title: Great Fire of London

text: Throughout Monday, the fire spread to the west and north. The spread to the south was mostly halted by the river, but it had torched the houses on London Bridge and was threatening to cross the bridge and endanger the borough of Southwark on the south bank of the river. London Bridge, the only physical connection between the City and the south side of the river Thames, had been noted as a deathtrap in the fire of 1633. However, Southwark was preserved by an open space between buildings on the bridge which acted as a firebreak.


title: Great Fire of London

text: The fire's spread to the north reached "the financial heart of the City". The houses of the bankers in Lombard Street began to burn on Monday afternoon, prompting a rush to rescue their stacks of gold coins before they melted. Several observers emphasise the despair and helplessness which seemed to seize Londoners on this second day, and the lack of efforts to save the wealthy, fashionable districts which were now menaced by the flames, such as the Royal Exchange—combined bourse and shopping centre—and the opulent consumer goods shops in Cheapside. The Royal Exchange caught fire in the late afternoon, and was a "smoking shell" within a few hours. John Evelyn, courtier and diarist, wrote:


title: Great Fire of London

text: Evelyn lived in Deptford, four miles (6 km) outside the City, and so he did not see the early stages of the disaster. He went by coach to Southwark on Monday, joining many other upper-class people, to see the view which Pepys had seen the day before of the burning City across the river. The conflagration was much larger now: "the whole City in dreadful flames near the water-side; all the houses from the Bridge, all Thames-street, and upwards towards Cheapside, down to the Three Cranes, were now consumed". In the evening, Evelyn reported that the river was covered with barges and boats making their escape piled with goods. He observed a great exodus of carts and pedestrians through the bottleneck City gates, making for the open fields to the north and east, "which for many miles were strewed with moveables of all sorts, and tents erecting to shelter both people and what goods they could get away. Oh, the miserable and calamitous spectacle!"


title: Great Fire of London

text: Suspicion soon arose in the threatened city that the fire was no accident. The swirling winds carried sparks and burning flakes long distances to lodge on thatched roofs and in wooden gutters, causing seemingly unrelated house fires to break out far from their source and giving rise to rumours that fresh fires were being set on purpose. Foreigners were immediately suspected because of the ongoing Second Anglo-Dutch War. Fear and suspicion hardened into certainty on Monday, as reports circulated of imminent invasion and of foreign undercover agents seen casting "fireballs" into houses, or caught with hand grenades or matches. There was a wave of street violence.


title: Great Fire of London

text: The fears of terrorism received an extra boost from the disruption of communications and news. The General Letter Office in Threadneedle Street, through which post passed for the entire country, burned down early on Monday morning. The "London Gazette" just managed to put out its Monday issue before the printer's premises went up in flames. Suspicions rose to panic and collective paranoia on Monday, and both the Trained Bands and the Coldstream Guards focused less on fire fighting and more on rounding up foreigners and anyone else appearing suspicious, arresting them, rescuing them from mobs, or both.


title: Great Fire of London

text: The inhabitants, especially the upper class, were growing desperate to remove their belongings from the City. This provided a source of income for the able-bodied poor, who hired out as porters (sometimes simply making off with the goods), being especially profitable for the owners of carts and boats. Hiring a cart had cost a couple of shillings the week before the fire; on Monday, it rose to as much as £40, a fortune equivalent to roughly £133,000 in 2021. Seemingly every cart and boat owner in the area of London came to share in these opportunities, the carts jostling at the narrow gates with the panicked inhabitants trying to get out. The chaos at the gates was such that the magistrates briefly ordered the gates shut, in the hope of turning the inhabitants' attention from safeguarding their own possessions to fighting the fire: "that, no hopes of saving any things left, they might have more desperately endeavoured the quenching of the fire."


title: Great Fire of London

text: Monday marked the beginning of organised action, even as order broke down in the streets, especially at the gates, and the fire raged unchecked. Bloodworth was responsible as Lord Mayor for coordinating the firefighting, but he had apparently left the City; his name is not mentioned in any contemporaneous accounts of the Monday's events. In this state of emergency, the King put his brother James, Duke of York, in charge of operations. James set up command posts on the perimeter of the fire. Three courtiers were put in charge of each post, with authority from Charles himself to order demolitions. James and his life guards rode up and down the streets all Monday, "rescuing foreigners from the mob" and attempting to keep order. "The Duke of York hath won the hearts of the people with his continual and indefatigable pains day and night in helping to quench the Fire," wrote a witness in a letter on 8 September.


title: Great Fire of London

text: On Monday evening, hopes were dashed that the massive stone walls of Baynard's Castle, Blackfriars would stay the course of the flames, the western counterpart of the Tower of London. This historic royal palace was completely consumed, burning all night.


title: Great Fire of London

text: Tuesday, 4 September was the day of greatest destruction. The Duke of York's command post at Temple Bar, where Strand meets Fleet Street, was supposed to stop the fire's westward advance towards the Palace of Whitehall. He hoped that the River Fleet would form a natural firebreak, making a stand with his firemen from the Fleet Bridge and down to the Thames. However, early on Tuesday morning, the flames jumped over the Fleet and outflanked them, driven by the unabated easterly gale, forcing them to run for it.


title: Great Fire of London

text: By mid-morning the fire had breached the wide affluent luxury shopping street of Cheapside. James's firefighters created a large firebreak to the north of the conflagration, although it was breached at multiple points. Through the day, the flames began to move eastward from the neighbourhood of Pudding Lane, straight against the prevailing east wind and towards the Tower of London with its gunpowder stores. The garrison at the Tower took matters into their own hands after waiting all day for requested help from James's official firemen, who were busy in the west. They created firebreaks by blowing up houses on a large scale in the vicinity, halting the advance of the fire.


title: Great Fire of London

text: Everybody had thought St. Paul's Cathedral a safe refuge, with its thick stone walls and natural firebreak in the form of a wide empty surrounding plaza. It had been crammed full of rescued goods and its crypt filled with the tightly packed stocks of the printers and booksellers in adjoining Paternoster Row. However, the building was covered in wooden scaffolding, undergoing piecemeal restoration by Christopher Wren. The scaffolding caught fire on Tuesday night. Within half an hour, the lead roof was melting, and the books and papers in the crypt were burning. The cathedral was quickly a ruin.


title: Great Fire of London

text: The wind dropped on Tuesday evening, and the firebreaks created by the garrison finally began to take effect on Wednesday, 5 September. Pepys climbed the steeple of Barking Church, from which he viewed the destroyed City, "the saddest sight of desolation that I ever saw". There were many separate fires still burning, but the Great Fire was over. It took some time until the last traces were put out: coal was still burning in cellars two months later.


title: Great Fire of London

text: In Moorfields, a large public park immediately north of the City, there was a great encampment of homeless refugees. Evelyn was horrified at the numbers of distressed people filling it, some under tents, others in makeshift shacks: "Many [were] without a rag or any necessary utensils, bed or board ... reduced to extremest misery and poverty." Most refugees camped in any nearby available unburned area to see if they could salvage anything from their homes. The mood was now so volatile that Charles feared a full-scale London rebellion against the monarchy. Food production and distribution had been disrupted to the point of non-existence; Charles announced that supplies of bread would be brought into the City every day, and markets set up round the perimeter.


title: Great Fire of London

text: Fears of foreign terrorists and of a French and Dutch invasion were as high as ever among the traumatised fire victims. There was panic on Wednesday night in the encampments at Parliament Hill, Moorfields, and Islington: a light in the sky over Fleet Street started a story that 50,000 French and Dutch immigrants had risen, and were marching towards Moorfields to murder and pillage. Surging into the streets, the frightened mob fell on any foreigners whom they happened to encounter, and were pushed back into the fields by the Trained Bands, troops of Life Guards, and members of the court. The light turned out to be a flareup east of Inner Temple, large sections of which burned despite an effort to halt the fire by blowing up Paper House.


title: Great Fire of London

text: Only a few deaths from the fire are officially recorded, and deaths are traditionally believed to have been few. Porter gives the figure as eight and Tinniswood as "in single figures", although he adds that some deaths must have gone unrecorded and that, besides direct deaths from burning and smoke inhalation, refugees also perished in the impromptu camps. Field argues that the number "may have been higher than the traditional figure of six, but it is likely it did not run into the hundreds": he notes that the "London Gazette" "did not record a single fatality" and that had there been a significant death toll it would have been reflected in polemical accounts and petitions for charity.


title: Great Fire of London

text: Hanson takes issue with the idea that there were only a few deaths, enumerating known deaths from hunger and exposure among survivors of the fire, "huddled in shacks or living among the ruins that had once been their homes" in the cold winter that followed. The dramatist James Shirley and his wife are believed to have died in this way. Hanson maintains that "it stretches credulity to believe that the only papists or foreigners being beaten to death or lynched were the ones rescued by the Duke of York", that official figures say very little about the fate of the undocumented poor, and that the heat at the heart of the firestorms was far greater than an ordinary house fire, and was enough to consume bodies fully or leave only a few skeletal fragments, producing a death toll not of eight, but of "several hundred and quite possibly several thousand."


title: Great Fire of London

text: The material destruction has been computed at 13,200–13,500 houses, 86 or 87 parish churches, 44 Company Halls, the Royal Exchange, the Custom House, St Paul's Cathedral, the Bridewell Palace and other City prisons, the General Letter Office, and the three western city gates—Ludgate, Newgate, and Aldersgate. The monetary value of the loss was estimated at around 9–10 million pounds (equivalent to £ in ). François Colsoni says that the lost books alone valued £150,000. Evelyn believed that he saw as many as "200,000 people of all ranks and stations dispersed, and lying along their heaps of what they could save" in the fields towards Islington and Highgate. The fire destroyed approximately 15 percent of the city's housing.


title: Great Fire of London

text: The Court of Aldermen sought to quickly begin clearing debris and re-establish food supplies. By the Saturday after the fire "the markets were operating well enough to supply the people" at Moorfields. Charles II encouraged the homeless to move away from London and settle elsewhere, immediately issuing a proclamation that "all Cities and Towns whatsoever shall without any contradiction receive the said distressed persons and permit them the free exercise of their manual trades". Royal proclamations were issued to forbid people to "disquiet themselves with rumours of tumults", and to institute a national charitable collection to support fire victims. The official account of the fire in the "London Gazette" concluded that the fire was an accident: "it stressed the role of God in starting the flames and of the king in helping to stem them".


