building from 2005 to 2008.
## Site
2 Columbus Circle is on the southern side of Columbus Circle in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. The building's land lot is irregular and covers 4,624 sq ft (429.6 m<sup>2</sup>). The lot occupies an entire city block bounded by Broadway to the east, 58th Street to the south, Eighth Avenue to the west, and Columbus Circle to the north. The site measures 74 feet (23 m) on Columbus Circle, 76 feet (23 m) on Broadway, 97 feet (30 m) on 58th Street, and 41 feet (12 m) on Eighth Avenue. The northern portion of the block is curved due to the curvature of Columbus Circle. The building occupies its entire lot.
The building is near Central Park to the northeast; 240 Central Park South, the Gainsborough Studios, and 220 Central Park South to the east; 5 Columbus Circle and Central Park Tower to the southeast; Central Park Place to the southwest; Deutsche Bank Center (formerly Time Warner Center) to the west; and Trump International Hotel and Tower to the north. Entrances to the New York City Subway's 59th Street–Columbus Circle station, served by the , are to the west, east, and south of the building.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Central Park South was developed as Manhattan's "Gold Coast", with many prestigious hotels and apartment buildings being erected on its route. The seven-story Grand Circle Hotel, designed by William H. Cauvet, stood at this address from 1874. Later called the Boulevard Hotel, it functioned as an office building by the late 1950s, with a Chevrolet advertisement on its roof.
## Architecture
### Facade
The building was designed by Edward Durell Stone for businessman Huntington Hartford, an heir to the A&P supermarket chain. It was originally a nine-story modernist structure. Its exterior wall is made of reinforced concrete, which was used because it was more flexible to construct than a traditional steel structure. The building uses Mo-Sai slabs, which are made of exposed aggregate concrete. The exterior walls double as load-bearing walls, which support the concrete floor slabs inside.
#### Original design
The facade was largely made of slabs of white Vermont marble, with gray and gold veins; these slabs were originally attached to the concrete wall. Most of the marble panels had no window openings, but there were small circular windows at the corners and top story. The windowless sections of the facade measured 2 inches (51 mm) thick, while the sections with windows were 3 inches (76 mm) thick. To create the window openings, circular marble pieces were carved out of the slabs; these were reused in the lobby and on the sidewalk. There were over 1,000 windows in the original design, each arranged in groups of four. Stone designed the windows to be as small as possible, and the Times and Herald Tribune likened the windows to portholes. Each window had a bronze frame with a hinge that could swing inward. According to Stone, the windows were intended to suggest the rusticated blocks of the Saint-Germain-des-Prés church in Paris. In Stone's original plans for the building, the facade would have been covered with vines or plantings.
The sidewalk around the building was originally made of reddish-brown terrazzo or concrete. Inset into the sidewalk were marble circles measuring 3 feet (0.91 m) across and framed by brass strips; there were also planting pits along the curb. The base of the building contained a loggia of reinforced concrete columns, evocative of that at the Doge's Palace. There were 27 columns in the loggia, which measured 8 feet (2.4 m) high. Above the ground-level loggia were alternating medallions made of red Italian marble and green Vermont marble. The lobby was recessed behind the loggia and had bronze-framed windows facing Columbus Circle; the other three elevations were faced with green marble at ground level. The seventh and eighth floors contained loggias on all elevations of the facade.
#### New design
The current facade, designed by Brad Cloepfil for the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), reuses the original massing; the upper loggia, the portholes, and the marble panels on the facade were removed. The building's concave curve on Columbus Circle was preserved. The ground-story loggia was also preserved because it was one of the key portions of the superstructure; it was enclosed behind a 13-foot-high (4.0 m) glass wall. Cloepfil had spoken negatively of Stone's original design, having regarded it as "frightening" ever since the 1970s when he was an architecture student.
The new facade consists of 4-inch-thick (10 cm) terracotta panels separated by deep grooves. The white terracotta panels are stippled, giving a sparkling appearance in sunlight. At different times of day, the panels give the impression that they are slightly changing in color. Behind the terracotta panels are horizontal openings, which measure 30 inches (760 mm) wide and are carved into the outer bearing walls. To reduce deflection, the grooves are spanned by large metal pins. There are one-story-high vertical panels of fritted glass, which connect the grooves on each floor. The glass strips and grooves create continuous strips on each elevation of the facade and are designed in a manner resembling a switchback. There are also glass strips at the northwest and northeast corners of the lower stories, which illuminate the galleries inside.
The top stories use the most glass and are illuminated by transparent, translucent, and fritted glass panels. Cloepfil said he wanted the new design "'to emphasize its role as a marker on Columbus Circle in juxtaposition to all the noise around it". Against Cloepfil's wishes, MAD's board and its director Holly Hotchner ordered that a band of windows be added near the top of the facade. This horizontal element connected two vertical strips of windows on the Columbus Circle elevation, creating an "H" shape; another vertical strip on the Eighth Avenue elevation was designed in an "I" shape. The windows appeared to spell out the word "HI" from the northwest.
### Interior
Originally, the building contained 60,000 square feet (5,600 m<sup>2</sup>) of floor area across nine stories. The elevators originally served alternate floors, which Hartford proposed "for variety's sake". There were also two emergency-exit stairs at the rear corners of the building. The elevators and emergency-exit stairs (which were required under local building codes) occupied a significant portion of the building. As a result, the landings of the staircases were widened to create intermediate mezzanine levels, with smaller display rooms surrounding the double-height main galleries. The mezzanines also had smoking lounges, as well as rooms with pipe-organ music. The Gallery of Modern Art had an Aeolian-Skinner organ, which measured 23 feet (7.0 m) high and was placed on the mezzanine above the second floor. That space was subsequently converted to the Gallery 3D theater, and the organ had been removed by the 2000s.
MAD occupies 54,000 square feet (5,000 m<sup>2</sup>) across ten above-ground floors and two basement levels. The mezzanines were removed when the building was renovated. Each of the main floors was enlarged to 3,650 square feet (339 m<sup>2</sup>), more than double the size of the original main floors. To make way for the expanded floor slabs, the mechanical spaces were placed behind the elevators, while the restrooms were relocated to the basement and sixth floor. The old emergency staircases were removed and a new staircase was built around the elevator core. The interior spaces are illuminated by glass channels measuring 30 inches wide. There are also glass columns, which contain a square cross-section and measure 3 or 4 feet (0.91 or 1.22 m) across. To accommodate these columns, the engineers had to construct square openings within each of the floor slabs. Because the superstructure is made of concrete, the engineers could only place openings through about 30 percent of the floor area. The glass channels and columns allow natural light to illuminate the interior. In addition, a six-story-high staircase was built along the Broadway elevation, connecting the museum spaces.
#### Museum spaces
When the building was used as the Gallery of Modern Art, the galleries were on the second through fifth floors. The Gallery of Modern Art had 14 galleries in total. The second and third floors were devoted to temporary exhibits, while the fourth and fifth floors contained Huntington's collection. Each story contained a main gallery measuring 13 feet (4.0 m) tall, as well as two smaller galleries. The main gallery on each floor faced Columbus Circle, while the smaller galleries faced Broadway and Eighth Avenue. The main halls on the second and third stories measured 60 by 25 feet (18.3 by 7.6 m), while the secondary halls each measured 18 by 20 feet (5.5 by 6.1 m). There were also walls with gray-blue fabric and walnut paneling, as well as floors with French parquetry. Abe Feder designed the lighting inside each gallery, which was designed over a two-year period. The original lighting system was composed of diagonal troffers in the ceiling, which faced the outer walls of each gallery; the troffers surrounded a dropped ceiling at the center of each gallery.
Following the 2000s renovation, MAD has four floors of exhibition galleries across 14,000 square feet (1,300 m<sup>2</sup>), about double the size of the exhibition space at MAD's previous building. The space is large enough to house the museum's permanent collection, which numbered 2,000 objects at the time of the renovation. The space also allowed MAD to host multiple temporary exhibits simultaneously; by contrast, the museum's previous building was so small that it had to be closed every time a temporary exhibition was installed. At the time of the building's reopening in 2008, two of the four exhibition floors were used for rotating exhibits.
#### Other spaces
In the basement was an auditorium with 154 seats. The auditorium measured 26 feet (7.9 m) deep and contained golden draperies, as well as a red-carpeted floor that extended to the back wall. The golden draperies doubled as sound insulation. The auditorium, subsequently named the Mark Goodson Theater, was the only part of the original design to be preserved in the 2000s renovation. The renovation also preserved the bronze doors leading to the auditorium. When MAD moved into the building in 2008, it started renting out the auditorium for events.
The original lobby's floor contained marble circles that had been cut out of the facade's portholes. In the 2000s, the lobby was enlarged and a museum store for MAD was placed at ground level. The museum store covers 1,400 square feet (130 m<sup>2</sup>).
The Gallery of Modern Art's offices were on the sixth floor, while the storage and restoration spaces were on the seventh floor. There were 3,500 square feet (330 m<sup>2</sup>) of storage space, as well as two terraces. When the Museum of Art and Design moved into the building, the sixth and seventh stories were converted to art studios, event spaces, and classrooms. One story was dedicated solely to educational programs, and there were also three artists' studios.
On the Gallery of Modern Art's eighth floor was a cocktail lounge, which had 60 seats. The eighth floor was decorated with rare Macassar ebony, which had to be sourced from a merchant in London, as well as Danish-wool sofas and Oceanic art. The ninth floor contained the Gauguin Room, a 52-seat restaurant with custom tables and tableware; it featured a 75-foot-wide (23 m) terrace facing north. The Gauguin Room served Polynesian food. The ninth-floor restaurant space was renovated in the mid-2000s, with windows on three sides. The restaurant, which reopened as Robert in 2009, serves American cuisine. The space contains 138 seats and can be accessed without entering the museum. It is decorated in an orange, purple, and vermilion color scheme, which in turn is illuminated by orange LED lighting.
## History
### Development
#### Planning and disputes
Huntington Hartford announced plans for the 10-story Gallery of Modern Art on the south side of Columbus Circle in June 1956. The building would contain a modern-art collection belonging to Hartford and his wife Marjorie Steele, as well as ground-story retail space and a rooftop garden. Hartford had paid nearly \$1 million for the land; he estimated that the gallery would cost \$1.5 million to construct and would be completed in 1958. The New York Times wrote of the plans: "If in that spot there can now rise something of architectural beauty, the whole face of the Circle, the approach to the Park, and the area near the Coliseum will have been definitely 'lifted'." The New York Herald Tribune said that the planned structure "can be a valuable contribution to New York's architectural scene". Hartford initially collaborated with Hanford Yang, a Chinese-born architecture student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, on the design of the museum. Yang's initial proposal called for an 11-story structure with a pair of interlocked concrete cylinders, sheathed in a plastic facade.
Winslow Ames was hired as the museum's director in September 1957, and Hartford said two months later that the project would begin "within six months to a year". In May 1958, Hartford hired Stone as the architect, since Yang was not registered to practice architecture in New York state. By then, the museum was to cost \$3 million and be completed in a year. Stone initially retained Yang as a project manager but soon revised the design drastically. Stone's first proposal filled the whole block and consisted largely of a blank facade, with windows arranged in a narrow vertical strip and along the top floor. His second proposal was published in 1959; it called for a mesh-like facade, with an exposed superstructure at the bottom and top, as well as a rooftop terrace. Both of Stone's proposals were intended to complement the neoclassical 5 Columbus Circle diagonally to the southeast. Stone and Hartford spent ten days just on refining various architectural models for the building.
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) requested an injunction in early 1959 to prevent Hartford from using the "Gallery of Modern Art" name. Hartford ultimately was allowed to keep the "Gallery" name. Stone filed plans for the gallery with the New York City Department of Buildings (DOB) in April 1959, as the naming dispute was ongoing. Most tenants had left by July 1959, and demolition was supposed to have begun in August, with the gallery being completed in early 1961. The last remaining tenant was a shoe store, whose owner argued that he could only be evicted if an office building was built on the site. Though the New York Supreme Court ruled against the shoe store, the store's owner appealed the decision to the New York Court of Appeals, prompting Hartford to postpone the gallery's opening by one year. The Court of Appeals refused to hear the store's appeal in February 1960, and the shoe store finally vacated the site.
#### Construction
Hartford procured numerous works of art for the new museum, including a large mural by Salvador Dalí entitled The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus. After his divorce from Steele in 1960, he bought five of his ex-wife's paintings for the museum. In total, the museum was to contain at least 30 sculptures and 75 paintings from Hartford's personal art collection. Hartford wanted his gallery to represent an alternative view of modernism; his art collection included works by Rembrandt, Monet, Manet, Turner, and Dalí. Ames announced in December 1960 that the museum would set aside two stories of galleries to photography exhibits. An advisory board would select the photography exhibits, which would be changed every 18 to 24 months. In 1961, Ames resigned from his position as the museum's director; the Herald Tribune reported that Ames and Hartford had disagreed over artistic taste. Hartford was also greatly involved in the design aspect of the building.
The museum's exterior was completed by January 1962, at which point construction costs had increased to \$5 million. The building's small site had significantly slowed down construction due to the lack of a suitable staging area. The project engineer J. Gilbert Parker attributed the construction delays to the building's lack of right angles, saying: "It was like making a watch out of concrete". Originally, the eighth floor was supposed to have contained offices for Hartford and for the museum's curator, but these were scrapped in favor of a gallery. Hartford hired Carl J. Weinhardt Jr. as the museum's new director in 1963, two years after Ames's resignation. Margaret Potter was hired as the museum's curator. The museum's staff planned to use the rotating exhibitions to showcase "certain relatively neglected phases" of 19th-and 20th-century art. In late 1963, Weinhardt selected the museum's first temporary exhibition, a showcase of surrealist paintings by Pavel Tchelitchew. At the time, the museum's staff had already moved into the building. The construction cost had increased to \$7.4 million, about five times the original budget, by the time the museum was completed.
### Opening and museum use
#### Gallery of Modern Art
In advance of the museum's opening, in mid-March 1964, WABC-TV and WNBC-TV broadcast "No. 2 Columbus Circle", an hour-long video tour of the museum. Prior to the official opening, the museum had several preview events with guests such as Ivan Sergeyevich Obolensky and Prince Aschwin of Lippe-Biesterfeld. The Gallery of Modern Art opened to the public on March 21, 1964, with 3,358 visitors on its first day. At the time, the museum had 25 staff members and 45 guards; its operating costs were estimated at \$600,000 per year. The museum had almost 40,000 guests in its first two weeks. The museum's early exhibits included retrospectives of the work of artists Jean Hélion, Reginald Marsh, and Salvador Dalí, as well as a set of paintings depicting New York City over a 50-year period. The museum also hosted short recitals by contemporary musicians. The Gallery of Modern Art began screening rare and classic films three times daily in April 1965, and the photography gallery opened the next month. Grace Glueck of The New York Times wrote that Hartford's art "did not exactly draw rave notices from the critics".
Not long after its opening, the Gallery of Modern Art was suffering financially. Though the museum charged an admission fee of \$1 per person, it only had an average of 500 visitors on weekdays and 1,000 visitors on weekends, not enough to cover the annual operating expenses. This prompted Hartford to reorganize the museum as a nonprofit organization in mid-1965, appointing a board of trustees to manage the museum's programming and finances. Hartford also asked officials at Columbia University and New York University if they were willing to help fund the museum, though neither university was interested in doing so. Over the following year, 750 people signed up as patrons of the museum, each paying \$15 to \$500 a year. The museum opened a section "for the perpetuation and viewing of the best works of television" in late 1965. Weinhardt resigned as the museum's director that November, leaving the museum without a director for the next five years. The museum continued to host exhibits through 1966, including a series of animated shorts by Faith and John Hubley and a showcase of ancient Egyptian objects.
The museum continued to operate with a \$580,000 annual deficit, and the museum had to spend \$320,000 a year on paying off its mortgage. Hartford started selling off objects in his collection, raising \$200,000 by April 1966. He planned to sell or lease 2 Columbus Circle, although a large art company had already declined an offer to lease the building because it was too large. In September 1966, Hartford offered to convey the building to Fordham University, though Fordham was hesitant to assume the building's \$3.8 million mortgage. Fordham planned to move its communication-arts program in the building. The museum still hosted exhibitions and events over the next two years. Among its offerings in 1967 and 1968 were a painting collection loaned by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, a set of paintings by former president Dwight D. Eisenhower, a showcase of 19th-century Russian antiques, and a selection of sports films.
#### New York Cultural Center
Peter Sammartino, the chancellor of Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey, expressed interest in the Gallery of Modern Art's exhibits in the late 1960s. Hartford transferred ownership of 2 Columbus Circle to the university in July 1969, and the Gallery of Modern Art was renamed the New York Cultural Center. As part of the agreement, Hartford would give at least \$5 million to the university if it operated the New York Cultural Center for five years. Hartford also donated \$1 million to the museum's operations, and Fairleigh S. Dickinson gave \$2.5 million to help pay off the mortgage. In addition, both men agreed to cover a portion of the museum's deficit. The Cultural Center was operated by a seven-member board of trustees; the university had five seats and Hartford and his financial advisor had two seats. The university hired Raymond Rohauer as the cultural center's film curator and director, though Rohauer resigned after less than a year.
The center appointed its first director, Donald H. Karshan, in January 1970. That month, John Canaday wrote for The New York Times: "Since the change of name, the center has seemed to be willing to exhibit just about anything in order to keep the walls covered..." The Cultural Center hosted 150 shows in its five years of operation. The auditorium also hosted musical performances and film retrospectives. Mario Amaya was hired as the Cultural Center's director in early 1972. Under Amaya's leadership, daily attendance tripled from December 1971 to December 1972, with 130,000 annual visitors in that period. The basement auditorium hosted its first legitimate theatrical shows in mid-1972. Amaya planned to exhibit objects from obscure New York City museums, and he wished to expand the Cultural Center's film and musical offerings. The Wall Street Journal wrote that the auditorium hosted film screenings, organ recitals, and experimental theater performances.
In October 1974, Fairleigh Dickinson University indicated it would no longer operate the Cultural Center, citing increasing expenses, waning public support, and the expiration of its agreement with Hartford. The New York Cultural Center's trustees began seeking a buyer for the property, considering bids only from organizations that could take "full responsibility, including purchase", of 2 Columbus Circle. The trustees first put the building for sale in March 1975 for \$6 million but subsequently lowered that price. The museum closed on September 14, 1975, and a cocktail party commemorating the museum was hosted the following week. Art critic Hilton Kramer wrote that the museum's closure, "while very far from being in any way central or catastrophic to New York art life, is nonetheless saddening". Following the Cultural Center's closure, St. Vincent's Hospital considered acquiring 2 Columbus Circle for \$1 million and converting it into a nursing school, but the hospital dismissed the idea. Several other organizations also declined to occupy the building.
### New York City government use
In December 1976, Gulf and Western Industries announced that it would purchase 2 Columbus Circle and donate the building to the government of New York City, as part of an agreement with outgoing mayor Abraham Beame. The structure would be converted into offices for the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) and the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau. As part of the acquisition, the property title would first be transferred to Phoenix Mutual Life Insurance, which held a \$1 million first mortgage on the building. Gulf and Western would then pay off the first mortgage, acquire the building, and deed it to the city government. Gulf and Western would spend \$700,000 in total, paying \$300,000 for renovations and \$400,000 in maintenance costs. Gulf and Western chairman Charles Bluhdorn explained his decision to buy 2 Columbus Circle: "More than ever, this is the time for confidence and credibility in our country and our city." At the time, Gulf and Western was housed at 15 Columbus Circle, immediately to the north.
The city government would have paid no property taxes, prompting complaints from two private developers who had separately wanted to buy 2 Columbus Circle, paying \$100,000 a year in property taxes. The plan was delayed for two years after Ed Koch took over as city's mayor in 1977; the building stood empty during this time. The delay was in part because Gulf and Western had to negotiate with both mayoral administrations over maintenance costs. Additionally, though the building was being renovated at the time, the Koch administration would not commit to the project in the wake of the 1975 New York City fiscal crisis. Other organizations expressed interest in 2 Columbus Circle, including the Parsons School of Design. Gulf and Western ultimately agreed to spend \$900,000 on maintenance over four years. Cultural Affairs commissioner Henry Geldzahler and his partner Christopher Scott oversaw the renovation, which left the building's materials and open spaces largely intact.
The city government announced in May 1979 that the DCLA and the Convention and Visitors Bureau would move into the building later that year. The New York City Board of Estimate voted to accept Gulf and Western's donation of 2 Columbus Circle to the city in February 1980. Under the terms of the gift, the New York City government was obliged to use the building solely for "cultural purposes". This stipulation was part of a "reversionary interest" clause that ran for thirty years; if the city government did not use the building for cultural purposes during that period, Gulf and Western could take back ownership. Koch dedicated the DCLA's offices at 2 Columbus Circle in November 1980. The DCLA occupied four stories and rented out the restaurant and auditorium, and the Visitors Bureau had an information booth in the lobby and offices on three other floors.
The city government opened the City Gallery on the second story in April 1981. Among the City Gallery's exhibits were artwork by New Yorkers, paintings by elderly citizens, and a showcase of works from the city's Percent for Art program. The Visitors Bureau had 250,000 annual visitors. The building's small size continued to pose a hindrance for its occupants, at least from the public's point of view. In 1991, Paul Goldberger wrote in the Times that the city government offices fit "no better into its awkward, cramped galleries than Mr. Hartford's pictures did." Viacom, which had acquired Gulf and Western in the 1990s, inherited the building's reversionary interest. As part of a \$15 million tax-incentive agreement with Viacom in 1994, the New York City Economic Development Corporation (EDC) acquired the reversionary interest in 2 Columbus Circle. Consequently, the city government was no longer obligated to use the building solely for cultural purposes.
### Sale and redevelopment
#### Early efforts
By October 1995, under mayor Rudolph Giuliani, the New York City government was planning to sell or lease the building back to the private sector. The government had yet to find new space for the DCLA and the Visitors Bureau. In July 1996, faced with the increasing difficulty of selling off the neighboring New York Coliseum for development, the city government also offered 2 Columbus Circle for redevelopment. That year, Robert A. M. Stern listed 2 Columbus Circle in his article "A Preservationist's List of 35 Modern Landmarks-in-Waiting". Since it was more than thirty years old, the building was technically old enough to be designated as a city landmark. A four-member committee of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) had declined to consider designating the building as a landmark in June 1996. Although architecture critic Herbert Muschamp believed there was little chance of 2 Columbus Circle's survival, the building received a high amount of attention from preservationists.
In February 1997, the EDC announced that it had received seven proposals for the site, most of which called for the building's renovation. Among those interested in the building were the Dahesh Museum of Art, as well as developer Donald Trump, who was renovating the nearby Gulf and Western Building. The Dahesh Museum proposed converting 2 Columbus Circle back into a museum, expanding its own space considerably in the process. Trump, who had spoken negatively of 2 Columbus Circle, planned to demolish the building to make way for the hotel; he was the only bidder who proposed destroying the building. That April, the New York City Council's Land Use Committee voted to prevent the DCLA, the building's only tenant, from leasing office space elsewhere. The committee expressed concern that the Giuliani administration did not even disclose general details about the site's future. The Giuliani administration claimed that, because the EDC owned 2 Columbus Circle's reversionary interest, the building did not have to undergo public review, which typically was required as part of the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure.
The visitor center in the building closed in September 1997, and the DCLA vacated 2 Columbus Circle in April 1998. Filmmakers occasionally used the empty building for film shoots, painting over portions of the wood paneling inside. EDC officials had not yet picked a developer for 2 Columbus Circle because they wanted the site to be redeveloped along with the Coliseum; the city selected a developer for the Coliseum project, which became Time Warner Center, in July 1998. That October, the Alexander Calder Foundation proposed renovating 2 Columbus Circle's facade. At the time, the most expensive offer for the site was Dahesh Museum's \$10 million proposal, which had received considerable support from the public. Among the supporters of Dahesh's bid were Huntington Hartford's daughter Juliet Hartford; New York state senator Thomas K. Duane; sculptor Richard Lippold; historian Robert Rosenblum; and local community group Committee for Environmentally Sound Development. Conversely, the Giuliani administration preferred Trump's proposal to demolish the building. The project remained stalled through the end of the 1990s.
#### Selection of developer
In March 2000, the Giuliani administration again started soliciting bids for 2 Columbus Circle. The previous redevelopment effort had been abandoned because it had been planned in conjunction with Time Warner Center, which was already underway. This time, the city government sought to replace the building entirely, with the EDC describing 2 Columbus Circle as a "prime location for residential apartments". The city received thirteen bids by the deadline of May 2, 2000, including two bids from Joseph Moinian and the Dahesh Museum, who both proposed preserving the exterior as-is. Several major developers, such as hotelier Ian Schrager, had declined to submit bids for 2 Columbus Circle. Preservationists continued advocating for the building to be designated as a city landmark. Even though the LPC had indicated that it would not hold landmark hearings for the building, many supporters of 2 Columbus Circle's preservation had coalesced behind Dahesh's bid.
Though city officials had initially promised that the building would be sold quickly, the EDC had still not selected a winning bid after over a year. In March 2001, the Giuliani administration directed the Columbus Circle advisory board to review the proposals for 2 Columbus Circle. At the end of Giuliani's tenure as mayor in December 2001, there were rumors that Giuliani had selected Trump as the site's developer, but the EDC denied the allegations. Trump claimed in 2002 that Giuliani had promised to designate him as the site's developer. By early 2002, a decision was still pending, and members of the public expressed concerns about the lack of transparency surrounding the project.
Under the administration of newly elected mayor Michael Bloomberg, the EDC announced in June 2002 that it would sell 2 Columbus Circle to the American Craft Museum (later the Museum of Arts and Design, or MAD). The museum had not been one of the original bidders. Its bid of \$15–20 million was slightly lower than Trump's bid, but EDC president Andrew Alper said Trump's proposal had been rejected because there were already two hotels next to Columbus Circle. The city government planned to sell 2 Columbus Circle for \$17 million and allocate another \$4.5 million in funding to the project. The American Craft Museum planned to spend at least \$30 million on renovations, including replacement of the deteriorating facade. The museum invited small architectural firms to submit proposals for redesigning 2 Columbus Circle, and eleven firms expressed interest. In mid-2002, the American Craft Museum selected four finalists to participate in an architectural design competition for the building. The museum rebranded itself as the Museum of Arts and Design that October.
#### Preservation controversy
MAD hired Brad Cloepfil of the firm Allied Works Architecture to redesign 2 Columbus Circle in November 2002. Cloepfil's design for the headquarters of Wieden+Kennedy and Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, as well as that for the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, had influenced museum officials to hire him. Cloepfil, who was based in Portland, Oregon, opened an office in New York City specifically to oversee the building's renovation. Meanwhile, preservationist groups continued to advocate for retaining Stone's design. These included Landmark West and the American Institute of Architects, which sponsored a panel discussion about 2 Columbus Circle in early 2003. By then, the facade was in such bad shape that a sidewalk shed had been erected around the building to protect pedestrians from falling debris. Architectural critic Ada Louise Huxtable, who criticized the preservation efforts, said the metal pieces behind the facade's marble slabs had rusted so severely that the entire facade would have to be replaced anyway.
Cloepfil presented designs for the building's renovation to the New York City Planning Commission in March 2003. The announcement was controversial, and several opponents wrote editorials about the design. Preservationists requested that the LPC hold public hearings for 2 Columbus Circle, but the commissioners were reluctant to do so, as they did not believe the building had cultural, architectural, or historical merit. In November 2003, several groups and individuals filed a lawsuit in the New York Supreme Court to prevent the building's sale from being finalized. The plaintiffs requested a environmental impact assessment for 2 Columbus Circle. The same month, the Preservation League of New York State placed 2 Columbus Circle on its "Seven to Save", its annual list of the state's most endangered historic sites. The National Trust for Historic Preservation also described 2 Columbus Circle as being one of the United States' "most endangered historic places" in 2004.
Cloepfil revised his design in January 2004. A state judge ruled against the preservationists that April, allowing the sale to proceed. The museum had difficulties fundraising for its new quarters; the museum's budget had risen to \$50 million by mid-2004, but MAD had only raised half that amount. Meanwhile, the vacant interior spaces had deteriorated considerably, and some areas had been damaged by burst water pipes. Other parts of the building had buckled or warped wooden floors and moisture-damaged walls. Fences had been erected around the ground-floor loggia to deter homeless people from sleeping there.
Manhattan borough officials approved the sale of the building to MAD for \$17 million in August 2004. Landmark West and the National Trust for Historic Preservation sued in an attempt to nullify the approval, but a state judge upheld the previous ruling in early 2005. Preservationists, joined by residents of the nearby Parc Vendome development, then filed a lawsuit to force the LPC to hold a public hearing for 2 Columbus Circle. The LPC refused to host another hearing on the matter, and MAD signed a contract in May 2005 to finalize its purchase. Preservationists next accused LPC chairman Robert Tierney of colluding with MAD, filing a lawsuit in an attempt to remove him from his position. That June, the World Monuments Fund (WMF) cited Stone's design as being among the world's 100 most endangered sites for 2006.
### Museum of Arts and Design use
#### Renovation
On June 29, 2005, a week after the WMF list was published, the DOB approved an alteration permit for renovations to 2 Columbus Circle. Members of the LPC continued to disagree publicly over the merits of designating the building as a city landmark. Sarah Bradford Landau, one of the four LPC commissioners who had voted not to hold a full hearing for the building in 1996, was among those in favor of hosting a public hearing. A state court ruled in favor of MAD in September 2005. The museum finalized its purchase of 2 Columbus Circle the next month. At this point, MAD had raised \$48 million of its \$65 million capital fund. Seven legal challenges, which included five lawsuits and two appeals, had increased the project's budget to \$40 million. MAD director Holly Hotchner saw a benefit to the legal disputes, saying: "The controversy has given us \$5 million of free advertising."
Landmark West filed its eighth legal challenge against the project in October 2005, as construction was starting. The group failed to halt the project and, in November 2005, installed a "shame cam" that livestreamed the work on the facade. Work on the building was temporarily halted in early 2006 after workers were caught using a small bulldozer to demolish portions of the structure that were supposed to have been deconstructed manually. Most of 2 Columbus Circle's marble facade had been removed by April 2006. To raise additional money for the museum, a billboard for the film The Da Vinci Code had been erected on the scaffolding around the building. The billboard's presence prompted controversy soon after it was erected, especially among preservationists who had opposed the renovation, and MAD disassembled the sign within two weeks. By mid-2007, the exterior marble cladding and portholes had been removed, and workers had made incisions in the concrete floors and walls.
#### Reopening and occupancy
MAD's capital fund had increased to \$95 million by mid-2008, of which \$85 million had been raised. The museum also renamed 2 Columbus Circle the Jerome and Simona Chazen Building, after the capital campaign's chairman Jerome Chazen and his wife Simona. MAD opened its new location at 2 Columbus Circle on September 27, 2008. At the time, the restaurant atop the building was projected to open early the next year. The renovation of 2 Columbus Circle was one of several projects to be completed around Columbus Circle in the 2000s, including the Time Warner Center and a reconstruction of the circle itself.
The ninth-floor restaurant was named Robert, after event planner Robert Isabell, who had been involved in its development before his death in mid-2009. Robert ultimately opened in December 2009. In part because of the Columbus Circle location, MAD had 500,000 visitors in 2009 alone, far surpassing its projections of 300,000 annual visitors. As of 2021, MAD continued to occupy 2 Columbus Circle; one former director, Glenn Adamson, described the building as being "expensive to operate". The Robert restaurant and the gift shop generated \$1.8 million in annual income, more than the amount raised through museum subscriptions in 2019.
## Reception
### Original structure
When 2 Columbus Circle was built, there was much criticism of its design. The Times reported in 1963 that the building had been likened to a seraglio and a traffic island. Ada Louise Huxtable derided 2 Columbus Circle as a "die-cut Venetian palazzo on lollypops", leading the building to be nicknamed "The Lollipop Building". The critic Alfred Frankfurter took issue with the wood paneling in the museum and the "spurious South Sea atmosphere" of the restaurants. Even the building's architectural style was disputed. The critic Stuart Preston compared the building to a Venetian palazzo, but Frankfurter wrote: "To attribute a 'Venetian' style to the design is to libel on the grandeur of the Queen of the Adriatic." Architectural critic Herbert Muschamp said much of the controversy arose from the fact that "this cultural campanile violated the modernist taboo against historically derived decoration".
Conversely, when 2 Columbus Circle opened, Thomas V. Ennis of the Times wrote that the building was a "bright spot" on the midtown section of Eighth Avenue. Olga Gueft, writing for Interiors magazine, said the colonnades and portholes "are too winsome for heavyweight criticism", contrasting with the "glittering ice-cage architecture" that was prevalent across New York City at the time. Newsday wrote that the building "represents a vivid departure from the steel-and-glass towers that have dominated many of New York's avenues in recent years." Ellen Perry of Progressive Architecture wrote: "This gallery is Stone-work, from what might be called the Middle Stone Age".
In 1974, Manuela Hoelterhoff wrote for The Wall Street Journal: "Slowly, that architectural oddity [...] is recovering from its peculiar birth in the middle of a traffic island 10 years ago", largely because of the Cultural Center's diverse offerings. The next year, John Canaday wrote in The New York Times that the building was a "white elephant", constricted largely by its small lot area and designed "in a weak moment" for Stone. According to novelist Tom Wolfe, the building was so widely disliked that Stone had to resort "to saying such things as, 'Every taxi driver in New York will tell you it's his favorite building.'" By the late 1990s, Huxtable said she got "a little lift, a sense of pleasure" when she walked past 2 Columbus Circle, as it was the circle's "only identifiable object". Muschamp called the building "a latter-day tribute to John Ruskin and the road not taken by modern architects after the collapse of the Gothic Revival in the late 19th century". In 2003, Laurie Kerr of The Wall Street Journal compared 2 Columbus Circle to the original World Trade Center, saying that neither project "ever fit into any of the architectural narratives of the city" as Lever House and the Plaza Hotel did.
#### Commentary on renovation
When 2 Columbus Circle was proposed for redevelopment in the late 1990s, there was much commentary in favor of preservation. Robert A. M. Stern believed the building merited landmark protection "by any and every standard of what a landmark is", and he described the structure as "important, thoughtful and carefully articulated". Tom Wolfe also spoke in favor of preservation, saying: that the building "really is a jewel. It's this lovely white [...] piece of drama!" David Childs, the architect of the Time Warner Center, expressed support for preserving Stone's design at 2 Columbus Circle. Other commentators favored the building's redevelopment. Donald Trump said 2 Columbus Circle "has got to be the worst building in the city of New York" and that it was "universally disliked" until the redevelopment plans were announced. The Calder Foundation's director Alexander S. C. Rower said: "We don't like Ed Stone's portholes."
Controversy continued after Cloepfil was announced as the renovation architect in 2002. Bernard Tschumi of the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation held an unfavorable view of the facade's renovation, saying that Stone's original design should either be preserved or the entire structure should be razed. Kate Wood of Landmark West said the plan "utterly erases Stone's vision for 2 Columbus Circle" in discarding the portholes and loggias, while Wolfe wrote a two-part New York Times editorial detailing his objections to the new design. By contrast, MAD director Holly Hotchner likened the existing design to a mausoleum, while MoMA curator Terence Riley compared the building to "a patient that has been on life support for so long that none of the doctors are still alive".
The LPC's refusal to hold public hearings for the building was itself a subject of contention. Muschamp described the LPC's decision as "a shocking dereliction of public duty", and Nicolai Ouroussoff cited the building as an example of the LPC's inability "to distinguish between preserving the city's architectural legacy and embalming it". Wolfe expressed a similar view against the LPC commissioners at a press conference in 2004, saying: "When anyone asks about 2 Columbus Circle, the commissioners dive under their desks." Conversely, Justin Davidson opposed the efforts to designate the building as a city landmark, saying it "minimizes flexibility and privileges the status quo, which in this case is dilapidation and uselessness". Huxtable concurred with this view, writing in The Wall Street Journal that opponents seemed "to be operating by tunnel vision and a blind resistance to change". According to Huxtable, the attempts at preservation amounted to "an unworthy performance that did little credit to anyone who cares about preservation and can only serve as an object lesson of how not to go about it."
### Renovated structure
James Gardner, architecture critic for the New York Sun wrote that the original building "was indubitably a landmark; the best that can be said for its replacement is that, if we're lucky, no one will ever notice it." Five years after the renovation was complete, Gardner maintained that the redesigned structure was "far inferior" to Stone's original design. Francis Morrone, also of the Sun, wrote: "Where Stone's original building read as neatly scaled to its setting, Mr. Cloepfil's redesign reads as a piece of abstract sculpture that, at building scale, seems all wrong." Witold Rybczynski wrote in Slate that the new design "feels like an alien presence", and architecture critic Justin Davidson said, "This version won't satisfy those who thought it should never have been touched." In 2008, Ouroussoff named the renovated building as one of seven buildings in New York City that should be torn down because they "have a traumatic effect on the city".
Some critics defended the new facade. Huxtable wrote that "criticism of the structure has been alarmingly out of proportion and flagrantly out of control". Paul Goldberger praised the new building's "functional, logical, and pleasant" interior in a review in The New Yorker, even though the "proportions and composition seem just as odd and awkward as they ever did". |
18,955,875 | Tree | 1,171,928,011 | Perennial woody plant with elongated trunk | [
"Forest ecology",
"Plant life-forms",
"Plant morphology",
"Plants by habit",
"Trees"
]
| In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, usually supporting branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, including only woody plants with secondary growth, plants that are usable as lumber or plants above a specified height. In wider definitions, the taller palms, tree ferns, bananas, and bamboos are also trees.
Trees are not a monophyletic taxonomic group but consist of a wide variety of plant species that have independently evolved a trunk and branches as a way to tower above other plants to compete for sunlight. The majority of tree species are angiosperms or hardwoods; of the rest, many are gymnosperms or softwoods. Trees tend to be long-lived, some reaching several thousand years old. Trees have been in existence for 370 million years. It is estimated that there are around three trillion mature trees in the world.
A tree typically has many secondary branches supported clear of the ground by the trunk. This trunk typically contains woody tissue for strength, and vascular tissue to carry materials from one part of the tree to another. For most trees it is surrounded by a layer of bark which serves as a protective barrier. Below the ground, the roots branch and spread out widely; they serve to anchor the tree and extract moisture and nutrients from the soil. Above ground, the branches divide into smaller branches and shoots. The shoots typically bear leaves, which capture light energy and convert it into sugars by photosynthesis, providing the food for the tree's growth and development.
Trees usually reproduce using seeds. Flowers and fruit may be present, but some trees, such as conifers, instead have pollen cones and seed cones. Palms, bananas, and bamboos also produce seeds, but tree ferns produce spores instead.
Trees play a significant role in reducing erosion and moderating the climate. They remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store large quantities of carbon in their tissues. Trees and forests provide a habitat for many species of animals and plants. Tropical rainforests are among the most biodiverse habitats in the world. Trees provide shade and shelter, timber for construction, fuel for cooking and heating, and fruit for food as well as having many other uses. In much of the world, forests are shrinking as trees are cleared to increase the amount of land available for agriculture. Because of their longevity and usefulness, trees have always been revered, with sacred groves in various cultures, and they play a role in many of the world's mythologies.
## Definition
Although "tree" is a term of common parlance, there is no universally recognised precise definition of what a tree is, either botanically or in common language. In its broadest sense, a tree is any plant with the general form of an elongated stem, or trunk, which supports the photosynthetic leaves or branches at some distance above the ground. Trees are also typically defined by height, with smaller plants from 0.5 to 10 m (1.6 to 32.8 ft) being called shrubs, so the minimum height of a tree is only loosely defined. Large herbaceous plants such as papaya and bananas are trees in this broad sense.
A commonly applied narrower definition is that a tree has a woody trunk formed by secondary growth, meaning that the trunk thickens each year by growing outwards, in addition to the primary upwards growth from the growing tip. Under such a definition, herbaceous plants such as palms, bananas and papayas are not considered trees regardless of their height, growth form or stem girth. Certain monocots may be considered trees under a slightly looser definition; while the Joshua tree, bamboos and palms do not have secondary growth and never produce true wood with growth rings, they may produce "pseudo-wood" by lignifying cells formed by primary growth. Tree species in the genus Dracaena, despite also being monocots, do have secondary growth caused by meristem in their trunk, but it is different from the thickening meristem found in dicotyledonous trees.
Aside from structural definitions, trees are commonly defined by use; for instance, as those plants which yield lumber.
## Overview
The tree growth habit is an evolutionary adaptation found in different groups of plants: by growing taller, trees are able to compete better for sunlight. Trees tend to be tall and long-lived, some reaching several thousand years old. Several trees are among the oldest organisms now living. Trees have modified structures such as thicker stems composed of specialised cells that add structural strength and durability, allowing them to grow taller than many other plants and to spread out their foliage. They differ from shrubs, which have a similar growth form, by usually growing larger and having a single main stem; but there is no consistent distinction between a tree and a shrub, made more confusing by the fact that trees may be reduced in size under harsher environmental conditions such as on mountains and subarctic areas. The tree form has evolved separately in unrelated classes of plants in response to similar environmental challenges, making it a classic example of parallel evolution. With an estimated 60,000-100,000 species, the number of trees worldwide might total twenty-five per cent of all living plant species. The greatest number of these grow in tropical regions; many of these areas have not yet been fully surveyed by botanists, making tree diversity and ranges poorly known.
The majority of tree species are angiosperms or hardwoods. Of the rest, many are gymnosperms or softwood trees; these include conifers, cycads, ginkgophytes and gnetales, which produce seeds which are not enclosed in fruits, but in open structures such as pine cones, and many have tough waxy leaves, such as pine needles. Most angiosperm trees are eudicots, the "true dicotyledons", so named because the seeds contain two cotyledons or seed leaves. There are also some trees among the old lineages of flowering plants called basal angiosperms or paleodicots; these include Amborella, Magnolia, nutmeg and avocado, while trees such as bamboo, palms and bananas are monocots.
Wood gives structural strength to the trunk of most types of tree; this supports the plant as it grows larger. The vascular system of trees allows water, nutrients and other chemicals to be distributed around the plant, and without it trees would not be able to grow as large as they do. Trees, as relatively tall plants, need to draw water up the stem through the xylem from the roots by the suction produced as water evaporates from the leaves. If insufficient water is available the leaves will die. The three main parts of trees include the root, stem, and leaves; they are integral parts of the vascular system which interconnects all the living cells. In trees and other plants that develop wood, the vascular cambium allows the expansion of vascular tissue that produces woody growth. Because this growth ruptures the epidermis of the stem, woody plants also have a cork cambium that develops among the phloem. The cork cambium gives rise to thickened cork cells to protect the surface of the plant and reduce water loss. Both the production of wood and the production of cork are forms of secondary growth.
Trees are either evergreen, having foliage that persists and remains green throughout the year, or deciduous, shedding their leaves at the end of the growing season and then having a dormant period without foliage. Most conifers are evergreens, but larches (Larix and Pseudolarix) are deciduous, dropping their needles each autumn, and some species of cypress (Glyptostrobus, Metasequoia and Taxodium) shed small leafy shoots annually in a process known as cladoptosis. The crown is the spreading top of a tree including the branches and leaves, while the uppermost layer in a forest, formed by the crowns of the trees, is known as the canopy. A sapling is a young tree.
Many tall palms are herbaceous monocots, which do not undergo secondary growth and never produce wood. In many tall palms, the terminal bud on the main stem is the only one to develop, so they have unbranched trunks with large spirally arranged leaves. Some of the tree ferns, order Cyatheales, have tall straight trunks, growing up to 20 metres (66 ft), but these are composed not of wood but of rhizomes which grow vertically and are covered by numerous adventitious roots.
## Distribution
The number of trees in the world, according to a 2015 estimate, is 3.04 trillion, of which 1.39 trillion (46%) are in the tropics or sub-tropics, 0.61 trillion (20%) in the temperate zones, and 0.74 trillion (24%) in the coniferous boreal forests. The estimate is about eight times higher than previous estimates, and is based on tree densities measured on over 400,000 plots. It remains subject to a wide margin of error, not least because the samples are mainly from Europe and North America. The estimate suggests that about 15 billion trees are cut down annually and about 5 billion are planted. In the 12,000 years since the start of human agriculture, the number of trees worldwide has decreased by 46%. There are approximately 64,100 known tree species in the world. With 43% of all tree species, South America has the highest biodiversity, followed by Eurasia (22%), Africa (16%), North America (15%), and Oceania (11%).
In suitable environments, such as the Daintree Rainforest in Queensland, or the mixed podocarp and broadleaf forest of Ulva Island, New Zealand, forest is the more-or-less stable climatic climax community at the end of a plant succession, where open areas such as grassland are colonised by taller plants, which in turn give way to trees that eventually form a forest canopy.
In cool temperate regions, conifers often predominate; a widely distributed climax community in the far north of the northern hemisphere is moist taiga or northern coniferous forest (also called boreal forest). Taiga is the world's largest land biome, forming 29% of the world's forest cover. The long cold winter of the far north is unsuitable for plant growth and trees must grow rapidly in the short summer season when the temperature rises and the days are long. Light is very limited under their dense cover and there may be little plant life on the forest floor, although fungi may abound. Similar woodland is found on mountains where the altitude causes the average temperature to be lower thus reducing the length of the growing season.
Where rainfall is relatively evenly spread across the seasons in temperate regions, temperate broadleaf and mixed forest typified by species like oak, beech, birch and maple is found. Temperate forest is also found in the southern hemisphere, as for example in the Eastern Australia temperate forest, characterised by Eucalyptus forest and open acacia woodland.
In tropical regions with a monsoon or monsoon-like climate, where a drier part of the year alternates with a wet period as in the Amazon rainforest, different species of broad-leaved trees dominate the forest, some of them being deciduous. In tropical regions with a drier savanna climate and insufficient rainfall to support dense forests, the canopy is not closed, and plenty of sunshine reaches the ground which is covered with grass and scrub. Acacia and baobab are well adapted to living in such areas.
## Parts and function
### Roots
The roots of a tree serve to anchor it to the ground and gather water and nutrients to transfer to all parts of the tree. They are also used for reproduction, defence, survival, energy storage and many other purposes. The radicle or embryonic root is the first part of a seedling to emerge from the seed during the process of germination. This develops into a taproot which goes straight downwards. Within a few weeks lateral roots branch out of the side of this and grow horizontally through the upper layers of the soil. In most trees, the taproot eventually withers away and the wide-spreading laterals remain. Near the tip of the finer roots are single cell root hairs. These are in immediate contact with the soil particles and can absorb water and nutrients such as potassium in solution. The roots require oxygen to respire and only a few species such as mangroves and the pond cypress (Taxodium ascendens) can live in permanently waterlogged soil.
In the soil, the roots encounter the hyphae of fungi. Many of these are known as mycorrhiza and form a mutualistic relationship with the tree roots. Some are specific to a single tree species, which will not flourish in the absence of its mycorrhizal associate. Others are generalists and associate with many species. The tree acquires minerals such as phosphorus from the fungus, while the fungus obtains the carbohydrate products of photosynthesis from the tree. The hyphae of the fungus can link different trees and a network is formed, transferring nutrients and signals from one place to another. The fungus promotes growth of the roots and helps protect the trees against predators and pathogens. It can also limit damage done to a tree by pollution as the fungus accumulate heavy metals within its tissues. Fossil evidence shows that roots have been associated with mycorrhizal fungi since the early Paleozoic, four hundred million years ago, when the first vascular plants colonised dry land.
Some trees such as Alder (Alnus species) have a symbiotic relationship with Frankia species, a filamentous bacterium that can fix nitrogen from the air, converting it into ammonia. They have actinorhizal root nodules on their roots in which the bacteria live. This process enables the tree to live in low nitrogen habitats where they would otherwise be unable to thrive. The plant hormones called cytokinins initiate root nodule formation, in a process closely related to mycorrhizal association.
It has been demonstrated that some trees are interconnected through their root system, forming a colony. The interconnections are made by the inosculation process, a kind of natural grafting or welding of vegetal tissues. The tests to demonstrate this networking are performed by injecting chemicals, sometimes radioactive, into a tree, and then checking for its presence in neighbouring trees.
The roots are, generally, an underground part of the tree, but some tree species have evolved roots that are aerial. The common purposes for aerial roots may be of two kinds, to contribute to the mechanical stability of the tree, and to obtain oxygen from air. An instance of mechanical stability enhancement is the red mangrove that develops prop roots that loop out of the trunk and branches and descend vertically into the mud. A similar structure is developed by the Indian banyan. Many large trees have buttress roots which flare out from the lower part of the trunk. These brace the tree rather like angle brackets and provide stability, reducing sway in high winds. They are particularly prevalent in tropical rainforests where the soil is poor and the roots are close to the surface.
Some tree species have developed root extensions that pop out of soil, in order to get oxygen, when it is not available in the soil because of excess water. These root extensions are called pneumatophores, and are present, among others, in black mangrove and pond cypress.
### Trunk
The main purpose of the trunk is to raise the leaves above the ground, enabling the tree to overtop other plants and outcompete them for light. It also transports water and nutrients from the roots to the aerial parts of the tree, and distributes the food produced by the leaves to all other parts, including the roots.
In the case of angiosperms and gymnosperms, the outermost layer of the trunk is the bark, mostly composed of dead cells of phellem (cork). It provides a thick, waterproof covering to the living inner tissue. It protects the trunk against the elements, disease, animal attack and fire. It is perforated by a large number of fine breathing pores called lenticels, through which oxygen diffuses. Bark is continually replaced by a living layer of cells called the cork cambium or phellogen. The London plane (Platanus × acerifolia) periodically sheds its bark in large flakes. Similarly, the bark of the silver birch (Betula pendula) peels off in strips. As the tree's girth expands, newer layers of bark are larger in circumference, and the older layers develop fissures in many species. In some trees such as the pine (Pinus species) the bark exudes sticky resin which deters attackers whereas in rubber trees (Hevea brasiliensis) it is a milky latex that oozes out. The quinine bark tree (Cinchona officinalis) contains bitter substances to make the bark unpalatable. Large tree-like plants with lignified trunks in the Pteridophyta, Arecales, Cycadophyta and Poales such as the tree ferns, palms, cycads and bamboos have different structures and outer coverings.
Although the bark functions as a protective barrier, it is itself attacked by boring insects such as beetles. These lay their eggs in crevices and the larvae chew their way through the cellulose tissues leaving a gallery of tunnels. This may allow fungal spores to gain admittance and attack the tree. Dutch elm disease is caused by a fungus (Ophiostoma species) carried from one elm tree to another by various beetles. The tree reacts to the growth of the fungus by blocking off the xylem tissue carrying sap upwards and the branch above, and eventually the whole tree, is deprived of nourishment and dies. In Britain in the 1990s, 25 million elm trees were killed by this disease.
The innermost layer of bark is known as the phloem and this is involved in the transport of the sap containing the sugars made by photosynthesis to other parts of the tree. It is a soft spongy layer of living cells, some of which are arranged end to end to form tubes. These are supported by parenchyma cells which provide padding and include fibres for strengthening the tissue. Inside the phloem is a layer of undifferentiated cells one cell thick called the vascular cambium layer. The cells are continually dividing, creating phloem cells on the outside and wood cells known as xylem on the inside.
The newly created xylem is the sapwood. It is composed of water-conducting cells and associated cells which are often living, and is usually pale in colour. It transports water and minerals from the roots to the upper parts of the tree. The oldest, inner part of the sapwood is progressively converted into heartwood as new sapwood is formed at the cambium. The conductive cells of the heartwood are blocked in some species. Heartwood is usually darker in colour than the sapwood. It is the dense central core of the trunk giving it rigidity. Three quarters of the dry mass of the xylem is cellulose, a polysaccharide, and most of the remainder is lignin, a complex polymer. A transverse section through a tree trunk or a horizontal core will show concentric circles of lighter or darker wood – tree rings. These rings are the annual growth rings There may also be rays running at right angles to growth rings. These are vascular rays which are thin sheets of living tissue permeating the wood. Many older trees may become hollow but may still stand upright for many years.
### Buds and growth
Trees do not usually grow continuously throughout the year but mostly have spurts of active expansion followed by periods of rest. This pattern of growth is related to climatic conditions; growth normally ceases when conditions are either too cold or too dry. In readiness for the inactive period, trees form buds to protect the meristem, the zone of active growth. Before the period of dormancy, the last few leaves produced at the tip of a twig form scales. These are thick, small and closely wrapped and enclose the growing point in a waterproof sheath. Inside this bud there is a rudimentary stalk and neatly folded miniature leaves, ready to expand when the next growing season arrives. Buds also form in the axils of the leaves ready to produce new side shoots. A few trees, such as the eucalyptus, have "naked buds" with no protective scales and some conifers, such as the Lawson's cypress, have no buds but instead have little pockets of meristem concealed among the scale-like leaves.
When growing conditions improve, such as the arrival of warmer weather and the longer days associated with spring in temperate regions, growth starts again. The expanding shoot pushes its way out, shedding the scales in the process. These leave behind scars on the surface of the twig. The whole year's growth may take place in just a few weeks. The new stem is unlignified at first and may be green and downy. The Arecaceae (palms) have their leaves spirally arranged on an unbranched trunk. In some tree species in temperate climates, a second spurt of growth, a Lammas growth may occur which is believed to be a strategy to compensate for loss of early foliage to insect predators.
Primary growth is the elongation of the stems and roots. Secondary growth consists of a progressive thickening and strengthening of the tissues as the outer layer of the epidermis is converted into bark and the cambium layer creates new phloem and xylem cells. The bark is inelastic. Eventually the growth of a tree slows down and stops and it gets no taller. If damage occurs the tree may in time become hollow.
### Leaves
Leaves are structures specialised for photosynthesis and are arranged on the tree in such a way as to maximise their exposure to light without shading each other. They are an important investment by the tree and may be thorny or contain phytoliths, lignins, tannins or poisons to discourage herbivory. Trees have evolved leaves in a wide range of shapes and sizes, in response to environmental pressures including climate and predation. They can be broad or needle-like, simple or compound, lobed or entire, smooth or hairy, delicate or tough, deciduous or evergreen. The needles of coniferous trees are compact but are structurally similar to those of broad-leaved trees. They are adapted for life in environments where resources are low or water is scarce. Frozen ground may limit water availability and conifers are often found in colder places at higher altitudes and higher latitudes than broad leaved trees. In conifers such as fir trees, the branches hang down at an angle to the trunk, enabling them to shed snow. In contrast, broad leaved trees in temperate regions deal with winter weather by shedding their leaves. When the days get shorter and the temperature begins to decrease, the leaves no longer make new chlorophyll and the red and yellow pigments already present in the blades become apparent. Synthesis in the leaf of a plant hormone called auxin also ceases. This causes the cells at the junction of the petiole and the twig to weaken until the joint breaks and the leaf floats to the ground. In tropical and subtropical regions, many trees keep their leaves all year round. Individual leaves may fall intermittently and be replaced by new growth but most leaves remain intact for some time. Other tropical species and those in arid regions may shed all their leaves annually, such as at the start of the dry season. Many deciduous trees flower before the new leaves emerge. A few trees do not have true leaves but instead have structures with similar external appearance such as Phylloclades – modified stem structures – as seen in the genus Phyllocladus.
### Reproduction
Trees can be pollinated either by wind or by animals, mostly insects. Many angiosperm trees are insect pollinated. Wind pollination may take advantage of increased wind speeds high above the ground. Trees use a variety of methods of seed dispersal. Some rely on wind, with winged or plumed seeds. Others rely on animals, for example with edible fruits. Others again eject their seeds (ballistic dispersal), or use gravity so that seeds fall and sometimes roll.
### Seeds
Seeds are the primary way that trees reproduce and their seeds vary greatly in size and shape. Some of the largest seeds come from trees, but the largest tree, Sequoiadendron giganteum, produces one of the smallest tree seeds. The great diversity in tree fruits and seeds reflects the many different ways that tree species have evolved to disperse their offspring.
For a tree seedling to grow into an adult tree it needs light. If seeds only fell straight to the ground, competition among the concentrated saplings and the shade of the parent would likely prevent it from flourishing. Many seeds such as birch are small and have papery wings to aid dispersal by the wind. Ash trees and maples have larger seeds with blade shaped wings which spiral down to the ground when released. The kapok tree has cottony threads to catch the breeze.
The seeds of conifers, the largest group of gymnosperms, are enclosed in a cone and most species have seeds that are light and papery that can be blown considerable distances once free from the cone. Sometimes the seed remains in the cone for years waiting for a trigger event to liberate it. Fire stimulates release and germination of seeds of the jack pine, and also enriches the forest floor with wood ash and removes competing vegetation. Similarly, a number of angiosperms including Acacia cyclops and Acacia mangium have seeds that germinate better after exposure to high temperatures.
The flame tree Delonix regia does not rely on fire but shoots its seeds through the air when the two sides of its long pods crack apart explosively on drying. The miniature cone-like catkins of alder trees produce seeds that contain small droplets of oil that help disperse the seeds on the surface of water. Mangroves often grow in water and some species have propagules, which are buoyant fruits with seeds that start germinating before becoming detached from the parent tree. These float on the water and may become lodged on emerging mudbanks and successfully take root.
Other seeds, such as apple pips and plum stones, have fleshy receptacles and smaller fruits like hawthorns have seeds enclosed in edible tissue; animals including mammals and birds eat the fruits and either discard the seeds, or swallow them so they pass through the gut to be deposited in the animal's droppings well away from the parent tree. The germination of some seeds is improved when they are processed in this way. Nuts may be gathered by animals such as squirrels that cache any not immediately consumed. Many of these caches are never revisited, the nut-casing softens with rain and frost, and the seed germinates in the spring. Pine cones may similarly be hoarded by red squirrels, and grizzly bears may help to disperse the seed by raiding squirrel caches.
The single extant species of Ginkgophyta (Ginkgo biloba) has fleshy seeds produced at the ends of short branches on female trees, and Gnetum, a tropical and subtropical group of gymnosperms produce seeds at the tip of a shoot axis.
## Evolutionary history
The earliest trees were tree ferns, horsetails and lycophytes, which grew in forests in the Carboniferous period. The first tree may have been Wattieza, fossils of which have been found in New York state in 2007 dating back to the Middle Devonian (about 385 million years ago). Prior to this discovery, Archaeopteris was the earliest known tree. Both of these reproduced by spores rather than seeds and are considered to be links between ferns and the gymnosperms which evolved in the Triassic period. The gymnosperms include conifers, cycads, gnetales and ginkgos and these may have appeared as a result of a whole genome duplication event which took place about 319 million years ago. Ginkgophyta was once a widespread diverse group of which the only survivor is the maidenhair tree Ginkgo biloba. This is considered to be a living fossil because it is virtually unchanged from the fossilised specimens found in Triassic deposits.
During the Mesozoic (245 to 66 million years ago) the conifers flourished and became adapted to live in all the major terrestrial habitats. Subsequently, the tree forms of flowering plants evolved during the Cretaceous period. These began to displace the conifers during the Tertiary era (66 to 2 million years ago) when forests covered the globe. When the climate cooled 1.5 million years ago and the first of four glacial periods occurred, the forests retreated as the ice advanced. In the interglacials, trees recolonised the land that had been covered by ice, only to be driven back again in the next glacial period.
## Ecology
Trees are an important part of the terrestrial ecosystem, providing essential habitats including many kinds of forest for communities of organisms. Epiphytic plants such as ferns, some mosses, liverworts, orchids and some species of parasitic plants (e.g., mistletoe) hang from branches; these along with arboreal lichens, algae, and fungi provide micro-habitats for themselves and for other organisms, including animals. Leaves, flowers and fruits are seasonally available. On the ground underneath trees there is shade, and often there is undergrowth, leaf litter, and decaying wood that provide other habitat. Trees stabilise the soil, prevent rapid run-off of rain water, help prevent desertification, have a role in climate control and help in the maintenance of biodiversity and ecosystem balance.
Many species of tree support their own specialised invertebrates. In their natural habitats, 284 different species of insect have been found on the English oak (Quercus robur) and 306 species of invertebrate on the Tasmanian oak (Eucalyptus obliqua). Non-native tree species provide a less biodiverse community, for example in the United Kingdom the sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus), which originates from southern Europe, has few associated invertebrate species, though its bark supports a wide range of lichens, bryophytes and other epiphytes. Trees differ ecologically in the ease with which they can be found by herbivores. Tree apparency varies with a tree's size and semiochemical content, and with the extent to which it is concealed by nonhost neighbours from its insect pests.
In ecosystems such as mangrove swamps, trees play a role in developing the habitat, since the roots of the mangrove trees reduce the speed of flow of tidal currents and trap water-borne sediment, reducing the water depth and creating suitable conditions for further mangrove colonisation. Thus mangrove swamps tend to extend seawards in suitable locations. Mangrove swamps also provide an effective buffer against the more damaging effects of cyclones and tsunamis.
## Uses
### Food
Trees are the source of many of the world's best known fleshy fruits. Apples, pears, plums, cherries and citrus are all grown commercially in temperate climates and a wide range of edible fruits are found in the tropics. Other commercially important fruit include dates, figs and olives. Palm oil is obtained from the fruits of the oil palm (Elaeis guineensis). The fruits of the cocoa tree (Theobroma cacao) are used to make cocoa and chocolate and the berries of coffee trees, Coffea arabica and Coffea canephora, are processed to extract the coffee beans. In many rural areas of the world, fruit is gathered from forest trees for consumption. Many trees bear edible nuts which can loosely be described as being large, oily kernels found inside a hard shell. These include coconuts (Cocos nucifera), Brazil nuts (Bertholletia excelsa), pecans (Carya illinoinensis), hazel nuts (Corylus), almonds (Prunus dulcis), walnuts (Juglans regia), pistachios (Pistacia vera) and many others. They are high in nutritive value and contain high-quality protein, vitamins and minerals as well as dietary fibre. A variety of nut oils are extracted by pressing for culinary use; some such as walnut, pistachio and hazelnut oils are prized for their distinctive flavours, but they tend to spoil quickly.
In temperate climates there is a sudden movement of sap at the end of the winter as trees prepare to burst into growth. In North America, the sap of the sugar maple (Acer saccharum) is most often used in the production of a sweet liquid, maple syrup. About 90% of the sap is water, the remaining 10% being a mixture of various sugars and certain minerals. The sap is harvested by drilling holes in the trunks of the trees and collecting the liquid that flows out of the inserted spigots. It is piped to a sugarhouse where it is heated to concentrate it and improve its flavour. Similarly in northern Europe the spring rise in the sap of the silver birch (Betula pendula) is tapped and collected, either to be drunk fresh or fermented into an alcoholic drink. In Alaska, the sap of the sweet birch (Betula lenta) is made into a syrup with a sugar content of 67%. Sweet birch sap is more dilute than maple sap; a hundred litres are required to make one litre of birch syrup.
Various parts of trees are used as spices. These include cinnamon, made from the bark of the cinnamon tree (Cinnamomum zeylanicum) and allspice, the dried small fruits of the pimento tree (Pimenta dioica). Nutmeg is a seed found in the fleshy fruit of the nutmeg tree (Myristica fragrans) and cloves are the unopened flower buds of the clove tree (Syzygium aromaticum).
Many trees have flowers rich in nectar which are attractive to bees. The production of forest honey is an important industry in rural areas of the developing world where it is undertaken by small-scale beekeepers using traditional methods. The flowers of the elder (Sambucus) are used to make elderflower cordial and petals of the plum (Prunus spp.) can be candied. Sassafras oil is a flavouring obtained from distilling bark from the roots of the sassafras tree (Sassafras albidum).
The leaves of trees are widely gathered as fodder for livestock and some can be eaten by humans but they tend to be high in tannins which makes them bitter. Leaves of the curry tree (Murraya koenigii) are eaten, those of kaffir lime (Citrus × hystrix) (in Thai food) and Ailanthus (in Korean dishes such as bugak) and those of the European bay tree (Laurus nobilis) and the California bay tree (Umbellularia californica) are used for flavouring food. Camellia sinensis, the source of tea, is a small tree but seldom reaches its full height, being heavily pruned to make picking the leaves easier.
Wood smoke can be used to preserve food. In the hot smoking process the food is exposed to smoke and heat in a controlled environment. The food is ready to eat when the process is complete, having been tenderised and flavoured by the smoke it has absorbed. In the cold process, the temperature is not allowed to rise above 100 °F (38 °C). The flavour of the food is enhanced but raw food requires further cooking. If it is to be preserved, meat should be cured before cold smoking.
### Fuel
Wood has traditionally been used for fuel, especially in rural areas. In less developed nations it may be the only fuel available and collecting firewood is often a time-consuming task as it becomes necessary to travel further and further afield in the search for fuel. It is often burned inefficiently on an open fire. In more developed countries other fuels are available and burning wood is a choice rather than a necessity. Modern wood-burning stoves are very fuel efficient and new products such as wood pellets are available to burn.
Charcoal can be made by slow pyrolysis of wood by heating it in the absence of air in a kiln. The carefully stacked branches, often oak, are burned with a very limited amount of air. The process of converting them into charcoal takes about fifteen hours. Charcoal is used as a fuel in barbecues and by blacksmiths and has many industrial and other uses.
### Timber
Timber, "trees that are grown in order to produce wood" is cut into lumber (sawn wood) for use in construction. Wood has been an important, easily available material for construction since humans started building shelters. Engineered wood products are available which bind the particles, fibres or veneers of wood together with adhesives to form composite materials. Plastics have taken over from wood for some traditional uses.
Wood is used in the construction of buildings, bridges, trackways, piles, poles for power lines, masts for boats, pit props, railway sleepers, fencing, hurdles, shuttering for concrete, pipes, scaffolding and pallets. In housebuilding it is used in joinery, for making joists, roof trusses, roofing shingles, thatching, staircases, doors, window frames, floor boards, parquet flooring, panelling and cladding.
Wood is used to construct carts, farm implements, boats, dugout canoes and in shipbuilding. It is used for making furniture, tool handles, boxes, ladders, musical instruments, bows, weapons, matches, clothes pegs, brooms, shoes, baskets, turnery, carving, toys, pencils, rollers, cogs, wooden screws, barrels, coffins, skittles, veneers, artificial limbs, oars, skis, wooden spoons, sports equipment and wooden balls.
Wood is pulped for paper and used in the manufacture of cardboard and made into engineered wood products for use in construction such as fibreboard, hardboard, chipboard and plywood. The wood of conifers is known as softwood while that of broad-leaved trees is hardwood.
### Art
Besides inspiring artists down the centuries, trees have been used to create art. Living trees have been used in bonsai and in tree shaping, and both living and dead specimens have been sculpted into sometimes fantastic shapes.
#### Bonsai
Bonsai (盆栽, lit. "Tray planting") is the practice of hòn non bộ originated in China and spread to Japan more than a thousand years ago, there are similar practices in other cultures like the living miniature landscapes of Vietnam hòn non bộ. The word bonsai is often used in English as an umbrella term for all miniature trees in containers or pots.
The purposes of bonsai are primarily contemplation (for the viewer) and the pleasant exercise of effort and ingenuity (for the grower). Bonsai practice focuses on long-term cultivation and shaping of one or more small trees growing in a container, beginning with a cutting, seedling, or small tree of a species suitable for bonsai development. Bonsai can be created from nearly any perennial woody-stemmed tree or shrub species that produces true branches and can be cultivated to remain small through pot confinement with crown and root pruning. Some species are popular as bonsai material because they have characteristics, such as small leaves or needles, that make them appropriate for the compact visual scope of bonsai and a miniature deciduous forest can even be created using such species as Japanese maple, Japanese zelkova or hornbeam.
#### Tree shaping
Tree shaping is the practice of changing living trees and other woody plants into man made shapes for art and useful structures. There are a few different methods of shaping a tree. There is a gradual method and there is an instant method. The gradual method slowly guides the growing tip along predetermined pathways over time whereas the instant method bends and weaves saplings 2 to 3 m (6.6 to 9.8 ft) long into a shape that becomes more rigid as they thicken up. Most artists use grafting of living trunks, branches, and roots, for art or functional structures and there are plans to grow "living houses" with the branches of trees knitting together to give a solid, weatherproof exterior combined with an interior application of straw and clay to provide a stucco-like inner surface.
Tree shaping has been practised for at least several hundred years, the oldest known examples being the living root bridges built and maintained by the Khasi people of Meghalaya, India using the roots of the rubber tree (Ficus elastica).
### Bark
Cork is produced from the thick bark of the cork oak (Quercus suber). It is harvested from the living trees about once every ten years in an environmentally sustainable industry. More than half the world's cork comes from Portugal and is largely used to make stoppers for wine bottles. Other uses include floor tiles, bulletin boards, balls, footwear, cigarette tips, packaging, insulation and joints in woodwind instruments.
The bark of other varieties of oak has traditionally been used in Europe for the tanning of hides though bark from other species of tree has been used elsewhere. The active ingredient, tannin, is extracted and after various preliminary treatments, the skins are immersed in a series of vats containing solutions in increasing concentrations. The tannin causes the hide to become supple, less affected by water and more resistant to bacterial attack.
At least 120 drugs come from plant sources, many of them from the bark of trees. Quinine originates from the cinchona tree (Cinchona) and was for a long time the remedy of choice for the treatment of malaria. Aspirin was synthesised to replace the sodium salicylate derived from the bark of willow trees (Salix) which had unpleasant side effects. The anti-cancer drug Paclitaxel is derived from taxol, a substance found in the bark of the Pacific yew (Taxus brevifolia). Other tree based drugs come from the paw-paw (Carica papaya), the cassia (Cassia spp.), the cocoa tree (Theobroma cacao), the tree of life (Camptotheca acuminata) and the downy birch (Betula pubescens).
The papery bark of the white birch tree (Betula papyrifera) was used extensively by Native Americans. Wigwams were covered by it and canoes were constructed from it. Other uses included food containers, hunting and fishing equipment, musical instruments, toys and sledges. Nowadays, bark chips, a by-product of the timber industry, are used as a mulch and as a growing medium for epiphytic plants that need a soil-free compost.
### Ornamental trees
Trees create a visual impact in the same way as do other landscape features and give a sense of maturity and permanence to park and garden. They are grown for the beauty of their forms, their foliage, flowers, fruit and bark and their siting is of major importance in creating a landscape. They can be grouped informally, often surrounded by plantings of bulbs, laid out in stately avenues or used as specimen trees. As living things, their appearance changes with the season and from year to year.
Trees are often planted in town environments where they are known as street trees or amenity trees. They can provide shade and cooling through evapotranspiration, absorb greenhouse gases and pollutants, intercept rainfall, and reduce the risk of flooding. Scientific studies show that street trees help cities be more sustainable, and improve the physical and mental wellbeing of the citizens. It has been shown that they are beneficial to humans in creating a sense of well-being and reducing stress. Many towns have initiated tree-planting programmes. In London for example, there is an initiative to plant 20,000 new street trees and to have an increase in tree cover of 5% by 2025, equivalent to one tree for every resident.
### Other uses
Latex is a sticky defensive secretion that protects plants against herbivores. Many trees produce it when injured but the main source of the latex used to make natural rubber is the Pará rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis). Originally used to create bouncy balls and for the waterproofing of cloth, natural rubber is now mainly used in tyres for which synthetic materials have proved less durable. The latex exuded by the balatá tree (Manilkara bidentata) is used to make golf balls and is similar to gutta-percha, made from the latex of the "getah perca" tree Palaquium. This is also used as an insulator, particularly of undersea cables, and in dentistry, walking sticks and gun butts. It has now largely been replaced by synthetic materials.
Resin is another plant exudate that may have a defensive purpose. It is a viscous liquid composed mainly of volatile terpenes and is produced mostly by coniferous trees. It is used in varnishes, for making small castings and in ten-pin bowling balls. When heated, the terpenes are driven off and the remaining product is called "rosin" and is used by stringed instrumentalists on their bows. Some resins contain essential oils and are used in incense and aromatherapy. Fossilised resin is known as amber and was mostly formed in the Cretaceous (145 to 66 million years ago) or more recently. The resin that oozed out of trees sometimes trapped insects or spiders and these are still visible in the interior of the amber.
The camphor tree (Cinnamomum camphora) produces an essential oil and the eucalyptus tree (Eucalyptus globulus) is the main source of eucalyptus oil which is used in medicine, as a fragrance and in industry.
## Threats
### Individual trees
Dead trees pose a safety risk, especially during high winds and severe storms, and removing dead trees involves a financial burden, whereas the presence of healthy trees can clean the air, increase property values, and reduce the temperature of the built environment and thereby reduce building cooling costs. During times of drought, trees can fall into water stress, which may cause a tree to become more susceptible to disease and insect problems, and ultimately may lead to a tree's death. Irrigating trees during dry periods can reduce the risk of water stress and death.
### Conservation
About a third of all tree species, some twenty thousand, are included in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Of those, over eight thousand are globally threatened, including at least 1400 which are classed as "critically endangered".
## Mythology
Trees have been venerated since time immemorial. To the ancient Celts, certain trees, especially the oak, ash and thorn, held special significance as providing fuel, building materials, ornamental objects and weaponry. Other cultures have similarly revered trees, often linking the lives and fortunes of individuals to them or using them as oracles. In Greek mythology, dryads were believed to be shy nymphs who inhabited trees.
The Oubangui people of west Africa plant a tree when a child is born. As the tree flourishes, so does the child but if the tree fails to thrive, the health of the child is considered at risk. When it flowers it is time for marriage. Gifts are left at the tree periodically and when the individual dies, their spirit is believed to live on in the tree.
Trees have their roots in the ground and their trunk and branches extended towards the sky. This concept is found in many of the world's religions as a tree which links the underworld and the earth and holds up the heavens. In Norse mythology, Yggdrasil is a central cosmic tree whose roots and branches extend to various worlds. Various creatures live on it. In India, Kalpavriksha is a wish-fulfilling tree, one of the nine jewels that emerged from the primitive ocean. Icons are placed beneath it to be worshipped, tree nymphs inhabit the branches and it grants favours to the devout who tie threads round the trunk. Democracy started in North America when the Great Peacemaker formed the Iroquois Confederacy, inspiring the warriors of the original five American nations to bury their weapons under the Tree of Peace, an eastern white pine (Pinus strobus). In the creation story in the Bible, the tree of life and the knowledge of good and evil was planted by God in the Garden of Eden.
Sacred groves exist in China, India, Africa and elsewhere. They are places where the deities live and where all the living things are either sacred or are companions of the gods. Folklore lays down the supernatural penalties that will result if desecration takes place for example by the felling of trees. Because of their protected status, sacred groves may be the only relicts of ancient forest and have a biodiversity much greater than the surrounding area. Some Ancient Indian tree deities, such as Puliyidaivalaiyamman, the Tamil deity of the tamarind tree, or Kadambariyamman, associated with the cadamba tree, were seen as manifestations of a goddess who offers her blessings by giving fruits in abundance.
## Superlative trees
Trees have a theoretical maximum height of 130 m (430 ft), but the tallest known specimen on earth is believed to be a coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) at Redwood National Park, California. It has been named Hyperion and is 115.85 m (380.1 ft) tall. In 2006, it was reported to be 379.1 ft (115.5 m) tall. The tallest known broad-leaved tree is a mountain ash (Eucalyptus regnans) growing in Tasmania with a height of 99.8 m (327 ft).
The largest tree by volume is believed to be a giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) known as the General Sherman Tree in the Sequoia National Park in Tulare County, California. Only the trunk is used in the calculation and the volume is estimated to be 1,487 m<sup>3</sup> (52,500 cu ft).
The oldest living tree with a verified age is also in California. It is a Great Basin bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva) growing in the White Mountains. It has been dated by drilling a core sample and counting the annual rings. It is estimated to currently be years old.
A little farther south, at Santa Maria del Tule, Oaxaca, Mexico, is the tree with the broadest trunk. It is a Montezuma cypress (Taxodium mucronatum) known as Árbol del Tule and its diameter at breast height is 11.62 m (38.1 ft) giving it a girth of 36.2 m (119 ft). The tree's trunk is far from round and the exact dimensions may be misleading as the circumference includes much empty space between the large buttress roots.
## See also |
15,919 | John Wilkes Booth | 1,173,350,778 | American stage actor and assassin (1838–1865) | [
"1838 births",
"1865 deaths",
"1865 murders in the United States",
"19th-century American Episcopalians",
"19th-century American criminals",
"19th-century American male actors",
"19th-century diarists",
"American diarists",
"American male Shakespearean actors",
"American male stage actors",
"American people of English descent",
"Assassins of presidents of the United States",
"Bel Air High School (Bel Air, Maryland) alumni",
"Booth family (theatre)",
"Burials at Green Mount Cemetery",
"Criminals from Maryland",
"Deaths by firearm in Virginia",
"Extrajudicial killings by the United States military",
"John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry",
"Knights of the Golden Circle",
"Lincoln assassination conspirators",
"Male actors from Maryland",
"Maryland Know Nothings",
"People from Baltimore County, Maryland",
"People from Bel Air, Maryland",
"People of Maryland in the American Civil War",
"People shot dead by law enforcement officers in the United States",
"Proslavery activists killed in the American Civil War"
]
| John Wilkes Booth (May 10, 1838 – April 26, 1865) was an American stage actor who assassinated United States President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865. A member of the prominent 19th-century Booth theatrical family from Maryland, he was a noted actor who was also a Confederate sympathizer; denouncing President Lincoln, he lamented the then-recent abolition of slavery in the United States.
Originally, Booth and his small group of conspirators had plotted to kidnap Lincoln to aid the Confederate cause. They later decided to murder him, as well as Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William H. Seward. Although the Army of Northern Virginia, commanded by General Robert E. Lee, had surrendered to the Union Army four days earlier, Booth believed that the Civil War remained unresolved because the Army of Tennessee of General Joseph E. Johnston continued fighting.
Booth shot President Lincoln once in the back of the head. Lincoln's death the next morning completed Booth's piece of the plot. Seward, severely wounded, recovered, whereas Vice President Johnson was never attacked. Booth fled on horseback to Southern Maryland; twelve days later, at a farm in rural Northern Virginia, he was tracked down sheltered in a barn. Booth's companion David Herold surrendered, but Booth maintained a standoff. After the authorities set the barn ablaze, Union soldier Boston Corbett fatally shot him in the neck. Paralyzed, he died a few hours later. Of the eight conspirators later convicted, four were soon hanged.
## Background and early life
Booth's parents were noted British Shakespearean actor Junius Brutus Booth and his mistress, Mary Ann Holmes, who moved to the United States from England in June 1821. They purchased a 150-acre (61 ha) farm near Bel Air, Maryland, where John Wilkes Booth was born in a four-room log house on May 10, 1838, the ninth of ten children. He was named after English radical politician John Wilkes, a distant relative. Thirty years after he had absconded across the Atlantic Ocean, Junius' wife Adelaide Delannoy Booth was granted a divorce in 1851 on grounds of adultery, and Holmes legally wed Junius on May 10, 1851, John Wilkes' 13th birthday. Nora Titone suggests in her book My Thoughts Be Bloody (2010) that the shame and ambition of Junius Brutus Booth's actor sons Edwin and John Wilkes eventually spurred them to strive for achievement and acclaim as rivals—Edwin as a Unionist and John Wilkes as the assassin of Abraham Lincoln.
Booth's father built Tudor Hall on the Harford County property as the family's summer home in 1851, while also maintaining a winter residence on Exeter Street in Baltimore. The Booth family was listed as living in Baltimore in the 1850 census.
As a boy, Booth was athletic and popular, and he became skilled at horsemanship and fencing. He attended the Bel Air Academy and was an indifferent student whom the headmaster thought was "not deficient in intelligence, but disinclined to take advantage of the educational opportunities offered him." In 1850–1851, he attended the Quaker-run Milton Boarding School for Boys located in Sparks, Maryland, and later St. Timothy's Hall, an Episcopal military academy in Catonsville, Maryland. At the Milton school, students recited classical works by such authors as Cicero, Herodotus, and Tacitus. Students at St. Timothy's wore military uniforms and were subject to a regimen of daily formation drills and strict discipline. Booth left school at 14 after his father's death.
While attending the Milton Boarding School, Booth met a Romani fortune-teller who read his palm and pronounced a grim destiny, telling him that he would have a grand but short life, doomed to die young and "meeting a bad end". His sister recalled that he wrote down the palm-reader's prediction, showed it to his family and others, and often discussed its portents in moments of melancholy.
By age 16, Booth was interested in the theater and in politics, and he became a delegate from Bel Air to a rally by the Know Nothing Party for Henry Winter Davis, the anti-immigrant party's candidate for Congress in the 1854 elections. Booth aspired to follow in the footsteps of his father and his actor brothers Edwin and Junius Brutus Jr. He began practicing elocution daily in the woods around Tudor Hall and studying Shakespeare.
## Theatrical career
### 1850s
Booth made his stage debut at age 17 on August 14, 1855, in the supporting role of the Earl of Richmond in Richard III at Baltimore's Charles Street Theatre. The audience jeered at him when he missed some of his lines. He also began acting at Baltimore's Holliday Street Theater, owned by John T. Ford, where the Booths had performed frequently. In 1857 he joined the stock company of the Arch Street Theatre in Philadelphia, where he played for a full season. At his request, he was billed as "J.B. Wilkes", a pseudonym meant to avoid comparison with other members of his famous thespian family. Jim Bishop wrote that Booth "developed into an outrageous scene stealer, but he played his parts with such heightened enthusiasm that the audiences idolized him." In February 1858, he played in Lucrezia Borgia at the Arch Street Theatre. On opening night, he experienced stage fright and stumbled over one of his lines. Instead of introducing himself by saying, "Madame, I am Petruchio Pandolfo", he stammered, "Madame, I am Pondolfio Pet—Pedolfio Pat—Pantuchio Ped—dammit! Who am I?", causing the audience to roar with laughter.
Later that year, Booth played the part of Mohegan Indian Chief Uncas in a play staged in Petersburg, Virginia, and then became a stock company actor at the Richmond Theatre in Virginia, where he became increasingly popular with audiences for his energetic performances. On October 5, 1858, he played the part of Horatio in Hamlet, alongside his older brother Edwin in the title role. Afterward, Edwin led him to the theater's footlights and said to the audience, "I think he's done well, don't you?" In response, the audience applauded loudly and cried, "Yes! Yes!" In all, Booth performed in 83 plays in 1858. Booth said that, of all Shakespearean characters, his favorite role was Brutus, the slayer of a tyrant.
Some critics called Booth "the handsomest man in America" and a "natural genius", and noted his having an "astonishing memory"; others were mixed in their estimation of his acting. He stood 5 feet 8 inches (1.73 m) tall, had jet-black hair, and was lean and athletic. Noted Civil War reporter George Alfred Townsend described him as a "muscular, perfect man" with "curling hair, like a Corinthian capital". Booth's stage performances were often characterized by his contemporaries as acrobatic and intensely physical, with him leaping upon the stage and gesturing with passion. He was an excellent swordsman, although a fellow actor once recalled that Booth occasionally cut himself with his own sword.
Historian Benjamin Platt Thomas wrote that Booth "won celebrity with theater-goers by his romantic personal attraction", and that he was "too impatient for hard study" and his "brilliant talents had failed of full development." Author Gene Smith wrote that Booth's acting may not have been as precise as his brother Edwin's, but his strikingly handsome appearance enthralled women. As the 1850s drew to a close, Booth was becoming wealthy as an actor, earning \$20,000 a year ().
### 1860s
Booth embarked on his first national tour as a leading actor after finishing the 1859–1860 theatre season in Richmond, Virginia. He engaged Philadelphia attorney Matthew Canning to serve as his agent. By mid-1860, he was playing in such cities as New York; Boston; Chicago; Cleveland; St. Louis; Columbus, Georgia; Montgomery, Alabama; and New Orleans. Poet and journalist Walt Whitman said of Booth's acting, "He would have flashes, passages, I thought of real genius." The Philadelphia Press drama critic said, "Without having [his brother] Edwin's culture and grace, Mr. Booth has far more action, more life, and, we are inclined to think, more natural genius." In October 1860, while performing in Columbus, Georgia, Booth was shot accidentally in his hotel, leaving a wound some thought would end his life.
When the Civil War began on April 12, 1861, Booth was starring in Albany, New York. He was outspoken in his admiration for the South's secession, publicly calling it "heroic." This so enraged local citizens that they demanded that he be banned from the stage for making "treasonable statements". Albany's drama critics were kinder, giving him rave reviews. One called him a genius, praising his acting for "never fail[ing] to delight with his masterly impressions." As the Civil War raged across the divided land in 1862, Booth appeared mostly in Union and border states. In January, he played the title role in Richard III in St. Louis and then made his Chicago debut. In March, he made his first acting appearance in New York City. In May 1862, he made his Boston debut, playing nightly at the Boston Museum in Richard III (May 12, 15 and 23), Romeo and Juliet (May 13), The Robbers (May 14 and 21), Hamlet (May 16), The Apostate (May 19), The Stranger (May 20), and The Lady of Lyons (May 22). Following his performance of Richard III on May 12, the Boston Transcript's review the next day called Booth "the most promising young actor on the American stage".
Starting in January 1863, he returned to the Boston Museum for a series of plays, including the role of villain Duke Pescara in The Apostate, that won him acclaim from audiences and critics. Back in Washington in April, he played the title roles in Hamlet and Richard III, one of his favorites. He was billed as "The Pride of the American People, A Star of the First Magnitude," and the critics were equally enthusiastic. The National Republican drama critic said that Booth "took the hearts of the audience by storm" and termed his performance "a complete triumph". At the beginning of July 1863, Booth finished the acting season at Cleveland's Academy of Music, as the Battle of Gettysburg raged in Pennsylvania. Between September and November 1863, Booth played a hectic schedule in the northeastern United States, appearing in Boston, Providence, Rhode Island, and Hartford, Connecticut. Every day he received fan mail from infatuated women.
Family friend John T. Ford opened 1,500-seat Ford's Theatre on November 9 in Washington, D.C. Booth was one of the first leading men to appear there, playing in Charles Selby's The Marble Heart. In this play, Booth portrayed a Greek sculptor in costume, making marble statues come to life. Lincoln watched the play from his box. At one point during the performance, Booth was said to have shaken his finger in Lincoln's direction as he delivered a line of dialogue. Lincoln's sister-in-law was sitting with him in the same presidential box where he was later slain; she turned to him and said, "Mr. Lincoln, he looks as if he meant that for you." The President replied, "He does look pretty sharp at me, doesn't he?" On another occasion, Lincoln's son Tad saw Booth perform. He said that the actor thrilled him, prompting Booth to give Tad a rose. Booth ignored an invitation to visit Lincoln between acts.
On November 25, 1864, Booth performed for the only time with his brothers Edwin and Junius in a single engagement production of Julius Caesar at the Winter Garden Theatre in New York. He played Mark Antony and his brother Edwin had the larger role of Brutus in a performance acclaimed as "the greatest theatrical event in New York history." The proceeds went towards a statue of William Shakespeare for Central Park, which still stands today (2019). In January 1865, he acted in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in Washington, again garnering rave reviews. The National Intelligencer called Booth's Romeo "the most satisfactory of all renderings of that fine character," especially praising the death scene. Booth made the final appearance of his acting career at Ford's on March 18, 1865, when he again played Duke Pescara in The Apostate.
## Business ventures
Booth invested some of his growing wealth in various enterprises during the early 1860s, including land speculation in Boston's Back Bay section. He also started a business partnership with John A. Ellsler, manager of the Cleveland Academy of Music, and with Thomas Mears to develop oil wells in northwestern Pennsylvania, where an oil boom had started in August 1859, following Edwin Drake's discovery of oil there, initially calling their venture Dramatic Oil but later renaming it Fuller Farm Oil. The partners invested in a 31.5-acre (12.7 ha) site along the Allegheny River at Franklin, Pennsylvania in late 1863 for drilling. By early 1864, they had a producing 1,900-foot (579 m) deep oil well named Wilhelmina for Mears' wife, yielding 25 barrels (4 kL) of crude oil daily, then considered a good yield. The Fuller Farm Oil company was selling shares with a prospectus featuring the well-known actor's celebrity status as "Mr. J. Wilkes Booth, a successful and intelligent operator in oil lands". The partners were impatient to increase the well's output and attempted the use of explosives, which wrecked the well and ended production.
Booth was already growing more obsessed with the South's worsening situation in the Civil War and angered at Lincoln's re-election. He withdrew from the oil business on November 27, 1864, with a substantial loss of his \$6,000 investment (\$ today).
## Civil War years
Booth was strongly opposed to the abolitionists who sought to end slavery in the United States. He attended the hanging of abolitionist leader John Brown on December 2, 1859, who was executed for treason, murder, and inciting a slave insurrection, charges resulting from his raid on the Federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (since 1863, West Virginia). Booth had been rehearsing at the Richmond Theatre when he read in a newspaper about Brown's upcoming execution. So as to gain access that the public would not have, he donned a borrowed uniform of the Richmond Grays, a volunteer militia of 1,500 men traveling to Charles Town for Brown's hanging, to guard against a possible attempt to rescue Brown from the gallows by force. When Brown was hanged without incident, Booth stood near the scaffold and afterwards expressed great satisfaction with Brown's fate, although he admired the condemned man's bravery in facing death stoically.
Lincoln was elected president on November 6, 1860, and the following month Booth drafted a long speech, apparently never delivered, that decried Northern abolitionism and made clear his strong support of the South and the institution of slavery. On April 12, 1861, the Civil War began, and eventually 11 Southern states seceded from the Union. In Booth's native Maryland, some of the slaveholding portion of the population favored joining the Confederate States of America. Although the Maryland legislature voted decisively (53–13) against secession on April 28, 1861, it also voted not to allow federal troops to pass south through the state by rail, and it requested that Lincoln remove the growing numbers of federal troops in Maryland. The legislature seems to have wanted to remain in the Union while also wanting to avoid involvement in a war against Southern neighbors. Adhering to Maryland's demand that its infrastructure not be used to wage war on seceding neighbors would have left the federal capital of Washington, D.C., exposed, and would have made the prosecution of war against the South impossible, which was no doubt the legislature's intention. Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus and imposed martial law in Baltimore and other portions of the state, ordering the imprisonment of many Maryland political leaders at Fort McHenry and the stationing of Federal troops in Baltimore. Many Marylanders, including Booth, agreed with the ruling of Marylander and U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, in Ex parte Merryman, that Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus in Maryland was unconstitutional.
As a popular actor in the 1860s, Booth continued to travel extensively to perform in the North and South, and as far west as New Orleans. According to his sister Asia, Booth confided to her that he also used his position to smuggle the anti-malarial drug quinine, which was crucial to the lives of residents of the Gulf coast, to the South during his travels there, since it was in short supply due to the Northern blockade.
Booth was pro-Confederate, but his family was divided, like many Marylanders. He was outspoken in his love of the South, and equally outspoken in his hatred of Lincoln. As the Civil War went on, Booth increasingly quarreled with his brother Edwin, who declined to make stage appearances in the South and refused to listen to John Wilkes' fiercely partisan denunciations of the North and Lincoln. In early 1863, Booth was arrested in St. Louis while on a theatre tour, when he was heard saying that he "wished the President and the whole damned government would go to hell." He was charged with making "treasonous" remarks against the government, but was released when he took an oath of allegiance to the Union and paid a substantial fine.
Booth is alleged to have been a member of the Knights of the Golden Circle, a secret society whose initial objective was to acquire territories as slave states.
In February 1865, Booth became infatuated with Lucy Lambert Hale, the daughter of U.S. Senator John P. Hale of New Hampshire, and they became secretly engaged when Booth received his mother's blessing for their marriage plans. "You have so often been dead in love," his mother counseled Booth in a letter, "be well assured she is really and truly devoted to you." Booth composed a handwritten Valentine card for his fiancée on February 13, expressing his "adoration". She was unaware of Booth's deep antipathy towards Lincoln.
### Plot to kidnap Lincoln
As the 1864 presidential election drew near, the Confederacy's prospects for victory were ebbing, and the tide of war increasingly favored the North. The likelihood of Lincoln's re-election filled Booth with rage towards the President, whom Booth blamed for the war and all of the South's troubles. Booth had promised his mother at the outbreak of war that he would not enlist as a soldier, but he increasingly chafed at not fighting for the South, writing in a letter to her, "I have begun to deem myself a coward and to despise my own existence." He began to formulate plans to kidnap Lincoln from his summer residence at the Old Soldiers Home, three miles (4.8 km) from the White House, and to smuggle him across the Potomac River and into Richmond, Virginia. Once in Confederate hands, Lincoln would be exchanged for Confederate Army prisoners of war held in Northern prisons and, Booth reasoned, bring the war to an end by emboldening opposition to the war in the North or forcing Union recognition of the Confederate government.
Throughout the Civil War, the Confederacy maintained a network of underground operators in southern Maryland, particularly Charles and St. Mary's Counties, smuggling recruits across the Potomac River into Virginia and relaying messages for Confederate agents as far north as Canada. Booth recruited his friends Samuel Arnold and Michael O'Laughlen as accomplices. They met often at the house of Confederate sympathizer Maggie Branson at 16 North Eutaw Street in Baltimore. He also met with several well-known Confederate sympathizers at The Parker House in Boston.
In October, Booth made an unexplained trip to Montreal, which was a center of clandestine Confederate activity. He spent ten days in the city, staying for a time at St. Lawrence Hall, a rendezvous for the Confederate Secret Service, and meeting several Confederate agents there. No conclusive proof has linked Booth's kidnapping or assassination plots to a conspiracy involving the leadership of the Confederate government, but historian David Herbert Donald states that "at least at the lower levels of the Southern secret service, the abduction of the Union President was under consideration." Historian Thomas Goodrich concludes that Booth entered the Confederate Secret Service as a spy and courier.
Lincoln won a landslide re-election in early November 1864, on a platform that advocated abolishing slavery altogether, by Constitutional amendment. Booth, meanwhile, devoted increased energy and money to his kidnapping plot. He assembled a loose-knit band of Confederate sympathizers, including David Herold, George Atzerodt, Lewis Powell (also known as Lewis Payne or Paine), and rebel agent John Surratt. They began to meet routinely at the boarding house of Surratt's mother, Mary Surratt.
By this time, John was arguing vehemently with his older, pro-Union brother Edwin about Lincoln and the war, and Edwin finally told him that he was no longer welcome at his New York home. Booth also railed against Lincoln in conversations with his sister Asia. "That man's appearance, his pedigree, his coarse low jokes and anecdotes, his vulgar similes, and his policy are a disgrace to the seat he holds. He is made the tool of the North, to crush out slavery." Asia recalled that he decried Lincoln's re-election, "making himself a king", and that he went on "wild tirades" in 1865, as the Confederacy's defeat became more certain.
Booth attended Lincoln's second inauguration on March 4 as the guest of his secret fiancée Lucy Hale. In the crowd below were Powell, Atzerodt, and Herold. There was no attempt to assassinate Lincoln during the inauguration. Later, Booth remarked about his "excellent chance...to kill the President, if I had wished." On March 17, he learned that Lincoln would be attending a performance of the play Still Waters Run Deep at a hospital near the Soldier's Home. He assembled his team on a stretch of road near the Soldier's Home in hope of kidnapping Lincoln en route to the hospital, but the President did not appear. Booth later learned that Lincoln had changed his plans at the last moment to attend a reception at the National Hotel in Washington — where Booth was staying.
## Assassination of Lincoln
On April 11, 1865, Booth was in the crowd outside the White House when Lincoln gave an impromptu speech from his window. During the speech, Lincoln stated that he was in favor of granting suffrage to former slaves; infuriated, Booth vowed to kill him and declared that it would be the last speech that Lincoln would ever make.
On April 12, 1865, Booth heard the news that Robert E. Lee had surrendered at Appomattox Court House. He told Louis J. Weichmann, a friend of John Surratt and a boarder at Mary Surratt's house, that he was done with the stage and that the only play he wanted to present henceforth was Venice Preserv'd. Weichmann did not understand the reference; Venice Preserv'd is about an assassination plot. Booth's scheme to kidnap Lincoln was no longer feasible with the Union Army's capture of Richmond and Lee's surrender, and he changed his goal to assassination.
On the morning of Good Friday, April 14, 1865, Booth went to Ford's Theatre to get his mail. While there, he was told by John Ford's brother that the President and Mrs. Lincoln would be attending the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre that evening, accompanied by Gen. and Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant. He immediately set about making plans for the assassination, which included making arrangements with livery stable owner James W. Pumphrey for a getaway horse and an escape route. Later that night, at 8:45 pm, Booth informed Powell, Herold, and Atzerodt of his intention to kill Lincoln. He assigned Powell to assassinate Secretary of State William H. Seward and Atzerodt to do so to Vice President Andrew Johnson. Herold would assist in their escape into Virginia.
Historian Michael W. Kauffman wrote that, by targeting Lincoln and his two immediate successors to the presidency, Booth seems to have intended to decapitate the Union government and throw it into a state of panic and confusion. In 1865, however, the second presidential successor would have been the president pro tempore of the U.S. Senate, Lafayette S. Foster, rather than Secretary Seward. The possibility of assassinating the Union Army's commanding general as well was foiled when Grant declined the theatre invitation at his wife's insistence. Instead, the Grants departed Washington by train that evening for a visit to relatives in New Jersey. Booth had hoped that the assassinations would create sufficient chaos within the Union that the Confederate government could reorganize and continue the war if one Confederate army remained in the field or, that failing, would avenge the South's defeat.
Booth had free access to all parts of Ford's Theatre as a famous and popular actor who had frequently performed there and who was well known to its owner John T. Ford, even having his mail sent there. Many believe that Booth had bored a spyhole into the door of the presidential box earlier that day, so that he could observe the box's occupants and verify that the President had made it to the play. Conversely, an April 1962 letter from Frank Ford, son of the theatre manager Harry Clay Ford, to George Olszewski, a National Park Service historian, includes: "Booth did not bore the hole in the door leading to the box [...]. The hole was bored by my father ... [to] allow the guard ... to look into the box".
After spending time at the saloon during intermission, Booth entered Ford's Theater one last time at 10:10 pm. In the theater, he slipped into Lincoln's box at around 10:14 p.m. as the play progressed and shot the President in the back of the head with a .41 caliber Deringer pistol. Booth's escape was almost thwarted by Major Henry Rathbone, who was in the presidential box with Mary Todd Lincoln. Booth stabbed Rathbone when the startled officer lunged at him. Rathbone's fiancée Clara Harris was also in the box but was not harmed.
Booth then jumped from the President's box to the stage, where he raised his knife and shouted "Sic semper tyrannis". (Latin for "Thus always to tyrants," attributed to Brutus at Caesar's assassination; state motto of Virginia and mentioned in the new "Maryland, My Maryland", future anthem of Booth's Maryland.) According to some accounts, Booth added, "I have done it, the South is avenged!" Some witnesses reported that Booth fractured or otherwise injured his leg when his spur snagged a decorative U.S. Treasury Guard flag while leaping to the stage. Historian Michael W. Kauffman questioned this legend in his book American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies, writing that eyewitness accounts of Booth's hurried stage exit made it unlikely that his leg was broken then. Kauffman contends that Booth was injured later that night during his flight to escape when his horse tripped and fell on him, calling Booth's claim to the contrary an exaggeration to portray his own actions as heroic.
Booth was the only one of the assassins to succeed. Powell was able to stab Seward, who was bedridden as a result of an earlier carriage accident; Seward was seriously wounded but survived. Atzerodt lost his nerve and spent the evening drinking alcohol, never making an attempt to kill Johnson.
## Reaction and pursuit
Booth fled Ford's Theatre by a stage door to the alley, where his getaway horse was held for him by Joseph "Peanuts" Burroughs. The owner of the horse had warned Booth that the horse was high-spirited and would break halter if left unattended. Booth had left the horse with Edmund Spangler and Spangler arranged for Burroughs to hold it.
Booth rode into southern Maryland, accompanied by David Herold, having planned his escape route to take advantage of the sparsely settled area's lack of telegraphs and railroads, along with its predominantly Confederate sympathies. He thought that the area's dense forests and the swampy terrain of Zekiah Swamp made it ideal for an escape route into rural Virginia. At midnight, Booth and Herold arrived at Surratt's Tavern on the Brandywine Pike, 9 miles (14 km) from Washington, where they had stored guns and equipment earlier in the year as part of the kidnap plot.
The duo then continued southward, stopping before dawn on April 15 for treatment of Booth's injured leg at the home of Dr. Samuel Mudd in St. Catharine, 25 miles (40 km) from Washington. Mudd later said that Booth told him the injury occurred when his horse fell. The next day, Booth and Herold arrived at the home of Samuel Cox around 4 am. As the two fugitives hid in the woods nearby, Cox contacted Thomas A. Jones, his foster brother and a Confederate agent in charge of spy operations in the southern Maryland area since 1862. The War Department advertised a \$100,000 reward (\$ in 2023 USD) by order of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton for information leading to the arrest of Booth and his accomplices, and Federal troops were dispatched to search southern Maryland extensively, following tips reported by Federal intelligence agents to Col. Lafayette Baker.
Federal troops combed the rural area's woods and swamps for Booth in the days following the assassination, as the nation experienced an outpouring of grief. On April 18, mourners waited seven abreast in a mile-long line outside the White House for the public viewing of the slain president, reposing in his open walnut casket in the black-draped East Room. A cross of lilies was at the head and roses covered the coffin's lower half. Thousands of mourners arriving on special trains jammed Washington for the next day's funeral, sleeping on hotel floors and even resorting to blankets spread outdoors on the Capitol's lawn. Prominent African American abolitionist leader and orator Frederick Douglass called the assassination an "unspeakable calamity". Great indignation was directed towards Booth as the assassin's identity was telegraphed across the nation. Newspapers called him an "accursed devil," "monster," "madman," and a "wretched fiend." Historian Dorothy Kunhardt writes: "Almost every family who kept a photograph album on the parlor table owned a likeness of John Wilkes Booth of the famous Booth family of actors. After the assassination Northerners slid the Booth card out of their albums: some threw it away, some burned it, some crumpled it angrily." Even in the South, sorrow was expressed in some quarters. In Savannah, Georgia, the mayor and city council addressed a vast throng at an outdoor gathering to express their indignation, and many in the crowd wept. Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston called Booth's act "a disgrace to the age". Robert E. Lee also expressed regret at Lincoln's death by Booth's hand.
Not all were grief-stricken. In New York City, a man was attacked by an enraged crowd when he shouted, "It served Old Abe right!" after hearing the news of Lincoln's death. Elsewhere in the South, Lincoln was hated in death as in life, and Booth was viewed as a hero as many rejoiced at news of his deed. Other Southerners feared that a vengeful North would exact a terrible retribution upon the defeated former Confederate states. "Instead of being a great Southern hero, his deed was considered the worst possible tragedy that could have befallen the South as well as the North," writes Kunhardt.
Booth continued hiding in the Maryland woods, waiting for an opportunity to cross the Potomac River into Virginia. He read the accounts of national mourning reported in the newspapers brought to him by Jones each day. By April 20, he was aware that some of his co-conspirators had already been arrested: Mary Surratt, Powell (or Paine), Arnold, and O'Laughlen. Booth was surprised to find little public sympathy for his action, especially from those anti-Lincoln newspapers that had previously excoriated the President in life. News of the assassination reached the far corners of the nation, and indignation was aroused against Lincoln's critics, whom many blamed for encouraging Booth to act. The San Francisco Chronicle editorialized:
> Booth has simply carried out what...secession politicians and journalists have been for years expressing in words...who have denounced the President as a "tyrant," a "despot," a "usurper," hinted at, and virtually recommended.
Booth wrote of his dismay in a journal entry on April 21, as he awaited nightfall before crossing the Potomac River into Virginia (see map):
> For six months we had worked to capture. But our cause being almost lost, something decisive and great must be done. I struck boldly, and not as the papers say. I can never repent it, though we hated to kill.
That same day, the nine-car funeral train bearing Lincoln's body departed Washington on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, arriving at Baltimore's Camden Station at 10 am, the first stop on a 13-day journey to Springfield, Illinois, its final destination. The funeral train slowly made its way westward through seven states, stopping en route at Harrisburg, Philadelphia, Trenton, New York, Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, and Indianapolis during the following days. About 7 million people lined the railroad tracks along the 1,662-mile (2,675 km) route, holding aloft signs with legends such as "We mourn our loss," "He lives in the hearts of his people," and "The darkest hour in history."
In the cities where the train stopped, 1.5 million people viewed Lincoln in his coffin. Aboard the train was Chauncey Depew, a New York politician and later president of the New York Central Railroad, who said, "As we sped over the rails at night, the scene was the most pathetic ever witnessed. At every crossroads the glare of innumerable torches illuminated the whole population, kneeling on the ground." Dorothy Kunhardt called the funeral train's journey "the mightiest outpouring of national grief the world had yet seen."
Mourners were viewing Lincoln's remains when the funeral train steamed into Harrisburg at 8:20 pm, while Booth and Herold were provided with a boat and compass by Jones to cross the Potomac at night on April 21. Instead of reaching Virginia, they mistakenly navigated upriver to a bend in the broad Potomac River, coming ashore again in Maryland on April 22. The 23-year-old Herold knew the area well, having frequently hunted there, and recognized a nearby farm as belonging to a Confederate sympathizer. The farmer led them to his son-in-law, Col. John J. Hughes, who provided the fugitives with food and a hideout until nightfall, for a second attempt to row across the river to Virginia. Booth wrote in his diary:
> With every man's hand against me, I am here in despair. And why; For doing what Brutus was honored for... And yet I for striking down a greater tyrant than they ever knew am looked upon as a common cutthroat.
The pair finally reached the Virginia shore near Machodoc Creek before dawn on April 23. There, they made contact with Thomas Harbin, whom Booth had previously brought into his erstwhile kidnapping plot. Harbin took Booth and Herold to another Confederate agent in the area named William Bryant who supplied them with horses.
While Lincoln's funeral train was in New York City on April 24, Lieutenant Edward P. Doherty was dispatched from Washington at 2 p.m. with a detachment of 26 Union soldiers from the 16th New York Cavalry Regiment to capture Booth in Virginia, accompanied by Lieutenant Colonel Everton Conger, an intelligence officer assigned by Lafayette Baker. The detachment steamed 70 miles (113 km) down the Potomac River on the boat John S. Ide, landing at Belle Plain, Virginia, at 10 pm. The pursuers crossed the Rappahannock River and tracked Booth and Herold to Richard H. Garrett's farm, about 2 miles (3 km) south of Port Royal, Virginia. Booth and Herold had been led to the farm on April 24 by William S. Jett, a former private in the 9th Virginia Cavalry, whom they had met before crossing the Rappahannock. The Garretts were unaware of Lincoln's assassination; Booth was introduced to them as "James W. Boyd", a Confederate soldier, they were told, who had been wounded in the battle of Petersburg and was returning home.
Garrett's 11-year-old son Richard was an eyewitness to the event. In later years, he became a Baptist minister and widely lectured on the events of Booth's demise at his family's farm. In 1921, Garrett's lecture was published in the Confederate Veteran as the "True Story of the Capture of John Wilkes Booth." According to his account, Booth and Herold arrived at the Garretts' farm, located on the road to, and close to, Bowling Green, around 3 p.m. on Monday afternoon. Confederate mail delivery had ceased with the collapse of the Confederacy, he explained, so the Garretts were unaware of Lincoln's assassination. After having dinner with the Garretts that evening, Booth learned of the surrender of Johnston's army, the last Confederate armed force of any size. Its capitulation meant that the Civil War was unquestionably over and Booth's attempt to save the Confederacy by Lincoln's assassination had failed. The Garretts also finally learned of Lincoln's death and the substantial reward for Booth's capture. Booth, said Garrett, displayed no reaction other than to ask if the family would turn in the fugitive should they have the opportunity. Still not aware of their guest's true identity, one of the older Garrett sons offered that they might, if only because they needed the money. The next day, Booth told the Garretts that he intended to reach Mexico, drawing a route on a map of theirs. Biographer Theodore Roscoe said of Garrett's account, "Almost nothing written or testified in respect to the doings of the fugitives at Garrett's farm can be taken at face value. Nobody knows exactly what Booth said to the Garretts, or they to him."
## Death
Conger tracked down Jett and interrogated him, learning of Booth's location at the Garrett farm. Before dawn on April 26, the soldiers caught up with the fugitives, who were hiding in Garrett's tobacco barn. David Herold surrendered, but Booth refused Conger's demand to surrender, saying, "I prefer to come out and fight." The soldiers then set the barn on fire. As Booth moved about inside the blazing barn, Sergeant Boston Corbett shot him. According to Corbett's later account, he fired at Booth because the fugitive "raised his pistol to shoot" at them. Conger's report to Stanton stated that Corbett shot Booth "without order, pretext or excuse," and recommended that Corbett be punished for disobeying orders to take Booth alive. Booth, fatally wounded in the neck, was dragged from the barn to the porch of Garrett's farmhouse, where he died three hours later, aged 26. The bullet had pierced three vertebrae and partially severed his spinal cord, paralyzing him. In his dying moments, he reportedly whispered, "Tell my mother I died for my country." Asking that his hands be raised to his face so that he could see them, Booth uttered his last words, "Useless, useless," and as dawn was breaking he died of asphyxiation as a result of his wounds. In Booth's pockets were found a compass, a candle, pictures of five women (actresses Alice Grey, Helen Western, Effie Germon, Fannie Brown, and Booth's fiancée Lucy Hale), and his diary, where he had written of Lincoln's death, "Our country owed all her troubles to him, and God simply made me the instrument of his punishment."
Shortly after Booth's death, his brother Edwin wrote to his sister Asia, "Think no more of him as your brother; he is dead to us now, as he soon must be to all the world, but imagine the boy you loved to be in that better part of his spirit, in another world." Asia also had in her possession a sealed letter that Booth had given her in January 1865 for safekeeping, only to be opened upon his death. In the letter, Booth had written:
> I know how foolish I shall be deemed for undertaking such a step as this, where, on one side, I have many friends and everything to make me happy ... to give up all ... seems insane; but God is my judge. I love justice more than I do a country that disowns it, more than fame or wealth.
Booth's letter was seized by Federal troops, along with other family papers at Asia's house, and published by The New York Times while the manhunt was still underway. It explained his reasons for plotting against Lincoln. In it he decried Lincoln's war policy as one of "total annihilation", and said:
> I have ever held the South was right. The very nomination of Abraham Lincoln, four years ago, spoke plainly war upon Southern rights and institutions. ...And looking upon African Slavery from the same stand-point held by the noble framers of our constitution, I for one, have ever considered it one of the greatest blessings (both for themselves and us,) that God has ever bestowed upon a favored nation. ...I have also studied hard to discover upon what grounds the right of a State to secede has been denied, when our very name, United States, and the Declaration of Independence, both provide for secession.
## Aftermath
Booth's body was shrouded in a blanket and tied to the side of an old farm wagon for the trip back to Belle Plain. There, his corpse was taken aboard the ironclad USS Montauk and brought to the Washington Navy Yard for identification and an autopsy. The body was identified there as Booth's by more than ten people who knew him. Among the identifying features used to make sure that the man that was killed was Booth was a tattoo on his left hand with his initials J.W.B., and a distinct scar on the back of his neck. The third, fourth, and fifth vertebrae were removed during the autopsy to allow access to the bullet. These bones are still on display at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, D.C. The body was then buried in a storage room at the Arsenal Penitentiary in 1865, and later moved to a warehouse at the Washington Arsenal on October 1, 1867. In 1869, the remains were once again identified before being released to the Booth family, where they were buried in the family plot at Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore, after a burial ceremony conducted by Fleming James, minister of Christ Episcopal Church, in the presence of more than 40 people. Russell Conwell visited homes in the vanquished former Confederate states during this time, and he found that hatred of Lincoln still smoldered. "Photographs of Wilkes Booth, with the last words of great martyrs printed upon its borders...adorn their drawing rooms".
Eight others implicated in Lincoln's assassination were tried by a military tribunal in Washington, D.C., and found guilty on June 30, 1865. Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, David Herold, and George Atzerodt were hanged in the Old Arsenal Penitentiary on July 7, 1865. Samuel Mudd, Samuel Arnold, and Michael O'Laughlen were sentenced to life imprisonment at Fort Jefferson in Florida's isolated Dry Tortugas. Edmund Spangler was given a six-year term in prison. O'Laughlen died in a yellow fever epidemic there in 1867. The others were eventually pardoned in February 1869 by President Andrew Johnson.
Forty years later, when the centenary of Lincoln's birth was celebrated in 1909, a border state official reflected on Booth's assassination of Lincoln: "Confederate veterans held public services and gave public expression to the sentiment, that 'had Lincoln lived' the days of Reconstruction might have been softened and the era of good feeling ushered in earlier." The majority of Northerners viewed Booth as a madman or monster who murdered the savior of the Union, while in the South, many cursed Booth for bringing upon them the harsh revenge of an incensed North instead of the reconciliation promised by Lincoln. A century later, Goodrich concluded in 2005, "For millions of people, particularly in the South, it would be decades before the impact of the Lincoln assassination began to release its terrible hold on their lives".
### Theories of Booth's motivation
Author Francis Wilson was 11 years old at the time of Lincoln's assassination. He wrote an epitaph of Booth in his 1929 book John Wilkes Booth: "In the terrible deed he committed, he was actuated by no thought of monetary gain, but by a self-sacrificing, albeit wholly fanatical devotion to a cause he thought supreme." Others have seen more selfish motives, such as shame, ambition, and sibling rivalry for achievement and fame.
### Theories of Booth's escape
In 1907, Finis L. Bates wrote Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth, contending that a Booth look-alike was mistakenly killed at the Garrett farm while Booth eluded his pursuers. Booth, said Bates, assumed the pseudonym "John St. Helen" and settled on the Paluxy River near Glen Rose, Texas, and later moved to Granbury, Texas. He fell gravely ill and made a deathbed confession that he was the fugitive assassin, but he then recovered and fled, eventually committing suicide in 1903 in Enid, Oklahoma, under the alias "David E. George". By 1913, more than 70,000 copies of the book had been sold, and Bates exhibited St. Helen's mummified body in carnival sideshows.
In response, the Maryland Historical Society published an account in 1913 by Baltimore mayor William M. Pegram, who had viewed Booth's remains upon the casket's arrival at the Weaver funeral home in Baltimore on February 18, 1869, for burial at Green Mount Cemetery. Pegram had known Booth well as a young man; he submitted a sworn statement that the body which he had seen in 1869 was Booth's. Others positively identified this body as Booth at the funeral home, including Booth's mother, brother, and sister, along with his dentist and other Baltimore acquaintances. In 1911, The New York Times had published an account by their reporter detailing the burial of Booth's body at the cemetery and those who were witnesses. The rumor periodically revived, as in the 1920s when a corpse was exhibited on a national tour by a carnival promoter and advertised as the "Man Who Shot Lincoln". According to a 1938 article in the Saturday Evening Post, the exhibitor said that he obtained St. Helen's corpse from Bates' widow.
The Lincoln Conspiracy (1977) contended that there was a government plot to conceal Booth's escape, reviving interest in the story and prompting the display of St. Helen's mummified body in Chicago that year. The book sold more than one million copies and was made into a feature film called The Lincoln Conspiracy which was theatrically released later that year. The 1998 book The Curse of Cain: The Untold Story of John Wilkes Booth contended that Booth had escaped, sought refuge in Japan, and eventually returned to the United States.
In 1994, two historians together with several descendants sought a court order for the exhumation of Booth's body at Green Mount Cemetery which was, according to their lawyer, "intended to prove or disprove longstanding theories on Booth's escape" by conducting a photo-superimposition analysis. The application was blocked by Baltimore Circuit Court Judge Joseph H. H. Kaplan, who cited, among other things, "the unreliability of petitioners' less-than-convincing escape/cover-up theory" as a major factor in his decision. The Maryland Court of Special Appeals upheld the ruling.
In December 2010, descendants of Edwin Booth reported that they obtained permission to exhume the Shakespearean actor's body to obtain DNA samples to compare with a sample of his brother John's DNA to refute the rumor that John had escaped after the assassination. Bree Harvey, a spokesman from the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Edwin Booth is buried, denied reports that the family had contacted them and requested to exhume Edwin's body. The family hoped to obtain samples of John Wilkes's DNA from remains such as vertebrae stored at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Maryland. On March 30, 2013, museum spokesperson Carol Johnson announced that the family's request to extract DNA from the vertebrae had been rejected.
## In popular culture
### Film
- Booth was portrayed by Raoul Walsh in the 1915 film The Birth of a Nation.
- He was played by Ian Keith in D. W. Griffith's early sound film Abraham Lincoln (1930)
- John Wilkes Booth was played by John Derek in the film Prince of Players (1955), a biography of Edwin Booth (played by Richard Burton).
- James Marsden plays Booth in a flashback cameo in the comedy Zoolander (2001).
- Chris Conner portrayed John Wilkes Booth in the director's cut of the 2003 film Gods and Generals.
- Christian Camargo depicts Booth in National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007).
- Booth is portrayed by Toby Kebbell in the Robert Redford film The Conspirator (2010).
- Jesse Johnson plays Booth in the telefim Killing Lincoln (2013), where he is the main character.
### Literature
- In G. J. A. O'Toole's 1979 historical fiction-mystery novel The Cosgrove Report, a present-day private detective investigates the authenticity of a 19th-century manuscript that alleges Booth survived the aftermath of the Lincoln assassination. ()
- In Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith, Booth is transformed into a vampire a few years before the Civil War, and assassinates Lincoln out of natural sympathy for the Confederate States, whose slave population provides America's vampires with an abundant source of blood.
### Stage productions
- Booth is featured as a central character of Stephen Sondheim's musical Assassins, in which his assassination of Lincoln is depicted in a musical number called "The Ballad of Booth".
- Austin-based theatre company The Hidden Room developed a staged reading of John Wilkes Booth's Richard III based on the manuscript promptbook in the collection of the Harry Ransom Center. The promptbook is one of only two known surviving promptbooks created by John Wilkes Booth, and uses the Colley Cibber adaptation of Shakespeare's text. The full book with the actor's handwritten notations has been digitized. The other promptbook is also for Richard III, and can be found in the Harvard Theatre Collection.
### Television
- Jack Lemmon played Booth live onstage in the sixth Ford Star Jubilee episode "The Day Lincoln Was Shot" (1956).
- The Wagon Train episode "The John Wilbot Story" (1958) is based on the premise that Booth survived and moved west; the character John Wilbot is played by Dane Clark.
- Booth was portrayed by John Lasell in The Twilight Zone episode "Back There" (1961).
- All three Booth brothers interact with the Morehouses and with Elizabeth in New York City in episode 9 of season 1 ("A Day to Give Thanks") of the BBC America series Copper.
- Booth was portrayed by Kelly Blatz in "The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln" episode (S01E02) of Timeless.
- In the early 1990s, an episode of the American TV show, Unsolved Mysteries, presented originally by Robert Stack, examined sympathetically the theory that John Wilkes Booth was not killed in Maryland but escaped, dying in Oklahoma in 1903. The episode was re-edited and hosted by Dennis Farina in 2009.
- Booth was played by Rob Morrow in a 1998 remake of the television film The Day Lincoln Was Shot.
- In the 2019 web television series Blame the Hero, Booth is portrayed by Anthony Padilla. In the series, multiple time travelers prevent Booth from killing President Lincoln.
### Music
- "John Wilkes Booth" is a song written by Mary Chapin Carpenter, commissioned and notably interpreted by Tony Rice. The song is included on his recording Native American.
### Video games
- In the 2013 video game BioShock Infinite, John Wilkes Booth is viewed as a hero in the fictional airborne city of Columbia. A cult's headquarters features a large statue of Booth in its lobby, as well as a painting depicting Booth as a saint while assassinating a devil version of Abraham Lincoln.
## See also
- Ogarita Booth Henderson
- Charles Guiteau, assassin of President James Garfield
- Leon Czolgosz, assassin of President William McKinley
- Lee Harvey Oswald, assassin of President John Kennedy |
3,675,268 | Évariste Kimba | 1,165,675,582 | Congolese politician (1926–1966) | [
"1926 births",
"1966 deaths",
"20th-century executions by the Democratic Republic of the Congo",
"Executed prime ministers",
"Government ministers of the State of Katanga",
"Members of the National Assembly (Democratic Republic of the Congo)",
"Members of the Senate (Democratic Republic of the Congo)",
"People executed by the Democratic Republic of the Congo by hanging",
"People executed for treason against the Democratic Republic of the Congo",
"People of the Congo Crisis",
"People of the State of Katanga",
"Prime Ministers of the Democratic Republic of the Congo"
]
| Évariste Leon Kimba Mutombo (16 July 1926 – 2 June 1966) was a Congolese journalist and politician who served as Foreign Minister of the State of Katanga from 1960 to 1963 and Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 13 October to 25 November 1965. Kimba was born in 1926 in Katanga Province, Belgian Congo. Following the completion of his studies he worked as a journalist and became editor-in-chief of the Essor du Congo. In 1958 he and a group of Katangese concerned about domination of their province by people from the neighbouring Kasaï region founded the Confédération des associations tribales du Katanga (CONAKAT), a regionalist political party. In 1960 the Congo became independent and shortly thereafter Moise Tshombe declared the secession of the State of Katanga. Kimba played an active role in the separatist state's government as its Minister of Foreign Affairs and participated in numerous talks with the central government aimed at political reconciliation. Following the collapse of the secession in early 1963, Kimba had a falling out with Tshombe and took up several ministerial posts in the new province of South Katanga.
Tshombe was later made Prime Minister of the Congo while Kimba joined the Association Générale des Baluba du Katanga (BALUBAKAT) party. On 13 October 1965 President Joseph Kasa-Vubu dismissed Tshombe and appointed Kimba Prime Minister. Kimba formed a government of national unity and spent the following weeks attempting to achieve rapprochement between the Congo and other African states. However, his government failed to obtain a vote of confidence from Parliament, though Kasa-Vubu reappointed Kimba to the premiership in the face of determined opposition from Tshombe's supporters. On 25 November Army Commander-in-Chief Joseph-Désiré Mobutu launched a coup removing both him and Kasa-Vubu from power and assumed control of the presidency. In May 1966 Mobutu's government accused Kimba of plotting with three other former government ministers to launch a coup. He was executed on 2 June for treason.
## Early life
Évariste Kimba was born on 16 July 1926 in the village of Nsaka, Bukama Territory, Katanga Province, Belgian Congo. Ethnically, he was a member of Luba tribe. His father was a railway worker. He spent much of his youth in Élisabethville, where he attended Roman Catholic schools. After receiving a basic primary and middle education Kimba, like his father, worked on the railroad, but continued his studies, taking night classes at St. Boniface Institute in sociology, law, and political economy. He also played on the school's football team.
Kimba took up journalism in 1954 when he began writing for the Essor du Congo in Élisabethville, a conservative, pro-colonial newspaper which covered Katangese affairs. Later that year he became the publication's editor-in-chief, and held the position until 1960. In 1960 he acted as vice president of the Association of the Congolese Press. He married a woman, Bernadette, and had four children with her. In 1958 Kimba attended Expo 58 in Belgium. The following year he traveled abroad, visiting West Germany, Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia, Senegal, the United States, Canada, France, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Ivory Coast, French Cameroon, French Congo, Chad, and French Madagascar.
## Political career
### Early activities
In February 1957 Kimba and a group of other young Katangese concerned about domination of their province by people from the neighbouring Kasaï region met to discuss the political future of Katanga. In 1958 they founded the Confédération des associations tribales du Katanga (CONAKAT), a regionalist political party.
In the spring of 1960 Walter Ganshof van der Meersch was appointed the Belgian Minister of African Affairs and sent to the Congo to oversee its transition to independence. Ganshof made Kimba his assistant chief of staff. On 12 June the Provincial Assembly of Katanga elected him to the Senate on a non-customary CONAKAT list. On 16 June the Katangese provincial government was formed and Kimba was appointed Minister of Commerce and Industry. The Republic of the Congo became independent on 30 June.
### Minister of Foreign Affairs of the State of Katanga
On 11 July 1960 Katangese Provincial President Moise Tshombe declared the secession of the "State of Katanga". This was opposed by the regional Luba-dominated party, the Association Générale des Baluba du Katanga (BALUBAKAT), but Kimba allied himself with Tshombe and maintained that the Katangese Baluba belonged to the Katangese "nation". Tshombe made Kimba Katanga's Minister of Foreign Affairs. Dominique Diur also applied for the position, but Kimba was chosen because Godefroid Munongo opposed Diur's nomination. In December, Kimba accompanied Tshombe to a conference with leaders of the national Congolese government in Brazzaville to discuss political reconciliation. The talks dissolved without any tangible progress being achieved. Though the role of the full Katangese government diminished over time under Tshombe's leadership, Kimba still actively met with Tshombe and held press conferences.
In April 1961 Kimba and Tshombe went to Coquilhatville for further talks with the central government on political reconciliation and revising the Congolese constitution. Unhappy with the conference, Tshombe attempted to leave on 26 April, but he and Kimba were arrested and imprisoned for six weeks. They were released on 22 June and allowed to return to Katanga. In exchange for their liberation, the two men signed an agreement with the Congolese government declaring that representatives from Katangese constituencies would appear in the next session of Parliament. They later repudiated the agreement. In March and May 1962 the Katangese government held further talks with the central government in Léopoldville, the Congolese capital. While Tshombe was gone, Kimba went on a tour of Luba areas in Katanga to rally their favour in support of the secession. On 18 May the last round of the Léopoldville negotiations was due to take place, but Tshombe, stalling for time, stayed in Katanga and sent Kimba in his place. Under military pressure from the United Nations Operation in the Congo, Tshombe declared the end of the Katangese secession in January 1963; on 19 January he received UN officials at his residence and, in the presence of Kimba and some of his other ministers, declared that he would accept the UN's terms for Katanga's reintegration into the Congo.
### Break from Tshombe
In the aftermath of the secession, Kimba had a falling out with Tshombe; Kimba preferred reconciliation with the central government, but Tshombe did not wish it at the time. Tshombe went to Paris, while in February 1963 Kimba became Minister of Education of the new province of South Katanga. From April until August he served as the province's Minister of Economic Affairs and Minister of Information. In June he went to Léopoldville, to reach an understanding with the central government. In September he attended a conference of moderate political parties in Luluabourg as an observer. On 18 September Kimba went to Europe for "health reasons". He returned to the Congo in January 1964. On 13 December he was elected president of the central committee of the Entente Muluba, an Élisabethville-based organisation.
That year Tshombe was welcomed back into the country and made Prime Minister at the helm of a transitional government tasked with suppressing a leftist insurrection in the eastern Congo. After this was largely accomplished, general elections took place in 1965 and Tshombe's new coalition organisation, the Convention Nationale Congolaise (CONACO) won a majority of the seats in Parliament. Kimba also contested in the election for a seat in the Chamber of Deputies, and won on a BALUBAKAT list. Afterwards he took a brief trip to Paris. Shortly before Parliament was due to reopen, the strength of CONACO faltered, and an anti-Tshombe coalition, the Front Democratique Congolais (FDC), was formed. Kimba joined it in October.
### Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
In the months following the elections, the political rivalry between Tshombe and the President of the Congo, Joseph Kasa-Vubu, grew increasingly tense. At the first session of the new Parliament on 13 October 1965, Kasa-Vubu unexpectedly announced that Tshombe's transitional government had fulfilled its purpose. He named Kimba the new Prime Minister and tasked him with forming a government of national unity. Kimba had little personal following or national reputation and thus was considered inoffensive to members of Parliament and of little threat to Kasa-Vubu's ambitions. Kasa-Vubu also hoped that by appointing another Katangese to the post, he would avoid aggravating persisting secessionist sentiment in Katanga. Kimba's government was installed on 18 October, representing 16 of the 39 political parties with members in Parliament.
Kimba's government was more nationalistic than Tshombe's administration and aimed to curb Western influence in Congolese affairs; it was markedly less amicable towards Belgian interests. The new cabinet sought to improve the Congo's relations with active countries in the Organisation of African Unity including Ethiopia and Ghana, and to distance itself from the members of the African and Malagasy Common Organisation. The government opened negotiations with Congo-Brazzaville, and on 5 November Kimba announced that in its first step towards rehabilitating the Congo's ties with African states his government was renewing ferry traffic across the Congo river between Brazzaville and Léopoldville, which had been suspended for two years. The following day he formally reestablished diplomatic relations with Congo-Brazzaville. He also reopened the Congo-Uganda border, which had been closed since February. Kimba revised the composition of his government on 8 November.
Tshombe's removal from power angered his supporters, and in the following weeks they competed with anti-Tshombe partisans for dominance in Parliament. On 14 November the Kimba Government was presented to the legislature for a formal vote of confidence. It was defeated, 72 to 76 in the Chamber of Deputies and 49 to 58 in the Senate. The next day Kasa-Vubu renominated Kimba as Prime Minister, resulting in a political deadlock. On 25 November, Army Commander-in-Chief Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, who had previously supported Kimba, launched a coup removing both him and Kasa-Vubu from power and assumed control of the presidency. Colonel Léonard Mulamba was appointed to replace Kimba.
## Arrest and execution
In May 1966 Kimba and former government ministers Jérôme Anany, Emmanuel Bamba, and Alexandre Mahamba were arrested by Mobutu's security forces while attending a meeting with military officials. They were taken to a military camp and tortured. Mobutu's regime accused them of plotting to assassinate Mobutu and Prime Minister Mulamba and overthrow the government. On 30 May the four men were tried before a military tribunal. The trial lasted an hour and a half and the accused were allowed no legal counsel. They pleaded innocence, claiming that they had been working at the behest of officers in the army. After deliberating for seven minutes, the three military judges found the four men guilty of treason and sentenced them to death. This was in violation of standing Congolese law, which did not consider plotting a coup to be a capital crime. On 2 June 1966, Kimba and the other men were publicly hanged in Léopoldville before a large crowd. This was the first public execution in the Congo since the 1930s. Kimba was the first of the four to be executed; it took him 20 minutes to die after being dropped. His family never received his body.
Kimba was the second former Prime Minister of the Congo to be killed after Patrice Lumumba. Some time after Kimba's death, the Avenue des Chutes in Lubumbashi (formerly Élisabethville) was officially renamed in his honour, though the street is still usually referred to by its original name. In 2011 a congress of the "Luba People" declared that Kimba was among "our valiant martyrs". |
89,337 | Carl Michael Bellman | 1,168,408,537 | Swedish poet, songwriter and composer (1740–1795) | [
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| Carl Michael Bellman (; 4 February 1740 – 11 February 1795) was a Swedish songwriter, composer, musician, poet, and entertainer. He is a central figure in the Swedish song tradition and remains a powerful influence in Swedish music, as well as in Scandinavian literature, to this day. He has been compared to Shakespeare, Beethoven, Mozart, and Hogarth, but his gift, using elegantly rococo classical references in comic contrast to sordid drinking and prostitution—at once regretted and celebrated in song—is unique.
Bellman is best known for two collections of poems set to music, Fredman's epistles (Fredmans epistlar) and Fredman's songs (Fredmans sånger). Each consists of about 70 songs. The general theme is drinking, but the songs "most ingeniously" combine words and music to express feelings and moods ranging from humorous to elegiac, romantic to satirical.
Bellman's patrons included King Gustav III of Sweden, who called him a master improviser. Bellman's songs continue to be performed and recorded by musicians from Scandinavia and in other languages, including English, French, German, Italian, and Russian. Several of his songs including Gubben Noak and Fjäriln vingad are known by heart by many Swedes. His legacy further includes a museum in Stockholm and a society that fosters interest in him and his work.
## Biography
### Early life
Carl Michael Bellman was born on 4 February 1740 in the Stora Daurerska house, which was one of the finest in the Södermalm district of Stockholm. The house was the property of his maternal grandmother, Catharina von Santen, who had brought up his father, orphaned as a small child. Carl Michael's parents were Johan Arndt Bellman, a civil servant, and Catharina Hermonia, daughter of the priest of the local Maria parish. Her family was wholly Swedish, whereas Johan's family had German origins: they had come from Bremen in about 1660. When Carl Michael was four the family moved to a smaller, single storey dwelling called the Lilla Daurerska house. He briefly went to a local school, but was educated mainly by private tutors. He was the eldest of 15 children who lived long enough for their births to be registered. His parents had intended him to become a priest, but he fell ill with a fever, and on recovering found he could express any thought in rhyming verse. His parents appointed a tutor called Ennes who Bellman called "a genius". Bellman was taught French, German, Italian, English, and Latin. He read Horace and Boileau; Ennes taught him to write poetry and to translate French and German hymns. He was familiar with stories from the Bible including the Apocrypha, many of which found their way into the songs he composed in later life. However, expenses including the Swedish tradition of hospitality left the family with no money to start him off in life with a journey to the south of Europe, such as to Spain to visit his uncle, Jacob Martin Bellman, who was the Swedish Consul in Cádiz. Carl Michael translated a French book by Du Four and dedicated it to his uncle, but the hint was ignored. Deep in debt, at the end of 1757 the family sent Carl Michael to Sweden's central bank Riksbanken as an unpaid trainee. He had no aptitude for numbers, instead discovering the taverns and brothels which were to figure so largely in his songs.
As the banking career was not working out – and as trainees were (after a period with a relaxed regime) again required to sit an exam, for which Bellman was ill-equipped – he took a break in 1758, going to the university of Uppsala, where Linnaeus was professor of botany. The idea of attending lectures was no more congenial than banking, and he stayed only one term; one of his songs (FS 28) records that "He contemplated Uppsala—the beer stung his mouth—love distracted his wits..." However, he met young men (such as Carl Bonde) from wealthy and noble families, went drinking with them, and started to entertain them with his songs. Bellman returned to the bank job, and seems quickly to have fallen into financial difficulty: "a jungle of debts, sureties and bondsmen began to proliferate around him." The character of bailiff Blomberg appears in his songs (e.g. FS 14), constantly trying to track down debtors and seize all their property. The law allowed the bankrupt only one way to escape from debtors' prison: to leave Sweden. In 1763, Bellman ran away to Norway. From the safety of Halden (then called Fredrikshald) he writes to the Council applying first for a passport, and then for a safe-conduct, both of which were granted. Meanwhile, his father had first mortgaged the Lilla Daurerska house, and then sold it: the family's finances were no better than his own. Even worse, by April 1764 the Bank had become tired of the riotous behaviour of its young men: its investigations showed that Bellman had been the ringleader, leading them (the Bank wrote) into "gambling, masquerades, picnics and suchlike". Bellman resigned, his safe banking career at an end.
### Poetry and song
In 1765, Bellman's parents died; deeply moved, he wrote a religious poem. Then his fortunes improved: someone found him a job, first in the Office of Manufactures, then in the Customs, and he was able once again to live happily in Stockholm, observing the people of the city, with at least a modest salary. In 1768, his life's work as we now know it got under way:
> Bellman had begun to compose an entirely new sort of song. A genre which 'had no model and can have no successors' (Kellgren), these songs were to grow swiftly in number until they made up the great work on which Bellman's reputation as a poet chiefly rests.
Bellman mostly played the cittern, becoming the most famous player of this instrument in Sweden. His portrait by Per Krafft shows him playing an oval instrument with twelve strings, arranged as six pairs. His first songs were "parody songs", a common form of entertainment at the time.
Between 1769 and 1773, Bellman wrote 65 of 82 of his Epistles, as well as many poems. He attempted to publish the poems in 1772, but was unable to obtain the permission of the king, Gustav III, as a political coup intervened. He finally managed to obtain the permission in 1774, but soon discovered that the cost of printing, especially as he was determined to publish the sheet music alongside the text, was prohibitive given his ruinous finances, and he was forced to put off his plans. In 1776, the king gave him a sinecure job as secretary to the national lottery; this supported him for the rest of his life.
On 19 December 1777, at the age of 37, he married the 22-year-old Lovisa Grönlund in Klara Church. They had four children, Gustav, Elis, Karl, and Adolf; Elis died young. Throughout his life, but especially during the 1770s, Bellman also wrote religious poetry, seeing no conflict with his bacchanalian works; he published collections of his religious poems in 1781 and 1787. He wrote some ten plays (none with particularly strong plots) as divertimentos, some of them later serving as entertainments at the royal court. The plays fill Volume 6 of his collected works. In 1783, Bellman brought out The Temple of Bacchus (Bacchi Tempel), perhaps hoping to establish his reputation as a poet, rather than the merry entertainer that he was in fact known as at the time; but he always stood out in people's minds as unique, a different kind of writer and performer.
Bellman's main works are the 82 Fredman's epistles (Fredmans epistlar, 1790) and the 65 Fredman's songs (Fredmans sånger, 1791). Their themes include the pleasures of drunkenness and sex. Against this backdrop, Bellman deals with themes of love, death, and the transitoriness of life. The settings of his songs reflect life in 18th-century Stockholm, but often refer to Greek and Roman mythological characters such as the goddess of love, Venus (or her Swedish equivalent, Fröja), Neptune and his retinue of water-nymphs, the love-god Cupid, the ferryman Charon and Bacchus, the god of wine and pleasure. Many of Fredman's Epistles are peopled by a cast which includes the clockmaker Jean Fredman, the prostitute or "nymph" Ulla Winblad, the alcoholic ex-soldier Movitz, and Father Berg, a virtuoso on several instruments. Some of these were based on living models, others probably not. Ulla Winblad was widely believed to have been closely based on Maria Kristina Kiellström, though the real woman, a silk worker once arrested for alleged prostitution, was not the ideal romantic figure of Bellman's songs. Fredman's songs also include Old Testament figures such as Noah and Judith.
Bellman achieved his effects of rococo elegance and humour through precisely organised incongruity. For example, Epistle 25, "Blåsen nu alla!" (All blow now!), begins with Venus crossing the water, as in François Boucher'sTriumph of Venus, but when she disembarks, Bellman transforms her into a lustful Ulla Winblad. Similarly, the ornate and civilized minuet melody of "Ack du min Moder" (Alas, thou my mother) contrasts with the text: Fredman is lying with a hangover in the gutter outside a tavern, complaining bitterly about life. Ulla Winblad ("vineleaf") recurs through the Epistles; Britten Austin comments that
> Ulla is at once a nymph of the taverns and a goddess of a rococo universe of graceful and hot imaginings.
The songs are "most ingeniously" set to music, the melodies accentuated by the bold construction of music, word pictures and choice of words, while the music brings out a hidden dimension not seen if the words are simply read as verse. The poems themselves, far from being the brilliant improvisations that they appear, are striking in their "formal virtuosity". They may be drinking songs in name, but in structure they are tightly woven into a precise metre, situating the "frenzied bacchanalia within a strict and decorous rococo frame." The musicologist James Massengale writes that the technique of reusing tunes in musical parody had already been overused and had fallen into disrepute by Bellman's time, just as his subject matter was initially looked down on. Despite this, Massengale argues
> Bellman chose to perfect his musical-poetic vehicle. He refers to the result ... not as 'parody' but as 'den muçiska Poesien', [musical poetry] ...
>
> Bellman's exceptional case, then, is that of a poetic genius who worked with an art form which in the hands of others was usually insignificant.
Massengale observes that Bellman was "fully aware of the complexity of the musical-poetic problem; his poems were not simply talented improvisations." and points out that Bellman was "also interested in concealing this complexity", with the discrepancies between the music and the poetry "apparently resolved".
Bellman was a gifted entertainer and mimic. He was able to
> go into a room apart and behind a half-open door mimic twenty or thirty people at the same time, a crowd pushing its way on to one of the Djurgården ferries, perhaps, or the uproarious atmosphere of a seaman's tavern. The illusion was so startling, his listeners could have sworn a mob of 'shoe-polishers, customs spies, seamen ... coalmen, washerwomen ... herring packers, tailors and bird-catchers' had burst into the next room.
In 1790, the Swedish Academy awarded Bellman its annual Lundblad prize of 50 Riksdaler for the most interesting piece of literature of the year. Although Fredman's Epistles was neither exactly literature as understood by the academy, nor meeting the standards of elegant taste, the poet and critic Johan Henric Kellgren and the King ensured that Bellman won the prize.
### Later life
After the assassination of the King at the Stockholm opera in 1792, support for the liberal arts was withdrawn. Bellman, already in poor health from alcoholism, went into decline, drinking increasingly heavily. His drinking very likely contributed to his gout, which troubled him badly in 1790. He also caught tuberculosis: the disease had already killed his mother, and by the winter of 1792, he was seriously ill.
As well as being ill, he was imprisoned—after struggling with debts and haunted by the threat of ruin and imprisonment all his life—"for a wretched[ly small] debt of 150 Rdr". The rumour was that a former Customs colleague, E. G. Nobelius, had had his advances to Louise Bellman rejected, and in revenge had sued Bellman for the debt, knowing he was penniless: he owed a total of almost 4,000 Riksdaler. On 11 February 1795, he died in his sleep in his house in Gamla Kungsholmsbrogatan. He was buried in Klara churchyard with no gravestone, its location now unknown. The Swedish Academy belatedly placed a memorial in the churchyard in 1851, complete with a bronze medallion by Johan Tobias Sergel.
## Reception
King Gustav III called Bellman "Il signor improvisatore" (The master improviser).
Bellman has been compared with poets and musicians as diverse as Shakespeare and Beethoven. Åse Kleveland notes that he has been called "Swedish poetry's Mozart, and Hogarth", observing that
> The comparison with Hogarth was no accident. Like the English portrait painter, Bellman drew detailed pictures of his time in his songs, not so much of life at court as of ordinary people's everyday.
Paul Britten Austin says instead simply that:
> Bellman is unique among great poets, I think, in that virtually his entire opus is conceived to music. Other poets, of course, notably our Elizabethans, have written songs. But song was only one branch of their art. They did not leave behind, as Bellman did, a great musical-literary work nor paint in words and music a canvas of their age. Nor are their songs dramatic.
## Legacy
### Performance and recordings
Bellman's informal Bacchi Orden (Order of Bacchus) was replaced in the 1770s by the more structured Bacchanalian society Par Bricole, which still exists in the 21st century. It enabled Bellman to publish his book Bacchi Tempel in 1783. When the tradition of solo performance of his songs died out, Par Bricole continued to perform his songs as choral pieces.
Bellman's poetry continued to be read and sung throughout the 19th century, contrary to the widespread belief among researchers that he was largely forgotten during this period. His songs were sung especially by the urban bourgeoisie and in fraternities, but also in aristocratic circles and ordinary people in the countryside. The Orphei Drängar Vocal Society, named after a phrase in Epistle 14, was founded in Uppsala in 1853; the song became their trademark. The Epistles and Songs were published in chapbooks, sung at festivals and performed in a variety of concerts and entertainments. Figures such as Fredman, Ulla Winblad and Movitz, as well as Bellman himself were painted on tavern walls and memorabilia such as plates, beer tankards and hipflasks. Curiously, Bellman was celebrated at least as enthusiastically in polite and abstemious circles, though with bowdlerized versions of the songs.
Major interpreters of Bellman's songs include Sven-Bertil Taube, who helped to start the 1960s Bellman renaissance; Fred Åkerström, who brought a fresh earthiness to Bellman interpretation; and the Dutch-born Cornelis Vreeswijk, who fitted Bellman to the style of American blues. Other recordings have been made by Evert Taube, and as rock music by Joakim Thåström, Candlemass or Marduk. They are also performed as choral music and as drinking songs. Martin Bagge has recreated Bellman's dramatic style complete with period costume. In 2020, Uppsala stadsteater and Västmanlands Teater created Bellman 2.0, a costumed theatre concert, directed by Nikolaj Cederholm with Fredman's Epistles and Fredman's Songs arranged by Kåre Bjerkø for guitar, electric guitar, double bass, cello, tuba, clarinet, drumkit and percussion, keyboards, accordion, and five voices.
### Translations
Bellman has been translated into at least 20 languages, including English, most notably by Paul Britten Austin, and German, including by Hannes Wader. German Communist leader Karl Liebknecht liked Bellman's songs and translated some into German. Hans Christian Andersen was one of the first to translate Bellman into Danish. Bellman's songs have been translated and recorded in Icelandic (by Bubbi), Italian, French, Finnish (for instance by Vesa-Matti Loiri), Russian, Chuvash and Yiddish. English interpretations have been recorded by William Clauson, Martin Best, Freddie Langrind made some Norwegian translations in 2008. Sven-Bertil Taube, Roger Hinchliffe and Martin Bagge. Schoolchildren two hundred years on still learn some of his songs, and several including Gubben Noak and Fjäriln vingad are known by heart by many Swedes.
Books in English with translations of Bellman's work have been written by Charles Wharton Stork in 1917, Hendrik Willem van Loon in 1939, Paul Britten Austin, and the historian Michael Roberts. In English, the most thorough treatment of Bellman's life is also by Britten Austin. Van Loon's The Last of the Troubadours: The Life and Music of Carl Michael Bellman (1740–1795) was inspired by a visit to Sweden, and tried to introduce the unknown Bellman to an American audience, but critics felt his version of twenty of the songs was "stiff and often ungraceful", not doing justice to their composer.
### Legacy
Bellman was the subject of an 1844 ballet choreographed by August Bournonville. Bellman features as a character, along with Ulla Winblad and King Gustav III, in the first episode of the Swedish television series "Nisse Hults historiska snedsteg" (Nisse Hult's historical slips) by SVT Drama. Bellman appears with his cittern and various objects from Fredman's Epistles and Fredman's Songs on a 100 Swedish kronor postage stamp issued in 2014 and designed by Beata Boucht; he was shown on earlier Swedish stamps in 1940 and 1990, commemorating the 200th and 250th anniversaries of his birth, and again in 2006. Bellmansgatan in Stockholm's Södermalm district is named for Bellman; Stieg Larsson places the apartment of his Millennium trilogy hero Mikael Blomkvist in Bellmansgatan, which Dan Burstein and Arne de Keijzer suggest is meant to provide Bellman associations.
Swedish schoolchildren tell Bellman jokes about a person named Bellman, an antihero or modern-day trickster with little or no connection to the poet. The first known Bellman joke is in a book from 1835, which quoted a letter written in 1808 by a contemporary of Bellman. 19th-century Bellman jokes were told by adults and focused on Bellman's life at court; they often related to sex. In the 20th century, the 'Bellman' character became generic, the jokes were told by schoolchildren, and often related to bodily functions. The jokes have been studied by anthropologists and psychologists since the 1950s.
### Bellmanmuseet
Stora Henriksvik, also called the Bellman museum (Bellmanmuseet) for its small permanent Bellman exhibition, celebrates his life and work with paintings, replica objects and a beachside café in a 17th-century Stockholm house. The place, beside the beach at Långholm, was in Bellman's time called Lilla Sjötullen (The Small Lake-Customs House) where farmers from Lake Mälaren had to pay a toll on the goods they were taking to market in Stockholm's Gamla stan. The place is mentioned in Epistle No. 48, Solen glimmar blank och trind.
### Bellmansällskapet
The Bellman Society (Bellmansällskapet), founded in Stockholm on the anniversary of Bellman's birth in 1919, fosters interest in Bellman and supports research into the man and his work. To these ends it organises concerts, lectures, and excursions. It produces the series of Bellmanstudier, starting in 1924, so far running to 24 volumes, as well as facsimile prints of Bellman documents, essay collections, and Yngve Berg's Bellman porcelain. It has published recordings including Alla Fredmans Epistlar (All Fredman's Epistles) and Alla Fredmans Sånger (All Fredman's Songs). The Society's newsletter is called Hwad behagas?. Sister societies in other countries include the Danish Selskabet Bellman i Danmark, and the German Deutsche Bellman-Gesellschaft.
## Works
Bellman published the following works:
- Månan (The Moon), Nyström och Stolpe, 1760
- Bacchi Tempel (Temple of Bacchus), 1783
- Fredmans Epistlar (Fredman's Epistles), 1790
- Fredmans Sånger (Fredman's Songs), 1791
- Samlade verk (Collected Works) |
45,255,604 | SCP Foundation | 1,171,439,535 | Online collaborative writing project | [
"Creative Commons-licensed websites",
"Creepypasta",
"Dark fantasy",
"Fiction about memory erasure and alteration",
"Fiction about monsters",
"Fictional intelligence agencies",
"Fictional laboratories",
"Fictional monster hunters",
"Fictional paramilitary organizations",
"Fictional paranormal investigators",
"Fictional prisons",
"Fictional secret societies",
"Human experimentation in fiction",
"Internet memes introduced in 2007",
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| The SCP Foundation is a fictional secret organization documented by the collaborative-writing wiki project of the same name. Within the website's shared universe, the Foundation is responsible for capturing, containing, and studying various paranormal, supernatural, and other mysterious phenomena unexplained by science (known as "anomalies" or "SCPs"), while also keeping their existence hidden from the rest of human society.
The collaborative writing project operates on the wiki-like website SCP Wiki, and includes elements of many genres such as horror, science fiction, and urban fantasy. The majority of works on the SCP Wiki consist of thousands of SCP files: mock confidential scientific reports that document various SCPs and associated containment procedures. The website also contains "Foundation Tales", short stories featuring various characters and settings in the SCP universe. The wiki's literary works have been praised for their ability to convey horror through a quasi-scientific and academic writing style, as well as for their high standards of quality.
The SCP universe has inspired numerous fan-made adaptations in widely varying forms of media; including books, comics, video games, animated, and live-action short films.
## Overview of the SCP universe
The fictional setting centers around the findings and activities of the SCP Foundation: an international secret society consisting of a scientific research institution with a paramilitary intelligence agency to support their goals. Despite their extremely secretive nature, the Foundation is entrusted by governments around the world to capture and contain various unexplained paranormal phenomena that defy the known laws of nature (referred to as "anomalies", "SCP objects", "SCPs", or informally as "skips"). They include living beings and creatures, artifacts and objects, locations and places, abstract concepts, and incomprehensible entities which display supernatural abilities or other extremely unusual properties. If left uncontained, many of the more dangerous anomalies will pose a serious threat to humans or even all life on Earth. All information regarding the existence of the Foundation and SCPs are strictly withheld from the general public in order to prevent mass hysteria that would supposedly occur if they were leaked, and allow human civilization to continue functioning under a masquerade of "normalcy".
Whenever an SCP anomaly is discovered, teams of undercover Foundation agents (often called Mobile Task Forces, or MTFs) are deployed to either collect and transport the object to one of the organization's many secret facilities, or to contain it at its location of discovery if transportation is not possible. If an anomaly is too widespread, elusive, or otherwise inaccessible, containment usually consists of suppressing all knowledge of the SCP from the public. This is accomplished through censorship of mass media, and by dosing all eyewitnesses with amnestic drugs which erase their memories of anomalous events.
At the Foundation's secret facilities, SCPs are studied and researched by scientists in order to improve containment methods for them. The Foundation also acquires disposable human test subjects called D-class personnel, who are usually (though not always) convicted criminals taken from prisons around the world, and forces them to take part in experiments with potentially dangerous SCPs in order to avoid risking the safety of Foundation employees themselves. The Foundation maintains documentation for all SCPs which they are aware of which can include or link to related reports and files. These documents describe the SCPs and include instructions for keeping them safely contained, as well as supplementary incident reports or experimentation logs.
Apart from the Foundation itself, there are numerous rival organizations (collectively referred to as Groups of Interest, or GOIs) which are also actively involved with the paranormal world. Notable examples include the Chaos Insurgency, a terrorist splinter group consisting of ex-Foundation defectors who attempt to capture and weaponize SCPs; the Global Occult Coalition (GOC), a secret paramilitary agency of the United Nations which specializes in destroying supernatural threats instead of containing them; and the Serpent's Hand, a militant group which advocates for the rights of anomalous beings, resisting both the Foundation's and GOC's efforts to suppress paranormal activity worldwide. Other GOIs seek to exploit anomalies by producing or selling them for monetary profit; or using them to serve their own religious, political, or ideological goals.
### Examples of SCPs
- SCP-055 is a mysterious memory-erasing anomaly known as an "anti-meme" that causes anyone who examines it to forget its existence, thus making the object's characteristics indescribable except in terms of what it is not.
- SCP-087 is a staircase that appears to descend infinitely and inhibits any light within its space. The staircase is inhabited by an entity known as SCP-087-1: a disembodied floating face without a mouth, pupils or nostrils, which chases after anyone walking down the stairs.
- SCP-108 is a Nazi bunker system that is accessible only through a portal found in a woman's nose.
- SCP-173 is a humanoid statue composed of rebar, concrete, and Krylon spray paint. It is immobile when directly observed, but it attacks people and breaks their neck when line of sight with it is broken. It is extremely fast, to the point where it can move multiple meters while the observer is blinking. In real life, SCP-173 is notable for being the first SCP ever written.
- SCP-294 is a coffee vending machine that can dispense anything that does or can exist in liquid formincluding, on occasion, abstract concepts. Regardless of the properties of the substance chosen, the machine's polystyrene cups appear to suffer no damage from the substances dispensed into them.
- SCP-426 is a toaster that can only be referred to in the first person.
- SCP-999 is a gelatinous slime mold-like creature that smells similar to whatever is most comforting to the person it makes contact with. It has a friendly personality and is known to induce positive emotions on contact with humans and other organisms. Therefore, it is sometimes used as a tool by the SCP Foundation.
- SCP-1171 is a home whose windows are covered in condensation; by writing in the condensation on the glass, it is possible to communicate with an extra-dimensional entity whose windows are likewise covered in condensation. This entity bears significant enmity towards humans but does not know that the Foundation members are humans.
- SCP-1609 is a wood chip mulch that teleports into the lungs of individuals displaying aggressive behavior towards it. Previously a benevolent chair that teleported to nearby individuals who needed to sit down, it became aggressive after being destroyed in a woodchipper by the Global Occult Coalition.
- SCP-3008 is an IKEA store with an interior that contains a seemingly infinite, labyrinthine pocket dimension designated SCP-3008-1. Prospective customers trapped within the building have formed rudimentary civilizations, and must defend themselves against hostile creatures known as SCP-3008-2: which are tall, faceless humanoids wearing IKEA employee uniforms that become violently aggressive towards all nearby humans when the lights are turned off.
## Writing style
On the SCP Wiki, the majority of works are stand-alone articles detailing the "Special Containment Procedures" of a given SCP object. In a typical article, an SCP object is assigned a unique identification number and a "containment class" based on the difficulty of containing it. The documentation then outlines proper containment procedures and safety measures before describing the SCP object in question. Addenda (such as images, research data, interviews, history, or status updates) may also be attached to the document. The reports are written in a scientific tone and often censor words with black bars (i.e., █████) and [DATA EXPUNGED] markings. As of August 2023, articles exist for over 7000 SCP objects; new articles are written and published frequently by contributors.
The SCP Wiki contains over 4,200 short stories referred to as "Foundation Tales". The stories are set within the larger SCP universe, and often focus on the exploits of various Foundation staff members, SCP entities, and objects, among other recurring characters and settings. Gregory Burkart, writing for Blumhouse Productions, noted that some of the Foundation Tales had a dark and bleak tone, while others were "surprisingly light-hearted".
The SCP universe has neither a central canon nor the ability to establish one due to its community-oriented nature, but stories on the wiki are often linked together to create larger narratives. Contributors have the ability to create "canons", which are clusters of SCPs and Foundation Tales with similar locations, characters, or central plots; many of these canons have hub pages that explain their basic concept and provide information such as timelines and character lists.
The genres of the SCP Wiki have variously been described as science fiction, urban fantasy, horror, and creepypasta.
## Community
The SCP Foundation originated in the "paranormal" /x/ forum of 4chan in 2007, where the very first SCP file, SCP-173, was posted by an anonymous user (later identified as Wesley "Moto42" Williams), accompanied by an image of the sculpture "Untitled 2004" by Japanese artist Izumi Kato. Although displeased with the unlicensed use of his art, Kato allowed the use of the photo explicitly for the noncommercial purposes of the community. Initially a stand-alone short story, many additional SCP files were created shortly after; these new SCPs copied SCP-173's style and were set within the same fictional universe. A stand-alone wiki was created in January 2008 on the EditThis wiki hosting service to display the SCP articles. The EditThis website did not have moderators, or the ability to delete articles. Members communicated through individual article talk pages and the /x/ board; the website lacked a central discussion forum. In July 2008, the SCP Wiki was transferred to its current Wikidot website after EditThis switched to a paid model. "Untitled 2004" was removed from the entry for SCP-173 in 2022.
The current Wikidot website contains numerous standard wiki features such as keyword searches and article lists. The wiki also contains a news hub, guides for writers and a central discussion forum. The wiki is moderated by staff teams; each team is responsible for a different function such as community outreach and discipline. Wikidot users are required to submit an application before they are allowed to post content. Every article on the wiki is assigned a discussion page, where members can evaluate and provide constructive criticism on submitted stories. The discussion pages are frequently used by authors to improve their stories. Members also have the ability to "upvote" articles they like and to "downvote" articles they dislike; articles that receive too many net downvotes are deleted. Writers from the Daily Dot and Bustle have noted that the website maintains strict quality control standards, and that sub-par content tends to be quickly removed. Notable authors who have written for the site include Max Landis, qntm, and Adrian Hon.
The Wikidot website routinely holds creative writing contests to encourage submissions. For example, in November 2014, the SCP Wiki held a "Dystopia Contest" in which its members were encouraged to submit writings about the Foundation set in a bleak or degraded world.
Apart from the original English wiki, 15 official foreign language branches exist, and some of their articles have been translated into English. The Wanderer's Library is a sister site and spin-off of the SCP Wiki. It uses the same setting as the SCP universe, but is made up of fantastical stories rather than scientific reports. The SCP community also maintains a role-playing site, a forum on Reddit, and accounts on Facebook and Twitter.
## Reception
The SCP Foundation has received largely positive reviews. Michelle Starr of CNET praised the creepy nature of the stories. Gavia Baker-Whitelaw, writing for the Daily Dot, praised the originality of the wiki and described it as the "most uniquely compelling horror writing on the Internet". She noted that the series rarely contained gratuitous gore. Rather, the horror of the series was often established through the reports' "pragmatic" and "deadpan" style, as well as through the inclusion of detail. Lisa Suhay, writing for the Christian Science Monitor, also noted the SCP Wiki's "tongue-in-cheek style".
Alex Eichler, writing for io9, noted that the series had varying levels of quality and that some of the reports were dull or repetitive. However, he praised the SCP stories for not becoming overly dark, and for containing more light-hearted reports. Additionally, he praised the wide variety of concepts covered in the report and said that the wiki contained writings that would appeal to all readers. Leigh Alexander, writing for The Guardian, noted that the wiki's voting system allows readers to easily locate content which "the community thinks are best and most scary."
