title: Heathers: The Musical

text: Veronica, having faked her suicide, races to stop J.D. ("Dead Girl Walking (Reprise)"). She confronts him in the boiler room, but in their struggle, J.D. is shot. Unable to disarm the detonator, Veronica takes it to the empty football field, out of range to detonate the bombs. J.D. convinces her to let him take the detonator instead ("I Am Damaged"). It explodes, killing him alone.


title: Heathers: The Musical

text: Returning to school, Veronica takes the red scrunchie from Heather D. and ends the era of social ridicule. Veronica invites Martha and Heather M to hang out (depending on blocking, Heather D is also included in some productions), rent a movie, and be kids before childhood is over ("Seventeen (Reprise)").


title: Heathers: The Musical

text: "You're Welcome" replaces "Blue", a song on the World Premiere Cast Recording. "You're Welcome" was originally written by O'Keefe and Murphy for the High School edition but was added to the official show beginning with the 2018 London production. O'Keefe and Murphy preferred "You're Welcome" as "Blue" had been perceived by audiences as “treating date rape as a laughing matter” and trivializing the issue by presenting it as comical, “boyish antics”. When asked to comment on the choice to replace the track, O'Keefe and Murphy stated that "'You're Welcome' doesn’t shy away from showing that Veronica is in real danger from these two drunk football assholes."


title: Heathers: The Musical

text: A new song for Heather Duke, "Never Shut Up Again", was also added for the London run, replacing "Blue (Reprise)". For the 2017 workshop, there was a different song to replace "Blue (Reprise)", which became "Big Fun (Reprise)", part of which is now included in "Never Shut Up Again". In the last week at The Other Palace, the authors added a new song after "Shine a Light (Reprise)" called "I Say No", in which Veronica finally dumps J.D. when he proposes a return to murdering, telling him "You need help I can't provide" and walking out on him. The song remained in the show for the Haymarket run and was released on February 15, 2019, as the first single on the West End cast album.


title: Heathers: The Musical

text: Andy Cohen and J. Todd Harris secured the rights from Daniel Waters (the screenwriter of the film) and immediately thought of Andy Fickman to direct. After seeing Laurence O'Keefe's work with "Legally Blonde" and how he transitioned film to theatre, he decided to pair him with "Reefer Madness" collaborator Kevin Murphy. Originally, lyricist Amy Powers was on the creative team, but she transitioned to joining producers Cohen and Harris. Fickman, Murphy and O'Keefe were also producers on the original productions in Los Angeles and New York. Fickman said of the experience, "we found that "Heathers" gave a great deal of opportunity for '80s commentary and a great chance for music and storytelling."


title: Heathers: The Musical

text: Three private readings of the work in progress were held in Los Angeles in 2009, each starring Kristen Bell as Veronica. The first was in March at the Beverly Hills offices of Endeavor Agency (starring Christian Campbell as J.D.); the second in June at the Hudson Theatre on Santa Monica Boulevard (starring Scott Porter as J.D.); and the third in December at the Coast Theatre in West Hollywood, starring James Snyder as J.D. In each reading, Jenna Leigh Green, Corri English, and Christine Lakin played Heather Chandler, Heather McNamara and Heather Duke respectively.


title: Heathers: The Musical

text: On September 13–14, 2010, Heathers was presented as a concert at Joe's Pub. The show was directed by Andy Fickman, and it starred Annaleigh Ashford as Veronica Sawyer, Jeremy Jordan as Jason Dean, Jenna Leigh Green as Heather Chandler, Corri English as Heather McNamara, and Christine Lakin as Heather Duke, James Snyder as Kurt Kelly, PJ Griffith as Ram Sweeney, Julie Garnyé as Martha "Dumptruck" Dunnstock, Eric Leviton as Ram's Dad, Kevin Pariseau as Kurt's Dad/Principal, Jill Abramovitz as Ms. Fleming/Veronica's Mom, Tom Compton as Hipster Dork/Preppy Kid, Alex Ellis as Goth Girl/English Teacher/Young Republicanette, and [Lindsey Guerra as Stoner Chick/School Psychologist.


title: Heathers: The Musical

text: The show played at the Hudson Backstage Theatre in Los Angeles for a limited engagement on the weekends from September 21, 2013, to October 6, 2013. The cast included Barrett Wilbert Weed as Veronica, Ryan McCartan as J.D., Sarah Halford as Heather Chandler, Kristolyn Lloyd as Heather Duke, and Elle McLemore as Heather McNamara. McLemore was the only Heather to remain with the cast when the show transferred to Off-Broadway, but after Alice Lee left the production, Kristolyn Lloyd reprised her role as Heather Duke. The production was music directed by Ryan Shore.


title: Heathers: The Musical

text: In 2013, it was announced that "Heathers: The Musical" would be brought to Off-Broadway, previews beginning in March at New World Stages, directed by Andy Fickman. Coincidentally, New World is also the name of the original film's distributor. In February 2014, the cast was announced, including Barrett Wilbert Weed, Ryan McCartan, and Elle McLemore reprising their roles as Veronica, J.D., and Heather McNamara, respectively, with new additions to the cast being Jessica Keenan Wynn as Heather Chandler, Alice Lee as Heather Duke and Tony Award winner Anthony Crivello as Bill Sweeney/'Big Bud' Dean. The show began previews on March 15, 2014, and opened on March 31, 2014.


title: Heathers: The Musical

text: A cast album was recorded on April 15–16, 2014, with an in-store and digital release of June 17, 2014. It was released a week early on June 10, 2014.


title: Heathers: The Musical

text: A workshop of the musical opened at The Other Palace, London which held 5 presentations in the Studio from 30 May to June 3, 2017. The workshop featured Charlotte Wakefield as Veronica Sawyer.


title: Heathers: The Musical

text: Following the workshop, the musical had its official London premiere in the Theatre at The Other Palace, London from June 9 to August 4, 2018, starring Carrie Hope Fletcher as Veronica Sawyer and Jamie Muscato as J.D. The production is produced by Bill Kenwright and Paul Taylor-Mills, directed again by Andy Fickman and with choreographer/associate director Gary Lloyd. For the London production "Blue" has been changed to the new song "You're Welcome" and Heather Duke has received her own song "Never Shut Up Again" as well as a few script changes.


title: Heathers: The Musical

text: "Heathers" transferred to the West End at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, running from September 3, 2018 to November 24, 2018. A new song for Veronica, "I Say No", as well as a few script changes to Act 2 were added for the transfer.


title: Heathers: The Musical

text: A West End cast recording was released on Ghostlight Records on March 1. The album premiered at No. 1 on the iTunes UK Soundtracks Charts and at #2 on the iTunes UK Album charts. The album premiered at No. 24 on the Official Albums Chart.


title: Heathers: The Musical

text: On March 3, 2019, "Heathers the Musical" won the Best New Musical award at London's WhatsOnStage Awards. Carrie Hope Fletcher also won for Best Actress in a Musical.


title: Heathers: The Musical

text: On October 3, 2019, it was announced via the Bill Kenwright LTD Twitter account that the show would embark on a UK & Ireland tour in 2020 which was later postponed until 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic. The tour opened in Leeds on 5 August 2021 before visiting Liverpool, Nottingham, Newcastle, Sheffield, Birmingham, Canterbury, Manchester, Belfast, Dublin, Brighton, Wimbledon, Bristol, Milton Keynes, High Wycombe, Cardiff and finishing in Edinburgh. On April 8, 2021, it was announced that "Heathers: The Musical" would return to the West End on June 21, 2021, and will run at the Theatre Royal Haymarket until September 11, 2021. The West End revival cast was announced on May 28, with Jodie Steele reprising her role as Heather Chandler.


title: Heathers: The Musical

text: Another London revival was announced, dubbed the "Homecoming", with a limited run at The Other Palace. West End Revival ensemble members Teleri Hughes and Iván Fernández González returned to the production, as did Lizzie Bea, who portrayed Martha Dunnstock during the West End Workshop. The 2022 run at The Other Palace was set for a limited run ending on February 20th, before it announced its extended run until May 1st, 2022. It then extended its run further, until September 4th, 2022. The show then extended until the 19th of February 2023 with a singalong performance on the 18th of January 2023.


title: Heathers: The Musical

text: The West End revival was filmed in May 2022 at The Other Palace and was released as a Roku Original on September 16, 2022.


title: Heathers: The Musical

text: On October 27, 2022, it was announced via the Heathers Twitter account that the show would embark on another UK & Ireland tour in 2023. It is planned to open in Windsor on 14 February 2023 before visiting Woking, Brighton, Bath, Mold, Stoke-on-Trent, Dublin, York, Birmingham, Aylesbury, Sunderland, Glasgow, Liverpool, and Manchester. More venues are to be announced.


title: Heathers: The Musical

text: In 2016 White Plains Performing Arts Center (WPPAC) presented the NY Regional Premiere of the production to sold-out audiences. Various local productions have cast a non-male actor as J.D., such as Stanford University's Ram's Head Theatrical Society in May 2021 featuring Emily Saletan as Janie "J.D." Dean.


title: Heathers: The Musical

text: The Australian premiere of "Heathers: The Musical" at the Hayes Theatre in Sydney was staged in July–August 2015. Directed by Trevor Ashley with choreography by Cameron Mitchell, it starred Jaz Flowers as Veronica Sawyer, Stephen Madsen as J.D., Lucy Maunder as Heather Chandler, Erin Clare as Heather McNamara, and Libby Asciak as Heather Duke. The well-received production transferred the following year, with mostly the same cast, for seasons in Brisbane (Playhouse, Queensland Performing Arts Centre) in January 2016, Melbourne (Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne) in May 2016, and the Sydney Opera House's Playhouse in June 2016.


title: Heathers: The Musical

text: The Brazilian premiere of "Heathers: The Musical" at the Viradalata Theatre in São Paulo was staged in October–November 2019. Translated by Rafael Oliveira, directed by Fernanda Chamma and Daniela Stirbulov, with choreography by Mariana Barros, it started with Ana Luiza Ferreira as Veronica Sawyer, Diego Montez and Murilo Armacollo as J.D., Bruna Vivolo and Gigi Debei as Heather Chandler, Veronica Goeldi and Mariana Fernandes as Heather Duke, Carol Amaral, Isa Castro and Luisa Valverde as Heather McNamara. The well-received production soon was announced that it would return in May–June 2020 but it was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Heathers: The Musical

text: "Heathers: The Musical"'s 2014 Off-Broadway run was generally received well by critics and audiences alike. The musical was praised for staying true to the film while still having its own original additions to the storyline. The score and choreography of the musical were also given praise.