title: Great Fire of London

text: Despite this, residents were inclined to put the blame for the fire on foreigners, particularly Catholics, the French, and the Dutch. Trained bands were put on guard and foreigners arrested in locations throughout England. An example of the urge to identify scapegoats for the fire is the acceptance of the confession of a simple-minded French watchmaker named Robert Hubert, who claimed that he was a member of a gang that had started the Great Fire in Westminster. He later changed his story to say that he had started the fire at the bakery in Pudding Lane. Hubert was convicted, despite some misgivings about his fitness to plead, and hanged at Tyburn on 29 October 1666. After his death, it became apparent that he had been on board a ship in the North Sea, and had not arrived in London until two days after the fire started.


title: Great Fire of London

text: A committee was established to investigate the cause of the Great Fire, chaired by Sir Robert Brooke. It received many submissions alleging a conspiracy of foreigners and Catholics to destroy London. The committee's report was presented to Parliament on 22 January 1667. Versions of the report that appeared in print concluded that Hubert was one of a number of Catholic plotters responsible for starting the fire.


title: Great Fire of London

text: Abroad in the Netherlands, the Great Fire of London was seen as a divine retribution for Holmes's Bonfire, the burning by the English of a Dutch town during the Second Anglo-Dutch War. In Italy, a pamphlet circulated comparing London "to Lucifer in its proud arrogance and its spectacular fall". In Spain, the fire was seen as a "parable of Protestant wickedness".


title: Great Fire of London

text: On 5 October, Marc Antonio Giustinian, Venetian Ambassador in France, reported to the Doge of Venice and the Senate, that Louis XIV announced that he would not "have any rejoicings about it, being such a deplorable accident involving injury to so many unhappy people". Louis had made an offer to his aunt, the British Queen Henrietta Maria, to send food and whatever goods might be of aid in alleviating the plight of Londoners, yet he made no secret that he regarded "the fire of London as a stroke of good fortune for him " as it reduced the risk of French ships crossing the English Channel being taken or sunk by the English fleet. Louis tried to take advantage but an attempt by a Franco-Dutch fleet to combine with a larger Dutch fleet ended in failure on 17 September at the Battle of Dungeness when they encountered a larger English fleet led by Thomas Allin.


title: Great Fire of London

text: A special Fire Court was set up from February 1667 to December 1668, and again from 1670 to February 1676. The aim of the court, which was authorized by the Fire of London Disputes Act and the Rebuilding of London Act 1670, was to deal with disputes between tenants and landlords and decide who should rebuild, based on ability to pay. Cases were heard and a verdict usually given within a day; without the Fire Court, lengthy legal proceedings would have seriously delayed the rebuilding which was so necessary if London was to recover.


title: Great Fire of London

text: Radical rebuilding schemes poured in for the gutted City and were encouraged by Charles. Apart from Wren and Evelyn, it is known that Robert Hooke, Valentine Knight, and Richard Newcourt proposed rebuilding plans. All were based on a grid system, which became prevalent in the American urban landscape. If it had been rebuilt under some of these plans, London would have rivalled Paris in Baroque magnificence. According to archaeologist John Schofield, Wren's plan "would have probably encouraged the crystallisation of the social classes into separate areas", similar to Haussmann's renovation of Paris in the mid-1800s. Wren's plan was particularly challenging to implement because of the need to redefine property titles.


title: Great Fire of London

text: The Crown and the City authorities attempted to negotiate compensation for the large-scale remodelling that these plans entailed, but that unrealistic idea had to be abandoned. Exhortations to bring workmen and measure the plots on which the houses had stood were mostly ignored by people worried about day-to-day survival, as well as by those who had left the capital; for one thing, with the shortage of labour following the fire, it was impossible to secure workmen for the purpose.


title: Great Fire of London

text: Instead, much of the old street plan was recreated in the new City. According to Michael Hebbert, this process "accelerated the development of scientific survey and cartographic techniques", including the development of ichnographical city maps. The reconstruction saw improvements in hygiene and fire safety: wider streets, open and accessible wharves along the length of the Thames, with no houses obstructing access to the river, and, most importantly, buildings constructed of brick and stone, not wood. The Rebuilding of London Act 1666 banned wood from the exterior of buildings, regulated the cost of building materials and the wages of workers, and set out a rebuilding period of three years, after which the land could be sold. A duty was imposed on coal to support civic rebuilding costs. Most private rebuilding was complete by 1671. New public buildings were created on their predecessors' sites; perhaps the most famous is St Paul's Cathedral and its smaller cousins, Christopher Wren's 51 new churches.


title: Great Fire of London

text: English economist Nicholas Barbon illegally reshaped London with his own rebuilding schemes, which developed the Strand, St. Giles, Bloomsbury and Holborn. These were completed despite strict restrictions which stated it was illegal to build between the City of London and Westminster.


title: Great Fire of London

text: In addition to the physical changes to London, the Great Fire had a significant demographic, social, political, economic, and cultural impact. The fire "caused the largest dislocation of London's residential structure in its history until the Blitz". Areas to the west of London received the highest number of new residents, but there was a general increase in the population density of the suburbs surrounding London. Approximately 9,000 new houses were built in the area in which over 13,000 had been destroyed, and by 1674 thousands of these remained unoccupied. Tenants who did remain in London saw a significant decrease in the costs of their lease.


title: Great Fire of London

text: The fire seriously disrupted commercial activity, as premises and stock were destroyed and victims faced heavy debts and rebuilding costs. As a result, economic recovery was slow. The City of London Corporation borrowed heavily to fund its rebuilding, defaulting on its loans in 1683; as a result, it had its privileges stripped by Charles. The commercial district of London had significant vacancies as merchants who had left the city resettled elsewhere. Charitable foundations experienced significant financial losses because of direct fire-related costs as well as loss of rental income. Despite these factors, London retained its "economic pre-eminence" because of the access to shipping routes and its continued central role in political and cultural life in England.


title: Great Fire of London

text: According to Jacob Field, "the reaction to the Fire revealed England's long-standing hostility to Catholics, which manifested itself most visibly at times of crisis". Allegations that Catholics had started the fire were exploited as powerful political propaganda by opponents of pro-Catholic Charles II's court, mostly during the Popish Plot and the exclusion crisis later in his reign. The Royalist perspective of the fire as accidental was opposed by the Whig view questioning the loyalties of Catholics in general and the Duke of York in particular.


title: Great Fire of London

text: In 1667 strict new fire regulations were imposed in London to reduce the risk of future fire and allow any fire that did occur to be more easily extinguished. The fire resulted in the emergence of the first insurance companies, starting with Nicholas Barbon's Fire Office. These companies hired private firemen and offered incentives for clients who took measures to prevent fires—for example, a cheaper rate for brick versus wooden buildings. Confusion between parish and private firefighting efforts led the insurance companies in 1832 to form a combined firefighting unit which would eventually become the London Fire Brigade. The fire led to a focus in building codes on restricting the spread of fire between units.


title: Great Fire of London

text: The Great Plague epidemic of 1665 is believed to have killed a sixth of London's inhabitants, or 80,000 people, and it is sometimes suggested that the fire saved lives in the long run by burning down so much unsanitary housing with their rats and their fleas which transmitted the plague, as plague epidemics did not recur in London after the fire. During the Bombay plague epidemic two centuries later, this belief led to the burning of tenements as an antiplague measure. The suggestion that the fire prevented further outbreaks is disputed; the Museum of London identifies this as a common myth about the fire.


title: Great Fire of London

text: On Charles' initiative, a Monument to the Great Fire of London was erected near Pudding Lane, designed by Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke, standing tall. In 1681, accusations against the Catholics were added to the inscription on the Monument which read, in part, "Popish frenzy which wrought such horrors, is not yet quenched". The inscription remained until after the passage of the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 when it was removed in 1830 following a successful campaign by City Solicitor Charles Pearson. Another monument marks the spot where the fire is said to have died out: the Golden Boy of Pye Corner in Smithfield.


title: Great Fire of London

text: Although it was never implemented, Wren's plan for the rebuilding of London has itself had a significant cultural impact. The decision not to implement the plan was criticized by later authors such as Daniel Defoe and was frequently cited by advocates for public health. It also featured heavily in textbooks for the nascent specialty of city planning and was referenced by reports on the reconstruction of London after the Second World War. Wren presenting the plan was the subject of a Royal Mail stamp issued in 2016, one of six in a set commemorating the 350th anniversary of the Great Fire.


title: Great Fire of London

text: Cultural responses to the Great Fire emerged in poetry, "one of the chief modes of media in seventeenth-century England", as well as in religious sermons. At least 23 poems were published in the year following the fire. More recent cultural works featuring the Great Fire include the 1841 novel "Old St. Paul's" (and the 1914 film adaptation), the 2006 novel "Forged in the Fire", the 2014 television drama "The Great Fire", and the musical "Bumblescratch", which was performed as part of the commemorations of the 350th anniversary of the Great Fire.


title: X2 (film)

text: X2 (also marketed as X2: X-Men United, and internationally as X-Men 2) is a 2003 American superhero film directed by Bryan Singer and written by Michael Dougherty, Dan Harris and David Hayter, from a story by Singer, Hayter and Zak Penn. The film is based on the X-Men superhero team appearing in Marvel Comics. It is the sequel to "X-Men" (2000), as well as the second installment in the "X-Men" film series, and features an ensemble cast including Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellen, Halle Berry, Famke Janssen, James Marsden, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Brian Cox, Alan Cumming, Bruce Davison, Shawn Ashmore, Aaron Stanford, Kelly Hu, and Anna Paquin. Its plot, inspired by the graphic novel "", concerns the genocidal Colonel William Stryker leading an assault on Professor Xavier's school to build his own version of Xavier's mutant-tracking computer Cerebro, in order to destroy every mutant on Earth and to save the human race from them, forcing the X-Men to team up with the Brotherhood of Mutants, their former enemies, to stop Stryker and save the mutant race.