Winston Cook-Wilson, writing for Inverse, compared the SCP stories to the writings of American author H. P. Lovecraft. Like Lovecraft, SCP casefiles generally lack action sequences and are written in a pseudo-academic tone. Cook-Wilson argued that both Lovecraft's works and those of the SCP Wiki were strengthened by the tensions between their detached scientific tone and the unsettling, horrific nature of the stories being told.
Bryan Alexander, writing in The New Digital Storytelling, stated that the SCP Foundation is possibly "the most advanced achievement of wiki storytelling" due to the large-scale and recurring process through which the wiki's user-base creates literary content.
## Media inspired by the SCP Foundation
The works present on the SCP Foundation website have been the subject of numerous independent adaptations and inspired some original works:
### Adaptations of the SCP universe
Films and videos (animation)
- Confinement (2017–2019) was an animated black comedy horror web series on YouTube, created by the animator "Lord Bung". The series focuses on the misadventures of Connor, an immortal human SCP prisoner whose anomalous ability to instantaneously resurrect himself from any cause of death is frequently exploited by the Foundation, who often use him like a D-class test subject to interact with various highly dangerous SCPs.
Films and videos (live-action)
- SCP: Overlord (2020) is a 35-minute action horror thriller short film on YouTube, directed by Stephen Hancock and written by Evan Muir. The plot involves a team of Foundation agents raiding and investigating a house occupied by a local cult, which performed occult rituals that have resulted in anomalous activity.
Literature (comics)
- SCP-5000 WHY - The Graphic Novel (2021) is a 120-page graphic novel adaptation of SCP-5000 - Why? (a contest-winning entry) written by Tanhony and illustrated by DRDOBERMANN. The novel focuses on technician Pietro Wilson surviving in an alternate universe where, for unknown reasons, the SCP Foundation has declared war against humanity and is releasing SCP objects to assure human extinction. Funded through Kickstarter, the novel was published by Discordia Publishing in August 2021.
Literature (novels)
- SCP Foundation: Iris Through the Looking-Glass (2018–2020) is a light novel series written by Akira and illustrated by Sidu. The book focuses on a boy who is kidnapped by the SCP Foundation after he sees a picture of Iris Thompson, a girl designated SCP-105, in every book he opens; the boy and Iris are forced to cooperate to escape the Foundation. The novel series began publication in Japan in September 2018, and was released by Seven Seas Entertainment in North America in January 2020.
- There Is No Antimemetics Division (2021) is a SCP sci-fi horror story written and self-published by Sam "qntm" Hughes. The novel focuses on the concept of "antimemes", ideas and entities that censor themselves through memory loss, data corruption, and other anomalous means, and more specifically the invasion of an antimemetic entity that feeds on information.
Theater
- Welcome to the Ethics Committee (2014) is a stage play that was performed in Dublin at the Smock Alley Theatre in October 2014. The play focused on the SCP Foundation's Ethics Committee, a body that tries to limit unethical containment procedures.
Video games
- SCP-087-B (2012) is a short horror game about walking down the stairs of SCP-087.
- SCP – Containment Breach (2012), one of the most popular games based on the SCP Foundation, was released by Finnish developer Joonas Rikkonen in 2012. The player character is D-9341, an unarmed D-class who attempts to escape from a containment facility while evading armed Foundation guards and escaped SCPs, including SCP-173. The game includes a blink function, which makes the player close their eyes but allows SCP-173 to approach.
- SCP: Secret Laboratory (2017) is a multiplayer game based on Containment Breach. Players have the option of playing as a breached SCP, an escaping scientist, a D-class, a Mobile Task Force Operative or the attacking Chaos Insurgency.
- SCP: 5K (2022) is a multiplayer co-op first-person shooter in development by Affray Interactive. Set in the alternate universe of SCP-5000 - Why?, players perform missions on behalf of various factions against the Foundation, which has become genocidal and seeks the annihilation of humanity.
- SCP: Secret Files (2022) is an episodic horror adventure game in development by GameZoo Studios. The player plays through chapters that each cover different excursions into the SCP Foundation's operations with the bizarre and abnormal.
### Other original works
Video games
- Lobotomy Corporation (2018), a management video game by Project Moon, was released in April 2018. Inspired by the SCP Foundation, the titular Lobotomy Corporation contains and harvests energy from supernatural "Abnormalities", and handling containment breaches is a major aspect of the gameplay.
- Control (2019), a video game created by Remedy Entertainment, was first revealed at E3 2018 and released in August 2019. The video game was heavily influenced by the SCP Foundation, with the game centered on a fictional Federal Bureau of Control that collects mundane objects imbued with paranormal influence to study and keep secure.
## See also
- Creepypasta
- Lovecraftian horror
- Men in Black
- The X-Files
## Explanatory notes |
292,690 | Arabian horse | 1,173,782,076 | Horse breed originating in the Middle East | [
"Arab culture",
"Arabian and part-Arabian horses",
"Horse breeds"
]
| The Arabian or Arab horse (Arabic: الحصان العربي , DMG al-ḥiṣān al-ʿarabī) is a breed of horse that originated on the Arabian Peninsula. With a distinctive head shape and high tail carriage, the Arabian is one of the most easily recognizable horse breeds in the world. It is also one of the oldest breeds, with archaeological evidence of horses in the Middle East that resemble modern Arabians dating back 4,500 years. Throughout history, Arabian horses have spread around the world by both war and trade, used to improve other breeds by adding speed, refinement, endurance, and strong bone. Today, Arabian bloodlines are found in almost every modern breed of riding horse.
The Arabian developed in a desert climate and was prized by the nomadic Bedouin people, often being brought inside the family tent for shelter and protection from theft. Selective breeding for traits, including an ability to form a cooperative relationship with humans, created a horse breed that is good-natured, quick to learn, and willing to please. The Arabian also developed the high spirit and alertness needed in a horse used for raiding and war. This combination of willingness and sensitivity requires modern Arabian horse owners to handle their horses with competence and respect.
The Arabian is a versatile breed. Arabians dominate the discipline of endurance riding and compete today in many other fields of equestrian sport. They are one of the top ten most popular horse breeds in the world. They are now found worldwide, including the United States and Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, continental Europe, South America (especially Brazil), and their land of origin, the Middle East.
## Breed characteristics
Arabian horses have refined, wedge-shaped heads, a broad forehead, large eyes, large nostrils, and small muzzles. Most display a distinctive concave, or "dished" profile. Many Arabians also have a slight forehead bulge between their eyes, called the jibbah by the Bedouin, that adds additional sinus capacity, believed to have helped the Arabian horse in its native dry desert climate. Another breed characteristic is an arched neck with a large, well-set windpipe set on a refined, clean throatlatch. This structure of the poll and throatlatch was called the mitbah or mitbeh by the Bedouin. In the ideal Arabian, it is long, allowing flexibility in the bridle and room for the windpipe.
Other distinctive features are a relatively long, level croup, or top of the hindquarters, and naturally high tail carriage. The USEF breed standard requires Arabians to have solid bone and standard correct equine conformation. Well-bred Arabians have a deep, well-angled hip and well laid-back shoulder. Within the breed, there are variations. Some individuals have wider, more powerfully muscled hindquarters suitable for intense bursts of activity in events such as reining, while others have longer, leaner muscling better suited for long stretches of flatwork such as endurance riding or horse racing. Most have a compact body with a short back. Arabians usually have dense, strong bone, and good hoof walls. They are especially noted for their endurance, and the superiority of the breed in Endurance riding competition demonstrates that well-bred Arabians are strong, sound horses with superior stamina. At international FEI-sponsored endurance events, Arabians and half-Arabians are the dominant performers in distance competition.
### Skeletal analysis
Some Arabians, though not all, have 5 lumbar vertebrae instead of the usual 6, and 17 pairs of ribs rather than 18. A quality Arabian has both a relatively horizontal croup and a properly angled pelvis as well as good croup length and depth to the hip (determined by the length of the pelvis), that allows agility and impulsion. A misconception confuses the topline of the croup with the angle of the "hip" (the pelvis or ilium), leading some to assert that Arabians have a flat pelvis angle and cannot use their hindquarters properly. However, the croup is formed by the sacral vertebrae. The hip angle is determined by the attachment of the ilium to the spine, the structure and length of the femur, and other aspects of hindquarter anatomy, which is not correlated to the topline of the sacrum. Thus, the Arabian has conformation typical of other horse breeds built for speed and distance, such as the Thoroughbred, where the angle of the ilium is more oblique than that of the croup. Thus, the hip angle is not necessarily correlated to the topline of the croup. Horses bred to gallop need a good length of croup and good length of hip for proper attachment of muscles, and so unlike angle, length of hip and croup do go together as a rule.
### Size
The breed standard stated by the United States Equestrian Federation, describes Arabians as standing between tall, "with the occasional individual over or under". Thus, all Arabians, regardless of height, are classified as "horses", even though is the traditional cutoff height between a horse and a pony. A common myth is that Arabians are not strong because they are relatively small and refined. However, the Arabian horse is noted for a greater density of bone than other breeds, short cannons, sound feet, and a broad, short back, all of which give the breed physical strength comparable to many taller animals. Thus, even a smaller Arabian can carry a heavy rider. For tasks where the sheer weight of the horse matters, such as farm work done by a draft horse, any lighter-weight horse is at a disadvantage. However, for most purposes, the Arabian is a strong and hardy light horse breed able to carry any type of rider in most equestrian pursuits.
### Temperament
For centuries, Arabian horses lived in the desert in close association with humans. For shelter and protection from theft, prized war mares were sometimes kept in their owner's tent, close to children and everyday family life. Only horses with a naturally good disposition were allowed to reproduce, with the result that Arabians today have a good temperament that, among other examples, makes them one of the few breeds where the United States Equestrian Federation rules allow children to exhibit stallions in nearly all show ring classes, including those limited to riders under 18.
On the other hand, the Arabian is also classified as a "hot-blooded" breed, a category that includes other refined, spirited horses bred for speed, such as the Akhal-Teke, the Barb, and the Thoroughbred. Like other hot-bloods, Arabians' sensitivity and intelligence enable quick learning and greater communication with their riders; however, their intelligence also allows them to learn bad habits as quickly as good ones, and they do not tolerate inept or abusive training practices. Some sources claim that it is more difficult to train a "hot-blooded" horse. Though most Arabians have a natural tendency to cooperate with humans, when treated badly, like any horse, they can become excessively nervous or anxious, but seldom become vicious unless seriously spoiled or subjected to extreme abuse. At the other end of the spectrum, romantic myths are sometimes told about Arabian horses that give them near-divine characteristics.
### Colors
The Arabian Horse Association registers purebred horses with the coat colors bay, gray, chestnut, black, and roan. Bay, gray and chestnut are the most common; black is less common. The classic roan gene does not appear to exist in Arabians; rather, Arabians registered by breeders as "roan" are usually expressing rabicano or, sometimes, sabino patterns with roan features. All Arabians, no matter their coat color, have black skin, except under white markings. Black skin provided protection from the intense desert sun.
#### Gray and white
Although many Arabians appear to have a "white" hair coat, they are not genetically "white". This color is usually created by the natural action of the gray gene, and virtually all white-looking Arabians are actually grays. A specialized colorization seen in some older gray Arabians is the so-called "bloody-shoulder", which is a particular type of "flea-bitten" gray with localized aggregations of pigment on the shoulder.
There are a very few Arabians registered as "white" having a white coat, pink skin and dark eyes from birth. These animals are believed to manifest a new form of dominant white, a result of a nonsense mutation in DNA tracing to a single stallion foaled in 1996. This horse was originally thought to be a sabino, but actually was found to have a new form of dominant white mutation, now labeled W3. It is possible that white mutations have occurred in Arabians in the past or that mutations other than W3 exist but have not been verified by genetic testing.
#### Sabino
One spotting pattern, sabino, does exist in purebred Arabians. Sabino coloring is characterized by white markings such as "high white" above the knees and hocks, irregular spotting on the legs, belly and face, white markings that extend beyond the eyes or under the chin and jaw, and sometimes lacy or roaned edges.
The genetic mechanism that produces sabino patterning in Arabians is undetermined, and more than one gene may be involved. Studies at the University of California, Davis indicate that Arabians do not appear to carry the autosomal dominant gene "SB1" or sabino 1, that often produces bold spotting and some completely white horses in other breeds. The inheritance patterns observed in sabino-like Arabians also do not follow the same mode of inheritance as sabino 1.
#### Rabicano or roan?
There are very few Arabians registered as roan, and according to researcher D. Phillip Sponenberg, roaning in purebred Arabians is actually the action of rabicano genetics. Unlike a genetic roan, rabicano is a partial roan-like pattern; the horse does not have intermingled white and solid hairs over the entire body, only on the midsection and flanks, the head and legs are solid-colored. Some people also confuse a young gray horse with a roan because of the intermixed hair colors common to both. However, a roan does not consistently lighten with age, while a gray does.
#### Colors that do not exist in purebreds
There is pictorial evidence from pottery and tombs in Ancient Egypt suggesting that spotting patterns may have existed on ancestral Arabian-type horses in antiquity. Nonetheless, purebred Arabians today do not carry genes for pinto or Leopard complex ("Appaloosa") spotting patterns, except for sabino.
`Spotting or excess white was believed by many breeders to be a mark of impurity until DNA testing for verification of parentage became standard. For a time, horses with belly spots and other white markings deemed excessive were discouraged from registration and excess white was sometimes penalized in the show ring.`
Purebred Arabians never carry dilution genes. Therefore, purebreds cannot be colors such as dun, cremello, palomino or buckskin.
To produce horses with some Arabian characteristics but coat colors not found in purebreds, they have to be crossbred with other breeds. Though the purebred Arabian produces a limited range of potential colors, they do not appear to carry any color-based lethal disorders such as the frame overo gene ("O") that can produce lethal white syndrome (LWS). Because purebred Arabians cannot produce LWS foals, Arabian mares were used as a non-affected population in some of the studies seeking the gene that caused the condition in other breeds. Nonetheless, partbred Arabian offspring can, in some cases, carry these genes if the non-Arabian parent was a carrier.
### Genetic disorders
There are six known genetic disorders in Arabian horses. Two are inevitably fatal, two are not inherently fatal but are disabling and usually result in euthanasia of the affected animal; the remaining conditions can usually be treated. Three are thought to be autosomal recessive conditions, which means that the flawed gene is not sex-linked and has to come from both parents for an affected foal to be born. One may be an autosomal dominant. Arabians are not the only breed of horse to have problems with inherited diseases; partbred Arabians may inherit deleterious genetics from other breeds.
Genetic diseases that can occur in purebred Arabians, or in partbreds with Arabian ancestry in both parents, are the following:
- Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID). Recessive disorder, fatal when homozygous, carriers (heterozygotes) show no signs. Similar to the "bubble boy" condition in humans, an affected foal is born with a complete lack of an immune system, and thus generally dies of an opportunistic infection, usually before the age of three months. There is a DNA test that can detect healthy horses who are carriers of the gene causing SCID, thus testing and careful, planned matings can now eliminate the possibility of an affected foal ever being born.
- Lavender Foal Syndrome (LFS), also called Coat Color Dilution Lethal (CCDL). Recessive disorder, fatal when homozygous, carriers show no signs. The condition has its name because most affected foals are born with a coat color dilution that lightens the tips of the coat hairs, or even the entire hair shaft. Foals with LFS are unable to stand at birth, often have seizures, and are usually euthanized within a few days of birth. In November 2009, Cornell University announced that a DNA test has been developed to detect carriers of LFS. Simultaneously, the University of Pretoria also announced that they had also developed a DNA test.
- Cerebellar abiotrophy (CA or CCA). Recessive disorder, homozygous horses are affected, carriers show no signs. An affected foal is usually born without clinical signs, but at some stage, usually after six weeks of age, develops severe incoordination, a head tremor, wide-legged stance and other symptoms related to the death of the purkinje cells in the cerebellum. Such foals are frequently diagnosed only after they have crashed into a fence or fallen over backwards, and often are misdiagnosed as suffering from a head injury caused by an accident. Severity varies, with some foals having fast onset of severe coordination problems, others showing milder signs. Mildly affected horses can live a full lifespan, but most are euthanized before adulthood because they are so accident-prone as to be dangerous. As of 2008, there is a genetic test that uses DNA markers associated with CA to detect both carriers and affected animals. Clinical signs are distinguishable from other neurological conditions, and a diagnosis of CA can be verified by examining the brain after euthanasia.
- Occipital Atlanto-Axial Malformation (OAAM). This is a condition where the occiput, atlas and axis vertebrae in the neck and at the base of the skull are fused or malformed. Symptoms range from mild incoordination to the paralysis of both front and rear legs. Some affected foals cannot stand to nurse, in others the symptoms may not be seen for several weeks. This is the only cervical spinal cord disease seen in horses less than 1 month of age, and a radiograph can diagnose the condition. There is now a genetic test for OAAM.
- Equine juvenile epilepsy, or Juvenile Idiopathic Epilepsy, sometimes referred to as "benign" epilepsy, is not usually fatal. Foals appear normal between epileptic seizures, and seizures usually stop occurring between 12 and 18 months. Affected foals may show signs of epilepsy anywhere from two days to six months from birth. Seizures can be treated with traditional anti-seizure medications, which may reduce their severity. Though the condition has been studied since 1985 at the University of California, Davis, the genetic mode of inheritance is unclear, though the cases studied were all of one general bloodline group. Recent research updates suggest that a dominant mode of inheritance is involved in transmission of this trait. One researcher hypothesized that epilepsy may be linked in some fashion to Lavender Foal Syndrome due to the fact that it occurs in similar bloodlines and some horses have produced foals with both conditions.
- Guttural Pouch Tympany (GPT) occurs in horses ranging from birth to 1 year of age and is more common in fillies than in colts. It is thought to be genetic in Arabians, possibly polygenic in inheritance, but more study is needed. Foals are born with a defect that causes the pharyngeal opening of the eustachian tube to act like a one-way valve – air can get in, but it cannot get out. The affected guttural pouch is distended with air and forms a characteristic nonpainful swelling. Breathing is noisy in severely affected animals. Diagnosis is based on clinical signs and radiographic examination of the skull. Medical management with NSAID and antimicrobial therapy can treat upper respiratory tract inflammation. Surgical intervention is needed to correct the malformation of the guttural pouch opening, to provide a route for air in the abnormal guttural pouch to pass to the normal side and be expelled into the pharynx. Foals that are successfully treated may grow up to have fully useful lives.
The Arabian Horse Association in the United States has created a foundation that supports research efforts to uncover the roots of genetic diseases. The organization F.O.A.L. (Fight Off Arabian Lethals) is a clearinghouse for information on these conditions. Additional information is available from the World Arabian Horse Association (WAHO).
Recent trends in halter breeding have given rise to Arabian horses with extremely concave features, raising concerns that the trait is detrimental to the animal's welfare. Comparisons have been made to a similar trend with some dog breeds, where show judging awarding certain features has led to breeders seeking an ever more exaggerated form, with little concern as to the inherent function of the animal. Some veterinarians speculate that an extremely concave face is detrimental to a horse's breathing, but the issue has not been formally studied.
## Legends
Arabian horses are the topic of many myths and legends. One origin story tells how Muhammad chose his foundation mares by a test of their courage and loyalty. While there are several variants on the tale, a common version states that after a long journey through the desert, Muhammad turned his herd of horses loose to race to an oasis for a desperately needed drink of water. Before the herd reached the water, Muhammad called for the horses to return to him. Only five mares responded. Because they faithfully returned to their master, though desperate with thirst, these mares became his favorites and were called Al Khamsa, meaning, the five. These mares became the legendary founders of the five "strains" of the Arabian horse. Although the Al Khamsa are generally considered fictional horses of legend, some breeders today claim the modern Bedouin Arabian actually descended from these mares.
Another origin tale claims that King Solomon was given a pure Arabian-type mare named Safanad ("the pure") by the Queen of Sheba. A different version says that Solomon gave a stallion, Zad el-Raheb or Zad-el-Rakib ("Gift to the Rider"), to the Banu Azd people when they came to pay tribute to the king. This legendary stallion was said to be faster than the zebra and the gazelle, and every hunt with him was successful, thus when he was put to stud, he became a founding sire of legend.
Yet another creation myth puts the origin of the Arabian in the time of Ishmael, the son of Abraham. In this story, the Angel Jibril (also known as Gabriel) descended from Heaven and awakened Ishmael with a "wind-spout" that whirled toward him. The Angel then commanded the thundercloud to stop scattering dust and rain, and so it gathered itself into a prancing, handsome creature - a horse - that seemed to swallow up the ground. Hence, the Bedouins bestowed the title "Drinker of the Wind" to the first Arabian horse.
Finally, a Bedouin story states that Allah created the Arabian horse from the south wind and exclaimed, "I create thee, Oh Arabian. To thy forelock, I bind Victory in battle. On thy back, I set a rich spoil and a Treasure in thy loins. I establish thee as one of the Glories of the Earth... I give thee flight without wings." Other versions of the story claim Allah said to the South Wind: "I want to make a creature out of you. Condense." Then from the material condensed from the wind, he made a kamayt-colored animal (a bay or burnt chestnut) and said: "I call you Horse; I make you Arabian and I give you the chestnut color of the ant; I have hung happiness from the forelock which hangs between your eyes; you shall be the Lord of the other animals. Men shall follow you wherever you go; you shall be as good for flight as for pursuit; you shall fly without wings; riches shall be on your back and fortune shall come through your meditation."
## Origins
Arabians are one of the oldest human-developed horse breeds in the world. The progenitor stock, the Oriental subtype or "Proto-Arabian" was believed to be a horse with oriental characteristics similar to the modern Arabian. Horses with these features appeared in rock paintings and inscriptions in the Arabian Peninsula dating back 3500 years. In ancient history throughout the Ancient Near East, horses with refined heads and high-carried tails were depicted in artwork, particularly that of Ancient Egypt in the 16th century BC.
Some scholars of the Arabian horse once theorized that the Arabian came from a separate subspecies of horse, known as equus caballus pumpelli. Other scholars, including Gladys Brown Edwards, a noted Arabian researcher, believe that the "dry" oriental horses of the desert, from which the modern Arabian developed, were more likely Equus ferus caballus with specific landrace characteristics based on the environments in which they lived, rather than being a separate subspecies. Horses with similar, though not identical, physical characteristics include the Marwari horse of India, the Barb of North Africa, the Akhal-Teke of western Asia and the now-extinct Turkoman Horse. Recent genetic studies of mitochondrial DNA in Arabian horses of Polish and American breeding suggest that the modern breed has heterogeneous origins with ten haplogroups. The modern concept of breed purity in the modern population cannot be traced beyond 200 years.
### Desert roots
There are different theories about where the ancestors of the Arabian originally lived. Most evidence suggests the proto-Arabian came from the area along the northern edge of the Fertile Crescent. Another hypothesis suggests the southwestern corner of the Arabian peninsula, in modern-day Yemen, where three now-dry riverbeds indicate good natural pastures existed long ago, perhaps as far back as the Ice Age. This hypothesis has gained renewed attention following a 2010 discovery of artifacts dated between 6590 and 7250 BCE in Al-Magar, in southwestern Saudi Arabia, that appeared to portray horses.
The proto-Arabian horse may have been domesticated by the people of the Arabian peninsula known today as the Bedouin, some time after they learned to use the camel, approximately 4,000–5,000 years ago. One theory is that this development occurred in the Nejd plateau in central Arabia. Other scholars, noting that horses were common in the Fertile Crescent but rare in the Arabian peninsula prior to the rise of Islam, theorize that the breed as it is known today only developed in large numbers when the conversion of the Persians to Islam in the 7th century brought knowledge of horse breeding and horsemanship to the Bedouin. The oldest depictions in the Arabian Peninsula of horses that are clearly domesticated date no earlier than 1800-2000 BCE.
Regardless of origin, climate and culture ultimately created the Arabian. The desert environment required a domesticated horse to cooperate with humans to survive; humans were the only providers of food and water in certain areas, and even hardy Arabian horses needed far more water than camels in order to survive (most horses can only live about 72 hours without water). Where there was no pasture or water, the Bedouin fed their horses dates and camel's milk. The desert horse needed the ability to thrive on very little food, and to have anatomical traits to compensate for life in a dry climate with wide temperature extremes from day to night. Weak individuals were weeded out of the breeding pool, and the animals that remained were also honed by centuries of human warfare.
The Bedouin way of life depended on camels and horses: Arabians were bred to be war horses with speed, endurance, soundness, and intelligence. Because many raids required stealth, mares were preferred over stallions as they were quieter, and therefore would not give away the position of the fighters. A good disposition was also critical; prized war mares were often brought inside family tents to prevent theft and for protection from weather and predators. Though appearance was not necessarily a survival factor, the Bedouin bred for refinement and beauty in their horses as well as for more practical features.
### Strains and pedigrees
For centuries, the Bedouin tracked the ancestry of each horse through an oral tradition. Horses of the purest blood were known as Asil and crossbreeding with non-Asil horses was forbidden. Mares were the most valued, both for riding and breeding, and pedigree families were traced through the female line. The Bedouin did not believe in gelding male horses, and considered stallions too intractable to be good war horses, thus they kept very few colts, selling most, and culling those of poor quality.
Over time, the Bedouin developed several sub-types or strains of Arabian horse, each with unique characteristics, and traced through the maternal line only. According to the Arabian Horse Association, the five primary strains were known as the Keheilan, Seglawi, Abeyan, Hamdani and Hadban. Carl Raswan, a promoter and writer about Arabian horses from the middle of the 20th century, held the belief that there were only three strains, Kehilan, Seglawi and Muniqi. Raswan felt that these strains represented body "types" of the breed, with the Kehilan being "masculine", the Seglawi being "feminine" and the Muniqi being "speedy". There were also lesser strains, sub-strains, and regional variations in strain names. Therefore, many Arabian horses were not only Asil, of pure blood, but also bred to be pure in strain, with crossbreeding between strains discouraged, though not forbidden, by some tribes. Purity of bloodline was very important to the Bedouin, and they also believed in telegony, believing if a mare was ever bred to a stallion of "impure" blood, the mare herself and all future offspring would be "contaminated" by the stallion and hence no longer Asil.
This complex web of bloodline and strain was an integral part of Bedouin culture; they not only knew the pedigrees and history of their best war mares in detail, but also carefully tracked the breeding of their camels, Saluki dogs, and their own family or tribal history. Eventually, written records began to be kept; the first written pedigrees in the Middle East that specifically used the term "Arabian" date to 1330 AD. As important as strain was to the Bedouin, modern studies of mitochondrial DNA suggest that Arabian horses alive today with records stating descent from a given strain may not actually share a common maternal ancestry.
## Historic development
### Role in the ancient world
Fiery war horses with dished faces and high-carried tails were popular artistic subjects in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, often depicted pulling chariots in war or for hunting. Horses with oriental characteristics appear in later artwork as far north as that of Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire. While this type of horse was not called an "Arabian" in the Ancient Near East until later, these proto-Arabians shared many characteristics with the modern Arabian, including speed, endurance, and refinement. For example, a horse skeleton unearthed in the Sinai peninsula, dated to 1700 BC and probably brought by the Hyksos invaders, is considered the earliest physical evidence of the horse in Ancient Egypt. This horse had a wedge-shaped head, large eye sockets and small muzzle, all characteristics of the Arabian horse.
### In Islamic history
Following the Hijra in AD 622 (also sometimes spelled Hegira), the Arabian horse spread across the known world of the time, and became recognized as a distinct, named breed. It played a significant role in the History of the Middle East and of Islam. By 630, Muslim influence expanded across the Middle East and North Africa, by 711 Muslim warriors had reached Spain, and they controlled most of the Iberian Peninsula by 720. Their war horses were of various oriental types, including both Arabians and the Barb horse of North Africa. More Arabian horses were introduced to North Africa as a result of the migration of Banu Hilal.
Arabian horses also spread to the rest of the world via the Ottoman Empire, which rose in 1299. Though it never fully dominated the heart of the Arabian Peninsula, this Turkish empire obtained many Arabian horses through trade, diplomacy and war. The Ottomans encouraged formation of private stud farms in order to ensure a supply of cavalry horses, and Ottoman nobles, such as Muhammad Ali of Egypt also collected pure, desert-bred Arabian horses.
El Naseri, or Al-Nasir Muhammad, Sultan of Egypt (1290–1342) imported and bred numerous Arabians in Egypt. A stud farm record was made of his purchases describing many of the horses as well as their abilities, and was deposited in his library, becoming a source for later study. Through the Ottomans, Arabian horses were often sold, traded, or given as diplomatic gifts to Europeans and, later, to Americans.
### Egypt
Historically, Egyptian breeders imported horses bred in the deserts of Palestine and the Arabian peninsula as the source of their foundation bloodstock. By the time that the Ottoman Empire dominated Egypt, the political elites of the region still recognized the need for quality bloodstock for both war and for horse racing, and some continued to return to the deserts to obtain pure-blooded Arabians. One of the most famous was Muhammad Ali of Egypt, also known as Muhammad Ali Pasha, who established an extensive stud farm in the 19th century. After his death, some of his stock was bred on by Abbas I of Egypt, also known as Abbas Pasha. However, after Abbas Pasha was assassinated in 1854, his heir, El Hami Pasha, sold most of his horses, often for crossbreeding, and gave away many others as diplomatic gifts. A remnant of the herd was obtained by Ali Pasha Sherif, who then went back to the desert to bring in new bloodstock. At its peak, the stud of Ali Pasha Sherif had over 400 purebred Arabians. An epidemic of African horse sickness in the 1870s that killed thousands of horses throughout Egypt decimated much of his herd, wiping out several irreplaceable bloodlines. Late in his life, he sold several horses to Wilfred and Lady Anne Blunt, who exported them to Crabbet Park Stud in England. After his death, Lady Anne was also able to gather many remaining horses at her Sheykh Obeyd stud.
Meanwhile, the passion brought by the Blunts to saving the pure horse of the desert helped Egyptian horse breeders to convince their government of the need to preserve the best of their own remaining pure Arabian bloodstock that descended from the horses collected over the previous century by Muhammad Ali Pasha, Abbas Pasha and Ali Pasha Sherif. The government of Egypt formed the Royal Agricultural Society (RAS) in 1908, which is known today as the Egyptian Agricultural Organization (EAO). RAS representatives traveled to England during the 1920s and purchased eighteen descendants of the original Blunt exports from Lady Wentworth at Crabbet Park, and brought them to Egypt in order to restore bloodlines had been lost. Other than several horses purchased by Henry Babson for importation to the United States in the 1930s, and one other small group exported to the US in 1947, relatively few Egyptian-bred Arabian horses were exported until the overthrow of King Farouk I in 1952. Many of the private stud farms of the princes were then confiscated and the animals taken over by the EAO. In the 1960s and 1970s, as oil development brought more foreign investors to Egypt, some of whom were horse fanciers, Arabians were exported to Germany and to the United States, as well as to the former Soviet Union. Today, the designation "Straight Egyptian" or "Egyptian Arabian" is popular with some Arabian breeders, and the modern Egyptian-bred Arabian is an outcross used to add refinement in some breeding programs.
## Arrival in Europe
Probably the earliest horses with Arabian bloodlines to enter Europe came indirectly, through Spain and France. Others would have arrived with returning Crusaders—beginning in 1095, European armies invaded Palestine and many knights returned home with Arabian horses as spoils of war. Later, as knights and the heavy, armored war horses who carried them became obsolete, Arabian horses and their descendants were used to develop faster, agile light cavalry horses that were used in warfare into the 20th century.
Another major infusion of Arabian horses into Europe occurred when the Ottoman Turks sent 300,000 horsemen into Hungary in 1522, many of whom were mounted on pure-blooded Arabians, captured during raids into Arabia. By 1529, the Ottomans reached Vienna, where they were stopped by the Polish and Hungarian armies, who captured these horses from the defeated Ottoman cavalry. Some of these animals provided foundation bloodstock for the major studs of eastern Europe.
### Polish and Russian breeding programs
With the rise of light cavalry, the stamina and agility of horses with Arabian blood gave an enormous military advantage to any army who possessed them. As a result, many European monarchs began to support large breeding establishments that crossed Arabians on local stock, one example being Knyszyna, the royal stud of Polish king Zygmunt II August, and another the Imperial Russian Stud of Peter the Great.
European horse breeders also obtained Arabian stock directly from the desert or via trade with the Ottomans. In Russia, Count Alexey Orlov obtained many Arabians, including Smetanka, an Arabian stallion who became a foundation sire of the Orlov trotter. Orlov then provided Arabian horses to Catherine the Great, who in 1772 owned 12 pure Arabian stallions and 10 mares. By 1889 two members of the Russian nobility, Count Stroganov and Prince Nikolai Borisovich Shcherbatov, established Arabian stud farms to meet the continued need to breed Arabians as a source of pure bloodstock.
In Poland, notable imports from Arabia included those of Prince Hieronymous Sanguszko (1743–1812), who founded the Slawuta stud. Poland's first state-run Arabian stud farm, Janów Podlaski, was established by the decree of Alexander I of Russia in 1817, and by 1850, the great stud farms of Poland were well-established, including Antoniny, owned by the Polish Count Potocki (who had married into the Sanguszko family); later notable as the farm that produced the stallion Skowronek.
### Central and western Europe
The 18th century marked the establishment of most of the great Arabian studs of Europe, dedicated to preserving "pure" Arabian bloodstock. The Prussians set up a royal stud in 1732, originally intended to provide horses for the royal stables, and other studs were established to breed animals for other uses, including mounts for the Prussian army. The foundation of these breeding programs was the crossing of Arabians on native horses; by 1873 some English observers felt that the Prussian cavalry mounts were superior in endurance to those of the British, and credited Arabian bloodlines for this superiority.
Other state studs included the Babolna Stud of Hungary, set up in 1789, and the Weil stud in Germany (now Weil-Marbach or the Marbach stud), founded in 1817 by King William I of Württemberg. King James I of England imported the first Arabian stallion, the Markham Arabian, to England in 1616. Arabians were also introduced into European race horse breeding, especially in England via the Darley Arabian, Byerly Turk, and Godolphin Arabian, the three foundation stallions of the modern Thoroughbred breed, who were each brought to England during the 18th century. Other monarchs obtained Arabian horses, often as personal mounts. One of the most famous Arabian stallions in Europe was Marengo, the war horse ridden by Napoleon Bonaparte.
During the mid-19th century, the need for Arabian blood to improve the breeding stock for light cavalry horses in Europe resulted in more excursions to the Middle East. Queen Isabel II of Spain sent representatives to the desert to purchase Arabian horses and by 1847 had established a stud book; her successor, King Alfonso XII imported additional bloodstock from other European nations. By 1893, the state military stud farm, Yeguada Militar was established in Córdoba, Spain for breeding both Arabian and Iberian horses. The military remained heavily involved in the importation and breeding of Arabians in Spain well into the early 20th century, and the Yeguada Militar is still in existence today.
This period also marked a phase of considerable travel to the Middle East by European civilians and minor nobility, and in the process, some travelers noticed that the Arabian horse as a pure breed of horse was under threat due to modern forms of warfare, inbreeding and other problems that were reducing the horse population of the Bedouin tribes at a rapid rate. By the late 19th century, the most farsighted began in earnest to collect the finest Arabian horses they could find in order to preserve the blood of the pure desert horse for future generations. The most famous example was Lady Anne Blunt, the daughter of Ada Lovelace and granddaughter of Lord Byron.
### Rise of the Crabbet Park Stud
Perhaps the most famous of all Arabian breeding operations founded in Europe was the Crabbet Park Stud of England, founded 1878. Starting in 1877, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt and Lady Anne Blunt made repeated journeys to the Middle East, including visits to the stud of Ali Pasha Sherif in Egypt and to Bedouin tribes in the Nejd, bringing the best Arabians they could find to England. Lady Anne also purchased and maintained the Sheykh Obeyd stud farm in Egypt, near Cairo. Upon Lady Anne's death in 1917, the Blunts' daughter, Judith, Lady Wentworth, inherited the Wentworth title and Lady Anne's portion of the estate, and obtained the remainder of the Crabbet Stud following a protracted legal battle with her father. Lady Wentworth expanded the stud, added new bloodstock, and exported Arabian horses worldwide. Upon her death in 1957, the stud passed to her manager, Cecil Covey, who ran Crabbet until 1971, when a motorway was cut through the property, forcing the sale of the land and dispersal of the horses. Along with Crabbet, the Hanstead Stud of Lady Yule also produced horses of worldwide significance.
### Early 20th-century Europe
In the early 20th century, the military was involved in the breeding of Arabian horses throughout Europe, particularly in Poland, Spain, Germany, and Russia; private breeders also developed a number of breeding programs. Significant among the private breeders in continental Europe was Spain's Cristóbal Colón de Aguilera, XV Duque de Veragua, a direct descendant of Christopher Columbus, who founded the Veragua Stud in the 1920s.
### Modern warfare and its impact on European studs
Between World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, many historic European stud farms were lost; in Poland, the Antoniny and Slawuta Studs were wiped out except for five mares. Notable among the survivors was the Janów Podlaski Stud. The Russian Revolution, combined with the effects of World War I, destroyed most of the breeding programs in Russia, but by 1921, the Soviet government reestablished an Arabian program, the Tersk Stud, on the site of the former Stroganov estate, which included Polish bloodstock as well as some importations from the Crabbet Stud in England. The programs that survived the war re-established their breeding operations and some added to their studs with new imports of desert-bred Arabian horses from the Middle East. Not all European studs recovered. The Weil stud of Germany, founded by King Wilhelm I, went into considerable decline; by the time the Weil herd was transferred to the Marbach State Stud in 1932, only 17 purebred Arabians remained.
The Spanish Civil War and World War II also had a devastating impact on horse breeding throughout Europe. The Veragua stud was destroyed, and its records lost, with the only survivors being the broodmares and the younger horses, who were rescued by Francisco Franco. Crabbet Park, Tersk, and Janów Podlaski survived. Both the Soviet Union and the United States obtained valuable Arabian bloodlines as spoils of war, which they used to strengthen their breeding programs. The Soviets had taken steps to protect their breeding stock at Tersk Stud, and by utilizing horses captured in Poland they were able to re-establish their breeding program soon after the end of World War II. The Americans brought Arabian horses captured in Europe to the United States, mostly to the Pomona U.S. Army Remount station, the former W.K. Kellogg Ranch in California.
In the postwar era, Poland, Spain, and Germany developed or re-established many well-respected Arabian stud farms. The studs of Poland in particular were decimated by both the Nazis and the Soviets, but were able to reclaim some of their breeding stock and became particularly world-renowned for their quality Arabian horses, tested rigorously by racing and other performance standards. During the 1950s, the Russians also obtained additional horses from Egypt to augment their breeding programs.
### After the Cold War
While only a few Arabians were exported from behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War, those who did come to the west caught the eye of breeders worldwide. Improved international relations between eastern Europe and the west led to major imports of Polish and Russian-bred Arabian horses to western Europe and the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. The collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1991, greater political stability in Egypt, and the rise of the European Union all increased international trade in Arabian horses. Organizations such as the World Arabian Horse Association (WAHO) created consistent standards for transferring the registration of Arabian horses between different nations. Today, Arabian horses are traded all over the world.
## In America
The first horses on the American mainland since the end of the Ice Age arrived with the Spanish Conquistadors. Hernán Cortés brought 16 horses of Andalusian, Barb, and Arabian ancestry to Mexico in 1519. Others followed, such as Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, who brought 250 horses of similar breeding to America in 1540. More horses followed with each new arrival of Conquistadors, missionaries, and settlers. Many horses escaped or were stolen, becoming the foundation stock of the American Mustang.
### Early imports
Colonists from England also brought horses of Arabian breeding to the eastern seaboard. One example was Nathaniel Harrison, who imported a horse of Arabian, Barb and Turkish ancestry to America in 1747.
One of George Washington's primary mounts during the American Revolutionary War was a gray half-Arabian horse named Blueskin, sired by the stallion "Ranger", also known as "Lindsay's Arabian", said to have been obtained from the Sultan of Morocco. Other Presidents are linked to ownership of Arabian horses; in 1840, President Martin Van Buren received two Arabians from the Sultan of Oman, and in 1877, President Ulysses S. Grant obtained two stallions, an Arabian and a Barb, as gifts from Abdul Hamid II, the "Sultan of Turkey".
A. Keene Richard was the first American known to have specifically bred Arabian horses. He traveled to the desert in 1853 and 1856 to obtain breeding stock, which he crossed on Thoroughbreds, and also bred purebred Arabians. Unfortunately, his horses were lost during the Civil War and have no known purebred Arabian descendants today. Another major U.S. political figure, William H. Seward purchased four Arabians in Beirut in 1859, prior to becoming Secretary of State to Abraham Lincoln.
Leopard is the only stallion imported prior to 1888 who left known purebred descendants in America. In 1888 Randolph Huntington imported the desert-bred Arabian mare \*Naomi, and bred her to Leopard, producing Leopard's only purebred Arabian son, Anazeh, who sired eight purebred Arabian foals, four of whom still appear in pedigrees today.
### Development of purebred breeding in America
In 1908, the Arabian Horse Registry of America was established, recording 71 animals, and by 1994, the number had reached half a million. Today there are more Arabians registered in North America than in the rest of the world put together.
The origins of the registry date to 1893, when the Hamidie Society sponsored an exhibit of Arabian horses from what today is Syria at the World Fair in Chicago. This exhibition raised considerable interest in Arabian horses. Records are unclear if 40 or 45 horses were imported for the exposition, but seven died in a fire shortly after arrival. The 28 horses that remained at the end of the exhibition stayed in America and were sold at auction when the Hamidie Society went bankrupt. These horses caught the interest of American breeders, including Peter Bradley of the Hingham Stock Farm, who purchased some Hamidie horses at the auction, and Homer Davenport, another admirer of the Hamidie imports.
Major Arabian importations to the United States included those of Davenport and Bradley, who teamed up to purchase several stallions and mares directly from the Bedouin in 1906. Spencer Borden of the Interlachen Stud made several importations between 1898 and 1911; and W.R. Brown of the Maynesboro Stud, interested in the Arabian as a cavalry mount, imported many Arabians over a period of years, starting in 1918. Another wave of imports came in the 1920s and 30s when breeders such as W.K. Kellogg, Henry Babson, Roger Selby, James Draper, and others imported Arabian bloodstock from Crabbet Park Stud in England, as well as from Poland, Spain and Egypt. The breeding of Arabians was fostered by the U. S. Army Remount Service, which stood purebred stallions at public stud for a reduced rate.
Several Arabians, mostly of Polish breeding, were captured from Nazi Germany and imported to the U.S.A. following World War II. In 1957, two deaths in England led to more sales to the United States: first from Crabbet Stud on the demise of Lady Wentworth, and then from Hanstead with the passing of Gladys Yule. As the tensions of the Cold War eased, more Arabians were imported to America from Poland and Egypt, and in the late 1970s, as political issues surrounding import regulations and the recognition of stud books were resolved, many Arabian horses were imported from Spain and Russia.
### Modern trends
In the 1980s, Arabians became a popular status symbol and were marketed similarly to fine art. Some individuals also used horses as a tax shelter. Prices skyrocketed, especially in the United States, with a record-setting public auction price for a mare named NH Love Potion, who sold for \$2.55 million in 1984, and the largest syndication in history for an Arabian stallion, Padron, at \$11 million. The potential for profit led to over-breeding of the Arabian. When the Tax Reform Act of 1986 closed the tax-sheltering "passive investment" loophole, limiting the use of horse farms as tax shelters, the Arabian market was particularly vulnerable due to over-saturation and artificially inflated prices, and it collapsed, forcing many breeders into bankruptcy and sending many purebred Arabians to slaughter. Prices recovered slowly, with many breeders moving away from producing "living art" and towards a horse more suitable for amateur owners and many riding disciplines. By 2003, a survey found that 67% of purebred Arabian horses in America are owned for recreational riding purposes. , there are more than 660,000 Arabians that have been registered in the United States, and the US has the largest number of Arabians of any nation in the world.
## In Australia
### Early imports
Arabian horses were introduced to Australia in the earliest days of European Settlement. Early imports included both purebred Arabians and light Spanish "jennets" from Andalusia, many Arabians also came from India. Based on records describing stallions "of Arabic and Persian blood", the first Arabian horses were probably imported to Australia in several groups between 1788 and 1802. About 1803, a merchant named Robert Campbell imported a bay Arabian stallion, Hector, from India; Hector was said to have been owned by Arthur Wellesley, who later became known as the Duke of Wellington. In 1804 two additional Arabians, also from India, arrived in Tasmania one of whom, White William, sired the first purebred Arabian foal born in Australia, a stallion named Derwent.
Throughout the 19th century, many more Arabians came to Australia, though most were used to produce crossbred horses and left no recorded purebred descendants. The first significant imports to be permanently recorded with offspring still appearing in modern purebred Arabian pedigrees were those of James Boucaut, who in 1891 imported several Arabians from Wilfred and Lady Anne Blunt's Crabbet Arabian Stud in England. Purebred Arabians were used to improve racehorses and some of them became quite famous as such; about 100 Arabian sires are included in the Australian Stud Book (for Thoroughbred racehorses). The military was also involved in the promotion of breeding cavalry horses, especially around World War I. They were part of the foundation of several breeds considered uniquely Australian, including the Australian Pony, the Waler and the Australian Stock Horse.
### In the 20th and 21st centuries
In the early 20th century, more Arabian horses, mostly of Crabbet bloodlines, arrived in Australia. The first Arabians of Polish breeding arrived in 1966, and Egyptian lines were first imported in 1970. Arabian horses from the rest of the world followed, and today the Australian Arabian horse registry is the second largest in the world, next to that of the United States.
## Modern breeding
Arabian horses today are found all over the world. They are no longer classified by Bedouin strain, but are informally classified by the nation of origin of famed horses in a given pedigree. Popular types of Arabians are labeled "Polish", "Spanish", "Crabbet", "Russian", "Egyptian", and "Domestic" (describing horses whose ancestors were imported to the United States prior to 1944, including those from programs such as Kellogg, Davenport, Maynesboro, Babson, Dickenson and Selby). In the US, a specific mixture of Crabbet, Maynesboro and Kellogg bloodlines has acquired the copyrighted designation "CMK".
Each set of bloodlines has its own devoted followers, with the virtues of each hotly debated. Most debates are between those who value the Arabian most for its refined beauty and those who value the horse for its stamina and athleticism; there are also a number of breeders who specialize in preservation breeding of various bloodlines. Controversies exist over the relative "purity" of certain animals; breeders argue about the genetic "purity" of various pedigrees, discussing whether some horses descend from "impure" animals that cannot be traced to the desert Bedouin. The major factions are as follows:
- The Arabian Horse Association (AHA) states, "The origin of the purebred Arabian horse was the Arabian desert, and all Arabians ultimately trace their lineage to this source." In essence, all horses accepted for registration in the United States are deemed to be "purebred" Arabians by AHA.
- The World Arabian Horse Association (WAHO) has the broadest definition of a purebred Arabian. WAHO states, "A Purebred Arabian horse is one which appears in any purebred Arabian Stud Book or Register listed by WAHO as acceptable." By this definition, over 95% of the known purebred Arabian horses in the world are registered in stud books acceptable to WAHO. WAHO also researched the purity question in general, and its findings are on its web site, describing both the research and the political issues surrounding Arabian horse bloodlines, particularly in America.
- At the other end of the spectrum, organizations focused on bloodlines that are the most meticulously documented to desert sources have the most restrictive definitions. For example, The Asil Club in Europe only accepts "a horse whose pedigree is exclusively based on Bedouin breeding of the Arabian peninsula, without any crossbreeding with non-Arabian horses at any time". Likewise, the Al Khamsa organization takes the position that "The horse...which are called "Al Khamsa Arabian Horses," are those horses in North America that can reasonably be assumed to descend entirely from bedouin Arabian horses bred by horse-breeding bedouin tribes of the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula without admixture from sources unacceptable to Al Khamsa." Most restrictive of all are horses identified as "straight Egyptian" by the Pyramid Society, which must trace in all lines to the desert and also to horses owned or bred by specific Egyptian breeding programs. By this definition, straight Egyptian Arabians constitute only 2% of all Arabian horses in America.
- Ironically, some pure-blooded desert-bred Arabians in Syria had enormous difficulties being accepted as registrable purebred Arabians because many of the Bedouin who owned them saw no need to obtain a piece of paper to verify the purity of their horses. However, eventually the Syrians developed a stud book for their animals that was accepted by the World Arabian Horse Association (WAHO) in 2007.
## Influence on other horse breeds
Because of the genetic strength of the desert-bred Arabian horse, Arabian bloodlines have played a part in the development of nearly every modern light horse breed, including the Thoroughbred, Orlov Trotter, Morgan, American Saddlebred, American Quarter Horse, and Warmblood breeds such as the Trakehner. Arabian bloodlines have also influenced the development of the Welsh Pony, the Australian Stock Horse, Percheron draft horse, Appaloosa, and the Colorado Ranger Horse.
Today, people cross Arabians with other breeds to add refinement, endurance, agility and beauty. In the US, Half-Arabians have their own registry within the Arabian Horse Association, which includes a special section for Anglo-Arabians (Arabian-Thoroughbred crosses). Some crosses originally registered only as Half-Arabians became popular enough to have their own breed registry, including the National Show Horse (an Arabian-Saddlebred cross), the Quarab (Arabian-Quarter Horse), the Pintabian the Welara (Arabian-Welsh Pony), and the Morab (Arabian-Morgan). In addition, some Arabians and Half Arabians have been approved for breeding by some Warmblood registries, particularly the Trakehner registry.
There is intense debate over the role the Arabian played in the development of other light horse breeds. Before DNA-based research developed, one hypothesis, based on body types and conformation, suggested the light, "dry", oriental horse adapted to the desert climate had developed prior to domestication; DNA studies of multiple horse breeds now suggest that while domesticated horses arose from multiple mare lines, there is very little variability in the Y-chromosome between breeds. Following domestication of the horse, due to the location of the Middle East as a crossroads of the ancient world, and relatively near the earliest locations of domestication, oriental horses spread throughout Europe and Asia both in ancient and modern times. There is little doubt that humans crossed "oriental" blood on that of other types to create light riding horses; the only actual questions are at what point the "oriental" prototype could be called an "Arabian", how much Arabian blood was mixed with local animals, and at what point in history.
For some breeds, such as the Thoroughbred, Arabian influence of specific animals is documented in written stud books. For older breeds, dating the influx of Arabian ancestry is more difficult. For example, while outside cultures, and the horses they brought with them, influenced the predecessor to the Iberian horse in both the time of Ancient Rome and again with the Islamic invasions of the 8th century, it is difficult to trace precise details of the journeys taken by waves of conquerors and their horses as they traveled from the Middle East to North Africa and across Gibraltar to southern Europe. Mitochondrial DNA studies of modern Andalusian horses of the Iberian peninsula and Barb horses of North Africa present convincing evidence that both breeds crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and influenced one another. Though these studies did not compare Andalusian and Barb mtDNA to that of Arabian horses, there is evidence that horses resembling Arabians, whether before or after the breed was called an "Arabian", were part of this genetic mix. Arabians and Barbs, though probably related to one another, are quite different in appearance, and horses of both Arabian and Barb type were present in the Muslim armies that occupied Europe. There is also historical documentation that Islamic invaders raised Arabian horses in Spain prior to the Reconquista; the Spanish also documented imports of Arabian horses in 1847, 1884 and 1885 that were used to improve existing Spanish stock and revive declining equine populations.
## Uses
Arabians are versatile horses that compete in many equestrian fields, including horse racing, the horse show disciplines of saddle seat, Western pleasure, and hunt seat, as well as dressage, cutting, reining, endurance riding, show jumping, eventing, youth events such as equitation, and others. They are used as pleasure riding, trail riding, and working ranch horses for those who are not interested in competition.
### Competition
Arabians dominate the sport of endurance riding because of their stamina. They are the leading breed in competitions such as the Tevis Cup that can cover up to 100 miles (160 km) in a day, and they participate in FEI-sanctioned endurance events worldwide, including the World Equestrian Games.
There is an extensive series of horse shows in the United States and Canada for Arabian, Half-Arabian, and Anglo-Arabian horses, sanctioned by the USEF in conjunction with the Arabian Horse Association. Classes offered include Western pleasure, reining, hunter type and saddle seat English pleasure, and halter, plus the very popular "Native" costume class. "Sport horse" events for Arabian horses have become popular in North America, particularly after the Arabian Horse Association began hosting a separate Arabian and Half Arabian Sport Horse National Championship in 2003 that by 2004 grew to draw 2000 entries. This competition draws Arabian and part-Arabian horses that perform in hunter, jumper, sport horse under saddle, sport horse in hand, dressage, and combined driving competition.
Other nations also sponsor major shows strictly for purebred and partbred Arabians, including Great Britain France, Spain, Poland, and the United Arab Emirates.
Purebred Arabians have excelled in open events against other breeds. One of the most famous examples in the field of western riding competition was the Arabian mare Ronteza, who defeated 50 horses of all breeds to win the 1961 Reined Cow Horse championship at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, California. Another Arabian competitive against all breeds was the stallion Aaraf who won an all-breed cutting horse competition at the Quarter Horse Congress in the 1950s. In show jumping and show hunter competition, a number of Arabians have competed successfully against other breeds in open competition, including the purebred gelding Russian Roulette, who has won multiple jumping classes against horses of all breeds on the open circuit, and in eventing, a purebred Arabian competed on the Brazilian team at the 2004 Athens Olympics.
Part-Arabians have also appeared at open sport horse events and even Olympic level competition. The Anglo-Arabian Linon was ridden to an Olympic silver medal for France in Dressage in 1928 and 1932, as well as a team gold in 1932, and another French Anglo-Arabian, Harpagon, was ridden to a team gold medal and an individual silver in dressage at the 1948 Olympics. At the 1952 Olympics, the French rider Pierre d'Oriola won the Gold individual medal in show jumping on the Anglo-Arabian Ali Baba. Another Anglo-Arabian, Tamarillo, ridden by William Fox-Pitt, represents the United Kingdom in FEI and Olympic competition, winning many awards, including first place at the 2004 Badminton Horse Trials. More recently a gelding named Theodore O'Connor, nicknamed "Teddy", a 14.1 (or 14.2, sources vary) hand pony of Thoroughbred, Arabian, and Shetland pony breeding, won two gold medals at the 2007 Pan American Games and was finished in the top six at the 2007 and 2008 Rolex Kentucky Three Day CCI competition.
### Other activities
Arabians are involved in a wide variety of activities, including fairs, movies, parades, circuses and other places where horses are showcased. They have been popular in movies, dating back to the silent film era when Rudolph Valentino rode the Kellogg Arabian stallion Jadaan in 1926's Son of the Sheik, and have been seen in many other films, including The Black Stallion featuring the stallion Cass Ole, The Young Black Stallion, which used over 40 Arabians during filming, as well as Hidalgo and the 1959 version of Ben-Hur.
Arabians are mascots for football teams, performing crowd-pleasing activities on the field and sidelines. One of the horses who serves as "Traveler", the mascot for the University of Southern California Trojans, has been a purebred Arabian. "Thunder", a stage name for the purebred Arabian stallion J B Kobask, was mascot for the Denver Broncos from 1993 until his retirement in 2004, when the Arabian gelding Winter Solstyce took over as "Thunder II". Cal Poly Pomona's W.K. Kellogg Arabian Horse Center Equestrian Unit has made Arabian horses a regular sight at the annual Tournament of Roses Parade held each New Year's Day in Pasadena, California.
Arabians also are used on search and rescue teams and occasionally for police work. Some Arabians are used in polo in the US and Europe, in the Turkish equestrian sport of Cirit (), as well as in circuses, therapeutic horseback riding programs, and on guest ranches. |
2,457,905 | Bill Szymczyk | 1,167,577,224 | American record producer (born 1943) | [
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| William Frank Szymczyk (/ˈsɪmzɪk/; born February 13, 1943) is an American music producer and recording engineer best known for working with rock and blues musicians, most notably the Eagles in the 1970s. He produced many top albums and singles of the 1970s, though–aside from continuing to work with Joe Walsh–he retired from the music business in 1990. He re-emerged in the late 2000s, taking on select projects including the 2007 Eagles album Long Road Out of Eden and the 2008 eponymous debut of Brian Vander Ark.
Unlike many music producers, Szymczyk has no background as a musician. He was originally a sonar operator for the U.S. Navy and took some audio production classes as part of his Navy training. Besides his work with the Eagles, he has produced hit songs and albums for such diverse artists as B.B. King, The Who, Joe Walsh, The James Gang, and Elvin Bishop.
## Early life
Bill Szymczyk was born in Muskegon, Michigan on February 13, 1943. His mother worked as a nurse, and his father held several jobs, including factory worker and maintenance at a school. Growing up, his first introduction to music and electronics was when he built his own crystal radio from a kit. Using his radio, he became a fan of blues and R&B while listening to a station out of Nashville, Tennessee.
He joined the United States Navy in 1960, where he worked as a sonar technician. It was in the Navy that he took his first course in radio and television production. Upon leaving the service in 1964, and without much of an idea of what to do for a post-military career, he enrolled at New York University's Media Arts School.
## Professional career
Szymczyk began working at a firm which produced demo recordings for Screen Gems Records and worked extensively with Brill Building songwriters such as Carole King and Gerry Goffin. He also worked as an assistant to music producers and songwriters Quincy Jones and Jerry Ragovoy, eventually working his way up to chief engineer at Ragavoy's Hit Factory recording studio in New York City. His first work as the primary producer on an album came for a Harvey Brooks solo record. He dropped out of NYU to work full-time in the music industry.
He left the Hit Factory and took a job at ABC Records, taking a large pay cut in exchange for the opportunity to move from engineer to producer. He successfully lobbied ABC to let him work with B. B. King, whose own record label was a subsidiary of ABC and who was a long time idol of Szymczyk's. After Szymczyk convinced King that he could improve his sound to make him more appealing to a wider audience, King himself agreed to let Szymczyk produce for him. Among the albums he produced for King are the 1969 live album Live & Well, King's first ever top-100 album. He produced his follow-up studio album Completely Well, which featured "The Thrill Is Gone", the biggest hit of King's career and his signature song. He would continue to produce blues albums throughout the early 1970s for the likes of King and Albert Collins.
Szymczyk was moved several times while working for ABC Records; first to Los Angeles when ABC acquired Dunhill Records and Szymczyk took over production for the West Coast operations, and later to Denver when he decided to form his own label, Tumbleweed Records. He worked for a while as a disc jockey at radio station KFML, and continued to produce albums in New York and Los Angeles, such as the J. Geils Band's 1971 album The Morning After, recorded at the Los Angeles Record Plant. He did extensive work at the Colorado studio Caribou Ranch.
After producing the James Gang's first three albums, he followed singer-guitarist Joe Walsh when he left the band, first as a solo artist with the Szymczyk-produced albums Barnstorm (the first recorded at the Caribou Ranch studio) and The Smoker You Drink, the Player You Get and later with the Eagles. His most prolific collaborations have been with Walsh; the two have made over 15 albums together in many settings. Walsh himself moved to Boulder, Colorado in 1971 in order to work with Szymczyk and the location would inspire one of Walsh's biggest solo hits, 1973's "Rocky Mountain Way". Besides work with Walsh in his band The James Gang and as a solo artist, he also brought Walsh in to work on several albums he was doing with other musicians, using him as a session player for the B. B. King album Indianola Mississippi Seeds and the Michael Stanley albums Michael Stanley and Friends and Legends. It was at Szymczyk's suggestion that the Eagles bring in Walsh to give them a "rock" edge; Walsh has remained a core member of the band to this day.
His long relationship with the Eagles began with their 1974 album On the Border, an album he took over from London-based producer Glyn Johns. He would be the sole producer for the next three Eagles studio albums, including 1976's Hotel California, the first to feature Joe Walsh. Szymczyk was instrumental in giving the Eagles a more "rock sound" and helping them to move away from their country rock roots.
Among the other acts he worked with extensively through the 1970s include Michael Stanley and the J. Geils Band. While working with The Outlaws, he coined the term "Guitar Army" to describe the band's sound; the name continues as a nickname for the band. He worked in the studio for the Edgar Winter Group's biggest hit, the Rick Derringer-produced "Frankenstein", and later produced Derringer's best known solo album All American Boy and its hit single, "Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo". At the start of the 1980s he was a highly sought-after producer, and worked on such albums as Bob Seger's 1980 album Against the Wind and The Who's 1981 release Face Dances. During this time period, Szymczyk produced such hit singles as Elvin Bishop's "Fooled Around and Fell in Love", The Who's "You Better You Bet", The Eagles' "Hotel California", and Bob Seger's "Against the Wind".
His workload tailed off in the mid-1980s, due mostly to his own financial success. Aside from continuing to work with Joe Walsh, he retired from the music industry in 1990, and then re-emerged in 2005, producing Dishwalla's self-titled fourth album. He returned to work with the Eagles on the 2007 album Long Road Out of Eden, and followed that with the 2008 solo debut of ex-Verve Pipe singer Brian Vander Ark.
He now lives in Little Switzerland, North Carolina with his wife Lisi. The couple have two sons, Michael and Daniel, and have become involved in their local community, having raised money for a local shelter for victims of domestic violence, among other charity work. He still works as a producer, but is more selective about projects he works on.
## Production style
Szymczyk's has frequently been noted as the sort of producer who pushes bands to expand their musical horizons; he has been brought in with the specific intent of changing a band's sound. He himself has credited this tendency to his lack of musical knowledge, stating: "I'm a professional listener. I listen and I react. I never was a musician, so I don't bring any preconceived prejudices to the table; I don't favour the guitar over the keyboard, and so forth. I just listen and try to figure out if I have anything I can bring to a song."
For his work with the Eagles, he has been cited for his innovative mixing of drums, laboriously working to get the right microphones and placements for just the right sound. Rather than recording harmony vocals individually, and mixing them together later, as was common, Szymczyk preferred to capture the Eagles singing in ensemble, often spending many hours to record each phrase "just right".
For the Elvin Bishop hit "Fooled Around and Fell in Love," it was Szymczyk who suggested the inclusion of the song on Bishop's Struttin' My Stuff album, feeling the blues-oriented album lacked a pop single. The song would go on to become Bishop's biggest hit. Such a pattern was repeated throughout his career. The Eagles brought him in to refine and improve their "rock" sound, and all of their biggest selling albums and songs were Szymczyk-produced. Martin Turner of Wishbone Ash has called him "my all time favourite producer". While the two did not always get along during recording, usually over Turner's bass-playing style, Turner does credit Szymczyk with giving the band a more commercial sound on one of their most successful albums, 1974's There's the Rub.
## Selected discography
All credits as producer unless otherwise noted.
### B. B. King
- Live & Well (1969)
- Completely Well (1969)
- Indianola Mississippi Seeds (1970)
- Live in Cook County Jail (1971)
### Silk/Michael Stanley/Michael Stanley Band
- Smooth as Raw Silk (1969)
- Michael Stanley (1972)
- Friends and Legends (1973)
- You Break It... You Bought It (1975)
- Ladies Choice (1976)
- Stagepass (1977)
### The James Gang
- Yer' Album (1969)
- James Gang Rides Again (1970)
- Thirds (1971)
- James Gang Live in Concert (1971)
### Joe Walsh
- Barnstorm (1972)
- The Smoker You Drink, the Player You Get (1973)
- So What (1974)
- But Seriously, Folks... (1978)
- You Bought It – You Name It (1983)
- Ordinary Average Guy (as engineer) (1991)
- Songs for a Dying Planet (1992)
- A Future to This Life: Robocop – The Series Soundtrack (1995)
- Joe Walsh's Greatest Hits – Little Did He Know... (remastering) (1997)
### Eagles
- On the Border (1974)
- One of These Nights (1975)
- Hotel California (1976)
- The Long Run (1979)
- Eagles Live (1980)
- Long Road Out of Eden (2007)
### The J. Geils Band
- The Morning After (1971)
- Bloodshot (1973)
- Ladies Invited (1973)
- Nightmares...and Other Tales from the Vinyl Jungle (1974)
- Hotline (1975)
- Blow Your Face Out (live, 1976)
### Jo Jo Gunne/Jay Ferguson
- Bite Down Hard (1973)
- Jumpin' the Gunne (1973)
- All Alone in the End Zone (1976)
- Thunder Island (1978)
- Real Life Ain't This Way (1979)
### Others
- Ford Theatre - Time Changes (1969)
- Danny Holien - Danny Holien (as producer and engineer) (1971)
- Edgar Winter Group - They Only Come Out at Night (as technical director) (1972)
- Johnny Winter - Still Alive and Well (as technical director) (1973)
- Rick Derringer - All American Boy (1973)
- Wishbone Ash - There's the Rub (1974)
- Johnny Winter - Saints & Sinners (as engineer) (1974)
- Elvin Bishop - Struttin' My Stuff (1975)
- Rick Derringer - Spring Fever (1975)
- REO Speedwagon - This Time We Mean It (as executive producer) (1975)
- Elvin Bishop - Hometown Boy Makes Good! (1976)
- Outlaws - Hurry Sundown (1977)
- Outlaws - Bring It Back Alive (live, 1978)
- Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band - Against the Wind (1980)
- The Who - Face Dances (1981)
- Santana - Shango (1982)
- Melvil James - "The Passenger" (1987)
- Dishwalla - Dishwalla (2005)
- Brian Vander Ark - Brian Vander Ark (2008)
- Brian Vander Ark - Magazine (2011)
- Tide Brothers - “High Water Mark” (2016)
- Michael Szymczyk - "Retro Magnetic" (2019)
- Kona - "Mondays In April - Live at The Bootleg Theater" (as mixer) (2022) |
6,340,792 | Ray Jones (footballer, born 1988) | 1,164,043,048 | English footballer | [
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| Raymond Barry Bankote Jones (28 August 1988 – 25 August 2007) was an English professional footballer who played as a striker. Jones spent his professional career at Queens Park Rangers, making his debut in the Football League Championship in April 2006. His good form at the start of the following season led to his only international match, for England under-19 against the Netherlands, as well as bids for other clubs to sign him. He totalled six goals in 37 professional matches.
Jones died three days before his 19th birthday, when he drove head-on into a bus in London. His club retired his shirt number of 31. An inquest into the accident ruled that had Jones survived, he would have faced charges of causing death by dangerous driving for the deaths of his two passengers.
## Career
Born in East Ham, London, Jones was rejected as a youth team player at Colchester United before impressing the coaches at Queens Park Rangers (QPR). He made his professional debut on 22 April 2006, coming on for the final seven minutes as a substitute for Steve Lomas in a 1–2 home loss to promotion-chasing Watford. Eight days later, he made his second appearance of the season, coming on for Stefan Bailey in the 68th minute of a defeat by the same score away to the already-crowned winners of the Football League Championship, Reading.
Jones had his first professional start on 12 August 2006, in a 2–0 win over Southend United at Loftus Road. He assisted Nick Ward's goal in the 41st minute, which gave QPR their first win of the new season. Brian Glanville of The Sunday Times opined that Jones and fellow youngster Dexter Blackstock combined in the forward line "as though they had been playing together for years". Ten days later in the second round of the Football League Cup at home to Northampton Town, Jones came on for Marc Bircham in the 84th minute, and three minutes later headed Marcus Bignot's cross for his first career goal, winning the match 3–2.
On 5 September, Jones made his only international appearance, replacing Giles Barnes in a goalless friendly draw for England under-19 against the Netherlands at the Bescot Stadium in Walsall. Eighteen days later, he scored his first league goal, opening a 2–0 home win over Hull City, the first match of John Gregory's tenure. Jones followed this the following weekend as QPR came from behind to win 2–1 at Southampton, scoring the decisive goal after rounding goalkeeper Kelvin Davis. On 17 November, as a substitute for Blackstock, Jones scored the only goal in a 1–0 away win over high-flying Cardiff City, connecting with Ward's cross with less than three minutes left of the match.
Many Premier League clubs showed interest in Jones after several solid performances, and Gregory at one point stated that he was resigned to him leaving. After scoring the only goal against Colchester on 1 January 2007, he pledged his future to the club, and a week later as he signed a new three-and-a-half-year deal. In total, Jones played 37 games (19 as a substitute) for QPR in all competitions, scoring six goals.
Colchester made a £200,000 offer for Jones in June 2007, which was rejected, but they made another bid the following day, which was also turned down. QPR's West London derby rivals Fulham also bid for him, as did Derby County, who offered £5.75 million for him and teammate Lee Cook. He missed the start of the 2007–08 season, in the last month of his life, due to a foot injury.
### Style of play
Writing Jones' obituary in The Guardian, QPR fan Benjie Goodhart remembered him as the club's "own Wayne Rooney, the prodigy, all precocious talent and burgeoning potential", and attributed him the essential qualities for a forward including strength, speed, intelligence and confidence. He was perceived by the supporters to be the epitome of a new era under manager Gregory and prospective new owner Flavio Briatore, and could do "things for real that his peers acted out on their games consoles". Goodhart also praised Jones for taking the London Underground back home from games alongside the supporters.
## Death
Jones died in a car crash in East Ham in the early hours of 25 August 2007 when the vehicle he was driving collided with a bus. He had only become a licensed driver 23 days earlier. Two passengers in his car, Idris Olasupo and Jess Basilva, were also killed; Olasupo received a letter later that day, inviting him to Fulham's academy. Jones' death was compared to that of Kiyan Prince, a QPR youth player who was fatally stabbed the previous year at the age of 15 when breaking up a fight. Goodhart wrote that tributes would be "done particularly beautifully at QPR because, heartbreakingly, we're getting rather good at it".
As a mark of respect QPR postponed their upcoming game with Burnley, a team who in turn replaced it with an open training session with proceeds going to the charity of QPR's choice. QPR also decided to retire the number 31 shirt in memory of Jones, who wore that shirt during his career. In their league game against Southampton on 1 September 2007, all of the QPR players carried Jones' name on the back of their shirts as a mark of respect. Ten days later, in the England U19 friendly against Belarus at Meadow Lane in Nottingham, a minute's applause was held before the match.
An inquest in April 2008 found that Jones had sped over a pedestrian crossing on the wrong side of the road, leading to a head-on collision. His death was recorded as an accident, but it was confirmed that had he survived, he would have been facing two charges of causing death by dangerous driving.
## Career statistics |
719,004 | California State Route 14 | 1,171,609,324 | State highway in Los Angeles and Kern counties in California, United States | [
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| State Route 14 (SR 14) is a north–south state highway in the U.S. state of California that connects Los Angeles to the northern Mojave Desert. The southern portion of the highway is signed as the Antelope Valley Freeway. The route connects Interstate 5 (I-5, Golden State Freeway) on the border of the city of Santa Clarita to the north and the Los Angeles neighborhoods of Granada Hills and Sylmar to the south, with U.S. Route 395 (US 395) near Inyokern. Legislatively, the route extends south of I-5 to SR 1 in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles; however, the portion south of the junction with I-5 has not been constructed. The southern part of the constructed route is a busy commuter freeway serving and connecting the cities of Santa Clarita, Palmdale, and Lancaster to the rest of the Greater Los Angeles area. The northern portion, from Vincent (south of Palmdale) to US 395, is legislatively named the Aerospace Highway, as the highway serves Edwards Air Force Base, once one of the primary landing strips for NASA's Space Shuttle, as well as the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake that supports military aerospace research, development and testing. This section is rural, following the line between the hot Mojave desert and the forming Sierra Nevada mountain range. Most of SR 14 is loosely paralleled by a rail line originally built by the Southern Pacific Railroad, and was once the primary rail link between Los Angeles and Northern California. While no longer a primary rail line, the southern half of this line is now used for the Antelope Valley Line of the Metrolink commuter rail system.
Linked with US 395, this road also connects Los Angeles with such places as Mammoth Mountain, Mono Lake, Yosemite National Park and Reno, Nevada. SR 14 was part of US 6 prior to truncation in 1964, when US 6 was a coast-to-coast route from Long Beach to Provincetown, Massachusetts. The non-freeway segment of SR 14 from Silver Queen Road north of Rosamond to Mojave is known as Sierra Highway, as is the old routing between I-5 and Silver Queen Road where SR 14 has been moved to a newer freeway alignment. Portions of SR 14 remain signed with names associated with US 6, including Midland Trail, Theodore Roosevelt Highway, and Grand Army of the Republic Highway.
## Route description
SR 14 is part of the California Freeway and Expressway System, and is part of the National Highway System, a network of highways that are considered essential to the country's economy, defense, and mobility by the Federal Highway Administration.
### Antelope Valley Freeway
The southern portion of the freeway, from I-5 to the Avenue D exit near Lancaster, has been designated the Antelope Valley Freeway by the state legislature. The Antelope Valley Freeway begins in the Santa Susana Mountains at the Newhall Pass interchange by splitting from the Golden State Freeway (I-5). This is the busiest portion of the route with an annual average daily traffic (AADT) count of 169,000 vehicles per day. The freeway forms much of the eastern boundary of Santa Clarita along its route. Past Santa Clarita, the road continues northeast and crosses the Sierra Pelona Mountains and western San Gabriel Mountains via the canyon of the seasonal Santa Clara River. The ascent is mostly rugged and rural terrain, with only two small towns along the ascent, first Agua Dulce and later Acton. In Agua Dulce, the freeway forms the southern boundary of Vasquez Rocks Park, a county park. The highway crests the Sierra Pelona Mountains via Escondido Summit, at an elevation of 3,258 feet (993 m), before descending and passing by Acton to the north. The highway then crests the San Gabriel Mountains via Soledad Pass, at an elevation of 3,209 feet (978 m). The route of the highway through the mountains loosely parallels that of Metrolink Antelope Valley Line.
After cresting both mountain passes, the highway descends into the Antelope Valley, a large valley within the Mojave Desert. The highway crosses Angeles Forest Highway and the California Aqueduct in the descent. SR 14 serves as the primary north–south thoroughfare for the communities of Palmdale and Lancaster. Between Palmdale Boulevard (County Route N2) and Avenue D in Lancaster, SR 14 runs concurrently with SR 138.
### Aerospace Highway
From the Pearblossom Highway exit south of Palmdale to its northern terminus at US 395 near Inyokern, SR 14 has been designated the Aerospace Highway. Between Pearblossom Highway and Avenue S, there is a vista point overlooking Lake Palmdale, which features a historic plaque that honors aviation accomplishments including the Space Shuttle, breaking the sound barrier and the speed record. The freeway passes the Los Angeles–Kern county line at Avenue A, and continues to run north through Rosamond and Mojave. In Rosamond, the highway passes close to Edwards Air Force Base, which was often used as one of the main landing strips for NASA's Space Shuttle, and as the base for the X-15 and many other air and spacecraft.
The freeway portion terminates just south of Mojave, where SR 14 serves as the main street and runs through the downtown area. To the east of the route is Mojave Air & Space Port, home to the National Test Pilot School and SpaceShipOne, the first privately funded human spaceflight, as well as a vast airplane graveyard; all are visible from SR 14.
SR 58 was formerly routed concurrently with SR 14 through Mojave, before it was rerouted onto a bypass running north and east of the town.
The character of the highway changes as it leaves California City with the last interchange located at California City Boulevard. Now a divided highway with at-grade intersections, departs the corridor of the rail main, to follow the crest of the forming Sierra Nevada mountains. The route continues to follow a branch line of the Union Pacific Railroad used as a connector for the Trona Railway. The main line of the railroad proceeds towards the Central Valley via Tehachapi Pass. Though SR 14 heads away from the pass, the highway has views of the mountains and the Tehachapi Pass Wind Farm. The scenery also changes, as the highway departs the Mojave Desert and crosses Red Rock Canyon State Park. Traffic counts drop dramatically as the highway becomes more rural, with an AADT of 3,200 vehicles at the northern terminus. SR 14 continues north toward US 395 in Inyokern, much of its routing as an expressway. Towards its northern terminus, SR 14 runs briefly concurrently with SR 178. At its northern terminus, SR 14 merges with US 395 as it turns into an expressway heading north to Bishop. As US 395 the route continues to follow the crest of the Sierra Nevada, serving Owens Valley, Mammoth Mountain, Yosemite National Park and Mono Lake.
## History
### Trails
The first road to use the general alignment of modern SR 14 was called the El Camino Sierra, or Sierra Highway, which extended from Los Angeles to Lake Tahoe. A dirt road was completed in the 1910s from what had been a pack trail. The Los Angeles Times declared El Camino Sierra complete in 1931, when the portion from Mojave to the Owens Valley, along modern US 395, was paved.
During the late 19th century, the corridor of modern SR 14 was also in use by the Southern Pacific Railroad. South of Mojave was used for a main line, the corridor north of Mojave follows a branch line. The main line connected Los Angeles with the Central Valley, via Soledad Pass and Tehachapi Pass. While significantly longer than the more direct Ridge Route (east of modern I-5), Tehachapi Pass is lower than Tejon Pass along the Ridge Route, with a longer, less steep grade on the descent into the Central Valley. While the Tehachapi Pass portion of this line has remained the same, over time another route was built from Mojave, across the Antelope Valley towards Cajon Pass to cross the San Gabriel Mountains, there merging with another main rail trunk to Los Angeles. The Cajon Pass fork remains the primary freight rail line to connect southern and northern California in use today, now owned and operated by the Union Pacific Railroad. The fork paralleling SR 14 and crossing at Soledad Pass is still a contiguous line, but not used for through freight traffic as a significant portion was sold to the predecessors of the Southern California Regional Rail Authority to become the Antelope Valley Line of the Metrolink commuter rail service. The branch north of Mojave was built when the Southern Pacific acquired the unfinished Carson and Colorado Railroad in 1900. The Southern Pacific built a standard gauge connector to the narrow gauge Carson and Colorado line from their main at Mojave. Although plans were to eventually convert this acquired line to standard gauge, most of the line was abandoned before the conversion was complete. The southern portion of this line is still active and connects to the Trona Railway.
The Midland Trail was one of the first organized coast-to-coast trails in the United States. In the trail's infancy, its routing changed numerous times. By 1925, the Midland Trail was established along what is modern State Route 168, joining El Camino Sierra in Big Pine. Other named trails that eventually followed this route included the Theodore Roosevelt highway, and Grand Army of the Republic Highway. Parts of modern SR 14 continue to be signed with these names, and north of Los Angeles County is still officially designated "El Camino Sierra / Midland Trail" as well as the aforementioned "Aerospace Highway".
### U.S. Route 6
US 6 was extended from Greeley, Colorado, to Long Beach, California, on June 21, 1937. Most of this extension used the Midland Trail, although the route entered California from Nevada slightly north of the previous route of the Midland Trail, instead passing through Bishop. While being designated US 6, parts of modern SR 14 were upgraded to freeway standards.
As part of the 1964 state highway renumbering, US 6 was truncated at Bishop. The portion of US 6 from Inyokern to Los Angeles was designated SR 14. Previously, the SR 14 designation was used for Artesia Boulevard and Lincoln Avenue, in the Los Angeles area, a portion of modern SR 91.
Between 1963 and 1975, significant portions of US 6/SR 14 were moved to a freeway alignment. The former routing south of Mojave (and the current routing to the north) is still known as Sierra Highway. The first freeway section, from just east of Solemint Junction to Red Rover Mine Road, was completed in 1963. Further portions in the intercanyon areas of Acton to Soledad Pass were completed by 1965. By 1966, the freeway was complete as far north as Avenue P-8 (now Technology Drive) in Palmdale. The freeway was completed to Mojave by 1972.
### Incidents
The Newhall Pass interchange, where I-5, Sierra Highway, Foothill Boulevard, San Fernando Road and the southern terminus of SR 14 meet, has been the site of a number of catastrophic incidents. The interchange has partially collapsed twice due to earthquakes: the 1971 Sylmar earthquake and the 1994 Northridge earthquake. As a result of the 1994 collapse, this interchange was renamed the "Clarence Wayne Dean Memorial Interchange", honoring a Los Angeles Police Department motorcycle officer killed when he was unable to stop in time and drove off the collapsed flyover ramp from SR 14 south to I-5 south. After both earthquakes, the collapsed portions were rebuilt and surviving portions reinforced.
In 2007, two tractor-trailer trucks collided in a tunnel along the truck lanes for southbound I-5 at the interchange. A resulting fire started, soon encompassing the entire tunnel along with 30 other trucks and one passenger vehicle that were in the tunnel at the time. The truck tunnel was closed for several days for structural damage inspections and repairs.
### Cancelled plans
SR 14 is an unfinished route, as the definition in the California Streets and Highways Code states that the route begins at SR 1 (Pacific Coast Highway), near Sunset Boulevard in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles. Between the constructed end and legislative end of SR 14 are the community of Reseda and Topanga State Park. There is no paved road that directly connects these two points, with SR 27 or I-405 being the nearest through roads in this area.
The interchange with Sierra Highway at Via Princessa in Santa Clarita has an unusual design, with long flyover ramps for the connections. This is the result of a freeway revolt by the residents of Santa Clarita that canceled plans for a freeway extension of SR 126. While the Via Princessa alignment of SR 126 was canceled, the city of Santa Clarita constructed the Cross Valley Connector (CVC) to connect SR 126 directly to SR 14 via Newhall Ranch Road and Golden Valley Road. The final CVC section, the bridge over the Santa Clara River, was opened on March 27, 2010.
## Future
Rapid exurban growth in Santa Clarita, Lancaster, and Palmdale has made the Antelope Valley Freeway one of the most congested in southern California, with average rush hour speeds well below 20 miles per hour (32 km/h). Future predictions call for continued growth along the SR 14 corridor, including predictions of a tripling of the population of Palmdale by 2030. In response, multiple government agencies have proposed adding more transportation arteries between Los Angeles and the Antelope Valley, as well as expanding the capacity of the existing SR 14 and rail corridors.
Several proposals have been made to bypass the Antelope Valley Freeway by boring a tunnel under the San Gabriel Mountains and extending the Glendale Freeway through it to the Antelope Valley. In 2003, Caltrans published a map showing potential improvements to the transportation infrastructure of southern California. The proposal showed both the unconstructed portion of SR 14 and new routes over or under the mountains to Antelope Valley. In 2005, the idea was advanced as a combination toll tunnel and surface highway. Preliminary studies estimated costs around \$3 billion and suggested charging a varying toll, adjusted for the time of day, averaging around \$8 for one-way passage.
## Major intersections
## See also |
21,813,301 | Vicars' Close, Wells | 1,158,672,282 | Street in Wells, England | [
"Buildings and structures completed in the 14th century",
"Buildings and structures in Wells, Somerset",
"Grade I listed buildings in Mendip District",
"Roads in Somerset",
"Streets in Somerset",
"Tourist attractions in Somerset",
"Wells Cathedral"
]
| Vicars' Close, in Wells, Somerset, England, is claimed to be the oldest purely residential street with original buildings surviving intact in Europe. John Julius Norwich called it "that rarest of survivals, a planned street of the mid-14th century". It comprises numerous Grade I listed buildings, comprising 27 residences (originally 44), built for Bishop Ralph of Shrewsbury, a chapel and library at the north end, and a hall at the south end, over an arched gate. It is connected at its southern end to the cathedral by a walkway over Chain Gate.
The Close is about 460 feet (140 m) long, and paved with setts. Its width is tapered by 10 feet (3.0 m) to make it look longer when viewed from the main entrance nearest the cathedral. When viewed from the other end it looks shorter. By the nineteenth century the buildings were reported to be in a poor state of repair, and part of the hall was being used as a malt house. Repairs have since been carried out including the construction of Shrewsbury House to replace buildings damaged in a fire.
The Vicars' Hall was completed in 1348 and included a communal dining room, administrative offices and treasury of the Vicars Choral. The houses on either side of the close were built in the 14th and early 15th centuries. Since then alterations have been made including a unified roof, front gardens and raised chimneys. The final part of the construction of the close was during the 1420s when the Vicars' Chapel and Library was constructed on the wall of the Liberty of St Andrew. The south face includes shields commemorating the bishops of the time. The interior is decorated with 19th-century gesso work by Heywood Sumner and the building now used by Wells Cathedral School.
## Origins
The Close owes its origins to a grant of land and buildings by Walter de Hulle, a canon of Wells Cathedral, for the purpose of accommodating chantry priests; however, the land is likely to have been used for a long period before the construction of the close, as prehistoric flint flakes and Romano-British pottery shards were recovered from the garden of number four during work to construct an extension.
Bishop Jocelin styled the priests serving the cathedral as the Vicars Choral, in the 12th century, their duty being to chant divine service eight times a day. Previously they had lived throughout the town, and Bishop Ralph resolved to incorporate them and provide subsistence for the future. The Vicars Choral were assigned annuities from his lands and tenements in Congresbury and Wookey, an annual fee from the vicarage of Chew, and endowed them with lands obtained from the Feoffees of Walter de Hulle. The residences he built became known as the College, or Close of the Vicars.
## Vicars' Hall and gateway
The entrance arch into the close comprises a pedestrian gate adjacent to a waggon gate, and has a lierne vault ceiling. The four-centered rere-arches may have been by William Joy or Thomas Witney his predecessor as master mason of the cathedral.
The first parts of the Close to be constructed were this first floor barrel-roofed common hall above a store room, kitchen and bakehouse which were completed in 1348. The fireplace, with a lectern, and the east window with stained glass, were added in the 15th century. A room known as The Chequer above the staircase was added in the early 15th century. It has a large fireplace which may have been enlarged following a fire. One of the vicars known as The Receiver sat in the room to receive rents and other funds due to the vicars, which were kept in a large chest dating from 1633. Next to The Chequer is the Muniment Room which has a filing cabinet dating from around 1420 used to hold documents such as leases of land. Beneath these rooms is The Treasury which has ten cupboards where the vicars vestments were stored.
In the 19th-century parts of the hall found use as a malt house, and as a library for the Theological College. The western half of the building was added around 1862 by John Henry Parker.
The Chain Gate, built with Doulting stone, was abutted to the hall in 1459 by Thomas Beckington. This included a gallery over the gate into the cathedral for the vicars' convenience.
## Vicars' Chapel and Library
The chapel was built between 1424 and 1430 at the north end of the close. It is eight degrees out of alignment with the rest of the close. This is because the northern wall of the chapel was built on top of the old wall enclosing the Liberty of St Andrew. The Liberty encompassed 52 acres (21 ha) broadly situated to the east of the city centre of Wells. The main part of the Liberty formed a walled precinct within the city (which was otherwise not walled) and this included Wells Cathedral, the Cathedral Green, the Bishop's Palace, the Old Deanery, and the Vicars' Close. To compensate for the misalignment of the chapel the roof slopes to the west so that it appears level from the close.
Most of the Vicars' Chapel is rubble masonry; however, the south face which can be seen from the close is of white Conglomerate quarried locally. The shields on the wall are those of Nicholas Bubwith, suggesting that construction was started during his reign as bishop between 1407 and 1424, and John Stafford who was bishop from 1424 until 1443 suggesting that construction was completed under his episcopate. The lower floor was a chapel, and a spiral stair led up to the library. The chapel was dedicated to the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St Katherine. It is now used by the chaplain of Wells Cathedral School. The interior is decorated with 19th-century gesso work by Heywood Sumner.
## Residences
The residences are built of stone from the Mercia Mudstone Group. There were originally 22 houses on the east side and 20 on the west. They line each side of a quadrangle which appears longer than it is because of false perspective achieved by building the houses at the upper northern end nearest the chapel 9 feet (2.7 m) closer together than those at the lower southern end closest to the Vicars' Hall. Each house originally comprised a ground floor hall of approximately 20 by 13 feet (6.1 by 4.0 m) and an upper floor of the same size. Both had a fireplace in the front wall. Washing facilities and a latrine were outside the back door. The date of some of the buildings is unclear but it is known that some had been built by 1363 and the rest were completed by 1412. There were originally 42 houses, each for one vicar; however, a charter of c.1582 Queen Elizabeth restricted the number of vicars to twenty, and the Vicars Choral currently number twelve men. No. 1 Vicars' Close was once a larger property, but has since been divided and part of the building is now called No. 1 St. Andrew Street.
Following the 16th-century Reformation when clerical marriage was permitted, larger households would have been required and as a result some of the houses were altered and combined, by knocking through walls, into larger dwellings. Others had extensions built to the rear. Water supply was originally from two wells, one at each end of the close. By 1468 lead pipes had been installed to bring water into the houses, although the wells continued to function until the 19th century. Number 22 is the house which still has most of its original medieval structure as it was originally built.
In the fifteenth century, Bishop Thomas Beckington left much of his estate to the Vicars' Choral, enabling repairs to be carried out. The gardens in front of the houses were not part of the original scheme, with the garden walls being added as part of this development. The walls are on average 4 metres (13 ft) from the front of the houses. He unified the appearance of the terraces, including the installation of a single arch-braced and wind-braced trussed sloping roof around 1466. The chimney shafts were renewed and raised, possibly because of the introduction of coal as the fuel rather than wood. Each stack incorporates two heraldic shields and the upper sections of the stacks are octagonal. The shields are those of the Bishop, a beacon above tun, and the arms of his three executors: sugar loaves for Hugh Sugar, three swans for Richard Swan, and a talbot for John Pope. Many of the original windows were replaced in the 18th century. Shrewsbury House is architecturally different from all the other buildings; it was rebuilt in the 19th century after a fire that burnt down the original structure.
## See also
Residences of other Vicars’ Choral:
- Vicars' Court, Lincoln
- College of Minor Canons, St Paul’s London
- Exeter
- Hereford
- Bedern, York |
11,997,415 | Vivo (Luis Miguel album) | 1,153,149,706 | null | [
"2000 live albums",
"2000 video albums",
"Albums produced by Luis Miguel",
"Live video albums",
"Luis Miguel live albums",
"Luis Miguel video albums",
"Spanish-language live albums",
"Spanish-language video albums",
"Warner Music Latina live albums",
"Warner Music Latina video albums"
]
| Vivo (English: Live) is the third live album by Mexican singer Luis Miguel. It was filmed at the Auditorio Coca-Cola concert hall in Monterrey, Mexico, where Miguel performed from 13 to 17 April 2000, as part of the second leg of his Amarte Es Un Placer Tour. Vivo was released in a live audio CD, DVD and VHS format. Vivo is the first Spanish-language live album to be released on NTSC, PAL, and DVD formats. The audio version was produced by Miguel while David Mallet directed the video album. The audio disc was released on 3 October 2000, while the video album was released on 24 October. Miguel's renditions of "Y" and "La Bikina", which he specifically performed during the concert shows in Mexico where he was joined by Cutberto Pérez's band Mariachi 2000, made available as singles for the album.
After its release, Vivo received generally favorable reviews from critics, who praised Miguel's vocals, his live performances of his tracks, and the mariachi songs. One reviewer, however, criticized the video album's lack of subtitles, closed captions, and supplemental materials. Miguel received several accolades, including a Grammy nomination for Best Latin Pop Album and a Latin Grammy nomination for Best Male Pop Vocal Album. Commercially, the album peaked at number two on the albums chart in Spain and on the Billboard Top Latin Albums chart in the United States. It also topped the albums chart in Argentina and was certified triple Platinum and Gold in Mexico.
## Background and release
In 1999, Luis Miguel released his thirteenth studio album Amarte Es un Placer. To further promote the record, he launched the Amarte Es Un Placer Tour which lasted from 1999 into 2000. As part of the second leg of his tour, Miguel presented five shows at the Auditorio Coca-Cola in Monterrey, Mexico from 13 to 17 April 2000, and drew over 50,000 spectators. Miguel was accompanied by a 13-piece band during his tour which included horns, keyboards, guitars and three female backup singers. His hour-and-a-half show consisted mainly of pop songs and ballads from Amarte Es un Placer and his earlier career, as well as medleys of boleros from the Romance-themed albums. During his concerts in Monterrey, he was joined by Cutbert Pérez's band Mariachi 2000 and performed live covers of "Y" and "La Bikina", which were made available as singles for Vivo.
Miguel's concerts in Monterrey were recorded for Vivo. Miguel produced the album himself while the video was directed by David Mallet. The audio disc for the album was released on 3 October 2000 while the video album was launched on VHS and DVD on 24 October. It is first the Spanish-language live album to be released on NTSC, PAL, and DVD formats. "La Bikina" was released as the lead single from the album 15 September 2000. A writer for La Opinión noted that the release day was likely meant to coincide with the Mexican Independence Day. It peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot Latin Songs in the United States. "Y" was released as the album's second single on 14 November 2000 and peaked at number eight on the Hot Latin Songs chart. The live renditions of "Quiero" and "Cómo Es Posible Que a Mi Lado" were also released as a promo single in Colombia in 2001.
## Reception
After its release, Vivo received generally positive reviews from music critics. AllMusic reviewer Perry Seibert gave the video album two out of five stars and criticized its lack of subtitles, closed captions, and supplemental materials, but stated that it should not "dissuade fans of Latino music from checking out this entertaining DVD from Warner Bros". The audio version itself was rated three out of five stars by an editor of AllMusic. Billboard editor Leila Cobo complimented Miguel's vocals and praised the "truly spectacular" tracks on Vivo including "La Bikina". However Cobo felt that he was "less convincing" on "Quiero" and "Tú, Sólo Tú", which she regarded "stuck-in-the-'s 80s funk/disco nuances", due to Miguel taking it "all so seriously". Mario Tarradell of The Dallas Morning News gave the album a "B" rating complimenting the record's "crisp, clean" sound, Miguel's "melodic voice", Mariachi 2000's participation on "La Bikina" which Tarradell calls the best track on Vivo. Tarradell also lauded the live renditions of "Quiero" and "Suave" as "pleasurable". However, he opined Miguel "milked the whole Latin standards thing too long" on the Romance medleys.
The Los Angeles Daily News critic Sandra Barrera rated Vivo four out of four stars commenting while the album may be viewed as "another attempt by the record-breaking artist at glorifying himself as the king of Latin pop prima donnas", she noted that it "doesn't detract from the gorgeous body of work". She also thought all of the record's tracks "represent the best of Miguel" and noted the Romance medleys "best illustrate why Miguel is the top-selling pop singer in Latin America". Richard Torres of Newsday wrote a positive review of the record noting Miguel's vocals are "deeper and gruffer than on his studio albums" which he felt gives the uptempo songs "a deeper, funkier edge". He praised Miguel's ballads "sublime", the bolero medleys, and the mariachi songs, concluding: "Miguel's the best purveyor of love songs around, and Vivo captures the best at his best."
At the 43rd Annual Grammy Awards in 2001, Vivo received a nomination for Best Latin Pop Album, which went to MTV Unplugged (2000) by Shakira. At the 2nd Annual Latin Grammy Awards in the same year, it was nominated Best Male Pop Vocal Album which was awarded to El Alma al Aire (2000) by Alejandro Sanz. At the 13th Annual Lo Nuestro Awards in 2001, Vivo was nominated Pop Album of the Year but lost to Paulina (2000) by Paulina Rubio. It was also nominated Album of the Year at the 2001 El Premio de la Gente Ritmo Latino Music Awards which also lost to Paulina. At the 2001 Billboard Latin Music Awards, Miguel won the award for Pop Album of the Year by a Male Artist.
## Commercial performance
In the United States, Vivo debuted and peaked at number two on the Billboard Top Latin Albums chart on the week of 21 October 2000 with Mi Reflejo (2000) by Christina Aguilera holding off the number one position. The album also peaked at 93 on the Billboard 200 chart and number two on the Latin Pop Albums chart. It was certified double Platinum in the Latin field in America by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for shipments of 200,000 copies and ended 2001 as the ninth best-selling Latin album of the year. In Argentina, Vivo debuted atop the albums chart and the disc was certified double Platinum by the Argentine Chamber of Phonograms and Videograms Producers for shipping 120,000 copies while the video received Platinum certification for shipments of 8,000 copies. In Spain, it peaked at number two on the albums chart and was certified triple Platinum by the Productores de Música de España for shipping 300,000 copies. In Mexico, the record was awarded Platinum and Gold for shipping 525,000 units and the video received a Gold certification in Brazil sales of 25,000 copies.
## Track listing
## Charts
### Weekly charts
### Year-end charts
### Decade-end charts
## Certifications
### Album
### Video
## See also
- 2000 in Latin music |
2,980,241 | Royal Banner of Scotland | 1,170,999,542 | Royal Banner of Scotland | [
"Flags displaying animals",
"Flags of Scotland",
"Kingdom of Scotland",
"National symbols of Scotland"
]
| The Royal Banner of the Royal Arms of Scotland, also known as the Royal Banner of Scotland, or more commonly the Lion Rampant of Scotland, and historically as the Royal Standard of Scotland, (Scottish Gaelic: Bratach rìoghail na h-Alba, Scots: Ryal banner o Scotland) or Banner of the King of Scots, is the royal banner of Scotland, and historically, the royal standard of the Kingdom of Scotland. Used historically by the Scottish monarchs, the banner differs from Scotland's national flag, the Saltire, in that its official use is restricted by an Act of the Parliament of Scotland to only a few Great Officers of State who officially represent the Monarchy in Scotland. It is also used in an official capacity at royal residences in Scotland when the Head of State is not present.
The earliest recorded use of the Lion Rampant as a royal emblem in Scotland was by Alexander II in 1222; with the additional embellishment of a double border set with lilies occurring during the reign of Alexander III (1249–1286). This emblem occupied the shield of the royal coat of arms of the ancient Kingdom of Scotland which, together with a royal banner displaying the same, was used by the King of Scots until the Union of the Crowns in 1603, when James VI acceded to the thrones of the kingdoms of England and Ireland. Since 1603, the lion rampant of Scotland has been incorporated into both the royal arms and royal banners of successive Scottish then British monarchs in order to symbolise Scotland, as can be seen today in the Royal Standard of the United Kingdom. Although now officially restricted to use by representatives of the Monarch and at royal residences, the Royal Banner continues to be one of Scotland's most recognisable symbols.
## Design
Displaying a red lion rampant, with blue tongue and claws, within a red double border on a yellow background, the design of the Royal Banner of Scotland is formally specified in heraldry as: Or, a lion rampant Gules armed and langued Azure within a double tressure flory counter-flory of the second, meaning: A gold (Or) background, whose principal symbol is a red (Gules) upright lion (lion rampant) with blue (Azure) claws and tongue (armed and langued), surrounded by a two-lined border (tressure) decorated with opposing pairs of floral symbols (flory counter-flory) of the second colour specified in the blazon (Gules). Used as a house flag, its proportions are 5:4; however, flag manufacturers themselves may also adopt alternative ratios, including 1:2 or 2:3.
## History
The Lion rampant has been used as a heraldic symbol by heirs of Malcolm III beginning with David I. The Great Seal was used by Alexander II (1214–1249). Its use in Scotland originated during the reign of Malcolm III (1058–1093), The Lion rampant motif is used as a badge by those Irish clans that have lineage in common with Malcolm III. They are linked to the legendary Milesian genealogies (specifically, the red lion is associated with the descendants of Érimón). An early recorded Scottish royal standard featured a dragon, which was used at the Battle of the Standard in 1138 by David I (1124–1153). Robert the Bruce, King Robert I, almost certainly wore a yellow surcoat that bore the Royal Red Lion Rampart at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314.
Following the Union of the Crowns of England, Ireland and Scotland in 1603, the Royal Banner of the arms of the kings of Scotland was incorporated into the royal standards of successive Scottish then, following the Acts of Union in 1707, British monarchs; with all such royal standards being quartered to include the banner of the arms of each individual realm. Since 1603, the Royal Banner of Scotland has appeared in both the first and fourth quarters of the quartered royal standard used in Scotland, while appearing only in the second quarter of that version used elsewhere.
## Protocol
### Use at royal residences
The Royal Banner of Scotland is used officially at the Scottish royal residences of the Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh, and Balmoral Castle, Aberdeenshire, when the King is not in residence. The Royal Standard of the United Kingdom used in Scotland is flown when the Monarch is present.
### Use by representatives of the Monarchy
In the tradition of Scottish heraldry, use of the banner is not restricted to the monarch. Several Great Officers of State who officially represent the Monarchy in Scotland are permitted to use the Royal Banner of Scotland, including; the First Minister of Scotland (as Keeper of the Great Seal of Scotland), Lord Lieutenants within their respective Lieutenancies, the Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, the Lord Lyon King of Arms and other lieutenants who may be specially appointed by the Head of State.
### Use by the Heir Apparent
A variation of the Royal Banner of Scotland is used by the heir apparent to the monarch, the Duke of Rothesay, whose standard is the banner defaced with an Azure coloured plain label of three points. The personal banner of Charles III, prior to his accession to the throne, also featured the same, displayed upon an inner shield.
### Legal status
As the personal banner of the Monarch, use of the Royal Banner of Scotland is restricted under the Act of the Parliament of Scotland 1672 cap. 47 and 30 & 31 Vict. cap. 17, and any unauthorised use of such is an offence under the Act. In 1978, a St Albans linen merchant, Denis Pamphilon, was fined £100 daily for usurpation of the banner on decorative bedspreads until he desisted, and both Rangers F.C. and the Scottish National Party have been admonished by the Court of the Lord Lyon for their non-authorised use of the banner. Despite such action, the flag continues to feature on a variety of merchandise and souvenirs produced commercially for Scotland's economically important tourism industry.
In 1934, George V issued a Royal Warrant authorising use of the Royal Banner of Scotland during the Silver Jubilee celebrations, due to take place the following year. However, such use was restricted to hand-held flags for "decorative ebullition" as a mark of loyalty to the Monarch; the banner was not to be flown from flagpoles or public buildings. The use of hand-held flags at state occasions, such as the opening of the Scottish Parliament, and at sporting events, continues to be authorised by this Royal Warrant although according to former Lord Lyon Robin Blair in an interview given to the Sunday Post in November 2007, such use at sporting events "was not envisaged in 1935".
## Appearance in other royal flags
As well as forming the basis of the standard of the Duke of Rothesay, the Royal Banner of Scotland has since 1603 been a component of what is now styled the Royal Standard of the United Kingdom, both for the version used exclusively in Scotland and the one used elsewhere. It similarly appears in the Queen's personal Canadian standard, with the arms of Canada reflecting the royal symbols of England, Scotland, Ireland and France.
### Gallery
## National Flag of Scotland
The Flag of Scotland, also known as the Saint Andrew's Cross or more commonly The Saltire, is the national flag of Scotland. It is also, where possible, flown from Scottish Government buildings every day from 8am until sunset, with certain exceptions, for example, on United Kingdom National Days.
## See also
- Hereditary Bearer of the Royal Banner
- Royal coat of arms of Scotland
- Royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom
- Royal Standard of the United Kingdom
- Arms of Canada
- Royal Standard of Canada
- List of Scottish flags
- List of British flags
- Scottish heraldry
- Duke of Rothesay
- List of Scottish monarchs |
4,963,841 | New York State Route 64 | 1,078,832,336 | Highway in New York | [
"State highways in New York (state)",
"Transportation in Monroe County, New York",
"Transportation in Ontario County, New York"
]
| New York State Route 64 (NY 64) is a north–south state highway in the Finger Lakes region of New York in the United States. Its southern terminus is at an intersection with NY 21 in the hamlet of Bristol Springs within the town of South Bristol, Ontario County. The northern terminus is at a junction with NY 96 and NY 252 in the village of Pittsford, Monroe County. NY 64 is a mostly two-lane highway that primarily serves as a connector between the southeastern suburbs of the city of Rochester and the Canandaigua Lake area, home to Bristol Mountain Ski Resort. Near the midpoint of the route, NY 64 has an overlap with U.S. Route 20 (US 20) and NY 5 that takes the route through the village of Bloomfield.
The majority of what is now NY 64 was originally designated as part of Route 14, an unsigned legislative route, by the New York State Legislature in 1908. In the vicinity of Bloomfield, however, Route 14 initially followed what later became NY 20C in order to access Holcomb. The alignment of Route 14 through Bloomfield was modified in 1921 to use modern NY 64 instead. When the first set of posted routes in New York were assigned in 1924, the portion of Route 14 between Mendon and Pittsford became part of NY 15. In the 1930 renumbering of state highways in New York, NY 15 was realigned to follow a new routing to the east while the Mendon–Pittsford segment of its former routing became the basis for NY 64, a new route that extended southward over the post-1921 routing of legislative Route 14 to South Bristol.
## Route description
NY 64 begins at an intersection with NY 21 on a ridge overlooking Canandaigua Lake in Bristol Springs, a hamlet of South Bristol. The route heads to the northwest as a two-lane highway, running in the base of the Bristol Valley, a lowland created by a pair of imposing mountain ranges to the east and west that is home to the Bristol Mountain Ski Resort. At the hamlet of Bristol Center (in the town of Bristol), roughly 7.5 miles (12.1 km) from Bristol Springs, the western mountains give way to flat farmland while the eastern range continues on, although to a lesser extent and a lower elevation than before. The elevation of NY 64 remains virtually unchanged, however, as it progresses northward. 1.5 miles (2.4 km) from Bristol Center, the route meets US 20A.
US 20A joins NY 64 here, following the latter for about 4 miles (6 km), allowing US 20A to terminate at its parent, US 20, here concurrent with NY 5, at an intersection in East Bloomfield. At this point, NY 64 turns west onto US 20 and NY 5. The three routes head westward across mostly open fields, meeting the southern terminus of NY 444 south of the former village of Holcomb. Past the junction, which once served as the eastern terminus of NY 20C, US 20, NY 5, and NY 64 continue into the village of Bloomfield before NY 64 breaks from NY 5 and US 20 and turns northward toward Rochester once again.
A mere 50 yards (46 m) north of US 20 and NY 5, NY 64 meets the west end of Bloomfield's West Main Street at a rural intersection that was the western terminus of NY 20C. North of West Main Street, the highway curves to the northwest as it exits East Bloomfield and enters the adjacent town of West Bloomfield. In the northeast corner of the town, NY 64 passes through the hamlet of Ionia. Northwest of the community, the route breaks to the north, taking a due north alignment as it passes into Monroe County and becomes Mendon–Ionia Road. The road stays on a relatively straight path northward as it heads through the rural southern portion of the town of Mendon to the hamlet of Mendon, where NY 64 meets NY 251 in the center of the community.
On the opposite side of NY 251, NY 64 becomes Pittsford–Mendon Road. Outside of the hamlet, the highway maintains a consistent northerly alignment as it runs through slightly more populated areas of the town of Mendon and passes over the New York State Thruway (Interstate 90 or I-90). The route enters the town of Pittsford a short distance north of the Thruway, at which time NY 64 becomes Mendon Road. Within Pittsford, NY 64 passes through increasingly more populated areas as it approaches the village of Pittsford. Directly south of the village, the highway enters an intersection with South Main Street, Stone Road and Mendon Center Road at a sharp angle. NY 253 once entered this junction on Mendon Center Road and followed NY 64 into Pittsford; however, today, NY 64 continues alone onto South Main Street. The route ends just under 1 mile (1.6 km) later at the junction of South Main Street and Jefferson Road, where it meets NY 96 and NY 252.
## History
In 1908, the New York State Legislature created Route 14, an unsigned legislative route that extended from Corning to Rochester via South Bristol and Pittsford. The majority of Route 14 south of Pittsford was routed on what is now NY 64; however, in the vicinity of Bloomfield, Route 14 broke from modern NY 64 and used what later became NY 20C to access Holcomb. At the same time, the portion of current NY 64 that overlaps with US 20 and NY 5 was included in Route 6, a cross-state highway connecting Albany to Buffalo. On March 1, 1921, Route 14 was altered to bypass Holcomb to the south on what is now NY 64.
When the first set of posted routes in New York were assigned in 1924, the portion of legislative Route 14 between Mendon and Pittsford became part of NY 15, a route that mostly followed the current alignment of NY 96 from Owego to Rochester. Between Victor and Pittsford, however, NY 15 strayed from the modern routing of NY 96 and followed what is now NY 251 to Mendon. At the same time, the segment of legislative Route 6 in East Bloomfield became part of both NY 5 and NY 5A. The NY 5A designation was replaced along this stretch with NY 7 by 1926, which in turn was replaced by US 20 in 1927. In the 1930 renumbering of state highways in New York, NY 15 was realigned to bypass Mendon to the northeast by way of the current alignment of NY 96 between Victor and Pittsford. The former alignment of NY 15 from Pittsford to Mendon became part of NY 64, a new route that extended south to South Bristol over the post-1921 routing of legislative Route 14. The 4-mile (6.4 km) portion of NY 64 between Vincent and South Bloomfield became part of US 20A c. 1939, allowing the route to reconnect to US 20 at South Bloomfield.
NY 64 briefly extended north of the village of Pittsford during the 1950s and 1960s. In the mid-1950s, NY 96 was realigned onto the new Eastern Expressway from Bushnell's Basin to NY 31F near East Rochester. From there, NY 96 followed modern NY 31F west to East Avenue, where it rejoined its original alignment. The portion of NY 96's original surface routing between the village of Pittsford and what is now NY 31F became part of an extended NY 64. A northwest extension of the freeway to what is now the Can of Worms was completed c. 1957 as a realignment of NY 96, resulting in another extension of NY 64 along East Avenue to the eastern edge of Rochester. NY 64 and NY 96 were restored to their pre-1950s alignments c. 1961 when the Eastern Expressway was designated as I-490.
## Major intersections
## See also |
30,357,446 | And I'm Joyce Kinney | 1,162,403,377 | null | [
"2011 American television episodes",
"Cultural depictions of John Travolta",
"Family Guy (season 9) episodes"
]
| "And I'm Joyce Kinney" is the ninth episode of the ninth season of the animated comedy series Family Guy. It originally aired on Fox in the United States on January 16, 2011. The episode follows housewife Lois as she becomes close friends with the local news anchor Joyce Kinney. In an attempt to become closer, the two decide to get drinks together, and reveal their darkest secrets. Wanting to fit in, Lois reveals her participation in a pornographic film when she was in college, with Joyce promising to keep her revelation a secret. The next day, Kinney unveils the story on the local news, much to the anger of Lois, who quickly becomes shunned by the entire town.
The episode was written by Alec Sulkin and directed by Dominic Bianchi. It received mixed reviews from critics for its storyline and many cultural references. According to Nielsen ratings, it was viewed in 7.08 million homes in its original airing. The episode featured guest performances by Kirker Butler, Colin Ford, Christine Lakin, Rachael MacFarlane, Helen Reddy and Jennifer Tilly, along with several recurring guest voice actors for the series. "And I'm Joyce Kinney" was one of five episodes submitted for consideration for an Emmy Award in the "Outstanding Comedy Series" category in 2011.
## Plot
As the family gathers around the television to watch the local news, Lois states her fondness of the new co-anchor, Joyce Kinney. Later that day, the family attends church, and while there, Lois learns of a local bake sale, and decides to bring her own baked goods. Going to the store to buy ingredients, Lois notices Joyce shopping there as well, and approaches her. The two quickly become close friends, and they decide to spend the day together at the news studio. That night, Lois and Joyce decide to get a drink together, and share stories. Reluctant at first to tell Joyce her darkest secret, she soon reveals that she was in an adult film when she was in college in the early 1980s, before she met Peter. Expecting Joyce will keep it a secret, as she promised, she is shocked when the local news reveals her participation in the making of the pornography.
Confronting Joyce about the story, Lois questions her intentions, with Joyce revealing that the two attended high school together, where she was fat and was known as Joyce Chevapravatdumrong (her real last name). She also reveals that Lois humiliated her in front of the entire school, by placing a hotdog in her mouth and pulling down her pants while blindfolded (revealing her pink underwear), and has sought revenge ever since. Since the revelation of her porno past, Lois is made a pariah and her kids face their share of ridicule at school. At church on Sunday, Lois and her family enter, and are immediately demanded to leave by the preacher. Becoming extremely depressed, Lois is eventually coaxed by Brian to face her mistake by showing it to the church. The porno causes the church to reaccept her and admit the Griffin family back into their congregation due to a positive opinion of the film, much to Joyce's anger. Stewie in the meantime develops suspicions of having been conceived through the creation of the porno, heightened when he sees that one of the actors has a football-shaped head like his.
## Production and development
"And I'm Joyce Kinney" was written by series regular Alec Sulkin, in his first episode for the season. The episode was directed by series regular Dominic Bianchi, shortly after the conclusion of the eighth production season, also in his first episode for the season. Series veterans Peter Shin and James Purdum, both of whom having previously served as animation directors, served as supervising directors for the episode. Alex Carter, Andrew Goldberg, Elaine Ko, Spencer Porter and Aaron Blitzstein served as staff writers for the episode. Composer Walter Murphy, who has worked on the series since its inception, returned to compose the music for "And I'm Joyce Kinney".
The episode served as a continuation of the season premiere, in which local news anchor Diane Simmons was killed after being shot with a sniper rifle by Stewie, after she had killed several other secondary characters. News anchor Joyce Kinney was brought in as a replacement for Simmons on the local news, alongside Tom Tucker. The character is voiced by actress Christine Lakin, who has guest starred in various roles throughout the course of the series.
In addition to the regular cast, former series writer and The Cleveland Show writer Kirker Butler, actor Colin Ford, actress Christine Lakin, voice actress Rachael MacFarlane (sister of series creator and executive producer Seth MacFarlane), singer Helen Reddy, and actress Jennifer Tilly guest starred in the episode. Recurring guest voice actors Ralph Garman, writer Chris Sheridan, writer Danny Smith, episode writer Alec Sulkin and writer John Viener made minor appearances throughout the episode.
## Cultural references
In the opening scene of the episode, instead of the usual theme song, a sequence similar to that of the 1977 CBS series The Incredible Hulk is played, with Stewie portraying Bruce Banner, Tom Tucker portraying Mr. McGee, and Peter portraying Hulk. After Lois meets Joyce Kinney at the local supermarket, the two decide to meet up at the news studio later that evening. Admitting her enjoyment of their friendship, Lois continually praises Joyce for her celebrity status, calling her as much of a bigshot as The Muppets character Miss Piggy. The scene then cuts to Kermit the Frog, who has been badly beaten, with Fozzie Bear approaching him about a proposed "Bears in Space" number. Kermit then reveals that the skit has been changed to "Pigs in Space" instead.
Returning home, the Griffin family are shown to be watching the syndicated talk show The Ellen DeGeneres Show with actress and comedian Ellen DeGeneres appearing as host of the show. Lois then interrupts the family, and announces that she is going out to drink with Joyce. The two then share their darkest secrets, with Lois revealing that she had participated in the making of a pornographic film. Asked if the film still exists, Lois states that it is "long gone," just like the original ending to the 1978 musical film Grease. Joyce shares her original surname, Chevapravatdumrong, with Family Guy writer and producer Cherry Chevapravatdumrong; in light of this, Joyce explains that she changed her surname to Kinney as "they'd never let that name on TV". The scene then transitions into a Facebook cutaway gag, showing Lois's Facebook profile. Becoming depressed once she is kicked out of her church, Lois is confronted by Brian, who suggest that she take the criticism head on, giving the example of television host Ryan Seacrest taking on jokes about his alleged homosexuality.
## Reception
"And I'm Joyce Kinney" was broadcast on January 16, 2011, as a part of an animated television night on Fox, and was preceded by American Dad!, The Simpsons and the second episode of the animated series Bob's Burgers. It was followed by Family Guy creator and executive producer Seth MacFarlane's spin-off, The Cleveland Show. Family Guy was watched by 7.08 million viewers, according to Nielsen ratings, despite airing simultaneously with Desperate Housewives on ABC, Undercover Boss on CBS and the Golden Globe Awards on NBC. The episode also acquired a 3.7 rating in the 18–49 demographic, beating American Dad!, The Simpsons, Bob's Burgers and The Cleveland Show, in addition to significantly edging out all four shows in total viewership. The episode's ratings decreased significantly from the previous week's episode, largely due to the lead-in that had been provided by the NFL Wild Card game that preceded the "Animation Domination" line-up.
Television critics reacted with mixed reaction toward the episode, with one critic calling the storyline "pretty dull." In a simultaneous review of the episodes of American Dad!, The Simpsons and Bob's Burgers that preceded the show, and the episode of The Cleveland Show that followed it, The A.V. Club'''s Rowan Kaiser wrote, "I don't have much to say about tonight's Family Guy. Last week, we had some comments about how Family Guy seems to be willing to play with its format this season. That didn't happen this week at all." Kaiser went on to criticize the flashback involving Lois and Joyce in high school, stating, "Having a previously unknown flashback as the big reveal feels like cheating, if you're inclined to view Family Guy as consistent." He concluded his review by praising "the burning bush" joke, and ultimately gave the episode a C− rating, the worst rating of the night. It was beaten by the American Dad! episode "Fart-Break Hotel", The Cleveland Show episode "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Roberta?", The Simpsons episode "Flaming Moe", and the Bob's Burgers episode "Crawl Space". In a slightly more positive review of the episode, Jason Hughes of TV Squad praised the episode for some of its "silly side jokes," but felt disappointed by the ending to the show, commenting, "it didn't follow any real logic It was an easy way out, as if they'd written themselves into a corner." Hughes also criticized the episode for its dependence on cutaway gags, writing, "at least there were some funnier moments in this one. Unfortunately, a lot of those came in the cutaways. And I thought we were starting to move away from a dependence on them." Hughes went on to comment that he felt confused by Stewie possibly being fathered by a porn star, adding that "it would be far more likely that Chris or Meg was fathered by the porn star."
The episode was among four other episodes submitted by the Family Guy production team for consideration of an Emmy Award nomination, in the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series category. "And I'm Joyce Kinney" was submitted, along with "Halloween on Spooner Street", "Road to the North Pole", "New Kidney in Town" and "Trading Places". The series was successfully nominated in 2009, but failed to merit an award. Mark Hentemann, executive producer and showrunner of Family Guy'' said of the nominating process, "We had internal discussions in the writers' room, and it seemed like we were much more akin to the other primetime comedies than we were to children's shows in animation. We assumed we would not get anywhere, and so it was a great surprise when we got the nomination." |
56,180,823 | The Dictator Pope | 1,171,972,165 | Critical biography of Pope Francis | [
"2017 non-fiction books",
"Books about popes",
"Regnery Publishing books",
"Works about Pope Francis",
"Works published under a pseudonym"
]
| The Dictator Pope: The Inside Story of the Francis Papacy (Italian: Il papa dittatore) is a biography of Pope Francis authored by the Anglo–French historian H. J. A. Sire under the pseudonym "Marcantonio Colonna" (the name of a Catholic admiral who fought at the Battle of Lepanto). Published initially in Italian, and later in English, the book takes a highly critical view of Pope Francis and his papacy over the Catholic Church. The book contends to be "the inside story of the most tyrannical and unprincipled papacy of modern times," arguing that Pope Francis, while presenting himself as humble, rules over the Church through fear and has allied to some of the most corrupt elements in the Vatican. On its 2017 release, the book reached 4th place on Amazon Kindle's Religion and Spirituality bestseller list.
A revised and updated English edition of The Dictator Pope was released both in hardcover and e-book formats by Regnery Publishing on April 23, 2018. An audiobook edition produced by Blackstone Audio was also released the same day.
## Content
The book places the political and theological statements made by Pope Francis, as well as his leadership style, into a specifically Argentine context, comparing him to former President Juan Perón, whereby Perón during his political career was able to talk to diametrically opposed political tendencies and tell each of them that they were right and that he agreed with them. The book presents this supposed Peronist attitude as a kind of ruthless opportunism according to The Spectator.
Topics of discussion in the book include the background to Pope Francis' ascent to the Papacy, mentioning the St. Gallen Group of supposed "liberal modernist" high ranking clerics, maturated under Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini who are alleged to have attempted to stop Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger from becoming pope during the 2005 Papal conclave. According to The Catholic Herald, the author "Colonna" alleges that this group adopted Bergoglio as their candidate for the 2013 Papal conclave, "With Martini dead, and most of the group coming within a hair of the cut-off age for participation in a conclave, time was running out – they knew this was their last realistic chance."
"Colonna" states in his book that much of the controversy surrounding the Synod on the Family was a product of the St. Gallen Group's desire to change Catholic moral teaching as it applied to giving Holy Communion to the divorced. He makes the claim, quoting Cardinal Wilfrid Napier, that Pope Francis deliberately stacked the Synod with prelates who agreed with his view. Also discussed are the Vatican's interventions in the cases of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate, the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and the firing of three members of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (which Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller protested against). The book asserts that Pope Francis rules the Roman Curia "by fear".
According to The Australian, outside of theological concerns, a major topic in the book is what "Colonna" views as the failure of Pope Francis' papacy when it comes to financial reform and the elimination of corruption in the Vatican. "Colonna" specifically accuses four men of obstructing financial reform; Secretary of State Pietro Parolin, the head of the Vatican Bank, Domenico Calcagno, the Prefect for Catholic Education Giuseppe Versaldi and the President of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State, Giuseppe Bertello. It also discusses the police raid and subsequent confiscation of a large number of documents from the offices of Pope Francis-appointed Auditor General Libero Milone, who was forced to step down in September 2017 in murky circumstances. First Things reported that the book discusses how a professional financial audit by PwC, commissioned by Cardinal George Pell, was suspended in 2016 by Substitute for General Affairs, Archbishop Giovanni Angelo Becciu (under the orders of Cardinal Parolin).
The reception of Pope Francis's papacy by the secular western world, particularly the non-Catholic media is discussed, while the book says that his papacy is less popular with Catholics. "Colonna" cites the dropping attendance figures at St. Peter's Square for Papal weekly audiences from a high of 51,617 in 2013 to under 10,000 in 2016. Pope Francis's public image of a humble man is also put under scrutiny.
## Reception
The book drew support from conservative and traditionalist-leaning lay publications such as The Catholic Thing, One Peter Five, The Remnant and ChurchMilitant.com. The book received mixed reviews from Dan Hitchens in the Catholic Herald and Philip Lawler in The Catholic World Report. Hitchens stated that the book contained unproven claims and was "not for the easily scandalised", but was "judiciously written and genuinely insightful". Hitchens questioned the author about the book's claim of a "disappeared report" by Peter Hans Kolvenbach, former Superior General of the Society of Jesus, which allegedly stated that a younger Pope Francis was "unsuitable" to be made a bishop because of "character defects". The author responded that it was not a rumour, but first-hand information from a priest who had read the report. Lawler stated that the book "is the product of a great deal of solid reporting", but criticised it for failing to provide evidence for its more extreme or implausible claims. He said that the fact that the work was pseudonymously self-published was likely to limit its readership, and that it suffered from a lack of copy-editing.
## Authorship
To conceal his identity, the author of the book decided to write under the pseudonym Marcantonio Colonna, an Italian nobleman who fought at the Battle of Lepanto. The author described himself as a historian who was educated at the University of Oxford, but is now living in Rome. "Colonna" said the reason he chose to keep his actual name private is due to the fear of retaliation, but expects to be "unmasked" by opponents eventually. He also said that Pope Francis has been shown a list of six people who they think could have been the author and that a person in England who had been misidentified "received threatening phone calls from Rome". Tess Livingstone of The Australian described in Rome a "frantic witch-hunt" to uncover the author.
On 19 March 2018, the author was revealed to be Henry (H. J. A.) Sire, born in 1949 at Barcelona of French ancestry. According to The Tablet, Sire, a historian and member of the Knights of Malta, had lived in Rome at the Knights' Grand Magistry Palace on the Via dei Condotti from 2013 to 2017 while researching for his book The Knights of Malta: A Modern Resurrection, at the behest of Fra Matthew Festing, the former Prince & Grand Master. Sire had studied in England at Stonyhurst College (a Jesuit institution) and at Exeter College, Oxford, before establishing himself as a Catholic historian. After Sire was revealed to be the author, the leadership of the Knights of Malta, now under Fra Giacomo dalla Torre del Tempio di Sanguinetto, suspended Sire's membership and distanced themselves from his critique of Pope Francis. The Order later expelled Sire on November 19, 2018.
## Editions in other languages
The Polish edition of The Dictator Pope (titled: Papież dyktator. Skrywana historia pontyfikatu papieża Franciszka) was to be released in the middle of November 2018. |
57,924,299 | Electricity (Silk City and Dua Lipa song) | 1,159,881,943 | 2018 single by Silk City and Dua Lipa | [
"2018 singles",
"2018 songs",
"British house music songs",
"Columbia Records singles",
"Dua Lipa songs",
"Silk City (duo) songs",
"Songs about dancing",
"Songs written by Diplo",
"Songs written by Dua Lipa",
"Songs written by Jr Blender",
"Songs written by Mark Ronson",
"Songs written by Wynter Gordon"
]
| "Electricity" is a song by British-American music duo Silk City and English-Albanian singer Dua Lipa featuring American DJ Diplo and British-American DJ Mark Ronson. The song was written by Silk City members: Ronson and Diplo, alongside Lipa, Diana Gordon, Romy Madley Croft, Jr Blender, Maxime Picard, Clément Picard, Jacob Olofsson and Rami Dawod. The production was handled by Silk City with additional production from Picard Brothers, Jarami, Riton, Alex Metric, and Blender. It was released for digital download and streaming through Columbia Records and Sony Music on 6 September 2018 as the fourth single from Silk City's debut extended play (EP) of the same name (2019). The song was later included on Dua Lipa: Complete Edition (2018), the super deluxe reissue of Lipa's eponymous debut studio album.
Musically, "Electricity" draws from Chicago house and 1990s music, and includes elements of disco-house, diva house and electropop. It is a dance-pop and piano house song that lyrically sees a couple who has found a kindred spirit, with one party also comforting the other. Several music critics commended Silk City's production as well as its lyrics. It won the Grammy Award for Best Dance Recording at the 61st Annual Grammy Awards and appeared on year-end lists from publications including Billboard, The New York Times and Popjustice. The song reached number 4 and 62 respectively on the UK Singles Chart and US Billboard Hot 100, and has a platinum certification in both countries.
The music video for "Electricity" was directed by Bradley & Pablo, and is set during the Northeast blackout of 2003. In the video, Lipa throws a party in her loft, where she turns the power back on with her dance moves, while Ronson and Diplo get stuck in an elevator. Critics praised Lipa's performance in the video. The song was also accompanied by a vertical video and dance video. Silk City and Lipa promoted the song with numerous live performances, including ones at the American Music Awards of 2018, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve. The song has received several remixes, including ones by the Black Madonna and MK.
## Writing and production
"Electricity" was written by Mark Ronson and Diplo of Silk City, Dua Lipa, Diana Gordon, Romy Madley Croft of The xx, Jr Blender, Jarami members Jacob Olofsson and Rami Dawod, and Maxime and Clément Picard. The song was produced by Silk City with Picard Brothers, Jarami, Riton, Alex Metric, and Blender handling additional production. The song began as a project between Ronson and Diplo, intending for it to have a Chicago house and vintage US house vibe. The first thing they did in the studio was write piano lines before Diplo made a beat under it; however, they had trouble finding the direction of the sound, calling upon nearly a dozen friends for assistance. The song took over two months to complete, going from a club song to a radio song.
Gordon came up with the melody, which jump-started the song, while Blender came up with the catchy chorus, which was unable to work for an entire song. Gordon ended up recording the melody in a demo. English singer Florence Welch of Florence and the Machine wrote and recorded an entire song to the record, called "Baptize", which demo leaked in 2020, but it did not fit, so they decided to keep her electricity concept and re-write it. Croft helped with the re-writes, writing the entire lead, and filling in some parts. After the many contributions, Diplo and Ronson were unsure of who they wanted to sing on it. They ultimately sent a demo to Lipa in November 2017, who expressed her admiration of it. Lipa ended up re-writing some parts and lowering the key to fit with her voice. She co-wrote the middle eight with Ronson. Ronson handled her vocal production and tracked her. The writers spent a lot of time perfecting the lyrics.
Diplo and Ronson had trouble with the production as they are not inherently house producers. They asked Metric and Riton for help as they are "very current" with house music in the United Kingdom. Diplo and Ronson knew they needed Metric and Riton in order to be authentic. Metric and Riton helped them with the drums and the arrangement. The Picard Brothers created the bassline using an old 909 machine. Ronson made the track sound vintage while Diplo incorporated disparate genres. Ronson tried the production several different ways, including having a band come into the studio and record it in a disco style. They ended up using this rendition as the song's outro. They accidentally played Gordon's demo in the lower key and decided to place it as an "answer" to Lipa's vocals. Gordon was not singing any lyrics in the demo so they had her re-record her vocals with the updated lyrics. They then slowed down her vocals. The song was recorded in March 2018 at Zelig West Studios in Los Angeles and Lazer Sound Studios in Beachwood Canyon, Los Angeles. Mixing was handled by Josh Gudwin at Henson Recording Studios in Los Angeles with Chris Gehringer mastering the song at Sterling Sound in New York City.
## Music and lyrics
Musically, "Electricity" is a dance-pop and piano house song. Running for 3 minutes and 58 seconds, the song follows a structure of verse, bridge, chorus, verse, bridge, chorus, middle eight, chorus, outro and is composed in time and the key of D minor, with a tempo of 118 beats per minute. It follows a chord progression of Dm–F–Dm–C, while the bridge adds additional Bmaj7 and Am7 chords. The song additionally draws from Chicago house and 1990s music, and incorporates elements of disco-house, diva house and electropop genres.
"Electricity" uses a retro-pop production, that consists of house drums, piano-driven beats, a modern heavy-handed bassline, an electric groove, Latin melodies, plunging synths, high pitched disco synth strings, slithering guitars, and soulful house piano stabs. The song also features a 1960s soul outro. Lipa uses warped gospel house vocals, ranging one octave from A<sub>3</sub> to A<sub>4</sub>, while also making use of belting. Lyrically, the song documents a relationship where the two people feel as though they've found a kindred spirit, with one also comforting the other who has been through a traumatic relationship in the past. It was also thought to be about self-love due to Lipa singing as though she is duetting with herself in the chorus.
## Release and promotion
In July 2018, Ronson confirmed that Silk City had a collaboration with Dua Lipa coming, and he announced the title as "Electricity." Ronson and Lipa began teasing the song shortly thereafter. On 25 August 2018, Lipa confirmed the song's release date and on 4 September of that year, Ronson, Lipa, and Diplo formally announced the track. "Electricity" was released on 6 September 2018 for digital download and streaming through Columbia Records and Sony Music. The song was serviced to contemporary hit radio formats in the United States on 11 September while it was sent for radio airplay in Italy on 21 September. The song was included as the fifth track on the second disc of the super deluxe edition of Lipa's eponymous debut album, Dua Lipa: Complete Edition, released through Warner Bros. Records on 19 October 2018. It was also included as the opening track of Silk City's 12-inch vinyl EP of the same name, released 13 April 2019 as part of Record Store Day 2019.
Several alternate versions of "Electricity" have been released. On 19 October 2018, an acoustic version was released. On 26 October of that year, the song's first remix was released, being by the Black Madonna (now known as the Blessed Madonna). Categorized as a blend of club, house, soul and techno with Chicago house vibes, the remix increases the tempo of the original and includes rhythmic, old-school keys, and a four on the floor drum pattern production-wise. On 2 November of that year, a club remix by Ten Ven was released. A week later and on 16 November, remixes by MK and Alex Metric were released. The Alex Metric remix reimagines the song as a disco house track, with groovy bongos, funk-driven basslines, and cowbells.
## Critical reception
In Rolling Stone, Daniela Tijerina viewed the song as a "riled up dancefloor smash" and praised it for being Lipa's best collaboration. Billboard's David Rishty complimented Lipa for her vocals, which he thought turned the track's listeners into dancers, as well as calling the song a "supercharged groover." Of the same magazine, Kat Bein labelled it "one of the year's most instantly lovable house hooks." The magazine ranked it as 2018's 48th best song as well as the year's 6th best dance/electronic Song. Pryor Stroud of PopMatters praised the propulsive chorus and noted that it "[breaks] out of the track's four walls and [runs] free." The song placed at number 59 on the magazine's 2018 year-end list, while it placed at number 29 for The New York Times. Popjustice named it 2018's 11th best song and it placed at number 12 on the year-end list of Stereogum. The song was nominated for the 2019 Popjustice £20 Music Prize.
For The Line of Best Fit, Cerys Kenneally commended the anthemic pop abilities, while MTV pointed out its house vibes, reminiscent of the 1990s. In his review for The Guardian, Kate Solomon viewed it as "a bop with a capital B" and a "90s piano-house dream." Writing for Spin, Anna Gaca complimented the "warm and familiar" pianos and the arrangement that showcases Lipa's husky vocals. She concluded by labelling it a "slinky dance ballad." Idolator's Mike Nied complimented the "emphatic" and "infectious" chorus, as well as calling the lyrics "infatuated." In his Crack Magazine review for Lipa's Future Nostalgia, Michael Cragg commended the track for going into the backbone of the album, expressing that it released something in her. "Electricity" won the Grammy Award for Best Dance Recording at the 2019 ceremony. The song received nominations for Best Pop/Electronic Song at the 2019 International Dance Music Awards and Global Hit of the Year at the 2019 MTV Millennial Awards.
## Commercial performance
In the United Kingdom, "Electricity" debuted at number 15 on the UK Singles Chart issue dated 14 September 2018. Three weeks later, it peaked at number 4 on the chart and spent a total of 20 weeks on the chart. Similarly, the song reached number 6 in Ireland and 8 in Scotland. In July 2019, it was certified platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) for track-equivalent sales of 600,000 units. "Electricity" reached number 6 on the Euro Digital Song Sales chart. The song had respective peaks of number 6 and 17 in the Flanders and Wallonia regions of Belgium. On their dance charts, it reached number 1 and 6 in the regions, respectively. The song was certified gold in the country by the Belgian Entertainment Association (BEA) for selling 20,000 track-equivalent units. The song additionally reached number 149 in France and 56 in Italy. It holds a gold certification in both countries.
In the United States, "Electricity" spent a total of 10 non-consecutive weeks on the Billboard Hot 100. In September 2018, the song debuted at number 96 and reached a peak of 62 the following January. It was awarded a platinum certification from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for selling 1,000,000 track-equivalent units in the country. It additionally reached the summit of the Dance Club Songs chart and number five on the Dance/Electronic Songs chart. In Canada, the song was certified gold by Music Canada and reached number 61 on the Canadian Singles Chart. In Australia, the song was awarded a platinum certification from the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) for selling 70,000 track-equivalent units. It reached number 22 on the country's singles chart and number 6 on their dance music chart. The song also peaked at number 25 in New Zealand.
## Music video
### Background and release
The music video for "Electricity" accompanied the single's release. It was directed by Bradley & Pablo and filmed at ODR Studios in Newark, New Jersey. Lipa called it a "turning point," stating that it was the first video where she did not care about what people thought and she just wanted to dance, perform, and enjoy herself. She went on to say it helped with her confidence and she was very proud of it. The song was also accompanied by a vertical video and dance video. The vertical video was released on 21 September 2018 and features Lipa wearing a leather bikini and dancing in a warehouse. The 1990s-inspired dance video released on 15 November 2018 and was directed and produced by Lindsey Mann. It features dancers in baggy clothes, going through the underground.
### Synopsis
The visual is set during the Northeast blackout of 2003, opening with home-video style footage from the time, starting with sirens going off in the street, before a man mentions the blackout, and is cut off by a reporter talking about how the luminous skyscrapers are now shadows. It then pans to Lipa listening to the radio in a dark New York City loft. She is noticeably sweaty, wearing red high-waisted bottoms, a white t-shirt tied around her chest, showing her abs, and layered necklaces, with blonde hair. Lipa then takes a sip from a jug of water and leans back in a chair, before she begins to sing and dance, with choreography inspired by Flashdance (1983). She gets up and twirls around her desk, while the lamps in the loft flicker as she heads for the refrigerator.
As Lipa dances, she kicks her legs up on a couch, eventually turning on the electricity with her dance moves, and drawing people in with her flickering lights and energy, beginning with two men. Ronson and Diplo are seen getting on an elevator and pushing the button, before the elevator shakes, and they get stuck. Lipa's party escalates to where a crowd of people, who shine their flashlights, join her in her now luminous loft. The video then fast-forwards to the next morning, where several people lie on the floor, with a woman playing the keyboards, and a man playing the drums. Lipa sits on a chair and opens her eyes. The visual closes with another clip of Ronson and Diplo in the dark broken elevator, with Ronson using a flashlight.
### Reception
The music video for "Electricity" was met with critical acclaim, with many praising Lipa's performance. In Billboard, John Ochoa viewed the video as "steamy" and commended Lipa for "tearing up a sweaty summer loft party." For Refinery29, Courtney E. Smith praised Lipa for listening to her criticism for her lack of stage presence. Ali Webb of L'Officiel complimented the video's "removal of literal electricity," allowing the "movement and connection to shine," while praising the "minimalism and maximalism, intimacy and emptiness" aesthetic. She concluded by calling it a reminder that "human connection is more powerful than any light."
Stereogum's Tom Breihan labelled the loft "cavernous" and the dancers "attractive strangers." Writing for Spin, Isabella Castro-Cota stated Lipa is "quite literally electric." In his review for MTV, Patrick Hoksen complimented Lipa's newly blonde hair and thought that she "steals the video." Sarah Brown of Soundigest viewed the "Electricity" video as a "burst of energy" and "trilling," as well as praising Ronson and Diplo's "comedic" cameo appearance. The video was nominated for the MTV Video Music Award for Best Dance Video at the 2019 MTV Video Music Awards.
## Live performances
After its release, "Electricity" was added to the setlists of the remaining shows for Lipa's Self-Titled Tour. From 2018 to 2020, the song was a part of her setlists for the iHeartRadio Music Festival 2018, Jingle Ball 2018, Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve 2019, the amfAR Gala 2019, the Amazon Prime Day concert 2019, the OnePlus Music Festival 2019, and the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras 2020. Lipa performed the song at the American Music Awards of 2018, as a medley with "One Kiss" (2018) on 9 October 2018. The stage was designed as a dimly lit urban loft studio, where Lipa performed with a dance team. Two days later, she performed it on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, backed by a bassist, a keyboardist, a drummer and two backup singers. She wore a sparkly silver dress, and danced bare foot. Lipa performed "Electricity" with Kylie Minogue on 27 November 2020 in her livestream concert, Studio 2054. Lipa also included the song on the setlist of her 2022 Future Nostalgia Tour.
Silk City performed "Electricity" for the first and only time together on 13 October 2018 at the Treasure Island Music Festival. Mark Ronson performed solo versions of the song in 2019 at BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend and Capital FM's Summertime Ball, while Diplo performed it at the Electric Daisy Carnival of that year in Las Vegas.
## Track listings
- Digital download and streaming
1. "Electricity" (featuring Diplo and Mark Ronson) – 3:58
- Digital download and streaming – acoustic version
1. "Electricity" (featuring Dua Lipa) [acoustic] – 4:13
- Digital download and streaming – The Black Madonna remix
1. "Electricity" (featuring Dua Lipa) [The Black Madonna remix] – 4:58
- Digital download and streaming – Ten Ven remix
1. "Electricity" (featuring Dua Lipa) [Ten Ven remix] – 4:22
- Digital download and streaming – MK remix
1. "Electricity" (featuring Diplo, Dua Lipa and Mark Ronson) [MK remix] – 5:46
- Digital download and streaming – Alex Metric remix
1. "Electricity" (featuring Dua Lipa) [Alex Metric remix] – 6:20
## Personnel
- Silk City – production
- Thomas Wesley Pentz – instrumentation, programming
- Mark Ronson – instrumentation, programming
- Dua Lipa – vocals
- The Picard Brothers – additional production
- Maxime Picard – instrumentation, programming
- Clément Picard – instrumentation, programming
- Jarami – additional production
- Jacob Olofsson – instrumentation, programming
- Rami Dawod – programming
- Riton – additional production
- Alex Metric – additional production
- Jr Blender – additional production, instrumentation, programming
- Josh Gudwin – mixing
- Hunter Jackson – mixing assistance
- Chris Gehringer – mastering
- Will Quinnell – mastering assistance
## Charts
### Weekly charts
### Year-end charts
## Certifications
## Release history
## See also
- List of UK top-ten singles in 2018
- List of Billboard Dance Club Songs number ones of 2018 |
31,356,965 | German destroyer Z5 Paul Jacobi | 1,128,457,792 | Type 1934A-class destroyer | [
"1936 ships",
"Destroyers of the French Navy",
"Ships built in Bremen (state)",
"Type 1934 destroyers"
]
| Z5 Paul Jacobi was a Type 1934A destroyer built for the Kriegsmarine in the mid-1930s. The ship was being refitted when World War II began on 1 September 1939 and was tasked to inspect neutral shipping for contraband goods in the Kattegat until early 1940. She participated in the early stages of the Norwegian Campaign by transporting troops to the Trondheim area in early April 1940 and was transferred to France later that year where she made several attacks on British shipping. Paul Jacobi spent most of 1941 under repair and returned to France in early 1942 to successfully escort two German battleships and a heavy cruiser home through the English Channel (the Channel Dash). The following month, the ship helped to escort another German battleship to northern Norway and returned in May to begin another lengthy refit.
Paul Jacobi spent most of 1943 inactive in the Arctic before returning to Germany in September for another refit. She was badly damaged by Allied air attacks on Kiel and was not operational again until late 1944. She spent most of the rest of the war escorting ships as the Germans evacuated East Prussia and bombarding Soviet forces. The ship was captured by the Allies in May 1945 and spent the rest of the year under British control as the Allies decided how to dispose of the captured German ships.
Paul Jacobi was ultimately allotted to France in early 1946 and renamed Desaix. She became operational later that year, but her service with the French Navy was fairly brief, with only cruises to French colonies in Africa during 1947 of note before she was paid off in late 1948 and placed in reserve in early 1949. The ship was used as a source of spare parts of the other ex-German ships in French service until she was condemned and sold for scrap in 1954.
## Design and description
Z5 Paul Jacobi had an overall length of 119 meters (390 ft 5 in) and was 114 meters (374 ft 0 in) long at the waterline. At some point before September 1939, her stem was lengthened, which increased her overall length to 120 meters (393 ft 8 in). The ship had a beam of 11.30 meters (37 ft 1 in), and a maximum draft of 4.23 meters (13 ft 11 in). She displaced 2,171 long tons (2,206 t) at standard load and 3,110 long tons (3,160 t) at deep load. The two Wagner geared steam turbine sets, each driving one propeller shaft, were designed to produce 70,000 metric horsepower (51,000 kW; 69,000 shp) using steam provided by six high-pressure Wagner boilers. The ship had a designed speed of 36 knots (67 km/h; 41 mph), but her maximum speed was 38.7 knots (71.7 km/h; 44.5 mph). Paul Jacobi carried a maximum of 752 metric tons (740 long tons) of fuel oil which was intended to give a range of 4,400 nautical miles (8,100 km; 5,100 mi) at a speed of 19 knots (35 km/h; 22 mph), but the ship proved top-heavy in service and 30% of the fuel had to be retained as ballast low in the ship. The effective range proved to be only 1,530 nmi (2,830 km; 1,760 mi) at 19 knots. The crew numbered 10 officers and 315 enlisted men, plus an additional four officers and 19 enlisted men if serving as a flotilla flagship.
The ship carried five 12.7-centimeter (5 in) SK C/34 guns in single mounts with gun shields, two each superimposed, fore and aft. The fifth gun was carried on top of the aft superstructure. Her anti-aircraft armament consisted of four 3.7-centimeter (1.5 in) SK C/30 guns in two twin mounts abreast the rear funnel and six 2-centimeter (0.8 in) C/30 guns in single mounts. Paul Jacobi carried eight above-water 53.3-centimeter (21 in) torpedo tubes in two power-operated mounts. A pair of reload torpedoes were provided for each mount. Four depth charge throwers were mounted on the sides of the rear deckhouse and they were supplemented by six racks for individual depth charges on the sides of the stern. Enough depth charges were carried for either two or four patterns of 16 charges each. Mine rails could be fitted on the rear deck that had a maximum capacity of 60 mines. A system of passive hydrophones designated as 'GHG' (Gruppenhorchgerät) was fitted to detect submarines.
An active sonar system was probably installed by the end of 1940, but it is uncertain when it was actually done. During the war, the ship's light anti-aircraft armament was augmented several times. Improved 2 cm C/38 guns replaced the original C/30 guns and three additional guns were added sometime in 1941. The two guns on the aft shelter deck were replaced by a single 2 cm quadruple Flakvierling mount, probably during her mid-1942 refit. During 1944–45, Paul Jacobi was one of the few destroyers to receive the full "Barbara" anti-aircraft refit in which all of her existing 3.7 cm and most of her 2 cm guns were replaced with improved models in greater numbers. The fifth 12.7 cm gun was removed to compensate for the weight of the additional weapons. She retained her Flakvierling mount and, by the end of the war, the rest of her anti-aircraft armament consisted of four twin and two single 3.7 cm SK M/42 mounts, four twin and one single 2 cm mounts on the forecastle and sides of the bridge.
## Construction and career
Z5 Paul Jacobi, named after Paul Jacobi, was ordered on 9 January 1935 and laid down at DeSchiMAG, Bremen on 15 July 1935 as yard number W899. She was launched on 24 March 1936 and completed on 29 June 1937. The ship participated in the late 1937 naval maneuvers as part of the Second Destroyer Division (2. Zerstörerdivision). Z5 Paul Jacobi and her sister ship Z8 Bruno Heinemann sailed to Norway in April 1938 to test the new 15-centimeter (5.9 in) TbtsK C/36 gun planned for later classes of destroyers. Z8 Bruno Heinemann had been fitted with four of the new weapons and they were removed after gunnery trials off Ålesund were completed. Z5 Paul Jacobi participated in the August 1938 Fleet Review as part of the 2nd Destroyer Division and the following fleet exercise. The division accompanied the heavy cruiser Admiral Graf Spee on her voyage to the Mediterranean in October where they visited Vigo, Tangiers, and Ceuta before returning home. The destroyer had a lengthy refit at Wilhelmshaven from February 1939 to 29 September.
After she finished working up on 11 October, Paul Jacobi was tasked to inspect neutral shipping for contraband goods in the Skaggerak until February 1940 between visits to the shipyard. The ship was allocated to Group 2 for the Norwegian portion of Operation Weserübung. The group's task was to transport the 138th Mountain Infantry Regiment (Gebirgsjäger-Regiment 138) of the 3rd Mountain Division to seize Trondheim together with the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper. The ships began loading troops on 6 April and set sail the next day. Paul Jacobi and her sisters Bruno Heinemann and Theodor Riedel each carried a company of mountain troops tasked to seize the forts defending the entrance to the Trondheimsfjord. En route the weather was so bad that Paul Jacobi rolled so far to port that water flooded the port boiler intakes, temporarily shutting down the port engine, and washing five men overboard. After passing the surprised forts the ships were able to land their troops and capture the forts with little difficulty. All of the destroyers had suffered storm damage en route and were low on fuel because none of the oil tankers had arrived yet. Admiral Hipper was ordered home on 10 April. Fuel was transferred from Paul Jacobi and Bruno Heinemann to Friedrich Eckoldt, enough to allow her to escort the cruiser home. Paul Jacobi remained in Trondheim until early May with engine troubles. Her aft torpedo tubes were removed and remounted on a pair of impounded small boats to improve the local defenses. In 1941 the ship was fitted with a FuMO 21 search radar above the bridge.
She arrived at Wilhelmshaven on 10 May and spent the next month under repair. Paul Jacobi returned to Trondheim on 30 June and helped to screen the crippled battleship Gneisenau as she returned to Kiel on 25 July. The ship laid a minefield in the North Sea before she was transferred to the Atlantic Coast of France in mid-September. Now based at Brest the ship helped to lay a minefield in Falmouth Bay during the night of 28/29 September. Five ships totalling only 2,026 GRT were sunk by this minefield. Paul Jacobi arrived back at Wilhelmshaven to begin a lengthy refit that lasted until October 1941. While departing Aarhus, Denmark for Norway, she fouled a buoy that damaged her port propeller and had to return to Kiel for repairs that took until 24 November. After loading mines at Aarhus, she had a boiler breakdown and had to return to Germany. While docked at Wilhelmshaven on 29 December, Paul Jacobi was slightly damaged by bomb splinters that also killed three crewmen.
She escorted the battleship Tirpitz for several days in mid-January 1942 as the battleship sailed from the Baltic to Trondheim. Paul Jacobi, together with the rest of the 5th Destroyer Flotilla, sailed from Kiel on 24 January for France as part of the preparations for the Channel Dash. On the evening of 25 January, Z8 Bruno Heinemann struck two mines laid by HMS Plover off the Belgian coast and sank. Paul Jacobi rescued 34 of the survivors and proceeded to Le Havre to put them ashore before reaching Brest on the 26th. The German ships departed Brest on 11 February, totally surprising the British. Paul Jacobi helped to repel an attack by five British destroyers and evaded a series of aerial attacks without damage. Shortly afterwards, the ship joined four other destroyers in escorting Prinz Eugen and the heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer to Trondheim. Heavy weather forced Paul Jacobi and two other destroyers to return to port before reaching Trondheim and Prinz Eugen was badly damaged by a British submarine after their separation. On 6 March, the battleship Tirpitz, escorted by Paul Jacobi and three other destroyers, sortied to attack the returning convoy QP 8 and the Russia-bound PQ 12 as part of Operation Sportpalast (Sports Palace), but the ship was ordered back to port that evening. Two months later, in Operation Zauberflote (Magic Flute), Paul Jacobi, the destroyer Z25, and two torpedo boats escorted the badly damaged heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen from Trondheim to Kiel from 16 to 18 May. Two days after her arrival, the destroyer began a lengthy refit that lasted until December.
On 9 January 1943, together with two other destroyers, she escorted Scharnhorst and Prinz Eugen as they attempted to return to Norway from Gotenhafen. The ships were spotted en route two days later by an aircraft from the Royal Air Force and the attempt was abandoned as the element of surprise was lost. The following month, Paul Jacobi made her way independently to Bogen Bay, Norway. She screened the battleships Tirpitz and Scharnhorst, as well as Lützow to the Altafjord, closer to the Allied convoy routes to Russia, in mid-March. Two weeks later, the ship, her sister Z6 Theodor Riedel, and the destroyer Z20 Karl Galster sailed for Jan Mayen island on 31 March to rendezvous with the blockade runner, . They searched for several days before increasingly heavy weather forced them to return to port with storm damage. Unbeknownst to the Germans, Regensburg had been intercepted and sunk by a British cruiser on 30 March. Paul Jacobi escorted Lützow back to Kiel in September and then began yet another lengthy refit on 30 September.
The ship was badly damaged during an air raid on Kiel on 13 December. One bomb struck the forecastle and started a severe fire while four others landed inside the dry dock itself, riddling her with splinters and sinking the ship. Paul Jacobi was not refloated until April and the refit itself was not completed until November. The ship had to be fitted with a new bow section, her radar was replaced by a FuMO 24 search radar and her foremast was rebuilt in a goal-post shape to allow the 6-by-2-meter (19.7 ft × 6.6 ft) antenna to fully rotate. A FuMO 63 K Hohentwiel radar replaced the searchlight on its platform abaft the rear funnel. After being damaged again by bomb splinters during an air raid on 18 July, she was towed to Swinemünde to be completed. Paul Jacobi was declared operational on 13 November and she escorted the hospital ship SS General von Steuben from Gotenhafen to Swinemünde. The destroyer's new 3.7 cm guns were installed on 20 December. While conducting torpedo training off the Swedish island of Gotland on 14 January 1945, one of her torpedoes circled back around and hit Paul Jacobi, inflicting only minor damage. She was back in action by the 19th, escorting ships in the eastern Baltic Sea. During one of these missions, the ship was accidentally rammed in the stern by the freighter SS Helga Schröder. Repairs took until 27 February to complete, and the Kriegsmarine took advantage of the opportunity to add more AA guns.
Paul Jacobi bombarded Soviet forces on 6–9 March and alternated between bombardment and escort tasks for the rest of the war as the Germans evacuated East Prussia in the face of advancing Soviet armies. On 2 May, her gyrocompass was sabotaged by some of her crew to prevent the ship from screening the last few refugee convoys. Three men were convicted by a drumhead court-martial and sentenced to death by Rear Admiral (Konteradmiral) Bernhard Rogge. Paul Jacobi was decommissioned five days later at Flensburg and sailed to Wilhelmshaven under British control on 21 May to have her fate determined. France was initially denied any of the captured ships, but eventually received Paul Jacobi and three other destroyers. She arrived in Cherbourg on 15 January 1946 and was turned over to the French on 4 February.
Renamed Desaix that same day, after General Louis Desaix, the ship was assigned to the 1st Division of Large Destroyers (contre-torpilleurs) and conducted trials in September. In March–June 1947, she formed part of the escort for the battleship Richelieu as the President of France, Vincent Auriol, visited West and North Africa. Desaix visited North Africa by herself later that year. She took part in the spring naval maneuvers in 1948 and in a naval review for Auriol off Brest on 30 May. The ship was present in Saint-Malo during the commemoration of the centenary of the death of François-René de Chateaubriand and she visited Bordeaux before returning to Cherbourg on 4 November. Desaix was decommissioned before the end of the year and reduced to reserve in January 1949. She was used as a source of spare parts until she was condemned on 17 February 1954. Her hulk was redesignated as Q02 and she was sold for scrap in June. She was towed to Rouen for demolition. |
56,866,672 | Box District station | 1,136,382,844 | Bus rapid transit station in Chelsea, Massachusetts | [
"Chelsea, Massachusetts",
"Silver Line (MBTA) stations"
]
| Box District station is a bus rapid transit station on the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) Silver Line system, located in Chelsea, Massachusetts. The accessible station has two side platforms under an arched canopy, with street access from Broadway and from Highland Street. Plans for the Urban Ring Project called for a busway along the former Grand Junction Branch, but without a station in the Box District neighborhood. After the Urban Ring was cancelled in 2010, new plans for a busway with a Box District stop were announced in 2013. Construction began in 2015, with route service beginning on April 21, 2018.
## Station layout
Box District station is located northeast of downtown Chelsea near the north end of Highland Street. The Silver Line busway runs roughly northwest-southeast through the station site, with the Chelsea Greenway paralleling the south side of the busway. Two accessible side platforms flank the busway, with an arched concrete-and-glass canopy connecting the platforms. A crosswalk is located just east of the platforms to allow passengers to cross the busway. Primary access to the station is from the Chelsea Greenway, with street connections at Broadway 600 feet (180 m) to the west and Highland Street just to the east; a sidewalk also follows the north side of the busway southeast to Griffin Way.
## History
The freight-only Grand Junction Railroad opened through Everett and Chelsea in 1852 to serve the East Boston docks. The Grand Junction tracks in Chelsea were largely unused after the Chelsea Creek bridge burned in 1955. In 2002, CSX Transportation began the process of abandoning the Grand Junction from 2nd Street in Everett through Chelsea to East Boston; the proceedings were delayed by negotiations with the city of Chelsea to acquire the right-of-way.
The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) planned to reuse the right-of-way for the Urban Ring Project – a planned circumferential bus rapid transit (BRT) line designed to connect the current radial MBTA rail lines. Under draft plans released in 2008, a dedicated busway was to be built from Griffin Way west through Chelsea along the right-of-way. A BRT stop was to be located on Griffin Way near Eastern Avenue, about 1⁄3 mile (0.5 km) southeast of where Box District station was later built. The Urban Ring Project was shelved in January 2010 due to high costs.
That June, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) purchased the disused Grand Junction right-of-way from 2nd Street to East Boston, to be landbanked for future transportation use. Planning for some smaller corridors continued; the Chelsea–South Boston section was given high priority because Chelsea was densely populated yet underserved by transit. A 2011 state study analyzed potential Chelsea transit improvements, including a Silver Line branch or improvements to the route bus. One Silver Line alternative followed the Urban Ring route to the Chelsea commuter rail station; the other ran on surface streets to the south.
In March 2013, the MBTA began studying an extension of the Silver Line to Chelsea via a newly constructed bypass road in East Boston. Three alternatives were discussed for the Chelsea section. One would run up the disused section of the Grand Junction Railroad right-of-way from Eastern Avenue to Chelsea station with stops at , Highland/Box District, the existing Chelsea station, and Mystic Mall. The second alignment would follow the Grand Junction to just short of Bellingham Square, then diverge onto surface roads to the square. The third alignment would run largely on surface streets, serving two stops on Central Avenue and four stops along a loop serving the existing Chelsea station and the MGH Chelsea healthcare center near Mystic Mall. In September 2013, the MBTA indicated that it would pursue the first alternative despite potential issues with bridge clearances and rebuilding Chelsea station.
On October 30, 2013, MassDOT announced \$82.5 million in state funding for construction of a modified version of the first alternative, with service expected to begin in late 2015. The Environmental Impact Report was issued in March 2014. The \$33.8 million main construction contract was approved in September 2014, and construction began in March 2015. By June 2017, the opening had been pushed back to April 2018. Silver Line service to Chelsea on the route began on April 21, 2018. |
31,316,475 | Man of Steel (film) | 1,173,617,179 | 2013 film by Zack Snyder | [
"2010s American films",
"2010s British films",
"2010s English-language films",
"2010s coming-of-age films",
"2010s science fiction adventure films",
"2010s science fiction drama films",
"2010s superhero films",
"2013 3D films",
"2013 action drama films",
"2013 films",
"2013 science fiction action films",
"Alien invasions in films",
"American action drama films",
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"American science fiction action films",
"British action drama films",
"British coming-of-age films",
"British science fiction action films",
"Christian allegory",
"DC Extended Universe films",
"Eugenics in fiction",
"Films about coups d'état",
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"Films about genetic engineering",
"Films directed by Zack Snyder",
"Films produced by Charles Roven",
"Films produced by Christopher Nolan",
"Films produced by Deborah Snyder",
"Films produced by Emma Thomas",
"Films scored by Hans Zimmer",
"Films set in Delaware",
"Films set in Kansas",
"Films set in the Indian Ocean",
"Films set on fictional planets",
"Films shot in California",
"Films shot in Chicago",
"Films shot in Vancouver",
"Films with screenplays by David S. Goyer",
"IMAX films",
"Legendary Pictures films",
"Reboot films",
"Superhero drama films",
"Superhero thriller films",
"Superman films",
"Syncopy Inc. films",
"The Stone Quarry films",
"Warner Bros. films"
]
| Man of Steel is a 2013 superhero film based on the DC Comics character Superman. Directed by Zack Snyder, the story was developed by David S. Goyer and producer Christopher Nolan, with Goyer writing the screenplay. The film was a reboot of the Superman film series, depicting the character's origin story, and it is the first installment in the DC Extended Universe (DCEU). Man of Steel stars Henry Cavill in the title role along with Amy Adams, Michael Shannon, Kevin Costner, Diane Lane, Laurence Fishburne, and Russell Crowe. In the film, Clark Kent learns that he is a superpowered alien from the planet Krypton. He assumes the role of mankind's protector as Superman, making the choice to face General Zod and prevent him from destroying humanity.
