title: Regular Show

text: The voice acting of the series is relatively low-key, and the intention was to make most of the characters sound natural and conversational. Quintel wanted to make the show listenable and given contrast to most other cartoons, which often are difficult for adults to listen to. The main cast consists of voice acting veterans Mark Hamill, who portrays Skips, and Roger Craig Smith, who plays Thomas. William Salyers plays the voice of Rigby; Janie Haddad portrays Margaret; Quintel's former CalArts classmate Sam Marin voices Benson, Pops and Muscle Man; and Quintel portrays Mordecai and Hi-Five Ghost. Members of the production staff have voiced several characters throughout the series, including Minty Lewis, Toby Jones, Andress Salaff and Matt Price. The "Regular Show" cast recorded their lines together in group as opposed to individual recording sessions for each actor; this helped make the show's dialogue sound natural. The series regularly used guest voice actors for recurring characters, such as Steven Blum, Courtenay Taylor, David Ogden Stiers, Robin Atkin Downes, Jeff Bennett, Jennifer Hale, David Kaye, Fred Tatasciore, Matthew Yang King and Julian Holloway.


title: Regular Show

text: Each episode of "Regular Show" took about nine months to complete. Quintel and his 35-member team developed each episode at Cartoon Network Studios in Burbank, California. The script was illustrated in rough hand-drawn images, known as storyboards. The storyboards were then animated and mixed with the corresponding dialogue to create the animatic, which was then sent to be approved by the network. The show's assets – backgrounds, character designs, props, etc. – were then assembled to be sent to Saerom Animation in South Korea, where the actual animation production of the episode was performed. When finished, the episode was sent to Sabre Media Studios back in California. Music and sound effects were created, and the final episode is mixed and completed. The process allowed the production team to work concurrently on dozens of episodes at different stages of production.


title: Regular Show

text: Although most modern animation had switched to hybrid methods such as the Cintiq, "Regular Show" was described as "far more low-fi" and was animated traditionally by hand using paper, which was then digitally composited and painted with digital ink and paint. Although Cintiqs were initially optioned to be used for the program, Quintel stated that he felt more comfortable working on paper, considering it to be more organic and more representative of each artist's individual style. Board artist Calvin Wong said, "the tools of the trade as being pencils, pens, white-out and occasionally lightboxes and electric erasers."


title: Regular Show

text: "Regular Show" has no regular theme music; instead, at the beginning of each episode, a blurred sound (provided by Quintel) followed by a ticking clock is heard over the title cards. The main composer of the series is Mark Mothersbaugh, one of the founding members of the band Devo. As Quintel was developing the pilot, he considered asking Mothersbaugh to create the music for the show. The episode's animatic was sent to Mothersbaugh, along with a request for him to join the show's staff and crew.


title: Regular Show

text: "Regular Show" also made use of licensed songs – mostly from the 1980s – which began when Quintel and the staff writers started recording the animatics using copyrighted songs for the montage scenes. The network executives watched the animatic and asked the crew if they wanted to use some of the songs for the finished episodes. Quintel said that the songs are chosen for their suitability for the scene, whether they sound good and if their licensing is affordable. Quintel enjoyed using the songs in the episodes, saying he thought adult viewers may remember them and younger viewers might appreciate older music. Songs in the show include "You're the Best Around," "Mississippi Queen," "Don't You (Forget About Me)" and "A Holly Jolly Christmas." The show also used several non-'80s songs, such as "Pale Blue Eyes" by The Velvet Underground in "" and "Heroes" by David Bowie in the series finale. Another notable song used in the show is "Here Comes a Regular" by The Replacements, a band often considered as underground.


title: Regular Show

text: The show also produced original songs that were used in episodes, which were generally composed by Mothersbaugh and written by one of the staff's storyboard artists. "Summertime Loving, Loving in the Summer (Time)" was written by staff member Sean Szeles and appeared in the episode "This Is My Jam" (season 2, episode 13).


title: Regular Show

text: Most episodes of "Regular Show" last 11 minutes; episodes are usually paired together to fill a half-hour program slot. 261 episodes in eight seasons have been completed and broadcast. The first season began on September 6, 2010, with the episode "The Power" and ended on November 22, 2010, with "Mordecai and the Rigbys." The second season began on November 29, 2010, with "Ello Gov'nor" and ended on August 1, 2011, with "Karaoke Video." The third season premiered on September 19, 2011, with the episode "Stick Hockey" and concluded on September 3, 2012, with "Bad Kiss." The fourth season premiered on October 1, 2012, with the half-hour special "Exit 9B" and concluded on August 12, 2013, with "Steak Me Amadeus." The fifth season premiered on September 2, 2013, with the episodes "Laundry Woes" and "Silver Dude" and concluded on August 14, 2014, with "Real Date." The sixth season premiered on October 9, 2014, with "Maxin' and Relaxin'" and ended on June 25, 2015, with "Dumped at the Altar." The seventh season premiered with "Dumptown U.S.A." on June 26, 2015, and ended with the half-hour "Rigby's Graduation Day Special" on June 30, 2016. The eighth and final season, titled "Regular Show in Space", started on September 26, 2016, with "One Space Day at a Time" and ended on January 16, 2017, with "A Regular Epic Final Battle."


title: Regular Show

text: Mordecai and Rigby had cameo appearances on the "Uncle Grandpa" episode "Pizza Eve," along with other Cartoon Network characters from currently running and ended cartoons. Mordecai, Rigby and Hi-Five Ghost make a small cameo in "The Amazing World of Gumball" episode "The Boredom," along with the titular characters from "Uncle Grandpa" and "Clarence". Mordecai and Hi-Five Ghost appear in the "" special "Crossover Nexus," and a character resembling Mordecai cameos in "Adventure Time" episode "Ketchup."


title: Regular Show

text: "Regular Show" became an instant hit. Its first and second seasons, broadcast on Monday nights, ranked No. 1 in its time slot among all key boy demos across all of television, according to Nielsen Media Research. The pilot's premiere was watched by 2.097 million viewers. For the following episodes of the first season, viewership increased by over 10% from the time period of the previous year. For instance, the entry was viewed by 1.339 million children aged 2–11, a 65% increase from the previous year. It was also watched by 716,000 children aged 9–14, a 43% increase. The Season 2 premiere, "Ello Gov'nor," marked a decline from the Season 1 premiere's figures. It gained 2.067 million views, but it marked an increase from the Season 1 finale, which had 2.028 million viewers. The Season 3 premiere, "Stick Hockey," saw a bigger decline in viewers, recording 2 million views. As the series continued, though, its ratings grew for a short time; the Season 4 premiere, "Exit 9B," was watched by 3.047 million viewers – a significant increase from previous seasons. However, as the series went on, the ratings would decline, and by the last season, most episodes had under 1 million viewers.


title: Regular Show

text: "Regular Show" received critical acclaim. A reviewer from "IGN", R.L. Shaffer, called the show zany, absurd, bizarre and hilarious. He praised the show's writing and said that it included "snappy dialogue, odd characters, and clever storieseach more irrelevant than the last"Regular Show" never ceases to tickle the funny bone." He finished his review by calling the show "a pretty awesome piece of refreshing off-the-wall comedy" and wrote that it's "humorously animated, brazenly silly and almost always funny."


title: Regular Show

text: "DVD Talk"'s Neil Lumbrad described the show as "offbeat sense of humor with a lot of randomness that makes its title both peculiar and hilarious" and compared it to the original "Looney Tunes" shorts and other cartoons – including "The Powerpuff Girls", "Dexter's Laboratory" and "Johnny Bravo" – that Cartoon Network has produced. He wrote that the network has found "animated gold with "Regular Show", which is too offbeat and unique to be called regular" and that it is a "comedic animated gem worthy of being discovered for years to come." Lumbrad ended his review by recommending the show and calling it "one truly awesome cartoon with a lot of good humor to enjoy."


title: Regular Show

text: "The A.V. Club"'s critic, Alasdair Wilkins, said that compared to another of Cartoon Network's animated comedies, "Adventure Time", he does not consider the series to be funny, and described it as "more pleasingly weird." He said that the episodes' plots can occasionally be too complex to explore completely in the show's 11 minutes and that the usual story setup can make some stories feel structurally the same as others. Wilkins said he considers the show at its best when it focuses on the jokes, the character moments and inventive ways to use animation. Kevin McFarland, also of "The A.V. Club", said he considers the series a thrill to watch; he complimented the animation style, characters and use of motifs.


title: Regular Show

text: In January 2013, Boom! Studios announced that it would develop a comic book series based on the show and that KC Green would be writing the script and Allison Strejlav would be in charge of the illustrations. The first issue was officially released on May 15, 2013. A series of original graphic novels began publication in 2014, as well. The first, titled "Hydration", was written by Rachel Connor and illustrated by Tessa Stone. It was followed by "Noir Means Noir, Buddy" (2015), "A Clash of Consoles" (2016), "Wrasslesplosion" (2017), "The Meatening" (2018) and "Comic Conned" (2018).


title: Regular Show

text: On November 9, 2011, a game called "Nightmare-Athon" was released in App Store for iOS. On January 24, 2013, a game called "Ride 'Em Rigby" was released in iOS.


title: Regular Show

text: On April 8, 2013, J. G. Quintel announced on his Twitter page that an official "Regular Show" video game was in development at the time, titled "". It was developed by WayForward Technologies and published by D3 Publisher for Nintendo 3DS. The video game was released on October 29, 2013. Mordecai and Rigby became playable characters in a video game called "", which was released for the Nintendo 3DS, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on November 8, 2016, and the Nintendo Switch on October 31, 2017.


title: Regular Show

text: Jazwares has produced an assortment of two-, six-, seven- and 10-inch licensed action figures and plush toys for the series. "Collectable Figures" have also been released, along with other themed merchandise, such as "80's Bobbleheads," "Pullback Custom Cruisers" and "Wrestling Buddies." There have been many graphic T-shirts officially licensed through clothing retailers Hot Topic, We Love Fine and Threadless. Looney Labs also released a "Regular Show"–themed version of the card game "Fluxx" on July 25, 2014.


