title: Jane Wyman

text: For her role as Angela Channing, Wyman was nominated for a "Soap Opera Digest" Award five times (for Outstanding Actress in a Leading Role and for Outstanding Villainess: Prime Time Serial), and was also nominated for a Golden Globe award in 1983 and 1984. Her 1984 Golden Globe nomination resulted in a win for Wyman, who took home the award for Best Performance By an Actress in a TV Series. Later in the show's run, Wyman suffered several health problems. In 1986, she had abdominal surgery which caused her to miss two episodes (her character simply "disappeared" under mysterious circumstances). In 1988, she missed another episode due to ill health and was told by her doctors to avoid work. However, she wanted to continue working, and she completed the rest of the 1988–1989 season while her health continued to deteriorate. Months later in 1989, Wyman collapsed on the set and was hospitalized due to problems with diabetes and a liver ailment. Her doctors told her that she should end her acting career. Wyman was absent for most of the ninth and final season of "Falcon Crest" in 1989–1990 (her character was written out of the series by making her comatose in a hospital bed following an attempted murder).


title: Jane Wyman

text: Against her doctor's advice, she returned for the final three episodes in 1990, even writing a soliloquy for the series finale. Wyman ultimately appeared in almost every episode until the beginning of the ninth and final season, for a total of 208 of the show's 227 episodes.


title: Jane Wyman

text: After "Falcon Crest", Wyman acted only once more, playing Jane Seymour's screen mother in a 1993 episode of "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman". Following this, she retired from acting permanently. Wyman had starred in 83 movies and two successful TV series, and was nominated for an Academy Award four times, winning once.


title: Jane Wyman

text: Wyman married salesman Ernest Eugene Wyman in Los Angeles, California, on April 8, 1933. Wyman recorded her name as 'Jane Fulks' on the wedding certificate. She also listed foster parents Emma and Richard Fulks as her parents. In keeping with the tendency of making herself older than she really was, she gave her age as 19 on the document. Truthfully, she had turned 16 just three months prior. The couple would divorce after two years. Wyman kept her first husband's surname professionally for the remainder of her life.


title: Jane Wyman

text: Wyman married Myron Martin Futterman, a dress manufacturer, in New Orleans on June 29, 1937. As Wyman wanted children but Futterman did not, they separated after only three months of marriage and divorced on December 5, 1938.


title: Jane Wyman

text: In 1938, Wyman co-starred with Ronald Reagan in "Brother Rat" (1938), and its sequel "Brother Rat and a Baby" (1940). They were engaged at the Chicago Theatre, and married on January 26, 1940, at the Wee Kirk o' the Heather in Glendale, California. She and Reagan had three children; Maureen Elizabeth Reagan, their adopted son Michael Edward Reagan, and Christine Reagan (premature, lived one day June 26, 1947). Wyman, who was a registered Republican, stated that their break-up was due to a difference in politics (Ronald Reagan was still a Democrat at the time). She filed for divorce in 1948; the divorce was final in 1949 and Wyman leased a home in Palm Springs, California. In 1981, Ronald Reagan became the first divorcé to assume the nation's highest office. This made Wyman the first former wife of an American president who was still living at the time that her former husband became president. Although she remained silent during Reagan's political career, she told a newspaper interviewer in 1968 that this was not because she was bitter or because she did not agree with him politically:


title: Jane Wyman

text: In spite of her divorce, according to her former personal assistant, Wyman still voted for her former husband in the 1980 and 1984 presidential elections.


title: Jane Wyman

text: Following her divorce from Reagan, Wyman married German-American Hollywood music director and composer Frederick M. "Fred" Karger on November 1, 1952, at El Montecito Presbyterian Church, Santa Barbara. They separated on November 7, 1954, and were granted an interlocutory divorce decree on December 7, 1954; the divorce was finalized on December 30, 1955. They remarried on March 11, 1961, and Karger divorced her again on March 9, 1965. According to "The New York Times'" report of the divorce, the bandleader charged that the actress "had walked out on him." Wyman had a stepdaughter, Terry, from Karger's marriage to Patti Sacks.


title: Jane Wyman

text: Wyman, who had converted to Catholicism in 1953, never remarried. She was a member of the Good Shepherd Parish and the Catholic Motion Picture Guild in Beverly Hills, California.


title: Jane Wyman

text: After "Falcon Crest" ended, Wyman made a guest appearance on the CBS series "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman" and then completely retired from acting; she spent her retirement painting and entertaining friends. Wyman was a recluse and made only a few public appearances in her last years in part due to suffering from arthritis. Wyman also suffered from Type 1 diabetes from a very young age. She did attend her daughter's funeral in 2001 after Maureen died of melanoma; Ronald Reagan was unable to attend due to his Alzheimer's disease. She also attended the funeral of her long-time friend Loretta Young in 2000. Wyman broke her silence about her former husband upon his death in 2004. She issued an official statement that read, "America has lost a great president and a great, kind, and gentle man." She also attended his funeral.


title: Jane Wyman

text: Wyman died at the age of 90 at her home in Rancho Mirage on September 10, 2007. Wyman's son, Michael Reagan, released a statement saying:


title: Jane Wyman

text: Wyman reportedly died in her sleep of natural causes. A member of the Dominican Order (as a lay tertiary) of the Catholic Church, she was buried in a nun's habit. She was interred at Forest Lawn Mortuary and Memorial Park in Cathedral City, California.


title: Jane Wyman

text: Wyman has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: one for motion pictures, at 6607 Hollywood Boulevard; and one for television, at 1620 Vine Street.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: Ruud Gullit (; born Rudi Dil; 1 September 1962) is a Dutch footballer and subsequent manager who played professionally in the 1980s and 1990s as a defender, midfielder or forward. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time. He captained the Netherlands national team that was victorious at UEFA Euro 1988 and was also a member of the squad for the 1990 FIFA World Cup and Euro 1992.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: At club level, in 1987 he moved from PSV to AC Milan for a world record transfer fee. Nicknamed "the black Tulip", he was part of a notable Dutch trio at Milan which included Marco van Basten and Frank Rijkaard. Gullit won three Serie A titles and two European Cups with Milan. In 1995, he signed for Chelsea and a year later was appointed the club's player-manager. In his debut season, he led Chelsea to FA Cup success, the club's first major title for 26 years, and in doing so became the first overseas manager to win the FA Cup.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: Gullit won the Ballon d'Or in 1987 and was named the World Soccer Player of the Year in 1987 and 1989. Normally an attacking midfielder, he was a versatile player, playing in numerous positions during his career. In 2004, he was named one of the Top 125 greatest living footballers as part of FIFA's 100th anniversary celebration.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: Gullit was born as Rudi Dil in Amsterdam to George Gullit, a Surinamese who arrived in the Netherlands with Herman Rijkaard (father of Frank Rijkaard), and Dutch mistress Ria Dil from the Jordaan district of Amsterdam. The Gullit family lived in one split level room on the top floor of a small apartment building. Gullit's father worked as an economics teacher at a local school, his mother as a custodian at the Rijksmuseum.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: Gullit developed his football skills in the confines of the Rozendwarsstraat, and street football was instrumental in his formative years. Gullit's first team were the Meerboys, where he joined as a junior in 1970. At the age of ten, however, Gullit moved from the Jordaan to Amsterdam Old West where he played street football alongside Frank Rijkaard. Gullit joined the DWS club after his move, and came to the attention of the Dutch youth team, where he played alongside future full international teammates, Erwin Koeman, Ronald Koeman and Wim Kieft.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: It was during his time at DWS that Gullit first took to using his father's surname, rather than his registered surname (from his mother), as he thought Gullit sounded more like a football player. However he retained his mother's surname, officially, and continues to sign all contracts as Ruud Dil.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: September 22nd 1978, Gullit signed professionally for HFC Haarlem under coach and former West Bromwich Albion player Barry Hughes. Gullit made 91 league appearances for Haarlem, scoring 32 goals. He made his debut for the club at just 16 years and 11 months old, on August 19th 1979 (Haarlem-MVV Maastricht 2-2), becoming at the time the youngest player in the history of the Eredivisie. In his first year at Haarlem, the club finished bottom of the Eredivisie, but bounced back the following season winning the Eerste Divisie. Gullit was named as the best player in the Eerste Divisie that season. In the 1981–82 season, Gullit was in fine form as Haarlem finished fourth and qualified for Europe for the only time in their history. In that same season, Gullit scored the goal he would later consider his finest: "Playing against Utrecht I went past four defenders and then the goalkeeper, and scored. It was an unforgettable goal for me." Hughes was so impressed with the young Gullit that he described him as the "Dutch Duncan Edwards".


title: Ruud Gullit

text: The young Gullit was considered as a signing by English sides Arsenal and Ipswich Town, but managers Terry Neill and Bobby Robson turned him down. Neill later told that he considered £30,000 too much for "this wild kid". Gullit therefore moved to Feyenoord in 1982, where he made 85 league appearances, scoring 31 goals. At Feyenoord, Gullit found himself playing in his second season 1983/84, alongside Dutch legend Johan Cruyff, while the assistant manager was Wim van Hanegem, and they were to leave a lasting impression.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: Gullit's first season saw Feyenoord miss out on major honours, but the following year they completed the league and cup double. Gullit was named Dutch Footballer of the Year in recognition of his contribution to Feyenoord's success. At Feyenoord, Gullit occupied an increasingly advanced role in midfield, having played predominantly as a sweeper at Haarlem. While at Feyenoord, Gullit became the focus of a race row as manager Thijs Libregts was alleged to have referred to Gullit as "blackie" and criticised him for being lazy, though Libregts defended himself by claiming that it was merely a nickname. While playing for Feyenoord at St Mirren in September 1983, he was racially abused and spat on by supporters of the Scottish club. Gullit called it "the saddest night of my life".


