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56,424,136 |
Ashley Freiberg
| 1,160,885,205 |
American racing driver
|
[
"1991 births",
"24 Hours of Daytona drivers",
"American female racing drivers",
"Indy Pro 2000 Championship drivers",
"JDC Motorsports drivers",
"Lamborghini Super Trofeo drivers",
"Living people",
"Michelin Pilot Challenge drivers",
"Racing drivers from Illinois",
"Sportspeople from Will County, Illinois",
"Starworks Motorsport drivers",
"WeatherTech SportsCar Championship drivers"
] |
Ashley Lynn Freiberg (born November 22, 1991) is an American racing driver who has competed in open-wheel, sports car and endurance racing. She became the first woman to win a Skip Barber Racing championship title in 2010, and the first female to claim outright race victories in the IMSA GT3 Cup Challenge and the Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge in 2013 and 2014, respectively.
After working as a timing and scoring official at her local kart track, Freiberg began karting at 13, achieving early success by winning five championships. She later progressed to car racing in Skip Barber and Formula Mazda, winning 25 races and two series titles in the former in 2010. Funding issues caused Freiberg to drop out of Skip Barber after four wins in 2011, but she later drove for JDC MotorSports in the 2012 Star Mazda Championship, finishing ninth in the points standings.
Freiberg moved to sports car racing in 2013, entering the IMSA GT3 Cup Challenge before moving to the Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge in 2014 and 2015, earning two outright victories. She debuted in the IMSA SportsCar Championship in 2016, running a partial schedule in the Prototype Challenge and Grand Touring Daytona (GTD) categories. Her best finish was second in GTD at the 12 Hours of Sebring, taking class and outright podiums for DAC Motorsports in the 2017 Lamborghini Super Trofeo North America Championship.
## Personal life
Freiberg was born on November 22, 1991, and raised in Homer Glen, Illinois. She is the daughter of Chuck and Donna Freiberg; no members of her family had any prior involvement in auto racing. Freiberg is a 2010 graduate of Lockport Township High School; she graduated early due to a good academic performance. Freiberg does cyclo-cross, hiking, rock climbing, and skate skiing in the mountains of Vermont to prepare herself for auto racing events.
## Biography
### Karting (2004–2008)
Freiberg's earliest racing experience came at the age of ten, when both her elder brothers took up the hobby. At the time, she did not believe girls could compete, but after skateboarding, playing basketball and soccer and studying karate, she was attracted to racing. At the age of 11, she acted as a timing and scoring official at a local kart track. Freiberg made her go-karting debut at the age of 13, and her father took her to the Jim Hall Karting School in Ventura, California in 2004. In December 2004, Freiberg made her national debut in a World Karting Association (WKA) event at Daytona International Speedway's road course. Her father supported her financially. In her first season, Freiberg finished fourth overall in the regional Championship Enduro Series (CES) and seventh overall in the national WKA points standings in 2005. In 2006, she raced in the Junior Sprint category because she was too young to progress to other classes. Freiberg took her first race wins in regional and national karting series, and went undefeated in CES, winning two championship titles. She also won her first WKA title in 2006 and two more karting championships over the next two years.
### Junior open-wheel racing (2007–2012)
Freiberg's achievements in karting led to her enrollment in both the two and three-day Advanced Skip Barber Race Schools in Daytona, beginning her open-wheel racing career. Soon after, she also joined Lyn St. James's Women in the Winner's Circle Driver Development Academy in Phoenix, Arizona, setting for herself the goal of reaching the IndyCar Series. In 2007, Freiberg finished fourth in her debut Skip Barber race, finishing six times in the podium and taking nine more top-five finishes during the 2008 Skip Barber season. Freiberg placed fourth in her debut Formula Mazda race in 2008, and Mazda Motorsports invited her to enter a round of the Skip Barber National Championship, in which she finished sixth. In 2009, Freiberg won the races held at Sebring International Raceway, Road America, Road Atlanta and the Carolina Motorsports Park. Freiberg also raced in the 2009 Skip Barber National Championship, becoming the first woman to claim a podium finish in that race and placing sixth overall in the points standings.
In mid-2009, Freiberg drove in both of the Autobahn Country Club races in the Star Mazda Championship for Team GDT. She won 25 Skip Barber races and two series championships in 2010, making her the first woman to win an overall Barber Series title and a Skip Barber National Championship race. In addition, Freiberg was the first woman to win a Skip Barber National Series feature race at the New Jersey Motorsports Park, and the first to take a race victory in the Skip Barber Mazda MX-5 Sedan Championship. She also finished fifth for Team GDT in the 2010 Star Mazda Championship race at Autobahn Country Club. Freiberg's results over the course of the season led to her receiving the Coach's Choice Award as "the best all-round driver in the series." She was also the second woman after Danica Patrick to earn a nomination for the Team USA Scholarship that year.
Freiberg won four races in 2011 before she was required to withdraw from racing due to funding issues. As a result, she visited race tracks and spoke to team owners who declared an interest in her through various channels because she was unable to employ a publicist. Towards the end of 2011, Freiberg was contacted by an official from TrueStar's driver development program Women Empowered Initiative, which had watched her compete in the Skip Barber championship season. This led to JDC MotorSports signing her for the full 2012 Star Mazda Championship, partnering her with Juan Piedrahita. Although she entered the series with the goal of finishing in the top-five or on the podium, Freiberg frequently changed her expectations over the course of the season. She took six top-ten finishes, with a sixth place at the Grand Prix of Baltimore being her best result of the season. Freiberg was 11th in the final points standings.
### Sports car and endurance racing (2013–present)
Although she desired another season in the Star Mazda Championship before switching to Indy Lights, Freiberg researched the possibility of driving sports cars, and competed for EFFORT Racing in the 2013 GT3 Cup Challenge. At the season-opening round at Sebring, she twice finished in the overall top-five, and took second place outright in the first Laguna Seca race, tying Madison Snow for the championship lead. On June 29, Freiberg became the first woman to win a North American GT3 Cup Challenge race outright in the Platinum Cup class, leading every lap of the Watkins Glen International round. She was also the second female class winner after Melanie Snow at the 2009 Sebring race. The victory allowed Freiberg to break her tie with Madison Snow for the championship, leading by four points. After an accident during a qualifying race at the Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, EFFORT Racing terminated her contract for unspecified reasons. Frieberg was named a Faces in the Crowd by Sports Illustrated that year.
She began competing on a race-by-race basis in the Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge in 2014, sharing the No. 48 Fall-Line Motorsports BMW M3 Grand Sport (GS) car with Shelby Blackstock as she struggled to find sponsorship for a full-time seat. Freiberg and Blackstock won the season-opening BMW Performance 200 after the International Motor Sports Association (IMSA) disqualified the No. 96 Turner Motorsport BMW M3 for a technical infringement. This made her the first woman in series history to win a race overall, and the first outright at Daytona International Speedway. Freiberg participated in four more races until her sponsorship money ran out. She was named a BMW North America Scholarship Driver in 2015 and rejoined Fall-Line Motorsports, who partnered her with Trent Hindman in the No. 46 BMW M3 GS car in the Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge. After poor results in the season's first three events, the duo finished second at the rain-affected Watkins Glen round, finishing third overall at Road America, and winning outright at the season-ending Road Atlanta race. Freiberg was eighth in the GS drivers' championship, garnering 226 points.
Freiberg co-drove Turner Motorsport's No. 96 BMW M3 Grand Touring Daytona (GTD) car in the 2016 IMSA SportsCar Championship North American Endurance Cup, and shared the No. 88 Starworks Motorsport Oreca FLM09 Prototype Challenge (PC) car with Mark Kvamme for the sprint races. She debuted at the season-opening 24 Hours of Daytona alongside Jens Klingmann, Bret Curtis and Marco Wittmann, finishing 22nd in the GTD class and 48th overall after multiple technical problems. During the Daytona race weekend, Freiberg earned support from the FIA Women in Motorsport Commission, making her the first North American female driver to receive recognition from the racing governing body. Two months later, she, Klingmann and Curtis finished a season-high second in the GTD class and 23rd overall at the 12 Hours of Sebring. Freiberg and Kvamme finished seventh in the PC class at both Long Beach and Laguna Seca and fifth at Belle Isle. After sitting out the mid-season races, she returned to drive for Turner Motorsports alongside Klingmann and Curtis at the season-ending Petit Le Mans, retiring before the race ended and being classified 10th in class.
After spending months locating sponsors to fund her career, Freiberg signed for DAC Motorsports to drive select races of the 2017 Lamborghini Super Trofeo North America Championship after she was contacted by the team in May that year. She took two consecutive third-place pro class finishes at the Circuit of the Americas, and was third overall at Watkins Glen. This achievement made Freiberg the first woman to stand on the overall podium in any of Lamborghini's Super Trofeo global series. In the opening round of the 2018 Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge, the BMW Endurance at Daytona, she and Audi Sport TT Cup driver Gosia Rdest formed the first all-female team in the GS class. The duo drove the No. 50 RHC-GMG Racing Audi R8 LMS GT4, finishing 23rd overall after Freiberg's progress into the top five was halted by Austin Cindric, who hit the car early in the race. In December 2018, Freiberg shared a Shift Up Now-entered BMW E30 with Lynn Kehoe, Kristina Esposito, Mandy McGee, and Karen Salvaggio in an all-female team at the 2018 25 Hours of Thunderhill, finishing second in class and 25th overall.
She competed in the second endurance race of the 2020 Michelin Pilot Challenge alongside co-driver Ryan Nash in the GS-class M1 Racing McLaren 570S GT4 at Road Atlanta in September 2020. Freiberg retired after completing 88 laps. For the season-ending round at Road Atlanta, Freiberg and Nash drove a Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 sourced by M1 Racing from Volt Racing after their McLaren was damaged beyond repair following an accident caused by brake failure. The pair finished the race in 14th position.
## Racing record
### Star Mazda Championship
(key) (Small number denotes finishing position; indicates that the driver was ineligible to score points)
#### IMSA SportsCar Championship
(key) (Small numbers denotes finishing position; indicates that the driver was ineligible to score points for not completing enough laps of a race)
#### 24 Hours of Daytona
#### 12 Hours of Sebring
|
13,661,901 |
Acanthopagrus butcheri
| 1,172,247,126 |
Species of fish
|
[
"Acanthopagrus",
"Commercial fish",
"Endemic fauna of Australia",
"Fish described in 1949",
"Marine fish of Southern Australia"
] |
The Black bream (Acanthopagrus butcheri), also commonly known as the southern black bream, southern bream and blue-nosed bream, is a species of anadromous ray-finned fish of the porgy family Sparidae. A deep-bodied fish, it is occasionally confused with other similar species that occur within its range, but is generally distinguished from these species by a lack of yellow ventral and anal fins. Southern black bream are endemic to the southern coasts of Australia from Shark Bay in Western Australia to Ulladulla, New South Wales, as well as Tasmania.
The black bream is primarily an inhabitant of brackish waters of estuaries and coastal lakes, rarely entering the open ocean, as it cannot complete its life cycle in a fully marine environment. During the breeding season, the species is known to penetrate into the upper reaches of rivers to spawn, causing an influx of juveniles in the estuaries a few months later. It is a opportunistic predator, consuming a wide range of crustaceans, molluscs, polychaetes and forage fish.
The southern black bream is a major target for both commercial and recreational fishing due to its high-quality flesh, with over 300 tonnes of yield taken each year by commercial fisheries. Anglers also pursue the fish for its sporting qualities, with the development of lure fishing for bream adding to this attraction. Aquaculture techniques for the species are being developed, but its slow growth rate poses a major hurdle to large scale food production.
## Taxonomy and naming
The southern black bream is one of 20 species in the genus Acanthopagrus, part of the porgy family Sparidae. The Sparidae are perciform fish in the suborder Percoidei. The southern black bream was at first confused with its nearly identical east coast relative, the surf bream (Acanthopagrus australis), with specimens initially grouped under the name Mylio australis by Rudall, Hale and Sheriden. In a 1949 review of the Australian "silver breams," Ian Munro found that M. australis was in fact two separate species, creating the new species name of Mylio butcheri to accommodate the southern black bream. Munro based this classification on a number of new specimens, one of which was from the Gippsland Lakes, Victoria, which he designated to be the holotype. Mylio butcheri was later changed to Acanthopagrus butcheri when the true genus of the species was identified.
Acanthopagrus butcheri has a number of common names, many of which are applied to a number of related fish species, both in Australia and worldwide. The species is commonly referred to in publications as the "southern black bream" to avoid confusion with the black sea bream and other closely related species loosely given the name "black bream." The species is known regionally by the names "black bream," "Perth bream," "Gippsland bream" and the "blue-nose bream." The latter name is given to mature fish over 1 kg in weight, as at this point their snouts begin to develop a bluish tinge. The Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts of the Federal Government designated black bream as preferred name. Black bream has also been designated the standard name by the CSIRO Division of Marine and Atmospheric Research in commercial fishing in Australia.
## Description
The southern black bream has a deep, moderately compressed body, with both the dorsal and ventral profiles equally curved. The mouth is of moderate size in comparison with the body, and contains six curved, peg like incisors in the front of both upper and lower jaws. The molars are set in series of four or five on each side of the upper jaw, and in series of three or four on the sides of the lower jaw, becoming smaller in size anteriorly. The body is covered with large scales, which may be cycloid or weakly ctenoid in shape. The head is mostly scale-free, with the exception of parts of the operculum. A low, scaly sheath covers the bases of the soft dorsal, anal and caudal fins. The lateral line scale count is 52–58. There is a single dorsal fin originating a little behind the posterior edge of the operculum, consisting of 10 to 13 spines set in front of 10 to 13 soft rays. The anal fin consists of 3 spines anterior to 8 to 10 soft rays, while the pectoral fin has 14 to 16 rays and the ventral has one large spine and 5 soft rays. The southern black bream is golden brown or bronze coloured on the back and sides, with greenish reflections when fresh, while the belly and chin are white. The fins are all dusky in colour, with the caudal fin often a dusky olive brown. The species has been known to reach a total maximum length of 60 cm (23+1⁄2 in) and a weight of 4 kg (8+3⁄4 lb) , but is much more common around 23–25 cm (9–9+3⁄4 in) and under 2 kg.
## Distribution and habitat
The southern black bream is endemic to southern Australia, inhabiting coastal waters from Shark Bay, Western Australia in the west to Mallacoota, Victoria in the east and south around the entire Tasmanian coastline. The species is primarily an inshore species, although has been found on rare occasions on deeper reefs on the continental shelf. Southern black bream primarily inhabit estuarine environments, penetrating into the far reaches of freshwater creeks and rivers during the summer spawning season. They are also known from a number of coastal lakes and intermittently open estuaries. In estuarine and freshwater environments they seek out the cover of structures such as fallen tree branches, jetties, oyster leases and rocky areas, while in deeper areas of coastal lakes, they are often found over bare mud and sand substrates. The species is rarely found in the ocean, but are often washed out of creeks during times of high river flow and are able to survive in the marine environment, where they inhabit inshore reefs and rocky shorelines.
The species is most common in southern Victoria, where it inhabits numerous estuaries. The Gippsland Lakes, Mallacoota Inlet and Lake Tyers are the most densely populated bodies of water in the state and the species is often found along the coast. It is not as prolific in South Australia, with the Coorong and Kangaroo Island being the main bream-producing areas in the state. The low numbers may be correlated with the state's lack of rivers and estuaries, although bream have been caught in unexpected areas, including the Gulfs, as well as deep rocky reefs off Streaky Bay in lobster traps. Southern black bream are prevalent in southern Western Australia, with large numbers of estuaries holding the species. The Culham and Stokes Inlets are known to have large populations of the fish.
## Biology
### Diet and feeding
Southern black bream are opportunistic omnivores, consuming a wide range of prey, including sessile, burrowing, benthic and pelagic species. The diet of the species varies between rivers, with their opportunistic feeding methods showing little pattern between seasons, although they appear to have certain prey preferences when two or more possible prey species are present. Crustaceans, including crabs, prawns, amphipods and copepods, are commonly taken, as are a number of polychaete and annelid worms. Bivalves such as mussels and cockles are crushed in the bream's powerful jaws, with small fish such as gobies and anchovies also taken. Algae of the genus Enteromorpha are also a major component of most fish's diets. Fish feeding in the upper reaches of river have different prey, reflecting the freshwater fauna, with insects, hardyheads, tadpoles, brine shrimp and gastropods taken. Studies from the Swan River suggest that there is a shift in diet with age. Younger fish consume amphipods, polychaetes and small individuals of various molluscs. The number of amphipods consumed decreased in the diets of older fish while the number of large molluscs, crabs and teleosts taken increased. The fish actively forage the substrate while swimming with their head down, snapping their prey down with little chewing.
### Life cycle
Southern black bream become sexually mature at different ages throughout their range, with Western and South Australian fish maturing by two to three years of age, while Victorian fish mature at five years. There is also a difference in maturation age between the sexes, as females generally mature one year later than males. The timing of spawning is also variable over the species range, with fish in Western Australia able to spawn from July to November, South Australian fish spawning between November and January and Victorian fish in October to November. Reproducing fish migrate into the upper reaches of rivers and streams, where they shed their eggs, with each fish producing up to three million per season. The eggs are small and pelagic, hatching two days or so after fertilisation. The young bream spend the next four years of their lives living in rivers, estuaries and parts of the coastline, often seen schooling over seagrass beds in shallow reaches of estuaries. It is when they reach five years in age that fish living in the marine environment move offshore to deeper reefs, returning to the rivers to spawn, as they cannot complete their life cycle in the ocean. Southern black bream are known to live to 29 years of age.
A number of unusual reproductive features have been observed in the species including a number hermaphroditic individuals which have both functional ovaries and testes, with the ability for a change to the preference of one sex also occasionally observed. The species has also been known to hybridise with the closely related species Acanthopagrus australis forming viable offspring, themselves able to backcross with the parent species. This is only known from one coastal lake where the two species are landlocked together for extended periods, promoting interbreeding and the production of offspring with morphological traits intermediate between the two species. The setting required to cause hybridisation, however is too rare to consider the two species subspecies, or even a single species.
### Predators
Apart from humans, a variety of seabirds are the southern black bream's main predators, with the pelican, little black cormorant and great cormorant prominent. The species is also taken by larger fish including sharks, rays and a number of large predatory teleosts such as mulloway and flathead. A number of ectoparasites are known from the species, including species from the Copepoda, Monogenea, Branchiura, Isopoda and Hirudinea.
## Relationship to humans
Southern black bream are one of the most important species to both commercial and recreational fisheries throughout its range, valued for its flavoursome and moist flesh. Due to its marketability, as well as its high tolerance to a wide range of salinity, the species has become a candidate for inland aquaculture in saline dams.
### Commercial fishery
The southern black bream is one of the most important species to the commercial fisheries in both Victoria and southern Western Australia, although only small numbers are harvested in South Australian waters due to the lower populations. Victoria produces the majority of the catch, with the Gippsland region alone producing 80% of the state's haul. A. butcheri has been taken from the Gippsland Lakes since the 1880s when they were the predominantly targeted species, although during the 1920s mullet became the most frequently caught species in the lakes. The bream catch from the lakes now fluctuates between 200 and 400 tonnes per year. The Mallacoota inlet and Lake Tyers make up the other important bream-producing regions of the state. In South Australia, bream are only commercially taken from the Coorong which has yielded 10 to 70 tonnes of the species per year since the 1970s. In lower Western Australia the Culham and Stokes inlet produce the bulk of the state's catch, with annual hauls far greater now than during the early 1990s. During the 1970s and 1980s, Western Australia had a modest bream catch of around 26 tonnes per year, a figure which rocketed to 103.9 tonnes in the 1992/3 season before receding to around 28 tonnes per year since 2000. The species is commonly taken by gill nets, beach seine and haul nets, as well as by handline. The fish are normally sold fresh whole or as fillets in local markets throughout the states they are taken in.
### Recreational fishery
Southern black bream have long been a favourite target for anglers who seek out the species for both its fighting qualities and high quality flesh. Bream are also popular due to their accessibility, with fish commonly caught from harbour and estuary banks, piers and rock walls, therefore eliminating the need for a boat in most regions. Research in Western Australia has shown that anglers take more bream than commercial fishermen, with a 1979 study indicating that at least 232 tonnes were taken, more than double that of the commercial harvest at its peak, although with the advent of catch and release fishing this figure has dropped.
Bream are commonly caught around structures within an estuary, including fallen branches, piers, rock walls, bridge abutments and other man made structures as well as on mud and sand banks where shellfish and crustaceans dwell. Although bream are opportunistic feeders, they can often be very difficult to catch in areas subject to high fishing pressure. Light fishing lines and sinkers are used to avoid spooking the fish and, as with all fishing, live bait produces the best results. Various crustaceans such as nippers, prawns and crabs are commonly used alongside various species of beach and tube worm. Frozen and cut bait such as prawns, mussels, cockles and fish pieces are also effective. Rigs are usually kept simple and light, with running ball or bean sinkers used on a light line from two up to four kilograms in breaking strength tied to a size 6 – 1 hook. In fast flowing waters, heavier sinkers may be needed to keep the bait in the target area long enough to be noticed by a fish. Burley is often introduced into the water, with chopped pilchards or chicken pellets soaked in fish oil popular amongst anglers. In recent years, the use of lures and flies on southern black bream has been successfully developed, with the species known to attack both hard bodied minnow and spinnerbait type lures, as well as soft plastic lures and saltwater flies.
The southern black bream is protected by size and bag limits in all the states it inhabits, which anglers must be aware of or face fines. In Western Australia the size limit is 25 cm with only 2 fish over 40 cm allowed to be taken from the Swan or Canning Rivers, while the bag limit varies throughout the state with West Coast allowing 4 per angler, Gascoyne 8 per angler, and Southern and Northern 20 per angler. In South Australia the daily bag limit is 10 per person, with a minimum legal size of 30 cm, which is the same limit as Victoria.
### Aquaculture
Southern black bream are relatively easy to grow in captivity, with fish usually spawning during their natural season without needing the addition of hormones. Despite this, bream are not bred on a commercial basis due to a comparatively slow growth rate and a low fillet recovery. Studies by Sarre in 1999, however, showed that the species can survive well in saline ponds with deep enough waters as long as food is supplemented to the ponds. This has led to the proposal of the breeding of the species to stock inland saline ponds for the use of recreational fishing, much like trout and barramundi are stocked elsewhere in Australia. Although the growth rate is currently too slow for food production purposes, genetic selection may allow the breeding of faster-growing fish for market purposes. Southern black bream are currently bred to stock depleted estuaries, and thus their requirements for farming are already well known.
## Similar species
A number of other members of the Sparidae inhabit Australian waters and maybe confused with A. butcheri. The yellowfin bream, Acanthopagrus australis is the most similar species to A. butcheri, overlapping in northern Victoria, with hybridisation events suggesting a recent divergence time, allowing few genetic differences to accumulate between the species. As its name suggests, the yellow fins of the yellowfin bream are distinctive. Overlapping the distribution of A. butcheri in the west is Acanthopagrus morrisoni, the western yellowfin bream, which can be distinguished by the prominent yellow ventral, anal and lower caudal fins. The tarwhine, Rhabdosargus sarba, is also similar in shape, but possesses gold horizontal stripes which allow for identification.
|
26,012,869 |
Black Tie (30 Rock)
| 1,157,609,736 | null |
[
"2007 American television episodes",
"30 Rock (season 1) episodes",
"Television episodes written by Tina Fey"
] |
"Black Tie" is the twelfth episode of the first season of the American television comedy series 30 Rock. It was directed by Don Scardino, and written by Kay Cannon and series creator Tina Fey. The episode originally aired on NBC in the United States on February 1, 2007. Guest stars in this episode include Kevin Brown, Grizz Chapman, Will Forte, April Lee Hernández, Paul Reubens, and Isabella Rossellini.
In the episode, Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) attends a foreign prince's (Reubens) birthday party with her boss Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) and meets Jack's ex-wife (Rossellini). At the same time, Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) tries to convince Pete Hornberger (Scott Adsit) to cheat on his wife at a wild party while NBC page Kenneth Parcell (Jack McBrayer) encourages him not to.
## Plot
Liz is invited by Jack to accompany him to a birthday party for his friend, Prince Gerhardt Habsburg (Loosely based on the Habsburg monarch Carlos II), which she accepts. Liz fears the invitation is a date, but Jack denies this when asked. Later, Liz runs into her friend Jenna Maroney (Jane Krakowski) at the party. While the two talk, Prince Gerhardt (Paul Reubens) makes his entrance, introduced as His Royal Highness the Duke of Thuringia, the Earl of the Duchy of Westphalia, Prince Gerhardt Messerschmitt Ramstein van Hoppe. He has a physical disability with many disfigurements and illnesses due to "centuries of inbreeding." Meanwhile, Jack is shocked to see his ex-wife Bianca (Isabella Rossellini) enter the room. When she comes over to say hello, Jack introduces Liz as his live-in girlfriend. She likes Liz and tells Jack not to let her get away.
At the same time, Prince Gerhardt spots Jenna and sends his messenger, Tomas (Will Forte), over to invite her to dine with him. Eager to become a modern-day Grace Kelly, she talks herself into doing it, despite his problems. Later, Bianca tells Liz that she dislikes the idea that Liz can make Jack truly happy. Liz tells Jack that Bianca is still not over him and to prove it, she goes to her and tells her the two are engaged. At hearing this, Bianca reacts violently and attacks Liz. Later, Prince Gerhardt decides he can now die happy, after he and Jenna discussed their relationship, and drinks some champagne, which he cannot digest. He dies because "he cannot metabolize the grapes." As a result, the party comes to a conclusion. Jack walks Liz up to her apartment. Before he leaves, he leans in to take off the necklace he lent her, which she mistakes for an attempted kiss. Jack acts semi-repulsed by the idea, and tells Liz to give it up.
Finally, at the 30 Rock studios, after overhearing Pete impersonating Elmo from Sesame Street while Pete was encouraging his son to do better with his potty training, Tracy compares Pete's relationship with his wife to that of Samson and Delilah. While working late at night in his office, Tracy enters with Grizz (Grizz Chapman) and Dot Com (Kevin Brown) and a couple of other people, which turns into a party. Pete is still working, while Tracy's entourage enjoy themselves. Tracy encourages Pete to loosen up, and asks one of the women, Vicki (April Lee Hernández), to look after him. Pete finally loosens up and begins to give in to Vicki's temptations, but Kenneth sets him straight, telling him to recall the day that he got married.
## Production
"Black Tie" was directed by Don Scardino, and written by Kay Cannon and series creator Tina Fey. This was Cannon and Fey's first script collaboration, later co-writing the episodes "Somebody to Love", "Christmas Special", and "Lee Marvin vs. Derek Jeter", for season two, season three, and season four, respectively. "Black Tie" originally aired on NBC in the United States on February 1, 2007, as the twelfth episode of the show's first season and overall of the series.
This episode featured guest appearances by actors Paul Reubens and Isabella Rossellini. Fey wrote the role of Prince Gerhardt Hapsburg specifically for Reubens, and he did not have to audition. Fey, in regard to Reubens, said: "We were thrilled beyond belief to get him to do [the role]." Kevin Lasit, the show's prop master, built Gerhardt's wheelchair and puppet legs. Fey said that Lasit "really outdid himself", and noted that Reubens was kneeling in the wheelchair in the seat built over the top of him. In addition, Reubens wore prosthetic teeth and a wig to accommodate his character's look. According to Fey, in the DVD commentary for this episode, the show shot an alternate ending—at Reubens's request—in which Gerhardt does not die, "but ultimately it felt better stakes for the story if he'd die", in which Will Forte's character says, "The Habsburg line has ended. You can pick up your gift bags at the coat check." In "Black Tie", Rosellini played Bianca, the ex-wife of Alec Baldwin's character, Jack Donaghy. Rosellini would make a second appearance in the February 8, 2007, episode "Up All Night". Comedian actor Will Forte, who played Tomas, the messenger of Prince Gerhardt, has appeared in the main cast of Saturday Night Live (SNL), a weekly sketch comedy series which airs on NBC in the United States. Fey was the head writer on SNL from 1999 until 2006. Forte would later return to 30 Rock as Paul, a love interest of Jenna Maroney's.
In the beginning of the episode, Liz and Josh Girard (Lonny Ross) are exchanging Yo Mamma Jokes. According to Fey, Liz's joke, "What's the difference between your mama and a washing machine? When I drop a load in the washing machine, it doesn't follow me around for a week", was "pretty dirty", and was surprised that the show was able to get away with the joke. It has since been censored in syndication.
## Reception
<div class="quotebox pullquote floatright " style="
width:195px;
;
">
> "'Black Tie' was a great example of what makes 30 Rock so darn enjoyable. It combined completely absurd, off-the-wall nonsense with real and believable human stories and had you constantly laughing as a result. Add to that two hilarious guest appearances and you're left with yet another fantastic episode".
<cite class="left-aligned" style="">Robert Canning,
IGN</cite>
</div>
According to the Nielsen ratings system, "Black Tie" was watched by 5.7 million households in its original American broadcast. It earned a 2.9 rating/7 share in the 18–49 demographic, meaning that 2.9 percent of all people in that group, and 7 percent of all people from that group watching television at the time, watched the episode. This was an increase from the previous episode, "The Head and the Hair", which was watched by 5.0 million American viewers. Since airing, the episode has received generally positive reviews from television critics.
IGN contributor Robert Canning called it a "fantastic episode" and rated it 8 out of 10. He enjoyed all the subplots, and the performances by Paul Reubens and Isabella Rossellini. Julia Ward of AOL's TV Squad wrote that Reubens and Rossellini were "pretty inspired choices", and said that "Tracy as the devil, Kenneth as the angel" gag—in which Tracy was encouraging Pete to cheat on his wife while Kenneth told him not to—was also "inspired". TV Guide's Matt Mitovich was favorable to the guest appearances of Reubens, Rossellini, and Will Forte, but said that Reubens's role "served up a memorable majesty on a very strong, very laugh-out-loud funny installment" of this episode. Mitovich was impressed with how "Black Tie" handled Liz's "date" with Jack, citing that lesser shows would have "gone there" in the final scene, "and really jacked up the 'tension' between its two leads, but Tina Fey and her crack writing staff didn't. They kept it 99.44 percent light, meaning we now won't ... be wondering, 'What if...?'" in regard to the episode itself, Mitovich said it was an "awesome episode, an immeasurably enjoyable, laugh-inducing series." Seattle Post-Intelligencer'' contributor Melanie McFarland said that Reubens was "perfectly cast as such a freak", though in regard to Rossellini's appearance "[s]he glides in playing the class act we're used to, but when Rossellini dissolves into a shocking mess, she yields one of the series' most absurd scenes yet." It was rated the 28th greatest TV episode of all time on TV Guide's list.
|
33,981,210 |
I Care (Beyoncé song)
| 1,171,947,332 | null |
[
"2010s ballads",
"2011 songs",
"Beyoncé songs",
"Contemporary R&B ballads",
"Song recordings produced by Beyoncé",
"Song recordings produced by Jeff Bhasker",
"Songs written by Beyoncé",
"Songs written by Chad Hugo",
"Songs written by Jeff Bhasker"
] |
"I Care" is a song recorded by the American singer Beyoncé for her fourth studio album, 4 (2011). It was written by Jeff Bhasker, Chad Hugo and Beyoncé and produced by Bhasker and co-produced by Beyoncé with Hugo playing rhythm guitar. The song was recorded at the MSR Studios and was mixed by Jordan Young aka DJ Swivel at KMA Studio in New York City. "I Care" is an R&B power ballad, which also contains elements of soul music and rock music. Built on a hand-clapped rhythm and pulsating beats, the song's instrumentation consists of screeching guitars, low-profile synthesizers, pounding drums, heavy percussion instrument and a piano. In "I Care", Beyoncé admits her vulnerability to her indifferent love interest with both honesty and power. She sings with heartfelt emotion over cooing background vocals and scats alongside a multi-octave guitar solo towards the end of the song. "I Care" was sent to contemporary hit radio in Italy on March 23, 2012 as the seventh overall single from 4.
"I Care" was acclaimed by contemporary music critics who highlighted the heartfelt emotion, sadness and resentment with which Beyoncé sings. Critics also complimented the way she made effective use out the power in her lower register in the first and second verses until her voice slowly builds until the commanding chorus is reached. They generally praised the guitar solo and the vocal power of Beyoncé which was displayed by "I Care" among other songs on 4. Following the release of 4 in early July 2011, "I Care" charted number 35 on the South Korea Gaon International Singles Chart, based on downloads alone. The song was part of Beyoncé's set list for her revues 4 Intimate Nights with Beyoncé (2011) and Revel Presents: Beyoncé Live (2012) as well as The Mrs. Carter Show World Tour (2013). It was also used as an interlude in her The Formation World Tour (2016).
## Background
"I Care" was written by Jeff Bhasker, Chad Hugo and Beyoncé while production was handled by Bhasker and Beyoncé. A private listening party for Beyoncé's fourth studio album, 4, was held on May 12, 2011. She offered a select group of fans a preview of five songs from 4 and the official video for the lead single "Run the World (Girls)". On that occasion, "I Care" was one of the songs previewed. Beginning on June 16 to June 27, 2011, the songs from 4 were available to listen to in full each day on Beyoncé's official website, paired with its accompanying photo spread from the album packaging and an insightful quote. On June 17, 2011, "I Care" was the second song to be chosen. The quote found Beyoncé commenting that "I Care" is one of the many ballads which take on matters of the heart. In February 2013, Bhasker revealed that the song was initially written for his first studio album Born on the Fourth of July released in July 2013. He described the sound of his version of "I Care" as "a little more pure version".
## Production
Jordan Young aka DJ Swivel mixed "I Care" at New York's KMA Studio. He told Sound on Sound, "I didn’t really know I was going to mix 'I Care' until the last minute. Luckily, during the course of the album, I had a couple of days to myself and I mixed it just because I felt like it, so the demo was already somewhat mixed, and B[eyoncé] let me do the final mix also."
"I Care" comprised 75 tracks in total: 35 for the music and 40 for the vocals. According to Swivel, the main challenge in mixing "I Care" was hand‐aligning every single drum shot as it was time-consuming. He said, "It's super‐monotonous, but it's the best way I can do it. If you Beat Detective the drums to the grid, it's never perfect." As the layering of the drums had to be right on the millisecond, Swivel did one kick and snare at a time. This helped him ensure that the kicks line up with the programmed drums, hence preventing any phase inversion. Accordingly, each drum punched through as strongly as the last. The inspiration for the main drum sound on "I Care" came to Swivel at around four o'clock in the morning during a mixing session. He took a large plate sound from Avid’s D‐Verb plug‐in, rolled the high frequencies off at 8.6 kHz, and sent it through an SSL channel strip with a gate on it, setting the release time to 0.6 seconds. He said, "It's a really basic plug‐in, and I used a very [19]80s‐sounding gated reverb."
Once he had the sound, he rolled off the bottom to "take the muddiness out". It was actually double reverbed; the gated reverb was only on the snares and the toms, and the rest of the kit as a whole had another plate reverb, which came off the Lexicon 960, for smoothing it out. Swivel said that it actually took him five minutes. According to him, the sound obtained was "a little unorthodox" and therefore, he tried to refine it. Beyoncé thought that it was better the way Swivel did it originally. Swivel commented, "... and in all honesty, whatever works first is usually going to work best. You end up finding something you like about it, and that's where the emotional attachment to a sound comes into play." Swivel often replaces or augments sounds with samples, trying to realise the producer's vision. Similarly in "I Care", he added a couple of kicks underneath the original kick and pitched them down an octave, so that "[the listener] could not hear them but could feel them on big speakers." Swivel further said that it started with "a dark, almost warehouse‐sounding" kick, and he then added a little thump to it.
Swivel dedicated much time in getting the vocal sound right, which according to him is crucial while working with Beyoncé's music. He further explained, "I only put a quick EQ on the vocal at the end of a recording session if I have been cutting her, but mixing is far more particular, so I spent a lot of time dialling in the perfect frequency." For the delay throws in the verses on "I Care", he sent it through a large hall reverb at 50 percent — half reverb, half clean — then through an Amp Farm plug‐in for the grittiness, and that then went through a quarter‐note delay. In the bridge, Beyoncé matches the guitar solo vocally — that was doubled — and one of the vocal tracks has an Amp Farm on it to add to that grittiness. To do justice to the multitude of vocal tracks within the song, Swivel created a stereo field using some clever panning techniques and a Waves S1 Imager plug‐in. He said that it was worth noting that whenever he mixes a record, "I hate hard‐panned L/R. To get the right width, I pan them all differently in pairs: 40/40, 60/60, 70/70, 80/80, 90/90, and OK, maybe one is 100/100, but this process is ultimately what creates the stereo field." Swivel used Waves' SSL E‐Channel plug‐in to shape Beyoncé's lead vocal. He took a Waves S1 Imager and spread with that without isolating he width. He added that something is hard‐panned, it feels too isolated and also confuses the listener's ears. Swivel explained further, "I like smooth sound, and with B[eyoncé] that works fine as she’s so good at matching everything. I like a wall of background vocals. It's the best way of putting your vocal in every area of the stereo field: a wide sound, but you’ve still got something there in the middle."
## Composition and lyrical interpretation
"I Care" is an R&B power ballad. According to Cameron Adams of the Herald Sun, the song contains elements of futuristic soul music and rock music. It is built on a hand-clapped rhythm, various melodies, pulsating as well as palpitating beats and a lone synth note underneath. "I Care" is instrumentally complete with screeching guitars, synthesizers, a thrashing drum machine, dense percussion instrument, and a piano. Holly Gleason of Paste magazine commented that "I Care" aurally resembles Peter Gabriel's "Solsbury Hill" (1977). Joey Guerra of the Houston Chronicle and Matthew Horton of BBC felt that the emotion and the chords present in "I Care" are reminiscent of Prince's "Purple Rain" (1984). Horton added that it "near-equals '1+1' and 'I Miss You' tug heartstrings too". Jim Farber of the Daily News wrote that Beyoncé's vocals over the guitar solo on "I Care" could have spun off a song by Journey. The New York Times' Jon Caramanica compared the song with Janet Jackson's earlier materials. Melinda Newman of the website HitFix compared the echo-chamber beats with Phil Collins' work and also noted that it was similar with Leona Lewis' material.
Throughout the song, Beyoncé airs out her feelings to an indifferent partner, and delivers "indignation and beauty in equal measure", as stated by Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune. This view was echoed by Erika Ramirez of Billboard magazine, who wrote that Beyoncé endorses "beauty in honesty and, ironically, power in admitting her vulnerability", and Lewis Corner of Digital Spy, who noted that the "raspy and husky growls" that she adopts occasionally, show "offering moments of raw, heartfelt emotion". Gleason wrote that the song writhes through the ache and the obsession that come from being the one left in love. Newman noted that in "I Care", Beyoncé was "spurred and left for dead" by her lover but despite her best efforts, she still cares about him. She sings over cooing background vocals, and her voice moves "from silken to powerful, torn to potent".
Over ominous keys, a keyboard opening and a repeating drum loop in the first verse, Beyoncé sings about how her relationship turned sour and puts all her cards on the table, "I told you how you hurt me, baby / But you don't care / Now I'm crying and deserted, baby / But you don't care / Ain't nobody tell me this is love / You're immune to all my pain / I need you to tell me this love / You don't care, well, that's OK". While singing the first and second verses, she pulls out the power in her lower register. Each time, her voice slowly builds until the commanding chorus is reached, where towards the end, she sings, "la la la", in a muted saxophone line. Her voice expresses anger as she sings the chorus lines. In the second verse, Beyoncé continues the "wild-eyed pleas", as stated by Guerra and sings the lines, "Even since you knew your power / you made me cry / And now every time our love goes sour / you won't sympathize". Her raw vocals then punch through most powerfully at the second chorus leading up to the bridge. After the bridge, Beyoncé, this time, scats the chorus alongside a multi-octave guitar solo.
## Critical reception
"I Care" was highly acclaimed by critics. Joanne Dorken of MTV UK wrote that "I Care" proves why Beyoncé "is still the best in the business", further adding that her vocals are flawless as she belts out notes "we didn't even realise were possible." Similarly, David Amidon of PopMatters who stated that "1+1 provides Beyoncé a song that "can compete with the favorites of this generation's parents", later wrote that "1+1" and "I Care" are "equally competent, if safer, attempts at the same formula". He added that the songs explain why she is "head and shoulders above her Clear Channel competition in R&B". However, he concluded that the two songs are misplaced on the tracklising of the album as "I Care" is "a jilted lover track" directly after "a pure love song" as "1+1". The Chicago Sun-Times' Thomas Conner commented that "I Care" is a "sad but superb" song. Holly Gleason of Paste magazine noted that "I Care" creates "a backdrop for Knowles' shaft of vocal power", hinting that she played Etta James in the musical biopic Cadillac Records (2008).
Genevieve Koski of The A.V. Club commented that "4 sees [Beyoncé] stretching out vocally, particularly on the heart-rending 'I Care'." Rich Juzwiak of The Village Voice commented that "I Care" is one of several four songs in which "deceptive calm gives way to intensity-cum-chorus", and commended how Beyoncé's essence "trembles with feeling, she seizes with emotion [and] her voice flutters with the intensity of a hummingbird". Brandon Lewis of Blogcritics commended how she makes maximum use of the power in her lower register, which according to him, is very effective with the song's "relatively short, punchy phrasing". Ian Walker of AbsolutePunk commented that Beyoncé and "the backing production" ebb and flow as the song proceeds, and added that toward the end, she channels her inner Mariah Carey and ultimately "puts the older star to shame". Similarly, Craig Jenkins of Prefix Magazine praised how effortlessly Beyoncé scats along with the multi-octave guitar solo.
Matthew Perpetua of Rolling Stone wrote that though the song may not be an obvious single, it remains one of the finest tracks on the record. Ben Cardew of Music Week called "I Care" an "early highlight" on 4, further praising its instrumentation and the fact that the song "feels touched with sadness, largely thanks to a fantastic chorus". He also noted that "I Care" bears resemblance to some of The Neptunes' "classy early tracks". Andy Gill of The Independent wrote that "I Care" makes good use of Surfer Blood's 2010 song "Twin Peaks"' two-chord motif. Chad Grischow of IGN commented "I Care" is one of the songs on which the Beyoncé's vocals are superior to the lyrics, "as the lame hook pleads, 'But I care / I know you don't care too much / But I still care'". NME's Hamish MacBain showed appreciation of the guitar solo, the lyrics and the "off-kilter drums and moody synths" on "I Care". Neil McCormick of The Daily Telegraph viewed "I Care" as an old-fashioned power ballad.
## Live performances
Beyoncé performed "I Care" live for first time on August 14, 2011 during her residency show 4 Intimate Nights with Beyoncé at the Roseland Ballroom in New York City. She performed the song in front of 3,500 people wearing a gold dress and backed by her all-female band and her backing singers, called the Mamas. Jocelyn Vena of MTV News commented that on "I Care", Beyoncé's vocal abilities "outshined it all." Mike Wass of Idolator commented:
> Sitting on top of a piano with her band and orchestra watching on, Beyonce wrung every ounce of emotion from the lyrics of '1+1' and hit each note perfectly. It was an impressive display, but her rendition of 'I Care' was even better. [Beyoncé] whipped her hair to the brooding brass and ominous beat, while bringing the song to life with an immaculate vocal. Out of nowhere, this often-overlooked track now seems single-worthy.
The video taken from the DVD Live at Roseland: Elements of 4 was uploaded onto YouTube by Beyoncé's Vevo account on December 21, 2011. It begins with the singer singing the song seated while wearing a sparkly mini dress. Later, the guitarist in her all-female band comes next to her and performs a guitar solo while Beyoncé sings the bridge. Kenneth Partridge of The Boombox praised the performance writing that "the R&B megastar is all growls and snarling glances". He further stated that she looked like "a triumphant rock 'n' roll goddess" while performing "I Care". A writer of The Huffington Post praised the performance writing that "'I Care'... showcases an impressive amount of Beyonce-ness. As she belts the lyrics 'You see these tears falling down to my ears/ I swear you like when I'm in pain/ I try to tell you all my fears/ You still don't care?/ That's okay,' Beyonce bedazzles in a sparkly getup and an impressive amount of hair-whipping." During the ITV special A Night With Beyoncé which aired on December 4 in the United Kingdom, Beyoncé performed "I Care" to a selected crowd of fans.
In May 2012, Beyoncé performed "I Care" during her Revel Presents: Beyoncé Live revue in Revel Atlantic City. Jim Farber of Daily News wrote that "she delivered it with equal parts defiance and need". Dan DeLuca of The Philadelphia Inquirer concluded, "The set list tipped too heavily at times towards bombastic balladry like 'I Care' and 'I Miss You'" Tris McCall of New Jersey On-Line praised the performance of "I Care" during the show writing that she "matched her guitar player’s solo note for note during a scalding version of 'I Care.'" In 2013, "I Care" was part of the set list of The Mrs. Carter Show World Tour where Beyoncé performed it seated on a bar stool wearing a black fedora. The Observer's Kitty Empire felt that the set "dip[ped]" with the performance of "I Care" before adding that "[the song is] reminding you that there is filler, even on Beyoncé albums" It was part of her set list during both of her performances at Coachella, and during The Formation World Tour, it was used as an interlude, in a medley with "Ghost". It was also part of the set list of OTR II after Jay-Z performed a snippet of "4:44". "I Care" was performed during the "Opening Act" of the Renaissance World Tour.
## Chart performance
For the week ending July 2, 2011, "I Care" debuted at number 35 on the South Korean International Singles Chart, selling 15,816 digital downloads.
## Certifications and sales
## Release history
|
22,197,466 |
Army of the Rhine and Moselle
| 1,171,452,234 | null |
[
"Armées of the French First Republic",
"Field armies of France",
"French Revolutionary Wars",
"Military units and formations disestablished in 1797",
"Military units and formations established in 1795",
"War of the First Coalition"
] |
The Army of the Rhine and Moselle (French: Armée de Rhin-et-Moselle) was one of the field units of the French Revolutionary Army. It was formed on 20 April 1795 by the merger of elements of the Army of the Rhine and the Army of the Moselle.
The Army of the Rhine and Moselle participated in two principal campaigns in the War of the First Coalition. Military planners in Paris formed armies based on specific strategic tasks, and the task of this Army was to secure the French frontier at the Rhine and to penetrate the German states, potentially threatening Vienna. The unsuccessful 1795 campaign concluded with the removal of General Jean-Charles Pichegru from command. In 1796, under the command of General Jean Victor Marie Moreau, the Army was more successful. After crushing the Reichsarmee's elements at Kehl, the Army advanced into southwestern Germany.
Its success depended on the cooperation with France's Army of the Sambre and Meuse, commanded by Jean-Baptiste Jourdan. In 1796, the jealousies between Jourdan and Moreau, and among the subcommanders, complicated the efficient operations of both armies. After a summer of maneuver in which the Coalition force enticed the French deeper and deeper into German territory, the Habsburg commander Archduke Charles, Duke of Teschen drubbed the French at Wurzburg and at second Wetzlar, and then defeated Jourdan's army at the Limburg-Altenkirchen. These battles destroyed any chance that Jourdan's force and Moreau's Army of the Rhine and Moselle could merge. Once Jourdan withdrew to the west bank of the Rhine, Charles could focus his attention on Moreau. By October they were fighting on the western slope of the Black Forest, and by December Charles had the French forces under siege at the principal river crossings of Kehl and Hüningen. By early 1797 the French had relinquished control of the bridgeheads over the Rhine. After an abbreviated German campaign in 1797, the French and Austrians agreed to the Treaty of Campo Formio and, on 29 September 1797, the Army of the Rhine and Moselle merged with the Army of the Sambre and Meuse to form the Army of Germany.
The Army of the Rhine and Moselle campaigns provided experience for a cadre of young officers. In his five-volume analysis of the Revolutionary Armies, Ramsey Weston Phipps called the Army of the Rhine and Moselle a "school for marshals", to emphasize the importance of experience under these conditions in training the future leadership of Napoleon's army.
## Background
The rulers of Europe viewed the 1789 revolution in France as an internal matter between the French king and his subjects. In 1790, Leopold succeeded his brother Joseph as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire; by 1791, the danger to his sister, Marie Antoinette and her children, alarmed him. In August 1791, in consultation with French émigré nobles and Frederick William II of Prussia, Leopold's Declaration of Pillnitz articulated that the interests of the monarchs of Europe were as one with the interests of Louis and his family. He and his fellow monarchs threatened unspecified consequences if anything should happen to the royal family. French émigrés continued to agitate for support of a counter-revolution, and on 20 April 1792 the French National Convention declared war on Austria. In this War of the First Coalition (1792–1798), France ranged itself against most of the European states sharing its land or water borders, plus Portugal and the Ottoman Empire.
Elements of the armies that were later formed into the Army of the Rhine and Moselle participated in the conquest of the Netherlands and the siege of Luxembourg. The various elements of the army won a victory at the Battle of Fleurus on 16 June 1794. Shortly after Fleurus, the position of the First Coalition in Flanders collapsed and the French armies overran the Austrian Netherlands and the Dutch Republic in the winter of 1794–1795. French and Coalition military strategy subsequently focused on the Rhine river as the principle line of defense: for each side, control of the opposite bank or, at least, the river's principal crossings, was the basis of defensive strategy.
## Purpose and formation
### Military challenges
By 1792 the armies of the French Republic were in a state of disruption; experienced soldiers of the Ancien Régime fought side by side with volunteers. Recruits, urged on by revolutionary fervor from the special representatives—agents of the legislature sent to ensure cooperation among the military—lacked the discipline and training to function efficiently; frequently insubordinate, they often refused orders and undermined unit cohesion. After a defeat, they were capable of mutiny, as Théobald Dillon learned when his troops lynched him in 1792.
Military cohesion became more acute following the 1793 introduction of mass conscription, the levée en masse. The basic unit of the army, the demi-brigade, mixed the men of the old army with the recruits from the levée en masse. Ideally, it was designed to include the regular infantry inherited from the old Royal regiments, who were relatively well-trained and equipped, dressed in white uniforms and wearing tarleton helmets, with the national guard units, who were less well-trained or equipped, with blue uniforms, and the fédéré volunteer battalions, who were poorly trained and equipped, with no uniform other than a red phrygian cap and a cockade of France.
Disruption reached the upper echelons of the army. French commanders walked a fine line between the security of the frontier and the Parisian clamor for victory. Commanders were constantly under suspicion from the representatives of the new regime and sometimes from their own soldiers. Failure to achieve unrealistic expectations implied disloyalty and the price of disloyalty was an appointment with Madame guillotine: several of the highest ranking generals, including the aged Nicolas Luckner, Jean Nicolas Houchard, Adam Philippe Custine, Arthur Dillon and Antoine Nicolas Collier, were killed. Francisco de Miranda's failure to take Maastricht landed him in La Force Prison for several years. Many of the old officer class had emigrated, forming émigré armies; the cavalry in particular suffered from their departure and the Hussards du Saxe and the 15éme Cavalerie (Royal Allemande) regiments defected en masse to the Austrians. The artillery arm, considered by the old nobility to be an inferior assignment, was less affected by emigration and survived intact.
By 1794-95, military planners in Paris considered the upper Rhine Valley, the south-western German territories and Danube river basin of strategic importance for the defense of the Republic. The Rhine offered a formidable barrier to what the French perceived as Austrian aggression and the state that controlled its crossings controlled the river and access into the territories on either side. Ready access across the Rhine and along the Rhine bank between the German states and Switzerland or through the Black Forest, gave access to the upper Danube river valley. For the French, control of the Upper Danube or any point in between, was of immense strategic value and would give the French a reliable approach to Vienna. The planners also understood the importance of moving the French army out of France and into the territories of other polities. Theirs was an army entirely dependent for support upon the countryside it occupied. Parisian revolutionaries and military commanders alike believed an assault into the German states was essential, not only in terms of war aims, but also in practical terms: the French Directory believed that war should pay for itself and did not budget for the payment or feeding of its troops. Although this solved some of the problems of feeding and paying the army, it did not solve them all. Until April 1796, soldiers were paid in an increasingly worthless paper currency called the Assignat; after April, pay was made in metallic value, but pay was still in arrears. Throughout the spring and early summer, the soldiers were in almost constant mutiny: in May 1796, in the border town of Zweibrücken, a demi-brigade revolted. In June, pay for two demi-brigades were in arrears and two companies rebelled.
### Formation
In late 1794, military planners in Paris reorganized the army into task forces. The right flank of the Armies of the Center, later called the Army of the Moselle, the entire Army of the North and the Army of the Ardennes were combined to form the Army of the Sabre and Meuse, which was stationed on the west bank of the Rhine north of the junction of the Main and the Rhine rivers.
The remaining units of the former Army of the Center and the Army of the Rhine were united, initially on 29 November 1794, and formally on 20 April 1795, under command of Jean-Charles Pichegru. These troops were stationed further south, in a line that stretched on the west bank of the Rhine from Basel to the Main River.
At Basel, where the river makes a wide, northerly turn at the Rhine knee, it enters what the locals call the Rhine Ditch (Rheingraben). This forms part of a rift valley some 31 km (19 mi) wide bordered by the mountainous Black Forest on the east (German side) and the Vosges mountains on the west (French side). At the far edges of the eastern flood plain, tributaries cut deep defiles into the western slope of the mountains. Further to the north, the river became deeper and faster, until it widened into a delta where it emptied into the North Sea.
## Campaign of 1795
The Rhine Campaign of 1795 (April 1795 to January 1796) opened both French armies attempted to cross the Rhine and capture the Fortress of Mainz. The French Army of the Sambre and Meuse, commanded by Jean-Baptiste Jourdan, confronted Count Clerfayt's Army of the Lower Rhine in the north, while the French Army of Rhine and Moselle under Pichegru lay opposite Dagobert Sigmund von Wurmser's army in the south. From April until August, both sides engaged in a waiting game until, in August, Jourdan crossed and quickly seized Düsseldorf. The Army of the Sambre and Meuse advanced south to the Main River, completely isolating Mainz. Pichegru's Army of the Rhine and Moselle surprised the Bavarian garrison of Mannheim; by mid-month, both French armies held significant footholds on the east bank of the Rhine. The French fumbled away the promising start to their offensive. Pichegru bungled at least one opportunity to seize Clerfayt's supply base in the Battle of Handschuhsheim, with resultant significant losses. With Pichegru unexpectedly inactive, Clerfayt massed against Jourdan, beat him at Höchst in October, and forced most of the Army of the Sambre and Meuse to retreat to the west bank of the Rhine.
These maneuvers left the Army of the Rhine and Moselle isolated. When Wurmser sealed off the French bridgehead at Mannheim, the Army of the Rhine and Moselle was trapped on the east bank. The Austrians defeated the left wing of the Army of Rhine and Moselle at the Battle of Mainz and moved down the west bank. In November, Clerfayt defeated Pichegru at Pfeddersheim and successfully wrapped up the siege of Mannheim. In January 1796, Clerfayt concluded an armistice with the French, sending the Army of the Rhine and Moselle back to France, and retaining a large portions of the west bank.
## Campaign in 1796
The opening of the Rhine Campaign of 1796 began with Jean-Baptiste Kléber's attack south of his bridgehead at Düsseldorf. After Kléber won sufficient maneuver room on the east bank of the Rhine River, Jean Baptiste Jourdan was supposed to join him with the remainder of the Army of the Sambre and Meuse. At the first battles of Altenkirchen (4 June 1796) and Wetzlar, two Republican French divisions commanded by Kléber attacked a wing of the Habsburg army led by Duke Ferdinand Frederick Augustus of Württemberg. A frontal attack combined with a flanking maneuver forced the Austrians to retreat. Three future Marshals of France played significant roles in the engagement at Altenkirchen: François Joseph Lefebvre as a division commander, Jean-de-Dieu Soult, as a brigadier and Michel Ney, as leader of a flanking column. Altenkirchen is located in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate about 50 km (31 mi) east of Bonn. Wetzlar was located in the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel, 66 kilometers (41 mi) north of Frankfurt. Altenkirchen was only a distraction to entice the Austrian commander to move troops from the south to strengthen his force in the middle Rhine; Moreau lent credence to this distraction by seeming to move part of the Army of the Rhine and Moselle north from Strasburg. When Archduke Charles moved troops north to oppose what looked to be a crossing in force, Moreau reversed to Kehl and crossed the river. Kléber carried out his part of the scheme to perfection.
The opposition armies of the First Coalition included imperial (Reichsarmee) contingents and the infantry and cavalry of the various states, amounting to about 125,000 (including the three autonomous corps), a sizeable force by eighteenth century standards but a moderate force by the standards of the later Revolutionary wars. In total, though, Imperial and Habsburg troops stretched in a line from Switzerland to the North Sea and Wurmser's troops stretched from the Swiss-Italian border to the Adriatic; furthermore, a portion of the troops in Fürstenberg's corps were pulled in July to support Wurmser's activities in Italy. Habsburg troops comprised the bulk of the army, but the thin white line of Habsburg infantry could not cover the territory from Basel to Frankfurt with sufficient depth to resist the pressure of the opposition. In spring 1796, drafts from the free imperial cities, and other imperial estates, augmented the Habsburg force with perhaps 20,000 men at the most. It was largely guesswork where they would be placed, and Archduke Charles, commander of the Reichsarmee and the Habsburg forces, did not like to use the militias, which were poorly trained and unseasoned. Compared to French coverage, Charles had only half the number of troops extended over a 211-mile front, stretching from Basel to Bingen. Furthermore, Charles had concentrated the bulk of his force, commanded by Count Baillet Latour, between Karlsruhe and Darmstadt, where the confluence of the Rhine and the Main river made an attack most likely, as it offered a gateway into eastern German states and ultimately to Vienna, with sturdy bridges crossing the relatively well-defined river bank. To the north, Wilhelm von Wartensleben’s autonomous corps stretched in a thin line between Mainz and Giessen.
On 22 June, the Army of the Rhine and Moselle executed simultaneous crossings at Kehl and Hüningen. At Kehl, Moreau's advance guard, 10,000 men, preceded the main force of 27,000 infantry and 3,000 cavalry directed at a mere several hundred Swabian pickets on the bridge. The Swabians were hopelessly outnumbered and could not be reinforced. Most of the Imperial Army of the Rhine was stationed further north, by Mannheim, where the river was easier to cross. Neither Louis Joseph, Prince of Condé's Army of Condé in Freiburg nor Karl Aloys zu Fürstenberg's force in Rastatt could reach Kehl in time to relieve the Swabian troops. Consequently, within a day, Moreau had four divisions across the river. Unceremoniously thrust out of Kehl, the Swabian contingent reformed at Rastatt by 5 July, which they held until reinforcements arrived. Furthermore, at Hüningen, near Basel, Ferino executed a full crossing, and advanced east along the German shore of the Rhine with the 16th and 50th Demi-brigades, the 68th, 50th and 68th line infantry, and six squadrons of cavalry that included the 3rd and 7th Hussars and the 10th Dragoons. The Habsburg and Imperial armies were in danger of encirclement.
With Ferino's quick movements to encircle him, Charles executed an orderly withdrawal in four columns through the Black Forest, across the Upper Danube valley, and toward Bavaria. By mid-July, the French forces maintained persistent pressure on Charles' force. Two imperial columns encamped near Stuttgart were surrounded and surrendered, leading to a general armistice with the Swabian Circle. The third column, which included the Condé's Corps, retreated through Waldsee to Stockach, and eventually Ravensburg. The fourth Austrian column, the smallest (three battalions and four squadrons), under General Wolff, marched the length of the Bodensee's northern shore, via Überlingen, Meersburg, Buchhorn, and the Austrian city of Bregenz.
Given the size of the attacking force, Charles had to withdraw far enough into Bavaria to align his northern flank with Wartensleben's autonomous corps. As he withdrew, his own line compressed, making his army stronger; his opposition's flanks extended, making their line weaker. In the course of this withdrawal, most of the Swabian Circle was abandoned to the Army of the Rhine and Moselle, which enforced an armistice and extracted sizeable reparations; in addition, the French occupied several principal towns in southwestern Germany, including Stockach, Meersburg, Constance, Überlingen am Bodensee, Ulm, and Augsburg. As Charles withdrew further east, the neutral zone expanded, eventually encompassing most of southern German states and the Ernestine duchies.
### Summer of 1796
By mid-summer, the strategic goals of the Army of the Rhine and Moselle appeared to have succeeded; Jourdan or Moreau seemed on the brink of flanking Charles and Wartensleben, forcing a wedge between the two; inexplicably, Wartensleben continued to withdraw to the east-north-east, despite Charles' orders to unite with him. At the Battle of Neresheim on 11 August, Moreau crushed Charles' force and at last, however, Wartensleben recognized the danger; he changed direction, moving his corps to join at Charles' northern flank. At the Battle of Amberg on 24 August, Charles inflicted another defeat on the French, but that same day, his commanders lost a battle to the French at Friedberg, when the French army, which was advancing eastward on the south side of the Danube, isolated an Austrian infantry unit, Schröder Infantry Regiment Nr. 7, and the French Army of Condé. In the ensuing clash, the Austrians and Royalists were cut to pieces.
The tide now turned in the Coalition's favor. Both French Armies had overstretched their lines, moving far into the German states, and were separated too far from each other for one to offer the other aid or security. The Coalition's concentration of troops forced a wider wedge between the two armies of Jourdan and Moreau, what the French had tried to do to Charles and Wartensleben. Despite Charles' instructions to withdraw northward toward Ingolstadt, Maximilian Anton Karl, Count Baillet de Latour retreated eastward to protect the borders of Austria. Moreau did not seize the opportunity to place his army between the two Austrian forces (Wartensleben's and Charles'). As the French withdrew toward the Rhine, Charles and Wartensleben pressed forward. On 3 September at Würzburg, Jourdan attempted unsuccessfully to halt the retreat; at the Battle of Limburg, Charles pushed him back to the Rhine.
Once Moreau received word of Jourdan's defeat, he initiated his withdrawal from southern Germany. Retreating through the Black Forest, with Ferino supervising the rear guard, he claimed one more victory: an Austrian corps commanded by Latour drew too close to Moreau at Biberach and lost 4,000 prisoners, some standards and artillery; Latour followed at a more sensible distance. Both sides were hampered by heavy rains; the ground was soft and slippery, and the Rhine and Elz rivers had flooded. This increased the hazards of mounted attack, because the horses could not get a good footing. Archduke's force pursued the French, although carefully. The French attempted to slow their pursuers by destroying bridges, but the Austrians repaired them and crossed the swollen rivers despite the high waters. Upon reaching a few miles east of Emmendingen, the Archduke split his force into four columns. Friedrich Joseph, Count of Nauendorf's column, in the upper Elz, had eight battalions and 14 squadrons, advancing southwest to Waldkirch; Wartensleben had 12 battalions and 23 squadrons advancing south to capture the Elz bridge at Emmendingen. Latour, with 6,000 men, was to cross the foothills via Heimbach and Malterdingen, and capture the bridge of Köndringen, between Riegel and Emmendingen, and Karl Aloys zu Fürstenberg's column held Kinzingen, about 3.2 kilometers (2 mi) north of Riegel. Frölich and Condé (part of Nauendorf's column) were to pin down Ferino and the French right wing in the Stieg valley. Nauendorf's men were able to ambush St.-Cyr's advance; Latour's columns attacked Beaupuy at Matterdingen, killing the general and throwing his column into confusion. Wartensleben, in the center, was held up by French riflemen until his third (reserve) detachment arrived to outflank them; the French retreated across the rivers, destroying all the bridges.
After the shambles at Emmendingen, the French withdrew to the south and west, and formed for battle by Schliengen. There, Moreau established his army along a ridge of hills, in a 11-kilometer (7 mi) semi-circle on heights that commanded the terrain below. Given the severe condition of the roads at the end of October, Archduke Charles could not flank the right French wing. The French left wing lay too close to the Rhine, and the French center was unassailable. Instead, he attacked the French flanks directly, and in force, which increased casualties for both sides. The Duc d'Enghien led a spirited (but unauthorized) attack on the French left, cutting their access to a withdrawal through Kehl. Nauendorf's column marched all night and half of the day, and attacked the French right, pushing them further back. In the night, while Charles planned his next day's attack, Moreau began the withdrawal of his troops toward Hüningen. Although the French and the Austrians both claimed victory at the time, military historians generally agree that the Austrians achieved a strategic advantage. However, the French withdrew from the battlefield in good order and several days later crossed the Rhine River at Hüningen.
After Schliengen, both the French and the Coalition sought to control the Rhine river crossings at Kehl and Hüningen. At Kehl, 20,000 French defenders under Louis Desaix and the overall commander of the French force, Jean Victor Marie Moreau, almost upset the siege when they executed a sortie that nearly captured the Austrian artillery park; the French managed to capture 1,000 Austrian troops in the melee. On 9 January the French general Desaix proposed the evacuation to General Latour and they agreed that the Austrians would enter Kehl the next day, on 10 January at 16:00. The French immediately repaired the bridge, rendered passable by 14:00, which gave them 24 hours to evacuate everything of value and to raze everything else. By the time Latour took possession of the fortress, nothing remained of any use: all palisades, ammunition, even the carriages of the bombs and howitzers, had been evacuated. The French insured that nothing remained behind that could be used by the Austrian/Imperial army; even the fortress itself was but earth and ruins. The siege concluded 115 days after its investment, following 50 days of open trenches, the point at which active fighting began.
At Hüningen Karl Aloys zu Fürstenberg's force initiated the siege within days of the Austrian victory at the Battle of Schliengen. Most of the siege ran concurrently with the siege at Kehl, which concluded on 9 January 1797. Troops engaged at Kehl marched to Hüningen in preparation for a major assault, but the French defenders capitulated on 1 February 1797. The French commander, Jean Charles Abbatucci, was killed in the early days of the fighting, and replaced by Georges Joseph Dufour. The trenches, opened originally in November, had refilled with winter rain and snow in the intervening weeks. Fürstenberg ordered them opened again, and the water drained out on 25 January. The Coalition force secured the earthworks surrounding the trenches. On 31 January the French failed to push the Austrians out. Archduke Charles arrived that day and met with Fürstenberg at nearby Lörrach. The night of 31 January to 1 February was relatively tranquil, marred only by ordinary artillery fire and shelling. At mid-day 1 February 1797, as the Austrians prepared to storm the bridgehead, General of Division Dufour pre-empted what would have been a costly attack for both sides, offering to surrender the position. On 5 February, Fürstenberg finally took possession of the bridgehead.
Following the losses in 1796 and early 1797, the French regrouped their forces on the west side of the Rhine. An abbreviated campaign in late spring of 1797 led to Austrians and the French to agree to the Treaty of Campo Formio, ending the War of the First Coalition. The subsequent armistice at Leoben led to long term negotiations for peace between Revolutionary France and Austria. On 29 September 1797, the Army of the Rhine and Moselle merged with the Army of the Sambre and Meuse to form the Army of Germany.
## Organizational and command problems
Excruciating command challenges plagued the Army of the Rhine and Moselle in its early operations. The campaign of 1795 had been entirely a French failure and the difficulties the Army of the Rhine and Moselle faced, especially in 1795, had much to do with Pichegru's own situation: his competition with both Moreau and Jourdan and his disaffection with the direction in which the revolution was headed. Originally a dedicated Jacobin, by 1794, his own intrigues had placed him in command after he had undermined Lazare Hoche the previous year, insuring his own appointment as commander of this army. As the revolution waxed and waned in its ardency, however, so did Pichegru to its principles: by late 1794, he was leaning heavily toward the royalist cause. The Directory replaced him with Desaix, and later Moreau. Undeniably a capable, possibly brilliant, and popular commander, Pichegru began his second campaign by crossing the Meuse on 18 October. After taking Nijmegen, he drove the Austrians across the Rhine. Then, instead of going into winter quarters, he prepared his army for a winter campaign, always a difficult proposition in the eighteenth century. Several brilliant actions in the winter established Pichegru's position. Pichegru's actions sometimes seemed inexplicable: although an associate, even a friend, of the recently executed Saint-Just, Pichegru offered his services to the Thermidorian Reaction; after having received the title of Sauveur de la Patrie ("Saviour of the Fatherland") from the National Convention, he subdued the sans-culottes of Paris during the bread riots of 1 April 1795. As a hero of the Revolution captured Mannheim but inexplicably he allowed his colleague Jourdan to be defeated; throughout 1796, his machinations in Paris complicated the conduct of operations in Germany by undermining the senior command confidence.
In the field in 1796, competition between generals, not ideology, caused command problems. Jealousies between Jourdan and Moreau further complicated the success of the Army of the Rhine and Moselle by refusing to unite their fronts. Moreau moved rapidly into Bavarian and toward Vienna, as if he commanded the only French army in the German states. Frustration created rivalries between and among subcommanders. Ferino continued his seemingly random maneuvers along the border with Switzerland, and through the Swabian Circle, as if he too were operating autonomously. These problems were not limited to Moreau's army; in the Army of the Sambre and Meuse, Jourdan had a spat with his wing commander Kléber and that officer suddenly resigned. Two generals from Kléber's clique, Bernadotte and Colaud, also made excuses to leave immediately. Faced with this mutiny, Jourdan replaced Bernadotte with General Henri Simon and divided Colaud's rebellious units among the other divisions.
### School for marshals
The campaigns in which the Army of the Rhine and Moselle participated also provided exceptional experience for a cadre of extraordinary young officers. In his five-volume analysis of the Revolutionary Armies, Ramsey Weston Phipps emphasized the importance of experience under these trying conditions of manpower shortage, poor training, equipment and supply shortage, and tactical and strategic confusion and interference. Phipps's objective was to show how the training received in the early years of the war varied not only with the theater in which they served but also with the character of the army to which they belonged. The experience of young officers under the tutelage of such experienced men as Pichegru, Moreau, Lazar Hoche, Lefebvre, and Jourdan provided young officers with valuable experience.
Phipps' analysis is not singular, although his lengthy volumes address in detail the value of this "school for marshals." In 1895, Richard Phillipson Dunn-Pattison also singled out the French Revolutionary army as "the finest school the world has yet seen for an apprenticeship in the trade of arms. The resurrection of the Ancien Régime civil dignity of the marchalate allowed Emperor Napoleon I to strengthen his newly-created power. He could reward the most valuable of his generals or soldiers who had held significant commands during the French Revolutionary Wars. The Army of the Rhine and Moselle (and its subsequent incarnations) included five future Marshals of France: Jean-Baptiste Jourdan, its commander-in-chief, Jean-Baptiste Drouet, Laurent de Gouvion Saint-Cyr, and Édouard Adolphe Casimir Joseph Mortier. François Joseph Lefebvre, by 1804 an old man, was named an honorary marshal, but not awarded a field position. Michel Ney, in the 1795–1799 campaigns an intrepid cavalry commander, came into his own command under the tutelage of Moreau and Massena in the south German and Swiss campaigns. Jean de Dieu Soult had served under Moreau and Massena, becoming the latter's right-hand man during the Swiss campaign of 1799–1800. Jean Baptiste Bessieres, like Ney, had been a competent and sometimes inspired regimental commander in 1796. MacDonald, Oudinot and Saint-Cyr, participants in the 1796 campaign, all received honors in the third, fourth and fifth promotions (1809, 1811, 1812).
## Commanders
## Order of Battle in 1796
The Army included 66 battalions and 79 squadrons, totaling 65,103 men, including 56,756 infantry, 6,536 cavalry and 1,811 artillery on 1 June 1796:
Commander in Chief (1796) Jean Victor Marie Moreau
Chief of Staff: Jean Louis Ebénézer Reynier
Commander of Artillery : Jean-Baptiste Eblé
Commander of Engineers: Dominique-André de Chambarlhac
## Notes, citations and references
### Other useful sources
[Rhin](Category:Armées_of_the_French_First_Republic "wikilink") [Military units and formations established in 1795](Category:Military_units_and_formations_established_in_1795 "wikilink") [Field armies of France](Category:Field_armies_of_France "wikilink") [French Revolutionary Wars](Category:French_Revolutionary_Wars "wikilink") [War of the First Coalition](Category:War_of_the_First_Coalition "wikilink") [Military units and formations disestablished in 1797](Category:Military_units_and_formations_disestablished_in_1797 "wikilink")
|
28,811,143 |
2 Broadway
| 1,170,354,783 |
Office skyscraper in Manhattan, New York
|
[
"1959 establishments in New York City",
"Bowling Green (New York City)",
"Broadway (Manhattan)",
"Emery Roth buildings",
"Financial District, Manhattan",
"Metropolitan Transportation Authority",
"Office buildings completed in 1959",
"Office buildings in Manhattan"
] |
2 Broadway is an office building at the south end of Broadway, near Bowling Green Park, in the Financial District of Manhattan in New York City. The 32-story building, designed by Emery Roth & Sons and constructed from 1958 to 1959, contains offices for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). 2 Broadway serves as the headquarters for some of the MTA's subsidiary agencies.
The building is on a site bounded by Broadway and Whitehall Street to the west, Beaver Street to the north, and Stone Street to the south. It fills most of the lot, with the building rising in triple setbacks. The facade is covered in blue-green tinted glass, which dates from a 1999 redesign by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.
The site was previously occupied by George B. Post's New York Produce Exchange building, which was completed in 1884. Plans for the skyscraper date to 1953, when William Lescaze devised plans to replace the Produce Exchange Building. Emery Roth & Sons were selected to be the architects when Uris Buildings Corporation took over the project. The original tenants were largely financial firms, while the Produce Exchange owned the land under the building and occupied some lower floors. Olympia and York acquired 2 Broadway in 1976 and the underlying land in 1983. After the building became mostly vacant during the early 1990s, Tamir Sapir purchased 2 Broadway in 1995. The building was renovated after the MTA leased all the space in 1998, although the project encountered high costs and several delays.
## Site
2 Broadway is in the Financial District of Manhattan in New York City, along the eastern side of Bowling Green. The land lot is shaped irregularly, with frontage on seven streets: Stone Street to the south; Broadway and Whitehall Street, along Bowling Green, to the west; Beaver Street and Marketfield Street to the north; and New Street and Broad Street to the east. The building also wraps around other structures at the city block's northeast corner, at Marketfield and Broad Streets, and at the block's southeast corner, at Broad and Stone Streets.
The building is adjacent to 26 Broadway to the north, the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House to the west, and the American Bank Note Company Building to the northeast. It also faces 1 Broadway, the Bowling Green Offices Building (11 Broadway), and the Cunard Building (25 Broadway) to the west. The Whitehall Street station of the New York City Subway, serving the , contains entrances directly outside 2 Broadway.
Much of the site was previously occupied by George B. Post's ten-story New York Produce Exchange headquarters, erected between 1881 and 1884. The structure had been built at a time when the Produce Exchange was in high demand; in 1900, the exchange performed \$15 million of business every day. By the 1950s, membership at the Produce Exchange had declined to five hundred from its peak membership of three thousand. The site was also occupied by three smaller buildings, including a five-story structure at 76 Broad Street.
## Architecture
2 Broadway was designed by Emery Roth & Sons and completed in 1959. It was one of several large post-World War II buildings the firm erected in Manhattan, besides the Pan Am Building, 1290 Avenue of the Americas, and the Chemical New York Trust Building. The current exterior dates to 1999, when Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) installed new cladding on the building.
The structure consists of 32 stories, with a height of 421 feet (128.32 m). The design fills most of the lot, with the building rising in triple setbacks. The building was designed so it occupied the maximum volume and massing allowed under zoning regulations at the time. Under a subsequent change to the zoning code, proposed one year after 2 Broadway was completed, the building would have exceeded the maximum shape of that code.
### Facade
Originally, 2 Broadway's facade was clad with full-height glass windows between black horizontal spandrels. The glass windows were separated by gray vertical mullions. Gray horizontal bars alternately ran atop the bottom or top of each spandrel, resulting in a staggered pattern. A similar pattern is employed in the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building. Carter B. Horsley wrote for The New York Times in 1977 that the facade pattern did not relate to the building's structural system, unlike most other structures built in New York City at the time. Following SOM's renovation, the facade was covered in blue-green tinted glass.
Above the main entrance at Broadway is a mosaic mural by Lee Krasner and Ronald Stein, measuring 86 feet (26 m) wide and 12 feet (3.7 m) tall. The mosaic is composed of multicolored glass tiles in green, gold, black, and crimson hues. Another mosaic by the same artists is installed over the entrance on Broad Street but measures 15 by 15 feet (4.6 by 4.6 m). The works were installed on the suggestion of B. H. Friedman, an executive at Uris Brothers, the company that developed 2 Broadway. These artworks were never given a title.
### Interior
The building contains about 1,600,000 square feet (150,000 m<sup>2</sup>) of total interior space. It was built with 1,390,000 square feet (129,000 m<sup>2</sup>) of leasable space, with about 59,000 square feet (5,500 m<sup>2</sup>) of office space on each floor. This made 2 Broadway the second largest skyscraper in the Financial District at the time of its completion, behind One Chase Manhattan Plaza (now 28 Liberty Street). As of 2021, the building houses offices of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). Some of the MTA's subsidiaries are headquartered at 2 Broadway, including the New York City Transit Authority, MTA Bridges and Tunnels, and MTA Capital Construction.
2 Broadway's lobby was originally accessed by three entrances at Broadway, Broad Street, and New Street, which were open to the public and internally connected. The entrance concourse at Broad Street, measuring 100 by 20 feet (30.5 by 6.1 m), was planted with flowers, shrubs, and trees when the building was completed. Other features of the lobby included a gray marble panel on the wall, embedded with a fossilized coral reef estimated to be 360 million years old.
## History
### Planning and construction
In October 1953, the Produce Exchange leased the site of its headquarters to developers Jack D. Weiler and Benjamin H. Swig for up to 100 years. The developers planned to construct a 30-story building on the Produce Exchange's site at 2 Broadway for \$25 million. In the original design by William Lescaze, the first and second stories would have occupied the whole lot, with a ground-level arcade, a two-story lobby, and a tenants' garage with 300 spots. The 3rd to 11th floors would have contained shallow setbacks from the street. The 12th to 30th floors would have comprised the tower slab measuring 72 feet (22 m) parallel to Broadway and 250 feet (76 m) deep. The tower slab was to be slightly hexagonal with concave bulges on the north and south. The facade of the third through 11th stories on Bowling Green would have been a grid, while the other facades would have been "horizontal strip" windows, horizontally spaced between balconies. The building would have had 1 million square feet of space, with 50,000 square feet (4,600 m<sup>2</sup>) on each of the 3rd to 11th floors and 18,000 square feet (1,700 m<sup>2</sup>) on each of the tower floors. Tenants of the existing Produce Exchange Building would have been able to rent space in 2 Broadway.
After the original plan stalled, the Charles F. Noyes Company subsequently took over the development project. The development had stalled until plans for One Chase Manhattan Plaza had been announced in 1956. As part of an agreement finalized that May, the exchange was allowed to retain ownership of the land under the new building. The Charles F. Noyes Company, which was funding the project, announced that August that Lescaze and Kahn & Jacobs had revised the plans. The building was then planned to be 33 stories with 1,069,000 square feet (99,300 m<sup>2</sup>) of rentable office space, making it the fourth-largest office building in New York City by rentable area.
The Uris Buildings Corporation took over the project in January 1957 and hired Emery Roth & Sons to redesign the skyscraper. The Roth design was also to be thirty stories but contained an additional 200,000 square feet (19,000 m<sup>2</sup>). The Produce Exchange moved to temporary quarters the same month, and demolition began that February. The final designs provided for a 32-story tower, the largest skyscraper to be developed in Lower Manhattan after World War II. Half of the planned 1,300,000 square feet (120,000 m<sup>2</sup>) of office space was rented by July 1957, even though the Produce Exchange Building was still being demolished. Facade installation was underway by early 1959. The structure was completed that June; the space was fully leased by the time it was completed.
### Early occupancy
The Produce Exchange moved to 2 Broadway, the site of its old building, in November 1959. The land under 2 Broadway was leased from the Produce Exchange, which earned \$275,000 per year. The other original tenants were largely financial firms, including sixteen brokerage firms. Leases at the building were originally handled by Cushman & Wakefield, which itself occupied some space in the building from 1959 to 1962. The leases included four stories for the City Bank/Farmers Trust Company, three stories for American Electric Power, two stories for Haskins and Sells, two stories for Continental Grain, parts of two stories for steamship operator Moore-McCormack, and some space for IBM. The large number of visitors to the building's financial firms, as well as the fact that the main lobby was used as a public pedestrian shortcut, resulted in extremely high visitor traffic, thereby increasing maintenance costs.
In 1973, the Produce Exchange was converted into a real estate investment trust called the Produce Exchange Realty Trust (PERT). The trust's main property was the land ownership of 2 Broadway. The same year, Uris Buildings was sold to National Kinney Corporation, which shortly afterward placed 2 Broadway and ten other Uris properties for sale. Samuel J. LeFrak expressed interest in buying 2 Broadway and most of the other Uris structures in 1976.
### Olympia & York ownership
Olympia and York (O&Y) bought 2 Broadway in 1977 as part of a \$50 million transaction involving several Uris properties. The transactions made the firm the largest commercial landlord in Manhattan. By 1980, the building was again fully occupied. With its purchase of the building, O&Y took over the \$275,000-per-year lease of the land under 2 Broadway, which was scheduled to be renewed in 1981. Upon the lease's expiration, PERT proposed to raise the annual rental to \$2.01 million, based on a clause in the lease that set the annual rental as five percent of the land value, as if the land had been vacant and unimproved. While two appraisers agreed the land was worth \$40.2 million, O&Y objected that the value had been incorrectly derived. The dispute was brought to the New York Supreme Court, which in May 1983 ruled in favor of PERT. Later that year, PERT's trustees proposed and approved a plan to sell off its ownership in 2 Broadway, its only large asset, to O&Y for \$26 million. In early 1984, O&Y secured a \$970 million floating-rate mortgage for 2 Broadway and two other Manhattan properties.
As the 1990s recession affected O&Y's finances, the vacancy rate at 2 Broadway reached 60 percent by 1992. The structure was described in The New York Times as "a stark illustration of the neighborhood's struggling office market". O&Y, struggling to pay \$60 million of property taxes, attempted to persuade the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development to lease about 500,000 square feet (46,000 m<sup>2</sup>). Around the same time, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority rented space at 2 Broadway, moving some of its operations from its former headquarters at 370 Jay Street in Downtown Brooklyn. O&Y subsequently restructured its \$970 million mortgage notes, and Apollo Investors became the majority owner of the notes. Accordingly, the note-holders became the owners of 2 Broadway. O&Y announced in July 1994 that it would sell 2 Broadway to raise money for the two other properties.
### MTA headquarters
In August 1995, the media announced that 2 Broadway had been purchased for \$20.5 million. The buyer was Tamir Sapir, a Soviet immigrant and cab driver turned real-estate investor, who acquired the building through his firm, ZAR Realty, that October. At the time, the MTA was the only tenant of 2 Broadway. While other developers saw the building as a white elephant, the building's brokers expressed optimism that the vacant space would be attractive to a large tenant. ZAR hired SOM in mid-1997 to upgrade the building's mechanical systems and renovating its lobby. By then, ZAR received offers of \$80 million for the property, but Sapir refused to sell. At the same time, the MTA was looking to consolidate its space, which then was split across several buildings.
The MTA signed a 49-year lease for the entire building in July 1998, with two 15-year renewal options, the day after it sold the New York Coliseum. The lease was one of the largest in city history at the time. The lease was worth \$1.6 billion, or about \$20 per square foot (\$220/m<sup>2</sup>) per year for the 50-year term. Shortly after the MTA's lease was signed, ZAR and the MTA started renovating 2 Broadway, with the cost then estimated at \$39 million. Credit Suisse First Boston gave Sapir a \$150 million mortgage on the property in late 1998, and Carlton Advisory Services gave another \$230.2 million in financing the next year. The MTA started moving additional personnel from the New York Coliseum into 2 Broadway in 1999. The MTA had initially named Sapir as the developer of its office space, offering to pay him \$7 million in bonuses. The refurbishment of mechanical systems and interiors was then expected to cost \$55 million while the offices would be furnished for \$80 million.
The refurbishment encountered delays in part due to a high demand for skilled construction workers citywide. A dispute also arose when the MTA replaced Sapir with Frederick C. Contini, whom Sapir had fired for another reason. The change of developer led Sapir to sue the MTA. Project costs increased as well; the renovations were expected to cost \$135 million by 2000 and about \$430 million by 2003. Part of the budget increase was attributed to corruption by several parties involved in the renovation, including Contini, who was subsequently indicted for embezzling several million dollars. Investigations of Contini's activities found that some of the embezzled funds had gone to the Gambino and Genovese crime families. The cost of routine work rose ten times from normal levels, and the law firm which the MTA hired to negotiate the building's lease sent the agency invoices for \$8 million in legal fees. Sapir and the MTA settled their suit in late 2003. The renovation was only about two-thirds complete at that time, leading one reporter to write, "2 Broadway stands as a monument to what's wrong with the MTA and how it handles the public's money." The total cost of the renovation ended up at \$499 million, excluding an additional \$346 million in interest costs.
Around 2003, the New York City Transit Authority assumed responsibility of the building. At that point, 2,700 workers were working in 2 Broadway and another two thousand were to be relocated by the end of the year. By 2011, the building had offices for 4,200 MTA employees, putting it at 87 percent occupancy. That year, the MTA announced plans to sell off its other office buildings at 341–347 Madison Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. As part of this plan, many of the 873 employees at Madison Avenue would be moved to 2 Broadway. In addition, the remaining employees at 370 Jay Street were moved to 2 Broadway around the same time. The Madison Avenue employees were relocated to 2 Broadway in 2014 and early 2015. The MTA moved its Business Service Center and Capital Project Management offices to 2 Broadway in 2020.
## Impact
The design of 2 Broadway was criticized by Architectural Forum editor Douglas Haskell, who wrote in 1959 that the Roth firm's space-maximizing design was a "cubistic method of composition", due to the need to conform to zoning law. Haskell stated of the building's curtain wall facade, "From a distance the wall looks not unlike a great piece of magnified and glass-filled chain mail". Ada Louise Huxtable wrote in 1986 that, in comparison to the design for the Produce Exchange, "The successor at 2 Broadway, a legitimate descendant if one considers only the engineering drawings, looks as if it could be demolished with a can opener." After SOM renovated the facade, the AIA Guide to New York City wrote that the exterior was a "sleek glass and elegant metal" cladding on what had been a "banal" structure.
2 Broadway was shown in the American comedy-drama film The Apartment (1960), produced and directed by Billy Wilder, as the building in which the characters played by stars Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, and Fred MacMurray work. The building was also a filming location in the thriller Mirage (1965), with Gregory Peck and Diane Baker.
## See also
- List of buildings and structures on Broadway in Manhattan
|
763,511 |
Alonzo Clemons
| 1,168,633,391 |
American sculptor and savant
|
[
"1958 births",
"20th-century African-American artists",
"20th-century American sculptors",
"21st-century African-American artists",
"21st-century American sculptors",
"Acquired savants",
"African-American sculptors",
"Living people",
"People from Boulder, Colorado",
"People with intellectual disability",
"Sculptors from Colorado"
] |
Alonzo Clemons (born 1958) is an American savant and sculptor from Boulder, Colorado. He sustained a severe brain injury as a child that left him with a developmental disability. He achieved fame for his ability to sculpt almost any animal in a realistic and anatomically accurate three-dimensional rendering even after glancing at a picture for only mere seconds.
## Life
Clemons was born in Boulder, Colorado, in 1958, where he has lived his entire life. At the age of three or four, Clemons experienced a severe brain injury due to a falling accident. This left him with a developmental disability, having an IQ of around 40 and the mental development of a six-year-old. According to his mother, molding clay was his only interest as a child ever since the accident. The accident left him barely able to speak and without the ability to read, write, drive a car, or tie his shoes, meaning he would only be able to live with assistance for the rest of his life. Due to the time he grew up in, his condition was not significantly treated in his youth. Nevertheless, he acquired a high level of self-sufficiency, living in his own apartment and studio next to his mother, while his improving social skills allowed him to work part-time at the local YMCA and partake in Special Olympics events in powerlifting.
Clemons is considered an acquired savant, meaning a person that acquired a disability and in turn received a prodigious talent in a certain field, in his case sculpting. Savant syndrome researcher Darold Treffert has referred to Clemons as a prodigy, stating that if he were not disabled, he would be considered a genius.
## Artistry
His talent for sculpting began to show shortly after his injury, when he started using clay, or, when unavailable, materials like butter, lard, or even bitumen to sculpt various animals, in most cases using only his hands. As with other savants, he received and required no formal training of any sort, but is immediately able to sculpt any animal he sees, be it in person, on TV or on a photo, in an accurate three-dimensional rendering, creating extremely lifelike clay sculptures that may later be cast into other materials. Researchers have speculated that he is able to "freeze the frame" of what he sees at any moment in time and reproduce the exact image. By 1987, he had already produced 500 clay pieces that filled his entire apartment. One of his gallerists asserted that his ability grew the more contact to animals he had, attributing regular visits to the Denver Zoo and local animal farms to his increased skill and range. While most of his works centers around animals, he has also produced sculptures of humans or religious symbols. Most of his artworks are small in size and sculpted in less than an hour, however; he has also produced life-sized sculptures. His first work of the sort, Three Frolicking Foals, which was sold for \$45,000 in 1987, only took him 15 days to produce, even though it required him to learn new techniques. Aside from sculpting, he has also picked up pastel drawing.
In 1983, he appeared in public for the first time on 60 Minutes on CBS and in May of the same year had his first public exhibition at an art gallery in Denver, Colorado, where a sculpture of a bull was sold for \$950. For decades, he had practiced his art in obscurity, until the 1988 film Rain Man created an interest in savant syndrome. Subsequently, he was shown in multiple international documentaries and TV shows, such as the German documentary Expedition ins Gehirn, leading to an increased interest in his art, which was then picked up by galleries and shown in art museums and at exhibitions around the world.
Clemons cannot describe how he sculpts and why his ability mostly relates to animals, but considers his ability to be a "gift from God" and not something he can, but rather something he has to do, an inner urge that enables him to show how he sees the world. When asked how he does it, Alonzo will simply smile and point to his head. His assistant has referred to working with clay as an "integral part of his personhood", while he himself stated that he would be miserable if he were unable to sculpt.
|
11,555,581 |
Coat of arms of Munich
| 1,099,278,860 |
Coat of arms
|
[
"Coats of arms with books",
"Coats of arms with crosses",
"Government of Munich",
"History of Munich",
"Municipal coats of arms in Germany"
] |
The coat of arms of Munich (Münchner Wappen) depicts a young monk dressed in black holding a red book. It has existed in a similar form since the 13th century, though at certain points in its history it has not depicted the central figure of the monk at all. As the German name for Munich, München, means Home of Monks, the monk in this case is a self-explanatory symbol (canting arms) who represents the city of Munich.
Appearing on a document of 28 May 1239, the oldest seal of Munich has a picture of a monk wearing an open hood. While all seal impressions show the monk with the book in one hand and three outstretched fingers in the other, the monk has varied slightly, appearing in profile, then later full-faced and bare-headed. By the 19th century the figure was portrayed as youthful and became known as the Münchner Kindl or Munich Child. The coat of arms in its current form was created in 1957 and is still an important symbol of the Bavarian state capital.
## The Monk
As the German name for Munich, i.e. München, means "of Monks", the monk in this case is a self-explanatory symbol who represents the city of Munich. The figure is portrayed wearing a golden trimmed black cowl with a black hood and red shoes. The right hand is raised and the left carries a red book.
The open right hand of the monk is interpreted as an oath-making gesture, or a blessing gesture in Christian tradition. The red book in the left hand refers to the oath book of the city (in accordance with the gesture of the right hand), or the municipal law book which is bounded in red and has been handed down since 1365. Another interpretation is that it is a gospel book.
When the Munich town administration developed a constitution of its council, a seal was necessary for the purposes of asserting the authenticity of town-council documents. Appearing on a document of May 28, 1239, the oldest seal of Munich has a picture of a monk wearing an open hood. While all seal impressions show the monk with the book in one hand and three outstretched fingers in the other, the monk has varied slightly, appearing in profile, then later full-faced and bare-headed. The monk as a sole heraldic figure can be found on a seal dating from the year 1304, and on flags of the city since the middle of the 14th century. Colourful representations of the town's coat of arms stem from the 15th century.
### Münchner Kindl
In the course of the few centuries up until the current version of 1957, the coat of arms has undergone some distinctly visible changes. While some 15th-century portrayals already show a child figure instead of the monk, the monk in representations onwards began to lose its serious disposition, with curly hair and a more youthful-looking face. By the 18th century and especially the 19th century, the monk had been minimised into the Münchner Kindl, Bavarian for Munich Child, a reference to the figure first documented in 1727, although it is not clear when it appeared on the coat of arms for the first time or who coined the term. The transformation was brought about by artists such as sculptors and painters as well as copper and seal engravers, as opposed to a legal order.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, local artists also supplemented the figure with items such as radishes, pretzels, laurel wreaths and foaming beer steins. The symbol diversely appears in numerous places such as on manhole covers, beer steins and the top of the tower of the town hall. While the symbol as a man through being a monk was previously clear, its gender has become ambiguous since being designated the Kindl. One interpretation is that it is simply genderless, however in the 1920s a female inclination became apparent, and portrayals in person are to this day by young women.
## History
The Munich coat of arms is verifiable from seals in 1239 and 1268. These seals show a monk in a gate, above which is in eagle, referring to the Bishop of Freising. The city belonged to him and this was probably derived from his coat of arms. From 1313, the city was in possession of the Wittelsbach Dukes and the eagle was replaced with a lion, a symbol of the old Bavarian and Palatine Wittelsbachs since the Fiefdom of Duke Ludwig in 1214.
### Coat of arms after ratification by Max I. Joseph
In 1808, King Maximilian I Joseph granted the city a historicist city emblem depicting a classical portal, atop which the King's crown lies. A golden lion sits in the gate's threshold with a sword in one paw and a shield with the letter "M" in the other. As an enlightened monarch, Max I. Joseph wanted the city's symbol to show its culture and at the same time dispel the stereotype of the "Mönchsbarbarei", or the barbarianism of the monks. However, the township decided against the complete elimination of the historical reference to the monk and thus in 1818 the M was replaced with the previous monk's head design.
### Coat of arms after ratification by Ludwig I
In 1834, King Ludwig I granted the city its old coat of arms again in the form of large and small crests. These embodied the small crest seal of 1304 and the large one of 1323. The 1835 coat of arms had a blue background, though this was later corrected to argent under Ludwig II in 1865. The background was rarely changed. One example of its occurrence, however, was when or was used in the 16th century instead.
### Coat of arms in the Third Reich
From 1936 to 1945, the lion was once again replaced by an eagle, only this time the one of the Nazi party, the Reichsadler. Deemed the Hauptstadt der Bewegung (Capital of the Movement), Munich was a significant place in terms of the Nazi ideology. The city was home to the NSDAP headquarters, the Beer Hall Putsch and also saw the establishment of Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp. Post-war designs were not pursued until 1949.
### New coat of arms
Both a small and large coat of arms existed from 1949 until 1957 based on representations of them prior to 1936. In 1957 both the large and small city coat of arms were newly arranged by the designer Eduard Ege. At the same time, the city council set the resolution on the December 17, 1957 that the large one was no longer for official use but only for particular representative purposes.
## See also
- Coat of arms of Germany
- Coat of arms of Bavaria
|
42,741,417 |
The Boat Race 1841
| 1,167,799,249 | null |
[
"1841 in sports",
"The Boat Race"
] |
The 5th Boat Race took place on the River Thames on 14 April 1841. It was the fourth of the University Boat Races, a side-by-side rowing competition between the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge, to be contested in London. The race was held between Westminster Bridge and Putney Bridge and was won by Cambridge, whose crew featured two pairs of brothers rowing, who defeated Oxford by a distance of 22 lengths in a time of 32 minutes and 30 seconds. The victory took the overall record in the event to 4–1 in Cambridge's favour.
## Background
The Boat Race is a side-by-side rowing competition between the University of Oxford (sometimes referred to as the "Dark Blues") and the University of Cambridge (sometimes referred to as the "Light Blues"). The race was first held in 1829, and takes place on the River Thames in southwest London. Cambridge went into the race as reigning champions, having won the previous year's race by three-quarters of a length.
There was some disagreement over the day selected for the race, mainly in an attempt to coincide with a suitable tide. The Cambridge cox for the 1839 race, Thomas Selby Egan, along with Oxford's R. G. Walls were umpires for the race along with referee Edmund Antrobus from St John's College, Cambridge. Both universities rowed in boats constructed by Searle of Stangate; the vessels were "justly and generally admired", the only significant difference between them being that Oxford's boat was carvel built while Cambridge's was clinker built. The race took place on a five-and-three-quarter-mile (9.2 km) stretch of the Thames between Westminster Bridge and Putney Bridge. No arrangements had been made for the police to keep the course clear: according to Cambridge's number seven George Denman "it was often ticklish work for the coxswains to decide whether to go ahead or astern of a train of barges catering across the river". According to a report in The Morning Chronicle, "both crews ... have agreed that the match will be off if any of the steamers attempt to lead".
Oxford arrived at the Thames fifteen days prior the race, and rowed the full course; Cambridge started their practice runs four days later, often racing against a crew from the Cambridge Subscription Room (who subsequently won the Grand Challenge Cup at the Henley Royal Regatta). George Denman suffered an injury during practice, struck "by a tremendous blow on the shoulder" which was all but cured by the application of "just one leech". Oxford's crew was not settled until three days before the race, when they competed against a crew from Leander Club.
## Crews
The Cambridge crew weighed an average of 11 st 4.625 lb (71.8 kg), 0.5 pounds (0.2 kg) per rower more than their Dark Blue opposition. Cambridge's crew contained three Blues: John Matthew Ridley, Francis Penrose and Charles Marsh Vialls, all of whom had rowed in the previous year's race. Similarly, Oxford saw the return of four members with Boat Race experience: Jacob G. Mountain, E. Royds, G. Meynell and J. J. T. Somers-Cocks. For the first time in the history of the race, two pairs of brothers rowed for Cambridge, the Crokers (Joseph and William) and the Denmans (George and Lewis).
## Race
Cambridge were considered favourites for the race, mainly as they had won the previous three races on the Thames. The Light Blues won the toss and elected to start at the first arch from the centre of Westminster Bridge on the Surrey side, Oxford from the next arch along. The race commenced at 6:10 p.m., with the Light Blues making the better start, taking an early lead, and getting clear by Lambeth. A lead of at least two lengths by Vauxhall Bridge was extended to around six lengths by Battersea Bridge.
Cambridge won by 22 lengths in a time of 32 minutes 30 seconds. It was their fourth consecutive victory and took the overall record to 4–1 in their favour. Despite earlier fears, "the steamers were well managed, and offered no obstruction to the boats".
|
12,999,463 |
Norman Hsu
| 1,101,035,888 |
American fraudster
|
[
"1951 births",
"American businesspeople convicted of crimes",
"American confidence tricksters",
"American people convicted of fraud",
"American people of Chinese descent",
"American political fundraisers",
"American prisoners and detainees",
"California Democrats",
"Fugitive financiers",
"Hong Kong businesspeople",
"Hong Kong emigrants to the United States",
"Living people",
"Prisoners and detainees of the United States federal government",
"Pyramid and Ponzi schemes",
"University of California, Berkeley alumni",
"Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania alumni"
] |
Norman Yung Yuen Hsu (born October 1951) is a convicted pyramid investment promoter who associated himself with the apparel industry. His business activities were intertwined with his role as a major fundraiser for the Democratic Party, and he gained notoriety after suspicious patterns of bundled campaign contributions were reported in 2007. Subsequently he was discovered to have been a long-time fugitive in connection with a 1992 fraud conviction. After turning himself in to California authorities in 2007 he fled the state again and was quickly recaptured.
The U.S. Justice Department investigated whether Hsu illegally reimbursed political donations by associates and formally charged him with fraud. On 27 November 2007, a federal grand jury indicted Hsu on charges of violating federal campaign finance laws and defrauding investors "out of at least \$20 million."
## Biography
### Early life
Hsu was born and raised in Hong Kong, though his family was originally from Shanghai. At age 18, he immigrated to the United States and obtained a BS degree in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley in 1973. Hsu married in 1974 and received a California real estate license in 1976. In 1981, he completed an M.B.A. from the Wharton School. He and other Hong Kong partners formed the sportswear company Laveno in 1982, which went bankrupt in 1984. He then created other sportswear companies, including Wear This, Base, and Foreign Exchange. He engaged in other businesses as well, including clothing stores and restaurants. During this time, he became a naturalized American citizen.
### Ponzi scheme conviction and flight
Hsu was able to gain the trust of investors by his dress, by his warm and personable manner, by his educational credentials, by being quoted in trade magazines, and by the long list of business under his name, but had a record of changing addresses and leaving disappointed investors behind. Starting in 1989, Hsu raised \$1 million from investors to launch a latex glove business. Some of these partners invested their life savings or mortgaged their homes, and some sued Hsu when it appeared their money was lost. In 1990, Hsu, then living in Foster City, California, declared a bankruptcy, stating that he was practically destitute, with no job, no income, and few possessions other than an SUV and a ring. That same year, he was also divorced as well as allegedly kidnapped by San Francisco Triad society gang leader Raymond Kwok Chow. In 1991, California authorities brought fraud charges against him, describing his operation as a Ponzi scheme. Specifically, authorities claimed Hsu had not engaged in any legitimate business activity, but instead was using funds from later investors to pay returns to earlier ones. In February 1992 Hsu pleaded no contest to one count of grand theft and agreed to serve up to three years in prison and pay a \$10,000 fine. Hsu subsequently failed to appear at the sentencing hearing and a warrant was issued for his arrest.
Hsu fled to Hong Kong and lived there from 1992 to 1996 while working in the garment industry. He started at least two companies there, both with vague charters. Aided by what others described as a magnetic personality, he prospered for a while, living in a luxury building. However the companies were dissolved in 1997 and 1998, and by 1998 Hong Kong courts had declared Hsu once again bankrupt. He would not emerge from this Hong Kong bankruptcy until 2006.
### Entry into politics
Hsu then returned to the United States in the late 1990s, despite his fugitive status, and established several addresses in the San Francisco and Los Angeles areas. He became an investor in Silicon Valley, invested in real estate in the San Francisco Bay Area, and still had engagements in the garment industry. He later relocated to New York, where he seemed to become involved in the apparel business once again and lived in a luxury apartment in SoHo while flying chartered jets.
Starting in 2003, Hsu began contributing to, and collecting contributions for, the Democratic Party, although he did not join the party and was not registered to vote. He also donated to causes such as the Innocence Project and Clinton Global Initiative. He also became a trustee of The New School in New York, to whom he donated \$100,000 and provided the money for a scholarship.
Democratic Party figures claimed they did not know much about him or his businesses, but appreciated his support; and he became known to them as someone who could quickly raise large amounts of money, and as someone who networked tirelessly and always found ways to be included in high-profile events. By 2007, Hsu's status within Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign had risen to the level where he was a "HillRaiser", someone who had "bundled" more than \$100,000 for her campaign, and to where he co-hosted a \$1 million fundraiser at wealthy Democratic Party supporter Ron Burkle's Beverly Hills estate, and in September, he was scheduled to co-host a major gala fundraising event featuring music legend Quincy Jones.
## Controversy regarding political donations
### Relationship with Paw family
In August 2007, an investigation by The Wall Street Journal revealed potential campaign finance irregularities involving Hsu, in his role as a "bundler", and his long-time associates, the Paw family of Daly City, California. Specifically, members of the Paw family made donations of over \$200,000 to Democratic candidates since 2005. These donations closely coordinated with those of Hsu in terms of timing, amounts and donees. In addition, the donations appeared to be much larger than would be expected given the Paw's modest income. According to records obtained for the investigation, the Paws own a gift shop and live in a 1,280-square-foot (119 m<sup>2</sup>) house that they recently refinanced for \$270,000. William Paw, the 64-year-old head of the household, is a mail carrier with the U.S. Postal Service and earns approximately \$49,000 a year. Other records linked Hsu to the Paws, including a campaign finance filing in which Hsu lists the Paw's home as his residence.
In September 2007, it was reported that the U.S. Justice Department has launched a formal investigation into possible campaign finance violations by Hsu and his associates. One focal point for the investigation concerns whether any of the donations by the Paws were reimbursed by Hsu, which would constitute a felony. Through his attorney, Hsu has denied any wrongdoing.
### Status as fugitive
One day after the release of The Wall Street Journal's investigation, it was reported that the warrant issued after Hsu's failure to appear for sentencing for his 1992 fraud conviction was still valid. On 31 August 2007, Hsu surrendered to authorities at the district court house in Redwood City, California. The California Attorney General's office had negotiated \$1 million bail to be eventually applied to restitution, but the presiding judge set the amount at the \$2 million. Hsu was jailed briefly that day until his attorney returned with the increased bail. The following week, Hsu failed to appear for a bail reduction hearing on 5 September at which he was expected to turn in his passport. A "no bail" warrant was immediately issued for his arrest and Hsu forfeited the \$2 million. On 6 September, he was arrested by the FBI in Grand Junction, Colorado, after falling ill on the California Zephyr train headed for Chicago. It was subsequently revealed that Hsu mailed suicide notes to several acquaintances and organizations before boarding the train, and was discovered with prescription pills loose in his compartment.
It was unclear how Hsu could have remained at large for 15 years and engage in prominent political activity without being detected. It was also unclear how a convicted felon, having already fled prosecution once, was allowed out on bail without first having to surrender his passport. Prior to Hsu's second attempt to flee, James Brosnahan, Hsu's attorney in California, defended Hsu stating that Hsu's prominence showed that he did not behave like a fugitive and that Hsu was moving towards a resolution of the matter, including a plan of restitution for victims of Hsu's actions.
On 13 September 2007, a Colorado judge denied a prosecutor's request for bail to be set at \$50 million and instead set bail for Hsu at \$5 million. The prosecutor reported Hsu to have a checkbook listing a balance of \$6 million at the time of his capture in Grand Junction. The presiding judge remarked, "\$2 million wasn't enough to keep Mr. Hsu from running. We'll see if \$5 million will do it."
On 4 January 2008, Hsu was sentenced to jail for 3 years by California Superior Court Judge Stephen Hall for the original fraud conviction, now 16 years old. Judge Hall rejected Hsu's argument that his right to a speedy trial was denied by authorities who could have easily found and arrested him.
### Source of income
The source of Hsu's income once he returned to the United States is unclear. While he claims to be involved in several businesses in the fashion industry, visits to those addresses "found no trace of Mr. Hsu." At several business addresses provided on Hsu's campaign donation forms, none of the listed businesses could be located. A New Jersey fashion designer that Hsu had listed as a co-investor, said he had never heard of Hsu. Lawrence Barcella, Hsu's Washington, D.C. attorney, claims that Hsu's post-1996-return Silicon Valley investments account for some of his ability to make his political contributions. However, detailed financial records for Components Ltd, a Hsu-controlled entity with no obvious business purpose, reveal payments of \$100,000 to nine political donors whose contributions were later bundled by Hsu.
Upon learning about Hsu's proposed investment scheme, Irvine, California, businessman Jack Cassidy became concerned and warned the California Democratic Party that Hsu's activities may not have been legitimate. Apparently, Hsu was soliciting investors for a "bridge loan" operation that returned approximately 6% every 3 months. However, investors were told few details about the operation and investigators are trying to determine whether the "bridge loans" involved bona fide business activity or were simply a front for a new Ponzi scheme.
Hsu may in fact have been running multiple cons on a massive scale. As an example, a New York investment fund run by Woodstock Festival founder Joel Rosenman invested \$40 million spread over 37 separate deals with a Hsu company. Hsu reportedly told Rosenman the money would be used to manufacture apparel for well known luxury brands, yielding a 40% profit on each deal. When Rosenman's fund recently attempted to cash checks from Hsu's company in September 2007, there were insufficient funds. Federal charges of fraud have since been brought against Hsu.
## Legal actions against Hsu
Since his re-incarceration, a variety of legal actions have been brought against Hsu.
### Federal charges
On 19 September 2007, a federal complaint was issued against Hsu by the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan. The complaint alleges that Hsu's investment offerings were a Ponzi scheme that paid early investors with money that was contributed by later investors, that Hsu pressured investors to contribute to candidates for office, providing them with a list of candidates to choose from and that Hsu reimbursed some contributors to candidates for office in the amount of their contributions. Based on these actions, Hsu is charged with mail fraud, wire fraud and violating the Federal Election Campaign Act. He could face a sentence of up to 45 years in prison.
The Complaint cites to statements from three "victims" and two "witnesses" as well as a confession by Hsu to an FBI agent.
On 27 November 2007, a federal grand jury sitting in Manhattan indicted Hsu on charges of violating federal campaign finance laws and defrauding investors out of at least \$20 million. According to the indictment, Hsu made "false promises" to private investors in his companies that they would be paid "guaranteed high rates of return on investments in the short term."
On 7 May 2009, Hsu pleaded guilty in federal court in New York to ten counts of mail and wire fraud in connection with the Ponzi scheme. Hsu stated that "I knew what I was doing was illegal" and faced up to 20 years in prison on each count. Hsu was still contesting the charges of campaign finance fraud, however.
Hsu was sentenced to 24 years in prison and is currently incarcerated in Federal Medical Center in Lexington, KY. His scheduled date of release is 12 August 2030.
### Source Financing
"Source Financing Investors LLC," an investment fund started by Joel Rosenman (a Woodstock founder), claims that Hsu owes it \$40 million. Source Financing sued Hsu on 20 September 2007. It has asked that all candidates who received campaign contributions from Hsu not donate them to charity as the money may have been improperly channeled from investors.
### Briar Wood Investors
On 21 September 2007 a group of Southern California investors ("Briar Wood Investors") sued Hsu, claiming that he defrauded them, and that he pressured them into making contributions to the campaigns of elected officials.
It is not clear whether the recipients of Hsu's campaign contributions will be added as defendants to any of the lawsuits as the various funds seek solvent entities from which to recover their initial investments.
## Democratic party reaction
After initial reports of suspicious contributions, prominent Democrats defended Hsu's reputation. Supporters began to distance themselves after his long-time fugitive status was revealed. After Hsu fled the California justice system again in 2007, his contributions were renounced by an increasing number of elected officials.
The general pattern of reaction has been typified by Bob Kerrey, president of the New School and former Senator from Nebraska, who originally stated that Hsu had been "a terrific member" of the New School board. After Hsu resigned as a board member, Kerrey said the university did not do background checks of prospective trustees and that he hoped that Hsu "didn't break the law." After Hsu became a two-time fugitive, Kerrey remarked, "I thought that I knew him, but obviously I didn't."
One of Hsu's most tenacious supporters was Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, who called Hsu "one of the best 10 people I've met." Later, Rendell said, "Though Norman is my friend and remains so, his failure to appear casts a new light on his assertions regarding the original [fraud] case. As a result I will follow other elected officials and donate the money he contributed to me to charity."
In comparison, 2008 Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton began to disengage from Hsu at an earlier phase of the scandal when Hsu's long time fugitive status was first revealed. After indications of additional misconduct by Hsu, the Clinton campaign then decided to refund a total of \$850,000 in bundled contributions. Clinton was the first major candidate to give up bundled contributions from associates of Norman Hsu. However, it is also true that her campaign ignored earlier private warnings about Hsu and that Clinton was the largest recipient of bundled donations from Hsu.
In 2006, former President Clinton referred to Hsu as "our friend Norman". After the scandal went public, Bill Clinton remarked in colloquial language, "You could have knocked me over with a straw". Democrats are continuing to try to reconcile positive personal impressions of Hsu with his criminal behavior. Mark Gorenberg, who sat on President Barack Obama campaign's national finance committee, remarked, "Despite it all, I still love the guy, despite everything you read, every experience I ever had with him was nothing but delightful, and I just scratch my head."
Hsu never appeared to want or expect anything in return for his many contributions, other than to appear in high-profile circles; indeed a West Coast Democratic fundraiser said, "He seemed so desperate to be included in every big-ticket event in California ... It was a little sad." One Clinton campaign aide attempted to penetrate more deeply into Hsu's motives, remarking that Hsu's business activity "was reinforced by his efforts in politics and philanthropy; he seemed like a generous guy, but only later did you realize what he was up to."
|
25,853,264 |
Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl
| 1,172,142,172 |
Painting by James McNeill Whistler
|
[
"1862 paintings",
"19th-century portraits",
"Collections of the National Gallery of Art",
"Death in art",
"Paintings by James Abbott McNeill Whistler",
"Wolves in art"
] |
Symphony in White, No. 1, also known as The White Girl, is a painting by James McNeill Whistler. The work shows a woman in full figure standing on a dog skin in front of a beige curtain with a lily in her hand. The colour scheme of the painting is almost entirely white. The model is Joanna Hiffernan, the artist's mistress. Though the painting was originally called The White Girl, Whistler later started calling it Symphony in White, No. 1. By referring to his work in such abstract terms, he intended to emphasize his "art for art's sake" philosophy.
Whistler created the painting in the winter of 1861–62, though he later returned to it and made alterations. It was rejected both at the Royal Academy and at the Salon in Paris, but eventually accepted at the Salon des Refusés in 1863. This exhibition also featured Édouard Manet's famous Déjeuner sur l'herbe, and together the two works gained a lot of attention. The White Girl shows clearly the influence of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, with whom Whistler had recently come in contact. The painting has been interpreted by later art critics both as an allegory of innocence and its loss, and as a religious allusion to the Virgin Mary.
## Artist and model
James Abbott McNeill Whistler was born in the United States in 1834, the son of George Washington Whistler, a railway engineer. In 1843, his father relocated the family to Saint Petersburg, Russia, where James received training in painting. After a stay in England, he returned to America to attend the US Military Academy at West Point in 1851. In 1855, he made his way back to Europe, determined to dedicate himself to painting. He settled in Paris at first, but in 1859 moved to London, where he would spend most of the remainder of his life. There he met Dante Gabriel Rossetti and other members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, who would have a profound influence on Whistler.
It was also in London that Whistler met Joanna Heffernan, the model who would become his lover. Their relationship has been referred to as a "marriage without benefit of clergy." By 1861, Whistler had already used her as a model for another painting. Wapping, named after Wapping in London where Whistler lived, was begun in 1860, though not finished until 1864. It shows a woman and two men on a balcony overlooking the river. According to Whistler himself, the woman – portrayed by Heffernan – was a prostitute. Heffernan supposedly had a strong influence over Whistler; his brother-in-law Francis Seymour Haden refused a dinner invitation in the winter of 1863–64 due to her dominant presence in the household.
## Creation and reception
Whistler started working on The White Girl shortly after December 3, 1861, with the intention of submitting it to the prestigious annual exhibition of the Royal Academy. In spite of bouts of illness, he had finished the painting by April. In a letter to George du Maurier in early 1862, he described it as:
> ...a woman in a beautiful white cambric dress, standing against a window which filters the light through a transparent white muslin curtain – but the figure receives a strong light from the right and therefore the picture, barring the red hair, is one gorgeous mass of brilliant white.
The portrait was created as a simple study in white; however, others saw it differently. The critic Jules-Antoine Castagnary thought the painting an allegory of a new bride's lost innocence. Others linked it to Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, a popular novel of the time, or various other literary sources. In the painting, Hiffernan holds a lily in her left hand and stands upon a wolf skin rug (interpreted by some to represent masculinity and lust) with the wolf's head staring menacingly at the viewer.
Whistler submitted the painting to the Academy, but according to Heffernan, he expected it to be rejected at this point. The previous year, in 1861, another painting had caused a minor scandal. Edwin Henry Landseer's The Shrew Tamed showed a horse with a woman resting on the ground nearby. The model was named as Ann Gilbert, a noted equestrienne of the period: however it was soon rumoured that it was actually Catherine Walters, the notorious London courtesan. Whistler's painting was reminiscent enough of Landseer's that the judges were wary of admitting it. White Girl was submitted to the Academy along with three etchings, all three of which were accepted, while the painting was not.
Whistler exhibited it at the small Berners Street Gallery in London instead, where it was shown under the title The Woman in White, a reference to the novel of that name by Wilkie Collins, which was a popular success at the time. The book was a tale of romance, intrigue and double identity, and was considered a bit of a sensation at the time of its publication. Du Maurier apparently believed that the painting referred to the novel. The review in the Athenaeum complained that painting did not correspond to the character in the novel, prompting Whistler to write a letter asserting that the gallery chose the title without consulting him, adding "I had no intention whatsoever of illustrating Mr Wilkie Collins' novel. My painting simply represents a girl dressed in white standing in front of a white curtain."
The next year, Whistler tried to have the painting exhibited at the Salon in Paris – the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts – but it was rejected there as well. Instead, it was accepted at the alternative Salon des Refusés – the "exhibition of rejects" that opened on May 15, two weeks after the official Salon.
The 1863 Salon des Refusés was the same exhibition where Édouard Manet's Déjeuner sur l'herbe caused a scandal, yet the attention given to Whistler's White Girl was even greater. The controversy surrounding the paintings was described in Émile Zola's novel L'Œuvre (1886). The reception Whistler's painting received was mostly favourable, however, and largely vindicated him after the rejection he had experienced both in London and in Paris. It was greatly admired by his colleagues and friends Manet, the painter Gustave Courbet and the poet Charles Baudelaire. The art critic Théophile Thoré-Bürger saw it in the tradition of Goya and Velázquez. Lisa Peters summarises that countering criticism by traditionalists, Whistler's supporters insisted that the painting was "an apparition with a spiritual content" and that it epitomized his theory that art should be concerned essentially with the arrangement of colors in harmony, not with a literal portrayal of the natural world. There were, however, those who were less favourable; certain French critics saw the English Pre-Raphaelite trend as somewhat eccentric.
The painting remained in the Whistler family until 1896, when it was sold by the artist's nephew to art collector Harris Whittemore. In 1943, the Whittemore family gave it as a gift to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
## Composition and interpretation
Whistler, especially in his later career, resented the idea that his paintings should have any meaning beyond what could be seen on the canvas. He is known as a central proponent of the "art for art's sake" philosophy. His comment on The White Girl, denying a connection to Wilkie Collins' novel The Woman in White is one of the earliest of these assertions ("My painting simply represents a girl dressed in white standing in front of a white curtain.") Because English critics saw the painting as an illustration, they tended to be less favourable than their French colleagues, who saw it as a visionary, poetic fantasy. One English critic, referring to Collins' novel, called The White Girl "...one of the most incomplete paintings we ever met with." Since the Berners Street Gallery had used the name The Woman in White for the painting, critics were disappointed with its lack of resemblance to the novel's heroine. Whistler, who had never even read the novel, resented the comparison. About ten years later, he began referring to the painting as Symphony in White, No. 1, though a French critic had called it a Symphonie du blanc already at the time of its exhibition in Paris. By the musical analogy, he further emphasised his philosophy that the composition was the central thing, not the subject matter. The title was probably also inspired by Théophile Gautier's 1852 poem Symphonie en Blanc Majeur.
Whistler was not entirely content with the realism the painting displayed in its original form, a trait he blamed on the influence Courbet had on him at the time. Later, between 1867 and 1872, he reworked it to give it a more spiritual expression. Even though Symphony was begun before Whistler first met Rossetti, the Pre-Raphaelite influence is still clear. The painting was an early experiment in white on white, with a woman standing in a white dress in front of a white background. This colour scheme was a subject he would return to later, in two paintings that would be given the titles of Symphony in White, No. 2 (1864) and Symphony in White, No. 3 (1865–1867). The panel is long and slender, and the model's pose and the shape of her clothes further emphasise the vertical nature of the painting. The woman is bold, almost confrontational, in her direct gaze at the viewer, and her features are highly individualised. Art critic Hilton Kramer sees in Whistler's portraits a charm and a combination of craft and observational skills that his more radical landscapes lacked.
Though Whistler himself resented attempts to analyse the meaning of his art, this has not deterred later critics from doing so. The 19th-century French art critic Jules-Antoine Castagnary saw in the painting symbols of lost innocence, a theme that has been picked up by later critics. The art historian E. Wayne Craven also sees the painting as more than a formalist exercise, and finds "enigmatic, expressive and even erotic undercurrents" in the image. He points to the contrasts presented by the imagery, with the white lily representing innocence and virginity, and the fierce wolf head on the rug symbolizing the loss of innocence. Beryl Schlossman, coming from the perspective of literary criticism, sees allusions to the Madonna of religious art in the work. To Schlossman, the rug under the woman's feet is the cloud on which the Virgin is often seen standing, and the wolf is the serpent, crushed under her heel.
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10,469,364 |
Michael Bruxner
| 1,166,514,517 |
Australian politician
|
[
"1882 births",
"1970 deaths",
"20th-century Australian farmers",
"20th-century Australian politicians",
"Australian Army officers",
"Australian Companions of the Distinguished Service Order",
"Australian Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire",
"Australian military personnel of World War I",
"Australian people of English descent",
"Deputy Premiers of New South Wales",
"Knights of the Legion of Honour",
"Members of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly",
"National Party of Australia members of the Parliament of New South Wales"
] |
Lieutenant Colonel Sir Michael Frederick Bruxner (25 March 1882 – 28 March 1970) was an Australian politician and soldier, serving for many years as leader of the Country Party (and its predecessors) in New South Wales. Born in the north of the state, Bruxner was educated at The Armidale School and started studies at University of Sydney but later dropped out to take up employment as a grazier and station agent in Tenterfield. After serving in the Citizen Military Forces from 1911, Bruxner enlisted into the Australian Light Horse upon the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. Serving with distinction in Gallipoli, Egypt and Palestine, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and awarded the Distinguished Service Order.
Returning to Australia in 1919, Bruxner sold his business and joined the Progressive Party, being elected to the Parliament of New South Wales for Northern Tablelands at the 1920 election. Bruxner came to political prominence when he led the rural "True Blues" faction of the Progressive Party that went against their Leader's decision to form a coalition in Sir George Fuller's short-lived government in 1921. Bruxner emerged as the leader of the reduced Progressive Party, which consisted of the members of his faction, but they nevertheless joined with Fuller's Nationalists to form government in 1922. Bruxner also became involved in the New England New State Movement. Bruxner resigned the party leadership, now for the renamed Country Party, at the end of 1925.
At the 1927 election, with the abandonment of proportional representation, he won the new seat of Tenterfield unopposed. Bruxner was included in new Premier Thomas Bavin's cabinet as Minister for Local Government, which included the responsibility for transport. He served until Labor won the 1930 election. In April 1932 Bruxner was elected again as the new Country Party Leader, which he would hold continuously until 1958. When Sir Philip Game dismissed Jack Lang and called upon the Leader of the Opposition Bertram Stevens to form a caretaker government in 1932, Stevens formed a coalition with Bruxner's Country Party and Bruxner was named as the first Deputy Premier of New South Wales. Bruxner was also sworn in as Minister for Transport and briefly resumed his former Local Government portfolio. Bruxner also worked with his long-time friend and Minister for Education David Drummond, to establish the New England University College in 1938, which was later to become the University of New England.
Bruxner was central in ensuring Alexander Mair became Premier after Stevens was defeated in the house in August 1939. The Coalition lost government at the 10 May 1941 election and Bruxner would never again serve in government. The rest of Bruxner's parliamentary career was to be on the opposition benches, leading the Country Party through five more elections and through the instability of the larger opposition parties that eventually united as the Liberal Party. On 6 May 1958, Bruxner formally resigned as Leader of the Country Party, having served continuously in that role since 1932. He continued to serve in his capacity as Member for Tenterfield for one more term before retiring from politics before the 1962 election. Bruxner was Knighted as a KBE in 1962, and thereafter served in various capacities on boards and continued his passion for horses before his death aged 88 on 28 March 1970.
## Early life and military career
Bruxner was born in Tabulum, near the Clarence River in Northern New South Wales, the second son of English-born grazier Charles Augustus Bruxner (1851–1915) and his wife Sarah Elizabeth Barnes (1858–1941). Bruxner was initially educated in private tuition but was soon sent as a boarder first at St Mark's Crescent School in Darling Point, Sydney and then to The Armidale School, where he became School Captain in 1900. From 1901 to 1903, he studied arts and law at the University of Sydney while resident at St Paul's College, but was expelled for non-attendance of lectures.
Returning to home to work as a grazier, Bruxner eventually moved to Tenterfield and set up business as a Stock and station agent. He also purchased "Roseneath", a grazing property near Tenterfield, where he bred Hereford cattle. On 17 June 1908 at Christ Church, Kiama, he married Winifred Catherine Hay Caird. Bruxner became vice-president of the local agricultural society and of the Cricket and Rugby clubs in Tenterfield. Being a racehorse owner, Bruxner also rose to be President of the Tenterfield Jockey Club from 1909 to 1911. He was commissioned as a Justice of the Peace in 1914.
Bruxner started his military career when he was commissioned as a second lieutenant on 11 September 1911 in the 6th Australian (New England) Light Horse, Citizen Military Forces, which was redesignated the 5th the following year. When the First World War broke out in September 1914, Bruxner joined up soon after on 10 October 1914 with the 6th Light Horse Regiment in the Australian Imperial Force. Promoted to captain, Bruxner was sent with his unit to take part in the Gallipoli Campaign, being wounded several times. Later, in 1916, he commanded the 6th during part of the Battle of Romani and served with distinction in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign, for which he was mentioned in despatches twice. On 30 May 1917 was appointed by the President of France, Raymond Poincaré, as a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur "in recognition of distinguished services during the campaign". Also in 1917, Bruxner was appointed to General Headquarters and rose to be assistant adjutant and quartermaster-general of the ANZAC Mounted Division. For his service he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and appointed as a Companion of the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) in 1919.
In July 1919, he returned Australia and was discharged a month later in August. Bruxner then returned to Tenterfield, sold his stock and station agency and went back to his property as a grazier. They eventually raised a family, having a daughter, Helen Elizabeth Bruxner, and two sons, James Caird and John Michael Bruxner.
## Early political career
As a prominent member of his local community, Bruxner became involved in emerging movements to have a political force for regional areas and joined and was convinced by friends to stand as a Progressive Party candidate in the 1920 New South Wales state election. Bruxner was elected under proportional representation with 23% as the second member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly district of Northern Tablelands alongside his friend David Drummond.
On 20 December 1920, the Labor Party Premier, James Dooley, and his cabinet resigned after having lost a vote in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly a week before. The Governor, Sir Walter Davidson, then commissioned the Leader of the Opposition, Sir George Fuller, as Premier. As Fuller did not have a majority, he initiated attempts to form a coalition with the Progressive Party. The Progressives split over whether to join the Fuller government into an urban wing, led by Leader Walter Wearne and Deputy Leader Thomas Bavin, which agreed to enter Fuller's coalition and a rural wing ("The True Blues"), led by Bruxner and Ernest Buttenshaw who offered Fuller only conditional support. After seven hours in government, still without a workable majority, Fuller requested a double-dissolution from Davidson. Davidson refused, on the basis that Dooley still had a majority in the lower house, and Fuller resigned.
Davidson then re-commissioned Dooley, who was then granted a dissolution for an election in March 1922. The Progressives were permanently divided and Bruxner and the "True Blues" who had opposed the coalition maintained their separate identity, while the urban members of the party joined Fuller's Nationalist Party. The Rural Progressives then elected Bruxner in 1922 as Leader for the election. The Progressives were reduced to nine rural members at the 1922 election and entered a Coalition with the Nationalists. Bruxner increased his margin to become the first electorate member with 39%. Bruxner also became involved in the New England New State Movement and helped pass a formal request to the Commonwealth by the Legislative Assembly to establish a new state in northern New South Wales. The request resulted in the 1924 Cohen Royal Commission into New States.
At the May 1925 election, Bruxner retained his seat with an increased margin of 41%, while the Nationalist/Progressive Government lost office to Jack Lang and the Labor Party. After the election, the Progressive party renamed themselves the Country Party, reflecting the electoral base of the party. Bruxner resigned the leadership at the end of 1925, citing the difficulty in balancing the needs of his family with the commitments of his political career, and was succeeded by Ernest Buttenshaw.
## Minister of the Crown
At the 1927 election, with the abandonment of proportional representation, he won the new seat of Tenterfield unopposed. At the election, Lang's Labor Party was defeated and Bruxner was included in new Premier Bavin's cabinet as Minister for Local Government, which included the responsibility for transport. As Minister, Bruxner was responsible for the amendment to the Main Roads Act which gave more powers to the Main Roads Board and provided for the reclassification of the principal roads of the State. All the roads of the state were classified in accordance with their order of importance, which formed the basis for which road development was funded. His view that transport should be a public asset was reinforced when he brought through the passage of the Transport Act 1930, which regulated private bus services to prevent the collapse of government-owned tramways and railways. He remained as Minister until the Bavin Government was defeated by Lang at the 1930 election. At the election, Bruxner retained his seat with 59%. On 23 December 1930, Bruxner was granted by King George V retention of the title "The Honourable" for having served for more than three years as a Member of the Executive Council of New South Wales.
In 1931 Bruxner moved a motion to censure Sydney University Professor of Philosophy John Anderson for his statements that war memorials were "political idols". The motion was vigorously debated but did not pass.
As the political climate in New South Wales became more volatile after Lang's attempts to abolish the Legislative Council and conflict with the Federal Government over debts, Bruxner emphasised the need that the Country Party remain independent of the United Australia Party (which had succeeded the Nationalist Party) amidst calls for the opposition to unite. On 26 April 1932, Country Party Leader Buttenshaw notified the party of his intention to resign. Bruxner was then elected as the new party Leader.
## Deputy Premier
Not long after, on 13 May Governor Sir Philip Game dismissed the Lang government and called upon the Leader of the Opposition and UAP Leader Bertram Stevens to form a caretaker government. Stevens formed a coalition with Bruxner's Country Party and immediately called an election. Lang's NSW Labor Party was heavily defeated and the Country Party gained eleven seats and held five seats on the cabinet. Bruxner retained his seat again unopposed (he would be elected unopposed a total of five times during his term). This time, the Country Party was an equal partner in the coalition and Bruxner was named as the first Deputy Premier of New South Wales. Sworn in on 16 May 1932 as Minister for Transport, Bruxner also briefly resumed his former Local Government portfolio during the caretaker period until 17 June 1932.
Insistent that his party take an equal role in the coalition government, Bruxner formed a good working relationship and long-lasting friendship with Stevens that would ensure the government's stability. The Stevens government had significant success, reducing Lang's 2 million pound deficit by 75%. However, one significant problem was that Stevens had trouble with an unruly backbench, and increasingly depended upon Bruxner and the Country Party. As Deputy Premier, Bruxner saw himself as loyal to Stevens, but still managed to push through several initiatives that specifically benefited rural areas, including another royal commission on the question of new States in 1935. The May 1935 election saw Stevens and Bruxner retaining government against a divided and fractious Labor opposition and Bruxner was returned unopposed again in his seat.
Bruxner detested the UAP Deputy Leader and Minister for Public Works and Local Government, Eric Spooner, whom Bruxner saw as trying to undermine confidence in Steven's leadership and reducing Country Party influence in the government. When Stevens went on a visit to London in March 1936 for six months until October, Bruxner became Acting Premier, with Spooner as Acting Deputy. The animosity between the two became most pronounced at this time, often over the most petty issues. In May 1937, Bruxner visited the United Kingdom as a member of the NSW parliamentary delegation to the coronation of King George VI. At the March 1938 election, the Stevens-Bruxner government retained power against Lang and the still-divided Labor Party. Bruxner was re-elected with 61% of the vote. Bruxner worked with his long-time friend, now Minister for Education David Drummond, to establish a regional tertiary education institution. After the 1938 election, they moved to establish the New England University College, a constituent college of the University of Sydney in the city of Armidale, and Bruxner was appointed to the first Advisory Council, on which he served until 1951.
In July 1939, Stevens and Colonial Treasurer Alexander Mair attempted to address Spooner's unwillingness to accede to cabinet decisions regarding ministerial expenditure by creating a committee of four, consisting of Mair, Stevens, Spooner and Bruxner, to approve all expenditure. Furious at this gesture, Spooner resigned on 21 July 1939 as Minister and Deputy Leader, citing a 'disagreement in government policy on relief works' as the reason. Despite Spooner's departure, the stability of the government was to be short. On 1 August 1939, Spooner carried a motion of no confidence in Stevens in the house, which unexpectedly passed by two votes, owing to the absence of several ministers. On 3 August Stevens tendered his resignation to the Governor, Lord Wakehurst, but was granted several days to remain until his successor was chosen.
Upon the resignation, Spooner was touted as Stevens' possible successor until Bruxner, who had always detested Spooner, refused to form a coalition government with him. At a UAP party meeting on 5 August, Spooner chose not to nominate and Steven's favoured candidate, Alexander Mair, defeated Athol Richardson 18 votes to 6, becoming Leader of the United Australia Party and was sworn in as Premier by Lord Wakehurst on the same day. Mair, who had got on well with Bruxner, ensured the survival of the coalition government. Mair attempted to shore up unity in his party to save the government. In the last months of government Bruxner was preoccupied with preparation for Australia's entry into the Second World War. He equipped railway workshops with modern machine tools and established National Emergency Services to deal with air raids.
However, despite the efforts of Mair and Bruxner, the controversy surrounding Stevens' departure and a resurgent Labor Party, now led by the moderate William McKell, ensured that the popularity of the government never recovered. At the campaign for the 10 May 1941 election, the government performed poorly, finding it difficult to distinguish themselves from the past and proposing policies but only promising action after the war. McKell's Labor Party did the opposite, leaving war matters to the federal government and promising current reforms. At the election, the Labor Party polled more than half the vote while Bruxner's Country Party lost nine seats and Mair's UAP lost twenty seats. Bruxner retained his seat with 56%. Bruxner would never again hold ministerial office and the conservative political forces would not take government again until Robert Askin and Charles Cutler won the 1965 election.
## In opposition
The rest of Bruxner's parliamentary career was to be on the opposition benches, due largely to the disintegration of the larger opposition party, the UAP, after the 1943 Federal election. A large number of former UAP members then formed the Democratic Party in New South Wales, led by Mair, who continued as Opposition Leader. Mair resigned as Democratic Party Leader on 10 February 1944, to be replaced by former Assembly Speaker Reginald Weaver. At the 1944 election, Bruxner's stable leadership ensured that the Country Party retained all ten of its seats in the Legislative Assembly. Bruxner retained his seat with 67.73%.
Bruxner witnessed the fragmented opposition parties forming into the Liberal Party in 1945, under the leadership of Weaver, Mair and then former Justice Minister Vernon Treatt from March 1946. Bruxner led the party, again being elected unopposed, again at the May 1947 election, achieving an overall gain of 5 seats from independents and the Labor Party, now led by James McGirr. Recognising the importance of the larger Liberals to opposing Labor while also being responsive to the needs of the Country Party's rural voters, Bruxner maintained the Country Party's coalition with the Liberals as well as trying to prevent seat conflicts between the two parties. However, it was to be the persistence of these "tri-cornered" contested seats between Labor, Liberal and Country candidates that were to prove problematic not only for maintaining the coalition but also for attempting to wrest government from Labor.
Treatt and Bruxner led the Coalition at the 17 June 1950 election, which resulted in a hung parliament. The Country Party gained two seats for a total of 17 for a Coalition total of 46 seats. With the Labor Party also holding 46 seats, the balance of power lay with the two re-elected Independent Labor members, James Geraghty and John Seiffert, who had been expelled from the Labor Party for disloyalty during the previous parliament. Seiffert was readmitted and, with the support of Geraghty, McGirr and Labor were able to stay in power. Bruxner retained his seat with 60%. He sold his "Roseneath" property in 1950 and in 1951 bought the homestead section of Old Auburn Vale station, dividing his time between there and his Sydney residence in Bellevue Hill.
The near loss of the election by Labor further weakened McGirr's position and he was replaced as premier by Joseph Cahill in April 1952. Cahill had won popular support as a vigorous and impressive minister who had resolved problems with New South Wales' electricity supply and in his first 10 months as premier had reinvigorated the party. He brought order to the government's chaotic public works program. In addition, he attacked the increasingly unpopular federal Coalition government of Robert Menzies. All this, combined with Bruxner and Treatt constantly clashing over policy and candidate issues, contributed to the Liberal-Country Coalition again being defeated at the 14 February 1953 election. This amounted to a total loss of ten seats, three being Country Party seats, and a swing against them of 7.2%. Bruxner retained his seat with 60.15%.
Murray Robson replaced Treatt as Leader of the Opposition in August 1954. Like other senior members of the Liberals, after having no conservative government since Alexander Mair in 1941, Robson had no experience in government, he had little interest in policy except for Cold War anti-communism, ignored majority views of his party and fellow parliamentary colleagues and Robson's attempts to forge a closer alliance with Bruxner and the Country Party, failed dismally and alienated him from many in his party. Robson was replaced by Pat Morton as leader in September 1955. Bruxner, now aged 70 and having fallen ill several times, led the Country Party one last time at the March 1956 election, which resulted in another labour victory and Country Party regained the seat of Armidale, but overall the government's majority fell from twenty to six. Bruxner retained Tenterfield unopposed.
On 6 May 1958, Bruxner formally resigned as Leader of the Country Party, having served continuously in that role since 1932. He continued to serve in his capacity as Member for Tenterfield, retaining his seat one final time at the March 1959 election, with 68% of the vote. After a final term he retired from the assembly before the election in 1962.
## Retirement and legacy
Upon his retirement, his youngest son, James Caird (Tim) Bruxner, who had served with distinction in the 2nd AIF and the Royal Australian Air Force during World War II, gained preselection for his father's vacated seat, allegedly against his parents' advice, and won it at the 1962 election. Tim Bruxner went on to become a member of the Askin, Lewis and Willis Cabinets from 1973 to 1976, including in his father's old portfolio as Minister for Transport and as Deputy Leader of the Country Party. His eldest son, John Michael Bruxner, having graduated from Sydney University with honours in law in 1935, was admitted to the Bar in 1936 and also served in the 2nd AIF as an officer. On 2 June 1954, he was appointed as a Judge of the District Court of New South Wales.
Upon retiring from politics, Bruxner was appointed as a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1962 "For political and public services". On 2 November 1959, the Mains Roads Board named the highway spanning across Northern NSW as the "Bruxner Highway" in recognition of his services to transport and roads in NSW. Throughout his life, Bruxner had maintained his passion for horses, including as a member of the Australian Jockey Club and the Sydney Turf Club. From 1960 Bruxner was also Deputy President of the Royal Agricultural Society of New South Wales. His wife Winifred having died the year before in 1969, Bruxner died on 28 March 1970, survived by his daughter and both sons. His portrait by William Chandler is in the National Party offices in Sydney, and a sketch of him by George Washington Lambert is in the Australian War Memorial, Canberra.
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23,141,570 |
The Shire
| 1,171,184,024 |
Fictional England-like home region of hobbits in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth
|
[
"Shire (Middle-earth)"
] |
The Shire is a region of J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional Middle-earth, described in The Lord of the Rings and other works. The Shire is an inland area settled exclusively by hobbits, the Shire-folk, largely sheltered from the goings-on in the rest of Middle-earth. It is in the northwest of the continent, in the region of Eriador and the Kingdom of Arnor.
The Shire is the scene of action at the beginning and end of Tolkien's The Hobbit, and of the sequel, The Lord of the Rings. Five of the protagonists in these stories have their homeland in the Shire: Bilbo Baggins (the title character of The Hobbit), and four members of the Fellowship of the Ring: Frodo Baggins, Sam Gamgee, Merry Brandybuck and Pippin Took. At the end of The Hobbit, Bilbo returns to the Shire, only to find out that he has been declared "missing and presumed dead" and that his hobbit-hole and all its contents are up for auction. (He reclaims them, much to the spite of his cousins Otho and Lobelia Sackville-Baggins.) The main action in The Lord of the Rings returns to the Shire near the end of the book, in "The Scouring of the Shire", when the homebound hobbits find the area under the control of Saruman's ruffians, and set things to rights.
Tolkien based the Shire's landscapes, climate, flora, fauna, and placenames on rural England where he lived, first in Worcestershire as a boy, then in Oxfordshire. In Peter Jackson's films of both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, the Shire was represented by countryside and constructed hobbit-holes on a farm near Matamata in New Zealand, which became a tourist destination.
## Fictional description
Tolkien took considerable trouble over the exact details of the Shire. Little of his carefully crafted fictional geography, history, calendar, and constitution appeared in The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, though additional details were given in the Appendices of later editions. The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey comments that all the same, they provided the "depth", the feeling in the reader's mind that this was a real and complex place, a quality that Tolkien believed essential to a successful fantasy.
### Geography
#### Four farthings
In Tolkien's fiction, the Shire is described as a small but beautiful, idyllic and fruitful land, beloved by its hobbit inhabitants. They had agriculture but were not industrialized. The landscape included downland and woods like the English countryside. The Shire was fully inland; most hobbits feared the Sea. The Shire measured 40 leagues (193 km, 120 miles) east to west and 50 leagues (241 km, 150 miles) from north to south, with an area of some 18,000 square miles (47,000 km<sup>2</sup>): roughly that of the English Midlands. The main and oldest part of the Shire was bordered to the east by the Brandywine River, on the north by uplands rising to the Hills of Evendim, on the west by the Far Downs, and on the south by marshland. It expanded to the east into Buckland between the Brandywine and the Old Forest, and (much later) to the west into the Westmarch between the Far Downs and the Tower Hills.
The Shire was subdivided into four Farthings ("fourth-ings", "quarterings"), as Iceland once was; similarly, Yorkshire was historically divided into three "ridings". The Three-Farthing Stone marked the approximate centre of the Shire. It was inspired by the Four Shire Stone near Moreton-in-Marsh, where once four counties met, but since 1931 only three do. There are several Three Shire Stones in England, such as in the Lake District, and formerly some Three Shires Oaks, such as at Whitwell in Derbyshire, each marking the place where three counties once met. Pippin was born in Whitwell in the Tookland. Within the Farthings there are unofficial clan homelands: the Tooks nearly all live in or near Tuckborough in Tookland's Green Hill Country.
#### Buckland
Buckland, also known as the "East Marches", was just to the east of the Shire across the Brandywine River. Named for the Brandybuck family, it was settled "long ago" as "a sort of colony of the Shire." It included Crickhollow, which serves as one of Frodo's five Homely Houses.
The Westmarch or West Marches was given to the Shire by King Elessar after the War of the Ring.
#### Bree
To the east of the Shire was the isolated village of Bree, unique in having hobbits and men living side-by-side. It was served by an inn named The Prancing Pony, noted for its fine beer which was sampled by hobbits, men, and the wizard Gandalf. Many inhabitants of Bree, including the inn's landlord Barliman Butterbur, had surnames taken from plants. Tolkien described the butterbur as "a fat thick plant", evidently chosen as appropriate for a fat man. Tolkien suggested two different origins for the people of Bree: either it had been founded and populated by men of the Edain who did not reach Beleriand in the First Age, remaining east of the mountains in Eriador; or they came from the same stock as the Dunlendings. The name Bree means "hill"; Tolkien justified the name by arranging the village and the surrounding Bree-land around a large hill, named Bree-hill. The name of the village Brill, in Buckinghamshire, a place that Tolkien often visited, inspired him to create Bree, has the same meaning: Brill is a modern contraction of Breʒ-hyll. Both syllables are words for "hill" – the first is Celtic and the second Old English.
### History
The Shire was first settled by hobbits in the year 1601 of the Third Age (Year 1 in Shire Reckoning); they were led by the brothers Marcho and Blanco. The hobbits from the vale of Anduin had migrated west over the perilous Misty Mountains, living in the wilds of Eriador before moving to the Shire.
After the fall of Arnor, the Shire remained a self-governing realm; the Shire-folk chose a Thain to hold the king's powers. The first Thains were the heads of the Oldbuck clan. When the Oldbucks settled Buckland, the position of Thain was peacefully transferred to the Took clan. The Shire was covertly protected by Rangers of the North, who watched the borders and kept out intruders. Generally the only strangers entering the Shire were Dwarves travelling on the Great Road from their mines in the Blue Mountains, and occasional Elves on their way to the Grey Havens. In the hobbits defeated an invasion of Orcs at the Battle of Greenfields. In –60, thousands of hobbits perished in the Long Winter and the famine that followed. In the Fell Winter of –12, white wolves from Forodwaith invaded the Shire across the frozen Brandywine river.
The protagonists of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, lived at Bag End, a luxurious smial or hobbit-burrow, dug into The Hill on the north side of the town of Hobbiton in the Westfarthing. It was the most comfortable hobbit-dwelling in the town; there were smaller burrows further down The Hill. In Bilbo Baggins left the Shire on the quest recounted in The Hobbit. He returned the following year, secretly bearing a magic ring. This turned out to be the One Ring. The Shire was invaded by four Ringwraiths in search of the Ring. While Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin were away on the quest to destroy the Ring, the Shire was taken over by Saruman through his underling Lotho Sackville-Baggins. They ran the Shire in a parody of a modern state, complete with armed ruffians, destruction of trees and handsome old buildings, and ugly industrialisation.
The Shire was liberated with the help of Frodo and his companions on their return at the Battle of Bywater (the final battle of the War of the Ring). The trees of the Shire were restored with soil from Galadriel's garden in Lothlórien (a gift to Sam). The year was considered by the inhabitants of the Shire to be the most productive and prosperous year in their history.
### Language
The hobbits of the Shire spoke Middle-earth's Westron or Common Speech. Tolkien however rendered their language as modern English in The Hobbit and in Lord of the Rings, just as he had used Old Norse names for the Dwarves. To resolve this linguistic puzzle, he created the fiction that the languages of parts of Middle-earth were "translated" into different European languages, inventing the language of the Riders of Rohan, Rohirric, to be "translated" again as the Mercian dialect of Old English which he knew well. This set up a relationship something like ancestry between Rohan and the Shire.
### Government
The Shire had little in the way of government. The Mayor of the Shire's capital, Michel Delving, was the chief official and was treated in practice as the Mayor of the Shire. There was a Message Service for post, and the 12 "Shirriffs" (three for each Farthing) of the Watch for police; their chief duties were rounding up stray livestock. These were supplemented by a varying number of "Bounders", an unofficial border force. At the time of The Lord of the Rings, there were many more Bounders than usual, one of the few signs for the hobbits of that troubled time. The heads of major families exerted authority over their own areas.
The Master of Buckland, hereditary head of the Brandybuck clan, ruled Buckland and had some authority over the Marish, just across the Brandywine River.
Similarly, the head of the Took clan, often called "The Took", ruled the ancestral Took dwelling of Great Smials, the village of Tuckborough, and the area of The Tookland. He held the largely ceremonial office of Thain of the Shire.
### Calendar
Tolkien devised the "Shire calendar" or "Shire Reckoning" supposedly used by the Shire's hobbits on Bede's medieval calendar. In his fiction, it was created in Rhovanion hundreds of years before the Shire was founded. When hobbits migrated into Eriador, they took up the Kings' Reckoning, but maintained their old names of the months. In the "King's Reckoning", the year began on the winter solstice. After migrating further to the Shire, the hobbits created the "Shire Reckoning", in which Year 1 corresponded to the foundation of the Shire in the year 1601 of the Third Age by Marcho and Blanco. The Shire's calendar year has 12 months, each of 30 days. Five non-month days are added to create a 365-day year. The two Yuledays signify the turn of the year, so each year begins on 2 Yule. The Lithedays are the three non-month days at midsummer, 1 Lithe, Mid-year's Day, and 2 Lithe. In leap years (every fourth year except centennial years) an Overlithe day is added after Mid-year's Day. There are seven days in the Shire week. The first day of the week is Sterday and the last is Highday. The Mid-year's Day and, when present, Overlithe have no weekday assignments. This causes every day to have the same weekday designation from year to year, instead of changing as in the Gregorian calendar.
For the names of the months, Tolkien reconstructed Anglo-Saxon names, his take on what the English would be if it had not adopted Latin names for the months such as January and February (also known as "Anglish"). In The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, the names of months and week-days are given in modern equivalents, so Afteryule is called "January" and Sterday is called "Saturday".
## Inspiration
### A calque upon England
Shippey writes that not only is the Shire reminiscent of England: Tolkien carefully constructed the Shire as an element-by-element calque upon England.
There are other connections; Tolkien equated the latitude of Hobbiton with that of Oxford (i.e., around 52° N). The Shire corresponds roughly to the West Midlands region of England in the remote past, extending to Worcestershire (where Tolkien grew up), forming in Shippey's words a "cultural unit with deep roots in history". The name of the Northamptonshire village of Farthinghoe triggered the idea of dividing the Shire into Farthings. Tolkien said that pipe-weed "flourishes only in warm sheltered places like Longbottom;" in the seventeenth century, the Evesham area of Worcestershire was well known for its tobacco.
### Homely names
Tolkien made the Shire feel homely and English in a variety of ways, from names such as Bagshot Row and the Mill to country pubs with familiar names such as "The Green Dragon" in Bywater, "The Ivy Bush" near Hobbiton on the Bywater Road, and "The Golden Perch" in Stock, famous for its fine beer. Michael Stanton comments in the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia that the Shire is based partly on Tolkien's childhood at Sarehole, partly on English village life in general with, in Tolkien's words, "gardens, trees, and unmechanized farmland". The Shire's capital, Michel Delving, embodies a philological pun: the name sounds much like that of an English country town, but means "Much Digging" of hobbit-holes, from Old English micel, "great" and delfan, "to dig".
### Childhood experience
The industrialization of the Shire was based on Tolkien's childhood experience of the blighting of the Worcestershire countryside by the spread of heavy industry as the city of Birmingham grew. "The Scouring of the Shire", involving a rebellion of the hobbits and the restoration of the pre-industrial Shire, can be read as containing an element of wish-fulfilment on his part, complete with Merry's magic horn to rouse the inhabitants to action.
## Adaptations
### Film
The Shire makes an appearance in both the 1977 The Hobbit and the 1978 The Lord of the Rings animated films.
In Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings motion picture trilogy, the Shire appeared in both The Fellowship of the Ring and The Return of the King. The Shire scenes were shot at a location near Matamata, New Zealand. Following the shooting, the area was returned to its natural state, but even without the set from the movie the area became a prime tourist location. Because of bad weather, 18 of 37 hobbit-holes could not immediately be bulldozed; before work could restart, they were attracting over 12,000 tourists per year to Ian Alexander's farm, where Hobbiton and Bag End had been situated.
Jackson's Bree is constantly unpleasant and threatening, complete with special effects and the Eye of Sauron when Frodo puts on the Ring. In Ralph Bakshi's animated 1978 adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, Alan Tilvern voiced Bakshi's Butterbur (as "Innkeeper"); David Weatherley played Butterbur in Jackson's epic, while James Grout played him in BBC Radio's 1981 serialization of The Lord of the Rings. In the 1991 low-budget Russian adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring, Khraniteli, Butterbur appears as "Lavr Narkiss", played by Nikolay Burov. In Yle's 1993 television miniseries Hobitit, Butterbur ("Viljami Voivalvatti" in Finnish, meaning "William Butter") was played by Mikko Kivinen. Bree and Bree-land can be explored in the PC game The Lord of the Rings Online.
Jackson revisited the Shire for his films The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. The Shire scenes were shot at the same location.
### Games
In the 2006 real-time strategy game The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle Earth II, the Shire appears as both a level in the evil campaign where the player invades in control of a goblin army, and as a map in the game's multiplayer skirmish mode.
In the 2007 MMORPG The Lord of the Rings Online, the Shire appears almost in its entirety as one of the major regions of the game. The Shire is inhabited by hundreds of non-player characters, and the player can get involved in hundreds of quests. The only portions of the original map by Christopher Tolkien that are missing from the game are some parts of the West Farthing and the majority of the South Farthing. A portion of the North Farthing also falls within the in-game region of Evendim for game play purposes.
In the 2009 action game The Lord of the Rings: Conquest, the Shire appears as one of the game's battlegrounds during the evil campaign, where it is razed by the forces of Mordor.
Games Workshop also produced a supplement in 2004 for The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game entitled The Scouring of the Shire. This supplement contained rules for a large number of miniatures that depicted the Shire after the War of the Ring had concluded.
|
44,396,555 |
All My Love (Major Lazer song)
| 1,170,942,056 |
2014 single by Major Lazer
|
[
"2014 songs",
"American house music songs",
"Aqua (band)",
"Ariana Grande songs",
"Dancehall songs",
"Electropop songs",
"Major Lazer songs",
"Soca songs",
"Song recordings produced by Diplo",
"Songs written by Ariana Grande",
"Songs written by Boaz van de Beatz",
"Songs written by Lorde",
"Songs written by MØ",
"The Hunger Games music"
] |
"All My Love" is a song by American electronic music project Major Lazer featuring vocals from American singer Ariana Grande. It was released on 13 November 2014 as the fifth song from the soundtrack for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 (2014). The song was written by Grande, Lorde, and MØ with production handled by Boaz van de Beatz, Jr Blender and Diplo. It is an electropop and dance-pop song with elements of dancehall. "All My Love" received positive reviews from music critics who complimented the track's production.
Commercially, the track performed modestly in Belgium and charted in France and the United Kingdom. A remix of the song featuring vocals from Grande and Trinidadian singer Machel Montano was released on 21 January 2015 and appears as the final track on Major Lazer's third studio album Peace Is the Mission (2015). It features an interpolation of Aqua's 1997 song "Lollipop (Candyman)". This version performed modestly in Belgium and charted in Canada. Grande performed the original version on select dates on The Honeymoon Tour (2015).
## Background and release
"All My Love" was written by Lorde (credited under her birth-name Ella Yelich-O'Connor), Ariana Grande and MØ (credited under her birth-name Karen Ørsted), while production of the song was handled by Boaz van de Beatz, Jr Blender and Diplo, a member of Major Lazer. Lorde's desire to include "All My Love" on the film's soundtrack led Diplo to rush the production process of the song. In an annotation posted to Genius that Diplo wrote, he mentioned that he was on vacation in London at the same time Grande was there. He managed to communicate with her and go "back and forth with certain mixes." Diplo said that he was willing to "screw around" and surprise people with "this kind of collaboration."
Leaked on 13 November 2014 before the official release date, "All My Love" was included as the fifth track for the soundtrack of the 2014 film The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1. Diplo first mentioned the track on 16 October 2014 via Twitter. However, he deleted the tweet afterwards. When the album's official track list was announced on 21 October 2014, the song was listed as "Track 5". Lorde, who curated the film's soundtrack, said on Twitter that the song was not excluded for "secrecy's sake" but because it was "not quite finished". A week later, Grande revealed in a livestream that she was included in the film's soundtrack. She described the song as "very interesting" and "very different." Lorde announced the track's title via Twitter on 3 November 2014.
## Composition and reception
"All My Love" is an electropop and dance-pop song, with elements of dancehall. Stereogum's Tom Breihan compared it to Grande's 2014 single, "Break Free", featuring Russian-German DJ Zedd. Bradley Stern from Idolator described its production as having "rich, tribal" sounds and "'90's-leaning dance floor pulsations". Exclaim writer Alex Hudson called the track an "electronic banger with in-your-face beats and a manic breakdown." Similarly, Complex writer Edwin Ortiz called the song an "electronic pop cut" with a "heart-pulsing backdrop". Brennan Carley of Spin noted that the song features "yelping, punctuated beats and synthesizers [that] pierce the air".
"All My Love" received mostly positive reviews from music critics. Michelle Geslani from Consequence of Sound called the song a "Grade A electropop banger." Geslani praised Diplo's "breezy yet bouncy island rhythms" and Grande's "angelic croon". In a review of the soundtrack, Nick Levine of NME stated that both artists sounded like they were "holding a rave in the rainforest". In a mixed review of the soundtrack, however, Jim Farber of New York Daily News called Grande's inclusion in the song a "commercial move", stating that her vocals proved "too mainstream for an album meant to project something sinister." "All My Love" was moderately successful in Belgium, where it peaked within the top 40 in both the Flanders and Wallonia chart components. It reached number 135 in France and number 194 in the United Kingdom.
## Remix
On 21 January 2015, a remix version featuring vocals from Grande and Trinidadian singer Machel Montano was released. It appears as the ninth track on Major Lazer's third studio album, Peace Is the Mission (2015). Diplo, a member of Major Lazer, co-wrote the song with producers Boaz de Jong, Jr Blender, and Skinny Fabulous, and featured artist Machel Montano. A French version of the remix, featuring Grande, Montano, and the French duo Shin Sekaï, was released on 4 March 2016.
The remix was described by critics as a soca, house, and dubstep song, with influences of dancehall. Its instrumentation includes bass, bongo rhythms, and a beat drop. According to Pitchfork writer Claire Lobenfeld, the song features an interpolation of Aqua's 1997 song "Lollipop (Candyman)". Jon Dolan from Rolling Stone called the remix a "weapons-grade sun splash". Idolator writer Mike Wass called it an "effortless overhaul that deserves a spot on your next party playlist." Commercially, the remix of the song charted at number 87 on the Billboard Canadian Hot 100 chart and peaked at number 15 on the US Dance/Electronic Songs chart; it reached number 66 on the latter's year-end chart.
## Credits and personnel
Credits adapted from the liner notes of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1 (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack).
Recording and management
- Recorded at Air Lyndhurst (London, United Kingdom)
Personnel
- Major Lazer – lead artist, production
- Ariana Grande-Butera – guest vocals, songwriting
- Karen Ørsted – songwriting
- Ella Yelich-O’Connor – songwriting
- Boaz van de Beatz – production
- Jr Blender – production
## Charts
### Weekly charts
### Year-end charts
|
20,741,435 |
Interception of the Rex
| 1,169,777,085 |
1930s United States Army exercise
|
[
"1938 in aviation",
"1938 in the United States",
"History of military aviation",
"Military aviation exercises",
"Non-combat military operations involving the United States",
"United States Army Air Corps"
] |
The interception of the Rex was a training exercise and military aviation achievement of the United States Army Air Corps prior to World War II. The tracking and location of an ocean-going vessel (the Italian liner SS Rex) by B-17 Flying Fortresses on 12 May 1938 was a major event in the development of a doctrine that led to a United States Air Force independent of the Army. The mission was ostensibly a training exercise for coastal defense of the United States, but was conceived by planners to be a well-publicized demonstration of the capabilities of "heavy bombers (as) long range instruments of power".
The flight was conducted during coastal defense maneuvers held by the Air Corps without the participation of the United States Navy, and apparently without understanding of their purpose by the Army Chief of Staff. Both had continuing disagreements with the leaders of the Air Corps over roles and missions, with the Navy disputing its maritime mission and the Army seeking to limit its role to that of supporting ground forces.
With a characteristic flair for creating publicity, the Air Corps' General Headquarters Air Force (its combat organization) not only successfully made the interception at sea, but exploited both live radio news coverage and dramatic photographs. Although the publicity resulted in a short-term setback for Air Corps ambitions, within a year both U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and future Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall became new proponents of long-range air power.
## Background
### Ostfriesland
In July 1921, promoting the concept of an independent Air Force, Gen. Billy Mitchell staged a series of aerial bombing exercises that resulted in the sinking of the former German battleship Ostfriesland by the U.S. Air Service. Incurring the enmity of the Navy, which considered the achievement nothing more than a publicity stunt, Mitchell continued to discredit the battleship as the main weapon for projection of power by sinking several more obsolete ships in the next two years. However, the Air Service was limited by Army policy to being an auxiliary of the ground forces and was unable to obtain a role that would use long distance bombers.
### The "Shasta Disaster"
When the Air Service was renamed the Air Corps in 1926, the Joint Army-Navy Board was in the process of reconsidering service responsibilities in coastal defense. Both Chief of Air Corps Major General Mason Patrick and Rear Admiral William A. Moffett, Chief of the Navy's Bureau of Aeronautics, resisted any restrictions on range or missions for their respective services' aircraft. The resulting Joint Action statement was vague regarding Air Corps actions over water but "left the door open" for the Navy's interpretation of its own authority, which was that the shore-based coastal patrol mission was its prerogative. Efforts by the War Department to clarify the issue were rebuffed by the Navy to the extent that the Secretary of War warned President Herbert Hoover in 1930 that the situation was endangering national defense.
On 7 January 1931, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Douglas MacArthur and Navy CNO Adm. William V. Pratt reached an agreement modifying the Joint Action statement by assigning the coastal defense role for land-based aircraft to the Air Corps. This came at a time when the Air Corps was seeking a mission to justify the development of all-metal monoplane bombers, and theorists at the Air Corps Tactical School were advocating the use of long-range heavy bombers. In August of that year, to garner publicity and generate favorable public opinion, Lt.Col. Frank M. Andrews, on the staff of outgoing Chief of the Air Corps Maj. Gen. James Fechet, proposed to bomb another ship during joint maneuvers with the Navy off the coast of North Carolina. Before the mission Col. Roy Kirtland, the base commander at Langley Field, cautioned reporters that the operation was to be only a bombing exercise using small bombs, and that "nothing spectacular" should be expected.
The United States Shipping Board made available a World War I cargo ship, the 4865 gross ton USS Mount Shasta, that had been tied up in the James River for a decade. An Army mine vessel towed the hulk to sea 60 nautical miles (111 km) off Currituck Beach Light. The next morning, 11 August, Major Harbert A. Dargue led nine B-3A and B-5 bombers of the 2nd Bombardment Group, little different from the Martin NBS-1s that had destroyed the Ostfriesland, to locate and attack the Mount Shasta, but a combination of bad weather and failed communications resulted in the planes being unable to locate the ship. Worse, the failure was witnessed by several dozen reporters, movie newsreel crews, a broadcast team from NBC radio, and observers from both the Army and Navy, some aboard airplanes that did find the ship. The Navy responded immediately with scornful public mocking of the effort. When a second attempt three days later scored only a few hits with inadequately small 300- and 600-pound bombs, and failed to sink the Mount Shasta, a pair of United States Coast Guard ocean-going tugboats used small guns to sink it.
Despite its earlier disclaimer and subsequent explanations, the Air Corps was highly embarrassed by the incident, referred to as "the bombing flop" within the service. Navy Captain Dudley Knox dubbed it "the Shasta Disaster", and the New York Evening Post commented that "the Navy evened up an old score". Hanson W. Baldwin, military editor of the New York Times and a Naval Academy graduate, averred that it was "illustrative of the inefficiency of land-based pilots over water." As a result, Andrews and six subordinates were replaced by incoming Chief of the Air Corps Maj. Gen. Benjamin Foulois, and the Secretary of War recommended that the Air Corps' budget be slashed. Andrews and Lt.Col. Henry H. Arnold (executive officer of the Air Materiel Division at Wright Field), however, expressed concerns about the apparent lack of capability and possible failures in Air Corps training demonstrated by the fiasco.
Two months later a second opportunity presented itself. Another old ship, the Haines, sank in shallow water while being towed off Plum Tree Island in Chesapeake Bay and became a hazard to navigation. The 2nd Bombardment Group redeemed itself by completely destroying the derelict from the air, even though their only visible target was a ten-foot-square float marker. This accomplishment, however, went entirely unpublicized.
Regardless of the MacArthur–Pratt agreement, the Navy had gone ahead with development of land-based patrol aircraft and expansion of its naval air stations, and in 1933 formally repudiated the agreement after Pratt retired. On 11 September 1935, the Joint Board, at the behest of the Navy and the concurrence of MacArthur, issued a revised Joint Action statement that reasserted the limited role of all Air Corps missions, including coastal defense, as auxiliary to the "mobile Army". However, long-range bomber advocates interpreted its language to mean that the Air Corps could conduct long-range reconnaissance, attack approaching fleets, reinforce distant bases, and attack enemy air bases, all in furtherance of its mission to prevent an air attack on America.
### Joint Air Exercise No. 4
On 4 March 1937, the 2nd Bombardment Group, now commanded by Lt. Col. Robert Olds, received the first of the newly developed B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bombers, with 12 delivered during the spring and summer of 1937. Designated the YB-17 because of its service-test status, the Flying Fortress was the first multi-engine long-range bomber acquired by the Air Corps, despite resistance from the Army General Staff over its necessity, and the centerpiece of the General Headquarters Air Force (GHQ Air Force).
The B-17s made their first significant operational contribution during Joint Air Exercise No. 4, an Army–Navy summer maneuver conducted at sea west of San Francisco, California. Authorized by a directive of President Roosevelt issued 10 July 1937, the exercise used the target ship Utah to represent a hostile fleet of two battleships, an aircraft carrier, and nine destroyers. A patrol wing of 30 Navy planes commanded by Rear Admiral Ernest J. King was assigned to locate the fleet, after which a force of 41 Air Corps bombers (including seven B-17s operating from March Field) would attack it. War Department orders limited the Air Corps aircraft to operating no more than 300 nautical miles (560 km) offshore, even though the directive had specified an exercise area out to 500 nautical miles (930 km).
The exercise began at noon on 12 August 1937 and was scheduled to end in 24 hours. After several hours of searching through a foggy undercast that extended 200 nautical miles (370 km) offshore, Navy planes found the Utah 275 nautical miles (510 km) from the coast and tracked it heading northwest. Air Corps bombers were sent to attack the ship but searched well into the evening without locating it. Admiral King then found an error in the Navy's position reports, which he later attributed to "clerical error". The Utah had actually been 50 nautical miles (93 km) west of the search area provided to the Air Corps. Worse, the ship disappeared into the extensive low fog during the night, breaking the contact by the Navy's scout planes. The poor weather also prevented an early morning search for the Utah.
Brig. Gen. Delos Emmons, commander of the GHQ Air Force's 1st Wing, dispatched bombers at 0900 on 13 August to search an area of 30,000 square miles (78,000 km<sup>2</sup>) entirely covered by low clouds. Olds surmised that the Utah had feinted towards San Francisco, then reversed course to attack the industrial Los Angeles area. Accompanied by Maj. Gen. Frank Andrews (commanding the GHQ Air Force), he flew in the lead B-17 above the clouds, patrolling an area 200 nautical miles (370 km) offshore. A Navy patrol aircraft located the Utah at 11:00 steaming southeast 285 nautical miles (530 km) off the coast. The 2nd BG bombers responded to the position report and located the Utah shortly before the noon termination of the exercise. From an altitude of 400 feet they attacked the former battleship with Navy-supplied water bombs.
When the Navy protested the low-altitude attack, claiming that evasive action could have avoided the attack, both B-17s and B-18s repeated the mission the next day. They found the Utah and bombed it, with the B-17s bombing from 18,000 feet. The Air Corps produced photographs and bombing data that showed it achieved a higher percentage of hits and near-misses than earlier Navy tests, and the Navy subsequently had the exercise classified "Secret". The joint report sent to the president by the secretaries of the Navy and War omitted the information showing the success both in navigation and bombing. Despite the secrecy restriction, the success of the B-17s was leaked to radio commentator Boake Carter, who disclosed it to the public.
In an attempt to overcome this compartmentalization, Andrews bypassed the chain of command on 8 January 1938, in a memorandum of his own regarding a minor joint air exercise held in November 1937 off the Virginia Capes. There four B-17s had found and successfully bombed Navy target vessels. Andrews sent a memo directly to Roosevelt's military aide, Col. Edwin M. Watson, that included confidential Navy memoranda confirming the accuracy of the Army's bombing.
## Intercepting the Rex
### Northeast Maneuvers
In May 1938 the Air Corps conducted one of the largest maneuvers in its history. 468 officers, 2,380 enlisted men, and 131 aircraft were drawn from all three wings of the GHQ Air Force and based at 18 airports in the northeast United States, "from Schenectady, New York, and Aberdeen, Maryland, westward to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania". Included were eight B-17s of the 2d Bombardment Group. All were assigned as the "Blue Force" defending New England from the "Black Force", an attacking aircraft carrier fleet. The Navy, involved in fleet exercises off the West Coast, did not provide ships to play the role of the Black Force. The Army publicized the resulting scenario as depicting simultaneous attacks on America by hostile fleets on both coasts, with the Air Corps tasked to defend against one of them.
Attached to the exercise was Lt. Col. Ira C. Eaker, the Chief of the Air Corps' Information Division. Eaker, who had a degree in journalism and had just completed a course in news photography at the University of Oklahoma, used the maneuvers as a platform for publicizing both the capabilities and materiel deficiencies of the Air Corps. His assistant was 2d Lt. Harris Hull, a reservist on temporary duty for the exercise who was a reporter for the Washington Post in civilian life. When newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, criticized the maneuvers for using a "mythical fleet" as a target, Hull suggested that an ocean liner be substituted for naval vessels. He learned that the Italian Line's SS Rex was bound for New York and would pass the 1,000 nautical miles (1,900 km) mark on 11 May. Eaker recommended the interception of the liner to Gen. Andrews, who concurred and received approval from the office of the Army's Chief of Staff. Hull arranged to receive position reports from officials of the line.
Olds, whose B-17s were deployed to Olmsted Field in Harrisburg, was given the assignment of locating the Rex as far at sea as possible, and assigned Major Vincent J. Meloy, the commanding officer of the 20th Bomb Squadron, to act as nominal head of the Black Force. Olds selected three aircraft from the 49th Bomb Squadron for the mission. On the afternoon of 11 May 1937, Olds and his crews flew from Olmsted to the staging base at Mitchel Field on Long Island.
Assigned as lead navigator was 1st Lt. Curtis E. LeMay, who had navigated the finding of the Utah and been a participant in a goodwill mission to South America in February that had won the group the MacKay Trophy. The Chief of the Materiel Division's Photographic Section, Maj. George W. Goddard, flew co-pilot in aircraft No. 81 to document the mission using a specially-modified Graflex camera. Reporters were also invited to accompany the mission. They included Hanson Baldwin, possibly because of his earlier excoriation of the "Shasta Disaster", and a radio crew from the National Broadcasting Company (which on 4 April 1937, had made a live six-minute broadcast from a B-17 at Langley Field) to broadcast from aboard the lead aircraft while it made the interception.
LeMay used the Rex's noon position report of 11 May in conjunction with known routes and speeds of ocean liners bound for New York to calculate an intercept point for the next day, based on the ship's expected noon position for 12 May. An updated position report to refine his calculations was expected that evening but not received. Weather conditions deteriorated during the night, with a forecast that "ceilings would be down to nothing" in the vicinity of the anticipated interception.
### Interception
At 8:30 a.m. on 12 May, the three B-17s had begun to taxi in a rain squall when a morning position report from Rex was relayed to LeMay. It indicated that the liner was then 725 nautical miles (1,300 km) from New York, farther east than his original computations had placed it. LeMay's original flight plan had incorporated an area search if necessary, but weather conditions and the ship's distance from Long Island precluded that possibility.
The B-17s took off from Mitchel Field at 8:45 a.m. and cruised east from Sandy Hook at 170 mph on a true course of 101 degrees through rain, hail, downdrafts, and an intense headwind that reduced their ground speed by 11.5 mph. LeMay was unable to check the effect of the winds on ground speed and drift because of a heavy overcast that limited their altitude to 1,100 feet (340 m). At 10:00 a.m. they emerged into good weather that lasted an hour. LeMay took double drifts until the B-17s had to separate to transit a cold front. At 11:15 a.m. they reassembled in clear weather on the other side, where LeMay checked their course again. He calculated an intercept time of 12:25 p.m. for his pilot, who in turn passed it to Meloy to schedule the live radio broadcast. At noon the B-17s encountered an area of "scattered rain squalls", spreading into a line abreast formation with the aircraft 15 nautical miles (28 km) apart to increase their chances of spotting the Rex.
At 12:23 p.m., the bombers broke out of a squall line, and Cousland in No. 81 immediately sighted the Rex. "There it is! There it is!" he transmitted by radio to the other pilots, "81 to 80, twelve o'clock." At 12:25 p.m., as predicted, the B-17s flew by the Rex while it was 620 nautical miles (1,100 km) east of Sandy Hook. The aircraft reversed course and came up the ship's port side, with No. 82 flying wing on No. 80 "at smoke stack level". From the co-pilot's seat of No. 81, Goddard took a series of photographs with the Graflex. In the waist position of No. 80, Meloy made voice contact by radio with the ship's captain, who invited "all members of the flight to come down to lunch." The ship's passengers filled its decks, waving to the bombers, with a group of Americans purportedly singing the "Star Spangled Banner".
Because of the bad weather, the B-17s returned individually to Mitchel Field. Cousland's Flying Fortress encountered severe hail, damaging all the forward surfaces of the plane, and ice caused a temporary shutdown of one engine. As a result, Cousland lagged behind the others, landing at 4:30 p.m. The next morning the three bombers took off to return to Harrisburg and spotted the Rex passing the Statue of Liberty at 9:30 a.m. as it entered New York Harbor.
The NBC radio crew aboard the lead bomber made its live broadcast coast-to-coast as the bombers flew by the Rex. The Army's low-altitude photographs were featured the next day on the front pages of hundreds of newspapers. Eaker exploited a trust of Americans in radio broadcasts and in photography, particular to that era, to bolster the credibility of Air Corps claims that air power was essential in defending the western hemisphere. In addition to the Rex episode, the May 1938 maneuvers conducted a well-publicized mock attack on New York City, and arranged the first voluntary blackout in the United States, also planned by Eaker, during a mock raid on Farmingdale, New York, on 16 May.
## Aftermath
### Impact
The response of the War Department was to curb further expansion of the Air Corps and its roles. On 16 May, the day of the "Farmingdale raid", the Army's deputy chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Stanley Embick, approved a request from Air Corps chief Maj. Gen. Oscar Westover to substitute a single Boeing Y1B-20 (an advanced design of the Boeing B-15) for two B-15s ordered for Project A, the development program for the very long range bomber. On 9 June, however, Secretary of War Harry Woodring countermanded the approval, which he had endorsed only three weeks before. On 3 August, the Army went on to cancel orders for 67 more B-17s authorized under a "balanced" plan Woodring himself had put forth in March, instead allocating the funds to buy smaller combat aircraft, and forbade any further spending for R&D of long-range bombers.
It was not until January 1939, when U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a public statement calling for an expansion of the Air Corps in anticipation of the coming of World War II and the needs of the United States in defending the Western Hemisphere, that Army policy was reversed. Gen. George C. Marshall, who was soon to move up from head of the War Plans Division to be the Army's chief of staff, received personal instruction on the capabilities and strengths of long-range bombers from new Air Corps chief Gen. Henry H. Arnold.
### Operational restriction
The day after the rendezvous with the Rex, Chief of Staff General Malin Craig telephoned Andrews and issued an order that restricted all Air Corps aircraft to operating within 100 nautical miles (190 km) of the coast. Arnold, Eaker, Olds, and Lt. Col. Carl Spaatz all believed that complaints from the Navy motivated the order. Spaatz, who personally answered the call, recorded that Andrews requested the order be issued in writing, but Arnold states he never saw a written order.
Two Air Corps historians state that no evidence exists that the Navy was behind the order. One explained that Craig believed the Air Corps violated War Department policy on publicity, while the second asserted that Craig was unhappy about not being provided details of the mission before it was publicly announced, and thus issued the order to ensure full notification before granting exceptions to the restriction. Deputy chief of staff Embick made the claim that the restriction had been issued only as a safety measure. Greer, however, in his history of Air Corps doctrine, firmly attributes the restriction to the Navy, noting that in November 1938 it achieved a new modification of the Joint Action statement specifically granting it the authorization for long-range land-based flights that the Army was denied, and immediately prepared six major bases to conduct them. A fourth historian, in a biography of Arnold, stated that the restriction had actually been promulgated on 1 September 1936, at the insistence of the Navy, but was not enforced by Craig until after the Rex incident.