title: Heathers: The Musical

text: The musical, however, was criticized for the length and its characters not living up to the cast of the original movie. It has also been criticized for taking the dark themes of the source material and sanitizing them with bubbly music and cartoon-like characters.


title: Heathers: The Musical

text: Marilyn Stasio, writing for "Variety", wrote, "[S]easoned industry pros could pick up a few tips on the Do's and Don'ts of adapting material from this smartly executed musical treatment of 'Heathers.'" She praised the lyrics but was not a fan of the music, writing: "Even at their giddiest, the lyrics never dumb down the characters singing them. Wish we could say the same for the music, which is brassy and blah and sounds nothing like the music that made the 80s."


title: Heathers: The Musical

text: "The Hollywood Reporter"s David Rooney stated: "Does the acidic comedy gain anything from being turned into a cartoonish pop musical? Hell, no. But as an extension of the movie's wicked pleasures, this version has its silly charms, as demonstrated by the rowdy response of the predominantly young audience. It's not exactly "very" — to borrow from Heather-speak — but for insatiable fans it might almost be enough, and the tacky high school-style staging seems somehow appropriate."


title: Heathers: The Musical

text: The musical got two out of five stars from "The Guardian"s Alexis Soloski, who wrote: "The off-Broadway adaptation of the 1988 Winona Ryder/Christian Slater teen movie is sunny and snarky, but the dark subject matter calls for something more wicked." But Elisabeth Vincentelli of the New York Post gave it four out of five stars, writing "The first act moves briskly as director Andy Fickman and his cast wring every last comic drop out of the script and songs... The production nearly derails in Act II, having killed off its antagonists. The film had the same problem, but here the sweetened worldview saps the grand finale of its effectiveness. Still, seeing “Heathers” onstage is a joy."


title: Heathers: The Musical

text: Kyle Anderson of "Entertainment Weekly" was harsher, giving the musical a C− rating: ""Heathers: The Musical" misses just about everything that made the film great, making it not only a colossally disappointing adaptation of a beloved property but also a generally unpleasant theater experience."


title: Heathers: The Musical

text: The London production received mixed reception and was flagged by some critics because they felt complex issues such as homosexuality, bulimia and suicide were made light of for comedic effect, making parts of the show feel "dated and uncomfortable for a 2018 audience."


title: Heathers: The Musical

text: Following its 2014 Off-Broadway run, the musical gained cult status from audiences that mirrored the characters at the fictional Westerberg High, and multiple high schools were putting in requests for the licensing rights; accordingly, an abridged "PG-13" version was prepared, newly revised by writers Laurence O’Keefe and Kevin Murphy, iTheatrics, and licensing company Samuel French specifically for student productions. Most of the profanity in the show was deleted, "Big Fun", "Dead Girl Walking", and the majority of the songs received rewritten lyrics and one new song, "You're Welcome" was written for the show to replace "Blue". The original playwrights—O'Keefe and Murphy—have since publicly stated that they prefer "You're Welcome" to "Blue", and the change was officially made for the London production of "Heathers" in June 2018.


title: Heathers: The Musical

text: The world premiere of "Heathers: The Musical (High School Edition)" took place on September 15, 2016, at Pearce Theatre, J.J. Pearce High School, Richardson, Texas.


title: Heathers: The Musical

text: The Brazilian version of "Heathers: The Musical (High School Edition)" or "Heathers - A Teen Musical" was set to open in 2020 at the Stunt Burger, but because of the COVID-19 pandemic it made some changes. The version was well received by both the audience and critics.


title: Heathers: The Musical

text: In 2019, a high school production of the musical is the focus of the "" episode of "Riverdale". The "Riverdale" cast album of the musical was produced via WaterTower Music. The lyrics from the songs in the episode are from the "High School Edition" of the musical with most of the profanity deleted.


title: Willie Garson

text: William Garson Paszamant (February 20, 1964September 21, 2021) was an American actor. He appeared in over 75 films and more than 300 TV episodes. He was known for playing Stanford Blatch on the HBO series "Sex and the City", in the related films "Sex and the City" and "Sex and the City 2" and in the spin-off "And Just Like That...", Mozzie in the USA Network series "White Collar" from 2009 to 2014, Ralph in the 2005 romantic comedy "Little Manhattan", Gerard Hirsch in the reboot of "Hawaii Five-0", and Martin Lloyd in the sci-fi series "Stargate SG-1".


title: Willie Garson

text: Garson was born in Highland Park, New Jersey, the son of Muriel (née Schwartz) and Donald M. Paszamant. Garson was Jewish. He attended Camp Wekeela in Hartford, Maine, as a child for 11 years.


title: Willie Garson

text: He graduated in 1982 from Highland Park High School. In 1985, he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Theater from Wesleyan University and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Yale Drama School.


title: Willie Garson

text: Garson had a recurring role as Henry Coffield on "NYPD Blue" and as Stanford Blatch on "Sex and the City". His other television appearances include "Mr. Belvedere", "My Two Dads", "Coach" ("The Loss Weekend" episode as a clerk), "Quantum Leap" (once as a newspaper salesman/hack writer, and once as Lee Harvey Oswald), "Twin Peaks", "Monk", "Boy Meets World", "Girl Meets World" (playing four different characters in the latter two shows' universe), "Ally McBeal", "Party of Five", "" (in the episode "Thirty Days"), "Special Unit 2", "Just Shoot Me!", "Ask Harriet", "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", "Friends" (as Ross Geller's neighbor in the episode "The One With the Girl Who Hits Joey"), "The X-Files" (twice and as two different characters), "Cheers" (as a waiter in the episode "Cape Cad"), "Yes, Dear", "", "Pushing Daisies", "Stargate SG-1" (3 episodes), "Wizards of Waverly Place", "", "Mental", "Spin City", and "Taken". He co-starred in the 2007 HBO series "John from Cincinnati". He co-starred as Mozzie in the USA Network series "White Collar" from 2009 to 2014. From 2019 to 2020, he was a regular guest star on the syndicated game show "25 Words or Less".


title: Willie Garson

text: Garson also appeared in three movies from the Farrelly brothers – "Kingpin", "There's Something About Mary", and "Fever Pitch". His other film credits include "Groundhog Day", "Just Like Heaven", "The Rock", "", "Being John Malkovich", "Freaky Friday", "Labor Pains", and "Out Cold". He made a cameo in the end credits of "Jackass Number Two", with the full context of the cameo being explained in "Jackass 2.5". He also appears in Before I Go (2021).


title: Willie Garson

text: Though he is mainly known for having played an openly gay man on "Sex and the City", he was heterosexual. He avoided discussing his sexual orientation publicly:


title: Willie Garson

text: Garson died from pancreatic cancer at his home in Los Angeles, California on September 21, 2021 at age 57.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: Saint Nicholas of Myra (traditionally 15 March 270 – 6 December 343), also known as Nicholas of Bari, was an early Christian bishop of Greek descent from the maritime city of Myra in Asia Minor (; modern-day Demre, Turkey) during the time of the Roman Empire. Because of the many miracles attributed to his intercession, he is also known as Nicholas the Wonderworker. Saint Nicholas is the patron saint of sailors, merchants, archers, repentant thieves, children, brewers, pawnbrokers, unmarried people, and students in various cities and countries around Europe. His reputation evolved among the pious, as was common for early Christian saints, and his legendary habit of secret gift-giving gave rise to the traditional model of Santa Claus ("Saint Nick") through Sinterklaas.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: Little is known about the historical Saint Nicholas. The earliest accounts of his life were written centuries after his death and probably contain legendary elaborations. He is said to have been born in the Greek seaport of Patara, Lycia, in Asia Minor to wealthy Christian parents.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: In one of the earliest attested and most famous incidents from his life, he is said to have rescued three girls from being forced into prostitution by dropping a sack of gold coins through the window of their house each night for three nights so their father could pay a dowry for each of them. Other early stories tell of him calming a storm at sea, saving three innocent soldiers from wrongful execution, and chopping down a tree possessed by a demon. In his youth, he is said to have made a pilgrimage to Egypt and Palestine. Shortly after his return, he became Bishop of Myra. He was later cast into prison during the persecution of Diocletian, but was released after the accession of Constantine.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: An early list makes him an attendee at the First Council of Nicaea in 325, but he is never mentioned in any writings by people who were at the council. Late, unsubstantiated legends claim that he was temporarily defrocked and imprisoned during the council for slapping the heretic Arius. Another famous late legend tells how he resurrected three children, who had been murdered and pickled in brine by a butcher planning to sell them as pork during a famine.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: Fewer than 200 years after Nicholas's death, the St. Nicholas Church was built in Myra under the orders of Theodosius II over the site of the church where he had served as bishop, and his remains were moved to a sarcophagus in that church.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: In 1087, while the Greek Christian inhabitants of the region were subjugated by the newly arrived Muslim Seljuk Turks, and soon after their church was declared to be in schism by the Catholic church, a group of merchants from the Italian city of Bari removed the major bones of Nicholas's skeleton from his sarcophagus in the church without authorization and brought them to their hometown, where they are now enshrined in the Basilica di San Nicola. The remaining bone fragments from the sarcophagus were later removed by Venetian sailors and taken to Venice during the First Crusade.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: Very little at all is known about Saint Nicholas's historical life. Any writings Nicholas himself may have produced have been lost and he is not mentioned by any contemporary chroniclers. This is not surprising, since Nicholas lived during . Furthermore, all written records were kept on papyrus or parchment, which were less durable than modern paper, and texts needed to be periodically recopied by hand onto new material in order to be preserved. The earliest mentions of Saint Nicholas indicate that, by the sixth century, his cult was already well-established. Less than two hundred years after Saint Nicholas's probable death, the Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius II (ruled 401–450) ordered the building of the Church of Saint Nicholas in Myra, which thereby preserves an early mention of his name. The Byzantine historian Procopius also mentions that the Emperor Justinian I (ruled 527–565) renovated churches in Constantinople dedicated to Saint Nicholas and Saint Priscus, which may have originally been built as early as 490.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: Nicholas's name also occurs as "Nicholas of Myra of Lycia" on the tenth line of a list of attendees at the Council of Nicaea recorded by the historian Theodoret in the "Historiae Ecclesiasticae Tripartitae Epitome", written sometime between 510 and 515. A single, offhand mention of Nicholas of Myra also occurs in the biography of another saint, Saint Nicholas of Sion, who apparently took the name "Nicholas" to honor him. "The Life of Saint Nicholas of Sion", written around 250 years after Nicholas of Myra's death, briefly mentions Nicholas of Sion visiting Nicholas's tomb to pay homage to him. According to Jeremy Seal, the fact that Nicholas had a tomb that could be visited serves as the almost solitary definitive proof that he was a real historical figure.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: In his treatise "De statu animarum post mortem" (written 583), the theologian Eustratius of Constantinople cites Saint Nicholas of Myra's miracle of the three counts as evidence that souls may work independent from the body. Eustratius credits a lost "Life of Saint Nicholas" as his source. Nearly all the sources Eustratius references date from the late fourth century to early fifth century, indicating the "Life of Saint Nicholas" to which he refers was probably written during this time period, shortly after Nicholas's death. The earliest complete account of Nicholas's life that has survived to the present is a "Life of Saint Nicholas", written in the early ninth century by Michael the Archimandrite (814–842), nearly 500 years after Nicholas's probable death.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: Despite its extremely late date, Michael the Archimandrite's "Life of Saint Nicholas" is believed to heavily rely on older written sources and oral traditions. The identity and reliability of these sources, however, remains uncertain. Catholic historian D. L. Cann and medievalist Charles W. Jones both consider Michael the Archimandrite's "Life" the only account of Saint Nicholas that is likely to contain any historical truth. Jona Lendering, a Dutch historian of classical antiquity, notes that Michael the Archimandrite's "Life" does not contain a "conversion narrative", which was unusual for saints' lives of the period when it was written. He therefore argues that it is possible Michael the Archimandrite may have been relying on a source written before conversion narratives became popular, which would be a positive indication of that source's reliability. He notes that many of the stories recounted by Michael the Archimandrite closely resemble stories told about the first-century AD Neopythagorean philosopher Apollonius of Tyana in the "Life of Apollonius of Tyana", an eight-volume biography of him written in the early third century by the Greek writer Philostratus. Christian storytellers were known to adapt older pagan legends and attribute them to Christian saints. As Apollonius's hometown of Tyana was not far from Myra, Lendering contends that many popular stories about Apollonius may have become attached to Saint Nicholas.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: Accounts of Saint Nicholas's life agree on the essence of his story, but modern historians disagree regarding how much of this story is actually rooted in historical fact. Traditionally, Nicholas was born in the city of Patara (Lycia et Pamphylia), a port on the Mediterranean Sea, in Asia Minor in the Roman Empire, to a wealthy family of Greek Christians. According to some accounts, his parents were named Epiphanius (, ) and Johanna (, ), but, according to others, they were named Theophanes (, ) and Nonna (, ). In some accounts, Nicholas's uncle was the bishop of the city of Myra, also in Lycia. Recognizing his nephew's calling, Nicholas's uncle ordained him as a priest.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: After his parents died, Nicholas is said to have distributed their wealth to the poor. In his most famous exploit, which is first attested in Michael the Archimandrite's "Life of Saint Nicholas", Nicholas heard of a devout man who had once been wealthy but had lost all of his money due to the "plotting and envy of Satan." The man could not afford proper dowries for his three daughters. This meant that they would remain unmarried and probably, in absence of any other possible employment, be forced to become prostitutes. Hearing of the girls' plight, Nicholas decided to help them, but, being too modest to help the family in public (or to save them the humiliation of accepting charity), he went to the house under the cover of night and threw a purse filled with gold coins through the window opening into the house. The father immediately arranged a marriage for his first daughter, and after her wedding, Nicholas threw a second bag of gold through the same window late at night.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: According to Michael the Archimandrite's account, after the second daughter was married, the father stayed awake for at least two "nights" and caught Saint Nicholas in the same act of charity toward the third daughter. The father fell on his knees, thanking him, and Nicholas ordered him not to tell anyone about the gifts. The scene of Nicholas's secret gift-giving is one of the most popular scenes in Christian devotional art, appearing in icons and frescoes from across Europe. Although depictions vary depending on time and place, Nicholas is often shown wearing a cowl while the daughters are typically shown in bed, dressed in their nightclothes. Many renderings contain a cypress tree or a cross-shaped cupola.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: The historicity of this incident is disputed. Adam C. English argues for a historical kernel to the legend, noting the story's early attestation as well as the fact that no similar stories were told about any other Christian saints. Jona Lendering, who also argues for the story's authenticity, notes that a similar story is told in Philostratus's "Life of Apollonius of Tyana", in which Apollonius gives money to an impoverished father but posits that Michael the Archimandrite's account is markedly different. Philostratus does not mention the fate of the daughters and, in his story, Apollonius's generosity is purely motivated out of sympathy for the father; in Michael the Archimandrite's account, however, Saint Nicholas is instead expressly stated to be motivated by a desire to save the daughters from being sold into prostitution. He argues that this desire to help women is most characteristic of fourth-century Christianity, due to the prominent role women played in the early Christian movement, rather than Greco-Roman paganism or the Christianity of Michael the Archimandrite's time in the ninth century, by which point the position of women had drastically declined.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: In another story, Nicholas is said to have visited the Holy Land. The ship he was on was nearly destroyed by a terrible storm but he rebuked the waves, causing the storm to subside. Thus, Nicholas became venerated as the patron saint of sailors and travelers.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: After visiting the Holy Land, Nicholas returned to Myra. The bishop of Myra, who had succeeded Nicholas's uncle, had recently died and the priests in the city had decided that the first priest to enter the church that morning would be made bishop. Nicholas went to the church to pray and was therefore proclaimed the new bishop. He is said to have been imprisoned and tortured during the Great Persecution under the Emperor Diocletian (ruled 284–305), but was released under the orders of the Emperor Constantine the Great (ruled 306–337). This story sounds plausible, but is not attested in the earliest sources and is therefore unlikely to be historical.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: One of the earliest attested stories of Saint Nicholas is one in which he saves three innocent men from execution. According to Michael the Archimandrite, three innocent men were condemned to death by the governor Eustathius. As they were about to be executed, Nicholas appeared, pushed the executioner's sword to the ground, released them from their chains, and angrily chastised a juror who had accepted a bribe. According to Jona Lendering, this story directly parallels an earlier story in Philostratus's "Life of Apollonius of Tyana", in which Apollonius prevents the execution of a man falsely condemned of banditry. Michael the Archimandrite also tells another story in which the consul Ablabius accepted a bribe to put three famous generals to death, in spite of their actual innocence. Saint Nicholas appeared to Constantine and Ablabius in dreams, informing Constantine of the truth and frightening Ablabius into releasing the generals, for fear of Hell.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: Later versions of the story are more elaborate, interweaving the two stories together. According to one version, Emperor Constantine sent three of his most trusted generals, named Ursos, Nepotianos, and Herpylion, to put down a rebellion in Phrygia. However, a storm forced them to take refuge in Myra. Unbeknownst to the generals, who were in the harbor, their soldiers further inland were fighting with local merchants and engaging in looting and destruction. Nicholas confronted the generals for allowing their soldiers to misbehave and the generals brought an end to the looting. Immediately after the soldiers had returned to their ships, Nicholas heard word of the three innocent men about to be executed and the three generals aided him in stopping the execution. Eustathius attempted to flee on his horse but Nicholas stopped his horse and chastised him for his corruption. Eustathius, under the threat of being reported directly to the Emperor, repented of his corrupt ways. Afterward, the generals succeeded in ending the rebellion and were promoted by Constantine to even higher status. The generals' enemies, however, slandered them to the consul Ablabius, telling him that they had not really put down the revolt, but instead encouraged their own soldiers to join it. The generals' enemies also bribed Ablabius and he had the three generals imprisoned. Nicholas then made his dream appearances and the three generals were set free.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: In 325, Nicholas is said to have attended the First Council of Nicaea, where he is said to have been a staunch opponent of Arianism and a devoted supporter of Trinitarianism, and one of the bishops who signed the Nicene Creed. Nicholas's attendance at the Council of Nicaea is attested early by Theodore the Lector's list of attendees, which records him as the 151st attendee. However, he is conspicuously never mentioned by Athanasius of Alexandria, the foremost defender of Trinitarianism at the council, who knew all the notable bishops of the period, nor is he mentioned by the historian Eusebius, who was also present at the council. Adam C. English notes that lists of the attendees at Nicaea vary considerably, with shorter lists only including roughly 200 names, but longer lists including around 300. Saint Nicholas's name only appears on the longer lists, not the shorter ones. Nicholas's name appears on a total of three early lists, one of which, Theodore the Lector, is generally considered to be the most accurate. According to Jona Lendering, there are two main possibilities:


title: Saint Nicholas

text: A later legend, first attested in the fourteenth century, over 1,000 years after Nicholas's death, holds that, during the Council of Nicaea, Nicholas lost his temper and slapped "a certain Arian" across the face. On account of this, Constantine revoked Nicholas's miter and pallium. Steven D. Greydanus concludes that, because of the story's late attestation, it "has no historical value." Jona Lendering, however, defends the veracity and historicity of the incident, arguing that, as it was embarrassing and reflects poorly on Nicholas's reputation, it is inexplicable why later hagiographers would have invented it. Later versions of the legend embellish it, making the heretic Arius himself and having Nicholas punch him rather than merely slapping him with his open hand. In these versions of the story, Nicholas is also imprisoned, but Christ and the Virgin Mary appear to him in his cell. He tells them he is imprisoned "for loving you" and they free him from his chains and restore his vestments. The scene of Nicholas slapping Arius is celebrated in Eastern Orthodox icons and episodes of Saint Nicholas at Nicaea are shown in a series of paintings from the 1660s in the Basilica di San Nicola in Bari.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: One story tells how during a terrible famine, a malicious butcher lured three little children into his house, where he killed them, placing their remains in a barrel to cure, planning to sell them off as ham. Nicholas, visiting the region to care for the hungry, saw through the butcher's lies and resurrected the pickled children by making the Sign of the Cross. Jona Lendering opines that the story is "without any historical value". Adam C. English notes that the story of the resurrection of the pickled children is a late medieval addition to the legendary biography of Saint Nicholas and that it is not found in any of his earliest "Lives". Alhough this story seems bizarre and horrifying to modern audiences, it was tremendously popular throughout the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period, and widely beloved by ordinary folk. It is depicted in stained glass windows, wood panel paintings, tapestries, and frescoes. Eventually, the scene became so widely reproduced that, rather than showing the whole scene, artists began to merely depict Saint Nicholas with three naked children and a wooden barrel at his feet.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: According to English, eventually, people who had forgotten or never learned the story began misinterpreting representations of it. That Saint Nicholas was shown with children led people to conclude he was the patron saint of children; meanwhile, the fact that he was shown with a barrel led people to conclude that he was the patron saint of brewers.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: According to another story, during a great famine that Myra experienced in 311–312, a ship was in the port at anchor, loaded with wheat for the Emperor in Constantinople. Nicholas invited the sailors to unload a part of the wheat to help in the time of need. The sailors at first disliked the request, because the wheat had to be weighed accurately and delivered to the Emperor. Only when Nicholas promised them that they would not suffer any loss for their consideration, the sailors agreed. When they arrived later in the capital, they made a surprising find: the weight of the load had not changed, although the wheat removed in Myra was enough for two full years and could even be used for sowing.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: It has long been traditionally assumed that Saint Nicholas was originally buried in his home town of Myra, where his relics are later known to have been kept, but some recent archaeological evidence indicates that Saint Nicholas may have originally been entombed in a rock-cut church located at the highest point on the small Turkish island of Gemile, only twenty miles away from his birthplace of Patara. Nicholas's name is painted on part of the ruined building. In antiquity, the island was known as "Saint Nicholas Island" and today it is known in Turkish as Gemiler Adasi, meaning "Island of Boats", in reference to Saint Nicholas's traditional role as the patron saint of seafarers.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: The church was built in the fourth century, around the time of Nicholas's death, and is typical of saints' shrines from that time period. Nicholas was the only major saint associated with that part of Turkey. The church where historians believe he was originally entombed is at the western end of the great processional way.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: In the mid-7th century, Gemile was vulnerable to attack by Arab fleets, so Nicholas's remains appear to have been moved from the island to the city of Myra, where Nicholas had served as bishop for most of his life. Myra is located roughly east of Gemile and its location further inland made it safer from seafaring Arab forces.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: It is said that, in Myra, the relics of Saint Nicholas each year exuded a clear watery liquid which smelled like rose water, called manna, or myrrh, which was believed by the faithful to possess miraculous powers. As it was widely known that all Nicholas's relics were at Myra in their sealed sarcophagus, it was rare during this period for forgers of relics to claim to possess those belonging to Saint Nicholas.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: A solemn bronze statue of the saint by Russian sculptor Gregory Pototsky was donated by the Russian government in 2000, and was given a prominent place in the square fronting the medieval Church of St Nicholas. In 2005, mayor Süleyman Topçu had the statue replaced by a red-suited plastic Santa Claus statue, because he wanted an image more recognisable to foreign visitors. Protests from the Russian government against this were successful, and the bronze statue was returned (albeit without its original high pedestal) to a corner nearer the church.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: On 28 December 2009, the Turkish government announced that it would be formally requesting the return of Saint Nicholas's skeletal remains to Turkey from the Italian government.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: Turkish authorities asserted that Nicholas himself desired to be buried at his episcopal town, and that his remains were illegally removed from his homeland. In 2017, an archaeological survey at St. Nicholas Church, Demre was reported to have found a temple below the modern church, with excavation work to be done that will allow researchers to determine whether it still holds Nicholas's body.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: After the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, the Byzantine Empire temporarily lost control over most of Asia Minor to the invading Seljuk Turks, and so Greek Christians of Myra became subjects of the Turks. At the same time the Catholic Church in the West had declared (in 1054 AD) that the Greek church, the official church of the Byzantine Empire, was in schism. Because of the many wars in the region, some Christians were concerned that access to the tomb might become difficult.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: Taking advantage of the confusion and the loss by the Greek Christian community of Myra of its Byzantine imperial protection, in the spring of 1087, Italian sailors from Bari in Apulia seized part of the remains of the saint from his burial church in Myra, over the objections of the Greek Orthodox monks in the church.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: Adam C. English describes the removal of the relics from Myra as "essentially a holy robbery" and notes the thieves were not only afraid of being caught or chased after by the locals, but also the power of Saint Nicholas himself. Returning to Bari, they brought the remains with them and cared for them. The remains arrived on 9 May 1087. Two years later, Pope Urban II inaugurated a new church, the Basilica di San Nicola, to Saint Nicholas in Bari. The Pope himself personally placed Nicholas's relics into the tomb beneath the altar of the new church. The removal of Saint Nicholas's relics from Myra and their arrival in Bari is reliably recorded by multiple chroniclers, including Orderic Vitalis and 9 May continued to be celebrated every year by western Christians as the day of Nicholas's "translation". Eastern Orthodox Christians and the Turks have both long regarded the unauthorized removal of the relics from Myra as a blatant theft, but the people of Bari have instead maintained that it was a rescue mission to save the bones from the Turkish invaders. A legend, shown on the ceiling of the Basilica di San Nicola, holds that Nicholas once visited Bari and predicted that his bones would one day rest there.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: Prior to the translation of Nicholas's relics to Bari, his cult had been known in western Europe, but it had not been extremely popular. In autumn of 1096, Norman and Frankish soldiers mustered in Bari in preparation for the First Crusade. Although the Crusaders generally favored warrior saints, which Saint Nicholas was not, the presence of his relics in Bari made him materially accessible. Nicholas's associations with aiding travelers and seafarers also made him a popular choice for veneration. Nicholas's veneration by Crusaders helped promote his cult throughout western Europe.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: After the relics were brought to Bari, they continued to produce "myrrh", much to the joy of their new owners. Vials of myrrh from his relics have been taken all over the world for centuries, and can still be obtained from his church in Bari. Even up to the present day, a flask of manna is extracted from the tomb of Saint Nicholas every year on 6 December (the Saint's feast day) by the clergy of the basilica. The myrrh is collected from a sarcophagus which is located in the basilica vault and could be obtained in the shop nearby. The liquid gradually seeps out of the tomb, but it is unclear whether it originates from the body within the tomb, or from the marble itself; since the town of Bari is a harbour, and the tomb is below sea level, there have been several natural explanations proposed for the manna fluid, including the transfer of seawater to the tomb by capillary action.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: In 1966, a vault in the crypt underneath the Basilica di San Nicola was dedicated as an Orthodox chapel with an iconostasis in commemoration of the recent lifting of the anathemas the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches had issued against each other during the Great Schism in 1054.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: In May 2017, following talks between Pope Francis and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, a portion of the relics of St. Nicholas in Bari were sent on loan to Moscow. The relic was on display for veneration at Christ the Savior Cathedral before being taken to Saint Petersburg in mid-June prior to returning to Bari. More than a million people lined up in Moscow for a momentary glimpse of the gilded ark holding one of the saint's ribs.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: The sailors from Bari took only the main bones of Nicholas's skeleton, leaving all the minor fragments in the grave. The city of Venice had interest in obtaining the remaining fragments of his skeleton. In 1044, they dedicated the San Nicolò al Lido monastery basilica to him on the north end of the Lido di Venezia. According to a single chronicle written by an anonymous monk at this monastery, in 1100, a fleet of Venetian ships accompanied by Bishop Henri sailed past Myra on their way to Palestine for the First Crusade. Bishop Henri insisted for the fleet to turn back and set anchor in Myra. The Venetians took the remaining bones of Saint Nicholas, as well as those of several other bishops of Myra, from the church there, which was only guarded by four Orthodox monks, and brought them to Venice, where they deposited them in the San Nicolò al Lido. This tradition was lent credence in two scientific investigations of the relics in Bari and Venice, which confirmed that the relics in the two cities are anatomically compatible and may belong to the same person. It is said that someone dies every time the bones of Saint Nicholas in Venice are disturbed. The last time the bones were examined was in July 1992.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: Because of Nicholas's skeleton's long confinement in Myra, after it was brought to Bari, the demand for pieces of it rose. Small bones quickly began to disperse across western Europe. The sailors who had transported the bones gave one tooth and two fragments chipped from Nicholas's sarcophagus to the Norman knight William Pantulf. Pantulf took these relics to his hometown of Noron in Normandy, where they were placed in the local Church of St. Peter in June 1092. In 1096, the duke of Apulia gave several bones of Saint Nicholas to the count of Flanders, which he then enshrined in the Abbey of Watten. According to legend, in 1101, Saint Nicholas appeared in a vision to a French clerk visiting the shrine at Bari and told him to take one of his bones with him to his hometown of Port, near Nancy. The clerk took a finger bone back with him to Port, where a chapel was built to Saint Nicholas. Port became an important center of devotion in the cult of Nicholas and, in the fifteenth century, a church known as the Basilique Saint-Nicolas was built there dedicated to him. The town itself is now known as "Saint Nicolas de Port" in honor of Nicholas.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: The clergy at Bari strategically gave away samples of Nicholas's bones to promote the cult and enhance its prestige. Many of these bones were initially kept in Constantinople, but, after the Sack of Constantinople in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade, these fragments were scattered across western Europe. A hand claimed to belong to Saint Nicholas was kept in the San Nicola in Carcere in Rome. This church, whose name means "Saint Nicholas in Chains", was built on the site of a former municipal prison. Stories quickly developed about Nicholas himself having been held in that prison. Mothers would come to the church to pray to Saint Nicholas for their jailed sons to be released and repentant criminals would place votive offerings in the church. As a result of this, Nicholas became the patron saint of prisoners and those falsely accused of crimes. An index finger claimed to belong to Saint Nicholas was kept in a chapel along the Ostian Way in Rome. Another finger was held in Ventimiglia in Liguria. Today, many churches in Europe, Russia, and the United States claim to possess small relics, such as a tooth or a finger bone.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: An Irish tradition states that the relics of Saint Nicholas are also reputed to have been stolen from Myra by local Norman crusading knights in the twelfth century and buried near Thomastown, County Kilkenny, where a stone slab marks the site locally believed to be his grave. According to the Irish antiquarian John Hunt, the tomb probably actually belongs to a local priest from Jerpoint Abbey.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: Whereas the devotional importance of relics and the economics associated with pilgrimages caused the remains of most saints to be divided up and spread over numerous churches in several countries, Saint Nicholas is unusual in that most of his bones have been preserved in one spot: his grave crypt in Bari. Even with the allegedly continuing miracle of the manna, the archdiocese of Bari has allowed for one scientific survey of the bones. In the late 1950s, while the crypt was undergoing much-needed restoration, the bones were removed from it for the first time since their interment in 1089. A special Pontiffical Commission permitted Luigi Martino, a professor of human anatomy at the University of Bari, to examine the bones under the commission's supervision. Martino took thousands of measurements, detailed scientific drawings, photographs, and x-rays. These examinations revealed the saint to have died at over seventy years of age and to have been of average height and slender-to-average build. He also suffered from severe chronic arthritis in his spine and pelvis.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: In 2004, at the University of Manchester, researchers Caroline Wilkinson and Fraco Introna reconstructed the saint's face based on Martino's examination. The review of the data revealed that the historical Saint Nicholas was in height and had a broken nose, which had partially healed, revealing that the injury had been suffered "ante mortem". The broken nose appeared to conform with hagiographical reports that Saint Nicholas had been beaten and tortured during the Diocletianic Persecution. The facial reconstruction was produced by Dr Caroline Wilkinson at the University of Manchester and was shown on a BBC2 TV program "The Real Face of Santa". In 2014, the Face Lab at Liverpool John Moores University produced an updated reconstruction of Saint Nicholas's face.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: In 2017, two researchers from Oxford University, Professor Tom Higham and Doctor Georges Kazan, radiocarbon dated a fragment of a pelvis claimed to belong to Saint Nicholas. The fragment originally came from a church in Lyon, France and, at the time of testing, was in the possession of Father Dennis O'Neill, a priest from St Martha of Bethany Church in Illinois. The results of the radiocarbon dating confirmed that the pelvis dates to the fourth century AD, around the same time that Saint Nicholas would have died, and is not a medieval forgery. The bone was one of the oldest the Oxford team had ever examined.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: According to Professor Higham, most of the relics the team has examined turn out to be too recent to have actually belonged to the saint to whom they are attributed, but he states, "This bone fragment, in contrast, suggests that we could possibly be looking at remains from St Nicholas himself." Dr Kazan believes the pelvis fragment may come from the same individual as the skeleton divided between the churches in Bari and Venice, since the bone they tested comes from the left pubis, and the only pelvis bone in the collection at Bari is the left ilium. In the absence of DNA testing, however, it is not yet possible to know for certain whether the pelvis is from the same man.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: Among Greeks and Italians he is a favorite of sailors, fishermen, ships and sailing. As a result, and over time, he has become the patron saint of several cities which maintain harbours. In centuries of Greek folklore, Nicholas was seen as "The Lord of the Sea", often described by modern Greek scholars as a kind of Christianized version of Poseidon. In modern Greece, he is still easily among the most recognizable saints and 6 December finds many cities celebrating their patron saint. He is also the patron saint of all of Greece and particularly of the Hellenic Navy.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: In the Eastern Orthodox Church, Saint Nicholas's memory is celebrated on almost every Thursday of the year (together with the Apostles) with special hymns to him which are found in the liturgical book known as the Octoechos. Soon after the transfer of Saint Nicholas's relics from Myra to Bari, a Russian version of his Life and an account of the transfer of his relics were written by a contemporary to this event.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: Devotional akathists and canons have been composed in his honour, and are frequently chanted by the faithful as they ask for his intercession. He is mentioned in the Liturgy of Preparation during the Divine Liturgy (Eastern Orthodox Eucharist) and during the All-Night Vigil. Many Orthodox churches will have his icon, even if they are not named after him. In Oriental Orthodoxy, the Coptic Church observes the Departure of St. Nicholas on 10 Kiahk, or 10 Taḫśaś in Ethiopia, which corresponds to the Julian Calendar's 6 December and Gregorian Calendar's 19 December.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: Nicholas had a reputation for secret gift-giving, such as putting coins in the shoes of those who left them out for him, a practice celebrated on his feast day, 6 December. For those who still observe the Julian calendar the celebration currently takes place thirteen days later than it happens in the Gregorian calendar and Revised Julian calendar.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: In Monaco, the Cathedral of Our Lady Immaculate was built from 1874 on the site of St Nicholas's church, founded in 1252. A children's Mass is still held on 6 December in the cathedral.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: In late medieval England, on Saint Nicholas Day parishes held Yuletide "boy bishop" celebrations. As part of this celebration, youths performed the functions of priests and bishops, and exercised rule over their elders. Today, Saint Nicholas is still celebrated as a great gift-giver in several Western European and Central European countries. According to one source, in medieval times nuns used the night of 6 December to deposit baskets of food and clothes anonymously at the doorsteps of the needy. According to another source, on 6 December every sailor or ex-sailor of the Low Countries (which at that time was virtually all of the male population) would descend to the harbour towns to participate in a church celebration for their patron saint. On the way back they would stop at one of the various "Nicholas fairs" to buy some hard-to-come-by goods, gifts for their loved ones and invariably some little presents for their children. While the real gifts would only be presented at Christmas, the little presents for the children were given right away, courtesy of Saint Nicholas. This and his miracle of him resurrecting the three butchered children made Saint Nicholas a patron saint of children and later students as well.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: Santa Claus evolved from Dutch traditions regarding Saint Nicholas (Sinterklaas). When the Dutch established the colony of New Amsterdam, they brought the legend and traditions of Sinterklaas with them. Howard G. Hageman, of New Brunswick Theological Seminary, maintains that the tradition of celebrating Sinterklaas in New York existed in the early settlements of the Hudson Valley, although by the early nineteenth century had fallen by the way. St. Nicholas Park, located at the intersection of St. Nicholas Avenue and 127th Street, in an area originally settled by Dutch farmers, is named for St. Nicholas of Myra.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: Saint Nicholas is a popular subject portrayed on countless Eastern Orthodox icons, particularly Russian and Serbian ones. He is depicted as an Orthodox bishop, wearing the omophorion and holding a Gospel Book. Sometimes he is depicted wearing the Eastern Orthodox mitre, sometimes he is bareheaded. Iconographically, Nicholas is depicted as an elderly man with a short, full, white, fluffy beard and balding head. In commemoration of the miracle attributed to him by tradition at the Council of Nicaea, he is sometimes depicted with Christ over his left shoulder holding out a Gospel Book to him and the Theotokos over his right shoulder holding the omophorion. Because of his patronage of mariners, occasionally Saint Nicholas will be shown standing in a boat or rescuing drowning sailors; Medieval Chants and Polyphony, image on the cover of the Book of Hours of Duke of Berry, 1410.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: In depictions of Saint Nicholas from Bari, he is usually shown as dark-skinned, probably to emphasize his foreign origin. The emphasis on his foreignness may have been intended to enhance Bari's reputation by displaying that it had attracted the patronage of a saint from a far-off country. In Roman Catholic iconography, Saint Nicholas is depicted as a bishop, wearing the insignia of this dignity: a bishop's vestments, a mitre and a crozier. The episode with the three dowries is commemorated by showing him holding in his hand either three purses, three coins or three balls of gold. Depending on whether he is depicted as patron saint of children or sailors, his images will be completed by a background showing ships, children or three figures climbing out of a wooden barrel (the three slaughtered children he resurrected).