title: Ruud Gullit

text: In 1985, Gullit moved to PSV for 1.2 million Dutch guilders and wound up scoring 46 goals in 68 league appearances for the team. Gullit was again named Footballer of the Year in 1986 as he helped PSV capture the Eredivisie crown, a feat they repeated the following year. It was at PSV that Gullit really began to establish himself as a world class footballer and his distinctive, dreadlocked appearance made certain that he would catch the eye of Europe's biggest clubs. Gullit was also singled out for criticism by large numbers of Feyenoord supporters, who branded him a "wolf" and accused him of moving to Eindhoven for money.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: Gullit signed for AC Milan in 1987, paying the then world record transfer fee of 18 million guilders as a replacement for Ray Wilkins. Milan's club leader Silvio Berlusconi had ambition to revive the fortunes of the Italian club which had stagnated after its glory days in the 1960s. Among Gullit's teammates at that club were compatriot Marco van Basten, who came at the same time. A year later they'd be joined by another compatriot and old friend Frank Rijkaard. The club also had then young Italian rising stars Paolo Maldini and Franco Baresi. Gullit's exploits with first PSV and then Milan helped him win the Ballon d'Or award in 1987 which he dedicated to Nelson Mandela.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: When he arrived at Milan, Gullit initially struggled to fit in as he spoke no Italian and was unused to living in a foreign country. Gullit's first season at Milan, however, saw the club win the "Scudetto" for the first time in nine years, under coach Arrigo Sacchi. He was initially used on the right of an attacking trio alongside Van Basten and Pietro Virdis, but after an injury to Van Basten it was changed to a front two. The following season Milan built on their domestic success by adding the European Cup to their list of honours. Their scintillating 5–0 demolition of Real Madrid in the semi-final second leg came at a cost, as Gullit suffered an injury and required surgery to be fit in time for the final. That performance was followed by a 4–0 victory over Steaua București in the 1989 final, with Gullit scoring two crucial goals. The following year, Milan retained the trophy as they defeated Benfica in the 1990 final. However, serious injuries sustained to the ligaments of his right knee limited Gullit's playing time and he managed just two domestic games in the 1989–90 season before appearing in the cup final.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: In 1990–91, Milan's pursuit of a third consecutive European Cup was cut short by Marseille at the quarter-final stage. Having drawn the first leg at the San Siro, Milan trailed to a Chris Waddle goal with little time remaining when the floodlights went out. After a short delay the lighting was restored, but Milan had returned to their dressing room and refused to return to complete the game. UEFA awarded Marseille a 3–0 victory and expelled Milan from all European competitions for the following season.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: While Milan continued their domestic dominance by winning Serie A in both 1991–92 (a season in which they went undefeated) and 1992–93, Gullit's position became an increasingly peripheral one under new coach Fabio Capello. This was demonstrated by his omission from the 1993 Champions League final, as under the UEFA rules clubs were only allowed to field three foreigners.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: Torino was interested in signing him, with the chairman claiming that an agreement with Milan was likely. Bayern Munich was also in talks with Gullit, but an agreement fell through. Instead, Gullit was loaned to Sampdoria.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: In 1993, Gullit moved to Sampdoria and led them to victory in the Coppa Italia in the 1993–94 season. He also scored the winner in a 3–2 victory over Milan. Gullit was briefly re-signed by Milan in 1994, but quickly returned to Sampdoria before the culmination of the 1994–95 season. During his time, he served under manager Sven-Göran Eriksson and the two had a strong understanding and mutual respect. In his brief time at Sampdoria, he scored 15 goals.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: In July 1995, Gullit signed for Chelsea on a free transfer. Initially played as sweeper by manager Glenn Hoddle with limited success, Gullit was moved to his more familiar role in midfield, where he scored six goals. The signing of Gullit, alongside the likes of Mark Hughes and Dan Petrescu, propelled Chelsea to the semi-final of the FA Cup but their league form was disappointing.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: Gullit had some difficulties adapting to the style of play at Chelsea: "I would take a difficult ball, control it, make space and play a good ball in front of the right back, except that he didn't want that pass. Eventually Glenn said to me, 'Ruud, it would be better if you do these things in midfield.'" His adjustment, however, was rapid and he ended the season by being named runner-up to Eric Cantona as Footballer of the Year.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: Gullit has since often stated in interviews that it was in London he enjoyed his career the most and felt happiest: "Every time I played for Chelsea, I thought, 'Nice game, beautiful stadium, great crowd, I'm playing well.' It was the only time I really had fun." In moving to Chelsea, Gullit played an important part in the "foreign revolution" as numerous high-profile international stars, such as Italian Gianfranco Zola and Dutchman Dennis Bergkamp, joined Chelsea and Arsenal respectively, which helped to increase its worldwide profile.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: In 1981, on his 19th birthday, Gullit made his international debut as a substitute for the Netherlands national team against Switzerland, a game the Dutch lost 2–1. During his early international career, the team failed to qualify for both the 1982 FIFA World Cup and UEFA Euro 1984 - missing out on the latter tournament on goals scored as Spain, needing an 11-goal victory to qualify, trounced minnows Malta 12–1 in their final qualifying game.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: There was further frustration in 1985 when the Dutch missed out on qualification for the World Cup at the hands of neighbours Belgium in a play-off. Having lost 1–0 in Belgium, the Netherlands appeared to be set for qualification in Rotterdam as they led 2–0 until a late Georges Grün goal put Belgium through on away goals.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: Gullit, however, was one of the key players for the Netherlands as he helped his country win Euro 1988 under coach Rinus Michels. Having lost their opening game of the tournament to the Soviet Union, the Netherlands beat England and the Republic of Ireland to reach the semi-finals. After defeating West Germany 2–1 in Hamburg, the Netherlands faced the Soviet Union again in the final. Gullit opened the scoring with a header and Marco van Basten scored a volley from a narrow angle to cap a 2–0 win. Gullit was thus the first Dutch captain to hold aloft international silverware.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: The Dutch travelled to the 1990 World Cup as one of the favourites, but the team failed to perform as expected. There was also internal trouble related to selection of the national team coach (players consulted had voted for Johan Cruijff, but the Dutch FA and especially its leader Rinus Michels snubbed them and chose Leo Beenhakker). Gullit's knee injuries also hampered his play, but his dribble and shot against Ireland helped the Netherlands qualify for the second round. There they met West Germany, in a game marred by an altercation between Frank Rijkaard and Rudi Völler. The Germans gained revenge for their defeat at Euro 1988 by beating the Netherlands 2–1 and going on to win the tournament.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: 1992 saw the Netherlands again among the favourites for silverware in Sweden at Euro 1992. Gullit appeared in strong form against Scotland in their opening game of the tournament as he supplied Dennis Bergkamp with a goal. But after drawing with Russia and beating Germany, the Netherlands suffered a shock exit on penalties to Denmark, who ended up winning the championship's Henri Delaunay Trophy.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: In 1993, Gullit and Netherlands manager Dick Advocaat began what was to be a long-running dispute which ultimately ended Gullit's international career. Advocaat's decision to play Gullit on the right side of midfield in a game against England at Wembley, rather than his usual central position, upset Gullit and this was exacerbated by his substitution for Marc Overmars. Gullit refused to play for the national team following this but later changed his mind and agreed to return, facing Scotland in May 1994. Shortly before the 1994 World Cup, Gullit walked out of the pre-tournament training camp and would never play international football again. In December 2013, while appearing on Dutch television program "Studio Voetbal", Gullit and Advocaat stated they were both at fault in the matter and regretted it.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: A complete and versatile player, Gullit epitomised the ethos of Total Football as he was naturally adept in several positions, and was capable of aiding his team defensively as well as offensively due to his work-rate, ball-winning abilities, and tactical intelligence in addition to his skill and physical qualities. Normally deployed as an attacking midfielder or as a second striker, he was capable of playing anywhere in midfield or along the front-line, on either wing or even in the centre, and could also play as a sweeper. Regarded as one of the greatest players of all time, his foremost attribute was his athleticism, as he used his strength and speed, combined with his technique, to great effect; he was also strong in the air, as he was tall, powerful, and an excellent jumper. Yet, unusually for a man of his stature, Gullit was an elegant player, who also possessed outstanding natural balance, poise, technical ability, and dribbling skills, which gave a graceful style to his game. Gullit also was noted for his intelligence, creativity, vision, and spatial abilities, qualities that helped him score goals early in his career and enabled him to play in a deeper role as a playmaker late in his days, where he was known for creating chances for teammates. Gullit thus combined physical presence with flair, mental acuity, formidable technique and natural touch, to become an iconic figure in world football. He was also an accurate free kick taker. Beyond his qualities as a footballer, Gullit also stood for his leadership and tenacity. Despite his talent, however, he struggled with injuries throughout his career, which later affected his fitness.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: Gullit's brilliance prompted George Best to comment in 1990, "Ruud Gullit is a great player by any standards. He has all the skills. He's not afraid to do things with the ball. And he looks as if he's enjoying every second of it. By my reckoning that's what makes him an even better player than Maradona. Both have the key quality you will find in all the best players: balance. You just can't knock them off the ball. It was the same with Pelé, Beckenbauer and Cruyff."


title: Ruud Gullit

text: In the summer of 1996, when Glenn Hoddle left Chelsea to become manager of the England national team, Gullit was appointed as a player-manager becoming the first Dutch manager in the Premier League. Gullit made a promising start to his managerial career when in the first season as a player-manager he guided Chelsea to an FA Cup triumph in 1997, the club's first major trophy in 26 years. In doing so he became the first manager from outside the British Isles and the first black manager to win a major British football trophy. The club also finished at a creditable sixth place in the Premiership.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: The following season, with Chelsea in second place in the Premiership and proceeding to the quarter-finals in two cup competitions, he was sacked, allegedly for a disagreement with the club's board over compensation, though Gullit himself disputed this. He was replaced by Gianluca Vialli, a man he had helped to bring to the club, and who went on to guide them to UEFA Cup Winners' Cup and Football League Cup glory over the remainder of the season. Gullit's last appearance as a player came in the first leg of that season's League Cup semi-final against Arsenal, but Gullit was sacked before the second leg. After Gullit's controversial sacking by Chelsea, chairman Ken Bates said of Gullit, "I didn't like his arrogance – in fact I never liked him."