title: Regular Show

text: At the Cartoon Network 2015/2016 upfront, it was announced they were making "Regular Show: The Movie". After accidentally creating a "Timenado," slacker groundskeepers Mordecai and Rigby go back in time and battle an evil volleyball coach in order to save the universe – and their friendship.


title: Regular Show

text: It first screened at The Downtown Independent in Los Angeles on August 14, 2015. It was released to digital download on September 1, 2015, as well as on DVD by Warner Home Video on October 13, 2015, and had its television premiere in November 2015. The movie also screened at select Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas across the United States, and it had select showtimes at the SVA Theatre of New York and the Cinema Montrereal CANADA during October 2015.


title: Malèna (film)

text: Malèna is a 2000 erotic comedy-drama film written and directed by Giuseppe Tornatore from a story by Luciano Vincenzoni. It stars Monica Bellucci and Giuseppe Sulfaro. The film won the Grand Prix at the 2001 Cabourg Film Festival. At the 73rd Academy Awards, the film was nominated for Best Cinematography and Best Original Score.


title: Malèna (film)

text: On June 10, 1940, in the fictional small Sicilian town of Castelcutò, a teenage boy named Renato Amoroso experiences three major events: the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini announces that Italy is entering World War II; he receives a new bike; he sees for the first time, together with his friends, the beautiful and sensual Maddalena "Malèna" Bonsignore Scordìa, who is the most desired young woman in town. Her husband Antonino "Nino" is in the armed forces fighting the British in Africa and she lives alone. Because of her physical appearance and her solitary status, she is an object of lust for all the town's men and of hatred for its women. She keeps an eye on her father, who is the school teacher of Renato and his friends and also lives alone, until he receives an anonymous note slandering her, which causes him to reject her.


title: Malèna (film)

text: Renato becomes obsessed with Malèna, spying on her in her house, stalking her when she leaves it and thinking of her in all his erotic fantasies. He also steals some of her underwear from her clothesline; when his parents find it in his bedroom, they become upset and strictly punish him, trying to break his fixation.


title: Malèna (film)

text: One day, Malèna is notified of her husband's death, adding grief to her isolation. She is said to have been with a lot of men; she unwisely fuels these rumours by allowing the young and handsome Cadei, a single air force officer, to visit her after dark. When she is denounced and put on trial by the wife of an elderly dentist, the officer sends testimony that he was nothing more than an occasional friend. The betrayal hurts, but Malèna says nothing to condemn him. After her acquittal, her advocate pays her a visit and forces her to pay for his services with sex.


title: Malèna (film)

text: Renato is very sad, because he wants to help Malèna but doesn't know how, so he asks God and his saints to watch over her and performs small acts of vengeance against her detractors.


title: Malèna (film)

text: Meanwhile, the war reaches Sicily and the town is bombed by the Allies, killing Malèna's father. Now penniless and universally scorned, with nobody willing to give her work, the only thing she can do to survive is sink into prostitution, cutting and coloring her hair and becoming compliant with all men. The townsfolk are happy to see her as a whore rather than a dangerous widow. When Nazi forces occupy the town, Renato sees his idol with two German soldiers and faints. His mother, believing it is demonic possession, takes him to a priest for exorcism, but his more practical father takes Renato to the town brothel, where he fantasizes that the prostitute initiating him is Malèna.


title: Malèna (film)

text: The Germans leave and American troops enter the town, welcomed by ecstatic cheers. The women accuse Malèna of collaborationism, storm the hotel and drag her out, ripping off her clothes, beating her and cutting off her hair. To escape further persecution, she leaves the hostile town and moves to Messina. A few days later Nino Scordìa, who has actually survived as a prisoner of war but lost an arm, comes back looking for her. His house has been taken over by displaced people and nobody wants to tell him how to find his wife. Renato becomes sad when Nino is mocked by former fascists and leaves him an anonymous note, saying that Malèna has always loved only him but has suffered misfortunes because of the war and has moved away, so Nino decides to reach her.


title: Malèna (film)

text: A year later, Nino and Malèna return and are seen strolling through the town. Women notice she now looks more matronly and plain, even if still beautiful. Since she is still married and living once again with her husband, people no longer consider her a threat and begin speaking of her and to her with more respect. While she walks home, some fruit falls from her bag and Renato rushes to pick it up. He wishes her good luck and she gives him an enigmatic half-smile: it's the only time Malèna and Renato have an actual interaction in the whole movie.


title: Malèna (film)

text: Many years later, an aged Renato reflects that he has known many women, many of whom asked him to remember them, without success; he admits that the only woman he can't forget is Malèna.


title: Malèna (film)

text: The soundtrack was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score and a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score.


title: Malèna (film)

text: The film has a 54% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on reviews by 78 critics, with an average of 5.6/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Malena ends up objectifying the character of the movie's title. Also, the young boy's emotional investment with Malena is never convincing, as she doesn't feel like a three-dimensional person." On Metacritic, which uses a weighted score, the film is rated 54/100, based on 22 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: Malèna (film)

text: When first released, "Variety" wrote: "Considerably scaled down in scope and size from his English-language existential epic, "The Legend of 1900", Giuseppe Tornatore's "Malena" is a beautifully crafted but slight period drama that chronicles a 13-year-old boy's obsession with a small-town siren in World War II Sicily. Combining a coming-of-age story with the sad odyssey of a woman punished for her beauty, the film ultimately has too little depth, subtlety, thematic consequence or contemporary relevance to make it a strong contender for arthouse crossover. But its erotic elements and nostalgic evocation of the same vanished Italy that made international hits of "Cinema Paradiso" and "Il Postino" could supply commercial leverage."


title: Malèna (film)

text: Film critic Roger Ebert compared the film to Federico Fellini's work, writing: "Fellini's films often involve adolescents inflamed by women who embody their carnal desires (e.g. "Amarcord" and "8½"). But Fellini sees the humor that underlies sexual obsession, except (usually but not always) in the eyes of the participants. "Malena" is a simpler story, in which a young man grows up transfixed by a woman and essentially marries himself to the idea of her. It doesn't help that the movie's action grows steadily gloomier, leading to a public humiliation that seems wildly out of scale with what has gone before and to an ending that is intended to move us much more deeply, alas, than it can."


title: Inferno (2016 film)

text: Inferno is a 2016 American action mystery thriller film directed by Ron Howard and written by David Koepp, loosely based on the 2013 novel of the same name by Dan Brown. It is the sequel to "The Da Vinci Code" (2006) and "Angels & Demons" (2009), and is the third and final film in the "Robert Langdon" film series. It stars Tom Hanks, reprising his role as Robert Langdon, alongside Felicity Jones as Dr. Sienna Brooks, Omar Sy, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Ben Foster, and Irrfan Khan.


title: Inferno (2016 film)

text: Filming began on April 27, 2015, in Venice, Italy, and wrapped on July 21, 2015, in Budapest. The film premiered in Florence on October 9, 2016, and was released in the United States on October 28, 2016, ten years after release of "The Da Vinci Code", in 2D and IMAX formats. The film received very negative reviews from critics, but grossed $220 million against a production budget of $75 million.


title: Inferno (2016 film)

text: Some time after helping the Vatican dealing with an antimatter threat, Harvard University professor Robert Langdon awakens in a hospital room in Florence, Italy. He has no memory of the last few days, but is plagued with hellish visions. Dr. Sienna Brooks, the doctor tending to him, reveals that he is suffering from amnesia as a result of a bullet wound to the head. An orderly says the police are there to question Langdon but the officer turns out to be Vayentha, an assassin, who shoots the orderly while coming up the hallway. Brooks helps Langdon to escape, and they flee to her apartment.


title: Inferno (2016 film)

text: Among Langdon's personal belongings, Langdon and Brooks find a Faraday pointer, a miniature image projector with a modified version of Sandro Botticelli's "Map of Hell", which itself is based on Dante's "Inferno". They soon realize this is the first clue in a trail left by Bertrand Zobrist, a dangerously unstable villain who believed that rigorous measures were necessary to reduce the Earth's growing population, and who committed suicide three days earlier after being chased by armed government agents.


title: Inferno (2016 film)

text: Langdon and Brooks figure out that Zobrist, who was obsessed with Dante, has created a biological superweapon he has dubbed "Inferno", with the potential of annihilating half the world's population. In the meantime, they have been traced by both Vayentha and government agents, who try to raid the apartment, forcing them to flee again. The government agents are headed by Elizabeth Sinskey, an old lover of Langdon's. Vayentha reports to her employer Harry Sims, the CEO of a private security company called "The Consortium", who is acting on behalf of Zobrist, who gives her instructions to kill Langdon as he had become a liability.


title: Inferno (2016 film)

text: Langdon's knowledge of Dante's work and history, and of hidden passages in Florence, allows the two to follow clues such as letters and phrases which lead to various locations in Florence and Venice, while inadvertently killing Vayentha and evading the agents. Along the way, Langdon discovers that he helped a friend of his steal and hide the Dante death mask, a crucial clue, an event he also does not remember. Zobrist had provided Sims with a video message about the attack, to be broadcast after it has been released. Shocked by its content, Sims allies with Sinskey to prevent the outbreak. However, Langdon and Brooks are contacted by Christoph Bouchard, a man purporting to be working for the government, warning them that Sinskey is a double agent and is after the Inferno for her own profit. The three cooperate for a while, until Langdon realizes that Bouchard is lying and seeking to profit from Inferno himself, forcing the duo to flee on their own again.


title: Inferno (2016 film)

text: Langdon figures out that the attack is in the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. With that knowledge, Brooks abandons Langdon, revealing that she was Zobrist's lover and that she will ensure the release of the weapon. Zobrist and Brooks used to play treasure hunt games; this trail was the backup plan in case something happened to Zobrist. Langdon is recaptured by Bouchard, but Sims kills Bouchard and rescues Langdon, who then re-teams with Sinskey, who asked him for help in interpreting the imagery from the Faraday pointer. Sims reveals he was hired by Brooks to kidnap Langdon when Zobrist had been killed, and drugged with benzodiazepine to induce a memory loss; the events in the hospital were all staged.