Development began in 2008 when Warner Bros. took pitches from comic book writers, screenwriters, and directors, opting to reboot the franchise. In 2009, a court ruling resulted in Jerry Siegel's family recapturing the rights to Superman's origins and Siegel's copyright. The decision stated that Warner Bros. did not owe the families additional royalties from previous films, but if they did not begin production on a Superman film by 2011, then the Shuster and Siegel estates would be able to sue for lost revenue on an unproduced film. Nolan pitched Goyer's idea after a story discussion on The Dark Knight Rises, and Snyder was hired as the film's director in October 2010. Principal photography began in August 2011 in West Chicago, Illinois, before moving to Vancouver and Plano, Illinois.
Man of Steel premiered in the Alice Tully Hall on June 10, 2013, and was released in the United States on June 14, 2013. Critics felt the film's visually-appealing action sequences were not enough to overcome its descent into "generic blockbuster territory", and they were divided over Cavill's performance as Superman. It grossed over \$668 million worldwide, becoming the ninth-highest-grossing film of 2013.
A follow-up titled Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was released on March 25, 2016, and a direct sequel under various stages of development since 2014 was canceled in 2022 following the restructuring of DC Films as DC Studios.
## Plot
The planet Krypton is destabilized from the mining of the planetary core. Just before the planet explodes, Krypton's supreme council chief advisor Jor-El infuses the genetics codex into his infant son, Kal-El, the first naturally born Kryptonian child in centuries. Jor-El manages to send Kal-El in a spacecraft toward Earth before being killed by General Zod during an uprising. Kal-El lands in Kansas, where he is adopted by Jonathan and Martha Kent and named Clark. As he grows older, he develops superhuman powers that Jonathan urges him to keep hidden, even refusing Clark's help years later during a tornado incident where he loses his life. Burdened with guilt over Jonathan's death, Clark travels the globe hiding under various aliases seeking a purpose in life.
Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane receives an assignment to investigate the discovery of a Kryptonian scout ship in the Canadian Arctic. Clark enters the ship disguised as a worker and learns from its artificial intelligence (AI), modeled after his father Jor-El, that Clark was sent to Earth to guide its people. While following Clark, Lois inadvertently triggers the ship's security system, and he uses his powers to rescue Lois from its defenses. He wears a uniform provided by the ship's AI and begins testing his flying abilities. Unable to convince supervisor Perry White to publish an article on the incident, Lois tracks down Clark in Smallville, with the intent of exposing him. However, Lois drops the story upon hearing of Jonathan Kent's sacrifice, keeping Clark's identity safe while fueling Perry's suspicions.
Zod and his crew escape the Phantom Zone, where they were imprisoned for treason for their actions against Krypton. They travel to Earth to turn it into a new Krypton, possessing several terraforming devices salvaged from Kryptonian outposts. Following Clark and Lois' capture, Zod's science officer, Jax-Ur, extracts Clark's genes to create Kryptonian colonists who will build a society based on Zod's ideals of genetic purity. Using the Jor-El AI to take over the ship, Clark and Lois flee and warn the U.S. military of Zod's plan, resulting in an explosive confrontation between Clark and Zod's troops.
Zod deploys his most powerful terraforming device, the World Engine, which severely damages Metropolis and risks humanity's existence. Clark destroys the terraforming platform while the military launches a suicide attack, sending Zod's troops back to the Phantom Zone. With the ship destroyed and Krypton's only hope of revival gone, Zod vows to destroy Earth and its inhabitants out of revenge. The two Kryptonians engage in a lengthy battle across Metropolis, which concludes when Clark kills Zod as he attacks a family in a train station. Sometime later, Clark adopts the moniker "Superman" and persuades the government to let him act independently, under the condition he does not turn against humanity. To gain covert access to dangerous situations, he takes a job under his civilian identity, Clark Kent, as a reporter for the Daily Planet.
## Cast
- Henry Cavill as Kal-El / Clark Kent:
A Kryptonian with superhuman powers and abilities, sent by his parents to Earth as an infant to escape the destruction of his homeworld, Krypton, and raised under the mental guidance of farmers in Smallville, Kansas, until he is inspired by the holographic message from his late father to become Earth's greatest protector. Cavill is the first non-American actor to play the character. He was previously cast in Superman: Flyby, which was ultimately shelved, and was considered for the role in the 2006 film Superman Returns, but lost to Brandon Routh. Cavill stated, "There's a very real story behind the Superman character." He explained that everyone's goal has been to explore the difficulties his character faces as a result of having multiple identities—including his birth name, Kal-El, and his alter ego, Clark Kent. Cavill also stated that "He's alone and there's no one like him," referring to Superman's vulnerabilities. "That must be incredibly scary and lonely, not to know who you are or what you are, and trying to find out what makes sense. Where's your baseline? What do you draw from? Where do you draw a limit with the power you have? In itself, that's an incredible weakness." In an interview with Total Film magazine, Cavill stated he had been consuming nearly 5,000 calories a day, training for over two hours daily and plowing protein to pack on the muscle mass. Tyler Hoechlin (who would later play the character in the Arrowverse and Superman & Lois), Matthew Goode, Armie Hammer, Jamie Dornan, Joe Manganiello and Colin O'Donoghue were also considered for the role. Manganiello was subsequently cast as Deathstroke in Justice League. Cavill cited his inspiration for his portrayal for Superman was by four comics The Death of Superman, The Return of Superman, Superman: Red Son and Superman/Batman: The Search for Kryptonite. Cooper Timberline was cast as the 9-year-old Clark Kent, and Dylan Sprayberry was cast as the 13-year-old Clark Kent.
- Amy Adams as Lois Lane:
A reporter for the Daily Planet newspaper and the love interest of Clark Kent. Adams was selected from a list of actresses that included Kristen Stewart, Zoe Saldaña, Olivia Wilde, and Mila Kunis. "There was a big, giant search for Lois," Snyder said. "For us, it was a big thing and obviously a really important role. We did a lot of auditioning, but we had this meeting with Amy Adams and after that I just felt she was perfect for it." Adams auditioned for the role three times: once for the unproduced Superman: Flyby, and the second time for Superman Returns before landing the current role. Adams was confirmed to play Lois Lane in March 2011. While announcing the role, Snyder said in a statement, "We are excited to announce the casting of Amy Adams, one of the most versatile and respected actresses in films today. Amy has the talent to capture all of the qualities we love about Lois: smart, tough, funny, warm, ambitious and, of course, beautiful." On portraying Lois Lane, Adams stated that the film would feature a Lois Lane who is an "independent, feisty woman ... but set in a more identifiable world." Adams said that "She has become more of a free-ranging journalist, someone who likes to be hands-on. The nature of the newspaper business has changed so much. There is so much more pressure."
- Michael Shannon as General Zod:
A Kryptonian general with the same superpowers as Superman, bent on transforming Earth into a new Krypton under his reign. Viggo Mortensen and Daniel Day-Lewis were also considered for the role. Snyder stated, "Zod is not only one of Superman's most formidable enemies, but one of the most significant because he has insights into Superman that others don't. Michael is a powerful actor who can project both the intelligence and the malice of the character, making him perfect for the role." When Goyer was asked about why Zod was chosen as the villain, he stated, "The way (Christopher) Nolan and I have always approached movies as well is you never say, 'Hey, which villain would be cool for this movie?' You start with the story first. What kind of story? What kind of theme do you want to tell? So we worked that out. Then, usually the villain becomes obvious in terms of who's going to be the appropriate antagonist for that. When you guys see the movie, the only villain we could've used was Zod and the Kryptonians. I mean, when you see what the whole story is, nothing else would have even made sense."
- Kevin Costner as Jonathan Kent:
Clark's adoptive father. Snyder explained his reason for his casting the on-screen couple is solely for the realism: "I think the thing you realize when you look at Diane and Kevin, in our decision to cast them so far, you sort of get a sense of how tonally we're looking at the movie, and what you realize is that those guys are serious actors, and we're taking this movie very seriously in terms of the tone of having those guys. You're talking about having a situation where whatever the action is or whatever the drama of the movie is, our first priority is to make sure it's rendered in the most realistic way we can get at."
- Diane Lane as Martha Kent:
Clark's adoptive mother. Lane was the first cast member to join the film after Cavill. "This was a very important piece of casting for me because Martha Kent is the woman whose values helped shape the man we know as Superman," Snyder said in the release. "We are thrilled to have Diane in the role because she can convey the wisdom and the wonder of a woman whose son has powers beyond her imagination."
- Laurence Fishburne as Perry White:
Editor-in-chief of the Daily Planet and the boss of Lois Lane. Fishburne is the first African-American to play Perry White in a live-action film. Fishburne remarked of his role: "[M]y inspiration really is the late Ed Bradley, who was a CBS correspondent on 60 Minutes for many years ... [The] legendary Ed Bradley ... was a friend, a mentor, and a role model for me, particularly because he worked in journalism, and he was the kind of guy who walked with kings, but he had the common touch. And so he was my inspiration for Perry."
- Antje Traue as Faora-Ul:
General Zod's sub-commander and a commander of the Kryptonian military, who is completely devoted and loyal to Zod. Gal Gadot was offered the role but declined because she was pregnant at that time; this allowed her to be later cast as Wonder Woman in the film's sequel. Alice Eve, Diane Kruger and Rosamund Pike were also considered for the role. About the role of Faora, Traue said in an interview: "What I liked about her was that as a woman, we have certain doubts and we think too much sometimes about ourselves and all these things, they're not there for Faora. She's a bred warrior. So to really focus on that aspect, that fear is a chemical reaction and that it was bred out of her and she doesn't have it, it's liberating when you actually think about it. That you're just a one-track mind, there's no filter, there's no double meaning. She gets orders and she answers those orders without a question."
- Ayelet Zurer as Lara Lor-Van:
Kal-El's biological mother and loyal wife to Jor-El. Julia Ormond had previously been announced as cast, but dropped out. Connie Nielsen was in negotiations for the role before Zurer was cast. Nielsen was subsequently cast as Queen Hippolyta in Wonder Woman.
- Christopher Meloni as Col. Nathan Hardy:
A United States Air Force officer, call sign "Guardian", assigned to the United States Northern Command.
- Russell Crowe as Jor-El:
A Kryptonian scientist who is Kal-El's biological father. Sean Penn and Clive Owen were also considered for the role. Crowe incorporates how his own fatherhood informed his reading of the script to portray Jor-El, stating that "... it was one of those things where that's how it was connecting me. That's the question that Jor-El faces, that's the situation that he's in." Crowe also comments on his preparation for the film stating that: "When I signed on ... well, one, I didn't realize that I would be wearing Spandex—'cause you know that's Superman's costume—I didn't realize that I'd have to fit into it as well," Crowe said. "But, I also didn't realize the type of organiser that Zack Snyder is, 'cause this was really old-school prep. This is sort of David Lean-level preparation, and I really appreciated him. And I was on the movie for three and a half or four months before I even got in front of the camera."
Additionally, Harry Lennix plays Lieutenant General Calvin Swanwick, a United States Army general officer and the deputy commander of United States Northern Command. Christina Wren plays Capt. Carrie Ferris, a United States Air Force officer and the assistant to General Swanwick. Richard Schiff plays Dr. Emil Hamilton, a scientist who works with the United States Armed Forces for DARPA. Carla Gugino portrays the voice of Kelor, the Kryptonian AI service-robot. Mackenzie Gray plays Jax-Ur, a Kryptonian scientist who is one of General Zod's followers. Michael Kelly plays Steve Lombard, an employee of the Daily Planet, and Rebecca Buller plays Jenny Jurwich, an intern of the Daily Planet. Jadin Gould, Rowen Kahn, and Jack Foley, respectively, play Lana Lang, Kenny Braverman, and Pete Ross, classmates of Clark Kent in high school. Joseph Cranford portrays Ross as an adult. Richard Cetrone, Samantha Jo, Revard Dufresne and Apollonia Vanova, respectively, play Tor-An, Car-Vex, Dev-Em II and Nadira, Kryptonian soldiers that follow General Zod.
## Production
### Development
In June 2008, Warner Bros. took pitches from comic book writers, screenwriters and directors on how to successfully reboot the Superman film series. Comic book writers Grant Morrison, Mark Waid, Geoff Johns and Brad Meltzer were among those who pitched their ideas for a reboot: "I told them, it's not that bad. Just treat Superman Returns as the Ang Lee Hulk", Morrison said. Waid said: "The Incredible Hulk has proven the audience will forgive you and let you redo the franchise". Morrison's idea was similar to their work on All-Star Superman, while Waid's was akin to Superman: Birthright. Mark Millar, teaming with director Matthew Vaughn, also planned an epic eight-hour Superman trilogy, each installment released a year apart, similar to The Lord of the Rings. Millar compared it to The Godfather trilogy, in which it would chronicle the entire life of Superman, from the early days of Krypton, where little Kal-El witnesses his father's tireless struggle to save the planet, to the finale where Superman loses his powers as the Sun starts to go supernova. According to Millar, Vaughn suggested his Stardust actor Charlie Cox as a Golden-Age inspired Superman "when he was a bit more of a regular person".
In August 2008, Warner Bros. suggested a reboot of the film series. Studio executive Jeff Robinov planned to have the film released either by 2010 or 2011, explaining that "Superman Returns didn't quite work as a film in the way that we wanted it to. It didn't position the character the way he needed to be positioned. Had Superman worked in 2006, we would have had a movie for Christmas of this year or 2009. Now the plan is just to reintroduce Superman without regard to a Batman and Superman movie at all." Paul Levitz stated in an interview that Batman holds the key to the Superman reboot. He elaborated: "Everyone is waiting for Nolan to sign on for another Batman, once that happens, the release date for Superman and all other future projects will follow." In February 2009, McG, who previously planned to direct Superman: Flyby, expressed interest in returning to the Superman franchise. August 2009 saw a court ruling in which Jerry Siegel's family recaptured 50% of the rights to Superman's origins and Siegel's share of the copyright in Action Comics \#1. In addition, a judge ruled that Warner Bros. did not owe the families additional royalties from previous films. However, if they did not begin production on a Superman film by 2011, then the Siegel estate would have been able to sue for lost revenue on an unproduced film.
The plot of Man of Steel employs a nonlinear narrative, and tells parts of the story in flashbacks. During story discussions for The Dark Knight Rises in 2008, David S. Goyer told Christopher Nolan his idea regarding how to present Superman in a modern context. Impressed with Goyer's concept, Nolan pitched the idea to the studio, who hired Nolan to produce and Goyer to write based on the financial and critical success of The Dark Knight. Nolan admired Bryan Singer's work on Superman Returns for its connection to Richard Donner's version, stating that "a lot of people have approached Superman in a lot of different ways. I only know the way that has worked for us that's what I know how to do", emphasizing the idea that Batman exists in a world where he is the only superhero and a similar approach to the Man of Steel would assure the integrity needed for the film. Nolan, however, clarified that the new film would not have any relationship with the previous film series, in which he commented: "Each serves to the internal logic of the story. They have nothing to do with each other".
Robinov spoke to Entertainment Weekly, and allowed a peek over the wall of secrecy surrounding their DC Comics plans: "It's setting the tone for what the movies are going to be like going forward. In that, it's definitely a first step." Plans included for the film to contain references to the existence of other superheroes, alluding to the possibility of a further DC Universe, and setting the tone for a shared fictional universe of DC Comics characters on film. Guillermo del Toro, with whom Goyer worked on Blade II, turned down the director's position on the reboot because of his commitment on a film adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness, while Robert Zemeckis was also approached. Ben Affleck (who would eventually be cast as Bruce Wayne/Batman in the film's sequel), Darren Aronofsky, Duncan Jones, Jonathan Liebesman, Matt Reeves (who would later direct a Batman reboot), and Tony Scott were considered as potential directors, before Zack Snyder was hired in October 2010. Casting began the following November. Snyder confirmed both Booster Gold and Batman references in the film, indicating their presence in the DC shared film universe. When Zod destroys a satellite, the words "Wayne Enterprises" are scrolled on the satellite. Snyder and Nolan considered having Man of Steel share continuity with the Dark Knight trilogy, but ultimately decided against it.
The film's storyboard was created by storyboard artist Jay Oliva, in his first live-action feature film project, along with Snyder. Oliva has cited the Japanese anime shows Dragon Ball Z and Birdy the Mighty as an inspiration for the film's epic battle scenes. During the film's brainstorming, Oliva pitched the idea as "I could come up with something I've never seen in live-action American cinema and only in anime".
### Filming
Principal photography began on August 1, 2011, at an industrial park near DuPage Airport under the codename "Autumn Frost". Zack Snyder expressed reluctance to shooting the film in 3-D, due to the technical limitations of the format, and instead chose to shoot the film two-dimensionally and convert the film into 3-D in post production, for a 2-D, 3-D, and IMAX 3-D release. Snyder also chose to shoot the film on film instead of digitally, because he felt it would make the film "a big movie experience". Cinematographer Amir Mokri shot the film with Panavision Panaflex Millennium XL2 cameras and C-Series anamorphic lenses. Filming was expected to last for two to three months. Production took place in Plano, Illinois on August 22 to 29. According to an interview with Michael Shannon, filming would continue until February 2012.
Man of Steel filmed in the Chicago area, California, and Burnaby's Mammoth Studios in Vancouver, which was utilized as a set for Krypton and the extraterrestrial aircraft portrayed in the film. Vancouver's North Shore waterfront area was also used for the oil rig rescue scene where Superman is first introduced. Ucluelet and Nanaimo, British Columbia, feature prominently in the film's first hour—the trademark winter mist and rough seas are passed off as Alaska in the film. Filming took place in the Chicago Loop from September 7 to 17. The Chicago shoot was a unit project, meaning that filming would partake numerous establishing shots as well as cutaways and might not necessarily include principal cast members.
### Design
Man of Steel features a redesigned Superman costume by James Acheson and Michael Wilkinson. The costume preserves the color scheme and "S" logo, but adopts darker tones, and notably does not feature the red trunks usually worn by Superman. Zack Snyder said the costume is "a modern aesthetic". He and the producers attempted to devise a suit featuring the red trunks, but could not design one that fit into the tone of the film, leading to their removal from the suit. Because of Wilkinson's unavailability, Snyder chose Acheson to design the suit; however, he only started developing it, and Wilkinson finished the development when he returned, and designed the other character's costumes as well. Due to the substantial weight a practical suit would yield, the Kryptonian armor for General Zod was constructed through CGI to allow Shannon "freedom of movement". In a March 2014 interview with Esquire, Wilkinson explained the reason for the look of Superman's redesigned suit:
> A lot of the efforts we took in the film were to explain why the suit looks the way it does. We didn't want it to be a random, ornamental decision. We start the film on the planet of Krypton, which is where the suit comes from, and we go to great pains to show the suit fitting into the culture. All of the people you see on Krypton are wearing this chainmail-like suit, with the same detailing as the Superman suit. Everyone has their family crests on their chests. The cuff and the boot details are shared through all of the different characters we meet on Krypton. So by the time we see Superman in his suit we understand why it looks the way it looks.
### Effects
John "DJ" Desjardin served as the visual supervisor for Man of Steel, with Weta Digital, MPC and Double Negative providing the visual effects for the film. Zack Snyder wanted the film to "appear very natural because there's some very fantastical things in there and he wanted people to suspend their disbelief, and we the visual effects team had to make it as easy as possible for them to do so." Desjardin noted that the intent in shooting the film was to utilize handheld devices to make the film feel like a "documentary-style" film. Desjardin said: "We had to think about what that would mean, since we also had to photograph some crazy action. So for a lot of the previs we did, we'd start to think where our cameras were and where our cameraman was. A lot of the rules are the Battlestar Galactica rules for the space cams that Gary Hurtzel [sic] developed for that miniseries, where we want to make sure if we're translating the camera at all it makes sense. Unless the action is so over the top, like in the end where Superman is beating up Zod—we had to break it a bit."
For the first act of the film taking place on the planet Krypton, Weta Digital placed alien-like planet environments, creatures and the principal means of display—a technology the filmmakers called "liquid geometry". Weta Digital visual effects supervisor Dan Lemmon explained that "it's a bunch of silver beads that are suspended through a magnetic field, and the machine is able to control that magnetic field so that the collection of beads behave almost like three-dimensional pixels, and they can create a surface that floats in the air and describes whatever the thing is you're supposed to be seeing." The beads of the display, which up close would appear to be pyramids with a slight bevel, were designed to create a surface of the object to depict inside a "console-like" figure.
In the modeling and animation aspect of the liquid geometry, Goodwin explained: "We had to develop a pipeline to bring in assets, so instead of going through the route of reducing the polygon count to something usable what we would then do—you would take the model in whatever way it was made and just scatter discrete points onto it, and extract the matrix onto the animation and copy these points onto the matrix and have these sparse points behaving in a way that the model would." After the animation, artists duplicated the beads onto the animated geometry for a pre-simulated lighting version to get approval on how the object would read. Sims were then run "on all the targets which would be discrete beads floating around on top of the surface which would have its own set of parameters", in which Goodwin further explained: "The bead size or the turbulence that would crawl along the surface constantly updating the orientation was based on the normal provided by the surface. That was then saved to disk and we would use that sim as the final target for the simulation." After the simulation process, Weta Digital ran every bead through a temporal filter to remove jitter to control the noise. Lighting solutions directly worked on the set. Weta utilized RenderMan to take advantage of improved ray tracing and instancing objects.
The sequences where Superman utilizes close-combat fight scenes with the other Kryptonians proved to be a major challenge for the filmmakers and the visual effects crew. Desjardin explained: "When we do these fights and these hyper-real things, we don't want to do the traditional, 'OK I'm a cameraman, I'm shooting a clean plate, I'm going to pan over here to follow the action that's not really there yet but we'll put the action in later. Because that's us animating the characters to the camera. So we would do that animation with the characters—grappling, punching or flying away—and we would take the real guys up until the point until they were supposed to do that and we'd cut. Then we'd put an environment camera there and take the environment. And then a camera for reference of the actors and get each moment. So then we had a set of high-res stills for the environment and the characters. Then, in post, we take the digi-doubles and animate them according to the speeds we want them to move in our digital environment."
MPC handled the visual effects for the "Smallville encounter" sequence. Before providing the visual effects, the shots were previsualized for the fight choreography. After the previsualizations, live action portions of the scene would be filmed in small pieces: "If say Superman was being punched and would land 50 meters away, we would shoot our start position and end position, and then bridge that gap with the CG takeovers", says Guillaume Rocheron, the MPC visual effects supervisor. A camera rig would then obtain key frames of the choreographed actor; Desjardin said "it's a six-still camera rig that's built on a pipe rig so that you can run it in at the end of a setup and get stills of key frames of a performance or an expression, and then we could use those hi-res stills to project onto the CG double and get really accurate transition lighting and color—right from the set."
On set, a camera rig was used to capture the environment of the sequence. Dubbed "enviro-cam", the visual effects crew would mount a Canon EOS 5D and a motorized nodal head, allowing the crew to capture the environment at a 360-degree angle with 55K resolution for every shot, the process would take approximately two to four minutes. The set capture resulted in lighting and textures that could be reprojected onto geometry. Full-screen digital doubles were a major component for the fighting sequences. Digital armor was also added, along with the energy-based Kryptonian helmets. Cyberscan and FACS were conducted with the actors, and polarized and non-polarized reference photos were taken. Superman's cape and costume were scanned in high detail—the cape in particular became a direct extension of Superman's actions.
For the sequences involving the terraforming of the city Metropolis, Double Negative handled the visual effects for the sequence. In order to construct a Metropolis that seemed convincing and realistic, Double Negative utilized Esri's CityEngine to help procedurally deliver the city. According to Ged Wright, a Double Negative visual effects supervisor, it was a much more sci-fi based role, "so we took what they had done and extended it a great deal. The work we were doing was based around the Downtowns for New York, L.A. and Chicago and that gave us the building volumes for heights. We'd skin those volumes with kit parts, but most of it then had to fall down! So we had to rig it for destruction and use it for other aspects of the work as well."
For the destruction of the buildings, the studio rewrote its own asset system to focus towards its dynamic events. The Bullet physics software was a heavily impacted component for the utilization of the destruction. Wright said that "we wanted to be able to run an RBD event and trigger all these secondary events, whether it was glass or dust simulations—all of those things needed to be chained up and handled in a procedural way. One of the advantages of this was that, because it was all based around a limited number of input components, you can make sure they're modeled in a way they're usable in effects—you can model something but they'll be another stage to rig it for destruction." Fire, smoke, and water stimulation tools were developed at the Double Negative studio. The studio transitioned between the existing proprietary volume rendering software to rendering in Mantra for elements such as fireball sims. Double Negative also used the in-house fluids tool "Squirt" to handle larger-scale sims and interaction for more tightly coupled volumes and particles. Regarding the battle between Superman and Zod, Double Negative implemented real photography onto its digital doubles.
### Music
Hans Zimmer initially denied popular rumors that he would be composing the film's score, but in June 2012, it was confirmed that Zimmer would, in fact, be doing so after all. To completely distinguish Man of Steel from the previous films, the iconic "Superman March" by John Williams was not used. Hans Zimmer's soundtrack for Man of Steel was released publicly on June 11, 2013. An unofficial rip of the musical score from the third trailer, entitled "An Ideal of Hope", confirmed to be a cut-down version of the track "What Are You Going to Do When You Are Not Saving the World?", was released on April 19. In late April, the official track listing of the two-CD deluxe edition was revealed.
## Themes
Many reviewers interpreted Man of Steel as a religious allegory, especially since Warner Bros. set up a website that contains "a nine-page pamphlet entitled Jesus: The Original Superhero". Justin Craig compares Kal-El's struggle to the Passion of Christ, stating that "Kal-El is more than willing to sacrifice himself to save the people of Earth. Originally reluctant to reveal his identity and powers to the world, Superman decides to turn himself over to Zod to save humanity from annihilation." Craig also states that there is an allegory to the Trinity within Man of Steel: "Jor-El returns to Kal-El on Earth as a ghost, guiding his budding superhero son on his journey to salvation. Before Jor-El sends his son off to Earth baby Moses-style, he tells his wife that, like Jesus, 'He'll be a god to them.'" Paul Asay of The Washington Post writes that "Superman floats in space with his arms splayed out as if nailed to an invisible cross," a fact that Craig also mentioned in his assessment of the film. The protagonist of the film is also 33 years old and seeks "counsel at a church."
Writing for The Huffington Post, Colin Liotta compared Zod to Adolf Hitler, citing: "He feels his vision for a pure Krypton (i.e. a society like the one Hitler envisioned with his eugenics program) is the only answer for survival." The sequence where a young Clark's powers overwhelm him in grade school, leading to him shutting himself in a closet, has led many to speculate that DC Extended Universe Superman is either autistic or meant to represent the struggles of autism. Many noted that when Martha comforts him, she encourages him to hone out the world by focusing on her voice, an example of hyperfocus; a necessary tool for many autistics to reduce overstimulation.
## Marketing
Warner Bros. and DC Comics won the rights to the domain name manofsteel.com, in use by a member of the public, for use for the film's official website. On November 20, 2012, for the release of The Dark Knight Rises DVD and Blu-ray, Warner Bros. launched a countdown on the film's website where fans could share the countdown on websites like Facebook or Twitter to unlock an "exclusive reward". On December 3, 2012, the "exclusive reward" was revealed to be an official Man of Steel teaser poster. The poster, which depicts Superman being arrested, generated a positive response and much speculation about the film's story. On December 10, 2012, a website appeared at dsrwproject.com that provided audio signals to be decoded by viewers. It was discovered to be related to the film due to the copyright on the website. By December 11, 2012, the decoded message led readers to another website with a countdown that led to the public release of the trailer. In anticipation of the film, Mattel unveiled a toy line which includes Movie Masters action figures. In addition, Lego released three Man of Steel sets, inspired by scenes from the film; Rubie's Costume Co. also released a new line of Man of Steel-inspired costumes and accessories for both kids and adults. The film has reportedly earned over \$160 million from promotional tie-ins.
Viral marketing campaigns for the film began when the official website was replaced by "deep space radio waves". The message was decoded to reveal a voice that said "You Are Not Alone". The official site continued to be updated with new static files that slowly revealed the symbol for the film's villain, General Zod. Shortly after, the website was replaced with a "message" from Zod, who requested that Earth must return Kal-El to his custody and told Kal-El to surrender within 24 hours or the world would suffer the consequences. A viral site called "IWillFindHim.com" was released that showed a countdown to the third trailer for the film.
Warner Bros. enlisted Christian-based marketing firm Grace Hill Media to help spread the Christian themes of the film to the religious demographics. Special trailers were created outlining the religious tones, due to Hollywood studios frequently marketing movies to specific religious and cultural groups. Warner Bros. previously marketed films such as The Blind Side, The Notebook, The Book of Eli and the Harry Potter series to faith-based groups. Warner Bros. also asked Professor Craig Detweiler of Pepperdine University to "create a Superman-centric sermon outline for pastors titled Jesus: The Original Superhero." Regarding this, Paul Asay of The Washington Post wrote that "the religious themes keep coming: Free will. Sacrifice. God-given purpose. Man of Steel isn't just a movie. It's a Bible study in a cape. The messages are so strong that its marketers been [sic] explicitly pushing the film to Christian audiences."
## Release
Man of Steel held a red carpet premiere at the Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall in New York City on June 10, 2013, which featured the attendance of the principal cast members. The film received a wide release on June 14, 2013. The film was originally slated for release in December 2012, but it was pushed to the June 14, 2013 date to avoid competition with Warner Bros’s other film The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which was released on December 14, 2012. It was released as a single-disc DVD (feature film only), on two-disc DVD with bonus features, and respective Blu-ray and Blu-ray 3D combo packs on November 12, 2013, and in the United Kingdom on December 2, 2013. As of January 2019, Man of Steel has sold more than 2.3 million DVDs along with an estimated of 3.3 million Blu-ray Discs totaling \$44.4 million and \$76.2 million, respectively, for a total of \$120.7 million in sales. The film was later released in 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray format on July 19, 2016.
## Reception
### Box office
Man of Steel grossed \$291 million in the United States and Canada, and \$377 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of \$668 million, making it the highest-grossing solo Superman film of all time and the second-highest when adjusting for inflation. It is also the second-highest-grossing reboot of all time behind The Amazing Spider-Man. Deadline Hollywood calculated the net profit of the film to be \$42.7 million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues, making it the ninth most profitable release of 2013. The film earned \$116.6 million on its opening weekend, including \$17.5 million from IMAX theaters. Man of Steel earned an additional \$120 million from DVD and Blu-ray sales.
Man of Steel made \$12 million from a Thursday night Walmart screening program, and an additional \$9 million from midnight shows. This marked Warner Bros.' third-highest advance night/midnight opening, and the biggest advance night/midnight debut for a non-sequel. The film eventually earned \$44 million during its opening Friday (including midnight grosses) and \$56.1 million when the Thursday night showings are included. The opening-day gross was the second-highest for a non-sequel, and the 20th-largest overall. Its opening weekend gross of \$116.6 million was the third-highest of 2013, behind Iron Man 3 (\$174.1 million) and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (\$158.1 million), and the third-highest among non-sequels, behind Marvel's The Avengers (\$207.4 million) and The Hunger Games (\$152.5 million). It also broke Toy Story 3's record (\$110.3 million) for the highest weekend debut in June (the record was again broken two years later by Jurassic World's opening gross of \$208.8 million). However, on its second weekend, Man of Steel's box office fell almost 65%–68% if the Thursday night gross is included—putting it in third place, behind Monsters University and World War Z. Box Office Mojo called it an "abnormally large drop," close to the second-weekend decline for Green Lantern.
Man of Steel earned \$73.3 million on its opening weekend from 24 countries, which includes \$4.2 million from 79 IMAX theaters, setting a June opening-weekend record for IMAX. The film set an opening-day record in the Philippines with \$1.66 million. In the United Kingdom, Ireland and Malta, the film earned \$5.6 million on its opening day and £11.2 million (\$17.47 million) on its opening weekend. Its biggest opener outside the United States was in China, with \$25.9 million in four days (Thursday to Sunday). In total earnings, its three largest countries after North America are China (\$63.4 million), the United Kingdom, Ireland and Malta (\$46.2 million) and Australia (\$22.3 million).
### Critical response
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of based on reviews and an average rating of . The site's consensus reads, "Man of Steel's exhilarating action and spectacle can't fully overcome its detours into generic blockbuster territory." On Metacritic, the film received a weighted score of 55 out of 100 based on 47 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audience polls in North America from CinemaScore for the film tallied an average grade of an "A−" on an A+ to F scale, with those under the age of 18 and older than 50 giving it an "A". Cavill's performance as Superman earned mixed reviews, with some critics commenting on perceived stiffness and a lack of charisma.
Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times said that Man of Steel covered no new ground with regard to Superman films, and instead, "we're plunged back into a mostly-underwhelming film, with underdeveloped characters and supercharged-fight scenes that drag on and offer nothing new in the way of special-effects creativity". The Boston Globe's Ty Burr wrote, "What's missing from this Superman saga is a sense of lightness, of pop joy". The Washington Post's Ann Hornaday stated that with "Hans Zimmer's turgid, over-produced score", the film "is an exceptionally-unpleasant viewing experience". For The Denver Post's Lisa Kennedy, the chief problem with Man of Steel is the "rhythm and balance in the storytelling and directing" which resulted in a film that swings "between destructive overstatement and flat-footed homilies."
Kofi Outlaw, Editor-in-Chief at Screen Rant, gave Man of Steel a 4-out-of-5-star review, stating that "Man of Steel has more than earned its keep, and deserves to be THE iconic Superman movie for a whole new generation". He would go on to name Man of Steel the best superhero movie of 2013. Jim Vejvoda of IGN gave Man of Steel a 9 out of 10 while praising the action sequences and the performances of Kevin Costner, Russell Crowe and Michael Shannon. The performance of Antje Traue as Superman's adversary Faora-Ul, particularly in the Smallville battle scenes, has also been lauded. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave it 3 stars out of 4, saying, "Caught in the slipstream between action and angst, Man of Steel is a bumpy ride for sure. But there's no way to stay blind to its wonders." Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter said rebooting the franchise was unnecessary, but that the film was confident enough and Snyder's attention to detail careful enough that audiences could overlook another reboot. PopMatters journalist J.C. Maçek III, wrote, "The path of this flawed savior isn't quite the one that we have been led to expect and many fans will love that and many fans will decry its comic book-divergent choices. On the other hand, barring Lois Lane's own knowledge of the dual nature of Clark and Superman (thus depriving one of fiction's greatest reveals), the hero we see in the final moments of Man of Steel is nothing if not the character Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created ... with just a bit more in the 'imperfections' column." Steve Persall of the Tampa Bay Times stated that, "Man of Steel is more than just Avengers-sized escapism; it's an artistic introduction to a movie superhero we only thought we knew." Time magazine's Richard Corliss said, "The movie finds its true, lofty footing not when it displays Kal-El's extraordinary powers, but when it dramatizes Clark Kent's roiling humanity. The super part of Man of Steel is just okay, but the man part is super." In a review on Roger Ebert's website, Matt Zoller Seitz awarded the film three out of four stars, calling it an "astonishing movie" and praising the conflict between Clark and Zod. But he criticized the film for not having more personal and intimate moments between Clark and Lois. In 2014, Empire ranked Man of Steel the 286th-greatest film ever made on their list of "The 301 Greatest Movies Of All Time" as voted by the magazine's readers.
Speaking to Fox Business Channel, Grae Drake, senior editor of Rotten Tomatoes, expressed dismay over the critical reception, stating, "As much as I love and respect our critics at Rotten Tomatoes, I've got to say I am shocked. Listen, the movie's not perfect but ... I just cannot fathom it. It was a good movie, you guys."
Reaction to the film among comics creators was mixed. Those who enjoyed it include Jeff Parker, Heidi MacDonald, Ethan Van Sciver, Christos Gage and former Superman writer Dan Jurgens. Among its detractors were Joe Keatinge, Sean McKeever, Gabriel Hardman and Mark Waid. MacDonald praised the film's action, drama and leads Henry Cavill and Amy Adams. Van Sciver singled out Cavill in particular for praise. Gage called it the best Superman film since 1980's Superman II. Hardman said that he liked a lot of the mechanics but did not connect with the characters, which robbed the story of tension. Waid, who wrote the origin miniseries Superman: Birthright, criticized the film for its overall "joyless" tone, and for Superman's decision to kill Zod, a criticism echoed by other creators. Writer Grant Morrison, who wrote the critically acclaimed miniseries All-Star Superman, expressed mixed reaction to the film, saying that while they "kinda liked it and kinda didn't", it did not present anything new, as they would have preferred a "second act" type story with Lex Luthor instead of re-establishing the character by presenting information Morrison is already familiar with. Morrison also questioned the need for a superhero to kill, as did artist Neal Adams. Adams suggested that other alternatives were open to Superman when Zod threatened innocent people with his heat vision, such as covering his eyes. He also criticized Superman for not moving the battle away from Metropolis as the character did at the end of Superman II. Jim Lee had a positive opinion: "It’s epic. It’s got a lot of heart, but one of the things that was kind of missing from the last Superman movie I think was the action, and this movie has it in spades. I mean it is a visual thrill ride. It is amazing. You get to see all the powers of Superman, and in all its glory, and I think people are going to be blown away."
### Accolades
## Future
### DC Extended Universe
Warner Bros. began planning a cinematic universe featuring other DC Comics characters following the release of Man of Steel. In June 2013, Goyer was hired to write the film's sequel, along with the script for Justice League. Zack Snyder revealed at San Diego Comic-Con International the following month that Superman and Batman would appear in the sequel to Man of Steel, with Cavill, Adams, Lane and Fishburne set to reprise their roles. The film's title, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, was revealed in May 2014, and it was theatrically released on March 25, 2016.
### Cancelled sequel and Upcoming reboot
A full slate of upcoming DC Comics-based films was announced by Warner Bros. Pictures in October 2014. The company also confirmed that a Superman film was in development, with Henry Cavill set to reprise his lead role. Zack Snyder contemplated the inclusion of Brainiac, the Kryptonians, and even Metallo as possible antagonists for the sequel, but they were ultimately scrapped by April 2013 in favor of a plot with Batman as the villain. The film, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, was released in 2016.
In August 2016, TheWrap reported that a sequel to Man of Steel had entered active development. Cavill's manager, Dany Garcia, confirmed that the actor would be involved. The screenplay was still being developed that November according to Amy Adams. Matthew Vaughn was Warner Bros.' top choice to direct the film as of March 2017. Vaughn previously pitched an idea for a new Superman trilogy with comic book writer Mark Millar prior to the development of Man of Steel, in which the destruction of Krypton would take place after Superman had already grown-up on the planet. The troubled production and lackluster box office earnings of Justice League (2017) led to a shake-up at Warner Bros., as the studio chose to rethink its approach to future DC projects. By late 2017, the script for a Man of Steel sequel was still incomplete according to Justice League producer Charles Roven.
In July 2018, prior to the release of Mission: Impossible – Fallout, director Christopher McQuarrie and co-star Cavill pitched their take on a new Superman film, but Warner Bros. did not pursue the idea. James Gunn was approached later that year to write and direct a Superman film, but he chose instead to move forward with The Suicide Squad (2021). Following contract issues with Cavill's scheduled cameo appearance in Shazam! (2019), as well as scheduling conflicts with his Fallout commitment, it was reported that the actor may be parting ways with the studio. In November 2019, however, Cavill maintained that he still had interest in reprising his role. Warner Bros. remained unsure of the direction the character was heading and was in contact with "high-profile talent", including J. J. Abrams and Michael B. Jordan, with the latter pitching a Black version of the character. Development on a Man of Steel sequel was abandoned by May 2020, though Cavill remained in talks to appear in a future DC film.
Warner Bros. revealed in October 2022 that a sequel to Man of Steel was being revisited, with Roven serving as a producer and Cavill reprising his role. The studio was still searching for writers, and McQuarrie was still on a list of possible directors. Cavill then appeared in the post-credits scene of the DCEU film Black Adam (2022), and the potential for his return in future projects became more favorable. Shortly after, Cavill's return as Superman in a future film was officially confirmed. Steven Knight had written a script treatment around that time, which reportedly included Brainiac as the antagonist. However, there was a lack of interest in the script by Warner Bros. executives. The following month, TheWrap reported that newly-appointed co-chairmen and co-CEOS of DC Studios James Gunn and Peter Safran were developing new plans for the DC Universe. Gunn later revealed in December 2022 that the next Superman film would not include Cavill and would instead focus on a younger Superman. He released more details including the film's title, Superman: Legacy, in January 2023.
## See also
- List of films featuring extraterrestrials |
1,802,881 | Doxorubicin | 1,172,314,283 | Chemotherapy medication | [
"Anthracyclines",
"Anthraquinone glycosides",
"CYP2D6 inhibitors",
"DNA intercalaters",
"Embryotoxins",
"IARC Group 2A carcinogens",
"Italian inventions",
"Johnson & Johnson brands",
"Orphan drugs",
"Pfizer brands",
"Teratogens",
"Topoisomerase inhibitors",
"Wikipedia medicine articles ready to translate",
"World Health Organization essential medicines"
]
| Doxorubicin, sold under the brand name Adriamycin among others, is a chemotherapy medication used to treat cancer. This includes breast cancer, bladder cancer, Kaposi's sarcoma, lymphoma, and acute lymphocytic leukemia. It is often used together with other chemotherapy agents. Doxorubicin is given by injection into a vein.
Common side effects include hair loss, bone marrow suppression, vomiting, rash, and inflammation of the mouth. Other serious side effects may include allergic reactions such as anaphylaxis, heart damage, tissue damage at the site of injection, radiation recall, and treatment-related leukemia. People often experience red discoloration of the urine for a few days. Doxorubicin is in the anthracycline and antitumor antibiotic family of medications. It works in part by interfering with the function of DNA.
Doxorubicin was approved for medical use in the United States in 1974. It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines. Versions that are pegylated and in liposomes are also available; however, they are more expensive. Doxorubicin was originally made from the bacterium Streptomyces peucetius.
## Medical uses
In the EU doxorubicin pegylated liposomal (as Caelyx) is indicated to treat breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and AIDS-related Kaposi's sarcoma. It is indicated to treat multiple myeloma in combination with bortezomib. Doxorubicin hydrochloride (as Myocet liposomal) is indicated to treat breast cancer in combination with cyclophosphamide.
Doxorubicin is commonly used to treat some leukemias and Hodgkin's lymphoma, as well as cancers of the bladder, breast, stomach, lung, ovaries, thyroid, soft tissue sarcoma, multiple myeloma, and others. Commonly used doxorubicin-containing regimens are AC (Adriamycin, cyclophosphamide), TAC (taxotere, AC), ABVD (Adriamycin, bleomycin, vinblastine, dacarbazine), BEACOPP, CHOP (cyclophosphamide, hydroxydaunorubicin, vincristine, prednisone) and FAC (5-fluorouracil, adriamycin, cyclophosphamide).
Doxil (see below) is used primarily for the treatment of ovarian cancer where the disease has progressed or recurred after platinum-based chemotherapy, or for the treatment of AIDS-related Kaposi's sarcoma.
## Side effects
### Cardiotoxicity
The most dangerous side effect of doxorubicin is dilated cardiomyopathy, leading to congestive heart failure. The rate of cardiomyopathy is dependent on its cumulative dose, with an incidence about 4% when the dose of doxorubicin is 500–550 mg/m<sup>2</sup>, 18% when the dose is 551–600 mg/m<sup>2</sup> and 36% when the dose exceeds 600 mg/m<sup>2</sup>. There are several ways in which doxorubicin is believed to cause cardiomyopathy, including oxidative stress, downregulation of genes for contractile proteins, and p53-mediated apoptosis.
Doxorubicin-induced cardiomyopathy typically results in dilated cardiomyopathy, with all four cardiac chambers being enlarged. This results in both systolic and diastolic dysfunction. Eventually, heart failure can result, which carries a 50% mortality rate. There is no effective treatment against established cardiomyopathy caused by the drug as of 2010. The drug dexrazoxane may be used to decrease the risk of doxorubicin's cardiotoxicity in certain cases.
### Other
Another common and potentially fatal complication of doxorubicin is typhlitis, an acute life-threatening inflammation of the bowel. Additionally, some people may develop PPE, characterized by skin eruptions on the palms of the hand or soles of the feet, swelling, pain, and erythema. Due to these side effects and its red color, doxorubicin has earned the nickname "red devil" or "red death."
Chemotherapy can cause reactivation of hepatitis B, and doxorubicin-containing regimens are no exception.
Doxorubicin and several chemotherapeutic drugs (including cyclophosphamide) can cause a loss of skin pigmentation.
### Liposomal formulations
There is a pegylated (polyethylene glycol coated) liposome-encapsulated form of doxorubicin, developed to treat Kaposi's sarcoma The polyethylene glycol coating results in preferential concentration of doxorubicin in the skin. However, this also results in a side effect called palmar plantar erythrodysesthesia (PPE), more commonly known as hand-foot syndrome.
Following administration of this form of doxorubicin, small amounts of the drug can leak from capillaries in the palms of the hands and soles of the feet. The result of this leakage is redness, tenderness, and peeling of the skin that can be uncomfortable and even painful. In clinical testing at 50 mg/m<sup>2</sup> dosing every 4 weeks, half of people developed hand-foot syndrome. The rate of this side effect limits the dose of this formulation that can be given as compared with plain doxorubicin in the same treatment regimen, thereby limiting potential substitution. Substitution would be desirable because liposome-encapsulated doxorubicin is less cardiotoxic than unencapsulated doxorubicin. This liposome-encapsulated form is also approved by the FDA for treatment of ovarian cancer and multiple myeloma.
A non-pegylated liposomal doxorubicin, called Myocet, is approved in the European Union and in Canada for the treatment of metastatic breast cancer in combination with cyclophosphamide, but it has not been approved by the FDA for use in the United States. Unlike Doxil, the Myocet liposome does not have a polyethylene glycol coating, and therefore does not result in the same rate of PPE. The minimization of this side effect may allow for one-for-one (1:1) substitution with doxorubicin in the same treatment regimen, thereby improving safety with no loss of efficacy. Like Doxil, the liposomal encapsulation of the doxorubicin limits the cardiotoxicity. In theory, by limiting the cardiotoxicity of doxorubicin through liposomal encapsulation, it can be used safely in concurrent combination with other cardiotoxic chemotherapy drugs, such as trastuzumab. There is an FDA black box warning that trastuzumab cannot be used in concurrent combination with doxorubicin, only in sequential combination. Though concurrent combination of trastuzumab and doxorubicin in clinical studies found superior tumor response, the combination resulted in unacceptable cardiotoxicity, including risk of cardiac failure manifesting as congestive heart failure (CHF). Published phase II study results have shown that Myocet, trastuzumab, and paclitaxel can safely be used concurrently without the cardiac risk, as measured by reduction in LVEF function, while still achieving superior tumor response. This finding is the basis for the ongoing phase III trial for FDA approval.
## Biosynthesis
Doxorubicin (DXR) is a 14-hydroxylated version of daunorubicin, the immediate precursor of DXR in its biosynthetic pathway.
Daunorubicin is more abundantly found as a natural product because it is produced by a number of different wild type strains of Streptomyces. In contrast, only one known non-wild type species, Streptomyces peucetius subspecies cesius ATCC 27952, was initially found to be capable of producing the more widely used doxorubicin. This strain was created by Arcamone et al. in 1969 by mutating a strain producing daunorubicin, but not DXR, at least in detectable quantities. Subsequently, Hutchinson's group showed that under special environmental conditions, or by the introduction of genetic modifications, other strains of Streptomyces can produce doxorubicin. His group also cloned many of the genes required for DXR production, although not all of them have been fully characterized. In 1996, Strohl's group discovered, isolated and characterized dox A, the gene encoding the enzyme that converts daunorubicin into DXR.
By 1999, they produced recombinant dox A, a cytochrome P450 oxidase, and found that it catalyzes multiple steps in DXR biosynthesis, including steps leading to daunorubicin. This was significant because it became clear that all daunorubicin-producing strains have the necessary genes to produce DXR, the much more therapeutically important of the two. Hutchinson's group went on to develop methods to improve the yield of DXR, from the fermentation process used in its commercial production, not only by introducing dox A encoding plasmids, but also by introducing mutations to deactivate enzymes that shunt DXR precursors to less useful products, for example baumycin-like glycosides. Some triple mutants, that also over-expressed dox A, were able to double the yield of DXR. This is of more than academic interest, because at that time DXR cost about \$1.37 million per kg and current production in 1999 was 225 kg per annum.
More efficient production techniques have brought the price down to \$1.1 million per kg for the nonliposomal formulation. Although DXR can be produced semi-synthetically from daunorubicin, the process involves electrophilic bromination and multiple steps, and the yield is poor. Since daunorubicin is produced by fermentation, it would be ideal if the bacteria could complete DXR synthesis more effectively.
## Mechanism of action
Doxorubicin interacts with DNA by intercalation and inhibition of macromolecular biosynthesis. This inhibits the progression of topoisomerase II, an enzyme which relaxes supercoils in DNA for transcription. Doxorubicin stabilizes the topoisomerase II complex after it has broken the DNA chain for replication, preventing the DNA double helix from being released and thereby stopping the process of replication. It may also increase quinone type free radical production, hence contributing to its cytotoxicity.
The planar aromatic chromophore portion of the molecule intercalates between two base pairs of the DNA, while the six-membered daunosamine sugar sits in the minor groove and interacts with flanking base pairs immediately adjacent to the intercalation site, as evidenced by several crystal structures.
By intercalation, doxorubicin can also induce histone eviction from transcriptionally active chromatin. As a result, DNA damage response, epigenome and transcriptome are deregulated in doxorubicin-exposed cells.
## History
In the 1950s, an Italian research company, Farmitalia Research Laboratories, began an organized effort to find anticancer compounds from soil-based microbes. A soil sample was isolated from the area surrounding the Castel del Monte, a 13th-century castle. A new strain of Streptomyces peucetius, which produced a red pigment, was isolated, and an antibiotic from this bacterium was effective against tumors in mice. Since a group of French researchers discovered the same compound at about the same time, the two teams named the compound daunorubicin, combining the name Dauni, a pre-Roman tribe that occupied the area of Italy where the compound was isolated, with the French word for ruby, rubis, describing the color. Clinical trials began in the 1960s, and the drug was successful in treating acute leukemia and lymphoma. However, by 1967, it was recognized that daunorubicin could lead to fatal cardiac toxicity.
Researchers at Farmitalia soon discovered that changes in biological activity could be made by minor changes in the structure of the compound. A strain of Streptomyces was mutated using N-nitroso-N-methyl urethane, and this new strain produced a different, red-colored antibiotic. They named this new compound Adriamycin, after the Adriatic Sea, and the name was later changed to doxorubicin to conform to the established naming convention. Doxorubicin showed better activity than daunorubicin against mouse tumors, and especially solid tumors. It also showed a higher therapeutic index, yet the cardiotoxicity remained.
Doxorubicin and daunorubicin together can be thought of as prototype compounds for the anthracyclines. Subsequent research has led to many other anthracycline antibiotics, or analogs, and there are now over 2,000 known analogs of doxorubicin. By 1991, 553 of them had been evaluated in the screening program at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). In 2016 GPX-150 was granted orphan drug designation by US FDA.
## Society and culture
### Legal status
On 24 March 2022, the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) adopted a positive opinion, recommending the granting of a marketing authorization for the medicinal product Zolsketil pegylated liposomal, intended for the treatment of metastatic breast cancer, advanced ovarian cancer, progressive multiple myeloma and AIDS-related Kaposi's sarcoma. The applicant for this medicinal product is Accord Healthcare S.L.U. Zolsketil pegylated liposomal is a hybrid medicine of Adriamycin. It contains the same active substance as Adriamycin, but is available in a pegylated liposomal formulation. Zolsketil pegylated liposomal was approved for medical use in the European Union in May 2022.
On 21 July 2022, the CHMP adopted a positive opinion, recommending the granting of a marketing authorization for the medicinal product Celdoxome pegylated liposomal, intended for the treatment of metastatic breast cancer, advanced ovarian cancer, progressive multiple myeloma and AIDS-related Kaposi's sarcoma. The applicant for this medicinal product is YES Pharmaceutical Development Services GmbH. Celdoxome pegylated liposomal is a hybrid medicine of Adriamycin which has been authorized in the EU since 24 October 1979. Celdoxome pegylated liposomal contains the same active substance as Adriamycin, but is available in a pegylated liposomal formulation. Celdoxome pegylated liposomal was approved for medical use in the European Union in September 2022.
### Names
It is also known as hydroxydaunorubicin and hydroxydaunomycin.
It is sold under a number of different brand names, including Adriamycin PFS, Adriamycin RDF, or Rubex.
### Formulations
Doxorubicin is photosensitive, and containers are often covered by an aluminum bag and/or brown wax paper to prevent light from affecting it. Doxorubicin is also available in liposome-encapsulated forms as Doxil (pegylated form), Myocet (nonpegylated form), and Caelyx, which are also given by intravenous injection.
The FDA approved the first generic version of Doxil, made by Sun, in February 2013.
## Research
Combination therapy experiments with sirolimus (rapamycin) and doxorubicin have shown promise in treating Akt-positive lymphomas in mice.
Further, the release of photo-activated adriamycin with the aid of nanoporous optical antenna resulted in significant anti-cancer effect in MCF-7 breast cancer cells. In 2006, animal research coupling a murine monoclonal antibody with doxorubicin created an immunoconjugate that was able to eliminate HIV-1 infection in mice.
### Antimalarial activity
There is some evidence for antimalarial activity for doxorubicin and similar compounds. In 2009, a compound similar in structure to doxorubicin was found to inhibit plasmepsin II, an enzyme unique to the malarial parasite Plasmodium falciparum. The pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) later identified doxorubicin in a set of compounds that inhibit parasite growth.
### Fluorescence
Doxorubicin is also known to be fluorescent. This has often been used to characterize doxorubicin concentrations, and has opened the possibility of using the molecule as a theranostic agent. However, there are significant limitations, as doxorubicin's fluorescence spectrum is known to depend on a variety of factors, including the pH of the environment, solvent dielectric constant and others. Doxorubicin fluorescence is quenched by binding to DNA, and shielded by micelle encapsulation. It is also known to self-quench at high concentrations. In contrast, histone binding amplifies fluorescence. |
39,105,581 | Agreement on Friendship and Cooperation between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia | 1,116,415,804 | Basis for joint defense against Serb forces | [
"1990s in Zagreb",
"1992 in Bosnia and Herzegovina",
"1992 in Croatia",
"20th-century military alliances",
"Bosnia and Herzegovina–Croatia relations",
"Bosnian War",
"Bosnian peace process",
"Croatian War of Independence",
"July 1992 events in Europe",
"Treaties concluded in 1992",
"Treaties of Bosnia and Herzegovina",
"Treaties of Croatia"
]
| The Agreement on Friendship and Cooperation between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia was signed by Alija Izetbegović, President of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Franjo Tuđman, President of the Republic of Croatia, in Zagreb on 21 July 1992 during the Bosnian and Croatian wars for independence from Yugoslavia. It established cooperation, albeit inharmonious, between the two and served as a basis for joint defense against Serb forces. It also placed the Croatian Defence Council (HVO) under the command of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH).
Izetbegović, who had hoped to prevent Bosnia and Herzegovina from falling under the influence of Croatia or Serbia, signed the agreement after Stjepan Kljuić, president of the Croatian Democratic Union's (HDZ) branch in Bosnia and Herzegovina, was replaced by Tuđman with Mate Boban, who blocked the delivery of supplies to Sarajevo where a siege was under way and had proclaimed an independent Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia (HR-HB). The agreement fell apart in October after a number of events including the assassination of Blaž Kraljević, leader of Croatian Defence Forces (HOS) in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the fall of the areas of Posavina, Bosanski Brod, and Jajce into the hands of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS), and after a major battle broke out between the HVO and the ARBiH in Prozor.
## Preparation for war
In 1990 and 1991, Serbs in Croatia and in Bosnia and Herzegovina had proclaimed a number of "Serbian Autonomous Regions" with the intent of later unifying them to create a Greater Serbia. Serbs used the well equipped Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) in defending these territories. As early as September or October 1990, the JNA had begun arming Bosnian Serbs and organizing them into militias. By March 1991, the JNA had distributed an estimated 51,900 firearms to Serb paramilitaries and 23,298 firearms to Serbian Democratic Party (SDS). The Croatian government began arming Croats in the Herzegovina region in 1991 and in the start of 1992, expecting that the Serbs would spread the war into Bosnia and Herzegovina. It also helped arm the Bosniak community. From July 1991 to January 1992, the JNA and Serb paramilitaries used Bosnian territory to wage attacks on Croatia.
On 25 March 1991, Franjo Tuđman met with Serbian president Slobodan Milošević in Karađorđevo, reportedly to discuss partition of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In November, the autonomous Croatian Community of Herzeg-Bosnia (HZ-HB) was established, it claimed it had no secessionary goal and that it would serve a "legal basis for local self-administration". It vowed to respect the Bosnian government under the condition that Bosnia and Herzegovina was independent of "the former and every kind of future Yugoslavia." In December, Tuđman, in a conversation with Bosnian Croat leaders, said that "from the perspective of sovereignty, Bosnia-Herzegovina has no prospects" and recommended that Croatian policy "support for the sovereignty [of Bosnia and Herzegovina] until such time as it no longer suits Croatia."
In April 1992, the siege of Sarajevo began, by which time the Bosnian Serb-formed Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) controlled 70% of Bosnia and Herzegovina. On 8 April, Bosnian Croats were organized into the Croatian Defence Council (HVO). A sizable number of Bosniaks also joined. The Croatian Defence Forces (HOS), led by Blaž Kraljević in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which "supported Bosnian territorial integrity much more consistently and sincerely than the HVO" was also created. On 15 April 1992, the multi-ethnic Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH) was formed, with slightly over two-thirds of troops consisting of Bosniaks and almost one-third of Croats and Serbs. In the winter Bosniaks began leaving the HVO and joining the ARBiH which also began receiving supplies from Croatia. In May, HVO Major General Ante Roso declared that the only "legal military force" in HZ-HB was the HVO and that "all orders from the TO [Territorial Defense] command [of Bosnia and Herzegovina] are invalid, and are to be considered illegal on this territory".
## Pressure and agreement
The Croatian government played a "double game" in Bosnia and Herzegovina and "a military solution required Bosnia as an ally, but a diplomatic solution required Bosnia as a victim". Tuđman's Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) party held important positions in the Bosnian government including the premiership and the ministry of defence, but despite this carried out a separate policy and refused for the HVO to be integrated into ARBiH. Jerko Doko, the Bosnian defence minister, gave the HVO priority in the acquisition of military weapons. In January 1992, Tuđman had arranged for Stjepan Kljuić, president of the Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina (HDZ BiH) who favored cooperating with the Bosniaks towards a unified Bosnian state, to be ousted and replaced by Mate Boban, who favored Croatia to annex Croat-inhabited parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina. A rift existed in the party between Croats from ethnically mixed areas of central and northern Bosnia and those from Herzegovina. Milivoj Gagro, prewar Croat mayor of Mostar and ally of Kljuić said: "The secessionist policy [union with Croatia] was consistently supported by the Herzegovina side, not by Sarajevo, Posavina, or Central Bosnia Croats. [...] Croats from Central Bosnia and Posavina, as well as those from urban centers who lived with Muslims and Serbs, thought differently. But when the war picked up, Posavina Croats were attacked, Sarajevo was surrounded [...] Kljuić was sidelined and Boban came in with idea [the Croat separatist idea] in this area. [...] When they [Croats in Sarajevo as well as Northern and Central Bosnia] felt they could not survive any more they lifted their hands and accepted their fate. And the Herzegovina Croats promised them the stars in the sky and told them "come here and we will give you a place." And what happened? It resulted in an exodus. And all these miserable Croat refugee communities that look absolutely ugly."
Izetbegović came under intense pressure from Tuđman to agree for Bosnia and Herzegovina to be in a confederation with Croatia; however, Izetbegović wanted to prevent Bosnia and Herzegovina from coming under the influence of Croatia or Serbia. Because doing so would cripple reconciliation between Bosniaks and Serbs, make the return of Bosniak refugees to eastern Bosnia impossible and for other reasons, Izetbegović opposed. He received an ultimatum from Boban warning that if he did not proclaim a confederation with Tuđman that Croatian forces would not help defend Sarajevo from strongholds as close as 40 kilometres (25 mi) away. On 9 May, Boban, Josip Manolić, Tuđman's aide and previously the Croatian Prime Minister, and Radovan Karadžić, president of the self-proclaimed Republika Srpska, secretly met in Graz and formed an agreement on the division of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Graz agreement. Beginning in June, discussions between Bosniaks and Croats over military cooperation and possible merger of their armies started to take place. The Croatian government recommended moving ARBiH headquarters out of Sarajevo and closer to Croatia and pushed for its reorganization in an effort to heavily add Croatian influence.
In June and July, Boban increased pressure "by blocking delivery of arms that the Sarajevo government, working around a United Nations embargo on all shipments to the former Yugoslavia, has secretly bought." On 3 July, Boban declared the independence of the Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia (HR-HB). He was established as its president. It claimed power over its own police, army, currency, and education and extended its grasp to many districts where Bosniaks were the majority. It only allowed a Croat flag to be used, the only currency allowed was the Croatian kuna, its only official language was Croatian, and a Croat school curriculum was enacted. Mostar, a town where Bosniaks constituted a slight majority, was set as the capital. There was no mention on the defense of Bosnia and Herzegovina's territorial integrity.
On 21 July, Izetbegović and Tuđman signed the "Agreement on Friendship and Cooperation between the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republic of Croatia" in Zagreb, Croatia. The agreement allowed them to "cooperate in opposing [the Serb] aggression" and coordinate military efforts. It placed the HVO under the command of the ARBiH. Cooperation was inharmonious, but enabled the transportation of weapons to ARBiH through Croatia in spite of the UN sanctioned arms embargo, reopening channels blocked by Boban. It established "economic, financial, cultural, educational, scientific and religious cooperation" between the signatories. It also stipulated that Bosnian Croats hold dual citizenship for both Bosnia and Herzegovina and for Croatia. This was criticized as Croatian attempts at "claiming broader political and territorial rights in the parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina where large numbers of Croats live". After its signature Boban vowed to Izetbegović that HR-HB would remain an integral part of Bosnia and Herzegovina when the war ended.
## Aftermath
In the summer of 1992, the HVO started to purge its Bosniak members. At the same time armed incidents started to occur among Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina between the HVO and the HOS. The HOS was loyal to the Bosnian government and accepted subordination to the Staff of the ARBiH of which Kraljević was appointed a member. On 9 August, Kraljević and eight of his staff were assassinated by HVO soldiers under the command of Mladen Naletilić, who supported a split between Croat and Bosniaks, after Kraljević's HOS attacked the VRS near Trebinje. The HOS's advance into eastern Herzegovina and occupation of Trebinje angered Boban who had affirmed to Karadžić that Croat forces were uninterested in the region. The HOS was disbanded, leaving the HVO as the only Croat force. Bosnian officials suspected that Tuđman's government was involved. According to Manolić the order to kill Kraljević was given by Šušak and approved by Tuđman. Božidar Vučurević, the war-time mayor of Trebinje, stated he safeguarded records showing that SDS and HDZ figures considered it a "task" that need to be carried out.
In late September, Izetbegović and Tuđman met again and attempted to create military coordination against the VRS, but to no avail. By October, the agreement had collapsed and afterwards Croatia diverted delivery of weaponry to Bosnia and Herzegovina by seizing a significant amount for itself. Boban had abandoned a Bosnian government alliance and ceased all hostilities with Karadžić. The dominant Croatian–Bosnian defense of Posavina fell apart after Tuđman and/or Gojko Šušak ordered the withdrawal of the Croatian Army (HV), enabling the Serbs to gain control of the corridor and connect their captured territories in western and eastern Bosnia. On 8 October, the town of Bosanski Brod was abandoned by the HVO and left to the VRS. By that time, the HV and the HVO had sustained approximately 7,500 casualties, out of 20,000 troops committed to the battle to control Posavina. The pullout appeared to be a quid pro quo for the JNA withdrawal from Dubrovnik's hinterland that took place in July. Still, a Central Intelligence Agency analysis concluded that there is no direct evidence of such arrangements. On 9 October, the HVO signed a cease-fire with the VRS in Jajce in exchange for providing electricity.
The strained relations escalated rapidly and led to an armed clash between the two forces in Novi Travnik on 18 October. Low-scale conflicts spread in the region, and the two forces engaged each other along the supply route to Jajce three days later, on 21 October, as a result of an ARBiH roadblock set up the previous day on authority of the "Coordinating Committee for the Protection of Muslims" rather than the ARBiH command. Just as the roadblock was dismantled, a new skirmish occurred in the town of Vitez the following day. On 29 October, the VRS captured Jajce due to the inability of ARBiH and HVO forces to construct a cooperative defense, against the VRS which held the advantage in troop size and firepower, staff work and planning was significantly superior to the defenders of Jajce. Six days prior the first major battle in the impending Croat–Bosniak war broke out when the HVO pushed ARBiH from Prozor and expelled the Bosniak population after carrying out rapes, attacking the local mosque, and torching the property of Bosniaks. Initial reports indicated about 300 Bosniaks were killed or wounded in the attack, but subsequent reports by the ARBiH made in November 1992 indicated eleven soldiers and three civilians were killed. Another ARBiH report, prepared in March 1993, revised the numbers saying eight civilians and three ARBiH soldiers were killed, while 13 troops and 10 civilians were wounded.
## See also
- Washington Agreement
- Split Agreement
- Bosnia and Herzegovina–Croatia relations |
1,306,667 | White House travel office controversy | 1,159,263,793 | Ethics controversy of the Clinton administration | [
"1993 controversies in the United States",
"1993 in American politics",
"Clinton administration controversies",
"Hillary Clinton controversies",
"Presidential scandals in the United States"
]
| The White House travel office controversy, sometimes referred to as Travelgate, was the first major ethics controversy of the Clinton administration. It began in May 1993, when seven employees of the White House Travel Office were fired. This action was unusual because executive-branch employees typically remain in their posts for many years (even though they can be terminated by, and serve at the pleasure of, the President).
The White House stated the firings were done because financial improprieties in the Travel Office operation during previous administrations had been revealed by an FBI investigation. Critics contended the firings were done to allow friends and campaign donors of President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton to take over the travel business and that the involvement of the FBI was unwarranted. Heavy media attention forced the White House to reinstate most of the employees in other jobs and remove the Clinton associates from the travel role.
Further investigations by the FBI and the Department of Justice, the White House itself, the General Accounting Office, the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, and the Whitewater Independent Counsel all took place over the subsequent years. Travel Office Director Billy Dale was charged with embezzlement but found not guilty in 1995. In 1998, Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr exonerated Bill Clinton of any involvement in the matter.
Hillary Clinton gradually came under scrutiny for allegedly having played a central role in the firings and making false statements about her involvement therein. In 2000, Independent Counsel Robert Ray issued his final report on Travelgate. He sought no charges against her, saying that while some of Clinton's statements were factually false, there was insufficient evidence that these statements were either knowingly false or that she understood that her statements led to the firings.
## The White House Travel Office
The White House Travel Office, known officially as either the White House Travel and Telegraph Office or the White House Telegraph and Travel Office, dates back to the Andrew Jackson administration and serves to handle travel arrangements for the White House press corps, with costs billed to the participating news organizations. By the time of the start of the Clinton administration, it was quartered in the Old Executive Office Building, and had seven employees with a yearly budget of \$7 million. Staffers serve at the pleasure of the president; however, in practice, the staffers were career employees who in some cases had worked in the Travel Office since the 1960s and 1970s, through both Democratic and Republican administrations.
Travel Office Director Billy Ray Dale had held that position since 1982, serving through most of the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations, and had started in the Travel Office in 1961. To handle the frequent last-minute arrangements of presidential travel and the specialized requirements of the press, Dale did not conduct competitive bidding for travel services, but relied upon a charter company called Airline of the Americas.
## Initial White House actions
According to the White House, the incoming Clinton administration had heard rumors of irregularities in the Travel Office and possible kickbacks to an office employee from a charter air company. They looked at a review by KPMG Peat Marwick which discovered that Dale kept an off-book ledger, had \$18,000 of unaccounted-for checks, and kept chaotic office records. White House Chief of Staff Mack McLarty and the White House counsels thus decided to fire the Travel Office staff and reorganize it. The actual terminations were done on May 19, 1993, by White House director of administration David Watkins. There was also a feeling among the White House and its supporters that the Travel Office had never been investigated by the media due to its close relationship with press corps members and the plush accommodations it afforded them and favors it did for them. (Congress would later discover that in October 1988, a whistleblower within the Travel Office had alleged financial improprieties; the Reagan White House counsel looked into the claim but took no action.)
Republicans and other critics saw the events differently. They alleged that friends of President Bill Clinton, including his third cousin Catherine Cornelius, had sought the firings in order to get the business for themselves. Dale and his staff had been replaced with Little Rock, Arkansas-based World Wide Travel, a company with a substantial reputation in the industry but with several ties to the Clintons. In addition, Hollywood producer and Inauguration chairman Harry Thomason, a friend of both Clintons, and his business partner, Darnell Martens, were looking to get their air charter company, TRM, the White House business in place of Airline of the Americas. The Clinton campaign had been TRM's sole client during 1992, collecting commissions from booking charter flights for the campaign. Martens wanted the White House to award TRM a \$500,000 contract for an aircraft audit, while also seeking Travel Office charter business as an intermediary which did not own any planes.
Attention initially focused on the role of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), since on May 12, 1993, a week before the firings, associate White House counsel William Kennedy had requested that the FBI look into possible improprieties in the Travel Office operation. FBI agents went there and, although initially reluctant, authorized a preliminary investigation. Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster became worried about the firings about to take place and ordered the KPMG Peat Marwick review, asking the FBI to hold off in the meantime. The accounting review started on May 14 and the report was given to the White House on May 17. KPMG was unable to do an actual audit, because there were so few records in the Travel Office that could be audited and because the office did not use the double-entry bookkeeping system that audits are based upon. One KPMG representative later described the office as "an ungodly mess in terms of records" with ten years of material piled up in a closet. When the review came back with its reports of irregularities, Watkins went ahead with the terminations on May 19.
## Investigations
The travel office affair quickly became the first major ethics controversy of the Clinton presidency and an embarrassment for the new administration. Criticism from political opponents and especially the news media became intense; the White House was later described as having been "paralyzed for a week". The effect was intensified by cable television news and the advent of the 24-hour news cycle. Within three days of the firings, World Wide Travel voluntarily withdrew from the White House travel operation and were replaced on a temporary basis by American Express Travel Services. (Later, after a competitive bid, American Express received the permanent role to book press charters.)
Various investigations took place.
### FBI
On May 28, 1993, the FBI issued a report saying it had done nothing wrong in its contacts with the White House. (This conclusion was reiterated by a March 1994 report by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility.)
Meanwhile, the FBI investigation of the Travel Office practices themselves continued, soon focusing on Travel Office Director Billy Dale. who was charged with embezzlement but found not guilty in 1995. During the summer of 1993, the other staffers of the office were informed that they were no longer a target of the investigation.
### Clinton White House report
On July 2, 1993, the White House issued its own 80-page report on the firings, one that the New York Times termed "strikingly self-critical". Co-written by Chief of Staff McLarty, it criticized five White House officials, included McLarty himself, Watkins, Kennedy, Cornelius, and another, for dismissing the Travel Office members improperly, for appearing to pressure the FBI into its involvement, and for allowing friends of the Clintons to become involved in a matter with which they had a business stake. It said that the employees should instead have been placed on administrative leave. However, the White House said no illegal actions had occurred, and no officials would be terminated; this did not satisfy Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole, who called for an independent investigation. As Chief of Staff McLarty personally apologized to the fired Travel Office employees—some of whom had all their personal documents and travel photographs related to years of service thrown out during the firing process—and said they would be given other jobs (which five of them were; Dale and his assistant director retired.) The White House report also contained the initial indications of the First Lady's involvement in the firings, saying that she had taken an interest in the Travel Office's alleged mismanagement and had been informed two days in advance that the firings would take place. There was no indication of involvement from President Clinton himself, although he had earlier taken broad public responsibility for what had happened.
The travel office controversy was subsequently judged to have been a factor in Vince Foster's depression and July 20, 1993, suicide. In his torn-up resignation note from a few days before, he wrote "No one in The White House, to my knowledge, violated any law or standard of conduct, including any action in the Travel Office. There was no intent to benefit any individual or specific group. [...] The press is covering up the illegal benefits they received from the travel staff". (In the last part, Foster may have been referring to lax customs treatment by the Travel Office of goods brought back from foreign trips by reporters.)
### GAO report
In July 1993, Congress requested the non-partisan General Accounting Office investigate the firings; on May 2, 1994, the GAO concluded that the White House did have legal authority to terminate the Travel Office employees without cause, because they served at the pleasure of the president. However, it also concluded that Cornelius, Thomason, and Martens, who all had potential business interests involved, had possibly influenced the decision. Moreover, the GAO report indicated that the First Lady played a larger role than previously thought before the firings, with Watkins saying she had urged "that action be taken to get 'our people' into the travel office." The First Lady, who had given a written statement to the inquiry, said she did "not recall this conversation with the same level of detail as Mr. Watkins."
### Independent Counsel investigation begins
Special prosecutor Robert B. Fiske tangentially investigated travel office events during the first half of 1994, as part of investigating the circumstances surrounding Foster's death.
In August 1994, Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr took over from Fiske in investigating Whitewater, Foster, and indirectly the travel office matter. On July 22, 1995, Hillary Clinton gave a deposition under oath to the Independent Counsel that touched on travel office questions; she denied having had a role in the firings, but was unable to recall many specifics of conversations with Foster and Watkins.
### Oversight Committee investigation begins
In late 1994, following the 1994 Congressional elections which switched Congress from Democratic to Republican control, the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, chaired by Pennsylvania Republican William Clinger, launched an investigation into the White House Travel Office firings. In October 1995, the committee began hearings on the matter; Clinger soon accused the White House of withholding pertinent documents and sought subpoenas to compel witnesses to appear.
### Private investigations
Not all investigations were by governmental bodies. The magazine The American Spectator, which had a well-established animus towards the First Couple, focused on the Travelgate story as one of many Clinton-related matters it thought scandalous, describing it as "a story about influence-peddling and sleazy deal-making... in the Clinton White House". Spectator publisher R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. would claim that the magazine's early Travelgate stories provided useful material to the congressional investigations. In general, Clinton administration controversies such as Travelgate allowed opinion magazines and political debate television shows to attract subscribers and viewers.
## Prosecution and acquittal of Billy Dale
Meanwhile, as a consequence of the FBI investigation, former Travel Office Director Billy Dale was indicted by a federal grand jury on December 7, 1994, on two counts of embezzlement and criminal conversion, charged with wrongfully depositing into his own bank account \$68,000 in checks from media organizations traveling with the president during the period between 1988 and 1991. He faced up to 20 years in prison if convicted. Dale's attorneys conceded that funds had been co-mingled, but stated that Dale had not stolen anything but rather used the monies for the substantial tips and off-the-book payments that the job required, especially in foreign countries, and that anything left over was used as a discount against future trips.
At the 13-day trial in October and November 1995, prominent journalists such as ABC News' Sam Donaldson and The Los Angeles Times''' Jack Nelson testified as character witnesses on Dale's behalf. Much of the trial focused on the details of the movement of Travel Office funds into Dale's personal account, and not on the political overtones of the case. The jury acquitted Dale of both charges on November 16, 1995, following less than two hours of deliberations.
## A memo surfaces regarding the First Lady
On January 5, 1996, a new development thrust the travel office matter again to the forefront. A two-year-old memo from White House director of administration David Watkins surfaced that identified First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton as the motivating force behind the firings, with the additional involvement of Vince Foster and Harry Thomason. "Foster regularly informed me that the First Lady was concerned and desired action. The action desired was the firing of the Travel Office staff." Written in fall 1993, apparently intended for McLarty, the Watkins memo also said "we both know that there would be hell to pay" if "we failed to take swift and decisive action in conformity with the First Lady's wishes." This memo contradicted the First Lady's previous statements in the GAO investigation, that she had played no role in the firings and had not consulted with Thomason beforehand. The White House also found it difficult to explain why the memo was so late in surfacing when all the previous investigations had requested all relevant materials. House committee chair Clinger charged a cover-up was taking place and vowed to pursue new material.
These developments, following Hillary Clinton's prior disputed statements about her cattle futures dealings and Whitewater, led to a famous exchange in which high-profile New York Times columnist William Safire, who had endorsed Bill Clinton in the previous election, wrote that many Americans were coming to the "sad realization that our First Lady—a woman of undoubted talents who was a role model for many in her generation—is a congenital liar" who "has never been called to account for lying herself or in suborning lying in her aides and friends," followed by White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry saying that "the President, if he were not the President, would have delivered a more forceful response to that—on the bridge of Mr. Safire's nose."
As a result of the discovery of the Watkins memo, and based upon a suggestion from the Office of Independent Counsel, on March 20, 1996, Attorney General Janet Reno requested that Whitewater Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr expand his inquiry to specifically include the travel office affair, in particular allegations that White House employees had lied about Hillary Clinton's role in the firings, and that David Watkins or Hillary Clinton had made false statements in previous testimony to the GAO, Congress, or the Independent Counsel.
The Congressional investigation continued; on March 21, 1996, Hillary Clinton submitted a deposition under oath to the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, again acknowledging concern about irregularities in the Travel Office but denying a direct role in the firings and expressing a lack of recollection to a number of questions. A battle of wills took place between the legislative and executive branches. On May 9, 1996, President Clinton refused to turn over additional documents related to the matter, claiming executive privilege. House committee chair Clinger threatened a contempt of Congress resolution against the president, and the White House partially backed down on May 30, surrendering 1,000 of the 3,000 documents the committee asked for.
Meanwhile, the seven dismissed employees were back in the picture. In March 1996 the House voted 350–43 to reimburse them for all of their legal expenses; in September 1996, Democratic Senator Harry Reid led an unsuccessful attempt to block this measure. In May 1996, the seven filed a \$35 million lawsuit against Harry Thomason and Darnell Martens, alleging unlawful interference with their employment and emotional distress.
On June 5, 1996, Clinger announced that the committee's investigations had discovered that the White House had requested access to Billy Dale's FBI background check report seven months after the terminations, in what Clinger said was an improper effort to justify the firings. It was rapidly discovered that the White House had additionally gotten improper access to hundreds of other FBI background reports, many on former White House employees in Republican administrations; thus was born the Filegate controversy.
The Senator Al D'Amato-chaired Senate Special Whitewater Committee, which had begun the previous year, issued its findings in a majority report on June 18, 1996; it did not investigate Travelgate directly, but did say that "[Hillary] Clinton, upon learning of [Vince] Foster's death, at least realized its connection to [the] Travelgate scandal, and perhaps to the Whitewater matter, and dispatched her trusted lieutenants to contain any potential embarrassment or political damage." Minority Democratic members of the Committee derided these findings as "a legislative travesty," "a witch hunt," and "a political game."
The House Government Reform and Oversight Committee issued its majority report on September 18, 1996, in which it accused the Clinton administration of having obstructed the committee's efforts to investigate the Travelgate scandal. It portrayed Bill Clinton as being heavily involved in the travel office affair, more than any other investigation. The report's chapter titles were lurid: "The White House Stonewalled All Investigations into the White House Travel Office Firings and Related Matters", "The White House Initiated a Full-Scale Campaign of Misinformation in the Aftermath of the Travel Office Firings and President Clinton Led the Misinformation Campaign from the First Days of the Travelgate Debacle", "Foster's Death Shattered a White House Just Recovering from an Abysmal First 6 Months of Administration", and so forth. Democratic members of the Committee walked out in protest over the report, with ranking member Henry Waxman calling it "an embarrassment to you [Chairman Clinger], this committee and this Congress" and "a crassly partisan smear campaign against President Clinton, Mrs. Clinton and this administration." The following month Clinger forwarded the report, along with one on Filegate, to the Independent Counsel, suggesting that the testimony of several witnesses be looked at for possible perjury or obstruction of justice. Democrats said this was politically motivated in an attempt to influence the 1996 presidential election.
## Independent Counsel findings
Almost two years passed. Independent Counsel Starr continued his investigation. Starr wanted access to notes that Vince Foster's attorney took in a conversation with Foster about the travel office affair shortly before Foster's suicide, but on June 25, 1998, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6–3 against Starr in Swidler & Berlin v. United States, stating that attorney–client privilege extends beyond the grave. In September 1998 Independent Counsel Starr released the famous Starr Report, concerning offenses that may have been committed by President Clinton as part of the Lewinsky scandal. It did not mention the travel office matter.
On November 19, 1998, Starr testified before the House Judiciary Committee in connection with the impeachment of Bill Clinton over charges related to the Lewinsky scandal. Here, for the first time, Starr exonerated President Clinton of complicity in the travel office affair, saying that while investigations were not complete, "the president was not involved in our... investigation." (Starr also chose this occasion to clear President Clinton in the Filegate matter, and to say he had not committed impeachable wrongdoing in the Whitewater matter; Democrats on the committee immediately criticized Starr for withholding all these findings until after the 1998 Congressional elections.)
Starr explicitly did not exonerate Hillary Clinton, however; her case remained unsettled. More time passed. By 2000, she was a candidate for United States Senator from New York, and Starr had been replaced as Independent Counsel by prosecutor Robert Ray, who once worked for Rudy Giuliani, Clinton's then-opponent in the Senate race. Regardless, Ray vowed his investigation would have "no untoward effect on the political process." Ray was determined to wrap up the case before the end of Bill Clinton's term.
On June 23, 2000, the suspense ended when Ray submitted the final Independent Counsel report on the travel office affair under seal to the judicial panel in charge of the investigation and publicly announced that he would seek no criminal charges against Hillary Clinton. Ray said that she had, contrary to her statements, "ultimately influenced" the decision to fire the employees. However, "the evidence was insufficient to prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that any of Mrs. Clinton's statements and testimony regarding her involvement in the travel office firings were knowingly false," and thus prosecution was declined. White House press secretary Joe Lockhart was critical of Ray's statement: "By inappropriately characterizing the results of a legally sealed report through innuendo, the Office of Independent Counsel has further politicized an investigation that has dragged on far too long."
Ray's full 243-page report was unsealed and made public on October 18, 2000, three weeks before the Senatorial election. It confirmed that neither Hillary Clinton nor David Watkins would be indicted. It included some new detail, including a somewhat unsubstantiated claim from a friend of Watkins saying that the First Lady had told Watkins to "fire the sons of bitches." Ray cited eight separate conversations between the First Lady and senior staff and concluded: "Mrs. Clinton’s input into the process was significant, if not the significant factor influencing the pace of events in the Travel Office firings and the ultimate decision to fire the employees." Moreover, Ray determined Hillary Clinton had given "factually false" testimony when questioned by the GAO, the Independent Counsel, and Congress about the travel office firings, but reiterated that "the evidence was insufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt" that she knew her statements were false or understood that they may have prompted the firings.
Immediate reactions to the report differed. David E. Kendall, Hillary Clinton's lawyer, said that Ray's words were "highly unfair and misleading" and that Ray's conclusions were inconsistent, that evidence regarding her innocence had been buried in the document, and that the report confirmed that her fears about financial improprieties in the Travel Office were warranted. On the other hand, Bill Powers, chair of the New York Republican State Committee, said the report "once again makes us question" the believability of Clinton, and Congressman Rick Lazio, her Republican opponent in the Senate election, said "We believe that character counts in public service." New York Times columnist Safire updated his description of Hillary Clinton to "habitual prevaricator", saying "the evidence that she has been lying all along is damning" and comparing her dark side to that of Richard Nixon, in whose White House he had once worked.
Regardless, after 71⁄2 years, Travelgate was finally over.
## Legacy
In the legal aftermath, Swidler & Berlin v. United States became an important Supreme Court decision. The length, expense, and results of the Travelgate and the other investigations grouped under the Whitewater umbrella turned much of the public against the Independent Counsel mechanism. As such, the Independent Counsel law expired in 1999, with critics saying it cost too much with too few results; even Kenneth Starr favored the law's demise.
Opinions would differ over the legacy of the affair. Some agreed with Safire, who had said that Hillary Clinton was "a vindictive power player who used the FBI to ruin the lives of people standing in the way of juicy patronage." Conservative commentator Barbara Olson would entitle her highly unflattering 1999 book Hell to Pay: The Unfolding Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton'', in reference to Clinton's Travelgate phrase. However, these had little effect on Hillary Clinton's career, as she won the 2000 election to the Senate, won re-election in 2006, became a strong contender for the Democratic Party nomination in the 2008 presidential election, then served as U.S. Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013, and then ran for president again in 2016, becoming the nominee.
Bill Clinton later described the allegations and investigation as "a fraud", while in her 2003 autobiography Hillary Clinton gave short shrift to the matter, never mentioning Billy Dale by name and saying that "'Travelgate'... was perhaps worthy of a two- or three-week life span; instead, in a partisan political climate, it became the first manifestation of an obsession for investigation that persisted into the next millennium." Many in the Clinton inner circle would always believe that political motivations had been behind the investigation, including an attempt to derail Hillary Clinton's role in the 1993 health care reform plan. But associate White House counsel William Kennedy would also later reflect that some of it was just "pure palpable hatred of the Clintons. It started and it never quit." |
1,651,822 | Ontario Highway 69 | 1,171,430,922 | Ontario provincial highway | [
"Ontario provincial highways",
"Roads in Greater Sudbury",
"Trans-Canada Highway",
"Transport in Parry Sound District",
"Transport in Parry Sound, Ontario",
"Transport in the District Municipality of Muskoka"
]
| King's Highway 69, commonly referred to as Highway 69, is a provincially maintained north–south highway in the central portion of the Canadian province of Ontario. In conjunction with Highway 400, it links Toronto with the city of Greater Sudbury at Highway 17, via Parry Sound. It is part of the Trans-Canada Highway and the National Highway System. From its southern terminus of Highway 559 at Carling, Highway 69 begins as Highway 400 narrows from a four-laned freeway to a two lane highway. It travels northerly for approximately 68 kilometres (42 mi) to south of the French River before widening back to a divided four lane freeway for approximately 64 kilometres (40 mi) into Sudbury. The final 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) of the route, connecting to Highway 17, is a five lane arterial road that will be converted to freeway as the final phase of the four-laning.
Highway 69 was first designated in 1936 when the Department of Highways (DHO) assumed the Rama Road between Atherley and Washago. This short route was extended the following year when the DHO merged with the Department of Northern Development and expanded the King's Highway network north of the Severn River. By the beginning of World War II, the route reached as far north as Britt; a separate segment connected the town of Burwash with Sudbury. However, the rationing of labour and materials due to the war effort resulted in these two sections remaining separated until the mid-1950s. In 1976, several reroutings and renumbering took place in the Muskoka area. As a result, the portion of Highway 69 between Brechin and Foot's Bay was renumbered as Highway 169, while the entirety of Highway 103 between Coldwater and Foot's Bay was renumbered as Highway 69.
Between 1956 and 1979, Highway 69 extended through and north of Sudbury. Until some point between 1974 and 1977, it reached as far north as Capreol, after which it was truncated at Hanmer. By 1980, the northern terminus had shifted to the Southwest Bypass, onto which Highway 17 was rerouted in 1995. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Highway 400 was gradually pushed north to its current terminus by twinning Highway 69, gradually truncating its length. A commitment to complete four-laning to Sudbury has been made by all three major provincial political parties in Ontario since 1991, but as of 2022 there remains 70 kilometres (43 mi) of two lane highway still to be constructed. Various former alignments of Highway 69 remain in use as directional carriageways of Highway 400 or as local roads. The highway forms part of the Georgian Bay Route of the Trans-Canada Highway, which continues south along Highway 400.
## Route description
Highway 69 is a major highway serving the recreational areas surrounding Georgian Bay and the Thirty Thousand Islands, as well as providing the westernmost fixed connection between southern and northern Ontario; the highway occupies the northern portion of a corridor that connects Toronto to Sudbury, with Highway 400 occupying the southern portion. While Highway 6 is located further west, it requires the use of a ferry service between the Bruce Peninsula and Manitoulin Island.
Between Nobel and Sudbury, there are no large communities, although numerous small communities lie adjacent to the route, including the Shawanaga First Nation, Pointe au Baril, Magnetawan First Nation, Byng Inlet, Britt, Bigwood, Delamere and the Henvey Inlet First Nation. As of 2021 the highway began 1.0-kilometre (0.62 mi) north of Highway 559 (Exit 241) in Carling, where the divided four lane Highway 400 narrows into the two-laned Highway 69 (that will serve as the future southbound lanes). Construction is scheduled to begin in 2022 to extend Highway 400 northward by 11 kilometres (6.8 mi) from Highway 559 to Shebooshekong Road near the Shawanaga First Nation.
Highway 69 travels in a predominantly north-northeast direction, well inland of Georgian Bay. The Canadian Shield dominates the topography, resulting in numerous transverse marshes and rock outcroppings that bisect the highway, with dense forests in between; services are limited and distant. Exiting Carling Township, the highway enters The Archipelago, where it scrapes the northeastern edge of the Shawanaga First Nation. It provides access to Pointe au Baril and Pointe au Baril Station before intersecting the southern end of Highway 529, a former alignment of the highway. It enters Unorganized Centre Parry Sound District, a sparsely-inhabited agglomeration of townships, where it provides access to Britt and Britt Station, as well as the northern end of Highway 529.
Progressing north, Highway 69 enters Sudbury District at the community of Key River. It passes through Cranberry, intersecting Highway 522. Highway 69 widens to a four lane freeway north of Highway 522 before briefly curving northward. It crosses the French River near Wanikewin and encounters an interchange with Highway 607 near Bigwood. It remains a divided four-laned freeway the remainder of its journey into Sudbury, passing by the communities of Rutter, Burwash, Estaire, and Wanup before merging into a four-lane arterial road immediately southeast of Highway 17 at the Southeast Bypass. The highway ends at the interchange with Highway 17; past this point, the roadway continues into Sudbury as Municipal Road 46 (Regent Street).
## History
Highway 69 has undergone several major changes during its existence, so much so that the first section designated has not been a King's Highway for 60 years and lay approximately 80 km (50 mi) from the current highway. In other places, a minor two-lane gravel highway has gradually been upgraded to a four-lane freeway. On August 5, 1936, the DHO assumed the Rama Road, connecting Highway 12 at Atherley with Highway 11 at Washago. On March 31, 1937, the Department of Northern Development (DND) was merged into the DHO, allowing the latter to extend the provincial highway network north of the Severn River. Subsequently, through August 1937, Highway 69 was extended 77.75 mi (125.13 km) north to the Naiscoot River, midway between Pointe au Baril and Britt. This extension followed DND trunk routes to Nobel, where a munitions and aircraft factory would soon provide an instrumental role in the war effort. In the north, the road connecting Sudbury and Burwash was also assumed as Highway 69 on August 11. It was intended to connect these two segments over the next several years; however, the outbreak of World War II in September 1939 halted all non-essential construction due to the short supply of labour and materials. Although an extension from the Naiscoot River to Britt would open by 1940.
Once the war ended, construction resumed to bridge the 65 kilometres (40 mi) gap between the two sections of Highway 69. French River and Alban would be linked to the provincial highway network via Britt by 1952. This allowed motorists to take a far more direct route between Severn River and Sudbury, by taking advantage of a detour via Highway 535 and Highway 64, through the small communities of Hagar and Noëlville. That same year also saw the rerouting of the southern end of the highway; the southern end was moved east from Atherley to Brechin and the Rama Road decommissioned as a provincial highway. The new routing was longer but gave the southern end of the highway a more significant purpose than as a bypass of Highway 11. The Rama Road has since been known as Simcoe County Road 44.
The biggest gap that remained on Highway 69 was between Alban and Burwash, but this was eliminated from 1952 to 1955, providing a third link from Southern Ontario to Northern Ontario (the other two being Highway 11 and Highway 17). Until Highway 69 was completed between Parry Sound and Sudbury, drivers travelling between Southern Ontario and Sudbury or Sault Ste. Marie had to travel along a circuitous routing via Highway 11 to North Bay, and thence along Highway 17 to Sudbury and beyond to Sault Ste. Marie. In 1956, Highway 69 was extended north of Sudbury to Capreol, bringing its length to 292.9 kilometres (182.0 mi).
The year 1976 saw big changes for Highway 69. The portion of highway south of MacTier was shifted onto the routing of former Highway 103, completely absorbing that roadway into its length. The former routing was renamed Highway 169. It was at this time that Highway 69 was at its longest, from Highway 12 and Highway 400 at Waubaushene north to Sudbury. Until the mid-1970s, Highway 69 continued through Sudbury along Regent Street, Paris Street and Notre Dame Avenue, and into the suburban towns of Valley East and Capreol. At some point between 1974 and 1977, it was truncated at Hanmer. By 1980, the northern terminus had shifted to the Southwest Bypass. While this route is no longer part of the provincial highway, and is officially designated as a series of Sudbury Municipal Roads, it is still often referred to locally as "Highway 69 North".
### Four-laning
Although planning for an eventual four-lane highway started in 1969, the commitment to expand the entirety of Highway 69 to a full freeway was first made in 1991 by the New Democrat government of Bob Rae. The first work on the southernmost portion of the highway had already begun in 1990, with the construction of the southbound structures over Matchedash Bay and the Canadian National Railway crossing north of Highway 12. Both were complete by the end of 1990. During 1991, construction began on the interchanges at Quarry Road and Port Severn Road, new service roads between those interchanges and the southbound structure over the Trent–Severn Waterway. In 1988, the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario completed a study of the Highway 69 corridor between Muskoka Road 5 in Port Severn and Tower Road southwest of MacTier, a distance of approximately 45 km (28 mi). This work was carried out through the 1990s as one large project, reaching as far as south of Go Home Lake Road (Muskoka District Roads 32/38) by mid-to-late 1997. It was extended 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) farther to south of the Musquash River in October 1999. The Highway 400 designation was moved north, and Highway 69 equally shortened, after each project.
Engineering was underway on the first 65 kilometres (40 mi) south of Sudbury. However, that project was shelved by the Progressive Conservative (PC) government of Mike Harris shortly after the 1995 provincial election. Despite this, construction of the segment from Highway 141 to the Seguin River, proceeded in November 1999, and the MacTier bypass south of Highway 141 to the Moon River in February 2000. The majority of these three projects were built on a new alignment, with the former route of Highway 69 becoming Lake Joseph Road and Oastler Park Road. Lake Joseph Road is maintained by the MTO as an unsigned highway. The portion south of Highway 141 designated as Highway 7289, and the northern portion as Highway 7290. The Parry Sound Bypass, from Badger Road to the Seguin River, opened on November 1, 2001; the section from Highway 141 to Badger Road opened in October 2002; and the MacTier Bypass opened on October 7, 2003.
The Highway 400 designation was extended northward from the Musquash River to the Seguin River following the opening of the MacTier Bypass, but the Highway 69 designation remained in place as a concurrency. This was due a 7.6-kilometre (4.7 mi) two lane gap between the Musquash and Moon Rivers, passing through the Wahta Mohawks territory, that came to be known as the Wahta Gap. The Territorial Reserve did not oppose the construction; however, the land was unobtainable due to a technicality requiring a minimum voter turnout of 65 percent. The land claim was settled by a vote held on October 25, 2003. Following ratification, construction began in December 2004, and opened July 15, 2008. Following its completion, Highway 69 was truncated at what is now the south junction of Lake Joseph Road (Exit 189) near MacTier, an overall reduction of over 40 kilometres (24.9 mi) since prior to 1989.
The City of Sudbury continued to lobby for the expansion of the highway, calling attention especially to an ongoing series of fatal car accidents at the intersection of Highway 637, where a sharp S-curve along Highway 69 rendered the approaching intersection effectively invisible to northbound traffic. Assisted by Rick Bartolucci, the Liberal MPP for Sudbury, the CRASH 69 (Community Rallying Against Substandard Highway 69) committee of Sudbury residents campaigned throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s to have the project reinstated.
Premier Harris' successor (and former MPP for Parry Sound—Muskoka), Ernie Eves, announced the resumption of construction between Parry Sound and Sudbury in 2002; however, the PCs did not commit to four-laning the entire route. The Liberal government of Dalton McGuinty came to power following the 2003 election with a promise to have a commitment in place within six months. Construction began on a 20-kilometre (12 mi) segment south of Sudbury to Estaire in January 2005, with route planning studies now completed for the remaining two-lane sections. In June of that year, construction began on a 16-kilometre (9.9 mi) extension of four-laning from Parry Sound to north of Nobel. Later in 2005, the provincial government announced that four-laning between Parry Sound and Sudbury would be completed by 2017.
The first project completed north of Parry Sound was the section between Sudbury and Estaire, which opened on November 12, 2009. The section from south of the Seguin River in Parry Sound to north of Highway 559, bypassing Nobel, opened on October 26, 2010. The former alignment in Sudbury is now known as Estaire Road, while the former route through Nobel is now Nobel Road. In 2008, work began to realign the S-curve at Highway 637; two lanes opened to traffic on July 27, 2010, while the completed four-lane route, with an interchange at Highway 637, opened to traffic on August 8, 2012. The former alignment now has the name Murdock River Road, and serves as a local road accessible only from Highway 637. In the summer of 2012, the Highway 69 designation was shortened by 63.4 kilometres (39.4 mi), between MacTier and 1 kilometre north of Highway 559, resulting in its current length.
Highway 69 passes through significant tracts of wilderness and forested land, and consequently has seen a rate of animal collisions well above the provincial norm. Several segments of the four-laned route will include special grade-separated wildlife crossings, the first of which was completed in March 2012. In the summer of 2012, work began to four lane a 9-kilometre (5.6 mi) segment between north of Highway 64 and the Murdock River, as well as on a 11-kilometre (6.8 mi) segment between Highway 607 and north of Highway 64. The first project was opened September 11, 2015, while the segment from north of Highway 607 to north of Highway 64, including an interchange at the latter, was opened by the beginning of August 2016. The most recently completed section as of 2023 was a 14-kilometre (8.7 mi) segment from north of Highway 522 to north of Highway 607 that opened on December 23, 2021.
## Future
Although the original plan called for the four-laning of the highway to be complete by 2017, the timeline was pushed back due to delays in environmental assessments and land negotiations with First Nations bands impacted by the construction. In the early 2010s, a widespread perception that the project appeared to be falling behind schedule was frequently discussed in Sudbury's media and by candidates in municipal and provincial elections, but the Ministry of Transportation continued to assert that the project was on track for completion in 2017. In March 2015, the ministry officially acknowledged that the 2017 timeline would not be met, and indicated that the new target date was between 2019 and 2021. In 2017, however, although the ministry made no formal announcement, its annual Northern Highways Report listed a completion date within that period only for the section already under construction between the French River and north of Highway 522 at Grundy Lake Provincial Park. This section opened in December 2021, several months ahead of the originally foreseen completion date of 2022.
The remaining route between Nobel and Grundy Lake is listed as "beyond 2021", as of July 2021. A 19.3-kilometre (12.0 mi) section, from north of the Magnetawan River to Grundy Lake, is funded but has no announced construction timeline.
## Major intersections |
40,105,342 | Safecracker (video game) | 1,136,272,666 | 1997 video game | [
"1997 video games",
"Adventure games",
"Classic Mac OS games",
"Daydream Software games",
"DreamCatcher Interactive games",
"Embracer Group franchises",
"First-person adventure games",
"Point-and-click adventure games",
"Video games developed in Sweden",
"Windows games"
]
| Safecracker is a 1997 puzzle adventure game developed by Daydream Software and published by GT Interactive. It casts the player as a security professional, whose goal is to infiltrate the mansion headquarters of a safe manufacturer and break into 35 of its unusual models. Each safe is guarded by a different type of puzzle, including sliding tiles, anagram codes and translations from braille. The player's progression is nonlinear: the mansion can be explored, and its safes unlocked, in multiple orders. However, the game must be completed within a 12-hour time limit.
Safecracker was conceived in 1994 as the debut title by Daydream, one of Sweden's first major computer game developers. After signing with Warner Interactive Entertainment (WIE) in 1995, Daydream began to develop the game with Macromedia Director and QuickTime VR. Expensive Silicon Graphics machines were purchased with Warner's funding to create the visuals; musicians Rob 'n' Raz were hired to compose the soundtrack. However, corporate upheaval at WIE led to costly delays. GT Interactive ultimately bought the publisher in 1996 and purposely slow-walked Safecracker's release and promotion. Having anticipated problems with GT, Daydream went public: its hit IPO drew enough capital for the team to repurchase Safecracker's rights in 1997 and sign new distributors worldwide.
While Safecracker's troubled release hurt its retail performance, long-tail sales at a budget price eventually carried it to 650,000 units sold. Reviewers broadly panned the game's limited core premise, although certain writers considered it a strength and recommended the title to fans of puzzle games. Critical reception of the puzzles and visuals ranged from positive to strongly negative. Following the launch of Safecracker, Daydream became a foundational company in the Swedish game industry. Nevertheless, problems caused by its early public launch led to the developer's bankruptcy in 2003. Kheops Studio and The Adventure Company later released a spiritual successor to Safecracker under the name Safecracker: The Ultimate Puzzle Adventure (2006).
## Gameplay and plot
Safecracker is a puzzle adventure game that takes place from a first-person view in a pre-rendered visual environment. The player uses a point-and-click interface to traverse the game world and interact with objects. In a manner that has been compared to Zork Nemesis, the player's movement is restricted to jumps between panoramic static screens. The camera view can rotate 360° on each screen. In Safecracker, the player assumes the role of a professional in the security systems business, who seeks a job with the fictional Crabb & Sons Company. The firm is a manufacturer of safes with unusual designs. As an audition, the player character is contracted by Crabb & Sons' owner to infiltrate his mansion headquarters and crack the safes within, with the ultimate goal of breaking into the new "F-9-12" design.
The game begins outside Crabb & Sons' building, after which the player sneaks in and begins to explore. Safecracker features nonlinear progression: the mansion's rooms can be navigated, and their safes tackled, in multiple orders. However, the game must be beaten under a 12-hour time limit. The mansion contains over 50 rooms and 35 safes, which are guarded by puzzles in a range of styles. Among these are mathematics puzzles, anagram codes, conversions of temperature units, translations from braille, musical problems and sliding puzzles. Unlocking a safe provides the player with clues and keys, which open up new areas and allow other puzzles to be solved. At the same time, certain clues are hidden around the mansion in books and other objects that the player may investigate. Clue items are stored in the inventory on the heads-up display (HUD) interface, which also features a meter that tracks the number of puzzles solved.
## Development
### Origins
Safecracker was conceived in 1994 by acquaintances Jörgen Isaksson and Nigel Papworth of Umeå, Sweden. Papworth's interest in making games was first sparked when Isaksson showed him Myst: its simple HyperCard engine suggested to Papworth that game programming could be easy. Isaksson himself had previously experimented with the medium to entertain his younger sister, yielding a computer conversion of the board game Mastermind. Papworth seized on this idea and reworked Isaksson's Mastermind board into a safe puzzle. After a short time, the pair had devised five more safes in this style, and the thought arose for an entire game about cracking safes in a single building. This concepting stage began in summer 1994. Isaksson and Papworth soon pitched the Safecracker idea to Erik Phersson and Jan Phersson-Broburg, the heads of a local computer services company, Sombrero, that Isaksson had co-founded. The more recent hire Leif Holm was present as well.
At a meeting in fall 1994, roughly one month after Isaksson had shown Myst to Papworth, the five men resolved to create Safecracker together. The Phersson brothers had already been anxious to expand into new fields. Phersson-Broburg immediately arranged an interview with Sanji Tandan, the head of Warner Music Sweden, based on the logic that the publisher had a worldwide foothold in the CD business. The first contact with Warner occurred in October 1994. However, the Safecracker team initially lacked any materials to sell Tandan on the game. Papworth, a professional illustrator, wrote that he hurriedly "made 2 pretty crude visuals with colored felt tips on an A1 sketch pad that showed a start sequence and some examples of different safe puzzles". Phersson-Broburg composed a financial roadmap for the project, while Isaksson cooperated with Papworth to construct the game's plot. The team used StrataVision 3D to create a test of Safecracker's pre-rendered graphics. Tandan enjoyed their presentation and the meeting was a success. Based on this event, the five team members founded Daydream Software in November 1994.
Nevertheless, Daydream's handshake deal with the publisher fell through. Tandan reported back that the rest of Warner Music Sweden was uninterested in pursuing computer games. Shortly thereafter, the Safecracker plan was revived during the 1994 Christmas party at Daydream's new office space. The team was called by the London-based Warner Interactive Entertainment, whose executive Laurence Scotford expressed interest in the game and soon flew to Umeå to learn more. The team then traveled to the publisher's London headquarters and pitched Safecracker directly. A writer for the city of Umeå later remarked that it was "a tricky display with cumbersome computers", but the parties reached a tentative agreement to partner on the game. Afterward, the contract was carefully tweaked at Daydream's offices. The developer signed with Warner to develop Safecracker in March 1995, as part of a three-year, multi-title deal set to run until March 1998. Funding was provided via an advance against royalties of 2.5 million kr; Daydream was set to earn 50 kr per unit sold, while Warner retained all revenues for the first 50,000 sales of the game. In retrospect, Papworth felt that Daydream was "lucky" to have joined the game industry when it did, as many of "the big record companies" were entering the computer game business with low standards as to the content they financed.
### Production
Daydream Software began development of Safecracker by creating thorough blueprints of the mansion and its rooms on paper. Objects inside the building were similarly drawn on paper ahead of the modeling stage. Nigel Papworth wrote that he "raided the local bookshops and bought up all the books [he] could find on antique furniture and Victoriana" for inspiration. The plan was to build the game's visual assets on Macintosh computers with Strata StudioPro after the concepting phase. However, Daydream soon deduced that the agreed-upon budget and deadline for Safecracker were unworkable with the developer's existing personnel and technology, according to Papworth. Hoping to speed up production, Jörgen Isaksson suggested that the team develop Safecracker's graphics on expensive Silicon Graphics workstations instead. Daydream felt that these machines and their software "offered an unbeatable combination of speed, quality in modeling and rendering". The company persuaded Warner Interactive Entertainment to pay \$50,000 for three workstations and a server, which made Daydream one of Sweden's top three buyers of Silicon Graphics computers. As a result, the graphics-production setup for Safecracker consisted of SGI Indy machines, for modeling the visuals, and a single SGI Challenge server. All of them were used for rendering.
For Safecracker's design, the team adopted a nonlinear approach because they were "allergic" to linear gameplay, Papworth later said. While researching adventure games in preparation, Papworth catalogued his dislikes with the genre and shaped Safecracker accordingly. This resulted in a scheme to make the basement and first floor fully traversable from the start, and the second floor unlockable after a relatively short time. In this way, Papworth noted, "Only the end task would be dependent on most of the clues having been already solved", which prevented Safecracker from becoming a series of roadblocks. Nonlinearity proved to be a challenge for both the designers and programmers. In an attempt to prevent the open structure from confusing players, the team included "exact instructions and advice" in the starting sequence, Papworth explained. Papworth used each room's theme to determine the design of its puzzles: for example, the music room contains a jukebox-inspired safe. He recalled creating roughly "80% of the safe designs in the first 3–4 weeks" of production; the rest were handled by other team members at later times.
Safecracker was developed primarily on Macintosh hardware with Macromedia Director and QuickTime VR. The latter software, which displays virtual-reality panoramas, had not yet been used for many games. It was one of the selling points in the Warner Interactive deal: Papworth remarked that the team hoped to "be the first developer to use [3D rotating panoramas] in a full sized game." Daydream worked initially with a beta edition, as QuickTime VR was not launched until July 1995. To create Safecracker's visuals, Daydream used its Silicon Graphics computers to build wire-frame 3D models with programs from Alias Wavefront, including PowerAnimator. Each modeler consulted a collective to-do list, from which he would "pick an object ... and write his name beside it", according to Papworth. This list cited the relevant reference pages in Papworth's books. Texture maps were drawn on Macintosh computers with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. Once a textured environment was lit, the team inserted a camera to render 12 images in a 360° radius, and the results were image-stitched into a rotatable panorama with QuickTime VR.
During production, Daydream legally had zero employees, and instead hired Sombrero staff and outside freelancers on a contractual basis. Team members assumed multiple roles. Leif Holm and the new hire Fredrik Jonsson modeled environments and furniture; Holm simultaneously managed aspects of Unix programming. Papworth, alongside his other jobs, textured environments and arranged objects inside them. Isaksson modeled and coded, but also compiled the team's visual assets into QuickTime VR and Macromedia Director, in which they were made playable and interactive. Sound effects, handled with Digital Audio Tapes and Macromedia's SoundEdit, were overseen by Erik Phersson. Papworth recalled that Daydream "purchased about 100 sound effect CDs" to assist him. Hoping to increase the soundtrack's quality by hiring professionals, Daydream contracted Swedish artists Rob 'n' Raz to create a unique musical theme for every room in Safecracker. This deal caused issues with STIM and the Nordisk Copyright Bureau regarding Rob 'n' Raz's rates, as there were no guidelines for computer software scores. Near the end of development, Daydream similarly contracted the firm Datadesign & Multimedia AB for coding assistance.
### Delays and public offering
As Safecracker's production progressed, instability at Warner Interactive Entertainment became a major concern for Daydream Software. These issues resulted in costly delays. The team finished "a basic build of Safecracker in less than a year", according to Nigel Papworth, and the game was nearing completion by the first part of 1996. However, around that time, Warner informed Daydream that it wanted the game localized in eight languages, even though the original contract had only accounted for English. This pushed the completion date back four months: the game's pre-rendered visuals contained writing in English and had to be deconstructed and re-rendered in other languages. Laurence Scotford was moved off Safecracker thanks to corporate restructuring; meanwhile, Warner Interactive Entertainment's sister branch Time Warner Interactive was sold to WMS Gaming in April 1996. Warner demonstrated Safecracker's progress at the spring European Computer Trade Show (ECTS) that month, by which time it was on track for July. Inscape, a Warner affiliate that served as the game's North American distributor, subsequently showed Safecracker at the 1996 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3).
In July 1996, Time Warner signaled plans to exit the game industry entirely, after its moves earlier in the year. Daydream learned that Warner Interactive Entertainment was being sold to GT Interactive around the time that the localizations for Safecracker were almost finished. By September 1996, talks of the buyout effort had become public at the fall ECTS. A writer for the city of Umeå noted that Daydream had "an uneasy feeling" about the deal, partly because GT Interactive was known for shooter games antithetical to Safecracker's nonviolent ethos. In addition, Papworth recalled his negative impression of a leading GT executive, whom he later dubbed "the most arrogant and unpleasant individual whom we had stumbled across in [the] industry". Before Warner's sale was completed, Daydream began to explore alternative business strategies to offer the team greater flexibility. The developer sought to increase its economic and decision-making independence compared to traditional publishing arrangements, and, for future projects, to select publishers nearer to the end of development. In particular, Jan Phersson-Broberg wrote that Daydream wanted to secure partners that were "strong at the time of launch."
Daydream struggled to find investors in Sweden. The country's game industry was small: Daydream itself was "one of Sweden's first international developers", according to a writer for the city of Umeå. It was the only development house in the city. Attempts to obtain money from banks were unsuccessful, as they were indifferent to Safecracker and did not see computer games as valuable in comparison to staple industries like lumber. Phersson-Broberg noted that Swedish venture capitalists were similarly uninterested in his business, thanks to the long-term returns on investment that Daydream promised. This problem ultimately led Daydream to attempt an initial public offering (IPO), after the brokerage firm Matteus Corporate Finance approached the developer and assessed its worth as 40 million kr. Phersson-Broberg called the plan dangerous and "probably the last thing you choose as a young company". However, he argued that self-financing Daydream's future games with money from Swedish shareholders would provide more stability, adaptability and room for growth.
In November 1996, Daydream bought Sombrero to incorporate the team into a single business. GT Interactive announced its purchase of Warner Interactive Entertainment on November 25, and Daydream released its IPO prospectus to potential investors on the 26th. According to the plan, the company was not expected to reach profitability for more than three years. Safecracker had been in development for roughly one-and-a-half years by that time, and was set to launch around the turn of 1997. Papworth's work on the game concluded in November, and he started to explore possibilities for Daydream's next title. A large amount of media attention began to surround Daydream's IPO. The team hosted regular meetings with Swedish and international investors at Stockholm's Sturehof restaurant, where they demonstrated Safecracker on large displays. In early December 1996, during the run-up to the public offering, Safecracker won the "Best Entertainment Title" and "Overall People's Choice" prizes at the Macromedia European Users Conference. Later that month, Daydream sold 2.6 million shares—roughly 45.5% of the company—to Matteus Corporate Finance at 7.65 kr each. This raised 20 million kr. Matteus's role as the subscriber was to sell these shares to the wider public, with a starting price of 8.35 kr per share.
Daydream opened on the Stockholm Stock Exchange's Stockholm Börsinformation (SBI) list on January 16, 1997. Its launch was an immediate hit: the company's share price ended the first day at 29 kr. Stocks quickly rose to 48 kr, and ultimately stabilized around 58 kr. Buyers included Berth Milton and Björn Nordstrand. The Wall Street Journal reported that Daydream became "the darling of the country's stock market"; its IPO achieved a 25-time oversubscription, Matteus's biggest success by that date. Soon after the launch, Pål Leveraas of Norway's Digi.no wrote, "With nothing but a new, self-developed computer game in the portfolio, the five [founders] have already become multi-millionaires." A writer for the city of Umeå similarly noted that "Daydream didn't even have a game on the market, let alone any revenue." Meanwhile, Safecracker began to encounter problems with GT Interactive. Daydream told investors that the new publisher was set to honor Warner's agreements on the project, and that the team viewed the situation as "very positive". However, GT Interactive delayed Safecracker past its due date of January 1997 to redesign its physical packaging—initially to late March and finally to May.
## Release and distribution
Safecracker was first released in Sweden in the middle of May 1997. Later that month and in early June, it received follow-up launches in 14 other territories across Europe and South America. Despite significant pre-release coverage, Safecracker's many delays meant that the "momentum for the game ... could not be exploited", according to the academic researchers Ola Henfridsson, Helena Holmström and Ole Hanseth. It accrued sales of 18,000 units in its first two weeks. Jan Phersson-Broberg later told investors that GT Interactive failed to support Safecracker at retail. He reported that the publisher "did not advertise, [and] did not place interviews, reviews" or other press relations material for the game, and that he received silence when Daydream Software sought an explanation. Behind the scenes, according to The Wall Street Journal, the project had "ended up on the 'let-die' pile" at GT Interactive.
Global sales of Safecracker reached 22,000 units by the start of autumn, before its launch in the Australian and North American markets. It remained unreleased in the latter region by late 1997. Nigel Papworth noted that North America was "seen as the paramount market to crack" for international developers; its buying power was equivalent to the rest of the world's combined. Reacting to these delays, Daydream publicly reported trouble with GT Interactive Europe in late 1997, and questioned the publisher's competence with and interest in Safecracker. Next Generation quoted the team's statement that it was "increasingly frustrated over the lack of marketing and the stalling of a North American release". In September 1997, Daydream initiated a plan to repurchase all rights to Safecracker, a move enabled by the developer's independent financing from shareholders. The buyout was executed on November 27. It cost roughly 1.4 million kr, compared to the 2.2 million kr that Daydream owed its publisher for the Warner Interactive advance. The money spent to purchase Safecracker counted toward repayment of the advance, which had been set to bankrupt Daydream.
In place of the GT Interactive contract, Daydream hired the talent agency Octagon Entertainment, a firm also involved with Fable and Starship Titanic. Octagon's job was to sign local distribution partners in Asia, Europe, Australia and North America for Safecracker. Phersson-Broberg told investors that partnering with regional companies, each of which understood its respective market, enabled the developer to "spread [its] eggs in more baskets". This strategy was intended to raise Safecracker's chances of becoming a hit. Daydream offloaded marketing and unit production to each distributor, which Phersson-Broberg said would allow the company to "focus solely on developing more good computer games." The developer forecast that the repayment of its advance, combined with its full ownership of the game, would hasten Safecracker's breaking even. As part of the buyback deal with GT Interactive, Daydream recalled around 7,500 unsold copies of the game's original release to storage. The developer proceeded to resell these to new distributors at prices ranging from 80 to 180 kr. Safecracker's Macintosh version launched in Sweden in December 1997.
By March 1998, Safecracker's display at the Milia festival in Cannes had secured it new distribution agreements in nine countries, including Germany, France, Australia and—with publisher PXL Computers—Canada and the United States. Daydream signed with Ahead Multimedia in June 1998 to re-release the game in Sweden, attracted by the publisher's penetration of unusual storefronts such as post offices and gas stations. In markets where GT Interactive had previously launched Safecracker, the game was sold at a lower price. Phersson-Broberg promised investors greater earnings from North America, as it was a new market for the game. Safecracker had reappeared in certain countries by the end of May 1998; revenue on each unit ranged between 30 and 130 kr at the time. Despite PXL Computers' release of the game, Papworth reported in 1999 that Safecracker had underperformed in North America. He felt that its tumultuous history had prevented it from receiving "the crack it deserve[d] at the American Market".
Safecracker's global sales totaled 65,000 units by January 1999, for revenues of 3.2 million kr. This performance amounted to a lifetime loss of 500,000 kr. Sales had risen to roughly 70,000 units the following month, at which point the game's development costs were fully capitalized. Although Safecracker had become a budget game by that time, Daydream told investors that its revenues remained "at the same level as when the product was launched and sold as a full-cost product." Conversely, the company reported later in 1999 the game's lower price point had decreased its earnings. Safecracker sold roughly 200,000 units by May 30 and 235,000 by September 30. By April 2000, European and Asian markets alone had accounted for 250,000 sales.
In spring 2000, Safecracker received a second launch in North America through DreamCatcher Interactive, the distributor for Daydream's Traitors Gate in the region. This deal offered Safecracker access to mainstream retailers such as Best Buy, Babbage's and CompUSA, at around 1,600 locations throughout the territory. It became successful for DreamCatcher. The game's worldwide sales reached approximately 275,000 copies by the end of May 2000 and 300,000 copies by mid-2001. In the 2010s, a writer for the city of Umeå retrospectively judged Safecracker a success. The author remarked that the game ultimately "sold 650,000 copies, not least via the department store chain Walmart", where it was stocked as a budget title.
## Reception
In October 1997, Safecracker won the "People's Choice" prize among entertainment products at the Macromedia International User Conference (UCON). This followed the game's wins, before its launch, at the Macromedia European User Awards.
Reviewing the game's PXL Computers edition, Joseph Novicki of PC Gamer US and Joel Strauch of PC Games offered conflicting opinions. Novicki praised the "clarity of purpose" in Safecracker's narrow focus on puzzle-solving, compared to Myst-inspired titles that combine puzzles with plot. By contrast, Strauch considered the game's limited story and premise to be major flaws. The lack of interaction beyond safecracking was likewise cited as a positive and a negative, respectively, by the two writers. While Novicki summarized Safecracker as "good puzzle game for gamers of all skill levels", despite problems with its inventory system, Strauch called the puzzles a mixed bag and ultimately panned the game.
The reviewer for PC PowerPlay, David Wildgoose, continued Strauch's complaints about the "stifling and pointless basic premise" in Safecracker. Charlie Brooker of PC Zone concurred: he dismissed the title as a dull, limited experience, and "the sort of thing that [only] impresses computer game virgins and Macintosh owners". He also echoed Strauch's criticism of the QuickTime VR implementation, which both writers found unimpressive as a computer game engine. Brooker's only praise went to the soundtrack, which he considered "alright". Wildgoose joined Brooker in calling Safecracker's visuals technically impressive but nevertheless drab and boring, and took a harder line than Strauch against the "witless, haphazard" puzzles. Writing for IGN, Scott Steinberg was more positive on the puzzles, of which he noted that "a rather large quantity ... are nothing short of ingenious". He also offered light praise to the visuals, in contrast to Brooker and Wildgoose. Despite these concessions, Steinberg ultimately declared Safecracker prohibitively difficult and confusing, and he sharply criticized its "techno crud" score.
The adventure game websites Just Adventure and Adventure Gamers were more approving of Safecracker. Ray Ivey of the latter publication called the puzzle design "simply a delight", and felt that the game was addictive. Just Adventure's Randy Sluganski similarly lauded the puzzles. Although he found them extremely difficult, he wrote that "you actually feel a sense of accomplishment and pride" after solving them. Sluganski also enjoyed the "top-notch" visuals. While he and Ivey both declared Safecracker's plot an afterthought, neither writer felt that its simplicity detracted from the game. Both compared the proceedings to Jewels of the Oracle, which Sluganski believed would limit its appeal, but he nonetheless strongly recommended Safecracker to puzzle devotees. Ivey offered a more general recommendation: to him, Safecracker was a "breezy good time, not to be missed."
## Legacy
With Safecracker as its first release, Daydream Software became an important force in Swedish games. A writer for the city of Umeå later remarked that Daydream "laid the foundation for the lucrative gaming industry in northern Sweden", which later included Coldwood Interactive and Nifflas Games in Umeå itself. The team followed Safecracker with Traitors Gate (1999) and the online game Clusterball (2000). However, Daydream was hounded by problems related to its public launch. The Umeån writer noted that shareholders did not understand the game industry or "the time it takes to develop a large, extensive computer game", and that they demanded faster returns than the prospectus had promised. The Wall Street Journal reported that stocks had crashed at Daydream by early 1998. In retrospect, Nigel Papworth called the company's hit IPO "bad for us [in the end]. Here we were, blue-eyed, no proper management, no board." Jan Phersson-Broberg likewise believed that the IPO was premature. After a series of financial and management problems related to its public status, the developer was shuttered in 2003.
In April 2006, plans for another Safecracker installment were revealed by publisher DreamCatcher Interactive. It was developed by Kheops Studio, previously known for Return to Mysterious Island. At the time of the announcement, Adventure Gamers reported that the game was to be a spiritual sequel rather than a direct follow-up, and that it would feature 35 safe puzzles. According to Kheops' Benoît Hozjan, DreamCatcher first contacted his team about developing a new Safecracker in early 2006, thanks to the original's status as a hit for the publisher. Kheops responded with a pitch for the game and suggested a story based on locating a will. Hozjan noted that the team had difficulty with the title's "fully puzzle-oriented" design, as its earlier projects had emphasized plot. The resultant game, entitled Safecracker: The Ultimate Puzzle Adventure, follows a safecracking professional who seeks the lost will of Duncan W. Adams, a wealthy collector of safes with unusual designs. After going gold in July 2006, the title reached store shelves in August. A port for the Wii was released in December 2008. |
5,314,506 | No Man Knows My History | 1,170,032,191 | 1945 book by Fawn M. Brodie | [
"1945 in Christianity",
"1945 non-fiction books",
"Alfred A. Knopf books",
"American biographies",
"Books about Joseph Smith",
"Books critical of Mormonism",
"English-language books",
"History books about the Latter Day Saint movement",
"Mormonism-related controversies"
]
| No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith is a 1945 book by Fawn M. Brodie that was one of the first significant non-hagiographic biographies of Joseph Smith, the progenitor of the Latter Day Saint movement. No Man Knows My History was influential in the development of Mormon history as a scholarly field. However, scholars have since criticized the book for its methodological deficiencies, factual errors, and overt hostility to Smith.
No Man Knows My History has never been out of print, and 60 years after its first publication, its publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, continues to sell about a thousand copies annually. For a revised edition released in 1971, Brodie added a supplement incorporating psychohistorical commentary. In 1995, Utah State University (USU) marked the 50th anniversary of the book's first publication by hosting a symposium to re-examine the book, its author, and her methods, and in 1996 USU published the symposium papers as a book of essays.
## Background
Reared in Utah in a respected, if impoverished, family of Latter-day Saints, Brodie drifted away from religion during her graduate studies in literature at the University of Chicago. Having found temporary employment at the Harper Library, Brodie began researching the origins of Mormonism as a biographical study of Joseph Smith. The writing of the biography was slowed by the birth of her first child and by three rapid moves to follow her husband's career, but in 1943, Brodie entered a 300-page draft of her book in a contest for the Alfred A. Knopf literary fellowship; and in May, the publisher judged her application to be the best of the 44 entries.
Other scholars of Mormonism enlarged and critiqued Brodie's research, most notably Dale Morgan, who became a lifelong friend, mentor, and sounding board. Brodie finally completed her biography of Smith in 1944, and Knopf published it in 1945, when Brodie was 30 years old.
## Perspective on Smith
In No Man Knows My History, Brodie presented the young Smith as a good-natured, lazy, extroverted, and unsuccessful treasure seeker, who, in an attempt to improve his family's fortunes, first developed the notion of golden plates and then the concept of a religious novel, the Book of Mormon. This book, she asserts, was based in part on an earlier work, View of the Hebrews, by a contemporary clergyman, Ethan Smith. While previous "naturalistic approaches to Joseph's visions had explained them through psychological analysis", regarding Smith as honest but deluded, Brodie instead interpreted him as having been deliberately deceptive. In No Man Knows My History, Brodie depicts Smith as having been a deliberate impostor, who at some point, in nearly untraceable steps, became convinced that he was indeed a prophet—though without ever escaping "the memory of the conscious artifice" that created the Book of Mormon. Jan Shipps, a preeminent non-LDS scholar of Mormonism who rejects this theory, nevertheless called No Man Knows My History a "beautifully written biography ... the work of a mature scholar [that] represented the first genuine effort to come to grips with the contradictory evidence about Smith's early life."
Although Brodie's analysis of Smith has sometimes been termed psychobiography or psychohistory, she did not gain a reputation as a psychohistorian until later in life, and she denied the presence of psychohistory in No Man Knows My History "except by inadvertence." In 1971, Brodie added a supplement to the book that engaged more directly—though still somewhat sparingly—in psychoanalysis, revising her earlier portrayal of Smith from a deliberate charlatan to a conflicted person torn by unconscious internal dissonance in a "personality disorder" that nevertheless defied clinical models.
## Reception
### Prominence
Upon its publication, Dale Morgan called Brodie's first book the "finest job of scholarship yet done in Mormon history and perhaps the outstanding biography in several years—a book distinguished in the range and originality of its research, the informed and searching objectivity of its viewpoint, the richness and suppleness of its prose, and its narrative power." For decades afterward, No Man Knows My History enjoyed broad acceptance. In 1971, Latter-day Saint historian Marvin S. Hill observed that at the time, "most professional American historians" regarded the book "as the standard work on the life of Joseph Smith." By 1995, although four other book-length studies of Joseph Smith had been produced, none achieved as much prominence as No Man Knows My History.
In 1995, Utah State University sponsored a symposium to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the publication of No Man Knows My History during which scholars reflected on the book's contributions to Mormon studies.
In his 2005 biography of Smith titled Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, Richard Bushman noted that at that time Brodie's "biography was acknowledged by non-Mormon scholars as the premier study of Joseph Smith," and he called Brodie "the most eminent of Joseph Smith's unbelieving biographers." In 2007, Bushman observed Knopf still sold about a thousand copies of No Man Knows My History annually and noted Brodie had "shaped the view of the Prophet for half a century. Nothing we have written has challenged her domination. I had hoped my book would displace hers, but at best it will only be a contender in the ring, whereas before she reigned unchallenged." However, historian Laurie Maffly-Kipp, who is not Mormon, believed the influence of No Man Knows My History was waning, as while it had been "the 'go to' book on Smith's life" for "most historians", Rough Stone Rolling displaced it as a "definitive account" of Smith.
### Criticism
Upon its 1945 release, one of the book's earliest critics was Vardis Fisher, a prolific novelist and former Latter-day Saint. In his review for the New York Times, Fisher approved of Brodie's "painstaking" work and praised her "excellent analysis of the early appeal of Mormonism," but he was unconvinced of Brodie's theory that Smith was a self-interested fraud and accused her of pursuing the idea overzealously, writing, "she has a thesis, and she rides it hard." Fisher also criticized Brodie's willingness to "give the content of a mind or to explain motives which at best can only be surmised," making No Man Knows My History "almost more a novel than a biography."
Although scholars of American history for decades considered No Man Knows My History the quintessential biography of Joseph Smith, historians of Mormonism were more critical as early as 1945. The book's portrayal of Smith as irreligious was at odds with the spiritual nature of Smith's personal writings, public discourse, and scriptural production, including the Book of Mormon. D. Michael Quinn assessed No Man Knows My History as hostile to its subject, evincing "unrelenting distaste for Joseph Smith" throughout. Additionally, No Man Knows My History claimed people's interest in and conversion to Mormonism was the result of Smith's charisma and a conjectured "unconscious but positive talent at hypnosis." However, attributing conversions to hypnosis and charisma neglects the broader religious context of nineteenth-century America and fails to account for Mormons who converted or stayed committed in Smith's absence. Historian Marvin S. Hill hypothesized that "general cynicism toward religion among many intellectuals" in the 1940s may have prompted Brodie's characterization of Smith.
Brodie's handling of primary sources also drew criticism. For example, No Man Knows My History references Smith's official history as if it is a primary source written or dictated by him, but historians discovered that most of Smith's official history was actually adapted from other sources, such as the diaries of George A. Smith and Willard Richards, and only rendered by scribes as if it were in Smith's first-person voice.
Scholars also echoed Fisher's critique of No Man Knows My History's reliance on unsourced and speculative depictions of historical figures' inner thoughts. Although Brodie's literary style invited readers to identify with people portrayed in the book, critics said it relied on guesswork and sometimes outright invention of what someone may have been thinking or feeling. According to psychologist Charles Cohen, this approach "undercut the history." Brodie's use of psychoanalysis in her 1971 supplement was later considered incomplete and inconsistent with evidence of Smith's positive upbringing and healthy relationships with his parents.
In No Man Knows My History, Brodie hypothesized that Smith had fathered five children through polygamous relationships: Oliver Buell, Orson Washington Hyde, Frank Henry Hyde, John Reed Hancock, and Moroni Pratt. In the 2000s, the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, using Y-DNA testing, excluded Smith as the father of Buell, Hancock, and Pratt. Frank Henry Hyde's recorded date of birth precludes Smith's paternity, and whether or not Smith fathered Orson Washington Hyde has neither been proved nor disproved.
At a 1995 USU symposium, scholars praised Brodie's accomplishments but generally agreed that No Man Knows My History made questionable interpretations, misused evidence, and had factual errors. In 2019, Theological Librarianship reported that "Contemporary scholars have found multiple flaws in Brodie’s methodology and conclusions, so her work has fallen out of fashion considerably".
### Influence
The significance and ground-breaking nature of Brodie's work is generally acknowledged within Mormon studies, and No Man Knows My History influenced the field in several lasting ways. The book "completely demolished", in the words of Jan Shipps, the hypothesis that the Book of Mormon was based on a novel manuscript written by Solomon Spaulding. Brodie also rejected earlier academic hypotheses that Smith was epileptic or paranoid and instead depicted Smith as rational and thoughtful. The interpretation of Smith as possessing all his faculties spread and persisted in scholarly studies of Mormonism. Also significantly, No Man Knows My History raised awareness of Smith's and Mormons' participation in politics and the resultant political dimension of both Mormon and anti-Mormon activities. In 2019, Theological Librarianship described the book's historiographical influence by stating that its "impact on the field cannot be overstated".
No Man Knows My History also contributed to the development of a more open-minded approach to church history among Mormon scholars. Historian Marvin S. Hill urged future scholars to avoid extremes in studies of Joseph Smith and instead find a middle ground between hagiography and cynicism. Roger D. Launius considered the book a turning point from "old" to "new" Mormon history, shifting the field away from polemical supports for or attacks on faith and toward objectively understanding events in a search for truth.
In 1971, Hill wrote:
> [No Man Knows My History] has had tremendous influence upon informed Mormon thinking, as shown by the fact that whole issues of B.Y.U. Studies and Dialogue have been devoted to considering questions on the life of the Mormon prophet raised by Brodie. There is evidence that her book has had strong negative impact on popular Mormon thought as well, since to this day in certain circles in Utah to acknowledge that one has "read Fawn Brodie" is to create doubts as to one's loyalty to the Church.
Other scholars in the history of Mormonism have expressed concern over Brodie's long-lasting influence as unhealthy for the field of Mormon studies. In 1995, Roger D. Launius wrote, "The degree to which Mormon historiography has been shaped by the long shadow of Fawn Brodie since 1945 is both disturbing and unnecessary," and he worried that scholars' preoccupation with either disproving or supporting No Man Knows My History "stunt[ed]" the field by narrowing its focus to topics explored in the book. In 2005, Cohen echoed this concern.
In the years since No Man Knows My History, various historians of Mormonism have posited a range of interpretations of Smith, generally affirming Smith's religiousness. In 1998, non-Mormon Dan Vogel agreed with Brodie that Smith deceived others but posited him as a "pious deceiver" who lied in order to impel people toward repentance and faith in God. In his 2005 book Rough Stone Rolling, historian Richard Bushman, a Mormon, sought to challenge the popularity of No Man Knows My History by studying Smith's cultural context and sympathetically understanding him as an accomplished but contradictory person. In 2014, religious studies scholar Ann Taves, who is not Mormon, proposed a naturalistic model of Smith that nevertheless rejected the idea of fraudulence, instead interpreting Smith as a "skilled perceiver" who, with the assistance of other believers, manifested a new religious reality they mutually and sincerely believed in. In 2020, William L. Davis similarly posed a naturalistic model while still interpreting Smith as sincerely religious without deception.
## Mormon responses
### The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Although No Man Knows My History questioned many common Mormon beliefs and portrayals of Joseph Smith, the work was not immediately condemned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), even as the book went into a second printing. In 1946, the Improvement Era, an official periodical of the church, claimed that many of the book's citations arose from doubtful sources and that the biography was "of no interest to Latter-day Saints who have correct knowledge of the history of Joseph Smith." The Church News section of the Deseret News provided a lengthy critique that acknowledged the biography's "fine literary style" but denounced it as "a composite of all anti-Mormon books that have gone before." BYU professor Hugh Nibley wrote a scathing 62-page pamphlet entitled No, Ma'am, That's Not History, asserting that Brodie had cited sources supportive only of her conclusions while conveniently ignoring others. Brodie considered Nibley's pamphlet to be "a well-written, clever piece of Mormon propaganda" but dismissed it as "a flippant and shallow piece." The church formally excommunicated Brodie in June 1946 for apostasy, citing her publication of views "contrary to the beliefs, doctrines, and teachings of the Church."
### Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
Shortly after the release of No Man Knows My History, leaders of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS; now called Community of Christ) warned Brodie they would sue her, though the Standard-Examiner describes these as having been "empty threats." Israel A. Smith, president of the RLDS Church at the time, claimed that Brodie's authorship of No Man Knows as a "renegade Mormon, born into a Mormon family" was evidence the LDS Church was "an evil bird that fouls its own nest." In 1966, RLDS scholar and member Robert B. Flanders disapproved of the book's uncritical use of 19th-century anti-Mormon literature and criticized Brodie's "zeal to create the grand and ultimate expose of Mormonism." Nevertheless, Flanders also recognized Brodie's "painstaking" research and considered the book "transitional" in the field shift from "old" to "new" Mormon history because it possessed elements of both.
## See also
- History of Joseph Smith by His Mother
- Joseph Smith–History
- Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling
- Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet
- Newell G. Bringhurst |
32,027,500 | A Glorious Way to Die | 1,144,280,264 | 1981 military history book by Russell Spurr | [
"1981 non-fiction books",
"20th-century history books",
"American history books",
"Books about military history",
"History books about World War II"
]
| A Glorious Way to Die: The Kamikaze Mission of the Battleship Yamato, April 1945 is a 1981 military history book by Russell Spurr about the suicide mission of the Japanese battleship Yamato against the American Pacific Fleet during the Battle of Okinawa near the end of World War II. Yamato was the largest battleship in the world, and Japan sacrificed her in a final, desperate attempt to halt the Allied advance on the Japanese archipelago. The book was published in 1981 in the United States by Newmarket Press, and in the United Kingdom by Sidgwick & Jackson.
Spurr, a British journalist and editor of the Hong Kong-based Far Eastern Economic Review, interviewed Japanese and Americans involved with Yamato's last mission, and drew on Japanese naval documents and records to write the book. He tells the story from both the Japanese and American points of view.
A Glorious Way to Die was generally well received by critics and historians. American author and journalist Charles Kaiser wrote in The New York Times that the book's strength is "its ability to re-create the fear the Japanese engendered with their desperation tactics", which resulted in American perception that they were all prepared to fight to the death. A reviewer in the Canadian journal Pacific Affairs commended Spurr's "well-balanced treatment of historical evidence and his workmanship in reconstructing the tragic event", and said that the book "deserves wide reading".
## Background
During World War II Russell Spurr was a lieutenant in the Royal Indian Navy fighting the Japanese in Burma. After the war, in February 1946, Spurr was part of the Commonwealth occupation force stationed in the Japanese naval base of Kure in southern Japan. There he noticed a huge drydock standing empty, and after querying what it had been used for, he learnt that it was where Yamato had been built. Spurr had been isolated in Burma for several years and had never heard of Yamato, but he became interested in her story and started collecting information about the battleship.
After returning to England, Spurr worked as a journalist. In 1952 The London Daily Express sent him to Japan as its China and Far East correspondent, but he found that he had little time to resume his pursuit of information on the fate of Yamato. In the mid-1970s Spurr returned to the Far East again, this time as a writer for the Far Eastern Economic Review. He began conducting interviews about Yamato with former Japanese naval commanders and survivors of the battleship's last mission. He also gained access to Japanese naval documents and records seized by the United States, plus US interrogation transcripts. For the American side of the story, he interviewed US naval commanders and personnel involved in the sinking of Yamato. Satisfied with what he had, Spurr began writing the book in the late 1970s, over 30 years after he first found out about the battleship.
In his introduction to the book, Spurr said that he made no attempt to "gloss over the facts, unpalatable though they may be to either side." He added, "The result, I trust, presents more than the story of a ship or a sortie, but offers some insight into the agonizing dilemma of a misguided, courageous people who persisted in continuing a hopeless war."
## Synopsis
In A Glorious Way to Die, Russell Spurr recounts the final mission of Japanese battleship Yamato. He describes the events that led to the decision by the Japanese at Combined Fleet headquarters to send Yamato, the pride of the Imperial Japanese Navy, on a suicide mission against the American Pacific Fleet during the Battle of Okinawa near the end of World War II. Spurr tells the story of Yamato's last mission from both the Japanese and the American point of view, dramatised in a third-person narrative.
Construction of Yamato began in secrecy at the Kure naval base in 1937. She was completed soon after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, but had already been rendered obsolete by the Japanese themselves after their successful carrier-based attacks at Pearl Harbor and elsewhere. Yamato, the largest battleship in the world, with nine 18.1-inch guns with a range of over 22 miles, became, in the words of a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reviewer, a "70,000-ton white elephant the Japanese did not quite know what to do with".
In March 1945, after the Americans had invaded Okinawa and all but eliminated the Japanese Navy, a final kamikaze mission called Operation Ten-Go (Operation Heaven One) was conceived by Japanese commanders at Combined Fleet to repulse the Allied advance on the Japanese archipelago. The plan was to send Yamato with eight support destroyers and a cruiser to Okinawa. Yamato would only be given enough fuel to reach Okinawa, and would have no air cover as all available airplanes would be used for a series of kamikaze attacks on US aircraft carriers. At Okinawa Yamato and her support craft would beach themselves and assist the island defenders. Without air cover there was little chance of Yamato reaching her destination, but, according to American author and journalist Charles Kaiser, the Japanese high command were "perfectly prepared to sacrifice the remnants of [their] fleet to avoid the stigma of surrender".
Not all Japanese naval officers agreed with Combined Fleet's decision to sacrifice Yamato, and while they had no choice but to comply, some committed one act of defiance by secretly supplying the battleship and the rest of her fleet with enough fuel to return home. Yamato set sail for Okinawa from the Kure naval base on March 29, 1945. On April 7, 1945, the Americans intercepted the Japanese fleet, 200 miles from Okinawa. Using 280 bombers and torpedo planes in three waves of attacks from nine aircraft carriers, they sank the battleship and five of her support ships within three hours. After Yamato went down, the Americans machine-gunned survivors in the water. Spurr explains the reason for their hatred of the Japanese:
> The Americans felt no compunction about slaughtering their helpless foes. They had always fought a blatantly racial war in the Pacific – and so had the Japanese. Headline-seeking brass hats openly declared that killing Japs was no worse than killing lice. Reports of Japan's atrocities against war prisoners and even the unnatural fanaticism of the Kamikaze combined to convince the Americans that these were inhuman freaks, deserving little mercy. The apogee of brutalization was to be reached, four months later, at Hiroshima.
After the US planes left the area, the remaining Japanese support ships picked up what survivors they could from the water and returned to Kure. According to Spurr, of Yamato's total crew of 3332, only 269 survived. The Americans lost 12 men in their attack on the Japanese fleet.
## Reception
Roger Jaynes, writing in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel described A Glorious Way to Die as "a dramatic absorbing account of Yamato's last mission". His only complaint was that the book takes too long to "get into", and that the first 90 pages, most of which deal with background information, should have been heavily condensed. But once "Yamato finally leaves port", Jaynes said the book is "a chilling account of how more than 3,000 Japanese sailors obediently sailed to their deaths, knowing they had no air cover and that the American planes were waiting".
In a review of the book in The New York Times, Richard F. Shepard called it a "compelling story". He said that Spurr tells this "naval saga", which had degenerated into a "racial conflict", from the point of view of the people involved, "people who had little time for moralizing or preachments, anything but getting on with the killing". American author and journalist Charles Kaiser, also writing in The New York Times, said that the book's strength is "its ability to re-create the fear the Japanese engendered with their desperation tactics" and the resulting American perception that they were all prepared to fight to the death. Kaiser added that younger readers may have a better understanding from this book of what led to US President Truman's decision to use the atomic bomb against Japan, "even if they ... question the morality of that decision".
A reviewer at the Internet Bookwatch said the book is not just "a dry historical record", but is "aptly presented", well researched and "a worthy addition to World War II history shelves". Kirkus Reviews called the book "A gripping recreation of the last ten days in the life of HIJMS Yamato". It said that Spurr gives the battleship, which "live[s] on as a legend in Japan", "appropriately big-picture treatment", and explains Japan's "predilection for self-immolation" and its kamikaze philosophy. Kearney Smith, recounting his brother's experiences on a US Landing Craft Support ship in the Battle of Okinawa in Aboard LCS 11 in World War II: A Memoir by Lawrence B. Smith, also said that Spurr's book "give[s] lots of insight into the matter of kamikaze attacks".
In a review in the Canadian journal Pacific Affairs, Kyozo Sato noted that the book highlights the Imperial Navy's "fatal lack of foresight" in recognizing the role air support and aircraft carriers would play in naval warfare, and persisted with the construction of Yamato. It also investigates "the politics and mentality of the Japanese leadership and the morale and spirit of the fighting men and the nation". He said that Spurr's hope that his book will help explain why Japan refused to surrender, "is a modest aspiration for his well-balanced treatment of historical evidence and his workmanship in reconstructing the tragic event". Sato's opinion of the book was that it "deserves wide reading".
In 1981, A Glorious Way to Die was selected by the Military Book Club, and was a Literary Guild alternate selection.
## See also
- Pacific War
- List of Pacific War campaigns
- Timeline WWII - Pacific Theater
## Works citing this book |
999,968 | The Wrecking Crew (music) | 1,169,378,654 | Loose collective of session musicians based in Los Angeles | [
"1960s establishments in California",
"1970s disestablishments in California",
"American session musicians",
"Music of Los Angeles",
"Musical backing groups",
"Musical collectives",
"Musical groups disestablished in the 1970s",
"Musical groups established in the 1960s",
"The Wrecking Crew (music) members"
]
| The Wrecking Crew was a loose collective of Los Angeles–based session musicians whose services were employed for a great number of studio recordings in the 1960s and 1970s, including hundreds of top 40 hits. The musicians were not publicly recognized in their era, but were viewed with reverence by industry insiders. They are now considered one of the most successful and prolific session recording units in music history.
Most of the players associated with the Wrecking Crew had formal backgrounds in jazz or classical music. The group had no official name in its active years, and it remains a subject of contention whether or not they were referred to as "the Wrecking Crew" at the time. Drummer Hal Blaine popularized the name in his 1990 memoir, attributing it to older musicians who felt that the group's embrace of rock and roll was going to "wreck" the music industry. Some of Blaine's colleagues corroborated his account, while guitarist/bassist Carol Kaye contended that they were called "the Clique". Another unofficial name was "the First Call Gang", sometimes used in the 1950s for an early version of the group headed by bassist Ray Pohlman which featured some of the same musicians.
The unit coalesced in the early 1960s as the de facto house band for Phil Spector and helped realize his Wall of Sound production style. They subsequently became the most requested session musicians in Los Angeles, playing behind many popular recording artists including Jan and Dean, Sonny & Cher, the Mamas and the Papas, the 5th Dimension, Frank Sinatra, and Nancy Sinatra. The musicians were sometimes used as "ghost players" on recordings credited to rock groups, such as the Byrds' debut rendition of Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" (1965), the first two albums by the Monkees, and the Beach Boys' 1966 album Pet Sounds.
The Wrecking Crew's contributions to so many hit recordings went largely unnoticed until the publication of Blaine's memoir and the attention that followed. Keyboardist Leon Russell and guitarist Glen Campbell were members who became popular solo acts, while Blaine is reputed to have played on more than 140 top-ten hits, including approximately 40 number-one hits. Other musicians who formed the unit's ranks were drummer Earl Palmer, saxophonist Steve Douglas, guitarist Tommy Tedesco, and keyboardist Larry Knechtel, who became a member of Bread. Blaine and Palmer were among the inaugural "sidemen" inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000, and the entire Wrecking Crew was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in 2007. In 2008, they were the subject of the documentary The Wrecking Crew.
## Historical context
### Recording practices in the 1960s
In the era when the Wrecking Crew was in demand, session players were usually active in local recording scenes concentrated in cities such as New York City, Nashville, Memphis and Detroit, as well as Los Angeles, the Wrecking Crew's base of operations, and smaller specialist recording locations such as Muscle Shoals. Each local scene had its circle of "A-list" session musicians, such as The Nashville A-Team that played on numerous country and rock hits of the era, the two groups of musicians in Memphis, the Memphis Boys and the musicians who backed Stax/Volt recordings, and the Funk Brothers in Detroit, who played on many Motown recordings.
At the time, multi-tracking equipment, though common, was less elaborate, and instrumental backing tracks were often recorded "hot" with an ensemble playing live in the studio. Musicians had to be available "on call" when producers needed a part to fill a last-minute time slot. Los Angeles was then considered the top recording destination in the United States—consequently studios were constantly booked around the clock, and session time was highly sought after and expensive. Songs had to be recorded quickly in the fewest possible takes. In this environment, Los Angeles producers and record executives had little patience for needless expense or wasted time and depended on the service of reliable standby musicians who could be counted on to record in a variety of styles with minimal practice or takes, and deliver hits on short order.
### Musical backgrounds
The Wrecking Crew were the "go to" session musicians in Los Angeles during this era. Its members were musically versatile but typically had formal backgrounds in jazz or classical music, and were exceptional at sight reading. The talent of this group of "first call" players was used in almost every style of recording, including television theme songs, film scores, advertising jingles and many genres of American popular music from the Monkees to Bing Crosby. Several of the Los Angeles recording studios in which the Wrecking Crew regularly appeared were Gold Star Studios, United Western Recorders built by Bill Putnam, Capitol Records' studios located at their tower on Vine Street, Columbia Records' Los Angeles complex, and the RCA recording facility, which was located on Sunset Boulevard near Wallichs Music City, a music store that often supplied instruments for L.A. session players. Like all session musicians who worked in Los Angeles, the Wrecking Crew's members belonged to the American Federation of Musicians (AFM), Local 47, which represented their interests in areas such as pay scale and enforcement of regulations.
### Name
The name "Wrecking Crew" was popularized by drummer and member Hal Blaine in his 1990 memoir, Hal Blaine and the Wrecking Crew. Though the unit did not have an official moniker during their years of activity, Blaine has stated that the term was sometimes used disparagingly in the early 1960s by members of the industry's old guard of "coat and tie" session players, who felt that, with their penchant for wearing "t-shirts and jeans" to sessions and their embrace of rock and roll, they were going to "wreck" the music industry. According to biographer Kent Hartman, "Some of the studio musicians I interviewed swear they heard it applied to themselves as early as 1963; others say it was later. One says it was never used at all." Blaine's memoirs, and the attention that followed, cast new light on the Wrecking Crew's role in many famous recordings.
Guitarist and bassist Carol Kaye has disputed Blaine's account of the name and stated, "We were never known as that. Sometimes we were called 'the Clique', but [the Wrecking Crew is] a Hal Blaine invented name for his own self-promotion in 1990 ..." Songfacts stated: "We couldn't find any references to 'The Wrecking Crew' in any publications from the era." In response to Kaye's contention, Blaine denied that anyone had ever heard the name "The Clique."
## Formation of unit: 1957–1962
The beginnings of the group can be traced to session musicians of the late 1950s including Irv Cottler, Earl Palmer, Howard Roberts, Hal Blaine and a group headed by bassist and guitarist Ray Pohlman, sometimes referred to as the "First Call Gang." Earl Palmer was originally from New Orleans and had recorded with many of the Crescent City's rhythm and blues musicians, such as Fats Domino. He moved to Los Angeles in 1957, and in the 1960s played on hit records by artists such as Ike and Tina Turner, Glen Campbell, Jan and Dean, The Righteous Brothers, The Beach Boys, The Ronettes, The Everly Brothers, and Sonny & Cher. Pohlman was one of the first session musicians in Los Angeles to use an electric bass in recordings, and by the early 1960s became highly sought after in rock recordings, playing on many records by Jan and Dean and the Beach Boys.
In 1962, Phil Spector started a new label, Philles Records, and recorded the song "He's a Rebel", which would be credited to The Crystals. He enlisted the aid of his high-school friend, saxophonist Steve Douglas, who was also working as a contractor in charge of recruiting musicians for recording sessions. Douglas helped him corral the backing unit, which included Pohlman, guitarists Roberts and Tommy Tedesco, pianist Al De Lory, upright bassist Jimmy Bond, and Hal Blaine on drums. They booked Studio A at Gold Star Studios, known for its deeply reverberant echo chambers, which became the preferred recording facility for Spector. The unit became an essential component in developing his "Wall of Sound" style, starting with "He's a Rebel" and a series of several more hits by The Crystals ("Da Doo Ron Ron" and "Then He Kissed Me") and other girl groups, such as The Ronettes ("Be My Baby" and "Baby, I Love You"). It was on these recordings that the Wrecking Crew emerged in their most recognizable form and became the most coveted session players in Los Angeles's thriving recording scene. With them, Spector went on to produce other records by The Righteous Brothers ("You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'", "Ebb Tide", and "Unchained Melody") and Ike and Tina Turner ("River Deep – Mountain High").
## Peak years: 1963–1971
After Spector, the Wrecking Crew worked with dozens of producers, such as Brian Wilson, Terry Melcher, Lou Adler, Bones Howe, Jimmy Bowen, and Mike Post. As side players, they were teamed with artists as diverse as Jan & Dean, Bobby Vee, Nancy Sinatra, the Grass Roots, Simon & Garfunkel, Glen Campbell, the Partridge Family, David Cassidy (in his solo work), the Carpenters, John Denver and Nat King Cole. During this heady period the unit worked long hours—15-hour days were not unusual—they were paid exceedingly well. Carol Kaye commented, "I was making more money than the President."
Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys produced and co-wrote many of his band's most famous tracks and used the Wrecking Crew's talents extensively in the mid-1960s, including on songs such as "Help Me, Rhonda", "California Girls", and "Good Vibrations" as well as the albums Pet Sounds and Smile. Some reports falsely claim that the Wrecking Crew replaced the Beach Boys on record after their first few hits; however, this misconception derived from incomplete written documentation of the recording sessions. After audio documentation surfaced, it was revealed that the Beach Boys' first ten albums leading up to Pet Sounds and Smile were, by and large, self-contained efforts, and the band members played instruments on most of their singles and key album tracks. It was not until the 1965 album The Beach Boys Today! that Wrecking Crew musicians began to figure heavily on the band's studio recordings, an arrangement that lasted until 1967.
Members of the Wrecking Crew served as "ghost players" on the first single by the Byrds, "Mr. Tambourine Man", because Columbia Records—namely, producer Terry Melcher—did not feel that the group (except for Roger McGuinn, who played guitar on the single) were seasoned enough to deliver the kind of perfect take needed, particularly in light of the limited time and budget allocated to the newly signed and unproven group—on a label that was only just beginning to embrace rock.
Lou Adler was one of Los Angeles' top music executives and produced records by acts such as Jan and Dean and The Mamas & the Papas, which were often backed by the Wrecking Crew, as on "California Dreamin'" and "Monday, Monday." Bones Howe had worked as an engineer under Adler and used the Wrecking Crew when he produced hits by the Association (including "Windy", "Everything That Touches You", and "Never My Love") and the 5th Dimension (including "Up, Up and Away", "Stoned Soul Picnic", and "Aquarius").
Sonny and Cher recorded several Wrecking Crew-backed hits including "I Got You Babe" and "The Beat Goes On", which were produced by Sonny Bono, who had previously worked as Phil Spector's aide. Many of Cher's solo records in the 1960s and early 1970s featured the backing of the Wrecking Crew, such as "Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves" produced by Snuff Garrett in 1971. Jimmy Bowen produced Frank Sinatra's "Strangers in the Night" in 1966 and Mike Post produced Mason Williams' 1968 hit "Classical Gas", both of which were backed by members of the Wrecking Crew.
Wrecking Crew members backed the Everly Brothers on their "The Hit Sound of the Everly Brothers" (1967) and "The Everly Brothers Sing" (1968) albums.
Rick Nelson used many Wrecking Crew members in various combinations, mostly during the mid-1960s, including Earl Palmer, Joe Osborn, James Burton, Tommy Tedesco, Howard Roberts, Billy Strange, Al Casey, Dennis Budimir, Glen Campbell, Don Randi, Mike Melvoin, Ray Pohlman, Chuck Berghofer, Victor Feldman, Frank Capp, and Jim Gordon.
## Musicians
### Bass, drums, and percussion
Carol Kaye provided an exception to the predominantly male world of Los Angeles session work in the 1960s. Originally a guitarist, she began doing session work in Los Angeles in the late 1950s, playing behind Ritchie Valens on "La Bamba" and in the 1960s becoming a regular contributor on Phil Spector's recordings as well as on Beach Boys songs, such as "Help Me, Rhonda" and their subsequent Pet Sounds and Smile LPs. Ray Pohlman, who had assumed an early leadership position in the Wrecking Crew, became the musical director for the Shindig! TV show in 1965, resulting in reduced studio work from that point on. After Pohlman's move to television, Kaye increasingly concentrated on the electric bass, becoming one of the few female "first call" players on the L.A. scene. She supplied the signature bass line in Sonny and Cher's "The Beat Goes On" released in 1967. Kaye was often teamed with Pohlman on pop music sessions (e.g. those for the Beach Boys) since it was a common practice at that time to reinforce the sound by "doubling" certain instruments like the bass, and producers and arrangers often recorded the bass parts with an acoustic and an electric bass playing together. Kaye would become known as one of the most prolific and widely heard bass guitarists, playing on an estimated 10,000 recordings in a career spanning more than 50 years.
Joe Osborn played bass on numerous Wrecking Crew-backed songs, such as Glen Campbell's "By the Time I Get to Phoenix", The Mamas & the Papas' "California Dreamin'", Richard Harris' "MacArthur Park", and the 5th Dimension's "Up, Up and Away." Other notable electric bassists who played with the Wrecking Crew were Bill Pitman, Max Bennett, Red Callender, Chuck Rainey, and Bob West, as well as Jimmy Bond, Lyle Ritz, and Chuck Berghofer, who played acoustic upright bass.
Drummer Earl Palmer contributed to a handful of hits in the 1960s with the Wrecking Crew, including Phil Spector-produced tracks such as Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" in 1964, and Ike and Tina Turner's "River Deep – Mountain High" in 1966. Hal Blaine, with his abundance of musical skills, personality, and charisma, is also mentioned as having a prominent role in the Wrecking Crew's success during their heyday. Though he had played primarily big band and jazz, he took a job in Tommy Sands' rockabilly group in the late 1950s, discovering a newfound appreciation for rock and roll, which by the beginning of the new decade led to session work in Los Angeles studios, where he became acquainted with Earl Palmer and saxophonist Steve Douglas. Blaine played on Elvis Presley's 1961 hit "Can't Help Falling in Love." Shortly thereafter, he began playing on sessions for Phil Spector, quickly becoming the producer's preferred drummer, and, along with Earl Palmer, became one of the two top session drummers in Los Angeles. Blaine is reputed to have played on over 140 top ten hits including approximately 40 No. 1 hits, such as "I Got You Babe" by Sonny & Cher, "Mr Tambourine Man" by the Byrds, and "Strangers in the Night" by Frank Sinatra, as well as numerous others and has been mentioned by Drummerworld as perhaps the most prolific recording drummer in history. Jim Gordon began as an understudy of Blaine, but with the passage of time emerged as a first call player in the Wrecking Crew, playing on parts of the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album and on hits such as "Classical Gas" and "Wichita Lineman."
Other drummers who played in the Wrecking Crew were Frank Capp, John Clauder, Forrest Draper and Joe Porcaro. Gary Coleman played vibraphone and a variety of percussion instruments and contributed to works such as the soundtrack of the musical Hair and Simon & Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water album. Some of the other Wrecking Crew percussionists were Julius Wechter, Milt Holland, Gene Estes, and Victor Feldman. Drummer Jim Keltner is sometimes mentioned in connection with the Wrecking Crew, because he befriended Hal Blaine in the 1960s and would later play with the Wrecking Crew on John Lennon's Rock 'n' Roll album recorded in 1973, but he is more often associated with the later generation of session players who eclipsed the Wrecking Crew in terms of popularity during the 1970s.
