title: Princes in the Tower

text: The fact that two persons claimed to be Richard led the 18th-century writer Horace Walpole to argue that Richard had in fact escaped death, and that Warbeck genuinely was Richard, a view also supported by the Scottish historian Malcolm Laing. Walpole, however, later retracted his views and stated that he now believed the princes to have been murdered by Richard III to secure his hold on the crown. In more recent times the theory that Warbeck was Richard has been endorsed by Annette Carson, a freelance writer with a "lifelong interest" in Richard III. She suggested that Richard smuggled the princes abroad to the custody of their aunt, the Duchess of Burgundy, and they were raised there under false identities. Baldwin's theory was that by having removed them from sight to prevent them being a focus for opposition, he was then unable to bring them back to court to scotch rumours of their murder without once again having them become a threat.


title: Princes in the Tower

text: In 2021, researchers from the "Missing Princes Project" claimed to have found evidence that Edward had lived out his days in the rural Devon village of Coldridge. They have linked the 13-year-old prince with a man named John Evans, who arrived in the village around 1484, and was immediately given an official position and the title of Lord of the Manor. Researcher John Dike noted Yorkist symbols and stained glass windows depicting Edward V in a Coldridge chapel commissioned by Evans and built around 1511, unusual for the location.


title: Princes in the Tower

text: The political reality of the disappearance of the princes, whatever happened to them, is that they were believed to have been murdered and Richard was blamed for their murders. Even if he had not been directly responsible for their deaths, the fact that he had deposed them and kept them under tight guard made him responsible for their welfare in the eyes of contemporaries, and the belief that they had been murdered made him guilty by negligence if not malice. As Baldwin noted in support of his conclusion that Richard would not have murdered the princes, "It seems incredible Richard ever supposed killing his nephews would help secure his position or make him more acceptable to his subjects." An initial uprising in September 1483, aimed at deposing Richard and restoring Edward V to the throne, was not stopped by rumours of Edward's murder. Instead, the rebels rallied around Henry Tudor as a potential alternative candidate; Horrox says Tudor was "an inconceivable choice if Edward V and his brother were thought to be still available." Anthony Cheetham, who considered Richard likely to have had the princes murdered, commented that it was "a colossal blunder. Nothing else could have prompted the deflated Woodvilles to hitch themselves to Henry Tudor's bandwagon." The fact that the majority of the rebels were wealthy and powerful southern noblemen, loyal to Edward IV, suggests a degree of revulsion against Richard's usurpation of the throne: their willingness to fight on under an implausible alternative candidate suggests that they regarded anyone as preferable to Richard as King due to his usurpation and the murder of his nephews. Bennett suggested that perhaps those who had initially supported Richard in his seizure of power may have felt complicit in the crime, which he thought "might explain the bitterness of the subsequent recriminations against him." Hicks speculated that these men may have been "appalled by the character of the regime...shocked by Richard's crimes." Their defection severely weakened Richard, who had to impose his supporters among the northern lords as officeholders in the southern counties to maintain order, in itself a very unpopular act that further damaged his reputation. In Pollard's words, "the belief that he had murdered his nephews seriously handicapped Richard's efforts to secure himself on the throne he had usurped."


title: Princes in the Tower

text: The mystery of the Princes in the Tower has spawned best-selling novels such as Josephine Tey's "The Daughter of Time" and four novels in Philippa Gregory's "Cousins' War" series, and continues to attract the attention of historians and novelists.


title: Batman: The Long Halloween (film)

text: Batman: The Long Halloween is a 2021 American two-part animated direct-to-video superhero film produced by Warner Bros. Animation and DC Entertainment, based on the DC Comics storyline . It is the 42nd film of the DC Universe Animated Original Movies, with both parts serving as the third and fourth installments of the Tomorrowverse. The film is directed by Chris Palmer and stars the voices of Jensen Ackles, Naya Rivera, Josh Duhamel, Billy Burke, Titus Welliver, David Dastmalchian, Troy Baker, Amy Landecker, Julie Nathanson, Jack Quaid, Fred Tatasciore and Alastair Duncan. The film is dedicated to Rivera, as it was her final film role before her death in 2020. In both parts of the film, Batman attempts to unravel the mystery of a serial killer known as "Holiday" during Halloween.