title: Ruud Gullit

text: In August 1998, Gullit was named manager of Newcastle United two games into the new league season and reached the 1999 FA Cup Final in his first year. Fans remained supportive despite a poor run of results, although a well-publicised contretemps with the team's top scorer Alan Shearer and captain Robert Lee did not put him in a favourable light. Gullit even refused to assign Lee a squad number, giving Lee's number 7 to new signing Kieron Dyer. In a match between Newcastle and local rivals Sunderland following the latter's return to the Premiership, Gullit left the usual starting strikers Shearer and Duncan Ferguson on the bench. Newcastle lost 2–1, and Gullit resigned three days later, five games into the 1999–2000 season.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: Before the start of the 2004–05 season, Gullit took charge of Feyenoord, quitting at the end of that season without winning any trophies, being replaced by Erwin Koeman. Feyenoord had finished a disappointing fourth in the Eredivisie, behind Ajax, PSV and AZ.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: On 8 November 2007, Gullit became head coach for the LA Galaxy, signing a three-year contract. His US$2 million per year salary was the highest ever given to a Major League Soccer (MLS) head coach. Gullit arrived as replacement for Frank Yallop who was let go after Galaxy failed to make the 2007 MLS playoffs despite having record signing David Beckham on the roster.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: From the start, Gullit's time with Galaxy was troublesome. Not well-versed in the intricacies and specifics of the MLS such as salary cap and draft rules, the Dutchman never adapted well to the North American league. The ill-fated acquisition in January 2008 of left back Celestine Babayaro, who was signed on Gullit's personal wishes before being dismissed without playing a competitive match, set the tone for the league campaign. After losing 0–4 in the season opener, Gullit clashed with midfielder Peter Vagenas, who criticized him for completely neglecting set-play practice during training.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: As the season progressed, Gullit clashed with several players, notably Landon Donovan and Abel Xavier, the latter who criticized Gullit's managerial style and claimed he did not have respect for most of the players. It was later reported that Gullit's appointment had been made in controversial fashion as Galaxy general manager, Alexi Lalas, had been bypassed in the process, with the decision being led by David Beckham's advisers: his management company 19 Entertainment and his personal manager Terry Byrne.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: On 11 August 2008, Gullit resigned as coach of the Galaxy, citing personal reasons. This came following a seven-game winless streak. General manager Lalas was fired at the same time.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: On 18 January 2011, Russian Premier League side Terek Grozny announced that Gullit has agreed to sign a year-and-a-half contract and become the head coach for the Chechen side. Upon signing, Gullit told "Sovetsky Sport", "I'd like to believe that I can bring joy into the lives of the Chechen people through football... Of course, I won't deny that I'm getting lots of money from Terek." Gullit was let go by the club on 14 June 2011.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: In 1988, Gullit scored a No. 3 hit with the anti-apartheid song "South Africa" in the Dutch Top 40 together with the reggae band Revelation Time. Previously, he had a modest hit in 1984 with the song "Not the Dancing Kind". Gullit also notably joined his band in front of 3000 people at concerts in Italy, in the year he made a move to AC Milan.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: After his spell at Newcastle, Gullit spent several years working as a football commentator, having previously coined the term "sexy football" during his spell as a BBC pundit for Euro 1996 while still playing professionally for Chelsea. Gullit used the term to describe teams, such as Portugal at that tournament, who played attractive football with an emphasis on the defense-penetrating pass-and-move game.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: By 2006, Gullit had a talk show on Dutch TV, where he has interviewed, amongst others, Nelson Mandela. When Gullit was named winner of the Ballon d'Or in 1987, he dedicated the award to the then imprisoned Nelson Mandela. Gullit has since said in interviews that he met Mandela after he was released, and that Mandela had said to him, "Ruud, I have lots of friends now. When I was on the inside, you were one of the few."


title: Ruud Gullit

text: In 2007, Gullit recalled, "Four months ago I visited Robben Island and met three guys who were cell-mates of Nelson Mandela. They remembered me dedicating my award in 1987 to Mandela and they said they couldn't believe what I had done, and were sure the football authorities would withdraw the award. That's what apartheid did to them, it made them believe injustice was a normal part of life."


title: Ruud Gullit

text: Gullit also appeared as a pundit for ITV during the 2006 World Cup and works as an analyst for Champions League games on Sky Sports and Al Jazeera Sports. During the 2010 FIFA World Cup, Gullit worked as a studio analyst alongside former players Jürgen Klinsmann and Steve McManaman for ESPN. He subsequently worked as an analyst for Al Jazeera Sports during Euro 2012 alongside Glenn Hoddle and Terry Venables, among others.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: In 2013, Gullit and many other former footballers were brought into EA Sports's "FIFA 14" as "Legends" cards in FIFA Ultimate Team; his card is one of the highest rated in the game.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: In 2014, Gullit joined BBC's Match of the Day as a studio pundit and first appeared during the 2014–15 season.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: Gullit embarked on the Heineken Champions League Trophy Tour in 2016 where he visited Vietnam with Carles Puyol.


title: Ruud Gullit

text: All competitive league games (league and domestic cup) and international matches (including friendlies) are included.


title: Suicideboys

text: Suicideboys (stylized as $UICIDEBOY$) is an American hip hop duo from New Orleans, Louisiana, founded in 2014 by cousins Ruby da Cherry and Scrim (stylized as $crim). Via the music sharing platform SoundCloud, the duo rose to popularity for their abrasive, self-produced beats, as well as their harsh lyrical content and themes prominently featuring substance abuse and suicidal ideation. They own and operate their own label, G*59 Records, under which all of their music is distributed by Virgin Music Label & Artist Services.


title: Suicideboys

text: The duo are considered one of the most popular acts in the underground rap scene, and are also considered to have a cult following. After several years of solely releasing EPs and mixtapes, Suicideboys' debut studio album "I Want to Die in New Orleans" was released on September 7, 2018. It fared well commercially, becoming their first top-ten album on the US "Billboard" 200. In May 2019, they released their collaborative six-track EP with Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker entitled "Live Fast, Die Whenever", which also featured Korn guitarist James Shaffer. They have sold over $2.5 million worldwide.


title: Suicideboys

text: $crim was born Scott Anthony Arceneaux Jr. on April 11, 1989, in Marrero, Louisiana. Arceneaux originally was inspired by T-Pain and Kanye West to produce music, buying his first laptop which he used to start DJing with money gained from selling drugs. Arceneaux's passion for DJing extended when he started to attend Delgado Community College, where he was hired to DJ parties. He also worked selling used furniture, getting fired for his new hand tattoos after three years.


title: Suicideboys

text: Ruby da Cherry was born Aristos Norman Petrou on April 22, 1990, to an American mother and Greek Cypriot father Pavlos Petrou, a former association football head coach at Mount Carmel Academy who arrived in the country after obtaining an athletic scholarship to the University of New Orleans. Raised in Metairie, Louisiana, Petrou's interest in music began when he was seven, playing violin and then drums when he was ten, eventually joining bands in middle school. He worked at his father's restaurant as a waiter, a job he held until 2015. His experience with the punk rock scene continued as he joined the band "Vapo-Rats" as its drummer; however, disillusioned with the apathy his bandmates showed towards the future of the band, Petrou left in order to pursue a career in hip-hop with Arceneaux.


title: Suicideboys

text: Arceneaux and Petrou are cousins, and as such shared a close relationship growing up. Realizing that both were interested in taking a musical career seriously, and both dissatisfied with the direction of their lives, the two formed Suicideboys, making a pact that if their musical career didn't work out, they would both commit suicide. Elaborating on this in an interview with Mass Appeal, Arceneaux states that, "it was pretty much like cutting the hand, bleeding, and making a pact that there's no plan B, that if this doesn't happen by the time we're 30, I'm blowing my head off".


title: Suicideboys

text: The duo's first project together, a three-track EP named "", was released in June 2014 on SoundCloud and Bandcamp, attracting attention for their collaboration with notable underground rapper Bones. In the following months, the duo released a further nine iterations of the "Kill Yourself" series.


title: Suicideboys

text: After a number of collaboration EPs with fellow underground artist Black Smurf, their first full-length project titled "Gray/Grey" was released on March 3, 2015.


title: Suicideboys

text: Suicideboys' underground breakthrough came with the release of 2015 EP "$outh $ide $uicide", a collaboration with established South Florida rapper Pouya, which thrust the duo into the underground rap spotlight. As of June 2022, the track has gained 128 million plays on streaming platform Spotify alone. The duo's first foray onto the mainstream musical charts came with the release of "" in the summer of 2016. The five-track EP, produced by EDM musician Getter, peaked at number 17 on the Billboard Rap charts.


title: Suicideboys

text: On September 7, 2018, their debut studio album "I Want to Die in New Orleans" was released. A statement posted by the duo's official Instagram account stated, "We started recording this album in the beginning of 2017. Initially we wanted to write about our experiences on the road and express how our lives had become slightly more extravagant."


title: Suicideboys

text: Suicideboys have gained a cult following in the hip hop scene, in part due to their niche subject matter involving subjects scarcely seen in rap such as suicidal ideation, anti-religion and depression. As of October 2022, their most viewed music video on YouTube is for their song "Paris", with nearly 170 million views. Their most streamed song on Spotify is "...And to Those I Love, Thanks for Sticking Around" with nearly 430 million streams. The duo were featured in Billboard's list titled "Billboard Dance's 15 Artists to Watch in 2017".


title: Suicideboys

text: In late 2018, a rumor arose that the group had broken up following a series of ominous tweets. However, they soon clarified that the tweets were in relation to "personal issues" facing Arceneaux, and that they had in fact not broken up.


title: Suicideboys

text: In May 2019, the group put this rumor to rest with the release of their six-track EP "Live Fast, Die Whenever" in collaboration with Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker, and prominently featuring Korn guitarist James Shaffer.


title: Suicideboys

text: In July 2019, the duo started their first nationwide "Grey Day Tour", with guests Germ, City Morgue, Trash Talk, Denzel Curry, Shoreline Mafia, Night Lovell, Pouya, and Turnstile as openers. The tour started with a show on July 24, 2019, at the WaMu Theater in Seattle, Washington and ended on August 23, 2019, after a show at the Shrine Expo Hall in Los Angeles, California.


title: Suicideboys

text: In August 2021, after a hiatus of over a year, the duo released their second studio album "Long Term Effects of Suffering". The album was received well by their fans, while being divisive in general media. Shortly after the release of the album, the duo began the Grey Day Tour 2021 along with other members of G*59.