### Guitars and keyboards
Guitarist and sometimes bassist Bill Pitman factored prominently in much of the Wrecking Crew's work. For a brief time in the late 1950s he provided guitar lessons for a young Phil Spector, before Spector formed the Teddy Bears, who went on to record the surprise hit "To Know Him Is to Love Him" in 1958. Pitman ended up playing on Spector-produced records in the 1960s such as "Be My Baby" by the Ronettes. He can be heard on numerous hits from the period such as "The Little Old Lady (from Pasadena)" by Jan & Dean, and "Mr. Tambourine Man" by the Byrds. Tommy Tedesco, born in an Italian family in Niagara Falls, New York, was another one of the Wrecking Crew's most renowned guitarists, playing along with Pitman on "Be My Baby" and "The Little Old Lady (from Pasadena)", as well as on the Champs "Limbo Rock." He provided the flamenco-influenced guitar licks in the 5th Dimension's "Up and Away" as well as the guitar intro to the popular M\*A\*S\*H theme. Billy Strange was one of the top guitarists with the Wrecking Crew and played on hits such as "The Little Old Lady (from Pasadena)" and the Beach Boys' version of "Sloop John B." In addition to playing sessions in Memphis, guitarist James Burton often recorded with the Wrecking Crew in Los Angeles in the 1960s.
Though Glen Campbell became better known as a highly successful country music artist in his own right, he played guitar in the Wrecking Crew during the 1960s and appeared along with them on several of the Beach Boys' classics of the period such as "I Get Around" and "Help Me Rhonda." He and Hal Blaine appeared as members of Steve McQueen's character's band in the film Baby the Rain Must Fall (1965) featuring an extremely clear moment of Campbell standing behind McQueen, but both Campbell and Blaine were uncredited in the film. In 1965 he toured with the Beach Boys, and in 1966 he and the Wrecking Crew played on the Pet Sounds album. Campbell enlisted the Wrecking Crew as a backup unit on many of his own solo records during the 1960s, such as on "Gentle on My Mind", and on two songs written by Jimmy Webb, "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" and his single "Wichita Lineman."
The Wrecking Crew's ranks included a circle of keyboardists who contributed piano and organ parts to many of the famous songs of the era. Larry Knechtel, later in Bread, was a multi-instrumentalist who played keyboards on "California Dreamin'", "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and "Classical Gas", as well as upright bass on "Eve of Destruction" and electric bass on Byrds' "Mr. Tambourine Man." Mike Melvoin, a classically trained pianist with an English degree from Dartmouth College, played organ and piano on many tracks on the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, played organ on "Good Vibrations", and performed on keyboards on many of the sessions for the Beach Boys' never-completed SMiLe album. Don Randi contributed the piano part on Barry McGuire's 1965 hit "Eve of Destruction." Before becoming a solo artist, Leon Russell was a regular member of the Wrecking Crew and played in the Ronettes' "Be My Baby", and Jan & Dean's "The Little Old Lady (from Pasadena)." New Orleans' Mac Rebennack (later Dr. John) did session work with the Wrecking crew while living in Los Angeles in the mid-1960s. Mike (Michel) Rubini was the son of Jan Rubini, a classical violinist, and initially played concert piano, but later became enamored with R&B and switched to playing popular music, eventually becoming a member of the Wrecking Crew and playing on hits such as Sonny & Cher's "The Beat Goes On" and Frank Sinatra's "Strangers in the Night."
### Brass, woodwinds, harmonica, and backing vocals
Saxophonist Steve Douglas, who attended Fairfax High School with Phil Spector in the 1950s, got a call in 1962 to play on Spector's debut recording as a producer, "He's a Rebel", and would, from then on, become a regular fixture with the Wrecking Crew. Years later, in 1978, Douglas played on Bob Dylan's 1978 "Street-Legal" album and accompanied Dylan on tour that year as part of his eight piece backing band. Jim Horn played both saxophone and flute, and contributed parts to numerous tracks with Wrecking Crew, such as in the Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin" and Frank Sinatra's "Strangers in the Night." He played flute in the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows" and "Good Vibrations" and would later become a member of John Denver's backing band. Plas Johnson provided the saxophone line in "The Pink Panther Theme" in the Champs' 1962 instrumental version of "Limbo Rock." Nino Tempo, who along with his sister Carol (under her stage name April Stevens) had scored a U.S. number 1 hit song in 1963, "Deep Purple", was also a member of the Wrecking Crew and played saxophone in the Ronettes' "Be My Baby" and later appeared on John Lennon's Rock 'n' Roll album.
Other saxophonists who played sessions with the Wrecking Crew were Jackie Kelso, Jay Migliori, Gene Cipriano, Bill Green, and Allan Beutler. On trombone were Richard "Slyde" Hyde, Lew McCreary, and Dick Nash and on trumpet Bud Brisbois, Roy Caton, Chuck Findley, Ollie Mitchell, and Tony Terran. Tommy Morgan played harmonica on Wrecking Crew-backed tracks such as "The Little Old Lady (from Pasadena)." When backing vocals were needed the Ron Hicklin Singers were called in.
## T.A.M.I. Show (1964)
Several members of the Wrecking Crew played in the house band for 1964's T.A.M.I. Show, which was captured on film and sent to theaters around the country. Seen in camera shots showing the right-hand side of the stage are musical director Jack Nitzsche, Hal Blaine, Jimmy Bond, Tommy Tedesco, Bill Aken, Glen Campbell, Lyle Ritz, Leon Russell, Plas Johnson, among others, all providing incidental music and backing for many of acts such as Chuck Berry, the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, and Lesley Gore.
## 1970s–2010s
### Diminished output
The Wrecking Crew's level of success could not be maintained indefinitely, and their services eventually fell out of demand. Kent Hartman cites several factors in the Wrecking Crew's demise, beginning as far back as 1968 when the unit was at their peak of popularity: "By the middle of 1968, popular music was changing once again. In fact it was getting downright heavy. In the aftermath of the recent Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. slayings, the bloody Tet Offensive in Viet Nam, and the ever-growing level of campus unrest at universities around the country, Top 40 radio gradually began to lose step with the times." Hartman mentions that the runaway success that year of Richard Harris' elaborate seven-minute epic hit, "MacArthur Park", written by Jimmy Webb and featuring the Wrecking Crew's intricate backing, might have been another seed in their eventual decline:
> Webb's creation additionally generated another unexpected consequence, one that would begin to subtly affect the Wrecking Crew's livelihood. Because the song had broken through the AM radio barrier, it had suddenly made it okay for lengthier songs to make the playlist. And the longer each song, the fewer minutes left during each hour for the station to play other songs. That was the unfair, mathematical irony of the whole equation; the Wrecking Crew had just played their hearts out on an all-time award-winning hit, yet its very success contributed toward a drop in the total number of songs making it on the air. And with fewer songs finding airtime, there gradually evolved a diminishing number of rock-and-roll recording dates for them to play on.
The Wrecking Crew remained in demand in the early 1970s, even enjoying several hits, but by the end of 1973 they began to experience a downturn in bookings, as a series of changes in the recording industry began to take hold. Unlike earlier bands/artists such as the Monkees, the Grass Roots, The Partridge Family and David Cassidy that often utilized the Wrecking Crew for backing tracks (and as a backing band for Cassidy's earliest concert tours of America in 1971/2), rock groups in the early to mid 1970s began to stipulate in their recording contracts that they be allowed to play their own instruments on records. Younger session players such as Larry Carlton, Andrew Gold, Danny Kortchmar, Waddy Wachtel, Russ Kunkel, Jeff Porcaro, Leland Sklar, and Jim Keltner had a more contemporary sound, better-suited to the changing musical tastes of the decade. By the mid-1970s, technological advances such as 16-track and 24-track tape recording machines and automated large-format multi-channel consoles made it viable for instruments to be recorded, often close-miked, onto separate tracks individually, reducing the need to hire ensembles to play live in the studio. Synthesizers could approximate the sound of practically any instrument. Eventually, drum machines would become the norm, which could be specially programmed to keep beats in place of a drummer or be used for click tracks played in musicians' headphones, making it easier to overdub or re-record any part in-synch and achieve a more uniform and consistent tempo.
### Post-Wrecking Crew careers
In 1969, after scoring hits as a solo artist such as "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" and "Wichita Lineman", Glen Campbell left the Wrecking Crew. Carol Kaye, exhausted from the constant pressure of the L.A. recording scene, went on to other musical endeavors. According to guitarist Bill Pitman, "You leave the house at seven o'clock in the morning, and you're at Universal at nine till noon; now you're at Capitol Records at one, you just got time to get there, then you got a jingle at four, then we're on a date with somebody at eight, then the Beach Boys at midnight, and you do that five days a week ... jeez, man, you get burned out." Campbell went on to become one of country music's most popular performers during the 1970s with hits such as "Rhinestone Cowboy" and the Allen Toussaint-penned "Southern Nights."
By the mid-1970s many of the Wrecking Crew's members scattered and drifted into different spheres. Some members, such as Carol Kaye, Tony Terran, Gary Coleman, Earl Palmer and Tommy Tedesco, switched to television and motion picture soundtrack work. Leon Russell and Mac Rebennack (as Dr. John) both went on to become successful solo artists and songwriters, enjoying hit singles and albums during the 1970s. Jim Keltner went on to a successful career as a session drummer for much of the 1970s–90s; he played in Ringo Starr's All-Starr band and was the drummer on both albums by the supergroup Traveling Wilburys, where he is credited as "Buster Sidebury." Beginning in 1973 he hosted a regular weekly jam session at Los Angeles clubs called "the Jim Keltner Fan Club" frequented by many of the younger L.A. session musicians of the time (Danny Kortchmar, Russ Kunkel, Waddy Wachtel, Leland Sklar, and Jeff and Steve Porcaro).
The unit did a brief, but ill-fated reunion session with Phil Spector in 1992. In 2001, members of The Wrecking Crew reunited in the studio with David Cassidy to recreate Cassidy's hit songs from the 1970s, both solo and with The Partridge Family. These recordings resulted in the album Then and Now which was hugely successful internationally and went platinum in 2002. More recently, they backed Glen Campbell in his song "I'm Not Gonna Miss You" taken from the soundtrack of the 2015 documentary Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me.
## Legacy
The Wrecking Crew backed dozens of popular acts and were one of the most successful groups of studio musicians in music history. According to Kent Hartman, "... if a rock-and-roll song came out of an L.A. recording studio from between about 1962 and 1972, the odds are good that some combination of the Wrecking Crew played the instruments. No single group of musicians has ever played on more hits in support of more stars than this superbly talented—yet virtually anonymous group of men (and one woman)." According to The New Yorker, "The Wrecking Crew passed into a history that it largely created, imperfectly acknowledged but perfectly present in hundreds of American pop songs known to all." In 2008, the Wrecking Crew were featured in the documentary film The Wrecking Crew, directed by Tommy Tedesco's son, Denny Tedesco. In 2014, its musicians were depicted in the Brian Wilson biopic Love & Mercy (playing the instrumental track Pet Sounds).
Two of their members, drummers Hal Blaine and Earl Palmer, were among the inaugural "sidemen" inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000, and the entire Wrecking Crew was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame in 2007. In 2010, Blaine was elected into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame.
## List of members
Sources: Kent Hartman (The Wrecking Crew) and Robert Lloyd ("Time of the Session"; LA Weekly)
- Electric bass: Max Bennett, Carol Kaye, Larry Knechtel, Joe Osborn, Bill Pitman, Ray Pohlman, Bob West
- Double bass (upright bass): Chuck Berghofer, Jimmy Bond, Red Callender, Lyle Ritz
- Drums: Hal Blaine, John Clauder, Jim Gordon, Jim Keltner, Earl Palmer, Joe Porcaro
- Guitar: Bill Aken, Doug Bartenfeld, Ben Benay, Vinnie Bell, Dennis Budimir, James Burton, Glen Campbell, Al Casey, David Cohen, Jerry Cole, Mike Deasy, John Goldthwaite, Carol Kaye, Barney Kessel, Lou Morrell, Frank Marshall, Don Peake, Bill Pitman, Ray Pohlman, Howard Roberts, Irv Rubins, Louie Shelton, P.F. Sloan, Billy Strange, Tommy Tedesco, Al Vescovo
- Keyboards: Mac Rebennack (Dr. John), Al De Lory, Larry Knechtel, Mike Melvoin, Don Randi, Mike (Michel) Rubini, Leon Russell
- Percussion: Larry Bunker, Frank Capp, Gary L. Coleman, Gene Estes, Victor Feldman, Milt Holland, Joe Porcaro
- Vibraphone & Marimba: Julius Wechter, Terry Gibbs
- Other Percussion: Jingle Bells and Tambourine Sonny Bono
- Saxophone: Allan Buetler, Gene Cipriano, Steve Douglas, Bill Green, Jim Horn, Plas Johnson, Jackie Kelso, John Lowe, Jay Migliori, Nino Tempo
- Trombone: Richard "Slyde" Hyde, Lew McCreary, Dick Nash, Lou Blackburn
- Trumpet: Bud Brisbois, Roy Caton, Chuck Findley, Ollie Mitchell, Tony Terran
- Flute: Jim Horn
- Harmonica: Tommy Morgan
- Harp: Gayle Levant
- Vocals: Ron Hicklin Singers often performed backup vocals on many of the same songs on which the Wrecking Crew had played instrumental tracks.
- Conductor and arranger: Jack Nitzsche
Blaine, Osborn and Knechtel were often collectively referred to as the Hollywood Golden Trio.
## Selected recordings
### Compilations
- The Wrecking Crew (2015, RockBeat; 4-CD set)
## See also
- Booker T. & the M.G.'s
- The Funk Brothers
- MFSB
- Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section
- The Nashville A-Team
- Salsoul Orchestra
- The Section |
35,598,237 | All Around the World (Justin Bieber song) | 1,171,217,356 | null | [
"2010s Island Records singles",
"2012 songs",
"2013 singles",
"Eurodance songs",
"Justin Bieber songs",
"Ludacris songs",
"Song recordings produced by Kuk Harrell",
"Songs written by Adam Messinger",
"Songs written by Justin Bieber",
"Songs written by Ludacris",
"Songs written by Nasri (musician)",
"Songs written by Sir Nolan"
]
| "All Around the World" is a song by Canadian singer Justin Bieber from his third studio album, Believe (2012). It was written by Bieber, Sir Nolan and Nasri of The Messengers in collaboration with Ludacris, who guest features. This was the second collaboration between Bieber and Ludacris, having previously collaborated on "Baby" (2010). It was first released on June 4, 2012, as a promotional single from the album. The song was released as the fourth international single, and the fifth and final US single on February 26, 2013. The Eurodance track features a similar instrumentation to songs by Britney Spears, Chris Brown and Usher. Lyrically, it features Bieber singing to his love interest that "all around the world, people want to be loved". "All Around the World" received critical acclaim from music critics, who welcomed the song's Eurodance style. The song had moderate success worldwide, reaching the top ten in several countries, such as Belgium, Canada and Norway. Bieber promoted the song through live performances and a music video.
## Background and composition
In late 2011, Bieber confirmed to radio network Capital FM that he was recording material for his third studio album, which was originally going to be released in early 2012. He later spoke to MTV News and revealed that Believe would surprise people in different ways, since it is musically a departure from his previous works. "All Around the World" was written and produced by The Messengers and Nolan Lambroza, while Bieber and Ludacris wrote additional lyrics. On May 25, 2012, an unmastered version of the track leaked online. The cover art for the promotional single was unveiled on June 4, 2012, and features Bieber holding an acoustic guitar over his shoulder, standing on the surface of the world, while the moon is glowing behind him. The same day, the track was released on iTunes Store through The Island Def Jam Music Group. The song was later released as the fourth international single, and the fifth and final US single on February 26, 2013.
It is a Eurodance song, which incorporates heavy synth-pop elements in its instrumentation and is similar to previous works by producer David Guetta. Contemporary critics compared the track to Britney Spears' "Till the World Ends" (2011) and Chris Brown's "Beautiful People" (2011). Lyrically, Bieber sings for his love interest and says that "all around the world, people want to be loved". The track opens with he singing, "You're beautiful, beautiful/You should know it/I think it's time, think it's time/That you show it", lines that were compared to One Direction's "What Makes You Beautiful" (2011). As the track follows, Bieber encourages girls to release their inner beauty: "Light it up, so explosive/Why you acting so shy, holding back/DJ bring that back." During the rap section, Ludacris references their previous collaboration on "Baby" (2010), saying, "Once again, the dynamic duo is back at it!/ JB, Ludacris!/ I love everything about you/ You're imperfectly perfect/ Everyone's itching for beauty/But they're just scratching the surface."
## Reception
### Critical response
"All Around the World" received mostly positive reviews from music critics. Jenna Rubenstein of MTV thought that the "fist-pumping club banger" is a complete departure from Bieber's previous work, while Diadem Pambid of the International Business Times stated that the singer joined the "'synth-pop' bandwagon" along with Britney Spears, Chris Brown and Usher. Jocelyn Vena also of MTV stated that the song could have been recorded by Usher, due to its "grinding, fist-pumping" background. Entertainment Weekly columnist Ray Rahman gave "All Around the World" a positive review, and stated: "a Euro beat worthy of The Wanted? The vocal swagger of Chris Brown? Lyrics smacking of One Direction? Check, check, and check, please!" Rick Florino of Artistdirect rated "All Around the World" five out of five stars, and commented that the track is not only a sequel to "Baby", but is also "a whole new level for pop itself." Becky Bain of Idolator explained that the song is a good example of how Bieber is taking "baby steps to 'swaggy' adulthood through the evolution of his music — keep the content G-Rated, but make the beat something the older club-going crowd can enjoy. So far, it's working." Amy Sciaretto of Pop Crush gave the track a mixed review, and deemed it as highly similar to the work of Spears, stating: "If you told us this song was penned for Britney Spears for her last album Femme Fatale, we'd Believe it, because the computerized style and the thick vocal effects remind us of recent Brit material. It's safe to say that 'All Around the World' is a club banger. And while we love Bieber, it's not our favorite song on Believe so far."
### Chart performance
In the United States, "All Around the World" debuted at its peak number 22 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart on June 23, 2012, becoming the week's best-debuting single. On the Pop Songs chart, it peaked at number 19. On the Canadian Hot 100, it peaked at number ten. "All Around the World" debuted on the UK Singles Chart at its peak of number 30, for the week ending June 16, 2012. In Denmark, it debuted at its peak of number seven, remaining five weeks on the chart. On the Norwegian Singles Chart, it peaked at number three. "All Around the World" debuted at number 56 on Sweden's national singles chart, later peaking at number 41 and then fell out after two weeks. The track also peaked at number 34 in Australia and 15 in New Zealand, lasting for two weeks in both countries.
## Music video
The official video was premiered on April 12, 2013. "Blessed and grateful to do what i do \#AllAroundTheWorld. Thanks", he wrote linking to the video. It is a "tour video" which is entirely composed of Bieber showing his point of view while he is touring the world and is largely based on his performance over Mexico City. It also illustrates vistas from the places he visited and documents national monuments including the Elizabeth Tower, the Eiffel Tower, the Sydney Opera House, Taj Mahal, Giza pyramid complex, the Colosseum and Christ the Redeemer statue in Brazil. Ludacris, joins Bieber in the video during the rap portion of the song. It also included images of the singer posing with fans, and others crying and screaming for him.
Nardine Saad from Los Angeles Times noted that the video "briefly makes us sympathetic toward the Biebs and his eyebrow-raising behavior this last year, which has included speeding, possibly smoking pot and frequently walking around shirtless" and named the fans' part "memorable". The same noted Ryan Seacrest's website, saying "proves that no matter where he goes, there will always be plenty of fans to support him". Entertainment Weekly notes that it "show off Justin Bieber in an all-white suit and in a leather-jacket outfit. Ludacris appears for a guest-verse, indicating that this may all be a stealth prequel to Fast & Furious 6". Idolator's Christina Lee described the video as "flashy" and wrote that it "offers a rose-colored view of his superstar status".
## Live performances
Bieber performed "All Around the World" at the Capital FM Summertime Ball 2012. For the performance, he sported fingerless gloves, a Union Jack tank with matching vest, and jeans. The singer also performed the track during a promotional concert in Europe on June 4, 2012, along with "Boyfriend" and "Die in Your Arms". Bieber also performed "All Around the World" and "Boyfriend" at the 2012 MuchMusic Video Awards on June 17. The song is also used as Bieber's 2012–13 Believe Tour's opening song. Entering from the upper portion of the arena, Bieber was lowered onto the center of the stage wearing a massive pair of charcoal-colored wings. He was quickly joined by a troupe of male backing dancers as the song was played. Fireworks exploded, laser lights shot wildly from the ceiling, confetti fell to the floor and plumes of smoke were released from the bottom of the stage. Sophie A. Schillaci from The Hollywood Reporter gave a negative review for the performance and wrote that "if you can move past Justin Bieber's bizarre stage entrance, flying in on a set of ginormous metal wings to the tune of 'All Around the World', it's hard not to smile at his show".
## Charts
## Certifications
## Release history |
10,227,206 | No. 457 Squadron RAAF | 1,068,345,927 | Royal Australian Air Force squadron | [
"Australian Article XV squadrons of World War II",
"Military units and formations disestablished in 1945",
"Military units and formations established in 1941"
]
| No. 457 Squadron was a Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) fighter squadron of World War II. Equipped with Supermarine Spitfire fighters, it was formed in England during June 1941 under Article XV of the Empire Air Training Scheme. The squadron was transferred to Australia in June 1942 and saw combat in the South West Pacific Area before being disbanded in November 1945.
The squadron saw combat against both Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan during the war. From March to May 1942 it was based in southern England and flew missions over German-occupied France during which it shot down at least five Luftwaffe aircraft. After being deployed to Australia, No. 457 Squadron was based near Darwin as part of No. 1 Wing RAAF and intercepted several Japanese raids on Allied bases in northern Australia between March and November 1943. The squadron remained at Darwin and saw almost no combat during 1944, but moved to Morotai and later Labuan in 1945 from where it attacked Japanese positions in the Netherlands East Indies and Borneo as part of Allied offensives in these areas.
## History
### Britain
No. 457 Squadron was formed at RAF Baginton in England on 16 June 1941. It was equipped with Supermarine Spitfires and was the second RAAF fighter unit to be formed in England after No. 452 Squadron. The establishment of both these squadrons formed part of an expansion of RAF Fighter Command which sought to improve its ability to defend Britain from a renewed German air offensive and to conduct offensive operations over occupied Europe. At the time of its formation the squadron's commanding officer, Squadron Leader Peter Malam Brothers, both flight commanders and all members of the ground crew were British, but most pilots were Australian. The squadron's ground crew component had been formed at RAAF Station Williamtown in Australia on 10 June, and departed for England on 7 August. On the same day No. 457 Squadron moved to RAF Jurby and thence to RAF Andreas, which were both situated on the Isle of Man to undertake training. While at the Isle of Man the squadron trained both its own pilots and pilots from other squadrons for operational duties, and for a time functioned as an operational training unit at RAF Andreas. It also escorted Allied convoys in the Irish Sea, but did not make contact with German aircraft. By October all the British pilots other than Brothers and the flight commanders had been replaced by Australians. The squadron's ground crew arrived in Britain during October and November, making it an almost entirely Australian unit.
In March 1942 the squadron moved to RAF Redhill, Surrey where it assumed No. 452 Squadron's front line duties as part of No. 11 Group RAF. These included shipping protection patrols, escorting bombers, conducting fighter sweeps over northern France and contributing to the air defence of southern England. Fighter Command had received authorisation to launch a full-scale offensive campaign against German air units shortly before No. 457 Squadron arrived at Redhill, and it became part of this effort. The squadron first saw action on 26 March when Brothers shot down a Bf 109 during a multi-squadron fighter sweep over France, though one of its Spitfires was lost in this action. By the end of its first week of operations No. 457 Squadron had shot down three German aircraft and inflicted damage on several others and it went on to conduct 32 operations over German territory by 26 April. These operations often encountered fierce opposition, and German Fw 190 fighters proved superior to the Spitfire Mark Vs that No. 457 Squadron was equipped with. The squadron scored its last victory over Europe on 29 April, though fighter sweeps over France continued until almost the end of May.
On 28 May 1942 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill agreed to an Australian Government request to dispatch three fully equipped Spitfire squadrons to Australia to reinforce the RAAF. The squadrons selected were the Australian No. 452 and No. 457 Squadrons as well as the British No. 54 Squadron RAF. Accordingly, No. 457 Squadron was withdrawn from operations on 28 May to prepare to be redeployed to Australia. By this time its pilots had been credited with five confirmed "kills" and another four "probables" and damaging seven aircraft. On 20 June the squadron left England on board the MV Stirling Castle, which was also carrying the men of No. 452 and No. 54 Squadrons.
### Darwin
The Stirling Castle arrived at Melbourne on 13 August. After being given 14 days leave the squadron's personnel reassembled at Richmond, New South Wales on 6 September. On 7 October it became part of No. 1 Wing RAAF along with No. 54 and No. 452 Squadrons. Most of the Spitfires intended for the wing had been diverted to the Middle East during the voyage to Australia, however, and the squadron initially only had CAC Wirraway and Ryan ST aircraft for training purposes. No. 457 Squadron was fully equipped with Spitfires by November and moved to Camden on the 7th of the month where it continued an intensive training program. In December the squadron was informed that it would be deployed to Darwin in the Northern Territory to counter the Japanese air raids against the town. The squadron's advance party departed on 31 December, and the main body followed by sea on 12 January 1943. No. 457 Squadron commenced air operations from Batchelor Airfield on 20 January and moved to Livingstone Airfield on the last day of the month.
No. 457 Squadron first saw combat against the Japanese in March 1943. Although the squadron was scrambled a number of times in February, it did not claim its first "kill" until 7 March when two Spitfires shot down a Mitsubishi Ki-46 "Dinah" reconnaissance aircraft near Darwin. On 15 March No. 1 Wing's three squadrons intercepted a large raid on Darwin, and No. 457 Squadron shot down two A6M Zeros and damaged another of the fighters. The squadron was also credited with damaging a Mitsubishi G4M "Betty" bomber and claimed another three Zeros as "probables". No further Japanese aircraft were encountered over northern Australia until May. During this period No. 457 Squadron practiced tactics and cooperation with RAAF and Australian Army units. Flying was normally limited to just one hour each day, however.
On 2 May No. 1 Wing responded to a major Japanese raid on Darwin. In the resulting air battle No. 457 Squadron shot down one fighter and claimed another two "probables", but lost two Spitfires. Overall, the RAAF suffered 14 Spitfires destroyed or damaged while claiming only six "kills", and the operation was not considered a success. Seven days later No. 457 Squadron deployed a detachment of six Spitfires to Milingimbi Island after the island's airfield was attacked. This detachment intercepted Japanese raids on 10 and 28 May, shooting down two Zeros and two Bettys for the loss of three Spitfires. The squadron also continued to take part in operations over the Darwin region, seeing combat on a number of occasions. During the last major battle near the town on 6 July No. 457 Squadron shot down a Zero and damaged five Bettys, but lost three Spitfires.
Japanese air activity over northern Australia dropped away after 6 July, and No. 457 Squadron saw little further combat. As a result, the squadron's personnel suffered greatly from boredom. No. 457 Squadron scored its next "kills" on 17 August, when its aircraft shot down three of the four Dinahs sent over Darwin that day; the fourth was destroyed by No. 1 Wing's acting commander, Wing Commander Clive Caldwell. The squadron shot down another two Dinahs on 20 August. On 7 September No. 1 Wing intercepted a Japanese reconnaissance aircraft escorted by 20 fighters. In the ensuing battle No. 457 Squadron shot down four Zeros without loss. On 4 November No. 457 Squadron deployed six Spitfires to Drysdale River Mission Airfield, and two days later they intercepted and damaged a Japanese reconnaissance aircraft. The squadron maintained a detachment at Drysdale River Mission until December, when No. 54 Squadron assumed this duty. During the early hours of 12 November three No. 457 Squadron Spitfires were part of a force which intercepted a raid on Darwin. No. 457 Squadron pilot Flying Officer John Smithson made the only interception and destroyed two Betty bombers.
The attack on 12 November was the final Japanese raid on the Darwin area. As a result, No. 1 Wing's flying squadrons had little to do and the pilots became bored. No. 457 Squadron conducted little operational flying until 8 March 1944, when it and No. 452 Squadron were ordered to Perth, Western Australia in response to fears that a Japanese naval force would raid the area. The squadrons departed Darwin on 9 March and arrived at RAAF Station Guildford (modern Perth Airport) three days later after flying through very difficult weather conditions. No attack eventuated, however, and the squadron returned to Livingstone Airfield between 23 and 28 March. The squadron next saw action on 18 April when two of its Spitfires took part in an attack on a Japanese radar station in the Babar Islands. In May 1944, No. 1 Wing's headquarters and No. 57 and 457 Squadrons were deployed to Exmouth Gulf, Western Australia to protect the facilities which had been established to refuel the British Eastern Fleet before Operation Transom, during which the fleet attacked Surabaya, Java. No. 457 Squadron departed for Exmouth Gulf on 10 May and returned to its new base at Sattler Airfield on the 24th of the month. The squadron again provided a detachment at Drysdale River Mission from 1 June 1944 and began to be reequipped with Mark VIII Spitfires on 2 July.
### Morotai and Labuan
On 1 July 1944 No. 452 and No. 457 Squadrons were transferred to the newly formed No. 80 Wing RAAF. This wing had been established to support a planned offensive from Darwin into the Netherlands East Indies (NEI). The offensive was cancelled in June, but this was not communicated to the wing, which continued to train for the operation until August. After the operation was cancelled the wing and its squadrons had no purpose, but continued to conduct training exercises as a means of maintaining morale. In November the wing was informed that it was to move to Morotai island in the NEI to take part in Allied offensives in the region.
No. 457 Squadron's movement to Morotai was delayed until early 1945. The squadron's ground crew departed Darwin by sea on 18 January and arrived on the island on 1 February. The Spitfires departed Sattler on 6 February and arrived at Morotai two days later. No. 457 Squadron flew its first operations from Morotai on 10 February. The squadron's main roles in this period were to conduct ground attack missions against Japanese camps and shipping as well as escorting other aircraft engaged in attacking these targets. This involved a heavy workload, and the squadron flew over 293 operational sorties between February and the end of April. From May No. 457 Squadron's Spitfires began using dive bombing tactics as well as strafing targets with their guns.
No. 457 Squadron participated in the Borneo Campaign during the final months of the war. On 27 May it was ordered to prepare for deployment, and on 5 June its personnel and equipment sailed for Labuan island off the north-west coast of Borneo. During this operation the squadron was attached to No. 81 Wing. The Spitfires departed Morotai on 17 June and commenced operations from Labuan two days later alongside No. 76 Squadron RAAF with the primary roles of providing air support to Allied troops in the area and air defence for the island. On 20 June two No. 457 Squadron fighters shot down a Dinah; this was the squadron's first "kill" since 12 November 1943. Operations against the Japanese continued until the end of the war on 15 August 1945. During the war 25 of the squadron's Australian personnel were killed.
Following the Japanese surrender No. 457 Squadron initially remained at Labuan. During this period it flew security patrols as well as training exercises and air tests. The squadron's serviceable aircraft left Labuan on 9 October for Oakey, Queensland and arrived there on the last day of the month. No. 457 Squadron was officially disbanded at Labuan on 7 November 1945. Following the war the squadron was awarded the battle honours "Fortress Europe, 1940–1944", "Pacific, 1941–1945", "Darwin, 1941–1944", "Morotai", "Borneo, 1945" and "Defence of Britain, 1940–1945".
## Aircraft operated
No. 457 Squadron operated the following aircraft:
## Squadron bases
No. 457 Squadron operated from the following bases and airfields:
## Commanding officers
No. 457 Squadron was commanded by the following officers: |
6,494,584 | Harry Farr | 1,172,325,543 | British Army soldier | [
"1891 births",
"1916 deaths",
"British Army personnel executed during World War I",
"Deaths by firearm in France",
"Military personnel from Kensington",
"West Yorkshire Regiment soldiers"
]
| Private Harry T. Farr (1891 – 18 October 1916) was a British soldier who was executed by firing squad during World War I for cowardice at the age of 25. Before the war, he lived in Kensington, London and joined the British Army in 1908. He served until 1912 and remained in the reserves until the outbreak of World War I. During the war, Farr served with the West Yorkshire Regiment on the Western Front. In 1915 and 1916 he was hospitalised multiple times for shell shock, the longest period being for five months. On 17 September 1916, Farr did not comply with an order to return to the front line, and was subsequently arrested and charged with cowardice. Unrepresented at his court martial, Farr was found guilty under section 4(7) of the Army Act 1881 and was sentenced to death. He was executed on 18 October 1916.
Farr's family initially suffered from shame and financial hardship following his execution. After discovering details regarding the circumstance of his death—particularly that he suffered from shell shock and did not have a fair trial—his family began a campaign in 1992 to have him posthumously pardoned. They brought a legal case against the Ministry of Defence, which led the government to grant posthumous pardons via the Armed Forces Act 2006, not only to Farr, but to 305 other men who were executed for cowardice, desertion and similar crimes in World War I.
## Early life
Harry T. Farr was born in 1891. He was not highly educated and lived in poverty. Before World War I, Farr lived in Kensington. He had joined the British Army on 8 May 1908, aged 17, and served until 1912. He remained in the reserves and worked as a scaffolder. Farr and his wife, Gertrude, had a daughter also named Gertrude or "Gertie", who was a young child when Farr left to fight in World War I.
## World War I
At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Farr was mobilized with the 2nd Battalion West Yorkshire Regiment. During his time serving in the war, Farr was hospitalised multiple times for shell shock and related symptoms. On 9 May 1915, shortly after Farr's battalion fought in the Battle of Aubers Ridge, he was removed from his position at Houplines and spent five months in hospital in Boulogne to recover from shell shock. His wife Gertrude recalled that while he was in hospital, it was evident he was suffering and nurses had to write letters on his behalf:
> He shook all the time. He couldn't stand the noise of the guns. We got a letter from him, but it was in a stranger's handwriting. He could write perfectly well, but couldn't hold the pen because his hand was shaking.
Farr was discharged from hospital and sent back to the front; he was transferred to the 1st Battalion in October. Farr reported himself to the medical station several times over the following months. In April 1916, he suffered a "nervous collapse" and was treated at a dressing station for a fortnight. On 22 July he spent the night at a medical station for the same complaint and was discharged for duty the next day.
### Desertion
On 17 September 1916, Farr's battalion was due to move to the front line of the Battle of Flers–Courcelette as part of an assault on the German 'Quadrilateral'—a fortified area of German soldiers. To reach this position, the battalion travelled through the so-called 'Chimpanzee Valley' near an ongoing British artillery bombardment. On the morning of the 17th, Farr informed the regimental sergeant major, RSM Hanking, that he was unwell and unable to fight. Farr was instructed to seek the help of a medical officer, but Farr did not appear to be physically wounded and the medical officer did not record anything wrong with him. Farr was ordered to report for duty with a ration party transporting goods to the front line at around 8 P.M., but went missing shortly afterwards. That evening, Farr was still not at the front line. Hanking discovered Farr at 11 P.M. that evening at the transport lines with a brazier. He was ordered to join his battalion but said he "could not stand it". Hanking is recorded to have said in response "You are a fucking coward and you will go to the trenches. I give fuck all for my life and I give fuck all for yours and I'll get you fucking well shot". Hanking also threatened to shoot Farr if he did not follow orders, saying "I will blow your fucking brains out if you don't go". Hanking arranged an escort and a corporal to try and force Farr to return to the front. A physical confrontation between the men ensued and Farr escaped, running back to the transport line where he was later discovered.
### Court martial
The following morning, 18 September 1916, Farr was arrested for disobeying orders and was charged with cowardice. Farr later testified that he could not recall any of the events which followed him struggling against the escort and corporal until after he was put under guard. He was taken to Ville-sur-Ancre on 25 September where his court martial was arranged a week later, on 2 October. He was formally accused of 'misbehaving before the enemy in such a manner as to show cowardice'. Farr underwent a medical examination, and was reported to have "satisfactory" physical and mental faculties. The court martial was presided over by Lieutenant-Colonel Frederick Spring, the Commanding Officer of the 11th (Service) Battalion of the Essex Regiment. Farr was unable to call a witness; the medical officer who had previously attended to him was injured and unavailable at the time of the trial. Farr also did not have a "prisoner's friend", so he defended himself. The timeline and details of Farr's desertion was recounted by four soldiers, including Hanking, and Farr did not deny their account. Acting Sergeant Andrews spoke in support of Farr, recounting his past medical complaints of nervousness. Farr was asked why he had not sought any further medical attention since he was arrested; Farr responded that he felt better when he was away from shellfire. Farr's military history prior to his desertion was almost entirely faultless. His company commander wrote that, even though Farr did not perform well under fire, "his conduct and character are very good".
The court martial found Farr guilty of cowardice under section 4(7) of the Army Act 1881 and sentenced him to death. From August 1914 to October 1918, the death sentence did not always result in an execution: only 11% of death sentences during this time resulted in an actual execution, and the proportion was even lower for those found guilty of cowardice (3.3%). At the time of Farr's guilty sentence, however, there was scepticism of the army's moral conduct and professionalism from figures like General Sir Douglas Haig; from 1916 onwards, Kitchener's Army brought an influx of conscripts into the army, and senior military professionals were not certain how these men would fare on the front line. They believed that firm discipline was necessary to ensure the new conscripts would persist. Furthermore, the psychiatrist Simon Wessely writes that the four soldiers who testified against Farr at his trial had fought in the particularly brutal Battle of Flers–Courcelette on 17 September (the day on which Farr had deserted the front line), and were likely influenced by a sense of "honour"—feeling disappointed that a fellow soldier had let them down. The combination of military honour and the need for discipline may have led to Farr's ultimate death. As Farr's guilty sentence was passed up the chain of command for approval, his sentence did not change. Haig, as the Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force subsequently confirmed the execution order. The transcript of the court martial, consisting largely of military terminology, runs to 1,353 words; of these, Farr spoke 445. The whole trial lasted 20 minutes.
### Execution
At 6.00 A.M on 18 October 1916, Farr was shot at Carnoy by a firing squad made up of 12 men from his own regiment. He is reported to have died immediately. Farr was offered a blindfold but did not wear it, as he wished to look the firing squad in the eye when he was shot. The army chaplain who also attended said that Farr had died with dignity. The chaplain later wrote to Farr's widow, saying "A finer soldier never lived". The location of Farr's grave is unknown, but his name is included on the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing.
## Legacy
### Farr's family after his execution
The historian William Philpott describes Farr's death as "Britain's most notorious military execution". After Farr was executed, his widow Gertrude received a telegraph notifying her of his death. It read "Dear Madam, we regret to inform you that your husband has died. He was sentenced for cowardice and was shot at dawn on 18th October". Gertrude and her daughter Gertie could no longer receive a military pension and they were made homeless. They were able to find employment with the family of a lord in their hometown of Hampstead. Gertrude remarried; her second husband was killed during World War II. She suffered from shame at the reason for Farr's execution and she did not reveal the circumstance of his death for decades. She claimed she had hidden the telegraph informing her of his death due to the embarrassment. Farr's father was so ashamed that he refused to say his son's name for the rest of his life. When Gertrude did reveal the truth to Gertie in 1985, Gertie was in her 40s. They both continued to keep the circumstances of Farr's death a secret from others. It was only when Janet Booth—Farr's granddaughter—began researching her family tree that Gertrude told her the story of how he had died.
### Posthumous pardon
#### Campaign and legal case
After learning about his execution, Booth and other members of Harry Farr's family began a campaign in 1992 to have him pardoned. They had discovered that some documents were being released by the government and, when they got hold of the court martial papers, they learned that Farr had been sent back to the front when he instead appeared to have needed urgent medical treatment. They, and the lawyers supporting Farr's case, believed that he had been suffering from shell shock or another related mental illness like post-traumatic stress disorder at the time of his trial. In 1993, the government refused a posthumous pardon for soldiers like Farr who had been shot for crimes including cowardice and desertion. However, in 2005 a High Court judge—Justice Stanley Burnton—said he believed that the family may have been incorrectly denied a pardon for Farr.
The family brought a legal case against the Ministry of Defence in May 2006. Gertie Harris, Farr's daughter, was invited to speak to Tom Watson, the Minister for Veteran's Affairs at the Ministry of Defence. He was so moved by the story of her father that he committed to finding a solution for the family.
In August 2006, Harris was notified by the Secretary of State for Defence, Des Browne, that the Armed Forces Bill currently going through parliamentary scrutiny would bring about pardons for WWI soldiers. At the time, Harris was 93. The Labour MP Andrew MacKinlay, who had been a campaigner for posthumous pardons, said that it was likely that the government recognised they were going to lose the Farr case, and therefore decided to pardon all soldiers who were executed for cowardice, desertion and related crimes. An official pardon for 306 WWI soldiers was announced by Browne on 16 August. Farr's legal status following his pardon was changed to reflect that he had been a "victim of war".
Farr's pardon, along with that of the 305 other men, was not universally welcomed. The son of Haig, George Haig, upheld that some of the men were true criminals who "had to be made an example of".
#### Shell shock
Speaking after the announcement of Farr's pardon, Gertie Harris expressed relief in knowing that her father had been recognised as a victim of the war, rather than a coward. She maintained that he was likely to have been suffering from shell shock at the time of his arrest and execution, saying "From the time he went out until he was executed was two years. I don't think most people could stand a weekend of it - all that death around you. The noise got to him in the end. He was a victim of shell shock who was never given a fair trial".
The general understanding of shell shock at the time of World War I and Farr's death was that it was a weakness of the soldier and could spread between men; following Farr's trial, his commanding officer had written something to his effect, saying Farr was "likely to cause a panic". At his court martial, shell shock was not treated any differently than cowardice. Wessely writes that Farr was very likely experiencing "intense fear" on 17 September 1916, and was probably suffering from an illness like anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder. Additionally, neurological research since the beginning of the 21st century has suggested that explosions can lead to brain injury, suggesting that Farr might have been suffering from injury and was not fit to fight. Contemporary understandings of shell shock contributed to the posthumous pardons of WWI soldiers executed for crimes including cowardice and desertion, including Farr, although it is not possible to prove that all 306 men were suffering from the condition.
### Art and popular culture
In June 2001, Farr's daughter Gertie Harris was invited to the opening of the Shot at Dawn Memorial in Staffordshire, which was built to commemorate the WWI soldiers executed by firing squad. From February to June 2014, the National Portrait Gallery in London held an exhibition of portraits of people from WWI. The curator, Paul Moorhouse, chose to include a portrait of Farr to resemble one of the many human experiences of the war, calling Farr "a courageous man". The book Shell Shock by Steve Stahl is in part inspired by the story of Harry Farr.
## See also
- Thomas Highgate – the first British soldier to be executed by firing squad in WWI
- Lucien Bersot – a French soldier executed by the French Army |
3,908,333 | USS Monadnock (1863) | 1,114,352,280 | Miantonomoh-class monitor | [
"1863 ships",
"American Civil War monitors of the United States",
"Miantonomoh-class monitors",
"Ships built in Boston",
"Ships of the Union Navy"
]
| USS Monadnock was one of four Miantonomoh-class monitors built for the United States Navy during the American Civil War. Commissioned in late 1864, she participated in the First in December and Second Battles of Fort Fisher in January 1865. The ship was later assigned to the James River Flotilla on the approaches to the Confederate capitol of Richmond, Virginia and then sailed to Spanish Cuba to intercept the Confederate ironclad CSS Stonewall.
Monadnock was then docked for a few months to prepare her for her transfer to California around the tip of South America. The monitor and her escorts departed in late 1865 and reached the Chilean port of Valparaíso in early 1866 where the Americans unsuccessfully attempted to prevent the Spanish from bombarding the undefended town during the Chincha Islands War. The ships reached California in June and Monadnock was decommissioned at the end of the month. The monitor was sold for scrap in 1874. The Navy Department evaded the Congressional refusal to order new ships by claiming that the Civil War-era ship was being repaired while building a new monitor of the same name.
## Description and construction
The Miantonomoh class were designed by John Lenthall, Chief of the Bureau of Construction and Repair, although the ships varied somewhat in their details. Monadnock was 259 feet 6 inches (79.1 m) long overall, had a beam of 52 feet 6 inches (16 m) and had a draft of 12 feet 3 inches (3.7 m). The ship had a depth of hold of 15 feet 6 inches (4.7 m), a tonnage of 1,564 tons burthen and displaced 3,295 long tons (3,348 t). Her crew consisted of 150 officers and enlisted men.
Monadnock was powered by a pair of two-cylinder horizontal vibrating-lever steam engines, each driving one four-bladed propeller about 10 feet (3 m) in diameter using steam generated by four Martin vertical water-tube boilers. The engines were rated at 1,400 indicated horsepower (1,000 kW) and gave the ship a top speed of 9 knots (17 km/h; 10 mph). She was designed to carry 300 long tons (305 t) of coal.
### Armament and armor
Her main battery consisted of four smoothbore, muzzle-loading, 15-inch (381 mm) Dahlgren guns mounted in two twin-gun turrets, one each fore and aft of the single funnel. Each gun weighed approximately 43,000 pounds (20,000 kg). They could fire a 350-pound (158.8 kg) shell up to a range of 2,100 yards (1,900 m) at an elevation of +7°.
The sides of the hull of the Miantonomoh-class ships were protected by five layers of 1-inch (25 mm) wrought-iron plates that tapered at their bottom edge down to total of 3 inches (76 mm), backed by 12–14 inches (305–356 mm) of wood. The armor of the gun turret consisted of ten layers of one-inch plates and the pilot house had eight layers. The ship's deck was protected by armor 1.5 inches (38 mm) thick. The bases of the funnel and the ventilator were also protected by unknown thicknesses of armor.
## Construction and career
Monadnock, named after Mount Monadnock, a mountain in southern New Hampshire, was laid down at the Boston Navy Yard in Charlestown, Massachusetts in 1862. The ship was launched on 23 March 1863 and commissioned on 4 October 1864. She subsequently steamed to Norfolk, Virginia, and there Commander Enoch Parrott assumed command on 20 November. On 13 December she departed Norfolk for the assault against Fort Fisher and joined the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron two days later. The reinforced squadron approached Fort Fisher on 24 December as part of the Union fleet. At ranges of 1,100–1,200 yards (1,000–1,100 m) she bombarded the fortification and continued throughout the day. The following morning she resumed shelling the fort as 2,000 Army troops under the command of General Benjamin F. Butler landed 3 miles (4.8 km) north of the fort. The soldiers were withdrawn later that day when Butler received word of approaching Confederate troops and worsening weather that would prevent him from evacuating his troops. Although the Navy had believed that its fire was accurate and effective, it was neither because many gunners had aimed at the Confederate flag flying above the fort and their shells had flown across the peninsula to land in the Cape Fear River.
A second assault was begun on the morning of 13 January 1865 with the ironclads the first to fire in the hopes of provoking the Confederate gunners to retaliate and reveal the positions of their gun so that they could be engaged by the rest of the fleet. The ironclads had anchored to make their fire more accurate and Monadnock kept up a slow and deliberate fire during the day and into the night. Resupplying ammunition at night the ship kept up her fire through the 15th. After Rear Admiral David D. Porter ordered that his ships were to aim at the walls of Fort Fisher rather than the flag, the bombardment was much more effective and many guns were dismounted or disabled. Monadnock's side armor was struck five times during the battle with little damage inflicted; the turrets and the ventilation pipe were also hit five times with no damage recorded. One of the monitor's sailors, Quartermaster William Dunn, was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions in the Fort Fisher engagements.
Monadnock was ordered to Charleston, South Carolina, on 18 January to reinforce the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron there under the command of Rear Admiral John A. Dahlgren. After the Confederates abandoned Charleston and its surrender on 18 February, Monadnock's crew took possession of the blockade runner SS Deer the following day and the monitor entered Charleston Harbor on the 20th. After a stay at Port Royal, South Carolina, she steamed to Hampton Roads, Virginia, on 15 March and then up the James River where she was assigned to the James River Flotilla. By 18 March, Commander William Ronckendorff had relieved Parrott in command of the ship. On 2 April, she steamed to support the final assault on Richmond and then assisted in clearing the river of naval mines. Returning to Hampton Roads on 7 April, Monadnock was assigned to the squadron commanded by Acting Rear Admiral Sylvanus Godon, which had been established to search for the Stonewall. The French-built ship had been ordered by the Confederacy, embargoed and sold to Denmark in 1864 and resold to the Confederacy in January 1865. Delayed by rudder problems, she was en route to the United States and ultimately made landfall in Spanish Cuba on 15 May. The squadron departed two days later and put into Charleston Harbor on the 22nd to re-coal and to be reinforced by the monitor Canonicus before continuing on to Havana, Cuba. They arrived on 28 May to find that the Stonewall had been temporarily turned over to the Spanish government. Monadnock's presence no longer required, she arrived at Norfolk, Virginia, on 12 June and continued onwards to the League Island Navy Yard in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to prepare for her impending voyage to California.
### Voyage around South America
To prepare the monitor for the voyage, she was fitted with a 3-foot-6-inch (1.07 m) breakwater to prevent head seas from battering her forward turret and tall, wooden pilot houses above the existing ones. During the trip a jury-rigged foremast was added which reportedly added 0.5 knots (0.93 km/h; 0.58 mph) to her speed.
Monadnock departed on 5 October in company with the paddle frigates USS Vanderbilt and USS Powhatan and the sloop USS Tuscarora. The monitor steamed the entire way to California entirely under her own speed and the biggest problem reported was that temperatures in the fire room ranged from 120 to 140 °F (49 to 60 °C). Stokers collapsed daily from heat prostration and special inducements of extra pay and spirits had to be offered for men to take their place. After stops at numerous South American ports, the squadron transited the Strait of Magellan and arrived at Valparaíso in late March 1866 as a Spanish squadron was preparing to bombard the undefended town, contrary to international law, during the Chincha Islands War. Commodore John Rogers, commander of the American squadron, attempted to persuade Admiral Casto Méndez Núñez to forego the bombardment, but the latter claimed it was a point of Spanish honor. Rogers even had his ships clear for action in an unsuccessful attempt to intimidate Méndez Núñez and was prepared to open fire if he received support from the small British squadron in the harbor. That was not forthcoming as the British minister in the town forbade Rear-Admiral Joseph Denham to act and Rogers was forced to stand down.
Monadnock's arrival at Acapulco coincided with a Mexican siege of the town's French defenders during the Second French intervention in Mexico. The squadron continued on to San Francisco, anchoring off that city on 21 June. On 26 June she proceeded to Vallejo, and entered the Mare Island Navy Yard where she was decommissioned on 30 June. Eight years later, her wooden hull was rotting and she was sold for scrap. Although Congress was informed by the Navy Department that the Civil War-era ship was being repaired, a new iron-hulled monitor of the same name was built with repair money and the proceeds of her sale because Congress refused to fund any new construction at this time. |
4,374,512 | Ethel Barrymore Theatre | 1,172,534,327 | Broadway theater in Manhattan, New York | [
"1928 establishments in New York City",
"Broadway theatres",
"New York City Designated Landmarks in Manhattan",
"New York City interior landmarks",
"Shubert Organization",
"Theater District, Manhattan",
"Theatres completed in 1928"
]
| The Ethel Barrymore Theatre is a Broadway theater at 241 West 47th Street in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. Opened in 1928, it was designed by Herbert J. Krapp in the Elizabethan, Mediterranean, and Adam styles for the Shubert family. The theater, named in honor of actress Ethel Barrymore, has 1,058 seats and is operated by the Shubert Organization. Both the facade and the auditorium interior are New York City landmarks.
The ground-floor facade is made of rusticated blocks of terracotta. The theater's main entrance consists of two archways and a doorway shielded by a marquee. The upper stories contain an arched screen made of terracotta, inspired by Roman baths, which is surrounded by white brick. The auditorium contains ornamental plasterwork, a sloped orchestra level, a large balcony, and a coved ceiling with a 36 ft-wide (11 m) dome. The balcony level contains box seats topped by decorative arches. The theater was also designed with a basement lounge and a now-demolished stage house.
The Shubert brothers developed the Barrymore Theatre after Ethel Barrymore agreed to have the brothers manage her theatrical career. It opened on December 20, 1928, with The Kingdom of God, and was the last pre-Depression house developed by the Shuberts. Ethel Barrymore only worked with the Shuberts until 1932 and last performed in the theater in 1940. The Barrymore has consistently remained in use as a legitimate theater since its opening, hosting plays and musicals; it is one of the few Broadway theaters to have never been sold or renamed. The theater was refurbished in the 1980s and the 2000s.
## Site
The Ethel Barrymore Theatre is on 243 West 47th Street, on the north sidewalk between Eighth Avenue and Broadway, near Times Square in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. The square land lot covers 10,050 sq ft (934 m<sup>2</sup>), with a frontage of 100 ft (30 m) on 47th Street and a depth of 100 feet. The Barrymore shares the block with the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre to the west, the Longacre Theatre to the north, and the Morgan Stanley Building to the east. Other nearby buildings include the Eugene O'Neill Theatre and Walter Kerr Theatre to the north; Crowne Plaza Times Square Manhattan to the northeast; 20 Times Square to the east; the Hotel Edison and Lunt-Fontanne Theatre to the south; and the Lena Horne Theatre and Paramount Hotel to the southwest.
## Design
The Ethel Barrymore Theatre was designed by Herbert J. Krapp in several styles and was constructed in 1928 for the Shubert brothers. The theater is named after actress Ethel Barrymore (1879–1959), a prominent member of the Barrymore family of actors, and is operated by the Shubert Organization. The Barrymore has been used continuously as a legitimate house and, unlike most Broadway theaters, has never been sold or renamed since its opening. The Barrymore was the last theater to be built by the Shubert Organization until 2003.
### Facade
The facade is symmetrically arranged. The ground floor is clad in rusticated blocks of terracotta, painted in a limestone color, above a granite water table. At ground level, the auditorium entrance includes two arched openings, each with four aluminum and glass doors. The voussoirs of the arches are made of rusticated blocks, while the keystones at the centers of each arch are shaped like brackets. Within each arch, the spaces above the doors are infilled with black glazed tiles; originally, these spaces were filled with metal tracery. Between the arched doors is a smaller doorway, which is topped by a large keystone. Above all of these openings is a marquee with the name "Barrymore", which is supported by ornate bronze brackets. The presence of the large marquee obscures the contrast between the ground floor and upper stories. The brackets originally supported a smaller bronze-and-glass canopy, which curved upward in front of either arch.
On either side of the doors are terracotta niches with bronze-framed sign boards. Above the signboards are terracotta wreaths, which surround circular panels with the gilded letters "The Barrymore Theater". Each wreath is topped by a curved pediment. The western and eastern portions of the facade are recessed slightly and contain recessed openings. The opening to the east is marked as the stage door. A frieze, decorated with leaf and wave moldings, runs above the first floor. To the east, there was originally a stage house with fire escapes on its facade, but this has since been replaced with the Morgan Stanley Building.
The upper stories are faced in bonded glazed-white brick. The central part of the facade includes a terracotta screen with an Ancient Roman-inspired pattern, surrounded by a cord molding. The screen includes a grid of squares, each of which contain central medallions with bars radiating in eight directions. To the left of the screen, the wall contains a sign with the name "Barrymore" and a metal fire escape. A metal sign hangs from the facade to the right. The top of the screen curves upward in a manner resembling a proscenium arch, and a brick parapet rises above the screen. A Greek key frieze and a cornice with talon moldings runs above the entire facade. Contemporary media from the theater's opening cited the top of the facade as being 62 ft (19 m) above the sidewalk, while the screen was 52 ft (16 m) wide.
### Auditorium
The auditorium has an orchestra level, one balcony, boxes and a stage behind the proscenium arch. The space is designed with plaster decorations in low relief. The auditorium is shaped almost as a square. According to the Shubert Organization, the auditorium has 1,058 seats; meanwhile, Playbill cites 1,039 seats and The Broadway League cites 1,096 seats. The physical seats are divided into 582 seats in the orchestra, 196 at the front of the balcony, 256 at the rear of the balcony, and 24 in the boxes. There were originally 1,100 seats, divided into 570 in the orchestra, 494 in the balcony, and 36 in the boxes.
The seats were designed to be "unusually comfortable", with steel backs and bottoms. A source from the theater's opening cited the auditorium as having an old-gold and brown color scheme. The interior uses a combination of Elizabethan, Mediterranean, and Adam-style design motifs.
#### Seating areas
The rear of the orchestra contains a promenade. The rear wall of the promenade contains three doorways, above which is a frieze. The promenade ceiling is curved and contains Elizabethan strapwork patterns. There is a wrought iron balustrade between the orchestra promenade and the last row of orchestra seating. Two staircases lead from either end of the promenade to the balcony level; they contain wrought-iron railings with shield and strapwork motifs. The orchestra is raked, sloping down toward the stage. The side walls of the orchestra contain a wainscoting that is divided into panels. The walls were originally painted cinnamon and gold. There are lighting sconces on the walls.
The balcony level is cantilevered above the orchestra and is divided into front and rear sections by an aisle halfway across its depth. The crossover aisle connects to segmentally arched exit doors on both of the side walls. There are console brackets above the arched exit doors, which support terraces that project slightly from an opening on either wall. The rest of the balcony's side walls are made of simple plaster and contain wall sconces. The front rail of the balcony contains high-relief strapwork patterns, which have been covered over with light boxes. The underside of the balcony has plasterwork panels with crystal light fixtures suspended from medallions. The original lighting fixtures, consisting of inverted bowls of cut glass, have since been replaced. Air-conditioning vents are placed along some of the panels under the balcony, as well as at the balcony's rear. There is a technical booth behind the balcony's rear wall.
On either side of the proscenium are three boxes, raised about 9 ft (2.7 m) from the orchestra floor, which curve toward the side walls. At orchestra level is a wainscoted wall interrupted by three segmental-arched openings, one beneath each box. The undersides of the boxes contain moldings and crystal light fixtures similar to those on the balcony. The box fronts are decorated with three Elizabethan-style plasterwork bands. From bottom to top, the bands depict shields with putti's faces; rosettes; and strapwork around shields. Immediately behind the boxes are six gold-colored, fluted pilasters with Ionic capitals. There are half-columns in front of the pilasters that flank the center box. Above the pilasters is an architrave with plaster strapwork reliefs, as well as a balustrade containing vase-shaped balusters. There is a lunette above the balustrade; it includes a square shield motif, which is connected by latticework bands to sphinxes on either side. The lunette is surrounded by strapwork bands and several concentric semicircular arches. The semicircular arches have design motifs such as shells, shields, anthemia, and half-columns. The arches, combined with the lunette, constitute a sunburst pattern. The boxes and semicircular arches are surrounded by a plaster frame.
#### Other design features
Next to the boxes is a three-centered proscenium arch. The archway is surrounded by a wide band with strapwork motifs, with narrow bands of leaves on either side. The spandrels, above the corners of the proscenium arch, contain decorative motifs. The proscenium measures 24 ft 10 in (7.57 m) high and 39 ft 3 in (11.96 m) wide. The depth of the auditorium to the proscenium is 28 ft 3 in (8.61 m), while the depth to the front of the stage is 31 ft 3 in (9.53 m). According to sources from the theater's completion, the proscenium opening was 40 ft (12 m) wide, while the arch itself was 34 ft (10 m) high. As arranged, the stage itself measured 28 ft (8.5 m) deep by 81 ft (25 m) wide. The stage gridiron was placed 65 ft (20 m) above the stage. There are traps throughout the entire stage, as well as a counterweight fly system.
The ceiling rises 49 ft (15 m) from the floor of the orchestra. The coved ceiling contains a dome at its center, measuring 36 ft (11 m) wide. At the center of the dome is a grilled centerpiece, which is surrounded by several Elizabethan-style circles, as well as four medallions placed at 90-degree angles. A glass chandelier hangs from the center of the dome. The rest of the dome is divided into wedge-shaped sections, which are arranged in a circular pattern around the centerpiece. Outside of the dome, the coved ceiling contains latticework panels, surrounded by a strapwork pattern. Where the coved ceiling curves onto the side walls, there is a band with water-leaf motifs. Originally, this band was colored in green, gold, and gray.
### Other interior spaces
The theater was built with a general lounge in the basement, which measured 25 by 50 ft (7.6 by 15.2 m). Separate spaces in the lounge were provided for women and men, and there was also a telephone booth. According to contemporary news articles, the basement lounge was decorated with an ivory-colored strapwork ceiling, modeled after English designs. The lounge had antique Elizabethan furniture, a mulberry-and-taupe carpet, and walls with an "old English texture in antique color". When the theater opened, Gilbert Miller lent a bronze bust of Ethel Barrymore, which was designed by A. C. Laddy. The basement also had a large dressing room for choruses.
On the first floor, Ethel Barrymore had her own modern-style reception and dressing room. The second floor had a chorus room and a smaller dressing room. The theater was built with three additional floors, each with four dressing rooms.
## History
Times Square became the epicenter for large-scale theater productions between 1900 and the Great Depression. During the 1900s and 1910s, many theaters in Midtown Manhattan were developed by the Shubert brothers, one of the major theatrical syndicates of the time. The Shuberts originated from Syracuse, New York, and expanded downstate into New York City in the first decade of the 20th century. The brothers controlled a quarter of all plays and three-quarters of theatrical ticket sales in the U.S. by 1925. The Shuberts continued to build Broadway theaters in the 1920s, with the construction of four theaters on 48th and 49th Streets, as well as the Imperial Theatre on 45th Street.
### Development and early years
In 1927, playwright Zoe Akins told Ethel Barrymore about an offer from the Shubert brothers, who proposed developing a Broadway theater and naming it in her honor if she agreed to be represented by the Shuberts. Barrymore agreed, and the Shuberts hired Krapp to design the theater, construction of which started in late April or early May 1928. At the time, Barrymore was 48 years old and a prominent theatrical personality; she had been represented by the Frohman brothers for almost her entire career. In September 1928, Lee Shubert announced that the theater would open the next month, with Barrymore starring in G. Martinez Sierra's play The Kingdom of God. The theater's completion was delayed, prompting The Kingdom of God to go on a several-week tour.
The Barrymore Theatre ultimately opened on December 20, 1928. During the opening, which was attended by many New York City socialites, Ethel Barrymore received seven curtain calls before she was able to give a speech thanking the Shuberts. The Barrymore Theatre received so many items of Barrymore memorabilia that, within a month of the theater's opening, the Shuberts considered creating a library to house these gifts. Ethel Barrymore appeared at her eponymous theater again in 1929, when she co-starred with Louis Calhern in The Love Duel, which ran for 88 performances. The Barrymore's next several plays did not feature Ethel Barrymore. These included a transfer of John Drinkwater's comedy Bird in Hand in September 1929, as well as Death Takes a Holiday that December, the latter of which had a comparatively long run of 181 performances.
### 1930s and 1940s
In 1930, the theater staged the comedy Topaze and the romance His Majesty's Car. Ethel Barrymore's next appearance at the Barrymore was in the short-lived blackface comedy Scarlet Sister Mary in November 1930, which saw the Broadway debut of the actress's daughter, Ethel Barrymore Colt. More successful was The Truth Game with Ivor Novello and Billie Burke, which opened that December and had 105 performances. In 1931, the Barrymore hosted Mélo with Edna Best and Basil Rathbone, followed that November by Ethel Barrymore in The School for Scandal, whose son John Drew Colt made his first Broadway appearance in that show. The Barrymore's productions in 1932 included a 144-performance run of Whistling in the Dark, as well as the short-lived comedy Here Today and a transfer of There's Always Juliet. The same year, Ethel Barrymore stopped performing under the Shuberts' management, prompting the brothers to remove her first name from the marquee. At the end of 1932, Fred Astaire and Claire Luce starred in the musical Gay Divorce, where Astaire performed without his sister Adele for the first time.
The theater's plays in 1933 included Design for Living with Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne, and Noël Coward, as well as the mystery Ten Minute Alibi and the drama Jezebel. The Barrymore went into receivership the same year, and the receiver deeded the theater to the Barrymore Theater Corporation. The Barrymore had seven flops in 1934. Coward, Lunt, and Fontanne returned in January 1935 for the play Point Valaine, which lasted for only 56 performances. The Barrymore hosted a transfer of the play Distaff Side that March, and Philip Merivale and Gladys Cooper staged revivals of Shakespeare's Macbeth and Othello that October. The play Parnell opened in November 1935 and ran for 98 performances; it was followed by a double bill of Irwin Shaw's Bury the Dead and Prelude in April 1936, then Emlyn Williams's Night Must Fall that September. Clare Boothe Luce's The Women opened with an all-female cast in December 1936 and was a hit, running for 657 performances.
The Playwrights' Company next presented the musical Knickerbocker Holiday with Walter Huston in 1938. The next year, the Barrymore hosted No Time for Comedy with Katharine Cornell, Laurence Olivier, and Margalo Gillmore for 185 performances, and Key Largo with Paul Muni, Uta Hagen, and José Ferrer for 105 performances. In 1940, Ethel Barrymore appeared in the short-lived play An International Incident, her last appearance at her namesake theater. The musical Pal Joey, featuring Gene Kelly and Vivienne Segal with a score by Rodgers and Hart, opened later that year and ran for 270 performances before transferring to another theater. The next hit was Best Foot Forward with Rosemary Lane in 1941, which had 326 performances. Walter Kerr and Leo Brady's Count Me In had a short run in 1942, but Anton Chekhov's The Three Sisters with Katharine Cornell was more successful, with 123 performances. Another success was the war drama Tomorrow the World in 1943, which had 499 performances.
Revivals predominated at the theater in the mid-1940s. These included The Barretts of Wimpole Street and Pygmalion in 1945, as well as The Duchess of Malfi and Cyrano de Bergerac in 1946. In 1947, Gian Carlo Menotti presented a double bill of the musical plays The Telephone and The Medium at the theater, which ran for 212 performances. Later that year, the Barrymore presented Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, originally featuring Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter, Karl Malden, and Jessica Tandy. The play, one of several that Irene Mayer Selznick produced at the theater, ran for 855 performances over the next two years.
### 1950s to 1970s
Menotti hosted another show at the Barrymore in 1950: the opera The Consul with Patricia Neway and Marie Powers. Later that year, the Barrymore hosted Bell, Book and Candle with husband-and-wife team Rex Harrison and Lilli Palmer, which ran for 233 performances. Another married couple starred in another hit in 1951: The Fourposter with Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn, who stayed for 632 performances. This was followed in 1953 by a transfer of Misalliance. The same year, the Barrymore staged Tea and Sympathy with Deborah Kerr, Leif Erickson, and John Kerr, which had 712 total performances. Shows in 1955 included The Desperate Hours; a personal appearance by Marcel Marceau; and the drama The Chalk Garden. Leonard Sillman's revue New Faces of 1956 ran for 220 performances, featuring Maggie Smith in her Broadway debut, as well as female impersonator T. C. Jones. Ketti Frings's adaptation of Look Homeward, Angel premiered in 1957 and ran 530 performances.
A Raisin in the Sun opened in March 1959, staying for seven months and running 530 total performances. When Ethel Barrymore died in June of that year, the theater's lights were dimmed in its namesake's honor. Another comedy, A Majority of One with Gertrude Berg and Cedric Hardwicke, moved to the Barrymore later that year and ran through June 1960. The Barrymore's productions of the early 1960s included Critic's Choice with Henry Fonda and Mildred Natwick in 1960; The Complaisant Lover with Michael Redgrave, Richard Johnson, and Googie Withers in 1961; and A Gift of Time with Fonda and Olivia de Havilland in 1962. Later in the decade, the theater hosted The Amen Corner in 1965, followed the next year by Wait Until Dark and a limited engagement by Les Ballets Africains. This was followed in 1967 by Peter Shaffer's twin production of Black Comedy and White Lies. The Barrymore's last hit of the 1960s was a revival of The Front Page in 1969.
The Barrymore hosted several hits in the 1970s, several of which won Tony Awards and other accolades. In 1970, Conduct Unbecoming opened at the Barrymore, featuring Michael Barrington and Jeremy Clyde. The next year, Alec McCowen appeared in The Philanthropist, as well as Melvin Van Peebles's musical Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death. The New Phoenix Repertory Company premiered at the Barrymore in late 1973, with three works: The Visit, Chemin de Fer, and Holiday. This was followed in 1974 by Noël Coward in Two Keys with Tandy, Cronyn, and Anne Baxter, a double bill of Coward's plays A Song at Twilight and Come Into the Garden, Maud. The Barrymore hosted the play Travesties with John Wood in 1975, as well as American Buffalo with Robert Duvall and I Love My Wife in 1977. The Barrymore's last hit of the decade was the 1979 play Romantic Comedy, featuring Mia Farrow and Anthony Perkins. During the run of Romantic Comedy, the Barrymore Theatre became one of the first theaters to distribute electronic headsets to help hard-of-hearing visitors. The theater also hosted a party in December 1979 to celebrate what would have been Ethel Barrymore's birthday.
### 1980s and 1990s
The Barrymore continued to host hits in the early 1980s. These included Lunch Hour, which opened in 1980 with Gilda Radner and Sam Waterston, followed in 1981 by The West Side Waltz with Katharine Hepburn and Dorothy Loudon. Hume Cronyn returned to the Barrymore in 1982, making his playwriting debut with Foxfire, in which he costarred with Jessica Tandy and Keith Carradine. This was followed at the end of 1983 by Baby, which ran for 241 performances. The next year, David Rabe's Hurlyburly transferred from off-Broadway and ran for 343 performances. The Barrymore's productions in 1986 included the solo show Lillian with Zoe Caldwell, as well as Social Security, the latter of which ran for 385 performances through 1987. The August Wilson musical Joe Turner's Come and Gone opened at the Barrymore in 1988. The following year, the Barrymore hosted Metamorphosis with Mikhail Baryshnikov, as well as a 12-performance run of David Hare's The Secret Rapture. During the late 1980s, the Shuberts renovated the Barrymore as part of a restoration program for their Broadway theaters, and the Shuberts also sold the Barrymore's air rights for development.
The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) had started to consider protecting the Barrymore as a landmark in 1982, with discussions continuing over the next several years. The LPC designated the Barrymore's facade as a landmark on November 4, 1987, followed by the interior on November 10. This was part of the commission's wide-ranging effort in 1987 to grant landmark status to Broadway theaters. The New York City Board of Estimate ratified the designations in March 1988. The Shuberts, the Nederlanders, and Jujamcyn collectively sued the LPC in June 1988 to overturn the landmark designations of 22 theaters, including the Barrymore, on the merit that the designations severely limited the extent to which the theaters could be modified. The lawsuit was escalated to the New York Supreme Court and the Supreme Court of the United States, but these designations were ultimately upheld in 1992.
In 1990, the play Lettice and Lovage opened at the Barrymore, featuring Margaret Tyzack and Maggie Smith from the West End version of the play. The next year, the Lincoln Center Theater brought Mule Bone, a never-performed play written in 1930 by Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston; it ran at the Barrymore for 67 performances. A limited revival of A Streetcar Named Desire, featuring Alec Baldwin and Jessica Lange, opened in 1992. Afterward, the off-Broadway hit The Sisters Rosensweig moved to the Barrymore in 1993, with 556 Broadway performances. The play Indiscretions opened in 1995 and had 220 performances; it was followed the next year by a 306-performance revival of Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband. Cy Coleman's off-off-Broadway musical The Life transferred to the Barrymore in 1997 and saw 465 performances. The Barrymore next hosted a revival of the Greek tragedy Electra in 1998, then the West End hit Amy's View and the musical Putting It Together in 1999.
### 2000s to present
The Donmar Warehouse's production of The Real Thing and the Manhattan Theatre Club's version of The Tale of the Allergist's Wife were both performed at the Barrymore in 2000. The 777-performance run of The Tale of the Allergist's Wife was followed by shorter runs of Imaginary Friends in 2002, Salome in 2003, and Sly Fox in 2004. As part of a settlement with the United States Department of Justice in 2003, the Shuberts agreed to improve disabled access at their 16 landmarked Broadway theaters, including the Barrymore. The Barrymore Theatre was then renovated for \$9 million in 2004. Next came a revival of Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie in 2005 and the short-lived musical Ring of Fire in 2006. Later in 2006, a revival of Stephen Sondheim's Company opened at the Barrymore, running for 247 performances. The band Duran Duran, performing its album Red Carpet Massacre in November 2007, was forced to relocate due to the 2007 Broadway stagehand strike. The Barrymore's exterior was renovated as part of a two-year project that was completed in 2008.
The Barrymore hosted three David Mamet plays in the late 2000s: November and Speed-the-Plow in 2008, as well as Race in 2009. Eugène Ionesco's Exit the King was also performed at the Barrymore in 2009. The 2010 play Elling had nine performances before it flopped. This was followed in 2011 by the play Arcadia, as well as a special appearance, An Evening with Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin. The Barrymore hosted Death of a Salesman and Chaplin in 2012; Macbeth and Betrayal in 2013; and A Raisin in the Sun in 2014. With the exception of the musical Chaplin, these productions were all revivals of plays. Next, the play The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time opened in late 2014 and ran for nearly two years. When The Curious Incident closed, the food show presenter Alton Brown had a limited appearance at the Barrymore in November 2016.
In 2017, the Barrymore hosted the plays The Present and Six Degrees of Separation. At the end of the same year, the Barrymore staged the musical The Band's Visit, which ran through early 2019. The play The Inheritance opened in November 2019 and was a few days short of its scheduled closing when the Barrymore shuttered on March 12, 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The theater reopened on September 4, 2021, with a limited revival of Waitress, which closed at the end of the year. The musical Paradise Square ran for three months from April to July 2022, followed by the first Broadway revival of the play The Piano Lesson, which opened at the theater in October 2022 and ran for three months. A transfer of the West End play Peter Pan Goes Wrong opened at the Barrymore in April 2023, running for three months. This is scheduled to be followed in August 2023 by a limited run of Antonio Díaz's magic show El Mago Pop, then in October 2023 by Barry Manilow and Bruce Sussman's musical Harmony.
## Notable productions
Productions are listed by the year of their first performance.
### 1920s to 1990s
- 1929: Death Takes a Holiday
- 1930: Topaze
- 1930: The Truth Game
- 1930: Scarlet Sister Mary
- 1931: Mélo
- 1931: The School for Scandal
- 1932: There's Always Juliet
- 1932: Gay Divorce
- 1933: Design for Living
- 1934: Both Your Houses
- 1934: Ruth Draper
- 1935: Point Valaine
- 1935: Othello
- 1935: Macbeth
- 1936: Bury the Dead
- 1936: Night Must Fall
- 1936: The Women
- 1938: Knickerbocker Holiday
- 1939: No Time for Comedy
- 1939: Key Largo
- 1940: Pal Joey
- 1941: Best Foot Forward
- 1942: R.U.R.
- 1943: Three Sisters
- 1945: Rebecca
- 1945: The Barretts of Wimpole Street
- 1945: Marinka
- 1945: Pygmalion
- 1946: The Duchess of Malfi
- 1946: Cyrano de Bergerac
- 1947: The Telephone/The Medium
- 1947: A Streetcar Named Desire
- 1949: The Rat Race
- 1950: The Consul
- 1950: Bell, Book and Candle
- 1951: The Fourposter
- 1952: I've Got Sixpence
- 1953: Misalliance
- 1953: Tea and Sympathy
- 1955: The Desperate Hours
- 1955: Marcel Marceau
- 1955: The Chalk Garden
- 1957: Small War on Murray Hill
- 1957: Waiting for Godot
- 1957: Look Homeward, Angel
- 1959: A Raisin in the Sun
- 1959: A Majority of One
- 1960: The Hostage
- 1960: Critic's Choice
- 1961: The Complaisant Lover
- 1962: Moby-Dick
- 1964: The Passion of Josef D.
- 1965: The Amen Corner
- 1966: Wait Until Dark
- 1966: We Have Always Lived in the Castle
- 1966: Les Ballets Africains
- 1967: Black Comedy/White Lies
- 1967: The Little Foxes
- 1968: Don't Drink the Water
- 1968: The Seven Descents of Myrtle
- 1968: Happiness Is Just a Little Thing Called a Rolls Royce
- 1968: The Goodbye People
- 1969: The Front Page
- 1970: Conduct Unbecoming
- 1971: The Philanthropist
- 1971: Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death
- 1972: Captain Brassbound's Conversion
- 1972: Don't Play Us Cheap
- 1973: The Visit
- 1973: Holiday
- 1974: A Song at Twilight/Come Into the Garden, Maud
- 1975: The Night That Made America Famous
- 1975: Travesties
- 1976: Legend
- 1976: Poor Murderer
- 1977: American Buffalo
- 1977: I Love My Wife
- 1979: Romantic Comedy
- 1981: The West Side Waltz
- 1982: Is There Life After High School?
- 1982: Foxfire
- 1983: Baby
- 1984: Hurlyburly
- 1986: Social Security
- 1988: Joe Turner's Come and Gone
- 1988: The Secret Rapture
- 1989: Rumors
- 1990: Lettice and Lovage
- 1991: Mule Bone
- 1992: A Streetcar Named Desire
- 1993: The Sisters Rosensweig
- 1995: Indiscretions
- 1996: An Ideal Husband
- 1997: The Life
- 1998: Electra
- 1999: Amy's View
- 1999: Putting It Together
### 2000s to present
- 2000: The Real Thing
- 2000: The Tale of the Allergist's Wife
- 2002: Imaginary Friends
- 2003: Salome
- 2004: Sly Fox
- 2005: The Glass Menagerie
- 2006: Ring of Fire
- 2006: Company
- 2007: Red Carpet Massacre
- 2008: November
- 2008: Speed-the-Plow
- 2009: Exit the King
- 2009: Race
- 2010: Elling
- 2011: Arcadia
- 2011: An Evening with Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin
- 2012: Death of a Salesman
- 2012: Chaplin
- 2013: Macbeth
- 2013: Betrayal
- 2014: A Raisin in the Sun
- 2014: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
- 2016: Alton Brown Live: Eat Your Science
- 2016: The Present
- 2017: Six Degrees of Separation
- 2017: The Band's Visit
- 2019: The Inheritance
- 2021: Waitress
- 2022: Paradise Square
- 2022: The Piano Lesson
- 2023: Peter Pan Goes Wrong
- 2023: El Mago Pop
- 2023: Harmony: A New Musical
## Box office record
Waitress achieved the box office record for the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. It grossed \$197,878 in ticket sales on September 3, 2021, breaking the previous single-performance house record at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre set by the production of Betrayal (\$184,476).
## See also
- List of New York City Designated Landmarks in Manhattan from 14th to 59th Streets
- List of Broadway theaters |
20,983,072 | The Duel (The Office) | 1,167,440,253 | null | [
"2009 American television episodes",
"The Office (American season 5) episodes"
]
| "The Duel" is the twelfth episode of the fifth season of the American comedy television series The Office, and the show's 84th overall episode. In the episode, Andy learns his fiancee Angela is having an affair with Dwight, and the two challenge each other to a physical fight to win her affections. Meanwhile, Michael travels to New York City for a meeting with David Wallace, where Wallace seeks managerial advice from Michael due to the poor financial condition of the fictional company, Dunder Mifflin.
The episode was written by Jennifer Celotta and directed by Dean Holland, the show's long-time editor making his directorial debut. It featured the conclusion of the love triangle between Dwight, Andy and Angela, a subplot that had been going on since the end of the fourth season. David Wallace's meeting with Michael marked the show's first acknowledgment of the economic crisis facing much of the globalized nation at the time of the episode due to the financial crisis of 2007–2010.
"The Duel" was seen as a defining episode for Andy Bernard, who is portrayed in a more sympathetic way than he has been seen in previous episodes. Ed Helms was particularly praised for his performance. Several bits of dialogue were improvised, especially during the duel scene between Andy and Dwight. That scene was shot over the course of six hours in an exterior parking lot set, with Helms and Wilson providing their own stunts.
The episode received generally positive reviews, and was largely described as an effective conclusion to the love triangle subplot. According to Nielsen Media Research, "The Duel" was seen by 8.35 million viewers. During its original American broadcast, it received particularly strong competition from the CBS drama series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, which that night featured the final appearance of actor William Petersen.
## Plot
Andy Bernard (Ed Helms) still has not learned about his fiancee Angela Martin's (Angela Kinsey) affair with Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson), seventeen days after Phyllis Vance (Phyllis Smith) revealed it to everyone else in the Dunder Mifflin office. Michael Scott (Steve Carell), who has since learned the news as well, suggests he should be the one to inform Andy, but the entire office argues that Angela should be the one to break the news. Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) is particularly concerned that Andy's past anger management issues may lead to violence. Dwight tries convincing Angela to tell Andy, but she continues to put it off despite claiming to Dwight that she loves him. This refusal, along with wanting to avoid the ensuing conflict, leaves Michael to tell Andy before he leaves for a meeting with David Wallace (Andy Buckley), leaving Andy shocked and dismayed. Angela reluctantly confirms the affair occurred, but also tells Andy that she loves him, and Andy realizes everybody else in the office already knew about it.
Andy confronts Dwight and challenges him to a "duel" in the parking lot, with Angela as a prize to the winner. Dwight accepts and Angela, anxious to avoid making a choice between the two men herself, says she will honor the results of the duel. Jim, acting as office manager in Michael's absence, tries to talk them out of the duel and confiscates Dwight's hidden weapons around the office, but concedes he does not have the power to prevent a fight outside the office. In New York, Michael is nervous about why David Wallace wants to meet with him. But as the meeting begins, David tells him Scranton is the most successful Dunder Mifflin branch amid a difficult economic climate, and he wants to learn why Michael's management has been so successful. Michael is delighted with the compliment and attention, but can only manage vague, off-topic and largely nonsensical answers. David claims it is difficult for someone to make a self-evaluation, and Michael leaves the meeting in a very pleasant mood.
In the parking lot, Andy has not shown up for the duel, instead leaving a deliberately verbose note hanging in the bushes saying he has given up. As Dwight reads it, Andy sneaks up behind him in his Toyota Prius, a hybrid car that remains completely silent when driven below five miles per hour due to the electric motor. Impressed by Andy's deviousness, the rest of the office does not warn Dwight, saying that Andy "deserves the win". Andy pins Dwight between the car and the large bushes in the parking lot. Dwight, having no weapons, whips the car with his belt. Jim races out to check that Dwight is not seriously injured, but they snap at him to go away. The two bicker back and forth about Angela, leading to Andy revealing that he has had sex with Angela, despite previous assumptions that only Dwight had done so. Realizing that Angela played them both, Dwight and Andy both admit defeat and return to the office, where Andy calls to cancel his wedding cake, and Dwight throws away a bobblehead doll Angela previously bought him as a gift. A saddened Angela realizes she has lost both men.
## Production
### Writing
"The Duel" was written by Jennifer Celotta, a producer and show runner with The Office. The episode featured the conclusion of the love triangle between Dwight, Andy and Angela, a subplot that had been going on since the fourth season finale, "Goodbye, Toby". The cast and writing staff saw "The Duel" as a defining episode for Andy Bernard because it demonstrated a softer, more emotional side of the character. Dean Holland, who directed the episode, said this was particularly effective because in past episodes, he displayed such rage problems that he had to attend anger management courses, but in "The Duel" he responded to horrible news in a heartrending way. Rainn Wilson particularly praised Ed Helms' performance, saying, "He gives a lot of heart and soul, and Andy is such a doofus and a douche, and now you really get to see his heart break. There's some reality there. That's the great thing this show gives us, just when you think you know the characters and they're two-dimensional and they're goofy and crazy, in their own way, you get real human redemption."
The subplot with David Wallace seeking managerial advice from Michael due to the poor financial condition of Dunder Mifflin was the first acknowledgment of the economic crisis facing much of the globalized nation at the time of the episode due to the financial crisis of 2007–2010. This set the stage for a continuing motif of financial difficulties for Dunder Mifflin, which would eventually culminate in the sixth season episode "Secret Santa", in which it is revealed the company has been sold and its executives all fired.
A number of scenes and lines in "The Duel" were improvised by the actors. During one scene, Michael repeatedly tries to tell Andy about Angela's affair, but Jim constantly interrupts him while forcing him into his office. John Krasinski improvised most of his lines and noises, and Wilson said they were so funny, "I was just chortling over at my desk." The scene as it appears in the episode consists of about six different takes spliced together. Krasinski also conceived a moment in "The Duel" when Jim returns to his desk by awkwardly passing through Dwight and Andy while they are facing off against each other. Wilson called the addition to the scene "a really nice touch". During another scene, Dwight sings a nursery rhyme that goes, "Learn your rules, you better learn your rules, if you don't, you'll be eaten in your sleep!" Celotta and Wilson came up with several versions of the song, but the one that appeared in the final episode was conceived by Wilson.
A line in which Dwight tells Andy that Angela "certainly seems to enjoy making lovemaking" was improvised by Wilson. Much of the dialogue between Andy and Dwight during the duel scene was also improvised. It was writer Paul Lieberstein, who served as show runner along with Celotta at the time, who suggested the idea of Andy sneaking up on Dwight with his Toyota Prius. The original script called for the entire office cast to come down to the parking lot from the Dunder Mifflin office to try to stop Dwight and Andy from fighting. However, the staging proved awkward during filming, so John Krasinski suggested that only Jim go down to the parking lot while the others stayed behind, and the change was eventually incorporated into the episode.
### Filming
"The Duel" marked the directorial debut of Dean Holland, a longtime film editor with The Office. The original cut of the episode was 38 minutes long and Holland, who edited it himself, had to trim it down to 22 minutes. During a cold open scene, the Dunder Mifflin employees run past a radar speed sign in the street and compete for the best speed. This was inspired by Aaron Shure, a television producer and The Office screenwriter, who worked on the staff of another television show that held races in front of a radar speed sign in exactly the same way. It was about 96 degrees when the scene was filmed, which made running particularly difficult for the actors. Despite the extremely hot temperatures, fake snow was placed in the exterior shots because the writers were trying to simulate the winter season weather of Scranton, Pennsylvania, where The Office is set, rather than the Van Nuys district in Los Angeles, California, where the show was filmed.
The original script called for Michael to tell Andy about Angela's affair outside in the parking lot before getting into his car and driving away. When filming began, Holland considered filming the scene inside the car instead. Steve Carell suggested Michael get in the car and leave Andy outside, then tell him while driving away, which was how the scene was ultimately shot. During a scene when Andy returns to the office and confronts his co-workers; there is a long, awkward silence, and the script originally called for Kevin to pass gas and ruin the tension. During filming, it was changed so Phyllis would pass gas instead because it was decided it would be funnier if it were a woman. During the editing process, Holland decided the joke did not work very well and cut it, but a brief moment of Dwight reacting in a disgusted way to the flatulence, while maintaining a defensive fighting pose toward Andy, can still be seen in the finished episode.
The duel scene itself was shot over the course of six hours in the exterior parking lot setting. Natural lighting from the sun changed so drastically over that time, large bounce cards had to be placed above the hedges so the shadows would remain consistent throughout the shoot. Ed Helms actually drove the car during the scenes, and Rainn Wilson performed his own stunts. The crew considered using a stunt double for Wilson, but they found his acting so funny during filming that they decided against it. At the end of "The Duel", Michael Scott talks directly to the camera with a New York City background behind him. The scenes were not filmed in the city, but rather behind a greenscreen where the scenery images were later added.
## Cultural references
During the cold open, after Michael believes he has run extremely fast, he says, "Eat that, Carl Lewis", a reference to the American track and field athlete and gold medalist.
## Reception
In its original American broadcast on January 15, 2009, "The Duel" was watched by 8.35 million viewers. It aired the same night as actor William Petersen's final appearance on the CBS drama series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, which drew an unusually high viewership of 23.13 million viewers. Nevertheless, The Office outperformed CSI in the ratings among viewers between ages 18 and 34, earning a 5.0 rating/13 share compared to CSI's 3.8 rating/10 share. Both shows were outperformed in that age group by the ABC drama series Grey's Anatomy, which drew a 5.2 rating/13 share, and a total of 12.95 million viewers for the night. Among viewers between ages 18 and 49, "The Duel" drew a 4.3 rating/10 share, which was lower than both CSI and Grey's Anatomy. The Office also earned higher ratings in its timeslot than the Fox reality television series "Kitchen Nightmares" (4.28 million viewers) and the CW thriller series Supernatural (2.96 million viewers).
"The Duel" received generally positive reviews. Andy calling off the wedding after learning Angela cheated on him with Dwight ranked number 6 in phillyBurbs.com's top ten moments from the fifth season of The Office. "The Duel" was voted the fourteenth highest-rated episode out of 26 from the fifth season, according to an episode poll at the fansite OfficeTally, where the episode was rated 8.11 out of 10. Alan Sepinwall of The Star-Ledger said the episode "brings the Dwight/Angela/Andy triangle to an effective close" that made him feel sympathy for both Dwight and Andy. He was disappointed, however, that the idea of David Wallace trying to learn from Michael seemed undeveloped. The A.V. Club writer Scott Tobias said "The Duel" efficiently resolved a major storyline in 30 minutes, and was "a nice mix of the wacky and the melancholy, though it's perhaps a little long on the former and a little short on the latter". He called the David Wallace subplot "funny-but-forgettable". Travis Fickett of IGN said the episode was surprisingly intense and dramatic, and particularly highlighted the talents of Ed Helms. Fickett said "The Duel" was a great payoff to the Angela love triangle storyline and demonstrated how well The Office varies and paces stories from episode to episode.
TV Guide writer Shahzad Abbas called it possibly the best episode of the season. Abbas particular enjoyed the tension as Andy learned the truth and the resolution of the duel. Entertainment Weekly writer Alynda Wheat called it an "instant classic" and a vast improvement over the most recent string of episodes. Wheat called the interactions between Dwight and Andy "brilliance" and described the cold open "pretty genius". New York magazine writer Will Leitch said the Andy-Dwight-Angela triangle was like a "dirtier, meaner, crazier parody" of the Jim-Pam-Roy subplot from previous seasons, and Leitch appreciated that it was resolved in a darker way than the latter love triangle. Brian Howard of The Journal News called it a "great episode", and particularly enjoyed the moments between Angela and Dwight, and the way Jim tried to prevent Michael from telling Andy about the affair. Jay Black of TV Squad said he enjoyed seeing Angela get her comeuppance, and felt he could relate to the voyeuristic interest the office co-workers took in the duel. Black praised the Michael subplot because it "provided an ironic counter-weight" to the duel because Michael was being praised for his managerial skills while his co-workers fought each other in the parking lot. |
62,477,077 | Kuiil | 1,167,512,682 | Fictional character in the Star Wars franchise | [
"Fictional farmers",
"Fictional mechanics",
"Fictional slaves",
"Male characters in film",
"Star Wars animated characters",
"Television characters introduced in 2019",
"Television sidekicks",
"The Mandalorian characters"
]
| Kuiil is a fictional character in the Star Wars franchise who first appeared in the first season of the Disney+ television series The Mandalorian. An alien of the Ugnaught species, Kuiil is a former indentured servant of the Galactic Empire living in solitude when he encounters the show's title character and assists him in seeking and protecting a young alien known as "The Child".
Kuiil is portrayed as wise, patient, and hard-working, with a high level of mechanical skills and a gruff but ultimately kind-hearted personality. The voice of Kuiil was performed by Nick Nolte, who completed his recordings for all the character's dialogue in a single afternoon. Kuiil's performance was done by Misty Rosas, who during filming wore an animatronic face mask created by Legacy Effects.
Kuiil's face was brought to life through animatronics and puppetry, with its electronics and wires concealed in the backpack and pockets of Kuiil's costume. Three puppeteers controlled the mask's mouth and eyebrows off-camera as Rosas performed her scenes, attempting to match the character's facial movements to Nolte's vocal tracks. The process often proved challenging, particularly when the puppeteers missed signals made by Rosas during dimly-lit scenes.
Kuiil's dynamic with the bounty hunter droid IG-11 reflects a parenting theme prevalent among multiple characters throughout the first season of The Mandalorian, and Kuiil's reprogramming of the droid from hunter to protector drew nature versus nurture discussions among reviewers. Kuiil has been received positively by reviewers and fans alike. He has been described as a fan favorite, with several reviews calling him the best character on the show, and his signature line "I have spoken" became one of the better-known and best-liked lines of dialogue from the series.
## Appearances
Kuiil is an alien of the Ugnaught species. According to his backstory established in exposition dialogue on The Mandalorian, Kuiil was sold into indentured servitude to the Galactic Empire and spent many years working for them against his will before the events of the television series. At one point in the show, Kuiil says he worked in the gene farms of a cloning facility during his time with the Empire. He eventually worked hard enough to pay off his debt and earn his freedom, and then sought a reclusive home on a quiet world where he would no longer have to work for anyone else again. Kuiil appeared in three episodes in the first season of The Mandalorian, making his first appearance in the series debut episode "Chapter 1: The Mandalorian", where he is shown living on a moisture farm on the planet Arvala-7, working as a vapor farmer.
In that episode, Kuiil encounters the show's title character, a bounty hunter known as the Mandalorian, who is seeking to collect a bounty on an unnamed person being held on the planet. Kuiil assists the Mandalorian when he is attacked by creatures known as blurrgs. He welcomes the Mandalorian into his home, where Kuiil informs him that several other bounty hunters and mercenaries have passed through Arvala-7 in search of the Mandalorian's target. Kuiil offers to help the bounty hunter travel to the compound where the asset is being kept, with the hope that once the bounty has been collected, peace will once again be restored to Arvala-7. Kuiil teaches the Mandalorian how to ride one of the captured blurrgs so he can travel to the compound.
Kuiil appears in the next episode, "Chapter 2: The Child when the Mandalorian returns to him with the target he had been seeking: a young alien creature referred to as "The Child". Kuiil helps the Mandalorian avert a crisis with a group of alien scavengers called Jawas. After the Jawas steal necessary parts from the Mandalorian's ship, the Razor Crest, Kuiil helps arranges a trade meeting between them, which Kuiil assures the Mandalorian is the best way to regain the necessary parts to repair his ship. Kuiil helps foster a deal in which the Jawas will return the parts if the Mandalorian collects for them an egg from a dangerous nearby creature called a mudhorn, which the Mandalorian does. After collecting the parts, Kuiil spends several days helping the Mandalorian repair the Razor Crest. Afterward, the Mandalorian offers to share some of the reward he will receive for collecting the bounty on the Child, but Kuiil refuses. The Mandalorian also offers for Kuiil to accompany him off-planet and work for him, but Kuiil declines this request as well, preferring his peaceful life on Arvala-7, and wishing to never work for anyone else ever again due to his past with the Empire.
Kuiil reappears in the show's penultimate episode, "Chapter 7: The Reckoning, in which the Mandalorian returns to Arvala-7 with his ally Cara Dune. They seek Kuiil's help in protecting the Child during a mission on the planet Nevarro to eliminate an Imperial presence there. It is revealed that after the Mandalorian left Arvala-7, Kuiil found and rebuilt the bounty hunter droid IG-11, whom the Mandalorian had destroyed while rescuing the Child. After a lengthy process of retraining IG-11 to walk and operate again, Kuiil reprogrammed him to be a nurse droid and protector, rather than a hunter. Kuiil assigns IG-11 to protect the Child, and agrees to accompany the Mandalorian to help protect the Child from imperial slavery, under the condition that he bring along IG-11 and his blurrgs. On their way to the planet, Kuiil witnesses the Child use the Force to choke Cara after mistaking her for a threat. While the others in the party do not understand his power, Kuiil advises them about rumors he has heard about the Force. During their journey on Nevarro, Cara and the Mandalorian's party are attacked by a group of giant winged creatures, which they repel after losing several of the blurrgs. Later, experiencing a change of heart after the Child saves his life, the bounty hunter Greef Karga reveals the mission is an ambush, after which the Mandalorian is to be killed and the Child given over to the Imperials. Cara, the Mandalorian, and Greef instead devise a new plan: they will leave the Child behind, bring the Mandalorian to the Imperials as if he is a prisoner, and then eliminate them.
At the Mandalorian's request, Kuiil agrees to take the Child back to the Razor Crest on his blurrg while the Mandalorian, Cara, and Greef attempt to eliminate the Imperials. When Imperial leader Moff Gideon later traps the Mandalorian and his party, the bounty hunter contacts Kuiil and urges him to hurry back to the ship and lock it down for the Child's protection, but two Imperial Scout Troopers on speeder bikes intercept the message and rush to stop Kuiil. Kuiil rides his blurrg as fast as possible and nearly reaches the Razor Crest, but he is shot and killed by the troopers, who then take the Child. In the season finale "Chapter 8: Redemption", Kuiil is not seen, but the Mandalorian returns to bury him, creating a makeshift tombstone with Kuiil's helmet resting atop a bed of rocks.
## Characterization
Kuiil values the peace and tranquility he has established on Arvala-7, as shown by his willingness to assist the Mandalorian and other bounty hunters travel in finding the bounty they seek. He believes doing so will help maintain the peace, and that getting the asset off the planet will restore tranquility to Arvala-7. Kuiil's history of servitude to the Empire means he strongly values his freedom and independence, and he has no desire to work for anyone again other than himself, as demonstrated by his rejection of the Mandalorian's offer of employment. Kuill has worked hard to get away from his past and forge a new life for himself. Corey Plante of Inverse wrote: "There’s something admirable about Kuiil's values here. He's a humble, salt-of-the-earth character who doesn’t bother contemplating any sense of morality; he knows what he wants out of life, and every choice he makes furthers that end." However, although Kuiil tries to avoid conflict at all costs, he does not hesitate to help those in need. He has a strong sense of honor, and believes in doing the right thing, as illustrated by his willingness to risk his safety and hard-won freedom to help the Child. The value he places on freedom due to his experience factors into his determination to protect the Child from the Empire.
Kuiil speaks directly and without hesitation, using few words and often cutting off any further argument or response by stating: "I have spoken." Actress Misty Rosas, who delivered the performance of Kuiil, said she does not believe the line is meant to be arrogant or disrespectful, but rather speaks to Kuiil's philosophy on life: "He just simplifies everything in life, and is just like: 'I have spoken. You know, we're done talking about this. Don't complicate it, don't overthink it.'" Nevertheless, Kuiil's terse manner of speaking has resulted in reviewers describing him as both friendly, and grumpy, though he is ultimately kind-hearted beneath his sometimes rough exterior. as demonstrated by the compassion he shows for both IG-11 and the Child. Plante wrote: "He comes across as deeply rational and admirable, even if many people might mistake him for a bit of a jerk."
Kuiil is extremely hard-working, with a high level of mechanical skills, and craftsmanship. He is very resourceful, and highly proficient with technology, as demonstrated by his ability to repair IG-11 and the Razor Crest. Kuiil is very intelligent, offering wisdom and guidance to visitors on Arvala-7. He has lived a long time, and has seen and experienced many terrible things as a result of his past as an indentured servant, instilling a hardened world-weariness in him. Cautious, stoic, and patient, Kuiil presents a calm and composed temperament even in the face of the Mandalorian's occasional impatience. Kuiil is also a teacher, as he shows when he teaches the Mandalorian how to ride a blurrg, and teaches IG-11 how to walk and operate again following his reprogramming. This shows Kuiil's penchant for patience and affirmation, which Megan Crouse of Den of Geek writes is "the core of his character and part of what makes him so delightful". His patience is further demonstrated by his willingness to spend multiple days helping the Mandalorian repair his ship. Although the Mandalorian has trouble trusting anybody throughout the series, Kuiil earns his trust.
Like all Ugnaughts, Kuiil has pink skin, white hair, upturned noses, and thick layers of jowls. He has a low, guttural voice that at times sounds like a raspy growl.
## Concept and creation
### Conception
Kuiil was created as an original character for The Mandalorian, a live-action Star Wars television series that debuted on the Disney+ streaming service on November 12, 2019. Concept art was prepared for the character during pre-production, including an image by Christian Alzmann of Kuiil and the Mandalorian riding blurrgs alongside each other, and another by Jama Jurabaev of Kuiil and the Mandalorian at his moisture farm. Ugnaughts had first appeared in The Empire Strikes Back (1980) as workers on Cloud City, and reappeared in the sequel film Return of the Jedi (1983). They have also been featured on the television shows Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Star Wars Rebels, and Star Wars Resistance, as well as various Star Wars novels. The character of Kuiil was first publicly announced on October 28 with the release of a character poster of The Mandalorian solely featuring the character. The first footage of Kuiil was shown in a trailer for The Mandalorian released on November 6, 2019, less than a week before the show debuted. The trailer included a brief clip of Kuiil, as well as a small amount of dialogue from the forthcoming show, in which he said he has never met a Mandalorian before but has heard stories about them.
### Portrayals
The voice of Kuiil was performed by veteran actor Nick Nolte. Nolte was seriously considered for the role of Han Solo in the original Star Wars (1977) film, losing out to Harrison Ford. In a 2011 interview, eight years before the release of The Mandalorian, Nolte said he would have been "kind of a goofy Star Wars guy" if he had been cast. Nolte completed his vocal performances for all of Kuiil's dialogue in The Mandalorian in a single afternoon session over the course of multiple hours. Although the news had leaked on the internet earlier, Nolte's casting was officially announced on November 30, 2018, though the character he would be portraying was not initially revealed. He was the third cast member publicly confirmed for the series, after Pedro Pascal and Gina Carano.
Actress and stuntwoman Misty Rosas provided the physical performance for Kuiil, calling it "the most amazing job of my life". Rosas had a cold reading audition for the part in the summer of 2018, though she arranged via her agent to come in early and briefly review the script and familiarize herself with the material. Rosas, who was born with 65% hearing loss in her right ear, was having problems with her hearing at the time and had an appointment with an ear doctor just hours before the audition. She was nervous that these problems would negatively impact her audition and that she would be forced to read lips, which she fears would "[take her] out of the scene".
Among the dialogue Rosas recited during her audition was Kuiil's signature line, "I have spoken", and she believed the producers studied her delivery of this line to gauge her understanding of the character. Rosas felt an immediate connection with the character based on her own life experiences, saying: "I know what it is to fight for your freedom." Rosas also said she related to the character's wise and thoughtful personality due to her regular practice of yoga.
### Costume
Kuiil's face was brought to life through the use of animatronics and puppetry, with a head mask that was created by Legacy Effects, a shop of prosthetic makeup experts started by Stan Winston. The face itself was a foam latex mask that Rosas also wore for the part. The mouth and eyebrows were controlled by three puppeteers off-camera as Misty Rosas delivered her performances. The electronics from the face mask's animatronics were concealed inside a backpack Kuiil wears throughout the show, and concealed wires ran along the back of Rosas' neck from the backpack into the mask. The wires were spread apart to give Rosas the greatest possible freedom of motion. Batteries for the mask was concealed inside the pockets of Kuiil's costume. As a result of all the machinery, the mask was physically heavy and placed a great deal of pressure on Rosas' shoulder, neck, back, and core stability. However, Rosas said the weight of the costume ultimately aided her performance, since it helped her portray Kuiil's advanced age and slow walking speed.
Kuiil's eyes are not part of the mask, and instead, Rosas' actual eyes with contacts are visible. Unlike some costumes Rosas has worn in past performances, she was able to see clearly while filming, but it was occasionally difficult to breathe because her mouth was far back within the mask. She occasionally needed to ask crew members to open the mouth of the mask for her between takes so she could breathe more freely. Some reviewers have noted that Kuiil's mask appears to have been designed to resemble Nick Nolte's face.
### Filming
Before scenes involving Kuiil were filmed, the cast and crew of The Mandalorian held private rehearsals with actress Misty Rosas in which she did not wear the costume. Jon Favreau, creator and showrunner of the series, attended these rehearsals, in which they would attempt to determine the rhythm and timing of each scene. Rosas called the rehearsals "the most nerve-wracking for me". Nick Nolte recorded dialogue for Kuiil before the character's live-action scenes were filmed, providing multiple takes with different performances and vocal inclinations for the crew to choose from. Rosas felt Nolte's voice work for Kuiil was "beautiful". The recordings would not be available until the mornings of filming, so Rosas prepared a great deal in advance for her scenes, studying the dialogue carefully, so that shooting would go as smoothly as possible.
Once the dialogue was ready, Rosas and other members of the crew, including the episode's director, would listen to the various recordings, arrange the chosen recordings, and prepare to shoot the scenes. It was complicated and often difficult for the puppeteers to match Kuiil's facial movements to Nolte's vocal tracks during filming; Misty said of the process: "We were so proud and we wanted it so bad, so we really, really focused and worked really hard." Scenes with a large amount of dialogue from Kuiil were particularly difficult. Rosas and the puppeteers prepared extensively to ensure their efforts were coordinated, and during filming, she would provide them a non-verbal signal to indicate when she was about to act out a line of dialogue so they could operate the mask. Occasionally the puppeteers would miss her signals, particularly during scenes that were dimly lit, and multiple takes were necessary as a result.
Kuiil often holds the Child during his scenes in "Chapter 7: The Reckoning", which is a puppet prop filled with animatronics. This made the Child relatively heavy, which occasionally proved challenging for Rosas, who also had to manage the weight of the animatronics in her costume. One full day of filming the episode focused upon Kuiil riding the blurrg, a process Rosas described as "intense" due to the amount of time she spent on the fake creature and the speeds at which it was made to appear to run. The process was made further challenging because she was carrying the heavy animatronic Child prop throughout the scenes, and she occasionally needed breaks between takes. Rosas said: "My legs are not exactly long, so I was squeezing for dear life and holding the baby." However, Rosas was able to place the weight of her animatronics-filled backpack on the saddle of the blurrg while filming the scenes, which helped relieve pressure on her shoulders, neck, and back.
While the closing credits music for The Mandalorian is usually fairly upbeat, a slower and sadder composition was used for "Chapter 7: The Reckoning" because the credits immediately followed Kuiil's death in the final scene.
## Themes
The dynamic between Kuiil and IG-11 reflects a childrearing theme that is prevalent among multiple characters throughout the first season of The Mandalorian. The two have a relationship similar to that of a father and son, as demonstrated in the scene in which Kuiil teaches IG-11 how to operate and function after the droid is reprogrammed. This dynamic is similar to the one shared by the Mandalorian and the child throughout the season. The Kuiil and IG-11 scenes also demonstrate that how the "child" character is raised makes a significant difference in whether the child becomes an asset or a threat to those around him. The droid was a dangerous assassin before Kuiil reprogrammed him, but thanks to the Ugnaught's parenting, he becomes a protector and helper instead. This, too, is similar to the relationship between the Mandalorian and the Child. For example, the scene in which the Child uses the Force to choke Cara Dune shows that the Child has the potential for evil if he is not properly guided by his "parent".
Kuiil's reprogramming of IG-11 raises nature versus nurture themes in The Mandalorian. Even after IG-11 is reprogrammed, the Mandalorian does not believe he has truly changed, because he believes droids have an essential nature and that IG-11's nature remains murderous and untrustworthy. But in reprogramming IG-11, Kuiil nurtures him and helps him to change; Kuiil feels that in the process of learning how to function again, IG-11 gained a new personality. Kuiil insists to the Mandalorian: "Droids are not good or bad — they are neutral reflections of those who program them." Keith Phipps of Vulture wrote of IG-11 and the nature versus nurture theme: "He's not bad. He's just programmed that way, and with care and change he can do a lot of good in the world."
Additionally, Leo Holman of Comic Book Resources said the character of Kuiil raises questions about the Galactic Empire that have never before been considered in Star Wars. The fact that Kuiil had been an indentured servant for the Empire invites the question of whether this is a prevalent type of Imperial practice: "It makes you wonder, how many of the characters we see in the background working for the Empire in various other Star Wars movies and media, are there against their will working towards freedom?" Additionally, the fact that Kuiil ultimately pays off his debt and buys his freedom raises the further question about whether species enslaved by the Empire can eventually earn their freedom through hard work, a concept that had never been featured in any other Star Wars media before The Mandalorian.
## Cultural impact
### Critical reception
Kuiil has been received positively by reviewers and fans alike. He has been described as a fan favorite, and several reviews have called him the best character on the show. His line "I have spoken" became one of the better-known and best-liked lines of dialogue from the series, and has been the subject of internet memes used by fans. Screen Rant Writer Kiki Evans called it one of the "most iconic phrases" from the series. Leo Holman of Comic Book Resources declared Kuiil The Mandalorian's best character, writing: "At first glance, [Kuiil] seemed like a throwaway character, but with every line of dialogue the character spoke, he became more and more interesting and helped shine a light on parts of the Star Wars universe that have never been explored." Charlie Ridgely of Comicbook.com described Kuiil as "one of the most memorable additions to the Star Wars canon in recent years". Space.com writer Scott Snowden called Kuiil one of the best characters on the show, describing him as quirky, interesting, and "beautifully portrayed", and particularly praising the level of detail and animatronic control in his facial expressions. Corey Plante of Inverse called Kuiil "the best and most under-appreciated character" on the show, and said that he felt the choice to make a member of a little-known Star Wars species such an important element of the show made the franchise feel larger and richer. He wrote: "Star Wars is better because Kuiil exists."
Mustafa Gatollari of Distractify called Kuiil one of the best parts of The Mandalorian, and praised the show for implementing the Ugnaught species, a previously minor element of Star Wars, in such an effective way. Q.V. Hough of Screen Rant described Kuiil's character arc as "heroic" and said the character is "bound to be remembered by fans as one of the season's best characters". Den of Geek writer Megan Crouse said that she felt the character was a wise old mentor trope, but that this worked well, in part due to Kuiil's likable personality and the strong performances of Nolte and Rosas. Crouse wrote: "He's the Obi-Wan Kenobi, and, right now, that's okay." Noah Howell of Niner Times called Kuiil his favorite character on the show, saying his humble and unassuming nature "instantly made me fall in love with him". He compared the dynamic of Kuill and the Mandalorian to that of Luke Skywalker and Yoda in the original Star Wars trilogy. Ana Dumaraog felt Kuiil's death was unfortunate, but well-handled by the show. Forbes writer Erik Kain liked that Kuiil was not abandoned after his initial episodes and instead returned to play a major part in the final episodes of the season. Mike Hale of The New York Times said Nick Nolte provided a "nicely acerbic voice" for the character.
Screen Rant ranked Kuiil seventh on its list of the best characters from the first season of The Mandalorian, and fifth on a separate list of the most interesting characters from the season. When Kuiil was killed in "Chapter 7: The Reckoning", the episode ended on a shot of his unconscious body. Fans on the internet expressed hope that it would be revealed in the next episode that he had survived, or that IG-11 or another character would revive him, before his death was confirmed on-screen. Some fans have speculated that the Mandalorian may eventually give the Child the name Kuiil in memory of the Ugnaught.
### Merchandise
A Funko Pop figurine of Kuiil was announced on December 31, 2019. In 2021, Hasbro and Hot Toys released a figurine depicting Kuiil while riding a blurrg and its credit collection. |
17,812,316 | One (Ami Suzuki song) | 1,140,973,955 | 2008 single by Ami Suzuki | [
"2008 singles",
"Ami Suzuki songs",
"Song recordings produced by Yasutaka Nakata",
"Songs written by Yasutaka Nakata"
]
| "One" (capitalized as "ONE") is a song recorded by Japanese recording artist Ami Suzuki for her seventh studio album, Supreme Show (2008). It was written and produced by Japanese producer and Capsule member Yasutaka Nakata. The track is Suzuki's third single with Nakata after her August 2007 single's "Free Free" and "Super Music Maker". "One" premiered on June 18, 2008, as the lead single from the album.
Musically, "One" was described as a dance and club song. The lyrics describes Suzuki's celebration of her career and music; it also emphasizes minor themes of love, happiness, partying, and relationships. Upon its release, the track garnered positive reviews from music critics and was praised for its composition and commercial appeal. It also achieved lukewarm success in Japan, peaking at number 17 on the Japanese Oricon Singles Chart and 47 on the Billboard Japan Hot 100 chart. As of March 2016, "One" has sold over eight thousand units in Japan alone.
The accompanying music video for "One" was shot in Tokyo; it features Suzuki inside of a club, surrounded by LED lamps and several club poles. The music video became notable for displaying another change in Suzuki's persona and is cited as an example of her numerous "reinventions". For additional promotion, the song was featured on Suzuki's One Promotional Tour, and at her 29th birthday event.
## Background and release
"One" was written, produced, composed and arranged by Japanese musician and Capsule member Yasutaka Nakata. Nakata was not credited as the single's featuring artist where it was first introduced on Suzuki's double a-side single "Free Free" and "Super Music Maker" (2007). It is Suzuki's third single to be handled by Nataka, following "Free Free" and "Super Music Maker". It was selected as the lead single from Supreme Show, and was released on June 18, 2008, by Avex Trax. "One" is to commemorate her 10th anniversary of her music career, and was released physically on July 2 that same year.
The maxi CD of the single contains the original composition and remix of "One", plus the album version and remix of "A Token of Love". The DVD format of the single includes the radio edit music video of "One". The CD cover sleeve has Suzuki laying down on a mirror, with several strips of neon light behind her. The DVD cover sleeve features Suzuki kneeling down in front of a wall of neon lights. The standalone CD cover was used as the digital EP cover for the iTunes Store and Amazon.com. The cover sleeve is placed at the back of the jewel case, with the front cover featuring a booklet with a different photo. Suzuki's name or the song's title are not placed on either the front or back of the case.
## Composition
"One" was recorded in early 2008 by Nakata at Avex Studio in Tokyo, Japan, and was co-distributed by Nakata's label Contemode, owned by Avex and Yamaha in Japan. The song was described as a dance-pop song with numerous musical elements, including club music and electropop. Throughout the entire track, Suzuki's vocals are processed with autotune and vocoder post-production work; the delivery is from the intro chorus and end of the song. Tetsuo Hiraga from Billboard'''s magazine Hot Express compared the "club" sounds and production to Japanese trio Perfume, a project that Nakata has contributed and produced since 2008; Hiraga felt Suzuki's song and Perfume's work emphasized a similar "club" and "energy" sound and feeling. Wendy Roeltgen from Orient Extreme compared Suzuki's processed vocals to the work of Daft Punk, and compared the composition to the work of Kylie Minogue's eighth studio album Fever (2002). The lyrics describes Suzuki's celebration of her career and music; it also emphasizes minor themes of love, happiness, partying, and relationships.
## Critical response
"One" received favorable reviews from most music critics. David Hickey, who had written her extended biography at AllMusic, highlighted the song as an album and career stand out track. Wendy Roeltgen from Orient Extreme was positive in her review, labeling it a "fun" and "dance summer tune"; Roeltgen concluded that "One" presented "superior quality" to the likes of other Japanese musicians. Tetsuo Hiraga from Billboards magazine Hot Express went on to discuss the quality of the song, and noted that her mini hiatus in 2007 "changed a lot" of her future music releases. Despite Hiraga feeling that Suzuki didn't provide enough "spirit" for the track and compared it to Perfume's work as well, he commended the club composition and production. An editorial review on the Japanese Amazon.com site complimented the composition of the track, labelling it "sparkling up-tempo tune". A staff reviewer from CD Journal was positive towards the song's composition and Nakata's production, labelling it a "sparkly" and "glistening" dance tune.
## Commercial performance
In Japan, "One" debuted at number 17 on the Japanese Oricon Singles Chart, selling over 5,100 units in its first week of sales. This became Suzuki's highest-charting single, alongside her 2006 single "Alright!" since "Fantastic" (2006). The song lasted four weeks in the singles chart, her longest spanning single since "Alright!" with five. The song was her first single to reach the top 20 since "Alright!" and sold over 8,000 units in Japan, her highest selling single since "Free Free" with 10,000 units. "One" debuted and peaked at 57 on Billboards Japan Hot 100, 67 on Billboards Japanese Radio Songs Chart, and 27 on the Billboard Japan Hot Singles Chart. The song spent a sole week on all three Billboard component charts, making this Suzuki's first single to fall out in all Japanese Billboard chart simultaneously.
## Music video
The accompanying music video for "One" was shot in Tokyo. The video opens with Suzuki singing while surrounded by several white lights. The first verse has several different angle shots of Suzuki singing in front of LED lights, dancing to the beat of the song. The pre-chorus shows a change of LED light colors, and includes several inter cut scenes of Suzuki pole dancing with facial jewelry on. The chorus features changing neon colors of blue, red, green, and yellow in the background, and has several close-up, body, and atmospheric shots of the room and Suzuki.
The second verse has five different shots of Suzuki in a pink dress, singing the song in a colorized 3D effect. Several club lights are overlapped with another shot of Suzuki dancing. The second chorus features several clones of Suzuki in the pink dress, standing in the shape of the song's title "One"; this scene uses the 3D effect. The final scenes finish with Suzuki in the room, as the lights turn off.
An editor from Channel-Ai blog was positive towards the video's visual effects and Suzuki's fashion, stating "for this reason all her 2008 releases were produced by the electronic producer and capsule leader Yasutaka Nakata, where Suzuki reinvented herself as a disco queen"; the editor concluded that "the media would portray Ami as the new fashion leader portraying the popular ero-kakoii style." The music video appeared on the DVD version of "One", and the bonus DVD format of Supreme Show.
## Promotion and live performances
For additional promotion, the song was featured on two of Suzuki's concert tours, and one television commercial. "One" was used as the ending theme song for the Nippon TV's series All Japan High School Quiz Championships. "One" made its first live premiere at Suzuki's One Party, which consisted of live performances in celebration of Suzuki's 10th Anniversary of her career beginning. The song was performed live on two club party events hosted by Suzuki: the 2008 Cruising Party, and a live performance at Club Asia; the performances appeared on the limited edition DVD format for Supreme Show. "One" was then performed again at Club Asia for a second hosting party by Suzuki; this live version was released on the bonus DVD format for Supreme Show. "One" was also included on the track list on one of Suzuki's concert tours; this being a concert for her 29th birthday, at the Liquidroom event. The Liquidroom live performance appeared on the bonus DVD format of Suzuki's extended play, Snow Ring (2013).
## Track listing
- Japanese CD single
1. "One" – 5:37
2. "A Token of Love" – 6:13
3. "One" (Instrumental) – 5:37
4. "A Token of Love" (FM88 Remix) – 4:20
- Japanese CD and DVD single
1. "One" – 5:37
2. "A Token of Love" – 6:13
3. "One" (Instrumental) – 5:37
4. "A Token of Love" (FM88 Remix) – 4:20
5. "One" (music video)
6. "One" (secret commentary video)
- Digital EP'
1. "One" – 5:37
2. "A Token of Love" – 6:13
3. "One" (Instrumental) – 5:37
4. "A Token of Love" (FM88 Remix) – 4:20
## Credits and personnel
Credits adapted from the liner notes of Supreme Show''.
- Ami Suzuki – vocals, background vocals
- Yasutaka Nakata – songwriting, composition, production, arrangement, management
- Avex Trax – Suzuki's management
- Contemode – Nataka's management
- Recorded by Nakata at Avex Studio, Tokyo, Japan
## Charts and sales
### Daily and weekly charts
### Sales
\|- ! scope="row"\| Japan (RIAJ) \| \| 7,899 \|-
## Release history |
5,154,433 | Typhoon Chanchu | 1,171,250,384 | Pacific typhoon in 2006 | [
"2006 Pacific typhoon season",
"2006 disasters in the Philippines",
"2006 in China",
"Retired Pacific typhoons",
"Tropical cyclones in 2006",
"Typhoons",
"Typhoons in China",
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| Typhoon Chanchu, known in the Philippines as Typhoon Caloy, was the most intense typhoon in the South China Sea in the month of May according to the Hong Kong Observatory (HKO). The first named storm of the 2006 Pacific typhoon season, Chanchu formed on May 8 in the vicinity of the Federated States of Micronesia and progressed westward. It gradually intensified into a tropical storm and later severe tropical storm before moving through the Philippines. On May 13, Chanchu entered the South China Sea and became a typhoon, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA). Warm waters and favorable outflow allowed the storm to quickly intensify to peak maximum sustained winds of 175 km/h (109 mph) on May 15. Around that time, the typhoon turned sharply to the north toward southeastern China. Chanchu weakened as it curved to the northeast, making landfall near Shantou, Guangdong on May 17 as a severe tropical storm. The government of China considered Chanchu the earliest typhoon to make landfall in the province. On the next day, the storm emerged into the East China Sea, becoming extratropical on May 19 before dissipating west of Kyushu.
Early in its duration, Chanchu moved through the Philippines, causing power outages and landslides in several islands. Despite a general warning against small boats sailing, a ferry departed Masbate and capsized due to the storm, killing 28 people. Throughout the country, 41 people died, and damage reached ₱117.57 million (PHP, US\$2.15 million). While in the South China Sea, Chanchu caught many Vietnamese fisherman off guard, causing 17 ships to sink and damaging several others. Chinese ships assisted in the search-and-rescue mission, ultimately rescuing 330 fishermen from 22 boats; however, 21 bodies were found, and the remaining 220 missing were presumed killed. In southern China, flooding and strong winds from Chanchu wrecked about 14,000 houses and damaged over 190,000 ha (470,000 acres) of crop fields. Damage was heaviest in Shantou where it moved ashore, with flooding covering roads and entering hundreds of homes. Damage in China totaled ¥7 billion yuan (RMB, US\$872 million), and there were 23 deaths. Rains from the typhoon killed two people in Taiwan after sweeping them up in a river, and crop damage there reached NT\$158.88 million (NTD, US\$5 million). Later, high waves killed one person in Okinawa and left another person missing, while rains extended into South Korea.
## Meteorological history
An area of convection, or thunderstorms, persisted on May 5 southeast of Yap State in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM). Initially it remained disorganized while tracking to the west, although a circulation became more distinct on May 7, indicative of gradual organization. At 06:00 UTC on May 8, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) declared that a tropical depression had developed about 175 km (109 mi) northeast of Palau. Five hours later, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) issued a tropical cyclone formation alert, and at 18:00 UTC they classified the system as Tropical Depression 02W. The system moved to the west-southwest, influenced by the subtropical ridge to the north. Early on May 9, the JTWC upgraded the depression to tropical storm status, and at 12:00 UTC the JMA followed suit by upgrading the system to Tropical Storm Chanchu. Also on that day, the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) began issuing warnings on the storm as Tropical Storm Caloy.
In its formative stages, Chanchu was located in an environment generally favorable for intensification. Its tracked shifted more to the west-northwest due to a building ridge to the south. Late on May 10, the JTWC upgraded Chanchu to typhoon status, estimating 1 minute sustained winds of 140 km/h (87 mph). By contrast, the JMA estimated it intensified only into a severe tropical storm with winds of 95 km/h (59 mph). Turning more to the west, Chanchu made landfall on Samar in the eastern Philippines on May 11. Despite moving through the archipelago, Chanchu intensified slightly within the Sibuyan Sea, striking Mindoro on May 12 with 1 minute winds of 160 km/h (99 mph), according to the JTWC. On May 13, Chanchu emerged into the South China Sea, and later that day the JMA upgraded it to typhoon status.
Upon reaching the South China Sea, Chanchu encountered an area of warm sea surface temperatures and low wind shear. After an upper-level low to the east provided favorable outflow to the south and the east, Chanchu rapidly intensified on May 14. While the storm was active, the JTWC upgraded Chanchu to a super typhoon with peak 1 minute winds of 250 km/h (160 mph), although the agency later downgraded the peak winds to 230 km/h (140 mph). By contrast, the JMA estimated peak 10 minute winds of 175 km/h (109 mph) at 00:00 UTC on May 15. According to the Hong Kong Observatory, the 10 minute winds reached 185 km/h (115 mph), which made Chanchu the strongest typhoon in the South China Sea in the month of May.
By the time Chanchu attained peak winds, an eastward-moving trough over China broke up the ridge to the north, causing the typhoon to turn sharply to the north into a less favorable environment. With decreased outflow and stronger wind shear, Chanchu began slowly weakening. The eye initially remained small, but the outer eyewall deteriorated on May 16 as the convection decreased in the northern periphery. The trough that previously weakened the ridge steered Chanchu to the north-northeast and forced an extratropical transition. Late on May 17, the JMA downgraded the typhoon to a severe tropical storm. Around that time, Chanchu made landfall near Shantou, Guangdong in southeastern China, about 315 km (196 mi) east of Hong Kong; the JTWC estimated landfall winds of 130 km/h (81 mph), while the JMA estimated them at 110 km/h (70 km/h). Early on May 18, the JTWC discontinued advisories, although the JMA continued tracking Chanchu over southeastern China through eastern Fujian province. Later on May 18, the storm emerged into the East China Sea, becoming fully extratropical at 00:00 UTC on May 19. The remnants continued toward Japan before dissipating at 18:00 UTC that day off the west coast of Kyushu in southern Japan.
## Preparations
Officials in southern Leyte recommended that residents evacuate to prevent a repeat of a deadly landslide in February 2006. Officials canceled several flights and ferry lines, stranding 10,000 people. In all, 2,144 people evacuated in the Philippines. PAGASA issued a storm signal number 2 for several provinces along Chanchu's path, as well as storm signal number 1 for other areas, largely forecasting for rainfall and gusty winds.
Vietnamese fishermen in the South China Sea received 24 hours of warning from the National Hydrometerological Forecast Center before Chanchu approached the area, less time than other agencies in the region. At one point, Chanchu was forecast to become a strong typhoon and make landfall near Hong Kong. In response to the threat, officials at the Hong Kong Observatory, as well as in Macau, issued a standby signal to inform the public of the approaching typhoon. The HKO issued a warning signal number 3 on May 17. In the territory, 60 flights were canceled with another 14 delayed, beaches were closed, and ferry service was disrupted. Ahead of the storm, about 1 million people evacuated from coastal Guangdong and Fujian provinces to government warehouses, schools, tents, or the houses of relatives. In the former province, 62,000 fishermen were ordered to return to port, while four flights were canceled at Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport. Residents were advised to remain indoors, and workers reinforced billboards in anticipation of the strong winds. Rail and boat transport was stopped between Guangdong and Hainan across the Qiongzhou Strait due to the typhoon. Schools were closed in Guangdong during the storm's passage, although they remained open in Fujian. In Shanghai, the speed limit of Donghai Bridge was halved because of strong winds.
Ahead of the storm, the Central Weather Bureau in Taiwan issued land and sea warnings. The Tainan City Government and three county governments closed for one day. All domestic flights to offshore islands were canceled, and rail service was interrupted. Later, airlines canceled 12 flights in Japan due to the storm.
## Impact
### The Philippines and Malaysia
While moving through the Philippines, Chanchu affected several islands with strong winds and heavy rainfall. In Legazpi, Albay, strong waves wrecked 100 homes and left 1,500 people homeless. High winds left widespread power outages, particularly in Mindoro, Batangas, and across the Bicol Region. The storm severely damaged the banana industry and affected various other fruit crops. Near Metro Manila, the winds damaged billboards, knocked over trees, and caused isolated power outages. Rough seas sank a ferry off Masbate, despite a warning against the operation of small craft, having left at sunrise to avoid the police. The Coast Guard rescued 18 passengers, but 28 people died in the wreck. An empty ferry sank at port in Tabaco. A ferry with 700 people aboard went missing, but the Coast Guard found it washed ashore with everyone safe on board. Similarly, an oil tanker washed ashore at Pinamalayan, Oriental Mindoro, and its crew of 13 was rescued. Throughout the country, Chanchu killed 41 people, mostly from the Masbate ferry wreck. The storm damaged 5,630 homes, and destroyed 1,013 others, forcing 53,307 people to leave their homes. Agricultural losses totaled ₱71.57 million (PHP, US\$1.3 million), chiefly to the corn harvest, with an additional ₱46 million (PHP, US\$850,000) in infrastructure damage.
While stalled over the South China Sea, Chanchu's large circulation caused an increase in rainfall over Malaysia. The typhoon brought the onset of the summer monsoon in the South China Sea after shifting the prevailing winds over the region.
### Vietnam
While moving slowly through the South China Sea, Chanchu produced strong waves that struck the east coast of Vietnam. The associated flooding washed away many shrimp from coastal ponds and also entered Thu Bồn River, thus preventing its use as a source for irrigation for about 1,000 ha (2,500 acres) of rice paddy fields. Due to its unexpected change in course and ferocity, Chanchu caught dozens of ships off guard and damaged communications, sinking 17 ships and damaging several others. Initially, there were 400 fishermen missing, although there was conflicting information with regard to the number of ships and people affected, particularly with ships near Hainan or Taiwan. Following a request from the Vietnamese government, the Chinese government deployed rescue ships on May 19, a day after the storm made its final landfall. Offshore Quảng Ngãi Province, 94 fishermen sought refuge on a Chinese island, and 22 boats were found on Pratas Island (Tungsha/Dongsha), Taiwan (ROC). One Chinese ship rescued 97 fishermen, but also found 18 people killed. Chinese ships ultimately rescued 330 fishermen from 22 boats and provided them with food and water; this was the country's largest oceanic rescue at the time. Two Vietnamese boats departed from Quảng Ngãi to assist crews on damaged boats attempting to return to port. Medical teams greeted the ships returning to harbor, while an altar was set up for the deceased. After two weeks, the government of Vietnam ended the search, with 21 bodies found, and the remaining 220 missing fishermen presumed killed.
### China
Typhoon Chanchu was the earliest on record to strike Guangdong at the time, having struck the country 44 days earlier than the average date for the first strike. Rainfall in the country spread across Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, and Zhejiang, and Chanchu became the earliest typhoon to affect Shanghai in 80 years. Rainfall totaled over 250 mm (9.8 in) in southeastern Guangdong and southwestern Fujian. In the former province, wind gusts peaked at 170 km/h (110 mph) in Huilai.
Upon striking China, Chanchu produced deadly flooding and landslides along its path, with flooding spreading as far northeast as Zhejiang province. One landslide in Fujian killed eight people and wrecked two houses. In Guangdong and Fujian, Chanchu wrecked 14,000 houses and damaged over 190,000 hectares (470,000 acres) of crop fields. Damage was particularly heavy in Shantou, Guangdong, where Chanchu moved ashore. There were about 200 flooded houses, and many roads covered, after rivers flooded from the heavy rainfall. The storm also caused power outages in Shantou, and damage there totaled ¥2.56 billion yuan (RMB, US\$320 million). In nearby Xiamen, the typhoon forced 43 factories to temporarily close, resulting in a loss of ¥62.2 million yuan (RMB, US\$7.8 million). The storm killed eight people in Guangdong, five of them due to traffic accidents, and a further 15 in Fujian. Overall damage was estimated at ¥7 billion yuan (RMB, US\$872 million), roughly evenly split between Guangdong and Fujian. This was less than expected given the winds at landfall.
While passing east of Hong Kong, the outer rainbands of Chanchu dropped 43.5 mm (1.71 in) of rainfall at Sha Tin. Sustained winds in the territory reached 96 km/h (60 mph), while gusts reached 146 km/h (91 mph), both recorded at Tate's Cairn. Chanchu produced a storm surge of 0.77 m (2.5 ft), causing minor flooding, sinking a yacht, and injuring one person who was swept into the sea. The storm downed several trees and damaged some scaffolding. Six people were injured in the territory, including three on a jetfoil bound for Macau.
### Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea
High waves in Taiwan washed an oil tanker ashore in Kaohsiung City; all 13 crew members were rescued with helicopters. In Kaohsiung County, the typhoon wrecked several dikes in coastal cities. Chanchu also produced heavy rainfall on the island, causing flooding and landslides, the latter of which covered a highway. Swollen rivers swept away three farmers in Hualien County, who were later rescued, and killed two sisters in Pingtung County underneath the Sandimen Bridge.
In Nishihara, Okinawa, high waves caused by Chanchu swept away three bathers. The Japan Coast Guard rescued one, another was killed, and the third remained missing as of May 23. The remnants of Chanchu produced 121 mm (4.8 in) of rainfall in Gifu Prefecture in combination with a nearby cold front, causing one landslide. A fallen tree in Nagasaki Prefecture caused a small power outage, and nearby there was a damaged home.
The trough that engulfed Chanchu drew moisture from the typhoon, leading to heavy rainfall in portions of South Korea that reached 144 mm (5.7 in) on Jeju Island. Along with strong winds, the rains caused ferry and flight cancelations.
## Aftermath
In the days after Chanchu moved through the Philippines, then-President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo ordered that the country's National Disaster Coordinating Council help all towns affected by the storm. The agency helped coordinate search and rescue missions. Several areas were declared a state of calamity, mostly on Mindoro, Samar, and Batangas. The Tzu Chi Foundation visited islands in eastern Samar, providing money to the families whose houses were destroyed. Towns in the region also assisted by supplying thatch to rebuild homes. In Oriental Mindoro, the Philippine Red Cross provided food and relief items to families in Calapan. The Adventist Development and Relief Agency also provided building materials for 200 families in Mindoro. Ultimately, the government provided storm victims with ₱415.1 million (PHP, US\$7.6 million) worth of relief supplies. Rainfall from the storm caused a red tide in Taal Lake, after dispersing a Ceratium bloom.
Immediate after Chanchu's China landfall, officials began distributing tents, quilts, water purification tablets, and disinfectant. The government of Fujian set up a ¥8.5 million yuan (RMB, \$1.06 million) relief fund. In the months after Chanchu, China suffered from several other damaging tropical cyclones, including Tropical Storm Bilis and Typhoon Saomai. Damage from Chanchu forced the China National Offshore Oil Corporation to shut down for a time, which contributed to an annual decrease in its oil output. The Chinese government recognized 50 people who assisted in the South China Sea search and rescue mission, and two vessels were declared "hero ships".
Vietnamese president Trần Đức Lương expressed his thanks to the Chinese government on May 22 for rescuing the Vietnamese on the imperiled ships. Residents and industries in Vietnam raised ₫360 million (VND, US\$36,000) for the families of the deceased fishermen, as well as providing 1 ton of rice. Trade unions encouraged workers to donate one day's salary to help storm victims. The Vietnamese embassy in India raised about US\$1,000 and Vietnamese people living in Greece raised ₫26 million (VND, €1,300 Euros) for storm victims. Ultimately, 43 different organizations and people donated \$29,000 (USD) to the Vietnam Red Cross. The country's Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs presented an award to the Vietnam News Agency in June 2006 for its charitable donations, which included the distribution of ₫112 million (VND, US\$11,200) to storm victims. One fisherman claimed to survive for two weeks in the open seas before being rescued, although he later confessed that he was safely on another boat, and wanted his family to retain the disaster compensation; after the man revealed that he had lied, his family was able to retain the relief funds due to their poverty. The head of the Vietnam Institute of Meteorology, Hydrology and Environment resigned two weeks after Chanchu killed many fishermen because of inadequate warnings. Then-Deputy Prime Minister Nguyễn Tấn Dũng ordered a review of the meteorological agency as a result. Within a few years after the typhoon, the meteorological agency began issuing more accurate and timely forecasts. After the many deaths of fishermen from Chanchu, the Vietnam government prevented any fishermen from leaving harbor during the passage of Typhoon Durian in November.
After the season ended, members of the 39th meeting of the Typhoon Committee of the World Meteorological Organization met in Manila in December 2006. They discussed retiring the name "Chanchu", along with four other names from the season. During the 40th meeting in November 2007, the Typhoon Committee approved the retirement, announcing that the name "Sanba" would replace Chanchu on the basin name lists beginning in 2008.
## See also
- Typhoons in the Philippines
- Other typhoons that impacted the Philippines in 2006:
- Typhoon Xangsane
- Typhoon Cimaron
- Typhoon Chebi
- Typhoon Durian
- Typhoon Utor
- Typhoon Megi (2010) – Stronger storm that took a similar track through the Philippines before turning north and striking China
- Typhoon Kammuri (2019) – A late-season powerful Category-4 that strucked almost the same areas throughout its path in the Philippines. Also had a similar track and intensity.
- Typhoon Molave and Goni (2020) – A pair of typhoons that both devastated Bicol Region with the latter one became the strongest landfall on record. |
46,309,686 | Titanfall 2 | 1,173,356,481 | 2016 first-person shooter video game | [
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"Fiction about corporate warfare",
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"Video games developed in the United States",
"Video games scored by Stephen Barton",
"Video games set on fictional planets",
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| Titanfall 2 is a first-person shooter video game, developed by Respawn Entertainment and published by Electronic Arts. A sequel to 2014's Titanfall, the game was released worldwide on October 28, 2016, for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One. In Titanfall 2, players control Titans, mecha-style exoskeletons and their pilots, who are agile and equipped with a variety of skills ranging from wall-running to cloaking. Set in a science fiction universe, the single-player campaign follows the story of Jack Cooper, a rifleman from the Frontier Militia, who bonds with his mentor's Titan BT-7274 after his mentor is killed in action. Together, they embark on a quest to stop the Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation (IMC) from launching a superweapon that is threatening to destroy the Militia planet Harmony.
The game's two-year development cycle began in mid-2014. The decision to add a single-player campaign to the game came about because the team wanted to expand the game's player base. They came up with different ideas and prototypes, and integrated them to form a single coherent campaign. Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet and buddy cop films, as well as the video game Half-Life inspired the game's campaign and narrative. The team also overhauled the progression system and made subtle changes to the multiplayer to make the gameplay more fair. A heavily modified version of Valve's Source engine powers the game. Stephen Barton returned to compose the game's music.
Upon release, the game received critical acclaim. The single-player campaign was praised for its design and execution, and the multiplayer modes for building on the foundation of the original game. Despite the positive reception, Titanfall 2 underperformed commercially, with most attributing its underwhelming performance to going on sale in a crowded release window, placed between the release of Battlefield 1 and Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. It was nominated for multiple year-end accolades, including Game of the Year and Best Shooter awards, by several gaming publications. Respawn continued to support the game after its release, providing several updates and downloadable content.
## Gameplay
Similar to its predecessor, Titanfall 2 is a first-person shooter where players can control both a pilot and their Titans—mecha-style robots that stand roughly seven to ten meters tall. The pilot has a large variety of equipment that enhance their abilities during combat. All pilots have a jump kit which assists with parkour, double-jumping, and wall-running. Pilots have more specific abilities unique to each 'class' which augments their offensive and defensive ability, such as a grappling hook for enhanced mobility, or a holographic visual cloaking device. Pilots use their jump kits to run on walls, movements which can be chained together to travel between locations quickly. The game introduces several new gameplay mechanics. These include: a movement system that allows players to slide on the ground, the pulse blade (which is a throwing knife that reveals the location of any nearby enemy), the holo-pilot, (a holographic pilot that mimics players' action to confuse enemies), and a grappling hook, which can be used to slingshot players to a building or reel in an enemy it attaches to. The Pilots have a large arsenal of gadgets and weapons, such as shotguns, submachine guns, pistols, and grenades to fight their enemies. At close range, players can execute their opponents from behind in a short animation with a melee attack. Melee attacks are always instantly fatal should they connect.
Titans are significantly less mobile than the pilots, but they have stronger firearms and superior protection. Replacing the three classes featured in the first Titanfall, six Titans were introduced at launch—Ion, Scorch, Northstar, Ronin, Tone, and Legion, with Monarch being introduced in the May 2017 Monarch's Reign free DLC. Ion uses a directed-energy arsenal and makes use of a shield that can catch then reflect enemy projectile attacks. Scorch engages in combat using area-denial incendiary weaponry and indirect-fire thermite mortar. Northstar excels in long-range precision attacks with a charged railgun, and sets movement-restricting traps, and is the only Titan with the ability to leave the ground and hover. Ronin specializes in hit-and-run combat, using a 'Leadwall' shotgun and a sword. Tone focuses on mid-range combat with its target locking weapons. Legion uses a rotary cannon designed for sustained fire at both mid- and close-range. Finally, Monarch—added post-release via downloadable content (DLC)—is a Vanguard-class chassis that can steal power from other Titans to power up its own defensive shield. The Titans have their own move sets which are different from those of the pilots—for instance, they can dodge quickly to evade attacks.
### Single-player
Unlike its predecessor, Titanfall 2 has a single-player story campaign with gameplay split between commanding the Titan (BT-7274, voiced by Glenn Steinbaum) and controlling the Pilot (Rifleman Third Class Jack Cooper, voiced by Matthew Mercer). It features a linear story, but levels offer players multiple paths to explore. For most parts of the game the Titan BT-7274 accompanies players, alongside allied NPCs from the universe's Frontier Militia faction (of which BT-7274 and Jack Cooper are a part). He can change his weapon loadouts under players' command to maximize his efficiency when combating local wildlife, IMC infantry and other Titans. These loadouts are unlocked by finding abandoned equipment in each level, typically before a sequence which will benefit from the player switching to that loadout. Players are able to use multiple ways to complete objectives and attack enemies, such as utilizing Cooper's Pilot stealth ability, jump-kit assisted traversal of the level and using firearms provided in the game. Levels are large, and there are multiple paths for players to choose from to reach their destination. The game also features platform elements, which task players to make use of Cooper's parkour abilities to solve environmental puzzles, and travel to previously inaccessible areas. Some weapons are level-specific and can only be used in certain areas. There are also level-specific gameplay mechanics. For instance, in the "Effect and Cause" level, players are required to shift between the present and past with a time travel device. Players can also select dialogue options and have Cooper talk to BT-7274 at certain points in the campaign to develop the characters' personalities and often to comedic effect. The single-player also features a training gauntlet, which acts as a tutorial for players. The faster they complete the gauntlet, the higher their position will be on a leaderboard.
### Multiplayer
The multiplayer mode sees the return of Titanfall's Titan meter, which fills slowly when the player is playing the game. It fills faster when the player kills an opponent, inflicts damage on enemies, or accomplishes the map's objectives such as capturing points in the Hardpoint game mode. When the meter is completely filled, the player can summon their selected Titan, which descends from the sky in a titular titanfall deployment. A titanfall can crush opponents if it lands on one when summoned and will instantly kill any enemy directly impacted. When the Titan meter is filled completely while in a Titan, the Titan can use its 'Core' ability, which often takes the form of a special attack or otherwise augments the Titan's abilities. Examples include the Ion Titan's Laser Core, which makes the Titan emit a bright red laser attack, or the Monarch Titan's Upgrade Core, which upgrades the Titan's abilities, defenses, or primary weapon. Pilots are able to rodeo a Titan similar to the original Titanfall, but rather than attacking a weak point with their weapon Pilots now steal a Titan's battery, causing damage to it and giving the Pilot a Titan battery. The battery can be taken and inserted into a friendly Titan, charging its shield and partially filling both the Titan's Core Meter and the Pilot player's Titan Meter. Players can disembark from their Titan at any time. It will continue attacking nearby opponents under "follow mode", where the Titan follows the pilot as closely as it can. Players can also set it to "guard mode" and it will stay put, attacking any opponent that comes close. Finally, the Pilot can activate the Titan's ejection system, destroying the titan (and creating a large explosion if the 'Nuclear Eject' perk is selected in the Titan's loadout) and launching the Pilot high into the air.
Players earn "merits", also known as experience points, based on their performance in a multiplayer match and whether their team wins or loses. Players need to accumulate merits to level up, which unlocks additional weapons, abilities, customization options, and more. There are also other ways to earn merits, like surviving the evacuation phase when the players' team loses a match. Players can also earn Credits, a form of currency used to buy weapons, boosts, Titans, or abilities before they are unlocked. These can be earned by gaining merits and completing challenges. The game's customization options have expanded significantly compared to Titanfall. Players' outfits and weapons, as well as Titans' appearances and combat efficiency, can be extensively customized. Boosts replace burn cards featured in the earlier game. They are tactical abilities that enhance the players' combat efficiency. Each boost has its own specific access requirement. Ticks, which are explosive mines that track enemies, for example, require 65% of the Titan meter filled. Amped Weapons, where players inflict more damage with their firearms, need 80%. Players must decide which boost they are going to use before a match begins; they cannot swap their boost during the game.
Titanfall 2 features several multiplayer modes. These modes include:
- Amped Hardpoint: In this mode, teams receive points if they can hold control points for an extended period. The team that accumulates more points wins.
- Bounty Hunt: Players are rewarded with money if they kill enemies, opponents or AI-controlled grunts. Players need to return to specific points to deposit the money. Players can also steal opponents' money by killing them. The team that has the highest score wins.
- Pilot vs. Pilot: A standard team deathmatch mode but players cannot summon any Titan.
- Capture the Flag: Players are tasked to capture the flag of an enemy and bring it to their team's base, while preventing opponents from stealing the player's flag. Sides switch halfway through the match.
- Attrition: A standard team deathmatch mode in which players can summon Titans. Points are rewarded to a player's team when they kill a human-controlled enemy or an AI-controlled grunt. When a team earns enough points, the game transitions into the following phase: the losing team needs to reach the evacuation zone and escape, while the winning team needs to eliminate all opponents.
- Skirmish: This mode is like Attrition, but there is no AI-controlled grunts and the score needed for phase transitioning is lower.
- Last Titan Standing: A last player standing mode, where the first team to eliminate all opposing titans wins. Players are spawned in their titan and can collect batteries scattered around the map.
- Free for All: Players are tasked to kill each other in this mode. All other players will be marked as their opponents. This has since been removed from the game.
- Coliseum: This is a one-versus-one multiplayer mode where the player is tasked to eliminate the other player. Players can gain access to this mode through Coliseum tickets. These are earned by playing other multiplayer modes, buying them with credits, or receiving them in gifts granted when the player levels up a faction.
- Titan Brawl: A standard team deathmatch mode, but players spawn with their titans and cannot eject or disembark from their titans.
- Frontier Defense: A player versus environment (PvE) multiplayer game mode where four players must face up to five waves of enemies.
Matchmaking is also enhanced, with the game automatically helping players to find a new match after the end of every match. The game also introduces a new feature called "Networks", which allows players to form a group, similar to a guild. The game automatically groups both the player and other members of the network together in a match. Players can join more than one network and can switch between joined networks in-game. Each network has its own "happy hour". If the player plays the game during this period, they gain extra merits.
## Campaign
### Setting
The game's conflict takes place in "The Frontier", a region of star systems far removed from the "Core Systems" where Earth is located. The Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation (IMC) and the Frontier Militia battle for control of the Frontier. The IMC seeks to exploit the Frontier's rich resources regardless of the consequences for planetary environments and civilian populations, while the Militia fight to expel the IMC and gain the Frontier's independence. In the wake of the Battle of Demeter, the Militia is on the offensive, battling for resources and control of the Frontier planets. Though weakened by the lack of reinforcements from the core systems because of the destruction of the refueling facility by James MacAllan, the IMC is still a dominant fighting force attempting to drive the Militia out and put down any resistance to their control of the Frontier.
In the single player campaign the player assumes control of Jack Cooper, a lowly rifleman from the Frontier Militia, sent to the alien planet of Typhon as part of an assault on the planet by the Militia, who must join his former mentor Captain Tai Lastimosa's Titan—named BT-7274—to foil the IMC's plans of interstellar domination.
### Plot
Jack Cooper is a rifleman in the Militia. He aspires to become a Titan Pilot and is receiving off-the-books training from Captain Tai Lastimosa to prepare for his candidacy. The two are part of a Militia force which attacks the IMC-held planet of Typhon. In the initial battle, the Apex Predators, a group of mercenaries led by Kuben Blisk and contracted by the leader of the IMC's science division, General Marder, mortally wounds Lastimosa and incapacitates his Vanguard-class Titan, BT-7274. With his dying breath, Lastimosa transfers control of BT to Cooper. BT explains that Cooper has also inherited Lastimosa's mission, Special Operation 217: to rendezvous with Major Eli Anderson and assist in the completion of their original assignment. Anderson's last known position is at an IMC laboratory. BT and Cooper are forced to detour, first through a water reclamation facility then a manufacturing plant, killing the Apex Predators Kane and Ash along the way.
BT and Cooper continue to the IMC laboratory only to find it destroyed, with corpses artificially aged due to time-travel distortion scattered across the facility. Cooper finds Anderson, deceased from a time-travel mishap. BT uploads part of his AI into Cooper's helmet to facilitate communication through time. Cooper learns Anderson was gathering intelligence on a new IMC device, the "Fold Weapon", which utilizes time-displacement technology to destroy entire planets. The planet Harmony, which is the home planet of Lastimosa and houses the Militia headquarters, will be the first target. Fortunately for the Militia, the Fold Weapon is dependent upon a power source known as the Ark. Cooper and BT hijack an IMC communications array to broadcast a signal to the Militia fleet and kill another of the Apex Predators, Richter. The transmission contains sensor data on the Ark's electromagnetic signature so that the Militia can find and seize it.
After receiving the transmission, the Militia's Marauder Corps, led by Commander Sarah Briggs, assaults the IMC-held installation where the Ark is being kept, arriving too late to prevent it from being loaded onto the Draconis, an IMC transport. The Militia gives chase in hijacked IMC ships. BT and Cooper attempt to board the Draconis but are attacked by the Apex Predator Viper. Cooper kills Viper and successfully boards the Draconis with BT.
Cooper and BT secure the Ark before the ship crashes. BT becomes incapacitated from damage sustained in his fight with Viper, and the duo are captured by Blisk and his second-in-command, Slone. BT surrenders the Ark to save Cooper but is destroyed by Slone for trying to help Cooper escape. However, BT gives Cooper a SERE kit and his data core before his chassis fails, and Cooper uses it to revive BT by installing it in a new Vanguard chassis provided by Briggs after he escapes captivity. Reunited, Cooper and BT fight their way to the base where the Fold Weapon is being prepared for use against Harmony. They kill Slone, earning Blisk's respect; Blisk spares Cooper and offers him a place in the Apex Predators before departing. BT and Cooper then launch themselves into the Fold Weapon's superstructure where the Ark has already been installed. BT hurls Cooper free before sacrificing himself, destroying the Ark, Fold Weapon, and the planet itself.
The game ends with a monologue by Cooper, talking about having his status as a pilot affirmed and being inducted into the Marauder Corps, as well as reminiscing over his experiences with BT. In a post-credits scene, the Titan neural link to Cooper's helmet flashes with the message "Jack?" encoded in binary, suggesting some fragment of BT's AI has survived.
## Development
Respawn Entertainment, founded by Vince Zampella, and a team of ninety people developed the game. Titanfall's original director, Steve Fukuda, producer Drew McCoy, and composer Stephen Barton returned for the sequel. Production of the title began in mid-2014 with a two-year development cycle. Publisher Electronic Arts provided funding and marketing support. The game's development was completed on September 29, 2016, with Respawn confirming it had been declared gold, indicating it was being prepared for duplication and release.
### Single-player
Titanfall had a low engagement with players post-release, despite huge initial sales. Fukuda believed the dwindling size of the community was due mainly to the game's lack of a single-player campaign. Zampella confirmed the introduction of a single-player campaign was intended to expand the player base, and McCoy believed this could make the overall package more complete. The team's vision for the campaign was to make it different from other first-person shooters, especially Call of Duty. This proved to be a challenge since many of them had worked at Infinity Ward, the developer of Call of Duty, before joining Respawn and had become accustomed to making a campaign in that style. According to McCoy, the team initially tried putting all the mechanics from the first Titanfall into the campaign, but it did not work out. As a result, the team decided to host many game jams in the studio, where team members were free to create new designs and experiment with technology with few constraints other than adhering to Titanfall's existing mechanics. The team was tasked not to follow traditional shooter campaign's design conventions. Team members were free to build prototypes for it, which would then be integrated to form a coherent campaign. These prototypes were internally referred to as "action blocks". They allowed the team to introduce "ideas after ideas" in the full game since these blocks were often independent of each other and had unique gameplay features. For instance, players would be time traveling in one level and assaulting Titans in the next. These blocks enabled the team to discover new ideas and work out the structure of the overall campaign. Internally it was called "211" as every level consisted of two parts involving pilot combat, one part involving pilot movement and puzzle solving, and one part involving Titan combat.
The "action blocks" approach meant Titanfall 2's gameplay was designed before the story. The team intended making the game similar to the Half-Life series, where a mystery takes center stage in the story, hooking players to continue exploring it and completing the campaign. Portal also influenced the game's design. One of the major components of the campaign is the interactions between Cooper and his Titan BT-7274. Fukuda described it as a "buddy" story, inspired by buddy cop films like Lethal Weapon or Beverly Hills Cop, as well as anime Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet. "BT" stood for "Buddy Titan", a name the team hated, but Fukuda insisted on using. To increase the chemistry between the duo, the two characters have opposite personalities: Jack is enthusiastic, while BT is robotic and calm. Cooper was difficult for the team to write since his personality may not align with players' choices or vision for the character. While the team intentionally avoided making BT similar to characters like Optimus Prime or cute robots like Wall-E, they found BT's personality difficult to write, as they had to find a balance between making it "a lovable partner and a 20-foot-tall war machine". Early drafts of BT's scripts were deemed too "bossy", and five writers took five months to rework them. To make BT more human, the team designed a large emotive eye, so players would know where the titan is looking, and a small pair of robotic arms that allow it to interact with other characters in a more natural way. The front of BT is filled with colored paints which inform players of the Titan's head movement. The team added a design choice that let players communicate with BT enabling players to bond with the Titan without using any cutscene. This also provided players with more insights into the game's world, though some staff questioned the decision since Half-Life's protagonist is silenced. To make players feel that Cooper and BT are separate entities even when they are controlling the Titan, the team included several small graphical hints to remind them that BT will still continue to talk to the player character. Akira Kurosawa films and Clint Eastwood and Sam Elliott's cowboy roles inspired animator Shawn Lee Wilson creation of BT's unique physical appearance and expression. The Apache helicopter and other military technologies also inspired BT's design. Wilson provided motion capture for the Titan.
While designing the game's single-player, one of the team's goals was to keep the energy present in Titanfall's multiplayer mode. The team wanted to make the campaign more creative instead of simply having robots in it. Both the unique traits of pilots and Titans had to be used and expanded upon. Therefore, the team decided to create both intricate environments for pilots' transversal and large open space for titan combat, instead of making it a corridor shooter. According to gameplay designer Mohammed Alavi, this gave players greater control and freedom over the character's movement. The team focused a great deal on platforming designed to further expand the use of the pilot movement sets. Many team members created action blocks dedicated to platforming, including ideas such as having players solve puzzles to find a new surface to wall-run on, and Titan being able to throw the pilot, so they could travel over long distances. The concept of Titan throwing pilots was ultimately discarded from the gameplay and became part of a cinematic cutscene because the team had trouble implementing it due to its lack of interactivity. The game also features a variety of puzzles inspired by BioShock and Half-Life, where players maintain "a certain level of speed" while solving puzzles. There are also puzzles which change the game's pace and require players to stop to think of a solution.
X2's Nightcrawler and the documentary series Life After People inspired the most acclaimed level, "Effect and Cause", initially an action block created by designer Jake Keating involving time travel. He had the idea before the development of Titanfall. He experimented with it with one of Titanfall's multiplayer maps. The action block was warmly welcomed by the entire development team, with some feeling that it had the potential to be the main feature through the entire game rather than being confined to one level. However, Keating insisted on limiting its use to one level so that the mechanic would not become boring for players. To make the level, the team created two building computer models with one on top of the other. As the player switches timelines, they are teleported from one building to the other. Fukuda added it was the landmark level the team was looking for and it did not need demanding technology. However, the added level created more work for the team since the two buildings, each with different features and characteristics, needed to be built twice.
The game's single-player starts with simple missions before gradually introducing players to more complicated situations which demand more skills and precision. The game story also supplements this, as Cooper transforms from a normal Frontier grunt to a skillful pilot at the end. The campaign was created as a stepping stone for inexperienced players by providing a more "relaxing" environment that teaches players' the basic gameplay mechanics, training them before they join multiplayer matches.
### Multiplayer
The team evaluated Titanfall and listened to both feedback and analytical research from gaming journalists and identified two major concerns: there was not enough content for players, and at times the game became too chaotic. The team slowed down the gameplay pace of Titanfall 2's multiplayer so that players could actively make decisions relying less on reflex. The team also improved the game's map design by introducing more verticality to each map. Fukuda described it as the 3D swiss cheese effect. The team also employed the strategy of "window pane", where each map has three obvious paths: left, middle and right. This helped make each map's environments more predictable to players. Titanfall 2 features a brighter color palette and environments compared to both the first game and contemporary shooter games, as the team aimed for graphical quality that is "postcard-worthy". There is also a greater variety of environments featured in the multiplayer maps, ranging from industrial centers, outdoor maps with more foliage, and the return of remastered maps from the first Titanfall game.
There are also various revisions to the game's multiplayer mode. McCoy described these changes as "subtle" as the team focused more on adding slight modifications to existing mechanics. The Titans were redesigned to have distinct silhouettes unique to each chassis (and thus ability set and weapons) so that players can "tell at a glance everything that [they] need to know" and stay prepared for each combat encounter. This enabled players to have a clearer picture of the combat situations and facilitated learning from each defeat. The team also introduced cosmetic changes to the pilots and the six Titan class giving them distinct visual characteristics so that players can easily identify an opponent's abilities. The team attempted to add more depth to the gameplay by introducing more Titans, gadgets, weapons, and pilot abilities, allowing players to customize a set of loadouts to suit their preferred playstyle, by creating specialized loadouts (for example a high mobility long ranged combatant by combining a sniper rifle with the mobility-enhancing grapple Pilot ability) or a stealthy Titan-hunter (taking a grenade launcher in addition to an Anti-Titan weapon along with the Cloak kit). These added more variety to the game so there are more things for players to discover and master. The game's extensive customization options and progression system were designed to engage players, so they can "get the most out of the game". Like its predecessor, Titans need to be earned using certain gameplay actions such as defeating opponents or completing objectives.
### Technology
The game used a heavily modified version of Valve's Source as its game engine. Many improvements were made to the engine's aspects such as physically based rendering, a texture streaming system developed in house, high dynamic range and depth of field. The team also made changes to the audio, such as introducing sound occlusion and reverberation. According to John Haggerty, senior software engineer, the team broke part of the engine's code for level progression and saves when they were making the first game. The programming team found it a huge challenge to fix and reinstate these codes to accommodate the sequel's single-player campaign. The team also developed a scripting system from scratch, allowing designers to quickly assemble action blocks. The game's artificial intelligence was significantly enhanced, with new movesets and behaviors for pilots and titans in both single-player and multiplayer modes. As Titanfall 2 was the first game Respawn developed for the PlayStation 4, the engineering team spent a lot of time and effort to get it running on the platform. A virtual reality version of the game was prototyped but never went into full production because, according to Joe Emslie, the player would "vomit all over their controller."
Combat animation can be interrupted by players' movement, which gives them more direct control instead of needing to wait for the animation to end. Most Titanfall's pilots' movesets returned in Titanfall 2 but with some slight modifications. For instance, players no longer fall off as they are wall running near the tops of walls. Before players begin to wall run, the game's camera also tilts slightly so that players can anticipate the movement.