In any event, the restriction fomented further interservice enmity between the Air Corps and the Navy that did not abate until World War II. The Navy specifically included the 100 nautical miles (190 km) limit in plans for joint maneuvers in 1939 that was deleted only after Andrews objected to Marshall, who had replaced Embick as deputy chief of staff. Emmons, who succeeded Andrews as commander of GHQ Air Force, complained in his "Report on Annual Tactical Inspection", dated 28 July 1939, that because of the operational restriction, navigation training in the Air Corps had suffered.
Despite this, exceptions to the restriction quickly became the norm. Only a month after the interception of the Rex, B-17s intercepted the 22,000-ton liner SS Queen of Bermuda 300 nautical miles (560 km) at sea on 12 June, and aircraft based in Hawaii twice located Army transports at similar distances during the summer of 1938. In March 1939, Arnold, as Chief of the Air Corps, was given specific authority by the chief of staff to grant exceptions as he saw fit, provided they were unpublicized and he notified the War Department well in advance.
### Subsequent history of the participants
Andrews was not reappointed as commander of General Headquarters Air Force when his term expired on 1 March 1939. Exactly as happened with Billy Mitchell, he was returned in rank to colonel (his permanent establishment rank) and assigned as air officer of the Eighth Corps Area in San Antonio, Texas. His "exile" in San Antonio was brief, however. In August, prospective Army Chief of Staff Marshall had Andrews promoted over the objections of Secretary Woodring and General Craig, beginning a climb to higher command for Andrews that culminated in promotion to lieutenant general and appointment as commander of the European Theater of Operations. Many senior airmen believed he was possibly being groomed to command the Normandy invasion. However, Andrews was killed in the crash of a Consolidated B-24 Liberator long-range bomber in Iceland in May 1943 while returning to Washington, D.C.
Capt. Archibald Y. Smith was promoted to colonel during World War II, commanded the 452nd Bomb Group (B-17) in the U.K., and became a prisoner of war in July 1944. Continuing his career after the war in the United States Air Force, he died in the crash of his Douglas B-26 in Oregon in April 1949. Cousland also became a colonel and commanded the first B-17 group in England, the 97th BG, although he was relieved of command by Col. Frank A. Armstrong just before it was to go into combat. Cousland finished the war commanding the 21st Bombardment Wing, a processing unit for personnel returning from overseas.
Seven of the participants became general officers. Hull was recalled to active duty to be an intelligence officer in World War II, then remained in the Air Force as a career. He retired as a brigadier general in 1964. Meloy served as a brigadier general in the Air Transport Command and retired in 1946. Goddard was recognized as the principal aerial photography expert of the USAF and retired in 1953 as a brigadier general. Caleb V. Haynes and his crew won the MacKay Trophy in 1939 flying an earthquake relief mission to Chile in the Boeing XB-15, and delivered the first B-24 Liberator to the UK, pioneering the northern Atlantic route in July 1941. Assigned initially to the Tenth Air Force, he was the first commander of the Assam-Burma-China Ferry Command, the airlift operation flying supplies over the Hump to China. Haynes went on to command the bombers of the China Air Task Force under Maj. Gen. Claire Chennault, became a brigadier general, commanded the India Air Task Force, and retired from the USAF as a major general in 1953.
Olds (whose son, Brig. Gen. Robin Olds, became a fighter pilot icon), was promoted to major general and commanded the Second Air Force, but died of a heart-related condition in April 1943 at the age of 46.
Eaker and LeMay had important roles as commanders in the strategic bombing campaigns of World War II. Eaker took command of the Eighth Air Force in 1942, and the Mediterranean Allied Air Forces in 1944. He retired in 1947 as a lieutenant general, but was promoted on the retired list to 4-star general in 1985 in recognition of his accomplishments. In the autumn of 1942, LeMay led the 305th Bomb Group, one of the four "pioneer" B-17 groups of the Eighth Air Force. He advanced to higher commands in the Eighth Air Force before holding a series of Boeing B-29 Superfortress commands in the Pacific in 1944–45, culminating in command of the Twentieth Air Force. LeMay commanded and reorganized the Strategic Air Command into an instrument of national policy and became the fifth Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force in 1961.
Laid up in Trieste harbor, Italy, by the war, the Rex was seized by Nazi Germany when Italy changed to the Allied side in 1943. On 8 September 1944, south of Trieste she was attacked twice by Royal Air Force Bristol Beaufighters. She was set on fire and listing by rockets and cannon shells. Following a second attack by RAF and South African Air Force Beaufighters Rex rolled over and sank. The purpose of the attack was to prevent her from being used to block the harbor entrance. The wreck was partially scrapped in the 1950s, but around one-third of it still remains.
The YB-17s quickly became obsolete and were transferred in October 1940 to the 19th Bomb Group at March Field, California, when the 2d BG acquired newer models. During World War II they operated again at Langley Field until mid-1942. The Air Corps belatedly put the B-17 into mass production beginning in July 1940, but at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor still had only 198 in service. However, 12,000 were produced during the war, became the backbone of the air war against Germany, and were an iconic symbol of the AAF.
The 2nd Bomb Group received newer B-17s and served in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations with both the Twelfth and Fifteenth Air Forces. GHQ Air Force assumed its designated wartime role in November 1940, was renamed Air Force Combat Command in June 1941, but went out of existence in March 1942 in a major reorganization of the United States Army Air Forces.
### Operation Rex Redux
On 24 August 2007, three B-52 Stratofortresses of the 2nd Bomb Wing, successor to the 2nd BG, conducted "Operation Rex Redux", a training mission commemorating the interception of the Rex. Flying from Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, and using the radio call signs Rex 51, Rex 52, and Rex 53, the B-52s intercepted the Military Sealift Command ship MV 2nd Lt. John P. Bobo east of Bermuda to test the capabilities of a new targeting system.
## Journals and periodicals
|
1,717,758 |
Outrageous (song)
| 1,166,129,160 |
2004 single by Britney Spears
|
[
"2003 songs",
"2004 singles",
"American contemporary R&B songs",
"American hip hop songs",
"Britney Spears songs",
"Jive Records singles",
"Music videos directed by Dave Meyers (director)",
"Song recordings produced by R. Kelly",
"Songs written by R. Kelly"
] |
"Outrageous" is a song by American singer Britney Spears from her fourth studio album, In the Zone (2003). It was written and produced by R. Kelly, with vocal production provided by Trixster and Penelope Magnet. The song was released on July 13, 2004, by Jive Records, as the fourth and final single from In the Zone. "Outrageous" was the record label's choice for first or second single, but Spears pushed for "Me Against the Music" and "Toxic" respectively, to be released instead. It was finally announced as a single after it was selected as the theme song for the 2004 film Catwoman. "Outrageous" is a hip hop and R&B song with an exotic feel. Lyrically, it talks about materialism and entertainment. "Outrageous" received mixed reviews from critics. Some praised its funky sound, while others deemed it "forgettable".
"Outrageous" only charted in Japan, Romania, Russia and in the United States, entering many of Billboard's component charts and peaking at number 79 on the Billboard Hot 100. Spears only performed the song on 2004's The Onyx Hotel Tour. The music video was being shot in New York City in June 2004, when Spears hurt her knee and had to undergo arthroscopic surgery. The video was canceled, as well as remainder of The Onyx Hotel Tour and the feature in the Catwoman soundtrack. A composite of different scenes was released in the DVD Greatest Hits: My Prerogative (2004).
## Background
"Outrageous" was written and produced by R. Kelly, and was recorded at The Chocolate Factory, in Chicago, Illinois. Penelope Magnet and Christopher "Tricky" Stewart of production team RedZone were enlisted to produce Spears's vocals. She recorded them at Battery Studios in New York City. The song was later mixed by Serban Ghenea at MixStar Studios in Virginia Beach, Virginia. On September 11, 2003, "Outrageous" was confirmed as one of the tracks from In the Zone. Jive Records hoped the song would be released as the first single from the album, but Spears convinced them to release her collaboration with Madonna, "Me Against the Music". The track was also one of the choices for second single along with "(I Got That) Boom Boom", but Spears selected "Toxic" instead. On June 1, 2004, it was announced that "Outrageous" would be released as the fourth single from the album and would be sent to radio stations on June 29, 2004. It was also announced that the track would be the theme song from the 2004 film Catwoman. "Outrageous" was sent to mainstream radio in the United States on July 20, 2004.
## Music and lyrics
"Outrageous" is a hip hop and R&B song. The beat was compared by Gavin Mueller of Stylus Magazine to R. Kelly's 2003 single "Snake". Jennifer Vineyard of MTV noted that "she whispers and moans [...] with a snake charmer melody giving the song an exotic feel". Nick Southall of Stylus Magazine compared the background vocals to those of Punjabi musician Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. According to the sheetmusic published at Musicnotes.com by Universal Music Publishing Group, "Outrageous" is composed in the key of D major, with a tempo of 105 beats per minute. The song's lyrics talk about materialism and amusement, with Spears referencing in the chorus a number of things that give her pleasure, such as "my world tour" and "my sex drive". Vineyard noted, "the cumulative effect seems like it's designed to put the listener in the lover's shoes—taking full advantage of the aural male gaze". Sal Cinquemani of Slant Magazine said the track "includes a telling parallel that reveals a lot about one of music's biggest—as Alanis Morissette would put it—treadmill capitalists: she sings "my sex drive" and "my shopping spree" with the same dripping gusto".
## Critical reception
"Outrageous" received mixed reviews from music critics. Mim Udovitch of Blender called the song an "R. Kelly club number, [that] has a hot, odd compulsion and lyrics that are practically big-pimpin', Spears-style". William Shaw of Blender selected it as the ninth best Spears song, highlighting "the nonsense chants" at 1:10. While reviewing Greatest Hits: My Prerogative, Ann Powers commented, "'Outrageous' is R. Kelly's dirty little take on the ideal Janet Jackson song". Spence D. of IGN said of the song that "it's a somewhat derivative Egyptian lover groove number. Yet for all it's [sic] repetitiveness, it's still kind of funky and pervasive". Kelefa Sanneh of The New York Times called it "[a] composition that cruises along on autopilot for two minutes and then suddenly switches gears with a delectable Michael Jackson-inspired bridge". Annabel Leathes of the BBC stated that "R. Kelly transform[s] Britney into a grubby Beyoncé". Caryn Ganz of Spin called "Outrageous" a "go-nowhere homage to living fabulously". Dave de Sylvia of Sputnikmusic called it "a forgettable but nonetheless catchy single". David Browne of Entertainment Weekly said that along with "(I Got That) Boom Boom", "[they] are little more than wobbly, rhythm-based contraptions intended to advance Spears' sex-princess-on-the-loose image". Jamie Gill of Yahoo! Music Radio commented that, "with its cheap, tinny production – it would take a rather senile and unworldly old lady in Tonbridge Wells [sic] to find this even diverting, let alone shocking".
## Commercial performance
On August 14, 2004, "Outrageous" debuted at number 85 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. On August 28, 2004, it peaked at number 79. The same week, the song peaked at number twenty-three on Billboard's Pop Songs. It also reached number 27 on Billboard's Hot Dance Club Songs on September 11, 2004. "Outrageous" also reached number 14 on the Hot Dance Singles Sales chart. In Japan, "Outrageous" charted on the Oricon Albums Chart for eight weeks and peaked at number 31.
## Music video
The music video for "Outrageous" was directed by Dave Meyers, who previously worked in the music videos for "Lucky" and "Boys", as well as the Curious commercials. It was shot in outdoors locations in Queens and Manhattan, New York City. The music video was set to premiere on MTV on June 28, 2004. After completion of the scenes with guest star Snoop Dogg, Spears was shooting dance scenes in Manhattan when around 11:30 pm, she fell and injured her left knee. She was taken immediately to a local hospital, where doctors performed an MRI scan and found floating cartilage. The following day, Spears underwent arthroscopic surgery. Spears was forced to remain six weeks with a thigh brace, followed by eight to twelve weeks of rehabilitation, which caused the rest of the shoot as well as the remainder of The Onyx Hotel Tour to be canceled. "Outrageous" was also scrapped as the theme song from Catwoman. A 45-second music video composed of the scenes that were shot was released in the 2004 DVD Greatest Hits: My Prerogative. The video begins with Snoop Dogg and a group of men playing basketball in an outdoors court, until Spears appears wearing blue baggy shorts. She starts to flirt with him, before jumping into his arms and licking his beard. In the next scene, she performs with her dancers on a street at night.
## Live performances
Spears has only performed the song during The Onyx Hotel Tour in 2004. It was the last song of the fifth act of the show, titled "Security Cameras". She performed "Breathe on Me" wearing pink lingerie while emulating different sexual practices with her dancers. After it ended, she put on a white trench coat while her dancers wore them in black and performed "Outrageous". The act ended with a skit that segued into the finale performance of "(I Got That) Boom Boom".
## Track listings
- Japan CD maxi single
1. "Outrageous" (Album Version) – 3:24
2. "Outrageous" (Murk Space Miami Mix) – 6:50
3. "Outrageous" (Junkie XL Dancehall Mix) – 2:58
4. "Outrageous" (Junkie XL Tribal Mix) – 6:11
5. "Toxic" (Armand Van Helden Remix Edit) – 6:29
6. "Everytime" (Above & Beyond Club Mix) – 8:50
7. "Everytime" (Scumfrog Haunted Dub) – 8:23
- 12" vinyl (Remixes)
1. "Outrageous" (Murk Space Miami Mix) – 6:48
2. "Outrageous" (R. Kelly Remix) – 3:24
3. "Outrageous" (Junkie XL's Dancehall Mix) – 3:00
4. "Outrageous" (Josh Harris Mixshow) – 5:55
5. "Outrageous" (Junkie XL's Tribal Mix) – 6:12
## Credits and personnel
Credits adapted from the liner notes of In the Zone.
Recording
- Recorded at The Chocolate Factory, Chicago, Illinois
- Vocals recorded at Battery Studios Studios, New York City
- Mixed at MixStar Studios, Virginia Beach, Virginia
Personnel
- Britney Spears – lead vocals, background vocals
- R. Kelly – songwriting, production, co-mixing, background vocals, guest vocals
- Ian Mereness – recording, programming
- Abel Garibaldi – recording, programming
- Andy Gallas – recording
- Brian "B-Luv" Thomas – recording, digital editing
- John Hanes – digital editing
- Trixster – vocal arrangements and editing
- Serban Ghenea – mixing
- Penelope Magnet – production, vocal arrangements and editing, background vocals
- Donnie Lyle – guitars
- Kendall Nesbitt - keyboards
- Roxanne Estrada – background vocals
- Jason Mlodzinski - engineering assistant
- Nathan Wheeler - engineering assistant
- Rich Tapper - engineering assistant
- Steve Bearsley - engineering assistant
- Tim Roberts - engineering assistant
## Charts
## Release history
|
34,915,981 |
World War I memorials
| 1,165,935,279 |
Commemorative sites
|
[
"World War I",
"World War I memorials"
] |
World War I is remembered and commemorated by various war memorials, including civic memorials, larger national monuments, war cemeteries, private memorials and a range of utilitarian designs such as halls and parks, dedicated to remembering those involved in the conflict. Huge numbers of memorials were built in the 1920s and 1930s, with around 176,000 erected in France alone. This was a new social phenomenon and marked a major cultural shift in how nations commemorated conflicts. Interest in World War I and its memorials faded after World War II, and did not increase again until the 1980s and 1990s, which saw the renovation of many existing memorials and the opening of new sites. Visitor numbers at many memorials increased significantly, while major national and civic memorials continue to be used for annual ceremonies remembering the war.
Architecturally, most war memorials were relatively conservative in design, aiming to use established styles to produce a tragic but comforting, noble and enduring commemoration of the war dead. Classical themes were particularly common, taking the prevailing styles of the late 19th century and typically simplifying them to produce cleaner, more abstract memorials. Allegorical and symbolic features, frequently drawing on Christian imagery, were used to communicate themes of self-sacrifice, victory and death. Some memorials adopted a medievalist theme instead, looking backwards to a more secure past, while others used emerging realist and Art Deco architectural styles to communicate the themes of the war.
The commissioning of memorials occurred through a wide range of national and local institutions, reflecting local political traditions; funding was similarly disparate, with most countries relying heavily on local charitable contributions to cover the costs of construction. War cemeteries and memorials to particularly significant battles, however, were typically centrally controlled and funded by the state. The war encouraged the creation of new forms of memorial. Lists of memorial names, reflecting the huge scale of the losses, were a common feature, while Tombs of the Unknown Soldier containing a selected, unidentified body, and empty cenotaph monuments commemorated the numerous unidentifiable corpses and those servicemen whose bodies were never found. Ceremonies were often held at the memorials, including those on Armistice Day, Anzac Day and the Fêtes de la Victoire, while pilgrimages to the sites of the conflict and the memorials there were common in the inter-war years.
Much of the symbolism included in memorials was political in tone, and politics played an important part in their construction. Many memorials were embroiled in local ethnic and religious tensions, with memorials either reflecting the contribution of particular groups to the conflict or being rejected entirely by others. In several countries it proved difficult to produce memorials that appealed to and included the religious and political views of all of a community. The Fascist governments that came to power in Italy and Germany during the inter-war period made the construction of memorials a key part of their political programme, resulting in a number of larger memorial projects with strong national overtones being constructed in the 1930s. While few memorials embraced a pacifist perspective, some anti-war campaigners used the memorials for rallies and meetings. Many of the political tensions of the inter-war period had diminished by the end of the 20th century, allowing some countries to commemorate the events of the war through memorials for the first time since the end of the war. The memory of the war became a major theme for scholars and museums during the First World War centenary.
## Background
On the eve of World War I there were no traditions of nationally commemorating mass casualties in war. France and Germany had been relatively recently involved in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 to 1871. Germany had built a number of national war memorials commemorating their victory, usually focusing on celebrating their military leaders. In France, memorials to their losses were relatively common, but far from being a national response, and many towns and villages did not erect memorials at all. A new organisation, the Souvenir Français, was established in the 1880s to protect French war memorials and encourage young French people to engage in military activities; the organisation grew to have many contacts in local government by 1914.
Britain and Australia had both sent forces to participate in the Second Boer War of 1899 to 1902, which spurred an increased focus on war memorials. The Boer War had involved 200,000 British volunteers alone, and attracted considerable press coverage. Numerous war memorials were erected on their return, either by local community leaders or by the local Lord Lieutenant, acting on behalf of the county regiments; these were often situated in quiet locations to allow for peaceful reflection by visitors. Australia had honoured its volunteers by placing individual plaques inside buildings, creating outdoor memorial tablets and erecting obelisks in public places. Although the Boer War encouraged a shift away from memorials portraying heroic commanding officers, as had been popular earlier in the 19th century, towards depicting ordinary soldiers, annual ceremonies surrounding the memorials were not common and no official memorial day emerged. Boer War memorials in both countries were widely felt to lack a suitable quality of design and execution, echoing contemporary concerns in the US about the statues erected to commemorate the American Civil War.
The new European states that had formed in the second half of the 19th century typically had traditions of war memorials, but nothing on the scale that would later emerge from World War I. Italy built various war memorials after unification in the 1860s, but there was little agreement about who should be responsible for these within the new Italian state. Romania erected a number of heroically styled memorials after the Romanian War of Independence in 1877 and 1878, usually celebrating famous leaders associated with Romanian independence, but also including the occasional modest local monuments Bulgaria and Serbia constructed many war memorials after the end of the First Balkan War in 1913. The public played little role in these eastern European memorials, however, which were typically constructed by the central state authorities.
## World War I
### Experience of the conflict
The memorials to World War I were shaped by the traumatic nature of the conflict and its impact on individuals and communities. The experience of the different nations varied considerably, but common themes emerged. The war required a mass call to arms, with a significant percentage of the population mobilised to fight, either as volunteers or through conscription. Campaigns were conducted on multiple fronts across Europe and beyond. The fighting was mechanised and conducted on an industrial scale; existing weapons, such as machine guns and artillery, were combined with the innovative deployment of aircraft, submarines and poison gas. In many theatres of operation, mobile campaigns degenerated into static trench warfare, depending on the slow attrition of the enemy over many years for victory. The battles spread across larger areas than ever before, with key engagements, such as that at Verdun, etched on the memories of the nations involved.
One result of this style of warfare was a level of casualties unknown in previous conflicts. Approximately 2 million Germans and 1.3 million Frenchmen died during the war; 720,000 British soldiers died, 117,000 American soldiers were killed, and 61,000 Canadian, 60,000 Australian, and 18,000 New Zealand servicemen also died. On the Eastern front, 300,000 Romanians died. The war had a global impact, and at least 2,000 Chinese died in the European theatre of the conflict. Many of the deaths occurred within a short period of time, or affected particular groups: half of France's casualties occurred during the first 17 months of the war, for example, while the French middle and upper classes suffered disproportionate losses. Many of those who survived were injured in the course of the fighting; some injuries, such as facial traumas, resulted in the victim being shunned by wider society and banned from public events. These losses also left large numbers of widows and orphans – 1.36 million in France alone – and affected most families in some way: in Australia, every second family had lost a relative. Even those left at home had suffered extensively from stress, anxiety and grief.
The war had also led to political tensions, revolution and turmoil. In Russia, the conflict resulted in revolution and civil war between 1917 and 1923, and the rise to power of the Communist Bolshevik government. The German Empire had seen revolution break out at the end of the war, with vicious street fighting in the major cities, including Berlin; some Germans felt that this experience was too quickly forgotten in the post-war years. Romania almost descended into revolution as well. There was turmoil in Ireland; 210,000 Irish served in the war as part of the British forces, but the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916 led in turn to the Irish War of Independence and the later civil war. Elsewhere the war exposed simmering ethnic and religious divisions. In Canada, for example, the distinctions between the English, largely Protestant, and French speaking, predominantly Catholic, parts of the country become increasingly apparent, with conscription becoming a major political issue.
In the years after the war, veterans, the bereaved and the rest of society focused, to the point of obsession, with the problem of death. There was tremendous interest in creating war memorials that celebrated the themes of glory, heroism and loss. In part, there was a rupture or dislocation with the pre-war norms of how memorials should look and feel; communities sought to find new, radical ways to mourn the millions of dead, killed in an essentially modern conflict. In other ways, the building of memorials drew on traditional forms and ideas, drawing on existing religious and architectural themes to explore loss and grief.
### Responses during the war
As the war progressed, memorials began to be created in most countries, either in civic centres, personal homes or on the battlefields themselves. Memorials took various names across Europe; amongst English-speaking countries, such memorials had previously been called fallen soldiers' monuments, but the term "war memorial" became popularised by the conflict, drawing attention to the role of society as a whole in the events. Germany followed suit, terming the memorials Kriegerdenkmal, war monuments. By contrast France and Italy termed them monuments aux morts and monumenti ai caduti: monuments to the dead, an explicit reference to the deceased. Many of these memorials were in private homes rather than in public places, as bereaved families often made domestic memorials, using photographs of the deceased and personal objects sent back from the front.
In Britain and Australia, early memorials were closely linked to the need to promote military recruitment and the state had an ambivalent attitude towards the informal memorials that emerged during the conflict. In Britain, stone memorials to the war began to be erected in towns and villages from 1915 onwards; some of these were given out by the state as rewards to communities for meeting military recruitment targets. In Australia, the existing memorials to mark the Boer War were used initially for commemorative ceremonies intended to increase military recruitment. As casualties increased, rolls of honour listing the dead began to be displayed in Britain and honour tablets with the names of those who had enlisted were put up inside Australian buildings: Australia used these lists to apply moral pressure on those who were not yet joined up. Informal memorials began to multiply as the war progressed. Local Australian groups erected small monuments, such as drinking fountains and stone pillars, to the point where the government became concerned about the expenditure on them and passed a law in 1916 to control their numbers. In Britain, some Anglican church leaders began to create street war shrines to the dead. These cheap, local memorials were mainly constructed in working class districts, often built from wood and paper, and were used for holding short services in honour of the dead and to hold donations of flowers. They were criticised, however, as promoting Catholic ritualism. Official support for the shrines only came after a national newspaper campaign, efforts by the Lord Mayor of London and a well-publicised visit from Queen Mary to a shrine, and standardised stone shrines then began to replace the earlier, temporary versions.
Across the German Empire nagelfiguren, war memorials made from iron nails embedded in wood, became popular, particularly in Austria. These took various forms, including knights, shields, eagles and crosses, as well as submarines. This practice had medieval origins, and the memorials were reinforced by the promotion of burgfrieden during the war, a medieval pact in which disparate German communities would put aside their differences during a conflict. In some cases, relatives of the deceased were encouraged to hammer memorial nails in as part of the ceremonies, while children might be encouraged to read out poems in a medieval style. At some nagelfiguren a charge was made for each nail used, with the revenues donated to charities supporting soldiers, orphans and others affected by the conflict.
Some relatively large memorials were constructed during the war. The largest nagelfiguren was a statue of General Hindenburg, famous for his victory over the Russians in Prussia at the battle of Tannenberg; the 12 m tall statue was put up in Berlin, complete with scaffolding to allow participants to reach the statue and hammer nails in. By the end of the war, architects in Germany were already considering how to commemorate the dead. A large, temporary memorial shrine was built in Hyde Park in August 1918, with over 100,000 visitors in its first week: it lasted over a year. The Hyde Park shrine encouraged debate in Britain about permanent war memorials in the major cities and towns. Museums to remember the events of the war also began to be commissioned; governmentally: the Imperial War Museum in Britain in 1917, Australia began a War Museum in 1917; privately, the repository of wartime records in France, Germany the Kriegsbibliothek.
During the conflict itself, monuments were erected near the battlefields and the temporary cemeteries being used to store the dead. It had been hoped in Britain to repatriate the war dead, but this rapidly proved entirely impractical, leading to haphazard, improvised arrangements around the battlefields. By 1916 over 200 war cemeteries had been commissioned in France and Belgium, prompting debate about what longer term memorials might be appropriate at these sites. The government was concerned that unsuitable, even distasteful memorials might be erected by relatives at the cemeteries and the decision was taken that the cemeteries would be controlled by the state, and that a uniform design would be applied to the memorials at the graves. French cemeteries were used for as memorial sites for ceremonies by injured soldiers during the war and many towns began to name streets and squares after Verdun. In Belgium, where the movement of the war and losses of territory had meant that the Flemish elements of the population were increasingly forming a disproportionate percentage of the army, the language on the memorial headstone gradually became an issue, leading to calls for the creation of heldenhuldezerkjes, headstones inscribed in Flemish, rather than the usual French. In Imperial Russia, the Moscow City Fraternal Cemetery was constructed for the war dead in 1915 by the Imperial royal family and senior Moscow political leaders, who hoped that its inspiring architecture would ensure patriotism in future generations of Russians.
## Inter-war
### Construction
#### Commissioning memorials
Various different mechanisms for commissioning the construction of war memorials emerged during the inter-war period. In most of the nations involved in the conflict, the memorials erected in towns and cities were usually commissioned by local community leaders and other civic groups, with relatively little or no central state involvement. Some national organisations emerged, including the British War Memorials Committee and the Canadian War Memorials Fund, but these focused on narrow, limited projects, rather than trying to coordinate a national response. The local processes and committees could result in multiple memorials being created for the same community or event: the site of Verdun was commemorated by three different memorials, for example, while some British towns saw rival memorials created by competing groups in the community.
In contrast, the construction of war cemeteries, graves and their associated memorials were typically placed under the control of a central state authority. The Imperial War Graves Commission (IWGC) took on this role for Britain and her empire. The Commissione nazionale per la onoranze ai caduti di guerra in Italy coordinated the military repatriation of bodies and the construction of cemeteries. The German war graves commission, the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge (VDK), was established in 1919, and took strict control over the creation and style of German war cemeteries. The American Battle Monuments Commission oversaw US military graves in a similar fashion.
In Britain and Australia, local community leaders were expected to organise local committees to create war memorials. Britain had a strong tradition of local government, and mayors, council chairmen or similar leaders would usually step forward to establish a memorial committee. These committees might then bring in a wider cross-section of local community leaders, including Christian clergy, Jewish leaders, voluntary organisations, rifle clubs and volunteer police, although sometimes committees were more tightly controlled by local government officials. Former servicemen occasionally felt that their opinions were excluded from the formal processes, while in other cases complaints were made that the wealthier members of the community were given a disproportionate role in decision-making. In both Britain and Australia, local memorials were also supplemented by other memorials that reflected wider groups in society, such as military units or particular sports, hobbies or even animals. North America largely followed a similar process. In Canada, the early memorials to the war were typically organised by groups of former soldiers, the Canadian Legion or local authorities. There was considerable discussion in the US during 1919 about the need to construct a suitably grand, national monument to commemorate the war dead, but the discussions failed to produce a consensus and no project was undertaken; monuments such as the Liberty Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri were built by local citizens.
In other countries, the state played a stronger role in the process of commissioning memorials. France, for example, mostly relied on local communities to organise and commission most war memorials, but the state played a comparatively larger role than in Britain and similar countries. A law was passed in 1919 establishing an official role for local government officials in the process of commissioning memorials; many towns then formed committees to take this process forward, typically at the commune level. Members of the Souvenir Français organisation played an important role in many of the resulting local committees. In other cases, governments increased their role in commissioning memorials during the inter-war period. In Romania, most memorials in the early 1920s were initially erected by local communities; in 1919 the royal family created the Societatea Cultul Eroilor Morţi to oversee commemoration of the war more generally; the organisation was headed by the Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church. By the 1930s official concern over the diverse range of designs led to increased central control over the process.
The rise of Fascism in particular frequently encouraged greater state involvement. In Italy, between the end of the war and 1923 local groups and organisations had established their own local memorials in villages and towns. Not all villages agreed that memorials were appropriate, either for political or religious reasons. With the Fascist revolution, this process became more centralised; veteran groups were assimilated by the Fascist government in 1926, and a systematic attempt to construct suitable national and local memorials followed. In Germany, the political and economic chaos of the immediate post-war years discouraged the construction of civic war memorials and comparatively few civic memorials in their larger towns, mainly due to the shortage of funds in the inter-war German economy and political disagreements between local groups as to what to commemorate and how. Those memorials that were constructed were often built instead by local movements, representing particular factional interests. It was only after the rise of the German Nazi party to power in 1933 that substantial funding began to flow into construction programmes, controlled from Berlin.
As a result of all these processes, large numbers of memorials, more than for any other conflict, were built across the world during the inter-war period. It is estimated that France built around 176,000 war memorials, including around 36,000 in the local communes. Most of the local commune memorials were built by 1922, but those in the towns and cities typically required more protracted negotiations, and their construction stretched into the 1930s. The 1920s were particularly busy for construction of memorials in Britain, although the trend tailed off in 1930s, with the last inter-war memorial unveiled at the town of Mumbles in 1939. The commissioning of Australian war memorials similarly reduced after the mid-1920s. Over 3,500 Romanian memorials were erected. Many German memorials were built during the 1930s. Russia was unusual in building very few war memorials to the events of World War I, mainly as a result of the devastation of the Civil War and the political views of the subsequent Bolshevik government.
#### Community and civic memorials
Civic and private memorials in response to the war took many forms, from monuments, sculpture, buildings, gardens, artistic works or special funds to support particular activities. One of the major distinctions between proposed war memorials involved a distinction between utilitarian and non-utilitarian, symbolic designs; in the US, utilitarian memorials were termed "living memorials". Utilitarian memorials were intended to commemorate the dead by having a practical function and typically include projects such as libraries, small hospitals, cottages for nursing staff, parks, clock towers or bowling greens, although in Britain and Canada, large-scale urban redevelopment projects were also proposed, including rebuilding the centre of Westminster, to form a huge war memorial complex and building a subway under the Detroit River. In contrast non-utilitarian memorials, such as monuments, remembered the dead purely through their symbolism or design. Locations could be also contentious: in France, some arguments as to whether market places, for example, were suitable locations: was it good to choose a central location, or did this cheapen the symbolism? In Britain, in a shift from 19th century practices, memorials were typically placed in busy public places.
In some countries, such as France and Germany, utilitarian memorials were considered totally unsuitable; the Germans, for example, thought them unpatriotic and disrespectful to the dead. In other, particularly more Protestant countries, however, a vigorous debate raged as to whether utilitarian or symbolic memorials were more appropriate. In Britain, this debate was spurred on by the formation of various national societies to promote particular perspectives. Some felt that practical memorials failed to remember the war dead properly; others argued that these memorials helped support the survivors of the war and society as a whole. Although these arguments frequently became embroiled in local politics, there was little correlation between national political views and opinions on the form of memorials. Most memorials in Australia were monumental rather than utilitarian, but practical memorials such as hospitals, schools or new roads were increasingly popular in the post war period, although some concerns were raised that these memorials might be later demolished as Australia's towns expanded. In America, utilitarian memorials were more popular, and the establishment of the National Committee on Memorial Buildings supported this trend. The American "living memorial" movement was aided by widespread criticism of the war monuments to the American Civil War, which many felt to have been poorly executed.
For symbolic memorials, numerous designs were possible, from simple monuments through to much more complex pieces of sculpture. Obelisks had been a popular memorial form in the 19th century and remained so in the inter-war years, including in Britain, France, Australia and Romania. One factor in this popularity was that obelisks were relatively cheap to build, while they also fitted well with the existing civic architecture in many towns. Memorial plaques were another popular memorial style around the world. Soldiers, either individually or in groups, were a popular sculptural feature in most countries, portrayed in various stances; typically these were allegorical, although in France the style of the soldier could also carry political meaning and reflect local political sympathies. Although the trend pre-dated the First World War, very few Western war memorials portrayed heroic commanding officers, as had been popular earlier in the 19th century; if soldiers were depicted, they were invariably ordinary soldiers, usually infantrymen. After the unveiling of the Cenotaph in London, it became a popular design in many other locations in Britain and Australia too.
In other respects, individual countries had different preferences for styles of memorial. French communities usually chose simple monuments, located in public spaces, and deliberately avoided political or religious imagery and rhetoric. In Australia and the US, memorial halls – some of which were large, grand structures – were popular. Australia also created the idea of an Avenue of Honour, involving lines of trees, with memorial plaques, along a road. Canadians often brought back various material from Europe for their memorials, including pieces of local European churches and soil from the relevant battlefields. Individual countries also had typical national symbols that were widely incorporated, from the British Britannia, to the Gallic rooster to the Romanian vulture. Postcards of war memorials were widely produced in Britain and Italy, and ceramic models of the more famous ones, such as the Cenotaph, were sold as souvenirs.
#### Cemeteries
The World War I war cemeteries represented important memorials sites to the conflict and typically incorporated specific monuments commemorating the dead. Under the Treaty of Versailles, each country was made officially responsible for maintaining the military graves inside their territories, but the relevant countries of the fallen soldiers were typically granted the freedom to design and build the military cemeteries themselves. Some countries' cemeteries would naturally be on their own soil, but in other cases, such as for Britain and the Dominions, the cemeteries could be relatively distant; the failure to repatriate British war dead from Europe early in the war had proved domestically controversial, and when the US joined the war in 1917 their government had promised relatives that bodies would be repatriated to the US; around 70 percent of the US war dead were sent back. Along the Western front, the cemeteries were typically concentrated in specific locations, with the bodies brought in some distances to form larger cemeteries; elsewhere, the cemeteries tended to be smaller and more scattered.
There was much discussion across the British empire about how the IWGC should commemorate the war dead. The construction of war cemeteries was a clear priority, but there was an ambition to produce a ground-breaking series of memorials to the fallen soldiers and the key battles along the Western front, while in the east there was an urgent political requirement to construct memorials to reinforce Britain's inter-war claims to influence and territories across the region. The Dominions also wanted to have their own national monuments as part of the programme of work. Initially twelve major memorials were planned, each of which would combine a memorial to a key battlefield, a cemetery and a monument to a specific Dominion, but the French government raised concerns over the considerable number and size of these memorials, leading to the plans being halved in scale.
IWGC war cemeteries featured grass and flowers within a walled area, intended to resemble an English garden; almost all were constructed around a War Stone and a Cross of Sacrifice, described in more detail below. The style varied slightly by architect and location, but typically the cemeteries followed classical influences in buildings and monuments, sometimes adapted slightly to appeal to the style of a particular Dominion. The buildings at the cemeteries were important symbolically and formed a key part of these designs. The graves proved controversial: initially they were marked by wooden crosses but, after some argument, it was agreed to replace these with Portland stone markers; the original wooden memorials were in some cases returned to the soldier's next of kin. Each marker was identical in shape and individualised only through the inscription of the name, regiment, date of death, a religious symbol and a short text agreed by the next of kin. Public debate ensued about these graves throughout the 1920s. British officials were concerned about families erecting their own memorials on the sites and detracting from the appearance of the cemeteries; critics complained about the secular nature of the memorials, the limited options for families to individualise the graves and the excessive role of the IWGC in determining how the soldiers were buried.
The construction of the French cemeteries was complicated by even more heated arguments over how the bodies of the war dead should be dealt with. During the conflict the French war dead had ended up being split between special war cemeteries, local civilian cemeteries and some had been returned to their original villages. Catholic traditionalists in the government called for the bodies to be buried together in special cemeteries along the Western front, while others campaigned for them to be returned to local cemeteries. In 1919, the decision was taken to use special war cemeteries and to ban the repatriation of bodies, but by 1920 this decision had been reversed and 300,000 French bodies were repatriated to their original homes. The French war cemeteries were typically much larger than their IWGC equivalents and used concrete Catholic crosses for all the graves, with the exception of the Islamic and Chinese war dead.
German war cemeteries are somewhat different from French and British ones, being more austere and simple in design. They were built around lawns, without flowers or other decorations, intended to highlight acceptance of the tragedy and avoid the expensive and pretentious sentimentality that the German VDK felt Allied cemeteries invoked. German war cemeteries also included heldenhaine, heroes' groves populated with oak trees and large boulders, dolmen. Both symbolising nature; this landscaping was considered to be particularly important for German war cemeteries. The cemeteries used slate grave markers, less individualised than British or French equivalents, and felt to better symbolise the importance of the German nation as a whole.
In eastern Europe, Romania built what were termed heroes' war grave cemeteries, either in existing heroes' cemeteries, on the sites of the World War I battles, or in new cemeteries symbolically placed on the edges of towns. In Serbia, Niś Commonwealth Military Cemetery includes memorials to nurses from the Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service. The situation was somewhat different in Russia, however, where the Moscow City Fraternal Cemetery was used not just for the war dead of World War I, but also for the casualties of the Civil War, and then the victims of the secret police. It was finally closed by the Bolsheviks in 1925 and turned into a park; subsequently, possibly on the orders of Joseph Stalin, the Eastern Orthodox church building and the headstones were systematically destroyed until almost no trace of the cemetery remained.
A final wave of war cemetery memorials were completed in the 1930s under the Fascist governments of Germany and Italy. The main Italian war cemeteries were not finished until 1938, and their positioning in some cases carried special political meaning, emphasising Italy's right to claim important, but ethnically diverse, border regions. In Germany, the same decade saw the completion of totenburgen, fortresses of the dead, used as war cemeteries and memorials. These were in some senses an extension of the cemetery designs of the 1920s, celebrating a natural German landscape, but included extensive modernist, monumental features, intending to highlight German artistic skill.
#### Battlefields
Most nations considered certain battlefields particularly important because of the national losses that had been incurred there, and took steps to erect special memorials to them, alongside the cemeteries that held their war dead. The French regarded the battles around Verdun as symbolic of the entire war, while for the British the battle of Ypres in Belgium and the battle of the Somme in France – in particular Thiepval hill – had similar resonances. Australian and New Zealand forces placed special significance on the events of Gallipoli. In the same way, Romania regarded the battles of Mărăşeşti and Mărăşti as hugely significant sites, worth of special remembrance. In the inter-war years, these battlefields were frequently described as forming "sacred" ground because of the number deaths that had occurred there.
National governmental bodies and charities were rapidly formed to produce memorials for these sites. The British government, for example, set up the Battle Exploits Committee in 1919 to create national battlefield memorials, alongside the work of the IWGC. Initially their intent was to celebrate the more heroic aspects of the fighting, and to avoid the flavour of memorials to the fallen that were being built elsewhere; by 1921, however, the committee had entered into a partnership with IWGC and adopted the same focus on the sacrifice of the fallen soldiers. The Canadian Battlefields Memorials Commission (CBMC) was similarly established in 1920 to produce war memorials for the major battlefields involving Canadian forces.
A range of battlefield memorials emerged. The huge Douaumont ossuary was built to remember Verdun through a private French charity, organised by the Bishop of Verdun. The ossuary was deliberately multi-faith, however, with Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Islamic facilities. The Romanian authorities built a similar mausoleum at Mărăşeşti, explicitly likened to the use French ossuary at Verdun. Amidst some concerns about denigrating the importance of other battlefields, the CBMC focused on producing a single major memorial at Vimy. In Turkey, the entire battlefield of Gallipoli was ceded to Britain and her imperial allies in 1923, and the area was turned into an extended memorial to the war dead. There were no settlements to reconstruct, so the graves were largely left scattered in individual graves or small cemeteries, and the slopes were planted with Australian vegetation. Obelisks were particularly popular memorials at Gallipoli along the ridges, including one obelisk 100 ft high.
There was uncertainty as to how to treat the wider battlefields surrounding these monuments. At the end of the war, visitors and tourists could easily see the damage caused by the war and the detritus of the fighting, but post-war reconstruction meant that by the 1930s most of this damage along the Western front had been restored. In several cases, veterans felt that the battlefields should be maintained in their immediate post-war condition as memorials; the reconstruction of the town of Ypres was opposed by some who favoured keeping the ruins as a memorial. It was proposed to leave the fortifications of Douaumont in ruins as a memorial to the dead of Verdun, and the issue of whether or not to replant the region with trees in the 1930s proved controversial with veterans. Some parts of the trench systems were preserved intact as memorials, however, including the Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial and the trench system at the Canadian National Vimy Memorial. In other theatres, such as Iraq and Palestine, reconstruction took much longer and bodies remained unburied at least until 1929.
#### Economics
Resources and funds were needed to construct most memorials, particular larger monuments or building projects; sometimes professional services could be acquired for nothing, but normally designers, workmen and suppliers had to be paid. Different countries approached this problem in various ways, depending on local culture and the role of the state. Despite the special nature of the memorials, contractual arguments and issues over costs, timings and specifications were common, from smaller works in villages through to major works, such as the Vimy Memorial. The sheer volume of work encouraged industrial innovation: carving the inscriptions into the many thousands of British memorial stones had to originally be undertaken by hand, for example, until a Lancashire company invented an automated engraving process.
In Britain, voluntary subscription, rather than funding from local or central government, was considered the only correct way to pay for a war memorial, although it was disputed whether active proactive fundraising was appropriate. Raising the sums required could be quite difficult, and many committees tried various means, including moral blackmail, to exhort larger sums out of the more wealthy members of the community. The amount of money successfully raised varied considerably: the city of Glasgow, with a million inhabitants, raised approximately £104,000 for memorials; Leeds, with around half a million inhabitants, only £6,000. A typical memorial monument in Britain costed between £1,000 and £2,000, but some could be cheaper still; larger pieces, such as the Royal Artillery Memorial, could cost as much as £25,000. Australian communities raised funds in similar ways to their British equivalents, but the process of fund-raising was much more open, and included directly canvassing for donations. Typical Australian projects cost between £100 and £1,000, with the larger memorials costing up to £5,000; bank-loans were also sometimes used. Memorials along the Western front, being larger, cost rather more than their civic equivalents; the Villers–Bretonneux Australian National Memorial, for example, cost the IWGC and Australian government around £40,000.
The French approach to funding memorials also relied mainly on voluntary fundraising, but featured a greater role for the state. A law passed in 1919 provided for a subsidy from central government to local authorities to assist in building memorials; the money was distributed in proportion to the number of local citizens who had died in the war. Nonetheless the largest French projects, such as the Ossuary of Douaumont, were still paid for mostly through private fund raising across France and the international community: it could take many years to raise the sums required. The Ossuary cost 15 m francs to build; at the other end of the scale, more modest urban memorials cost around 300,000 francs.
Much of the inter-war period saw economic recession or stagnant growth, making fund-raising more challenging. Partially as a result, many memorial projects had to be cut back or altered due to lack of money. The final size of Douaumont had to be cut in size by a third when fund-raising slowed. Proposals to turn the planned Imperial War Museum into a grand memorial for the war dead were shelved due to lack of funds.
The construction of memorials produced a lot of business in all the countries involved in the war. In Britain and Australia, stone masons provided large quantities of mass-produced design, often advertising through catalogues, while professional architects acquired the bulk of the specialised commissions for war memorials, making use of their professional organisations. Professional sculptors argued that their work was superior and more appropriate than that of architects, but they received far fewer commissions. British stone masons provided cheap products through catalogues. In France, funeral directors played a large part in the business of producing designs, producing catalogues of their designs for local communities to choose from. In the US, there was sufficient interest that a specialist magazine, Monumental News, was created to support the trade in war memorials.
### Innovation and grieving
#### Naming the dead
The deaths caused by World War I were difficult for post-war societies to cope with: their unprecedented scale challenged existing methods of grieving. Furthermore, an expectation had arisen during the war that individual soldiers would expect to be commemorated, even if they were low ranking members of the military. One method used to address this was the inclusion of lists of names. In part, this was a response to the practical problem of commemorating such large numbers of dead, but it carried additional symbolic importance; in some ways, the physical presence of a name acted to compensate for an absent body. The lists could vary in size from the 21 names listed in a small English village like East Ilsley, to the 54,896 names inscribed on the Menin Gate and the 73,357 on the Thiepval Memorial.
Civic memorials in Britain and France typically had names inscribed; in Britain, these were often combined with other mottos or script, in France, where the significance of the name took even greater importance, just the names were used with a simple introduction. In France the names were usually listed in alphabetical order, resembling a military presentation. The British phrase, adopted by IWGC, "their name liveth for evermore", was popularised by Rudyard Kipling, who had lost a son during the war. British lists often omitted the soldier's rank, creating an impression of equality in death. Long lists of names – up to 6,000 – incorporated into churches in England and Germany. In Australia, where the forces were solely volunteers, all those who served were typically recorded on memorials, while in New Zealand, where conscription applied, only the fallen were recorded on memorials.
Touching the names of the dead on memorials was common gesture of grieving in the inter-war period; sometimes mourners would also kiss the names. Visitors to the memorials on the Western front would often photograph or trace on paper the relevant names on the memorials, taking these reminders back with them to their homes. By contrast, the naming of the dead played a less significant role in Italy, where formal lists of the war dead were not established until the mid-1920s; local communities compiled their own lists, used to produce local memorial plaques, but the national lists remained inaccurate for many years.
After the war, a bronze memorial plaque, inscribed with the name of the deceased alongside Britannia and a lion, and a scroll, sent to the next of kin of those had died in the service of the British Empire. Honour rolls in Canada were very popular, particularly immediately after the end of the war, although the decision on which names to include on them proved contentious: should accidental deaths, for example, be included? Where it was impractical to inscribe names in churches, usually due to the number of casualties and available space, books of names were often recorded instead.
#### Cenotaphs and Tombs of the Unknown Soldier
A large number of soldiers who died in the war were never found, and similarly bodies were recovered that could not be identified; once again, this required new forms of memorial. The scale of the issue was once again huge: 73,000 Allied dead were never found at the Somme, for example, either because their bodies had been lost, destroyed or were unrecognisable, more than one in ten of the losses in the battle.
One of the key developments in memorials to the war, the cenotaph, used an empty tomb to symbolise these aspects of the war. In 1919, Britain and France planned victory marches through their respective capitals and as part of this France decided to erect a temporary cenotaph, an empty sarcophagus monument, which would be saluted by the marching troops. The British Prime Minister David Lloyd George decided that a similar but non-denominational memorial should be built in London, despite ministerial concerns that a cenotaph was an inappropriate, Catholic form of monument, and that it might be desecrated. The victory marches went ahead; French political leaders had the memorial in Paris removed immediately after the parade, on the basis that it was too Germanic in appearance, but the London cenotaph proved very popular and hundreds of thousands flocked to see it. The popularity of the temporary Cenotaph resulted in it remaining open until the following year, when the decision had to be taken about what to do with the decaying structure: there was concern from the government that a permanent memorial might be vandalised, while the popular press criticised any suggestion of dismantling the existing structure. A new, permanent cenotaph designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens was commissioned and unveiled on Whitehall on Armistice Day 1920, effectively turning this part of London into a memorial to the war; over a million people visited the site during November that year. The memorial style became very popular and spread to other countries in the subsequent years.
In contrast to the empty cenotaph, another new form of memorial, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, used the idea of burying one of the unidentified bodies from the war as a symbolic memorial to all of the lost soldiers. This idea had begun to emerge towards the end of the war, and was actively promoted by some British veterans' groups in 1919. Initially, however, it failed to gain traction with the government because of the success of the Whitehall Cenotaph, and a second memorial was felt to be unnecessary. Finally, in 1920, following lobbying by British cleric David Railton, Britain and France both decided to create a Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, choosing an unknown body and creating a special memorial around it; the tombs were inaugurated on Armistice Day. The choice of location for the French tomb proved controversial, however, and it was not finalised until the following year, when the body was laid to rest under the Arc de Triumph. The concept proved popular, and encouraged similar memorials in other countries.
In Italy, the idea of an Unknown Soldier memorial was particularly popular, both because lists of memorial names were less common and because Italy had suffered particularly heavily from unidentifiable casualties as a result of the campaigns in the Alps – as many of 60% of the corpses buried at Redipuglia were unidentifiable. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Rome was built in 1921, with other unidentifiable bodies being adopted by local cults of the dead across Italy. The Italian tomb was significant in political terms; Italy was deeply divided in the post-war years and the Liberal government hoped that the opening would reunify the country. In practice, the tomb became a point of tension between the Liberals and the Italian Fascist movement, and Benito Mussolini claimed to have timed his seizure of power the next year to ensure that the 1922 ceremonies at the tomb would occur under a Fascist government.
Other countries considered similar memorials. The US constructed a Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in 1921; while the idea was clearly a foreign concept, it proved very popular with the American public and by 1936 was attracting over 1.5 m visitors a year and acting as an informal national monument to the war. Edwin Redslob, part of the German government, supported a similar scheme in 1925, but without success, and Mainz Cathedral and Ulm Minster were later proposed as options for a tomb. In Germany, a tomb was not finally built until 1935, when it was sponsored by the Nazi government; the final memorial contained 20 bodies of unknown German soldiers from the Eastern front. Other countries also constructed tombs, including Belgium and Portugal, and as in France and Britain these tombs were placed in capital cities; there was an abortive attempt to place the Romanian tomb at Mărăşeşti, but this proved impractical for both logistic and ceremonial reasons. Canada, Australia and New Zealand declined to build their own tombs, as they were considered to be represented by the burial in London.
#### Ceremonies
Ceremonies came to surround many memorials; many memorials were formally opened or unveiled in public ceremonies, while others were used for recurring ceremonies on commemorative days. Memorials in Britain and France were typically opened in civic ceremonies involving local dignitaries, veterans and the next-of-kin of fallen servicemen. Some memorials acquired daily ceremonies; in 1928 it became customary to play the Last Post bugle call at the Menin Gate memorial each evening, for example, and this practice spread to many other similar memorials in France.
Some ceremonies were formed around the memorials on specific days of the year. During the war, the British had commemorated the 4 August as Remembrance Day, but this was superseded at the end of the conflict by Armistice Day on 11 November each year. It became the norm for ceremonies to be held at memorials across Britain at 11 am on this day, supported by two minutes of silence, instituted by the Government, police and local authorities. The London Cenotaph formed the national hub for these ceremonies from 1919 onwards; at the first Armistice Day ceremony, it received 500,000 visitors in four days. The ceremony at the Cenotaph was equated to a religious event: the Daily Mail, for example, described the emotion and the "mystic meaning" at the ceremony which combined to produce a special "halo" and an "aura". Ceremonies at the Cenotaph were covered and photographed by the national papers, and national radio broadcasts of the event commenced in 1928.
Armistice Day ceremonies also became important in France. The early ceremonies were organised by veterans' associations on the 11 November, but in 1921 the French government became concerned that these ceremonies were impacting on industrial productivity and moved the commemoration to the first available Sunday. Following protests, a national French holiday was declared in 1922. The ceremonies were heavily influenced by the state, with national and local officials playing an important part, and there was an expectation of universal national participation. Attendees would march, often from the local church, past the local cemeteries to a relevant memorial; tricolour flags, black wreaths and wreaths of flowers would be placed on or around the memorials, but unlike Britain there was almost no military symbolism involved in the ceremony. Up to a hundred names of the dead would then be read out, typically by a war orphan, and the crowd would follow each name by saying "Mort pour la France"—"He died for France"—in unison.
Other important days were commemorated at memorials around the world. Australia commemorated Armistice Day, but held larger scale commemorations around Anzac Day on 25 April. Anzac Day was founded to remember the Gallipoli campaign, and memorials were erected for the first ceremonies in 1916; dawn services at local memorials formed a key part of the national event. In France, the authorities in Verdun organised the Fêtes de la Victoire on 23 June, centring on the city's memorials and the nearby ossuary. These usually involved senior French military figures and pageantry. Ceremonies to honour the fallen of the battle of the Somme were held by the British at the Somme memorials on the Sunday nearest 1 July throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Romania – inter-war years, the Feast of the Ascension used to commemorate the war dead. Termed Heroes' Day, civic processions under central guidance from the Societata took place to the local war memorials. The 6 August was also used to commemorate the battle of Mărăşeşti at the site. Many of these adopted the British use of collective silence during the memorial ceremonies.
In some locations, these ceremonies could prove controversial. Canadian ceremonies on Armistice Day in the 1920s were not straightforward. In Montreal they were predominantly Anglican and English, with French and Catholic elements largely excluded until the end. The opening of the Vimy Memorial drew criticism for its secular nature—no clergy were invited to speak-despite the religious symbolism of much of the building.
The emotional character of the ceremonies around the memorials changed as grieving took place and many individuals, inevitably, continued with their lives. Some early ceremonies around memorials were believed to be closely associated with spiritual events. The opening of the Menin Gate memorial, for example, inspired Will Longstaff's dream that led to the famous Menin Gate at Midnight painting, portraying the fallen dead rising and walking through the gateway, while the Cenotaph ceremonies were photographed in 1922, and believed by some to show the ghosts of the war dead. Indeed, early ceremonies at the London Cenotaph after the war were felt to be particularly emotional; commentators felt that by the late 1920s, the events were more formal and less fraught with emotional than previously. Initially foreign diplomats in Britain were expected to lay wreaths on Armistice Day; this requirement was reviewed in the 1930s. In Australia, there were initially many local ceremonies at memorials on Anzac Day specifically for bereaved mothers; by the 1930s, these had been discontinued and incorporated into the wider ceremonial occasion.
#### Pilgrimages
Organised or structured visits to war memorials became popular during the inter-war years. These were often termed pilgrimages, in keeping with the spiritual and religious nature of the journeys. These were frequently combined with other ceremonies at the sites. Tensions existed between those who travelled to the sites as tourists and those who perceived themselves as pilgrims.
Along the Western front these began quite early after the war and continued for several decades, dropping in number in the mid-1920s, when interest in the war temporarily diminished, and again in the Great Depression years of the early 1930s. Flemish pilgrimages to Belgium graves, particularly the heldenhuldezerkjes, and memorials began in 1919, continuing through the subsequent decades. The Ossuary at Verdun was the centre for many veterans pilgrimages in the 1920s, one of the better known groups being the Fêtes de la Bataille, which travelled to the site to undertake a vigil, processions and lay wreaths. These pilgrimages were typically low-key and avoided military symbolism or paraphernalia. Ypres became a pilgrimage destination for Britons to imagine and share the sufferings of their men and gain a spiritual benefit; the Ypres League was established by veterans, and sought to transform the horrors of trench warfare into a purifying spiritual quest. The Menin Gate memorial became a focal point for British pilgrims to the Western front after it was opened in 1927. Pilgrims could come long distances: in the 1920s Canadians began to journey to Vimy and Australians began visiting Gallipoli from 1925 onwards, bringing back military souvenirs relics.
Guidebooks for English-speaking visitors became common, including a number of official publications, some extremely detailed. Major Dwight D. Eisenhower spent years working on a guide to American battlefields. A 1920 British guide book, The Holy Ground of British Arms captured the mood of the Ypres League, stating: "there is not a single half-acre in Ypres that is not sacred. There is not a single stone which has not sheltered scores of loyal young hearts, whose one impulse and desire was to fight and, if need be, to die for England."
In central and eastern Europe, the state played a greater role in organising these pilgrimages. The National Orthodox Romanian Women's Society, supported by the church and the state, played an important part in enabling regular pilgrimages to important Romanian sites up until 1939. In Germany and Italy, the Fascist governments took a keen interest in organising such journeys. In Italy, these involved large, state-influenced organisations, and the government steadily discouraged private visits or unofficial groups from taking part in alternative ceremonies at these sites. In Nazi Germany, pilgrimages were organised to the new war memorials sponsored by the government in the 1930s.
### Politics
The memorials to World War I were frequently politicised, either by the debates over their construction and design, or by the symbolism incorporated into them. Even where attempts were made to ensure political neutrality, as in France where the inscriptions on memorials were usually deliberately neutral, avoiding political controversy, national politics influenced the symbolism and messages incorporated into the memorials.
Pacifism slowly began to emerge after the war, but very few war memorials communicated a pacifist message, largely because in the 1920s, most in the victorious countries felt that the war, while costly in human life, had been worth fighting. Anti-war protests in the inter-war years did use war memorials, however, as locations to communicate their messages; the Communist party in France, for example, held rallies at them. In Britain, political views about the war influenced attitudes towards memorial design and the ceremonies that surrounded them. Those who supported the war were keen to see the ideals of justice and freedom embodied in the designs; those who opposed the conflict sought memorials that would convince people to avoid future slaughter. The opening of the tomb of the Unknown Soldier was criticised for what anti-war campaigners felt was its pro-war pomp and ceremony, and the burial of the Unknown Soldier in Westminster raised controversy between those who liked the ceremony, and those who thought that the pageantry was designed to distract from the poor living conditions faced by the survivors of the war.
Religious differences and tensions could make it difficult to design inclusive war memorials. In US, the separation of church and state meant that crosses were discouraged. Despite being banned from onwards 1905, many French monuments were explicitly Catholic in character, including a Catholic cross. Australia also minimised the use of crosses, partially for similar reasons, but also because over concerns about excluding their Jewish community. Decisions to incorporate Christian imagery into memorials in Britain could also exclude minority groups, such as Jews, from participating in a memorial. In Britain, the religious differences between Anglicans, Nonconformists and Roman Catholics were frequently played out at a local level in arguments over the location and symbolism to be used in memorials. In Canada, where these differences were overlaid across the English and French speaking national divide, war memorials attempted to reunify the country; the Cross of Sacrifice memorial in Montreal, for example, was deliberately situated in between the Catholic and Protestant war cemeteries. This was only partially successful – inauguration ceremony and the military parade resulted in shouted arguments between French and English speaking parts of the crowd.
World War I memorials were also involved in the civil wars and ethnic disputes of the inter-war period. After independence and the civil war, for example, the Republic of Ireland did not prioritise commemorating the dead of World War I, and indeed the events were largely ignored. Attempts to construct memorials during the 1930s, such as the National War Memorial Gardens in Dublin, were discouraged by the Republican movement and finally blocked altogether in 1939. By contrast, Unionists in Northern Ireland made the war a key part of their political narrative, emphasising their role in events such as the Battle of the Somme. Monuments were erected in prominent locations in the centres of key Northern Ireland cities.
Other multi-ethnic parts of Europe frequently found war memorials equally contentious. In Flanders, the IJzertoren, a controversial Flemish memorial tower, was opened in 1930, commemorating the sacrifices during the war, but also celebrating Flemish identity and marking the hard treatment of Flemish activists by the Belgian authorities during the conflict. In disputed multi-ethnic territories in the east, such as Transylvania, the war had created bitter memories between Hungarian and Romanian inhabitants. The arguments were played out in differences as to how the dates of the war-in which Hungary and Romania had entered and left at different times-were recorded on tombstones and other memorials. In Serbia, the Kosovo Maiden was extensively used in war memorials, drawing a link between the war and the Battle of Kosovo.
The Fascist movements in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s made extensive use of World War I memorials to communicate a political message. War memorials were a key part of the Italian Fascist government's programme, with memorials set up in the name of the fallen and the Fascist revolution. Local Fascist organisations made extensive use of the war memorials and associated ceremonies to promote loyalty both to Italy, and to the revolution. The government promoted the "cult of the fallen hero", stressing that the war dead had played a vital role in transforming Italy's position in Europe and transforming history. The Fascist leader Mussolini was less enthusiastic, however, about the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which he felt was associated with the former regime; he discouraged its use, although remained sensitive to its symbolic importance to various parts of Italian society. Military fly-pasts were added to the Armistice ceremonies and the Tomb itself was moved in 1935, to make it easier to use the memorial in military parades.
The later German monuments constructed by the Nazi government were substantial, but communicated a limited range of symbolic messages, focusing on German heroism, conservative nationalism sentiments and masculinity. Use of mass graves symbolised the sense of German community. When Paul von Hindenburg died in 1935, the Tannenberg Memorial was then used as his mausoleum, commemorating elite military leadership during the war. The Nazi government attempted to have the Jewish names removed from the war memorials, but this proved impractical and instead a law was passed forbidding their addition to any future memorials. The government also removed more experimental earlier war memorials which were felt to communicate an inappropriate message about the war, such as the work of Ernst Barlach.
### Architecture
Most World War I war designers attempted to produce memorials that were, as cultural historian Jay Winter describes, noble, uplifting, tragic and endurably sad. There were various architectural styles used on memorials, but most were essentially conservative in nature, typically embracing well established styles such as classicism and embracing mainstream Christian symbolism. This conservatism in part resulted from the age and background of the committees that were commissioning the memorials, and also from a sense that established architectural styles, rather a potentially more transitory but fashionable style, would be more enduring and appropriate.
Professional concern was raised in several countries about the quality of memorials. Australians expressed critical concern from 1919 onwards about the poor quality of the sculptures of soldiers on memorials, the blame being placed on the cheap reproductions by stone masons. Their government responded by establishing advisory boards to discourage this trend. Britain also saw concerns over the "stereotyped designs" being supplied by firms of stone masons, and here again numerous bodies issued guidance on better practices, including the Royal Academy of Art, the Church of England; the Civic Arts Association was formed specifically to help. The opinion of professional artists and critics remained quite important for committees when choosing designs, however, and there was vigorous discussion between supporters of different styles and architectural traditions.
Many designers were involved in the construction of memorials, but some became particularly well known for their work in this area. Many of the sculptors active on the memorials were established, Victorian-era individuals; the war had disrupted the training of a new generation, and many young sculptors had been killed. Some attempts were made to give preference to designers who had fought in the war, but this was far from universal. In British circles, Edwin Lutyens, Herbert Baker, Reginald Blomfield and Charles Holden formed the core of the established artists; these were joined by Charles Sargeant Jagger, Gilbert Ledward and Eric Gill from the younger generation. Pietro Porcelli was a particularly prolific Australian designer. In Germany, Käthe Kollwitz's memorial of a grieving mother at the Roggevelde cemetery was particularly famous, and based on her own loss of a son during the fighting in the war.
#### Symbolism
World War I memorials made extensive use of symbolism and allegory. Some of these symbols were national in character, carrying a simple message about national victory – a Gallic rooster triumphing over a German, the Croix de Guerre, or the Romanians' symbol for their heroes' cult for example – but others, such as images of infantrymen, could be used in different ways, depending on how they were portrayed. Some sculpture of French infantrymen, for example, aims to capture the spirit of French republicanism, while others are designed with more right-wing, nationalist attributes.
Major memorial themes, such as victory and death all had their symbols. Many Canadian and British soldiers are shown raising a hat or a rifle, a sign of victory first introduced into Boer War memorials. The Greek goddess Nike herself frequently appears on civic memorials, particularly in Britain and Canada, personifying victory, often pointing the way to soldiers: the image is far less, common, however, on more sombre memorials in battlefields and graveyards. Personifications of Death rarely feature on these memorials, however, probably because the emphasis is typically on the self-sacrifice of the soldiers involved, rather than their being taken or claimed by Death. Death is more typically presented through images of widows, orphans and elderly parents on memorials, all popular inter-war allegorical forms for death and grieving. Figures of women often represented peace, civilisation or wider humanity.
By far the most important source of symbolism on memorials, however, is Christian imagery and icons. Religious imagery permeated many war memorials, even the secular. The most important of these symbols was the Christian cross, a widely used symbol of hope and suffering. The cross could take multiple forms, from Catholic designs in France, to Orthodox crosses in eastern Europe. Celtic crosses were popular in Britain and Ireland, partially because they avoided Catholic connotations, although they were considered vulgar by more classical architects such as Blomfield. In France, les croix des bois, wooden crosses, became popular symbols at memorials after Roland Dorgelès's novel of the same name. German memorials made extensive use of the image of the Virgin Mary tending her son Christ, following in the tradition of the pietà. The crucifixion was also a widely used symbol, as seen in Derwent Wood's Canada's Golgotha, although Christ himself was relatively rarely typically seen on British memorials.
The widespread use of Christian symbolism led to questions about how to produce memorials suitable for non-Christians. Lutyens attempted to solve this problem for the IWGC through the design of the Stone of Remembrance, or War Stone. This was a large, simple stone, intended to resemble an altar and evoke the theme of sacrifice. In practice, many commentators felt it resembled a sarcophagus. Lutyens wanted it to avoid conventional Christian symbolism and based it on designs in Chinese Ming tombs. One of Lutyens' arguments in favour of his design was that explicit Christian symbolism excluded the Indian and Jewish communities and atheists. The IWGC designs for the Indian and Chinese war cemeteries in Europe deliberately did not use Christian imagery – although, as historian Xu Guoqi notes, the Chinese role in the Allied armies remains largely uncommemorated through memorials.
#### Classicism
Many memorials drew on a classical style of architecture to produce their effect. This had been a popular style for many pre-war memorials, such as those for the dead of the Boer War, and used Greek or Roman structures, styles and symbolism. A key feature of the classical style was the concept of the "beautiful death" – classical memorials might include figures of soldiers, sometimes dying in conflict, but always heroically and, ultimately, peacefully. Soldiers in these memorials were still frequently depicted as Homeric warriors, rather than more realist figures. The classical symbolism was often used to distance the event of death from the observer, appealing to allegories for sacrifice, justice and victory, in an attempt to make mourning easier to bear.
Some inter-war architects developed this approach further. Some traditional classical memorials had been criticised in both England and Germany as being fussy and overly ornate. Men such as Lutyens took the classical principles, but simplified them until the design became almost abstract. These memorials used abstract, beautiful designs intended to remove the viewer from the real world, and focus them on an idealised sense of self-sacrifice, a continuation of the principle of a "beautiful death". In many ways the simplified, but still classical, forms of memorials like the Cenotaph meant that mourners could read their own thoughts and concerns onto the memorial. Where dead soldiers were shown, they were depicted in an image of serenity and peace, often physically distanced from the viewer on a high platform, the entire effect reflected by the silence that traditionally surrounds ceremonies at the Cenotaph.
Many classical themes were used in this way. Thiepval Memorial, for example uses the classical themes of a victory arch and an abstract pattern of diminishing arches to produce what historian Jay Winter has termed "an embodiment of nothing". The various Cenotaphs adopt the principle of entasis – Greek method with apparently straight lines, that are in fact slightly curved. Many memorials and war cemeteries used precinct walls to mark out the memorial as special and sacred, originally a Roman feature made popular again in the 19th century. Some features were more literally interpreted: the Victoria State Memorial in Australia, for example, was closely based on a Persian step pyramid.
Classical themes, like Christian symbolism, emphasised the sacred nature of the memorial sites. Nonetheless, there was some criticism of classicism by those who wanted a clearer separation of pagan and Christian symbolism; this was played out in arguments in Germany over whether Iron Crosses or traditional Christian crosses should be used on memorials. Similarly, Lutyens' War Stones were criticised for their blending of Christian and non-Christian design, while the London Cenotaph was critiqued by the Catholic Herald as being "insulting to Christianity". Some Christian symbols were redesigned in the simplified classical style, however, including the Cross of Sacrifice. This cross, in a classical style and featuring a white cross and an inverted bronze sword, was designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield for the War Graves Commission, widely used in Commonwealth countries. The design was criticised by some who felt that it excluded other faiths from the memorial site, but nonetheless, over a 1,000 of these crosses were ultimately built.
#### Medievalism
In some countries, particularly Germany and England, memorials used a medieval style, reaching back to a more distant past. Some of these medieval styled memorials were set in existing medieval buildings, fusing older and newer themes. Memorial church windows, for example, could combine medieval and modern features, including armoured knights on horseback, modern weapons-including-tanks and aircraft-and modern national flags. Other memorials deliberately chose medieval themes and symbols, such as the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster, where the language of the inscriptions was deliberately archaic, and the tomb itself made from a medieval chest, decorated with a crusader's sword. England's patron saint, Saint George, was a particular popular symbol in British designs, typically shown mounted and wearing armour. The Arthurian Round Table and the medieval crusades proved popular themes in Canadian memorials.
New memorial buildings could also adopt a medieval style. The Scottish National War Memorial, for example, a Scots baronial styled memorial hall complete with stained glass in Edinburgh Castle, attempts to blend in with the surrounding medieval fortress. In Germany, the totenburgen usually looked to the past for their style; Tannenberg, for example, was heavily medieval in appearance, resembling a castle, albeit combined with a huge cross and mass graves. The dolmen boulders used around the outside of many German memorials reinforced the archaic feel of the monuments. In other cases Germans chose to preserve or rebuild real medieval buildings and architecture to form war memorials, such as parts of Dorsten and Dülken.
Medievalism was popular with mourners because it reached back to the past, attempting to heal some of the discontinuities and ruptures of the war. In a period of great uncertainty, the style was reaffirming and apparently immutable, lost in a distant past. By placing the recent dead alongside those who had fallen before, the style gave reassurance that the World War I dead would not be forgotten; in Westminster, the Dean of Westminster, emphasised when he noted that the Unknown Warrior would be resting alongside his "Saxon and Norman, Plantagenet and Tudor" predecessors. The style was actively promoted by a number of extant artistic and architectural institutions and groups, such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Arts and Crafts Movement and Gothic revivalists.
#### Alternative styles
Only a minority of war memorials used some of the newer styles emerging in the inter-war period, such as modernism, realist and Art Nouveau approaches. As noted above, typically existing, traditional themes were preferred for memorials as a way of grounding mourning in a more familiar perspective. Nonetheless, some of the memorials to use the newer styles became particularly famous. There are a handful of memorials conducted in an Art Deco style, including the ANZAC War Memorial in Sydney which uses the delicate aspects of the Art Deco style to invoke sadness in the viewer, and is the only war memorial in the world to depict a naked soldier. The Douaumont Ossuary also draws on Art Deco principles in its structural architecture, avoiding straight lines in favour of gentle, soft, intersecting curves. Modernist principles were taken further in a small number of British memorials designed by Eric Gill, characterised by their highly abstract, simplified forms.
Realism and early modernist principles were applied in Britain to produce a critique of the conventional classical approach and the concept of a "beautiful death", most notably by Charles Jagger. Jagger's later work during the inter-war period, most notably his Royal Artillery Memorial, uses realism techniques to portray an oversized BL 9.2 inch Mk I howitzer in detail, mounted on a huge, architecturally simple plinth with detailed carvings of military events involving ordinary artillerymen. The sheer size of the piece creates a dehumanizing impact, despite the portrayal of a team of artillerymen, including a covered corpse. Critiqued by much of the British press when unveiled in 1925, many veterans however felt that the style connected to them in a way that more classical themes could not. While the Royal Artillery Memorial is unique, elements of the style can be seen in some other memorials, such as the Cameronians Memorial which includes a realist, almost tactile depiction of a machine gun position.
Historical accuracy was important to many British designers, resulting in the use of genuine military equipment as models for memorials, and long discussions with committees over the details to be incorporated into designs. In contrast, the British interest in accurately depicting real weaponry from the war was far less common on German monuments, where usually stylised medieval weapons and armour were used.
## World War II and post-war
The Second World War that broke out in 1939 consumed the attention of a new generation. Across most of the theatres of conflict, the participants attempted to respect the memorials to World War I. After the Second World War there was no equivalent mass construction of memorials to the war dead; instead, often local World War I memorials were adapted for use instead: additional names might be inscribed to the existing lists. In some cases, this resulted in memorials losing their exclusive focus on World War I. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Washington, for example, was expanded in 1950s to include corpses from the Second World War and Korea War, broadening the memorial's remit to commemorate most modern wars. In other cases, such as the Australian War Memorial, begun in the inter-war years but only opened in 1941, an essentially new memorial was formed to honour the multiple conflicts.
In Italy and Germany, 1945 saw the collapse of Fascism; many memorials in Italian towns and cities were used to execute and display the bodies of the overthrown regime, and the inter-war Fascist pilgrimages and ceremonies around the memorials were abandoned and quickly forgotten. The World War I memorial sites continued to be used, but a combination of anti-war feelings and their residual Fascist links limited the attendance at their public ceremonies. Due to the changes in national borders, in the post-war era some sites favoured by the Nazi government, such as the Tannenberg Memorial, found themselves in Poland; the demolition of Tannenberg began in 1949 and its stonework was reused for Soviet party buildings.
Elsewhere, changes in post-war politics impacted considerably on the memorials. in Belgium, the Flemish IJzertoren tower had become associated with Fascism during the Second World War and was blown up in 1946 by anti-Flemish activists, leading to outrage. Proposals were put forward to build a national monument on the site, but ultimately a second Flemish memorial was constructed instead. In Romania, the Communist post-war government moved away from commemorations around Ascension Day, which was seen as carrying too many religious meanings. The Romanian Societata itself was abolished in 1948, pilgrimages to the memorials ceased and the focus of the Communist government was almost entirely placed on commemorating the sacrifices of the Soviet army during World War II. Unusually, political changes in Canada led to the construction of new World War I memorials; some of the inter-war tensions eased, and 35 new memorials were added in Quebec to the existing 68 in the post-war years, often built as combined memorials to later conflicts.
As a whole, interest in the war memorials diminished considerably in the 1950s and 1960s, reflected in a reduced level of ceremonies and a simplification of the commemorative events around memorials. In the post-war years, for example, the separate official and veterans ceremonies at the Verdun memorials blended into one; in 1956, German and French ceremonies were also united into a single event. Attendance at events like Anzac Day diminished. Many memorials slowly deteriorated: in some cases the original inter-war funding had never included maintenance, in other cases the materials used to construct the memorials were not durable. In some towns and cities, the memorials were moved to less prominent locations as part of urban renewal projects, or hidden by new buildings. World War I memorials were commonplace in many countries and were paid little attention.
## Since 1990
In the 1990s, however, there was a resurgence of interest in World War I memorials. This was driven partially by a sequence of academic works on the social and cultural character of the conflict, aided by a sequence of artistic exhibits of some of more famous designers in the 1980s, and partially by generational change in many countries. As the generation who had lived and fought during the war died off, explaining the context of the memorials became more important. In France, veteran groups had begun to build memorial museums alongside the major monuments and battlefields from the late 1930s onwards.
Similar efforts made at the end of the 20th century to create additional museums to explain the events of the war and the memorials; these initiatives have the support of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission – the successor to the IWGC – but caused concerns amongst British government officials, due to concerns that they might cheapen the symbolism of the memorials. As old imperial links declined, in 1993, Australia decided to repatriate one of its unidentified war dead from the Western front to form its own Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Canberra.
Meanwhile, some of the political tensions of earlier generations faded, allowing new memorials to be built. In the Republic of Ireland, new war memorials were built, trips organised to war memorials in Europe, and the National War Memorial Gardens were restored and finally officially opened in 1995.
In Russia, the Memorial park complex of the heroes of the First World War was built on the site of the former Moscow City Fraternity Cemetery after the fall of Communism, opening in 2005 at a cost of 95 million roubles. The park includes 12 monuments, amongst which was the only surviving headstone from the cemetery and a new memorial chapel. In contrast, by the early 21st century, the numbers visiting the IJzertoren tower during the annual pilgrimages declined significantly as memories of the conflict faded.
In the late 1990s and start of the 21st century visitor numbers to the Western Front memorials have risen considerably, and Australian visitors to the memorials at Gallipoli have increased hugely in recent years; the Prime Ministers of Australia and New Zealand opened a new memorial at the site in 2000. World War I memorials remain in ceremonial use on Remembrance Day – the post-World War II successor to Armistice Day – Anzac Day and other national occasions, while many utilitarian memorials are still in use by local communities in the 21st century. Systematic efforts are being made to catalogue and record the memorials, with a number of individual restoration projects undertaken with public and private funding; the Liberty Memorial in the US, for example, was renovated and declared the country's national World War I museum in 2005. During the First World War centenary, the memory of the war became a major theme for scholars and museums. Many museums and historical societies set up special exhibits, websites, and multimedia exhibits. Proposals were put forward to construct a new national US memorial to the conflict in Washington.
## See also
- List of World War I monuments and memorials
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The Fight (The Office)
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[
"2005 American television episodes",
"Martial arts fiction",
"The Office (American season 2) episodes"
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"The Fight" is the sixth episode of the second season of the television series The Office, and the show's twelfth episode overall. It was written by Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg and directed by Ken Kwapis. It originally aired on November 1, 2005, on NBC. "The Fight" guest starred Lance Krall, who played the part of Dwight's sensei, Ira.
The series depicts the everyday lives of office employees in the Scranton, Pennsylvania branch of the fictional Dunder Mifflin Paper Company. In this episode, Michael Scott (Steve Carell), after being embarrassed by Dwight Schrute's (Rainn Wilson) superior fighting skills, engages in a karate match with Dwight during lunch. Meanwhile, Jim Halpert's (John Krasinski) flirting with Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer) goes too far.
"The Fight" was known as "Karate" and "The Dojo" by members of the cast and crew due to many of the scenes featuring the titular fight. Several of the cast members of the show—recurring and starring—had martial arts experience. The episode contained several cultural references, with many referring to popular fighting-related movies and television shows. "The Fight" received largely positive reviews from critics. The episode earned a Nielsen rating of 3.9 in the 18–49 demographic and was viewed by 7.9 million viewers.
## Synopsis
Michael Scott (Steve Carell) has one task: sign routine documents. Unfortunately, it's a month where three separate sets of paperwork are due at the same time, so Michael mulishly ignores his workload. To procrastinate, Michael makes Ryan Howard (B. J. Novak) update emergency contact information of the staff. When Michael gets Ryan's cell phone number, he constantly prank calls Ryan with crude impersonations of Michael Jackson, Mike Tyson, and Saddam Hussein.
Talk of Dwight Schrute's (Rainn Wilson) karate experience gets Michael's competitive juices flowing, leading to a lunchtime match between the two at Dwight's dojo. Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) accidentally goes too far when horsing around with Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer), and she abruptly shuts him down when their co-workers take notice.
After a pathetic showing by both combatants, Michael emerges victorious over Dwight, which leads to Dwight changing his emergency contact from "Michael Scott" to "The Hospital". At the end of the day, Michael promotes Dwight from his lowly "Assistant to the Regional Manager" position to his dream position: "Assistant Regional Manager" (although the "promotion" is little more than a title change only).
The office staff soon gets fed up with Michael's inability to accomplish even the simplest task, and so Pam manages to get the documents to the shipping place after Toby Flenderson (Paul Lieberstein), Angela Martin (Angela Kinsey), and Stanley Hudson (Leslie David Baker) forge Michael's signature on the documents.
On the way out, Jim gives Pam the bag of chips he owed her from earlier. Pam quietly takes them and stares in a forgiving manner after Jim leaves.
## Production
"The Fight" was written by Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg, while Ken Kwapis served as the episode's director. The episode was the first entry of the series to be written by Stupnitsky and Eisenberg; it was also Kwapis' fifth episode directed. The episode guest starred comedian and actor Lance Krall, who portrayed Dwight's sensei, Ira. B. J. Novak, who portrays Ryan Howard in the series, noted that when the episode was being filmed, the majority of the cast and crew called it "'Karate', or 'The Dojo', since the most memorable scenes involve a karate fight." Novak explained that the episode centered on the effects of procrastination "carried to the nth degree". However, he noted that it was more memorable as "the episode in which Steve Carell and Rainn Wilson jump-kick each other in public to try to prove a point."
Several of the cast members had experience in martial arts prior to the filming of the episode. Rainn Wilson used to study karate and is a certified yellow belt. Krall is a black belt in Taekwondo and was nationally ranked. One of background actresses who played a student in Dwight's class was actually a black belt, but was forced to wear a white belt; ultimately, she was unhappy about having to hide her ability. Eventually, she vented her frustration by "practically knock[ing] Rainn over when she kicked the pad he was holding", which was included in the episode. During the filming of the episode, the protective piece of headgear that Wilson wore actually cut him.
During the filming of many scenes in the episode, the cast and crew members kept breaking character and laughing. Jenna Fischer recalls that she had to film the scene where Ryan reveals that he is working on emergency contacts "about 20 times". In addition, Fischer noted that she and John Krasinski kept laughing "about a million times" during the kitchen confrontation between Michael and Dwight. During the dojo scenes, cinematographer Randall Einhorn and Krall "lost it" when Michael pinned down. In fact, shots of Krall (and several of the cast) laughing made it into the closing scene of the episode.
The Season Two DVD contains a number of deleted scenes from this episode. Notable cut scenes include brief shots of Dwight at the dojo and Michael and Dwight preparing to fight, Jim asking Dwight whom he could take on in a fight, Dwight discusses the result of the fight, Stanley confronting Michael about signing the forms, Michael saying that "no one ever lost their job for missing deadlines", and Michael delivering Pam the emergency contact information.
## Cultural references
During the game of "phone tag", Michael impersonates Michael Jackson, Tito Jackson, Mike Tyson, and Saddam Hussein. In addition, several songs are alluded to. Michael sings "I don't want to work/I just want to bang on this mug all day" to the tune of "Bang the Drum All Day" by Todd Rundgren. Jim alludes to the Jets, one of the rival street gangs in the musical West Side Story, by quoting the noted lyrics "When you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way", as well as snapping his fingers in the same way as the gang members. Several popular quotes are misused in the episode: Michael consistently misuses the phrase "Catch-22", and Dwight mistakes the phrase "tit for tat" as "tit for tit".
Several noted films are referenced in the episode. After grabbing Dwight in a sleeper hold, Michael nonsensically shouts out Bedtime for Bonzo, a 1951 movie starring Ronald Reagan. Michael notes that Dwight cried at the end of Armageddon, a 1998 science fiction action movie starring Bruce Willis. Michael's line "You talkin' to me?" is a line performed by Robert De Niro in the movie Taxi Driver. Michael mis-attributes it to Al Pacino in Raging Bull, a film Pacino did not appear in. The Karate Kid franchise is referenced two separate times. Michael notes that Dwight is the "Hilary Swank version", a reference to The Next Karate Kid, the fourth movie in the Karate Kid series, starring Swank as the first female student of sensei Miyagi. Kevin later tells Dwight to "sweep the leg", a quote from the original movie. The episode also contains several television references. Jim mocks Pam by doubting her status as an Ultimate Fighter; The Ultimate Fighter is a reality television series in the form of a martial arts competition. Michael turns the insult "queer" into a reference to Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, a make-over reality television program featuring five openly gay men dispensing fashion and style advice.
## Reception
"The Fight" originally aired on NBC in the United States on November 1, 2005. The episode was viewed by 7.9 million viewers and received a 3.9 rating/9% share among adults between the ages of 18 and 49. This means that it was seen by 3.9% of all 18- to 49-year-olds, and 9% of all 18- to 49-year-olds watching television at the time of the broadcast. An encore presentation of the episode, on April 25, 2006, received 3.0 rating/8% share and retained 91% of its lead in "My Name is Earl" viewership. The encore presentation was viewed by over 6.1 million viewers.
Erik Adams of The A.V. Club awarded the episode a "B", and wrote that he enjoyed the way the important elements of the episode go "unspoken: Jim composes an apology email but doesn’t send it; the way the spectators are blocked during the main event at the dojo, there’s practically an entire office standing between Krasinski and Jenna Fischer." Adams also enjoyed the way the episode wrote Pam's reaction, noting "is she generally uncomfortable, is she afraid of what Meredith might assume, or is she afraid of her own feelings?"
Critical reception to the episode was largely positive. "Miss Alli" from Television Without Pity gave the episode a positive review and rated it an A−. Francis Rizzo III from DVD Talk called the episode "classic", and praised the performance of Rainn Wilson as Dwight. He noted that the episode, along with several others, "wouldn't be nearly as entertaining" without his character. TV Fanatic reviewed several quotes from "The Fight", and rated Michael's "Would I rather be feared or loved?" soliloquy and Michael's confession that Dwight cried at the end of Armageddon 5 out of 5. In 2006, Jenna Fischer said that the episode's cold opening, featuring Jim moving Dwight's desk into the bathroom, was her favorite prank on the show.
|
7,948,465 |
M-132 (Michigan highway)
| 1,138,518,306 |
Former state highway in Washtenaw County, Michigan, United States
|
[
"Former state highways in Michigan",
"Transportation in Washtenaw County, Michigan"
] |
M-132 was the designation of a former state trunkline highway in the Lower Peninsula of the US state of Michigan near Ann Arbor. The highway, commissioned in 1929, connected Ann Arbor and Dexter to the northwest along present-day Dexter–Ann Arbor Road. The roadway was turned back to local control around 1960.
## Route description
Beginning at the intersection of Main Street and Baker Road in downtown Dexter, M-132 ran southeasterly along Main Street through town. Upon reaching the city limits, the highway became Dexter–Ann Arbor Road. It ran southeast across rural Washtenaw County through fields before entering Ann Arbor where it followed Dexter Avenue and terminated at US Highway 12 (US 12, Huron Street/Jackson Avenue).
## History
M-132 was commissioned in October 1928 between Dexter and Ann Arbor; at the time it was created, it was fully paved. It remained in the same configuration until it was removed from the state trunkline system in December 1959, after the freeway carrying Interstate 94 and US 12 was completed near Ann Arbor. After removal from the state highway system, the roadway is now simply known as Dexter–Ann Arbor Road; it is two lanes wide throughout.
## Major intersections
## See also
|
7,088,328 |
Robert Dover (equestrian)
| 1,157,636,888 |
20th and 21st-century American equestrian
|
[
"1956 births",
"American LGBT sportspeople",
"American dressage riders",
"American male equestrians",
"Dressage riders",
"Equestrians at the 1984 Summer Olympics",
"Equestrians at the 1988 Summer Olympics",
"Equestrians at the 1992 Summer Olympics",
"Equestrians at the 1996 Summer Olympics",
"Equestrians at the 2000 Summer Olympics",
"Equestrians at the 2004 Summer Olympics",
"Gay sportsmen",
"International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame inductees",
"Jewish sportspeople",
"LGBT Jews",
"LGBT equestrians",
"LGBT people from Illinois",
"Living people",
"Medalists at the 1992 Summer Olympics",
"Medalists at the 1996 Summer Olympics",
"Medalists at the 2000 Summer Olympics",
"Medalists at the 2004 Summer Olympics",
"Olympic bronze medalists for the United States in equestrian",
"Sportspeople from Chicago",
"University of Georgia alumni"
] |
Robert Jeffrey Dover (born June 7, 1956) is an American equestrian who has had international success in the sport of dressage. Riding from the age of 13, he began specializing in dressage at age 19 and competed in his first Olympics in 1984. He competed in every summer Games between 1984 and 2004, winning four team bronze medals. He also took a team bronze at the 1994 World Equestrian Games. Dover is the most honored dressage rider in the United States, and has been inducted to the United States Dressage Federation Hall of Fame. Outside of competition, Dover founded the Equestrian Aid Foundation in 1996 to assist others in the equestrian world, and hosted a TV show that searched for the next dressage star. From late 2009 to early 2011, Dover served as the Technical/Coach Advisor for the Canadian national dressage team. In April 2013, Dover was named Technical Advisor/Chef d'Equipe for the US national dressage team.
## Personal life
Dover, who is Jewish, was born in Chicago, Illinois to parents Herb and Jean Dover. He was given a horse for his Bar Mitzvah at 13 and was active in Pony Club, graduating at "A" level, the highest level. He decided to specialize in dressage when he was 19. Dover attended the University of Georgia. He is openly gay, and his partner is fellow rider Robert Ross. He became the first openly gay Olympic athlete when he came out in 1988. Injuries, including a torn rotator cuff and pinched sciatic nerve, began to plague him in the late 1990s, causing major back pain and reducing his ability to ride.
## Career
### Competition
In 1984, Dover competed in his first Olympic Games at the age of 28. At the Los Angeles Games, he finished 17th individually, and the US team finished 6th. At the 1988 Seoul Olympics, he finished 13th, and the team tied for 6th place. In 1992, at the Barcelona Games, Dover tied for 22nd place, while the American team took the bronze medal. At the 1996 Atlanta Games, the 2000 Sydney Olympics and the 2004 Athina Games the United States dressage team took the bronze medal each time, while Dover finished 25th, 23rd and 6th respectively. He was elected team captain in all six Olympics in which he competed. Of his Olympic experience, Dover says, "The medals themselves aren't the important thing. My memories of the Games and of the entire Olympic experience are, to me, everything."
In 1987, Dover defeated Reiner Klimke, a six-time Olympic gold medalist, at the German Aachen Grand Prix freestyle competition. In doing so, he became the first American in 27 years to win that event. In 1994 he was named the US Olympic Male Equestrian Athlete of the Year, and in 1995 awarded the Whitney Stone Cup, given by the United States Equestrian Federation (USEF) for excellence in international competition. Dover has been named the USEF Dressage Champion five times, and ridden seven times in the FEI World Cup Final. In 1994, Dover rode with the United States dressage team at the World Equestrian Games, winning a team bronze. He was also amassed more than 100 Grand Prix victories. Overall, Dover has won more honors in dressage than any other rider from the United States. In 2009, Dover announced his retirement from competitive riding, instead choosing to focus on teaching and philanthropy.
### Other
Dover founded the Equestrian Aid Foundation in 1996. The Foundation's mission is to financially assist members of the equestrian community who have suffered a catastrophic accident, injury or illness. In 2002, Dover was listed as one of the 50 most influential horsemen by Chronicle of the Horse magazine. In 2007, "The Search for America's Next Equestrian Star: Dressage", a reality TV show created and promoted by Dover, aired on the Fox Reality Channel with five one-hour episodes. The show followed a search for young, talented dressage riders, with the final five being allowed to train with Dover for one month before a winner was selected; the winner became Dover's assistant. In 2008, Dover was inducted into the United States Dressage Federation Hall of Fame. Dover served on the USEF Dressage Committee for many years, and spent eight years on the US Olympic Committee Athlete Advisory Council.
In late 2009, Dover was selected as a Technical/Coach Advisor for the Canadian dressage team, with a contract that extended through the 2010 World Equestrian Games in Lexington, Kentucky. After the Games, it was announced that Dover and the Canadian team had not been able to agree on contract renewal terms, but in late 2010 it was announced that Dover would remain as the interim trainer for the first quarter of 2011. In March 2011, German equestrian Markus Gribbe was hired, and Dover's term as a Canadian coach came to an end. Dover is known for his coaching abilities, with some of the best dressage riders with top international titles to their credit coming from his stables. During his time as a trainer for Canada, he was no longer be eligible to train top riders with the USEF. In April 2013, Dover was named Technical Advisor/Chef d'Equipe of the US national dressage team. He is expected to remain in the position through the 2016 Summer Olympics. Dover is currently a rider and trainer at Stillpoint Farm in Florida.
## See also
- List of athletes with the most appearances at Olympic Games
- List of select Jewish equestrians
|
7,484,943 |
James Temple
| 1,160,771,720 |
English regicide
|
[
"1606 births",
"1670s deaths",
"17th-century English Puritans",
"English MPs 1640–1648",
"English MPs 1648–1653",
"English politicians convicted of crimes",
"Members of Lincoln's Inn",
"Military personnel from Kent",
"Parliamentarian military personnel of the English Civil War",
"People from Chadwell St Mary",
"People from Etchingham",
"People from Rochester, Kent",
"Prisoners in the Tower of London",
"Prisoners who died in Jersey detention",
"Regicides of Charles I"
] |
James Temple (1606–1680) was a puritan and English Civil War soldier who was convicted of the regicide of Charles I. Born in Rochester, Kent, to a well-connected gentry family, he was the second of two sons of Sir Alexander Temple, although his elder brother died in 1627. As a child, Temple moved with his father from Rochester to Chadwell St Mary in Essex and then to Etchingham in Sussex, where he settled.
Temple gained military experience as a member of the Duke of Buckingham's expedition to the Isle of Ré in 1627. As a puritan, he joined the Parliamentary army at the outbreak of the Civil War and fought at the Battle of Edgehill. He rose to become a colonel and commanded Tilbury Fort, an important defensive position on the approach to London by river. He was elected as a Member of Parliament (MP) for Bramber in September 1645 to replace an ejected Royalist. He sided with the army in opposing any compromise with the King, and survived Pride's purge. He was appointed as a judge at the trial of King Charles I of England. Temple attended most of the court sessions and was the 28th (of 59) to sign the King's death warrant. After the restoration of Charles II, he was convicted of regicide, but avoided execution and was imprisoned on Jersey, where he died.
## Early life
Temple was born to Sir Alexander Temple and Mary Sommer while his parents were living in the parish of St. Margaret's in Rochester, Kent in the house previously owned by his mother's first husband. His family was closely related to the Temple family of Stowe House. The family belonged to the gentry, having a reasonable income, without being members of the aristocracy. His father had been knighted at the Tower of London by James I following the King's accession to the English throne – one of many members of the gentry who were knighted during the first years of the King's reign.
Temple had an older brother (John) and a sister (Susan). As a result of his mother's first marriage, he had two half-brothers (including Sir Thomas Peniston) and two half-sisters. He was born into a well connected family. His uncles included Sir Thomas Temple, 1st Baronet, of Stowe and William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele. His sister, Susan Temple, Lady Lister, was the mother of Martin Lister and the grandmother of Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough.
In 1607, following his mother's death, he moved to Longhouse Place (now known as Chadwell Place) in Chadwell St Mary, Essex. Both he and his older brother John, were admitted to Lincoln's Inn in 1622. In the same year, Temple was given permission by the privy council to travel abroad for up to three years. He was allowed to take a servant with him, but he was strictly forbidden to visit Rome.
While Temple was living in Chadwell St Mary, a number of Temple family portraits were painted by Cornelius Johnson. These may have been part of a family commission. They include Temple's father (which hangs in Hagley Hall) and his sister (which is in the Tate Gallery). These family portraits may have included Temple himself, but no portrait is known to have survived.
In the early 1620s, as a result of his father's marriage to Mary Bankworth (who was previously married to John Busbridge), he moved, this time to Haremere Hall in Etchingham, Sussex. His father's third marriage gave him step siblings, including his stepsister, Mary Busbridge to whom Temple was married in March 1627. Over the next few years, they had six children. They initially lived in Etchingham where five of their children were baptised.
### Isle of Ré expedition
In June 1627, George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham led an expedition to the island of Île de Ré to support the Huguenots besieged in La Rochelle by King Louis XIII of France. With no standing army, Buckingham's forces were largely volunteers and mercenaries. Since public opinion in England (particularly among extreme Protestants) supported the Huguenots, a number of well connected gentry came forward. The volunteers to join Buckingham included Temple, his elder brother John and other members of his family. The expedition to the Isle of Ré, was a disaster and altogether, Buckingham lost more than 5,000 men in the campaign out of a force of 7,000. Among those who died was Temple's brother.
### Life in Sussex
When his father died in 1629, Temple was the main beneficiary of his father's estate. However, much of his father's property was held via his wife, mortgaged or being used to meet other commitments. Temple had a relatively meagre inheritance – no grand country house, no great estate and certainly no large fortune. His financial affairs were not in good order and were discussed by other members of the family. Margaret Longville, Temple's cousin, wrote to her mother, "my cousin Cary Saunders is broke for forty thousand pounds and is not able to pay five shillings in the pound and James Temple is in too much". (Cary was the family name for Carew Saunders.) During Charles I's Personal Rule (1629–1640), he was part of a network of Puritan gentry in Sussex and in due course became a Sussex justice of the peace (JP).
## Civil War
`Temple, like most members of his family, was a puritan and supported Parliament against the King. His uncle Lord Saye and Sele was one of the King's principal opponents. Temple's military experience became useful when the First English Civil War broke out in August, 1642. He was appointed captain of a troop of horse raised by Lord Saye and Sele and commanded by Temple's cousin, John Fiennes. Temple was related to Oliver Cromwell via his kinsman Edward Whalley and was able to secure a commission for Whalley in his uncle's unit. He saw action close to the Temple family home at Stowe where both Temple and Whalley fought at the Battle of Edgehill in October 1642.`
Temple was also present at the Battle of Bramber Bridge in December 1643. In March 1643, he had returned to Sussex, and along with his stepbrother, John Busbridge, he was appointed by Parliament to the Sussex committee set for the sequestration (i.e. seizure and administration) of the assets of prominent Royalists. In December 1643, Temple was prominent in the defence of the crossing of the River Adur at Bramber Castle against a Royalist attack during Lord Hopton's attempt to obtain control of Sussex for the King. His actions were described by Dr Cheynell:
> "Upon the 12th of December I visited a brave soldier of my acquaintance, Captn Jas Temple, who did that day defend the fort of Bramber against a bold and daring enemy to the wonder of all the country ; and I did not marvel at it, for he is a man that hath his head full of stratagems, his heart full of piety and valour, and his hand as full of success as it is of dexterity."
As the war progressed, Temple was promoted to colonel and became governor of Tilbury Fort in Essex, a post that had previously been held by his father. The fort was close to Temple's childhood home at Longhouse Place and was of strategic importance because it controlled the approach to London by river. During the Second Civil War, there were Royalist uprisings in Kent and Essex. Temple's control of Tilbury Fort for Parliament enabled Lord Fairfax's troops to cross from Gravesend to Tilbury en route to Colchester for the siege of royalists in that town.
## Trial of Charles I and Commonwealth
`In September 1645, Temple was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Bramber to replace Sir Thomas Bowyer, the royalist member who had been ejected. He belonged to the political and religious group known as Independents who were opposed to any compromise in Parliament's negotiations with the King. As a result, he was one of the MPs allowed to remain after Pride's Purge – a military coup that excluded from Parliament roughly three quarters of the MPs, particularly those who were believed to be unsympathetic to the Army. In January 1649, the army and the Independents decided to bring Charles I to trial. Temple was one of the judges named to the High Court of Justice that conducted the trial. He attended nine sessions of the court in both the Painted Chamber and Westminster Hall. He approved the guilty verdict and signed the King's death warrant – the 28th of the 59 judges to so.`
During the early part of the Commonwealth period, he continued to serve on Parliamentary committees. However, he attracted accusations of corruption. In September 1650, these accusations led to him giving up his post at Tilbury Fort. It was probably around this time that he married his second wife, Joanna van Tromp.
Temple attracted a number of other accusations of financial impropriety, although apparently nothing was proved. In 1648, he was ordered by the House of Commons to respond to the legal action of one Elizabeth Willan who had attempted to serve him with two writs in connection with a bond for £400. He "threw them on the ground and spurned them with his foot". In 1649, Temple became the guardian of the daughter of one Mrs Eyre. He apparently "inveigled" her to marry his son, Alexander. As a result, Temple acquired the deeds to property in Ireland which he subsequently refused to return. A few years later, he was accused of improperly benefiting from administering the estate of a prominent Sussex catholic – Sir John Shelley – whose heir was a minor.
Following Temple's marriage, his father had invested in a farming venture by Edward Whalley who was the brother-in-law of Temple's stepsister – Mary Penistone. Sir Alexander apparently intended this to provide an inheritance for his grandchildren (the children of James Temple). As a younger son himself, Sir Alexander wanted to ensure suitable provision for his own younger son. This investment made by Temple's father for the benefit of his children had apparently become valueless when Edward Whalley fled to Scotland in the late 1630s. However, in the 1650s, Whalley had become a prominent and successful member of the Puritan establishment and there was a possibility of recovering some money. In the late 1650s, Temple and Whalley went to the Court of Chancery to determine what was due to Temple and his children. However, with the death of Oliver Cromwell and the subsequent restoration of Charles II, both regicides were faced with the possibility of execution and the case appears to have been unresolved.
## Restoration
Temple returned to Parliament with the recall of the Rump and Long Parliaments by General Monck, but following the Restoration in 1660, he was excluded from the Indemnity and Oblivion Act, because of his role in the trial and execution of Charles I. He was captured in Warwickshire while trying to travel to Ireland, under his first wife's maiden name of Busbridge. He was held in the Tower of London before being tried as a regicide. He tried to avoid the death penalty by saying that he had only acted as a judge in Charles I's trial in order to give information to the Royalists. He went on to claim that he had tried to prevent the King's execution, begging Oliver Cromwell to spare him. He did avoid execution and was sentenced to life imprisonment. As a result of security concerns, a number of regicides, including Temple were sent to Jersey in the Channel Islands. Initially he was imprisoned in Mont Orgueil, and subsequently in Elizabeth Castle, where he is reported to have died on 17 February 1680.
William Winstanley described him as "not so much famous for his valour as his villainy, being remarkable for nothing but this horrible business of the king's murther, for which he came into the pack to have a share in the spoyle."
|
19,533,905 |
Castiel (Supernatural)
| 1,173,315,811 |
Character from American TV series Supernatural
|
[
"Fictional angels",
"Fictional characters who can manipulate light",
"Fictional characters who can manipulate time",
"Fictional characters who can teleport",
"Fictional characters who have been possessed by the Devil",
"Fictional characters who use magic",
"Fictional characters with accelerated healing",
"Fictional characters with death or rebirth abilities",
"Fictional characters with dream manipulation abilities",
"Fictional characters with extrasensory perception",
"Fictional characters with fire or heat abilities",
"Fictional characters with healing abilities",
"Fictional characters with immortality",
"Fictional characters with spirit possession or body swapping abilities",
"Fictional characters with superhuman durability or invulnerability",
"Fictional characters with superhuman senses",
"Fictional characters with superhuman strength",
"Fictional commanders",
"Fictional demon hunters",
"Fictional knife-fighters",
"Fictional mass murderers",
"Fictional monster hunters",
"Fictional self-sacrifices",
"Fictional soul collectors",
"Fictional telekinetics",
"Fictional telepaths",
"Male characters in television",
"Supernatural (American TV series) characters",
"Television characters introduced in 2008"
] |
Castiel (/ˌkæstiˈɛl/; nicknamed "Cas") is a fictional character portrayed by Misha Collins on The CW's American fantasy television series Supernatural. An Angel of the Lord, he first appears in the fourth season and is used to introduce the theme of Christian theology to the series. In the series, Castiel brings Dean Winchester back from Hell and frequently helps him and his brother, Sam, in their battles with various demons and angels along the way. During his travels with the Winchesters, Castiel develops friendships with both men. As an angel, he possesses a number of supernatural abilities, including the ability to kill demons. Initially, the character demonstrates complete devotion to God and little emotion. However, his interactions and experiences with Dean and Sam, as well as certain revelations about God and his fellow angels, have a humanizing effect on him. This, despite the stress and harm it causes his character, allows him to develop an independent will as the series progresses and helps the show address topics related to free will.
Unlike the stereotypical portrayal of television angels, Castiel does not always help people, and is willing, at least when he is first introduced, to kill innocents if needed. Collins originally read for the part of a demon, as series creator Eric Kripke did not want fans to find out that angels were being introduced to the series. Collins prepared for the role by reading the Book of Revelation and based his portrayal on his younger brother. Critics and fans have responded highly favorably to the character. In response, the show's creators expanded his role in the series, upgrading him to a main cast member in the fifth and sixth seasons. After being a special guest star in the seventh and eighth seasons, Collins was upgraded once again to regular cast member status through seasons 9–15.
## Plot
### Arrival on Earth
At the end of the third season of Supernatural, Dean Winchester is in Hell after being killed by the hellhounds of the demonic antagonist Lilith. In the season four premiere "Lazarus Rising", the angel Castiel is introduced as the one who brought Dean back from Hell and resurrected him. Because merely perceiving his actual form typically results in blindness, he takes a human host – James "Jimmy" Novak, a "devout man" who prayed for it – to communicate with Dean, and tells him that he has been brought back because God has work for him. Lilith is breaking the 66 seals in order to free Lucifer, and Dean must stop her.
Castiel continues to appear throughout the season, at one point sending Dean back in time and later tasking him and his brother Sam with stopping witches from breaking another seal. He returns with fellow angel Uriel at the end of the episode "I Know What You Did Last Summer", seeking to kill Anna Milton, a fallen angel with the ability to "hear" the communications between angels. In the following episode, "Heaven and Hell", Anna uses an ancient Enochian sigil to send the angels away, though they manage to track them down later. Once there, Castiel expresses regret at having to kill Anna. Before they can carry out their duty, however, they are confronted by the demon Alastair and two of his minions. A fight ensues, and Castiel is nearly defeated in the battle by Alastair. He is saved by Dean, and they in turn are rescued when Anna regains her powers. Although Uriel nearly vents his frustration on Dean, Castiel stops him, and the two leave.
Castiel later becomes suspicious of Uriel and confronts him in "On the Head of a Pin". Uriel admits he and certain other angels are now working together to free Lucifer, having grown weary of never hearing from God and jealous of His favoritism for humanity. He asks Castiel to join him, but Castiel refuses and attacks him. Uriel eventually overpowers Castiel, but is killed by Anna before he can strike the finishing blow. During this time, the orders he is getting from Heaven of questionable morality and the influence of Anna cause him to start to have doubts about Heaven's plans. He later returns in "The Monster At the End of This Book" to explain Chuck's role as a Prophet and later when Dean calls him to help save Sam. Castiel informs Dean he can't interfere due to how important Prophets are, but he impresses upon Dean how the archangel protecting a Prophet will intervene if said Prophet is in trouble to secretly let him know a way to save Sam.
### Jimmy Novak alone
In "The Rapture", Castiel enters Dean's dreams and arranges a meeting to tell him something important. However, when Sam and Dean go to meet him, they instead find Jimmy, Castiel's vessel, who claims to have little memory of his life as a vessel. Anna theorizes Castiel must have angered his superiors, prompting him to be taken back to Heaven. When Jimmy is shot at the end of the episode trying to save his family from demons, Castiel returns, taking Jimmy's daughter Claire as his new vessel. After the demons are killed, a dying Jimmy begs Castiel to take him back as a host so his daughter will not have to go through what he did, and the angel acquiesces. Dean then asks him what he needed to tell him, but Castiel coldly replies his loyalty is to Heaven, not to mankind or to him.
### Servant of Heaven
In "When the Levee Breaks", Castiel has Dean take the oath of allegiance to God and His angels, to which Dean agrees under the impression it will keep Sam safe. Later in the episode, Castiel releases Sam, who is on detox from Ruby's demon blood, from Bobby's Panic Room. When Anna confronts him about his actions, other angels appear and capture her.
With Sam closing in on Lilith, Castiel and Zachariah imprison Dean within an idyllic waiting room, where he will be made comfortable until the time comes for him to play his role in stopping the Apocalypse. Dean refuses to remain idle, and continually requests to be able to see Sam, which is denied. Once Dean discovers the angels are allowing the Apocalypse to happen, he implores for Castiel to help him stop the final seal from being broken. Though Castiel refuses at first, he returns ready to help not long after. He takes Dean to see the prophet Chuck for information on Sam. Their presence does not fall in line with Chuck's Gospel, so the Archangel Raphael begins to descend. Castiel sends Dean to Sam, remaining behind to hold back the archangel and any others who might come. He is subsequently killed, with his host's body being blown to pieces.
### Fall to Earth
However, Castiel later returns – still in Jimmy Novak's body – in the fifth-season premiere, "Sympathy for the Devil", killing two fellow angels in order to save Sam and Dean. He is uncertain as to how he was resurrected, but alludes to Zachariah it may have been God's doing. After ordering Zachariah away, Castiel carves Enochian sigils into Sam and Dean's ribs to hide them from all angels, including Lucifer. Castiel later returns to the brothers in "Good God Y'All!", and reveals his plans to find God. He borrows Dean's amulet, as it burns hot in God's presence, and departs. He has also been completely cut off from Heaven as a result of his rebellion and has lost some of his powers as a result, including his ability to heal injuries. He remains on Earth hunting for God, although acquires a cell phone so that the Winchesters can call for his aid when dealing with particularly challenging cases, such as their discovery of the Antichrist or their latest confrontation with the Trickster (who is revealed to be the lost archangel Gabriel).
In "Abandon All Hope...", Castiel helps the Winchesters retrieve the Colt and joins them on their hunt for Lucifer. However, he ventures off after discovering hundreds of Reapers are already in the town, hoping to discover what has called them there. He soon becomes imprisoned by Lucifer, who tries to tempt Castiel into joining him, pointing out they are both targets of heaven, but Castiel refuses. He later manages to free himself, but finds he no longer has the power to kill demons. After Sam and Dean fail in their attempt to kill the Devil, Castiel teleports them to safety. After exhausting most of his remaining power to take Sam and Dean back in time to save their parents from renegade angel Anna,
Castiel aids the Winchesters in their battle with Famine, the Horseman of the Apocalypse – the brothers having already defeated War – but his weakened powers render him susceptible to Famine's influence, Famine attacking Jimmy's hunger for red meat to make Castiel more interested in eating burgers than actually fighting. When the brothers are killed by vengeful hunters in "Dark Side of the Moon", Castiel – unable to return to Heaven – briefly communicates with them. He tasks them with finding the angel Joshua, who communicates directly with God. Although Joshua reveals God is alive, he claims He is apathetic to the Apocalypse; having saved the brothers and Castiel, God feels He has done enough. When relayed to Castiel, his hopes and faith are shattered, leading him to drink heavily in the subsequent episode "99 Problems" when Sam summons him for answers about the actions of the people in a town. Castiel reveals that they are dealing with the Whore of Babylon and provides the stake that can kill her, but as he is no longer a true servant of Heaven, is unable to do it himself. He gets Pastor Gideon so they can have him do it and tries to hold the Whore in place so the Pastor can stab her. However, she casts a spell that causes him great pain and knocks him out of the fight. In the end, Dean stabs her with the stake, identifying himself as a true servant of heaven.
### Powerless
In "Point of No Return", Castiel helps Sam to keep Dean from becoming Michael's vessel. He leaves after hearing a signal from the angels, and finds a resurrected Adam Milligan – Sam and Dean's half-brother who had been previously killed by ghouls. When Dean escapes and tries to contact the angels, Castiel finds him, and angrily attacks him for making Castiel's rebelling against Heaven worthless. Later, he carves a banishing sigil into his own chest and activates it in the presence of multiple angels in order to clear the way for Sam and Dean to attack Zachariah and save Adam. The effects of the sigil send him onto a fishing boat, now completely human. Despite his lack of power, he is able to defeat the Horseman Pestilence using what appears to be what little is left of his angelic strength, and assists Bobby and Sam in preventing nationwide distribution of the Croatoan virus.
In the fifth-season finale, "Swan Song", Castiel loses faith after Sam fails to overpower Lucifer when he possesses him and suggests they get drunk and wait for the end to come. When Dean refuses to give up, Castiel and Bobby follow him and Castiel uses a Molotov cocktail of Holy Fire to temporarily banish Michael to buy Dean time to try to reach Sam. Angry that Castiel attacked his brother, Lucifer obliterates Castiel with a snap of his fingers. After Sam and Dean avert the Apocalypse, Castiel is resurrected once more by God, now more powerful than ever as a seraphim. He heals Dean's injuries and resurrects Bobby and reminds Dean that he got what he wanted: no Apocalypse, no Paradise, just more of the same. Castiel then heads back to heaven to restore order and become its new leader, believing it to be in chaos since Sam trapped Michael in Lucifer's Cage as well.
### Post-Apocalyptic alliances
A year after the Apocalypse, Castiel returns to Earth in "The Third Man" to get Sam and Dean's help to find the Staff of Moses, which, along with many other weapons of Heaven, has been stolen during the war. They soon discover that the angel Balthazar has stolen it and sold pieces of it to people in exchange for their souls. They confront Balthazar, but are interrupted by Raphael. Before Raphael is able to get his revenge against Castiel, Balthazar destroys Raphael's vessel and sends him back to Heaven. After trapping Balthazar within a ring of ignited holy oil and forcing him to restore the souls he has taken, Castiel sets him free, claiming his debt has been paid off.
In "Family Matters", Castiel returns to "diagnose" Sam by asking him several questions. Sam, still dizzy and unsure of what is going on after being knocked unconscious by Dean, reveals that he no longer sleeps and has become a better hunter. Castiel has an idea of what's wrong and decides to read Sam's soul by reaching inside him, and the truth is finally revealed: that Sam has no soul, and it was locked in the cage with Lucifer. Both Dean and Castiel are unsure whether Sam is still Sam without his soul, but they let Sam go and Castiel heals his wounds from being beaten by Dean.
In "Caged Heat", Sam tries to trick Castiel into coming to Earth to help the brothers get Sam's soul back. When he comes, Sam threatens Castiel saying that if he does not help, then he will hunt him down and kill him. Despite knowing Sam never could, he helps them. Later, while Sam and Dean are doing research, Castiel discovers porn on TV; when Dean asks why he was watching porn, he replies, "It was there."
Castiel later discovers Sam and Dean are working with a demon called Meg, whom he refers to as an abomination. When Crowley admits that he cannot get Sam's soul back, Castiel burns Crowley's human remains.
At the end of the episode Castiel explains to Sam and Dean that the celestial war is not going well for him and he would rather be on Earth with them, but leaves anyway to continue fighting, but promises to take care of Crowley's captured monsters first. After acquiring the holy weapons from Balthazar in "The French Mistake", Castiel suggests that he now has a military advantage in the war. Unfortunately, this advantage seems limited; he orders Balthazar in "My Heart Will Go On" to save the Titanic, spawning 50,000 new souls to empower his side. However, Fate works to undo the impossible births and begins killing them. Once the brothers encounter the string of odd deaths Fate takes this opportunity to eliminate them due to their part of undoing the destined Apocalypse. This forces Castiel to concede the loss and re-sink the Titanic.
In "Frontierland", Sam and Dean call for Castiel to send them back in time as they have learned that the ashes of a Phoenix can kill Eve and that Samuel Colt killed one in the past with The Colt. Rachel, Castiel's lieutenant comes instead and berates the boys for only calling for him when they need something of him, but Castiel arrives himself and sends Rachel away. Castiel is able to send Dean and Sam back in time, but warns them that he has to retrieve them in 24 hours or they'll be stuck in the past forever and tells Bobby to pray for him when the time comes. While waiting, Rachel approaches him about his plans and attacks him. Castiel kills her, but is left weakened by a stab wound she managed to inflict on him first. Castiel manages to teleport to Bobby's and draws a sigil to hide himself from the other angels before passing out. He wakes in time to retrieve the Winchesters, but his weakened state prevents this so he is forced to draw power from Bobby's soul. While Dean killed the Phoenix, Castiel brought them back before they could gather the ashes so it all appears for nothing and he lacks the power to send them back. Luckily, Samuel Colt collected the ashes and sent a package with them to be delivered to Bobby's after the boys return.
In "Mommy Dearest", it is discovered that there is a possibility Crowley may have faked his death and might still be alive; suggesting that perhaps Castiel had burned the wrong bones by mistake. Eve reveals this to Sam and Dean when they try to hunt her down. During the hunt, Eve is able to suppress Castiel's powers as she is older than him. After Dean kills Eve, Castiel's powers return and he kills all of her monsters with a blast of white light before transporting the group to the home of the uncle of two young boys who were turned into monsters. There, they find them dead, having been killed by demons, and Castiel promises to look into Crowley's possible survival to find out for sure if he's dead or not. However, Castiel is instead seen with a very alive Crowley who states that he is "tired of cleaning up after [Castiel's] messes", implying that Castiel had full knowledge of burning the wrong bones and that both he and Crowley have some sort of agreement between them and/or may be working together as partners.
In "The Man Who Would Be King", it is revealed that Castiel was the one who partially raised Sam from Hell, though due to the complication of the cage it was impossible to retrieve his soul, and that he has made a deal with Crowley in a desperate attempt to win the war. Sam and Dean also learn of his partnership with Crowley when he slips up and reveals he is spying on them.
In "Let it Bleed", Castiel is enraged to learn that Lisa and Ben Braeden have been kidnapped by Crowley and tries to get him to reveal where they are to no avail. Castiel saves Dean from a demon and tries and fails to convince him to back off. Later, after Lisa is mortally wounded by a demon possessing her in an attempt to force Dean not to exorcise her, Castiel arrives at the hospital and without being asked, heals her wounds and at Dean's request, erases all of her and her son Ben's memories of Dean. He does this as a final act of friendship towards Dean though both admit it doesn't change the fact that they are now enemies. Castiel also spends the episode one step ahead of Bobby investigating H.P. Lovecraft's opening of Purgatory in an attempt to find a way to open it himself.
### Godhood
In "The Man Who Knew Too Much", Castiel tricks Crowley and Raphael, eventually absorbing the souls from Purgatory. He demonstrates his new power by killing Raphael with a simple snap of his fingers. While talking to Dean, who unsuccessfully begs him to give up the power, Sam sneaks up behind them and attempts to kill him with an angelic blade by stabbing Castiel in the back, but it has no effect. Castiel removes the blade, explains that he is no longer an angel, declaring himself their new God. He then glances at the three hunters before delivering an ultimatum: to profess their own loyalty and love unto him, or be destroyed.
In "Meet the New Boss", Castiel begins exacting his new supremacy over the planet, working miracles and punishing religious hypocrites alike. However, when Castiel's vessel begins to become damaged and he begins to lose control of his power, Death reveals that he also absorbed creatures known as Leviathans from Purgatory. The Leviathans will destroy him if they are not released. Castiel seeks out the Winchesters' help, and reopens the portal with Death's assistance. Although the souls are returned, the Leviathans evade reentering Purgatory and take control of Castiel's vessel. In "Hello, Cruel World", the vessel begins to quickly break down. The Leviathans are forced to leave, dispersing into the local water supply nearby and leaving behind only Castiel's trench coat.
### Return to madness
In "The Born-Again Identity", it's revealed that Castiel survived. After the Leviathans left him, he made his way out of the river, naked, and ran into his future wife Daphne. However, the experience renders Castiel amnesic, but with his angelic powers intact. Going by the name "Emanuel", Castiel used his powers to heal people, though he didn't know where that ability and his power to see demon's true faces came from. After Sam is committed to a mental hospital as a result of the hallucinations of Lucifer he is suffering due to Castiel breaking his "mental wall", Dean searches for "Emanuel" and kills a demon that is holding his wife hostage. Castiel agrees to help Dean who doesn't tell him who he really is, but mentions what "Cas" had done to Sam. The two are joined by Meg, but upon reaching the hospital, find demons surrounding the entrance. As Castiel is the only one who can take them all down, Dean is forced to tell him the truth about who he really is and insists he has the power to kill the demons. Castiel manages to summon his power to kill demons and kills all of them, but doing so restores his memories. Castiel shows remorse for his previous actions and initially wants to leave, but Dean is able to convince him to help by giving him back his trench coat. Castiel finds Sam in time to save him from a demon torturing him to death with electro-shock therapy and tries to restore his mental wall, but can't as it's completely gone. Feeling sorry for what he had done, Castiel transfers the problem to himself and is haunted by visions of Lucifer like Sam was. Castiel is committed to the mental hospital, but is safe from the demons as only Meg knows he's alive and she takes a job at the hospital, presumably to look after him. In "Party On, Garth", Dean calls Meg and she reveals that Castiel's in the same condition, which Sam feels guilty about.
In "Reading is Fundamental", Castiel is awakened when the Word of God – a tablet with information inscribed by an angel as dictated by God – is found by Sam and Dean. Although his torment has driven him insane, he explains that taking on Sam's pain has helped relieve some of his past burdens. He then explains what the Word of God is, but is unable to read it. Two angels from his former garrison arrive in pursuit of Kevin, a prophet who was awakened by the Word of God and drawn to it. The angel Hester tries to kill Castiel out of anger for his past actions, but she is instead killed by Meg. The other angel offers Castiel the chance to return to Heaven with him, but Castiel declines, explaining that he feels he no longer belongs there. The other angel then leaves, taking Kevin away to safety. Castiel comments to the Winchesters that he finds it amazing that he does not know what he is going to do next, and teleports away after giving them his blood.
In "Survival of the Fittest", after finding his garrison wiped out, Castiel has Meg take him to the Winchesters where he explains what he has discovered. Crowley arrives and is furious to see him, but Castiel no longer has a wish to fight and when Crowley realizes he's insane, he decides to put off his feud with Castiel for a time when he's sane again. Crowley, after giving them his blood, disappears but tells them Castiel can help them kill Dick. Castiel refuses to help as he doesn't want to fight and after he disappears to retrieve a board game, Meg explains that since Castiel had the Leviathans within him, he is able to tell them apart even in their human forms and can pick out the real Dick Roman. Castiel watches as Sam and Dean burn Bobby's flask and put him at rest and later takes Dean to where he has stored the Impala and agrees to help. Castiel, Sam and Dean infiltrate Sucrocorp thanks to a distraction from Meg and he and Dean confront Dick Roman in the labs. Dick throws Castiel across the room when he tries to attack, but after Dean fails to kill Dick, Castiel holds his head in place from behind allowing Dean to stab Dick through the neck with the weapon, killing him. As a result of this, Castiel and Dean are sucked into Purgatory with Dick's soul and after letting Dean know this and that they are more likely to die than get out, Castiel disappears, leaving Dean alone.
### Out of Purgatory
In "We Need To Talk About Kevin", Dean escapes Purgatory with the help of the vampire Benny, but Castiel is not with him. He later tells Sam that things got hairy near the end and that Castiel didn't make it, that he "let go". While Dean doesn't elaborate, he is clearly affected by this. In a flashback scene, Dean is shown looking for Castiel in Purgatory, interrogating a vampire for his location. As a result, he meets Benny and only agrees to Benny's deal to get out if they find Castiel first and help him escape too. Castiel appears in flashbacks in the following episode, where he reveals that he fled Dean to keep him safe from the Leviathans and other monsters that are angry at Castiel, but Dean refuses to leave Purgatory without Castiel. When talking with another angel at an auction for the second Word of God tablet, Dean again states that Castiel did not make it out of Purgatory. He later escapes with the aid of an army of angels sent to rescue him – having initially remained behind as penance for his actions to stop a duo of Leviathans that were trying to attack Dean and Benny as they left Purgatory – but the other angels not only erase his memory that they were responsible for his escape, but also erase his memory of their subsequent 'check-ins' to discuss the Winchesters' actions, with Castiel forced to tell them about the Winchesters' progress in the search for the tablet. Apparently back to full power, Castiel helps the Winchesters save Kevin from Crowley – who has been abducting future Prophets to try to find another means of reading the Word of God tablet – and destroy the tablet to prevent Crowley using it, retaining half of the tablet while Crowley flees with the other half. Afterwards, in "Hunteri Heroici", Castiel cuts off his ability to listen into the other angels and decides to become a full-time hunter to avoid facing the other angels about what he has done. Castiel proves instrumental in solving the case, using his abilities to enter the mind of a man with reality warping powers, allowing Sam to bring him back to reality with a speech about not running from it. Later, at the request of the man, Fred, Castiel strips him of his powers so he is no longer a danger to anyone though it leaves him mentally damaged. Castiel, having listened to Sam's speech about running from reality as well as Fred, decides to return to Heaven to try to make up for what he did, but is forbidden by Naomi, the angel who ordered his rescue. Instead, Castiel stays to watch out for Fred for a while, but accepts that he can no longer run from what he has done.
In "Torn and Frayed", as his penance, Castiel has turned back on his "angel radio" and travels around helping people who have need of help or healing. He demonstrates this by healing a sick infant that won't stop crying. After getting a distress call from Samandriel, Naomi summons Castiel to rescue the angel. Castiel enlists Dean's help and repeatedly wonders where Sam is, unaware that Sam and Dean are currently not getting along. After getting the ingredients for a "demon bomb", Castiel gets Sam as they will need all the help they can get to rescue Samandriel and yells at Sam and Dean for their behavior. At the warehouse, Castiel tells Sam and Dean what symbols to neutralize and where so he can enter and gives Sam his sword so he has a weapon against demons. After Sam and Dean clear the way, Castiel enters, but is weakened by the other sigils in the building. Samandriel's screams cause him to remember being tied down by Naomi who approaches his eye with a mysterious instrument and is unable to help Sam and Dean in breaking into the room where Samandriel is. After they get in, Castiel frees Samandriel while Sam and Dean deal with the demons guarding him and takes the other angel outside. There, Samandriel begs for Castiel not to return him to Heaven and tries to warn him that "they" are controlling him. Before Samandriel can explain, Naomi forces Castiel to kill him for being a "traitor". Castiel is horrified by this, but Naomi reveals that Samandriel telling Crowley about the angel Word of God tablet puts all in angels in danger and Castiel is a hero. Under her orders, he claims to Sam and Dean that he was forced to kill Samandriel in self-defense and that he is taking him back to Heaven to put him to rest (in reality so Naomi can determine just how much he broke), but his weird behavior and the fact that his eye starts bleeding arouses Sam and Dean's suspicions that he is being controlled.
### On the run from Heaven
In "Goodbye Stranger", Castiel has been completely brainwashed by Naomi and has killed thousands of copies of Dean ruthlessly. Castiel is sent to find the angel tablet and tortures and kills the demons also looking for it, drawing Sam and Dean's attention. Sam and Dean track down someone who knows the location of one of Lucifer's Crypts where the angel tablet is, and in the ensuing scuffle, Sam ends up in trouble. Castiel saves Sam and captures one of the demons, claiming under Naomi's orders that he is searching for the second half of the demon tablet and that the demons are searching for a parchment that will allow them to translate it without a Prophet. Castiel tortures the demon who tells them where to find Meg, but kills her before she can reveal the truth to Sam and Dean. Castiel heads off alone and rescues Meg who explains what the demons really want. While Naomi initially wants her killed to prevent that, Castiel is able to make a case to keep her alive. The group then go to the warehouse where the crypt is and before heading inside with Dean, Castiel reveals that Sam is damaged by his trials on a level that even Castiel can't fix. Castiel and Dean locate the angel tablet and Castiel has to have Dean get it as it is warded against angels. However, Naomi orders Castiel to kill Dean and though he fights it, he has no control over his actions. As he is about to kill him, Dean manages to break through to Castiel's heart and he breaks free of Naomi's influence. He picks up the angel tablet which completely severs Naomi's connection to and control over him. Castiel heals Dean and explains what happened, but senses that he must now protect the tablet from everyone, even Dean. Castiel is later seen traveling on a bus to an unknown destination with the tablet. Despite losing the tablet, Naomi is somewhat satisfied as according to her, Castiel is doing what he is supposed to be doing. Naomi later comes to Dean. In an attempt to gain his trust, presumably because she knows Castiel is one of his weak spots, she lies to Dean about Castiel and claims that he misinterpreted everything she has done and is still insane. Dean, of course, doesn't believe her. Despite this, Castiel is eventually captured by Naomi's forces, but the angel tablet is claimed by Crowley after one of Naomi's angels betrays their location, although this gives Castiel time to escape and reunite with the Winchesters after killing the angel guarding him.
### Metatron's betrayal
With Heaven in chaos, Metatron (the Scribe of God, recently rediscovered) convinces Castiel that they must seal the gates of Heaven to force the angels together to make peace. The first trial is to cut out the heart of a nephilim, the child of a human and an angel, which Castiel is forced to kill when the selected target attacks him. They manage to complete the second trial (retrieving the bow of a cupid), but Metatron subsequently reveals that his true intentions are to exile all the angels from Heaven for forcing him to leave Heaven ages ago. He takes Castiel's grace from him as the third ingredient for this spell, leaving Castiel human and banished to Earth before the other angels begin to fall as well.
### Back to humanity
With the angels expelled from Heaven, many of them begin searching for Castiel, whom they believe is responsible, and was knowingly working to enact Metatron’s plans. Castiel decides he wants to help his fallen brethren find "direction" when he encounters an angel named Hael who requests his guidance. When Castiel contacts the Winchesters, however, Dean tells him to leave Hael and make his way the Men of Letters bunker where he will be safe from the angels hunting him. Following this, Castiel attempts to leave Hael behind but is captured by her instead whereby she reveals her plans to possess him. Castiel escapes and kills Hael then continues to make his way to the bunker, abandoning his usual attire along the way. Castiel is nearly caught several times by the angels searching for him and gets a tattoo that will ward him against angels. In response, the angels send freelance Reapers after him and he is eventually caught by one of them. The Reaper tortures Castiel and kills him when the Winchesters show up to rescue him. Dean has the angel secretly possessing Sam heal Castiel and takes him back to the bunker but later asks him to leave when Ezekiel, the angel inside Sam, requests it, potentially threatening Sam’s life if Dean doesn’t comply.
Castiel gets a job at a gas station and attempts to adjust to his new life as a human. He helps Dean hunt a rogue angel that is killing people in emotional pain, but later prays for help when Dean sends him away for the second time on Ezekiel's orders. Castiel is found by the neutral angel Muriel who heard his prayer. Muriel agrees to provide information but the two are captured by angels that have been trailing Muriel. Castiel and Muriel are taken to the anarchist angel Malachi, the leader of one side of the angel civil war (the other side being headed by the angel Bartholomew), and tortured for information on Metatron. Muriel is killed in the process.
### Stolen Grace
Eventually, Malachi leaves Castiel with the angel Theo who tells Castiel he wants to defect to Metatron's side. Castiel tricks Theo into releasing him and steals his Grace, transforming Castiel into an angel once more and at least restoring his powers. Castiel calls Dean and tells him that while he was held captive by Malachi he learned that the angel Ezekiel is dead and so the angel possessing Sam must be an impostor.
After being contacted by Dean, Castiel, now wearing a new suit and trench coat and driving a stolen car as he can no longer teleport, returns to the bunker where he comes up with the plan to have Crowley help expel Gadreel from Sam. Castiel knocks Gadreel out and comforts Dean when the torture they have Crowley perform to bring forth Sam's mind proves too much for Dean. Castiel is furious to learn that the angel possessing Sam is actually Gadreel, blaming him for all the evil in the universe, but Dean calms him down. When Gadreel proves resistant to their efforts to expel him, Dean tries to have Castiel possess Sam to let him know of the situation but he can't without Sam's permission, and furthermore has no way to gain it due to Sam’s mind being kept under by Gadreel. Crowley agrees to possess Sam instead in exchange for his freedom and though Castiel is reluctant, he removes Sam's anti-possession tattoo. The plan works and Sam expels Gadreel. After leaving Crowley to deal with Abaddon, Castiel heals Sam's injuries from the torture and informs him he can finish his healing from the Trials over time as Gadreel did most of the job. He remains behind with Sam as Dean leaves on his own.
### Facing Metatron
With his angelic powers partially restored, Castiel sets out to try and stop the angelic civil war. Having killed Bartholomew in self-defence, Castiel takes command of most of the Earth-bound angels, but finds himself opposed by Metatron, who is rallying angels to his side with the intention of painting Castiel as the villain of the piece. Although Castiel learns that his stolen grace will kill him eventually, he refuses Metatron's offer to side with him, eventually convincing Gadreel to ally with him in opposing Metatron's attempt to stage a coup of Heaven even as Metatron tricks the other angels into follow him by presenting Castiel as a despot willing to destroy everything to win the war, convincing angels to 'suicide bomb' themselves and claim that Castiel told them to do it. Having gained access to Heaven's 'back door' after Gadreel sacrifices himself, Castiel defeats Metatron and throws him into Heaven's prison.
### Lack of Grace
Despite his defeat of Metatron and access to Heaven having been restored, Castiel continues to face challenges on a personal and large scale, as some angels prefer to remain on Earth and his stolen Grace continues to consume him. Although Metatron has hinted that he may be able to help Castiel with a remaining fragment of his original Grace, Castiel has rejected the option of making a deal with Metatron to save his own life. Sam and Dean remain ignorant of Castiel's fate, although Crowley is aware of Castiel's condition, at one point killing another angel to transfer her Grace to Castiel so that Castiel could help Sam cure the now-demonic Dean after he was transformed by the Mark of Cain.
When Hannah decides to return to Heaven to give her vessel a chance at returning to her life, Castiel is prompted to look up Jimmy's daughter Claire Novak, revealing that Jimmy has been dead and in Heaven ever since Jimmy's body was destroyed during his first confrontation with Raphael. Although Claire initially resents Castiel's return to her life, she comes to accept him and the Winchesters after they save her from being sold as a prostitute by a man she believed had been helping her.
### Grace restored
Seeking to help Dean find a cure for the Mark of Cain, Castiel breaks Metatron out of Heaven and removes his Grace so that the Winchesters can interrogate him. Although he fails to provide any new information, Metatron is able to lead Castiel to the library where he hid the remaining fragments of Castiel's Grace. With his powers restored, Castiel helps Claire find her long-lost mother, but although Amelia sacrifices herself to save Claire, Claire accepts that the Winchesters and Castiel meant well, even speculating that she will become a Hunter herself. When Rowena – Crowley's long-lost mother – casts a spell to remove the Mark, she also casts a spell that causes Castiel to attack Crowley while she escapes, leaving Castiel driven by a greater rage to the point that he kills two angels until Rowena is forced to cure him.
### Lucifer's Vessel
Faced with the threat of the Darkness – revealed over the course of the series to be God's "sister", sacrificed to create the world – Castiel agrees to act as Lucifer's vessel when Lucifer claims to be the only one with the power to defeat the Darkness since God is absent and all other archangels are dead or insane. After killing Rowena, apparently the only person capable of reopening the Cage, Lucifer spends some time reestablishing his power base in hell while acting as Castiel to interact with the Winchesters and follow their research into Amara, but his true identity is revealed after the Winchesters attempt to travel back in time to recover a Hand of God from a submarine before it sank in 1943. Castiel is able to regain control long enough to explain the situation to Sam and to stop Lucifer from killing him. Dean subsequently returns and banishes Lucifer, vowing to find a way to free Castiel from his control. Crowley, forced to act as Lucifer's slave, is forced on the run after he fails to kill Lucifer with another salvaged Hand of God. The Winchesters manage to get through to Castiel when preparing for a new confrontation with Amara, but Castiel resolves to remain Lucifer's Vessel until her defeat, only for the Hand of God to fail against Amara's power. With Castiel/Lucifer now Amara's prisoner, she decides to torture an archangel to try to lure God out, leaving the Winchesters to speculate that Lucifer couldn't use the Hand of God due to the fact that he is a fallen archangel. Lucifer is eventually rescued when God returns – revealed to be Chuck, the author who wrote the Winchester Gospels – with God/Chuck healing Lucifer and apologizing for his past actions. Although Lucifer is apparently killed in the later confrontation with Amara, Castiel is healed and returned to control of his body; he also meets his creator for the first time. After Dean's apparent sacrifice to stop the Darkness, Castiel goes with Sam although he is then banished when a member of the London branch of the Men of Letters attacks the bunker to punish Sam for his past actions.
### Quest for Lucifer
Castiel is able to collect himself in time to return to the bunker and help Dean and the resurrected Mary Winchester find and rescue Sam. However, upon learning that Lucifer has escaped destruction, now jumping through vessels that rapidly burn out due to his weakened state making it harder for him to maintain them, Castiel sets out to find Lucifer, accompanied by Crowley, although their first attempt simply sees Rowena banish Lucifer's new vessel to the bottom of the ocean without actually managing to kill him. Lucifer eventually takes the President of the United States as his vessel and conceives a child with one of the president's staff but is banished from this vessel thanks to the Winchesters and Crowley. After helping the Winchesters fake their deaths to escape the secret service, Castiel attempts to find Lucifer's child but is convinced to spare the unborn child by his mother, Kelly, who is certain that the baby will be good. When Lucifer returns - Crowley faked banishing Lucifer when in reality he attempted to trap Lucifer in his old vessel and control him - the Winchesters, with the help of Castiel and Crowley, confront Lucifer as Kelly is giving birth to Jack. The brothers are successful in luring Lucifer into the rift as Crowley sacrifices himself to close the rift, trapping Lucifer inside. As Castiel reenters the portal, Lucifer kills him, while Mary forces Lucifer through the rift, trapping them both in the parallel dimension.
### Reborn again
Although Castiel is dead, Jack, Lucifer's son, who regards Castiel as his guardian, is able to make Castiel "wake up" in the Empty, the place where angels and demons go when they die. The Cosmic Entity, who rules this realm, is annoyed by Castiel's being awake and attempts to use his own memories and insecurities against him to make him fall back asleep forever. However, Castiel believes that he is "already saved" and will not go to sleep, while demanding to be released. This defiance causes the Cosmic Entity to resurrect him and send him back to Earth, where he is overjoyed to be alive again. He later reunites with the Winchesters and meets Jack. However, he is subsequently captured along with Lucifer by Asmodeus when Lucifer returns to this world to warn them about the Michael of the parallel universe, who seeks to rule this world as well. Castiel and Lucifer work to escape together, but Lucifer attacks Castiel shortly afterward. Castiel stabs him, but Lucifer escapes. Castiel and the Winchesters work together to try to find Lucifer while also working with the prophet Donatello on a spell to free Mary and Jack from Apocalypse World. Donatello, without his soul that was taken by Amara, has no natural barrier against the corrupting influence of the tablets, causing him to become corrupted. He attempts to get Dean and Castiel killed when he tells them that they need to summon and kill ancient warriors Gog and Magog and retrieve their hearts as ingredients for the spell. Castiel, realizing there is no other way to safely know the true ingredients for the spell, forcibly extracts the spell from Donatello's mind, leaving him brain-dead and on life support. Sam and Dean are uncomfortable with Castiel's actions, but he tells them that there was no other way.
While the Winchesters search for other ingredients, Castiel searches for fruit of the Tree of Life in Syria. After finding the tree, Castiel fought and killed most of the Djnn clan that was guarding the tree and bargained with the survivors, possibly leaving Castiel married to their queen. Castiel then returns to the Bunker in Scoobynatural, where he is sucked into an episode of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! following the Winchesters.
Castiel attempts to assist Sam in healing a traumatized Gabriel, who is actually alive, after faking his own death and being captured by Asmodeus, who tortured him and extracted his grace for power for years. Asmodeus then tracks Gabriel down and he and his demon underlings enter the Bunker, where they attack the group. Gabriel then regains his confidence and incinerates Asmodeus. Sam and Castiel tell Gabriel about the situation with Apocalypse World and ask for his help, but he refuses and leaves. Castiel then goes to Heaven to ask for help with Gabriel and the Apocalypse World Michael situation, where he is surprised to meet an alive Naomi. Naomi had actually survived Metatron's attack on her, and had spent the last years recovering. She then tells Castiel that due to the fact that there are only a dozen or so angels left alive after the various wars and purges of recent years, Heaven is at risk of falling apart and having the billions of souls residing there sent back to Earth as ghosts, which would cause untold destruction and chaos. She and the surviving angels must stay in Heaven in order to keep it running, although his news about an archangel, Gabriel, being alive gives them hope as his power could help keep Heaven running. Castiel, disturbed by the news and by Naomi being alive, leaves Heaven.
The Winchesters and Castiel, now working with Rowena and Gabriel, capture Lucifer to use his archangel grace for the spell after Gabriel's proves to be insufficient. Rowena then is able to open up a rift to Apocalypse World and Castiel then travels with Dean, Sam and Gabriel into the rift to find Mary and Jack. Castiel informs Gabriel of the situation in Heaven, but Gabriel is reluctant to believe that he can be of help after abandoning Heaven previously. Sam is killed by vampires while traveling to Mary and Jack's camp. The group then arrives at the camp and they inform Jack and Mary of Sam's death. Jack angrily asks Castiel and Gabriel why they did not resurrect Sam, but they inform him that neither of them are strong enough. Lucifer then enters the camp with a resurrected Sam, using him as proof of his good intention to simply try to get to know his son. Castiel distrusts this and handcuffs him, which Lucifer allows.
Arthur Ketch and the alternate universe version of Charlie Bradbury are captured by angels. The alternate universe version of Castiel, who never knew the Winchesters and thus never defected from Heaven is called in as an "expert" to interrogate and torture them. While he still uses the vessel of Jimmy Novak, this version of Castiel speaks with an accent, and has a pronounced facial tic and an eye injury. Meanwhile, the Winchesters, Jack and Castiel are informed of the capture of their allies and work to free them. The two versions of Castiel encounter each other. The alternate Castiel wonders about the other Castiel's allegiance to humans, and tell him that they are the same. Castiel agrees, and kills him. Castiel then works with Jack and the Winchesters to evacuate their alternate universe allies through the rift and back to their original universe. Gabriel is killed fighting Michael during the evacuation, and Lucifer is purposefully left behind by Sam. During the celebrations back at the Bunker, the Winchesters inform Castiel that Gabriel died a noble death helping them all escape.
Michael arrives from Apocalypse World at the Bunker and attacks the Winchesters and Castiel. Sam prays to Jack for help, who quickly arrives at the Bunker with Lucifer and defeats Michael. Jack, after finding out Lucifer murdered Maggie, rejects him, which causes Lucifer to admit he only needs his power, causing him to steal Jack's grace and disappear with him and Sam. Castiel and Dean tell Michael of the situation, who is willing to help them defeat Lucifer but cannot fight him due to the damage to his vessel. Over the protests of Castiel, Dean tells Michael that he is his true vessel and that he will be his vessel and they can defeat Lucifer together if Dean remains in control. Dean then fights and kills Lucifer, but Michael betrays the deal and takes control. Mary and Bobby return to the Bunker to find Castiel, alone and despondent.
### War against Michael
With Dean now trapped as Michael's vessel, Castiel assists Sam and Jack in campaigning against Michael's forces while also trying to assist Nick in coping with his time as Lucifer's vessel. Michael is eventually apparently expelled from Dean, but Jack later dies as a result of his angelic heritage being at war with his human nature now that his grace has been stripped. Castiel is able to make a deal with the entity from the Empty to restore Jack to life in exchange for himself, but the entity chooses not to collect right away. Michael later re-takes Dean as a vessel, but after Castiel and the others enter Dean's mind to alert him to the situation, Dean is able to trap Michael in his own subconscious while he makes plans to trap himself to stop Michael for good.
When the Winchesters unintentionally change history when a wish-granting pearl draws John Winchester of 2003 into the present, this creates a new timeline where Castiel is still a servant of Heaven alongside Zachariah. The Winchesters are able to kill Zachariah and banish Castiel, but eventually are forced to send John back to restore the original history.
Michael is eventually destroyed when Jack taps his remaining powers, but this results in damage to Jack's soul, with the Winchesters and Castiel becoming increasingly concerned about his future sanity. Castiel is later able to restore the prophet Donatello to life, the mental damage he had previously suffered due to his lost soul now limited so long as Donatello reminds himself to be good. Castiel continues to assist the Winchesters, such as trapping psychic Chip Harrington in his own mind when Chip's psychic powers force an entire town to remain stuck in the 1950s. Jack's moral corruption escalates to the point where he kills Mary on impulse; Castiel attempts to retrieve her soul, but decides to leave her in Heaven after he confirms that Mary has reunited with John in the afterlife. When the angel Durmah attempts to establish a more ruthless form of Heaven, Castiel kills her when she tries to use John and Mary's souls as a blackmail tool.
### War against God
God eventually returns to offer the Winchesters help against Jack's corrupted state, but when the Winchesters realize that God is manipulating the situation to suit his own narrative aspirations, they reject his plans, prompting God to release all the spirits and monsters the Winchesters have previously defeated from Hell. The Winchesters are able to defeat the wave of monsters after Rowena sacrifices herself to take the spirits back to Hell, but with his powers weakening and Dean blaming Castiel for Mary's death, Castiel decides to move on, although an encounter with a djinn inspires Castiel to continue trying to help others.
Castiel subsequently returns to the brothers to help them defeat God by grooming a resurrected Jack to become stronger. After the plan fails, and they are chased by Billie, Castiel sacrifices himself by confessing his love and admiration for Dean and allowing himself to be happy. This activates his deal with the Shadow, who drags him and Billie into the Empty.
In "Carry On", Bobby Singer revealed to Dean in heaven that Jack resurrected Castiel from the Empty in order to help reshape heaven.
## Characterization
Castiel typically displays very little emotion and always exhibits an extremely somber disposition. Although it has been suggested angels possibly do not possess the ability to truly feel emotion, Castiel frequently exhibits affection towards Dean. This attachment and growing ability to feel even causes him to be "demoted", as his superiors fear emotions are clouding his judgment. Throughout his appearances in the fourth season, he also seems to, at the very least, come close to expressing regret, hesitance, and anger several times, and has once quietly laughed at a joke Dean made in "It's the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester". Actor Misha Collins feels, through Dean, "[Castiel is] learning a little bit about humanity and re-learning something about [his] own humanity from that exposure. So...there's a humanizing of Castiel going on." Castiel begins having an internal struggle between what is right and what is wrong, and whether or not to obey orders from Heaven. Collins feels this is because interactions with Sam and Dean have made the angel "uncertain" and "more fragile". Collins believes Castiel envies Dean's decisiveness and desires to emulate him.
Having lost his connection to Heaven in the fifth season, Castiel's humanization seems to have quickened by the episode "Free to Be You and Me", as he appears extremely anxious while in a whorehouse, is visibly distraught when asking Dean for help, and refers to the Archangel Raphael as "my little bitch". Despite becoming very arrogant when he becomes the "new God", Castiel still shows his caring side and ultimately returns the souls to Purgatory and shows remorse for his actions, promising to Dean to find a way to redeem himself in Dean's eyes, showing that he cares about how Dean views him. After losing his memory, Castiel is more human than ever, but still displays some of his emotionless side. After his memory returns, he shows real regret when he can't undo the damage he did to Sam and essentially sacrifices himself to save him out of remorse for his actions. After Castiel wakes up from his catatonic state, he is now depicted as insane with tendencies to ramble about random topics. However, parts of Castiel's original personality are still shown with him still being happy to help Sam and Dean out and still knowledgeable about various supernatural things, but not willing to actually fight anymore even when his life is threatened. Castiel describes himself as "bad luck" and doesn't believe he should be around the Winchesters as a result. After traveling to Purgatory, Castiel regained his sanity, but still carries a lot of guilt about his previous actions. He is also now less distant from Sam and Dean and more appreciative of human things such as television.
While Castiel and his peers, contrary to depictions of angels in popular culture, are not out helping people in need, Castiel still has a conscience and cares about the welfare of humanity—creatures whom he believes to be "works of art". Speaking of his character, actor Misha Collins stated, "I think that these angels are at least loosely derived from some Biblical angel stories, and those angels are [very tough]. They just destroy. I picked up Revelations, and they destroy, they destroy, they destroy. There’s no mention of cherubs and harps or any of that."
## Development
The character was created for the fourth season to introduce Christian mythology to the series. Because series creator Eric Kripke wanted to keep the introduction of angels a secret, the character was described as a demon during auditions. Once Collins got the part, the main direction Kripke gave him of the character was there is "an otherworldly quality to the character, and that he hasn't been up close with human beings. He's been watching human beings from a great distance for the last two thousand years, so angels haven't been on Earth mingling with human beings for the last two thousand years. So when [he is] interacting with human beings, there's a naive curiosity about their behavior. It's as if [he is] inspecting some sort of alien beings." The series director Kim Manners also encouraged Collins to play Castiel with an air of "piousness". Kripke based Castiel's appearance on the comic book character John Constantine.
To prepare for the role, Collins read the Book of Revelation. As well, Collins has said he somewhat based his character around his younger brother, who has something "angelic about him", as he "has this way of, very calmly, just staring into someone's eyes" making one feel "like he can get into your soul." To avoid the biblically toned dialogue from sounding too "campy", Collins does his best to "play it as real as possible". Because Castiel's true voice shattered windows in his premiere episode, Collins decided to use a "gruff, resonant voice" for the character. However, when portraying the angel's host Jimmy Novak, he tried to create a distinction between the two characters, providing different physical and personality traits, as well as using a "more boyish kind of sound" for Jimmy's voice.
Speaking of the fifth season and Castiel's more frequent interactions with humans, Collins commented, "Obviously the big joke is that he doesn't understand human beings and how they behave. And there is something inherently funny in that, especially if he's the straight man." The actor noted he was a little hesitant at making the character into "the funny guy", and was apprehensive about some moments in the early episodes of the season. However, he believes the writers have found "the line", allowing for the jokes to be "more subtle" and "a little more believable".
## Reception
Critical response to the character has been extremely favorable. Castiel ranked ninth on TV.com's top ten list of best new supporting characters of 2008. The staff and voters of TelevisionWithoutPity both agreed Castiel was the 2008–2009 Most Welcome New Character on television, and BuddyTV's John Kubicek listed him as one of the ten "TV Characters Who Deserve Their Own Spin-Offs". TV Squad ranked him as the top reason to watch the series, noting the "slightly awkward, frighteningly precise angel... has done an amazing job of selling the underlying menace and vengefulness of God's most heavenly creatures."
Karla Peterson of The San Diego Union-Tribune described the concept of Castiel as "genius" and the actor Collins as "fabulous". Deeming Castiel to be a "fascinating new element", Diana Steenbergen of IGN ranked Castiel fourth in her list of the "Ten Things We Love About Supernatural". She posited that Collins plays the role with "somber intensity", and "brings a sense of curiosity about humans to the character". The angel's interactions with Dean were "one of the highlights of the [fourth] season". She especially praised Collins for his dual role as Castiel and the angel's host Jimmy Novak in the episode "The Rapture", and wrote, "It is a tribute to Collins's acting that the audience knows immediately that the person we are seeing is not Castiel."
Fan response to the character has also been positive. Collins believed that the character would end up being just another role for him, and never expected such a reaction from the fans. According to him, "The enthusiasm that I've been met with is something new and not something I'm really prepared for." The character was originally intended for only a six-episode story arc, but his role was rewritten to continue throughout the rest of the season. Upon Supernatural's renewal for a fifth season, Collins was promoted to a series regular, something he believes to be mainly due to fan support.
|
746 |
Azerbaijan
| 1,173,865,428 |
Country straddling West Asia and Eastern Europe in the Caucusus
|
[
"1991 establishments in Asia",
"1991 establishments in Europe",
"Azerbaijan",
"Caucasus",
"Countries and territories where Azerbaijani is an official language",
"Countries in Asia",
"Countries in Europe",
"Dialogue partners of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation",
"Landlocked countries",
"Member states of the Commonwealth of Independent States",
"Member states of the Council of Europe",
"Member states of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation",
"Member states of the Organization of Turkic States",
"Member states of the United Nations",
"Members of the International Organization of Turkic Culture",
"Republics",
"South Caucasus",
"States and territories established in 1991",
"Transcontinental countries",
"West Asian countries"
] |
Azerbaijan (UK: /ˌæzərbaɪˈdʒɑːn, -ˈdʒæn/ , US: /ˌɑːzərbaɪˈdʒɑːn, ˌæz-/; Azerbaijani: Azərbaycan, ), officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, is a transcontinental country located at the boundary of Eastern Europe and West Asia. It is a part of the South Caucasus region and is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia (Republic of Dagestan) to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia and Turkey to the west, and Iran to the south. Baku is the capital and largest city.
The Azerbaijan Democratic Republic proclaimed its independence from the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic in 1918 and became the first secular democratic Muslim-majority state. In 1920, the country was incorporated into the Soviet Union as the Azerbaijan SSR. The modern Republic of Azerbaijan proclaimed its independence on 30 August 1991, shortly before the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the same year. In September 1991, the ethnic Armenian majority of the Nagorno-Karabakh region formed the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh. The region and seven surrounding districts are internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, pending a solution to the status of Nagorno-Karabakh through negotiations facilitated by the OSCE, although it became de facto independent with the end of the First Nagorno-Karabakh War in 1994. Following the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020, the seven districts and parts of Nagorno-Karabakh were returned to Azerbaijani control.
Azerbaijan is a unitary semi-presidential republic. It is one of six independent Turkic states and an active member of the Organization of Turkic States and the TÜRKSOY community. Azerbaijan has diplomatic relations with 182 countries and holds membership in 38 international organizations, including the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the Non-Aligned Movement, the OSCE, and the NATO PfP program. It is one of the founding members of GUAM, the CIS, and the OPCW. Azerbaijan is also an observer state of the WTO.
The vast majority of the country's population (97%) is nominally Muslim, but the constitution does not declare an official religion and all major political forces in the country are secularist. Azerbaijan is a developing country and ranks 91st on the Human Development Index. It has a high rate of economic development, literacy, and a low rate of unemployment. However, the ruling New Azerbaijan Party, in power since 1993, has been accused of authoritarian leadership under the leadership of both Heydar Aliyev and his son Ilham Aliyev, and deteriorating the country's human rights record, including increasing restrictions on civil liberties, particularly on press freedom and political repression.
## Etymology
According to a modern etymology, the term Azerbaijan derives from that of Atropates, a Persian satrap under the Achaemenid Empire, who was later reinstated as the satrap of Media under Alexander the Great. The original etymology of this name is thought to have its roots in the once-dominant Zoroastrianism. In the Avesta's Frawardin Yasht ("Hymn to the Guardian Angels"), there is a mention of âterepâtahe ashaonô fravashîm ýazamaide, which literally translates from Avestan as "we worship the fravashi of the holy Atropatene". The name "Atropates" itself is the Greek transliteration of an Old Iranian, probably Median, compounded name with the meaning "Protected by the (Holy) Fire" or "The Land of the (Holy) Fire". The Greek name was mentioned by Diodorus Siculus and Strabo. Over the span of millennia, the name evolved to Āturpātākān (Middle Persian), then to Ādharbādhagān, Ādhorbāygān, Āzarbāydjān (New Persian) and present-day Azerbaijan.
The name Azerbaijan was first adopted for the area of the present-day Republic of Azerbaijan by the government of Musavat in 1918, after the collapse of the Russian Empire, when the independent Azerbaijan Democratic Republic was established. Until then, the designation had been used exclusively to identify the adjacent region of contemporary northwestern Iran, while the area of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic was formerly referred to as Arran and Shirvan. On that basis Iran protested the newly adopted country name.
During Soviet rule, the country was also spelled in Latin from the Russian transliteration as Azerbaydzhan (Russian: Азербайджа́н). The country's name was also spelled in Cyrillic script from 1940 to 1991 as Азәрбајҹан.
## History
### Antiquity
The earliest evidence of human settlement in the territory of Azerbaijan dates back to the late Stone Age and is related to the Guruchay culture of Azykh Cave.
Early settlements included the Scythians during the 9th century BC. Following the Scythians, Iranian Medes came to dominate the area to the south of the Aras river. The Medes forged a vast empire between 900 and 700 BC, which was integrated into the Achaemenid Empire around 550 BC. The area was conquered by the Achaemenids leading to the spread of Zoroastrianism.
### From the Sasanid period to the Safavid period
The Sasanian Empire turned Caucasian Albania into a vassal state in 252, while King Urnayr officially adopted Christianity as the state religion in the 4th century. Despite Sassanid rule, Albania remained an entity in the region until the 9th century, while fully subordinate to Sassanid Iran, and retained its monarchy. Despite being one of the chief vassals of the Sasanian emperor, the Albanian king had only a semblance of authority, and the Sasanian marzban (military governor) held most civil, religious, and military authority.
In the first half of the 7th century, Caucasian Albania, as a vassal of the Sasanians, came under nominal Muslim rule due to the Muslim conquest of Persia. The Umayyad Caliphate repulsed both the Sasanians and Byzantines from the South Caucasus and turned Caucasian Albania into a vassal state after Christian resistance led by King Javanshir was suppressed in 667. The power vacuum left by the decline of the Abbasid Caliphate was filled by numerous local dynasties such as the Sallarids, Sajids, and Shaddadids. At the beginning of the 11th century, the territory was gradually seized by the waves of Oghuz Turks from Central Asia, who adopted a Turkoman ethnonym at the time. The first of these Turkic dynasties established was the Seljuk Empire, which entered the area now known as Azerbaijan by 1067.
The pre-Turkic population that lived on the territory of modern Azerbaijan spoke several Indo-European and Caucasian languages, among them Armenian and an Iranian language, Old Azeri, which was gradually replaced by a Turkic language, the early precursor of the Azerbaijani language of today. Some linguists have also stated that the Tati dialects of Iranian Azerbaijan and the Republic of Azerbaijan, like those spoken by the Tats, are descended from Old Azeri. Locally, the possessions of the subsequent Seljuk Empire were ruled by Eldiguzids, technically vassals of the Seljuk sultans, but sometimes de facto rulers themselves. Under the Seljuks, local poets such as Nizami Ganjavi and Khaqani gave rise to a blossoming of Persian literature on the territory of present-day Azerbaijan.
The local dynasty of the Shirvanshahs became a vassal state of Timur's empire and assisted him in his war with the ruler of the Golden Horde Tokhtamysh. Following Timur's death, two independent and rival states emerged: Qara Qoyunlu and Aq Qoyunlu. The Shirvanshahs returned, maintaining for numerous centuries to come a high degree of autonomy as local rulers and vassals as they had done since 861. In 1501, the Safavid dynasty of Iran subdued the Shirvanshahs and gained its possessions. In the course of the next century, the Safavids converted the formerly Sunni population to Shia Islam, as they did with the population in what is modern-day Iran. The Safavids allowed the Shirvanshahs to remain in power, under Safavid suzerainty, until 1538, when Safavid king Tahmasp I (r. 1524–1576) completely deposed them, and made the area into the Safavid province of Shirvan. The Sunni Ottomans briefly managed to occupy present-day Azerbaijan as a result of the Ottoman–Safavid War of 1578–1590; by the early 17th century, they were ousted by Safavid Iranian ruler Abbas I (r. 1588–1629). In the wake of the demise of the Safavid Empire, Baku and its environs were briefly occupied by the Russians as a consequence of the Russo-Persian War of 1722–1723. Remainder of present Azerbaijan was occupied by the Ottomans from 1722 to 1736. Despite brief intermissions such as these by Safavid Iran's neighboring rivals, the land of what is today Azerbaijan remained under Iranian rule from the earliest advent of the Safavids up to the course of the 19th century.
### Modern history
After the Safavids, the area was ruled by the Iranian Afsharid dynasty. After the death of Nader Shah (r. 1736–1747), many of his former subjects capitalized on the eruption of instability. Numerous self-ruling khanates with various forms of autonomy emerged in the area. The rulers of these khanates were directly related to the ruling dynasties of Iran and were vassals and subjects of the Iranian shah. The khanates exercised control over their affairs via international trade routes between Central Asia and the West.
Thereafter, the area was under the successive rule of the Iranian Zands and Qajars. From the late 18th century, Imperial Russia switched to a more aggressive geo-political stance towards its two neighbors and rivals to the south, namely Iran and the Ottoman Empire. Russia now actively tried to gain possession of the Caucasus region which was, for the most part, in the hands of Iran. In 1804, the Russians invaded and sacked the Iranian town of Ganja, sparking the Russo-Persian War of 1804–1813. The militarily superior Russians ended the Russo-Persian War of 1804–1813 with a victory.
Following Qajar Iran's loss in the 1804–1813 war, it was forced to concede suzerainty over most of the khanates, along with Georgia and Dagestan to the Russian Empire, per the Treaty of Gulistan.
The area to the north of the river Aras, amongst which territory lies the contemporary Republic of Azerbaijan, was Iranian territory until Russia occupied it in the 19th century. About a decade later, in violation of the Gulistan treaty, the Russians invaded Iran's Erivan Khanate. This sparked the final bout of hostilities between the two, the Russo-Persian War of 1826–1828. The resulting Treaty of Turkmenchay, forced Qajar Iran to cede sovereignty over the Erivan Khanate, the Nakhchivan Khanate and the remainder of the Talysh Khanate, comprising the last parts of the soil of the contemporary Azerbaijani Republic that were still in Iranian hands. After the incorporation of all Caucasian territories from Iran into Russia, the new border between the two was set at the Aras River, which, upon the Soviet Union's disintegration, subsequently became part of the border between Iran and the Azerbaijan Republic.
Qajar Iran was forced to cede its Caucasian territories to Russia in the 19th century, which thus included the territory of the modern-day Azerbaijan Republic, while as a result of that cession, the Azerbaijani ethnic group is nowadays parted between two nations: Iran and Azerbaijan.
Despite the Russian conquest, throughout the entire 19th century, preoccupation with Iranian culture, literature, and language remained widespread amongst Shia and Sunni intellectuals in the Russian-held cities of Baku, Ganja and Tiflis (Tbilisi, now Georgia). Within the same century, in post-Iranian Russian-held East Caucasia, an Azerbaijani national identity emerged at the end of the 19th century.
After the collapse of the Russian Empire during World War I, the short-lived Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic was declared, constituting the present-day republics of Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia. It was followed by the March Days massacres that took place between 30 March and 2 April 1918 in the city of Baku and adjacent areas of the Baku Governorate of the Russian Empire. When the republic dissolved in May 1918, the leading Musavat party declared independence as the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR), adopting the name of "Azerbaijan" for the new republic; a name that prior to the proclamation of the ADR was solely used to refer to the adjacent northwestern region of contemporary Iran. The ADR was the first modern parliamentary republic in the Muslim world. Among the important accomplishments of the Parliament was the extension of suffrage to women, making Azerbaijan the first Muslim nation to grant women equal political rights with men. Another important accomplishment of ADR was the establishment of Baku State University, which was the first modern-type university founded in the Muslim East.
By March 1920, it was obvious that Soviet Russia would attack Baku. Vladimir Lenin said that the invasion was justified as Soviet Russia could not survive without Baku's oil. Independent Azerbaijan lasted only 23 months until the Bolshevik 11th Soviet Red Army invaded it, establishing the Azerbaijan SSR on 28 April 1920. Although the bulk of the newly formed Azerbaijani army was engaged in putting down an Armenian revolt that had just broken out in Karabakh, Azerbaijanis did not surrender their brief independence of 1918–20 quickly or easily. As many as 20,000 Azerbaijani soldiers died resisting what was effectively a Russian reconquest. Within the ensuing early Soviet period, the Azerbaijani national identity was finally forged.
On 13 October 1921, the Soviet republics of Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia signed an agreement with Turkey known as the Treaty of Kars. The previously independent Republic of Aras would also become the Nakhchivan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic within the Azerbaijan SSR by the treaty of Kars. On the other hand, Armenia was awarded the region of Zangezur and Turkey agreed to return Gyumri (then known as Alexandropol).
During World War II, Azerbaijan played a crucial role in the strategic energy policy of the Soviet Union, with 80 percent of the Soviet Union's oil on the Eastern Front being supplied by Baku. By the Decree of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in February 1942, the commitment of more than 500 workers and employees of the oil industry of Azerbaijan were awarded orders and medals. Operation Edelweiss carried out by the German Wehrmacht targeted Baku because of its importance as the energy (petroleum) dynamo of the USSR. A fifth of all Azerbaijanis fought in the Second World War from 1941 to 1945. Approximately 681,000 people with over 100,000 of them women, went to the front, while the total population of Azerbaijan was 3.4 million at the time. Some 250,000 people from Azerbaijan were killed on the front. More than 130 Azerbaijanis were named Heroes of the Soviet Union. Azerbaijani Major-General Azi Aslanov was twice awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union.
### Independence
Following the politics of glasnost, initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev, civil unrest and ethnic strife grew in various regions of the Soviet Union, including Nagorno-Karabakh, an autonomous region of the Azerbaijan SSR. The disturbances in Azerbaijan, in response to Moscow's indifference to an already heated conflict, resulted in calls for independence and secession, which culminated in the Black January events in Baku. Later in 1990, the Supreme Council of the Azerbaijan SSR dropped the words "Soviet Socialist" from the title, adopted the "Declaration of Sovereignty of the Azerbaijan Republic" and restored the flag of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic as the state flag. As a consequence of the failed 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt in Moscow, the Supreme Council of Azerbaijan adopted a Declaration of Independence on 18 October 1991, which was affirmed by a nationwide referendum in December 1991, while the Soviet Union officially ceased to exist on 26 December 1991. The country now celebrates its Independence Day on 18 October.
The early years of independence were overshadowed by the First Nagorno-Karabakh war with the ethnic Armenian majority of Nagorno-Karabakh backed by Armenia. By the end of the hostilities in 1994, Armenians controlled up to 14–16 percent of Azerbaijani territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh itself. During the war many atrocities and pogroms by both sides were committed including the massacres at Malibeyli and Gushchular, the Garadaghly massacre and the Khojaly massacres, along with the Baku pogrom, the Maraga massacre and the Kirovabad pogrom. Furthermore, an estimated 30,000 people have been killed and more than a million people have been displaced, more than 800,000 Azerbaijanis and 300,000 Armenians. Four United Nations Security Council Resolutions (822, 853, 874, and 884) demand for "the immediate withdrawal of all Armenian forces from all occupied territories of Azerbaijan." Many Russians and Armenians left and fled Azerbaijan as refugees during the 1990s. According to the 1970 census, there were 510,000 ethnic Russians and 484,000 Armenians in Azerbaijan.
### Aliyev family rule, 1993–present
In 1993, democratically elected president Abulfaz Elchibey was overthrown by a military insurrection led by Colonel Surat Huseynov, which resulted in the rise to power of the former leader of Soviet Azerbaijan, Heydar Aliyev. In 1994, Surat Huseynov, by that time the prime minister, attempted another military coup against Heydar Aliyev, but he was arrested and charged with treason. A year later, in 1995, another coup was attempted against Aliyev, this time by the commander of the OMON special unit, Rovshan Javadov. The coup was averted, resulting in the killing of the latter and disbanding of Azerbaijan's OMON units. At the same time, the country was tainted by rampant corruption in the governing bureaucracy. In October 1998, Aliyev was reelected for a second term. Despite the much improved economy, particularly with the exploitation of the Azeri–Chirag–Guneshli oil field and Shah Deniz gas field, Aliyev's presidency was criticized due to suspected election fraud, high levels of economic inequality and domestic corruption.
Ilham Aliyev, Heydar Aliyev's son, became chairman of the New Azerbaijan Party as well as President of Azerbaijan when his father died in 2003. He was reelected to a third term as president in October 2013. In April 2018, President Ilham Aliyev secured his fourth consecutive term in the election that was boycotted by the main opposition parties as fraudulent. On 27 September 2020, new clashes in the unresolved Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resumed along the Nagorno-Karabakh Line of Contact. Both the armed forces of Azerbaijan and Armenia reported military and civilian casualties. The Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire agreement and the end of the six-week war between Azerbaijan and Armenia was widely celebrated in Azerbaijan, as they made significant territorial gains.
## Geography
Geographically, Azerbaijan is located in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia, straddling Western Asia and Eastern Europe. It lies between latitudes 38° and 42° N, and longitudes 44° and 51° E. The total length of Azerbaijan's land borders is 2,648 km (1,645 mi), of which 1,007 km (626 mi) are with Armenia, 756 km (470 mi) with Iran, 480 kilometers with Georgia, 390 km (242 mi) with Russia and 15 km (9 mi) with Turkey. The coastline stretches for 800 km (497 mi), and the length of the widest area of the Azerbaijani section of the Caspian Sea is 456 km (283 mi). The country has a landlocked exclave, the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic.
Three physical features dominate Azerbaijan: the Caspian Sea, whose shoreline forms a natural boundary to the east; the Greater Caucasus mountain range to the north; and the extensive flatlands at the country's center. There are also three mountain ranges, the Greater and Lesser Caucasus, and the Talysh Mountains, together covering approximately 40% of the country. The highest peak of Azerbaijan is Mount Bazardüzü 4,466 m (14,652 ft) , while the lowest point lies in the Caspian Sea −28 m (−92 ft) . Nearly half of all the mud volcanoes on Earth are concentrated in Azerbaijan, these volcanoes were also among nominees for the New 7 Wonders of Nature.
The main water sources are surface waters. Only 24 of the 8,350 rivers are greater than 100 km (62 mi) in length. All the rivers drain into the Caspian Sea in the east of the country. The largest lake is Sarysu 67 km<sup>2</sup> (26 sq mi) , and the longest river is Kur 1,515 km (941 mi), which is transboundary with Armenia. Azerbaijan has several islands along the Caspian sea, mostly located in the Baku Archipelago.
Since the independence of Azerbaijan in 1991, the Azerbaijani government has taken measures to preserve the environment of Azerbaijan. National protection of the environment accelerated after 2001 when the state budget increased due to new revenues provided by the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline. Within four years, protected areas doubled and now make up eight percent of the country's territory. Since 2001 the government has set up seven large reserves and almost doubled the sector of the budget earmarked for environmental protection.
### Landscape
Azerbaijan is home to a wide variety of landscapes. Over half of Azerbaijan's landmass consists of mountain ridges, crests, highlands, and plateaus which rise up to hypsometric levels of 400–1000 meters (including the Middle and Lower lowlands), in some places (Talis, Jeyranchol-Ajinohur and Langabiz-Alat foreranges) up to 100–120 meters, and others from 0–50 meters and up (Qobustan, Absheron). The rest of Azerbaijan's terrain consists of plains and lowlands. Hypsometric marks within the Caucasus region vary from about −28 meters at the Caspian Sea shoreline up to 4,466 meters (Bazardüzü peak).
The formation of climate in Azerbaijan is influenced particularly by cold arctic air masses of Scandinavian anticyclone, temperate air masses of Siberian anticyclone, and Central Asian anticyclone. Azerbaijan's diverse landscape affects the ways air masses enter the country. The Greater Caucasus protects the country from direct influences of cold air masses coming from the north. That leads to the formation of subtropical climate on most foothills and plains of the country. Meanwhile, plains and foothills are characterized by high solar radiation rates.
Nine out of eleven existing climate zones are present in Azerbaijan. Both the absolute minimum temperature (−33 °C or −27.4 °F ) and the absolute maximum temperature were observed in Julfa and Ordubad – regions of Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic. The maximum annual precipitation falls in Lankaran (1,600 to 1,800 mm or 63 to 71 in) and the minimum in Absheron (200 to 350 mm or 7.9 to 13.8 in).
Rivers and lakes form the principal part of the water systems of Azerbaijan, they were formed over a long geological timeframe and changed significantly throughout that period. This is particularly evidenced by remnants of ancient rivers found throughout the country. The country's water systems are continually changing under the influence of natural forces and human-introduced industrial activities. Artificial rivers (canals) and ponds are a part of Azerbaijan's water systems. In terms of water supply, Azerbaijan is below the average in the world with approximately 100,000 cubic metres (3,531,467 cubic feet) per year of water per square kilometer. All big water reservoirs are built on Kur. The hydrography of Azerbaijan basically belongs to the Caspian Sea basin.
The Kura and Aras are the major rivers in Azerbaijan. They run through the Kura-Aras Lowland. The rivers that directly flow into the Caspian Sea, originate mainly from the north-eastern slope of the Major Caucasus and Talysh Mountains and run along the Samur–Devechi and Lankaran lowlands.
Yanar Dag, translated as "burning mountain", is a natural gas fire which blazes continuously on a hillside on the Absheron Peninsula on the Caspian Sea near Baku, which itself is known as the "land of fire." Flames jet out into the air from a thin, porous sandstone layer. It is a tourist attraction to visitors to the Baku area.
### Biodiversity
The first reports on the richness and diversity of animal life in Azerbaijan can be found in travel notes of Eastern travelers. Animal carvings on architectural monuments, ancient rocks, and stones survived up to the present times. The first information on flora and fauna of Azerbaijan was collected during the visits of naturalists to Azerbaijan in the 17th century.
There are 106 species of mammals, 97 species of fish, 363 species of birds, 10 species of amphibians, and 52 species of reptiles which have been recorded and classified in Azerbaijan. The national animal of Azerbaijan is the Karabakh horse, a mountain-steppe racing and riding horse endemic to Azerbaijan. The Karabakh horse has a reputation for its good temper, speed, elegance, and intelligence. It is one of the oldest breeds, with ancestry dating to the ancient world, but today the horse is an endangered species.
Azerbaijan's flora consists of more than 4,500 species of higher plants. Due to the unique climate in Azerbaijan, the flora is much richer in the number of species than the flora of the other republics of the South Caucasus. 66 percent of the species growing in the whole Caucasus can be found in Azerbaijan. The country lies within four ecoregions: Caspian Hyrcanian mixed forests, Caucasus mixed forests, Eastern Anatolian montane steppe, and Azerbaijan shrub desert and steppe. Azerbaijan had a 2018 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 6.55/10, ranking it 72nd globally out of 172 countries.
## Government and politics
The structural formation of Azerbaijan's political system was completed by the adoption of the new Constitution on 12 November 1995. According to Article 23 of the Constitution, the state symbols of the Azerbaijan Republic are the flag, the coat of arms, and the national anthem. The state power in Azerbaijan is limited only by law for internal issues, but international affairs are also limited by international agreements' provisions.
The Constitution of Azerbaijan states that it is a presidential republic with three branches of power – Executive, Legislative, and Judicial. The legislative power is held by the unicameral National Assembly and the Supreme National Assembly in the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic. The Parliament of Azerbaijan, called Milli Majlis, consists of 125 deputies elected based on majority vote, with a term of five years for each elected member. The elections are held every five years, on the first Sunday of November. The Parliament is not responsible for the formation of the government, but the Constitution requires the approval of the Cabinet of Ministers by Milli Majlis. The New Azerbaijan Party, and independents loyal to the ruling government, currently hold almost all of the Parliament's 125 seats. During the 2010 Parliamentary election, the opposition parties, Musavat and Azerbaijani Popular Front Party, failed to win a single seat. European observers found numerous irregularities in the run-up to the election and on election day.
The executive power is held by the President, who is elected for a seven-year term by direct elections, and the Prime Minister. The president is authorized to form the Cabinet, a collective executive body accountable to both the President and the National Assembly. The Cabinet of Azerbaijan consists primarily of the prime minister, his deputies, and ministers. The 8th Government of Azerbaijan is the administration in its current formation. The president does not have the right to dissolve the National Assembly but has the right to veto its decisions. To override the presidential veto, the parliament must have a majority of 95 votes. The judicial power is vested in the Constitutional Court, Supreme Court, and the Economic Court. The president nominates the judges in these courts. The European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ) report refers to the Azerbaijani justice model on the selection of new judges as best practice, reflecting the particular features and the course of development towards ensuring the independence and quality of the judiciary in a new democracy.
Azerbaijan's system of governance nominally can be called two-tiered. The top or highest tier of the government is the Executive Power headed by President. The President appoints the Cabinet of Ministers and other high-ranking officials. The Local Executive Authority is merely a continuation of Executive Power. The Provision determines the legal status of local state administration in Azerbaijan on Local Executive Authority (Yerli Icra Hakimiyati), adopted 16 June 1999. In June 2012, the President approved the new Regulation, which granted additional powers to Local Executive Authorities, strengthening their dominant position in Azerbaijan's local affairs Chapter 9 of the Constitution of the Azerbaijan Republic addresses major issues of local self-government, such as the legal status of municipalities, types of local self-government bodies, their basic powers and relationships to other official entities. The other nominal tier of governance is municipalities (Bələdiyə), and members of municipalities are elected by a general vote in Municipal elections every five years. Currently, there are 1,607 municipalities across the country. The Law on Municipal Elections and the Law on the Status of Municipalities were the first to be adopted in the field of local government (2 July 1999). The Law on Municipal Service regulates the activities of municipal employees, their rights, duties, labor conditions, and social benefits and outlines the structure of the executive apparatus and the organization of municipal service. The Law on the Status of Municipalities regulates the role and structure of municipal bodies and outlines state guarantees of legal and financial autonomy. The law pays special attention to the adoption and execution of municipal programs concerning social protection, social and economic development, and the local environment.