title: Batman: The Long Halloween (film)

text: Part 1 was released on June 27, 2021, and Part 2 was released on July 27 the same year. A deluxe edition combining both films was released on September 20, 2022.


title: Batman: The Long Halloween (film)

text: On Halloween, Johnny Viti, nephew of Gotham City mob boss Carmine "The Roman" Falcone, is murdered by a mysterious figure who leaves a jack-o'-lantern at the crime scene. Since Viti was about to turn the state's evidence against Falcone, Gotham City Police Department Captain James Gordon suspects the Roman himself of being responsible. He summons District Attorney Harvey Dent and Batman to investigate the murder and bring down Falcone.


title: Batman: The Long Halloween (film)

text: Catwoman leads Batman to Falcone's cash stockpile with Dent following. Based on a coin flip, Harvey decides to burn the money rather than move it legally and risk Falcone stopping them. In retaliation, Falcone hires triad member Mickey Chen to bomb Harvey's house. Both Harvey and his wife Gilda survive, but Harvey is hospitalized. Batman chases Chen down to the sewers, where he runs into Solomon Grundy. Batman convinces Grundy to spare Chen and takes him to the GCPD for questioning. Lacking evidence of his involvement in the bombing, Batman and Gordon are forced to release him. Gordon advises Batman to learn more about being a detective.


title: Batman: The Long Halloween (film)

text: On Thanksgiving, Falcone's son Alberto sends Harvey a mocking "get well soon" card in his father's name, angering Falcone for presuming to speak for him. Falcone strangles his son and reminds him that he is too weak to inherit the family business. Harvey escapes from the hospital and meets Gordon, who gives him a gun for protection. That night, Chen and his associates are killed by Viti's murderer. On Christmas Eve, Gordon and Batman question Calendar Man in Arkham Asylum on the identity of the murderer who has now been nicknamed "Holiday". Calendar Man names Falcone, Sal Maroni, and Harvey as suspects and calls Batman's war on crime a "joke".


title: Batman: The Long Halloween (film)

text: Batman then realizes that Joker has escaped from Arkham. Not wanting Holiday to replace him as Gotham's most notorious criminal, Joker confronts Harvey in his home and threatens to kill Gilda if he is proven to be Holiday. Batman visits Maroni, who was also attacked by Joker. Maroni advises Batman that if Joker is on Holiday, he will inevitably target Falcone himself. Joker harasses Falcone, warning him not to divulge any new information about Holiday to him. Falcone's bodyguard Milos Grappa chases Joker out of the building but is killed by Holiday. In the Batcave, Batman identifies Maroni, Falcone's sister Carla Viti, Joker, Falcone, and Harvey as suspects.


title: Batman: The Long Halloween (film)

text: Bruce Wayne attends a New Year's Eve yacht party celebrating Gotham's children's clinic, hosted by Falcone, who calls out Bruce during his speech as the son he never had, angering Alberto. Bruce meets with Selina Kyle, who calls off their relationship due to their conflicting secret identities. Joker attempts to gas the New Year's Eve celebration in Gotham Square using a stolen plane, hoping that Holiday is among the crowd. Meanwhile, Selina meets with Alberto to learn about the Falcones. Alberto laments about never being respected by his father, who also rejected his fiancée from Oxford University. Batman foils Joker's scheme, and when Joker remarks that he "loves a good puzzle".


title: Batman: The Long Halloween (film)

text: Batman deduces that Alberto, who would benefit the most from killing his father's enemies and is known for his love of puzzles, is the killer. Returning to the yacht, Batman accuses Alberto of being Holiday, targeting his father's associates to gain power within the family. Alberto angrily denies wanting control of the family business, citing he no longer wishes to be in his father's shadow. As the New Year hits, Alberto is shot dead by Holiday and falls into the water, where his body is cut to pieces by the yacht's propellers. Batman pursues Holiday, but they manage to escape via speedboat. As the ship is evacuated, Gordon and Harvey meet with Batman. Batman tells his allies to assign a protective detail to Falcone.