## Release
In May 2014, two months after the first game's release, publisher Electronic Arts announced they would collaborate with Respawn Entertainment for more experiences set within the Titanfall universe. A sequel was officially confirmed on March 12, 2015, by Respawn's Vince Zampella at the 12th British Academy Games Awards. He also confirmed the game would come to PlayStation 4, unlike the first one. EA opened their press conference at EA Play 2016 with Titanfall 2, and announced that the game would be released worldwide on October 28, 2016. This meant the title would have to compete with other triple-A first-person shooters including Battlefield 1, made by DICE (one of EA's studios), and Activision's futuristic Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, developed by Zampella's old studio Infinity Ward. According to McCoy, the release date was confirmed long before and the team could not change it. The game's Collector's Edition and Vanguard SRS Collector's Edition, which include additional content, were released on the same day as the standard edition. Titanfall 2 was added to EA Access and Origin Access on July 7, 2017. An Ultimate Edition, which bundles the base game and all the updates as well as some bonus content, was released on the same day.
EA partnered with a restaurant and a snack food company to promote the game. Players who purchased food or drink at any Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant received a free customization item and access to a multiplayer mode. Similarly, players who purchased Mountain Dew or Doritos were given a code granting them double XP, early access to a new multiplayer mode, a Titan, and Titan customization items. EA also partnered with toy manufacturer McFarlane Toys to produce a toyline for the game which includes a seven-inch tall Cooper figure and a ten-inch tall BT-7274 figure. Respawn prepared two technical tests for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One users in August 2016, allowing players to try some of the game's multiplayer modes and maps. They made several major gameplay adjustments after hearing feedback from players participating in these tests. The official Titanfall Twitter account, controlled by EA rather than Respawn, also helped promote the game by suggesting it to Twitter users who indicated they were looking for games to play. It was also used to mock its competitors. Players who purchased Battlefield 1 and this game also had exclusive access to a Titan skin inspired by World War I.
At E3 2016, Respawn announced that all the updates and downloadable content would be free for all players. Inspired by Evolve's free maps model, the team hoped this approach would make players more satisfied with the full-priced package. Respawn supported the game with multiple pieces of downloadable content in the first year after the game's release, including:
Since early 2021, Titanfall 2 and its predecessor were hit with frequent DDoS attacks, which rendered the online multiplayer unplayable. A mod, named Northstar (named after the eponymous Titan chassis), was released, giving support for custom servers to counter-act the unplayable servers.
## Reception
Titanfall 2 received "generally favorable" reviews, according to review aggregator Metacritic. GamesRadar selected it as their game of the year, while PC Gamer chose it as their shooter of the year. Polygon named it among the decade's best.
The game's plot received mixed reviews. Nic Rowen of Destructoid found it had an unsurprising and "by the number" sci-fi plot. He was disappointed by the campaign's five-hour length and noted that the emotional core of the story lacked development. Game Informer'''s Javy Gwaltney compared the plot to a "buddy comedy" remarking positively that BT is a relatable character. Peter Paras of Game Revolution praised the interesting story, despite feeling the nine-chapter story is basic. He also liked BT's personality, calling it a "straight-laced 'I take what you say literally' thinking machine". He noted the interactions with the Titan successfully added more context to the game's world and setting. Jon Denton of Eurogamer praised BT's character, saying its lines were skillfully written. GameSpot's Mike Mahardy felt the story was poorly written and that it ended abruptly. Arthur Gies of Polygon felt the narrative was subpar, with mediocre voice acting, "corny names" for characters, and insufficient context for players to truly remember the story.
Titanfall 2's gameplay received critical acclaim. Rowen described it as "frantic and exhilarating", saying the fluidity of gameplay further enhanced the quality of the single-player campaign. Gwaltney shared similar thoughts, saying that no matter how players chose to approach a mission, combat or stealth, it was satisfying. Furthermore, he found controlling the Titan an interesting experience that resembles MechWarrior and Star Fox. Mahardy also felt that player movement controls remained "invigorating". He liked the Titan combat more for often presenting "David versus Goliath" scenarios. Mahardy and described the game as a "thinking man"'s shooter, adding it required players to think tactically instead of simply having good reflexes. David Houghton of GamesRadar praised the game's controls and movement options for turning many seemingly gameplay obstacles and barriers into opportunities for players to manipulate. Chris Thursten of PC Gamer praised the game's variety of weapons and their sounds and the "brilliant" freedom of movement.
Rowen praised the level design, which he found one of the game's "real stars". He was impressed by the variety of settings and set pieces featured in each level and praised the design for having tricky environments for transversal encouraging free movements. He singled out "Effect and Cause" as one of the game's most imaginative levels, comparing it favorably with Portal. Paras remarked that two of the game's chapters were extremely impressive, and that they "[re-examine] level design in most action games". Thursten also enjoyed these levels but added that not all of them share this level of creativity. He wished some of the novel concepts introduced "stuck around longer" during his playtime. Gwaltney liked the flexibility of the game's campaign, which provides players plenty of freedom to handle combat encounters. He also appreciated the inclusion of the game's puzzles, which requires players to "think outside the box". Both Paras and Houghton liked the levels for incorporating elements of Pilot and Titan gameplay. Paras said it added variety to the package, and Houghton felt it improved the game's pacing, making it very "exhilarating" to play. Mahardy admired the pacing, attributing its success to the fact that players can switch BT's loadouts to handle various combat situations, presenting a different dynamic from multiplayer. Brandin Tyrrel of IGN admired the game's sense of scale and map design, where each level stage felt large but at the same time linear enough to direct players' progression.
The game's multiplayer was also acclaimed. Rowen described it as "more than solid" and praised the more complex and extended progression system for rectifying Titanfall's lack of long-term appeal. While Titan's customization became more limited, he felt this was a necessary change to make the Titan combat deeper and more rewarding. He noted there were many "smart" gameplay adjustments and design changes that emphasize players' skills, but he was disappointed there were not enough modes featuring AI opponents. Gwaltney, however, felt there were no significant changes to the multiplayer, but there were sufficient subtle design adjustments making it more refined and improved than its predecessor. He still found the progression system lacking in substance. He appreciated the new gadgets, which make the game more tactical. He commented positively on the game modes' structure, which prompts all types of players to engage in teamwork. Paras criticized the multiplayer for being unforgiving, though he enjoyed some of the game modes, like Bounty Hunt. Mahardy praised the six new Titans types for being easy to learn and difficult to master. As the six Titan types have distinct controls and attack schemes, Mahardy noted that combat resembles that of a fighting game and multiplayer online battle arenas games. Tyrrel praised the overhauled rodeo mechanic, which promoted teamwork, and Boosts, which make the game more balanced. Gies described some of the design changes as "odd" and "difficult to understand", including the rodeo mechanic which he found mostly useless. In addition, he criticized the maps for being too confined, and not fitting with the game's fast gameplay.
Critics generally had a positive reception to the overall package. Rowen admired the game for being an imaginative and creative shooter. Gwaltney described the game as a "must-play" title that offered a complete package with both a fully-fledged single-player campaign and a refined multiplayer. Paras felt that Titanfall 2 successfully delivered on the promises made by the first game. Tyrrel called the game a rare and exceptional title that improved on every aspect of its predecessor. Houghton called the game the year's surprise, describing it as one of the most "creative and rewarding FPS in recent memory". Thursten worried that Titanfall 2 would suffer from a short lifespan like its predecessor due to the same poor release timing. He noted the single-player campaign was the game's true highlight.
### Sales
Electronic Arts expected the game to sell approximately nine to ten million units in its first year of release. However, financial analysts predicted the game's sales would be substantially disappointing due to EA's decision to release the game in late October, a period between the launch of EA's own Battlefield 1, and Activision's Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. Despite that, EA expressed no concern about the release window, as they felt that the player base of Battlefield 1 and Titanfall 2 would not overlap.
The game was the fourth best-selling retail game in the UK in its week of release, behind Battlefield 1, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Special Edition, and FIFA 17. Its first-week sales only reached a quarter of the launch-week sales of Titanfall despite Titanfall 2 being a multi-platform release. Digital sales of the game were also down, only reaching a quarter of its predecessor's sales. According to the NPD Group, the game was the ninth best-selling game in October 2016 and the fifth best-selling game in November 2016. In their earnings call for the third quarter of the 2017 fiscal year, EA stated that the game's sales fell below expectations. However, EA COO and CFO Blake Jorgensen went on to say the company was pleased with the positive reviews the game received and expected it to have strong sales into the next fiscal year. According to Zampella, Titanfall 2 sold well and was successful, but it could have sold better. In January 2017, financial firm Morgan Stanley estimated that the game had sold 4 million units. The game's release on Steam in June 2020 helped to reinvigorate its player base on PC.
### Accolades
## Sequel
In October 2016, Zampella said the team would like to deliver more experiences for the player set within the franchise, though a trilogy was not planned. When publisher Electronic Arts acquired Respawn Entertainment, however, it was revealed that a new mainline Titanfall title was in development.
A battle royale spin-off game, Apex Legends, which takes place in the same universe, featuring some of the same characters from Titanfall 2, such as Ash and Kuben Blisk, the Apex Predators that the game is aptly named after, was released on February 4, 2019. The game's lead developer, Drew McCoy stated "There are some people who think there are too many battle royale games or it's a fad, the world thinks we're making Titanfall 3 and we're not - this is what we're making." With the focus on Apex Legends, the team halted the development of a new Titanfall game. On October 18, 2021, Ash was revealed to be a playable character for the eleventh season of Apex Legends, previously having narrated the Arenas'' gamemode. |
28,004,899 | Franz von Hipper | 1,173,072,456 | German admiral (1863–1932) | [
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"1932 deaths",
"Admirals of the Imperial German Navy",
"Commanders of the Military Order of Max Joseph",
"Imperial German Navy admirals of World War I",
"Military personnel from Bavaria",
"Military personnel from the Kingdom of Bavaria",
"People from Weilheim-Schongau",
"Recipients of the Hanseatic Cross (Bremen)",
"Recipients of the Hanseatic Cross (Lübeck)",
"Recipients of the Iron Cross (1914), 1st class",
"Recipients of the Military Merit Cross (Mecklenburg-Schwerin), 1st class",
"Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (military class)"
]
| Franz Ritter von Hipper (13 September 1863 – 25 May 1932) was an admiral in the German Imperial Navy (Kaiserliche Marine). Franz von Hipper joined the German Navy in 1881 as an officer cadet. He commanded several torpedo boat units and served as watch officer aboard several warships, as well as Kaiser Wilhelm II's yacht SMY Hohenzollern. Hipper commanded several cruisers in the reconnaissance forces before being appointed commander of the I Scouting Group in October 1913.
He is most famous for commanding the German battlecruisers of the I Scouting Group during World War I, particularly at the Battle of Jutland on 31 May – 1 June 1916. During the war, Hipper led the German battlecruisers on several raids of the English coast, for which he was vilified in the English press as a "baby killer". His squadron clashed with the British battlecruiser squadron at the Battle of Dogger Bank in January 1915, where the armored cruiser Blücher was lost. At the Battle of Jutland, Hipper's flagship Lützow was sunk, though his ships succeeded in sinking three British battlecruisers. In 1918 he was promoted to succeed Admiral Reinhard Scheer as commander of the High Seas Fleet.
After the end of the war in 1918, Hipper retired from the Imperial Navy with a full pension. He initially lived under an alias and moved frequently to avoid radical revolutionaries during the German Revolution of 1918–1919. After the revolution settled, he moved to Altona outside Hamburg. Unlike his superior, Reinhard Scheer, he never published a memoir of his service during the war. Hipper died on 25 May 1932. The Kriegsmarine commemorated him with the launching of the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper in 1938.
## Early life
Franz Hipper was born to Anton and Anna Hipper in Weilheim in Oberbayern, some 40 miles (64 km) south of Munich, on 13 September 1863. His father, a shop-keeper, died when Franz was three. When Franz turned five, he began his education at a Catholic grammar school in Munich. At the age of ten, Franz attended the Gymnasium in Munich. Hipper graduated from the Gymnasium in 1879 with the degree of Obersekundareife—the rough equivalent of a high school diploma.
After completing his education, Hipper signed up as a volunteer reserve officer (Einjährig-Freiwilliger), a one-year volunteer position in the German military. After basic officer training in 1879, Hipper decided to join the navy. He went to Kiel, where he took the Pressen, courses designed to prepare officers for the naval entrance examination, which he successfully passed. On 12 April 1881, at the age of 18, Franz Hipper became an officer of the Imperial German Navy. Among the fellow cadets of the 1881 class was Wilhelm Souchon, who went on to command the Mediterranean Division at the outbreak of World War I.
## Naval career
### Peacetime career
After Hipper joined the German Navy in 1881 as a probationary sea cadet, he served on the sail-frigate SMS Niobe from April to September 1881. He was then transferred to the Naval Cadet School in Kiel, which he attended from September 1881 to March 1882. Upon graduation, he attended the 6-week Basic Gunnery School on the training ship Mars, from April to May 1882. Following gunnery training, Hipper was assigned to the training ship Friedrich Carl for sea training, which lasted from May to September 1882. He was then transferred to the steam corvette Leipzig for a world cruise; this was begun in October 1882 and completed two years later in October 1884. Upon reaching Germany, Hipper returned to Kiel to attend Naval Officer School from November 1884 to April 1885. On 24 April, Hipper was assigned as a divisional drill officer; he was tasked with training recruits for the First Naval Battalion, based in Kiel. Hipper held this position for seven months.
In October 1885, Hipper went through the Executive Officer School in Kiel, which he completed on 16 December. On 4 January 1886, Hipper was assigned as a division officer for the Second Seaman's Artillery Division, Coastal Defense Artillery. He remained in this post until 3 March 1887, at which point he was assigned as the watch officer aboard Friedrich Carl. This began a three and a half year stint serving as watch officer aboard several ships, including the corvettes Stosch and Stein, the armored frigate Friedrich der Grosse, and the aviso Wacht. Hipper attended the Torpedo Officer Course aboard the corvette Blücher from October 1890 to January 1891. He was then designated as a torpedo specialist; he returned to Friedrich der Grosse as a torpedo officer in October 1891. In April 1892, he went to join the crew of the newly commissioned coastal defense ship Beowulf, again as a torpedo officer. He served in this position only briefly, before being reassigned as the company commander of the Second Torpedo Unit, based in Wilhelmshaven, in October 1892. Hipper then took part in torpedo boat instruction from January to February 1893.
In 1894–95, Hipper served as the senior watch officer aboard the new battleship Wörth, under the command of Prince Heinrich. While aboard Wörth, Hipper was promoted to Senior Lieutenant and awarded the Bavarian National Defense Service Medal on 29 August 1895. In September 1895, Hipper was assigned as the commanding officer of the Second Torpedo-boat Reserve Division. He held this position for 21 months, during which time he alternated command of four vessels of the active and reserve units in his division. In June 1897, Hipper participated in a 17-day Admiralty staff cruise aboard the aviso Grille. After returning from the staff cruise, Hipper was promoted to serve as the commander of the Second Reserve Torpedo-boat Flotilla, a position in which he served for 15 months.
Hipper was transferred to the battleship Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm on 1 October 1898, where he served as navigator. Hipper served for 11 months as navigator aboard the battleship before he was transferred to the Imperial yacht SMY Hohenzollern on 19 September 1899. While serving on the Imperial yacht, Hipper was present for the trip to England for Queen Victoria's funeral in 1901 and the cruise to America the following year. Hipper was awarded a number of medals during his service aboard Hohenzollern, including the Prussian Order of the Red Eagle, the Bavarian Military Service Order, and the Order of St. Stanislaus—awarded by the Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. Hipper was promoted to the rank of Korvettenkapitän (corvette captain) on 10 June 1901.
After leaving the Imperial yacht, Hipper was assigned to command of the Second Torpedo Unit on 1 October 1902. He held the command until 30 September 1905. His flagship for the first six months of his command was the new cruiser Niobe; he then transferred his flag to the large torpedo boat D8. While in this command, Hipper was awarded additional commendations, including the Prussian Distinguished Service Cross and the Prussian Royal Crown Order. He was promoted to the rank of Fregattenkapitän (frigate captain) on 5 April. In January 1906, Hipper attended the 10-day Cruiser Gunnery School on the new armored cruiser Prinz Adalbert. In April 1906, he participated in the Battleship Gunnery Course conducted aboard the battleship Schwaben. On 20 April, Hipper was given command of the light cruiser Leipzig, though his tenure as commander was short-lived. Leipzig departed for the East Asia Squadron in September 1906, at which point Hipper was transferred to command the new armored cruiser Friedrich Carl. Hipper assumed command of the ship on 30 September. Under Hipper's leadership, the crew of Friedrich Carl won the Kaiser's Prize for the best shooting in the fleet in 1907. Admiral Hugo von Pohl stated in a subsequent report:
> "He has brought the ship to a higher degree of combat effectiveness, and the ship has won the Kaiser Prize for good shooting. One of the best captains we have in the cruisers. A good example for his officers. Recommended for battleship command and for higher independent commands."
On 6 April 1907, Hipper was promoted to Kapitän zur See (captain at sea). Nicholas II awarded Hipper another commendation, the Order of St. Andrew, that year during a meeting with Wilhelm II. During the ceremony, Hipper joined Wilhelm II as one of his "Imperial Captains." On 6 March 1908, Hipper took command of the new cruiser Gneisenau. He was tasked with conducting the shakedown cruise, after which the ship departed for the East Asia Squadron. Hipper again remained in Germany; he was given command of the First Torpedo boat Division, based in Kiel. Here he was responsible for training more than half of the torpedo boats in the entire German navy. Hipper held the position for three years, until he returned to fleet service.
On 1 October 1911, Hipper took command of the armored cruiser Yorck, along with the position as chief of staff for Rear Admiral Gustav Bachmann, the Deputy Flag Officer, Reconnaissance Forces. In January 1912, Rear Admiral Bachmann was promoted out of his position; on the 26th Hipper succeeded him as the deputy commander. The following day, he was promoted to rear admiral. After serving as the deputy commander for over a year and a half, Hipper again followed Admiral Bachmann. Admiral Bachmann was promoted to Chief of the Baltic Station and Hipper took over as the commanding officer of the I Scouting Group on 1 October 1913. Erich Raeder was appointed as Hipper's deputy.
### World War I
After World War I broke out in 1914 Hipper led his battlecruisers on several raids against the English coastal towns. The first such raid occurred on 2 November 1914. Hipper's force included the battlecruisers Moltke, Von der Tann, and Seydlitz, his flagship, and the large armored cruiser Blücher, along with four light cruisers. The flotilla arrived off Great Yarmouth at daybreak the following morning and bombarded the port, while the light cruiser Stralsund laid a minefield. The British submarine HMS D5 responded to the bombardment, but struck one of the mines laid by Stralsund and sank. Shortly thereafter, Hipper ordered his ships to turn back to German waters. On the way, a heavy fog covered the Heligoland Bight, so the ships were ordered to halt until visibility improved and they could safely navigate the defensive minefields. The armored cruiser Yorck made a navigational error that led her into one of the German minefields. She struck two mines and quickly sank; only 127 men out of the crew of 629 were rescued.
A second operation followed on 15–16 December 1914; it targeted the towns of Scarborough, Hartlepool, and Whitby. By this time Hipper's squadron had been augmented by the new battlecruiser Derfflinger. Twelve hours after Hipper left the Jade, the High Seas Fleet, consisting of 14 dreadnoughts and 8 pre-dreadnoughts and a screening force of 2 armored cruisers, 7 light cruisers, and 54 torpedo boats, departed to provide distant cover for the bombardment force. The Royal Navy had the capability to intercept and decode the German naval code, as a result of the capture of the light cruiser Magdeburg at the outbreak of the war. On 14 December, the British intercepted messages relating to the plan to bombard Scarborough. Vice Admiral Beatty's four battlecruisers, supported by six dreadnoughts and several cruisers and smaller vessels, were to ambush Hipper's battlecruisers.
The evening of the 15th, the main German fleet encountered the six British battleships; Admiral Friedrich von Ingenohl, convinced he was faced by the entire British fleet, turned in retreat. Hipper was unaware of his superior's decision, and so pressed on with the bombardment. The three towns were shelled briefly before Hipper turned back to the planned rendezvous point. By this time, Beatty's battlecruisers were in position to block Hipper's chosen egress route, while other forces were en route to complete the encirclement. Errors in signaling aboard the British ships and bad weather, however, allowed Hipper to escape the trap without incident. As a result of the civilian casualties inflicted in these raids, the British propaganda effort vilified Hipper as a "baby killer."
#### Battle of Dogger Bank
In early January 1915, it became known to the German naval command that British ships were conducting reconnaissance in the Dogger Bank area. Admiral von Ingenohl was initially reluctant to attempt to destroy these forces, because the I Scouting Group was temporarily weakened while Von der Tann was in drydock for periodic maintenance. Rear Admiral (German: Konteradmiral) Richard Eckermann, the Chief of Staff of the High Seas Fleet, insisted on the operation, and so Ingenohl relented and ordered Hipper to take his battlecruisers to the Dogger Bank. On 23 January, Hipper sortied, with Seydlitz in the lead, followed by Moltke, Derfflinger, and Blücher, along with four light cruisers and 19 torpedo boats.
Again, interception and decryption of German wireless signals played an important role. Although they were unaware of the exact plans, the cryptographers of Room 40 were able to deduce that Hipper would be conducting an operation in the Dogger Bank area. Vice Admiral Beatty was again tasked with intercepting and destroying Hipper's battlecruisers. At 08:14 on 24 January, the German cruiser Kolberg spotted the light cruiser Aurora and several destroyers from the Harwich Force, which had been attached to support Beatty's battlecruiser squadron. Hipper immediately turned his battlecruisers towards the gunfire, when, almost simultaneously, Stralsund spotted a large amount of smoke to the northwest of her position. This was identified as a number of large British warships steaming towards Hipper's ships. Hipper later remarked:
> "The presence of such a large force indicated the proximity of further sections of the British Fleet, especially as wireless intercepts revealed the approach of 2nd Battlecruiser Squadron... They were also reported by Blücher at the rear of the German line, which had opened fire on a light cruiser and several destroyers coming up from astern... The battlecruisers under my command found themselves, in view of the prevailing [East-North-East] wind, in the windward position and so in an unfavourable situation from the outset."
Hipper turned south to flee, but was limited to 23 knots (43 km/h; 26 mph), which was Blücher's maximum speed at the time. The pursuing British battlecruisers were steaming at 27 knots (50 km/h; 31 mph), and quickly caught up to the German ships. As the rearmost ship in the German line, Blücher suffered the majority of the British gunfire for the early portion of the battle.
Seydlitz was struck in her forecastle at 10:25, by a 13.5 in shell from Lion, but this hit did minor damage. At 10:40, Lion hit Seydlitz with a single 13.5 in (343 mm) shell, which holed the deck and penetrated the rear barbette. The shell itself failed to enter the barbette, but the explosion flashed into the working chamber and detonated the propellant charges inside. By this time, Blücher was severely damaged after having been pounded by heavy shells. The chase ended when there were several reports of U-boats ahead of the British ships; Beatty quickly ordered evasive maneuvers, which allowed the German ships to increase the distance to their pursuers. At this time, Lion's last operational dynamo failed, which dropped her speed to 15 knots (28 km/h). Beatty, in the stricken Lion, ordered the remaining battlecruisers to "Engage the enemy's rear," but signal confusion caused the ships to solely target Blücher, allowing Moltke, Seydlitz, and Derfflinger to escape.
Blame for the loss of Blücher was not placed on Hipper, but on his superior Admiral von Ingenohl, who was removed from his post on 4 February. Also on the 4th, Hipper met with the Kaiser on an inspection of the fleet in Wilhelmshaven. That same day, Hipper was awarded the Iron Cross by the Kaiser; on the 23rd he was presented with the Friedrich August Cross, First and Second Classes, by the Grand Duke of Oldenburg. Three days later, Hipper was informed that his hometown had named its main street Hipperstrasse (Hipper Street).
By March 1916, Hipper suffered from severe combat fatigue; he had held command of the fleet reconnaissance forces for some 20 months, and the strain of command was beginning to take its toll. He requested sick leave on 20 March, which was approved by Admiral Reinhard Scheer—who had replaced von Pohl as fleet commander in January 1916— a week later on the 27th. Scheer, however, attempted to have Hipper retired instead of returning after the termination of sick leave; he contacted Henning von Holtzendorff, the Chief of the Admiralty Staff, who disagreed with Scheer. Holtzendorff thought that relieving Hipper at that point would "only damage the war leadership." Hipper had meanwhile left for a spa in Bad Nenndorf, where he spent five weeks. His deputy, Friedrich Boedicker, assumed temporary command. Hipper returned to his post on 12 May 1916; he hoisted his flag aboard the newly commissioned battlecruiser Lützow.
#### Battle of Jutland
Admiral Scheer planned another operation to lure out a portion of the British fleet for 17 May, but damage to the battlecruiser SMS Seydlitz sustained during the bombardment of Yarmouth and Lowestoft the previous month, coupled with condenser trouble on several of the battleships of III Battle Squadron caused the plan to be delayed, ultimately to 31 May. That morning, at 02:00 CET, the I Scouting Group, which comprised the battlecruisers Lützow, Derfflinger, Seydlitz, Moltke, and Von der Tann, five light cruisers, and 30 torpedo boats, left the Jade estuary. Scheer and the battle fleet followed an hour and a half later. The British navy's Room 40 had intercepted and decrypted German radio traffic containing plans of the operation, and so sortied the Grand Fleet, totaling some 28 dreadnoughts and 9 battlecruisers the night before, in order to cut off and destroy the High Seas Fleet.
At 16:00, the British and German battlecruiser forces encountered each other and began a running gun fight south, back towards Scheer's battle fleet. During this portion of the battle, Hipper's ships destroyed the battlecruisers Indefatigable and Queen Mary. Upon reaching the High Seas Fleet, Vice Admiral David Beatty's battlecruisers turned back to the north to lure the Germans towards the rapidly approaching Grand Fleet, under the command of Admiral John Jellicoe. During the run to the north, Hipper's ships continued to engage both Beatty's battlecruisers and the Queen Elizabeth-class battleships of the 5th Battle Squadron.
At 19:24, the 3rd Battlecruiser Squadron had formed up with Beatty's remaining battlecruisers ahead of the German line. The leading British ships spotted Lützow and Derfflinger, and began firing on them. In the span of 8 minutes, the battlecruiser Invincible scored eight hits on Lützow; these hits were mainly concentrated in the ship's bow and were the primary cause of the flooding that would eventually cause her loss. In return, both Lützow and Derfflinger concentrated their fire on Invincible, and at 19:33, Lützow's third salvo penetrated Invincible's center turret and ignited the magazine; the ship disappeared in a series of massive explosions.
By 19:30, the Grand Fleet had arrived on the scene, and was deployed into a position that would cross Scheer's "T" from the northeast. To extricate his fleet from this precarious position, Scheer ordered a 16-point turn to the south-west. Lützow had lost speed and was unable to keep up, and so Hipper ordered his flagship to withdraw to the southwest. Shortly before 20:00, Kommodore Michelson, aboard the cruiser Rostock, dispatched the torpedo boats of I Half-Flotilla to assist Lützow. G39 came alongside and took Hipper and his staff aboard, in order to transfer him to one of the other battlecruisers. At 19:55, Scheer decided to conduct another 16-point turn to launch an attack on the British fleet. This maneuver again put Scheer in a dangerous position; Jellicoe had turned his fleet south and again crossed Scheer's "T." A third 16-point turn followed, which was covered by a charge by Hipper's mauled battlecruisers—though as he was in the process of transferring from Lützow to G39, command of the squadron had temporarily fallen to Captain Hartog aboard Derfflinger. Hipper remarked,
> "I had to find myself another flagship because I could no longer exercise command from one which was shot to pieces...A torpedo boat was called alongside and we changed under heavy fire...[I] drove my torpedoboat hoping to find an advantageous moment to board one of [the other battlecruisers]. These 11⁄2 hours that I spent in a hail of shell and splinters aboard the torpedoboat I shall not be likely to forget."
By 22:15, Hipper was finally able to transfer to Moltke; he then ordered his ships to steam at 20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph) to take up their station at the head of the German line. Only Moltke and Seydlitz, however, were in condition to comply; Derfflinger and Von der Tann could make at most 18 knots, and so these ships lagged behind. An attack by British light cruisers caused the German formation to fall into disarray. In the confusion, Seydlitz lost sight of Moltke, and was no longer able to keep up with Moltke's 22 knots (41 km/h; 25 mph); Seydlitz detached herself to proceed to the Horns Reef lighthouse independently. Hipper's ships were to see no further combat during the return to German waters; at 03:55 Hipper reported to Scheer that Derfflinger and Von der Tann both had only two guns in operation, and that Seydlitz had been heavily damaged. Scheer replied that Hipper was to return to Wilhelmshaven while the fleet stood off Horns Reef.
For his conduct in the battle, Hipper received Germany's highest military honor, the Pour le Mérite; it was awarded by the Kaiser on 5 June. He was also awarded the Royal Bavarian Military Order of Max Joseph, Commander's Cross. This award carried with it elevation to the nobility and the title Ritter. He was presented with several other awards, including the Royal Saxon Order, the Order of Albrecht, and all three Hanseatic Crosses from Lübeck, Bremen, and Hamburg.
#### Command of the High Seas Fleet
The remainder of 1916 and through 1917 was largely uneventful for Hipper. He was placed in command of a detachment of the High Seas Fleet, composed of two battlecruisers, eleven battleships, four light cruisers, and twelve torpedo boats, sent to Denmark to retrieve a pair of stranded U-boats in November 1916. One was successfully returned to Germany, but the other had to be destroyed to prevent its capture. On the return to Germany, Kronprinz and Grosser Kurfürst were torpedoed by a British submarine. A year later, a brief skirmish took place in the Helgoland Bight between British and German capital ships.
On 12 August 1918, Hipper was promoted to command of the High Seas Fleet, after Scheer had been promoted to the Chief of Naval Staff. He was concurrently promoted to Admiral; Hipper took provisional control of the fleet in a ceremony held on the old battleship Kaiser Wilhelm II the day before. However, the war was all but lost by the time Hipper took command of the fleet.
In October, Hipper and Scheer envisioned one last major fleet advance to attack the British Grand Fleet. Scheer intended to inflict as much damage as possible on the British navy, to achieve a better bargaining position for Germany regardless of the cost to the navy. During the planning stages, Hipper wrote "As to a battle for the honor of the fleet in this war, even if it were a death battle, it would be the foundation for a new German fleet...such a fleet would be out of the question in the event of a dishonorable peace." The plan involved two simultaneous attacks by light cruisers and destroyers, one on Flanders and another on shipping in the Thames estuary; the five battlecruisers were to support the Thames attack while the dreadnoughts remained off Flanders. After both strikes, the fleet was to concentrate off the Dutch coast, where it would meet the Grand Fleet in battle.
While the fleet was consolidating in Wilhelmshaven, however, war-weary sailors began deserting en masse. As Von der Tann and Derfflinger passed through the locks that separated Wilhelmshaven's inner harbor and roadstead, some 300 men from both ships climbed over the side and disappeared ashore. On 24 October 1918, the order was given to sail from Wilhelmshaven. Starting on the night of 29 October, sailors on several battleships mutinied; three ships from the III Squadron refused to weigh anchors, and acts of sabotage were committed on board the battleships Thüringen and Helgoland. In the face of open rebellion, the order to sail was rescinded and the planned operation was abandoned. In an attempt to suppress the mutiny, the High Seas Fleet squadrons were dispersed. The situation had declined so significantly that on 9 November, Hipper personally took down his flag from the battleship Baden and went ashore.
According to the terms of the Armistice, all five of Germany's battlecruisers and two of the three battle squadrons, along with a number of light cruisers and the most modern torpedo boats, were to be interned in Scapa Flow. The fleet was placed under the command of Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter and sent to meet the Allied fleet of some 370 vessels. Hipper watched from shore as the German fleet left for Scapa Flow on 21 November 1918. He later wrote,
> My heart is breaking with this; my time as fleet commander has come to an inglorious end. The remaining questions of demobilization, disarmament, and the negotiations with the soldiers councils can be handled by my chief of staff; I have nothing more to do. I shall remain pro forma in command for a short time, otherwise, I am dead tired.
Less than two weeks later, on 2 December, Admiral Hipper submitted his request to be placed on the inactive list. He retired on 13 December with a full pension; at the age of 55, Hipper spent almost 37 years on active duty in the Imperial Navy. The German fleet in Scapa Flow, meanwhile, was scuttled by its crew on 21 June 1919.
## Post-war life
Following the German defeat in World War I, Hipper retired on 13 December 1918 from the navy and lived a quiet life; he received a full war pension. During the chaos of the German Revolution of 1918–1919, Hipper hid from radical revolutionaries by assuming a false name and moving frequently. He wrote a letter to Adolf von Trotha, the new fleet commander, expressing his approval of the scuttling of the German fleet in Scapa Flow on 21 June 1919. After the revolution was over, Hipper moved to a house in Altona near Hamburg.
Unlike his superior, Reinhard Scheer, Hipper never wrote a memoir of the war or his participation in the Imperial Navy. He briefly dabbled in conservative political movements in the 1920s but never committed to any. Franz von Hipper died on 25 May 1932; he was cremated and was buried in his hometown of Weilheim, according to his wishes. On hearing of Hipper's death, his old adversary David Beatty said, "I am very sorry. One would like to express one's regrets for the passing of a gallant officer and a great sailor." In 1938, the German navy, which had been expanded by the Nazis, launched the new heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper in commemoration of its namesake.
## Decorations and awards
- Iron Cross of 1914, 1st and 2nd class
- Pour le Mérite (5 June 1916)
- Order of the Red Eagle, 2nd class with Star, Oak Leaves and Swords
- Order of the Crown, 2nd class (Prussia)
- Service Award (Prussia)
- Commander's Cross of the Military Order of Max Joseph (6 June 1916) (Bavaria)
- Military Merit Order, 2nd class with Star and Swords (Bavaria)
- Commander's Cross First Class with Swords of the Albert Order (Saxony)
- Commander of the Military Merit Order (Württemberg)
- Military Merit Cross, 1st class (Mecklenburg-Schwerin)
- Friedrich August Cross, 1st class (Oldenburg)
- Knight's Cross, First Class of the Order of the White Falcon (Weimar)
- Hanseatic Crosses of Bremen, Hamburg and Lübeck
- Commander of the Order of St. Olav (Norway)
- Various naval warships and shore installations were named for Hipper: heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper of the Kriegsmarine, the training frigate Hipper of the Bundesmarine and a building of the German Naval Operations School in Bremerhaven. |
66,926,268 | Robert J. Fulton | 1,171,787,428 | American priest; president of Boston College | [
"1826 births",
"1895 deaths",
"19th-century American Jesuits",
"American Roman Catholic clergy of Irish descent",
"Georgetown University College of Arts & Sciences alumni",
"Pastors of St. Aloysius Church (Washington, D.C.)",
"Pastors of the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola (New York City)",
"Pastors of the Church of the Immaculate Conception (Boston, Massachusetts)",
"People from Alexandria, Virginia",
"Presidents of Boston College",
"Presidents of Gonzaga College High School",
"Provincial superiors of the Jesuit Maryland Province",
"St. Stanislaus Novitiate (Frederick, Maryland) alumni"
]
| Robert James Fulton (June 28, 1826 – September 4, 1895) was an American Catholic priest and Jesuit who twice served as the president of Boston College, from 1870 to 1880 and 1888 to 1891. He was influential in the early years of Boston College, as he was in charge of all the school's academic affairs.
Fulton was born and educated in the District of Columbia, including at Georgetown College. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1843, and taught at Jesuit institutions throughout Washington, Maryland, and Massachusetts. He eventually became the first prefect of studies at the newly founded Boston College, overseeing the school's teachers and curriculum. In 1870, Fulton became the president of the college. He oversaw expansion of its facilities, and founded what would later be named the Fulton Debating Society.
In 1882, Fulton became the provincial superior of the Jesuit Maryland-New York Province, and was made the canonical visitor to the Irish Province in 1886. In 1888, Fulton returned to Boston College as president, overseeing further expansion and the separation of Boston College High School. He died at Santa Clara University in 1895. Fulton Hall and the Fulton Debating Society at Boston College are named for him.
## Early life
Robert James Fulton was born on June 28, 1826, in the city of Alexandria, then located in the District of Columbia. Both of Irish descent, his father was Presbyterian and his mother was Catholic. His paternal ancestors had emigrated to the United States in the 18th century and initially settled near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. His maternal ancestors were of the O'Brien clan from County Clare and initially settled near Baltimore, Maryland. Among his relatives were the president of the United States, Benjamin Harrison, and the governor of Virginia, Henry A. Wise. Fulton attended his mother's church for the first years of his life, and when his father sought to have him instead attend his Presbyterian church, Robert protested and his father reluctantly acquiesced.
Fulton's father was wealthy but encountered significant financial difficulty soon before his father's death, when Fulton was seven years old, leaving his widow and son poor. In order to support the family, Fulton's mother opened a small, private school, which she ran, and later opened a boarding house. Fulton attended his mother's school for a time.
When he was nine years old, Fulton enrolled at a school in Washington, D.C. Through a relative, Senator William S. Fulton of Arkansas, Fulton was appointed a Page of the United States Senate, a position he held for four years. He explored various occupations, first attempting to study medicine with several books and instruments he borrowed from a physician. He then decided to seek entrance to the United States Military Academy at West Point. In preparation for this, he enrolled at Georgetown College at 16 years of age. Fulton likely worked at the college during his studies to remit part of his tuition.
While at Georgetown, Fultondecided that he would enter the Jesuit order. Upon hearing this, his mother decided that she would also enter religious life. They both rid themselves of their possessions, including manumitting their slaves, and then Fulton entered the Society of Jesus on September 1, 1843, at the novitiate in Frederick, Maryland, while his mother entered the Georgetown Visitation Monastery, taking the name Sister Olympias.
## Academic career
After his novice year in the Society of Jesus, Fulton taught at Saint John's College in Frederick for three years. He then taught for a year each at Georgetown College and the Washington Seminary. Fulton began his study of philosophy at Georgetown in 1849, but in 1850 was sent to teach for one year each at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, Georgetown, and Loyola College in Maryland. He completed his philosophical studies at Georgetown in 1853, and studied theology from 1854 to 1857. On July 25, 1857, Fulton was ordained a priest by Francis Kenrick, the Archbishop of Baltimore, at Georgetown.
Fulton completed his theological studies in 1858, and was then appointed a professor of rhetoric at Georgetown. He completed his tertianship in 1861, and in March of that year, was sent to Boston College to teach a course on moral theology to the Jesuit scholastics. On August 15, 1862, he professed his fourth vow. From 1862 to 1863, he again taught rhetoric in Frederick.
### Early years of Boston College
In 1863, Fulton returned to Boston. He engaged in pastoral work at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in the South End. On September 5, 1864, Boston College admitted the first class of 22 lay students, a number Fulton considered to be lackluster. Fulton was the first prefect of studies, overseeing the teachers and the education of these students. He had exclusive control over the academic affairs of the school, even though he was not the president, and personally taught many of the classes himself. Shortly after the establishment of the college, Fulton founded and was the first president of the Senior Debating Society, which renamed itself the Fulton Debating Society of Boston College on November 7, 1890. The debating society's room in Gasson Hall, named the Fulton Room, opened on November 19, 1913. In 1867 or 1868, he wrote a code of rules for the teachers of the school.
Upon his retirement as the first president of the college in 1869, John Bapst recommended to the Jesuit Superior General that Fulton succeed him. Yet, Robert W. Brady was chosen as the school's second president.
#### First presidency
On August 2, 1870, Fulton succeeded Brady as the vice-rector and president of Boston College and the pastor of the Church of the Immaculate Conception. Once the Jesuits considered the school fully established in 1872, Fulton was promoted to rector. In October 1870, Fulton created a cadet corps, with the help of Major General John G. Foster of the United States Army, which became called the Foster Cadets. Though its creation was initially well received, when Fulton required that all students, many of whom were from poor families, purchase the military uniform, nearly half of the 142 students enrolled left the school, including all the upperclassmen. Eventually, the cadet corps was discontinued during Fulton's presidency.
From 1874 to 1875, the college building was physically moved 60 feet and was significantly expanded. It included an enlarged library, a gymnasium, and space for a new organization that Fulton would found in 1875, the Young Men's Catholic Association, which would focus on recreation for working Catholic men in Boston. The academic year of 1876 and 1877 was the first in which Boston College offered the final course in philosophy.
Fulton's presidency was unusually long, as Jesuit colleges ordinarily permitted a president to serve only two three-year terms. His tenure eventually came to an end on January 11, 1880, and he was succeeded by Jeremiah O'Connor. Fulton was given only two days' notice from the provincial superior of the end of his presidency, and he was, unusually, made the prefect of studies and an assistant to O'Connor.
### Pastor in New York
On May 13, 1880, Fulton left Boston College to become the pastor of the Church of St. Lawrence O'Toole in Manhattan (later known as the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola) on November 1, 1880, succeeding John Treanor. He oversaw the early construction of a rectory, and established a sodality for married men. In 1880, Fulton purchased a plot of land on 83rd Street for \$7,500 (equivalent to approximately \$ in ), where the Loyola School would open 20 years later. He remained as pastor only a year, before being succeeded by David Merrick on June 21, 1881.
### Gonzaga College
Fulton became the president of Gonzaga College and pastor of St. Aloysius Church in Washington, D.C. on June 21, 1881, succeeding Charles K. Jenkins. The school's finances were in a poor state, with the institution having a debt of around \$192,000 (equivalent to approximately \$ in ) and operating on a yearly deficit. During the course of his year in office, Fulton reduced the debt by approximately \$100,000. Fulton's tenure came to an end in 1882 when he was promoted to provincial superior, and he was succeeded by John J. Murphy.
## Provincial superior
Fulton was named to succeed Robert W. Brady as the provincial superior of the Jesuit Maryland-New York Province, assuming office on May 28, 1882. As provincial, he attended the Jesuit General Congregation in Rome in 1883, which elected Anton Anderledy as the Superior General.
In December 1886, Anderledy made him the canonical visitor to the Jesuits' Irish Province. He remained as provincial superior of the Maryland-New York Province until he was succeeded by Thomas J. Campbell on May 21, 1888.
## Second presidency of Boston College
Fulton again returned to Boston College as president on July 4, 1888, succeeding Nicholas Russo. He raised \$125,000 (equivalent to approximately \$ in ) to expand the facilitates of the Young Men's Catholic Association, and construction began in 1889. Work was delayed due to strikes by the laborers, and the expansion was completed in 1890.
Upon the suggestion of the Archbishop of Boston, John Joseph Williams, Fulton separated an English high school division, as a distinct course of study, from the college in September 1889. The two institutions were further separated over the following years, giving rise to Boston College High School. By this time Fulton's health had begun to deteriorate. On October 16, 1890, he left for Hot Springs, Arkansas, to recuperate. When it became clear that his health was not improving, the provincial superior appointed Edward I. Devitt as vice-rector of the college on January 8, 1891, who assumed management of its affairs. Devitt officially succeeded Fulton as rector and president of the college on September 3, 1891.
## Later years
In his later years, Fulton spent time at Jesuit facilities in New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. and was eventually named the chair of English literature at Georgetown, teaching postgraduate students. Soon, however, his health deteriorated further, and he was sent to recuperate in California. Once his health slightly improved, he traveled to San Francisco and finally to Santa Clara University. On the evening of September 4, 1895, he died at the university. He was buried in the Santa Clara Mission Cemetery.
Fulton Hall, named for Robert Fulton, opened in 1948, at Boston College's Chestnut Hill campus. It currently houses the Carroll School of Management. |
645,405 | Al MacInnis | 1,172,595,148 | Canadian ice hockey defenceman (born 1963) | [
"1963 births",
"Calgary Flames draft picks",
"Calgary Flames players",
"Canadian expatriate ice hockey players in the United States",
"Canadian ice hockey defencemen",
"Canadian people of Scottish descent",
"Colorado Flames players",
"Conn Smythe Trophy winners",
"Hockey Hall of Fame inductees",
"Ice hockey people from Nova Scotia",
"Ice hockey players at the 1998 Winter Olympics",
"Ice hockey players at the 2002 Winter Olympics",
"James Norris Memorial Trophy winners",
"Kitchener Rangers players",
"Living people",
"Medalists at the 2002 Winter Olympics",
"National Hockey League All-Stars",
"National Hockey League first-round draft picks",
"National Hockey League players with retired numbers",
"Olympic gold medalists for Canada",
"Olympic ice hockey players for Canada",
"Olympic medalists in ice hockey",
"People from Inverness County, Nova Scotia",
"Regina Pats players",
"St. Louis Blues executives",
"St. Louis Blues players",
"Stanley Cup champions"
]
| Allan MacInnis (born July 11, 1963) is a Canadian former professional ice hockey defenceman who played 23 seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL) for the Calgary Flames (1981-1994) and St. Louis Blues (1994-2004). A first round selection of the Flames in the 1981 NHL Entry Draft, he went on to become a 12-time All-Star. He was named the Conn Smythe Trophy winner as the most valuable player of the playoffs in 1989 after leading the Flames to the Stanley Cup championship. He was voted the winner of the James Norris Memorial Trophy in 1999 as the top defenceman in the league while a member of the Blues. In 2017 MacInnis was named one of the '100 Greatest NHL Players' in history.
MacInnis was most famous for having the hardest shot in the league. He tied Bobby Orr's Ontario Hockey League (OHL) record for goals by a defenceman, and won two OHL championships and a Memorial Cup with the Kitchener Rangers as a junior. He famously split goaltender Mike Liut's mask with a shot, and became only the fourth defenceman in NHL history to score 100 points in a season. Internationally, he was an all-star on defence as Canada won the 1991 Canada Cup and twice participated in the Winter Olympics. He was a member of the 2002 team that won Canada's first gold medal in 50 years.
An eye injury suffered early in the 2003–04 NHL season forced MacInnis into retirement. He finished his career third all-time among defencemen in goals, assists and points and was named to seven post-season all-star teams. He was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2007, and his jersey number 2 was retired by the Blues and is honoured by the Flames. MacInnis remains a member of the Blues organization, currently serving as the team's Senior Advisor to the General Manager. When the Blues won the Stanley Cup in 2019, he got his name engraved on the Stanley Cup for a second time.
## Early life
MacInnis was born in Inverness, Nova Scotia, and grew up in nearby Port Hood, a fishing village on Cape Breton Island. He is the seventh of eight children born to Alex and Anna Mae MacInnis, and one of six brothers. His father worked as a coal miner and later as the assistant manager of the arena in Port Hood when the mine closed while his mother was a school teacher. The brothers all played hockey in Port Hawkesbury during the winter. MacInnis often assisted his father's work at the arena, collecting pucks that he used to shoot repeatedly against a sheet of plywood set against the family barn during the summer. It was through this practice, which occasionally left him with blistered fingers, that he developed his powerful slapshot.
## Playing career
### Junior
MacInnis left home in 1979 to join the Regina Pat Blues of the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League (SJHL). He appeared in 59 games, scoring 20 goals and 48 points with the Pat Blues, and appeared in two Western Hockey League (WHL) games with the Regina Pats. He then moved to Ontario and joined the Kitchener Rangers of the Ontario Hockey League (OHL). Following a season in which he scored 39 points in 47 games and winning the League Championship with Kitchener in the 1980–81 OHL season, MacInnis was rated as the second best defensive prospect at the 1981 NHL Entry Draft. He was selected by the Calgary Flames in the first round, 15th overall. The Flames invited him to their training camp, although they did not expect him to play for them immediately, and he was returned to junior.
Most of his season was spent with Kitchener where MacInnis was named to the OHL first All-Star team after scoring 75 points for the Rangers. The team won its second consecutive OHL title, and captured the 1982 Memorial Cup. He played a third season in Kitchener in 1982–83, and was again named a first-team All-Star after an 84-point season. Additionally, MacInnis was voted the winner of the Max Kaminsky Trophy as the OHL's top defenceman. He tied Bobby Orr's OHL record for goals by a defenceman in one season with 38 (subsequently broken by Bryan Fogarty's 47 in 1988–89), and holds the Canadian Hockey League record of five goals in one game by a defenceman.
### Calgary Flames
MacInnis made his NHL debut with the Flames on December 30, 1981, against the Boston Bruins. He appeared in two games that season, and an additional fourteen in 1982–83 in seasons spent primarily with Kitchener at the junior level. He scored his first NHL point against the Toronto Maple Leafs on October 23, 1982. MacInnis began the 1983–84 season with the Colorado Flames of the Central Hockey League, scoring 19 points in 19 games before joining Calgary full-time. With the Flames, he scored 11 goals and 34 assists in 51 games and appeared in his first 11 post-season games during the 1984 Stanley Cup playoffs.
A point-per-game pace in 1984–85 (66 points in 67 games) earned MacInnis his first All-Star Game appearance, playing in front of his hometown fans at the 1985 game in Calgary. He was voted a second-team All-Star for the 1986–87 NHL season, and started his first All-Star Game in 1988. He was a finalist for the James Norris Memorial Trophy as top defenceman in the league in three consecutive seasons, 1989, 1990 and 1991, but failed to win the award each time.
Led by MacInnis' 31 points, the Flames won the first Stanley Cup championship in their history in 1989. He had four goals and five assists in six games in the final series against the Montreal Canadiens en route to winning the Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player of the playoffs. MacInnis became the first defenceman to lead the league in post-season scoring, and he finished with a 17-game scoring streak, the longest by a defenceman in NHL history.
MacInnis finished second amongst NHL defencemen in scoring in 1989–90 with 90 points and was named a First Team All-Star for the first time. He improved to a career high 103 points the following year, becoming the first Flames' defenceman and only the fourth in NHL history to record a 100-point season. He scored his 563rd career point in a January 8, 1991, game against Toronto, to surpass Kent Nilsson as the franchise's all-time scoring leader. MacInnis missed three months of the 1992–93 season when he suffered a dislocated hip during a game on November 11, 1992, against the Hartford Whalers. While chasing a puck at high speed, he lost control and crashed into the end boards after Hartford rookie Patrick Poulin shoved MacInnis with his stick. Three weeks after his return to action, on February 23, 1993, MacInnis set a Flames franchise record when he appeared in his 706th career game.
Following five consecutive seasons where the Flames failed to advance past the first round of the playoffs, both MacInnis and the team were looking for a change in the summer of 1994. Though the Flames made an offer of C\$2.5 million per season for MacInnis, he instead signed an offer sheet with the St. Louis Blues for US\$3.5 million a season for four years, making him the fourth highest-paid player in the NHL. As MacInnis was a restricted free agent, the Blues sent defenceman Phil Housley and two second round draft picks to the Flames in compensation while also receiving a fourth round selection back.
MacInnis said his decision to leave Calgary was not easy to make given his family was from the city. He claimed money was not the only reason he signed with the Blues, stating that he wanted a new challenge. He left Calgary after 11 full NHL seasons as the franchise's all-time leader in scoring with 822 points, and led in assists (603), games played (803), playoff assists (77) and playoff points (103). He appeared in six All-Star Games with Calgary and was named a league all-star five times: twice on the first team and three times on the second. The team honoured MacInnis as the first player inducted into their "Forever a Flame" program in 2012. His jersey number 2 was raised to the Saddledome rafters on February 27, 2012, but was not formally retired.
### St. Louis Blues
Pneumonia and a late-season shoulder injury limited MacInnis to 28 points in 32 games in 1994–95, a season itself reduced to 48 games by a labour dispute. While he returned to play in the postseason, MacInnis required off-season surgery to repair the damage to his shoulder. He returned to health in 1995–96, appearing in all 82 games for the Blues. Early in his third season with the Blues, MacInnis played his 1,000th game in an October 23, 1997, match-up against the Vancouver Canucks. However he again suffered a separation of his surgically repaired shoulder in December 1997, an injury that forced him out of the Blues line-up for three weeks.
MacInnis scored a goal and an assist in a 5–3 loss to the Detroit Red Wings on April 7, 1998, to become just the sixth defenceman in NHL history to score 1,000 points. After coming close several times, MacInnis finally won the Norris Trophy as the league's top defenceman in 1998–99. Early in the 2000–01 season, MacInnis recorded four assists in a 5–2 victory over the Florida Panthers to set a Blues franchise record for scoring by a defenceman. He reached the mark with his 300th point, scored in his 424th game with the organization.
When Chris Pronger broke his arm early in the 2002–03 NHL season, MacInnis was named interim captain for the remainder of the season. He completed the season as the league's leader in scoring amongst defencemen with 68 points. Pronger insisted that MacInnis remain captain permanently when he returned for the 2003–04 season. MacInnis played only three games that season as vision problems he suffered during an October 2003 game against the Nashville Predators were diagnosed as being the result of a detached retina in one eye – the same eye in which he suffered a serious injury after being struck by a high stick in 2001. He missed the remainder of the season as a result, and after the 2004–05 NHL season was cancelled due to a labour dispute, MacInnis felt that he could not return to the game at a high enough level to compete.
MacInnis announced his retirement as a player on September 9, 2005, but remained with the Blues organization as part of its marketing and hockey operations departments. Ending his career with 1,274 points, MacInnis ranked third all-time in goals, assists and points amongst defencemen, and played in six additional All-Star Games as a member of the Blues. The team retired his jersey number 2 on April 9, 2006, and honoured him with a bronze statue out front of the Scottrade Center in 2009. MacInnis was inducted to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2007. He was the first player from Nova Scotia so honoured, and was also inducted into the Nova Scotia Sport Hall of Fame and the St. Louis Sports Hall of Fame.
### International
MacInnis was a member of the Canadian national team on four occasions. He first represented Canada at the 1990 Men's World Ice Hockey Championships where he scored one goal and four points. One year later, he played in his only Canada Cup tournament. He scored two goals and four assists and was named a tournament all-star as Canada won the title over the United States. He suffered a separated shoulder shortly before the 1998 Winter Olympics, and while it was feared he would be unavailable for the tournament as a result, recovered in time to be cleared to play. MacInnis scored two goals during the tournament, but Canada finished in fourth place after losing the bronze medal match to Finland following a semi-final loss to the Czech Republic. MacInnis also participated in the 2002 Winter Olympics. Though he scored no points in the tournament, Canada defeated the United States to win the nation's first gold medal in hockey in 50 years.
## Playing style
MacInnis was best known for the power and accuracy of his slapshot. The Flames selected him in the 1981 Draft on the strength of his shot alone; his skating ability was so poor when he arrived for his first training camp in Calgary he earned the nickname "Chopper". While some reporters expected he would be a bust as a result, MacInnis said the patience the Flames showed him in his early days as a professional allowed him to develop into a more complete defenceman.
The power of his shot grew into legend on January 17, 1984, in a game against St. Louis. In his first full season with the Flames, MacInnis took a slapshot from just outside the Blues' defensive zone that struck goaltender Mike Liut on the mask. The shot split Liut's helmet while the puck fell into the net for a goal. The power of his shot, and the fear it inspired in his opposition, led to MacInnis' success as an offensive-defenceman, especially as a threat on the power play. MacInnis resisted the transition to carbon-fiber sticks in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The new stick technology offering better flexing characteristics and increased shot speed, but MacInnis preferred the feel of traditional wooden sticks. He continued to win "Hardest Shot" events at All-Star Game skills competitions despite competing with the technologically inferior wooden sticks. He won the event a total of seven times between 1991 and 2003. He occasionally topped 100 miles per hour (160 km/h), including his win in the 2000 All-Star Game.
Used primarily as a power play specialist in his first years as a professional, MacInnis worked at improving his overall game such that he was named a Norris Trophy finalist three consecutive seasons between 1989 and 1991, and was the runner-up to Ray Bourque in 1991. He finally won the Norris Trophy as the league's top defenceman in 1999 with the Blues. Former teammate Doug Gilmour praised MacInnis' passing ability. MacInnis's play developed to the point where he was as valued for his defensive ability on the penalty kill as he was his offence on the power play.
## Off the ice
MacInnis married his wife Jackie shortly after winning the Stanley Cup in 1989, and the couple have four children, Carson, Ryan, Lauren and Riley. MacInnis settled in St. Louis following his retirement, and in 2006 was named the Blues' Vice-President of Hockey Operations. He coaches his children's minor hockey teams, and in 2008–09 coached the St. Louis Junior AAA Blues to a 73–3–2 record and the championship title at the 50th Quebec International Pee-Wee Hockey Tournament. His son Ryan was a member of the Kitchener Rangers, and was drafted by the Arizona Coyotes in the 2014 NHL Entry Draft. His daughter Lauren has committed to play ice hockey at Northeastern University.
Though his career took him away from Nova Scotia, MacInnis remains involved with his hometown. In 2001, he committed C\$100,000 towards a major renovation of the Port Hood Arena. The arena was renamed the Al MacInnis Sports Centre in his honour, and he hosts an annual golf tournament to help raise funds for the arena commission. On the day he was inducted into the Nova Scotia Sport Hall of Fame, he donated \$100,000 to the Inverness County Memorial Hospital in the memory of his parents.
In 2018 he finished third to hockey superstar Sidney Crosby and curler Colleen Jones in a listing of the greatest 15 athletes in Nova Scotia's history.
## Career statistics
### Regular season and playoffs
### International
## Awards and honours
## See also
- List of NHL statistical leaders |
2,124,418 | Raging Abe Simpson and His Grumbling Grandson in 'The Curse of the Flying Hellfish' | 1,141,174,171 | null | [
"1996 American television episodes",
"Television episodes about World War II",
"Television episodes about theft",
"The Simpsons (season 7) episodes"
]
| "Raging Abe Simpson and His Grumbling Grandson in 'The Curse of the Flying Hellfish' is the twenty-second episode of the seventh season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on April 28, 1996.
In the episode, one of Abraham Simpson's fellow World War II veterans, Asa Phelps, dies, leaving him and Mr. Burns as the only living members of Grampa's war squad, the Flying Hellfish. In the final days of the war, the unit had discovered several paintings and agreed on a tontine, placing the paintings in a crate, and the final surviving member would inherit the paintings. As Mr. Burns wants the paintings as soon as possible, he orders Abe's assassination. To escape death, Abe moves into the Simpsons' house, where the family lets him live in Bart's room. Bart eventually joins Grampa in a daring mission to recover the paintings.
Written by Jonathan Collier and directed by Jeffrey Lynch, the episode was inspired by several stories about lost art surfacing. The staging of several scenes was based on DC Comics's Sgt. Rock and Marvel Comics's Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos. The episode scored a Nielsen rating of 8.3, making it the second highest-rated show on the Fox network the week it aired, and received positive reviews from critics, who particularly praised the animation of its action and underwater scenes.
## Plot
During Grandparents' Day at Springfield Elementary School, Grampa embarrasses Bart with his tall tales, straining their relationship. At the retirement home, Grampa receives word that Asa Phelps, one of the men who served under his command in the Army during World War II, has died. Grampa and Mr. Burns are now the only two surviving members of their infantry squad, known as the Flying Hellfish. Unwilling to wait for Grampa's natural death, Burns hires an assassin to kill him. After avoiding several attempts on his life, Grampa seeks refuge at the Simpsons' house. He bunks in Bart's room and explains why Burns wants him dead.
In a flashback, he reveals that the Flying Hellfish discovered several priceless paintings in a German castle during the final days of World War II. To avoid being caught stealing the paintings, the soldiers formed a tontine and locked them in a strongbox, which was hidden away; the last surviving member of their group would inherit the collection. Each man was given a key, all of which are needed to trigger a mechanism that reveals where the paintings are hidden.
After Grampa ends his story, Burns breaches Bart's bedroom wall with a cherry-picker and takes Grampa's key by force. After Bart retrieves Burns's and Grampa's keys using a sleight of hand, he and Grampa rush to the Hellfish monument in a local cemetery. After activating the locator mechanism in the monument, they learn that the paintings are hidden at the bottom of a lake. They borrow Ned Flanders's motorboat and head to the location.
Bart retrieves the strongbox during a dive. As he and Grampa open it, Burns arrives and takes the paintings at gunpoint. When Bart calls him a coward and an embarrassment to the Hellfish, Burns kicks him into the empty strongbox, which locks and topples back into the lake. After Grampa dives in and rescues Bart, they chase Burns back to shore, where Grampa overpowers him. Rather than killing Burns, Grampa instead gives him a dishonorable discharge for trying to kill his commanding officer and his grandson and expels him from the tontine.
Before Grampa and Bart can leave with the paintings, several State Department agents arrive. They reveal the U.S. government has tried to find the paintings for 50 years to avoid an international incident with Germany. The agents confiscate the paintings and hand them to a Eurotrash heir of one of the original owners, leaving Bart and Grampa empty-handed. Despite the loss, Grampa is content, knowing he has proven to Bart that he is not just a pathetic old man. Having reconciled, they hug. The heir then tells them to "get a room". Bart gets embarrassed.
## Production
Jonathan Collier, who wrote the episode, got the idea after reading several then-current stories about lost art surfacing. The story then evolved into one involving Grampa and Burns, and it gave the writers a chance to introduce the relatives of some of the recurring characters. The other members of the Flying Hellfish were based on stereotypical war movie characters. The idea of having a tontine came from Bill Oakley, who got the idea from "an old Barney Miller episode". Collier originally named the unit the "Fighting Hellfish" but it was later changed to the "Flying Hellfish". The logo for the unit was designed using the original name and was not subsequently changed when the name was switched.
Supervising director David Silverman describes the directing in the episode as an "amazingly brilliant job". Director Jeffrey Lynch received help from Brad Bird, with whom he worked on many complex staging shots. Lynch did not have any other episodes to work on at the time and was able to devote a lot of time to working on the episode. He storyboarded most of it by himself. The episode contains more effects shots than an average episode of The Simpsons, many of which were worked on by animator Dexter Reed. Other animators that worked on the episode include Chris Clements, Ely Lester, James Purdum, Tommy Tejeda, and Orlando Baeza.
## Cultural references
Much of the staging in the flashback scenes is based on DC Comics's Sgt. Rock and Marvel Comics's Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos. Many of the paintings in the episode are based on real paintings that went missing during World War II. The animators referenced a book of lost art for the designs. Other cultural references in the episode include Grampa's recollection of his brush with death at the Retirement Castle, which is a reference to Dorothy's return to Kansas in The Wizard of Oz. Mr. Burns introduces himself to the assassin as "M.B." and is briefly mistaken for former Washington D.C. Mayor Marion Barry with the assassin asking "Is it time for another shipment already?", a reference to the mayor's 1990 drug arrest. The sequence where Ox explains the concept of a tontine is similar to a scene in the M\*A\*S\*H episode "Old Soldiers". The Flying Hellfish raid on the castle recalls the attack on the château in The Dirty Dozen. The scene where Grampa tries to assassinate Hitler is based on The Day of the Jackal. During that scene, Abe says "they'll never save your brain, Hitler", a reference to a 1963 movie called They Saved Hitler's Brain. The song played by Baron von Hertzenberger as he drives off is Caterpillar (Rabbit in the Moon mix) by DJ Keoki.
## Reception
In its original broadcast, "The Curse of the Flying Hellfish" finished 48th in the ratings for the week of April 22 to April 28, 1996, with a Nielsen rating of 8.3. The episode was the second highest-rated show on the Fox network that week, following The X-Files.
The authors of the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, wrote that the episode is "notable for Mr Burns' impersonation of Marge, some spectacular action sequences, and some good underwater scenes – but [it is] not especially brilliant".
Dave Foster of DVD Times said: "It's easily the highlight of this season in terms of cinematic presence, with wonderful animation, staging and lighting which complements what is essentially a mini action adventure movie superbly realised via Grandpa and Bart. Like numerous episodes this season it also works as another example of family ties being reinforced though never at the sake of entertainment."
DVD Movie Guide's Colin Jacobson wrote that "many Grampa episodes tank, but 'Hellfish' provides a very notable exception. It's a lot of fun to see his wartime past, especially since we find precursors of series regulars. I also like the action swing the story takes, as it becomes clever and inventive. This comes out as a terrific show."
Adam Finley of TV Squad listed “Raging Abe” as one of the most touching episodes of The Simpsons, noting that it is "more 'crazy action flick' than emotional, but I list it here because it shows Grandpa Simpson as someone other than a crazy old coot." |
51,244,419 | Kill or Be Killed (comics) | 1,154,047,811 | American comic book series | [
"2016 comics debuts",
"2018 comics endings",
"Comics by Ed Brubaker",
"Crime comics",
"Image Comics titles"
]
| Kill or be Killed is an American comic book series created by writer Ed Brubaker and artist Sean Phillips. Elizabeth Breitweiser is the colorist. The series was announced in April 2016, and the first issue was published by Image Comics on August 3, 2016. The series received mostly positive reviews from critics until its conclusion with issue 20 in June 2018.
The story is about a suicidal college student who, working with a demon, becomes a vigilante. The comic examines the consequences of vigilante violence. Kill or be Killed debuted to mostly positive reviews, although some critics felt it was too similar to Brubaker and Phillips' previous collaborations.
## Publication history
### Production
Kill or Be Killed is the sixth collaboration between Brubaker and Phillips, who had previously created other crime comics like Criminal, Fatale, and The Fade Out together. They first announced this series in April 2016 at the Image Expo, which was held during the Emerald City Comic Con. They promoted the series being "unlike anything [they have] done before" because it will be set in the present day and is designed as an ongoing series instead of a limited one with a predetermined course. Image partner Robert Kirkman suggested Brubaker aim for at least 50 issues.
The concept stemmed from Brubaker's effort to channel his feelings about the state of the world and take them to the extreme. Recent news reports made him feel "that there is no justice. Everybody gets away with everything. The world being at the edge of falling apart is where the whole story sprang from." He hopes the story taps into the "generational anger" he has observed. He describes the story as Death Wish meets Breaking Bad with the adventure of The Amazing Spider-Man comics from the 1970s.
Phillips chooses to be kept in the dark about the future of the series, never knowing any farther ahead than his current working script. For Kill or Be Killed, he is using digital tools and the same panel layout he has used on previous works, but removed the frame from the outside edges because he felt the full bleed makes the images feel more claustrophobic. Breitweiser, an integral part of the team, is coloring Phillips' art in a moody palette with gritty textures and incorporating color psychology.
### Publication
The first issue had an initial print run of about 30,000 and was released on August 3, 2016. It quickly sold out at the distributor level and a second printing was announced August 9. The issue remained in high demand, and two additional printings were issued by December. It was the 93rd best selling comic book issue the month it was released. The second issue was released in September with an initial print run of about 23,800 copies. The 20% drop in orders for issue two was less than the industry average of 30%, and far less than the Image average of 50%. This issue was also a sell out and received additional printings. Orders for the third issue were a little higher, estimated at 23,900 copies. The first four issues sold in higher numbers than any of Brubaker and Phillips' previous collaborations. As part of Image Comics' 25th anniversary, Kill or Be Killed participated in the "tribute variants" with an alternate cover drawn by Phillips that paid homage to the first issue of The Walking Dead. The series concluded at issue 20 in June 2018.
The comic book was collected in a series of trade paperback volumes. The first volume, released January 18, 2017, contains issues 1–4 and the second volume, released August 9, 2017, contains issues 5–10. The third volume was released on January 19, 2018, collecting issues 11–14. A fourth volume was also released in 2018. Each single issue includes articles and other content written by guest contributors that are not included in the collected editions.
## Plot
### Synopsis
Brubaker wanted to examine the reality of being a vigilante, and Kill or Be Killed focuses on the ramifications of violence and its effect on Dylan’s loved ones. Brubaker said he chose to make the character young because he wanted to include the optimism of youth. The demonic element to the story also allows Brubaker to play with the idea of "If you had to kill a bad person, who would you pick?" Although Dylan becomes a murderer at the beginning of the story, Brubaker hopes the character's plight is sympathetic enough that readers will root for him. Dylan's arrangement with the demon has been interpreted as commentary on the War on Terror and the racially motivated violence publicised in the US in the two years prior to the book's publication.
### Plot
Dylan, a 28 year-old grad student, is depressed because he is in love with his best friend, Kira, but she is dating Dylan's roommate, Mason. He has a cynical worldview and criticizes the world for its materialism, and at the same time wishes he could connect better with the people in it. When his roommate is away one night, Dylan and Kira begin a secret affair. When Dylan overhears Mason and Kira discussing how pitiful he is, Dylan decides to commit suicide. He jumps off a tall building, but survives due to unlikely events. That night, he is visited by a demon who claims he spared Dylan's life. The demon says Dylan must now murder one person for every additional month he wants to live. Dylan convinces himself this was a hallucination, but he begins to grow sick as the end of the month approaches. When the demon appears a second time, Dylan decides to track down a man who molested Dylan's friend when they were children. After shooting him, Dylan's sickness goes away. The next month, Dylan struggles to find another target he feels deserves to die. He settles on a brothel run by a Russian mob. He murders one of the men, but is violently beaten by one of the sex workers before he escapes. His unexplained injuries lead Kira to end their secret romance, although they remain friends. Dylan begins taking boxing lessons and stalking a corrupt businessman. A detective, Lily Sharpe, begins to connect the dots between Dylan's murders; the Russian mob, and begins to hunt for Dylan.
## Critical reception
The series debuted to highly positive reviews, earning an average score of 9.0 out of 10 based on 30 critic reviews at review aggregation website Comic Book Roundup. In his review for Adventures in Poor Taste, Nick Nafpliotis described the main character's flaws as "uncomfortably relatable." He and other reviewers noted visual similarities to the Sam Raimi Spider-Man films and the pulp hero The Shadow. Reviewer Zedric Dimalanta was impressed with the Phillips' accurate depiction of speed loading a shotgun. Reviewers David Pepose and Drew Bradley praised Breitweiser for "sell[ing] the mood" and adding depth and texture to the finished page. Nothing But Comics called it the best new series of 2016.
In his review of the first issue, Nick Hanover said "the craft on display is unsurprisingly proficient," but that aside from Breitwesier's colors, it does not distinguish itself from the team's earlier works. He drew comparisons to Fatale and Criminal, lamenting that Kill or Be Killed fails to live up to the promise of being unlike anything they had done previously. Matthew Garcia agreed in his review for Multiversity Comics, saying that while the story was well made and entertaining, the themes and content were unsurprising. In his Newsarama review, Pepose called the deal with the demon that sets the story in motion and establishes the status quo the weakest point of the story.
In 2017, the series was nominated for Eisner Awards in the categories "Best Continuing Series", "Best Writer", "Best Cover Artist", and "Best Coloring". Phillips was also nominated for "Best Pencillier/Inker or Penciller/Inker Team" at the 2019 Eisner Awards.
## Collected editions
## Film adaptation
In December 2017, a film adaptation of the comic was announced. It will be written by Daniel Casey and directed by Chad Stahelski. |
1,123,402 | 2000 German Grand Prix | 1,173,091,054 | Formula One motor race held in 2000 | [
"2000 Formula One races",
"2000 in German motorsport",
"German Grand Prix",
"July 2000 sports events in Europe"
]
| The 2000 German Grand Prix (formally the Grosser Mobil 1 Preis von Deutschland 2000) was a Formula One motor race contested on 30 July 2000, at the Hockenheimring in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, in front of 102,000 people. It was the 62nd German Grand Prix and the 11th round of the 2000 Formula One World Championship. Ferrari's Rubens Barrichello won the 45-lap race after starting 18th. McLaren's Mika Häkkinen finished second, with teammate David Coulthard third.
Before the race, Michael Schumacher led the World Drivers' Championship and Ferrari led the World Constructors' Championship. Coulthard began alongside Michael Schumacher on pole position after qualifying fastest. Coulthard's teammate Häkkinen started fourth. At the first corner, Michael Schumacher moved to the left, colliding with Giancarlo Fisichella, and both drivers retired. Häkkinen took the race lead, which he retained until lap 25 when an intruder breached circuit limits, forcing drivers to pit under safety car conditions. Meanwhile, until the first safety car period, Barrichello had gained thirteen positions to fifth. After Coulthard's stop on lap 27, Häkkinen reclaimed the lead. Barrichello stayed out on dry slick tyres, grabbing the lead and retaining it to claim his maiden Formula One victory. It was also the first Formula One victory for a Brazilian driver since Ayrton Senna won the 1993 Australian Grand Prix.
Barrichello's victory was widely celebrated among the Formula One paddock as it came after a career setback. The race result tied Häkkinen and Coulthard for second, but it decreased Schumacher's points lead in the World Drivers' Championship to two. Barrichello trailed the McLaren drivers by eight points. With six races remaining in the season, McLaren was four points behind Ferrari and 76 points ahead of Williams in the World Constructors' Championship. The track intruder, named as 47-year-old Frenchman Robert Sehli, eventually apologised and was fined by track administration.
## Background
On 30 July 2000, the eleventh of seventeen rounds of the 2000 Formula One World Championship was held at the 6.825 km (4.241 mi) clockwise Hockenheimring near the town of Hockenheim in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. There were eleven teams (each representing a different constructor), each with two drivers and were the same as those on the season entry list. Sole tyre supplier Bridgestone provided soft and medium dry tyre compounds, as well as intermediate and full wet-weather compounds to the race.
Before the race, Ferrari's Michael Schumacher led the World Drivers' Championship with 56 points, followed by McLaren's David Coulthard and teammate Mika Häkkinen with 50 and 48 points, respectively. Ferrari's Rubens Barrichello was fourth with 36 points, while Benetton's Giancarlo Fisichella was fifth with 18 points. Ferrari led the World Constructors' Championship with 92 points, McLaren and Williams were second and third with 88 and 19 points, respectively, Benetton was fourth with 18 points, and BAR was fifth with 12 points.
Following the on 16 July, the teams tested at three circuits from 18 to 21 July to prepare for the event. McLaren, Benetton, Jordan, Jaguar, Sauber and BAR went to Silverstone over three days. Olivier Panis, McLaren's test driver, led testing's first day. Jaguar test driver Luciano Burti damaged his car's suspension, front and rear wings, and sidepod in an accident at Stowe corner. Testing was briefly stopped and Jaguar shipped a spare car for the next day's testing. Panis remained fastest on the second day. Jarno Trulli damaged his suspension and rear wing, resulting in repairs which limited his team's testing time. Burti's right rear wheel detached. Fisichella led the third and final day's running. Ferrari test driver Luca Badoer spent four days at the Fiorano Circuit focused on engine and aerodynamic development, while Michael Schumacher did practice starts and component testing on the fourth day.
Jaguar's Eddie Irvine Jaguar was passed fit in the days before to the race. He arrived at the previous race ill with suspected appendicitis and withdrew at the conclusion of the Friday practice sessions. Burti replaced him. Irvine was later admitted to a London hospital and diagnosed with a swollen intestine. Irvine said he felt ready to race again: "I'm looking forward to Hockenheim. I have been keeping tabs on the team's Silverstone test this week and we're all encouraged by what has been achieved."
Teams setup their cars for the long straights of the Hockenheimring circuit, necessitateing reducing aerodynamic downforce and increasing aerodynamic efficiency. The Jaguar team included multiple characteristics in its cars. It replaced the huge panels mounted behind the front wheels with smaller screens mounted between the suspension. They also returned to the bodywork seen at the and installed a new uprated Cosworth engine. Jordan's new car, the EJ10B, was also introduced that weekend; the team had previously raced with their primary 2000 car, the EJ10. Originally scheduled to debut at the previous race in Austria, the vehicle was required to complete Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) safety tests on its bodywork and Jordan wished to create extra spare components for the EJ10B, postponing the car's race début.
## Practice
Two one-hour sessions on Friday and two 45-minute sessions on Saturday preceded Sunday's race. The Friday practices were held in dry, cloudy weather, becoming damp during the day, making the track slippery. Michael Schumacher set the first session's fastest time of 1:43.532, almost six-tenths of a second faster than Häkkinen. Barrichello was third, slightly behind Häkkinen, with Coulthard fourth; both Barrichello and Coulthard led during the session. Jordan's Heinz-Harald Frentzen, BAR driver Ricardo Zonta, Fisichella, Sauber's Mika Salo, Williams' Ralf Schumacher and Herbert rounded out the top ten. Few incidents occurred during practice as some drivers went off the circuit. Trulli's engine failed after 20 minutes at the Ostkurve turn and marshals relocated his car with yellow flags. Jenson Button spun and slammed against the inside barriers at the pit lane entry after practice ended and rain fell, removing his car's front wing.
Heavy rain made the track wet and dusty, slowing lap times in the second practice session. The slick surface and wet-weather tyres become familiar to drivers. After nearly three-quarters of the session had passed and the track dried, competitive lap times began to be set.Michael Schumacher's lap time did not improve, but remained the fastest. Frentzen lapped quicker and was second-fastest. Although both McLaren drivers were testing race set-up and brake performance, Häkkinen finished third and Coulthard fifth. Barrichello separated them. Trulli, Zonta, Villeneuve, Fisichella, and Salo completed the top ten. Several drivers entered the gravel traps during the session. The two Minardi drivers crashed. Gastón Mazzacane hit the barrier in the stadium section and Marc Gené beached his car in the last turn's gravel trap. Ralf Schumacher missed half of the session as his team switched the engine in his car.
The Saturday morning sessions were held in damp weather with occasional rain. Most of practice saw the circuit dry with sunlight appearing through the clouds. Häkkinen set the third session's fastest lap, a 1:44.144, one-tenth of a second quicker than Arrows' Pedro de la Rosa. Coulthard, Frentzen, Salo. Trulli, Barrichello, Michael Schumacher, Villeneuve and Fisichella completed the top ten. Ralf Schumacher, who completed just one lap in the session's second half, lost control of his car after crossing the start/finish line on a damp area and hit the turn one tyre barrier as the racing line began drying. Jean Alesi simultaneously beached his Prost car in the gravel due to a rear suspension failure on the damp circuit.
The track became completely dry during the last practice session and lap times fell as drivers found more grip on it. Nearly every driver exited the pit lane in the first minutes, giving teams a final chance to significantly adjust their cars before qualifying. Häkkinen set the day's quickest time, a 1:41.658, with 15 minutes remaining; his teammate Coulthard finished third. Ferrari's Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello were second and fourth, respectively. Frentzen fell to fifth, with Fisichella, sixth, pleased with the feel of his car. Button, Salo, Villeneuve, and Trulli were seventh to tenth. Fisichella's car billowed smoke because of an engine failure in the final seconds at the North Kurve turn. Michael Schumacher went 50 m (160 ft) backwards into the Opel Kurve corner wall in the stadium section after the session. Schumacher drove the spare Ferrari in qualifying.
## Qualifying
During Saturday's one-hour qualifying session, each driver was limited to twelve laps, with the starting order determined by the fastest laps. The 107% rule was in force during this session, requiring each driver to lap within 107% of the fastest time to qualify for the race. The session was held in damp weather with intermittent rain; drivers used grooved and wet-weather compound tyres with drivers initially hesitant to go onto the track. With a lap time of 1:45.697 set on his first try, Coulthard earned his second pole position of the season after the and 10th overall. Michael Schumacher joined him on the front row, 1.3 seconds slower than Coulthard but three-tenths of a second faster than his previous best lap to move from fourth to second. Fisichella qualified third in a spare Benetton car with incorrect gear ratios. He spun on his first run but retained second until Michael Schumacher's lap as the rain stopped. Fisichella was fined \$5,000 for failing to place his car at the pit-lane weighbridge so that the FIA could check if it was within the legal minimum weight limit. Häkkinen, who qualified fourth, three hundredths of a second slower than Fisichella, admitted he was cautious about going off the track owing to the weather. In his then-career-best qualifying performance, De La Rosa took fifth in the spare Arrows car while his race car was being prepared. Trulli and Wurz were satisfied to qualify sixth and seventh. Herbert was the quicker Jaguar driver in eighth. Villeneuve secured ninth in BAR's spare car after losing control of his car and stalling at the Jim Clark chicane, disrupting Frentzen's running. Irvine, tenth, was slowed by Gené midway attempting to lap quicker.
Jos Verstappen had engine starting problems, resulting in Arrows removing the car's floor to install a starter. A lack of qualifying laps for Verstappen left him 11th. Zonta, 12th, used a new engine and was impeded by Alesi at the final chicane in the stadium area. He was ahead of Alesi's teammate Nick Heidfeld in 13th whose lap was set simultaneously as Fisichella. Ralf Schumacher, 14th, outpaced teammate Jenson Button, 16th; the change in weather caught Williams out. They were separated by Salo in 15th, who encountered two cars on his first fast lap and was slowed by the weather. Frentzen, 17th, spent most of qualifying 107 per cent outside of the quickest lap; the stewards disallowed his first quick lap when he cut the first chicane in his attempt to find room and pass two slower vehicles to lap faster and avoid being hampered by aerodynamic turbulence. Barrichello, 18th, used his teammate's repaired race car after his vehicle developed oil-leak issues; his mechanics adjusted the settings of his pedals to suit Barrichello's right-footed braking style before he could drive. Barrichello was also asked to park at the weighbridge for car weight checks. Sauber's Pedro Diniz, 19th, lost time amongst slower cars, with Alesi 20th and Mazzacane 21st. Mazzacane's teammate Gené in 22nd incorrectly used wet-weather tyres and abandoned his car on the track with a gearbox fault; he drove the spare Minardi car.
### Qualifying classification
## Warm-up
The drivers took to the track at 09:30 Central European Summer Time (GMT+2) for a 30-minute warm-up session. Ten minutes in, Coulthard lapped fastest at 1:44.065; Häkkinen was second in the other McLaren, followed by De La Rosa and Michael Schumacher. Villeneuve and Verstappen collided at the Jim Clark chicane during their installation lap just as warm-up started. Yellow flags were waved because both Villeneuve and Verstappen's cars were stationary and obstructing much of the track. Verstappen sustained multiple arm abrasions. Coulthard spun backwards into the tyre wall at the stadium section's final double right-hand turn after drifting wide onto dust. He damaged his car's front wing, and returned to the pit lane to drive the spare McLaren. When Heidfeld's engine cover detached into the Ostkurve corner, littering the circuit with carbon fibre debris, waved yellow flags were once again required. De La Rosa suffered a right-rear tyre puncture after driving over some carbon fibre debris and stopped on the side of the circuit. He was unhurt.
## Race
The 45-lap race ran before 102,000 spectators over 307.125 km (190.839 mi) from 14:00 local time. The race began in dry weather, but became damp and wet as it progressed. The air temperature was 21 °C (70 °F) and the track temperature ranged from 21 to 25 °C (70 to 77 °F). Rain began falling in the stadium section eleven minutes before the parade lap, but it ceased eight minutes later. Ferrari adjusted the angle of Michael Schumacher's front wing to better cope with wet weather that the team expected. Several drivers adjusted their rear wings, slowing them slightly but improving their steering in tight corners. Button's engine suddenly failed to start during the parade lap, forcing him to start from the back of the field. When the race began, Coulthard and Michael Schumacher made slow starts. Coulthard steered hard right to obstruct Michael Schumacher's path, allowing teammate Häkkinen to veer left and take the lead. Noticing Häkkinen to his left, Michael Schumacher moved to the outside line, and his left-rear wheel and Fisichella's front wing collided after catching Fisichella off guard and his braking late. Both drivers ran off the track, struck the turn one tyre barrier and retired from the race. The safety car was not deployed since both cars were far off the track.
Barrichello, on a two-stop strategy making his car light, moved from 18th to 10th to end lap one. At the first lap's completion, Häkkinen led from Coulthard, Trulli, De La Rosa, Irvine, Herbert, and Verstappen. Häkkinen began to maintain his lead from teammate Coulthard. Herbert moved into fifth place after Irvine fell to seventh after Verstappen overtook him for sixth on lap two. Barrichello advanced further up the field, passing both BAR drivers for eighth. The McLaren drivers maintained their gap over Trulli, who set the race's fastest lap of 1:46.321. Irvine lost another place to Barrichello on lap three following a short battle, as Frentzen took 14th from Diniz. On lap four, Frentzen passed Heidfeld for 13th. On the same lap Verstappen locked up his tyres to avoid hitting Herbert. This allowed Barrichello to pass Verstappen for sixth into the Jim Clark chicane on lap five, as the Arrows vehicle suffered with braking into the chicanes. On lap six, Herbert lost fifth to Barrichello, while Frentzen gained more places, passing Ralf Schumacher and Wurz for 11th.
Barrichello began setting successive fastest laps, closing up to De La Rosa. Frentzen overtook Zonta for tenth on lap seven. On the next lap, Verstappen's engine cover detached from the chassis as Frentzen advanced four spots over the next four laps. Further down, Ralf Schumacher overtook Zonta for 11th and Diniz passed teammate Salo for 14th. By lap 11, Barrichello had caught De La Rosa and passed him for fourth a lap later. Frentzen began pressuring De La Rosa. Herbert retired at the side of the track with clutch failure on lap 13. Two laps later, braking for the Jim Clark chicane, Barrichello passed Trulli for third. Barrichello was the first driver to make a pit stop, entering the pit lane for the first of two planned stops at the end of lap 17 (7.2 seconds). He rejoined the circuit in sixth place. Frentzen stopped one lap later and fell to sixth, behind Barrichello. By lap 20, Häkkinen had a 1.4-second advantage over Coulthard, who was nearly 22 seconds ahead of Trulli. De La Rosa was 2.1 seconds behind Trulli and was being caught by Barrichello, who recorded a new fastest lap of 1:44.300. Villeneuve passed Irvine for eighth on lap 22. On lap 25, a man wearing a white raincoat with French writing critical of Mercedes-Benz appeared from beside the barriers and stepped onto the outside edge towards the Ostkurve. To avoid being apprehended by marshals, he ran in front of a group of cars approaching him at high speed to the inside of the track. The incident prompted race officials to deploy the safety car and the field closed up. As the pit stop window approached, teams rushed their drivers into the pit lane to take advantage of the situation, with Trulli and De La Rosa being the first to stop. Both Häkkinen and Coulthard had passed the pit lane following the safety car's deployment. At the end of lap 26, McLaren called Häkkinen to the pit lane. Coulthard stayed out on worn tyres due to radio communication uncertainty about whether he should have entered the pit lane. Coulthard would stop on the following lap and fell to sixth. On the same lap, the man was caught and escorted off the circuit. The safety car period benefited those who had stopped before it was deployed.
Racing resumed on lap 29 when the safety car entered the pit lane. Trulli was immediately put under pressure by Barrichello and resisted his attempts to pass him. On lap 30, Ralf Schumacher spun at the Jim Clark chicane, forcing Verstappen wide. Later, on the approach to the Ayrton Senna chicane, Diniz made a mistake under braking as attempted to pass Alesi and went across him at high speed. Alesi crashed into the barrier at high speed, removing his car's left-hand side wheels. Diniz's car was not damaged. Alesi suffered from abdominal pains, dizziness and vomiting. Officials again deployed the safety car as carbon fibre was scattered across the grass and needed removing by marshals. The safety car was withdrawn at the end of the 31st lap, and the race resumed with Häkkinen leading.
Salo avoided colliding with the slow to react Wurz on the start/finish straight, sending Wurz spinning onto the grass. Although Wurz's car stopped at the side of the track with a gearbox jam, marshals were able to move it away and racing continued without the need for a third safety car period due to the Hockenheimring's length. Light rain began to fall in the stadium on lap 32 and on other parts of the circuit a lap later. On the following lap, Button was the first driver to pit, and his Williams pit crew swapped his dry tyres to wets. With a failed engine and oil on the track on lap 34, Gené became the race's seventh retirement. The rain had intensified on that lap and became a downpour in the stadium section on lap 35. Villeneuve spun after making minor contact with teammate Zonta's rear exiting the first turn on that lap but continued racing.
All drivers, apart from Barrichello, Coulthard, Frentzen and Zonta, made pit stops for wet-weather tyres. After technical director Ross Brawn informed Barrichello of Häkkinen's final pit stop, the two agreed he could stay on the track. They believed that because the rain had not reached the track's outer edge, grooved tyres could still allow for fast laps. Brawn obtained information indicating that Barrichello might lap faster than wet-weather shod cars. Häkkinen lapped the wet stadium section three seconds faster than the circumspect Barrichello. Häkkinen lost most of his advantage through the dry chicanes, which gave his wet-weather tyres little grip. Trulli was imposed a ten-second stop-go penalty on lap 37 when marshals reported him for passing Barrichello, who had just exited the pit lane after the first turn. He took the penalty immediately and fell to 11th. Zonta was also penalised, but he crashed into the tyre wall at the Sachs hairpin because he was distracted by a radio communication telling him of the penalty. Frentzen pressured Coulthard who made a driving error and cut the Jim Clark chicane on lap 38. Coulthard became the final driver to make a pit stop on the same lap but his team were not ready for him, dropping to fifth. Button then passed De La Rosa for sixth.
At the completion of lap 39, with the pit stops completed, the top six were Barrichello, Häkkinen, Frentzen, Salo, Coulthard, and Button. Frentzen retired with gearbox failure at the start/finish straight on lap 40 as Coulthard overtook Salo for third. Heidfeld became the race's final retirement owing to alternator failure on lap 40. Rain returned two laps later. Button caught Salo on lap 43 and made an aggressive pass for fourth. By lap 44, it began raining more heavily, but Barrichello held on to win his first Formula One race and the first for a Brazilian driver since Ayrton Senna in the 1993 Australian Grand Prix in a time of 1'25:34.418. at an average speed of 215.340 km/h (133.806 mph). Häkkinen finished 7.4 seconds behind Barrichello, with his teammate Coulthard third. Button finished fourth, his season-best finish, ahead of Salo in fifth and De La Rosa the final points-scorer in sixth. Ralf Schumacher, Villeneuve, Trulli, Irvine and Mazzacane filled the next five positions, with Heidfeld the final classified driver despite his alternator failure. Verstappen, the other race retirement, spun into the gravel trap in the stadium section after 39 laps.
## Post-race
The top three drivers appeared on the podium to collect their trophies and in the subsequent press conference. Barrichello's first win was widely celebrated among spectators and team personnel, because it came after an earlier setback, including a major accident during practice for the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix that rendered him unconscious. Barrichello dedicated his victory to Senna, who had assisted him in his early career. He also disclosed that he chose to race on dry tyres because he believed he would have an advantage on the straights and chicanes, even though he flat-spotted a tyre in the race's closing stages, reducing his visibility. Häkkinen stated that he was "in control" of the event throughout the first phase, while he confessed that he was careful on wet tyres and could have won on dry tyres. Coulthard revealed that he used Michael Schumacher's tactics at the start after seeking clarity on the rules governing such manoeuvres. He also said that he was unable to communicate with his team in the forest portions, which prompted him to stay out for an extra lap after Häkkinen's pit stop.
Button was overjoyed with his then-career-best fourth and congratulated his team for timing the switch to wet-weather tyres. Salo regarded his race as "hard" because he chose a high downforce setup, which meant he was slower than his competitors on the straights. Furthermore, he revealed that near the end of the race, he ran out of engine oil as temperatures gradually rose. De La Rosa earned points for the second time this season after finishing fifth at the European Grand Prix. He thought the event was "strange," but was happy with his team's efforts. Michael Schumacher, who retired on the first lap after colliding with Fisichella, blamed Fisichella for the incident. "I am out of the race not because of David (Coulthard) but because of Fisichella." he said. Fisichella, conversely, maintained his racing line and believed that drivers should choose their preferred racing line before describing his race as a "waste." Schumacher's manager Willi Weber rejected reports the crash was part of a conspiracy.
The majority of media attention, however, was focussed on the intruder who penetrated the circuit's barriers on lap 25. He was identified as Robert Sehli, a 47-year-old French father of three who spent 22 years working at a Mercedes-Benz production factory in Le Mans. The news reported that Sehli was protesting his dismissal on health grounds. Additional information revealed that he planned to protest 15 seconds before the start of the formation lap but marshals stopped this by dragging him off the circuit. Sehli had attempted to do something similar at the before being stopped in the pit lane ten laps before the race ended by the FIA Photographers' Delegate. He was released on a DM 2,000 (\$945) bail the Monday after the event. Retired Formula One driver Hans-Joachim Stuck said that Sehli had "succeeded in avenging himself on Mercedes." Brawn said that Sehli's actions were "very, very dangerous" and that similar intrusions "should never be allowed to happen again." However, Mercedes-Benz Motorsport vice president Norbert Haug called the police's treatment of Sehli a "scandal." Hockenheimring GmbH, the track's owners, reported that Sehli had been charged with trespassing. Mercedes-Benz would compensate him and he apologised for the track invasion. On December 16, Sehli won a court battle against Mercedes-Benz, which was compelled to pay F91,000 for "dismissing him without any conclusive reasons." Hockenheimring GmbH, however, fined him £600 for breaching circuit limits.
The race result cut Michael Schumacher's lead in the World Drivers' Championship to two points. Häkkinen moved into second place, level on points with teammate Coulthard; both were eight points ahead of Barrichello, with Fisichella remained a distant fifth with 18 points. McLaren cut Ferrari's lead in the World Constructors' Championship to four points. Williams expanded their lead over Benetton to four points with 22 points, while BAR maintained fifth with 12 points with six races remaining.
### Race classification
Drivers who scored championship points are denoted in bold.
## Championship standings after the race
Drivers' Championship standings
Constructors' Championship standings
- Note: Only the top five positions are included for both sets of standings. |
3,427,503 | Kanariya | 1,140,347,050 | null | [
"1999 singles",
"1999 songs",
"Avex Trax singles",
"Ayumi Hamasaki songs",
"Oricon Weekly number-one singles",
"Song recordings produced by Max Matsuura",
"Songs written by Ayumi Hamasaki"
]
| "Kanariya" (Japanese: "Canary") is a song recorded by Japanese recording artist Ayumi Hamasaki for her second studio album, Loveppears (1999). It was released by Avex Trax in Japan and Hong Kong on December 8, 1999, and through Avex USA in North America in early 2000. The recording also served as Hamasaki's second limited edition single, with limited physical units of 300,000 copies. The track was written by Hamasaki herself, while production was handled by long-time collaborator Max Matsuura. Two versions of "Kanariya" were made available for consumption—a radio edit produced by American disc jockey Jonathan Peters, and the album version composed by Yasuhiko Hoshino. Lyrically, the song was written in third person perspective.
Upon its release, "Kanariya" received mixed reviews from music critics, with some of them praising the original and radio edit, but generally criticizing the remixes. Commercially, the single experienced success in Japan, peaking at number one on the Oricon Singles Chart and TBS' Count Down TV chart. It sold just below its 300,000 restricted copies, and was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ) for shipments of 200,000 units. An accompanying music video for the recording was directed by Wataru Takeishi, with it portraying Hamasaki in a dark laboratory surrounded by keyboards and electronic devices. To promote the single, it appeared on several remix and greatest hits compilation albums released by Hamasaki.
## Background and release
"Kanariya" was written by Hamasaki herself, while production was handled by long-time collaborator Max Matsuura. Two versions of "Kanariya" were made available for consumption—a radio edit produced by disc jockey Jonathan Peters, and the album version composed by Yasuhiko Hoshino. Peters' remix of the track portrays a dance composition, a genre that heavily influenced Hamasaki's second studio album, Loveppears (1999). The song also includes musical elements of house and techno. "Kanariya"'s instrumentation consists of synthesizers and keyboards played by Peters; it was eventually mastered and co-produced by Japanese musician Naoto Suzuki. The track's album version was included as a hidden track with another album entry, "Who...", and has been described by members of CD Journal as a pop recording with instrumentation of guitars and a drum kit. Lyrically, the recording was written in third person perspective, a trait that is shared with the rest of the album's tracks.
The song was released by Avex Trax in Japan and Hong Kong on December 8, 1999 as a CD single, serving as Hamasaki's second limited edition single with limited physical units of 300,000 copies. The physical format of "Karariya" featured a total of thirteen tracks, of which eleven were remixes and an a cappella of the track, also incorporating a remix for Hamasaki's tracks "Two of Us" and "From Your Letter". While the former appeared on her debut studio album, A Song for ×× (1999), the latter was included as a B-side track for her single "Depend on You". On June 12, 2000, "Kanariya" was distributed in North America through Avex USA as a 12" inch vinyl, including three remixes managed by Peters. The single's artwork was photographed by Japanese photographer Toru Kumazawa, and featured Hamasaki sitting in a circular pod with rhinestones on her face. The physical version of "Kanariya" failed to include a booklet, which resulted in the cover sleeve being immolated as a picture disc, featuring an emphasised plastic sheet with information on the single.
## Reception
Upon its release, "Kanariya" received mixed reviews from music critics. A reviewer from Jame World was generally favourable to the album version of the song, acclaiming the R&B approach and Hamasaki's vocal abilities. When reviewing the CD single, the website stated, "For fans of remixes, it is a great release – however, if you want substantial music with variety and professionalism, you should look elsewhere." Similarly, a member of CD Journal was positive towards the original and radio edit of the single, but criticized the remixes and labelled the sound "tired". Commercially, the single experienced success in Japan. It debuted at number one on the Oricon Singles Chart, selling 248,070 units in its first week of availability. "Kanariya" lasted six weeks within the top 200, marking one of Hamasaki's lowest-spanning singles on that chart. Likewise, it opened atop on the Count Down TV chart hosted by Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS), lasting four weeks within the top 100.
By the end of 1999, the recording sold over 289,200 units in Japan, but failed to be included on Oricon's Annual Chart for unknown reasons. The subsequent year, "Kanariya" was ranked at number 92 behind five other singles released by Hamasaki. It also peaked at number 84 on TBS' Annual Chart in 1999. In February 2000, the track was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ) for shipments of 200,000 units. As of July 2016, "Kanariya" has been listed as the singer's 29th best-selling single based on Oricon Style's database.
## Music video and promotion
An accompanying music video for the single was directed by Wataru Takeishi, and uses a shorten version of Peters' remix. The visual portrays Hamasaki in a dark laboratory, being surrounded by keyboards, electronic devices and a black bird. Throughout the music video, several people start to wear headphones and follow Hamasaki, with them eventually starting to listen to the song and observing TV monitors of the singer. Each person, including Hamasaki, wears black eye shadow on one eye, and a code on their hand. Over the clip, the singer is seen singing to the recording in the laboratory, with interspersed scenes portraying her wearing the outfit used for the single's artwork. The music video was included on several DVD compilations released by Hamasaki, includingA Clips (2000), A Complete Box Set (2004), and the digital release of A Clips Complete (2014).
"Kanariya" has been heavily promoted through compilation albums released by Hamasaki, being additionally included on six of her remix albums, including Super Eurobeat Presents Ayu-ro Mix and Ayu-mi-x II Version Non-Stop Mega Mix (2001). The single has also been featured on A Complete: All Singles (2007), one of the singer's greatest hits album, and was specially remixed by Hex Hector for addition on her extended play The Other Side One: Hex Hector (2001).
## Track listing
- CD single & Digital download
1. "Kanariya" (Jonathan Peters' Vocal Club Mix) – 9:58
2. "Kanariya" (Struggle Mix) – 6:03
3. "Kanariya" (Hal's Mix) – 4:22
4. "Kanariya" (DJ-Turbo Club Mix) – 7:10
5. "Kanariya" (Dub's Energy Remix) – 7:31
6. "Two of Us" (Hal's Mix) – 5:17
7. "Kanariya" (Spazm Mix) – 6:22
8. "From Your Letter" (Pandart Sasanooha mix) – 5:41
9. "Kanariya" (Big Room Mix) – 7:35
10. "Kanariya" (Hiroshi's Nite Clubbing Mix) – 5:15
11. "Kanariya" (Full Vocal Mix) – 6:45
12. "Kanariya" (Original Mix) [Radio edit] – 3:03
13. "Kanariya" (Vocal Track) – 3:03
- US 12" vinyl
1. "Kanariya" (Jonathan Peters' Vocal Club Mix) – 9:58
2. "Kanariya" (Jonathan Peters' Millennium Dub) – 9:41
3. "Kanariya" (Jonathan Peters' Sound Factory Dub) – 9:41
## Credit and personnel
Credits adapted from the liner notes of the single's physical release.
Recording
- Recorded at Prime Sound Studio, Studio Sound Dali, Onkio Haus, Tokyo, Japan in 1999.
Credits
- Ayumi Hamasaki – vocals, songwriting, background vocals
- Max Matsuura – production
- Yasuhiko Hoshino – composing, programming
- CPM-Marvin – arranging
- Naoto Suzuki – sound producing
- Wataru Takeishi – music video director
- Jonathan Peters – co-producing, remixing
- Dave Way – mixing
## Charts
### Weekly
### Year-end chart
## Certification and sales
## Release history |
8,441,667 | BL 18-inch Mk I naval gun | 1,110,434,281 | null | [
"460 mm artillery",
"Elswick Ordnance Company",
"Naval guns of the United Kingdom",
"World War I naval weapons of the United Kingdom"
]
| The BL 18-inch Mk I naval gun was a breech-loading naval rifle used by the Royal Navy during World War I. It was the largest and heaviest gun ever used by the British. Only the Second-World-War Japanese 46 cm/45 Type 94 had a larger calibre, 18.1 inches (46 cm), and it fired a lighter shell. The gun was a scaled-up version of the BL 15 inch Mk I naval gun and was developed to equip the "large light cruiser" (a form of battlecruiser) Furious. Its barrel length of 60 ft (18 m) was just 40 calibres, slightly limiting its muzzle velocity.
Only three guns were built, but they did not see combat with Furious before they were removed from her and transferred to the Lord Clive-class monitors General Wolfe and Lord Clive for coast-bombardment duties. Only 85 rounds were fired in combat operations before the war ended. All three were removed from service in 1920 and served as proving guns for cordite tests. Two were scrapped in 1933 and the last one survived until it was scrapped in 1947.
## Design and development
The 18-inch gun had its genesis in the insistence of the First Lord of the Admiralty, Admiral Fisher, for the biggest possible gun mounted on the fastest possible ship. He conceived of what he called "large light cruisers" carrying four 15-inch (380 mm) guns, which became the Courageous class, but he wanted their half-sister Furious to carry an even bigger gun. The Elswick Ordnance Company was the only company capable of manufacturing such a large gun and began design work in 1915. It was designated as the "15-inch B" to conceal its real size and was derived from the design of the 15-inch Mk I already in service.
The gun and its breech mechanism weighed a total of 149 long tons (151 t), almost half again as much as the 15-inch gun's 100 long tons (102 t). It was mounted in a single-gun turret, also designated as the 15-inch B, derived from the twin-gun 15-inch Mark I/N turret. The barbettes of Furious were designed to accommodate either turret, in case problems arose with the 18-inch gun's development. The gun could depress to −3° and elevate to a maximum of 30°. Ammunition development for the gun was naturally focused on anti-ship shells for Furious, and it fired a 3,320-pound (1,510 kg), 4 crh armour-piercing, capped (APC) shell, at a muzzle velocity of 2,270 ft/s (690 m/s) to a distance of 28,900 yards (26,400 m). It could fire one round per minute. The turret's revolving mass was 826 long tons (839 t), only a slight 2% more than the 810 long tons (823 t) of its predecessor.
The guns proved to be too powerful for Furious' light hull, and they became available for other uses during 1917, after trials showed the ship could not handle the stress of firing. Admiral Sir Reginald Bacon, commander of the Dover Patrol, conceived a plan to mount two guns inside the shell of the Palace Hotel in Westende from where they could bombard the naval facilities at Zeebrugge and Bruges, provided that the hotel was captured during the upcoming Battle of Passchendaele. He planned to transport the guns across the English Channel lashed to the torpedo bulges of monitors. He also thought that they could be used on the decks of monitors and as such a dual purpose carriage was designed for the guns, which could be used both afloat and ashore. Only a limited amount of traverse was required for either role, but elevation had to be increased to 45° to maximize range. The concept was approved 23 September 1917, and Elswick was ordered to design the new 'B CD' mounts for delivery in five months.
The original concept for land use involved a special elevating slide that could traverse 6° to either side. Ammunition handling, elevation and ramming were to be done via hydraulic pump, but the breech was hand-worked. The gun was to be installed in a turf-covered concrete dome with a gunport for the barrel. As much as possible of the gun and its mount was designed to be assembled out of range of German artillery and then moved on a special broad-gauge railway to the site on specially-designed wheels. The transportable section weighed 210 long tons (213 t).
After the British Army failed to capture Westende, the mounting was optimised for use on a monitor. It was very simple, consisting of two large girders connected together at each end with the gun and its carriage between them. The mount could only traverse 10° inside its fixed, 1⁄2-inch (12.7 mm) gun shield and was aimed over the starboard side of the monitor. It was loaded at a fixed angle of 10°, but it could only fire between 22° and 45° to equalize the stresses on the carriage and the ship. It was provided with hydraulically powered cranes, loading tray, rammer and breech mechanism to minimize the crew's workload, but the ammunition parties had to use muscle power. The shells were stowed below deck and had to be moved by overhead rail to the hatch in the deck behind the gun to be lifted up and loaded. The cordite propellant charges were kept in eighteen steam-heated storage tanks mounted on the forecastle deck abaft the funnel and moved to the gun on a bogie mounted on rails, two one-sixth charges at a time, which reduced the rate of fire to about one round about every 3–4 minutes. The monitors had to be extensively modified to handle the gun. Numerous additional structural supports had to be added underneath the gun to support its weight of 384 long tons (390 t); the sides had to be plated in to accommodate the additional crewmen and the interior rearranged for the 18–inch shells and the loading arrangements.
## Service
A total of three guns were built by Armstrong Whitworth, two for Furious and a spare. The forward gun was removed from Furious in March 1917, before she was completed, when she was ordered to be converted to a seaplane carrier. The second gun was removed later in 1917, and she was converted into an aircraft carrier. The new 'B CD' mounts were delayed, and the mount for Lord Clive-class monitor General Wolfe was not delivered until 20 June 1918. The gun from Furious' 'A' turret was lifted aboard on 9 July, but the General Wolfe was not ready to begin firing trials until 7 August. She was given the nickname of 'Elephant and Castle', as the enormous gun-mount structure dominated the ship's profile.
While the new mounting was being designed, further effort was put into the ammunition to extend the range as much as possible. Use of a supercharge, where one of the six charges was increased in weight to 165 pounds (74.8 kg), making a total of 690 pounds (313.0 kg) propellant, and increasing the elevation to 45° extended the range to about 36,900 yards (33,700 m) with the existing 4 crh shells. New 8 crh high explosive shells, with a longer, thinner ballistic cap, were ordered, but only two shells had been delivered before the end of the war. Some of the existing stock of 500 APC and 500 CPC (common, pointed, capped) shells on hand from Furious were modified with the new cap and were probably the only shells used during the war.
General Wolfe was assigned to the Dover Patrol on 15 August 1918, but did not fire on any targets until 28 September, when a large force of monitors was gathered to harass German lines of communication. She was anchored bow and stern, broadside to her target, and had difficulties dealing with the tidal currents. She opened fire on the railway bridge at Snaeskerke (4 miles (6.4 km) south of Ostend) at a range of 36,000 yards (32,918 m) and made naval history as the heaviest shell fired from the largest gun at the longest range in action. She fired 52 shells that day and found that the recoil from her 18–inch gun moved her sideways with her shallow hull and also caused her to roll, which slowed her rate of fire. She fired a total of 81 rounds before the end of the war.
The second gun, Furious' spare, was mounted in Lord Clive, but she was not ready for combat until 13 October 1918. She fired three rounds the following day, but had to cease fire to avoid hitting friendly advancing troops. One round had already been loaded when the order came to cease fire so she fired it, with a reduced charge, into a minefield to seaward. A total of 85 18-inch shells were fired in action by both guns. Wear on General Wolfe's gun was measured at about 0.37 in (9.4 mm) after firing 161 effective full charges (EFC) - 105 rounds including proof and practice, with 57 being supercharges. This indicates the gun would have been good for well over 300 EFC, comparable with most other British ordnance using Cordite MD.
The third gun, from Furious' 'Y' turret, was intended for Prince Eugene, which had been modified to accept it earlier in the year, but the war ended before it was mounted, although the monitor was ordered to Portsmouth to have it fitted on 19 October. The guns were removed from the monitors in December 1920. Gun No. 1, from Furious' 'Y' turret, was lined down to 16 inches (410 mm) and used in cordite-proving tests for the BL 16-inch Mk I gun, intended for the cancelled G3 battlecruisers, and used in the Nelson-class battleships. It remained in use until 1942 and was scrapped in 1947. The other two guns were used at Shoeburyness and Yantlet artillery ranges in the Thames Estuary for similar duties; they were scrapped in 1933.
One mount survived and was used to mount a spare BL 14-inch Mk VII gun from the battleship King George V. It was emplaced near Dover in 1940, and the combination was named "Pooh", after Winnie-the-Pooh.
## See also
- 46 cm/45 Type 94 World War II Japanese 18-inch gun |
35,565,161 | Ontario Highway 95 | 1,109,366,852 | Former Ontario provincial highway | [
"1934 establishments in Ontario",
"1998 disestablishments in Ontario",
"Former Ontario provincial highways"
]
| King's Highway 95, commonly referred to as Highway 95, was a provincially maintained highway in the Canadian province of Ontario on Wolfe Island. Together with Highway 96, the routes were the only King's Highways not connected to the rest of the network by a fixed link. At its southern end, the 11.4-kilometre (7.1 mi) route connected to New York State Route 12E via the private and seasonal Horne's Ferry. At its northern end, it connected with Highway 96 in Marysville a short distance west of the MV Wolfe Islander III ferry to Kingston. Today it is under the jurisdiction of Frontenac Islands Township, as Frontenac County does not have a county road system.
## Route description
Highway 95 was an 11.4-kilometre (7.1 mi), two-lane highway that travelled in a generally north–south direction across Wolfe Island. At its southern end at Point Alexandria, the route connected with New York State Route 12E at Cape Vincent via the private summer-operated Horne's Ferry. The route travelled west from there, sandwiched between Button Bay to the north and the Saint Lawrence River to the south. At Stevenson Lane, the route made a broad curve to the north. From there it crossed the island to Marysville, where it encountered Highway 96 and the summer ferry dock for the Wolfe Islander III. Unlike the private ferry service at the southern tip of the island, the MV Wolfe Islander III is operated by the Ministry of Transportation and can be used free of charge. Beside the ferry services, there is no other link between Wolfe Island and the mainland, making the two routes on the island the only King's Highways that were not connected to the rest of the network by a fixed link.
## History
Highway 95 was established on July 25, 1934, when the Department of Highways, predecessor to the modern Ministry of Transportation, assumed the road connecting Point Alexandria to Marysville and the Wolfe Island Ferry. At that time, it was the only highway on the island; Highway 96 was established the following year. The entire route was decommissioned on January , 1998. It was subsequently transferred to Frontenac County, which does not maintain a county road system. The county transferred the route to the municipality of Frontenac Islands, which designated it as Road 95.
## Major intersections
## See also
- List of numbered roads in Frontenac County |
57,356,577 | Fake Love (BTS song) | 1,173,257,682 | 2018 single by BTS | [
"2018 singles",
"2018 songs",
"BTS songs",
"Billboard Korea K-Pop number-one singles",
"Gaon Digital Chart number-one singles",
"Hybe Corporation singles",
"Music videos directed by Lumpens",
"Number-one singles in Malaysia",
"Number-one singles in Singapore",
"Rap rock songs",
"Songs written by Bang Si-hyuk",
"Songs written by Pdogg",
"Songs written by RM (musician)"
]
| "Fake Love" is a song recorded in Korean and Japanese by South Korean band BTS. It was written by "Hitman" Bang, RM, and Pdogg, with the latter as producer. The Korean version was released through Big Hit Entertainment on May 18, 2018, as the lead single from the band's third album Love Yourself: Tear (2018). Columbia Records serviced the song to US contemporary hit radio on June 12, 2018, as a single in the country. A remix, titled "Rocking Vibe", was released on June 4, 2018, and appears on the band's third compilation album, Love Yourself: Answer (2018). The Japanese version of the song was released for digital download and streaming on October 16, 2018, by Universal Music Japan as a single album that included the remix and "Airplane Pt. 2", both also in Japanese. "Fake Love" is an emo hip hop, grunge, rap-rock and electropop song which relies on rock instrumentals. The lyrics talk about the love that was once believed to be destiny, but turned out fake at the end.
The song received generally positive reviews from critics who praised its dark production, eclectic sound, and the band's vocal delivery. It received several accolades, including the Song of the Year and Best Pop Song at the 2019 Korean Music Awards, and appeared on the decade-end lists of NME and Consequence of Sound. Commercially, the Korean version of "Fake Love" debuted at number one on the Gaon Digital Chart and number ten on the US Billboard Hot 100, becoming the band's first top-ten single in the US. The Japanese version debuted and peaked at number one on the Oricon Singles Chart, becoming the 12th best-selling single of 2018 in Japan. It was certified platinum for both streaming and digital download sales by the Korea Music Content Association (KMCA) and double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ).
Two music videos, for the original and the remix, were directed by YongSeok Choi. Premiering on May 18, 2018, the first video follows the story-line of BTS' fictional narrative universe and depicts the band dancing on various sets. The second video, an extended version of the first, was released on June 1, 2018, and has some additional footage. The debut performance of "Fake Love" at the 2018 Billboard Music Awards received positive reviews from critics. BTS later promoted the song with televised live performances on several South Korean music programs in 2018, including M! Countdown, Music Bank, and Inkigayo. It was also included on the setlist of their Love Yourself World Tour (2018–19).
## Background and release
BTS embarked on their extended three-part series "Love Yourself" with the release of their fifth extended play Love Yourself: Her in 2017. On April 16, 2018, the band announced the sequel of Her in the form of their third Korean-language studio album, Love Yourself: Tear. "Fake Love" was confirmed to be a part of Love Yourself: Tear, when the band shared the track-listing of the album. On May 14 of that year, it was announced as the first single from the album. The song was written by "Hitman" Bang, RM and its producer Pdogg. It was engineered by Pdogg and Jeong Wooyeong, while mixing was handled by James F. Reynolds at Schmuzik Studios. Backing vocals for the track was provided by band member Jungkook alongside Supreme Boi. BTS recorded the song at Big Hit Studios in Seoul, South Korea.
Talking about the song, RM explained in a V Live broadcast that among all songs on the album, "Fake Love" was most difficult to work on. The main foundation of it was created by him, while the rest of the song-making process was handled by Pdogg and "Hitman" Bang. He also shared a demo version of the track during the broadcast, which he felt was "completely different" and "more depressing and deeper" than the recorded one. Speaking about how the song was conceived, he said:
> "To adjust to voice range of our vocalists, we change the pitch in the end so rappers often have difficulty adjusting to that. (In case of this song), it went up by 6 1/2 pitches as far as I know. Six and half -- that makes a totally different song! We adjusted to that pitch and added the guitar sound and there came the 'Fake Love' we listen to now."
"Fake Love" was released for digital download and streaming in various countries by Big Hit Entertainment on May 18, 2018, as the lead single from Love Yourself: Tear. On June 12 of that year, Columbia Records serviced the song to contemporary hit radio in the United States as a single in that country. A "Rocking Vibe" remix version of the track was recorded and issued digitally on June 4, 2018. It was subsequently included on the band's third compilation album, Love Yourself: Answer (2018). The remix has identical songwriting credits to the original version with the addition of Slow Rabbit serving as producer. A Japanese version of the song was made available for digital purchase on October 16, 2018, by Universal Music Japan as the band's ninth Japanese-language single album, together with the Japanese versions of the remix and previously released Korean track "Airplane Pt. 2" (2018). It was also released as a four-version CD single in Japan on November 7, 2018, with a regular edition and three different limited editions: A, B and C. All four editions contain Japanese versions of the original and remix of "Fake Love", "Airplane Pt. 2", and a "stadium" remix of their 2018 Korean single, "Idol". In addition, edition A includes a DVD containing the music videos for "Fake Love" and "Airplane Pt. 2". Edition B also comes with a DVD that contains behind the scenes footage of the music video for "Airplane Pt. 2" and the making of album jacket photos, while C contains a 36-page photobook. The lyrics for the Japanese version were written by KM-Markit. It was later included as the eighth track on the band's fourth Japanese-language studio album, Map of the Soul: 7 – The Journey (2020).
## Music and lyrics
"Fake Love" is a emo hip hop, grunge-rock, rap-rock and electropop song with elements of pop-rock, trap and adult contemporary music. It is composed in time in the key of D minor, with a moderate tempo of 78 beats per minute, and runs for 4:02. Though the song keeps up with the band's signature hip hop sound, it employs a dark production consisting of thumping trap beats, "gritty guitars", "ambient synth quirks" and "doomy bass." The song primarily relies on rock instrumentation which includes electric guitar, drums, keyboards, and synthesizers. The drums have a repeating kick and snare sequence, which remains constant throughout the song. The verses are led by both arpeggiated and rhythm guitars.
The song makes use of dissonant and dark chord progressions and contains a "tense" chorus which is boosted by heavy bass. It features a "tenacious" and "blocky" bassline, which was compared to that of Atlanta hip-hop. The opening verse uses a "serpentine" delivery characterized by "breathy" vocals while the refrain is accompanied by "wailing" vocals from band. The song features "anguished" singing blending "warm" melodies and "dreamy, echoing" verses with "brusque" raps. The staccato-driven rapped verses follow the triplet flow saturating hip hop. The remix version adds "dynamic" electronic and acoustic string instruments over the original melody, introducing rock vibes to the song. The latter is also composed in the same key as the original recording, but with a moderately fast tempo of 155 beats per minute.
Lyrically, the song talks about love that was once believed to be destiny, but turned out fake at the end and reflects the theme of the entire "Love Yourself" series — "that any love wherein one does not love oneself is not real." It also recounts the emptiness that comes to a person who has invested too much in a relationship, only to lose one's own identity in the process through lyrics such as, "I even became quite unsure of who I was / Try babbling into the mirror, who the heck are you?" The lyrics further reference to the notion of holding onto a toxic relationship: "I grew a flower that can't be bloomed in a dream that can't come true." Lines like "Mold a pretty lie for you" and "Try to erase myself and make me your doll" suggest themes of "hiding depression" and "pressure" to maintain relationships despite struggling with mental health. During the chorus, the band chant the titular phrase singing, "I'm so sick of this fake love" admitting "disenchantment."
## Critical reception
"Fake Love" received generally positive reviews from critics. Jeff Benjamin of Paper praised the track's sound and the band's vocal delivery, writing that the song "might very well be the best representation of the pop excellence BTS brings to music." In The Korea Herald, Dam-young Hong wrote that the musical style "offers an overwhelming sense of darkness and maturity" to the song. She also appreciated its lyrical content, writing that the "poetic refrains" used throughout it "adds to the song's ineffable sensitivity." Hyun-su Yim, also of The Korea Herald, praised the song for "brilliantly" capturing the "genre-bending" and "emotion-heavy" musical essence of BTS. Rhian Daly of NME commended the "dark" production and labelled the song "beautifully gloomy," adding that the track is an "early instance of BTS tackling the idea of one's persona." IZM's Do-heon Kim compared the song to the band's previous tracks "I Need U" (2015) and "Blood Sweat & Tears" (2016), and praised the blend of "aggressive" guitar riff, "tensed synth samples," and "dreamy sounds" in the production which recreates "depression and anxiety" that is expressed through the "emotive" lyrics of the song. Markos Papadatos of Digital Journal said the song was "sonically and lyrically powerful" and "embodies the emotions of saying goodbye in a raw yet sincere fashion." He called the lyrics "exceptional".
"Fake Love" was positively reviewed by the writers of Rolling Stone, who likened the guitar line to that of '80s rock band, Def Leppard and stated that the track "is an impressive fusion, simultaneously bruised and bruising." In a separate review, music critic Elias Leight of the same publication viewed the song as "a jolt of angst-ridden, arena-ready rap-rock." Jess Lau of The 405 wrote that the song displayed significant growth in the band's sound and deemed it as the strongest track on Love Yourself: Tear. Writing for Spin, Blanca Méndez stated that the song "turns dark and marries the drama of Wings with the angst of their 2015 album The Most Beautiful Moment in Life: Young Forever." Dan Weiss of Consequence of Sound deemed it as a "breathy anthem-ballad," while Idolator's Mike Nied called the song "mega-infectious." Reviewing for Vulture, Kim Youngdae and Park T.K. opined that the song's music was "carefully selected to amplify" the central message of the album. They further wrote, "the tension between electric guitar and a hip-hop beat creates a sense of dark resolve, unique among contemporary K-Pop and even among BTS's other music."
In a Billboard publication, Caitlin Kelley cited it as one of the best songs of the band and wrote, "this is BTS at their angstiest, wallowing in the heartache of changing yourself so much for someone that your love is fake." Writing for The Malaysia Star, Chester Chin praised the song for "its explosive hook-heavy glory." Taylor Glasby from Dazed appreciated the "poignant rawness of the pre-choruses" while also complimenting the song's lyrical content. She also wrote an article for Clash, where she viewed the track "brittle pinnacle of deception." In another review for Vogue, she described the song as a "moody emo anthem." Salva Mubarak, of the same magazine, deemed the track as "iconic," citing its "unexpectedly complex music arrangement and lyrics." Billboard ranked "Fake Love" at number 22 on their list of 2018's best songs. Other publications that included the track among their lists of the best songs of 2018 were The Dong-a Ilbo, The Guardian, The New York Times, and Rolling Stone. The latter also ranked "Fake Love" as one of the greatest boy band songs of all time. Consequence of Sound and NME placed it on their decade-end list of the 100 best songs of the 2010s. "Fake Love" won the Song of the Year and Best Pop Song awards at the Korean Music Awards in 2019. It also won the Best Rap / Hip Hop song at the 2018 Melon Music Awards. The song also achieved the top spot on various South Korean music programs, garnering a total of 12 awards including "triple-crowns" (three consecutive wins) on Music Bank, Show! Music Core and Inkigayo. It also achieved five consecutive Melon Weekly Popularity Awards due to its substantial success on digital platforms.
## Commercial performance
"Fake Love" was a commercial success in South Korea. It debuted at number six on the Gaon Digital Chart for issue date of May 19, 2018. The following week, it climbed to number one and also peaked at number one on the component Download Chart. The single remained in the top five of the digital chart for five consecutive weeks before falling for the week of June 30, 2018. "Fake Love" was the third best-performing song of the June 2018 issue of the Gaon Monthly Digital Chart based on digital sales, streaming, and background music (instrumental track) downloads. It was eventually the 19th best-selling song of 2018 in South Korea, selling over 680,480,472 digital units. In addition, the song peaked at number one on the Billboard K-pop Hot 100 on the chart issue dated May 26, 2018. "Fake Love" received platinum certifications, for both streaming and download, from the Korea Music Content Association (KMCA), denoting over 100 million streams and 2.5 million digital download sales, respectively.
"Fake Love" debuted and peaked at number 10 on the US Billboard Hot 100 on the issue date of June 2, 2018, selling 29,000 digital copies, which was the highest debut on the chart for that week. It became BTS' first top-ten entry on the chart and the highest-charting song by a Korean band in the United States, surpassing their own record achieved with 2017 song "Mic Drop" at number 28. BTS also became the second K-pop act to chart a top-ten song in the country after Psy achieved it with "Gangnam Style" and "Gentleman" in 2012 and 2013, respectively. The single appeared at number seven on the Billboard Streaming Songs chart with 27.8 million streams in its opening week, becoming their first top-ten on the chart. It also became their fifth number one on the US World Digital Songs chart. On the Pop Songs chart, the single peaked at number 34 in the week of July 21, 2018. It was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), for track equivalent sales of 500,000 units becoming BTS' third song to do so. "Fake Love" debuted and peaked at number 22 on the Canadian Hot 100 chart. In the United Kingdom, it debuted at number 42 on the Singles Chart, and reached number 3 on the Indie Chart. "Fake Love" appeared on the Australian Singles Chart at number 36, which later became its peak. It was certified gold by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) for track-equivalent sales of 35,000. The song peaked at number one in both Malaysia and Singapore, and also made a top-ten debut on the South African music chart. Additionally, it made top 40 appearances in Austria, New Zealand, Russia, Scotland, Slovakia, Switzerland and Flemish region of Belgium.
Following the release of the song as a single album in Japan, "Fake Love / Airplane Pt.2" topped the Oricon Daily Singles Chart on its first day of release, selling 327,342 copies. The single remained at number one on the daily chart for the next six days, selling 454,829 physical copies in its first week. By doing so, the band became the first foreign artist to surpass 400,000 copies in a week. "Fake Love / Airplane Pt. 2" peaked at number one on the Oricon Weekly Singles Chart for the chart issue dated November 5–11, 2018. It sold 481,000 copies in the month of November 2018, achieving higher sales than their previous Japanese single album "Mic Drop / DNA / Crystal Snow". For the year end chart, it was the 12th best-selling single of 2018 in the country. It additionally charted at number one on the Billboard Japan Hot 100 on the issue date of November 19, 2018. On December 9, 2018, the single album received double platinum certification from the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ), denoting shipments of 500,000 copies. On June 26, 2020, "Fake Love" received a silver streaming certification from the RIAJ for 30 million digital streams. It received gold certification the following year, on February 23, 2021, for surpassing 50 million streams.
## Music videos
The music video for "Fake Love" was directed by YongSeok Choi of Lumpens. HyunWoo Nam of GDW was credited as the director of photography, while HyunSuk Song served as the gaffer. The video premiered on Big Hit's YouTube channel at 18:00 KST (08:00 UTC) on May 18, 2018; it was preceded by two teasers released on the same platform on May 14 and 16. The "high-production" visual is almost five-minutes long and features a darker atmosphere compared to that of the previous single, "DNA" (2017). It continues the extended story-line of BTS' fictional narrative universe by connecting "fantasy and reality, past and present" with multiple Easter eggs, and symbolisms. The video opens with a flower trapped inside a glass and then switches to show close-up shots of band members Jin and Jungkook. The clip then blacks out briefly before showing silhouettes of the seven members who start performing choreography as the opening line of the song plays. As the light brightens, the members are seen dressed in black leather outfits. The visual then rewinds to show Jin standing inside a room painted in bleak colours and filled with shattered glass. Jungkook plays the protagonist of the visual, as he runs through a hallway as floorboards collapse beneath his feet. Throughout the video, he searches for his band-mates on his own inside a maze-like manor. The video alternates with scenes which show the members reflecting their own personal struggles in several decaying rooms and group-shots of the band performing furious and tight choreography in an "imposing collection of sets". In some scenes, they are also seen staring blankly at the camera. Over the course of the clip, Jin tries to protect a flower as everything around him falls apart. As the flower crumbles to ashes, "annihilation" follows. Thematically, the entire visual correlates with the song's message. Scenes with sand slipping and rooms filled with abandoned toys and candy bars suggest themes of "dishonesty" and "disillusionment." In another scene, fire bursts in front of Suga, as he smirks in amusement and sits calmly while the fire grows. Jimin stands and stares ahead as water storms around him. The choreography depicted in the video consists of "sharp movements" and "dramatic poses" which portrays each member exhibiting the anguish of the song's lyrics. The clip also references to the band's previous thematic eras. A scene featuring V standing in front of a wall with the words "Save Me" written on it bears testimony to their "Wings" era. The visual ends with Jungkook returning eventually to a masked figure.
Papadatos of Digital Journal called the video "compelling from start to finish." In his review for Cosmopolitan, Alex Reed cited the clip as "wonderful" and said, "The styling is perfect, the vocals are on point, the choreography is exceptional, and the visuals are beyond." Anna Gaca from Spin deemed the visual as "glossy" and praised the "dramatic, CGI-enhanced" shots and the band's choreography. Reviewing for Celebmix, Ellie Nicholas labelled the video "intense, artistic and addicting," adding that it is "a masterpiece of a music video that you cannot help but replay." The clip was the most-watched music video on YouTube within 24 hours of 2018 upon releaese, achieving 35.9 million views on the platform on its first day, surpassing their own record of 22.3 million views with "DNA". It also became the third most watched music video within the first 24 hours in 2018. Within 8 days, "Fake Love" surpassed 100 million views besting the group's previous record with "DNA", which achieved the same in 24 days. As of September 2021, the visual has garnered over 1 billion views.
An accompanying music video for the remix version of "Fake Love", also directed by YongSeok Choi, was uploaded to Big Hit's YouTube channel on June 1, 2018. The visual introduces some "extended footage" while retaining the content of the original video. For its conclusion, Jungkook is joined by six hooded figures and closes out with the seven being crushed together by a wall.
## Live performances
BTS performed "Fake Love" live for the first time at the 2018 Billboard Music Awards on May 20, 2018. The performance was acclaimed in the media. Taylor Weatherby of The Hollywood Reporter deemed the choreography as "intense" and "flawless" adding, "From high kicks to synchronized waves, BTS hit every move perfectly while singing their latest jam." Writing for Elle, Alyssa Bailey praised the performance writing, "the perfectly-synched dancing that was truly next-level." Jennifer Drysdale of Entertainment Tonight wrote that the band "slayed the performance with their intricate dance moves in front of a stunning display, completely stealing the show." The band performed the song on The Ellen DeGeneres Show on May 25, alongside "Airplane Pt. 2". On June 12, they gave a pre-recorded performance of the song on The Late Late Show with James Corden.
Following the release of Love Yourself: Tear, BTS appeared on several Korean music programs, including Mnet's M! Countdown, KBS's Music Bank, SBS's Inkigayo and MBC's Show! Music Core to promote "Fake Love" and the album. On December 1, 2018, BTS performed the song at the Melon Music Awards. The rock version of the song was promoted at the 2018 Mnet Asian Music Awards on December 12. They performed it again at the KBS Song Festival on December 29. On January 15, 2019, BTS performed the song at the Seoul Music Awards. "Fake Love" was included on the setlist of BTS' Love Yourself World Tour (2018–19).
## Track listing
## Credits and personnel
### Korean and Japanese versions
Credits are adapted from the CD liner notes of Love Yourself: Tear and Tidal.
- BTS – primary vocals
- "Hitman" Bang – songwriting
- RM – songwriting
- KM-Markit – songwriting, rap arrangement (Japanese version)
- Lee Taewook – guitar
- Jungkook – chorus
- Supreme Boi – chorus, digital editing
- Pdogg – production, songwriting, synthesizer, keyboard, digital editing, vocal arrangement, rap arrangement, record engineering
- Hiss noise – digital editing
- J.Pearl – digital editing (Japanese version)
- Jeong Wooyeong – record engineering
- James F. Reynolds – mix engineering
### Rocking Vibe Remix
Credits are adapted from the CD liner notes of Love Yourself: Answer.
- BTS – primary vocals
- Slow Rabbit – production, keyboard, synthesizer, digital editing
- Pdogg – songwriting, vocal arrangement, rap arrangement, digital editing, recording engineer
- "Hitman" Bang – songwriting
- RM – songwriting
- Lee Taewook – guitar
- Lee Jooyeong – bass
- Jungkook – chorus
- Supreme Boi – chorus
- Hiss noise – digital editing
- Jeong Wooyeong – recording engineer
- Yang Ga – mix engineer
## Charts
### Weekly charts
### Monthly charts
### Year-end charts
## Certifications
\|- ! colspan="3" \| Streaming \|-
## Release history
## See also
- List of Gaon Digital Chart number ones of 2018
- List of Hot 100 number-one singles of 2019 (Japan)
- List of K-pop Hot 100 number ones
- List of M Countdown Chart winners (2018)
- List of Oricon number-one singles of 2019
- List of number-one songs of 2018 (Malaysia)
- List of number-one songs of 2018 (Singapore) |
22,815,969 | 2008 Football League One play-off final | 1,164,551,773 | null | [
"2007–08 Football League One",
"2008 Football League play-offs",
"2008 sports events in London",
"Doncaster Rovers F.C. matches",
"EFL League One play-off finals",
"Leeds United F.C. matches",
"May 2008 sports events in the United Kingdom"
]
| The 2008 Football League One play-off final was an association football match which was played on 25 May 2008 at Wembley Stadium, London, between Doncaster Rovers and Leeds United to determine the third and final team to gain promotion from Football League One to the Football League Championship. The top two teams of the 2007–08 Football League One season, Swansea City and Nottingham Forest, gained automatic promotion to the Championship, while those placed from third to sixth in the table took part in play-off semi-finals. The winners of these semi-finals competed for the final place for the 2008–09 season in the Championship. The losing semi-finalists were Carlisle United and Southend United.
The game was played in front of 75,132 spectators and was refereed by Andy D'Urso. After a goalless first half, Doncaster's James Hayter scored with a header from a Brian Stock corner. The match ended 1–0 to Doncaster, who were thus promoted to the Championship after four seasons in League One.
Leeds finished the following season in fourth place in League One and qualified for the play-offs, where they lost in the semi-finals to Millwall. Doncaster's next season ended with them in fourteenth position in the Championship.
## Route to the final
Doncaster Rovers finished the regular 2007–08 season in third place in Football League One, the third tier of the English football league system, two positions ahead of Leeds United. Both therefore missed out on the two automatic places for promotion to the Football League Championship and instead took part in the play-offs to determine the third promoted team. Doncaster Rovers finished two points behind Nottingham Forest (who were promoted in second place) and twelve behind league winners Swansea City. Leeds United ended the season four points behind Doncaster Rovers; before the start of the season, Leeds had been given a fifteen point deduction for "breaching rules on insolvency". Their manager, Dennis Wise, resigned in January 2008 and was replaced by Gary McAllister who confirmed that "the job brief is promotion."
Leeds United faced Carlisle United in their play-off semi-final with the first match of the two-legged tie being played at Elland Road in Leeds on 12 May 2008. The visitors took the lead on 32 minutes when a volley from Simon Hackney was deflected off Danny Graham into the Leeds net. Five minutes into the second half Marc Bridge-Wilkinson, the Carlisle midfielder, sidefooted in Evan Horwood's low cross to make it 2–0. Keiren Westwood, the Carlisle goalkeeper, made a number of saves in a performance which the BBC's Mandeep Sanghera called "heroic". However, he was beaten five minutes into stoppage time when Jermaine Beckford scored from a free kick to make the final score 2–1. The second leg of the play-off semi-final took place three days later at Brunton Park in Carlisle. Jonny Howson opened the scoring on 10 minutes for the away side to level the aggregate score at 2–2. Carlisle had a number of chances in the second half but could not convert any, and in the 90th minute, Howson scored his and Leeds' second from 18 yards (16 m): the game ended 2–0 to Leeds who progressed to the Wembley play-off final with a 3–2 aggregate victory.
In the other play-off semi-final, Doncaster Rovers faced Southend United and the first leg took place at Roots Hall in Southend-on-Sea on 9 May 2008. The home side dominated the first half but after the break, Doncaster's Jason Price missed several chances. Paul Heffernan was sent off for headbutting Southend's Peter Clarke after they tangled in a tackle with three minutes to go and the match finished goalless. The second leg was held a week later at the Keepmoat Stadium in Doncaster. The visitors hit the crossbar in the opening minutes through a James Walker strike but Doncaster took the lead on 11 minutes with a penalty from Brian Stock. Adam Barrett scored an own goal ten minutes later before James Coppinger struck a third to see the home side leading 3–0 at half-time. Coppinger completed his hat-trick with two more goals after the interval and with a consolation goal from Southend's Nicky Bailey made it 5–1 to Doncaster at the final whistle.
## Match
### Background
Doncaster had played in the third tier of English football since gaining promotion from the Third Division as champions in the 2003–04 season. They had not featured in a league play-off final, although they won the 2003 Football Conference play-off final to secure their place back in the Football League. Doncaster had also never played a competitive match at Wembley Stadium. Leeds were relegated to League One the previous season, having also been deducted ten points for entering administration. The club had featured in two play-off finals prior to 2008: they lost the 1987 Football League Second Division play-off final to Charlton Athletic and were defeated by Watford in the 2006 Football League Championship play-off final. The last visit Leeds had paid to the national stadium was for the 1996 Football League Cup Final which they lost 3–0 against Aston Villa. During the regular season, both games between the sides resulted in away wins: Doncaster won 1–0 at Elland Road in January 2008 while Leeds secured a 1–0 victory at the Keepmoat Stadium the following April. Doncaster's top scorer going into the play-offs was Hayter with nine goals (seven in the league and two in the FA Cup). Beckford was leading scorer for Leeds with twenty goals, followed by Trésor Kandol with eleven.
The referee for the match was Andy D'Urso representing the Essex County Football Association. Both teams started the final with line-ups unchanged from their respective semi-final second leg matches. The BBC reported that Leeds had sold their full ticket allocation of 36,000 while Doncaster had sold 24,000. According to author Daniel Chapman, Leeds fans queued overnight for the chance to buy tickets, and that "by dawn there were 7,000 in a tired, hungry and angry scrum". Doncaster played in red-and-white hooped shirts while Leeds wore white kit.
### Summary
The match kicked off around 3 p.m. on 25 May 2008 in front of 75,132 spectators. Within a minute, the Leeds defender Bradley Johnson's shot cleared the Doncaster crossbar. On six minutes, Price's shot from 6 yards (5.5 m) was blocked by Leeds before Richie Wellens struck the ball into the side netting. Casper Ankergren then made a save at Coppinger's feet before denying Hayter after Doncaster had beaten the offside trap. On 15 minutes, Matt Mills became the first player of the afternoon to be shown a yellow card for a foul on Beckford. In the 17th minute, Beckford's 20-yard (18 m) strike was saved in the Doncaster goal by Neil Sullivan. Ten minutes later, David Prutton was booked for a late tackle. Leeds increased the pressure and in the 31st minute Beckford's weak shot was saved by Sullivan. Five minutes before half time, Hayter's strike flew over the Leeds crossbar before Howson's curling shot passed narrowly outside the Doncaster post. The half was brought to a close with the score at 0–0.
Neither side made any changes to their personnel during the half-time interval, and Doncaster won an early free kick which Coppinger struck into the defensive wall. In the 48th minute, Hayter put Doncaster ahead: Stock played in an outswinging corner which Hayter scored with a diving header to make it 1–0. Three minutes later, Beckford's shot was saved by Sullivan low to his right. On 60 minutes, Howson's strike from 20 yards (18 m) was off-target. Twelve minutes later, Leeds made the first substitution of the game with Prutton being replaced by Kandol. Coppinger was then stopped by Jonathan Douglas before Mark McCammon came on for Wellens. With around twelve minutes remaining, Dougie Freedman's shot went wide and he was soon after replaced by Andrew Hughes. Two minutes later, Price was replaced by Adam Lockwood before Sullivan was booked for time-wasting. Doncaster then made their final substitution of the match with Coppinger being replaced by Lewis Guy. Douglas then saw his 20-yard (18 m) half-volley fly just wide of the Doncaster goal and after four minutes of stoppage time, the final whistle was blown.
### Details
## Post-match
Hayter said: "It is an unbelievable feeling to score the winner. I have been dreaming about it all week." The Doncaster manager Sean O'Driscoll suggested that he "could murder a cup of tea" while his opposite number McAllister suggested his team "huffed and puffed but our quality wasn't quite there today. We lost a poor goal." The Leeds goalkeeper Ankergren reflected "maybe in a few days we'll realise the achievement ... but right now we're standing here with nothing."
Leeds finished the following season in fourth place in League One and qualified for the play-offs, where they lost in the semi-finals to Millwall. Doncaster's next season ended with them in fourteenth position in the Championship. |
8,015,635 | Give It All | 1,166,127,405 | 2004 single by Rise Against | [
"2004 debut singles",
"2004 songs",
"Geffen Records singles",
"Rise Against songs",
"Song recordings produced by Garth Richardson",
"Songs written by Tim McIlrath"
]
| "Give It All" is a song by American rock band Rise Against. It was originally recorded for the 2004 compilation album Rock Against Bush, Vol. 1, while a slightly altered version appeared on the band's third studio album Siren Song of the Counter Culture later that year. It is a hardcore punk song, with lyrics that are about "being a punk rocker in today's world," according to lead vocalist Tim McIlrath. It was released as Siren Song of the Counter Culture's first single in October 2004.
Despite receiving minimal coverage from music critics who reviewed Siren Song of the Counter Culture, "Give It All" has become one of Rise Against's most widely recognized songs, and is credited as the band's breakthrough single. It has been featured on multiple lists of the best Rise Against songs, and peaked at number thirty-seven on the Billboard Alternative Songs chart. The accompanying music video has the band perform in a crowded subway car, while other people travel throughout the city of Chicago vandalizing and defacing billboards and posters, with the intention of raising social and political awareness.
## Background and composition
After spending several years as an underground band in which they released two albums with Fat Wreck Chords, Rise Against signed a recording contract with Geffen Records in 2003. This deal was criticized by some fans, who felt that a major record label would hinder the band's creative process and negatively impact their music. The first song the band released following their signing to Geffen was "Give It All", which was featured on the 2004 compilation album Rock Against Bush, Vol. 1. The band liked the song, and decided to record a slightly altered version for their third studio album Siren Song of the Counter Culture later that year.
"Give It All" is a short hardcore punk track, with a fast pace and a slow bridge, and in the key of A major (although the verses, pre-chorus, and bridge start with F-sharp minor). Lead vocalist Tim McIlrath commented that the song is "kind of a punk rock anthem about being a punk rocker in today’s world; like what being a human being in today’s world is like." Scott Heisel of Punknews.org felt that the Rock Against Bush, Vol. 1 version maintained the band's distinctive sound, and signing to a major record label had not changed the band's music. Davey Boy of Sputnikmusic noted that the Siren Song of the Counter Culture version reminded him of a harder version of songs by the Offspring, and that it was controlled enough to appeal to casual rock fans.
## Reception
"Give It All" began playing on radio stations in October 2004, as the first single from Siren Song of the Counter Culture. Commercially, "Give It All" became the first Rise Against song to reach the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart, peaking at number thirty-seven on January 1, 2005.
Upon the release of Siren Song of the Counter Culture, "Give It All" received almost no coverage from music critics who reviewed the album, aside from Justin Donnelly of Blistering, who described the piece as "a little generic and forgettable". Despite the lack of coverage, it has become one of the band's most widely recognized songs, and John J. Moser of The Morning Call credits it as Rise Against's breakthrough single. Dave Kim of WGRD-FM listed "Give It All" as the fourth best Rise Against song.
## Music video
The accompanying music video was directed by James Cox, and filmed in Chicago. In the video, Rise Against performs inside a subway car on the Chicago "L". Passengers begin boarding the car in large quantities, and engage in a mosh pit, while the band continues to perform. Simultaneously, other passengers leave the car and travel throughout the city at night, vandalizing and defacing billboards and posters with the intention of raising social and political awareness. In the morning, the vandals change into suits, and go to work.
The band was given a small budget to film the music video. McIlrath remarked that the band did not want to make a video that felt "really cheesy or overproduced", and instead wanted to incorporate the song's message. The night before filming began, the band performed at a local venue, and asked the audience members to star in the video; several audience members came the following day. The subway car featured in the video continued to make its regular stops, while the band and the actors performed. During one scene in the video, the vandals sneak into the local zoo, and deface a tiger cage with a sticker that says "I've spent my entire life trapped in a cage". The zoo had not given permission for the band to film the tiger cage, out of fear it would damage their reputation. The filming crew chose to instead sneak into the zoo at night to film the scene.
## Credits and personnel
Credits adapted from the liner notes of Siren Song of the Counter Culture.
### Rise Against
- Tim McIlrath – lead vocals
- Chris Chasse – lead guitar, backing vocals
- Joe Principe – bass guitar, backing vocals
- Brandon Barnes – drums
Additional personnel
- Neil Hennessy - additional backing vocals
### Production
- Garth Richardson – producer
- Dean Maher – audio engineering
- Andy Wallace – mixing
## Charts |
5,996,397 | Eduard von Jachmann | 1,173,259,948 | German admiral (1822–1887) | [
"1822 births",
"1887 deaths",
"German military personnel of the Franco-Prussian War",
"Military personnel from Gdańsk",
"Military personnel from West Prussia",
"Prussian military personnel of the Second Schleswig War",
"Prussian naval officers",
"Vice admirals of the Imperial German Navy"
]
| Eduard Karl Emanuel von Jachmann (2 March 1822 – 21 October 1887) was the first Vizeadmiral (vice admiral) of the Prussian Navy. He entered the navy in the 1840s after initially serving in the merchant marine. In 1848, Jachmann received his first command, the corvette SMS Amazone; through the 1850s and early 1860s, he held several other commands, including the frigates Thetis—aboard which he took part in the Eulenburg expedition to East Asia—and Arcona. During the Second Schleswig War in 1864, he commanded Prussian naval forces in the Baltic from Arcona, and led a small squadron at the Battle of Jasmund on 17 March. Though defeated in that battle, he was promoted to Konteradmiral (rear admiral) for his aggressive handling of the Prussian fleet.
Jachmann was the senior-most officer in the Prussian Navy by the mid-1860s, second only to Prince Adalbert of Prussia. In 1867, Jachmann became the director of the Ministry of the Navy, and the following year, he was promoted to Vizeadmiral. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, he commanded the squadron of ironclad warships based in the North Sea, though his ships saw no action owing to engine difficulties. After the war, he oversaw the founding of the Imperial Naval Academy at Kiel and the organization of the North Sea Naval Station. He expected to be named the first Chief of the Imperial Admiralty in 1872, but he was passed over in favor of the Prussian Army General Albrecht von Stosch. Embittered by the decision, Jachmann retired from the navy in 1874.
Jachmann retired to Oldenburg with his family, though he returned to naval affairs in 1878 following the accidental sinking of Grosser Kurfürst during a training cruise. Jachmann used the incident to attack Stosch, first through anonymously published letters criticising his training program, and then as part of a court martial that placed blame for the accident on Carl Ferdinand Batsch, Stosch's protege. Jachmann thereafter left the public eye until his death on 21 October 1887.
## Early life
Jachmann was born in Danzig on 2 March 1822, the youngest of seven children, to Dr. R. H. Jachmann and Minna Jachmann (née Schaff). Eduard attended grammar school in Marienwerder. Against his father's wishes, Jachmann joined the merchant marine as a cabin boy in Danzig in 1839; at the time, it was uncommon for an educated young man to join the shipping industry. Over the winter of 1842–1843, he attended the navigation school in Danzig and he passed his examination on 20 March 1843. He also served aboard ships on voyages to the Americas into 1844.
## Naval career
In early 1843, as the Prussian Navy looked forward to the completion of the corvette SMS Amazone, it began searching for cadets at the Danzig navigational school to form the ship's crew. Jachmann was one of those studying at the school recruited into the navy; Jachmann came aboard the ship in 1844 while it was made available to the school for training purposes. During a training cruise that lasted from June to October 1845, Jachmann held one of the officer positions aboard the vessel, but he had not been officially promoted to officer rank. The cruise went into the Atlantic Ocean and into the Mediterranean Sea, and included stops in London, Genoa, Algiers, Madiera, and Portsmouth. Another Mediterranean cruise followed in July 1846; Jachmann served as the ship's executive officer, second in command to the captain, Jan Schröder, a Dutch officer who had been hired to provide naval expertise.
On 27 May 1847, he was formally promoted to second lieutenant. A fourth training cruise followed four days later, lasting until October. On their return, Jachmann and the other officers were sent to winter quarters in Danzig. In November 1848, during the Revolutions of 1848 and the concurrent First Schleswig War against Denmark, Schröder was promoted and Jachmann succeeded him as Amazone's commander. Jachmann was promoted to first lieutenant on 29 March 1849. He took Amazone to Stettin for operations against the Danish fleet. She saw no action, however, as the Danes focused their attention on the larger Reichsflotte (Imperial Fleet) in Bremen. On 15 July 1850, the Danish blockade fleet entered Swinemünde and seized several Prussian vessels; Jachmann did not sortie to recapture the vessels, which cast suspicion on him and nearly cost him his command. Amazone, of only 356 metric tons (350 long tons; 392 short tons), was too weak to challenge the Danish and the only other Prussian vessels in the area were small gunboats of even lesser value as warships. As a result, Jachmann was exonerated.
Through the 1850s, Jachmann held a variety of roles. He served as the executive officer aboard the frigate SMS Gefion, again as the commander of Amazone, and as the shipyard director at the Königliche Werft (Royal Shipyard) in Danzig. During this period, Jachmann commanded a flotilla of ten gunboats during exercises in July and August 1851. In 1855, Jachmann was promoted to the rank of Korvettenkapitän (Corvette Captain). On 3 December 1856, he was appointed as the Director of the Technical Department of the Admiralty. Jachmann was promoted again in 1859, to the rank of Kapitän zur See (KzS—Captain at Sea). By this time, Jachmann was the third highest-ranking officer in the Prussian Navy, behind only Prince Adalbert of Prussia and the Swedish captain Henrik Sundewall.
From 1859 to 1862, he commanded the frigate SMS Thetis during the Eulenburg expedition to East Asia. Sundewall, the squadron commander, flew his flag aboard the frigate SMS Arcona; in addition to Thetis, his command also included the schooner SMS Frauenlob and the clipper ship Elbe. The ships, without Elbe as she sailed to Singapore directly, sailed to Rio de Janeiro and then to Cape Town before meeting with Elbe in Singapore. There, the squadron embarked the diplomat Friedrich Albrecht zu Eulenburg. On arriving in China, Eulenberg concluded a trade treaty with the Qing government. On the way back to Germany, Jachmann had been instructed to investigate Patagonia as the site of a possible German colony, but he ignored the command, citing the poor condition of his ship after the long voyage to East Asia, and in particular after a severe storm had badly damaged her in South American waters. Indeed, Jachmann had to put into Salvador, Bahia in Brazil for repairs.
### Wars of German unification
At the start of the Second Schleswig War in 1864, the bulk of the Prussian fleet was concentrated in the Baltic Sea. Prince Adalbert was the senior navy commander, and Jachmann, as the senior-most captain, became the squadron commander, with Arcona as his flagship. The much larger Danish fleet blockaded Prussia's main ports, trapping Jachmann's ships—Arcona and SMS Nymphe—in Swinemünde. On 17 March, Jachmann took his two ships and the armed paddle steamer SMS Loreley out to challenge the Danish blockade force. In the ensuing Battle of Jasmund off the island of Rügen, Jachmann's squadron was defeated by the more powerful Danish squadron and forced to retreat. This was to be the only major naval battle fought in the Baltic during the war. Nevertheless, he was appointed Konteradmiral (Rear Admiral) for his aggressive handling of the fleet at Jasmund. The arrival of a Danish ironclad warship precluded any further attacks on the Danish fleet, as the traditional guns that armed Jachmann's ships were entirely useless against the armored vessel.
On 24 March 1865, with the fleet having returned to its demobilised, peacetime status, Jachmann was given command of the Marinestation der Ostsee (Naval Station of the Baltic Sea). Later that year, Jachmann moved the fleet to its new main base at Kiel in the newly annexed Duchy of Schleswig. There, he was responsible for establishing the new base, the land defences for which were established at Hörup Haff and Holtenau Bay under the direction of Generals Helmuth von Moltke, the Chief of the General Staff, and Albrecht von Roon, the Prussian Minister of War. Later that year, Jachmann accompanied Roon aboard Loreley for a survey of the Jade Bay, where the naval base at Wilhelmshaven was planned. Jachmann remained in his post in the Baltic Sea during the Austro-Prussian War, commanding the main squadron of frigates and corvettes. Before the outset of hostilities, he sent the gunboat Tiger to Elbe to block the movement of an Austrian brigade that was garrisoned in Holstein. Since the Austrian fleet was occupied with Prussia's ally Italy during the war, the Prussian Navy saw relatively little action; the only major operations were conducted in the North Sea, under the command of KzS Reinhold von Werner.
On 17 July 1867, Jachmann attended the fleet review held in Spithead, Britain in honour of the Ottoman Sultan Abdülaziz. On 22 August, he became of the director of the Ministry for the Navy, serving under Roon. Jachmann and Roon were good friends, which led to an effective partnership between the two. Jachmann presented his fleet plan in October that year, as part of Roon's overall military budget. The plan projected a ten-year construction program for sixteen ironclad warships, twenty corvettes, and eight avisos. Jachmann included the large number of corvettes to bring pro-colonialist factions to support the plan, though he was himself ambivalent to colonial aspirations. The Reichstag approved Roon's budget without objection. Jachmann was promoted to Vizeadmiral (VAdm—Vice Admiral) on 22 March 1868; he was the first man to hold that rank in the Prussian Navy. By mid-1869, the ironclads that the navy had begun to acquire under Jachmann's direction had started to enter service, permitting the formation of an ironclad squadron.
At the start of the Franco-Prussian War in July 1870, Jachmann left Berlin to take command of the ironclad squadron based in Wilhelmshaven. At the time, Jachmann had under his control the ironclads König Wilhelm, Friedrich Carl, Kronprinz, and Arminius. Work had not yet been completed on the fortifications outside Kiel and Wilhelmshaven; Jachmann ordered the acquisition of naval mines, a technology then still in its infancy, to help defend the German coast. The French Northern Squadron had arrived off the North Sea coast to blockade Germany's ports. He sortied with the fleet in late August, but located no French warships. König Wilhelm and Friedrich Carl thereafter developed engine problems, preventing Jachmann from taking further offensive actions, for which he was publicly criticised. For its part, the French blockade was poorly planned and achieved little of significance. By 11 September, all four of his ships were again operational, but by that time the French fleet had abandoned the blockade. Owing to the ineffectiveness of the ironclad fleet, none of its officers were decorated after the war.
### Later career
With the war over, Jachmann returned to Berlin to several projects, including organising a North Sea naval station and conducting an evaluation of the naval mines used during the war. He also oversaw the rapid expansion of the base at Wilhelmshaven and the establishment of the Imperial Naval Academy at Kiel. The two Kaiser-class ironclads were ordered from British shipyards in the anticipation that France would launch a war of revenge in the near future. Jachmann came under intense criticism in the press and the Reichstag for the orders, since they had not been given to German shipyards, though at that time German shipbuilders were not sufficiently developed to build vessels of that size quickly.
In 1872, the navy command was reorganised as the Imperial Admiralty. As the highest ranking naval officer, Jachmann expected to be given the role as the Chief of the Imperial Admiralty, but General Albrecht von Stosch received the position instead. Jachmann had not proved himself an effective administrator in the 1860s, nor had he impressed Wilhelm I with his handling of the fleet during the Franco-Prussian War. Instead, he remained the commander of the active naval forces, and was given a spot on the Admiralty board, though Stosch never actually convened the board while Jachmann was in the navy. Following the death of Prince Adalbert in June 1873 and the retirement of Roon the following October, Jachmann lost his most powerful friends, and Stosch largely ignored him. The fact that Jachmann came from a middle-class background and had no formal higher education served to isolate him in the officer corps Stosch sought to create, which was modelled on the aristocratic army officer corps. Jachmann requested retirement in February 1874; he was awarded the Order of the Red Eagle, 1st Class with Swords, on 17 February and thereafter left the service. Stosch then purged numerous other senior officers with similar backgrounds.
In May 1878, the new ironclad Grosser Kurfürst was accidentally rammed and sunk by König Wilhelm. Jachmann, still bitter at being passed over in favour of Stosch, anonymously published an article in Deutsche Revue severely criticizing Stosch's training policies, which he alleged favoured military discipline and theory over practical seamanship. Jachmann was appointed a member of the court martial that investigated the accident and the role of Carl Ferdinand Batsch—the captain of König Wilhelm and Stosch's protege. Jachmann was at that time not known to be the author of the article, and he did not recuse himself. The court ruled against Batsch but did not issue a punishment. Batsch appealed to Stosch, arguing that Jachmann and the also retired VAdm Eduard Klatt had not been impartial judges. Kaiser Wilhelm I agreed to appoint a second court martial that did not include either man.
Jachmann retired to Oldenburg with his family, which included his wife Anna (whom he had married in 1852 in Trutenau near Königsberg), his daughter, and three sons. One of his sons, Siegfried von Jachmann, went on to serve in the Imperial Navy and reached the rank of Konteradmiral. Eduard appeared in public one last time on 18 May 1885, after Wilhelm I called on him to give the christening speech for the new corvette Arcona in Danzig. Jachmann died in Oldenburg on 21 October 1887. |
12,927,548 | Pennsylvania Route 546 | 1,140,738,720 | State highway in McKean County, Pennsylvania, US | [
"State highways in Pennsylvania",
"Transportation in McKean County, Pennsylvania"
]
| Pennsylvania Route 546 (PA 546) is a 3.586-mile-long (5.771 km) state highway in the northernmost regions of McKean County, Pennsylvania. The route, known locally as Oil Valley Road, begins at an intersection with PA 346 in the community of Duke Center (located in Otto Township). The highway heads northward, through mountainous regions before crossing the state line and into New York.
PA 546 was designated in the 1928 numbering of state highways in the commonwealth. The route was under construction and unpaved for two years afterward, and by 1930, the route was complete and has remained virtually intact since.
## Route description
PA 546 begins at an intersection with PA 346 in the community of Duke Center. The highway, known locally as Oil Valley Road, progresses to the northeast, intersecting with a short connector back to PA 346 (SR 9112). Duke Center is small and PA 546 runs along the center of the community. The community and PA 546 run along the base of the 2,000 feet (610 m) mountain. PA 546 parallels the Knapp Creek, and after an intersecting with Galespie Hollow Road, the highway leaves Duke Center.
Continuing northward, the highway enters the community of Oil Valley, which the road is named for. At an intersection with Bootleg Hollow, Knapp Creek turns off PA 546. A short distance later, the highway passes through several taller mountains, some reaching as high as 2,200 feet (670 m) in elevation. The route crosses the state line into New York and continues northward as the unnumbered Duke Center Road, which continues for about one half of a mile to an intersection with NY 16 in Knapp Creek, New York.
## History
PA 546 began in the 1928 numbering of state highways in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The route was assigned at the time on its current alignment, but the highway was not completely constructed. At the time, the sections of PA 546 from the community of Duke Center to a location 2 miles (3.2 km) north were incomplete. By 1929, this missing piece was completed, and was paved. However, the road was not complete, as there was an unpaved piece of PA 546 from that point This unpaved area was finished by the next year. PA 546, although, has remained intact in terms of alignment since its assignment in 1928.
Duke Center Road, the road that continues north into New York, was originally designated as County Route 45 in Cattaraugus County, but the designation was decommissioned and turned over to the town of Allegany.