title: Inferno (2016 film)

text: They deduce the weapon is in a plastic bag hidden under water in the Basilica Cistern in Istanbul. The agents team – joined by Langdon, Sims, and Sinskey – race to locate and secure the bag, while Brooks and fellow Zobrist disciples attempt to detonate an explosive to rupture the bag and aerosolize the weapon. Sims incapacitates a disciple and kills another, but is fatally stabbed by Brooks who, refusing Langdon's pleas, releases the weapon by manually triggering an underwater blast. The detonation ruptures the bag, which however is trapped by Sinskey in a special containment unit. After struggling against Sinskey and Langdon to open the container, Brooks' last ally is killed by special units. The weapon is secured for analysis, while Langdon and Sinskey ruminate on the idealism of youth and the future of humanity. Langdon returns to Florence and covertly returns the Dante Death Mask.


title: Inferno (2016 film)

text: On July 16, 2013, Columbia Pictures set Ron Howard to direct Dan Brown's fourth novel in the Robert Langdon series, "Inferno", with David Koepp writing the script. Imagine Entertainment was set to produce the film, while Tom Hanks was again set to reprise his role as Robert Langdon. On August 26, 2014, Sony had finalized the deal with Howard and Hanks, and set the film for April start of production in Italy. Brian Grazer was also set to produce the film with Howard.


title: Inferno (2016 film)

text: On December 2, Felicity Jones was in early talks to join the film. On February 17, 2015, studio revealed the confirmed cast for the film, including Jones as Dr. Sienna Brooks, Omar Sy as Christoph Bruder, Irrfan Khan as Harry "The Provost" Sims, and Sidse Babett Knudsen as Elizabeth Sinskey, head of the World Health Organization. Ben Foster was set for an unspecified villainous role on March 10, 2015, which later revealed to be the role of Bertrand Zobrist.


title: Inferno (2016 film)

text: Filming began on April 27, 2015, in Venice, Italy, and continued in Florence, Italy, starting at the end of April. Outdoor scenes featuring Hanks were filmed near the Palazzo Vecchio and elsewhere in the historic center of the city, starting on May 2, 2015. Some second unit stunts were filmed at an apartment building close to the Ponte Vecchio, in Florence. Low-flying aerial shots of Florence landmarks, its river and bridges were filmed on May 11, 2015. A sequence displayed in an early trailer features a Padova railway station sign, but locals of Padova immediately recognized the scene as recreated somewhere else. As of June 5, 2015, most of the film was planned to be shot in Budapest, Hungary at Korda Studios. Filming wrapped on July 21, 2015.


title: Inferno (2016 film)

text: During location filming, its production codename was "Headache", a reference to a concussion suffered by Langdon early in the story.


title: Inferno (2016 film)

text: In July 2013, Sony set the film a release date for December 18, 2015. However, due to the date clash with "", the release date was moved to October 14, 2016. In early 2016, the release date was pushed back two more weeks to October 28, 2016. It was released in both 2D and 3D formats.


title: Inferno (2016 film)

text: On May 9, 2016, Sony Pictures released the first teaser trailer for the film. The film premiered in Florence, Italy on October 8, 2016, at the New Opera Theater and also held a premiere in India on October 13, 2016, due to the popularity of actor Irrfan Khan.


title: Inferno (2016 film)

text: "Inferno" grossed $34.3 million in the United States and Canada and $185.7 million in other countries for a worldwide total of $220 million, against a production budget of $75 million.


title: Inferno (2016 film)

text: In the United States and Canada, "Inferno" was initially expected to top the box office with around $25 million from 3,546 theaters in its opening weekend. It made $800,000 from Thursday night previews and $5.6 million on its first day, lowering weekend projections to $15 million. It ended up opening to $14.9 million, finishing second at the box office behind "Boo! A Madea Halloween" and marked the fourth straight domestic disappointment for director Ron Howard.


title: Inferno (2016 film)

text: Internationally, the film was released two weeks ahead of its North American debut, across 53 overseas markets (about 66% of its total international market) in order to avoid competition from Disney/Marvel Studios' "Doctor Strange". It finished at first place at the box office in 45 of those countries. In total, it opened to $49.7 million, of which $2.6 million came from IMAX theaters, the second biggest amount of October. It fell 49% in its second weekend, earning $28.9 million from 58 markets and was surpassed by "" at the chart. Italy, where the film was partly shot, delivered the biggest opening with $5 million. This was followed by Germany ($4.4 million), where it competed for No. 1 with the animated "Finding Dory". Russia similarly opened to $4.4 million, followed by the United Kingdom and Ireland ($3.8 million), Spain ($2 million) and the Netherlands ($1.2 million). "Inferno"s £2.97 million debut in the U.K. is considerably less than the first (£9.50 million) and the second film (£6.05 million). In Latin America, the film debuted in first in all 11 markets, earning a combined $9 million. Brazil led with $4 million, followed by Mexico ($2.6 million). Similarly in South East Asia, it saw top openings in six out of seven markets for a combined $6 million. Japan ($3.3 million), Taiwan ($1.7 million), India ($1.9 million) and Indonesia ($1 million) posted the biggest debuts. In China, it opened at number one with $13.3 million. In the Oceania region, Australia launched with $1.8 million. "Inferno" opened to number one across the Middle East for a regional total of $1.8 million. The film opened in France


title: Inferno (2016 film)

text: "Inferno" received generally negative reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, the film has an approval rating of 23% based on 253 reviews; the average rating is 4.60/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Senselessly frantic and altogether shallow, "Inferno" sends the Robert Langdon trilogy spiraling to a convoluted new low." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 42 out of 100 based on 47 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Inferno (2016 film)

text: British film critic Mark Kermode gave the film a negative review, calling it, "intergalactically stupid". Cinema Blend wrote "Inferno" is "insufferable. And while you're obviously meant to take "Inferno" with a dash of salt, it's so preposterously stupid and dumb that this rancid popcorn flick becomes increasingly nauseating the further you taste."


title: Common raven

text: The common raven (Corvus corax) is a large all-black passerine bird. It is the most widely distributed of all corvids, found across the Northern Hemisphere. It is a raven known by many names at the subspecies level; there are at least eight subspecies with little variation in appearance, although recent research has demonstrated significant genetic differences among populations from various regions. It is one of the two largest corvids, alongside the thick-billed raven, and is possibly the heaviest passerine bird; at maturity, the common raven averages in length and in mass. Although their typical lifespan is considerably shorter, common ravens can live more than 23 years in the wild. Young birds may travel in flocks but later mate for life, with each mated pair defending a territory.


title: Common raven

text: Common ravens have coexisted with humans for thousands of years and in some areas have been so numerous that people have regarded them as pests. Part of their success as a species is due to their omnivorous diet; they are extremely versatile and opportunistic in finding sources of nutrition, feeding on carrion, insects, cereal grains, berries, fruit, small animals, nesting birds, and food waste. Some notable feats of problem-solving provide evidence that the common raven is unusually intelligent.


title: Common raven

text: Over the centuries, the raven has been the subject of mythology, folklore, art, and literature. In many cultures, including the indigenous cultures of Scandinavia, ancient Ireland and Wales, Bhutan, the northwest coast of North America, and Siberia and northeast Asia, the common raven has been revered as a spiritual figure or godlike creature.


title: Common raven

text: The common raven was one of the many species originally described, with its type locality given as Europe, by Carl Linnaeus in his landmark 1758 10th edition of "Systema Naturae", and it still bears its original name of "Corvus corax". It is the type species of the genus "Corvus", derived from the Latin word for 'raven'. The specific epithet "corax" is the Latinized form of the Greek word , meaning 'raven' or 'crow'.


title: Common raven

text: The modern English word "raven" has cognates in many other Germanic languages, including Old Norse (and subsequently modern Icelandic) and Old High German , all which descend from Proto-Germanic . An old Scottish word or , akin to the French , has been used for both this bird and the carrion crow. Collective nouns for a group of ravens (or at least the common raven) include "unkindness" and "conspiracy".


title: Common raven

text: The closest relatives of the common raven are the brown-necked raven ("C. ruficollis"), the pied crow ("C. albus") of Africa, and the Chihuahuan raven ("C. cryptoleucus") of the North American Southwest. While some authorities have recognized as many as 11 subspecies, others recognize only eight:


title: Common raven

text: The common raven evolved in the Old World and crossed the Bering land bridge into North America. Recent genetic studies, which examined the DNA of common ravens from across the world, have determined that the birds fall into at least two clades: a California clade, found only in the southwestern United States, and a Holarctic clade, found across the rest of the Northern Hemisphere. Birds from both clades look alike, but the groups are genetically distinct and began to diverge about two million years ago.


title: Common raven

text: The findings indicate that based on mitochondrial DNA, common ravens from the rest of the United States are more closely related to those in Europe and Asia than to those in the California clade, and that common ravens in the California clade are more closely related to the Chihuahuan raven ("C. cryptoleucus") than to those in the Holarctic clade. Ravens in the Holarctic clade are more closely related to the pied crow ("C. albus") than they are to the California clade. Thus, the common raven species as traditionally delimited is considered to be paraphyletic.


title: Common raven

text: One explanation for these genetic findings is that common ravens settled in California at least two million years ago and became separated from their relatives in Europe and Asia during a glacial period. One million years ago, a group from the California clade evolved into a new species, the Chihuahuan raven. Other members of the Holarctic clade arrived later in a separate migration from Asia, perhaps at the same time as humans.


title: Common raven

text: A 2011 study suggested that there are no restrictions on gene flow between the Californian and Holarctic common raven groups, and that the lineages can remerge, effectively reversing a potential speciation.


title: Common raven

text: A recent study of raven mitochondrial DNA showed that the isolated population from the Canary Islands is distinct from other populations. The study did not include any individuals from the North African population, and its position is therefore unclear, though its morphology is very close to the population of the Canaries (to the extent that the two are often considered part of a single subspecies).