title: X2 (film)

text: Development on the sequel began shortly after the first film was released on July 14, 2000 by 20th Century Fox. David Hayter and Zak Penn wrote separate scripts, combining what they felt to be the best elements of both scripts into one screenplay. Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris were eventually hired to rewrite the work, and changed the characterizations of Beast, Angel, and Lady Deathstrike. Sentinels and the Danger Room were set to appear before being deleted because of budget concerns from Fox. The film's premise was influenced by the Marvel Comics storylines "Return to Weapon X" and "". Filming began in June 2002 and ended that November, mostly taking place at Vancouver Film Studios, the largest North American production facility outside of Los Angeles. Production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas adapted similar designs by John Myhre from the previous film.


title: X2 (film)

text: "X2" was released in the United States on May 2, 2003 by 20th Century Fox, and received positive reviews for its storyline, action sequences, and performances. The film grossed $407million worldwide, and received eight Saturn Awards nominations. A sequel, "", was released on May 26, 2006.


title: X2 (film)

text: At the White House, brainwashed teleporting mutant Nightcrawler attacks the President of the United States, wounding many agents. He is shot and retreats. Meanwhile, Logan explores an abandoned military installation at Alkali Lake in Alberta for clues to his past, but finds nothing. Jean Grey has been having premonitions and struggles to concentrate as her powers become increasingly difficult to control. Later, Logan returns to Professor Xavier's school for mutants, and Xavier tracks Nightcrawler using Cerebro. Xavier and Cyclops go to question the imprisoned Magneto about the attack, while X-Men Storm and Jean Grey retrieve Nightcrawler. Military scientist Colonel William Stryker approaches the president and receives approval to investigate Xavier's mansion for their ties to mutants in the wake of the recent attack. Stryker's forces invade the school and abduct some of the students. Colossus leads the remaining students to safety while Logan, Rogue, Iceman, and Pyro escape, and Stryker's assistant Yuriko Oyama captures Cyclops and Xavier. During the attack, Logan confronts Stryker, who addresses him as Wolverine and seems to know about his past.


title: X2 (film)

text: The shape-shifting Mystique gains information about Magneto's prison and helps him escape while also discovering schematics for a second Cerebro. Logan, Rogue, Iceman, and Pyro visit Iceman's parents and brother in Boston and meet up with Storm, Jean, and Nightcrawler. The X-Jet is attacked by fighter jets while flying back to the mansion and is shot down, but Magneto saves them from crashing. Magneto explains to the group that Stryker has built the second Cerebro to use it and Xavier to telepathically kill every mutant on the planet. Stryker's son, Jason, is a mutant with mind-controlling powers, whom Stryker will use to force Xavier to do this. Stryker had also previously used Jason's powers to orchestrate Nightcrawler's attack as a pretense to gain approval to invade Xavier's mansion. Magneto also tells Wolverine that Stryker was the man who grafted his adamantium skeleton onto his bones and is responsible for his amnesia. Jean reads Nightcrawler's mind and determines that Stryker's base is underground in a dam at Alkali Lake.


title: X2 (film)

text: Disguised as Logan, Mystique infiltrates Stryker's base. She lets the rest of the mutants in and Magneto and Mystique go to disable Cerebro before the brainwashed Xavier can activate it. Storm and Nightcrawler rescue the captured students, and Jean fights a mind-controlled Cyclops; their battle frees Cyclops but damages the dam, which begins to rupture. Logan finds Stryker in an adamantium smelting lab and remembers it as where he received his adamantium skeleton. Logan fights and kills Yuriko, then chases Stryker to a helicopter pad and chains him to the helicopter's wheel. Magneto stops Cerebro and, using Mystique impersonating Stryker to command Jason, has Xavier redirect its powers on humans. The two subsequently use Stryker's helicopter to escape, accompanied by Pyro, who has been swayed to Magneto's views. Nightcrawler teleports Storm inside Cerebro, where she creates a snowstorm to break Jason's concentration and free Xavier from his control.


title: X2 (film)

text: The X-Men flee the dam as water engulfs it, killing Stryker, but the X-Jet loses all power and struggles to take flight as the flood water rushes towards them. Jean sneaks off the jet and telepathically wishes the team goodbye. She holds back the water and raises the jet above it as flames erupt from her body, until she lets go and allows the flood to crash down upon her, presumably killing her. The X-Men give Stryker's files to the president, and Xavier warns him that humans and mutants must work together to build peace. Back at the school, Xavier, Cyclops, and Logan remember Jean, and Xavier begins to hold a class. Meanwhile, a Phoenix-like shape rises from the flooded Alkali Lake.


title: X2 (film)

text: Additionally, Daniel Cudmore portrayed Peter Rasputin / Colossus: a mutant with the ability to turn his body into metal, the character's importance was reduced to a cameo, Michael Reid MacKay portrayed Jason 143, William Stryker's son who had the ability to create illusions. Keely Purvis portrayed the little girl whom Jason used as an avatar when controlling Xavier. Cotter Smith portrayed US President McKenna. Cameo appearances include Katie Stuart as Kitty Pryde, Bryce Hodgson as Artie, Kea Wong as Jubilation Lee / Jubilee, Steve Bacic as Dr. Hank McCoy and Shauna Kain as Theresa Rourke / Siryn. Gambit's cameo was shot, but the footage was not used in the final cut. Also in the final scene with Xavier, a girl is seen dressed in a Native American style jacket, as well as a blond haired boy dressed in blue, played by Layke Anderson. These were confirmed to be Danielle Moonstar and Douglas Ramsey.<ref name="writers/producers">Michael Dougherty, Dan Harris, David Hayter, Lauren Shuler Donner, Ralph Winter, DVD audio commentary, 2003, 20th Century Fox</ref> Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris, the film's writers, cameo in scenes of Wolverine's Weapon X flashbacks as surgeons.


title: X2 (film)

text: The financial and critical success of "X-Men" persuaded 20th Century Fox to immediately commission a sequel. Starting in November 2000,<ref name="second/uncanny">"The Second Uncanny Issue of X-Men: Making X2" Documentary, 2003, 20th Century Fox</ref> Bryan Singer researched various storylines (one of them being the Legacy Virus) of the "X-Men" comic book series. Singer wanted to study, "the human perspective, the kind of blind rage that feeds into warmongering and terrorism," citing a need for a "human villain". Bryan and producer Tom DeSanto envisioned "X2" as the film series' equivalent to "The Empire Strikes Back", in that the characters are "all split apart, and then dissected, and revelations occur that are significant... the romance comes to fruition and a lot of things happen". Producer Avi Arad announced a planned November 2002 theatrical release date, while David Hayter and Zak Penn were hired to write separate scripts. Hayter and Penn combined what they felt to be the best elements of both scripts into one screenplay. Singer and Hayter worked on another script, finishing in October 2001. Penn was partially hired when he convinced Singer to not adapt "The Dark Phoenix Saga" storyline for the film, feeling that the franchise's universe should be established much more before "going cosmic". Instead, in what he feels was his major contribution to the project, Penn based the film's outline on Chris Claremont's graphic novel "" before leaving to work in another movie.


title: X2 (film)

text: Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris were hired to rewrite Hayter and Penn's script in February 2002, turning down the opportunity to write "". Angel and Beast appeared in early drafts, but were deleted because there were too many characters. Dr. Hank McCoy can be seen on a television interview in one scene. Beast's appearance was to resemble Jim Lee's 1991 artwork of the character in the series "". Angel was to have been a mutant experiment by William Stryker, transforming into Archangel. A reference to Dougherty's and Harris's efforts to include Angel remains in the form of an X-ray on display in one of Stryker's labs. Tyler Mane was to reprise as Sabretooth before the character was deleted. In Hayter's script, the role eventually filled by Lady Deathstrike was Anne Reynolds, a character who appeared in "God Loves, Man Kills" as Stryker's personal assistant/assassin. Singer changed her to Deathstrike, citing a need for "another kick-ass mutant". There was to be more development on Cyclops and Professor X being brainwashed by Stryker. The scenes were shot, but Fox cut them out because of time length and story complications. Hayter was disappointed, feeling that James Marsden deserved more screentime.


title: X2 (film)

text: Rewrites were commissioned once more, specifically to give Halle Berry more screen time. This was because of her recent popularity in "Monster's Ball", earning her the Academy Award for Best Actress. A budget cut meant that the Sentinels and the Danger Room were dropped. Guy Hendrix Dyas and a production crew had already constructed the Danger Room set. In the words of Dyas, "The control room [of the Danger Room] was a large propeller that actually rotated around the room so that you can sit up [in that control room] and travel around the subject who is in the middle of the control room. The idea for the traveling is that if it's a mutant has some kind of mind control powers they can't connect."


title: X2 (film)

text: Producer Lauren Shuler Donner had hoped to start filming in March 2002, but production did not begin until June 17, 2002 in Vancouver and ended by November. Over sixty-four sets were used in thirty-eight different locations. The film crew encountered problems when there was insufficient snow in Kananaskis, Alberta for them to use for some scenes. A large amount of fake snow was then applied. The idea to have Jean Grey sacrifice herself at the end and to be resurrected in a third installment was highly secretive. Singer did not tell Famke Janssen until midway through filming. Cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel and two stunt drivers nearly died when filming the scene in which Pyro has a dispute with police officers. James Bamford worked as Hugh Jackman's stunt double for rehearsals until he suffered an injury; due to Bamford's looks, Singer asked him to play the role of Gambit for a cameo appearance, but Gambit's scene was deleted from the film's final cut.


title: X2 (film)

text: John Ottman composed the score. Ottman established a new title theme, as well as themes specifically for Magneto, Jean Grey, Nightcrawler, Mystique, and Pyro.


title: X2 (film)

text: Singer and Sigel credited "Road to Perdition" as a visual influence. Though Sigel shot the first "X-Men" in anamorphic format, he opted to shoot "X2" in Super 35. Sigel felt the recent improvements in film stocks and optics increased the advantages of using spherical lenses, even if the blowup to anamorphic must be accomplished optically instead of digitally. Sigel noted, "If you think about it, every anamorphic lens is simply a spherical lens with an anamorphizer on it. They'll never be as good as the spherical lenses that they emulate." Cameras that were used during filming included two Panaflex Millenniums and a Millennium XL, as well as an Aaton 35mm. Singer also used zoom lenses more often than he did in his previous films, while Sigel used a Frazier lens specifically for dramatic moments.