The Security Council is the deliberative body under the president, and he organizes it according to the Constitution. It was established on 10 April 1997. The administrative department is not a part of the president's office but manages the financial, technical and pecuniary activities of both the president and his office.
Azerbaijan's political system has been defined by some political scientists as authoritarian, due to the long-lasting influence of the Aliyev political family and the New Azerbaijan Party (Yeni Azərbaycan Partiyası, YAP) established by Heydar Aliyev. The country's third President, Heydar Aliyev (in office between 1993 and 2003; he was previously the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan between 1969 and 1982, and First Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union between 1982 and 1987) was succeeded by his son, the fourth and current President Ilham Aliyev, in 2003. Although Azerbaijan has held numerous elections since regaining its independence and has many of the formal institutions of a democracy, it remains categorised as "not free" by Freedom House, who ranked it 9/100 on Global Freedom Score in 2022, calling it a "consolidated authoritarian regime". In recent years, large numbers of Azerbaijani journalists, bloggers, lawyers, and human rights activists have been rounded up and jailed for their criticism of President Aliyev and government authorities. A resolution adopted by the European Parliament in September 2015 described Azerbaijan as "having suffered the greatest decline in democratic governance in all of Eurasia over the past ten years," noting as well that its dialogue with the country on human rights has "not made any substantial progress." On 17 March 2016, the President of Azerbaijan signed a decree pardoning more than a dozen of the persons regarded as political prisoners by some NGOs. This decree was welcomed as a positive step by the US State Department. On 16 March 2017 another pardon decree was signed, which led to the release of additional persons regarded as political prisoners.
Azerbaijan has been harshly criticized for bribing foreign officials and diplomats to promote its causes abroad and legitimize its elections at home, a practice termed caviar diplomacy. However, on 6 March 2017, the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center ESISC) published a report called "The Armenian Connection", in which it attacked human rights NGOs and research organisations criticising human rights violations and corruption in Azerbaijan. ESISC in that report asserted that the "Caviar Diplomacy" report elaborated by ESI aimed to create a climate of suspicion based on slander to form a network of MPs that would engage in a political war against Azerbaijan and that the network, composed of European PMs, Armenian officials, and some NGOs (Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, "Human Rights House Foundation", "Open Dialog, European Stability Initiative, and Helsinki Committee for Human Rights) was financed by the Soros Foundation. According to Robert Coalson (Radio Free Europe), ESISC is a part of Baku's lobbying efforts to extend the use of front think tanks to shift public opinion. Freedom Files Analytical Centre said that "The report is written in the worst traditions of authoritarian propaganda".
### Foreign relations
The short-lived Azerbaijan Democratic Republic succeeded in establishing diplomatic relations with six countries, sending diplomatic representatives to Germany and Finland. The process of international recognition of Azerbaijan's independence from the collapsing Soviet Union lasted roughly one year. The most recent country to recognize Azerbaijan was Bahrain, on 6 November 1996. Full diplomatic relations, including mutual exchanges of missions, were first established with Turkey, Pakistan, the United States, Iran and Israel. Azerbaijan has placed a particular emphasis on its "special relationship" with Turkey.
Azerbaijan has diplomatic relations with 158 countries so far and holds membership in 38 international organizations. It holds observer status in the Non-Aligned Movement and World Trade Organization and is a correspondent at the International Telecommunication Union.
On 9 May 2006 Azerbaijan was elected to membership in the newly established Human Rights Council by the United Nations General Assembly. The term of office began on 19 June 2006. Azerbaijan was first elected as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council in 2011 with the support of 155 countries.
Foreign policy priorities of Azerbaijan include, first of all, the restoration of its territorial integrity; elimination of the consequences of occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh and seven other regions of Azerbaijan surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh; integration into European and Euro-Atlantic structure; contribution to international security; cooperation with international organizations; regional cooperation and bilateral relations; strengthening of defense capability; promotion of security by domestic policy means; strengthening of democracy; preservation of ethnic and religious tolerance; scientific, educational, and cultural policy and preservation of moral values; economic and social development; enhancing internal and border security; and migration, energy, and transportation security policy.
Azerbaijan is an active member of international coalitions fighting international terrorism, and was one of the first countries to offer support after the September 11 attacks.
The country is an active member of NATO's Partnership for Peace program, contributing to peacekeeping efforts in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Azerbaijan is also a member of the Council of Europe since 2001 and maintains good relations with the European Union. The country may eventually apply for EU membership.
On 1 July 2021, the US Congress advanced legislation that will have an impact on the military aid that Washington has sent to Azerbaijan since 2012. This was due to the fact that the packages to Armenia, instead, are significantly smaller.
### Military
The history of the modern Azerbaijan army dates back to Azerbaijan Democratic Republic in 1918 when the National Army of the newly formed Azerbaijan Democratic Republic was created on 26 June 1918. When Azerbaijan gained independence after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Armed Forces of the Republic of Azerbaijan were created according to the Law on the Armed Forces of 9 October 1991. The original date of the establishment of the short-lived National Army is celebrated as Army Day (26 June) in today's Azerbaijan. As of 2021, Azerbaijan had 126,000 active personnel in its armed forces. There are also 17,000 paramilitary troops and 330,00 reserve personnel. The armed forces have three branches: the Land Forces, the Air Forces and the Navy. Additionally the armed forces embrace several military sub-groups that can be involved in state defense when needed. These are the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the State Border Service, which includes the Coast Guard as well. The Azerbaijan National Guard is a further paramilitary force. It operates as a semi-independent entity of the Special State Protection Service, an agency subordinate to the President.
Azerbaijan adheres to the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe and has signed all major international arms and weapons treaties. Azerbaijan closely cooperates with NATO in programs such as Partnership for Peace and Individual Partnership Action Plan/pfp and ipa. Azerbaijan has deployed 151 of its Peacekeeping Forces in Iraq and another 184 in Afghanistan.
Azerbaijan spent \$2.24 billion on its defence budget as of 2020, which amounted to 5.4% of its total GDP, and some 12.7% of general government expenditure. Azerbaijani defense industry manufactures small arms, artillery systems, tanks, armors and night vision devices, aviation bombs, UAV'S/unmanned aerial vehicle, various military vehicles and military planes and helicopters.
### Administrative divisions
Azerbaijan is administratively divided into 14 economic regions; 66 rayons (rayonlar, singular rayon) and 11 cities (şəhərlər, singular şəhər) under the direct authority of the republic. Moreover, Azerbaijan includes the Autonomous Republic (muxtar respublika) of Nakhchivan. The President of Azerbaijan appoints the governors of these units, while the government of Nakhchivan is elected and approved by the parliament of Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic.
## Economy
After gaining independence in 1991, Azerbaijan became a member of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Islamic Development Bank, and the Asian Development Bank. The banking system of Azerbaijan consists of the Central Bank of Azerbaijan, commercial banks, and non-banking credit organizations. The National (now Central) Bank was created in 1992 based on the Azerbaijan State Savings Bank, an affiliate of the former State Savings Bank of the USSR. The Central Bank serves as Azerbaijan's central bank, empowered to issue the national currency, the Azerbaijani manat, and to supervise all commercial banks. Two major commercial banks are UniBank and the state-owned International Bank of Azerbaijan, run by Abbas Ibrahimov.
Pushed up by spending and demand growth, the 2007 Q1 inflation rate reached 16.6%. Nominal incomes and monthly wages climbed 29% and 25% respectively against this figure, but price increases in the non-oil industry encouraged inflation. Azerbaijan shows some signs of the so-called "Dutch disease" because of its fast-growing energy sector, which causes inflation and makes non-energy exports more expensive.
In the early 2000s, chronically high inflation was brought under control. This led to the launch of a new currency, the new Azerbaijani manat, on 1 January 2006, to cement the economic reforms and erase the vestiges of an unstable economy. Azerbaijan is also ranked 57th in the Global Competitiveness Report for 2010–2011, above other CIS countries. By 2012 the GDP of Azerbaijan had increased 20-fold from its 1995 level.
### Energy and natural resources
Two-thirds of Azerbaijan is rich in oil and natural gas. The history of the oil industry of Azerbaijan dates back to the ancient period. Arabian historian and traveler Ahmad Al-Baladhuri discussed the economy of the Absheron peninsula in antiquity, mentioning its oil in particular. There are many pipelines in Azerbaijan. The goal of the Southern Gas Corridor, which connects the giant Shah Deniz gas field in Azerbaijan to Europe, is to reduce European Union's dependency on Russian gas.
The region of the Lesser Caucasus accounts for most of the country's gold, silver, iron, copper, titanium, chromium, manganese, cobalt, molybdenum, complex ore and antimony. In September 1994, a 30-year contract was signed between the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) and 13 oil companies, among them Amoco, BP, ExxonMobil, Lukoil and Equinor. As Western oil companies are able to tap deepwater oilfields untouched by the Soviet exploitation, Azerbaijan is considered one of the most important spots in the world for oil exploration and development. Meanwhile, the State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan was established as an extra-budgetary fund to ensure macroeconomic stability, transparency in the management of oil revenue, and safeguarding of resources for future generations.
Access to biocapacity in Azerbaijan is less than world average. In 2016, Azerbaijan had 0.8 global hectares of biocapacity per person within its territory, half the world average of 1.6 global hectares per person. In 2016 Azerbaijan used 2.1 global hectares of biocapacity per person – their ecological footprint of consumption. This means they use more biocapacity than Azerbaijan contains. As a result, Azerbaijan is running a biocapacity deficit.
Azeriqaz, a sub-company of SOCAR, intends to ensure full gasification of the country by 2021. Azerbaijan is one of the sponsors of the east–west and north–south energy transport corridors. Baku–Tbilisi–Kars railway line will connect the Caspian region with Turkey, which is expected to be completed in July 2017. The Trans-Anatolian gas pipeline (TANAP) and Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) will deliver natural gas from Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz gas to Turkey and Europe.
Azerbaijan extended the agreement on development of ACG until 2050 according to the amended PSA signed on 14 September 2017 by SOCAR and co-ventures (BP, Chevron, Inpex, Equinor, ExxonMobil, TP, ITOCHU and ONGC Videsh).
### Agriculture
Azerbaijan has the largest agricultural basin in the region. About 54.9 percent of Azerbaijan is agricultural land. At the beginning of 2007 there were 4,755,100 hectares of utilized agricultural area. In the same year the total wood resources counted 136 million m<sup>3</sup>. Azerbaijan's agricultural scientific research institutes are focused on meadows and pastures, horticulture and subtropical crops, green vegetables, viticulture and wine-making, cotton growing and medicinal plants. In some areas it is profitable to grow grain, potatoes, sugar beets, cotton and tobacco. Livestock, dairy products, and wine and spirits are also important farm products. The Caspian fishing industry concentrates on the dwindling stocks of sturgeon and beluga. In 2002 the Azerbaijani merchant marine had 54 ships.
Some products previously imported from abroad have begun to be produced locally. Among them are Coca-Cola by Coca-Cola Bottlers LTD., beer by Baki-Kastel, parquet by Nehir and oil pipes by EUPEC Pipe Coating Azerbaijan.
### Tourism
Tourism is an important part of the economy of Azerbaijan. The country was a well-known tourist spot in the 1980s. The fall of the Soviet Union, and the First Nagorno-Karabakh War during the 1990s, damaged the tourist industry and the image of Azerbaijan as a tourist destination.
It was not until the 2000s that the tourism industry began to recover, and the country has since experienced a high rate of growth in the number of tourist visits and overnight stays.
In recent years, Azerbaijan has also become a popular destination for religious, spa, and health care tourism. During winter, the Shahdag Mountain Resort offers skiing with state of the art facilities.
The government of Azerbaijan has set the development of Azerbaijan as an elite tourist destination as a top priority. It is a national strategy to make tourism a major, if not the single largest, contributor to the Azerbaijani economy. These activities are regulated by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Azerbaijan.
There are 63 countries which have a visa-free score. E-visa – for a visit of foreigners of visa-required countries to the Republic of Azerbaijan.
According to the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report 2015 of the World Economic Forum, Azerbaijan holds 84th place.
According to a report by the World Travel and Tourism Council, Azerbaijan was among the top ten countries showing the strongest growth in visitor exports between 2010 and 2016, In addition, Azerbaijan placed first (46.1%) among countries with the fastest-developing travel and tourism economies, with strong indicators for inbound international visitor spending last year.
### Transportation
The convenient location of Azerbaijan on the crossroad of major international traffic arteries, such as the Silk Road and the south–north corridor, highlights the strategic importance of the transportation sector for the country's economy. The transport sector in the country includes roads, railways, aviation, and maritime transport.
Azerbaijan is also an important economic hub in the transportation of raw materials. The Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline (BTC) became operational in May 2006 and extends more than 1,774 km (1,102 mi) through the territories of Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey. The BTC is designed to transport up to 50 million tons of crude oil annually and carries oil from the Caspian Sea oilfields to global markets. The South Caucasus Pipeline, also stretching through the territory of Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey, became operational at the end of 2006 and offers additional gas supplies to the European market from the Shah Deniz gas field. Shah Deniz is expected to produce up to 296 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year. Azerbaijan also plays a major role in the EU-sponsored Silk Road Project.
In 2002, the Azerbaijani government established the Ministry of Transport with a broad range of policy and regulatory functions. In the same year, the country became a member of the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic. Priorities are upgrading the transport network and improving transportation services to better facilitate the development of other sectors of the economy.
The 2012 construction of Kars–Tbilisi–Baku railway was meant to improve transportation between Asia and Europe by connecting the railways of China and Kazakhstan in the east to the European railway system in the west via Turkey. In 2010 Broad-gauge railways and electrified railways stretched for 2,918 km (1,813 mi) and 1,278 km (794 mi) respectively. By 2010, there were 35 airports and one heliport.
### Science and technology
In the 21st century, a new oil and gas boom helped improve the situation in Azerbaijan's science and technology sectors. The government launched a campaign aimed at modernization and innovation. The government estimates that profits from the information technology and communication industry will grow and become comparable to those from oil production.
Azerbaijan has a large and steadily growing Internet sector, mostly uninfluenced by the financial crisis of 2007–2008; rapid growth is forecast for at least five more years. Azerbaijan was ranked 80th in the Global Innovation Index in 2021, up from 84th in 2019.
The country has also been making progress in developing its telecoms sector. The Ministry of Communications & Information Technologies (MCIT) and an operator through its role in Aztelekom are both policy-makers and regulators. Public payphones are available for local calls and require the purchase of a token from the telephone exchange or some shops and kiosks. Tokens allow a call of indefinite duration. As of 2009, there were 1,397,000 main telephone lines and 1,485,000 internet users. There are four GSM providers: Azercell, Bakcell<sup> [az]</sup>, Azerfon (Nar Mobile), Nakhtel mobile network operators and one CDMA.
In the 21st century a number of prominent Azerbaijani geodynamics and geotectonics scientists, inspired by the fundamental works of Elchin Khalilov and others, designed hundreds of earthquake prediction stations and earthquake-resistant buildings that now constitute the bulk of The Republican Center of Seismic Service.
The Azerbaijan National Aerospace Agency launched its first satellite AzerSat 1 into orbit on 7 February 2013 from Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana at orbital positions 46° East. The satellite covers Europe and a significant part of Asia and Africa and serves the transmission of TV and radio broadcasting as well as the Internet. The launching of a satellite into orbit is Azerbaijan's first step in realizing its goal of becoming a nation with its own space industry, capable of successfully implementing more projects in the future.
## Demographics
As of March 2022, 52.9% of Azerbaijan's total population of 10,164,464 is urban, with the remaining 47.1% being rural. In January 2019, the 50.1% of the total population was female. The sex ratio in the same year was 0.99 males per female.
The 2011 population growth-rate was 0.85%, compared to 1.09% worldwide. A significant factor restricting population growth is a high level of migration. In 2011 Azerbaijan saw a migration of −1.14/1,000 people.
The Azerbaijani diaspora is found in 42 countries and in turn there are many centers for ethnic minorities inside Azerbaijan, including the German cultural society "Karelhaus", Slavic cultural center, Azerbaijani-Israeli community, Kurdish cultural center, International Talysh Association, Lezgin national center "Samur", Azerbaijani-Tatar community, Crimean Tatars society, etc.
In total, Azerbaijan has 78 cities, 63 city districts, and one special legal status city. 261 urban-type settlements and 4248 villages follow these.
### Ethnicity
The ethnic composition of the population according to the 2009 population census: 91.6% Azerbaijanis, 2.0% Lezgins, 1.4% Armenians (almost all Armenians live in the break-away region of Nagorno-Karabakh), 1.3% Russians, 1.3% Talysh, 0.6% Avars, 0.4% Turks, 0.3% Tatars, 0.3% Tats, 0.2% Ukrainians, 0.1% Tsakhurs, 0.1% Georgians, 0.1% Jews, 0.1% Kurds, other 0.2%.
### Languages
The official language is Azerbaijani, which is a Turkic language. Azerbaijani is spoken by approximately 92% of the population as a mother tongue. Russian and Armenian (only in Nagorno-Karabakh) are also spoken, and each are the mother tongue of around 1.5% of the population respectively. There are a dozen other minority languages spoken natively in the country. Avar, Budukh, Georgian, Juhuri, Khinalug, Kryts, Lezgin, Rutul, Talysh, Tat, Tsakhur, and Udi are all spoken by small minorities. Some of these language communities are very small and their numbers are decreasing. Armenian was the majority language in Nagorno-Karabakh with around 76% in 1989. After the first Nagorno-Karabakh war, the population is almost exclusively Armenian at around 95%.
### Religion
Azerbaijan is considered the most secular Muslim-majority country. Around 97% of the population are Muslims. Around 55–85% of Muslims are estimated to be Shia, while 15–45% of Muslims are Sunnis. Other faiths are practised by the country's various ethnic groups. Under article 48 of its Constitution, Azerbaijan is a secular state and ensures religious freedom. In a 2006–2008 Gallup poll, only 21% of respondents from Azerbaijan stated that religion is an important part of their daily lives.
Of the nation's religious minorities, the estimated 280,000 Christians (3.1%) are mostly Russian and Georgian Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic (almost all Armenians live in the break-away region of Nagorno-Karabakh). In 2003, there were 250 Roman Catholics. Other Christian denominations as of 2002 include Lutherans, Baptists and Molokans. There is also a small Protestant community. Azerbaijan also has an ancient Jewish population with a 2,000-year history; Jewish organizations estimate that 12,000 Jews remain in Azerbaijan, which is home to the only Jewish-majority town outside of Israel and the United States. Azerbaijan also is home to members of the Baháʼí, Hare Krishna and Jehovah's Witnesses communities, as well as adherents of the other religious communities. Some religious communities have been unofficially restricted from religious freedom. A U.S. State Department report on the matter mentions detention of members of certain Muslim and Christian groups, and many groups have difficulty registering with the agency who regulates religion, The State Committee on Religious Associations of the Republic of Azerbaijan (SCWRA).
### Education
A relatively high percentage of Azerbaijanis have obtained some form of higher education, most notably in scientific and technical subjects. In the Soviet era, literacy and average education levels rose dramatically from their very low starting point, despite two changes in the standard alphabet, from Perso-Arabic script to Latin in the 1920s and from Roman to Cyrillic in the 1930s. According to Soviet data, 100 percent of males and females (ages nine to forty-nine) were literate in 1970. According to the United Nations Development Program Report 2009, the literacy rate in Azerbaijan is 99.5 percent.
Since independence, one of the first laws that Azerbaijan's Parliament passed to disassociate itself from the Soviet Union was to adopt a modified-Latin alphabet to replace Cyrillic. Other than that the Azerbaijani system has undergone little structural change. Initial alterations have included the reestablishment of religious education (banned during the Soviet period) and curriculum changes that have reemphasized the use of the Azerbaijani language and have eliminated ideological content. In addition to elementary schools, the education institutions include thousands of preschools, general secondary schools, and vocational schools, including specialized secondary schools and technical schools. Education through the ninth grade is compulsory.
## Culture
The culture of Azerbaijan has developed as a result of many influences; that's why Azerbaijanis are, in many ways, bi-cultural. Today, national traditions are well preserved in the country despite Western influences, including globalized consumer culture. Some of the main elements of the Azerbaijani culture are: music, literature, folk dances and art, cuisine, architecture, cinematography and Novruz Bayram. The latter is derived from the traditional celebration of the New Year in the ancient Iranian religion of Zoroastrianism. Novruz is a family holiday.
The profile of Azerbaijan's population consists, as stated above, of Azerbaijanis, as well as other nationalities or ethnic groups, compactly living in various areas of the country. Azerbaijani national and traditional dresses are the Chokha and Papakhi. There are radio broadcasts in Russian, Georgian, Kurdish, Lezgian and Talysh languages, which are financed from the state budget. Some local radio stations in Balakan and Khachmaz organize broadcasts in Avar and Tat. In Baku several newspapers are published in Russian, Kurdish (Dengi Kurd), Lezgian (Samur) and Talysh languages. Jewish society "Sokhnut" publishes the newspaper Aziz.
### Music and folk dances
Music of Azerbaijan builds on folk traditions that reach back nearly a thousand years. For centuries Azerbaijani music has evolved under the badge of monody, producing rhythmically diverse melodies. Azerbaijani music has a branchy mode system, where chromatization of major and minor scales is of great importance. Among national musical instruments there are 14 string instruments, eight percussion instruments and six wind instruments. According to The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "in terms of ethnicity, culture and religion the Azerbaijani are musically much closer to Iran than Turkey."
Mugham, meykhana and ashiq art are among the many musical traditions of Azerbaijan. Mugham is usually a suite with poetry and instrumental interludes. When performing mugham, the singers have to transform their emotions into singing and music. In contrast to the mugham traditions of Central Asian countries, Azerbaijani mugham is more free-form and less rigid; it is often compared to the improvised field of jazz. UNESCO proclaimed the Azerbaijani mugham tradition a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity on 7 November 2003. Meykhana is a kind of traditional Azerbaijani distinctive folk unaccompanied song, usually performed by several people improvising on a particular subject.
Ashiq combines poetry, storytelling, dance, and vocal and instrumental music into a traditional performance art that stands as a symbol of Azerbaijani culture. It is a mystic troubadour or traveling bard who sings and plays the saz. This tradition has its origin in the Shamanistic beliefs of ancient Turkic peoples. Ashiqs' songs are semi-improvised around common bases. Azerbaijan's ashiq art was included in the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage by the UNESCO on 30 September 2009.
Since the mid-1960s, Western-influenced Azerbaijani pop music, in its various forms, that has been growing in popularity in Azerbaijan, while genres such as rock and hip hop are widely produced and enjoyed. Azerbaijani pop and Azerbaijani folk music arose with the international popularity of performers like Alim Qasimov, Rashid Behbudov, Vagif Mustafazadeh, Muslim Magomayev, Shovkat Alakbarova and Rubaba Muradova. Azerbaijan is an enthusiastic participant in the Eurovision Song Contest. Azerbaijan made its debut appearance at the 2008 Eurovision Song Contest. The country's entry gained third place in 2009 and fifth the following year. Ell and Nikki won the first place at the Eurovision Song Contest 2011 with the song "Running Scared", entitling Azerbaijan to host the contest in 2012, in Baku. They have qualified for every Grand Final up until the 2018 edition of the contest, entering with X My Heart by singer Aisel.
There are dozens of Azerbaijani folk dances. They are performed at formal celebrations and the dancers wear national clothes like the Chokha, which is well-preserved within the national dances. Most dances have a very fast rhythm.
### Literature
Among the medieval authors born within the territorial limits of modern Azerbaijani Republic was Persian poet and philosopher Nizami, called Ganjavi after his place of birth, Ganja, who was the author of the Khamsa ("The Quintuplet"), composed of five romantic poems, including "The Treasure of Mysteries", "Khosrow and Shīrīn", and "Leyli and Mejnūn".
The earliest known figure in written Azerbaijani literature was Izzeddin Hasanoghlu, who composed a divan consisting of Persian and Azerbaijani ghazals. In Persian ghazals he used his pen-name, while his Azerbaijani ghazals were composed under his own name of Hasanoghlu.
Classical literature in Azerbaijani was formed in the 14th century based on the various Early Middle Ages dialects of Tabriz and Shirvan. Among the poets of this period were Gazi Burhanaddin, Haqiqi (pen-name of Jahan Shah Qara Qoyunlu), and Habibi. The end of the 14th century was also the period of starting literary activity of Imadaddin Nasimi, one of the greatest Azerbaijani Hurufi mystical poets of the late 14th and early 15th centuries and one of the most prominent early divan masters in Turkic literary history, who also composed poetry in Persian and Arabic. The divan and ghazal styles were further developed by poets Qasem-e Anvar, Fuzuli and Khatai (pen-name of Safavid Shah Ismail I).
The Book of Dede Korkut consists of two manuscripts copied in the 16th century, and was not written earlier than the 15th century. It is a collection of 12 stories reflecting the oral tradition of Oghuz nomads. The 16th-century poet, Muhammed Fuzuli produced his timeless philosophical and lyrical Qazals in Arabic, Persian, and Azerbaijani. Benefiting immensely from the fine literary traditions of his environment, and building upon the legacy of his predecessors, Fuzuli was destined to become the leading literary figure of his society. His major works include The Divan of Ghazals and The Qasidas. In the same century, Azerbaijani literature further flourished with the development of Ashik (Azerbaijani: Aşıq) poetic genre of bards. During the same period, under the pen-name of Khatāī (Arabic: خطائی for sinner) Shah Ismail I wrote about 1400 verses in Azerbaijani, which were later published as his Divan. A unique literary style known as qoshma (Azerbaijani: qoşma for improvisation) was introduced in this period, and developed by Shah Ismail and later by his son and successor, Shah Tahmasp I.
In the span of the 17th and 18th centuries, Fuzuli's unique genres as well Ashik poetry were taken up by prominent poets and writers such as Qovsi of Tabriz, Shah Abbas Sani, Agha Mesih Shirvani<sup> [ru]</sup>, Nishat, Molla Vali Vidadi, Molla Panah Vagif, Amani, Zafar and others. Along with Turks, Turkmens and Uzbeks, Azerbaijanis also celebrate the Epic of Koroglu (from Azerbaijani: kor oğlu for blind man's son), a legendary folk hero. Several documented versions of Koroglu epic remain at the Institute for Manuscripts of the National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan.
Modern Azerbaijani literature in Azerbaijan is based on the Shirvani dialect mainly, while in Iran it is based on the Tabrizi one. The first newspaper in Azerbaijani, Akinchi was published in 1875. In the mid-19th century, it was taught in the schools of Baku, Ganja, Shaki, Tbilisi, and Yerevan. Since 1845, it was also taught in the University of Saint Petersburg in Russia.
### Folk art
Azerbaijanis have a rich and distinctive culture, a major part of which is decorative and applied art. This art form is represented by a wide range of handicrafts, such as chasing, jeweling, engraving in metal, carving in wood, stone, bone, carpet-making, lasing, pattern weaving and printing, and knitting and embroidery. Each of these types of decorative art, evidence of the endowments of the Azerbaijan nation, is very much in favor here. Many interesting facts pertaining to the development of arts and crafts in Azerbaijan were reported by numerous merchants, travelers, and diplomats who had visited these places at different times.
The Azerbaijani carpet is a traditional handmade textile of various sizes, with a dense texture and a pile or pile-less surface, whose patterns are characteristic of Azerbaijan's many carpet-making regions. In November 2010 the Azerbaijani carpet was proclaimed a Masterpiece of Intangible Heritage by UNESCO.
Azerbaijan has been since ancient times known as a center of a large variety of crafts. The archeological dig on the territory of Azerbaijan testifies to the well-developed agriculture, stock raising, metalworking, pottery, ceramics, and carpet-weaving that date as far back as to the 2nd millennium BC. Archeological sites in Dashbulaq, Hasansu, Zayamchai, and Tovuzchai uncovered from the BTC pipeline have revealed early Iron Age artifacts.
Azerbaijani carpets can be categorized under several large groups and a multitude of subgroups. Scientific research of the Azerbaijani carpet is connected with the name of Latif Karimov, a prominent scientist and artist. It was his classification that related the four large groups of carpets with the four geographical zones of Azerbaijan, Guba-Shirvan, Ganja-Kazakh, Karabakh and Tabriz.
### Cuisine
The traditional cuisine is famous for an abundance of vegetables and greens used seasonally in the dishes. Fresh herbs, including mint, cilantro (coriander), dill, basil, parsley, tarragon, leeks, chives, thyme, marjoram, green onion, and watercress, are very popular and often accompany main dishes on the table. Climatic diversity and fertility of the land are reflected in the national dishes, which are based on fish from the Caspian Sea, local meat (mainly mutton and beef), and an abundance of seasonal vegetables and greens. Saffron-rice plov is the flagship food in Azerbaijan and black tea is the national beverage. Azerbaijanis often use traditional armudu (pear-shaped) glass as they have very strong tea culture. Popular traditional dishes include bozbash (lamb soup that exists in several regional varieties with the addition of different vegetables), qutab (fried turnover with a filling of greens or minced meat) and dushbara (sort of dumplings of dough filled with ground meat and flavor).
### Architecture
Azerbaijani architecture typically combines elements of East and West. Azerbaijani architecture has heavy influences from Persian architecture. Many ancient architectural treasures such as the Maiden Tower and Palace of the Shirvanshahs in the Walled City of Baku survive in modern Azerbaijan. Entries submitted on the UNESCO World Heritage tentative list include the Ateshgah of Baku, Momine Khatun Mausoleum, Hirkan National Park, Binagadi asphalt lake, Lökbatan Mud Volcano, Shusha State Historical and Architectural Reserve, Baku Stage Mountain, Caspian Shore Defensive Constructions, Ordubad National Reserve and the Palace of Shaki Khans.
Among other architectural treasures are Quadrangular Castle in Mardakan, Parigala in Yukhary Chardaglar, a number of bridges spanning the Aras River, and several mausoleums. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, little monumental architecture was created, but distinctive residences were built in Baku and elsewhere. Among the most recent architectural monuments, the Baku subways are noted for their lavish decor.
The task for modern Azerbaijani architecture is diverse application of modern aesthetics, the search for an architect's own artistic style and inclusion of the existing historico-cultural environment. Major projects such as Heydar Aliyev Cultural Center, Flame Towers, Baku Crystal Hall, Baku White City and SOCAR Tower have transformed the country's skyline and promotes its contemporary identity.
### Visual art
The Gamigaya Petroglyphs, which date back to the 1st to 4th millennium BC, are located in Azerbaijan's Ordubad District. They consist of some 1500 dislodged and carved rock paintings with images of deer, goats, bulls, dogs, snakes, birds, fantastic beings, and people, carriages, and various symbols were found on basalt rocks. Norwegian ethnographer and adventurer Thor Heyerdahl was convinced that people from the area went to Scandinavia in about 100 AD, took their boat building skills with them, and transmuted them into the Viking boats in Northern Europe.
Over the centuries, Azerbaijani art has gone through many stylistic changes. Azerbaijani painting is traditionally characterized by a warmth of colour and light, as exemplified in the works of Azim Azimzade and Bahruz Kangarli, and a preoccupation with religious figures and cultural motifs. Azerbaijani painting enjoyed preeminence in Caucasus for hundreds of years, from the Romanesque and Ottoman periods, and through the Soviet and Baroque periods, the latter two of which saw fruition in Azerbaijan. Other notable artists who fall within these periods include Sattar Bahlulzade, Togrul Narimanbekov, Tahir Salahov, Alakbar Rezaguliyev, Mirza Gadim Iravani, Mikayil Abdullayev and Boyukagha Mirzazade.
### Cinema
The film industry in Azerbaijan dates back to 1898. Azerbaijan was among the first countries involved in cinematography, with the apparatus first showing up in Baku. In 1919, during the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, a documentary The Celebration of the Anniversary of Azerbaijani Independence was filmed on the first anniversary of Azerbaijan's independence from Russia, 27 May, and premiered in June 1919 at several theatres in Baku. After the Soviet power was established in 1920, Nariman Narimanov, Chairman of the Revolutionary Committee of Azerbaijan, signed a decree nationalizing Azerbaijan's cinema. This also influenced the creation of Azerbaijani animation.
In 1991, after Azerbaijan gained its independence from the Soviet Union, the first Baku International Film Festival East-West was held in Baku. In December 2000, the former President of Azerbaijan, Heydar Aliyev, signed a decree proclaiming 2 August to be the professional holiday of filmmakers of Azerbaijan. Today Azerbaijani filmmakers are again dealing with issues similar to those faced by cinematographers prior to the establishment of the Soviet Union in 1920. Once again, both choices of content and sponsorship of films are largely left up to the initiative of the filmmaker.
### Television
There are three state-owned television channels: AzTV, Idman TV and Medeniyyet TV. There is one public channel and 6 private channels: İctimai Television, Space TV, Lider TV, Azad Azerbaijan TV, Xazar TV<sup> [az]</sup>, Real TV (Azerbaijan) <sup> [ Real TV; Real TV (Azərbaycan)]</sup> and ARB.
### Human rights
The Constitution of Azerbaijan claims to guarantee freedom of speech, but this is denied in practice. After several years of decline in press and media freedom, in 2014, the media environment in Azerbaijan deteriorated rapidly under a governmental campaign to silence any opposition and criticism, even while the country led the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe (May–November 2014). Spurious legal charges and impunity in violence against journalists have remained the norm. All foreign broadcasts are banned in the country.
According to the 2013 Freedom House Freedom of the Press report, Azerbaijan's press freedom status is "not free", and Azerbaijan ranks 177th out of 196 countries.
Christianity is officially recognized. All religious communities are required to register to be allowed to meet, under the risk of imprisonment. This registration is often denied. "Racial discrimination contributes to the country's lack of religious freedom, since many of the Christians are ethnic Armenian or Russian, rather than Azeri Muslim".
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Voice of America are banned in Azerbaijan. Discrimination against LGBT people in Azerbaijan is widespread.
During the last few years, three journalists were killed and several prosecuted in trials described as unfair by international human rights organizations. Azerbaijan had the biggest number of journalists imprisoned in Europe in 2015, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, and is the 5th most censored country in the world, ahead of Iran and China. Some critical journalists have been arrested for their coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic in Azerbaijan.
A report by an Amnesty International researcher in October 2015 points to "...the severe deterioration of human rights in Azerbaijan over the past few years. Sadly Azerbaijan has been allowed to get away with unprecedented levels of repression and in the process almost wipe out its civil society." Amnesty's 2015/16 annual report on the country stated "... persecution of political dissent continued. Human rights organizations remained unable to resume their work. At least 18 prisoners of conscience remained in detention at the end of the year. Reprisals against independent journalists and activists persisted both in the country and abroad, while their family members also faced harassment and arrests. International human rights monitors were barred and expelled from the country. Reports of torture and other ill-treatment persisted."
The Guardian reported in April 2017 that "Azerbaijan's ruling elite operated a secret \$2.9bn (£2.2bn) scheme to pay prominent Europeans, buy luxury goods and launder money through a network of opaque British companies .... Leaked data shows that the Azerbaijani leadership, accused of serial human rights abuses, systemic corruption and rigging elections, made more than 16,000 covert payments from 2012 to 2014. Some of this money went to politicians and journalists, as part of an international lobbying operation to deflect criticism of Azerbaijan's president, Ilham Aliyev, and to promote a positive image of his oil-rich country." There was no suggestion that all recipients were aware of the source of the money as it arrived via a disguised route.
### Sport
Freestyle wrestling has been traditionally regarded as Azerbaijan's national sport, in which Azerbaijan won up to fourteen medals, including four golds since joining the International Olympic Committee. Currently, the most popular sports include football and wrestling.
Football is the most popular sport in Azerbaijan, and the Association of Football Federations of Azerbaijan with 9,122 registered players, is the largest sporting association in the country. The national football team of Azerbaijan demonstrates relatively low performance in the international arena compared to the nation football clubs. The most successful Azerbaijani football clubs are Neftçi, Qarabağ, and Gabala. In 2012, Neftchi Baku became the first Azerbaijani team to advance to the group stage of a European competition, beating APOEL of Cyprus 4–2 on aggregate in the play-off round of the 2012–13 UEFA Europa League. In 2014, Qarabağ became the second Azerbaijani club advancing to the group stage of UEFA Europa League. In 2017, after beating Copenhagen 2–2 (a) in the play-off round of the UEFA Champions League, Qarabağ became the first Azerbaijani club to reach the Group stage. Futsal is another popular sport in Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijan national futsal team reached fourth place in the 2010 UEFA Futsal Championship, while domestic club Araz Naxçivan clinched bronze medals at the 2009–10 UEFA Futsal Cup and 2013–14 UEFA Futsal Cup. Azerbaijan was the main sponsor of Spanish football club Atlético de Madrid during seasons 2013/2014 and 2014/2015, a partnership that the club described should 'promote the image of Azerbaijan in the world'.
Azerbaijan is one of the traditional powerhouses of world chess, having hosted many international chess tournaments and competitions and became European Team Chess Championship winners in 2009, 2013 and 2017. Notable chess players from the country's chess schools that have made a great impact on the game include Teimour Radjabov, Shahriyar Mammadyarov, Vladimir Makogonov, Vugar Gashimov and former World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov. As of 2014, country's home of Shamkir Chess a category 22 event and one of the highest rated tournaments of all time. Backgammon also plays a major role in Azerbaijani culture. The game is very popular in Azerbaijan and is widely played among the local public. There are also different variations of backgammon developed and analyzed by Azerbaijani experts.
Azerbaijan Women's Volleyball Super League is one of the strongest women leagues in the world. Its women's national team came fourth at the 2005 European Championship. Over the last years, clubs like Rabita Baku and Azerrail Baku achieved great success at European cups. Azerbaijani volleyball players include likes of Valeriya Korotenko, Oksana Parkhomenko, Inessa Korkmaz, Natalya Mammadova, and Alla Hasanova.
Other Azerbaijani athletes are Namig Abdullayev, Toghrul Asgarov, Rovshan Bayramov, Sharif Sharifov, Mariya Stadnik and Farid Mansurov in wrestling, Nazim Huseynov, Elnur Mammadli, Elkhan Mammadov and Rustam Orujov in judo, Rafael Aghayev in karate, Magomedrasul Majidov and Aghasi Mammadov in boxing, Nizami Pashayev in Olympic weightlifting, Azad Asgarov in pankration, Eduard Mammadov in kickboxing, and K-1 fighter Zabit Samedov.
Azerbaijan has a Formula One race-track, made in June 2012, and the country hosted its first Formula One Grand Prix on 19 June 2016 and the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2022. Other annual sporting events held in the country are the Baku Cup tennis tournament and the Tour d'Azerbaïdjan cycling race.
Azerbaijan hosted several major sport competitions since the late 2000s, including the 2013 F1 Powerboat World Championship, 2012 FIFA U-17 Women's World Cup, 2011 AIBA World Boxing Championships, 2010 European Wrestling Championships, 2009 Rhythmic Gymnastics European Championships, 2014 European Taekwondo Championships, 2014 Rhythmic Gymnastics European Championships, and 2016 World Chess Olympiad. On 8 December 2012, Baku was selected to host the 2015 European Games, the first to be held in the competition's history. Baku also hosted the fourth Islamic Solidarity Games in 2017 and the 2019 European Youth Summer Olympic Festival, and it is also one of the hosts of UEFA Euro 2020, which because of Covid-19 is being held in 2021.
## See also
- Outline of Azerbaijan
- Index of Azerbaijan-related articles
- List of World Heritage Sites in Azerbaijan
- The Defense & Foreign Affairs Handbook on Azerbaijan (2006)
|
23,178,132 |
Where You Go I Go Too
| 1,028,477,116 | null |
[
"2008 albums",
"Ambient techno albums",
"Hans-Peter Lindstrøm albums",
"Smalltown Supersound albums"
] |
Where You Go I Go Too is the first studio album by Norwegian electronica artist Hans-Peter Lindstrøm. It was first released in the United Kingdom on 18 August 2008 and was subsequently released the next day in the United States. The album comprises three tracks, roughly 30, 10, and 15 minutes in length. Where You Go I Go Too is usually labeled "space disco" due to its "spacey, psychedelic" feel and four-to-the-floor beats.
Production of the album followed the 2006 release of It's a Feedelity Affair, a compilation of singles. Lindstrøm had become dissatisfied with simply producing remixes and average length songs, which led to experimentation with lengthy tracks. The album received positive reviews from critics, who praised its slick production values and epic scope. At the 2009 Spellemannprisen award ceremony in Norway, the record won the award for "best electronica album".
## Background and production
Following the release of It's a Feedelity Affair in 2006, Lindstrøm had become tired of producing dance remixes and average length vocal pieces. He began giving the artists and labels mixes with slower tempos. Lindstrøm also felt he was unwisely incorporating musical ideas into remixes instead of original works, which led to experiments with lengthier tracks for an original album. Four to five tracks were originally envisioned for Where You Go I Go Too, but only three were chosen.
The title track was a time-consuming project; Lindstrøm called it a "nightmare to finish." The song comprised over 70 layers of sound and spanned almost 30 minutes. Around half the sound consisted of live performances, which Lindstrøm found difficult to merge with the electronic portions. After changing the music, he would usually listen to the entire song and evaluate the change. The repeated listens took a toll: "I needed to listen to 30 minutes of music every time I did something," said Lindstrom "So I'll never gonna [sic] do it again." Despite this, he enjoyed working with extended songs because it allowed them to evolve and move at a slow pace.
The album mixing was delayed during spring 2008. Typically, Lindstrøm would mix the record himself, but he felt overwhelmed by the album's scope and decided to seek outside help: "I’ve kind of discovered that I’m not good at doing everything myself. The problem with involving other people is that sometimes all the progress gets slowed down, but as long as the results are good, I’m happy... Leave the post-production to somebody else."
Though a common theme was not purposefully established for the album, some journalists noted similar feelings of travel and adventure when listening to the record. Lindstrøm has recommended people listen while traveling, and believes his travels may have influenced the album: "I don't particularly like traveling, but I've realised that it's perfect for listening to whole albums... I'm sure the way I'm listening to music now ... has something to do with the music I'm writing." The song titles were left "open" so "the listener could make up his own story."
Where You Go I Go Too was released by Smalltown Supersound on 18 August 2008 in the United Kingdom, and 19 August in the United States. A special edition was issued on 23 December 2008. The album featured a bonus disc with edited versions of the original tracks by frequent Lindstrøm collaborator Prins Thomas. Lindstrøm toured in Austria, Germany, Spain, and the United States that fall.
## Musical style and influences
Where You Go I Go Too comprises three tracks, roughly 30, 10, and 15 minutes in duration, which seamlessly flow into each other in transitions that were described as "gradual and subtle". The songs grow and develop independent musical traits, such as motifs, polyrhythms, and melodies. According to The Guardian, some musical changes are pronounced, such as the introduction of a synthesizer, while others, such as small tempo changes, remain "almost insensible". Some critics have noted the album conjures the feeling of a journey.
The music is a collage of electronic music, characterized by synthesized melodies, layered sounds, live performances, and four-to-the-floor beats. Pitchfork editor Dominique Leone described it as a "seamless combination of digital production, analog synthesizers and live instrumentation." Lindstrøm has been heavily influenced by music from the 1970s and 1980s, particularly disco progenitors Jean-Marc Cerrone and Giorgio Moroder. Where You Go I Go Too is often classified as "space disco" due to these influences and because it possesses a "spacey, psychedelic" sound. Lindstrøm listened to the Beach Boys, the Eagles, and Kirsty MacColl while writing the album.
## Reception
Where You Go I Go Too debuted at No. 11 on the Norwegian music chart. The following week it fell to No. 27 before leaving the list. The record did not chart internationally. In 2009, Where You Go I Go Too received a Spellemannprisen award for "best electronica album". The album was well received by critics and received an 82 out of 100 on the aggregate website Metacritic, which signifies "universal acclaim".
AllMusic writer K. Ross Hoffman declared the record an "entirely satisfying display" of Lindstrøm's talents and positively commented on the textured instrumentation. Hoffman concluded the music was an "expansive, exploratory journey" worth experiencing. Andy Battaglia of The A.V. Club disagreed, believing the album to be narrow minded and a missed opportunity to exploit the lengthy tracks and deliver more musical depth. Praise was given by Alex Macpherson of The Guardian, who stated "Every aspect of the record seems tailor-made to produce maximum pleasure [...] Where You Go I Go Too would make even the most hellish of journeys seem like a first-class trip."
Jim Brackpool of Yahoo! Music felt audience reactions would be polarized; some would find it "sophisticated and lovingly crafted", while others might be put off by its "unabashed opulence". No Ripcord writer Sam Draper christened the record "one of the finest pieces of music [he had] heard in years." Pitchfork editor Tim Finney believed Where You Go I Go Too showed signs of a masterpiece, but also possessed "bloat, excess, and splendor" reminiscent of disco revivalists. Pitchfork named it one of the best albums of 2008.
The album's title track was received favorably. Draper displayed particular fondness for the song and was amazed the music could stay fresh for its entire length. Hoffman also spoke highly of it, stating "[It] contains only as many discernible musical ideas as your average five- to seven-minute techno track [...] but its luxurious length lets those ideas stretch out gloriously [...] allowing a slow, fluid evolution that gestures towards a cosmic infinity." Finney praised the title track for its "shimmering, strobing synthesizer melodies" and ability to expand and surprise. A favorable comparison to Kraftwerk's similarly lengthy song "Autobahn" was made by Jason Newman of URB.
Reviews of the other two tracks were generally positive. Brackpool wrote favorably about "Grand Ideas" and made comparisons to Vangelis and Tangerine Dream, while Hoffman named it the most danceable track on the album. Though Battaglia felt the song kept repeating the same chord progression, he believed the "accents and shifts in pitch" strengthened it. Jeff Rovinelli writing for Tiny Mix Tapes thought "The Long Way Home" sounded silly. Brackpool agreed, writing "[If] isolated from the rest of the album [The Long Way Home] could easily pass for generic library music..." While Draper considered it a solid song, he decided it was a "little too saccharine for its own good". Hoffman enjoyed the song and wrote "the vibe is rangy and exultant [...] as blissful and bemused as the vehemently unpretentious [cover] shot of Lindstrøm."
## Track listing
All songs written by Hans-Peter Lindstrøm except where noted.
Original release
1. "Where You Go I Go Too" – 28:58
2. "Grand Ideas" – 10:10
3. "The Long Way Home" – 15:58
iTunes bonus song (also available on Spotify)
1. "Grand Ideas (Johan Agebjörn Remix)" – 6:49
Special edition
1. "Where You Go I Go Too" – 28:58
2. "Grand Ideas" – 10:10
3. "The Long Way Home" – 15:58
4. "Where You Go I Go Too Pt. 1" (Prins Thomas Edit) – 13:05
5. "Where You Go I Go Too Pt. 2" (Prins Thomas Edit) – 8:37
6. "Grand Ideas" (Prins Thomas Radio Edit) – 5:14
7. "The Long Way Home" (Prins Thomas Edit) – 12:32
## Personnel
- Hans-Peter Lindstrøm – writing, producing, performing, mixing
- Knut Sævik – mixing
- Chris Sansom – mastering
- Kim Hiorthøy – photography
## Charts
|
9,526,723 |
Henry Taylor (swimmer)
| 1,172,955,331 |
British swimmer
|
[
"1885 births",
"1951 deaths",
"English Olympic medallists",
"English male freestyle swimmers",
"Medalists at the 1906 Intercalated Games",
"Medalists at the 1908 Summer Olympics",
"Medalists at the 1912 Summer Olympics",
"Medalists at the 1920 Summer Olympics",
"Olympic bronze medalists in swimming",
"Olympic bronze medallists for Great Britain",
"Olympic gold medalists in swimming",
"Olympic gold medallists for Great Britain",
"Olympic swimmers for Great Britain",
"Royal Navy personnel of World War I",
"Sportspeople from Oldham",
"Swimmers at the 1906 Intercalated Games",
"Swimmers at the 1908 Summer Olympics",
"Swimmers at the 1912 Summer Olympics",
"Swimmers at the 1920 Summer Olympics",
"World record setters in swimming"
] |
Henry Taylor (17 March 1885 – 28 February 1951) was an English competitive swimmer who represented Great Britain in four Summer Olympics between 1906 and 1920. Taylor served in the Royal Navy during the First World War, and continued to swim competitively until 1926. His fortunes declined after he retired and he died penniless. His record of three gold medals at one Olympic Games – the most by any Briton – stood for 100 years until it was equaled by cyclist Chris Hoy in 2008. Tying the medal count of American Mel Sheppard, he was the most successful athlete at the 1908 Olympics.
## Early life
Henry Taylor was born in Hollinwood in Oldham, Lancashire, on 17 March 1885 to James, a coal miner, and Elizabeth Taylor. Henry's parents died when he was young and he was raised by his older brother, Bill. Taylor learned to swim in the Hollinwood Canal, and practised in any water body he could find – baths, becks, canals, lakes, etc., including the Hollinwood Canal and Alexandra Park's boating lake. Austin Rawlinson, who was Taylor's friend and later president of Amateur Swimming Association, recalled that Taylor "loved his swimming more than anything else in life". At the age of seven Taylor swam in his first race.
Bill became his coach and Henry trained in the Oldham Baths, and from 1894 in the Chadderton Baths, often on the "dirty water days" because of cheaper admission. During this time he continued to train in the canal and when he got a job at a cotton mill, he spent his lunch times swimming in the canal. At 5'5" (1.65 m) and weighing 10 stone 6 pounds (66 kg), he wore a hand-woven silk swimming costume weighing about an ounce.
## Career
Taylor came to attention after success with Chadderton Swimming Club. He was selected for the 1906 Intercalated Games in Athens. Although he was not expected to win any medals, he eventually won gold in the one mile freestyle, a silver in the 400 m freestyle and a bronze in the 4×250 m freestyle. Later that year, Taylor broke the world record for 880 yards (800 m). He was an automatic selection for the 1908 Summer Olympics.
During the 1908 Summer Olympics in London, Taylor won gold medals in the three events in which he took part: the 400 m freestyle, the 4×200 m freestyle, and the 1500 m freestyle. He finished first in all of the races he took part in during the games bar one. After performing well in the heats of the 400 m freestyle, he finished second in the semi-final to Austrian Otto Scheff, who won the same event in the 1906 Intercalated Games. However, in the final Taylor finished 10 seconds ahead of the Austrian who won the bronze. The British press hailed Taylor as "Britain's Greatest Amateur Swimmer". He was the first man to hold the world record for the 1500 metres freestyle, a feat that he completed on 25 July 1908 in a time of 22:48.4 in London. His haul of three was the most gold medals won by any Briton at the Olympics. This feat was not repeated by any British participant in the Olympic Games for a century until Chris Hoy won three gold medals in cycling events at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.
Four years later, Taylor was selected for the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm. In the 4×200 m freestyle relay, he helped his team win bronze. There were no Olympic Games in 1916 because of the First World War. Taylor joined the Royal Navy in 1914 and kept fit by swimming around the ships when his ship was anchored at Scapa Flow. He was present at the Battle of Jutland. A popular story tells that during the course of the battle, his ship, HMS St. Vincent, was sunk and while the survivors waited for two hours to be rescued, Taylor swam around encouraging his crewmates. However, this story is probably a myth as HMS St Vincent was not sunk at the Battle of Jutland. He was transferred to HMS Ramillies where he remained until he was demobilised.
After the war, Taylor returned to swimming. He took part in the Morecambe Bay Race, winning eight times over a period of 20 year and at one point held the record. Taylor attempted to emulate Matthew Webb in swimming across the English Channel but failed due to bad weather. He annually took on the French champion, swimming in the River Thames and the River Seine and winning on every occasion. Taylor's last appearance in the Olympic Games was at Antwerp, Belgium, in 1920 when he again helped the 4×200 m freestyle relay team to a bronze medal.
## After swimming
Taylor continued swimming competitively into his 40s until he retired in 1926. He also played water polo for England. During his career he won over 35 trophies and 300 medals. He suffered a setback when the public house, the Nudger, he owned in Dobcross was closed due to financial difficulties. Taylor became an attendant at Chadderton Baths. To raise money, Taylor was forced to sell most of his prizes. He died in obscurity aged 65 on 28 February 1951, at lodgings in Brierley Street, Chadderton, he was penniless and unmarried. He was cremated and his remains were scattered at Rochdale Cemetery.
The trophies Taylor won were collected and temporarily displayed at Chadderton Baths. In 1969 he was posthumously inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame. In 2002, a blue plaque was unveiled at Chadderton Baths commemorating his swimming achievements. At the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China, Rebecca Adlington became the first British swimmer to win more than one gold medal at a single Olympic Games since Taylor won three in 1908.
## See also
- List of members of the International Swimming Hall of Fame
- List of Olympic medalists in swimming (men)
- World record progression 400 metres freestyle
- World record progression 800 metres freestyle
- World record progression 1500 metres freestyle
- World record progression 4 × 200 metres freestyle relay
|
43,032,776 |
The Boat Race 1985
| 1,048,893,723 | null |
[
"1985 in English sport",
"1985 in rowing",
"1985 sports events in London",
"April 1985 sports events in the United Kingdom",
"The Boat Race"
] |
The 131st Boat Race took place on 6 April 1985. Held annually, the event is a side-by-side rowing race between crews from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge along the River Thames. Oxford won by 4+3⁄4 lengths. Bruce Philp became the first man to row for both universities having previously rowed for Cambridge, and Henrietta Shaw became the first female cox for Cambridge.
Isis won the reserve race, while Oxford were victorious in the Women's Boat Race.
## Background
The Boat Race is a side-by-side rowing competition between the University of Oxford (sometimes referred to as the "Dark Blues") and the University of Cambridge (sometimes referred to as the "Light Blues"). First held in 1829, the race takes place on the 4.2-mile (6.8 km) Championship Course on the River Thames in southwest London. The rivalry is a major point of honour between the two universities and followed throughout the United Kingdom and broadcast worldwide. Oxford went into the race as reigning champions, having beaten Cambridge by 3+1⁄4 lengths in the previous year's race. However Cambridge held the overall lead, with 68 victories to Oxford's 61 (excluding the "dead heat" of 1877). The race was sponsored by Ladbrokes for the ninth consecutive year.
The first Women's Boat Race took place in 1927, but did not become an annual fixture until the 1960s. Until 2014, the contest was conducted as part of the Henley Boat Races, but as of the 2015 race, it is held on the River Thames, on the same day as the men's main and reserve races. The reserve race, contested between Oxford's Isis boat and Cambridge's Goldie boat has been held since 1965. It usually takes place on the Tideway, prior to the main Boat Race.
## Crews
Oxford were pre-race favourites, and weighed an average of 4 pounds (1.8 kg) per rower more than their opponents. Oxford's crew contained four former Blues while Cambridge featured three. Bruce Philp became the first man to row for both universities, having represented Cambridge in the 1982 and 1983 races. Henrietta Shaw became the first woman to cox the Cambridge boat.
## Race
Cambridge won the toss and elected to start from the Surrey station. A quick start from Cambridge coupled with a poor one from Oxford saw the Light Blues take a third of a length lead before being reined back at Fulham Football Club. A one-second lead at the mile post preceded a period of warnings from umpire Ronnie Howard to both coxes as they contested the same water. Oxford held a canvas' lead as the crews passed under Hammersmith Bridge and began to move away along Chiswick Eyot. A ten-second lead at Barnes Bridge became a thirteen-second lead at the finishing post, as Oxford took the win by four and three-quarter lengths in a time of 17 minutes 11 seconds. This was Oxford's tenth consecutive victory, and their eleventh in twelve years, and took the overall record to 68–62 in favour of Cambridge.
In the reserve race, Oxford's Isis beat Cambridge's Goldie by six lengths, while Oxford won the 40th Women's Boat Race.
## Reaction
Cambridge stroke John Pritchard said "I tried everything. But at the vital moment, the boat went heavy." His Oxford counterpart Francis Reininger said "I was always optimistic that the power was there waiting to be switched on. When I asked for it, it glowed." Oxford coach Dan Topolski suggested that being given the Middlesex station was to their advantage, "I was glad to have Middlesex because in training our first three minutes had always been relatively poor."
|
53,079,758 |
Alan Winde
| 1,172,383,330 |
8th Premier of the Western Cape (born 1965)
|
[
"1965 births",
"20th-century South African politicians",
"21st-century South African politicians",
"Democratic Alliance (South Africa) politicians",
"Living people",
"Members of the Western Cape Provincial Parliament",
"People from Knysna",
"Politicians from Cape Town",
"Premiers of the Western Cape",
"South African businesspeople",
"South African politicians",
"White South African people"
] |
Alan Richard Winde (born 18 March 1965) is a South African politician and businessman. He is the 8th and current Premier of the Western Cape, having held the position since 2019. He has been a Member of the Western Cape Provincial Parliament since 1999. Winde is a member of the Democratic Alliance.
Born in Knysna, Winde attended Knysna High School. He established small businesses in his hometown. He started his political career as a municipal and district councillor in the early 1990s. Shortly afterwards in 1999, he was elected to the Western Cape Provincial Parliament. He has held various leadership positions in the Democratic Alliance provincial parliament caucus. Winde was appointed Provincial Minister of Finance, Economic Development and Tourism in May 2009 and served until May 2014, when he assumed the post of Provincial Minister of Economic Opportunities.
In September 2018, the Democratic Alliance selected Winde to be the party's Western Cape Premier candidate. In October 2018, Premier Helen Zille appointed Winde to the post of Provincial Minister of Community Safety. He took office on 1 November 2018. On 8 May 2019, the Democratic Alliance retained their majority in the Western Cape Provincial Parliament, but with a decrease in the number of seats. Winde was elected Premier on 22 May 2019, succeeding Zille. He is the second Western Cape Premier from the Democratic Alliance.
## Early life and business career
Alan Richard Winde was born on 18 March 1965 in Knysna to Ingrid and William Dave Winde. He attended and matriculated from Knysna High School. Winde started many small businesses that specialised in printing, selling bicycles, courier services and boat parts in Knysna. He later worked as a business consultant for Aldes Business Brokers, a South African Top 100 Company.
## Political career
### Early political career
Winde ran as an independent candidate and was elected to the South Cape District Council in 1996. He had previously served as a councillor for the Outeniqua Rural Council.
Shortly after being elected a district councillor, the Democratic Party recruited him to be a candidate for the Western Cape Provincial Parliament. He was elected in the 1999 general election. He was sworn in as a Member on 15 June 2009.
During his first term, he served as Western Cape Provincial Finance Chairman and a Member of the Executive Committee. He returned to the Provincial Parliament following the 2004 general election. Briefly, before being re-elected in 2009, he served as Chief Whip of the Official Opposition, Party Spokesperson on Environment and Planning and Deputy Party Spokesperson on Economic Development and Tourism.
### Provincial ministerships
Premier Helen Zille appointed Winde to the position of Provincial Minister of Finance, Economic Development and Tourism following his re-election in May 2009. Constitutional Court Judge Yvonne Mokgoro swore him in as Provincial Minister on 7 May 2009. He consequently succeeded Garth Strachan.
During his tenure, he criticised immigration regulations introduced by the national government, which he alleged had harmed tourism growth in the Western Cape, and organised petitions against the regulations.
After the 2014 election, Zille announced that Winde would now hold the title of Provincial Minister of Economic Opportunities and only lead the Provincial Departments of Agriculture, Economic Development and Tourism. The Provincial Finance Department would be an independent department with its own Provincial Minister. Western Cape Deputy Judge President Jeanette Traverso swore him in on 26 May 2014.
As Provincial Minister of Economic Opportunities, Winde announced in 2017 that during the First Thursday event in Cape Town, the provincial government would host talk shops where people could directly speak with government officials. During the drought that ravaged the Western Cape province from 2017 to 2018, he argued for farmers to keep hold of their private agricultural water supply, even when their local municipalities had a shortage of water.
Zille announced in October 2018 that Winde would move to the Provincial Community Safety Department as incumbent Provincial Minister Dan Plato had announced his intention to resign. Winde was succeeded by Beverley Schäfer on 1 November 2018. He subsequently assumed the post of Provincial Minister of Community Safety.
Winde has served as acting Premier of the Western Cape on various brief occasions when Zille was unavailable. In February 2019, Zille was in Germany, and so Winde was sworn in as acting premier. He consequently represented the provincial government at the State of the Nation Address held in the same month.
### 2019 electoral campaign
Winde emerged as the front-runner quite early on in the Democratic Alliance selection process for the party's candidate for Western Cape Premier. On 19 September 2018, Democratic Alliance Federal Leader, Mmusi Maimane, announced Winde as the party's candidate to succeed Zille after the 2019 elections. Winde defeated prominent candidates such as the Provincial Leader of the Democratic Alliance in the Western Cape, Bonginkosi Madikizela, and Member of Parliament David Maynier in an internal party vote. The Democratic Alliance won a majority in the Western Cape Provincial Parliament, but with a decrease in the number of seats, on 8 May 2019.
### Premiership
Winde was elected Premier of the Western Cape on 22 May 2019 during the first sitting of the Sixth Provincial Parliament and accordingly became the second Democratic Alliance member to hold the office. He received 24 out of the 34 valid votes. Six ballots were spoilt, and there were two abstentions. His main challenger for the post was Cameron Dugmore of the African National Congress, who received 10 out of the 34 valid votes.
Winde announced the formation of his Provincial Cabinet on 23 May 2019. He retained four ministers in their existing portfolios, while he moved three to other portfolios and appointed three new members. He appointed former DA Member of Parliament and premier candidate contender, David Maynier, to the post of Provincial Minister of Finance and Economic Opportunities, while he moved Albert Fritz and Ivan Meyer to the posts of Provincial Minister of Community Safety and Provincial Minister of Agriculture, respectively. Winde also said that all the newly-appointed cabinet members would undergo lifestyle audits.
National Police Minister Bheki Cele announced on 11 July 2019, that the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) would be deployed in the gang-ridden areas of Cape Town. Winde welcomed the deployment of SANDF. His predecessor, Helen Zille, had repeatedly asked for the deployment of SANDF during her tenure. The deployment came into effect on 18 July 2019 and was set to end on 16 September 2019. However, Winde wrote to President Cyril Ramaphosa and Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula in mid-September 2019 to request that the SANDF deployment in Cape Town be extended, stating that it was necessary to bring stability. The cabinet granted the request and the deployment ended in March 2020.
Winde delivered his maiden State of the Province Address on 18 July 2019, in which he highlighted the provincial government's achievements and outlined his agenda. Also in the speech, Winde placed emphasis on the provincial crime and misconduct statistics and claimed that the police "had lost the war on crime" because of mismanagement.
Winde and Provincial Minister of Community Safety Albert Fritz announced on 19 September 2019 that the provincial government would annually be investing R1 billion (US\$67.3 million) for three years into the training and deployment of 3,000 safety officers and 150 investigators. A total of 500 safety officers were deployed in February 2020. The safety plan aims to halve the province's crime statistics within the next decade. Fritz added that the provincial government would also establish an integrated violence prevention programme.
On 22 October 2019, he appointed Harry Malila as the new Director-General of the Western Cape Provincial Government. Malila succeeded long-serving Brent Gerber.
On 22 October 2021, Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane found that Winde and the Provincial Minister of Local Government, Environmental Affairs and Development Planning, Anton Bredell, had breached the Executive Ethics Code over their handling of issues at the Oudtshoorn Local Municipality.
In his capacity as a member of the Judicial Service Commission, Winde voted on 25 July 2022 to recommend that the Judge President of the Western Cape High Court, John Hlophe, be suspended by President Ramaphosa for gross misconduct.
In the wake of the International Criminal Court's arrest warrant for Russian president Vladimir Putin, Winde criticised President Ramaphosa in a statement on 27 April 2023 for inviting Putin to South Africa for the upcoming BRICS summit in August 2023 and said that he would instruct the provincial Law Enforcement Advancement Plan (LEAP) officers to arrest Putin "if he sets foot in the Western Cape".
#### COVID-19 response
On 11 March 2020, the first COVID-19 case was confirmed in the Western Cape. Winde and the provincial minister of health, Nomafrench Mbombo, then organised a media briefing about the province's preparedness. The provincial cabinet approved the request for the establishment of a provincial hotline to assist the National Institute for Communicable Diseases hotline and also resolved that all people returning from overseas should be advised to self-isolate.
Winde was exposed to a positive case of COVID-19 on 18 March 2020. He consequently worked from home as medical experts advised him not to go into self-isolation or be tested. As positive cases in the province started to climb, Winde released daily detailed updates on the spread of the virus. On 13 May, Winde announced that he would self-quarantine after his contact with eNCA cameraman Lungile Tom, who interviewed Winde days before he died from the virus. On 8 July, in the midst of the province's "first wave" of infections, Winde announced that he had tested positive for COVID-19, and would be self-isolating.
As the province began to experience its "second wave" of infections in early-December 2020, Winde said that there should be harsher penalties for people who violate the regulations. Winde and the provincial government mulled introducing "mini lockdowns" on certain district municipalities and local municipalities, but the newly elected DA leader, John Steenhuisen, said that there was "no evidence" that lockdowns work. Winde later said that he would argue against a stricter lockdown being imposed on the Western Cape as a whole. On 24 December 2020, Winde urged all religious gatherings in the province to not be held in-person. He formally requested tighter restrictions on 28 December, but again distanced himself from the idea of a hard lockdown. President Ramaphosa announced on the same day that liquor sales would again be suspended until further notice. Winde welcomed the decision. Winde said on 20 January 2021 that the first two weeks of the suspension had cost the Western Cape economy over R1 billion.
While delivering his 2022 State of the Province Address (SOPA) on 15 February 2022, Winde demanded that Ramaphosa end the national COVID-19 state of disaster. He said: "To be clear: we want the date and the time, and not generalised commitment." On 15 March 2022, Winde condemned the Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma's decision to extend the State of disaster for another month.
### 2024 electoral campaign
On 26 August 2023, DA leader John Steenhuisen announced that Winde's was the party's Western Cape premier candidate for the 2024 provincial election.
## Personal life
Winde married his wife Tracy in 1993. They have two children and live in the suburb of Claremont, Cape Town. Winde's son is studying sound engineering while his daughter has finished high school. Winde was a member of his daughter's high school's governing body.
Winde is a type 2 diabetic. In May 2021, it was reported that he managed to turn his twelve-year history with diabetes around by doing a 21-day plant-based eating programme with the help of the Ubuntu Wellness Centre, a wellness non-profit organisation in Cape Town.
|
9,147,803 |
2002 Masters (snooker)
| 1,108,057,651 |
Professional non-ranking snooker tournament, Feb 2002
|
[
"2002 in snooker",
"2002 sports events in London",
"February 2002 sports events in the United Kingdom",
"Masters (snooker)"
] |
The 2002 Masters (officially the 2002 Benson & Hedges Masters) was a professional invitational snooker tournament held at the Wembley Conference Centre, London from 3 to 10 February 2002. It was the 28th edition of The Masters, a Triple Crown event, and the penultimate invitational event in the 2001–02 snooker season. It followed the 2001 Scottish Masters and preceded the 2002 Irish Masters. Sponsored by the cigarette company Benson & Hedges, the event featured the top 16 from the snooker world rankings and two wild cards. The competition had a total prize fund of £650,000, with £175,000 going to the winner.
Paul Hunter was the tournament's defending champion and qualified for the final with victories over Stephen Lee, Peter Ebdon and Alan McManus in the preceding rounds as Mark Williams reached the same stage by defeating Mark King, Stephen Hendry and Jimmy White. Hunter defeated Williams 10–9 (ten to nine) to win the second of three Masters titles. Ronnie O'Sullivan compiled the tournament's highest break, a 138 , in the fourth frame of his first round match with Joe Swail.
## Overview
The Masters is an invitational snooker tournament that was first held in 1975; the top-16 players from the snooker world rankings as well as a sponsors' selection entrant and the Benson and Hedges Championship victor invited to participate as wild cards for the 2002 competition. It is one of the three Triple Crown events in the game of snooker; the others being the World Snooker Championship and the UK Championship, but it is not a ranking tournament. As an invitational event, it carried no world ranking points. The 2002 Masters was its 28th staging, and the penultimate World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA) invitational event of the 2001–02 season, following the 2001 Scottish Masters and preceding the 2002 Irish Masters. It was held from 3 to 10 February 2002, at the Wembley Conference Centre, London, England.
Sponsored by the tobacco company Benson & Hedges, it had a total prize fund of £695,000, with £190,000 going to the winner, and the host broadcaster was the BBC. Every match was played as best-of-11 , except for the final which was the best-of-19 frames. World champion Ronnie O'Sullivan was installed as the favourite by bookmakers to win the tournament. Stephen Hendry, the six-times Masters champion, commented on his prospects of a seventh title: "There is no doubt that this is one of the most difficult tournaments to win. For the players it is second only to the Embassy [World Snooker Championship] in terms of prestige. But I feel I have certainly got as good a chance as anybody."
### Prize fund
The breakdown of prize money for the 2002 Masters is shown below:
- Winner: £190,000
- Runner-up: £95,000
- Semi-finals: £47,500
- Quarter-finals: £37,000
- Second round: £18,000
- First round: £11,000
- Highest break: £21,000
- Total: £695,000
## Tournament summary
### Qualifying
The Benson and Hedges Championship held at the Towers Snooker Club, Mansfield from 4 to 15 November 2001 determined a wild card qualifier for the Masters. Players ranked outside the top 16 in the world rankings were allowed to enter. Ryan Day qualified for the final with victories over Steven Bennie, Drew Henry, Paul Davies, Stuart Bingham, Ian McCulloch, Lee Walker and Sean Storey, where he played Hugh Abernethy, who defeated Ian Sargeant, Dominic Dale, Nick Dyson, Anthony Davies, Mark Gray and Shaun Murphy. Day became the competition's first Welsh winner since 1995 when he beat Abernethy 9–5 to enter the Masters and won £5,000 prize money for winning. Murphy compiled a maximum break in frame two of his 5–2 Last 32 win over Adrian Rosa, the second of his career, the second of the season, the fourth in tournament history and the 44th overall. At 19 years and 3 months, Murphy was the second youngest player to achieve a maximum break in professional snooker.
### Round 1
The first round, in which the two wild cards and those ranked 15th and 16th participated, took place from 3 to 4 February. Fergal O'Brien, the 2001 runner-up, overturned a 2–5 deficit to the sponsor's wild card selection Steve Davis and took the final four frames to win 6–5 with a match-high of 97. Day, playing with a different cue stick after leaving his old one on a train returning from an event in Glasgow, beat world number 15 Dave Harold 6–3 in his Masters debut following a from the to the in frame seven.
### Round 2
Both of the first round winners played and those ranked 1st to 14 played in the second round held from 3 to 6 February. Paul Hunter, the reigning Masters winner, came from 2–3 behind the 2001 LG Cup victor Stephen Lee to win 6–3 with breaks of 101, 69 and 69; Lee accumulated 32 points in the last four frames. John Higgins, the 1999 Masters champion, lost the first two frames to fellow Scot Alan McManus but won the next four to lead 4–2. McManus went 5–4 ahead with breaks of 50 and 102 before Higgins' 78 break in frame ten forced a final frame decider. McManus won the final frame on the brown for a 6–5 victory after Higgins went the brown trying to escape from a . Higgins did not attend the compulsory press conference because he was upset with his form. 1984 Masters winner Jimmy White led Matthew Stevens 5–0 before the latter stopped a whitewash with a 73 break in frame six. White won frame seven and the match 6–1 with breaks of 32 and 36 overturning Stevens' 53–0 lead in that frame. O'Brien played two-time Masters runner-up Ken Doherty, with O'Brien leading 4–0 before Doherty won three frames in a row to be 4–3 behind. O'Brien claimed frames eight and nine to win 6–5.
Hendry took 138 minutes to whitewash Day 6–0 with breaks of 89, 60, 103, 91 and 84 and accumulated 572 points to Day's 120. Asked whether he was sympathetic to Day, Hendry replied, "Why? Marcus Campbell didn't feel sorry for me. You just want to destroy an opponent. That's how it's always been with me." World number 7 Peter Ebdon came from 1–4 behind world number 14 and tournament debutant Graeme Dott to produce breaks of 124 and 84 in claiming five frames in succession and winning 6–4 in 3 hours and 56 minutes. 1998 Masters champion Mark Williams took 1 hour and 53 minutes to defeat world number 13 Mark King 6–1, including a clearance of 127 in the fourth frame and breaks of 58, 40 and 48; King stopped a whitewash by winning frame two on 55 break. O'Sullivan played Joe Swail in the last first round match. Tied at 1–1, O'Sullivan produced a break of 50 in frame three and a 138 in frame four to lead 3–1. Swail claimed the following two frames to tie at 3–3, including a 109 century break in frame six. O'Sullivan made breaks of 87, 77 and 108 to win the match 6–3, compiling 284 points to Swail's 11 in that time.
### Quarter-finals
The quarter-finals were held on 7 and 8 February. The first quarter-final was between McManus and O'Brien. Trailing 2–0, O'Brien won four frames in a row to lead McManus 4–2 as he had the match-high break of 59. McManus went on to win four frames in succession to win by 6–4 in a match lasting 4 hours and 12 minutes. Both players commented they had sub-par performances during the match. Ebdon and Hunter played the second quarter-final. Hunter led 3–1 with a break of 54 and a century break of 105 in the fourth frame but the match was required to conclude with a final frame decider as both players shared the next five frames. A break of 80 from Hunter in the final frame gave him a 6–5 win. Hunter said he had the knowledge that he would play Ebdon for a long period of time, adding: "I played well to go 3–1 up and I scored well when I was in the balls all night. I knew he would come back at me but I just concentrated on playing the balls as they were."
O'Sullivan and White contested the third quarter-final. A crowd of 2,403 people observed the play, the record for a non-final Masters game. O'Sullivan led 3–1 with breaks of 51 and 50, extending it to 5–2 by winning three of the next four frames. White went 5–4 behind following errors in O'Sullivan's play; he came from 35 points behind the latter who went in-off on that score to compile a 72 clearance in frame ten and force a final frame decider. O'Sullivan led the final frame 49–19 but a missed safety shot on the red allowed White to achieve a clearance ending on the blue ball and win the match 6–5. O'Sullivan commented he was quite angry because he lost a game he felt he could have won, "It's disappointing. The wheels have come off though there is nothing wrong with my game, it's just something I have got to deal with mentally and it's not something I want to air in the press." The last quarter-final was played by Hendry and Williams. After five frames, Hendry was 3–2 ahead with breaks of 70 and 85 before Williams levelled at 3–3. Hendry retook the lead with a break of 79 in frame seven before Williams took the next three with breaks of 80 and 50 to win 6–4.
### Semi-finals
Both of the semi-finals occurred on 9 February. The first semi-final was contested by Hunter and McManus. Ahead 2–1, Hunter failed to pot the pink to win the fourth frame, allowing McManus to achieve a clearance from the 14th red to the black to tie at 2–2. McManus made breaks of 56 and 98 to go two frames ahead before Hunter took the next three frames to lead 5–4. The tenth frame was secured by McManus to require a final frame decider won by Hunter with a break of 36 for a 6–5 victory. It was McManus' 34th career semi-final and did not advance to the final of a competition for the first time since the 1999 Thailand Masters. Hunter said he was happy to qualify for the final because McManus was a decent participant. McManus said would not dwell over his defeat and wished Hunter the best of luck for the final.
White and Williams played the other semi-final. A break of 78 won White the first frame while Williams took the next three with breaks on 51, 93 and 102 to go 3–1 ahead. White claimed frame five as Williams took the sixth and then the seventh on a clearance of 133 to be within one frame of victory. White won frames eight to ten to require a final frame decider. During the concluding frame, White a red into the bottom , allowing Williams to clinch the frame 70–24 and the match 6–5. Williams said that White had recovered "really well" and the last frame put a plethora of pressure on both players but noted his form against Hunter had no meaning for the final. He commented on the crowd: "It was difficult to concentrate when someone in the crowd starts whistling while I'm trying to take a shot."
### Final
The final between Hunter and Williams was held over two as the best-of-19 frames on 10 February. This was the first meeting between the two players since the 2001 Champions Cup earlier in the season and the final was their highest ranking match since the 2000 Grand Prix where Williams beat Hunter 5–3 in the quarter-finals. Williams had won all six matches against Hunter with a combined total of 30–9 in frames won. The referee for the final was Jan Verhaas of the Netherlands. Williams won the first frame with a break of 79 and the following three to go 4–0 ahead. In the fifth frame, which lasted 35 minutes, Hunter gave away 24 points in fouls to Williams' 20 before Williams won the frame 82–79 on a clearance from the to the black. Williams broke down on a 56 break in frame six, allowing Hunter to win the frame on the pink. Hunter claimed the seventh frame with breaks of 32 and 69. The eighth frame saw Williams end on a 56 break after missing the 13th red by undercutting it to a top corner. This enabled Hunter to produce a 36 clearance completed on the pink to end the first session 5–3 behind.
On resumption of the match, Hunter won the ninth frame with a break of 61 and the tenth to level at 5–5 when Williams left the black on the inside of the top-right corner pocket from poor contact. Frames 11 and 12 were shared for a 6–6 score at the mid-session interval. In frame 13, Hunter was 54–24 behind when he obtained two snookers before missing the blue ball to the top-left corner pocket, allowing Williams to claim the frame. Hunter returned the score to a tie with an 84 break in frame 14 and took the lead for the first time in the next following errors from Williams. A break of 45 from Williams again tied the final in frame 16, before Hunter took the 17th frame after the former got stuck in a snooker. Williams secured frame 18 on a break of 72 to force a final frame decider. In the concluding frame, Williams scored 10 points before Hunter's break of 65 secured him a 10–9 win.
This was Hunter's second Masters victory in a row; he went on to win the tournament for a third and final time in 2004. He was third player in history after Cliff Thorburn and Hendry to successfully defend the Masters since it was first held in 1975, and the fifth to have won it for a second time. Hunter earned £190,000 prize money for winning the event; his earnings for the campaign increased to £324,600, moving him past Higgins for the lead of the seasonal money list. He commented on the victory: "I'm so happy to have won the match — especially to retain the title. Only Stephen Hendry and Cliff Thorburn have won it in successive years — so I'm up there with them." Williams said of his fifth loss in the final of a tournament extending back to the 2000 Grand Prix: "I feel sick because that was one I threw away. I know I got close but a defeat like that could well knock me back to square one. I've got to put it out of my mind, but that's going to be tough. The more finals you lose, the less confidence you have."
## Main draw
### First round
Numbers given in brackets after players names show the competition's 15th and 16th seeds. Players in bold indicate match winners.
### Main draw
Numbers to the left of players' names show the tournament's seeds. Players in bold denote match winners.
## Final
The bold text in the table indicates winning frame scores and the winning finalist. Breaks over 50 are displayed in brackets.
## Century breaks
There were 13 century breaks made by 9 different players over the course of the 2002 Masters. The highest break of the competition, a 138, was compiled by O'Sullivan in the fourth frame of his first round match with Swail, earning him £21,000 prize money and the Gold Medal award.
- 138, 108 – Ronnie O'Sullivan
- 133, 127, 102 – Mark Williams
- 124 – Peter Ebdon
- 109 – Joe Swail
- 108 – Jimmy White
- 105, 101 – Paul Hunter
- 103 – Stephen Hendry
- 102 – Alan McManus
- 100 – Fergal O'Brien
|
28,849 |
Shiva
| 1,173,469,250 |
Major deity in Hinduism
|
[
"Arts gods",
"Ascetics",
"Characters in the Mahabharata",
"Creator gods",
"Dance gods",
"Destroyer gods",
"Forms of Shiva",
"Hindu eschatology",
"Hindu gods",
"Hindu tantric deities",
"Indian yogis",
"Justice gods",
"Life-death-rebirth gods",
"Names of God in Hinduism",
"Savior gods",
"Shaivism",
"Shiva",
"Time and fate gods",
"Triple gods",
"Wisdom gods"
] |
Shiva (/ˈʃɪvə/; Sanskrit: शिव, romanized: Śiva, lit. 'The Auspicious One' ), also known as Mahadeva (/məˈhɑː ˈdeɪvə/; Sanskrit: महादेव:, romanized: Mahādevaḥ, lit. 'The Great God' [mɐɦaːd̪eːʋɐh]), is one of the principal deities of Hinduism. He is the Supreme Being in Shaivism, one of the major traditions within Hinduism.
Shiva is known as The Destroyer within the Trimurti, the Hindu trinity which also includes Brahma and Vishnu. In the Shaivite tradition, Shiva is the Supreme Lord who creates, protects and transforms the universe. In the goddess-oriented Shakta tradition, the Supreme Goddess (Devi) is regarded as the energy and creative power (Shakti) and the equal complementary partner of Shiva. Shiva is one of the five equivalent deities in Panchayatana puja of the Smarta tradition of Hinduism.
Shiva has many aspects, benevolent as well as fearsome. In benevolent aspects, he is depicted as an omniscient Yogi who lives an ascetic life on Mount Kailash as well as a householder with his wife Parvati and his two children, Ganesha and Kartikeya. In his fierce aspects, he is often depicted slaying demons. Shiva is also known as Adiyogi (the first Yogi), regarded as the patron god of yoga, meditation and the arts.
The iconographical attributes of Shiva are the serpent king Vasuki around his neck, the adorning crescent moon, the holy river Ganga flowing from his matted hair, the third eye on his forehead (the eye that turns everything in front of it into ashes when opened), the trishula or trident as his weapon, and the damaru. He is usually worshipped in the aniconic form of lingam.
Shiva has pre-Vedic roots, and the figure of Shiva evolved as an amalgamation of various older non-Vedic and Vedic deities, including the Rigvedic storm god Rudra who may also have non-Vedic origins, into a single major deity. Shiva is a pan-Hindu deity, revered widely by Hindus in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Indonesia (especially in Java and Bali).
## Etymology and other names
According to Monier Monier-Williams, the Sanskrit word "śiva" (Devanagari: शिव, also transliterated as shiva) means "auspicious, propitious, gracious, benign, kind, benevolent, friendly". The root words of śiva in folk etymology are śī which means "in whom all things lie, pervasiveness" and va which means "embodiment of grace".
The word Shiva is used as an adjective in the Rig Veda (c. 1700–1100 BCE), as an epithet for several Rigvedic deities, including Rudra. The term Shiva also connotes "liberation, final emancipation" and "the auspicious one"; this adjectival usage is addressed to many deities in Vedic literature. The term evolved from the Vedic Rudra-Shiva to the noun Shiva in the Epics and the Puranas, as an auspicious deity who is the "creator, reproducer and dissolver".
Sharma presents another etymology with the Sanskrit root śarv-, which means "to injure" or "to kill", interpreting the name to connote "one who can kill the forces of darkness".
The Sanskrit word śaiva means "relating to the god Shiva", and this term is the Sanskrit name both for one of the principal sects of Hinduism and for a member of that sect. It is used as an adjective to characterize certain beliefs and practices, such as Shaivism.
Some authors associate the name with the Tamil word ' meaning "red", noting that Shiva is linked to the Sun (', "the Red one", in Tamil) and that Rudra is also called Babhru (brown, or red) in the Rigveda. The Vishnu sahasranama interprets Shiva to have multiple meanings: "The Pure One", and "the One who is not affected by three Guṇas of Prakṛti (Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas)".
Shiva is known by many names such as Viswanatha (lord of the universe), Mahadeva, Mahandeo, Mahasu, Mahesha, Maheshvara, Shankara, Shambhu, Rudra, Hara, Trilochana, Devendra (chief of the gods), Neelakanta, Subhankara, Trilokinatha (lord of the three realms), and Ghrneshwar (lord of compassion). The highest reverence for Shiva in Shaivism is reflected in his epithets Mahādeva ("Great god"; mahā "Great" and deva "god"), Maheśvara ("Great Lord"; mahā "great" and īśvara "lord"), and Parameśvara ("Supreme Lord").
Sahasranama are medieval Indian texts that list a thousand names derived from aspects and epithets of a deity. There are at least eight different versions of the Shiva Sahasranama, devotional hymns (stotras) listing many names of Shiva. The version appearing in Book 13 (Anuśāsanaparvan) of the Mahabharata provides one such list. Shiva also has Dasha-Sahasranamas (10,000 names) that are found in the Mahanyasa. The Shri Rudram Chamakam, also known as the Śatarudriya, is a devotional hymn to Shiva hailing him by many names.
## Historical development and literature
### Assimilation of traditions
The Shiva-related tradition is a major part of Hinduism, found all over the Indian subcontinent, such as India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asia, such as Bali, Indonesia. Shiva has pre-Vedic tribal roots, having "his origins in primitive tribes, signs and symbols." The figure of Shiva as he is known today is an amalgamation of various older deities into a single figure, due to the process of Sanskritization and the emergence of the Hindu synthesis in post-Vedic times. How the persona of Shiva converged as a composite deity is not well documented, a challenge to trace and has attracted much speculation. According to Vijay Nath:
> Vishnu and Siva [...] began to absorb countless local cults and deities within their folds. The latter were either taken to represent the multiple facets of the same god or else were supposed to denote different forms and appellations by which the god came to be known and worshipped. [...] Siva became identified with countless local cults by the sheer suffixing of Isa or Isvara to the name of the local deity, e.g., Bhutesvara, Hatakesvara, Chandesvara."
An example of assimilation took place in Maharashtra, where a regional deity named Khandoba is a patron deity of farming and herding castes. The foremost center of worship of Khandoba in Maharashtra is in Jejuri. Khandoba has been assimilated as a form of Shiva himself, in which case he is worshipped in the form of a lingam. Khandoba's varied associations also include an identification with Surya and Karttikeya.
Myths about Shiva that were "roughly contemporary with early Christianity" existed that portrayed Shiva with many differences than how he is thought of now, and these mythical portrayals of Shiva were incorporated into later versions of him. For instance, he and the other gods, from the highest gods to the least powerful gods, were thought of as somewhat human in nature, creating emotions they had limited control over and having the ability to get in touch with their inner natures through asceticism like humans. In that era, Shiva was widely viewed as both the god of lust and of asceticism. In one story, he was seduced by a prostitute sent by the other gods, who were jealous of Shiva's ascetic lifestyle he had lived for 1000 years.
### Pre-Vedic elements
#### Prehistoric art
Scholars have interpreted early prehistoric paintings at the Bhimbetka rock shelters, considered to be from pre-10,000 BCE period, as Shiva dancing, Shiva's trident, and his mount Nandi. Rock paintings from Bhimbetka, depicting a figure with a trident or trishul, have been described as Nataraja by Erwin Neumayer, who dates them to the mesolithic.
#### Indus Valley and the Pashupati seal
Of several Indus valley seals that show animals, one seal that has attracted attention shows a large central figure, either horned or wearing a horned headdress and possibly ithyphallic, seated in a posture reminiscent of the Lotus position, surrounded by animals. This figure was named by early excavators of Mohenjo-daro as Pashupati (Lord of Animals, Sanskrit paśupati), an epithet of the later Hindu deities Shiva and Rudra. Sir John Marshall and others suggested that this figure is a prototype of Shiva, with three faces, seated in a "yoga posture" with the knees out and feet joined. Semi-circular shapes on the head were interpreted as two horns. Scholars such as Gavin Flood, John Keay and Doris Meth Srinivasan have expressed doubts about this suggestion.
Gavin Flood states that it is not clear from the seal that the figure has three faces, is seated in a yoga posture, or even that the shape is intended to represent a human figure. He characterizes these views as "speculative", but adds that it is nevertheless possible that there are echoes of Shaiva iconographic themes, such as half-moon shapes resembling the horns of a bull. John Keay writes that "he may indeed be an early manifestation of Lord Shiva as Pashu-pati", but a couple of his specialties of this figure does not match with Rudra. Writing in 1997, Srinivasan interprets what John Marshall interpreted as facial as not human but more bovine, possibly a divine buffalo-man.
The interpretation of the seal continues to be disputed. McEvilley, for example, states that it is not possible to "account for this posture outside the yogic account". Asko Parpola states that other archaeological finds such as the early Elamite seals dated to 3000–2750 BCE show similar figures and these have been interpreted as "seated bull" and not a yogi, and the bovine interpretation is likely more accurate. Gregory L. Possehl in 2002, associated it with the water buffalo, and concluded that while it would be appropriate to recognize the figure as a deity, and its posture as one of ritual discipline, regarding it as a proto-Shiva would "go too far".
#### Proto-Indo-European elements
The Vedic beliefs and practices of the pre-classical era were closely related to the hypothesised Proto-Indo-European religion, and the pre-Islamic Indo-Iranian religion. The similarities between the iconography and theologies of Shiva with Greek and European deities have led to proposals for an Indo-European link for Shiva, or lateral exchanges with ancient central Asian cultures. His contrasting aspects such as being terrifying or blissful depending on the situation, are similar to those of the Greek god Dionysus, as are their iconic associations with bull, snakes, anger, bravery, dancing and carefree life. The ancient Greek texts of the time of Alexander the Great call Shiva "Indian Dionysus", or alternatively call Dionysus "god of the Orient". Similarly, the use of phallic symbol as an icon for Shiva is also found for Irish, Nordic, Greek (Dionysus) and Roman deities, as was the idea of this aniconic column linking heaven and earth among early Indo-Aryans, states Roger Woodward. Others contest such proposals, and suggest Shiva to have emerged from indigenous pre-Aryan tribal origins.
#### Rudra
Shiva as we know him today shares many features with the Vedic god Rudra, and both Shiva and Rudra are viewed as the same personality in Hindu scriptures. The two names are used synonymously. Rudra, a Rigvedic deity with fearsome powers, was the god of the roaring storm. He is usually portrayed in accordance with the element he represents as a fierce, destructive deity. In RV 2.33, he is described as the "Father of the Rudras", a group of storm gods.
Flood notes that Rudra is an ambiguous god, peripheral in the Vedic pantheon, possibly indicating non-Vedic origins. Nevertheless, both Rudra and Shiva are akin to Wodan, the Germanic God of rage ("wütte") and the wild hunt.
According to Sadasivan, during the development of the Hindu synthesis attributes of the Buddha were transferred by Brahmins to Shiva, who was also linked with Rudra. The Rigveda has 3 out of 1,028 hymns dedicated to Rudra, and he finds occasional mention in other hymns of the same text. Hymn 10.92 of the Rigveda states that deity Rudra has two natures, one wild and cruel (Rudra), another that is kind and tranquil (Shiva).
The term Shiva also appears simply as an epithet, that means "kind, auspicious", one of the adjectives used to describe many different Vedic deities. While fierce ruthless natural phenomenon and storm-related Rudra is feared in the hymns of the Rigveda, the beneficial rains he brings are welcomed as Shiva aspect of him. This healing, nurturing, life-enabling aspect emerges in the Vedas as Rudra-Shiva, and in post-Vedic literature ultimately as Shiva who combines the destructive and constructive powers, the terrific and the gentle, as the ultimate recycler and rejuvenator of all existence.
The Vedic texts do not mention bull or any animal as the transport vehicle (vahana) of Rudra or other deities. However, post-Vedic texts such as the Mahabharata and the Puranas state the Nandi bull, the Indian zebu, in particular, as the vehicle of Rudra and of Shiva, thereby unmistakably linking them as same.
#### Agni
Rudra and Agni have a close relationship. The identification between Agni and Rudra in the Vedic literature was an important factor in the process of Rudra's gradual transformation into Rudra-Shiva. The identification of Agni with Rudra is explicitly noted in the Nirukta, an important early text on etymology, which says, "Agni is also called Rudra." The interconnections between the two deities are complex, and according to Stella Kramrisch:
> The fire myth of Rudra-Śiva plays on the whole gamut of fire, valuing all its potentialities and phases, from conflagration to illumination.
In the Śatarudrīya, some epithets of Rudra, such as Sasipañjara ("Of golden red hue as of flame") and Tivaṣīmati ("Flaming bright"), suggest a fusing of the two deities. Agni is said to be a bull, and Lord Shiva possesses a bull as his vehicle, Nandi. The horns of Agni, who is sometimes characterized as a bull, are mentioned. In medieval sculpture, both Agni and the form of Shiva known as Bhairava have flaming hair as a special feature.
#### Indra
According to Wendy Doniger, the Saivite fertility myths and some of the phallic characteristics of Shiva are inherited from Indra. Doniger gives several reasons for her hypothesis. Both are associated with mountains, rivers, male fertility, fierceness, fearlessness, warfare, the transgression of established mores, the Aum sound, the Supreme Self. In the Rig Veda the term śiva is used to refer to Indra. (2.20.3, 6.45.17, and 8.93.3.) Indra, like Shiva, is likened to a bull. In the Rig Veda, Rudra is the father of the Maruts, but he is never associated with their warlike exploits as is Indra.
Indra himself may have been adopted by the Vedic Aryans from the Bactria–Margiana Culture. According to Anthony,
> Many of the qualities of Indo-Iranian god of might/victory, Verethraghna, were transferred to the adopted god Indra, who became the central deity of the developing Old Indic culture. Indra was the subject of 250 hymns, a quarter of the Rig Veda. He was associated more than any other deity with Soma, a stimulant drug (perhaps derived from Ephedra) probably borrowed from the BMAC religion. His rise to prominence was a peculiar trait of the Old Indic speakers.
The texts and artwork of Jainism show Indra as a dancer, although not identical generally resembling the dancing Shiva artwork found in Hinduism, particularly in their respective mudras. For example, in the Jain caves at Ellora, extensive carvings show dancing Indra next to the images of Tirthankaras in a manner similar to Shiva Nataraja. The similarities in the dance iconography suggests that there may be a link between ancient Indra and Shiva.
### Development
A few texts such as Atharvashiras Upanishad mention Rudra, and assert all gods are Rudra, everyone and everything is Rudra, and Rudra is the principle found in all things, their highest goal, the innermost essence of all reality that is visible or invisible. The Kaivalya Upanishad similarly, states Paul Deussen – a German Indologist and professor of philosophy, describes the self-realized man as who "feels himself only as the one divine essence that lives in all", who feels identity of his and everyone's consciousness with Shiva (highest Atman), who has found this highest Atman within, in the depths of his heart.
Rudra's evolution from a minor Vedic deity to a supreme being is first evidenced in the Shvetashvatara Upanishad (400–200 BCE), according to Gavin Flood, presenting the earliest seeds of theistic devotion to Rudra-Shiva. Here Rudra-Shiva is identified as the creator of the cosmos and liberator of Selfs from the birth-rebirth cycle. The Svetasvatara Upanishad set the tone for early Shaivite thought, especially in chapter 3 verse 2 where Shiva is equated with Brahman: "Rudra is truly one; for the knowers of Brahman do not admit the existence of a second". The period of 200 BC to 100 AD also marks the beginning of the Shaiva tradition focused on the worship of Shiva as evidenced in other literature of this period. Other scholars such as Robert Hume and Doris Srinivasan state that the Shvetashvatara Upanishad presents pluralism, pantheism, or henotheism, rather than being a text just on Shiva theism.
Shaiva devotees and ascetics are mentioned in Patanjali's Mahābhāṣya (2nd-century BCE) and in the Mahabharata.
The earliest iconic artworks of Shiva may be from Gandhara and northwest parts of ancient India. There is some uncertainty as the artwork that has survived is damaged and they show some overlap with meditative Buddha-related artwork, but the presence of Shiva's trident and phallic symbolism in this art suggests it was likely Shiva. Numismatics research suggests that numerous coins of the ancient Kushan Empire (30–375 CE) that have survived, were images of a god who is probably Shiva. The Shiva in Kushan coins is referred to as Oesho of unclear etymology and origins, but the simultaneous presence of Indra and Shiva in the Kushan era artwork suggest that they were revered deities by the start of the Kushan Empire.
The Shaiva Upanishads are a group of 14 minor Upanishads of Hinduism variously dated from the last centuries of the 1st millennium BCE through the 17th century. These extol Shiva as the metaphysical unchanging reality Brahman and the Atman (Self), and include sections about rites and symbolisms related to Shiva.
The Shaiva Puranas, particularly the Shiva Purana and the Linga Purana, present the various aspects of Shiva, mythologies, cosmology and pilgrimage (Tirtha) associated with him. The Shiva-related Tantra literature, composed between the 8th and 11th centuries, are regarded in devotional dualistic Shaivism as Sruti. Dualistic Shaiva Agamas which consider Self within each living being and Shiva as two separate realities (dualism, dvaita), are the foundational texts for Shaiva Siddhanta. Other Shaiva Agamas teach that these are one reality (monism, advaita), and that Shiva is the Self, the perfection and truth within each living being. In Shiva related sub-traditions, there are ten dualistic Agama texts, eighteen qualified monism-cum-dualism Agama texts and sixty-four monism Agama texts.
Shiva-related literature developed extensively across India in the 1st millennium CE and through the 13th century, particularly in Kashmir and Tamil Shaiva traditions. Shaivism gained immense popularity in Tamilakam as early as the 7th century CE, with poets such as Appar and Sambandar composing rich poetry that is replete with present features associated with the deity, such as his tandava dance, the mulavam (dumru), the aspect of holding fire, and restraining the proud flow of the Ganga upon his braid. The monist Shiva literature posit absolute oneness, that is Shiva is within every man and woman, Shiva is within every living being, Shiva is present everywhere in the world including all non-living being, and there is no spiritual difference between life, matter, man and Shiva. The various dualistic and monist Shiva-related ideas were welcomed in medieval southeast Asia, inspiring numerous Shiva-related temples, artwork and texts in Indonesia, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia, with syncretic integration of local pre-existing theologies.
## Position within Hinduism
### Shaivism
Shaivism is one of the four major sects of Hinduism, the others being Vaishnavism, Shaktism and the Smarta Tradition. Followers of Shaivism, called "Shaivas", revere Shiva as the Supreme Being. Shaivas believe that Shiva is All and in all, the creator, preserver, destroyer, revealer and concealer of all that is. He is not only the creator in Shaivism, but he is also the creation that results from him, he is everything and everywhere. Shiva is the primal Self, the pure consciousness and Absolute Reality in the Shaiva traditions.
The Shaivism theology is broadly grouped into two: the popular theology influenced by Shiva-Rudra in the Vedas, Epics and the Puranas; and the esoteric theology influenced by the Shiva and Shakti-related Tantra texts. The Vedic-Brahmanic Shiva theology includes both monist (Advaita) and devotional traditions (Dvaita) such as Tamil Shaiva Siddhanta and Lingayatism with temples featuring items such as linga, Shiva-Parvati iconography, bull Nandi within the premises, relief artwork showing aspects of Shiva.
The Tantric Shiva tradition ignored the mythologies and Puranas related to Shiva, and depending on the sub-school developed a variety of practices. For example, historical records suggest the tantric Kapalikas (literally, the 'skull-men') co-existed with and shared many Vajrayana Buddhist rituals, engaged in esoteric practices that revered Shiva and Shakti wearing skulls, begged with empty skulls, and sometimes used meat as a part of ritual. In contrast, the esoteric tradition within Kashmir Shaivism has featured the Krama and Trika sub-traditions. The Krama sub-tradition focussed on esoteric rituals around Shiva-Kali pair. The Trika sub-tradition developed a theology of triads involving Shiva, combined it with an ascetic lifestyle focusing on personal Shiva in the pursuit of monistic self-liberation.
### Vaishnavism
The Vaishnava (Vishnu-oriented) literature acknowledges and discusses Shiva. Like Shaiva literature that presents Shiva as supreme, the Vaishnava literature presents Vishnu as supreme. However, both traditions are pluralistic and revere both Shiva and Vishnu (along with Devi), their texts do not show exclusivism, and Vaishnava texts such as the Bhagavata Purana while praising Krishna as the Ultimate Reality, also present Shiva and Shakti as a personalized form an equivalent to the same Ultimate Reality. The texts of Shaivism tradition similarly praise Vishnu. The Skanda Purana, for example, states:
> Vishnu is no one but Shiva, and he who is called Shiva is but identical with Vishnu.
Both traditions include legends about who is superior, about Shiva paying homage to Vishnu, and Vishnu paying homage to Shiva. However, in texts and artwork of either tradition, the mutual salutes are symbolism for complementarity. The Mahabharata declares the unchanging Ultimate Reality (Brahman) to be identical to Shiva and to Vishnu, that Vishnu is the highest manifestation of Shiva, and Shiva is the highest manifestation of Vishnu.
### Shaktism
The goddess-oriented Shakti tradition of Hinduism is based on the premise that the Supreme Principle and the Ultimate Reality called Brahman is female (Devi), but it treats the male as her equal and complementary partner. This partner is Shiva.
The earliest evidence of the tradition of reverence for the feminine with Rudra-Shiva context, is found in the Hindu scripture Rigveda, in a hymn called the Devi Sukta.
The Devi Upanishad in its explanation of the theology of Shaktism, mentions and praises Shiva such as in its verse 19. Shiva, along with Vishnu, is a revered god in the Devi Mahatmya, a text of Shaktism considered by the tradition to be as important as the Bhagavad Gita. The Ardhanarisvara concept co-mingles god Shiva and goddess Shakti by presenting an icon that is half-man and half woman, a representation and theme of union found in many Hindu texts and temples.
### Smarta tradition
In the Smarta tradition of Hinduism, Shiva is a part of its Panchayatana puja. This practice consists of the use of icons or anicons of five deities considered equivalent, set in a quincunx pattern. Shiva is one of the five deities, others being Vishnu, Devi (such as Parvati), Surya and Ganesha or Skanda or any personal god of devotee's preference (Ishta Devata).
Philosophically, the Smarta tradition emphasizes that all idols (murti) are icons to help focus on and visualize aspects of Brahman, rather than distinct beings. The ultimate goal in this practice is to transition past the use of icons, recognize the Absolute symbolized by the icons, on the path to realizing the nondual identity of one's Atman (Self) and the Brahman. Popularized by Adi Shankara, many Panchayatana mandalas and temples have been uncovered that are from the Gupta Empire period, and one Panchayatana set from the village of Nand (about 24 kilometers from Ajmer) has been dated to belong to the Kushan Empire era (pre-300 CE). The Kushan period set includes Shiva, Vishnu, Surya, Brahma and one deity whose identity is unclear.
### Yoga
Shiva is considered the Great Yogi who is totally absorbed in himself – the transcendental reality. He is the Lord of Yogis, and the teacher of Yoga to sages. As Shiva Dakshinamurthi, states Stella Kramrisch, he is the supreme guru who "teaches in silence the oneness of one's innermost self (atman) with the ultimate reality (brahman)." Shiva is also an archetype for samhara (Sanskrit: संहार) or dissolution which includes transcendence of human misery by the dissolution of maya, which is why Shiva is associated with Yoga.
The theory and practice of Yoga, in different styles, has been a part of all major traditions of Hinduism, and Shiva has been the patron or spokesperson in numerous Hindu Yoga texts. These contain the philosophy and techniques for Yoga. These ideas are estimated to be from or after the late centuries of the 1st millennium CE, and have survived as Yoga texts such as the Isvara Gita (literally, 'Shiva's song'), which Andrew Nicholson – a professor of Hinduism and Indian Intellectual History – states have had "a profound and lasting influence on the development of Hinduism".
Other famed Shiva-related texts influenced Hatha Yoga, integrated monistic (Advaita Vedanta) ideas with Yoga philosophy and inspired the theoretical development of Indian classical dance. These include the Shiva Sutras, the Shiva Samhita, and those by the scholars of Kashmir Shaivism such as the 10th-century scholar Abhinavagupta. Abhinavagupta writes in his notes on the relevance of ideas related to Shiva and Yoga, by stating that "people, occupied as they are with their own affairs, normally do nothing for others", and Shiva and Yoga spirituality helps one look beyond, understand interconnectedness, and thus benefit both the individual and the world towards a more blissful state of existence.
### Trimurti
The Trimurti is a concept in Hinduism in which the cosmic functions of creation, maintenance, and destruction are personified by the forms of Brahma the creator, Vishnu the maintainer or preserver and Shiva the destroyer or transformer. These three deities have been called "the Hindu triad" or the "Great Triple deity". However, the ancient and medieval texts of Hinduism feature many triads of gods and goddesses, some of which do not include Shiva.
## Attributes
- Third eye: Shiva is often depicted with a third eye, with which he burned Desire (Kāma) to ashes, called "Tryambakam" (Sanskrit: त्र्यम्बकम्), which occurs in many scriptural sources. In classical Sanskrit, the word ambaka denotes "an eye", and in the Mahabharata, Shiva is depicted as three-eyed, so this name is sometimes translated as "having three eyes". However, in Vedic Sanskrit, the word ambā or ambikā means "mother", and this early meaning of the word is the basis for the translation "three mothers". These three mother-goddesses who are collectively called the Ambikās. Other related translations have been based on the idea that the name actually refers to the oblations given to Rudra, which according to some traditions were shared with the goddess Ambikā.
- Crescent moon: Shiva bears on his head the crescent moon. The epithet Candraśekhara (Sanskrit: चन्द्रशेखर "Having the moon as his crest" – candra = "moon"; śekhara = "crest, crown") refers to this feature. The placement of the moon on his head as a standard iconographic feature dates to the period when Rudra rose to prominence and became the major deity Rudra-Shiva. The origin of this linkage may be due to the identification of the moon with Soma, and there is a hymn in the Rig Veda where Soma and Rudra are jointly implored, and in later literature, Soma and Rudra came to be identified with one another, as were Soma and the moon.
- Ashes: Shiva iconography shows his body covered with ashes (bhasma, vibhuti). The ashes represent a reminder that all of material existence is impermanent, comes to an end becoming ash, and the pursuit of eternal Self and spiritual liberation is important.
- Matted hair: Shiva's distinctive hair style is noted in the epithets Jaṭin, "the one with matted hair", and Kapardin, "endowed with matted hair" or "wearing his hair wound in a braid in a shell-like (kaparda) fashion". A kaparda is a cowrie shell, or a braid of hair in the form of a shell, or, more generally, hair that is shaggy or curly.
- Blue throat: The epithet Nīlakaṇtha (Sanskrit नीलकण्ठ; nīla = "blue", kaṇtha = "throat"). Since Shiva drank the Halahala poison churned up from the Samudra Manthana to eliminate its destructive capacity. Shocked by his act, Parvati squeezed his neck and stopped it in his neck to prevent it from spreading all over the universe, supposed to be in Shiva's stomach. However the poison was so potent that it changed the color of his neck to blue. This attribute indicates that one can become Shiva by swallowing the worldly poisons in terms of abuses and insults with equanimity while blessing those who give them.
- Meditating yogi: his iconography often shows him in a Yoga pose, meditating, sometimes on a symbolic Himalayan Mount Kailasha as the Lord of Yoga.
- Sacred Ganga: The epithet Gangadhara, "Bearer of the river Ganga" (Ganges). The Ganga flows from the matted hair of Shiva. The Gaṅgā (Ganga), one of the major rivers of the country, is said to have made her abode in Shiva's hair.
- Tiger skin: Shiva is often shown seated upon a tiger skin.
- Vasuki: Shiva is often shown garlanded with the serpent Vasuki.Vasuki is the second king of the nāgas (the first being Vishnu's mount, Shesha). According to a legend, Vasuki was blessed by Shiva and worn by him as an ornament after the Samudra Manthana.
- Trident: Shiva typically carries a trident called Trishula. The trident is a weapon or a symbol in different Hindu texts. As a symbol, the Trishul represents Shiva's three aspects of "creator, preserver and destroyer", or alternatively it represents the equilibrium of three Gunas of "sattva, rajas and tamas".
- Drum: A small drum shaped like an hourglass is known as a damaru. This is one of the attributes of Shiva in his famous dancing representation known as Nataraja. A specific hand gesture (mudra) called ḍamaru-hasta (Sanskrit for "ḍamaru-hand") is used to hold the drum. This drum is particularly used as an emblem by members of the Kāpālika sect.
- Axe (Parashu) and Deer are held in Shiva's hands in Odisha & south Indian icons.
- Rosary beads: he is garlanded with or carries a string of rosary beads in his right hand, typically made of Rudraksha. This symbolises grace, mendicant life and meditation.
- Nandī: Nandī, (Sanskrit: नन्दिन् (nandin)), is the name of the bull that serves as Shiva's mount. Shiva's association with cattle is reflected in his name Paśupati, or Pashupati (Sanskrit: पशुपति), translated by Sharma as "lord of cattle" and by Kramrisch as "lord of animals", who notes that it is particularly used as an epithet of Rudra.
- Mount Kailāsa: Mount Kailash in the Himalayas is his traditional abode. In Hindu mythology, Mount Kailāsa is conceived as resembling a Linga, representing the center of the universe.
- Gaṇa: The Gaṇas are attendants of Shiva and live in Kailash. They are often referred to as the bhutaganas, or ghostly hosts, on account of their nature. Generally benign, except when their lord is transgressed against, they are often invoked to intercede with the lord on behalf of the devotee. His son Ganesha was chosen as their leader by Shiva, hence Ganesha's title gaṇa-īśa or gaṇa-pati, "lord of the gaṇas".
- Varanasi: Varanasi (Benares) is considered to be the city specially loved by Shiva, and is one of the holiest places of pilgrimage in India. It is referred to, in religious contexts, as Kashi.
## Forms and depictions
According to Gavin Flood, "Shiva is a god of ambiguity and paradox," whose attributes include opposing themes. The ambivalent nature of this deity is apparent in some of his names and the stories told about him.
### Destroyer and Benefactor
In Yajurveda, two contrary sets of attributes for both malignant or terrifying (Sanskrit: rudra) and benign or auspicious (Sanskrit: śiva) forms can be found, leading Chakravarti to conclude that "all the basic elements which created the complex Rudra-Śiva sect of later ages are to be found here". In the Mahabharata, Shiva is depicted as "the standard of invincibility, might, and terror", as well as a figure of honor, delight, and brilliance.
The duality of Shiva's fearful and auspicious attributes appears in contrasted names. The name Rudra reflects Shiva's fearsome aspects. According to traditional etymologies, the Sanskrit name Rudra is derived from the root rud-, which means "to cry, howl". Stella Kramrisch notes a different etymology connected with the adjectival form raudra, which means "wild, of rudra nature", and translates the name Rudra as "the wild one" or "the fierce god". R. K. Sharma follows this alternate etymology and translates the name as "terrible". Hara is an important name that occurs three times in the Anushasanaparvan version of the Shiva sahasranama, where it is translated in different ways each time it occurs, following a commentorial tradition of not repeating an interpretation. Sharma translates the three as "one who captivates", "one who consolidates", and "one who destroys". Kramrisch translates it as "the ravisher". Another of Shiva's fearsome forms is as Kāla "time" and Mahākāla "great time", which ultimately destroys all things. The name Kāla appears in the Shiva Sahasranama, where it is translated by Ram Karan Sharma as "(the Supreme Lord of) Time". Bhairava "terrible" or "frightful" is a fierce form associated with annihilation. In contrast, the name Śaṇkara, "beneficent" or "conferring happiness" reflects his benign form. This name was adopted by the great Vedanta philosopher Adi Shankara (c. 788 – c. 820), who is also known as Shankaracharya. The name Śambhu (Sanskrit: शम्भु swam-on its own; bhu-burn/shine) "self-shining/ shining on its own", also reflects this benign aspect.
### Ascetic and householder
Shiva is depicted as both an ascetic yogi and as a householder (grihasta), roles which have been traditionally mutually exclusive in Hindu society. When depicted as a yogi, he may be shown sitting and meditating. His epithet Mahāyogi ("the great Yogi: Mahā = "great", Yogi = "one who practices Yoga") refers to his association with yoga. While Vedic religion was conceived mainly in terms of sacrifice, it was during the Epic period that the concepts of tapas, yoga, and asceticism became more important, and the depiction of Shiva as an ascetic sitting in philosophical isolation reflects these later concepts.
As a family man and householder, he has a wife, Parvati and two sons, Ganesha and Kartikeya. His epithet Umāpati ("The husband of Umā") refers to this idea, and Sharma notes that two other variants of this name that mean the same thing, Umākānta and Umādhava, also appear in the sahasranama. Umā in epic literature is known by many names, including the benign Pārvatī. She is identified with Devi, the Divine Mother; Shakti (divine energy) as well as goddesses like Tripura Sundari, Durga, Kali, Kamakshi and Minakshi. The consorts of Shiva are the source of his creative energy. They represent the dynamic extension of Shiva onto this universe. His son Ganesha is worshipped throughout India and Nepal as the Remover of Obstacles, Lord of Beginnings and Lord of Obstacles. Kartikeya is worshipped in Southern India (especially in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka) by the names Subrahmanya, Subrahmanyan, Shanmughan, Swaminathan and Murugan, and in Northern India by the names Skanda, Kumara, or Karttikeya.
Some regional deities are also identified as Shiva's children. As one story goes, Shiva is enticed by the beauty and charm of Mohini, Vishnu's female avatar, and procreates with her. As a result of this union, Shasta – identified with regional deities Ayyappan and Aiyanar – is born. In outskirts of Ernakulam in Kerala, a deity named Vishnumaya is stated to be offspring of Shiva and invoked in local exorcism rites, but this deity is not traceable in Hindu pantheon and is possibly a local tradition with "vaguely Chinese" style rituals, states Saletore. In some traditions, Shiva has daughters like the serpent-goddess Manasa and Ashokasundari. According to Doniger, two regional stories depict demons Andhaka and Jalandhara as the children of Shiva who war with him, and are later destroyed by Shiva.
### Iconographic forms
The depiction of Shiva as Nataraja (Sanskrit नटराज; Naṭarāja) is a form (mūrti) of Shiva (literally, "Lord of Dance"). The names Nartaka ("dancer") and Nityanarta ("eternal dancer") appear in the Shiva Sahasranama. His association with dance and also with music is prominent in the Puranic period. In addition to the specific iconographic form known as Nataraja, various other types of dancing forms (Sanskrit: nṛtyamūrti) are found in all parts of India, with many well-defined varieties in Tamil Nadu in particular. The two most common forms of the dance are the Tandava, which later came to denote the powerful and masculine dance as Kala-Mahakala associated with the destruction of the world. When it requires the world or universe to be destroyed, Shiva does it by the Tandava, and Lasya, which is graceful and delicate and expresses emotions on a gentle level and is considered the feminine dance attributed to the goddess Parvati. Lasya is regarded as the female counterpart of Tandava. The Tandava-Lasya dances are associated with the destruction-creation of the world.
Dakshinamurthy (Sanskrit दक्षिणामूर्ति; Dakṣiṇāmūrti) is a form (mūrti) of Shiva (literally, "[facing] south form"). Dakshinamurthy is depicted as a figure seated upon a deer-throne surrounded by sages receiving instruction. This form represents Shiva in his aspect as a teacher of yoga, music, and wisdom and giving exposition on the shastras. This iconographic form for depicting Shiva in Indian art is mostly from Tamil Nadu.
Bhikshatana (Sanskrit भिक्षाटन; Bhikṣāṭana) is a form (mūrti) of Shiva (literally "wandering about for alms, mendicancy" ). Bhikshatana is depicted as a nude four-armed man adorned with ornaments who holds a begging bowl in his hand and is followed by demonic attendants. The nudity and begging bowl are associated with the kapali tradition. This form of Shiva is associated with his penance for committing brahmicide, and with his encounters with the sages and their wives in the Deodar forest.
Tripurantaka (Sanskrit त्रिपुरांतक; Tripurāntaka) is a form (mūrti) of Shiva (literally "ender of Tripura"). Tripurantaka is depicted with four arms, the upper pair holding an axe and a deer, and the lower pair wielding a bow and arrow. This form of Shiva is associated with his destruction of the three cities (Tripura) of the Asuras.
Ardhanarishvara (Sanskrit: अर्धनारीश्वर; Ardhanārīśvara) is a form (mūrti) of Shiva (literally "the lord who is half woman"). Adhanarishvara is depicted with one half of the body as male and the other half as female. Ardhanarishvara represents the synthesis of masculine and feminine energies of the universe (Purusha and Prakriti) and illustrates how Shakti, the female principle of God, is inseparable from (or the same as, according to some interpretations) Shiva, the male principle of God, and vice versa.
Kalyanasundara-murti (Sanskrit कल्याणसुन्दर-मूर्ति, literally "icon of beautiful marriage") is the depiction of Shiva's marriage to Parvati. The divine couple are often depicted performing the panigrahana (Sanskrit "accepting the hand") ritual from traditional Hindu wedding ceremonies. Agamic texts like the Amsumadbhedagama, the Uttara-kamaikagama and the Purva-Karanagama prescribe the iconography of the Kalyanasunadara icon. The most basic form of this murti consists of only Shiva and Parvati together, but in more elaborate forms they are accompanied by other persons, sometimes including Parvati's parents, as well as deities (often with Vishnu and Lakshmi standing as Parvati's parents, Brahma as the officiating priest, and various other deities as attendants or guests).
Somaskanda is the depiction of Shiva, Parvati, and their son Skanda (Kartikeya), popular during the Pallava Dynasty in southern India.
Pañcānana (Sanskrit: पञ्चानन), also called the pañcabrahma, is a form of Shiva depicting him as having five faces which correspond to his five divine activities (pañcakṛtya): creation (sṛṣṭi), preservation (sthithi), destruction (saṃhāra), concealing grace (tirobhāva), and revealing grace (anugraha). Five is a sacred number for Shiva. One of his most important mantras has five syllables (namaḥ śivāya).
Shiva's body is said to consist of five mantras, called the pañcabrahman. As forms of God, each of these have their own names and distinct iconography: These are represented as the five faces of Shiva and are associated in various texts with the five elements, the five senses, the five organs of perception, and the five organs of action. Doctrinal differences and, possibly, errors in transmission, have resulted in some differences between texts in details of how these five forms are linked with various attributes. The overall meaning of these associations is summarized by Stella Kramrisch,
> Through these transcendent categories, Śiva, the ultimate reality, becomes the efficient and material cause of all that exists.
According to the Pañcabrahma Upanishad:
> One should know all things of the phenomenal world as of a fivefold character, for the reason that the eternal verity of Śiva is of the character of the fivefold Brahman. (Pañcabrahma Upanishad 31)
In the hymn of Manikkavacakar's Thiruvasagam, he testifies that at Nataraja Temple, Chidambaram had, by the pre-Chola period, an abstract or 'cosmic' symbolism linked to five elements (Pancha Bhoota) including ether. Nataraja is a significant visual interpretation of Brahman and a dance posture of Shiva. Sharada Srinivasan notes that, Nataraja is described as Satcitananda or "Being, Consciousness and Bliss" in the Shaiva Siddhanta text Kunchitangrim Bhaje, resembling the Advaita doctrine, or "abstract monism," of Adi Shankara, "which holds the individual Self (Jīvātman) and supream Self (Paramātmā) to be one," while "an earlier hymn to Nataraja by Manikkavachakar identifies him with the unitary supreme consciousness, by using Tamil word Or Unarve, rather than Sanskrit Chit." This may point to an "osmosis" of ideas in medieval India, states Srinivasan.
### Lingam
The Linga Purana states, "Shiva is signless, without color, taste, smell, that is beyond word or touch, without quality, motionless and changeless". The source of the universe is the signless, and all of the universe is the manifested Linga, a union of unchanging Principles and the ever changing nature. The Linga Purana and the Shiva Gita texts builds on this foundation. Linga, states Alain Daniélou, means sign. It is an important concept in Hindu texts, wherein Linga is a manifested sign and nature of someone or something. It accompanies the concept of Brahman, which as invisible signless and existent Principle, is formless or linga-less.
The Shvetashvatara Upanishad states one of the three significations, the primary one, of Lingam as "the imperishable Purusha", the absolute reality, where says the linga as "sign", a mark that provides the existence of Brahman, thus the original meaning as "sign". Furthermore, it says "Shiva, the Supreme Lord, has no liūga", liuga (Sanskrit: लिऊग ) meaning Shiva is transcendent, beyond any characteristic and, specifically the sign of gender.
Apart from anthropomorphic images of Shiva, he is also represented in aniconic form of a lingam. These are depicted in various designs. One common form is the shape of a vertical rounded column in the centre of a lipped, disk-shaped object, the yoni, symbolism for the goddess Shakti. In Shiva temples, the linga is typically present in its sanctum sanctorum and is the focus of votary offerings such as milk, water, flower petals, fruit, fresh leaves, and rice. According to Monier Williams and Yudit Greenberg, linga literally means 'mark, sign or emblem', and also refers to a "mark or sign from which the existence of something else can be reliably inferred". It implies the regenerative divine energy innate in nature, symbolized by Shiva.
Some scholars, such as Wendy Doniger, view linga as merely a phallic symbol, although this interpretation is criticized by others, including Swami Vivekananda, Sivananda Saraswati, Stella Kramrisch, Swami Agehananda Bharati, S. N. Balagangadhara, and others. According to Moriz Winternitz, the linga in the Shiva tradition is "only a symbol of the productive and creative principle of nature as embodied in Shiva", and it has no historical trace in any obscene phallic cult. According to Sivananda Saraswati, westerners who are curiously passionate and have impure understanding or intelligence, incorrectly assume Siva Linga as a phallus or sex organ. Later on, Sivananda Saraswati mentions that, this is not only a serious mistake, but also a grave blunder.
The worship of the lingam originated from the famous hymn in the Atharva-Veda Samhitâ sung in praise of the Yupa-Stambha, the sacrificial post. In that hymn, a description is found of the beginningless and endless Stambha or Skambha, and it is shown that the said Skambha is put in place of the eternal Brahman. Just as the Yajna (sacrificial) fire, its smoke, ashes, and flames, the Soma plant, and the ox that used to carry on its back the wood for the Vedic sacrifice gave place to the conceptions of the brightness of Shiva's body, his tawny matted hair, his blue throat, and the riding on the bull of the Shiva, the Yupa-Skambha gave place in time to the Shiva-Linga. In the text Linga Purana, the same hymn is expanded in the shape of stories, meant to establish the glory of the great Stambha and the superiority of Shiva as Mahadeva.
The oldest known archaeological linga as an icon of Shiva is the Gudimallam lingam from 3rd-century BCE. In Shaivism pilgrimage tradition, twelve major temples of Shiva are called Jyotirlinga, which means "linga of light", and these are located across India.
### Avatars
Puranic scriptures contain occasional references to "ansh" – literally 'portion, or avatars of Shiva', but the idea of Shiva avatars is not universally accepted in Shaivism. The Linga Purana mentions twenty-eight forms of Shiva which are sometimes seen as avatars, however such mention is unusual and the avatars of Shiva is relatively rare in Shaivism compared to the well emphasized concept of Vishnu avatars in Vaishnavism. Some Vaishnava literature reverentially link Shiva to characters in its Puranas. For example, in the Hanuman Chalisa, Hanuman is identified as the eleventh avatar of Shiva. The Bhagavata Purana and the Vishnu Purana claim sage Durvasa to be a portion of Shiva. Some medieval era writers have called the Advaita Vedanta philosopher Adi Shankara an incarnation of Shiva.
## Temple
## Festivals
There is a Shivaratri in every lunar month on its 13th night/14th day, but once a year in late winter (February/March) and before the arrival of spring, marks Maha Shivaratri which means "the Great Night of Shiva".
Maha Shivaratri is a major Hindu festival, but one that is solemn and theologically marks a remembrance of "overcoming darkness and ignorance" in life and the world, and meditation about the polarities of existence, of Shiva and a devotion to humankind. It is observed by reciting Shiva-related poems, chanting prayers, remembering Shiva, fasting, doing Yoga and meditating on ethics and virtues such as self-restraint, honesty, noninjury to others, forgiveness, introspection, self-repentance and the discovery of Shiva. The ardent devotees keep awake all night. Others visit one of the Shiva temples or go on pilgrimage to Jyotirlingam shrines. Those who visit temples, offer milk, fruits, flowers, fresh leaves and sweets to the lingam. Some communities organize special dance events, to mark Shiva as the lord of dance, with individual and group performances. According to Jones and Ryan, Maha Sivaratri is an ancient Hindu festival which probably originated around the 5th-century.
Another major festival involving Shiva worship is Kartik Purnima, commemorating Shiva's victory over the three demons known as Tripurasura. Across India, various Shiva temples are illuminated throughout the night. Shiva icons are carried in procession in some places.
Thiruvathira is a festival observed in Kerala dedicated to Shiva. It is believed that on this day, Parvati met Shiva after her long penance and Shiva took her as his wife. On this day Hindu women performs the Thiruvathirakali accompanied by Thiruvathira paattu (folk songs about Parvati and her longing and penance for Shiva's affection).
Regional festivals dedicated to Shiva include the Chithirai festival in Madurai around April/May, one of the largest festivals in South India, celebrating the wedding of Minakshi (Parvati) and Shiva. The festival is one where both the Vaishnava and Shaiva communities join the celebrations, because Vishnu gives away his sister Minakshi in marriage to Shiva.
Some Shaktism-related festivals revere Shiva along with the goddess considered primary and Supreme. These include festivals dedicated to Annapurna such as Annakuta and those related to Durga. In Himalayan regions such as Nepal, as well as in northern, central and western India, the festival of Teej is celebrated by girls and women in the monsoon season, in honor of goddess Parvati, with group singing, dancing and by offering prayers in Parvati-Shiva temples.
The ascetic, Vedic and Tantric sub-traditions related to Shiva, such as those that became ascetic warriors during the Islamic rule period of India, celebrate the Kumbha Mela festival. This festival cycles every 12 years, in four pilgrimage sites within India, with the event moving to the next site after a gap of three years. The biggest is in Prayaga (renamed Allahabad during the Mughal rule era), where millions of Hindus of different traditions gather at the confluence of rivers Ganges and Yamuna. In the Hindu tradition, the Shiva-linked ascetic warriors (Nagas) get the honor of starting the event by entering the Sangam first for bathing and prayers.
In Pakistan, major Shivaratri celebration occurs at the Umarkot Shiv Mandir in the Umarkot. The three-day Shivarathri celebration at the temple is attended by around 250,000 people.
## Beyond the Indian subcontinent and Hinduism
### Indonesia
In Indonesian Shaivism the popular name for Shiva has been Batara Guru, which is derived from Sanskrit Bhattāraka which means "noble lord". He is conceptualized as a kind spiritual teacher, the first of all Gurus in Indonesian Hindu texts, mirroring the Dakshinamurti aspect of Shiva in the Indian subcontinent. However, the Batara Guru has more aspects than the Indian Shiva, as the Indonesian Hindus blended their spirits and heroes with him. Batara Guru's wife in Southeast Asia is the same Hindu deity Durga, who has been popular since ancient times, and she too has a complex character with benevolent and fierce manifestations, each visualized with different names such as Uma, Sri, Kali and others. In contrast to Hindu religious texts, whether Vedas or Puranas, in Javanese puppetry (wayang) books, Batara Guru is the king of the gods who regulates and creates the world system. In the classic book that is used as a reference for the puppeteers, it is said that Sanghyang Manikmaya or Batara Guru was created from a sparkling light by Sang Hyang Tunggal, along with the blackish light which is the origin of Ismaya. Shiva has been called Sadāśiva, Paramasiva, Mahādeva in benevolent forms, and Kāla, Bhairava, Mahākāla in his fierce forms.
The Indonesian Hindu texts present the same philosophical diversity of Shaivite traditions found in the Indian subcontinent. However, among the texts that have survived into the contemporary era, the more common are of those of Shaiva Siddhanta (locally also called Siwa Siddhanta, Sridanta).
During the pre-Islamic period on the island of Java, Shaivism and Buddhism were considered very close and allied religions, though not identical religions. The medieval-era Indonesian literature equates Buddha with Siwa (Shiva) and Janardana (Vishnu). This tradition continues in predominantly Hindu Bali Indonesia in the modern era, where Buddha is considered the younger brother of Shiva.
### Central Asia
The worship of Shiva became popular in Central Asia through the influence of the Hephthalite Empire and Kushan Empire. Shaivism was also popular in Sogdia and the Kingdom of Yutian as found from the wall painting from Penjikent on the river Zervashan. In this depiction, Shiva is portrayed with a sacred halo and a sacred thread (Yajnopavita). He is clad in tiger skin while his attendants are wearing Sogdian dress. A panel from Dandan Oilik shows Shiva in His Trimurti form with Shakti kneeling on her right thigh. Another site in the Taklamakan Desert depicts him with four legs, seated cross-legged on a cushioned seat supported by two bulls. It is also noted that the Zoroastrian wind god Vayu-Vata took on the iconographic appearance of Shiva.
### Sikhism
The Japuji Sahib of the Guru Granth Sahib says: "The Guru is Shiva, the Guru is Vishnu and Brahma; the Guru is Paarvati and Lakhshmi." In the same chapter, it also says: "Shiva speaks, and the Siddhas listen." In Dasam Granth, Guru Gobind Singh has mentioned two avatars of Rudra: Dattatreya Avatar and Parasnath Avatar.
### Buddhism
Shiva is mentioned in the Buddhist Tantras and worshipped as the fierce deity Mahākāla in Vajrayana, Chinese Esoteric, and Tibetan Buddhism. In the cosmologies of Buddhist Tantras, Shiva is depicted as passive, with Shakti being his active counterpart: Shiva as Prajña and Shakti as Upāya.
In Mahayana Buddhism, Shiva is depicted as Maheshvara, a deva living in Akanishta Devaloka. In Theravada Buddhism, Shiva is depicted as Ishana, a deva residing in the 6th heaven of Kamadhatu along with Sakra Indra. In Vajrayana Buddhism, Shiva is depicted as Mahakala, a dharma protecting Bodhisattva. In most forms of Buddhism, the position of Shiva is lesser than that of Mahabrahma or Sakra Indra. In Mahayana Buddhist texts, Shiva (Maheshvara) becomes a buddha called Bhasmeshvara Buddha ("Buddha of ashes").
In China and Taiwan, Shiva, better known there as Maheśvara (Chinese: 大自在天; pinyin: Dàzìzàitiān; or Chinese: 摩醯首羅天 pinyin: Móxīshǒuluótiān) is considered one of the Twenty Devas (Chinese: 二十諸天, pinyin: Èrshí Zhūtiān) or the Twenty-Four Devas (Chinese: 二十四諸天, pinyin: Èrshísì zhūtiān) who are a group of dharmapalas that manifest to protect the Buddhist dharma. Statues of him are often enshrined in the Mahavira Halls of Chinese Buddhist temples along with the other devas. In addition, he is also regarded as one of thirty-three manifestations of Avalokitesvara in the Lotus Sutra. In Mahayana Buddhist cosmology, Maheśvara resides in Akaniṣṭha, highest of the Śuddhāvāsa ("Pure Abodes") wherein Anāgāmi ("Non-returners") who are already on the path to Arhathood and who will attain enlightenment are born.
Daikokuten, one of the Seven Lucky Gods in Japan, is considered to be evolved from Shiva. The god enjoys an exalted position as a household deity in Japan and is worshipped as the god of wealth and fortune. The name is the Japanese equivalent of Mahākāla, the Buddhist name for Shiva.
## In contemporary culture
In contemporary culture, Shiva is depicted in art, films, books, tattoos, etc. He has been referred to as "the god of cool things" and a "bonafide rock hero".
Popular films include the Gujarati language movie Har Har Mahadev, the Kannada movie Gange Gowri and well-known books include Amish Tripathi's Shiva Trilogy, which has sold over a million copies. On television, Devon Ke Dev...Mahadev, a television serial about Shiva on the Life OK channel was among the most watched shows at its peak popularity. A 90's television series of DD National titled Om Namah Shivay was also based on legends of Shiva.
Popular video games featuring Shiva include the Shin Megami Tensei series and especially Smite. The god is also depicted as the mascot for the Washington Commanders in the popular animated series, Gridiron Heights.
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"Filmed improvised explosive device bombings",
"Filmed killings in Asia",
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"Improvised explosive device bombings in 2008",
"India–Pakistan relations",
"Islam and antisemitism",
"Islamic terrorism in India",
"Islamic terrorist incidents in 2008",
"Jewish Indian history",
"Lashkar-e-Taiba attacks",
"Manmohan Singh administration",
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"Mass shootings in India",
"Mumbai Suburban Railway",
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"November 2008 events in India",
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"Spree shootings in India",
"Terrorist incidents in India in 2008",
"Terrorist incidents in Mumbai",
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"Urban warfare"
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The 2008 Mumbai attacks (also referred to as 26/11 attacks or 26 November attacks) were a series of terrorist attacks that took place in November 2008, when 10 members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a militant Islamist organisation from Pakistan, carried out 12 coordinated shooting and bombing attacks lasting four days across Mumbai. The attacks, which drew widespread global condemnation, began on Wednesday 26 November and lasted until Saturday 29 November 2008. A total of 175 people died, including nine of the attackers, with more than 300 injured.
Eight of the attacks occurred in South Mumbai: at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, the Oberoi Trident, the Taj Palace & Tower, the Leopold Cafe, the Cama Hospital, the Nariman House, the Metro Cinema, and in a lane behind the Times of India building and St. Xavier's College. There was also an explosion at Mazagaon, in Mumbai's port area, and in a taxi at Vile Parle. By the early morning of 28 November, all sites except for the Taj Hotel had been secured by the Mumbai Police and security forces. On 29 November, India's National Security Guards (NSG) conducted Operation Black Tornado to flush out the remaining attackers; it culminated in the death of the last remaining attackers at the Taj Hotel and ended the attacks.
Before his execution in 2012, Ajmal Kasab, the sole surviving attacker, disclosed that the attackers were members of the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, and were controlled from Pakistan, corroborating initial claims from the Indian Government. Pakistan later confirmed that the sole surviving perpetrator of the attacks was a Pakistani citizen. On 9 April 2015, the foremost ringleader of the attacks, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, was released on bail and disappeared; he was arrested again in Lahore on 2 January 2021. In 2018, former Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif suggested that the Pakistani government played a role in the 2008 Mumbai attack. In 2022, one of the masterminds of the attack, Sajid Majeed Mir —who had been earlier claimed to be dead by the Pakistan Government— was convicted for funding terrorist activities by an anti-terrorism court in Pakistan.
## Background
There had been many terrorist attacks in Mumbai since the 13 coordinated bomb explosions that killed 257 people and injured 700 on 12 March 1993. The 1993 attacks were carried out in revenge for earlier religious riots that killed many Muslims.
On 6 December 2002, a blast in a BEST bus near Ghatkopar station killed two people and injured 28. The bombing occurred on the 10th anniversary of the demolition of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya. A bicycle bomb exploded near the Vile Parle station in Mumbai, killing one person and injuring 25 on 27 January 2003, a day before the visit of the Prime Minister of India Atal Bihari Vajpayee to the city. On 13 March 2003, a day after the 10th anniversary of the 1993 Bombay bombings, a bomb exploded in a train compartment near the Mulund station, killing 10 people and injuring 70. On 28 July 2003, a blast in a BEST bus in Ghatkopar killed 4 people and injured 32. On 25 August 2003, two bombs exploded in South Mumbai, one near the Gateway of India and the other at Zaveri Bazaar in Kalbadevi. At least 44 people were killed and 150 injured. On 11 July 2006, seven bombs exploded within 11 minutes on the Suburban Railway in Mumbai, killing 209 people, including 22 foreigners and more than 700 injured. According to the Mumbai Police, the bombings were carried out by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI).
## Training
A group of men sometimes stated as 24 and at other times 26, received training in marine warfare at a remote camp in mountainous Muzaffarabad in Pakistan. Part of the training was reported to have taken place on the Mangla Dam reservoir in Pakistan.
The recruits went through the following stages of training, according to Indian and US media reports:
- Psychological: Indoctrination to Islamist Jihadi ideas, including imagery of atrocities suffered by Muslims in India, and across the globe.
- Basic Combat: Lashkar's basic combat training and methodology course, the Daura Aam.
- Advanced Training: Selected to undergo advanced combat training at a camp near Mansehra, a course the organisation calls the Daura Khaas. According to an unnamed source at the US Defense Department, this includes advanced weapons and explosives training supervised by former members of the Pakistan Army, along with survival training and further indoctrination.
- Commando Training: Finally, an even smaller group was selected for specialized commando tactics training, and marine navigation training was given to the Fedayeen unit that was selected, in order to target Mumbai.
From the recruits, ten were handpicked for the Mumbai mission. They also received training in swimming and sailing, besides the use of high-end weapons and explosives under the supervision of LeT commanders. According to a media report citing an unnamed former Defence Department Official of the US, the intelligence agencies of the US had determined that former officers from Pakistan's Army and Inter-Services Intelligence agency assisted actively and continuously in training. They were given blueprints of all the four targets – The Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, Oberoi Trident, Nariman House, and Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus.
## Attacks
The terrorist first hijacked an Indian fishing boat, killed 5 who were on-board. The first events were detailed around 20:00 Indian Standard Time (IST) on 26 November, when 10 men in inflatable speedboats came ashore at two locations in Colaba. They reportedly told local Marathi-speaking fishermen who asked them who they were to "mind their own business" before they split up and headed two different ways. The fishermen's subsequent report to the police department received little response and local police failed to act.
### Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus
The Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT) was attacked by two gunmen, Ismail Khan and Ajmal Kasab. Kasab was later caught alive by the police and identified by eyewitnesses. The attacks began around 21:30 when the two men entered the passenger hall and opened fire using AK-47 assault rifles. The attackers killed 58 people and injured 104 others, their assault ending at about 22:45. Security forces and emergency services arrived shortly afterwards. Announcements by a railway announcer, Vishnu Dattaram Zende, alerted passengers to leave the station and saved many lives. The two gunmen fled the scene and fired at pedestrians and police officers in the streets, killing eight police officers. The attackers passed a police station. Knowing that they were outgunned against the heavily armed terrorists, the police officers at the station, instead of confronting the terrorists, decided to switch off the lights and secure the gates.
The attackers then headed towards Cama Hospital with intent to kill patients, but the hospital staff locked all of the patient wards. A team of the Mumbai Anti-Terrorist Squad led by police chief Hemant Karkare searched the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus and then left in pursuit of Kasab and Khan. Kasab and Khan opened fire on the vehicle in a lane next to the hospital, and received return fire in response. Karkare, Vijay Salaskar, Ashok Kamte and three of their officers were killed. The only survivor, Constable Arun Jadhav, was severely wounded. Kasab and Khan seized the police vehicle but later abandoned it and seized a passenger car instead. They then ran into a police roadblock, which had been set up after Jadhav radioed for help. A gun battle then ensued in which Khan was killed and Kasab was wounded. After a physical struggle, Kasab was arrested. A police officer, Tukaram Omble, was also killed when he tried to disarm Kasab by wrestling his weapon away from him.
### Leopold Cafe
The Leopold Cafe, a popular restaurant and bar on Colaba Causeway in South Mumbai, was one of the first sites to be attacked. Two attackers, Shoaib alias Soheb and Nazir alias Abu Umer, opened fire on the cafe on the evening of 26 November between 21:30 and 21:48, killing 10 people (including some international travelers) and injuring many more.
### Bomb blasts in taxis
There were two explosions in taxis caused by time bombs. The first one occurred at 22:40 at Vile Parle, killing the driver and a passenger. The second explosion took place at Wadi Bunder between 22:20 and 22:25. Three people, including the driver of the taxi were killed, and about 15 others were injured.
### Taj Mahal Palace Hotel and Oberoi Trident
Two hotels, The Taj Mahal Palace Hotel and the Oberoi Trident, were among the four locations targeted. Six explosions were reported at the Taj Hotel – one in the lobby, two in the elevators, three in the restaurant – and one at the Oberoi Trident. At the Taj, firefighters rescued 200 hostages from windows using ladders during the first night.
CNN initially reported on the morning of 27 November 2008 that the hostage situation at the Taj Hotel had been resolved and quoted the police chief of Maharashtra stating that all hostages were freed; however, it was learned later that day that there were still two attackers holding hostages, including foreigners, in the Taj Hotel.
A number of European Parliament Committee on International Trade delegates were staying in the Taj Hotel when it was attacked, but none of them were injured. British Conservative Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Sajjad Karim (who was in the lobby when attackers initially opened fire there) and German Social Democrat MEP Erika Mann were hiding in different parts of the building. Also reported present was Spanish MEP Ignasi Guardans, who was barricaded in a hotel room. Another British Conservative MEP, Syed Kamall, reported that he along with several other MEPs left the hotel and went to a nearby restaurant shortly before the attack. Kamall also reported that Polish MEP Jan Masiel was thought to have been sleeping in his hotel room when the attacks started, but eventually left the hotel safely. Kamall and Guardans reported that a Hungarian MEP's assistant was shot. Also caught up in the shooting were the President of Madrid, Esperanza Aguirre, while checking in at the Oberoi Trident, and Indian MP N. N. Krishnadas of Kerala and Gulam Noon while having dinner at a restaurant in the Taj Hotel. Gautam Adani, a billionaire business tycoon of India, was having dinner in the Taj on November 26; he hid in the hotel basement for the night.
### Nariman House
Nariman House, a Chabad Lubavitch Jewish centre in Colaba known as the Mumbai Chabad House, was taken over by two attackers and several residents were held hostage. Police evacuated adjacent buildings and exchanged fire with the attackers, wounding one. Local residents were told to stay inside. The attackers threw a grenade into a nearby lane, causing no casualties. NSG commandos arrived from Delhi, and a naval helicopter took an aerial survey. During the first day, 9 hostages were rescued from the first floor. The following day, the house was stormed by NSG commandos fast-roping from helicopters onto the roof, covered by snipers positioned in nearby buildings. After a long battle, one NSG commando, Sergeant Gajender Singh Bisht was killed, as were both perpetrators. Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivka Holtzberg, who was six months pregnant, were murdered with four other hostages inside the house by the attackers.
According to radio transmissions picked up by Indian intelligence, the attackers "would be told by their handlers in Pakistan that the lives of Jews were worth 50 times those of non-Jews". Injuries on some of the bodies indicated that they may have been tortured.
### NSG raid
During the attacks, both hotels were surrounded by Rapid Action Force personnel and Marine Commandos (MARCOS) and National Security Guards (NSG) commandos. When reports emerged that attackers were receiving television broadcasts, feeds to the hotels were blocked. Security forces stormed both hotels, and all nine attackers were killed by the morning of 29 November. Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan of the NSG was fatally shot during the rescue of Commando Sunil Yadav, who was hit in the leg by a bullet during the rescue operations at Taj. 32 hostages were killed at the Oberoi Trident.
NSG commandos then took on the Nariman house, and a naval helicopter took an aerial survey. During the first day, 9 hostages were rescued from the first floor. The following day, the house was stormed by NSG commandos fast-roping from helicopters onto the roof, covered by snipers positioned in nearby buildings. NSG Commando Sergeant Gajender Singh Bisht, who was part of the team that fast-roped onto Nariman House, died after a long battle in which both perpetrators were also killed. By the morning of 28 November, the NSG had secured the Jewish outreach centre at Nariman House as well as the Oberoi Trident hotel. They also incorrectly believed that the Taj Palace and Towers had been cleared of attackers, and soldiers were leading hostages and holed-up guests to safety, and removing bodies of those killed in the attacks. However, later news reports indicated that there were still two or three attackers in the Taj, with explosions heard and gunfire exchanged. Fires were also reported at the ground floor of the Taj with plumes of smoke arising from the first floor. The final operation at the Taj Palace hotel was completed by the NSG commandos at 08:00 on 29 November, killing three attackers and resulting in the conclusion of the attacks. The NSG rescued 250 people from the Oberoi, 300 from the Taj and 60 people (members of 12 different families) from Nariman House. In addition, police seized a boat filled with arms and explosives anchored at Mazgaon dock off Mumbai Harbour.
## Attribution
The Mumbai attacks were planned and directed by Lashkar-e-Taiba militants inside Pakistan, and carried out by 10 young armed men trained and sent to Mumbai and directed from inside Pakistan via mobile phones and VoIP.
In July 2009 Pakistani authorities confirmed that LeT plotted and financed the attacks from LeT camps in Karachi and Thatta. In November 2009, Pakistani authorities charged seven men they had arrested earlier, of planning and executing the assault.
Mumbai police department originally identified 37 suspects—including two Pakistani army officers—for their alleged involvement in the plot. All but two of the suspects, many of whom are identified only through aliases, are Pakistani. David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana, arrested in the United States in October 2009 for other attacks, were also found to have been involved in planning the Mumbai attacks. One of these men, Pakistani American David Headley (born Daood Sayed Gilani), was found to have made several trips to India before the attacks and gathered video and GPS information on behalf of the plotters.
In April 2011, the United States issued arrest warrants for four Pakistani men as suspects in the attack. The men, Sajid Mir, Abu Qahafa, Mazhar Iqbal alias "Major Iqbal", are believed to be members of Lashkar-e-Taiba and helped plan and train the attackers.
### Negotiations with Pakistan
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani and President Asif Ali Zardari condemned the attacks. Pakistan promised to assist in the investigation and President Zardari vowed "strong action against any Pakistani elements found involved in the attack".
Pakistan initially denied that Pakistanis were responsible for the attacks, blaming plotters in Bangladesh and Indian criminals, a claim refuted by India, and saying they needed information from India on other bombings first.
Pakistani authorities finally agreed that Ajmal Kasab was a Pakistani on 7 January 2009, and registered a case against three other Pakistani nationals.
The Indian government supplied evidence to Pakistan and other governments, in the form of interrogations, weapons, and call records of conversations during the attacks. In addition, Indian government officials said that the attacks were so sophisticated that they must have had official backing from Pakistani "agencies", an accusation denied by Pakistan.
Under US and UN pressure, Pakistan arrested a few members of Jamaat ud-Dawa and briefly put its founder under house arrest, but he was found to be free a few days later. A year after the attacks, Mumbai police continued to complain that Pakistani authorities were not co-operating by providing information for their investigation. Meanwhile, journalists in Pakistan said security agencies were preventing them from interviewing people from Kasab's village. The then Home Minister P. Chidambaram said the Pakistani authorities had not shared any information about American suspects David Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana, but that the FBI had been more forthcoming.
An Indian report, summarising intelligence gained from India's interrogation of David Headley, was released in October 2010. It alleged that Pakistan's intelligence agency (ISI) had provided support for the attacks by providing funding for reconnaissance missions in Mumbai. The report included Headley's claim that Lashkar-e-Taiba's chief military commander, Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi, had close ties to the ISI. He alleged that "every big action of LeT is done in close coordination with [the] ISI."
In 2018, during an interview with newspaper Dawn, Pakistan's former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif reportedly indirectly accepted Pakistan's involvement in not preventing the Mumbai attacks.
### Investigation
According to investigations, the attackers travelled by sea from Karachi, Pakistan, across the Arabian Sea, hijacked the Indian fishing trawler Kuber, killed the crew of four, then forced the captain to sail to Mumbai. After murdering the captain, the attackers entered Mumbai on a rubber dinghy. The captain of Kuber, Amar Singh Solanki, had earlier been imprisoned for six months in a Pakistani jail for illegally fishing in Pakistani waters. The attackers stayed and were trained by the Lashkar-e-Taiba in a safehouse at Azizabad in Karachi before boarding a small boat for Mumbai.
David Headley was a member of Lashkar-e-Taiba, and between 2002 and 2009 Headley travelled extensively as part of his work for LeT. Headley received training in small arms and countersurveillance from LeT, built a network of connections for the group, and was chief scout in scoping out targets for Mumbai attack having allegedly been given \$25,000 in cash in 2006 by an ISI officer known as Major Iqbal. The officer also helped him arrange a communications system for the attack, and oversaw a model of the Taj Hotel so that gunmen could know their way inside the target, according to Headley's testimony to Indian authorities. Headley also helped ISI recruit Indian agents to monitor Indian troop levels and movements, according to a US official. At the same time, Headley was also an informant for the US Drug Enforcement Administration, and Headley's wives warned American officials of Headley's involvement with LeT and his plotting attacks, warning specifically that the Taj Hotel may be their target.
US officials believed that the Inter-Services Intelligence (I.S.I.) officers provided support to Lashkar-e-Taiba militants who carried out the attacks. Disclosures made by former American intelligence contractor Edward Snowden in 2013 revealed that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had intercepted communications between the Lashkar boat and the LeT headquarters in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and passed the alert on to RAW on 18 November, eight days before the terrorists actually struck Mumbai. In the hours after the attack, the New York City Police Department sent Brandon del Pozo, an official from their Intelligence Division, to investigate the incident in order to understand what vulnerabilities its methods posed for New York City.
The arrest of Zabiuddin Ansari alias Abu Hamza in June 2012 provided further clarity on how the plot was hatched. According to Abu Hamza, the attacks were previously scheduled for 2006, using Indian youth for the job. However, a huge cache of AK-47's and RDX, which were to be used for the attacks, was recovered from Aurangabad in 2006, thus leading to the dismantling of the original plot. Subsequently, Abu Hamza fled to Pakistan and along with Lashkar commanders, scouted for Pakistani youth to be used for the attacks. In September 2007, 10 people were selected for the mission. In September 2008, these people tried sailing to Mumbai from Karachi, but could not complete their mission due to choppy waters. These men made a second attempt in November 2008, and successfully managed to execute the final attacks. David Headley's disclosures, that three Pakistani army officers were associated with the planning and execution of the attack were substantiated by Ansari's revelations during his interrogation.
After Ansari's arrest, Pakistan's Foreign Office claimed they had received information that up to 40 Indian nationals were involved in the attacks.
### Method
The attackers had planned the attack several months ahead of time and knew some areas well enough to vanish and reappear after security forces had left. Several sources have quoted Kasab telling the police that the group received help from Mumbai residents. The attackers used at least three SIM cards purchased on the Indian side of the border with Bangladesh. There were also reports of a SIM card purchased in the US state of New Jersey. Police had also mentioned that Faheem Ansari, an Indian Lashkar operative who had been arrested in February 2008, had scouted the Mumbai targets for the November attacks. Later, the police arrested two Indian suspects, Mikhtar Ahmad, who is from Srinagar in Kashmir, and Tausif Rehman, a resident of Kolkata. They supplied the SIM cards, one in Calcutta, and the other in New Delhi.
The attackers used a satellite phone and cell phones to talk to each other as well as their handlers that were based in Pakistan. In transcripts intercepted by Indian authorities between the attackers and their handlers, the handlers provided the attackers with encouragement, tactical advice, and information gained from media coverage. The attackers used both personal cell phones and those obtained from their victims to communicate with each other and the news media. Although the attackers were encouraged to murder hostages, the attackers were in communication with the news media via cell phones to make demands in return for the release of hostages. This was believed to be done in order to further confuse Indian authorities that they were dealing with primarily a hostage situation.
Type 86 Grenades made by China's state-owned Norinco were used in the attacks.
There were also indications that the attackers had been taking steroids. The gunman who survived said that the attackers had used Google Earth to familiarise themselves with the locations of buildings used in the attacks.
There were 10 gunmen, nine of whom were subsequently shot dead and one captured by security forces. Witnesses reported that they seemed to be in their early twenties, wore black T-shirts and jeans, and that they smiled and looked happy as they shot their victims.
It was initially reported that some of the attackers were British citizens, but the Indian government later stated that there was no evidence to confirm this. Similarly, early reports of 12 gunmen were also later shown to be incorrect.
On 9 December, the 10 attackers were identified by Mumbai police, along with their home towns in Pakistan: Ajmal Amir Kasab from Faridkot, Abu Ismail Dera Ismail Khan from Dera Ismail Khan, Hafiz Arshad and Babr Imran from Multan, Javed from Okara, Shoaib from Sialkot, Nazir Ahmed and Nasir from Faisalabad, Abdul Rahman from Arifwalla, and Fahadullah from Dipalpur Taluka. Dera Ismail Khan is in the North-West Frontier Province; the rest of the towns are in Pakistani Punjab.
On 6 April 2010, the Home Minister of Maharashtra State, informed the Assembly that the bodies of the nine killed Pakistani gunmen from the 2008 attack on Mumbai were buried in a secret location in January 2010. The bodies had been in the mortuary of a Mumbai hospital after Muslim clerics in the city refused to let them be buried on their grounds.
### Attackers
Only one of the 10 attackers, Ajmal Kasab, survived the attack. He was hanged in Yerwada jail in 2012. The other nine attackers killed during the onslaught were Hafiz Arshad alias Abdul Rehman Bada, Abdul Rahman Chhota, Javed alias Abu Ali, Fahadullah alias Abu Fahad, Ismail Khan alias Abu Ismail, Babar Imran alias Abu Akasha, Nasir alias Abu Umar, Nazir alias Abu Umer and Shoaib alias Abu Soheb.
### Arrests
Ajmal Kasab was the only attacker arrested alive by police. At first, he deposed to police inspector Ramesh Mahale that he had come to India "to see Amitabh Bachchan's bungalow", and that he was apprehended by the Mumbai Police outside the bungalow. Much of the information about the attackers' preparation, travel, and movements comes from his subsequent confessions to the Mumbai police.
On 12 February 2009, Pakistan's Interior Minister Rehman Malik said that Pakistani national Javed Iqbal, who acquired VoIP phones in Spain for the Mumbai attackers, and Hamad Ameen Sadiq, who had facilitated money transfer for the attack, had been arrested. Two other men known as Khan and Riaz, but whose full names were not given, were also arrested. Two Pakistanis were arrested in Brescia, Italy (east of Milan) on 21 November 2009, after being accused of providing logistical support to the attacks and transferring more than US\$200 to Internet accounts using a false ID. They had Red Corner Notices issued against them by Interpol for their suspected involvement and it was issued after the last year's strikes.
In October 2009, two Chicago men were arrested and charged by the FBI for involvement in "terrorism" abroad, David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana. Headley, a Pakistani-American, was charged in November 2009 with scouting locations for the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Headley is reported to have posed as an American Jew and is believed to have links with militant Islamist groups based in Bangladesh. On 18 March 2010, Headley pleaded guilty to a dozen charges against him thereby avoiding going to trial.
In December 2009, the FBI charged Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed, a retired major in the Pakistani army, for planning the attacks in association with Headley.
On 15 January 2010, in a successful snatch operation R&AW agents nabbed Sheikh Abdul Khwaja, one of the handlers of the 26/11 attacks, chief of HuJI India operations and a most wanted suspect in India, from Colombo, Sri Lanka, and brought him over to Hyderabad, India for formal arrest.
On 25 June 2012, the Delhi Police Department arrested Zabiuddin Ansari alias Abu Hamza, one of the key suspects in the attack at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi. His arrest was touted as the most significant development in the case since Kasab's arrest. Security agencies had been chasing him for three years in Delhi. Ansari is a Lashker-e-Taiba ultra and the Hindi tutor of the 10 attackers who were responsible for the Mumbai attacks in 2008. He was apprehended, after he was arrested and deported to India by Saudi Intelligence officials as per official request by Indian authorities. After Ansari's arrest, investigations revealed that in 2009 he allegedly stayed for a day in a room in Old Legislators's Hostel, belonging to Fauzia Khan, a former MLA and minister in Maharashtra Government. The minister, however, denied having any links with him. Home Minister P. Chidambaram asserted that Ansari was provided a safe place in Pakistan and was present in the control room, which could not have been established without active State support. Ansari's interrogation further revealed that Sajid Mir and a Pakistani Army major visited India under fake names as cricket spectators to survey targets in Delhi and Mumbai for about a fortnight.
Sajid Mir, a Pakistani citizen and key operative of the militant Islamic extremist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), is seen as one of the main organizers of the 2008 attacks. He has been called the "mastermind" and "project manager". Mir is on the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation's Most Wanted list and the United States Department of State offers in its Rewards for Justice Program, a reward of up to \$5 million for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Mir. Mir has carried out terrorism operations in different parts of the world, including France.
Jason M. Blazakis, professor of practice at Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, stated in 2018 in The Hill: "A lethal, miasmic mix of bureaucratic inertia, diplomatic dysfunction and misperception has contributed to the fact that LeT members Sajid Mir, Mazhar Iqbal, Abu Qahafa (his nom de guerre), and their ISI handler, Major Iqbal (no relation to Mazhar), roam free."
## Casualties and compensation
A total of 175 people, including civilians, security personnel, and nine of the attackers, were killed in the attacks. Among the dead were 29 foreign nationals. One attacker was captured. The bodies of many of the dead hostages showed signs of torture or disfigurement. A number of those killed were notable figures in business, media, and security services.
The chief minister of Maharashtra, Vilasrao Deshmukh, stated that 15 policemen and two NSG commandos were killed, including the following officers:
- Assistant Police Sub-Inspector Tukaram Omble, who succeeded in capturing a terrorist alive, with his bare hands.
- Joint Commissioner of Police Hemant Karkare, the Chief of the Mumbai Anti-Terrorism Squad
- Additional Commissioner of Police: Ashok Kamte
- Encounter specialist Senior Inspector Vijay Salaskar
- Senior Inspector Shashank Shinde
- NSG Commando, Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan
- NSG Commando, Hawaldar Gajender Singh Bisht
Three railway officials of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus were also killed.
The casualties occurred in the following locations:
The government of Maharashtra announced about ₹500,000 (US\$6,300) as compensation to the kin of each of those killed in the terror attacks and about ₹50,000 (US\$630) to the seriously injured. In August 2009, the Indian Hotels Company and the Oberoi Group received about US\$28 million as part-payment of the insurance claims, on account of the attacks on Taj and Trident, from General Insurance Corporation of India.
## Aftermath
The attacks are sometimes referred to in India as "26/11", after the date in 2008 that the attacks began. The Pradhan Inquiry Commission, appointed by the Maharashtra government, produced a report that was tabled before the legislative assembly more than a year after the events. The report said the "war-like" attack was beyond the capacity to respond of any police force, but also found fault with the Mumbai Police Commissioner Hasan Gafoor's lack of leadership during the crisis.
The Maharashtra government planned to buy 36 speed boats to patrol the coastal areas and several helicopters for the same purpose. It also planned to create an anti-terror force called "Force One" and upgrade all the weapons that Mumbai police currently have. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on an all-party conference declared that legal framework would be strengthened in the battle against terrorism and a federal anti-terrorist intelligence and investigation agency, like the FBI, will be set up soon to co-ordinate action against terrorism. The government strengthened anti-terror laws with UAPA 2008, and the federal National Investigation Agency was formed.
A Public Interest Litigation has been filed by social activist Ketan Tirodkar to demand equal justice for all the police who were killed in the terror attack; especially for the members of the Bomb Disposal Squad of Mumbai Police. During the hearing of the petition, the Government informed the High Court that the Federal Government of India has rejected the proposal to award the Bomb Disposal Squad of the city police for their contribution in defusing grenades in the terror attack.
The attacks further strained India's slowly recovering relationship with Pakistan. India's then External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee declared that India may indulge in military strikes against terror camps in Pakistan to protect its territorial integrity. There were also after-effects on the United States's relationships with both countries, the US-led NATO war in Afghanistan, and on the Global War on Terror. FBI chief Robert Mueller praised the "unprecedented cooperation" between American and Indian intelligence agencies over the Mumbai terror attack probe. However, Interpol secretary general Ronald Noble said that Indian intelligence agencies did not share any information with Interpol.
A new National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) was proposed to be set up by the then-Home Minister P. Chidambaram as an office to collect, collate, summarise, integrate, analyse, co-ordinate and report all information and inputs received from various intelligence agencies, state police departments, and other ministries and their departments.
### Movement of troops
Pakistan moved troops towards the border with India voicing concerns about the Indian government's possible plans to launch attacks on Pakistani soil if it did not co-operate. After days of talks, the Pakistan government, however, decided to start moving troops away from the border.
## Reactions
Indians criticised their political leaders after the attacks, saying that their ineptness was partly responsible. The Times of India commented on its front page that "Our politicians fiddle as innocents die." Political reactions in Mumbai and India included a range of resignations and political changes, including the resignations of Minister for Home Affairs Shivraj Patil, Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and deputy chief minister R. R. Patil for controversial reactions to the attack including taking the former's son and Bollywood director Ram Gopal Verma to tour the damaged Taj Hotel and the latter's remarks that the attacks were not a big deal in such a large city. Indian Muslims condemned the attacks and refused to bury the attackers. Groups of Muslims marched against the attacks and mosques observed silence. Prominent Muslim personalities such as Bollywood actor Aamir Khan appealed to their community members in the country to observe Eid al-Adha as a day of mourning on 9 December. The business establishment also reacted, with changes to transport, and requests for an increase in self-defence capabilities. The attacks also triggered a chain of citizens' movements across India such as the India Today Group's "War Against Terror" campaign. There were vigils held across all of India with candles and placards commemorating the victims of the attacks. The NSG commandos based in Delhi also met criticism for taking ten hours to reach the three sites under attack.
International reaction for the attacks was widespread, with many countries and international organisations condemning the attacks and expressing their condolences to the civilian victims. Many important personalities around the world also condemned the attacks.
Media coverage highlighted the use of social media and social networking tools, including Twitter and Flickr, in spreading information about the attacks. In addition, many Indian bloggers offered live textual coverage of the attacks. A map of the attacks was set up by a web journalist using Google Maps. The New York Times, in July 2009, described the event as "what may be the most well-documented terrorist attack anywhere".
In November 2010, families of American victims of the attacks filed a lawsuit in Brooklyn, New York, naming Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, chief of the ISI, as being complicit in the Mumbai attacks. On 22 September 2011, the attack on the American Embassy in Afghanistan was attributed to Pakistan via cell phone records identical to the attacks in Mumbai, also linked to Pakistan.
## Trials
### Kasab's trial
Kasab's trial was delayed due to legal issues, as many Indian lawyers were unwilling to represent him. A Mumbai Bar Association passed a resolution proclaiming that none of its members would represent Kasab. However, the Chief Justice of India stated that Kasab needed a lawyer for a fair trial. A lawyer for Kasab was eventually found, but was replaced due to a conflict of interest. On 25 February 2009, Indian investigators filed an 11,000-page chargesheet, formally charging Kasab with murder, conspiracy, and waging war against India among other charges.
Kasab's trial began on 23 March 2009, and he pled not guilty on 6 May 2009. On 10 June 2009, Devika Rotawan, a child who had been shot in her leg during the attack, identified Kasab as one of the attackers during her testimony. He pled guilty on 20 July 2009. The judge found many of the 86 charges were not addressed in his confession, and therefore the trial continued 23 July 2009. Kasab initially apologised for the attacks and said he deserved the death penalty for his crimes, but on 18 December 2009, retracted his confession, and said he had been forced by police to make his confession.
Kasab was convicted of all 86 charges on 3 May 2010. He was found guilty of murder for directly killing seven people, conspiracy to commit murder for the deaths of the 164 people killed in the three-day terror siege, waging war against India, causing terror, and of conspiracy to murder two high-ranking police officers. On 6 May 2010, he was sentenced to death by hanging. However, he appealed his sentence at high court. On 21 February 2011, the Bombay High Court upheld the death sentence of Kasab, dismissing his appeal.
On 29 August 2012, the Indian Supreme Court upheld the death sentence for Kasab. The court stated, "We are left with no option but to award death penalty. The primary and foremost offence committed by Kasab is waging war against the Government of India". The verdict followed 10 weeks of appeal hearings, and was decided by a two-judge Supreme Court panel, which was led by Judge Aftab Alam. The panel rejected arguments that Kasab was denied a free and fair trial.
Kasab filed a mercy petition with the President of India, which was rejected on 5 November. Kasab was hanged in Pune's Yerwada jail in secret on 21 November 2012 at 7:30 am named as operation 'X'. The Indian embassy in Islamabad informed the Pakistan government about Kasab's hanging through a letter. Pakistan refused to take the letter, which was then faxed to them. His family in Pakistan was sent news of his hanging via a courier.
### In Pakistan
Indian and Pakistani police exchanged DNA evidence, photographs and items found with the attackers to piece together a detailed portrait of the Mumbai plot. Police in Pakistan arrested seven people, including Hammad Amin Sadiq, a homoeopathic pharmacist, who arranged bank accounts and secured supplies. Sadiq and six others began their formal trial on 3 October 2009 in Pakistan. Indian authorities said the prosecution stopped well short of top Lashkar leaders. In November 2009, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that Pakistan had not done enough to bring the perpetrators of the attacks to justice.
An eight-member commission comprising defence lawyers, prosecutors and a court official was allowed to travel to India on 15 March 2013 to gather evidence for the prosecution of seven suspects linked to the 2008 Mumbai attacks. However, the defence lawyers were barred from cross-examining the four prosecution witnesses in the case including Ajmal Kasab. On the eve of the first anniversary of 26/11, a Pakistani anti-terror court formally charged seven accused, including LeT operations commander Zaki ur Rehman Lakhvi. However, the actual trial started on 5 May 2012. The Pakistani court conducting trial of Mumbai attacks accused, reserved its judgement on the application filed by Lakhvi, challenging the report of the judicial panel, to 17 July 2012. On 17 July 2012, the court refused to take the findings of the Pakistani judicial commission as part of the evidence. However, it ruled that if a new agreement, which allows the panel's examination of witnesses, is reached, the prosecution may make an application for sending the panel to Mumbai. The Indian Government, upset over the court ruling, however, contended that evidence collected by the Pakistani judicial panel has evidential value to punish all those involved in the attack. On 21 September 2013, a Pakistani judicial commission arrived in India to carry out the investigation and to cross examine the witnesses. This is the second such visit: the one in March 2012 was not a success as its report was rejected by an anti-terrorism court in Pakistan due to lack of evidence.
### In the United States
The LeT operative David Headley (born Daood Sayed Gilani) in his testimony before a Chicago federal court during co-accused Tahawwur Rana's trial revealed that Mumbai Chabad House was added to the list of targets for surveillance given by his Inter Services Intelligence handler Major Iqbal, though the Oberoi Hotel, one of the sites attacked, was not originally on the list. On 10 June 2011, Tahawwur Rana was acquitted of plotting the 2008 Mumbai attacks, but was held guilty on two other charges. He was sentenced to 14 years in federal prison on 17 January 2013. In May 2023, a US court approved his extradition to India where he is sought for his involvement in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.
David Headley pleaded guilty to 12 counts related to the attacks, including conspiracy to commit murder in India and aiding and abetting in the murder of six Americans. On 23 January 2013, he was sentenced to 35 years in federal prison. His plea that he not be extradited to India, Pakistan or Denmark was accepted.
## Memorials
On the first anniversary of the event, the state paid homage to the victims of the attack. Force One—a new security force created by the Maharashtra government—staged a parade from Nariman Point to Chowpatty. Other memorials and candlelight vigils were also organised at the various locations where the attacks occurred.
On the second anniversary of the event, homage was again paid to the victims.
On the 10th anniversary of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, Nariman House, one of the several establishments that were targeted by the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists, were to be declared a memorial and renamed as Nariman Light House.
The Indian Express group hosts an annual memorial event, 26/11 – Stories of Strength, in Mumbai to pay homage to those killed in the ghastly terror attacks in the city in 2008. The memorial event started in 2016, is now organised at the Gateway of India and brings forth the inspiring stories of courage and strength of more than 100 survivors that the Indian Express has interviewed over the past decade. Actor Amitabh Bachchan has been the brand ambassador for the event over the years.
## Published accounts
### Documentaries
- Mumbai Massacre (2009), television documentary film by Victoria Midwinter Pitt about survivors of the attack. Originally broadcast by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, it was re-edited for PBS' Secrets of the Dead as the episode "Mumbai Massacre", it was also shown in Four Corners as the twenty-sixth episode of season 49.
- Terror in Mumbai (2009), British television documentary film by Dan Reed, broadcast by HBO which features audio tapes of the intercepted phone calls between the young gunmen and their controllers in Pakistan, and testimony from the sole surviving gunman.
- Mumbai Terror Attacks (2010), Indian television documentary film by Ashish R. Shukla produced by Miditech and broadcast by Nat Geo India.
- "City Under Siege" (2012), directed by Matthew Hinchcliffe, first episode of the television documentary series Black Ops with a focus on the rescue operation during the attacks.
- "Terror in Mumbai" (2011), directed by Mike Phillips, fourth episode of the American television docudrama series Got Home Alive, about foreign tourists caught in the attacks.
- "Mumbai Massacre" (2012), directed by Stan Griffin, sixth episode of season 5 of the television docudrama series Seconds from Disaster, focusing on intelligence failures which lead to the attacks.
- "Operation Black Tornado" (2018), third episode of the Indian television documentary series Battle Ops on the online channel Veer by Discovery.
- Rubaru Roshni (2019), Indian documentary film by Svati Chakravarty Bhatkal broadcast by Star India, about survivors of the attacks.
### Films
- Crackers (2011), Indian animated film by Anil Goyal, inspired by the attacks.
- Operation Mumbai (2012), Indian action film by Ajit Varma which dramatizes the events of the attacks including the motivations of Ajmal Kasab.
- Shahid (2012), Indian biographical drama film by Hansal Mehta, based on the life of lawyer and human rights activist Shahid Azmi - assassinated in 2010 after agreeing to defend Faheem Ansari who was accused of abetting the terrorists (was later found not-guilty by the courts).
- The Attacks of 26/11 (2013), Indian action thriller film directed by Ram Gopal Varma, depicting the attacks based on the book Kasab: The Face of 26/11 by Rommel Rodrigues with a focus on Ajmal Kasab.
- Arrambam (2013), Indian action-thriller film by Vishnuvardhan about counter-terrorism operations in India, inspired by the attacks.
- Phantom (2015), Indian action-thriller film by Kabir Khan, an alternative-historical account about the assassination of Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed.
- Taj Mahal (2015), French-Belgian thriller-drama film directed and written by Nicolas Saada. It was screened in the Horizons section at the 72nd Venice International Film Festival. The film is about an 18-year-old French girl who was alone in her hotel room when the terrorists attacked the hotel.
- Mumbai Siege: 4 Days of Terror (also known as One Less God) (2017), independent Australian film directed by Lliam Worthington, featuring the situation of some foreigners inside Taj Hotel.
- Hotel Mumbai (2019), action thriller film directed by Anthony Maras and written by John Collee and Maras. It has come under criticism for omitting any reference to the role of Pakistan in the terror strikes.
- Punha 26/11 (Again 26/11), Indian action film set in the aftermath of the attacks with efforts to avert another strike on Mumbai.
- The Interview (2021), Indian thriller film written and directed by Laurence Postma, about a journalist who foregoes the coverage of the attacks to interview a Bollywood actress.
- Sooryavanshi (2021), Indian action film by Rohit Shetty set in the aftermath of the counter-terrorism operations following the attacks.
- Major (2022), an Indian biographical-action film directed by Sashi Kiran Tikka. Shot simultaneously in Telugu and Hindi languages, the film is based on the life of Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan, who was killed while rescuing hostages during the attacks.
### Television
- Operation 26/11 (2021), Indian Hindi-language television mini series by Ajit Varma, set in the aftermath of the attacks and focusing on counterterrorism operations therein.
- State of Siege: 26/11 (2020), Indian Hindi-language web series released on ZEE5, showing the attacks from the perspective of NSG Commandos. It is based on the book Black Tornado: The Three Sieges of Mumbai 26/11 by journalist Sandeep Unnithan.
- Mumbai Diaries 26/11 (2021), Indian Hindi-language medical drama series on Amazon Prime Video. The series is directed by Nikhil Advani and Nikhil Gonsalves. It follows the staff of Bombay General Hospital during the night of the attacks.
### Books
- Kasab: The Face of 26/11 (2010) by Rommel Rodrigues focuses on Ajmal Kasab, the sole terrorist who was caught. It is the basis of the aforementioned film The Attacks of 26/11.
- The Siege: The Attack on the Taj is a non-fiction book by Cathy Scott-Clerk and Adrian Levy. It is an account of the 2008 attacks on The Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Mumbai, India, during the night of 26 November 2008. The book was first published by Penguin Books in 2013.
- In 2014, Black Tornado: The Three Sieges of Mumbai 26/11 was published by Indian journalist Sandeep Unnnithan, a non-fiction book, presented a blow-by-blow account of the terrorist strike and how the siege of Mumbai was thwarted by India's security forces. The book covers the heroic efforts of Marine Commandos of Indian Navy as well as an ill-equipped yet valiant Mumbai Police. But its primary focus is on the 51 Special Action Group of National Security Guards, commanded by the decorated Indian Army Special Forces officer, then Colonel, now Brigadier. Sunil Sheoran Sena Medal (Bar). The book delves into the reasons for the delayed arrival of the NSG, including incredible facts like the then Home Minister of India, Shivraj Patil, wanted to fly in the NSG aircraft and came 1 hour late to board the plane which inturn delayed the NSG's arrival into the city and that the then Southern Army Commander, Lt. General. Noble Thamburaj, notoriously toured the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel with his wife while the NSG operation was still on. It was adapted into the web series State of Siege: 26/11 (2020).
- Aziz Burney wrote a book titled 26/11: RSS ki Saazish? ("26/11: An RSS conspiracy?") hinting that Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh was somehow linked to the attack and launched the book in presence of Congress leader Digvijaya Singh. Later as RSS filed a case against him, he had to apologise for it.
- In his 2020 memoirs, Let Me Say It Now, former IPS officer Rakesh Maria, who was given the responsibility of investigating the attacks and personally interrogated Ajmal Kasab, revealed the extent to which terrorists had gone to ensure their bodies would be mis-identified as Hindus, to lend credence to the narrative that the attack was the handiwork of Hindu extremists, and thus provide the Pakistani authorities with plausible deniability. According to Maria, Lashkar-e-Taiba wanted Kasab to be killed as a Bengaluru resident named ‘Samir Dinesh Chaudhari’, with a "red (sacred) thread" tied around his wrist to portray the attack as a case of ‘Hindu terror’, but their plan apparently did not succeed and the police nabbed Kasab. LeT had even given each terrorist a fake identity card listing an Indian address, to further strengthen the circumstantial narrative. If everything went according to plan, Kasab would have died as Chaudhari and the media would have blamed 'Hindu terrorists' for the attack. Kasab, in his confessional account, acknowledged this plot, as did David Coleman Headley, who corroborated this account by confirming that the sacred threads to be worn around the terrorists' wrists to identify them as Hindus, were procured from Mumbai's Siddhivinayak Temple.
## See also
- 1993 Bombay bombings
- 2006 Mumbai train bombings
- Attack on American Consulate, Kolkata
- The Attacks of 26/11
- Sarah Avraham
- Bowbazaar Bomb Blast 1993
- Hotel Mumbai
- List of Islamist terrorist attacks
- Mumbai Diaries 26/11
- November 2015 Paris attacks
- Phantom
- The Siege: The Attack on the Taj
- Survivor registry
- Westgate centre shootings
- List of massacres in India
## Explanatory notes
|
2,297,928 |
Downtown MRT station
| 1,167,190,925 |
Mass Rapid Transit station in Singapore
|
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"Mass Rapid Transit (Singapore) stations",
"Railway stations in Singapore opened in 2013"
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Downtown MRT station is an underground Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) station on the Downtown line (DTL). Located in Downtown Core, Singapore, underneath Central Boulevard, the station serves various commercial developments including the Marina Bay Financial Centre, Asia Square and SGX Centre. The station is operated by SBS Transit.
First announced as Landmark MRT station in 2005 as part of the Circle line's Downtown extension, the station was constructed as part of DTL Stage 1. The station opened in 2013. Downtown station features an Art-in-Transit artwork Leaves by Jason Lim.
## History
The station was first announced as Landmark station when the Land Transport Authority (LTA) unveiled the 3.4-kilometre (2.1 mi) Downtown extension (DTE) on 14 June 2005. The DTE was initially planned to be a branch of the Circle line, extending from Milennia (now Promenade) station to Chinatown station. In 2007, the DTE was revised, becoming Stage 1 of the 40-kilometre (25 mi) Downtown line (DTL). Through a public poll, the station was renamed to Downtown in June 2009.