title: Common raven

text: A mature common raven ranges between 54 and 67 cm (21" and 26") long, with a wingspan of 115 to 150 cm (45–51"). Recorded weights range from 0.69 to 2 kg (1.5 to 4.4 lb), thus making the common raven one of the heaviest passerines. Birds from colder regions such as the Himalayas and Greenland are generally larger with slightly larger bills, while those from warmer regions are smaller with proportionally smaller bills. Representative of the size variation in the species, ravens from California weighed an average of , those from Alaska weighed an average of and those from Nova Scotia weighed an average of . The bill is large and slightly curved, with a culmen length of , easily one of the largest bills amongst passerines (perhaps only the thick-billed raven has a noticeably larger bill). It has a longish, strongly graduated tail, at , and mostly black iridescent plumage, and a dark brown iris. The throat feathers are elongated and pointed and the bases of the neck feathers are pale brownish-grey. The legs and feet are good-sized, with a tarsus length of . Juvenile plumage is similar but duller with a blue-grey iris.


title: Common raven

text: Apart from its greater size, the common raven differs from its cousins, the crows, by having a larger and heavier black beak, shaggy feathers around the throat and above the beak, and a wedge-shaped tail. Flying ravens are distinguished from crows by their tail shape, larger wing area, and more stable soaring style, which generally involves less wing flapping. Despite their bulk, ravens are easily as agile in flight as their smaller cousins. In flight the feathers produce a creaking sound that has been likened to the rustle of silk. The voice of ravens is also quite distinct, its usual call being a deep croak of a much more sonorous quality than a crow's call. In North America, the Chihuahuan raven ("C. cryptoleucus") is fairly similar to the relatively small common ravens of the American southwest and is best distinguished by the still relatively smaller size of its bill, beard and body and relatively longer tail. All-black carrion crow ("C. corone") in Europe may suggest a raven due to their largish bill but are still distinctly smaller and have the wing and tail shapes typical of crows.


title: Common raven

text: In the Faroe Islands, a now-extinct white-and-black colour morph of this species existed, known as the pied raven.


title: Common raven

text: White ravens are occasionally found in the wild. Birds in British Columbia lack the pink eyes of an albino, and are instead leucistic, a condition where an animal lacks any of several different types of pigment, not simply melanin.


title: Common raven

text: Common ravens have a wide range of vocalizations which are of interest to ornithologists. Gwinner carried out important studies in the early 1960s, recording and photographing his findings in great detail. Fifteen to 30 categories of vocalization have been recorded for this species, most of which are used for social interaction. Calls recorded include alarm calls, chase calls, and flight calls. The species has a distinctive, deep, resonant "prruk-prruk-prruk" call, which to experienced listeners is unlike that of any other corvid. Its very wide and complex vocabulary includes a high, knocking "toc-toc-toc", a dry, grating "kraa", a low guttural rattle and some calls of an almost musical nature.


title: Common raven

text: Like other corvids, the common raven can mimic sounds from their environment, including human speech. Non-vocal sounds produced by the common raven include wing whistles and bill snapping. Clapping or clicking has been observed more often in females than in males. If a member of a pair is lost, its mate reproduces the calls of its lost partner to encourage its return.


title: Common raven

text: The common raven can thrive in varied climates; indeed this species has the largest range of any member of the genus, and one of the largest of any passerine. They range throughout the Holarctic from Arctic and temperate habitats in North America and Eurasia to the deserts of North Africa, and to islands in the Pacific Ocean. In the British Isles, they are more common in Scotland, Wales, northern England and the west of Ireland. In Tibet, they have been recorded at altitudes up to 5,000 m (16,400 ft), and as high as 6,350 m (20,600 ft) on Mount Everest. The population sometimes known as the Punjab raven—described as "Corvus corax laurencei" (also spelt "lawrencii" or "laurencii") by Allan Octavian Hume but more often considered synonymous with "subcorax"—is restricted to the Sindh district of Pakistan and adjoining regions of northwestern India. They are generally resident within their range for the whole year. In his 1950 work, "Grønlands Fugle" ["Birds of Greenland"], noted ornithologist Finn Salomonsen indicated that common ravens did not overwinter in the Arctic. However, in Arctic Canada and Alaska, they are found year-round. Young birds may disperse locally.


title: Common raven

text: In the United Kingdom, the common raven's range has been increasing, though it favours mountainous or coastal terrain, but can also be found in parks with tall trees suitable for use as habitation. Its population is at its most dense in the north and west of the country, though the species is expanding its population southwards.


title: Common raven

text: Most common ravens prefer wooded areas with large expanses of open land nearby, or coastal regions for their nesting sites and feeding grounds. In some areas of dense human population, such as California in the United States, they take advantage of a plentiful food supply and have seen a surge in their numbers. On coasts, individuals of this species are often evenly distributed and prefer to build their nest sites along sea cliffs. Common ravens are often located in coastal regions because these areas provide easy access to water and a variety of food sources. Also, coastal regions have stable weather patterns without extreme cold or hot temperatures.


title: Common raven

text: In general, common ravens live in a wide array of environments but prefer heavily contoured landscapes. When the environment changes in vast degrees, these birds will respond with a stress response. The hormone known as corticosterone is activated by the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis. Corticosterone is activated when the bird is exposed to stress, such as migrating great distances.


title: Common raven

text: Common ravens usually travel in mated pairs, although young birds may form flocks. Relationships between common ravens are often quarrelsome, yet they demonstrate considerable devotion to their families.


title: Common raven

text: Owing to its size, gregariousness and its defensive abilities, the common raven has few natural predators. Predators of its eggs include owls, martens, and sometimes eagles. Ravens are quite vigorous at defending their young and are usually successful at driving off perceived threats. They attack potential predators by flying at them and lunging with their large bills. Humans are occasionally attacked if they get close to a raven nest, though serious injuries are unlikely. There are a few records of predation by large birds of prey. Their attackers in America have reportedly included great horned owls, northern goshawks, bald eagles, golden eagles and red-tailed hawks. It is possible that the two hawk species only attack young ravens; in one instance a peregrine falcon swooped at a newly fledged raven but was chased off by the parent ravens.


title: Common raven

text: In Eurasia, their reported predators include, in addition to golden eagles, Eurasian eagle-owls, white-tailed eagles, Steller's sea-eagles, eastern imperial eagles and gyrfalcons. Because they are potentially hazardous prey for raptorial birds, raptors must usually take them by surprise and most attacks are on fledgling ravens. More rarely still, large mammalian predators such as lynxes, coyotes and cougars have also attacked ravens. This principally occurs at a nest site and when other prey for the carnivores are scarce. Ravens are highly wary around novel carrion sites and, in North America, have been recorded waiting for the presence of American crows and blue jays before approaching to eat.


title: Common raven

text: Juveniles begin to court at a very early age, but may not bond for another two or three years. Aerial acrobatics, demonstrations of intelligence, and ability to provide food are key behaviours of courting. Once paired, they tend to nest together for life, usually in the same location. Instances of non-monogamy have been observed in common ravens, by males visiting a female's nest when her mate is away.


title: Common raven

text: Breeding pairs must have a territory of their own before they begin nest-building and reproduction, and thus they aggressively defend a territory and its food resources. Nesting territories vary in size according to the density of food resources in the area. The nest is a deep bowl made of large sticks and twigs, bound with an inner layer of roots, mud, and bark and lined with a softer material, such as deer fur. The nest is usually placed in a large tree or on a cliff ledge, or less frequently in old buildings or utility poles.


title: Common raven

text: Females lay between three and seven pale bluish-green, brown-blotched eggs. Incubation is about 18 to 21 days, by the female only. The male may stand or crouch over the young, sheltering but not actually brooding them. Young fledge at 35 to 42 days, and are fed by both parents. They stay with their parents for another six months after fledging.


title: Common raven

text: In most of their range, egg-laying begins in late February. In colder climates, it is later, e.g. April in Greenland and Tibet. In Pakistan, egg-laying takes place in December. Eggs and hatchlings are preyed on, rarely, by large hawks and eagles, large owls, martens and canids. The adults, which are very rarely preyed upon, are often successful in defending their young from these predators, due to their numbers, large size and cunning. They have been observed dropping stones on potential predators that venture close to their nests.


title: Common raven

text: Common ravens can be very long-lived, especially in captive or protected conditions; individuals at the Tower of London have lived for more than 40 years. Lifespans in the wild are considerably shorter at typically 10 to 15 years. The longest known lifespan of a banded wild common raven was 23 years, 3 months, which among passerines only is surpassed by a few Australian species such as the satin bowerbird.


title: Common raven

text: Common ravens are omnivorous and highly opportunistic: their diet may vary widely with location, season and serendipity. For example, those foraging on tundra on the Arctic North Slope of Alaska obtained about half their energy needs from predation, mainly of microtine rodents, and half by scavenging, mainly of caribou and ptarmigan carcasses.


title: Common raven

text: In some places they are mainly scavengers, feeding on carrion as well as the associated maggots and carrion beetles. With large-bodied carrion, which they are not equipped to tear through as well as birds such as hook-billed vultures, they must wait for the prey to be torn open by another predator or flayed by other means. They are also known to eat the afterbirth of ewes and other large mammals. Plant food includes cereal grains, acorns, buds, berries and fruit. They prey on small invertebrates, amphibians, reptiles, small mammals and birds. Ravens may also consume the undigested portions of animal feces, and human food waste. They store surplus food items, especially those containing fat, and will learn to hide such food out of the sight of other common ravens. Ravens also raid the food caches of other species, such as the Arctic fox. They sometimes associate with another canine, the grey wolf, as a kleptoparasite, following to scavenge wolf-kills in winter. Ravens are regular predators at bird nests, brazenly picking off eggs, nestlings and sometimes adult birds when they spot an opportunity. They are considered perhaps the primary natural threat to the nesting success of the critically endangered California condor, since they readily take condor eggs and are very common in the areas where the species is being re-introduced. On the other hand, when they defend their own adjacent nests, they may incidentally benefit condors since they chase golden eagles out of the area that may otherwise prey upon larger nestling and fledging condors. Condors, despite their large size, do not seem to have well developed nest defenses.