title: Suicideboys

text: In November 2021, the duo were awarded with their first RIAA platinum single, as their hit song "...And to Those I Love, Thanks for Sticking Around" reached one million sales.


title: Suicideboys

text: In July 2022, the third studio album and 47th project from the duo, "Sing Me a Lullaby, My Sweet Temptation", its tracklist and covers were all announced on June 2, 2022, via an Instagram post made by both of the Boy$.


title: Suicideboys

text: Along with their work in Suicideboys, Petrou and Arceneaux have both released sporadic solo work as well as worked with other artists individually.


title: Suicideboys

text: Before Suicideboys, Arceneaux was an aspiring solo hip-hop artist, releasing several mixtapes under the name $crim. These include "Narcotics Anonymous", "#DrugFlow" and "Patron Saint of Everything Totally Fucked", all of which were released before the group's formation in 2014. Arceneaux has also worked as an in-house producer for Universal/Republic, producing several songs for artists, including one song that was commercially successful. In 2020, Arceneaux released his first solo album since the formation of $uicideboy$. The album, "A Man Rose from the Dead", received mixed reviews among fans.


title: Suicideboys

text: Petrou has released two solo mixtapes under the name Oddy Nuff da Snow Leopard; "The Jefe Tape" in 2012 and "Pluto" in 2014. "Pluto" contained the first collaboration between Arceneaux and Petrou on a commercial project; Arceneaux featured on the song "Smoke a Sack".


title: Suicideboys

text: Suicideboys have come under much criticism by mainstream music critics for their often abrasive and offensive image, including their name, lyrical content, and behavior. Many of their songs contain themes and insinuations of devil worship; however, as Arceneaux states on an interview with Adam Grandmaison, their use of satanic imagery is simply a metonym for the negative effects of money, drugs, and other items that have the potential to manipulate people.


title: Suicideboys

text: Arceneaux is a former opioid addict, claiming in his No Jumper interview that he would lure people to him on Craigslist in order to rob them just to feed his addiction.


title: Suicideboys

text: In September 2016, Canadian DJ and record producer Deadmau5 accused the duo of copyright infringement following the success of their song "Antarctica" (off of the 2016 mixtape "Dark Side of the Clouds"). The song samples parts of Deadmau5's "I Remember", with Kaskade; the DJ lambasted the duo for this, claiming that Suicideboys were "publicizing other people's intellectual property without consent". The song, which had been out since January and subsequently reached millions of plays on both YouTube and SoundCloud, was taken down by Suicideboys on both platforms and no further action was taken. However, in time for their upcoming Grey Day Tour 2021, "Antarctica" was cleared for streaming after nearly four years of being off streaming services in September 2021.


title: Suicideboys

text: The music of Suicideboys varies between different subgenres of rap; while some songs have melancholy tones with lyrical content that focuses on subjects such as depression and suicidal ideation (topics not widely exposed in rap music), others are wildly aggressive, with themes of violence and sexual content. Some of their music is based around life growing up in New Orleans; song titles such as "Audubon", "Tulane", "Elysian Fields" and "St. Bernard" reflect streets and neighborhoods that influenced the life of Arceneaux and Petrou.


title: Suicideboys

text: There is a clear Three 6 Mafia influence in much of their music, with many earlier Suicideboys songs using samples from the group's songs, most notably in "Mask & Da Glock". While the use of Three 6 Mafia has been met with reservations by some of its former members, particularly Gangsta Boo, it has been embraced by others; founding member Juicy J has been vocal about his support and mentorship of Suicideboys, and enlisted the duo to produce his mixtapes "Highly Intoxicated" and "ShutDaF*kUp", featuring artists such as ASAP Rocky, Cardi B, Wiz Khalifa and XXXTentacion.


title: Suicideboys

text: A large portion of their music focuses on depression and its symptoms, an angle not often received in mainstream hip hop; Arceneaux elaborated on this in an interview with Mass Appeal, stating, "A lot of people take it as emo, or depressed music, or negative music... it's really just connecting. It's therapy, through music".


title: Suicideboys

text: Excluding occasional guest producers and usage of purchased instrumental loops, the entirety of Suicideboys' discography is self-produced, mainly by Arceneaux under his pseudonym Budd Dwyer (an homage to the former politician of the same name). Arceneaux has produced tracks for multiple artists, including Denzel Curry, Dash and Juicy J; additionally, he states that he once held an in-house deal with Universal/Republic.


title: Suicideboys

text: Arceneaux and Petrou are quite secretive when it comes to their personal lives. However, they both refer to women they have dated in their songs, most notably being "CLYDE (I Hope at Least One of My Ex-Girlfriends Hears This)".


title: Suicideboys

text: Arceneaux has a history of drug addiction, including heroin. However, he claims to have been sober since February 2019. Arceneaux has stated that he maintains his sobriety by attending 12-Step programs and therapy sessions.


title: Suicideboys

text: After an intervention by their management, Petrou checked into a drug rehabilitation facility in October 2020. Petrou continues to smoke marijuana.


title: Baptists

text: Baptists form a major branch of Protestantism distinguished by baptizing professing Christian believers only (believer's baptism), and doing so by complete immersion. Baptist churches also generally subscribe to the doctrines of soul competency (the responsibility and accountability of every person before God), "sola fide" (salvation by just faith alone), "sola scriptura" (scripture alone as the rule of faith and practice) and congregationalist church government. Baptists generally recognize two ordinances: baptism and communion.


title: Baptists

text: Diverse from their beginning, those identifying as Baptists today differ widely from one another in what they believe, how they worship, their attitudes toward other Christians, and their understanding of what is important in Christian discipleship.


title: Baptists

text: For example, Baptist theology may include Arminian or Calvinist beliefs with various sub-groups holding different or competing positions, while others allow for diversity in this matter within their denominations or congregations.


title: Baptists

text: Historians trace the earliest Baptist church to 1609 in Amsterdam, Dutch Republic with English Separatist John Smyth as its pastor. In accordance with his reading of the New Testament, he rejected baptism of infants and instituted baptism only of believing adults. Baptist practice spread to England, where the General Baptists considered Christ's atonement to extend to all people, while the Particular Baptists believed that it extended only to the elect. Thomas Helwys formulated a distinctively Baptist request that the church and the state be kept separate in matters of law, so that individuals might have freedom of religion. Helwys died in prison as a consequence of the religious conflict with English Dissenters under James I. In 1638, Roger Williams established the first Baptist congregation in the North American colonies. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the First and Second Great Awakening increased church membership in the United States. Swedish Baptist (Scandinavian Baptists) have origins in the Radical Pietism movement that split off from the Lutheran Church of Sweden due to the Conventicle Act (Sweden) rather than the English Dissenters that split off from the Anglican Church of England, but both reached similar conclusions on theology. Baptist missionaries have spread their faith to every continent.


title: Baptists

text: Modern Baptist churches trace their history to the English Separatist movement in the 1600s, the century after the rise of the original Protestant denominations. This view of Baptist origins has the most historical support and is the most widely accepted. Adherents to this position consider the influence of Anabaptists upon early Baptists to be minimal. It was a time of considerable political and religious turmoil. Both individuals and churches were willing to give up their theological roots if they became convinced that a more biblical "truth" had been discovered.


title: Baptists

text: During the Protestant Reformation, the Church of England (Anglicans) separated from the Roman Catholic Church. There were some Christians who were not content with the achievements of the mainstream Protestant Reformation. There also were Christians who were disappointed that the Church of England had not made corrections of what some considered to be errors and abuses. Of those most critical of the Church's direction, some chose to stay and try to make constructive changes from within the Anglican Church. They became known as "Puritans" and are described by Gourley as cousins of the English Separatists. Others decided they must leave the Church because of their dissatisfaction and became known as the Separatists.


title: Baptists

text: In 1579, Faustus Socinus founded the Unitarians in Poland, which was a tolerant country. The Unitarians taught baptism by immersion. When Poland ceased to be tolerant, they fled to Holland. In Holland, the Unitarians introduced immersion baptism to the Dutch Mennonites.


title: Baptists

text: Baptist churches have their origins in a movement started by the English John Smyth and Thomas Helwys in Amsterdam. Due to their shared beliefs with the Puritans and Congregationalists, they went into exile in 1607 for Holland with other believers who held the same biblical positions. They believe that the Bible is to be the only guide and that the believer's baptism is what the scriptures require. In 1609, the year considered to be the foundation of the movement, they baptized believers and founded the first Baptist church.


title: Baptists

text: In 1609, while still there, Smyth wrote a tract titled "The Character of the Beast," or "The False Constitution of the Church." In it he expressed two propositions: first, infants are not to be baptized; and second, "Antichristians converted are to be admitted into the true Church by baptism." Hence, his conviction was that a scriptural church should consist only of regenerate believers who have been baptized on a personal confession of faith. He rejected the Separatist movement's doctrine of infant baptism (paedobaptism). Shortly thereafter, Smyth left the group. Ultimately, Smyth became committed to believers' baptism as the only biblical baptism. He was convinced on the basis of his interpretation of Scripture that infants would not be damned should they die in infancy. Smyth, convinced that his self-baptism was invalid, applied with the Mennonites for membership. He died while waiting for membership, and some of his followers became Mennonites. Thomas Helwys and others kept their baptism and their Baptist commitments. The modern Baptist denomination is an outgrowth of Smyth's movement. Baptists rejected the name Anabaptist when they were called that by opponents in derision. McBeth writes that as late as the 18th century, many Baptists referred to themselves as "the Christians commonly—though "falsely"—called Anabaptists."


title: Baptists

text: Thomas Helwys took over the leadership, leading the church back to England in 1611 and published the first Baptist confession of faith "A Declaration of Faith of English People" in 1611. He founded the first General Baptist Church in Spitalfields, east London, England in 1612.


title: Baptists

text: Another milestone in the early development of Baptist doctrine was in 1638 with John Spilsbury, a Calvinistic minister who helped to promote the strict practice of believer's baptism by immersion (as opposed to affusion or aspersion). According to Tom Nettles, professor of historical theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, "Spilsbury's cogent arguments for a gathered, disciplined congregation of believers baptized by immersion as constituting the New Testament church gave expression to and built on insights that had emerged within separatism, advanced in the life of John Smyth and the suffering congregation of Thomas Helwys, and matured in Particular Baptists."