Contract C907 for the construction of the station was awarded to Taisei Corporation for (US\$ million) in December 2007. The contract also included the construction of Central Boulevard above the station. The station held an open house on 7 December 2013. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong held an official inauguration at this station on 21 December; the station commenced operations the following day along with the DTL Stage 1 stations.
## Station details
Downtown station serves the DTL and is situated between the Bayfront and Telok Ayer stations. The official station code is DT17. Being part of the DTL, the station is operated by SBS Transit. The station has a side platform configuration with four underground levels.
Downtown station is underneath Central Boulevard between the junctions of Straits View and Marina View, and serves the Marina Bay Financial Centre. The station's six entrances connect to surrounding developments and landmarks including Asia Square, Hong Leong Building, Marina Bay Suites, One Raffles Quay, OUE Downtown and SGX Centre. Downtown station is within walking distance of the Raffles Place and Marina Bay stations on the North South Line.
### Artwork
Leaves by Jason Lim is a mosaic of six leaves displayed at this station as part of the Art-in-Transit programme, a public art showcase which integrates artworks into the MRT network. While the leaves on a macroscopic level guide commuters to the platforms, the close-up view shows a series of plant cells reflecting how local businesses are connected. The work was inspired by the structure of bamboo leaves; bamboo is significant in Asian economies and cultures, representing integrity and resilience.
Lim initially planned a mural of a single leaf blade across the platform wall, but, due to the platform design, he changed his planned artwork to six blades. He used mosaic tiles for the artwork to create a pixellated effect, allowing commuters to interpret his work in various ways. The work was first created on sheets of A3 graph paper, with each square shaded. These drawings were scanned in low resolution and enlarged to further "pixelate" them and create the intended mosaic effect. Rather than mounting Lim's work on cement, the LTA allowed Lim to install mosaic tiles on the entirety of the wall dedicated to the artwork. This allowed his work to be integrated with the station's design. An Italian mosaic tile manufacturer produced the tiles.
|
31,622,364 |
Greg Gianforte
| 1,173,886,056 |
Governor of Montana (born 1961)
|
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"20th-century American engineers",
"21st-century American businesspeople",
"21st-century American engineers",
"21st-century American philanthropists",
"21st-century American politicians",
"American Christian Young Earth creationists",
"American Christians",
"American business writers",
"American businesspeople convicted of crimes",
"American computer businesspeople",
"American people convicted of assault",
"American people of English descent",
"American people of Italian descent",
"American people of Scottish descent",
"American software engineers",
"American technology chief executives",
"American technology company founders",
"American technology writers",
"Businesspeople from Montana",
"Businesspeople from San Diego",
"Candidates in the 2016 United States elections",
"Engineers from California",
"Engineers from Montana",
"Living people",
"Montana politicians convicted of crimes",
"People from Bozeman, Montana",
"Philanthropists from California",
"Philanthropists from Montana",
"Political violence in the United States",
"Politicians from San Diego",
"Republican Party governors of Montana",
"Republican Party members of the United States House of Representatives from Montana",
"Stevens Institute of Technology alumni",
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"Writers from San Diego"
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Gregory Richard Gianforte (/ˌdʒi.ənˈfɔːrteɪ/ JEE-ən-FOR-tay; born April 17, 1961) is an American businessman, politician, software engineer, and writer serving as the 25th governor of Montana since 2021. A member of the Republican Party, Gianforte served as the U.S. representative for Montana's at-large congressional district from 2017 to 2021.
In 1997, Gianforte and his wife, Susan, co-founded RightNow Technologies, a customer relationship management software company. The company went public in 2004; by that time, it employed over 1,000 workers. RightNow Technologies was acquired by Oracle Corporation for \$1.5 billion in 2011.
In 2016, Gianforte ran for governor of Montana as the Republican nominee, losing to incumbent governor Steve Bullock. In May 2017, Gianforte defeated Democratic nominee Rob Quist in a special election for Montana's at-large congressional seat to fill a vacancy created by the appointment of Ryan Zinke as U.S. secretary of the interior. Gianforte was convicted of assault in state court in June 2017 stemming from his election-eve body-slamming attack on The Guardian political reporter Ben Jacobs in May 2017. He was fined and sentenced to community service and anger management therapy. Gianforte was reelected in 2018, defeating Democratic nominee Kathleen Williams.
Gianforte did not seek reelection to the House of Representatives in 2020 and instead was a candidate in the 2020 Montana gubernatorial election. In the November general election, he defeated incumbent lieutenant governor Mike Cooney. He is the first Republican to serve as governor of Montana since Judy Martz left office in 2005.
## Early life and education
Gregory Richard Gianforte was born on April 17, 1961, in San Diego, California. He is the oldest son of Frank Richard Gianforte, who had a career as an aerospace engineer and, later, as a landlord. His mother, Dale Douglass, worked for General Dynamics in San Diego, and later was a school math teacher. Gianforte is of Italian, English, and Scottish ancestry. He has two younger brothers, Douglass and Michael. After the age of three, Gianforte was raised in the Valley Forge and King of Prussia suburbs northwest of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, including Wayne, an affluent unincorporated township community that extends into Montgomery, Chester, and Delaware Counties.
During his high school years in the 1970s, Gianforte started a software business. He attended Upper Merion Area High School in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, where he was elected class president during his junior and senior years. Gianforte was also captain of his school football team, where he played left offensive guard. He graduated from high school in 1979.
Gianforte graduated in 1983 from his father's alma mater, Stevens Institute of Technology, with a BE in electrical engineering and a master's degree in computer science. He directed a computer lab with 12 programmers. He was a member of the Delta Tau Delta men's fraternity, and enjoyed playing squash.
## Career
### Software entrepreneurship
Gianforte began his career in 1983 at Bell Laboratories, working in product acquisition. Frustrated by the bureaucratic corporate hierarchy at Bell Labs, Gianforte departed to co-found Brightwork Development Inc., a developer of server-based LAN management software for the banking industry, which was based in Tinton Falls, New Jersey. He and his partners sold the company to McAfee Associates for \$10 million in 1994. Gianforte then began working for McAfee as head of North American sales. In 1995, he moved to Bozeman, Montana.
Gianforte and his wife, Susan, a mechanical engineer by trade, co-founded RightNow Technologies in 1997. Part of Gianforte's strategy was to leverage the internet as a means to overcome geographic barriers to building a globalized business. By the time the company went public in 2004, it employed over 1,000 workers and executives in Bozeman and globally, with offices in the U.K., Asia, and Australia. Future U.S. senator Steve Daines was among its executives. The company was acquired by Oracle Corporation for \$1.5 billion in 2011. At the time, Gianforte's 20% stake in the company was worth about \$290 million. Right Now Technologies had contracts with federal agencies, including handling all of the online search queries for the Social Security Administration and Medicare websites. In 2012, Gianforte sued the Montana Democratic Party for defamation, alleging the House campaign ads it aired critical of then House candidate Daines were libelous. Gianforte alleged the party aired television ads that claimed that Right Now Technologies capitalized itself with public contracts, and then offshored jobs.
In 2005, Gianforte and Marcus Gibson co-wrote the book Bootstrapping Your Business: Start and Grow a Successful Company with Almost No Money. He has offered business lectures on entrepreneurship and building a global business.
### Philanthropy and civic life
In 2004, Gianforte and his wife founded the Gianforte Family Foundation, which has promoted his creationist beliefs in the public sphere, and has made tens of millions of dollars in charitable contributions. The foundation describes its primary mission as supporting "the work of faith-based organizations engaged in outreach work, strengthening families, and helping the needy; organizations in Montana that work to improve education, support entrepreneurship, and create jobs; and organizations that enhance the local community of Bozeman, Montana." Gianforte, his wife, and his son, Richard, are the foundation's three trustees. The foundation had assets of \$113 million in 2013.
The Gianforte Family Foundation has given nearly \$900,000 to the Montana Family Foundation, in some years making up half of that organization's total revenue. The Montana Family Foundation has promoted conservative and Christian values in the Montana legislature. Asked why he donated to the group, Gianforte said it was because the organization aligns with his views.
Through his nonprofit, the Gianforte Family Charitable Trust, Gianforte has contributed substantial funds to several conservative organizations. Some have led legal efforts to dismantle federal campaign finance regulations. Gianforte has donated to the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family, which advocate for a constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage, as well as the Montana Family Foundation, which is "the state's primary advocate against LGBT policies". Gianforte served on the board of the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, an education reform organization founded by economist Milton Friedman which advocates for school vouchers.
Gianforte believes in Young Earth creationism. He has donated at least \$290,000 to the Glendive Dinosaur and Fossil Museum, a Montana creationist museum that teaches visitors that the theory of evolution is false, that the Earth is about 6,000–6,400 years old, and that humans and dinosaurs coexisted during the same period. The museum claims dinosaurs were aboard Noah's Ark, and that they likely went extinct 4,300 years ago during the great flood described in the Book of Genesis. The Gianforte Family Foundation also donated a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton replica to the museum.
### Affiliations and investments
Gianforte has had a variety of business interests and investments. In November 2013, he was appointed to the board of FICO, which profiles consumer credit risks for lenders. The same month, Gianforte acquired 8,000 shares of FICO, which were then valued at more than \$464,000.00. He is a partner in MGRR No. 1, a limited liability company that has received grain subsidies since 1995. Gianforte was the founding board chair of the Montana High Tech Business Alliance. He resigned as chair in June 2017, when he was sworn into Congress.
In financial disclosure forms filed in 2017, Gianforte indicated that he owned \$150,000 worth of shares in VanEck Vectors Russia ETF and \$92,400 in the IShares MSCF Russia ETF, totaling just under \$250,000 in two exchange-traded funds focused on investments in Russia. The investments attracted attention because they included shares in Gazprom and Rosneft, which have been subject to U.S. sanctions since the Russian invasion of Crimea, but because the per-person ownership stake in these companies is so small in such index funds, they are exempt from sanctions. After the issue was raised in Gianforte's 2017 congressional campaign, Gianforte stated that his Russia holdings were a small portion of his overall investments and pledged to place all of his assets in a blind trust if elected.
Through a holding corporation, Gianforte owns a 12-seat private jet, which he has used as a strategic asset on the campaign trail. He made the aircraft available to others in his congressional caucus to travel back to Washington for important votes.
## U.S. House of Representatives (2017–2021)
### Elections
#### 2017 special election campaign
On March 1, 2017, Republican Representative Ryan Zinke of Montana's at-large congressional district resigned his seat after the United States Senate confirmed him as United States Secretary of the Interior. A special election was scheduled to fill the remainder of Zinke's term. Gianforte had already announced his intention to seek the seat on January 25, before Zinke's resignation. At a March 6 convention, the Republican Party nominated Gianforte. He faced Democratic musician and former Montana Arts Council member Rob Quist and Libertarian nominee Mark Wicks in the general election.
In a departure from previous pledges made during his gubernatorial campaign, Gianforte relaxed his past pledges to refuse all PAC money, and began to turn away only corporate PAC funding. His campaign began accepting contributions from political party and leadership PACs.
Gianforte distanced himself from Donald Trump during the 2016 Republican presidential primary and did not attend Trump's sole rally in Montana, citing a scheduling conflict. But he endorsed Trump in the 2016 general election and continued to express support for him during his 2017 special election campaign for Congress. Gianforte's campaign was supported by Vice President Mike Pence and Donald Trump Jr., who both stumped for Gianforte in the state. Gianforte tacked close to Trump's political narratives, promoting his outsider status as a first time political candidate, touting his experience as a technology entrepreneur, and criticizing policies leading to sanctuary cities and "the liberal elite."
Gianforte supported repeal of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). He declined to say whether he supported the American Health Care Act, the House Republican legislation to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. On May 4, 2017, Gianforte held a private conference call with Republican-leaning lobbyists in Washington in which he offered a more supportive view of the AHCA. He said that it "sounds like we just passed a health care thing, which I'm thankful for. Sounds like we're starting to repeal and replace." Later that May, he said he would not "vote for a repeal and a replace unless I know it protects people with preexisting conditions, lowers rates and preserves rural access". Gianforte assaulted a reporter in response to questions about how the AHCA would make health insurance too expensive for people with preexisting conditions.
Gianforte opposed the legalization of marijuana for recreational use, comparing marijuana to more addictive drugs. He supported allowing the use of medical marijuana for "people in chronic pain, under the care of a doctor."
Gianforte opposes abortion except in cases where a woman's life is in danger. He favors removing federal funding from Planned Parenthood. He has said that he supports government enforcement of nondiscrimination for workers, but not for customers. He opposed increasing in the minimum wage. Gianforte supported Executive Order 13769, to ban immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries. He opposed resettlement of refugees in Montana. He opposed sanctuary cities policies. Gianforte blamed the Obama administration for "the situation with Russia" and favored a multilateral strategy to stand against Russian aggression.[^1] He supported Trump's decision to fire FBI Director James Comey.
Gianforte opposed efforts to transfer federal lands to the states. He called for changes to the Endangered Species Act. He supported amending the Equal Access to Justice Act to reduce environmental litigation, saying that "environmental extremists" had abused the act. He acknowledged human-caused climate change but "did not have specific ideas on how to address climate change". He has said that "the climate is always changing" and believes that closing coal-fired power plants would not help mitigate climate change. He supported Trump's repeal of the Clean Power Plan and has called for investments in clean coal technology. Gianforte has criticized the length of time the Department of Interior spends to evaluate applications to drill and frack for shale gas.
Gianforte outlined his position on retirement by using the Biblical example of Noah. He said:
> There's nothing in the Bible that talks about retirement. And yet it's been an accepted concept in our culture today. Nowhere does it say, "Well, he was a good and faithful servant, so he went to the beach". The example I think of is Noah. How old was Noah when he built the ark? 600. He wasn't, like, cashing Social Security checks. He wasn't hanging out. He was working. So I think we have an obligation to work. The role we have in work may change over time, but the concept of retirement is not biblical.
#### Election-eve assault on journalist
On May 24, 2017, the day before the House special election, Ben Jacobs, a political reporter for The Guardian newspaper who was covering the election, reported to the Gallatin County, Montana Sheriff's Office that Gianforte had assaulted him at Gianforte's Bozeman campaign office after Jacobs asked him a question about health care policy. Jacobs said that Gianforte "bodyslammed" him to the floor and broke his glasses. Jacobs was hospitalized after the attack.
In the immediate aftermath of the incident, Gianforte made misleading statements to a Gallatin County Sheriff's Office sergeant who reported to Gianforte's campaign office to investigate Jacobs's complaint. Gianforte told the sergeant, "the liberal media is trying to make a story." In the hours after the assault, the Gianforte campaign issued a press release falsely blaming the reporter, claiming that Jacobs grabbed Gianforte's wrist and caused them both to fall to the ground. But an audio recording of the incident appeared to support Jacobs's statement, and other reporters who were present at the scene corroborated Jacobs's version of events. An eyewitness to the attack, Fox News reporter Alicia Acuna, testified that "Gianforte grabbed Jacobs by the neck with both hands and slammed him into the ground", then "began punching the man" and "yelling something to the effect of 'I'm sick and tired of this!'" Acuna said, "at no point did any of us who witnessed this assault see Jacobs show any form of physical aggression toward Gianforte, who left the area after giving statements to local sheriff's deputies." Another journalist who was an eyewitness to the assault, Alexis Levinson, tweeted that she "heard a giant crash and saw Ben's feet fly in the air as he hit the floor."
The Gallatin County Sheriff's Office cited Gianforte for misdemeanor assault. On August 25, 2017, he was briefly booked into jail, fingerprinted, and had his mugshot taken, after his legal team lost a bid to avoid that process. On October 10, 2017, Gianforte's mugshot was released publicly by a Gallatin County court order.
The Helena Independent Record editorial board rescinded its endorsement of Gianforte and noted that before the attack, Gianforte had encouraged his supporters to boycott certain newspapers, singled out a reporter in a room to point out that he was outnumbered, and joked about choking a news writer. Two other well-circulated Montana newspapers, the Billings Gazette, and the largest in the state, the Missoulian, also rescinded their endorsements of Gianforte. Speaker Paul Ryan and other members of Congress urged Gianforte to apologize.
In his acceptance speech the night of his May 25 victory, Gianforte apologized to Jacobs and the Fox News crew for his assault. On June 7, he made a written apology to Jacobs and donated \$50,000 to the Committee to Protect Journalists, which accepted the funds because it was part of the settlement and said it would put them towards the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker. In return, Jacobs agreed to not pursue a civil claim against Gianforte.
Gianforte subsequently pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault in Gallatin County District Court, acknowledging that Jacobs "did not initiate any physical contact with me" and writing a letter to Jacobs saying that Jacobs did not start the physical altercation. Gianforte was originally sentenced to four days in jail, to be completed in part through a work program, but he was ineligible for the work program due to the assault conviction. The judge then switched the sentence to 40 hours of community service, 20 hours of anger management therapy, a 180-day deferred sentence, and a \$300 fine along with an \$85 court fee.
During the court hearing, Jacobs said that he hoped to interview Gianforte in the future, as he was trying to do at the time of the assault. Gianforte said in court to Jacobs, "I am sorry, and if and when you are ready, I look forward to sitting down with you in D.C." As of October 2017, Gianforte had not sat down with Jacobs for an interview, and the issue was not pursued further.
`Since the assault, Jacobs has, through his attorney, accused Gianforte of whitewashing his guilt, twice sending Gianforte cease-and-desist letters about his accounts of his culpability in the assault. Gianforte met with the Missoulian newspaper editorial board in October 2018, and, when asked about the assault, maintained that his original false statement to sheriff's deputies in the immediate aftermath of the incident was his best recollection of events, a statement that Gianforte later contradicted under oath in court with an admission of guilt connected to his guilty plea.`
On October 18, 2018, during a rally in Missoula, Montana, President Donald Trump congratulated Gianforte for his assault on Jacobs. While verbally praising Gianforte's prowess in carrying out a body slam, Trump made gestures with his hands and arms to pantomime a fighting maneuver. According to analysts, this marked the first time a sitting president had "openly and directly praised a violent act against a journalist on American soil".
Gianforte's assault of Jacobs achieved political notoriety. During an October 2018 campaign event with then Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, Representative Jody Hice implored the small crowd that had gathered to oppose the resurgence of Democratic candidates in the 2018 midterm elections. Hice declared, "It's time for this so called blue wave to be body-slammed!"
#### 2018 House campaign
In 2018, Gianforte ran against Democratic nominee Kathleen Williams, a state legislator and natural resources expert from Bozeman, and Libertarian Party candidate Elinor Swanson, a lawyer from Billings.
Gianforte opposed Williams's proposal to allow those 55 and older to buy into Medicare, remarking, "Medicare for all is Medicare for none", and cautioned that Medicare would be at risk of spending cuts if Democrats won a majority in the House. Williams criticized Gianforte for introducing a bill to remove federal protections from several wilderness study areas in Montana without holding any public meetings on the issue.
Polling data in the weeks leading up to the election showed Gianforte and Williams in a close contest within the margin of error. Gianforte was reelected by a 5% margin. Exit polling data indicated that Gianforte had his strongest support at the polls from men older than 44 and from those with annual incomes above \$50,000.
### Tenure
#### 115th Congress
Gianforte was sworn into the House of Representatives on June 21, 2017. At his inauguration ceremony, he announced his support for congressional term limits, barring members of Congress from becoming lobbyists, and withholding congressional pay if no budget is passed. It is unusual for members of Congress to announce such support for legislation in their inauguration. Montana Democrats mailed Gianforte an orange prison jumpsuit on the day of his inauguration.
The first bill Gianforte introduced, on June 21, 2017, was H.R. 2977, the Balanced Budget Accountability Act, which, as he summarized it, would withhold pay from members of Congress unless a balanced budget is passed. The bill did not achieve a committee hearing.
Gianforte touted refundable tax credits for low income parents as an achievement of the Republican Caucus in the 115th Congress.
In 2018, Gianforte expressed opposition to the aluminum and steel tariffs imposed by President Trump, expressing fears about the impact of retaliatory tariffs (the trade war) on Montana agricultural exports.
Gianforte chaired the Interior Subcommittee of the Oversight Committee through the end of the 115th Congress in 2018. He introduced legislation to nullify Wilderness Study Area (WSA) designations from more than 800,000 acres of land in Montana under the stewardship of the federal Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service.
#### 116th Congress
In the 2018 midterm elections, the Republicans lost control of the House to the Democrats, and Gianforte began his second term in January 2019 in the minority caucus. Over his career, Gianforte voted in line with Trump's position in about 93.3% of key votes. He voted with Trump's position more often than Montana U.S. Senator Steve Daines, a fellow Republican.
In January 2019, during the 2018–2019 United States federal government shutdown, Gianforte said that he "didn't come here to Washington to shut the government down" but expressed support for Trump and blamed Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi for the shutdown. He opposed the impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump over the Trump-Ukraine scandal, calling it a "sham", and voted against both articles of impeachment against Trump (abuse of power and obstruction of Congress). Gianforte voted against a measure to bar Trump from initiating military action against Iran without congressional consent; a spokesman for Gianforte said in 2019 that he would not "discuss the conditions under which he would vote in favor of authorizing military force against Iran because talking about it strengthens the position [of] Iran's regime." Gianforte voted against the 2020 House Democrats police reform bill; against restoring part of the Voting Rights Act; against universal background checks for gun purchases; and against the 2020 D.C. statehood bill. In line with Trump's position, he voted against legislation to block U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, but he opposed Trump's decision in 2019 to withdraw U.S. forces from northern Syria, where they had been stationed as part of U.S. efforts to block Turkish attacks on Kurdish forces. Gianforte voted against legislation in 2019 to raise the federal minimum wage to \$15 per hour. He voted against legislation to overturn Trump's emergency declaration to divert federal appropriations for construction of a border wall. He opposed federal action to combat climate change and supported Trump's withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris Agreement on climate change, voting against legislation to block Trump from withdrawing from the agreement. Gianforte voted against reauthorizing the Export–Import Bank and against a bill allowing the government to negotiate lower prices for prescription drugs. He voted for the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement on trade.
Gianforte is one of the few tech executives to be elected to political office in the U.S. After Representative Darrell Issa left office in 2019, Gianforte became the wealthiest member of Congress, a distinction he held until the January 2020 appointment of Kelly Loeffler to represent Georgia in the Senate.
In December 2020, Gianforte was one of 126 Republican members of the House of Representatives to sign an amicus brief in support of Texas v. Pennsylvania'', a lawsuit filed at the United States Supreme Court contesting the results of the 2020 presidential election, in which Joe Biden defeated Trump. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case on the basis that Texas lacked standing under Article III of the Constitution to challenge the results of an election held by another state.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a statement that called signing the amicus brief an act of "election subversion". She also reprimanded Gianforte and the other House members who supported the lawsuit: "The 126 Republican Members that signed onto this lawsuit brought dishonor to the House. Instead of upholding their oath to support and defend the Constitution, they chose to subvert the Constitution and undermine public trust in our sacred democratic institutions."
Committee assignments
- Natural Resources Committee
- Subcommittee on Federal Lands
- Subcommittee on Water, Power, and Oceans
- Oversight Committee
- Subcommittee on Information Technology
- Subcommittee on Interior (Chair, 115th Congress)
- Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Affairs
Caucus memberships
- Congressional Western Caucus
## Governor of Montana
### Elections
#### 2016
On January 20, 2016, Gianforte announced his candidacy for the Republican Party's nomination for governor of Montana in the 2016 election. A citizen of Butte filed a political practices complaint against him, alleging that he began campaigning before registering; the complaint was dismissed.
In a campaign speech that year, Gianforte stated that he had been involved in discussions with Facebook about bringing a new call center to Montana, but that Facebook had declined because of that state's business equipment tax. A Facebook spokesman disputed Gianforte's claims, saying that no discussions with him had taken place and that the tax was not the reason the company decided not to locate a call center in Montana. Gianforte stood by his statement, saying he had spoken with a Facebook executive the previous fall.
During his gubernatorial campaign, Gianforte pledged not to accept special interest PAC money and ran television ads criticizing his opponent for doing so. He came under scrutiny when an audio tape surfaced revealing his past advocacy to replace state income tax and state business tax revenue with a state sales tax.
Management of public lands was a point of contention in Gianforte's 2016 campaign for governor. In 2009, Gianforte's LLC filed a lawsuit against the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks about the boundaries of an easement for public access to the East Gallatin River adjacent to his property. Gianforte's suit against the state became an issue in the 2016 campaign, with his critics characterizing it as a wealthy out-of-stater's effort to block public access to a popular stream. Gianforte consistently denied the allegations and called the issue a misunderstanding, noting the suit was never served, though the lawsuit was settled outside of court. Gianforte opposes same-sex marriage and abortion.
Incumbent governor Steve Bullock defeated Gianforte in the November general election, 50%–46%.
#### 2020
Gianforte contended with Attorney General Tim Fox and State Senator Al Olszewski for the Republican nomination in the 2020 Montana gubernatorial election. Gianforte drew parallels between his experience building a large technology company in Bozeman and Trump's business background, and shared anecdotes of visits to the White House meant to illustrate their ties.
Gianforte won the Republican nomination. In the November general election, he defeated incumbent lieutenant governor Mike Cooney.
### Tenure
Gianforte was sworn in as governor on January 4, 2021.
On February 12, 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Gianforte lifted Montana's statewide mask mandate. The previous day, he signed a bill giving liability protections to businesses and healthcare providers. In May 2021, Gianforte signed a bill into law that limited the ability of hospitals and other businesses to require that their staff be vaccinated against COVID-19 and prohibited businesses from requiring that customers be vaccinated in order to access facilities. Montana became the only state with such a ban on employers.
On February 18, 2021, Gianforte signed a constitutional carry bill into law.
On March 16, 2021, Gianforte signed a bill changing Montana's system of choosing judges, giving the governor, with the state senate's approval, more control over the process.
On April 2, 2021, Gianforte signed a bill banning sanctuary cities in Montana; at the time, there were no sanctuary cities in Montana. Montana became the 13th state to ban sanctuary cities.
Later that April, Gianforte signed a bill into law that ended same-day voter registration in Montana, in addition to a separate bill that prevented students from using a student ID as voter ID. He also signed a bill making it easier for individuals to challenge government regulations for violating their religious beliefs, and signed three bills restricting abortion.
On April 30, 2021, Gianforte signed a bill requiring individuals to undergo gender reassignment surgery in order to change their birth certificate. On May 7, 2021, he signed a bill banning transgender athletes from girls' sports in public schools. On April 28, 2023, he signed a bill banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors.
## Personal life
While working at Bell Labs in New Jersey in the 1980s, Gianforte met his wife, Susan, the first-generation daughter of German immigrants. They married in 1988. Gianforte and his wife have resided in Bozeman since moving from New Jersey in 1995. They have four children. Gianforte was raised Presbyterian. He and his wife attend Grace Bible Church, a nondenominational church in Bozeman.
Gianforte is an avid hunter. In a 2016 interview, he described entertaining investment bankers from Scotland and New York at his Montana home, in connection with his company's public stock offering, where he served them a dinner of mountain lion teriyaki, antelope chops wrapped in bacon, and elk tenderloin. On October 28, 2000, he was fined \$70 for violating state Fish and Wildlife Commission rules by killing an elk. In February 2021, he violated state hunting regulations by trapping and shooting an adult black wolf known as "1155". While born in Yellowstone National Park and radio collared in 2018, it was roughly 10 miles (16 km) north of the park's boundary. As Gianforte had not completed a wolf trapping certification course, he was issued a written warning by Fish, Wildlife and Parks. In December, he killed a mountain lion near the same area that was also being monitored by the National Park Service. "M220" was radio collared in 2019 and was estimated to be five years old when he was driven up a tree by the hunting group's dogs and shot in compliance with Montana state laws.
Gianforte received an honorary doctorate from Stevens Institute of Technology and gave the commencement speech in 2012. In 2007, he received an honorary doctorate from Montana State University's College of Engineering. In 2007, Gianforte was inducted into the CRM Hall of Fame. He received the 2003 Stevens Institute of Technology's Stevens Honor Award. Gianforte was named Pacific Northwest Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst & Young in 2003.
As of 2018, Gianforte's net worth was more than \$189 million, which made him one of Congress's wealthiest members.
## Electoral history
## Writings
[^1]: Ben Jacobs, GOP candidate has financial ties to US-sanctioned Russian companies, The Guardian (April 28, 2017).
|
14,357,763 |
HMS Ramillies (1892)
| 1,134,916,906 |
Royal Sovereign-class battleship
|
[
"1892 ships",
"Maritime incidents in 1906",
"Royal Sovereign-class battleships",
"Ships built on the River Clyde",
"Victorian-era battleships of the United Kingdom"
] |
HMS Ramillies was a Royal Sovereign-class pre-dreadnought battleship of the Royal Navy, named after the Battle of Ramillies. The ship was built by J. & G. Thompson at Clydebank, starting with her keel laying in August 1890. She was launched in March 1892 and commissioned into the Mediterranean Fleet as flagship the following October. She was armed with a main battery of four 13.5-inch guns and a secondary battery of ten 6-inch guns. The ship had a top speed of 16.5 knots.
Ramillies served as flagship of the Mediterranean Fleet up to 1899, and again from 1900 to 1902. After taking part in manoeuvres off the coast of Portugal, she returned to England for a refit in 1903. Upon completion, she was commissioned into the Reserve in 1905. She suffered damage while participating in combined manoeuvres the following year, and was recommissioned into the Special Service Division of the Home Fleet in 1907, becoming the Parent Ship of the 4th Division of the Home Fleet in 1910. She was relieved of that role a year later, before being reduced to material reserve at Devonport in August 1911, and stripped and laid up at Motherbank for disposal in July 1913. She was sold for scrap in October 1913 and towed to Italy to be broken up the following month.
## Design
The Royal Sovereign-class battleships were based on Admiral-class barbette ships, but contained several alterations. The freeboard was raised, the barbettes' armour was extended and an upper belt and secondary armour were added. They could also obtain a higher speed, but were 4,000 tons larger. Ramillies was 410 feet (120 m) long overall and had a beam of 75 ft and a draft of 27 ft 6in. She displaced up to 15,580 tons at her full combat load. Her propulsion system consisted of two 3-cylinder triple expansion engines powered by eight coal-fired cylindrical boilers. With natural draught, her engines provided a top speed of 15.5 knots at 9,000 indicated horsepower; 16.5 knots at 11,000 indicated horsepower could be obtained with forced draught. She had a crew of 712 officers and ratings. When built, ships of the Royal Sovereign class rolled too heavily under certain conditions. Bilge keels were added to compensate for the problem, and the ships "proved to be excellent seaboats quite capable ... of maintaining high speeds in a seaway". The ships were well-constructed and probably the most substantial built for the Royal Navy, even if they "suffered ... from excessive weight and fittings." In the view of R. A. Burt, they were "highly successful; at that time, they were probably unequalled in all-round fighting efficiency."
Ramillies was armed with four breech-loading 13.5-inch guns on two barbettes with armour ranging from 11 to 17 inches in thickness. The ship also carried ten quick-fire (QF) 6-inch guns, four of which were mounted in casemates on the main deck, plus sixteen QF 6-pounder (2.2 in (57 mm)) guns of an unknown type and a dozen QF 3-pounder (1.9 in (47 mm)) Hotchkiss guns. She was also equipped with seven 18-inch torpedo tubes, two of which were submerged. Between 1899 and 1902, the 3-pounder guns were removed from the upper tops; the above-water torpedo tubes were removed in 1902–1905. The remaining 6-inch guns on the upper deck were mounted in 5-inch armoured casemates between 1902 and 1904. All of the armour was supplied by the builders, J. & G. Thompson, of Clydebank. The waterline belt was 252 ft long by 8 ft 8in deep, and its armour varied in thickness between 14 and 18 inches; the bulkheads were protected by 14 to 16 inches of armour. The middle deck covering the belt was 3 inches thick and the lower deck forward and aft of the belt was 2.5 inches thick, while the upper belt between the middle and main decks was coated in 3 to 4 inches of armour. The casemates for the 6-inch guns were protected by an equal thickness of armour and the conning tower was protected with 14 inch armour on the forward side, and 3 inches of armour on the aft. The ship's armoured deck was 2.5 to 3 inches thick.
## Service history
Ramillies was built by J. & G. Thompson, of Clydebank, at a cost of £902,600, plus £78,295 for guns. She was laid down on 11 August 1890, launched on 1 March 1892 and completed the following October. She had been constructed at such a small incline that it took nearly an hour and a half to travel down the slipway and into the water; most of the crowd that had gathered dissipated in the meantime. Ramillies was commissioned at Portsmouth on 17 October 1893 as the Flagship of the Mediterranean Fleet. She departed on 28 October and arrived at Malta on 8 November to relieve the battleship HMS Sans Pareil as acting flagship. Francis C. B. Bridgeman-Simpson was appointed captain of Ramillies on the day of her commission; the commander of the Mediterranean Fleet at the time was Admiral Sir Michael Culme-Seymour. On 9 December 1896, Ramillies was recommissioned at Malta for further service in the Mediterranean Fleet. In July 1899, she became a private ship in the fleet, relieved as flagship by the battleship HMS Renown, but in January 1900 she became the flagship of Rear Admiral Lord Charles Beresford, second-in-command of the Mediterranean Fleet. When Beresford resigned from this position in January 1902, his successor Rear-Admiral Burges Watson took over Ramillies as his flagship until his death in September 1902. In October 1902, she was once again relieved as flagship, this time by the battleship HMS Venerable.
In May 1902, Ramillies was at Palermo to attend festivities in connection with the opening of an agricultural exhibition by King Victor Emmanuel; the King and the Italian Minister of Marine paid her a visit when she arrived in Rome later in the month. She took part in combined manoeuvres off the coast of Portugal in August 1903, but that month she was paid off from Mediterranean service and transferred to the Portsmouth Reserve while she was refitted. Her refit complete, she was commissioned into the reserve at Chatham on 30 January 1905. In April 1905, Ramillies transferred her crew to the battleship HMS London and was recommissioned with a new crew into the Sheerness-Chatham Reserve Division.
On 30 January 1906, she transferred her crew to the battleship HMS Albemarle and recommissioned with yet another crew for service in the Chatham Reserve. In June 1906, she participated in combined manoeuvres of the Atlantic Fleet, Channel Fleet, and Reserve Fleet, but in the process collided with her sister ship HMS Resolution, suffering stern damage. As a result, her propellers were disabled. In November 1906, her crew was transferred once more to the battleship HMS Africa. In March 1907, Ramillies was recommissioned at Devonport with a reduced crew into the Special Service Division of the Home Fleet. In October 1910, she became Parent Ship in the Home Fleet's 4th Division. Her sister ship HMS Royal Oak relieved her of her parent ship duties in June 1911 and she was placed on the material reserve at Devonport in August 1911. She was stripped and laid up ready for disposal in July 1913, before being auctioned off for scrap on 7 October 1913; the buyer, George Cohen, of Swansea, paid £42,300 for her. She was resold to an Italian company, which in November 1913 towed her to Italy to be broken up.
## Captains
The following is an incomplete list of captains who commanded Ramillies:
- 17 October 1893: Francis C. B. Bridgeman-Simpson.
- 17 January 1895: William H. May.
- 9 December 1896: William Des V. Hamilton.
- 1 January 1900: Robert S. Lowry.
- 24 January 1902: Hon. Walter George Stopford.
- 16 October 1902: Francis George Kirby.
- 15 March 1905: Robert G. Fraser.
- 13 March 1906: Charles H. Dare, MVO.
- 12 September 1906: Caspar J. Baker.
- 1 February 1908: Hubert Grant-Dalton.
- 2 February 1909: Arthur W. Ewart.
|
1,041,562 |
Goat Rocks
| 1,165,827,882 |
Extinct stratovolcano in United States of America
|
[
"Cascade Volcanoes",
"Extinct volcanoes of the United States",
"Gifford Pinchot National Forest",
"Goat Rocks",
"Landforms of Lewis County, Washington",
"Landforms of Yakima County, Washington",
"Mountains of Lewis County, Washington",
"Mountains of Washington (state)",
"Mountains of Yakima County, Washington",
"Pleistocene stratovolcanoes",
"Pliocene stratovolcanoes",
"Stratovolcanoes of Washington",
"Stratovolcanoes of the United States",
"Volcanoes of Washington (state)"
] |
Goat Rocks is an extinct stratovolcano in the Cascade Range, located between Mount Rainier and Mount Adams in southern Washington, in the United States. Part of the Cascade Volcanoes, it was formed by the subduction of the Juan de Fuca Plate under the western edge of the North American Plate. The volcano was active from 3.2 million years ago until eruptions ceased between 1 and 0.5 million years ago. Throughout its complex eruptive history, volcanism shifted from silicic explosive eruptions to voluminous, mafic activity.
The volcano and the surrounding Goat Rocks Wilderness, established in 1964, are named after the numerous mountain goats which live in the area. The variable climate of the wilderness area supports a host of wildlife, including marmots, pikas, deer, and elk. Various peaks within the wilderness can be climbed or scrambled, and other activities such as hiking are permitted. The area is rife with minerals and resources, including coal, cobalt, copper, and base metals.
## Geography and geology
Goats Rocks volcano is located in southern Washington, 113 km (70 mi) west of Yakima, at latitude 46.50° N and longitude 121.45° W. This region of the Cascades was originally occupied by Native Americans, who hunted and fished in its vicinity and used its trails as trade routes. Goat Rocks lies in a zone of intermittent volcanism which has produced many small volcanic vents, also including the Mount Adams volcanic field and Indian Heaven. Situated in the eastern portion of the Cascade Range, Goat Rocks lies at the northwest corner of the Klickitat River basin. As a member of the Cascade Volcanoes, Goat Rocks was produced by the subduction of the oceanic Juan de Fuca plate under the western edge of the continental North American Plate. This fault, known as the Cascadia subduction zone, lacks the deep oceanic trench usually found at convergent plate boundaries, which can probably be explained by its slow rate of subduction. According to the United States Geological Survey, the Nazca and North American plates converge at a rate of 3 to 4 cm (1 to 2 in) each year, just half of their convergence rate as recently as 7 million years ago.
The Cascade Volcanoes in Washington are restricted to four belts; Goat Rocks forms one segment of the north–south trending Mount Adams belt that also incorporates Tumac Mountain, Adams, and the King Mountain Fissure Zone. Of the four Cascade arcs, this belt contains the second most volcanoes, and its volcanoes are predominantly made of calc-alkalic to tholeiitic to basaltic andesite lava. Goat Rocks and its immediate vicinity are underlain by pre-Tertiary greywacke and argillite, and these deposits are cut by several prominent northward-trending faults. Overlaying these deposits are Cenozoic volcanic rocks, including the thick, Eocene-aged Ohanapecosh Formation, comprised by chemically altered basalt and andesite lava flows and bedded andesite and dacite volcaniclastic rock. In turn, the Stevens Ridge Formation overlies the Ohanapecosh layer, featuring quartz-bearing silicic tuff, rhyolite, and other volcaniclastic rocks. Under both layers is the Russell Ranch Formation, 2,298 to 3,048 m (7,539 to 10,000 ft) in thickness, which contains deposits of lapilli and tuff hinting at a caldera, although geologists have failed to identify clear evidence for the formation of a caldera in this zone.
Together with Mount Adams, Mount Rainier, and Mount St. Helens, the Goat Rocks volcano is part of a triangle of volcanoes, an arrangement not found elsewhere in the Cascades. This may be related to a mid-crust zone with abnormally high electrical conductivity, the Southern Washington Cascades Conductor (SWCC), which is not well understood by geologists. Scientists from the United States Geodynamics Committee hypothesized in 1994 that this anomaly is associated with the thrust of a large deposit of sedimentary rock against a continental margin. However, Hill et al. (2009) dismiss this view as it proves inconsistent with maps made from magnetotelluric readings of the area. Instead, they propose that the anomaly is linked to the region's volcanism, which has caused partial melting of the crust.
The oldest Cascade stratovolcano formed after the Columbia River Basalt Group, Goat Rocks is roughly equal in volume to Mount St. Helens and smaller in volume than Mount Baker, at approximately 60 km<sup>3</sup> (14 cu mi). Rough estimates place the composition of the volcano as 40% tuff and breccia. The remains of its lava flows can be found in the Tieton, Klickitat, and Cispus river valleys, their elevation reversed by erosion to make them resemble ridges. These flows have been thoroughly eroded, but testify to the volcano's previous size.
### Glaciation
Although it may have once been a towering stratovolcano, Goat Rocks has undergone extensive erosion since its extinction. Once eruptions ceased, the ongoing forces of glacial erosion, as well as hydrothermal alteration of the volcano's interior, stripped away layers of volcanic ash deposits and lava flows, uncovering the rocky lava spines where magma had cooled and hardened within the conduits of the volcano. Nearly all the remaining volcanic debris has been partially covered by a younger layer of rock.
The Goat Rocks area is notable for its extensive glaciers, despite its modest elevation and southerly location relative to the rest of the Washington Cascades. Four major glaciers mantle the north and northeast slopes of the peaks: Conrad Glacier, McCall Glacier, Meade Glacier, and Packwood Glacier, along with numerous smaller permanent snowfields.
### Major peaks in the Goat Rocks vicinity
The elevation of the Goat Rocks volcano and its immediate vicinity varies from 914 to 2,500 m (2,999 to 8,202 ft) at its highest point, Gilbert Peak. Because of extensive glaciation and erosion, the peaks surrounding Goat Rocks are at most moderate in height.
## Eruptive history
Goat Rocks is a stratovolcano with a somewhat complicated eruptive history. It first became active approximately 3.2 million years ago during the Pliocene epoch, undergoing explosive eruptions that ejected silicic lava with highly felsic rocks like rhyolite. One of these events produced 650 m (2,133 ft) of tuff that remains, exposed, on the east flank of the existing mountain. This rhyolitic episode also produced the Devil's Horn caldera. The amount of rhyolite tuff exceeds 20 km<sup>3</sup> (4.8 cu mi).
Three million years ago Goat Rocks shifted to mafic volcanism, erupting olivine and basalt. As eruptions continued into the Pleistocene epoch, the lava flows became increasingly andesitic, containing mostly pyroxene with phenocrysts as well as hornblende minerals. These andesitic flows formed the volcano's major edifice between roughly 2.5 and 0.5 million years ago, which may have resembled contemporary Mount Rainier. At this point in time, Goat Rocks's eruptions had very high volumes and extended far from the volcano, possibly because multiple satellite vents contributed to eruptions.
Approximately 1.64 million years ago, Goat Rocks generated an andesitic lava flow extending 80 km (50 mi) down the Naches and Tieton Rivers, which has been recognized as the longest andesite flow on Earth having a total volume of 6.6 km<sup>3</sup> (1.6 cu mi). About 250,000 years after this andesite flow a second flow erupted from Bear Creek Mountain, the second flow took a similar path as the older one and had a total volume of 2.5 km<sup>3</sup> (0.60 cu mi). Many of the flows immediately surrounding the volcano have since been cut by intrusive dikes, which form a radial arrangement around the volcano's core.
As erosion occurred on a large scale, the volcano remained active, producing more hornblende andesite lava flows. Eruptive activity continued at Old Snowy Mountain into the middle to late Pleistocene, yielding hornblende andesite lava flows that were subsequently glaciated in the Cispus River valley; whether Old Snowy Mountain is a vent of Goat Rocks or an independent volcano remains unclear. Hornblende andesite can also be found on top of the highest point in Goat Rocks, Gilbert Peak.
Hogback Mountain, a shield volcano north of Goat Rocks and south of White Pass, was identified by Siebert et al. (2010) as a satellite vent of Goat Rocks. Rising 700 m (2,297 ft) in elevation, it erupted more than 200 m (656 ft) of olivine basalt and basaltic andesite from the end of the Pliocene through the early Pleistocene. Eruptions from Goat Rocks formed a spread-out volcanic field populated by small lava domes and cinder cones as far north as an unnamed vent on American Ridge north of Bumping Lake. Spiral Butte along US 12 near White Pass is one of these vents, having erupted less than 690,000 years ago. The volcanic field's dimensions are approximately 29.9 by 15 km (19 by 9 mi).
Goat Rocks is now classified as an extinct volcano, as its most recent eruptive activity was during the Pleistocene. The last eruption from the Goat Rocks complex occurred around 115,000 years ago. It was an effusive lava flow known as the Clear Fork Lava. The flow was primarily composed of dacite and flowed 12 km (7.5 mi) along the White Pass Highway and has an estimated volume of 0.55 km<sup>3</sup> (0.13 cu mi).
## Wilderness
Land surrounding Goat Rocks was first protected by the United States Department of Agriculture in February 1931, when approximately 18,009 hectares (44,501 acres) was set aside for preservation. In 1935, this was increased to 29,315 hectares (72,439 acres) of land, then to 33,459 hectares (82,679 acres) in 1940. In 1964, the United States Congress created the Goats Rock Wilderness as part of the National Wilderness Preservation System, delegating its management to the United States Forest Service. Since additional land was incorporated in 1984, it now encompasses 43,745 hectares (108,096 acres) between Mount Rainier and Mount Adams, straddling the Gifford Pinchot and Okanogan-Wenatchee national forests. It is bordered by the Yakama Indian Reservation to the southeast.
The wilderness ranges from 914 to 2,500 m (2,999 to 8,202 ft) in elevation, featuring alpine tundras with glaciers, small lakes, and ponds, as well as 15 different routes that amount to 193 km (120 mi) of trails. One of these trails constitutes the highest segment of the famous Pacific Crest Trail in Washington, running for 50 km (31 mi) north–south through the middle of the wilderness area. Because this route is located at such a high elevation, its hikers may experience violent storms that could be dangerous for unprepared parties. Much of the wilderness is located above the timberline, offering views of alpine scenery.
### Climate and wildlife
Weather within the Wilderness varies due to the mountains acting as a barrier for both weather and temperature. The Cascade Range mountains prevent wet storms from moving, forcing air to rise and then cool. This cooling air cannot hold as much moisture, causing heavy precipitation (up to 381 cm (150 in) in rainfall annually) on the western flanks of the mountains, which leads to extensive forestation. Snowfall typically totals more than 8 m (26 ft) annually, amounting to snow still being present as late as July or August. In warmer months, melted snow runs off into lakes, keeping them especially full. Because the mountains are so tall, storm clouds may get stuck even as the rest of the storm moves onward, leading to snowstorms and freezing temperatures year-round. In extreme conditions, these storm cells might endanger hikers by means of strong winds, fog, snow, and rain that can potentially make hiking nearly impossible. On the eastern sides of the mountains, air warms as it drops, producing Chinook winds, considerably lower precipitation, and less forested landscapes. Because of these conditions, temperatures on the western sides of mountains are steady, whereas temperatures on the eastern flanks fluctuate wildly.
Goat Rocks obtained its name from a population of mountain goats that can be observed around the mountain. Other fauna include marmots and pikas at high elevations. Deer and elk can be found below the timberline, including mule deer, mule deer-black-tailed hybrids, Roosevelt elk, and Rocky Mountain elk that were introduced from Yellowstone National Park in 1913. Black-tailed deer are especially common.
### Climbing and recreation
Old Snowy Mountain and Gilbert Peak, two of Goat Rocks's peaks, are frequented by hikers and mountaineers. Both are considered remote summits, although Old Snowy Mountain is the more accessible of the two. This, coupled with its easier ascent, makes Old Snowy Mountain the more popular climb. There are several routes up the mountain, which take 5–6 hours, rising 1,097 m (3,599 ft) in elevation. Running for 23 km (14 mi) round-trip, Old Snowy can be scrambled or climbed using glaciers, although a trail exists. From the summit, mountaineers can see Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainier in the distance. Because this area has a lot of loose talus and rock, an avalanche hazard exists.
The climb up Gilbert Peak was first completed by Fred G. Plummer in 1899. It also rises 1,097 m (3,599 ft) in elevation, lasting 6–8 hours and running for 26 km (16 mi) round-trip. Because the routes are longer and more technically challenging due to loose rock, scrambling Gilbert is generally considered more difficult than Old Snowy Mountain. Most climbers opt to mount Gilbert early in the climbing season when snow levels are low.
Recreational activities permitted by the Forest Service at the Wilderness include day hiking, horse riding, and backpacking. Because Goat Rocks is part of the National Wilderness Preservation System, motor vehicles and means of transport are prohibited. These include bicycles, wagons, motorboats, and helicopters. A free permit is required for entry to the wilderness.
|
70,081,941 |
2022 Serbian local elections
| 1,161,749,908 | null |
[
"2022 elections in Serbia",
"2022 in Serbia",
"Local elections in Serbia"
] |
Local elections in Serbia were held on 3 April 2022 in the municipalities of Aranđelovac, Bajina Bašta, Belgrade, Bor, Doljevac, Kladovo, Knjaževac, Kula, Lučani, Majdanpek, Medveđa, Sečanj, Sevojno, and Smederevska Palanka. Alongside the local elections, national-level general elections were held simultaneously on the same day.
Seven ballot lists appeared in the election in Aranđelovac, while nine ballot lists appeared in Bajina Bašta. In Belgrade, there were twelve ballot lists in total; the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) nominated Aleksandar Šapić as their mayoral candidate, while the major opposition United for the Victory of Serbia (UZPS) coalition nominated Vladeta Janković. In Bor, eleven ballot lists were present in total while parties inside the UZPS coalition ran on two separate ballot lists. Four ballot lists were present in the election in Doljevac, with no opposition parties taking part in the local election. In Kladovo, five lists appeared on the ballot, while in Knjaževac there were eight lists in total. The UZPS coalition also ran on two separate lists in Kula, where the leader of a civic group claimed that bribery occurred during the collection of signatures. Five ballot lists appeared in the election in Lučani and seven in Majdanpek, where electoral irregularities were reported at voting stations. Seven ballot lists appeared in the election in Medveđa, while in Sečanj there were four lists on the ballot. In Sevojno, six lists appeared on the ballot, while in Smederevska Palanka there were seven lists in total, with the UZPS coalition again running on two separate lists.
SNS won the most votes in all local elections. In Belgrade, the election was repeated at five voting stations on 16 April and again on 21 April due to the UZPS coalition and Social Democratic Party (SDS) objecting the results at those polling stations. SDS did not manage to cross the threshold after the repeat elections, and in June, Šapić was elected mayor of Belgrade.
## Background
Previous local elections in Serbia were held in March and October 2021, in which the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) won a majority of seats in most of the municipalities. Electoral irregularities had occurred at voting stations, and there had also been physical attacks on opposition activists. Dialogues between the opposition and ruling parties regarding electoral conditions were held from May to October 2021. The two groups signed a document on 29 October, which included changes to the required minimum of collected signatures for minority ballots and changes to the composition of the Regulatory Body of Electronic Media (REM) and Republic Electoral Commission (RIK). The environmental protests, which began in September 2021, grew in size due to the adoption of modifications to the law on referendum and people's initiative and the expropriation law in November 2021. The modifications to the law on referendums and people's initiatives abolished the 50% threshold that was needed for referendums to pass into law. The protests lasted until February 2022. In Belgrade, the protests helped the We Must coalition to gain more support in opinion polls. A constitutional referendum regarding the judiciary also took place in January 2022, in which the "yes" option, which was supported by the government, prevailed over the "no" option, although the turnout was reported to be at 30 per cent.
## Electoral system
Local elections in Serbia are held under a proportional representation system. Eligible voters vote for electoral lists, on which the registered candidates are present. An electoral list could be submitted by a registered political party, a coalition of political parties, or a citizens' group. The number of valid signatures needed to be collected to take part in the election varies by the number of eligible voters in that municipality. At least 40 percent of candidates on electoral lists must be female. The electoral list is submitted by its chosen ballot representative, who does not have to be present on its electoral list. An electoral list could be declined, after which those who had submitted can fix the deficiencies in a span of 48 hours, or rejected, if the person is not authorised to nominate candidates. The name and date of the election, the names of the electoral lists and its ballot representatives, and information on how to vote are only present on the voting ballot.
Local electoral commissions and polling boards oversee the election. Seats are allocated with an electoral threshold of 3 percent of all votes cast, however if no electoral list wins 3 percent of all votes cast, then all electoral lists that received votes can participate in the distribution of seats. The seats are distributed by electoral lists in proportion to the number of votes received, while the number of seats belonging to electoral lists is determined by applying the highest quotient system. The seats are distributed by dividing the total number of votes received by the electoral list participating in the distribution of seats by each number from one to the number of councilors the local assembly has. The obtained quotients are classified by size so that the electoral list has as many mandates as it has its quotients among the highest quotients of all the electoral lists participating in the distribution. If two or more electoral lists receive the same quotients on the basis of which the seat is distributed, the electoral list that received the greater number of votes has priority. The seats in the local assemblies are awarded to the candidates to their order on the electoral list, starting with the first candidate from an electoral list. When the councilors of a local assembly are sworn in, they in turn elect the mayor.
An electoral list could be declared the status of an ethnic minority electoral list by the local electoral commission. An ethnic minority electoral list could be only submitted by a registered political party or a coalition of political parties of an ethnic minority. If the percentage of the members of that ethnic minority is less than 50% in that municipality, an electoral list could be then granted the status of an ethnic minority electoral list. If the electoral list receives less than the 3 percent electoral threshold of all votes cast, it would still take part in the distribution of seats. When the distribution of seats takes place, the quotients of ethnic minority electoral lists that won less than 3 percent of the votes are increased by 35 percent.
Any local election, whether it is a municipal or a local assembly election, is called by the president of the National Assembly, who also has to announce its date. To vote, a person has to be a citizen and resident of Serbia and at least 18 years old. A voter could only vote in the municipality of their residence. An election silence begins two days before the scheduled election, meaning that no opinion polls, presentation of candidates and their programmes, or invitation to vote in the election could take place.
## Results and campaign
Ivica Dačić, the president of the National Assembly, called the local elections on 15 February, and shortly afterwards Aleksandar Vučić, the president of Serbia, dissolved the National Assembly, after which the official electoral campaign began. Dačić announced that local elections would be held in the municipalities of Aranđelovac, Bajina Bašta, Belgrade, Bor, Doljevac, Kladovo, Knjaževac, Kula, Lučani, Majdanpek, Medveđa, Sečanj, Sevojno, and Smederevska Palanka. The 2022 general election occurred simultaneously on 3 April.
### Aranđelovac
On 16 February, SNS submitted their ballot list for the election, and a day later, the Serbian Party Oathkeepers (SSZ) submitted their ballot list. The Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS)–United Serbia (JS) coalition submitted their ballot on 18 February. POKS submitted its list on 21 February, while the Dveri–Healthy Serbia (ZS) coalition submitted its ballot later that day. The United for the Victory of Serbia (UZPS) coalition list and Enough is Enough (DJB) list were later confirmed by the City Election Commission. During the campaign period, SNS youth representatives launched an initiative to landscape the area near a local railway station. SPS representatives signed an agreement with the Greens of Serbia on 25 February, which formalised their coalition in Aranđelovac.
In the municipality of Aranđelovac, there were 36,847 eligible citizens that were able to vote in the local election. The local City Election Commission reported that the turnout was 63%. The Serbian Progressive Party won 19 seats, while the SPS–JS coalition won seven. The Serbian Party Oathkeepers won 5 seats, while the United for the Victory of Serbia coalition won four, and the Dveri–ZS coalition won three seats. Two seats were won by POKS, while the Enough is Enough party won one.
### Bajina Bašta
The SNS-led coalition submitted their ballot list on 17 February, while the SPS–JS coalition submitted its ballot on 23 February. The Social Democratic Party (SDS) submitted its ballot list on 8 March, and on the same day, the People's Party (NS) and Democratic Party (DS) had also submitted their list under the "United for Victory" banner. ZS had also submitted their list on 12 March, and a day later, the National Democratic Alternative (NADA) list was confirmed. The civic group "Loud and Clear", which was led by Vladislav Biljić, submitted their ballot on 13 March. A day later, the City Election Commission confirmed the Alliance 90/Greens of Serbia list.
In the municipality of Bajina Bašta, there were 21,733 eligible citizens that were able to vote in the local election. The local City Election Commission reported that the turnout was 68%. The coalition led by the Serbian Progressive Party won 24 seats, while the United for the Victory of Serbia coalition won 9 seats. The SPS–JS coalition won six seats, and it is followed by the Healthy Serbia which won three seats, the Social Democratic Party which won two seats, and Dveri, which won one seat. NS had claimed that they allegedly stopped electoral fraud from taking place at voting stations.
### Belgrade
The City of Belgrade announced that the SNS–led coalition, SPS–led coalition, Serbian Radical Party (SRS), SSZ, UZPS, NADA, We Must (Moramo), SDS–led coalition, Love, Faith, Hope (LJVN), Sovereignists, Dveri, and the Russian Minority Alliance would take part in the local election. SNS nominated Aleksandar Šapić as their mayoral candidate, while UZPS nominated Vladeta Janković.
In Belgrade, preliminary results were published a day after the elections, although due to objections that were made by UZPS and SDS the election was repeated at five voting stations on 16 April and again on 21 April. Final results were published on 9 May. Opposition parties had managed to win more votes than the governing parties, although SDS remained below the threshold. Opposition parties suggested that the next election might be called earlier. Šapić was shortly after elected as mayor of Belgrade.
### Bor
The Bor City Election Commission (GIK) proclaimed the ballot list led by SNS on 16 February. A day later, the Party of Freedom and Justice (SSP) held a conference during which the party presented a coalition with the Movement of Free Citizens (PSG), Vlach Party, and Regional Development Initiative of East Serbia, and the coalition appointed Ljubiša Stamenković, an independent politician, as their ballot representative. The SPS–JS coalition presented its ballot on 18 February, while the Vlach Party "Bridge" announced that they will contest the local election by themselves. GIK proclaimed the Dveri–POKS ballot list on 19 February, and the coalition led by the NS on 20 February. The Sovereignists coalition, which was led by the Enough is Enough party, submitted its ballot on 25 February. In Bor, JS decided to not participate in a coalition with SPS and its ballot was submitted on 4 March. Two civic groups, the "Loud for the Youth" and "Fighters for Bor", submitted their ballots on 7 March. The Serbian Radical Party (SRS) and Russian Party (RS) had also announced their participation in the election; SRS managed to submit its list before the deadline.
During the campaign, the NS–led coalition stated its support for building new hospitals and its opposition to exploitation of natural resources. The Vlach Party "Bridge" representatives proposed that salaries at the Serbia Zijin Bor Copper, a copper mining complex, should be increased instead, while SRS stated its support for exploitation. A poll was conducted in early February, in which the majority of respondents stated that the local government in Bor should change. SNS received its support from the Social Democratic Party of Serbia (SDPS) and the Movement of Vlachs of Serbia (PVS). The "Loud for Youth" civic group campaigned mainly on youth politics.
In the municipality of Bor, there were 40,661 eligible citizens that were able to vote in the local election. The local City Election Commission stated that the turnout was 61.2%. The Serbian Progressive Party won 15 seats, while the coalition led by the People's Party won 6 seats. The Socialist Party of Serbia and Vlach Party "Bridge" both won four seats, while the coalition led by the Party of Freedom and Justice won three seats. The Dveri–POKS coalition, Fighters for Bor, and Loud for the Youth each won one seat.
### Doljevac
The City Election Commission in Doljevac had confirmed four ballot lists in total, which were SNS, SPS, JS, and SRS. It was noted that opposition parties would not take part in the local election in Doljevac. In the municipality of Doljevac, there were 13,940 eligible citizens that were able to vote in the local election. The local City Election Commission reported that the turnout is reported to be at 78%. The Serbian Progressive Party won a supermajority of 30 seats, while the Socialist Party of Serbia and United Serbia have each won three seats, while the Serbian Radical Party only won one seat.
### Kladovo
The SNS list was confirmed by the City Election Commission on 16 February, while the SPS list was confirmed two days later. On 4 March, the Vlach National Party ballot list was confirmed. A civic group named "Movement for Kladovo – dr Borislav Petrović" also announced its participation in the election, and its list was confirmed by the City Election Commission on 11 March. A ballot list led by SRS was confirmed before the deadline.
In the municipality of Kladovo, there were 21,668 eligible citizens that were able to vote in the local election. The local City Election Commission stated that the turnout was 52%. The Serbian Progressive Party won 14 seats and followed by them, the Movement for Kladovo won 9 seats, and the Socialist Party of Serbia won 5 seats.
### Knjaževac
In Knjaževac, the local City Election Commission confirmed the SNS ballot list on 16 February, while the SPS list was confirmed on 19 February. The NADA ballot list was confirmed on 1 March, while the UZPS coalition and SRS ballot lists were confirmed a day later. The Dveri–POKS coalition submitted its ballot on 3 March, and it was confirmed by the City Election Commission on the same day. The City Election Commission also confirmed ballot lists that were submitted by the Serbian People's Party (SNP) and JS.
In the municipality of Knjaževac, there were 23,638 eligible citizens that were able to vote in the local election. The local City Election Commission reported that the turnout was 63%. The Serbian Progressive Party won 27 seats and followed by them, the Socialist Party of Serbia won 6 seats, the United for the Victory of Serbia coalition won 4 seats, the Dveri–POKS coalition won two seats, and the National Democratic Alternative won one seat.
### Kula
SNS submitted its list on 16 February. SPS and "List of the Serb Community" submitted their list shortly after. A coalition list made up of DJB, NS, and RS was formed, and its ballot list was confirmed by 14 March, including SRS and a civic group named "Citizens of Kula and Our City". Zlatko Ostojić, the leader of the civic group "Citizens of Kula and Our City", had claimed that two ballot lists were submitted in an illegal way, and that bribery took place during the collection of signatures.
In the municipality of Kula, there were 34,198 eligible citizens that were able to vote in the local election. The local City Election Commission reported that the turnout was 65%. The Serbian Progressive Party won 21 seats and followed by them, the Critical Mass – for the Victory and Citizens of Kula and Our City each won five seats, List of the Serb Community and Socialist Party of Serbia have each won three seats, and the coalition led by the People's Party won two seats.
### Lučani
Milivoje Dolović was chosen as the ballot representative of the SNS-led list which was proclaimed on 17 February. The SPS–JS coalition's list was confirmed on 21 February. In early March, the City Election Commission confirmed the ballot list led by POKS. A civic group named "One Team" also announced its participation in the election, and its ballot list was confirmed by 14 March, including SRS. In the previous local election, Lučani was noted as a municipality with a high amount of blackmail and pressure towards the voters, although local citizens noted that this did not occur during the electoral campaign period in March 2022.
In the municipality of Lučani, there were 15,414 eligible citizens that were able to vote in the local election. The local City Election Commission stated that the turnout was 72%. The Serbian Progressive Party won 20 seats and followed by them, One Team won 9 seats, the SPS–JS coalition won four seats, and POKS won two seats.
### Majdanpek
The local City Election Commission confirmed the SNS ballot list on 16 February, while the SPS list was confirmed on 22 February. The civic group "It can be different" ballot list was confirmed on 25 February. On 12 March, the ballot list led by Dveri was confirmed by the City Election Commission, and two days later, ballot lists led by SRS, NADA, and a civic group "I don't give up!" were confirmed. Besides them, the Vlach Party and Vlach Party "Bridge" had also announced their participation in the election, although their ballot lists were not confirmed by the City Election Commission.
In the municipality of Majdanpek, there were 16,251 eligible citizens that were able to vote in the local election. Electoral irregularities were reported to have occurred at voting stations. The local City Election Commission reported that the turnout was 59%. The Serbian Progressive Party won 19 seats and followed by them, the SPS–JS coalition won 5 seats, "I don't give up" won three seats, "It can be different" won two seats, and Dveri and NADA won one seat respectively.
### Medveđa
The SNS ballot list was confirmed by GIK on 16 February, being the first one to submit a ballot in Medveđa. In early March, it held a campaign rally in the town. Six more ballot lists were confirmed by 14 March, after an announcement from the City Election Commission in Medveđa.
In the municipality of Medveđa, there were 6,175 eligible citizens that were able to vote in the local election. The local City Election Commission stated that the turnout was 64%. The Serbian Progressive Party won 13 seats and followed by them, "Medveđa has better" won 5 seats, the Socialist Party of Serbia won three seats, the Democratic Party "For Medveđa" won two seats, the Party for Democratic Action and For the Development of Medveđa each won one seat.
### Sečanj
SNS submitted its list on 17 February, while the SPS ballot list was confirmed on 19 February. An opposition civic group named "For the better Municipality of Sečanj", which was led by Vukašin Baćina, announced its participation in the election on 21 February, and its ballot list was confirmed on 28 February. SRS also announced its participation in the election, and its ballot list was confirmed in early March. Baćina was arrested on 1 March, with the police claiming that his arrest occurred because of alleged bribery that took place in February 2022.
In the municipality of Sečanj, there were 10,481 eligible citizens that were able to vote in the local election. The local City Election Commission stated that the turnout was 67%. According to the results, the Serbian Progressive Party won 15 seats and followed by them, the SPS–JS coalition won 6 seats, and the For the better Municipality of Sečanj won two seats.
### Sevojno
The SNS-led coalition in Sevojno formed a coalition with SPS, and their ballot was confirmed by GIK on 18 February. Healthy Serbia (ZS) submitted its ballot on 20 February. In early March, the SRS ballot list was proclaimed. The UZPS coalition had also announced its participation in the local election, and its ballot list was confirmed on 8 March. The SSZ ballot list was confirmed on the same day. By 15 March, the JS ballot list was also confirmed by the City Election Commission. During the electoral campaign, SNS announced that the reconstruction of the ambulance building would begin in April. Avram Ilić, a Healthy Serbia representative, stated that "further decentralization would be necessary for a better life of the citizens in Sevojno".
In the municipality of Sevojno, there were 5,681 eligible citizens that were able to vote in the local election. The local City Election Commission reported that the turnout was 70%. The Serbian Progressive Party won 10 seats and followed by them, the Healthy Serbia won 4 seats, while the United for the Victory of Serbia coalition won 2 seats and other parties managed to cross the threshold.
### Smederevska Palanka
In Smederevska Palanka, GIK confirmed the SNS ballot list on 16 February. It confirmed the SPS–JS list on 18 February, and on the same day, it also proclaimed the list led by NS. On 5 March, the SRS ballot list was confirmed, and a day later the NS ballot list was proclaimed by the City Election Commission. On 11 March, the People's Front and ZS ballot lists were confirmed. SSP stated in early March that their ballot list was declined by the City Election Commission, with the president of the City Election Commission stating that the commission does not have a quorum. Its ballot list was confirmed later on 6 March.
In the municipality of Smederevska Palanka, there were 39,932 eligible citizens that were able to vote in the local election. The local City Election Commission reported that the turnout was 58%. According to the results, the Serbian Progressive Party won 34 seats and followed by them, the coalition around the Party of Freedom and Justice, SPS–JS coalition, and the People's Party have won 4 seats, the Healthy Serbia won two seats, and the People's Front won one seat.
## Aftermath
In Sečanj, Vukašin Baćina and his citizens group declined to join the local government led by Serbian Progressive Party. Vesna Đurić, who previously served as the president of the municipality of Bajina Bašta, was sworn in on 12 May; all 24 members of the Serbian Progressive Party city assembly group voted in favour. On the same day, Damjan Miljanić was chosen as the president of the municipality of Kula. A day later, Serbian Progressive Party formed a local government in Lučani together with the Socialist Party of Serbia.
|
1,341,928 |
Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge
| 1,164,594,119 |
2003 platform game for Game Boy Advance
|
[
"2003 video games",
"Banjo-Kazooie",
"Cancelled Game Boy Color games",
"Game Boy Advance games",
"In-Fusio games",
"Interquel video games",
"Mobile games",
"Rare (company) games",
"Single-player video games",
"THQ games",
"Video games about bears",
"Video games about birds",
"Video games about revenge",
"Video games about time travel",
"Video games about witchcraft",
"Video games developed in the United Kingdom",
"Video games featuring female protagonists"
] |
Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge is a 2003 platform game by Rare for Nintendo's Game Boy Advance (GBA). It is the third instalment in the Banjo-Kazooie series and takes place between the events of the Nintendo 64 (N64) games Banjo-Kazooie (1998) and Banjo-Tooie (2000). In Grunty's Revenge, the evil witch Gruntilda travels back in time to prevent the events of Banjo-Kazooie from happening, and the bear Banjo and his bird friend Kazooie set out to stop her. Grunty's Revenge retains the focus on collecting items and most of the other game mechanics from its predecessors, but is presented in 2D rather than 3D. Aside from the main game, players can also access minigames such as fishing and target shooting.
Rare began to plan Grunty's Revenge in August 1999. At this time, it was titled Grunty's Curse and was planned for release on the Game Boy Color, and featured a different plot. Rare was working on the game's sprites when production halted in late 1999, but it was revived after Nintendo released the GBA. Nintendo rival Microsoft's purchase of Rare in 2002 did not affect their plans to develop the game; Microsoft negotiated a deal with THQ to publish Grunty's Revenge alongside Rare's other GBA projects. The game was released for the GBA in September 2003 and a port for mobile phones was released in June 2005. Grunty's Revenge received average reviews; although its visual style and gameplay were praised and favourably compared to those of the N64 games, its low difficulty, short length, and story were criticised.
## Gameplay
Like its Nintendo 64 (N64) predecessors Banjo-Kazooie (1998) and Banjo-Tooie (2000), Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge is an adventure platformer with a strong emphasis on collecting items. The player must control the player characters, the bear Banjo and his bird friend Kazooie, through several levels. The story takes place between the events of the N64 Banjo games and employs time travel as a key plot device. In the story, the evil witch and antagonist of the previous games, Gruntilda, transfers her spirit into a mechanical body before kidnapping Kazooie and going back in time to prevent her from meeting Banjo, thus preventing the events of Banjo-Kazooie. The shaman Mumbo Jumbo sends Banjo back in time to stop Gruntilda. At the start of the game, the player controls just Banjo, who can walk, jump, crouch, and attack enemies with his backpack. Collecting golden musical notes scattered around levels will enable Banjo to purchase three additional abilities from a mole named Bozzeye. Eventually, Banjo rescues Kazooie, who rides in his backpack for the remainder of the game. With Kazooie, the player can purchase seven new abilities, such as temporary flight. While Grunty's Revenge's game mechanics are largely the same as those from the N64 games, it is presented in 2D from an overhead perspective with pre-rendered graphics, rather than the 3D presentation of its predecessors.
There are five levels (called worlds), which are accessed from the overworld Spiral Mountain. In each world, players must collect items scattered around the environments. These include the musical notes; puzzle pieces called Jiggies, which unlock levels and progress players through the game; empty honeycombs, which extend Banjo's energy bar; and lost creatures called Jinjos, which will give the player a Jiggy when every one in a level is found. Progress is tracked on a statistics screen showing maps of each location and collected items. Other collectibles include totems and coins; overall, there are more than 750 collectibles. If Banjo gives totems to Mumbo Jumbo, he will gain the ability to transform into other creatures, including a mouse, octopus, candle, or tank, each with its own unique abilities. Some areas in levels are inaccessible unless Banjo buys new abilities or transformations. Every level features an "arena style" boss fight with Gruntilda or her minion, Klungo. Like previous games, the final boss fight includes game show-style quiz segments testing the player's knowledge of the game mechanics. Aside from the platforming, some levels feature minigames, such as fishing, racing, and target shooting. The closing credits features a minigame where the player can earn tokens, which can be used to purchase and replay unlocked ones in an arcade cabinet hidden in one of the levels.
## Development
Grunty's Revenge was developed by Rare for the Game Boy Advance (GBA), a handheld game console by Nintendo. Production lasted four years and began in August 1999, a year before the release of Banjo-Tooie and when Rare was still a second-party developer for Nintendo. Although it was developed and released on the GBA, Grunty's Revenge was initially planned for the system's predecessor, the Game Boy Color. It was originally titled Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Curse and was conceptualised by a small team. Grunty's Curse's story was different: it was set in a parallel universe, did not involve time travel, and would have taken place several years after the events of Banjo-Kazooie. In the story of Grunty's Curse, Gruntilda curses Bottles the mole and Mumbo Jumbo, and kidnaps Kazooie and turns her into a monster; to save them, Banjo must find several magic ingredients. As he has not adventured in a long time, Banjo sets out to be retrained by Bottles' grandfather Grampa Mole (who became Bozzeye in the final version). The original plot is referenced as an in-joke in the final game; when Banjo finds Kazooie, he says he is surprised Gruntilda did not turn her into a monster. Originally conceived as a side-scrolling platformer, Grunty's Curse was to feature more levels and power-ups than Grunty's Revenge. Rare was working on the game's sprites when production halted in late 1999.
Production restarted after Nintendo released the GBA. Rare retitled the game Grunty's Revenge and changed the plot so it would fit better in the series' universe. It was announced and showcased along with Rare's other GBA games they were working on at the time at E3 2001. Development continued even after Rare was acquired by Nintendo's rival Microsoft, who currently does not make handheld game consoles, in 2002. Grunty's Revenge was nearly complete at the time, but Rare chose to continue to fine-tune it during their transition to a first-party developer. It also gave them time to implement 3D computer graphics. A multiplayer mode using the GBA's Game Link Cable was planned but cut. In 2003, Microsoft was collaborating with THQ to publish Rare's GBA projects, including Grunty's Revenge, a remake of Sabre Wulf (2004), Banjo spinoff Banjo-Pilot (2005), and It's Mr. Pants (2005). The game was released in North America on 12 September 2003 and in Europe on 24 October. It was Rare's first game after the Microsoft buyout and their first game in over 10 years that they or Nintendo did not publish. In June 2005, French company In-Fusio released a port of the game for mobile phones, alongside another mobile game comprising the minigames, Grunty's Revenge Missions.
## Reception
According to Metacritic, a video game review aggregator, Grunty's Revenge received "mixed or average reviews". Some reviewers, such as those from IGN, GameZone, GameSpy, ONM, and retrospectively Nintendo Life, applauded it as a splendid effort to bring Banjo-Kazooie to a handheld device. Nintendo Life and Official Nintendo Magazine (ONM) highlighted its high amount of similarities to the originals, although a lack of new concepts was a disappointment for ONM, which noted the collect-a-thon gameplay as typical of a Rare platformer and thus expected. However, some critics also believed its shortcomings ruined the experience and only recommended it to fans of the series or Rare's games.
Some reviewed Grunty's Revenge in the context of the GBA library. Play celebrated it as a "rare treat" given the low amount of "fully featured platformer/adventures" available on the handheld device, Cube labeling it the best of them so far. GameSpot and Eurogamer, on the other hand, argued it did not stand out from other GBA games; Eurogamer also thought it was inferior to other GBA platform releases, such as a 2003 re-release of Super Mario Bros 3 (1988).
Reviewers generally agreed the story was subpar. IGN called it "half-baked", weak, and poorly written; they felt it did not use the time travel aspect well and should have had more in-jokes and references to the two previous Banjo-Kazooie games. Others described it as too confusing, lame, "ludicrous", and failing to add anything innovative to an experience already fill with recycled elements in its gameplay. However, Jeuxvideo.com praised its offbeat, humorous tone.
Reviewers were more generous towards its gameplay, with Nintendo Power calling it "fast-paced and enjoyable" and many favourably comparing it to that of the original games. GameZone and GameSpy thought the series' gameplay transitioned well from the N64 to the GBA, with GameSpy writing Grunty's Revenge did not merely mimic the N64 games and, unlike other platformers, was never repetitive. Jeuxvideo.com found the environments vast. The transfer of the gameplay depth of the N64 to a handheld console with less hardware was praised, Play emphasizing this while the original games' issues of camera and backtracking were address: "Every level offers new challenges and new abilities, so the quest continues evolving and new areas are continuously unlocked. The minigames were also praised as an addictive and fun diversion that added depth to the main game. On the negative side, reviewers were disappointed the promised multiplayer mode was absent; IGN and GameZone agreed the racing minigame would have worked well in a multiplayer mode. Other complaints were levied against the overhead view—which was said to make it difficult to judge heights—and GameSpot believed the best aspects of the game were "overshadowed by its Sisyphean focus on item collecting".
The visuals were acclaimed for their successful recreation of the 3D games into 2D, in addition to the animation, use of vibrant colours, and faithfulness to the N64 games. Nintendo Life favourably compared the pre-rendered graphics to Donkey Kong Country. Eurogamer said that while it was not the GBA's prettiest game, most of Grunty's Revenge's visuals were well-done, although they thought the backgrounds were lacklustre. Jeuxvideo.com and Pocket Gamer were more critical; Jeuxvideo.com felt the colours were odd and the text was hard to read, and Pocket Gamer argued the art style was too cute. Cube, Nintendo Power, and ONM cited issues related to the isometric perspective, such as the inability to judge heights of surfaces and seemingly invisible collision, which caused several missed jumps. Reviewers were surprised by how similar the audio was to the N64 games. IGN called the music catchy and the sound as a whole impressive, and GameZone appreciated that Rare brought "Banjo's hilarious and indescribable jibber-jabber" back.
The low difficulty and short length were primary aspects of criticism. Reviewers estimated that the game could be completed within a matter of hours, and also felt it lacked replay value. ONM suggested the low number of levels was a result of limited memory and the huge amount of graphical detail. GameSpot, for example, believed there were not many areas where players could slow down and interact with the environment, and Eurogamer called the game boring. Boss fights were singled out as one of the game's biggest failings, which Cube noted were commonplace in Rare games; they were criticised for their uninspired nature and lack of challenge, although IGN and Nintendo Life considered the final boss a highlight. Pocket Gamer also wrote it was easy to get lost in the game world.
|
5,862,911 |
Líf and Lífþrasir
| 1,138,118,171 |
Parents of mankind in Norse mythology
|
[
"Couples",
"Eschatology in Norse mythology",
"Legendary progenitors",
"People in Norse mythology"
] |
In Norse mythology, Líf (identical with the Old Norse noun meaning "life, the life of the body") and Lífþrasir (Old Norse masculine name from líf and þrasir and defined by Lexicon Poëticum as "Livæ amator, vitæ amans, vitæ cupidus" "Líf's lover, lover of life, zest for life"), sometimes anglicized as Lif and Lifthrasir, female and male respectively, are two humans who are foretold to survive the events of Ragnarök by hiding in a wood called Hoddmímis holt and, after the flames have abated, to repopulate the newly risen and fertile world. Líf and Lífþrasir are mentioned in the Poetic Edda, which was compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, and the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson. Many scholars have speculated as to the underlying meaning and origins of both names.
## Attestations
In the poem Vafþrúðnismál, collected in the Poetic Edda, the god Odin poses a question to the jötunn Vafþrúðnir, asking who among mankind will survive when Fimbulvetr, the winter at the end of the world, occurs. Vafþrúðnir responds that they will be Líf and Lífþrasir, that the two will have hidden in the wood of Hoddmímis Holt, they will consume the morning dew as food, and "from them generations will spring".
In chapter 53 of the Prose Edda book Gylfaginning, High tells Gangleri (king Gylfi in disguise) that two people, Líf and Lífþrasir, will lie hid in Hoddmímis Holt during "Surt's fire", and that "from these people there will be descended such a great progeny that the world will be inhabited." The above-mentioned stanza of Vafþrúðnismál is then quoted.
## Reception
Carolyne Larrington notes that it is nowhere expressly stated what will happen to the world tree Yggdrasil at Ragnarök, points to a connection between Mímir and Yggdrasil in the poem Völuspá, and theorizes that "it is possible that Hoddmimir is another name for Mimir, and that the two survivors hide in Yggdrasill."
Rudolf Simek theorizes that the survival of Líf and Lífþrasir is "a case of reduplication of the anthropogeny, understandable from the cyclic nature of the Eddic eschatology." Simek says that Hoddmímis holt "should not be understood literally as a wood or even a forest in which the two keep themselves hidden, but rather as an alternative name for the world-tree Yggdrasil. Thus, the creation of mankind from tree trunks (Askr, Embla) is repeated after the Ragnarǫk as well." Simek says that in Germanic regions, the concept of mankind originating from trees is ancient. Simek additionally points out legendary parallels in a Bavarian legend of a shepherd who lives inside a tree, whose descendants repopulate the land after life there has been wiped out by plague (citing a retelling by F. R. Schröder). In addition, Simek points to an Old Norse parallel in the figure of Örvar-Oddr, "who is rejuvenated after living as a tree-man (Ǫrvar-Odds saga 24–27)".
## See also
- Ask and Embla, the first two humans in Norse mythology
|
93,255 |
Robeson County, North Carolina
| 1,172,239,655 |
County in North Carolina, United States
|
[
"1787 establishments in North Carolina",
"Lumbee",
"Majority-minority counties in North Carolina",
"Populated places established in 1787",
"Robeson County, North Carolina"
] |
Robeson County (/ˈrɒbɪsən/ ROB-ih-sun) is a county in the southern part of the U.S. state of North Carolina and is its largest county by land area. Its county seat and largest city is Lumberton. The county was formed in 1787 from part of Bladen County and named in honor of Thomas Robeson, a colonel who had led Patriot forces in the area during the Revolutionary War. As of the 2020 census, the county's population was 116,530. It is a majority-minority county; its residents are approximately 38 percent Native American, 22 percent white, 22 percent black, and 10 percent Hispanic. It is included in the Fayetteville-Lumberton-Pinehurst, NC Combined Statistical Area. The state-recognized Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina is headquartered in Pembroke.
The area eventually comprising Robeson was originally inhabited by Native Americans, though little is known about them. By the mid-1700s, a Native community had coalesced around the swamps near Lumber River, which bisects the area. Later in the century the other lands were occupied by Scottish, English, and French settlers. The population remained sparse for decades due to the lack of suitable land for farming, and timber and naval stores formed a key part of the early economy. The proliferation of the cotton gin and rising demand for cotton led Robeson County to become one of the state's major cotton-producing counties throughout much of the 1800s. The Lowry War was fought between a group of mostly-Native American outlaws and local authorities during the latter stages of the American Civil War and through the Reconstruction era. After Reconstruction ended, a unique system of tripartite racial segregation was instituted in the county to separate whites, blacks, and Native Americans.
In the early 20th century, Robeson developed significant tobacco and textile industries, while many of its swamp lands were drained and roads were paved. From the 1950s to the 1970s, the county experienced tensions over racial desegregation. During the same time period, local agriculture mechanized and the manufacturing industry grew. The new industry was unable to provide stable enough employment to locals and by the 1980s Robeson was heavily afflicted by cocaine trafficking. The narcotics trade fueled violence, social unrest, political tensions, police corruption, and caused the county's statewide reputation to suffer. The county's economy was further damaged by major declines in the tobacco and textile industries in the 1990s and early 2000s which have now been supplanted by the supply of fossil fuels, poultry farming, biogas and bio-mass facilities, and logging. Robeson continues to rank low on several statewide socioeconomic indicators.
## History
### Early history and colonial era
Indigenous people have lived in the region as early as 20,000 B.C.E, though little is known about those who lived there in the pre-colonial and early colonial eras. Archeological excavations in the area eventually encompassing Robeson County have uncovered glass beads—often used by Native Americans in trade, pottery, and clay pipes. Archeologist Stanley Knick concluded that the land that had been inhabited continuously from 12,000 B.C.E. in the early Paleo-Indian period through the Archaic and Woodland periods and up to the present. The earliest written mention of Native Americans in the area is a 1725 map compiled by John Herbert, which identified four Siouan-speaking communities near Drowning Creek—later known as the Lumber River.
The Native American/American Indian-descent people in the Lumber River valley eventually coalesced into a series of farming communities collectively dubbed "Scuffletown" by whites but known by its own inhabitants as "the Settlement". The date of Scuffletown's formation is unknown as was its actual location. Some scholars believe it was in the vicinity of the later town of Pembroke while others place it at Moss Neck. Historians Adolph Dial and David K. Eliades believed that it was a mobile community. Others still believe the name applied broadly to any concentration of Indians in the area. Culturally, the Scuffletonians were similar to other Europeans in their dress and style of homes. They were Protestant Christians and spoke English, though they spoke an "older form" which set them apart from later settlers. Not viewed as Native Americans by the state of North Carolina until the 1880s, these people were generally dubbed "mulattos" by locals and in federal documents throughout the mid-1800s to distinguish them from blacks. The original Scuffletonians were joined by some whites and blacks in the mid-1700s, including some escaped slaves. The earliest written record of white settlement dates from 1747 land deed applications.
The area eventually comprising Robeson County was not heavily settled by whites until about 10 years before the American Revolution, when Highland Scots moved into the area. They formed a separate community from the Scuffletonians. The immigrants encompassed a range of class distinctions, from literate and aristocratic English-speaking families to poorer Scottish Gaelic-speakers, many of whom were indentured servants. The latter were called "Buckskins" due to their reputation for wearing pants made of deer leather. Gaelic remained spoken in the area as late as the 1860s. English and a few French settlers moved into the eastern portion of the eventual county. Despite the increase in settlement, population levels in the Lumber River valley remained low for many years, as swamps and thick vegetation divided arable land and made transportation difficult. The production of timber and naval stores formed a key part of the area's early economy, with logs being floated down the river for sale in Georgetown, South Carolina in the late 1700s. During the American Revolutionary War, control over the Lumber River valley was heavily contested by British Loyalists and Patriots. Tensions raised by the war caused some whites to migrate out of the area, moving as far away as Canada.
### Creation
Robeson County was created by the North Carolina General Assembly in 1787 out of a western section of Bladen County. It was named for Thomas Robeson, a colonel who had led Patriot forces in the area during the Revolutionary War. General John Willis, owner of the Red Banks plantation, lobbied to have the county's new seat of government located on his land. The site, to be known as Lumberton, was chosen due to its central location in the county, proximity to a reliable ford of the Lumber River, and as it was where several roads intersected. The first county courthouse was a wooden residence sold by Willis and moved into place after land was cleared. Lumberton served as county residents' primary area of commerce for much of the area's early history, as transportation links with major regional cities elsewhere were tenuous. The 1790 United States census recorded 5,356 county residents. The county's first U.S. Post Office was established there by 1796. That year settlers moved up the Lumber River and established Robeson's second white community, Princess Anne. Much of the county's geography was not officially understood by surveyors until the early 1800s. The county's boundaries were modified and remarked several times between 1788 and 1832.
### Antebellum
Initially, wheat, corn, rice, sugar cane, and potatoes were popular crops among Robesonian farmers. The proliferation of the cotton gin and rising demand for cotton led it to be rapidly adopted, and Robeson County became one of the state's major cotton-producing counties throughout much of the 1800s. Wealthy white planters held the best land in the county, and often outcompeted smallholding Indian and white farmers due to the aid of slave labor, creating stark class divisions. Cotton demand facilitated the growth of slavery and the expansion of plantations. By 1850, the county had a population of 7,290 whites, 4,365 slaves, and 1,171 free persons of color.
In 1835 a new Constitution of North Carolina was ratified, which restricted the ability of "free persons of color" and "free persons of mixed blood" to vote and bear arms. While having previously enjoyed the same political rights as white people, the Indians were disenfranchised by the new constitution. White farmers in Robeson County also sought ways to obtain Indians' land or labor. According to Indian oral tradition, the "tied mule" incidents were emblematic of this. In these scenarios, a farmer would tie his mule on an Indian's land and release some of his cattle there, before bringing local authorities to the scene to accuse the Indian landowner of theft. Doubtful of a fair trial in the courts, an Indian would settle with the farmer by either offering him a portion of land or free labor. By the 1860s, many Indians were landless. The legal discrimination and exploitative practices heightened racial tensions in the area.
In 1848 a new county courthouse was constructed to replace the original building. Lumberton was formally incorporated four years later. In 1860, the Wilmington, Charlotte and Rutherford Railroad was laid through the county as its first railway. By April 1861, the line reached the town of Shoe Heel—later known as Maxton. The introduction of the railroad facilitated the creation of new towns in the county.
### Civil War
North Carolina seceded from the United States in 1861 and joined the Confederate States of America to fight in the American Civil War. Many Indians and Buckskin whites were unenthusiastic about the war; most local supporters of the Confederate cause were wealthy or well-educated. Some Indian men enlisted in the Confederate States Army, though it is unknown whether they were accepted as recognized Indians or passed as white. Major white slaveholders were exempted from service, as were those wealthy enough to pay for surrogates to serve in their place. In 1863, Confederate authorities began conscripting the Indians and other free persons of color for labor along the coast, especially at Fort Fisher. The Indians were usually tasked to either construct batteries or grind salt. Most found the work dangerous and monotonous, and the conditions at the labor camps poor. Many consequently fled into the swamps of Robeson County to avoid conscription. Though some Indians still sought to serve in the army during this time, by late 1863 most had concluded that the Confederacy was an oppressive regime. This change in attitudes was brought on by their contact with Union prisoner-of-war escapees from the Florence Stockade, 60 miles (97 km) away in South Carolina. Indians became increasingly willing to help the Union soldiers escape and avoid recapture.
As time progressed some of the swamp deserters—including Indians, blacks, and Union soldiers—formed bands to raid and steal from area farms, though this was mostly out of a desire to survive and had little to do with challenging the Confederacy. The Indians' aid to the Union escapees and their attempts to dodge labor conscription drew the attention of the Confederate Home Guard, a paramilitary force tasked with maintaining law and order in the South during the war. In early March 1865, Union troops led by General William Tecumseh Sherman entered North Carolina. The Union escapees left to join them, and the bands became predominantly Indian. Union forces entered Lumberton on March 9, burning two bridges and a depot. They also foraged off of the goods of locals, seizing draft animals, cattle, and crops. The bulk of Confederate forces surrendered at Appomattox, Virginia shortly thereafter. On May 15, slaves in Robeson were declared emancipated.
### Reconstruction and Lowry War
In 1864, during the latter stages of the Civil War, Confederate postmaster James P. Barnes accused some sons of Allen Lowry, a prominent Indian farmer, of stealing two of his hogs and butchering them to feed Union escapees. He ordered the Lowry family to stay off his land under threat of being shot. In December, Barnes was ambushed and shot as he made his way to work. Shortly before he succumbed to his wounds he accused William and Henry Berry Lowry, two sons of Allen, of committing the attack. The following January, Confederate Home Guard officer James Brantly Harris was ambushed and shot following his involvement in the deaths of three Lowrys. Fearing Harris' death would lead to retaliation from the Home Guard, local Indians began preparing for violence. Short on food and weapons, they began stealing from white-owned farms and plantations. Supplies intended for the guard was stolen from the courthouse in Lumberton.
White citizens were infuriated by the decline in law and order, and the Home Guard suspected that the Lowry family was largely responsible. On March 3, 1865, a Home Guard detachment arrested Allen Lowry and several others. Following an impromptu tribunal, the guardsmen executed Allen and his son William for allegedly possessing stolen goods. The Home Guard was briefly disrupted by the incursion of Sherman's troops several days later, but thereafter resumed investigating the Lowry family. These events initiated the Lowry War, a conflict which dominated Robeson County throughout the Reconstruction period.
The situation in Robeson County briefly calmed with the Union victory, as locals focused on rebuilding their livelihoods. The region suffered an economic downturn brought on by an agricultural depression and the destruction of the turpentine industry by Union troops. Some white Robesonians moved down the Lumber River into South Carolina in search of new farmland, while others moved west. Many black freedmen turned to tenant farming. Local government in Robeson mostly continued as it had during the war, with rich white men of prominence dominating public offices, especially the justices of the peace who constituted the county court. The Home Guard was formally dissolved but was replaced by a similar institution, the Police Guard.
In December the Police Guard arrested Henry Berry Lowry at his wedding and held him on charges of murdering Barnes. He shortly thereafter escaped custody and avoided the authorities by hiding in swamps with a group of associates which became known as the Lowry Gang. Although a somewhat fluid band at times numbering 20–30 men, the gang usually operated with six to eight men. The principle members were mostly relatives of Lowry, though the gang also included two blacks and a poor white. They usually stayed in improvised shelters in Back Swamp, a ten-mile long stretch of sparsely-traveled land near Allen Lowry's homestead. Throughout 1866 and 1867 the gang conducted raids "in retaliation" for previous wrongs inflicted upon them, but no people were killed.
Following the passage of federal Reconstruction Acts in 1867 and the ratification of a new state constitution in North Carolina in 1868, nonwhites in Robeson, both black freedmen and Indians, were re-enfranchised. The Republican Party won a majority of the vote in elections in Robeson, displacing Conservative planter families who had dominated county affairs. The party relied on the electoral support of black freedmen, Indians, and poor Buckskin whites. Republican officials were reluctant to take any action concerning the lawlessness in Robeson, since prosecuting former Home Guardsmen for their extrajudicial killings would harm their law and order campaign, while targeting the Lowry Gang would split their local base of support. Despite this, the new Republican Governor of North Carolina, William Woods Holden issued a declaration of outlawry against Lowry and some of his associates, dividing the local Republican Party and threatening their hold on county politics.
In an attempt to broker a solution, local Republicans convinced Lowry to surrender himself to be tried in the postwar court system, but he shortly thereafter escaped. The Lowry Gang then killed Reuben King, the former sheriff of the county, during a robbery in January 1869, ending all attempts by Reconstruction authorities to negotiate a settlement. The gang continued its raids, and as a result federal troops were dispatched to assist the local authorities. In February 1872, the Lowry Gang committed their largest heist, stealing two safes from downtown Lumberton. Shortly thereafter, Henry Berry Lowry disappeared. Over the next two years bounty hunters tracked down the remaining gang members, and the war ended when the last active one was killed in February 1874.
### End of Reconstruction and establishment of racial segregation
Dissatisfied with the 1868 Reconstruction constitution, Conservatives/Democrats pushed for a convention to be held in 1875 to revise the document. Elections to determine the delegates to attend were held in August. Early returns indicated that a Republican-majority convention was likely, and the final results from Robeson County were, depending on the outcome, likely to provide either party with their majority. The state Democratic chairman sent a telegram to the local Democrat-dominated elections board, writing, "As you love the state, hold Robeson." The board then voted to certify the elections without counting results from four Republican-majority precincts, giving the county's two Democratic delegate candidates a slim margin of victory. With their narrow majority at the convention, the Democrats reversed many of the reforms instituted in the 1868 constitution, making it harder for Republicans and blacks to hold office.
With Reconstruction thus ended, Democrats reasserted their dominance over politics in the South, but Republicans remained competitive in North Carolina and the Indian population in Robeson continued to support them. Though Republicans still made up the majority of registered voters in Robeson, disagreements caused by the Lowry War prevented them from solidifying local control. The Indians also resisted being treated the same as blacks under the new socio-political hierarchy, who were relegated to a subordinate position. Hamilton McMillan, a Robesonian member of the North Carolina House of Representatives and a Democrat, sought to switch the Indians' allegiance to solidify his party's control over the state. He convinced the General Assembly to formally recognize the Indians as "Croatoans"—arguing that they descended from English settlers of the Lost Colony who mixed with Croatan Indians.
In 1887, McMillan convinced the legislature to appropriate money for the establishment of a Croatan Normal School to train teachers who could staff new Indian schools. As a result, most Robeson Indians began to vote for Democrats, and their voting rights were preserved when blacks were disenfranchised by constitutional amendment in 1900. This distinction birthed a system of tripartite segregation which was unique in the American South, though whites generally regarded both the Indians and blacks as "colored". Indians and blacks nevertheless maintained separate identities. Some other county facilities were separated for "Whites", "Negroes", and "Indians", including the courthouse in Lumberton. Under this racial hierarchy, whites constituted the dominant racial caste and blacks were socially subordinated, while the Indians formed a middle caste and, though retaining more privileges than blacks, were still subject to discrimination.
The county's second rail line was established in 1884 by the Cape Fear and Yadkin Valley Railway, connecting Lumber Bridge, Red Springs, and Maxton. In 1892, the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad built a north–south line through the county, intersecting with the Wilmington, Charlotte and Rutherford Railroad at the site of Campbell's Mill. A train station was subsequently built and a strong trading community was established. It was incorporated in 1895 as the town of Pembroke and in 1909 the Croatan Normal School was moved there from its original location in Pates. Pembroke became a center for Indian commercial activity. Due to the Indians' predominance in the community, the town lacked strict adherence to many Jim Crow norms common in the rest of the county and the wider South in the early-to-mid 20th century. St. Pauls and Red Springs developed as white-majority towns hostile to nonwhites, while the towns of Fairmont and Rowland retained significant black labor forces. In 1913 the General Assembly reclassified the Indians as Cherokees.
### Economic development and Great Depression
Following the stagnation of cotton prices in the 1890s, farmers in Robeson County began rapidly adopting tobacco as a regular crop. Many tobacco warehouses were built, and the town of Fairmont became the county's primary market town for the crop. Significant tobacco markets were also established in Rowland and Lumberton. The county's first cotton mill opened in 1897, and St. Pauls subsequently developed as the county's primary textile center. In the early 1900s area farmers organized a trade association and convinced the county government to appoint a local commissioner for agriculture.
In 1909, Robeson County's third courthouse was constructed. Two years later a portion of the county was split off and combined with a section of Cumberland County to form Hoke County. Bouts of typhoid, hookworm, smallpox, and a high infant mortality rate led Robeson's government to organize the first county-level public health department in the United States in 1912. Following the passage of a state drainage law in 1909, many swamps in the county were drained to increase usable farmland, improve transportation, and reduce malaria cases. Work on the drainage of the nearly 22,000-acre Back Swamp was completed in 1918. Most major roads in the county were paved with state support between the 1920s and 1947. In 1929, Robeson became the first county in the United States to appoint a county manager.
Similar to the rest of the country, local agriculture suffered throughout the 1920s following World War I due to decreased demand and limited market opportunities for crops. The Great Depression led to a severe decline in tobacco prices. Area farmers responded by increasing their output, but the expanded agricultural supply only pushed crop prices lower. Robesonians dubbed the time period the "Hoover Days". In response to the downturn, in 1936, the federal government created Pembroke Farms, a resettlement community for struggling Indian farmers. In 1938, the government offered loans for the establishment of a second project, the Red Banks Mutual Association. The association served as a cooperative with multiple Indian households farming common land from which profits would be attained and then divided among the members. Neither project proved successful, and by the 1940s both were facing neglect from the government, though the mutual association persisted into the 1960s before it finally collapsed.
### Civil rights and desegregation
Hundreds of Indians from Robeson County fought for the United States during World War II in white units (blacks were segregated into different outfits). Many returned with a willingness to pursue social change. Some of them, especially the war veterans, disliked Robeson County's segregation. In 1945 a group of Indians petitioned the governor to support the restoration of an elected municipal government in Pembroke, which had been swapped for an appointive system in 1917 at the behest of the community's white minority. Two years later, the town returned to an elected government and Pembroke chose its first Indian mayor. Other Indian leaders lobbied for the adoption of a unique name to identify their group. In 1952 the name Lumbee, inspired by the Lumbee/Lumber River, was approved by the Indians in a referendum, and the following year the General Assembly formally recognized the label. In 1956 the United States Congress formally extended partial recognition to the Lumbee Tribe, affirming their existence as an indigenous community but disallowing them from use of federal funds and services available to other Native American groups. Other Indians rejected the Lumbee designation and identified themselves as Tuscarora—stressing a connection to the Tuscarora people who had populated North Carolina in the 1700s—with the aim of securing a better chance at full federal recognition.
In 1954 the United States Supreme Court issued its decision in Brown v. Board of Education, ruling that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. The ruling sparked a significant amount of pro-segregation activity among whites in the South, including a resurgence in white supremacist Ku Klux Klan (KKK) activity. Klan activity and violence increased in Robeson in the early 1950s before being suppressed under pressure from the district solicitor and the federal government. In early 1958, Klan leader James W. "Catfish" Cole of South Carolina attempted to revive the Klan in Robeson County. His group burned crosses in St. Pauls and Lumberton to intimidate the Lumbee community before advertising a rally to be held at Hayes Pond, near Maxton. The rally was held on the evening of January 18, attended by about 50 Klansmen—most not from the county, and joined by several hundred armed Lumbees. The Lumbees opened fire, inflicting minor injuries and causing the Klansmen to disperse. The event, dubbed by the press as the "Battle of Hayes Pond", garnered national media attention and led Klan activity against the Lumbees to cease.
Pembroke State College (formerly the Croatan Normal School) racially integrated in the 1950s and 1960s. After 1965, the rate of black and Native American voter registration substantially increased. By 1968, black and Native voters outnumbered whites. In 1970 the federal government ordered the county school board to integrate its institutions. The board responded by dissolving special Native American districts and consolidating Native students with black and white schools. This did not affect most white students in the county, who were largely served by independent municipal school districts. Feeling a loss of control over their traditional schools, many Lumbees and Tuscaroras protested integration and resisted the assignment of black staff and white and black students to their institutions.
In early 1973, dozens of buildings in the county, most of them owned by whites, were set ablaze. In March, Old Main, a historic building on Pembroke State's campus which had symbolic importance to the Native American community, was burned. In 1974, a federal court ruled that the "double voting" system used by the county school board, whereby both county residents and municipal residents could vote for board members—despite the latter not being served by the county school system, was unconstitutional. Following a bitter 1986 referendum which received national attention, the municipal systems were merged with the county system in 1988.
Pembroke State College was elevated to university status in 1971 and was grouped under the University of North Carolina system the following year. In 1974 the county courthouse was demolished. It was replaced with a new structure in 1976.
### Drug trafficking and economic stagnation
Robeson County became one of the top moonshine-producing counties in North Carolina in the 20th century. The prevalence of poverty enticed many Robesonians to sell moonshine to supplement their incomes, and the large number of isolated swamps and woods offered many places where stills could be concealed. Many Lumbees and Tuscaroras produced moonshine into the 1970s. The trade of marijuana eventually supplanted moonshine before being overtaken by cocaine trafficking in the 1980s, which was enabled by the county's midway location between Miami and New York City along Interstate 95. The drug trade was fueled by worsening economic prospects in the region which began with the 1970s energy crisis and increased living costs. By the mid-1980s, local agriculture was in decline; reliance on mechanised agriculture and the consolidation of smallholding farms into larger corporate operations led to the loss of work for many farmers and their laborers. Newer manufacturing jobs did not provide sufficient employment and stability to residents to makeup for the shift. Over a quarter of county residents lived below the poverty threshold, over half of adults over the age of 25 lacked a high school diploma, and the local unemployment rate was higher than the state average.
Native Americans and blacks suffered disproportionately from the lack of prosperity, and many Native Americans partook in the drug trade. Narcotics-related activities led to murders and stoked social unrest, political tensions, and police corruption. Robeson's homicide rate grew to four times worse than the national average and the county had the highest numbers of drug-related arrests in the state in 1985 and 1986. In February 1988, two Tuscaroras held the staff of the county newspaper, The Robesonian, hostage to protest local corruption. Shortly thereafter, Lumbee judicial candidate Julian Pierce was murdered under disputed circumstances, and the father of basketball player Michael Jordan was murdered in Robeson in 1993. The county's reputation among North Carolinians suffered as a result of these events. Political action motivated by discontent led to an increasing number of blacks and Native Americans to run for office. In 2002, the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation opened an inquiry into corruption allegations in the Robeson County Sheriff's Office. Their subsequent Operation Tarnished Badge became the largest police corruption investigation in state history, and led to 22 officers, including the sheriff, being convicted for various crimes.
### Deindustrialization and hurricanes
Following the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1992, Robeson County lost thousands of manufacturing jobs, followed shortly by a knock-on loss of employment in other sectors. Deindustrialization coupled with the decline in the tobacco industry prompted by the Fair and Equitable Tobacco Reform Act of 2004 caused deep economic and social damage, with increasing underemployment, rising poverty, growing welfare dependency, and an increase in certain types of crimes. Economic development thereafter increasingly focused on the supply of fossil fuels, poultry farming, biogas and bio-mass facilities, and logging. The Latino population also increased as Mexican immigrants—many of them undocumented—supplanted black agricultural workers.
In 2016, the county was impacted by Hurricane Matthew, leading to record flooding in Lumberton. In 2018, the county was struck by Hurricane Florence, which broke the record. The storms heavily damaged thousands of residences throughout the county, and entire streets in south and west Lumberton were left abandoned. The destruction of significant amounts of affordable housing accelerated a population decline in the county which had begun in 2013. Falling student enrollments in the county school system and the resulting decline in state education subsidies led the county school board to close nine schools in 2019. During the 2020 United States presidential election, President Donald Trump held a rally in Robeson County, marking the first time a sitting president had ever held a formal appearance there.
## Geography and physical features
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Robeson County has 947.3 square miles (2,453 km<sup>2</sup>) of land area. It is the largest county in North Carolina by area. Owing to its large size, the county was historically sometimes referred to informally as the "State of Robeson". It is bordered by the North Carolina counties of Bladen, Columbus, Cumberland, Hoke, and Scotland, and the South Carolina counties of Dillon, Horry, and Marlboro.
Robeson is located in the state's Coastal Plain region and is one of the state's ten counties within the Sandhills region, characterized by sandy and fertile soil. It hosts 11 major soil types, mostly sandy loams. It has a temperate climate and rarely experiences snowfall. The county hosts many pocosins, bald cypress forests, Carolina bays, creeks (including Shoe Heel and Big Shoe Heel), and 50 swamps. The swamps feed into the Lumber River, which flows eastward from the northwest corner of the county to the southeast corner. Portions of the Lumber River State Park are located in Robeson, as is the entirety of the Warwick Mill Bay State Natural Area. The two state game lands in the county are Bullard and Branch Hunting Preserve and Robeson Game Land.
Most of Robeson County lies within the Lumber River basin. The river and its banks support many flora and fauna. Resident mammals include deer, raccoons, muskrats, beavers, minks, and otters. The river also supports wild turkeys and several varieties of ducks. Local fish include catfish, robin, perch, pike, bluegill bream, jack, and largemouth bass, smallmouth bass, black crappie, and redbreast sunfish. Reptilian life includes copperhead snakes and some water snakes including cottonmouths. Robeson County is also one of the westernmost regular habitats in the state for American alligators. Plant life supported by the river includes bald cypress, gum, poplar, loblolly-bay, and juniper trees. Ferns, Virginia creeper, Spanish moss, pitcher plants, Venus flytraps, also reside along the river and its tributaries.
## Demographics
### 2020 census
As of the 2020 United States census, there were 116,530 people residing in the county. Lumberton was the most populous community, with 19,025 residents. About 51 percent of county denizens were women. Racially, 30,041 identified as white, 26,424 identified as black or African American, 44,871 identified as American Indian, 908 identified as Asian, and 79 identified as Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, 8,192 identified as other, and 6,015 identified as two or more races. Of the total among the races, 11,757 people identified as Hispanic or Latino. In proportions, the county was approximately 38 percent Native American, 22 percent white, 22 percent black, and 10 percent Hispanic. It is a majority-minority county and proportionately has the largest Native American population of any North Carolina county.
Robeson County is included in the Fayetteville-Lumberton-Pinehurst, NC Combined Statistical Area.
### Demographic change
Robeson County experienced a loss of 17,638 people between 2010 and 2020, a decline of 13.1 percent and the largest numerical decline among North Carolina's counties. Between the 2010 and 2020 censuses, the white demographic experienced the largest decrease in size, while Hispanics and people who identify as two or more races experienced the most significant increases. The proportion of county residents under the age of 18 dropped by 22 percent.
## Law and government
### Government
Robeson County is run by a commission–manager government. The county commission comprises eight members elected from single-member districts in four-year staggered terms. Presided over by a chairman elected by the commissioners from among their members for a one-year term, the commission has legislative and policy-making authority over county government. The commissioners appoint a county manager who holds executive authority over county administration and implements the decisions of the commission. The manager appoints directors of county government departments. The county government supplies emergency services, social services, public health services, recreation, and economic development in its jurisdiction. It also maintains a water system and landfill. The county government is funded by a local property tax. Several county departments are headquartered in the Robeson County Administration Center in Lumberton.
Robeson County is a member of the Lumber River Council of Governments, a regional planning board representing five counties. The county also has its own Soil and Water Conservation District led by an elected supervisor. Robeson County is located in North Carolina's 7th congressional district the North Carolina Senate's 24th district, and the North Carolina House of Representatives' 46th and 47th district. Robeson is one of the four counties within the jurisdiction of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, and tribal members within the county elect some members of the tribal council. Its headquarters is in Pembroke.
### Law enforcement and judicial system
Robeson County lies within the bounds of North Carolina's 20th Prosecutorial District, the 16B Superior Court District, and the 16B District Court District. County residents elect a county sheriff, clerk of Superior Court, and district attorney. Judicial officials work out of the Robeson County Courthouse in Lumberton. Law enforcement is provided across the county by the sheriff's office, while the University of North Carolina at Pembroke and the towns of Lumberton, St. Pauls, Maxton, Red Springs, Rowland, Pembroke, and Fairmont retain their own police departments. According to an October 2021 report issued by the State Bureau of Investigation, in 2020 Robeson experienced the highest violent crime rate of the state's counties at 1,190 incidents per 100,000 people, and the third-worst overall crime rate.
### Politics
Politically, Robeson County has historically been dominated by the Democratic Party. A majority of Robesonians voted for Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon in 1972, but then voted for Democratic presidential candidates in the next nine elections. The local Republican Party grew in the early 21st century, fueled by prevailing religious conservatism in the county and discontent with the loss of manufacturing jobs. Many of the Democrats who remained with their party were conservative. Democrats continued to win state and local races by large margins in the 2000s but their margins of victory in presidential and congressional races decreased. In 2016 and 2020, county voters favored Republican Donald Trump, who won over majorities of white and Lumbee voters by championing socially conservative issues, criticizing free trade agreements, and declaring his support for full federal recognition of the Lumbee Tribe. The area also began increasingly voting for Republican state and local candidates, with Robesonians in 2016 electing their first Republican state senator since Reconstruction. In 2020, Republicans won most races in the county. As of April 2022, Robeson hosts about 70,400 registered voters, comprising about 36,500 registered Democrats, 12,300 registered Republicans and 21,300 unaffiliated.
## Economy
Robeson County was largely reliant on the textile and tobacco industries throughout much of the 20th century. Agriculture predominated in employment in 1960, and the county earned the second-highest agriculture related revenue among all Southern counties, though its per-capita income remained low. By 1970, agriculture had been overtaken by manufacturing, and the completion of Interstate 95 within several years accelerated industrialization. By 1990, fewer than 2,300 Robesonians worked in agriculture, and manufacturing accounted for a third of the county's employment. The tobacco and manufacturing sectors rapidly declined in the 1990s and 2000s, with manufacturing especially adversely impacted by several national free trade agreements. The Robeson County Office of Economic Development determined that the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement led to the closure of 32 manufacturing facilities and the loss of over 6,000 jobs between 1995 and 2005. From 1997 to 2007, the county lost 22,860 acres in farmland.
Tobacco is still grown in the county, as are corn, soybeans, sorghum, peanuts, and cotton. Some local landowners raise pine trees and sell them as timber. Poultry farming has also rapidly increased since the 1990s. In recent years commercial activity has grown along the Interstate 95 corridor, Chicken processing, pork processing, and the pellet fuel industry have supplanted much of the former textile industry. The significant presence of such high-pollution industries in the county has led some residents to describe the area as a sacrifice zone. Health care/social assistance, manufacturing, retail, education, and accommodation/food service are the largest-employing sectors in Robeson County. According to the American Community Survey, from 2017 to 2021 the estimated median household income was \$36,736. As of 2023, 28 percent of local residents are impoverished, making Robeson one of the poorest counties in the state.
## Transportation
Robeson County is served by Interstate 95, which travels north–south through the county, and Interstate 74 (incomplete), which travels east–west. The two routes intersect to the southwest of Lumberton. It is also served by U.S. Route 74 (Alt.) (Bus.), U.S. Route 301, U.S. Route 501, and North Carolina Highways 20, 41, 71, 72, 83, 130 (Bus.), 211, 295 (to be I-295), 710, 711, and 904. County government supports a public transport bus service, the South East Area Transit System. Airplane facilities are provided by the Lumberton Municipal Airport in Lumberton. The Laurinburg–Maxton Airport, situated in Scotland County near the border with Robeson, serves both the Scotland city of Laurinburg and the Robeson town of Maxton. Railroads in Robeson County are operated by CSX Transportation. The longest straight stretch of railroad track in the United States, spanning 78.86 miles, passes through Robeson.
## Education
The Public Schools of Robeson County (PSRC) operates public schools in the area. As of 2022, the system operates 36 schools and serves about 23,000 students. The state classifies the PSRC as a low-performing district. The county hosts two post-secondary institutions: the University of North Carolina at Pembroke and Robeson Community College. Additionally, the PSRC supports the Robeson Planetarium, while county government also runs seven libraries. A county history museum is located in Lumberton. According to the 2021 American Community Survey, an estimated 14.3 percent of county residents have attained a bachelor's degree or higher level of education.
## Healthcare
Robeson County is served by a single hospital, UNC Health Southeastern, based in Lumberton. The Robeson Health Care Corporation also provides medical care to local residents through various clinics. According to the 2022 County Health Rankings produced by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, Robeson County had the worst health outcomes of all of North Carolina's counties. Per the ranking, 32 percent of adults say they are in poor or fair health, the average life expectancy is 72 years—six years lower than the state average, and 19 percent of people under the age of 65 lack health insurance. The county has been heavily impacted by the opioid epidemic, and in 2021 suffered from the highest fatal opioid overdose rate among North Carolina's counties.
## Culture
Robeson is pronounced by local residents as "RAH-bih-sun" or "ROB-uh-son". Outsiders sometimes pronounce it as "ROW-bih-sun". In line with the predominantly tri-ethnic nature of the county, whites, blacks, and Native Americans generally operate as three different sociocultural entities. Members of each group generally express dialectal differences in their speech. The collard sandwich—consisting of fried cornbread, collard greens, and fatback—is a popular dish among the Lumbee people in the county. Numerous small communities in the county are culturally insular owing to their lack of contact with people from outside the county. Most towns host their own annual festivals. The Lumbee Homecoming, a festival for Lumbee tribal members, is held annually in late June and early July and often brings thousands of Lumbees as well as tourists to the county. Fishing and hunting have long been popular activities in the county, both as means of acquiring food and as sports. The Carolina boat—a style of skiff of marine plywood construction—originated in the county. Many in the county are religious, and religion is a key part of local public life. Several area buildings and sites have been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
## Communities
### Incorporated communities
- Lumberton (county seat and largest city)
- Fairmont
- Lumber Bridge
- Marietta
- Maxton
- McDonald
- Orrum
- Parkton
- Pembroke
- Proctorville
- Raynham
- Red Springs
- Rennert
- Rowland
- St. Pauls
### Townships
Robeson County townships include:
- Alfordsville
- Back Swamp
- Barnesville
- Britts
- Burnt Swamp
- East Howellsville
- Gaddy
- Parkton
- Philadelphus
- Raft Swamp
- Rennert
- Saddletree
- Shannon
- Smiths
- Smyrna
- Sterlings
- Thompson
- Tolarsville
- Union
- West Howellsville
- Whitehouse
- Wishart
### Census-designated places
- Barker Ten Mile
- Elrod
- Prospect
- Raemon
- Rex
- Shannon
- Wakulla
### Unincorporated communities
- Barnesville
- Bloomingdale
- Five Forks
- Red Banks
- Moss Neck
- Pates
## Notable people
- Henry Berry Lowry (1845–c. 1872), outlaw who disappeared
- Rhoda Strong Lowry (1849–1909), wife of Henry
- Angus Wilton McLean (1870–1935), Governor of North Carolina from 1924 to 1928
- Francis M. Wishart (1837–1872), military officer
## See also
- List of counties in North Carolina
|
2,787,036 |
Cross Game
| 1,157,960,505 |
Japanese manga series by Mitsuru Adachi
|
[
"2005 manga",
"2009 anime television series debuts",
"Anime series based on manga",
"Baseball in anime and manga",
"Coming-of-age anime and manga",
"Mitsuru Adachi",
"Romantic comedy anime and manga",
"Shogakukan manga",
"Shōnen manga",
"TV Tokyo original programming",
"Viz Media anime",
"Viz Media manga",
"Winners of the Shogakukan Manga Award for shōnen manga"
] |
Cross Game (Japanese: クロスゲーム, Hepburn: Kurosu Gēmu) is a Japanese baseball-themed manga series written and illustrated by Mitsuru Adachi. It was serialized in Shogakukan shōnen manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Sunday from April 2005 to February 2010, with its chapters collected in 17 tankōbon volumes. The series was adapted as a 50-episode anime television series that aired on the TV Tokyo network from April 2009 to March 2010.
Cross Game is the story of Ko Kitamura and the four neighboring Tsukishima sisters, Ichiyo, Wakaba, Aoba, and Momiji. Wakaba and Ko were born on the same day in the same hospital and are close enough that Wakaba treats Ko as her boyfriend, though nothing is officially declared, while Aoba, one year younger than them, hates how Ko is "taking" her sister away from her. After Wakaba dies in an accident, Ko and Aoba slowly grow closer as they strive to fulfill Wakaba's final dream of seeing them play in the high school baseball championship in Koshien Stadium. The manga is divided into multiple parts. Part One, which consists of volume one, is a prologue that takes place while the main characters are in elementary school, ending in tragedy. Part Two starts four years later with Ko in his third year of junior high and continues into the summer of his third year of high school. Part Three continues the story without a break, ending with Ko and Aoba traveling to Koshien.
In 2009, Cross Game received the 54th Shogakukan Manga Award for the shōnen category. Both the manga and its anime adaptation have been overall well received by critics.
## Plot
At the start of Part One, Ko Kitamura, son of the owner of Kitamura Sports, lives in the same neighborhood as the batting center run by the Tsukishima family. Due to their proximity and the relationship between their businesses, the Kitamura and Tsukishima families have been close for many years, and their children go back and forth between the two homes. Because Ko and Wakaba are the same age and always together, Aoba is jealous of all the time Ko spends with her older sister. Aoba is a natural pitcher with excellent form, and Ko secretly trains to become as good as she is, even while publicly showing little interest in baseball. Then Wakaba dies in a swimming accident at a summer camp during fifth grade.
Part Two starts with Ko in his third year of junior high, as he continues training in secret. When he enters Seishu High School, he joins the baseball club along with his childhood friends, Akaishi and Nakanishi. However, the interim principal (the regular principal is on medical leave) has brought in a new head coach, and he in turn brings in transfer students from other schools as ringers just to play baseball. This team, led by their star, Yūhei Azuma, is the clear favorite of the school. Because the three friends refuse to take evaluation tests to join the first-string team, they are placed on the second-string "portable" team under the former head coach, Maeno, who has to use the Seishu Junior High School field for practice. This causes a rivalry between the two parts of the team. In the first summer practice scrimmage between them, the portable team loses by only a narrow margin.
During the summer vacation, while the first-string team plays in the prefectural qualifying tournament for Koshien, Maeno has the portable team practice at a recently closed elementary school with the support from a mysterious old man. The portable team also has six practice matches with other local high schools, all of which reached semifinals or higher in the regional preliminaries. Near the end of summer vacation, the interim principal decides to dissolve the portable team. However, Coach Maeno asks for a rematch scrimmage with the first-string team, after which the losing team would be dissolved and that coach would leave. The portable team, playing with Aoba, wins a narrow victory. The first-string team is dissolved, and the head coach and the interim principal leave to work at other schools.
In the spring, Ko becomes a second-year student and Aoba enters Seishu High School. Yūhei, who stays at Seishu despite having been on the former first-string team, moves in with Ko's family after the first-stringers' dormitory is closed. The reformed Seishu team goes on to prove themselves by defeating Sannō High School in the first round of the summer prefectural qualifying tournament. However, they lose to their second-round opponents, Ryuō, in overtime, ending Seishu's hopes of Koshien for the year. Ryuō subsequently reaches Koshien, advances up to the semifinals where they are narrowly beaten. However, Ryuō then goes on to win the spring invitational Koshien tournament later that same year.
As Ko and Aoba enter their summer break, a girl named Akane Takigawa with a striking resemblance to Wakaba moves in next door to Ko. This causes mixed feelings among the various characters, particularly Ko, Aoba, and Akaishi (who had also liked Wakaba). Akane soon becomes friends with Ko and Tsukishimas, and begins working in the Tsukishima cafe. As another year begins, the romantic subplots further solidify when Yūhei expresses an interest in Aoba. Meanwhile, Seishu gains a new assistant coach in the form of Yūhei's older brother Junpei, after Ichiyo agrees to marry him if Seishu makes it to Koshien.
When the prefectural summer baseball tournament starts, Seishu starts with a dominating shutout against its first-round opponent, Matsunami Municipal High School. In the second round, they face Sena Municipal High School led by Tatsumasa Miki, a former Seishu first-string player, which in the first round defeated the team headed by Seishu's former head coach. Seishu wins with a nearly perfect game, ending Part Two of the story.
Part Three starts with the prefectural tournament still in progress. After another win by Seishu, Akane is hospitalized due to an unspecified illness. Initially, Akaishi's play is affected by worrying about Akane's condition. Ko continues to perform well and promises Akane to go on a date with her if Seishu reaches Koshien. However, Akane's illness is more severe than expected, and she is scheduled for surgery on the morning of the prefectural final against Ryuō. Before the game begins, Ko tells Aoba he loves her more than anyone, but in such a way she thinks he is lying until after Seishu wins in extra innings, clinching a Koshien berth. In the final chapter, the morning before traveling to Koshien, Akaishi visits Akane recovering in the hospital and Ko and Aoba head for the train station holding hands.
## Media
### Manga
Cross Game, written and illustrated by Mitsuru Adachi, was serialized in Shogakukan's shōnen manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Sunday from April 27, 2005, to February 17, 2010. The series is divided into multiple parts. Part One, "Wakaba's Season", consists of volume one, and takes place while the main characters are in elementary school. Part Two, "Aoba's Season", covering volumes 2 through 14, with chapter numbering restarted from 1, begins four years later with Ko in his third year of junior high school and continues into high school. In October 2008, the series went on hiatus at the end of Part Two, resuming in March 2009 with the start of Part Three, which is untitled and covers volumes 15 through 17, with Ko in the summer of his third year of high school. Shogakukan collected its 160 individual chapters in seventeen tankōbon volumes, released from September 2, 2005, to April 16. 2010.
The series is licensed in France by Editions Tonkam, in Italy by Flashbook Editore, in South Korea by Daiwon C.I., in Hong Kong by Jonesky, in Taiwan by Chingwin Publishing Group, in Indonesia by Elex Media Komputindo, and in Thailand by Vibulkij Publishing.
In March 2010, Viz Media announced that they had licensed the series for release in North America. The first volume, collecting the first three tankōbon volumes, was published October 12, 2010. The eighth and final volume was released on November 13, 2012.
### Anime
Cross Game was adapted into an anime television series produced by TV Tokyo, Shogakukan-Shueisha Productions and SynergySP. It was directed by Osamu Sekita, with Michihiro Tsuchiya handling series composition, Yūji Kondō designing the characters and Kotaro Nakagawa composing the music. The series aired on the TV Tokyo network beginning on April 5, 2009 in the 10:00–10:30 am slot; episodes began syndication later in April 2009 on AT-X and other channels in Japan, and finished airing on March 28, 2010. The first DVD volume of episodes was released in Japan on July 24, 2009, with additional DVDs released monthly.
The opening theme song, "Summer Rain", was written by Kentarō Kobuchi and sung by Kobukuro. It was released by Warner Music Japan on April 15, 2009 in both regular and limited edition versions, and peak ranked at \#2 on the Oricon singles chart. The ending theme song for episodes 1–13, "Heartfelt Dream" (恋焦がれて見た夢, Koi Kogarete Mita Yume), was composed and sung by Ayaka and arranged by Shintarō Tokita. It was released as a single by Warner Music Japan in both regular and limited edition versions on April 22, 2009, and reached \#6 on the Oricon singles chart. The ending theme for episodes 14–26, "Orange Days" (オレンジDays, Orenji Days) by Squarehood, was released as a single by Warner Music Japan on August 5, 2009. The ending theme song for episodes 27–39 was "Moeruyō na Koi ja naikedo" (燃えるような恋じゃないけど) by Tsuru, which was released as a single on November 11, 2009. The ending theme song for episodes 40–49 was "Rehearsal" (リハーサル, "Rihaiseru") by Natsuko Kondō. The final ending theme, for episode 50, was Loving Maiden (恋スル乙女, Koisuru Otome), also by Kondō.
Viz began streaming the Cross Game anime in the United States in May 2010.
## Reception
Cross Game won the 54th Shogakukan Manga Award for the shōnen category in 2009. The first volume of the French edition won the Prix Tam-Tam Dlire Manga 2007. The manga was also used in an academic paper presented at the 2007 conference of the International Research Society for Children's Literature as an example of telling a story using "silent" scenes (scenes with no dialogue) to powerfully convey a message.
The first two volumes of the Japanese edition were described by Anime News Network as "quietly brilliant" and "the slice-of-life genre at its best", saying that despite some "storytelling goofs", there is "no matching the pleasant feelings that come from reading this series." The French edition was praised by Manga News as a "great success" and "a pure delight as usual," citing as key ingredients the "appealing and funny characters" put in funny situations, accessible drawing style, and Adachi's talent for staging baseball scenes; Adachi was praised for his ability to mix "the sports world which he cherishes so much and the love relationships that are not yet real but so much implied and awaited" and his skill at rendering moving scenes without dialogue. The reviewer noted that while Adachi's art style has not changed much since Touch, his layouts are cleaner and his action scenes more dynamic than before. Anime Land praised Adachi for his "sense of the elliptical and staging", the verisimilitude of his stories, appealing secondary characters, and ability to develop comedy in just one panel. The reviewer claimed Adachi's handling of Wakaba's death is "remarkable" and that the event "gave real meaning" to the story.
The first episode of the anime series was called the "masterpiece of the new season" by ANN, which also complimented the musical score as "understated but highly effective". Two reviewers at ANN gave it the highest possible rating, and one said that he would have given it a higher rating if possible. Another praised its "honest and heartfelt storytelling" while saying it would be easy to call the episode's pacing "almost too-languid". A fourth reviewer found it to be typical of Adachi anime adaptations, but that the production values were "at best, mediocre and, at times, brushing up against the marginal".
Chris Beveridge of Mania.com, after viewing the first episode, said the series had "an older feeling to it" because of the rounder character designs reminiscent of those from the 1980s and 1990s, calling it a "great look" with a "wonderful simplicity" and backgrounds "filled with detail". Beveridge called the animation "solid", and stated that the series had "a whole lot of potential", making him excited to see more. He was impressed with the way the events of episode one were handled in the second episode, comparing the pacing and style to that of Kimagure Orange Road, which he stated is one of his favorites series. He especially liked the way the budding romance was shown between Ko and Wakaba back in the elementary school days, and how it affected the current relationship between Ko and Aoba.
Beveridge called the third episode "understated", moving at a slower pace which helps to begin showing the true nature of several of the characters, and the good pacing continues into the fourth episode where a dynamic between Akaishi, Nakanishi, and Ko is developed. Beveridge praised the character building in the fifth episode, calling the interaction of Ko and Aoba "very charming" and "reminiscent of real childhoods", with things "starting to fall into place" for the main focus of the series (high school baseball) by the end of the sixth episode. He praises the exposition used in the seventh episode, the protective instinct of Ko, Nakanishi, and Akaishi when it comes to Aoba, the use of flashbacks which show how the past is affecting the characters in the present, and the good pacing which "really sets it apart from almost every other sports show".
|
1,611,927 |
The Village Green Preservation Society
| 1,170,865,258 |
1968 song by The Kinks
|
[
"1968 songs",
"English patriotic songs",
"Folk rock songs",
"Pye Records singles",
"Reprise Records singles",
"Song recordings produced by Ray Davies",
"Songs about nostalgia",
"Songs written by Ray Davies",
"The Kinks songs"
] |
"The Village Green Preservation Society" is a song by the English rock band the Kinks from their 1968 album The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society. Written and sung by the band's principal songwriter Ray Davies, the song is a nostalgic reflection where the band state their intention to "preserve" British things for posterity. As the opening track, the song introduces many of the LP's themes, and Ray subsequently described it as the album's "national anthem".
Ray was inspired to write "The Village Green Preservation Society" after hearing someone express that the Kinks had been preserving "nice things from the past". Written and recorded in August 1968 as sessions for the band's next album neared completion, the song was intended to be a new title track after he remained unsatisfied with the album's working title Village Green. The song pairs pop and rock music with elements of English music hall, indicating Ray's continued interest in the genre. It has received generally favourable reviews from critics, but later commentators dispute how much of its lyrics were to be considered ironic; some consider them reactionary and others find the tone partially parodic. Coinciding with the band's "God Save the Kinks" promotional campaign, the song was issued as a US single in July 1969, though it failed to chart. The Kinks regularly included the song in their live set list in the 1970s, '80s and '90s.
## Background and recording
Ray Davies composed "The Village Green Preservation Society" around August 1968, after the other eleven songs for the Kinks' next album had been recorded. In a contemporary interview, he explained that the song's central inspiration spawned from a conversation where someone suggested that the Kinks had been preserving "nice things from the past", and he hoped to capture the idea within a single song. Ray had been unsatisfied with the LP's working title Village Green but was unsure how to replace it; after composing the song, he re-titled the album The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society.
The Kinks recorded "The Village Green Preservation Society" around 12 August 1968 in Pye Studio 2, one of two basement studios at Pye Records' London offices. Ray is credited as the song's producer, and Pye's in-house engineer Brian Humphries operated the four-track mixing console. Author Andy Miller writes the song's arrangement is defined by Mick Avory's "especially exuberant" drumming and the "similarly light and effective" piano contribution, played by either Ray or session keyboardist Nicky Hopkins. Ray's organ contribution is emphasised in the mix over Dave Davies's acoustic rhythm guitar.
## Composition
### Music and lyrics
The musical composition of "The Village Green Preservation Society" is simple, employing four chords and a midway modulation from C to D major. Miller considers it a pop song, and The Harvard Dictionary of Music characterises it as a rock song with elements of English music hall. Author Patricia Gordon Sullivan considers it one of several songs on Village Green played in the style of music hall, a theme she writes Ray established on the band's 1967 album Something Else by the Kinks. Ray later recalled that though he never went to a music hall performance as a child, his style of composition was heavily influenced by his father, who regularly went to musicals and dances and encouraged his children to sing songs at the piano.
The lyrics of "The Village Green Preservation Society" help establish the themes of Village Green; Ray subsequently described the song as the album's "national anthem". The lyrics state the band's intention to "preserve" things from the past and consists of a listing of institutions to be saved for posterity. Things listed include vaudeville, the George Cross medal and its recipients, draught beer and virginity, among others. In addition to "The Village Green Preservation Society", the singers adopt other identifiers, like "the Custard Pie Appreciation Consortium" and "the Skyscraper Condemnation Affiliate". Ray and Dave harmonise closely throughout, and Ray's voice is emphasised at the midway point and its closing. The song concludes with its final lyric "God save the village green!", backed with falsetto harmony vocals.
### Interpretation
Later commentary regarding "The Village Green Preservation Society" centres around the song's degree of irony. The academic Mark Doyle considers the song emblematic of an ambiguity which characterises Ray's songwriting, holding a tension between both longing for the past and the rejection of longing, leaving it unclear whether the song should be interpreted seriously or satirically. He writes that in its tension between being either an earnest call for preservation of English heritage or a satire of traditionalists, Ray's writing forces the listener to evaluate the merits of both positions. Like Doyle, the band biographers Rob Jovanovic and Johnny Rogan each suggest that the song is simultaneously ironic and Ray's sincere expression of love for many of the things listed.
Some commentators consider elements of the song reactionary, such as the opposition to office blocks and skyscrapers. Rogan compares the sentiments to the UK Conservation Society's 1966 founding promise to "[fight] against the menace of decreasing standards". Ray countered interpretations that the song was reactionary in a 1984 interview, instead characterising it as "a warm feeling, like a fantasy world that I can retreat to". Author Barry J. Faulk writes that following Ray's November 1968 explanation that the song was meant to capture the Kinks' penchant for preservation, the song's message was meant to directly contrast with that of contemporary rock songs like the Rolling Stones' 1968 single "Street Fighting Man". Miller writes that though it "lack[s] the righteousness and glamour" of the Rolling Stones' single, "The Village Green Preservation Society" is a "quiet song of defiance". Doyle considers the band's defiant sentiments an "anti-authoritarian preservationism of the little man", pointing to Dave's later explanation of the song's opening harmonies: "It was like, 'We're impenetrable. We might not have a lot, but you can't kill us. You're going to have to shoot us.'"
"The Village Green Preservation Society" includes elements of autobiography and self-parody. Ray and Dave grew up in Fortis Green, a suburban neighbourhood of Muswell Hill in North London; though the area did not have a traditional village green as a common area, Ray has regularly described the area in rural terms. In a 2009 interview, he explained that "North London was my village green, my version of the countryside", further mentioning Waterlow Park in the nearby suburb of Highgate and its small lake as an influence. In the two weeks before "The Village Green Preservation Society" was recorded, Ray moved out of his East Finchley semi-detached home on Fortis Green and into a larger Tudor house in the suburbs of Borehamwood, Hertfordshire. In the song, Ray sings for God to save Tudor houses, antique tables and billiards, which Rogan thinks was Ray's self-mockery over his increased social standing. Rogan further suggests "the Anglocentric ideal has already been tainted" by the mention of Donald Duck, an American creation, but cultural researcher Jon Stratton writes Britons could still be nostalgic for the character since he had been popular in Britain since before the Second World War.
## Release
Ray sequenced "The Village Green Preservation Society" as the opening track of his original twelve-track edition of The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society. In the United Kingdom, Pye planned to release the album on 27 September 1968, but Ray halted its release in mid-September in order to expand its track listing. Pye released the expanded fifteen-track edition of the album in the UK on 22 November 1968, retaining "The Village Green Preservation Society" as the album's opening track. To help promote the album, the Kinks performed the song on 26 November 1968 for BBC Radio 1 programme Saturday Club at the Playhouse Theatre in central London. The band also lip-synced the song for ITV programme Time For Blackburn (Pop, People & Places), broadcast on 21 December 1968.
Reprise Records issued "The Village Green Preservation Society" as a US single backed with "Do You Remember Walter?" in July 1969. The single did not chart in America but reached number 19 on Danmarks Radio's chart in Denmark, where the song was instead backed with "Picture Book". The US release coincided with Warner Bros. Records' "God Save the Kinks" promotional campaign, which sought to reestablish the band's status in America after their informal four-year performance ban was lifted in the country. The Kinks' return tour of North America ran from October to December 1969, during which they regularly included "The Village Green Preservation Society" as part of their set list. The song also featured in concerts throughout the 1970s, '80s and '90s.
## Reception
In his September 1968 preview of Village Green for New Musical Express, critic Keith Altham was especially fond of the title track, which he thought could have made it to in the UK had it been issued as a single. The reviewer for Disc and Music Echo similarly counted it as one of the most memorable songs on the album. In Paul Williams's June 1969 review of the album for Rolling Stone magazine, he praised several elements of the song, including its drums, bass and vocals. He added that "[t]he tune, the rhythm, are more of a delight with each verse", and that it was almost "unbearable" that the song had to finish. Following the song's July 1969 US single release, Cash Box magazine's review staff designated it "Choice Programming" – indicating they thought it deserved the special attention of radio programmers – and the reviewer expected that the band's committed followers would enjoy the song's "cute Anglo-rock effort".
Among retrospective assessors, J. H. Tompkins of the website Pitchfork considered the song an example of Ray's best work, done "with a quiet, ironic smile". Critic Stewart Mason of AllMusic agrees that the song is musically one of Ray's best, but he finds its lyric less effective than the Ray's similarly themed 1967 composition "Autumn Almanac". He adds that though "The Village Green Preservation Society" is likely the best known song from Village Green, the album's cult status means that the song holds a different position from the Kinks' biggest hits, ultimately concluding that other critics may have "slightly overpraised" the song. In a piece for Billboard magazine ranking all of the album's tracks, Morgan Enos placed the song ninth out of fifteen, writing that in spite of its cheerful sound, the song "aches with longing".
|
13,762,849 |
French battleship Démocratie
| 1,151,494,400 |
French Liberté-class battleship
|
[
"Liberté-class battleships",
"Ships built in France"
] |
Démocratie was a pre-dreadnought battleship built for the French Navy in the mid-1900s. She was the fourth member of the Liberté class, which included three other vessels and was a derivative of the preceding République class, with the primary difference being the inclusion of a heavier secondary battery. Démocratie carried a main battery of four 305 mm (12 in) guns, like the République, but mounted ten 194 mm (7.6 in) guns for her secondary armament in place of the 164 mm (6.5 in) guns of the earlier vessels. Like many late pre-dreadnought designs, Démocratie was completed after the revolutionary British battleship HMS Dreadnought had entered service, rendering her obsolescent.
On entering service, Démocratie joined the Mediterranean Squadron, based in Toulon. She immediately began the normal peacetime training routine of squadron and fleet maneuvers and cruises to various ports in the Mediterranean. She also participated in several naval reviews for a number of French and foreign dignitaries. Following the outbreak of war in July 1914, Démocratie was used to escort troopship convoys carrying elements of the French Army from French North Africa to face the Germans invading northern France. She thereafter steamed to contain the Austro-Hungarian Navy in the Adriatic Sea, taking part in the minor Battle of Antivari in August. The increasing threat of Austro-Hungarian U-boats and the unwillingness of the Austro-Hungarian fleet to engage in battle led to a period of monotonous patrols that ended with Italy's entry into the war on the side of France, which allowed the French fleet to be withdrawn.
In mid-1916, she became involved in events in Greece, being stationed in Salonika to put pressure on the Greek government to enter the war on the side of the Allies, but she saw little action for the final two years of the war. Immediately after the end of the war, she was sent to the Black Sea, first to oversee the surrender of German-occupied Russian warships there, and then as part of the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. In May 1919, she carried the Ottoman delegation to France to sign the Treaty of Sèvres. The ship was placed in reserve in 1920, stricken from the naval register in 1921, and broken up later that year.
## Design
The Liberté-class battleships were originally intended to be part of the République-class battleship, which was to total six ships. After work on the first two ships had begun, the British began construction of the King Edward VII-class battleships. These ships carried a heavy secondary battery of 9.2-inch (230 mm) guns, which prompted the French Naval General Staff to request that the last four Républiques be redesigned to include a heavier secondary battery in response. Ironically, the designer, Louis-Émile Bertin, had proposed such an armament for the République class, but the General Staff had rejected it since the larger guns had a lower rate of fire than the smaller 164 mm (6.5 in) guns that had been selected for the République design. Because the ships were broadly similar apart from their armament, the Libertés are sometimes considered to be a sub-class of the République type.
Démocratie was 135.25 meters (443 ft 9 in) long overall and had a beam of 24.25 m (79 ft 7 in) and an average draft of 8.2 m (26 ft 11 in). She displaced up to 14,900 metric tons (14,700 long tons) at full load. The battleship was powered by three vertical triple-expansion steam engines, each driving one propeller shaft using steam provided by twenty-two Belleville boilers. They were rated at 17,500 metric horsepower (17,300 ihp) and provided a top speed of 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph). Coal storage amounted to 1,800 t (1,800 long tons; 2,000 short tons), which provided a maximum range of 8,400 nautical miles (15,600 km; 9,700 mi) at a cruising speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph). She had a crew of 32 officers and 710 enlisted men.
Démocratie's main battery consisted of four 305 mm (12 in) Modèle 1893/96 guns mounted in two twin-gun turrets, one forward and one aft of the superstructure. The secondary battery consisted of ten 194 mm (7.6 in) Modèle 1902 guns; six were mounted in single turrets, and four in casemates in the hull. She also carried thirteen 65 mm (2.6 in) Modèle 1902 guns and ten 47 mm (1.9 in) Modèle 1902 guns for defense against torpedo boats. The ship was also armed with two 450 mm (17.7 in) torpedo tubes, which were submerged in the hull on the broadside.
The ship's main belt was 280 mm (11 in) thick in the central citadel, and was connected to two armored decks; the upper deck was 54 mm (2.1 in) thick while the lower deck was 51 mm (2 in) thick, with 70 mm (2.8 in) sloped sides. The main battery guns were protected by up to 360 mm (14.2 in) of armor on the fronts of the turrets, while the secondary turrets had 156 mm (6.1 in) of armor on the faces. The casemates were protected with 174 mm (6.9 in) of steel plate. The conning tower had 266 mm (10.5 in) thick sides.
### Modifications
Over the course of 1912 through 1914, the navy tried to modify Démocratie and her sister Vérité to allow the 305 mm guns to be aimed continuously. Tests to determine whether the main battery turrets could be modified to increase the elevation of the guns (and hence their range) proved to be impossible, but the Navy determined that tanks on either side of the vessel could be flooded to induce a heel of 2 degrees. This increased the maximum range of the guns from 12,500 to 13,500 m (13,700 to 14,800 yd). New motors were installed in the secondary turrets in 1915–1916 to improve their training and elevation rates. Also in 1915, the 47 mm guns located on either side of the bridge were removed and the two on the aft superstructure were moved to the roof of the rear turret. On 8 December 1915, the naval command issued orders that the light battery was to be revised to eight of the 47 mm guns and ten 65 mm (2.6 in) guns. The light battery was revised again in 1916, with the four 47 mm guns being converted with high-angle anti-aircraft mounts. They were placed atop the rear main battery turret and the number 7 and 8 secondary turret roofs. In 1912–1913, the ship received two 2 m (6 ft 7 in) Barr & Stroud rangefinders.
## Service history
### Construction – 1911
Démocratie was laid down at the Arsenal de Brest shipyard on 1 May 1903, launched on 30 April 1904, and completed on 9 January 1908, over a year after the revolutionary British battleship HMS Dreadnought entered service, which rendered the pre-dreadnoughts like Démocratie outdated before they were completed. Following her completion, she left Brest on 20 January and steamed south to Toulon, where she joined the 1st Division of the 1st Battle Squadron on 10 March, which included the battleships Patrie and République. In June and July, the Mediterranean and Northern Squadrons conducted their annual maneuvers, this time off Bizerte. In October, the 1st Division ships steamed to Barcelona, Spain, but Démocratie did not join her division mates, since the French government feared her name would be provocative to the Spanish King Alfonso XIII.
In early 1909, the fleet went to Villefranche-sur-Mer, where the ships were inspected by Albert I, Prince of Monaco during his visit to the port from 18 to 24 February. After his departure, the Mediterranean Squadron conducted training exercises off Corsica, followed by a naval review in Villefranche for President Armand Fallières on 26 April. Démocratie, Patrie, Liberté, and the armored cruiser Ernest Renan steamed into the Atlantic for training exercises on 2 June; while at sea ten days later, they rendezvoused with République, Justice, and the protected cruiser Galilée at Cádiz, Spain. Training included serving as targets for the fleet's submarines in the Pertuis d'Antioche strait. The ships then steamed north to La Pallice, where they conducted tests with their wireless telegraphy sets and shooting training in Quiberon Bay. From 8 to 15 July, the ships lay at Brest and the next day, they steamed to Le Havre. There, they met the Northern Squadron for another fleet review for Fallières on 17 July. Ten days later, the combined fleet steamed to Cherbourg, where they held another fleet review, this time during the visit of Czar Nicholas II of Russia. Démocratie, République, and Patrie departed for Toulon on 17 August and arrived on 6 September.
Démocratie joined Patrie, Justice, Vérité, République, and Suffren for a simulated attack on the port of Nice on 18 February. The ships of the 1st Squadron held training exercises off Sardinia and Algeria from 21 May to 4 June, followed by combined maneuvers with the 2nd Squadron from 7 to 18 June. An outbreak of typhoid among the crews of the battleships in early December forced the navy to confine them to Golfe-Juan to contain the fever. By 15 December, the outbreak had subsided. On 16 April 1911, Démocratie and the rest of the fleet escorted Vérité, which had aboard Fallières, the Naval Minister Théophile Delcassé, and Charles Dumont, the Minister of Public Works, Posts and Telegraphs, to Bizerte. They arrived two days later and held a fleet review that included two British battleships, two Italian battleships, and a Spanish cruiser on 19 April. The fleet returned to Toulon on 29 April, where Fallières doubled the crews' rations and suspended any punishments to thank the men for their performance. Démocratie and the rest of 1st Squadron and the armored cruisers Ernest Renan and Léon Gambetta went on a cruise in the western Mediterranean in May and June, visiting a number of ports including Cagliari, Bizerte, Bône, Philippeville, Algiers, and Bougie.
By 1 August, the battleships of the Danton class had begun to enter service, and they were assigned to the 1st Squadron, displacing six Liberté and République-class ships to the 2nd Squadron. The fleet held another fleet review outside Toulon on 4 September. Admiral Jauréguiberry took the fleet to sea on 11 September for maneuvers and visits to Golfe-Juan and Marseilles, returning to port five days later. On 25 September, Liberté exploded while in Toulon, another French battleship claimed by unstable Poudre B propellant. Several ships in the harbor were damaged, and Démocratie lost three men who were killed by flying debris. Despite the accident, the fleet continued with its normal routine of training exercises and cruises for the rest of the year. These included cruises to Les Salins, Le Lavandou, and Porquerolles until the training program ended on 15 December.
### 1912–1914
Delcassé visited Démocratie in April 1912, after which she went to sea with her four other ships of the 2nd Squadron for training exercises. Admiral Augustin Boué de Lapeyrère inspected both battleship squadrons in Golfe-Juan from 2 to 12 July, after which the ships cruised first to Corsica and then to Algeria. The ship saw little further activity for the rest of the year, and on 2 October the ship joined Patrie, République, and Suffren in Bizerte. The ships went to Golfe-Juan on 18 October. The ships then took part in training exercises off Le Lavandou in early January 1914. The French fleet, which by then included sixteen battleships, held large-scale maneuvers between Toulon and Sardinia beginning on 19 May. The exercises concluded with a fleet review for President Raymond Poincaré. Gunnery practice followed from 1 to 4 July. The 2nd Squadron departed Toulon on 23 August with the armored cruisers Jules Ferry and Edgar Quinet and two destroyer flotillas to conduct training exercises in the Atlantic. While en route to Brest, the ships stopped in Tangier, Royan, Le Verdon, La Pallice, Quiberon Bay, and Cherbourg. They reached Brest on 20 September, where they met a Russian squadron of four battleships and five cruisers. The ships then steamed back south, stopping in Cádiz, Tangier, Mers El Kébir, Algiers, and Bizerte before ultimately arriving back in Toulon on 1 November. On 3 December, Démocratie, Justice, Vérité, and République conducted torpedo training and range-finding drills.
The 2nd Squadron ships conducted torpedo training on 19 January 1914, and later that month they steamed to Bizerte, returning to Toulon on 6 February. On 4 March, République, Démocratie, Vérité, and Justice joined the 1st Squadron battleships and the 2nd Light Squadron for a visit to Porto-Vecchio, Sardinia. On 30 March, the 2nd Squadron ships steamed to Malta to visit the British Mediterranean Fleet, remaining there until 3 April. During a fleet exercise on 28 May 1914, Démocratie collided with the battleship Suffren when the latter vessel lost power. Suffren was only lightly damaged, with her port anchor and hawsepipe carried away, though Démocratie suffered little damage and was able to continue with the rest of the fleet. The squadron visited various ports in June, but following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the ensuing July Crisis prompted the fleet to remain close to port, making only short training sorties as international tensions rose.
### World War I
#### 1914–1915
Following the outbreak of World War I in July 1914, France announced general mobilization on 1 August. The next day, Boué de Lapeyrère ordered the entire French fleet to begin raising steam at 22:15 so the ships could sortie early the next day. Faced with the prospect that the German Mediterranean Division—centered on the battlecruiser Goeben—might attack the troopships carrying the French Army in North Africa to metropolitan France, the French fleet was tasked with providing heavy escort to the convoys. Accordingly, Démocratie and the rest of the 2nd Squadron were sent to Algiers, where they joined a group of seven passenger ships that had a contingent of 7,000 troops from XIX Corps aboard. While at sea, the new dreadnought battleships Courbet and Jean Bart and the Danton-class battleships Condorcet and Vergniaud, which took over as the convoy's escort. Instead of attacking the convoys, Goeben bombarded Bône and Philippeville and then fled east to the Ottoman Empire.
On 12 August, France and Britain declared war on the Austro-Hungarian Empire as the war continued to widen. The 1st and 2nd Squadrons were therefore sent to the southern Adriatic Sea to contain the Austro-Hungarian Navy. On 15 August, the two squadrons arrived off the Strait of Otranto, where they met the patrolling British cruisers HMS Defence and HMS Weymouth north of Othonoi. Boué de Lapeyrère then took the fleet into the Adriatic in an attempt to force a battle with the Austro-Hungarian fleet; the following morning, the British and French cruisers spotted vessels in the distance that, on closing with them, turned out to be the protected cruiser SMS Zenta and the torpedo boat Ulan, which were trying to blockade the coast of Montenegro. In the ensuing Battle of Antivari, Boué de Lapeyrère initially ordered his battleships to fire warning shots, but this caused confusion among the fleet's gunners that allowed Ulan to escape. The slower Zenta attempted to evade, but she quickly received several hits that disabled her engines and set her on fire. She sank shortly thereafter and the Anglo-French fleet withdrew.
The French fleet patrolled the southern end of the Adriatic for the next three days with the expectation that the Austro-Hungarians would counterattack, but their opponent never arrived. On 17 August, Justice and Démocratie collided in heavy fog at 09:20; the latter vessel lost her rudder and center screw. République took her under tow at 12:40, steaming first to Corfu and then to Malta. They arrived there on 20 August, where repairs were completed, though she returned to the fleet without her center screw. On 18–19 September, the fleet made another incursion into the Adriatic, steaming as far north as the island of Lissa; on the return south, several French cruisers inadvertently came within range of the guns at Cattaro, so Démocratie and Patrie opened fire at the guns to suppress them while the cruisers withdrew. On 25 September, the ship was detached to Toulon, where her center propeller was replaced.
The fleet continued these operations in October and November, including a sweep off the coast of Montenegro to cover a group of merchant vessels replenishing their coal there. Throughout this period, the battleships rotated through Malta or Toulon for periodic maintenance; Corfu became the primary naval base in the area. The patrols continued through late December, when an Austro-Hungarian U-boat torpedoed Jean Bart, leading to the decision by the French naval command to withdraw the main battle fleet from direct operations in the Adriatic. For the rest of the month, the fleet remained at Navarino Bay. The battle fleet thereafter occupied itself with patrols between Kythira and Crete; these sweeps continued until 7 May. Following the Italian entry into the war on the side of France, the French fleet handed control of the Adriatic operations to the Italian Regia Marina (Royal Navy) and withdrew its fleet to Malta and Bizerte, the latter becoming the main fleet base.
#### 1916–1918
Démocratie and Justice were detached from the main fleet in January 1916 to reinforce the Dardanelles Division, though the Allies evacuated their forces fighting there that month. Démocratie left on 11 April for repairs in Toulon and collided with the Russian steamer SS Odessa off Cape Maleas, though she was not significantly damaged. In June, the French battle fleet was reorganized; Démocratie, her two sisters, the two République-class ships, and Suffren were assigned to the 3rd Squadron. The ships were tasked with pressuring the Greek government, which to that point had remained neutral, since King Constantine I's wife Sophie was the sister of the German Kaiser Wilhelm II. The French and British were growing increasingly frustrated by Constantine's refusal to enter the war, and sent the 3rd Squadron to try to influence events in the country. Over the course of June and July, the ships alternated between Salonika and Mudros, and the squadron was transferred to Corfu on 12 August, where it joined the rest of the French fleet. Early on 27 August, the 3rd Squadron sailed to Milos, and on 1 September went to sea again, headed to Keratsini. From there, Démocratie, Patrie, and Suffren steamed to the roadstead off Eleusis just outside Athens on 7 October. The ships were to take part in an attack on the Greek fleet, and Démocratie was to attack the battleship Kilkis. But the plan was shelved and the French ultimately seized the Greek ships on 19 October.
In the meantime, in August, a pro-Allied group launched a coup against the monarchy in the Noemvriana, which the Allies sought to support. Several French ships sent men ashore in Athens on 1 December to support the coup, but they were quickly defeated by the royalist Greek Army. In response, the British and French fleet imposed a blockade of the royalist-controlled parts of the country. By June 1917, Constantine had been forced to abdicate and the 3rd Squadron was disbanded. Démocratie returned to the 2nd Squadron on 1 July, which included the other Liberté-class ships and three of the Danton-class battleships. They remained in Corfu, largely immobilized due to shortages of coal, preventing training until late September 1918. In late October, members of the Central Powers began signing armistices with the British and French, signaling the end of the war. The 2nd Squadron ships were sent to Constantinople to oversee the surrender of Ottoman forces, and Démocratie and Justice proceeded into the Black Sea, where they supervised the transfer of Russian warships that had been seized by the Germans back to Russian control.
### Postwar career
Shortly after the end of the war, Démocratie, Justice, and a destroyer joined an Allied fleet (including the British dreadnoughts HMS Superb and Temeraire and the Italian pre-dreadnought Roma) that was sent to the Black Sea port of Sevastopol. They oversaw the enforcement of the terms of the Armistice with Germany; the Germans had previously seized Russian naval units and stationed occupation forces there under the terms of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The French contingent provided crews for a pair of Russian destroyers and two German U-boats, and the other Allied ships similarly activated Russian and German vessels to secure the area.
On 7 January 1919, the battleship Mirabeau arrived in Sevastopol and relieved Démocratie. The latter vessel then returned to Constantinople where she joined the 2nd Squadron, which at that time also included Justice, the Danton-class ships Diderot and Vergniaud, and the dreadnought France. The French command detached Démocratie to Smyrna to prevent Italy from occupying the area. Démocratie later returned to the Black Sea and in May, was off Odessa in company with Ernest Renan; on 25 May the two ships departed for Constantinople. There, she embarked Grand Vizier Damat Ferid Pasha and carried him to France, where he was given the peace terms according to the Treaty of Sèvres. Démocratie arrived in Toulon on 11 June and saw no further activity until she was placed in reserve on 1 April 1920. The ship was stricken from the naval register on 18 May 1921. The following month she was sold to ship breakers and towed to Savona, Italy, where she was broken up for scrap.
|
7,223,519 |
Private Peaceful
| 1,173,268,556 |
2003 book by Michael Morpurgo
|
[
"2003 British novels",
"2003 children's books",
"British children's novels",
"British novels adapted into films",
"Children's books set during World War I",
"Children's historical novels",
"HarperCollins books",
"Novels by Michael Morpurgo",
"Novels set during World War I",
"Plays for one performer"
] |
Private Peaceful is a novel for older children by British author Michael Morpurgo first published in 2003. It is about a fictional young soldier called Thomas "Tommo" Peaceful, who is looking back on his brother Charlie's execution by firing squad. The story focusses on the harsh realities of English rural life and warfare, and highlights the British Army's practice of executing its own soldiers during the First World War. Morpurgo was inspired to write the novel after learning about the around 300 British and Commonwealth soldiers who were shot for crimes like desertion and cowardice. The novel helped further the campaign to grant posthumous pardons to the men, which were agreed and implemented by the UK Government in 2006.
Private Peaceful won the 2004 Red House Children's Book Award and the Blue Peter Book Award. It has been adapted by Simon Reade into a stage play, a radio play and a film. The folk trio Coope Boyes and Simpson performed in a concert which featured folk songs and readings from the novel; a live recording called Private Peaceful: The Concert was released in 2006.
## Plot
The story is told from the perspective of the fictional character Thomas "Tommo" Peaceful, a young man from a rural village in England who fights in the First World War. The novel switches between Tommo's past and present: in a short section at the beginning of every chapter, Tommo describes his thoughts and feelings during a single night in a hay barn near the Somme. Each chapter indicates the progress of time, with titles such as "Five Past Ten" and "Twenty To Eleven", gradually counting down to the morning of his brother Charlie's execution by firing squad. The majority of the novel covers Tommo's memories of his life.
He recalls being a young boy before the First World War. He discusses his love for Molly, a girl he met on his first day at school, and his relationship with his older brother Charlie. Early in the story, Tommo and his father go woodcutting together, leading to his father's death while he saves Tommo from a falling tree; Tommo keeps the incident a secret from everyone, blaming himself for what happened. Tommo, Charlie and Molly grow up together; their mischievous adventures include braving their nasty great-aunt, defying a Colonel, skinny-dipping, and being the first people in their village to see an aeroplane.
Charlie, Molly and later Tommo all find jobs on the local estate or in the village. Charlie and Molly become closer as they are both older than Tommo, causing Tommo to feel left out. Later, it is revealed that Molly had become pregnant with Charlie's baby. She is thrown out of her house and moves in with the Peacefuls. Tommo is heartbroken after the couple rush to get married. A short time later, Charlie is forced to enlist in the British Army and is deployed to France to fight in the First World War. Tommo lies about his age to join his brother. The rest of the story describes the brothers' experiences of the war: their confrontations with Sergeant "Horrible" Hanley, near-misses during the fighting on the front line, and Charlie's continued protection of Tommo.
During a charge of the German lines, Charlie disobeys a direct order from Sergeant Hanley and stays with Tommo while he is injured in no-man's-land. As a result, Charlie is accused of cowardice, for which he is court-martialled and sentenced to death. On the night before his brother's execution, Tommo reveals to Charlie his guilt for their father's death; Charlie reassures him that his father's death was not his fault. Tommo learns that Sergeant Hanley has been killed, but this only provides small consolation. Charlie is marched before the firing squad and dies happily, singing his favourite childhood song, "Oranges and Lemons". The novel ends with Tommo preparing for the Battle of the Somme.
## Themes
Morpurgo has written multiple books for children about war. The author has been praised for the anti-war messages of his stories, and although Morpurgo has said that none of his books—including Private Peaceful—glorify war, he believes that children must make their own minds up about what the story tells them. Compared to other twenty-first-century children's novels about war, which often focus on families and civilians' perspectives, Private Peaceful is about how soldiers were also victims of the time. The story begins with the Peaceful brothers experiencing the unfairness of the early twentieth-century UK class system amongst the backdrop of their rural village, before experiencing the unfairness of warfare itself. Through Tommo's narrative, Morpurgo demonstrates that a soldier can be a whole, complex person with their own motives. The two brothers have conflicting views about fighting in the war. Charlie expresses confusion as to why he should be forced to fight the Germans, saying "Why should I ever want to shoot a German? Never even met a German." Tommo is more willing to fight due to his fear of being called a coward.
Brotherhood and kindness are themes throughout the novel. Tommo looks up to Charlie, who has many positive traits similar to an archetypical soldier or hero. Morpurgo has acknowledged the weight of Charlie's sacrifice at the end of the novel, saying "I understand his love for his brother and how he would do anything for him, but I'm not sure that when the time came, I would be able to do what he does".
## Inspiration
### Plot
Morpurgo was inspired to write a novel about soldiers who were court-martialled and shot during the First World War after learning about the practice whilst at a conference in Ypres. Soldiers accused of crimes like desertion and cowardice had trials which sometimes only lasted 20 minutes, and many of those who were executed were suffering from shell shock. After facing calls to review the executions, in 1998 the Ministry of Defence denied there was a need to grant posthumous pardons to the approximately 300 men who had been killed. The UK Government did acknowledge that the executions were wrong, but continued to refuse pardons due to the complexities of reviewing the historic cases. Morpurgo said he was "outraged" at the government's position.Morpurgo has said that inspiration for the plot of Private Peaceful came from the story of Sergeant John Thomas Wall, who was executed for desertion on 6 September 1917. Wall had been a successful sergeant during the war and had no other convictions to his name. During an enemy artillery barrage on 10 August 1917, Wall was sheltering in a dugout with two privates and refused to leave them behind, knowing that attempting to re-join the front line would have led to certain death. The men were forced to remain in the dugout for 24 hours due to the severity of the bombardment. Despite acknowledging the danger, the Company Sergeant Major said that Wall should have obeyed the order to leave the shelter. Following a short trial with only one testimony, Wall was executed.
### Title
The origin of the name "Peaceful" for the novel's title character came from a gravestone at Bedford House Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery near Ypres. Clare Morpurgo, Michael's wife, noticed a grave with the name "Private T.S.H. Peaceful of the Royal Fusiliers", a soldier who had died on 4 June 1915. Morpurgo has said "As soon as I saw it I knew I'd found the name for my main characters."
## Publication history
Private Peaceful was first published in hardback in 2003 by Harper Collins Children's Books. The first paperback publication was in 2004. The book has been translated into Chinese and French.
## Reception
Private Peaceful won the 2004 Red House Children's Book Award—an award judged entirely by a panel of children with no adults—beating Lola Rose by Jacqueline Wilson and Lirael by Garth Nix. Morpurgo said that he believed the ubiquity of war at the time of the award, such as the Iraq War and commemorations of D-Day, meant that the depiction of the First World War resonated with children. Private Peaceful was shortlisted for both the 2004 Whitbread children's book award and the Carnegie Medal. It won the Blue Peter Book Award and came first in the "Book I couldn't put down" category. Diane Samuels of The Guardian wrote that the novel has a gentle but persistent and ominous pace. She wrote that the tone of the prose is more reminiscent of an elderly man recounting his childhood and early life, rather than the direct perspective of a young man, which makes the prose feel distant. Morpurgo interviewed three men in their eighties to gather insight for the story, which Samuels said may have led to a sense of "literary conceit".
## Legacy
### Posthumous pardons
Private Peaceful helped further the campaign to pardon those soldiers who were executed for cowardice, desertion and other similar crimes. Morpurgo was one of the people who argued for change, including via a letter to Cherie Blair, wife of the then-Prime Minister Tony Blair. In 2006, Des Browne—the UK Defence Secretary—announced that 306 British and Commonwealth soldiers would be pardoned. The postscript of Private Peaceful editions was updated after the posthumous pardons were granted.
### Thomas Samuel Henry Peacefull
When Morpurgo first saw the gravestone of Private T.S.H. Peaceful, the inspiration for the novel's name, in Bedford House Cemetery, the man's background was not known; Morpurgo said of him "He's as close to an unknown soldier as you can get". In 2018, it was discovered that the soldier's name had been misspelled, the correct name being Thomas Samuel Henry Peacefull. Peacefull's great-niece, Maxine Keeble, had spotted the similar name when listening to a radio adaptation of Private Peaceful. She wrote to Morpurgo after realising that the story's namesake was her great uncle. A new headstone bearing the correct name was installed in July 2018 by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, with Keeble, her husband, and Michael and Clare Morpurgo, as witnesses.
Thomas Samuel Henry Peacefull was born on 7 September 1893 in Battersea. He served in the war alongside three of his brothers, two —including Keeble's grandfather—survived. Peacefull died of his wounds in the Ypres Asylum in June 1915.
## Adaptations
### Stage play
The book was adapted into a play of the same name by Simon Reade, first performed at the Bristol Old Vic in April 2004 starring Alexander Campbell. The play was performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, London's West End, and toured the United Kingdom. Reade said he was inspired to adapt Morpurgo's book into a play after hearing an interview with Morpurgo on BBC Radio 4's Today programme. The play is a one-man production, consisting of just the actor and a bed on the stage, with a dramatic monologue to create a world around the character. Whilst in Morpurgo's novel it is Charlie Peaceful (Tommo's brother) who is shot for cowardice at the end of the story, Reade changed this in his stage play and Tommo himself is shot by the firing squad. Both the book and the adaptation of Private Peaceful helped the campaign to grant posthumous pardons to men executed during the war. At a 2012 production of the play at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, 306 names of men who were shot for cowardice, desertion and other related crimes were listed on the back of the programme.
A gender-flipped version of Reade's play was performed at The Barn in Cirencester in 2020. It was directed by Alexander Knott and Emily Costello played the part of Tommo. Dominic Cavendish of The Telegraph wrote that "Costello evokes a sturdy boyishness while eschewing male-impersonation – emblemising a spirit of youthfulness and hopefulness".
### Radio play
A radio dramatisation of Private Peaceful, adapted by Simon Reade and directed and produced by Susan Roberts, was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2012. It was recorded in Iddesleigh in Devon, where the story is set. It starred Paul Chequer as Tommo, Nicholas Lyndhurst as Sergeant Hanley, and Michael Morpurgo as the vicar. It features music by Coope Boyes and Simpson. An abridged version of the radio adaptation was created for use in schools.
### Concert
Morpurgo first met the folk trio Coope Boyes and Simpson whilst they were in Belgium, where the trio had become popular through their appearances at Passchendaele peace concerts. Morpurgo was inspired by their music and worked with them to create a Private Peaceful concert, combining readings from Private Peaceful with songs from Coope Boyes and Simpson. In 2006, a live recording of the concert was released called Private Peaceful: The Concert. The featured folk songs include some specifically about war, such as "The Sergeant's Having a Very Good Time" and "Hanging on the Old Barbed Wire", and other songs which are not about war, including "Hares on the Mountain" and "Oranges and Lemons".
### Film
A feature film version of Private Peaceful, directed by Pat O'Connor with a screenplay by Simon Reade, was released in October 2012. It starred George MacKay as Tommo and Jack O'Connell as Charlie. In reviews of the film, comparisons were drawn to Steven Spielberg's War Horse—another adaptation of one of Morpurgo's novels. Like in the book, the film does not make it clear which of the Peaceful brothers is going to be executed at the end of the story. It deviates from the book in that Tommo goes to the Front before Charlie, who resists the war due to political reasons and not wanting to leave behind his pregnant wife. Simon Reade said this was a deliberate decision to create a rift between the brothers. Kate Stables of the magazine Sight & Sound described the film as "a small and intimate affair", and Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian wrote that it was "a small-scale story in essence, which works efficiently on the non-epic in which it's presented". Robbie Collin of The Telegraph wrote that the film was "warfare and poverty recast as snug escapism".
## See also
- List of books on military executions in World War I
- Shot at Dawn Memorial – War Memorial in the National Memorial Arboretum to commemorate 306 men shot for desertion and other offences.
- Thomas Highgate – The first British soldier to be executed during the First World War.
|
1,074,739 |
Seth Neddermeyer
| 1,170,960,629 |
American physicist (1907–1988)
|
[
"1907 births",
"1988 deaths",
"20th-century American physicists",
"California Institute of Technology alumni",
"Deaths from Parkinson's disease",
"Enrico Fermi Award recipients",
"Fellows of the American Physical Society",
"Manhattan Project people",
"Neurological disease deaths in Washington (state)",
"Nuclear weapons scientists and engineers",
"People from Richmond, Michigan",
"Stanford University alumni",
"University of Washington faculty"
] |
Seth Henry Neddermeyer (September 16, 1907 – January 29, 1988) was an American physicist who co-discovered the muon, and later championed the implosion-type nuclear weapon while working on the Manhattan Project at the Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II.
## Early life
Seth Henry Neddermeyer was born in Richmond, Michigan, on September 16, 1907. He attended Olivet College, a small college that his mother, older sister, and uncle had also attended, for two years before his family moved to California. He transferred to Stanford University, from which received his Bachelor of Arts (AB) degree in 1929. His interest in physics was inspired by the work of Robert A. Millikan, and he enrolled in graduate school at California Institute of Technology (Caltech), where he wrote his 1935 PhD thesis on "The absorption of high energy electrons", under the supervision of Carl D. Anderson. He confirmed the theory espoused by Niels Bohr for this process. He also noted large radiative energy losses of electrons in lead, in agreement with the theory propounded by Hans Bethe and Walter Heitler.
Neddermeyer contributed to the research which led to the 1932 discovery of the positron, for which Anderson was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1936. That year, Neddermeyer and Anderson discovered the muon, using cloud chamber measurements of cosmic rays. Their discovery predated Hideki Yukawa's 1935 theory of mesons that postulated the particle as mediating the nuclear force. Anderson and Neddermeyer collaborated with Millikan in high altitude studies of cosmic rays, which confirmed Robert Oppenheimer's theory that the air showers produced in the atmosphere by cosmic rays contained electrons. They also obtained the first evidence that gamma rays can generate positrons.
## Manhattan Project work
In early 1941, with World War II raging in Europe but the United States not yet a belligerent, Neddermeyer joined a team led by Charles C. Lauritsen and William A. Fowler at the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and then at the National Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C., that worked on the photoelectric proximity fuze. After this work was completed, Neddermeyer was recruited by Oppenheimer to work at the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory. Neddermeyer was an early advocate for the development of an implosion technique for assembling a critical mass in an atomic bomb. Although implosion was suggested by Richard Tolman as early as 1942 and discussed in the introductory lectures given to Los Alamos scientists by Robert Serber, Neddermeyer was one of the first to urge its full development. Unable to find much initial enthusiasm for the concept among his fellow Los Alamos scientists, Neddermeyer presented the first substantial technical analysis of implosion in late April 1943. Oppenheimer considered this to be the beginning of implosion research at Los Alamos.
Though many remained unimpressed, Oppenheimer appointed Neddermeyer the head of a new group to test implosion. His group became the E-5 (Implosion) Group, which was part of Captain William S. Parsons' E Division. A gun-type nuclear weapon was the preferred method, but implosion research constituted a backup. Neddermeyer embarked on an intensive series of experiments testing cylindrical implosions. The result was a series of distorted shapes. Progress was made; Neddermeyer and a member of his team, Hugh Bradner, along with James L. Tuck from the British Mission, conceived the idea of explosive lenses, in which shaped charges are used to focus the force of an explosion. Nevertheless, seemingly unsolvable problems with shock wave uniformity brought progress on implosion to a crawl.
By September 1943, Neddermeyer's team had grown from five people to fifty. That month, John von Neumann came to Los Alamos at Oppenheimer's request. Von Neumann was impressed by the implosion concept and, working with Edward Teller, an old friend, made a series of suggestions. Von Neumann was able to create a sound mathematical model of implosion, enabling Neddermeyer to present a proposal for a greatly expanded research program. Edwin McMillan and Isidor Isaac Rabi recommended that George Kistiakowsky, who had a specialized knowledge in the precision use of explosives, be brought in to help the program. In February 1944, Kistiakowsky became Parsons' deputy for implosion.
In April 1944, tests on the first sample of plutonium that had been produced with neutrons in a nuclear reactor revealed that reactor-bred plutonium contained five times more plutonium-240 than that hitherto produced in cyclotrons. This unwanted isotope that spontaneously decayed and produced neutrons promised to cause a predetonation without sufficiently quick critical mass assembly. It now became apparent that only implosion would work for practical plutonium bombs; a powerful enough gun could not be constructed small enough to be carried in an aircraft, and plutonium-240 was even more difficult to separate from plutonium-239 than the isotopes of uranium that were giving the rest of the Manhattan Project such difficulties. Plutonium was unusable unless implosion worked, but only plutonium could be produced in quantities that would allow regular production of atomic bombs. Thus, the implosion technique now suddenly stood as the key to production of nuclear weapons.
In mid-June 1944, a report from Kistiakowsky to Oppenheimer detailing dysfunctionality within the implosion team led to the ousting of Neddermeyer. He was replaced as the head of the E-5 Group by Kistiakowsky on June 15, 1944, but remained a technical adviser to the implosion program, with group leader status. Neddermeyer was said to have been much embittered by this episode. In Oppenheimer's August 1944 reorganization of the Los Alamos Laboratory, Neddermeyer's group was renamed X-1, with Norris Bradbury as group leader. The implosion method championed by Neddermeyer was used in the first atom bomb exploded (in the Trinity test), the Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki, and almost all modern nuclear weapons. Kistiakowsky later insisted that "the real invention should be given full credit to [Seth] Neddermeyer" (sic).
## Later years
In 1946, after World War II ended, Neddermeyer left Los Alamos to become an associate professor at the University of Washington, where he would spend the rest of his career. In due course he became a full professor. He resumed his studies of cosmic rays using a cloud chamber and a new device that he invented to measure the speed of charged particles known as a "chronotron". He was particularly interested in the properties of the muon, and conducted experiments with muons at SLAC. He participated in the DUMAND Project, for which he helped design large-scale underwater neutrino detectors. Neddermeyer became interested in parapsychology, insisting, in spite of the skepticism of many colleagues, that it warranted proper scientific investigation. He retired in 1973, becoming a professor emeritus, but he continued his research activities for as long as his health permitted. He was afflicted with Parkinson's disease.
In 1982, he was presented with the Department of Energy's Enrico Fermi award. His citation read:
> For participating in the discovery of the positron, for his share in the discovery of the muon, the first of the subatomic particles; for his invention of the implosion technique for assembling nuclear explosives; and for his ingenuity, foresight, and perseverance in finding solutions for what at first seemed to be unsolvable engineering difficulties.
In later life, Neddermeyer was sometimes troubled by the nuclear weapons he had helped to invent. He told an interviewer in 1983:
> I get so overwhelmed by a feeling of terrible guilt when I think about the history of the bomb. I'm terribly worried now about the current world situation. What the hell can we do about it?
Neddermeyer died in Seattle on January 29, 1988, from complications of Parkinson's disease.
## In popular culture
Neddermeyer is portrayed by Colin Bennett in the 1980 BBC series Oppenheimer, by Joe D'Angerio in Fat Man and Little Boy, and by Devon Bostick in the Christopher Nolan-directed film Oppenheimer (2023).
|
1,416,984 |
The Artist in the Ambulance
| 1,170,852,460 | null |
[
"2003 albums",
"Albums produced by Brian McTernan",
"Island Records albums",
"Thrice albums"
] |
The Artist in the Ambulance is the third studio album by American rock band Thrice. It was released on July 22, 2003, through Island Records, becoming their first release on a major label. The band released their second studio album The Illusion of Safety in March 2002; by July of that year, they were writing material for their next album. Recording sessions were held with producer Brian McTernan at Bearsville Studios in Bearsville, New York; Salad Days Studios in Beltsville, Maryland; and Phase Studios in College Park, Maryland.
Following tours of the United States and Europe—the latter as part of the Deconstruction Tour—"All That's Left" was released as the lead single from The Artist in the Ambulance. Thrice briefly appeared on Warped Tour before the track "Under a Killing Moon" was released on a split seven-inch vinyl single with a track by Thursday. Thrice appeared at the Reading and Leeds Festivals in the United Kingdom before embarking on a European tour supporting co-headliners Rancid and Alkaline Trio. Thrice closed 2003 with another UK tour, and a US tour with Thursday and Coheed and Cambria. Thrice also toured Japan, Australia and Europe in 2004, leading into US tours; one with Poison the Well and Darkest Hour, and one supporting Dashboard Confessional on the Honda Civic Tour.
The Artist in the Ambulance received generally positive reviews from music critics, many of whom highlighted Thrice's musicianship and the quality of the songwriting. The album peaked at number 16 on the Billboard 200 chart, becoming Thrice's first entry on that chart. It topped the Top Internet Albums chart, and peaked at number 109 on the main UK Albums Chart and at number nine on the UK Rock Albums Charts. "All That's Left" appeared on three Billboard component charts; its highest peak was number 24 on the Alternative Airplay chart, on which "Stare at the Sun" reached number 39. A re-recorded version, featuring various guest vocalists, appeared in 2023.
## Background
In June 2000, Thrice released their debut album Identity Crisis through independent label Greenflag Records. Sometime afterwards, Louis Posen of Sub City Records took an interest in Thrice and re-issued the album. The band's second album, the Brian McTernan-produced The Illusion of Safety, followed in February 2002. Prior to this, Island Records' A&R member Robert Stevenson became interested in Thrice and saw them perform at Chain Reaction, a venue in California. The members of Thrice liked Stevenson's appreciation of the punk rock scene; he had grown up listening to New York hardcore bands and had previously signed Rival Schools. Thrice came to the attention of major labels such as Capitol, Columbia and MCA Records. Thrice toured with Anti-Flag; before or after every show on the tour, Thrice had a meeting with a representative of one of those labels. Around this time, the band was also being courted by music producer Rick Rubin.