title: Batman: The Long Halloween (film)

text: In a post-credits scene, Bruce attends Alberto's funeral. Falcone approaches him and requests Bruce's help in money laundering his money, but Bruce refuses. Bruce is then introduced to the woman accompanying Falcone, who shakes his hand. Vines emerge from under her sleeve to grip Bruce's arm, turning his eyes green, indicating that Poison Ivy has taken control of him.


title: Batman: The Long Halloween (film)

text: In the three months since Alberto's death, the Holiday killer has targeted the Falcone and Maroni families on Valentine's Day, Saint Patrick's Day, and April Fools' Day. Meanwhile, Bruce has signed much of his assets over to Falcone under Poison Ivy's influence. Catwoman defeats Ivy and rescues Bruce.


title: Batman: The Long Halloween (film)

text: On Mother's Day, Scarecrow escapes from Arkham Asylum. When Batman intervenes, Scarecrow injects him with his fear toxin, forcing him to relive the night of his parent's murder. Catwoman finds Batman in an alleyway and brings him home. Falcone's daughter Sofia asks for a seat at the family table, but Falcone refuses. Gordon and Harvey question Bruce about Holiday, citing his family's past connections with Falcone. Bruce recalls how, as a boy, he met Falcone when his father saved his life following an assassination attempt by the Maronis.


title: Batman: The Long Halloween (film)

text: On Father's Day, Maroni's father Luigi is murdered by Holiday. Catwoman witnesses Falcone paying a hitman in the cemetery. Maroni meets with Harvey and agrees to testify against Falcone in exchange for immunity. On the Fourth of July, Batman is captured by Scarecrow and Mad Hatter as they rob a bank for Falcone. He escapes and defeats them as they drop off the cash in the cemetery. On the boardwalk, Falcone's hitman attacks Harvey and Gilda during the fireworks display. Catwoman intervenes, but the hitman knocks out both of them. Harvey awakens to find the hitman dead and one of Holiday's guns nearby, and he flees as the police arrive.


title: Batman: The Long Halloween (film)

text: Falcone's sister Carla Viti publicly accuses Harvey of being Holiday. While Harvey has Maroni in court, Batman meets Gordon and reveals that he found Holiday's guns in the Dents' basement. In the middle of the court, Maroni accuses Harvey of being Holiday and throws acid in his face. Harvey is hospitalized, but escapes and is picked up by Falcone's men. Harvey kills his guards and flees into the sewers, where he is nurtured by Solomon Grundy. On Falcone's birthday, Carla is killed by Holiday.


title: Batman: The Long Halloween (film)

text: On Labor Day, Harvey and Grundy attack Maroni's prison convoy. Batman, disguised as Maroni's guard, subdues Grundy, but Maroni is shot by Holiday from another building. Harvey, Grundy, and Holiday escape. At Wayne Manor, Alfred prepares for another Halloween while Bruce questions his motives for fighting crime. Alfred reassures him that, regardless of his parents' connections to the mob, they would have been proud of him. Batman asks Catwoman about her obsession with the Falcone family. She confesses that Falcone is her father and she only wants to know her mother's name. Harvey, now calling himself Two-Face, and Grundy attacks Arkham and free several inmates; Poison Ivy, Scarecrow, and Mad Hatter engage the GCPD while Two-Face, Grundy, Joker, and Penguin attack Falcone's building.


title: Batman: The Long Halloween (film)

text: They overwhelm Falcone's guards and Sofia, and Two-Face prepares to flip a coin to decide whether Falcone will live or die. Batman and Catwoman arrive and defeat the rogues but are unable to prevent Two-Face from shooting Falcone. Distraught, Sofia falls out the broken window to her death. Catwoman reveals her face to Falcone, who says "Louisa" before dying in Batman's arms. Two-Face turns himself over to Gordon and claims responsibility for all the Holiday killings. In the Dents' basement, Gilda burns her Holiday items while Batman looks on. She confesses that Falcone had annulled her marriage to Alberto and had their child aborted, rendering her infertile. As Holiday, she exacted revenge against the entire family. She assures Batman that Holiday is finished.