## Major intersections
## See also |
1,141,317 | William Tuke | 1,165,886,591 | English mental health reformer (1732–1822) | [
"1732 births",
"1822 deaths",
"18th-century Quakers",
"19th-century Quakers",
"English Quakers",
"Mental health activists",
"Tuke family of York"
]
| William Tuke (24 March 1732 – 6 December 1822), an English tradesman, philanthropist and Quaker, earned fame for promoting more humane custody and care for people with mental disorders, using what he called gentler methods that came to be known as moral treatment. He played a big part in founding The Retreat at Lamel Hill, York, for treating mental-health needs. He and his wife Esther Maud backed strict adherence to Quaker principles. He was an abolitionist, a patron of the Bible Society, and an opponent of the East India Company's inhumane practices.
## Early life
William Tuke was born on 24 March 1732 in York into a prominent Quaker family. His father Samuel was a stuff-weaver and shopkeeper, who died when Tuke was 16. His mother Ann died seven years later. Tuke attended boarding school for two or three years, after which he pursued further studies under clergymen. At age 14, he began an apprenticeship at his aunt's wholesale tea business, which he inherited on her death in 1746.
## Family life
Tuke married Elizabeth Hoyland in 1754 and fathered four children. After Elizabeth died giving birth to their fifth child, Tuke met and married Esther Maud in 1765. Tuke and his wife were deeply involved in the Friends community and advocated stricter adherence to Quaker principles. For five decades, he travelled to London for the Yearly Meeting, serving as clerk there in 1783. Meanwhile, Tuke remained involved in the family business alongside his eldest son and business partner, Henry. Ann Tuke, his daughter by Esther Maud, married William Alexander of the prominent Ipswich Quaker banking family.
## The Retreat
In 1791, William Tuke was moved by an incident involving Hannah Mills, a melancholic Quaker widow, who died unexpectedly at York Lunatic Asylum. Although her cause of death was unclear, mistreatment was suspected and the managers had forbidden Mills from having visitors. Tuke's daughter Ann proposed founding a mental institution run by Quakers for their own members. At a Society of Friends meeting in March 1792, Tuke presented a plan for those who "laboured under that most afflictive dispensation — the loss of reason." However, the proposal met with significant opposition. Some members felt such a move was unnecessary, while others saw it as overstepping the jurisdiction of a Quaker community. The small minority of supporters included Tuke's son, Henry, and the grammarian Lindley Murray.
During a visit to St. Luke's Hospital in London, Tuke witnessed appalling conditions for patients. He was particularly affected by a naked female patient who had been chained to a wall. Tuke believed the abuse was not cruel in intent, but marked a lack of effective alternatives.
By 1795, financial and social support from the community was still limited. The Society of Friends eventually approved the plan when Tuke's friend, Lindley Murray, suggested raising funds through annuities. Tuke bought 11 acres of land (4.5 ha) for £938 and worked closely with a London architect, John Bevans, to carry out his vision for the new asylum. Unlike other institutions at the time, York Retreat featured long, airy corridors where patients could stroll, even if they were kept from going outside. A month after the first patients arrived in June 1796, the unexpected death of its superintendent, Timothy Maud, forced Tuke to step in and run the Retreat himself.
William Tuke allowed his doctors to make their own observations and apply them in practice. Bleeding and other traditional remedies were abandoned in favour of gentler methods, such as warm baths for patients with melancholia. Tuke believed that physical and mental health were inextricably linked and stressed the need for proper diet and exercise. He sought to instil a sense of reason, not fear, and limited the use of physical restraints. Patients were encouraged to make themselves comfortable and often took up tasks like sewing and knitting.
The approach was widely derided at first. William Tuke noted, "All men seem to desert me." However, it eventually became famous worldwide as a model for more humane, psychologically based approaches.
## Other work
Outside his work at the Retreat, Tuke helped to found three Quaker schools: Ackworth School, Bootham School, and Trinity Lane Quaker Girls' School. The last was run by Tuke's second wife Esther until her death in 1794. The Tuke family continued to run it until 1812, by which time 500 students had passed through.
As a patron of the Bible Society, Tuke attended its meetings and made generous donations. Tuke campaigned against the slave trade and supported the abolitionist William Wilberforce in the 1806 Yorkshire parliamentary election.
Tuke was one of few voices in Britain opposing the East India Company for its inhumanity in other countries. He also supported the African Institution, which sought to create a viable, civilized refuge for freed slaves in Sierra Leone.
Towards the end of his career, a resurgence of patient abuse at York Asylum prompted Tuke to take to the local press and demand urgent reform. Tuke provided evidence to the Select Committee on Madhouses in May 1815, which led to further inquiries and passage of the County Asylums Act in 1828.
## Final years and death
Tuke remained involved with the Retreat until he became blind at the age of 82. He died on 6 December 1822 after a paralytic attack.
## Legacy
Several of Tuke's family pursued similar philanthropic work. The York Retreat was founded by his son Henry (1755–1815), at whose request his own son Samuel wrote an 1813 account of it and popularized the principles of "moral treatment". Samuel's son James Hack Tuke also helped to manage the York Retreat, while his brother Daniel Hack Tuke co-wrote A Manual of Psychological Medicine (1858) and became a leading medical expert on insanity. His daughter Sarah Tuke Grubb founded a school in Ireland.
Michel Foucault in his work Madness and Civilization discusses the advent of new types of detention by comparing and contrasting the accomplishments of William Tuke and Philippe Pinel in their respective regions (England and France. |
4,371,619 | Mac Speedie | 1,172,246,766 | American football player (1920–1993) | [
"1920 births",
"1993 deaths",
"American football ends",
"BC Lions players",
"Canadian football wide receivers",
"Cleveland Browns (AAFC) players",
"Cleveland Browns players",
"Coaches of American football from Utah",
"Denver Broncos coaches",
"Denver Broncos head coaches",
"Eastern Conference Pro Bowl players",
"Fort Warren Broncos football players",
"Houston Oilers coaches",
"Military personnel from Utah",
"People from Odell, Illinois",
"Players of American football from Salt Lake City",
"Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees",
"Saskatchewan Roughriders players",
"United States Army personnel of World War II",
"Utah Utes football players"
]
| Mac Curtis Speedie (January 12, 1920 – March 5, 1993) was an American professional football end who played for the Cleveland Browns in the All-America Football Conference (AAFC) and the National Football League (NFL) for seven years before joining the Saskatchewan Roughriders in Canada. He later served for two years as head coach of the American Football League's Denver Broncos. A tall and quick runner whose awkward gait helped him deceive defenders and get open, Speedie led his league in receptions four times during his career and was selected as a first-team All-Pro six times. His career average of 800 yards per season was not surpassed until two decades after his retirement, and his per-game average of 50 yards went unequalled for 20 years after he left the game.
Speedie grew up in Utah, where he overcame Perthes Disease to become a standout as a hurdler on his high school track team and a halfback on the football team. He attended the University of Utah, where he continued to excel at track and football before entering the military in 1942 during World War II. He spent four years in the service before joining the Browns in 1946, where he played as an end opposite quarterback Otto Graham, fullback Marion Motley and fellow receiver Dante Lavelli. The Browns, a new team in the AAFC, won the league championship every year between 1946 and 1949. The Browns merged into the NFL in 1950 after the AAFC disbanded, and Speedie continued to succeed as the team won another league championship. After two more years with the Browns, however, Speedie left the team for the Western Interprovincial Football Union (WIFU) amid a conflict with Paul Brown, Cleveland's head coach. He played two full seasons in the WIFU and one game in a third season before leaving professional football.
Speedie was hired in 1960 as an end coach for the Houston Oilers in the American Football League (AFL). The Oilers won the AFL championship that year, but Speedie left in 1961 after the head coach, former teammate Lou Rymkus, was fired. He then took a job as an assistant for the AFL's Denver Broncos and was promoted to head coach in 1964. His two-year run with the team was unsuccessful, however. After his resignation in 1966, Speedie became a scout for the Broncos, a job he kept until his retirement in 1982. On January 15, 2020, Speedie was announced to have been selected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame class of 2020.
## Early life
Speedie was born in Odell, Illinois, but attended high school in Utah. As a child he had Perthes Disease, a condition where growth or loss of bone mass in the hip joint affects blood supply to the area. He had to wear a brace for four years to correct the condition; one of his legs came out shorter than the other. Despite his struggle with the disease, Speedie became a star athlete at South High School in Salt Lake City, playing football, basketball and track. He was the center on the school's basketball team and was named to a list of Salt Lake's best athletes as a halfback on the football team. Getting out of the braces "was like turning a frisky colt out to pasture after a year in a box stall", Speedie once said. "I had such a backlog of athletic ambition that I wanted to play football, basketball, and track all at one time."
## College and military career
After graduating from high school, Speedie attended the University of Utah, where he majored in geology and continued to excel as an athlete. He played football and basketball and was a top college hurdler in track. As an end on the Utah Redskins football team, he won all-conference honors in 1939, 1940 and 1941. In track, he finished second in a high hurdles event where the winner, Rice University's Fred Wolcott, set an NCAA record.
Like many college athletes, Speedie joined the military as America's involvement in World War II intensified following the attack on Pearl Harbor at the end of 1941. He entered the U.S. Army after graduating in 1942. Speedie was stationed at Fort Warren in Wyoming and played for the base's Broncos military team.
## Professional career
### Cleveland Browns
Speedie was drafted by the National Football League's Detroit Lions in the late rounds of the 1942 draft. Fred Mandel, the owner of the Lions, visited him at Fort Warren and offered a contract worth \$2,800 a year. Speedie wanted to sign immediately, but Mandel preferred to wait until after the war. By the time the war drew to a close in 1945, however, Speedie was considering signing with the Chicago Rockets, a team in the new All-America Football Conference (AAFC). He was pursued by the Rockets after playing well against a team at Marine Corps Air Station El Toro from which many of the Rockets' players were drawn. Speedie was also spotted by Paul Brown, who had been the head coach of a military team at Great Lakes Naval Station that played against the Broncos. Brown, who was starting a new AAFC team called the Cleveland Browns, sent a friend named Jackie Ranen to sign Speedie for \$7,000 in 1946.
With the Browns, Speedie quickly became an important part of an offensive attack that featured quarterback Otto Graham, fullback Marion Motley and fellow receiver Dante Lavelli. He was enthusiastic, energetic and fast, posing a challenge for defenders assigned to cover him. He had an unusual running style because of his bout with Perthes Disease, which Lavelli said "gave him an odd gait in which he could fake plays without even trying". Speedie caught the first touchdown in the AAFC's existence in the Browns' opening game against the Miami Seahawks, a 44–0 win. The Browns ended the regular season with a 12–2 record, winning the AAFC West division and earning a spot in the league championship. During the week before the championship game against the New York Yankees, Speedie and two teammates, Lou Rymkus and team captain Jim Daniell were arrested after an argument with Cleveland police. Daniell was driving a car with Rymkus and Speedie as passengers as they waited for Speedie's wife to return on a flight from Utah. A police car was blocking Daniell's way, and he honked the horn, leading to the confrontation and arrests. Brown kicked Daniell off of the team, but Speedie and Rymkus were not punished by the team; they were, however, held in custody for several hours and charged with creating a disturbance.
The Browns went on to win the championship game in 1946, helped by Speedie's six catches for 71 yards. Speedie led the league in yards per catch, with 23.5, and scored seven touchdowns. After the season, he was named along with several teammates to the AAFC's all-league team.
The 1947 season was another strong one for Speedie. In a game against the Buffalo Bills, he tied a professional football record by catching a throw from Graham and running 99 yards for a touchdown. He finished the season as the league leader in receptions and receiving yards as the Browns won another championship. His 67 catches and 1,146 receiving yards, in fact, were the second-best in pro football history after Don Hutson of the Green Bay Packers, who caught for 1,211 yards in 1940. Speedie was named by news outlets as a first-team All-Pro. Speedie's success in 1947 came as he, Graham and Lavelli gelled as a passing and receiving unit, having studied hours of tape and worked on their technique and coordination. Speedie studied how defensive backs moved their feet and tried to break into the open by exploiting mis-steps. They experimented with screen passes and made modifications to common receiving routes to exploit the weaknesses of defenses.
The Browns had a perfect season the following year, winning the championship for a third straight time. Speedie led the league in receiving and was named an All-Pro again. The 1949 season brought another championship and another All-Pro season for Speedie, who led the league in receptions for the third year in a row. He had 228 receiving yards in a game against the Yankees, which remains a Browns record. Tom Landry, a Yankees cornerback who went on to coach the Dallas Cowboys, was assigned to cover Speedie and called it "the most embarrassing athletic performance of my entire life". The AAFC dissolved after the 1949 season and the Browns, along with two other teams, were absorbed by the more established NFL. Speedie was the AAFC's all-time leader in receptions and receiving yards, with 3,554.
Cleveland's success continued in the NFL in 1950, silencing skeptics who thought the team stood out only because of the poor quality of competition in the AAFC. After beating the defending NFL champion Philadelphia Eagles in the first game of the season, the Browns advanced to the championship game, where they beat the Los Angeles Rams 30–28 on a last-second Lou Groza field goal. Speedie had 548 receiving yards during the season and was selected for the NFL's first-ever Pro Bowl.
The Browns reached the NFL championship game in 1951 and 1952, but lost both times. Speedie led the NFL in receiving in 1951 and was named a first-team All Pro, but he did not play in the championship game due to an injury. He was selected for the Pro Bowl for a second time in 1952. After that season, however, he left the Browns to join the Saskatchewan Roughriders of the Western Interprovincial Football Union under acrimonious circumstances. Speedie had an independent streak that did not sit well with Brown, whose domineering coaching style grated against many of the men who played for him. "He was one of the ones that Paul Brown picked on quite a bit", recalled former teammate Ken Carpenter. "He'd get on Speedie's case for no particular reason." Speedie showed his displeasure by bringing a skunk to training camp in 1952 and calling it "Paul". Brown told Speedie he did not think it was very funny, to which Speedie responded that it was a nocturnal animal and was named after Paul Revere.
The Roughriders offered Speedie double his Browns salary as the Canadian leagues tried to make names for themselves by signing top-level NFL players. Paul Brown refused to match the offer, and Speedie, who was making \$11,000 per year with the Browns, joined the Canadian team for the 1953 season. Brown then threatened to sue Speedie for violating his existing contract with the team, saying the Browns had exercised an option to extend the deal after it expired in the summer of 1953. "This was a case of jumping a contract, pure and simple, as this young man morally and ethically had a contract with us", Brown said at the time. Speedie later said that Brown "told me when I jumped leagues that he was going to get even with me".
### Western Interprovincial Football Union
Speedie, by then 33 years old, joined the Roughriders despite the threat of legal action. Speedie had a league-leading seven touchdowns in 1953, and 576 receiving yards the following season. He was sent to the WIFU's BC Lions in 1955, but played only one game for the club. Speedie hurt his left knee and was declared out for the season. He had suffered a hairline leg fracture and underwent surgery on torn ligaments in his knee and ankle. He was expected to scout for the Lions as he recovered. After the injury, Speedie was cut from the Lions' roster and did not play professional football again.
At the end of his career, Speedie was one of the most prolific receivers of his era. He averaged more than 800 receiving yards a season during his seven years in the AAFC and NFL, a mark that was not surpassed for 20 years after he left the game. His career average of 49.9 receptions per season stood for 25 years. He was named to the National Football League 1940s All-Decade Team and was selected by news outlets as a first-team All-Pro six times. The authors of the official NFL encyclopedia named him one of the league's 300 greatest-ever players.
## Coaching career
Speedie resurfaced in 1960, when he was named the end coach for the new American Football League's Houston Oilers under former teammate and Oilers head coach Lou Rymkus. The Oilers won the AFL championship in 1960, but Rymkus was fired after the team got off to a slow start the following year. Team owner Bud Adams urged Speedie to stay on the staff, but Speedie resigned out of loyalty to Rymkus.
The AFL's Denver Broncos hired Speedie the following year as an end coach. He served under head coach Jack Faulkner, who replaced Frank Filchock that season and was voted AFL Coach of the Year for turning the team around and posting a 7–7 record. Faulkner led the team to a 2–11–1 season in 1963, however, and Speedie replaced him the following year as the Broncos went on a 14-game losing streak.
In Speedie's first game leading the team, the Broncos ended the losing streak with a 33–27 upset victory over the Kansas City Chiefs. Two weeks later, Speedie suspended placekicker Gene Mingo and defensive back Willie West for "conduct detrimental to the club", reportedly as a result of a late-night party at a hotel. The team posted a 2–7–1 record under Speedie, and he was signed to a two-year contract after the season.
In his first full season as the Broncos' coach in 1965, Speedie's team posted a 4–10 record. After two losses to begin the 1966 season, Speedie resigned and assistant Ray Malavasi took over. He said the move was in the best interest of the club. Speedie had a 6-19-1 record as the Broncos' coach. He then accepted a scouting position with the organization and was based out of his home in Laguna Hills, California. He held the post until his retirement in 1982.
## Later life and death
Speedie had a brief and cold reunion with Brown in 1977, when the two met at the annual East–West Shrine Game, a college all-star game. Speedie introduced himself to Brown, only to be told, "Yes, I know. You're the one who went to Canada." Speedie's friends and former teammates lobbied repeatedly for his inclusion in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but Speedie believed that his conflict with Brown was keeping him out even as numerous former teammates, including Otto Graham, Dante Lavelli and Marion Motley were inducted. He was placed on an old-timers' list of nominees for induction into the hall in the mid-1980s, but ultimately was passed over. "Quite honestly, I think Paul Brown is the reason" for Speedie's exclusion, Graham said in 1991. "Paul wasn't the type of guy you crossed. He would never forget it."
While he was passed over for professional football's hall of fame during his lifetime, Speedie was inducted into the Utah Sports Hall of Fame in 1972 and the University of Utah's Crimson Club hall of fame in 1986. He died in California in 1993.
On January 15, 2020 Speedie was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2020. |
7,865,254 | Ike Leggett | 1,124,443,583 | American politician | [
"1944 births",
"21st-century African-American people",
"African Americans in the Vietnam War",
"African-American United States Army personnel",
"African-American people in Maryland politics",
"Howard University alumni",
"Living people",
"Maryland Democrats",
"Members of the Montgomery County Council (Maryland)",
"Military personnel from Texas",
"Montgomery County, Maryland Executives",
"People from Burtonsville, Maryland",
"People from Newton County, Texas",
"Southern University alumni",
"United States Army officers",
"United States Army personnel of the Vietnam War"
]
| Isiah "Ike" Leggett (born July 25, 1944) is an American politician from the U.S. state of Maryland and former executive of Montgomery County, Maryland. He is a member of the Democratic Party.
Born in Deweyville, Texas, Leggett attended Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and, after serving in the Vietnam War with the U.S. Army, earned a J.D. degree from Howard University in Washington, D.C. In 1986, he became the first African-American elected to the county council in Montgomery County, Maryland and served on the council through 2002.
For two years, Leggett served as the chairman of the Maryland Democratic Party before leaving that position to run for office once again. Leggett was elected County Executive of Montgomery County in 2006, the first African-American to hold that office.
## Early life and education
Leggett was born on July 25, 1944, in Deweyville, Texas and grew up with twelve siblings in Alexandria, Louisiana. In Alexandria, he played football for Peabody Magnet High School. He attended Southern University in Baton Rouge, working through school as a groundskeeper in a work-study program and graduating in 1967. In his time as an undergraduate, he was a student leader in the civil rights movement and twice met Martin Luther King Jr. He led the on-campus civil rights movement while at the same time commanding the Southern University Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) unit. He was elected president of his class during his senior year and is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, the first intercollegiate fraternity established for African-Americans. In 1968, Leggett served as a captain in the United States Army during the Vietnam War, first in combat with a Military Advisory Unit attached to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam and then as a public affairs officer with the 7th Support Battalion/199th Light Infantry Brigade. He was awarded the Bronze Star for Service. In 1974, he received Master of Arts and Juris Doctor degrees from Howard University in Washington, D.C., graduating first in his law school class, followed soon after by a Master of Laws degree from George Washington University. He returned to Howard as a professor in their law school in 1976, and continued teaching at the law school through his election as County Executive in 2006, with the exception of a stint as a White House Fellow under President Jimmy Carter in 1977.
## Career
Leggett's first participation in county government was as an appointed member of the Montgomery County Human Relations Committee, on which he served from 1979 to 1986. He was later named Chair of the committee. In 1986, he was elected as an at-large member of the Montgomery County Council, becoming the first African-American ever to serve on the council. To this day, only one other African-American has been elected to county government office at large. He was re-elected to the seat three more times, and served three one-year terms as council president. During his time on the council, he chaired the council's transportation and environment committee and played a role in passage of a county living wage law and a public smoking ban. In 1992, a former county council aide of Leggett's accused him of sexual harassment in a widely publicized case, but the accusation was dismissed by a jury. In 2002, Leggett declined to run for re-election to the county council. He was widely viewed as a potential running mate for Democratic nominee Kathleen Kennedy Townsend in that year's gubernatorial race. However, Townsend chose Admiral Charles R. Larson instead. Townsend and Larson lost in November when Maryland elected Robert Ehrlich to be its first Republican governor in 40 years and Lieutenant Governor Michael S. Steele as its first African-American statewide elected official. When his term on the council was completed in December of that year, Leggett was elected as chairman of the Maryland Democratic Party. Leggett's chairmanship was seen by some Democratic activists as important to maintaining the African-American base of the Maryland Democratic Party and rebuilding the party's strength following the 2002 gubernatorial loss.
### 2006 campaign for county executive
Following the election of 2004, Maryland politicians started announcing their intentions for the 2006 elections. Among them was three-term County Executive Doug Duncan, who was in the early stages of a run for governor. In December 2004, Leggett left his position as Chair of the Maryland Democratic Party to begin a campaign to replace Duncan as Montgomery County Executive. In the Democratic primary election Leggett squared off against a former colleague from the council, Steve Silverman. Leggett and Silverman engaged in a long series of debates beginning almost a year before the election. But despite being outspent by Silverman by more than five to one, Leggett won the Democratic nomination for executive by 61.3 percent to 35.5 percent in the primary election on September 12, 2006. He then faced Republican nominee Chuck Floyd and independent anti-tax advocate Robin Ficker in the general election. Leggett easily won the November election with 68 percent of the vote to Floyd's 22 percent and 10 percent for Ficker. He carried 239 of the county's 241 voting precincts.
### First term as county executive
In the early days of his administration, Leggett took the lead on a number of controversial issues. To help alleviate transportation funding difficulties and move County transit projects forward, he proposed a statewide gas tax increase, a position he first articulated in his race for County Executive. This proposal, which happened in the midst of a state budget crunch and in response to high levels of traffic congestion in the county, was supported by the County Council but largely ignored by incoming Governor Martin O'Malley. Leggett continued to advocate for the increase throughout his term.
Leggett dealt with the major local issue of a hiring site for day laborers from the city of Gaithersburg and the surrounding upper county area. During the term of Leggett's predecessor Doug Duncan, Gaithersburg had struggled to find space within the city limits that the county could lease for use as a location where the day laborers could wait for employers. The owners of virtually all of the more than 30 sites considered by the city government had refused to grant a lease for this purpose, and in the one case where the property owner was willing to consider the use, the county's efforts to lease the property fell through after the property owner backed out. The debate became caught up in a larger national debate about the role of illegal immigrants in American society. Leggett located a site for day laborer center on county-owned land with his first several months in office. Despite opposition from anti-immigrant voices, the center has served hundreds of workers and employers without incident.
### Second term as county executive
Leggett was unopposed in the 2010 Democratic Party primary for County Executive. In the general election, he was opposed by Republican Party candidate Douglas Rosenfeld. In the November balloting, Leggett won reelection with 66 percent of the vote to 34 percent for Rosenfeld, carrying 227 of the county's 252 precincts.
### Third term as county executive
Leggett won the Democratic nomination for a third term, gaining 45 percent of the vote to 33 percent for former county executive Doug Duncan and 22 percent for councilmember Phil Andrews, and winning 80 percent of county precincts. In the fall general election Leggett defeated the Republican candidate James Shalleck by 65-35 percent, winning 212 of 245 voting precincts. Leggett declared before the passage of term limits in the county in 2016, that he would not run for re-election.
Leggett was elected as president of the Maryland Association of Counties in January 2015. In January 2017, he vetoed a bill which would have gradually raised the county minimum wage to \$15 an hour by 2020.
## Personal life
Leggett is currently married to his second wife, Catherine. |
375,669 | Piedmont Park | 1,122,171,693 | Urban park in Atlanta, Georgia | [
"Baseball venues in Georgia (U.S. state)",
"Dog parks in the United States",
"National Register of Historic Places in Atlanta",
"Parks in Atlanta",
"Parks on the National Register of Historic Places in Georgia (U.S. state)",
"World's fair sites in the United States",
"World's fairs in Georgia (U.S. state)"
]
| Piedmont Park is an urban park in Atlanta, Georgia, located about 1 mile (1.6 km) northeast of Downtown, between the Midtown and Virginia Highland neighborhoods. Originally the land was owned by Dr. Benjamin Walker, who used it as his out-of-town gentleman's farm and residence. He sold the land in 1887 to the Gentlemen's Driving Club (later renamed the Piedmont Driving Club), who wanted to establish an exclusive club and racing ground for horse enthusiasts. The Driving Club entered an agreement with the Piedmont Exposition Company, headed by prominent Atlantan Charles A. Collier, to use the land for fairs and expositions and later gave the park its name.
The park was originally designed by Joseph Forsyth Johnson to host the first of two major expositions held in the park in the late 19th century. The Piedmont Exposition opened in October 1887 to great fanfare. The event was a success and set the stage for the Cotton States and International Exposition which was held in the park seven years later in 1895. Both exhibitions showcased the prosperity of the region that had occurred during and after the Reconstruction period. In the early 20th century, a redesign plan called the Olmsted plan, was begun by the sons of New York Central Park architect, Frederick Law Olmsted. The effort led to the addition of scenic paths in the park and the joining of the park with the Ansley park system.
Over the years, the park has also served as an athletic center for the city. Atlanta's first professional baseball team, the Atlanta Crackers, played in the park from 1902 to 1904. Several important intercollegiate rivalries were also forged in the park including the University of Georgia vs. Georgia Tech baseball rivalry and Georgia versus Auburn football which has been called the "Deep South's Oldest Rivalry".
Throughout the 20th century, many improvements have been made in the park, including the addition of covered picnic areas, tennis facilities, the Lake Clara Meer dock and visitors center, and two playgrounds. In 2008, a ground-breaking ceremony was held for a 53-acre (210,000 m<sup>2</sup>) extension to the park. On April 12, 2011, Mayor Kasim Reed cut the ribbon to open the first phase of a major expansion into the northern third of the park. Additional areas at the far north of the park (near Ansley Mall) are to be developed next.
## History
### Opening
Atlanta was a rapidly growing city in the years before Piedmont Park. From 1860 to 1890, the population jumped from 9,554 to 65,533 residents. Those years saw the opening of many education institutions such as Morehouse College (1867), Clark College (1869), Spelman College (1881), Morris Brown College (1882), Georgia School of Technology (now known as the Georgia Institute of Technology) (1885), and Agnes Scott College (1890). John B. Gordon, a distinguished Confederate general, was Governor of Georgia.
The area soon to be known as Piedmont Park was owned by Benjamin Walker, who purchased the 189 acres (0.76 km<sup>2</sup>) in the 1830s from a man who had won the land in the land lottery. Walker farmed the land until, in 1887, he sold the land to the Gentlemen's Driving Club, known today as the Piedmont Driving Club, who planned "to form exclusive club and racing ground for horse enthusiasts". The driving club entered into an agreement with the Piedmont Exposition Company to use the grounds around the track as exposition space. Charles A. Collier, a prominent Atlanta businessman and former lawyer, was president of the company. Soon after, a main building, grandstands, and club house were built for the track.
### The 1887 Piedmont Exposition
The first exposition ever held in Piedmont Park, the Piedmont Exposition of 1887, opened on October 10. The main building constructed for the Exposition was 570 feet (170 m) long, 126 feet (38 m) wide, and two stories high. The first day opened with 20,000 visitors. Samuel J. Randall opened the Exposition with a speech on the success of the resurrected post-civil war south. When his speech concluded, General Pierce M. B. Young and his men fired cannons to signal the opening of the events.
Exhibitors showed off a variety of items including works of art, local raw materials like manganese marble, and wood work. Many prominent figures of the day were in attendance to see the displays. Governor David B. Hill of New York spoke at the event as well as President Grover Cleveland who attended with his wife, Frances Folsom. Over 50,000 people were in attendance for Cleveland's speech. When the exposition was over, civic leaders said that it had successfully expanded Atlanta's reputation as a place to visit and to conduct business.
The Exposition was also a chance for Atlanta to prove that it was ready to host a world's fair. The Executive Committee of the Fair was invited to attend the event under the bidding of Charles Reynolds, Secretary of the Piedmont Exposition Company.
### The "Deep South's Oldest Rivalry"
Five years later, Piedmont Park was the location of the second football game and the beginning of the "Deep South's Oldest Rivalry" between Auburn University (then named Agricultural and Mechanical College of Alabama) and the University of Georgia. The game was arranged by former Johns Hopkins classmates, Dr. Charles Herty of Georgia and Dr. George Petrie of Auburn. Auburn won the game 10–0. It was rumored afterward that Georgia's mascot, a goat (it wasn't until 1921 that Georgia officially became the Bulldogs), was the main course at a barbecue held by Georgia fans after the game.
### Cotton States and International Exposition (1895)
In 1894, the Piedmont Exposition Company offered to sell the land to the city of Atlanta for \$165,000.00, but Mayor John B. Goodwin refused. Thus, The park remained in private hands and outside the city limits for another ten years.
The Cotton States and International Exposition which opened for 100 days beginning on September 18, 1895 and ending December 31, 1895, attracted visitors from the U.S. and 13 countries. Over \$2 million was spent on the transformation of Piedmont Park. The government allocated \$250,000 for the construction of a government building and many states and countries such as Argentina also had their own buildings. Also constructed for the fair were the Tropical gardens, now known as the Atlanta Botanical Garden, and Lake Clara Meer which was originally a pond but was expanded to 11.5 acres (47,000 m<sup>2</sup>) for the event. Today, the stone balustrades scattered around the park are the only part of the enormous main building. The park remains largely as Joseph Forsyth Johnson designed it for the exposition although some changes were made during the Olmsted planning phase. However, most of the buildings that were constructed for the exposition were made of local Georgia granite and the buildings were dismantled after the event so that the granite could be sold to absolve the debt that the city incurred to hold the fair.
Booker T. Washington delivered his famous Atlanta Exposition Speech at the Expo, which is "widely regarded as one of the most significant speeches in American history." In his speech, Washington pushed for progress but not integration, a point that angered many other black leaders such as W. E. B. Du Bois.
Attractions included Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, the Liberty Bell, and the first public demonstration of C. Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat's motion picture projection device which they called the Phantoscope. John Philip Sousa's "King Cotton" march was created for the expo and was performed at the ceremony, and was conducted by the composer himself.
After the Exposition, the park continued to be extremely popular and was a magnet for growth in the area. State fairs and holiday celebrations were held at the park. Street car lines to the park increased. It was a generally prosperous time.
### The beginnings of Atlanta baseball
In March 1898, the baseball fields were finally completed. On April 16, 1898, the first baseball game between Georgia and Georgia Tech, then known as the Georgia School of Technology, was played. From 1902 until 1904, the Atlanta Crackers, the city's original professional baseball team played ball on the fields of Piedmont Park before moving to a stadium on Ponce de Leon Avenue.
### The Olmsted plan
The year 1904 for was a watershed time for the park. The preceding year, the prominent Atlantan George Washington Collier died. Collier had owned 202 acres (0.82 km<sup>2</sup>) of land to the west and north of the park that was sold for \$300,000 to developers. The city bought the park for \$98,000 in 1904, incorporating Piedmont Park into Atlanta's city limits. Mayor Evan Howell agreed to purchase the park, but only if it included those developed areas adjacent to the park which would add approximately \$35,000 to \$40,000 in tax revenues annually.
The main developer of Collier's land was Edwin Ansley, who created the Ansley Park subdivision under the guidelines set by the Olmsteds. The result was curvy streets surrounding "mini-parks" comprising a total of 25 acres (100,000 m<sup>2</sup>). In 1912, these parks were deeded to the city.
In 1909, the sons of Frederick Law Olmsted, landscape architect for Central Park in New York, Carey and Frederick Jr. were asked to design the park's master plan while they were at work on Grant Park. The city agreed to pay \$1,800 for the plan, but Olmsted was concerned that Atlanta might not have enough money for the necessary improvements.
In 1910, the brothers submitted a plan for the park that was to include a 5-mile (8.0 km) scenic path and driveways that would link Piedmont Park to the streets of Ansley Park. Joining the parks was a success and thereafter, the parks were known as Twin Parks. Although never fully implemented, the Olmsted plan had a great effect on the development in the surrounding area.
### 20th-century growth and development
The park's first bathhouse was opened in 1911. Swimming in the lake was allowed until 1973, when the city opened a pool in the park. The same year the first bathhouse was opened, the Peace Monument, a Confederate monument, was dedicated in the park, near the 14th Street gate.
On January 29, 1913, Calvin Shelverton applied for a building permit to construct the Piedmont Park Apartments. The apartments were designed by Leila Ross Wilburn and were decidedly middle-class unlike some of the other developments in the area. The apartments remained middle-class up until about 1960, and residents included such prominent Atlantans as accounting company president T. C. Dunlap and lawyer J. B. Stewart. In 1913, seven clay courts were built where the 1895 Cotton States and International Exposition's Manufacturers and Liberal Arts Building once was. Eight more courts were added in 1914 to accommodate the overwhelming demand. That same year, the Sidney Lanier Monument was dedicated in the park.
Notable additions and buildings include the bandstand, built in 1915; a picnic shelter constructed by the WPA in 1936; the Steffen Thomas-designed Pioneer Women memorial in 1938; the Noguchi Playscapes, completed in 1976 under the aegis of the High Museum and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and designed by world-renowned artist and sculptor Isamu Noguchi, noteworthy as the only public work by Noguchi in the U.S. In 2002, the dog park was opened.
Playscapes underwent restoration in 2005 under Eddie Granderson, public arts manager of the City of Atlanta. Jablonski Berkowitz Conservation Inc. was selected to do the restoration and assessments began in September of that year. The company was charged with bringing the playground up to safety codes and restoring the original paint.
### 2008 drought
In January 2008, city officials announced that the Peachtree Road Race, Atlanta Pride Festival, the Atlanta Jazz Festival, and the Dogwood Festival would not be held in the park due to extreme drought. Some festivals which don't make use of green space were still allowed in the park. The Atlanta Arts Festival ran from September 12–14, 2008, and utilized only paved areas. Other festivals were temporarily moved to alternate venues, such as Centennial Olympic Park. The drought in Atlanta ended by late 2009. In 2010, several events returned to Piedmont Park, including the Dogwood Festival, the Jazz Festival, and Screen on the Green.
### 2011 expansion
Approximately 50 acres (20 ha) in the northwest portion of the 187-acre (76 ha) park had remained woodlands into the 21st century. In 2007, a park expansion plan called for a new parking deck as well as "open green space, bicycle and walking trails, formal and community gardens, an interactive water feature, children's playgrounds, a skate park, athletic fields, and woodlands". The project was expected to cost \$72 million.
On April 23, 2008, a ground-breaking ceremony was held at the Bathhouse for the 53-acre (21 ha) expansion of the Park. The pool and bathhouse are part of a huge Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) renovation that cost around \$7.8 million and was completed in early summer 2009. The renovation features accessibility, a warming kitchen, WiFi, a pool with beach entry, bubblers, current channel, vortex, fountains, separate splash pad, lap lanes, landscaped deck environment, and concessions. A new area featuring a Bocce ball court and green space with an arbor opened in May 2010.
On April 12, 2011, Mayor Kasim Reed cut the ribbon to open the first phase of a major expansion into the northern third of the park. Areas opened include two oval-shaped plazas ("The Greensward" and "The Promenade", which contains the interactive Legacy Fountain), the Lower Meadow, the Six Springs Wetlands, and a vastly expanded dog park.
### 2013 expansion
Construction began in early 2013 on areas at the far north of the park, including The Northwoods, Piedmont Commons, and Piedmont Gardens. New park entrances are to be added at the eastern end of Westminster Dr. (off Piedmont Ave.), the northern end of Dutch Valley Pl., and at 1514 Monroe just south of Piedmont Ave., on the site of Agnes & Muriel's restaurant. Map There are already dirt trails that follow Clear Creek and the BeltLine Eastside Trail northwards connecting the 2011 and 2013 expansion areas and providing pedestrian access to the Ansley Mall area north of the park, and to the BeltLine trails going further north.
## Piedmont Park Conservancy
The Piedmont Park Conservancy is a 501(c) 3 non-profit organization that is in charge of park improvements and 90 percent of the Park's daily maintenance care and security. The Conservancy was founded in 1989 to revitalize the rapidly deteriorating park. Since then, it has raised and invested \$66 million in the restoration and enhancement of Piedmont Park and making it, once again, the most visited green space in Atlanta.
## Activities and facilities
### Outdoor activities
The park hosts several miles of paved paths suitable for walking, running, biking, and inline skating. Skate Escape across from the park at the 12th Street entrance rents both bikes and skates. On weekend afternoons, skateboarders and inline skaters often share the open, paved area inside the 12th Street entrance.
Piedmont Park has picnic shelters located just to the East of the north soccer field. There are also various picnic tables and benches throughout the park. Many visitors choose to picnic on the expansive lawns as well. The first grill in Piedmont Park was erected for the 1895 Cotton States Exposition where the administrative offices now sit. There are 22 grills throughout the park. No portable grills are allowed.
The Noguchi "Playscape" is located near the 12th Street Gate. The geometrically shaped, modernist playground includes a soaring swing set, slide, sand pit, climbing dome and more made of bright and exciting colors. Also in the park is a new playground known as Mayor's Grove. It was designed as a Boundless Playgrounds and features a high level of accessibility and interactive play.
### Sports
Piedmont Park is a popular place for organized sports. The Sharon E. Lester Tennis Center at Piedmont Park is a fully staffed, public facility with 12 lighted hard courts, offering leagues, lessons, and supplies.
The Active Oval has two softball fields, two soccer fields, and two beach volleyball courts, all ringed by a dirt running path. Kickball leagues also use the softball fields.
The park's swimming center, once closed for renovations, re-opened in summer of 2009.
### Fishing and the lake
The lake is located in the south east part of the park. Fishing is permitted in the lake, which is stocked with large mouth bass, crappie, bream, and catfish. A 2002 renovation of the lake added a new bridge connecting the two bodies of water and three fishing piers located around the lake.
Clara Meer Dock is located at the west corner of the lake. Just above the Dock sits the historic Visitor Center building. Clara Meer Dock forms an amphitheater-like space nestled into the western end of the lake. Clara Meer Dock is often used for wedding ceremonies. Rental of the dock also includes the Visitor's Center. The Visitor's Center features a barrel ceiling with a painted mural called "A Day at the Park" by Ralph Gilbert. The center seats 40 persons inside and over 200 more on the adjoining lawn and dock. The Dock seats up to 120 for ceremony, or up to 100 for table dining or possible dance floor area.
### Dogs
With the exception of some festival weekends and special events, dogs are permitted in Piedmont Park, on leashes 6 feet (1.8 m) or shorter for safety reasons. Owners must clean up after their dogs, and the park has a half-dozen plastic bag dispensing stations to facilitate this. Several of the park's water fountains also have a ground-level basin for dogs to use.
Just north of the Park Road entrance bridge are two fenced-in Dog Parks that equal to three acres where friendly dogs (and their owners) can cavort with each other off-leash. Brand new, vastly expanded parks for small and large dogs were opened in April 2011.
The Piedmont Park Conservancy (a nonprofit) was responsible for the restoration of the Piedmont Park Dog Parks, and still manages the dog parks today.
### Special events
Piedmont Park is a central focal point of Atlanta's Midtown community. The park is home to various annual celebrations and events, including Atlanta Pride Festival, the Atlanta Jazz Festival, the Atlanta Dogwood Festival, Music Midtown, Atlanta Black Pride, and Festival Peachtree Latino. A summer series of classic films, Screen on the Green, is also aired in the park for local residents.
On the weekend and holidays, the park comes alive with music, intramural sports, and fun festivities. In 2004, Georgia Shakespeare Festival added an annual series of free performances entitled "Shake on the Lake" with Lake Clara Meer as a backdrop. A centennial celebration was held for the park in June 2004. In 2007, the Allman Brothers Band and Dave Matthews Band played a concert with proceeds benefiting the planned expansion to the park. Dave Matthews Band's performance was later released as a live DVD as well as their eighth live album, Live at Piedmont Park. Sir Paul McCartney performed in Piedmont Park to benefit the conservancy on August 15, 2009. The Eagles performed at the park on October 16, 2010, also as a benefit for the conservancy. In 2011, Music Midtown returned from its five-year hiatus, hosting headliners Coldplay and The Black Keys in Piedmont Park, however the 2022 concert was cancelled due to a lawsuit concerning firearms access.
## Park schedule
The park is open from 6:00 AM to 11:00 PM every day.
## See also
- 10-minute walk
- Park conservancy |
681,811 | Alapalooza | 1,156,113,462 | null | [
"\"Weird Al\" Yankovic albums",
"1993 albums",
"Rock 'n Roll Records albums",
"Scotti Brothers Records albums"
]
| Alapalooza is the eighth studio album by "Weird Al" Yankovic, released in 1993. By the completion of his previous album, Off the Deep End, Yankovic had already written all of the original songs that he planned to use on his next release. This new album, which would eventually be titled Alapalooza in reference to the music festival Lollapalooza, consisted of seven original songs and five parodies. It produced three parody singles: "Jurassic Park", "Bedrock Anthem", and "Achy Breaky Song". "Jurassic Park" was a top five hit on the Canadian magazine The Record's single chart.
Among the album's original creations were "Talk Soup", a tune originally intended to replace the theme song of the television show of the same name, and "Harvey the Wonder Hamster", an oft-requested jingle from one of Yankovic's Al TV specials. A music video compilation, entitled Alapalooza: the Videos, was released the following year and contained four videos, only two of which were from its eponymous album. One of the videos, the one for "Jurassic Park", was animated entirely in the style of claymation and received a nomination for the Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video at the 37th Grammy Awards, losing to "Love Is Strong" from the Rolling Stones.
Alapalooza met with average to negative reception upon its release, with some critics commenting that the album seemed hurried and out of touch with contemporary music. The video offering received a similarly lukewarm response. Nonetheless, the album was certified "gold" in the United States by the Recording Industry Association of America by the end of the year, peaking at number 46 on the Billboard 200, and went "double platinum" in Canada.
## Production
### Background
Yankovic's 1992 album Off the Deep End, his best-selling album since 1984's "Weird Al" Yankovic in 3-D, had revived his career and displayed his "credibility as an evolving artist" after the commercial failures of his 1986 work Polka Party! and his feature film UHF. By the time production for Off the Deep End was nearing completion, Yankovic had already written all of the original songs that would be eventually included on Alapalooza. Fearing that his track "I Was Only Kidding" would be outdated by the time of his next album, he rearranged Off the Deep End to allow for the song to be released with the album, saving "Waffle King" for Alapalooza. Nevertheless, "Waffle King" was released as a B-side to Off the Deep End's "Smells Like Nirvana" single, "just in case there wasn't going to be a next album".
Yankovic recorded all of the album's original songs, except "Talk Soup" and "Harvey the Wonder Hamster", by the end of 1992 and, in July 1993, recorded all of Alapalooza's remaining tracks, aside from "Livin' in the Fridge". Yankovic eventually decided to title his new album Alapalooza, a reference to the Lollapalooza music festival. The Yankovic dinosaur in the album's booklet was designed by David Peters, who had worked previously with the singer on the "Dare to Be Stupid" video.
Alapalooza was released on October 5, 1993, in the United States. Globally, some versions included a notice distinguishing it from the official Jurassic Park film soundtrack, as the two cover designs were similar. The Japanese edition contained a bonus track of Yankovic singing "Jurassic Park" in Japanese. A music video compilation for the album, entitled Alapalooza: the Videos, was released in February 1994 and contained four videos, only two of which ("Jurassic Park" and "Bedrock Anthem") were from Alapalooza.
### Originals
Alapalooza contains seven original songs among its twelve tracks, although "Young, Dumb & Ugly" and "Frank's 2000" TV" were meant to be stylistic parodies of AC/DC and the early work of R.E.M., respectively. For the former, Yankovic wanted to parody the heavy metal music genre while at the same time avoiding a repetition of what had already been done by Spinal Tap. He ended up disliking the final product because he sang it "in a register that was really too high for [his] singing voice". The latter was a song about consumerism and modern electronics that described the neighborhood's envy of the eponymous character's new television.
The song "Talk Soup", which is about a man who desires to go on television to tell the world about his strange life, was originally commissioned as a new theme for the E! Entertainment Television show of the same name. Although the producers approved the lyrics and enjoyed the result, they decided against using it. "Waffle King", the track that had been intended for Off the Deep End, was written as "a song about a guy who becomes incredibly famous for doing something kinda stupid, and then starts taking himself way too seriously". Yankovic included "Harvey the Wonder Hamster", a short tune from one of his Al TV appearances, after receiving numerous requests to include it on an album.
### Parodies
Yankovic's first single from Alapalooza was "Jurassic Park", a parody of the Jimmy Webb song "MacArthur Park" that was first performed by Richard Harris in 1968. After hearing "Lola" by The Kinks on the radio and recalling how much he had enjoyed his previous pairing of a contemporary film with a classic song (1985's "Yoda"), Yankovic came up with the idea for a tune based around the recently released Jurassic Park film. He received permission from Webb, Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton, and director Steven Spielberg to produce the track. For the music video Yankovic collaborated with animators Mark Osborne and Scott Nordlund to produce a claymation feature that parodied scenes from the movie; the song itself was a comedic retelling of the film's plot interspersed with the gripes about his visit to the park. The music video was directed by Osborne and Nordlund, while Yankovic came up with the original concept and ideas for some of the shots; Osborne said that the directors "came up with about half the ideas in collaboration" with Yankovic.
Having always wanted to write a tribute to The Flintstones, Yankovic next focused his energy on creating a song that he hoped would be current with the impending release of The Flintstones live action film in 1994. In order to collect sound bites and animation and "re-familiarize" himself with the characters, Yankovic watched over 100 episodes of the original show. A parody of both Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Under the Bridge" and "Give It Away", the resulting song was a comedic tribute to the program. It ended up becoming the second single released from Alapalooza. Yankovic directed the video for the single, which featured scenes of band members playing the song in Bedrock dressed as characters from the show. In the third and final single, "Achy Breaky Song", a parody of Billy Ray Cyrus' "Achy Breaky Heart", Yankovic lists things he would rather experience than having to listen to the original track. The parody received radio play on country music stations in the United States. The proceeds from the track were donated to United Cerebral Palsy, as both Don Von Tress (the songwriter of "Achy Breaky Heart") and Yankovic felt that the parody was "a little bit [...] mean-spirited".
"Livin' in the Fridge", a parody of Aerosmith's "Livin' on the Edge" that discusses leftovers that have grown sentient in the refrigerator, was the last song to be recorded for the album. With a deadline looming, Yankovic sent requests to several artists to do parodies of their songs. He ultimately went with Aerosmith because they replied first. It was recorded a month after the rest of the tracks had been finalized and less than two months prior to the album's release. The album includes a polka medley, a staple of Yankovic's albums, called "Bohemian Polka". Unlike previous medleys, which had featured portions of multiple songs, "Bohemian Polka" contains only one tune, Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody", and is a rearrangement of the entire song as a polka.
## Reception
### Critical reception
Critical response to Alapalooza ranged from average to negative. In (The New) Rolling Stone Album Guide, Alapalooza earned 2.5 stars out of 5, which ranked it somewhere between "mediocre" and "good". Anthony Violanti of The Buffalo News gave the album three stars out of five, claiming that "[o]nce again, Weird Al gets the last laugh on rock 'n' roll". Barry Weber of AllMusic, on the other hand, criticized the album for failing to engage contemporary musical trends and said it "sounds sloppy and mostly like a compilation of old B-sides". In reference to the album's polka tune, Mark Jenkins of The Washington Post wrote that it "doesn't sound all that different" from the original.
Entertainment Weekly felt that overall Alapalooza: the Videos was "amusing", but referred to the claymation video for the "Jurassic Park" as "clever but toothless". The magazine gave the collection an overall grade of "C" and argued that Yankovic's parodies did not satirize the original material, but instead transposed new elements on top of them. The video for "Jurassic Park" was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video at the 37th Grammy Awards, but lost to the video for "Love Is Strong" by the Rolling Stones. Nonetheless, it received attention in animation festivals worldwide for its use of claymation effects.
### Commercial performance
Released in October 1993, Alapalooza was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America on December 23, 1993, representing sales of at least 500,000 units. The video compilation, released on February 1, 1994, went gold in the United States on August 14, 1995, representing sales of at least 50,000 units. In Canada the album went gold on November 16, 1993, platinum on January 31, 1994, and double platinum on February 12, 1998, representing sales of 50,000, 100,000, and 200,000 units respectively. The album peaked at number 46 on the United States' Billboard 200 chart on October 30, 1993, but produced no charting singles. In Canada, however, "Jurassic Park" was a top five hit on The Record's single chart. As of 2014, sales in the United States have exceeded 873,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
## Track listing
## Personnel
Credits adapted from CD liner notes.
Band members
- "Weird Al" Yankovic – lead and background vocals, keyboards, accordion
- Jim West – guitars, banjo, mandolin, background vocals
- Steve Jay – bass guitar, background vocals
- Jon "Bermuda" Schwartz – drums, percussion
Additional musicians
- Rubén Valtierra – keyboards
- Brad Buxer – keyboards, orchestral arrangements and programming (track 1)
- Warren Luening – trumpet
- Joel Peskin – clarinet, baritone saxophone
- Tommy Johnson – tuba
- Julia Waters – background vocals
- Maxine Waters – background vocals
- Sandy Berman – dinosaur sound effects
- "Musical Mike" Kieffer – musical hands
- Alan Reed – voice of Fred Flintstone
- Mel Blanc – voice of Barney Rubble and Dino
Technical
- "Weird Al" Yankovic – producer
- Tony Papa – engineer, mixing
- Colin Sauers – assistant engineer
- Jamie Dell – assistant engineer
- Bernie Grundman – mastering
- Spencer Proffer – executive producer (track 7)
- Doug Haverty – art direction
- Command A Studios – design
- David Peters – dinosaur imagery
- David Westwood – logo design
- Rocky Schenck – inside photography
## Charts and certifications
### Charts
### Certifications
### Singles |
66,663,528 | Jeremy Pemberton (priest) | 1,164,208,414 | Anglican priest | [
"1956 births",
"20th-century English LGBT people",
"21st-century Church of England clergy",
"21st-century English Anglican priests",
"21st-century English LGBT people",
"Alumni of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge",
"Canons (priests)",
"English gay men",
"LGBT Anglican clergy",
"Living people"
]
| Jeremy Charles Baring Pemberton (born 1956) is a British Anglican priest who was the first priest in the Church of England to enter into a same-sex marriage when he married another man in 2014. As same-sex marriages are not accepted by the church (its canon law defines marriage as between one man and one woman), he was denied a job as a chaplain for the National Health Service by John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York. Before then, he had been an Anglican priest for 33 years.
He sued the church on employment discrimination grounds. However, a tribunal upheld his dismissal, saying that being a Church of England chaplain meant that Pemberton had to uphold that church's views on marriage. The tribunal also said that the Equality Act in England and Wales allowed for religious exemptions to laws that protect people from being fired because of their sexual orientation. The dismissal was upheld on appeal by the Court of Appeal in 2018.
## Early life and ordained ministry
Pemberton was born in 1956. He studied at Merton College, Oxford, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in 1977: as per tradition, his BA was promoted to a Master of Arts (MA Oxon) degree. From 1978 to 1981, he trained for ordination at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, an evangelical Anglican theological college. He also studied theology at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, graduating with a further BA in 1980.
Pemberton was ordained in the Church of England as a deacon in 1981 and as a priest in 1982, when he was 25. From 1981 to 1984, he served his curacy at All Saints' Church, Stranton in the Diocese of Durham. He then served a second curacy at St George's Church, Leeds, in the Diocese of Ripon and Leeds. From 1987 to 1991, he was a Church Mission Society mission partner.
By 2005, after teaching theology in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), he became an honorary canon of Boga-Zaire in the DRC. He was also an honorary canon of Ely in Cambridgeshire while he worked as team rector of 13 parishes in West Cambridgeshire.
## Marriage
### Background
The Equality Act 2010 prohibits discrimination based on protected characteristics in the act, including sexual orientation. However, the Church of England and other religious groups that do not agree with same-sex relationships are allowed to not employ gay people if they are sexually active or in civil partnerships. Same-sex marriage in England and Wales began in late March 2014, when the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 came into force.
In April 2014, Pemberton married his partner Laurence Cunnington; Pemberton met Cunnington on a support website for gay fathers in 2008 and both had been previously married to women for several decades. The marriage occurred despite an official ban on same-sex marriages from the Church of England's House of Bishops in February 2014, who instead allowed civil partnerships between members of the same gender, within a celibate relationship. The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 meant that religious institutions which do not agree with same-sex marriage—such as the Church of England, which defines marriage as between one man and one woman in its canon law—did not have to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies. These exemptions came following extensive lobbying by conservative Anglicans.
### Chaplaincy move and legal action
In 2014, Pemberton lived in Southwell and preached in Southwell Minster. He had a job as a hospital chaplain in the Diocese of Lincoln for an NHS trust (an organisational trust within the National Health Service (NHS)) in Lincolnshire but sought work closer to home at King's Mill Hospital. Pemberton spoke to the Bishop of Lincoln, Christopher Lowson, prior to his move. Lowson had no initial objections but later issued an official written rebuke to the couple.
The Archbishop of York, John Sentamu (whose ecclesiastical jurisdiction included Southwell), an opponent of same-sex marriage, opposed Pemberton's move. Following consultation with Sentamu, Bishop Richard Inwood refused Pemberton permission to officiate (PTO) in the Diocese of Southwell and Nottingham. A PTO is only rarely revoked, usually only when the law is broken. As a result, the NHS refused his chaplaincy at King's Mill Hospital, though he still worked for the Lincolnshire NHS trust.
In response, Pemberton threatened legal action against the church. This led to a tribunal. Pemberton approached three barristers and the church hired the law firm Herbert Smith Freehills. At the tribunal, a registrar of the Diocese of London, a solicitor for Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, a legal secretary from the church's general synod, and a legal representative of the church's pensions board were present, among others. Tom Linden QC, representing the church, took an aggressive line against Pemberton, calling him "errant", "not in good standing" and heavily chastising him for crying over the revocation of his PTO.
The tribunal upheld the church's position, saying that supporting the church's position on same-sex marriage was a requirement of being a Church of England chaplain, and that the act allows religious groups exemptions in anti-employment discrimination law. This judgement was criticised by the LGBT rights activist Peter Tatchell and the LGBT rights charity Stonewall.
Pemberton appealed the decision, but the Employment Appeal Tribunal dismissed his appeal in 2016. The Court of Appeal also dismissed his case in 2018.
Precisely five years after his marriage, Equal, the Campaign for Equal Marriage in the Church of England, was founded to end bans on same-sex marriages in churches and to allow clergy to marry people of the same sex. |
23,744,269 | CMLL Arena Coliseo Tag Team Championship | 1,123,406,184 | Professional wrestling tag team championship | [
"Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre championships",
"Regional professional wrestling championships",
"Tag team wrestling championships"
]
| The CMLL Arena Coliseo Tag Team Championship (Spanish: Campeonato de Parejas de la Arena Coliseo del CMLL) is a professional wrestling Tag team championship promoted by the Mexican Lucha Libre wrestling based promotion Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (CMLL) since 2000. The championship is considered a revival of the EMLL Arena Coliseo Tag Team Championship that was used in the 1960s and 1970s when CMLL was known as "Empresa Mexicana de Lucha Libre" (EMLL). The CMLL Arena Coliseo Tag Team Championship is considered a secondary championship, with the CMLL World Tag Team Championship being the primary championship for the tag team division in CMLL. As it is a professional wrestling championship, its holders are determined by promoters or promotions, not by athletic competition. As the name indicates the championship is intended to be defended in Arena Coliseo in Mexico City; one of CMLL's primary venues.
There are no current holders of the championship as it was declared vacant on April 29, 2020. The decision was made after one-half of the then-reigning champions Tritón, who held it with Esfinge, had left CMLL several months prior. The company announced that they would hold a tournament at a future date. Esfinge and Tritón were the ninth championship team since Arena Coliseo championship was revived in 2000.
## Background
The Arena Coliseo Tag Team Championship was originally created in the late 1960s or early 1970s by Empresa Mexicana de Lucha Libre (EMLL; who would change their name to CMLL around 1990) as a secondary title to the Mexican National Tag Team Championship, which was the promotion's top tag team title at the time. Records of champions from that era are sparse with no records of who was the first champion; nor are there any records of exactly when the title was abandoned in the 1980s. Due to sparse record keeping of local wrestling in Mexico between the 1960s and early 1980s no clear history exists from that time, it has been verified that Los Villanos (Villano I and Villano II), Kung Fu and Kato Kung Lee, and the team of Dios Rojo and Dios Negro all held the Arena Coliseo Tag Team Championship due to references to the teams defending the championship at an EMLL show.
The Championship was revived in 2000, and was mainly contested for by younger or lower ranked wrestlers than those that challenged for the CMLL World Tag Team Championship. The first champions were found via a one night, eight-team tournament held to determine the first CMLL Arena Coliseo Tag Team Champions. On the night, the team of brothers Alan and Chris Stone (sometimes billed as "Motorcross") defeated the teams of Neutron and La Flecha, Ricky Marvin and Sombra de Plata and finally Fugaz and Virus to become the first CMLL Arena Coliseo Tag Team Champions in the modern era. The Stone brothers defended the title until 2002, after which the championship was barely mentioned, much less promoted by CMLL. The title is considered inactive after the Stone brothers' last recorded title defense on October 22, 2002, against Valetin Mayo and Karloff Lagarde Jr. When both Stone brothers left CMLL in 2005 to work for AAA the championship was finally declared vacant.
In June 2008 CMLL announced that they were bringing the CMLL Arena Coliseo Tag Team Championship back. A 16-team tournament was held to crown new champions, the competitors were a mixture of regular teams and random parings of CMLL low to mid-card workers. The preliminary rounds were held on June 22, 2008, and saw the teams of Stuka Jr. and Flash (Collectively known as Los Bombadieros; "The Bombardiers") and Los Infernales ("The Infernal Ones"; Euforia and Nosferatu) each win three matches to qualify for the final. On June 28, 2008, Stuka Jr. and Flash defeated Los Infernales to become the second CMLL Arena Coliseum Tag Team Champions of the modern age. Flash later changed his ring name to "Fuego". On March 3, 2013, La Fiebre Amarilla ("The Yellow Fever"; Namajague and Okumura) defeated Fuego and Stuka Jr. to become the third modern age CMLL Arena Coliseo Tag Team Champions, ending the previous champions' four and a half year reign. On November 4, 2013, Delta and Guerrero Maya Jr. became the fourth modern age Arena Coliseo Tag Team Champions. After a long-running rivalry with the then-champions Delta and Guerrero Maya Jr., La Comando Caribeño ("The Caribbean Commando"; Misterioso Jr. and Sagrado) became the fifth modern day Arena Coliseo Tag Team Champions on February 28, 2015.
## Reigns
The championship is currently vacant, as CMLL announced that the previous championship team of Esfinge and Tritón, had been stripped of the championship and a tournament would be held at a future date. The decision was made several months after Tritón had left CMLL.
Guerrero Maya Jr. is the only wrestler to have two documented title reigns during the CMLL-era, as he previously held the titles with Delta. No team has held the championship more than once after it was brought back in 2000, but records indicate that team of Kung Fu and Kato Kung Lee held the championship on at least two separate occasions, possibly more. The current champions are also the shortest reigning champions of the modern age, , second to only to Namajague and Okumura's reign of 245 days, but will surpass that if they remain champions until August 28, 2017. Los Bombardieros reign is the longest of the modern age, 1,708 days although there were extended periods of time where the championship went undefended. Black Terry, who was 64 years old at the time of his title victory, is the oldest person to win the Arena Coliseo Tag Team Championship. The Panther was seventeen or eighteen years old at the time he won the championship, making him the youngest champion of at least the CMLL-era and possibly in the history of the championship. In 2005, after both Stone brothers left CMLL to work for AAA, the championship was finally declared vacant.
## Rules
The CMLL Arena Coliseo Tag Team Championship is designed for tag team competition only, teams of two, and has not allowed neither individual wrestlers to hold the championship by themselves nor teams of three to share the championship. The championship is considered a secondary championship for the tag team division; with the CMLL World Tag Team Championship being the primary championship for the tag team division in CMLL. As it is a professional wrestling championship, its holders are determined by promoters or promotions, not by athletic competition.
CMLL promotes a number of championships with the "world" label as well as a number of championships restricted by geographical locations such as the Mexican National Championships, or the Guadalajara specific Occidente championships, but the CMLL Arena Coliseo Tag Team Championship was created specifically for Arena Coliseo in Mexico City. Arena Coliseo was once CMLL's primary venue with CMLL founder Salvador Lutteroth financing the construction of the building in the 1940s. While CMLL also promotes shows in "Arena Coliseo" in Guadalajara on a regular basis, and occasionally in other regional Arena Coliseos across Mexico it has restricted championship matches to Arena Coliseo in Mexico City. CMLL has only allowed the championship to be defended outside of Arena Coliseo in Mexico City on a few occasions, primarily in Arena México when the regularly scheduled Arena Coliseo shows had to be moved. In January 2016, CMLL allowed the championship to be defended in Korakuen Hall in Tokyo, as part of the Fantastica Mania 2016 tour. The championship has only been won and lost in Arena Coliseo, except for when Black Terry and Negro Navarro won the championship in Arena Naucalpan.
## Tournaments
### 2000
CMLL held a one-night, eight-team tournament on November 7, 2000, to determine the first CMLL Arena Coloseo Tag Team Champions of the modern era, bringing the titles back after abandoning them in the 1980s.
### 2008
CMLL held a 16-team tournament in 2008; the top half of the bracket took place on June 15, the bottom half on June 19 and the finals took place on June 29, 2008.
### 2018
On February 14, 2018, then Arena Coliseo tag team champions Nuevo Generacion Dinamitas (El Cuatrero and Sansón) announced that they were giving up the championship to focus on a tournament for the vacant CMLL World Tag Team Championship that had just been announced. CMLL held a 16-team elimination tournament starting on February 24, 2018, with subsequent tournament matches taking place on March 5 and the finals on March 11. In the end Esfinge and Tritón defeated Disturbio and Virus to win the vacant championship.
## Title history
## Combined reigns
Key |
26,066,412 | Paul Krichell | 1,158,670,795 | French-American baseball player | [
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"1957 deaths",
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"French emigrants to the United States",
"Hartford Senators players",
"Kansas City Blues (baseball) players",
"Major League Baseball catchers",
"Montreal Royals players",
"New York Yankees scouts",
"Newark Indians players",
"Newark Sailors players",
"Plattsburgh (baseball) players",
"Richmond Climbers players",
"St. Louis Browns players",
"Toronto Maple Leafs (International League) players"
]
| Paul Bernard Krichell (December 19, 1882 – June 4, 1957) was a Major League Baseball catcher, best known for being the head scout for the New York Yankees for 37 years until his death. Krichell's talent evaluations and signings played a key role in building up the Yankees' run of success from the Murderers' Row teams of the 1920s to the 1950s teams led by Casey Stengel.
Krichell began his professional career in the minor leagues, playing as the reserve catcher for the St. Louis Browns before a serious injury threatened his career. He continued to play in the minor leagues and began to move into coaching before Yankees manager Ed Barrow signed him as a scout in 1920. Considered one of the greatest scouts in baseball history, Krichell signed over 200 players who later played professional baseball, including future Baseball Hall of Famers Lou Gehrig, Hank Greenberg, Phil Rizzuto, Whitey Ford, and Tony Lazzeri. His recommendation of Stengel as the Yankees manager was instrumental in Stengel's appointment in 1948. Barrow called Krichell "the best judge of baseball players he ever saw".
## Early life
Krichell was born in Paris, France, the son of a German cabinetmaker and youngest of nine children. He grew up in The Bronx, near the site of the future Yankee Stadium. Krichell made his professional baseball debut in 1903 as a catcher with the Ossining, New York, club in the Hudson River League's inaugural season. He moved to the Hartford Senators of the Connecticut League in 1906 and spent most of the following three years with the Newark Indians of the Eastern League. For the latter part of the 1909 season and the whole of 1910, Krichell played for the Montreal Royals at third base. In 1910, he played 102 games for the team, achieving a batting average of .249 and hitting 14 doubles. Krichell began his long association with manager Ed Barrow that year when the latter took charge of the Royals.
## Playing and managing career
In 1911, Krichell joined the St. Louis Browns as a reserve catcher, playing 28 games with a .232 batting average, 19 hits and 8 runs batted in during 82 at bats. The following year, he managed 59 games while sharing catching duties with Jim Stephens. In 161 at bats, Krichell achieved 35 hits and a .217 batting average. His fielding percentage was .959 that season. Ty Cobb of the Detroit Tigers stole second, third, and home plate in the same inning of a game while Krichell was catching. In a later game, a famous photograph captures Cobb appearing to Intentionally be flying foot-first into Krichell’s crotch while the catcher squints in pained anticipation. There is a 1950s interview with Krichell, and by his own testimony, Cobb was aiming his foot at the ball in Krichell’s glove, and succeeded in knocking it to the backstop. “The ball hit the grandstand on the fly. I was mad and stunned. Cobb was mad and shaken. In a way it was really my fault. I was standing in front of the plate, instead of on the side, where I could tag Ty as he slid in. But out of that mix-up I learned one thing: never stand directly in front of the plate when Cobb was roaring for home.”
After the 1912 season, the Browns released Krichell, but after recovering from his injury, he played six seasons in the minor leagues. He was the starting catcher for the Buffalo Bisons in 1914 when Babe Ruth made his professional debut with the Baltimore Orioles, hitting a double and a single against his pitching. From 1917 to 1918, Krichell served as manager for Bridgeport of the Eastern League, making several playing appearances over the two seasons. He resigned on June 27, 1918, after two wins were forfeited when he used a player not under contract. He worked in the shipyards during the First World War. During the offseason, Krichell became the owner of a saloon popular with players in the Bronx, before Prohibition forced Krichell to close and return to baseball. For the 1919 season, he coached the New York University baseball team, and after the season ended, he signed with Ed Barrow to become a coach and scout for the Boston Red Sox in the following season.
## Scouting career
Prior to the 1921 season, Barrow was appointed general manager of the New York Yankees and requested that Krichell join him as a full-time scout. At the time, the Yankees had a two-man scouting rotation, and Barrow believed the appointment of Krichell would improve the scouting staff. The first player signed by Krichell was Hinkey Haines, an outfielder from Penn State University. He signed catcher Benny Bengough from Buffalo of the International League, and Charlie Caldwell, a Princeton University graduate. Caldwell was used mainly as a batting practice pitcher, appearing in just three games in his major league career. During one practice, Caldwell fractured Wally Pipp's skull with a high fastball, allowing Lou Gehrig to assume Pipp's place in the starting lineup.
### Discovery of Gehrig
Early in the 1923 season, while traveling to New Brunswick, New Jersey, for a baseball game between Columbia University and Rutgers University, Krichell shared a train with the manager of the Columbia squad, Andy Coakley. They discussed Lou Gehrig, a left-handed pitcher on his squad who could also hit, and later that day, Gehrig hit two home runs in three at-bats. Following the game, Krichell spoke with Barrow, saying he had found the "next Babe Ruth". Skeptical, Barrow sent Krichell to watch Columbia's next game against New York University, where Gehrig hit a home run that reportedly went out of the stadium. After the game, Krichell persuaded Gehrig to sign for the Yankees for \$2,000 (\$ in 2010) for the remainder of 1923, with a \$1,500 bonus (\$ in 2010). Krichell also asked Gehrig to give up pitching to focus on being a hitter.
After joining up with the team for batting practice in June 1923, Gehrig was sent by Yankees manager Miller Huggins to the Hartford Senators. After a good start, Gehrig went through a long slump and suffered depression which led him to consider quitting baseball. Upon hearing this, Krichell was sent to Hartford to speak with the star player. He discovered that Gehrig was drinking, boosted his confidence and gave him batting advice, including one of Ty Cobb's batting tricks. Gehrig started hitting again, and eventually joined the Yankees.
## Later signings
### 1920s
Before the 1925 New York Yankees season, Babe Ruth collapsed at a train station in Asheville, North Carolina. Krichell's actions may have saved Ruth's life. On the instructions of Huggins, Krichell drove Ruth to hospital, before traveling with Ruth by train to New York, where Ruth had emergency surgery for an "intestinal abscess" that left him hospitalized for six weeks.
The same year, Krichell went to Hartford, Connecticut, to sign shortstop Leo Durocher for a \$7,500 bonus (\$ in 2010). When the deal was concluded, Barrow sent Krichell to Salt Lake City to watch young second baseman Tony Lazzeri, who played for the Salt Lake Bees of the Pacific Coast League and hit 60 home runs and achieved over 200 RBIs the previous season. The Bees were asking for \$50,000 (\$ in 2010), but several scouts placed his value ten times lower. The Chicago Cubs were given the option to sign him for a discounted rate, but declined because he had epilepsy. Krichell saw promise in the player and convinced Barrow to buy him. Around the same time, he helped acquire shortstop Mark Koenig from the Minneapolis Millers. These Krichell signings formed part of the 1927 New York Yankees team, considered by many to be the greatest team ever assembled. Four of the starters in this squad were signed by Krichell, including three-quarters of its infield and Mike Gazella, its main backup, who signed for \$500 in 1923 (\$ in 2010). The Yankees took just four games to defeat the Pittsburgh Pirates and win the 1927 World Series.
To assist at practice for the 1927 season, Krichell signed Billy Werber from Duke University. He left the team after a month, but re-signed after graduating in 1930. During that time, Krichell was involved in what is considered one of the worst deals from the era. Barrow asked him to travel to Durham, North Carolina, to negotiate with the Durham Bulls for an outfielder named Dusty Cooke. Neither Krichell nor Barrow had seen Cooke; he was believed to be a great hitter, even though he had hardly played for the Bulls. The Yankees signed him for \$15,000 (\$ in 2010), beating the Cleveland Indians' offer of \$12,500 (\$ in 2010) and an unnamed player in exchange. Cooke turned out to be an injury-prone backup outfielder, and the Yankees gave up on both Cooke and Werber. After the 1933 season, the two were traded to the Boston Red Sox for cash considerations.
In the summer of 1929, Krichell discovered Hank Greenberg while on a scouting trip in Massachusetts. Krichell believed Greenberg would be the next Lou Gehrig. Krichell offered Greenberg a \$10,000 contract (\$ in 2010) on the spot based on his potential and knowing the Yankees were looking for Jewish players to increase their Jewish fanbase. Greenberg discussed the deal with his father but declined it because he knew his opportunities would be limited by the presence of Gehrig as first baseman. Subsequently, he signed with the Detroit Tigers.
### 1930s
In the early 1930s, Krichell focused on Ivy League pitchers, saying he preferred signing pitchers who could think. From Harvard University, he signed Charlie Devens later saying he could have been great had he continued to play baseball, and from Yale University, he scouted pitcher Johnny Broaca who seemed to be heading for stardom after winning 12 games in his first three seasons with the Yankees, but suddenly retired to become a professional boxer. In 1935, a local scout who worked with Krichell placed Long Island University pitcher Marius Russo in a semi-professional team. When Krichell deemed Russo ready, he signed with the Yankees for \$750, twice becoming a 14-game winner and being an All-Star in 1941 before injuring his arm. Other Krichell signings from this period included Johnny Murphy, Hank Borowy and Johnny Allen. Murphy, a relief pitcher and four time saves leader, was signed while still in high school in the Bronx and at Krichell's behest, the Yankees followed Murphy's education at Fordham University, where he gained baseball experience. Krichell signed Borowy from Fordham University for \$8,500 and the player later became the ace for the Yankees during the wartime era. Krichell supposedly discovered Allen by a chance encounter when Allen worked as a desk clerk at a Sanford hotel. The story said he recognized Krichell as a scout, told him that he was a pitcher, and that he wanted to try out. Krichell agreed, and impressed by Allen's ability, signed him to a minor league contract. However, in an interview with J. G. Taylor Spink of The Sporting News, Krichell said while he signed Allen, he did not discover him.
Aside from his Ivy League pitcher focus, Krichell also unearthed several position players. He signed Charlie Keller, a highly touted prospect playing for the University of Maryland. To encourage Keller to sign, Krichell met and had dinner with his family. In 1937, Krichell signed shortstop Phil Rizzuto, who had tried out with the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants, but was dismissed by them on the grounds that he was too small. Even so, Krichell decided to look at the infielder and was impressed by the way Rizzuto accomplished double plays; his technique reminded Krichell of Leo Durocher, one of his favorite players. He signed Rizzuto for \$75 a month and sent him to the Yankees' farm club in Bassett, Virginia.
### 1940s–1950s
Krichell's next target was second baseman Snuffy Stirnweiss from the University of North Carolina. He initially tried to convince him to bypass football for baseball, but the player refused until his father's death soon after his college graduation altered his priorities, leaving him as the sole supporter of his mother and younger brother. Krichell signed him to a contract soon afterwards. In a mass tryout for the Yankees team, Krichell scouted first baseman Whitey Ford. Krichell realised Ford had a strong arm, and recommended he tried pitching. Developing an effective fast curveball, Ford helped his team win the New York City sandlot ball championship, and was signed by Krichell for \$7,000 in 1947 (\$ in 2010). Ford later became a Hall of Famer and an ace of the Yankees for most of the 1950s and 1960s.
Krichell played a factor in signing future All-Star Tommy Byrne. He was referred by one of his scouts, Gene McCann, to see Byrne pitch for Wake Forest University. Impressed with what he saw, Krichell signed him for \$10,000 (\$ in 2010). He also signed Red Rolfe and Vic Raschi. Krichell oversaw the expansion of the New York Yankees scouting staff from two men to more than twenty part-time scouts by 1957. Among the scouts he hired for the Yankees were former players Babe Herman, Atley Donald, Jake Flowers and Johnny Neun. As he hired more scouts, Krichell reduced his own role, becoming the chief scout and regional scout for the New England area.
In 1948, Krichell was involved in a minor scandal. Harry Nicolas was a high school baseball star in Long Island. The Yankees sent Krichell to scout him and offered him a contract with a blank check, being willing pay up to \$20,000 for his services. As Nicolas was still in high school, the Yankees were fined \$500 by Happy Chandler, the Commissioner of Baseball. Nicolas never reached the Majors. However, Krichell's recommendation of Casey Stengel for manager of the Yankees in 1948 was instrumental in their front office hiring him.
## Final days
In 1954, Krichell was honored by the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) with the William J. Slocum Memorial Award. Named after the former head sportswriter of the New York Journal American and president of the BBWAA, the award honored his longevity in baseball. The final players Krichell signed were two bonus babies: infielder Tom Carroll from Notre Dame University and Frank Leja, an 18-year-old first baseman. Krichell advised the Yankees staff to sign Carroll for \$30,000 (\$ in 2010) and he thought Leja could be the next Gehrig, but both flopped. By the time he retired, he was the most experienced employee still working for the Yankees.
Krichell died on June 4, 1957, at his home in the Bronx after a lengthy illness. He had surgery for Crohn's disease in 1955 after losing 60 pounds in 60 days. His wife of 50 years, Mary, died earlier in the year. He had one daughter, Caroline, and four grandchildren at the time of his death.
## Scouting style
When he first started his scouting career, Krichell followed the example of early baseball scouts. He traveled with the Yankees for spring training to view his signees playing baseball. When the Yankees traveled north to begin their season, Krichell usually followed. He also scouted the local newspapers to look for games in which potential prospects were playing.
Later, his style of scouting was used as a blueprint by scouts to evaluate players. He usually ignored the obvious tools such as ability to hit, size, speed, and human power, saying that "any dope" could see it. When he scouted a prospect, his top priority was checking that the subject could handle the pressure of playing Major League Baseball. When he got word of a promising player, he went to see him play. If Krichell liked what he saw, he discussed the player's goals and motivation with him and his family. He decided whether the player was ready for the Yankees or one of their farm teams to use. He tended to take a risk with players passed by other teams. He discounted some of a player's weaknesses if their remaining skills were up to par, for example with Tony Lazzeri, who was a poor fielder. Krichell also was one of the first to notice that intelligence mattered in a game filled with uneducated people. Most of his signings were college graduates who Krichell believed could take advantage of their ability to think.
At other times, Krichell collected some of the best prospects in an area, normally 300 or more, and put them through a four-day workout. It normally consisted of practice in the morning and a full game in the afternoon. There, Krichell and his staff sorted through players they believed could become useful in the organization, and dropped those they thought lacked motivation. The few players who survived the workout were assigned by Krichell to the Yankees Minor League hierarchy.
## Legacy
Krichell is considered one of the greatest scouts in baseball history. Birdie Tebbetts, a member of the Veterans Committee in the 1980s, led a campaign to have Krichell, along with fellow scouts Charlie Barrett and Hugh Alexander, inducted to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Under Hall of Fame rules, scouts are not eligible for induction. Tibbets appealed to the Hall of Fame Board of Directors every year from 1981 to 1986 to make the three scouts members of the Hall of Fame, but with no success. In The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, James awards the sarcastically-named "Paul Krichell Talent Scout Award" to an example of a team that has a good chance of signing a player who later becomes a star, who they end up passing on as the result of poor scouting. |
157,100 | Battle of Cape St. Vincent (1780) | 1,152,648,043 | 1780 naval battle between Great Britain and Spain | [
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| The Battle of Cape St. Vincent (Spanish: Batalla del Cabo de San Vicente) was a naval battle that took place off the southern coast of Portugal on 16 January 1780 during the American Revolutionary War. A British fleet under Admiral Sir George Rodney defeated a Spanish squadron under Don Juan de Lángara. The battle is sometimes referred to as the Moonlight Battle (batalla a la luz de la luna) because it was unusual for naval battles in the Age of Sail to take place at night. It was also the first major naval victory for the British over their European enemies in the war and proved the value of copper-sheathing the hulls of warships.
Admiral Rodney was escorting a fleet of supply ships to relieve the Spanish siege of Gibraltar with a fleet of about twenty ships of the line when he encountered Lángara's squadron south of Cape St. Vincent. When Lángara saw the size of the British fleet, he attempted to make for the safety of Cádiz, but the copper-sheathed British ships chased his fleet down. In a running battle that lasted from mid-afternoon until after midnight, the British captured four Spanish ships, including Lángara's flagship Real Fénix (often just called "Fenix"). Two other ships were also captured, but they were retaken by their Spanish crews, although Rodney's report claimed the ships were grounded and destroyed; in fact one went aground and was destroyed, while the other safely returned to Cadiz and resumed service with the Spanish Navy.
After the battle Rodney successfully resupplied Gibraltar and Minorca before continuing on to the West Indies station. Lángara was released on parole, and was promoted to lieutenant general by King Carlos III.
## Background
One of Spain's principal goals upon its entry into the American War of Independence in 1779 was the recovery of Gibraltar, which had been lost to Great Britain in 1704. The Spanish planned to retake Gibraltar by blockading and starving out its garrison, which included troops from Britain and the Electorate of Hanover. The siege formally began in June 1779, with the Spanish establishing a land blockade around the Rock of Gibraltar. The matching naval blockade was comparatively weak, however, and the British discovered that small fast ships could evade the blockaders, while slower and larger supply ships generally could not. By late 1779, however, supplies in Gibraltar had become seriously depleted, and its commander, General George Eliott, appealed to London for relief. A supply convoy was organized, and in late December 1779 a large fleet sailed from England under the command of Admiral Sir George Brydges Rodney. Although Rodney's ultimate orders were to command the West Indies fleet, he had secret instructions to first resupply Gibraltar and Minorca. On 4 January 1780 the fleet divided, with ships headed for the West Indies sailing westward. This left Rodney in command of 19 ships of the line, which were to accompany the supply ships to Gibraltar.
On 8 January 1780 ships from Rodney's fleet spotted a group of sails. Giving chase with their faster copper-clad ships, the British determined these to be a Spanish supply convoy that was protected by a single ship of the line and several frigates. The entire convoy was captured, with the lone ship of the line, Guipuzcoana, striking her colours after a perfunctory exchange of fire. Guipuzcoana was staffed with a small prize crew and renamed HMS Prince William, in honour of Prince William, the third son of the King, who was serving as midshipman in the fleet. Rodney then detached HMS America and the frigate HMS Pearl to escort most of the captured ships back to England; Prince William was added to his fleet, as were some of the supply ships that carried items likely to be of use to the Gibraltar garrison.
On 12 January HMS Dublin, which had lost part of her topmast on 3 January, suffered additional damage and raised a distress flag. Assisted by HMS Shrewsbury, she limped into Lisbon on 16 January. The Spanish had learnt of the British relief effort. From the blockading squadron a fleet comprising 11 ships of the line under Admiral Juan de Lángara was dispatched to intercept Rodney's convoy, and the Atlantic fleet of Admiral Luis de Córdova at Cadiz was also alerted to try to catch him. Córdova learnt of the strength of Rodney's fleet, and returned to Cadiz rather than giving chase. On 16 January the fleets of Lángara and Rodney spotted each other around 1:00 pm south of Cape St. Vincent, the southwestern point of Portugal and the Iberian Peninsula. The weather was hazy, with heavy swells and occasional squalls.
## Battle
Rodney was ill, and spent the entire action in his bunk. His flag captain, Walter Young, urged Rodney to give orders to engage when the Spanish fleet was first spotted, but Rodney only gave orders to form a line abreast. Lángara started to establish a line of battle, but when he realised the size of Rodney's fleet, he gave orders to make all sail for Cadiz. Around 2:00 pm, when Rodney felt certain that the ships seen were not the vanguard of a larger fleet, he issued commands for a general chase. Rodney's instructions to his fleet were to chase at their best speed, and engage the Spanish ships from the rear as they came upon them. They were also instructed to sail to the lee side to interfere with Spanish attempts to gain the safety of a harbour, a tactic that also prevented the Spanish ships from opening their lowest gun ports. Because of their copper-sheathed hulls (which reduced marine growths and drag), the ships of the Royal Navy were faster and soon gained on the Spanish.
The chase lasted for about two hours, and the battle finally began around 4:00 pm. Santo Domingo, trailing in the Spanish fleet, received broadsides from HMS Edgar, HMS Marlborough, and HMS Ajax before blowing up around 4:40, with the loss of all but one of her crew. Marlborough and Ajax then passed Princessa to engage other Spanish ships. Princessa was eventually engaged in an hour-long battle with HMS Bedford before striking her colours at about 5:30. By 6:00 pm it was getting dark, and there was a discussion aboard HMS Sandwich, Rodney's flagship, about whether to continue the pursuit. Although Captain Young is credited in some accounts with pushing Rodney to do so, Gilbert Blane, the fleet physician, reported it as a decision of the council.
The chase continued into the dark, squally night, leading to it later being known as the "Moonlight Battle", since it was uncommon at the time for naval battles to continue after sunset. At 7:30 pm, HMS Defence came upon Lángara's flagship Fenix, engaging her in a battle lasting over an hour. She was broadsided in passing by HMS Montagu and HMS Prince George, and Lángara was wounded in the battle. The Real Fénix finally surrendered to HMS Bienfaisant, which arrived late in the battle and shot away her mainmast. Real Fénix's takeover was complicated by an outbreak of smallpox aboard Bienfaisant. Captain John MacBride, rather than sending over a possibly infected prize crew, apprised Lángara of the situation and put him and his crew on parole. At 9:15 Montagu engaged Diligente, which struck after her maintopmast was shot away. Around 11:00 pm San Eugenio surrendered after having all of her masts shot away by HMS Cumberland, but the difficult seas made it impossible to board a prize crew until morning.
That duel was passed by HMS Culloden and Prince George, which engaged San Julián and compelled her to surrender around 1:00 am. The last ship to surrender was Monarca. She nearly escaped, shooting away HMS Alcide's topmast, but was engaged in a running battle with the frigate HMS Apollo. Apollo managed to keep up the unequal engagement until about the time that Rodney's flagship Sandwich came upon the scene around 2:00 am. Sandwich fired a broadside, unaware that Monarca had already hauled down her flag. The British took six ships. Four Spanish ships of the line and the fleet's two frigates escaped, although sources are unclear if two of the Spanish ships were even present with the fleet at the time of the battle. Lángara's report states that San Justo and San Genaro were not in his line of battle (although they are listed in Spanish records as part of his fleet). According to one account two of Lángara's ships (the two aforementioned) were despatched to investigate other unidentified sails sometime before the action. Rodney's report states that San Justo escaped but was damaged in battle, and that San Genaro escaped without damage.
## Aftermath
With the arrival of daylight, it was clear that the British fleet and their prize ships were dangerously close to a lee shore with an onshore breeze. One of the prizes, San Julián, was recorded by Rodney as too badly damaged to save, and was driven ashore. Another prize, San Eugenio, was retaken by her crew and managed to reach Cadiz; she was later restored to service within two months, and remained so until taken to pieces at Cadiz in 1804. A Spanish history claims that the prize crews of both ships appealed to their Spanish captives for help escaping the lee shore. The Spanish captains retook control of their ships, imprisoned the British crews, and sailed to Cadiz. The British reported their casualties in the battle as 32 killed and 102 wounded. The supply convoy sailed into Gibraltar on 19 January, driving the smaller blockading fleet to retreat to the safety of Algeciras. Rodney arrived several days later, after first stopping in Tangier. The wounded Spanish prisoners, who included Admiral Lángara, were offloaded there, and the British garrison was heartened by the arrival of the supplies and the presence of Prince William Henry.
After also resupplying Minorca, Rodney sailed for the West Indies in February, detaching part of the fleet for service in the Channel. This homebound fleet intercepted a French fleet destined for the East Indies, capturing one warship and three supply ships. Gibraltar was resupplied twice more before the siege was lifted at the end of the war in 1783. Admiral Lángara and other Spanish officers were eventually released on parole, the admiral receiving a promotion to lieutenant general. He continued his distinguished career, becoming Spanish Navy Minister in the French Revolutionary Wars. Admiral Rodney was lauded for his victory, the first major victory of the war by the Royal Navy over its European opponents. He distinguished himself for the remainder of the war, notably winning the 1782 Battle of the Saintes in which he captured the French admiral, Comte de Grasse. He was, however, criticised by Captain Young, who portrayed him as weak and indecisive in the battle with Lángara. (He was also rebuked by the admiralty for leaving a ship of the line at Gibraltar, against his express orders.) Rodney's observations on the benefits of copper sheathing in the victory were influential in British Admiralty decisions to deploy the technology more widely.
## Order of battle
None of the listed sources give an accurate accounting of the ships in Rodney's fleet at the time of the action. Robert Beatson lists the composition of the fleet at its departure from England, and notes which ships separated to go to the West Indies, as well as those detached to return the prizes captured on 8 January to England. He does not list two ships (Dublin and Shrewsbury, identified in despatches reprinted by Syrett) that were separated from the fleet on 13 January. Furthermore, HMS Prince William is sometimes misunderstood to have been part of the prize escort back to England, but she was present at Gibraltar after the action. Beatson also fails to list a number of frigates, including Apollo, which played a key role in the capture of Monarca.
There are some discrepancies between the English and Spanish sources listing the Spanish fleet, principally in the number of guns most of the vessels are claimed to mount. The table below lists the Spanish records describing Lángara's fleet. However, Beatson lists all of the Spanish ships of the line at 70 guns, except Real Fénix, which he correctly lists at 80 guns), and the San Julián, which he incorrectly gives as 64 guns. Spanish archives confirm this except for San Julián.
One frigate, Santa Rosalia, is listed by Beatson at 28 guns, although she was actually 26 guns. The identify of the second Spanish frigate is different in the two listings. Beatson records her as Santa Gertrudis, 26 guns, with captain Don Annibal Cassoni, while Duro's listing describes her as Santa Cecilia, 34, captain Don Domingo Pérez de Grandallana; Spanish archives confirm the latter. Both frigates did not participate in the battle, and returned to Cadiz. |
57,636,052 | Freeee (Ghost Town, Pt. 2) | 1,121,640,993 | 2018 song by Kids See Ghosts | [
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"Songs written by Kanye West",
"Songs written by Kid Cudi",
"Songs written by Mike Dean (record producer)",
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| "Freeee (Ghost Town, Pt. 2)" is a song by American hip hop duo Kids See Ghosts, composed of the rappers Kanye West and Kid Cudi, from their eponymous debut album (2018). The song features a guest appearance from American musician Ty Dolla Sign. It is the sequel to West's song "Ghost Town" from his eighth studio album, Ye (2018). The former was produced by West and Kid Cudi, with co-production from Mike Dean, Jeff Bhasker, and BoogzDaBeast, while additional production was handled by Andrew Dawson, Andy C, and Russell "Love" Crews. Apart from BoogzDaBeast, the lead and co-producers wrote the song alongside Ty Dolla Sign and Corin Littler, who has the stage name of Mr. Chop and received songwriting credit due to his work being sampled.
A rap rock number with psychedelic elements, "Freeee (Ghost Town, Pt. 2)" samples "Stark" by Mr. Chop and an excerpt of a speech by Marcus Garvey. In the lyrics, Kids See Ghosts demonstrate recovering from mental illness and represent liberation. The song received universal acclaim from music critics, who generally expressed highly positive opinions of the composition. Some praised the vocals, while other critics appreciated the song's creativity. It was submitted for the 61st Annual Grammy Awards, though ultimately failed to receive any nominations at the ceremony.
"Freeee (Ghost Town, Pt. 2)" charted at number 62 on the US Billboard Hot 100, while it reached number 58 on the Canadian Hot 100. The duo and Ty Dolla Sign performed the song at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in 2019. Ronald Oslin Bobb-Semple issued a lawsuit over the song in March 2019, pressing the accusation of exploiting "The Spirit of Marcus Garvey (Garvey speaks to an all-Black audience)" without permission or payment. Kids See Ghosts and their co-defendants responded three months later, arguing fair use and that there was nothing wrong with the duo's actions, later reaching a settlement with Bobb-Semple in January 2020.
## Background and development
On April 19, 2018, Kanye West announced a collaborative album with Kid Cudi. The album was revealed as being titled Kids See Ghosts by West, with him setting its release date as June 8, 2018. Kid Cudi had been featured on a number of tracks by West prior to the announcement, including "Welcome to Heartbreak" (2008) and "Gorgeous" (2010). West released his eighth studio album Ye on June 1, 2018, with vocals from Kid Cudi included on the tracks "No Mistakes" and "Ghost Town". The album also features additional vocals from Ty Dolla Sign on "All Mine", "Wouldn't Leave" and "Violent Crimes". On June 4, 2018, the musician teased a joint album with West. The rapper had expressed a desire to collaborate on an album four days previously, calling himself and Ty Dolla Sign "one of the best combinations ever" while affirming that he is simply "trying to go week after week and improve on the craft". West elaborated, naming the collaborator among "the strongest artists we have living" and admitting that "anything I can do to support, get around, produce, take my hands and chop up I'm with it". Ty Dolla Sign later recalled "going off on the backgrounds, no Auto-Tune" when working with West in a phone conversation with Rolling Stone on August 30, 2018. West went on to contribute a feature to his single "Ego Death", released in July 2020.
"Freeee (Ghost Town, Pt. 2)" serves as the sequel to "Ghost Town", but credits Kids See Ghosts as the lead performers and Ty Dolla Sign as a featured artist. This differs from the prequel crediting West as the lead artist and Kid Cudi, PartyNextDoor, and 070 Shake as additional vocalists. The titles of Kids See Ghosts and the track, respectively, are part of a "spooky-ghost routine" that is continued from "Ghost Town"; the album also includes a song of the same name. "Freeee (Ghost Town, Pt. 2)" includes an interpolation of lyrics from the song. Fellow album track "4th Dimension" also shows continuity of the prequel, with both of the tracks sampling gospel singer Shirley Ann Lee's "Someday". Prior to combining rap and rock, both members of Kids See Ghosts had shown admiration for guitar artists. The genres had previously been compared by West in an interview with BBC Radio 1 host Zane Lowe, during which he said of rappers: "We the new rock stars and I'm the biggest of all of them!" West rapped nonsense words on his single "Lift Yourself" in April 2018, before he re-used the song's "whoop! Scoop!" phrases on GOOD Music president Pusha T's "What Would Meek Do?" the following month. "Freeee (Ghost Town, Pt. 2)" was produced by West and Kid Cudi, while co-produced by Mike Dean, Jeff Bhasker, and BoogzDaBeast, with additional production being handled by Andrew Dawson alongside Andy C and Russell "Love" Crews. The lead producers and co-producers, with the exception of BoogzDaBeast, co-wrote the track with Ty Dolla Sign and Corin Littler; the latter of the two is known under the stage name of Mr. Chop and was credited as a songwriter due to his recording "Stark" (2008) being sampled. The sampling of Mr. Chop stood among West's numerous samples taken from the record label Now-Again Records in the Summer of 2018.
## Composition and lyrics
Musically, "Freeee (Ghost Town, Pt. 2)" is a rap rock number, with psychedelic elements. The song is built around a chopped up sample of "Stark", written and performed by Mr. Chop. An electric guitar riff is taken from the recording. For the intro of the song, an excerpt from a speech by black nationalist Marcus Garvey is sampled alongside "Stark". According to Spin's Zoe Camp, Garvey's proclamation "lays the track's liberating themes bare". Drums are heavily featured, which are distorted. The song also includes percussion, a cello, and an acoustic guitar; the latter of the three was played by Zack Djurich. It contains voice modulation, as well as off-key cries. West and Kid Cudi trade turns to perform for the chorus, which includes the former of the two yelling. They are followed by Ty Dolla Sign and a gospel choir, with him harmonizing as the song's beat drops out.
In the lyrics of "Freeee (Ghost Town, Pt. 2)", Kids See Ghosts demonstrate the recovery from mental illness and showcase liberation. On the chorus, a message of it being acceptable to not feel okay is conveyed. "Nothing hurts me anymore / Guess what, baby? I feel freeeee", proclaim both members of Kids See Ghosts separately, interpolating 070 Shake's lyrics "And nothing hurts any more / I feel kind of free" from "Ghost Town", as well as representing freedom in a triumphant moment. The word "free" is stretched out vocally through extra e's being used to echo the song title, with reverberation being applied to it. West re-uses the nonsensical "Scoop!" phrase from "Lift Yourself", shouting it on the song.
## Release and promotion
"Freeee (Ghost Town, Pt. 2)" replaced "Ghost Town" as the fourth track on Kids See Ghosts' eponymous debut studio album, released on June 8, 2018. On the day of the album's release, multiple tracks were mislabeled on streaming services as the result of a technical error, though "Freeee (Ghost Town, Pt. 2)" was the exception to the error. As part of their first show billed as Kids See Ghosts, the duo delivered a performance of the song at the 2018 Camp Flog Gnaw Carnival. The song was the fifth track of their set, though it was the fourth track that they released under the Kids See Ghosts moniker to be performed. The duo were backed by visuals that featured pulsating bright colors for their performance inside a transparent box, and rapper Tyler, the Creator sang along with the line "I feel freeeee" while in the crowd. Kids See Ghosts went on to perform "Ghost Town" as the closer to their set, during which the crowd sang along with the line "I feel kinda free." For Kid Cudi's weekend two set at the 2019 Coachella Music Festival, he brought out West at the Sahara Tent as a surprise. They were joined by Ty Dolla Sign to perform a rendition of "Freeee (Ghost Town, Pt. 2)", with Kid Cudi taking running jumps across the stage at multiple points. After the performance, Kids See Ghosts delivered a rendition of "Ghost Town".
## Critical reception
The song was met with universal acclaim from music critics, with strong praise for the composition. Jack Hamilton of Slate categorized the song as the "most fun and exuberant track" on Kids See Ghosts, labeling it heavily comparable to English musician David Bowie's work because of the "booming walls of vocals, gnashing distortion, and thundering drums". Christopher R. Weingarten of Rolling Stone expressed certainty in "Freeee (Ghost Town, Pt. 2)" being "fantastic", hailing it as "gorgeously arranged" like tracks on West's fifth studio album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010) "with a more spontaneous feel". Writing for Entertainment Weekly, Chuck Arnold voiced a similar viewpoint; he remarked that the song "is the [same] type of wide-screen soundscape" as the album's tracks, while also stating there is "a liberating rush" from being able to feel "demons being kicked to the curb". Spencer Kornhaber from The Atlantic commented how the song and "Ghost Town" are "a duo" that he considered to be the standout tracks of their respective albums, noticing the songs "roil with peeling guitar, off-key yowls, and drunken drumming". Kornhaber further praised the song for building on "a crunchy funk-rock tune from [...] Mr. Chop", alongside highlighting Ty Dolla Sign's performance and West's vocals that differ from his.
NPR's Sidney Madden wrote Mr. Chop's sampled "soaring electric guitar riff" backs the "declarations of freedom" from West and Kid Cudi on "Freeee (Ghost Town, Pt. 2)" that "erupt into an all-out rebel yell", as well as commenting how the sample resembles "fuzzed-out psychedelic rock of the '70s". At Pitchfork, Jayson Greene said that while "a buzzing cello pecks at its tendons and the distorted drums smash into bone" on the song, the listener is left with contemplation of "the scary sort of freedom West prizes". He elaborated, noting it is "the freedom of mania" where you allow your mind to "gallop off its leash in as many directions at once" and that the song can give anyone with experience of this type of freedom "a pang of recognition in this exhilaration". For The Guardian, Dean Van Nguyen assured the song is the "undoubted centrepiece" of Kids See Ghosts, analyzing that it is "an acid-laced trip into bohemian spiritualism". Van Nguyen admitted that with rap rock crossovers being generally "execrable", he cannot envision West making the song "without Cudi in the booth to summon the spirit of flower power". NME critic Jordan Bassett picked the "defiant" interpolation of "Ghost Town" on the chorus as a stand out on the album.
For Exclaim!, Riley Wallace stated the song fully shows West and Kid Cudi on "their journeys to bettering themselves" via "the power of positivity" as "the two notoriously creative, controversial and often elusive artists" seem to shed "the demons, shackles and negativity" that troubles them. He continued, analyzing that the duo move forward "with a clear state of mind", and noticing their "childlike innocence and fearlessness". In The A.V. Club, Marty Sartini Garner called the song a "barbaric yawp" that continues "Ghost Town" and "aims to blast through any ambiguities", noting both members of Kids See Ghosts "sound as big and bold and alive as they ever have". He went on to highlight the beat's "brash power" for coming across "like an exclamation point at the end of a very long and digressive sentence", though was unhappy with the intention of it being "seen as a statement" due to it feeling "hard to shake the idea that you're joining in a dubious celebration" because West is unclear about what he's free from.
### Accolades
NME ranked "Freeee (Ghost Town, Pt. 2)" as the 20th best song of 2018, with the publication's Dan Stubbs hailing it as a "standout track" from West's Wyoming Sessions. He further called the track "an empowering blast of booming vocals, thunderous drums" and West's "liberal shouts" of "Scoop!", arguing that the use of the catchphrase may be West's "most admirable contribution to 2018's cultural melee". It was listed as the 98th best song of 2018 by Spin, while also being named by The Guardian music journalist Harriet Gibsone as one of the best tracks of the year. In July 2020, Cool Accidents placed Ty Dolla Sign's appearance among his 11 best guest features. On October 25, 2018, it was reported that West's team had submitted the song for consideration in the categories of Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance at the 61st Annual Grammy Awards. According to TMZ, the song had already gone through the screening process for the categories at the time and "since been sent out on the first round ballot to voters", with the submissions awaiting enough support to be nominated. However, the song was ultimately nominated in neither of the categories at the ceremony.
## Commercial performance
Upon the release of Kids See Ghosts, "Freeee (Ghost Town, Pt. 2)" entered the US Billboard Hot 100 at number 62. Simultaneously, the song debuted at number 30 on the US Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. In Canada, it peaked at number 58 on the Canadian Hot 100. Elsewhere, the song reached number 72 in Australia on the ARIA Singles Chart. It further charted at numbers 66 and 72 on the Irish Singles Chart and Singles Digitál Top 100 in Ireland and Slovakia, respectively.
## Lawsuit
On March 7, 2019, Ronald Oslin Bobb-Semple sued the duo, Ty Dolla Sign, and record labels Def Jam and Universal Music for the song's alleged sampling of his recording "The Spirit of Marcus Garvey (Garvey speaks to an all-Black audience)" (2002). Court documents obtained by The Blast and TMZ saw him accuse them of exploitation of "the actual voice, words and performance" with lack of authorization or monetary compensation and state that he hadn't been given any of the profit made from "Freeee (Ghost Town, Pt. 2)". Bobb-Semple further noted Kids See Ghosts and Ty Dolla Sign had received "substantial profits", and that he wanted a "fair cut". The damages sought by Bobb-Semple were reportedly unspecified and a warning was sent out to Kids See Ghosts, Ty Dolla Sign, and the record labels to prevent them from still profiting off his work. At the time, neither of the two artists had issued any comments about his lawsuit.
Kids See Ghosts went on to file a legal response to the lawsuit on June 4, 2019, with various co-defendants for their response, including Ty Dolla Sign, Def Jam, Universal Music, and West's record label GOOD Music. Bobb-Semple's infringement claim was denied by the defendants, with them asserting that the usage of the sample does actually classify as fair use despite not having obtained authorization to use it. They continued, arguing that even if copyright infringement was present, Kids See Ghosts' actions were "innocent and non-willful", and pointed out Bobb-Semple not having provided any facts to support the duo's "alleged willfulness". Kids See Ghosts made the accusation of Bobb-Semple's original complaint being "barred by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution" and characterized him as misusing copyright. West demanded for the case to be thrown out of court. It has been shown by West that he is not opposed to giving credit where it is due, with him having reached out to the estate of Louis Prima to clear a sample for "4th Dimension". In January 2020, the parties reached a settlement regarding the lawsuit.
## Credits and personnel
Recording
- Recorded at West Lake Ranch, Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Personnel
- Kanye West – songwriter, production
- Kid Cudi – songwriter, production
- Mike Dean – songwriter, co-production, mixer
- Jeff Bhasker – songwriter, co-production
- Ty Dolla Sign – songwriter, featured artist
- Corbin Littler – songwriter
- BoogzDaBeast – co-production
- Andrew Dawson – additional production, engineer
- Andy C – additional production
- Russel "Love" Crews – additional production
- Zack Djurich – engineer, acoustic guitar
- Mike Malchicoff – engineer
- William J. Sullivan – engineer
- Nico Agliettico – engineer
- Jenna Felsenthal – assistant engineer
- Jess Jackson – mixer
- Sean Solymar – assistant mixer
Information taken from the Kids See Ghosts liner notes and Tidal.
## Charts
## See also
- Lift Yourself |
51,214,696 | Sleeping with the One I Love | 1,154,100,861 | null | [
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"2015 songs",
"2016 singles",
"Blues songs",
"Fantasia Barrino songs",
"RCA Records singles",
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"Songs written by R. Kelly",
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]
| "Sleeping with the One I Love" is a song recorded by American recording artist Fantasia for her fifth studio album, The Definition Of... (2016). Written and produced by R. Kelly, it was released on May 26, 2016 as the album's second single. Fantasia recorded the track as a way to expand her "rock soul" sound, which she had introduced on her previous release Side Effects of You (2013). She also used the song, and the album as a whole, to assert more creative control over her career.
A soul and blues ballad, its lyrics revolve around a woman's search for love, while being torn between her boyfriend and her lover. Media outlets had varying interpretations of the song's genre and content, with several attributing it as an example of soul and blues and describing it as containing jazz influences. Inspired by her past, Fantasia recorded the track to express her gratitude for getting through her past, negative relationships to grow as a person and form a more healthy romance. Commentators compared "Sleeping with the One I Love" to Ben E. King's 1963 single "I (Who Have Nothing)", James Brown's 1966 song "It's a Man's Man's Man's World", and Shirley Bassey's music, while Fantasia herself found similarities with her own 2005 single "Free Yourself".
Critics responded positively to "Sleeping with the One I Love", praising Fantasia's vocals and her collaboration with R. Kelly. It peaked at number seven on the Adult R&B Songs Billboard chart for the week of July 2, 2017. It was Fantasia tenth top-ten entry, and the second of the album's two top 20 singles, with "No Time for It" (2016) being the first. Fantasia performed the song during a July 28, 2016 concert broadcast on BET and the Fantasia & Anthony Hamilton: Live in Concert. A music video, directed by Derek Blanks, was released on June 26, 2016. Inspired by the American comedy-drama series Orange Is the New Black, the visual features Fantasia playing various characters in their pursuit of love while incarcerated. It received positive feedback from media outlets.
## Background and recording
While recording her fifth studio album The Definition Of... (2016), Fantasia sought to have more creative control over her music and image. Frustrated with the amount of record label interference in the past, she described executives' plans to determine her sound and style as "prostituting the artist’s gift", and wanted to avoid such influences for the album. Fantasia explained that the album would expand on the "rock soul" sound that she introduced on her previous release Side Effects of You (2013). She had defined "rock soul" as covering multiple style of music, describing it as an attempt to combine her soulful childhood singing in church with "a certain side of [her] that wants to tap into that whole rock world".
"Sleeping with the One I Love" was written and produced by R. Kelly. During the early stages of production for The Definition Of..., Fantasia posted several videos on her social media accounts of her recording sessions with Kelly. In promotional interviews, Fantasia said that the album was initially produced by another artist who she “really, really, really loved", but she switched to a different team for the final product. She explained: "Sometimes, when you work with producers who are artists, it’s very hard, They are doing their thing ... and things got a little chaotic.” Derrick G. Kennedy of the Los Angeles Times speculated that Kelly was the producer mentioned by Fantasia.
The instrumental parts of the song were recorded by Thomas Carillo at the Kennedy Compound in Hollywood. Fantasia's vocals, produced and arranged by Ron Fair, were engineered by Fair and Pat Thrall at Faircraft Studios in Brentwood, California. Abel Garibaldi and Ian Mereness provided additional programming and engineering for the track. Dan Higgins arranged the horn section, which was engineered by Fair and John Schacter. Donnie Lylie provided additional music direction and played the guitar for the instrumental, while Steve Genewick handled the engineering for the string portion.
## Composition and lyrics
Described as a "vintage-y soul ballad with jazz elements" by Kevin Apaza of Direct Lyrics, "Sleeping with the One I Love" is composed in the key of D-sharp minor and has a tempo of 65 beats per minute. Singersroom's Elle Breezy wrote that the single was a "heavy blues tune", and represented how Fantasia "rock soul" sound would encompass various musical genres. AllMusic's Andy Kellman called the song "a spacious, retro-styled ballad", and The Boombox's Amber McKynzie described it as "sultry ode to 60s soul". The Tampa Bay Times''' Jay Cridlin equated the single to "five minutes of slow-burning flame". Elias Leight of Vogue felt that "Sleeping with the One I Love" was "one of the more unusual songs on radio at the moment" as it did not contain strong hip hop elements, and compared it to Shirley Bassey's music.
"Sleeping with the One I Love" revolves around Fantasia feeling torn between the stability of her boyfriend and the sensual pleasures of her lover. According to Wanda J. Coppage of Music Times, the lyrics focus on "the story of a woman in search of love, but she seems to find it with the wrong type of men". Throughout the single, Fantasia "candidly and guiltlessly" discusses her affair by singing: "I’m sleeping with the man I love because the one I’m with just ain’t good enough.” In the verses, Fantasia sings about her conflict with choosing between the two men, through lyrics such as: “Yes, I've tried to shake it off, and I even tried to pray / But I'm still waking up in a bed that don't belong to me”. She expresses pain with the lyrics "See my baby's like a dream, but the other man, he haunts me". Other lyrics also include: "I'm still waking up in a bed that don't belong to me...I thought about the cost, but it's a price I'm willing to pay."
Breezy questioned if the song's content was inspired by Fantasia's past affair with a married man. The singer explained that the single was about self-love, saying: "My song talks about all the bad relationships but I'm grateful for going through them." Fantasia compared "Sleeping with the One I Love" to her 2005 single "Free Yourself", explaining that they both have "that gritty, bluesy feeling". Amber McKynzie described the main theme of the song as "what it’s like to love hard and not get the same love in return". Centric's Gerren Keith Gaynor felt that Fantasia was channeling James Brown's 1966 song "It's a Man's Man's Man's World".
## Release
On May 27, 2016, "Sleeping with the One I Love" was released as the second single from The Definition Of.... Apaza described it as "the latest countdown single", as two promotional singles ("Ugly" and "So Blue") were also made available prior to the album's release.
RCA Records executives had initially chosen "When I Met You" (2016) to be the album's second single, but Fantasia had disagreed with the label's decision, preferring to release "Sleeping with the One I Love" instead. The singer said that RCA did not want to promote the song as they felt it was "too churchy", but she had responded: "No, it’s the next single. I’m the one out here on stages and connecting with the people." She proceeded to conduct polls during a series of radio interviews, asking listeners to choose which track they wanted to be released. Ultimately, they voted for "Sleeping with the One I Love", which was released as the second single instead of "When I Met You". "When I Met You" would later be released as the record's third and final single on January 17, 2017.
## Reception
"Sleeping with the One I Love" received positive feedback from music critics. Apaza praised the single for showcasing Fantasia's vocals, writing that the singer had "out-of-this-world vocals and a grandiose emotion that will leave any listener mesmerized and in awe". Breezy felt that the single was based on a "juicy concept". Both Apaza and Breezy wrote that they were looking forward to Fantasia performing the song live. Amber McKynzie selected it as one of the album's top five tracks, and Gerren Keith Gaynor wrote that it "t[ook] story telling to new height", calling the song "soul-stirring". Jay Cridlin listed "Sleeping with the One I Love" as one of the top 25 songs of 2016, writing that Fantasia "cuts loose on a confident and expansive chunk of retro soul". In Entertainment Weekly, Chuck Arnold identified the song as one of the album's "key tracks". Andy Kellman praised her collaboration with R. Kelly as the "most pairing", writing that the song included lyrics that "she was born to sing". Sarah Grant of Rolling Stone felt that Kelly had helped Fantasia achieve her "rock soul" sound by "put[ting] her yowl to work on the excellent, chiseled single".
The single was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Traditional R&B Performance at the 59th Annual Grammy Awards, but lost to Lalah Hathaway's 2015 single "Angel". Even though he wanted William Bell's 2016 song "The Three of Me" to win the award, Billboard's Carl Wilson wrote that "it’s too bad it’s at the expense of, among others, Fantasia’s terrific 'Sleeping With the One I Love'". The track also received a nomination for the BET Centric Award at the BET Awards 2017, but lost to Solange Knowles' 2016 single "Cranes in the Sky".
"Sleeping with the One I Love" debuted at number 21 on the Adult R&B Songs Billboard chart for the week of July 2, 2017. It peaked at number seven during the week of November 26, 2016, and stayed on the chart for a total of 13 weeks. It was Fantasia tenth top-ten entry, and the second of the album's two top 20 singles; "No Time for It" (2016) was the first.
## Music video and promotion
Prior to the music video's release, Fantasia posted several images of herself in costume as three fictional women (Brenda, Pauletta and Rox) on her official Instagram account. For each image, she explained the women's background, and expounded on the concept for the overall visual. The characters include a seductress and a woman who Gerren Keith Gaynor compared to Cleopatra "Cleo" Sims from the 1996 film Set It Off.
Premiering directly after the BET Awards 2016 telecast on June 26, 2016, the video features the women's struggles with love as they all pursue the attention of a prison guard. Directed by Derek Blanks, it was inspired by the American comedy-drama series Orange Is the New Black, and shows the guard "playing them all". According to a press release from RCA, Fantasia "portrays multiple characters in a compelling plot twist" in the video. Eeshé White of The Boombox summarized the video as: "Fantasia appears to be in prison, and is battling with herself." The visual includes a scene in which all of the characters fight one another. It received positive reviews from media outlets. Breezy called the video "intriguing", while Gerren Keith Gaynor described it as a "creative take" on the song.
Fantasia performed "Sleeping with the One I Love" alongside "It's a Man's Man's Man's World" during a July 28, 2016 concert broadcast on BET, the first in a series of live concerts on the cable channel. She had also included it as the final song on her set list for Fantasia & Anthony Hamilton: Live in Concert (2016).
## Track listing
## Credits and personnel
Credits adapted from the liner notes of The Definition Of... ''.
Management
- Rock Soul Records/19 Recordings
- Limited/RCA Records
Recording locations
- Music recording – Kennedy Compound (Hollywood); Faircraft Studios (Brentwood)
Personnel
- Fantasia – vocals
- R. Kelly – production, song-writing
- Ron Fair – vocal arrangement, vocal production, vocal engineer, strings arrangement, strings conductor, horn engineer, additional production
- Dan Higgins – horns arrangement
- Donnie Lyle – additional music direction, guitar
- Pat Thrall – editing, additional engineer, vocal engineer
- Abel Garibaldi – engineer, programmer
- Ian Mereness – engineer, programmer
- John Schacter – horn engineer
- Steve Genewick – strings engineer
## Charts
## Release history |
40,130,924 | Fire (Big Sean song) | 1,122,264,387 | Song by Big Sean | [
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| "Fire" is a song by American recording artist Big Sean from his second studio album Hall of Fame (2013). It was released on August 20, 2013 by GOOD Music and Def Jam Recordings as the fourth single from the record. It was written and produced by Darhyl Camper Jr. and Rob Kinelski, with additional songwriting provided by Big Sean and Alexander Izquierdo of The Monsters and the Strangerz. "Fire" is a hip hop song that lyrically describes the perseverance to overcome personal difficulties.
"Fire" received generally favorable reviews from music critics, who compared it the catalogs of fellow rappers Kanye West and Jay-Z, and recognized it as a standout track from Hall of Fame. The song peaked at number 19 on the U.S. Billboard Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles component chart to the Billboard Hot 100, and reached number 46 on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. An accompanying music video was premiered through Vevo on August 2, 2013, and featured American recording artist Miley Cyrus; critics primarily focused on the continuation of the increasingly provocative image she established earlier in the year.
## Background and composition
When Sean was describing his second studio album Hall of Fame (2013) in December 2012, he stated that he wished to "teach and leave a legacy" with its tracks, admitting that the content on his debut record Finally Famous (2011) "didn't really teach too much." "Fire" was officially premiered through SoundCloud on July 29, 2013, after having surfaced online earlier that day. On his Instagram account, Big Sean commented that "this IS NOT a single...yet, but 1 of [his] favorites on the album." The track was released for digital download on August 20 by GOOD Music and Def Jam Recordings. Its release preceded the launch of Hall of Fame, which was made available later that month.
"Fire" is a hip hop song that incorporates a "moody but confident bass line [and] celebratory piano keys". It was compared to the musical styles seen on Graduation (2007), the third studio album by Kanye West, and Watch the Throne (2011), a collaborative record between West and Jay-Z. Lyrically, it has been described to "place emphasis on pushing through personal struggles", and has also been noted for "[lifting] a few cues from heroes such as mentor Kanye West and Jay-Z". Big Sean performed "Fire" on The Arsenio Hall Show, which had recently been revived after a nearly twenty-year hiatus, on September 19, 2013.
## Critical reception
Upon its release, "Fire" received generally favorable reviews from music critics. Writing for Entertainment Weekly, spoke favorably of the track, calling it the "centerpiece of Fame, an infectious antidote to his famous mentor [Kanye West]'s self-seriousness." While recognizing musical similarities to Graduation and Watch the Throne, Gary Graff from The Oakland Press felt that Big Sean drew inspiration from West and Jay-Z's records while maintaining "his own stylized favor and flow". Khari of The Source felt that "Fire" was appropriately placed as the second song on Hall of Fame, where it matched the "flawless effort" seen in the opening track "Nothing Is Stopping You". David Jeffries of AllMusic and Edna Gundersen from USA Today both considered the track to be a standout from the record, and both placed it on their lists of recommended purchases from the album.
## Chart performance
"Fire" peaked at number 19 on the US Billboard Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles component chart to the Billboard Hot 100, which represents the twenty-five songs that failed to reach the flagship Billboard Hot 100. It also reached number 46 on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart.
## Music video
An accompanying music video for "Fire" was directed by Jack Heller and Matthew Williams; it premiered through Vevo on August 2, 2013. The clip features American recording artist Miley Cyrus; according to Emily Blake and Nadeska Alexis of MTV News, it is composed entirely of "seductive stances and sultry glares [which] are interrupted solely by images of a red rose and a burning picture of the MC [Big Sean] himself". Big Sean commented that the lyrics delivered in the track "really [don't] have anything to do with her personal story in the video."
Critical commentary regarding the music video focused on Cyrus' increasingly provocative image. Margaret Eby of Daily News stated that she "just can't stop strutting her stuff" and "[flaunted] several barely-there outfits in the three-minute video." A writer for The Huffington Post shared a similar sentiment, adding that "even though her wardrobe is full of crop tops and itty bitty shorts, Miley Cyrus' skimpy outfits still manage to shock." A writer for Rap-Up provided a favorable review, complimenting Cyrus for "[turning] up the heat" in the "striking visuals". Writing for VH1, Emily Exton joked that "hip-hop's fledgling relationship with a former Disney star just got a little stronger", and noted that "Jay-Z may have encouraged Miley’s love of twerking with his "Somewhereinamerica" shout-out, but it appears Sean is less interested in seeing Billy Ray's daughter shake her thing than having her walk around in dazzling heels and stare the camera down in the name of art."
## Credits and personnel
Credits adapted from the liner notes of Hall of Fame.
- Big Sean – lead vocals, songwriting
- Elijah Blake – background vocals
- Darhyl "Hey DJ" Camper – songwriting, production
- James Fauntleroy – background vocals
- Melanie Fiona – background vocals
- Alexander Izquierdo – songwriting
- Rob Kinelski – songwriting, production
- Nicole Lequerica – background vocals
## Charts
## Release history |
23,421,744 | French battleship Henri IV | 1,128,449,700 | Pre-dreadnought battleship of the French Navy | [
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| Henri IV was a pre-dreadnought battleship of the French Navy built to test some of the ideas of the prominent naval architect Louis-Émile Bertin. She began World War I as guardship at Bizerte. She was sent to reinforce the Allied naval force in the Dardanelles campaign of 1915, although some of her secondary armament had been removed for transfer to Serbia in 1914. Afterwards, she was relegated to second-line roles before being sent to Taranto as a depot ship in 1918. She was struck from the navy list in 1920 and scrapped the following year.
## Design
Henri IV was designed by the famous French naval architect Louis-Émile Bertin to evaluate some of his ideas. She was designed to make her a small target and lacked most of the normal rear superstructure common to ships of her period, other than that needed to keep her rear turret from being washed out. Her rear hull had only 4 feet (1.2 m) of freeboard, although she was built up to the normal upper deck height amidships and at the bow for better sea-keeping and to provide for her crew. Her superstructure was narrow and recessed from the hull above the main deck.
### General characteristics
Henri IV was smaller than her predecessors, at 108 metres (354 ft 4 in) overall. She had a beam of 22.2 metres (72 ft 10 in) and a maximum draft of 7.5 metres (24 ft 7 in). She was significantly lighter than the Charlemagne-class battleships and displaced only 8,948 metric tons (8,807 long tons) normally, some 2,300 metric tons (2,260 long tons) less than the earlier ships. Her crew consisted of 26 officers and 438 enlisted men.
### Propulsion
Henri IV had three vertical triple-expansion steam engines, each driving one propeller shaft. The engines were rated at 11,500 indicated horsepower (8,600 kW) using steam provided by 24 Niclausse boilers and gave a top speed of 17 knots (31 km/h; 20 mph). She carried a maximum of 1,100 tonnes (1,080 long tons; 1,210 short tons) of coal that gave her a range of 7,750 nautical miles (14,350 km; 8,920 mi) at a speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph).
### Armament
Henri IV carried her main armament of two 40-caliber 274 mm (10.8 in) Canon de 274 modèle 1893/1896s in two single-gun turrets, one forward on the upper deck and the other on the main deck at the rear. The guns fired 255 kg (562 lb) armor-piercing projectiles at a muzzle velocity of 865 metres per second (2,840 ft/s).
The ship's secondary armament consisted of seven 45-caliber 138.6 mm (5.46 in) Canon de 138 mm Modèle 1893 naval guns. Four were mounted in individual casemates on the main deck; two more were mounted on the shelter deck with gun shields and the last gun was mounted in a shelter deck turret superfiring over the rear main gun turret. This was the first superfiring turret in naval history and, in this case, was not very successful because the barrel of the 138 mm gun was too short to clear the sighting hood of the turret below. These guns fired 35–30 kg (77–66 lb) shells at muzzle velocities of 730–770 metres per second (2,400–2,500 ft/s).
Twelve 47 mm (1.9 in) 40-caliber Canon de 47 mm Modèle 1885 Hotchkiss guns were mounted as anti-torpedo boat guns. They were mounted in platforms in the foremast and mainmast and on the superstructure. They fired a 1.49-kilogram (3.3 lb) projectile at 610 metres per second (2,000 ft/s) to a maximum range of 4,000 metres (4,400 yd). Their theoretical maximum rate of fire was fifteen rounds per minute, but only seven rounds per minute sustained. Two submerged 450 mm (18 in) torpedo tubes were also carried. Exactly which types of torpedoes carried is unknown, but most of the torpedoes in service during the war had warheads of 110 kilograms (240 lb), maximum speeds of 36 knots (67 km/h; 41 mph) and maximum ranges of 6,000 meters (6,600 yd).
### Armor
Henri IV had a waterline armor belt of Harvey armor that was 2.5 m (8.2 ft) high and tapered from the maximum thickness of 280 mm (11 in) that to 180 mm (7.1 in) at the ship's ends. The belt ended short of the stern in a 100 mm (3.9 in) traverse bulkhead. The lower edge of this belt tapered as well from 180 to 75 mm (7.1 to 3.0 in) in thickness. The upper armor belt was mostly 100 mm (3.9 in) thick and ran from the bow to 9.1 m (360 in) aft of the midsection. It was generally 2 m (6.6 ft) high, but increased to 4 m (13 ft) forward and ended in a 75 mm (3.0 in) traverse bulkhead. The maximum thickness of the armored deck was 60 mm (2.4 in), but tapered to 30 mm (1.2 in) at the ship's ends. Below this was a thinner armored deck that tapered from 20 mm (0.79 in) on the centerline to 35 mm (1.4 in) at the edges. It curved down about 91 cm (36 in) to form a torpedo bulkhead before it met up with the inner bottom. This system was based on experiments conducted in 1894 and was more modern than that used in the Russian battleship Tsesarevich although it was still too close to the side of the ship. The main turret armor was 305 mm (12.0 in) in thickness and the ammunition shafts were protected by 240 mm (9.4 in) of armor. The casemates for the 138 mm guns ranged from 75–115 mm (3.0–4.5 in) in thickness and their ammunition tubes had 164.7 mm (6.48 in) of armor.
## Construction and service
Henri IV was laid down at Cherbourg on 15 July 1897 and launched on 23 August 1899, but did not enter service until September 1903, at a cost of ₣15,660,000 francs. By 1911, Henri IV was assigned as the guard ship of the French naval base in Tunis in French Tunisia.
The ship spent the early part of World War I as the guardship at Bizerte, until February 1915 when she was assigned to the newly formed Syrian Squadron (escadre de Syrie). This squadron was intended to attack Turkish positions and lines of communication in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and the Sinai Peninsula. Henri IV was transferred to the French squadron in the Dardanelles campaign to replace the sunk battleship Bouvet and the damaged Gaulois after the Allies suffered heavily during their first attempt to sail through the Dardanelles and past the fortifications on 18 March 1915. The ship bombarded Kum Kale, on the Asiatic side of the Dardanelles in support of the French diversionary landing on 25 April 1915, and provided fire support for the troops ashore for the rest of the month. She was hit eight times while providing support during this time.
Three of her 138.6 mm guns had been dismounted by November 1914 and sent to reinforce the French naval mission to Serbia, known as "Mission D", by rail from Salonica. In 1916, she was assigned to the Complementary (Reserve) Division of the 3rd Battle Squadron. Subsequently she served with the French Eastern Division in Egypt and then she was sent to Taranto in 1918 as a depot ship. Henri IV was stricken from the Navy List in 1920 and scrapped the following year. |
18,469,964 | Mass Effect 3 | 1,172,858,791 | 2012 video game | [
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| Mass Effect 3 is an action role-playing video game developed by BioWare and published by Electronic Arts. The third major entry in the Mass Effect series and the final installment of the original trilogy, it was released in March 2012 for Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. A Wii U version of the game, entitled Mass Effect 3: Special Edition, was later released in November 2012. The game is set within the Milky Way galaxy in 2186, where galactic civilization is invaded by a highly advanced machine race of synthetic-organic starships known as Reapers. It concludes the story of Commander Shepard, an elite human soldier who is tasked with forging alliances between species for the war.
Similar to Mass Effect 2, the player can import a completed saved game into Mass Effect 3 that influences the plot by taking previous decisions into account. In general, Mass Effect 3 revolves around increasing military strength by completing missions and gathering resources. As BioWare designed the game to be accessible to both old and new players, many of the series' traditional gameplay elements remain, such as cover-based third-person shooting, but new aspects are introduced as well, such as a multiplayer component. The game's score was written by a variety of composers, who aimed for a balance between the orchestral sound of Mass Effect 2 and the synthesizer-driven sound of the first Mass Effect. Mass Effect 3 also supports a variety of downloadable content packs, ranging from minor in-game items to more significant plot-related missions. Notable packs include From Ashes, Leviathan, Omega, and Citadel.
Mass Effect 3 received critical acclaim for its art direction, characters, emotional depth, improved combat, soundtrack, and voice acting. However, its ending was poorly received by fans, who felt that it did not meet expectations. In response to the controversy, BioWare released the Extended Cut pack, which expands upon the original ending. The game received several year-end awards, including Best RPG at the Spike Video Game Awards and Game of the Year from Game Informer. A standalone sequel, Mass Effect: Andromeda, was released in March 2017. In May 2021, Mass Effect 3 was remastered as part of the Mass Effect Legendary Edition.
## Gameplay
Mass Effect 3 is an action role-playing game in which the player takes control of Commander Shepard from a third-person perspective. Shepard's gender, appearance, military background, combat training, and first name are determined by the player before the game begins. If the player has a completed saved game from Mass Effect 2, the character from that game can be imported. By importing an old character, decisions from prior Mass Effect titles are carried over, which impacts the plot of Mass Effect 3. Similar to previous installments in the series, the player is able to choose from six different character classes that each have their own unique set of skills. For example, the Infiltrator class is proficient in stealth and sniping abilities whereas biotics-inclined classes possess psychokinetic powers. By completing assignments and quests, the player is rewarded with experience points. Once enough points are earned, Shepard levels up, which allows for the unlocking or upgrading of skills along a tree.
Mass Effect 3 has three pre-set campaign modes: Action, Story, and RPG. In Action Mode, conversations have automatic replies and normal combat difficulty; in Story Mode, conversations have manual replies and minimal combat difficulty; and in RPG Mode, conversations have manual replies and normal combat difficulty. The game contains various role-playing elements, such as the ability to augment guns with different ammo types, barrels, modifications, and scopes to improve their effectiveness in combat. If the player has Kinect, customization choices can be made verbally instead of selected using a controller. Upon beating the game, a New Game+ is unlocked, which allows the player to restart with certain bonuses, such as the ability to further upgrade weapons.
The primary mode of transportation in Mass Effect 3 is a star ship called Normandy SR-2. From the inside of the ship, players can use a galaxy map to choose a destination point, scan planets for resources, or start missions. To aid the player in managing tasks, the game automatically logs available missions in a journal; however, unlike previous titles in the series, the journal does not distinguish between main quests and side quests. In general, Mass Effect 3 revolves around increasing "Effective Military Strength" (EMS) to prepare for its final mission. EMS is calculated by multiplying "Total Military Strength" (TMS) and "Readiness Rating" (RR). TMS is increased by acquiring "War Assets", which include accomplishments from all three Mass Effect games, whereas RR is increased by playing the multiplayer mode.
### Dialogue and morality
Unless it is set to Action Mode, the player interacts with non-player characters in Mass Effect 3 by using a radial command menu where dialog options depend on wheel direction. Most conversations are advanced by choosing either a Paragon (diplomatic) or Renegade (intimidating) option, which appear to the top and bottom right of the wheel, respectively. By conversing with squadmates aboard the Normandy, Commander Shepard can develop friendships or, in some cases, romantic relationships with them over time. Same-sex relationships for both female and male Shepards are available. If Shepard was imported from Mass Effect 2 and achieved a love interest in each of the prior Mass Effect games, then both characters vie for Shepard's attention in Mass Effect 3. During some conversations, the player is prompted with a context-sensitive interrupt option that offers a temporary alternative to what is available on the dialog wheel.
On several occasions, the player must make decisions that impact the game's narrative. For example, one mission asks the player to side with one of two species, which can lead to one of them being eradicated. Over the course of Mass Effect 3, dialog and narrative decisions result in "Reputation Points", which are added together and unlock further decision-making and dialog options as they accumulate. The conclusion of the game is influenced by accomplishments earned and decisions made throughout the series.
### Combat
Combat in Mass Effect 3 takes place in real-time but also allows for pausing to aim, change weapons, or use skills from a menu. During battle, the player has direct control of Commander Shepard from an over-the-shoulder perspective, who can move around the map by climbing up ladders, combat rolling, or sprinting. Shepard is typically accompanied by two squad members who are controlled by the game's artificial intelligence; however, the player can still order them into position or choose their powers. Kinect users are able to issue these commands verbally. If squad members die, they can be revived using the Unity power or an on-screen prompt if the player is in close proximity.
Enemy encounters generally involve navigating opposing forces that work together and support each other with varying roles. For example, a typical confrontation involves defeating suppressor-type enemies who shoot from afar while also managing more aggressive enemies that are constantly charging. To avoid taking damage, the player can go into cover behind objects on the battlefield, but harder difficulties necessitate that players stay mobile as well. If Shepard or the squad members are hit, damage is dealt to their shields until they run out, at which point a final layer of health is gradually depleted until the individual dies, health is restored, or shields regenerate.
Opposing forces are damaged with gunfire, melee attacks, or specialized skills such as combat drones. If desired, the melee system can be a vital aspect of gameplay. For example, players can execute heavy melee attacks that vary depending on character class. All enemies have protections that are susceptible to particular attack types, such as armor, which is weak against the Incinerate skill and weapons with a slow rate of fire. Sometimes, the player is presented with alternate offensive approaches. For example, if the player encounters an Atlas Mech and defeats its driver without destroying the entire suit, Shepard can climb inside and take control of its heavy-duty weaponry.
### Multiplayer
Mass Effect 3 includes a multiplayer mode called "Galaxy at War". In this mode, up to four players join to complete horde-style cooperative matches in which the participants must survive escalating waves of enemies and complete a series of objectives. As rounds are completed, the player earns in-game currency that is used to buy randomly-generated packs of unlockables, such as new character types and weapons. In-game currency is also available via microtransaction. For the first year of the mode's existence, players could participate in BioWare-sponsored challenges with special objectives and increased rewards.
In contrast to the single-player mode, where the player can only play as a human, the multiplayer mode has a wider variety of species to choose from. Every race has unique powers, such as a "Krogan Charge" for krogans. Combat is based on its single-player counterpart but has some differences such as no pause menu to change weapons; instead, weapons are changed by holding down a button. Frequency of play and number of multiplayer missions completed affect the outcome of the single-player campaign.
## Synopsis
### Setting
The Mass Effect trilogy is set within the Milky Way galaxy during the 22nd century, where interstellar travel is possible through the use of mass transit devices called mass relays, a technology believed to have been built by an extinct alien race known as the Protheans. A conglomerate body of governments known as the Citadel Council controls a large percentage of the galaxy and is responsible for maintaining law and order among races of the galactic community. Races that belong to the Citadel Council include humans, asari, salarians and turians. Other alien races include the warlike reptilian krogan, the nomadic environmental suited quarians, and their wayward creations, a race of networked artificial intelligences known as the geth.
Mass Effect 3 begins in 2186, six months after the events of Mass Effect 2. The galactic community lives in fear of an invasion by Reapers, a highly advanced machine race of synthetic-organic starships that are believed to eradicate all organic civilization every 50,000 years. Meanwhile, the krogan face extinction because of the genophage, a genetic mutation developed by the salarians and deployed by the turians as a bioweapon to contain the krogan; the quarians prepare to retake their homeworld from the geth; and the human supremacist terrorist organization Cerberus is regrouping after a temporary alliance with Commander Shepard to defeat the Collectors, indoctrinated and genetically modified remnants of the Prothean race who were abducting human colonies. Shepard has been relieved of duty and is confined on Earth, awaiting court-martial by the Systems Alliance.
### Characters
The protagonist of Mass Effect 3 is Commander Shepard (Mark Meer or Jennifer Hale), an elite human soldier who is Commanding Officer of the Normandy SR-2 starship. While the exact roster can vary, Shepard's squad members generally include Systems Alliance officers Ashley Williams (Kimberly Brooks) or Kaidan Alenko (Raphael Sbarge), Systems Alliance marine James Vega (Freddie Prinze Jr.), asari information broker and researcher Liara T'Soni (Ali Hillis), turian military adviser Garrus Vakarian (Brandon Keener), the Normandy's artificial intelligence EDI (Tricia Helfer), and quarian engineer Tali'Zorah (Ash Sroka). The Prothean endling Javik (Ike Amadi) is included as an optional squad member by default with the Wii U version of the game. Other characters include Systems Alliance admirals David Anderson (Keith David) and Steven Hackett (Lance Henriksen), Normandy pilot Jeff "Joker" Moreau (Seth Green), Cerberus leader the Illusive Man (Martin Sheen), Cerberus assassin Kai Leng (Troy Baker), Citadel Security (C-Sec) Commander Armando-Owen Bailey (Michael Hogan), and Asari crime boss Aria T'Loak (Carrie-Anne Moss).
Certain characters such as human Cerberus officer Miranda Lawson (Yvonne Strahovski), salarian scientist Mordin Solus (William Salyers), krogan leader Urdnot Wrex (Steven Barr), human criminal Jack (Courtenay Taylor), genetically engineered krogan soldier Grunt (Steve Blum), drell assassin Thane Krios (Keythe Farley), asari Justicar Samara (Maggie Baird), and geth mobile platform Legion (D. C. Douglas) may appear depending on whether or not they survived the events of previous games. If necessary, the game establishes alternate characters as replacements for previously-deceased characters who otherwise would have significant roles in the plot; for example, Urdnot Wreav will emerge as the krogan leader instead of Urdnot Wrex, Padok Wiks will appear instead of Mordin as the salarian scientist working to cure the genophage, and a facsimile of Legion occupied by a geth virtual intelligence (VI) will be encountered by Shepard if Legion is unable to appear.
### Plot
Six months after the events of Mass Effect 2, the Reapers invade and quickly overwhelm Earth. After being reinstated by Anderson, who stays behind to rally resistance, Shepard is ordered to Mars by Hackett. On Mars, Shepard learns from Liara about a Prothean superweapon capable of destroying the Reapers, and recovers its schematics from the Illusive Man, who reveals Cerberus' desire to control the Reapers instead. With schematics in hand, the Alliance begins construction on the device, dubbed the "Crucible", while Shepard is ordered to recruit support from other species across the galaxy.
Shepard begins by rescuing the turian primarch from Menae, a moon orbiting the turian homeworld, Palaven. The primarch pledges turian support to Shepard only if the krogan help defend Palaven, but the krogan leader refuses to help unless the genophage is cured. Shepard and the krogan leader travel to the salarian homeworld, Sur'Kesh, where they rendezvous with a salarian scientist who formulates a cure from Eve, a fertile krogan female, and plans to disperse it using a tower called the "Shroud" on the krogan homeworld, Tuchanka. Before landing on Tuchanka, Shepard is contacted by the leader of the salarian government, who reveals that the Shroud has been sabotaged to prevent the dispersal of a cure, and offers her government's support only if the sabotage is left intact. Shepard must ultimately decide whether to allow the cure to proceed, in which case the salarian scientist sacrifices himself to deploy a counter-measure, resulting in a pledge of support from the krogan. Alternatively, Shepard may deceive the krogan into thinking that the genophage has been cured, thereby earning both krogan and salarian support.
Following the events on Tuchanka and a failed coup by Cerberus to take over the Citadel, the quarians offer their support to the Alliance if Shepard helps them reclaim their homeworld, Rannoch, from the geth. Shepard boards a geth dreadnought, rescues a captive geth ally, then disables the Reaper control signal over the geth. Shepard then locates and destroys a Reaper base on Rannoch, which gives the quarians an opportunity to attack the vulnerable geth. However, the allied geth unit reveals that it intends to sacrifice itself in order to upgrade the geth using Reaper technology, which empowers the geth to defeat the quarians and enable them to achieve true sentience and free will. Shepard either supports one faction by allowing them to exterminate the other, or negotiates a ceasefire to gain support from both sides.
Shepard is subsequently summoned to the Citadel by the asari councilor. She reveals that there is a hidden Prothean artifact on the asari homeworld, Thessia, which may help Shepard identify the "Catalyst", an essential component for completing the Crucible. There, Shepard discovers a Prothean VI called "Vendetta", but Kai Leng arrives and steals it as Thessia falls to the Reapers. Desperate to reclaim Vendetta, Shepard's crew follow Leng to the Sanctuary facility on the human colony world Horizon, where Cerberus has been secretly researching Reaper-control technology. Shepard obtains a tracking device that leads to the Illusive Man's headquarters. Accompanied by EDI, Shepard assaults the Cerberus space station, kills Leng, and learns from Vendetta that the Catalyst is the Citadel itself, which the Reapers have captured after successfully indoctrinating the Illusive Man, who abandoned the station prior to the assault.
The Alliance and its allies launch an all-out assault on the Reapers in a last-ditch effort to retake Earth and activate the Crucible by joining it with the Citadel. Shepard and Anderson eventually enter the Citadel through a Reaper transportation beam, and they find the Illusive Man; only Shepard survives the ensuing confrontation. Shepard attempts to activate the Crucible, but is instead lifted to the Citadel's pinnacle, and meets a childlike artificial intelligence that declares itself to be the Catalyst. The Catalyst explains that it created the Reapers to prevent synthetic life from destroying organic life by periodically culling civilizations that had grown advanced enough to develop synthetic life. Accepting that this cycle is no longer viable, the Catalyst presents Shepard a number of options on how to deal with the Reapers. The ultimate fates of Shepard, the Normandy crew, Earth, and the rest of the galaxy depend on the player's final choice in dealing with the Catalyst as well as their final EMS score.
In a post-credits scene, an individual known as the "Stargazer" tells the story of "the Shepard" to a young boy, implying that Shepard's legacy lives on far into the future.
## Development
Mass Effect 3 was developed by BioWare and published by Electronic Arts (EA). Similar to previous installments in the series, the game was directed by Casey Hudson, who originally created the franchise along with BioWare founders Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka.
### Production
Early stages of development on Mass Effect 3 began before Mass Effect 2 was released. Because Mass Effect 3 was designed for consoles that were nearing the end of their lifespans, BioWare focused more on optimizing gameplay and storytelling than pushing the technology forward. Throughout the design process, the company referenced critical feedback to help guide their creative decisions, an approach they also utilized for Mass Effect 2. For example, many fans complained that role-playing systems in Mass Effect 2 were oversimplified, so BioWare added back more character customization options. Another major strategy was to make Mass Effect 3 more user-friendly for new players, something that BioWare felt they did a bad job of in Mass Effect 2.
One of Hudson's primary goals for the single-player campaign was to improve combat, hoping to turn Mass Effect 3 into one of the best shooters on the market. BioWare tried to accomplish this by improving enemy animations and diversity, including specialized enemies that would require players to utilize different tactics based on character class. The company also aimed to make the battlefield less predictable by introducing unexpected events and redirects, such as the floor giving out and the player falling to a completely different level of the environment, so that enemy encounters would not always go as telegraphed.
Mass Effect 3 required over 40,000 lines of dialog. By comparison, the original Mass Effect featured approximately 20,000 lines while Mass Effect 2 featured 25,000. Because of the game's extensive voice cast, it was logistically impossible for BioWare to have every actor in a single location at one time. Caroline Livingstone, who served as voiceover director, coordinated recording sessions from Edmonton while the actors worked remotely. BioWare noted that this approach, combined with the sheer volume of dialog, made it difficult to consistently capture the proper intonation and volume of each line. To help reduce these kinds of errors, they developed their own technology, such as the "Intensity Volume Matrix", which listed out each line and the appropriate tone associated with it.
The music of Mass Effect 3 was composed by Sasha Dikicyan, Sam Hulick, Christopher Lennertz, Clint Mansell, and Cris Velasco. Everyone except for Mansell was a returning composer; Hulick contributed to the first two games and Dikicyan, Lennertz, and Velasco scored some Mass Effect 2 downloadable content packs. Jack Wall, the lead composer of Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, had no involvement in the production of Mass Effect 3. Each composer was allocated a specific area of the game to work on, and in total there were 90 minutes of music scored. According to Hulick, the team aimed for a balance between the orchestral sound of Mass Effect 2 and the synthesizer-driven sound of Mass Effect. Mansell, a Golden Globe Award-nominated composer, likened his role to that of a disc jockey, who is responsible for choosing the right music at the right times.
Although Mass Effect 3 was originally planned as a project that could be finished in under two years, by March 2011, it was clear that more development time was required, so BioWare moved the game's release date from Q4 2011 to Q1 2012. In order to meet this deadline, the company also made some concessions, such as the removal of a new, Prothean squad mate from the base game. The game was officially approved for distribution, making it effectively finished, in February 2012.
### Writing
Mac Walters, who served as co-lead writer on Mass Effect 2 with Drew Karpyshyn, was the lead writer for Mass Effect 3. Karpyshyn departed from the series after Mass Effect 2 to work on Star Wars: The Old Republic. Hudson and Walters began the writing process by collaborating on a short story document that outlined all primary plot points. These high-level ideas were then disbursed to the rest of the team, who were each put in charge of specific character and story arcs. Staff members were also responsible for peer reviewing each other's work. Because prior games allowed players to choose from different outcomes, the writers had to account for many possible variables; however, in anticipation of this challenge, they preemptively locked in certain story arcs to ensure that all Mass Effect 3 playthroughs had at least some commonalities.
Mass Effect 3 offers expanded content, in comparison to prior entries in the series, for players who are interested in having their Shepard pursue same-sex relationships with non-player characters. Kaidan Alenko, who was previously only available as a heterosexual romance option for a female Shepard, is retroactively established as a bisexual character who can, at the player's discretion, become a male Shepard's love interest. It is also the first game of the series to offer an exclusively gay male and lesbian romance option with shuttlecraft pilot Steve Cortez and communications specialist Samantha Traynor respectively. Cortez was written by Dusty Everman, who approached the romance arc as a meaningful human relationship that just happens to be between two men. Traynor's story arc is framed as a lighthearted fish out of water situation by Patrick Weekes, whose character work for Traynor is predominantly about a civilian technician trying to adjust to life in a military environment, as opposed to her sexual orientation and attraction to feminine qualities.
The overall narrative of Mass Effect 3 went through multiple redrafts before being finalized, and a number of ending sequences involving the Reapers were considered but ultimately abandoned. In November 2011, a private beta of Mass Effect 3 was leaked onto Xbox Live, which allowed players to access unreleased plot details, and forced BioWare to alter some aspects of the story at the last minute.
## Marketing and release
Mass Effect 3 was officially announced on December 11, 2010, at the Spike Video Game Awards. The following summer, the game was demoed and unveiled at conventions such as Comic-Con, Electronic Entertainment Expo, Gamescon, and PAX Prime. A multiplayer component was officially announced on October 10, 2011, confirming longstanding fan rumors of a multiplayer mode dating back to 2010. An official single-player demo was released on February 14, 2012, with early access granted to consumers who purchased Battlefield 3 and activated their online pass.
Leading to its release, Mass Effect 3 was promoted with a variety of video content, beginning with a reveal trailer in 2010 and ending with a teaser trailer called Take Back Earth in 2012. BioWare also utilized viral marketing such as fictional blogs and a weekly web series called BioWare Pulse. For one promotional campaign, EA launched early copies of Mass Effect 3 into space using weather balloons that were equipped with GPS devices. Fans were able to track the balloons online and then recover them once they landed, which enabled them to obtain early copies of the game. Throughout its marketing cycle, Mass Effect 3 was subject to numerous leaks; most significantly, a private beta unintentionally became available to players on Xbox Live in November 2011.
Unlike Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, BioWare promoted Mass Effect 3 with both male and female versions of Commander Shepard. Colloquially referred to as "FemShep", the female Shepard had her own dedicated trailers and appeared on the cover of some versions of the game, including the standard version, which featured a reversible slipcase insert with FemShep on one side. To help decide the official FemShep model, BioWare asked fans to choose between five prototypes on Facebook. Ultimately, the fifth prototype won and a new fan vote was held to decide its hair color, which became red.
In addition to the standard version of Mass Effect 3, players could also purchase a Collector's Edition and Digital Deluxe Edition, which included in-game bonuses and unlockable items. The Digital Deluxe Edition was exclusively available through Origin, EA's online distribution and digital rights management system. The game also came with various pre-order bonuses depending on where the order was made. For example, those who pre-ordered the game from the PlayStation Network were granted the M-55 Argus assault weapon and Mass Effect 3 PlayStation theme.
Mass Effect 3 was originally scheduled for release in late 2011, but its official release date was eventually moved to March 6, 2012. Initially, the game was only released for Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. All new copies of the game came with an online pass that granted access to the multiplayer mode, but used copies generally required that a new pass be purchased. In order to run Mass Effect 3 on PC, players were required to install Origin. On November 18, 2012, a Wii U version of the game was released in North America, followed by releases in Europe on November 30 and Japan on December 6. Along with Mass Effect 2, Mass Effect 3 became backwards compatible with Xbox One on November 7, 2016. A remaster of the Mass Effect trilogy, entitled Mass Effect Legendary Edition, was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on May 14, 2021.
### Downloadable content
A variety of downloadable content packs for Mass Effect 3 were released between March 2012 and April 2013. The content ranges from minor in-game items to more significant plot-related missions. One pack, Extended Cut, expands upon the game's original endings with an additional choice to refuse the Catalyst, which inevitably results in a Reaper victory over the current cycle of organics. The pack also supplements each of the three main endings with an epilogue and elaborates upon other aspects of the conclusion. For example, whereas the original ending shows the Normandy SR-2 trying to outrun the blast from the Crucible, it does not elaborate on why the Normandy is fleeing from battle in the first place. In Extended Cut, a scene with Admiral Hackett ordering an evacuation is added.
Other major packs include From Ashes, which adds Javik as a squadmate; Leviathan, which follows the crew of the Normandy as they investigate the Reapers' origins; Omega, which involves Shepard retaking the space station Omega alongside Aria T'Loak, its former ruler, from Cerberus; and Citadel, which follows the crew of the Normandy on shore leave. An interactive comic called Genesis 2 is also available for purchase and allows players to quickly customize important story decisions on the spot instead of having to replay prior installments. The Wii U version of the game includes Genesis 2 and From Ashes. Of all the packs, Citadel was the best-received, and both Leviathan and Citadel were nominated for Best DLC at the Spike Video Game Awards during their respective years of release (2012 and 2013).
## Reception
### Critical response
Upon release, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of Mass Effect 3 received "universal acclaim" while the Microsoft Windows and Wii U versions received "generally favorable reviews" from video game publications, according to review aggregator Metacritic. The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game finished with scores of 93 out of 100, making Mass Effect 3 the highest-rated game of 2012 on both systems.
Critics felt that Mass Effect 3 was a satisfying conclusion to the Mass Effect trilogy. In a perfect review for Eurogamer, Dan Whitehead praised the game for providing a definitive close to the saga instead of something more ambiguous or open-ended. Writing for Game Informer, Andrew Reiner proclaimed that BioWare had created one of the most "intricately crafted" stories in the history of video gaming. Tom Francis of PC Gamer (US) remarked that the finale was a "mixed bag", but ultimately praised its scale and emotional impact, which he felt was more satisfying than its main plot.
Reviewers highlighted the experience of playing Mass Effect 3 with an imported saved game. In a piece for Polygon, Arthur Gies opined that, while the game would be engaging without any previous context, it would be more meaningful for players who also played through Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2. Gus Mastrapa of The A.V. Club echoed these sentiments and praised Mass Effect 3 for allotting each player a degree of flexibility over their choices and the direction of the narrative. By contrast, Edge felt that Mass Effect 3 relied too heavily on events from prior games, which stopped it from standing up as its own work.
The combat system and multiplayer mode received praise. Discussing combat for IGN, Colin Moriarty observed that while changes from prior installments were minor, they were still evident, and anticipated that multiplayer would give the game added replay value. While Game Informer noted that combat was not perfect, they were still positive and concluded that enemy encounters were more intense and interesting than in Mass Effect 2, due in part to a greater variety in environment and enemy types. In an otherwise enthusiastic write-up for GameSpot, Kevin VanOrd recounted numerous glitches during combat, such as party members putting themselves in the line of fire by climbing onto crates and enemies getting stuck on walls. Machinima also noted numerous bugs, but relented that Mass Effect 3 was still a memorable experience, citing the game's strong characters as compensation for its flaws.
Other aspects of Mass Effect 3 to receive praise included its art design, music, and voice acting. GameSpot described the art design as "fantastic" and gave particular attention to its use of color and composition. In that same review, the website complimented the game's voice acting for bringing its major characters to life. PC Gamer (US) made special mention of the game's music, calling it "gorgeous" and observing that it significantly added to the emotional impact of the game. The Verge went a step further and described the score as one of the most "powerful and memorable" ever created for a video game. Kirk Hamilton of Kotaku felt that the score represented some of the best video game music of 2012.
### Controversies
The ending of Mass Effect 3 was poorly received by players, who felt that it did not meet their expectations. Displeased fans organized an internet campaign called "Retake Mass Effect" to demand a better ending to the game, part of which included a charity drive for the organization Child's Play. Public outcry over the game's outcome drew conflicting responses from organizations such as the US-based Better Business Bureau and Federal Trade Commission as well as the UK-based Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) as to whether BioWare had engaged in false advertising and misled consumers under existing law. On April 5, 2012, BioWare announced a free DLC pack that would expand upon the ending and address criticism. The expansion, Extended Cut, was released for most platforms on June 26, 2012. Critical and fan reaction towards the pack was generally mixed.
Some fans and special interest groups vocally objected to the inclusion of expanded same sex romance options for Shepard. Kevin VanOrd from GameSpot and Craig Takeuchi from the Georgia Straight highlighted instances of dismissive comments against the game's same-sex relationship content which were posted on several websites in their respective articles. Queerty suggested that some of the user-generated comments posted on review aggregator Metacritic were indicative of a review bomb movement to intentionally lower the game's user rating in response to the romance content. In April 2012, Jeff Brown, VP of corporate communications at EA, claimed that his company was inundated by "several thousand" letters and emails protesting the inclusion of LGBT content in the video games it publishes like Mass Effect 3. EA issued a statement denying that it came under pressure by any groups to include LGBT characters in their games, but acknowledged that it has voluntarily worked with pro-LGBT groups to discuss appropriate content as well as the harassment of players in online forums. James Brightman from Gameindustry.biz noted that many of the letters appeared to have originated from addresses in the US State of Florida and were likely coordinated by local anti-LGBT groups based there.
Other noteworthy controversies surrounding Mass Effect 3 included accusations of questionable business practices over the decision to release From Ashes as paid day one DLC; allegations of conflict of interest involving the casting of video game media personality Jessica Chobot as an in-game character named Diana Allers; the creative decision to utilize a stock photo as the basis of Tali's face; and an online poll to determine the redesigned default appearance of a female Shepard.
### Sales
EA originally shipped 3.5 million units of Mass Effect 3 in its first month. It sold 349,000 digital copies on the PC alone by the end of March 2012. The game sold over 890,000 copies in its first 24 hours. According to The NPD Group, it sold 1.3 million physical copies in its debut month, which amounted to twice the total of Mass Effect 2 during its opening month in January 2010. In May 2012, EA reported that Mass Effect 3 grossed over \$200 million during Q4 FY12.
### Accolades
Following its release, Mass Effect 3 received a number of year-end awards, including Satellite Award for Outstanding Role Playing Game, Best RPG at the Spike Video Game Awards, Game of the Year from Game Informer, Best Overall RPG from IGN, and Best Co-Operative Multiplayer and Best Game Cinematography from Inside Gaming Awards.
| Year | Award | Category | Recipient | Result | Ref |
|-----------------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------|-------------------|------------------------|--------|-----|
| 2011 | Game Critics Awards | Best Console Game | Mass Effect 3 | | |
| Best Role Playing Game | Mass Effect 3 | | | | |
| GameSpy's Best of E3 2011 Awards | Overall (and Multiplatform) Game of Show | Mass Effect 3 | | | |
| Role-Playing Game of Show | Mass Effect 3 | | | | |
| IGN Best of E3 2011 Awards | Best Overall Game | Mass Effect 3 | | | |
| Best Xbox 360 Game | Mass Effect 3 | | | | |
| Best PC Game | Mass Effect 3 | | | | |
| Best Role-Playing Game | Mass Effect 3 | | | | |
| Best Trailer | Mass Effect 3 | | | | |
| Most Anticipated Game Award | Mass Effect 3 | | | | |
| Spike Video Game Awards | Most Anticipated Game | Mass Effect 3 | | | |
| 2012 | Game Developers Choice Awards | Game of the Year | Mass Effect 3 | | |
| Best Narrative | Mass Effect 3 | | | | |
| Game Informer Top 50 Games of 2012 | Game of the Year | Mass Effect 3 | | | |
| Best Role-Playing | Mass Effect 3 | | | | |
| Best Downloadable Content | Mass Effect 3 | | | | |
| Golden Joystick Awards | Best RPG | Mass Effect 3 | | | |
| Best Gaming Moment | Mass Effect 3 – Tuchanka Choice | | | | |
| The Golden Joystick Ultimate Game Award | Mass Effect 3 | | | | |
| IGN Best of 2012 Awards | Game of the Year | Mass Effect 3 | | | |
| Best Xbox 360 Role-Playing Game | Mass Effect 3 | | | | |
| Best Xbox 360 Graphics | Mass Effect 3 | | | | |
| Best Xbox 360 Multiplayer Game | Mass Effect 3 | | | | |
| Best PS3 Role-Playing Game | Mass Effect 3 | | | | |
| Best PS3 Game | Mass Effect 3 | | | | |
| Best Overall Role-Playing Game | Mass Effect 3 | | | | |
| Best Overall Music | Mass Effect 3 | | | | |
| Best Overall Sound | Mass Effect 3 | | | | |
| Inside Gaming Awards | Best Co-Operative Multiplayer | Mass Effect 3 | | | |
| Best Game Cinematography | Mass Effect 3 | | | | |
| PC Gamer Game of the Year Awards 2012 | The Game of the Year 2012 | Mass Effect 3 | | | |
| Polygon'''s 2012 Games of the Year | Game of the Year | Mass Effect 3 | | | |
| Satellite Awards | Satellite Award for Outstanding Role Playing Game | Mass Effect 3 | | | |
| Spike Video Game Awards | Game of the Year | Mass Effect 3 | | | |
| Best RPG | Mass Effect 3 | | | | |
| Best Performance by a Human Female | Jennifer Hale | | | | |
| Best DLC | Mass Effect 3: Leviathan | | | | |
| Game of the Decade | Mass Effect 3 | | | | |
| 2013 | Spike Video Game Awards | Best DLC | Mass Effect 3: Citadel | | |
## Legacy
In the years following its release, Mass Effect 3 has received retrospective attention, with much of it focusing on the ending controversy. For example, a 2017 article by James Davenport of PC Gamer opined that the game's ending received an "inordinate" amount of criticism, and while he agreed that the ending was "problematic", he also noted that fixating on the ending could distract players from other aspects of the game. In 2018, Lucy O'Brien of IGN posited that BioWare's cooperative response to "Retake Mass Effect" contributed to a paradigm shift in how consumers influence video game developers. She ultimately concluded that the movement "helped lift up the velvet rope that once stood between gamer and game-maker." Wes Fenlon from PC Gamer suggested that the popularity of the game's multiplayer mode helped popularize loot boxes, "the worst monetization gimmick of the 2010s" in his opinion, and made it a mainstream feature in the video game industry.
Despite the controversies surrounding the game, some publications have cited Mass Effect 3 as one of the greatest video games of all time and as one of the best or most important games of the 2010s. In November 2012, the game was included in Time's list of the top 100 video games of all time, and in 2018, it was named among the greatest games of all time by Game Informer. By 2019, Mass Effect 3 was ranked as one of the best video games of the 2010s by VG247, Forbes, and Den of Geek. That same year, Eurogamer listed the character Mordin's final scene as one of their favorite moments of the decade. Mass Effect 3 was also identified by VentureBeat as one of the defining games of the 2010s due to the "firestorm of fans, press, and developers converging into an absolute mess of internet culture" over its ending, and its multiplayer mode, which ultimately became an unexpected monetary success.
## Future
On March 21, 2017, a standalone sequel, entitled Mass Effect: Andromeda, was released. The game takes place in the Andromeda galaxy during the 29th century following a 634-year sleeper ship journey from the Milky Way galaxy. It introduces a new protagonist, either Sara or Scott Ryder, and revolves around finding a new homeworld for humanity. As of February 2022, the next game of the Mass Effect'' universe is currently in pre-production, led by a veteran team at BioWare. |
738,628 | Henry Garnet | 1,167,107,043 | 16th-century English Jesuit priest (1555–1606) | [
"1555 births",
"1606 deaths",
"16th-century English Jesuits",
"17th-century English Jesuits",
"English expatriates",
"Executed Gunpowder Plotters",
"Executed people from Derbyshire",
"People educated at Winchester College",
"People executed by the Kingdom of England by hanging",
"People from Heanor",
"People of the Papal States",
"Prisoners in the Tower of London"
]
| Henry Garnet SJ (July 1555 – 3 May 1606), sometimes Henry Garnett, was an English Jesuit priest executed for high treason, based solely on having had advanced knowledge of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot and having refused to violate the Seal of the Confessional by notifying the authorities.