Thrice's manager Nick Bogardus spent time at Time Bomb Recordings, which helped him make contact with Epic Records A&R member Pete Giberga. Giberga, who also enjoyed New York hardcore, said while Epic had no interest in signing Thrice, he advised Bogardus and the band which A&R people were worth talking to. In June 2002, Thrice signed to Island Records and formally announced the signing the following month. Their recording contract was for up to three albums; vocalist and guitarist Dustin Kensrue said they "felt it was the right move" for the band and would allow them to "make better music and be on the road more". Bassist Eddie Breckenridge said the label had bought the rights for the band's next album from Sub City. The same month, Thrice spent time at home writing material for their next album. The band then performed on the main stage at Warped Tour before playing club shows in October and November 2002.
## Recording
Thrice were adamant about working with McTernan again, whom they had enjoyed working with on The Illusion of Safety. The Artist in the Ambulance marked the first time McTernan worked on a major label release, which Eddie Breckenridge said made it "really stressful" for him. Drummer Riley Breckenridge said the band did not have much time to write new material after The Illusion of Safety because they were constantly on tour. They were under pressure to write new songs, having only brief ideas by this point, and were given two months to write material for their upcoming major-label debut. McTernan visited the band at lock-outs in southern California for pre-production work on material. Thrice wanted to expand their musical palette but were unable to experiment due to the rushed nature of the process, since they were on tour constantly and did not have enough time to write. For two weeks, drums were recorded at Bearsville Studios in Bearsville, New York, with engineer Michael Barbiero and Pro Tools operator Matt Squire; Bill Synan assisted the pair.
Thrice then went to Salad Days Studios in Beltsville, Maryland, for six weeks across March and April 2003 to record the rest of the instruments. Breckenridge felt they were not prepared upon entering the studio, saying that he would often be writing his bass parts as he was recording them, which increased the pressure for McTernan. Kensrue had a few disagreements over lyrics with McTernan, who felt "really maxed out" while in the studio because he wrote most of them there. Having no time to rest, whenever Kensrue came up with a lyric, McTernan "would know that it wasn't the best I could do, and he would tell me". Guitarist Teppei Teranishi said they used to "just throw songs together", but for this album they spent more time on arranging the songs. Thrice struggled to record guitars for "Under a Killing Moon" because of problems with tuning, resulting in them re-recording the guitars.
According to McTernan, Thrice added a megaphone to the second verse of "All That's Left" "literally 10 minutes before we had to fed-ex the song to be mixed". The strings on "Cold Cash and Colder Hearts" and "The Melting Point of Wax" were recorded at Phase Studios in College Park, Maryland. Charlie Barnett arranged and conducted the session, which involved musicians Marcio Bothello (cello), Osman Kivrak (viola), Teri Lazar (violin), Chris Shieh (violin) and Greg Watkins (double bass). Andy Wallace mixed the recordings at Soundtrack studios in New York City with assistance from Steve Sisco and Pro Tools operator Josh Wilbur. Howie Weinberg mastered the recordings at Masterdisk in New York City. The songs "Motion Isn't Meaning" and "Eclipse" were recorded during the sessions but were left off the finished album.
## Composition and lyrics
The Artist in the Ambulance has been classified as melodic hardcore, post-hardcore, and emo. It drew comparisons to the work of Blindside. Jon Wiederhorn of MTV said the album blends "thrash metal, hardcore, emo and pop punk often within a single song". Fuse called the album a "post-hardcore landmark, one that coasted into the lanes of math-metal and, yes, even pop-punk just enough to appeal to a rainbow of fans". Teranishi called The Illusion of Safety the "anti-verse-chorus-verse record"; for The Artist in the Ambulance, they "realized that if something's good, it might be worth bringing back a second time".
Breckenridge said they felt pressured by their fans to keep the same sound as their previous album, as they were worried about alienating their listeners, which stopped them from expanding their sound. He mentioned that the biggest chance they made was writing songs around vocal melodies, instead of amalgamating various guitar parts and adding vocals over the top, which allowed them to switch between the mellow and heavy sections much easier. The album's title was taken from a short story in an issue of Burn Collector by Al Burian of Milemarker; Kensrue said it "basically [asks] the question, 'Do we, as artists, have the responsibility to do something more than ... entertain?'" Riley Breckenridge said they were reading McTernan's copy of it during their spare time in the midst of The Illusion of Safety sessions.
### Tracks
The Artist in the Ambulance opens with "Cold Cash and Colder Hearts", an aggressive track that showcases Teranishi's guitarwork and Kensrue's vocals. It is the result of blending two songs together; Teranishi said the "spooky" section, which refers to the part with strings and palm-muted guitars, was initially played on a guitar that was enhanced with an auto-volume delay pedal. They switched it to a heavier version that was reminiscent of the work of Isis, before settling on the final version. McTernan sauid Barnett's string section "really took it over the top" with the instruments doubling the sound of the palm mutes. Eddie Breckenridge originally wrote the track's 5/4 section as part of an aborted 10-minute track. Thrice unsuccessfully attempted to put the section in every track before leaving it in "Cold Cash and Colder Hearts".
"Under a Killing Moon" switches between older forms of metal and hard rock. The band wanted another heavy track; Teranishi wrote the verses' guitar riff during a practice session. The song's ending guitar riff is slower in tempo because it had been played to a slow beat from Riley Breckenridge, and was later sped up and incorporated into the track. Both riffs were influenced by the sound of Killswitch Engage, to whose work Teranishi was listening on the days he wrote the parts. The lyrics initially worked well with melodic chord progressions but did not work when the band worked on the song during a practice session. Kensrue then decided to scream the words, which he felt worked better with the final song. "All That's Left" is the result of the band's desire to experiment with more-traditional song structures with The Artist in the Ambulance; its chorus section bordered on space-esque progressive rock before being reworked. Kensrue rewrote the song's lyrics around eight times and said the final version talks about the "strength we have in our youth and the things we trade for that".
"Silhouette" includes a section Kensrue wrote in 7/7 time, which Eddie Breckenridge attempted to emulate. His part was in 13/8 and had to be re-edited to keep it in time with Kensrue's part, facilitating the addition of extra notes. Its lyrics originate from the band's first tour; Kensrue sent them to his girlfriend on the back of a postcard. He wrote them on a painting he made for her, and later reworked them into "Silhouette". The bassline of "Stare at the Sun" was initially written in a mathy, chaotic metal style that Teranishi tried to merge with "The Abolition of Man" before spinning it off into a new track. The drums were originally played in 4/4 time at 5/7 intervals before being simplified to allow Kensrue to sing over them. As a result of this, the bridge section had to be scrapped and a new one written. The beginning of "Paper Tigers" came from jamming sessions that occurred between Eddie and Riley Breckenridge following practice sessions. In its original form, the song was a metal and hardcore punk track, which was then merged with another part that became its final-chorus section. Kensrue wrote the lyrics for a piano song that was later scrapped, and added them to "Paper Tigers" towards the end of recording. "Hoods on Peregrine" is a combination of a guitar riff Kensrue wrote during practice, a 1970s-like bass part from Eddie Breckenridge, and a guitar riff Kensrue wrote during one of the coldest nights he had experienced in Omaha, Nebraska. Discussing the lyrics, Kensrue said when writing The Artist in the Ambulance, the "media was out of control. Don't take anything at face value cause everyone's got an agenda."
"The Melting Point of Wax" is the first song the band wrote after the release of The Illusion of Safety; Riley Breckenridge wrote the chorus section using an acoustic guitar. He did not like the way the track sounded with added distortion and felt Barnett's strings helped fill it out in places where he though "there were voices missing". The song went through 12 variations, which included verses in 5/4 time, before the band settled on the final version. According to Kensrue, the song is a response to people "bitching at us for decisions" they made the previous year. It is a re-telling of the Icarus mythology, which was one of his favorite myths. Kensrue said the band glorified Icarus' flight, which contrasted the "traditional interpretations [that] include shunning vanity, respecting elders, playing it safe, etc." "Blood Clots and Black Holes" is an amalgamation of riffs from Teranishi and Breckenridge, and is the second song written following The Illusion of Safety. The album's title track "The Artist in the Ambulance" was influenced by Burn Collector, which Kensrue would read while at a Starbucks coffee house. He said he discussed comparing "The Artist" and "The Ambulance" as concepts, and the "different roles they play and what contribution they make in life". "The Abolition of Man" is one of the heaviest tracks on The Artist in the Ambulance; it incorporated multiple time signatures and Arabian-style guitar riffs. It was named after C.S. Lewis's book of the same name and initially had the working title "Hot Water Metal" due to its anthemic first verse. Teranishi said his guitar parts were influenced by the early releases of Converge. "Don't Tell and We Don't Ask", the album's closing track, resulted from ideas scrapped from other songs on the album. The drums in the chorus were adapted from those in the intro to "Paper Tigers".
## Release
Punknews.org reported that Thrice would tour with the Used in April and May 2003. During this tour, which included a performance at Skate and Surf Fest, the band were aiming to perform new material. On April 5, 2003, The Artist in the Ambulance was announced for release in three months' time. During the next two months, the band expected to participate in the Deconstruction Tour, which visited several European countries. "Under a Killing Moon" was posted on the band's website on May 10, 2003, and the album's track listing was posted three days later. "All That's Left" was released to alternative radio on June 17 and two days later, the album's artwork was posted online.
Thrice was announced as part of on the Warped Tour line-up, which ran between June and August 2003. During one performance, Breckenridge tried removing his clothing-filled suitcase from the tour bus, which had become stuck in the cargo area. In a 2005 interview, he recalled that as soon as he freed the suitcase, "my back just went... It was like somebody stabbed me in my lower back". It exacerbated a previous injury he had sustained from skateboarding. Despite increasing pain, Breckenridge continued performing shows; he eventually stopped performing while the rest of the band continued, playing the final few Warped shows acoustically. "Under a Killing Moon" was released on a split seven-inch vinyl single with "For the Workforce, Drowning" by Thursday on July 1, 2003. A music video for "All That's Left", which was directed by the Workshop, premiered on MTV a week later.
The Artist in the Ambulance was initially planned for release on July 15, 2003, through Island Records, but was delayed until July 22 of that year. A limited edition of the album featuring special artwork, lyrics and details about each track was also released. Eddie Breckenridge explained that they took inspiration from jazz albums, which was a style that the members of the band were big fans of. Discussing the accompanying artwork, he "always want[ed] to know how bands got to a certain part, or how they exactly feel. If someone doesn't really like a song or finds something weird about a certain part of a song, it would be cool to hear why they did that". An extract from Burian's short story was included in the liner notes, alongside a link to purchase it. Five percent of the sales from the album was donated to Syrentha J. Savio Endowment, an organization that provides chemotherapy and other medication for those who cannot afford it. Thrice had previously donated money to charities while on Sub City; when they were negotiating with major labels, they made it clear they wished to continue donating money to charities. The president of Island Records had founded a charity and was supportive of the band's endeavors.
Around the time of release, the band signed autographs at in-store events. On August 21, 2003, Thrice appeared on The Late Late Show. For the rest of July 2003, Thrice were expected to perform at the Reading and Leeds Festivals in the UK before embarking on a European tour supporting Rancid and Alkaline Trio. Thrice were expected to perform on Jimmy Kimmel Live in September 2003. In October 2003, Thrice announced a UK tour, anticipating a North American tour with Thursday and Coheed and Cambria, which was planned to run into November 2003. Two weeks of this tour was headlined by the Deftones. The music video for "Stare at the Sun" was released on November 12, 2003; it was directed by Brett Simon, and depicts use of a photocopier, which Simon said "illustrate[d] a search for meaning and knowledge".
"Stare at the Sun" was released to US alternative radio on November 18, 2003. The band wanted to release "The Artist in the Ambulance" as the album's second single but Island Records wanted to release "Stare at the Sun"; the label asked program directors of radio stations for input, all of whom chose "Stare at the Sun". In December 2003, the band was announced to perform at the KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas festival. In February 2004, Thrice planned to tour Japan before embarking on an Australian tour with Alkaline Trio and Hot Water Music. Following this, Punknews.org reported that the band would tour Europe with Coheed and Cambria, and Vaux. In March and April 2004, the band planned to tour the US with Poison the Well, Darkest Hour and Moments in Grace. In May and June 2004, the band were expected to support Dashboard Confessional on the Honda Civic Tour. Thrice then appeared on Warped Tour for a third time.
## Critical reception
The Artist in the Ambulance received generally positive reviews from music critics. AllMusic reviewer Johnny Loftus complimented McTernan for "tighten[ing] the seams that hold together Thrice's patchwork print of post-hardcore bellow, emotional bluster, and unabashed metal wankery"; he called it the band's strongest work to date. Nick Madsen of IGN said the band's tendency to "lean more towards the melodic" gave them "much more focused songs". He considered The Artist in the Ambulance the "perfect evolution of Thrice's past material" because the "direction of the music and the delivery of the actual songs have improved three-fold". Sputnikmusic writer Damrod was surprised "anew by the nice basslines" as well as the use of "octaves, unvonventional [sic] patterns, [and] excellent fills". He summarised it by saying the band's "musicianship is on a high level, the instrumental use as well as the lyrics". Melodic webmaster Johan Wippsson wrote the band provided "a bunch of great songs that just smashes you in the face with power and raw energy".
Jasamine White-Gluz of Exclaim! similarly said Thrice "sounds better than ever", managing to "hang on to their signature melody-based songwriting". PopMatters contributor Christine Klunk found it to be "more than just three chords, lots of guttural screaming, and heavy-handed drumming" because it offers "12 surprisingly varied tracks". Jens Brüggemann writing for laut.de stated the tempo shifts in the "individual tracks ensure liveliness" with melodies that showcase the album's complex nature. CMJ New Music Report's Amy Sciarretto wrote the band sound like a mix of Face to Face, Metallica and Thursday "somehow manag[ing] to pull the feat off—without resulting in an unlistenable mess of music". Billboard reviewer Bram Teitelman expressed a similar opinion, saying the album "at times sounds like Iron Maiden, Bad Religion and Rush jamming (which sounds a lot better on disc than it looks on paper)". Belfast Telegraph writer Neil McKay remarked that the band "ticks all the right boxes for energy and noise, [but] it's too generic to be memorable". John Wiederhorn of Blender wrote; "[s]omehow, all these stylistic variations don’t disrupt the music’s flow, which rocks as hard as it aches". Rolling Stone writer Marie Elsie St. Leger said while the rest of the band "ably create a close facsimile of existential rage", Kensrue's words, which are "sharp, sometime political ... and even allegorical", typically get "lost in the screams".
## Commercial performance and legacy
Prior to release, 100,000 copies of The Artist in the Ambulance had been shipped to stores; it sold 47,500 copies in its first week of release. By July 2006, it had sold 391,000 copies in the US. The album peaked at number 16 on the Billboard 200 chart, making it their first album to do so. It topped the Top Internet Albums chart. The album reached number nine on the UK Rock Albums Chart. "All That's Left" peaked at number 24 on Alternative Airplay, number 36 on Mainstream Rock Airplay and number 37 on Active Rock. "Stare at the Sun" peaked at number 39 on Alternative Airplay.
In a 2007 interview, Riley Breckenridge said the label pushed to make Thrice and Thursday "the next grunge [movement] or whatever we were supposed to become. It just did not work". Orange County Register ranked The Artist in the Ambulance at number five on their list of the "10 best albums of the ’00s". NME included the album on their list of the "20 Emo Albums That Have Resolutely Stood The Test Of Time". Rock Sound ranked it at number 25 on their list of "modern classics", stating that it was "their first classic, introducing themselves to the world at large with a brand of unique post-hardcore that is still to be bettered". The Color Morale covered "Stare at the Sun" for their EP Artist Inspiration Series (2017).
### 2023 re-recording
On February 1, 2023, Thrice released The Artist in the Ambulance - Revisited, a re-recording of the original tracklist, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the album and promote its anniversary tour. When discussing the recording with Spin Magazine, Kensrue said the band felt the original was "stiff" and wanted the re-recording to include the energy present in live performances. For a time, the band considered releasing a remixes album, but ultimately decided against it as they did not wish to change the music too drastically. Instead, their goal was to be "subtle" and find a middle ground between changing very little, and making it effectively unrecognisable. Kensrue said it was unlikely that the band would produce another re-recording after this, saying the material in The Artist in the Ambulance has "specific things going on with it that make sense for this project".
The album features guest vocals from Ryan Osterman of Holy Fawn, Chuck Ragan of Hot Water Music, Sam Carter of Architects, Mike Minnick of Curl Up and Die, Brian McTernan of Be Well, and Andy Hull of Manchester Orchestra.
## Track listing
All music by Thrice. Lyrics by Dustin Kensrue. All recordings produced by Brian McTernan.
### 2023 re-recording track listing
## Personnel
Credits adapted from the booklet of The Artist in the Ambulance.
Thrice
- Dustin Kensrue – vocals, rhythm guitar
- Eddie Breckenridge – bass
- Teppei Teranishi – lead guitar
- Riley Breckenridge – drums
Additional musicians
- Charlie Barnett – arranger, conductor (tracks 1 and 8)
- Marcio Bothello – cello (tracks 1 and 8)
- Osman Kivrak – viola (tracks 1 and 8)
- Teri Lazar – violin (tracks 1 and 8)
- Chris Shieh – violin (tracks 1 and 8)
- Greg Watkins – double bass (tracks 1 and 8)
Production and design
- Brian McTernan – producer, engineer
- Andy Wallace – mixing
- Michael Barbiero – drum engineer
- Matt Squire – Pro Tools
- Bill Synan – engineering assistant
- Steve Sisco – mixing assistant
- Josh Wibur – Pro Tools
- Howie Weinberg – mastering
- Cold War Kids – artwork, photography
## Charts
|
19,996,174 |
Circus (Britney Spears song)
| 1,168,198,562 |
2008 single by Britney Spears
|
[
"2008 singles",
"2008 songs",
"2009 singles",
"2013 singles",
"Britney Spears songs",
"Jive Records singles",
"Music video controversies",
"Music videos directed by Francis Lawrence",
"Song recordings produced by Benny Blanco",
"Song recordings produced by Dr. Luke",
"Songs written by Benny Blanco",
"Songs written by Claude Kelly",
"Songs written by Dr. Luke"
] |
"Circus" is a song by American singer Britney Spears. It was released on December 2, 2008, through Jive Records as the second single from her sixth studio album of the same name. Written by Dr. Luke, Claude Kelly and Benny Blanco, "Circus" is a metaphor for the public's perception of Spears' life. After she listened to the track for the first time, she felt inspired to create an album and a tour with a circus theme. "Circus" is an uptempo electropop and dance-pop song with elements of pop rock and "half-rapped" vocals. The song's lyrics talk about being an entertainer and putting on shows.
"Circus" was well received by contemporary critics, with reviewers complimenting Spears' confident persona and praising the song's electronic production. "Circus" was a commercial success, peaking inside the top-ten in Australia, Canada, Denmark, New Zealand, and Sweden, while reaching top-twenty positions in many European countries. The song reached number three on the Billboard Hot 100 and number one on the Mainstream top 40 radio and is her second best-selling digital song in the United States, having sold over 3.2 million downloads as of July 2016. On a global scale, "Circus" was one of the top ten best-selling songs of 2009 with 5.5 million digital copies sold that year across the world, according to the IFPI.
The music video, directed by Francis Lawrence, was released on December 4, 2008. It portrays Spears as the ringmaster of a circus accompanied by different performers, and it is interspersed with scenes of Spears in different circus settings. The video received positive reviews from critics, but was criticized by PETA for featuring "cruelly trained animals". However, the exhibitors denied these claims. Spears performed the song on Good Morning America on December 2, 2008. It was also the opening number of the Circus Starring Britney Spears (2009), where she was dressed in a ringmistress outfit, designed to represent a metamorphosis. Spears has also performed the song during her residency concert Britney: Piece of Me. The song appears in Just Dance 2016.
## Background
"Circus" was written by Dr. Luke, Benny Blanco and Claude Kelly, while produced by Luke and Blanco. Luke and Kelly were initially commissioned to work on a new track for Spears, and entered the studio with no concept prepared, as Kelly explained, "just knowing her style and knowing what she does." After Luke came up with the music, they based the song on the public's perception of her life at the time. Spears explained that after listening to "Circus" for the first time, she felt inspired and imagined a story behind it. She also stated, "['Circus'] put the whole album together as far as what I wanted my show to be like. You can play with a circus in so many different ways". "Circus" was recorded at Conway Recording Studios and Chalice Recording Studios in Los Angeles, California, and at Glenwood Place Studio in Burbank, California. Background vocals were provided by Cathy Dennis, Kelly and Myah Marie. Main instrumentation was done by Luke and Blanco. The song was mixed by Serban Ghenea at MixStar Studios in Virginia. "Circus" was announced on October 31, 2008, as the second single from the album, and was officially serviced to U.S. radio stations on December 2, 2008.
## Music and lyrics
"Circus" is an uptempo electropop and dance-pop song, with a stomp box beat and elements of pop rock. The song opens with the sound of a drum and builds until Spears starts singing, "There's only two types of people in the world/The ones that entertain and the ones that observe". Spears delivers confident and "half-rapped" vocals, with the verses having usage of synthesizers. Lyrically, the song talks about being an entertainer and putting on shows. She explains her emotions while performing in lines such as: "I feel the adrenaline moving through my veins / Spotlight on me and I'm ready to break". The chorus begins with an electronic sound, while she compares herself, as well as performing to being on the center of a circus ring. According to the sheet music published at Musicnotes.com by Alfred Publishing, "Circus" is composed in the key of F# minor with 120 beats per minute, however on the album the song is 115 beats per minute. Spears's vocal range spans from G#<sub>2</sub> to C#<sub>5</sub>. Kelly commented that "Circus" was "a cool way to get people dancing and having fun", but also have a slight message.
## Critical reception
Nick Levine of Digital Spy described it as "a rampaging monster of a song whose chorus kicks off with a Max Martin-style and Timbaland thump". Popjustice praised the production of the song, compared it to "Break the Ice" and added, "there's a lot of stopping and starting, including a built-in MTV-style dance breakdown segment." Chris Williams of Billboard in its single review appreciated the song for surrounding Spears with "an electronic cyberpop landscape". In the album review, Ann Donahue of Billboard criticized the lyrics for rehashing the theme of fame and compared it to "Lucky" (2000) and "Piece of Me" (2007). Dave De Sylvia of Sputnikmusic said that while "Womanizer" sounded like a Blackout track, "Circus" is more reflective of the album's general mood. Dan Cairns of The Sunday Times named it one of the standout tracks of the album, along with "If U Seek Amy" and "Mannequin". Entertainment Weekly writer Chris Willman noted that, despite the album being titled Circus, the title track is "not about the madhouse her life has become but just a brag about her prowess as a whip-cracking sexual ringmaster."
BBC Music's Talia Kraines thought that the singer "loves the attention being shone directly on her as the 'ringleader' as she sings of adrenaline flowing through her veins when it's time to put on a show." Ben Norman of About.com considered the song a "true and triumphant Britney Spears pop song with a pensive underbelly (the first verse in particular) and a supremely executed hook." Jonny Mugwump of The Quietus said, "a paean to her performance adrenalin, ["Circus" is] a medium-paced, big power-popper topped with an orbit-esque guitar," and commented that the song's lyrics highlight Spears' uniqueness – "the fuck you attitude. Despite everything, regardless of the personal destruction and undoubted hell she might still be haunted by, within the fictional space of the music, this woman couldn't give a damn. She rightly taunts the world around her, sounding utterly defiant. There is no place for apology or humble platitudes." John Murphy of musicOMH also praised its lyrics, describing them as "a confident, and encouraging, return to form." "Circus" was nominated at the 2009 Teen Choice Awards in the category of Choice Music: Single, but lost to Miley Cyrus's "The Climb".
## Commercial performance
On December 20, 2008, "Circus" debuted at number three on the US Billboard Hot 100 due to digital sales of over 212,000 units. On the week of March 7, 2009, the song reached number one on the Pop Songs chart and number three on the Hot Dance Club Songs chart. As of July 2016, "Circus" has sold 3.2 million digital downloads in the United States according to Nielsen Soundscan. It is her second best-selling digital single in the country.
In Canada, the track debuted at number two based solely on digital downloads, being blocked from ascending to the top spot by Lady Gaga's "Poker Face". On December 8, 2008, "Circus" entered the Australian Singles Chart at number 15, becoming the "Highest Debut" of the week. On December 22, 2008, the song peaked at number six. It was certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) for sales over 70,000 units. In New Zealand, "Circus" peaked at number four, and was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of New Zealand (RIANZ) for selling over 7,500 copies. The song was also successful in Europe, peaking at number 12 on the European Hot 100 Singles on March 21, 2009. "Circus" also reached the top 10 in Sweden and the top 20 in Austria, Czech Republic, Finland, Norway, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. According to the Official Charts Company, the song has sold 227,400 copies in the United Kingdom and is her 13th best-selling single in the country. It became the 10th best-selling digital single of 2009, selling 5.5 million copies worldwide. As of May 2020, "Circus" has generated over 212 million streams in the US.
## Music video
### Development and synopsis
The music video for "Circus" was filmed from October 28 to November 2, 2008, in Los Angeles, California. It was directed by Francis Lawrence, who previously worked with Spears on the music video for her 2001 single "I'm a Slave 4 U". Spears chose Lawrence, since he was the "only person who could capture it, make it really twisted, eccentric and different". On November 17, 2008, an exclusive three-second clip premiered during a promo for her documentary Britney: For the Record. The video was set to be released on December 5, 2008, on Entertainment Tonight, but it was moved at the last minute to December 4, 2008.
The video begins with Spears at a vanity, putting Curious on and earrings by Bulgari. She is then seen holding a top hat in front of her face, while doves fly out of another hat. Spears starts singing in the vanity but stands up and puts on a ringmaster jacket. She walks through an aisle while dancing suggestively with several circus dancers. Throughout the video, there are interspersed scenes of different circus performers, including ribbon dancers, contortionists, clowns and a mime on stilts. There are also scenes of Spears singing with the top hat, wearing a nude body stocking in front of a red curtain, with a spotlight on her. This is followed by a group dance scene in the middle of a circus ring, where Spears wears the ringmaster jacket, sequined hot pants and a feathered top hat. In the second verse, she dances with a chair and a whip wearing a nude bra covered in leaves. The video continues with a series of intercut scenes, such as Spears in slow motion in front of a shower of sparks, her surrounded by a pair of lions and in front of an elephant. During the bridge, Spears and her dancers perform a routine in front of flames. In the last chorus, Spears returns to the circus ring, surrounded by two elephants, many more circus performers, dancers and fire breathers. The video ends with Spears in the spotlight, laughing with the top hat over her head.
### Reception
Davil Balls of Digital Spy described the music video as being "cheeky, seductive and more than a little bit ridiculous" and said that Spears "delivers some killer dance routines". Tim Stack of Entertainment Weekly compared the dance in the chair with the music video of "Stronger" and added that "best of all, she actually looks animated in this video and appears to be having fun". James Montgomery of MTV said that after watching the video "you are overcome with the sudden urge to go to the Big Apple Circus. Or pick up some Curious perfume. Or you know, possibly both". The music video won the category of Best Moves at the MTV Australia Awards 2009. It was also nominated for four VMAs at the 2009 awards in the categories of Best Art Direction, Best Choreography, Best Cinematography and Best Editing. It was also nominated for Best Video in the MTV Europe Music Awards 2009, but lost to Beyoncé's "Single Ladies". The video won Best Video of 2009 in Fuse TV, making Spears the only artist to win two years in a row.
On December 9, 2008, animal rights organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) issued a press release condemning Spears for using "cruelly trained lions and elephants" and demanding her to "stop using exotic animals in her videos and concerts once and for all". Spears had previously received criticism from the organization when she used an albino python and a caged tiger during a performance of "I'm a Slave 4 U" at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards. Kari Johnson from Have Trunk Will Travel responded, saying, "[the company] has never issued a written endorsement, nor does it condone using electrical devices to discipline and control elephants except in situations where elephant or human safety is at risk. [...] The American Humane Association monitors animal action in film and television. A representative was on the set of the Britney Spears 'Circus' video with our elephants, Tai and Kitty, to ensure their safety and welfare [...] Britney, the director, producers and the entire crew were respectful of the elephants' needs and comfort and a pleasure to work with." The music video for "Circus" was certified on the digital platform Vevo after reaching 100 million views on YouTube. In 2021, "Circus" went viral on TikTok, and as of May 8, 2021, has been used 426,200 times.
## Live performances
"Circus" was performed on December 2, 2008, at American morning talk show Good Morning America, along with "Womanizer". She wore a midriff-baring shirt, leather pants, a ringmaster jacket and a top hat. "Circus" was a major part on the Circus Starring Britney Spears (2009), as the opening number of the show. The costumes of the performance were selected to show a metamorphosis. The show began with a video introduction featuring Perez Hilton as Queen Elizabeth I, welcoming the audience to the circus. In the middle of the video, the cylinder screen surrounding the stage started to rise, while Spears appeared on the video and shot Hilton with a crossbow, causing him to fall backwards onto the floor. As the video ended, Spears started to descend from the ceiling on a suspended platform, wearing a cheetah headdress, a ringmaster jacket, black shorts, high-heeled boots and carrying a whip. The headdress represented an animal. When she reached the stage, she took it off to represent both a ringmaster and a lion tamer and "Circus" started. It featured acrobats taking the stage and spinning on giant rings in the air. The performance ended with Spears taking off her ringleader jacket to reveal a Swarovski-crystal corset, representing a slave. She then ran into the center of the main stage, surrounded by jets of smoke, to enter a golden cage and perform "Piece of Me". People writer Chuck Arnold wrote that Spears, "descending from above in a red ringmaster-meets-dominatrix outfit" to sing the song, "showed that her body was tight, even if her dancing always wasn't." James Montgomery of MTV considered both "Circus" and "Radar" performances "great". Spears included the song on her current residency show in Las Vegas, Britney: Piece of Me. For the performance, Spears appears from the back of the stage, in the center of a fiery ring, resembling a circus showgirl. Spears included the song on the set list for the Britney: Live in Concert (2017) and Piece of Me Tour (2018).
## Track listings and formats
- CD single
1. "Circus" – 3:12
2. "Womanizer" (Mike Rizzo Funk Generation Radio) – 3:51
- Maxi single
1. "Circus" – 3:12
2. "Circus" (Tom Neville's Ringleader remix) – 7:52
3. "Circus" (Diplo Circus remix) – 4:25
4. "Circus" (Junior Vasquez Club Circus) – 9:02
5. "Circus" (video) – 4:13
- Digital download - remix EP
1. "Circus" (Diplo Circus remix) – 4:25
2. "Circus" (Tom Neville's Ringleader remix) – 7:50
3. "Circus" (Villains remix) – 5:17
4. "Circus" (Linus Loves remix) – 4:39
5. "Circus" (Junior Vasquez Electric Circus) – 9:02
- Digital 45
1. "Circus" – 3:12
2. "Circus" (Tom Neville's Ringleader remix) – 7:52
- Digital download - Twister Rave remix
1. "Circus" (Twister Rave remix) – 3:32
## Credits and personnel
Credits and personnel are adapted from the Circus album liner notes.
- Lukasz "Dr. Luke" Gottwald – writer, producer, guitars, drums, keyboards, programming
- Claude Kelly – writer, background vocals
- Benny Blanco – writer, producer, drums, keyboards, programming
- Serban Ghenea – mixing
- John Hanes – additional Pro Tools engineering
- Tim Roberts – additional Pro Tools engineering assistance
- Emily Wright – recording, vocal editing
- Matt Beckley – recording, vocal editing
- Matt Beckley – recording
- Eric Weaver – recording assistant
- Chad Carlisle – recording assistant
- Chris Kasych – recording assistant
- Tatiana Gottwald – recording assistant
- Cathy Dennis – background vocals
- Myah Marie – background vocals
## Charts
### Weekly charts
### Year-end charts
## Certifications and sales
## Release history
|
903,701 |
Jeff White (Australian footballer)
| 1,153,593,129 |
Australian rules footballer, born 1977
|
[
"1977 births",
"All-Australians (AFL)",
"Australian rules footballers from Victoria (state)",
"Dandenong Stingrays players",
"East Perth Football Club players",
"Fremantle Football Club players",
"Keith 'Bluey' Truscott Trophy winners",
"Living people",
"Melbourne Football Club players",
"Redland Football Club players",
"Victorian State of Origin players"
] |
Jeffrey Newman "Jeff" White (born 19 February 1977) is an Australian rules footballer who had a distinguished career in the Australian Football League (AFL) spanning 14 years. He played most recently and notably for the Melbourne Football Club, following a move from the Fremantle Dockers at the end of 1997. He was Melbourne's first-choice ruckman for a decade, relying on his key attributes of athleticism and durability. He was an All-Australian in 2004, and was selected for Victoria several times. He was an important member of the Melbourne sides which made the 2000 AFL Grand Final and qualified for six finals series from 1998 to 2006.
White's career was punctuated by serious injuries to his shin and face, in 2003 and 2005 respectively. He cemented his reputation as one of the premier ruckmen in the AFL with consistent displays for Melbourne during his eleven years at the club. Former team-mate, fellow long-serving Melbourne ruckman, and Melbourne chairman Jim Stynes called White an "ornament to the game and particularly to the Melbourne Football Club." His contract with Melbourne was not renewed in 2008 and White signed to play in 2009 with the Redland Australian Football Club in the AFL Queensland State League.
## Personal life
White grew up in Victoria and was keen to return to Melbourne after he was drafted to the Fremantle Dockers in Western Australia. He was married to Stacy, and in Melbourne they lived at Sandringham. The pair met on the Gold Coast, and married there in October 2005. On 5 May 2007, Stacy gave birth to the couple's first child, son Kalani Jordan. White has stated his desire to move to the Gold Coast once his playing career in Melbourne is finished, and has mooted that a role with the proposed Gold Coast AFL team is possible in either a development or coaching capacity. In September 2008, he launched a sports classified website, SponsorThem, which is a specialised networking site for athletes. White wanted to impart his knowledge of social media to other athletes, which grew into his own business, White Echo, launched in 2009. White is an avid golfer and is a member of the Huntingdale Golf Club, and also plays regularly at the Royal Melbourne Golf Club. He plays off of a handicap of 5. At his final press-conference with Melbourne, he jokingly stated that a card on the seniors' Champions Tour was a potential aim once his football career is finished.
## Playing career
White played for the Dandenong Stingrays in the TAC Cup in 1993 and 1994. He was drafted with the number 1 pick in the 1994 AFL Draft—the first Dandenong player to be drafted with the highest pick. Travis Johnstone—who was White's team-mate at Melbourne for 10 years—is the only other Dandenong player to be selected with the first pick in an AFL draft. White was one of six Dandenong players selected to play for Vic Metro at the Teal Cup—the national under 18 championships—in 1994. Following his performances for Vic Metro, he was named as an All-Australian at Under 18 level.
### Fremantle
White was drafted by the Fremantle Dockers as the number 1 pick, which Fremantle were granted by the AFL because 1995 was the club's first season in the competition. White made his debut in Round 3 of Fremantle's inaugural season in a victory over Fitzroy. He played six matches in 1995, kicking three goals but averaging less than three hit-outs per game. The 1996 season saw him play 13 matches and kick 13 goals and greatly improve his average number of disposals. He was nominated for the AFL Rising Star award in Round 19 in a 24-point win against Collingwood. He had 22 disposals, 11 marks, kicked a goal and received three Brownlow Medal votes for his stand-out performance for the season. In his final season at Fremantle, White took on greater responsibility of the ruck-work, and averaged 10 hit-outs per game for the season. He played the first 12 matches of the season, but was then dropped for nine matches until the final match of the season—and of his Fremantle career. Fremantle's performances were largely consistent during White's three seasons with them, as they finished 13th in both 1995 and 1996, and 12th in 1997.
White was handed the number 34 guernsey at Fremantle and he wore the number for the rest of his career. He credits Percy Johnson with guiding his ruck style in his time with Fremantle. He played 32 games and kicked 18 goals with the Dockers between 1995 and 1997, before being traded back to his home state of Victoria to play for Melbourne. Salary-cap breaches involved in White's trade caused Melbourne to forfeit their highest selection (pick number 5) in the 1999 draft to Fremantle.
### Melbourne
#### Early seasons
Melbourne traded their two highest selections in the 1997 draft (picks 2 and 18) to Fremantle in return for White. He was a key signing in Melbourne's attempt to rebuild its squad, and in his first season at Melbourne he shared the rucking duties with Jim Stynes, the latter mentoring White in their only season together. He played in all of Melbourne's 25 matches for the season as they reached the preliminary final, where they lost to . He received 11 votes in the Brownlow Medal for the season. After a promising start to his career in Melbourne, 1999 was less successful. White's disposals and scoring statistics dropped significantly, and he tellingly failed to record any votes in the Brownlow Medal. In 2000, he was a key member of the Melbourne side that reached the Grand Final, with many pundits seeing White as the best Melbourne player on the ground in the loss to Essendon, as he had 24 hit-outs and 14 disposals. He kicked 16 goals and averaged 21 hit-outs per game for the season, and as in 1998, he recorded 11 Brownlow Medal votes. He effected the most number of hit-outs in the league for the season, with 499.
White played all but one of Melbourne's matches in 2001, and after a commanding performance against his former club in Round 21 where had 33 possessions, kicked two goals, and received three Brownlow Medal votes, then-Fremantle coach Ben Allan responded to a suggestion that White may leave Melbourne at the end of the season by saying "we'll have him back". White recorded the most hit-outs in the league in 2002, with 561, playing in all of Melbourne's matches in a run that saw them narrowly lose to Adelaide by two goals in a semi-final. The 2003 season was disappointing for both Melbourne, and White personally. His average number of hit-outs dropped by more than six per game, he averaged fewer than eight kicks per match, and did not receive any Brownlow Medal votes.
#### Consistent form
The following season saw a vast improvement in White's personal performance, as he enjoyed the finest season of his career, winning Melbourne's best-and-fairest, receiving All-Australian selection, and ranking second in the league for total number of hit-outs. He reached the top ten in the 2004 Brownlow Medal with 15 votes, including four best-on-ground displays, with dominant performances against North Melbourne and Fremantle among them. His most productive period came between Rounds 9 and 16, where he recorded three best-on-ground displays, averaged 25 hit-outs and received 13 Brownlow Medal votes. His Round 6 performance against Carlton is also noted as one of his career-best performances, with Melbourne winning by more than 100 points, as White recorded 26 disposals, took eight marks, kicked one goal, and received the three Brownlow votes for his influential display. Coinciding with White's career-best form, Melbourne sat atop the AFL ladder after Round 18, but in the final month of the season, the team lost its last five matches, finishing fifth after Round 22, and losing to Essendon in the Elimination Final. The 2005 season was less successful for both White and Melbourne, with the club struggling to cement a place in the top eight during the year, although they managed to finish seventh after a strong finish to the minor round, and qualify for the club's second consecutive finals series—the first time it had competed in consecutive finals series since 1991. Melbourne again lost in the Elimination Final, this time to Geelong. It was during this match that White sustained his career-threatening facial injury.
Following the 2005 season, he signed a three-year deal with Melbourne—his last contract with the club—worth A\$1.4m. He was an integral part of Melbourne's strong 2006 form, as the team won 11 out of 12 games after losing the first three matches of the season. He was named among the best Melbourne players in the side's come-from-behind victory against St Kilda in the Elimination Final. Melbourne lost to Fremantle the following week, ending their third consecutive finals series. During 2006, White effected fewer hit-outs than in 2005, although his total number of disposals, marks and goals were all significantly improved. He played all of Melbourne's matches that season, as he did for four seasons from 2004—a consistent run which saw him play more than 100 consecutive matches after he missed games in 2003 due to a serious shin injury and a knee injury, until Round 12, 2008. In both 2005 and 2006, he ranked third in the league in number of hit-outs.
#### Final years
Melbourne's poor form throughout the 2007 season, when they won just five matches, saw the side finish 14th. White brought up his milestone 250th AFL-game in Round 19 with a win over the Western Bulldogs. His last season with Melbourne was 2008, in which he was dropped for the first time in his Melbourne career, despite returning to some of his best form. His average number of disposals per match (18.5) was the highest of any season in his career. His long-time understudy Mark Jamar assumed White's position as the premier ruckman at Melbourne, allowing Paul Johnson to play the second-ruckman role. It was the first time in 20 years that anyone other than White or Jim Stynes had been the first-choice ruckman at Melbourne for an extended run of matches. Coach Dean Bailey said that 2008 was the most difficult season that White and team-mate Adem Yze had experienced at the club—the side finished bottom and won just three games. Bailey praised both White and Yze on their professionalism and attitude at the end of the season—the pair's last at Melbourne. White played 15 games in 2008—his lowest total in a season with Melbourne. He finished his career at Melbourne in Round 22 against Richmond, kicking two goals and having 17 possessions. He received 53 Brownlow votes throughout his career—47 with Melbourne and six with Fremantle. He reached double-figures in Brownlow votes on three occasions, with his highest being the 15 votes he received in 2004. He received his final Brownlow vote in Round 7, 2008, in Melbourne's win over Fremantle. He received Brownlow votes in nine of his 14 AFL seasons.
He was named as one of Melbourne's 150 Legends during the club's 150th anniversary celebrations, and finished his career with the seventh-highest number of appearances for Melbourne with 236. He was made a life member of the Melbourne Football Club during 2008. White was delisted from Melbourne following the 2008 season, but has stated that he hopes to play on for one or two more seasons at another AFL club: "From a personal point of view, I still feel like I've got some time left." His preference would have been to continue at Melbourne, saying, "I love the club and would love to play on" but that he "totally understands" his delisting. Dean Bailey spoke highly of White's leadership at Melbourne, saying that White will leave a lasting legacy at the club.
### Season 2009
Carlton coach Brett Ratten suggested that he would "have to go back and have a look" at the possibility of drafting White for the 2009 season. Ratten cited White's experience and leadership in helping to guide the younger ruckmen at Carlton as a potential draw-card. St Kilda was also suggested as a possible destination for White to continue his playing career, but the Sydney Swans later emerged as the most likely destination for White. Ultimately White signed to play in 2009 with the Redland Australian Football Club in the AFL Queensland State League. After one season with Redlands he retired from playing and joined Gold Coast Football Club as a coach
### Victoria
During 1998—his first year living back in Melbourne—he was selected to play for Victoria. He was selected in the squad of 25 for Victoria in 1999 but did not make the final 22 for the match against South Australia. This was the last State-of-Origin match, although a Victoria team was selected to play against a Dream Team in the AFL Hall of Fame Tribute Match in 2008—White was selected in the initial 40-man squad for Victoria, but once again did not make the final 22. He was Melbourne's only representative in the squad. Playing for Victoria in 1998 was his only representative appearance.
## Playing style
White's kicking accuracy was of particular note for a ruckman—his goal-kicking accuracy finished at slightly less than 60%. He was a consistent exponent of the spectacular mark, preferring to take chest marks high over packs. He was nominated on several occasions for the Mark of the Year, but he never won the award. His ball-skills and work around the ground remained one of his greatest strengths throughout his career. He effected 5000 hit-outs in his AFL career, the most by any one player since records began in 1987, with a career-high game total of 47 during a resounding round-22 win over West Coast Eagles in 2000. Testament to his durability and consistency, he was ranked in the top five in the AFL in total number of hit-outs for nine consecutive seasons from 1999. At 195 cm, White is relatively short for a ruckman, and operated more as a ruck-rover than as a traditional ruckman. He was noted for his athleticism and vertical-leap, which helped him overcome his lack of height in comparison to other ruckmen. His approach to ruck-work—with greater emphasis on possessing the ball and working around the ground—helped him adapt to the changed centre-circle rules, and compensated for his lack of height and diminished ability at stoppages. Following the departure of Jim Stynes from Melbourne, White later worked on his game with former ruckman Sam Newman. Percy Johnson, Stynes and finally Newman guided and influenced White's ruck-work during his career.
## Injuries
Throughout the latter stages of his career, he wore special thigh- and shin-pads to protect himself from injury in the ruck—his specially-designed shin-pad was required to protect a problematic shin injury which had threatened his career. During a match in 2003, he was kicked in the shin, causing his shin-pad to crack and split the skin, leaving a laceration about the size of a tablespoon. Once the wound had healed, White's surgeon told him that if it split open again, he would have to stop playing. White has said that this "reality check" helped to strengthen his focus and helped him deal with injuries more effectively. He said that the specially-designed shin-guard and those who designed it "saved his career". (The shin-guard can be seen on White's right-leg in the photos on this page.)
In 2005, he was involved in a horrific on-field incident with Geelong's Steven King. As King attempted to kick the ball out of mid-air, he missed and collected White's face at the height of his leg's swing, causing facial injuries that required extensive surgery, inserting five metal plates and 14 screws into White's jaw and face. It was viewed as an accident by the AFL tribunal and no action was taken against King. As the incident took place in Melbourne's final match of the season—Geelong winning the match and knocking Melbourne out of the finals—White was able to recover during the off-season and did not miss a match, despite the severity of the injury. White's wedding to his fiancée Stacy was postponed until later in the year due to the injury.
## Statistics
\|- style="background-color: \#EAEAEA" ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" \| 1995 \| \| 34 \|\| 6 \|\| 3 \|\| 1 \|\| 25 \|\| 12 \|\| 37 \|\| 12 \|\| 4 \|\| 16 \|\| 0.5 \|\| 0.2 \|\| 4.2 \|\| 2.0 \|\| 6.2 \|\| 2.0 \|\| 0.7 \|\| 2.7 \|- ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" \| 1996 \| \| 34 \|\| 13 \|\| 13 \|\| 5 \|\| 80 \|\| 39 \|\| 119 \|\| 54 \|\| 8 \|\| 70 \|\| 1.0 \|\| 0.4 \|\| 6.2 \|\| 3.0 \|\| 9.2 \|\| 4.2 \|\| 0.6 \|\| 5.4 \|- style="background-color: \#EAEAEA" ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" \| 1997 \| \| 34 \|\| 13 \|\| 2 \|\| 4 \|\| 88 \|\| 51 \|\| 139 \|\| 65 \|\| 2 \|\| 131 \|\| 0.2 \|\| 0.3 \|\| 6.8 \|\| 3.9 \|\| 10.7 \|\| 5.0 \|\| 0.2 \|\| 10.1 \|- ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" \| 1998 \| \| 34 \|\| 25 \|\| 17 \|\| 16 \|\| 184 \|\| 129 \|\| 313 \|\| 140 \|\| 15 \|\| 409 \|\| 0.7 \|\| 0.6 \|\| 7.4 \|\| 5.2 \|\| 12.5 \|\| 5.6 \|\| 0.6 \|\| 16.4 \|- style="background-color: \#EAEAEA" ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" \| 1999 \| \| 34 \|\| 19 \|\| 7 \|\| 7 \|\| 119 \|\| 115 \|\| 234 \|\| 93 \|\| 17 \|\| 371 \|\| 0.4 \|\| 0.4 \|\| 6.3 \|\| 6.1 \|\| 12.3 \|\| 4.9 \|\| 0.9 \|\| 19.5 \|- ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" \| 2000 \| \| 34 \|\| 24 \|\| 16 \|\| 8 \|\| 218 \|\| 175 \|\| 393 \|\| 148 \|\| 37 \|\| 499 \|\| 0.7 \|\| 0.3 \|\| 9.1 \|\| 7.3 \|\| 16.4 \|\| 6.2 \|\| 1.5 \|\| 20.8 \|- style="background-color: \#EAEAEA" ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" \| 2001 \| \| 34 \|\| 21 \|\| 3 \|\| 6 \|\| 202 \|\| 121 \|\| 323 \|\| 98 \|\| 28 \|\| 398 \|\| 0.1 \|\| 0.3 \|\| 9.6 \|\| 5.8 \|\| 15.4 \|\| 4.7 \|\| 1.3 \|\| 19.0 \|- ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" \| 2002 \| \| 34 \|\| 24 \|\| 3 \|\| 5 \|\| 236 \|\| 123 \|\| 359 \|\| 133 \|\| 50 \|\| 561 \|\| 0.1 \|\| 0.2 \|\| 9.8 \|\| 5.1 \|\| 15.0 \|\| 5.5 \|\| 2.1 \|\| 23.4 \|- style="background-color: \#EAEAEA" ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" \| 2003 \| \| 34 \|\| 16 \|\| 9 \|\| 1 \|\| 127 \|\| 107 \|\| 234 \|\| 83 \|\| 17 \|\| 277 \|\| 0.6 \|\| 0.1 \|\| 7.9 \|\| 6.7 \|\| 14.6 \|\| 5.2 \|\| 1.1 \|\| 17.3 \|- ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" \| 2004 \| \| 34 \|\| 23 \|\| 8 \|\| 5 \|\| 222 \|\| 177 \|\| 399 \|\| 127 \|\| 38 \|\| 523 \|\| 0.3 \|\| 0.2 \|\| 9.7 \|\| 7.7 \|\| 17.3 \|\| 5.5 \|\| 1.7 \|\| 22.7 \|- style="background-color: \#EAEAEA" ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" \| 2005 \| \| 34 \|\| 23 \|\| 7 \|\| 4 \|\| 169 \|\| 145 \|\| 314 \|\| 92 \|\| 56 \|\| 532 \|\| 0.3 \|\| 0.2 \|\| 7.3 \|\| 6.3 \|\| 13.7 \|\| 4.0 \|\| 2.4 \|\| 23.1 \|- ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" \| 2006 \| \| 34 \|\| 24 \|\| 11 \|\| 4 \|\| 214 \|\| 187 \|\| 401 \|\| 135 \|\| 54 \|\| 481 \|\| 0.5 \|\| 0.2 \|\| 8.9 \|\| 7.8 \|\| 16.7 \|\| 5.6 \|\| 2.3 \|\| 20.0 \|- style="background-color: \#EAEAEA" ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" \| 2007 \| \| 34 \|\| 22 \|\| 7 \|\| 7 \|\| 186 \|\| 170 \|\| 356 \|\| 127 \|\| 41 \|\| 461 \|\| 0.3 \|\| 0.3 \|\| 8.5 \|\| 7.7 \|\| 16.2 \|\| 5.7 \|\| 5.8 \|\| 21.0 \|- ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" \| 2008 \| \| 34 \|\| 15 \|\| 7 \|\| 4 \|\| 135 \|\| 143 \|\| 278 \|\| 93 \|\| 21 \|\| 271 \|\| 0.5 \|\| 0.3 \|\| 9.0 \|\| 9.5 \|\| 18.5 \|\| 6.2 \|\| 1.4 \|\| 18.1 \|- class="sortbottom" ! colspan=3\| Career ! 268 ! 113 ! 77 ! 2205 ! 1694 ! 3899 ! 1400 ! 388 ! 5000 ! 0.4 ! 0.3 ! 8.2 ! 6.3 ! 14.5 ! 5.2 ! 1.4 ! 18.7
|
73,986,210 |
Dvorichna settlement hromada
| 1,172,707,890 |
Administrative unit in Kharkiv Oblast, Ukraine
|
[
"2020 establishments in Ukraine",
"Hromadas of Kharkiv Oblast",
"Kupiansk Raion"
] |
The Dvorichna settlement hromada (Ukrainian: Дворічанська селищна громада, romanized: Dvorichanska selyshchna hromada, Russian: Дворичанская поселковая община) is a hromada in the Kupiansk Raion, Kharkiv Oblast, Ukraine. The hromada was created on 12 June 2020, and is centrally administered by the urban-type settlement of Dvorichna, being the local government for 55 settlements. The pre-war population of the hromada was small, and the economy was largely agriculture-based with little industry. As of 2023, the hromada remains about half occupied by Russian forces as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and has been severely depopulated because of a mandatory evacuation that has been issued for all civilians in recaptured areas.
## Overview
The entire hromada is composed largely of flat, agricultural land, with virtually no industrial areas. In line with this, the hromada is also largely undeveloped, only gaining access to electricity more recently, and remains with little outside communication or internet. Because of this, while the hromada does have an official website, it is sparsely updated with new information.
Before Russia's invasion in 2022, income in the hromada came entirely from agriculture, animal husbandry, accounting, education, medicine, and administration. The hromada did notably have a successful sports school in the head administrative settlement Dvorichna, along with multiple other schools and a kindergarden.
## History
### Founding and early years
The hromada was created on 12 June 2020 after merging 14 settlement councils within the soon to be abolished Dvorichna Raion. Upon establishment, the hromada became the local government for 55 settlements, and had a total population of 16,568 in January 2021.
The hromada would hold their first elections on 25 October 2020, where Dvorichna native Turbaba Halyna Hryhorivna would be elected as Head of the Hromada. Before the war in 2022, the hromada had a total population of approximately 16,500 within a 1,109.1 km<sup>2</sup> (428.2 sq mi) area.
### Russian invasion
The entire hromada was occupied by Russian forces in the early days of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. During full occupation, Halyna Turbaba would be imprisoned twice for refusing to cooperate with the Russian military. During Turbaba's first imprisonment lasting one month, and second imprisonment 50 days, some lesser hromada officials agreed to work with the Russians. In this time: better houses, along with useful equipment from farms, were reportedly confiscated by the Russian military. Many residents likewise would leave for the Russian border or travel across a dam going over the Pecheneg Reservoir [uk] to territory controlled by Ukrainian forces.
The territorial situation would only change in the hromada after the successful Kharkiv counteroffensive conducted by Ukrainian forces during September 2022, where control of the hromada would be divided along the Oskil river by 12 September, and would remain this way with some exceptions. After the counteroffensive, those lesser officials who worked with the Russians had fled the hromada, and many former-residents who left for Russia returned to live in Kharkiv or moved to other European nations including Czechia, Germany, Norway, Poland, Sweden, and Switzerland, as the now-frontline hromada was placed under mandatory evacuation. This depopulation led to only about 2,000 residents remaining in the recaptured areas of the hromada by December 2022, and only 1,100 residents by April 2023, consisting primarily of the elderly, with only 60 of whom being children.
Daily shelling of the hromada that has taken place since Ukraine's counteroffensive has destroyed much of the head administrative settlement Dvorichna: including all 35 apartment buildings there, 30% of all residential buildings in the hromada, and 70% in Dvorichna, and much of the educational, medical, and recreational infrastructure in the hromada, as well as damaged or destroyed all administrative buildings. All buildings not bordering neighboring settlement hromadas have also lost access to electricity, gas, and heat, leading to the hromada's post offices, banks, pharmacies, and other reliant establishments being closed indefinitely.
Because of these factors, much of the remaining population either lives in their yards or basements because of damages from the war. Humanitarian aid consisting of food, hygiene, firewood, fuel, and other highly needed items are delivered on average twice a month to residents, making still living in the hromada possible. A bakery built by humanitarian workers along with local village vegetable gardens also provide more food than necessary to residents. A local doctor and ambulance also provides medical assistance despite the lack of a functioning pharmacy. Administration is still led by Turbaba, and two other officials, with more opting to work remotely. There is little to no communication with the occupied half of the hromada, with there existing the possibility of a humanitarian disaster.
#### Territorial control since September 2022
After Ukraine's successful counteroffensive, the territorial situation in the hromada would not change again until 18 October, when a localized Russian counteroffensive would retake Horobivka. Four months later from 4 to 18 February 2023, a larger Russian counteroffensive from Dvorichne would push Ukrainian forces from the settlement on 10 February, and would continue their advancement to capture Lyman Pershyi [uk] on 16 February, and Hrianykivka on 18 February, being the last significant event from the offensive. According to Turbaba, it was about this time that Hrianykivka's population became zero after every building there had been destroyed during the series of offensives and counteroffensives.
On 15 May 2023, another localized Russia counteroffensive would recapture Masiutivka, the last settlement in the hromada on the east side of the Oskil.
On 17 July 2023, Russian forces would attempt to further their advances from Masiutivka and attempt to cross the Oskil. While the Ukrainian General Staff reported that the offensive was unsuccessful, a Russian milblogger claimed that the offensive captured 1–2 km (0.6–1.2 mi) of land in this direction. This claim would be supported by other milbloggers and the Russian Ministry of Defense two days later on 19 July. The Russian advance in this direction would continue again on 8 August, with Russian forces of the 6th Combined Arms Army capturing positions south of Vilshana and Lyman Pershyi.
## List of settlements
### Current
The hromada is composed of one urban-type settlement, being the administrative head Dvorichna, and a further 54 settlements, including:
- Berestove [uk]
- Bohdanivske [uk]
- Bolohivka [uk]
- Dobroliubika [uk]
- Dovhenke [uk]
- Dvorichanske [uk]
- Dvorichne
- Fyholivka [uk]
- Horobivka
- Hrakove [uk]
- Hrianykivka
- Ivanivka [uk]
- Lozova Druha [uk]
- Lozova Persha [uk]
- Lyman Druhyi [uk]
- Lyman Pershyi [uk]
- Kamianka [uk]
- Kasianivka [uk]
- Kolodiazne [uk]
- Krasne Pershe [uk]
- Kutkivka [uk]
- Maltsivka [uk]
- Masiutivka
- Mechnikove [uk]
- Mykolaivka [uk]
- Mytrofanivka [uk]
- Nezhdanivka [uk]
- Novoiehorivka [uk]
- Novomlynsk [uk]
- Novouzhvynivka [uk]
- Novovasylivka [uk]
- Obukhivka [uk]
- Odradne [uk]
- Pavlivka [uk]
- Pershotravneve [uk]
- Petrivka [uk]
- Petrivske [uk]
- Petro-Ivanivka [uk]
- Pishchanka [uk]
- Pisky [uk]
- Pleskachivka [uk]
- Putnykove [uk]
- Ridkodub [uk]
- Tavilzhanka
- Stroivka [uk]
- Terny [uk]
- Tokarivka [uk]
- Topoli (rural town)
- Topoli (village)
- Vasyltsivka [uk]
- Velykyi Vyselok [uk]
- Vilshana
- Vodiane [uk]
- Zapadne [uk]
|
49,595,295 |
It's You (Zayn song)
| 1,138,616,314 | null |
[
"2010s ballads",
"2016 songs",
"Black-and-white music videos",
"Contemporary R&B ballads",
"Songs about heartache",
"Songs written by Harold Lilly (songwriter)",
"Songs written by Malay (record producer)",
"Songs written by Zayn Malik",
"Torch songs",
"Zayn Malik songs"
] |
"It's You" (stylised as "iT's YoU") is a song recorded by English singer and songwriter Zayn from his debut solo studio album Mind of Mine (2016). It was written by Zayn, James Ho and Harold Lilly, whilst production was handled by Malay. Zayn debuted the track with a live performance during his appearance on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on 18 February 2016. It was later premiered on Beats 1 Radio on 25 February 2016, and ultimately was released as the first promotional single from the album on 26 February 2016 along with the album's pre-order on iTunes.
A slow-paced, intimate R&B ballad, "It's You" features organ-like keyboards, pulsating beats and sparingly employed strings, piano, and electric guitar through its instrumentation. Lyrically, the song talks about a break-up, where the protagonist is desperate for answers on a failed relationship. Considered an album highlight by various reviewers, several critics additionally believed that the inspiration behind the track was Zayn's relationship with former girlfriend Perrie Edwards. "It's You" charted moderately around the world, including in the United Kingdom, Scotland, and the United States. The accompanying music video for the song was released on 26 February 2016 exclusively on the Apple Store and later on 28 March 2016.
## Background and release
Soon after his departure from the British-Irish band One Direction, Zayn started working on his debut solo studio album; months later, on 22 July 2015, it was announced that Zayn was recording new music with record producer Malay Ho, after the producer posted a photo with the singer on his Instagram account. Malik's management team reached out to him because Zayn was a fan of his work with artists such as John Legend, Alicia Keys and Frank Ocean. Later, Ho heard "Pillowtalk" and "Fool for You" before signing on to produce the record, and thought Malik's voice was "incredible" and agreed to work with him. The two recorded most of the songs in the Studio Suite at the Palms Casino Resort, inside Malik's Beverly Hills Hotel room, and in the middle of the woods. As recalled by Ho, the work had a "super creative, super free" atmosphere. Zayn admitted that "He’s just an amazing person. Like from the second I met him I just knew he was kind of different. He looks into every instrument in high detail and he understands how to break it down."
One of the songs they worked together, "It's You", was said to be one of the album's centerpiece, with Malik commenting: "I just felt like I needed to put myself out there, just because it was a form of therapy for me and it did help me get through some shit. If I can help someone else at that time, that’s cool." Dan Hyman from Pitchfork stated that the song shared similarities with Ocean's "Bad Religion", with Ho mentioning that after hearing the song live and Zayn's fans noting similarities between both songs, he found them similar with the organ. "It's You" premiered during Zane Lowe's Beats One Radio on 25 February 2016, and a day later, 26 February 2016, it was released as the first promotional single from Zayn's debut solo studio album Mind of Mine (2016), along with the pre-order of the album on the iTunes Store.
## Composition and lyrics
"It's You" was written by Malik, James Ho and Harold Lilly, and produced by Malay. Malay was also responsible for guitar, programming, keyboards, bass and triangle. String arrangement and orchestration were provided by Dave Eggar and Chuck Palmer, while Eggar played the cello and Palmer acted as the track's conductor. Additionally, violins were performed by Katie Kresek and Rachel Golub. It was recorded at two studios: the Larabee Studios in North Hollywood and Germano Studios in New York City. According to the sheet music published at Musicnotes.com by EMI Music Publishing, it is written in the key of F major with a tempo of 63 beats per minute in common time. The song follows a chord progression of F – Bm6/D – F/6 –Am/C, and Malik's vocals span from C<sub>4</sub> to D<sub>6</sub>. It is a slow-burning, intimate R&B ballad with a "dreamy, ambient" synth, organ-like keyboards, pulsating beats and sparingly employed strings, piano, and electric guitar. During the track, Zayn uses pained vocals, while during its chorus he uses his falsetto.
Lyrically, the song talks about a heartbreak, as a girl is playing with the protagonist heart's, he's being used and his feelings are being thrown to the side. The song opens with Zayn singing, "She got, she got, she got/Her own reason for talking to me/She don't, she don't, she don't/Give a f\*\*k/About what I need," before continuing: "Tell me your lies/Because I just can't face it." In the chorus, he repeats: "It's you, it's you, it's you," showing that he "can't seem to fight his feelings about th[e] girl being 'the one,' but "also referring to the loss of that love he is dealing with based off of [sic] her and her decisions within their relationship." Several critics believed that the song was written about Zayn's break-up with former fiancée Perrie Edwards.
## Critical reception
"It's You" was well-received by several music critics. Tim Sendra of AllMusic picked the track as one of the album's highlights, noting that "his soaring falsetto on 'iT's YoU' is breathtaking." Zach Frydenlund of Complex called it an emotional ballad that "showcas[es] his tremendous vocal abilities, which weren't on display like this previously." Andy Gill of The Independent was also complimentary of his vocals and selected it as one of the tracks to download, writing that "the drawn-out, melismatic title hook of 'It's You' soars over the organ drone and piano." Alexa Camp of Slant Magazine praised the "Malik's surprisingly mournful vocals on the haunting" song. Amy Davidson, writing for Digital Spy, named it "a slice of slick R&B," observing that "the stripped back production lets his airy falsetto come through nicely, and the whole thing sits as perfectly stylised as his glorious quiff." Lewis Corner of the same publication opined that, "It's the most vulnerable Zayn sounds on the entire record, while his spire-scaling 'oooohs' are poignantly doleful." Kate Solomon of Drowned in Sound was also positive to what she called "his dreamy falsetto underpinned by a melancholy organ line and coupled madly with Top Gun guitars and Disney film strings." Jon Caramanica of The New York Times described it as "an elegant whisper of a love song, part mellow soul burner and part post-Coldplay melancholia."
Christina Lee, an editor for Idolator, noticed that the song "sounds like Zayn asked 'Channel Orange' producer Malay for his own version of Frank Ocean's 'Bad Religion,' though it suffers because his writing and singing aren't nearly as gripping." Sam Richards of NME agreed, noting that "the beginning of ‘It’s You’ sounds like that album's 'Bad Religion', with its melancholy jazz chords and confessional vocals – though it's debatable how much Zayn is ready to confess." Michael Cragg of The Guardian also saw similarities, expressing that "Zayn "showcases his Frank Ocean-esque falsetto on the sad-eyed, organ-drenched [track]." Mikael Wood of Los Angeles Times also perceived influences of Ocean. Sarah Murphy of Exclaim! thought that the track worked for showing a "more mature content and a sleeker, less bubblegum-y pop sound" and credited Malay for the feat. Spin's Andrew Unterberger also praised the producer for "serving up most of the LP's highlights," which included "the lightly quaking Beach House gauze" song. He also praised Zayn's voice for "floating like a paper airplane above the tremors." On the other hand, Brittany Spanos of Rolling Stone called it a "tepid ballad."
## Chart performance
After being released as a promotional single, "It's You" charted in several countries around the world. In the United Kingdom, it peaked at number 48 on the official UK Singles Chart, and at number 9 on the R&B component chart. In Australia, France, and Sweden, it spent one week on their respective charts, where it debuted at numbers 38, 65, and 97, respectively. According to Billboard, "It's You" was the most mentioned song on Twitter for the week ended 19 March 2016, where it topped the Billboard Twitter Real-Time chart, in addition to peaking at number 59 on the Billboard Hot 100. Furthermore, the track peaked in Scotland, Canada, and Ireland at positions 30, 71, and 74, respectively.
## Music video
The music video for the song was directed by Ryan Hope and released on 26 February 2016 exclusively on the Apple Store. The black-and-white video finds the singer in a pensive state, with scenes shot in slow motion. In the beginning, Malik is first seen alone inside a home while his video co-star Nicola Peltz is outside enjoying the pool. Later, Malik sits at a piano. As the video progresses, "the object of his affection is seen with another man at a cocktail party while Malik looks on. It culminates with Malik watching through a window as his former love drives away," as explained by Rolling Stone's Althea Legaspi. Eventually, the video was uploaded on his Vevo account on YouTube on 28 March 2016.
Julia of 2Day FM called it a "stunning", "ridiculously hot" and a "black and white masterpiece." Kat Boehrer of Complex named it a "mesmerizing video." The Capital FM website published that the video is "a moody, atmospheric piece of art that is almost guaranteed to make you fall in love with the singer." Jackson McHenry of Vulture.com called it "a more melancholy-look love."
## Live performances
Zayn made his solo live debut on television with a live performance of "It's You" during his appearance on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on 18 February 2016. "It's You" was also part of his setlist at the 2016 Wango Tango. An additional live rendition occurred during the Honda Stage at the iHeartRadio Theater in New York City, New York.
## Credits and personnel
Recording
- Recorded at Larabee Studios, North Hollywood, California; Germano Studios, New York City.
- Mixed at Larabee Studios, North Hollywood, California.
Personnel
- Zayn – vocals, writing
- James "Malay" Ho – writing, production, guitar, programming, keyboards, bass and triangle
- Harold Lilly – writing
- Dave Eggar – string arrangement, orchestration, cello
- Chuck Palmer – string arrangement, orchestration, conductor
- Katie Kresek – violins
- Rachel Golub – violins
- Manny Marroquin – mixing
- Chris Galland – assistant engineer
- Ike Schultz – assistant engineer
Credits adapted from the liner notes of Mind of Mine, RCA Records.
## Charts
|
2,541,443 |
James Jones (basketball, born 1980)
| 1,168,083,797 |
American NBA general manager and former player
|
[
"1980 births",
"20th-century African-American people",
"21st-century African-American sportspeople",
"African-American basketball players",
"African-American sports executives and administrators",
"American men's basketball players",
"Basketball players from Miami",
"Cleveland Cavaliers players",
"Indiana Pacers draft picks",
"Indiana Pacers players",
"Living people",
"Miami Heat players",
"Miami Hurricanes men's basketball players",
"National Basketball Association general managers",
"Phoenix Suns executives",
"Phoenix Suns players",
"Portland Trail Blazers players",
"Shooting guards",
"Small forwards",
"Sportspeople from Hialeah, Florida"
] |
James Andrew Jones (born October 4, 1980) is an American professional basketball executive and former player. He is both the president of basketball operations and general manager for the Phoenix Suns. He played 14 seasons in the National Basketball Association (NBA).
Jones was a four-year letterman at American High School in Hialeah, Florida. He averaged 25 points per game as a senior, earning Class 6A Player of the Year and First-team All-State honors. Jones played college basketball for the Miami Hurricanes of the University of Miami, where he was a three-year starter and finished his career averaging 11 points per game. He was named Third-team All-Big East his junior year and Second-team Verizon Academic All-American his senior year. He was inducted into the University of Miami Sports Hall of Fame in 2014.
Jones was drafted by the Indiana Pacers in the second round of the 2003 NBA draft. He went on to play for the Pacers, Phoenix Suns, Portland Trail Blazers, Miami Heat and Cleveland Cavaliers. He won three NBA championships, two with the Heat and one with the Cavaliers. Jones was never on an NBA team with a losing record and only missed the playoffs once—with the Trail Blazers in 2007–08. He finished third in the NBA in three-point percentage during the 2007–08 season and won the Three-Point Contest in 2011. His nickname is "Champ".
## High school career
Jones was a four-year letterman in basketball at American High School in Hialeah, Florida. He averaged 25.2 points, 12 rebounds, 2.5 assists, two steals, and six blocks per game his senior season, earning First-team All-State and First-team All-Dade honors. He was also named the Class 6A Player of the Year and the Miami Herald Boys' Basketball Player of the Year. Jones was the team MVP his junior and senior years and once blocked 16 shots in one game.
## College career
Jones played college basketball for the Miami Hurricanes of the University of Miami from 1999 to 2003. During his time at Miami, he majored in finance, was a member of the National Honor Society, and had a 3.41 grade point average. He played in 33 games, averaging 3.9 points and 1.9 rebounds per game, during his freshman year in 1999. He started all 29 games for the Hurricanes his sophomore year, averaging 11.9 points, 5.9 rebounds, 1.2 assists, 1.2 steals and 1.6 blocks per game. Jones shot a team-best 41-of-87 on three-pointers for a .471 percentage. He started all 31 games for the team his junior season, averaging 12.8 points, 6.3 rebounds, 1.5 assists, 2.4 blocks and 1.3 steals, garnering Third-team All-Big East and 2002 Verizon Academic All-District III accolades. He started all 28 games his senior year, averaging 16.9 points, 6.0 rebounds, 1.8 assists, 1.6 steals and 1.8 blocks, earning Honorable Mention All-Big East and Second-team Verizon Academic All-American recognition. Jones led the team in blocks and rebounds as a senior.
He played in 122 games, starting 89, during college and finished his career averaging 11.1 points, 5.0 rebounds, 1.2 assists, 1.1 steals and 1.6 blocks per game. He started 89 consecutive games from the 2000–01 season to the 2002–03 season. He also earned Big East All-Academic honors all four seasons and was the Hurricanes' first Verizon Academic All-American selection. He was inducted into the University of Miami Sports Hall of Fame in 2014.
## Professional career
### Indiana Pacers (2003–2005)
The 6'8" (203 cm), 215 lb (98 kg) small forward was picked 49th by the Indiana Pacers in the 2003 NBA draft. He played in only 26 total minutes over six games during his rookie campaign in 2003–04 and missed 66 games due to a variety of injuries. He was also a DNP-CD (did not play – coach's decision) in ten games.
Jones played in 75 games, starting 24, for the Pacers during the 2004–05 season, averaging 4.9 points per game while also ranking 25th in the NBA and leading the team in three-point conversion percentage (39.8%). He saw increased playing time during the season as a result of a brawl between the Pacers and Detroit Pistons on November 19, 2004, that caused small forward Ron Artest to be suspended for the remainder of the season and shooting guard Stephen Jackson to be suspended 30 games. Jones was a DNP-CD in seven games. He scored a career-high 27 points on 10-of-14 shooting while going 6-of 9-from three-point range on November 28, 2004, against the Seattle SuperSonics.
### Phoenix Suns (2005–2007)
Jones was traded by the Pacers to the Phoenix Suns on August 25, 2005, in exchange for a 2008 second-round draft pick. He played in 75 games, starting 24, for the Suns during the 2005–06 season, averaging 9.3 points, 3.4 rebounds and 23.6 minutes per game. He missed seven games due to a variety of injuries. Jones's turnover percentage of 5.23 turnovers committed per 100 plays during the 2005–06 season set an NBA record for lowest single-season turnover percentage. It was fourth place on the all-time list as of the end of the 2015–16 season. The NBA did not start recording individual turnovers until the 1977–78 season.
He appeared in 76 games, with 7 starts, for the team during the 2006–07 season, averaging 6.4 points, 2.3 rebounds and 18.1 minutes a game. He was a DNP-CD six times. Jones made 45 consecutive free throws from January 5 to March 29, the longest consecutive free throws made streak in the NBA during the 2006–07 season.
### Portland Trail Blazers (2007–2008)
In June 2007, Jones was traded to the Portland Trail Blazers along with the draft rights to Rudy Fernandez, the 24th pick in the 2007 NBA draft, in exchange for cash considerations. In late January 2008, Jones was leading the NBA in three-point percentage with a percentage slightly over 50%. He missed 12 games from February 4 to 27 with a knee injury. He had also missed 12 games in November 2007 due to knee problems, spending five games on the inactive list and seven as a DNP-CD. Jones finished the 2007–08 season third in the league in three-point percentage with a percentage of 44.4%. Despite his good shooting for the year, he was not selected to participate in the Three-Point Contest during the 2008 NBA All-Star Game, much to the chagrin of Trail Blazers fans. He played in 58 games, starting 3, during the season while averaging 8.0 points, 2.8 rebounds and 22.0 minutes per game. The Trail Blazers finished the 2007–08 season with a 41–41 record. That season was the only time in Jones's NBA career that he missed the playoffs. He was also never on a team with a losing record. On June 26, 2008, he used his player option to opt out of his contract with the Trail Blazers, making him a free agent for the off-season.
### Miami Heat (2008–2014)
On July 9, 2008, Jones signed a contract with his hometown team, the Miami Heat. He earned \$4 million in his first year of a potential five-year contract, worth up to \$23.2 million. The first two years were guaranteed, while the final three were options held by both the Heat and Jones. He played in forty games, starting one, for the Heat during the 2008–09 season, averaging 4.2 points, 1.6 rebounds and 15.8 minutes per game. Jones missed 36 games due to right wrist injures and was a DNP-CD six games. He started all seven of the team's playoff games that season. He completed two four-point plays in a span of eleven seconds in a playoff loss to the Atlanta Hawks on April 29, 2009.
He appeared in 36 games, with 6 starts, for the team during the 2009–10 season while averaging 4.1 points, 1.3 rebounds and 14.0 minutes a game. He missed one game due to an intestinal virus and was a DNP-CD 35 times. Jones was also healthy but on the inactive list ten games.
On June 29, 2010, he was released to clear salary cap space worth \$400,000. On July 19, 2010, Jones was re-signed by the Heat for the league minimum. He played in 81 games, starting 8, for the team during the 2010–11 season, averaging 5.9 points, 2.0 rebounds and 19.1 minutes per game. He missed one game as a DNP-CD. Jones led the Heat in games played, three-point field goals made with 123, three-point field goals attempted with 287 and charges drawn with 29. He finished seventh in the NBA in three-point field goal percentage with a .429 shooting percentage. He also had the lowest turnover percentage in the NBA during the 2010–11 season, committing an average of 5.27 turnovers per 100 plays. This was the second best single-season turnover percentage in NBA history, behind Jones's own record of 5.23 from the 2005–06 season. His 5.27 percentage is now fifth place while his 5.23 percentage is fourth place on the all-time list as of the end of the 2015–16 season. On February 19, 2011, he won the Three-Point Contest in Los Angeles at Staples Center. Jones scored a playoff career-high 25 points on 5-of-7 shooting from three-point range and 10-of-10 free throw shooting on May 1, 2011, against the Boston Celtics. The Heat went on to make the 2011 NBA Finals where they lost to the Dallas Mavericks, 4 games to 2.
On December 9, 2011, he re-signed with the Heat to a three-year, \$4.5 million contract. In the 2011–12 season, an impressive playoff run by the Heat culminated in his first NBA championship, and the franchise's second as they defeated the Oklahoma City Thunder in the 2012 NBA Finals, 4 games to 1. Jones played in 51 games, starting 10, for the Heat during the season while averaging 3.6 points, 1.0 rebounds and 13.1 minutes per game. He was a DNP-CD 15 times. He finished third place in the 2012 Three-Point Shootout in Orlando.
Jones played in 38 games for the Heat during the 2012–13 season while averaging 1.6 points, 0.6 rebounds and 5.8 minutes. He was a DNP-CD for 43 games and missed another game due to personal reasons. He won his second championship when the Heat defeated the San Antonio Spurs in seven games. In 2013–14, the Heat made the 2014 NBA Finals as they recorded their fourth straight Finals appearance. Miami faced the Spurs again but this time, the Heat went on to lose in five games. He played in 20 games, starting 6, during the season, averaging 4.9 points, 1.2 rebounds and 11.8 minutes. He was on the inactive list for 21 games.
### Cleveland Cavaliers (2014–2017)
On August 5, 2014, Jones signed with the Cleveland Cavaliers. LeBron James, Jones's teammate with the Heat, had asked him to come join him in Cleveland. The Cavaliers won the Eastern Conference championship and advanced to the NBA Finals. Facing the Golden State Warriors, the Cavaliers lost the series in six games. Jones played in 57 games, starting 2, for the Cavaliers during the 2014–15 season while averaging 4.4 points, 1.1 rebounds and 11.7 minutes a game. He was a DNP-CD for 25 games.
On July 25, 2015, Jones re-signed with the Cavaliers. In a December 2015 article on ESPN.com by Dave McMenamin, LeBron James said "He's my favorite player of all time" and "He's the greatest teammate I've ever had" in regards to Jones. The Cavaliers won the Eastern Conference championship for the second year in a row and went on to win the 2016 NBA championship, becoming the first team in history to win the championship after being down 3–1 in the Finals, as Jones won his third title in five years. He played in 48 games during the 2015–16 season while averaging 3.7 points, 1.0 rebounds and 9.6 minutes a game. He was a DNP-CD for 34 games. He was also one of twelve players nominated for the Twyman–Stokes Teammate of the Year Award, finishing tenth place in the voting. On June 26, 2016, Cavaliers teammate Kevin Love called Jones "the best teammate I've ever had".
On August 3, 2016, Jones re-signed with the Cavaliers. On January 19, 2017, he started in place of an injured Kevin Love and scored 14 points in a 118–103 win over the Phoenix Suns. It was his first start since April 2, 2015. The Cavaliers won the Eastern Conference championship for the third year in a row, as Jones and teammate LeBron James joined Bill Russell, Bob Cousy, K. C. Jones, Sam Jones, Tom Heinsohn, and Frank Ramsey (all from the Boston Celtics) as the only players in NBA history to reach seven consecutive NBA Finals. Facing the Golden State Warriors in the Finals for the third straight year, the Cavaliers lost the series in five games. Jones played in 48 games, starting 2, for the Cavaliers during the 2016–17 season while averaging 2.8 points, 0.8 rebounds and 7.9 minutes a game.
Jones' final NBA game ever was Game 4 of that 2017 Finals series against the Warriors on June 9, 2017 where Cleveland would win the game 137–116 with Jones playing only the last 2 minutes of the game and recording no stats.
## Executive career
### Phoenix Suns (2017–present)
On July 19, 2017, Jones was named the Director of Player Personnel for the Phoenix Suns, effectively ending his 14-year NBA career. On October 8, 2018, Jones was named an interim general manager for the Phoenix Suns alongside assistant general manager Trevor Bukstein after firing the previous general manager, Ryan McDonough. During the 2018–19 season, he orchestrated two trades for the Suns to acquire more veteran players to help improve the team's play: trading Trevor Ariza for Kelly Oubre Jr. in December 2018 and Ryan Anderson for Tyler Johnson in February 2019. On April 11, 2019, the Suns removed the interim tag from Jones' title, naming him the team's general manager, with Bukstein remaining as assistant general manager.
During the 2019 off-season, Jones orchestrated changes that appeared questionable on the surface, such as firing head coach Igor Kokoškov after only one season (albeit hiring Monty Williams soon afterward), executing multiple trades in the 2019 NBA draft, including T. J. Warren to the Indiana Pacers for cash considerations, trading down from the 6th pick to pick up both Dario Šarić and the 11th draft pick (Cameron Johnson) from the Minnesota Timberwolves, and trading a late 2020 first round pick to the Boston Celtics for Aron Baynes and the 24th pick (Ty Jerome), and even picking up Ricky Rubio in free agency via trading multiple picks and players with the Memphis Grizzlies to free up more salary. Despite the mixed reception, Jones' moves would help the Suns achieve their best record in five seasons, before the COVID-19 pandemic hit U.S. shores in 2020, with a 26–39 record before the season was suspended. When the season resumed in the 2020 NBA Bubble, the Suns managed to finish with an 8–0 run in Orlando, with their only significant roster change adding G League guard Cameron Payne.
With the surprising improvement in the bubble, Jones orchestrated another major trade in November 2020, this time trading Kelly Oubre Jr., Ricky Rubio, Ty Jerome, Jalen Lecque, and a protected 2022 first-round pick to the Oklahoma City Thunder for Abdel Nader and All-Star point guard Chris Paul. Jones looked to bolster team depth in the delayed 2020 NBA draft period by selecting Jalen Smith at pick 10 and picking up Jae Crowder, E'Twaun Moore, Langston Galloway, and Damian Jones in the shortened 2020 free agency period in the hopes of ending their decade-long playoff drought. The Suns wound up making the 2021 NBA playoffs for the first time since 2010. Because of the Suns' dramatic improvement, Jones earned the 2020–21 NBA Executive of the Year Award. The Suns would reach the 2021 NBA Finals, but lost the series in 6 games to the Milwaukee Bucks.
After the following season provided the franchise their best regular season record (which included signings of players like JaVale McGee and Bismack Biyombo to improve their center depth), Jones was promoted from general manager to President of Basketball Operations and general manager (through acting team governor Sam Garvin) on November 28, 2022.
## Personal life
Jones is a Christian. He and his wife Destiny have a son named James Dylan Jones and two daughters named Jadynn Alyssa Jones and Jodie Marissa Jones. Jones's nicknames include "Champ", "J. J." and "JHoops" (pronounced Joops). The James Jones Legacy Foundation was founded in 2009. He is also a managing partner of the consulting firm Jones and Jones Strategic Consulting. Jones previously owned an urban redevelopment company called James Jones Ventures. He began hosting an annual basketball camp called JHoops Live in 2009. He also runs a camp called Crew 22 Training Camp. Jones appeared on the television show Kitchen Nightmares in 2010.
Jones's uncle, Ricky Gutiérrez, played in Major League Baseball. Jones's aunt, Lisa Jones played basketball at the University of Miami from 1988 to 1990. His cousin Mionsha Gay also played at the University of Miami. His aunt, Hope Jones, and his cousin, Shelnita Jackson, played basketball at Barry University. Jones's father Jay Lee played at Southern University while his uncle Mitchell Lee played at the University of Minnesota and his cousin Shawn Brailsford played at Marshall University.
Jones was previously the secretary-treasurer of the NBA Players Association (NBPA).
## Awards and honors
As player
- 3× NBA champion – 2011–12, 2012–13, 2015–16
- NBA Three-Point Contest champion – 2010–11
- All-Big East Conference Third-team – 2001–02
- 4× Big East All-Academic Team – 1999–2000, 2000–01, 2001–02, 2002–03
- Honorable Mention All-Big East Conference Team – 2002–03
- Verizon Academic All-American – 2002–03
- Verizon Academic All-District III selection – 2001–02
- Inducted into University of Miami Sports Hall of Fame – 2014
- Class 6A Player of the Year in Florida – 1998–99
- First-team All-State Selection – 1998–99
- First-team All-Dade County selection – 1998–99
- Miami Herald Boys' Basketball Player of the Year – 1998–99
As executive
- 2020–21 NBA Executive of the Year
## NBA career statistics
### Regular season
\|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|2003–04 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Indiana \| 6 \|\| 0 \|\| 4.3 \|\| .222 \|\| .250 \|\| 1.000 \|\| .3 \|\| .0 \|\| .2 \|\| .0 \|\| 1.2 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|2004–05 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Indiana \| 75 \|\| 24 \|\|17.7\|\| .396 \|\| .398 \|\| .855 \|\| 2.3 \|\| .8 \|\| .4 \|\| .4 \|\| 4.9 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|2005–06 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Phoenix \| 75 \|\| 24 \|\| 23.6 \|\| .418 \|\| .386 \|\| .851 \|\| 3.4 \|\| .8 \|\| .5 \|\| .7 \|\| 9.3 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|2006–07 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Phoenix \| 76 \|\| 7 \|\| 18.1 \|\| .368 \|\| .378 \|\| .877 \|\| 2.3 \|\| .6 \|\| .4 \|\| .6 \|\| 6.4 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|2007–08 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Portland \| 58 \|\| 3 \|\| 22.0 \|\| .437 \|\| .444 \|\| .878 \|\| 2.8 \|\| .6 \|\| .4 \|\| .3 \|\| 8.0 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|2008–09 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Miami \| 40 \|\| 1 \|\| 15.8 \|\| .369 \|\| .344 \|\| .839 \|\| 1.6 \|\| .5 \|\| .3 \|\| .4 \|\| 4.2 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|2009–10 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Miami \| 36 \|\| 6 \|\| 14.0 \|\| .361 \|\| .411 \|\| .821 \|\| 1.3 \|\| .5 \|\| .3 \|\| .1 \|\| 4.1 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|2010–11 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Miami \| 81 \|\| 8 \|\| 19.1 \|\| .422 \|\| .429 \|\| .833 \|\| 2.0 \|\| .5 \|\| .4 \|\| .2 \|\| 5.9 \|- \| style="text-align:left; background:#afe6ba;"\|2011–12 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Miami \| 51 \|\| 10 \|\| 13.1 \|\| .380 \|\| .404 \|\| .833 \|\| 1.0 \|\| .4 \|\| .3 \|\| .2 \|\| 3.6 \|- \| style="text-align:left; background:#afe6ba;"\|2012–13 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Miami \| 38 \|\| 0 \|\| 5.8 \|\| .344 \|\| .302 \|\| .500 \|\| .6 \|\| .3 \|\| .1 \|\| .2 \|\| 1.6 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|2013–14 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Miami \| 20 \|\| 6 \|\| 11.8 \|\| .456 \|\| .519 \|\| .636 \|\| 1.2 \|\| .5 \|\| .2 \|\| .2 \|\| 4.9 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|2014–15 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Cleveland \| 57 \|\| 2 \|\| 11.7 \|\| .368 \|\| .360 \|\| .848 \|\| 1.1 \|\| .4 \|\| .2 \|\| .1 \|\| 4.4 \|- \| style="text-align:left; background:#afe6ba;"\|2015–16 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Cleveland \| 48 \|\| 0 \|\| 9.6 \|\| .408 \|\| .394 \|\| .808 \|\| 1.0 \|\| .3 \|\| .2 \|\| .2 \|\| 3.7 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|2016–17 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Cleveland \| 48 \|\| 2 \|\| 7.9 \|\| .478 \|\| .470 \|\| .650 \|\| .8 \|\| .3 \|\| .1 \|\| .2 \|\| 2.8 \|- class="sortbottom" \| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"\|Career \| 709 \|\| 93 \|\| 15.7 \|\| .401 \|\| .401 \|\| .840 \|\| 1.8 \|\| 0.5 \|\| 0.3 \|\| 0.3 \|\| 5.2
### Playoffs
\|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|2005 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Indiana \| 13 \|\| 0 \|\| 16.5 \|\| .413 \|\| .400 \|\| .444 \|\| 2.1 \|\| .8 \|\| .5 \|\| .5 \|\| 4.0 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|2006 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Phoenix \| 20 \|\| 6 \|\| 17.7 \|\| .341 \|\| .308 \|\| .846 \|\| 3.6 \|\| .3 \|\| .3 \|\| .9 \|\| 4.3 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|2007 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Phoenix \| 11 \|\| 6 \|\| 15.5 \|\| .528 \|\| .444 \|\| .818 \|\| 1.4 \|\| .3 \|\| .2 \|\| .2 \|\| 5.0 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|2009 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Miami \| 7 \|\| 7 \|\| 33.6 \|\| .531 \|\| .500 \|\| .917 \|\| 2.3 \|\| .7 \|\| .4 \|\| .1 \|\| 9.6 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|2010 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Miami \| 1 \|\| 0 \|\| 9.0 \|\| .000 \|\| .000 \|\| 1.000 \|\| .0 \|\| .0 \|\| .0 \|\| .0 \|\| 2.0 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|2011 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Miami \| 12 \|\| 0 \|\| 22.7 \|\| .471 \|\| .459 \|\| 1.000 \|\| 2.5 \|\| .2 \|\| .5 \|\| .2 \|\| 6.5 \|- \| style="text-align:left; background:#afe6ba;"\|2012 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Miami \| 20 \|\| 0 \|\| 8.7 \|\| .372 \|\| .300 \|\| 1.000 \|\| 1.0 \|\| .1 \|\| .2 \|\| .1 \|\| 2.6 \|- \| style="text-align:left; background:#afe6ba;"\|2013 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Miami \| 9 \|\| 0 \|\| 3.7 \|\| .429 \|\| .750 \|\| \|\| .3 \|\| .0 \|\| .0 \|\| .1 \|\| 1.0 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|2014 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Miami \| 15 \|\| 0 \|\| 8.4 \|\| .450 \|\| .469 \|\| .667 \|\| .7 \|\| .3 \|\| .2 \|\| .1 \|\| 3.5 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|2015 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Cleveland \| 20 \|\| 0 \|\| 15.6 \|\| .347 \|\| .344 \|\| .929 \|\| 1.5 \|\| .5 \|\| .4 \|\| .2 \|\| 4.4 \|- \| style="text-align:left; background:#afe6ba;"\|2016 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Cleveland \| 12 \|\| 0 \|\| 4.6 \|\| .200 \|\| .143 \|\| .250 \|\| .3 \|\| .3 \|\| .0 \|\| .0 \|\| .5 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|2017 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Cleveland \| 8 \|\| 0 \|\| 3.7 \|\| .200 \|\| .000 \|\| \|\| .5 \|\| .0 \|\| .0 \|\| .0 \|\| .3 \|- class="sortbottom" \| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"\|Career \| 148 \|\| 19 \|\| 13.4 \|\| .404 \|\| .387 \|\| .845 \|\| 1.6 \|\| .3 \|\| .3 \|\| .3 \|\| 3.7
## See also
|
57,853,831 |
Margaret McFarland
| 1,173,873,316 |
American psychologist
|
[
"1905 births",
"1988 deaths",
"20th-century American psychologists",
"20th-century American women",
"American women academics",
"American women psychologists",
"Child psychologists",
"Columbia Medical School faculty",
"Columbia University alumni",
"Goucher College alumni",
"Mount Holyoke College faculty",
"People from Oakdale, Pennsylvania",
"University of Pittsburgh faculty"
] |
Margaret Beall McFarland (July 3, 1905 – September 12, 1988) was an American child psychologist and a consultant to the television show Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. She was the co-founder and director of the Arsenal Family and Children's Center in Pittsburgh, and much of her work focused on the meaning of the interactions between mothers and children. Fred Rogers referred to McFarland as his major professional influence.
A graduate of Goucher College and Columbia University, McFarland taught and conducted research with children in the United States and Australia. After earning a doctorate in childhood development, she taught at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts before returning to Pittsburgh. In 1953, with pediatrician Benjamin Spock and psychologist Erik Erikson, she co-founded the Arsenal Center as a nursery school and counseling center for children and their families. Professionals from various fields came to the center to learn about child development. McFarland remained the center's director until 1971. McFarland and Spock also established a child development department at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
McFarland met Fred Rogers in the 1950s when she agreed to supervise his work with a child for a seminary counseling course, and she became a child development consultant to Mister Rogers' Neighborhood in 1965. She met with Rogers on a nearly weekly basis and reviewed the content and wording of his scripts. She often influenced the presentation of material on the show, and McFarland and Rogers continued to meet until her death from myelofibrosis at the age of 83.
## Early life
McFarland, the youngest of three daughters, was born to Robert and Gertrude (Messer) McFarland on July 3, 1905, in Oakdale, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh. She was of Scottish and French-German ancestry. McFarland said she adored her father, but she knew that her sister, the middle child named Mary, was his favorite daughter. Her father died when she was five years old. McFarland remained unmarried and childless throughout her life, and she attributed that to her father's death. "And all of the subsequent phases of what it means to be loved by a male and loving to a male were lost to me. I wanted a kind of fathering," she said.
While her relationship with her father left her unfulfilled, McFarland described her mother as "natively invested in motherhood ... She gave me the sense the baby or the young child has great worth." Although she became interested in child development through babysitting jobs, she said that her mother's loving example significantly shaped her path to working with children as a career. "In the end I really wanted to be like my mother," she said. McFarland attended Goucher College, completing an undergraduate degree in 1927.
## Career
### Academia and the Arsenal Center
After McFarland earned a master's degree at Columbia University in 1928, she spent a few years teaching and conducting personality research at the Winchester Thurston School in Pittsburgh and the Hubbard Woods Nursery School in Winnetka, Illinois. When McFarland taught at Hubbard Woods, she worked with the children enrolled in a study by Rose Haas Alschuler and La Berta Weiss Hattwick that resulted in their publication known as Painting and personality: A study of young children.
McFarland returned to Columbia to complete a Ph.D. in childhood development in 1938. She then went to Melbourne, where she was principal at the Kindergarten Training College. Returning to the United States in 1941, she taught at Mount Holyoke College as associate professor of Psychology and ran its children's school. During this time McFarland realized the importance of two concepts that defined much of her later work – the role of the woman in child development and the utility of creative play in childhood.
In 1951, McFarland returned to Pittsburgh and became an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh. She co-founded the Arsenal Family and Children's Center with Benjamin Spock and Erik Erikson two years later. The center's goal was to teach physicians and other professionals about childhood development. Erikson spent one day a week at the center. "He spoke to me in a different way than any of the psychoanalytic literature," McFarland said of Erikson. Erikson was similarly complimentary of McFarland, saying that she "knew more than anyone in this world about families with young children." McFarland was the director of the Arsenal Center through 1971.
With Spock, McFarland co-founded the Department of Child Development and Child Care at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. That department later moved to the university's School of Social Work. McFarland was also a member of the Pittsburgh Psychoanalytic Center. John Hitchcock, former director of the center, said that though McFarland was not a psychoanalyst, she was invited to teach there because she could impart a deep understanding of the nuances of parent-child interactions. She did not publish much academic literature; her primary impacts came from her direct work with families at the Arsenal Center and from her mentoring of students.
Through her work in psychology and education, McFarland developed specific ideas about the best ways to teach children. She believed that a teacher did not so much teach a specific attitude to a student, but that the child "caught" a certain attitude toward a subject based on the teacher's enthusiasm and commitment to the material. Once, when a sculptor came to visit young children at the Arsenal Center, she instructed him not to teach the children how to sculpt, but instead to just "love clay in front of the children". Douglas Robert Nowicki, a clinical child psychologist and a priest in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, said that McFarland considered love to be the essential characteristic of a successful teacher.
### Mister Rogers' Neighborhood
In the 1950s, Rogers began co-hosting and producing The Children's Corner, a television show filmed in Pittsburgh, with Josie Carey. On that show, Rogers was a puppeteer, so he did not appear on camera himself. During this time, he enrolled at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary with the intent of utilizing religious training to further his television outreach to children. He was taking a seminary course in counseling, and McFarland supervised his counseling of a child as part of that class. After Rogers's course ended, McFarland continued to meet with him each week. She told him that he would be more effective on a show in which he appeared on camera himself. This way, McFarland said, Rogers would be able to help children to draw distinctions between reality and fantasy.
In 1966, Rogers began working on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, and McFarland became the primary consultant to the show. She reviewed the show's scripts until her death, often suggesting improvements on what Rogers had created. She also consulted on Rogers's First Experience book series and his video series on parenting. Rogers recalled McFarland saying that "the basis of creativity was the desire to bridge the gap between what is and what might be."
McFarland used her background in child psychology to influence the presentation of the material on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. For example, Rogers made his entrance at the beginning of each episode from screen left to screen right because McFarland said that mirrored the way a child's eyes moved when reading. Once, Rogers was preparing for an episode that would teach children about fire, and McFarland told him that children's fire-related dreams were closely related to their thoughts about controlling their body fluids. The episode started with a segment on common types of water flow, such as water filling a bathtub, and then there was a small, brief make-believe fire. When a few parents called the show and said that their children were experiencing some urinary difficulties, Rogers felt that McFarland had given him insight into the nature of the issue.
Rogers said that McFarland was "so other-directed that when you were in her presence, you felt you were important." He referred to McFarland as "the most major influence in my professional life." Rogers's book "Mister Rogers Talks to Parents" is dedicated to McFarland. The spin-off series, Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, includes a character named for her.
## Later life and legacy
McFarland was diagnosed with a bone marrow disorder called myelofibrosis in the 1970s, and by 1987 she was receiving blood transfusions. Despite having difficulties with her mobility by that time, she was still meeting with Rogers weekly and holding discussions in her home with other former students and mental health professionals. With two colleagues, she was also analyzing videos for a research study on ego development in infancy and early childhood.
During a 1987 interview, McFarland was asked about the biggest issue for child development at that time, and she said it was the trend toward children being raised largely in group settings such as daycare centers. McFarland believed that there was no comparable replacement for a mother in the child-rearing process, and she was curious to learn more about the negative and positive results of such an upbringing. Despite her strong feelings about the contributions of women to the family unit, she said she was not a feminist. She felt that women were more introspective than men, leading to opportunities for them to be more creative, and she said that groups like the National Organization for Women did not recognize the uniqueness of women in this regard.
On September 12, 1988, McFarland died at County Meadows Nursing Home in South Fayette Township. After her death, a number of people, including early art therapist Judith A. Rubin and language specialist Ethel Tittnich, described her influence on them. Rubin characterized McFarland as a "creative catalyst" and "my professional mother". She contributed to a Festschrift in recognition of McFarland's work. In the epigraph of a book on children's language, Tittnich compared McFarland to a teacher described in Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet, saying that McFarland led students "to the threshold of [their] own minds".
In 2015, the Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children's Media at Saint Vincent College established a project to analyze recorded conversations between McFarland and Rogers. The project's goal is to characterize the impact of these discussions on the development of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.
## See also
- Won't You Be My Neighbor?, 2018 documentary on Rogers which mentions McFarland's influence
|
5,828,330 |
Royal Rumble (1995)
| 1,173,030,319 |
World Wrestling Federation pay-per-view event
|
[
"1995 WWF pay-per-view events",
"1995 in Florida",
"January 1995 events in the United States",
"Professional wrestling shows in the Tampa Bay area",
"Royal Rumble"
] |
The 1995 Royal Rumble was the eighth annual Royal Rumble professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event produced by the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE). It took place on January 22, 1995, in the USF Sun Dome located in Tampa, Florida. The event featured five matches on its card. As has been customary since 1993, the Royal Rumble match winner received a world championship match at that year's WrestleMania. For the 1995 event, the winner received a match for the WWF World Heavyweight Championship at WrestleMania XI.
The main event was the 1995 Royal Rumble match, which Shawn Michaels won after entering first and outlasting the 29 other wrestlers. This was the first time that the first entrant won the match. The event also featured a match for the WWF World Heavyweight Championship, where Diesel defended the title against Bret Hart. The match was stopped when several other wrestlers interfered and the referee lost control of the match. Two other title matches took place; Jeff Jarrett won the WWF Intercontinental Championship from Razor Ramon, and The 1–2–3 Kid and Bob Holly won the final match in a tournament that determined the new WWF Tag Team Champions.
Several storylines from Royal Rumble 1995 were carried over to WrestleMania XI, the WWF's next pay-per-view. Bam Bam Bigelow attacked National Football League Hall of Famer Lawrence Taylor, who was sitting in the crowd; this set up a match between the two at WrestleMania. Pamela Anderson was at ringside and was supposed to accompany the winner of the Royal Rumble match to his WWF World Heavyweight Championship match at WrestleMania. Although Shawn Michaels won the match, Anderson came to the ring at WrestleMania with Diesel. The Undertaker's feud with Ted DiBiase's Million Dollar Corporation also escalated, as DiBiase's men stole the urn that was said to give The Undertaker his power. Jarrett and Ramon continued to feud for several months, and Bret Hart targeted Bob Backlund because of Backlund's interference in the WWF World Heavyweight Championship match.
## Production
### Background
The Royal Rumble is an annual gimmick pay-per-view (PPV), produced every January by the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE) since 1988. It is one of the promotion's original four pay-per-views, along with WrestleMania, SummerSlam, and Survivor Series, which were dubbed the "Big Four", and was considered one of the "Big Five" PPVs, along with King of the Ring. It is named after the Royal Rumble match, a modified battle royal in which the participants enter at timed intervals instead of all beginning in the ring at the same time. The match generally features 30 wrestlers and the winner traditionally earns a world championship match at that year's WrestleMania. For 1995, the winner earned a match for the WWF World Heavyweight Championship at WrestleMania XI. The 1995 event was the eighth event in the Royal Rumble chronology and was scheduled to be held on January 22, 1995, in the USF Sun Dome located in Tampa, Florida.
### Storylines
The card consisted of five matches. The matches resulted from scripted storylines, where wrestlers portrayed heroes, villains, or less distinguishable characters to build tension and culminated in a wrestling match or series of matches. Results were predetermined by WWF's writers, with storylines produced on their weekly television show, Raw.
The storyline behind the WWF World Heavyweight Championship match began in 1994, when Bret Hart was feuding with his brother Owen. After Owen was unable to win the title, he helped Bob Backlund win the belt from Bret at Survivor Series 1994. Three days after Survivor Series, Diesel faced Backlund and won the title belt. He agreed to grant a title shot to Bret Hart, who, like Diesel, was also a fan-favorite.
Also at Survivor Series 1994, Shawn Michaels and Diesel had an argument after Michaels accidentally kicked Diesel in the face. Although the pair held the WWF Tag Team Championship together, Diesel said that he did not want to team with Michaels any longer. The title was vacated, and the WWF held a tournament to determine the new champions. During the tournament, The Smoking Gunns were forced to withdraw when Bart Gunn was injured in a rodeo accident. As a result, the 1–2–3 Kid and Bob Holly took their place. The Gunns requested that they get a title shot after the tournament when Bart had recovered. The 1–2–3 Kid and Holly advanced to the finals, as did Ted DiBiase's team of Bam Bam Bigelow and Tatanka. The match to determine the new champions was scheduled to take place at the Royal Rumble.
The Undertaker had been feuding with DiBiase's Million Dollar Corporation since his return to the WWF from an injury in August 1994. During the match between The Undertaker and Yokozuna at Survivor Series 1994, Irwin R. Schyster, one of DiBiase's wrestlers, interfered in the match by attacking The Undertaker. The feud between The Undertaker and Schyster escalated when Schyster performed a series of vignettes in which he repossessed such items as tombstones and burial plots from people he claimed had not paid their taxes before dying. During the feud, Schyster was escorted to the ring for his matches by a group of hooded druids.
The feud between Jeff Jarrett and Razor Ramon began in late 1994 when Jarrett challenged Ramon for Ramon's WWF Intercontinental Championship. They faced each other several times, but Jarrett was unable to win the belt. Jarrett, who portrayed an aspiring country music star, was accompanied to the ring by The Roadie, who often interfered in matches on Jarrett's behalf.
Although no major feuds were featured in the Royal Rumble match, Baywatch star Pamela Anderson was in attendance at ringside. It was announced that she would accompany the winner of the match during his WWF World Heavyweight Championship title shot at WrestleMania XI.
## Event
Prior to the live pay-per-view broadcast, Buck Quartermaine defeated The Brooklyn Brawler in a dark match.
In the first televised match, Razor Ramon defended his WWF Intercontinental Championship against Jeff Jarrett, who was accompanied by The Roadie. Ramon used his strength to dominate the opening of the match. Jarrett gained the momentum with a series of dropkicks and then choked Ramon with a sleeper hold. Ramon ran at Jarrett but was thrown over the top rope. He hit his knee when he landed, and The Roadie then hit Ramon from behind in the knee. Ramon was unable to return to the ring, so Jarrett was awarded the match via countout. Because the championship cannot change hands on a countout, Jarrett challenged Ramon to continue the match. Ramon agreed and nearly pinned Jarrett twice. Jarrett applied the figure four leglock to apply pressure to Ramon's injured knee. Ramon escaped the hold and attempted to perform the Razor's Edge. He collapsed under Jarrett's weight, however, and Jarrett pinned him to win the title.
The Undertaker faced Irwin R. Schyster in the next match. The Undertaker gained the advantage at the beginning and held it until Ted DiBiase called his druids to the ring. When The Undertaker attempted to attack Schyster from the top rope, the druids shook the ropes and caused him to fall. Schyster performed a clothesline to knock The Undertaker out of the ring, where he and the druids attacked The Undertaker. When the match returned to the ring, Schyster was in control. Both men got knocked down, however, and a druid snuck into the ring and rolled Schyster on top of The Undertaker for a pinfall attempt. The Undertaker kicked out and attempted to perform the Tombstone Piledriver. A druid interfered to prevent the move, but The Undertaker performed a chokeslam on Schyster to gain the pinfall victory. After the match, Ted DiBiase called out Corporation member King Kong Bundy to help Schyster attack The Undertaker and steal the urn, which was said to be the source of The Undertaker's power.
The WWF World Heavyweight Championship match was next, in which Diesel defended the title against Bret Hart. Diesel began the match by clotheslining Hart, but Hart gained the advantage by focusing on injuring Diesel's knee. He performed the figure four leglock twice before attacking Diesel outside the ring. Diesel regained the advantage by using his size and strength to throw Hart and perform power moves to wear him down. Hart tied Diesel's legs to the ring post with a piece of tape and kicked him repeatedly. Diesel recovered and performed the Jackknife power bomb on Hart. Before the referee could count the pinfall, Shawn Michaels ran to the ring and attacked Diesel. The referee ordered the match to continue, and the match went back and forth until Hart used the Sharpshooter submission hold to place pressure on Diesel's injured leg. Owen Hart interfered by attacking Bret, but the match was ordered to continue. Bret Hart and Diesel brawled until Bret rolled Diesel up for a pinfall. The referee was knocked unconscious, and Michaels, Jarrett, and The Roadie came to the ring to attack Diesel. Meanwhile, Owen Hart and Bob Backlund attacked Bret Hart. Because the referee could not control the match, it was declared a draw and Diesel retained his championship.
Bob Holly and the 1–2–3 Kid faced Bam Bam Bigelow and Tatanka next in the final match of the WWF Tag Team Championship tournament. Tatanka began the match by using his strength against Holly, but Holly soon turned the match around by performing a hurricanrana throw. Bigelow used his strength against his opponents, but the 1–2–3 Kid performed a hurricanrana on him as well. Bigelow regained the advantage by kicking the Kid in the back of the head and controlled the match until the Kid threw him out of the ring. Bigelow and Tatanka turned the match around again, using power moves to wear down their opponents. At one point, Bigelow held the Kid for Tatanka to attack, but Tatanka accidentally hit Bigelow instead. The match ended in a similar manner, as Tatanka knocked Bigelow off the top rope when Bigelow attempted to perform a moonsault. The 1–2–3 Kid pinned Bigelow to win the match and the WWF Tag Team Championship. After the match, the crowd heckled Bigelow. He responded by pushing retired NFL player Lawrence Taylor, who was at ring side, laughing about Bigelow's loss.
In the main event, Shawn Michaels was the first entrant in the Royal Rumble match, while Davey Boy Smith was the second participant. Every 60 seconds, another wrestler entered the match. As Owen Hart made his way to the ring, he was attacked by his brother Bret. As a result of the attack, Owen was quickly eliminated from the match when Smith, his brother-in-law, threw him out of the ring. King Kong Bundy and Mabel, the two biggest competitors in the match, fought until Mabel eliminated Bundy. Lex Luger then entered the match and eliminated Mabel. Bret Hart returned later and attacked Bob Backlund as Backlund was about to enter the match. This enabled Luger to eliminate Backlund quickly, after which Backlund and Bret continued to fight. The final four participants remaining in the ring were Michaels, Smith, Luger, and Crush. Luger attacked Crush but was eliminated by Michaels. Crush then convinced Michaels to work with him but then turned on Michaels by attacking him. Michaels scratched Crush's eyes, which enabled Smith to eliminate Crush. Michaels and Smith, the first two entrants, were the last two wrestlers remaining. Smith threw Michaels over the top rope and began to celebrate. Michaels, who had only touched the floor with one foot, was not eliminated from the match, however. He attacked Smith from behind and threw him out of the ring to become the first wrestler to win the Royal Rumble after entering first. Michaels celebrated in the ring with Pamela Anderson.
## Reception
The event was attended by 10,000 fans, which is approximately the maximum capacity of the USF Sun Dome. This attendance figure was down from the previous year's attendance of 14,500, but higher than the following year, when 9,600 people attended Royal Rumble 1996. From the ticket sales, the WWF gained \$140,000; again, this was lower than in 1994 but higher than in 1996. The pay-per-view buyrate of 1.0, however, was higher than 1994's 0.9 figure but lower than 1996's buyrate of 1.1.
Current WWE wrestler Cody Rhodes has stated that Michaels's win, in which he was the first wrestler to enter the ring in the \#1 position and win the match, is his favorite ending to a Royal Rumble match. Reviewing the event for Online Onslaught, columnist Adam Gutschmidt evaluated the event as acceptable but not exceptional. He found the Royal Rumble match to be the best part of the show, although he claimed that the WWF's switch to having wrestlers enter every 60 seconds hurt the match. He also found the inconclusive ending to the WWF World Heavyweight Championship match frustrating and rated the match between The Undertaker and Irwin R. Schyster as a "dud". The event has also been rated by customers at Amazon.com, who have given the event four and a half out of five stars. Art O'Donnell, writer of the website WrestleCrap, has inducted the 1995 Rumble match into the site's list of "the very worst in pro wrestling". He cites that most of the Royal Rumble participants' gimmicks and the lack of main event wrestlers (such as Jeff Jarrett, Scott Hall and The Undertaker) as his reasons for including the match in the list.
Royal Rumble 1995 was released on VHS in North America by Coliseum Video on March 8, 1995. It was released in the United Kingdom in VHS format on May 8, 1995. The event, packaged together with Royal Rumble 1996, was also released on DVD in the United Kingdom as part of the WWE Tagged Classics line on April 17, 2006. On October 15, 2007, WWE released the event in the United Kingdom as part of the Royal Rumble Complete Anthology DVD set.
## Aftermath
The day after Royal Rumble, the 1–2–3 Kid and Bob Holly faced The Smoking Gunns. The Gunns won the match and the WWF Tag Team Championship. By losing the belts after one day, the Kid and Holly tied what was at that time the record for the shortest tag team title reign in WWF history.
Razor Ramon faced Jeff Jarrett at WrestleMania XI in a rematch for the WWF Intercontinental Championship. To counteract The Roadie's interference, Ramon was accompanied by his friend the 1–2–3 Kid. Ramon won the match by disqualification but did not win the title. On May 19, 1995, Ramon defeated Jarrett in a ladder match to regain the championship, but Jarrett won the belt back three days later.
The Undertaker faced King Kong Bundy at WrestleMania XI. Although The Undertaker won the match, Kama, another member of DiBiase's Corporation, took possession of the urn and melted it down into a necklace. The Undertaker defeated Kama in dark matches at In Your House 1 and In Your House 2. They faced each other in a casket match at SummerSlam, which The Undertaker won to end the feud.
Bret Hart wrestled an "I Quit" match against Bob Backlund at WrestleMania. Hart won the match after the referee determined that Backlund had conceded defeat. Bret's feud with Owen was not featured again, but the two did not reunite until they formed The Hart Foundation in 1997 with brothers-in law Davey Boy Smith and Jim Neidhart.
Despite Michaels winning the right to be escorted by Pamela Anderson to his WWF World Heavyweight Championship match against Diesel at WrestleMania, Anderson came to the ring with Diesel instead. Michaels's bodyguard, Sycho Sid, attempted to interfere on Michaels's behalf but ultimately helped Diesel retain the title. Michaels became the second man to win the Rumble but lose their Wrestlemania title match. Diesel offered Michaels a rematch, and Michaels told Sid that he would not be needed in the upcoming match. Upset with Michaels, Sid attacked Michaels until Diesel came to Michaels's rescue. Diesel and Michaels became allies once again and teamed up to win the WWF Tag Team Championship later that year.
Bam Bam Bigelow challenged Lawrence Taylor to a match, which Taylor accepted after initially refusing. Diesel trained Taylor, who beat Bigelow at WrestleMania XI. Embarrassed, Bigelow challenged Diesel to a match for the WWF World Heavyweight Championship. Tatanka was at ringside for the match; he turned on Bigelow and caused him to lose. Bigelow attacked Tatanka after the match, which led to Sid, a new addition to the Corporation, to come to Tatanka's defense. This led to a tag team match at King of the Ring, where Diesel and Bigelow defeated Tatanka and Sid.
## Results
### Tournament bracket
The tournament was held between December 1994 and January 22, 1995. The tournament brackets were:
### Royal Rumble entrances and eliminations
A new entrant came out approximately every minute.
`– Winner`
|
973,104 |
Æthelbert of York
| 1,000,101,371 |
8th-century Archbishop of York
|
[
"780 deaths",
"8th-century archbishops",
"Archbishops of York",
"Year of birth unknown"
] |
Æthelbert (died 8 November 780) was an eighth-century scholar, teacher, and Archbishop of York. Related to his predecessor at York, he became a monk at an early age and was in charge of the cathedral's library and school before becoming archbishop. He taught a number of missionaries and scholars, including Alcuin, at the school. While archbishop Æthelbert rebuilt the cathedral and sent missionaries to the Continent. Æthelbert retired before his death, and during his retirement built another church in York.
## Early life
Æthelbert, was the teacher and intimate friend of Alcuin, whose poem on the saints and prelates of the Church of York, Versus de Patribus Regibus et de Sanctis et Pontificibus Ecclesiæ Eboracensis, is the principal source of information concerning Æthelbert's life. He was a kinsman of his predecessor Ecgbert, who was brother to Eadberht, King of Northumbria. Æthelbert's family placed him in a monastery as a young child, where he was a pupil in the school founded at York by Ecgbert. Ecgbert ordained Æthelbert as a priest put him in charge of the school.
Æthelbert was instrumental in forming a library at York, which was probably the largest contemporary collection of books to be found in Europe outside of Rome. Alcuin mentions several Latin and Greek classical authors, as well as the Fathers and other Christian writers that formed the 8th century canon. Æthelbert, in his search for books, travelled far, and we know that he visited Rome among other places. Alcuin's poem Versus lists 41 different authors, including some who wrote in Hebrew. He taught both the trivium as well as the quadrivium, plus how to figure the dates of church festivals and natural science.
## Archbishop
In 766 Æthelbert succeeded Ecgbert as archbishop; he was consecrated 24 April 767, the feast day of his predecessor Wilfrid. This may have been deliberate and a sign that Æthelbert wished to revive Wilfrid's ambitions for the archiepiscopal see. Æthelbert received his pallium from Pope Adrian I in 773. Alcuin was appointed head of the cathedral school after Æthelbert became archbishop. Much of Alcuin's description of Æthelbert's time as archbishop has the flavour of a panegyric, as Alcuin praised Æthelbert as a model bishop suitable for other bishops to use as a role model.
Æthelbert rebuilt York Minster, which had been destroyed by fire in 741, giving Eanbald and Alcuin the job of overseeing the construction. Alcuin wrote that it had bright windows and ceilings and that the liturgical vessels and altars were decorated with precious metals and gems. The new building also had 30 altars as well as upper apartments. Æthelbert dedicated one of the altars to Saint Paul and it was located on the location where Edwin, the first Christian king of Northumbria, was baptized.
Æthelbert sent out missionaries to the pagans of Northern Europe, among them Alubert and Liudger, who went to northern Germany. Liudger had earlier been a pupil at the school in York, and went on to become the first Bishop of Munster. Æthelbert was the recipient of letters from one of the missionaries – Lull, the Archbishop of Mainz, assuming that Lull's correspondent "Coena", who is an archbishop and who was being asked for the works of Bede, is actually Æthelbert, as most historians seem convinced of. Books were sent to the missionaries from the York library.
In 774, Æthelbert called a council which deposed Alhred the King of Northumbria and sent the ex-king north into exile with the Picts. The cause of the deposition may have been related to missionary work. The historian D. P. Kirby feels that Æthelbert was not a supporter of Alhred prior to his deposition. Alhred was replaced with Æthelred, who was replaced in 778 by Ælfwald, the son of Oswulf. Kirby sees Æthelbert's withdrawal of support as instrumental in the deposition of Æthelred, noting that Ælfwald was closely related to Æthelbert, unlike both Alhred and Æthelred. Kirby also notes that medieval chroniclers noted that Æthelbert is said to have not "spared evil kings".
## Retirement and death
Æthelbert retired some time before his death, consecrating Eanbald as his successor. The exact date this occurred is unclear. Alcuin gives a date corresponding to July 778, but it could be 777 too. Eanbald's position may have just been as an associate bishop, with Æthelbert remaining in office until his death while sharing the office with Eanbald. During his retirement, he had constructed a new church dedicated to Alma Sophia. He lived long enough to consecrate the new church, ten days before his death on 8 November.
## See also
- Accord of Winchester
|
13,692,761 |
Colbert-class ironclad
| 1,136,901,610 |
French Navy's Colbert-class ironclad
|
[
"Colbert-class ironclads",
"Ironclad classes",
"Ship classes of the French Navy"
] |
The Colbert class were a pair of armored frigates built for the French Navy during the 1870s. The ships served as the flagships of the commander and deputy commander of the Mediterranean Squadron for most of their careers. The sister ships took part in the French conquest of Tunisia, notably shelling and landing troops in Sfax in 1881. They were relegated to second-line roles in 1894–95 before being condemned in 1900. The ships were finally sold for scrap in 1909.
## Design and description
The Colbert-class ships were designed by Constructor Sabattier as improved versions of the ironclad Richelieu and were the last ships authorized by the 1857 Naval Program. They reverted to a single propeller shaft to improve their sailing qualities and to lessen the chance of the propellers being fouled by fallen rigging. As central battery ironclads, they had their armament concentrated amidships. Like most ironclads of their era, they were equipped with a plough-shaped ram. The ships' crew numbered 774 officers and men. Their metacentric height was low, a little above 0.6 meters (2 ft).
The ships measured 101.1–102.1 meters (331 ft 8 in – 335 ft 0 in) overall, with a beam of 17.57–17.7 meters (57 ft 8 in – 58 ft 1 in). They had maximum drafts of 8.11–8.58 meters (26 ft 7 in – 28 ft 2 in) and displaced 8,617–8,814 metric tons (8,481–8,675 long tons).
While the exact reason for such prolonged construction time is not known, it is believed that reduction of the French Navy's budget after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 and out-of-date work practices in French dockyards were likely causes.
### Propulsion
The Colbert class had a single Wolf three-cylinder horizontal return connecting-rod compound steam engine that drove one propeller. The engine was powered by eight oval boilers and was designed for a capacity of 4,700 metric horsepower; 3,400 kilowatts (4,600 ihp). On sea trials the engines produced 4,652–4,882 metric horsepower (3,422–3,591 kW) and the ships reached speeds of 14.18–14.47 knots (26.26–26.80 km/h; 16.32–16.65 mph). The ships carried a maximum of 620 metric tons (610 long tons) of coal which allowed them to steam for approximately 3,300 nautical miles (6,100 km; 3,800 mi) at a speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph). They were ship rigged with three masts and had a sail area around 2,100 square meters (23,000 sq ft).
### Armament
The Colberts had two 274-millimeter (10.8 in) guns mounted in barbettes on the upper deck, one gun at the forward corners of the battery, with six additional guns on the battery deck below the barbettes. The side of the upper deck were cut away to improve the ability of the barbette guns to bear fore and aft. One 240-millimeter (9.4 in) gun was mounted in the forecastle as a chase gun. The ship's secondary armament consisted of six 138-millimeter (5.4 in) guns, four forward of the battery and two aft. These latter two guns were replaced in 1878 by another 240-millimeter gun as a stern chaser. The ship also mounted four above-water 356-millimeter (14.0 in) torpedo tubes.
All of the guns could fire both solid shot and explosive shells. The 18-caliber 274-millimeter Modèle 1870 gun fired an armor-piercing, 216.0-kilogram (476.2 lb) shell while the gun itself weighed 23.21 metric tons (22.84 long tons). The gun fired its shell at a muzzle velocity of 434 m/s (1,424 ft/s) and was credited with the ability to penetrate 360 millimeters (14.3 in) of wrought iron armor at the muzzle. The armor-piercing shell of the 19-caliber 240-millmeter Modèle 1870 gun weighed 144.0 kilograms (317.5 lb) while the gun itself weighed 15.66 metric tons (15.41 long tons). It had a muzzle velocity of 495 m/s (1,624 ft/s) and could penetrate 366 millimeters (14.4 in) of wrought iron armor at the muzzle. The 138-millimeter gun was 21 calibers long and weighed 2.67 metric tons (2.63 long tons). It fired a 28.0-kilogram (61.7 lb) explosive shell that had a muzzle velocity of 466 m/s (1,529 ft/s).
At some point the ship received fourteen to eighteen 37-millimeter (1.5 in) Hotchkiss 5-barrel revolving guns. They fired a shell weighing about 500 g (1.1 lb) at a muzzle velocity of about 610 m/s (2,000 ft/s) to a range of about 3,200 meters (3,500 yd) and had a rate of fire of about 30 rounds per minute.
### Armor
The Colbert-class ships had a complete wrought iron waterline belt that was 220 millimeters (8.7 in) thick amidships and tapered to 180 millimeters (7.1 in) at the stern. It was backed by 89 millimeters (3.5 in) of wood. The sides of the battery itself were armored with 160 millimeters (6.3 in) of wrought iron, backed by 62 millimeters (2.4 in) of wood, and the ends of the battery were closed by transverse armored bulkheads 120 millimeters (4.7 in) thick, backed by 480 millimeters (18.9 in) of wood. The barbettes were unarmored, but the deck was 15 millimeters (0.59 in) thick.
## Ships
## Service
Colbert served as the flagship of the Mediterranean Squadron from 1879 to 1890 when she was placed in reserve. Trident became the flagship of the second-in-command of the squadron in 1879. The sisters bombarded the port of Sfax on 15–16 July 1881 as the French occupied Tunisia, under the command of Vice Admiral Henri Garnault.
Colbert was recommissioned in 1892 before she was disarmed and paid off in 1895. Trident was disarmed and placed in reserve in 1886–89, but was recommissioned in 1889 and resumed her role as flagship until she was again placed in reserve in 1894. The ship served as a gunnery training ship until she was condemned in 1900. She was renamed Var in 1904 and was sold for scrap five years later. Colbert was also condemned in 1900 and sold for scrap in 1909.
|
11,204,650 |
Adam Miller (footballer, born 1982)
| 1,166,103,382 |
Association football midfielder
|
[
"1982 births",
"Aldershot Town F.C. players",
"Cambridge United F.C. players",
"Canvey Island F.C. players",
"Dagenham & Redbridge F.C. players",
"Ebbsfleet United F.C. players",
"England men's semi-pro international footballers",
"English Football League players",
"English men's footballers",
"English people of Northern Ireland descent",
"Footballers from Hemel Hempstead",
"Gillingham F.C. players",
"Grays Athletic F.C. players",
"Ipswich Town F.C. players",
"Isthmian League players",
"Living people",
"Men's association football midfielders",
"Men's association footballers from Northern Ireland",
"National League (English football) players",
"Northern Ireland men's youth international footballers",
"Peterborough United F.C. players",
"Queens Park Rangers F.C. players",
"Stevenage F.C. players"
] |
Adam Edward Miller (born 19 February 1982) is a retired footballer. He began his career with Ipswich Town but failed to make the first team and played for several non-league teams before joining Queens Park Rangers, where he made his Football League debut in December 2004. He later joined Stevenage Borough, but followed manager Mark Stimson to Gillingham in late 2007. He represented the England National Game XI and played at Wembley Stadium in the final of the FA Trophy.
## Early life
Miller was born in Hemel Hempstead, but grew up in the Monkwick district of Colchester, where his family still lived as of 2004. He attended The Stanway School in the town. At the age of 16 he joined Ipswich Town as a trainee. At around the same time he was called up to represent Northern Ireland at under-18 level, qualifying by virtue of the fact that his maternal grandfather was born in the country.
## Career
### Canvey Island
Miller proved unable to break into Ipswich's first team and was permitted to undertake a trial with Southend United in August 2000. He played for the Essex club's reserve team, which led to him being offered a professional contract, but Alan Little was dismissed as the club's manager shortly afterwards, and the offer of a contract was withdrawn. In October 2000, Miller was released from his contract at Ipswich and dropped into non-league football, joining Canvey Island of the Isthmian League. In the 2000–01 season he made 36 appearances for the "Gulls" and helped the team reach the final of the FA Trophy, although he was an unused substitute for Canvey's victory over Forest Green Rovers in the final. The following season, he was a key member of the team that finished second in the Isthmian League Premier Division, playing 48 times in total.
### Grays Athletic and Aldershot Town
In August 2002, after two final games for Canvey, he moved to Grays Athletic in a swap deal which saw Jeff Minton go in the opposite direction. Although he played 26 times for Grays in the 2002–03 season, scoring six goals, he was made available for transfer at the end of the season. He joined Gravesend & Northfleet in September 2003, but played just four games for the club before moving on to Aldershot Town a month later. His form at Aldershot won him The Non-League Paper's Young Player of the Year award for the 2003–04 season, and also led to a call-up to the England National Game XI in February 2004, although it was to be his only cap for the semi-professional national team. In November 2004, Miller played for Aldershot against the reserve team of Queens Park Rangers, the team he had supported since childhood.
### Queens Park Rangers
Rangers manager Ian Holloway, who had received promising reports about Miller from scouts, was sufficiently impressed to sign the player after watching him in person. Although the exact amount was undisclosed, the transfer fee was the highest ever received by Aldershot Town. Miller made his Football League debut on 4 December 2004 in a 2–1 defeat to Nottingham Forest, and played in more than half of the team's remaining league matches that season. By late September 2005, he had made just one league appearances since the start of the season, and was sent to Peterborough United on what was originally intended to be a three-month loan. A month later he was recalled to Loftus Road, but he was not to feature again in the Rangers team.
### Stevenage
In January 2006, he had a brief trial with Oxford United but the following week he joined Stevenage Borough of the Conference National, initially on an 18-month contract.
Miller featured regularly for Stevenage, and was in the starting line-up for the 2007 FA Trophy final, the first competitive match at the new Wembley Stadium, in which Borough came back from two goals down to beat Kidderminster Harriers and win the Trophy.
### Gillingham
Stevenage manager, Mark Stimson, was appointed as the new manager of Gillingham in November 2007, and quickly moved to sign Miller and his teammate John Nutter on loan. Miller made his debut for the Kent club in the 2–1 home win over Hartlepool United on 24 November 2007, and signed a permanent contract in January 2008, set to keep him at the club until 2010. During the team's ultimately unsuccessful struggle to avoid relegation from League One in the 2007–08 season, Miller was identified as a key player and singled out for praise by Stimson, who said "If eight players play like Adam Miller we won't be in this position but if we've only got one or two we will be".
The following season, he remained a regular selection in Stimson's team, acting as captain in Barry Fuller's absence, but injury kept him out of the team at the end of the season as Gillingham clinched a place in, and ultimately promotion through, the play-offs.
In the 2009–10 season, however, he failed to hold down a regular place in the team, and in November 2009 went to Dagenham & Redbridge on a one-month loan. Miller's debut for Dagenham came on 14 November in a 1–0 away win against Accrington Stanley. He returned to Gillingham at the end of his loan spell, but Stimson announced that the club was considering paying off the remainder of the player's contract. Despite this, Miller played regularly during the remainder of the 2009–10 season.
### Cambridge United and retirement
At the end of the season he left Gillingham and joined Cambridge United. Miller played several times at the start of the 2010–11 campaign, but was seriously injured in early September against Eastbourne Borough. Two years later, he announced his retirement from football as a result of the injury. He subsequently set up a company leasing luxury cars to other footballers.
## Honours
- FA Trophy: 2001, 2007
|
30,014,712 |
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
| 1,173,744,366 |
2011 video game
|
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"D.I.C.E. Award for Game of the Year winners",
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"D.I.C.E. Award for Outstanding Achievement in Story winners",
"D.I.C.E. Award for Outstanding Technical Achievement winners",
"D.I.C.E. Award for Role-Playing Game of the Year winners",
"Fantasy video games",
"Game Developers Choice Award for Game of the Year winners",
"Games for Windows",
"Golden Joystick Award for Game of the Year winners",
"Kinect games",
"Nintendo Switch games",
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"PlayStation 3 games",
"PlayStation 4 Pro enhanced games",
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"PlayStation VR games",
"Role-playing video games",
"Single-player video games",
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The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is an action role-playing video game developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. It is the fifth main installment in The Elder Scrolls series, following The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006), and was released worldwide for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 on November 11, 2011.
The game is set 200 years after the events of Oblivion and takes place in Skyrim, the northernmost province of Tamriel, a continent on the planet Nirn. Its main story focuses on the player's character, the Dragonborn, on their quest to defeat Alduin the World-Eater, a dragon who is prophesied to destroy the world. Over the course of the game, the player completes quests and develops the character by improving skills. The game continues the open world tradition of its predecessors by allowing the player to travel anywhere in the game world at any time, and to ignore or postpone the main storyline indefinitely.
Skyrim was developed using the Creation Engine, which was rebuilt specifically for the game. The team opted for a unique and more diverse open world than Oblivion's Imperial Province of Cyrodiil, which game director and executive producer Todd Howard considered less interesting by comparison. Upon release, the game received critical acclaim, with praise for its character advancement, world design, visuals, and dual-wielding combat, and it is considered to be one of the greatest video games ever made. Criticism targeted the melee combat, dragon battles, and numerous technical issues present at launch. The game shipped over seven million units within the first week of its release and has sold over 60 million units as of June 2023.
Three downloadable content (DLC) add-ons were released: Dawnguard, Hearthfire and Dragonborn, which were bundled along with the base game into The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Legendary Edition released in June 2013. A remastered version, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Special Edition, was released for Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in October 2016, with all three DLC expansions and a graphical upgrade. A port for the Nintendo Switch was released in November 2017. A separate virtual reality-only version, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR, was released in November 2017 for PlayStation VR, and for Windows-based VR headsets in April 2018. In addition, the Special Edition was released on PlayStation 5 as part of the compilation The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Anniversary Edition in November 2021, and for Nintendo Switch in September 2022. A sequel, The Elder Scrolls VI, is currently in development.
## Gameplay
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is a fantasy action role-playing game, playable from either a first- or third-person perspective. The player may freely roam over the land of Skyrim, an open world environment consisting of wilderness expanses, dungeons, caves, cities, towns, fortresses, and villages. Players may navigate the game world more quickly by riding horses, paying for a ride from a city's stable, or utilizing a fast-travel system that allows them to move their character immediately to a previously discovered location.
At the beginning of the game, players select their character's sex and race, with 10 choices for the latter including races of humans and fantasy races such as elves and orcs. The player chooses the character's appearance; this is not necessarily permanent, however, as an in-game mechanic allows for changing the appearance later. Characters have three primary attributes: health is how much damage the character can take before dying, magicka is depleted to cast spells, and stamina allows the character to perform heavy "power attacks" or sprint. A status bar for each attribute appears onscreen when the attribute falls below its maximum value. Attributes regenerate over time and can be refilled faster by drinking potions, casting regenerative spells, or through various enchantments. Characters gain experience indirectly, via leveling up skills. The 18 skills are divided evenly among the three schools of combat, magic, and stealth. Each skill has its own experience bar, which increases when the character performs an action in-game related to the skill. For example, crafting a dagger increases the Smithing skill, and dealing damage with a bow increases the Archery skill. When a skill's experience bar fills, the skill levels up and the bar is reset. After enough skills level up, the character levels up, enabling the player to increase the maximum value of one of the three attributes and providing a perk point. Perk points can be spent immediately on a skill-specific perk or stored for later use.
Non-player characters (NPCs) populate the world; the player may engage them in conversation (potentially leading to new quests or map locations), marry predetermined ones, or engage them in lethal or nonlethal combat. As in previous games in the series, killing certain individuals can make some quests or items unobtainable. Certain NPCs essential to the narrative cannot be killed by the player, and will survive attacks of any magnitude. Committing a crime like murder or theft accrues the player a bounty if the crime is witnessed, leading to confrontations with guards. Depending on some factors, including how serious the crime was, the player can choose to go to jail, pay the guard off, persuade the witness to forget about it, declare that one is a thane of a certain hold (which leads the guard to pardon the player), 'pacify' the guard or silence witnesses through killing them.
NPCs frequently offer the player side-quests; some have parameters adjusted based on nearby unexplored areas. Some NPCs who are befriended or hired by the player may act as companions who will accompany the player and aid them in combat. A number of individuals have quests that the player needs to complete in order to gain their services as a companion. The player may choose to join factions, organized groups of NPCs—for example, the Dark Brotherhood, a band of assassins. Each of the factions has an associated quest path to progress through.
The player's effectiveness in combat relies on the use of weapons, armor, and enchantments (which may be bought, found from containers, raided from dead bodies, stolen and/or forged) and on the use of magic spells: similarly, spells may be bought, stolen and/or unlocked by finding spell tomes. Weapons, shields, and magic are assigned to each hand allowing for dual-wielding, and can be swapped out through a quick-access menu of favorite items. Some weapons and spells require both hands. Shields can be used to fend off enemy attacks and reduce incurred damage or offensively through bashing attacks. Blunt, bladed, and hacking weapons can be used in close combat and each have specific advantages and roles. Power attacks expend stamina to temporarily stun/stagger an enemy and deal increased damage. Spells have several functions, both in combat (e.g. damaging or confusing enemies, resurrecting dead bodies and conjuring other entities, restoring the player's health and/or stamina) and out (e.g. showing the way to an objective, illuminating a dark room or turning iron into silver). Bows are used for long-range combat and can be used to bash enemies in melee combat. The player can enter sneak mode to pickpocket or deliver powerful sneak attacks to unsuspecting enemies.
When exploring the game world the player may encounter wildlife. Many creatures in the wilderness, such as wolves or bears, are immediately hostile towards the player, while other species are docile and will run away. Skyrim is the first entry in The Elder Scrolls to include dragons in the game's wilderness, although dragons are frequently referenced/mentioned in several of the other games. Like other creatures, dragons are generated randomly in the world and will engage in combat with NPCs, creatures and the player. Some dragons may attack cities and towns when in their proximity. The player character can absorb the souls of dragons in order to use powerful spells called "dragon shouts" or "Thu'um". Each shout contains three words in the language spoken by dragons, and the strength of the shout will vary depending on how many words have been spoken. The words to shouts can be learned by visiting "word walls" in dungeons or around the wilderness. The words to each shout are unlocked for use by spending the absorbed souls of slain dragons. A regeneration period limits the player's use of shouts in gameplay.
## Synopsis
### Setting
Skyrim is set 200 years after the events of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, although it is not a direct sequel. Skyrim is a cold and mountainous region in the north of the continent of Tamriel. It has traditionally been divided into nine administrative sections, called "holds", each governed by a jarl from a larger town. Of these settlements, five—Solitude, Windhelm, Markarth, Riften, and Whiterun—are larger and more powerful. The landscape is littered with forts, camps, and ruins, some of which were built by the now-extinct race of the Dwemer, or Deep Elves. The Nords, one of the human races, view Skyrim as their homeland, though members of other races populate Skyrim as well.
Skyrim is a province of the much larger Empire, which comprises most of Tamriel. The Empire has recently fought a war with the elvish Aldmeri Dominion, who believe that they are racially superior to humans. While the conflict, known as the Great War, ended in a military stalemate after a hard-fought battle at the imperial capital, the greatly weakened Empire was forced to sign a humiliating peace treaty called the White-Gold Concordat.
While most of Tamriel worship a religious pantheon of eight deities, the Nords of Skyrim are accustomed to worshiping a ninth god, Talos, the deified Nord general who founded the Empire. The Dominion, led by the intolerant Thalmor sect, rejects this notion and its implication that a man became greater than any elf. They instituted a clause in the Concordat forbidding Talos worship in the Empire. Motivated in part by this condition, Ulfric Stormcloak, the jarl of Windhelm, leads a rebellion against imperial rule, with the holds divided roughly evenly between the two sides.
In the ancient past, dragons ruled over vast swaths of Tamriel. Their hegemony was overthrown when three human warriors threw the dragon ruler, Alduin, forward in time using an Elder Scroll, a powerful and mysterious artifact. When Skyrim begins, the survival of the last dragon, the sage Paarthurnax, is a secret kept by an order of monks called the Greybeards. Within their monastery atop the Throat of the World, Skyrim's highest mountain, the Greybeards dedicate their lives to the Way of the Voice, a discipline for powerful draconic spells called "shouts". Rare warriors are "Dragonborn", having the ability to learn shouts intuitively by absorbing the souls of dead dragons. Ancient prophecy maintains that Alduin will return to consume the world, and a "Last Dragonborn" will defeat him.
### Characters
The player character is Dragonborn and is typically referred to as such. The Dragonborn can be male or female, from one of ten races. Each of the ten races has, in addition to a bonus for certain skills, a power specific to their race – for example, Nords start with a bonus to several martial skills, and the ability to intimidate enemies for a short period. The player can recruit one NPC at a time as a follower, who can travel and fight with the Dragonborn; there are forty-five available followers in the base game, with thirteen more added in the downloadable expansions.
Outside of followers and Alduin, the primary antagonist, NPCs prominent to the plot of Skyrim include Balgruuf, Jarl of Whiterun, a town in the center of Skyrim; Arngeir, the leader of the Greybeards; Delphine and Esbern, two of the last members of the Blades, an order of warriors sworn to help the Dragonborn but nearly wiped out after the Great War; and Paarthurnax, the last surviving dragon and grandmaster of the Greybeards. Also notable are Ulfric and General Tullius, who command the Stormcloaks and Imperial Legion respectively. During the course of the game, the Dragonborn can join and assist either side to gain victory in the civil war. Other factions that the Dragonborn can elect to join include the Companions, a noble order of warriors; the College of Winterhold, an institution dedicated to the mystic arts and magic; the Thieves Guild, a league of burglars who have fallen on hard times; and the Dark Brotherhood, a fellowship of assassins.
### Plot
Imperial soldiers have captured Ulfric Stormcloak and are preparing to execute him, along with the player who was caught up in the skirmish and mistakenly believed to be a rebel. Before the player can be executed, Alduin appears, attacking the imperial outpost and thus rescuing the player. The player escapes and warns Jarl Balgruuf of Whiterun of the dragon attack. When another dragon attacks and is slain, the dragon's soul flows into the player character, causing the nearby guards to call them "Dragonborn". The Greybeards summon the Dragonborn to the Throat of the World, where the Dragonborn begins training in the Way of the Voice.
Delphine intercepts the Dragonborn on a training quest and arranges for the Dragonborn to infiltrate the Thalmor Embassy in Solitude, on the (mistaken) suspicion that the Thalmor are responsible for the dragon attacks. There, they learn that Esbern, a Blades lore master obsessed with the prophecy of Alduin's return, is alive and hiding in Riften. The Dragonborn rescues Esbern from Thalmor agents. Esbern leads them to an ancient Blade temple and a massive engraving depicting Alduin's prior defeat. Esbern deciphers that the ancient Nords used a special shout to remove Alduin's ability to fly and render him vulnerable.
Arngeir does not know the shout, which is called Dragonrend and violates the Way of the Voice. Arngeir sends the Dragonborn to Paarthurnax at the summit of the Throat. Paarthurnax reveals that no one living knows Dragonrend, but theorizes that the Dragonborn could learn it by looking through time at the summit, the site of Alduin's banishment. To do this, the Dragonborn retrieves the Elder Scroll used in the banishment from a massive subterranean Dwemer city. The Dragonborn returns to the summit and learns Dragonrend. Alduin attacks. The Dragonborn uses Dragonrend, and together with Paarthurnax overpowers Alduin, who flees.
The Dragonborn's allies hatch a plan to capture a dragon at Whiterun. The Dragonborn helps negotiate a truce in the civil war to prevent either side from capturing Whiterun during this delicate operation. The captured dragon, Odahviing, questions whether Alduin deserves lordship over dragons. He reveals that Alduin has gone to recover his strength in Sovngarde, the Nord afterlife, where he feeds on the souls of the dead. Since the portal to Sovngarde cannot be reached on foot, Odahviing bargains his freedom in exchange for flying the Dragonborn there. Entering Sovngarde, the Dragonborn meets the three heroes who had defeated Alduin originally. With their help, the Dragonborn kills Alduin and returns to Skyrim.
## Development
Having completed work on Oblivion in 2006, Bethesda Game Studios began work on Fallout 3. It was during this time that the team began planning the next entry in The Elder Scrolls series. From the outset, they had decided to set the new game in the land of Skyrim, incorporating dragons into the main theme of the game. Full development began following the release of Fallout 3 in 2008; the developers considered Skyrim a spiritual successor to both Fallout 3 and previous The Elder Scrolls games. The game was developed by a team of roughly 100 people composed of new talent as well as of the series' veterans. The production was supervised by Todd Howard, who has been the director of several titles released by Bethesda Softworks.
### Design
The team set the game in the province of Skyrim, designing it by hand. While similar in size to Oblivion's game world of Cyrodiil, the mountainous topography of the world inflates the game space and makes it more difficult to traverse than Cyrodiil, which was relatively flat. In designing Skyrim's world, the team opted for a different approach to what was taken with Oblivion; art director Matt Carofano considered the "epic-realism" of Skyrim's world design as a departure from Oblivion's generic representation of classic European fantasy lore. Howard expressed the team's desire to re-encapsulate the "wonder of discovery" of Morrowind's game world in Skyrim, as the return to the classic fantasy of Arena and The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall in Oblivion meant sacrificing a world with a unique culture. As a way of creating diversity, the team divided the world into nine sectors, known as holds, and attempted to make each hold feel topographically unique from one another; in addition, the team wanted to reflect the socioeconomic background of the NPCs by making some locations elaborate and wealthy while others are poorer and lower-tech.
The team sought to make each of the game's ten races feel unique; Howard considered the player's choice of race at the beginning of the game a more important decision than it had been in previous The Elder Scrolls games because the culture of Skyrim's world contains more racism. However, he reiterated that the player's choice of race does not have major game-affecting consequences as it adds "flavor" in different NPCs' dispositions towards the player, and is not meant as a way of locking players out of particular quests. Efforts to make Skyrim's world feel hand-crafted extended to the team abandoning the use of generated landscapes as they had done in Oblivion. While just one team member was charged with designing dungeons in Oblivion, Skyrim's 150 dungeons were designed by a group of eight people. Skyrim features 244 quests, over 300 points of interest with a map marker and numerous unmarked locations.
### Engine
Skyrim is powered by Bethesda's Creation Engine, forked from the Fallout 3 codebase specifically for Skyrim. After Fallout 3's release, the team devised numerous design objectives to meet for Skyrim, and according to Howard, the team "got all those done and kept going". Had the team not been able to meet their design goals with seventh generation of video game consoles, they would have waited for the next generation and released Skyrim then, but Howard felt that the technology of the time did not hold the team back at all. The Creation Engine allows for numerous improvements in graphical fidelity over Bethesda's previous efforts. For example, the draw distance renders farther than in previous The Elder Scrolls games; Howard provided an example where the player can stare at a small object such as a fork in detail, and then look up at a mountain and run to the top of it. Dynamic lighting allows shadows to be created by any structure or item in the game world, and the Creation Engine allowed for greater detail in flora production than SpeedTree had in previous Bethesda games. For example, with Bethesda's own technology, developers were able to give weight to the branches of trees, which affects how trees blow in the wind. In addition, the technology allows wind to affect the flow of water in channels such as rivers and streams. Because of the large presence of snow in Skyrim's game world, the technological upgrades were applied to weather effects and allow for dynamic snowfall upon the terrain, instead of snow that was rendered as a textural effect in previous games.
The team used Havok's Behavior toolset for character animation, which allows for a greater fluidity between the character's movements of walking, running and sprinting, and also increases the efficiency of the third-person camera option, which had been criticized in Oblivion. The toolset allows interactions between the player and NPCs to take place in real time; in Oblivion, when the player went to interact with an NPC, time would freeze and the camera would zoom in on the NPC's face. In Skyrim, NPCs can move around and make body gestures while conversing with the player. Children are present in the game, and their presence is handled similarly to Fallout 3 in that they cannot be harmed by the player in any way, since depictions of violence involving children in video games are controversial. Skyrim uses the Radiant AI artificial intelligence system that was created for Oblivion, and it has been updated to allow NPCs to "do what they want under extra parameters". The updated system allows for greater interaction between NPCs and their environments; NPCs can perform tasks such as farming, milling, and mining in the game world, and will react to each other.
### Audio
The team employed Jeremy Soule to compose the music for Skyrim, who previously worked on Morrowind and Oblivion. The game's main theme "Dragonborn" was recorded with a choir of over 30 people singing in the fictional dragon language. Creative director Todd Howard envisioned the theme for Skyrim as The Elder Scrolls theme sung by a choir of barbarians. This became a reality when the idea was passed by Soule, who recorded the 30-man choir and layered three separate recordings to create the effect of 90 voices. Bethesda's concept artist Adam Adamowicz created the Draconic language, and also developed a 34-character runic alphabet for the game. He expanded the lexicon of Draconic as needed; Bruce Nesmith explained that words were introduced to the lexicon every time that the studio "wanted to say something".
Bethesda released four audio CDs along with the game on November 11, 2011. The soundtrack to Skyrim is sold via Jeremy Soule's distributor DirectSong, and Soule autographed all physical copies ordered via DirectSong. "Day One" pre-orders from Amazon.de also included a five-track promotional Skyrim soundtrack sampler. A digital version of the soundtrack was released via iTunes on January 31, 2013.
The voice-overs in the game included more than 70 actors and over 60,000 lines of dialogue. Casting director and production supervisor Timothy Cubbison worked with Bethesda to evaluate auditions and oversee the recordings. The full cast consisted of three Academy Award nominees and several other high-profile actors including Max von Sydow, Christopher Plummer, Joan Allen, Michael Hogan, and Vladimir Kulich.
## Marketing and release
Skyrim was announced at the Spike Video Game Awards on December 11, 2010; Howard appeared onstage during the awards and presented the announcement trailer, which introduced the game's story and revealed its "11–11–11" release date. It was the cover story for the February 2011 issue of the Game Informer magazine, wherein journalist Matt Miller wrote a fifteen-page article that revealed the first details about the game's story and gameplay. Asked about downloadable content (DLC) packages in a June 2011 interview, Howard expressed the team's intention to release DLC packages, having done so for previous releases; he revealed that it was the team's goal to release a lower number of DLC packages that were larger in content than those released for Fallout 3, as he felt that releasing a larger number of low-content packages was "chaotic". Via a press release, the team announced that the first two planned DLC packages would release on the Xbox 360 via Xbox Live a month ahead of PCs and the PlayStation 3. At the 2011 QuakeCon conference, the team unveiled Skyrim's collector's edition package. Bundled with a copy of the game is a map of the game world, a 12-inch figurine of Alduin, as well as a 200-page concept art book and a DVD feature about the making of Skyrim.
In October 2011, pictures of many pages of the manual of the game were leaked, later followed by footage from the introduction, revealing some more details. By November 1, 2011, a copy of the Xbox 360 version had been leaked and made available through the Internet, allowing those with a hacked Xbox 360 to play Skyrim 10 days before its release. In the Netherlands, the game was made available for purchase on November 7. On November 10, stores in Australia began selling the game ahead of its November 11 release date.
### Remastered version
On June 4, 2016, Bethesda announced The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Special Edition, a remaster for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Microsoft Windows. It was released on October 28, 2016. Windows players who owned the original game and all of its downloadable content on Steam were offered the Special Edition for free. The remastered version contains an upgraded game engine as well as numerous graphical enhancements, along with mod support on consoles. A DRM-free version of the Special Edition was released on the GOG.com platform on September 29, 2022.
### Other versions
In October 2016, the reveal trailer for Nintendo Switch featured gameplay of Skyrim on the console. At the time, it was reported that Bethesda only used the game for the reveal trailer and that it was not officially releasing on the Nintendo Switch. On January 13, 2017, Todd Howard confirmed that the game will come out on the Nintendo Switch, making it the first Bethesda title to be released on a Nintendo platform for a Nintendo home console since Home Alone for the NES in 1991. During Bethesda's E3 2017 showcase, it was revealed that the Nintendo Switch version will support Amiibo and the Joy-Con motion controls.
At E3 2017, Bethesda announced a PlayStation VR version of Skyrim for release in November 2017. A standalone VR port of the game was released for Windows on April 2, 2018, supporting the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and Windows Mixed Reality headsets.
A parody of Skyrim's numerous ports and re-releases, titled Skyrim: Very Special Edition was released by Bethesda at their E3 2018 press conference for Amazon Alexa, stating it would be also released for the Etch A Sketch, Motorola pagers and Samsung smart refrigerators. The Alexa version was found to be a legitimate version of the game developed by Bethesda, playing off the joke that the studios had seemingly ported Skyrim to all possible platforms following its E3 2017 announcements.
### Compilations
A compilation package called The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Legendary Edition was released on June 4, 2013. It contains the version 1.9 patch and the three expansions, along with the main game.
As part of Skyrim's 10th anniversary celebration, another compilation titled The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Anniversary Edition was released in November 2021 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. It includes all the content from Special Edition, over 500 Creation Club elements, and introduces the ability to fish and player-owned aquariums. Anniversary Edition was released for the Nintendo Switch on September 29, 2022. A DRM-free version of the Anniversary Edition was released on the GOG.com platform on September 29, 2022. In addition, a DLC pack for the Special Edition that included the content added in the Anniversary Edition became available on GOG.
### Related games
While Skyrim was being ported to next-generation systems, Zen Studios developed a virtual pinball adaptation of the game as part of the Bethesda Pinball collection, which became available as part of Zen Pinball 2, Pinball FX 2 and Pinball FX 3, as well as a separate free-to-play app for iOS and Android mobile devices. A Skyrim themed expansion for the digital collectible card game The Elder Scrolls: Legends, titled Heroes of Skyrim, was released on June 29, 2017.
## Additional content
### Official expansions
Dawnguard was the first downloadable add-on for Skyrim, revolving around a battle between the Dawnguard and Clan Volkihar. The Dawnguard are a band of vampire hunters who rely on the use of crossbow weapons in their pursuit against Clan Volkihar, a family of vampires. Early in Dawnguard's quest line, players must choose which of the two factions to join forces with. Dawnguard adds new content to the game, including weapons, spells, and armor, and expands the abilities afforded to players who choose to become either a vampire or a werewolf. It adds two new areas to explore outside of the mainland of Skyrim: the Soul Cairn (a plane of the realm of Oblivion) and the Forgotten Vale (a secluded glacial valley). Dawnguard released on the Xbox 360 in English-speaking territories on June 26, 2012, and in European countries in mid-July 2012. It was released for Windows on August 2, 2012, via the digital distribution platform Steam. Performance issues on the PlayStation 3 hampered Dawnguard's release on that platform. It was released on the PlayStation 3 on February 26, 2013, in North America, and on February 27, 2013, in Europe.
Hearthfire was Skyrim's second add-on, which allows players to build houses and adopt children. Three plots of land are added to the game world which players can purchase. Once land is purchased, players build a small basic house, then select rooms to add on. The house and its additions are built from raw materials such as lumber and clay, which can be gathered or purchased. Players may adopt up to two children and have them live in the home, along with the player's spouse. Hearthfire was released for the Xbox 360 on September 4, 2012, and for Windows on October 4, 2012. It was later released for PlayStation 3 on February 19, 2013, in North America, and February 20, 2013, in Europe.
Dragonborn is the third and final add-on for Skyrim. It revolves around the player character's efforts to defeat Miraak, the first Dragonborn to become corrupted and seek to control the world. The add-on takes place on Solstheim, an island northeast of Skyrim, belonging to the province of Morrowind, which is presented as an additional open world. It adds content to the game and allows players to ride on the backs of dragons, along with other shouts that can be learned from Solstheim. Dragonborn was released for the Xbox 360 on December 4, 2012, for Windows on February 5, 2013, and for PlayStation 3 on February 12, 2013.
In April 2013, Bethesda announced via their blog that they were "moving on" from Skyrim and preparing to work on other projects. They added that they would only be releasing "minor updates" for the game.
### Creation Club
Through Creation Club, 74 small downloadable content packs, termed Creations, were released for Skyrim between 2017 and 2021. All 74 Creations were packaged with the Anniversary Edition release in 2021. The 74 Creations were also packaged together on GOG.com as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Upgrade, which was sold as a DLC pack for the Special Edition in 2021. The Anniversary Edition was not available as a standalone title on the platform until 2022.
### Community content
A wide variety of official and fan-created mods, short for modifications, are available for Skyrim, which are generally made using the packaged Creation Kit. These mods are distributed freely on file-sharing sites such as Nexus Mods, and are aggregated via the Steam Workshop's controlled content distribution mechanism. The mods may include features such as better game stability, improvements and tweaks of gameplay features, significantly enhanced visuals, overhauled weather systems, new characters and locations, user interface updates, and more.
The first Skyrim modification was The Fall of the Space Core, Vol. 1, created by Bethesda in collaboration with Valve. It causes a fictional device known as the Space Core from Valve's video game Portal 2 to fall from the sky and land where the player can recover it. The Space Core acts as a non-player character voiced by Nolan North which follows the player around the world of Skyrim and dispenses space-related comments.
Enderal: The Shards of Order is a total conversion mod of Skyrim developed by SureAI as a sequel to Nehrim: At Fate's Edge which was developed for Oblivion. It was released in July 2016, initially in German only. An English version was released August 16, 2016. A 2015 mod entitled The Forgotten City was later adapted into a full standalone game and released on PC and Nintendo Switch in 2021.
## Reception
### Critical reception
Skyrim received critical acclaim upon release. The removal of the character class system, present in previous The Elder Scrolls entries, was generally well received by critics/reviewers. Billy Shibley of Machinima's Inside Gaming and Charles Onyett of IGN praised its removal because it allowed players to experiment with different skills without having to make decisions about a class early in the game. John Bedford of Eurogamer stated that by removing the character class system, the game tailored itself to players who wanted to build an all-around character, while still letting other players specialize in a preferred play-style. Steve Butts of The Escapist considered the addition of perks to the character advancement system "a great method to make your character feel even more unique and personal". Kevin VanOrd of GameSpot praised the way perks allowed for the player's preferred skills to become more powerful over time, stating that the perk system "forms around the way you play, but allows for tweaking so that you retain a sense of control". The user interface was also praised by reviewers for its accessibility; Bedford complimented its "elegant design" which succeeded Oblivion's comparatively complex interface.
The art style of the game world drew acclaim from many reviewers, who welcomed the departure from Oblivion's Cyrodiil. Jason Schreier of Wired described the land of Skyrim as a "Viking-inspired treasure trove of flavor and charm", noting its contrast to Cyrodiil, which he considered generic by comparison. The Staff at Edge magazine described Cyrodiil as a "patchwork of varying terrains", praising the more consistent design of Skyrim. Shibley praised "the lack of copy-and-paste level design that's plagued Bethesda's previous games, ... giving a lived-in and handcrafted look to the world". Bedford noted that the improved graphical fidelity over Oblivion allowed the game world to feel more lifelike, praising the "misty mountain setting, complete with swirling fog and high-altitude snowstorms". An editor for PC PowerPlay praised the diversity of the dungeon design. Andrew Reiner of Game Informer cited criticisms that Oblivion faced for repetitive dungeons, noting that "the composition of each dungeon is largely unique and individualized" in Skyrim. He also favored the design choice to have a quick route out of a dungeon leading from its last room, eliminating a problem he identified Oblivion as having, where the player would clear a dungeon and then have to go all the way back to the beginning to exit it. Many reviewers praised the large number of things to do in the world outside of the main story. Tom Francis of PC Gamer noted that it was difficult to explore the world without becoming distracted by things to do, stating that, "it's hard to walk for a minute in any direction without encountering an intriguing cave, a lonely shack, some strange stones, a wandering traveller, [or] a haunted fort".
Reviewers welcomed the ability to dual-wield weapons and magic. An editor for PC PowerPlay felt that the dual-wielding ability "transforms the tactical scope of each combat encounter". Shibley noted that the dual-wielding option gave the player more freedom to experiment with combat, writing that, "the ability to apply a spell to each hand ... generates huge potential for getting creative with your spell combinations". However, reviewers were critical of the melee combat, feeling that it had not been improved upon as much as other areas in the game. Justin McElroy of Joystiq felt that "what should be thrilling fights in Skyrim are often weighed down by the same clunky melee system Oblivion suffered from". Onyett described the melee combat as "flat" and "floaty", and that "many times it feels like you're slicing air instead of a mythical creature's flesh". Francis agreed with this sentiment, stating that, "too much of the time, you wave your weapon around and enemies barely react to the hits".
The game received minor criticism in several other areas. The quality of the main quest divided some reviewers. While Reiner praised the main quest as "superbly penned" and "Bethesda's best effort to date", Butts and Francis criticized the fact that the story was delivered primarily through conversations and quest journals, rather than through the player's own interactions. While the dragon battles were well-received, some reviewers observed flaws in the AI for dragons. Onyett pointed out their "predictable attack patterns", which Francis agreed with, claiming that "fighting them never changes much: you can just ignore them until they land, then shoot them from a distance when they do". Reiner felt that, due to the repetitiveness of their attack patterns, the dragons were not challenging enough for low-level players. Edge pointed out a curve in difficulty for players who favored archery and magic, as dragons were difficult to attack while airborne. Many reviewers noted glitches while playing Skyrim, some game-breaking. Nick Cowen of The Guardian pointed out that the game's glitches were a trade-off for its ambitious scope, and that he had experienced glitches that forced him to reload earlier saves. Edge began their review by criticizing the lack of polish, while still acknowledging many areas in the game which made up for it.
### Technical issues
At the launch of Skyrim, many technical issues of varying severity were reported. Some examples include a texture down-scaling issue on the Xbox 360 version when the game was run from the hard drive; crashes, slowdown and frame rate issues on the PlayStation 3 version when save files exceeded 6 MB, commonly occurring due to extended gameplay times; and various crashes and slowdowns on the Windows version. According to Skyrim's director Todd Howard, the notion that bugs were caused by "restrictive RAM" is incorrect. Howard said, "It's literally the things you've done in what order and what's running."
Since release, several patches were published to address technical issues and improve overall gameplay. Patch 1.2 was released on November 29, 2011, to fix some of the game's issues; however, some players reported new bugs in the game following the patch, including more frequent game crashes. Patch 1.3 was released on December 7, 2011, to improve stability, further address known issues, and fix some problems that were introduced in version 1.2. Patch 1.4 was released on February 1, 2012, for the PC. Another list of issues and bugs were addressed in this patch, and Skyrim launcher support for Skyrim Workshop (PC) was provided. Patch 1.5 was released on March 20, 2012, for the PC. Numerous bugs were fixed, and new archery/spellcasting kill cams were included. On April 12, 2012, Bethesda announced that Kinect support would be coming for the Xbox 360 version of Skyrim, with over 200 voice commands. Patch 1.6 was released on May 24, 2012, for the PC. This includes a new feature: mounted combat. Patch 1.7 was released on July 30, 2012, for the PC, and 1.8 was released on November 1, 2012, for the PC. These two introduced only minor bugfixes. Patch 1.9 was released on March 18, 2013. In addition to providing various bug fixes, this patch also added new features, most prominently the new "Legendary" difficulty, and "Legendary" skills, which effectively remove the level cap.
An unofficial patch attempts to fix remaining issues unattended by the official patches. It lists hundreds of gameplay, quest, and other bugs that it fixes in the game and its add-ons.
### Sales
Within two days after the game's launch, 3.4 million physical units were sold. Of those sales, 59% were for the Xbox 360, 27% for the PS3, and 14% for the PC. In the first week of release, Bethesda stated that 7 million units of the game had been shipped to retailers worldwide, and that total sales through the following Wednesday were expected to generate an estimated US\$450 million. By December 2011, this had risen to 10 million units shipped to retail and around US\$620 million generated. In June 2013, Bethesda announced that over 20 million units of the game had been sold. According to Todd Howard, Skyrim had sold over 30 million units by November 2016. As of June 2023, the game has sold over 60 million units.
During the first day of release, Steam showed over 230,000 people playing Skyrim concurrently. Additionally, Valve stated that it was the fastest selling game to date on their Steam platform. Steam's statistics page showed the client breaking a five million user record by having 5,012,468 users logged in on January 2, 2012. The total number of sold copies on the PC platform is difficult to confirm because Valve does not publicly publish digital sales. Shortly after its release, Skyrim was the most-played game on Steam by a huge margin, with double the number of players as Team Fortress 2, the second-placed game. In the United Kingdom, Skyrim was the 9th best selling title of 2012. Regarding sales on the PC, Todd Howard stated in an interview with Rock, Paper, Shotgun that, "Skyrim did better than we've ever done on PC by a large, large number. And that's where the mods are. That feeds the game for a long time."
### Awards
Skyrim received awards from numerous gaming sites and publications. IGN and GameSpot named Skyrim "PC Game of the Year". It also received GameSpot's "Readers' Choice" award. The game received the "RPG of the Year" award from Spike TV, IGN, X-Play, GameSpot and GameSpy. It received "Overall Game of the Year" wins from Spike TV, Giant Bomb, X-Play, Machinima.com, GameSpot, 1UP.com, Game Revolution, GameSpy, Joystiq, and the Interactive Achievement Awards. It was voted No. 1 in Good Game's top 100 video games of all time and No. 1 in PC Gamer's "The 100 Greatest PC Games of All Time". In Giant Bomb's 2017 Game of the Year Awards, the game was a runner-up for "2017's Old Game of the Year". The VR version was nominated for "Best Virtual Reality Game" at the Gamescom 2017 Awards; for the Coney Island Dreamland Award for Best Virtual Reality Game and the Tappan Zee Bridge Award for Best Remake (along with the Switch version) at the New York Game Awards 2018; for "Excellence in Technical Achievement" and "VR Game of the Year" at the 2018 SXSW Gaming Awards; and for "Best VR/AR Game" at the 2018 Game Developers Choice Awards. At the 17th Annual National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers Awards, the VR version was nominated for "Control Design, VR", "Direction in Virtual Reality", and "Sound Mixing in Virtual Reality", while the Switch version was nominated for "Costume Design". The VR version won the award for "Best VR Game" at the 2018 Golden Joystick Awards.
### Legacy
Critics often consider Skyrim among the best video games of all time. Skyrim has been credited by developers as a direct influence on later games, such as Valheim and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The game has received credit for popularizing large-scale open worlds in fantasy role-playing games, influencing the settings of installations in game series including The Witcher and Dragon Age.
Skyrim spawned a number of noteworthy Internet memes that circulated as image macros or video parodies and achieved viral popularity. These including the dragon shout "Fus ro dah", and variations or adaptations of the phrase "I used to be an adventurer like you, then I took an arrow in the knee."
During an interview in 2018, Todd Howard attributed Bethesda's frequent re-releases of the game to the "millions" of people still playing Skyrim.
|
24,319,139 |
The Social Network
| 1,169,223,005 |
2010 film by David Fincher
|
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"Films whose writer won the Best Adapted Screenplay BAFTA Award",
"Films with screenplays by Aaron Sorkin",
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The Social Network is a 2010 American biographical drama film directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin, based on the 2009 book The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich. It portrays the founding of social networking website Facebook. It stars Jesse Eisenberg as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, with Andrew Garfield as Eduardo Saverin, Justin Timberlake as Sean Parker, Armie Hammer as Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and Max Minghella as Divya Narendra. Neither Zuckerberg nor any other Facebook staff were involved with the project, although Saverin was a consultant for Mezrich's book.
Production began when Sorkin signed to write it. Principal photography began that same year in October in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and lasted until November. Additional scenes were shot in California, in the cities of Los Angeles and Pasadena. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross of Nine Inch Nails composed the film's award-winning score, which was released on September 28, 2010.
The film premiered at the New York Film Festival on September 24, 2010, and was released theatrically in the United States on October 1, by Sony Pictures Releasing. A major critical and commercial success, the film grossed \$224 million on a \$40 million budget and was widely acclaimed by critics. It was named one of the best films of the year by 78 critics, and named the best by 22 critics, the most of any film that year. It was also chosen by the National Board of Review as the best film of 2010. At the 83rd Academy Awards, it received eight nominations, including for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for Eisenberg, and won for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score, and Best Film Editing. It also received awards for Best Motion Picture – Drama, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Original Score at the 68th Golden Globe Awards.
The Social Network has maintained a strong reputation since its initial release, and is commonly cited by critics as one of the best films of the 2010s and 21st century. The Writers Guild of America ranked Sorkin's screenplay the third greatest of the 21st century. While no official sequel has been announced, Sorkin has publicly expressed interest and willingness to write a screenplay for one should Fincher return to direct.
## Plot
On October 28, 2003, 19-year-old Harvard University sophomore Mark Zuckerberg is dumped by his girlfriend, Erica Albright. Returning to his dorm, Zuckerberg writes an insulting post about Albright on his LiveJournal blog. He creates a campus website called Facemash by hacking into college databases to steal photos of female students, then allowing site visitors to rate their attractiveness. After traffic to the site crashes parts of Harvard's computer network, Zuckerberg is given six months of academic probation. However, Facemash's popularity attracts the attention of twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and their business partner Divya Narendra. The trio invites Zuckerberg to work on Harvard Connection, a social network exclusive to Harvard students and aimed at dating. Zuckerberg approaches his friend Eduardo Saverin with an idea for Thefacebook, a social networking website that would be exclusive to Ivy League students. Saverin provides \$1,000 in seed funding, allowing Zuckerberg to build the website, which quickly becomes popular. When they learn of Thefacebook, the Winklevoss twins and Narendra are incensed, believing that Zuckerberg stole their idea while misleading them by stalling development on the Harvard Connection website. They raise their complaint with Harvard President Larry Summers, who is dismissive and sees no value in disciplinary action on Thefacebook or Zuckerberg.
Saverin and Zuckerberg meet fellow student Christy Lee, who asks them to "Facebook me," a phrase that impresses them. As Thefacebook grows in popularity, Zuckerberg expands the network to Yale University, Columbia University, and Stanford University. Lee arranges for Saverin and Zuckerberg to meet Napster co-founder Sean Parker, who presents a "billion-dollar" vision for the company. Zuckerberg is impressed, but Saverin dismisses him as paranoid and delusional. Parker also suggests renaming the site to Facebook. Later, Zuckerberg relocates the company to Palo Alto on Parker's advice; Saverin remains in New York to work on business development. Parker later moves into the house that Zuckerberg is using as a base of operations and becomes more involved with the company, much to Saverin's annoyance.
While competing in the 2004 Henley Royal Regatta for Harvard against the Hollandia Roeiclub, the Winklevoss twins discover that Facebook has expanded to Europe with Oxford, Cambridge and LSE, and decide to sue the company for intellectual property theft. Meanwhile, Saverin objects to Parker making business decisions for Facebook and freezes the company's bank account in the resulting dispute. He relents when Zuckerberg reveals that they have secured \$500,000 from angel investor Peter Thiel. Saverin becomes enraged when he discovers that the new investment deal allows his share of Facebook to be diluted from 34% to 0.03% while maintaining the ownership percentage of all other parties. He confronts Zuckerberg and Parker, and Saverin vows to sue Zuckerberg before being ejected from the building. Saverin's name is removed from the masthead as co-founder and CFO. Later, Parker is apprehended for cocaine possession at a party celebrating 1 million users. He attempts to blame Saverin, so Zuckerberg cuts ties with him, telling him to go home.
In separate depositions, the Winklevoss twins claim that Zuckerberg stole their idea, while Saverin claims his shares of Facebook were unfairly diluted when the company was incorporated. Marylin Delpy, a junior lawyer for the defense, informs Zuckerberg that they will settle with Saverin since the sordid details of Facebook's founding and Zuckerberg's callous attitude will make him unsympathetic to a jury. Alone, Zuckerberg sends a Facebook friend request to Albright and repeatedly refreshes the page.
## Cast
Josh Pence is the body double for Hammer, whose likeness was digitally imposed onto Pence's body. He is listed in the end credits as playing Tyler Winklevoss alongside Hammer. He also appears in a cameo role as the man being detoured from the bathroom by Zuckerberg and Saverin.
## Production
### Screenplay
Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin said, "What attracted me to [the film project] had nothing to do with Facebook. The invention itself is as modern as it gets, but the story is as old as storytelling; the themes of friendship, loyalty, jealousy, class and power." He said he read an unfinished draft of The Accidental Billionaires when the publisher began "shopping it around" for a film adaptation. Sorkin added, "I was reading it and somewhere on page three I said yes. It was the fastest I said yes to anything ... They wanted me to start right away. Ben and I were kind of doing our research at the same time, sort of along parallel lines."
According to Sorkin, Mezrich did not send him material from his book as he wrote it: "Two or three times we'd get together. I'd go to Boston, or we'd meet in New York and kind of compare notes and share information, but I didn't see the book until he was done with it. By the time I saw the book, I was probably 80 percent done with the screenplay." Sorkin elaborated:
> There's a lot of available research, and I also did a lot of first person research with a number of the people that were involved in the story. I can't go too deeply into that because most of the people did it on the condition of anonymity, but what I found was that two lawsuits were brought against Facebook at roughly the same time, that the defendant, plaintiffs, witnesses all came into a deposition room and swore under oath, and three different versions of the story were told. Instead of choosing one and deciding that's the truest one or choosing one and deciding that's the juiciest one, I decided to dramatize the idea that there were three different versions of the story being told. That's how I came up with the structure of the deposition room.
### Casting
Casting began in mid-2009, with Jesse Eisenberg, Justin Timberlake, and Andrew Garfield announced to star. Jonah Hill was in contention for Timberlake's role, but director David Fincher passed on him. In October 2009, Brenda Song, Rooney Mara, Armie Hammer, Shelby Young, and Josh Pence were cast. Max Minghella and Dakota Johnson were also confirmed. In a 2009 interview with The Baltimore Sun, Eisenberg said, "Even though I've gotten to be in some wonderful movies, this character seems so much more overtly insensitive in so many ways that seem more real to me in the best way. I don't often get cast as insensitive people, so it feels very comfortable: fresh and exciting, as if you never have to worry about the audience. Not that I worry about the audience anyway – it should be just the furthest thing from your mind. The Social Network is the biggest relief I've ever had in a movie". In 2010, it was mentioned that Rashida Jones would appear as Marylin Delpy.
### Filming
Principal photography began in October 2009 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Scenes were filmed around the campuses of two Massachusetts prep schools, Phillips Academy and Milton Academy. Additional scenes were filmed on the campus of Wheelock College, which was set up to be Harvard's campus. (Harvard has turned down most requests for on-location filming ever since the filming of Love Story (1970), which caused significant physical damage to trees on campus.) Filming took place on the Keyser and Wyman quadrangles in the Homewood campus of Johns Hopkins University from November 2–4, which also doubled for Harvard in the film. The first scene in the film, where Zuckerberg is with his girlfriend, took 99 takes to finish. The film was shot on the Red One digital cinema camera. The rowing scenes with the Winklevoss brothers were filmed at Community Rowing Inc. in Newton, Massachusetts and at the Henley Royal Regatta; miniature faking process was used in a sequence showing a rowing event at the latter. Although a significant portion of the latter half of the film is set in Silicon Valley, the filmmakers opted to shoot those scenes in Los Angeles and Pasadena.
Armie Hammer, who portrayed the Winklevoss twins, acted alongside body double Josh Pence while his scenes were filmed. His face was later digitally grafted onto Pence's face during post-production, while other scenes used split-screen photography. Pence was concerned about having no face time during the role, but after considerable musing thought of the role as a "no-brainer". He also appears in a cameo role elsewhere in the film. Hammer states that director David Fincher "likes to push himself and likes to push technology" and is "one of the most technologically minded guys I've ever seen." This included sending the actors to "twin boot camp" for 10 months to learn everything about the Winklevosses.
#### Rowing production
Community Rowing Inc. held a casting call and a tryout for 20 rowing extras; some were graduates from Harvard, Northeastern University, Boston University, George Washington University, and Trinity College, as well as local club rowers from Union Boat Club and Riverside Boat Club. None of the cast rowing extras for the Henley Royal Regatta racing scene appeared in the film; filming for the race was originally planned to take place in Los Angeles, but Fincher decided to film in England during production.
David Fincher hired Loyola Marymount coach Dawn Reagan to help train Josh Pence and Armie Hammer. While Hammer was new to the sport, Pence rowed previously at Dartmouth College.
The indoor rowing scene was filmed at Boston University's indoor rowing tanks. All of BU's blue oars in the scene were repainted to Harvard's crimson color for filming. Dan Boyne was the official rowing consultant in the US and the UK.
### Soundtrack
On June 1, 2010, it was announced that Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross would score the film. The soundtrack was released September 28 in various formats under the Null Corporation label. Leading up to the release of the soundtrack, a free five-track EP was made available for download. The White Stripes' song "Ball and Biscuit" can be heard in the opening of the film and The Beatles' song "Baby, You're a Rich Man" concludes the film. Neither song appears on the soundtrack album. Reznor and Ross won the award for Best Original Score at the 2011 Golden Globe Awards, as well as the 2011 Academy Award for Best Original Score.
## Marketing
### Poster
The first theatrical poster, designed by Neil Kellerhouse, was released on June 18, 2010. As Kellerhouse previously designed posters for the films of Steven Soderbergh, director David Fincher's friend, he was contacted by Ceán Chaffin in late 2009 to work on the key art for The Social Network, which had to make sole use of one approved photograph, that of Eisenberg's head. As he wanted to highlight the tremendous drama that went with Mark Zuckerberg's success, Kellerhouse thought of the tagline "You don't get to 300 million friends without making a few enemies"; he would later adjust the line to "500 million friends" in anticipation of Facebook reaching 500 million users by the film's release date. Kellerhouse's poster has been praised for its unique and "striking" design, and alongside his work for the film I'm Still Here, has since become influential in film marketing; posters for The King's Speech and The Armstrong Lie strongly evoked the poster's design format.
### Trailers
The film's first teaser trailer was released on June 25, 2010. The second teaser was released on July 8. The full length theatrical trailer debuted on July 16, 2010, which plays an edited version of the song "Creep", originally by Radiohead, covered by the Belgian choir group Scala & Kolacny Brothers. The trailer was then shown in theaters, prior to the films Inception, Dinner for Schmucks, Salt, Easy A, The Virginity Hit, and The Other Guys. The theatrical trailer, put together by Mark Woollen & Associates, won the Grand Key Art award at the 2011 Key Art Awards, sponsored by The Hollywood Reporter, and was also featured on The Film Informant's Perfect 10 Trailers in 2010.
## Release
The Social Network had its first screening at the New York Film Festival on September 24, 2010.
### Box office
The film was released in theaters in the United States on the weekend of October 1–3, 2010. It debuted at No. 1, grossing \$22.4 million in 2,771 theaters. The film retained the top spot in its second weekend, dropping only 31.2%, breaking Inception's 32.0% record as the smallest second weekend drop for any number-one film of 2010, while being the third-smallest overall behind Secretariat's 25.1% drop and Tooth Fairy'''s 28.6% drop. At the end of its theatrical run, the film grossed \$97 million in the United States and \$128 million in other territories for a worldwide total of \$224.9 million.