title: Baptists

text: A minority view is that early-17th-century Baptists were influenced by (but not directly connected to) continental Anabaptists. According to this view, the General Baptists shared similarities with Dutch Waterlander Mennonites (one of many Anabaptist groups) including believer's baptism only, religious liberty, separation of church and state, and Arminian views of salvation, predestination and original sin. Representative writers including A.C. Underwood and William R. Estep. Gourley wrote that among some contemporary Baptist scholars who emphasize the faith of the community over soul liberty, the Anabaptist influence theory is making a comeback.


title: Baptists

text: However, the relations between Baptists and Anabaptists were early strained. In 1624, the then five existing Baptist churches of London issued a condemnation of the Anabaptists. Furthermore, the original group associated with Smyth and popularly believed to be the first Baptists broke with the Waterlander Mennonite Anabaptists after a brief period of association in the Netherlands.


title: Baptists

text: Traditional Baptist historians write from the perspective that Baptists had existed since the time of Christ. Proponents of the Baptist successionist or perpetuity view consider the Baptist movement to have existed independently from Roman Catholicism and prior to the Protestant Reformation.


title: Baptists

text: The perpetuity view is often identified with "The Trail of Blood", a booklet of five lectures by J.M. Carrol published in 1931. Other Baptist writers who advocate the successionist theory of Baptist origins are John T. Christian, Thomas Crosby, G. H. Orchard, J. M. Cramp, William Cathcart, Adam Taylor and D. B. Ray. This view was also held by English Baptist preacher, Charles Spurgeon as well as Jesse Mercer, the namesake of Mercer University.


title: Baptists

text: In 1898 William Whitsitt was pressured to resign his presidency of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary for denying Baptist successionism.


title: Baptists

text: In 1612, Thomas Helwys established a Baptist congregation in London, consisting of congregants from Smyth's church. A number of other Baptist churches sprang up, and they became known as the General Baptists. The Particular Baptists were established when a group of Calvinist Separatists adopted believers' Baptism. The Particular Baptists consisted of seven churches by 1644 and had created a confession of faith called the First London Confession of Faith.


title: Baptists

text: Both Roger Williams and John Clarke, his compatriot and coworker for religious freedom, are variously credited as founding the earliest Baptist church in North America. In 1639, Williams established a Baptist church in Providence, Rhode Island, and Clarke began a Baptist church in Newport, Rhode Island. According to a Baptist historian who has researched the matter extensively, "There is much debate over the centuries as to whether the Providence or Newport church deserved the place of 'first' Baptist congregation in America. Exact records for both congregations are lacking."


title: Baptists

text: The Great Awakening energized the Baptist movement, and the Baptist community experienced spectacular growth. Baptists became the largest Christian community in many southern states, including among the enslaved Black population.


title: Baptists

text: Baptist missionary work in Canada began in the British colony of Nova Scotia (present day Nova Scotia and New Brunswick) in the 1760s. The first official record of a Baptist church in Canada was that of the Horton Baptist Church (now Wolfville) in Wolfville, Nova Scotia on 29 October 1778. The church was established with the assistance of the New Light evangelist Henry Alline. Many of Alline's followers, after his death, would convert and strengthen the Baptist presence in the Atlantic region. Two major groups of Baptists formed the basis of the churches in the Maritimes. These were referred to as Regular Baptist (Calvinistic in their doctrine) and Free Will Baptists (Arminian in their doctrine).


title: Baptists

text: In May 1845, the Baptist congregations in the United States split over slavery and missions. The Home Mission Society prevented slaveholders from being appointed as missionaries. The split created the Southern Baptist Convention, while the northern congregations formed their own umbrella organization now called the American Baptist Churches USA (ABC-USA). The Methodist Episcopal Church, South had recently separated over the issue of slavery, and southern Presbyterians would do so shortly thereafter.


title: Baptists

text: In 2015, Baptists in the U.S. number 50 million people and constitute roughly one-third of American Protestants.


title: Baptists

text: The Baptist churches in Ukraine were preceded by the German Anabaptist and Mennonite communities, who had been living in the south of Ukraine since the 16th century, and who practiced adult believers baptism. The first Baptist baptism (adult baptism by full immersion) in Ukraine took place in 1864 on the river Inhul in the Yelizavetgrad region (now Kropyvnytskyi region), in a German settlement. In 1867, the first Baptist communities were organized in that area. From there, the Baptist movement spread across the south of Ukraine and then to other regions as well. One of the first Baptist communities was registered in Kyiv in 1907, and in 1908 the First All-Russian Convention of Baptists was held there, as Ukraine was still controlled by the Russian Empire. The All-Russian Union of Baptists was established in the town of Yekaterinoslav (now Dnipro) in Southern Ukraine. At the end of the 19th century, estimates are that there were between 100,000 and 300,000 Baptists in Ukraine. An independent All-Ukrainian Baptist Union of Ukraine was established during the brief period of Ukraine's independence in early 20th-century, and once again after the fall of the Soviet Union, the largest of which is currently known as the Evangelical Baptist Union of Ukraine.


title: Baptists

text: Missionary organizations favored the development of the movement on all continents. In England there was the founding of the Baptist Missionary Society in 1792 at Kettering, England. In United States, there was the founding of International Ministries in 1814 and International Mission Board in 1845.


title: Baptists

text: Many churches are members of a national and international denomination for a cooperative relationship in common organizations, missionary, humanitarian as well as schools and theological institutes. There also are a substantial number of cooperative groups. In 1905, the Baptist World Alliance (BWA) was formed by 24 Baptist denominations from various countries. The BWA's goals include caring for the needy, leading in world evangelism and defending human rights and religious freedom.


title: Baptists

text: Finally, there are Independent Baptist churches that choose to remain independent of any denomination, organization, or association.


title: Baptists

text: According to a Baptist World Alliance census released in 2022, the largest Baptist denomination in the world, it would regroup 246 Baptist denominations members in 128 countries, 176,000 churches and 51,000,000 baptized members.


title: Baptists

text: In 2010, 100 million Christians identify themselves as Baptist or belong to Baptist-type churches. In 2020, according to the researcher Sébastien Fath of the CNRS, the movement would have around 170 million believers in the world.


title: Baptists

text: Among the censuses carried out by the Baptist denominations in 2021, those which claimed the most members were on each continent:


title: Baptists

text: In Africa, the Nigerian Baptist Convention with 13,654 churches and 8,000,637 members, the Baptist Convention of Tanzania with 1,300 churches and 2,660,000 members, the Baptist Community of the Congo River with 2,668 churches and 1,760,634 members.


title: Baptists

text: In North America, the Southern Baptist Convention with 47,530 churches and 14,525,579 members, the National Baptist Convention, USA with 21,145 churches and 8,415,100 members.


title: Baptists

text: In South America, the Brazilian Baptist Convention with 9,018 churches and 1,790,227 members, the Evangelical Baptist Convention of Argentina with 670 churches and 85,000 members.


title: Baptists

text: In Asia, the Myanmar Baptist Convention with 5,319 churches and 1,710,441 members, the Nagaland Baptist Church Council with 1,615 churches and 610,825 members, the Boro Baptist Church Association with 219 churches and 40,000 members, the Boro Baptist Convention with 353 churches and over 52,000 members, the Garo Baptist Convention with 2,619 and 333,908 members, the Convention of Philippine Baptist Churches with 2,668 churches and 600,000 members.


title: Baptists

text: In Europe, the All-Ukrainian Union of Churches of Evangelical Christian Baptists with 2,272 churches and 113,000 members, the Baptist Union of Great Britain with 1,895 churches and 111, 208 members, the Union of Evangelical Free Churches in Germany with 801 churches and 80,195 members.


title: Baptists

text: In Oceania, the Baptist Union of Papua New Guinea with 489 churches and 84,000 members, the Australian Baptist Ministries with 1,021 churches and 76,046 members.


title: Baptists

text: Membership policies vary due to the autonomy of churches, but generally an individual becomes a member of a church through believer's baptism (which is a public profession of faith in Jesus, followed by immersion baptism).


title: Baptists

text: Most baptists do not believe that baptism is a requirement for salvation, but rather a public expression of one's inner repentance and faith. Therefore, some churches will admit into membership persons who make a profession without believer's baptism.


title: Baptists

text: In general, Baptist churches do not have a stated age restriction on membership, but believer's baptism requires that an individual be able to freely and earnestly profess their faith. (See Age of Accountability)


title: Baptists

text: Since the early days of the Baptist movement, various denominations have adopted common confessions of faith as the basis for cooperative work among churches. Each church has a particular confession of faith and a common confession of faith if it is a member of a denomination. Some historically significant Baptist doctrinal documents include the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, 1742 Philadelphia Baptist Confession, the 1833 New Hampshire Baptist Confession of Faith, and written church covenants which some individual Baptist churches adopt as a statement of their faith and beliefs.


title: Baptists

text: Baptist theology shares many doctrines with evangelical theology. It is based on believers' Church doctrine.


title: Baptists

text: Baptists, like other Christians, are defined by school of thought—some of it common to all orthodox and evangelical groups and a portion of it distinctive to Baptists. Through the years, different Baptist groups have issued confessions of faith—without considering them to be "creeds"—to express their particular doctrinal distinctions in comparison to other Christians as well as in comparison to other Baptists. Baptist denominations are traditionally seen as belonging to two parties, General Baptists who uphold Arminian theology and Particular Baptists who uphold Reformed theology. During the holiness movement, some General Baptists accepted the teaching of a second work of grace and formed denominations that emphasized this belief, such as the Ohio Valley Association of the Christian Baptist Churches of God and the Holiness Baptist Association. Most Baptists are evangelical in doctrine, but their beliefs may vary due to the congregational governance system that gives autonomy to individual local Baptist churches. Historically, Baptists have played a key role in encouraging religious freedom and separation of church and state.