title: Common raven

text: Common ravens nesting near sources of human garbage included a higher percentage of food waste in their diet, birds nesting near roads consumed more road-killed vertebrates, and those nesting far from these sources of food ate more arthropods and plant material. Fledging success was higher for those using human garbage as a food source. In contrast, a 1984–1986 study of common raven diet in an agricultural region of southwestern Idaho found that cereal grains were the principal constituent of pellets, though small mammals, grasshoppers, cattle carrion and birds were also eaten.


title: Common raven

text: One behaviour is recruitment, where juvenile ravens call other ravens to a food bonanza, usually a carcass, with a series of loud yells. In "Ravens in Winter", Bernd Heinrich posited that this behaviour evolved to allow the juveniles to outnumber the resident adults, thus allowing them to feed on the carcass without being chased away. A more mundane explanation is that individuals co-operate in sharing information about carcasses of large mammals because they are too big for just a few birds to exploit. Experiments with baits however show that such recruitment behaviour is independent of the size of the bait.


title: Common raven

text: Furthermore, there has been research suggesting that the common raven is involved in seed dispersal. In the wild, the common raven chooses the best habitat and disperses seeds in locations best suited for its survival.


title: Common raven

text: The brain of the common raven is among the largest of any bird species. Specifically, their hyperpallium is large for a bird. They display ability in problem-solving, as well as other cognitive processes such as imitation and insight.


title: Common raven

text: Linguist Derek Bickerton, building on the work of biologist Bernd Heinrich, has argued that ravens are one of only four known animals (the others being bees, ants, and humans) who have demonstrated displacement, the capacity to communicate about objects or events that are distant in space or time. Subadult ravens roost together at night, but usually forage alone during the day. However, when one discovers a large carcass guarded by a pair of adult ravens, the unmated raven will return to the roost and communicate the find. The following day, a flock of unmated ravens will fly to the carcass and chase off the adults. Bickerton argues that the advent of linguistic displacement was perhaps the most important event in the evolution of human language, and that ravens are the only other vertebrate to share this with humans.


title: Common raven

text: One experiment designed to evaluate insight and problem-solving ability involved a piece of meat attached to a string hanging from a perch. To reach the food, the bird needed to stand on the perch, pull the string up a little at a time, and step on the loops to gradually shorten the string. Four of five common ravens eventually succeeded, and "the transition from no success (ignoring the food or merely yanking at the string) to constant reliable access (pulling up the meat) occurred with no demonstrable trial-and-error learning." This supports the hypothesis that common ravens are 'inventors', implying that they can solve problems. Many of the feats of common ravens were formerly argued to be stereotyped innate behaviour, but it now has been established that their aptitudes for solving problems individually and learning from each other reflect a flexible capacity for intelligent insight unusual among non-human animals. Another experiment showed that some common ravens could intentionally deceive their conspecifics.


title: Common raven

text: A study published in 2011 found that ravens can recognise when they are given an unfair trade during reciprocal interactions with conspecifics or humans, retaining memory of the interaction for a prolonged period of time. Birds that were given a fair trade by experimenters were found to prefer interacting with these experimenters compared to those that did not. Furthermore, ravens in the wild have also been observed to stop cooperating with other ravens if they observe them cheating during group tasks.


title: Common raven

text: Common ravens have been observed calling wolves to the site of dead animals. The wolves open the carcass, leaving the scraps more accessible to the birds. They watch where other common ravens bury their food and remember the locations of each other's food caches, so they can steal from them. This type of theft occurs so regularly that common ravens will fly extra distances from a food source to find better hiding places for food. They have also been observed pretending to make a cache without actually depositing the food, presumably to confuse onlookers.


title: Common raven

text: Common ravens are known to steal and cache shiny objects such as pebbles, pieces of metal, and golf balls. One theory is that they hoard shiny objects to impress other ravens. Other research indicates that juveniles are deeply curious about all new things, and that common ravens retain an attraction to bright, round objects based on their similarity to bird eggs. Mature birds lose their intense interest in the unusual, and become highly neophobic.


title: Common raven

text: The first large-scale assessment of ravens' cognitive abilities suggests that, by four months of age, ravens do about as well as adult chimps and orangutans on tests of causal reasoning, social learning, theory of mind, etc.


title: Common raven

text: There has been increasing recognition of the extent to which birds engage in play. Juvenile common ravens are among the most playful of bird species. They have been observed to slide down snowbanks, apparently purely for fun. They even engage in games with other species, such as playing catch-me-if-you-can with wolves, otters and dogs. Common ravens are known for spectacular aerobatic displays, such as flying in loops or interlocking talons with each other in flight.


title: Common raven

text: They are also one of only a few wild animals who make their own toys. They have been observed breaking off twigs to play with socially.


title: Common raven

text: Compared to many smaller "Corvus" species (such as American crow), ravens prefer undisturbed mountain or forest habitat or rural areas over urban areas. In other areas, their numbers have increased dramatically and they have become agricultural pests. Common ravens can cause damage to crops, such as nuts and grain, or can harm livestock, particularly by killing young goat kids, lambs and calves. Ravens generally attack the faces of young livestock, but the more common raven behaviour of scavenging may be misidentified as predation by ranchers.


title: Common raven

text: In the western Mojave Desert, human settlement and land development have led to an estimated 16-fold increase in the common raven population over 25 years. Towns, landfills, sewage treatment plants and artificial ponds create sources of food and water for scavenging birds. Ravens also find nesting sites in utility poles and ornamental trees, and are attracted to roadkill on highways. The explosion in the common raven population in the Mojave has raised concerns for the desert tortoise, a threatened species. Common ravens prey upon juvenile tortoises, which have soft shells and move slowly. Plans to control the population have included shooting and trapping birds, as well as contacting landfill operators to ask that they reduce the amount of exposed garbage. A hunting bounty as a method of control was historically used in Finland from the mid-18th century until 1923. Culling has taken place to a limited extent in Alaska, where the population increase in common ravens is threatening the vulnerable Steller's eider ("Polysticta stelleri").


title: Common raven

text: Ravens, like other corvids, are definitive hosts of West Nile Virus (WNV). The transmission can be from infected birds to humans, and ravens are susceptible to WNV. However, in a 2010 study, it was shown that the California Common Ravens did not have a high positivity rate of WNV.


title: Common raven

text: Across its range in the Northern Hemisphere, and throughout human history, the common raven has been a powerful symbol and a popular subject of mythology and folklore.


title: Common raven

text: In some Western traditions, ravens have long been considered to be birds of ill omen, death and evil in general, in part because of the negative symbolism of their all-black plumage and the eating of carrion. In Sweden, ravens are known as the ghosts of murdered people, and in Germany as the souls of the damned. In Danish folklore, valravne that ate a king's heart gained human knowledge, could perform great malicious acts, could lead people astray, had superhuman powers, and were "terrible animals".


title: Common raven

text: As in traditional mythology and folklore, the common raven features frequently in more modern writings such as the works of William Shakespeare, and, perhaps most famously, in the poem "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe. Ravens have appeared in the works of Charles Dickens, J. R. R. Tolkien, Stephen King, George R. R. Martin and Joan Aiken among others.


title: Common raven

text: It continues to be used as a symbol in areas where it once had mythological status: as the national bird of Bhutan (Kings of Bhutan wear the Raven Crown), official bird of the Yukon territory, and on the coat of arms of the Isle of Man (once a Viking colony).


title: Common raven

text: In Persia and Arabia the raven was held as a bird of bad omen but a 14th-century Arabic work reports use of the raven in falconry.


title: Common raven

text: The modern unisex given name "Raven" is derived from the English word "raven". As a masculine name, "Raven" parallels the Old Norse "Hrafn", and Old English "*Hræfn", which were both bynames and personal names.


title: Common raven

text: In Tlingit and Haida cultures, Raven was both a trickster and creator god. Related beliefs are widespread among the peoples of Siberia and northeastern Asia. The Kamchatka Peninsula, for example, was supposed to have been created by the raven god Kutkh. There are several references to common ravens in the Old Testament of the Bible and it is an aspect of Mahakala in Bhutanese mythology.


title: Common raven

text: In Norse mythology, Huginn (from the Old Norse for "thought") and Muninn (from the Old Norse for "memory" or "mind") are a pair of ravens that fly all over the world of humans, Midgard, and bring the god Odin information. Additionally among the Norse, raven banner standards were carried by such figures as the Jarls of Orkney, King Cnut the Great of England, Norway and Denmark, and Harald Hardrada. In the British Isles, ravens also were symbolic to the Celts. In Irish mythology, the goddess Morrígan alighted on the hero Cú Chulainn's shoulder in the form of a raven after his death. In Welsh mythology they were associated with the Welsh god Bran the Blessed, whose name translates to "raven." According to the "Mabinogion", Bran's head was buried in the White Hill of London as a talisman against invasion.


title: Common raven

text: A legend developed that England would not fall to a foreign invader as long as there were ravens at the Tower of London; although this is often thought to be an ancient belief, the official Tower of London historian, Geoff Parnell, believes that this is actually a romantic Victorian invention.


title: Common raven

text: In the Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions, the raven was the first animal to be released from Noah's Ark. "So it came to pass, at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made. Then he sent out a raven, which kept going to and fro until the waters had dried up from the earth. He also sent out from himself a dove, to see if the waters had receded from the face of the ground." The raven is mentioned 12 times in the Bible. In the New Testament Jesus tells a parable using the raven to show how people should rely on God for their needs and not riches (). The raven is also mentioned in the Quran at the story of Cain and Abel. Adam's firstborn son Cain kills his brother Abel, but he does not know what to do with the corpse: "Then Allah sent a raven scratching up the ground, to show him how to hide his brother's naked corpse. He said: Woe unto me! Am I not able to be as this raven and so hide my brother's naked corpse? And he became repentant."