title: X2 (film)

text: The Blackbird was redesigned and increased in virtual size from 60 feet to 85 feet. John Myhre served as the production designer on the first film, but Singer hired Guy Hendrix Dyas for "X2", which was his first film as a production designer. For scenes involving Stryker's Alkali Base, Vancouver Film Studios, the largest sound stage in North America, was reserved.


title: X2 (film)

text: Visual effects supervisor Mike Fink was not satisfied with his work on the previous film, despite the fact it nearly received an Academy Award nomination. Up to 520 shots were created for "X-Men", while "X2" commissioned roughly 800. A new computer program was created by Rhythm and Hues for the dogfight tornado scene. Cinesite was in charge of scenes concerning Cerebro, enlisting a 20-man crew. The Alkali Lake Dam miniature was high and wide. Cinesite created 300 visual effects shots, focusing on character animation, while Rhythm and Hues created over 100.


title: X2 (film)

text: The first cut of "X2" was rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America, due to violent shots with Logan when Stryker's army storms the X-Mansion. A few seconds were cut to secure a PG-13 rating.


title: X2 (film)

text: The film premiered in London on April 24, 2003, and then had the widest release ever, opening on May 2, 2003, in 93 markets, on 7,316 screens overseas and in 3,741 theaters in the United States and Canada.


title: X2 (film)

text: "X2" opened May 2, 2003, accumulating $85.6million on its opening weekend in 3,749 theaters in the United States and Canada. Overseas, it grossed $69.27million in its first five days, including previews. The film exceeded "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" in terms of number of screenings. "X2" would hold this record until the following year, when it was taken by "Shrek 2". It surpassed "" for having the highest opening weekend for a 20th Century Fox film. For two weeks, it stayed in the number 1 spot before being displaced by "The Matrix Reloaded". "X2", "The Matrix Reloaded", "Finding Nemo", "Bruce Almighty" and "" all became the first five films to cross the $200-million mark at the box office in one summer season. The film grossed $214.9million in the United States and Canada, the sixth-highest-grossing film of 2003, earning $192.8million overseas, for a worldwide total of $407.7million, the ninth-highest-grossing film of 2003. It earned $107million in its first five days when released on DVD.


title: X2 (film)

text: "X2" received positive reviews, with praise aimed at the acting, action, and story. The review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reports that of critics gave the film a positive review, based on reviews with an average score of . The website's consensus states: "Tightly scripted, solidly acted, and impressively ambitious, "X2: X-Men United" is bigger and better than its predecessor—and a benchmark for comic sequels in general." Metacritic calculated a weighted average score of 68/100 based on reviews from 37 critics, indicating generally favorable reviews. Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade A on scale of A to F.


title: X2 (film)

text: Roger Ebert was impressed by how Singer was able to handle so many characters in one film, but felt "the storyline did not live up to its potential". In addition, Ebert wrote that the film's closing was perfect for a future installment, giving "X2" three out of four stars. Kenneth Turan of the "Los Angeles Times" wrote that it was rare for a sequel to be better than its predecessor. Turan observed that the film carried emotional themes that are present in the world today and commented that "the acting was better than usual [for a superhero film]". Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" wrote that Hugh Jackman heavily improved his performance, concluding ""X2" is a summer firecracker. It's also a tribute to outcasts, teens, gays, minorities, even Dixie Chicks." "Empire" called "X2" the best comic book movie of all time in 2006, while "Wizard" named the film's ending as the 22nd greatest cliffhanger of all time. In May 2007, Rotten Tomatoes listed "X2" as the fifth greatest comic book film of all time.


title: X2 (film)

text: Mick LaSalle of the "San Francisco Chronicle" was critical of the storyline, special effects and action scenes. Joe Morgenstern of "The Wall Street Journal" specifically referred to the film as "fast-paced, slow-witted". Stephen Hunter of "The Washington Post" wrote "Of the many comic book superhero movies, this is by far the lamest, the loudest, the longest". Richard Corliss of "Time" argued that Singer depended too much on seriousness and that he did not have enough sensibilities to communicate to an audience.


title: X2 (film)

text: The film won the Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film. In addition, Bryan Singer (Direction), Dan Harris and Michael Dougherty (Writing), and John Ottman (Music) all received nominations. It also received nominations for its costumes, makeup, special effects and DVD release, amounting to a total of eight nominations. The Political Film Society honored "X2" in the categories of Human Rights and Peace, while the film was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form).


title: X2 (film)

text: The film's score was composed by John Ottman, a regular collaborator with film director Bryan Singer. The soundtrack album "X2: Original Motion Picture Score" was released on April 29, 2003. Ottman used a sample of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "Requiem" as the basis for the music in scenes featuring Nightcrawler. As well as the music on the album, tracks by Conjure One and 'N Sync also featured in the film.


title: X2 (film)

text: On July 19, 2012, La-La Land Records and Fox Music issued an expanded version of Ottman's score, including the specially recorded version of Alfred Newman's 20th Century Fox fanfare incorporating Ottman's film theme.


title: X2 (film)

text: "X2" was released on DVD in widescreen and fullscreen formats as well as VHS in 2003. The two-disc DVD includes over three hours of special features. "X2" was also released on Blu-ray and additionally as a Blu-ray, DVD and digital-copy combination in 2011 with special features. The film is included in the 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray set "X-Men: 3-Film Collection", which was released on September 25, 2018.


title: X2 (film)

text: A video game titled "" was released in April 2003, for PlayStation 2, GameCube, Microsoft Windows, Xbox and Game Boy Advance. The game was a promotional tie-in for the film. Patrick Stewart reprises his role as Professor X, while Hugh Jackman's likeness was featured on the cover as Wolverine.


title: X2 (film)

text: Another game, titled "", was released in May 2006, for PlayStation 2, GameCube, Microsoft Windows, Xbox, Xbox 360, Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS. The game bridges the time period between "X2" and "X-Men: The Last Stand" and uses several voice actors from the film franchise.


title: Alfonso Ribeiro

text: Alfonso Lincoln Ribeiro (born September 21, 1971) is an American actor and television host. He is best known for his roles as Alfonso Spears on the sitcom "Silver Spoons", Carlton Banks on the NBC sitcom "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air", and Maxwell Stanton on "In the House".


title: Alfonso Ribeiro

text: He is the current host of ABC's "America's Funniest Home Videos", replacing Tom Bergeron, who left after 15 years. Ribeiro has hosted the GSN game show "Catch 21", the ABC Family show "Spell-Mageddon", and the television show "Dance 360". He also starred in the title role of the Broadway musical "The Tap Dance Kid" and took part in the 13th season of the British reality show "I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!" Ribeiro won Season 19 of "Dancing with the Stars" with professional partner Witney Carson.


title: Alfonso Ribeiro

text: Ribeiro was born in New York City in the Riverdale neighborhood of The Bronx to Afro-Trinidadian parents. His paternal grandfather was Albert Ribeiro, a Trinidadian calypsonian of African and Portuguese descent, known professionally as Lord Hummingbird.


title: Alfonso Ribeiro

text: Ribeiro began his career at age 8. He first gained recognition in 1983 when he played a leading role in the Broadway musical "The Tap Dance Kid". He received positive reviews for his performance and was nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award. Ribeiro appeared as a dancer in a Pepsi commercial that featured Michael Jackson in 1984; a rumor spread that Ribeiro died from snapping his neck while dancing in the commercial. The same year, Ribeiro was cast as Rick Schroder's best friend on the TV series "Silver Spoons".


title: Alfonso Ribeiro

text: In 1985, Ribeiro appeared as himself in a commercial on MTV, advertising a dance instruction book he authored, "Alfonso's Breakin' & Poppin' Book". He also released four 12-inch singles on Prism Records, including the 1984 track, "Dance Baby".


title: Alfonso Ribeiro

text: Ribeiro's most prominent role was as Carlton Banks, the cousin of Will Smith's lead character, on the NBC sitcom "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" from September 1990 to May 1996. Carlton was known for frequently dancing to Tom Jones' "It's Not Unusual", a dance routine that gained fame as "The Carlton".


title: Alfonso Ribeiro

text: Ribeiro competed as one of the celebrity singers on the reality television show "Celebrity Duets" in September 2006, winning over the runner-up Lucy Lawless. In July 2008, Ribeiro hosted the game show "Catch 21" on GSN. He directed some episodes of "Meet the Browns" and a majority of the Season 2 episodes of the "Are We There Yet?" television series. Ribeiro hosted his second game show "Spell-Mageddon", on ABC Family, in 2013.


title: Alfonso Ribeiro

text: On May 24, 2013, Ribeiro made a cameo appearance on "The Graham Norton Show" to perform "The Carlton Dance", with show guests Will and Jaden Smith. In November of that year, Ribeiro took part as a contestant in the thirteenth series of the British reality show, "I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here". He was eliminated from the show on December 5, 2013, finishing in seventh place.


title: Alfonso Ribeiro

text: On September 4, 2014, Ribeiro was announced as one of the celebrities who would compete on Season 19 of "Dancing with the Stars". He partnered with professional dancer Witney Carson. He became the fourth celebrity dancer in the show's history to receive a 9 from each judge in week one. On November 25, 2014, Ribeiro and Carson won the competition. In September 2015, he returned as a guest judge in week three of Season 21, and he substituted for Tom Bergeron as host the following week.


title: Alfonso Ribeiro

text: On May 19, 2015, Ribeiro was named Bergeron's successor to host "America's Funniest Home Videos". In July 2015, Ribeiro made a cameo appearance in the music video for "All Night" by pop-rock band R5.


title: Alfonso Ribeiro

text: In October 2018, he was announced as the host of the UK game show "Money Tree". On October 12, 2018, Ribeiro was announced to sit in for Bruno Tonioli as guest judge on "Strictly Come Dancing" for week 5. He joined regular judges Craig Revel Horwood, Darcey Bussell, and Shirley Ballas. This also occurred for week 5 of the 2019 series. He also appeared as a contestant on a special Child TV Stars episode of "Weakest Link" in 2001. He made it into the final round but lost to Keshia Knight-Pulliam.


title: Alfonso Ribeiro

text: "Catch 21" was revived in 2019, and Ribeiro returned as the host. His role earned him a 2020 Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Game Show Host, but he lost to Alex Trebek. He earned another nomination the following year, but again lost to Trebek.