title: Batman: The Long Halloween (film)

text: On Halloween, Alfred, with a bowl of chocolates in his hands, holds out hope for trick-or-treaters. Bruce predicts that there will be no visitors. Wayne Manor then receives its first trick-or-treater. Selina is revealed to be together with Bruce and mocks Bruce's previously expressed skepticism. Alfred opens the door to a child dressed as Batman. In a post-credits scene, the doorbell again rings, and Alfred opens the door to Flash and Green Arrow and informs Bruce of their arrival.


title: Batman: The Long Halloween (film)

text: The Flash and Green Arrow make non-speaking cameo appearances during the second part's post-credit scene.


title: Batman: The Long Halloween (film)

text: "Part One" was released on June 22, 2021, on digital download, DVD, and Blu-ray. "Part One" was delayed due to the release of the live-action Batman film "The Batman", and was originally supposed to launch the new animated continuity that originated in "".


title: Batman: The Long Halloween (film)

text: "Part Two" was made available for online streaming on July 27, and was released on DVD and Blu-ray on August 10.


title: Batman: The Long Halloween (film)

text: On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, "Part One" has an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . "Part Two" has an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of .


title: Batman: The Long Halloween (film)

text: Jesse Schedeen of IGN rated "Part One" an 8 out of 10: ""Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One" may not quite meet the high standard of "", but it's a well-crafted addition to the revamped DC Universe Movies line. It faithfully adapts the comic book source material while still veering in its own direction at times. It's difficult to imagine this adaptation working nearly as well if Warner Bros. Animation had tried to cram the entirety of "The Long Halloween" into one movie. With any luck, "Part Two" will be just as successful".


title: Batman: The Long Halloween (film)

text: Zaki Hasan of IGN rated "Part Two" a 9 out of 10: "It's a compelling story adapted with care and performed with conviction. Taken together, both parts make for not merely one of the best "Batman" animated movies, but one of the best "Batman" movies, period".


title: Batman: The Long Halloween (film)

text: William Fischer of "Collider" negatively compared the film's visual design to the more detailed and stylized artwork of the comics story arc, while acknowledging that the film's animators worked under different constraints than illustrators.


title: Batman: The Long Halloween (film)

text: "Part One" earned $659,774 from domestic DVD sales and $2,950,796 from domestic Blu-ray sales, bringing its total domestic home video earnings to $3,610,570. "Part Two" earned $454,659 from domestic DVD sales and $2,100,180 from domestic Blu-ray sales, bringing its total domestic home video earnings to $2,554,839.


title: Batman: The Long Halloween (film)

text: Ackles will reprise his role as Bruce Wayne / Batman in the upcoming film "Legion of the Super-Heroes", which is also set in the Tomorrowverse.


title: Maersk

text: It is a publicly traded family business, as the company is controlled by the namesake Møller family through holding companies. In September 2016, Maersk Group announced that it was splitting into two separate divisions: Transport & Logistics, and Energy. The company's 2018 annual revenue was US$39 billion (2019). In the 2020 Forbes Global 2000, Møller-Maersk was ranked as the 622nd -largest public company in the world.


title: Maersk

text: () was founded in Svendborg in April 1904 by captain Peter Mærsk Møller (1836–1927) and his son Arnold Peter (A. P.) Møller (1876–1965). A. P. Møller had four children, all by his first wife Chastine Estelle Roberta Mc-Kinney. Their second child was (Arnold) Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller (1913–2012), who became a partner in 1939 and head of the firm upon his father's death. In 1993, he was succeeded as CEO by Jess Søderberg. He continued as chairman until December 2003, at which point he was 90 years of age and Michael Pram Rasmussen took over. Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller was until his death one of the "managing owners" of the company and was chairman of Odense Steel Shipyard until 2 May 2006.


title: Maersk

text: In 2016, A.P. Moller – Maersk announced the strategic decision to focus solely on container logistics and to dismantle the conglomerate structure by separating out the oil and gas-related activities. The majority shareholding in Maersk Tankers was sold to A.P. Moller Holding in 2017. Maersk Oil was sold to TOTAL S.A. in 2018 and Maersk Drilling became a separately listed company in April 2019.