title: Saint Nicholas

text: In a strange twist, the three gold balls referring to the dowry affair are sometimes metaphorically interpreted as being oranges or other fruits. As in the Low Countries in medieval times oranges most frequently came from Spain, this led to the belief that the Saint lives in Spain and comes to visit every winter bringing them oranges, other 'wintry' fruits and tales of magical creatures.


title: Saint Nicholas

text: In 1948, Benjamin Britten completed a cantata, "Saint Nicolas" on a text by Eric Crozier which covers the saint's legendary life in a dramatic sequence of events. A tenor soloist appears as Saint Nicolas, with a mixed choir, boys singers, strings, piano duet, organ and percussion.


title: Tropic of Cancer

text: The Tropic of Cancer, which is also referred to as the Northern Tropic, is the most northerly circle of latitude on Earth at which the Sun can be directly overhead. This occurs on the June solstice, when the Northern Hemisphere is tilted toward the Sun to its maximum extent. It also reaches 90 degrees below the horizon at solar midnight on the December Solstice. Using a continuously updated formula, the circle is currently north of the Equator.


title: Tropic of Cancer

text: Its Southern Hemisphere counterpart, marking the most southerly position at which the Sun can be directly overhead, is the Tropic of Capricorn. These tropics are two of the five major circles of latitude that mark maps of Earth, the others being the Arctic and Antarctic circles and the Equator. The positions of these two circles of latitude (relative to the Equator) are dictated by the tilt of Earth's axis of rotation relative to the plane of its orbit, and since the tilt changes, the location of these two circles also changes.


title: Tropic of Cancer

text: In geopolitics, it is known for being the southern limitation on the mutual defence obligation of NATO, as member states of NATO are not obligated to come to the defence of territory south of the Tropic of Cancer.


title: Tropic of Cancer

text: When this line of latitude was named in the last centuries BCE, the Sun was in the constellation Cancer (Latin for "crab") at the June solstice, the time each year that the Sun reaches its zenith at this latitude. Due to the precession of the equinoxes, this is no longer the case; today the Sun is in Gemini at the June solstice. The word "tropic" itself comes from the Greek "trope (τροπή)", meaning turn (change of direction, or circumstances), inclination, referring to the fact that the Sun appears to "turn back" at the solstices.


title: Tropic of Cancer

text: The Tropic of Cancer's position is not fixed, but constantly changes because of a slight wobble in the Earth's longitudinal alignment relative to the ecliptic, the plane in which the Earth orbits around the Sun. Earth's axial tilt varies over a 41,000-year period from 22.1 to 24.5 degrees, and is about 23.4 degrees, which will continue to remain valid for about a millennium. This wobble means that the Tropic of Cancer is currently drifting southward at a rate of almost half an arcsecond (0.468″) of latitude, or , per year. The circle's position was at exactly 23° 27′N in 1917 and will be at 23° 26'N in 2045. The distance between the Antarctic Circle and the Tropic of Cancer is essentially constant as they move in tandem. This is based on an assumption of a constant equator, but the precise location of the equator is not truly fixed. See: equator, axial tilt and circles of latitude for additional details.


title: Tropic of Cancer

text: North of the tropic are the subtropics and the North Temperate Zone. The equivalent line of latitude south of the Equator is called the Tropic of Capricorn, and the region between the two, centered on the Equator, is the tropics.


title: Tropic of Cancer

text: There are approximately 13 hours, 35 minutes of daylight during the summer solstice. During the winter solstice, there are 10 hours, 41 minutes of daylight.