Born in Heanor, Derbyshire, he was educated in Nottingham and later at Winchester College before he moved to London in 1571 to work for a publisher. There he professed an interest in legal studies and in 1575, he travelled to the continent and joined the Society of Jesus. He was ordained in Rome some time around 1582.
In 1586 Garnet returned to England as part of the Jesuit mission, soon succeeding Father William Weston as Jesuit superior, following the latter's capture by the English authorities. Garnet established a secret press, which lasted until late 1588, and in 1594 he interceded in the Wisbech Stirs, a dispute between secular and regular clergy. Fr. Garnet preferred nonviolent resistance to the religious persecution Catholics faced in England. He accordingly approved of the disclosure by Catholic priests of the existence of the 1603 Bye Plot, and repeatedly exhorted English Catholics not to plot violent regime change.
In summer 1605 Garnet met with Robert Catesby, a member of the English nobility who, unknown to him, planned to assassinate the Protestant King James I. The existence of Catesby's Gunpowder Plot was revealed to Fr. Garnet by Father Oswald Tesimond on 24 July 1605, but as the information was received under the seal of the confessional, Canon law prevented Frs. Garnet and Tesimond from telling the authories under penalty of immediate excommunication. Instead, Fr. Garnet pleaded with Catesby to cancel what he was plotting. Fr. Garnet also wrote to his superiors in Rome, urging them to order English Catholics not to use violence.
When the plot failed Garnet went into hiding, but he was eventually arrested on 27 January 1606. He was taken to London and interrogated by the Privy Council, whose members included John Popham, Edward Coke and Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury. Imprisoned in the Tower of London, his conversations with fellow prisoner Edward Oldcorne were monitored by eavesdroppers, and his letters to friends such as Anne Vaux were intercepted. His conviction, announced at the end of his trial on 28 March 1606, was a foregone conclusion. Criticised for his use of equivocation, which Coke called "open and broad lying and forswearing", and condemned for not warning the authorities of what Catesby planned, he was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. He was executed on 3 May 1606.
## Early life
Henry Garnet (or Garnett) was born some time around July 1555 at Heanor in Derbyshire, son of Brian Garnet (or Garnett) and Alice (née Jay). He had at least five siblings: two brothers, Richard and John, and three sisters, Margaret, Eleanor and Anne, all of whom became nuns at Louvain. He was uncle to saint Thomas Garnet SJ. Henry studied at the grammar school in Nottingham where, from 1565, his father was master. Following his election as a scholar on 24 August 1567, in 1568 he entered Winchester College, where he apparently excelled. His love of music and "rare and delightful" voice were complemented by an ability to perform songs without preparation, and he was reportedly also skilled with the lute. Father Thomas Stanney wrote that Garnet was "the prime scholar of Winchester College, very skilful in music and in playing upon the instruments, very modest in his countenance and in all his actions, so much that the schoolmasters and wardens offered him very great friendship, to be placed by their means in New College, Oxford."
## Rome
Garnet did not enter New College; instead, late in 1571, he left Winchester for London. There he worked for a legal publisher, Richard Tottell, as a proof-reader and corrector. He often dined with Sir John Popham, who as Lord Chief Justice was to preside over the trial of the Gunpowder Plotters, men whose association with Garnet would eventually prove so fateful. Although Garnet professed to Popham an interest in legal studies, in 1575 he sailed for Portugal with Giles Gallop, to enter the Society of Jesus.
The two men travelled to Rome and on 11 September 1575 were accepted into the church at Sant'Andrea della Valle. Garnet studied under the theologian Father Robert Bellarmine. Two of his professors, Christopher Clavius and Robert Bellarmine, praised his abilities. He was ordained sometime around 1582 and stayed in Rome as a Professor of Hebrew, lecturing also on metaphysics and mathematics. He was also an English confessor at St Peter's, but in May 1584 his academic career was curtailed when, perhaps as a consequence of a petition from the Jesuit superior for England William Weston, Father Robert Persons asked that he be sent to England. The Superior General Claudio Acquaviva, who saw Garnet as his successor, refused this request. He thought Garnet more suited to "the quiet life" than that which awaited him in England, but on 2 May 1586 he relented and allowed him to leave. Appointed superior for the journey, Garnet travelled with Robert Southwell, leaving for Calais on 8 May. He landed near Folkestone early in July 1586.
## England
After meeting the Jesuit superior for England William Weston at a London inn, Garnet, Southwell and Weston travelled to Harlesford, near Marlow, Buckinghamshire. Spending just over a week at the home of Richard Bold, they engaged in prayer and masses, and also took confessions. They discussed their mission in England, deciding to meet each year in February and August (later changed to Easter and autumn). Weston also gave the two men details of Catholic houses that would shelter them.
Acquaviva had instructed that should anything happen to Weston, Garnet was to succeed him as superior in England, which he did when only days after leaving Harlesford, Weston was captured en route to London. Acquaviva had also given Garnet permission to print pro-Catholic literature, and so early the next year he met Southwell in London to discuss the establishment of a secret press, which was probably located somewhere around a former Augustinian hospital near Spitalfields. It lasted until late 1588 and was responsible for A Consolatory Letter to All the Afflicted Catholikes in England, author unknown, and An Epistle of Comfort, by Southwell. From a friend's window in Ludgate Hill, Garnet witnessed the November 1588 procession to a thanksgiving service at Old St Paul's Cathedral, celebrating the failed Spanish invasion. Spain's actions gave Garnet much cause for concern, "For when we thought that there was an end to these disasters by which we are already nearly destroyed, our hope was suddenly turned to sorrow, and now with redoubled effort the overseers are pressing upon us". People were allowed to spectate from windows only if their loyalty to Queen Elizabeth I was guaranteed by the householder. In a letter to Acquaviva, Garnet said that many of his supporters thought that he was more concerned for the Queen than her Calvinist ministers. In light of the Armada's destruction, he also wrote to the general to ask for advice on two versions of a proposed oath to allow Roman Catholics to swear their allegiance to the Queen. The government's version required that Catholics reject the pope's authority over Elizabeth, whereas the Catholic version proposed that they recognise her authority and "would wish with every effort to struggle to thwart and to fight to the death all those who will in any way endanger the life of her Highness". The Privy Council rejected the latter.
Garnet's first few years in England were spent meeting new priests in London, including John Gerard and Edward Oldcorne. Jesuits had been banished from England since 1585, and if discovered they risked being charged with high treason. Avoiding pursuers was therefore a recurrent problem, and Garnet was almost caught on several occasions. As a result of an almost disastrous meeting at Baddesley Clinton in 1591, when he and many others were almost captured together while renewing their vows, he reorganised the mission into eleven smaller groups, each assigned two weeks annually. Following Southwell's capture in June 1592, and the search of Anne Vaux and Eleanor Brooksby's rented house in Warwickshire, he wrote to Acquaviva to ask for an assistant who could succeed him as superior. Henry Walpole was thus dispatched, but was captured on his arrival in December 1593, and executed in York in April 1595. Garnet believed that it was his duty to observe (in disguise) the executions of his fellow priests, so as to secretly administer the last rites, and he may have been present at Southwell's execution at Tyburn in 1595. The latter's death was a significant blow for Garnet, who later wrote of the "intolerable burden of loneliness" he carried while in England.
In November 1593 Garnet travelled to the decrepit and decayed Wisbech Castle, requisitioned by the government in 1579 for the internment of Catholic priests. William Weston was held there. The castle's inhabitants were supported by Catholic alms and lived a relatively comfortable existence; Garnet was complimentary about Wisbech, calling it a "college of venerable confessors". The following year he mediated in a dispute there between secular and regular clergy (the latter represented by the Jesuits), which became known as the Wisbech Stirs. The argument was settled by the end of the year, but Garnet was concerned that reports of discontent at the Jesuit-administered English College in Rome and tension between some Catholic English exiles in Brussels might undermine his efforts to stabilise the situation.
## Gunpowder Plot
### Introduction to Catesby
Garnet spent much of 1604 on the move, although few details of his travels exist. At Easter he reportedly gave a mass at Twigmoor Hall, the house of John Wright. In November he was with Anne Vaux (whose family he had been introduced to in summer 1586) at White Webbs near Enfield, renewing the vows given on the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lady. On 9 June 1605, he was to be found in a room on Thames Street in London, with Robert Catesby. In the midst of what Garnet later recalled was a seemingly casual conversation, Catesby asked the priest about the morality of "killing innocents". Garnet replied according to Catholic theology, that often, during war, innocents were killed alongside the enemy. According to Antonia Fraser, Garnet may have thought that Catesby's request was to do with him possibly raising a regiment in Flanders.
Garnet was not at all like Catesby, described by Fraser as possessing the mentality "of the crusader who does not hesitate to employ the sword in the cause of values which he considers are spiritual". Catesby was also described as "exceedingly tangled in debts and barely able to subsist" In contrast, Garnet believed that "things were best settled by submission to the will of God." He was ebullient over King James I's succession to the English throne and hoped that there would be no foreign interference. Of the 1603 Bye Plot, revealed (with his blessing) to the Privy Council by two Catholic priests, he wrote that it was "a piece of impudent folly, for we know that it is by peaceful means that his Holiness and other princes are prepared to help us." He exhorted that Pope Clement VIII instruct all English Catholics not to engage in violent rebellion, "quiete et pacifice". It was a message echoed by Archpriest George Blackwell, who commanded his priests never to attempt any such thing, but it proved controversial; early in summer 1605 Garnet reported to Rome that English Catholics had reached "a stage of desperation".
The two met again in July at Fremland in Essex. Garnet told Catesby that he "wished him to look what he did if he intended anything. That he must first look to the lawfulness of the act itself, and then he must not have so little regard of Innocents that he spare not friends and necessary persons for the Commonwealth." When Catesby offered to tell the priest more, Garnet declined: "I told him what charge we all had of quietness and to procure the like in others." Garnet also spoke with William Parker, 4th Baron Monteagle, asking him "if Catholics were able to make their part good by arms against the King", but Monteagle's reply was vague. Author Alan Haynes suggests that Garnet may at that point have become marginalised.
### Seal of the confessional
Garnet later claimed to have been ignorant of Catesby's designs until 24 July, when he was approached by Father Oswald Tesimond. "An intelligent and thoughtful man", Tesimond wanted his superior's advice as Catesby had recently told him of his plan. As Garnet viewed Tesimond's information as having been imparted under the seal of the confessional, he later claimed to have felt unable to warn anyone of Catesby's plan. According to his own account, the two had a third meeting around 24 July. He read to Catesby a letter he had received from Persons, urging him to speak to the Pope before attempting any scheme, but fearful of being discovered, Catesby declined. So Garnet wrote to Aquaviva, claiming to have prevented several outbreaks of violence, and of his suspicion that there was "a risk that some private endeavour may commit treason or use force against the King". As he had done following the failed Bye Plot, he urged the pope to publicly warn against the use of force, attempting to hide his knowledge of the plot by suggesting that the warning be aimed at recusants in Wales. He also sent Sir Edmund Baynham to deliver the same message, and when Parliament was prorogued on 28 July, Garnet satisfied himself that the danger had been averted.
On 24 August he was at White Webbs near Enfield, with Anne Vaux, her sister Eleanor Brooksby, her nephew William Brooksby and his wife Dorothy. A few days later the group set out on a pilgrimage to St Winefride's Well at Holywell in Wales. They travelled to John Grant's home at Norbrook, then Huddington Court near Worcester, through Shrewsbury, and finally to Wales. About 30 people made the journey west, including Everard Digby and his wife, and their secret chaplain Edward Oldcorne, and Nicholas Owen. On his return from Wales, Garnet travelled with Anne Vaux to Rushton Hall, home of the recently deceased Thomas Tresham (father to Francis Tresham). From there they travelled to Digby's home at Gayhurst House in Buckinghamshire. Vaux was suspicious that so many horses were being collected at the homes of her friends and family, and confessed to Garnet her fear that "these wild heads had something in hand". She asked him to speak with Catesby, but Garnet reassured her that Catesby was instead seeking a commission in Flanders. Garnet wrote a letter of recommendation for Catesby for that very purpose. When in October Vaux raised the issue once more, claiming that several women had asked her where they should retreat to once "the brunt was passed in the beginning of Parliament", Garnet again mentioned Flanders, although Fraser suggests that Vaux's questioning must have concerned him deeply.
### Arrest and imprisonment
Garnet was at Coughton Court on 6 November when Thomas Bates brought news of the plot's failure. Catesby wanted him to help raise support in Wales, where it was thought Catholic support would be more likely, but Garnet was horrified. In a letter to Catesby and Digby, he urged them to abandon their "wicked actions" and follow the pope's advice. He spent weeks on the run but was eventually arrested on 27 January 1606, at Hindlip Hall. There, for eight days, he and Fr. Edward Oldcorne (later beatified as the Blessed Edward Oldcorne) had secreted themselves in a small, cramped space, unable even to stand or stretch their legs. They received sustenance from their protectors through a small drinking straw hidden within the building's structure, but with no commode or drainage they were eventually forced by "customs of nature which must of necessity be done" to emerge from hiding, and were immediately captured. They were taken first to Holt Castle in Worcestershire, and a few days later to London. Garnet was still weak from his ordeal, and Salisbury therefore ordered that he be given a good mount; his supplies were paid for by the king. The group was accompanied by a Puritan minister who "ranted at length without interruption", but Garnet's replies remained erudite, brief and clear—much to the minister's disappointment. On his arrival in London he was taken to the Gatehouse Prison in Westminster, which was already home to many Catholic prisoners, including his nephew, Father Thomas Garnet.
Garnet first appeared in front of the Privy Council on 13 February 1606. Present were John Popham, Edward Coke, Sir William Waad, and the Earls of Worcester, Northampton, Nottingham and Salisbury. Superficially, they treated him with respect, removing their hats and addressing him as "Mr Garnet", although they made fun of his relationship with Anne Vaux, claiming he was her lover, not her confessor. During his questioning he admitted some of his movements, and that he had received Catesby's letter on 6 November, but he denied being involved in the plot, whose members he did not name. Garnet was convinced that his captors were interested only in the failed scheme and believed he might be able to clear his name, but the councillors also asked him about the doctrine of equivocation. His own treatise on this topic, one of the "heretical, treasonable and damnable books" found amongst Francis Tresham's possessions, was laid on the council table before him. Although it condemned lying, Garnet's treatise supported the notion that when questioned, for instance, on the presence of a priest in his house, a Catholic might "securely in conscience" answer "No" if he had a "secret meaning reserved in his mind". The occasions on which a Catholic might legitimately use equivocation, he supposed, were limited, but such replies could be taken as an example of insincerity or deviousness—especially to the king's council, who may not have wanted to see Garnet prove his case. The council's view of equivocation was very different from Garnet's. In their eyes, it was simple deceit.
The next day, Garnet was moved to the Tower of London, into what he described as "a very fine chamber". He was afforded claret with his meals, though it took him some time to get bedding and coal for the fireplace. He claimed that Lieutenant of the Tower William Waad treated him well, although on the subject of religion his speeches became "violent and impotent".
Garnet's recent interrogation was only the first of many. Generally, his answers were carefully considered and demonstrated a passive resistance to his questioners; the use of the rack was a distinct possibility, one which he answered with "Minare ista pueris [Such threats are only for children]". What information he did give up was of limited interest only. His jailer, a man named Carey, was employed by Waad to gain the priest's trust, offering to relay letters to his nephew in the Gatehouse Prison. Carey then placed Garnet into a cell containing a hole through which he was able to converse with Oldcorne, who was in a neighbouring cell. From "a place which was made for this precise purpose", two government eavesdroppers were therefore able to record details of conversations between the two priests. Their communications were mostly innocent, although Garnet's admission that on one occasion he drank too much wine was later used against him, along with other incriminating evidence recorded during their stay. His communications with his nephew, and Anne Vaux, were also intercepted. Most of these letters found their intended recipient, but not before they had first been read by Waad, who also kept Salisbury informed. Although Garnet told Vaux that the Council's evidence constituted nothing but "presumptions", insufficient for a state trial, early in March he confessed, possibly as a result of torture. Vaux too was arrested and interrogated twice, just as further questions were being asked of Garnet by the council and the king, the latter of whom was interested in his opinion on theological matters.
Despite his claims to have been horrified by Catesby's plan, his declaration, which admitted that he had "dealt very reservedly with your Lordships in the case of the late powder action", gave the government proof that he had prior knowledge of the plot, and in their view, he was therefore guilty of misprision of treason.
### Trial
Garnet's trial took place on Friday 28 March 1606. He was taken to the Guildhall by closed coach; an unusual method, considering prisoners were usually walked to trial, though the authorities may have had some concern about support from a sympathetic crowd. The trial began at about 9:30 am and lasted all day. In attendance were King James (hidden from public view) and several courtiers including Lady Arbella Stuart and Catherine Howard, Countess of Suffolk. Garnet was introduced with his various aliases, which included "Whalley, otherwise Darcy, otherwise Roberts, otherwise Farmer, otherwise Philips". He was accused of having conspired with Catesby on 9 June 1605 to kill the king, his son, and to "alter and subvert the government of the kingdom and the true worship of God established in England". He was also accused of having conspired with several others to blow up the House of Lords with gunpowder. He pleaded "not guilty".
Speaking for the government, Edward Coke accused him of involvement in every treason since 1586, the year he returned to England. According to Coke, the provincial superior was involved in the Main and Bye Plots of 1603. He had sent Edmund Baynham to Rome to gain papal approval for the 1605 plot, and while at Coughton in November, had prayed "for the success of the great action". Coke called Garnet "a doctor of five Ds, namely, of dissimulation, of deposing of princes, of disposing of kingdoms, of daunting and deterring of subjects, and of destruction". His supposed inappropriate relationship with Anne Vaux was mentioned, but his adherence to the doctrine of equivocation proved extremely damaging. Francis Tresham's deathbed letter, which claimed that Garnet had played no part in the so-called Spanish Treason, was read aloud. Tresham claimed not to have seen Garnet "for fifteen or sixteen years before", despite government evidence that the two had met more recently. Garnet had not seen the letter and did not know that it referred to events before 1602, not 1605. He was unable to explain it, except by saying "it may be, my Lord, that he meant to equivocate."
Statements regarding Jesuit-encouraged plots against Queen Elizabeth were read to the court, as well as some of the plotters' confessions. Garnet defended his use of equivocation with his own treatise on the doctrine. He had denied his conversation with Oldcorne as it was a secret, but said that in matters of faith, equivocation could never be lawful. When asked by Salisbury what he would do if the pope excommunicated King James, he "denied to answer". His defence of equivocation was scorned by Coke, who called it "open and broad lying and forswearing". As for Tesimond's confession, the planned assassination had not at that point happened and so Salisbury said that Garnet could easily have alerted the government. Salisbury attacked the idea that it had ever been made under the seal of the confessional, and claimed anyway that Garnet could have warned the authorities after his more ordinary conversation with Catesby about the death of innocents; the priest replied by saying that at the time, he did not understand the relevance of Catesby's questions. The Earl of Northampton said, in Latin, "quod non-prohibet cum potest, jubet" (what a man does not forbid when he can, he orders). Garnet's defence, that he had forbidden Catesby from proceeding, was futile.
The jury took fifteen minutes to decide that Garnet was guilty of treason. He was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered.
### Execution
The day after his trial Garnet made a new statement, which he hoped would clarify his dealings with Tresham. He also wrote to the king, reiterating his stance on violence against a rightful monarch. When the government lied and told him they had captured Tesimond, he wrote an apologetic letter to the priest regarding the nature of their conversation the previous year. He also wrote a final letter to Anne Vaux, on 21 April, relating his lack of fortune over the previous few months.
After about three months spent in the Tower, on Saturday 3 May 1606 Garnet was strapped to a wooden hurdle and taken by three horses to the churchyard of St Paul's. He wore a black cloak over his clothes and hat, and spent much of the journey with his hands together and eyes closed. Present in the churchyard were the Sheriff of London, Sir Henry Montague, George Abbot and John Overal. When asked if he had knowledge of any further treasons, Garnet replied that he had nothing to say. He rejected any entreatments to abandon his faith for Protestantism, and said that he had committed no offence against the king. The only thing he thought he might be condemned for was for abiding by the terms of the confessional, and if by that action he had offended the king or state, he asked for forgiveness. The recorder announced that this was an admission of guilt, but Garnet reiterated his not guilty plea and continued to argue the point.
Garnet highlighted the date of his execution, 3 May, the Feast of the Cross, and reaffirmed his innocence. He defended Anne Vaux against claims that their relationship had been inappropriate. He then prayed at the base of the ladder, disrobed down to his long, sewn-up shirt, "that the wind might not blow it up", and mounted the ladder. He ignored a Protestant minister who came forward, replying to an objectionable member of the audience that he "ever meant to die a true but perfect Catholic". Bishop Overal protested that "we are all Catholics", although Garnet disagreed with this. He once again said his prayers, and was then thrown off the ladder. Before the executioner could cut him down alive, many in the crowd pulled on his legs, and as a result, Garnet did not suffer the remainder of his grim sentence. There was no applause when the executioner held Garnet's heart aloft and said the traditional words, "Behold the heart of a traitor". His head was set on a pole on London Bridge, but crowds of onlookers fascinated by its fresh and unblemished appearance eventually forced the government to turn the head upward, so its face was no longer visible.
A bloodstained straw husk saved from the scene of the execution and said to bear Garnet's image became an object of curiosity. It was smuggled out of the country into the possession of the Society of Jesus, before being lost during the French Revolution.
## Writings
Garnet's writings include An Apology Against the Defence of Schisme (1593), an attack against church papistry in which he scolded Thomas Bell for supporting the occasional taking of Communion in the Church of England. This was followed by A Treatise of Christian Renunciation (1593), which comprised a selection of quotations on what Catholics should be prepared to renounce for their faith, and The Societie of the Rosary (1593–1594)
His defence of the practice of equivocation was published in A Treatise against lying and fraudulent dissimulation (c. 1598), originally titled A Treatise of Equivocation. Equivocation was condemned by most of his Protestant contemporaries as outright lying. Even William Shakespeare may have alluded to Garnet in Macbeth with the following line: "who committed treason enough for God's sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven", although Shakespeare's personal views on equivocation are unknown. |
4,917,584 | Maryland Route 355 | 1,169,413,499 | State highway in Montgomery and Frederick Counties, Maryland, United States | [
"Roads in Frederick County, Maryland",
"Roads in Montgomery County, Maryland",
"State highways in Maryland"
]
| Maryland Route 355 (MD 355) is a 36.75-mile (59.14 km) north–south road in western central Maryland in the United States. The southern terminus of the route, Wisconsin Avenue, is located in Bethesda in Montgomery County, at the county's border with Washington, D.C. It continues south into Washington, D.C. as Wisconsin Avenue NW. The northern terminus is just north of a bridge over Interstate 70 (I-70)/U.S. Route 40 (US 40) in the city of Frederick in Frederick County, where the road continues north as Market Street through Frederick towards MD 26.
MD 355 serves as a major thoroughfare through Frederick and Montgomery counties, passing through Bethesda, Rockville, Gaithersburg, Germantown, Clarksburg, Hyattstown, Urbana, and Frederick, roughly parallel to I-270. The southern portion of the route from the Washington, D.C. border to Germantown is a suburban four–to–six–lane divided highway lined with many businesses. North of Germantown, the route is predominantly a two lane rural road until it reaches Frederick, where it passes through commercial areas in the southern part of the city. The road changes names along its route, from the south, as Wisconsin Avenue, to Rockville Pike, followed by Hungerford Drive, then Frederick Road, and lastly as Urbana Pike.
MD 355 is the original route of US 240, which was planned in 1926 to run from Washington, D.C. north to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; however, the route was designated a part of US 15 north of Frederick. This route served as the primary connector linking Frederick and points west to Washington, D.C. During the 1950s, US 240 was relocated in stages to the Washington National Pike, a freeway between Bethesda and Frederick shared with I-70S (now I-270). MD 355 was designated onto the former alignment of US 240 between Bethesda and Frederick as each stage of freeway was built. MD 355 was also designated through Frederick along Market Street, which was the former alignment of US 15 through the city before it was moved to a bypass in 1959. US 240 was decommissioned in 1972, and MD 355 was extended south along the former US 240 to the Washington, D.C. border. In 2006, the interchange with US 15 at the route's northern terminus was removed, resulting in MD 355 ending just short of US 15 at a dead end. By 2009, a four lane divided bypass of Urbana for MD 355, funded by private developers, was completed. The former alignment of MD 355 through Urbana was designated as MD 355 Business (MD 355 Bus.) before being removed from the state highway system. The same year, the portion of MD 355 north of I-70 was transferred to the city of Frederick and is no longer considered part of the route.
## Route description
MD 355 is a part of the main National Highway System from the District of Columbia line to I-495, in Bethesda. The highway is also a part of the National Highway System as an intermodal connector from I-495 to Shady Grove Road in Rockville, and as a principal arterial from Shady Grove Road to MD 27 in Germantown.
### Montgomery County
MD 355 begins in the Bethesda CDP, at the intersection with Western Avenue NW / Western Avenue (Maryland), the northwestern border between Washington, D.C., and the state of Maryland. It heads north from this point as Wisconsin Avenue, a six-lane divided highway. Washington Metro's Red Line runs in a tunnel underneath the road. Wisconsin Avenue NW traverses southeastward inside Washington, D.C., ending in Georgetown at an intersection with K Street NW underneath US 29 (Whitehurst Freeway NW), just north of the Potomac River. From the Washington, D.C. border, MD 355 heads north through areas of retail and high-rise buildings in Friendship Heights, and the Village of Friendship Heights, including The Shops at Wisconsin Place and the Friendship Heights station along the Red Line. Past Friendship Heights, the route continues into the wooded residential area of Somerset, before passing the Chevy Chase Country Club on the east side of the road, and the residential areas of the town of Chevy Chase, and its associated villages, to the west. It then forms an intersection with MD 191 (Bradley Boulevard) and Bradley Lane. Past this intersection, MD 355 enters downtown Bethesda, where it heads back into commercial areas with high-rise buildings.
In downtown Bethesda, the road intersects MD 410 (Montgomery Avenue) one-way eastbound, the westbound direction of MD 410 (East West Highway), and MD 187 (Old Georgetown Road), a short distance north, near the Red Line's Bethesda station. The road continues through the community and passes by Bethesda Theatre, a 1938 Art Deco cinema. It leaves the downtown area of Bethesda and becomes Rockville Pike at the intersection with Glenbrook Parkway / Woodmont Avenue. From here, the road passes west of Naval Support Activity Bethesda, which is home to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, one of the United States' most prominent military hospitals, and east of the National Institutes of Health, which is home to the United States National Library of Medicine, the world's largest medical library. The Medical Center station along the Red Line is located in this area.
Past the naval hospital and the NIH, the road passes west of Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart and intersects Cedar Lane. After this intersection, the route heads north into wooded areas, passing near residences as well as the Bethesda Meeting House, an 1850 wood-frame church. MD 355 continues north through more suburban residential areas before coming to an interchange that provides access to I-495 (Capital Beltway) and the southern terminus of I-270, where the Metro Red Line comes above the surface in the median of the route and passes over I-495. Past this interchange, the road skirts the edge of Rock Creek Park, coming to an intersection with Grosvenor Lane that features a northbound jughandle. The route passes to the west of the Linden Oak at the Grosvenor Lane intersection. MD 355 continues into residential areas of North Bethesda, where the Red Line parallels the route to the east to the Grosvenor–Strathmore station before returning to running under the road. Farther north, the route comes to the intersection with MD 547 (Strathmore Avenue) east of Georgetown Preparatory School.
The route heads through some residential neighborhoods before entering a commercial area with strip malls and some high-rise buildings where White Flint Mall, once one of the D.C. metropolitan area's largest shopping malls, was located on the east side of the road. MD 355 passes to the west of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission headquarters and heads past the North Bethesda station along the Red Line. The road comes to an intersection with Old Georgetown Road as well as a grade-separated interchange at Montrose Parkway. The Metro Red Line tunnel draws farther east from MD 355 before it crosses into Rockville, the county seat of Montgomery County. In Rockville, the road passes more commercial development with the Metro Red Line and CSX's Metropolitan Subdivision railroad line paralleling the road a short distance to the east. The route intersects MD 911 (First Street) and Wootton Parkway. MD 355 intersects MD 660 (Dodge Street), which is a short connector to MD 28 (Veirs Mill Road) that the route intersects a short distance later.
Past this intersection, MD 355 continues into downtown Rockville, where it becomes Hungerford Drive. The road passes by the Rockville station, which is used by the Metro's Red Line, MARC's Brunswick Line, and Amtrak's Capitol Limited (MARC and Amtrak trains run along the CSX line). MD 355 heads into more commercial areas and passes the Rockville Campus of Montgomery College before intersecting Gude Drive. Past this intersection, MD 355 becomes Frederick Road and heads northwest into a mix of commercial and residential areas in Derwood, drawing further away from the railroad tracks. The route leaves Rockville and intersects Shady Grove Road. Past Shady Grove Road, MD 355 has an interchange with I-370 and crosses into Gaithersburg. Here, the road heads through more commercial areas before heading into residential neighborhoods. It heads into business areas again and passes northeast of Gaithersburg High School as it approaches downtown Gaithersburg, where the route has an interchange with MD 117 (Diamond Avenue) and passes over CSX's Metropolitan Subdivision before continuing northwest past more businesses. MD 355 passes southwest of the Lakeforest Mall before intersecting MD 124 (Montgomery Village Avenue). MD 355 passes more strip malls past this intersection before crossing over Great Seneca Creek and leaving Gaithersburg. The route continues northwest into Germantown through residential areas before passing businesses again and intersecting Middlebrook Road. It passes through residential developments, with the road narrowing to four lanes before it reaches an intersection with MD 118 (Germantown Road). From here, the road passes more homes and a shopping center prior to crossing MD 27 (Ridge Road).
Past MD 27, the road passes more suburban developments before narrowing to a two-lane undivided road and heading through some woodland. It continues northwest through a mix of rural woodland and suburban development in Clarksburg, where MD 355 passes northeast of Clarksburg High School and intersects MD 121 (Clarksburg Road). Past this intersection, the route passes Little Bennett Regional Park on the east and businesses on the west, running closely parallel to I-270 located to the west. The route eventually draws farther east of I-270 and heads through residential neighborhoods and woodland before reaching Hyattstown. In Hyattstown, MD 355 intersects MD 109 (Old Hundred Road).
### Frederick County
After passing through Hyattstown, MD 355 crosses into Frederick County, where it becomes Urbana Pike. Here, it passes some businesses before intersecting MD 75 (Green Valley Road). Past this intersection, the road continues into a more rural setting consisting of farmland, woods, and some residential areas and businesses. The route reaches Urbana, where it heads onto a four-lane divided bypass called Worthington Boulevard to the east of the community, while the former alignment of MD 355 continues through Urbana as Urbana Pike. MD 355 intersects MD 80 (Fingerboard Road) and passes through residential areas in the Villages of Urbana subdivision, encountering two roundabouts. Upon leaving Urbana, the route intersects Lew Wallace Street and returns to its alignment along two-lane undivided Urbana Pike as it continues north through areas of woods and farms with some rural residences. The road passes Monocacy National Battlefield, the site of the Battle of Monocacy Junction in the American Civil War fought on July 9, 1864. Past the battlefield, the road crosses the Monocacy River and CSX's Old Main Line Subdivision railroad line.
In a short distance, MD 355 heads from rural areas into a commercial district on the outskirts of Frederick. The road widens to four lanes as it passes by the Francis Scott Key Mall and several other businesses. It intersects MD 85 (Buckeystown Pike), which provides access to and from I-70/US 40. MD 355 passes over I-70/US 40 and ends just north of the overpass, with the road continuing north into Frederick as locally maintained Market Street.
## History
The Rockville Pike portion of MD 355 dates back to what was a Native American trail that led from the mouth of Rock Creek to the great Conestoga Trail. In later times it was used as an escape route from Washington during the War of 1812 as well as a route for settlers to travel from Montgomery County to developing areas north and west. In 1911, a small portion of state highway leading northwest out of Rockville was completed, with the remainder between Rockville and Gaithersburg under contract. A state highway was proposed between Gaithersburg and Germantown. The state road between Gaithersburg and Germantown was finished by 1915. By 1921, the portions of state highway between the Washington, D.C. border and Rockville, to the northwest of Germantown, and between northwest of Urbana and Frederick were completed. At this time, a state highway was proposed between northwest of Germantown and northwest of Urbana. The state road was completed between Germantown and Clarksburg and through Urbana to a point southeast of the community by 1923. The entire length of the state road connecting Washington, D.C. and Frederick was completed by 1927. In the approved plan for the U.S. Highway System in 1926, US 240 was planned to run from Washington, D.C. to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania via Frederick. In 1927, US 240 was designated along the proposed 1926 route south of US 15/US 40 in Frederick with the US 15 designation given to the road north of Frederick. In 1950, US 240 was widened into a divided highway between the Washington, D.C. border and Bethesda.
In 1947, plans were made to construct a freeway, the Washington National Pike (now I-270), parallel to US 240. In 1953, the US 240 freeway was completed between MD 121 in Clarksburg and US 15 (now MD 85) in Frederick. The former alignment of US 240 between Clarksburg and Frederick was designated as US 240 Alt. A year later, the freeway was extended down to MD 118 in Germantown. At this time, the original alignment between Germantown and Frederick was designated MD 355, replacing what was US 240 between Germantown and Clarksburg and the entire length of US 240 Alt. between Clarksburg and Frederick. The US 240 freeway was extended south to MD 28 in Rockville in 1956, and MD 355 was subsequently extended south along the former alignment to the MD 28 intersection in Rockville. Also, the US 240 freeway was completed from US 15 north to US 40. In 1957, US 240 was upgraded to a divided highway between Bethesda and Rockville. The US 240 freeway was extended south to Montrose Road in 1958, resulting in MD 355 being extended south along the former alignment to Montrose Road. I-70S was designated onto the US 240 freeway in 1959. In addition, MD 355 was extended north to US 15 north of Frederick, passing through the city on Market Street, the one-way pair of Market Street northbound and Bentz Street southbound in the downtown area, and Market Street to the north of downtown. The route replaced US 15/US 240 south of downtown Frederick and US 15 north of downtown Frederick, with US 15 shifted to a bypass west of the city. In 1960, I-70S/US 240 was extended south to the Capital Beltway, and MD 355 was extended south along former US 240 between Montrose Road and the Capital Beltway.
In 1972, the American Association of State Highway Officials approved for the US 240 designation to be removed. As a result, MD 355 was extended south along the former US 240 alignment to the Washington, D.C. border. MD 355 was widened into a divided highway between Rockville and Gaithersburg in 1977. The divided highway was extended north from Gaithersburg to Germantown by 1997. In 2006, the northern terminus of MD 355 at the interchange with US 15 in Frederick was truncated to a dead end a short distance south of that route. In 2009, the portion of MD 355 north of the I-70 overpass was transferred to the city of Frederick, with the MD 355 designation officially being removed from this stretch. In 2010, an interchange was completed at Montrose Parkway.
In Frederick County, the two bridges which carry portions of MD 355 have been subject to infrastructure status concerns, and receive annual inspections, as part of the Federal Highway Administration's National Bridge Inventory (NBI). The Monocacy River crossing was built in 1930, and reconstructed in 1980. Its June 2016 NBI report noted that this bridge is possibly eligible to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The CSX crossing was built in 1931, but never reconstructed. This bridge's NBI report, from September 2016, determined that its deck was in poor condition, with advanced section loss or deterioration. The 2016 inspection reports for both bridges concluded that both of these MD 355 carriers' deck geometries were "[b]asically intolerable requiring high priority of replacement."
A four-lane divided bypass of Urbana was constructed for MD 355 in the 2000s. The primary reason for constructing the bypass was to relieve traffic heading through the community brought on by the construction of numerous shopping centers in the area, and the costs for constructing the bypass were entirely paid for by the developers of an area shopping center. The proposal for the bypass called for two roundabouts to control traffic. The first portion of the road opened in late 2005 from MD 355 south to a roundabout at Sugarloaf Parkway. On October 30, 2008, construction began to build the connection of the bypass to MD 355 south of MD 80. The bypass was completed by January 2009, at which point MD 355 was realigned onto it and the former alignment became MD 355 Bus. In 2013, maintenance of the bypass of MD 355 around Urbana was transferred from the developers to the state.
## Junction list
## Related routes
### MD 355 Business
Maryland Route 355 Business (MD 355 Bus.) was the designation of a 1.06-mile (1.71 km) business route of MD 355 in Urbana that ran along Urbana Pike. The route began at MD 355 south of Urbana, heading west as a two-lane undivided road and coming to an intersection with MD 80. Past this intersection, the road continued northwest through residential areas. The business route reached its terminus at another intersection with MD 355. The entire length of MD 355 Bus. originally followed MD 355C. In 2014, all of MD 355C except for a 0.376-mile (0.605 km) portion between a point south of Urbana Church Road and Sprigg Street was turned over to county maintenance. The remainder of MD 355C was turned over to county maintenance in an agreement dated December 8, 2017.
Junction list
### Auxiliary routes
- MD 355A runs along an unnamed road from MD 355 north to a cul-de-sac in Frederick, Frederick County. The route is 0.05 mi (0.080 km) long.
- MD 355B ran along an unnamed road from MD 355 Bus. east to a dead end in Urbana, Frederick County. The route was 0.12 mi (0.19 km) long. MD 355B was turned over to county maintenance in 2014.
## See also |
71,549,981 | Ali-Qoli Khan Qajar | 1,147,838,872 | 19th-century governor in Iran | [
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"1824 deaths",
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"19th-century Iranian people",
"Iranian blind people",
"People from Gorgan",
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| Ali-Qoli Khan Qajar (c. 1756–1824) was a son of Mohammad Hasan Khan Qajar () and half-brother of Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar (r. 1789–1797), the founder of the Qajar dynasty of Iran. Unlike Agha Mohammad Khan's full brothers, Ali-Qoli Khan served loyally from the outset and supported, for around twenty years (with brief intervals), Agha Mohammad Khan's conquest for control over all of Iran. Following Agha Mohammad Khan's assassination in 1797, he unsuccessfully tried to claim himself as his brother's rightful successor. Ali-Qoli Khan was eventually blinded and exiled by his nephew Baba Khan, who would ascend the Iranian throne as Fath-Ali Shah Qajar (r. 1797–1834).
## Biography
### Early life
Ali-Qoli Khan Qajar was born c. 1756 in Astarabad (present-day Gorgan). According to the later court historian Mohammad-Taqi "Lesan ol-Molk" Sepehr, he was Mohammad Hasan Khan's ninth and last son, a rank possibly inherited because his mother was of non-Qajar origin, rather than being connected to his actual age. After the defeat and death of his father in 1759, Ali-Qoli Khan was brought to Qazvin as a captive of Karim Khan of the Zand dynasty. Ali-Qoli Khan was then moved to the Zand capital of Shiraz where he was raised, together with his brothers, under the surveillance of the Zand rulers. Following Karim Khan's death in 1779, confusion erupted which enabled Ali-Qoli Khan to accompany his eldest brother Agha Mohammad Khan to Astarabad. This event marked the beginning for Ali-Qoli Khan of what would become roughly twenty years of service (with brief intervals) under his eldest brother, taking part in Agha Mohammad Khan's endeavours to establish control over all of Iran. In contrast to Agha Mohammad Khan's full brothers, Ali-Qoli Khan was his steadfast associate from the start.
Ali-Qoli Khan rarely matched the military prowess of his older brothers and was never able to obtain an independent position in the Qajar tribe. He was reportedly nicknamed Agha Baji by Agha Mohammad Khan, a derogatory term meaning "effeminate master", which, as the modern historian Abbas Amanat explains, may refer to certain feminine traits in his behavior or his lack of cruelty. Nevertheless, Ali-Qoli Khan's support of Agha Mohammad Khan did help the latter in 1779–1782 during early conflicts with his brothers over power.
### Campaigns
In 1781, Ali-Qoli Khan and Agha Mohammad Khan were successful in ousting the Kurdish and Arab tribal chiefs of northern Khorasan out of the town of Semnan, in the historical region of Qumis. For his assistance in the conquest of this area, Ali-Qoli Khan was subsequently given Semnan as a fiefdom (soyurgal). Subsequently, Ali-Qoli Khan would play a pivotal role in subduing Khvar and Varamin, near Tehran, putting them under Agha Mohammad Khan's control. This region was the seat of the rival Develu clan of the Qajar tribe, whose loyalty and support were deemed essential for tribal unity. This factor may have added to Agha Mohammad Khan's decision to designate nearby Tehran as his capital several years later, in 1795.
In 1783, as a result of the continued struggle between the Zands and the Qajars, Ali-Qoli Khan decided to make a bid for power. Having abandoned Agha Mohammad Khan, he made peace with the Zand chiefs, which, as the modern historian Abbas Amanat explains, was perhaps intended to gain authority over central Iran. Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar was forced to retreat to Astarabad. However, this retreat was short lived, for the reduction of Zand power allowed him to regain his former position. Ali-Qoli Khan repented before Agha Mohammad Khan, now engaging in the cycle of betrayal and reconciliation that characterized Agha Mohammad Khan's relationships with his other brothers. As Agha Mohammad Khan was able to tighten his position in the north of the country, Ali-Qoli Khan, carrying the banner of Agha Mohammad Khan yet again, was ordered to fight in a series of six campaigns which resulted in the elimination of the Zands and other minor states in southern Iran. Ali-Qoli Khan conquered the remainder of the Fayli Lors in the southwestern-most part of the country. Two years later, in 1787–1788, he partnered again with Agha Mohammad Khan during an unsuccessful campaign against Fars.
Returning from Fars, Ali-Qoli Khan was appointed governor of Isfahan by Agha Mohammad Khan, replacing their brother Jafar-Qoli Khan Qajar, and was assigned 2,000 troops stationed in the city to command. With Agha Mohammad Khan on his way to Tehran, however, Jafar Khan Zand (r. 1785–1789) began preparing yet another invasion of Isfahan. Ali-Qoli Khan, learning of this plan, sent a force of Qaraguzlu tribesmen to hold Qumishah, but the advancing Zand army led by Jafar Khan Zand were superior in number and overwhelmed them. Ali-Qoli Khan then retreated to Kashan, leaving Isfahan open to Jafar Khan Zand. Not long after, however, together with his older brother, Ali-Qoli Khan returned and retook the city. In 1789–1790, Ali-Qoli Khan, during Agha Mohammad Khan's second Fars campaign, commanded a contingent of 7,000 soldiers and bested the Lor tribes that roamed in Kohgiluyeh. Much of his success in Kohgiluyeh was not necessarily due to his military tactics or prowess, but because the tribes were willing to repudiate their allegiance to the unstable Zands and submit themselves to the Qajars.
Ali-Qoli Khan took part in Agha Mohammad Khan's attack on Kerman in 1794 and was responsible for taking Shahr-e Babak and Sirjan. He was later ordered to assert control over Lar. Ali-Qoli Khan also took part in the campaigns in Azerbaijan and the Caucasus in 1795. During the latter campaign, he was first sent to Shirvan followed by Erivan (Erevan). Ali-Qoli Khan intended to replace Mostafa Khan-e Davalu with Mostafa Khan-e Talesh following the former's death as a result of a local uprising by the population of Shirvan. However, after taking tribute (kharaj), Ali-Qoli Khan left Mostafa Khan-e Talesh in his post and moved back to Tehran.
### Succession claim and downfall
In 1797, during Agha Mohammad Khan's final campaign in the Caucasus, Ali-Qoli Khan was ordered to hold Erivan. At this point, Ali-Qoli Khan had become the only surviving brother of Agha Mohammad Khan who had not been exiled or physically disabled. Following Agha Mohammad Khan's assassination in June 1797 in Shusha and the ensuing turmoil, Ali-Qoli Khan would proclaim himself the rightful successor to his older brother. According to the French naturalist Guillaume Antoine Olivier, who was travelling through Iran at the time, Ali-Qoli Khan had first proclaimed himself Shah in Mazandaran. Other sources, however, suggest that Ali-Qoli Khan left Erivan and marched down via Khoy, Tabriz and Maragheh towards Tehran, with the intention of seizing the newly established capital. The gates of the city had been closed by its governor (beglarbeg) Mirza Mohammad Khan Develu since 1795, however, and thus Ali-Qoli Khan was forced to encamp at a village some fifty kilometres west of Tehran, known as Alishah Avaz (now the city of Shahriar). His stay at the village was probably intended to recruit more troops in order to storm Tehran by force.
Simultaneously, however, his young nephew, Baba Khan, soon to be Fath-Ali Shah (r. 1797–1834), the second shah of the Qajar dynasty, entered Tehran through the acquiescence of Mirza Mohammad Khan. On the advice of Hajji Ebrahim Shirazi, Baba Khan sent his brother Hosayn-Qoli Khan II to invite Ali-Qoli Khan to the palace in Tehran, under the feigned pretext of discussing succession. When Ali-Qoli Khan arrived, he was not allowed to enter the palace accompanied by his armed attendants. Ali-Qoli Khan was physically obliged to bow to Baba Khan and, cursing him all the while, was led to a room where he was blinded. Ali-Qoli Khan was then sent to Barforush (now Babol) in Mazandaran, where he remained until his death in 1824.
Ali-Qoli Khan based his claim to succession on his loyalty to Agha Mohammad Khan, having accompanied him throughout the conquest of Iran, and as the sole surviving son of Mohammad Hasan Khan. Based on these arguments, he considered it his right to ascend the throne. The claim, however, was void from the start because, in the contemporaneous Qajar system of power, concepts of kinship and "purity" of blood were major focal points in the transmission of right and dignity. As Ali-Qoli Khan had been born to a non-Qajar mother, he was ineligible for such right. In addition, under the earlier Qajars, a "legitimate" claim to the Iranian throne had to be imposed by military and political power—qualities that Ali-Qoli Khan did not possess. Furthermore, Baba Khan had long been prepared by Agha Mohammad Khan for succession. |
1,555,271 | Rhode Island Route 37 | 1,166,188,643 | State highway in Rhode Island, US | [
"Freeways in the United States",
"Numbered routes in Rhode Island",
"Transportation in Kent County, Rhode Island",
"Transportation in Providence County, Rhode Island"
]
| Route 37 is a state highway running 3.47 miles (5.58 km) in Providence County and Kent County, Rhode Island, United States. A freeway for its entire length, it serves the cities of Cranston and Warwick and is also a major east–west freeway in the Providence metropolitan area, linking T. F. Green Airport with Interstate 295. The western terminus of Route 37 is an at-grade intersection with Natick Avenue in Cranston. The freeway has numbered interchanges with I-295, Rhode Island Route 2, Pontiac Avenue, and I-95 before terminating at a trumpet interchange with U.S. Route 1 in Warwick.
Originally conceived as a freeway linking Scituate with suburban Warwick, the proposed alignment of Route 37 was later shortened to an alignment linking I-295 with I-95. Construction on the freeway began in 1963 and was completed by 1969. An eastward extension across upper Narragansett Bay was proposed in 1966; this proposal would have extended Route 37 north to I-195 and I-295 in Attleboro, Massachusetts, completing a beltway around the city of Providence. This extended route was approved and given the I-895 designation in 1968, but the extension was ultimately canceled by the Rhode Island Department of Transportation (RIDOT). In the 1980s, Route 37 was included in proposals for an eastward extension of Interstate 84 from Hartford, Connecticut, to Rhode Island, but this alignment was also canceled. RIDOT has long-range plans to extend Route 37 east to Route 117 in Downtown Warwick, but plans for a westward extension have been abandoned.
## Route description
Route 37 begins at an at-grade intersection with Natick Avenue in the city of Cranston; Natick Avenue is an unnumbered road that is used to access Rhode Island Route 51 (Phenix Avenue). Shortly after the intersection with Natick Avenue, Route 37 begins to head in a northeastern direction and has its first numbered exit at a cloverleaf interchange with I-295. The interchange is signed as Exits 1A-B from Route 37 west, but both the northbound and southbound lanes of I-295 are served via a single on-ramp from Route 37 east. After the junction with I-295, Route 37 passes through a densely settled region of Cranston and passes over Route 5 on a single-span bridge. After passing under Glen Hills Drive, the freeway turns to head in a southwestern direction before intersecting Route 2 at a cloverleaf interchange signed as Exits 2A-B.
After the interchange with Route 2, Route 37 passes over Power Road before intersecting with Pontiac Avenue, an unnumbered, four-lane highway in Cranston.The interchange, numbered as Exit 3, is the only one along the length of Route 37 that does not have a suffixed exit number in either direction. Shortly after Exit 3, Route 37 crosses over the Pawtuxet River and enters the city of Warwick. In Warwick, the freeway has a complicated interchange with I-95 that is signed as Exits 4A-B. From westbound Route 37, exit 4B is a right-hand exit that is used to access I-95 north, while exit 4A is a left-hand exit that is used to access I-95 south. Both ramps from eastbound Route 37 are right-hand exits.
After the I-95 interchange, Route 37 widens to three lanes in each direction. The freeway crosses Jefferson Boulevard and Amtrak's Northeast Corridor railroad on twin-span bridges and passes to the north of the Lincoln Park Cemetery before interchanging with US 1 at exits 5A-B. The freeway terminates at a trumpet interchange with US 1, with the two left-hand lanes defaulting onto US 1 north and the right-hand lane serving US 1 south, which connects to T. F. Green Airport.
## History
### Construction of the freeway
The origins of Route 37 date back to 1956, when the Rhode Island Department of Public Works (RIDPW) included the Route 37 Expressway on its list of proposed freeways for the state of Rhode Island. The freeway was originally proposed to begin at Route 116 in Hope, a village of Scituate, and extend east through Cranston to Route 117 in Warwick. The route would also have connections with the proposed I-295 in Cranston and I-95 in Warwick.
In 1959, RIDPW approved construction of the expressway, amending the proposed route to an alignment extending roughly from I-295 to a junction with Route 10 (Huntington Expressway) in Warwick; Route 10 would be extended south to Warwick as part of the plan. The routing was officially designated as Route 37, but was at one time referred to as the "Lincoln Avenue Freeway" after a local road in Warwick that the new route would bypass. RIDPW originally planned to begin construction in 1960, but it was delayed until 1963 due to ongoing construction projects with I-95 and I-195 in Providence. Route 37 was routed through mostly undeveloped land in the cities of Warwick and Cranston, and in 1969, the construction of the freeway to an interchange with US 1 in Warwick was completed. The proposed southern extension of Route 10 was ultimately canceled by RIDPW.
### Proposed extensions
In 1966, Route 37 was included in a proposal to extend I-295 across Narragansett Bay to make a full beltway around the city of Providence. The plan, which was approved by both RIDPW and the Massachusetts Highway Department (MassHighway), involved extending Route 37 eastward from its existing terminus at US 1 across Narragansett bay via a new bridge that would connect Warwick with the town of Barrington. The expressway would then head northward into the town of Warren, intersecting I-195 in the town of Swansea after crossing into Massachusetts. Eventually, the freeway would connect with I-295 at its existing northern terminus in Attleboro, Massachusetts.
In 1969, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) designated the proposed expressway as I-895 instead of the originally proposed I-295. The expressway was planned to extend the existing Route 37 by 24.4 miles (39.3 km), and was scheduled to be completed by 1975. In 1971, however, the expressway's original routing was canceled due to community opposition in the towns of Barrington and Warren and concerns that a new bridge across Upper Narragansett Bay would interfere with aviation traffic at T. F. Green Airport. In 1971, RIDOT submitted a new proposed alignment for I-895 that utilized the Jamestown and Newport Bridges in southern Newport County and bypassed Barrington and Warwick altogether, but the interstate was ultimately canceled in 1982.
In 1981, ten years after the eastern extension of Route 37 was canceled, RIDOT began planning studies for a western extension of the freeway. The expressway was included in a proposal to extend I-84 eastward from Hartford, Connecticut, to Providence; more northern alignments for the freeway had been rejected due to concerns of potential damage to the Scituate Reservoir. The southern routing of I-84, which would have utilized Route 37 and terminated in Warwick, largely bypassed the reservoir's watershed. In 1982, however, I-84 was officially canceled by RIDOT after studies indicated that the southern alignment was not a feasible alternative.
In 1992, RIDOT reviewed plans for an eastern extension of Route 37. The department conducted planning studies on two proposed freeway alignments that would extend Route 37 into Downtown Warwick. The first proposal continued the freeway southeast from US 1 to Airport Road for 0.75 miles (1.2 km), while the second proposal extended the freeway east for 1.5 miles (2.4 km), intersecting Route 117 and Route 117A in the village of Hoxsie before terminating at Route 117 (West Shore Road). The first option was ultimately dropped by RIDOT after studies indicated the routing would interfere with aviation traffic at T. F. Green Airport. The freeway extension to Route 117 remained on RIDOT's long-term plans, but this has since been abandoned as well.
### Recent history
In June 2006, erosion resulting from heavy rains exposed human remains near the westbound lanes of Route 37 in Cranston. Subsequent drainage improvements to the freeway led to the discovery of human remains from more than 70 individuals buried in late 19th and early 20th centuries. Archaeological research indicated that the portion of Route 37 in Cranston between Exits 2 and 3 was inadvertently constructed over a portion of the State Farm Cemetery in the 1960s. The cemetery's wooden burial markers had deteriorated by the time Route 37 was constructed, and environmental studies that would have indicated the location of the cemetery were not conducted prior to the expressway's construction. In late 2006, the remains of 71 individuals were exhumed from the site of the previous cemetery and re-interred at the State Institution Cemetery in Warwick. On July 14, 2009, RIDOT hosted a memorial service for the 71 people re-interred in Warwick.
A 2021 investigation by WPRI-TV revealed that the remains of at least 1,000 individuals remained buried under Route 37 after the Rhode Island Department of Transportation built the highway over State Farm Cemetery in the 1960s and inadvertently did not exhume and remove the remains. The findings were confirmed by an RIDOT spokesperson.
## Future
RIDOT was rewarded a \$25 million federal grant was awarded to rehabilitate six bridges along the Route 37. However, RIDOT is also planning to eliminate the bridge over Power Road and downgrade the Post Road (US 1) eastern terminus interchange to an at-grade signalized intersection.
## Exit list
RIDOT is currently in the process of converting its sequential exit numbering to mileage-based numbering to conform with federal highway standards. In November 2019, RIDOT announced that Route 37 would be part of the third round of exit renumbering to begin on/after December 9, 2019. |
1,301,292 | Wipeout Fusion | 1,151,551,482 | 2002 racing video game by Studio Liverpool | [
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| Wipeout Fusion (stylised as wipEout fusion) is a futuristic racing video game developed by Studio Liverpool and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 2. It is the fifth instalment in the Wipeout series and was released in February 2002 in Europe, and in June for North America. It was the first Wipeout game to be published on the PlayStation 2. The game takes place in 2160 and revolves around players competing in the F9000 anti-gravity racing league.
Wipeout Fusion received positive reviews upon release, with particular praise being directed at its techno soundtrack, but its graphics and track design received mixed responses from critics.
## Gameplay
Wipeout Fusion is a racing game which is set in 2160 and revolves around players competing in the F9000 anti-gravity racing league. Players control anti-gravity ships owned by large racing corporations (collectively referred to as "teams"). Overall, the game contains 45 race tracks, 32 ship models, and 26 weapons. There are eight teams in Wipeout Fusion, each having a lead pilot and second pilot – players can choose which pilot and team they want to use before a race. Each ship has its characteristics; depending on the team selected, a ship will vary in terms of speed, acceleration, manoeuvrability, and shield strength.
The game has four race modes. Arcade mode involves a standard single race, in which the player must race against opponents and finish first to earn a gold medal; securing second or third place will reward the player with a silver or bronze medal, respectively. The AG League contains ten tournaments; each tournament has four races with sixteen competitors. Money is awarded at the end of each tournament as a result of time, damage, and skill bonuses. Players can use money to upgrade the appearance or performance of their ships. The other two race modes are "Zone" mode, which revolves around survival as the player's ship automatically accelerates to extreme speeds; and time trial mode, where the player may record their best lap times.
In addition, the game features a variety of weapons which can be utilised to destroy other opponents or for self-defence. Offensive weapons include rockets, plasma bolts, missiles, and grenades, whilst defensive weapons range from deployable mines to energy shields. Every ship is also equipped with a standard energy shield which will protect the player from damage caused by collisions or weapon fire. If a shield runs out, the ship will explode and the player in question will be eliminated from the race.
## Development and release
The game was developed by Studio Liverpool (formerly known as Psygnosis prior to 2001). After the success of Wipeout 2097, the studio wanted to aim their next game at an "older, savvier crowd". Shortly after the release of Wipeout Fusion, chief designer Colin Berry said in a retrospective interview that he became disillusioned with the way the Wipeout franchise was trying to emulate games such as Nintendo's F-Zero GX. Wipeout Fusion was announced to be published in North America by Bam! Entertainment in March 2002, after a delay in receiving the publishing licence by Sony's American division. The game was ultimately released in Europe on 8 February 2002, and in North America later on 18 June.
## Reception
Wipeout Fusion received generally favourable reviews upon release. It holds an average score of 83 percent from Metacritic based on aggregate of 21 reviews.
The graphics received mixed opinions from critics. Rick Sanchez of IGN felt disappointed with the game's visuals, opining that its graphics had not changed since he had played it at E3 2001. Sanchez stated that the game looked like an "early first generation PS2 game", and asserted that had it been released a year from writing his review, the graphics would not have looked as dated. Louis Bedigan from GameZone praised the game's attention to detail, stating that the game's visuals had improved by "110%" since Wipeout 3 and thought a lot of time was put into Wipeout Fusion's graphics, resulting in "something truly extraordinary". John Kauderer of GameSpy praised the game's key improvements over its predecessor – in particular its cutting edge graphic design, stating that it "sets [the game] worlds apart from the tired side scrollers and kiddy characters that populated the 16-bit systems". A reviewer from GamePro enjoyed the game's "slickly renovated" graphics. Ryan Davis of GameSpot criticised the game's visuals, asserting that although the track designs appear more "flamboyant" over Wipeout 2097, the game "keeps its visual flash to a minimum". Additionally, Davis also expressed disappointment in the lack of awe-inspiring tracks, as well as the game's occasional slowdown and graphical pop-up issues. In contrast, Tom Bramwell from Eurogamer considered that Wipeout Fusion's only improvement from its predecessors was its improved graphics engine.
Critics praised the game's techno soundtrack and recognised that it was an important part of the Wipeout series. Sanchez opined that the soundtrack from the previous Wipeout games—as well as Wipeout Fusion—are "good enough" to buy separately. Sanchez also commended the game's sound effects and music, stating that both aspects are "dead on for a member of the Wipeout family". Bedigan enjoyed the soundtrack, saying that every song was "addictive" and "suits the game's 'extreme' feel". Kauderer thought that the game had an exceptional soundtrack, stating that since the use of licensed music in Wipeout 2097, the franchise had "changed the face of the industry forever", although he opined that Wipeout Fusion had lost "that cool edge". Davis praised the "hard hitting" techno soundtrack; saying that it was a type of music "you'd want to listen to even when you weren't playing the game". Bramwell, on the other hand, criticised the game's choice of music, stating that the soundtrack feels "like a practical joke" and admitted to muting the music. A reviewer from Edge lauded the soundtrack, describing it as "excellent, trance-inducing", but also said that the gameplay "has failed to keep up with the times". |
46,991,680 | Hitman (2016 video game) | 1,171,682,263 | 2016 stealth video game | [
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"Episodic video games",
"Feral Interactive games",
"Fiction about secret societies",
"Hitman (franchise)",
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"Stadia games",
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"Video game reboots",
"Video games developed in Denmark",
"Video games set in 1999",
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"Video games set in Bangkok",
"Video games set in Colorado",
"Video games set in Greenland",
"Video games set in Hokkaido",
"Video games set in Italy",
"Video games set in Morocco",
"Video games set in Paris",
"Warner Bros. video games",
"Windows games",
"Xbox One X enhanced games",
"Xbox One games"
]
| Hitman is a 2016 stealth video game developed by IO Interactive and published by Square Enix. The game, which has six episodes, is the sixth mainline entry in the Hitman franchise, the first installment of the World of Assassination trilogy, and the successor to Hitman: Absolution (2012). The single-player story follows genetically engineered assassin Agent 47 as he goes on a worldwide adventure and solves a mysterious series of seemingly unconnected assassinations. Hitman features a number of large, open-ended sandboxes that Agent 47 can freely explore. The game presents the player with various assassination opportunities, many of which are unconventional. IO Interactive introduced a "live component" to the game with new content being regularly delivered in downloadable form.
Each episode is set in a location: Paris, Sapienza, Marrakech, Bangkok, Colorado and Hokkaido, and the team mainly did their location research remotely using Google Images and Street View. Square Enix Europe set up a Montréal studio to work on the next Hitman game, but IO Interactive returned to lead the game's development following the under-performance of Absolution. The title was conceived as a reimagining of the franchise as the team attempted to integrate the gameplay of Absolution with the open-endedness of earlier installments of the series. According to the team, Hitman is a puzzle game with action and stealth elements; the developers refined the simulation and artificial intelligence of each level. The game adopted an episodic model and the team envisioned the game as a service. It was marketed as a "World of Assassination" and provided a platform that would expand and evolve over time, and inspire a trilogy of games.
It was released episodically for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One from March to October 2016. Upon its release, Hitman received positive reviews; critics praised the game's episodic release format, locations, level design, and its replayability but criticised the always-online requirement and excessive handholding. The game underperformed commercially and caused publisher Square Enix to divest from IO Interactive in May 2017. Following a management buyout, IO retained the rights to the series and partnered with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment to produce a sequel titled Hitman 2, which was released in November 2018. The World of Assassination trilogy was concluded with Hitman 3 in January 2021. In January 2023, Hitman was delisted from sales after IO Interactive rebranded Hitman 3 as Hitman: World of Assassination, with the contents of the previous two Hitman games becoming available to Hitman 3 owners, free of charge.
## Gameplay
Hitman is an action-adventure stealth video game in which players control a genetically enhanced assassin called Agent 47 from a third-person perspective as he carries out assassinations of various targets across the globe. As in other games in the Hitman series, players have a large amount of freedom in their approach to their assassinations. Players may use weapons including explosives, pistols, assault rifles, and long-range sniper rifles; they may also assassinate the target at close range using bladed weapons or throwable items.
Agent 47 is vulnerable in a firefight; thus, eliminating targets silently is preferred. He can use his specially equipped garrote wire to strangle his victims or disguise his killings as accidental deaths, such as poisoning the target's food or drowning them in a toilet. The game also includes scripted opportunities that require the completion of multiple tasks. Players can eavesdrop on conversations from non-playable characters (NPCs) to obtain clues about the location and routine of targets, and uncover opportunities for creative infiltration and elimination. For example, Agent 47 can tamper with a chandelier, causing it to fall and kill a target. 47 can collect items to use as improvised weapons, access previously restricted areas, knock out NPCs, or create distractions. Completion of mission challenges, such as killing targets in unconventional ways, discovering unique items, and gaining access to new areas, enables players to progress through the mastery levels for each location, with rewards such as advanced weapons and gadgets, agency pick-up locations for stashing gear, and new starting locations for that level.
Each episode in the game features a sandbox-type environment the player can freely explore. Players can incapacitate specific NPCs and wear their clothes as disguises, which allow Agent 47 to access restricted areas, initiate conversations with targets or other NPCs, and perform actions that would otherwise be highly suspicious. Some NPCs, referred to as "Enforcers", will see through 47's disguises. Agent 47 can try to blend in to prevent this from happening. Levels can accommodate about 300 NPCs, each of which reacts to the player's actions differently and has their own unique routines. Acting strangely, such as crouching or taking cover in a crowd, will raise suspicions. If 47 tries to enter a restricted area, he may have to be frisked by guards, requiring him to discard weapons or illegal items before being searched. The artificial intelligence (AI) of NPCs has several alert phases. Guards will escort Agent 47 from a restricted area if he is found trespassing and his disguise may be compromised if a NPC sees him perform an illegal action. An alert guard will first try to arrest 47, but if he resists or tries to run, they will open fire on him. Guards can be distracted and Agent 47 can hide the bodies of incapacitated individuals and other evidence to avoid alerting other NPCs. Agent 47 can also enter Instinct Mode, which highlights the locations of the targets, as well as useful items, guards, and other important information. After eliminating his target(s), Agent 47 needs to locate an exit to complete a mission. A player's mission performance review is rated with a five-star rating system and is influenced by factors such as time elapsed, the number of non-target NPCs killed, sightings of 47 performing illegal activities, appearances on CCTV cameras, and discoveries of victims' bodies.
IO Interactive introduced a "live component" to Hitman; new content, which was regularly delivered in downloadable form, includes time-limited missions called "Elusive Targets". If a player fails to kill an elusive target before the mission expires, or alerts targets and allows them to escape, the targets will not return. Players are rewarded for successful killings with cosmetic rewards. Unlike the main game, players cannot save their games when they are completing the Elusive Target missions. "Escalation Contracts", which are contracts created by the developers, include stages that require players to complete tasks such as assassinating a target using a specific weapon or disguise. By completing a stage, players progress through the escalation and the level of difficulty will increase with new challenges to comply with or changes to the level. Hitman: Absolution's Online Contracts mode also returns in Hitman, allowing players to assign up to five NPCs as assassination targets, set requirements for their killings, and share their contracts with and compete with other players.
## Synopsis
In 1999, an unnamed man is initiated into the International Contract Agency (ICA) and demonstrates exceptional aptitude as an assassin. The ICA is unable to verify his background or uncover any information about him, which disturbs Erich Soders, the ICA's training director. With the help of his handler, Diana Burnwood, the initiate passes a final test that Soders had rigged against him. The director reluctantly approves the initiate for field duty and washes his hands of the matter. The man tells Diana to call him "47" and leaves to await further instructions; this prologue leads into the events of Codename 47, the first game in the series.
Twenty years later, 47 completes a series of contracts provided by Diana, who has risen to a senior position in the ICA. At first, the contracts appear to be unrelated, but Diana gradually uncovers information that an unknown individual referred to as the "Shadow Client" has covertly coordinated these contracts to attack a secretive organization called "Providence", whose existence and total control over global affairs were thought to be a myth. The Shadow Client uses the ICA and 47 to kill Providence agents, making the ICA appear culpable and hiding his own involvement. The game ends with Diana being approached by a representative of Providence, who requests that the ICA deal with the Shadow Client.
### Plot
The Shadow Client performs an assassination for Viktor Novikov, a fashion mogul and head of the international spy ring IAGO, and receives a copy of all of IAGO's files as payment. Using the files to identify Providence's secret operations, the Client sends an anonymous warning to MI6 of an impending IAGO auction of a stolen non-official cover (NOC) list that will take place at a Paris fashion show by Novikov's label, Sanguine. As, a result, MI6 hires 47 to prevent the sale; he assassinates Novikov and his business partner and IAGO's true leader, Dalia Margolis, at the fashion show.
The Client sets two more ICA contracts in motion to disrupt Providence's activities without exposing himself. He first discloses a secret project to develop a deadly weaponised virus to a disgruntled shareholder in the Ether Biotech Corporation, knowing that the shareholder will then hire 47 to assassinate Silvio Caruso and Francesca De Santis, the scientists in charge of the project, and destroy the virus prototype housed at Caruso's private lab in the fictitious Italian town of Sapienza. Providence dispatches an agent to investigate the incident; the Client ambushes and kills him, and takes a key in his possession.
The second contract involves the Client disclosing an impending military coup in Morocco to Hamilton-Lowe, an international contractor with lucrative Moroccan government contracts. The company hires 47 to eliminate General Reza Zaydan, the mastermind of the coup, and fugitive bank CEO Claus Hugo Strandberg—both of whom are undercover Providence operatives—in Marrakesh. As 47 is completing the contract, the Client breaches a Providence vault in New York City and steals valuable information on Providence's assets and operatives. The leaders of Providence realize that a coordinated attack has been launched against them.
The Client puts a third ICA contract in motion to reveal another Providence member, the reclusive media tycoon Thomas Cross. Cross had ordered a coverup that exonerated his son, famed indie rock singer Jordan Cross, for the murder of his girlfriend Hannah Highmoore; the Client reveals the truth to her family. The Highmoores hire 47 to kill Jordan Cross and Ken Morgan, the Cross family lawyer and fellow Providence member who oversaw the coverup, while both are staying at a private resort in Bangkok. Deploying forces from a private militia under his control, the Client kidnaps Thomas Cross from Jordan's funeral and kills him, then steals billions of dollars from his offshore bank accounts. The ICA, realizing an unknown party has benefited from the Cross contract, re-examines 47's previous contracts and discovers the Client's role in setting them up.
The ICA learns of the existence of a training camp for the Client's militia, based in an old industrial farm in rural Colorado. Seeking to eliminate the Client for his manipulation, the agency orders a premature operation due to the intervention of Soders, a member of ICA's executive board. 47 is sent to the camp to eliminate the militia's leader, eco-terrorist Sean Rose, and three other key militia members. 47 discovers a secret room filled with the Client's research, revealing both the connections of the previous contracts to Providence and the Client's obsession with 47 himself. Diana also discovers that Soders is a mole for Providence and has been manipulating the agency on their behalf. The Client, who has been secretly tracking 47, uses this opportunity to go into hiding.
47 assassinates Soders and his Providence liaison, yakuza associate and fixer Yuki Yamazaki, at a hospital in Hokkaido, where Soders is set to receive needed medical treatment in exchange for a list of all active ICA operatives. Subsequently, Providence uncovers the Client's role in the attacks. An unnamed Providence member approaches Diana on a train, seeking to hire the ICA to target the Client. Diana refuses but starts to reconsider when the Providence member offers to reveal information about 47's past.
### The Sarajevo Six
In this alternative storyline, 47 receives contracts to assassinate the six former members of SIGMA, a deniable operations paramilitary unit of the private military contractor CICADA, who committed war crimes during the siege of Sarajevo but evaded prosecution by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. 47 tracks each SIGMA member—starting with the group's former commander and working his way down—to all six of the Season 1 mission settings, with the events and characters of each location serving as backdrops. As the missions progress, security increases and the targets become more paranoid and cautious, increasing the difficulty.
For the final contract, 47 is sent to the GAMA hospital in Hokkaido to both eliminate the final group member, Taheiji Koyama, and retrieve files documenting SIGMA's operations from the hospital's records. If 47 chooses to approach the target, Koyama will reveal that he financed the contracts, wanting to get justice for SIGMA's victims. Now that he is dying from a terminal illness, Koyama instructs 47 to publicize the SIGMA files after killing him. 47 honors Koyama's request, but both he and Diana agree that public indifference will likely relegate SIGMA's atrocities to obscurity.
### Patient Zero
A doomsday cult, "Liberation", that masquerades as a self-help group is using an upcoming exhibition at a luxury resort in Bangkok to provide cover for a bio-weapon attack. 47 receives a contract from a mysterious billionaire using the alias "Locksley" to eliminate the cult's leader Oybek Nabazov and his second-in-command, Sister Yulduz. As 47 makes his escape, Diana notices a series of digital messages being transmitted from the resort's network, which are revealed to be signals meant to activate the cult's sleeper agents worldwide as a contingency once Nabazov's death is confirmed.
ICA identifies two sleeper agents, Brother Akram and celebrity author Craig Black, meeting at a private event in Sapienza to exchange a weapon identical to the one in Bangkok, which 47 retrieves after eliminating the targets. ICA intel then confirms the origin of another signal, this one based in the United States, which leads to a mercenary camp in Colorado where Dr. Bradley Paine, a CDC specialist and secret cult member, has already begun infecting personnel. Forced to maintain his distance to prevent infection, 47 assassinates Paine with a sniper rifle, along with four victims of the Nabazov virus.
Diana's analysts intercept a memo indicating Japanese authorities have recently detained a man on a flight to Australia who showed signs of infection and have ordered him to be quarantined in the GAMA medical facility. 47 infiltrates the hospital to eliminate the man, who is identified as Owen Cage, a radical virus researcher who helped design the Nabazov virus and infected himself with the intention of becoming Patient Zero. An additional target is Klaus Liebleid, an Ether scientist overseeing the quarantine effort while secretly trying to extract as much information about the virus as he can so that Ether can reverse engineer Cage's work and profit from it. Despite Cage being kept in isolation, the virus can spread to other people and 47 must kill all infected individuals to eliminate the virus. After 47 completes the contract the virus is destroyed.
## Development
### Origin
Danish company IO Interactive developed all of the mainline Hitman games. Prior to the launch of Hitman: Absolution (2012), publisher and IO's owner Square Enix announced it had established a new studio named Square Enix Montréal to work on future Hitman games. Due to cutbacks and layoffs at IO Interactive, other projects were stopped and the company started working on a new Hitman game, and Square Enix Montréal focused on developing smartphone and tablet versions of Hitman and other games. Most of the members of the development team at IO Interactive only worked on Absolution, not older games of the series, such as Hitman: Blood Money (2006).
Absolution was controversial for removing many of the franchise's traditional gameplay elements and being linear rather than the large, open sandbox levels of the older games, despite being more accessible. When the team brainstormed ideas for the next entry in the franchise, they strove to integrate the gameplay of Absolution and the open levels of Blood Money. According to Christian Elverdem, this goal was "daunting" during the early stage of the game's development because they needed to upgrade their in-house Glacier game engine to accommodate these larger maps and most of the team did not have experience building sandboxes. According to Michael Vogt, the game's lead writer, the title was designed to be a "soft reboot" and a "reimagining" of the franchise.
### Design
The major story beats and the destinations were decided by a small group of development leads, after which a team would be responsible for each level's design, rules, targets, and other details to create a self-contained game world. The first level the team created, Paris, was the vertical slice for the game; it set the gameplay rules, general level design, and the number of non-playable characters for future episodes. According to Elverdem, every level is "fully simulated" and the player is free to explore and observe the behaviours of the AI. If the player eliminates a certain NPC, the simulation adjusts itself and continues to function, though it will also react to players' actions. The team listened to feedback from playtesters and adjusted the game accordingly. For instance, after some playtesters complained about the level being too punitive, the team introduced the concept of escorting, in which NPCs escort Agent 47 back to a public space if he is found trespassing, whereas in the early version, the guards would attack Agent 47.
The team perceived Hitman as a puzzle game with action and stealth elements; they had several major design concepts. The first concept was named "Swiss cheese"; according to the team, the term means players would be presented with an ample options, and there were multiple ways to move in and out of a level. There are two types of levels in this game; "fortress" refers to an area the player must infiltrate, and a "snailhouse" is a level that has a circular design in which players are encouraged to explore the peripheral areas to find ways to access the area in the middle of the map. The level Sapienza was developed alongside Paris and was designed as the "opposite" of it, both in level design layout and aesthetic. Inspired by Italy's Amalfi coast and the town of Vernazza, the maps feature a snailhouse design. Elverdem described this level as the "pinnacle" of the Swiss cheese design because the map has a lot of verticality and the pathways are interconnected, ensuring players will not find a dead end. According to designer Jesper Hylling, the team mainly did their location research remotely using Google Images, YouTube and Google Street View.
The team incorporated a concept known as "social stealth", in which players are expected to conform to social norms and abide by the rules in a particular setting or context to blend in. Each area in a map is considered to be a microbiome that informs players the way they should act. At each level, the team balanced the proportion of public and private spaces. Players are able to freely walk around in public spaces without restrictions, which enables them to understand the "feel" of the level and discover mission opportunities. There are two types of private spaces; professional spaces that often require a disguise and personal spaces in which the target can be alone. The AI of targets displays two types of behaviour; some will roam around the map and others will station themselves in a private space that is off-limits to the player. This helped diversify the gameplay loop by encouraging different playstyles. According to the team, the first type of target encourages players to follow them and observe their behaviour and patterns while the latter type prompts players to find ways to infiltrate a setting or gain access to previously restricted areas.
After receiving complaints about the level being lifeless and boring from playtesters, the team introduced narrative subplots into the game with mission stories and opportunities. These elements position the players on a "rail" that will guide them to their target; this added additional challenges to the game's simulation because opportunities will disrupt the target's usual loop and players can complicate the loop by abandoning an ongoing opportunity in favour of another rail. Despite this complication, the team believed these subplots allow players to discover creative ways that change the AI loop in a meaningful and organic manner. For instance, if the Ether virus is destroyed in Sapienza, one of the targets, scientist Francesca DeSantis, will deviate from her core loop to visit the laboratory. Players can easily use this feature to manipulate the targets. Despite putting players on a rail, the team stopped giving players further instructions after they have gathered all of the information needed to carry out the hit. The team felt it encourages players to decide how to approach the targets and communicates to the player there is never a "wrong" way of killing a target.
Another result of the playtesting complaints was IO Interactive heavily expanding upon the tutorial missions set at the ICA Facility. The tutorial was designed to teach players the fundamentals of Hitman, how to operate the game and how to set their own goals. The first iteration was a series of individual test chambers where the player would be taught a single mechanic or feature at a time. However, even though this taught players how to operate the game, it was not representative of the nature of the game as an open sandbox. The redesigned tutorial consisted of a short 'Arrival' opening that teaches basic movement and camera controls, a 'Guided training' mission set on a sandbox yacht level and then an unguided 'Final Test' sandbox level. However, despite teaching the controls and the fundamentals of Hitman, developers still felt they had to teach players how to set their own goals so this led to the idea of the 'Freeform training' mission. In this mission players are asked to replay the yacht level from the 'Guided training' again but this time without any guidance and with more items such as remote explosives available to play with. Playtesters were given a list of challenges on paper that were deliberately designed to be simple and to work well together. This resulted in players setting their own goals and becoming creative in trying to complete all the different challenges.
### Story
Vogt and Elverdam placed more emphasis on the game's narrative because they observed the market wanted "quality drama" following the success of The Last of Us (2013). Vogt noted there was a genre change for the franchise with Hitman (2016); unlike the previous games in the series, which are crime thrillers, the 2016 game is an "agent thriller" that was inspired by James Bond movies such as Casino Royale and has a more "adventurous and aspirational" tone than the older games, which are "cold and cynical". The team elevated the stature of Agent 47 and his targets; 47 is now travelling to luxurious and exotic locations, and assassinating targets who are social elites and powerful criminals. Elverdem said with the genre change, Agent 47 became "the guy you called for the most impossible hits under the most impossible circumstances". To make the game aspirational, it has a "stronger moral compass" than earlier games in the series so the assassinations committed by Agent 47 are more morally justifiable and make more sense in the context of the in-game universe.
Vogt described Agent 47 as a "quintessential blank slate character" and Elverdam said "since he is not anyone himself, it's easy for him to be everyone else". Agent 47's only goal is to complete his assignments. Given the nature of the character, the team cannot forcefully apply typical character arcs like hero's journey for him; the team felt this would cause ludonarrative dissonance. The team introduced other characters to accompany Agent 47 through the post-2016 Hitman games. 47's handler Diana Burnwood becomes his conscience and the Shadow Client—who is revealed as Lucas Grey in Hitman 2—serves as his emotions. These characters have genuine emotions and desires, and their actions and attitudes would slowly influence Agent 47 and facilitate his own character arc. David Bateson returned to voice Agent 47.
Vogt was initially concerned by the game's episodic format; he felt the episode would feel like "a slice of an unfinished game" if one episode features too many narrative elements. The team thus decided to include subplots within each level while the main story would slowly unfold throughout the games. This unfolding makes the game similar to a television series in which some episodes are entirely about a subplot that has no relation to the overarching narrative. Vogt said Season 1 only serves to introduce the game's characters and that the game's story would become increasingly important in later seasons. The first half of Season 1 has very little story content because the team wanted to ensure players can relate themselves to Agent 47, a merciless assassin who travels around the world to kill targets assigned to him. Because Agent 47 is a blank state character, the team strove to create a "living, breathing" world. Rather than a protagonist, Agent 47 is an intruder who observes and occasionally interrupts other people's lives. To achieve this, the team relied heavily on environmental storytelling. Art director Jonathan Rowe said the art team spent a lot of time "set dressing" every room and item to ensure each item has a reason to be there and has a tale to tell. For instance, some rooms in the Bangkok hotel are messy, communicating the story of the previous inhabitants of these rooms.
### Online
Hitman is always online due to the inclusion of Elusive Targets who can only be killed once. The making of Elusive Targets did not impact the game's level design; the team used a different design philosophy compared with the main game. Players are not allowed to replay Elusive Targets because the team felt this would create a tense experience and prevent players from noticing imperfections that would make the experience less enjoyable. Elusive Targets were designed to be memorable; they do not always have connections to the main story, which gave the team more freedom to create characters that fit the setting and theme of each map. The team avoided releasing Elusive Targets in a newly released map; they wanted to give sufficient time for players to master and explore the level. The development team observed the ways players completed Elusive Targets, their play patterns and feedback, and made adjustments to make future targets more challenging. Hannes Seifert, the head of IO Interactive, described Elusive Targets as "the pulse" of the experience that has "energised" the community and boosted the game's sales. This mode was intended to provide bursts of content to the player during intervals between episodes. In July 2016, a companion app that allows players to keep track of online content released for the game was released.
In March 2016, advertising company Omelet announced they had collaborated with Square Enix for a new campaign called "Choose Your Hit". Players could vote online and through Twitter to "kill" either Gary Cole or Gary Busey; the actor who received the most votes would lend his voice and likeness to the target in an upcoming mission. A month later, it was announced Busey had won and would appear as the target in a mission that would be released in mid-2016. On 18 July 2016, Busey was announced as the seventh elusive target in the game; his mission, in which Cole also appears, would be available for seven days starting on 21 July 2016.
A mode called Contracts mode, which first appeared in Absolution, was added to Hitman. The team believed the larger maps with more NPCs in each make the experience more varied and created identifiable NPCs to make these custom targets more interesting. When Absolution launched in 2012, the online servers were unstable due to a large number of players accessing the online Contracts mode; to avoid a repeat of this incident and to ensure Hitman had a stable launch, IO Interactive improved the game's online infrastructure.
## Release
Hitman was originally set to be released on 8 December 2015 for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One, but its release was postponed to 11 March 2016 to allow time for IO Interactive to include more content in the base game. The PlayStation 4 version of the game includes six exclusive missions known as The Sarajevo Six. Players who pre-ordered the game gained access to its beta, which was released for PlayStation 4 on 12 February and for Windows on 19 February 2016. No season pass was available at launch; the company considered the addition of paid content a "wrong approach". Players who pre-ordered the game also received a costume pack based on a mission from Blood Money and two in-game weapons. A beta was released prior to the game's official launch. Feral Interactive released the Definitive Edition on Linux and macOS on 16 February and 20 June 2017 respectively.
### Release format
While there was no post-launch support for Absolution, the team realised players regularly re-visited the game's Contracts mode, in which players set custom targets and share them online with other players. This mode's longevity encouraged IO Interactive to re-evaluate the release model of Hitman, which they envisioned as a "digital platform" that is similar to a Netflix series. This platform, which was marketed as the "World of Assassination", allowed IO Interactive to regularly release content without rebuilding the technology. The team believed launching the game at a lower price point with fewer levels would encourage more players to purchase it, creating positive word of mouth that would expand the game's player base. As the team released more episodes, the expected new players would convert their existing version to the full version. The team initially estimated about 80% of the purchasers would buy the episodes separately while the other 20% of them, whom they believed to be long-time fans of the series, would purchase the full-priced versions.
Originally, the game was to be released in an "intro pack" that would include all of the base content and locations, six-story missions, three sandboxes, forty "signature kills", a contracts mode with 800 targets, and access to regular events held by the developer. New missions and locations set in Thailand, the US, and Japan were to be released after the game's launch, and a full-priced version was to be released following the release of this post-release content. No downloadable content (DLC) was to be released for the game and no microtransactions were to be offered; new missions, locations, and targets were to be regularly added to the game as free post-release updates.
On 14 January 2016, it was announced Hitman would be released in an episodic manner; at its launch, the game would consist of the prologue and Paris missions. New content would be released monthly; this would include the remaining two cities of the main game (Sapienza and Marrakesh) in April and May 2016 respectively, which would be followed by the previously planned Thailand, US, and Japan expansions in late 2016. Weekly events would be held and additional content would be released between the monthly updates. These expansions would be available at no extra cost to purchasers of a full-priced, downloaded copy of the game but purchasers of the "Intro Pack" would buy this extra content separately. According to Seifert, the move was designed to allow the team time to develop the game's levels and to "create a living game that will expand and evolve over time and establish a foundation for the future—this is the first game in a storyline which will continue and expand with future Hitman games".
The episodic release enabled IO Interactive to receive feedback for earlier levels and fix some of the design flaws during the production of later episodes. The positive reaction to Sapienza boosted the team's confidence and encouraged them to continue experimenting with level design by modifying the design principles in later maps, which add new challenges and change players' expectations. The team also believed by periodically releasing episodes, players would be encouraged to replay and master each level, and share their experience with other players while awaiting the next episode.
### Episodes
In addition to the ICA Facility level, which serves as the prologue and a tutorial to the game, Hitman features six locations, including Paris, France; the fictional town of Sapienza, Italy; Marrakesh, Morocco; Bangkok, Thailand; Colorado, United States; and Hokkaido, Japan.
After the release of Marrakesh, IO Interactive announced a "Summer Bonus Episode" that was released on 19 July 2016 and features a remake of the Sapienza and Marrakesh levels, new targets, challenges and opportunities. Additionally, there are several additional "bonus" episodes for 47 to complete.
- "The Icon": 47 is given a contract to assassinate actor-director Dino Bosco on the set of his new superhero movie to save L'Avventura Pictures from being driven into bankruptcy by Bosco's incompetence and the film's over-inflated budget.
- "A House Built on Sand": Prior to the events of "A Gilded Cage", 47 is hired to assassinate Matthieu Mendola, chief architect of international contractor Hamilton-Lowe, and Kong Tuo-Kwang, CEO of rival firm China Corp., who had hired Mendola to steal valuable trade secrets. 47 kills both men and recovers the stolen goods for the client.
- "Holiday Hoarders": 47 takes on an assignment to eliminate professional thieves Harry Bagnato and Marv Gonif, both on the run from American authorities, as they attempt to rob the Palais De Walewska during a Christmas celebration. The targets are a nod to Joe Pesci's and Daniel Stern's characters from the holiday film Home Alone.
- "Landslide": Prior to the events of "World of Tomorrow", 47 is hired by Silvio Caruso to assassinate Marco Abiatti, a wealthy businessman and right-wing politician with mafia ties who is running for mayor of Sapienza with the intention of demolishing most of the town so he can build expensive luxury resorts on the land.
### Publication
IO Interactive's parent company Square Enix published every episode, and the downloadable and retail releases of Hitman: The Complete First Season, which bundles all of the game's episodes. The Complete First Season was released on 31 January 2017. Because of the game's poorer-than-expected financial performance and Square Enix prioritisation of other properties, Square Enix announced it would divest from IO Interactive and allow the studio's management to buy it out, after which it became independent.
Following the buyout, IO Interactive retained the rights to the Hitman franchise and began self-publishing the game digitally. It released "ICA Facility", the game's prologue, as a free-to-play game in June 2017. IO Interactive then released Hitman: Game of the Year Edition on 7 November 2017 for download; the re-release includes the base game and a separate campaign named "Patient Zero", a remix of the Bangkok, Sapienza, Colorado, and Hokkaido episodes. It also includes a new costume inspired by Blood Money, and new music composed by Niels Bye Nielsen. The studio then partnered with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment to release the Game of the Year Edition for retail on 15 May 2018. The edition, which is titled Hitman: Definitive Edition, includes the campaign and the bonus episodes, as well as the "IO Interactive's 20th Anniversary Outfit Bundle", which includes outfits inspired by IO's other franchises such as Freedom Fighters, Mini Ninjas, and Kane & Lynch.
Hitman - Game of the Year Edition was added to the GOG store, which only sells DRM-free games, on 22 September 2021. This resulted in significant backlash and large amounts of negative user reviews on the game's store page due to the always-online requirements of the game. GOG responded in a forum post stating that users were free to refund the game but warned against "review bombing". They later clarified that they would only remove reviews that go against their review guidelines after pushback from forum users about the suggestion their complaints were "review bombing". The game was pulled from the store on 9 October, with GOG writing in a statement "we shouldn't have released it [Hitman] in its current form".
## Reception
### Critical reception
Hitman received generally positive reviews according to review aggregator Metacritic. Many reviewers regarded the game as a "return to form" for the series after the controversial release of Absolution in 2012.
Many reviewers expressed skepticism at the game's release schedule. When the Paris episode was launched, Arthur Gies of Polygon said the game was more unfinished than episodic. Phil Savage from PC Gamer said, "Hitman feels unrefined and unfinished in lots of small but important ways". As more episodes were released, critics' impressions of the release format improved significantly. Mike Williams from USgamer said the episodic release format helped increase the replayability of Hitman because it gave sufficient time for the players to fully explore a level and experiment with different approaches before a new episode was released. Reviewers from Rock, Paper, Shotgun said the episodic release model meant the game would not be overwhelming for players, that it "[set] an excellent precedent for having impeccable chunks once a month", and that other games should be inspired by this release structure. According to the developers, the format would encourage players to regularly return to and replay each level.
The locations received praise from critics. Williams liked the vast and lively levels, which he described as "playgrounds" players can freely explore and observe. Savage also said the levels are "intricate" and "dense", meaning players would have plenty to do in each level, encouraging them to replay the game. He also liked the variety of the levels presented, especially later levels, which he said add new challenges to the game. GameSpot's Brett Todd also admired the complex design of each level and commented, "the levels are so big and so packed with details that they take on lives of their own, much like separate movies in a franchise". Writing for Game Informer, Jeff Marchiafava said the levels are too big and that players could not stumble upon meaningful opportunities in an organic and spontaneous manner. He also said a lot of trial and error was needed for later episodes because the rules had changed, resulting in a lot of frustration. Eurogamer's Edwin Evans-Thirlwell was disappointed the AI did not react sufficiently to the players' actions. Critics generally agreed Paris was a promising start to the series, though Sapienza was often named as the game's high point due to the map's complex layout, location variety, and creative assassinations. Marrakesh and Hokkaido were released to a generally positive reception but Bangkok and Colorado were considered to be weaker levels because the assassinations are less creative and the art style is less striking. The Colorado level was often considered to be controversial among players due to its complete lack of public spaces and verticality. Critics liked the idea of a global-trotting adventure; Williams and Todd drew similarities between Hitman and the James Bond films. Some reviewers expressed disappointment that the game reuses voice actors in different locations.
The gameplay received critical praise. Williams said players are able to experiment with different ways to assassinate their targets. As the player progresses, they unlock new tools, which allow them to discover new assassination opportunities, further boosting the game's replay value. Andy Kelly from PC Gamer said, "if you have an absurd idea, the game will almost always accommodate and react to it". Savage said the opportunities are "entertaining" because they often result in very creative assassinations. Todd said the assassinations feel like "more of a funhouse ride than a grim series of contract killings" due to the game's over-the-top nature. Jeffrey Matulef from Eurogamer also commented on AI behaviour, which generates many unscripted moments for players. Some reviewers said the opportunities are too overbearing because the game offers players too much guidance and hand-holding. Reviewers praised IO Interactive for allowing players to play with minimal hints by modifying the game's settings. Many reviewers said the game feels like a puzzle game because of the way the player deciphers AI patterns and approaches their objectives. Savage said the game has the "most elegant implementation" of the disguise system because it introduces a specific type of NPC that will recognise 47's disguise rather than Blood Money's "arbitrary suspicion meter", though several reviewers said the pattern remained difficult to discern. Several critics also disliked the game's always-online requirement and its long load times.
### Sales
Contrary to the developers' expectations, Hitman's episodic format did not succeed commercially. Most of the players purchased the full-priced versions and the sales volume was significantly lower than the traditional boxed release. Due to market confusion over the game's episodic format, even when the game's development was completed, the retail version did not meet publisher Square Enix's expectations, causing it to divest from the studio. Hitman: The Complete First Season was the fourth-best-selling video game at retail in the UK during its week of release, behind Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (2017), Grand Theft Auto V (2013), and FIFA 17 (2016). Despite the slow start, IO Interactive announced the game had attracted seven million players as of November 2017 and more than 13 million players had played the game by May 2018.
### Accolades
Hitman was nominated for Best Action/Adventure Game at The Game Awards 2016 and Evolving Game at the 13th British Academy Games Awards. Video game publication Giant Bomb named Hitman their Game of the Year in 2016; the staff said, "2016 was filled with huge debuts, finales, and resurrections, but the surprise success of Hitman had us talking, sweating, cursing, and laughing more than any other game this year".
## Legacy
### World of Assassination trilogy
A sequel titled Hitman 2 was released by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment in November 2018 for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One. "Hitman: Legacy Pack" was released on 9 November 2018 as DLC for Hitman 2; all of the missions from the first season of the game were made available in the new game with the improved game mechanics used in Hitman 2. IO Interactive developed and published another sequel, Hitman 3, which was released in January 2021, and concludes the story arc started in Hitman.
A digital-only collection of all the games from the World of Assassination trilogy was released on 20 January 2022. It features Hitman 3 as well as access passes to play the content from Hitman 2 and Hitman inside Hitman 3. A Premium Add-Ons bundle includes all DLC for the games, excluding the "Seven Deadly Sins" DLC from Hitman 3. Hitman Trilogy bundle can be found on the PS4 and PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Steam and Epic Games. Another collection titled Hitman World of Assassination was released on January 26, 2023. It allows the importation of 21 destinations from the World of Assassination trilogy into Hitman 3 free of charge. The original Hitman was delisted from sales.
### Other media
IO Interactive partnered with Dynamite Entertainment to create Agent 47: Birth of the Hitman, a six-issue comic book miniseries that ran from November 2017 to June 2018, and was later released as a graphic novel in 2019. The series ties-in with the World of Assassination trilogy and depicts 47's life before the events of the games, including his upbringing at Dr. Ort-Meyer's asylum and his previous career as a brainwashed assassin for Providence alongside his best friend, Lucas Grey / Subject 6. IO Interactive had complete control over the storyline of the comic.
In November 2017, Hulu and Fox 21 Television Studios announced they would produce a television series based on the game. Derek Kolstad, Adrian Askarieh and Chuck Gordon would also serve as its executive producers.The pilot episode would be written by Kolstad. Kolstad has stated that his adaption of Agent 47 will differ slightly from that of the vision IO has already made. Despite being announced in 2017, he doesn't know when the TV series will start filming. |
1,286,918 | Interstate 295 (Delaware–Pennsylvania) | 1,172,586,925 | Interstate Highway in the US states of Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania | [
"Auxiliary Interstate Highways",
"Beltways in the United States",
"Interstate 95",
"Interstate Highways in Delaware",
"Interstate Highways in New Jersey",
"Interstate Highways in Pennsylvania",
"Transportation in Bucks County, Pennsylvania",
"Transportation in Burlington County, New Jersey",
"Transportation in Camden County, New Jersey",
"Transportation in Gloucester County, New Jersey",
"Transportation in Mercer County, New Jersey",
"Transportation in New Castle County, Delaware",
"Transportation in Salem County, New Jersey"
]
| Interstate 295 (I-295) in Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania is an auxiliary Interstate Highway, designated as a bypass around Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and a partial beltway of Trenton, New Jersey.
The route begins at a junction with I-95 south of Wilmington, Delaware, and runs to an interchange with I-95 in Bristol Township, Pennsylvania. The highway heads east from I-95 and crosses the Delaware River into New Jersey on the Delaware Memorial Bridge concurrent with U.S. Route 40 (US 40). Upon entering New Jersey, the New Jersey Turnpike and US 40 split away and I-295 runs parallel to the turnpike for most of its course in the state. After a concurrency with US 130 in Gloucester County, I-295 has an interchange with I-76 and Route 42 in Camden County. The freeway continues northeast toward Trenton, where it intersects I-195 and Route 29 before bypassing the city to the east, north, and west, crossing the Delaware River on the Scudder Falls Bridge into Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania, I-295 is signed as an east–west road and heads south to its other terminus at I-95. I-295 is one of two auxiliary Interstates in the US to enter three states, the other being the I-275 beltway around Cincinnati, which enters Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky.
Three portions of I-295 predate the Interstate Highway System: the Delaware Memorial Bridge and its approach, built in 1951; a section in Salem County, built in 1953; and the part concurrent with US 130, built in two sections that opened in 1948 and 1954. The route was designated on these sections in New Jersey in 1958 and in Delaware in 1959. The portion of I-295 connecting to I-95 in Delaware opened in 1963 while most of the route in New Jersey was finished by the 1980s. The part of I-295 near the interchange with I-195 and Route 29 was finished in 1994. I-295 previously ended in New Jersey at US 1 in Lawrence Township, becoming I-95 heading south into Philadelphia. By July 2018, I-295 was extended along the former I-95 in New Jersey and Bucks County, Pennsylvania, to end at I-95 at the Pennsylvania Turnpike, with no access between I-295 and the latter road. Improvements continue to be made to the highway, including reconstruction of interchanges and replacement of bridges.
## Route description
I-295 begins at I-95, I-495, US 202, and Delaware Route 141 (DE 141) near Newport, Delaware, and heads east over the Delaware River on the Delaware Memorial Bridge into New Jersey. The highway intersects the southern terminus of the New Jersey Turnpike and runs northeast through suburban areas of South Jersey parallel to the turnpike, providing a bypass of Philadelphia and Camden. I-295 turns north and bypasses Trenton to the east and turns west at the US 1 junction in Lawrence Township. The route heads west around the north side of Trenton, crosses the Delaware River on the Scudder Falls Bridge into Pennsylvania, and heads south to its terminus at I-95 in Bristol Township. The portion of I-295 running through New Jersey is sometimes referred to as the Camden Freeway by the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT). As part of the Interstate Highway System, the entire length of I-295 is a part of the National Highway System, a network of roads important to the country's economy, defense, and mobility.
### Newport to Westville
I-295 begins at an interchange with I-95 (Delaware Turnpike), I-495, US 202, and DE 141 south of the town of Newport in New Castle County, Delaware. The northbound beginning of I-295 has direct ramps from both directions of I-95, southbound I-495, and southbound DE 141, while the southbound end of I-295 has direct ramps to both directions of I-95, northbound I-495, and northbound DE 141. From this junction, the highway heads southeast on an eight-lane freeway maintained by the Delaware Department of Transportation (DelDOT) that passes to the northeast of suburban neighborhoods in Wilmington Manor. I-295 passes over the Jack A. Markell Trail and reaches an interchange with US 13/US 40 in Farnhurst. Here, US 40 splits from US 13 by heading east concurrent with I-295. At this interchange, the highway becomes maintained by the Delaware River and Bay Authority (DRBA). The road has an eastbound ramp to Landers Lane before it passes between residential neighborhoods and comes to a cloverleaf interchange with DE 9 north of the city of New Castle. This interchange provides access to Veterans Memorial Park, where a war memorial honoring veterans from Delaware and New Jersey is located. Past DE 9, the median of the freeway widens to include the DRBA headquarters, with direct access to and from the southbound lanes while northbound access is provided by way of DE 9. After this, the southbound lanes of I-295 have a toll plaza for the Delaware Memorial Bridge. I-295/US 40 continues east and passes over Norfolk Southern Railway's New Castle Secondary railroad line before crossing the Delaware River on the twin-span Delaware Memorial Bridge.
Upon reaching the east bank of the Delaware River, I-295/US 40 enters Pennsville Township in Salem County, New Jersey, and heads east-southeast through industrial areas. The freeway comes to an interchange with the southern terminus of US 130 and the western terminus of Route 49, at which point it also meets the southern terminus of the New Jersey Turnpike. Here, I-295 splits onto its own freeway maintained by NJDOT while US 40 continues along the New Jersey Turnpike for a short distance before it splits to the southeast. A short distance later, the roadway enters Carneys Point Township and County Route 551 (CR 551) merges onto I-295, with the four-lane freeway heading northeast. The highway comes to a junction with Route 140, where CR 551 splits from I-295 by continuing east along Route 140. I-295 heads into wooded areas and features a rest area in the northbound direction. The freeway continues northeast and comes to a northbound weigh station before it reaches the Route 48 exit. The highway runs through a mix of farmland and woodland and enters Oldmans Township, where it comes to an interchange providing access to CR 643.
I-295 crosses Oldmans Creek into Logan Township in Gloucester County and passes near some residential development and Pureland Industrial Complex as it comes to the Center Square Road (CR 620) exit. The road crosses Raccoon Creek and reaches an interchange serving US 322/CR 536. Following this, the highway runs through agricultural and wooded areas before northbound US 130 merges into the freeway.
At this point, I-295 and US 130 head east as a six-lane freeway with a narrow median and soon come to the CR 684 exit. Continuing east, the freeway crosses into Greenwich Township and has a junction with CR 607. After passing near Greenwich Lake, there are exits for CR 653 and CR 673 within a short distance of each other. I-295/US 130 reaches an interchange with CR 680 on the border of Greenwich Township and East Greenwich Township. The road runs through a portion of East Greenwich Township before crossing back into Greenwich Township and coming to a junction with CR 678 and CR 667 on the border of Greenwich Township and Paulsboro.
Past this point, the freeway runs through marshy areas of Mantua Creek and continues into West Deptford Township. Here, there is an exit for CR 656. Passing near more industrial areas, I-295/US 130 has an interchange with the Mid-Atlantic Parkway, which provides access to Route 44 as well as to CR 643 and CR 660. Continuing northeast, the freeway passes over Conrail Shared Assets Operations's (CSAO) Penns Grove Secondary railroad line and reaches an interchange with Route 44 and CR 640. At this point, Route 44 begins to parallel I-295/US 130 on its northwest side as the two roads cross the Woodbury Creek. Route 44 ends at a cul-de-sac that has a ramp from the southbound direction of I-295/US 130 prior to another exit that provides access to CR 644. The freeway passes near some homes before US 130 splits from I-295 at an interchange that also has access to CR 642. The median of I-295 becomes wider again and it continues east through woods, coming to a southbound exit and northbound entrance with Route 45. The roadway passes over CSAO's Vineland Secondary railroad line and passes through a small strip of Deptford Township before it has a partial interchange with CR 551, with a southbound exit and northbound entrance. The highway enters Westville and skirts near residential and commercial development, with another southbound exit and northbound entrance serving Route 47.
### Bellmawr to Lawrence Township
I-295 crosses Big Timber Creek into Bellmawr in Camden County and runs northeast before it comes to the junction with the North–South Freeway, which serves as the northern terminus of Route 42 and the eastern terminus of I-76. At this point, the travel lanes of I-295 head north for a short distance along the outside of the North–South Freeway, with the northbound lanes of I-295 having access from northbound Route 42 and eastbound I-76 and access to westbound I-76 while the southbound lanes of I-295 having access from eastbound I-76 and access to southbound Route 42. Past this, I-295 continues east as a six-lane freeway through wooded areas near suburban development, passing under CSAO's Grenloch Industrial Track line before reaching an interchange with Route 168. The highway heads east along the border between Haddon Heights to the north and Barrington to the south and passes over CSAO's Beesleys Point Secondary railroad line before reaching the junction with US 30 near its junction with Route 41/CR 573.
The road fully enters Barrington before crossing into Lawnside, where it comes to a southbound exit and northbound entrance serving Warwick Road (CR 669). After this, I-295 curves northeast and passes through a corner of Tavistock before entering a part of Haddonfield and coming to a trumpet interchange providing access to Woodcrest station along the PATCO Speedline. At this point, the road becomes closely parallel to the New Jersey Turnpike to the southeast. The highway crosses into Cherry Hill and passes over the tracks carrying the PATCO Speedline and NJ Transit's Atlantic City Line before it reaches the CR 561 exit. The roadway runs through wooded areas with suburban neighborhoods to the west and the New Jersey Turnpike to the east as it comes to a cloverleaf interchange at Route 70. Past this, the highway curves north farther west from the turnpike.
I-295 enters Mount Laurel in Burlington County upon crossing Pennsauken Creek and runs northeast through woods near development, reaching a cloverleaf interchange with Route 73 that provides access to the New Jersey Turnpike to the east. Past this, the road passes east-northeast near commercial areas to the southeast of Moorestown Mall before curving northeast to closely follow the turnpike. The highway runs through wooded areas and encounters the Route 38 junction. The roadway passes over CSAO's Pemberton Industrial Track line and CR 537 and runs through a mix of fields and trees with occasional development, with an exit serving CR 635. I-295 crosses Rancocas Creek into Westampton and runs through an area of warehouses, where it has a cloverleaf interchange at CR 626. The highway runs north through rural land with nearby buildings and enters Burlington Township. Here, the road curves northeast and comes to a cloverleaf junction at CR 541 that provides access to a commercial area along with the New Jersey Turnpike. The freeway runs through woodland and heads into Springfield Township, where it passes a pair of closed rest areas in each direction. I-295 crosses Assiscunk Creek into Florence Township and heads through a mix of farm fields and trees before it enters Mansfield Township and comes to a cloverleaf interchange at CR 656 that provides access to nearby CR 543. The highway passes over the Pearl Harbor Memorial Extension of the New Jersey Turnpike (I-95) and continues through rural land into Bordentown Township, where a northbound exit and southbound entrance serves Rising Sun Road that provides access to US 206 and the New Jersey Turnpike. Past this, the road curves north and reaches the exit for US 130 west of Bordentown before passing through woodland and crossing over NJ Transit's River Line.
I-295 crosses Crosswicks Creek into Hamilton Township in Mercer County and runs through woods and marshland a short distance east of the Delaware River. A scenic overlook of the river is located along the southbound side of the road; access from the northbound lanes is provided by a pedestrian bridge over the highway. The freeway heads farther from the river and passes over the River Line again before it reaches a modified cloverleaf interchange serving the western terminus of I-195 and the southern terminus of the Route 29 freeway to Trenton. Following this junction, the road heads northeast near residential neighborhoods and comes to an interchange at Arena Drive (CR 620) that provides access to nearby White Horse Avenue (CR 533). A short distance later, a southbound exit and northbound entrance provides access to northbound Olden Avenue (CR 622). I-295 continues through wooded areas with nearby development and curves north to come to an interchange at Route 33 and CR 606. The next junction is a southbound exit and northbound entrance at CR 535. The highway continues through woods and reaches a cloverleaf junction serving Sloan Avenue (CR 649). The roadway comes to a bridge over Amtrak's Northeast Corridor railroad line and crosses into Lawrence Township, where it curves northwest and comes to a modified interchange with US 1.
### Lawrence Township to Bristol Township
West of US 1, the freeway passes commercial areas. I-295 comes to a partial cloverleaf interchange at Princeton Pike (CR 583), before coming to a southbound ramp to CR 546. Continuing west, the road reaches a cloverleaf interchange with US 206. I-295 then has a northbound exit and southbound entrance serving Federal City Road, before leaving Lawrence Township and entering Hopewell Township. The median of the freeway widens as it runs near suburban residential areas; this is where the Somerset Freeway would have begun, had it been built. Upon entering Hopewell Township, the median narrows.
I-295 turns southwest past suburban development containing some farmland. It reaches the Route 31 interchange and passes through Ewing Township before returning to Hopewell Township, crossing under CSX Transportation's Trenton Subdivision railroad line. The next interchange along the route provides access to CR 611 and Trenton–Mercer Airport via a cloverleaf interchange. After CR 611, the highway crosses back into Ewing Township and passes to the northwest of the airport. An interchange with CR 579 also serves Trenton–Mercer Airport. The freeway comes to the Route 29 interchange that also has a northbound entrance from Route 175. At this point, maintenance of the road changes from NJDOT to the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission (DRJTBC), and I-295 widens from six to eight lanes. Immediately after the interchange with Route 29, I-295 then crosses the Delaware River into Pennsylvania on the tolled Scudder Falls Bridge. At the state line, I-295 transitions from a north–south road to an east–west road, with the northbound direction turning into the westbound direction upon crossing into Pennsylvania and the eastbound direction turning into the southbound direction upon crossing into New Jersey.
Upon crossing the Delaware River, I-295 becomes the Delaware Expressway (Vietnam Veterans Memorial Highway) and enters Lower Makefield Township in Bucks County, passing over Pennsylvania Route 32 (PA 32) and reaching an electronic toll gantry in the westbound direction. After crossing the Delaware Canal, I-295 reaches an interchange with Taylorsville Road, which provides indirect access to PA 32, to the north of the borough of Yardley, and narrows to six lanes. Here, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) takes over maintenance of the road. At this interchange, the route changes cardinal directions, with northbound becoming westbound and eastbound becoming southbound. I-295 continues west-southwest near suburban residential areas and features a westbound rest area and weigh station. The freeway turns to the south and reaches the PA 332 interchange that serves the borough of Newtown to the west, narrowing again to four lanes. I-295 continues south near some farmland before passing near more homes with some commercial development. The freeway comes to a bridge over SEPTA's West Trenton Line and CSX Transportation's Trenton Subdivision before it crosses into Middletown Township and comes to a cloverleaf interchange with the US 1 freeway. Immediately after this interchange, I-295 passes over Norfolk Southern's Morrisville Line and CSX Transportation's Fairless Branch as it curves southwest, heading northwest of commercial development and the Oxford Valley Mall. The freeway makes a curve to the south and becomes parallel to SEPTA's West Trenton Line and CSX Transportation's Trenton Subdivision to the west, passing under PA 213 without an interchange. The railroad tracks split to the west and I-295 reaches a diamond interchange with US 1 Business (US 1 Bus.)/PA 413 to the east of the borough of Penndel. Following this interchange, the freeway crosses Mill Creek and runs south-southeast near suburban residential areas as it heads west of Levittown. I-295 enters Bristol Township and terminates at an interchange with I-95 at I-276 (Pennsylvania Turnpike). At this interchange, I-295 merges into southbound I-95, with access from westbound I-295 to southbound I-95 and from northbound I-95 to eastbound I-295; there are no ramps connecting I-295 and the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
## History
In the 1927 New Jersey state highway renumbering, Route 39 was legislated to begin at the Yardley–Wilburtha Bridge and bypass Trenton to the north and east before continuing south to Hammonton along present-day US 206. Route 39, which was not built around Trenton, was decommissioned in the 1953 New Jersey state highway renumbering.
### Original highway
Portions of I-295 in Salem and Gloucester counties predate the Interstate Highway System as part of freeway bypasses for the surface section of US 130/Route 44 through Carneys Point and between Bridgeport and Westville. In 1948, the first section of the US 130/Route 44 bypass in Gloucester County between current exits 21 and 24 opened, with a second section between exits 14 and 21 opening in 1954. The section of the present highway between the southern terminus of the New Jersey Turnpike and the present-day CR 618 bridge was built as part of the US 130 bypass of Carneys Point in 1953. The concurrent Route 44 designation was removed from US 130 in the 1953 New Jersey state highway renumbering and was later assigned to the former surface alignment of US 130 through Carneys Point and between Bridgeport and Westville. In 1958, the US 130 bypass of Carneys Point and the freeway in Gloucester County was designated as part of I-295.
Construction on the Delaware Memorial Bridge began in 1949. At the same time, work was underway on the Delaware Memorial Bridge approach in Delaware, a divided highway which would begin at a directional T interchange with US 13/US 202 in Farnhurst and head east to a cloverleaf interchange at New Castle Avenue (present DE 9) before leading to the bridge. Construction on the US 13/US 202 interchange at Farnhurst began on July 12, 1950. On August 16, 1951, the Delaware Memorial Bridge opened to traffic. The Delaware Memorial Bridge and the approach road to US 13/US 202 became a part of US 40 following the opening of the bridge. I-295 was designated onto the New Jersey approach of the bridge in 1958. That same year, construction began for a bridge at the Farnhurst interchange that would link the US 40 approach to the Delaware Memorial Bridge to the Delaware Turnpike that was proposed to run west to the Maryland state line. A year later, the Farnhurst interchange and the bridge approach were upgraded to Interstate Highway standards, and it was designated as part of I-295. Construction at the interchange connecting to the Delaware Turnpike at Farnhurst was completed in July 1961. On November 14, 1963, the Delaware Turnpike opened to traffic, with I-295 extended west (south) to I-95 at the northern terminus of the Delaware Turnpike, which continued south as I-95. In the middle of 1964, work began on a second span at the Delaware Memorial Bridge due to increasing traffic volumes. The second span of the bridge was opened to traffic in late 1968.
The remainder of I-295 through New Jersey was planned as Federal Aid Interstate Route 108, which was created by NJDOT in 1956. I-295 was built between Big Timber Creek and Route 42 in 1958. In 1960, the section of the Interstate between Route 42 and Warwick Road was finished. The highway was built between US 130 and Route 45 in 1960 and was extended east to the Big Timber Creek a year later. In 1963, I-295 was completed between Warwick Road and just south of Route 70. A year later, the roadway was extended north to Route 73. The freeway was built between Route 73 and Route 38 in 1966. In 1968, the section of I-295 between Carneys Point and Bridgeport was finished. Following the completion of this section, US 130 reverted to its previous surface alignment through Carneys Point, replacing that portion of Route 44. In 1972, the highway was finished between Route 38 and CR 541. I-295 was extended from CR 541 northward to US 130 near Bordentown a year later. I-295 was completed from US 1 west to a proposed interchange with I-95 in Hopewell Township in 1974. In 1975, the roadway was constructed from south of the Route 33 interchange north to US 1. The section of I-295 between Arena Drive and south of Route 33 was finished in 1984. In 1987, I-295 was built between I-195/Route 29 and Arena Drive, with the highway between I-195/Route 29 and Route 33 opened to traffic on August 16 of that year. The final section of I-295 between US 130 in Bordentown and I-195/Route 29 was finished in 1994.
At its original northern terminus, the freeway continued west as I-95 toward the Scudder Falls Bridge while I-95 was proposed to head north along the Somerset Freeway. In 1983, the Somerset Freeway portion of I-95 was canceled as a result of community opposition. In the 1990s, the northern terminus of I-295 was moved to the US 1 interchange in Lawrence Township, with the route west of there replaced by an extended I-95. Due to the cancelation of the Somerset Freeway, a gap existed along I-95 in New Jersey. To bridge the gap, motorists from northbound I-95 were directed to follow I-295 southbound and I-195 eastbound to reach the New Jersey Turnpike to continue north along I-95, and vice versa.
In 1995, the southbound rest area along I-295 in Burlington County was named for radio personality Howard Stern. Governor Christine Todd Whitman named the rest area after Stern as payback for him granting Whitman airtime during her 1993 gubernatorial campaign. A plaque proclaiming the rest area as the "Howard Stern Rest Stop" was installed, with an image of Stern poking his head from an outhouse. Days after the plaque was installed, it was stolen and later mailed to Stern. In 2003, the rest areas along I-295 in Burlington County were closed as part of funding cuts in Governor Jim McGreevey's budget, saving the state \$1 million a year.
I-295, like many other highways in New Jersey, once had solar-powered emergency callboxes every mile (1.6 km); the use of the callboxes became limited due to the increasing popularity of cellphones. To save on maintenance costs, NJDOT removed these callboxes in 2005.
### Reconstruction of interchanges
In 2013, NJDOT broke ground on a project to construct a straighter roadway for I-295 near the Route 42 interchange. This project, dubbed the I-295/I-76/Route 42 Direct Connection, will reconstruct the dangerous and congested Route 42/I-295/I-76 interchange, which currently requires traffic on I-295 to use 35-mile-per-hour (56 km/h) ramps that merge onto the North–South Freeway for a short distance, among a series of other indirect connections. In 2007, "Alternative D" for the reconstructed interchange was selected, calling for I-295 to cross over the North–South Freeway. This interchange was projected to cost \$900 million (equivalent to \$ in ). The project is being constructed in four phases and was originally scheduled to be complete in 2021. However, delays in construction, including the collapse of a retaining wall on March 25, 2021, pushed the expected completion date to 2028.
NJDOT has also announced another project to address the missing connections between I-295 and Route 42 to provide an easier connection between the Delaware Valley and points south to Atlantic City and vice versa. This project, dubbed the I-295/Route 42 Missing Moves, will provide connections from I-295 northbound to Route 42 southbound and Route 42 northbound to I-295 southbound by constructing two ramps just south of the I-295/I-76/Route 42 interchange. Construction began in mid-2020 and is expected to be completed in late 2023.
In early 2015, the DRBA began a project to reconstruct southbound I-295 between US 13/US 40 and I-95/I-495. The first phase, which took place between early 2015 and late 2016, reconstructed and repaved the left lanes of southbound I-295, reconstructed and repaved the right side of the ramps to US 13/US 40, I-495, and northbound I-95, and closed the ramp from northbound US 13 to southbound I-295 and built a new loop ramp. The second phase, which took place between 2016 and 2017, reconstructed and repaved the right lanes of southbound I-295, completed construction on the ramps from southbound I-295, and built a tunnel carrying the Jack A. Markell Trail under I-295. The final phase, which took place between 2017 and 2018, reconstructed the ramp from southbound US 13 to southbound I-295, removed the former ramp from northbound US 13 to southbound I-295, and reconstructed the left lane and shoulder on the ramps from southbound I-295 to I-95.
### Extension into Pennsylvania
In preparation for the completion of the first stage of the interchange between I-95 and the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Bristol Township, Pennsylvania, the former route was truncated from New Jersey to the site of the interchange. In its place, I-295 was extended, ending at the unfinished interchange. NJDOT and the DRJTBC completed Phases 1 and 2 of the redesignation in March 2018, extending the route from US 1 in Lawrence Township across the Scudder Falls Bridge to Taylorsville Road in Pennsylvania. PennDOT then finished Phase 3 in July of the same year, signing their section as east–west despite its north–south alignment to avoid a change in direction from north to south on the same route.
Between September 2005 and May 2015, New Jersey and Pennsylvania intended to extend I-195 around Trenton instead of I-295. This would have also truncated I-295 to its junction with I-195 and Route 29. However, in 2015, plans changed once again to extend I-295. This was because of guidelines set by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), which state that auxiliary Interstates with an odd-numbered first digit should only connect with their parent route once. Since the extended route would have two junctions with the parent route (I-95), a route number with an even-numbered first digit was considered more appropriate.
On September 22, 2018, the first stage of the interchange opened, allowing for I-95 to be routed onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike to connect to the New Jersey Turnpike, truncating the eastern terminus of I-276 to the new interchange and completing I-95 from Miami to the Canadian border. However, there remains no access between I-295 and the Pennsylvania Turnpike/I-276, nor between I-295 westbound and I-95 northbound and vice versa. The next stage of the project will complete the movements at the interchange.
### Scudder Falls Bridge replacement
The structurally deficient Scudder Falls Bridge, carrying I-295 over the Delaware River between Lower Makefield Township, Pennsylvania, and Ewing Township, New Jersey, is in the process of being replaced. Construction on a dual-span replacement bridge began in April 2017. The first span opened to Pennsylvania-bound traffic on July 10, 2019, and opened to New Jersey-bound traffic on July 24. Demolition of the original span and construction of the second new span began afterwards, and it is expected to open in early 2021. The new configuration will have six through-traffic lanes (three in each direction), acceleration and deceleration lanes, shoulders, and a shared bicycle and pedestrian path. Additionally, the two adjoining interchanges with Route 29 and Taylorsville Road are being reconstructed. Previously a toll-free crossing, on July 14, 2019, an electronic toll was instituted for Pennsylvania-bound traffic, payable using E-ZPass or toll by plate.
## Exit list
All exits in Delaware are unnumbered.
## See also |
36,861,499 | Upper Thomson MRT station | 1,165,022,527 | Mass Rapid Transit station in Singapore | [
"Mass Rapid Transit (Singapore) stations",
"Railway stations in Singapore opened in 2021"
]
| Upper Thomson MRT station is an underground Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) station on the Thomson–East Coast line (TEL) in Thomson, Singapore. As the name suggests, it is located along Upper Thomson Road. The five entrances of the station serve various developments such as Soo Chow Estate, Thomson Plaza and the Church of the Holy Spirit.
First announced in August 2012 as part of the Thomson line (TSL), the station was constructed as part of TEL Phase 2 (TEL2) with the merger of the TSL and the Eastern Region line (ERL). The station's construction required multiple traffic diversions along Upper Thomson Road along with a canal. Opening on 28 August 2021 along with the TEL2 stations, Upper Thomson station features Lost In Our (Concrete) Jungle by Troy Chin as part of the Art-in-Transit programme.
## History
Upper Thomson station was first announced as part of the 22-station Thomson line on 29 August 2012. In November 2013, the contract for the station's construction was awarded to Sato Kogyo (S) Pte. Ltd. The S\$374 million (US\$ million) contract included building the associated tunnels. The station's construction began in 2014, with a scheduled completion of 2020.
On 15 August 2014, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) announced that TSL would merge with the ERL to form the TEL. Upper Thomson station, being part of the proposed line, would be constructed as part of TEL2, which consists of six stations between Springleaf and Caldecott.
The road above the station, Upper Thomson Road, had to be diverted through seven stages, along with utilities and a canal. Barriers were installed to minimise noise pollution, with workers draping noise curtains on heavy machinery. A linkway to one of the station's entrances was constructed using a retractable micro-tunnel boring machine. This machine installed a series of interlocking underground pipes around the passageway, allowing one side of the Upper Thomson Road to remain open as workers excavate the linkway. In order to reduce carbon emissions during construction, the station was built using environmentally-friendly materials.
In December 2016, shops along Upper Thomson Road were affected by a flood, which severely impacted their businesses as their goods were damaged. Through an inspection by the Public Utilities Board (PUB), the contractor, Sato Kogyo, was fined S\$14,000 (US\$) for altering the draining systems around the station's site without informing the PUB. Fourteen other contractors working on other construction works were also penalised on similar charges.
With the restrictions imposed on construction works due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the TEL2 completion date was pushed to 2021. On 14 December 2020, it was further announced that the opening of TEL 2 was delayed to the third quarter of 2021 so the rail system software for the line could be reviewed. As announced during a visit by Transport Minister S. Iswaran at Caldecott station on 30 June 2021, the station began operations on 28 August 2021.
## Station details
Upper Thomson station serves the TEL and is between the Bright Hill and Caldecott stations. The official station code is TE8. Being part of the TEL, the station is operated by SMRT Trains. Train frequencies on the TEL range from 5 to 6 minutes. The station has five entrances, serving Soo Chow Estate and various landmarks along Upper Thomson Road, including Thomson Plaza, Church of the Holy Spirit and the LTA office at Sin Ming.
The station has a length of 228 metres (748 ft) and a depth of 20 metres (66 ft). The station walls have wave-like motifs that reflects the station's proximity to three reservoirs – MacRitchie Reservoir, Upper Peirce Reservoir and Lower Peirce Reservoir. The station is decorated by 88 animal figures, which are part of the Art-in-Transit artwork Lost in Our (Concrete) Jungle by Troy Chin. The artwork, primarily depicting long-tailed macaques, took inspiration from the nearby Central Catchment Nature Reserve. With the "hide-and-seek" concept adopted for the artwork, Chin intended for his artwork to be enjoyable and "fun" for commuters. The number of figures signifies Upper Thomson station being the 88th station involved in the Art-in-Transit programme. |
1,374,861 | Brean Down | 1,164,882,935 | Promontory in Somerset, England | [
"Bristol Channel",
"Headlands of Somerset",
"Hill forts in Somerset",
"Hills of Somerset",
"National Trust properties in Somerset",
"Roman religious sites in England",
"Scheduled monuments in Sedgemoor",
"Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Somerset",
"Sites of Special Scientific Interest notified in 1971"
]
| Brean Down is a promontory off the coast of Somerset, England, standing 318 feet (97 m) high and extending 1+1⁄2 miles (2.5 kilometres) into the Bristol Channel at the eastern end of Bridgwater Bay between Weston-super-Mare and Burnham-on-Sea.
Made of Carboniferous Limestone, it is a continuation of the Mendip Hills. Two further continuations are the small islands of Steep Holm and Flat Holm. The cliffs on the northern and southern flanks of Brean Down have large quantities of fossils laid down in the marine deposits about 320–350 million years ago. The site has been occupied by humans since the late Bronze Age and includes the remains of a Romano-Celtic Temple. At the seaward end is Brean Down Fort which was built in 1865 and then re-armed in the Second World War.
Brean Down is now owned by the National Trust, and is rich in wildlife, history and archaeology. It is a Site of Special Scientific Interest due to both the geology and presence of nationally rare plants including the white rock-rose. It has also been scheduled as an ancient monument.
## Geology
The Mendip Hills, of which Brean Down forms the most westerly part, are the most southerly Carboniferous Limestone upland in Britain. These rock strata were laid down during the early Carboniferous period, about 320–350 million years ago. Subsequently, much of northwestern Europe underwent continental collision throughout the late Paleozoic era, culminating in the final phases of the Variscan orogeny near the end of the Carboniferous period, 300 million years ago. This tectonic activity produced a complex suite of mountain and hill ranges across what is now southern Ireland, south-western England, Brittany, and elsewhere in western Europe. As a result of the Variscan mountain-building, the Mendip area now comprises at least four anticlinal fold structures, with an east-west trend, each with a core of older Devonian sandstone and Silurian volcanic rocks. West of the main Mendip plateau the Carboniferous Limestone continues in Bleadon Hill and Brean Down, and on the islands of Steep Holm and Flat Holm.
Brean Down is just over two kilometres (1+1⁄4 mi) long and runs in an east-west direction near the mouth of the River Axe opposite Uphill Cliff. The flat area on the top of the peninsula may represent a raised beach laid down when the sea level was much higher than it is today, as the highest point of the promontory is approximately 97 metres (318 ft) above sea level. The cliffs on the north and south faces are rich in fossils that include corals, seashells and crinoids, which supports the theory of the marine deposition of the rocks. 13 separate layers have been identified in the 'sand cliff' on the south side, the lowest five dating to the millennia of the last glaciation.
## History
Human occupation dates back to the Beaker culture of the late Bronze Age. There is also evidence of an Iron Age hill fort and prehistoric barrows and field systems. There is evidence of a shrine dating from pre-Roman times, which was re-established as a Romano-Celtic Temple in the mid-4th century. According to at least one source, it is extremely likely this was succeeded by a small late-4th-century Christian oratory. Several Roman finds including gold coins of Augustus, Nero, and Drusus, two silver denarii of Vespasian and a Roman carnelian ring were found at the site during quarrying.
Brean Down Fort was built on the headland between 1864 and 1871 on the recommendations of the 1859 Royal Commission. It was the most southerly of a chain of defences across the Bristol Channel, protecting the access to Bristol and Cardiff. Four acres of land at the end of Brean Down were requisitioned in 1862, with construction beginning in 1864 and completed in 1871.
In the 1860s plans were laid for a deep-water harbour on the northern shore of Brean Down. It was intended that this harbour would replace Bristol as a port on embarkation for transatlantic crossings and the export of minerals and agricultural produce from the Mendip Hills and the rest of Somerset. The foundation stones of the pier were laid, but the project was later abandoned after a large storm destroyed the foundations. In 1897, following wireless transmissions from Lavernock Point in Wales and Flat Holm, Guglielmo Marconi moved his equipment to Brean Down and set a new distance record of 14 kilometres (7+1⁄2 nautical miles) for wireless transmission over open sea. In 1912 Brean Down was leased by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds as a bird sanctuary, acquiring the shooting rights to stop others shooting on the promontory.
On the outbreak of World War II, the fort was rearmed with two 6-inch (15-centimetre) ex-naval guns, and machine gun posts were built on the Down. Birnbeck Pier was taken over by the Admiralty in 1941 as an outpost of the Department of Miscellaneous Weapons Development (DMWD). It was commissioned as HMS Birnbeck, and was used for secret weapons development and storage with testing. The "Bouncing bomb" was tested at the Brean Down Fort on the opposite side of Weston Bay.
In 1954 the former Axbridge Rural District Council gave 59.685 hectares (147+31⁄64 acres) of the down to the National Trust to celebrate the Festival of Britain. The Major Aldermen and Burgesses of the Borough of Weston-Super Mare gave 1.494 hectares (3+11⁄16 acres) in 1963, and a further 1.371 hectares (3+25⁄64 acres) at Brean Down Cove was acquired from M.D. and M Matthews in 2000. After restoring the fort, which covers 1.606 hectares (3+31⁄32 acres), Sedgemoor District Council gave this to the trust as well in 2002.
Various proposals have been put forward to construct a Severn Barrage for tidal electricity production from Brean Down to Lavernock Point in south Wales. The proposals, which go back over 100 years, have never been successful so far, however Peter Hain and others are still working on further proposals and trying to persuade the government to fund either the barrage or tidal lagoons.
## Ecology
In addition to the geological interest of the site, the range of plants growing on Brean Down has led to it being designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest. The nationally rare white rock-rose (Helianthemum appenninum) is a common species at the site, occurring in abundance on the upper reaches of the grassy south-facing slopes. Some of the broomrapes growing here, which were originally thought to be oxtongue broomrape (Orobanche artemisiae-campestriae), are now no longer believed to be this species, but atypical specimens of ivy broomrape (Orobanche hederae). Other plants on the southern slopes include the Somerset hair grass, wild thyme, horseshoe vetch and birds-foot-trefoil. The northern side is dominated by bracken, bramble, privet, hawthorn, cowslips and bell heather.
The birds seen on Brean Down include peregrine falcon, jackdaw, kestrel, collared and stock doves, common whitethroat, common linnet, stonechat, dunnock, rock pipit and – in 2007 – Britain's first and only Atlantic yellow-nosed albatross was discovered in a garden nearby. There are also several species of butterfly, including chalkhill blue, dark green fritillary, meadow brown, marbled white, small heath, and common blue.
## See also
- List of National Trust properties in Somerset |
12,832,094 | Shimna River | 1,055,162,153 | River in County Down, Northern Ireland | [
"Rivers of County Down"
]
| The Shimna River (Irish: Simhné, meaning river of bulrushes) is a river in County Down, Northern Ireland. It rises on the slopes of Ott Mountain, in the Mourne Mountains, and enters the Irish Sea at Newcastle, on Dundrum Bay. It is acidic and nutrient-poor, as a result of which its most common flora are mosses and liverworts, including the rare Portuguese feather-moss and Holt's mouse-tail moss. Its principal fish are salmon and sea trout, and it is managed by the Shimna Angling Club. The river is an Area of Special Scientific Interest (ASSI).
The Shimna has a history of flooding; the most serious recent flooding was in 2008. There have also been incidents of pollution, and there were serious fish kills in 2004, 2006 and 2009.
## Course
The source of the river is in the Mourne Mountains on the slopes of Ott Mountain. The river then flows in a northerly direction into Fofanny Dam. It continues its flow in a north-easterly direction into Tollymore Forest Park where the tributary Spinkwee River and Trassey River join it. The Shimna finally flows to the east, then takes a south easterly direction toward Newcastle where at one point it flows through Tipperary Wood. The final tributaries to join the river prior to it reaching the sea are the Burren River and the Tullybrannigan River, at Islands Park. Near the mouth, as it flows through Castle Park, it widens quite considerably to create a shallow boating pond.
The river's geology, flora and fauna have made it an Area of Special Scientific Interest (ASSI).
## Geology
The Shimna is a short spate river, meaning it becomes deep and fast-flowing after periods of rain and is slow, with low water levels in drier weather. In sections of the river where the gradient is low, there are riffles and pools, sandy banks, and pebbles and scattered boulders on the river bed. Along steeper parts there is a faster flow, rapids and cascades, and the bed is made up of bedrock and boulders.
The bedrock of the upper part of the river, located in the Mourne Mountains, is composed of granite formed approximately 50 million years ago (mya). The bedrock of the river as it flows through Tollymore is shale from the Silurian age, more than 400 mya, and it forms step gorges along some sections of the river banks. Dark bands of basalt are found were molten basalt lava was forced through cracks in the bedrock about 60 million years ago. The river bed contains stones and gravel from as far away as Antrim, Tyrone and Scotland, which were carried there by glacial ice sheets during the last ice age.
## History
Felix Magennis, a member of the Magennis clan and relative of Hugh Magennis, Lord of Iveagh, built a castle next to the mouth of the Shimna River in 1588. The town is referred to as New Castle in the Annals of the Four Masters in 1433 so it is likely that he built on the site of an existing structure. Magennis' castle was demolished in 1830.
The river is crossed by 16 bridges as it flows through Tollymore Forest Park. The Old Bridge, built by James Hamilton in 1726, is the oldest of the current bridges. The Ivy Bridge was built in 1780 and Foley's Bridge in 1787. Parnell Bridge, named in recognition of Sir John Parnell who visited Tollymore in the late 18th century, was constructed in 1842. It was the last stone bridge to be built in Tollymore. The more recent footbridges are constructed from wood. Castle Bridge is located near the mouth where Main Street crosses the river. It was originally called Fearsat an Chaislein Nui (The Ford or Pass of the Newcastle) and was next to the entrance to the castle. This was replaced by a wider, straighter bridge in the 1890s.
The Hermitage is a small stone shelter built into the side of the gorge, above the river. It was designed by James Hamilton in the 1770s as a place for ladies to shelter while the men fished in the river.
Between 1994 and 2003, five flint artefacts were discovered near the Shimna River. A flake, two blades and a concave scraper were found in two locations in Tollymore Forest. The flake, scraper and one of the blades were identified as prehistoric. The second blade was identified as Late Mesolithic or Early Neolithic. A Bronze Age barbed and tanged arrowhead was found in a nearby field.
## Flooding
### 2008
There was major flooding in the area on 16 and 17 August 2008 which was investigated by the Rivers Agency, part of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD). Most of the flooding occurred along Bryansford Avenue and the Shimna Road, close to the Burren River and Shimna River confluence, causing damage to approximately 40 properties. There is a history of flooding in Newcastle, particularly after heavy, sustained rainfall. The Rivers Agency had commissioned a flood alleviation scheme along the nearby Burren River to reduce the risk of flooding in that area to 1 in 100 in any given year (national standards). This was completed in August 2007. There are no flood prevention measures in place along the Shimna River itself but in 2014 DARD commissioned a feasibility study for flood alleviation work to be carried out. The Rivers Agency concluded that the flooding was an extreme event, caused by weather that resulted in widespread flooding across Northern Ireland. The amount of water in the rivers exceeded the capacity of the flood defences and the natural river banks. They further concluded that the flooding was a result of overflow of the Shimna River into the Burren River catchment area through Islands Park, rather than from the Burren River itself.
### 2020
Major flooding occurred on 25 and 26 August 2020 when the Shimna River burst its banks during Storm Francis. The Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service deployed specialist flood rescue teams, and a number of elderly people were evacuated from homes on the Shimna Road and Bryansford Road in Newcastle. In response to the flooding, Infrastructure Minister Nicola Mallon stated that work on a flood alleviation scheme for the Shimna River was due to start in the summer of 2021. She later said this will be brought forward and work on the scheme will start as quickly as possible.
There was also flooding in Tollymore Forest Park, where a number of bridges were washed away.
## Flora
The river is nutrient-poor and acidic (pH 4.33) which determines the type of plant life found there. Mosses and liverworts are the most common. Near the source compressed flapwort (Nardia compressa) and green algae are the most dominant species. Closer to the mouth water earwort (Scapania undulata), feather moss and bulbous rush (Juncus bulbosus) are also found. Holt's mouse-tail moss (Isothecium holtii) is very common on the banks; the Shimna River is one of only three known sites for this species in Northern Ireland. It is also the only known location in Northern Ireland where Portuguese feather-moss (Platyhypnidium alopecuroides) is found.
Other notable species include:
- Rusty feather-moss (Brachythecium plumosum)
- Fox-tail feather-moss (Thamnobryum alopecurum)
- Yellow fringe-moss (Racomitrium aciculare)
- Overleaf pellia (Pellia epiphylla)
The most common trees found along the banks include oak, beech (Fagus sylvatica), ash (Fraxinus excelsior), birch and willow. Rhododendron, elderberry, blackberry, laurel and ivy are also common along parts of the river.
## Fauna
Atlantic salmon, brown trout and sea trout use the river to spawn. Other fish species found include Three-spined stickleback, minnow, stone loach, and eel. Dippers and Grey wagtails can also be seen feeding on insects along the river. Invertebrate species found include leeches, Simulidae and Ancylidae. Various Mayfly families are found, such as; Baetidae, Ephemerellidae, Heptageniidae and Caenidae. Stoneflies (Nemouridae, Chloroperlidae and Perlodidae families) and caddis larvae (Hydropsychidae, Polycentropidae, Rhyacophilidae and Limnephilidae families) are also present.
A population of feral Mandarin ducks have been present on the river since 1978. Kingfishers and grey herons can also be seen. Otters are common near the mouth of the river.
## Angling
The river is partly owned by the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure (DCAL) and partly leased by the Shimna Angling Club, and is managed by the latter club under a management agreement. The principal fish are salmon and sea trout. The record for the largest sea trout in Ireland was set in 1983 when a 16 lbs 6oz (7.43 kg) fish was caught in the Shimna. Fishing season is from 1 March to 31 October.
## Pollution and fish kills
There have been a number of incidents in recent years where the river has been polluted and fish have been killed. In 2004 a pipe was broken by builders while they were working on the upgrade of the Fofanny water treatment works, near the source of the river. This resulted in sediment running into the river and the flooding of the plant. Fish were not directly harmed by this incident, and the Water Service carried out an investigation to assure drinking water had not been affected. However, concerns were raised by the Shimna Anglers Club that this was not the first time building work had affected the river, and that there was the possibility of long term harm to the salmon and sea trout.
In July 2006, sewage discharge from a pumping station resulted in the death of an estimated 1,400 fish, mostly juveniles. Brian Finn of the Fisheries Conservation Board suggested that there may have been only a small amount of sewage released but the high water temperatures and the low water levels caused by the warm weather at the time increased the fish's vulnerability to pollution. The pollution led to the temporary closure of the boating lake and part of the beach near the mouth of the river.
In 2009 there was another major fish kill, with over 200 dead fish found near the Fofanny water treatment works. There were approximately 150 trout and 55 salmon killed. The Northern Ireland Environment Agency investigated the incident and identified a potential source. It was revealed that an emergency discharge was carried out at Fofanny Water Treatment Work from 5am to 7am, due to a generator failure. The discharge was stopped as soon as personnel arrived at the site. Northern Ireland Water claimed the discharge was necessary to maintain the drinking water supply from Fofanny Dam. Measures have been since been put in place to prevent a similar incident in the future.
In 2010 a new fish counter was commissioned for the Shimna river and the initial results indicated that fish numbers had reached approximately 76% of the conservation limit (the number of fish required to spawn) in the 2010 season. This is an improvement from the estimated 12% in 2009. However, in 2014 concerns about salmon levels in the river were raised again after it was observed that the number of eggs being laid was still below conservation limits.
## Gallery |
385,817 | The Unknown Soldier (novel) | 1,171,021,045 | 1954 war novel by Väinö Linna | [
"1954 Finnish novels",
"20th-century Finnish novels",
"Anti-war novels",
"Continuation War",
"Finnish novels adapted into films",
"Novels by Väinö Linna",
"Novels set during World War II",
"Novels set in 20th-century Russia",
"Novels set in Finland",
"Novels set in the 1940s",
"Novels set in the Soviet Union"
]
| The Unknown Soldier (Finnish: Tuntematon sotilas, Swedish: Okänd soldat) or Unknown Soldiers is a war novel by Finnish author Väinö Linna, considered his magnum opus. Published in 1954, The Unknown Soldier chronicles the Continuation War between Finland and the Soviet Union during 1941–1944 from the viewpoint of ordinary Finnish soldiers. In 2000, the manuscript version of the novel was published with the title Sotaromaani ("the war novel") and in 2015, the latest English translation as Unknown Soldiers. A fictional account based closely on Linna's own experiences during the war, the novel presented a more realistic outlook on the formerly romanticized image of a noble and obedient Finnish soldier. Linna gave his characters independent and critical thoughts, and presented them with human feelings, such as fear and rebellion.
Although published to mixed reviews, The Unknown Soldier quickly became one of the best-selling books in Finland and is considered both a classic in Finnish literature and a part of the national legacy. The novel was well received by frontline veterans; it shot Linna to literary fame and has been described as creating a shift in the collective memory of the war. It has sold nearly 800,000 units, been translated into 20 different languages and adapted into three films with the latest one released in 2017.
## Setting and characters
The novel follows soldiers of a Finnish Army machine gun company operating on the Karelian front during the Continuation War from mobilisation in 1941 to the Moscow Armistice in 1944. The company's action is based on Infantry Regiment 8 (Finnish: Jalkaväkirykmentti 8), the actual unit Väinö Linna served in. The novel has no single central character and both begins and ends with an ironic play on the narrator's omniscience. Rather, its focus is on different responses and views on the experience of war from a soldier's point of view.
The men of the company come from all over Finland, they have widely varying social backgrounds and political attitudes, and everyone has their own way of coping with the war. The novel paints realistic, yet sympathetic, portraits of a score of very different men: cowards and heroes—the initially naive and eventually brave upper-class idealist Kariluoto; the down-to-earth Koskela; the hardened and cynical working-class grunt Lehto; the company comedian Vanhala; the pragmatic and strong-nerved Antero "Antti" Rokka; the politically indifferent Hietanen, and the communist Lahtinen. Most of the characters are killed in action during the course of the novel. Nevertheless, the general atmosphere of the machine gun company is relaxed and business-like, even childish and jolly, throughout the story, despite the war, losses and despair. The soldiers' continued disrespect for formalities and discipline is a source of frustration for some of the officers.
## Plot
The novel starts with the company transferring in June 1941 from their barracks to the Finnish-Soviet border in preparation for the invasion of the Soviet Union. Soon after, the soldiers receive their baptism by fire in an attack over a swamp on Soviet positions. Captain Kaarna is killed during the battle and the stern Lieutenant Lammio takes his place as company commander. Amidst a series of battles, the company assaults a Soviet bunker line on a ridge and stops an armoured attack, the ambushed and abandoned Lehto commits suicide during a regimental flanking maneuver, and the soldiers advance into East Karelia. The company eventually crosses the old border lost during the Winter War and the soldiers ponder the justification for the continued invasion. In October 1941, the company is stationed in the captured and pillaged Petrozavodsk, where the novel follows the soldiers interacting with the locals.
Two men are executed after refusing to follow orders to fend off a Soviet winter attack along the Svir river—during which Lahtinen is killed while trying to carry off his Maxim M/32-33 machine gun and Rokka distinguishes himself by ambushing a 50-strong enemy unit with a Suomi KP/-31 submachine gun. The story moves on to the trench warfare period of the war. The period includes the soldiers drinking kilju (a home-made sugar wine) during Commander-in-Chief Field Marshal Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim's birthday celebrations and getting drunk, a new recruit being killed by a sniper for failing to listen to advice from experienced veterans and raising his head above the trench, and Rokka capturing an enemy captain during a nightly Soviet probe into the Finnish trenches.
The final act of the novel describes the defence against the Soviet Vyborg–Petrozavodsk offensive of summer 1944, the withdrawal and counter-attacks of the Finnish Army, and the numerous losses that the company suffers. The company abandons their machine guns in a lake while withdrawing from a hopeless defence, and Lieutenant Colonel Karjula executes the retreating Private Viirilä in a burst of rage while trying to force his men into positions. Koskela is killed while disabling an attacking Soviet tank with a satchel charge and Hietanen loses his eyes to an artillery strike and later dies when his ambulance is attacked. Asumaniemi, an ambitious young private, is the last one to die during the company's last counter-attack. The war ends in a ceasefire in September 1944, with the soldiers rising from their foxholes after the final Soviet artillery barrage stops. The survivors listen to the first radio announcements of the eventual Moscow Armistice. The novel's last sentence describes the characters of the unit as "[r]ather dear, those boys."
## Themes
Väinö Linna wrote in his manuscript cover letter to the publisher WSOY that he wanted "to give the soldiers, who bore the weight of the calamity, all the appreciation and strip war of its glory". Gritty and realistic, the novel was partly intended to shatter the myth of a noble, obedient Finnish soldier. In Linna's own words, he wanted to give the Finnish soldier a brain, an organ he saw lacking in earlier depictions—such as Johan Runeberg's The Tales of Ensign Stål, where Finnish soldiers are admiringly portrayed with big hearts and little independent intellect. The Unknown Soldier is closely based on Linna's own experiences as a Finnish Army soldier in Infantry Regiment 8 during the Continuation War with many of its scenes derived from factual events, but is more or less fictional.
The novel has been described as an honest, uncomforting, forlorn, pacifist and critical outlook on the war between the Soviet Union and Finland. The Herald described Linna's aim as "not to home in on individual plights and agendas but to show the whole great shapeless mass of a platoon, one that is continuously besieged and pared down". The Independent stated that Linna examines nationhood and "the fate of small nations in particular" while the novel's "wisest characters come to regard nationality as a matter of chance". Aku Louhimies, director of the 2017 film adaptation, analysed Linna's intentions as follows: "I think [his] original idea was to show the events so that they would also act as a warning."
## Reception and legacy
The novel initially received mixed reviews and was not expected to be a commercial success by its publishers, but has since become a revered household classic that Finns are given to read at school. By 2017, it had sold nearly 800,000 units. It launched Väinö Linna into a steady career as a public figure and The Unknown Soldier was adapted into different formats for theatre, cinema and radio. Released ten years after the end of the Continuation War, the novel is considered to be the first medium that gave a realistic description of the conflict instead of a polished one. Although the book was criticized, for example, by senior officers of the Finnish Defence Forces as an erroneous account of the war, the book was well received by the masses and frontline veterans who thought it depicted their experiences accurately.
The Unknown Soldier and its first film adaptation of 1955 created a shift in the cultural memory of the war. Likewise, the novel is widely believed to have a special cultural status whereby only a limited number of ways to adapt the canon text are considered acceptable. The cover art of a soldier's white silhouette against a red background, designed by Martti Mykkänen, became similarly famous and is often used as a symbol for war in Finland. The novel contributed numerous expressions and idioms into Finnish culture and language, with phrases that are popular to the point of some having become clichès. Few remember the exact characterisations from the book, but some phrases are known word for word. Some of the characters even became role models. For example, the disobedient but competent and pragmatic Rokka, or the humane jokester, Hietanen, are described as typical role models, while the calm, fair and composed Koskela is the paragon of every Finnish leader. In conclusion, the novel is considered to be a defining part of the national legacy and identity of Finland. As such, the 1955 film adaptation by Edvin Laine is broadcast on national television every Independence Day and seen by nearly 20% of the Finnish population.
## Editions
By 2017, the book had been printed in 60 editions in Finland. Its first English translations were published in 1957 by William Collins, Sons and G. P. Putnam's Sons in the United Kingdom and the United States, respectively. It has since been translated into 20 other languages. An unedited manuscript version was published in 2000 by WSOY as Sotaromaani ("the war novel")—Linna's working title for The Unknown Soldier. Penguin Books published a new English translation by Liesl Yamaguchi in 2015 with the idiosyncratic title Unknown Soldiers to reflect the lives of young Finnish soldiers in the war.
## Adaptations
- The Unknown Soldier (1955)
- The Unknown Soldier (1985)
- Tuntematon sotilas (2009) - TV movie of a stage play based on the book
- The Unknown Soldier (2017)
## See also
- Finnish literature
- List of books with anti-war themes
- List of Finnish writers
- Military history of Finland during World War II
- Under the North Star trilogy |
57,905,968 | Lo-En | 1,173,857,202 | Albian–Campanian guyot in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean | [
"Extinct volcanoes",
"Landforms of the Marshall Islands",
"Mesozoic volcanoes",
"Ralik Chain",
"Seamounts of the Pacific Ocean"
]
| Lo-En or Hess is an Albian–Campanian guyot in the Marshall Islands. One among a number of seamounts in the Pacific Ocean, it was probably formed by a hotspot in what is present-day French Polynesia. Lo-En lies southeast of Eniwetok which rises above sea level, and Lo-En is almost connected to it through a ridge.
The seamount is formed by basaltic rocks that probably formed a shield volcano first. It is believed that a number of hotspots such as the Macdonald hotspot, the Rarotonga hotspot and the Rurutu hotspot may have been involved in the formation of Lo-En. After volcanic activity, by the Turonian the seamount was submerged although it is possible that a carbonate platform formed during the Albian. After a hiatus, sedimentation commenced on the seamount in Oligocene time and led to the deposition of manganese crusts and pelagic sediments including limestone, some of which were later modified by phosphate.
## Name and research history
The name "Lo-En" is a reference to the hibiscus tree. The seamount was formerly known as Hess Guyot. In 1992 the seamount was targeted for drilling in the Ocean Drilling Program.
## Geography and geology
### Local setting
Lo-En lies within the northern Marshall Islands, less than 150 kilometres (93 mi) south-southeast from Eniwetok. It is part of a cluster of seamounts and islands that surrounds Eniwetok, but also appears to be part of a chain running parallel to the Ralik Chain and the Ratak Chain, two seamount-and-island chains in the Marshall Islands.
The seamount rises 4,561 ± 526 metres (14,964 ± 1,726 ft) above the seafloor to a depth of 1,080 metres (3,540 ft) below sea level. Lo-En is elongated in north–south direction and is a typical guyot. Its flat top has dimensions of 30 by 40 kilometres (19 mi × 25 mi) and a surface area of 823 square kilometres (318 sq mi). A volcanic pinnacle is embedded in the sediments on top of Lo-En, it is either a volcanic formation that resisted erosion or a volcanic vent that was active after Lo-En was submerged. There are other cones which emerge from the sediments and which appear to be of volcanic origin in light of the dredged rocks, as well as lobate structures. Terraces occur on Lo-En's southwestern rim and may be products of landslides. The magnetization pattern of the seamount has been investigated; it is classified as "normal" but with particular magnetization patterns that are different from the topography.
No carbonate cap or limestones have been found on the platform of Lo-En, unlike in several other guyots of the region; a drill core at Lo-En found pelagic sediments directly on the volcanic basement. However, remains of reefs and of lagoonal sediments have been detected on seismic profiles although the existence of a barrier reef has been questioned, and Lo-En has a 141.7–143.6-metre (465–471 ft) thick pelagic sediment cap. It is possible that shallow water limestones exist at the margins of the platform, which were not drilled.
Lo-En shares its volcanic edifice with Eniwetok; a northern spur from Lo-En almost reaches Eniwetok while another spur emerges in south-southeast direction and is about 14.5 kilometres (9.0 mi) long. Another seamount lies 50 kilometres (31 mi) farther west from Lo-En. The seafloor underneath Lo-En is 113–156.9 ± 5 million years old and lies at a depth of more than 5 kilometres (3.1 mi).
### Regional setting
The Pacific Ocean seafloor, especially the parts that are of Mesozoic age, contains most of the world's guyots. These are flat-topped submarine mountains which are characterized by steep slopes, a flat top and usually the presence of corals and carbonate platforms. It is not clear whether the Cretaceous guyots were atolls in the present-day sense but many of these seamounts were, which today still exist. All these structures originally formed as volcanoes in the Mesozoic Ocean. First fringing reefs may have developed on the volcanoes, which then became barrier reefs as the volcano subsided and turned into an atoll. Continued subsidence balanced by upward growth of the reefs led to the formation of thick carbonate platforms. Sometimes volcanic activity occurred even after the formation of the atoll or atoll-like landforms, and during episodes where the carbonate platforms were lifted above sea level erosional features such as channels and blue holes developed. The crust underneath these seamounts tends to subside as it cools and thus the islands and seamounts sink.
The formation of many such seamounts including Limalok has been explained with the hotspot theory, which discusses the formation of chains of volcanoes which get progressively older along the length of the chain, with an active volcano only at one end of the system. Seamounts and islands in the Marshall Islands do not appear to have originated from such simple age-progressive hotspot volcanism as the age progressions in the individual island and seamount chains are often inconsistent with a hotspot origin. One solution to this dilemma may be that more than one hotspot passed through the Marshall Islands, as well as the possibility that hotspot volcanism is affected by contemporaneous lithospheric extension.
Candidate hotspots responsible for the formation of Lo-En are the Macdonald hotspot which passed close to Lo-En between 115 and 105 million years ago and the Rarotonga hotspot and Rurutu hotspot, both of which were at Lo-En between 90 and 74 million years ago. Of these, the first two also have the strongest geochemical similarity to Lo-En. In the case of Lo-En, volcanism on the Ogasawara Fracture Zone may also have contributed to its formation considering that the seamount is much older than surrounding seamounts.
Based on plate motion reconstructions, the region of the Marshall Islands was located in the region of present-day French Polynesia during the time of active volcanism. Both regions display numerous island chains, anomalously shallow ocean floors and the presence of volcanoes. About 8 hotspots have formed a large number of islands and seamounts in that region, with disparate geochemistries, and that geological province has been called the "South Pacific Isotopic and Thermal Anomaly" or DUPAL anomaly.
### Composition
Lo-En has erupted alkali basalt and hawaiite. Minerals contained in the rocks include apatite, biotite, clinopyroxene, ilmenite, magnetite and plagioclase. Strong alteration has occurred and has given rise to calcite, carbonate, chabazite, clay, hematite, smectite and zeolite, as well as palagonite. Other rocks found on Lo-En are chalk, limestone, manganese crusts, phosphate and sandstone.
## Geologic history
The geologic history of Lo-En seamount is relatively poorly known; paleomagnetic data have been used to infer an age of 45–85 million years ago for the seamount. It was located at about 25–30 degrees southern latitude when it formed, south of the hotspots that are presently active in the Cook Islands–Austral Islands. Eniwetok is about 36 million years younger than Lo-En.
### Volcanism and first biotic phenomena
A first phase of volcanic activity occurred 114 million years ago, and was followed by a second episode during the Campanian, separated by as much as 30 million years. The first episode has been dated at 111.6–114.0 million years ago and was contemporaneous with volcanic activity at other western Pacific seamounts. The second episode may be responsible for the cones that emerge from or are embedded in sediments that cover Lo-En. Eniwetok was active 76.9 million years ago and flexural effects from its growth may have influenced the second volcanic phase at Lo-En. Potentially, the first episode was caused by the Macdonald hotspot and the second by the Rarotonga and Rurutu hotspots.
The volcanic rocks encountered in drill cores consist of breccia and lava flows. Their alkalic composition implies that they may be post-shield volcanics. Claystones indicate that weathered terrain occurred on Lo-En, with subaerial alteration of volcanic rocks.
### Post-volcanic
Lo-En was submerged in the Turonian by about 112.8 ± 1.2 million years ago, long before surrounding seamounts and islands formed. The absence of a barrier reef would have facilitated the erosion of Lo-En's summit. It is possible that flexural loading by Eniwetok pushed Lo-En downward and thus prevented the formation of reefs on Lo-En during the Cretaceous when the seamount was uplifted by a hotspot. It took about 2–7 million years from the end of volcanic activity until sedimentation began.
During the Albian, limestones were emplaced on Lo-En. These appear to reflect the formation of reefs and a shallow carbonate bank, material from which has been dredged on the southern flank. This platform drowned during the late Albian, similar to many other carbonate platforms of similar age, and there is no evidence of mid-Cretaceous platforms.
Starting in the Albian–Cenomanian, pelagic limestone was deposited directly on the volcanic rocks during Santonian–Coniacian times; in light of fossil data it is likely that the seamount was not overly deep at that time. Sediments of Cretaceous–Paleocene age reach thicknesses of less than 1 metre (3 ft 3 in).
Starting in the Oligocene, pelagic oozes were deposited on Lo-En. The previously emplaced limestones also underwent phosphate reactions as they were exposed on the seafloor, and some of the sediments underwent reworking.
Foraminifera encountered on the seamount in the form of nannofossils are:
- Arkangelskiella specillata
- Aspidolithus parcus expansus
- Eiffellithus eximius
- Gephyrorhabdus coronadventis
- Lithastrinus septenarius
- Micula sp.
- Nannoconus farinacciae
- Reinhardtites sp.
- Stoverius sp. |
19,879,430 | Manchester Liners | 1,153,782,749 | 20th-century cargo/passenger shipping company | [
"Defunct shipping companies of the United Kingdom",
"History of Manchester",
"Transatlantic shipping companies"
]
| Manchester Liners was a cargo and passenger shipping company founded in 1898, based in Manchester, England. The line pioneered the regular passage of ocean-going ships along the Manchester Ship Canal. Its main sphere of operation was the transatlantic shipping trade, but the company also operated services to the Mediterranean. All of the line's ships were registered in the Port of Manchester, and many were lost to enemy action during the First and Second World Wars.
A successful switch from traditional to container shipping in 1968 was relatively short-lived, as the subsequent introduction elsewhere of much larger container ships meant that the company's ships, which were restricted to a maximum length of 530 feet (160 m) imposed by the ship canal's lock chambers, could no longer compete economically. The line ceased operations in 1985.
## Early history
The opening of the Manchester Ship Canal in 1894 made it possible for large ocean-going ships to sail directly into the heart of Manchester. However, because of opposition from cartels of ship-owners based at Liverpool and other ports in the United Kingdom, shipping lines were slow to introduce direct services to the new Port of Manchester, which found it difficult to compete against the established ports. New trading routes from Manchester to West Africa and Mediterranean ports were countered by the established shipping conferences sharply reducing their own charges and by inducing their customers to sign binding contracts. In some cases, after achieving their aims, the cartels re-imposed their old charges. To help counter these "sharp practices", Sir Christopher Furness, of Furness Withy & Company, proposed in 1897 that a Manchester-based shipping line should be formed to encourage the use of the Manchester Ship Canal and docks. The public prospectus for Manchester Liners Ltd (ML) was issued on 10 May 1898, with an authorised share capital of £1 million. Furness' company became the largest shareholder, and he was appointed chairman. Other directors included representatives from the Ship Canal company and Salford Borough Council. Robert Burdon Stoker, a director of Furness Withy, was appointed as ML's first managing director.
## Initial operations 1898–1914
Manchester Liners decided from the outset to make Manchester–Canada their prime route, with a secondary route to the southern United States cotton ports of New Orleans and Galveston. Other lesser, sometimes seasonal routes, were added later. Two 1890-built 3,000 gross registered ton (grt) ships were bought for £60,000 in May 1898, and renamed Manchester Enterprise and Manchester Trader. The Trader made the shipping line's first voyage, setting out from Avonmouth for Montreal on 26 May, before docking in Manchester with a cargo of grain.