title: Baptists

text: Shared doctrines would include beliefs about one God; the virgin birth; miracles; atonement for sins through the death, burial, and bodily resurrection of Jesus; the Trinity; the need for salvation (through belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, his death and resurrection); grace; the Kingdom of God; last things (eschatology) (Jesus Christ will return personally and visibly in glory to the earth, the dead will be raised, and Christ will judge everyone in righteousness); and evangelism and missions.


title: Baptists

text: Most Baptists hold that no church or ecclesiastical organization has inherent authority over a Baptist church. Churches can properly relate to each other under this polity only through voluntary cooperation, never by any sort of coercion. Furthermore, this Baptist polity calls for freedom from governmental control.


title: Baptists

text: Exceptions to this local form of local governance include a few churches that submit to the leadership of a body of elders, as well as the Episcopal Baptists that have an Episcopal system.


title: Baptists

text: Baptists generally believe in the literal Second Coming of Christ. Beliefs among Baptists regarding the "end times" include amillennialism, dispensationalism, and historic premillennialism, with views such as postmillennialism and preterism receiving some support.


title: Baptists

text: Since there is no hierarchical authority and each Baptist church is autonomous, there is no official set of Baptist theological beliefs. These differences exist both among associations, and even among churches within the associations.


title: Baptists

text: Excommunication is used as a last resort by denominations and churches for members who do not want to repent of beliefs or behavior at odds with the confession of faith of the community.


title: Baptists

text: In Baptist churches, worship service is part of the life of the Church and includes praise (Christian music), worship, of prayers to God, a sermon based on the Bible, offering, and periodically the Lord's Supper. In many churches, there are services adapted for children, even teenagers. Prayer meetings are also held during the week.


title: Baptists

text: The architecture is sober and the Latin cross is one of the only spiritual symbols that can usually be seen on the building of a Baptist church and that identifies the place where it belongs.


title: Baptists

text: Baptist churches established elementary and secondary schools, Bible colleges, colleges and universities as early as the 1680s in England, before continuing in various countries. In 2006, the International Association of Baptist Colleges and Universities was founded in the United States. In 2022, it had 46 member universities.


title: Baptists

text: In matters of sexuality, several Baptist churches are promoting the virginity pledge to young Baptist Christians, who are invited to engage in a public ceremony at sexual abstinence until Christian marriage. This pact is often symbolized by a purity ring. Programs like True Love Waits, founded in 1993 by the Southern Baptist Convention have been developed to support the commitments.


title: Baptists

text: In some Baptist churches, young adults and unmarried couples are encouraged to marry early in order to live a sexuality according to the will of God. Some books are specialized on the subject, such as the book "" published in 1976 by Baptist pastor Tim LaHaye and his wife Beverly LaHaye who was a pioneer in the teaching of Christian sexuality as a gift from God and part of a flourishing Christian marriage.


title: Baptists

text: Baptists have faced many controversies in their 400-year history, controversies of the level of crises. Baptist historian Walter Shurden says the word "crisis" comes from the Greek word meaning 'to decide.' Shurden writes that contrary to the presumed negative view of crises, some controversies that reach a crisis level may actually be "positive and highly productive." He claims that even schism, though never ideal, has often produced positive results. In his opinion crises among Baptists each have become decision-moments that shaped their future. Some controversies that have shaped Baptists include the "missions crisis", the "slavery crisis", the "landmark crisis", and the "modernist crisis".


title: Baptists

text: Early in the 19th century, the rise of the modern missions movement, and the backlash against it, led to widespread and bitter controversy among the American Baptists. During this era, the American Baptists were split between missionary and anti-missionary. A substantial secession of Baptists went into the movement led by Alexander Campbell to return to a more fundamental church.


title: Baptists

text: Leading up to the American Civil War, Baptists became embroiled in the controversy over slavery in the United States. Whereas in the First Great Awakening Methodist and Baptist preachers had opposed slavery and urged manumission, over the decades they made more of an accommodation with the institution. They worked with slaveholders in the South to urge a paternalistic institution. Both denominations made direct appeals to slaves and free Blacks for conversion. The Baptists particularly allowed them active roles in congregations. By the mid-19th century, northern Baptists tended to oppose slavery. As tensions increased, in 1844 the Home Mission Society refused to appoint a slaveholder as a missionary who had been proposed by Georgia. It noted that missionaries could not take servants with them, and also that the board did not want to appear to condone slavery.


title: Baptists

text: In 1845, a group of churches in favor of slavery and in disagreement with the abolitionism of the Triennial Convention (now American Baptist Churches USA) left to form the Southern Baptist Convention. They believed that the Bible sanctions slavery and that it was acceptable for Christians to own slaves. They believed slavery was a human institution which Baptist teaching could make less harsh. By this time many planters were part of Baptist congregations, and some of the denomination's prominent preachers, such as the Rev. Basil Manly, Sr., president of the University of Alabama, were also planters who owned slaves.


title: Baptists

text: As early as the late 18th century, Black Baptists began to organize separate churches, associations and mission agencies. Blacks set up some independent Baptist congregations in the South before the American Civil War. White Baptist associations maintained some oversight of these churches.


title: Baptists

text: In the postwar years, freedmen quickly left the white congregations and associations, setting up their own churches. In 1866, the Consolidated American Baptist Convention, formed from Black Baptists of the South and West, helped southern associations set up Black state conventions, which they did in Alabama, Arkansas, Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky. In 1880, Black state conventions united in the national Foreign Mission Convention to support Black Baptist missionary work. Two other national Black conventions were formed, and in 1895 they united as the National Baptist Convention. This organization later went through its own changes, spinning off other conventions. It is the largest Black religious organization and the second-largest Baptist organization in the world. Baptists are numerically most dominant in the Southeast.


title: Baptists

text: In 2007, the Pew Research Center's Religious Landscape Survey found that 45% of all African Americans identify with Baptist denominations, with the vast majority of those being within the historically Black tradition.


title: Baptists

text: In the American South, the interpretation of the American Civil War, abolition of slavery and postwar period has differed sharply by race since those years. Americans have often interpreted great events in religious terms. Historian Wilson Fallin contrasts the interpretation of Civil War and Reconstruction in white versus Black memory by analyzing Baptist sermons documented in Alabama. Soon after the Civil War, most Black Baptists in the South left the Southern Baptist Convention, reducing its numbers by hundreds of thousands or more. They quickly organized their own congregations and developed their own regional and state associations and, by the end of the 19th century, a national convention.


title: Baptists

text: "God's gift of freedom." They had a gospel of liberation, having long identified with the Book of Exodus from slavery in the Old Testament. They took opportunities to exercise their independence, to worship in their own way, to affirm their worth and dignity, and to proclaim the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Most of all, they quickly formed their own churches, associations, and conventions to operate freely without white supervision. These institutions offered self-help and racial uplift, a place to develop and use leadership, and places for proclamation of the gospel of liberation. As a result, Black preachers said that God would protect and help him and God's people; God would be their rock in a stormy land.


title: Baptists

text: The Southern Baptist Convention supported white supremacy and its results: disenfranchising most Blacks and many poor whites at the turn of the 20th century by raising barriers to voter registration, and passage of racial segregation laws that enforced the system of Jim Crow. Its members largely resisted the civil rights movement in the South, which sought to enforce their constitutional rights for public access and voting; and enforcement of midcentury federal civil rights laws.


title: Baptists

text: In 1995, the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution that recognized the failure of their ancestors to protect the civil rights of African Americans. More than 20,000 Southern Baptists registered for the meeting in Atlanta. The resolution declared that messengers, as SBC delegates are called, "unwaveringly denounce racism, in all its forms, as deplorable sin" and "lament and repudiate historic acts of evil such as slavery from which we continue to reap a bitter harvest." It offered an apology to all African Americans for "condoning and/or perpetuating individual and systemic racism in our lifetime" and repentance for "racism of which we have been guilty, whether consciously or unconsciously." Although Southern Baptists have condemned racism in the past, this was the first time the convention, predominantly white since the Reconstruction era, had specifically addressed the issue of slavery.


title: Baptists

text: The statement sought forgiveness "from our African-American brothers and sisters" and pledged to "eradicate racism in all its forms from Southern Baptist life and ministry." In 1995, about 500,000 members of the 15.6-million-member denomination were African Americans and another 300,000 were ethnic minorities. The resolution marked the denomination's first formal acknowledgment that racism played a role in its founding.


title: Baptists

text: Elsewhere in the Americas, in the Caribbean in particular, Baptist missionaries and members took an active role in the anti-slavery movement. In Jamaica, for example, William Knibb, a prominent British Baptist missionary, worked toward the emancipation of slaves in the British West Indies (which took place in full in 1838). Knibb also supported the creation of "Free Villages" and sought funding from English Baptists to buy land for freedmen to cultivate; the Free Villages were envisioned as rural communities to be centred around a Baptist church where emancipated slaves could farm their own land. Thomas Burchell, missionary minister in Montego Bay, also was active in this movement, gaining funds from Baptists in England to buy land for what became known as Burchell Free Village.


title: Baptists

text: Prior to emancipation, Baptist deacon Samuel Sharpe, who served with Burchell, organized a general strike of slaves seeking better conditions. It developed into a major rebellion of as many as 60,000 slaves, which became known as the Christmas Rebellion (when it took place) or the Baptist War. It was put down by government troops within two weeks. During and after the rebellion, an estimated 200 slaves were killed outright, with more than 300 judicially executed later by prosecution in the courts, sometimes for minor offenses.


title: Baptists

text: Baptists were active after emancipation in promoting the education of former slaves; for example, Jamaica's Calabar High School, named after the port of Calabar in Nigeria, was founded by Baptist missionaries. At the same time, during and after slavery, slaves and free Blacks formed their own Spiritual Baptist movements – breakaway spiritual movements which theology often expressed resistance to oppression.


title: Baptists

text: Southern Baptist Landmarkism sought to reset the ecclesiastical separation which had characterized the old Baptist churches, in an era when inter-denominational union meetings were the order of the day. James Robinson Graves was an influential Baptist of the 19th century and the primary leader of this movement. While some Landmarkers eventually separated from the Southern Baptist Convention, the movement continued to influence the Convention into the 20th and 21st centuries.