title: Tropic of Cancer

text: Using 23°26'N for the Tropic of Cancer, the tropic passes through the following countries and territories starting at the prime meridian and heading eastward:


title: Tropic of Cancer

text: The climate at the Tropic of Cancer is generally hot and dry, except for cooler highland regions in China, marine environments such as Hawaii, and easterly coastal areas, where orographic rainfall can be very heavy, in some places reaching annually. Most regions on the Tropic of Cancer experience two distinct seasons: an extremely hot summer with temperatures often reaching and a warm winter with maxima around . Much land on or near the Tropic of Cancer is part of the Sahara Desert, while to the east, the climate is torrid monsoonal with a short wet season from June to September, and very little rainfall for the rest of the year.


title: Tropic of Cancer

text: The highest mountain on or adjacent to the Tropic of Cancer is Yu Shan in Taiwan; though it had glaciers descending as low as during the Last Glacial Maximum, none survive and at present no glaciers exist within of the Tropic of Cancer; the nearest currently surviving are the Minyong and Baishui in the Himalayas to the north and on Iztaccíhuatl to the south.


title: Tropic of Cancer

text: According to the rules of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, for a flight to compete for a round-the-world speed record, it must cover a distance no less than the length of the Tropic of Cancer, cross all meridians, and end on the same airfield where it started.


title: Tropic of Cancer

text: For an ordinary circumnavigation the rules are somewhat relaxed and the distance is set to a rounded value of at least .


title: Newton (unit)

text: The newton (symbol: N) is the unit of force in the International System of Units (SI). It is defined as 1 kg⋅m/s, the force which gives a mass of 1 kilogram an acceleration of 1 metre per second per second. It is named after Isaac Newton in recognition of his work on classical mechanics, specifically Newton's second law of motion.


title: Newton (unit)

text: A newton is defined as 1 kg⋅m/s (it is a derived unit which is defined in terms of the SI base units). One newton is therefore the force needed to accelerate one kilogram of mass at the rate of one metre per second squared in the direction of the applied force.


title: Newton (unit)

text: The units "metre per second squared" can be understood as measuring a rate of change in velocity per unit of time, i.e. an increase in velocity by 1 metre per second every second.


title: Newton (unit)

text: In 1946, Conférence Générale des Poids et Mesures (CGPM) Resolution 2 standardized the unit of force in the MKS system of units to be the amount needed to accelerate 1 kilogram of mass at the rate of 1 metre per second squared. In 1948, the 9th CGPM Resolution 7 adopted the name "newton" for this force. The MKS system then became the blueprint for today's SI system of units. The newton thus became the standard unit of force in the (SI), or International System of Units.


title: Newton (unit)

text: In more formal terms, Newton's second law of motion states that the force exerted on an object is directly proportional to the acceleration hence acquired by that object, thus:


title: Newton (unit)

text: where formula_2 represents the mass of the object undergoing an acceleration formula_3. As a result, the "newton" may be defined in terms of the kilogram (formula_4), metre (formula_5), and second (formula_6) as


title: Newton (unit)

text: At average gravity on Earth (conventionally, ), a kilogram mass exerts a force of about 9.8 newtons. An average-sized apple exerts about one newton of force at Earth's surface, which we measure as the apple's weight on Earth.


title: Newton (unit)

text: It is common to see forces expressed in kilonewtons (kN), where . For example, the tractive effort of a Class Y steam train locomotive and the thrust of an F100 jet engine are both around 130 kN.


title: Ghost Rider (2007 film)

text: Ghost Rider is a 2007 American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. The film was written and directed by Mark Steven Johnson, known for helming 2003's "Daredevil" previously, and stars Nicolas Cage as Johnny Blaze / Ghost Rider, with Eva Mendes, Wes Bentley, Sam Elliott, Donal Logue, Matt Long, and Peter Fonda in supporting roles.


title: Ghost Rider (2007 film)

text: "Ghost Rider" was released on February 16, 2007, in the United States. The film was met with negative reviews from critics, but was a box office success, earning $228.7 million worldwide on a $110 million budget. "Ghost Rider" was released on DVD, Blu-ray and UMD on June 12, 2007. A sequel, titled "", was released on February 17, 2012, with Cage reprising his role.


title: Ghost Rider (2007 film)

text: The demon Mephistopheles sends his bounty hunter of the damned, the Ghost Rider, to retrieve the contract of San Venganza for control of a thousand corrupt souls. Seeing that the agreement would give Mephistopheles the power to bring hell on Earth, the Rider refuses and escapes with it. In 1986, Mephistopheles reaches out to 17-year-old Johnny Blaze, offering to cure his father's cancer in exchange for Johnny's soul. The next morning, Johnny awakens to discover the cancer cured, but his father dies later that same day from burns sustained in a stunt accident. Johnny accuses Mephistopheles of causing his father's death, but Mephistopheles considers his side of the contract fulfilled and promises to see Johnny again.


title: Ghost Rider (2007 film)

text: Mephistopheles' son Blackheart comes to Earth and seeks aid from the Hidden (three fallen angels bonded with the elements of air, earth, and water) to find the lost contract of San Venganza.


title: Ghost Rider (2007 film)

text: In 2007, Johnny has become a famous stunt motorcycle rider. He runs into his former sweetheart Roxanne Simpson, now a news reporter, whom he abandoned after his father's death. He convinces her to attend a dinner date.


title: Ghost Rider (2007 film)

text: Mephistopheles makes Johnny the new Ghost Rider and offers to return his soul if he defeats Blackheart. Johnny transforms into the Ghost Rider, his flesh burning off his skeleton, and kills the earth angel Gressil. He then uses the Penance Stare, a power that causes mortals to feel all the pain they have caused others, searing their soul, on a street thug. The next day, he meets a man called the Caretaker, who knows about the Ghost Rider's history. He assures Johnny that what happened was real and will happen again, especially at night, when he is near an evil soul.


title: Ghost Rider (2007 film)

text: Johnny leaves to find Roxanne, who's reporting the previous night's events on the news. At home, Johnny tries to control his firepower. Roxanne comes to visit before leaving town, and Johnny reveals himself as the Devil's bounty hunter. Unconvinced, she walks away in disbelief. After brief imprisonment for murders Blackheart committed, Johnny kills the air angel Abigor and escapes from the police. He returns to the Caretaker, who tells him of his predecessor Carter Slade, a Texas Ranger who hid the contract of San Venganza. At home, Johnny discovers that Blackheart has killed his friend Mack and taken Roxanne hostage, intending to kill her if Johnny does not deliver the contract. Johnny tries to use the Penance Stare on Blackheart, but it proves ineffective as Blackheart has no soul. Blackheart then orders Johnny to retrieve the contract and bring it to him in San Venganza.


title: Ghost Rider (2007 film)

text: Johnny returns to the Caretaker, demanding the contract to save Roxanne. The Caretaker reveals that it is hidden inside a spade, telling Johnny that he is more powerful than his predecessors because he sold his soul for love rather than greed, before giving the contract. The Caretaker then transforms with Blaze, revealing that the Caretaker was actually Carter Slade. Slade then leads Johnny to San Venganza and gives him a lever-action shotgun before bidding farewell and apparently having finally shaken off the curse, fades into dust as he rides away.


title: Ghost Rider (2007 film)

text: After killing the water angel Wallow, Johnny gives Blackheart the contract. He transforms into the Ghost Rider to subdue Blackheart, but is rendered powerless at sunrise. Using the contract to absorb the thousand souls, Blackheart attempts to finish Johnny off, but is distracted when Roxanne uses Johnny's discarded shotgun to separate them. Johnny shoots Blackheart with the gun, holding it in the shadows to allow him to enhance it with his power. Keeping his own body in shadow, he transforms again and uses his Penance Stare to render Blackheart catatonic by burning all the corrupt souls within him. Mephistopheles appears and declares the contract is complete, offering to take back the curse of the Ghost Rider. Determined not to let anyone else make another deal, Johnny declines, declaring that he will use his power against the demon and against all harm that comes to the innocent. Infuriated, Mephistopheles vows to make Johnny pay and disappears with Blackheart's body. Roxanne tells Johnny that he has his second chance and kisses him. Johnny rides away on his motorcycle, preparing for his new life as the Ghost Rider.


title: Ghost Rider (2007 film)

text: Marvel began development for "Ghost Rider" as early as 1992 and were in discussions with potential producers to sell the rights to. In 1997, Gale Anne Hurd was listed as producer, with Jonathan Hensleigh attached to write the script. David S. Goyer developed a script and in May 2000, Marvel announced an agreement with Crystal Sky Entertainment to film "Ghost Rider" with actor Jon Voight attached as a producer. Production was scheduled to start in early 2001 with a budget of $75 million and Johnny Depp expressing interest in the lead role. The following August, Dimension Films joined Crystal Sky to co-finance the film, which would be directed by Stephen Norrington. Producer Avi Arad approached Eric Bana on the possibility of playing Ghost Rider, but opted to cast him in "Hulk" instead. In June 2001, actor and Ghost Rider fan Nicolas Cage entered talks to be cast into the lead role, after having found out about Depp being a possibility for the role and contacted the director to express his own interest. Norrington would drop out within a few months due his commitment to "Tick Tock" and Cage eventually left the project as well. By May 2002, Columbia Pictures sought to acquire rights to "Ghost Rider" in turnaround from Dimension Films following their success with "Spider-Man". They brought Shane Salerno to rewrite Goyer's script.


title: Ghost Rider (2007 film)

text: In April 2003, under Columbia Pictures, director Mark Steven Johnson took over the helm for "Ghost Rider" with Cage returning for the lead role. Johnson, rewriting Salerno's script, was set to begin production of "Ghost Rider" in late 2003 or early 2004, but it was delayed to October. Cage took a temporary leave of absence to film "The Weather Man". "Ghost Rider" production was slated to tentatively begin in May or June 2004. Despite the previous listed actors, Johnson claimed that Cage was the only actor they considered for the role of Johnny Blaze.


title: Ghost Rider (2007 film)

text: "Ghost Rider" had again been delayed to begin in late 2004, but the lack of a workable script continued to delay production. Johnson revealed that the original draft featured the character Scarecrow as the main villain, but the studio convinced him to change it to Blackheart so that audiences did not confuse him for the DC character of the same name. Actor Wes Bentley was cast as the Blackheart, having been introduced to Johnson by Colin Farrell, who had worked with the director in "Daredevil". Actress Eva Mendes was also cast opposite Cage as Roxanne Simpson.