The two secondhand ships were joined in January 1899 by the newly built Manchester City of 7,696 grt, constructed by Raylton Dixon & Co of Middlesbrough. This steamship carried 1,170 long tons (1,190 t) of coal, burned at 70 long tons (71 t) per day, giving a speed of 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph), fast for her day. She was a refrigerated ship, designed to carry frozen meat and live cattle, and was claimed to be one of the largest meat-carrying ships then afloat. She made a successful maiden voyage from Canada and up the new canal to Manchester, which she took two days to negotiate after stopping overnight at Irlam to give the crew a rest. The Manchester Guardian reported on 16 January 1899 that "there were many shakings of the head, not only in Liverpool, at the audacity of the attempt" and that "the canal pilots, on reaching Irlam, looked as if they had not been in bed for a week, as their eyes were bleared with exhaustion". The City discharged 450 cattle and 150 sheep at Manchester Corporation's Foreign Animals Wharf near the Mode Wheel locks in Salford. With an overall length of 467 feet (142 m), she was by far the largest ship to have ventured up the waterway, and her successful navigation disproved the claim of Liverpool owners that only ships of 350 feet (110 m) or less could safely reach Manchester. The ship continued to Manchester docks for further unloading, where she was met by the Lord Mayor, accompanied by a band and a festive crowd. This successful voyage did much to encourage other shipowners to use the new port. On her first voyage to Halifax, Nova Scotia, in March 1899, the City took nine days and sixteen hours; and arrived before the mail boat, which had left the Mersey twelve hours ahead of her.
The ML fleet was joined by two new smaller 5,600 grt ships, the Manchester Port and Manchester Merchant during 1899 and 1900, and further new ships followed quickly thereafter. The basic sailing pattern to Canada was Saint John, New Brunswick, year-round and to Montreal when the St Lawrence River was ice-free.
Between 1899 and 1902, four Manchester ships and their crews were requisitioned by the United Kingdom government to transport troops, horses, and supplies to South Africa during the Boer War and its aftermath. Collecting points for horses and mules included Galveston and New Orleans (USA) and Buenos Aires and Montevideo in South America. Manchester Port made its second voyage to the Cape in 1900, then continued to Australia to bring troops to the conflict. On the first voyage after her return to ML, in January 1903, the first Manchester Merchant was lost while on passage from New Orleans to Manchester. A serious fire developed in her cotton cargo, and she was scuttled in Dingle Bay on the west coast of Ireland to douse the flames, but subsequently broke up in bad weather.
By 1904 the line was operating fourteen steamships of between four and seven thousand tons, several built by the associated Furness Withy shipyards. Services to ports in eastern Canada were supplemented by regular sailings to Boston, Philadelphia, and the southern US cotton ports of New Orleans and Galveston. Between 1904 and 1908 ML deployed three ships including the Manchester City to the River Plate route, serving other UK ports as well Manchester. The main return cargo was frozen and chilled meat, and the City set a record for the largest meat consignment up to that time. Lord Furness, as he had become, died in 1912 and was succeeded as ML's chairman by R. B. Stoker until his death in 1919. ML's fleet was maintained at 14 ships during the last few years before the First World War. Eleven of their ships were deployed on the Canadian routes, carrying mainly manufactured goods outwards and meat and grain inbound.
## Operations during the First World War
At the start of the war in July 1914, ML had a fleet of fifteen ships. Most of the fleet continued to operate services to ports in eastern Canada and to USA including Baltimore, returning with war and other supplies. In August 1914, the Manchester Miller (1903) and Manchester Civilian (1913) were requisitioned as supply ships and sent with coal to the Falkland Islands to refuel the battlecruisers HMS Inflexible and HMS Invincible. As the Civilian was coaling the cruisers, the German ships approached and the British warships cast off immediately to engage them. In the battle that ensued Admiral Von Spee's armored cruisers, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, plus escorting cruisers were sunk. The Civilian was later equipped with minesweeping gear. She returned in 1916 carrying supplies and equipment from Canada to the troops in France.
All ships were fitted with defensive guns at the bow and stern. In June 1917 Manchester Port (1904) beat off a submarine attack with gunfire near Cape Wrath. Manchester Commerce (1899), outward-bound for Quebec City was sunk off northwest Ireland on 26 October 1914, with the loss of 14 crew, becoming the first merchant ship to be sunk by a mine. On 4 June 1917 the second Manchester Trader, en route from Souda Bay in Crete to Algiers, fought a running battle with U-boat U-65 before she was captured and sunk near Pantellaria island, with the loss of one crewmember. The master, Captain F.D. Struss, was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, and went on to complete 40 years service with the line after surviving another sinking in the Second World War. A further nine ships were sunk by U-boats, seven of the losses occurring in 1917.
ML acquired seven ships between 1916 and 1918, four of which were sunk in 1917. Manchester Engineer, acquired secondhand in 1917, had a short but eventful career with ML. On 18 June, when bound for Archangel, she was chased by a U-boat but escaped when her naval escort arrived. On 16 August when sailing from the Tyne to St Nazaire with coal, she was torpedoed five miles off Flamborough Head and sunk. Manchester Division achieved fame on her maiden voyage from West Hartlepool to join a westbound Atlantic convoy at Plymouth when she rammed and sank a German submarine off Flamborough Head in October 1918. At the end of the war in November 1918, ML had twelve surviving ships on strength.
## Peacetime operations 1919–39
In 1921–22, ML's fleet was augmented by two second-hand ships. Sailings were resumed to New Orleans, and the Baltimore service was extended to Norfolk, Virginia. Some ships including the Manchester Civilian and Manchester Spinner became regular carriers in the coal trade from Sydney, Nova Scotia. The Civilian made several round trips from the US to Japan in 1923, carrying relief supplies after the Japanese earthquake. ML took delivery of the 7,930 tons steam turbine Manchester Regiment in 1922, constructed on the Tees by the Furness Shipbuilding Company. This 12.5-knot (23.2 km/h; 14.4 mph) ship with a crew of 65 was the largest operated to date, carrying 512 cattle, plus hold cargo and was equipped with large derricks to assist in heavy goods handling. The Regiment's record from the Mersey Bar to Quebec was seven days nine hours. In 1925 her captain won the gold-headed cane traditionally awarded each Spring to the master of the first ship to break through the St Lawrence ice to reach Montreal, a feat repeated later by several other ML captains. ML's old head office in Deansgate, Manchester became inadequate and was replaced in August 1922 by a purpose-built five-storey modern building in St Ann's Square next to the Royal Exchange.
The line acquired two new ships in 1925, but later that year its fortunes were adversely affected by competition from subsidised American firms on the North Atlantic routes; ML disposed of seven ships between late 1925 and 1930, reducing its fleet to ten ships. The Regiment steamed 160 miles through a gale in 1929 to reach the sinking Glasgow steamer Volumnia. A lifeboat was launched to rescue the crew of forty-five. On return home, King George V awarded the Regiment's lifeboat crew the Silver Medal for Gallantry in Saving Life at Sea and Manchester's Lord Mayor presented a silver salver from the Board of Trade to Captain Linton. In 1933, amid the Great Depression, several ships were laid up; the Manchester Merchant of 1904 was disposed of for breaking up and the Manchester Civilian was sold to Greek owners. The public sailing programme for the 1933 summer season listed six ships as allocated to the weekly "Fast Freight Service" to Quebec and Montreal. The six steamers were advertised as being "fitted with fan or forced ventilation and all have cold storage accommodation". Most ships were also able to carry up to twelve passengers. After a ten-year gap, three new ships were commissioned between 1935 and 1938 as trade started to recover, maintaining the fleet at ten ships. The trio were equipped with automatic stokers for their coal-fired boilers and had greatly improved accommodation for the passengers and the crew.
## Operations during the Second World War
ML had ten ships at the start of World War II, but early in the conflict lost Manchester Regiment in December 1939, when outbound with general cargo for Saint John, New Brunswick. She was proceeding without lights when she was run down by the Pacific Steam Navigation's Oropesa, which had been detached from an eastbound convoy. While the ML fleet continued to be deployed on the North Atlantic routes during the war, the company's ships also undertook a wide variety of roles elsewhere during the conflict. Manchester City became a minelayer, then a naval auxiliary ship, working in the Far East. Manchester Progress was one of the last ships to leave Rangoon in 1941 before the Japanese conquest of Burma. Manchester Commerce (1925) was deployed on Mediterranean convoys in 1942/43 and next year transported mules from South Africa to India for the Burma Campaign. Manchester Trader (1941) was fitted with extra crew quarters for use as a commodore ship on Atlantic convoys. Except for two supply runs to Bone, Algeria, she remained in the Atlantic theatre and served ML until 1963. Manchester Brigade, having survived the first World War, was sunk on 26 September 1940 after being torpedoed by when bound for Montreal in convoy off Malin Head, to the north of Ireland; 58 crew were lost.
Manchester Merchant, completed in May 1940, quickly became involved in Operation Fish, transporting Britain's gold reserves to Canada, making two voyages with bullion valued in total at £4.5 million. In late 1942 she was deployed on Operation Torch as a supply ship to North Africa. On 25 February 1943, she was torpedoed by "U 628" while part of an outbound Atlantic convoy; 36 of the crew of 65 including gunners were lost, but Captain Struss again survived, and received the OBE. Manchester Division (1918) bound for Table Bay was directed to assist the Blue Star Line's Dunedin Star which had beached on Namibia's rugged coast. The Division stood by in heavy swell for three days, rescuing 40 passengers and crew, before taking them to Cape Town. Manchester Citizen (1925) was also sunk by a U-boat, whilst on passage to Lagos on 9 July 1943 after surviving several supply runs for the Eighth Army. The last ships to be "lost", albeit deliberately, was Manchester Spinner (1918), which had taken military supplies to India in 1942. On 7 June 1944, shortly after D-Day, manned by a volunteer crew, she led a line of Mulberry Harbour blockships and was sunk off Juno Beach Normandy to act as a breakwater, whilst troop reinforcements and stores were landed on the beaches. Her superstructure was then armed with anti-aircraft guns.
## Peacetime operations 1945–68
At the war's end, ML had a fleet of eight ships built between 1918 and 1943, and these continued to operate the traditional service to eastern Canada for a further two years before new ships could be acquired. In 1946 the Manchester Shipper became the first merchant ship to be fitted with radar, and to navigate the St Lawrence with its aid. In the same year the company carried Manchester's Lord Mayor and party to Canada on a goodwill and trade mission. Manchester Exporter was sold in 1947 and replaced by the newly built larger Manchester Regiment. Two further 7,000 ton 14-knot (26 km/h; 16 mph) ships were commissioned in 1952, which meant that the Manchester Division, veteran of both wars, could be sold for scrapping after a record 35 years service with the line. In 1952, Robert B. Stoker, grandson of the second chairman, became the third generation of his family to be appointed an executive director of ML. He had joined the line in 1932 and in turn became chairman in 1968.
Manchester Shipper was used to transport WWII German aircraft to Canada. It left Ellesmere Port on 23 August 1946 arriving in Montreal 1 September. Its cargo included two Me 262s (WNr500210, WNr111690). Manchester Commerce also carried Second World War German aircraft to Canada, leaving Seaforth Docks on 26 August and arriving on 9 September with two He 162s (WNr 120076, WNr 120086) and two Me 163s (WNr191454, WNr191914). The ship featured in the 1961 film "A Taste of Honey".
ML contracted Cammell Laird of Birkenhead to build two smaller ships of 1,800 tons. Commissioned in 1952, they were named the Manchester Pioneer and Explorer. They were joined by the secondhand 1,400-ton Manchester Prospector. The trio were the first of a size able to pass through the restricted-size canals and locks leading directly to Toronto and the other Great Lakes ports as far as Detroit, Michigan. This initiative, the first by a British line, and taken well ahead of the 1959 completion of the Saint Lawrence Seaway, gave the line a head start in the direct trade to the Midwest ports. During the winter months, when thick ice prevented navigation on the lakes, the trio were employed elsewhere, sometimes on charter to other lines.
Manchester Progress, 5,620 grt, opened a regular mid-summer service to Churchill, Manitoba, on Hudson Bay in 1954, during the short ice-free season, bringing back grain shipped to the port by rail from the Canadian Prairies. Captain F. Struss, survivor of sinkings in both wars, retired in March 1954 after forty years service, the last ML Commodore who had gained his master's ticket in sail. That same year the Great Lakes service was extended to Chicago, and ML's pre-1914 service to the southern US ports of Charleston, Savannah, and Jacksonville was resumed.
A USAF RB-36 "Peacemaker" ten-engined strategic bomber suffered engine fires on 5 August 1954, while en route from Travis AFB California to RAF Lakenheath Suffolk. The crew of twenty-three were ordered to bail out 450 miles (720 km) west of Ireland at 03:40. The Manchester Shipper, inbound from Montreal, and the outbound Manchester Pioneer, diverted to the scene and despite bad weather were able to rescue the four surviving crew. The USAF's HQ Third Air Force sent messages commending the ship masters and crews efforts under adverse circumstances.
ML's first two motor ships, with engines and accommodation aft, were commissioned in April 1956. The Manchester Vanguard and Venture, 1,662 grt, were designed for the Great Lakes service. Two larger motor ships, the Manchester Faith and Fame, 4,460 grt, were commissioned in April 1959, and the Faith quickly became the first commercial ship to transit the newly opened St Lawrence Seaway with its larger locks.
Two ML ships were involved in a successful mid-Atlantic rescue of airliner passengers on 23 September 1962. A Flying Tiger Line Lockheed Super Constellation was en route from McGuire AFB New Jersey to Frankfurt Airport with 76 persons aboard. Two out of four engines failed and the airliner changed course for Shannon Airport Ireland. After a further hour, a third engine failed and Captain John Murray made a successful ditching in darkness 560 nautical miles (1,040 km; 640 mi) west of Shannon. All occupants evacuated the aircraft before it sank. The larger Manchester Progress acted as a radio relay ship, while Manchester Faith picked up 48 survivors. The other 28 persons on board the aircraft were lost when their rafts sank in heavy seas.
## Switch to containers 1968–78
Manchester Liners House, the company's new headquarters in Salford Docks, was officially opened on 12 December 1969 by the High Commissioner for Canada. The design was advanced for its day and it remains basically unchanged today except for re-glazing. The unusual curved facade of the ten-storey building was designed to echo the bridge shape of the Manchester Miller. Later renamed Furness House, it was built on the former Manchester Ship Canal railway sidings between Nos. 8 and 9 Docks.
By the late 1960s rising shore costs, dock workers strikes, restrictive practices on both sides of the Atlantic, and subsidised competition from American shipping lines, persuaded Manchester Liners to switch its future fleet to container ships only. An example of the delaying effect of the strikes in the Canadian ports, with consequent impact on operating costs, was an extended ninety-day return voyage to Quebec City in early 1967 by the new Manchester Progress.
Initially, three new ships were ordered from Smiths Dock Company in Middlesbrough, the first of which, Manchester Challenge, was delivered in 1968, becoming the first British-built and operated cellular container ship. The Challenge and her two sisters Manchester Courage and Concorde were followed from the Tees in 1971 by the Crusade. UK manufacturers supplied 10,000 containers. The four ships each had the capacity to carry five hundred 20-foot (6.1 m) containers, all of them below deck. A new regular container route started in November 1968, with a twice-weekly service to Montreal, where the containers were transferred to smaller ships which could navigate to the ports of the Great Lakes. The four new powerful (16,000 hp) 19.5-knot (36.1 km/h; 22.4 mph) ships were built to a standard exceeding Lloyds class 1 ice-stiffening, with additional aft protection over the rudder to permit reversing through ice.
On her second voyage in early 1969, Manchester Challenge lived up to her name by entering the heavily iced Montreal harbour, discharging, reloading and departing only two days late. Another thirty-seven conventional ships were stuck at the port for a month. The quartet's ice-breaking capability often resulted them in leading a convoy of other ships into Montreal during the winter months. The four ships of 12,039 gross tons were of the maximum size able to navigate the Manchester Ship Canal.
To obtain the greatest operational efficiency, ML constructed two dedicated container terminals with their own gantry cranes, spreaders etc. The Manchester terminal was built on an open site next to the western end of No. 9 Dock. A second container berth was added in 1972. The other terminal was created at Montreal, with similar equipment, where the containers were trans-shipped to a dedicated liner train operated by Canadian National Railways, which carried them onwards to Toronto and further destinations.
ML inaugurated a container service to the Mediterranean in 1971 using smaller ships. Initial destinations included Malta, Cyprus and Israel. Later in the decade, the countries served were extended to include Italy, Greece, Lebanon and Syria. To further improve service to shippers, two large road hauliers were acquired in 1971 and 1972, enabling a "door-to-door" container operation to be introduced. Facilities for container storage and repair were also acquired. Following its successful pioneering of the UK container trade, ML was given the Queen's Award for Export in 1971, the first to be given to a shipping company; every ship in the fleet flew the award flag.
In 1974 ML carried 783,000 long tons (796,000 t) out of the total 2,900,000 long tons (2,900,000 t) of dry cargo handled on the ship canal (27%). During the same year, ML acquired Manchester Dry Docks Ltd, which operated three large and one small dry docks on the canal adjacent to MLs berths in Salford Docks. These facilities assisted greatly in keeping the fleet fully operational. Manchester Challenge completed her 100th round voyage to Montreal in 1975 having carried 95,000 containers weighing 1,440,000 long tons (1,460,000 t) a distance of 554,000 miles (892,000 km) – the equivalent of a round trip to the moon. During 1976 MLs Manchester to Canada route had three sailings per week.
## Decline and closure
Manchester Liners had been partly owned by Furness Withy from the beginning, and they became a subsidiary in 1970. Furness Withy was itself taken over in 1980 by the C. Y. Tung Group of Hong Kong. Robert B. Stoker retired in 1979 as Chairman of Manchester Liners after 47 years service with the company.
Severe competition following the building of excess container shipping capacity by many companies badly affected ML's trade and profitability. The company's ships were by then smaller than average in the industry, leading to higher operating costs per unit of cargo carried. Their operations were further severely affected during the mid-1970s by both official and unofficial strikes by dock workers. The service to Canada ended in 1979, and by the early 1980s only five "Manchester" ships remained – the 30,000 ton container ship Manchester Challenge and four 1,600–4,000 ton ships: Manchester Crown, Manchester Trader, Manchester Faith and Manchester City. The line had by then ceased using the Port of Manchester, and the four smaller ships were operating to the Mediterranean out of Ellesmere Port, 33 miles (53 km) closer to the sea on the lower reaches of the ship canal.
In 1981, ML jointly with the Canadian Pacific Steamship Company and the Dart Container Line, instituted a weekly containership service from Felixstowe, Suffolk, to Montreal. MLs contribution to the service was the large Manchester Challenge. The last of Manchester Liners' ships was sold in 1985, and in 1988 the services formerly operated by the company were taken over by the Orient Overseas Container Line, successor to the Tung Group.
## Ship naming policy, house and flag colours
The company's ship-naming policy throughout its 87-year period of operations was to use its home port's name plus a suffix word, often a trade or occupation. The most frequently used name was Manchester Trader, applied to six different ships between 1898 and cessation of operations in 1985. Some names used appropriately during the First World War, such as Manchester Hero, Manchester Brigade and Manchester Division were not reused after the disposal or loss of those ships. Some ships operated short-term or on charter retained their original names and did not receive the Manchester prefix.
From the earliest days, the line's colours were: funnels – dark red with black top and thin black band; hulls – black with white boot topping. During the Second World War, ships were painted in battleship grey and the names were deleted for security, except when in friendly ports. From the 1960s onwards, some ships' hulls were painted light grey and others red.
The line's flag colours were a red oval, placed horizontally, with white "ML" lettering in the centre, imposed on an overall white background. |
48,910,901 | Love Ballad (Tove Lo song) | 1,122,335,229 | null | [
"2012 debut singles",
"2012 songs",
"Songs written by Jakob Jerlström",
"Songs written by Ludvig Söderberg",
"Songs written by Tove Lo",
"Tove Lo songs"
]
| "Love Ballad" is a song by Swedish singer Tove Lo. It was co-written by Lo, Ludvig Söderberg and Jakob Jerlström, and was produced by her co-writers under their production name The Struts. In 2012, after signing a publishing deal with Warner/Chappell Music and co-writing songs for artists including Girls Aloud and Icona Pop, Lo decided to become an independent singer to keep her most personal songs for herself.
She eventually sent her debut single "Love Ballad" to Swedish radio stations on 15 October 2012. It was digitally released on 5 November 2012. The track was later included on Lo's debut extended play Truth Serum and her debut studio album Queen of the Clouds, both of which were released in 2014. "Love Ballad" is a pop song with drum instrumentation; its lyrics detail the protagonist's exaggerated ways to show affection to a romantic partner. Critics described it as an "ode to falling dangerously in love with someone" and a parody of love songs.
The song drew the attention of music blogs and received positive reviews from some critics but failed to chart anywhere. A music video for the song, which was directed by Motellet Film and Lo, was released on 5 October 2012. It shows the singer covered in black paint and performing acrobatics in the middle of a road and on a football field. Lo performed the track several times, including on the Swedish campaign Musikhjälpen and at Notting Hill Arts Club in London, United Kingdom.
## Background and release
After the dissolution of her band Tremblebee, Tove Lo focused on writing songs and she signed a publishing deal with Warner/Chappell Music in 2011. In the following year, she co-wrote "Something New" for Girls Aloud, and "We Got the World" and "Ready for the Weekend" for Icona Pop. After she signed the publishing deal, she felt "lost" and unsure of her identity. She was also going through a difficult time during a relationship, which led her to write songs that were not related to her life. However, at one point, she "couldn't handle it anymore" and needed to write a personal song. Lo then co-wrote "Love Ballad" with Ludvig Söderberg and Jakob Jerlström; it was their first collaboration. Söderberg and Jerlström also produced the track under their production name The Struts. According to Lo, an artist became interested in recording the song but considered it "too brutal" and wanted to change some of the lyrics. Because of this, Lo kept the song for herself. She said that after co-writing "Love Ballad", she started to write songs "that I felt I needed to get out of me".
Lo eventually self-released "Love Ballad" as her first single. It was sent to Swedish radio station P3 on 15 October 2012. It was digitally released on 5 November 2012. The song drew the attention of music blogs, which led Lo to start a career as an independent singer so she could record her most personal songs. "Love Ballad" was later featured on the Swedish edition of Lo's debut extended play Truth Serum (2014) and as a bonus track on the North American version of her debut studio album Queen of the Clouds (2014).
## Inspiration and composition
"Love Ballad" is an uptempo pop song featuring drum instrumentation. According to Lo, the songs on her extended play Truth Serum are about her "most intense" failed relationship. She stated, "In its entirety, [Truth Serum tells] a love story from beginning to end. The song 'Love Ballad' is about the moment you decide to give everything to another person, while 'Habits' shows what happens when everything is screwed up and you just want to freak out. 'Out of Mind' deals with the stage after that, when your broken heart has mended, but the scars are still there". In an interview with Klap Magazine, Lo said, "'Love Ballad' is actually supposed to be a way of telling the one I love I'd do anything for him. He's worth the pain. A bit exaggerated but that's what it feels like when you're so into someone".
According to Rich Thane of The Line of Best Fit, the track details the "carefree beginnings of a new romance". Michael Cragg of The Guardian described the song as an "ode to falling dangerously in love with someone". Cragg also said the singer is "willing to share her drugs" with her lover in the verse "Jump off a cliff / I'd give you my last spliff / I'd do it for you / Ain't love sweet?". According to Mark Savage of BBC News, the track "parodies the preposterous promises" made by musicians in love songs; he cited the line "Chop off my hands / Chop off my feet / I'd do it for you / Ain't love sweet?" as an example.
## Reception
"Love Ballad" received positive reviews by some critics. Doron Davidson-Vidavski of The Line of Best Fit called it an "infectious debut single", while a reviewer from Scandipop wrote that the song is "rousingly melodic in both its production and its topline". Michael Cragg of The Guardian said Lo had started her career "in fine style" with the song. A reviewer for Nu Wave Pony described it as a "lyrically obsessive and heart-wrenching pop song" and said that "it plays like a catchy summer song". Richard S. Chang of Redbull.com ranked it at number four on his top 5 of the Best Tove Lo songs. Writing for Discopop, Mark Savage said that "Love Ballad" is superior to "Stay High", the remixed version of "Habits (Stay High)".
Despite the positive reviews and its popularity among music blogs, "Love Ballad" failed to chart anywhere. In an interview with Gulf Times, Lo said she thought the song's poor commercial reception was due to her change of stage name. She stated, "['Love Ballad'] didn't sell particularly well. I'd used my real name, Tove Nilsson, when I was in Tremblebee so perhaps no-one knew who I was".
## Music video
The music video for "Love Ballad" was co-directed by Tove Lo and Motellet Film. Lo also wrote the video's script; she said: "Imagine sitting on a football field in the dark, freezing, after seven hours, covered only in black house paint, trying to put on fake eyelashes!". MTV Sweden premiered the video on 5 October 2012, and Lo released it on her YouTube channel on 8 October 2012.
The video begins with Lo covered in black paint and walking in the middle of a road. In the next scene, she covers four men, who go to play rugby on a football field, in paint. Later, Lo is shown walking upside-down and performing other acrobatics on the road and the football field. Then, she appears wearing a hibiscus dress while singing the song in a rubbish dump. In the next scenes, Lo is walking topless through a field of flowers. Near the end, she is standing on the football field while the four men run up to her and cover her in paint. The video is interspersed with scenes of Lo performing the song with images of cities and explosions projected onto her.
## Live performances
On 10 December 2012, Lo performed "Love Ballad" and "Paradise" on the Swedish campaign Musikhjälpen. On 10 April 2013, she performed "Love Ballad", "Habits (Stay High)", "Out of Mind" and "Not Made For This World" at Swedish radio station P3. Lo performed "Love Ballad" alongside other songs from Truth Serum and "Run On Love" during her first UK show at Notting Hill Arts Club, London, on 2 April 2014. For the performance, she was accompanied by two drummers. A reviewer from Discopop said he was "blown away" and that it was "so refreshing to be at a pop show that engages the heart as well as the senses". Michael Cragg of The Guardian rated the show with four stars out of five and deemed it as "a punchy UK debut". Lo performed the same set list at her Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen show on 6 May 2014.
On 1 October 2014, Lo performed "Love Ballad" and other songs at Webster Hall in Manhattan, New York City. On 30 March 2015, she held a concert at KOKO in London, UK, and performed the track among others from Truth Serum and Queen of the Clouds. Amelia Maher of London In Stereo wrote, "With the opening bars to 'Over' and 'Love Ballad' there is something different in [Lo's] tone as she carelessly lays her soul bare for all to see and reveals that she isn't just a raunchy one trick pony". On 14 August 2015, Lo performed the song at the Way Out West festival in Gothenburg, Sweden. On 11 September 2015, she held a concert at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, Germany, and performed "Love Ballad" and tracks from Truth Serum and Queen of the Clouds.
## Credits and personnel
Credits adapted from the liner notes of Truth Serum.
Locations
- Recorded at Warner/Chappell Studios, Stockholm
- Mastered at Cutting Room, Stockholm
Personnel
- Songwriting – Tove Lo, Jakob Jerlström, Ludvig Söderberg
- Production – The Struts
- Lead vocals – Tove Lo
- Mixing – Lars Norgren
- Programming – The Struts
- Mastering – Björn Engelmann
- Instrumentation – The Struts
## Release history |
803,609 | Bert Jansch | 1,164,491,829 | Scottish folk musician (1943–2011) | [
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| Herbert Jansch (3 November 1943 – 5 October 2011) was a Scottish folk musician and founding member of the band Pentangle. He was born in Glasgow and came to prominence in London in the 1960s as an acoustic guitarist and singer-songwriter. He recorded more than 28 albums and toured extensively from the 1960s to the 21st century.
Jansch was a leading figure in the 1960s British folk revival, touring folk clubs and recording several solo albums, as well as collaborating with other musicians such as John Renbourn and Anne Briggs. In 1968, he co-founded the band Pentangle, touring and recording with them until their break-up in 1972. He then took a few years' break from music, returning in the late 1970s to work on a series of projects with other musicians. He joined a reformed Pentangle in the early 1980s and remained with them as they evolved through various changes of personnel until 1995. Until his death, Jansch continued to work as a solo artist.
Jansch's work influenced many artists, especially Jimmy Page, Mike Oldfield, Paul Simon, Pete Hawkes, Nick Drake, Donovan, and Neil Young. He received two Lifetime Achievement Awards at the BBC Folk Awards: one, in 2001, for his solo achievements and the other, in 2007, as a member of Pentangle.
## Early years
Herbert Jansch was born at Stobhill Hospital in the Springburn district of Glasgow, on 3 November 1943, the descendant of a family originally from Hamburg, Germany, who settled in Scotland during the Victorian era. The family name is most often pronounced as /ˈjænʃ/ yansh, although Jansch himself, like several other members of his family, pronounced it /ˈdʒænʃ/ jansh.
Jansch was brought up in the residential area of Edinburgh known as West Pilton, where he attended Pennywell Primary School and Ainslie Park Secondary School. As a teenager, he acquired a guitar and started visiting a local folk club ("The Howff") run by Roy Guest. There, he met Archie Fisher and Jill Doyle (Davy Graham's half-sister), who introduced him to the music of Big Bill Broonzy, Pete Seeger, Brownie McGhee and Woody Guthrie. He also met and shared a flat with Robin Williamson, who remained a friend when Jansch later moved to London.
After leaving school, Jansch took a job as a nurseryman then, in August 1960, he gave this up, intending to become a full-time musician. He appointed himself as an unofficial caretaker at The Howff and, as well as sleeping there, he may have received some pay to supplement his income as a novice performer who did not own his own guitar. He spent the next two years playing one-night stands in British folk clubs. This was a musical apprenticeship that exposed him to a range of influences, including Martin Carthy and Ian Campbell, but especially Anne Briggs, from whom he learned some of the songs (such as "Blackwaterside" and "Reynardine") that would later feature strongly in his recording career.
Jansch travelled around Europe (and beyond) between 1963 and 1965, hitch-hiking from place to place, living on earnings from busking and casual musical performances in bars and cafes. Before leaving Glasgow, he married a 16-year-old girl, Lynda Campbell. It was a marriage of convenience which allowed her to travel with him, as she was too young to have her own passport. They split up after a few months, and Jansch was eventually repatriated to Britain after catching dysentery in Tangiers.
## London (mid-1960s)
Jansch moved to London. There, in 1963, at the invitation of Bob Wilson – a Staffordshire folksinger who was also an art student at St Martin's School of Art – he was asked to take over as resident singer at Bunjies on Great Litchfield Street with Charles Pearce, another art student. They remained in that situation for a year before Pearce moved to south London to run several clubs south of the Thames. There was a burgeoning interest in folk music throughout London by then. There, he met the engineer and producer Bill Leader, at whose home they made a recording of Jansch's music on a reel-to-reel tape recorder. Leader sold the tape for £100 to Transatlantic Records, who produced an album directly from it. The album Bert Jansch was released in 1965, and went on to sell 150,000 copies. It included Jansch's protest song "Do You Hear Me Now", which was brought to the attention of the pop music mainstream later that year by the singer Donovan, who covered it on his Universal Soldier EP, which reached No. 1 in the UK EP chart and No. 27 in the singles chart. Pearce disappeared from Jansch's life after arranging for him to be one of the artists in the Liberal International concert, "Master of the Guitar" at the Royal Festival Hall in 1968. Also included on Jansch's first album was his song "Needle of Death", a stark anti-drugs lament written after a friend died of a heroin overdose.
In his early career, Jansch was sometimes characterized as a British Bob Dylan. During this period, Jansch stated that his musical influences were few: "the only three people that I've ever copied were Big Bill Broonzy, Davy Graham and Archie Fisher." Jansch followed his first album with two more, produced in quick succession: It Don't Bother Me and Jack Orion, which contained his first recording of "Blackwaterside", later to be taken up by Jimmy Page and recorded by Led Zeppelin as "Black Mountain Side". Jansch said, "The accompaniment was nicked by a well-known member of one of the most famous rock bands, who used it, unchanged, on one of their records." Transatlantic took legal advice about the alleged copyright infringement, and was advised that there was "a distinct possibility that Bert might win an action against Page." Ultimately, Transatlantic was dubious about the costs involved in taking on Led Zeppelin in the courts, and half the costs would have had to be paid by Jansch personally, which he simply could not afford, so the case was never pursued. The arrangement and recording of Jack Orion was greatly influenced by Jansch's friend, singer Anne Briggs.
In London, Jansch met other innovative acoustic guitar players, including John Renbourn, with whom he shared a flat in Kilburn, Davy Graham, Wizz Jones, Roy Harper and Paul Simon. They would all meet and play in various London music clubs, including the Troubadour in Old Brompton Road, and Les Cousins club in Greek Street, Soho. Renbourn and Jansch frequently played together, developing their own intricate interplay between the two guitars, often referred to as "Folk baroque".
In 1966, they recorded the Bert and John album together, featuring much of this material. Late in 1967, they tired of the all-nighters at Les Cousins and became the resident musicians at a music venue set up by Bruce Dunnet, a Scottish entrepreneur, at the Horseshoe pub (now defunct), at 264–267 Tottenham Court Road. This became the haunt of a number of musicians, including the singer Sandy Denny. Another singer, Jacqui McShee, began performing with the two guitarists and, with the addition of Danny Thompson (string bass) and Terry Cox (drums), they formed the group Pentangle. The venue evolved into a jazz club, but by then the group had moved on.
On 19 October 1968, Jansch married Heather Sewell. At the time, she was an art student and had been the girlfriend of Roy Harper. She inspired several of Jansch's songs and instrumentals, the most obvious being "Miss Heather Rosemary Sewell" from his 1968 album Birthday Blues, but Jansch says that, despite the name, "M'Lady Nancy" from the 1971 Rosemary Lane album was also written for her. As Heather Jansch, she became a well-known sculptor.
## Pentangle years: 1968–73
Pentangle's first major concert was at the Royal Festival Hall in 1967, and their first album, The Pentangle, was released in the following year. Pentangle embarked on a demanding schedule of touring the world and recording and, during this period, Jansch largely gave up solo performances. He did, however, continue to record, releasing Rosemary Lane in 1971. The tracks for this album were recorded on a portable tape recorder by Bill Leader at Jansch's cottage in Ticehurst, Sussex—a process which took several months, with Jansch only working when he was in the right mood.
Pentangle reached their highest point of commercial success with the release of their Basket of Light album in 1969. The single "Light Flight", taken from the album, became popular through its use as theme music for a TV drama series, Take Three Girls, for which the band also provided incidental music. In 1970, at the peak of their popularity, they recorded a soundtrack for the film Tam Lin, made at least 12 television appearances, and undertook tours of the UK (including the Isle of Wight Festival) and America (including a concert at Carnegie Hall). However, their fourth album, Cruel Sister, released in October 1970, was a commercial disaster. This was an album of traditional songs that included a 20-minute-long version of "Jack Orion", a song that Jansch and Renbourn had recorded previously as a duo on Jansch's Jack Orion album.
Pentangle recorded two further albums, but the strains of touring and of working together as a band were taking their toll. Then Pentangle withdrew from their record company, Transatlantic, in a bitter dispute regarding royalties. The final album of the original incarnation of Pentangle was Solomon's Seal released by Warner Brothers/Reprise in 1972. Colin Harper describes it as "a record of people's weariness, but also the product of a unit whose members were still among the best players, writers and musical interpreters of their day." Pentangle split up in January 1973, and Jansch and his wife bought a farm near Lampeter, in Wales, and withdrew temporarily from the concert circuit.
## Mid 1970s
Jansch spent two or three years in California in the mid-1970s. He recorded most of his 1974 album LA Turnaround and 1975 album Santa Barbara Honeymoon while there. The making of LA Turnaround was documented in a film produced by Mike Nesmith.
## Late 1970s
After two years as a farmer, Jansch left his wife and family and returned to music, although Jansch and his wife would not be formally divorced until 1988. In 1977, he recorded the album A Rare Conundrum with a new set of musicians: Mike Piggott, Rod Clements and Pick Withers. He then formed the band Conundrum with the addition of Martin Jenkins (violin) and Nigel Smith (bass). They spent six months touring Australia, Japan and the United States. With the end of the tour, Conundrum parted company and Jansch spent six months in the United States, where he recorded the Heartbreak album with Albert Lee.
Jansch toured Scandinavia, working as a duo with Martin Jenkins and, based on ideas they developed, recorded the Avocet album (initially released in Denmark). Jansch rated this as among his own favourites from his own recordings. On returning to England, he set up Bert Jansch's Guitar Shop at 220, New King's Road, Fulham. The shop specialised in hand-built acoustic guitars but was not a commercial success and closed after two years.
## 1980s
In 1980, an Italian promoter encouraged the original Pentangle to reform for a tour and a new album. The reunion started badly, with Terry Cox being injured in a car accident, resulting in the band's debuting at the Cambridge Folk Festival as a four-piece Pentangle. They managed to complete a tour of Italy (with Cox in a wheelchair) and Australia, before Renbourn left the band in 1983. There then followed a series of personnel changes, including Mike Piggott replacing John Renbourn from 1983 to 1987 and recording Open the Door and In the Round, but ultimately leaving Jansch and McShee as the only original members. The final incarnation consisting of Jansch, McShee, Nigel Portman Smith (keyboards), Peter Kirtley (guitar and vocals) and Gerry Conway (drums) survived from 1987 to 1995 and recorded three albums: Think of Tomorrow, One More Road and Live 1994.
In 1985, two limited edition albums appeared, issued under the name of Loren Auerbach, who was to become Jansch's wife: After the Long Night was released in February 1985, the second, Playing the Game, appearing in October. Jansch was initially a guest player, but also became a writer on some of the songs, as well as an arranger and co-vocalist. Richard Newman was the primary guitarist and songwriter. Auerbach had worked alongside Newman for many years before meeting Jansch. Newman and Jansch were the key players on After the Long Night. On Playing the Game, Jansch and Newman joined Cliff Aungier, Geoff Bradford (lead guitarist from Cyril Davis' All Stars, from Long John Baldry's Hoochie Coochie Men, and in the first line-up of The Rolling Stones) and Brian Knight (British blues veteran of the Blues By Six). The two albums became one—After The Long Night / Playing The Game. Jansch played guitar with Richard Newman on the following Newman songs: "I Can't Go Back", "Smiling Faces", "Playing the Game", "Sorrow", "Days and Nights", "The Rainbow Man", "Frozen Beauty", "Christabel", "So Lonely" and "The Miller". All songs were sung by Auerbach with the exception of "The Miller", which was sung by Newman. Jansch married Auerbach in 1999.
He had always been a heavy drinker, but in 1987 Jansch fell ill while working with Rod Clements and Marty Craggs, and was rushed to hospital, where he was told that he was "as seriously ill as you can be without dying" and that he had a choice of "giving up alcohol or simply giving up." He chose the former option: Colin Harper states that "There can be no doubt that Bert's creativity, reliability, energy, commitment and quality of performance were all rescued dramatically by the decision to quit boozing." Jansch and Clements continued the work they had started before Jansch's illness, resulting in the 1988 Leather Launderette album.
## Final years and death: 1992–2011
Bert was the prime mover in the Acoustic Routes film, first broadcast by the BBC in 1992. It shows him revisiting his old haunts and reminiscing with guests such as Al Stewart, Anne Briggs, John Renbourn, and Davy Graham.
From 1995, Jansch appeared frequently at the 12 Bar Club in Denmark Street, London. One of his live sets there was recorded direct to Digital Audio Tape (DAT) by Jansch's then manager, Alan King, and was released as the Live at the 12 Bar: an official bootleg album in 1996. In 2002, Jansch, Bernard Butler and Johnny "Guitar" Hodge performed live together at the Jazz Cafe, London. Butler had also appeared on Jansch's album of that year, Edge of a Dream, which features (among others) Ralph McTell and guitarist Paul Wassif. The instrumental "Black Cat Blues", featuring Wassif, appears in the 2003 film Calendar Girls, and Wassif became a frequent sideman at Bert's live shows. In 2003, Jansch celebrated his 60th birthday with a concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. The BBC organised a concert for Jansch and various guests at the church of St Luke Old Street, which was televised on BBC Four.
In 2005, Jansch teamed up again with one of his early influences, Davy Graham, for a small number of concerts in England and Scotland. His concert tour had to be postponed, owing to illness, and Jansch underwent major heart surgery in late 2005. By 2006, he had recovered and was playing concerts again. Jansch's album The Black Swan, his first for four years, was released on Sanctuary on 18 September 2006, featuring Beth Orton and Devendra Banhart on tracks "Katie Cruel", "When the Sun Comes Up" and "Watch the Stars", among other guests. In 2007, he was featured on Babyshambles album, Shotter's Nation, playing acoustic guitar on the song "The Lost Art of Murder". After recording, he accompanied Babyshambles' lead singer Pete Doherty on several acoustic gigs, and performed on the Pete and Carl Reunion Gig, where Libertines and Dirty Pretty Things frontman and guitarist Carl Barât joined Doherty on stage.
In 2009, he played a concert at the London Jazz Cafe to celebrate the release of three of his older albums (LA Turnaround, Santa Barbara Honeymoon and A Rare Conundrum) on CD format. However, later that year, due to an unexpected illness, he had to cancel a 22-date North American tour that was due to start on 26 June. Jansch's website reported: "Bert is very sorry to be missing the tour, and apologises to all the fans who were hoping to see him. He is looking forward to rescheduling as soon as possible."
Jansch opened for Neil Young on his Twisted Road solo tour in the US and Canada, starting on 18 May 2010. He also performed at Eric Clapton's Crossroads festival in June 2010. These were Jansch's first shows since his illness. One of his last recording sessions was with Eric Clapton for Paul Wassif's 2011 album Looking Up Feeling Down. Jansch again opened for Young's 2011 tour, beginning on 15 April in Durham, North Carolina, and having a final solo performance in Chicago on 7 May. That same year, a few reunion gigs also took place with Pentangle, including performances at the Glastonbury Festival and one final concert at the Royal Festival Hall in London, which was also Jansch's last ever public performance.
Jansch died on 5 October 2011, aged 67, at a hospice in Hampstead after a long battle with lung cancer. His wife, Loren Jansch (née Auerbach), died of cancer on 9 December 2011. They are both buried in Highgate Cemetery.
## Recognition and awards
In 2001, Jansch received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, and on 5 June 2006, he received the MOJO Merit Award at the Mojo Honours List ceremony, based on "an expanded career that still continues to be inspirational." The award was presented by Beth Orton and Roy Harper. Rolling Stone ranked Jansch as No. 94 on its list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of all Time in 2003.
In January 2007, the five original members of Pentangle (including Jansch) were given a Lifetime Achievement award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. The award was presented by Sir David Attenborough. Producer John Leonard said "Pentangle were one of the most influential groups of the late 20th century and it would be wrong for the awards not to recognise what an impact they had on the music scene." Pentangle played together for the event, for the first time in more than two decades, and their performance was broadcast on BBC Radio 2 on 7 February 2007. In 2007, Jansch was also awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music by Edinburgh Napier University, "in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the UK music industry."
## Music
Jansch's musical influences included Big Bill Broonzy and Brownie McGhee, whom he first saw playing at The Howff in 1960 and, much later, claimed that he'd "still be a gardener" if he hadn't encountered McGhee and his music. Jansch was also strongly influenced by the British folk music tradition, particularly by Anne Briggs and, to a lesser extent, A.L. Lloyd. Other influences included jazz (notably Charles Mingus), early music (John Renbourn and Julian Bream) and other contemporary singer-songwriters – especially Clive Palmer. The other major influence was Davy Graham who, himself, brought together an eclectic mixture of musical styles. Also, in his formative years, Jansch had busked his way through Europe to Morocco, picking up musical ideas and rhythms from many sources. From these influences, he distilled his own individual guitar style.
Some of his songs feature a basic Travis picking style of right-hand playing, but these are often distinguished by unusual chord voicings or by chords with added notes. An example of this is his song "Needle of Death", which features a simple picking style, though several of the chords are decorated with added ninths. Characteristically, the ninths are not the highest note of the chord, but appear in the middle of the arpeggiated finger-picking, creating a "lumpiness" to the sound.
Another characteristic feature was his ability to hold a chord in the lower strings while bending an upper string—often bending up from a semitone below a chord note. These can be heard clearly on songs such as "Reynardine" where the bends are from the diminished fifth to the perfect fifth. Jansch often fitted the accompaniment to the natural rhythm of the words of his songs, rather than playing a consistent rhythm throughout. This can lead to occasional bars appearing in unusual time signatures. For example, his version of the Ewan MacColl song "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face", unlike most other covers of that song, switches from 4/4 time to 3/4 and 5/4. A similar disregard for conventional time signatures is found in several of his collaborative compositions with Pentangle: for instance, "Light Flight" from the Basket of Light album includes sections in 5/8, 7/8 and 6/4 time.
## Instruments
Through the development of Pentangle, Jansch played a number of instruments: banjo, Appalachian dulcimer, recorder, and concertina—on rare occasions he was even known to play electric guitar. However, it is his acoustic guitar playing that was most notable.
Jansch's first guitar was home-made from a kit but when he left school and started work, he bought a Höfner cello-style guitar. Soon he traded this in for a Zenith which was marketed as the "Lonnie Donegan guitar" and which Jansch played in the folk clubs in the early 1960s. His first album was reputedly recorded using a Martin 00028 borrowed from Martin Carthy. Pictures of Jansch in the middle 1960s show him playing a variety of models, including Martin and Epiphone guitars. He had a guitar hand-built by John Bailey, which was used for most of the Pentangle recordings but was eventually stolen.
Jansch later played two six-string guitars built by the Coventry-based luthier Rob Armstrong, one of which appears on the front and back covers of the 1980 Shanachie release, Best of Bert Jansch. He then had a contract with Yamaha, who provided him with an FG1500 which he played, along with a Yamaha LL11 1970s jumbo guitar. Jansch's relationship with Yamaha continued and they presented him with an acoustic guitar with gold trim and abalone inlay for his 60th birthday—although Jansch was quoted as saying that, valued at about £3000, it was too good for stage use.
## Influence
Jansch's music, and particularly his acoustic guitar playing, have influenced a range of well-known musicians. His first album (Bert Jansch, 1965) was much admired, with Jimmy Page saying, "At one point, I was absolutely obsessed with Bert Jansch. When I first heard that LP, I couldn't believe it. It was so far ahead of what everyone else was doing. No one in America could touch that." The same debut album included Jansch's version of the Davy Graham instrumental "Angie". This was a favourite of Mike Oldfield, who practised acoustic guitar alone as a child, and was then heavily influenced by Jansch's style. The title of the instrumental inspired Oldfield to call his first band (with sister Sally) the Sallyangie.
Jansch's version of "Angie" inspired Paul Simon's recording of the piece, which was retitled "Anji" and appeared on the Simon & Garfunkel album Sounds of Silence. From the same era, Neil Young is quoted as saying: "As much of a great guitar player as Jimi [Hendrix] was, Bert Jansch is the same thing for acoustic guitar... and my favourite." Nick Drake and Donovan were both admirers of Jansch. Both recorded cover versions of his songs, and Donovan went on to dedicate two of his own songs to Jansch: "Bert's Blues" appeared on his Sunshine Superman LP, and "House of Jansch" on his fourth album Mellow Yellow. Other tributes included Gordon Giltrap's album Janschology (2000) which has two tunes by Jansch, plus two others that show his influence.
## Discography
Studio albums
- 1965: Bert Jansch
- 1965: It Don't Bother Me
- 1966: Jack Orion
- 1967: Nicola
- 1969: Birthday Blues
- 1971: Rosemary Lane
- 1973: Moonshine
- 1974: L.A. Turnaround
- 1975: Santa Barbara Honeymoon
- 1977: A Rare Conundrum (released 1976 as Poor Mouth with alternate track listing)
- 1978: Avocet
- 1980: Thirteen Down (as The Bert Jansch Conundrum)
- 1982: Heartbreak
- 1985: From the Outside
- 1990: Sketches
- 1990: The Ornament Tree
- 1995: When the Circus Comes to Town
- 1998: Toy Balloon
- 2000: Crimson Moon
- 2002: Edge of a Dream
- 2006: The Black Swan |
15,155,749 | Steve Smith (cricketer) | 1,172,161,156 | Australian international cricketer | [
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"Australia Test cricketers",
"Australia Twenty20 International cricketers",
"Australian cricketers",
"Australian people of English descent",
"Barbados Royals cricketers",
"Comilla Victorians cricketers",
"Cricketers at the 2011 Cricket World Cup",
"Cricketers at the 2015 Cricket World Cup",
"Cricketers at the 2019 Cricket World Cup",
"Cricketers from Sydney",
"Delhi Capitals cricketers",
"International Cricket Council Cricketer of the Year",
"Kochi Tuskers Kerala cricketers",
"Living people",
"New South Wales cricketers",
"Pune Warriors India cricketers",
"Rising Pune Supergiant cricketers",
"Royal Challengers Bangalore cricketers",
"Sydney Sixers cricketers",
"Wisden Cricketers of the Year",
"Worcestershire cricketers"
]
| Steven Peter Devereux Smith (born 2 June 1989) is an Australian international cricketer and former captain of the Australian national team. Regarded by some as the best Test batsman of the modern era, as well as one of the greatest in the history of the sport, Smith has drawn comparisons to Don Bradman for his high Test batting average and been labelled 'the best since Bradman'. Smith was a member of the Australian team that won the 2015 Cricket World Cup, the 2021 ICC T20 World Cup, and the 2023 ICC World Test Championship final.
Although he was initially selected for Australia as a right-arm leg spinner, Smith later played primarily as a batsman. After playing five matches from 2010 to 2011, he was recalled to the Australian team in 2013, and took over the captaincy from Michael Clarke in late 2015, after which he predominantly batted at number 3 or 4.
Awards he has won include the Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy (ICC Cricketer of the Year) in 2015; ICC Test Player of the Year in 2015 and 2017; ICC Men's Test Player of the Decade for 2011–2020; the Allan Border Medal for the best player in Australian Cricket in 2015, 2018, 2021 and 2023; Australian Test Player of the Year in 2015 and 2018, and Australian One Day International Player of the Year in 2015 and 2021. He was named by Wisden as one of their Cricketers of the Year in the 2016 Wisden Almanack.
In 2014, New Zealand batsman Martin Crowe described Smith as one of the young Fab Four of Test cricket along with Joe Root, Kane Williamson and Virat Kohli. On 30 December 2017, he reached a Test batting rating of 947, the second-highest of all time, only behind Don Bradman's 961.
In March 2018, Smith was widely criticised for overseeing and actively encouraging ball tampering in the third Test against South Africa, during which he stood down from the team captaincy and was replaced by Tim Paine. Following an investigation by Cricket Australia, Smith was banned from all international and domestic cricket in Australia for one year starting from 29 March 2018, and from consideration for any leadership role for an additional year.
## Early and personal life
Steve Smith was born on 2 June 1989 in Kogarah, Sydney to an Australian father, Peter, who has a degree in chemistry, and an English mother, Gillian. Smith attended Menai High School, and left at age 17 to play cricket in England where he played club cricket for Sevenoaks Vine in the Kent Cricket League. He did so well for Sevenoaks that he was picked to play for Surrey's second XI.
Because his mother was born in London, Smith has dual British and Australian citizenship. In 2011, Smith started dating Dani Willis, a commerce and law student at Macquarie University. In June 2017, the couple announced their engagement while on holiday in New York. The couple married at Berrima, New South Wales on 15 September 2018.
Smith supports the Sydney Roosters in the National Rugby League.
## Youth and domestic career
Smith was a member of the Australian team at the 2008 Under-19 Cricket World Cup in Malaysia. In the tournament he scored 114 runs and took seven wickets in four matches.
Smith made his first-class debut for New South Wales against Western Australia at the SCG on 25 January 2008. He scored 33 in his only innings as New South Wales defeated Western Australia outright. He was part of the New South Wales team that won the 2009 Twenty20 Champions League. In the final against Trinidad and Tobago at Hyderabad, Smith made 33 with the bat and took two wickets.
By the end of the 2009–10 domestic season, Smith had a first-class batting average of over 50 after 13 first-class matches. While his first-class bowling average in the high forties was not as impressive, his bowling appeared to be steadily improving following some well-publicised mentoring and praise from Shane Warne. In the final match of the season he took 7 for 64 in the second innings against South Australia.
### Big Bash League
Smith made his Twenty20 cricket debut for New South Wales in a match against South Australia at Adelaide on 1 January 2008 during the six team KFC Big Bash competition. Smith was the leading wicket taker at the 2008 Big Bash tournament. He took 4/15 against Queensland and finished with 9 wickets overall. He was also named the second-best player of the tournament. In 2011–12, the Australian T20 competition became the city-based Big Bash League featuring eight teams. Smith joined the Sydney Sixers and filled in as captain when Brad Haddin could not play due to Test duties, subsequently leading the team to victory in the inaugural season. As an all-rounder, he scored 166 runs with the bat from nine matches with a strike rate of 130.71, including one half century. With the ball, he took 6 wickets at an economy rate of 8.06 per over. He also took nine catches throughout the tournament. In the final match, the Sixers beat Perth Scorchers by 7 wickets while chasing down the target of 157 within 18.5 overs after the Scorchers made 5/156 in 20 overs. Smith's good form during the Big Bash League, attracted the attention of former India Captain Sourav Ganguly, and was recruited to play for the Pune Warriors India team captained by Sourav Ganguly in the 2012 Indian Premier League. Smith was also been made captain of the team for one match, when Ganguly was rested, despite Australian captain Michael Clarke being the vice-captain. He continued to play for the same franchise in 2013, under the captaincy of Angelo Mathews. Smith reunited with the Sydney Sixers in 2023 after missing two years of the Big Bash, rejoining in BBL12. In his second match, against Adelaide Strikers, he scored 101 runs off 56 deliveries as the Sixers won by 59 runs. In the next match, Smith score 125\* runs off 66 deliveries against Sydney Thunder.
### Indian Premier League
Smith was first bought by Royal Challengers Bangalore for the 2010 Indian Premier League as a replacement for Jesse Ryder. During the 2011 IPL player auction, he was bought by Kochi Tuskers Kerala for \$200,000, but he had to have an ankle operation and was not available to play for them that season.
The next season, Kochi Tuskers were dropped from the IPL and Smith was put up for auction. He went unsold at the 2012 IPL Players Auction, but was later bought as a replacement for Mitchell Marsh by the Pune Warriors India. In his first match for his new team, he scored 39 runs off 32 balls to lead his team to victory against the Mumbai Indians. He received the Man of the Match award for this effort.
In the auction for IPL 2014, Smith was bought by Rajasthan Royals for \$600,000. Smith was given the captaincy of the Royals in the latter half of the 2015 season and led the team to significant victories, thus ensuring a berth for his team in the play-off part of the tournament.
During the 2016 IPL Auction, Smith was bought by new franchise, the Rising Pune Supergiants for the same price as in the previous auction (\$600,000), and struggled early for form. Smith finally broke a run of low scores against Sunrisers Hyderabad, scoring 46\*. His form continued as he registered his maiden T20 century against the Gujarat Lions, scoring 101 off 54 balls. He then went on to score a further 45 against the Mumbai Indians, before being ruled out of the remainder of the tournament with a wrist injury.
The Supergiant management axed MS Dhoni as captain and named Smith as captain for the 2017 season. In RPS's first game against Mumbai Indians, Smith led his team to victory in style, scoring 84\* and was rewarded with the Man of The Match award. Three consecutive losses, however, left his team in last position on the points table. A run of 8 wins in 10 matches helped Supergiant finish in the second position, and thus qualify for the playoffs, with Smith receiving praise for his captaincy from renowned cricketers and experts like Sunil Gavaskar and Kevin Pietersen. He led his team to the final with a 20-run victory over Mumbai Indians in Qualifier 1. In the final Smith's men faced Mumbai yet again. He scored 51 off 50 balls but could not lead RPS to victory. Pune lost the match by one run. Smith was RPS's highest run scorer in the tournament, scoring 472 runs at an average of 39.33, including three fifties.
In February 2018, he was named as captain of Rajasthan Royals for the IPL 2018. However, following his admission of involvement in the Australian test side's ball tampering controversy in the Third Test in South Africa in March 2018, it was announced by the team that Smith has stood down from that role and Ajinkya Rahane took charge as the new captain for Rajasthan Royals team.
On 28 March 2018, after being banned by Cricket Australia for his involvement in a ball tampering incident, Smith's player contract with the Royals was terminated by the Board of Control for Cricket in India as Steve Smith and fellow Australian batsman David Warner were banned from playing for their respective teams for the upcoming 2018 IPL edition.
In November 2018, Smith was retained by Rajasthan Royals for the 2019 Indian Premier League. After losing six out of first eight matches of the season, Smith was appointed as the captain of the Rajasthan Royals by replacing Ajinkya Rahane. In the tournament, he scored 319 runs at an average of 39.87, including three fifties.
He went unsold in the 2022 IPL auctions.
### Other T20 franchise cricket
In May 2018, Smith was named as one of the ten marquee players for the first edition of the Global T20 Canada cricket tournament. On 3 June 2018, he was selected to play for the Toronto Nationals in the players' draft for the inaugural edition of the tournament. In his first representative match since his conviction for ball-tampering, Smith scored 61 runs from 41 balls alongside Anton Devcich as the Toronto Nationals won by six wickets against the Vancouver Knights. In the tournament he scored 167 runs in six matches at an average of 33.40, including two fifties.
In July 2018, Smith was named in Barbados Tridents's squad in the sixth edition of Caribbean Premier League.
In September 2018, Smith returned to Australian club cricket by scoring 85 off 91 balls for Sutherland in a one-day match against Mosman. In October 2018, he was named as one of the fourteen Platinum category players for the fourth edition of the Pakistan Super League.
In December 2018, Smith was named in Comilla Victorians's squad in the sixth edition of Bangladesh Premier League. He played only two matches of the tournament before returning to Australia for elbow surgery.
## 2010–2011: Debut and early international career
Steve Smith made his international cricket debut in a Twenty20 International match playing as a leg spinner against Pakistan at Melbourne in February 2010. The same month, he made his One Day International debut against the West Indies also at Melbourne, playing in the fifth match of the series.
In the 2010 ICC World Twenty20 competition held in the West Indies, Australia finished runners up to England. Smith took 11 wickets in seven matches at an average of 14.81 to finish as the equal-second-highest wicket-taker of the tournament.
Smith made his Test debut at Lord's in July 2010, playing both Tests against Pakistan in the 2010 Test series played in England. He was selected mainly for his bowling, and batted down the order, although his bowling was not required in the first innings. In the second innings, he took 3 wickets for 51 as Australia won by 150 runs. In the second Test he was called to bowl only ten overs and took no wickets, although he played an impressive role with the bat in the second innings. Batting with the tail, he scored 77 including nine fours and two sixes off successive balls, helping Australia to set a competitive target after having been bowled out for 88 in the first innings.
Smith's fielding attracted attention during the 2009–10 season with some spectacular catches in the outfield.
In the 2010–11 Australian summer, Smith played three Tests in the 2010–11 Ashes series, this time playing more as a batsman, taking the number six spot in the order. His performances were solid during the series, getting a number of starts and scoring two half centuries. Following the 2010–11 Ashes, Smith did not play another Test for two years, his next Test series coming against India in March 2013.
## 2013–15: Return and breakthrough
### Tour to India and back-to-back Ashes 2013–14
Smith's return to the test team came during the 2013 tour of India. In the previous two Sheffield seasons his form had been middling, averaging 37, but he was chosen for the 17-man squad, primarily as a backup batsman, rather than an allrounder as he had been in the Test team previously. Smith was selected for the third test in Mohali, his first in over two years, when four players were dropped for "not doing their homework", in a scandal known as Homeworkgate.
In his first match innings in India he scored 92 before being stumped by Dhoni from a delivery by Pragyan Ojha, and in the second innings he managed 5 runs. In the final Test match at Delhi, Smith made 46 and 18 runs, respectively, but Australia was unable to win the Test match as India secured a 4–0 series win.
Following the defeat to India, Australia's next series was against England in the British Isles in July. Although the squad for the 2013 Ashes was finalised in April, Smith was the vice-captain of Australia's A team and was later called into the main squad after showing some promise in the Australia's A tour to the United Kingdom in June where he made 133 runs against Ireland in Belfast but also as a backup batsman due to Michael Clarke's fitness concerns. He played his first-class tour match with the main squad on 2 July 2013 in Worcester making 111 runs in both innings combined. In the first Test match at Trent Bridge he made a half century in his first innings but fell cheaply in the second innings getting out lbw to Graeme Swann. While making little impact at Lord's, Smith produced a century at Hove against Sussex on 27 July.
In the third Test being 2–0 down to England, Australia moved up north to Old Trafford Cricket Ground in Manchester needing to win or draw to save the series. Smith made 89 and 19 runs, respectively, but the third Test match stirred controversy about the on-field umpire's decisions and DRS (Decision Review System) causing Smith to survive on two occasions and his teammate Usman Khawaja to be dismissed. In the final Test, Smith scored his maiden Test century, which came in the first innings of the last Test of the series at The Oval, reaching the total in style by hitting a six off the bowling of Jonathan Trott. He remained unbeaten on 138. Smith became only the sixth Australian to reach his maiden Test 100 with a six. At the end of the series, the urn was retained by England after winning the series 3–0. Smith played in all five Tests, scoring 345 runs at an average of 38.33.
Smith remained in the team for the first Test of 2013–14 Ashes series in Brisbane. Despite starting slowly in the first two Tests, Smith produced his first Test century on home soil in the third Test at Perth, scoring 111 from 208 balls, helping Australia display a total of 6–326 at stumps on the second day to later win the Test match and be awarded man of the match. It was during this innings at the WACA which he decided to take a "prelim movement back and across" to counter short-pitched bowling and has even exaggerated it, according to Smith, "I was probably batting on middle and leg and going to middle at that point ... I've sort of moved things a little bit across to leg stump and now I'm going just outside off stump". Smith remarked "Everything sort of just clicked into place and it felt really good so I've continued doing it". Despite his success in the first innings, he mistimed a pull shot in the second innings, the ball caught in the deep by substitute fielder Bairstow off Ben Stokes' bowling, being dismissed for 15 from 50 deliveries.
In the fourth Test at the MCG he was dismissed on 19 by Stuart Broad, but made another century with 115 runs from 154 deliveries in the first innings of the fifth and final Test at the SCG. His 128-run partnership with Brad Haddin helped Australia come back from 5–97 to 326 all out in the first innings and eventually went on to win the Test match by 281 runs. The victory in Sydney marked a 5–0 victory towards Australia after a dismal 3–0 loss during the winter period of 2013. Smith made two centuries with a total of 327 runs at an average of 36. Smith played just one ODI match during England's tour during 2013–14, in the 4th ODI at Perth where he made 19 runs.
### Tour of South Africa 2014
Following a 5–0 victory against England in the Ashes, Australia were scheduled three Test matches and three T20 matches in South Africa. In the first Test at Centurion, Johannesburg, Smith made his fourth century and first in South Africa, where he and Shaun Marsh made a 233 run partnership from 4–98. Smith was not required in the second innings and Australia won the Test by 281 runs. The second Test in Port Elizabeth saw a slower pitch as Smith made 49 and a duck and South Africa levelled the series 1–1. In the deciding Test match in Cape Town, Smith made 89 runs in the first innings and finished 36 not out in the second innings as Australia won the series 2–1. Steve Smith produced 269 runs at an average of 67.25, the third-best in the series and the second-best by an Australian, second to David Warner.
### Tri-Series in Zimbabwe and the UAE 2014
The five-month break from cricket activity saw a surprise pick of Smith called up for the 2014 Zimbabwe Tri-Series on the August 2014. Smith prior to the tour had two ODI matches in the last two years. In his first match against Zimbabwe, he was run out by Sikandar Raza. He made scores in his thirties in his participating matches but only made 10 runs in the final against South Africa on 6 September, where South Africa went on to win the Tri-Series.
The squad later travelled to the UAE to face Pakistan in a T20 Match, three ODIs and two Tests. In the first and only T20 match, Pakistan won the toss and made 96 runs in their allotment of 20 overs, setting Australia a target of 97 runs to win. Smith made three runs before being dismissed. Despite this, Australia won by six wickets.
Following the T20 came the 3-match ODI series. In the first ODI at Sharjah Cricket Stadium, Smith made his first ODI century scoring 101 runs off 118 balls to push the visitors to a 1–0 lead in the series. In the second ODI he made 12 runs and in the third and final ODI he made 77 runs off 105 balls to win the ODI match by 1 run. However, during the match, Steve Smith's catch on Fawad Alam questioned whether his catch was within the ICC laws. The incident occurred when in the 18th over of Pakistan's chase of 231 where Xavier Doherty delivered the ball and before Fawad made contact with his paddle sweep, Smith had moved from first slip towards leg slip to intercept the shot. The legality of the catch continued to be the main talking point after the ODI Series and afterwards ICC made a press statement stating that: "As long as the movement of a close catching fielder is in response to the striker's actions (the shot he/she is about to play or shaping to play), then movement is permitted before the ball reaches the striker. On the day, if umpires believe any form of significant movement is unfair (in an attempt to deceive the batsman), then the Law still applies." The win saw Australia rise back to number one in the ICC ODI Rankings and Steve Smith was made man of the series for his batting performances.
Transitioning into the Test series saw Australia's continued failure against reverse swing and spin in the subcontinent. In the warm-up match against Pakistan A in Sharjah, Australia lost by 153 runs where Smith made 58 but retired out. In the first Test in Dubai, Smith made 22 runs in the first innings and 55 runs in the second innings but collectively lost the Test match by 221 runs. In the second Test, Smith made a duck and 97 runs but Australia's woes against spin continued as Australia lost by 356 runs. In the series he made 174 runs at an average of 43.5 runs.
### South Africa and India in Australia 2014–15
Arriving back from the subcontinent following their 2–0 Test defeat against Pakistan. Smith played in the series against South Africa where Australia defeated South Africa 4–1 in the ODI Series. He missed the first match due to selectors picking Shane Watson over Smith but later joined the remainder of the games due to Michael Clarke's hamstring injury. In his first match in Perth he registered 10 runs but in the following games he made 73\*, 104 and 67 runs. His hundred in the 4th ODI at the MCG was Smith's first on Australian soil. Smith scored 254 runs at an average of 84.66, the highest Australian total in the series and consequently receiving the man of the series award.
India arrived in Australia to play the Border-Gavaskar Test match series and a tri-series ODI competition with England. The first Test was scheduled to begin on 4 December in Brisbane, but was later postponed because of the death of Phillip Hughes. The first Test was later rescheduled to the Adelaide Oval on 9 December and Brisbane would be hosting the second Test on 17 December. In the first Test match in Adelaide, the Australian players wore Hughes' Test cap number 408 on their playing shirts for the match as well as black armbands in honour of their former teammate. In the first Test match in Adelaide, Smith scored 162\* from 298 balls in the first and made 52\* in the second innings, defeating India by 48 runs into day five. This also marked Steve Smith's first Test century against India and at the Adelaide Oval.
On 15 December, Smith was named Australia's new vice-captain and following an injury to Michael Clarke, he was appointed stand-in skipper against India with Brad Haddin as his deputy. He made his captaincy debut for Australia in the Second Test match against India at the Gabba. He continued his batting form and made 133 runs in the first innings before being run-out in the second innings with a score of 28. Smith was awarded man of the match as Australia defeated India by 4 wickets. Australia were then up 2–0 in the series. In the third Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, Smith made his third consecutive century in the first innings of the Test match scoring 192 runs in 433 balls. He also scored his 1,000th run in the 2014 calendar year, and became the eighth-fastest Australian to reach 2000 Test runs, beating previous Australian captains such as Michael Clarke and Ricky Ponting.
The final Test match at the Sydney Cricket Ground saw Smith in his fourth consecutive century against India. The achievement saw Smith join Don Bradman (6), Neil Harvey, Jack Fingleton and Matthew Hayden (4 each) as Australian centurions in four or more consecutive Tests, a streak Smith started during the 1st Test at Adelaide. Smith also became the first Australian skipper to open their captaincy with three consecutive centuries, and the second batsman since Jacques Kallis against West Indies to score a century in every match of a Test series. The Test match ended in a draw as Australia defeated India 2–0 in the series, thus returning the Border–Gavaskar Trophy to Australia. The conclusion of the Test series saw Smith be given the man of the series award, scoring 769 runs at an average of 128.16, the highest aggregate score in a four-test match series in Australia and also marked the highest number of runs scored against India by an Australian, surpassing Donald Bradman.
Following the Test series, an ODI tri-series with India and England was confirmed in preparation for the upcoming Cricket World Cup hosted by Australia and New Zealand. In his first ODI match against England in Sydney, he was dismissed at 37 runs by Moeen Ali but continued to provide runs in the following matches leading to the final against England. En route to the tri-series final, Smith was handed his first ODI match on 20 January as the skipper after George Bailey was suspended for a slow-over rate earlier in the series. Three days later, Smith scored his first ODI century against England producing 102 runs in 95 balls; the win saw Australia qualify for the final and later defeating England to win the Carlton Mid Triangular Series in Australia 2014–15.
### Cricket World Cup in Australia 2015
In the World Cup, Smith played a vital role as versatile batsman as he played in numerous batting positions from number three down to as a middle-order batsman. In Australia's opening match of the World Cup, against England, he was dismissed early on 5 but later improved as the tournament progressed. After making half centuries against Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Pakistan, he later steered Australia into the final after making a century against India in the semi-finals at the Sydney Cricket Ground. In the final, Australia drew against fellow neighbours New Zealand after defeating South Africa. Australia's target to chase 183 runs after a New Zealand collapse saw Steve Smith score 58 not out alongside the skipper, Michael Clarke as Australia won by 7 wickets with 101 balls remaining. Smith was Australia's highest run scorer in the tournament, scoring 402 runs at an average of 67, including a century and four fifties. He was named in the team of the tournament for the 2015 World Cup by the ICC. He was also named in the team of the tournament by ESPNcricinfo and Cricbuzz.
### Tour of the West Indies 2015
After winning the World Cup in March, Australia's winter schedule was later released with the Test team returned from their short break towards their two Test series against the West Indies in the Caribbean. Due to IPL commitments, Smith missed out on Australia's maiden warm up match against the West Indies Cricket Board President's XI on 27 May. He later joined the Test squad in the first Test match in Windsor Park, and scored 25 and 5 runs, respectively. In the second Test match in Sabina Park, Smith steered Australia to a first innings score of 399, where he made 199 and became the eighth man in Test history to be dismissed on 199. Australia later won the match in positive fashion, beating the West Indies by 277 runs within four days and retained the Frank Worrell Trophy. After his man of the match effort against the West Indies in the second Test, Smith became the second-youngest player ever to reach the number 1 ICC Test batsmen ranking and just the eighth Australian to do so.
### Ashes in England 2015
The 2–0 victory against the West Indies gave Australia some momentum into the long-awaited Ashes series in the British Isles. While Australia's last Ashes tour was in 2013, the emergence of England's Joe Root and Australia's Steve Smith saw an awaited clash to determine the better batsman in the upcoming series. With the Australians in good form and England drawing to New Zealand and West Indies gave Australia some confidence to the countdown to the first Test in Cardiff. Smith started positively in his first-class match with a century against Kent in Canterbury. He was rested for the second first-class match and in the first Test match in Cardiff, Smith made 33 in both innings as England took a 1–0 lead in the series. In the second Test in Lord's, Smith produced 215 runs in his first innings, his highest Test score and became the first Australian to score a double-ton at Lord's since the Second World War. His double century also made Smith pass 3000 Test runs, the third-youngest Australia to reach the feat. In his second innings he made 58 runs before Australia levelled the series in a 405 run rout.
In the third Test in Edgbaston, Smith made 7 and 8 runs, respectively, both dismissed by Steven Finn, but Smith's low scores saw England take a 2–1 lead into the series. In the fourth Test in Trent Bridge, Australia needed a win to draw the series. With overcast conditions and a green top, Alastair Cook won the toss and elected to field. In the first innings, Smith was dismissed again cheaply by Stuart Broad with a score of 6, as Australia capitulated in the first session of a total 60 runs from 18.3 overs—is the quickest—in terms of balls faced—a team has been bowled out in the first innings of a Test match. In the second innings, Smith was again caught by Ben Stokes in the slips from Stuart Broad with a meagre score of 5. England within three days regained the Ashes and took an unassailable 3–1 lead and critics began to question Smith's performances in seaming conditions. Into the fifth and final Test match back at The Oval, Smith made his second century in the series registering 143 runs off 252 balls before being bowled by Finn. Australia later defeated England by an innings and 46 runs. However, England regained the Ashes 3–2 after winning in Nottingham in early August and later saw the Test retirements of Australia's senior players: Michael Clarke, Chris Rogers and later Shane Watson, Ryan Harris and Brad Haddin. Overall, Smith made 508 runs at an average of 56.44, the most runs scored in the series.
## 2015–2018: Australian captaincy
The retirement of Michael Clarke following Australia's 3–2 defeat in the 2015 Ashes series saw Smith appointed as the full-time captain of the Australian Test team. Fellow New South Welshman David Warner was appointed as his vice-captain.
### New Zealand, West Indies and ascension to captaincy 2015–16
Next followed a three Test home series against New Zealand. Smith's output in the first Test in Brisbane was modest, scoring 48 and 1, as the team romped home for a win in a high scoring game. During the second Test, Smith scored 27 in the first innings before breaking the shackles with 138 in the second innings. This was Smith's first-ever second innings century; all previous centuries having been scored in the first innings of a Test match. Australia went on to draw the second Test. In the third Test, significant for being the first-ever day-night Test held at the Adelaide Oval, Smith defied difficult batting conditions to register 53 in the first innings, before falling for 14 in the second innings. Australia won the match in a tight contest.
Shortly after the series against New Zealand, a three Test series was to be held against the West Indies. During the first innings of the first Test, Smith was caught behind on 10, and did not bat again, due to Australia's dominance. The second Test was successful for the captain, scoring 134\* and 70\* in each respective innings, as Australia went on to seal a series victory. Due to poor weather conditions, the third Test was a wash out, with very little play able to be held.
In 2015 Smith was awarded the Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy (ICC Cricketer of the Year) and ICC Test Player of the Year award and named in ICC Test Team of the Year and ICC ODI Team of the Year by the ICC. In the same year, he also received the Allan Border Medal, Australian Test Player of the Year and Australian One Day International Player of the Year award. He was also named in the Test XI of the year 2015 by ESPNcricinfo.
### Tour of New Zealand and T20 World Cup 2016
A two Test return tour against New Zealand took place in February 2016. Smith looked to be in fine touch, registering 71, 138, and 53\* in the three innings in which he batted, as the Australian team won 2–0.
During the T20 World Cup 2016, held in India, Smith struggled with form early, before registering 61 against Pakistan in a must-win pool match for Australia. Smith went on to score only 2 against India, as Australia were knocked out of the tournament. It was believed that Smith was incorrectly given out, having clean missed a ball the umpires deemed to have been edged.
### Tour of Sri Lanka 2016
Smith then led the Australian Cricket Team on their tour of Sri Lanka. The three Test series was a disaster for the Aussies, losing 3–0. Smith was Australia's highest run scorer in the series, scoring 247 runs at an average of 41, including one century and one fifty. Throughout the following ODI series, Smith averaged in excess of 40 across the first two matches, before leaving early for a rest.
### ODI Tour of South Africa 2016
Australia's disappointing run of form continued into their ODI tour of South Africa. They lost the first 3 matches, largely attesting to their young bowling attack's inability to contain a strong South African batting line-up. Smith was disappointing in output across the first two ODIs, before scoring 108 off 107 balls in the 3rd match, as he and David Warner helped Australia to 371. Despite the large total, it was chased down by South Africa in the 50th over. Australia lost the 5-match series 5–0.
### South Africa, New Zealand and Pakistan in Australia 2016–17
Following the 5–0 ODI defeat in South Africa, the Australian team returned home for a 3 Test series against South Africa. In the first Test Smith made a duck and 34 runs, and Australia lost the Test match. In the second Test at Hobart, Smith made 48 not out in the first innings but the team capitulated, only making a total score of 85 runs and ending up losing the Test. Following the defeat, criticism of Smith's captaincy and the team's performance emerged which saw the influx of young players such as Matt Renshaw, Peter Handscomb and Nic Maddison for the last Test. After losing five consecutive Tests, Smith made 59 and 40, respectively, with the addition of his team performances to win the day-night Test match in Adelaide. The win in Adelaide avoided a 3–0 whitewash at home, as the 2–1 defeat marked Smith's first series defeat at home.
After the Test series against South Africa, New Zealand played 3 ODIs in between the two Test series against South Africa and Pakistan. In the first ODI, Steve Smith registered 164 runs at the SCG, marking the highest ODI score at the ground, beating the previous score of 162 set by AB De Villiers during the 2015 World Cup. He was awarded "man of the match". In the second ODI he made 72 runs and in Melbourne of the final ODI he was dismissed for a duck. The Australian team won the contested Chappell-Hadlee Trophy 3–0 and returned the trophy to Australia.
Pakistan was scheduled to have three Test series and 5 ODIs. In the first Test in Brisbane, Smith made 130 and 63 runs. His century in Brisbane marked his 16th Test century and his first against Pakistan. Despite Pakistan being bowled out for a low score of 142 in the first innings, Smith's captaincy tactics sparked a mixed response from critics when the on-field umpires made the decision to increase the fourth day evening session for another thirty minutes, believing a result would be determined. Pakistan made a 4th innings total of 450, as Australia won by 39 runs. The second Test match was held at the Melbourne Cricket Ground and Smith later placed his seventeenth century, the fourth-fastest to do so and also reaching 1000 runs in the calendar year—his third consecutive achievement of this since 2014. Despite intermittent rain, Australia managed an unlikely victory into the last session of day five, resulting in a 2–0 win for Australia. The final Test at the Sydney Cricket Ground marked Steve Smith's 50th Test match, as Australia whitewashed Pakistan 3–0 . Following the victory, he was awarded "Man of the Series" after making a total of 441 runs—the most in the series from both sides.
Smith was once again featured in ICC's 2016 Cricket Awards as a 12th man for the ICC Test team of the year. In the ODI Series against Pakistan, Smith experienced mixed results but played a vital role, with Australia later ending up routing Pakistan 4–1. On 19 January 2017, Steve Smith produced his 8th ODI century against Pakistan at the WACA Ground—becoming the quickest Australian to reach 3000 ODI runs within 79 innings. Following the home series, Smith was scheduled to tour three ODI matches against New Zealand for the Chappell–Hadlee Trophy but later sustained a mild sprain to the medial ligament in his left ankle, so he headed to Dubai in preparation for the upcoming four Test tour of India.
### Tour of India 2017
Following the training at ICC's Cricket Academy Centre in Dubai, Smith began the tour of India with a century in their maiden warm-up match in Mumbai. He replicated his ton in the first Test in Pune where he produced his first century in the Indian Subcontinent, accompanied by the support of his bowlers to win their first Test match in India since 2004 and breaking India's 19 match undefeated streak, stretching back from 2012. Veteran commentator Harsha Bhogle and other Indian Media rated Smith's third innings hundred at Pune as one of the best ever by a visiting player in India. The Wisden described Smith's ton as an impossible hundred on a minefield of a pitch at Pune where all other batsman from both sides struggled to get a decent score.
<div class="quotebox pullquote floatright " style="
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> "Our choice as the best Test innings is when the world's leading Test batsman defied form and a devilish pitch to produce a most unlikely, match-winning hundred.
— Wisden on Smith's Pune hundred.
</div>
In the 3rd Test match in Ranchi, which is the first-ever Test match hosted at this venue, Steve Smith scored yet another century, 178 not out. This is the third-highest score by an Australian cricketer in Test matches played in India and the highest by an Australian Captain. In the fourth Test in Dharmasala, Smith scored 111 in the first innings which helped Australia to a first innings score of 300. In the second innings, Smith played a ball onto his stumps after scoring a rapid and threatening 17 runs off 15 balls. Smith was the highest run scorer in the series, scoring 499 runs at an average of 71.29, including three centuries.
### Ashes in Australia 2017–18
In the first Test at Brisbane, Smith scored the first century of the series, 141\*, which was his 21st Test century in his 105th innings—making him the third-quickest to score 21 Test centuries behind Donald Bradman and Sunil Gavaskar.
On 16 December 2017, Smith scored 239 in the final Ashes match at the WACA Ground. He was quick to score his 22nd century at the WACA, his century coming from 138 balls, including sixteen fours and a six, before he converted that into a career-best 239. It was his second double-hundred and his first as captain.
In the fourth Ashes test at Melbourne, Smith continued his prodigious form when he scored 76 in the first innings before he was bowled by England debutant Tom Curran, providing him with his first wicket in test cricket. A series best 244\* by England's Alastair Cook then placed Australia in a tense situation that saw them trail by 164 at the start of the fourth day. Coming in at 2/65 before lunch on a rain affected day four, Smith batted until the closure of play on day five and scored yet another century, finishing with a defiant 102\* from 275 deliveries to guide Australia to a draw and denying England of its first victory in Australia since 2011.
Smith concluded the 2017 calendar year with six centuries and three fifties, along with an average of 76.76 and a total of 1,305 runs, the highest of any player that year. During the final Ashes match in Sydney, Smith reached the milestone of 6,000 Test runs in 111 innings, becoming the equal second-fastest player and also the youngest Australian, ever to do so.
Smith garnered praise from opponent captain Joe Root for leading the team from the front, and in Root's opinion Smith was the difference between the two teams during 2017–18 Ashes series. Smith was the highest run scorer in the series, scoring 687 runs at an average of 137.40, including three centuries and two fifties.
In 2017 Smith was awarded the ICC Test Player of the Year award and named in the ICC Test Team of the Year by the ICC. In February 2018 he received the Allan Border Medal and Australian Test Player of the Year award.
## 2018: Tour of South Africa, ball-tampering incident and suspension
### Tour of South Africa 2018
Smith was rested for the T20 series against New Zealand and England so he could prepare for the South African Test series. The series was marred by controversial incidents on and off field. Australia won the first Test by 118 runs with Smith making scores of 56 and 38 runs. The result was overshadowed by a stairwell confrontation between Australian vice captain David Warner and South African wicket-keeper Quinton de Kock. Footage emerged showing Warner having to be physically restrained after words were spoken between the two. This led to Smith and opposing captain Faf du Plessis being called to a meeting with umpires and match officials, where they were reminded of their responsibility to control their teams. South Africa won the second Test by 6 wickets, with Smith's contributions being only 25 and 11 runs. Smith's diminishing returns with the bat and lower than average strike rate suggested that he may have been struggling somewhat. During the match South African fast bowler and player of the match Kagiso Rabada was suspended for the following Test after he made physical contact with Smith after he dismissed him. Rabada successfully appealed the ban; a decision that annoyed Smith.
### Ball-tampering incident and suspension
Australia lost by 322 runs in the third Test, with Smith barely contributing to the score. However, the match result was overshadowed by illegal ball tampering that occurred on the third day. Cameron Bancroft, the second-youngest and most inexperienced member of the team, was captured by television cameras surreptitiously using sandpaper to rough up the cricket ball. He then hid the sandpaper in his underwear before being confronted by the on-field umpires. When attending the press conference at the conclusion of the third day's play with Bancroft, Smith admitted that the "leadership group" of the team discussed tampering with the ball to influence the result of the match during the lunch break. He admitted that he was part of the "leadership group" but did not identify the other members. Smith and vice-captain David Warner stood down from the team leadership the morning after the incident, but still played on, and wicketkeeper Tim Paine took over as interim captain for the rest of the Test match. Subsequently, match referee Andy Pycroft for the ICC banned Smith for one Test match and fined him 100% of his match fee. He handed Bancroft three demerit points and fined him 75% of his match fee.
Cricket Australia launched an independent investigation, charging Smith with bringing the game into disrepute. He was suspended and sent home from the tour. The report stated that, while he did not develop the plan, Smith was found to have misled match officials and others, and as captain did not act to prevent it. He was therefore banned from all international and domestic cricket for 12 months starting from 29 March 2018. He was also debarred from consideration for any team leadership role for an additional 12 months. Warner and Bancroft also received bans. Smith also had his contract with the Rajasthan Royals IPL team for the 2018 season terminated by the Board of Control for Cricket in India as a consequence of the sanctions.
Smith arrived in Sydney on 29 March. In a press conference at Sydney Airport, a tearful Smith started by saying that he had nothing to add to Cricket Australia's report. He said that as captain of the Australian cricket team, he took full responsibility (even though he did not devise the plan to change the condition of the ball or actually perform the act), and that he had made a serious error in judgement: "It was a failure of leadership, my leadership." As well as apologising to his "teammates, to fans of cricket all over the world and to all Australians who are disappointed and angry", he specifically referred to the effect that the incident had had on his parents and implored others faced with questionable decisions to consider their parents. He added, "I know I will regret this for the rest of my life. I'm absolutely gutted. I hope in time I can earn back respect and forgiveness."
## 2019: Return to international cricket, dominant Ashes series
### ODI World Cup in England 2019
In April 2019, he was named in Australia's squad for the 2019 Cricket World Cup. After missing the 2018–19 season, Smith was awarded a national contract by Cricket Australia for the 2019–20 season. On 1 June 2019, Smith played in Australia's opening match of the Cricket World Cup, against Afghanistan, at the County Ground in Bristol. On 11 July 2019, in the semi-final match against England Smith scored 85 runs, becoming the second batsman after Sachin Tendulkar to score four 50+ scores in Cricket World Cup knockouts. In the tournament, he scored 379 runs at an average of 37.90, including four fifties.
### Ashes in England 2019
In July 2019, he was named in Australia's squad for the 2019 Ashes series in England. In the first Test at Edgbaston, Smith scored centuries in both innings, his ninth and tenth Ashes centuries and his 24th and 25th overall. Smith's first innings hundred was hailed as one of his finest ever by British Media as he was returning from a year-long suspension and was batting with the tail for a large part of his innings under tricky conditions. His 25th came in his 119th innings, second only to Don Bradman (who took 69 innings). Smith also rated his first innings hundred at Edgbaston as his best ever.
In the first innings of the second Test, his innings was interrupted on 80, when he was hit by a 148.7 km/h ball on the left side of his neck, under the ear from Jofra Archer. He later returned to complete his innings after passing the concussion tests and was out, lbw, for 92. On 18 August 2019, the final day of the Test, Smith was replaced by Marnus Labuschagne, after further tests showed he had actually suffered concussion due to the blow the previous day. Therefore, Labuschagne became the first player to become a concussion substitute in a Test match following a change in the International Cricket Council's (ICC) rules. The concussion then ruled him out of the third Test, though this did not stop him reclaiming the number one position in the Test batting rankings on 3 September 2019.
In the first innings of the fourth Test at Old Trafford Smith scored his third double-century in Test matches and third century in the series and became the first batsman to score 500 or more runs in three successive Ashes series.
Smith registered his tenth consecutive Ashes fifty-plus score in the first innings of the fifth Test, breaking Inzamam Ul Haq's record for the most consecutive Test 50+ scores against a single opposition. He finished the series with 774 runs at an average of 110.57, by far the most on either side. Smith made 3 hundreds and 3 fifties. He was awarded his second consecutive Compton–Miller Medal as the man of the series.
British Media along with former cricketers rated his dominating batting in the series as one of the greatest batting displays in a test series.
## 2019–2021: Form slump
### Sri Lanka, Pakistan and New Zealand in Australia 2019–20
After retaining the Ashes in England, the Australian team returned home for two back to back T20I series against Sri Lanka and Pakistan. In the first T20I against Sri Lanka, Smith did not bat, but made 53 not out and 13 in the second and third matches respectively. Australia went on to win the three match series 3–0. Although Smith was not required to bat in the first and third T20Is against Pakistan, his valuable contribution of 80 not out in the second match helped Australia win the match by seven wickets, and go on to win the T20I series 2–0.
Following the T20I series', Australia played Pakistan and New Zealand at home in two and three match Test series respectively. In contrast to the preceding Ashes tour, Smith made little contribution with the bat throughout the test series against Pakistan, scoring 4 and 36 in the first and second matches respectively. Despite this, Australia went on to win the Test series 2–0, winning both matches by an innings margin. During the second test match of the series at Adelaide, Smith overtook Donald Bradman as the 11th highest run scorer for Australia in tests. Smith also became the fastest test batsman to score 7,000 test runs in his 126th innings, bettering the 73-year-old record of Walter Hammond (130 innings).
In the first day-night Test match at Perth against New Zealand, Smith struggled, scoring 43 and 16, and was dismissed both innings to the short-pitched bowling of fast-bowler Neil Wagner. Australia went on to win the first Test by 296 runs. In the second test at Melbourne, Smith continued to find form when he scored 85 in the first innings before he was again dismissed by Neil Wagner, denying Smith of a record fifth consecutive Test century at the MCG. Although Australia bowled New Zealand out for 148 and progressively built on their large first innings lead, Smith was dismissed for 7 in the second innings, giving Neil Wagner his 200th Test wicket and fourth consecutive dismissal of Smith in the series. Despite this, Australia comfortably won the match by 247 runs and retained the Trans-Tasman Trophy. On Day 1 of the Melbourne test, Smith also went past Greg Chappell's tally of 7,110 moving into 10th position as highest run-scorer for Australia in Tests. The 3rd Test saw Smith reach the half-century mark again, reaching 63 from 182 balls, taking 45 minutes to get off the mark. Australia won the match by 279 runs, completing a clean sweep of the Test series.
In a similar vein to Bodyline devised by England in the 1930s to disrupt Bradman's scoring, which was largely employed by Harold Larwood, New Zealand devised a set of tactics to curb Smith's scoring. It involved left-arm fast-medium bowler Neil Wagner pitching short to Smith attempting to get him out caught on the leg side. The plan enjoyed good results, with Wagner dismissing Smith all four times in Perth and Melbourne, however Colin de Grandhomme claimed Smith's wicket in the Test at Sydney. Smith himself said after the first Test, "The pink one's a little bit different - it just sort of comes off the wicket at different paces ... I couldn't quite time the ball where I wanted to at certain times but no doubt I'm going to get a little bit (of short-pitch bowling) in Melbourne, I dare say, on probably a different wicket. We'll see how we go." Despite Smith scoring 214 runs from 5 innings at an average of 42.80, and atypically for Smith a low strike rate of 34.13—who just three months earlier in the 2019 Ashes scored at a rate of 64.71 per 100 balls—Australia managed to win all three Tests by a margin of over 200 runs, largely thanks to Labuschagne's batting.
### Tours of India and South Africa 2019–20
Australia travelled to India to play three ODI matches between 14 and 19 January 2020. Smith was not required in the first match. In the second match, Smith came in at 1/20 and looked set to reach another hundred, but was dismissed for 98 as he played on to his stumps off Kuldeep Yadav. In the 3rd match, Smith made 131 off 132 balls as Australia reached a total of 286 from the 50 overs. However, Smith's hundred was in vain as India chased down the target in the 48th over, India winning the series 2–1.
Australia travelled to South Africa to play a 3 ODI matches and 3 T20I matches between 21 February and 7 March 2020. The first match of the T20I series in Johannesburg saw Smith topscore with 45, helping Australia to a total of 196 winning by 107 runs. Australia was sent in to bat in the 3rd match at Cape Town, making 193 runs from their 20 overs, Smith remaining not out on 30 from 15 balls. South Africa was bowled out for 96, Australia winning by 97 runs, and winning the T20I series 2–1.
Smith topscored in the first ODI match with 76, but the rest of the team could only manage 134 between them, getting bowled out in the 46th over for 217. Smith failed to make any significant scores for the remaining games as Australia lost the ODI series 0–3.
### New Zealand in Australia 2020
New Zealand returned to Australia after the Test series, with games scheduled to be held on 13, 15 and 20 March 2020. The first match was won by Australia, with a winning margin of 71 runs; Smith getting bowled for 14 by Santner. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2nd and 3rd matches were cancelled without a ball being bowled due to travel restrictions.
### Tour of England 2020
On 16 July 2020, Smith was named in a 26-man preliminary squad of players to begin training ahead of a possible tour to England following the COVID-19 pandemic. On 14 August 2020, Cricket Australia confirmed that the fixtures would be taking place, with Smith included in the touring party.
Smith's scoring was unremarkable in the 3 T20I matches. Between the last T20I match and first ODI match, Smith was struck on the head at training, and subsequently missed the first two ODIs. Smith was still feeling the effects before the 3rd ODI, and was left out again, missing all three matches in the series.
### India in Australia 2020–21
India's tour began with a 3-match ODI series. In the first match in Sydney, Smith came to the wicket after a large opening partnership, and put on a 108-run partnership with Aaron Finch. Smith brought up his hundred off 62 deliveries, the third fastest by an Australian and finished with 105 runs off 66 balls. Smith made a second century in the second match at Sydney, again requiring only 62 deliveries. He was dismissed on 104 from 64 deliveries. Smith and Labuschagne put on a 136-run partnership. Australia won the match by 51 runs, and Smith was again awarded Player of the Match for his performance. Australia won the series 2–1. Smith was awarded Player of the Series for his efforts.
Following the ODI series was a 3-match T20I series. Smith made a respectable 46 in the second match, but his scores in the other matches were unremarkable. Australia lost the series 1–2.
In November 2020, Smith was nominated for the Sir Garfield Sobers Award for ICC Male Cricketer of the Decade, and the award for Test cricketer of the decade.
Smith's poor form for his standards continued as he scored 1 and 1\* in the opening Test of the Border-Gavaskar trophy in Adelaide, Australia winning the match after bowling India out for 36, their lowest total in Tests. Smith scored 0 and 8 at Melbourne as India won by 8 wickets in contrast to his previous seven Tests at the ground where he had averaged 113.50. Since the 2019 Ashes, Smith had averaged 26.40. Ex-Australian captain Ian Chappell noted "He doesn't look as comfortable at the crease because India have given him things to think about" and "In trying to avoid one way of getting out, you can create another one, and I think that's happened a bit with Smith."
Smith was able to break his 14-innings century drought since the 2019 Ashes at his home ground in Sydney with a 226-ball 131 in the first innings. He followed that up with a 167-ball 81 in the third innings, helping to set India a target of 407 in the fourth innings. The match ended in a draw as the series was poised 1 all.
In the fourth and final match of the series at the Gabba, Smith made 36 in the first innings and topscored for Australia with 55 in the third innings. Australia set India a target of 328 to win. India took the game into the 5th day as they chased the target with three wickets remaining as Australia lost the series 1–2.
### T20 World Cup in the UAE 2021
Smith was ruled out of the tours to West Indies and Bangladesh with an elbow injury in his left arm — a recurrence of an injury that prohibited him from playing domestic cricket for a month during February and March in 2021. National selection panel chair Trevor Hohns said of the injury - "I can't tell you how long or how serious it is but it's something that he's had before, and it definitely flared up again whilst playing in the IPL ... How long it'll take to get it completely right, I can't tell you that at the moment ... the main thing from our point of view with Steven is to make sure he is fit for the T20 World Cup and of course the Ashes next season." In August 2021, Smith was named in Australia's squad for the 2021 ICC Men's T20 World Cup.
Smith played a "floating position" in Australia's win in the T20 World Cup. He scored 69 runs at a strike rate of 97.18.
## 2021–present: Australian vice captaincy
### Ashes in Australia 2021–22
In November 2021, following Tim Paine's resignation from the Test captaincy amid allegations of improper conduct in 2017, Pat Cummins was promoted to captain of the Test side, as Smith returned to a leadership position with the vice captaincy. In the first Test in Brisbane, Smith fell to 'a lazy shot' to Mark Wood for 12.
Smith captained Australia for the second Test in Adelaide, when Cummins was ruled out for the match after he was deemed to be a close contact of someone with COVID-19. Smith passed 50 in the first innings, but was trapped leg before wicket on 93 to James Anderson to a ball that kept low. In the second innings, Smith survived multiple chances (including a first-ball drop by Buttler) but was out on 6, gloved down the leg side to Robinson. Smith had also picked up his first test wicket in 6 years, dismissing Jack Leach, who was caught by David Warner.
After the Test, Smith said "It brought back some old memories in a way and I had fun out there, but it's Patty's team. I'm the vice-captain and I will help him any way I can. That's my job. Hopefully we can keep the momentum going into what should be an amazing Boxing Day Test."
### Tour of Pakistan 2022
Australia toured Pakistan in 2022 to play three tests, three ODIs and a one off T20I. Smith played during the three tests, but did not play in the ODIs and T20Is. This tour was the Australia's first tour of Pakistan since 1998. Smith performed well against Pakistan, averaging 56.50 in 4 innings and achieving a top score of 78, but did not manage to fully take advantage of the "dead" and "benign" pitch at the Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium during the first test, unlike his Pakistani contemporaries. During the series, Smith had also become the fastest man to reach 8,000 test runs, achieving it in 151 innings, one less than the previous title holder, Kumar Sangakkara and three innings faster than Sachin Tendulkar. Smith was also the first person to achieve this feat with a batting average over 60, reaching 8,000 test runs with a 60.1 average at the time.
### Tour of Sri Lanka 2022
In 2022, Australia toured Sri Lanka for 3 T20Is, 5 ODIs and 2 tests. Smith did not play during the first T20I, but played in the second and third, where he scored 5 runs in the second match and 37 runs off of 27 balls and remained not out in the third match. Smith finished the T20I series with a 42.0 batting average, with a high score of 37. Smith played during the first two ODI matches, but was unable to play during the last three due to a quad injury. He scored 53 runs off 60 balls during the first match and scored 28 runs off of 35 balls during the second match. He finished the ODI series with an average of 40.50, a high score of 53 and scored 81 runs in 2 innings.
Smith played during both of the tests, and scored 6 runs off of 11 balls before being run out by Niroshan Dickwella. This mix up had caused Smith to lose his temper against his batting partner at the time, Usman Khawaja, where he was visibly irritated. However, Smith states that there is no lingering fallout between the two of them. Smith did not bat during the second innings, as Australia bowled Sri Lanka out for 212 and 113, and had a target of 5 runs, winning the match by 10 wickets. During the second test, Smith scored 145 runs off of 272 balls and remained not out. This was his first century since January 2021; a time span of 547 days, as well as being his 28th Test century. During the second innings however, Smith was dismissed for 0 and Australia collapsed, as Sri Lanka beat Australia by an innings and 39 runs. During the second innings, Smith had reviewed the original "out" decision by the umpire, only to confirm the umpire's decision. This review was called "comical" and "appalling" by multiple news sources. Smith finished the test series with 151 runs from 3 innings, an average of 75.50 and with a high score of 145\*. He was the second highest run scorer during the series, behind Sri Lankan batsman, Dinesh Chandimal.
### T20 World Cup in Australia 2022
### England and the West Indies in Australia 2022–23
In October 2022, Smith was named in the Australian ODI squad for the three-match home ODI series. He scored 195 runs including two half centuries in 3 matches at an average of 97.50 as Australia won the series in a 3–0 whitewash.
In November 2022, He was named in the Australia Test squad for the series against the West Indies.
In the first Test in Perth, Smith scored 200 not out from 311 deliveries, his fourth double-century in his Test career. Smith said after his innings: "I think from the first one-dayer against England, where I sort of implemented the work that I've been doing, it felt really good straightaway." He went on to say "I suppose the reason for my slight change in technique is because I was unhappy with where I was at with my batting ... But I think now with the way I'm able to play and the way teams have bowled against me, I've had to adapt a bit and where I'm at with my body and my hands I feel like I'm opening up the whole ground as opposed to probably just behind square on the leg side, and I'm able to hit the ball in different areas, which I probably was able to hit previously. So I feel in a good place."
### Home series against South Africa
In December 2022, Smith was named in Australia's Test squad as the vice-captain for their home series against South Africa. In the third Test, on 5 January 2023, he scored 104 runs and moved past Matthew Hayden and Michael Clarke to become the fourth highest Australian Test run-scorer. This was also his 30th Test century, the equal third most by an Australian.''
### 2023 ICC World Test Championship Final and The Ashes
In May 2023, Smith was named in Australia's squad for the final, which was set to take place at The Oval, Kennington on June 7, 2023. During the final, Smith consolidated Australia's position in the first innings with a 285 run partnership with Travis Head, ending the innings scoring 121 runs which marked his 31st century in Test cricket. With his contribution, Australia defeated India in the final by 240 runs, making Smith the first men's cricket player (along with David Warner and Mitchell Starc) to win the ICC World Cup, ICC Men's T20 World Cup, and the ICC World Test Championship.
## Playing style
Smith is a right-handed batsman with a technique that has attracted attention for its unorthodoxy. He moves around frequently in the crease, especially during bowlers' run-up, and ends up with the toes of his feet outside off stump against right-handers, controls the bat with his bottom hand (that is, the hand closest to the blade of the bat), and is capable of playing unconventional cricket shots like the reverse sweep. Playing in a club match in January 2010, right-handed Smith took guard left-handed and hit a six. Due to his unorthodox style, Smith was initially labelled as a limited-overs batsman who might struggle in the longer form of the game, especially early in his career when he was vulnerable outside off stump. However, Smith compensates for his unique technique with outstanding hand-eye co-ordination, focus, and his footwork, especially to spin bowlers, is exemplary. Smith spontaneously experimented with his technique during the Perth Test match in the 2013–14 Ashes, during which he decided to take a "prelim movement back and across" to counter short-pitched bowling. This change took his batting average from 33 in 2013 to 64.95 in 2019. As of 2023, it is 58.61. At the time of delivery, Smith's stumps are fully covered, making bowled dismissals unlikely. This position also allows him to play to either the on or off side with ease.
Much of the credit for Smith's success can also be attributed to batting coach Trent Woodhill, who coached Smith as a junior and noted his abundant talent. He has also defended Smith's unique batting style, and has long argued that in Australia, many naturally talented cricketers who may not necessarily have an orthodox technique are let down by over-coaching; in the years between leaving school and his elevation into international cricket, Smith had his technique picked apart by a number of well-intentioned coaches. Since re-establishing his working relationship with Woodhill, Smith appears to have regained calm and confidence in his cricket, which has since produced results over the last few seasons. Smith is also known for his concentration, being able to bat for long periods of time, even through a whole day's play.
As a bowler, however, after his quick rise up the batting order (until he became captain, and settled in at 4), the comparisons to Shane Warne never gathered momentum. He was an able option as a leg spinner early in his career, but was under-used because he was described as a very defensive bowler.
When he was captain for Australia, he had been initially tagged as the second "Captain Grumpy" since Allan Border early in his captaincy reign, having to warn Mitchell Starc for unsportsmanlike behaviour, and being highly critical of the team's bowling and fielding despite beating New Zealand by over 200 runs in 2015. Later, in 2017–2018, he publicly criticised Glenn Maxwell's training regimen when Maxwell was dropped from the Australian ODI squad. He was also criticised for having too much influence over team selections.
Smith is consistently rated as one of the top-ranked Test batsmen in the world, according to the ICC Player Rankings.
## Career best performances
As of December 2022, Smith has made a total of 45 first-class centuries, 13 List A centuries and one T20 century. Of these, 29 of his first-class centuries were scored in Test matches and 12 of his List A centuries scored in One Day Internationals. His best bowling figures of seven wickets for the cost of 64 runs (7/64) were taken for New South Wales against South Australia in the Sheffield Shield.
- Smith's highest score in Test and first-class cricket is 239 scored against England at the WACA Ground, Perth in 2017.
- His highest score in ODI and List A cricket is 164 scored against New Zealand at the Sydney Cricket Ground in 2016.
- His highest score in Twenty20 International matches is 90 runs, scored against England at Sophia Gardens, Cardiff in 2015.
- He has scored three T20 centuries. The first was for Rising Pune Supergiants against Gujarat Lions at Maharashtra Cricket Association Stadium, Pune in the 2016 Indian Premier League, the second was when he scored 101 off 56 balls against the Adelaide Strikers for the Sydney Sixers at C.ex Coffs International Stadium and the third against the Sydney Thunder for the Sydney Sixers at the SCG in the 2022–23 Big Bash League season.
### Test match performance
## Records and achievements
- Fastest Australian batsman and sixth-fastest batsman in the world to reach 10,000 runs in International cricket.
- Fastest batsman to reach 7,000, 8,000 runs in Tests.
- Joint second-fastest batsman (after Don Bradman), youngest Australian and fourth youngest overall to reach 6,000 runs in Tests.
- Only the second batsman to score more than 1,000 runs in Test cricket in four consecutive calendar years.
- First batsman to register ten successive scores of 50 or more against a single opponent in Test history.
- The second-highest Test batting rating (947), behind Don Bradman's 961, reached on 30 December 2017.
- Only player to win the ICC Test Player of the Year award more than once.
- Second youngest batsman to top the ICC Test batting rankings.
- Joint most consecutive 50+ scores in World Cup history with five such scores in the 2015 Cricket World Cup.
- Joint most 50+ scores (four) in Cricket World Cup knockout matches.
- During the 2018 Australian tour to South Africa, he equalled the world record by taking five catches as a non-wicketkeeper in a Test innings and was the 11th fielder to achieve this feat.
- Youngest player to win the Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy (ICC Cricketer of the Year award).
- Fastest batsman after Donald Bradman (68 Innings) to reach 25 test centuries (119 Innings).
- Fifth player to win the Allan Border Medal more than once.
- First cricketer to win the McGilvray Medal four times.
- Named as ICC Test batsman of 2010's.
- Fastest Australian batsman to reach 14,000 runs in International cricket.
- First player to score a century in the Big Bash League for the Sydney Sixers. Smith scored 101 runs of 56 deliveries at C.ex Coffs International Stadium in Coffs Harbour, New South Wales against the Adelaide Strikers in their 59 run win. He was also named Man of the Match.
- Third player to win the Allan Border Medal four times, a record alongside former captains Ricky Ponting and Michael Clarke.
- Least number of innings to reach 32 centuries in Test cricket, with 174 innings.
## Awards
- Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy (ICC Cricketer of the Year): 2015
- ICC Test Player of the Year: 2015, 2017
- ICC Men's Test Player of the Decade: 2011–2020
- ICC Men's Test Team of the Decade: 2011–2020
- ICC Test Team of the Year: 2015, 2016, 2017, 2019
- ICC ODI Team of the Year: 2015
- Allan Border Medal: 2015, 2018, 2021, 2023
- Australian Test Player of the Year: 2015, 2018
- Australian One Day International Player of the Year: 2015, 2021
- Compton–Miller Medal: 2017–18, 2019
- McGilvray Medal: 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017
- Steve Waugh Award: 2009–10, 2011–12
- Wisden Cricketers of the Year: 2015
## In popular culture
The Test, a 2020 Australian English-language TV documentary, produced as an Original for Amazon Prime Video. The documentary was also co-produced by Cricket Australia. The documentary revolves around the Infamous ball-tampering scandal at Cape Town in March 2018 and how Australia rebuild their reputation after the scandal. Smith's redemption and his dominating batting display in the 2019 Ashes after the scandal was one of the key point of the series.
## See also
- List of cricketers by number of international centuries scored
- List of cricketers who have scored centuries in both innings of a Test match
## Publications |
1,359,212 | Junior Eurovision Song Contest | 1,173,767,236 | Annual international song competition for youth | [
"2003 establishments in Europe",
"Eurovision events",
"Junior Eurovision Song Contest",
"Recurring events established in 2003",
"Song contests",
"Youth music competitions"
]
| The Junior Eurovision Song Contest (often shortened to JESC, Junior Eurovision or Junior EuroSong) is an international song competition which has been organised by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) annually since 2003.
The competition has many similarities to the Eurovision Song Contest from which its name is taken. Each participating broadcaster sends an act, the members of which are aged 9 to 14 on the day of the contest, and an original song lasting three minutes at most to compete against the other participating entries. Each entry represents the country served by the participating broadcaster. Viewers from all around the world are invited to vote for their favourite performances by online voting, and a national jury from each participating country also vote. The overall winner of the contest is the entry that receives the most points after the scores from every country have been collected and totalled. The most recent winner is Lissandro of , who won the in Yerevan, Armenia, with his song "Oh maman!".
In addition to the countries taking part, the 2003 contest was also broadcast in Estonia, Finland and Germany (who would not debut until the 2020 contest), Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2004 and from 2006 to 2011, followed by Andorra in 2006, and Iceland in 2021, however these countries have yet to participate. Since 2006, the contest has been streamed live on the Internet through the official website of the contest. Australia was invited to participate in the contest, while Kazakhstan was invited in the contest, making it the only major Eurovision event to feature multiple associate member broadcasters.
## Origins and history
The origins of the contest date back to 2000 when Danmarks Radio held a song contest for Danish children that year and the following year. The idea was extended to a Scandinavian song festival in 2002, MGP Nordic, with Denmark, Norway and Sweden as participants. In 2001 and 2002, Polish broadcaster Telewizja Polska (TVP) hosted two pilot editions of an international song contest for children in Konin with the name Eurokonkurs (English: Eurocontest) in 2001 and Światowy Konkurs Piosenki (English: World Song Contest) in 2002 but the whole project was called Eurokonkurs. TVP went on to hold further editions in Konin between 2003 and 2006, some time of which after Poland's initial withdrawal from Junior Eurovision Song Contest. In 2006, Eurokonkurs returned as Światowe Talenty (English: World Talents) and was hosted by Dominika Rydz and Weronika Bochat, who represented Poland in Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2004 as part of girl group KWADro.
In November 2002, the EBU picked up the idea for a song contest featuring children and opened the competition to all member broadcasters making it a pan-European event. The working title of the programme was "Eurovision Song Contest for Children", branded with the name of the EBU's long-running and already popular song competition, the Eurovision Song Contest. Denmark was asked to host the first edition after experience with MGP Nordic in that country.
After a successful first contest in Copenhagen, the second faced several location problems. The event originally should have been organised by British broadcaster ITV in Manchester. ITV then announced that due to financial and scheduling reasons, the contest would not take place in the United Kingdom. It is also thought that another factor to their decision was the previous year's audience ratings for ITV which were below the expected amount. The EBU approached Croatian broadcaster HRT, who had won the previous contest, to stage the event in Zagreb, though it later emerged that HRT had 'forgotten' to book the venue in which the contest would have taken place. It was at this point, with five months remaining until the event would be held, that Norwegian broadcaster NRK stepped in to host the contest in Lillehammer.
Broadcasters have had to bid for the rights to host the contest since 2004 to avoid such problems from happening again. Belgium was therefore the first country to successfully bid for the rights to host the contest in 2005.
All contests have been broadcast in 16:9 widescreen and in high definition. All have also had a CD produced with the songs from the show. Between 2003 and 2006, DVDs of the contest were also produced though this ended due to lack of interest.
As of 2008, the winner of the contest is decided by 50% televote and 50% national jury vote. The winners of all previous contests had been decided exclusively by televoting. Between 2003 and 2005 viewers had around 10 minutes to vote after all the songs had been performed. Between 2006 and 2010 the televoting lines were open throughout the programme. Since 2011 viewers vote after all the songs had been performed. Profits made from the televoting during the 2007 and 2008 contests were donated to UNICEF.
Prior to 2007, a participating broadcaster's failure in not broadcasting the contest live would incur a fine. Now broadcasters are no longer required to broadcast the contest live, but may transmit it with some delay at a time that is more appropriate for children's television broadcast.
The 2007 contest was the subject of the 2008 documentary Sounds Like Teen Spirit: A Popumentary. The film followed several contestants as they made their way through the national finals and onto the show itself. It was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival 2008 and was premiered in Ghent, Belgium and also in Limassol, Cyprus, where the 2008 contest was held.
## Format
The format of the contest has remained relatively unchanged over the course of its history in that the format consists of successive live musical performances by the artists entered by the participating broadcasters. The EBU claims that the aim of the programme is "to promote young talent in the field of popular music, by encouraging competition among the [...] performers".
The programme was always screened on a Saturday night in late November/early December and lasts approximately two hours fifteen minutes. Since 2016, the contest is screened on an early Sunday evening.
Traditionally the contest will consist of an opening ceremony in which the performers are welcomed to the event, the performances of the entries, a recap of the songs to help televoting viewers decide which entries to vote for, an interval act usually performed after the televoting has closed, the results of the televoting or back-up jury voting which is then followed by the declaration of the winner and a reprise of the winning song. At various points throughout the show, networks may opt out for a few minutes to screen a commercial break.
Since 2008 the winning entry of each contest has been decided by a mixture of televoting and national juries, each counting for fifty per cent of the points awarded by each country. The winners of all previous contests had been decided exclusively by televoting. The ten entries that have received the most votes in each country are awarded points ranging from one to eight, then ten and twelve. These points are then announced live during the programme by a spokesperson representing the participating country (who, like the participants, is aged between ten and fifteen). Once all participating countries have announced their results, the country that has received the most points is declared the winner of that year's contest.
Until 2013 the winners receive a trophy and a certificate. Since 2013 contest the winner, runner-up and third place all win trophies and certificates.
Originally, unlike its adult version, the winning country did not receive the rights to host the next contest. From 2014 until 2017, the winning country had first refusal on hosting the following contest. Italy used this clause in 2015 to decline hosting the contest that year after their victory in 2014. On 15 October 2017, the EBU announced a return to the original system in 2018, claiming that it would help provide broadcasters with a greater amount of time to prepare, ensuring the continuation of the contest into the future. However, from 2019 onwards all contests have been hosted by the previous year's winning country.
The contest usually features two presenters, one man and one woman, who regularly appear on stage and with the contestants in the green room. The presenters are also responsible for repeating the results immediately after the spokesperson of each broadcaster to confirm which country the points are being given to. Between 2003 and 2012, the spokespersons gave out the points in the same format as the adult contest, behind a backdrop of a major city of that country in the national broadcaster's television studio. From 2013 onwards, the spokespersons give the points from their country on the arena stage, as opposed to the adult contest where spokespersons are broadcast live from their respective country (with the exception of 2020, due to travel restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic).
Despite the Junior Eurovision Song Contest being modelled on the format of the Eurovision Song Contest, there are many distinctive differences that are unique to the children's contest. From 2005 to 2015 every contestant was automatically awarded 12 points to prevent the contestants scoring zero points, although ending with 12 points total was in essence the same as receiving zero, however, no entry has ever received nul points in total scoring.
## Entry restrictions
The song must be written and sung in the national language (or one of the national languages) of the country being represented. However, they can also have a few lines in a different language. The same rule was in the adults' contest from 1966 to 1972 and again from 1977 to 1998. This rule was later changed in 2009 so that up to 25% of a song could be in a different language, usually English. This rule was changed again in 2017, now allowing up to 40% to be in English.
Originally the competition was open to children between the ages of 8 and 15, however in 2007 the age range was narrowed so that only children aged 10 to 15 on the day of the contest were allowed to enter. In 2016 the age range was changed again. From now on children aged 9 to 14 on the day of the contest are allowed to enter.
The song submitted into the contest cannot have previously been released commercially and must last 3 minutes at most. The rule stating that performers also must not have previously released music commercially was active from 2003 to 2006. This rule was dropped in 2007 thus allowing already experienced singers and bands in the competition. As a result, NRK chose to withdraw from the contest.
Since 2008, adults have been allowed to assist in the writing of entries. Previously, all writers had to be aged 10 to 15.
## Organisation
The contest is produced each year by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). The original executive supervisor of the contest was Svante Stockselius who also headed the Steering Group that decides on the rules of the contest, which broadcaster hosts the next contest and oversees the entire production of each programme. In 2011, he was succeeded by Sietse Bakker. In 2013, Vladislav Yakovlev took over the position. Yakovlev was dismissed without any clear reason after three contests, and was replaced by Jon Ola Sand, who had been Executive Supervisor for the Eurovision Song Contest since . On 30 September 2019, Sand announced his intention to step down as Executive Supervisor and Head of Live Events after the Eurovision Song Contest 2020, which was later cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Martin Österdahl was named his successor, starting with the 2020 contest.
Steering Group meetings tend to include the Heads of Delegation whose principal job is to liaise between the EBU and the broadcaster they represent. It is also their duty to make sure that the performers are never left alone without an adult and to "create a team atmosphere amongst the [performers] and to develop their experience and a sense of community."
The table below lists all Executive Supervisors of the Junior Eurovision Song Contest since the first edition (2003):
### Junior Eurovision logo and theme
The former generic logo was introduced for the in Limassol, to create a consistent visual identity. Each year of the contest, the host country creates a sub-theme which is usually accompanied and expressed with a sub-logo and slogan. The theme and slogan are announced by the EBU and the host country's national broadcaster.
The generic logo was revamped in March 2015, seven years after the first generic logo was created. The logo was used for the first time in the in Sofia.
The generic logo was again updated after Nice was revealed as the host city for the , where the "heart flag" symbol of the adult Eurovision Song Contest is featured. It is set to be used for the first time in 2023.
### Slogans
Each contest since 2005 has had a slogan, chosen by the host broadcaster. Based on the slogan, the theme and the visual design are developed.
## Participation
All active member broadcasters of the EBU are permitted to take part in the contest, though the contest has been broadcast in several non-participating countries.
Participation in the contest tends to change dramatically each year. The original Scandinavian broadcasters left the contest in 2006 because they found the treatment of the contestants unethical, and revived the MGP Nordic competition, which had not been produced since the Junior Eurovision Song Contest began. The is the only country to have taken part every year since the first contest in 2003.
40 countries have competed at least once. Listed are all the countries that have taken part in the competition, alongside the year in which they made their debut:
## Winning entries
Overall, twelve countries have won the contest since the inaugural edition in . Five have won the contest once: , , , , and the . Six have won the contest twice: , , , , (the first, and so far only, country to win back to back) and ; while is the only country to have won three times. Both Croatia and Italy achieved their wins on their debut participation in the contest.
## Interval acts and guest appearances
The tradition of interval acts between the songs in the competition programme and the announcement of the voting has been established since the inaugural contest in 2003. Interval entertainment has included such acts as girl group Sugababes and rock band Busted (), Westlife in , juggler Vladik Myagkostupov from the world-renowned Cirque du Soleil () and singer Katie Melua in .
Former Eurovision Song Contest participants and winners have also performed as interval acts, such as Dima Bilan and Evridiki in , Ani Lorak (), Alexander Rybak in and Sirusho (). Emmelie de Forest and the co-host that year, Zlata Ognevich, performed in . 2015 host Poli Genova and Jedward were two of the interval acts in . winner Duncan Laurence and the intended Polish entrant Alicja Szemplińska performed as interval acts in the . runner-up Barbara Pravi performed as an interval act in the . Armenian entrant Rosa Linn performed as an interval act in the .
The winners of Junior Eurovision from 2003 to 2009 performed a medley of their entries together on stage during the 2010 interval. As part of the 2022 interval, eleven previous winners performed in a medley of all the winning songs to date, for the occasion of the 20th edition of the event. The other eight winning songs were performed by the Tavush Diocese Children’s Choir.
The previous winner has performed on a number of occasions since 2005, and from 2013 all participants have performed a "common song" together on stage during the interval. Similar performances took place in 2007 and 2010 with the specially-commissioned UNICEF songs "One World" and "A Day Without War" respectively, the latter with Dmitry Koldun. The official charity song for the contest was "We Can Be Heroes", the money from the sales of which went to the Dutch children's charity KidsRights Foundation.
The event in Limassol, Cyprus finished with the presenters inviting everyone on stage to sing "Hand in Hand", which was written especially for UNICEF and the Junior Eurovision Song Contest that year.
Ruslana was invited to perform at the 2013 contest, which took place in her country's capital Kyiv. Nevertheless, on the day of the contest she withdrew her act from the show, due to the violence shown by the Ukrainian authorities against the Euromaidan protesters.
Since (with the exceptions of 2012, 2014 and 2017), the opening of the show has included a "Parade of Nations" or the "Flag Parade", similar to the Olympic Games opening ceremony. The parade was adopted by the Eurovision Song Contest in 2013 and has continued every year since.
## Eurovision Song Contest
Below is a list of former participants of the Junior Eurovision Song Contest who have gone on to participate in the Eurovision Song Contest. Since , the winner of the Junior Eurovision Song Contest has been invited as a guest at the adult contest the following year. |
3,507,301 | HMS York (90) | 1,165,916,310 | Lead ship of British York-class | [
"1928 ships",
"Maritime incidents in March 1941",
"Maritime incidents in May 1941",
"Ships built on the River Tyne",
"World War II cruisers of the United Kingdom",
"World War II shipwrecks in the Mediterranean Sea",
"York-class cruisers"
]
| HMS York was the lead ship of her class of two heavy cruisers built for the Royal Navy in the late 1920s. She mostly served on the North America and West Indies Station before World War II. Early in the war the ship escorted convoys in the Atlantic and participated in the Norwegian Campaign in 1940. York was transferred to the Mediterranean theatre in late 1940 where she escorted convoys and the larger ships of the Mediterranean Fleet. She was wrecked in an attack by Italian explosive motorboats of the 10th Flotilla MAS at Suda Bay, Crete, in March 1941. The ship's wreck was salvaged in 1952 and scrapped in Bari.
## Design and description
York's design was based on the earlier County classes but was intended to be smaller and cheaper, although better armoured. She was easily distinguishable from her sister ship, Exeter, as the latter had straight masts and funnels, while those of York were angled to the rear. In addition, York also had a very tall bridge designed to clear the aircraft catapult originally planned to be carried on the superfiring ('B') gun turret forward.
York displaced 8,250 long tons (8,380 t) at standard load and 10,620 long tons (10,790 t) at deep load. The ship had an overall length of 575 feet (175.3 m), a beam of 57 feet (17.4 m) and a draught of 20 feet 3 inches (6.2 m). She was powered by Parsons geared steam turbines, driving four shafts, which developed a total of 80,000 shaft horsepower (60,000 kW) and gave a maximum speed of 32.25 knots (59.73 km/h; 37.11 mph). Steam for the turbines was provided by eight Admiralty 3-drum water-tube boilers. York carried a maximum of 1,900 long tons (1,900 t) of fuel oil that gave her a range of 13,300 nautical miles (24,600 km; 15,300 mi) at 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph). The ship's complement was 628 officers and men.
The ship mounted six 50-calibre 8-inch (203 mm) guns in three twin turrets. Her secondary armament consisted of four QF 4-inch (102 mm) Mk V anti-aircraft (AA) guns in single mounts. York mounted two single 2-pounder (40 mm) light AA guns ("pom-poms"). The ship carried two triple torpedo tube above-water mounts for 21-inch (533 mm) torpedoes.
York lacked a full waterline armor belt. The sides of her boiler and engine rooms were protected by 3 inches (76 mm) of armour and sides of the magazines were protected by 4.375 inches (111.1 mm) of armour. The transverse bulkheads at the end of her machinery rooms were 3.5 inches (89 mm) thick. The top and ends of the magazines were three inches thick. The lower deck over the machinery spaces and steering gear had a thickness of 1.5 inches (38 mm). Space and weight was reserved for one catapult and its seaplane, but they were not fitted until after she was completed. A second catapult, intended to be mounted on 'B' turret, was deleted from the design during construction.
## Service
York was laid down by Palmers Shipbuilding and Iron Company, Jarrow, on 18 May 1927, launched on 17 July 1928 and was completed on 1 May 1930. She became the flagship of Vice-Admiral Sir Reginald Drax, then his successor, Vice-Admiral Matthew R. Best, of the 2nd Cruiser Squadron of the Home Fleet upon commissioning. Between 1931 and 1934 she was commanded by Captain Richard Bevan, who was succeeded in Bermuda by Captain H.P. Boxer. She served as the flagship of the 8th Cruiser Squadron on the America and West Indies Station based at the Royal Naval Dockyard on Ireland Island in Bermuda. She left Cartagena, Colombia, on the 29 April 1934, arriving in Bermuda for the first time (along with HMS Exeter from Jamaica) on Friday, 4 May. In Bermuda, York was drydocked in Admiralty Floating Dock No. 1, being the largest vessel to have been lifted by that dock at the time and having required the "almost re-construction" of AFD 1 in order "to accommodate the docking of the larger ships of the H.M.S. York class". The ship played a primary role in the Jubilee Day celebrations of the Silver Jubilee of George V that took place in the City of Hamilton, Bermuda, on the 6 May 1935. She was brought in through the channel to berth with special precautions at the Royal Naval Dockyard during the hurricane that struck Bermuda on 30 November 1935 when winds speeds reached 86 miles per hour (the Dockyard had been extensively damaged during a hurricane in October 1926, which had also sunk the sloop HMS Valerian with the loss of 85 of her crew). York was detached to the Mediterranean Fleet in 1935 and 1936 for the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, before returning to the American Station until the outbreak of war in September 1939.
The ship was transferred to Halifax, Nova Scotia that same month for convoy escort duties (as the circumference of the perimeter of one large convoy was relatively smaller for its area than those of two smaller convoys, requiring fewer escort vessels, convoys originating at Bermuda and Halifax, coded BHX and HX respectively, merged prior to crossing the Atlantic as HX convoys, often with only a single escort early in the war, as was the case with the ill-fated Convoy HX 84). In October 1939, York was assigned to Force F at Halifax, which was active in hunting for commerce raiders and protecting convoys. She was briefly refitted in Bermuda between 31 October and 22 November before she returned to Great Britain for a more thorough refit in December. Upon its completion on 9 February York was assigned to the 1st Cruiser Squadron of Home Fleet. On 3 March 1940 the ship intercepted the German blockade runner Arucas in the Denmark Strait near Iceland, but she was scuttled by her own crew before she could be captured.
In early April 1940, York, and the rest of her squadron, were assigned to carry troops under Plan R 4, the British plan to invade Norway. The troops were disembarked on 8 April when the British learned of the imminent German invasion of Norway and the squadron, under the command of Vice-Admiral John Cunningham, joined the bulk of the Home Fleet already at sea. On 10 April the destroyer HMS Eclipse was badly damaged by air attack and York was detailed to tow her to Lerwick for repairs. The ship, and the light cruisers HMS Manchester and HMS Birmingham, ferried the 1st Battalion of the Green Howards and other troops from Rosyth to Åndalsnes and Molde on 24–25 April. York returned home on 26 April. York was one of the ships used to evacuate British and French troops from Namsos, along with three French transports and a number of British destroyers, on the evening of 1/2 May.
### In the Mediterranean
In August 1940 York was assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet, joining the 3rd Cruiser Squadron in Alexandria in late September, after escorting a convoy around the Cape of Good Hope. Two days later she participated in Operation MB.5, where the Mediterranean Fleet escorted the light cruisers HMS Liverpool and HMS Gloucester as they ferried troops to Malta. During the Battle of Cape Passero, York sank the disabled and abandoned destroyer Artigliere on 13 October after the destroyer's engagement with the light cruiser HMS Ajax the previous evening. A month later York and the Mediterranean Fleet executed Operation MB8, a complex series of manoeuvers, including Operation Judgment, where the ship escorted the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious as her aircraft attacked the Italian Fleet at Taranto on the evening of 11/12 November. A few days later York ferried British troops from Alexandria, Egypt, to Piraeus, Greece. On 26 November, York, and the rest of the 3rd Cruiser Squadron, covered a small convoy to Malta.
The Mediterranean Fleet, including York, sortied on 16 December to conduct air strikes on Italian shipping, airbases on Rhodes and to bombard Valona. In early January 1941 the ship escorted the tanker RFA Brambleleaf and four Flower-class corvettes to Suda Bay, Crete, and covered operations in the Eastern Mediterranean during Operation Excess. She arrived back at Alexandria on 16 January. York returned to Suda Bay in early February for operations against Italian shipping. During Operation Lustre in March, she protected troop convoys from Egypt to Greece.
### Sinking
York was disabled at Suda Bay in Crete by two Italian explosive motorboats of the Italian Regia Marina assault Flotilla Decima Flottiglia MAS, launched by the destroyers Francesco Crispi and Quintino Sella on 26 March 1941; the two old destroyers were fitted with special cranes to operate assault craft. Six motorboats entered the bay, led by Tenente di vascello Luigi Faggioni, and attacked three targets in pairs; the first was York, second the tanker Pericles and last another ship at anchor. Three of the attacking boats had various problems, either mechanical or human, due to the extreme temperature conditions, but the other three successfully attacked their targets. Two motorboats, packed with 330-kilogram (728 lb) charges in the bows, struck York amidships, flooding both boiler rooms and one engine room. Two British seamen were killed. All Italian sailors survived the attack and fell into British hands. The ship was run aground to prevent her from sinking. The submarine HMS Rover was used to supply electrical power to operate the cruiser's guns for anti-aircraft defence, until Rover was severely damaged by air attack and had to be towed away for repairs. On 18 May, further damage was inflicted by German bombers and the ship was damaged beyond repair. Her main guns were wrecked by demolition charges on 22 May 1941 when the Allies began to evacuate Crete. York's wreck was salvaged in February 1952 by an Italian shipbreaker and towed to Bari to be broken up, beginning on 3 March. |
36,252,746 | Asylum of the Daleks | 1,143,460,776 | null | [
"2012 British television episodes",
"Dalek television stories",
"Eleventh Doctor episodes",
"Television episodes written by Steven Moffat"
]
| "Asylum of the Daleks" is the first episode of the seventh series of the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who, broadcast on BBC One on 1 September 2012. It was written by executive producer Steven Moffat and directed by Nick Hurran.
The episode features the alien time traveller the Doctor (Matt Smith) being captured by the Daleks, along with his companions Amy (Karen Gillan) and Rory (Arthur Darvill), who are about to divorce. They are sent by the Daleks to the Asylum, a planet where insane Daleks are exiled, to enable the Asylum to be destroyed before the insane Daleks can escape. The Doctor is helped along the way by Oswin (Jenna-Louise Coleman), a woman whose spaceship had crashed on the planet a year ago and has been trapped there since then.
"Asylum of the Daleks" incorporates many of the different varieties of Daleks seen throughout the programme's 50-year history, and was intended to make the Daleks scary again. Coleman makes her first appearance in Doctor Who in this episode, before returning as the Doctor's new companion in the 2012 Christmas special; her appearance was successfully kept a secret from the general public prior to the episode's broadcast, as her casting as the new companion had already been announced. The episode was watched by 8.33 million viewers in the UK, and received attention on BBC iPlayer and international broadcasts. Critical reception was positive, with some critics questioning the circumstances behind Amy and Rory's breakup.
## Plot
### Prequels
A prequel was released to iTunes on 1 September 2012, and to Zune and Amazon Video on 2 September 2012. In the prequel, a hooded messenger informs the Eleventh Doctor that a woman, Darla von Karlsen, requests his help for her daughter. The messenger provides space-time coordinates to the planet Skaro, home planet of the Daleks.
In addition, Pond Life is an earlier five-part mini serial prequel to this episode, which was released serially in the week leading up to the premiere. The fifth part hints at Amy and Rory's separation.
### Synopsis
The Doctor, having been led into a trap by Darla, is kidnapped by the Daleks and taken to the Parliament of the Daleks. Joined by him are nearly-divorced Amy and Rory, who have been similarly kidnapped from present-day Earth. The Doctor is surprised when the Daleks ask him for help. The Alaska, a starliner that crashed into a planet housing insane, battle-scarred Daleks called the Asylum, has ruptured the planet's force field, thus risking escape of the insane Daleks. To prevent this, the Parliament wishes to destroy the planet remotely, but the force field is still too strong to allow that. The Daleks task the Doctor, Amy and Rory with deactivating the force field from the planet. After arriving, the Doctor, surmising that the Daleks will destroy the planet as soon as he deactivates the force field, plots an escape via a nearby teleporter which will transport them to the Dalek ship. Oswin, a surviving crew member of the Alaska, agrees to deactivate the force field in return for the Doctor coming to rescue her. Meanwhile, Rory and Amy reconcile their marriage.
The Doctor makes his way to Oswin, venturing through a section that holds Daleks who survived encounters with him. Oswin saves the Doctor from these Daleks by removing any memories of him from the Daleks' collective telepathically-shared knowledge. The Doctor enters Oswin's chamber and discovers to his horror that she is a Dalek. Oswin is revealed to have been captured by Daleks after the Alaska crashed on the Asylum and, to preserve her genius-level intellect for Dalek use, was turned into a Dalek. Unable to cope with her conversion, her mind retreated into a fantasy of survival as a human. Oswin fulfils her promise of deactivating the force field, making her final request that the Doctor remember her as the human she once was. The Doctor returns to Amy and Rory, and they teleport back to the TARDIS just as the planet is destroyed. The Daleks fail to recognise the Doctor, revealing the magnitude of Oswin's removal of the Doctor from the Dalek hive intelligence. The Doctor returns Amy and Rory home, where Rory moves back in with Amy.
### Continuity
Some of the Daleks are survivors of previous encounters with the Doctor on Spiridon (Planet of the Daleks, 1973), Kembel (The Daleks' Master Plan, 1965–66), Aridius (The Chase, 1965), Vulcan (The Power of the Daleks, 1966), and Exxilon (Death to the Daleks, 1974). The Special Weapons Dalek, introduced in Remembrance of the Daleks (1988), appears in a cameo. In her opening speech, Darla refers to the Doctor faking his death in the 2011 episodes "The Impossible Astronaut" and "The Wedding of River Song". The concept of nanogenes – microscopic machines – is mentioned in the two-parter "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances" (2005), also written by Moffat. In the closing exchange in the Parliament, the Doctor refers to one of his nicknames as "The Oncoming Storm", first mentioned in the episode "The Parting of the Ways" (2005). The final question of "Doctor who?", besides being a callback to the programme's title, is the "question that must never be answered" that Dorium asks at the end of "The Wedding of River Song".
## Production
Executive producer Steven Moffat announced in 2011 that he intended to give a "rest" to the Daleks. The reason for the rest was that Moffat felt their frequent appearances made them the "most reliably defeatable enemies in the universe". Moffat recalled that the Daleks were remembered for being scary, but due to their legacy as British icons they had become "cuddly" over the years and their true menace forgotten; with "Asylum" he intended to make them scary again, reminding the audience of their intentions. He thought the best way to do this would be to show Daleks that were considered even madder than usual. Actor Karen Gillan admitted that she had not been scared of the Daleks before working on the episode. It is also the first Dalek story Moffat has written for the show; he stated that he "couldn't resist" the opportunity.
In March 2012, it was announced that Jenna-Louise Coleman would replace Gillan and Arthur Darvill as the next companion, first appearing in the 2012 Christmas special. It was Moffat's idea to have her appear in "Asylum of the Daleks" as the character of Oswin; it was not originally planned, and Coleman assumed it was part of her audition at first to see which character fitted her best. He intended to keep her appearance a secret, and thanked the press and fans that it was not leaked. Coleman's scenes were filmed over six days on a closed set with a green screen which she acted to. Whether her later character was the same as Oswin was not confirmed at the time, but her appearance in "The Snowmen" makes it clear that there is a connection. Coleman played each version of the character as individuals with "trust that there would be a payoff" to her mystery.
"Asylum of the Daleks" was directed by Nick Hurran, who directed "The Girl Who Waited" and "The God Complex" of the previous series, as well as the fifth episode of the seventh series. "Asylum of the Daleks" contains many of the Dalek types that the Doctor has faced over the years, including the Special Weapons Dalek from the 1988 story Remembrance of the Daleks. According to The Daily Telegraph, the production team located the remaining models of the various versions of the Daleks and shipped them to the studios in Cardiff Bay. This included a Dalek owned by Russell T Davies, Moffat's predecessor. Executive producer Caroline Skinner knew Davies well and asked to borrow his replica. She stated that he was "thrilled" that it was canonised. The total number of different Daleks was around 25, with models from 1963 to 2010; Skinner said that "there was just a real magic and sense of history about having them". Moffat was concerned about how all the different Daleks would look together, but was pleased once he saw them; he commented that the diversity made them look like a species, rather than identical robots. Many of the props were built from scratch. The snow scenes on the asylum planet were filmed in Spain during the production of "A Town Called Mercy". Music featured in the episode are the "Habanera" from the Georges Bizet opera Carmen, which is used diegetically, and "Feel the Love" by Rudimental is also featured. The Doctor Who logo in the title sequence featured the texture of a Dalek, in keeping with the varied "blockbuster" themes for each of the opening titles of the first half of the series.
## Broadcast and reception
"Asylum of the Daleks" was preview screened at BFI Southbank on 14 August 2012, and at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival during 23–25 August. On 25 August it was also screened in New York City and Toronto. The episode was broadcast to the public on 1 September on BBC One in the United Kingdom, BBC America in the United States, and on Space in Canada, and on 2 September on the ABC iView service. It premiered on 8 September 2012 on ABC1 in Australia, and on 13 September on Prime TV in New Zealand.
Overnight viewing figures for the UK showed that the episode was watched by 6.4 million viewers, the lowest overnight figure for a premiere episode of the revived series; however, viewing patterns indicate that fewer people watch Doctor Who live, and it won its timeslot. The final consolidated rating was 8.33 million viewers, ranking third for the week on BBC One. It was also the most-viewed episode on BBC's online iPlayer the day that it aired, and ended September in the number one spot, with 2.2 million requests. "Asylum of the Daleks" achieved an Appreciation Index of 89, the highest for a series opener of Doctor Who.
Viewing figures in the US on BBC America showed that the episode was watched by 1.555 million viewers. It was the \#1 cable program in its timeslot, and the most watched telecast in the history of the network. The episode also garnered a 0.6 rating in the 18–49 demographic. "Asylum of the Daleks" also was viewed 75,000 times on ABC's iView in Australia, a record audience, and 620,000 watched the premiere on Space in Canada, Doctor Who's second-best ratings for the channel. On Prime in New Zealand, the episode attracted 171,690 viewers, Doctor Who'''s second-highest rating on the channel and the highest rated show on the channel that day.
### Critical reception
"Asylum of the Daleks" received positive reviews from critics. Dan Martin of The Guardian praised Moffat's "script packed with ace curveballs and zappy dialogue" and Nick Hurran's direction. Martin also notes that "more happened in the opening episode than has been covered in most recent two-parters – and events were also dealt with in a lot more depth." He also was pleased that the asylum setting could explore the Daleks while making it reminiscent of the classic series. The Daily Telegraph reviewer Gavin Fuller gave it four out of five stars, describing it as a "confident opener" and highlighting the concept and set design of the asylum. He particularly praised Coleman, whom he called "the star of the episode". Michael Hogan, also writing for The Telegraph, gave "Asylum of the Daleks" a slightly higher rating of four and a half stars out of five, also commending Coleman as well as many details of the script.
Neela Debnath of The Independent commented positively on the show's continuing exploration of the Daleks and the more "adult tone", praising the performance of the three leads. Radio Times writer Patrick Mulkern stated that it "ticks all [his] boxes as a Doctor Who fan of more than 40 years standing", describing it as "clever, fast, funny, eerie, surprising and tearjerking". Nick Setchfield of SFX gave the episode five out of five stars, calling it a "strong, cinematically-minded series opener" which succeeded in making the Daleks scary. He also praised Coleman's debut, Matt Smith's performance, the special effects, and Amy and Rory's emotional subplot. io9 reviewer Charlie Jane Anders noted that the plot "is mostly just an excuse to explore the Doctor's ongoing relationship with the Daleks, and to show how sad it's gotten". Both Anders and Mulkern (the latter citing a Doctor Who veteran, Katy Manning) noted that Oswin's fascination with eggs, required for making soufflés, is really just a mental trick to block out the "exterminate" ("eggs-terminate") conditioning; this literary device is woven throughout the episode as a series of subtle hints, as Rory is confused by a dormant Dalek, initially misinterpreting him as saying "eggs".
Digital Spy's Morgan Jeffery also awarded it five stars, though he felt Amy and Rory's breakup was "a little difficult to buy" as it was resolved quickly, even if the situation was "sensitively handled" and "deftly performed". Keith Phipps of The A.V. Club graded "Asylum of the Daleks" as a "B+", also writing that he had a "quibble" with the Ponds' marriage issue as it had not been foreshadowed, but ultimately felt that the episode "gets the season off to a great start while creating a sense that anything could happen". IGN's Matt Risley rated the episode as 8.5 out of 10, finding that the "only downside" was that "it felt less a tale about the Daleks than an adventure that just happened to have them in it". Maureen Ryan, writing for The Huffington Post'', felt it was a "ripping start to the season" that redeemed the Daleks from "Victory of the Daleks". While she commended Gillan and Darvill's acting during Amy and Rory's emotional confrontation, she noted that they were not a couple that would break up because of infertility.
The episode was nominated for the 2013 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form), alongside "The Angels Take Manhattan" and "The Snowmen". |
1,224,141 | E and F-class destroyer | 1,154,408,256 | Ship class | [
"Destroyer classes",
"E and F-class destroyers",
"Ship classes of the Royal Navy"
]
| The E and F-class destroyers were a group of 18 destroyers built for the Royal Navy during the 1930s. The ships were initially assigned to the Home Fleet, although they reinforced the Mediterranean Fleet during the Italian invasion of Abyssinia of 1935–36 and enforced the Non-Intervention Agreement during the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939. After the beginning of the Second World War in August 1939, the E-class ships were mostly assigned to escort duties under the Western Approaches Command, while the Fs were assigned to escort the ships of the Home Fleet. Between them they sank four German submarines through March 1940 while losing only one ship to a submarine.
Most of the sisters were committed to the Norwegian Campaign in April–June where they helped to sink one German destroyer and a submarine. The two E-class minelayer-destroyers helped to evacuate Allied troops from Dunkirk in May–June. Most of the Fs were sent to Gibraltar around the end of June and formed part of Force H where they participated in the attack on Mers-el-Kébir. Two months later they participated in the Battle of Dakar where they sank three Vichy French submarines. During the rest of 1940, they sank one Italian submarine while losing two ships to mines and torpedoes. Force H covered a number of convoys to Malta in 1941, during which they sank one German submarine and lost one destroyer to bombs. Three E-class ships began escorting convoys to Russia in late 1941 and three others were transferred to the Eastern Fleet.
Two of these latter were sunk by Japanese forces in early 1942 and two Fs were transferred to replace them. Many of the Fs reinforced the Arctic convoy escorts during which they fought several engagements with German destroyers and sank one German submarine. Several were detached to escort Malta convoys, during which one ship was lost. Several ships were converted to escort destroyers in late 1942–early 1943 for duty in the North Atlantic and many others were assigned there for extended periods of time where they sank two German submarines. Three of these ships were later transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy. Four of the Es and Fs were sent to the Mediterranean Fleet in mid-1943 to support the invasion of Sicily and remained there into 1944. One of these was transferred to the Royal Hellenic Navy that same year and remained in Greek service until 1956. The ships that remained in the Atlantic sank two German submarines in 1944 before they were recalled to the UK in May to prepare for the invasion of Normandy. There they sank two submarines, although another F-class ship was lost to a mine. The ships mostly returned to the North Atlantic after Overlord or began long refits in Canada.
The three Canadian ships were used to transport troops back to Canada after the end of the war before being broken up in 1947. Most of the British ships were broken up around the same time, although one ship was sold to the Dominican Navy in 1949 and served until 1968.
## Design and description
The E class were ordered as part of the 1931 Naval Construction Programme, the F class following in 1932. These ships were based on the preceding D class with minor changes to the hull and armament. Two of the ships were modified to accommodate 60 mines. The F class were repeats of the E's with some minor differences. All of the destroyers were fitted with ASDIC (sonar) and the ability to use the Two-Speed Destroyer Sweep (TSDS) minesweeping gear.
The E- and F-class destroyers displaced 1,405 long tons (1,428 t) at standard load and 1,940 long tons (1,970 t) at deep load. They had an overall length of 329 feet (100.3 m), a beam of 33 feet 3 inches (10.1 m) and a draught of 12 feet 6 inches (3.8 m). The ships' complement was 145 officers and ratings. They were powered by two Parsons geared steam turbines, each driving one propeller shaft, using steam provided by three Admiralty 3-drum boilers that operated at a pressure of 300 psi (2,068 kPa; 21 kgf/cm<sup>2</sup>) and a temperature of 620 °F (327 °C). The turbines developed a total of 36,000 shaft horsepower (27,000 kW) and gave a maximum speed of 35.5 knots (65.7 km/h; 40.9 mph). The destroyers carried a maximum of 470–480 long tons (480–490 t) of fuel oil that gave them a range of 6,350 nautical miles (11,760 km; 7,310 mi) at 15 knots (28 km/h; 17 mph).
All of the ships had the same main armament, four quick-firing (QF) 4.7-inch (120 mm) Mark IX guns in single mounts, designated 'A', 'B', 'X', and 'Y' from front to rear. The guns had a maximum elevation of 40° which was achieved by using a lowered section of the deck around the mount, the "well", that allowed the breech of the gun to be lowered below deck height. They fired a 50-pound (22.7 kg) shell at a muzzle velocity of 2,650 ft/s (810 m/s) to a range of 16,970 yards (15,520 m). For anti-aircraft (AA) defence, they had two quadruple mounts for the QF 0.5-inch Vickers Mk III machine gun on platforms between the funnels. The E- and F-class ships were fitted with two quadruple mounts for 21-inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes. The ships, except for the minelayers, were also equipped with two throwers and one rack for 20 depth charges. The stern of the minelayers was fitted with a pair of sponsons that housed part of the mechanical chain-conveyor system and to ensure smooth delivery of her mines. To compensate for the weight of her Mark XIV mines, their rails, two 4.7-inch guns, their ammunition, both sets of torpedo tubes, their whalers and their davits had to be removed.
The main guns were controlled by an Admiralty Fire Control Clock Mk I that used data derived from the manually-operated director-control tower and the separate 9-foot (2.7 m) rangefinder situated above the bridge. They had no capability for anti-aircraft fire and the anti-aircraft guns were aimed solely by eye.
### Wartime modifications
Beginning in May 1940, the after bank of torpedo tubes was removed and replaced with a QF 12-pounder 20-cwt anti-aircraft gun, the after mast and funnel being cut down to improve the gun's field of fire. Four to eight QF 20 mm Oerlikon cannons were added to the surviving ships, usually replacing the .50-calibre machine gun mounts between the funnels. One pair of these was added to the bridge wings and the other pair was mounted abreast the searchlight platform. Early in the war, depth charge stowage increased to 38. By 1943, all the surviving ships, except Fury had the 'Y' gun on the quarterdeck removed to allow for additional depth charge stowage and two additional depth charge throwers. The 12-pounder was removed to allow for the installation of a Huff-Duff radio direction finder on a short mainmast and for more depth charges. All of the survivors, except perhaps for Echo, had 'A' or 'B' gun replaced by a Hedgehog anti-submarine spigot mortar, and their director-control tower and rangefinder above the bridge removed in exchange for a Type 271 target-indication radar, Fame had her 'A' gun reinstalled by 1944. A Type 286 short-range, surface-search radar, adapted from the Royal Air Force's ASV radar, was also added. The early models, however, could only scan directly forward and had to be aimed by turning the entire ship. Express's modifications differed somewhat in that 'B' gun was replaced by a twin-gun QF 6-pounder Hotchkiss mount and a split Hedgehog installation. In addition, she retained her 12-pounder gun, but her remaining torpedo tubes were removed.
### Flotilla leaders
For the first time since the A class of the 1927 programme, the flotilla leaders were built to an enlarged design, being lengthened to incorporate an additional QF 4.7-inch gun between the funnels. The lengthened design resulted in a three boiler room layout to enhance water-tight integrity. The leaders were not fitted for minesweeping or minelaying. They displaced 1,475–1,495 long tons (1,499–1,519 t) at standard load and 2,010–2,050 long tons (2,040–2,080 t) at deep load. The ships had an overall length of 343 feet (104.5 m), a beam of 33 feet 9 inches (10.3 m) and a draught of 12 feet 6 inches (3.8 m). The ships carried a total of 175 personnel which included the staff of the Captain (D), commanding officer of the flotilla. Their turbines were 2,000 shp (1,500 kW) more powerful than the private ships, which made them 0.5 knots (0.93 km/h; 0.58 mph) faster; their propulsion machinery was otherwise identical. Exmouth was an early wartime loss and consequently received no modifications, but Faulknor survived the war. Her modifications differed somewhat from those of the private ships. She received a 4-inch (102 mm) AA gun in lieu of her aft torpedo tubes, although they were later reinstalled and the 4-inch gun replaced 'X' 4.7-inch gun. Two Oerlikons were later added on the forward part of her aft superstructure and a quadruple QF two-pounder "pom-pom" mount replaced 'Q' gun between the funnels. Finally her rangefinder was replaced by a high-angle director fitted with a Type 285 gunnery radar.
## Ships
### E class
### F class
## Service
All of the E class were assigned to the 5th Destroyer Flotilla (DF) of the Home Fleet upon commissioning during 1934. Following the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, the entire flotilla was sent to the Red Sea in August 1935 to monitor Italian warship movements until April 1936. Refitted upon their return, many were deployed to Spanish waters during the Spanish Civil War in 1936–39 to intercept shipping carrying contraband goods to Spain and to protect British-flagged ships. While the F-class ships were assigned to the 6th Destroyer Flotilla of the Home Fleet, they followed much the same pattern as their E-class sisters. In April 1939 the 5th and 6th DFs were renumbered the 7th and 8th Destroyer Flotillas, respectively. In mid-1939, newly commissioned J-class destroyers began to replace the E-class ships and they were reduced to reserve for lack of manpower. Increasing tensions with Nazi Germany in August, caused the British to mobilize the Navy's reserves, which allowed the ships to be manned again and assigned to the 12th Destroyer Flotilla of the Home Fleet.
When the war began on 3 September, the E-class ships, except for the two minelayers, Esk and Express, were assigned to the Western Approaches Command (WAC) for convoy escort and patrolling duties, while the Fs remained with the Home Fleet, performing the same sorts of tasks. On 14 September, Faulknor, Firedrake, and Foxhound, escorting the aircraft carrier Ark Royal, sank , the first German submarine to be lost during the war, after she had unsuccessfully attacked the carrier. Six days later, Fearless, Faulknor, Forester, and Fortune sank . Most of the E class remained with the WAC until April 1940, but several were transferred to Rosyth Command at the end of 1939. Exmouth was one of these and was sunk by on 21 January 1940 in the Moray Firth. On the other hand, Escapade forced to the surface on 25 February, which was then scuttled by her crew, and Fortune sank on 20 March. Esk and Express were assigned to the specialist 20th Destroyer Flotilla shortly after the war began, together with the four I-class destroyer-minelayers, and were busy laying mines in the North Sea and off the English coast through April–May 1940.
The beginning of the Norwegian Campaign in April saw almost all of the E and F class transferred to the Home Fleet for operations in Norwegian waters. For the most part they escorted the ships of the Home Fleet and the various convoys to and from Norway, but Forester and Foxhound were part of the escort for the battleship Warspite during the Second Battle of Narvik on 13 April and the latter helped to sink one German destroyer. While escorting one convoy, Fearless and the destroyer Brazen sank two days later. Esk and Express were the only two ships committed to the evacuation of Dunkirk in May–June, each rescuing thousands of Allied troops.
Fearless, Escapade, Faulknor, and Foxhound of the 8th DF escorted Ark Royal and the battlecruiser Hood to Gibraltar in late June, where they formed Force H. Eight days later, they participated in the attack on Mers-el-Kébir against the Vichy French ships stationed there, together with Forester, Foresight and Escort. The latter ship was sunk by an Italian submarine on 11 July while covering a Malta convoy. Most of Force H returned to the UK for a brief refit in early August, but upon their return at the end of the month, the 8th DF now consisted of Faulknor, Forester, Foresight, Firedrake, Fortune, Fury, and Greyhound. On the night of 31 August/1 September, Esk, Express and three other minelaying destroyers laid a minefield off the Dutch island of Texel. While doing so, the latter ship struck a mine that blew her bow off. While closing to render aid, Esk struck two mines that broke her in half with heavy casualties. Express was towed back to England for repairs that lasted until October 1941. On 13 September, Force H met a convoy that was carrying troops intended to capture Dakar from the Vichy French that was escorted by Inglefield, Eclipse, Echo, Encounter, and Escapade. Ten days later they attacked Dakar where Foresight and Inglefield sank the French submarine Persée, Fortune sank the submarine Ajax a day later and Foresight sank the submarine Bévéziers on the 25th. After the battle, Escapade and Echo returned to the Home Fleet and resumed their regular duties of fleet escort. On 17 October, Fame ran aground and could not be refloated for several months. The following day, Firedrake together with the destroyer Wrestler and two Royal Air Force flying boats sank the Italian submarine Durbo. Fury, Encounter, Faulknor, Firedrake, and Forester participated in the inconclusive Battle of Cape Spartivento on 27 November.
In 1941, the 8th DF escorted Force H as it covered multiple convoys and aircraft carriers flying off aircraft to Malta. While returning from one of the latter missions, Forester, Foresight, Faulknor, Fearless and Foxhound sank on 18 June. A month later, Fearless was crippled by Italian bombs on 23 July while escorting a convoy to Malta and had to be scuttled by her sister Foresight while Firedrake was badly damaged by near misses and had to return to Gibraltar for repairs. The ships of the 8th DF mostly returned home between August and October for repairs and refits. Encounter was transferred to the Mediterranean Fleet in April and spent several months under repair as she was badly damaged by bombs at Malta. The ship was then transferred to the Eastern Fleet in November and arrived at Singapore the following month. Eclipse, Echo, and Electra were assigned to the 3rd Destroyer Flotilla of the Home Fleet at the beginning of 1941 where they escorted the larger ships of the fleet while they were searching for German commerce raiders and on other missions. Escapade began escorting convoys to Russia in August and continued to do so for most of the following year. Electra did the same for several months until she was detailed to escort the battleship Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser Repulse to Singapore in October, together with Express.
Express and Electra were half of the escorts for Prince of Wales and Repulse as they sailed north on 9 December, but could do little as the Japanese bombers sank the two capital ships other than help to rescue the 3,000-odd survivors. Upon their return to Singapore, they joined Encounter and the other destroyers there escorting ships between Singapore and the Sunda Strait. Electra and Encounter escorted the heavy cruiser Exeter during the Battle of the Java Sea on 27 February 1942. The former ship was sunk by a Japanese destroyer as she covered Exeter's withdrawal. Several days later, Encounter and the American destroyer Pope were escorting the damaged Exeter en route to Ceylon when they encountered four Japanese heavy cruisers and their escorts. Encounter and Exeter were sunk in the subsequent battle on 1 March. Express did not participate in any of these battles because she'd been damaged by a boiler room fire in early February and her repairs did not begin until April. Fortune joined her sister with the Eastern Fleet in February, with Foxhound following two months later.
On 27 March, Fury, Eclipse and the light cruiser Trinidad were escorting Convoy PQ 13 in the Arctic when they were intercepted by three German destroyers. In the ensuing action, the cruiser was damaged by one of her own torpedoes and Eclipse was hit twice, although the cruiser sank the German destroyer Z26. Foresight, Forester and the light cruiser Edinburgh were the close escort for Convoy QP 11, returning from Murmansk to Iceland, when Edinburgh was torpedoed on 29 April. The two hits disabled her steering and she had to be towed by the two destroyers. Two days later, they were attacked by three German destroyers which badly damaged Foresight and Forester and put another torpedo into Edinburgh, crippling her. The two destroyers took off the survivors and scuttled the cruiser. Temporarily repaired at Murmansk, the sisters were part of Trinidad's escort home when she was set on fire by a German bomber and had to be scuttled on 15 May. Faulknor, Fury, Escapade, Echo, and Eclipse escorted more Arctic convoys in May–September, Faulknor sinking on 12 September while escorting Convoy PQ 18. Foresight and Fury were briefly detached to escort the fleet during Operation Pedestal in August, during which the former was torpedoed and had to be scuttled. While being repaired, Fame was converted into an escort destroyer and was assigned to the WAC, joining her sister, Fearless, upon its completion in September. A month later, she sank while protecting Convoy SC 104. Fearless was torpedoed and sunk by on 16 December.
When convoys to Russia resumed in December 1942, Fury, Forester, Faulknor, Eclipse, and Echo were assigned as escorts. Fury, and Eclipse were detached to augment the escorts of the WAC in March–May 1943, joining their sisters, Fame and Escapade, when German submarine attacks reached their peak. The former had already sunk on 17 February while escorting Convoy ONS 165. Express, Fortune and Foxhound was assigned to the Eastern Fleet at the beginning of 1943, but the first two returned to Britain in February to begin refits, during which they were transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy and renamed Gatineau and Saskatchewan in June and May, respectively. Foxhound followed in August and was converted into an escort destroyer before being given to the Canadians in February 1944 and renamed Qu'Appelle. Forester was assigned to Escort Group C1 of the WAC in June. Escapade was badly damaged by a premature detonation of her Hedgehog projectiles in September and was under repair until the end of 1944. Faulknor, Fury, Echo, and Eclipse were transferred to the Mediterranean Fleet to escort the covering force during the invasion of Sicily in July and the subsequent landings in mainland Italy. Faulknor, Fury, and Eclipse participated in the Dodecanese Campaign after the surrender of Italy in September and the latter ship sank after hitting a mine on 24 October.
Echo began a long refit at Malta in December and was loaned to the Royal Hellenic Navy upon its completion in April 1944. Renamed Navarinon, she supported government forces during the Greek Civil War and was retained after the end of the war. Faulknor and Fury later supported operations in Italy before returning to the UK for Operation Overlord in June. While escorting Convoy HX 280, Gatineau helped to sink on 6 March, four days later Forester participated in the sinking of . Fame, Forester, Gatineau, Saskatchewan, and Qu'Appelle joined their sisters covering the preparations for the invasion of Normandy and the invasion itself. Fame and two others destroyers sank on 18 June. Fury struck a mine on 21 June and was forced to beach herself to prevent her from sinking. She was written off after she was salvaged and was broken up for scrap beginning in September. Saskatchewan and Gatineau returned to Canada in August for lengthy refits that lasted into 1945 after which they returned to the UK. Qu'Appelle returned to the North Atlantic in October and Forester helped to sink on 20 August and then was sent back to the North Atlantic. Escapade was fitted with the new Squid anti-submarine mortar when her repairs were finished.
### Postwar
Gatineau, Saskatchewan, and Qu'Appelle were used to ferry Canadian troops back home before they were placed in reserve in 1946 and subsequently sold for scrap, although Gatineau was scuttled in 1948 in British Columbia to serve as a breakwater. Faulknor and Forester were reduced to reserve in 1945 and broken up the following year; Escapade lasted on active duty a year longer as she served in the Anti-Submarine Training Flotilla until 1946, but the ship was scrapped the next year. Unlike most of her sisters, Fame remained on active duty until 1947 when she was placed in reserve. She was sold to the Dominican Republic in 1949 and renamed Generalissimo. The ship was renamed Sanchez in 1962 and finally discarded in 1968. Navarinon later became a training ship before she was returned to the Royal Navy in 1956 and broken up the following year. |
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