### Critical reception
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 96% based on 326 reviews, with an average rating of 9/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Impeccably scripted, beautifully directed, and filled with fine performances, The Social Network is a riveting, ambitious example of modern filmmaking at its finest." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 95 out of 100, based on 42 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.
From The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw gave the film four stars, praising David Fincher's directing as the "right intensity and claustrophobia for a story that takes place largely in a stupefyingly male environment at Harvard University in 2003". In her review for The Verge, Kaitlyn Tiffany wrote positive comments on Aaron Sorkin's screenplay, writing that his "reflex for writing witty, whiny men with outsized intellect and poorly disguised narcissism serves as an advantage instead of a handicap." The film's editing by Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall was also lauded by critics, leading to their win of the Academy Award for Best Film Editing. Additionally, the film's score received positive commentary, with some reviewers stating that it was "a persistent source of simmering tension in the movie", and a "masterpiece".
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, giving it four stars and naming it the best film of the year, wrote: "David Fincher's film has the rare quality of being not only as smart as its brilliant hero, but in the same way. It is cocksure, impatient, cold, exciting and instinctively perceptive." Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave the film his first full four-star rating of the year and said: "The Social Network is the movie of the year. But Fincher and Sorkin triumph by taking it further. Lacing their scathing wit with an aching sadness, they define the dark irony of the past decade." The Harvard Crimson review called it "flawless" and gave it five stars.
Joe Morgenstern in The Wall Street Journal praised the film as exhilarating but noted: "The biographical part takes liberties with its subject. Aaron Sorkin based his screenplay on [...] The Accidental Billionaires, so everything that's seen isn't necessarily to be believed." Among the film's very few negative reviewers was Nathan Heller of Slate, who described it as "rote and deeply mediocre" as well as "maddeningly generic", and believed that, "Sorkin and Fincher's 2003 Harvard is a citadel of old money, regatta blazers, and (if I am not misreading the implication here) a Jewish underclass striving beneath the heel of a WASP-centric, socially draconian culture... to get the university this wrong in this movie is no small matter."
The Social Network appeared on 78 film critics' top-ten lists of the best films of 2010, based on Metacritic's aggregation. Out of the critics, 22 ranked the film first, and 12 ranked the film second. Out of the films of 2010, The Social Network appeared on the most top-ten lists. In 2016, The Social Network was voted the 27th-best film of the 21st century by the BBC, as voted on by 177 film critics from around the world.
In 2018, IndieWire writers ranked the script the fourth best American screenplay of the 21st century, with Michael Nordine arguing that "everything came together nearly perfectly on the film, thanks in large part to Aaron Sorkin's Oscar-winning screenplay. Its finds the loquacious scribe at his best, with all the verbal takedowns [...] and rapid-fire back-and-forths we've come to expect (and, more often than not, love) from him. Sorkin's portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg was hardly flattering, but recent headlines suggest it may have been too sympathetic."
### Home media
The Social Network was released on DVD and Blu-ray January 11, 2011. In its first week of release, DVD sales totaled \$13,470,305 and it was the number-one-sold DVD of the week. The DVD includes an audio commentary with director David Fincher, and a second commentary with writer Aaron Sorkin and the cast. The Blu-ray and two-disc DVD releases include the commentaries, along with a feature-length documentary, How Did They Ever Make a Movie of Facebook?, featurettes, Angus Wall, Kirk Baxter and Ren Klyce on Post, Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross and David Fincher on the Score, In the Hall of the Mountain King: Reznor's First Draft, Swarmatron, Jeff Cronenweth and David Fincher on the Visuals, and a Ruby Skye VIP Room: Multi-Angle Scene Breakdown feature.
The film was released on Ultra HD Blu-ray in October 2021 as part of the Columbia Classics 4K Ultra HD Collection (Volume 2), featuring a new Dolby Atmos mix and upscaled Dolby Vision/HDR10 transfer from the film's 2K master.
## Accolades
The Social Network won the Best Motion Picture – Drama Golden Globe at the 68th Golden Globe Awards on January 16, 2011. The film also won the awards for Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Original Score, making it the film with the most wins of the night.
The film was nominated for seven British Academy Film Awards, including Best Film, Best Actor in a Leading Role (Jesse Eisenberg), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Andrew Garfield), and Rising Star Award (Andrew Garfield). It won three for Best Editing, Adapted Screenplay, and Best Direction on February 13, 2011.
The Social Network received nominations for eight Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Cinematography, Best Director, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Adapted Screenplay. It won three for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score, and Best Film Editing at the 83rd Academy Awards on February 27, 2011.
The film won Best Picture from the National Board of Review, National Society of Film Critics, New York Film Critics Circle, and Los Angeles Film Critics Association, making it only the third film in history—after Schindler's List (1993) and L.A. Confidential (1997)—to sweep the "Big Four" critics awards. The film also won the "Hollywood Ensemble Award" from the Hollywood Film Awards.
## Historical accuracy
The script was leaked online in July 2009. In November 2009, executive producer Kevin Spacey said, "The Social Network is probably going to be a lot funnier than people might expect it to be." The Cardinal Courier stated that the film was about "greed, obsession, unpredictability and sex" and asked, "Although there are over 500 million Facebook users, does this mean Facebook can become a profitable blockbuster movie?"
At the D8 conference hosted by D: All Things Digital on June 2, 2010, host Kara Swisher told Zuckerberg she knew he was not happy with The Social Network being based on him, to which he replied, "I just wished that nobody made a movie of me while I was still alive." Zuckerberg stated to Oprah Winfrey that the drama and partying of the film is mostly fiction, and that he had spent most of the past six years focusing, working hard, and coding Facebook. Speaking to an audience at Stanford University, Zuckerberg said that instead of making Facebook to "get girls", he made it because he enjoyed "building things". He added that the film accurately depicted his wardrobe, saying, "It's interesting the stuff that they focused on getting right—like every single shirt and fleece they had in that movie is actually a shirt or fleece that I own."
Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz called the film a "dramatization of history ... it is interesting to see my past rewritten in a way that emphasizes things that didn't matter, (like the Winklevosses, who I've still never even met and had no part in the work we did to create the site over the past 6 years) and leaves out things that really did (like the many other people in our lives at the time, who supported us in innumerable ways)". According to Moskovitz:
> A lot of exciting things happened in 2004, but mostly we just worked a lot and stressed out about things; the version in the trailer seems a lot more exciting, so I'm just going to choose to remember that we drank ourselves silly and had a lot of sex with coeds. ... The plot of the book/script unabashedly attacked [Zuckerberg], but I actually felt like a lot of his positive qualities come out truthfully in the trailer (soundtrack aside). At the end of the day, they cannot help but portray him as the driven, forward-thinking genius that he is.
Co-founder Eduardo Saverin said "the movie was clearly intended to be entertainment and not a fact-based documentary". Sorkin said: "I don't want my fidelity to be to the truth; I want it to be to storytelling. What is the big deal about accuracy purely for accuracy's sake, and can we not have the true be the enemy of the good?"
Journalist Jeff Jarvis acknowledged the film was "well-crafted" but called it "the anti-social movie", objecting to Sorkin's decision to change various events and characters for dramatic effect, and dismissing it as "the story that those who resist the change society is undergoing want to see". Technology broadcaster Leo Laporte concurred, calling the film "anti-geek and misogynistic". Sorkin responded to these allegations by saying, "I was writing about a very angry and deeply misogynistic group of people".
Andrew Clark of The Guardian wrote that "there's something insidious about this genre of [docudrama] scriptwriting", wondering if "a 26-year-old businessman really deserves to have his name dragged through the mud in a murky mixture of fact and imagination for the general entertainment of the movie-viewing public?". Clark added, "I'm not sure whether Mark Zuckerberg is a punk, a genius or both. But I won't be seeing The Social Network to find out."
Mashable founder and CEO Pete Cashmore, blogging for CNN, said: "If the Facebook founder [Zuckerberg] is concerned about being represented as anything but a genius with an industrious work ethic, he can breathe a sigh of relief." Jessi Hempel, a technology writer for Fortune who says she has known Zuckerberg "for a long time", wrote of the film:
> The real-life Zuckerberg was maniacally focused on building a web site that could potentially connect everyone on the planet...By contrast, in the film he seems more obsessed with achieving the largesse that bad boy Sean Parker, an original Napster founder, portrays when he arrives to meet Zuckerberg at a New York restaurant.
Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig wrote in The New Republic that Sorkin's screenplay does not acknowledge the "real villain" of the story:
> The total and absolute absurdity of the world where the engines of a federal lawsuit get cranked up to adjudicate the hurt feelings (because "our idea was stolen!") of entitled Harvard undergraduates is completely missed by Sorkin. We can't know enough from the film to know whether there was actually any substantial legal claim here. Sorkin has been upfront about the fact that there are fabrications aplenty lacing the story. But from the story as told, we certainly know enough to know that any legal system that would allow these kids to extort \$65 million from the most successful business this century should be ashamed of itself. Did Zuckerberg breach his contract? Maybe, for which the damages are more like \$650, not \$65 million. Did he steal a trade secret? Absolutely not. Did he steal any other "property"? Absolutely not—the code for Facebook was his, and the "idea" of a social network is not a patent. It wasn't justice that gave the twins \$65 million; it was the fear of a random and inefficient system of law. That system is a tax on innovation and creativity. That tax is the real villain here, not the innovator it burdened.
In an onstage discussion with The Huffington Post co-founder Arianna Huffington, during Advertising Week 2010 in New York, Facebook's Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said she had seen the film and it was "very Hollywood" and mainly "fiction". "In real life, he [Zuckerberg] was just sitting around with his friends in front of his computer, ordering pizza", she declared. "Who wants to go see that for two hours?".
Divya Narendra said that he was "initially surprised" to see himself portrayed by the non-Indian actor Max Minghella, but also admitted that the actor did a "good job in pushing the dialogue forward and creating a sense of urgency in what was a very frustrating period".
## Legacy
### Preliminary impact
Since its release, The Social Network has been cited as inspiring involvement in start-ups and social media. Bob Lefsetz has stated that: "watching this movie makes you want to run from the theatre, grab your laptop and build your own empire," noting that The Social Network has helped fuel an emerging perception that "techies have become the new rock stars." This has led Dave Knox to comment that: "fifteen years from now we might just look back and realize this movie inspired our next great generation of entrepreneurs." After seeing the movie, Zuckerberg was quoted as saying he is "interested to see what effect The Social Network has on entrepreneurship", noting that he gets "lots of messages from people who claim that they have been very much inspired... to start their own company." Saverin echoed these sentiments, stating that the film may inspire "countless others to create and take that leap to start a new business." In one such instance, the co-founders of Wall Street Magnate confirmed that they were inspired to create the fantasy trading community after watching The Social Network.
Following his success with the film, Sorkin became attached to another project about a technology company, writing the script for the 2015 biopic Steve Jobs, which used a similar format. Another Facebook film may be produced, as Sheryl Sandberg has signed a deal with Sony Pictures Entertainment to develop her 2013 book Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead, into a movie.
### Post-2010s assessment
Following the close of the decade, The Social Network was recognized as one of the best films of the 2010s. Metacritic reported that it was listed on over 30 film critics' top-ten lists for the 2010s, including eight first-place rankings and four second-place rankings. Metacritic ranked The Social Network third overall, following Mad Max: Fury Road and Moonlight. Esquire named The Social Network the best of the 2010s, calling it Citizen Kane "for the Internet age" and dubbing it "the movie of our new millennium". With Facebook going "from a utopian, world-shrinking force of good to a potential threat to democracy", Esquire wrote, "Fincher seemed to sense all of this and more long before anyone else. And his brilliant, troubling film bristles with that queasy sense of prophecy and prescience." Polygon, calling The Social Network the best film of the decade, wrote, "The Social Network, by chance or by design, has become one of the most immensely relevant movies of this decade... But after nearly a decade of watching Facebook 'move fast and break things,' including news websites, social video, politics, etc., the movie's tangible sense of tension can easily be reinterpreted as foreboding for what comes after you make a billion friends." Director Quentin Tarantino called the film the best of the 2010s, singling out the script by Aaron Sorkin, whom he described as "the greatest active dialogist".
Rolling Stone ranked The Social Network second after Moonlight (2016) on its end-of-decade list, describing it as "one deliciously re-watchable preview of the apocalypse, as entertaining and cheeky as it is troubling and startlingly prescient". Time Out named it the fourth-best of the decade, "Powered by a relentless, clinical Aaron Sorkin script, directed with sinuous grace by David Fincher and loaded with smirking, smart-ass central performances, The Social Network is arguably the most important and prophetic film of our era, itself a depressing thought." ScreenCrush ranked The Social Network eighth, referring to it as "[Fincher's] spiritual sequel to Fight Club, another story of a embittered, lonely man who discovers unleashing his rage at society has unexpected consequences". Mashable, listing The Social Network among the top 15 films of the 2010s, said of the story, "It was everything young people could be and everything older generations feared in us before a decade of blaming [us for] problems we didn't create and can't solve." IndieWire ranked The Social Network sixteenth among the decade's films, writing, "The Social Network is both a thrilling, queasy exploration of how Facebook came to be and a searing indictment of what it would inevitably become." Inverse listed the film among those defining "class rage" in the 2010s, "As a gently prodding diagnosis of class conflict, The Social Network'' is a logical place to start."
## Possible sequel
In January 2019, Sorkin revealed that Rudin has suggested the development of a screenplay for a sequel, noting, "A lot of very interesting, dramatic stuff has happened since the movie ends." Sorkin also mentioned that there was indeed enough material to create a sequel. On July 18, 2019, Eisenberg expressed his interests in starring in the proposed sequel, stating that "Sorkin is a genius, and if he chooses to write about something, I'll obviously be interested". In October 2020, a decade after the film's release, Sorkin announced that he would only write the sequel's script if David Fincher returned as director.
|
142,049 |
Minority Report (film)
| 1,172,770,988 |
2002 film by Steven Spielberg
|
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Minority Report is a 2002 American science fiction action film directed by Steven Spielberg, loosely based on the 1956 novella "The Minority Report" by Philip K. Dick. The film is set in Washington, D.C., and Northern Virginia in the year 2054, where Precrime, a specialized police department, apprehends criminals by use of foreknowledge provided by three psychics called "precogs". The cast stars Tom Cruise as Precrime Chief John Anderton, Colin Farrell as Department of Justice agent Danny Witwer, Samantha Morton as precog Agatha Lively, and Max von Sydow as Precrime director Lamar Burgess. The film combines elements of tech noir, whodunit, thriller and science fiction genres, as well as a traditional chase film, as the main protagonist is accused of a crime he has not committed and becomes a fugitive. Spielberg characterized the story as "fifty percent character and fifty percent very complicated storytelling with layers and layers of murder mystery and plot".
The film was first optioned in 1992 as a sequel to another Dick adaptation, Total Recall (1990), with Arnold Schwarzenegger set to reprise his role as Doug Quaid. But after Total Recall production company Carolco Pictures filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the project was reworked into a stand-alone project and started its development in 1997, after a script by Jon Cohen reached Spielberg and Cruise. Production suffered many delays due to Cruise's Mission: Impossible 2 and Spielberg's A.I. running over schedule, eventually starting in March 2001. During pre-production, Spielberg consulted numerous scientists in an attempt to present a more plausible future world than that seen in other science fiction films, and some of the technology designs in the film have proven prescient.
Minority Report was one of the most anticipated films of 2002 because of the high-profile collaboration between Cruise and Spielberg. Upon its release, the film grossed over \$358 million against a production budget of \$102 million, becoming 2002's tenth most-successful film worldwide. Initial reviews were generally positive. Praise was given to Cruise's performance, Spielberg's directing, action sequences, and visual effects, though some criticism was focused on the runtime and the complexity of the plot that critics felt was too difficult for audiences. It was nominated for several awards. It received an Academy Award nomination for Best Sound Editing, and eleven Saturn Award nominations, including Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, and Saturn Award for Best Music, winning Best Science Fiction Film, Best Direction, Best Writing, and Best Supporting Actress.
Since its release, Minority Report has been critically re-evaluated and retrospective reviews have called it one of the best films for both Cruise and Spielberg and placed it among the best science fiction films of the 2000s. The film has been analyzed for its themes of free will versus determinism; the roles of preventive government in protecting its citizenry; media in a future state where technological advancements make its presence nearly boundless; the potential legality of an infallible prosecutor; and Spielberg's perennial theme of broken families. Along with several media including a video game, Minority Report was followed up by a television series of the same name in 2015, but was canceled in 2016 after one season.
## Plot
In 2054, the federal government plans to nationally implement the Washington, D.C., prototype "Precrime" police program, which has been operating for six years. Three clairvoyant humans ("precogs") receive psychic impressions of an impending homicide, and officers analyze their visions to determine the location and apprehend the perpetrator before the crime can occur. Would-be killers are placed in an electrically induced coma and held in a panopticon-like prison facility. Although Precrime has eliminated nearly all premeditated murders during its six-year existence, spontaneous crimes of passion called "red ball" killings still occur, giving the police only a short time to act.
Precrime chief John Anderton joined the program after his six-year-old son Sean was abducted and never found. He suffers from depression and addiction to the drug "neuroin", and his wife Lara has left him. Department of Justice agent Danny Witwer audits the Precrime operation, intent on uncovering any flaws. Agatha, one of the precogs, experiences a flashback to a woman's drowning as Anderton watches. Curious, he learns from the prison warden that the intended victim, Anne Lively, went missing shortly after her murder was prevented; however, he also discovers that Agatha's vision of the crime is not on file. Soon afterward, the precogs predict that Anderton will kill a man named Leo Crow, whom he has never met. Anderton flees, prompting Witwer to begin a manhunt.
Anderton visits Dr. Iris Hineman, a geneticist whose research led to the creation of Precrime, and learns that the precogs' abilities are the result of brain damage caused by their parents' addiction to early, impure forms of neuroin. Hineman explains that one precog occasionally sees a different future vision from the others, known as a "minority report". These discrepancies are purged from the official record in order to maintain the precogs' reputation of infallibility, but the precogs retain their memories. If Anderton does have a minority report, Hineman says, it will most likely have been generated by Agatha since she is the strongest of the three.
After undergoing eye transplant surgery to foil the retinal scanners at Precrime, Anderton returns and kidnaps Agatha, shutting down the group-mind on which Precrime depends. With the assistance of a cybercriminal, Anderton searches Agatha's memories but fails to find a minority report for Crow's murder. However, he finds and downloads her memories of Anne's death. The two track Crow to a hotel room and find photos of many children, including Sean; Anderton accuses Crow of killing Sean and nearly kills him, but relents at the last moment. Crow then claims he was hired to plant the photos and begs Anderton to kill him, saying that his family will only be paid if he dies. When Anderton still refuses, Crow kills himself in a manner similar to the precogs' vision of Anderton killing him.
Tipped off by Anderton, Witwer investigates Anne's case and finds discrepancies to suggest that she had indeed been murdered. He reports his findings to Lamar Burgess, director of Precrime, who kills him with Anderton's gun. Anderton is arrested and imprisoned for the murders of Crow and Witwer, and Agatha is returned to the other precogs. After Anderton's imprisonment Lara discusses Anderton's concerns about Anne Lively with Burgess. Initially Burgess denies any recollection of Anne Lively but later in the same conversation says he will look into "her drowning"—a detail Lara never mentioned. Lara becomes suspicious and breaks Anderton out of prison allowing him to confront Burgess at a banquet celebrating the national launch of Precrime. Anne, a neuroin addict and Agatha's mother, had given up custody of Agatha; some time later, she broke her habit and tried to reclaim her daughter. Burgess hired a man to kill Anne, knowing that Precrime would intervene, then killed her himself in the predicted manner afterward. The Precrime technicians disregarded the second murder vision as an echo of the first one. Once Anderton began to investigate, Burgess arranged for Crow to pose as Sean's abductor in order to provoke Anderton to murder.
A "red ball" report comes in, indicating that Burgess will kill Anderton. As the two men face each other down, Anderton points out the dilemma facing Burgess: he can spare Anderton and watch Precrime be discredited and shut down, or kill him and go to prison in order to validate the program. Burgess asks Anderton's forgiveness before killing himself.
Anderton and Lara reconcile, with Lara becoming pregnant with another child. Precrime is abandoned and the prisoners are pardoned and released, though many remain under police surveillance. The precogs are moved to an undisclosed location to live in peace.
## Cast
- Tom Cruise as Chief John Anderton, Precrime program commanding officer.
- Max von Sydow as Lamar Burgess, Director of Precrime.
- Colin Farrell as Danny Witwer, agent from Department of Justice.
- Samantha Morton as Agatha Lively, described as the most "talented" of the three precogs.
- Neal McDonough as Gordon "Fletch" Fletcher, a Precrime officer.
- Patrick Kilpatrick as Geoffrey Knott, a Precrime officer.
- Michael and Matthew Dickman as Arthur and Dashiell "Dash" Arkadin, the precog twins.
- Lois Smith as Dr. Iris Hineman, creator of precrime.
- Kathryn Morris as Lara Anderton, estranged wife of Anderton.
- Mike Binder as Leo Crow, the Precrime victim who is supposed to be killed by Anderton.
- Steve Harris as Jad Watson, agent who assists Anderton in temple.
- Jessica Harper as Anne Lively, Agatha's mother.
- Tim Blake Nelson as Gideon, a guard of the Precrime prison.
- Daniel London as Norbert "Wally" Wallace, the caretaker of the Precogs.
- Peter Stormare as Dr. Solomon P. Eddie, an underground surgeon Anderton previously arrested who replaces his eyes.
The cast also features Jessica Capshaw as Evanna, Precrime's transport pilot,Tyler Patrick Jones as Sean Anderton, John and Lara's son supposedly murdered by Crow, Jason Antoon as Rufus T. Riley, cyber parlor proprietor; Nancy Linehan Charles as Celeste Burgess, Lamar's wife; Victor Raider-Wexler as Attorney General Arthur Nash, Arye Gross as Howard Marks, Ashley Crow as Sarah Marks, David Stifel as Lycon, Anna Maria Horsford as Casey, Joel Gretsch as Donald Dubin, Tom Choi as Nick Paymen, Caroline Lagerfelt as Greta van Eyck and William Mapother (Tom Cruise's cousin) as a hotel clerk.
Cameron Diaz, Cameron Crowe, and Paul Thomas Anderson make uncredited cameo appearances as subway passengers.
## Production
### Development
Dick's story was first optioned by producer and writer Gary Goldman in 1992. He created the initial script for the film with Ron Shusett and Robert Goethals (uncredited). It was supposed to be a sequel to the 1990 Dick adaptation Total Recall, which starred Arnold Schwarzenegger. However, Carolco Pictures, the production company that produced the film, struggled to secure either funding or Schwarzenegger's interest to progress the project before its bankruptcy in 1995. While the remake rights were purchased by Miramax Films in 1997, Shusett and Goldman had removed the Total Recall elements from their script to develop it as a standalone film, Minority Report.
Novelist Jon Cohen was hired in 1997 to adapt the story for a potential film version that would have been directed by Dutch filmmaker Jan de Bont. Meanwhile, Cruise and Spielberg, who met and became friends on the set of Cruise's film Risky Business in 1983, had been looking to collaborate for ten years. Spielberg was set to direct Cruise in Rain Man, but left to make Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Cruise read Cohen's script, and passed it onto Spielberg, who felt it needed some work. Spielberg was not directly involved in the writing of the script, though he was allowed to decide whether the picture's screenplay was ready to be filmed. When Cohen submitted an acceptable revision, he called Cruise and said, "Yeah, I'll do this version of the script." In that version, Witwer creates a false disk which shows Anderton killing him. When Anderton sees the clip, his belief in the infallibility of the precogs' visions convinces him it is true, therefore the precogs have a vision of him killing Witwer. At the end, Anderton shoots Witwer and one of the brother precogs finishes him off, because Witwer had slain his twin. Spielberg was attracted to the story because as both a mystery and a film set 50 years in the future, it allowed him to do "a blending of genres" which intrigued him.
In 1998, the pair joined Minority Report and announced the production as a joint venture of Spielberg's DreamWorks and Amblin Entertainment, 20th Century Fox, Cruise's Cruise/Wagner Productions, and De Bont's production company, Blue Tulip, the latter of which had previously worked on Speed 2: Cruise Control. In exchange for directing The Haunting, Spielberg offered to take over directing duties on Minority Report while De Bont was busy with post-production for Twister. Spielberg however stated that despite being credited, De Bont never became involved with the film. Cruise and Spielberg, at the latter's insistence, reportedly agreed to each take 15% of the gross instead of any money up front to try to keep the film's budget under \$100 million. Spielberg said he had done the same with name actors in the past to great success: "Tom Hanks took no cash for Saving Private Ryan but he made a lot of money on his profit participation." He made this agreement a prerequisite:
> I haven't worked with many movie stars—80 per cent of my films don't have movie stars—and I've told them if they want to work with me I want them to gamble along with me. I haven't taken a salary in 18 years for a movie, so if my film makes no money I get no money. They should be prepared to do the same.
Production was delayed for several years. The original plan was to begin filming after Cruise's Mission: Impossible 2 was finished, but that film ran over schedule, which also allowed Spielberg time to bring in screenwriter Scott Frank to rework Cohen's screenplay. John August did an uncredited draft to polish the script, and Frank Darabont was also invited to rewrite, but was by then busy with The Majestic. The film closely follows Scott Frank's final script (completed May 16, 2001), and contains much of Cohen's third draft (May 24, 1997). Frank removed the character of Senator Malcolm from Cohen's screenplay, and inserted Burgess, who became the "bad guy". He also rewrote Witwer from a villain to a "good guy", as he was in the short story. In contrast to Spielberg's next science fiction picture, War of the Worlds, which he called "100 percent character" driven, Spielberg said the story for Minority Report became "50 percent character and 50 percent very complicated storytelling with layers and layers of murder mystery and plot." According to film scholar Warren Buckland, Cohen and Frank apparently did not see the Goldman and Schusett screenplay, but instead worked on their own adaptation. Goldman and Schusett, however, claimed the pair used a lot of material from their script, so the issue went through the Writer's Guild arbitration process. They won a partial victory; they were not given writing credits, but were listed as executive producers. The film was delayed again so Spielberg could finish A.I. after the death of his friend Stanley Kubrick. When Spielberg originally signed on to direct, he planned to have an entirely different supporting cast. He offered the role of Witwer to Matt Damon, Iris Hineman to Meryl Streep, Burgess to Ian McKellen, Agatha to Cate Blanchett, and Lara to Jenna Elfman. Streep declined the role, Damon opted out due to scheduling conflicts with Ocean's Eleven, and the other roles were recast due to the delays. Spielberg also offered the role of Witwer to Javier Bardem, who turned it down.
### Technology
After E.T., Spielberg started to consult experts, and put more scientific research into his science fiction films. In 1999, he invited fifteen experts convened by Peter Schwartz and Stewart Brand to a hotel in Santa Monica for a three-day "think tank". He wanted to consult with the group to create a plausible "future reality" for the year 2054 as opposed to a more traditional "science fiction" setting. Dubbed the "think tank summit", the experts included architect Peter Calthorpe, author Douglas Coupland, urbanist and journalist Joel Garreau, computer scientist Neil Gershenfeld, biomedical researcher Shaun Jones, computer scientist Jaron Lanier, and former Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) architecture dean William J. Mitchell. Production designer Alex McDowell kept what was nicknamed the "2054 bible", an 80-page guide created in preproduction which listed all the aspects of the future world: architectural, socio-economic, political, and technological. While the discussions did not change key elements in the film, they were influential in the creation of some of the more utopian aspects, though John Underkoffler, the science and technology advisor for the film, described it as "much grayer and more ambiguous" than what was envisioned in 1999. Underkoffler, who designed most of Anderton's interface after Spielberg told him to make it "like conducting an orchestra", said "it would be hard to identify anything [in the movie] that had no grounding in reality." McDowell teamed up with architect Greg Lynn to work on some of the technical aspects of the production design. Lynn praised his work, saying that a "lot of those things Alex cooked up for Minority Report, like the 3-D screens, have become real."
Spielberg described his ideas for the film's technology to Roger Ebert before its release:
> I wanted all the toys to come true someday. I want there to be a transportation system that doesn't emit toxins into the atmosphere. And the newspaper that updates itself ...
>
> The Internet is watching us now. If they want to. They can see what sites you visit. In the future, television will be watching us, and customizing itself to what it knows about us. The thrilling thing is, that will make us feel we're part of the medium. The scary thing is, we'll lose our right to privacy. An ad will appear in the air around us, talking directly to us.
### Filming
Minority Report was the first film to have an entirely digital production design. Termed "previz", as an abbreviation of previsualization (a term borrowed from the film's narrative), production designer Alex McDowell said the system allowed them to use Photoshop in place of painters, and employ 3D animation programs (Maya and XSI) to create a simulated set, which could be filled with digital actors then used to block out shots in advance. The technology also allowed the tie-in video game and special effects companies to cull data from the previous system before the film was finished, which they used to establish parameters for their visuals. When Spielberg quickly became a fan, McDowell said "It became pretty clear that [he] wouldn't read an illustration as a finished piece, but if you did it in Photoshop and created a photorealistic environment he focused differently on it." Minority Report was the last live-action visual effects job for PDI/DreamWorks which became DreamWorks Animation shortly afterwards. PDI/DreamWorks primarily worked on the Spyder sequences and visual effects supervisor Henry LaBounta took inspiration from deep sea jellyfish: "Their tentacles have these bioluminescent little lights that kind of run through their tentacles and that just looks so cool. So I got back to the studio and talked to the artists and I said, ‘We’re gonna do some radiating jellyfish bioluminescent lights on the bottom of this spider, and try that.’"
Filming took place from March 22 to July 18, 2001, in Washington, D.C., Virginia, and Los Angeles. Film locations included the Ronald Reagan Building (as PreCrime headquarters) and Georgetown. The skyline of Rosslyn, Virginia is visible when Anderton flies across the Potomac River. A quick shot of Indian Field Creek, which crosses the Colonial Parkway in Yorktown, Virginia, is seen as John takes Agatha to his wife's house. During production, Spielberg made regular appearances on a video-only webcam based in the craft services truck, both alone and with Tom Cruise; together they conferred publicly with Ron Howard and Russell Crowe via a similar webcam on the set of A Beautiful Mind in New York.
The location of the small, uncharted island in the last shot of the film is Butter Island off North Haven, Maine in the Penobscot Bay.
Although it takes place in an imagined future world of advanced technology, Minority Report attempts to embody a more "realistic" depiction of the future. Spielberg decided that to be more credible, the setting had to keep both elements of the present and ones which specialists expected would be forthcoming. Thus Washington, D.C., as depicted in the movie keeps well-known buildings such as the Capitol and the Washington Monument, as well as a section of modern buildings on the other side of the Potomac River. Production designer Alex McDowell was hired based on his work in Fight Club and his storyboards for a film version of Fahrenheit 451 which would have starred Mel Gibson. McDowell studied modern architecture, and his sets contain many curves, circular shapes, and reflective materials. Costume designer Deborah L. Scott decided to make the clothes worn by the characters as simple as possible, so as not to make the depiction of the future seem dated.
The stunt crew was the same one used in Cruise's Mission: Impossible 2, and was responsible for complex action scenes. These included the auto factory chase scene, filmed in a real facility using props such as a welding robot, and the fight between Anderton and the jetpack-clad officers, filmed in an alley set built on the Warner Bros. studio lot. Industrial Light & Magic did most of the special effects, while PDI/DreamWorks was responsible for the Spyder robots. The company Pixel Liberation Front did previsualization animatics. The holographic projections and the prison facility were filmed by several roving cameras which surrounded the actors, and the scene where Anderton gets off his car and runs along the Maglev vehicles was filmed on stationary props, which were later replaced by computer-generated vehicles.
### Storyline differences
> The Philip K. Dick story only gives you a springboard that really doesn't have a second or third act. Most of the movie is not in the Philip K. Dick story – to the chagrin of the Philip K. Dick fans, I'm sure.
Like most film adaptations of Dick's works, many aspects of his story were changed in their transition to film, such as the addition of Lamar Burgess and the change in setting from New York City to Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and Northern Virginia. The character of John Anderton was changed from a balding and out-of-shape old man to an athletic officer in his 40s to fit its portrayer and the film's action scenes. The film adds two stories of tragic families; Anderton's, and that of the three pre-cogs. In the short story, Anderton is married with no children, while in the film, he is the divorced father of a kidnapped son, who is most likely deceased. Although it is implied, but unclear in the film whether Agatha is related to the twin pre-cogs, her family was shattered when Burgess murdered her mother, Anne Lively. The precogs were intellectually disabled and deformed individuals in the story, but in the film, they are the genetically mutated offspring of drug addicts. Anderton's future murder and the reasons for the conspiracy were changed from a general who wants to discredit PreCrime to regain some military funding, to a man who murdered a precog's mother to preserve PreCrime. The subsequent murders and plot developed from this change. The film's ending also differs from the short story's. In Dick's story, Anderton prevents the closure of the PreCrime division, however, in the movie Anderton successfully brings about the end of the organization. Other aspects were updated to include current technology. For instance in the story, Anderton uses a punch card machine to interpret the precogs' visions; in the movie, he uses a virtual reality interface.
### Themes
The main theme of Minority Report is the classic philosophical debate of free will versus determinism. Other themes explored by the film include involuntary commitment, the nature of political and legal systems in a high technology-advanced society, the rights of privacy in a media-dominated world, and the nature of self-perception. The film also continues to follow Spielberg's tradition of depicting broken families, which he has said is motivated by his parents' divorce when he was a child.
## Music
The score was composed by regular Spielberg collaborator John Williams, who was inspired by Bernard Herrmann's film music; Instead of focusing on the science fiction elements, he made a score suitable for the film noir, including the use of female singer in the some sequences, and emotional themes, which Williams considered unusual for that genre. Several classical pieces, including Franz Schubert's Symphony No. 8 (Unfinished Symphony), Haydn string quartet (Op. 64, No. 1), Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 (Pathétique), were implemented in the score, though Williams said that the choices of using classical pieces were made by the studio.
Besides composing, Williams conducted the score, with orchestration by John Neufeld and vocals by Deborah Dietrich. The music was released on June 18, 2002 by DreamWorks Records in CD, vinyl and cassettes, and re-issued by Geffen Records in mid-2014 for streaming media and download. The full score as heard in the film, was released into a 2-disc "expanded edition" in 2019, which was marketed by La-La Land Records, along with several alternate and unused tracks as bonus material.
## Style
Minority Report is a futuristic film which portrays elements of a both dystopian and utopian future. The film renders a much more detailed view of its future world than the book and contains new technologies not in Dick's story. From a stylistic standpoint, Minority Report resembles Spielberg's previous film A.I., but also incorporates elements of film noir. Spielberg said that he "wanted to give the movie a noir feel. So I threw myself a film festival. Asphalt Jungle. Key Largo. The Maltese Falcon." The picture was deliberately overlit, and the negative was bleach-bypassed during post-production. The scene in which Anderton is dreaming about his son's kidnapping at the pool is the only one shot in "normal" color. Bleach-bypassing gave the film a distinctive look; it desaturated the film's colors, to the point that it nearly resembles a black-and-white movie, yet the blacks and shadows have a high contrast like a film noir picture. The color was reduced by "about 40%" to achieve the "washed-out" appearance. Elvis Mitchell, formerly of The New York Times, commented that "The picture looks as if it were shot on chrome, caught on the fleeing bumper of a late '70s car."
Spielberg preferred film to the then-emerging digital video format, and opted to create the film's look photochemically. Cinematographer Janusz Kamiński shot with high-speed film in Super 35 format (which requires an additional enlarging process) to increase the overall grain, having been told by Spielberg to create "the ugliest, dirtiest movie" he'd ever shot. The film's camera work is very mobile, alternating between handheld and Steadicam shots, which are "exaggerated by the use of wide angle lenses and the occasional low camera angle" to increase the perception of movement according to film scholar Warren Buckland.
Kamiński said that he never used a lens longer than 27mm, and alternated between 17, 21, and 27mm lenses, as Spielberg liked to "keep the actors as close to the camera as possible". He also said, "We staged a lot of scenes in wide shots that have a lot of things happening with the frame." The duo also used several long takes to focus on the emotions of the actors, rather than employing numerous cuts.
Spielberg eschewed the typical "shot reverse shot" cinematography technique used when filming characters' interactions in favor of the long takes, which were shot by a mobile, probing camera. McDowell relied on colorless chrome and glass objects of curved and circular shapes in his set designs, which, aided by the "low-key contrastive lighting", populated the film with shadows, creating a "futuristic film noir atmosphere".
### Opening sequence
Buckland describes the film's 14 minute opening sequence as the "most abstract and complex of any Spielberg film." The first scene is a distorted precog vision of a murder, presented out of context. The pace of the film is sped up, slowed, and even reversed, and the movie "jumps about in time and space" by intercutting the images in no discernible order. When it ends, it becomes clear that the scene was presented through Agatha's eyes, and that this is how previsions appear to her. Fellow scholar Nigel Morris called this scene a "trailer", because it foreshadows the plot and establishes the type of "tone, generic expectations, and enigmas" that will be used in the film.
The visions of the pre-cogs are presented in a fragmented series of clips using a "squishy lens" device, which distorts the images, blurring their edges and creating ripples across them. They were created by a two-man production team, hired by Spielberg, who chose the "layered, dreamlike imagery" based on some comments from cognitive psychologists the pair consulted. In the opening's next scene, Anderton is "scrubbing the images", by standing like a composer (as Spielberg terms it), and manipulating them, while Jad assists him. Next the family involved in the murder in Agatha's vision is shown interacting, which establishes that the opening scene was a prevision. The picture then cuts back to Anderton and the precogs' images, before alternating between the three.
The opening is self-contained, and according to Buckland acts merely as a setup for numerous elements of the story. It lasts 14 minutes, includes 171 shots, and has an average shot length of five seconds as opposed to the 6.5 second average for the entire film. The opening's five-second average is attained despite "very fast cutting" in the beginning and ending, because the middle has longer takes, which reach 20 seconds in some instances. Spielberg also continues his tradition of "heavily diffused backlighting" for much of the interior shots.
## Release
### Context
The summer of 2002 was expected to be competitive at the global box office due to the high number of franchises, blockbusters, and star-studded projects.
Spielberg typically keeps the plot points of his films closely guarded before their release, and Minority Report was no different. He said he had to remove some scenes, and a few "F-words" to get the film's PG-13 rating. Following the disappointing box office results of Spielberg's A.I., the marketing campaign for Minority Report downplayed his role in the movie and sold the film as a Cruise action thriller.
Tom Rothman, chairman of the film's co-financier Fox Filmed Entertainment, described the film's marketing strategy thus: "How are we marketing it? It's Cruise and Spielberg. What else do we need to do?" The strategy made sense; coming into the film, Spielberg had made 20 films which grossed a domestic total of \$2.8 billion, while Cruise's resume featured 23 films and \$2 billion in domestic revenues. With their combined 30% take of the film's box office though, sources such as BusinessWeek'''s Ron Grover predicted the studios would have a hard time making the money needed to break even. Despite the outward optimism, as a more adult-oriented, darker film than typical blockbusters, the studio held different box office expectations for the film than they would a more family friendly film.
Entertainment Weekly projected the film would gross \$40 million in the US in its opening weekend, and Variety predicted that the high concept storyline would not appeal to children and would render it a "commercial extra-base hit rather than a home run."
### Theatrical run
The world premiere of Minority Report took place in New York City on June 19, 2002. An online "popcorn cam" broadcast live from inside the premiere. Cruise attended the London premiere the following week, and mingled with thousands of adoring fans as he walked through the city's Leicester Square. It debuted at first place in the U.S. box office, collecting \$35.677 million in its opening weekend, narrowly above Lilo & Stitch. Forbes considered those numbers below expectations, as they gave the film a small edge over Lilo & Stitch, which debuted in second place (\$35.260 million). Lilo & Stitch sold more tickets, but since much of the film's attendees were children, its average ticket price was much lower.
The film opened at the top of the box office in numerous foreign markets; it made \$6.7 million in 780 locations in Germany its opening weekend, and accounted for 35% of France's total box office weekend office gross when it collected \$5 million in 700 theaters. In Great Britain, Minority Report made \$36.9 million in its first three days. It went on to make \$5.9 million in the UK, ranking number one at the box office, beating Spider-Man. Minority Report had the country's third-highest opening for a Steven Spielberg film, behind Jurassic Park and its successor The Lost World: Jurassic Park.
The film then made \$6.2 million in Italy in its first ten, \$815,000 in its 75 location opening weekend in Belgium, and \$405,000 in an 80 theater opening weekend in Switzerland. Meanwhile, in Turkey, it made \$307,822 from 64 screens, achieving the third-highest opening for any 20th Century Fox film in the country, after Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace and Titanic. The BBC felt the film's UK performance was "buoyed by Cruise's charm offensive at last week's London premiere."
Minority Report made a total of \$132 million in the United States and \$226.3 million overseas.
### Home media
DreamWorks spent several million dollars marketing the film's DVD and VHS releases. The campaign included a tie-in video game released by Activision, which contained a trailer for the movie's DVD. Minority Report was successful in the home video market, selling at least four million DVDs in its first few months of release. The DVD took two years to produce. For the first time, Spielberg allowed filmmakers to shoot footage on the set of one of his films. Premiere-award-winning DVD producer Laurent Bouzereau, who would become a frequent Spielberg DVD collaborator, shot hundreds of hours of the film's production in the then-new high-definition video format. It contained over an hour of featurettes which discussed various aspects of film production, included breakdowns of the film's stunt sequences, and new interviews with Spielberg, Cruise, and other "Academy Award-winning filmmakers".
The film was released on a two-disc Blu-ray by Paramount Pictures (now the owner of the early DreamWorks library) on May 16, 2010. It included exclusive extras and interactive features, such as a new Spielberg interview, that were not included in the DVD edition. The film was transferred from its "HD master" which retained the distinctive grainy appearance.
### Video game
A video game based on the film titled Minority Report: Everybody Runs was developed by Treyarch, published by Activision and released on November 18, 2002, for Game Boy Advance, GameCube, PlayStation 2, and Xbox. It received mixed reviews.
## Reception
On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Minority Report received 90% positive reviews based on 254 critics and an average rating of 8.20/10. The site's critical consensus is, "Thought-provoking and visceral, Steven Spielberg successfully combines high concept ideas and high octane action in this fast and febrile sci-fi thriller." The website listed it among the best reviewed films of 2002. The film also earned an 80 out of a possible 100 on the similar review aggregating website Metacritic based on 37 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.
Most critics gave the film's handling of its central theme (free will vs. determinism) positive reviews, and many ranked it as the film's main strength. Other reviewers felt that Spielberg did not adequately tackle the issues he raised. The film has inspired discussion and analysis, the scope of which has been compared to the continuing analysis of Blade Runner. This discussion has advanced past the realm of standard film criticism. Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek fashioned a criticism of the Cheney Doctrine by comparing its preemptive strike methodology to that of the film's PreCrime system.
Richard Corliss of Time said it's "Spielberg's sharpest, brawniest, most bustling entertainment since Raiders of the Lost Ark". Mike Clark of USA Today felt it succeeded due to a "breathless 140-minute pace with a no-flab script packed with all kinds of surprises." Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly praised the film's visuals, and Todd McCarthy of Variety complimented the cast's performances. Film scholar Warren Buckland recommended the film, but felt that the comedic elements—aside from Stormare's lines—detracted from the plot and undermined the film's credibility.
Several critics used their reviews to discuss Spielberg and analyze what the film signified in his development as a filmmaker. Andrew O'Hehir of the online magazine Salon expressed excitement over the atypically hard edge of the movie. "Little Steven Spielberg is all grown up now ... into of all things a superior film artist ... It's too early to know whether Minority Report, on the heels of A.I., marks a brief detour in Spielberg's career or a permanent change of course, but either way it's a dark and dazzling spectacle." J. Hoberman of The Village Voice said it is "the most entertaining, least pretentious genre movie Steven Spielberg has made in the decade since Jurassic Park." Randy Shulman of Metro Weekly said that "the movie is a huge leap forward for the director, who moves once and for all into the world of adult movie making."
Roger Ebert called the film a "masterpiece" and said that when most directors of the period were putting "their trust in technology", Spielberg had already mastered it, and was emphasizing "story and character" while merely using technology as a "workman uses his tools". Ebert eventually named the film the best film of the year. David Edelstein of Slate echoed the positive sentiments, saying "It has been a long time since a Spielberg film felt so nimble, so unfettered, so free of self-cannibalizing." Jonathan Rosenbaum, then of the Chicago Reader, was less convinced. Though he approved of the film, he derided it in his review as a superficial action film, cautioning audiences to enjoy the movie but not "be conned into thinking that some sort of serious, thoughtful statement is being delivered along with the roller-coaster ride."
Andrew Sarris of the New York Observer gave the film a negative review in which he described the script as full of plot holes, the car chases as silly, and criticized the mixture of futuristic environments with "defiantly retro costuming". The complexity of the storyline was also a source of criticism for Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times, who considered the plot "too intricate and difficult to follow".
Rosenbaum and Hoberman both referred to the titular minority report as a "red herring". More positive reviews have seen it similarly, but referred to it as a "MacGuffin".
### Accolades
The film earned nominations for many awards, including Best Sound Editing at the 75th Academy Awards (lost to The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers), and Best Visual Effects at the BAFTAs.
It was nominated for eleven Saturn Awards including Best Actor for Cruise, Best Supporting Actor for von Sydow and Best Music for Williams, and won four: Best Science Fiction Film, Best Direction for Spielberg, Best Writing for Frank and Cohen and Supporting Actress for Morton.
It was nominated for two Visual Effects Society Awards in the categories of "Best Effects Art Direction in a Motion Picture" and "Best Compositing in a Motion Picture". It also won the BMI Film Music Award, the Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Supporting Actress, and the Empire Awards for Best Actor for Cruise, Best Director for Spielberg and Best British Actress for Morton.
Ebert listed Minority Report as the best film of 2002, as did online film reviewer James Berardinelli. The film was also included in top ten lists by critic Richard Roeper, and both reviewers at USA Today.
#### Retrospective honors
In 2008, the American Film Institute nominated Minority Report for its Top 10 Science Fiction Films list.
Roger Ebert eventually named it one of his favorite films of the 2000s. Likewise, The Washington Post selected Minority Report'' as one of the 23 best films from 2000 to 2018.
## Television series
On September 9, 2014, it was announced that a follow-up television series had been given a pilot commitment at Fox. Max Borenstein wrote the script and served as executive producer alongside Spielberg, Justin Falvey and Darryl Frank. The series was envisioned to be set 10 years after the film, and focused on a male precog who teams up with a female detective to find a purpose to his gift. On February 13, 2015, Daniel London and Li Jun Li joined the cast. On February 24, 2015, Laura Regan was cast as Agatha Lively, replacing Samantha Morton, who was said to have been offered to reprise the role.
In March 2015, Stark Sands and Meagan Good landed the lead roles with Sands playing the role of Dash, one of the male precogs, and Good playing Lara Vega, a detective haunted by her past, who works with Dash to help him find a purpose for his gift, Li Jun Li plays Akeela, a CSI technician, Daniel London reprised his role as Wally the Caretaker from the original film and Wilmer Valderrama was cast as a police detective.
The show was picked up to series by Fox on May 9, 2015, and made its broadcast debut on September 21, 2015, but was cancelled on May 13, 2016.
## See also
- Causal loop
- Inchoate offense
- List of films featuring surveillance
|
2,541,242 |
Army of Ghosts
| 1,171,253,877 | null |
[
"2006 British television episodes",
"Cybermen television stories",
"Dalek television stories",
"Doctor Who stories set on Earth",
"Television episodes about ghosts",
"Television episodes about parallel universes",
"Television episodes set in London",
"Television shows written by Russell T Davies",
"Tenth Doctor episodes"
] |
"Army of Ghosts" is the twelfth and penultimate episode in the second series of the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who which was first broadcast on BBC One on 1 July 2006. It is the first episode of a two-part story; the concluding episode, "Doomsday", was first broadcast on 8 July.
The episode is set in London, some time after the events of the 2006 episode "Love & Monsters". In the episode, the Cybermen come to Earth from a parallel world by following a spherical ship through an interdimensional breach. The Torchwood Institute intends to open this breach further for use as an energy source.
## Plot
Jackie shows the Tenth Doctor and Rose a vaguely humanoid and luminous silhouette that momentarily appears in her flat, which Jackie insists is the ghost of her deceased father. Jackie explains that for the past two months, millions of ghosts began appearing all over the world. Humans have come to accept them and believe that they are the manifestations of loved ones.
Conducting an experiment, the Doctor determines that the ghosts are in fact impressions of something forcing its way into this universe. The Doctor tracks the signal back and uses the TARDIS to travel there with Rose and Jackie, arriving at the Torchwood Institute in Canary Wharf. The Doctor and Jackie are taken by soldiers to see Torchwood's director Yvonne Hartman, while the TARDIS is impounded with Rose inside. Yvonne shows the Doctor the invisible breach which is the source of the ghost energy, along with a ship which came through the breach: a "Void ship", designed to exist in the space between universes known as the Void. Torchwood built One Canada Square around the breach and conducted experiments on it, forcing it open in an attempt to harness it as a source of energy. Yvonne also reveals to the Doctor that his encounter with Queen Victoria made him an enemy of the state and was the catalyst for the creation of Torchwood.
Meanwhile, Rose, masquerading as a Torchwood employee, slips out of the TARDIS, and gains access to the sphere chamber, where she finds Mickey, also disguised as Torchwood staff. An advance guard of Cybermen subvert and manipulate three employees into initiating an unscheduled ghost shift to forcibly open the breach, causing millions of ghosts to appear across the globe before they materialise into their true form, the Cybermen. At the same time the Cybermen arrive, the sphere suddenly activates and begins to open. The Cybermen are similarly oblivious to the origins of the sphere; they simply followed its course through the breach.
In the sphere chamber, Mickey explains to Rose that after a battle in the parallel universe the Cybermen mysteriously disappeared. He happened upon their means of escape and returned to his native universe with the intention of stopping them. Mickey believes that the Cybermen are in control of the sphere and produces a gun to destroy whatever is in it. Rose is horrified when the sphere opens and reveals its occupants to be four Daleks.
### Continuity
The majority of this episode takes place in the Torchwood Institute, which is seen on screen for the first time. The phrase "Torchwood" originated from an anagram of Doctor Who used to conceal the "rushes" tapes during the filming of the first series. It was an arc word used through the majority of the second series, starting with the series one episode "Bad Wolf".
The episode's secondary plot device is the Cybermen, from the parallel universe featured in "Rise of the Cybermen" and "The Age of Steel". The Cybermen breaking through plastic sheets is a recurring theme throughout Cybermen appearances, in particular, The Tomb of the Cybermen (1967), The Invasion (1968) and Earthshock (1982). The concept of a CyberKing, mentioned by Mickey, would eventually come to pass in "The Next Doctor" (2008).
The episode is also the first in which Freema Agyeman appears, although she is not playing the role of Martha Jones, which she would play in series 3, but a minor character named Adeola (who is later revealed to be Martha's cousin). Russell T Davies admired Agyeman's performance as Adeola and called her back to fill the role of companion that Piper had chosen to leave.
## Production
The two-part finale comprising "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday" was originally going to take place in Cardiff on the time rift which was the focus of the episodes "The Unquiet Dead" and "Boom Town". With the commission of the Torchwood series in 2005, Davies decided to base the spin-off in Cardiff and relocate "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday" to Canary Wharf in London.
To ensure that Noel Clarke and Shaun Dingwall (Mickey Smith and Pete Tyler, respectively) were available for filming, the story was filmed in the season's third production block along with "Rise of the Cybermen" and "The Age of Steel". Filming for the story started on 2 November 2005 on location in Kennington, but this story did not become the primary focus of the production crew until 29 November, when filming began on the scenes in and around the sphere chamber. Scenes in the lever room, the main setting for the story, were filmed between 12 and 15 December, and 3 and 5 January 2006.
The episode also features references to other programmes by the BBC. The most notable of these is the cameo of Barbara Windsor as Peggy Mitchell in EastEnders, where she bars a ghost, who she presumes to be Den Watts, from The Queen Victoria. Watts, presumed killed in 1989, had returned to the soap in 2003, before being killed a second time in 2005 after being written out of the show. Other British TV personalities appearing in the episode are Trisha Goddard, Alistair Appleton and Derek Acorah, appearing as themselves. Additionally, the shot of One Canada Square is taken from the opening credits of The Apprentice. A programme with the same name as a controversial broadcast in 1992 by the BBC, Ghostwatch, also appears in the show.
Location shooting took place at the Coal Exchange and Mount Stuart Square, Cardiff Bay.
## Broadcast and reception
To keep the appearance of the Daleks secret, the final scene was removed from all preview tapes and replaced with a title card reading "final scene withheld until transmission", including the copy given to the Doctor Who microsite's "fear forecast" team.
The episode was watched by 8.19 million viewers, and was the seventh most watched programme of the week, behind four World Cup games and two episodes of Coronation Street. The Companion episode of Doctor Who Confidential gained 570,000 viewers. The episode's Appreciation Index was 86, above the average baseline of 77 for drama series.
The episode was generally well reviewed by critics. The Stage commented that the episode was "a tense contest, full of drama, tears, adversity and two powerful forces coming face to face in the ultimate battle" while mockingly downplaying the England football team's defeat earlier that evening. The author of the review then stated that the cliffhanger increased his affection of the show. The Guardian commented that the episode was "Who back at its best" while The People complimented the humour of the scene of the Doctor channel surfing. Jacob Clifton of Television Without Pity gave the episode an A− rating. Ahsan Haque of IGN gave the episode 9.8 out of 10 (Incredible), and complimented the pacing of the episode and the revelation of both the Cybermen and the Daleks, concluding that "you couldn't ask for a better cliffhanger".
After its initial airing, the episode was released on DVD with "Fear Her" and "Doomsday" on 25 September 2006. The story ("Army of Ghosts"/"Doomsday") was nominated for the 2007 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form.
|
30,363,390 |
Player One
| 1,007,537,647 |
Book by Douglas Coupland, October 2010
|
[
"2010 Canadian novels",
"House of Anansi Press books",
"Massey Lectures books",
"Novels by Douglas Coupland"
] |
Player One: What Is to Become of Us is a novel written by Douglas Coupland for the 2010 Massey Lectures. Each of the book's five chapters was delivered as a one-hour lecture in a different Canadian city: Vancouver on October 12, Regina on October 14, Charlottetown on October 19, Ottawa on October 25 and ending in Toronto on October 29. The lectures were broadcast on CBC Radio One's Ideas, November 8–12. The book was published by House of Anansi Press.
The plot follows four characters, Karen, Rick, Luke, and Rachel, as they arrive in the lounge of an airport bar, as they interact with one another, and as they cope with chaos that erupts as cataclysmic events occur. The story addresses their motivations and perceptions, as well as their thoughts on certain themes. There are several minor characters and a fifth main character, Player One, who retells the events that the four main characters experience but from the perspective of an outside observer, like someone exploring a video game environment.
## Background
In 2009 a panel of representatives, including Sarah MacLachlan of House of Anansi Press, John Fraser of Massey College and Ideas executive producer Bernie Lucht, selected Douglas Coupland to deliver the 2010 Massey Lectures. Coupland, a West Vancouver resident who would be 48 years old during the lectures, was best known for his previous novels Generation X (1991), jPod (2006), and Generation A (2009), but also had written non-fiction works and screenplays. Coupland did not immediately agree but after some thought, accepted the panel's offer. He was given the creative freedom to select how the lecture would be delivered, and chose to write a novel. While previous novelists, such as Margaret Atwood and Thomas King, had delivered traditional academic lectures, Coupland felt that "a narrative seemed like the most efficient and accessible way of putting forth a large number of propositions about life in the year 2010."
## Synopsis
The book is divided into five chapters. Each chapter is divided into five parts, each describing events from the perspective of one of the five main characters: Karen, Rick, Luke, Rachel, and Player One. The first chapter, "Hour One: Cue the Flaming Zeppelin", has Karen arriving at the Toronto airport on a flight from Winnipeg to meet a man she met online. She sits on a stool at the airport hotel bar in which Rick is the bartender, Rachel is at a computer terminal, and Luke is sitting at a table drinking scotch. Rachel is there with the expectation to meet a man who can father her child and approaches Luke. Karen's date goes badly as she finds the man too assertive physically and too distant intellectually. A self-help guru, Leslie Freemont, enters with his assistant Tara to welcome Rick into his empowerment program; Leslie gives a speech to the group, takes Rick's money, and leaves. Meanwhile, oil prices rapidly increase and explosions start to occur outside. With the power unreliable, Karen, Rick, Luke, and Rachel run to Rick's vehicle to listen to the radio. Karen's date, Warren, is killed by a sniper as he runs to the group, who quickly return to the bar lounge where they barricade themselves in.
In "Hour Three: God's little Dumpsters" Karen's daughter tells them, over the phone, of rioting and general chaos that is occurring. Rick and Luke crawl through the ventilation shafts to the roof to overpower the sniper but fail and retreat to the lounge. As chemical fall-out starts to land on the airport, the sniper seeks shelter in the lounge and is taken prisoner by the other characters. In "Hour Four: Hello, My Name Is: Monster" Rick and Rachel have sex, the sniper explains his motivations, and a teenager suffering from chemical burns seeks their help. In the final chapter "Hour Five: The View From Inside Daffy Duck's Hole" Karen and Luke tend to the teenager's wounds. Rachel discovers that the sniper is actually Leslie Freemont's son, and upon stating this, the sniper panics, manages to get his gun back and shoots Rachel. The final part of the final chapter is told from the combined point-of-view of Rachel and Player One, who exist in what is labeled as Eternity, and provide an epilogue revealing the fates of the characters.
### Characters
- Karen — A divorced mother of one daughter, and a receptionist at a psychiatrist office, who travels from Winnipeg to Toronto to meet Warren, whom she met in an online forum.
- Rick — A divorced father of one son, and a recovering alcoholic, who works as a bartender at the Toronto Airport Camelot Hotel. He has been saving money to enroll in an empowerment program operated by Leslie Freemont.
- Luke — A pastor of a church in Nipissing, Ontario who lost his faith in religion, stole \$20,000 from the church and fled to Toronto.
- Rachel — A young woman who operates a business that breeds lab mice and lives with psychological conditions on the Autism spectrum. Among her psychological conditions is prosopagnosia, as well as an inability to understand humour, metaphors, irony, or social cues. She wants to become pregnant to prove to her parents that she can lead what they consider a normal life.
- Player One — A disembodied voice who watches the events and comments on the character's past, present, and future actions and circumstances.
- Warren — The man who Karen is scheduled to meet at the hotel bar.
- Leslie Freemont — A self-help guru who operates the Power Dynamics Seminar System. He arrives with his assistant Tara to accept Rick into the program.
- Bertis — A religious fanatic, the son of Leslie Freemont, and the sniper on the bar's roof.
- Max — A teenager who tries to covertly take photos of Karen during their flight. He stumbles upon the group as he flees the chemical fall-out.
## Style and themes
Player One is the first Massey Lecture to be delivered as a work of fiction: a 50,000-word novel. The story is told as a first-person narrative with the perspective rotated between the five main characters: Karen, Luke, Rick, Rachel, and Player One. The narrative voice was described as being the typical "Coupland-esque coolness" with the "same apocalyptic feel" as his previous novel, Generation A. Rachel, though, speaks with a unique tone, devoid of emotion and unable to detect emotion in the voice of others, similar to how people communicate online without seeing one another, like via email.
The story's themes reflect many of the themes Coupland has addressed in his other works, including themes on time, religion, an afterlife, and communication. One reviewer mentioned that the book has "quintessential Coupland themes, chiefly, how the speed of change, both technologically and socially driven, is altering the world, our own sense of self and our souls". In relation to the Future Legend glossary at the end of the book Coupland said "The future is happening so fast and furious right now, there's no language to describe all these new sensations, so we have to begin inventing one".
## Publication and reception
The book was published by House of Anansi Press and released in October 2010 as Coupland began the Massey lecture series in Vancouver on October 12. Each lecture consisted of Coupland reading aloud one chapter, followed by questions from the audience and a book signing. The second lecture took place in Regina on October 14, followed by Charlottetown on October 19, Ottawa on October 25, and ending on October 29 in Toronto. The series was recorded then aired on CBC Radio One's Ideas between November 8 and 12. The book was long-listed for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.
The review in the Library Journal wrote that the book is "eminently readable, humorous, and philosophical if at times slightly lightweight" and that it "is a worthwhile novel that may also appeal to younger readers". By selecting Coupland, the Massey Lecture selection committee did intend to appeal to "a slightly younger demographic than previous Massey Lectures". In the Booklist review, Jonathan Fullmer writes, "A taut and scintillating exploration of time, Coupland's tale is both smart and suspenseful while simultaneously questioning the meaning of narration."
|
43,984,042 |
2011 White House shooting
| 1,160,871,952 |
Assassination attempt on President Barack Obama, 2011
|
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"History of the White House",
"Non-fatal shootings",
"November 2011 crimes in the United States",
"November 2011 events in the United States",
"Presidency of Barack Obama"
] |
On November 11, 2011, Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez, an unemployed 21-year-old man, fired multiple shots at the White House using a semi-automatic rifle. At least seven bullets hit the second floor. Neither President Barack Obama nor First Lady Michelle Obama were home at the time; the president was not in Washington, D.C., having been on a trip abroad. However, the couple's youngest daughter, Sasha, and the first lady's mother, Marian Shields Robinson, were in the White House. No one was injured. It took four days for the Secret Service to realize that bullets had struck the White House. Michelle Obama learned of the shooting from an usher, then summoned Mark J. Sullivan, director of the Secret Service, to find out why the first family had not been informed.
In September 2013, Ortega-Hernandez pleaded guilty to one count of property destruction and one count of discharging a firearm during a crime of violence, thereby avoiding being charged with an attempt to assassinate the President. In March 2014, he was sentenced to 25 years' imprisonment. In September 2014, The Washington Post published an investigative report detailing errors that the Secret Service made on the night of the shooting that led to the crime going undiscovered. A House of Representatives hearing followed and Julia Pierson, director of the Secret Service, resigned the following week. It was the first shooting at the White House since Francisco Martin Duran's attempted assassination of President Bill Clinton in 1994.
## Background
Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez, an unemployed 21-year-old man, left his home in Idaho Falls, Idaho on October 23, three weeks prior to the shooting. He told his friends and family that he was going to Utah for a business trip; his family reported him missing on October 31 after he failed to return. According to friends, Ortega-Hernandez had become increasingly paranoid before leaving, saying that the United States government was controlling citizens and that President Barack Obama "had to be stopped". The mother of Ortega-Hernandez's former fiancée stated that he had been well-mannered for the four years she had known him, but had recently started making bizarre statements. On July 8, he had told an acquaintance that Obama was planning to put GPS tracking devices into children and that the world would end in 2012. In September, he made a video for Oprah Winfrey, explaining that he was Jesus and asking to appear on her television show. On his 21st birthday in October, he made a 45-minute speech on various topics including a warning of the dangers of secret societies. Ortega-Hernandez had a 2-year-old son with his former fiancée; it is unknown when or why they separated.
Ortega-Hernandez arrived in Washington on November 9 with 180 rounds of ammunition and a Romanian-made Cugir WASR semiautomatic rifle that he had purchased from a gun shop in Idaho. On the morning of the shooting, he was reported for suspicious behavior in a local park. Police questioned him, but he refused to let police search his car. After photographing him, police officers let him go as they had no cause to make an arrest.
## Shooting and response
On November 11, Ortega-Hernandez parked his vehicle on Constitution Avenue, 750 yards (690 m) directly south of the White House. He aimed his semi-automatic rifle from the car's passenger seat and fired. Gunfire was reported around 9 pm. One bullet hit an antique window on the White House's second floor near the first family's formal living room; however, it did not penetrate the bulletproof glass on the inside. One bullet lodged in a window frame, and others ricocheted off the roof, causing small pieces of wood and concrete to fall to the ground. At least seven bullets struck the second floor, causing \$97,000 worth of damage. A woman in a taxi nearby witnessed the shooting and wrote on Twitter, "Driver in front of my cab STOPPED and fired 5 gun shots at the White House. It took the police a while to respond." President Obama, his wife Michelle, and their oldest daughter Malia were not home at the time of the shooting, although their younger daughter Sasha and Michelle's mother Marian Shields Robinson were. When the shooting occurred, Malia was coming home and was expected to arrive at any moment.
Secret Service agents initially rushed to respond. Snipers scanned the South Lawn, looking for an assailant. A supervisor then decided that the noises were backfires from a nearby construction site and told the agents, "No shots have been fired ... stand down", to the surprise of several officers. According to Carol D. Leonnig, agents who thought the building had been fired upon "were largely ignored", with one reporting she had been afraid to doubt her superior's assertion. By the end of the night, it was confirmed that a shooting had occurred, although the Secret Service believed that gunfire was not aimed at the White House, but rather was the result of a gang fight nearby. A Secret Service dispatcher called emergency services and gave incorrect descriptions of both vehicles and suspects; police were told to look for two black men on Rock Creek Parkway. It took four days for the Secret Service to realize that bullets had struck the White House. The evidence was only noticed when a housekeeper discovered broken glass and pieces of cement on the Truman Balcony around midday on November 15.
President Obama was visiting Australia and Indonesia when the discovery was made. Michelle Obama had returned to the White House on the morning of November 15, going to sleep shortly after arriving. An usher went to check on her later that day and began talking about the shooting, assuming she already knew about the incident. According to Leonnig, the first lady was "furious", wondering why the director of the Secret Service, Mark J. Sullivan, who had accompanied her on her flight back to Washington, had not told her about it. Leonnig also stated that Sullivan was subsequently summoned to a meeting with the first lady, during which she raised her voice so loudly she could be heard through the closed door. Sullivan disputes this report, though he declined to give any details regarding the conversation. A detailed inspection of the White House for evidence or damage and interviews with key witnesses began later that afternoon. Leonnig also stated that President Obama was angered over the flawed response and the failure to notify the first lady. According to one presidential aide, "the shit really hit the fan" when Obama returned from his travels five days later.
Three years later, in September 2014, Carol D. Leonnig from The Washington Post released an investigative report describing the details of the Secret Service's "bungled" response following the shooting. The Secret Service responded to the criticism, stating that the shots were fired from a quarter-mile away, resulting in echoes obfuscating their origin, and that initial witness accounts stated that the shots were fired at another vehicle from a black vehicle. An agent who asked to remain anonymous stated, "I'm not saying this was our shining moment, but we never stopped looking for [the gunman]." A former agent stated that the Secret Service needed to change its ways in order to prevent "complacency" and stop future attacks. As a direct result of the attack, additional security measures, such as personnel changes and physical improvements including additional surveillance cameras, were implemented at the White House. It was the first shooting at the White House since Francisco Martin Duran's fired shots at President Bill Clinton from the fence overlooking the north lawn on October 29, 1994.
A week after The Washington Post released their report, Julia Pierson, who took over as director of the Secret Service from Sullivan in March 2013, testified at a United States House of Representatives hearing regarding security breaches at the White House. Pierson was criticized by Committee Chairman Darrell Issa regarding several security breaches. Issa stated, "The fact is, the system broke down ... when Oscar Ortega-Hernandez successfully shot at the White House on November 2011." Upon hearing that an agent was unwilling to doubt her superior's assertion, Representative Elijah Cummings stated to Pierson that it was "very disturbing to know that Secret Service agents in the most protective agency in the world feel more comfortable ... coming to members of this committee and telling things than coming to you and members in the agency." Pierson acknowledged that the incident was "extremely" troubling. As a result of the 2011 shooting and other controversies, Pierson resigned from her position on October 1, 2014.
## Arrest and trial
Leonnig described Ortega-Hernandez's arrest as "sheer luck". He crashed a black 1998 Honda Accord, registered in his name, several blocks from the White House shortly after the shooting. He abandoned his vehicle with his firearm still inside, along with three loaded magazines, nine spent shell casings, and brass knuckles. On November 13, the United States Park Police obtained a warrant for Ortega-Hernandez's arrest based on weapons charges regarding his abandoned rifle, although he was still not suspected of shooting at the White House. Around the same time, Secret Service agents learned from his friends and family that he was obsessed with President Obama, and the agents began canvassing Washington in an attempt to find him. When the damage to the White House was discovered on November 15, Ortega-Hernandez became the prime suspect for the shooting. On November 16, he was arrested in a hotel in Indiana, Pennsylvania, after an employee there recognized him and contacted police.
Federal prosecutors launched an investigation to determine if he had acted out of hatred for Obama. Writings by Ortega-Hernandez and testimonies from those who knew him revealed that he believed that he was Jesus, and that President Obama was the Antichrist and the devil. Ortega-Hernandez was not found to be affiliated with any extremist groups. In September 2013, Ortega-Hernandez pled guilty to two of the nineteen charges against him: one count of destruction of property and one count of discharging a firearm during a crime of violence. As part of his plea bargain, the remaining charges were dropped, including the charge of attempting to assassinate the President, which carried a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. On March 31, 2014, Ortega-Hernandez was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment by Judge Rosemary M. Collyer. His lawyers had asked for a 10-year sentence, stating Ortega-Hernandez was suffering from depression and stress. Prosecutors had asked for the maximum sentence of 271⁄2 years. He is serving his sentence at Federal Correctional Institution, Beaumont, with a release date of June 21, 2033.
## See also
- List of incidents of political violence in Washington, D.C.
- List of United States presidential assassination attempts and plots
- List of White House security breaches
- Religious terrorism
- Security incidents involving Barack Obama
|
30,411,478 |
You and I (Lady Gaga song)
| 1,167,666,447 |
2011 single by Lady Gaga
|
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"2010s ballads",
"2011 singles",
"2011 songs",
"American country music songs",
"Ben Platt songs",
"Country ballads",
"Country rock songs",
"Interscope Records singles",
"Lady Gaga songs",
"Music videos directed by Laurieann Gibson",
"Rock ballads",
"Song recordings produced by Lady Gaga",
"Song recordings produced by Robert John \"Mutt\" Lange",
"Songs about Nebraska",
"Songs about cross-dressing",
"Songs written by Lady Gaga"
] |
"You and I" (stylized as "Yoü and I") is a song written and recorded by American singer-songwriter Lady Gaga, taken from her second studio album, Born This Way (2011). She also co-produced it with Robert John "Mutt" Lange. The track samples Queen's "We Will Rock You" (1977) and features electric guitar by Queen's Brian May. Gaga debuted "You and I" in June 2010 during her performance at Elton John's White Tie and Tiara Ball. Footage of the performance appeared on the Internet, and positive response encouraged her to include the song on her setlist for The Monster Ball Tour. She later performed the song on Today to a record crowd in July 2010, and on The Oprah Winfrey Show in May 2011. On August 23, 2011, Interscope Records released the song as the fourth single from the album.
"You and I" is a downtempo song featuring instrumentation from electric guitars and piano, with Gaga and Lange providing background vocals. The song received critical acclaim, with reviewers listing it as one of the highlights from Born This Way. After the release of the parent album, "You and I" charted in Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, due to digital downloads from the parent album. After being released as a single, "You and I" reached the top ten in the US, Japan, and seven additional countries. The song was also certified Triple Platinum in the US for selling three million units. Season ten American Idol contestant Haley Reinhart performed "You and I" in May 2011 before its release, earning positive reviews. Her studio recording was released to the iTunes Store as a single, and appeared on the compilation album, American Idol Top 5 Season 10. "You and I" was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Pop Solo Performance at the 54th Grammy Awards, which was held on February 12, 2012.
The accompanying music video for "You and I" was also met with a positive response. It was shot by Gaga's long-time collaborator Laurieann Gibson in Springfield, Nebraska, and it was released on August 16, 2011. It features Yüyi, Gaga's mermaid alter ego, and Jo Calderone, Gaga's male alter ego, who also appears on the single's cover. Gaga later performed the song dressed as Jo Calderone at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards. The song has subsequently been performed on the singer's concert tours and residencies.
## Background and release
"Yoü and I", written by Lady Gaga and produced by Gaga and Robert John "Mutt" Lange, was one of the first songs previewed from the album. Gaga said she wrote the song in New York, while she was busy playing her old piano. The singer first played "Yoü and I" at Elton John's White Tie and Tiara Ball in June 2010. She said that the song was a bit of a "rock-and-roll tune" and, as such, was unlikely to be released as a single from Born This Way. She said that it "is very dear" to her heart. Footage of the performance appeared on the Internet soon after, and positive response encouraged Lady Gaga to perform the song during the first concert of the North American leg of The Monster Ball Tour in Montreal. Gaga told MSNBC's Meredith Vieira and Ann Curry that "'Yoü and I' was written about the most important person that I ever met", allegedly Lüc Carl, her ex-boyfriend.
Gaga announced "Yoü and I" as the fourth single from Born This Way on July 22, 2011. Its cover, released on August 5, 2011, via TwitPic, was accompanied by the line: "You will never find what you are looking for in love, if you don't love yourself." It features two black-and-white images of Gaga's male alter ego Jo Calderone smoking a cigarette and sporting sideburns. The Calderone character made a previous appearance in June 2011, when Gaga posed as him in London for a series of photos by photographer Nick Knight, arranged by stylist Nicola Formichetti. One shot features him wearing a blazer and white T-shirt with his head down smoking a cigarette. The other image is of Jo Calderone in silhouette exhaling a cloud of smoke.
A writer for Australia's The Daily Telegraph described the images as having a moody and scruffy look, and felt that Gaga had become "bored with being an outrageous woman and has decided to switch gender instead." Rap-Up's David Jones commented that Gaga's Calderone character appearing on the cover looked similar to musician Bob Dylan. Steve Pond of Reuters stated about the artwork: "Lady Gaga loves herself even when she's dressed as a guy."
## Composition
"You and I" was written solely by Gaga. The song has rock and country music influences, and features British rock band Queen's guitarist Brian May. It was recorded by Tom Ware and Horace Ward at the Warehouse Productions Studio in Omaha, Nebraska, and Allertown Hill in the United Kingdom, respectively. Along with May, Justin Shirley Smith also played guitars; Gene Grimaldi mastered the track. Olle Romo did additional recording and programming. Gaga teased that "someone legendary" would be producing the track before production credits were announced in April 2011. Gaga, a Queen fan (even taking her stage name from the Queen song "Radio Ga Ga"), admitted to "[falling] to the floor crying and laughing" when she found out that May agreed to the collaboration. Lange asked Gaga to record a "rough lead vocal" for the track while she was touring. Gaga later recalled: "I had about 30 cigarettes and a couple of glasses of Jameson and just put on a click track and sang my face off, thinking we'd redo the vocals." However, Lange was satisfied with her recording and used it on the track. Ware recalled that the song was recorded the night after Gaga's March 17, 2011, concert for The Monster Ball Tour. She welcomed his opinions and encouraged his input which he said helped make the four-hour session the best working experience he has had with a celebrity. "She was flattering toward the studio — and Omaha, too, for that matter. She is a bright young lady with remarkable music instincts who charts her own path," he added.
According to the sheet music published by Sony/ATV Music Publishing, "You and I" is set in common time with a slow tempo of 60 beats per minute. It is written in the key of A major. During the song Gaga's voice spans from the notes of E<sub>3</sub> to C<sub>5</sub>. The song begins with an A–G–A chord progression, which changes to A–Bm/A–D/A–Bm during the chorus, and back to the former chords afterwards. The opening lyrics—"It's been a long time since I came around/ It's been a long time, but I'm back in town/ And this time, I'm not leaving without you"—describe a whiskey-breathed lover for whom she is pining. Gil Kaufman of MTV News described it as the "tune eschewed most of her dance flavor, right down to a rollicking barrel-house piano solo." Her voice sounded like growling during the main verses, where she sings the lines: "He said, 'Sit back down where you belong, in the corner of my bar with your high heels on, Sit back down on the couch where we made love the first time..."
Noting the differences between live performances of the song and the studio version, Neil McCormick of The Daily Telegraph observed that the piano parts were replaced mostly by "fizzing synths, a stomping beat sampled from "We Will Rock You", thundering electric guitars and backing vocals stacked into shimmering choral walls." Kitty Empire of The Guardian described the song as an "umlaut-toting digital country power ballad" with two Bruce Springsteen references: "born to run" and Nebraska.
## Critical reception
"You and I" received acclaim from music critics. After hearing the White Tie and Tiara Ball performance, Entertainment Weekly's Leah Greenblatt complimented the song for its "torchy, slow-burn cabaret quality" and for lacking "Auto-Tune, fancy production, or performance gimmicks." McCormick, noting the differences between Gaga's live and studio versions of the song, described the studio version as "bigger, bolder and less quirkily emotive, a custom-built radio rock ballad to induce hand claps in packed stadiums. This is not music for the underground: it is cheesy, high-gloss, pop rock for the mainstream middle, a kind of instant Eighties retro classic to seduce middle-aged rockers – possibly the last demographic to remain sceptical about her appeal." Jody Rosen of Rolling Stone called the song a confessional power ballad "with a torrid, Sturm und Drang vocal turn". In his review for The Guardian, Tim Jonze said the song "aims for a 'Hey Jude' style singalong but – owing to its determination to have someone playing kitchen sink in the background – ends up as bloated as Oasis' 'All Around the World'." Kitty Empire said the song is Gaga's "unlikely heartland moment – a bid, perhaps, to locate herself as an all-American balladeer as well as an art-disco avatar with tent pegs under her skin", referring to the prosthetics featured in the music video for the song "Born This Way".
The Dartmouth's Kate Sullivan wrote that "You and I" may be Gaga's most honest song to date. Shirley Halperin of The Hollywood Reporter wondered whether pop radio would play the song, considering Gaga's popularity. Halperin felt that the track emoted "a sense of grandness that listeners don't always get with Gaga's RedOne-produced heavily synthetic sounds." Conversely, she felt that the live piano and background vocals by Gaga and Lange added "an undeniably lush quality, while the lyrics drives the song home and potentially into hit territory." Kerri Mason of Billboard felt that the "country ballad" made no contextual sense. Nekesa Mumbi Moody, while reviewing Born This Way for Florida Today, compared the song to "Speechless", a similar tempo song included on The Fame Monster (2009). Robert Copsey, a writer for the website Digital Spy gave the song four out of five stars calling it a "torchy, retro-classic, all-American power ballad custom-built for the masses – and one we suspect Stefani would be proud to call her own." Amy Sciarretto of Artistdirect concluded that the song was "a bit bluesier than anything you'd expect from the dance floor icon." AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine chose the song as a highlight on Born This Way saying that Gaga shows her vulnerability in it.
"You and I" was nominated for Best Pop Solo Performance at the 54th Annual Grammy Awards, which was held on February 12, 2012.
## Chart performance
In the United States, "You and I" debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 at number 36 on the June 11, 2011 chart, having sold 83,000 downloads. The song re-entered the August 27, 2011, Billboard Hot 100 at number 96, while debuting on the Pop Songs chart at number 35. The following week, the song was the greatest gainer on the digital chart, entering at number 24 having sold 56,000 copies, while moving to number 35 on the Hot 100. It also gained airplay and became the highest debuting song on the Radio Songs chart, entering at number 58 with 22 million audience impressions. Following her performance on the MTV Video Music Awards, "You and I" moved up to number 16 on the Hot 100, with a 92% increase in digital sales to 109,000 and a 50% increase in airplay to 32 million, according to Nielsen Broadcast Data Systems. The following week, it moved to number six on the Hot 100 with a 61% increase in digital sales to 175,000 and a 32% increase in radio play to 41 million audience impressions, reaching number four and number 23 on the Digital Songs and Radio Songs charts, respectively. "You and I" became Gaga's eleventh consecutive top ten single on the Hot 100. In October 2011 it became Gaga's tenth song to sell 1 million in the U.S. As of February 2018, "You and I" has sold 2.4 million digital downloads in the US becoming Gaga's tenth two-million seller. In February 2016, "You and I" received a triple platinum certification from the Recording Industry Association of America.
In Canada, the song entered the Hot Digital Songs chart at number 14, subsequently debuting on the Canadian Hot 100 at number 27. It entered the charts again at number 45, and has reached a peak of number 10. Before the single was officially released in Australia, digital downloads were sold, consequently it entered the ARIA Singles Chart at number 56 on August 15, 2011. The following week, the song moved up to number 34, and has reached a peak of number 14. Following the album's release on May 23, 2011, "You and I" entered the UK Singles Chart at number 89, thanks to digital downloads from Born This Way. The song jumped up to number 70 from its previous week's position of number 187, in the issue dated September 3, 2011, and has reached a peak of number 23. In Japan, the song had initially entered the digital chart at number 98, but after the MTV Video Music Awards performance, it entered the Japan Hot 100 at number eight.
## Music video
### Background
"You and I"'s music video was filmed in Springfield, Nebraska in July 2011, and was directed by Lady Gaga's then choreographer Laurieann Gibson. In the video, Gaga walks from New York City to Nebraska to get her boyfriend back. According to Gaga: "I'm walking with no luggage and no nothing and it's just me and my ankles are bleeding a little bit and there's grass stuck in my shoes and I've got this outfit on and it's real sort of New York clothing and I'm sprinting... And the [video is about the] idea that when you're away from someone you love, it's torture," she continued. "I knew I wanted the video to be about me sprinting back and walking hundreds of thousands of miles to get him back."
She announced that the video would be the 1,000th tweet on her Twitter account. Gaga confirmed to MTV News that the video would premiere on August 18, 2011, on MTV. However, two days before it was to air, parts of the clip leaked on the Internet, prompting Gaga to post three tweets which, together, read "FUCK THURS DAY". The messages were followed immediately by her 1,000th Twitter message: "You must love all + every part of me, as must I, for this complex + incomprehensible force to be true," including a link to the full music video, uploaded to Gaga's YouTube channel two days earlier than its scheduled première. The video features Gaga's two alter egos: Jo Calderone, Gaga's male ego, and Yüyi, a mermaid she had hinted would appear in the video in July 2011.
Following the video's premiere on MTV, Gaga explained some of its scenes and her inspiration: "The video is quite complex in the way that the story is told, and it's meant to be slightly linear and slightly twisted and confusing, which is the way that love is." Regarding the sexual intercourse scenes between actor Taylor Kinney and the singer as a mermaid, Gaga explained that it emphasized metaphorically that sometimes relationships did not work. "No matter what you do, there's this giant boundary between you and someone else. So that's what it's about, perceiving in your imagination that there's something magical inside of you that you can make it work," she said. After revealing that the wedding dress shown in the video belonged to her mother, Gaga explained the scenes involving the ice cream truck. According to her, they represented the destruction of her youth, experiences she had shared in earlier interviews. Explaining her decision to include them, Gaga said:
> That's how I wanted to open the video, because I think it really sets up the rest of the story. It allows you to imagine you yourself are not just one person; you're so many. That person has so many stories and memories to draw from, and they all affect your journey profusely. I'm battered quite brutally at the beginning of the video, but at the end, I'm not battered; I'm a bit strange. It's not meant to be an answer video; it's meant to be a profuse number of the question.
### Synopsis
The music video begins with Gaga, dressed in black clothing, sunglasses, bloody feet, and seemingly bionic features, walking through a field in Nebraska; having returned on foot after years of absence. Gaga goes to buy ice cream from an ice cream truck, but she suddenly drops it as a toothless man with a doll in his hand grins at her. She begins to have flashbacks to an earlier time spent in Nebraska as scenes of Gaga having a wedding, being tortured by a man inside a barn, and being inside a water tank appear in quick succession. The song starts playing as the camera zooms slowly towards Gaga, who is standing bent forward as she begins singing. The video continually switches to scenes where Gaga, with little make up, a simple gray-colored hair style, and a white dress, plays a piano in the middle of a cornfield, while her male alter ego, Jo Calderone, sits on top of the piano, smoking and drinking a beer. As Calderone pulls up his sleeves, present day Gaga is still walking through the desert.
During the second verse, a mad scientist, portrayed by Kinney, seemingly tortures Gaga, who is wearing a yellow dress with glasses made of barbwire, as another version of the singer, with teal-colored hair, performs a dance routine with her backup dancers in a barn. As the chorus begins for the second time, Gaga appears as Yüyi the Mermaid, with gills on her face and neck, as she lies in a tub filled with dirty water. At the end of the chorus, the camera zooms to a brunette Gaga inside a water tank while she sings "You and I" in the desert scene, and in the cornfield with Calderone. Interspersing scenes again show Gaga having her wedding, Yüyi in her tub, and Gaga seated on a chair with a conveyor belt. During May's guitar solo, Gaga dances in the cornfield with other dancers dressed in the same white dress, as Yüyi and the scientist kiss. While singing the chorus for the final time, Gaga kisses Calderone in one sequence and runs across the field in another. As the video reaches its conclusion, the tortured Gaga is being slid down as the conveyor belt turns on. The video ends with Yüyi and the scientist together in the bath tub, as a depiction of their dream wedding flashes across, before a last shot of the barn as the screen turns black.
### Reception
Following its premature release on the Web, the music video for "You and I" met with positive reviews. Matthew Perpetua of Rolling Stone felt the video was an improvement over her earlier videos, "Judas" and "The Edge of Glory", saying, "the best moments of the video put a distinctly Gaga-ish spin on the iconography of Americana and traditional love stories." Jillian Mapes of Billboard wrote the video has: "torture contraptions, mermaid sex, a wedding, bondage in a barn, an ice cream truck, and to top it all off, 'Children of the Corn' and religious overtones thrown in for good measure," and thought the video setting was the strangest representation of Nebraska. Leah Collins of Dose felt the video was a "great opportunity for the singer to finally find out what it's like to make out with herself." Kyle Anderson of Entertainment Weekly noted of the scene in which Gaga plays a piano in a cornfield beside her male alter ego: "She's just Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, playing a piano in the middle of a corn field—with a little making out on the side, of course." Gil Kaufman of MTV News believed that Gaga was not joking when she talked about the video being about the "torture" of being away from the one you love. "And, man, based on the bruising final product, she wasn't kidding," Kaufman concluded.
Jocelyn Vena of MTV found influences of Gaga's past videos in the various avatars she plays in "You and I". She explained that:
> when [Gaga] stands at a crossroads in a big hat, the image is reminiscent of 'Telephone' Gaga. When she sits nearly makeup-free at her piano in the cornfields, there are touches of the teary-eyed makeup-less Gaga from the 'Bad Romance' video. Flashes of her wedding may remind fans of the wedding dress she wore in the 'Judas' clip. Robot Gaga's facial structures recall some of the steampunk looks of her 'Alejandro' video. Those are only a few of the nods to past personae from her own videography.
Devin Brown of CBS News felt that Gaga had finally returned to form with the video. "After some visually pleasing but generally lackluster videos, she has finally come out with something to write home about. 'You and I' is arguably the best song on her sophomore release, Born This Way, and now has a video to match." A Slant Magazine writer commented that the publication had a mixed reaction to the video, saying that it "is essentially a collection of disconnected images we couldn't make heads or tails of."
### Fashion films
On September 1, 2011, Gaga announced on her Twitter account that she had shot five "fashion films" related to the song's music video with Dutch photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin. The characters for each of the videos are: Jo Calderone (Gaga's alter ego), Yüyi (a mermaid), Nymph, Bride, and finally Barn Hooker and Mother. After the tweet, Gaga released the first video, titled "Haus of Ü featuring Nymph". The two-minute black-and-white video featured Gaga with minimal make-up, wearing a short dress, performing ballet choreography. As wind blows around her, the singer looks intently toward the camera, with the parting shot in color. The second video featured her as the bride from the opening sequence of the music video. The fashion film portrayed her in the same costume, gradually removing it and her wig. At the end, she is topless with her hand covering her breasts. Interspersed between are scenes portraying people dressed like Gaga, and appearances by Taylor Kinney, who was in the music video, and the singer's stylist Nicola Formichetti. The third fashion film portrayed the singer as the mermaid Yüyi. She sits in a director's chair, flopping her tail. It also shows two crew members carrying Yüyi toward the barn, where the music video was filmed. Formichetti also makes a cameo in this video.
## Live performances
After the first performance of "You and I" at Elton John's White Tie and Tiara Ball, Gaga performed the song live on the television program Today on July 9, 2010, before an estimated crowd of 18,000–20,000 people, the largest ever to pack Rockefeller Plaza. It was next performed on the July 31, 2010, Phoenix stop of the Monster Ball Tour, where Gaga protested Arizona's immigration law SB 1070—which mandates that state police officers "question any person they suspect to be an illegal immigrant and imprison any aliens not carrying one of four allowed forms of proper identification"—and dedicated her performance of "You and I" to a boy whose family had been affected by the law. Gaga performed the album version of the track on The Oprah Winfrey Show on May 5, 2011, using a piano constructed from a wire high-heel structure while sitting on a high stool. The "less organic" version for the final "Harpo Hookups" episode featured an electric guitar and modified lyrics to include Oprah's name.
The song was on the set list of the HBO television special, Lady Gaga Presents the Monster Ball Tour: At Madison Square Garden, which aired originally on May 7, 2011, in the United States. Gaga's performance of "You and I" from the HBO special aired on American Idol, the night after she mentored the four remaining contestants, and the week following Haley Reinhart's performance of the song. She performed a jazz version of "You and I" at Radio 1's Big Weekend in Carlisle, Cumbria on May 18, 2011. The third performance of the album version of the song was on the Paul O'Grady Live show in London, on June 17, 2011. Wearing a dress by the late Gianni Versace, Gaga perched atop a New York City-inspired fire escape, where she sang the song. Ryan Love of Digital Spy had a preview of the show's recording, and said that it was a "real treat" to hear Gaga sing the song. In August 2011, Gaga performed "You and I" on the American TV talk show program The View. On August 28, 2011, Gaga attended the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards dressed as Jo Calderone. As Calderone, she opened the show with a four-minute monologue, explaining his broken relationship with Gaga. Following the monologue, joined on stage by Brian May, she performed "You and I". On October 6, 2011, she filmed a pre-recorded interview and performance for the single on The Jonathan Ross Show. Later, on October 16, 2011, she performed the song during a concert at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles for the Clinton Foundation.
On the ABC special, A Very Gaga Thanksgiving, the singer performed the song backed by a "piano-and-trumpet arrangement". On November 30, during the CBS special titled The Grammy Nominations Concert Live! – Countdown to Music's Biggest Night—where the nominations for the 54th Grammy Awards were revealed—Gaga performed "You and I" along with Jennifer Nettles of the country band Sugarland while Kristian Bush played the guitar. During the performance, she changed the lyrics to fit the occasion: "With your high cowboy boots on. Oh Sugarland, it's been six whole years." According to James Montgomery of MTV News, she performed a "husky, musky version" of "You and I". She performed the song on the Born This Way Ball tour (2012–2013) by playing it on the piano before running around the stage. Like previous concert tours, the piano, fused to a motorcycle, was an elaborate prop that tied into the theme of her show, in keeping with the hair metal theme of Born This Way. The song was also part of the setlist of Gaga's 2014 residency show at Roseland Ballroom.
In July 2016, Gaga performed "You and I" at the "Camden Rising" concert at the BB&T Pavilion in Camden, New Jersey, which was part of the 2016 Democratic National Convention. The performance of the song was later included in her documentary film, Gaga: Five Foot Two (2017). In 2017, Gaga performed the song during both of her shows at the Coachella Festival, and included it in her set at the Deep From the Heart: The One America Appeal benefit concert in Texas, where she joined former US presidents Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and other performers in raising money to victims of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria. During the latter, she changed up the lyrics to address each president with the song. Gaga has also performed the song on her 2018–2020 Las Vegas residency show, Enigma. On November 2, 2020, Gaga performed "You and I" along with "Shallow" at president-elect Joe Biden's final campaign rally in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
## Cover versions
Prior to the release of Born This Way, season ten American Idol contestant Haley Reinhart sang "You and I" as one of two performances for the "Songs from Now and Then" episode. Jimmy Iovine, head of Gaga's record label, asked for the song and Reinhart received her permission before the performance. Reviews of Reinhart's performance were mostly positive. Len Melisurgo of The Star-Ledger considered it a risky choice, since the song had not been released, but accepted that Reinhart "sounded amazing" by hitting "some really high notes". Brian Mansfield of USA Today described Reinhart's performance as an "old-fashioned dance-hall groove, kind of like a mid-'70s Elton John number. It's perfectly suited to that slippery growl that such a distinctive part of Haley's style. By the end of the song, she turns it into a gospel-style rocker, and she takes it to the house." Mansfield also noted that the American Idol judges—Randy Jackson, Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler—reacted positively to it. On the contrary, Jim Farber of the New York Daily News considered the choice risky and was thankful when Reinhart performed a more familiar song for her second round. On May 5, 2011, Reinhart's studio recording of "You and I" was released as a digital single to the iTunes Store, and appeared on the compilation album American Idol Top 5 Season 10. Mansfield, who initially had misgivings about Reinhart as a singer, complimented her studio recording of the track, feeling that if she could "get another 10 songs this good when it comes time to cut the record, then all my initial misgivings about this girl will vanish into thin air."
British singer Amelia Lily covered the song in November 2011 during her time on UK talent show The X Factor. On November 15, 2011, comedy-drama, musical TV series Glee featured a mash-up of Gaga's "You and I" and Eddie Rabbitt and Crystal Gayle's "You and I", performed by Matthew Morrison and Idina Menzel (as their respective characters Will Schuester and Shelby Corcoran) in the episode "Mash Off". The mash-up sold 23,000 digital downloads, and debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 chart at number 69, in the issue dated December 3, 2011.
On June 25, 2021, Ben Platt released a cover version of the song as part of the tenth anniversary edition of Born This Way.
## Track listing
Digital download
1. "Yoü and I" (Radio Edit) [Main] – 4:06
2. "Yoü and I" (Mark Taylor Radio Edit) – 3:55
CD single
1. "Yoü and I" (Radio Edit) – 4:07
2. "Yoü and I" (Mark Taylor Radio Edit) – 3:56
UK 7-inch picture disc
1. "Yoü and I" (Wild Beasts Remix) – 3:51
2. "Yoü and I" (Metronomy Remix) – 4:20
Yoü and I – The Remixes
1. "Yoü and I" (Wild Beasts Remix) – 3:51
2. "Yoü and I" (Mark Taylor Remix) – 5:02
3. "Yoü and I" (10 Kings Remix) – 4:29
4. "Yoü and I" (ATB Remix) – 8:08
5. "Yoü and I" (Metronomy Remix) – 4:20
6. "Yoü and I" (Danny Verde Remix) – 7:48
7. "Yoü and I" (Hector Fonseca Remix) – 8:03
## Credits and personnel
Credits adapted from the liner notes of Born This Way.
### Recording and management
- Recorded at Warehouse Productions (Omaha, Nebraska) and Allertown Hill (United Kingdom)
- Mastered at Oasis Mastering (Burbank, California)
- Contains elements of the composition "We Will Rock You", written by Brian May and originally recorded by band Queen
- Published by Stefani Germanotta P/K/A Lady Gaga, Sony/ATV Songs LLC, House of Gaga Publishing Inc., GloJoe Music Inc. and Sony/ATV Music Publishing
- All rights on behalf of itself and Interscope Records, a division of UMG Recordings, Inc.
- Brian May appears courtesy of Hollywood Records (for US and Canada distribution) and Universal International (for worldwide distribution)
### Personnel
- Lady Gaga – lead vocals, songwriter, producer, background vocals, piano and keyboards
- Robert John "Mutt" Lange – producer, background vocals, audio mixing
- Tom Ware and Horace Ward – recording
- Olle Romo – programming, recording
- Brian May – Electric guitar
- Justin Shirley Smith – guitar recording
- Gene Grimaldi – audio mastering
## Charts
### Weekly charts
### Year-end charts
## Certifications
## Release history
## See also
- List of Billboard Hot 100 top-ten singles in 2011
- List of Billboard Dance Club Songs number ones of 2011
|
31,186,339 |
The Hunger Games (film)
| 1,173,699,217 |
2012 American film by Gary Ross
|
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"2010s science fiction thriller films",
"2010s survival films",
"2012 drama films",
"2012 films",
"2012 science fiction action films",
"American dystopian films",
"American post-apocalyptic films",
"American science fiction action films",
"American science fiction drama films",
"American science fiction thriller films",
"American survival films",
"Censored films",
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"Films about teenagers",
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"Films produced by Jon Kilik",
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The Hunger Games is a 2012 American dystopian action film directed by Gary Ross, who co-wrote the screenplay with Suzanne Collins and Billy Ray, based on the 2008 novel of the same name by Collins. It is the first installment in The Hunger Games film series. The film stars Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, Lenny Kravitz, Stanley Tucci, and Donald Sutherland. In the film, Katniss Everdeen (Lawrence) and Peeta Mellark (Hutcherson) are forced to compete in the Hunger Games, an elaborate televised fight to the death consisting of adolescent contestants from the 12 Districts of Panem.
Development of a film adaptation of Collins' original novel began in March 2009 when Lionsgate entered into a co-production agreement with Color Force, which had acquired the rights a few weeks earlier. As the novel is written in Katniss' first-person point of view, its screenplay develops ancillary characters and locations for the film. Ross was confirmed as director in November 2010 and the rest of the main cast was rounded out by May 2011. Principal photography began that month and ended that September, with filming primarily taking place in North Carolina.
The Hunger Games premiered at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles on March 12, 2012, and was released in the United States on March 23, by Lionsgate. The film received generally positive reviews from critics, with praise for its themes and messages, Lawrence's performance, and faithfulness to the source material, although there was some criticism for its use of shaky cam. It grossed over \$694 million, setting the then-records for both the opening day and opening weekend gross for a non-sequel, becoming the ninth-highest-grossing film of 2012.
Among its accolades, the song "Safe & Sound" from the soundtrack, performed by Taylor Swift and The Civil Wars, won a Grammy Award and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song. For her performance, Lawrence won the Saturn Award for Best Actress, the Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress in an Action Movie, the Empire Award for Best Actress, and was also nominated for the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress.
The film was followed by The Hunger Games: Catching Fire in 2013.
## Plot
The nation of Panem is divided into 12 districts, ruled from the Capitol. As punishment for a failed revolt many years before, each district is forced to select two tributes, one boy and one girl between the ages of 12 and 18, to fight to the death in the annual Hunger Games until there is only one survivor. The entire event is televised.
Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen of District 12 volunteers to take her younger sister Primrose's place in the 74th Hunger Games. She and fellow tribute Peeta Mellark are escorted to the Capitol by their chaperone Effie Trinket and mentor Haymitch Abernathy, the Games' only living winner from District 12. Haymitch stresses the importance of gaining sponsors, as they can provide potentially life-saving gifts during the Games. While training, Katniss observes the "Careers" (Marvel, Glimmer, Cato, and Clove), volunteers from the wealthy Districts 1 and 2 who have trained for the Games from an early age. During a televised interview with Caesar Flickerman, Peeta expresses his love for Katniss, which she initially sees as an attempt to attract sponsors; she later learns his admission is genuine.
At the start of the Games, Katniss grabs some of the supplies placed around the Cornucopia, a structure at the starting point, and narrowly escapes death. Half of the 24 tributes die in the initial melee, and only 11, including all four Careers, survive the first day. Katniss tries to stay away from the others, but Seneca Crane, the Head Gamemaker, triggers a forest fire to drive her towards them. She runs into the Careers, with whom Peeta has seemingly allied, and flees up a tree. Peeta advises the Careers to wait her out. The next morning, Katniss notices Rue, District 11's young female tribute, hiding in an adjacent tree. Rue draws her attention to a nest of genetically modified venomous wasps. Using a knife, Katniss causes the nest to fall on the Careers sleeping below; Glimmer dies, but the others escape. Katniss becomes disoriented from being stung a few times. Peeta returns and tells her to flee.
Rue helps Katniss recover, and they become friends and allies. Katniss destroys the supplies the Careers stockpiled by detonating mines guarding them, while Rue provides a distraction. Katniss later finds and frees Rue from a trap, but Marvel throws a spear which impales Rue. Katniss kills him with an arrow. She comforts Rue by singing to her and, after she dies, adorns her body with flowers, triggering a riot in District 11. Panem President Coriolanus Snow warns Crane he is displeased about the unrest.
Haymitch persuades Crane to change the rules to allow two winners provided they are from the same district, suggesting that this will pacify the public. After the announcement, Katniss finds a gravely wounded Peeta. Another announcement promises that what each survivor needs the most will be provided at the Cornucopia the next morning. Despite Peeta's vehement opposition, Katniss leaves to get medicine for him, but she is ambushed and overpowered by Clove, who gloats about Rue's death and prepares to dispatch her. Thresh, District 11's male tribute, overhears and kills Clove. He spares Katniss once, for Rue's sake. The medicine heals Peeta overnight.
While hunting for food, Katniss hears a cannon go off, signaling a death. She races to Peeta, who has unwittingly collected deadly nightlock berries. They discover "Foxface", District 5's female tribute, poisoned by the nightlock she collected after watching Peeta. Crane then unleashes genetically modified beasts that kill Thresh and force Katniss, Peeta, and Cato – the last survivors – to climb onto the Cornucopia's roof. Cato gets Peeta in a headlock and uses him as a human shield against Katniss's bow, and reveals his awareness that he will not win, but opts to continue to do so as all he knows how to do is bring pride to his district. Peeta directs Katniss to shoot Cato's hand, enabling Peeta to throw him to the beasts below, before Katniss kills him with an arrow to end his suffering.
Crane then revokes the rule change allowing two victors to win. Peeta urges Katniss to shoot him, but she convinces him to eat nightlock berries together. Just before they do, Crane hastily declares them co-victors. Afterward, Haymitch warns Katniss that she has made enemies through her acts of defiance. Snow has Crane locked in a room with nightlock berries.
## Cast
## Production
### Development
In March 2009, Lions Gate Entertainment (known as Lionsgate) entered into a co-production agreement for The Hunger Games with Nina Jacobson's production company Color Force, which had acquired worldwide distribution rights to the novel a few weeks earlier, reportedly for \$200,000. Alli Shearmur and Jim Miller, president and senior vice president of motion picture production at Lionsgate, took charge of overseeing the production of the film, which they described as "an incredible property ... a thrill to bring home to Lionsgate". The studio, which had not made a profit for five years, raided the budgets of other productions and sold assets to secure a budget of \$88,000,000 for the film. Suzanne Collins' agent Jason Dravis remarked that "they [Lionsgate] had everyone but the valet call us" to help secure the franchise. Lionsgate subsequently acquired tax breaks of \$8 million for shooting the film in North Carolina. Gary Ross, Sam Mendes, David Slade, Andrew Adamson, Susanna White, Rupert Sanders and Francis Lawrence were listed as possible directing candidates, but in the end, Ross was announced as the film's director in November 2010. Ross became interested in directing the film after his agent notified him about that a film adaptation of The Hunger Games was in development; having heard about the book due to his children reading it, Ross read the book quickly and called his agent to tell her that he wanted the job.
Ross had many conversations with Collins about how to adapt the story, and was fascinated by how Ancient Roman culture inspired the books. Collins adapted the novel for film herself, in collaboration with screenwriter Billy Ray and Ross. The screenplay remains extremely faithful to the original novel, with Ross saying he "felt the only way to make the film really successful was to be totally subjective", echoing Collins' presentation of the novel in the first person present. Ross felt that, to preserve the novel's first person point of view, the audience could know little more than what protagonist Katniss Everdeen knows about the story's developments. Instead of presenting Katniss' internal monologues about the Capitol's machinations through actual monologues or voice-over narrations, the screenplay expanded on the character of Seneca Crane, the Head Gamemaker, to allow several developments for which Katniss is not present to be shown directly to the audience. Ross explained, "In the book, Katniss speculates about the game-makers' manipulations ... in the film, we can't get inside Katniss's head, but we do have the ability to cut away and actually show the machinations of the Capitol behind the scenes. I created the game centre and also expanded the role of Seneca Crane for those reasons. I thought it was totally important." Ross also added several scenes between Crane and Coriolanus Snow, the elderly President of Panem, noting that "I thought that it was very interesting that there would be one generation [of Panem citizens] who knew that [the Games] were actually an instrument of political control, and there would be a successive generation who was so enamoured with the ratings and the showbiz and the sensations and the spectacle that was subsuming the actual political intention, and that's really where the tension is".
The Gamemakers' control center, about which Katniss can only speculate in the novel, was also developed as a location, helping to remind the audience of the artificial nature of the arena. Ross commented, "so much of the film happens in the woods that it's easy to forget this is a futuristic society, manipulating these events for the sake of an audience. The look of the control center, the antiseptic feeling of it and the use of holograms were all intended to make the arena feel 'constructed' even when you weren't seeing the control room." Ross and visual effects supervisor Sheena Duggal were keen to use the omniscient view that the setting provided to justify the literal dei ex machina Katniss experiences in the arena; Duggal explained that "we really didn't want to have to explain things ... how do you get compelled by these [animals] that just appear at the end of the movie? We wanted to find a way to introduce them without having to explain specifically and exactly what they were and the game room was a really great opportunity for us to be able to do that."
### Casting
Ross had a general idea of who he wanted to cast in some roles, but the studio insisted on holding auditions for the roles, which he accepted. He found the castings of Katniss Everdeen, Peeta Mellark and Gale Hawthorne "honestly easy". Lionsgate confirmed in March 2011 that about 30 actresses auditioned or read for the role of Katniss Everdeen, including Hailee Steinfeld, Abigail Breslin, Emma Roberts, Saoirse Ronan, Chloë Grace Moretz, Jodelle Ferland, Lyndsy Fonseca, Emily Browning, Shailene Woodley, Kaya Scodelario and Troian Bellisario. On March 16, 2011, it was announced that Jennifer Lawrence (who was at the time filming for X-Men: First Class) had landed the role. Feeling that Lawrence "blew the doors off the place", Ross described Lawrence as having "an incredible amount of self-assuredness, you got the sense that this girl knew exactly who she was. And then she came in and read for me and just knocked me out; I'd never seen an audition like that before in my life. It was one of those things where you just glimpse your whole movie in front of you."
Though Lawrence was 20 when filming began, four years older than the character, Collins said that the role demanded "a certain maturity and power" and said she would rather the actress be older than younger. She added that Lawrence was the "only one who truly captured the character I wrote in the book" and that she had "every essential quality necessary to play Katniss". Lawrence, a fan of the books, was originally intimidated by the size of the production, and took three days to accept the role.
Contenders for the role of Peeta other than Josh Hutcherson, included Alexander Ludwig, Hunter Parrish, Lucas Till and Evan Peters. Ross felt that Hutcherson was a "pitch perfect". Other actors considered for the role of Gale Hawthorne included David Henrie, Drew Roy and Robbie Amell before Liam Hemsworth was cast. In April 2011, John C. Reilly was in talks with Lionsgate to portray Haymitch Abernathy. The following month, Lionsgate announced that the role had gone to Oscar nominee Woody Harrelson. Harrelson initially passed on the role, but Ross called him up and convinced him to accept the role. The casting of Grammy winner Lenny Kravitz as Cinna, Oscar nominee Stanley Tucci as Caesar Flickerman, and Toby Jones as Claudius Templesmith, soon followed. Tucci and Ross had previously worked together in The Tale of Despereaux, leading Tucci to immediately accept the role of Flickerman when Ross offered it to him in an Italian restaurant of New York City during New Year's Eve. Multiple-Golden Globe Award winner Donald Sutherland was cast as President Coriolanus Snow in late May 2011. Following his casting, Sutherland wrote Ross a letter explaining him how much his role meant to the narrative, which impressed Ross and led him to incorporate some of Sutherland's suggestions to Snow's scenes in the film.
### Filming
Fireman's Fund Insurance Company insured the production, but as part of the underwriting process, insisted on a thorough risk analysis of hazards as diverse as wayward arrows, poison ivy, bears, bugs and a chase across fast-running water.
Lawrence dyed her naturally blonde hair dark for the part of Katniss. Other stars who dyed their hair for the movie include Josh Hutcherson as Peeta and Liam Hemsworth as Gale. Lawrence also underwent extensive training to get in shape for the role, including archery, rock and tree climbing, combat, running, parkour and yoga. On the last day of her six-week training phase, she had an accident in which she hit a wall while running at full speed, but was not seriously injured. Lionsgate hired Olympic bronze medal-winning archer Khatuna Lorig to teach Lawrence how to shoot.
With an initial budget of \$75 million, principal photography began near Brevard in Transylvania County in Western North Carolina in May 2011 and concluded on September 15, 2011, with a final budget reported as between \$90 and \$100 million, reduced to \$78 million after subsidies. Steven Soderbergh served as a second unit director, and filmed much of the District 11 riot scene. The movie was shot on film as opposed to digital, due in part to the tightness of the schedule; as Ross said in an interview with The New York Times, "I didn't want to run the risk of the technical issues that often come with shooting digitally—we simply couldn't afford any delays."
Virtually all production photography took place in North Carolina, with Lionsgate receiving tax credits of around \$8 million from the state government to do so. Most outdoor scenes, both from the arena and from the outskirts of District 12, were filmed in DuPont State Forest; the Little River, with its multiple waterfalls, provided several locations for shooting the river running through the arena. To run across Triple Falls, Lawrence was attached to wires and ran on a board.
Many of the urban and interior locations, in the Capitol and elsewhere, were filmed in Shelby and Charlotte; other scenes were filmed in the Asheville area. Ross and production designer Phil Messina drew on the buildings of the 1939 New York World's Fair and symbols of political power including Tiananmen Square and Red Square, when designing the Capitol architecture, which they wanted "to be set in the future but have a sense of its own past ... it's festive and alluring and indulgent and decadent but it also has to have the kind of might and power behind it". For Katniss' neighborhood in District 12, the production team used Henry River Mill Village, an abandoned mill town which Ross said "just worked perfectly for the movie to evoke the scene"; Messina explained that "originally we talked about maybe building one house and the facade of the house next door and redressing it, and maybe doing some CG extensions ... we ended up finding a whole abandoned mill town ... it was absolutely perfect".
For the costume design, Judianna Makovsky and her crew looked at photographs of coal mining districts from the 1950s, in the search of an "American" feel. The idea was to create clothing unique for every character, and to strongly differentiate the people in Capitol and in districts. Grey and blue prevailed in the color palette for the District, while the people in Capitol were chosen to look bright in theatrical hats, flowers, ruffles, with powdered and eyebrowless faces.
## Music
### Soundtrack
The soundtrack album for The Hunger Games contains songs inspired by the film; only three of them ("Abraham's Daughter", "Safe & Sound", and "Kingdom Come", respectively) appear in the film itself, during the closing credits. The first single from the film's companion album, "Safe & Sound" by Taylor Swift featuring The Civil Wars, was released on December 23, 2011. Along with separate songs from Swift and The Civil Wars, the soundtrack also features songs by The Decemberists, Arcade Fire, The Secret Sisters, Miranda Lambert featuring The Pistol Annies, Neko Case, Kid Cudi, Academy Award winner Glen Hansard, The Low Anthem, Punch Brothers, Birdy, Maroon 5, Jayme Dee, and Carolina Chocolate Drops. The soundtrack was released on March 20, 2012.
### Score
Danny Elfman and T-Bone Burnett were initially recruited to score music for The Hunger Games, with Burnett also acting as the film's executive music producer to produce songs for the soundtrack. However, due to scheduling conflicts, James Newton Howard replaced Elfman as the music composer. Arcade Fire also contributed to the score album, who composed the fascistic-inspired Panem national anthem, "Horn of Plenty", a leitmotif appearing throughout the film. The score album was released on March 26, 2012.
## Release
### Home media
The film was released in North America and the Netherlands on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on August 18, 2012. Extras include The World is Watching: Making The Hunger Games, numerous featurettes, the propaganda video in its entire form, a talk with the director Gary Ross and also Elvis Mitchell and a marketing archive.
In its first weekend on sale, Lionsgate reported that 3.8 million DVD/Blu-ray Disc copies of the movie were sold, with more than one-third in the Blu-ray Disc format. Three weeks after the release of the movie to home media formats in the US, over 5 million DVD units and 3.7 million Blu-ray Disc units have been sold. With 10,336,637 units sold by the end of the year, it became the top-selling video of 2012. The entire Hunger Games series was released on 4K UHD Blu-Ray on November 8, 2016.
## Reception
### Box office
The Hunger Games earned \$408 million in the United States and Canada, and \$286.4 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of \$694.4 million.
In North America, The Hunger Games is the 22nd-highest-grossing film, the highest-grossing film released outside the summer or holiday period, and the highest-grossing film distributed by Lionsgate. Box Office Mojo estimates that the film sold more than 50 million tickets in the US. At the time of its release, the film set a midnight-gross record for a non-sequel (\$19.7 million), the tenth-highest midnight gross overall. On its opening day, it topped the box office at \$67.3 million (including midnight showings), setting opening-day and single-day records for a non-sequel. The film also achieved the sixteenth-highest opening-day and nineteenth-highest single-day grosses of all time. For its opening weekend, the film earned the No. 1 spot and grossed \$152.5 million, breaking Alice in Wonderland's opening-weekend records for a film released in March, for any spring release, and for a non-sequel at the time of its release. On its second day of release, the film had surpassed Fahrenheit 9/11 to become Lionsgate's highest-grossing film worldwide, a record that would later be surpassed by its sequel The Hunger Games: Catching Fire a year later. Its opening weekend gross was the third highest of 2012 behind The Avengers (\$207.4 million) and The Dark Knight Rises (\$160.8 million) as well as the largest for any film released outside the summer season and the eighth-largest overall. The film held the March and spring opening weekend records for four years until they were broken by Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. It remained in first place at the North American box office for four consecutive weekends, becoming the first film since Avatar to achieve this. On June 10, 2012 (its 80th day in theaters), it became the 14th movie to pass the \$400-million-mark. On April 20, 2012, Lionsgate and IMAX Corporation announced that due to "overwhelming demand", The Hunger Games would return to North American IMAX cinemas on April 27 for a further one-week engagement.
Outside North America, the film was released in most countries during March and April 2012, with the exception of China, where it was released in June 2012. On its first weekend (March 23–25, 2012), the film topped the box office outside North America with \$59.25 million from 67 markets, finishing at first place in most of them. The largest opening weekends were recorded in China (\$9.6 million), Australia (\$9.48 million), and the UK, Ireland and Malta (\$7.78 million). In total earnings, its highest-grossing markets after North America are the UK (\$37.3 million), Australia (\$31.1 million) and China (\$27.0 million).
Also in its release, The Hunger Games broke the record for first-day advance ticket sales on Fandango on February 22, 2012, topping the previous record of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. The sales were reported to be 83 percent of the site's totals for the day. According to first tracking, unaided awareness for The Hunger Games was 11%, definite interest was 54%, first choice was 23% and total awareness was 74%. In the week leading up to its release, the film sold-out over 4,300 showings via Fandango and MovieTickets.com On Fandango alone, it ranks as the third-highest advance ticket seller ever, behind The Twilight Saga: New Moon and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2. According to Fandango, it broke the site's single-day sales record (March 23), the mobile sales record for a weekend ( March 23–25, 2012) and the site's highest share of a film's opening weekend (Fandango sold 22% of the film's opening weekend tickets).
### Critical response
The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported an approval rating of with an average score of , based on reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, "Thrilling and superbly acted, The Hunger Games captures the dramatic violence, raw emotion, and ambitious scope of its source novel." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 68 out of 100 based on 49 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.
Several critics have reviewed the film favorably and compared it with other young adult fiction adaptations such as Harry Potter and Twilight, while praising Jennifer Lawrence for her portrayal as Katniss Everdeen, as well as most of the main cast. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Lawrence embodies Katniss, "just as one might imagine her from the novel". Empire magazine said "Lawrence is perfect as Katniss, there's very little softness about her, more a melancholy determination that good must be done even if that requires bad things." Justin Craig of Fox News rated the film as "[e]xcellent" and stated: "Move over Harry Potter. A darker, more mature franchise has come to claim your throne." Rafer Guzman of Newsday referred to The Hunger Games as being "darker than 'Harry Potter,' more sophisticated than 'Twilight'." David Sexton of The Evening Standard stated that The Hunger Games "is well cast and pretty well acted, certainly when compared with Harry Potter's juvenile leads".
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three stars out of four, praising the movie as "effective entertainment" and Lawrence's performance. Despite a largely positive review, he criticized the film for being too long and noted that the film misses opportunities for social criticism. Simon Reynolds of Digital Spy gave the film four stars out of five, calling it "enthralling from beginning to end, science fiction that has depth and intelligence to match its pulse-racing entertainment value". Reynolds also spoke highly of Lawrence's performance and director Gary Ross, whose "rough and ready handheld camerawork" meant that viewers were "with Katniss for every blood-flecked moment of her ordeal in the combat arena". However, film critic David Thomson of the magazine The New Republic called it a "terrible movie", criticizing it for a lack of character development and unclear presentation of the violence, describing the latter as "un-American".
Eric Goldman of IGN awarded the film four out of five stars, stating that director Gary Ross "gets the tone of The Hunger Games right. This is a grounded, thoughtful and sometimes quite emotional film, with its dark scenario given due weight. Ross doesn't give the film a glossy, romanticized 'Hollywood' feel, but rather plays everything very realistically and stark, as Katniss must endure these outrageous and horrible scenarios." The film received some criticism for its shaky camera style, but it was said to "add to the film in certain ways". The violence drew commentary as well. Time critic Mary Pols considered that the film was too violent for young children, even though the violence had been toned down compared with the novel, while critic Théoden Janes of The Charlotte Observer found that "[...] the violence is so bland it dilutes the message". Also writing in Time, psychologist Christopher J. Ferguson argued that parents' fears of the effect of the film's violent content on their children were unnecessary, and that children are capable of viewing violent content without being psychologically harmed.
### Themes
Interpretations of the film's themes and messages have been widely discussed among critics and general commentators. In his review for The Washington Times, Peter Suderman expressed that "[m]aybe it's a liberal story about inequality and the class divide. Maybe it's a libertarian epic about the evils of authoritarian government. Maybe it's a feminist revision on the sci-fi action blockbuster. Maybe it's a bloody satire of reality television", but concludes the film only proposes these theories and brings none of them to a reasonable conclusion.
Reviewers and critics have differing views on whether the film represents feminist issues. Historically, among the "top 200 worldwide box-office hits ever (\$350 million and up), not one has been built around a female action star". Manohla Dargis of The New York Times sees Katniss Everdeen as a female hero following in the lineage of "archetypal figures in the literature of the American West" such as Natty Bumppo, as well as characters portrayed by American actors such as John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. Katniss is also seen as defying normative gender roles: she exhibits both "masculine" and "feminine" traits equally. Dargis also notes that Katniss is a female character with significant agency: "Katniss is a fantasy figure, but partly what makes her powerful—and, I suspect, what makes her so important to a lot of girls and women—is that she's one of the truest feeling, most complex female characters to hit American movies in a while. She isn't passive, she isn't weak, and she isn't some random girl. She's active, she's strong and she's the girl who motivates the story." Similarly, Shelley Bridgeman of The New Zealand Herald wrote that because the characteristics of "athleticism, strength, courageousness and prowess at hunting" are not given to a male protagonist, but to Katniss, her character is an abrupt departure from the stereotypical depiction of women as being innately passive or helpless. Mahvesh Murad of The Express Tribune said that the film's triumph is "a young female protagonist with agency", comparing her with Joss Whedon's Buffy Summers.
The film has drawn varying interpretations for its political overtones, including arguments in favor of left-wing, right-wing, and libertarian viewpoints. Bob Burnett of The Huffington Post observed the film displays a general distrust of government, regardless of the audience's political party affiliation. Steven Zeitchik and Emily Rome, in the Dallas Morning News, also stated that some viewers formed an opinion about The Hunger Games as a parable of the Occupy Wall Street activity. The Huffington Post reported that Penn Badgley, a supporter of Occupy Wall Street, saw the film as a social commentary on the movement. Burnett also states that "Collins doesn't use the terms 1 percent and 99 percent, but it's clear that those in the Capitol are members of the 1 percent and everyone in the Panem districts is part of the 99 percent".
Steven Zeitchik and Emily Rome, in the Los Angeles Times and the Dallas Morning News reported that, among other disparate interpretations, some viewers saw The Hunger Games as a Christian allegory. Jeffrey Weiss of Real Clear Religion, published in the Star Tribune, has remarked on what he saw as the intentional absence of religion in The Hunger Games universe, and has commented that, while the stories contain no actual religion, people are "find[ing] aspects that represent their own religious values" within it.
### Battle Royale and other precedents
Several critics compared The Hunger Games unfavorably to Kinji Fukasaku's Japanese film Battle Royale; the novel had earlier faced criticism for its similarities to the novel Battle Royale by Koushun Takami. Jonathan Looms of The Oxford Student argues that it is "unfair that the film is only drawing comparisons with Battle Royale" but that it "is a veritable pastiche of other movies" as well, comparing it to The Truman Show, Death Race, the Bourne films, and Zoolander, and that it is common for artists to borrow from and "improve on many sources. Quentin Tarantino has built his career on this principle." The Hunger Games is considered to be part of a wider battle royale genre, which had earlier been defined by Battle Royale. Prior to The Hunger Games, the battle royale genre was largely limited to Japan, where Battle Royale had inspired a wave of manga, anime and visual novel works, such as Gantz (2000), Higurashi: When They Cry (2002), Future Diary (2006), Btooom! (2009), Zero Escape (2009) and Danganronpa (2010).
Wheeler Winston Dixon, a film professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, listed several precedents: Battle Royale, Jackson's "The Lottery", William Golding's Lord of the Flies, Metropolis, Blade Runner, Death Race 2000, and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Manohla Dargis in The New York Times compares it to Battle Royale, Ender's Game, and Twilight, but contrasts The Hunger Games in terms of how its "exciting" female protagonist Katniss "rescues herself with resourcefulness, guts and true aim". Steve Rose of The Guardian refers to the film as "think Battle Royale meets The Running Man meets Survivor.
Charles McGrath, writing for The New York Times, said that the film will remind viewers of the television series Survivor, a little of The Bachelorette, and of the short story "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson, published in 1948 by The New Yorker. It reminded an author at Salon of the 1932 film The Most Dangerous Game. The Hunger Games has also been conceptually compared to Robert Sheckley's 1953 short story "Seventh Victim" and its 1965 Italian film adaptation by Elio Petri, The 10th Victim, as the story and film feature a government-endorsed, televised (in the film's case) "Big Hunt", featuring contestants from around the world acting as "hunters" and "victims". Writing in The Atlantic, Govindini Murty made a list of touchstones the film alludes to, from the ancient Greek, Roman and Egyptian civilizations to modern references such as the Great Depression, the Vietnam and Iraq Wars, and reality television. For her part, author Collins cites the myth of Theseus, the modern Olympic Games, reality television, and coverage of the Iraq War as her inspiration.
In 2022, while on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Quentin Tarantino accused The Hunger Games of plagiarizing Battle Royale.
### Controversies
#### Race and ethnicity
During the film's opening weekend, controversial statements about various members of the cast arose, sparking open dialogue about issues of racism, sexism and unrealistic body image. Comparisons were also made between The Hunger Games premise of children killing each other, and the child soldiers of the Lord's Resistance Army led by Joseph Kony. In a Jezebel article published March 26, 2012, Dodai Stewart reported that several users on Twitter posted racist tweets, criticizing the portrayals of Rue, Thresh and Cinna by African American actors. In a 2011 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Collins stated that while she did not have any ethnic background in mind for lead characters Katniss and Gale because the book is written in "a time period where hundreds of years have passed" and there would be "a lot of ethnic mixing", she explains "there are some characters in the book who are more specifically described", and states that both Rue and Thresh are African American. Lyneka Little of The Wall Street Journal states that although it is easy to find bigoted or offensive postings online, "the racist 'Hunger Games' tweets, because they are so shockingly ignorant even by the standards of the fringes of the internet, have kicked up a storm".
Fahima Haque of The Washington Post, Bim Adewunmi of The Guardian, and Christopher Rosen of The Huffington Post all reiterate the fact that Rue and Thresh are described in The Hunger Games as having dark brown skin, as well as Collins's assertion that they were intended to be depicted as African Americans. Adewunmi remarked that "it comes to this: if the casting of Rue, Thresh and Cinna has left you bewildered and upset, consider two things. One: you may be a racist—congrats! Two: you definitely lack basic reading comprehension. Mazel tov!" Erik Kain of Forbes saw the controversy as a way to appreciate the value of free speech. He states that while society may never be free of racism, "racist comments made on Facebook and Twitter quickly become public record. Aggregations of these comments, like the Jezebel piece, expose people for what they are. Sure, many hide under the cloak of anonymity, but many others cannot or choose not to. And as the internet becomes more civilized and its denizens more accountable, this sort of thing carries more and more weight." Amandla Stenberg responded to the controversy with the following statement: "As a fan of the books, I feel fortunate to be part of The Hunger Games family ... It was an amazing experience; I am proud of the film and my performance. I want to thank all of my fans and the entire Hunger Games community for their support and loyalty." Dayo Okeniyi was quoted saying "I think this is a lesson for people to think before they tweet" and "It's sad ... We could now see where society is today. But I try not to think about stuff like that."
#### Casting of Lawrence
A number of critics expressed disappointment in Lawrence's casting as Katniss because her weight was not representative of a character who has suffered a life of starvation. Manohla Dargis, in her review of the film for The New York Times, stated "[a] few years ago Ms. Lawrence might have looked hungry enough to play Katniss, but now, at 21, her seductive, womanly figure makes a bad fit for a dystopian fantasy about a people starved into submission". Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter said that, in certain scenes, Lawrence displays "lingering baby fat". These remarks have been rebuked by a number of journalists for pushing unrealistic body image expectations for women.
L.V. Anderson of Slate states that, "[j]ust as living in a world with abundant calories does not automatically make everyone fat, living in a dystopian world like Panem with sporadic food access would not automatically make everyone skinny. Some bodies, I daresay, would be even bigger than Lawrence's." Since none of Lawrence's male co-stars have come under the same scrutiny, Anderson concludes that complaints about Lawrence's weight are inherently sexist. MTV asked for responses from audiences on the controversy and reported that most found criticism of Lawrence's weight "misguided". One response pointed to Collins's physical description of Katniss in The Hunger Games novel which reads: "I stand straight, and while I'm thin, I'm strong. The meat and plants from the woods combined with the exertion it took to get them have given me a healthier body than most of those I see around me." Los Angeles Times writer Alexandra Le Tellier commented that "[T]he sexist commentary along with the racist barbs made by so-called fans are as stomach-churning as the film's cultural commentary, which, in part, shines a light on the court of public opinion and its sometimes destructive power to determine someone else's fate".
#### Violence
The film has been rated 12A by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) in the UK for "intense threat, moderate violence and occasional gory moments". To achieve that rating, Lionsgate had to cut or substitute seven seconds of film by "digitally removing blood splashes and the sight of blood on wounds and weapons." The uncut version was ultimately released on Blu-ray in the UK with a 15 certificate. In the United States, the film was granted a PG-13 rating from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) for "intense violent thematic material and disturbing images—all involving teens"; as Collins had originally anticipated.
Screening of The Hunger Games was delayed indefinitely in Vietnam. The film was to be released on March 30, 2012, but, according to a member of the Vietnamese National Film Board, the Board considers the film to be too violent and unanimously voted for the indefinite delay. It was later banned.
### Accolades
The Hunger Games received fifty-one nominations, and won twenty-eight. The song "Safe & Sound" won a Grammy Award and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song. For her performance, Lawrence won the Saturn Award and the Empire Award for Best Actress, and the Critics' Choice Awards for Best Actress in an Action Movie. The film itself received twelve nominations, winning the award for Favorite Movie at the People's Choice Awards and at the Kids' Choice Awards. Meanwhile, Hutcherson won a MTV Movie Award for Best Male Performance, a Teen Choice Award for Choice Movie Actor – Sci-Fi/Fantasy and a Do Something! Awards for Best Male Movie Star, and Elizabeth Banks won the MTV Movie Award for Best On-Screen Transformation.
## Sequels
On August 8, 2011, while still shooting the film, Lionsgate announced that a film adaptation of the second novel in The Hunger Games trilogy, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, was scheduled to be released on November 22, 2013. In November 2011, Lionsgate entered negotiations with screenwriter Simon Beaufoy to adapt the novel for screen, since the post-production schedule for The Hunger Games was too crowded for Ross and Collins to adapt the next film as originally planned. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire began production in the summer of 2012. Gary Ross did not return for Catching Fire, and instead Francis Lawrence directed the film. On May 6, 2012, it was reported that Michael Arndt was in talks to re-write the script for Catching Fire. Arndt officially signed on as the new script writer on May 24, 2012. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire began filming September 10, 2012, and concluded December 21, 2012; it premiered in London on November 11, 2013, before premiering on November 22, 2013, in the US as was originally scheduled.
In July 2012, release dates were confirmed for two films based on the last book Mockingjay. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 was released November 21, 2014, and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 was released November 20, 2015. Lawrence, Hutcherson, Hemsworth, and Harrelson were all signed on to the whole franchise.
## Prequel
|
41,891,998 |
Arlington's Great Meadows
| 1,054,431,609 |
American nature preserve
|
[
"Arlington, Massachusetts",
"Lexington, Massachusetts",
"Protected areas of Middlesex County, Massachusetts"
] |
Arlington's Great Meadows is a 183-acre (74 ha) meadow located adjacent to the Minuteman Bikeway in Lexington, Massachusetts. The meadow was once the site of a dairy farm, which was used for livestock and crop harvesting. In 1871, Great Meadows was acquired by the town of Arlington, Massachusetts for use as a water storage area for the Mystic River. After being drained in the early 20th century, it was turned into a protected area for wildlife. It currently remains a nature preserve and serves as a popular recreational area, and an important piece in local flood control.
## History
Originally known as "Alewife Meadows" during colonial times, European settlers used the area to harvest oak, and harvest trees for the Medford Shipyards. Due to the soil being too soft to support buildings, the settlers left the marsh open and instead used it to graze livestock. A local family operated a dairy farm on Great Meadows until the 1860s. They also built a mill nearby the site to help build the foundations for homes. Additionally, between 1865 and 1867, the American Peat Company cut and burned peat to fuel local homes and churches.
The meadow was purchased by the town of Arlington in 1871 and primarily used as a water storage area to prevent flooding to nearby areas. Families of nearby neighborhoods used the resulting body of water for recreational activities such as boating. However, after Arlington joined the Metropolitan District Commission, making it no longer necessary to hold the water for supply, the reservoir was drained, in 1902, leaving it as a wet meadow. For much of the 20th century, the meadow served as a habitat for a wide variety of local wildlife.
Since the opening of the adjacent Minuteman Bikeway in 1992, it has become a popular recreational area for residents of Arlington and Lexington. As a result, dirt trails were added throughout the Meadow. Additionally, it continues to play an important role in flood control for the surrounding neighborhoods, as the soil in the wetlands absorbs flood waters.
### Wildfires
In the 21st century, there have been two large wildfires in Great Meadows. The first one occurred on April 23, 2008. Nine acres of upland forest near a nursing home were damaged. The fire was set by six teenagers playing in the woods, though it is unclear if the fire was ignited accidentally or intentionally. Almost a year later, on April 17, 2009, the meadow was hit with another fire. Two firefighters were injured and the fire came within feet of nearby homes. Twenty-two local fire departments and state police responded to help extinguish the blaze, which took four and a half hours to put out. Over a dozen acres burned off in the fire. The cause of the fire is believed to be the result of human activity. However, it remains unclear if the fire was started intentionally or not.
## Wildlife and vegetation
Great Meadows hosts a wide range of wildlife and vegetation, with over 400 species of plants and animals. 56 species of birds, 12 species of reptiles and amphibians, and many varieties of mammals reside in the uplands. Some varieties of fish and 251 species of plants have been found in the wet meadows.
## Activities and amenities
The park offers a 1.9-mile (3.1 km) network of compact dirt trails for pedestrian and bicycle use. Activities include hiking, walking, jogging, cycling, and photography. The trail's terrain is considered child- and animal-friendly. The trails directly connect to the 10-mile-long (16 km) Minuteman Bikeway. Additional entry points can be found in surrounding neighborhoods, including at Lexington Christian Academy.
## See also
- Arlington, Massachusetts
- Minuteman Bikeway
|
160,994 |
NFL Europe
| 1,173,001,810 |
Defunct professional American football league
|
[
"1991 establishments in Canada",
"1991 establishments in Europe",
"1991 establishments in the United States",
"1993 disestablishments in Canada",
"1993 disestablishments in the United States",
"2007 disestablishments in Europe",
"ABC Sports",
"American Broadcasting Company original programming",
"American football leagues in Europe",
"Defunct American football leagues",
"FX Networks original programming",
"Fox Sports original programming",
"NFL Europe",
"NFL Network original programming",
"Sports leagues disestablished in 2007",
"Sports leagues established in 1991",
"USA Network Sports"
] |
NFL Europe League (simply called NFL Europe and known in its final season as NFL Europa League) was a professional American football league that functioned as the developmental minor league of the National Football League (NFL). Originally founded in 1989 as the World League of American Football (or WLAF), the league was envisioned as a transatlantic league encompassing teams from both North America and Europe. Initially, the WLAF consisted of seven teams in North America and three in Europe. It began play in 1991 and lasted for two seasons before suspending operations; while the league had been "wildly popular" in Europe, it failed to achieve success in North America. After a two-year hiatus, it returned as a six-team European league, with teams based in England, Germany, the Netherlands, Scotland, and Spain. NFL Europa was dissolved in 2007 due to its continued unprofitability and the NFL's decision to shift its focus towards hosting regular-season games in Europe; at the time of its closure, the league consisted of five German teams and one team based in the Netherlands.
The league operated under rules nearly identical to the NFL, but featured some differences and experimental rules changes designed to appeal to fans of association football (soccer) and rugby football. NFL teams were incentivized to allocate players through the granting of additional training camp positions for each allocated player, and each team in NFL Europe was required to employ a number of "local" players. Most of the league's players were American, with "local" players tending to be converted rugby or soccer players playing at the punter or placekicker positions. Several NFL Europe alumni – including quarterbacks Brad Johnson, Kurt Warner, and Jake Delhomme – went on to have successful careers in the NFL, and two NFL Europe alumni (Adam Vinatieri and Dante Hall) made the National Football League 2000s All-Decade Team.
The league's schedule went through several formats throughout its existence, but each season always culminated in the championship World Bowl game. In its initial run, each team played a ten-game schedule, and the winners of each of the three divisions (Europe, North America East, and North America West), along with the team with the best record that didn't win a division, would play in a four-team playoff. Following its revival as a six-team European league, the ten-game schedule was retained as double round-robin regular season. From 1995 to 1997, the World Bowl was played between the team with the best record in the first half of the season and the team with the best record in the second half of the season; from 1998 on, the two teams with the best records across the entire season played in the World Bowl. The Frankfurt Galaxy – the only team to play all 15 seasons of the league's existence – won the most World Bowl titles (four) and recorded the most World Bowl appearances (eight), while the final league title was won by the Hamburg Sea Devils.
## History
### Founding and origins
In 1974, the National Football League (NFL) announced plans to launch a professional American football league in Europe, the Intercontinental Football League (IFL). Aiming for a launch in the spring of 1975, the IFL would feature six teams (located in Istanbul, Rome, Munich, Berlin, Vienna, and Barcelona, respectively) and would be a satellite league of the NFL, with initial funds made by the NFL owners and the rosters consisting of "second-line athletes and rookies from established NFL teams". The brainchild of Bob Kap, the proposed league had already sold six franchises and had secured the rights to loan players from the NFL. The league had also pre-selected four more cities for expansion teams, and Al Davis and Tex Schramm were assigned to head the committee that would put the league together. The IFL did not materialize – the Pro Football Researchers Association attributed this failure to Europe not being ready for American football, potential competition with the World Football League (WFL), a players' strike during the summer of 1974, and the recession. Another factor was the turmoil in Europe in 1974: Turkey had invaded Cyprus, the American ambassador to Cyprus had been assassinated, Basque separatists had assassinated the prime minister of Spain, and terrorist groups like the Red Brigades had engaged in kidnapping. The State Department discouraged NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle from pursuing the league, and the IFL also suffered a potentially fatal blow when Pan American World Airways, who Kap had brought on as a sponsor, pulled out of the project. Ultimately, Rozelle deemed the creation of the league "impractical".
By 1980, the popularity of American football was increasing in Europe without any push by the NFL. The NFL capitalized on this newfound interest by holding American Bowl games (pre-season exhibition contests held overseas), and the popularity of these games, particularly in London, led to a renewed interest from Rozelle in creating an American football league in Europe. In 1989, the NFL announced plans to create an international spring football league. The NFL initially wanted the new league to be known as the International Football League, but it had to change the name after discovering that the name was already owned by Donald Trump and Charley Finley, who were allegedly in the process of forming their own league (which would never come to fruition). The name World League of American Football (WLAF) was eventually settled on; this name was chosen to avoid associating it with the dissolved World Football League, and the term "American football" was included in the league's name because "football" in Europe typically refers to association football, known in the United States as soccer. The NFL and WLAF attempted to downplay its status as a minor league and refused to acknowledge the WLAF as a farm league of the NFL. The NFL approved the creation of the WLAF in July 1989, with Schramm to head up the project and the league expected to begin play in 1990 or 1991. The league was expected to have 12 teams (six in the United States, four in Europe, one in Canada and one in Mexico), and it secured a two-year television deal with ABC and a four-year television deal with USA Network to air regular and post-season games. Schramm was fired as league president in October 1990 due to differences between him and the NFL as to the direction the WLAF would take; Schramm had wanted the WLAF to be an "independent, major international league which would be strong enough to stand on its own feet", while the NFL had wanted the WLAF to be a small league with close ties to the NFL.
On November 14, 1990, the WLAF announced it would begin play in 1991 with ten teams (six of them in the United States, three of them in Europe, and one in Canada) split into three divisions (North America West, North America East, and Europe). A 50-game schedule stretching from March 23, 1991, to May 27, 1991, was agreed upon, and a draft was held from February 14, 1991, to February 24, 1991. Unlike the NFL draft, the World League draft was a position-by-position draft – potential draftees were divided into ten position groups, meaning each of the ten teams would have the number-one pick at a position group. All players were to receive a base salary of \$20,000, but players could receive more money by meeting performance-based incentives with a maximum total salary of \$100,000. Each NFL team could allocate up to four players to the WLAF, although only two, the New Orleans Saints and Kansas City Chiefs opted to do so.
### WLAF (1991–92)
The World League of American Football, described by The New York Times as the "first trans-Atlantic major sports league", began play on March 23, 1991, with three games held in Frankfurt, Germany, Birmingham, Alabama, and Sacramento, California, respectively. After the conclusion of the regular season, the WLAF playoffs were held, featuring the three division champions (London Monarchs, New York/New Jersey Knights, and Birmingham Fire) and one wild-card team (Barcelona Dragons). London and Barcelona won their playoff games to meet in World Bowl '91 at Wembley Stadium, which London won 21–0.
Following its first season, the World League of American Football was at risk of folding. It suffered a loss of nearly \$7 million, and none of its teams made a profit. In addition to the monetary loss for the league, television ratings on ABC and USA network were poor. According to Dan Rooney, the NFL chairman of the World League, cost estimates were accurate, but the league overestimated the amount of revenue the WLAF would make. The league's television contracts were also at risk due to poor ratings, with USA Network having lost money. The WLAF averaged around 26,000 fans a game in its first season; the European teams had a higher attendance than the North American teams, bolstering the average. Ultimately, the NFL decided to bring the league back for a second season in 1992. The league name was shortened to World League by league officials, who felt the surprising success of the league in Europe made the "American football" part unnecessary, and the Raleigh-Durham Skyhawks folded, replaced by the Ohio Glory.
### NFL Europe/Europa (1995–2007)
Although the league was "wildly popular" in Europe, with attendance averaging 45,000 for the London Monarchs, it was "ignored" in the United States. The World League suspended play for the 1993 and 1994 season before returning in 1995 as a six-team, exclusively European league. All three of the original European teams returned along with three new teams (the Amsterdam Admirals, Rhein Fire, and Scottish Claymores). Each team was required to have seven "local" players on their 40-man roster. Fox became a co-owner of the WLAF and a major financial contributor in return for broadcasting rights. The league was renamed the NFL Europe League (NFLEL) in 1998, and the London Monarchs were renamed the England Monarchs in an attempt to spur attendance, which had fallen below 10,000 per game. The Monarchs would fold the following season and were replaced by the Berlin Thunder.
NFL Europe commemorated its 10th season in 2002, but still remained far from being profitable. The league announced a three-year with the soccer club FC Barcelona to jointly promote American football in Europe and soccer in the United States; the Barcelona Dragons franchise was renamed FC Barcelona Dragons. The collaboration with FC Barcelona would prove to be unsuccessful, however, and the Barcelona Dragons would fold after the 2003 season due to declining attendance. The team's attendance had fallen to under 7,000 per game, a 50% decline since the 1997 season, when the team had won the World Bowl. The Dragons were replaced by the Cologne Centurions in 2004, and the following year the Scottish Claymores folded; although the team boasted the largest following of any Scottish sports team outside the Old Firm, averaging 10,799 per game, the league had determined an additional German team could bring in 30,000 per game.
The Claymores were replaced the following year by the Hamburg Sea Devils, which left the Amsterdam Admirals as the only team in the league not to be based in Germany. This was part of a strategic pivot to Germany, which had been the most receptive country to the league and the sport in general. Accordingly, the league changed its name to NFL Europa in 2006, ahead of the league's 15th season, to reflect the league's focus on Germany and the Netherlands.
### Closure and legacy
On July 29, 2007, less than a week after World Bowl XV, the NFL announced the closure of NFL Europa. The league had been losing a reported US\$30 million a year, and the NFL had decided to shift their strategy in marketing football abroad towards holding NFL regular-season games outside the United States. The NFL owners who funded the league were reportedly dissatisfied with NFL Europa's lack of revenue as well as its decreasing success in player development. The league had nearly folded in 2003, when eight of the 32 NFL owners voted against funding it, one short of the nine votes needed to end the league, and its gradual progression into a German-dominated league had run counter to the NFL's goals of selling merchandise throughout the European continent. The league's inability to garner a live television contract with local media markets also played a role in its demise, as the potential revenue from a deal could have helped the league financially.
Andrei S. Markovits and Lars Rensmann described the league as an "abysmal failure", noting its poor quality of play, frequent name changes, and franchise relocations as well as the accessibility of regular NFL games in Europe as reasons for its collapse. Len Pasquarelli of ESPN.com noted that the league had strayed from its original goal, with the allocation system of players gradually being abused to amass training camp exemptions rather than to develop players. John Mara, the co-owner of the New York Giants, said that the league "had some useful purpose in developing players" and that it helped the NFL determine that there was an interest in American football in Europe.
Looking back on NFL Europe in 2017, Kevin Seifert of ESPN.com noted its strong record in developing quarterbacks: Kurt Warner (a Super Bowl champion and two-time MVP), Brad Johnson (who won a Super Bowl in 2002 with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers), Jake Delhomme (who led the Carolina Panthers to an NFC championship in 2003), and journeyman quarterback Jon Kitna all spent time in NFL Europe. Two NFL Europe alumni (kicker Adam Vinatieri and return specialist Dante Hall) were included on the NFL's 2000s All-Decade Team. The league also provided an opportunity for the NFL to experiment with rules and to develop officials and coaches. Some NFL coaches and executives have suggested reviving the concept of a developmental league, and several independent leagues have been created to fill the need, but with little success. At a press conference before Super Bowl LI, league commissioner Roger Goodell said the NFL had been "actively considering" creating a new developmental league.
Since the closure of NFL Europa, the NFL has held regular-season games annually in London and has also hosted regular-season games in Mexico City and Toronto. The league is pursuing the goal of a franchise in London, as well as potential regular-season games in China. In 2021, the NFL announced it was looking for partners to host a regular-season game in Germany. In 2022, the league announced four regular-season games would be held in Germany, the first set for November 13, 2022 between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Seattle Seahawks to be played at Munich's Allianz Arena. NFL.com writer Judy Battista noted Germany was the "fastest-growing international community" for the league, and attributed this in part to the popularity of the former NFL Europe's German teams, but argued the large number of expats as well as the American military presence were greater factors.
In 2007, fans and former members of the Frankfurt Galaxy – the most successful of NFL Europe's teams on the field and in crowd attendance – created the Frankfurt Universe. The new team was promoted to the German Football League 2 in 2011, and won promotion to the German Football League (GFL) in 2015. The European League of Football (ELF), a pan-European league that began play in 2021, signed an agreement with the NFL allowing them to utilize the branding of the former teams of NFL Europe. The ELF's Barcelona Dragons, Berlin Thunder, Cologne Centurions, Hamburg Sea Devils, Frankfurt Galaxy, and Rhein Fire all share the names and imagery of their NFL Europe predecessors.
### Season structure and development
From 1991 to 1992, the 12-team WLAF was split into three divisions: North America East, North America West, and Europe with a ten-game regular season schedule. All three division champions, in addition to the team with the best record who didn't win a division, made the playoffs. The winners of the two playoff games played for the league championship in the World Bowl. The ten game schedule was retained upon the league's return in 1995, but was modified with the new six-team format. Each team played every other team twice in a double round-robin regular season. Following the regular season, two teams would be selected for the World Bowl; the team that led the league's standings after week five would host the game, and the team with the best overall record at the end of the season would be their opponent. This format was criticized for making the second half of the league's season less competitive, and beginning with the 1998 season it was changed to have the two teams with the best overall records play in the World Bowl instead.
The league played under standard NFL rules, with several exceptions. In an effort to appeal to fans of rugby and soccer, the league instituted rules to speed up the pace of the game and awarded four points for field goals made from beyond 50 yards as opposed to the typical three points. Rule changes instituted upon the league's revival in 1995 included the creation of the defensive two-point conversion, referred to by the league as the "deuce", as well as only requiring receivers to have one foot in bounds on a completed pass. The regular-season overtime period consisted of a single 10-minute quarter where both teams were required to have control of the ball at least once, and the play clock was set to 35 seconds. Starting with the 1997 season, the league required the receiver to have two feet in bounds for a completed pass. Ties were possible in the league, with two (a 1992 game between the London Monarchs and Birmingham Fire and a 2006 game between the Berlin Thunder and Hamburg Sea Devils) occurring in league history.
NFL teams were allowed to allocate players to NFL Europe. In exchange for doing this, they were awarded with exemptions for training camp, allowing them to bring more players than would otherwise be allowed. A certain number of players on each team of NFL Europe were required to be "local players", and at least two local players were required to be on the field at all times during games. Despite this, most of the league's most prominent players were Americans; "local players" were often converted rugby or soccer players playing as punters or placekickers.
## Teams
### World League of American Football/World League (1991–92)
### World League/NFL Europe League/NFL Europa (1995–2007)
## Trophy and awards
NFL Europe presented several awards and honors. The World Bowl trophy, awarded to the winners of the annual World Bowl game, was a 40-pound glass globe. The winning team also received championship rings Other awards included regular season most valuable player awards on offense and defense, a coach of the year award, and an award for the World Bowl MVP. The league also awarded offensive, defensive, special teams, and national players of the week, and named an all-league team at the end of the season.
### Award winners
## Television coverage
### 1991–92
In the United States, television coverage was provided by the ABC and USA Network. The reported cost of the contracts varied. According to the Los Angeles Times, ABC committed to \$28 million over two years, and USA Network committed to \$25 million for the same length of time with an additional two-year option. Ratings were characterized as "poor" in the inaugural season, with ABC averaging a 2.1 rating and USA Network averaging a 1.2 rating. Television ratings in the United States were "dismal" during the league's second season, with ABC averaging a 1.7 rating and USA Network averaging a 1.1 rating. As a result, ABC's payment was reduced to \$3 million while USA saw theirs lowered to \$10 million. According to The New York Times, USA Network was "not happy" with this arrangement and did not heavily promote the league as a result.
International teams aired on different domestic networks. Montreal Machine games were aired in English on The Sports Network and in French on RDS. Coverage in Europe was mostly on satellite television. Eurosport showed games on delay and Super Channel aired the 1991 World Bowl. In the United Kingdom, Channel 4 showed half-hour highlights of Monarchs games on Saturday mornings. Larry Eichel of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that "The only way a Monarchs fan could watch the team's first-round playoff game from the Meadowlands was to go to Wembley to see it on closed circuit."
### 1995–2007
The revived league's United Kingdom television coverage was mainly on Sky Sports, with additional coverage also on Channel 4, STV, and Carlton. Eight European continental broadcasters also showed games, including Germany's Vox and DSF.
Although the league no longer had any U.S. teams, it was covered on American television until its closure. Fox became a co-owner of the league in exchange for broadcasting rights, and following the relaunch all regular season games were broadcast on the FX network. Fox ended its joint ownership with the league in 2000, but continued to air some games as a television partner. In 2004, NFL Network began airing select NFL Europe games. This was expanded to cover all NFL Europe games – including the World Bowl – in 2006.
## Records
### Champions and runners-up
### Win–loss records
|
1,514,374 |
J. Johnston Pettigrew
| 1,166,878,933 |
American Confederate general
|
[
"1828 births",
"1863 deaths",
"19th-century American politicians",
"American Civil War prisoners of war",
"Confederate States Army brigadier generals",
"Confederate States of America military personnel killed in the American Civil War",
"Members of the South Carolina House of Representatives",
"People from Tyrrell County, North Carolina",
"People of North Carolina in the American Civil War",
"University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill alumni",
"Writers from North Carolina"
] |
James Johnston Pettigrew (July 4, 1828 – July 17, 1863) was an American author, lawyer, and soldier. He served in the army of the Confederate States of America, fighting in the 1862 Peninsula Campaign and played a prominent role in the Battle of Gettysburg. Despite starting the Gettysburg Campaign commanding a brigade, Pettigrew took over command of his division after the division's original commander, Henry Heth, was wounded. In this role, Pettigrew was one of three division commanders in the disastrous assault known as Pickett's Charge on the final day of Gettysburg. He was badly wounded during the assault and was later mortally wounded during a Union attack while the Confederates retreated to Virginia near Falling Waters, West Virginia, dying several days later.
## Early years
Johnston Pettigrew was born at his family's estate "Bonarva" in Tyrrell County, North Carolina, on July 4, 1828. His father was from a wealthy family of French Huguenot background. One of Pettigrew's cousins, John Gibbon, would later become a major general for the Union during the Civil War. Pettigrew enrolled at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill at the age of 15. Pettigrew is reported to have performed well in his studies, as well as in boxing and fencing. He earned praise for his achievements from President James K. Polk, who appointed him an assistant professor at the United States Naval Observatory. Pettigrew studied law, traveled to Europe, and eventually moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where he worked in the legal field with his uncle, James Louis Petigru. He was also an author, writing a book about the culture of Spain titled Notes on Spain and the Spaniards in the Summer of 1859, With a Glance at Sardinia.
Returning to the United States, Pettigrew was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1856. Despite his education and legal experience, Pettigrew leaned toward the military as a way to serve his country and his state. In December 1860, he was serving as an aide to the governor of South Carolina and the following April participated in the negotiations between the governor's office, the South Carolina military authorities, and the Union commander of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.
## Civil War
When war began, Pettigrew joined the Hampton Legion, a force raised in South Carolina by Wade Hampton, as a private, although he quickly accepted a commission as colonel of the 1st South Carolina Rifle Militia Regiment. Pettigrew was later assigned to command the 12th (later renamed the 22nd) North Carolina Infantry. Confederate President Jefferson Davis urged him to accept higher command, but he declined because of his lack of military experience. Despite this inexperience, Pettigrew was promoted to brigadier general by Jefferson Davis during the lead-up to the Peninsula Campaign.
### Peninsula Campaign
During the Peninsula Campaign in the summer of 1862, Pettigrew was severely wounded at the Battle of Seven Pines. He was hit by a Minié ball that damaged his throat, windpipe, and shoulder. Pettigrew nearly bled to death, and while lying wounded, he received another bullet wound in the arm and was bayoneted in the right leg. Pettigrew was left for dead on the field, as his wounds were believed to be mortal. However, he recovered consciousness as a Union prisoner of war. Exchanged two months later, the general recovered from his wounds, spent the fall commanding a brigade in Maj. Gen. Daniel Harvey Hill's division around Richmond, and in the winter commanded a brigade in North Carolina and southern Virginia. He returned to his North Carolina brigade just in time to begin the Gettysburg Campaign in June 1863.
### Gettysburg Campaign
The Confederate War Department had assigned Pettigrew's Brigade to Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, and Pettigrew traveled northward to join Lee's army. Pettigrew's brigade, along with the brigades of James Jay Archer, John M. Brockenbrough, and Joseph R. Davis, was assigned to Major General Henry Heth's division of Lt. Gen. A. P. Hill's Third Corps. Both Heth's division and Hill's corps were new organizations, having been created as part of Lee's reorganization following the death of Stonewall Jackson. Pettigrew's Brigade was the strongest in Heth's division. Freshly uniformed and armed with rifles from state military depots, his regiments presented a fine military appearance during the march through Maryland and Pennsylvania. Some of his regimental officers were also members of the North Carolina planter "aristocracy", including Colonel Collett Leventhorpe leading the 11th North Carolina Infantry and twenty-one-year-old Harry Burgwyn at the head of the 26th North Carolina Regiment, the largest Confederate regiment at Gettysburg. Not having been in serious combat for nearly a year, his brigade mustered a strength over 2,500 officers and men.
Pettigrew's Brigade tangled with the Iron Brigade on July 1, 1863, at the McPherson and Herbst farms to the west of Gettysburg, where all four of his regiments suffered devastating losses—over 40 percent—but were successful in driving the Union forces off of McPherson's Ridge. That afternoon, General Heth suffered a head wound that kept him out of action, and Pettigrew took over command of the battered division.
On July 3, 1863, Gen. Lee selected Pettigrew's division to march at the left of Maj. Gen. George Pickett's in the famous infantry assault popularly known as Pickett's Charge (sometimes called the "Pickett-Pettigrew-Trimble Assault", as Pickett's division was not the only one to participate in the charge). Pettigrew's old brigade, now commanded by James K. Marshall, had been roughly handled on the first day of the battle, and was not in good condition for the charge.
Pettigrew's division ran into a heavy fire from Union general Alexander Hays' division, which was posted on Cemetery Ridge. Birkett Fry, now commanding James Archer's brigade was wounded, Marshall was killed. Pettigrew's division suffered heavy casualties and were unable to break Hays' line. The division was driven off, and Pettigrew had his horse shot out from under him, requiring him to lead his division on foot. Pettigrew also suffered a painful arm wound.
During the Confederate retreat from Gettysburg, Pettigrew remained in command until Heth recovered. Stopped by the flooded Potomac River at Falling Waters, West Virginia, Pettigrew's brigade (temporarily combined with Archer's former brigade) was deployed as a rear guard unit. Union cavalry probed the southern defenses throughout the night as Lee's army crossed the pontoon bridges into West Virginia. On the morning of July 14, 1863, Pettigrew's brigade was one of the last Confederate units still north of the Potomac River when the Union attacked his position. On foot and in the front line, Pettigrew was directing his soldiers when he was shot by a Union cavalryman from the Michigan Brigade at close range, the bullet striking him in the abdomen. He was immediately carried to the rear and across the Potomac, having refused to be left in federal hands. He died three days later at Edgewood Manor plantation near Bunker Hill, West Virginia. His brigade, which lost an estimated 56% casualties, had been ruined as an effective combat organization.
## Legacy
An official day of mourning was held for him in North Carolina. His death also affected Lee, who remarked: "The army has lost a brave soldier and the Confederacy an accomplished officer." General Pettigrew's body was returned to North Carolina and interred at his family estate, "Bonarva", which is now part of Pettigrew State Park in Washington and Tyrrell Counties.
General James Johnston Pettigrew Camp \#1401 of the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Lenoir, North Carolina, was named for the fallen officer.
In 1912, a building on the campus of the University of North Carolina was named for Pettigrew.
Pettigrew was portrayed by George Lazenby in a short scene of the film Gettysburg. The scene depicts the planning for Pickett's Charge, and Pettigrew, as a newly promoted division commander, introduces himself to the Longstreet character who remarks that Pettigrew's reputation as a scholar has preceded him.
## See also
- List of American Civil War generals (Confederate)
|
17,659,587 |
Donald William Kerst
| 1,165,327,486 |
American physicist who developed the betatron
|
[
"1911 births",
"1993 deaths",
"20th-century American physicists",
"Accelerator physicists",
"Fellows of the American Physical Society",
"Founding members of the World Cultural Council",
"Manhattan Project people",
"Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences",
"People from Galena, Illinois",
"University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty",
"University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty"
] |
Donald William Kerst (November 1, 1911 – August 19, 1993) was an American physicist who worked on advanced particle accelerator concepts (accelerator physics) and plasma physics. He is most notable for his development of the betatron, a novel type of particle accelerator used to accelerate electrons.
A graduate of the University of Wisconsin, Kerst developed the first betatron at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, where it became operational on July 15, 1940. During World War II, Kerst took a leave of absence in 1940 and 1941 to work on it with the engineering staff at General Electric, and he designed a portable betatron for inspecting dud bombs. In 1943 he joined the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory, where he was responsible for designing and building the Water Boiler, a nuclear reactor intended to serve as a laboratory instrument.
From 1953 to 1957 Kerst was technical director of the Midwestern Universities Research Association, where he worked on advanced particle accelerator concepts, most notably the FFAG accelerator. He was then employed at General Atomics's John Jay Hopkins Laboratory from 1957 to 1962, where he worked on the problem of plasma physics. With Tihiro Ohkawa he invented toroidal devices for containing the plasma with magnetic fields. Their devices were the first to contain plasma without the instabilities that had plagued previous designs, and the first to contain plasma for lifetimes exceeding the Bohm diffusion limit.
## Early life
Donald William Kerst was born in Galena, Illinois November 1, 1911, the son of Herman Samuel Kerst and Lillian E Wetz. He entered the University of Wisconsin, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in 1934, and then his Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in 1937, writing his thesis on "The Development of Electrostatic Generators in Air Pressure and Applications to Excitation Functions of Nuclear Reactions". This involved building and testing a 2.3 MeV generator for experiments with the scattering of protons.
## Betatron
After graduation, Kerst worked at General Electric Company for a year, working on the development of x-ray tubes and machines. He found this frustrating, as x-ray research required high energies that could not be produced at the time. In 1938 he accepted an offer of an instructorship at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, where the head of the physics department, F. Wheeler Loomis encouraged Kerst in his efforts to create a better particle accelerator. The result of these efforts was the betatron. When it became operational on July 15, 1940, Kerst became the first person to accelerate electrons using electromagnetic induction, reaching energies of 2.3 MeV.
In December 1941 Kerst decided on "betatron", using the Greek letter "beta", which was the symbol for electrons, and "tron" meaning "instrument for". He went on to build more betatrons of increasing energy, a 20 MeV machine in 1941, an 80 MeV in 1948, and a 340 MeV machine, which was completed in 1950.
The betatron would influence all subsequent accelerators. Its success was due to a thorough understanding of the physics involved, and painstaking design of the magnets, vacuum pumps and power supply. In 1941, he teamed up with Robert Serber to provide the first theoretical analysis of the oscillations that occur in a betatron. The original 1940 machine was donated to the Smithsonian Institution in 1960.
## World War II
During World War II, Kerst took a leave of absence from the University of Illinois to work on the development of the betatron with the engineering staff at General Electric in 1940 and 1941. They designed 20 MeV and 100 MeV versions of the betatron, and he supervised the construction of the former, which he brought back to the University of Illinois with him. He also designed a portable 4 MeV betatron for inspecting dud bombs.
Kerst's engineering and physics background placed him near the top of the list of scientists that Robert Oppenheimer recruited for the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory, which was set up to design the atomic bomb. In August 1943, Kerst was placed in charge of the Laboratory's P-7 Group, which was responsible for designing and building the Water Boiler, a nuclear reactor intended to serve as a laboratory instrument to test critical mass calculations and the effect of various tamper materials. Primarily drawn from Purdue University, his group included Charles P. Baker, Gerhart Friedlander, Lindsay Helmholtz, Marshall Holloway, and Raemer Schreiber. Robert F. Christy provided help with the theoretical calculations.
Kerst designed an aqueous homogeneous reactor in which enriched uranium in the form of soluble uranium sulfate, was dissolved in water, and surrounded by a beryllium oxide neutron reflector. It was the first reactor to employ enriched uranium as a fuel, and required most of the world's meager supply at the time. A sufficient quantity of enriched uranium arrived at Los Alamos by April 1944, and the Water Boiler commenced operation in May. By the end of June it had achieved all of its design goals.
The Los Alamos Laboratory was reorganized in August 1944 to concentrate on creating an implosion-type nuclear weapon. Studying implosion on a large scale, or even a full scale, required special diagnostic methods. As early as November 1943, Kerst suggested using a betatron employing 20 MeV gamma rays instead of x-rays to study implosion. In the August 1944 reorganization, he became joint head, with Seth Neddermeyer, of the G-5 Group, part of Robert Bacher's G (Gadget) Division specifically charged with betatron testing. Oppenheimer had the 20 MeV betatron at the University of Illinois shipped to Los Alamos, where it arrived in December. On January 15, 1945, the G-5 Group took their first betatron pictures of an implosion.
## Later life
Kerst returned to the University of Illinois after the war. From 1953 to 1957 he was technical director of the Midwestern Universities Research Association, where he worked on advanced particle accelerator concepts, most notably the FFAG accelerator. He developed the spiral-sector focusing principle, which lies at the heart of many spiral ridge cyclotrons that are now in operation around the world. His team devised and analysed beam stacking, a process of radio frequency acceleration in fixed field machines that led to the development of the colliding beam accelerators.
From 1957 to 1962 Kerst was employed at the General Atomics division of General Dynamics's John Jay Hopkins Laboratory for Pure and Applied Science in La Jolla, California, where he worked on plasma physics, which it was hoped was the doorway to the control of thermonuclear energy. With Tihiro Ohkawa he invented toroidal devices for containing the plasma with magnetic fields. The two completed this work at the University of Wisconsin, where Kerst was a professor from 1962 until his retirement in 1980. Their devices were the first to contain plasma without the instabilities that had plagued previous designs, and the first to contain plasma for lifetimes exceeding the Bohm diffusion limit. From 1972 to 1973 he was also chairman of the Plasma Physics Division of the American Physical Society.
Kerst was married to Dorothy Birkett Kerst. They had two children, a daughter, Marilyn, and a son, Stephen. After he retired, Kerst and Dorothy moved to Fort Myers, Florida. He died on August 19, 1993, at the University Hospital and Clinics in Madison, Wisconsin, from a brain tumor. He was survived by his wife and children. His papers are in the University of Illinois Archives.
## Awards and honors
- Honorary degree, Lawrence College, 1942.
- Awarded Comstock Prize in Physics, National Academy of Sciences, 1943.
- Awarded John Scott Award, City of Philadelphia, 1946.
- Awarded John Price Wetherill Medal, Franklin Institute, 1950.
- Elected to the National Academy of Sciences, 1951.
- Honorary degree, University of Sao Paulo, 1953.
- Honorary degree, University of Wisconsion, 1961.
- Founding member of the World Cultural Council, 1981.
- Awarded James Clerk Maxwell Prize in plasma physics, American Physical Society, 1984.
- Awarded Robert R. Wilson Prize for accelerator physics, 1988.
- Honorary degree, University of Illinois, 1989.
|
5,807,951 |
Hammerfest Airport
| 1,093,937,158 |
Airport in Hammerfest, Finnmark, Norway
|
[
"1974 establishments in Norway",
"Airports established in 1974",
"Airports in Troms og Finnmark",
"Avinor airports",
"Hammerfest",
"Heliports in Norway"
] |
Hammerfest Airport (Norwegian: Hammerfest lufthavn; ) is a regional airport at Prærien in Hammerfest, Norway. It is operated by the state-owned Avinor and handled 145,396 passengers in 2014, making it the third-busiest regional airport in the country. The airport has a 880-meter (2,890 ft) runway aligned 05/23. Services are provided by Widerøe using the Dash 8-100. Up to eight daily flights are provided to Tromsø and public service obligation flights are flown eastwards to other airports in Finnmark. The airport is the base for offshore helicopter services operated by Bristow Norway and CHC Helikopter Service. An estimated 40,000 people from Hammerfest Airport's catchment area annually use Alta Airport for flights to Oslo.
Hammerfest was served from 1935 by scheduled seaplanes at a water aerodrome at Rypefjord. Services were interrupted by World War II, but resumed in 1945, lasting until the 1963 opening of Alta Airport. Hammerfest Airport opened on 1 August 1974, along with four other regional airport in Troms og Finnmark, and was originally served with de Havilland Canada Twin Otters. The de Havilland Canada Dash 7 was introduced in 1983 and a helicopter base was established in 1989. The Dash 8 was introduced in 1995 and the airport was nationalized two years later. A Dash 8 was damaged beyond repair after a hard landing in 2005. Because of the limited space for expansion and unfavorable wind conditions, there is a proposal to build a new airport at Grøtnes.
## History
The first plans for serving Hammerfest with an airline route was launched in a government plan from 1933. It proposed that flights in Northern Norway be carried out using seaplanes, and proposed Hammerfest as one of several stops on a route from Trondheim to Vadsø. Norwegian Air Lines (DNL) received the concession to operate all routes in Norway from 1935, resulting in the coastal route from Bergen to Tromsø commencing. The following year a connecting route from Tromsø via Hammerfest to Honningsvåg was subcontracted to Widerøe. The water aerodrome in Hammerfest was located at Rypefjord and consisted of a buoy where the aircraft parked; passengers were transported to the aircraft in a boat. All flights were terminated in 1939 and remained so until the end of World War II in 1945.
DNL resumed the Hammerfest route in 1946, connecting the town to Tromsø, Vadsø and Kirkenes with a Junkers Ju 52. The route later also served Alta and made part of the coastal route to Bergen. The segment north of Tromsø was taken over by Widerøe in 1954, and two years later Widerøe also started a route from Hammerfest via Alta to Bardufoss Airport, which allowed for a transfer to an Oslo-bound aircraft. Widerøe mostly used Noorduyn Norseman and de Havilland Canada Otters on the routes. Alta Airport and two other primary airports in Finnmark opened in 1963 and Widerøe decided to terminate its seaplane routes in the county. At the time a bus trip from Hammerfest to Alta took four hours. Unlike the seaplane routes, the landplane routes from Alta were able to operate during winter. Norving established an air ambulance base at Hammerfest in 1961. With the opening of Alta Airport, Norving applied for permission and subsidies to operate a feeder service from Hammerfest to Alta, but the application was rejected by the government.
The mid-1960s saw several proposals for regional airports in Finnmark. A committee appointed by Finnmark County Council proposed, in 1966, Hammerfest as one of six suitable sites for a simple airfield to serve air ambulance and air taxi services. At the same time the government was working on plans to build a national network of short take-off and landing airport. The plans eventually called for six airports in northern Troms og Finnmark, a plan passed by Parliament in 1972. Both Widerøe and Norving applied to operate the subsidized routes in Finnmark, and the contract was awarded to Widerøe, which operated the subsidized routes in the rest of the country. The airport opened on 1 August 1974 with Hammerfest Municipality as the owner and operator. The same day four other airports in Finnmark and Troms commenced operations. These were all originally served using Widerøe's de Havilland Canada Twin Otter aircraft. The airline established its technical base for Finnmark at Hammerfest.
Widerøe introduced the de Havilland Canada Dash 7 on the route from Tromsø Airport to Hammerfest in 1983, the same year as Norving started flights from Hammerfest to Hasvik Airport. The Hasvik roue was taken over by Widerøe in 1990. Helikopter Service established a helicopter base at Hammerfest Airport in 1989 to serve the offshore petroleum industry which was searching for oil in the Barents Sea. Widerøe introduced the Dash 8 on the Finnmark routes in 1995. The airport was taken over by the state and the Civil Aviation Administration (later renamed Avinor) on 1 January 1997. The state paid Hammerfest Municipality 19.5 million Norwegian krone (NOK) in compensation. The routes eastwards were made subject to public service obligations with the Ministry of Transport and Communications from 1 April 1997. The routes to Tromsø had a sufficient patronage that they were operated without subsidies.
The helicopter operations were taken over by Norsk Helikpoter (later renamed Bristow Norway) when they opened their base on 11 November 2004. Airport security was introduced on 1 January 2005. Hammerfest was the second airport to receive SCAT-I, a Global Positioning System-based landing system, when it was installed in 2007. SCAT-I allows aircraft with the system installed to make a safer and less fuel-consuming landings using a gliding instead of step-down approach. This was followed up with an upgrade to the runway safety area and runway lights in 2008 and 2009.
## Facilities
The terminal has a capacity for 250 passengers per hour. It includes a separate area for helicopter traffic, but this is not in use, and helicopter passengers instead use the regular part of the terminal. There is a separate operations and fire station building, which includes the control tower. The asphalt runway measures 880 by 30 meters (2,887 by 98 ft) and aligned 05–23. There are no possibilities of extending the runway, largely because of the terrain at the east end. The tarmac has room for five aircraft the size of Dash 8, in addition to helicopters. The airport is six to seven minutes' drive from the town center and has parking, taxis and car rental. Forty-five people work at the airport.
## Airlines and destinations
The main route at Hammerfest is Widerøe's service to Tromsø, which is operated up to eight times per day using Dash 8-100/Q200 aircraft. Widerøe also operates flights eastwards to other communities in Finnmark on public service obligations with the Ministry of Transport and Communications. Two helicopter operators have bases at the airport: Bristow Norway, which operates two Eurocopter EC225 Super Pumas, and CHC Helikopter Service, which operates a Sikorsky S-92. Both companies operate flights to offshore installations. One of the Super Pumas is used for search and rescue operations for the petroleum industry and when the Royal Norwegian Air Force's Westland Sea Kings based at Station Group Banak are not available, for instance if they are on another mission or the aircraft are being maintained.
Forty-two percent of the airport's traffic is generated from routes to Oslo and abroad, while twenty-nine percent is to Tromsø. The airport served 145,396 passengers, 13,822 aircraft movements and handled 16 tonnes of cargo in 2014. This included 21,216 passengers and 1,827 aircraft movements which flew offshore. Hammerfest is the third-busiest regional airport in Norway. Patronage since the 2000s has varied with the activity in the petroleum industry. Each year, an estimated 40,000 passengers from the Hammerfest area chose Alta Airport over Hammerfest Airport, as Alta provides direct flights to Oslo. Alta is located 138 kilometers (86 mi) by road from Hammerfest. The catchment area of Hammerfest Airport covers the municipalities of Hammerfest and Kvalsund, although residents in Kvalsund largely use Alta Airport instead.
## Statistics
## Accidents and incidents
The Widerøe Dash 8-103 aircraft LN-WIK underwent a hard landing on 1 May 2005. The aircraft, en route from Tromsø, was landing on Runway 05 when it experienced a veering wind which changed direction, resulting in an increased tail wind. The pilot attempted to counteract the increased descent rate by increasing to full throttle. This was not sufficient and the aircraft carried out a hard landing just inside the threshold, with the starboard landing gear collapsing. The aircraft slid on its belly along the runway for 650 meters (2,130 ft) and was damaged beyond repair. Widerøe permitted aircraft to land in the maximum certified wind conditions, a cross-wind of 18 meters per second (36 knots) and 5 meters per second (10 knots) tail wind. Twenty-five passengers and the three crew members were all transported to hospital, although there were no serious injuries. Widerøe enforced its strictest wind restrictions of any airport at Hammerfest after the accidents.
## Future
Avinor is considering building a new airport at Grøtnes, which would be built as reclaimed land 15 kilometers (9 mi) from Hammerfest. The terminal would be located on a peninsula while the runway would be built on a filling in the fjord. Avinor has studied two possible runway lengths, 1,199 meters (3,934 ft) and 1,550 meters (5,090 ft). The former would cause operational problems during winter for 50-passenger aircraft, while the longer alternative would allow for operation of 70-seat turboprops, such as the Dash 8-Q400 and the ATR 72. Avinor estimated in 2012 the costs of a new airport with a short runway to NOK 1.6 billion and of a longer runway to NOK 2.2 billion. Avinor's calculations give a negative net present value for society of between NOK 1.2 and 1.4 billion. The main gain comes from that the use of slightly larger aircraft will allow for cheaper flights.
A 2008 report from the Institute of Transport Economics, financed by Hammerfest and Kvalsund Municipalities, looked into two possible runway lengths of an airport at Grøtnes: 1,199 meters (3,934 ft) and 1,999 meters (6,558 ft). It concluded that the former would have a negative cost for society, while the latter would break even. The report concluded that the latter could allow for three daily direct flights to Oslo, and estimated the 2013 traffic, if airport had been built, at 190,000, of which 99,000 would have been generated by the petroleum industry. A major uncertainty in the model is the unknown activity of the petroleum industry in the future. A report by the Norwegian Meteorological Institute the same year concluded that the weather at Grøtnes was well-suited for an airport.
Avinor's proposal for National Transport Plan 2014–2023 discards building an airport at Grøtnes. One of Avinor's main concerns is that runway capable of Oslo flights could cannibalize the market for Alta Airport and Lakselv Airport, Banak and reduce traffic to a level that there would not be sufficient patronage at any airport to allow for two airlines to compete on the Oslo route. Instead Avinor recommends improving the road to Alta airport (138 kilometers (86 mi) driving distance). Such a road improvement, costing 540 M kr, is partly finished, partly still planned (as of 2018). A part of this route (E6 at Sennalandet) is sensitive to snow storms, causing risk of missed flights.
|
32,015,808 |
Ryse: Son of Rome
| 1,167,551,205 |
2013 video game
|
[
"2013 video games",
"Action-adventure games",
"Alternate history video games",
"Cancelled Xbox 360 games",
"Colosseum",
"Cooperative video games",
"CryEngine games",
"Crytek games",
"Cultural depictions of Boudica",
"Cultural depictions of Nero",
"Deep Silver games",
"Hack and slash games",
"Microsoft games",
"Multiplayer and single-player video games",
"Video games about gladiatorial combat",
"Video games about revenge",
"Video games developed in Germany",
"Video games set in antiquity",
"Video games set in the Roman Empire",
"Windows games",
"Xbox One games"
] |
Ryse: Son of Rome is a 2013 action-adventure video game developed by Crytek and published by Microsoft Studios. Set in an alternate version of Ancient Rome, Ryse follows the life of the Roman centurion Marius Titus as he becomes one of the leaders in the Roman Legion. Gameplay revolves around Marius using his sword to strike enemies and shield to deflect attacks. Execution sequences are featured in the game, which are quick-time events that serve as an extension to combat. The game features a cooperative multiplayer mode, which tasks players to fight against waves of enemies in maps that are changing dynamically.
The game's development began in 2006. Originally it was set to be a first-person Kinect-only title for the Xbox 360. However, the developer gradually redesigned the game to become a third-person hack and slash game, with Kinect serving a diminished role. The development of the game was originally handled by Crytek Budapest, but was later transferred to Crytek's headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany. The game's combat emphasizes on "flow", a term referring to a player's ability to move on to fight against another enemy upon defeating an enemy with few limitations in between. The team partnered with The Imaginarium Studios to develop the cinematic and motion-capture technology for the game. Competitive multiplayer modes developed by Ruffian Games was planned but it was ultimately cancelled.