title: Ghost Rider (2007 film)

text: "Ghost Rider" commenced filming in Australia at the Melbourne Docklands film studios on February 14, 2005. In March, actor Peter Fonda (who starred in "Easy Rider") was cast as the villain Mephistopheles. Johnson originally planned to film before an audience at the Docklands Stadium, but instead opted to create a crowd using computer-generated imagery. The director also chose to film in the motorcycle district of Melbourne. By June 2005, principal photography had been completed for "Ghost Rider", which was set for a summer 2006 release.


title: Ghost Rider (2007 film)

text: Instead of a "hard drinking and smoking bad ass" Johnny Blaze, Nicolas Cage decided to give him more depth: "I'm playing him more as someone who... made this deal and he's trying to avoid confronting it, anything he can do to keep it away from him". Cage also explained that Blaze's stunt riding was a form of escape and a way to keep him connected to his deceased father, who taught him to ride. Cage rode a Buell motorcycle for Blaze's stunt cycle, and a heavily customized hardtail chopper named "Grace" which transforms into the "Hell Cycle". The Hell Cycle's wheels, made of pure flames in the comics, were changed to be solid tires covered in flames in order to give the motorcycle more weight onscreen.


title: Ghost Rider (2007 film)

text: The film's visual effects supervisor, Kevin Mack, and the visual effects team at Sony Pictures Imageworks handled the difficult task of creating computer-generated fire on a shot-by-shot basis. Ghost Rider's skull flames were designed to become smaller and blue to display any emotion other than rage. Kevin's Team at Imageworks also created computer-generated motorcycles, chains, water, black goo, dementors and buildings. To pull off such effects as the living morph where the hardtail chopper ("Grace") comes alive to become the "Hell Cycle", Sony enlisted teams of animators, models, effects artists, lighters & "Flame" artists. The department supervisors for these teams at Imageworks included Kevin Hudson, Brian Steiner, JD Cowels, Marco Marenghi, Joe Spadaro, Joanie Karnowski, Vincent Serritella & Patrick Witting. Patrick's team bore the brunt of the work as they created the fire using a custom pipeline that automated the set up starting with Maya animated geometry driving Maya Fluids, imported into Houdini and then rendered & composited on top of the live action plates. Patrick and his team set up the fire process and much of the front end automation was set up by Scott Palleiko and Joe Spadaro. The fire was then tweaked and manipulated to look and move believably by Patrick's eleven man Houdini effects team. All of this was enabled by effects producers Daniel Kuehn and the Digital Effects Supervisor Kee-Suk 'Ken' Hahn.


title: Ghost Rider (2007 film)

text: The digital version of the hell cycle was modeled in detail by Kevin Hudson and based on the practical prop used in the film, it included animatable skeletal hands that came alive to wrap the gas tank during the supernatural transformation scene. The transformation scene was animated by Max Tyrie and finalized by Joe Spadaro. Each part of the "Grace" geometry had to match up and morph with a piece of geometry on the "Hell Cycle".


title: Ghost Rider (2007 film)

text: Ghost Rider's voice was manipulated by sound designer Dane Davis, who won an Academy Award for Sound Editing for "The Matrix". Davis filtered Cage's line readings through three different kinds of animal growls that were played backwards and covered separate frequencies. Davis then amplified the dialogue through a mechanical volumizer. Director Johnson described the sound as a "deep, demonic, mechanical lion's roar".


title: Ghost Rider (2007 film)

text: Christopher Young composed "Ghost Rider" score. In addition, Spiderbait, a band that Johnson befriended during filming in Australia, performed a cover of "" for the end credits.


title: Ghost Rider (2007 film)

text: In May 2005, Sony Pictures launched the official website for "Ghost Rider". The following July, the studio presented a "Ghost Rider" panel at Comic-Con International and screened a teaser for the audience. The teaser, which did not have finalized footage of the film, eventually leaked online. In the same month, Majesco Entertainment Company announced its deal with Marvel to acquire worldwide rights to produce the video game "Ghost Rider" for the PS2, PSP, and Game Boy Advance consoles. In December, the studio presented a first glimpse of Ghost Rider in a ten-second footage piece on the official site. In April 2006, Sideshow Collectibles announced the sale of a Ghost Rider maquette based on the concept art of the film. The following May, domestic and international teaser trailers for "Ghost Rider" were launched at Apple. The Ghost Rider was also featured in a commercial for Jackson Hewitt Tax Services in which the character presented his income tax forms to a clerk for processing to receive a quick refund check.


title: Ghost Rider (2007 film)

text: "Ghost Rider" was originally scheduled to release on August 4, 2006, but the date was moved three weeks earlier to July 14. Sony changed the film's release date once more to February 16, 2007 to help relieve the studio's crowded 2006 calendar.


title: Ghost Rider (2007 film)

text: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released the film on June 12, 2007 as a single-disc Theatrical Cut DVD, two-disc Extended Cut DVD, Blu-ray Disc, and UMD. Special features on the Extended Cut DVD include two commentary tracks, a comic book history feature, and a making of the film featurette.


title: Ghost Rider (2007 film)

text: "Ghost Rider" was commercially released in the United States on February 16, 2007. The film grossed $15,420,123 on its opening day, while earning $45,388,836 for its opening weekend. The film earned $52,022,908 over the four-day President's Day weekend, with a per-theater average of $US 14,374 in 3,619 theaters. The film's total earnings were $228,738,393 worldwide of which $115,802,596 was from North America.


title: Ghost Rider (2007 film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, "Ghost Rider" has an approval rating of 27% based on reviews from 139 critics, with an average rating of . The site's critical consensus states: ""Ghost Rider" is a sour mix of morose, glum histrionics amidst jokey puns and hammy dialogue". Metacritic gave the film a weighted average score of 35 out of 100 based on reviews from 20 critics. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave it a grade "B".


title: Ghost Rider (2007 film)

text: Michael Ordoña of the "Los Angeles Times" and Jeannette Catsoulis of the "New York Times" expressed disappointment in the film. Ordoña said "for a comic book with a rebel spirit, the adaptation feels obediently conventional", and Catsoulis said Johnny Blaze is "more funny than frightening". Although Eric Alt of the "Chicago Tribune" praised the computer-generated effects of the film, he also criticized it, calling it a "clumsy, lifeless outing".


title: Ghost Rider (2007 film)

text: The film was nominated for one Razzie Award for Nicolas Cage as Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actor. However, the film was also nominated for Best Horror Film at the Saturn Awards.


title: Ghost Rider (2007 film)

text: A sequel, entitled "Spirit of Vengeance", was released on February 17, 2012. Cage reprised his role as Johnny Blaze and also portrayed Johnny Blaze in his Ghost Rider form. "Crank" filmmakers Neveldine/Taylor directed the film. The film received worse reviews than its predecessor, but was still a financial success.


title: Ghost Rider (2007 film)

text: When asked about a potential third film, Cage said that it could happen, but without his involvement. In 2013 the rights reverted to Marvel Studios, effectively cancelling plans for a third film. The Robbie Reyes version of the Ghost Rider later appeared in the TV series "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.", set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.


title: Ghost Rider (2007 film)

text: Craig Ferguson, former host of The Late Late Show, has mentioned that his robot skeleton sidekick Geoff Peterson was inspired by Cage's portrayal of Ghost Rider in this film and its sequel.


title: Heather Mills

text: Mills first came to public attention in 1993 when she was a model and was involved in a traffic collision with a police motorcycle in London. The accident resulted in the amputation of her left leg below the knee, but she continued to model using a prosthetic limb and later sold her story to the tabloid journal "News of the World".


title: Heather Mills

text: She began a relationship with Paul McCartney in 2000. They married in June 2002 and Mills gave birth to Beatrice Milly McCartney on 28 October 2003. They separated in 2006, and finalised their divorce in 2008.


title: Heather Mills

text: After her marriage to McCartney, Mills became involved in animal rights advocacy and as of 2012 is a patron of Viva! (Vegetarians' International Voice for Animals) and the Vegetarian and Vegan Foundation. She is also vice-president of the Limbless Association.


title: Heather Mills

text: Mills was born in Aldershot, Hampshire, to John 'Mark' Francis Mills, a former British paratrooper, and his wife, Beatrice Mary Mills (née Finlay), who was the daughter of a colonel in the British Army. John was adopted at the age of seven and grew up in Brighton, where his adoptive parents had a grocery shop. His adoptive father also worked as a mechanic for a Grand Prix racing team. Beatrice was born in India during World War II, and was educated at English boarding schools. John and Beatrice met at Newcastle University, and were married against the wishes of her father, who did not attend the wedding and only saw his daughter once more before he died.


title: Heather Mills

text: Beatrice spoke several languages and played the piano, while Mark played banjo and guitar, liked photography (winning an "Evening Standard" award) and took part in numerous sports. He was very fond of animals (working for the RSPCA for a time), and Heather remembered her family always having a dog and a cat, as well as once having a pet goose and a white nanny goat that was allowed to roam the house owned by Mark's parents in Libanus, near Brecon.


title: Heather Mills

text: The Mills family spent their holidays in Libanus, and also lived there for a time. When Heather was six years old, the family moved north to Alnwick, in Northumberland, but relocated shortly afterwards to a block of flats in Washington, Tyne and Wear, and then on to Cockshott Farm, in Rothbury, Northumberland. Heather attended Usworth Grange Primary school, and then Usworth Comprehensive School in Washington. She visited Usworth Comprehensive in 2003, as guest of honour at a prize-giving event, and to support the school against plans for its closure.


title: Heather Mills

text: Heather later wrote that, when she was eight years old, she and her next-door neighbour were kidnapped and sexually assaulted by a swimming pool attendant. But her neighbour, Margaret Ambler, alleged that Heather's story was "nothing what she made it out to be", that Heather was never a victim, and the pool attendant did not commit suicide, as she had written. Although having received a letter from Heather offering £10,000 to stop a court case, Ambler complained that the story had caused her deep discomfort by bringing the incident to national attention, so she sued for breach of privacy, accepting an out-of-court settlement of £5,000 in compensation, and £54,000 legal costs.