title: Alfonso Ribeiro

text: In 2020, Ribeiro starred in a series of commercials for State Farm Insurance as a fanatic of Chris Paul. In 2021, Ribeiro voiced a character in "Muppets Haunted Mansion".


title: Alfonso Ribeiro

text: On July 6, 2019, the syndicated radio show "The 90s with Alfonso Ribeiro" launched on multiple radio stations across the country via Sun Broadcast Group. Radio veteran Daena "DK" Kramer joined him as co-host. The three-hour weekly show celebrates 1990s music and culture while Alfonso and DK share their stories, pop culture facts and memories from the 1990s.


title: Alfonso Ribeiro

text: Ribeiro was married to Robin Stapler from January 2002 until August 2006. They have a daughter, born in October 2002.


title: Alfonso Ribeiro

text: Ribeiro married Angela Unkrich on October 13, 2012, following a three-month engagement. The two live in Los Angeles and have three children born in 2013, 2015, and 2019.


title: Alfonso Ribeiro

text: Ribeiro competed in several editions of the Toyota Pro/Celebrity Race car race at Long Beach, earning an overall win in 2015 and celebrity class wins in 1994, 1995 and 2016. He also worked as radio spotter for CART racecar driver Bryan Herta, and performed the national anthem at CART and IndyCar Series races.


title: Alfonso Ribeiro

text: In December 2018, Ribeiro, along with Instagram star Russell Horning, aka Backpack Kid, and rapper Terrence Ferguson, aka 2 Milly, brought a lawsuit against Epic Games for their decision to feature respective choreographies in the popular game "Fortnite". In Ribeiro's case, his "Carlton dance", which he made popular in the 1990s as a cast member of "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air", is one of the many dances that "Fortnite" players can purchase for their avatars. Epic Games declined to comment on the lawsuits. The U.S. Copyright Office denied him a copyright for his dance on January 13, 2019. On March 7, 2019, Ribeiro dropped the lawsuit.


title: Alfonso Ribeiro

text: Ribeiro was partnered with Witney Carson for season 19. On November 25, 2014, Ribeiro and Carson were declared the season's champions.


title: Alfonso Ribeiro

text: In November 2017, Ribeiro returned to 25th season in Week eight, to participate in a trio Jive with Frankie Muniz and his professional partner Witney Carson.


title: Alfonso Ribeiro

text: The American public scored the dance in place of Goodman with the averaged score being counted alongside the three other judges.


title: School of Rock

text: School of Rock (titled onscreen as The School of Rock) is a 2003 comedy film directed by Richard Linklater, produced by Scott Rudin, and written by Mike White. The film stars Jack Black, Joan Cusack, Mike White, and Sarah Silverman. Black plays struggling rock guitarist Dewey Finn, who is fired from his band and subsequently poses as a substitute teacher at a prestigious prep school. After witnessing the musical talent of the students, Dewey forms a band of fourth-graders to attempt to win the upcoming Battle of the Bands and use his winnings to pay his rent.


title: School of Rock

text: "School of Rock" was released on October 3, 2003, by Paramount Pictures, grossing $131 million worldwide on a $35 million budget. The film received positive reviews from critics, with praise for Black's performance and humor. Disregarding inflation, it was the highest-grossing music-themed comedy of all time until the release of "Pitch Perfect 2" in 2015. A stage musical adaptation opened on Broadway in December 2015, and a television adaptation for Nickelodeon premiered on March 12, 2016.


title: School of Rock

text: Rock band No Vacancy performs at a nightclub three weeks before auditioning for the Battle of the Bands. Guitarist Dewey Finn creates on-stage antics, including a stage dive that abruptly ends the performance. The next morning, Dewey's roommate Ned Schneebly and Ned's domineering girlfriend, Patty Di Marco, inform Dewey he must either pay his overdue share of the rent or move out. When Dewey meets No Vacancy at a rehearsal session, he is informed that he has been fired from the band and replaced by another guitarist, Spider. Later, while trying to sell some of his equipment, Dewey answers a phone call from Rosalie Mullins, the principal of the Horace Green prep school, inquiring for Ned about a short-term position as a substitute teacher. Desperate for money, Dewey impersonates Ned and is hired. On his first day at the school, Dewey, who does not know how to spell "Schneebly", adopts the name "Mr. S" and spends the day behaving erratically, much to the students' confusion.


title: School of Rock

text: The next day, after observing the students' talent in music class, Dewey devises a plan to form a new band to audition for Battle of the Bands. He casts Zack Mooneyham as lead guitarist, Freddy Jones as drummer, cello player Katie on bass, pianist Lawrence on keyboards, and himself as lead vocalist and guitarist. He assigns the rest of the class to various roles of co-lead and backup singers, groupies, and roadies, with overachiever Summer Hathaway as band manager. The project takes over normal lessons, but helps the students to embrace their talents and overcome their insecurities. He reassures Lawrence, who is worried about not being cool enough for the band, Zack, whose overbearing father disapproves of rock, and Tomika, an overweight girl who is too self-conscious to audition for co-lead and backup singer despite having a powerful voice. During one lesson, he assures the kids that rock and roll can help them stand up for themselves. Band "groupies" Michelle and Eleni, with Summer's approval, pitch the band name "The School of Rock".


title: School of Rock

text: Two weeks into his hiring, Dewey sneaks the key band members out of school to audition for Battle of the Bands while the rest of the class stay behind to maintain cover. The group is rejected because the bill is full, but are accepted after Summer tricks the staff into thinking that the kids are terminally ill. The next day, Rosalie decides to check on Dewey's teaching progress, forcing Dewey to teach the students actual academic material. The day before Battle of the Bands, a parents' night takes place at the school, during which the parents question Dewey's teaching methods. That same night, Ned receives a paycheck from the school via mail and realizes that Dewey impersonated him. He, Patty, and the police arrive at the school and confront him. When Rosalie arrives, Dewey reveals his true identity, admits he is not a licensed teacher and then flees. Back at home, disappointed with Dewey for impersonating him, Ned tells Dewey that he should move out.


title: School of Rock

text: The next morning, the parents angrily confront Rosalie at her office. Not wanting their hard work to go to waste, the kids sneak out of the school. When the new substitute discovers that the kids are missing, Rosalie and the parents race to Battle of the Bands, but are forced to buy tickets in order to enter. A school bus comes to pick up Dewey, who leads the kids to the competition and decides that they should play a song Zack had written earlier. Meanwhile, having had enough of being constantly pushed around, Ned finally stands up to Patty, and goes to see the School of Rock perform. Initially dismissed as a gimmick, the band wins over the entire crowd. Much to Dewey's disappointment, No Vacancy wins, but the audience chants for School of Rock and demands an encore. While upset at the deception, the parents admit to being impressed by the kids' talent and confidence on stage, alongside Rosalie becoming ecstatic.


title: School of Rock

text: Some time later, an after-school program known as the School of Rock opens and Summer obtains for the band many offers for shoes and record deals. Dewey continues to coach the students he played with before, while Ned, who has rediscovered his passion for rock music, teaches beginner students.


title: School of Rock

text: Screenwriter Mike White's concept for the film was inspired by The Langley Schools Music Project. Jack Black once witnessed a stage dive gone wrong involving Ian Astbury of rock band The Cult, which made its way into the film. Many scenes from the movie were shot around the New York City area. The school portrayed in "School of Rock" is actually Main Hall at Wagner College in Staten Island, New York. In the DVD commentary, the kids say that all of the hallway scenes were shot in one hallway. One of the theaters used in many of the shots was at Union County Performing Arts Center located in Rahway, New Jersey.


title: School of Rock

text: The eponymous album was released on September 30, 2003. Sammy James Jr. of the band The Mooney Suzuki penned the title track with screenwriter Mike White, and the band backed up Jack Black and the child musicians on the soundtrack recording of the song. The film's director, Richard Linklater, scouted the country for talented 13-year-old musicians to play the rock and roll music featured on the soundtrack and in the film. The soundtrack includes "Immigrant Song" by Led Zeppelin, a band that has a very long history of denying permission for use of their songs in film and television. Linklater came up with the idea to shoot a video on the stage used at the film's ending, in which Jack Black begs the band for permission with the crowd extras cheering and chanting behind him. The video was sent directly to the living members of Led Zeppelin (Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones), who granted permission for the song. The video is included on the DVD and Blu-ray.


title: School of Rock

text: "School of Rock" opened at #1 with a weekend gross of $19,622,714 from 2,614 theaters for an average of $7,507 per venue. In its second weekend, the film declined just 21 percent, earning another $15,487,832 after expanding to 2,929 theaters, averaging $5,288 per venue, and bringing the 10-day gross to $39,671,396. In its third weekend, it dropped only 28 percent, making another $11,006,233 after expanding once again to 2,951 theaters, averaging $3,730 per venue, and bringing the 17-day gross to $54,898,025. It spent a total of six weeks among the Top 10 films and eventually grossed $81,261,177 in the United States and Canada and another $50,015,772 in international territories for a total gross of $131,282,949 worldwide, almost four times its budget of $35 million. This made "School of Rock" the highest-grossing music-themed comedy of all time, until it was overtaken in 2015 by "Pitch Perfect 2".


title: School of Rock

text: "School of Rock" received an approval rating of 92% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 200 reviews with an average rating of 7.70/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Black's exuberant, gleeful performance turns "School of Rock" into a hilarious, rocking good time." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 82 out of 100, based on 41 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".


title: School of Rock

text: Rating the film 3.5 stars out of 4, Roger Ebert wrote that "School of Rock" "proves you can make a family film that's alive and well-acted and smart and perceptive and funny -- and that rocks."


title: School of Rock

text: The film was nominated for several awards, including Black receiving a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actor – Comedy or Musical (which he lost to Bill Murray for "Lost in Translation"), and winning an MTV Movie Award for Best Comedic Performance. In 2004, the film won Best Comedy Film at the British Comedy Awards.


title: School of Rock

text: In 2008, Jack Black said that a sequel was being considered. It was later reported that director Richard Linklater and producer Scott Rudin would return. Mike White was returning as screenwriter for the sequel, titled "School of Rock 2: America Rocks", which picks up with Finn leading a group of summer school students on a cross-country field trip that delves into the history of rock 'n' roll. In 2012, Black stated that he believed the sequel was unlikely, saying, "I tried really hard to get all the pieces together. I wouldn't want to do it without the original writer and director, and we never all got together and saw eye-to-eye on what the script would be. It was not meant to be, unfortunately," but added, "never say never".