title: Buffalo Bill

text: William Frederick Cody (February 26, 1846January 10, 1917), known as "Buffalo Bill", was an American soldier, bison hunter, and showman. He was born in Le Claire, Iowa Territory (now the U.S. state of Iowa), but he lived for several years in his father's hometown in modern-day Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, before the family returned to the Midwest and settled in the Kansas Territory.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: Buffalo Bill started working at the age of eleven, after his father's death, and became a rider for the Pony Express at age 15. During the American Civil War, he served the Union from 1863 to the end of the war in 1865. Later he served as a civilian scout for the U.S. Army during the Indian Wars, receiving the Medal of Honor in 1872.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: One of the most famous and well-known figures of the American Old West, Buffalo Bill's legend began to spread when he was only 23. Shortly thereafter he started performing in shows that displayed cowboy themes and episodes from the frontier and Indian Wars. He founded "Buffalo Bill's Wild West" in 1883, taking his large company on tours in the United States and, beginning in 1887, in Great Britain and continental Europe.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: Cody was born on February 26, 1846, on a farm just outside Le Claire, Iowa. His father, Isaac Cody, was born on September 5, 1811, in Toronto Township, Upper Canada, now part of Mississauga, Ontario, directly west of Toronto. Mary Ann Bonsell Laycock, Bill's mother, was born about 1817 in Trenton, New Jersey. She moved to Cincinnati to teach school, and there she met and married Isaac. She was a descendant of Josiah Bunting, a Quaker who had settled in Pennsylvania. There is no evidence to indicate Buffalo Bill was raised as a Quaker. In 1847 the couple moved to Ontario, having their son baptized in 1847, as William Cody, at the Dixie Union Chapel in Peel County (present-day Peel Region, of which Mississauga is a part), not far from the farm of his father's family. The chapel was built with Cody money, and the land was donated by Philip Cody of Toronto Township. They lived in Ontario for several years.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: In 1853, Isaac Cody sold his land in rural Scott County, Iowa, for $2000 (around $68,000 in today's money) and the family moved to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas Territory. In the years before the Civil War, Kansas was overtaken by political and physical conflict over the slavery question. Isaac Cody was against slavery. He was invited to speak at Rively's store, a local trading post where pro-slavery men often held meetings. His antislavery speech so angered the crowd that they threatened to kill him if he did not step down. A man jumped up and stabbed him twice with a Bowie knife. Rively, the store's owner, rushed Cody to get treatment, but he never fully recovered from his injuries.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: In Kansas, the family was frequently persecuted by pro-slavery supporters. Cody's father spent time away from home for his safety. His enemies learned of a planned visit to his family and plotted to kill him on the way. Bill, despite his youth and being ill at the time, rode thirty miles (48km) to warn his father. Isaac Cody went to Cleveland, Ohio, to organize a group of thirty families to bring back to Kansas, to add to the antislavery population. During his return trip, he caught a respiratory infection which, compounded by the lingering effects of his stabbing and complications from kidney disease, led to his death in April 1857.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: After his death, the family suffered financially. At age 11, Bill took a job with a freight carrier as a "boy extra". On horseback he would ride up and down the length of a wagon train and deliver messages between the drivers and workmen. Next, he joined Johnston's Army as an unofficial member of the scouts assigned to guide the United States Army to Utah, to put down a rumored rebellion by the Mormon population of Salt Lake City.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: According to Cody's account in "Buffalo Bill's Own Story", the Utah War was where he began his career as an "Indian fighter":


title: Buffalo Bill

text: At the age of 14, in 1860, Cody was caught up in the "gold fever", with news of gold at Fort Colville and the Holcomb Valley Gold Rush in California. On his way to the goldfields, however, he met an agent for the Pony Express. He signed with them, and after building several stations and corrals, Cody was given a job as a rider. He worked at this until he was called home to his sick mother's bedside.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: Cody claimed to have had many jobs, including trapper, bullwhacker, "Fifty-Niner" in Colorado, Pony Express rider in 1860, wagonmaster, stagecoach driver, and a hotel manager, but historians have had difficulty documenting them. He may have fabricated some for publicity. Namely, it is argued that in contrast to Cody's claims, he never rode for the Pony Express, but as a boy, he did work for its parent company, the transport firm of Russell, Majors, and Waddell. In contrast to the adventurous rides, hundreds of miles long, that he recounted in the press, his real job was to carry messages on horseback from the firm's office in Leavenworth to the telegraph station three miles away.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: After his mother recovered, Cody wanted to enlist as a soldier in the Union Army during the American Civil War but was refused because of his young age. He began working with a freight caravan that delivered supplies to Fort Laramie in present-day Wyoming. In 1863, at age 17, he enlisted as a teamster with the rank of private in Company H, 7th Kansas Cavalry, and served until discharged in 1865.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: The next year, Cody married Louisa Frederici. They had four children. Two died young, while the family was living in Rochester, New York. They and a third child are buried in Mount Hope Cemetery, in Rochester.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: In 1866, he reunited with his old friend Wild Bill Hickok in Junction City, Kansas, then serving as a scout. Cody enlisted as a scout himself at Fort Ellsworth and scouted between there and Fort Fletcher (later renamed and moved to Fort Hays). He was attached as a scout, variously, to Captain George Augustus Armes (Battle of the Saline River) and Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer (guide and impromptu horse race to Fort Larned). It was during this service at Fort Ellsworth that he met William Rose, with whom he would found the short-lived settlement of Rome.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: In 1867, with the construction of the Kansas Pacific Railway completing through Hays City and Rome, Cody was granted a leave of absence to hunt buffalo to supply railroad construction workers with meat. This endeavor continued into 1868, which saw his hunting contest with William Comstock.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: Cody returned to Army service in 1868. From his post in Fort Larned, he performed an exceptional feat of riding as a lone dispatch courier from Fort Larned to Fort Zarah (escaping brief capture), Fort Zarah to Fort Hays, Fort Hays to Fort Dodge, Fort Dodge to Fort Larned, and, finally, Fort Larned to Fort Hays, a total of 350 miles in 58 hours through hostile territory, covering the last 35 miles on foot. In response, General Philip Sheridan assigned him Chief of Scouts for the 5th Cavalry Regiment.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: In January 1872, Cody was a scout for the highly publicized hunting expedition of the Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich of Russia.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: Cody was awarded the Medal of Honor in 1872 for documented gallantry above and beyond the call of duty as an Army scout in the Indian Wars. It was revoked in 1917, along with medals of 910 other recipients dating back to the Revolutionary War, when Congress decided to create a hierarchy of medals, designating the "Medal of Honor" as the highest military honor it could bestow. Subsequent regulations authorized the War Department to revoke prior Medal of Honor awards it considered not meeting requirements since the introduction of strict regulations promulgated under the 1917 law. Those regulations required the medal to be awarded for acts of bravery above and beyond the call of duty by officers or enlisted soldiers. Ironically, the law was enacted days before Buffalo Bill died, so he never knew a law might rescind the medal awarded to him. All civilian scout medals were rescinded since they did not appear to meet the basic criterion of being officers or enlisted soldiers, which had been expressly listed in every authorizing statute ever enacted for the Medal of Honor. Cody was one of five scouts affected. Their medals were stripped shortly after Cody died in 1917.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: Cody's relatives objected, and, for over 72 years, they wrote repeatedly to the US Congress seeking reconsideration. All efforts failed, until a 1988 letter to the Senate from Cody's grandson received by the office of senator Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming, when a newly minted legislative assistant (K. Yale) took up the cause in 1989. The legal brief he drafted and submitted to the Department of Defense on behalf of the relatives of Buffalo Bill argued that civilian scouts were technically officers, as their native American counterparts were nominally scouts. However, they were given the rank and pay of officersboth for retention purposes. Also, scouts were the equivalent of "reconnaissance" for the military and thus provided highly valued services. In addition, a practical reason was to avoid mistaking them for opponents in skirmishes. Moreover, although civilian scouts might have normally been officers because of their highly valued skills, the military drawdown and related budget cuts after the Civil War left no billets available for the civilian scouts to fill, and thus they were relegated to a highly qualified status that treated them as valuable military assets without the designation or retirement benefits of officers. Nevertheless, they were treated as high-ranking military officials and had status of officers alongside their native American brethren. The brief argued for retroactive restoration of the Medal of Honor to Buffalo Bill, and the Department of Defense required the appeal to be adjudicated by the Army Board for Correction of Military Records. After months of deliberation, the Board agreed with the persuasive legal brief and made the decision to restore the Medal of Honor, not only to Buffalo Bill but also several other civilian scouts whose medals had also been rescinded.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: Long after the medal was restored, the decision was thought to be controversial for several reasons. Some people interpreted Simpson's submission as arguing that the law had never required Cody to be a soldier. However, this was never a key element of Simpson's brief. According to these interpretations, Simpson's submission cited a book, "Above and Beyond", to illustrate the lack of requirement to be a soldier. However, it was recognized in the legal brief that Medal of Honor recipients had to be an officer or enlisted soldier. Another problem cited by some was the authority of the Board to contravene several federal statutes because the Medal of Honor revocation had been expressly authorized by Congress, meaning that the restoration went against the law in force in 1872, the law requiring the revocation in 1916, and the modern statute enacted in 1918 that remains substantially unmodified today. However, the legal brief clearly did not suggest overturning of the law, but rather conforming the status of civilian scouts to that of other scouts similarly situated (source: copy of the actual legal brief, by the author).