Revealed as Codename: Kingdom at E3 2010, the game was reintroduced as Ryse: Son of Rome two years later. It was released in November 2013 as a launch title for the Xbox One, and was released on October 10, 2014 for Windows by Crytek and Deep Silver. It received a mixed critical reaction from reviewers upon launch, being praised for its visuals, story and high production values but criticized for its repetitive and simple gameplay. Cevat Yerli, CEO of Crytek, added that he was not satisfied with the sales of the game. Upon launch, the game was supported with several multiplayer-focused downloadable content, but the originally planned Challenge Editor was cancelled.
## Gameplay
Ryse: Son of Rome is an action-adventure hack and slash game played in a third-person perspective. Players assume control of Marius Titus, a Roman general who is on a quest to avenge his murdered family. Throughout the game, players gain access to weapons that can be used to assault enemies or defend themselves. For instance, players are equipped with a sword that can be used to strike and kill enemies, and a shield that can be used to deflect enemies' attack and break their defense. The strength of each attack can be decided by players. In addition to melee-based combat, the game features spears and javelins, which serve as ranged weapons.
The game's combat puts emphasis on "flow", a term referring to a player's ability to move on to fight against another enemy upon defeating and killing an enemy with few limitations in between. Combat is combo-based, and rewards are given to players who are able to build a long combo. Marius can block attacks to break enemy combos to counterattack. In several segments of the game, Marius is involved in large-scale battles. Players are tasked to co-operate with, or command, other non-playable characters to defeat large numbers of enemies. The game features Kinect voice integration, in which players can issue commands to other characters to provide assistance, such as calling in arrows or catapults.
When players deal enough damage to an enemy, they can activate an execution sequence. Once the execution sequence has been initiated, enemies involved in the execution are highlighted automatically with colors by the game, and players can perform a series of quick time events by pressing the appropriate buttons. These execution sequences serve to grant additional resources to players, depending on how well the execution is performed. At any time prior to initiating an execution, the player can select one of four categories of executions to perform upon weakened enemies; the selected type of execution determines the type of resource that will be granted when an enemy is executed. Upon completing a successful execution sequence, players are granted the type of execution that was selected. There are four perks available for players. One boosts the player's damage for a short period after the execution; one refills the player's Focus bar; one allows players to regain lost health, and the last significantly boosts the amount of experience points received from the kill. These experience points can be used to purchase upgrades for various attributes, such as health, damage, or Focus bar capacity, and to unlock additional execution moves. The game still automatically completes and finishes these execution sequences when players fail to press the highlighted buttons, but provides a much smaller reward. Lining up two or more weakened enemies in close proximity allows the player to perform a double execution sequence, which greatly increases the reward granted.
There is also a co-operative multiplayer mode, in which two players team up to accomplish various challenges and fight against waves of increasingly difficult enemies in the Roman Colosseum, a gladiator arena setting. The environments of the Colosseum change dynamically in a match to add variety to the mode. Players can gain access to increasingly advanced armor and weapons as they progress through these multiplayer matches. Microtransactions are also featured, allowing players to purchase in-game upgrades with real-life currency.
## Plot
The game begins in medias res with Roman general Marius Titus leading the defence of Rome against a barbarian invasion. Marius leads the Roman emperor Nero into a safe room. At Nero's behest, Marius begins to tell his life story to the emperor.
Marius begins his story as a Roman legionary serving in the II Legion who returns to the Titus family villa in Rome to visit them before he is deployed to Alexandria. His visit is cut short as a sudden barbarian invasion occurs, resulting in the death of his parents and sister. Commander Vitallion, who served alongside Marius' father, transfers him to the XIV Legion, promising Marius vengeance for the death of his family. Vitallion leads the XIV Legion to the rebelling province of Britannia, where the fleet transporting them is almost destroyed by river chains. Marius' ship is hit by a trebuchet shot, but he survives and leads an attack which destroys the towers holding the chains up, preventing the Roman fleet from being destroyed; an impressed Vitallion promoted him to the rank of centurion. The XIV Legion marches on York, fighting numerous battles with Briton rebels on the way. Upon arriving at York, Marius leads the XIV Legion in an attack against a rebel army, capturing British king Oswald and his daughter Boudica.
The XIV Legion brings Oswald and Boudica before Nero's son Basilius, who forces Oswald to reveal where the Britons have sent Basilius' brother Commodus to. After Oswald informs the Romans that Commodus was traded to the inhabitants beyond Hadrian's Wall, Basilius orders the XIV Legion to march north and bring Commodus back. During the campaign there, a Roman scouting party led by Marius and Vitallion is ambushed by barbarians; Vitallion is captured, while Marius falls into a ravine but survives. Making his way to the main barbarian camp (where they are about to burn a wicker man with Vitallion inside), Marius kills the barbarian leader and rescues Vitallion and Commodus. Returning to York, Marius and Vitallion participate in a peace treaty between the Romans and Britons. However, Commodus murders Oswald, sparking a riot while Boudica escapes, and Marius realises that it was in fact the Emperor Nero himself who was responsible for causing the earlier invasion which resulted in the death of his family. Commodus flees York after tasking the XIV Legion to defend the city. Marius sacrifices himself so the last Roman ships can flee the city. However, Marius is resurrected by the Roman goddess Summer, and vows to avenge his family and kill Nero and his sons.
Returning to Rome, Marius enters the ludi in order to confront Nero and his sons directly. Dressed as legendary Roman general Damocles, Marius kills Basilius after participating in a private gladiator fight for him. In the aftermath, he sets a fortune teller free who prophesies that Marius will be killed by Damocles, but that he would kill Damocles as well; she also tells Marius that he cannot kill Nero, because the Emperor could only be killed by his own sword. Entering the Colosseum, he participates in a series of staged battles before engaging in a duel with Commodus. Despite Commodus' attempts to rig the fight in his favour, including using a poisonous gas to try and incapacitate him, Marius defeats him as well, decapitating him and promising Nero: "You are next!". Marius escapes the Colosseum and meets up with Vitallion, who informs him that an invading barbarian army led by Boudica is closing in on Rome, eager to seek revenge for Commodus murdering her father. During the ensuing battle, Vitallion is killed by Boudica and Marius assumes command; confronting her in single combat, he decapitates her. The narrative returns to the conversation between Nero and Marius; the Emperor, having long since deduced that Damocles was Marius, flees further into the palace. As Marius gives chase, he is temporarily impeded by god of the north wind Aquilo, who is revealed to have been aiding Nero and his sons for the entire story because he wants to see Rome destroyed. However, Summer intervenes, allowing Marius to confront Nero and launch both the Emperor and himself off a parapet. Marius falls to his death, whilst Nero is viciously impaled on a giant sword belonging to a huge statue of himself, thus fulfilling both prophecies that were made to Marius earlier in the story: that Marius and Damocles would kill each other, and that Nero would perish at the hand of his own sword.
The story ends with a voiceover from Summer revealing that due to Marius' efforts, the invasion was repelled and Rome "would go on to stand for a thousand years", and "endure... until the last days of man."
## Development
### As a Kinect title
Ryse: Son of Rome was originally developed by Crytek Budapest. In 2004, Crytek released its debut title Far Cry, and in 2006, Microsoft Studios released the Xbox 360 and was working on a prototype for Kinect called "Project Natal". Ideas for Ryse originated in 2006 by Crytek's CEO Cevat Yerli, who was eager to expand the studio, and wanted the studio to work on multiple projects simultaneously. Early work and concept development began shortly afterwards, with Crytek working on a pair of fantasy games that were set in the same Medieval universe. They were Kings, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, and Kingdoms, a first-person action role-playing game. They hoped that with Kingdoms, they could create an "up-close" and "visceral" experience.
Crytek then pitched the game to different publishers, and eventually, in 2009, the company pitched the two projects to Microsoft. According to Nick Button-Brown, the general manager at Crytek, the game was not functional at that time, and only served to prove to the publisher that a first-person melee game was fun for players. The representative from Microsoft, Phil Spencer, admired Crytek's intention to expand, and thought that Microsoft's games line up for the Xbox 360 was lacking a first-person melee-combat game. As a result, they accepted to publish Kingdoms, and rejected Kings. The two companies agreed that the project would be a natural fit for Microsoft's yet-to-be-announced Kinect.
It was originally revealed as Codename: Kingdoms during Microsoft's E3 2010 press conference, along with the announcement that the game was being developed by Crytek. During the Microsoft Press Conference at E3 2011, Ryse was announced as a Kinect-only title. The announcement entailed a prerendered trailer with minor gameplay footage. The gameplay footage featured players using their own body gestures to control the protagonist to fight against enemies, and perform actions like sword wielding, blocking attacks with a shield, and head-butting. The trailer served as a test for Crytek to see whether the general audience liked the Kinect features or not.
In early 2011, the game's direction was shifted from building a world of "high fantasy" to building a realistic ancient Rome, and the development of the game was shifted from Crytek Budapest to Crytek's headquarter in Frankfurt, Germany. The Budapest office was significantly downsized afterwards, and its focus was shifted to develop smartphone games. It became one of six projects the company was working on. Development of the game continued after its E3 2011 reveal. Different experiments were carried out for the game to see what elements would work and what would not. A team at Crytek proposed to turn the game to an on-rail interactive movie, which the team believed was suitable for Kinect's features and would able to showcase the power of CryEngine. The idea was later scrapped.
During the game's development, the team worried that the game may be too tiring for players, and that Kinect may not able to detect their movements accurately, leading to frustration. As a result, the team developed three prototypes for the game. The first prototype allowed players to play the entire game with Kinect, the second one tasks players to play the game with an Xbox 360 controller, with Kinect features, while the third one completely removed the Kinect features. Crytek eventually chose the second prototype, and shifted the game's perspective to become a third-person video game. In June 2012, Phil Spencer, corporate VP of Microsoft Studios, maintained that the game was still in development. and added that Kinect will only be "part of the game". With the changes in the game's control scheme, the game's focus also changed, with the team aiming to create a cinematic and character-focused experience for players. The change also extended the game's development process, and eventually, in May 2013, Ryse was confirmed to be a launch title for Microsoft's next game console, Xbox One. In June 2013 at the E3 Microsoft Conference, Crytek showed a gameplay video. Kinect was no longer part of the active battle but had a diminished role by providing squad commands through speech and gesture. The team at Crytek decided to make it a launch title instead of delaying it for further polishing, as they considered the launch of Xbox One an "emotional" event and wanted to be a part of it.
### Gameplay and story
Ryse's combat puts many focuses on "flow" and crowd control. As a result, the team introduced a rhythm-styled combat. The flow was described to be one of the most important part in the game's mechanics, and the artificial intelligence of enemies were designed to break and disrupt players' flow. The team later chose to introduce the execution mechanics as they found that the combat was proven to be too difficult for players, and that the execution mechanics provided an easier way for players to defeat enemies. The game also focused on precision and timing, tasking players to hit enemies at the correct time and position to gain greater rewards. The developer also hoped that players will use creativity when dealing with enemies. A concept called "mashing to mastery" was introduced in Ryse, in which the game's combat was designed to be accessible for newcomers and be challenging for hardcore players. In order to achieve the "mashing to mastery" mechanic, the team introduced the execution mechanic, which is a series of quick-time events, as the team at Crytek hoped that it would make these scene more rewarding to players, as well as allowing the flow of combat to continue.
Ryse's intention was to build a cinematic story. The team put emphasis on building the game's protagonist, Marius Titus, who was described as a character with three different sides. The game's cinematic director, Peter Gornstein, considered that adding personalities to characters as one of the most important features in creating a good story, as it allows players to care for and emphasize the character. He also hoped that the character is consistent throughout the game. As a result, the team developed transition sequences, in which gameplay can fluidly transit to cinematic. The game also put emphasis on the protagonist's motion capture. To achieve this, the team collaborated with The Imaginarium Studios to develop the cinematic and motion-capture technology for the game. According to Yerli, having good motion capture technology can help "create the ultimate emotion". The game's camera was originally set to be controlled by artificial intelligence, drawing inspirations from Seven Samurai and Children of Men, but the idea was later scrapped and a dynamic camera was designed to replace it. The camera was also made closer to the playable character than other hack and slash games, as they hoped that they could show a "claustrophobic brutality" from it. According to Crytek, having a close up camera has always been the game's core element.
The developers claim to have drawn much of the inspiration for the game's combat and tactics from "...the innumerable Roman campaigns that led to the modern concept of total war". Fifteen hero level characters were given full motion capture with the same detail as Marius. Unlike Crytek's previous projects, the game is set in ancient Rome, a place which the developer thought was underrepresented in video games. The game also features different Renaissance-inspired imagery. In order to create an accurate environment, the team visited different locations in Rome. While the game is set in Rome, its story is not entirely historically accurate. Crytek described it as a "historical mash-up", in which the team selected their favourite historical events and put them together into the game.
Crytek contracted Ruffian Games to develop a competitive multiplayer mode for Ryse, but the feature was later cut from the final game. Despite that, a co-operative multiplayer mode was introduced, and tasked players to fight against waves of increasingly difficult human enemies. The team originally hoped to add sea battles and animals to the game, but after internal testing, these features were removed. An Xbox SmartGlass feature called the Challenge Editor was set to be introduced to the game after its launch. It allowed players to create custom challenges for the game's co-operative multiplayer. However, Crytek announced that the development of this feature had been ceased in February 2014.
The game's music is composed by Borislav Slavov and Peter Antovszki, Crytek's in-house composers. Slavov had previously led the soundtrack development of Crysis 3 and Warface. The soundtrack development began in February 2013, right after the completion of Crysis 3. Slavov considered composing the music for Ryse a great challenge, as he had to compose 250 minutes of music within a short time frame. Crytek also hired an external composer, Tilman Silescu, to help compose the music for the game.
### Release
Ryse was originally revealed as an Xbox 360 title that was set to be released in early 2011. Revealed at E3 2010 as Codename Kingdom, the game missed its release window, and its official name was revealed during E3 2011 as Ryse. It was reintroduced as Ryse: Son of Rome at Microsoft's press conference at E3 2013 with a gameplay demo. The game served as a launch title for the Xbox One, and was released on November 22, 2013. The season pass, featuring different in-game bonuses and items, was released on the same day. The game was supported with downloadable content upon launch. Mars’ Chosen, Morituri Pack, Duel of Fates Pack, and Colosseum Pack were released from 2013 to 2014 and featured new maps and modes for the multiplayer portion of the game. A Legendary Collection, which featured the base game, the game's seasonal pass, and all the additional content released for the game, was released on October 7, 2014.
On August 7, 2014, Crytek announced that Ryse would be released for the PC platform in the fall of 2014. This version of the game is stated to support 4K resolution and included previously released downloadable content. The PC version was released on October 10, 2014. Crytek published the digital version of the PC version of the game, while Deep Silver published the retail version.
## Reception
Overall, Ryse: Son of Rome received mixed reviews. Aggregating review website Metacritic gave the Xbox One version 60/100 based on 77 reviews, and the Windows version 61/100 based on 27 reviews.
The game's visuals received widespread critical acclaim. Brian Albert from IGN thought that Ryse would be the perfect title for people to show off their console due to its high graphical quality. He also praised the game's wide variety of environments and fluid character animation. However, he criticized the game's boss-design. Hollander Cooper from GamesRadar strongly praised the game's graphics and the level of detail. Simon Miller from VideoGamer.com thought that the game fulfilled its purpose as an Xbox One launch title, and demonstrated the power of the console. Andrew Reiner from Game Informer considered that the game's cinematic as "towering achievements of visual design". Brad Shoemaker from Giant Bomb thought that the graphics had successfully surprised players.
The game's story also received praise from most critics. Camron praised the game's voice-acting and setting, which he thought was "intriguing". However, he thought that the narrative was too basic, and missed many details that could have further improved the game's story. Albert admired the game's story, and thought that it was handled with great care. He added that the game's plot was easy for players to follow, even though the game features multiple unexpected twists. Cooper described the game's narrative as surprising, adding that the later part of the game successfully added personalities to both the game's heroes and villains. In stark contrast, Walton called the game's script as "laughable" and said that the dialogue made the plot unbelievable for players.
The game's gameplay received polarized reception. Marc Camron from Electronic Gaming Monthly called it "basic", and thought that despite the fluid and smooth combat, and the addition of the reward system which added a layer of strategy to the game, the game's execution system hindered the flow of the game by slowing down the overall pace of combat. He added that the game's combat lacked complexity and depth, and was too repetitive for players to enjoy. Albert also thought that the combat system was too basic. In addition, he noted the repetitive pattern of enemies. He also criticized the game's over-emphasis on graphics, which led to the simple gameplay. Cooper thought that the game's combat was satisfying, and thought that the game's swordplay had successfully captured the sense of weight and impact. However, he also considered the system repetitive. Reiner criticized the execution sequences, which he considered excessive and over-simplistic. Shoemaker also thought that the game lacked both variety and depth. Mark Walton from GameSpot thought that the game design was too linear, and that the game discouraged any form of exploration.
Critics also had divided opinions on the game's multiplayer. Camron thought that it was a nice addition to the game, even though he thought it lacked the complexity a multiplayer mode should have, and that it failed to extend the game's longevity. Miller echoed this statement, and thought that the multiplayer mode failed to hook players. Walton thought that players would not return the mode after experiencing it once, and he described the mode as "bland". Albert, in contrast, considered the mode a unique addition to the game, and thought that it had successfully added some strategy elements to the game. Chris Carter from Destructoid thought that the multiplayer mode was better than the game's main campaign. He described it as a "pleasant surprise".
The amount of content featured in the game received mixed reviews. Miller thought that the game only revolved around one idea, which led to its simplistic gameplay. Camron and Cooper thought that the campaign was too short for most players. Shoemaker thought that for a full-priced game, it lacked content. Reiner further criticized the game's low replay value. Carter advocated that players purchase the game when its price dropped. He added that while the game features many ideas, most of them failed to deliver.
While no exact sales figure was revealed, Yerli expressed his disappointment with the sales of Ryse for the Xbox One in August 2014, blaming the low sales of the Xbox One.
### Controversy
A Federal Trade Commission investigation uncovered an undisclosed paid endorsement deal between Microsoft Studios and Machinima Inc. Microsoft Studios paid for fake organic reviews, and bound Machinima Inc. to "not portray [Microsoft], the Xbox One, or the Launch Titles in a negative manner". Ryse: Son of Rome was specifically listed in the FTC document as being one of the titles to receive fake reviews, and price quotes for these reviews range between \$15,000 and \$30,000.
## Sequel
According to Yerli, Ryse: Son of Rome was not a "one-off" title and would serve as the beginning of a new franchise. However, several reports claimed that Ryse 2 was cancelled because of a conflict between Crytek and Microsoft over who would own the rights to the franchise. In exchange for funding Ryse 2's development, Microsoft wanted to take over the Ryse intellectual property. Crytek would not agree to these terms, so the project was cancelled. Cevat Yerli denied that the game was cancelled in an interview with Eurogamer, adding that the relationship between Microsoft and Crytek remained strong and positive. Ryse was one of the last titles developed by Crytek before the company entered financial crisis and re-construction. The new Crytek is focused on developing free-to-play games and being a "game service" instead of a video game developer. Despite this, Ryse is still an intellectual property owned by Crytek.
|
1,615,883 |
Second Battle of Lexington
| 1,162,554,010 |
Battle of the American Civil War
|
[
"1864 in Missouri",
"Battles of the American Civil War in Missouri",
"Battles of the Trans-Mississippi Theater of the American Civil War",
"Confederate victories of the American Civil War",
"Conflicts in 1864",
"Lafayette County, Missouri",
"October 1864 events",
"Price's Missouri Expedition"
] |
The Second Battle of Lexington was a minor battle fought during Price's Raid as part of the American Civil War. Hoping to draw Union Army forces away from more important theaters of combat and potentially affect the outcome of the 1864 United States presidential election, Sterling Price, a major general in the Confederate States Army, led an offensive into the state of Missouri on September 19, 1864. After a botched attack at the Battle of Pilot Knob, the strength of the Union defenses at Jefferson City led Price to abandon the main goals of his campaign.
Additional Union troops were recalled from a campaign against the Cheyenne, and the Kansas State Militia was mobilized, but political authorities in Kansas would not allow the militiamen to serve east of the Big Blue River. As a result, Major General James G. Blunt was only able to take 2,000 men east to confront Price. By October 19, Blunt had occupied a position near the city of Lexington, which was soon attacked by lead elements of Price's army. Blunt's men resisted strongly, despite being outnumbered, and forced Price to deploy the rest of his army and his heaviest artillery. After gaining information about Price's strength and position that the Union high command had been previously lacking, Blunt withdrew from the field. Four days later, Price was decisively defeated at the Battle of Westport, and the Confederates were pursued, suffering several more defeats in the process. By December, only 3,500 men of Price's initially 13,000-strong army remained.
## Context
At the start of the American Civil War in 1861, the state of Missouri was a slave state, but did not secede. However, the state was politically divided: Governor Claiborne Fox Jackson and the Missouri State Guard (MSG) supported secession and the Confederate States of America, while Brigadier General Nathaniel Lyon and the Union Army supported the United States and opposed secession. Under Major General Sterling Price, the MSG defeated Union armies at the battles of Wilson's Creek and Lexington in 1861, but by the end of the year, Price and the MSG were restricted to the southwestern portion of the state. Meanwhile, Jackson and a portion of the state legislature voted to secede and join the Confederate States of America, while another element of the legislature voted to reject secession, essentially giving the state two governments. In March 1862, a Confederate defeat at the Battle of Pea Ridge in Arkansas gave the Union control of Missouri, and Confederate activity in the state was largely restricted to guerrilla warfare and raids throughout 1862 and 1863.
By the beginning of September 1864, events in the eastern United States, especially the Confederate defeat in the Atlanta campaign, gave Abraham Lincoln, who supported continuing the war, an edge in the 1864 United States presidential election over George B. McClellan, who favored ending the war. At this point, the Confederacy had very little chance of winning the war. Meanwhile, in the Trans-Mississippi Theater, the Confederates had defeated Union attackers during the Red River campaign in Louisiana, which took place from March through May. As events east of the Mississippi River turned against the Confederates, General Edmund Kirby Smith, Confederate commander of the Trans-Mississippi Department, was ordered to transfer the infantry under his command to the fighting in the Eastern and Western Theaters. However, this proved to be impossible, as the Union Navy controlled the Mississippi River, preventing a large scale crossing. Despite having limited resources for an offensive, Smith decided that an attack designed to divert Union troops from the principal theaters of combat would have an equivalent effect as the proposed transfer of troops, through decreasing the Confederates' numerical disparity east of the Mississippi. Price and the Confederate Governor of Missouri, Thomas Caute Reynolds, suggested that an invasion of Missouri would be an effective offensive; Smith approved the plan and appointed Price to command the offensive. Price expected that the offensive would create a popular uprising against Union control of Missouri, divert Union troops away from principal theaters of combat (many of the Union troops previously defending Missouri had been transferred out of the state, leaving the Missouri State Militia to be the state's primary defensive force), and aid McClellan's chance of defeating Lincoln in the election. On September 19, Price's column, named the Army of Missouri, entered the state.
## Prelude
When it entered the state, Price's force was composed of about 13,000 cavalrymen. However, several thousand of these men were poorly armed, and all 14 of the army's cannons were underpowered. Countering Price was the Union Department of Missouri, under the command of Major General William S. Rosecrans, who had fewer than 10,000 men on hand, many of whom were militiamen. In late September, the Confederates encountered a small Union force holding Fort Davidson near the town of Pilot Knob. Attacks against the post in the Battle of Pilot Knob on September 27 failed, and the Union garrison abandoned the fort that night. Price had suffered hundreds of casualties in the battle, and decided to divert the aim of his advance from St. Louis to Jefferson City. Price's army was accompanied by a sizable wagon train, which significantly slowed its movement. The delays caused by this slow progress enabled Union forces to reinforce Jefferson City, whose garrison was increased from 1,000 men to 7,000 between October 1 and October 6. In turn, Price determined that Jefferson City was too strong to attack, and began moving westwards along the course of the Missouri River. The Confederates gathered recruits and supplies during the movement; a side raid against the town of Glasgow on October 15 was successful, as was another raid against Sedalia.
Meanwhile, Union troops commanded by Major Generals Samuel R. Curtis and James G. Blunt were withdrawn from their role in fights against the Cheyenne; the Kansas State Militia was also mobilized. On October 15, Blunt moved a three-brigade unit under his command to Hickman Mills, Missouri; the third brigade was composed of militia. At this time, Price was at Marshall, east of Blunt's column. The next day, Curtis moved the Kansas militiamen to Kansas City, but was prohibited by the governor of Kansas from taking them east of the Big Blue River. On the 17th, Blunt detached his militia unit to Kansas City, and then sent his other two brigades to Holden. On October 18, Blunt's advance guard, commanded by Colonel Thomas Moonlight, occupied the town of Lexington, hoping to cooperate with a force commanded by Brigadier General John B. Sanborn to catch and trap Price. However, Sanborn's force was too far south of Lexington to move in concert with Blunt. Additionally, he learned that Price was only 20 miles (32 km) away at Waverly; he also received word from Curtis that the political authorities in Kansas would not allow him to send militiamen to Curtis. Blunt then made the decision to reinforce his outer positions and resist the inevitable Confederate advance.
## Battle
Price's army was split into three columns: Brigadier General Joseph O. Shelby commanded the advance guard. The overall force still numbered about 13,000 men. Blunt's force consisted of about 2,000 men and two batteries of four 12-pounder mountain howitzers. Contact between the two forces occurred 3 miles (4.8 km) south of the town. Shelby's cavalrymen made contact with Blunt's forward scouts around 14:00, and drove them back towards the main Union position. Blunt's main force made a stand against Shelby; leading Price to commit the forces of Major General James F. Fagan and Brigadier General John S. Marmaduke to the fray. For a time, Blunt's howitzers held the line. Price was also forced to deploy his heaviest artillery, and Blunt withdrew his men from near Lexington. In his after-action report, Blunt provided the significant amount his force was outnumbered by, as well as the fact that his mountain howitzers were unable to effectively respond to Price's artillery as reasons for the decision to withdraw. The 11th Kansas Cavalry Regiment served as a rear guard for Blunt until nightfall. Four of the mountain howitzers supported the Kansans during the rear guard action. While the action was a Confederate victory, Blunt had gained definite evidence about Price's strengths and exact movements, which the Union high command had been lacking since the time that Price was still in Arkansas.
## Aftermath
Union casualties numbered about 40; Price gave no official total, but stated that his losses were "very light". The Confederates spent the night near Fire Prairie Creek, while Blunt retreated to the Little Blue River. Price continued moving westward, fighting several smaller actions along the way, before being decisively defeated by Curtis at the Battle of Westport on October 23, near Kansas City. The Army of Missouri fell back through Kansas, suffering two defeats at the battles of Marais des Cygnes and Mine Creek on October 25; the latter defeat was particularly devastating, as Marmaduke and many other soldiers were captured. Returning to Missouri, Price was further defeated at the Battle of Marmiton River on October 25 and again at the Second Battle of Newtonia on October 28. Curtis pursued the Confederates all the way to the Arkansas River; the Confederates did not stop retreating until they reached Texas. By December, only 3,500 men remained of the Army of Missouri.
A 2011 study by the American Battlefield Protection Program found that while the site of the battle is threatened by the development of Missouri Route 13, and is otherwise fragmented by development, opportunities for preservation remain at the site. The same report noted that while none of the battlefield is on the National Register of Historic Places, 3,543.31 acres (1,433.93 ha) of the site are likely eligible for listing. Battle of Lexington State Historic Site is concerned with the preservation of the 1861 First Battle of Lexington.
## See also
- List of American Civil War battles
|
46,773,587 |
Neerja
| 1,172,511,405 |
2016 film by Ram Madhvani
|
[
"2010s Hindi-language films",
"2010s biographical films",
"2016 action thriller films",
"2016 films",
"Best Hindi Feature Film National Film Award winners",
"Censored films",
"Film censorship in Pakistan",
"Film controversies in Pakistan",
"Films about aircraft hijackings",
"Films about aviation accidents or incidents",
"Films about flight attendants",
"Films about terrorism in India",
"Films about women in India",
"Films set in 1986",
"Films set in Karachi",
"Films set in Pakistan",
"Films set in airports",
"Films set on airplanes",
"Films shot in Mumbai",
"Fox Star Studios films",
"Indian action thriller films",
"Indian aviation films",
"Indian biographical films",
"India–Pakistan relations in popular culture",
"Thriller films based on actual events"
] |
Neerja is a 2016 Indian Hindi-language biographical thriller film directed by Ram Madhvani and written by Saiwyn Quadras and Sanyuktha Chawla Shaikh. It was produced by Atul Kasbekar's company, Bling Unplugged, alongside Fox Star Studios. The film stars Sonam Kapoor as the eponymous lead, with Shekhar Ravjiani, Shabana Azmi, Yogendra Tiku, Kavi Shastri and Jim Sarbh in supporting roles.
The plot is based on a real-life event: the attempted hijacking of Pan Am Flight 73 in Karachi, Pakistan by Libyan-backed Abu Nidal Organization on 5 September 1986. The film is shown from the point of view of the head purser of the flight, Neerja Bhanot, who thwarted the hijack attempt by alerting the pilots, thus grounding the plane. Bhanot died trying to help save the passengers and crew, of whom 359 of the 379 on board survived.
Development began in September 2014, when Kasbekar signed Madhvani and Kapoor for a film to be made by Bling Unplugged and Fox Star Studios. Saiwyn Quadras and Sanyuktha Chawla worked on the script, with principal photography taking place in Mumbai. The film features music by Vishal Khurana, with lyrics written by Prasoon Joshi. Neerja was released on 19 February 2016 to critical acclaim and became one of the highest grossing Bollywood films featuring a female protagonist. The film grossed ₹135.52 crore (US\$17 million) at the box office.
The film received widespread critical acclaim and numerous accolades from Bollywood award organisations, with particular praise for Kapoor's performance and Madhvani's direction. It won 2 awards at the 64th National Film Awards - Best Feature Film in Hindi and Special Mention (Kapoor). At the 62nd Filmfare Awards, Neerja received 8 nominations, including Best Film and Best Director (Madhvani), and won a leading 6 awards, including Best Film (Critics), Best Actress (Critics) (Kapoor), and Best Supporting Actress (Azmi).
## Plot
22-year-old Neerja Bhanot arrives late for a house party one evening. Her mother, Rama, expresses concern about Neerja's job as a flight attendant, suggesting that Neerja should return to her old modelling career. Neerja insists on keeping her job. She is driven to the airport by her friend Jaideep.
During the flight, Neerja reflects on her brief, unhappy arranged marriage to Naresh, a professional in Doha, Qatar, who abused her over her small dowry and inability to perform household work. She eventually returned home for a modelling contract. Naresh sent her parents a letter complaining about the dowry and their daughter's lack of domestic skills, demanding that Neerja either bring back the money or not return it at all. Neerja left Naresh and landed a job with Pan Am Airways.
As Neerja boards Pan Am 73, it is meanwhile revealed that the Abu Nidal organisation, a Libyan-sponsored Palestinian terrorist group, plans to hijack the plane in Karachi. The plane takes off from Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport and lands in Karachi's Jinnah International Airport, where the four Abu Nidal terrorists, disguised as security officers escorting a Libyan diplomat, hijack the plane. Neerja quickly alerts the cockpit, without the terrorists knowing, and the three American pilots escape through the overhead hatch, fleeing to the terminal under fire from the hijackers. The American pilots had just enough time to escape, as the hijackers did not realise that the cockpit of a Boeing 747 is on the upper level.
When a Kenyan-born Indian American passenger reveals himself as an American, one of the terrorists murders him and dumps his body off the aircraft in front of the Pakistani negotiators. The terrorists try to locate a radio engineer among the passengers by ordering Neerja to announce over the intercom. When Imran Ali, a Pakistani radio engineer, begins to stand up, Neerja signals for him to sit down. The terrorists have the flight attendants collect all passports to identify the American passengers and hold them hostage; Neerja and her colleagues collect the passports, disposing of any American passports by throwing them down trash chutes or hiding them under seats. Dejected over not finding any American passports, the hijackers instead take a British passenger hostage.
The Pakistani negotiators inadvertently reveal the name of radio engineer Ali, whom the hijackers bring to the cockpit to use the radio for negotiations. Meanwhile, the Pakistani authorities try to stall for time. When a younger terrorist assaults the passengers and threatens the attendants, the terrorist leader chastises him. Humiliated, the younger terrorist storms into the cockpit and shoots Ali, screaming wild threats over the radio. While negotiations with the Pakistani air controllers drag on, the negotiators slowly lose control of the situation, with the hijackers becoming more agitated by the minute. Meanwhile, Neerja, whose birthday would be in 2 days, had an envelope and when she has kept away from other passengers, opens that envelope given to her by Jaideep, her friend, which was his love confession and a cookie. Neerja reads the note and eats the cookie which symbolizes her acceptance of his love, something which Jaideep will never learn.
Around 17 hours later, the plane loses auxiliary power, and the lights go out inside the plane. Despite Neerja and the other attendants' attempts to explain, the terrorists assume the Pakistanis cut the power deliberately, and anticipate an imminent Pakistani raid on the plane. The panicking hijackers begin shooting down passengers indiscriminately; at great peril to her own life, Neerja opens the emergency exit door and deploys the chute, directing passengers out of the plane. Choosing to let the passengers escape first, Neerja is shot three times by a terrorist as she tries to shield three young children from the gunfire. The children escape the plane, and Neerja then drags herself out of the doorway and down the emergency slide before dying. The Special Service Group storms the plane and kills all the terrorists.
The film ends with a tribute to Neerja, who was eventually honoured posthumously with the Ashoka Chakra, India's highest military decoration awarded for peacetime valour, courageous action or self-sacrifice.
## Cast
- Sonam Kapoor as Neerja Bhanot.
- Shekhar Ravjiani as Jaideep, Neerja's love interest
- Yogendra Tiku as Harish Bhanot, Neerja's father
- Shabana Azmi as Rama Bhanot, Neerja's mother
- Kavi Shastri as Naresh Mishra, Neerja's ex-husband
- Ali Baldiwala as Mansoor, one of the terrorists
- Vikrant Singta as Fahad, one of the terrorists
- Abrar Zahoor as Zayd Safirini, one of the terrorists
- Jim Sarbh as Khalil, one of the terrorists
- Manya Chopra as Bhavika Desai
- Shaurya Chopra as Shaurya Desai
- Aarush Rana as Jatin Desai
- Anjali Khurana as Dolly
- Sunanda Wong as Tina
- Eisha Chopra as Debina
- Meghana Kaushik as Sanjana
- Arjun Aneja as Aneesh Bhanot, Neerja's brother
- Arjun Kapoor as an infant Aneesh Bhanot (Photograph only)
- Nikhil Sangha as Akhil Bhanot, Neerja's brother
- Ismail Mohammed Mirza as Al Turk
- Shashi Bhushan as radio engineer Emran Ali (based on Meherjee Kharas)
- Deepak Shah as brigadier
- Sushil Tyagi as Inzamam Younis
- Prashantt Guptha as Rahul Kumar
- Alex Kozyrev as Ronnie Huston (based on Michael John Thexton)
Source:
## Production
### Development and pre-production
Pre-production work on Neerja began in September 2014, when the film's executive producer Atul Kasbekar said that his company, Bling Unplugged, would co-produce Ram Madhvani's film along with Fox Star Studios. Kasbekar later tweeted, "Do U Know Who Neerja Bhanot Is? No? Well U Really Really Should...". He said, "For us [...], a story of courage as exceptional as Neerja's simply deserved to be told. We just decided that we would do our bit to ensure that India would remember one of its great heroines."
The film's script and screenplay were penned by Saiwyn Quadras, and the dialogue was written by Sanyuktha Chawla Sheikh. The director of photography for the film was the cinematographer Mitesh Mirchandani, who had been previously associated with 2012 film Luv Shuv Tey Chicken Khurana. The editing for the film was done by Monisha R Baldawa and Manohar Verma served as the stunt director for the film.
Kapoor was contracted by Kasbekar to play Neerja Bhanot, the senior flight crew member. On receiving the role of Neerja in the film, Kapoor told Press Trust of India, "I thought doing this film just reaffirms that it is about not bowing down. It is an inspiring story for me to do. I am blessed." It was reported in May 2015 that Shekhar Ravjiani, one half of Bollywood's performing/producing duo Vishal–Shekhar, would play a short role in the movie, marking his acting debut. Shabana Azmi played the role of Neerja's mother Rama Bhanot in the film. In an interview with The Indian Express, Azmi describes her character and explains, "It was very difficult to play her, particularly the last scene where Rama addresses an audience. It is an extremely well-written emotional scene, which does complete justice to the moment."
### Filming and post-production
Principal photography of the film commenced 19 April 2015 in Mumbai. After two months of filming, the shooting was wrapped up on 19 June 2015. Kasbekar tweeted, "Amazing! And it's a wrap on Neerja !!! 32 shooting days!!! That's Two More days than Birdman took!" During the principal photography of the film, many Bollywood celebrities visited the film's sets, including Vidya Balan, Boman Irani, Anil Kapoor, and Raju Hirani. "I knew that getting Aamir Khan, Boman Irani, Vidya Balan, Raju Hirani and Anil Kapoor to speak to the 220 cast would help instill dedication and effort that this film would require," director Madhvani said in a statement.
During production, the actors playing the crew and the passengers of the flight were put in separate hotels from the actors portraying the hijackers and ate their meals separately, ostensibly to create an air of antagonism in the film between the two groups. This element was applied earlier to the 2006 film United 93.
The makers of the film acknowledged the responsibility of portraying the story. One challenge faced was acquiring an actual Boeing 747 for shooting. Director Ram Madhvani and Rucha Pathak initially thought of shooting in Abu Dhabi, UAE or the United States due to the convenience of leasing a retired 747 but later decided to re-create the plane because a major part of the film required shooting against the plane backdrop. The plane set took 48 days to build and closely resembled the actual aircraft.
The film's visual effects (VFX) were by Tata Elxsi. VCL produced a wide range of visual effects, including the creation of Karachi airport and buildings, and also helped in creating the 1986 period restoration for various locations.
## Music
The film's soundtrack is composed by Vishal Khurana with lyrics written by Prasoon Joshi. The first song from the film, "Jeete Hain Chal", was released by Ram Madhvani, Sonam Kapoor and Prasoon Joshi at a launch event held on 1 February 2016 in Mumbai. The entire soundtrack album was released digitally by T-Series on 5 February 2016.
The soundtrack received a positive critical response. Mohar Basu of The Times of India gave the music a 3.5 out of 5 ratings, saying that it "is beautiful, pensive, touching and all of it sans melodrama," and that it "is straight from the soul." Joginder Tuteja of Bollywood Hungama said that "the songs of the film heard are strictly functional and won't really be into play once the film is through." He added that the songs "Aankhein Milayenge Darr Se" and "Gehra Ishq" would make the most impression. A critic of The Quint praised the music album and said, "The brilliance of this album is that it features songs which will not hijack and/or disrupt the flow of the narrative. The sound is delicate, fearless, vulnerable and always intimate."
## Release
The film had a special screening on 16 February 2016 in Mumbai, which was attended by celebrities, including filmmaker Karan Johar; Subhash Ghai; Kapoor's father, Anil Kapoor; Sachin Tendulkar; Yuvraj Singh; Sunil Gavaskar; Ayushmann Khurrana; and Amit Sadh. The film received a positive response from many Bollywood celebrities, with Tendulkar calling Neerja Bhanot a "Braveheart" and saying that "the people should definitely watch the film."
The film was released worldwide, in approximately 671 theatres, on 19 February 2016. Upon release, Neerja received positive reviews, with praise directed to Kapoor's performance, and was a huge box office success. The film was also praised by Delhi's Chief Minister, Arvind Kejriwal, who tweeted that the film's message was, "Live for others, die for others." The film emerged as one of the highest-grossing Bollywood films featuring a female protagonist.
Neerja was banned in Pakistan, for reasons that remain uncertain. The CBFC maintained that the film should not be considered "banned" in Pakistan because it was not submitted to them.
### Tax-free
The film was declared tax-free by Government of Maharashtra and the Government of Madhya Pradesh.
The Finance Minister, Jayant Kumar Malaiya, said, "The movies Neerja and Jai Gangaajal will be free from entertainment tax in Madhya Pradesh on account of International Women's Day which was celebrated yesterday." Producer Kasbekar, replied on Twitter, "Big thank you to MP Poonam Mahajan and the Hon CM Devendra Fadnavis in declaring Neerja tax free in Maharashtra. Quick and decisive decision."
## Reception
### Box office
#### India
On its first day, the film earned about ₹47 million (US\$590,000) net, much of it from Mumbai and Delhi NCR. It collected ₹76 million (US\$950,000) net on Saturday and ₹97.1 million (US\$1.2 million) on Sunday, with a weekend total of ₹210 million (US\$2.6 million).
On Monday, the film netted around ₹37 million (US\$460,000), with only around a 20% drop in revenue compared to first day. On Tuesday, the film earned around ₹34.1 million (US\$430,000). The film's Wednesday, Thursday and Friday earnings were ₹31.4 million (US\$390,000), ₹36 million (US\$450,000), and ₹31.5 million (US\$390,000), respectively. On Saturday and Sunday, Neerja had a massive jump and earned ₹50 million (US\$630,000) and ₹66.5 million (US\$830,000) respectively, for a total collection of ₹501 million (US\$6.3 million) at the box office.
On the 11th day (Monday), Neerja collected ₹21.2 million (US\$270,000); ₹19 million (US\$240,000) on Tuesday; ₹18.5 million (US\$230,000) on Wednesday; and ₹17.6 million (US\$220,000) on Thursday. By the end of its 38-day run, the film had grossed an estimated domestically and internationally, for an approximate worldwide total of .
#### Overseas
Neerja opened strong, collecting ₹1.56 million (US\$20,000) in foreign theatres. The film had the highest opening weekend for a female-led film in the US and Middle East; in the UK, it had the second-highest opening weekend of 2016.
### Critical response
Upon release, the film, as well as Kapoor’s performance, received widespread praise from film critics around the world. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 100%, based on 9 reviews with an average rating of 8/10. Shubha Shetty-Saha of Mid-Day gave the film 4.5 out of 5 stars, calling it "a deeply moving experience", and writing for Kapoor deemed it as "her best performance till date". Meena Iyer of The Times of India gave Neerja 4 out of 5 stars and said, "Neerja raises a toast to the daunting spirit of India's daughters; every one of us must salute Neerja." Bollywood Hungama gave the film 4 out of 5 stars and said, "As a movie-watching experience, Neerja is flawless. There's not a single false note." Writing for Hindustan Times, Anupama Chopra awarded 4 out of 5 stars, saying that "Neerja is a truly inspiring story that will grip you from the first frame till the last." Sarita Tanwar from Daily News and Analysis gave 4 out of 5 stars, writing, "Neerja is quite easily the finest film in recent times (on par with Talvar (2015)) based on a true story." Raja Sen from Rediff.com gave 4 out of 5 stars as well and called it "an absolute must-watch," adding that "Sonam Kapoor is exceptional as Neerja Bhanot." Suahni Singh of India Today rated the film as a 3.5 stars and stated, "Sonam Kapoor delivered her career-best performance as she assuredly plays an abused wife, a beloved daughter and a flight attendant caught in her worst nightmare."
Rummana of Yahoo! gave it 4 out of 5 stars, stating, "Neerja deserves loud applause because not only is it an exceptional story of courage but because it is an ode to the undying spirit of humanity" and called Kapoor as "the star of the film". The Economic Times also gave a 4 out of 5 star rating: "Neerja is a must-see, not just for its cinematic value, but also as a reminder to salute Neerja's spirit." Rajeev Masand of News18 gave a 3.5 out of 5 rating and said, "Neerja is a well-intentioned, heartfelt film that pays tribute to a real hero." Shubhra Gupta of The Indian Express also gave the film 3 stars out of 5, writing that "Minus the songs and the excessive schmaltz, Neerja could have been outstanding. But still, the film holds, and hold us with it."
Manjusha Radhakrishnan of Gulf News rated the film 4 out of 5 stars; while she criticised the terrorists' lack of depth and weak points in Neerja*'s second half, she wrote that "the climax of the film is powerful and makes up for that blip." Jason Klein of Variety declared that DAR-Film Leaderboard was notably absent of Oscar-nominated films, but part of the gap was filled by Neerja. Sonali Kokra of The National praised the film: "Neerja* is a great story told well. Mitesh Mirchandani’s jerky camerawork does a great job of using the claustrophobic confines of the aircraft to showcase the oppressiveness of the situation and the terror of the hostages."
## Accolades
## See also
- List of Bollywood films of 2016
|
12,644,852 |
Russian cruiser Pallada (1906)
| 1,169,870,270 |
Russian Bayan-class cruiser
|
[
"1906 ships",
"Bayan-class cruisers",
"Maritime incidents in October 1914",
"Naval magazine explosions",
"Ships built at Admiralty Shipyard",
"Ships sunk by German submarines in World War I",
"Shipwrecks in the Gulf of Finland",
"Warships lost in combat with all hands",
"World War I cruisers of Russia",
"World War I shipwrecks in the Baltic Sea"
] |
Pallada (Russian: Паллада) was the last of the four Bayan-class armored cruisers built for the Imperial Russian Navy in the first decade of the 20th century. She was assigned to the Baltic Fleet during World War I where she captured codebooks from the German cruiser Magdeburg that had run aground during the first month of the war. The ship was torpedoed by a German submarine in October 1914 and exploded; none of the crew survived. Pallada was the first warship lost by the Russians during the war.
## Design and description
Pallada was 449.6 feet (137.0 m) long overall. She had a maximum beam of 57.5 feet (17.5 m), a draught of 26 feet (7.9 m) and displaced 7,750 long tons (7,870 t). The ship had a crew of 568 officers and men. Pallada was named in honour of the earlier Russian cruiser captured by the Japanese during the Russo-Japanese War. Both ships were named for the Greek goddess, Pallas Athena.
The ship had two vertical triple-expansion steam engines with a designed total of 16,500 indicated horsepower (12,304 kW), but they developed 19,320 indicated horsepower (14,410 kW) on sea trials and drove the ship to a maximum speed of 22.55 knots (41.76 km/h; 25.95 mph). Steam for the engines was provided by 26 Belleville boilers. She could carry a maximum of 1,100 long tons (1,118 t) of coal, although her range is unknown.
Pallada's main armament consisted of two 8-inch (203 mm) 45-calibre guns in single turrets fore and aft. Her eight 6-inch (152 mm) gun were mounted in casemates on the sides of the ship's hull. Anti-torpedo boat defense was provided by 20 75-millimetre (3.0 in) 50-calibre guns; eight of these were mounted in casemates on the side of the hull and in the superstructure. The remaining guns were located above the six-inch gun casemates in pivot mounts with gun shields. Pallada also mounted four 47-millimetre (1.9 in) Hotchkiss guns. The ship also had two submerged 15-inch (381 mm) torpedo tubes, one mounted on each broadside.
The ship used Krupp armour throughout. Her waterline belt was 190 millimetres (7.5 in) thick over her machinery spaces. Fore and aft, it reduced to 90 millimetres (3.5 in). The upper belt and the casemates were 60 millimetres (2.4 in) thick. The armour deck was 50 millimetres (2 in) thick; over the central battery it was a single plate, but elsewhere it consisted of a 30-millimetre (1.2 in) plate over two 10-millimetre (0.39 in) plates. The gun turrets were protected by 132 millimetres (5.2 in) of armour and the conning tower had walls 136 millimetres (5.4 in) thick.
## Service
Pallada was built by the Admiralty Shipyard in Saint Petersburg. Construction began on 24 June 1905, although she was not formally laid down until August, and the ship was launched on 10 November 1906. Pallada was completed in February 1911. She spent her entire career with the Baltic Fleet.
On 26 August 1914, during the first month of World War I, the German light cruiser Magdeburg ran aground near the island of Odensholm in the Gulf of Finland. Her escort, the V25-class torpedo boat SMS V-26, failed to pull her off and rescued part of the crew before Pallada and the protected cruiser Bogatyr appeared and opened fire. The Germans blew up the front part of the ship, but failed to demolish the rest of the ship. They failed to destroy their naval codebooks, which were discovered by the Russians. A copy was later given to the British where it proved enormously helpful to Room 40 in reading German wireless traffic for much of the war. Together with the armoured cruiser Rurik, Pallada unsuccessfully searched for German ships between Bornholm and Danzig on the night of 27 August. Less than two months later, on 11 October, Pallada was torpedoed by the German submarine SM U-26 and blew up with the loss of all hands, the first Russian warship sunk during the war.
## Wreck
On 6 October 2012 the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat reported that the wreck of Pallada had been discovered by a diver group outside Hanko near the coast of Finland in 2000, but the group had waited until 2012 before publishing their find.
The ship is lying in three pieces, all upside-down, at a depth of about 40 to 50 metres (130 to 160 ft). Although the wreck was severely damaged during the sinking and is now covered in silt, a number of details such as a large wooden emblem of the Russian double-headed eagle are still intact. One of the eight-inch turrets is resting on the seafloor next to the bow section.
On 6 September 2013, Helsingin Sanomat reported that the previously largely untouched wreck of Pallada had been looted.
|
38,360,155 |
Luang Por Dhammajayo
| 1,162,065,604 |
Thai Buddhist monk
|
[
"1944 births",
"20th-century Buddhist monks",
"21st-century Buddhist monks",
"Buddhism-related controversies",
"Buddhist abbots",
"Buddhist meditation",
"Dhammakaya tradition",
"Kasetsart University alumni",
"Living people",
"People associated with Wat Phra Dhammakaya",
"People from Sing Buri province",
"Thai Buddhist spiritual teachers",
"Thai Theravada Buddhist monks"
] |
Luang Por Dhammajayo (Thai: ธมฺมชโย, , Luang Por being a deferential title), also known by the lay name Chaiyabun Suddhipol, is a Thai Buddhist monk. He was the abbot of the Buddhist temple Wat Phra Dhammakaya, the post he held until 1999 and again from 2006 to December 2011. In December 2016, he was given the post of honorary abbot of the temple. He is a student of the nun (maechi) Chandra Khonnokyoong, and is the most well-known teacher of Dhammakaya meditation. He has been subject to criticism and government response. However, he continues to be a spiritual leader that has significant influence in Thai society. Luang Por Dhammajayo's approach to Buddhism seeks to combine the ascetic and meditative life with modern personal ethics and social prosperity.
Luang Por Dhammajayo met Maechi Chandra in his student years, and learnt about Buddhism from her. During his student years, he met his fellow student who later became known as Luang Por Dattajivo. Luang Por Dhammajayo started teaching together with Maechi Chandra, and in 1970, they started their own temple in Pathum Thani province, later called Wat Phra Dhammakaya.
The temple became extremely popular in the 1980s. However, from the 1997 Asian financial crisis onward, the temple and Luang Por Dhammajayo came under heavy criticism for unorthodox fundraising methods, culminating in several charges against him. The charges were withdrawn in 2006, and Luang Por Dhammajayo revived the temple. He organized several notable activities in this period, including a campaign against smoking and drinking for which he was rewarded by the World Health Organization.
After the 2014 coup d'état, Luang Por Dhammajayo again was charged by the Thai government, by then a military junta, for conspiring in money-laundering and receiving stolen goods. These charges have been widely described as politically motivated, but did lead to an arrest warrant and highly publicized standoff in 2017. The junta was, however, unable to find Luang Por Dhammajayo. As of December 2017, the whereabouts of Luang Por Dhammajayo was still unknown, with Phrakhru Sangharak Rangsarit being assigned as official abbot instead.
## Biography
### Early life and background
Luang Por Dhammajayo was born in Sing Buri Province with the lay name Chaiyabun Sutthiphon on 22 April 1944, to Janyong Sutthiphon (his father) and Juri Sutthiphon (his mother). His parents were Lao Song and Thai-Chinese, and separated when he was young. Chaiyabun was raised by his father, who was an engineer working for a government agency. Due to a sensitivity for sunlight, Chaiyabun had to wear sunglasses from a young age.
In Wat Phra Dhammakaya's publications, Chaiyabun is described as a courageous child, who would often play dangerous games with his friends. Whilst studying at Suankularb Wittayalai, the owner of the school would bring Chaiyabun to meet with monks regularly. This sparked his interest in Buddhism from a young age. He set up a Buddhist Youth Society together with his fellow students. Chaiyabun developed a strong interest in reading at a young age, especially on Buddhist practice and biographies of leading people in the world, both religious and political. This included a book with teachings from Luang Pu Sodh Candasaro, the founder of the Dhammakaya Tradition, and a magazine about the maechi (nun) Chandra Khonnokyoong.
In 1963, while studying economics at Kasetsart University, he started visiting the temple Wat Paknam Bhasicharoen. It was here that he first met Maechi Chandra, a student of abbot Luang Pu Sodh Candasaro, who had by then died. Maechi Chandra was able to answer Chaiyabun's questions, which made him curious to learn more about Buddhism, through the practice of meditation. Under Maechi Chandra's supervision, Chaiyabun attained a deeper understanding of Buddhism.
Chaiyabun got to know many fellow students both in Kasetsart University and in other universities who were interested in practicing meditation, and encouraged them to join him in learning meditation with Maechi Chandra. One of these early acquaintances later became a Buddhist monk and Luang Por Dhammajayo's assistant: Phadet Phongsawat, now known as Luang Por Dattajivo, who would become the deputy abbot of Wat Phra Dhammakaya. When Chaiyabun met Phadet, Phadet was involved in occult practices (Thai: ไสยศาสตร์), and would often hold public demonstrations of such practices for his fellow students. In Wat Phra Dhammakaya's biographies it is told that every time Chaiyabun joined to watch one of Phadet's demonstrations, Phadet was incapable of doing his performance. Phadet therefore become curious about Chaiyabun, suspecting that Chaiyabun was affecting his occult demonstrations. Later on, when Phadet tried to persuade Chaiyabun to drink alcohol at a college party, Chaiyabun refused, citing his adherence to the five Buddhist precepts. To test Chaiyabun, Phadet then decided to bring him to his occult black magic teacher. However, even the teacher could not use his powers in Chaiyabun's presence, which convinced Phadet to learn more about Dhammakaya meditation from Chaiyabun. From that moment on, they remained friends and Phadet became Chaiyabun's assistant.
### Ordination as monk
During his university years, Chaiyabun wanted to stop his studies in order to ordain as a monk. However, Maechi Chandra and Chaiyabun's father persuaded him to finish his degree first. They argued that Chaiyabun could do more benefit to society if he was both knowledgeable in mundane and spiritual matters. During university, he took a lifelong vow of celibacy as a birthday gift to Maechi Chandra, inspiring many of her students to do the same. After his graduation from Kasetsart University, he was ordained at Wat Paknam Bhasicharoen on 27 August 1969. He received the monastic name "Dhammajayo", meaning 'The victor through Dhamma'. At his ordination, Phra (meaning 'monk, venerable') Dhammajayo took a vow that he would work to bring progress to Buddhism. A university degree in the Thailand of the 1960s could lead to a good job and social standing, making Chaiyabun's decision to ordain uncommon.
Once ordained, he started teaching Dhammakaya meditation together with Maechi Chandra. In the beginning, the meditation courses were carried in a small house called 'Ban Thammaprasit' in the Wat Paknam Bhasicharoen compound. Because of the popularity of both teachers, the house soon became overcrowded with interested students and they considered it more appropriate to start a new center by themselves. Although initially they intended to buy a plot of land in Patum Thani, the landowner Khunying Prayat Suntharawet gave a plot four times the requested size to celebrate her birthday. Thus, on 20 February 1970, Maechi Chandra, Phra Dhammajayo, Phra Dattajivo and their students moved to the 196 rai (313,600 m<sup>2</sup>) plot of land to found a meditation center. A book about the initiative was compiled, to inspire people to join in and help with the building of the meditation center. The site eventually became an official temple in 1977 and was later named Wat Phra Dhammakaya.
### Life as abbot
Phra Dhammajayo later became abbot of the temple and was called Luang Por (meaning 'venerable father') Dhammajayo from then on. In the early years, Maechi Chandra still had an important role in fundraising and decision-making. However, in years to follow this would gradually become less, as she grew older and withdrew more to the background of the temple's organization. From then onward, Luang Por Dhammajayo received a greater role. The temple gained great popularity during the 1980s (during the Asian economic boom), attracting up to fifty thousand people on major ceremonies.
In the wake of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, Wat Phra Dhammakaya and Luang Por Dhammajayo came under widespread criticism and an investigation from the Sangha Supreme Council. The main criticism was that the temple was using fundraising methods that did not fit in with Buddhism. One of the accusations investigated was that Luang Por Dhammajayo had moved land donated to the temple to his own name. The temple denied this, stating that it was the intention of the donors to give the land to the abbot and not the temple. During this time, a letter with the then Supreme Patriarch's signature was leaked to the press implying that Luang Por Dhammajayo had to disrobe for not returning the land. However, the authenticity of the letter was put into question. Eventually the Sangha Council declared that Luang Por Dhammajayo had not broken any serious offenses against monastic discipline (Vinaya). Despite this, the Religious Affairs Department [th] charged Luang Por Dhammajayo with embezzlement and removed him from his post as abbot.
During this period, many Thai news reporters used pejorative language in describing Luang Por Dhammajayo, as well as members of the Sangha Supreme Council. Monastic chiefs nationwide sent letters to the Prime Minister over concerns about the media's language toward the Sangha. Widespread negative media coverage at this time was symptomatic of the temple being made the scapegoat for commercial malpractice in the Thai Buddhist temple community. In 1999, Wat Phra Dhammakaya filed several successful slander suits against various news outlets. In an interview held in the same year, LP Dhammajayo stated he understood the government's anxiety about Buddhist movements with large gatherings, but still felt perplexed about the controversies.
In the 2000s, Luang Por Dhammajayo began a nationwide anti-smoking and drinking campaign. This project led the World Health Organization (WHO) to present him with a World No Tobacco Day Award in 2004. In 2005, over one hundred religious organizations joined the campaign and successfully stopped the listing of liquor company Thai Beverage on the Stock Exchange of Thailand, which would have been the biggest listing in Thai history.
In 2006, the running lawsuits against Luang Por Dhammajayo were withdrawn by the Attorney-General, citing that Luang Por Dhammajayo had moved all of the disputed land to the name of the temple and that continuing the case would not benefit the public. His position as abbot was subsequently restored. Five years later, Luang Por Dhammajayo stepped down as abbot of Wat Phra Dhammakaya, with Luang Por Dattajivo taking over as caretaker abbot, although this was not widely known at the time.
#### Since the 2014 coup d'état
New investigations against Luang Por Dhammajayo appeared following the 2014 Thai coup d'état. The military junta created a National Reform Council with a religious committee led by former senator Paiboon Nititawan [th], Phra Suwit Dhiradhammo [th] (known under the activist name Phra Buddha Issara), and former Wat Phra Dhammakaya monk Mano Laohavanich. In February 2015, Paiboon Nititawan led an unsuccessful bid to reopen the alleged land embezzlement case against Luang Por Dhammajayo from 1999. Meanwhile, Phra Suwit requested the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) to start an investigation in the assets of the Sangha Council's members. This included Somdet Chuang Varapuñño, who was Luang Por Dhammajayo's preceptor (the person who ordained him).
In 2015, Luang Por Dhammajayo was implicated in the Klongchan Credit Union controversy when 11.37 billion baht was taken out of the Klongchan Credit Union Cooperative (KCUC) via unauthorized checks, in which a portion totaling more than a billion baht were found to have been given to Wat Phra Dhammakaya via donations. In defense, spokespeople of Wat Phra Dhammakaya explained that Luang Por Dhammajayo was not aware that the donations were illegally obtained. In a written agreement with the credit union, supporters of the temple had raised the money linked to Wat Phra Dhammakaya to donate to the KCUC to compensate their members.
Regardless, Luang Por Dhammajayo was summoned to acknowledge the charges of ill-gotten gains and conspiring to money-laundering at the offices of the DSI. The temple requested the DSI to let him acknowledge his charges at the temple due to his deep vein thrombosis, a request the DSI refused. When Luang Por Dhammajayo failed to appear at the DSI office to acknowledge his charges, authorities launched several failed raids of the temple to find him. The standoff led to a 23-day lockdown of the temple in 2017 by the junta using Article 44 of the interim constitution, despite the efforts authorities were still unable to find him. Many reporters questioned the practicality of using Article 44 and so many resources to arrest one person to acknowledge a charge of a non-violent crime, and pointed out the viability of trying him in absentia to determine guilt first.
News analysts have speculated that the actions of the Thai junta towards the temple may have reflected a political need to control who should be selected as the next Supreme Patriarch of Thailand. The monk who was next in line for the position, Somdet Chuang Varapuñño, had ordained Luang Por Dhammajayo. Selecting Somdet Chuang would have meant a Supreme Patriarch from the Maha Nikaya fraternity, rather than the Dhammayuttika fraternity, which historically had been the preferred choice by the Thai government and the monarchy. In fact, Somdet Chuang's appointment was withdrawn by the Thai Junta, with another candidate from the Dhammayuttika fraternity appointed instead. The coinciding lawsuits against Luang Por Dhammajayo, and Somdet Chuang's connection to him were, in fact, eventually used as a reason by the junta to withdraw his nomination.
In the aftermath of the lockdown additional charges were filed, this time also against the deputy abbot, Luang Por Dattajivo. With both Wat Phra Dhammakaya's honorary and deputy abbot under investigation, the junta pushed unsuccessfully to appoint an "outsider" abbot to run the temple. The junta stated it was necessary to take over the temple because it is a "threat to national security".
In December 2016, Luang Por Dhammajayo was given the position of honorary abbot by the Ecclesiastical Provincial Chief (governing monk of the region) of Pathum Thani. In December 2017, the temple assigned Phrakhru Sangharak Rangsarit as the temple's new abbot and began announcing the organization of new events. News outlet Kom Chad Luek described this as a "revival" of the temple, but news outlet Thai PBS stated that the temple had not been affected much by the disappearance of the former abbot. In 2016, Wat Phra Dhammakaya was described as the largest temple of Thailand.
## Teachings
Luang Por Dhammajayo's approach to Buddhism seeks to combine the ascetic and meditative life with modern personal ethics and social prosperity. Luang Por Dhammajayo is mostly known for his teachings with regard to Dhammakaya meditation. In his approach to propagating Buddhism he has emphasized a return to a purer Buddhism, as it had been in the past. He has also opposed protective magic and prognostication and refers to these as signs that Buddhism is deteriorating. Many followers in the temple believe that his projects are a product of his visions in meditation.
Luang Por Dhammajayo is known for his modern style of temple management and iconography. Luang Por Dhammajayo often uses positive terms to describe Nirvana. Apart from the true self as taught by the Dhammakaya tradition as a whole, religious studies scholar Rachelle Scott notes that Wat Phra Dhammakaya often describes Nirvana as being the supreme happiness, and argues that this may explain why the practice of Dhammakaya meditation is so popular. In its teachings on how meditation can help improve health and the quality of modern life, the temple has been compared to the Vipassana movement of S.N Goenka. The temple's emphasis on meditation is expressed in several ways. Meditation books and CDs are for sale in stores around the temple, and every gathering that is organized by the temple will feature some time for meditation. The temple emphasizes the usefulness of meditating in a group, and sociologist Apinya Fuengfusakul notes that public meditations have a powerful effect on the minds of the practitioners.
Luang Por Dhammajayo was heavily influenced by Maechi Chandra Khonnokyoong in her teachings. He turned the Dhammakaya meditation method "into an entire guide of living" (McDaniel), emphasizing cleanliness, orderliness, and quiet, as a morality by itself and as a support for meditation. In short, Wat Phra Dhammakaya's appearance is orderly, and can be described as "a contemporary aesthetic" (Scott), which appeals to practitioners, especially the modern Bangkok middle class. Practitioners are also encouraged to keep things tidy and clean, through organized cleaning activities. A strong work ethic is promoted through these activities, in which the most menial work is seen as the most valuable and fruitful.
Wat Phra Dhammakaya has a vision of a future ideal society. Wat Phra Dhammakaya is known for its emphasis on meditation, especially samatha meditation (meditation aiming at tranquility of mind). Through Luang Por Dhammajayo's teachings, Wat Phra Dhammakaya started to develop a more international approach to its teachings, teaching meditation in non-Buddhist countries as a religiously neutral technique suitable for those of all faiths, or none. The temple emphasizes that the daily application of Buddhism will lead the practitioner and society to prosperity and happiness in this life and the next, and the temple expects a high commitment to that effect. Through meditation, fundraising activities and volunteer work, the temple emphasizes the making of merit, and explains how through the law of kamma merit yields its fruits, in this world and the next. The ideal of giving as a form of building character is expressed in the temple's culture with the words Cittam me, meaning 'I am victorious', referring to the overcoming of inner defilements (Pali: kilesa).
## Recognition
In 1994, LP Dhammajayo received an honorary degree from the Mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya University. In 2013, in commemoration of year 2550 of the Buddhist Era, the World Buddhist Sangha Youth (WBSY) presented the Universal Peace Award to LP Dhammajayo at the third WBSY meeting in recognition of his work in disseminating Buddhism for more than thirty years. Other awards that have been given to LP Dhammajayo are the Phuttha-khunupakan award from the House of Representatives in 2009, and a World Buddhist Leader Award from the National Office of Buddhism (2014).
Luang Por Dhammajayo was given the monastic title of Phrasudharmayanathera in 1991, followed by Phrarajbhavanavisudh in 1996. In 2011, he received his third and last title Phrathepyanmahamuni. In March 2017, King Rama X approved a request by junta leader Prayuth Chan-ocha to remove Luang Por Dhammajayo's title for not acknowledging the charges laid upon him.
## Publications
- Luang Por Dhammajayo (2007) Pearls of Inner Wisdom: Reflections on Buddhism, Peace, Life and Meditation (Singapore: Tawandhamma Foundation)
- Luang Por Dhammajayo (2007) Tomorrow the World Will Change: A Practice for all Humanity (Singapore: Tawandhamma Foundation)
- Luang Por Dhammajayo (2008) Journey to Joy: The Simple Path Towards a Happy Life (Singapore: Tawandhamma Foundation)
- Luang Por Dhammajayo (2008) Lovely Love (Singapore: Tawandhamma Foundation)
- Monica Oien (2009) Buddha Knows: An Interview With Abbot Dhammajayo On Buddhism (Patumthani: Tawandhamma Foundation), based on interviews held for the Norwegian TV series Gudene vet [no]
- Luang Por Dhammajayo (2011) At Last You Win (Patumthani: Dhammakaya Foundation)
- Luang Por Dhammajayo (2014) Beyond Wisdom (Patumthani: Dhammakaya Foundation)
## Biographies
- John Hoskin and Robert Sheridan (2010) World Peace Lies Within: One Man's Vision (Bangkok: Mark Standen Publishing)
|
27,078,211 |
Khonani
| 1,157,544,338 | null |
[
"2010 American television episodes",
"2010 Tonight Show conflict",
"30 Rock (season 4) episodes",
"Television shows directed by Beth McCarthy-Miller"
] |
"Khonani" is the eighteenth episode of the fourth season of the American television comedy series 30 Rock, and the 76th overall episode of the series. It was written by co-producer Vali Chandrasekaran and directed by Beth McCarthy Miller. It originally aired on NBC in the United States on April 22, 2010, following shortly after the episode "Lee Marvin vs. Derek Jeter" on the same night. Guest stars in this episode include Kapil Bawa and Subhas Ramsaywack.
In the episode, Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) distracts himself from his romantic problems by attempting to resolve a dispute between two janitors (Bawa and Ramsaywack). Meanwhile, Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) is offended when she learns that her employees hang out outside of work but do not invite her. This episode of 30 Rock closely mirrored the feud between television hosts Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien.
"Khonani" received generally mixed reviews from television critics. According to the Nielsen ratings system, the episode was watched by 5.182 million households during its original broadcast, and received a 2.5 rating/7 share among viewers in the 18–49 demographic.
## Plot
Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) distracts himself from his romantic problems involving the choice between CNBC host Avery Jessup (Elizabeth Banks) and his high school sweetheart Nancy Donovan (Julianne Moore) by attempting to resolve a dispute between two janitors, Subhas (Subhas Ramsaywack) and Khonani (Kapil Bawa). Five years ago, Khonani signed a contract to take the 11:30 p.m. janitorial shift from Subhas and informs Jack that he is ready to start at the new time. Jack grants him permission, and calls a meeting with Subhas informing him that Khonani will take over the 11:30 shift. Subhas is not happy with this, so Jack decides to move him to 10:00 p.m., which Subhas has no problem with. As he begins his scheduled shift, Khonani is unhappy with it as there is no trash to pick up because Subhas has already collected it. Khonani complains to Jack about this, resulting in Jack returning Subhas to 11:30, and Khonani leaving NBC to work at Foxwoods Resort Casino.
Meanwhile, Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) is distraught to learn that although her writing staff sometimes hang out after work, they never invite her. She tells Jack—her boss—about this, however, Jack explains that it is best for her to keep her distance from them. Later, Liz's assistant Cerie Xerox (Katrina Bowden) announces that her wedding is back on and that Liz and Jenna Maroney (Jane Krakowski) need to plan a bachelorette party for her. Liz decides to have the party at her apartment and prove to her employees—who are invited—that she can be fun to be with. At the bachelorette party, staff members Pete Hornberger (Scott Adsit), Frank Rossitano (Judah Friedlander), James "Toofer" Spurlock (Keith Powell) and J. D. Lutz (John Lutz) show up, but want to leave as they are not having a good time. Liz gets upset about this, calls them out for not inviting her to hang out with them and demands that they apologize to her.
At the same time, Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) is torn between his commitments to his pregnant wife Angie Jordan (Sherri Shepherd) and his desire to party. He asks NBC page Kenneth Parcell (Jack McBrayer) to assist with any of Angie's needs, however, it becomes too much for Kenneth to deal with and he tells Tracy that he needs to be with her instead. Tracy realizes he needs to be with Angie, but changes his mind and goes to a strip club. After returning home and in order to stay there, Tracy decides to wear his dog's shock collar on himself. Tracy then sends Kenneth to take his place at Liz's party. Unbeknownst to Kenneth, Tracy's dog has followed him to the bachelorette party. Kenneth bursts in Liz's home with Tracy's dog right behind him, resulting in the staff hiding from the dog after it attacks them. They all turn to Liz to get rid of the dog, which she at first refuses. She eventually agrees to help them, after they tell her she is a mother figure to them and that nobody wants to go drinking with their mom. Liz finds comfort in this, so she distracts the dog, and the staff exits her apartment unharmed.
## Production
"Khonani" was written by 30 Rock co-producer Vali Chandrasekaran and directed by Beth McCarthy-Miller, a long-time television director who worked with series creator Tina Fey on the sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live. This episode was Chandrasekaran's second writing credit, having co-written the "Winter Madness" episode that aired on January 21, 2010. This was McCarthy-Miller's eleventh directed episode. "Khonani" originally aired in the United States on April 22, 2010, on NBC as the eighteenth episode of the show's fourth season and the 76th overall episode of the series.
The main plot regarding the two janitors—Subhas and Khonani—battling for the late-night shift at 11:30 p.m. closely mirrored the feud between television hosts Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien over the hosting job of The Tonight Show. Similar to the feud, in this 30 Rock episode, Khonani signed a contract five years ago to take over the 11:30 p.m. from Subhas and asked Jack Donaghy to make it happen, which Jack does. In September 2004, it was announced by the NBC network that Jay Leno would be succeeded by Conan O'Brien in 2009 as host of The Tonight Show. Five years later, Leno would host his final episode of The Tonight Show in May 2009; similarly, Jack informs Subhas that Khonani will take over that shift. Subhas is not thrilled with this, resulting in Jack moving Subhas to the 10:00 shift; O'Brien took over as host of The Tonight Show in June 2009. NBC, afraid of losing Leno to another network, gave him a new nightly prime time series, The Jay Leno Show, which premiered in September 2009 at 10:00 p.m. In "Khonani", as he begins his shift, Khonani is unhappy as there is no trash to pick up as it already has been collected by Subhas. As a result, Subhas goes back to the 11:30 shift, and Khonani leaves NBC to continue his janitorial duties at Foxwoods Resort Casino. The Jay Leno Show debuted to good ratings, however, as the show continued it would garner low ratings, resulting in NBC proposing that the show air at 11:35 p.m. and that The Tonight Show be moved to 12:05. O'Brien, however, rejected the timeslot. In January 2010, O'Brien reached a deal with the network that would see him leave The Tonight Show on January 22, 2010, and two months later Leno returned as host of The Tonight Show on March 1, 2010. In April 2010, O'Brien signed a deal with the cable network TBS to host a new late-night talk show.
Lorne Michaels, who is the executive producer of 30 Rock and who used to produce Late Night with Conan O'Brien, was O'Brien's mentor. Michaels told The Hollywood Reporter in March 2010 that O'Brien would "prevail" from his departure of The Tonight Show. In addition, O'Brien appeared as himself on 30 Rock's first season episode "Tracy Does Conan" that was broadcast on December 6, 2006.
Despite not appearing in the episode, the show made reference of Jack's love triangle storyline with Avery Jessup and Nancy Donovan, played by actresses Elizabeth Banks and Julianne Moore, respectively. This plot was first introduced in the previous episode, "Lee Marvin vs. Derek Jeter". The Jack character's love dilemma would continue throughout the season. Moore was announced as a love interest for Alec Baldwin's television character in November 2009, while Banks' guest spot as a love interest for the Jack character was confirmed in December 2009.
30 Rock executive producer and co-showrunner Robert Carlock was asked in a 2009 interview if Frank Rossitano (Judah Friedlander), Toofer Spurlock (Keith Powell), and J.D. Lutz (John Lutz)—the staff writers of the fictitious show The Girlie Show with Tracy Jordan (TGS)—were going to be seen more in the upcoming season, to which he replied, "One of the great things about this show and the blessing and the curse is that we have so many characters and so many different interactions between characters that work so well. [...] And so, yeah, absolutely because we love those guys". In this episode, Liz Lemon, the head writer for TGS, discovers that Frank, Toofer, and Lutz, along with Pete, do not invite her to hang out with them as they consider her a mother figure.
## Cultural references
Jack tells Khonani that every April 22 he honors former United States President Richard Nixon's death by getting drunk and making some unpopular decisions, after Khonani demands to start working at the 11:30 shift as he signed a contract with Jack on April 22, 2005. Cerie says that her wedding is back on after learning that her fiancé was rescued by the A-Team—a fictional group of ex-United States Army Special Forces who work as soldiers of fortune while being on the run from the military—from pirates. Khonani tells Jack that Subhas will want to leave NBC so he can attend to his hobbies of "[collecting] classic car...", Khonani coughs, "cardboard. Classic cardboard." This is a satirical reference to Jay Leno who collects classic cars. Later, after Jack gives back Subhas his original time shift, Khonani says he has a "great job lined up at Fox", Khonani coughs, "...woods. Foxwoods Casino." Following his departure from NBC, reports circulated that the Fox network wanted to hire Conan O'Brien. At the bachelorette party, Jenna sings the 1840s song "Jimmy Crack Corn".
## Reception
In its original American broadcast, "Khonani" was watched by 5.182 million households, according to the Nielsen ratings system. It achieved a 2.5 rating/7 share in the key 18- to 49-year-old demographic. This means that it was seen by 2.5 percent of all 18- to 49-year-olds, and 7 percent of all 18- to 49-year-olds watching television at the time of the broadcast. This was an increase from the previous episode, "Lee Marvin vs. Derek Jeter", that aired the same day of the week, which was watched by 4.216 million American viewers.
The episode received generally mixed critical reception. The A.V. Club's Nathan Rabin found the episode less enjoyable than "Lee Marvin vs. Derek Jeter". He explained that when he first learned that the show would tackle the Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien situation "I felt a surge of excitement and optimism. I thought the writers would come up with a smart new angle to attack the imbroglio", but after the airing he noted the janitor plot only hampered the episode. Rabin, however, enjoyed Tracy's actions in the episode, commenting that it "provided a showcase for some great Tracy Morgan non-sequiturs". Emily Exton of Entertainment Weekly also found "Khonani" the weaker of the two episodes, and also believed that the "late-night jokes felt tired". Television columnist Alan Sepinwall of The Star-Ledger disliked the episode, and as a result he noted in his recap that he would remove 30 Rock from the rotation of shows for which he always did detailed reviews. Willa Paskin of New York magazine wrote had the show make reference to the Leno and O'Brien debacle a few months ago "this would have been a cutting-edge satire ... Now, not so much." Jason Hughes of TV Squad remarked that the writing in "Khonani" was sharp, though added that "for some reason" the episode "didn't ring nearly as sharp or funny as many others. I think it was a lot of unfulfilled potential." Sean Gandert of Paste magazine deemed this episode disappointing, but proclaimed "it was still entertaining enough."
James Poniewozik of Time observed, "NBC's public troubles have been 30 Rock's greatest blessing this season, providing it with satiric fodder from The Jay Leno Show to the Comcast acquisition. The show may not be the best sitcom on TV now, but it's definitely the best work of NBC-criticism." In regards to the main plot, he said it "could have done even more with the premise of the Jaypocalypse re-enacted with janitors, but it gets a lot of credit for the inspired idea." IGN contributor Robert Canning gave the episode an 8.3 out of 10 rating, writing that the janitor plot "came at a perfect time" in regards to the Leno and O'Brien controversy. He, however, did not like the other two plots, noting they were "less impressive". Meredith Blake from the Los Angeles Times said that the Khonani and Subhas plot was "supremely clever and self-referential", and that the show's take on it was "decidedly neutral, albeit very funny".
|
28,433,316 |
Brazilian monitor Piauí
| 1,137,423,657 |
Imperial Brazilian Navy's Pará-class river monitors
|
[
"1868 ships",
"Pará-class monitors",
"Ships built in Brazil"
] |
The Brazilian monitor Piauí was the fourth ship of the Pará-class river monitors built for the Brazilian Navy during the Paraguayan War in the late 1860s. Piauí passed the fortifications at Humaitá in July 1868 and provided fire support for the army for the rest of the war. The ship was assigned to the Mato Grosso Flotilla after the war. Piauí was scrapped in 1893.
## Design and description
The Pará-class monitors were designed to meet the need of the Brazilian Navy for small, shallow-draft armored ships capable of withstanding heavy fire. The monitor configuration was chosen since a turreted design did not have the same problems engaging enemy ships and fortifications as did the central battery ironclads already in Brazilian service. The oblong gun turret sat on a circular platform that had a central pivot. It was rotated by four men via a system of gears; 2.25 minutes were required for a full 360° rotation. A bronze ram was fitted to these ships as well. The hull was sheathed with Muntz metal to reduce biofouling.
The ships measured 39 meters (127 ft 11 in) long overall, with a beam of 8.54 meters (28 ft 0 in). They had a draft of 1.51 to 1.54 meters (4 ft 11 in to 5 ft 1 in) and displaced 500 metric tons (490 long tons). With only 0.3 meters (1 ft 0 in) of freeboard they had to be towed between Rio de Janeiro and their areas of operations. Their crew numbered 43 officers and men.
### Propulsion
The Pará-class ships had two direct-acting steam engines, each driving a single 1.3-meter (4 ft 3 in) propeller. Their engines were powered by two tubular boilers at a working pressure of 59 psi (407 kPa; 4 kgf/cm<sup>2</sup>). The engines produced a total of 180 indicated horsepower (130 kW) which gave the monitors a maximum speed of 8 knots (15 km/h; 9.2 mph) in calm waters. The ships carried enough coal for one day's steaming.
### Armament
Piauí had a single 120-pounder Whitworth rifled muzzle loader (RML) in her gun turret. The gun had a maximum range of about 5,540 meters (6,060 yd). Its 7-inch (178 mm) shells weighed 151 pounds (68.5 kg) and the gun itself weighed 16,660 pounds (7,556.8 kg). Most unusually the gun's Brazilian-designed iron carriage was designed to pivot vertically at the muzzle; this was done to minimize the size of the gunport through which splinters and shells could enter.
### Armor
The hull of the Pará-class ships was made from three layers of wood, with the grain of each layer at right angles to the next layer. It was 457 millimeters (18.0 in) thick and was capped with a 102-millimeter (4 in) layer of peroba hardwood. The ships had a complete wrought iron waterline belt, 0.91 meters (3.0 ft) high. It had a maximum thickness of 102 millimeters amidships, decreasing to 76 millimeters (3 in) and 51 millimeters (2 in) at the ship's ends. The curved deck was armored with 12.7 millimeters (0.5 in) of wrought iron.
The rectangular gun turret had rounded corners. It was built much like the hull, but the front of the turret was protected by 152 millimeters (6 in) of armor, the sides by 102 millimeters and the rear by 76 millimeters. Its roof and the exposed portions of the platform it rested upon were protected by 12.7 millimeters of armor. The armored pilothouse was positioned ahead of the turret.
## Service
Piauí was laid down at the Arsenal de Marinha da Côrte in Rio de Janeiro on 8 December 1866, during the Paraguayan War, which saw Argentina and Brazil allied against Paraguay. She was launched on 8 January 1868 and commissioned later that month. Together with the ironclads Silvado and Cabral, Piauí passed the weakened Paraguayan fortifications at Humaitá on 21 July 1868. She bombarded Asunción that same day. The monitor and a number of Brazilian ironclads bombarded Paraguayan batteries at Angostura, downstream of Asunción, on 28 October, 19 November and 26 November. Piauí, together with her sister ships Ceará and Santa Catharina, broke through the Paraguayan defenses at Guaraio on 29 April 1869 and drove off the defenders. On 31 August 1869 the monitor unsuccessfully tried to locate and destroy the remnants of the Paraguayan Navy on the Manduvirá River. In the 1880s the ship's armament was reinforced with a pair of 11-millimeter (0.43 in) machine guns. After the war she was assigned to the Mato Grosso Flotilla and was scrapped in 1893.
|
436,659 |
Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut, BWV 199
| 1,112,087,844 |
Solo church cantata by J. S. Bach
|
[
"1714 compositions",
"Church cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach"
] |
Johann Sebastian Bach composed the church cantata Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut (My heart swims in blood) BWV 199 in Weimar between 1711 and 1714, and performed it on the eleventh Sunday after Trinity, 12 August 1714. It is a solo cantata for soprano.
The text was written by Georg Christian Lehms and published in Darmstadt in 1711 in the collection Gottgefälliges Kirchen-Opffer, on the general topic of redemption. The librettist wrote a series of alternating recitatives and arias, and included as the sixth movement (of eight) the third stanza of Johann Heermann's hymn "Wo soll ich fliehen hin". It is not known when Bach composed the work, but he performed it as part of his monthly cantata productions on the eleventh Sunday after Trinity, 12 August 1714. The solo voice is accompanied by a Baroque instrumental ensemble of oboe, strings and continuo. The singer expresses in a style similar to Baroque opera the dramatic development from feeling like a "monster in God's eyes" to being forgiven. Bach revised the work for later performances, leading to three different editions in the Neue Bach-Ausgabe.
## History and words
On 2 March 1714 Bach was appointed concertmaster of the Weimar court orchestra (Kapelle) of the co-reigning dukes Wilhelm Ernst and Ernst August of Saxe-Weimar. As concertmaster, he assumed the principal responsibility for composing new works, specifically cantatas for the Schlosskirche (palace church), on a monthly schedule. He performed the cantata on the Eleventh Sunday after Trinity as the fifth cantata of the series, following Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen, BWV 12. The prescribed readings for the Sunday were from the First Epistle to the Corinthians, on the gospel of Christ and his (Paul's) duty as an apostle (), and from the Gospel of Luke, the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector ().
The text, which concerns a sinner seeking and finding redemption, was written by Georg Christian Lehms. Lehms was based in Darmstadt, and it is not known whether Bach knew him personally, but he may well have had access to Lehms's 1711 publication Gottgefälliges Kirchen-Opffer, which includes this text and that of another solo cantata, Widerstehe doch der Sünde, BWV 54, performed the month before. The third stanza of Johann Heermann's hymn "Wo soll ich fliehen hin" is integrated as the sixth movement, to the melody of "Auf meinen lieben Gott". The text in the first person shows the dramatic change of a person initially feeling as "a monster in God's eyes" to finally feeling accepted as God's child. The cantata text was set to music in 1712 by Christoph Graupner in Darmstadt. It is not known if Bach knew of Graupner's composition. The text has no specific relation to the prescribed readings, therefore it is possible that Bach may have already composed the work before his promotion to concert master with regular Sunday services, like the other cantata on a text by Lehms.
Bach first performed the cantata on 12 August 1714. When he performed it again in Leipzig on the eleventh Sunday after Trinity in 1723 (8 August) it was the first solo cantata and the most operatic work which he had presented to the congregation up to that point. He made revisions for that performance, such as transposing it from C minor to D minor and changing the obbligato viola to violoncello piccolo. In the same service, he also performed a new work, Siehe zu, daß deine Gottesfurcht nicht Heuchelei sei, BWV 179: one before and one after the sermon.
The Neue Bach-Ausgabe recognises three distinct versions: the Weimar version, a Köthen version, and the Leipzig version.
## Music
### Structure and scoring
The cantata, structured in eight movements, is scored as chamber music for a solo soprano voice (S), and a Baroque instrumental ensemble of oboe (Ob), violins (Vl), viola (Va), and basso continuo (Bc) including bassoon (Fg) and violone (Vo). In the Weimar version, it is in C minor, with a viola as the obbligato instrument in movement 6. The title page of the parts for this version reads: "Geistliche Cantate / Mein Herze schwimt im Blut / â / Soprano solo / 1 Hautb. / 2 Viol. / Viola / e / Basso / di / J.S.Bach". In the Leipzig version, it is in D minor, with an obbligato violoncello piccolo instead of the viola.
In the following table of the movements, the scoring follows the Neue Bach-Ausgabe. The keys and time signatures are taken from Alfred Dürr, using the symbol for common time (4/4). The continuo, playing throughout, is not shown.
### Movements
Although limited to one soprano voice, Bach achieves a variety of musical expression in the eight movements. All but one recitative are accompanied by the strings (accompagnato), and only movement 5 is secco, accompanied by the continuo only. The solo voice is treated to dramatic declamation, close to contemporary opera.
#### 1
A recitative sets the scene, "Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut" ("My heart swims in blood").
> Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut, Weil mich der Sünden Brut In Gottes heilgen Augen Zum Ungeheuer macht.
> My heart swims in blood, since the offspring of my sins in the holy eyes of God make me a monster.
The musicologist Julian Mincham explains that it "drips with the self-obsessed agonies of sin, pain and abandonment ... with the torment of an abandoned soul swamped by its own sin and sorrow. Its finely wrought contours portray dramatically the vacillating emotions ranging from horror and terror to lonely and dispirited resignation."
#### 2
The first aria, a da capo aria, "Stumme Seufzer, stille Klagen" (Mute sighs, silent cries), is accompanied by the oboe. The theme of the ritornello is present throughout the movement. The middle section begins with a dissonance to stress the sorrowful image of "Und ihr nassen Tränenquellen" ("And you, moist springs of tears"). It ends with a passage set as a secco recitative, described by Mincham: "Time almost appears to stand still with this final expression of misery".
#### 3
The following recitative, "Doch Gott muss mir genädig sein" ("But God must be gracious to me"), ends in a statement of repentance.
#### 4
The second aria, "Tief gebückt und voller Reue" ("Deeply bowed and filled with regret"), is dominated by rich string sound. An adagio passage leads to the da capo. The aria expresses repentance in a "civilised and refined minuet".
#### 5
A short secco recitative, "Auf diese Schmerzensreu" ("Upon this painful repentance"), introduces the following hymn stanza. It begins with "a musical echo of the torments of the heart swimming in blood".
#### 6
The only chorale stanza of the work is "Ich, dein betrübtes Kind" ("I, Your troubled child"), the third stanza of Johann Heermann's "Wo soll ich fliehen hin" ("Where should I flee"), published in 1630. Its term "troubled child" is a good summary of the position of the human being in relation to God. The wording of its conclusion, "In deine tiefen Wunden, da ich stets Heil gefunden" ("into Your deep wounds, where I have always found salvation") leads to the following recitative. The voice is accompanied by an obbligato viola (violoncello piccolo in the Leipzig version) in a lively figuration.
Bach used a rather unusual melody by Caspar von Stieler, whereas he based his later chorale cantata on this hymn on the melody by Jacob Regnart. The hymn is treated as in a chorale fantasia, with string ritornellos between the verses.
#### 7
The last recitative, "Ich lege mich in diese Wunden" ("I lay myself on these wounds"), introduces a different mood; the final measures are a "soaring melisma", a "joyously uplifting prelude" to the last movement.
#### 8
The final aria, "Wie freudig ist mein Herz" ("How joyful is my heart"), expresses joy as a cheerful gigue, with a long coloratura on "fröhlich" (joyful). It is comparable to the gigues in Bach's French Suites. Mincham concludes:
> This cantata, expressed throughout in the first person, is highly personal. It makes a clear and dramatic journey from the cesspools of sinful misery to the euphoria of redemption and salvation. It has no trumpets, horns or drums to drive its message home; they are not needed within this highly private context.
## Recordings
The work has been recorded often, both by Bach specialists and others. The listing is taken from the selection on the Bach Cantatas Website, which lists 58 recordings as of 2017. Ensembles playing on period instruments in historically informed performance are marked by green background.
|
8,217,675 |
Loughor Castle
| 1,081,705,732 |
Medieval fortification in southwestern Wales
|
[
"Castles in Swansea",
"Scheduled monuments in Wales"
] |
Loughor Castle is a ruined, medieval fortification located in the town of Loughor, Wales. The castle was built around 1106 by the Anglo-Norman lord Henry de Beaumont, during the Norman invasion of Wales. The site overlooked the River Loughor and controlled a strategic road and ford running across the Gower Peninsula. The castle was designed as an oval ringwork, probably topped by wicker fence defences, and reused the remains of the former Roman fort of Leucarum.
Over the next two centuries, the castle was involved in many conflicts. It was attacked and burnt, probably in the Welsh uprising of 1151, and was captured by the forces of Llywelyn the Great in 1215. John de Braose acquired the castle in 1220 and repaired it, constructing a stone curtain wall to replace the older defences. Attacked again in 1251, the castle was reinforced with a stone tower in the second half of the 13th century. It declined in importance during the late-medieval period, and by the 19th century, the castle was ruinous and overgrown with ivy.
In the 21st century, Loughor Castle is controlled by the Welsh heritage agency Cadw and operated as a tourist attraction. The ruined tower and fragments of the curtain wall still survive on top of the ringwork's earthwork defences, which now resemble a motte, or mound, and are part of the Loughor Castle Park.
## History
### 1st–4th centuries
Loughor Castle is located 11 kilometres (6.8 mi) west of Swansea in South-West Wales, overlooking the River Loughor. The site was first used by the Romans for a military fort, one of a sequence running across South-West Wales. The fort, Leucarum, took its name from the Celtic name for the River Loughor. Its location provided good visibility across the region and enabled it to support naval units operating in the Bristol Channel. It also controlled a ford across the River Loughor; this ford had probably emerged by the time of the Roman period, and was passable at high tide. The fort was built around 75 AD and was used until the middle of the 2nd century; it was then reoccupied by the Romans during the late 3rd and early 4th century, before being abandoned by the military.
### 11th–12th centuries
The Normans began to make incursions into South Wales from the late-1060s onwards, pushing westwards from their bases in recently occupied England. Their advance was marked by the construction of castles, frequently on old Roman sites, for example those at Cardiff, Pevensey and Portchester, and the creation of regional lordships. Reusing former Roman sites in this way produced considerable savings in the manpower required to construct the large earth fortifications of the early castles.
Loughor Castle was constructed on the western edge of the Welsh commote, or land unit, of Gwyr. The castle was built shortly after 1106, when Henry de Beaumont, the Earl of Warwick, was given the Gower Peninsula by Henry I. The Anglo-Norman colonisation of the region followed, with Gower becoming a Marcher territory, enjoying extensive local independence. Loughor Castle was strategically important because it controlled the main road running through Gywr from Beaumont's main base at Swansea Castle, and was a valuable coastal port. The castle took its name from a corruption of the title of the Roman fort.
In the 12th century, the castle would have been defended on its south side by a steep slope and the marshy ground running along the river. It was designed as an oval ringwork, which today is around 21 metres (69 ft) by 18 metres (59 ft) across and 12 metres (39 ft) high, protected by a ditch 5 metres (16 ft) wide and 2 metres (6 ft 7 in) deep. The Roman fort in this corner was only visible as earthworks in the 12th century, and the builders used part of these in the construction of the ringwork. The ringwork was made up of a core of river gravel and coarse sand, with finer sand and clay forming the surface layer. The ringwork had a protective wicker fence around the top of the earthworks and possibly some form of early stone or wooden tower, with a gateway just to the north side of it. It is unclear what kind of buildings were constructed inside the ringwork, although a kitchen was certainly built on the east side of the enclosure.
The first half of the 12th century was a violent period in Gower, with extensive fighting occurring between the Anglo-Normans and the local Welsh. Loughor Castle was attacked and burnt down around the middle of the century, probably as a part of a Welsh rebellion that devastated the area in 1151. Henry II and the Welsh prince Rhys ap Gruffydd later agreed peace terms, and the castle was rebuilt. The inside of the ringwork was partially filled by debris during the 1151 attack, and at some point in the next few decades the bank of the ringwork was also deliberately widened inwards in places, allowing buildings to be constructed on it. These changes started the process of filling in the middle of the ringwork which led to the castle today having a mound, or motte-like, appearance.
At around the end of the 12th century, two stone buildings were constructed in the centre of the ringwork, one of them being around 8 metres (26 ft) by 4.5 metres (15 ft). The castle probably passed into the control of the King of England at around this time, in lieu of debts owed by the Earl of Warwick. War broke out again across South-West Wales in 1189 on the death of Henry II, as Rhys and his sons attempted to reclaim the region.
### 13th–14th centuries
Gower continued to see extensive fighting in the 13th century. Loughor Castle was given by King John to his ally William de Braose in 1203; William was a powerful Marcher Lord, and related to Rhys ap Gruffudd and his extended family. In 1208, however, John and William argued; their relationship broke down and the king attempted to confiscate Loughor and William's other lands in the region. William allied himself with the Welsh prince Llywelyn the Great and war broke out. William died in 1211, but his son, Reginald, continued fighting and married Gwladus, Llywelyn's daughter. In 1215, the castle was captured by Llywelyn's forces and control of Gower was granted to Reginald. Two years later, however, Reginald made peace with the English Crown and Llywelyn removed him from power, replacing him with the Welsh prince Rhys Gryg. Contemporary chroniclers recorded that Rhys Gryg deliberately destroyed all the castles in Gower as part of his campaign to dominate the area.
Llyweyln married another of his daughters, Margaret, to Reginald's nephew, John de Braose, and in 1220 Llyweyln gave him Gower and Loughor Castle, which John appears to have set about repairing. As part of this work, a stone curtain wall was built around the castle. This included a sally port on the north side of the castle.
In 1232 the castle was inherited by John's son, William de Braose, and in turn his son, also called William. In the second half of the century, Wales saw a renewal of fighting, and the castle was attacked again in 1251. The decision was taken to improve the castle's defences and, as part of this, a square, stone tower was added to the castle to provide living accommodation, with three chambers, the first floor containing a garderobe and a fireplace. A gateway was constructed through the curtain wall just to the south of the tower. Two further stone buildings were constructed within the castle walls.
In 1302, William de Braose granted the Loughor estate to his seneschal, John Yweyn, for life, in exchange for an annual fee of a greyhound collar. On John Yweyn's death in 1322 the lands were seized by John de Mowbray, William's son-in-law. John was involved in the rebellion against Edward II, however, and was executed later in 1322; John Yweyn's next of kin, Alice Roculf, successfully appealed to the king and was granted the lands instead. Edward fell from power in 1327, and the Loughor lands were granted to John de Mowbray's son, John.
### 15th–21st centuries
The importance of Loughor Castle and the surrounding town declined in the late-medieval period, and by the 19th century the castle had been ruined for many years and was covered in ivy. The castle was painted by the artist William Butler in the 1850s, who depicted the ruins alongside the local industries and the new railway line that had been cut through the remains of the former Roman fort.
In the 1940s, the south-east corner of the castle tower collapsed; the corner fell to the ground intact and because of its archaeological value it was decided to leave the fallen stonework in place on the ground, rather than risk further damaging it by removing it. In 1946 the castle was given to the Ministry of Works, and is now in the control of the Welsh heritage agency Cadw and operated as a tourist attraction. The castle sits within the grounds of the small Loughor Castle Park.
Archaeological investigations were carried out between 1969–71 and in 1973. The castle is protected as a scheduled monument under UK law. Much of the curtain wall has been stolen and destroyed since the medieval period, although fragments remain up to 1.5 metres (4 ft 11 in) high, and the ruins of the tower remain a prominent feature of the local area.
## See also
- List of castles in Wales
- Castles in Great Britain and Ireland
|
32,160,118 |
Captain John Hart (Torchwood)
| 1,165,449,280 |
Fictional character of Torchwood
|
[
"Fictional LGBT characters in television",
"Fictional bisexual men",
"Fictional con artists",
"Fictional military captains",
"Fictional pansexuals",
"Male characters in television",
"Television characters introduced in 2008",
"Time travelers",
"Torchwood characters"
] |
Captain John Hart, played by James Marsters, is a fictional character from the BBC science fiction television programme Torchwood. He is introduced in the episode "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang"—the first episode of Torchwood's second series. Whilst the character has not featured subsequently to the second series finale, he went on to appear in a Torchwood Magazine comic strip and Marsters has stated his interest in reprising the role on more than one occasion.
In his first appearance, John Hart is as a rogue Time Agent and former partner of the series' lead male character Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) both professionally and sexually. Whilst the original function of the Time Agency—stated to have ceased operation by the time Hart appears —is left unspecified, John's own backstory is briefly given: as well as having had a relationship with Jack, he has been in rehab for an addiction to alcohol, drugs, sex and murder. John leaves Earth disgraced after his initial self-interested plot is foiled by Harkness' Torchwood team, though returns in the series finale "Exit Wounds" where he is eventually given a chance to redeem himself.
The role of John Hart in Torchwood was written with the casting of Marsters in mind after he contacted the shows' producers expressing his interest in appearing in the programme's parent show, Doctor Who. The character is used to illuminate some of Jack's own characteristics as a doppelgänger who provides both an exaggerated version of, and a parallel to, aspects of Jack's persona. Both Marsters and the general media also compared aspects of Hart's character to Marsters's role as Spike in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. Whilst a few reviewers criticised the character in relation to his impact of the show's tone, a larger number welcomed the character and the energy Marsters brought to the role.
## Appearances
### Television
Captain John Hart appears through the Cardiff space-time Rift using a vortex manipulator and asks Jack Harkness for help in locating three radioactive cluster bombs, apparently scattered across Cardiff. Jack Harkness tells his team that John cannot be trusted but agrees to help him. True to Jack's word, Captain John is lying and seizes the containers, trying to kill Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles) using a paralyzing lip gloss, shooting Owen Harper (Burn Gorman), punching Toshiko Sato (Naoko Mori) and pushing Jack off the top of a building, thinking he's dead. However the containers, which are supposed to contain the location of a valuable diamond hidden by the lover he murdered, instead contain an explosive which latches on the DNA signature of her killer. As insurance against Torchwood leaving him to die, John handcuffs himself to Gwen and swallows the key. After superficially altering his DNA using that of the Torchwood staff, Jack and Owen are able to save John's life before banishing him. Spurned by his former lover, John leaves by means of his Vortex Manipulator.
In "Fragments", Captain John returned in holographic form, stating that he is going to destroy Jack's life, revealing a holographic image of his lost brother Gray. Continuing in "Exit Wounds", Captain John is revealed to have rescued Jack's brother Gray from a group of sadistic captors, only to learn too late that Gray had been driven insane through being tortured over the years. Molecularly bonding a bomb to John's wrist to force him to obey his orders, Gray had John set off multiple bombs throughout Cardiff before taking Jack back in time to 27AD, where Jack is buried alive at the site that would become Cardiff in the future. However, John betrays Gray by leaving a tracking device on Jack in the shape of a ring, thus allowing Jack to be recovered by the Torchwood Institute and frozen in the morgue, escaping at the right moment to stop his brother. Having frozen Gray in cryopreservation, unwilling to witness any more death that day, Jack offers to help pinpoint another Rift event to allow John to leave, but John instead states his desire to travel Earth, commenting that he'd like to learn what Jack finds so fascinating about the planet.
An image of John Hart is briefly seen in the 2014 Doctor Who episode "Time Heist", as part of a montage of the galaxy's most notorious criminals.
### Literature
The character has a prominent role in the Torchwood magazine comic strip "Shrouded" set between Torchwood's third television series, subtitled Children of Earth, and fourth series Miracle Day and written by Gareth David-Lloyd who portrayed Ianto Jones in the first three series of Torchwood. John Hart is seen to have observed Ianto's funeral from a distance before later settling in Mexico, earning a living by buying and selling alien artefacts washed up from a rift similar to the one in Cardiff. A past version of Ianto is then contacted by a malevolent time-travelling seductress seeking to use the knowledge of his death to alter time for her own gain. As Jack has left Earth and Gwen has a newborn child, John is required to team up with Gwen's husband Rhys Williams in order to restore the original timeline.
Captain Hart is also briefly mentioned in an audiobook, In the Shadows, where he is a part of Jack's 'hell'. He is said to have taken over Torchwood 3 and started a relationship with Ianto Jones (Gareth David-Lloyd).
### Audio
Marsters reprised his role as John Hart in the audio play "The Death of Captain Jack" from Big Finish's Torchwood range, alongside John Barrowman as Captain Jack in March 2018, and "Torchwood: The Sins of Captain John" in January 2020.
## Development
### Casting and concept
Head writer Chris Chibnall had originally conceived the idea of a "rogue Time Agent" character during the production of Torchwood series 1, but the idea never made it to TV screens. After watching episodes of executive producer Russell T Davies' revival of Torchwood's parent series Doctor Who, Marsters and his agent got in touch with Davies about appearing in the series. Davies vetoed the idea, but suggested that Marsters be part of Torchwood's second series instead. After Marsters expressed interest in Torchwood, Chibnall and Davies felt that he would be perfect for the role of the Time Agent character. Chibnall immediately produced the script for "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang", which introduced the character. He sent it off to Marsters "and essentially got agreement straight away". Marsters accepted the role on the basis of a "really good script" and "a really fun character" stating that as an actor he is attracted to "playing people who are evil, don't care, and have no guilt." In an interview published to the BBC Online news website in July 2007, Marsters indicated that he was "really" excited about his character, who he revealed would be "naughty" and "a bit of a psychopath."
### Characterisation
The character shares many similarities with Marsters's Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel character, Spike, with Marsters commenting "In a lot of ways, this role is very much like Spike was in my first three episodes of Buffy." The Torchwood writers conceived John as a classical nemesis for Captain Jack, with Chibnall commenting, "In seeing John you see the way Jack could have gone, and probably did, for a little while." James Marsters further discussed ways in which John is a doppelgänger or foil to Captain Jack: both are pansexual time travellers, with their key difference being that John never reformed. The character exaggerates many of Jack's qualities, for example displaying zoophilic attraction to non-humanoids such as poodles, in addition to men and women. John and Jack's intentional similarities extend to their penchant for period war clothing:
> He's got a jacket from fighting in the Napoleonic Wars; he's got a snakeskin sword from Korea that I think he had to kill someone for; his boots are from Italy circa 1640 and he's got gun holsters from the American West."
Teasing John's role in "Exit Wounds" Marsters stated that he's someone "who's in way over his head and doesn't even know it yet" and that "things do change" in regards to his character. Chibnall, Marsters and producer Richard Stokes discuss the role of "Exit Wounds" in developing John's character and placing him on a redemptive path. Marsters felt the character to be on a "journey" whilst Chibnall deliberately played upon the question of "can you trust him, or can't you?" Stokes commented that the character isn't the "selfish and anarchic" character seen in "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" and that his "affection and love for Captain Jack are enough to make him try and do the noble thing". Stephen James Walker, a writer of reference works on Doctor Who and its spin-offs, notes that because of the reluctance of Hart's collaboration with Gray and his remorse for his actions the episode leaves the audience "a little more favourably disposed" towards the character. In April 2008 Marsters indicated that he expected to return to Torchwood in the near future. He later expressed a desire to be part of Torchwood's fourth series after it was revealed the show would be largely produced in Los Angeles.
## Reception
Reviewing the episode "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" for The Daily Telegraph James Walton was sceptical about the fact that "some of the fawning [over Captain Jack] even came from the main baddie" and what he felt to be the indication that the character was "thrown into the mix on the principle that one glamorous space-travelling bisexual isn’t enough." Whilst The Daily Mirror's Jane Simon expected that the physical contact between Marsters and Barrowman would result in "somebody's sci-fi fantasy" being realised she saw it dashing her "hopes series two might serve less sex, less rubbish aliens and more credible drama". However, Dan Martin of The Guardian described the character as the "best thing about the opener" and stated that "he stole every scene he was in". He felt the production team "shamelessly and brilliantly.... transplanted" the character of Spike into the series. Richard Edwards of SFX magazine also gave particular praise to Marsters portrayal and like Martin, stated that he "steals the show". Ben Rawson-Jones of Digital Spy felt Hart's arrival to be "self-consciously iconic" in providing "swagger, innuendo and a wonderful Star Wars reference". He felt that overall the characterisation verged "dangerously close to parody at times" but this didn't detract from Marsters being "a joy to watch, in a similar vein to his role in Buffy." Charlie Jane Anders commented in regards to the episode that ""Spike" is pretty great in his Adam Ant jacket, with his paralyzing lip gloss and his zany sexual innuendo". IGN felt John to be a "lot of fun" and a "good character to add to the mix" who showed the team "just how much of a mess they are".
In regards to "Exit Wounds" Anders felt that the "campy" John "felt like he didn't quite belong in such a serious episode". Conversely, Mark Wright of The Stage opined that the character was "rather better second time round". SFX's Edwards felt the character to be "not as fun" as in episode one but observed that his "heroic side makes for a more rounded character" and anticipated a return in future. IGN's Travis Fickett felt Hart to be "a far more interesting adversary" than Jack's brother Gray and once he had been unmasked as a "red herring" the episode "has some life taken out of it". Subsequent to his last appearance, the character has continued to be mentioned in relation to Torchwood. In June 2010—following the announcement of a fourth series to be produced as an American co-production—Dan Martin felt that James Marsters would be the "obvious first box to tick" in regards to new cast members for the programme. In March 2012, John Hart made SFX'' magazine's reader voted list of the 100 sexiest male characters in the history of film and television science fiction and fantasy. He ranked \#82.
|
16,330,449 |
Swimming at the 1980 Summer Olympics – Men's 4 × 100 metre medley relay
| 1,149,475,133 | null |
[
"4 × 100 metre medley relay",
"Men's events at the 1980 Summer Olympics",
"Swimming at the 1980 Summer Olympics"
] |
The men's 4 × 100 metre medley relay event at the 1980 Summer Olympics was held in Moscow, Soviet Union on 24 July 1980 in the Olympiski Sports Complex. A total of 13 teams participated in the event. These were split over two heats held in the morning of that day, and the eight fastest teams qualified for the finals held in the evening of the same day.
The United States, the winner of all previous editions of this event, was boycotting the games in response to the Soviet–Afghan War. As a result, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and Sweden were expected to win. Australia's Quietly Confident Quartet, however, composed of backstroker Mark Kerry, breaststroker Peter Evans, butterflyer Mark Tonelli, and freestyler Neil Brooks, surprisingly won the final in 3:45.70. They were followed by the silver medalists Soviet Union, 0.22 seconds in arrears, and the bronze medalists Great Britain, as favorites Sweden had been disqualified in the heats. As of 2021, this is the only time the United States has not won the gold medal in the event.
## Preview
The 1980 Summer Olympic Games were notable for a large number of boycotting countries as a result of the host country invading Afghanistan in 1979. As a result, several medal favorites for the men's 4 × 100 metre medley relay race were absent. The most notable absence was the United States, who had won the event every time since its inception at the 1960 Games, invariably by large margins, and would go on to win the event at all subsequent Games. Furthermore, they had also obtained the gold medal at the previous World Championships, just two years before the Olympiad. This, together with the boycott of the silver and bronze medallists from the previous edition, West Germany—who won the silver medal also at the World Championships—and Canada respectively, meant that the field had opened.
Sweden, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union were the most heavily favoured teams. Another ten National Olympic Committees were able to send teams to Moscow: Angola, Australia, Brazil, Bulgaria, East Germany, France, Hungary, Netherlands, Spain, and Vietnam. Favorites Soviet Union boasted the silver medalists in the 100 m finals hosted several days earlier in backstroke and breaststroke (Viktor Kuznetsov and Arsens Miskarovs respectively), while their butterflyer (Yevgeny Seredin) and freestyler (Sergey Kopliakov) had come fifth and fourth in their respective 100 m events. The British team included the 100 m breaststroke gold medallist (Duncan Goodhew), and fifth-place finisher in the 100 m backstroke (Gary Abraham). Sweden's butterflyer (Pär Arvidsson) and backstroker (Bengt Baron) had won their respective 100 m events, and their freestyle swimmer (Per Holmertz) had come second in the 100 m, while their lowest ranked swimmer, the breaststroker (Peter Berggren), had come ninth in the 100 m event.
The Australians were regarded as an outside chance for a medal, but were not seen as the main threats, as they were ranked seventh coming into the Olympics out of the 13 competing countries. In the five times the event had been contested, Australia had only won a silver in the inaugural race in Rome, and a bronze medal in Tokyo in 1964. On paper, Australia's team appeared much weaker than those of the other favorites: Peter Evans was the only individual medalist in the distance, claiming bronze in the 100 m breaststroke, while Neil Brooks, the freestyler, and Mark Kerry, the backstroker, had been eliminated in their respective semifinals, and Mark Tonelli was swimming as a makeshift butterflyer.
## Competition
### Heats
The medley relay was scheduled in the Olympiski Sports Complex for Thursday, 24 July, the fifth day of swimming competition, with heats from 11 am, and the final from 9 pm. In the morning Sweden was disqualified in the first heat, while Australia and the Soviet Union competed in the second heat. With their superior depth, the home team was able to rest their entire first-choice quartet in the heats, while Australia was only willing to rest Kerry, with Glenn Patching swimming the backstroke leg in his place. The hosts led the Australians from the start and extended their margin over each of the first three legs. Brooks reclaimed 1.34 s on the freestyle leg, but the Australians fell 0.13 s short to come second in their heat. Nevertheless, the Australians qualified in second place overall, as they and the Soviets were almost 2 s faster than the third-placed Hungarians. In any case, the home team, despite resting all of their first-choice quartet, were still faster than the Australians, who had rested only one. The winners of the first heat, Great Britain, had obtained a time slower than even the fourth-place finisher of the second heat, East Germany, and slower than the Soviets' by almost 3 seconds.
### Final
The Australian Evans took the opportunity to attempt to regain the psychological ascendancy from the Briton Goodhew, confronting him privately and stating that "we will win it", before noting that Goodhew was astounded by his posturing. Tonelli, the eldest swimmer in the Australian quartet at the age of 23, convened the team as its de facto leader, and asked his teammates to commit to swimming their legs in a certain time; Kerry vowed to swim the backstroke in 57 s, Evans the breaststroke in 63 s flat, Tonelli the butterfly in 54 s and Brooks promised to anchor the team in 49.8 s, even though he had never gone faster than 51 s in his career. Tonelli named the foursome as the Quietly Confident Quartet, and they exhibited a silent assurance as they lined up for the race. Whereas most of the other teams were "psyching up" in the marshalling area, the Australians were remaining light-hearted, convinced that they could perform in the final.
Kerry led off the Australian team in a faster time than he had clocked in the individual event, but it was still two seconds slower than his personal best time. Kerry finished in a time of 57.87 s, leaving Australia in fourth place at the end of the first leg. Kuznetsov gave the Soviets the lead with a leadoff leg of 56.81 s with Hungary and Great Britain in second and third place. France was last to reach the 100 m mark, posting a time of 58.84 s. Evans then swam a personal best of 63.01 s, the fastest split among the breaststrokers by 0.63 s. His leg moved Australia into second place at the halfway mark, just 0.45 s behind the hosts and roughly half a second ahead of the British and the Hungarians. The remainder of the teams had been dropped, with a two-second gap back to the fifth-placed East Germans. Tonelli then swam his leg in 54.94 s, almost two seconds faster than he had done over the distance. Tonelli began to lose ground in the last 50 m and was a body length behind until a late surge brought him to within a metre by the end of his leg. Tonelli's butterfly leg was such that if he had swum the same time in the individual event, he would have claimed the silver medal. Although he lost 0.36 s to Seredin, he had minimised his loss and Australia were within 0.81 s going into the final leg. Furthermore, the Australians were now more than a second clear of the third placed Great Britain.
Brooks then made a powerful, well-timed dive and surfaced almost even with his Soviet counterpart Kopliakov. He had drawn level halfway through his leg and made a superior turn to take the lead as they headed home. The Soviet freestyler pulled level with 25 m to go before Brooks sprinted away again to seal an Australian victory by 0.22 s. He did not breathe in the last ten metres, and claimed to be laughing for the final five metres, confident that his opponent could not pass him. Brooks had finished his leg in 49.86 s as he had vowed to his teammates. In doing so, he recorded the fastest freestyle split in the relay, even faster than the individual 100 m freestyle gold medallist, Jörg Woithe of East Germany.
## Aftermath
The time of 3 m 45.70 s sealed Australia's first ever win in a medley relay at the Olympics, for men or women, and it still remains the only time that the United States did not win the men's event. After the race, the team made a celebratory dive into the water and performed a poolside interview. Tonelli remarked that "I was totally stunned. After all the hassle, and my being the athletes' mouthpiece, we'd come through and done it". Australia's women's captain Lisa Forrest hailed the win as "a gold medal that should never have been". Evans said of the relay, "It was unbelievable, but it was all so logical. I was so deliriously happy that I couldn't stop talking," as Brooks dedicated his win to his mother, who had died from cancer the previous Christmas.
Upon returning to Australia, Evans and Brooks were raucously received in their hometown of Perth. They were denied a civic reception by the Lord Mayor of Perth, Fred Chaney, because of his stance on Afghanistan, but the Mayor of Fremantle, Bill McKenzie, hosted one instead. Evans also received congratulations from Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser. After being greeted as a hero, Brooks considered retiring as he felt that his gold had diminished his hunger for further success.
The quartet did not compete again as a unit following the Moscow Olympics, as Tonelli retired from swimming immediately after the Games. Australia came third in the 1984 Olympics in the medley relay as the Americans returned to the Olympic fold, with only Evans and Kerry of the original four swimming in the final, while Brooks swam in the heats. Evans and Kerry both retired after the 1984 Olympics, and after Brooks retired in 1986, the last of the Quietly Confident Quartet had departed the Australian swimming scene.
## Records
Prior to this competition, the existing world and Olympic records were as follows.
## Results
### Heats
### Final
|
4,457,806 |
Born on the Fourth of July (film)
| 1,169,582,892 |
1989 film by Oliver Stone
|
[
"1980s American films",
"1980s English-language films",
"1980s biographical drama films",
"1980s war films",
"1989 drama films",
"1989 films",
"American biographical drama films",
"American war drama films",
"Anti-war films about the Vietnam War",
"Best Drama Picture Golden Globe winners",
"Drama films based on actual events",
"Films about activists",
"Films about disability in the United States",
"Films about paraplegics or quadriplegics",
"Films about post-traumatic stress disorder",
"Films about the United States Army",
"Films about the United States Marine Corps",
"Films about the United States Navy",
"Films about veterans",
"Films based on autobiographies",
"Films directed by Oliver Stone",
"Films featuring a Best Drama Actor Golden Globe winning performance",
"Films produced by Oliver Stone",
"Films scored by John Williams",
"Films set in the 1960s",
"Films set in the 1970s",
"Films shot in Dallas",
"Films shot in the Philippines",
"Films whose director won the Best Directing Academy Award",
"Films whose director won the Best Director Golden Globe",
"Films whose editor won the Best Film Editing Academy Award",
"Films with screenplays by Oliver Stone",
"Independence Day (United States) films",
"Universal Pictures films",
"Vietnam War films",
"War films based on actual events"
] |
Born on the Fourth of July is a 1989 American biographical anti-war drama film that is based on the 1976 autobiography of Ron Kovic. Directed by Oliver Stone, and written by Stone and Kovic, it stars Tom Cruise, Kyra Sedgwick, Raymond J. Barry, Jerry Levine, Frank Whaley, and Willem Dafoe. The film depicts the life of Kovic (Cruise) over a 20-year period, detailing his childhood, his military service and paralysis during the Vietnam War, and his transition to anti-war activism. It is the second installment in Stone's trilogy of films about the Vietnam War, following Platoon (1986) and preceding Heaven & Earth (1993).
Producer Martin Bregman acquired the film rights to the book in 1976 and hired Stone, also a Vietnam veteran, to co-write the screenplay with Kovic, who would be played by Al Pacino. When Stone optioned the book in 1978, the film adaptation became mired in development hell after Pacino and Bregman left, which resulted in him and Kovic putting the film on hold. After the release of Platoon, the project was revived at Universal Pictures, with Stone attached to direct. Shot on locations in the Philippines, Texas and Inglewood, California, principal photography took place from October 1988 to December, lasting 65 days of filming. The film went over its initial \$14 million production budget and ended up costing \$17.8 million after reshoots.
Upon release, Born on the Fourth of July was praised by critics for its story, Cruise's performance and Stone's direction. The film was successful at the box office as it grossed over \$162 million worldwide, becoming the tenth highest-grossing film of 1989. At the 62nd Academy Awards, it received eight nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Cruise, his first nomination, and the film won for Best Director, Stone's second in that category, and Best Film Editing. The film also won four Golden Globe Awards for Best Motion Picture – Drama, Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama, Best Director and Best Screenplay.
## Plot
In 1956 Massapequa, New York, 10-year-old Ron Kovic is playing with his friends in a forest. On his Fourth of July birthday, he attends an Independence Day parade with his family and best friend Donna. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy's televised inaugural address inspires a teenage Kovic to join the United States Marine Corps. After attending an impassioned lecture by two Marine recruiters visiting his high school, he enlists. His decision receives support from his mother, but upsets his father, a World War II veteran who lost many of his friends to the war. Kovic goes to his prom, dances with Donna and kisses her before leaving for recruit training.
In October 1967, Kovic is now a Marine sergeant on a reconnaissance mission in Vietnam, during his second tour of duty. He and his unit kill a number of Vietnamese villagers after mistaking them for enemy combatants. After encountering enemy fire, they flee the village and abandon its sole survivor, a crying baby. During the retreat, Kovic accidentally kills Wilson, a young private in his platoon. He reports the action to his superior, who ignores the claim and advises him not to say anything else. In January 1968, Kovic is critically wounded during a firefight, but is rescued by a fellow Marine. Paralyzed from the mid-chest down, he spends several months in recovery at the Bronx Veterans Hospital in New York. Conditions in the underfunded and understaffed hospital are poor; the doctors, nurses and orderlies ignore patients, abuse drugs, and operate using old equipment. Against his doctors' requests, Kovic desperately tries to walk again with the use of braces and crutches, only to severely injure one of his legs, nearly requiring its amputation.
In 1969, Kovic, now permanently using a wheelchair, returns home and turns to alcohol to cope with his growing depression and disillusionment. During an Independence Day parade, he is asked to give a speech, but is unable to finish after he hears a crying baby in the crowd, triggering a flashback to Vietnam. Kovic visits Donna in Syracuse, New York, where the two reminisce. While attending a vigil for the victims of the Kent State shootings, they are separated when Donna and other protestors are arrested by police.
In Massapequa, a drunken Kovic has a heated argument with his mother, and his father decides to send him to Villa Dulce, a Mexican haven for wounded Vietnam veterans. He has his first sexual encounter with a prostitute, whom he falls for until he sees her with another customer. Kovic befriends Charlie, another paraplegic, and the two decide to travel to another village after getting kicked out of a bar. After annoying their taxicab driver, they are stranded on the side of the road, and an argument turns into a fight. They are picked up by a passing motorist who takes them back to Villa Dulce.
Kovic travels to Armstrong, Texas, where he locates Wilson's tombstone. He then visits the fallen Marine's family in Georgia to confess his guilt. Wilson's widow Jamie expresses that she is unable to forgive Kovic, while his parents are more sympathetic. In 1972, Kovic joins the organization Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and travels to the Republican National Convention in Miami, Florida. As Richard Nixon is giving an acceptance speech for his presidential nomination, Kovic expresses to a news reporter his hatred for the war and the government for abandoning the American people. His comments enrage Nixon's supporters, and his interview is cut short when police attempt to remove and arrest him and other protestors. Kovic and the veterans manage to break free from the officers, regroup, and charge the hall again, though not successfully. In 1976, Kovic delivers a public address at the Democratic National Convention in New York City, following the publication of his autobiography.
## Cast
- Tom Cruise as Sergeant Ron Kovic
- Bryan Larkin as Young Ron
- Willem Dafoe as Charlie
- Kyra Sedgwick as Donna
- Jessica Prunell as Young Donna
- Raymond J. Barry as Mr. Kovic
- Jerry Levine as Steve Boyer
- Frank Whaley as Timmy
- Caroline Kava as Mrs. Kovic
- Cordelia Gonzalez as Maria Elena - Villa Dulce
- Ed Lauter as Legion Commander
- John Getz as Marine Major - Vietnam
- Beau Starr as Man \#2 - Arthur's Bar
- Michael Wincott as Vet \#3 - Villa Dulce
- Edith Díaz as Madame - Villa Dulce
- Richard Grusin as Coach - Massapequa
- Stephen Baldwin as Billy Vorsovich
- Bob Gunton as Doctor \#1 - Veterans Hospital
- Vivica Fox as Hooker
- Jason Gedrick as Martinez - Vietnam
- Richard Panebianco as Joey Walsh
- Anne Bobby as Susanne Kovic
- David Warshofsky as Lieutenant - Vietnam
- Reg E. Cathey as Speaker - Syracuse
- Josh Evans as Tommy Kovic
- Bruce MacVittie as Patient \#2 - Veterans Hospital
- Lili Taylor as Jamie Wilson
- David Herman as Patient \#1 - Veterans Hospital
- Andrew Lauer as Vet \#2 - Villa Dulce
- Tom Sizemore as Vet \#1 - Villa Dulce
- Bryan Larkin as Young Ron
- John C. McGinley as Official \#1 - Democratic Convention (Pushing Kovic's Wheelchair)
- Wayne Knight as Official \#2 - Democratic Convention
- Tom Berenger as Gunnery Sergeant Hayes - Marine Recruiter
- Richard Haus as Marine Sergeant - 2nd Recruiter
- Mark Moses as Optimistic Doctor
- Holly Marie Combs as Jenny
In addition, decorated Marine and Vietnam War veteran Dale Dye appears as an infantry colonel (being interviewed by a TV reporter played by Oliver Stone), Chicago Seven anti-war protester Abbie Hoffman appears as a student strike organizer at Syracuse University, and singer Edie Brickell appears as a folksinger in Syracuse. Hoffman died before the film was released, with an "In Memoriam" in his honor shown in the closing credits.
## Production
### Development
Al Pacino expressed interest in portraying Ron Kovic after watching the Vietnam veteran's televised appearance at the 1976 Democratic National Convention and reading his autobiography. He also turned down starring roles in the Vietnam War-themed films Coming Home (1978) and Apocalypse Now (1979), the former for which Kovic would act as a consultant. Kovic met with Pacino in New York, where they discussed adapting the book to film. In September 1976, Pacino's manager, producer Martin Bregman, contacted Kovic's agent and entered into negotiations for the film rights. The following October, Bregman's production company Artists Entertainment Complex acquired the rights for \$150,000. Filming was scheduled to begin in June 1977 with Paramount Pictures acting as distributor, but the project fell apart. Bregman and Pacino were unhappy with the script, and the studio dropped the film.
In 1977, Bregman hired Oliver Stone, also a Vietnam veteran, to help write the screenplay. At the time, Stone had been developing Platoon (1986), and an unproduced sequel script titled Second Life, that was inspired by his own life after the war. He and Kovic bonded over their experiences during the war, and they began work on a new script in 1978 after Stone optioned the book. Stone also discussed the adaptation with William Friedkin, who turned down an opportunity to direct in favor of The Brink's Job (1978). After Bregman secured financing from German investors, the film briefly continued development at United Artists before moving to Orion Pictures. Daniel Petrie was hired to direct, but several weeks before rehearsals, the investors withdrew from funding the film. After the project moved to Universal Pictures, Bregman and Pacino left the film. Bregman deemed the project impossible, and felt it would be overshadowed by the success of Coming Home. Stone and Kovic grew frustrated with the troubled pre-production and dropped the project, though Stone expressed his hope to return and make the film at a later time. Stone promised Kovic that if his career took off, he would return to Kovic to revive the project. Kovic stated that after the release of Platoon, Stone called Kovic and told him he was ready to return working on the film.
In April 1987, John Daly, chairman and CEO of the English-based Hemdale Film Corporation, announced that it was producing the film, which would act as a sequel to Platoon. The studio entered into negotiations to finance the film in May 1988 with a \$20 million budget, but it later withdrew from funding the film. Stone was announced as director in June 1988, and his Ixtlan Productions banner was enlisted as a production company. Tom Pollock, president of Universal Pictures, read the script as Stone was developing Wall Street (1987), and the studio allocated a \$14 million budget on the condition that a major star appears in the lead role. Stone and Kovic then revised the script, adding the latter's appearance at the 1976 Democratic National Convention.
### Casting
Sean Penn, Charlie Sheen and Nicolas Cage were among those considered by Stone to portray Kovic. In 1987, Stone's agent Paula Wagner had shown Platoon to Tom Cruise, after he had expressed interest in working with the director. Cruise met with Stone to discuss the role in January 1988. The studio was concerned over the prospects of Cruise appearing as a dramatic film lead. Stone, in particular, had dismissed his previous film Top Gun (1986) as a "fascist movie", but expressed that he was drawn to the actor's "Golden Boy" image. "I saw this kid who has everything," he stated. "And I wondered what would happen if tragedy strikes, if fortune denies him ... I thought it was an interesting proposition: What would happen to Tom Cruise if something goes wrong?" Kovic was also wary of Cruise's casting, but relented when the actor visited him at his home in Massapequa, New York.
Cruise spent one year preparing for the role. He visited several veterans' hospitals, read various books on the Vietnam War and practiced riding in a wheelchair. At one point during pre-production, Stone suggested that Cruise be injected with a chemical drug that would render him paralyzed for two days; the director believed that the drug would help him realistically portray the difficulties of being a paraplegic. The insurance company responsible for the film vetoed the idea, believing that the drug would cause permanent incapacitation. Kovic visited the production daily and would often participate in rehearsals with Cruise. Kovic also appears in the film as a World War II veteran at an Independence Day parade who flinches in response to exploding firecrackers, a reflex that Cruise's character develops later in the film. On July 3, 1989, following the end of reshoots, Kovic gave Cruise his Bronze Star Medal as a birthday present and in praise of his commitment to the role.
Casting directors Risa Bramon Garcia and Billy Hopkins sought more than 200 actors for various speaking roles. They auditioned 2,000 child actors in Massapequa and hired 8,000 extras for scenes shot in Dallas, Texas. For the Fourth of July parade sequences, student protests and presidential conventions, the production employed nearly 12,000 people from the National Paralysis Foundation, Campfire Girls and American Legion to appear as extras. The film reunited Stone with several past collaborators who make brief appearances in the film. Tom Berenger, who worked with the director on Platoon, plays Gunnery Sergeant Hayes, a Marine recruiter. Michael Wincott, who had a supporting role in Talk Radio (1988), plays a wounded veteran in Mexico. John C. McGinley, in his fourth collaboration with Stone, plays an official at the 1976 Democratic Convention. Mark Moses, who appeared in Platoon as Lieutenant Wolfe, plays an overwhelmed doctor at the VA hospital in the Bronx. Stone himself appears as a skeptical news reporter.
To prepare the actors portraying Marines, military advisor Dale Dye organized one-week training missions, one in the United States, and the other in the Philippines where the battle sequences were to be filmed. Abbie Hoffman, a Yippie activist, acted as a consultant who educated the cast about the peace movement. He also makes an appearance as a protestor in Syracuse, New York. The film is dedicated to Hoffman, who died on April 12, 1989.
### Filming
Principal photography was scheduled to begin in September 1988, but did not commence until mid-October of that year. Studio executive Pollock planned an initial budget of \$14 million, but the film went over budget. The high production costs prompted Stone and Cruise to waive their salaries and instead receive a percentage of the box office gross. The final production cost of the film was \$17.8 million. The film was cinematographer Robert Richardson's fifth collaboration with Stone, and their first to be shot in the anamorphic format. Richardson shot the film using Panavision cameras and lenses, and primarily utilized 35 mm film stocks; 16 mm and Super 16 mm stocks were also used to film the scene of Kovic demonstrating at the 1972 Republican National Convention, blended with archive footage of the actual event.
Filming began in Dallas, Texas, for scenes set in the United States. The Elmwood neighborhood of Oak Cliff doubled for Massapequa. The Kimball High School band and staff appeared in the parade scenes and the dramatic prom scene featuring Sedgwick and Cruise. The Dallas Convention Center was used to re-create the 1972 Republican National Convention in Miami, Florida. The filmmakers also shot scenes at the Parkland Memorial Hospital, which stood in for the Bronx Veterans Hospital in New York. They also filmed on soundstages at Las Colinas Studios in Irving, Texas. The Philippines stood in for scenes set in Vietnam and Mexico. Stone originally wanted to shoot on location in Vietnam but was unable to do so, due to unresolved conflicts between that country and the United States. Principal photography wrapped in December 1988, after 65 days of filming.
After viewing a rough cut of the film, Universal demanded that the ending, which depicted Kovic's appearance at the 1976 Democratic National Convention, be reshot. The original scene was shot in Dallas, with 600 extras, but the studio was dissatisfied with the filmed footage, and requested that Stone make it "bigger and better". The scene was reshot in July 1989 at The Forum arena in Inglewood, California. Filming lasted one day, with 6,000 extras. The reshoot ended up costing \$500,000.
### Music
The score was produced, composed and conducted by John Williams, who agreed to work on the film after viewing a rough cut version. Recording sessions took place at 20th Century Fox Studios in Los Angeles, California. Timothy Morrison, a member of the Boston Pops Orchestra, acted as a trumpeter. Williams stated, "I knew immediately I would want a string orchestra to sing in opposition to all the realism on the screen, and then the idea came to have a solo trumpet – not a military trumpet, but an American trumpet, to recall the happy youth of [Kovic]." The motion picture soundtrack album was released on December 19, 1989, by MCA Records. In addition to Williams's score, it features eight songs that appear in the film. AllMusic's Tavia Hobbart wrote that the score "literally haunts you as you watch the movie. It's just as effective here." Stephen Holden of The New York Times stated, "Mr. Williams's themes are melodically strong enough so that one could imagine them being developed into a full-blown symphonic poem."
## Release
Universal gave the film a platform release which involved showing it in select cities before expanding distribution in the following weeks. To qualify the film for awards consideration, the studio issued a limited theatrical run in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Toronto on December 20, 1989. The film was released across North America on January 5, 1990, playing at 1,310 theaters, and expanding to 1,434 theaters by its eleventh week. A heavily edited version of the film was scheduled for broadcast on CBS in early 1991, but was shelved by the network's executives due to the impending Persian Gulf War. The film had its network premiere on January 21, 1992.
### Box office
The film grossed \$172,021 on its first week of limited release, an average of \$34,404 per theatre. More theatres were added on the following weekend, and it grossed a further \$61,529 in its second weekend, with an overall gross of \$937,946. On its third weekend, the film entered wide release, grossing \$11,023,650 and securing the number one position at the North American box office. The film fell 27.2% the following week, grossing an additional \$8,028,075 while remaining first in the top-ten rankings. On its fifth weekend, it earned an additional \$6,228,360 for an overall gross of \$32,607,294.
The film grossed \$4,640,940 in its sixth weekend, dropping to second place behind Driving Miss Daisy. The following weekend, it moved to third place, earning an additional \$4,012,085. On its eighth weekend, it had dropped to fourth place and earned \$3,004,400. It stayed in fifth place for the next three weekends, and by March 4, 1990, the film had an overall gross of \$59,673,354.
The film grossed \$70,001,698 in North America (\$151,650,800 when adjusted for inflation), and \$91 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of \$162,001,698. In the United States and Canada, it was the seventeenth highest-grossing film of 1989. Worldwide, it was the tenth highest-grossing film of 1989, as well as Universal's second highest-grossing film released that year, behind Back to the Future Part II.
### Home media
The film was released on VHS on August 9, 1990, and DVD on October 31, 2000. On January 16, 2001, it was again released on DVD as a part of the "Oliver Stone Collection", a box set of films directed by Stone. Special features include an audio commentary by Stone, production notes, and cast and crew profiles. A Special Edition DVD was released on October 5, 2010, containing the film, the commentary by Stone, as well as archive news footage from NBC News. The film was released on HD DVD on June 12, 2007, and on Blu-ray on July 3, 2012. The Blu-ray presents the film in 1080p high definition, and contains all the additional materials found on the Special Edition DVD.
## Reception
### Critical response
Based on 55 reviews, the film holds a score of 85% on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 7.50/10. The website's consensus reads, "Led by an unforgettable performance from Tom Cruise, Born on the Fourth of July finds director Oliver Stone tackling thought-provoking subject matter with ambitious élan." Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 75 out of 100 based on reviews from 16 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.
David Denby of New York magazine, stated that the film was "a relentless but often powerful and heartbreaking piece of work, dominated by Tom Cruise's impassioned performance." Richard Corliss of Time, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune and Peter Travers of Rolling Stone also commended Cruise's performance. Vincent Canby of The New York Times said the film was "the most ambitious nondocumentary film yet made about the entire Vietnam experience." Janet Maslin, also writing for The New York Times, praised Stone's direction, writing that he "reaches out instantly to his audience's gut-level emotions and sustains a walloping impact for two and a half hours." Internet reviewer James Berardinelli felt that the film's greatest accomplishment was "its contrasting of the glorious illusion of war as seen from thousands of miles away to the barbarity of it up-close."
The Washington Post published two negative reviews; Hal Hinson called the film "alienating", while Desson Howe was critical of Cruise's "whiny" performance. Sheila Benson of the Los Angeles Times felt that the actor's portrayal of Kovic was lacking in character development. Jonathan Rosenbaum derided the storytelling for "brimming with false uplift", and Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly called the film "2 1/2 hours of self-righteousness masquerading as art." Pauline Kael of The New Yorker wrote, "It's almost inconceivable that Ron Kovic was as innocent as the movie and the 1976 autobiography on which it's based make him out to be ... Kovic's book is simple and explicit; he states his case in plain, angry words. Stone's movie yells at you for two hours and twenty-five minutes."
The film also received criticism for its dramatization of actual events, prompted by Kovic's declared decision to run for Congress as a Democratic opponent to Californian Republican Robert Dornan in the 38th congressional district. As a result, Born on the Fourth of July became Stone's first film to be publicly attacked in the media. Dornan criticized the film for portraying Kovic as "[being] in a panic and mistakenly shooting his corporal to death in Vietnam, visiting prostitutes, abusing drugs and alcohol and cruelly insulting his parents". Kovic dismissed his comments as being part of a "hatred campaign", and ultimately did not run for election.
In an article for the New York Post, former White House Communications Director Pat Buchanan criticized the adaptation for deviating from the book, and concluded by calling Stone a "propagandist". Democratic State Senator Nancy Larraine Hoffmann, who took part in Syracuse University's 1970 peaceful protest of the Cambodian Campaign, was critical of the film's depiction of Syracuse police as "faceless people brutalizing peaceful protesters". Following the film's wide release in January 1990, Stone wrote a letter apologizing to the city of Syracuse and its police officials.
### Accolades
The film received various awards and nominations, with particular recognition for the screenplay, Cruise's performance, Stone's direction and the score by John Williams. The National Board of Review named it one of the "Top 10 Films of 1989", ranking it at number one. The film received five Golden Globe Award nominations and won four for Best Motion Picture – Drama, Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama, Best Director and Best Screenplay, while Williams was nominated for Best Original Score.
In February 1990, the film competed for the Golden Bear at the 40th Berlin International Film Festival, but lost to the American film Music Box (1990) and Czech film Larks on a String (1969). That same month, the film garnered eight Academy Awards nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor; its closest rival was Driving Miss Daisy, which received nine nominations. At the 62nd Oscars, Stone won a second Academy Award for Best Director; he had previously won the award for Platoon. The film also won the Academy Award for Best Film Editing; Driving Miss Daisy, The Bear, Glory and The Fabulous Baker Boys had also been nominated in that category. At the 44th British Academy Film Awards in 1991, the film received two nominations for Best Actor in a Leading Role and Best Adapted Screenplay, but did not win in either category.
On May 10, 2021, Cruise returned all three of his Golden Globe awards to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association due to controversy in its lack of diversity among its membership, including his Best Actor award for this film.
## See also
- Platoon, the first installment in Oliver Stone's Vietnam War trilogy
- Heaven & Earth, the third installment in Stone's Vietnam War trilogy
- Casualties of War, another 1989 film set during the Vietnam War, based on the 1966 incident on Hill 192
- Vietnam War in film
- United States–Vietnam relations
|
26,056,854 |
Nepal at the 2010 Winter Olympics
| 1,152,810,684 | null |
[
"2010 in Nepalese sport",
"Nations at the 2010 Winter Olympics",
"Nepal at the Winter Olympics by year"
] |
Nepal sent a delegation to compete at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada from 12 to 28 February 2010. The delegation consisted of a single cross-country skier, Dachhiri Sherpa. Sherpa finished 92nd in his only event, the 15 kilometre freestyle
## Background
Nepal first participated in Olympic competition at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. The nation did not take part in the next Summer Olympics, but have participated in every Summer Games since the 1972 edition. Nepal did not enter the Winter Olympic Games until the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, they again took part in the Turin Olympics four years later. Dachhiri Sherpa was the only Nepalese athlete to participate in Vancouver, just as he had been in Turin. Sherpa was chosen as the flag bearer for both the opening ceremony and the closing ceremony.
## Cross-country skiing
Sherpa was 40 years old at the time of the Vancouver Olympics, and had taken up skiing at the age of 33. His only event was the 15 kilometre freestyle held on 15 February; Sherpa posted a time of 44 minutes and 26 seconds, finishing nearly 11 minutes behind gold medal time. He finished in 92nd position out of 95 competitors.
## See also
- Nepal at the 2010 Asian Games
- Nepal at the 2010 Summer Youth Olympics
|
3,718,188 |
What Took You So Long?
| 1,170,867,501 |
2001 single by Emma Bunton
|
[
"2001 debut singles",
"2001 songs",
"British pop rock songs",
"Emma Bunton songs",
"Number-one singles in New Zealand",
"Number-one singles in Scotland",
"Songs written by Emma Bunton",
"Songs written by John Themis",
"Songs written by Julian Gallagher",
"Songs written by Martin Harrington",
"Songs written by Richard Stannard (songwriter)",
"UK Singles Chart number-one singles",
"Virgin Records singles"
] |
"What Took You So Long?" is the debut solo single of English singer Emma Bunton from her debut solo studio album, A Girl Like Me (2001). The song was written by Bunton, Richard Stannard, Julian Gallagher, Martin Harrington, John Themis and Dave Morgan, and produced by Stannard and Gallagher in Biffco Studios in Dublin, Ireland. It was released as the album's lead single in the United Kingdom on 2 April 2001. A pop rock song, its sound is influenced by the work of AOR artists such as Sheryl Crow, Gabrielle, and the band Texas. For the lyrics, Bunton explained that the song is about men taking longer than women to realise they are in love, a concept inspired by her past romantic relationships. The song received mixed to positive reviews from music critics, with many of them praising the melody and Bunton's vocal delivery, while others were critical of its production.
The song topped the UK Singles Chart for two weeks, becoming Bunton's first and only number-one, making her the fourth member of the Spice Girls to top the chart with a solo record. "What Took You So Long?" attracted moderate success in Europe and Oceania, topping the chart in New Zealand and peaking inside the top 10 in the charts of Australia, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Romania. An accompanying music video, directed by Gregg Masuak, was shot in mid-February 2001 at the Mojave Desert near Lancaster, California. The song's promotional campaign included a series of appearances on television programmes and festivals worldwide, and it has since been regularly included on the setlists in most of her concerts and presentations.
## Background and development
After finishing the Spiceworld Tour in September 1998 and releasing their single "Goodbye" in December, the Spice Girls went into a hiatus period, during which the members of the group launched their solo careers and focused on their personal lives. The group resumed work on their third studio album in August 1999. Unlike her bandmates, Bunton displayed little desire to launch a music career outside of the Spice Girls, but by the end of 1999, she decided to accept an offer to collaborate with English electronic dance music duo Tin Tin Out on a cover version of Edie Brickell & New Bohemians's song "What I Am" (1988), which was released in the UK on 1 November 1999. In December, the Spice Girls performed on their UK-only tour, Christmas in Spiceworld, in London and Manchester, also showcasing songs from Forever.
The recording process for Bunton's first solo studio album A Girl Like Me took place between late 1999 and October 2000 at recording studios in London, Dublin, Stockholm, Miami, Los Angeles and New York. She worked with a mix of familiar writers and producers from the Spice Girls' recording sessions, including Richard Stannard ("Wannabe") and Rodney Jerkins ("Holler"), as well as new songwriters and record producers, such as Andrew Frampton, the duo Carl Sturken and Evan Rogers, and Rhett Lawrence. In a web chat on the group's official website, she described the sound of A Girl Like Me as a "bit of R&B; quite a lot of guitar and quite folky. It's even got some country on there." Bunton said that the album would likely include 11 or 12 tracks and the release date was planned for the spring of 2001.
## Writing and recording
"What Took You So Long?" started as a backing track on an "in progress" DAT tape in Richard Stannard's Biffco Studio in Dublin, Ireland. The chords were put together by songwriter Martin Harrington, and the track was then used as the basis for a writing session. Stannard explained that the two of them worked in an "organic manner", placing a microphone in the middle of a room, then playing the chords and laying down tracks on top of them, finally singing the first ideas that came up. The melody was composed by singing over the chords, before Stannard wrote some of the lyrics on his hand from watching a film the night before. Because of his professional and personal relationship with Bunton from their previous work during the Spice Girls' sessions, the creative process was fairly simple, he commented: "With that backing track we just got writing straight away and before you knew it the words were done." Bunton finished writing the song with Stannard and songwriter/producer Julian Gallagher, and she commented about the process: "I'm very hands on with lyrics and production, I have to know what's going on. I'm really pleased with it."
The song was captured on a hard disk using Pro Tools with a Logic front end. Recording engineer Ash Howes employed an Avalon microphone amplifier and equalizer for the main vocal chain, then a UREI 1176 for dynamic range compression. For the mixing Howes used a GML Stereo equalizer, and a SSL desk for the stereo bus compressor. To create an acoustic feel, Stannard placed the sound of a Ludwig drumkit on top of a drum machine. Audio engineer Mark "Spike" Stent did the final mixing of the song at The Mix Suite, Olympic Studios in London.
## Composition and lyrics
Musically, "What Took You So Long?" is a pop rock song. It is written in the key of C major, with a time signature set in common time, and moves at a fast tempo of 120 beats per minute. The song uses the sequence F<sub>maj7</sub>–Am–G as the chord progression and is constructed in a verse-chorus form, with a bridge before the third chorus. It starts with an instrumental introduction that incorporates acoustic guitars, keyboards, a drumkit, and a drum machine. The arrangement include the use of handclaps to energise the sound. Some critics have noted the similarities of the song's production to the work of AOR artists such as Sheryl Crow and Texas. The melody has a Motown feel, and has been described by Bunton as "pop entwined with guitars". She cited Texas and Gabrielle as the main influences sonically. Tom Ewing from Freaky Trigger considered Bunton's vocals during the chorus to be her "strength card" that adds "enjoyable touches" to the song; an opinion shared by other writers.
Lyrically, according to Bunton, "What Took You So Long?" is about men taking longer than women to realise they are in love. In an interview with Smash Hits, she was asked if the subject of the song was her partner Jade Jones, the lead singer of the British boy band Damage. She commented, "I've only had a few boyfriends and I think they were all in my mind when I wrote it". In the book 1000 UK Number One Hits, the authors Jon Kutner and Spencer Leigh concluded that the lyrics are "about a girl who is crowing over regaining her lover", pointing out the line "What took you forever to see I'm right?"
## Release and promotion
In mid October 2000, while the Spice Girls were doing promotion for the release of their new single, "Holler", and Forever, Bunton talked about her then-upcoming solo album on the group's website, with a release date targeted for March 2001. In early February 2001, she revealed "What Took You So Long?" as her debut solo single set to be released in April. The song officially premiered via Bunton's newly-launched website on 14 February. Nancy Phillips, who was hired in 1998 to manage the Spice Girls' business affairs, was by early 2001, also in charge of each of the four members' individual projects, including the launch of Bunton's solo album A Girl Like Me and Melanie C's touring schedule in support of her debut album Northern Star (1999).
The promotional campaign for "What Took You So Long?" started in March 2001, but according to Phillips, the release was in danger of been overlooked by the press because of Melanie C's comments in an interview to Reuters, in which she declared not to enjoy working with the Spice Girls anymore. She commented: "We've all been very honest and all wanted to pursue solo careers. We're still linked business-wise and we're still friends, but I don't really consider myself to work as a band now." The media's focus shifted to the end of the group. Aiming to end the press stories, Phillips persuaded Melanie C to set a telephone interview on 10 March to the television programme CD:UK, where Bunton was presenting the song. In the call, she denied leaving the Spice Girls and added: "We're concentrating on solo stuff but no-one has left the band. I've not left the Spice Girls." This lessened the speculation but also prompted Phillips to end her involvement with the group, although she continued to manage the solo careers of Melanie C and Bunton.
An intensive promotional campaign in the UK that lasted a couple of weeks started at the end of March 2001, while the song entered the top 20 of the UK Airplay Chart. Bunton began with a performance at the nightclub G-A-Y and instore presentations alongside signings. She then appeared at CD:UK on 24 March, The Pepsi Chart Show and MTV Select on 29 March, Live & Kicking on 31 March, T4 on 1 April, GMTV on 4 April, and Diggit on 7 April 2001. After the release of A Girl Like Me, Bunton began promotional visits abroad. On 24 April 2001, she did an interview at TV total in Cologne, Germany, then visited Italy, France and Scandinavia. Bunton promoted the song in Singapore during May, and appeared at the television show Patrick Kielty Almost Live in Belfast on 27 July 2001.
"What Took You So Long?" was commercially released in the UK on 2 April 2001, in two single versions. The first one, an enhanced CD, included the song and two different B-sides. The first B-side, "(Hey You) Free Up Your Mind", written by Bunton with fellow Spice Girls group member Melanie C and songwriter-producer Rhett Lawrence, was originally included on the soundtrack of the English-language adaptation of Pokémon: The First Movie (1998), released in November 1999. The second one, "Merry-Go Round", was penned by Bunton with songwriting and production duo Carl Sturken and Evan Rogers. In addition, the CD contains a picture gallery and the song's music video and lyrics. The second version was a cassette single, featuring the song and the two B-sides.
## Critical reception
Upon release, initial reviews of "What Took You So Long?" from critics were mostly positive, many of whom praised the song's melody and Bunton's vocal delivery. Peter Robinson of NME dismissed the R&B direction of Forever and was pleased that she worked with Stannard on the track, labelling it "a solo Spice single which actually sounds like a solo single". Chart Attack's writer Erik Missio had a similar opinion; he praised the song for not sounding like a "Spice cover". In a review of the single, Gary Crossing of Dotmusic considered Bunton's image change a "cynical marketing ploy" but called the song's chorus "irresistible" and lauded it for being a "perfectly fine strummalong pop song". Ian Wade from the same publication, characterized the song as a "Shania-for-the-tweens", singling it out as one of A Girl Like Me's highlights while calling the song a "birrova standout". Smash Hits' Caroline Millington chose it as the issue's single of the fortnight, calling the song a "catchy little number" while describing Bunton's singing as "absolutely lurving". The staff of the Evening Mail described it as "completely inoffensive" and added that the song matched with Bunton's "fragile, little girl vocals". Dale Price of the Drowned in Sound named the song the best solo track released by any of the Spice Girls, commenting that it "comes as a complete bolt from the blue". He described the instrumental introduction as "Chris Isaak making a concerted effort to go pop", and complimented the vocals and the production.
Some reviewers had mixed opinions about the production. Writing for Stylus Magazine, Dom Passantino was critical of the song. He commented that to have a number one, Bunton had to "channel the spirit of Lene Marlin from a mere two years prior"; he disregarded the song as a quick way for her to stay relevant "so nobody forgot her". Graeme Virtue of the Sunday Herald described its sound as "quite melancholy", but praised the song for its catchiness. Tom Ewing from the e-zine Freaky Trigger was mixed on the track. He characterized the song as a "well-performed, pleasant AOR with a sensible heart, Sheryl Crow drawn by Posy Simmonds", but founded it uninteresting, calling the instrumentation "grim" and the production "soggy". Conversely, Cameron Adams of the Herald Sun enjoyed the use of guitars in the instrumentation, calling the song a "great pop tune". Billboard critic Jon O'Brien ranked "What Took You So Long?" third on the magazine's 2018 list of "The Spice Girls' 20 Best Solo Singles"; he called it "one of the simplest" solo Spice Girls singles and considered the production to be "tailor-made for drive-time radio". Lauren Murphy placed it second on Entertainment.ie's 2019 list of "The 10 best Spice Girls solo songs". She enjoyed the song's melody and Bunton's vocals, describing it as "a wistful little pop tune", and she considered the song "stood the test of time".
## Commercial performance
"What Took You So Long?" debuted at the top of the UK Singles Chart, with sales of 76,000 copies. This made Bunton the fourth member of the Spice Girls to top the chart as a solo artist, and also set a record for the group, as they became the act with the most individual members to have their own number one single in the country. It spent two weeks at number one, three weeks inside the top 10, nine weeks in the top 40, and 13 weeks on the chart in total, ending at the 41th position on the 2001 year-end chart. The song was certified silver by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) in the UK in April 2001. As of January 2021, it has sold 295,000 copies in the country.
"What Took You So Long?" was moderately successful in the rest of Europe. It reached number six on the Eurochart Hot 100, peaked inside the top 10 in the singles chart of Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, and Romania, and inside the top 20 in Spain and Sweden. The song performed better on radio across the continent, reaching the third position of the European Radio Top 50 chart, topping the airplay chart in Italy, peaking inside the top 10 in the German-speaking countries, Scandinavia, and the UK; and it further reached the top 20 in France, Hungary and Poland.
The song debuted on the ARIA Singles Chart at number 48 on 22 April 2001 and peaked at number 10 on 1 July. It lasted for 16 weeks on the chart, ended at the 63rd position on the year-end chart, and was certified gold by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) for selling 35,000 units in 2001. The song debuted on the Official New Zealand Music Chart at number 50 on 6 May 2001 and eight weeks later, it topped the chart. The song spent eight weeks in the top 10, 14 inside the top 20, lasted for 22 weeks on the chart, and ended at the 15th position on the year-end chart for 2001.
## Music video
The music video for "What Took You So Long?" was directed by Gregg Masuak, who previously worked with Bunton on the video for "What I Am"–her 1999 collaboration with Tin Tin Out, as well as the Spice Girls' videos for "Who Do You Think You Are" (1997) and "Let Love Lead the Way" (2000). It was filmed in mid-February 2001 in the Mojave Desert near Lancaster, California. Bunton described the video as "very natural", and in an interview, she commented about the concept: "I knew I wanted the video to be quite 'deserty', waiting on the side of the road, what took him so long kind of thing."
The video starts with Bunton walking down an empty road through the desert, dressed in a long coat while carrying a suitcase, presumably waiting for her love interest to arrive. It is implied that a few days go by, as the video alternates between scenes showing her bowling with glass bottles, standing outside an abandoned cottage, starting a campfire during the night, and playing with butterflies and dogs that resemble wolves. Towards the end of the clip, a man appears driving a pickup truck, with Bunton seducing him and getting on. At the end, as they are driving, she throws him out of the truck in the middle of the desert and waves goodbye to him.
## Live performances
Bunton has performed "What Took You So Long?" many times on British television, including shows such as CD:UK and Live & Kicking. Through the years, the song has been part of the setlists in most of her concerts and presentations. While promoting the single and A Girl Like Me in late April 2001, Bunton performed it for Sveriges Radio P3's Ketchup Party in Stockholm, Sweden; and for The Voice radio station at Park Café in Copenhagen, Denmark. In June, she delivered a performance at the 2001 Festivalbar held in Padua, Italy.
Throughout the summer of 2001, Bunton made several presentations at festivals across the UK. She performed the song on 9 June at Power in the Park in Southampton, on 24 June at BBC Radio 1's One Big Sunday in Manchester, on 8 July at Party in the Park in London, and 9 August at the Ashton Court Festival in Bristol. In November 2001, she performed it at the Rumba Festival in Melbourne and Sydney in Australia.
On 6 December 2019, Bunton delivered her first solo show in over a decade at the Royal Albert Hall in London. The concert was a special one-off Christmas show that featured her performing well known Christmas covers, Spice Girls' songs, as well as many of her solo hits, including "What Took You So Long?".
## Formats and track listings
UK, Australian, European, and Thai CD
1. "What Took You So Long?" – 3:59
2. "(Hey You) Free Up Your Mind" – 3:21
3. "Merry-Go Round" – 3:54
4. "What Took You So Long?" (Video)
European 2-track and French CD
1. "What Took You So Long?" – 3:59
2. "Merry-Go Round" – 3:54
UK and New Zealand cassette (Side 2 is the same as Side 1)
1. "What Took You So Long?" – 3:59
2. "(Hey You) Free Up Your Mind" – 3:21
3. "Merry-Go Round" – 3:54
## Credits and personnel
Credits of "What Took You So Long?" are adapted from the booklet of A Girl Like Me:
- Emma Bunton – lyrics, vocals
- Richard Stannard – lyrics, production
- Julian Gallagher – lyrics, production
- Martin Harrington – lyrics
- John Themis – lyrics
- Dave Morgan – lyrics
- Ash Howes – programming, recording engineer
- Alvin Sweeney – additional recording, Pro Tools
- Mark "Spike" Stent – audio mixing
- Jan 'Stan' Kybert – mix engineering, Pro Tools
- Matt Fields – mix assistance
Credits of the B-sides, interactive element and artwork are adapted from the liner notes of the "What Took You So Long?" UK CD single:
"(Hey You) Free Up Your Mind"
- Emma Bunton – lyrics, vocals
- Melanie C – lyrics
- Rhett Lawrence – lyrics, production, audio mixing
- Dave Pensado – audio mixing
Interactive Video
- Abbey Road Interactive – enhanced element
"Merry-Go Round"
- Emma Bunton – lyrics, vocals
- Evan Rogers – lyrics, production, audio mixing
- Carl Sturken – lyrics, production, audio mixing
Artwork
- Terry Richardson – photography
- Ian Ross for BSS – design
## Charts
### Weekly charts
### Year-end charts
## Certifications and sales
|
7,701,000 |
2007 Major League Baseball All-Star Game
| 1,161,184,293 |
78th MLB midseason exhibition
|
[
"2007 Major League Baseball season",
"2007 in San Francisco",
"2007 in sports in California",
"Baseball competitions in San Francisco",
"July 2007 sports events in the United States",
"Major League Baseball All-Star Game"
] |
The 2007 Major League Baseball All-Star Game was the 78th midseason exhibition between the all-stars of the American League (AL) and the National League (NL), the two leagues comprising Major League Baseball. The game was held on July 10, 2007, at AT&T Park, the home of the NL's San Francisco Giants. It marked the third time that the Giants hosted the All Star Game since moving to San Francisco for the 1958 season. The 1961 and 1984 All Star Games were played at the Giants former home Candlestick Park, and the fourth overall in the Bay Area, with the Giants bay area rivals the Oakland Athletics hosting once back in 1987, and the second straight held in an NL ballpark.
The American League defeated the National League by a score of 5–4. Ichiro Suzuki won the MVP award for the game for hitting the first inside-the-park home run in All-Star history. As per the 2006 Collective Bargaining Agreement, the American League champion (which eventually came to be the Boston Red Sox) received home field advantage in the 2007 World Series. The victory was the 10th consecutive (excluding the 2002 tie) for the AL, and their 11-game unbeaten streak is only beaten by the NL's 11-game winning streak from 1972 to 1982 in All-Star history.
## Background
As with each All-Star Game since 1970, the eight starting position players (with no designated hitter due to playing in an NL stadium) of each league were elected by fan balloting. The remaining players were selected by a players' vote, each league's team manager, and a second fan balloting to add one more player to each roster. In all, 32 players were selected to each league's team, not including players who decline to play due to injuries or personal reasons.
The Giants were awarded the game on February 9, 2005. The game marked the first time since 1962 that one league hosted consecutive All-Star Games, after Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, hosted the game in 2006.
The game was the fifth straight All-Star Game to decide home-field advantage in the World Series. The AL entered the game on a ten-game unbeaten streak (nine wins, with one tie in 2002). The NL was looking for their first win since the 1996 game in Philadelphia.
## Fan balloting
### Starters
Balloting for the 2007 All-Star Game starters (excluding pitchers) began on April 27 and continued through June 28. The top vote-getters at each position and the top three among outfielders are named the starters for their respective leagues. The results were announced on July 1. About 18.5 million votes were cast by close to 12 million fans. Alex Rodriguez was the leading vote-getter with 3,890,515 votes, easily outpacing his Yankees teammate Derek Jeter by over 700,000 votes. Ken Griffey Jr., was the top vote-getter in the National League, with 2,986,818 votes.
### Final roster spot
After the rosters were announced, a second round of fan voting, the Monster All-Star Final Vote, was commenced to determine the occupant of the final roster spot for each team. This round lasted until July 5. Chris Young and Hideki Okajima were elected to represent the National League and American League, respectively, in the All-Star Game as first time All-Stars. All ten players included in the balloting were pitchers, a first for the event.
## Rosters
Players in italics have since been inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
### American League
### National League
These players did not see action in the game.
Voted onto the roster through the All-Star Final Vote.
Unable to play due to injury. Brandon Webb took his roster spot.
Unable to play due to injury. Roy Oswalt took his roster spot.
## Managers
National League: Tony La Russa
American League: Jim Leyland
## Game
O Canada was played by members of the San Francisco Symphony. The Star-Spangled Banner was sung by Chris Isaak. Before the game, there was a tribute to former San Francisco Giants slugger Willie Mays. Mays threw the ceremonial first pitch to New York Mets shortstop José Reyes. Paula Cole sang God Bless America during the seventh-inning stretch. The first pitch was thrown by the National League's starter, Jake Peavy at 8:54 EDT The game was completed in 3 hours, 6 minutes under an overcast sky and a gametime temperature of 68 °F (20 °C).
### Umpires
Umpires for the game were announced on June 14. Bruce Froemming, the most tenured current umpire in Major League Baseball, was named crew chief for the game. It was also revealed that day that Froemming would retire following the 2007 season.
### Starting lineups
### Game summary
The National League got things started in the bottom of the first when José Reyes led off with a base hit off American League starter Dan Haren and proceeded to steal second. He scored on an RBI single by Ken Griffey Jr. to give the NL a 1–0 lead. Barry Bonds nearly gave his hometown fans something to cheer for in the bottom of the third when, with Reyes on second, he lofted a high fly ball to left field, but it was snared at the warning track by Magglio Ordóñez. The AL nearly tied the game in the fourth when Alex Rodriguez attempted to score on a two-out single by Iván Rodríguez. However, the throw to home plate by Griffey allowed Russell Martin to tag Rodriguez out at the plate to end the inning. The AL would score one inning later when, after Chris Young issued a leadoff walk to Brian Roberts, Ichiro Suzuki hit a long fly ball off the right field wall. Instead of caroming straight to Griffey, the ball took an unusual bounce off a sign and ricocheted to Griffey's right. This allowed Ichiro to score on what is still the only inside-the-park home run in All-Star Game history. The homer gave the AL a 2–1 lead and resulted in Ichiro's MVP win.
The lead would be augmented in the sixth when Carl Crawford hit a line drive that just cleared the right field wall for a home run. Though it appeared a fan may have reached over the wall to catch it, NL manager Tony La Russa did not challenge the umpires' call. The NL got a run back in the bottom of the inning when Carlos Beltrán led off with a triple and scored on a sacrifice fly by Griffey. The AL added some insurance runs in the eighth when Víctor Martínez hit a two-run home run just inside the left field foul pole to give the AL a 5–2 lead.
The American League's closers then entered the game, with Jonathan Papelbon pitching a scoreless bottom of the eighth. In the ninth, J. J. Putz tried to earn the save and began by inducing a weak pop-up and striking out Brian McCann. Pinch-hitter Dmitri Young rolled a ground ball deep in the hole to Brian Roberts, but he could not come up with it. Alfonso Soriano followed with a two-run home run to right field to cut the NL's deficit to one. After Putz walked J. J. Hardy, AL manager Jim Leyland replaced him with Francisco Rodríguez. However, Rodriguez had trouble consistently locating his pitches and walked Derrek Lee on a check-swing 3–2 pitch and then Orlando Hudson to load the bases. In a move that drew criticism, La Russa elected not to pinch-hit his last player on the bench, Albert Pujols, and instead let Aaron Rowand hit. Rowand lofted a fly ball to right field that was caught by Alex Ríos to close the game, earning the American League their tenth consecutive victory.
## Home Run Derby
The State Farm Home Run Derby was held the night before the All-Star Game, July 9, and broadcast on ESPN. Four players from each league competed to hit as many home runs as they could in each round to advance and eventually win the contest. This year, a five-swing swing-off would be used to break ties occurring in any round. This became necessary when Albert Pujols and Justin Morneau tied for fourth in the first round. The champion of last year's Derby, Ryan Howard of the Philadelphia Phillies, competed even though he was not named to the NL All-Star roster.
In the finals, Vladimir Guerrero of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim defeated Alex Ríos of the Toronto Blue Jays by a score of 3–2. Guerrero hit 17 home runs in all, second only to Ríos' 19. Guerrero also hit the longest blast of the competition, a 503-foot (153 m) drive to left field that just missed hitting a giant replica glove and baseball set up on the concourse beyond the left field bleachers.
AT&T Park is distinguished by having the San Francisco Bay beyond its right field bleachers. The body of water located adjacent to the ballpark is known as McCovey Cove, named for legendary Giants slugger Willie McCovey. McCovey Cove is known for having many fans sitting in the water in kayaks and boats hoping to retrieve a long home run ball hit there. Though dozens of fans waited in the cove during the Derby, no home runs were actually hit into the water, either on the fly or off the promenade next to the right field seats, though, two foul balls hit by Justin Morneau and Prince Fielder did reach the water. This was largely due to the three left-handed competitors all exiting in the first round, as well as wind currents blowing toward left field. Prior to the All-Star break, a total of 58 home runs were hit into the cove on the fly during the park's history.
Gold balls were utilized whenever any player had one out remaining during his round. Any home runs hit with the balls meant Major League Baseball and State Farm would pledge to donate money to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. Due to the change in sponsors from Century 21 to State Farm, each ball's value was reduced to US\$17,000 to reflect the 17,000 State Farm agents in the United States and Canada. In all, twelve gold ball home runs were hit, which, along with a \$50,000 "bonus" constituted \$254,000 raised for charity.
Recorded only seven of ten outs before hitting winning home run.
Advanced after defeating Morneau 2–1 in a swing-off.
## Futures Game
The 2007 XM All-Star Futures Game took place on July 8, showcasing the top minor league prospects from all thirty teams' farm systems. The contest is seven innings regardless of the score with pitchers limited to no more than one inning of work. The World team defeated the United States by a score of 7–2. Chin-Lung Hu of the Los Angeles Dodgers organization won the Larry Doby MVP award after driving in two runs on a single and double, plus a stolen base and a run.
## Footnotes and references
|
58,520,592 |
Trauma-sensitive yoga
| 1,170,004,764 |
Yoga in the use of mental therapy
|
[
"Alternative medicine",
"Yoga as therapy",
"Yoga styles"
] |
Trauma-sensitive yoga is yoga as exercise, adapted from 2002 onwards for work with individuals affected by psychological trauma. Its goal is to help trauma survivors to develop a greater sense of mind-body connection, to ease their physiological experiences of trauma, to gain a greater sense of ownership over their bodies, and to augment their overall well-being. However, a 2019 systematic review found that the studies to date were not sufficiently robustly designed to provide strong evidence of yoga's effectiveness as a therapy; it called for further research.
## Background
### Psychological trauma and the body
Psychological trauma occurs when an individual has experienced a traumatic event which becomes lived and relived in the body and the mind. Trauma can trigger a chronic stress response in the body, which may manifest as an uncontrollable and constant state of heightened arousal and fear. Those with a history of trauma may also interpret this chronic stress response as a threat to their sense of self and relation to the world. Traumatized individuals often have difficulty soothing their overactive internal sensations without relying on external stimuli, such as food, substances, or self-harm. Therefore, psychological trauma is not only associated with psychological disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and anxiety, but also with somatic disorders.
Though most evidence-based treatments focus on the psychological effects of trauma first and foremost, attrition rates are still high, possibly due to heightened physiological arousal during the initial stages of exposure therapy. Mind-body approaches offer a complementary method to traditional psychotherapy, allowing traumatized individuals to reconnect with and identify their own physical sensations. Mind-body approaches allow participants to work through their somatic trauma memories and feel safe enough to emotionally and verbally process their traumatic memories. Such approaches involve increasing awareness of, and attention to, bodily sensations, while emphasizing present-moment experience. In this way, they seek to counteract dissociative responses. Finally, mind-body approaches attempt to help traumatized individuals to nurture their bodies. In this way, messages from the physical body may provide information for traumatized individuals about their identities and help individuals regain ownership over their internal responses.
### Postural yoga
Postural yoga is a mind-body practice with many forms and styles. It typically includes physical postures called asanas, breathing exercises (pranayama), mindfulness, and meditation. Postural yoga can reduce stress, enhance physical health, and heighten one's sense of self.
### Physiological effects
The techniques of yoga alleviate effects on the body's nervous system. The mindfulness and meditation aspect of yoga allows the mind to maintain objective awareness on the body's physical sensations, while maintaining a state of calm. The aspect of yoga geared toward breath manipulation helps to enhance capacity for emotion regulation. Thus, yoga reduces the overall intensity of the stress response and improves the ability to self-soothe.
Yoga is associated with a reduction in physiological and somatic complaints often attributable to post-traumatic stress disorder, such as pain and anxiety. Research also suggests that yoga produces psychological benefits for individuals with post-traumatic stress disorder such as reduction of stress, a decrease in depression as associated with the mindfulness component, a greater sense of interconnectedness with others when practiced in group settings, enhanced self-efficacy and self-esteem, and a feeling of overall empowerment.
## Description
Trauma-sensitive yoga is a form of yoga as therapy, adapted from modern postural yoga. It was developed at the Justice Resource Institute's Trauma Center in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 2002 by David Emerson and colleagues. It was designed to promote an enhanced feeling of safety for traumatised individuals as they engage in an exercise that is focused on body awareness, which might otherwise be overwhelming for them. It addresses the need for a trauma-informed yoga practice able to identify and mitigate potentially triggering environmental and physiological circumstances, while still providing the psychological and physical benefits that typical yoga practice offers.
Trauma-sensitive yoga has been formulated from five core domains which if nonoptimal could produce adverse side effects among a traumatized population by reminding them of their traumas:
## Key features
### Themes
David Emerson has identified four clinically informed key themes in trauma informed yoga practice that have been beneficial for the trauma survivors. These include: 1) experiencing the present moment (which addresses the trauma survivors' predicament of being unable to be fully present in the moment or in their bodies); 2) making choices (which addresses the issue of lack of choice and helplessness that trauma survivors experience during a traumatic event); 3) effective action taking (which addresses the inability to escape the traumatic event that trauma survivors have experienced during the trauma incident), and 4) creating rhythms (which addresses the issue of feeling disconnected that trauma survivors continue to experience in relation to others and themselves). These themes can be integrated by the teacher all in one class, or may be used individually as a focal point of a particular class.
### Approach
Trauma-sensitive yoga is designed to begin gently, with a seated breathing exercise, followed by light movements. While adhering to the conditions of the five core domains (i.e., physical environment, exercises, teaching style, adjustments, and language), the instructor guides the class through a series of physical postures at a level of difficulty fitting the abilities of the participants. In each posture, instructors encourage students to observe their internal sensations, without judgment, and to respond to them compassionately. Throughout, participants are encouraged to make choices for themselves about what feels comfortable and safe in their bodies, and instructors spaciously invite students to modify any posture as needed. The class ends similarly to ordinary postural yoga in a resting pose (Savasana).
Certain conditions remain constant to ensure that participants feel safe, including consistency of room appearance and class structure, instructors' reminders to participants of where the exits are located, and bright lighting so that participants can see their surroundings.
### Mechanisms
Individuals who have experienced psychological trauma often view their internal body sensations as dangerous and foreign, and form destructive habits as a means of coping with their internal experiences. Therefore, instructors strive throughout to create an environment that feels both physically and emotionally safe for the participants, thereby facilitating a healing atmosphere for traumatised individuals. When students feel increased levels of safety and groundedness in their environment, they are said to be at an appropriate mid-range level of arousal for working with their traumas effectively. In that state, they can learn to work with the physiological experiences of trauma in a more adaptive and less destructive manner.
### Confidentiality
Consumers of trauma-sensitive yoga may need to consider the matter of confidentiality as it differs between trauma-sensitive yoga instructors and mental health professionals. Though instructors are most often required to complete at least 200 hours of yoga teacher training with a focus on trauma, confidentiality is typically not the focus of training.
## Evidence
Trauma-sensitive yoga is effective for improving the psychological symptoms for women who have survived interpersonal violence. Improvements may include a reduction in symptom severity of post-traumatic stress disorder, reduction in severity of symptoms of depression and anxiety. Survivors of interpersonal violence who engage in trauma-sensitive yoga have reported increased feelings of safety and agency, higher self-esteem and self-compassion, decreased feelings of isolation, greater feelings of relaxation, and a greater sense of agency over their own bodies.
Practitioners state that trauma-sensitive yoga should be used only as an alternative and complementary treatment to other evidence-based treatments (e.g., psychotherapy, medication) for trauma. Classes are designed to vary, and thus efficacy has not been established. Trauma-sensitive yoga can be used as a primer to individual psychotherapy, as a means of preparing and grounding the body before uncovering stored traumatic memories, and establishing a traumatized individual's buy-in for treatment.
A systematic review in 2019 failed to find strong evidence that yoga was effective in PTSD, depression, or anxiety after trauma, as the studies examined were of low quality with a "high risk of bias"; they provided what would if confirmed be strongly beneficial effects with effect sizes in the range of ds=0.40—1.06. The reviewers called for further studies with "more rigorous design".
|
30,023,005 |
Aldimir
| 1,095,097,421 |
Bulgarian despot and local lord
|
[
"13th-century Bulgarian people",
"13th-century births",
"14th-century Bulgarian people",
"14th-century deaths",
"Bulgarian people of the Byzantine–Bulgarian Wars",
"Despots of the Second Bulgarian Empire",
"Medieval Bulgarian military personnel",
"Medieval Bulgarian nobility",
"Terter dynasty"
] |
Aldimir (Bulgarian: Алдимир) or Eltimir (Елтимир) (fl. 1280–1305) was a Bulgarian noble of the 13th–14th century. A member of the Terter dynasty and a younger brother of Tsar George I Terter, Aldimir was an influential local ruler as the despot of Kran. Aldimir rose to that position under his brother George, though as Smilets assumed the throne he was forced into exile. At the turn of the 14th century, Aldimir returned to Bulgaria as an ally of the regent widowed consort Smiltsena. He did not oppose the accession of his nephew Theodore Svetoslav and even assisted him in ousting his contenders. However, he was promptly eliminated by Theodore Svetoslav when he betrayed him to ally with the Byzantines.
## Under George I and Smiltsena
Just like his brother George, Aldimir was of Cuman origin. Bulgarian historian Plamen Pavlov is of the opinion that Aldimir and George's ancestors had sought refuge in Bulgaria after 1241, when they left the Kingdom of Hungary amidst sedition. The brothers must have originated from the Cuman royal dynasty Terteroba, and the ruler Köten was probably their relative or even direct ancestor. Pavlov also interprets Aldimir's name as originating from the Cuman-language expression for "heated iron".
Aldimir rose in importance with the accession of his older brother George (r. 1280–1292) to the Bulgarian throne in 1280. He must have been conferred the high noble title of despot during George's reign, and American historian John Fine believes Aldimir was granted his appanage at that time. Pavlov, however, conjectures that Aldimir's domain dates to 1298, long after George's reign.
Unlike the neighbouring principality of Smilets at Kopsis, Aldimir remained loyal to the Bulgarian government and ensured that his domain retained its ties to the capital Tarnovo. Fine describes Aldimir's lands as spanning the region from modern Sliven in the east to Kazanlak or Karlovo in the west, just south of the Balkan Mountains. His capital was the fortress of Kran in the Rose Valley.
After George's abdication in 1292, Aldimir had to flee into exile. He may have followed his brother as a refugee in the Byzantine Empire, though he certainly settled in the Golden Horde not long thereafter. Perhaps with Tatar approval, Aldimir returned to Bulgaria in 1298, after the reign of Smilets (r. 1292–1298) was over and the empire was in the hands of the child Tsar Ivan II and his mother, the widow of Smilets tentatively known as Smiltsena. Aldimir pledged his loyalty to Smiltsena, who either granted him the domain south of the Balkan Mountains or restored him to his former appanage. To consolidate that union, Aldimir married Smiltsena's daughter, the princess Marina, possibly in late 1298.
With Aldimir's appointment as despot of Kran, Smiltsena ensured that his lands were better protected from Smilets' brothers Radoslav and Voysil who, as émigrés in Byzantium, held aspirations for the Bulgarian throne or at least their former domains. During Smiltsena's regency, Aldimir was one of the most influential people in Bulgaria; indeed, Byzantine statesman Theodore Metochites refers to the "Scythian [i.e. Cuman] venturer", as he calls Aldimir, as the queen's right-hand man. Aldimir's leading position leaves little doubt that he was involved in the fruitless anti-Byzantine negotiations between Bulgaria and Serbia in 1299. Pavlov even goes as far as to suggest that the proposed anti-Byzantine union was the brainchild of Aldimir.
## Under Theodore Svetoslav
In 1299, George's son and Aldimir's nephew Theodore Svetoslav (r. 1300–1322), the legitimate successor to the Bulgarian throne, invaded Bulgaria along with Tatar troops. The news of that invasion was enough to force Smiltsena and Ivan to flee to the despotate of Kran even before Theodore Svetoslav's troops had reached the capital. Aldimir gave refuge to Smiltsena and Ivan, though he was clearly not opposed to his newly crowned nephew. In 1300, Smilets' brother sebastokrator Radoslav headed a Byzantine-supported campaign against Aldimir en route to the capital. However, the attack had disastrous consequences to Radoslav. He was captured by Aldimir, blinded and forced back to Thessaloniki, while his Byzantine generals were sent as captives to Theodore Svetoslav. With this act, Aldimir pledged his allegiance to Theodore Svetoslav, who rewarded him with an extension to his appanage. The despotate of Kran was enlarged to the east to include the fortresses of Yambol and Lardea near today's Karnobat.