title: School of Rock

text: On April 5, 2013, Andrew Lloyd Webber announced that he had bought the rights to "School of Rock" for a stage musical. On December 18, 2014, the musical was officially confirmed and it was announced that the show would receive its world premiere on Broadway in autumn 2015, at the Winter Garden Theatre. It ultimately began previews on November 9, 2015, and opened on December 6, 2015. The musical has a book by "Downton Abbey" creator Julian Fellowes, and is directed by Laurence Connor, with choreography by JoAnn M. Hunter, set and costume design by Anna Louizos and lighting by Natasha Katz. The musical features an original score composed by Lloyd Webber, with lyrics by Glenn Slater and sound design by Mick Potter, in addition to music from the original film. "School of Rock" became Lloyd Webber's first show opening on Broadway before London since "Jesus Christ Superstar" in 1971. The stage adaptation eventually closed on January 20, 2019, having grossed $160,145,109 over the course of 1,309 performances.


title: School of Rock

text: On August 29, 2013, a 10th anniversary screening of the film was held in Austin, Texas, at the Paramount Theatre. Those in attendance included director Richard Linklater, Jack Black, Mike White, Miranda Cosgrove and the rest of the young cast members, except for Cole Hawkins (who played Leonard). Hosted by the Austin Film Society and Cirrus Logic, the event included a red carpet, a full cast and crew Q&A after the screening, where the now-grown child stars discussed their current pursuits in life, and a VIP after-party performance by the School of Rock band during which "School of Rock", "The Legend of The Rent", "Step Off" and "It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)" were played.


title: School of Rock

text: On August 4, 2014, Nickelodeon announced that it was working with Paramount Television to develop a television show adaptation of the film. Production started in the fall and the series premiered in 2016. It starred Breanna Yde, Ricardo Hurtado, Jade Pettyjohn, Lance Lim, Aidan Miner, and Tony Cavalero. The series adaptation of "School of Rock" ran for three seasons from March 12, 2016 to April 8, 2018.


title: Simon Rex

text: Simon Rex Cutright (born July 20, 1974), is an American actor, rapper, comedian, and former model. Rising to fame as an MTV VJ, Rex later became an actor known for "What I Like About You", starring in three films of the "Scary Movie" franchise, and "National Lampoon's Pledge This!". He later developed a rap persona, Dirt Nasty, and had several solo albums and co-founded the hip-hop group Three Loco. In 2021, he received critical acclaim for his lead role in Sean Baker's drama film "Red Rocket", winning the Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead.


title: Simon Rex

text: Rex was born in San Francisco, California, and raised in Alameda, the son of Zoe, an environmental consultant, and Paul, a relationship coach. He is Jewish.


title: Simon Rex

text: Rex was an only child who grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. Rex's father was a breath-work coach (in the tradition of alternative psychologist Stanislov Grof) who walked out on him when he was little. At age 18, he was attending community college and working at a potato-sack factory when he began dating and living with a model in Oakland.


title: Simon Rex

text: In 1993, aged 19, Rex responded to an advertisement in a Los Angeles magazine and agreed to be photographed nude for photographer Brad Posey and his Club 1821 studio. The following year, under the alias "Sebastian", he appeared in solo masturbation scenes for three Club 1821 pornographic films: "Young, Hard & Solo #2", "Young, Hard & Solo #3", and "Hot Sessions III". Archive footage was used in the 2000 films "Hot Sessions 11" and "Hot Sessions 12". He says he took the job to pay for rent and food for his girlfriend's two-year-old son. One day, while driving her to castings and watching the child a casting director spotted Rex in the waiting room and the next day he was on a flight to Milan. In 1994 Rex went on a modeling tour for Tommy Hilfiger, before going on to appear in mainstream modeling gigs for Calvin Klein Inc, Versace, and Levi’s.


title: Simon Rex

text: In 1999, he was cast in the comedy-drama television series "Jack & Jill", which aired on The WB channel for two seasons. He appeared as Eli in the TV show "Felicity" and television guest appearances followed including "Baywatch", "Everwood", and "Summerland".


title: Simon Rex

text: Starting in 2002, Rex starred with Amanda Bynes in the sitcom "What I Like About You". In 2006, he appeared on the Lifetime primetime telenovela "Monarch Cove", which ran for fourteen episodes. From television into film, Rex has held the lead role in feature films including "Scary Movie" 3, 4, & 5, "Hotel California", "The Karate Dog", "King of the Avenue", and "Superhero Movie". Rex more recently starred alongside comedian Nick Swardson in the Comedy Central show, "Typical Rick", which ran for two seasons from 2016 to 2017.


title: Simon Rex

text: Rex entered the music industry in 2005 as a rap artist after becoming friends with and discovering Mickey Avalon. Rex adopted his alter ego "Dirt Nasty" and formed the rap group "Dyslexic Speedreaders" with Avalon & Andre Legacy. Rex both produced and was featured on the group’s hit song "My Dick""." Again the group paired with Lil Jon to create the song "What Do You Say" which was featured in 2009’s blockbuster comedy film, "The Hangover".


title: Simon Rex

text: Rex was an investor in the New York City nightclub The Plumm with partners Noel Ashman, Samantha Ronson, Chris Noth, and others. It opened in 2006 and closed in 2009.


title: Simon Rex

text: In 2007, Dirt Nasty released his self-titled debut album which included the songs "1980", "Cracker Ass Fantastic" & "Dropping Names". His second album, 2011's "Nasty as I Wanna Be", featured Ke$ha, LMFAO, Too Short, and Warren G. Rex's other musical projects under his Dirt Nasty alias include his third album "Palatial," and the supergroup Three Loco which features Andy Milonakis and Riff Raff. As Three Loco, the group teamed up with producer Diplo and released the group’s eight-song EP on Diplo’s Mad Decent label.


title: Simon Rex

text: In "Red Rocket" (2021), Rex plays the lead in the comedy-drama as a washed-up ex-porn star who returns to his hometown where they are not exactly happy to see him. On October 23, 2020, "The Florida Project" director Sean Baker called Rex, whom he had never met, and convinced him to send an audition tape via iPhone with only five minutes to prepare. Rex then drove to Galveston, Texas without telling his agent to avoid having to quarantine after a flight with filming set to begin three days later. The film premiered in competition for the Palme d'Or at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival and Rex has received rave reviews and several awards.


title: Simon Rex

text: In October 2021, as a result of the success of "Red Rocket", Rex signed with the management firm Range Media Partners. He will next be seen in "Down Low" with Zachary Quinto and then "Mack & Rita" opposite Diane Keaton. He has also signed on to co-star in "National Anthem."


title: Simon Rex

text: He appeared in the April 2, 2022 episode of "Saturday Night Live" hosted by Jerrod Carmichael with musical guest Gunna, in the music video "Short-Ass Movies", where in addition to appearing as himself, his face is used for Ernest P. Worrell.


title: Simon Rex

text: In his late 40s, Rex reconnected with his father. They shared a "psychedelic experience" during which Rex learned his grandfather was a "spiritual leader" who was "not always the most faithful member of his flock."


title: Simon Rex

text: Rex bought a house in Laurel Canyon after the success of "Scary Movie 3", but he was living in a guesthouse in the Venice neighbourhood of Los Angeles when he was offered US$70,000 by British tabloids to falsely claim he had dated Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, his co-star in "Cuts".


title: Simon Rex

text: Tabloids speculated that he had dated Paris Hilton, but he insisted they were just "friends that held hands."


title: George Washington Carver

text: George Washington Carver ( 1864 – January 5, 1943) was an American agricultural scientist and inventor who promoted alternative crops to cotton and methods to prevent soil depletion. He was one of the most prominent black scientists of the early 20th century.


title: George Washington Carver

text: While a professor at Tuskegee Institute, Carver developed techniques to improve types of soils depleted by repeated plantings of cotton. He wanted poor farmers to grow other crops, such as peanuts and sweet potatoes, as a source of their own food and to improve their quality of life. The most popular of his 44 practical bulletins for farmers contained 105 food recipes using peanuts. Although he spent years developing and promoting numerous products made from peanuts, none became commercially successful.


title: George Washington Carver

text: Apart from his work to improve the lives of farmers, Carver was also a leader in promoting environmentalism. He received numerous honors for his work, including the Spingarn Medal of the NAACP. In an era of high racial polarization, his fame reached beyond the black community. He was widely recognized and praised in the white community for his many achievements and talents. In 1941, "Time" magazine dubbed Carver a "Black Leonardo".


title: George Washington Carver

text: Color film of Carver shot in 1937 at the Tuskegee Institute by African American surgeon Allen Alexander was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 2019. The 12 minutes of footage includes Carver in his apartment, office and laboratory, as well as images of him tending flowers and displaying his paintings.


title: George Washington Carver

text: Carver was born into slavery, in Diamond Grove (now Diamond), Newton County, Missouri, near Crystal Place, sometime in the mid-1860s. The date of his birth is uncertain and was not known to Carver; but it was before slavery was abolished in Missouri, which occurred in January 1865, during the American Civil War. His enslaver, Moses Carver, was a German American immigrant, who had purchased George's parents, Mary and Giles, from William P. McGinnis on October 9, 1855, for $700.


title: George Washington Carver

text: Giles died before George was born and when he was a week old, he, his sister, and his mother were kidnapped by night raiders from Arkansas. George's brother, James, was rushed to safety from the kidnappers. The kidnappers sold the trio in Kentucky. Moses Carver hired John Bentley to find them, but he found only the infant George. Moses negotiated with the raiders to gain the boy's return, and rewarded Bentley. After slavery was abolished, Moses Carver and his wife, Susan, raised George and his older brother, James, as their own children. They encouraged George to continue his intellectual pursuits, and "Aunt Susan" taught him the basics of reading and writing.