title: Maersk

text: In 2017, the company was one of the main victims of the NotPetya ransom malware attack, which severely disrupted its operation for several months.


title: Maersk

text: P. M. Møller (1836–1927), who was a deeply religious Christian, attached a blue banner with a white seven pointed star on both sides of the black chimney on the steamship "Laura" when his wife recovered from illness. In a letter to his wife, P. M. Møller explained in October 1886, "The little star on the chimney is a memory of the night when I prayed for you and asked for a sign: If a star would appear in the gray and cloudy sky, it would mean that the Lord answers prayers." The same star later became the emblem of the Maersk Group.


title: Maersk

text: A.P. Moller–Maersk is structured into two main business segments: transport & logistics and energy. These two branches include several subsidiaries such as container shipping and related activities; APM Terminals; tankers, training, offshore and other shipping activities; oil and gas activities; retail activity; and shipyards, other industrial companies, interest in Danske Bank, etc.


title: Maersk

text: "Container shipping and related activities" is the largest business area for A.P. Moller–Maersk, providing almost half of the group's revenue in 2008. It comprises worldwide container services, logistics and forwarding and terminal activities under the brand names: Maersk Line, Safmarine, and Damco. For the first since 1996, Maersk has been overtaken by MSC, which has become the container line with largest shipping capacity.


title: Maersk

text: The largest operating unit in A. P. Moller–Maersk by revenue and staff (around 25,000 employees in 2012) is Maersk Line. In 2013, the company described itself as the world's largest overseas cargo carrier and operated over 600 vessels with 3.8 million twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) container capacity. As of January 2021, as the largest container fleet, it held 17% of the global TEU.


title: Maersk

text: In 2006, the largest container ship in the world to that date, the vessel , was delivered to Maersk Line from Odense Steel Shipyard. Since, seven other sister ships have since been built, and on 21 February 2011 Maersk ordered ten even larger container ships from Daewoo, the , each with a capacity of 18,000 containers. The first were delivered in 2013. There was an option for 10–20 more, and in June 2011, Maersk placed a follow-on order for a second batch of ten sister ships (to the same design with the same shipyard), but cancelled its option for a third batch of ten.


title: Maersk

text: As of February 2010, Maersk had an order book for new ships totalling 857000TEU (including options on the Triple E class); that backlog is larger than the existing fleet of the fourth-largest line, Evergreen Line.


title: Maersk

text: Maersk Line cooperated with the United States Navy on testing 7–100% algae biofuel on the Maersk Kalmar in December 2011.


title: Maersk

text: In January 2012, Søren Skou took over as CEO of Maersk Line from Eivind Kolding. Later that year, the company ceased its business in Iran in order to prevent potential damage to the company's business with Western countries, particularly the US, due to the sanctions regime led by those countries.


title: Maersk

text: On December 12, 2022, Vincent Clerc was appointed CEO of Maersk and will take up his duties on January 1, 2023.


title: Maersk

text: A. P. Moller–Maersk's independent APM Terminals business unit with its separate headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands, operates a Global Port, Terminal and Inland Services Network with interests in 57 ports and container terminals in 36 countries on five continents, as well as 155 Inland Services operations in 48 countries.


title: Maersk

text: "Maersk Container Industry A/S": Container manufacturing with factories in China (Dongguan and Qingdao) and headquarters in Denmark (Tinglev).


title: Maersk

text: Container Inland Services: Includes: depots, equipment repair, trucking, container sales and related activity.


title: Maersk

text: Svitzer was founded as a salvage client in 1833 before entering the towing business in 1870. Svitzer become majority owned by Maersk in 1979. Svitzer has continued to grow including through purchasing the tugboat operations of Adsteam and it now has a fleet of over 400 tugs, line handlers and other vessels. The company provides harbour and terminal towage services in over 100 ports and 20 oil and gas terminals across the globe. As of January 2022 Svitzer operates a fleet of 110 vessels in seven ports and 11 terminals across 12 countries in Svitzer operates in the Africa, Middle East & Asia region.