title: Baptists

text: The rise of theological modernism in the latter 19th and early 20th centuries also greatly affected Baptists. The Landmark movement, already mentioned, has been described as a reaction among Southern Baptists in the United States against incipient modernism. In England, Charles Haddon Spurgeon fought against modernistic views of the Scripture in the Downgrade Controversy and severed his church from the Baptist Union as a result.


title: Baptists

text: The Northern Baptist Convention in the United States had internal conflict over modernism in the early 20th century, ultimately embracing it. Two new conservative associations of congregations that separated from the convention were founded as a result: the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches in 1933 and the Conservative Baptist Association of America in 1947.


title: Baptists

text: Following similar conflicts over modernism, the Southern Baptist Convention adhered to conservative theology as its official position. In the late 20th century, Southern Baptists who disagreed with this direction founded two new groups: the liberal Alliance of Baptists in 1987 and the more moderate Cooperative Baptist Fellowship in 1991. Originally both schisms continued to identify as Southern Baptist, but over time "became permanent new families of Baptists."


title: Baptists

text: In his 1963 book, "Strength to Love", Baptist pastor Martin Luther King Jr. criticized some Baptist churches for their anti-intellectualism, especially because of the lack of theological training among pastors.


title: Baptists

text: In 2018, Baptist theologian Russell D. Moore criticized some Baptists in the United States for their moralism emphasizing strongly the condemnation of certain personal sins, but silent on the social injustices that afflict entire populations, such as racism. In 2020, the North American Baptist Fellowship, a region of the Baptist World Alliance, officially made a commitment to social justice and spoke out against institutionalized discrimination in the American justice system.


title: Jim Lovell

text: James Arthur Lovell Jr. (; born March 25, 1928) is an American retired astronaut, naval aviator, test pilot and mechanical engineer. In 1968, as command module pilot of Apollo 8, he became, with Frank Borman and William Anders, one of the first three astronauts to fly to and orbit the Moon. He then commanded the Apollo 13 lunar mission in 1970 which, after a critical failure en route, circled the Moon and returned safely to Earth.


title: Jim Lovell

text: A graduate of the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, in the class of 1952, Lovell flew F2H Banshee night fighters. This included a Western Pacific deployment aboard the aircraft carrier . In January 1958, he entered a six-month test pilot training course at the Naval Air Test Center at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, with Class 20 and graduated at the top the class. He was then assigned to Electronics Test, working with radar, and in 1960 he became the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II program manager. The following year he became a flight instructor and safety engineering officer at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and completed Aviation Safety School at the University of Southern California.


title: Jim Lovell

text: Lovell was not selected by NASA as one of the Mercury Seven astronauts due to a temporarily high bilirubin count but was accepted in September 1962 as one of the second group of astronauts, needed for the Gemini and Apollo programs. Prior to Apollo, Lovell flew in space on two Gemini missions, Gemini 7 (with Borman) in 1965 and Gemini 12 in 1966. He was the first person to fly into space four times. One of 24 people to have flown to the Moon, Lovell was the first to fly to it twice. He is a recipient of the Congressional Space Medal of Honor and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He co-authored the 1994 book "Lost Moon", on which the 1995 film "Apollo 13" was based. Lovell was featured in a cameo appearance in the film.


title: Jim Lovell

text: James Arthur Lovell Jr. was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on March 25, 1928, the only child of James Lovell Sr., a Toronto, Ontario, Canada-born coal furnace salesman who died in a car accident in 1933 and Blanche Masek, who was of Czech descent. For the first two years after the death of his father, Lovell and his mother lived with a relative in Terre Haute, Indiana. They then relocated to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he went to Juneau High School. He was a member of the Boy Scouts during his childhood and eventually achieved Eagle Scout, the organization's highest rank. He became interested in rocketry and built flying models as a teenager.


title: Jim Lovell

text: After graduating from high school, Lovell attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison for two years, where he studied engineering under the United States Navy's "Flying Midshipman" program from 1946 to 1948. At Wisconsin, he played college football and pledged to the Alpha Phi Omega fraternity. While Lovell was attending pre-flight training in the summer of 1948, the Navy was beginning to make cutbacks in the program, and cadets were under a great deal of pressure to transfer out. There were concerns that some or most of the students who graduated as naval aviators would not have pilot billets to fill. To avoid this prospect, Lovell decided to apply to the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. He secured a nomination from his local U.S. Representative, John C. Brophy, and entered Annapolis in July 1948.


title: Jim Lovell

text: During his first year, Lovell wrote a treatise on the liquid-propellant rocket engine. He graduated in the spring of 1952 with a Bachelor of Science degree and was commissioned as an ensign in the Navy. On June 6, he married Marilyn Lillie Gerlach in a ceremony at St. Anne's Church in Annapolis. The two had begun dating while they were in high school. As a college student, Gerlach had transferred from Wisconsin State Teachers College to the George Washington University in Washington, D.C., so she could be near him while he was at Annapolis. They had four children: Barbara, James, Susan, and Jeffrey.


title: Jim Lovell

text: Lovell was one of 50 members of his 783-strong graduating class initially selected for naval aviation training. He went to flight training at Naval Air Station Pensacola from October 1952 to February 1954. He was designated a naval aviator on February 1, 1954, upon completion of pilot training, and was assigned to VC-3 at Moffett Field near San Francisco, California. From 1954 to 1956 he flew McDonnell F2H Banshee night fighters. This included a Western Pacific deployment aboard the aircraft carrier . Lovell eventually completed 107 carrier deck landings. Upon his return to shore duty, he was reassigned to provide pilot transition training for the North American FJ-4 Fury, McDonnell F3H Demon and Vought F8U Crusader.


title: Jim Lovell

text: In January 1958, Lovell entered a six-month test pilot training course at what was then the Naval Air Test Center (now the United States Naval Test Pilot School) at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, with Class 20, which also included future astronauts Wally Schirra and Pete Conrad, who gave Lovell the nickname "Shaky". Lovell graduated at the top of the class. Usually the top graduate was assigned to flight test on graduation, but the head of electronics test had complained about never getting the top graduate, so Lovell was assigned to electronics test, where he worked with radar sets.


title: Jim Lovell

text: Later that year, Lovell, Conrad, and Schirra were among 110 military test pilots selected as potential astronaut candidates for Project Mercury. Schirra went on to become one of the Mercury Seven, but Lovell was not selected because of a temporarily high bilirubin count. In 1960, electronics test was merged with armaments test to become weapons test, and Lovell became the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II program manager. During this time future astronaut John Young served under him. In 1961 Lovell received orders for VF-101 "Detachment Alpha" at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach, Virginia, as a flight instructor and safety engineering officer, and he completed Aviation Safety School at the University of Southern California.


title: Jim Lovell

text: In 1962 NASA began recruiting its second group of astronauts, intended to fly during the Gemini and Apollo programs. This time the process was a public one. Lovell found out about the selection from an advertisement that had been placed in "Aviation Week & Space Technology", and decided to apply a second time. A three-person selection panel consisting of Mercury Seven astronauts Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton, and NASA test pilot Warren J. North, reduced the candidates to 32 finalists, who were sent to Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio for medical examinations. The tests there were much the same as those employed to select the Mercury Seven, but this time Lovell passed. The remaining 27 then went to Ellington Air Force Base near Houston, where they were individually interviewed by the selection panel.


title: Jim Lovell

text: On September 14, Slayton informed Lovell that he had been accepted. To avoid tipping off the media, all checked into the Rice Hotel in Houston under the name of Max Peck, its general manager. On September 17, the media crowded into the 1800-seat Cullen Auditorium at the University of Houston for the official announcement, but it was a low-key event compared to the unveiling of the Mercury Seven three years before. The group became known as the "Next Nine" or the "New Nine". The new astronauts moved to the Houston area in October 1962. Conrad and Lovell built houses in Timber Cove, south of the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC). Developers in Timber Cove offered astronauts mortgages with small down payments and low interest rates. The MSC complex was not yet complete, so NASA temporarily leased office space in Houston.


title: Jim Lovell

text: The task of supervising the Next Nine's training fell to Mercury Seven astronaut Gus Grissom. Initially, each of the astronauts was given four months of classroom instruction on subjects such as spacecraft propulsion, orbital mechanics, astronomy, computing, and space medicine. Classes were for six hours a day, two days a week, and all sixteen astronauts had to attend. There was also familiarization with the Gemini spacecraft, Titan II and Atlas boosters, and the Agena target vehicle. Jungle survival training was conducted at the United States Air Force (USAF) Tropic Survival School at Albrook Air Force Station in the Panama Canal Zone, desert survival training at Stead Air Force Base in Nevada, and water survival training on the Dilbert Dunker at the USN school at the Naval Air Station Pensacola and on Galveston Bay. Following the precedent set by the Mercury Seven, each of the Next Nine was assigned a special area in which to develop expertise that could be shared with the others, and to provide astronaut input to designers and engineers. Lovell became responsible for recovery systems.


title: Jim Lovell

text: Lovell was selected as backup pilot for Gemini 4, which was officially announced on July 29, 1964. It put him in position for his first space flight three missions later, as pilot of Gemini 7 with command pilot Frank Borman, under a rotation system devised by Slayton. Borman was a USAF officer, and Lovell had first met him during the evaluation process for astronaut selection. Their selection for the Gemini 7 mission was officially announced on July 1, 1965, along with that of Edward White and Michael Collins as their backup crew.


title: Jim Lovell

text: Like all Gemini missions, it was part of the preparations for Apollo. The flight's objective was to evaluate the effects on the crew and spacecraft from fourteen days in orbit, this being sufficiently long for any possible Moon mission, and would therefore enable doctors to evaluate the medical aspects of such a flight. Whereas the Gemini 6 mission preceding it was to demonstrate techniques for space rendezvous, likewise critical requirement of Apollo. These techniques had been worked out by Dean F. Grimm and Buzz Aldrin, who had written his doctoral thesis on the subject.


title: Jim Lovell

text: The Gemini 6 mission, which was commanded by Schirra with Tom Stafford as pilot, had a serious setback on October 15, 1965, when the Agena target vehicle that Gemini 6 was supposed to rendezvous with exploded soon after takeoff. Lovell was present at the Launch Control Center at Cape Kennedy when this occurred. Officials from McDonnell, the manufacturer of the Gemini spacecraft, then raised the possibility of a rendezvous between Gemini 6 and Gemini 7 during the two weeks while Gemini 7 was in orbit. The only change to the latter's flight plan this required was to circularize its orbit to match that intended for the Agena target vehicle. Borman rejected a proposal by Schirra that Lovell and Stafford exchange places, on the grounds that it was hazardous and likely to jeopardize the fourteen-day mission objective through loss of oxygen.