title: Buffalo Bill

text: Since the Board of Correction is merely a delegation of the Secretary of the Army's authority, some suggest a separation of powers conflict, since even the president cannot contravene a clear statute and, although Cody's case was dealt with below the cabinet level, the legal brief was written in conformance with the statutes. Modern Medal of Honor cases originating from the board, such as the recent case of Garlin Conner, required both executive action as well as a statutory waiver from Congress, which underscores the point that some cases might be in conflict with statutes.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: In the Cody case, the board's governing assistant secretary recognized that it lacked the authority to reinstate the medal directly, and so decided to return the case to the board for reconsideration. As a result, the board amended Cody's record to make him an enlisted soldieraligning it with the legal argument that civilian scouts were the equivalent to officers or enlisted soldiersso that he would fall within the legal requirements and did the same for four other civilian guides who had also had their medals rescinded. In doing so, the board overlooked the fact that Cody was a civilian guide with far greater employment flexibility than a soldier, including the ability to resign at will. Nevertheless the Board did recognize the value that all scouts provided, whether Native American or otherwise, and how they volunteered to put themselves in harm's way (in the case of Buffalo Bill, saving the lives of several soldiers by rushing onto an active battlefield and pulling them to safety while under fire) instead of pursuing less demanding civilian jobs.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: Cody received the nickname "Buffalo Bill" after the American Civil War, when he had a contract to supply Kansas Pacific Railroad workers with buffalo (American bison) meat. Cody is purported to have killed 4,282 buffalo in eighteen months in 1867 and 1868. Cody and another hunter, Bill Comstock, competed in an eight-hour buffalo-shooting match over the exclusive right to use the name, which Cody won by killing 68 animals to Comstock's 48. Comstock, part Cheyenne and a noted hunter, scout, and interpreter, used a fast-shooting Henry repeating rifle, while Cody competed with a larger-caliber Springfield Model 1866, which he called Lucretia Borgia, after the notorious Italian noblewoman, the subject of a popular contemporary Gaetano Donizetti opera "Lucrezia Borgia", based on Victor Hugo's play of the same name. Cody explained that while his formidable opponent, Comstock, chased after his buffalo, engaging from the rear of the herd and leaving a trail of killed buffalo "scattered over a distance of three miles", Codylikening his strategy to a billiards player "nursing" his billiard balls during "a big run"first rode his horse to the front of the herd to target the leaders, forcing the followers to one side, eventually causing them to circle and create an easy target, and dropping them close together.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: In 1869, the 23-year-old Cody met Ned Buntline, who later published a story based on Cody's adventures (largely invented by the writer) in Street and Smith's "New York Weekly" and then published a highly successful novel, "Buffalo Bill, King of the Bordermen", which was first serialized on the front page of the Chicago Tribune, beginning that December 15. Many other sequels followed by Buntline, Prentiss Ingraham and others from the 1870s through the early part of the twentieth century. Cody later became world-famous for "Buffalo Bill's Wild West", a touring show which traveled around the United States, Great Britain, and Continental Europe. Audiences were enthusiastic about seeing a piece of the American West. Emilio Salgari, a noted Italian writer of adventure stories, met Buffalo Bill when he came to Italy and saw his show; Salgari later featured Cody as a hero in some of his novels.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: In December 1872, Cody traveled to Chicago to make his stage debut with his friend Texas Jack Omohundro in "The Scouts of the Prairie", one of the original Wild West shows produced by Ned Buntline. The effort was panned by criticsone critic compared Cody's acting to a "diffident schoolboy"but the handsome performer was a hit with the sold-out crowds.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: In 1873, Cody invited "Wild Bill" Hickok to join the group in a new play called "Scouts of the Plains". Hickok did not enjoy acting and often hid behind scenery; in one show, he shot at the spotlight when it focused on him. He was therefore released from the group after a few months. Cody founded the "Buffalo Bill Combination" in 1874, in which he performed for part of the year while scouting on the prairies the rest of the year. The troupe toured for ten years. Cody's part typically included a reenactment of an 1876 incident at Warbonnet Creek, where he claimed to have scalped a Cheyenne warrior.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: In 1883, in the area of North Platte, Nebraska, Cody founded "Buffalo Bill's Wild West", a circus-like attraction that toured annually. (Contrary to the popular misconception, the word "Show" was not a part of the title.) With his show, Cody traveled throughout the United States and Europe, and made many contacts. He stayed, for example, in Garden City, Kansas, in the presidential suite of the former Windsor Hotel. He was befriended by the mayor and state representative, a frontier scout, rancher, and hunter named Charles "Buffalo" Jones. In 1886, Cody and Nate Salsbury, his theatrical manager, entered into partnership with Evelyn Booth (1860–1901), a big-game hunter and scion of the aristocratic Booth family. It was at this time Buffalo Bill's Cowboy Band was organized. The band was directed by William Sweeney, a cornet player who served as leader of the Cowboy Band from 1883 until 1913. Sweeney handled all of the musical arrangements and wrote a majority of the music performed by the Cowboy Band.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: In 1893, Cody changed the title to "Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World". The show began with a parade on horseback, with participants from horse-culture groups that included the US and another military, cowboys, American Indians, and performers from all over the world in their best attire. Turks, gauchos, Arabs, Mongols and Georgians displayed their distinctive horses and colorful costumes. Visitors would see main events, feats of skill, staged races, and sideshows. Many historical western figures participated in the show. For example, Sitting Bull appeared with a band of 20 of his braves.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: Cody's headline performers were well-known in their own right. Annie Oakley and her husband, Frank Butler, were sharpshooters, together with the likes of Gabriel Dumont and Lillian Smith. Performers re-enacted the riding of the Pony Express, Indian attacks on wagon trains, and stagecoach robberies. The show was said to end with a re-enactment of Custer's Last Stand, in which Cody portrayed General Custer, but this is more legend than fact. The finale was typically a portrayal of an Indian attack on a settler's cabin. Cody would ride in with an entourage of cowboys to defend a settler and his family. This finale was featured predominantly as early as 1886 but was not performed after 1907; it was used in 23 of 33 tours. Another celebrity appearing on the show was Calamity Jane, as a storyteller as of 1893.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: With his profits, Cody purchased a 4,000-acre (16-km²) ranch near North Platte, Nebraska, in 1886. The Scout's Rest Ranch included an eighteen-room mansion and a large barn for winter storage of the show's livestock.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: In 1887, invited by the British businessman John Robinson Whitley, Cody took the show to Great Britain in celebration of the Jubilee year of Queen Victoria, who attended a performance. It played in London and then in Birmingham and Salford, near Manchester, where it stayed for five months.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: In 1889, the show toured Europe, and, in 1890, Cody met Pope Leo XIII. On March 8, 1890, a competition took place. Buffalo Bill had met some Italian "butteri" (a less-well-known sort of Italian equivalent of cowboys) and said his men were more skilled at roping calves and performing other similar actions. A group of Buffalo Bill's men challenged nine "butteri", led by , at Prati di Castello neighbourhood in Rome. The "butteri" easily won the competition. Augusto Imperiali became a local hero after the event: a street and a monument were dedicated to him in his hometown, Cisterna di Latina, and he was featured as the hero in a series of comic strips in the 1920s and 1930s.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: Cody set up an independent exhibition near the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, which greatly contributed to his popularity in the United States. It vexed the promoters of the fair, who had rejected his request to participate.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: In 1894, Edison Studios invited Buffalo Bill and his show to be filmed in an early silent film: "Buffalo Bill".