While Aldimir was nominally loyal to Theodore Svetoslav, the presence of Smiltsena and Ivan at his court would have been seen by the Bulgarian emperor as a threat. In addition, Aldimir perhaps harboured a desire to accede to the throne himself. After Theodore Svetoslav's victory over Byzantium at Skafida in 1304, the Byzantines approached Aldimir with a proposal for an anti-Bulgarian alliance. Aldimir initially remained adamant and was hostile to the Byzantine forces which entered his domain in 1305. However, by the end of that year Aldimir had switched sides to the Byzantines, as Theodore Svetoslav took back the fortresses that he had granted to Aldimir. Shortly thereafter, Theodore Svetoslav restored his direct power over Kran by reconquering and annexing the appanage.
Aldimir may have been murdered during this campaign, as no activity of his is mentioned in later sources. His widow Marina and his son Ivan Dragushin managed to escape to Serbia, where Marina's sister, Theodora, was married to the prince Stephen Dečanski. Having become a Serbian subject, Ivan Dragushin was installed by his first cousin King Stephen Dušan as a local ruler in the region of Macedonia. Donor's portraits of Marina and Ivan Dragushin exist in the Pološko Monastery near Kavadarci, where Ivan Dragushin was buried before 1340.
|
25,678,189 |
Kepler-7b
| 1,161,322,140 |
Hot Jupiter orbiting Kepler-7
|
[
"Exoplanets discovered by the Kepler space telescope",
"Exoplanets discovered in 2010",
"Giant planets",
"Hot Jupiters",
"Lyra",
"Transiting exoplanets"
] |
Kepler-7b is one of the first five exoplanets to be confirmed by NASA's Kepler spacecraft, and was confirmed in the first 33.5 days of Kepler's science operations. It orbits a star slightly hotter and significantly larger than the Sun that is expected to soon reach the end of the main sequence. Kepler-7b is a hot Jupiter that is about half the mass of Jupiter, but is nearly 1.5 times its size; at the time of its discovery, Kepler-7b was the second most diffuse planet known, surpassed only by WASP-17b. It orbits its host star every five days at a distance of approximately 0,06 AU (9.000.000 km or 5.592.340 mi). Kepler-7b was announced at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society on January 4, 2010. It is the first extrasolar planet to have a crude map of cloud coverage.
## Characteristics
### Mass, temperature, and orbit
Kepler-7b is a hot Jupiter, a Jupiter-like exoplanet orbiting close to its star. Its equilibrium temperature, due to its proximity to its star, is hot and is measured at nearly 1540 K. However, of the first five planets discovered by Kepler, it is the second coolest, being surpassed only by Kepler-6b. This is over twelve times hotter than Jupiter. Kepler-7b has a mass of only 0.433 that of Jupiter but due to proximity to its star the planet has expanded to a radius of 1.478 that of Jupiter. Because of this its mean density is only 0.166 g/cm<sup>3</sup>, about the same as expanded polystyrene, a substance used to manufacture lightweight, disposable commercial plastic products. Only WASP-17b (0.49M<sub>J</sub>; 1.66R<sub>J</sub>) was known to have a lower density at the time of Kepler-7b's discovery. Such low densities are not predicted by current standard theories of planet formation. Kepler-7b orbits its host star every 4.8855 days at a distance of 0.06224 AU, making it the furthest-orbiting planet of the first five discovered by Kepler. Mercury, in contrast, orbits at a distance of 0.387 AU every 87.97 days. In addition Kepler-7b has an observed orbital inclination of 86.5o, which means that its orbit is almost edge-on as seen from Earth.
### Cloud mapping
Astronomers using data from NASA's Kepler and Spitzer space telescopes have created a cloud map of the planet. It is the first cloud map to be created beyond the Solar System. Kepler's visible-light observations of Kepler-7b's Moon-like phases led to a rough map of the planet that showed a bright spot on its western hemisphere. But these data were not enough on their own to decipher whether the bright spot was coming from clouds or heat. The Spitzer Space Telescope played a crucial role in answering this question. Jonathan Fortney, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz, said: "These clouds may well be composed of rock and iron, since the planet is over 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (500 degrees Celsius)." Brice-Olivier Demory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology noted that the oceans and continents cannot be detected, but a clear reflective signature has been detected which is interpreted as cloud. Thomas Barclay, Kepler scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center, said: "Unlike those on Earth, the cloud patterns on this planet do not seem to change much over time—it has a remarkably stable climate."
### Host star
Kepler-7 is the largest host star of the first five planets detected by Kepler, and is situated in the Lyra constellation. The star has a radius 184% that of the Sun. Kepler-7 also has 135% the Sun's mass, and thus is larger and more massive (though less dense) than the Sun. It is slightly hotter than the Sun, as Kepler-7 has an effective temperature of 5933 K. The star is near the end of its life on the main sequence. The star's metallicity is [Fe/H] = 0.11, which means that Kepler-7 has 128% the amount of iron than is detected in the Sun.
## Discovery
In 2009, NASA's Kepler spacecraft was completing the last of tests on its photometer, the instrument it uses to detect transit events, in which a planet crosses in front of and dims its host star for a brief and roughly regular period of time. In this last test, Kepler observed 50000 stars in the Kepler Input Catalog, including Kepler-7; the preliminary light curves were sent to the Kepler science team for analysis, who chose obvious planetary companions from the bunch for follow-up at observatories. Kepler-7 was not one of these original candidates. After a resting period of 1.3 days, Kepler began a nonstop 33.5-day period in which it observed 150000 targets uninterrupted until June 15, 2009, when the collected data was downloaded and tested for false positives. Kepler-7's candidate was not found to be one of these false positives, such as an eclipsing binary star that may generate a light curve that mimics that of transiting planetary companions.
Kepler-7 was then observed using Doppler spectroscopy using the Fibre-fed Echelle Spectrograph at the Canary Islands' Nordic Optical Telescope for ten nights in October 2009, taken with respect to the star HD 182488 to compensate for possible telescope error. Speckle imaging of the star was taken at WIYN Observatory in Arizona to check for close companions; when none were found, the High Resolution Echelle Spectrometer instrument at the W.M. Keck Observatory on Hawaii, the Harlan J. Smith Telescope at the McDonald Observatory in Texas, the PRISM camera at the Lowell Observatory, and the Faulkes Telescope North at the Haleakala Observatory on Maui were also used to analyze Doppler spectroscopy of the planetary candidate. The radial velocity observations confirmed that a planetary body was responsible for the dips observed in Kepler-7's light curve, thus confirming it as a planet. Kepler's first discoveries, including the planets Kepler-4b, Kepler-5b, Kepler-6b, Kepler-7b, and Kepler-8b, were first announced on January 4, 2010, at the 215th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington, D.C. In May 2011, the planet was detected by brightness variations of the star cause by reflected starlight from the planet. It was found that Kepler-7b has a relatively high geometric albedo of 0.3.
|
3,472,644 |
Bay Ridge Avenue station
| 1,171,754,741 |
New York City Subway station in Brooklyn
|
[
"1916 establishments in New York City",
"BMT Fourth Avenue Line stations",
"Bay Ridge, Brooklyn",
"New York City Subway stations in Brooklyn",
"Railway stations in the United States opened in 1916"
] |
The Bay Ridge Avenue station is a station on the BMT Fourth Avenue Line of the New York City Subway, located at the intersection of Bay Ridge Avenue and Fourth Avenue in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. It is served by the R train at all times.
The Bay Ridge Avenue station was constructed as part of the Fourth Avenue Line, which was approved in 1905 and subsequently modified. Construction on the segment of the line that includes Bay Ridge Avenue started on January 24, 1913, and was completed in 1915. The station opened on January 15, 1916, as part of an extension of the BMT Fourth Avenue Line from 59th Street to 86th Street. The station's platforms were lengthened in 1926–1927, and again in 1970. The station was also renovated during the 1970s and in 2017.
## History
### Construction and opening
The Bay Ridge Avenue station was constructed as part of the Fourth Avenue Line. The plan for the line was initially adopted on June 1, 1905, before being approved by the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York on June 18, 1906 after the Rapid Transit Commission was unable to get the necessary consents of property owners along the planned route. The Rapid Transit Commission was succeeded by the New York State Public Service Commission (PSC) on July 1, 1907, and the PSC approved the plan for the line in October and November 1907.
As part of negotiations between New York City and the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT), and the Interborough Rapid Transit Company for the expansion of the city's transit network, the line was leased to a subsidiary of the BRT. The agreement, known as Contract 4 of the Dual Contracts, was signed on March 19, 1913. In 1912, during the Dual System negotiations, the construction of an extension of the Fourth Avenue subway from 43rd Street to 89th Street, just south of the 86th Street station, was recommended. This recommendation was approved by the Board of Estimate on February 15, 1912. The PSC directed its chief engineer to create plans on June 14, 1912. The two contracts for the extension, Route 11B, were awarded on September 16, 1912, to the Degnon Construction Company for a combined \$3.8 million (equivalent to \$ million in ).
On January 24, 1913, construction began on Route 11B2, which includes this station and extends between 61st Street and 89th Street. Construction was completed on this section in 1915. Bay Ridge Avenue opened on January 15, 1916, as part of an extension of the BMT Fourth Avenue Line from 59th Street to 86th Street.
### Station renovations
#### 1920s
On June 27, 1922, the New York State Transit Commission commissioned its engineers to examine platform-lengthening plans for 23 stations on the lines of the Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT), the successor to the BRT, to accommodate eight-car trains. As part of the project, Bay Ridge Avenue's platforms would have been lengthened from 495 feet (151 m) to 530 feet (160 m). Progress on the extensions did not occur until February 16, 1925, when the New York City Board of Transportation (NYCBOT) commissioned its engineers to examine platform-lengthening plans for this and eleven other stations along the Fourth Avenue Line. It estimated the project would cost \$633,000 () (). The BMT had been ordered by the Transit Commission to lengthen these platforms since September 1923. The NYCBOT received bids for the project on February 25, 1926. The contract was awarded to the Corson Construction Company for \$345,021 (). The extensions opened on August 1, 1927.
#### 1960s
The city government took over the BMT's operations on June 1, 1940. In the 1960s, the New York City Transit Authority (NYCTA) started a project to lengthen station platforms on its lines in Southern Brooklyn to 615 feet (187 m) to accommodate 10-car trains. On July 14, 1967, the NYCTA awarded a contract to conduct test borings at eleven stations on the Fourth Avenue Line, including Bay Ridge Avenue, to the W. M. Walsh Corporation for \$6,585 () in preparation of the construction of platform extensions (). The NYCTA issued an invitation for bids on the project to extend the platforms at stations along the Fourth Avenue Line between 45th Street station and Bay Ridge–95th Street, including this station, on May 3, 1968.
However, work had already started on the platform extension project in February. As part of the renovation project, the station's platforms were extended at its northern and southern ends, for a total of 85 feet (26 m), and the station's elaborate mosaic tile walls were covered over with 8-by-16-inch (20 by 41 cm) white cinderblock tiles. The latter change, which was also made to 15 other stations on the BMT Broadway and Fourth Avenue Line, was criticized for being dehumanizing. The NYCTA spokesman stated that the old tiles were in poor condition and that the change was made to improve the appearance of stations and provide uniformity. Furthermore, it did not consider the old mosaics to have "any great artistic merit".
#### 2017
As part of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's 2015–2019 Capital Program, the station, along with thirty other New York City Subway stations, were scheduled to undergo a complete overhaul as part of the Enhanced Station Initiative. Updates were to include cellular service, Wi-Fi, USB charging stations, interactive service advisories and maps, improved signage, and improved station lighting. From January to May 2016, Grimshaw Architects worked on a design for the station's renovation, with Arup Group acting as a consultant. The award for Package 1 of the renovations, which covered renovations at the Prospect Avenue, 53rd Street, and Bay Ridge Avenue stations on the BMT Fourth Avenue Line, was awarded on November 30, 2016. Citnalta-Forte Joint Venture was selected to renovate the three stations under a \$72 million design–build contract, the first such contract in the subway system's history. The station closed on April 29, 2017 for these renovations and reopened on October 13, 2017.
## Station layout
This underground station has two tracks and two side platforms. The R stops here at all times. The station is between 59th Street to the north and 77th Street to the south.
While the 95th Street-bound platform has columns along its full length, the Manhattan-bound platform is mostly columnless, with only a few columns located in the middle of the platform and at its southern end. The columns on the 95th Street-bound platform are curved, except for those at the ends of the platform, which are typical I-beams, and are where the platform was extended in 1970. All of the columns are painted blue and have "Bay Ridge Av" signs on them.
Prior to the station's 1970 renovation, it was finished all in white and marble tile, and it had its own color scheme to allow regular passengers to identify the station based only on the color of the marble trimmings. Since that renovation, the station walls have consisted of white cinderblock tiles, except for small recesses in the walls, which contain blue-painted cinderblock tiles. The blue cinderblock field contains the station-name signs and white text pointing to the exits. During the 2017 renovation, the cinderblock tiles were refurbished and colored white with small recesses containing blue tiles.
The landing in the southbound platform's second entrance had been the only area in the station that contained the original 1915 trim line with "B.R." tiled on it. These tiles were all removed during the 2017 renovation, and were replaced with blue rectangular tiling.
The 2017 artwork at this station called Strata consists of a set of tile mosaics by Katy Fischer, which commemorate the Native American, Dutch, and English colonial histories of the area.
### Provisions
The Fourth Avenue Line south of 59th Street, including the Bay Ridge Avenue and 77th Street stations, was built as a two-track structure under the west side of Fourth Avenue with plans for two future tracks on the east side of the street. The bridge across the Long Island Rail Road's Bay Ridge Branch to the north of this station, but under Fourth Avenue, was built for four tracks, but only the space for the two west tracks were ever used. The tunnel leading up to each side of the bridge was built for two tracks only. Daylight can briefly be seen from the bridge.
The station is designed to allow the northbound platform to become the Manhattan-bound express trackway if the two additional tracks were built. To facilitate the conversion, the northbound platform is mostly columnless and is wider than the southbound platform. Furthermore, there is space underneath the platform for the trackway.
### Exits
The station's mezzanine is above the platforms with two staircases leading to each.
From the mezzanine outside of fare control, two staircases lead to either southern corners of Bay Ridge and Fourth Avenues.
The southbound platform has an additional entrance near its north end. Prior to the 2017 renovation, the entrance was exit-only, and consisted of one high entry-exit turnstile on the platform. Two platform level turnstiles lead to a small landing, where a double-flight staircase goes up to the northwest corner of 68th Street and Fourth Avenue.
|
7,351,992 |
Vindolanda tablets
| 1,147,745,365 |
Roman writing tablets found in England
|
[
"Hadrian's Wall",
"History of Northumberland",
"Latin inscriptions",
"Palaeography",
"Roman Britain",
"Romano-British objects in the British Museum"
] |
The Vindolanda tablets were, at the time of their discovery, the oldest surviving handwritten documents in Britain (they have since been antedated by the Bloomberg tablets). They are a rich source of information about life on the northern frontier of Roman Britain. Written on fragments of thin, postcard-sized wooden leaf-tablets with carbon-based ink, the tablets date to the 1st and 2nd centuries AD (roughly contemporary with Hadrian's Wall). Although similar records on papyrus were known from elsewhere in the Roman Empire, wooden tablets with ink text had not been recovered until 1973, when archaeologist Robin Birley, his attention being drawn by student excavator Keith Liddell, discovered some at the site of Vindolanda, a Roman fort in northern England.
The documents record official military matters as well as personal messages to and from members of the garrison of Vindolanda, their families, and their slaves. Highlights of the tablets include an invitation to a birthday party held in about 100, which is perhaps the oldest surviving document written in Latin by a woman.
The excavated tablets are nearly all held at the British Museum, but arrangements have been made for some to be displayed at Vindolanda. The texts of 752 tablets had been transcribed, translated and published as of 2010. Tablets continue to be found at Vindolanda.
## Description
The wooden tablets found at Vindolanda were the first known surviving examples of the use of ink letters in the Roman period. The use of ink tablets was documented in contemporary records and Herodian in the 3rd century AD wrote "a writing-tablet of the kind that were made from lime-wood, cut into thin sheets and folded face-to-face by being bent".
The Vindolanda tablets are made from birch, alder and oak that grew locally, in contrast to stylus tablets, another type of writing tablet used in Roman Britain, which were imported and made from non-native wood. The tablets are 0.25–3 mm (0.01–0.12 in) thick with a typical size being 20 cm × 8 cm (8 in × 3 in) (the size of a modern postcard). They were scored down the middle and folded to form diptychs with ink writing on the inner faces, the ink being carbon, gum arabic and water. Nearly 500 tablets were excavated in the 1970s and 1980s.
First discovered in March 1973, the tablets were initially thought to be wood shavings until one of the excavators found two stuck together and peeled them apart to discover writing on the inside. They were taken to the epigraphist Richard Wright, but rapid oxygenation of the wood meant that they were black and unreadable by the time he was able to view them. They were sent to Alison Rutherford at Newcastle University Medical School for multi-spectrum photography, which led to infrared photographs showing the scripts for researchers for the first time. The results were initially disappointing as the scripts were undecipherable. However, Alan Bowman at Manchester University and David Thomas at Durham University analysed the previously unknown form of cursive script and were able to produce transcriptions.
### Chronology
Vindolanda fort was garrisoned before the construction of Hadrian's Wall and most of the tablets are slightly older than the Wall, which was begun in 122. The original director of excavations Robin Birley identified five periods of occupation and expansion:
1. c. 85–92, first fort constructed.
2. c. 92–97, fort enlargement.
3. c. 97–103, further fort enlargements.
4. c. 104–120, hiatus and reoccupation.
5. c. 120–130, the period when Hadrian's Wall was constructed
The tablets were produced in periods 2 and 3 (c. 92–103), with the majority written before 102. They were used for official notes about the Vindolanda camp business and personal affairs of the officers and households. The largest group is correspondence of Flavius Cerialis, prefect of the ninth cohort of Batavians and that of his wife, Sulpicia Lepidina. Some correspondence may relate to civilian traders and contractors; for example Octavian, the writer of Tablet 343, is an entrepreneur dealing in wheat, hides and sinews, but this does not prove him to be a civilian.
### Selected highlights
The best-known document is perhaps Tablet 291, written around 100 by Claudia Severa, the wife of the commander of a nearby fort, to Sulpicia Lepidina, inviting her to a birthday party. The invitation is one of the earliest known examples of writing in Latin by a woman. There are two handwriting styles in the tablet, with the majority of the text written in a professional hand (thought to be the household scribe) and with closing greetings personally added by Claudia Severa herself (on the lower right hand side of the tablet).
The tablets are written in Roman cursive script and throw light on the extent of literacy in Roman Britain. One of the tablets confirms that Roman soldiers wore underpants (subligaculum), and also testifies to a high degree of literacy in the Roman army.
There are only scant references to the indigenous Celtic Britons. Until the discovery of the tablets, historians could only speculate on whether the Romans had a nickname for the Britons. Brittunculi (diminutive of Britto; hence 'little Britons'), found on one of the Vindolanda tablets, is now known to be a derogatory, or patronising, term used by the Roman garrisons that were based in Northern Britain to describe the locals.
### Transcription
The tablets are written in forms of Roman cursive script, considered to be the forerunner of joined-up writing, which varies in style by author. With few exceptions, they have been classified as Old Roman Cursive.
The cursive writing from Vindolanda differs greatly from the Latin capitals used for inscriptions. The script is derived from the capital writing of the late first century BC and the first century AD. The text rarely shows the unusual or distorted letter-forms or the extravagant ligatures to be found in Greek papyri of the same period. Additional challenges for transcription are the use of abbreviations such as "h" for homines (men) or "cos" for consularis (consular), and the arbitrary division of words at the end of lines for space reasons such as "epistulas" (letters) being split between the "e" and the rest of the word.
The ink is often badly faded or survives as little more than a blur, so that in some instances transcription is not possible. In most cases infrared photographs of the tablets provide a far more legible version of what was written than visual inspection. However, the photographs contain marks which appear similar to writing, but which certainly are not letters; additionally, they contain a great many lines, dots and other dark marks which may or may not be writing. Consequently, the published transcriptions have often had to be interpreted subjectively in deciding which marks should be regarded as writing.
### Contents
The Vindolanda tablets contain various letters of correspondence. For instance, the cavalry decurion Masculus wrote a letter to prefect Flavius Cerialis inquiring about the exact instructions for his men for the following day, including a polite request for more beer to be sent to the garrison (which had entirely consumed its previous stock of beer). The documents also provide information about various roles performed by the men at the fort, such as a keeper of the bath-house, shoe-makers, construction workers, medical doctors, maintainers of wagons and kilns, and those put on plastering duty.
## Comparison to other sites
Wooden tablets have been found at twenty Roman settlements in Britain. However, most of those sites did not yield the type of tablet found at Vindolanda, but rather "stylus tablets", marked with pointed metal styli. A significant number of ink tablets have been identified at Carlisle (also on Hadrian's Wall).
The fact that letters were sent to and from places on Hadrian's Wall and further afield (Catterick, York, and London) raises the question of why more letters have been found at Vindolanda than other sites, but it is not possible to give a definitive answer. The anaerobic conditions found at Vindolanda are not unique and identical deposits have been found in parts of London. One possibility, given the fragile condition of the tablets found at Vindolanda, is that archaeologists excavating other Roman sites have overlooked evidence of writing in ink.
## Imaging
In 1973, the tablets were photographed by Susan M. Blackshaw in the British Museum, using infrared sensitive cameras and, more comprehensively, in 1990 at Vindolanda, by Alison Rutherford. The tablets were scanned again using improved techniques in 2000–2001 with a Kodak Wratten 87C infra-red filter. The photographs are taken in infrared to enhance the faded ink against the wood of the tablets, or to distinguish between ink and dirt, to make the writing more visible.
In 2002, the tablet images were used as part of a research programme to extend the use of the GRAVA iterative computer vision system, to aid the transcription of the Vindolanda tablets through a series of processes modelled on the best practice of papyrologists, and to provide the images in an XML marked up format, identifying the likely placement of characters and words with their transcription.
In 2010, a collaboration between Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents at University of Oxford, the British Museum, and the Archaeological Computing Research Group at University of Southampton, used polynomial texture mapping on several hundreds of the original tablets for detailed recording and edge detection.
## Online catalogue
The images, at a resolution suitable for web page display, and text of the tablets from Tab. Vindol. II were published on-line. Tablets from both Tab. Vindol. II and Tab. Vindol. III were published in a new online catalogue in 2010.
## Exhibition and impact
The tablets are held at the British Museum, where a selection of them is on display in its Roman Britain gallery (Room 49). The tablets featured in the list of British archaeological finds selected by experts at the British Museum for the 2003 BBC Television documentary Our Top Ten Treasures. Viewers were invited to vote for their favourite, and the tablets came top of the poll.
The Vindolanda Museum, run by the Vindolanda Trust, has funding so that a selection of tablets on loan from the British Museum can be displayed at the site where they were found. The Vindolanda Museum put nine of the tablets on display in 2011. This loan of items to a regional museum is in line with British Museum's current policy of encouraging loans both internationally and nationally (as part of its Partnership UK scheme).
## See also
- Bath curse tablets
- Bloomberg tablets
|
8,413,997 |
Joel Palmer
| 1,108,409,356 |
American pioneer, author, politician (1810–1881)
|
[
"1810 births",
"1881 deaths",
"19th-century American politicians",
"Cayuse War",
"Indiana Democrats",
"Members of the Indiana House of Representatives",
"Oregon Country",
"Oregon Republicans",
"Oregon Superintendents for Indian Affairs",
"Oregon pioneers",
"Oregon state senators",
"People from Dayton, Oregon",
"Pre-Confederation Canadian emigrants to the United States",
"Speakers of the Oregon House of Representatives"
] |
General Joel Palmer (October 4, 1810 – June 9, 1881) was an American pioneer of the Oregon Territory in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. He was born in Canada, and spent his early years in New York and Pennsylvania before serving as a member of the Indiana House of Representatives.
Palmer traveled to the Oregon Country in 1845. He played a central role in blazing the last leg of the Oregon Trail, the Barlow Road, with Sam Barlow and others. Specifically, Palmer is noted for having climbed high on Mount Hood to observe the surrounding area when the party ran into difficulty. He wrote a popular immigrant guidebook, co-founded Dayton, Oregon, and served as a controversial Indian Affairs administrator. After Oregon became a state, Palmer served in both branches of the Oregon Legislative Assembly. He was selected as Speaker of the Oregon House of Representatives for one session in 1862, and in 1870 lost a bid to become Governor of Oregon.
The Palmer House, his former home in Dayton, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1987.
## Early life
Joel Palmer was born in Elizabethtown, Ontario, Canada, on October 4, 1810. His parents, Hannah Phelps and Ephraim Palmer, were American Quakers. When he was two years old, they moved to New York's Catskill Mountains in response to the War of 1812. He received only three months of formal education in elementary school. In 1822, when Palmer was 12, his parents indentured him to the Haworth family for a period of four years. When he gained his freedom, he moved to Bucks County, Pennsylvania, to work on canals and bridges.
He was married to Catherine Coffee from 1830 until her death after childbirth. On October 8, 1832, Palmer became a United States citizen. Palmer married his second wife, Sarah Ann Derbyshire, in 1836, and bought land near Laurel, Indiana, in the Whitewater Valley, where he supervised a construction project for a canal. In 1843, he was elected as a Democrat to the Indiana House of Representatives for a one-year term. Representing Franklin County, he was re-elected to the legislature in 1844.
## Oregon pioneer
In the spring of 1845, Palmer traveled to Oregon without his family, as captain of a wagon train of 23 wagons. Stephen Meek served as the train's paid guide. Meek left the group at Fort Hall to lead some of the members on the Meek Cutoff. The remaining parts of the wagon train reached the end of the overland Oregon Trail at the Columbia River, and unwilling to wait for transport down the dangerous Cascade Rapids, Palmer's party joined Sam Barlow's party in a quest for passage through the Cascade Range around the south side of Mount Hood. Palmer climbed to the 9,000-foot level of Mount Hood on October 7, 1845—with little food and the scant protection of moccasins—to scout a route off the mountains. This was Mount Hood's first recorded climb; the Palmer Glacier on the mountain is named for him.
Because of the onset of winter, the Barlow, Rector, and Palmer parties were forced to leave their wagons on the mountain's eastern foothills. Palmer left on horseback for Oregon City, while Barlow and Rector blazed a trail to Oregon City on foot. Sam Barlow later returned with partner Philip Foster to establish the Mount Hood Toll Road, which became known as the Barlow Road.
In 1846, Palmer returned to his family in Indiana and in 1847 he published his diary as Palmer's Journal of Travels Over the Rocky Mountains, 1845–1846. This book provided equipment guidance and comprehensive route information for those crossing the Oregon Trail. The publication also had a general description of the Oregon Country, a detailed description of the Willamette Valley, and included a copy of the Organic Laws of Oregon adopted by settlers at the Champoeg Meetings. It was a popular guidebook for immigrants for the next ten years.
Also in 1847, Palmer traveled with his family to Oregon as captain of that year's major wagon train. While passing through the Walla Walla Valley he met Marcus and Narcissa Whitman at their mission shortly before their deaths in the Whitman massacre—the event that precipitated the Cayuse War. Perhaps motivated by meeting the Whitmans, Palmer later returned to serve as a peace commissioner to tribes considering joining the Cayuse. At the outset of the war he was appointed as commissary-general of the Provisional Government’s militia forces.
After the war, in 1848, Palmer joined the California Gold Rush but returned in 1849 to co-found Dayton, Oregon on the lower Yamhill River where he built a sawmill on his donation land claim.
## Oregon politician
In 1853, President Franklin Pierce appointed Palmer Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Oregon Territory. The debate of what to do with Native Americans ranged from full integration to total extermination. Palmer proved effective negotiating "Cessation of Hostility treaties" with the native tribes in 1854 and 1855, brokering nine of fifteen treaties. He joined Isaac Stevens, his counterpart for the Washington Territory, in the successful Walla Walla Treaty Council of the Yakima Indian War. Approximately 5,000 Indians attended deliberations from May 29, 1855 to June 11, 1855.
Palmer gained an anti-settler reputation among immigrants, newspapers and officials, who said he acted too favorably toward the Indians, even though he moved the tribes to reservations outside the Willamette Valley, seeking to avoid friction between settlers and natives by physical distance. In late 1855, while moving the Rogue River tribes to the Grand Ronde Reservation, violent resistance was threatened by settlers who felt the land should not be given to the tribes. Palmer succeeded, but the territorial legislature petitioned for his removal from office, which became effective in 1857.
After leaving office as Indian Affairs Superintendent, Palmer worked his farm on his land claim and operated his sawmill and several other enterprises. Between 1858 and 1861 he spent time in British Columbia as a merchant to prospectors in the gold rushes of the Thompson River, Similkameen Valley, and Fraser River. Palmer blazed a route to the gold fields of the Okanogan Valley and the upper portions of the Columbia River from Priest Rapids in 1860. In 1862, he was elected to the Oregon House of Representatives to represent Yamhill County. Now a member of the Republican Party, he was named Speaker of the House during that session.
That year Palmer also established the Columbia River Road Company to build a trail through the Columbia River Gorge on the Oregon side of the river. In 1864, Palmer was elected to the State Senate and served in that chamber through 1866. This included the 1865 special session of the legislature when Oregon adopted the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution that abolished slavery throughout the United States. He ran for governor in the 1870 election as the Republican candidate, but was narrowly defeated by La Fayette Grover, largely for his Indian policies.
### Treaties negotiated by Palmer
- Treaty with the Rogue River, 1853
- Treaty with the Umpqua–Cow Creek Band, 1853
- Treaty with the Rogue River, 1854
- Treaty with the Chasta, etc., 1854
- Treaty with the Umpqua and Kalapuya, 1854
- Treaty with the Kalapuya, etc., 1855
- Treaty with the Wallawalla, Cayuse, etc., 1855
- Treaty with the Middle Tribes of Oregon, 1855
- Treaty with the Molala, 1855
## Later years and legacy
Palmer's brother, named Ephraim like their father, also immigrated to Oregon and served as a captain in the first regiment of the Oregon Infantry. In 1871, Palmer was the state's Indian agent to the Siletz tribe, remaining in the office until 1873. All eight of Palmer's children completed higher education. Joel Palmer died in Dayton on June 9, 1881, at the age of 70. His former home that he built in 1852, Palmer House, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1987, and is now operating as a restaurant. Palmer's name is one of 158 memorialized in the frieze of the two chambers of the Oregon Legislative Assembly at the Oregon State Capitol, with his located in the Senate chamber. During World War II the liberty ship SS Joel Palmer, hull number 2025, was built and named in his honor. The Oregon Historical Society issues the Joel Palmer Award for the year's best article in its quarterly publication, Oregon Historical Quarterly.
|
40,846,635 |
Better Out Than In
| 1,151,679,697 |
2013 art installation by Banksy
|
[
"2013 in New York City",
"Art in New York City",
"Graffiti in the United States",
"October 2013 events in the United States",
"Political art",
"Vandalized works of art in New York City",
"Works by Banksy"
] |
Better Out Than In was a residency undertaken by pseudonymous graffiti artist and political activist Banksy in New York City during October 2013. Banksy unveiled at least one work of art daily, documenting it on both a dedicated website and an Instagram account. The majority of the works were stencil graffiti and chiefly political, a distinctive characteristic of Banksy. Other pieces and multimedia exhibits toyed with dark humor and satire.
The unpredictability of the show and Banksy's elusive nature stirred excitement amongst fans, while defacement from competing street artists and vandals became an imminent problem. While Banksy's works were inherently illegal, no official complaints were reported to the police; most property owners praised the art and some took measures to protect it. The month-long residency drew controversy amongst some locals for its more politically strong pieces, and received mixed reviews from critics.
An HBO documentary film covering this period and residency titled Banksy Does New York was released in 2014.
## Background
On 1 October 2013, Banksy announced on his website that he would be attempting to host a show in New York City for the entire month. This came after posters promoting an October event started showing up in Los Angeles.
The title Better Out Than In is a reference to a quote by impressionist Paul Cézanne, "All pictures painted inside, in the studio, will never be as good as those done outside."
In an interview with The Village Voice, Banksy said "New York calls to graffiti writers like a dirty old lighthouse. We all want to prove ourselves here," and that he chose it for the high foot traffic and hiding places.
## Works
The works Banksy has included in Better Out Than In primarily consist of stencil graffiti, much of which are political in nature. His first installment, which he captioned "the street is in play", depicted a child reaching for a bottle of spray paint on a sign reading "graffiti is a crime". The sign was stolen and later replaced by Queens-based graffiti group Smart Crew with a new sign that read "street art is a crime". Like most of his other works, the piece has audio accompaniment that can be heard either on the website or by calling a toll-free 800 number.
In the East Village, Banksy's fifth work was housed in a delivery truck as a "mobile garden," which included theatrical property showing a rainbow, waterfall, and butterflies. The following day Banksy posted a photo of a tracking device he found under the vehicle.
Banksy's installments are located all across the five boroughs, with some being purely multimedia exhibits. On 6 October, as a way to have made an installment in Dumbo, Brooklyn, a primary arts district of the city, Banksy posted a video featuring the Walt Disney character Dumbo being shot down by Syrian rebels, the meaning behind which puzzled many.
On 9 October, Banksy unveiled one of the more elaborate and politically strong pieces of the series. It featured armed soldiers and horses spray-painted on a car and trailer in an empty lot in the Lower East Side. Instead of commentary about the work, the accompanying audio was that of a classified video from the July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike. After being dismantled, the car was towed away to prevent further defacement.
Day 11 saw an elaborate political display questioning the "casual cruelty" of the meat industry. Entitled Sirens of the Lambs, Banksy drove around a military-style cargo truck filled with squealing, stuffed animatronic livestock. The truck fittingly made its debut in Meatpacking District, Manhattan, but toured the rest of the city in the following weeks.
On 13 October, Banksy made headlines when it was revealed that the art an older man was selling outside Central Park was actually authentic, signed Banksy canvases, sold for only \$60 each. Having not announced this beforehand, tourists and park goers were unaware of the value the paintings had, which the BBC estimated could be upwards of \$32,000 each. Banksy posted a video on his website chronicling the surprise sale, which revealed that a total of seven paintings were sold for \$420 taking. A woman from New Zealand who bought two for \$60 each later sold them for £125,000 at a London auction in 2014.
Banksy unveiled one of his most controversial pieces of the series on 15 October, with a depiction of the Lower Manhattan skyline featuring the former Twin Towers, with a burnt-orange chrysanthemum in place where one of the hijacked airplanes struck the North Tower. The silhouette appeared on the side of a building in TriBeCa, with an identical depiction along the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, facing the downtown skyline. The Brooklyn Heights piece was eventually buffed out by the city, requiring chemicals and a high-powered pressure washer. The removal followed a taunt Banksy had directed toward the city on his website. Meanwhile, the sister piece in TriBeCa served as a shrine, people placing flowers next to it, as well as a letter asking no one to touch the painting. Acrylic glass was eventually installed to protect the piece, before someone painted over it.
Banksy extended his work beyond the canvas and city street with other political statements, including on 16 October, when he crafted a giant fiberglass sculpture of Ronald McDonald, with a real live Banksy assistant shining its shoes. It was unveiled in the Bronx but was moved outside of a different McDonald's restaurant across the city around lunch time for several days. The work criticized the "heavy labor required to sustain the polished image of a mega-corporation", as the narrator of the audio accompaniment put it.
On 18 October there was a pair of paintings that Banksy collaborated on with Os Gemeos depicting a single soldier amongst masked citizens and vice versa. "The audio commentary Banksy provided suggests that this piece functions both as situational criticism of the art world as well as a tribute to the Occupy movement. Yet it also recognizes that the installation may be unsuccessful at actually advancing any agenda".
Banksy's second trip to the South Bronx was on 21 October and resulted in a piece depicting a child spray-painting the words "Ghetto 4 Life" on a wall, while a butler waited on him with a platter of spray paints. The work immediately drew a crowd from fans, despite angering many residents, who found the message offensive.
The Sphinx sculpture appeared on a worksite in Willets Point on 22 October, entitled Everything but the kitchen sphinx, and was quickly swarmed by eager Banksy fans. The attention caught the workers interest, who were reportedly selling bricks for \$100 each, and onlookers watched as it was loaded into a truck and taken away. The fate of this piece was heavily chronicled by the HBO documentary Banksy Does New York (2014). The piece was taken from its original site, kept in a garage and later appeared in the Art Miami New York modern art fair.
The 23rd installment was cancelled due to police activity, according to Banksy's official website, which stirred rumors that he had come under arrest. That same day, an outlined canvas with the caption "Better Out Than In \#AnonymousGuestbook" appeared on a building in Red Hook. The idea of an open-canvas collaborative piece was presented to Banksy two weeks prior by a community art director. The story then led many to believe the "anonymous guestbook" was outlined by Banksy himself, however this was later debunked to have been the work of a group under the name Anonymous Guestbook.
Waiting in Vain was the show's 24th installment. Located outside a strip club in Hell's Kitchen, it illustrated a man in a tuxedo holding flowers, presumably jilted by his date. After some of the club's entertainers posed in front of the piece, the owner had it carefully cut from the shutter gate before vandals could deface it. It is planned to go on permanent display inside the club.
The 25th piece came suitably Halloween-themed. Located on the Bowery, it exhibited a Grim Reaper riding a bumper car in circles to an elaborate light show, fog machine and Blue Öyster Cult's "(Don't Fear) The Reaper." The accompanying audio guide offered a self-mocking interpretation, with Banksy stating that often "the role of art is to remind us of our mortality," implying that with this mounted art show that goes on "for so long we wish we were dead already." The site of the exhibit was once that of an antique shop, some remains of which were placed in a coffin that occupied the lot for months. This prompted other interpretations of the installation's message, paying homage to the "ghosts of Bowry," as the antique store owner suggested.
The 27 October piece was a message on a wall in Greenpoint that read "This site contains blocked messages." It made reference to an unpublished column Banksy had submitted to The New York Times. The controversial essay criticized the city's decision in approving the One World Trade Center, which he described as "vanilla" and looking like "something they would build in Canada." In what became his second reference to the September 11 attacks, Banksy argued the building was a betrayal to everyone who lost their lives that day, and that its blandness is a sign the terrorist won.
The final piece of the month-long series was a group of balloons that together read "BANKSY!", tied to the wall of a building alongside the Long Island Expressway in Queens. Banksy included the message "Save 5pointz" in the caption for the piece on his website, referring to 5 Pointz, a nearby outdoor art exhibit considered to be a focal point of such culture that had recently been approved by the New York City Department of City Planning to be demolished to make way for condominiums.
## Defacement
Most of the works that make up the Better Out Than In series were defaced, some just hours after the piece was unveiled. At least one defacement was identified as done by a competing artist, OMAR NYC, who spray-painted over Banksy's red mylar balloon piece in Red Hook. OMAR NYC also defaced some of Banksy's work in May 2010.
As a result of the continued defacement, fans rushed to the sites of the installments as soon as they are announced. A group of men took advantage of this and threatened to deface a stencil painting of a beaver in East New York, charging money for people to take photographs. Some took matters into their own hands by guarding the works, others restoring them once defaced. In part because of the defacement, but also because of the great value of the artworks, property owners have also gone to extreme measures to protect the art. Some hired security guards, others covered the art with acrylic glass, and yet others installed metal roll-down gates.
## Response
The month-long show was widely publicized and covered by the media. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, while supporting the arts, criticized Banksy's work, calling him a vandal, contending that defacing property was not his definition of art.
On 17 October the New York Post wrote under the front-page headline "Get Banksy!" that police were pursuing Banksy, but noted the hunt is difficult because he has never been positively identified in public. In response Banksy posted an image of the front page on his website with the caption "I don't read what i believe in the papers." The NYPD later denied they were actively looking for Banksy as no property owners had filed any formal complaints.
### Controversy
Bronx Borough President Rubén Díaz, Jr. called Banksy a "modern-day Picasso" and praised him for choosing to unveil his 16 October Ronald McDonald replica in the South Bronx. This came before Banksy's 21 October piece, which brought discontent to the President and other residents. The piece featured a child spray-painting the words "Ghetto 4 Life" on a wall. Díaz stated it reinforced "outdated negative stereotypes," and defended that Banksy should become aware that graffiti art and culture originated in the Bronx. The owner of the graffitied wall and his partner, however, praised the work and its message, calling it "beautiful" and owning its preservation to the artist's fame.
Banksy's op-ed article about One World Trade Center, posted on his website on 27 October, came as an insult to many across the city. Former FDNY Deputy Chief Jim Riches wrote that it was a "disgrace to New York City and all the families who lost loved ones on 9/11." Sally Regenhard, a leading voice for families of September 11 victims, expressed concerns about Banksy's 15 October depiction of the Twin Towers in TriBeCa, saying the piece was "horrific" and that the placed flower looked more like an explosion. A Century 21 department store near Ground Zero had planned to show Banksy's work on 29 October, but cancelled due to the controversy.
### Critical reception
Banksy's Better Out Than In series has received mixed reviews. Many fans raved over his work, flocking to each site everyday of the show.
New York magazine art critic Jerry Saltz wrote Banksy's well-executed work stood out from other graffiti, but that the meaning behind the pieces aren't as deep as fans like to believe. "No other graffiti artist has a PR machine remotely like Banksy's," he writes, arguing Banksy is more of a "promo man" than an artist.
Will Ellsworth-Jones, author of Banksy: The Man Behind the Wall writes that Better Out Than In shows Banksy's range of mediums has grown to incorporate multi-media and performance-based works. He pointed out the "wonderful commentary on money and art" displayed with hiring an anonymous salesman to sell Banksy paintings in Central Park for \$60.
## See also
- List of works by Banksy
- Graffiti in New York City
- List of damaged or destroyed works by Banksy
|
62,766 |
Tom Bombadil
| 1,171,212,651 |
Middle-earth character
|
[
"Fictional pacifists",
"Literary characters introduced in 1934",
"Middle-earth deities and spirits",
"The Lord of the Rings characters"
] |
Tom Bombadil is a character in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium. He first appeared in print in a 1934 poem called "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil", which also included The Lord of the Rings characters Goldberry (his wife), Old Man Willow (an evil tree in his forest) and the Barrow-wight, from whom he rescues the hobbits. They were not then explicitly part of the older legends that became The Silmarillion, and are not mentioned in The Hobbit.
Bombadil is best known from his appearance as a supporting character in Tolkien's high fantasy epic The Lord of the Rings, published in 1954 and 1955. In the first volume, The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo Baggins and company meet Bombadil in the Old Forest. The idea for this meeting and the appearances of Old Man Willow and the Barrow-wight can be found in some of Tolkien's earliest notes for a sequel to The Hobbit. Bombadil is mentioned, but not seen, near the end of The Return of the King, where Gandalf plans to pay him a long visit.
Tom Bombadil has been omitted in radio adaptations of The Lord of the Rings, the 1978 animated film, and Peter Jackson's film trilogy, as non-essential to the story.
Commentators have debated Bombadil's role and origins. A likely source is the demigod Väinämöinen in the 1849 Finnish epic poem Kalevala, with many points of resemblance. Scholars have stated that he is the spirit of a place, a genius loci.
## Appearances
### "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil"
The original version of Tolkien's poem "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil" was published in 1934 in The Oxford Magazine. The poem depicts Bombadil as a "merry fellow" living in a small valley close to the Withywindle river, where he wanders and explores nature at his leisure. Several of the valley's mysterious residents, including the "River-woman's daughter" Goldberry, the malevolent tree-spirit Old Man Willow, the Badger-folk and a Barrow-wight, attempt to capture Bombadil for their own ends, but quail at the power of his voice, which defeats their enchantments and commands them to return to their natural existence. At the end of the poem, Bombadil captures and marries Goldberry. Throughout the poem, he is unconcerned by the attempts to capture him and brushes them off with the power in his words.
Bombadil makes it clear that he found Goldberry in the Withywindle river, calling her "River-woman's daughter". The Tolkien critic John D. Rateliff suggests that, at least in terms of Tolkien's early mythology, she should be seen as one of the fays, spirits, and elementals (including the Maia): "Thus Melian is a 'fay', (as, in all probability, are Goldberry and Bombadil; the one a nymph, the other a genius loci)".
The later poem "Bombadil Goes Boating" anchors Bombadil in Middle-earth, featuring a journey down the Withywindle to the Brandywine river, where hobbits ("Little Folk I know there") live at Hays-end. Bombadil is challenged by various river-residents on his journey, including birds, otters and hobbits, but charms them all with his voice, ending his journey at the farm of Farmer Maggot, where he drinks ale and dances with the family. At the end of the poem, the charmed birds and otters work together to bring Bombadil's boat home. The poem includes a reference to the Norse lay of Ótr, when Bombadil threatens to give the hide of a disrespectful otter to the Barrow-wights, who he says will cover it with gold apart from a single whisker. The poem mentions Middle-earth locations including Hays-end, Bree and the Tower Hills, and speaks of "Tall Watchers by the Ford, Shadows on the Marches".
### The Lord of the Rings
In The Fellowship of the Ring, Tom Bombadil helps Frodo Baggins and his hobbit companions on their journey. Tom and his wife Goldberry, the "Daughter of the River", still live in their house by the source of the Withywindle, and some of the characters and situations from the original poem reappear.
Tom first appears when Merry and Pippin are trapped in the Old Forest by Old Man Willow, and Frodo and Sam cry for help. Tom commands Old Man Willow to release them, singing him to sleep.
The hobbits spend two nights in Tom Bombadil's house, which serves as one of Frodo's five Homely Houses. Here it is seen that the One Ring has no power over Bombadil; he can see Frodo when the Ring makes him invisible to others, and can wear it himself with no effect. He even tosses the Ring in the air and makes it disappear, but then produces it from his other hand and returns it to Frodo. The idea of giving him the Ring for safekeeping is rejected in Book Two's second chapter, "The Council of Elrond". Gandalf says that it is unwise to consider Tom as having power over the Ring, and that rather, "the Ring has no power over him...". He suggests that Tom would not find the Ring to be very important, and so might simply misplace it.
Before sending the hobbits on their way, Tom teaches them a rhyme to summon him if they fall into danger again within his borders. This proves fortunate, as the four are trapped by a barrow-wight. After rescuing them, Tom gives each hobbit a long dagger taken from the treasure in the barrow. He refuses to pass the borders of his own land, but he directs them to The Prancing Pony Inn at Bree.
Towards the end of The Return of the King, when Gandalf leaves the hobbits, he mentions that he wants to have a long talk with Bombadil, calling him a "moss-gatherer". Gandalf says, in response to Frodo's query of how well Bombadil is getting along, that Bombadil is "as well as ever", "quite untroubled" and "not much interested in anything that we have done and seen", save their visits to the Ents. At the very end of The Lord of the Rings, as Frodo sails into the West and leaves Middle-earth forever, he has what seems to him the very experience that appeared to him in the house of Bombadil in his dream of the second night.
## Creation and interpretations
### Tolkien
Tolkien stated that he invented Tom Bombadil in memory of his children's Dutch doll. His Bombadil poems far pre-date the writing of The Lord of the Rings, into which Tolkien introduced Tom Bombadil from the earliest drafts. In response to a letter, Tolkien described Tom in The Lord of the Rings as "just an invention" and "not an important person – to the narrative", even if "he represents something that I feel important, though I would not be prepared to analyse the feeling precisely. I would not, however, have left him in, if he did not have some kind of function." Specifically, Tolkien connected Tom in the letter to a renunciation of control, "a delight in things for themselves without reference to yourself," "Botany and Zoology (as sciences) and Poetry". In another letter, Tolkien writes that he does not think Tom is improved by philosophizing; he included the character "because I had already 'invented' him independently" (in The Oxford Magazine) "and wanted an 'adventure' on the way".
Tolkien commented further that "even in a mythical Age there must be some enigmas, as there always are. Tom Bombadil is one (intentionally)". In a letter to Stanley Unwin, Tolkien called Tom Bombadil the spirit of the vanishing landscapes of Oxfordshire and Berkshire. However, this 1937 letter was in reference to works which pre-dated the writing of The Lord of the Rings.
Tolkien said little of Tom Bombadil's origins, and the character does not fit neatly into the categories of beings Tolkien created. Bombadil calls himself the "Eldest" and the "Master". He claims to remember "the first raindrop and the first acorn", and that he "knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless—before the Dark Lord came from Outside". When Frodo asks Goldberry just who Tom Bombadil is, she responds simply by saying "He is". Some critics have taken this dialogue as a reference to God's statement "I Am that I Am" in the Book of Exodus, but Tolkien explicitly rejected this.
### Väinämöinen
The Tolkien scholar David Elton Gay writes that Tolkien was inspired by the Finnish writer Elias Lönnrot's 1849 epic poem Kalevala, a work of modern mythology. Gay suggests with a detailed comparison that Tom Bombadil was directly modelled on the poem's central character, the demigod Väinämöinen.
### Sauron's opposite
The Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger writes that if there was an opposite to Sauron in The Lord of the Rings, it would not be Aragorn, his battlefield opponent, nor Gandalf, his spiritual enemy, but Tom Bombadil, the earthly Master who is entirely free of the desire to dominate, and hence cannot be dominated. The Christian scholar W. Christopher Stewart sees Bombadil as embodying the pursuit of knowledge purely for its own sake, driven only by his sense of wonder. In his view, this goes some way to explaining Bombadil's indifference to the One Ring, whose only purpose is power and domination.
### Multiple levels of meaning
Jane Beal, in the Journal of Tolkien Research, writes that Bombadil can be considered using "the four levels of meaning found in medieval scriptural exegesis and literary interpretation". These are different ways of understanding a text, rather than necessarily contradicting each other.
### Jungian interpretation
The psychologist, fiction author and camouflage expert Timothy R. O'Neill interpreted Bombadil from a Jungian perspective in The Individuated Hobbit: Jung, Tolkien, and the Archetypes of Middle-Earth (1979). O'Neill finds Bombadil to be the manifestation of the Self archetype and a vision of man's beginning and destiny:
"A common and potent archetype is Original Man, which Jung often calls Anthropos, emerging as a conscious representative of the Self. Bombadil, despite his apparently humble digs in the Old Forest, is the prototype of the Children of God, that Original Man and the template which will influence the final form of Man... he is the cosmic seed from which Man develops."
The Tolkien scholar Patrick Grant notes that "Jung also talks of a common figure, the 'vegetation numen,' king of the forest, who is associated with wood and water in a manner that recalls Tom Bombadil."
### Early interpretations
The Tolkien scholar and philosopher Gene Hargrove argued in Mythlore in 1986 that Tolkien understood who Bombadil is, but purposefully made him enigmatic. Nevertheless, Tolkien left clues that Bombadil is a Vala, a god of Middle-Earth, specifically Aulë, the archangelic demigod who created the dwarves. Robert Foster suggested in 1978 that Bombadil is one of the Maiar, angelic beings sent from Valinor.
## Adaptations
Along with the adventures in Crickhollow, the Old Forest, and the Barrow-downs, Bombadil is omitted from Peter Jackson's interpretation of The Lord of the Rings. Jackson explained that this was because he and his co-writers felt that the character does little to advance the story, and including him would make the film unnecessarily long. Christopher Lee concurred, stating the scenes were left out to make time for showing Saruman's capture of Gandalf.
Bombadil has appeared in other radio and film adaptations. He was played by Norman Shelley in the 1955–1956 BBC radio adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, a performance that Tolkien thought "dreadful"; in his view even worse was that Goldberry was announced as his daughter and Willowman "an ally of Mordor (!!)" (his emphasis). He was portrayed by Esko Hukkanen in the 1993 Finnish miniseries Hobitit. He appeared, too, in the 1979 Mind's Eye recordings, where he was played by Bernard Mayes, who also voiced Gandalf. He was included, along with Goldberry and the Barrow-wight, in the 1991 Russian adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring, Khraniteli.
Although Bombadil was not portrayed in Ralph Bakshi's or Jackson's films, a Tom Bombadil card exists in The Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game by Decipher, Inc. (part of the trilogy's merchandise). The model portraying Bombadil on this card is Harry Wellerchew. Bombadil is an NPC in the MMORPG game The Lord of the Rings Online, serving as a main character in Book 1 of the epic quests.
Bombadil appears as a playable character in the LEGO The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit video games. He has no impact in the main story for either game, as the games are direct adaptations of the Peter Jackson films rather than the original novels, but he later appears as an unlockable character in the Middle Earth hub world and can be used in free-play mode.
The 1969 Harvard Lampoon novel Bored of the Rings parodies Tom Bombadil as "Tim Benzedrine", a stereotypical hippie married to "Hash-berry". One of his songs is rewritten as:
> > Toke-a-lid! Smoke-a-lid! Pop the mescalino! Stash the hash! Gonna crash! Make mine methedrino! Hop a hill! Pop a pill! For Old Tim Benzedrino!
|
34,001,428 |
Regional Holiday Music
| 1,146,656,213 | null |
[
"2011 American television episodes",
"American Christmas television episodes",
"Community (season 3) episodes",
"Musical television episodes"
] |
"Regional Holiday Music" is the tenth episode and mid-season finale of the third season of the American television series Community, and 59th overall episode of the series. It was originally broadcast on December 8, 2011 on NBC and is the final episode before the show went on hiatus during the 2011–12 midseason. The Christmas-themed episode is a musical featuring original songs performed by cast members. After Greendale's glee club members become incapacitated, the study group is asked to join. Despite their dislike of the club, each of them is lured into joining after their vulnerabilities are exploited.
The episode was directed by Tristram Shapeero and written by Steve Basilone and Annie Mebane. The musical format, along with other more subtle elements in the episode is a parody of the Fox television series Glee. Creator Dan Harmon is known to dislike Glee and the series has satirized aspects of the musical TV series in previous episodes. The premise of "Regional Holiday Music" also draws on an event in season 2's "Paradigms of Human Memory" (Community's "clip show") and provides closure to it. Taran Killam guest-starred as the glee club instructor.
The episode received mostly positive reviews, with many critics disagreeing with NBC's decision to bench the series. Critics praised the episode's high-concept satire and character-driven moments. Opinion was divided on the quality of the original songs. According to Nielsen Media Research, "Regional Holiday Music" was seen by an estimated 3.6 million viewers, a drop from the previous week.
## Plot
While meeting in the cafeteria, the study group reveal their plans for Christmas. Some are spending time away, disappointing Abed (Danny Pudi), who had wished to spend the holidays with the group, even renting the critically reviled Inspector Spacetime holiday special to watch with them. Their conversation is interrupted by a performance by the obnoxious Greendale glee club. Midway through, Chang (Ken Jeong) stops them with a cease and desist order from ASCAP—tipped off by Jeff (Joel McHale)—for performing copyrighted music without permission. The glee club members suffer a nervous breakdown and are taken to the hospital.
The glee club instructor, Cory "Mr. Rad" Radison (Taran Killam), invites the study group to join and perform the Christmas pageant but is rebuffed promptly due to their collective dislike for the club. However, through a series of events performed as songs, the members of the group are lured into joining the club one by one.
1. "Glee": Mr. Rad manages to convince Abed to join the club by tapping into Abed's desire to spend Christmas with the group.
2. "Christmas Infiltration": Troy (Donald Glover) is next to join when Abed creates a scenario where he can infiltrate the glee club for the Jehovah's Witnesses. Troy then raps about going undercover to make it seem like he accepts Christmas.
3. "Baby Boomer Santa": Troy and Abed exploit Pierce's (Chevy Chase) baby boomer narcissism using mixed musical styles associated with each of the decades Pierce has lived through.
4. "Teach Me How to Understand Christmas": Before this song, Annie (Alison Brie) catches the glee club virus after being cornered by Troy, Abed, and Mr. Rad. She then dresses up in a sexy Santa outfit to seduce Jeff.
5. "Happy Birthday Jesus": Pierce invites a children's choir to sing to Shirley about how the public school system has thrown out the meaning of Christmas (the birth of Jesus) during its celebrations. Unable to resist her religious fervor, Shirley springs into song, proclaiming "Happy Birthday Jesus!"
With Britta (Gillian Jacobs) the only non-glee club member left, she seeks out Jeff, only to find that Annie successfully turned him, and he in turn manages to sway Britta.
As they are backstage preparing for the Christmas pageant, Mr. Rad tells Abed of his plans to take the group to "Regionals" and many further glee competitions. As Abed had only made the group join to brighten up Christmas, he decides to sabotage the pageant so that Mr. Rad cannot take them to Regionals. While the group performs "Planet Christmas" on stage, he asks Britta (who was originally cast as the mute tree) to replace him as the Mouse King. She does and ruins the pageant with her poor singing and badly improvised lyrics and choreography. Despite Mr. Rad's objections, Dean Pelton (Jim Rash) and the audience supportively agree to "let Britta sing her awkward song" in the spirit of inclusion. Mr. Rad becomes enraged at the idea and inadvertently reveals that he killed the previous glee club members when they did not live up to his expectations, then runs off. Abed regretfully concedes that "forcing things to be bright just makes the darkness underneath it even darker."
Back at the apartment, Abed is watching the Inspector Spacetime holiday special alone. The rest of the group arrive, singing "The First Noel", and announce that after a dark year, they have cancelled their plans in order to spend the holidays with him. The episode ends with the group watching Inspector Spacetime together.
## Production
"Regional Holiday Music" was written by Steve Basilone and Annie Mebane, both their debut writing credits for the series. It was directed by Tristram Shapeero, his seventh directing credit. The music for the episode was composed by series composer Ludwig Göransson, with lyrics by the writing staff.
The episode took six days to shoot, which Danny Pudi said is one of the longest for a single episode.
Taran Killam, a cast member of Saturday Night Live, guest starred as glee club instructor Cory Radison. Killam previously worked with Community executive producers Neil Goldman and Garrett Donovan in the pilot of Nobody's Watching. The show was not picked up.
Series creator Dan Harmon has long been known to dislike Glee. Community has parodied the musical television series in previous episodes. In "Modern Warfare", the show referenced Glee's lack of original music. In "Paradigms of Human Memory", the study group fills in for the glee club members who died in a bus crash, though they sing a song with no real lyrics. These events are brought up during "Regional Holiday Music", which also reveals the true reason behind the crash.
Following the footsteps of season 2's "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas", Abed spends the episode trying to get the group to embrace the holiday spirit during Christmas.
## Cultural references
"Regional Holiday Music" is a satire-at-large of the television series Glee. The audio transitions for this episode mimic the a cappella audio transitions featured in Glee, whilst the glee club instructor Cory Radison ("Mr. Rad") shares many similarities to Will Schuester ("Mr. Schue"). The episode also makes reference to the concept of "Regionals", which would be confusing to people who haven't watched the show. Unlike most songs on Glee, the music on "Regional Holiday Music" is entirely original.
Jeff remarks in a scene that not liking the glee club does not make the group bullies, in reference to Glee creator Ryan Murphy's criticism of musicians who don't want their music on the show. When Mr. Rad reveals that he killed previous glee club members, he shouts "Look, Kings of Leon!" to distract the audience before escaping. Kings of Leon had previously clashed with Murphy over permission to use their songs on Glee.
The song "Glee" speaks about the namesake series' characters' tendency to sing their feelings instead of "making a face." While performing "Baby Boomer Santa", Troy and Abed recreate musical styles from the 1940s to 1980s, including performing "Dancing in the Dark" and Troy impersonating Bob Dylan. The episode continues the show's recurring spoof of the British television series Doctor Who through Inspector Spacetime, while also making a nod to the infamous 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special. While the group discusses their Christmas plans, Annie reveals she will spend time with her bubbe (the Yiddish word for grandmother), which Troy confuses for "boobie" (breast). The scene where Britta discovers that Jeff has been turned is a spoof of the ending of the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
In the end tag, the heads of the Dean (Jim Rash), Chang (Ken Jeong), Magnitude (Luke Youngblood), Starburns (Dino Stamatopoulos) and Leonard (Richard Erdman) are superimposed on ornaments as they perform a version of "Carol of the Bells" using their names and a few recurring lines.
## Reception
### Ratings
In its original American broadcast, "Regional Holiday Music" was viewed by an estimated 3.6 million households, with a Nielsen rating/share of 1.5/4 in the 18–49 demographic. It finished fourth in its 8 pm time slot among broadcast networks and was outperformed by CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory, which was seen by 14.4 million households; Fox reality show The X Factor, which was seen by 9.9 million households; and a special holiday episode of ABC reality show Wipeout, which was seen by 6.6 million households. The episode outperformed a repeat airing of The Vampire Diaries on The CW, which was seen by 1.2 million households. Community was NBC's lowest performing show of the night in the demographic despite The Office, Parks and Recreation and Whitney all slipping to season lows.
### Reviews
"Regional Holiday Music" received mostly positive reviews from critics, many of whom pleaded for the show to return. BuddyTV placed it \#17 in its list of 50 best TV episodes of 2011, calling the songs the "best original songs TV has heard in a long time".
Emily VanDerWerff of The A.V. Club gave the episode an 'A', saying "Community is going away for a while, but it's going away with an episode that reminds me why I love the show so much. This is a very personal thing—since humor's subjective like that—but for me, this was the funniest episode since the clip show... I laughed myself silly at this one, to the point where I was devolving into hiccups at certain scenes, and I'm glad we get to go out on an episode like this, one that plays around with form and makes me laugh." Alan Sepinwall of HitFix also praised the Glee-spoofing, saying "'Regional Holiday Music' was the logical, clever, funny endpoint to it." Sean Gandert of Paste said, "As with its best theme-episodes, the show bridged the gap between high-concept parody and character-based comedy." TV Fanatic's Leigh Raines gave the episode a 4/5 rating, saying while the show "definitely went out with a bang, it didn't totally blow my socks off... While there were a few moments that upped the ick factor, overall this episode fell on the positive side." She praised Troy and Abed's rap performance, but called the scene where Annie seduces Jeff "creepy". Robert Canning of IGN said it was a "great" episode, but "faltered just a bit" at the end: "Abed's realization that his attempts to brighten the holiday only made things darker, as Jeff had previously suggested, fit the character well enough, but the study group's follow-up felt a bit forced and holiday hokey. Of course, that could well have been the point."
Kelsea Stahler of Hollywood.com gave the episode a bad review, calling the original songs "terrible". She remarked, "fans merit a better episode, better commentary, and better parody of the subject at hand." Nonetheless, she praised the episode's ending and asked, "Who cares that the story was a bit weak this time around? It's the last episode we have before the dreaded undetermined hiatus gets underway, and it's Christmas. Let's just cherish the episode for what it is..." Sean Campbell said although he enjoyed the episode's concept, "the execution left much to be desired" and that the quality of the songs "varied from okay to bad".
The Atlantic's Kevin Fallon compared "Regional Holiday Music" to Glee's own 2011 Christmas episode "Extraordinary Merry Christmas" which aired on December 13. Fallon said "Regional Holiday Music" "relentlessly exposed Glee's most repetitive cliches" and "couldn't have invented better illustrations of Glee's cringe-inducing, everyone-is-loved-as-long-as-they-sing-a-song motif." However, on a final note, he highlighted the two shows' similarities, explaining how both shows stick to their bold delivery and heartwarming moments.
|
60,820,200 |
American Song Contest
| 1,172,993,649 |
Song competition between U.S. states adapted from the Eurovision Song Contest
|
[
"2020s American music television series",
"2020s American reality television series",
"2022 American television series debuts",
"American Song Contest",
"American annual television specials",
"American television spin-offs",
"English-language television shows",
"Eurovision Song Contest",
"Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on television",
"Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the music industry",
"Music competitions in the United States",
"NBC original programming",
"Reality television spin-offs",
"Song contests",
"Television series by Universal Television"
] |
The American Song Contest is an American music reality competition television series based on the Eurovision Song Contest. The sole season of the series was hosted by Snoop Dogg and Kelly Clarkson; it consisted of eight episodes airing between March 21 and May 9, 2022 on NBC. It saw acts representing all 50 U.S. states, five territories, as well as Washington, D.C. compete for the title of Best Original Song. Over the course of the season, 56 competing entries were divided into five qualifying rounds leading to two 11-participant semi-finals, and culminating with a 10-participant final round, which aired as the season finale. Participants advanced from a qualifying round to a semifinal, and then to a final based on votes received by public voting or jury voting, or a combination thereof. The contest was won by the state of Oklahoma, which was represented by the song "Wonderland", performed by AleXa.
NBC acquired the rights to broadcast the Eurovision Song Contest in the United States starting in and shortly after announced the American Song Contest with a 2022 premiere date. Promotion for the series was organized by NBC and included a commercial during the 2022 Super Bowl and a sweepstakes for listeners on iHeartRadio stations. Reception for the series was largely mixed, with many critics noting that it did not live up to its Eurovision inspiration; it was ultimately not renewed for a 2023 season.
## Format
The American Song Contest put artists head-to-head against other representatives in a series of qualifying rounds, leading to the semi-finals and a prime time final in a "March Madness" style. The winning act earns the title of Best Original Song. As initially announced in August 2020, the competition would feature professional musical artists such as solo singers, duos, or groups of up to six members from each of the 50 U.S. states. By May 2021, the format had been expanded to include all five populated U.S. territories and the nation's capital and federal district of Washington, D.C. The participating territories were American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Acts could consist of solo artists, duos, bands, or a DJ.
Each representative performed an original song in the live television program broadcast across the country on NBC. The series lasted eight episodes, consisting of five episodes of qualifying rounds, followed by two episodes of semi-finals and one final. In each qualifying round, a 56-member jury of music industry professionals (one for each state and territory) selected one song to advance to the semi-finals, while three songs also advanced after a 35-hour viewer voting period, which tallied votes from a combination of the jury and fans. After the qualifying rounds, the jury also selected two "redemption songs" from the qualifying rounds to join in the semi-finals, bringing the total number of semi-finalists to 22. They were then divided into two 11-participant semi-finals. The same selection process was facilitated in the semi-finals to determine the 10 acts to compete in the final. The final results were presented in Eurovision style, with each jury member awarding their maximum 12 points, followed by the awarding of points from viewers. The viewer votes were weighted, with each state and territory being worth 12 points much like in Eurovision, thus giving all regions equal voting power while preventing populous states like California and Texas from dominating the voting process.
## Production
### Background
The Eurovision Song Contest is an international song competition organized annually by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) since 1956, which features participants representing primarily European countries. It ranks among the world's most-watched non-sporting events every year, with hundreds of millions of viewers globally. The earliest known telecast of Eurovision in the continental US was in , while the broadcast in Puerto Rico was the first for a U.S. territory. The contest was later broadcast in both areas for the and contests. U.S. cable network Logo TV broadcast the finals from to , featuring commentary from Carson Kressley and Michelle Collins (2016); Michelle Visage and Ross Mathews (); and Mathews and Shangela (2018). Viewing figures were low, ranging from 52,000 viewers in 2016 to 74,000 viewers in 2018. WJFD-FM, a commercial radio station in New Bedford, Massachusetts, also broadcast the and finals, with English and Portuguese commentary.
Netflix licensed the video-on-demand rights for the 2019 and contests. The OTT platform planned to release the musical comedy film Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga together with the 2020 contest. However, because of the contest's cancellation due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the film was released a month later, on June 26. The film became the most-streamed content on Netflix in the U.S. on its first weekend, and introduced American viewers to the Eurovision format and its popularity in Europe. Furthermore, a song from the film, "Husavik", was later nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 2021 Oscars.
There were plans to develop an American version of Eurovision as early as 2006, with Ben Silverman (then chairman of production company Reveille) developing the contest for NBC to challenge American Idol. Silverman (currently co-CEO and chairman of production company Propagate) admitted in 2020 that he had been trying to pursue this project for 20 years, including when he was chairman of NBC.
### Development
In an interview with Billboard, Christer Björkman and Anders Lenhoff revealed that they discussed creating an American version of the Eurovision Song Contest after producing the in Kyiv, Ukraine. Lenhoff brought up the idea, to which Björkman was hesitant, saying: "Why would we do that and how would that work?" Despite the initial rejection, Lenhoff persisted with the concept, adding: "It sounds like a brilliant idea with states competing instead of countries. Americans love music. Americans love competition. Americans love where they come from. They have an awesome amount of pride for their home state, for their hometown." Lenhoff then contacted fellow Swedish producer Peter Settman, who crafted the business plan for potential sponsors and TV networks. After announcing in 2019 that they have acquired the rights from the EBU to produce an American version of Eurovision, Björkman and his team received a call from Silverman saying, "You are not doing this without me. Period. That's not going to happen."
The European Broadcasting Union announced NBC had acquired the rights to broadcast the competition on May 14, 2021. NBC announced the American Song Contest would have a mid-season or summer premiere in 2022 after releasing their fall schedule for the upcoming 2021–22 network television season. The producers were able to get NBC on board mainly due to their experience working with music shows such as The Voice and Songland. Silverman serves as executive producer for the program, while Audrey Morrissey is appointed as the showrunner. Propagate Content and Universal Television Alternative Studio serve as the production companies for the program. In a press statement, Silverman hoped that focusing on the mutual love and respect for music would unite a "fractional America." Deadline Hollywood reported that a corporation that centers around the competition has been founded, with former Propagate president Greg Lipstone appointed as President and Chief Operating Officer. The American Song Contest, Inc., aims to "develop and grow the Eurovision brand globally," which includes creating auxiliary businesses around the reality series, as well as expanding the franchise to countries that are not covered by Eurovision.
NBC originally scheduled the premiere for February 21, 2022, but the premiere was postponed in favor of America's Got Talent: Extreme due to COVID-19-related concerns involving the Omicron variant. The first live show was then rescheduled to March 21, with the finale moved to May 9, the same week as the Eurovision Song Contest 2022.
Rapper Snoop Dogg and pop singer Kelly Clarkson were introduced as presenters of the show. In a statement, Clarkson said: "I have been a fan and love the concept of Eurovision and am thrilled to bring the musical phenomenon to America. I'm so excited to work with Snoop and can't wait to see every state and territory represented by artists singing their own songs." Clarkson added during a virtual press conference: "We are so unfortunately divided... and having so many things going on – it's been a very hard couple of years and now it's getting more serious. Feeling like you are not isolated and that you are a part of something bigger than your everyday world is so important. That's what this show is going to do for people. Everyone is being represented. It's a really great concept in general but one that is very needed right now."
## Participants
An online submissions platform was launched in May 2021, allowing eligible artists aged 16 years and older to apply, with or without recording or publishing deals. Participants were required to list all states or territories with which they had "an authentic, deep connection" during the casting process, with the producers having the final say on which state or territory the artists would represent. The website stressed that submissions had to be original songs in any genre and could not have been released commercially. Songs that were released promotionally, such as on SoundCloud and on social media, could be submitted—given that all posts were to be deleted if selected. The producers teased the possibility of filming in Los Angeles or Atlanta between February and April 2022. However, filming was later confirmed to take place on the Universal Studios Lot in Universal City, California. Previously, Björkman had stated during an interview in The Euro Trip podcast that Las Vegas, Tampa, and Orlando were also considered to be the first host city.
NBC revealed the 56 competing artists on March 3, 2022, through an interactive map. Atlantic Records served as the exclusive music partner of the American Song Contest, with the original songs in the competition released in batches beginning March 21 at midnight Eastern Daylight Time.
## Qualifying rounds
In each qualifying round, 11-12 songs competed for four spots in the semi-final, with the outcome decided upon by the votes from a jury panel and a public vote. An automatic qualifier from each round was determined by the juries, while the remaining three spots were decided by a combination of the jury and public votes. Moreover, two artists with the highest streams to this point returned as "redemption picks" and would join the qualifiers in the semi-finals.
### Qualifiers 1
The first qualifier round was held on Monday, March 21. At the end of the broadcast, it was announced that the jury had selected Rhode Island to advance to the semi-final. On April 18, it was announced on The Kelly Clarkson Show that Wyoming had advanced to the semi-final, being the first redemption pick.
### Qualifiers 2
The second qualifier round was held on Monday, March 28. At the end of the broadcast, it was announced that the jury had selected Kentucky to advance to the semi-final. During the first semi-final, it was announced that New York had advanced to the semi-final, being the second redemption pick.
### Qualifiers 3
The third qualifier round was held on Monday, April 4. At the end of the broadcast, it was announced that the jury had selected Tennessee to advance to the semi-final. The final results of this qualifying round was announced on the fourth episode of the contest.
### Qualifiers 4
The fourth qualifier round was held on Monday, April 11. At the end of the broadcast, it was announced that the jury had selected Washington to advance to the semi-final.
### Qualifiers 5
The fifth qualifier round was held on Monday, April 18. At the end of the broadcast, it was announced that the jury had selected Michigan to advance to the semi-final.
## Semi-finals
The 22 semi-finalists were split into the two semi-finals that took place during the April 25 and May 2 episodes, respectively. In each semi-final, 11 songs competed for five spots in the grand final: an automatic qualifier from each semi-final was determined by the juries, while the remaining four spots were decided by the public votes. From both semi-finals combined, a total of ten performers would advance to the grand final on May 9.
### Semi-final 1
On April 19, NBC confirmed the first 11 semi-finalists who would compete in the first semi-final. The first semi-final was then held on Monday, April 25. At the end of the broadcast, it was announced that the jury had selected Washington to advance to the final. The public qualifiers for the final were announced at the beginning of the second semi-final, held the following week, and were Oklahoma, Colorado, Alabama, and Kentucky.
### Semi-final 2
The second semi-final was held on Monday, May 2. At the end of the broadcast, it was announced that the jury had selected Tennessee to advance to the final. On Wednesday, May 4, it was announced on E! Network that the public qualifiers to the final were Connecticut, American Samoa, Texas, and North Dakota.
## Grand final
The grand final took place on May 9 and served as the season finale of the series. Ten states and territories participated in the grand final, composed of the two jury qualifiers and the eight public vote qualifiers from the two semi-finals. The contest was won by the state of Oklahoma, represented by the song "Wonderland", performed by AleXa. As an interval act, Jimmie Allen performed his single "Down Home".
## Detailed voting results
### 12 points
Below is a summary of the maximum 12 points awarded by each region's professional juries.
## National jury and spokespersons
### National jury
The winner of the American Song Contest was partly determined by a 56-member "national jury," with one member representing each state and territory. Their duty was to evaluate each entry based on the live performance, together with its "artistic expression, hit potential, originality, and visual impression." They were then divided into ten regions, namely: Midwest, Upper South, New England, Plains, Mountains, Lower South, Mid-Atlantic, Southwest, Territories, and Pacific. Jurors include:
- Alabama – Amber Parker, program director, WTXT Tuscaloosa, iHeartMedia
- Alaska – Quinn Christopherson, singer-songwriter
- American Samoa – Joseph Fa'avae, founder, Island Block Network
- Arizona – Double-L, music director, on-air personality, KNIX Phoenix, iHeartMedia
- Arkansas – Kevin Mercer, program director, KHKN Little Rock, iHeartMedia
- California – Dan McCarroll, former president of Capitol Records and WB Records
- Colorado – Isaac Slade, frontman of The Fray
- Connecticut – Jaime Levine, CEO, Seven Mantels, artist manager
- Delaware – Christa Cooper, on-air personality / assistant program director, WDSD Wilmington, iHeartMedia
- Florida – Jose Tillan, director/producer – The POPGarage
- Georgia – Jennifer Goicoechea, SVP A&R Sony Music, EPIC
- Guam – Heidi Chargualaf Quenga, executive director, Chamorro Cultural Advisor
- Hawaii – Eric Daniels, keyboardist/arranger, The Voice
- Idaho – Shari Short, singer/songwriter/producer
- Illinois – Mike Knobloch, president, music and publishing, NBCUniversal
- Indiana – Nancy Yearing, talent development
- Iowa – Taylor J., program director / on-air personality KKDM Des Moines, iHeartMedia
- Kansas – Michelle Buckles, program director, KZCH Wichita, iHeartMedia
- Kentucky – Ashley Wilson, director of country programming, Kentucky/Indiana, iHeartMedia
- Louisiana – Uptown Angela, Executive Vice President of Programming, format lead custom R&B/gospel, iHeartMedia
- Maine – Lauren Wayne, general manager, talent buyer, State Theater
- Maryland – Caron Veazey, Founder & CEO, Something in Common
- Massachusetts – Jamie Cerreta, EVP Hipgnosis Songs Group
- Michigan – Shahida Mausi, CEO The Right Productions, Inc./Aretha Franklin Amphitheatre
- Minnesota – Barry Lather, creative director, choreographer, producer
- Mississippi – Joe King the Big Daddy, program director, WZLD Hattiesburg, iHeartMedia
- Missouri – Tommy Austin, SVP Programming, iHeartMedia
- Montana – Stephanie Davis, singer-songwriter
- Nebraska – Hoss Michaels, program director, KXKT Omaha, iHeartMedia
- Nevada – Jim Vellutato, CEO, Arrival Music
- New Hampshire – Charlie Singer, music television producer, executive producer
- New Jersey – Matt Pinfield, nationally syndicated radio host, A&R consultant, former MTV host of 120 Minutes
- New Mexico – Tony Manero, SVP Programming Southwest, iHeartMedia
- New York – Tom Poleman, Chief Programming Officer & President, iHeartMedia
- North Carolina – Paul Schadt, on-air personality, WKKT Charlotte, iHeartMedia
- North Dakota – Allison Bostow, program director / on-air personality, KIZZ Minot, iHeartMedia
- Northern Mariana Islands – Galvin Deleon Guerrero, President of Northern Marianas College, radio DJ
- Ohio – Khirye Tyler, songwriter, producer, musical director
- Oklahoma – Ester Dean, singer-songwriter
- Oregon – Mark Hamilton, program director / on-air personality, Portland Audacy
- Pennsylvania – Ty Stiklorius, Founder & CEO of Friends at Work
- Puerto Rico – Carlos Perez, creative director
- Rhode Island – Kristin Lessard, on-air personality, WSNE Providence, iHeartMedia
- South Carolina – Miss Monique, on-air personality / program director, WXBT Columbia, iHeartMedia
- South Dakota – Jered Johnson, President / CEO, Pepper Entertainment
- Tennessee – Brian Phillips, Executive VP, Content and Audience, Cumulus Media
- Texas – Natural, music producer
- U.S. Virgin Islands – Ajanie Williams, music producer & author
- Utah – Jeff McCartney, SVP Programming, Salt Lake City, iHeartMedia
- Vermont – Lee Chesnut, A&R Consultant
- Virginia – Justin Derrico, musician
- Washington – Zann Fredlund, on-air personality, music director & assistant program director, KBKS Seattle, iHeartMedia
- Washington, D.C. – Dustin Matthews, Director of Rock Programming, Washington, DC, iHeartMedia
- West Virginia – Judy Eaton, program director, WTCR Huntington, iHeartMedia
- Wisconsin – Shanna "Quinn" Cudeck, program director / on-air personality, WMIL Milwaukee, iHeartMedia
- Wyoming – Ian Munsick, Warner Music recording artist
### Spokespersons
All 56 juries were geographically divided in the grand final and selected the following spokespersons who announced the 12-point score from their respective regional juries chronologically:
## Episodes
## Marketing
NBC News produced a report promoting the casting process of the American Song Contest, which was then distributed to its affiliate stations across the U.S. and its territories. It featured an interview with supervising casting producer Michelle McNulty, stating that they were "looking for the next big hit single, like those anthem songs... that just get in your head and can't get them out." The Italian rock band Måneskin, winners of the Eurovision Song Contest 2021, performed during the Top 10 episode of The Voice season 21, in which host Carson Daly promoted the American Song Contest as "the U.S. version of Eurovision." NBC released a promotional video for the American Song Contest on their Twitter account on December 15, 2021, stating that it'll be "the biggest live music event America has ever seen", with songs from all genres competing. An advertisement that introduces Snoop Dogg and Clarkson as the show's presenters debuted before the Super Bowl LVI halftime show. Clarkson had previously performed a cover of "Arcade" by Dutch singer Duncan Laurence, the winning song of the Eurovision Song Contest 2019, at her talk show. Radio stations affiliated with iHeartRadio have introduced sweepstakes in relation to the American Song Contest to listeners for a chance to win gift cards.
## International broadcasting
The show was also broadcast in multiple European countries, as well as in Australia and Canada:
- Australia – SBS Viceland
- Austria and Germany – ServusTV
- Canada – CHCH-DT
- Estonia – TV3
- Finland – Yle TV2
- Greece – ERT
- Iceland – RÚV
- Lithuania – TV6
- Montenegro – RTCG
- Norway – NRK
- Portugal – RTP
- Serbia – RTS
- Slovenia – RTVSLO
- Spain – RTVE Play
- Sweden – SVT
## Reception
The concept of producing an American version of Eurovision was initially met with lukewarm reactions. Andy Kryza of Time Out wrote that the American Song Contest's biggest challenge is "the relative homogeneity of the American musical landscape," that its pop stars need to be paired with colorful performers like drag queens, wrecking crews, clowns, gospel singers, and the like. Justin Kirkland of Esquire predicted that the contest will be "a colossal nightmare," adding that Americans "lack the self-deprecation, campiness, and selfless energy to pull this off." Chris Murphy of Vulture.com pointed out that the television landscape in the United States is saturated with singing and talent competitions, adding that "no one's gonna write a song as catchy as 'Husavik'."
In an interview with BBC Breakfast in 2020, Cheryl Baker (member of the winning act in the ) opined that the competition will not translate well in the U.S., adding that the country "has got a long way to go to get the kitsch, the cheese, and the fun element" of the contest. Baker also suggested that the U.S. should bring a representative to Eurovision instead.
When asked about the possibility of competing in the American Song Contest, Flo Rida explained that it would be "a dream come true." The Florida-based rapper performed "Adrenalina" along with 's representative Senhit at the .
Writing for The Guardian, Adam Gabbatt was excited about "the mouth-watering prospect of seeing how politically and culturally opposed states rate the musical output of their rivals." Gabbatt explained how conservative viewers in Texas and liberal audiences in New York could express their mutual dislike for one another, or how voters might turn against Florida due to the anti-mask and vaccine-skeptic crusade of the state's current governor. Fellow The Guardian columnist Stuart Heritage described the list of participants as "breathtakingly starry," referring to artists who "already have their own Wikipedia page," which he took as a sign that the producers are "taking this thing seriously."
Reacting to the premiere episode, Kevin Fallon of The Daily Beast commented that it was a "big ole meh," while pointing out the performances of Oklahoma's AleXa and Puerto Rico's Christian Pagán as the highlights of the night. Fallon added that while Wyoming's entry "New Boot Goofin'" was "undeniably the worst song of the night," he predicted that its irresistibility would become the show's "greatest success story." Emily Yahr of The Washington Post also wrote praises about "New Boot Goofin'", adding that it "immediately stole the show's social media thunder" and it could be "the song of the summer." Yahoo! Music's editor-in-chief Lyndsey Parker wrote that the first episode of the American Song Contest "failed to live up to Eurovision's wacky promise or premise."
## Cancellation and future
Björkman announced in early February 2023 that the series was not renewed for a 2023 season. Speaking to Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, he added that he was disappointed in the way the program was organized, specifically the promotion of it and the lack of building awareness that the event was occurring. Following the event, only the winning song "Wonderland" by AleXa managed to place on the Billboard charts, with most remaining songs only gathering a dozen thousand streams or so each. In a press conference held during the Eurovision Song Contest 2023 in Liverpool, executive supervisor of Eurovision, Martin Österdahl, added that "partners in America are looking at other options."
## Awards and nominations
|
44,971,524 |
Walter de Clare
| 1,104,078,128 |
12th-century Anglo-Norman baron in England
|
[
"1130s deaths",
"Anglo-Normans",
"De Clare family",
"English feudal barons"
] |
Walter de Clare or Walter fitzRichard (died probably 1137 or 1138) was an Anglo-Norman nobleman and founder of Tintern Abbey. A member of a powerful family, Walter was a younger son who was given lands around Chepstow Castle by King Henry I of England sometime before 1119. Walter continued to appear in Henry's charters for the rest of the reign, and was an early supporter of King Stephen of England, Henry's successor as king. Walter last appears in the historical record in 1136 and died without children. His lands went to his nephew.
## Family and background
Walter was a younger son of Richard de Clare, a Norman lord and landholder who also held Clare and Tonbridge in England. Walter's mother was Rohese, the daughter of Walter Giffard. Rohese and Richard had at least six sons and two daughters. Besides Walter, they were Roger, Gilbert, Richard, Robert and Godfrey. The daughters were Alice and Rohese. Walter's family of de Clare was a powerful one, with members of it having participated in rebellions and conspiracies against Henry's older brother King William II of England (d. 1100) in 1088 and 1095.
## Life
Little is known of Walter's life, most of it deriving from the Gesta Normannorum Ducum written by William of Jumieges. The first mention of Walter in the historical record is when he was granted the lordship of Netherwent, including Chepstow Castle beside the River Wye, by King Henry I of England. This occurred sometime before 1119. Walter's lordship of Netherwent or Chepstow was generally considered a feudal barony, and Walter is considered a baron by most historians. Walter's land grant was part of a larger series of grants by Henry in southern Wales, including some given to Walter's brother Gilbert de Clare. Henry also granted lands to another brother of Gilbert and Walter: Robert, who received Little Dunmow. These grants from the king to the Clare family helped bring them over to the royal side during the conflict between the king and his nephew William Clito over the control of Normandy in the late 1110s.
Walter was a witness on 12 of Henry's royal charters, all before 1131. He also was a witness for some royal charters issued by Henry's successor, King Stephen of England, early in Stephen's reign. One was a charter issued at Henry's funeral on 4 January 1136 and another at Stephen's court at Easter 1136. These two charter attestations show that he was an early supporter of Stephen in the king's seizure of the throne from Henry's daughter Matilda. These early charters from Stephen's reign are Walter's last appearances in documents during his lifetime. Also in 1136 Walter was in charge of the defense of Le Sap in Normandy against Geoffrey V of Anjou.
Walter established Tintern Abbey as a Cistercian monastery on 9 May 1131, the second Cistercian monastic house to be endowed in Britain. The monks for the establishment came from L'Aumône Abbey in France. Although the ruins of Tintern were the subject of a poem by William Wordsworth and a painting by J. M. W. Turner, these ruins are not Walter's original buildings, as little remains of them.
## Death and legacy
Historians differ over whether Walter ever married, but agree that he died childless. Michael Altschul lists no wife in his work on the Clares, and C. Warren Hollister, revising J. Horace Round's entry in the Dictionary of National Biography for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, states that it is unclear if Walter married. Jennifer Ward, however, states that Walter married Isabella, a daughter of Ralph de Tosny. Katharine Keats-Rohan states that Walter married Isabel, a daughter of Ralph de Tosny, and states that his widow gave an endowment to the cathedral chapter of Salisbury Cathedral for the sake of Walter's soul. Walter was alive at Easter in 1136, but died after that date. The obituary for Walter from Tintern gives his death date as 10 March, but does not state a year. A date of 1138 is usually given for his death; though this has not been proven, it is likely. His estates passed to his nephew Gilbert de Clare, son of his brother Gilbert, who had died around 1115.
|
3,032,611 |
German cruiser Seydlitz
| 1,165,479,738 |
Admiral Hipper-class cruiser
|
[
"1939 ships",
"Admiral Hipper-class cruisers",
"Germany–Soviet Union relations",
"Maritime incidents in April 1945",
"Proposed ships of Germany",
"Ships built in Bremen (state)",
"World War II aircraft carriers of Germany",
"World War II cruisers of Germany",
"World War II shipwrecks in the Baltic Sea"
] |
Seydlitz was a heavy cruiser of Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine, fourth in the Admiral Hipper class, but was never completed. The ship was laid down in December 1936 and launched in January 1939, but the outbreak of World War II slowed her construction and fitting-out work was finally stopped in the summer of 1940 when she was approximately 95 percent complete. The unfinished ship remained pier-side in the shipyard until March 1942, when the Kriegsmarine decided to pursue aircraft carriers over surface combatants. Seydlitz was among the vessels chosen for conversion into auxiliary aircraft carriers.
Renamed Weser, the ship was to have had a complement of ten Bf 109 fighters and ten Ju 87 divebombers. Work lasted from 1942 to 1943, but was not completed, and the incomplete vessel was towed to Königsberg in early 1944. She was eventually scuttled there in 1945 as the Soviet Red Army approached the city. The wreck was seized by the Soviets and was briefly considered for cannibalization for spare parts to complete her sistership Lützow for the Soviet Navy. This plan was also abandoned, and the ship was broken up for scrap.
## Design
The Admiral Hipper class of heavy cruisers was ordered in the context of German naval rearmament after the Nazi Party came to power in 1933 and repudiated the disarmament clauses of the Treaty of Versailles. In 1935, Germany signed the Anglo–German Naval Agreement with Great Britain, which provided a legal basis for German naval rearmament; the treaty specified that Germany would be able to build five 10,000-long-ton (10,160 t) "treaty cruisers". The Admiral Hippers were nominally within the 10,000-ton limit, though they significantly exceeded the figure.
Seydlitz was 210 meters (690 ft) long overall and had a beam of 21.80 m (71.5 ft) and a maximum draft of 7.90 m (25.9 ft). The ship had a design displacement of 17,600 t (17,300 long tons; 19,400 short tons) and a full load displacement of 19,800 long tons (20,100 t). Seydlitz was powered by three sets of geared steam turbines, which were supplied with steam by twelve ultra-high pressure oil-fired boilers. The ship's top speed was 32 knots (59 km/h; 37 mph), at 132,000 shaft horsepower (98,000 kW). As designed, her standard complement consisted of 42 officers and 1,340 enlisted men.
Seydlitz's primary armament was eight 20.3 cm (8 in) SK L/60 guns mounted in four twin gun turrets, placed in superfiring pairs forward and aft. Her anti-aircraft battery consisted of twelve 10.5 cm (4.1 in) L/65 guns, twelve 3.7 cm (1.5 in) guns, and eight 2 cm (0.79 in) guns. The ship also carried a pair of triple 53.3 cm (21 in) torpedo launchers abreast of the rear superstructure. The ship was equipped with three Arado Ar 196 seaplanes and one catapult. Seydlitz's armored belt was 70 to 80 mm (2.8 to 3.1 in) thick; her upper deck was 12 to 30 mm (0.47 to 1.18 in) thick while the main armored deck was 20 to 50 mm (0.79 to 1.97 in) thick. The main battery turrets had 105 mm (4.1 in) thick faces and 70 mm thick sides.
## Construction and conversion
Seydlitz was ordered by the Kriegsmarine from the Deschimag shipyard in Bremen. Seydlitz was originally designed as a light cruiser version of the Admiral Hipper-class heavy cruisers, armed with twelve 15 cm (5.9 in) guns instead of the Admiral Hipper's eight 20.3 cm guns. The Kriegsmarine decided, however, to complete the ship identically to Admiral Hipper on 14 November 1936. Her keel was laid on 29 December 1936, under construction number 940. The ship was launched on 19 January 1939, and at the launching ceremony, Admiral Richard Foerster, who had been the gunnery officer of the namesake ship, gave a speech, and the widow of that ship's commander during World War I christened the vessel. At that time, her hull had been completed with a straight stem. After the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, work slowed considerably as priorities shifted to vessels that could be completed faster, like destroyers, U-boats, and smaller craft. Nevertheless, work on the ship proceeded at a slow pace, and during this period her bow was altered to the standard "Atlantic bow" that had been installed on her sister ships. By the time work stopped completely in June 1942, the ship was approximately 95 percent complete; only her anti-aircraft armament, masts, cranes, and her aircraft catapult remained to be installed.
Following the loss of the battleship Bismarck in May 1941, during which British aircraft carriers proved instrumental, and the near torpedoing of her sistership Tirpitz in March 1942, the Kriegsmarine became convinced of the necessity of acquiring aircraft carriers. Work on the purpose-built carrier Graf Zeppelin, which had been halted in April 1940, was resumed in March 1942. The Kriegsmarine also decided to convert a number of vessels into auxiliary aircraft carriers. Seydlitz was among the ships selected for conversion, along with several passenger liners. These included Europa, Potsdam, and Gneisenau. The unfinished French cruiser De Grasse was also to be converted. As the design staff examined the existing ships, they determined that Europa and Gneisenau were too slow, and Potsdam would only be suitable as a training carrier, so only Seydlitz and De Grasse would be completed as front-line carriers. The navy envisioned operating the carriers from northern Norway to interdict the supply convoys to the Soviet Union.
At the same time as construction of Graf Zeppelin resumed, conversion work began on Seydlitz. The majority of the superstructure was cut away, with the exception of the funnel, to prepare for the installation of a flight deck and an aircraft hangar. In total, approximately 2,400 t (2,400 long tons; 2,600 short tons) of material from the ship was removed. The ship was renamed Weser, but work was ceased in June 1943, before the conversion was completed. By that time, her superstructure had been entirely razed to the upper deck, apart from her funnel.
As British and American air raids increased in intensity through 1943, the Germans decided to move the ship to Königsberg in an attempt to place her out of the reach of Allied bombers. She could not be moved until March 1944, however, when she was towed to Kiel. She was then towed from Kiel to Königsberg between 30 March and 2 April. She remained there for the rest of the war, and likely little work was done; in December, she was classified as a hulk. On 29 January 1945, the ship was scuttled before the advancing Soviet Red Army could seize her. The Soviet Navy nevertheless considered using the wreck for parts to complete the cruiser Lützow, a sister-ship of Seydlitz the Soviets had purchased unfinished before the outbreak of war. This was not carried out, however, and the ship was eventually raised before being broken up beginning in 1958.
### Specifications
The conversion work would have slightly increased the ship's length to 216 m (708 ft 8 in) long overall, but decreased her draft to 6.65 m (21 ft 10 in) at full load. Her propulsion system, which had already been installed, would remain the same, as would her expected performance. A large island was to be installed on the starboard side, with a tall, tubular mast on the forward end of the island.
The flight deck was to have been 200 m (660 ft) long and 30 m (98 ft) wide. The hangar was 137.50 m (451.1 ft) long and 17 m (56 ft) wide forward and 12 m (39 ft) wide amidships and aft. Two elevators would have been installed to transfer aircraft from the hangar to the flight deck. Seydlitz's air complement was to have consisted of ten Bf 109 fighters and ten Ju 87 Stuka divebombers. The Bf 109 fighters were a navalized version of the "E" model, designated as Bf 109T. Their wings were longer than the land-based model to allow for shorter take-off. The Ju 87 type selected was to have been the "E" variant, which was a navalized version of the Ju 87D, and were modified for catapult launches and were equipped with arresting gear.
### Armament
Her armament was reduced to a medium-caliber anti-aircraft battery of ten 10.5 cm L/65 guns in twin mounts, two forward of the conning tower and three aft. All of these would have been in line with the island, in a superfiring arrangement. The LC/31 mounting was triaxially stabilized and capable of elevating to 80°. This enabled the guns to engage targets up to a ceiling of 12,500 m (41,000 ft). Against surface targets, the guns had a maximum range of 17,700 m (58,100 ft). The guns fired fixed ammunition weighing 15.1 kg (33 lb); the guns could fire HE and HE incendiary rounds, as well as illumination shells.
These would have been supported by a battery of light anti-aicraft guns consisting of ten 3.7 cm guns in dual mounts and twenty-four 2 cm guns in quadruple mounts. These were distributed along the sides of the ship, generally on platforms that overhung the sides of the ship. Four of the 3.7 cm mounts were on the sides of the ship and the fifth mount was on the extreme bow. Two of the 2 cm mounts were to be placed on the island, with the remainder in the side platforms. The mounts were the Dopp LC/31 type, originally designed for earlier 8.8 cm (3.5 in) SK C/31 guns. The 3.7 cm gun was a single-shot gun, with a rate of fire of around 30 rounds per minute. At its maximum elevation of 85°, the gun had a ceiling of 6,800 m (22,300 ft). The 2 cm gun was a magazine-fed automatic weapon, firing at up to 500 rounds per minute. Twenty and forty-round magazines were supplied for the guns;
|
1,170,514 |
USS Yorktown (PG-1)
| 1,154,343,344 |
PG-1, Yorktown-class gunboat
|
[
"1888 ships",
"Banana Wars ships of the United States",
"Boxer Rebellion naval ships of the United States",
"Philippine–American War ships of the United States",
"Ships built by William Cramp & Sons",
"Yorktown-class gunboats"
] |
USS Yorktown was lead ship of her class of steel-hulled, twin-screw gunboats in the United States Navy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She was the second U.S. Navy ship named in honor of the American Revolutionary War's Battle of Yorktown.
Yorktown was laid down by William Cramp & Sons of Philadelphia in May 1887 and launched in April 1888. She was just over 244 feet (74 m) long and 36 feet (11 m) abeam, and displaced 1,710 long tons (1,740 t). She was equipped with two steam engines which were supplemented with three schooner-rigged masts. The ship's main battery consisted of six 6-inch (15.2 cm) guns and was augmented by an assortment of smaller-caliber guns.
At launch, Yorktown joined the Squadron of Evolution of "New Navy" steel-hulled ships. Detached from that squadron, Yorktown, under the command of Robley D. Evans, sailed to Valparaíso, Chile, during the 1891 Baltimore Crisis and relieved USS Baltimore at that port. After that situation was resolved, Yorktown took part in the joint British–American sealing patrol in Alaskan waters and duty on the Asiatic Station before returning to the United States in 1898. Yorktown was out of commission during the Spanish–American War, but took part in actions in the Philippine–American War and the Boxer Rebellion in 1899 and 1900, respectively, after she had been recommissioned.
After three years out of commission from 1903 to 1906, Yorktown hosted the Secretary of the Navy on board when he greeted the Great White Fleet on its arrival in San Francisco in May 1908. Over the next five years, most of Yorktown's time was spent in sealing patrols in Alaska and duty in Latin American ports. From July 1912, Yorktown was out of commission for alterations, but resumed duties off the Mexican, Nicaraguan, and Honduran coasts beginning in April 1913. Through World War I, Yorktown continued in the same role, until she departed for the East Coast of the United States in April 1918. She served an escort for one convoy headed to Halifax in August, and remained in coastal escort duties in the east until January 1919. After arrival at San Diego in February, she was decommissioned for the final time in June 1919, and was assigned the hull number PG-1 the following year. She was sold in 1921 to an Oakland, California firm and broken up that same year.
## Design and construction
The Yorktown class gunboats—unofficially considered third-class cruisers—were the product of a United States Navy design attempt to produce compact ships with good seakeeping abilities and, yet, able to carry a heavy battery. Yorktown was authorized in the 1886 fiscal year, and the contract for her construction was awarded to the William Cramp & Sons shipyard of Philadelphia. The hull for Yorktown was designed by the Navy's Bureau of Construction and Repair while the mechanical design was left to the Cramp yard. Yorktown's keel was laid on 14 May 1887.
The ship was launched on 28 April 1888 and sponsored by Mary Cameron, the daughter of U.S. Senator Don Cameron of Pennsylvania. The dynamite-gun cruiser Vesuvius was launched a few minutes after Yorktown in the same ceremony. According to a news account, 25 United States Senators, 180 Congressmen, the Secretary of the Navy William Collins Whitney, and the governors of six states attended the dual ceremony, many arriving from Washington, D.C., via the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's passenger steamer SS Columbia. By 19 March 1889, Cramp had completed Yorktown and was prepared to turn her over to the Navy.
### Layout
As built, Yorktown was 244 feet 5 inches (74.50 m) in length and 36 feet (11 m) abeam. Her steel hull had an average draft of 14 feet (4 m), which was expected to give her the ability to escape from larger ships into shallow water. At the waterline was a turtleback deck of 3⁄8-inch (9.5 mm) steel that formed a watertight seal over the lower spaces. The deck had a crown at the level of the waterline and curved downwards to 3 feet (0.91 m) below the waterline at the sides of the ship. Below this armored deck were twelve compartments separated by watertight bulkheads; the spaces above were equipped with watertight doors intended to be closed during battle.
Above the armored deck, Yorktown had forecastle and poop decks with an open gun deck that spanned the length of the ship between them. The conning tower was located forward on the forecastle deck and was oval-shaped to deflect shot. It was outfitted with a steam-powered steering wheel, a telegraph, and speaking tubes; it was protected by 2 inches (51 mm) of steel armor plate.
### Propulsion
Yorktown was powered by two triple-expansion steam engines which each drove one of the pair of 10.5-foot (3.2 m), three-bladed screw propellers. The cylinders of each engine were 22, 31, and 51 inches (56, 79, and 130 cm) in diameter and had a 30-inch (76 cm) stroke. Each engine was rated at 3,400 indicated horsepower (2,500 kW) and together were designed to move the ship at 16 knots (30 km/h), though the ship exceeded that in her trials.
The engines, situated in separate watertight compartments, were each fed by a pair of coal-fired boilers. Each boiler was horizontally mounted and was 9 feet 6 inches (2.90 m) in diameter and 17 feet 6 inches (5.33 m) in length with a total grate area of 220 square inches (1,400 cm<sup>2</sup>). Yorktown's coal bunkers could carry up to 400 long tons (410 t) of the fuel, and were shielded from "shot and shell". At a near top-speed of 16 knots, the ship could cover 2,800 nautical miles (5,200 km) in 61⁄2 days; at the more economical speed of 8 knots (15 km/h) she could cruiser 12,000 nautical miles (22,000 km) over 62 days.
To supplement her steam power plant, Yorktown was built with three masts that were schooner-rigged. She had a total sail area of 6,300 square feet (590 m<sup>2</sup>). The steam and sail combination was expected to allow Yorktown to remain at sea for months at a time during wartime.
### Armament
Yorktown's main battery consisted of six 6-inch (152 mm)/30 caliber Mark 3 guns, with each gun weighing in excess of 11,000 pounds (5,000 kg). Two were mounted on the forecastle deck, two on the poop deck, and the other pair amidships on the gun deck. The two guns on the gun deck were mounted 10 feet (3.0 m) above the waterline, while the other four were 18 feet (5.5 m) above. The guns fired 105-pound (48 kg) armor-piercing projectiles with a propellant charge weighing 18.8 pounds (8.5 kg) at 1,950 feet per second (590 m/s). At an elevation of 30.2°, the guns had a range of 18,000 yards (16,000 m). Each gun was shielded with steel plating 3 inches (76 mm) thick.
Yorktown's secondary battery consisted of two 6-pounder (57 mm (2.24 in)) guns, two 3-pounder (47 mm (1.85 in)) guns, and two 1-pounder (37 mm (1.46 in)) guns. All were based on designs of the French arms company Hotchkiss. According to a 1902 Bureau of Ordnance publication, an armor-piercing round fired from a 6-pounder gun could penetrate 2 inches (51 mm) of armor at a distance of 1,000 yards (910 m).
## 1889–1897
The ship was commissioned at the League Island (Philadelphia) Navy Yard on 23 April 1889 under the command of Commander French E. Chadwick. After Yorktown conducted her final sea trials, she was assigned to the "Squadron of Evolution"—sometimes also referred to as the "White Squadron"— in late 1889. Yorktown operated with that unit as it developed tactical maneuvers for use by the new steel-hulled naval vessels then coming into service in the United States Navy. After this duty, Yorktown departed the east coast of the United States on 7 December 1889, bound for European waters; stopped briefly at Fayal in the Azores; and arrived at Lisbon, Portugal, two days before Christmas. The ship subsequently cruised the Mediterranean into the early spring of the following year, calling at ports in Spain, Morocco, France, Italy, Greece, and Malta. Following her return to the United States on 17 June 1890, the warship entered drydock at the New York Navy Yard on 1 July for repairs that lasted until 8 August. Upon the completion of these alterations, Yorktown took part in the ceremonies marking the embarkation of the remains of the noted inventor, John Ericsson—of Monitor fame—for transportation back to his native Sweden for burial.
Yorktown next again operated in the Squadron of Evolution off the eastern seaboard and into the Gulf of Mexico into the summer of 1891. Under Acting Rear Admiral John Grimes Walker, the squadron normally cruised in the Gulf of Mexico from January to April and off the east coast from May to October. While in the gulf, the ships called at Galveston, Texas; New Orleans; and Pensacola, Florida; and carried out target practice in Tampa Bay. Later, the squadron conducted small arms practice at Yorktown, Virginia, after arriving at Hampton Roads. In July 1891, the squadron carried out exercises and maneuvers in connection with the naval militias of New York and Massachusetts during which it added torpedo attacks upon the Fleet to the usual target practices. In addition, it conducted drills and landing exercises. The Secretary of the Navy's report for the fiscal year 1891 noted that "useful experience" had been gained by the Squadron of Evolution in the training of commanding, navigating, and watch officers in skillfully and safely maneuvering vessels in formation and in restricted waters. In addition, engineers were trained in regulating and maintaining economical coal consumption.
### Baltimore crisis
On 8 October 1891, Yorktown, under the command of Commander Robley D. Evans, departed New York to join the Pacific Squadron. The gunboat put into Charlotte Amalie, Danish West Indies, to "coal ship" on 14 October. While the ship was engaged in this duty, Yorktown was ordered to Valparaíso, Chile, in response to the Baltimore Crisis.
During the 1891 Chilean Civil War, SS Itata, a cargo ship employed by Chilean Congressionalists, had loaded weaponry in California, but was detained in San Diego by U.S. officials. After Itata was able to slip away from San Diego, Charleston caught up with the ship at the Chilean port of Iquique in July 1891 and escorted the ship back to San Diego before her cargo could be unloaded. In October, some months after the Itata Incident had ended, the American cruiser Baltimore put in at Valparaíso. On 16 October, a group of sailors from Baltimore ashore on liberty were attacked by Congressionalists, still angry at the Itata affair. Two of Baltimore's sailors were killed and eighteen wounded; thirty-six other American sailors were arrested by the local authorities. Tensions ran high in both Chile and the United States.
Yorktown, a part of the United States' response, departed Charlotte Amalie for Valparaíso on 17 October for a six-week, storm-tossed voyage around the South American continent via the Straits of Magellan. Less than two weeks after Yorktown's 30 November arrival, Baltimore departed, leaving American interests in the hands of Evans and Yorktown. Over the ensuing weeks, Chile and the United States came close to war, but cooler heads prevailed. Locally, Evans' patience was "dangerously tested", but it held. One inflammatory incident occurred when Chilean torpedo boats bore down on Evans' ship, turning their helms hard over at the last possible instant to avoid a collision. On another occasion, a group of locals threw rocks at Evans and his gig as it lay at the foot of a jetty.
After a month at Valparaíso, Yorktown took on refugees from the American, Spanish, and Italian legations in mid-January 1892. She got underway on the 19th and arrived at Callao, Peru, on the 25th. While Yorktown lay anchored there, tension between the United States and Chile relaxed and the crisis abated, and the Chilean later government provided compensation for the families of the American sailors that were killed.
### Sealing patrol
Yorktown stood out of Callao on 4 March 1892, steamed northward via San Diego and San Francisco, and eventually arrived at the Mare Island Navy Yard, Vallejo, California. The gunboat subsequently underwent repairs there until late in the following month. Having weathered one diplomatic storm and international incident, Evans and his command soon set sail on another mission that, if handled wrongly, could have caused ill-feeling with the British.
That spring, Yorktown—along with two other naval vessels and a trio of revenue cutters—headed toward Arctic waters on 27 April to protect the great herds of seals in the Bering Sea from poachers. Traveling along the west coast of the United States, the gunboat and her crew "braced", in Evans' words, "at the prospect of doing something". As at Valparaíso, Evans faced the possibility of becoming involved in an international incident arising from possible confrontations with Canadian sealers. Operating under the protection of the British crown, the latter had taken particularly heavy catches. Many American vessels put to sea under the British flag in an attempt to evade prosecution by their own government. The British agreed to help put an end to the slaughter of seals and decided upon joint action with the United States in prosecuting the poachers. About 110 schooners, large and small, made up the sealing fleet, typically "armed" with double-barrelled shotguns for killing the animals and Winchester rifles for dealing with any humans who attempted to interfere. The fact that the great majority of seals killed had been female —still with young in many cases—almost doubled the toll of slain seals. As Evans noted: "the slaughter in the North Pacific was fearful".
Arriving at Port Townsend, Washington, on 30 April, Yorktown put to sea on 13 May, arriving at Iliuliuk, Unalaska, one week later. Coaling there, the gunboat skirted the ice floes near the seal rookeries of the Pribilof Islands, reconnoitering the vicinity for sealers. Assisted by a revenue cutter, Yorktown guarded the passes to the Bering Sea. The crews of the patrolling American ships lacked fresh provisions but carried on in spite of the hardships imposed by both diet and climate. Fresh fish, however, proved abundant. Codfish was the staple with an occasional gourmet treat of salmon.
### Telescopic gunsight
Besides the patrols made during this deployment in northwestern waters, Yorktown conducted routine operations such as target practices. Among the officers assigned to the ship at that time was Lt. Bradley Fiske, a young officer who had invented and constructed a practical telescopic gunsight. Fiske's sight had been tested in Baltimore and had favorably impressed that ship's officers—including her commander, Captain Winfeld S. Schley. Evans, however, had not taken a liking to Fiske's newfangled gadget but nevertheless consented to allow a second test on board Yorktown (the first one had failed miserably). On the afternoon of 22 September 1892, during scheduled target practice, Fiske's invention worked as designed and elicited praise from Evans. As Fiske himself later wrote in the United States Naval Institute's magazine Proceedings, modern naval gunnery had its birth not in the British Navy but in the American—off Unalaska on 22 September 1892, in Yorktown.
Yorktown continued her task of patrolling until 21 September when she departed Unalaska for the Mare Island Navy Yard. From 11 to 24 October, the ship underwent repairs there before proceeding on to the east coast via Cape Horn. Yorktown eventually arrived at Norfolk, Virginia, on 24 February 1893.
After repairs at the New York Navy Yard from 25 April to 26 July, Yorktown retraced her route south and sailed again around Cape Horn back into the Pacific. She then moved north to resume patrolling the Bering Sea. She protected seal rookeries into 1894 before returning to Mare Island for repairs which lasted into mid-September.
On 24 September 1894, Yorktown sailed for the western Pacific and duty on the Asiatic Station. Sailing via Honolulu, she reached Yokohama, Japan, on 8 December 1894 and spent the next three years, under the command of Commander Charles Stockton touching at the principal ports-of-call along the coasts of China and Japan. She departed Yokohama early in the autumn of 1897 and made port at Mare Island on 18 November 1897. Subsequently, laid up at Mare Island and decommissioned on 8 December, the gunboat remained inactive there through the Spanish–American War in 1898.
## 1898–1903
Recommissioned on 17 November 1898, with Commander Charles S. Sperry in command, Yorktown sailed again for the Far East on 7 January 1899. Rumors of German machinations in Samoa lengthened Yorktown's stay at Hawaii from a few days to a few weeks; but, when the anticipated trouble failed to materialize, Yorktown resumed her voyage to the Philippine Islands. On 23 February, she arrived at Cavite Navy Yard, near Manila where patrolled to prevent gun-runners thought to be supplying guns and ammunition to the Insurrectos, Filipinos fighting for independence.
At one point, rumors flew concerning possible German gun-running activities; and Yorktown patrolled off the entrance to Subic Bay and from thence to Lingayen to keep a lookout for the filibusters. She continued coastal patrol work over the next three years, cooperating with the Army, transporting and convoying troops, and patrolling wide areas of often badly charted waters. Upon occasion, Yorktown served as "mother ship" to smaller gunboats, providing officers and men to staff the smaller patrol craft. Ensigns William Harrison Standley and Harry E. Yarnell (both future admirals) and future naval historian and archivist Dudley Wright Knox were among the junior officers who served in Yorktown during this time.
During the Philippine–American War, Yorktown stood in to Baler Bay, on the west coast of Luzon, on 11 April 1899, on a mission to relieve a Spanish garrison that had been under siege by Filipino troops for nine months. Lt. James C. Gillmore and a party of sailors in the ship's whaleboat provided a decoy, ostensibly taking soundings of a nearby river. Meanwhile, Standley and an enlisted man landed farther up the coast to reconnoiter. The next day, Gillmore and his boat crew drifted into a trap, running aground too far from the river's mouth and out of sight of Yorktown. Filipino troops, hidden in the jungle-covered banks, raked the boat with rifle fire. Two American sailors were killed; two were mortally wounded; and the remainder, including Gillmore, were slightly wounded. The survivors were taken prisoner until freed by U.S. Army troops. Standley completed his mission and, together with the enlisted signalman, made it back to the ship.
In 1899, the situation in China worsened until it culminated in the Boxer Rebellion. The following spring, Yorktown was withdrawn from her patrol duties in the northern Philippines to provide assistance to the operations off the coast of North China. She departed Manila on 3 April 1900, bound for China; and, after she reached the mainland, her landing force served ashore at Taku. In addition, Marines from Yorktown participated in the actions at Tientsin between June and July. Under the command of Commander Edward D. Taussig from June 1900 to June 1901, she continued to support the China Relief Expedition forces. In June 1900, she assisted Oregon back off a reef near that Chinese port.
The gunboat departed Shanghai on 10 September 1900 and reached Cavite on the 17th. In the Philippines, she resumed her cooperation with Army forces, still engaged in pacification operations, and continued these duties for the next two years. In between pacification missions, she performed survey work: at Guam in November 1901 and at Dumanquillas Bay, Philippines, in February 1903. In April 1902, Yorktown's Coxswain Joseph Quick rescued a shipmate from drowning while the ship was in port at Yokohama, Japan. For his efforts, Quick was awarded a peacetime Medal of Honor. Yorktown departed the Far East in early 1903 and returned to Mare Island on 3 June. Two weeks later, on the 17th, she was decommissioned.
## 1906–1912
Recommissioned at Mare Island on 1 October 1906, with Commander Richard T. Mulligan in command, Yorktown was fitted out there until 9 November. Underway on that day, she operated off the west coasts of Mexico, Honduras, and Nicaragua into the following summer. After repairs at San Francisco and Mare Island, Yorktown conducted target practice at Magdalena Bay, Mexico, and relieved Albany as station ship at Acapulco. She then cruised with the 2d Squadron of the Pacific Fleet to Magdalena Bay and San Francisco. Over the ensuing months, Yorktown continued her regular local operations.
Yorktown hosted the Secretary of the Navy, Victor H. Metcalf, to witness the arrival of the Great White Fleet—commanded by Yorktown's former commander, Robley "Fightin' Bob" Evans—into San Francisco. The fleet arrived on 6 May 1908, and the flagship Connecticut saluted the secretary's flag on Yorktown with the discharge of seventeen guns. Metcalf also boarded Yorktown on the 8th to review the assembled battleships, armored cruisers, and torpedo boats of the Pacific and Great White Fleets. On 30 May 1908, Yorktown participated in festivities for the Rose Festival at Portland, Oregon. From June to September, Yorktown conducted seal patrols in Alaskan waters, out of Nome, Unalaska, and Sitka and, between 15 and 19 September, established a site for a wireless station at Valdez. Afterwards, Yorktown sailed south to rejoin the Pacific Fleet, conducting battle practices between 19 November and 1 December at Magdalena Bay. She later joined the armored cruisers West Virginia and Colorado and the tender Glacier at Acajutla, El Salvador, before sailing for Corinto, Nicaragua, in March 1909. After more target practices at Magdalena Bay, Yorktown was repaired at Mare Island in June and into July before shifting to Seattle, to participate in festivities for the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. Later in July, the ship visited Esquimalt, British Columbia. She subsequently cruised off the Pacific coast and participated in the Portolá Festival at San Francisco in October.
From 13 December 1909 to 27 March 1910, Yorktown operated off Corinto, Nicaragua, with the Nicaraguan Expeditionary Squadron. She then pursued a schedule of exercises and maneuvers, operating between California and British Columbia through June and July. She returned to a posture of readiness off Corinto and San Juan del Sur between 13 August and 7 September. She then operated off Ecuadorian, Colombian, and Peruvian ports, with the United States Consul General at Large embarked, between 19 September and 16 October before putting into Panama for coal and stores. She subsequently patrolled at Amapala, Honduras, and the familiar Corinto for most of November and December. She spent Christmas at Corinto before shifting to Amapala, en route to San Francisco and Mare Island. From March to July 1911, Yorktown cruised off the west coasts of Mexico, Nicaragua, and Honduras. On 29 May, she rescued the survivors from the foundered Panamanian steamer Taboga, which had sunk with the loss of 60 of its 100 passengers and crew. Another period of repairs and upkeep in the late summer of 1911 proceeded the ship's duties off the Pacific coasts of South and Central America. She returned to Mare Island in May 1912, and was decommissioned there for alterations on 15 July.
## 1913–1919
Recommissioned on 1 April 1913, with Commander George B. Bradshaw in command, Yorktown operated out of San Diego on shakedown into mid-April. She was soon back at Corinto, however, remaining in Nicaragua until 5 June. After a brief period of operations off the coast, she returned to Corinto on 21 June and remained there for over a month before departing on 31 July to coal at Salina Cruz, Mexico. She moved to Mazatlán on 10 August and there picked up mail, delivering it to the port of Topolobampo, Mexico, on the 11th. Yorktown remained there until mid-September.
For the remainder of 1913, Yorktown conducted local operations out of San Diego and San Francisco. In January 1914, though, the gunboat returned to Mexican waters and investigated local conditions at Ensenada between 3 and 6 January before moving, in subsequent months, to a succession of Mexican ports: Mazatlán, San Blas, Miramar, Topolobampo, and La Paz. Following an overhaul at Mare Island from 24 June to 2 September 1914, Yorktown served in Mexican waters again into June 1915. From that point until the entry of the United States into World War I in April 1917, Yorktown continued her routine of patrols off Mexican, Nicaraguan, and Honduran ports with occasional repairs at Mare Island and maneuvers out of San Diego.
After the United States joined the Allies, Yorktown operated off the coast of Mexico until August 1917, when she paused briefly at San Diego. On 18 July 1917, Yorktown rescued the last surviving members of an abandoned guano mining settlement on Clipperton Island. From a peak population of roughly 100 in 1915, only four women and seven children survived. After her time off the Mexican coast, Yorktown then cruised off the west coasts of Central and South America into 1918. After a refit at Mare Island, Yorktown, sailed for the east coast on 28 April 1918, transiting the Panama Canal en route, and arrived at New York on 20 August. The gunboat escorted a coastal convoy to Halifax, soon thereafter before returning to New York. She performed local coastwise escort duties through the end of World War I. After a period of upkeep at the New York Navy Yard in December, she departed the east coast on 2 January 1919 on her last voyage to California.
Arriving at San Diego on 15 February 1919, Yorktown was placed out of commission at Mare Island on 12 June 1919. On 17 June 1920, she was assigned the hull number PG-1. The veteran steel-hulled gunboat was sold to the Union Hide Company of Oakland, California, on 30 September 1921; she was broken up in Oakland sometime after that.
|
5,816,630 |
Amanita gemmata
| 1,159,886,227 |
Species of fungus
|
[
"Amanita",
"Fungi described in 1838",
"Fungi of Asia",
"Fungi of Europe",
"Poisonous fungi",
"Psychoactive fungi",
"Taxa named by Elias Magnus Fries"
] |
Amanita gemmata, commonly known as the gemmed amanita or the jonquil amanita, is an agaric mushroom of the family Amanitaceae and genus Amanita. The fruit body has a cap that is a dull to golden shade of yellow, and typically 2.5–12 cm (1–4+3⁄4 in) in diameter. The cap surface is sticky when moist, and characterized by white warts, which are easily detached. It is initially convex, and flattens out when mature. The flesh is white and does not change colour when cut. The gills are white and closely spaced. The stem is pale yellow, and measures 4–12 cm (1+5⁄8–4+3⁄4 in) long by 0.5–1.9 cm (1⁄4–3⁄4 in) thick. The partial veil that covers the young fruit body turns into the ring on the stem at maturity. The spore print is white, while the spores are roughly elliptical, and measure 8–10 by 6.5–7.5 μm.
This species is a mycorrhizal fungus, widespread in Europe. It can grow either singly, scattered, or in groups. It prefers habitats like coniferous and mixed forests and alongside paths, where it fruits in summer and fall. It is a toxic mushroom, containing ibotenic acid and muscimol, also found in many species in section Amanita of the Amanita genus including Amanita muscaria and A. pantherina. It is often confused with various other European species. A. gemmata resembles the false death cap, tawny grisette and panther cap mushrooms. Its cap is brighter in color than the former, and more yellow than the latter two.
## Taxonomy and phylogeny
The species was first described scientifically by Swedish mycologist and botanist Elias Magnus Fries as Agaricus gemmatus in 1838. It was transferred to the genus Amanita in 1866 by the French statistician Louis Bertillon. The species has been transferred to several genera in its history, resulting in a number of synonyms, including Amanita muscaria var. gemmata (1886, Lucien Quélet), Amanitopsis gemmata (1887, Pier Andrea Saccardo), Amanitaria gemmata (1940, Jean-Edouard Gilbert), and Venenarius gemmatus (1948, William Murrill). Amanita authority Rodham E. Tulloss considers A. amici (published by Claude Casimir Gillet in 1891) to be synonymous with A. gemmata, as the macroscopic characteristics of the former fall within the limits of the range expected for the latter.
Within the genus Amanita, A. gemmata is classified in subgenus Amanita, section Amanita, subsection Gemmatae, and series Gemmatae. Tulloss places the species in a stirps (an informal ranking above species level) with A. russuloides and A. viscidolutea. Some mycologists believe that A. gemmata is not different from A. russuloides. Two molecular studies based on sequences of the large ribosomal subunit RNA gene (nLSU-rDNA) and the mitochondrial small ribosomal subunit RNA gene (mtSSU-rDNA) show that A. gemmata is part of a clade within Amanita with its close relatives A. muscaria, A. farinosa and A. roseitincta.
The mushroom is commonly known as the "gemmed Amanita", the "jonquil Amanita", or the "European gemmed Amanita".
## Description
The fruit bodies are colored yellow overall. The fresh cap, ranging in color from dull creamy yellow to golden yellow to buff, is sticky when moist. White warts adorn the cap surface, but they are usually flimsy and easily washed away by rain. They are placed randomly, but tend to be more concentrated in the center. The cap is typically 2.5–12 cm (1–4+3⁄4 in) in diameter, and initially convex before flattening out in maturity. The flesh is white, and shows no change when sliced.
The gills are adnate to adnexed, and white; they are close together, with little intervening space. The pale yellowish stem is 4–12 cm (1+5⁄8–4+3⁄4 in) long by 0.5–1.9 cm (1⁄4–3⁄4 in) thick, and either roughly equal in width throughout, or slightly thicker at the base. Young mushrooms have a membranous partial veil extending from the upper stem to the cap margin; as the mushroom grows, the partial veil tears to leave a flimsy, skirt-like, easily lost ring on the stem. At the base of the stem is a white volva (a remnant of the universal veil that covered the immature mushroom) that usually forms a small, free rim. Spore prints are white. There is no distinctive odour.
### Microscopic characteristics
Amanita gemmata has ellipsoid to broadly ellipsoid spores measuring 8–10 by 6.5–7.5 μm with an average Q-ratio (the fraction of length/width) of 1.35; they are not amyloid. The spores are smooth, thin-walled, and they contain one to several small oil droplets. The basidia (spore-bearing cells of the hymenium) are usually four-spored, club shaped, and measure 30–40 by 8–11 μm.
The gill tissue is divergent, meaning that the cells are more or less parallel near the center of the gill, but bend outwards near the end of the gill. The hyphae in this tissue are cylindrical to inflated, thin walled, hyaline (translucent) to yellowish, and measure 2.2–9 μm wide; the hyphae in the central strand are narrower and typically cylindrical. The hyphae of the subhymenium (a layer of tissue directly under the hymenium) are interwoven. These hyphae are branched, cylindrical to slightly inflated, hyaline, and 6–9 μm wide. The hyphae of the cap cuticle are filamentous, interwoven, and radially arranged. They are cylindrical, 2.7–4 μm wide, thin-walled, hyaline to yellowish, and gelatinize when mounted in potassium hydroxide. The cap tissue is also interwoven, with hyphae that are cylindrical to somewhat inflated, 3.7–14.6 μm wide, thin-walled, branched, and hyaline to yellowish. Caulocystidia are abundant on the apex of the stem; they are club-shaped to cylindrical, thin-walled, hyaline, and measure 3–9 μm wide. The annulus tissue comprises interwoven cylindrical hyphae measuring 3–9 μm wide. Sphaerocysts (inflated, spherical cells) are also present in the annulus tissue; they are club shaped to ellipsoidal, with dimensions of 29–55 by 30–70 μm. The warts on the cap surface (remnants of the universal veil) comprise loosely interwoven cylindrical to inflated thin-walled hyphae that are 3.5–8 μm wide. Sphaerocysts in this tissue are 58.5–70.2 by 17.5–40 μm, ellipsoidal, and hyaline. The volval tissue is interwoven, with cylindrical, hyaline hyphae that are 4.4–7.3 μm wide. The sphaerocysts here are ellipsoidal to roughly spherical, hyaline, and measure 35–70 by 20–35 μm. In A. gemmata, where they are most abundant in the region just below the cap cuticle, these refractive cells are scattered, and have a width of 3.7–6 μm. Clamp connections are rare in the hyphae of A. gemmata; they are present in the annulus, gill tissue, subhymenium, and cap tissue.
### Similar species
There are numerous species in North America that resemble A. gemmata. In 2005, mycologist Rod Tulloss described Amanita aprica, a species that has been confused with A. gemmata several times in the past. According to mycologists Pierre Neville and Serge Poumarat, the Mediterranean species A. amici (synonymous with A. gemmata f. amici) is similar in appearance to A. gemmata but is larger. According to Tulloss however, their measurements of the cap and stem dimensions of A. amici fell within the range expected for A. gemmata, and for this reason, the two taxa should be considered conspecific. Neville and Poumarat suggest that the name A. gemmata still persists for Mediterranean collections because of its frequent historical misapplication to the native Italian species A. gioiosa, which had not been described as a distinct species until 2004. A. orientigemmata, a mushroom ranging from Japan to China, is a lookalike, but has clamps, unlike A. gemmata. Other differences between the two species include the slightly smaller spores of A. orientigemmata, and differences in the microstructure of the cap warts.
## Toxicity
Toxicity is suspected to be due to the presence of muscimol and ibotenic acid.
Generally, symptoms of poisoning appear within three hours of ingestion of the mushroom as visual hallucinations, nausea, vomiting, stomach pain, diarrhea, irregular and slow heart beat and agitation. Severe cases involving coma, convulsions, or death are extremely rare.
## Ecology, habitat and distribution
Amanita gemmata is a mycorrhizal fungus, meaning it forms a mutually beneficial relationship with the roots of compatible host plants. Through the association, the plant provides the fungus with a carbon source, and the fungus provides the plant with several benefits such as nutrients and protection from pathogens. Largent and collaborators (1980) document mycorrhizal associations of A. gemmata with Manzanita (Arctostaphylos spp.) and Lodgepole Pine (Pinus contorta), and Nieto and Carbone with Maritime Pine (Pinus pinaster) in Spain. The fungus favours sandy and slightly acidic soils, and is often found in association with Norway Spruce (Picea abies). The mushroom grows either singly, scattered, or in groups in coniferous and mixed forests, especially along paths and roads.
The species is distributed in areas of Asia and Europe. It is widely distributed (as a species cluster, not the actual Amanita gemmata) in North America, where it has been found as far south as Ixtlán de Juárez, Mexico. The species has been reported from the Dominican Republic. In South America, it is known from Chile and Colombia. In Asia, the mushroom has been collected from Iran and China.
## See also
- List of Amanita species
|
14,556,051 |
Hartsdown Park
| 1,153,105,807 |
Sports venue in Kent, England
|
[
"Buildings and structures in Kent",
"Football venues in England",
"Margate",
"Margate F.C.",
"Sports venues completed in 1929"
] |
Hartsdown Park is a football stadium located in Margate, Kent, England. It has been the home of Margate F.C. (known as Thanet United F.C. between 1981 and 1989) since 1929, apart from between 2002 and 2005, when the club was forced to share the grounds of other Kent clubs while protracted redevelopment work occurred.
Although the football club was able to return to the stadium in 2005, redevelopment work is still at a very early stage, and many of the ground's facilities are still of a temporary nature. Nonetheless, the club has extensive plans for the future development of the site.
## History
The stadium has been the home of Margate F.C. since 1929, the same year the park itself opened to the public. The local council had purchased the former grounds of Hartsdown House for public use and built a stadium which it was agreed the football club would lease, initially at a charge of £200 per year. Initially the players had to change in Hartsdown House itself, approximately 200 yards (180 m) from the pitch. A small wooden grandstand with 500 bench seats was soon added, followed shortly afterwards by new dressing rooms and a second stand on the north side of the ground containing a mixture of standing and seated accommodation. The first ever match at the new stadium was a friendly against Folkestone on 31 August 1929 and the first competitive match a Kent League fixture against Dover two weeks later. In 1934 the club entered into an agreement to become a nursery team for Arsenal, and as part of the agreement the Hartsdown pitch was altered to exactly match the size of that at Highbury.
Further covered spectator accommodation was erected at the ground in 1935, but this blew down in a storm in 1952 and had to be rebuilt. At around the same time the club added a new terrace next to the main stand, where supporters had previously stood on banked earth. A new covered terrace was installed at the Tivoli Park Avenue end of the ground in the late 1950s, officially named the Cornhill Stand but more usually known to fans as the Coffin End, the name deriving from a prominent piece of graffiti which adorned its rear wall for many years. The club's first set of floodlights was erected in September 1959 and inaugurated with a friendly match against West Ham United.
In 1966 a new clubhouse was built, but there was little further development of the ground, although in the late 1980s the North Stand, which had been condemned by council officials was demolished and the clubhouse extended. In 1982 the club was nearly evicted from the ground by the local council after its name change to Thanet United. A legal loophole was discovered which meant that the lease on the ground was held in the name of Margate F.C. and therefore the renamed club was technically no longer permitted to use the stadium, but this was eventually resolved and the club was allowed to remain. Upon promotion to the Football Conference in 2001 the club spent £175,000 on improvements designed to bring the stadium up to the standard required for that level of football, but soon afterwards launched an ambitious scheme to completely redevelop the site. The club moved out and the old stadium, which was constructed mainly from timber and corrugated iron, was demolished in early 2003, but the local council disputed the plans submitted. Although planned to be completed by August 2003, the redevelopment process lasted for three years, delayed by issues regarding planning permission for the commercial facilities the club wanted to build in addition to the stadium itself. The team ground-shared with other Kent clubs for three seasons, but club officials' failure to confirm a return date to Hartsdown led to Margate's expulsion from the Conference National in 2004. In 2005 the club was finally able to return to the ground, albeit with pre-fabricated stands and temporary buildings in place. Five years later, plans for the redevelopment of the north end of the ground, reportedly including the construction of a new terrace, a bar, and a three-storey hotel, were approved. Club chairman Keith Piper also announced that companies had expressed interest in paying for the naming rights of individual stands or even the entire stadium. In June 2022, the club announced plans to install new changing rooms using funding from the Premier League Stadium Fund.
In March 2023, it was announced that Canterbury City would be groundsharing with Margate for the following season.
## Structure and facilities
As most of the stadium was demolished and little of the proposed redevelopment work has as yet been carried out at Hartsdown Park, the stadium's current facilities are limited. On the south side of the pitch, the site of the former main stand, portable buildings are in place behind the dugouts. The opposite side of the ground currently contains two prefabricated seated stands.
Behind the goal at the western end of the ground, known as the Hartsdown Road end, the one terrace remaining from before the redevelopment work has been renovated, along with the clubhouse behind it. A plan was reportedly in place for a temporary standing structure at the opposite end of the ground, known as the Tivoli Park Avenue end, but this has yet to come to fruition.
The first stage in the wider development of the site was the construction of a 5-a-side pitch complex. Although it was initially announced that work was to begin on the complex in May 2007, ground was not in fact broken for a further four months. The complex opened on 9 December 2007.
## Future
The club's ultimate plan involves a stadium with a capacity of 5,000 forming part of a complex incorporating a hotel, fitness centre, conference centre, all-weather pitch and ten 5-a-side pitches. In 2004 the club's stadium manager, Keith Piper quoted the total cost of the hotel alone as more than £6,000,000, but stated that the club had sufficient financial backing. The following year the total cost of the project, which it was revealed would be funded by developers CNC Properties, was put at £8,000,000. It has been claimed that the redevelopment will raise the standard of the stadium to that required for entry to the Football League.
## Other uses
The stadium was used as the home venue for the Thanet Vikings American football club during the late 1980s. It was also the venue for a charity match held in 2006 in memory of former Margate player Paul Sykes, who collapsed and died while playing for Folkestone Invicta, in which current and former professionals Andy Hessenthaler, Adrian Pennock and Danny Spiller played.
## Records
The highest attendance recorded for a Margate match at Hartsdown Park was 14,169 for the visit of Tottenham Hotspur in the FA Cup on 13 January 1973. The lowest attendance recorded was 29, for a match against Salisbury City on 24 April 1986.
## Transport
The stadium is approximately 0.7 miles (1 km) from Margate railway station, which lies on Southeastern's Chatham Main Line from London Victoria to Ramsgate and is also the northern terminus of the Kent Coast Line to Dover Priory.
|
4,502,477 |
Victor Henry Anderson
| 1,173,636,682 |
American poet, co-founder of Feri Tradition
|
[
"1917 births",
"2001 deaths",
"20th-century American poets",
"20th-century accordionists",
"20th-century occultists",
"American accordionists",
"American blind people",
"American modern pagans",
"American occultists",
"American writers with disabilities",
"Blind poets",
"Feri Tradition",
"Modern pagan poets",
"Modern pagan religious leaders",
"People from Union County, New Mexico",
"People from Wichita County, Texas",
"Poets from New Mexico"
] |
Victor Henry Anderson (May 21, 1917 – September 20, 2001) was an American priest and poet. He was co-founder of the Feri Tradition, a modern Pagan new religious movement established in California during the 1960s. Much of his poetry was religious in nature, being devoted to Feri deities.
Born in Clayton, New Mexico, to a working-class family, Anderson was left visually impaired during childhood. His family regularly moved around within the United States during his early years, with Anderson claiming that encounters with Mexican, Hawaiian, and Haitian migrants led to him gaining an early understanding of these various cultures' magical practices. The family eventually settled in Oregon, and Anderson later claimed that it was here that he was initiated into a tradition of witchcraft by an African woman. He later claimed that, in 1932, he joined a magico-religious group known as the Harpy Coven which was based in Ashland and which dissolved in the 1940s. According to his description, the group was devoted to a god and goddess, Setan and Lilith, and were influenced by both American folk magic and Huna.
In 1944, he married Cora Cremeans in Bend, Oregon, and, inspired by the writings of English Wiccan Gerald Gardner, they founded the Mahaelani Coven, gaining followers of what became known as the Feri tradition. One of their first initiates was Gwydion Pendderwen, who was a significant influence on the development of the tradition, and who introduced elements from Alexandrian Wicca in to it. Anderson was a professional accordion player and wrote poetry for various American Pagan magazines. In 1970, he published his first book of poetry, Thorns of the Blood Rose, which contained devotional religious poetry dedicated to the Goddess; it won the Clover International Poetry Competition Award in 1975. Anderson continued to promote the Feri tradition until his death, at which point April Niino was appointed as the new Grandmaster of the tradition.
## Early life
### Childhood: 1917–1931
Anderson was born on May 21, 1917, at the Buffalo Horn Ranch in Clayton, New Mexico. His parents were Hilbart Alexander Anderson (1883–1952) and Mary Frances Anderson (née Smith, 1886–1973). Regarding his ethnic ancestry, he later stated that "I am mostly Irish and Spanish with some Native American, including Polynesian". He also claimed that his maternal great-grandmother had been one of the Blue Fugates, a community living in Appalachia whose skin had a blueish coloration due to methemoglobinemia. Anderson became almost completely blind when he was two years old, either because of an accident or untreated diabetes. By 1920, the family were living in Burkburnett, Wichita County, Texas, where a sister, Elsie Glenan Anderson, was born in February. Here, Hilbart worked as a floor worker on some of the many oil rigs in the town. From there they moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where they were recorded as living in the 1923–24 directory, and where Anderson later claimed that he had made many friends among Mexican migrant children. Anderson's later wife claimed that he was also instructed in how to use his etheric vision by "Mexican Witches" during childhood. The family next moved to Olustee, Oklahoma, where Hilbart's brother resided.
After several months in Oklahoma they proceeded to the area around Ashland, Oregon, where Anderson claimed to have befriended Hawaiian and Haitian migrant families who were working as fruit pickers. Anderson often claimed that he had been instructed in the magical practices of Hawaiian Kahuna and Haitian Vodou, with his later wife referring to him as both "one of the last Kahuna" and "a priest of Voudou". He claimed to have been instructed in Vodou by Haitians who were working in southern Oregon. While living in that state he attended a school for the blind, although despite this was largely self-educated. The family moved around the state in the coming years; in August 1928 they were living in Pinehurst, where Hilbert was recorded as working as an engineer at a lumber mill in the 1930 census. By the 1940 census, the family were recorded as living in East Phoenix, Jackson county, Oregon, with Higbert adding that he had also been living there in 1935. At this point, Hilbert was working as a millwright and Mary as a trained nurse. In 1942 they were recorded as living in Ashland, and it was here that they attended the First Baptist Church, before relocating to Bend prior to 1944.
Anderson claimed to be initiated into a tradition of witchcraft in 1926 by a woman "of the Fairy race", whom he elsewhere referred to as "a priestess from Africa". Anderson informed the journalist Margot Adler that when he was nine years old he encountered a small old woman sitting in the centre of a circle containing brass bowls of herbs. He alleged that he instinctively stripped naked and that she then sexually initiated him into a witchcraft tradition, during which he had a vision of a goddess and a horned god. After the vision, he claimed that they sat in the circle and she instructed him in the magical use of the various herbs, after which he was washed in butter, oil, and salt, before putting his clothes on and returning home. The Pagan studies scholar Ethan Doyle White described this as being "difficult to accept as a literal account", but suggested that Anderson may have undergone a significant spiritual experience with an older woman in 1926, which was subsequently "embellished into the later tale" that he told Adler. A woman who knew Anderson, Cornelia Benavidez, later stated that "He says that he became friends with a woman in the circus who was a fire dancer and when she got older worked the stands. She somehow joined the circus in South Africa and made her way to the US. When he first met her she was 60 years old and he was a nine-year-old boy. He knew her for 15 years". Researcher William Wallworth provided potential supporting evidence for this claim when he noted that a number of the circuses that performed in Oregon during the 1920s and 1930s had Africans in their travelling retinues.
### The Harpy Coven: 1932–1943
Anderson claimed that in 1932 he was initiated into a witchcraft group in Ashland that he called the Harpy Coven, although remains the only source testifying to the group's existence. Research into the coven was later conducted by Valerie Voigt, the coordinator of the Pagan, Occult, and Witchcraft Special Interest Group of the United States branch of Mensa, who was also one of Anderson's students and who asked him about the group. According to her claims, the group were led by two figures, known as Maybelle "Cardea" Warren and Jerome Warren, with other members being Jim Murdoch, Patricia Fern, Tom C. ("Arven"), and Ruth D., the latter of whom was a preacher's wife. As related by Voigt, most of them had been immigrants from the Southern states, mainly from Alabama.
According to Voigt, the coven placed an emphasis on practical magic rather than worship, theology, ethics, or ritual, and were eclectic in their practices, mixing Huna with forms of American folk magic. She noted that they did not worship a goddess but held to a belief in a god who was opposed to the God of Christianity. Moreover, she claimed that they met together for both outdoor and indoor meetings, according to the phases of the moon. According to Voigt's account, Anderson also claimed that on occasion, the coven used a naked woman as their altar, and that the group disbanded after World War II broke out.
After the Pagan studies scholar Aidan A. Kelly published a summary of Voigt's research, Anderson released an open letter dated to August 21, 1991, refuting many of Kelly's claims and referring to it as "the stupid drivel of those who have only a shallow grasp of their alleged research." He stated that contrary to Kelly's assertions, the Harpy Coven had worshiped a goddess, who was known as Lilith, and that "we did not think of her as merely the Goddess, but as God Herself". He added that the coven also venerated a consort of the Goddess, who was known as Setan, but "although the Goddess tells us that away from the sweet influence of her love, he is the most terrible of all spirits, he is not the fallen angel or 'Satan' of Christianity or Islam". Kelly later stated that the Harpy Coven might "have been self-trained or may have descended from an earlier person or group".
## Later life: 1944–2001
Anderson met Cora Ann Cremeans in Bend, Oregon, in 1944; they married three days later, on 3 May, claiming that they had encountered each other before in the astral realm. Born in Nyota, Alabama, in January 1915, Cora had been exposed to folk magical practices from childhood; reputedly, her Irish grandfather was a "root doctor" who was known among locals as the "druid". The Andersons claimed that one of their first acts after their marriage was the erection of an altar. The following year, a son was born, and they named him Victor Elon, with the latter being the Hebrew word for oak; Cora claimed that she had received the name in a dream. After the birth, a ritual was held to dedicate the infant to the Goddess. In 1948, the family moved to Niles, California, later that year purchasing a home in San Leandro. There, Anderson became a member of the Alameda Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Eagles, and he subsequently remained so for forty years. Victor earned his living as a musician, playing the accordion at events, while Cora worked as a hospital cook. It has been claimed that Anderson could speak Hawaiian, Spanish, Creole, Greek, Italian, and Gothic.
In the mid-1950s Victor and Cora read Witchcraft Today, a 1954 book by English Wiccan Gerald Gardner, with Cora claiming that Victor corresponded with Gardner for a time. The Pagan studies scholar Chas S. Clifton has suggested that the Andersons used Gardner's work as a "style guide" for the development of their own tradition of modern Pagan witchcraft. Similarly, Kelly stated that the Andersons' tradition "began to more and more resemble that of the Gardnerians" as the couple learned more about the latter, adopting elements from it. Anderson was in correspondence with the Italian-American Wiccan Leo Martello, who encouraged Anderson to found his own coven. Circa 1960, the Andersons founded a coven, naming it Mahaelani, after the Hawaiian word for the full moon. Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Andersons initiated a number of individuals into the coven. One of these was Gwydion Pendderwen, a friend of their son who shared their interest in the esoteric. Pendderwen contributed to the development of what came to be known as the Feri tradition, with some members of the lineage viewing him as its co-founder. Pendderwen noted that he had first met the family when, aged thirteen, he got into a fight with Victor Elon, although the two later became friends. Pendderwen was particularly influenced by Welsh mythology, and on a visit to Britain he spent time with the Alexandrian Wiccans Alex Sanders and Stewart Farrar, subsequently introducing various Alexandrian elements into Feri Wicca. In the early 1970s, the Andersons established a new coven with Pendderwen and his initiate, Alison Harlow. After Pendderwen married, his wife also joined this coven, although it disbanded in 1974.
### Anderson's teaching
Over the next four decades, the Andersons would initiate between twenty-five and thirty people into their tradition. Anderson has been described as one of the "founding teachers" and the "seminal voice" of the Feri tradition, although – according to Feri initiate Storm Faerywolf – he preferred to refer to himself as "Grand Master and a fairy chief". The original word that the Andersons used for their tradition was Vicia, "pronounced as in Italian." She added that "the name Fairy became accidentally attached to our tradition because Victor so often mentioned that word in speaking of nature spirits and Celtic magic". Early initiates alternately spelled the name of the tradition as Fairy, Faery, or Faerie, although Anderson began using the spelling Feri during the 1990s to differentiate it from other witchcraft traditions of the same name; not all practitioners followed his example. Cora claimed that Feri was the word's original spelling, adding that it meant "the things of magic". Anderson also referred to his form of Wicca as the Pictish tradition. In their writing, the Andersons mixed terminology adopted from Huna, Gardnerian Wicca, and Voodoo, believing that all reflected the same underlying magico-religious tradition. It drew heavily upon the huna system developed by Max Freedom Long. According to one Feri initiate, Corvia Blackthorn:
"The Andersons' teaching method was very informal. There were no classes in an academic sense, only conversations and the occasional ritual, usually followed by a home-cooked meal. Discussions with Victor were non-linear and overflowing with information. Someone once aptly remarked that talking to Victor was like to trying to drink from a fire hose. Often the connecting threads and underlying patterns in the information didn't become apparent until later on. There was also a non-verbal component to Victor's teaching. He was a true shaman, and had the ability to shift the consciousness of his students on a level well below the surface of conversation."
According to Kelly:
"Studying with Victor presented some unusual problems. He demanded as much respect as any working-class grandfather might. One could ask for clarification, but to even hint that one disagreed with him, or worse yet, to contradict him, would result in an immediate and permanent order to leave. One was tempted to ask such forbidden questions because Victor lived in mythic time and was totally uninterested in other people's concepts of logic or consistency ... Another student told me that when Victor read a new book and believed it was true, then he considered it to have always been true and would rethink his history accordingly."
According to one initiate, Jim Schuette, Anderson was "a taskmaster. He took pride in testing his students." One of those initiated into the Anderson's Feri tradition was Starhawk, who incorporated ideas from the Feri tradition when creating Reclaiming. She also included aspects from it in her 1979 book, The Spiral Dance, including mention of the Iron and Pearl Pentagram and the three souls, all of which originated within Feri Wicca. Another prominent initiate was Gabriel Carillo (Caradoc ap Cador), who in the late 1970s developed a written body of Feri teachings, and began offering paid classes in the tradition in the 1980s, generating the Bloodrose lineage; doing so generated controversy among Feri initiates, with critics believing that it was morally wrong to charge for teaching.
### Poetry and final years
In 1970 Anderson privately published Thorns of the Blood Rose, which contained poems that he had authored over the previous 25 years. He stated that "every poem is a love letter to the Goddess". Money to publish the book had come from Cora's savings, with sales barely covering the costs of publication, so a second printing was not possible at that time. In 1975, this book received the Clover International Poetry Competition Award, and in 1980 it was republished by Pendderwen, who also put some of Anderson's poems to music for his own 1975 album, Songs for the Old Religion. Anderson also contributed work to Pagan magazines like Witch Eye, Green Egg, and Nemeton. Anderson had assembled a group of poems to be published as a second book, released posthumously as Lilith's Garden in 2005.
To honor her fiftieth wedding anniversary, in 1994 Cora authored a book titled Fifty Years in the Feri Tradition, deeming it a tribute to her husband. It has been termed "the definitive written work on Feri thealogy and thought". In 1998, Cora had a stroke and was left largely bedridden by its effects.
At the time of his death, he was still running a coven, which was known as Nostos or Blue Circle. He died at his home on September 20, 2001. He was survived by his wife, son, and various grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Cora then appointed a woman named Anaar, or April Niino, to be the new Grandmaster of the Feri tradition in summer 2003. The tradition itself survived, with various publications appearing that discussed the practice of magic from a Feri perspective.
## Teachings
Anderson's Feri Wicca tradition theistically revolved around a Goddess, who was named Mari after the Basque folkloric character. In Feri theology, Mari was accompanied by a male consort, a Horned God named Krom. Krom was also viewed as a union of two separate entities, the Divine Twins. Cora claimed that the Goddess had created these Twins, "not because she had to have male help, but because in her divine lust she desired them". According to Anderson, the name Mari meant "mother of water", and he described both Mari and Krom as having been the deity names of "the tiny dark aborigines of Scotland, Ireland, and the ancient British Isles". The God was also referred to as Melek Taus. He stressed the view that these deities were real entities, rather than Jungian archetypes, the latter being a view that had been espoused by other Pagans.
Systems of morality in Feri revolved largely around the idea of kala; Cora stated that this term was borrowed from the Hawaiian language and that it meant "keep[ing] oneself clean and bright and free from complexes within and without". Cora stated that the Feri tradition had "a code of honor and sexual morality which is as tough and demanding as the Bushido of Japan and of Shinto". She added that while Christian missionaries would understand Feri as a "sex cult", "we do not behave like a bunch of slavering mad dogs in heat". Initiation into Feri was a sexual act, and according to Cora "in initiation you literally marry the Goddess, her dual consort and the Gods, whether you are male or female". It involved a male priest giving the female initiate the names of the God and Goddess upon orgasm. If the female initiate was already betrothed to another, or did otherwise not wish to have intercourse with the priest, then a ritual known as the Intentions of the Heart took place. In this, her next sexual act with another person would be considered her initiation. When a female initiated a male, there was a similarly sexual component although according to Cora, "there are some important differences".
The Andersons taught that there were three parts of the soul, with Doyle White believing that they had adopted this belief from those of Hawaii. Cora stated that the first part of the soul inhabited "the etheric body or double", surrounding and penetrating the physical body, extending about 2 cm from human flesh and colored either "a misty blue-gray" or "a lovely electric pink". According to her, the second part of the soul inhabited the aura and extended 8 to 9 inches from the physical body. She believed that the third part of the soul was "the Godself" and lived in the top of the aura, appearing as a blue, white or gold ball of light. The Andersons also expressed a belief in reincarnation, believing that the allocation of one's future births were organized by karma. They taught that between incarnations, a soul could travel to one of nine etheric globes surrounding the Earth, in which existed "well-defined classes of nature spirits" which included gnomes, sylphs, undines, and salamanders.
Cora described Feri as the "direct survival of old Stone Age religion", reflecting a trend within the Wiccan community for retaining faith in the witch-cult hypothesis long after it was academically discredited by historians. The Andersons believed that the Witchcraft religion had emerged in Africa and been spread throughout the world, believing that Feri Wicca was essentially the same as Sami indigenous religion, Voudou, and Santeria. She believed that the ritual tools of "the Craft" were "very much alike throughout the world in both time and place". She listed the ritual tools as an athame "to raise or focus power", a binding cord for use in "ritual liberation and unbinding", as well as a scourge "to raise power", although the latter was never used to whip human beings. A chalice is used in rituals, symbolizing "the yoni female receptacle of the life force", with an accompanying stone or wax phallus which is sometimes dipped into the chalice during rituals. A stone or wooden egg "honors the cosmic egg which God held in her womb". Cora stated that in their rituals "power is raised and used in magic operations for the good of our human race, our ecology, or for necessary martial purposes".
According to Adler, Anderson had "a very poetic way of looking at the world". Alison Harlow had informed her that Anderson's claims about his origins often changed, with Doyle White commenting that "Anderson believed that the telling of spiritual 'truths' through stories was more important than factual accounts of the past". Anderson described Feri witchcraft as "a devotional science", and his wife called him "an Einstein of the occult". Cora claimed that the couple were "scientists in the truest sense". Adler noted that some of the "hallmarks" of the Feri tradition were its "shamanic practices and sexual mysticism". It only involved one initiation. There is no set book of liturgy in the tradition, with teachings being passed down orally. Practitioner Storm Faerywolf noted that "the Feri tradition is less about specific practices and more about energetic experience".
|
1,906,523 |
Carl Størmer
| 1,169,310,159 |
Norwegian geophysicist and mathematician
|
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Fredrik Carl Mülertz Størmer (3 September 1874 – 13 August 1957) was a Norwegian mathematician and astrophysicist. In mathematics, he is known for his work in number theory, including the calculation of π and Størmer's theorem on consecutive smooth numbers. In physics, he is known for studying the movement of charged particles in the magnetosphere and the formation of aurorae, and for his book on these subjects, From the Depths of Space to the Heart of the Atom. He worked for many years as a professor of mathematics at the University of Oslo in Norway. A crater on the far side of the moon is named after him.
## Personal life and career
Størmer was born on 3 September 1874 in Skien, the only child of a pharmacist Georg Ludvig Størmer (1842–1930) and Elisabeth Amalie Johanne Henriette Mülertz (1844–1916). His uncle was the entrepreneur and inventor Henrik Christian Fredrik Størmer.
Størmer studied mathematics at the Royal Frederick University in Kristiania, Norway (now the University of Oslo, in Oslo) from 1892 to 1897, earning the rank of candidatus realium in 1898. He then studied with Picard, Poincaré, Painlevé, Jordan, Darboux, and Goursat at the Sorbonne in Paris from 1898 to 1900. He returned to Kristiania in 1900 as a research fellow in mathematics, visited the University of Göttingen in 1902, and returned to Kristiania in 1903, where he was appointed as a professor of mathematics, a position he held for 43 years. After he received a permanent position in Kristiania, Størmer published his subsequent writings under a shortened version of his name, Carl Størmer. In 1918, he was elected as the first president of the newly formed Norwegian Mathematical Society. He participated regularly in Scandinavian mathematical congresses, and was president of the 1936 International Congress of Mathematicians in Oslo (from 1924 the new name of Kristiania). Størmer was also affiliated with the Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics at the University of Oslo, which was founded in 1934. He died on 13 August 1957, at Blindern.
He was also an amateur street photographer, beginning in his student days. Near the age of 70 he put on an exhibition in Oslo of the photographs of celebrities that he had taken over the years. For instance it included one of Henrik Ibsen strolling down Karl Johans gate, the main road in Oslo. He was also a supervisory council member of the insurance company Forsikringsselskapet Norden.
In February 1900 he married consul's daughter Ada Clauson (1877–1973), with whom he eventually had five children. Their son Leif Størmer became a professor of historical geology at the University of Oslo. His daughter Henny married landowner Carl Otto Løvenskiold. Carl Størmer is also the grandfather of the mathematician Erling Størmer.
## Mathematical research
Størmer's first mathematical publication, published when he was a beginning student at the age of 18, concerned trigonometric series generalizing the Taylor expansion of the arcsine function. He revisited this problem a few years later. Next, he systematically investigated Machin-like formula by which the number π may be represented as a rational combination of the so-called "Gregory numbers" of the form arctan 1/n. Machin's original formula,
$\textstyle\pi = 16\arctan \frac15 - 4\arctan\frac1{239},$
is of this type, and Størmer showed that there were three other ways of representing π as a rational combination of two Gregory numbers. He then investigated combinations of three Gregory numbers, and found 102 representations of π of this form, but was unable to determine whether there might be additional solutions of this type. These representations led to fast algorithms for computing numerical approximations of π. In particular, a four-term representation found by Størmer,
$\textstyle\pi = 176 \arctan\frac{1}{57} + 28 \arctan\frac{1}{239} - 48 \arctan\frac{1}{682} + 96 \arctan\frac{1}{12943}$
was used in a record-setting calculation of π to 1,241,100,000,000 decimal digits in 2002 by Yasumasa Kanada. Størmer is also noted for the Størmer numbers, which arose from the decomposition of Gregory numbers in Størmer's work.
Størmer's theorem, which he proved in 1897, shows that, for any finite set P of prime numbers, there are only finitely many pairs of consecutive integers having only the numbers from P as their prime factors. In addition, Størmer describes an algorithm for finding all such pairs. The superparticular ratios generated by these consecutive pairs are of particular importance in music theory. Størmer proves this theorem by reducing the problem to a finite set of Pell equations, and the theorem itself can also be interpreted as describing the possible factorizations of solutions to Pell's equation. Chapman quotes Louis Mordell as saying "His result is very pretty, and there are many applications of it."
Additional subjects of Størmer's mathematical research included Lie groups, the gamma function, and Diophantine approximation of algebraic numbers and of the transcendental numbers arising from elliptic functions. From 1905 Størmer was an editor of the journal Acta Mathematica, and he was also an editor of the posthumously-published mathematical works of Niels Henrik Abel and Sophus Lie.
## Astrophysical research
From 1903, when Størmer first observed Kristian Birkeland's experimental attempts to explain the aurora borealis, he was fascinated by aurorae and related phenomena. His first work on the subject attempted to model mathematically the paths taken by charged particles perturbed by the influence of a magnetized sphere, and Størmer eventually published over 48 papers on the motion of charged particles. By modeling the problem using differential equations and polar coordinates, Størmer was able to show that the radius of curvature of any particle's path is proportional to the square of its distance from the sphere's center. To solve the resulting differential equations numerically, he used Verlet integration, which is therefore also known as Störmer's method. Ernst Brüche and Willard Harrison Bennett verified experimentally Størmer's predicted particle motions; Bennett called his experimental apparatus "Störmertron" in honor of Størmer. Størmer's calculations showed that small variations in the trajectories of particles approaching the earth would be magnified by the effects of the Earth's magnetic field, explaining the convoluted shapes of aurorae. Størmer also considered the possibility that particles might be trapped within the geomagnetic field, and worked out the orbits of these trapped particles. Størmer's work on this subject applies to what are today called the magnetospheric ring current and Van Allen radiation belts.
As well as modeling these phenomena mathematically, Størmer took many photographs of aurorae, from 20 different observatories across Norway. He measured their heights and latitudes by triangulation from multiple observatories, and showed that the aurora are typically as high as 100 kilometers above ground. He classified them by their shapes, and discovered in 1926 the "solar-illuminated aurora", a phenomenon that can occur at twilight when the upper parts of an aurora are lit by the sun; these aurorae can be as high as 1000 km above ground.
Størmer's book, From the Depths of Space to the Heart of the Atom, describing his work in this area, was translated into five different languages from the original Norwegian. A second book, The Polar Aurora (Oxford Press, 1955), contains both his experimental work on aurorae and his mathematical attempts to model them. In his review of this book, Canadian astronomer John F. Heard calls Størmer "the acknowledged authority" on aurorae. Heard writes, "The Polar Aurora will undoubtedly remain for many years a standard reference book; it belongs on the desk of anyone whose work or interest is involved with aurorae."
Other astrophysical phenomena investigated by Størmer include pulsations of the earth's magnetic field, echoing in radio transmissions, nacreous clouds and luminous night clouds, zodiacal light, meteor trails, the solar corona and solar vortices, and cosmic rays.
## Awards and honors
Størmer was a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) and a Corresponding Member of the French Academy of Sciences. He was also a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters from 1900. He was given honorary degrees by Oxford University (in 1947), the University of Copenhagen (1951), and the Sorbonne (1953), and in 1922 the French Academy awarded him their Janssen Medal. Three times Størmer was a plenary speaker in the International Congress of Mathematicians (1908 in Rome, 1924 in Toronto, and 1936 in Oslo); he was an invited speaker of the ICM in 1920 in Strasbourg and in 1932 in Zurich. In 1971, the crater Störmer on the far side of the Moon was named after him.
In 1902, Størmer was decorated with King Oscar II's Medal of Merit in gold. He was also decorated as a Knight, First Order of the Order of St. Olav in 1939. He was upgraded to Grand Cross of the Order of St. Olav in 1954.
|
44,541 |
Phoolan Devi
| 1,173,109,916 |
Indian bandit and politician (1963–2001)
|
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"2000s assassinated politicians in Asia",
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"21st-century Indian politicians",
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"Assassinated Indian politicians",
"Assassinated activists",
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"Indian robbers",
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"Outlaws",
"People from Jalaun district",
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"People murdered in India",
"Women in Uttar Pradesh politics",
"Women members of the Lok Sabha"
] |
Phoolan Devi (10 August 1963 – 25 July 2001) popularly known as the Bandit Queen, was an Indian bandit and politician, who became a Member of Parliament before being assassinated. She was a Mallah woman who grew up in poverty in a village in the state of Uttar Pradesh, where her family was on the losing side of a land dispute which caused them many problems. After being sexually abused repeatedly and married off at the age of eleven, she joined a dacoit group, becoming its leader. Her gang robbed higher caste villages and held up trains and vehicles. She became a heroine to the lower castes for being a Robin Hood figure who punished her rapists and evaded capture by the authorities. Phoolan Devi was charged in absentia for the 1981 Behmai massacre, in which twenty Thakur men were executed, allegedly on her command; afterwards the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh resigned and calls to capture Devi were amplified. She surrendered two years later in a carefully negotiated settlement and spent eleven years in Gwalior prison, without facing trial.
Phoolan Devi was released in 1994 after her charges were set aside, then she became a politician, standing as a Member of Parliament for the Samajwadi Party in 1996. She lost her seat in 1998 then regained it the following year; she was the incumbent at the time of her death in 2001. She was assassinated outside her house by Sher Singh Rana, who was eventually convicted for the murder in 2014. At the time of her death, she was still fighting against the reinstituted criminal charges. Phoolan Devi's worldwide fame grew after the release of the controversial 1994 film Bandit Queen, which told her life story in a way she herself did not approve of. Her life has also inspired several biographies, and her dictated autobiography was entitled I, Phoolan Devi. There are varying accounts of her life because she told her story in different ways.
## Early life
Phoolan Devi was born on 10 August 1963, in the village of Gorha Ka Purwa in Jalaun district, Uttar Pradesh, India. The land is filled with gorges and ravines, making it suitable for dacoits (bandits) to roam freely, and is crossed by the Yamuna and Chambal rivers. Her family was poor and from the Mallah fisherman subcaste, which lies towards the bottom of the Hindu caste system in India, Mallahs being of the Shudra varna. Phoolan Devi's family survived by collecting dung cakes to burn as fuel and growing chickpeas, sunflowers and pearl millet.
Phoolan Devi's mother was called Moola. Devi had four sisters and one brother; her father Devidin had one brother, who had a son called Maiyadin. Phoolan Devi's uncle and his son (her cousin) stole land from her father by bribing the village leader to change the land records. Her family was compelled to live in a small house on the edge of the village; the uncle and son continued to harass the family and to steal their crops, aiming to drive them away from the village. At the age of 10, Phoolan Devi decided to protest against the injustice by going to the disputed land. With her older sister Rukhmini, she sat in a field and ate the chickpeas growing there, saying the crop belonged to her family. Maiyadin ordered her to leave, and when she did not, he beat her into unconsciousness; the village leader then decreed that her parents should also be beaten. In 2018, Phoolan Devi's mother told The Asian Age that she was still fighting to regain the land which Maiyadin had stolen from the family.
Following these events, Phoolan Devi's parents decided to arrange a marriage for her. She was married to a man called Puttilal, who offered ₹ 100, a cow and a bicycle as a dowry. According to the version related by Sen it was agreed that Phoolan Devi would live with him after three years had passed, but less than three months later Puttilal came back and took her away. He was three times her age; she refused his sexual advances and later became sick. When her parents came and collected her, they took her to a doctor who gave a diagnosis of measles. For a wife to leave her husband was scandalous; preying on Phoolan Devi's parents' fears of disgrace, Maiyadin offered to ensure that Puttilal took her back if they signed a document. The family was illiterate and the parents were warned that it contained a clause giving Maiyadin legal rights to their land, so they refused to sign. Instead, her mother sent Devi to stay with a distant relative in the village of Teoga, where she met her recently married cousin Kailash, who ran errands for dacoits (also known locally as bahghis). They became close and had an affair, which resulted in Phoolan Devi being ordered by his wife to go back to her own village.
When Phoolan Devi was back in Gorha Ka Purwa, the second son of the village leader became infatuated with her, and when she did not reciprocate his affections, he attacked her. Again, Phoolan Devi needed to leave the village and Maiyadin pressured the family to ask Puttilal to take her back, which he did; in the meantime, he had taken another wife who enjoyed mistreating her. After several years, Puttilal abandoned Phoolan Devi beside the river and she again returned to the parental home. In January 1979, Maiyadin destroyed the family's crops and began to chop down a neem tree on their land. When Phoolan Devi threw stones at him and wounded his face, she was arrested by the local police and detained for one month. She later told The Atlantic that she was arrested because Maiyadin accused her of robbing him. Her biographer Mala Sen asked if she had been raped at the station, and Phoolan Devi replied "They had plenty of fun at my expense and beat the hell out of me too". Sen notes that it is common for victims of sexual assault to avoid or repress talking about what happened to them. Sen also observes that from the mid-1970s onwards, Indian feminist groups were recording many instances of women being attacked and murdered by men. The director of the Women's Feature Service commented that "quite often rape is used as a method of control and punishment to keep women in their place".
## Banditry
### Bandit Queen
In July 1979, a gang of bandits led by Babu Gujjar attempted to seize Phoolan Devi from her family's home, for reasons she explained in multiple ways. Gujjar took her as his property and raped her repeatedly. His second in command, Vikram Mallah, became fond of Devi; he killed Gujjar and became leader of the gang. He trained Phoolan Devi to use a rifle. Over the following year, the gang robbed trains and vehicles, and looted higher caste villages, sometimes disguising themselves using stolen police uniforms. Vikram Mallah and Phoolan Devi fell in love. The gang lived in the ravines, constantly moving between places such as Devariya, Kanpur, and Orai. and when they returned to punish Puttilal, Devi beat him up. As news of her exploits spread, she became wildly popular with the poor, who called her Dasyu Sundari (Beautiful Bandit), and she was celebrated by most of the Indian mainstream media as a Robin Hood figure, who robbed from the rich to give to the poor. She was seen as an incarnation of the Hindu goddess Durga, and a doll was produced of her in police uniform wearing a bandoleer.
The crime spree was interrupted when a former leader of the gang, Shri Ram Singh, was released from prison together with his brother Lalla Ram Singh. They were Thakurs and thus a higher caste than the rest of the gang; when they rejoined the gang a power struggle ensued, which ended when Shri Ram murdered Vikram Mallah. Without Vikram Mallah's protection, Phoolan Devi could not escape from Shri Ram, who took her to the remote village of Behmai where she was repeatedly raped by Thakur men (Thakurs being a subcaste of the higher Kshatriya caste); in a final indignity, she was forced to collect water for him from the well whilst naked, in front of the villagers. The rapists included Chheda Singh.
### Behmai massacre
Phoolan Devi managed to escape and formed another gang with Man Singh. They lived on wild berries and produce stolen from cultivated fields. The following year, she returned to Behmai with her gang on 14 February 1981. Speaking through a loudhailer, she demanded that the villagers hand over Shri Ram and Lalla Ram, then her gang went from house to house looting valuables. When the two men could not be found, twenty-two Thakur men were lined up at the Yamuna river and shot from behind. Two survived and twenty died. The Behmai massacre led Thakur farmers to pressure Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to impose the rule of law. When she was later arrested in 1983, Phoolan Devi claimed that she had not been present at the time of the shooting. This was confirmed by the evidence of the two men who survived, who stated that they had not seen Devi and that a man called Ram Avtar was giving orders. By other accounts, such as that of journalist Khushwant Singh, it was Devi who put the men to death. For Dalits, Phoolan Devi was to be celebrated for fighting back against her abuse by men of a higher caste, and when she eluded capture by the authorities her fame grew. The killings prompted the resignation of V. P. Singh, the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. It was later clarified that the dead men were composed of seventeen Thakurs, one Muslim, one Dalit and one Other Backward Class; Phoolan Devi was charged in absentia with forty-eight crimes, which included kidnapping, looting and twenty-two murders.
### Surrender
After the massacre, Phoolan Devi remained on the run. She was nearly caught by the police on 31 March 1981, and had to shoot her way out. Her mother was held for five months in Kalpi prison to pressure Devi to give herself up. In 1983, Phoolan Devi surrendered to the authorities after long negotiations led by Rajendra Chaturvedi, a police officer from Bhind. Dressed in a police uniform and still armed with a Mauser rifle, she bowed before representations of Durga and Gandhi, then prostrated herself in front of Arjun Singh, chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, with 8,000 people watching. Phoolan Devi had set conditions regarding her surrender, which included the following: no death penalty for anyone from her gang; a maximum custodial sentence of eight years; no use of handcuffs; being imprisoned as a group; being imprisoned in Madhya Pradesh and not Uttar Pradesh; her family being given land with their goat and cow; and her brother getting a government job. She and seven men, including Man Singh, surrendered. Mala Sen records that the male journalists gathered in Bhind to watch her surrender were unimpressed with her plain appearance.
Phoolan Devi was charged with the forty-eight crimes. The gang was incarcerated at Gwalior. Despite the promise she would not spend more than eight years in prison, Phoolan Devi spent over ten years on remand. During this time, she had tuberculosis and was diagnosed with two stomach tumours. Whilst receiving hospital treatment, she received a hysterectomy without her consent. The others, including Man Singh, agreed to trials in Uttar Pradesh and were all acquitted, but Phoolan Devi refused to make a deal and remained convinced she would be murdered if she went there.
## Political career
Charges against Phoolan Devi were dropped in 1994 by order of the central government of Mulayam Singh Yadav, from the Samajwadi Party. After her release from prison, she joined the Samajwadi Party and in the 1996 general election, took a seat in the Lok Sabha as a Member of Parliament (MP) for Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh. She won with a majority of 37,000 and had over 300,000 votes in total. She was not the only illiterate MP, joining others such as Bhagwati Devi and Shobhawati Devi. Phoolan Devi campaigned with limited success for the rights of women and to provide better amenities for the poor. She told author Roy Moxham "I want to bring hospitals, schools, electricity and clean water to the poor in the villages. To stop child marriage and to improve life for women." Mallah people were happy to have someone of their caste representing them in parliament for the first time, and she was generally popular among Other Backward Classes. She visited her constituents in their villages and listened to their concerns.
The Kanpur district court set aside Yadav's pronouncement, a decision upheld by the Allahabad High Court. In 1996, Phoolan Devi lost her Supreme Court appeal to have the charges dropped. The following year, the court approved a request from Uttar Pradesh to arraign Devi on charges related to the Behmai massacre. She did not attend the court date in Kanpur, to the outrage of the widows of Behmai; after several months of legal machinations, the Supreme Court ruled that Devi did not need to be jailed before trial. She lost her seat to the Bharatiya Janata Party candidate in the 1998 elections, then regained it the following year. She was holding the position at the time of her death, at the age of 37. The criminal charges against her remained open.
## In culture
Phoolan Devi married Umed Singh in 1994; he was a fellow Mallah from West Delhi. They appeared together in a film, called Sholay Aur Chingari (Blazing Fires and Sparks). Together with her new husband, she became a Buddhist, aiming to evade the Hindu caste system. They attended a ceremony at Deekshabhoomi in 1995. Moxham reported that she then renounced Buddhism.
The 1994 film Bandit Queen was loosely based on Mala Sen's biography; it was directed by Shekhar Kapur and starred Seema Biswas as Phoolan Devi. After it received acclaim at Cannes Film Festival, Kapur asked for permission from the Central Board of Film Certification to screen the film at cinemas in India. Phoolan Devi attempted to block the release, commenting "It's simply not the story of my life". She was supported by the feminist and novelist Arundhati Roy, who wrote a critique of the film entitled The great Indian rape trick. In his 2021 autobiography Farrukh Dhondy, the former commissioning editor at Channel 4, described how he rushed to Delhi in order to get Umed Singh to persuade Phoolan Devi to drop her complaint. When Phoolan Devi discovered Singh had taken this payment, they became estranged, before later reconciling. A court case was brought against screening the film by lawyer Indira Singh and Arundhati Roy at the Delhi High Court. Ultimately, Phoolan Devi received £40,000 from Channel 4 and dropped the complaint. She dictated her autobigraphy I, Phoolan Devi which was published first in French in 1996 and then in other languages, including English, Japanese and Malay. The income from book sales supported Devi and enabled her to pay her legal fees.
## Assassination
At 13:30 on 25 July 2001, Phoolan Devi was shot dead by three unknown assailants outside her house at 44 Ashoka Road in New Delhi. She was shot nine times, and her bodyguard was hit twice; he returned fire as the attackers escaped by car. She was rushed to Lohia Hospital and was pronounced dead on arrival. All business of both houses of Parliament was adjourned for two days, and the funeral took place in Mirzapur. Umed Singh commented "No one likes it when someone, especially a woman, from the lower classes rises and makes a name for herself" and her lawyer Kamini Jaiswal stated "This murder is the result of caste conflict."
Days after the murder, Sher Singh Rana was arrested and claimed he had shot at Phoolan Devi, saying the assassination was revenge for the Behmai massacre. Rana was a political activist from Uttaranchal who at first struggled to convince police that he was present at the scene of the crime. He escaped from Tihar Jail in 2004 and was recaptured two years later. In August 2014, Rana received a life sentence for murder, with ten other co-defendants being acquitted. Two years later, he appealed his sentence to the Delhi High Court and was set free on a personal bond of ₹50,000 (equivalent to ₹72,000 or £750 in 2023) and two sureties of the same amount by Justice Gita Mittal. He was required to not interact with Phoolan Devi's family and to report to the police every six months, whilst also informing them where he stayed and what mobile telephone number he was using.
In August 2001 Umed Singh announced before Phoolan Devi's terahvin had occurred that he was setting up a trust to administer the properties she owned; he was immediately denounced by her sisters and mother, who claimed he was trying to steal her investments worth ₹2.5 crore (equivalent to ₹9.9 crore or £1 million in 2023). Devi's sister Munni alleged that Umed Singh knew the murderers and challenged his alibi. She said that Umed Singh was abusive towards Phoolan Devi and that her sister had tried at least twice to divorce him. Phoolan Devi's first husband Puttilal also made a demand for her properties since they had never officially divorced. Munni Devi again claimed in 2018 that Devi had been murdered on the order of Umed Singh and argued that Sher Singh Rana had been framed by a government conspiracy.
## Legacy
Phoolan Devi's fame throughout India continued to grow after her death, and the controversy surrounding the Bandit Queen film had already ensured that she was globally famous; she has become a legendary figure, alongside other outlaws such as Ned Kelly, Sándor Rózsa and Pancho Villa. Her life has inspired biographies by Roy Moxham, Mala Sen, and Richard Shears and Isobelle Gidley, and novels by Irène Frain and Dimitri Friedman. A graphic novel entitled Phoolan Devi, Rebel Queen was published in 2020 by Claire Fauvel [fr]. Scholar Tatiana Szurlej notes that the facts presented in these biographies often contradict each other despite coming from interviews with Phoolan Devi herself, and questions whether Devi forgot elements or adapted her account to suit her changing circumstances. In 1994, Arundhati Roy commented that Phoolan Devi "is suffering from a case of Legenditis. She's only a version of herself. There are other versions of her that are jostling for attention." Media theorist Sandra Ponzanesi states Phoolan Devi is an example of a Third World postcolonial subject who is aware of the racist and patronising Orientalist attitudes that First World analysts have of her.
Several films have been made about her life. Ashok Roy made the 1984 film Phoolan Devi in Bengali and followed it the next year with a Hindi version entitled Kahani Phoolvati Ki (The story of Phoolan). Bandit Queen came out in 1994, and in 2019 Hossein Martin Fazeli was developing a documentary entitled Phoolan. In 2022, Farrukh Dhondy announced that he was making a web series about her life told from the perspective of Rajendra Chaturvedi, the person who arranged her surrender. Phoolan Devi has been represented in fine art by painters such as Rekha Rodwittiya. Her life has also been commemorated by folk singers, making her into a mythical outlaw figure. Shirish Korde wrote an opera called Phoolan Devi: The Bandit Queen which premiered in 2010 at the Tsai Music Centre at the University of Boston.
The court case concerning the Behmai massacre began in 2012; of the twenty-three people facing charges, sixteen (including Devi) were dead by 2020. Of the seven remaining suspects, three were on the run (including Man Singh). A verdict was expected in January 2020 and then delayed because important case documents had been lost. The last witness died the following year, and since the presiding judge had been transferred, the case began again in 2022. In 2023, another suspect died, leaving only two people on trial.
In 2018, the NISHAD Party laid claim to Phoolan Devi's political legacy, saying that it would build a statue of her in Gorakhpur because the Mallah subcaste forms part of the Nishad caste. Three years later, in 2021, in order to mark twenty years since the assassination, the Vikassheel Insaan Party proposed to place statues of her in 18 districts of Uttar Pradesh. In Unnao and Varanasi, the local authorities blocked the installation of the statues. Tributes were paid to her by Akhilesh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party, Chirag Paswan of the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) and Tejashwi Yadav of Rashtriya Janata Dal.
## Selected works
## See also
- Jagga Jatt
- Paan Singh Tomar
- Seema Parihar
- Ashok Mahto gang
- List of assassinated Indian politicians
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