title: Heather Mills

text: Beatrice left home when Heather was nine years old, to live with "Crossroads" actor Charles Stapley, which left her, her older brother Shane, and her younger sister Fiona, in the care of their father John. Heather once said that John threw Shane against a window for making a mess on the carpet with crayons; the window broke and Shane had to be taken to hospital, where John explained that the boy had fallen on some glass in the garden. Fiona said: "Our family were always short of money and our father demanded that we find food and clothes so we turned to shoplifting, learnt to hide from the bailiffs and became experts at domestic duties. I'm not ashamed to say that we were forced to steal because when you are a young child, you'd rather do that than face a beating from your father." John disputed his daughters' allegations that he was violent towards them, later releasing home movies of family holidays in Wales, showing Mills playing happily.


title: Heather Mills

text: When Heather's father was jailed for 18 months after being convicted of fraud, she left home with her sister Fiona to live with their mother and her partner in Clapham, London. Shane went to Brighton to live with his paternal grandparents. Heather later wrote that at the age of 15, she ran away to join a funfair, and lived in a cardboard box under Waterloo station for four months, although Stapley denied this by saying that she occasionally left home at weekends to travel with a young man who worked for a funfair in London. During Heather's stated period of homelessness, her school records indicated that she and Fiona were both enrolled at Usworth comprehensive in Tyne and Wear until April 1983, and at Hydeburn Comprehensive, in Balham, on 6 June that year, where they both stayed until 2 July 1984. Heather remembered that a teacher at the Hydeburn once said, "there's no hope for her at all", and that she left school with no academic qualifications. In the same year, her father had another daughter, Claire Mills, with a new partner. Mills worked for a croissant shop, but was sacked, and vowed "never to work for anyone else again". She wrote in her 1995 autobiography that the owner of a jewellery shop in Clapham gave her a job on Saturdays, but Jim Guy, the owner of Penrose Jewellers, later stated: "Everything she wrote about me was lies, I never gave her a job; she just hung around and made tea. She told me her father was dead. The only thing that was true was she nicked stuff from the shop", which Guy said was worth £20,000. Heather admitted that she had stolen some gold chains and sold them to buy a moped, and when Guy reported the theft, she was put on probation.


title: Heather Mills

text: Alfie Karmal, the son of a Palestinian father and Greek mother, was ten years older than Mills when they met in 1986. Karmal bought her new clothes and Cartier jewellery, and paid for cosmetic surgery to her breasts. Karmal, who had moved into the computer industry, set up a model agency for her, ExSell Management, although it was unsuccessful. In 1987, Mills went to live in Paris, telling Karmal that a cosmetics company had given her a modelling contract, but instead she became the mistress of millionaire Lebanese businessman George Kazan for two years and took part in a nude photo session for a stills-only German sex education manual called "Die Freuden der Liebe" ("The Joys of Love").


title: Heather Mills

text: After returning to London, Mills asked Karmal to marry her. Karmal said yes, but on one condition: "I told her I couldn't marry her until she did something about her compulsive lying, and she agreed to see a psychiatrist for eight weeks. She admitted she had a problem and said it was because she'd been forced to lie as a child by her father." Although Mills proposed to Karmal, she later said that every man she has been out with "has asked me to marry him within a week". The couple married on 6 May 1989. While married to Karmal, she suffered two ectopic pregnancies, so in 1990, Karmal paid for her to go on holiday to Croatia with his children and ex-wife (with whom Mills had become friends), but Mills ended up living with her Slovenian ski instructor, Miloš Pogačar, shortly before the Croatian War began. Mills set up a refugee crisis centre in London, helping over 20 people to escape the war. She drove to deliver donations to Croatia, taking modelling assignments in Austria on the way to pay for the trip, later saying that she "worked on the front line in a war zone in the former Yugoslavia for two years where there were mines everywhere that weren't marked." Karmal and Mills were divorced in 1991, and Mills was engaged to Raffaele Mincione (a bond dealer for the Industrial Bank of Japan) in 1993.


title: Heather Mills

text: On 8 August 1993, Mills and Mincione walked to the corner of De Vere Gardens and Kensington Road, London, but while crossing Kensington Road, Mills was knocked down by a police motorcycle, the last in a convoy of three, which was responding to an emergency call. Mills suffered crushed ribs, a punctured lung, and the loss of her left leg below the knee; a metal plate was later attached to her pelvis. In October 1993, she had another operation that further shortened her leg. Mills was awarded £200,000 by the police authority as recompense for her injuries, () even though the police motorcyclist was later cleared by magistrates of driving without due care and attention. After the accident, Mills sold her story to the "News of the World", and gave other interviews, saying she earned £180,000. She used the money to set up the Heather Mills Health Trust, which existed from 2000 to 2004 and delivered prosthetic limbs to people (particularly children) who had lost limbs after stepping on landmines. Mills often shows people her prosthetic leg, once taking it off during an interview on the American talk show "Larry King Live", in 2002.


title: Heather Mills

text: Mills booked herself into the Hippocrates Health Institute in Florida, which put her on a raw food vegan diet, using wheat grass and garlic poultices to heal her wound. After an operation, Mills discovered that she had been previously identified as having an O rhesus negative blood type, when in fact she was A rhesus negative, which had interfered with her attempts to follow the so-called blood type diet. As her prosthetic leg had to be replaced on a regular basis, and because the size of the amputated stump kept changing as it healed, she had the idea to collect thousands of discarded prosthetic limbs for amputees in Croatia. Mills persuaded the Brixton prison governor to get inmates to dismantle and pack the prosthetic limbs before being transported, which resulted in 22,000 amputees obtaining limbs in addition to the Croatian citizens who were already supplied with prosthetic limbs by the Croatian Institute for Health Insurance, which paid for the fitting of limbs and rehabilitation of patients. The first convoy of limbs arrived in Zagreb in October 1994, and Mills travelled with the convoy to film interviews with some of the recipients for the daytime television programme "Good Morning with Anne and Nick". She received an award in 2001 from Croatia's prime minister, Ivica Račan for the money she raised to help clear that country of landmines.


title: Heather Mills

text: With the help of ghostwriter Pamela Cockerill, Mills wrote a book about her experience, entitled "Out on a Limb" (1995), which was republished in the United States as "A Single Step" (2002). Extracts from "Out on a Limb" were serialised in the "Daily Mail" in March 2000. Mills handed all the proceeds from the book to Adopt-A-Minefield, and stated that it was one of 'the few charities where 100% of their donations goes to clear minefields and survivor assistance'. In 1995, Mills became engaged to British media executive Marcus Stapleton, after being together for 16 days; and was then engaged to documentary filmmaker Chris Terrill in 1999, after 12 days in Cambodia, where they were making a film about landmines. Mills ended their relationship five days before their planned wedding day, later telling friends in the media that she had called the wedding off because Terrill was gay, an MI6 agent, and that his mission was to sabotage her anti-landmine work. Terrill had once told Mills that he had been interviewed by the intelligence services when he was thinking of a career with the Foreign Office, but later said: "I soon realised that Heather had a somewhat elastic relationship with the truth, which she was able to stretch impressively sometimes." Terrill also claims that although Mills said she was a vegetarian at the time, she often cooked her speciality dish, Lancashire hotpot, (which contains lamb) for him; and her former sister-in-law, Dianna Karmal, claims that Mills became a vegetarian after meeting McCartney.


title: Heather Mills

text: In 2003, the Open University awarded Mills an honorary doctorate for her philanthropic work on behalf of amputees. She continues to campaign, in addition to promoting the distribution of prostheses around the world, and has been involved with the development of the Heather Mills McCartney Cosmesis, which gives amputees in America the chance to wear a Dorset Orthopaedic cosmesis without having to travel to the UK. Mills is also vice-president of the Limbless Association. In 2004, Mills received a "Children in Need" award from the annual International Charity Gala in Düsseldorf; and in the same year, the University of California, Irvine gave her their 2004 Human Security Award and created the Heather Mills McCartney Fellowship in Human Security to support graduate students conducting research on pressing human security issues. She is a former Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Association Adopt-A-Minefield programme.


title: Heather Mills

text: Mills met McCartney at the Dorchester Hotel, during the Pride of Britain Awards event on 20 May 1999, which McCartney had attended to present an award to an animal rights activist. Mills presented the Outstanding Bravery Award to Helen Smith, also making an appeal on behalf of the Heather Mills Health Trust. McCartney also presented an award dedicated to his late wife, Linda McCartney, and later talked to Mills about donating to her charity, later giving her £150,000 (). In the autumn of 1999, Mills and her sister Fiona recorded "VO!CE", a song they wrote to raise funds for Mills's charity. After recording the song in Greece, where Fiona lived, running the independent label Coda Records, the sisters stayed overnight at McCartney's estate in Peasmarsh, Sussex, in early November, where McCartney added vocals to the song.


title: Heather Mills

text: Having sparked the interest of the tabloids about his appearances with Mills at events, McCartney appeared publicly beside her at a party in January 2000 to celebrate her 32nd birthday. While on holiday in the Lake District, McCartney proposed to Mills on 23 July 2001, giving her a £15,000 diamond and sapphire ring he had purchased in Jaipur, India, while they were there on holiday.


title: Heather Mills

text: Mills and McCartney were married on 11 June 2002, four years after his first wife Linda had died of breast cancer. The McCartney–Mills wedding was an elaborate ceremony at Castle Leslie, in the village of Glaslough in County Monaghan, Ireland. A song specially composed by McCartney, called "Heather", was played; this had been included on the 2001 album "Driving Rain".


title: Heather Mills

text: Mills said that she liked to cook traditional vegetarian Christmas dinners for McCartney and as many of his family as possible, and that McCartney had encouraged her to give up her self-confessed addiction to chocolate and Snickers bars. When asked by chat-show host Larry King in 2003 how life was with McCartney, Mills replied, "Great, really great", but also said that she was surprised at how tidy McCartney was: "He always cleans up before the cleaner comes. So I said for a while that's crazy, but what's good is if I cook the dinner, he'll clean everything up."


title: Heather Mills

text: In 2003, McCartney played a concert in Red Square, Russia. Vladimir Putin gave the couple a tour of the Kremlin. McCartney later said that Mills's contribution was giving him an acrylic fingernail to protect a finger on his left hand that often bled after playing guitar. McCartney stated that he felt inspired by Mills, as "Being in love with her makes me want to write songs", such as "Too Much Rain" for the album "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard" (2005), and "See Your Sunshine" ('She makes me feel glad/I want her so bad') for his album "Memory Almost Full" (2007). Another composition inspired by Mills was used as the bridal march at their wedding.