title: Buffalo Bill

text: On 29 October, 1901, outside Lexington, North Carolina, a freight train crashed into one unit of the train carrying Buffalo Bill's show from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Danville, Virginia. The freight train's engineer had thought that the entire show train had passed, not realizing it was three units, and returned to the tracks; 110 horses, including his mounts Old Pap and Old Eagle, were killed in the crash or had to be killed later. No people were killed, but Annie Oakley's injuries were so severe that she was told she would never walk again. She did recover and continued performing later. The incident put the show out of business for a while, and this disruption may have led to its eventual demise.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: "My People the Sioux", pp. 270–272. Agonito, pp. 245–246 states that three young Indians were killed in the train accident and many others injured.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: In 1908, Pawnee Bill and Buffalo Bill joined forces and created the "Two Bills" show. That show was foreclosed on when it was playing in Denver, Colorado.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: The Buffalo Bill and Pawnee Bill Film Company, based in New York City, produced a three-reel motion picture in 1912 titled "The Life of Buffalo Bill". Cody himself appears in scenes that bookend the short film, a series of adventures presented in flashback as Buffalo Bill's dreams. The film had two other directors before it was successfully completed by John B. O'Brien. The film is in the collection of the Library of Congress.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: "Buffalo Bill's Wild West" toured Europe eight times, the first four tours between 1887 and 1892, and the last four from 1902 to 1906.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: The "Wild West" first went to London in 1887 as part of the American Exhibition, which coincided with the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria. The Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, requested a private preview of the "Wild West" performance; he was impressed enough to arrange a command performance for Queen Victoria. The Queen enjoyed the show and meeting the performers, setting the stage for another command performance on June 20, 1887, for her Jubilee guests. Royalty from all over Europe attended, including the future Kaiser Wilhelm II and the future King George V. These royal encounters provided "Buffalo Bill's Wild West" an endorsement and publicity that ensured its success. Also, at this time, Buffalo Bill was presented with written accolades from several of America's high ranking generals including William T. Sherman, Philip H. Sheridan and William H. Emory testifying to his service, bravery, and character. Among the presentations was a document signed by Governor John M. Thayer of Nebraska appointing Cody as aide-de-camp on the Governor's staff with the rank of colonel dated March 8, 1887. The rank had little official authority but the English press quickly capitalized on the new title of "Colonel Cody". "Buffalo Bill's Wild West" closed its successful London run in October 1887 after more than 300 performances, with more than 2.5 million tickets sold. The tour made stops in Birmingham and Manchester before returning to the United States in May 1888 for a short summer tour.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: "Buffalo Bill's Wild West" returned to Europe in May 1889 as part of the Exposition Universelle in Paris, an event that commemorated the 100th anniversary of the Storming of the Bastille and featured the debut of the Eiffel Tower. On this tour, his portrait was painted by Europe's leading female painter Rosa Bonheur. The tour moved to the South of France and Barcelona, Spain, then on to Italy. While in Rome, a Wild West delegation was received by Pope Leo XIII. Buffalo Bill was disappointed that the condition of the Colosseum did not allow it to be a venue; however, at Verona, the "Wild West" did perform in the ancient Roman amphitheater. The tour finished with stops in Austria-Hungary and Germany.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: In 1891 the show toured cities in Belgium and the Netherlands before returning to Great Britain to close the season. Cody depended on several staffs to manage arrangements for touring with the large and complex show: in 1891 Major Arizona John Burke was the general manager for the Buffalo Bill Wild West Company; William Laugan , supply agent; George C. Crager, Sioux interpreter, considered leader of relations with the Indians; and John Shangren, a native interpreter. In 1891, Buffalo Bill performed in Karlsruhe, Germany, in the Südstadt Quarter. The inhabitants of Südstadt are nicknamed "Indianer" (German for "American Indians") to this day, and the most accepted theory says that this is due to Buffalo Bill's show.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: In October Cody brought the show to Dennistoun, Glasgow, where it ran from 16 November until 27 February 1892 in the East End Exhibition Building, and George C. Crager sold The Ghost Shirt to the Kelvingrove Museum.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: The show's 1892 tour was confined to Great Britain; it featured another command performance for Queen Victoria. The tour finished with a six-month run in London before leaving Europe for nearly a decade.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: "Buffalo Bill's Wild West" returned to Europe in December 1902 with a fourteen-week run in London, capped by a visit from King Edward VII and the future King George V. The "Wild West" traveled throughout Great Britain in a tour in 1902 and 1903 and a tour in 1904, performing in nearly every city large enough to support it. The 1905 tour began in April with a two-month run in Paris, after which the show traveled around France, performing mostly one-night stands, concluding in December. The final tour, in 1906, began in France on March 4 and quickly moved to Italy for two months. The show then traveled east, performing in Austria, the Balkans, Hungary, Romania and Ukraine, before returning west to tour in Poland, Bohemia (later Czech Republic), Germany, and Belgium.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: The show was enormously successful in Europe, making Cody an international celebrity and an American icon. Mark Twain commented, "It is often said on the other side of the water that none of the exhibitions which we send to England are purely and distinctly American. If you will take the "Wild West" show over there you can remove that reproach." The "Wild West" brought an exotic foreign world to life for its European audiences, allowing a last glimpse at the fading American frontier.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: In 1895, Cody was instrumental in the founding of the town of Cody, the seat of Park County, in northwestern Wyoming. Today the Old Trail Town museum is at the center of the community and commemorates the traditions of Western life. Cody first passed through the region in the 1870s. He was so impressed by the development possibilities from irrigation, rich soil, grand scenery, hunting, and proximity to Yellowstone Park that he returned in the mid-1890s to start a town. Streets in the town were named after his associates: Beck, Alger, Rumsey, Bleistein, and Salsbury. The town was incorporated in 1901.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: In November 1902, Cody opened the Irma Hotel, named after his daughter. He envisioned a growing number of tourists coming to Cody on the recently opened Burlington rail line. He expected that they would proceed up Cody Road, along the north fork of the Shoshone River, to visit Yellowstone Park. To accommodate travelers, Cody completed the construction of the Wapiti Inn and Pahaska Tepee in 1905 along Cody Road with the assistance of the artist and rancher Abraham Archibald Anderson.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: Cody established the TE Ranch, located on the south fork of the Shoshone River about thirty-five miles from Cody. When he acquired the TE property, he stocked it with cattle sent from Nebraska and South Dakota. The new herd carried the TE brand. The late 1890s were relatively prosperous years for the "Wild West" show, and he bought more land to add to the ranch. He eventually held about eight thousand acres ( square miles; 32 square kilometers) of private land for grazing operations and ran about a thousand head of cattle. He operated a dude ranch, pack-horse camping trips, and big-game hunting business at and from the TE Ranch. In his spacious ranch house, he entertained notable guests from Europe and America.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: Cody published his autobiography, "The Life and Adventures of Buffalo Bill", in 1879. Another autobiography, "The Great West That Was: "Buffalo Bill's" Life Story", was serialized in "Hearst's International Magazine" from August 1916 to July 1917. and ghostwritten by James J. Montague. It contained several errors, in part because it was completed after Cody's death in January 1917.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: Bill's Daughter, Irma Cody, died in Cody in 1918. She is buried at Riverside Cemetery in Cody, Wyoming.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: Larry McMurtry, along with historians such as R. L. Wilson, asserted that at the turn of the 20th century, Cody was the most recognizable celebrity on Earth. While Cody's show brought an appreciation for the Western and American Indian cultures, he saw the American West change dramatically during his life. Bison herds, which had once numbered in the millions, were threatened with extinction. Railroads crossed the plains, barbed wire, and other types of fences divided the land for farmers and ranchers, and the once-threatening Indian tribes were confined to reservations. Wyoming's coal, oil and natural gas were beginning to be exploited toward the end of his life.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: The Shoshone River was dammed for hydroelectric power and irrigation. In 1897 and 1899, Cody and his associates acquired from the State of Wyoming the right to take water from the Shoshone River to irrigate about of land in the Big Horn Basin. They began developing a canal to carry water diverted from the river, but their plans did not include a water storage reservoir. Cody and his associates were unable to raise sufficient capital to complete their plan. Early in 1903, they joined with the Wyoming Board of Land Commissioners in urging the federal government to step in and help with irrigation in the valley.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: The Shoshone Project became one of the first federal water development projects undertaken by the newly formed Reclamation Service, later known as the Bureau of Reclamation. After Reclamation took over the project in 1903, investigating engineers recommended constructing a dam on the Shoshone River in the canyon west of Cody. Construction of the Shoshone Dam started in 1905, a year after the Shoshone Project was authorized. When it was completed in 1910, it was the tallest dam in the world. Almost three decades after its construction, the name of the dam and reservoir was changed to Buffalo Bill Dam by an act of Congress.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: Cody married Louisa Frederici on March 6, 1866, just a few days after his twentieth birthday. The couple met when Cody had traveled to St. Louis under his command during the Civil War. Cody's "Autobiography" barely mentioned the courtship to Frederici but declared, "I now adored her above any other young lady I had ever seen." Cody suggested in letters and his autobiography that Frederici had pestered him into marriage, but he was aware that it was "very smart to be engaged." This rhetoric became pushed more and more in his explanations for marriage as the relationship between him and his wife began to decline.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: Frederici stayed home with their four children in North Platte, while he stayed outside the home, hunting, scouting, and building up his acting career in the "Wild West" show. As Cody began to travel more frequently and to places farther from home, problems over infidelity, real or imagined, began to arise. These concerns grew so great that in 1893, Frederici showed up at his hotel room in Chicago unannounced and was led to "Mr. and Mrs. Cody's suite." Cody mentions in his autobiography that he was "embarrassed by the throng of beautiful ladies" who surrounded him both in the cast and the audiences, and this trend continued as he became involved with more and more actresses who were not afraid to show their attraction to him in front of an audience.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: Cody filed for divorce in 1904, after 38 years of marriage. His decision was made after years of jealous arguments, bad blood between his wife and his sisters, and friction between the children and their father. By 1891, Cody had instructed his brother-in-law to handle Frederici's affairs and property, saying "I often feel sorry for her. She is a strange woman but I don't mind herremember she is my wifeand let it go at that. If she gets cranky, just laugh at it, she can't help it." Cody hoped to keep the divorce quiet, to not disrupt his show or his stage persona, but Frederici had other ideas.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: Filing for divorce was scandalous in the early 20th century when marital unions were seen as binding for life. This furthered Cody's determination to get Frederici to agree to a "quiet legal separation," to avoid "war and publicity." The court records and depositions that were kept with the court case threatened to ruin Cody's respectability and credibility. His private life had not been open to the public before, and the application for divorce brought unwanted attention to the matter. Not only did townspeople feel the need to take sides in the divorce, but headlines rang out with information about Cody's alleged infidelities or Frederici's excesses.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: Cody's two main allegations against his wife were that she attempted to poison him on multiple occasions (this allegation was later proved false) and that she made living in North Platte "unbearable and intolerable" for Cody and his guests. The press picked up on the story immediately, creating a battle between Cody and Frederici's teams of lawyers, both of which seemed to be the better authority on Nebraska divorce law. Divorce laws varied from state to state in the early 1900s. Desertion was the main grounds for divorce, but in some jurisdictions, such as Kansas, divorce could be granted if a spouse was "intolerable." The Victorian ideal of marriage did not allow for divorce in any case, but the move westward forced a change in the expectations of husbands and wives and the ability to remain married. In Lewis and Clark County, Montana, 1867 records show that there were more divorces in that year than marriages. Part of the appeal of the frontier was that "a man cannot keep his wife here."


title: Buffalo Bill

text: After Cody's announcement that he was suing for divorce, Frederici began to fight back. She claimed that she had never attempted to poison him and that she wished to remain married. The trial then moved to court in February 1905. One of the witnesses who spoke to a newspaper was Mrs. John Boyer, a housekeeper in the Cody home who was married to a man who worked for the "Wild West" show. She claimed that Frederici acted inhospitably towards Cody's guests and that, when Cody was not at the ranch, she would "feed the men too much and talk violently about Cody and his alleged sweethearts... and that she was seen putting something into his coffee." Other witnesses mentioned Cody's comment that to handle his wife he had to "get drunk and stay drunk." The battle in court continued, with testimony from three witnesses, Mary Hoover, George Hoover, and M.E. Vroman. After the witnesses had testified, Cody changed his mind about the divorce.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: Cody's change of mind was not due to any improvement in his relationship with Frederici but rather was due to the death of their daughter, Arta Louise, in 1904 from "organic trouble." With this weighing heavily on him, Cody sent a telegram to Frederici hoping to put aside "personal differences" for the funeral. Frederici was furious and refused any temporary reconciliation. Cody decided to continue pursuing the divorce, adding to his complaint that Frederici would not sign mortgages and that she had subjected him to "extreme cruelty" in blaming him for the death of Arta. When the trial proceeded a year later, in 1905, both their tempers were still hot. The final ruling was that "incompatibility was not grounds for divorce," so that the couple was to stay legally married. The judge and the public sided with Frederici, the judge deciding that her husband's alleged affairs and his sisters' meddling in his marriage had caused his unhappiness, not his wife. Cody returned to Paris to continue with the "Wild West" show and attempted to maintain a hospitable, but distant, relationship with his wife. The two reconciled in 1910, after which Frederici often traveled with her husband until he died in 1917.


title: Buffalo Bill

text: Cody died on January 10, 1917. He was baptized in the Catholic Church the day before his death by Father Christopher Walsh of the Denver Cathedral. He received a full Masonic funeral. Upon the news of Cody's death, tributes were made by King George V, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and President Woodrow Wilson. His funeral service was held at the Elks Lodge Hall in Denver. The governor of Wyoming, John B. Kendrick, a friend of Cody, led the funeral procession to the cemetery.