title: George Washington Carver

text: Black people were not allowed at the public school in Diamond Grove. George decided to go to a school for black children 10 miles (16 km) south, in Neosho. When he reached the town, he found the school closed for the night. He slept in a nearby barn. By his own account, the next morning he met a kind woman, Mariah Watkins, from whom he wished to rent a room. When he identified himself as "Carver's George", as he had done his whole life, she replied that from now on his name was "George Carver". George liked Mariah Watkins, and her words, "You must learn all you can, then go back out into the world and give your learning back to the people", made a great impression on him.


title: George Washington Carver

text: At age 13, because he wanted to attend the academy there, he moved to the home of another foster family, in Fort Scott, Kansas. After witnessing the killing of a black man by a group of whites, Carver left the city. He attended a series of schools before earning his diploma at Minneapolis High School in Minneapolis, Kansas.


title: George Washington Carver

text: During his time spent in Minneapolis there was another George Carver in town, which caused confusion over receiving mail. Carver chose a middle initial at random, and began requesting letters to him be addressed to George W. Carver. Someone once asked if the "W" stood for Washington, and Carver grinned and said "Why not?" However, he never used Washington as his middle name, and signed his name as either George W. Carver or simply George Carver.


title: George Washington Carver

text: Carver applied to several colleges before being accepted at Highland University in Highland, Kansas. When he arrived, however, they refused to let him attend because of his race. In August 1886, Carver traveled by wagon with J. F. Beeler from Highland to Eden Township in Ness County, Kansas. He homesteaded a claim near Beeler, where he maintained a small conservatory of plants and flowers and a geological collection. He manually plowed of the claim, planting rice, corn, Indian corn and garden produce, as well as various fruit trees, forest trees, and shrubbery. He also earned money by odd jobs in town and worked as a ranch hand.


title: George Washington Carver

text: In early 1888, Carver obtained a $300 loan at the Bank of Ness City for education. By June he left the area. In 1890, Carver started studying art and piano at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa. His art teacher, Etta Budd, recognized Carver's talent for painting flowers and plants; she encouraged him to study botany at Iowa State Agricultural College (now Iowa State University) in Ames.


title: George Washington Carver

text: When he began there in 1891, he was the first black student at Iowa State. Carver's Bachelor's thesis for a degree in Agriculture was "Plants as Modified by Man", dated 1894. Iowa State University professors Joseph Budd and Louis Pammel convinced Carver to continue there for his master's degree. Carver did research at the Iowa Experiment Station under Pammel during the next two years. His work at the experiment station in plant pathology and mycology first gained him national recognition and respect as a botanist. Carver received his Master of Science degree in 1896. Carver taught as the first black faculty member at Iowa State.


title: George Washington Carver

text: Despite occasionally being addressed as "doctor", Carver never received an official doctorate, and in a personal communication with Pammel, he noted that it was a "misnomer", given to him by others due to his abilities and their assumptions about his education. With that said, both Simpson College and Selma University awarded him honorary doctorates of science in his lifetime. Iowa State later awarded him a doctorate of humane letters posthumously in 1994.


title: George Washington Carver

text: In 1896, Booker T. Washington, the first principal and president of the Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University), invited Carver to head its Agriculture Department. Carver taught there for 47 years, developing the department into a strong research center and working with two additional college presidents during his tenure. He taught methods of crop rotation, introduced several alternative cash crops for farmers that would also improve the soil of areas heavily cultivated in cotton, initiated research into crop products (chemurgy), and taught generations of black students farming techniques for self-sufficiency.


title: George Washington Carver

text: Carver designed a mobile classroom to take education out to farmers. He called it a "Jesup wagon" after the New York financier and philanthropist Morris Ketchum Jesup, who provided funding to support the program.


title: George Washington Carver

text: To recruit Carver to Tuskegee, Washington gave him an above average salary and two rooms for his personal use, although both concessions were resented by some other faculty. Because he had earned a master's in a scientific field from a "white" institution, some faculty perceived him as arrogant. Unmarried faculty members normally had to share rooms, with two to a room, in the spartan early days of the institute.


title: George Washington Carver

text: One of Carver's duties was to administer the Agricultural Experiment Station farms. He had to manage the production and sale of farm products to generate revenue for the institute. He soon proved to be a poor administrator. In 1900, Carver complained that the physical work and the letter-writing required were too much. In 1904, an Institute committee reported that Carver's reports on yields from the poultry yard were exaggerated, and Washington confronted Carver about the issue. Carver replied in writing, "Now to be branded as a liar and party to such hellish deception it is more than I can bear, and if your committee feel that I have willfully lied or [was] party to such lies as were told my resignation is at your disposal." During Washington's last five years at Tuskegee, Carver submitted or threatened his resignation several times: when the administration reorganized the agriculture programs, when he disliked a teaching assignment, to manage an experiment station elsewhere, and when he did not get summer teaching assignments in 1913–14. In each case, Washington smoothed things over.


title: George Washington Carver

text: Carver started his academic career as a researcher and teacher. In 1911, Washington wrote a letter to him complaining that Carver had not followed orders to plant particular crops at the experiment station. This revealed Washington's micro-management of Carver's department, which he had headed for more than 10 years by then. Washington at the same time refused Carver's requests for a new laboratory, research supplies for his exclusive use, and respite from teaching classes. Washington praised Carver's abilities in teaching and original research but said about his administrative skills:


title: George Washington Carver

text: When it comes to the organization of classes, the ability required to secure a properly organized and large school or section of a school, you are wanting in ability. When it comes to the matter of practical farm managing which will secure definite, practical, financial results, you are wanting again in ability.


title: George Washington Carver

text: In 1911, Carver complained that his laboratory had not received the equipment which Washington had promised 11 months before. He also complained about Institute committee meetings. Washington praised Carver in his 1911 memoir, "My Larger Education: Being Chapters from My Experience". Washington called Carver "one of the most thoroughly scientific men of the Negro race with whom I am acquainted". After Washington died in 1915, his successor made fewer demands on Carver for administrative tasks.


title: George Washington Carver

text: While a professor at Tuskegee, Carver joined the Gamma Sigma chapter of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity. He spoke at the 1930 Conclave that was held at Tuskegee, Alabama, in which he delivered a powerful and emotional speech to the men in attendance.


title: George Washington Carver

text: From 1915 to 1923, Carver concentrated on researching and experimenting with new uses for peanuts, sweet potatoes, soybeans, pecans, and other crops, as well as having his assistants research and compile existing uses. This work, and especially his speaking to a national conference of the Peanut Growers Association in 1920 and in testimony before Congress in 1921 to support passage of a tariff on imported peanuts, brought him wide publicity and increasing renown. In these years, he became one of the most well-known African Americans of his time.


title: George Washington Carver

text: Carver developed techniques to improve soils depleted by repeated plantings of cotton. Together with other agricultural experts, he urged farmers to restore nitrogen to their soils by practicing systematic crop rotation: alternating cotton crops with plantings of sweet potatoes or legumes (such as peanuts, soybeans and cowpeas). These crops both restored nitrogen to the soil and were good for human consumption. Following the crop rotation practice resulted in improved cotton yields and gave farmers alternative cash crops. To train farmers to successfully rotate and cultivate the new crops, Carver developed an agricultural extension program for Alabama that was similar to the one at Iowa State. To encourage better nutrition in the South, he widely distributed recipes using the alternative crops.


title: George Washington Carver

text: Additionally, he founded an industrial research laboratory, where he and assistants worked to popularize the new crops by developing hundreds of applications for them. They did original research as well as promoting applications and recipes, which they collected from others. Carver distributed his information as agricultural bulletins.


title: George Washington Carver

text: Carver's work was known by officials in the national capital before he became a public figure. President Theodore Roosevelt publicly admired his work. Former professors of Carver's from Iowa State University were appointed to positions as Secretary of Agriculture: James Wilson, a former dean and professor of Carver's, served from 1897 to 1913. Henry Cantwell Wallace served from 1921 to 1924. He knew Carver personally because his son Henry A. Wallace and the researcher were friends. The younger Wallace served as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture from 1933 to 1940, and as Franklin Delano Roosevelt's vice president from 1941 to 1945.


title: George Washington Carver

text: The American industrialist, farmer, and inventor William C. Edenborn of Winn Parish, Louisiana, grew peanuts on his demonstration farm. He consulted with Carver.


title: George Washington Carver

text: In 1916, Carver was made a member of the Royal Society of Arts in England, one of only a handful of Americans at that time to receive this honor. Carver's promotion of peanuts gained him the most notice.


title: George Washington Carver

text: By 1920, the U.S. peanut farmers were being undercut by low prices on imported peanuts from the Republic of China.


title: George Washington Carver

text: In 1921, peanut farmers and industry representatives planned to appear at Congressional hearings to ask for a tariff. Based on the quality of Carver's presentation at their convention, they asked the African-American professor to testify on the tariff issue before the Ways and Means Committee of the United States House of Representatives. Due to segregation, it was highly unusual for an African American to appear as an expert witness at Congress representing European-American industry and farmers. Southern congressmen, reportedly shocked at Carver's arriving to testify, were said to have mocked him. As he talked about the importance of the peanut and its uses for American agriculture, the committee members repeatedly extended the time for his testimony. The Fordney–McCumber Tariff of 1922 was passed including one on imported peanuts. Carver's testifying to Congress made him widely known as a public figure.


title: George Washington Carver

text: During the last two decades of his life, Carver seemed to enjoy his celebrity status. He was often on the road promoting Tuskegee University, peanuts, sweet potatoes, and racial harmony. Although he only published six agricultural bulletins after 1922, he published articles in peanut industry journals and wrote a syndicated newspaper column, "Professor Carver's Advice". Business leaders came to seek his help, and he often responded with free advice. Three American presidents—Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge and Franklin Roosevelt—met with him, and the Crown Prince of Sweden studied with him for three weeks. From 1923 to 1933, Carver toured white Southern colleges for the Commission on Interracial Cooperation.


title: George Washington Carver

text: With his increasing notability, Carver became the subject of biographies and articles. Raleigh H. Merritt contacted him for his biography published in 1929. Merritt wrote:


title: George Washington Carver

text: At present not a great deal has been done to utilize Dr. Carver's discoveries commercially. He says that he is merely scratching the surface of scientific investigations of the possibilities of the peanut and other Southern products.