title: Jim Lovell

text: In planning the mission, it was decided that both astronauts would sleep at the same time and observe the same work periods, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Experiments were not scheduled, but fitted in when time allowed. Of the twenty experiments, eight were medical, aimed at gathering data about the effects of long-duration space flight. Of the rest, four were tests of spacecraft systems, five involved radiometry or navigation, and three involved photography and observation, To save space, the G5C space suit was designed that incorporated a soft hood instead of a helmet and zippers instead of a neck ring. It weighed a third less than the standard Gemini space suit and could be stowed more easily.


title: Jim Lovell

text: Gemini 7 lifted off on December 4, 1965, and reached its intended near-circular orbit. Lovell was taller than Borman and had more difficulty donning and removing his space suit. Initially one astronaut had to be suited, but this made him uncomfortably warm, and eventually mission control relented and allowed both to leave their space suits off. Gemini 6, now called Gemini 6A, lifted off on December 15, and rendezvoused with Gemini 7 on Gemini 6A's fourth orbit. The two spacecraft then flew in tandem for three orbits, the distance between them varying between . Gemini 6A returned to Earth on December 16.


title: Jim Lovell

text: In the final two days of the mission, Lovell had time to read part of "Drums Along the Mohawk" by Walter D. Edmonds. As in earlier long-duration flights, malfunctions accumulated as the flight wore on. Two of the thrusters stopped working. After the flight, this was traced to the fact that they had an old type of laminate in the thrust chamber instead of the new type that had been developed to solve this problem. This proved to be only an annoyance, but there were more concern over a loss of power in the fuel cells. By day thirteen, a warning light was burning continuously and it was feared that the cells, which were only giving partial output, might fail completely, and the mission might have to be cut short; tests were carried out in St. Louis that demonstrated that the batteries could sustain it for the remainder of the flight. Gemini 7 made a successful return from orbit on December 18. The fourteen-day flight set an endurance record, making 206 orbits.


title: Jim Lovell

text: On January 24, 1966, Lovell was named as the backup command pilot of Gemini 10, with Aldrin as the pilot. On March 21, this was changed as a result of the deaths of the Gemini 9 prime crew, Elliot See and Charles Bassett, in an air crash. The Gemini 9 backup crew of Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan became the prime crew of Gemini 9A, and Lovell and Aldrin became their backups. This positioned Lovell for his second flight and first command, of Gemini 12. Lovell and Aldrin's selection for this mission was officially announced on June 17, along with that of Gordon Cooper and Gene Cernan as their backups.


title: Jim Lovell

text: The goals of Gemini 12, the final Gemini mission, were ill-defined at first. "Essentially Gemini 12 didn't have a mission", Lovell later recalled. "It was, I guess, by default... supposed to wind up the Gemini program and catch all those items that were not caught on previous flights." By July, its mission had become to master extravehicular activity (EVA), something that had proven problematic on earlier Gemini missions, as they had been more strenuous than expected and performing simple tasks had been more complicated. A series of innovations had been developed in response to the problems that had been encountered. It had been found that moving in space was similar to being underwater, and Aldrin made use of this new training technique. A waist restraint was provided on the space suit, and the Gemini spacecraft and the Agena target vehicle had additional handrails, handholds, and rings for tethering the waist restraint. Procedures were modified to minimize fatigue.


title: Jim Lovell

text: Gemini 12 lifted off on November 11, and quickly achieved orbit. Its first task was to rendezvous with its Agena target vehicle. This was complicated when the rendezvous radar set failed. Instead, Aldrin, who had written his PhD on the rendezvous, used a sextant to measure the angle between the spacecraft and the Agena, and then calculated the required actions using the onboard computer. Lovell then flew the spacecraft accordingly. Rendezvous was achieved, and Gemini successfully docked with the Agena, achieving the fifth space rendezvous and fourth space docking with an Agena target vehicle. Lovell then successfully undocked and docked again.


title: Jim Lovell

text: Aldrin performed three EVAs. The first was a standup EVA on November 12, in which the spacecraft door was opened and he stood up, but did not leave the spacecraft. The standup EVA mimicked some of the actions he would do during his free-flight EVA, so he could compare the effort expended between the two. It set an EVA record of two hours and twenty minutes. The next day Aldrin performed his free-flight EVA. He climbed across the newly installed hand-holds to the Agena and installed the cable needed for the gravity-gradient stabilization experiment. He performed several tasks, including installing electrical connectors and testing tools that would be needed for Apollo. The EVA concluded after two hours and six minutes. Before returning to the spacecraft, Aldrin cleaned the pilot's window with a cloth, and Lovell jokingly asked him if he could change the oil too. A third, 55-minute standup EVA was conducted on November 14, during which Aldrin took photographs, conducted experiments, and discarded some unneeded items.


title: Jim Lovell

text: Gemini 12 returned to Earth on November 15, after 59 orbits. During re-entry a pouch containing books and small pieces of equipment broke free and landed in Lovell's lap. He did not want to grab it, as he feared he might pull on the D-ring that activated the ejector seat. It did not move any further, and the landing went well. The spacecraft landed just from the recovery ship, the aircraft carrier . Twelve experiments had been carried out. This mission proved that people could work effectively outside the spacecraft, which was required for the Apollo missions with the goal of getting man on the Moon by the end of the decade.


title: Jim Lovell

text: On January 27, 1967, Grissom, White and Roger Chaffee were killed in the Apollo 1 fire. At the time, Lovell was in Washington, D.C., where, along with fellow astronauts Neil Armstrong, Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper and Richard Gordon, he had attended the signing of the Outer Space Treaty and the reception afterwards in the Green Room of the White House hosted by President Lyndon Johnson. Four days later, Lovell flew to West Point, New York, with Borman in a NASA T-38 for the funeral service for White at the Old Cadet Chapel. After the service, White was laid to rest in the West Point Cemetery; Lovell served as a pallbearer along with Armstrong, Borman, Conrad, Stafford and Aldrin.


title: Jim Lovell

text: The Apollo command module was redesigned after the fire, and afterwards it underwent a series of qualification tests. In April 1968, Lovell, along with fellow astronauts Stuart Roosa and Charles Duke, spent 48 hours in command module CM-007A, bobbing in the Gulf of Mexico to test the seaworthiness of the Apollo spacecraft. The NASA research vessel stood by with technicians and divers, while the astronauts assessed how quickly the spacecraft's flotation devices could right it from the "stable II" (upside down) position. The urine collection hose was used to vacuum up water that entered the cabin. Although this did not seem to bother Lovell, Duke regarded it as his worst experience as an astronaut, and Roosa became quite seasick. The NASA "Roundup" newspaper wrote the event up under the headline, "Yo, Ho, Ho and a Bottle of Marezine", referencing the brand name of a motion sickness drug.


title: Jim Lovell

text: Lovell was originally chosen as command module pilot (CMP) on the backup crew for Apollo 9 along with Armstrong as commander (CDR) and Aldrin as lunar module pilot (LMP). Apollo 9 was planned as a high-apogee Earth orbital test of the Lunar Module (LM). Lovell later replaced Michael Collins as CMP on the Apollo 9 prime crew in July 1968 when Collins needed to have surgery for a bone spur on his spine. This reunited Lovell with his Gemini 7 commander Frank Borman, along with LMP William Anders. Aldrin became Lovell's backup CMP, and Fred Haise joined Armstrong's crew as LMP.


title: Jim Lovell

text: Construction delays of the first crewed LM prevented it from being ready in time to fly on Apollo 8, planned as a low Earth orbit test. It was decided to swap the Apollo 8 and Apollo 9 prime and backup crews in the flight schedule so that the crew trained for the low-orbit test could fly it as Apollo 9, when the LM would be ready. A lunar orbital flight, now Apollo 8, replaced the original Apollo 9 medium Earth orbit test mission. The crew was informed of this decision on August 10, 1968, and the training schedule was adjusted accordingly. Starting in September, the crew spent ten hours a day in the simulator rehearsing the mission.


title: Jim Lovell

text: Apollo 8 was launched on December 21, 1968, and Borman, Lovell and Anders became the first crew to ride the Saturn V rocket, as well as the first to travel to the Moon. Their Apollo craft entered lunar orbit on December 24 (Christmas Eve) and reduced speed to go into a orbit. The engine was then fired again to enter a circular orbit around the Moon.


title: Jim Lovell

text: On Christmas Eve, the crew broadcast black-and-white television pictures of the lunar surface back to Earth. Lovell took his turn with Borman and Anders in reading a passage from the Biblical creation story in the Book of Genesis. They made a total of ten orbits of the Moon in 20 hours and ten minutes, and began their return to Earth on December 25 (Christmas Day) with a rocket burn made on the Moon's far side, out of radio contact with Earth. When contact was re-established, Lovell broadcast, "Please be informed, there is a Santa Claus."


title: Jim Lovell

text: As CMP, Lovell served as the navigator, using the spacecraft's built-in sextant to determine its position by measuring star positions. This information was then used to calculate required mid-course corrections. Lovell used some otherwise idle time to do navigational sightings, maneuvering the module to view stars by using the Apollo guidance computer keyboard. Lovell accidentally erased some of the computer's memory by entering the wrong codes, which caused the inertial measurement unit (IMU) to contain data indicating that the module was in the same relative orientation it had been in before lift-off; the IMU then fired the thrusters to "correct" the module's attitude.


title: Jim Lovell

text: Once the crew realized why the computer had changed the module's attitude, they knew that they would have to reenter the correct data to tell the computer the module's actual orientation. It took Lovell ten minutes to figure out the correct values, using the thrusters to get the stars Rigel and Sirius aligned, and another 15 minutes to enter the corrected data into the computer. Sixteen months later, during the Apollo 13 mission, Lovell would have to perform a similar manual realignment under even more critical conditions after the module's IMU had been turned off to conserve energy.