title: George Washington Carver

text: In 1932, the writer James Saxon Childers wrote that Carver and his peanut products were almost solely responsible for the rise in U.S. peanut production after the boll weevil devastated the American cotton crop beginning about 1892. His article, "A Boy Who Was Traded for a Horse" (1932), in "The American Magazine", and its 1937 reprint in "Reader's Digest", contributed to this myth about Carver's influence. Other popular media tended to exaggerate Carver's impact on the peanut industry.


title: George Washington Carver

text: From 1933 to 1935, Carver worked to develop peanut oil massages to treat infantile paralysis (polio). Ultimately, researchers found that the massages, not the peanut oil, provided the benefits of maintaining some mobility to paralyzed limbs.


title: George Washington Carver

text: From 1935 to 1937, Carver participated in the USDA Disease Survey. Carver had specialized in plant diseases and mycology for his master's degree.


title: George Washington Carver

text: In 1937, Carver attended two chemurgy conferences, an emerging field in the 1930s, during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, concerned with developing new products from crops. He was invited by Henry Ford to speak at the conference held in Dearborn, Michigan, and they developed a friendship. That year Carver's health declined, and Ford later installed an elevator at the Tuskegee dormitory where Carver lived, so that the elderly man would not have to climb stairs.


title: George Washington Carver

text: Carver had been frugal in his life, and in his seventies he established a legacy by creating a museum of his work, as well as the George Washington Carver Foundation at Tuskegee in 1938 to continue agricultural research. He donated nearly in his savings to create the foundation.


title: George Washington Carver

text: Carver headed the modern organic movement in the southern agricultural system. Carver's background for his interest in organic farming sprouted from his father being killed during the Civil War, and when his mother was kidnapped by Confederate slave raiders. Now an orphan, Carver found comfort in botany when he was just 11 years old in Kansas. Carver learned about herbal medicine, natural pesticides, and natural fertilizers that yielded plentiful crops from his caretaker. When crops and house plants were dying, he would use his knowledge and go and nurse them back to health. As a teenager, he was termed the "plant doctor".


title: George Washington Carver

text: When his study about infection in soybean reached Booker T. Washington, he invited him to come and teach at the Tuskegee Agricultural school.


title: George Washington Carver

text: Although the emancipation allowed Black families 40 acres and a mule, President Johnson revoked this and gave the land to white plantation owners instead. This prompted Black farmers to exchange what was once their land, and in turn, a small part of the land's harvest. This led to sharecropping. Carver soon realized that farmers were not obtaining enough food to survive, and how the industrialization of cotton had contaminated the soil. Carver wanted to find a way to organically transform Alabama's failing soil. He found that alternating nitrogen-rich crops would let the soil get back to its natural state. Keeping crops like sweet potatoes, peanuts, and cowpeas would produce more food surplus and different types of food for farmers. Carver worked to pioneer organic fertilizers like swamp muck and compost for the farmers to use. These fertilizers were more sustainable to the planet and helped farmers to spend less money on fertilizers since they were recycling products. Carver pushed for woodland preservation, to help improve the quality of the topsoil. He urged farmers to feed their hogs acorns. The acorns contained natural pesticides and feeding them acorns was cheaper for the farms too. Carver's efforts towards the holistic and organic approach are still in practice today. In his research, Carver discovered Permaculture. Permaculture could be used to produce carbon from the atmosphere, produce a higher quantity of crops, and let crops flourish despite global warming. President Biden realized the success of Permaculture as described by Carver, and is now using it in sustainable agriculture in his climate policy.


title: George Washington Carver

text: Carver never married. At age 40, he began a courtship with Sarah L. Hunt, an elementary school teacher and the sister-in-law of Warren Logan, Treasurer of Tuskegee Institute. This lasted three years until she took a teaching job in California. In her 2015 biography, Christina Vella reviews his relationships and suggests that Carver was bisexual and constrained by mores of his historic period.


title: George Washington Carver

text: When he was 70, Carver established a friendship and research partnership with the scientist Austin W. Curtis Jr. This young black man, a graduate of Cornell University, had some teaching experience before coming to Tuskegee. Carver bequeathed to Curtis his royalties from an authorized 1943 biography by Rackham Holt. After Carver died in 1943, Curtis was fired from Tuskegee Institute. He left Alabama and resettled in Detroit. There he manufactured and sold peanut-based personal care products.


title: George Washington Carver

text: Upon returning home one day, Carver took a bad fall down a flight of stairs; he was found unconscious by a maid who took him to a hospital. Carver died January 5, 1943, at the age of 79 from complications (anemia) resulting from this fall. He was buried next to Booker T. Washington at Tuskegee University. Due to his frugality, Carver's life savings totaled $60,000, all of which he donated in his last years and at his death to the Carver Museum and to the George Washington Carver Foundation.


title: George Washington Carver

text: On his grave was written, "He could have added fortune to fame, but caring for neither, he found happiness and honor in being helpful to the world."


title: George Washington Carver

text: Even as an adult Carver spoke with a high pitch. Historian Linda O. McMurry noted that he "was a frail and sickly child" who suffered "from a severe case of whooping cough and frequent bouts of what was called croup". McMurry contested the diagnosis of croup, holding rather that "His stunted growth and apparently impaired vocal cords suggest instead tubercular or pneumococcal infection. Frequent infections of that nature could have caused the growth of polyps on the larynx and may have resulted from a gamma globulin deficiency. ... until his death the high pitch of his voice startled all who met him, and he suffered from frequent chest congestion and loss of voice."


title: George Washington Carver

text: Carver believed he could have faith both in God and science and integrated them into his life. He testified on many occasions that his faith in Jesus was the only mechanism by which he could effectively pursue and perform the art of science. Carver became a Christian when he was still a young boy, as he wrote in connection to his conversion in 1931:


title: George Washington Carver

text: He was not expected to live past his 21st birthday due to failing health. He lived well past the age of 21, and his belief deepened as a result. Throughout his career, he always found friendship with other Christians. He relied on them especially when criticized by the scientific community and media regarding his research methodology.


title: George Washington Carver

text: Carver viewed faith in Jesus Christ as a means of destroying both barriers of racial disharmony and social stratification. He was as concerned with his students' character development as he was with their intellectual development. He compiled a list of "eight cardinal virtues" whose possession defines "a lady or a gentleman":


title: George Washington Carver

text: Beginning in 1906 at Tuskegee, Carver led a Bible class on Sundays for several students at their request. He regularly portrayed stories by acting them out. He responded to critics with this: "When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world."


title: George Washington Carver

text: A movement to establish a U.S. national monument to Carver began before his death. Because of World War II, such non-war expenditures had been banned by presidential order. Missouri senator Harry S. Truman sponsored a bill in favor of a monument. In a committee hearing on the bill, one supporter said:


title: George Washington Carver

text: The bill is not simply a momentary pause on the part of busy men engaged in the conduct of the war, to do honor to one of the truly great Americans of this country, but it is in essence a blow against the Axis, it is in essence a war measure in the sense that it will further unleash and release the energies of roughly 15,000,000 Negro people in this country for full support of our war effort.


title: George Washington Carver

text: On July 14, 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated $30,000 for the George Washington Carver National Monument west-southwest of Diamond, Missouri, the area where Carver had spent time in his childhood. This was the first national monument dedicated to an African American and the first to honor someone other than a president. The national monument complex includes a bust of Carver, a -mile nature trail, a museum, the 1881 Moses Carver house, and the Carver cemetery. The national monument opened in July 1953.


title: George Washington Carver

text: In December 1947, a fire broke out in the Carver Museum, and much of the collection was damaged. "Time" magazine reported that all but 3 of the 48 Carver paintings at the museum were destroyed. His best-known painting, displayed at the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, depicts a yucca and cactus. This canvas survived and has undergone conservation. It is displayed together with several of his other paintings.


title: George Washington Carver

text: Carver was featured on U.S. 1948 commemorative stamps. From 1951 to 1954, he was depicted on the commemorative Carver-Washington half dollar coin along with Booker T. Washington. A second stamp honoring Carver, of face value 32¢, was issued on February 3, 1998, as part of the Celebrate the Century stamp sheet series. Two ships, the Liberty ship SS "George Washington Carver" and the nuclear submarine USS "George Washington Carver" (SSBN-656), were named in his honor.


title: George Washington Carver

text: In 1977, Carver was elected to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans. In 1990, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. In 1994, Iowa State University awarded Carver a Doctor of Humane Letters. In 2000, Carver was a charter inductee in the USDA Hall of Heroes as the "Father of Chemurgy".


title: George Washington Carver

text: In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed George Washington Carver as one of 100 Greatest African Americans.


title: George Washington Carver

text: In 2005, Carver's research at the Tuskegee Institute was designated a National Historic Chemical Landmark by the American Chemical Society. On February 15, 2005, an episode of "Modern Marvels" included scenes from within Iowa State University's Food Sciences Building and about Carver's work. In 2005, the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, Missouri, opened a George Washington Carver garden in his honor, which includes a life-size statue of him.


title: George Washington Carver

text: Many institutions continue to honor George Washington Carver. Dozens of elementary schools and high schools are named after him. National Basketball Association star David Robinson and his wife, Valerie, founded an academy named after Carver; it opened on September 17, 2001, in San Antonio, Texas. The Carver Community Cultural Center, a historic center located in San Antonio, is named for him.


title: George Washington Carver

text: Carver was given credit in popular folklore for many inventions that did not come out of his lab. Three patents (one for cosmetics; , and two for paints and stains; and ) were issued to Carver in 1925 to 1927; however, they were not commercially successful. Aside from these patents and some recipes for food, Carver left no records of formulae or procedures for making his products. He did not keep a laboratory notebook.


title: George Washington Carver

text: Mackintosh notes that, "Carver did not explicitly claim that he had personally discovered all the peanut attributes and uses he cited, but he said nothing to prevent his audiences from drawing the inference."


title: George Washington Carver

text: Carver's research was intended to produce replacements from common crops for commercial products, which were generally beyond the budget of the small one-horse farmer. A misconception grew that his research on products for subsistence farmers were developed by others commercially to change Southern agriculture. Carver's work to provide small farmers with resources for more independence from the cash economy foreshadowed the "appropriate technology" work of E. F. Schumacher.


title: George Washington Carver

text: Dennis Keeney, director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University, wrote in the "Leopold Letter" (newsletter):