title: Maersk

text: Damco was the combined brand of the Maersk Group's logistics activities previously known as Maersk Logistics and Damco. As of 2008 Damco had 10,800 employees in offices in more than 93 countries. and was involved in supply chain management and freight forwarding all over the world. In September 2019 Maersk announced that they would dissolve the Damco brand and integrate their remaining activities after initially merging Maersk Line and Damco at the beginning of 2019 at which time the freight forwarding business of Damco stayed separate. The dissolving of the Damco brand was completed by the end of 2020.


title: Maersk

text: Maersk Oil (Danish: Mærsk Olie og Gas A/S) was established in 1962 when Maersk was awarded a concession for oil and gas exploration and production in the Danish sector of the North Sea. Maersk Oil is engaged in the exploration for and production of oil and gas in many parts of the world. Total oil production is more than 600,000 barrels per day (95,000 m³/d) and gas production is up to some 1 billion cubic feet (28,000,000 m³) per day. Most of this production is from the North Sea, from both the Danish and British sectors, but there is also production in offshore Qatar, in Algeria and in Kazakhstan.


title: Maersk

text: In addition to the above-mentioned producing sites, Maersk Oil is involved in exploration activities in Danish, British, Dutch and Norwegian sectors of the North Sea, Qatar, Algeria, Kazakhstan, Angola, Gulf of Mexico (US sector), Turkmenistan, Oman, Morocco, Brazil, Colombia and Suriname. Most of these activities are not 100% owned but are via membership in a consortium. The company developed production techniques especially suited to difficult environments (The North Sea, etc.) and for drilling techniques that extract oil from problematic underground conditions.


title: Maersk

text: Oil and gas activities provided A .P. Moller – Maersk with 22% of its revenue and 68% of its profit in 2008. On 21 August 2017, A. P. Møller - Mærsk A/S announced the signing of an agreement to sell Mærsk Olie og Gas A/S to Total S.A. for US$7.45 billion in a combined share and debt transaction. The transaction was subject to regulatory and competition approval and was closed on 8 March 2018, when Maersk Oil became a part of Total.


title: Maersk

text: Maersk Drilling supports global oil and gas production by providing high-efficiency drilling services to oil companies around the world. The company owns 24 rigs and its fleet consists of six Ultra-Harsh jack-ups, four XL Enhanced jack-ups (including one new build which is set for delivery in late 2016), four Harsh jack-ups, two Premium jack-up, four semi-submersibles and four Ultra deepwater drillships. Maersk Drilling is among others a market leader in the Norwegian jack-up market with a market share of 7 out of 12 rig .


title: Maersk

text: Maersk Supply Service provides anchor handling, towage of drilling rigs and platforms as well as supply service to the offshore industry. By 2021, the fleet consists of 41 vessels including anchor handling tug supply vessels (AHTS), subsea support vessels (SSV) and platform supply vessels (PSV).


title: Maersk

text: Maersk Line, Limited (MLL) is a US-based subsidiary of A.P. Moller–Maersk Group which owns and operates a fleet of US-flag vessels providing the U.S. Federal Government and their contractors with multimodal transportation and logistics services. A Virginia-based organization, MLL manages the world's largest fleet of internationally trading US-flagged vessels.


title: Maersk

text: MCC Transport hosts containerized cargo services in the Intra-Asia market. The company was later renamed Sealand-Asia.


title: Maersk

text: Seago Line is a subsidiary shipping line which serves ports in the Mediterranean region. The company is now Sealand- Europe and Mediterranean.


title: Maersk

text: Safmarine is an independently operated shipping company in the A. P. Moller–Maersk Group with roots in Africa. It operates a fleet of more than 40 container vessels and more than 20 multi purpose vessels (MPVs). The company has five container vessels and four MPVs on order for delivery in 2009–2011. In September 2020, it was announced that the Safmarine brand will be integrated into Maersk.


title: Maersk

text: SeaLand, branded "Sealand – A Maersk Company", is an American regional maritime and logistics operator. It has been part of A. P. Moller - Maersk since 1999. The Sealand name was phased out in 2009, but revived as a separate brand in 2014. After focussing on intermodal services between North, Central and South America, in 2018 it was merged with other Maersk intra-regional brands MCC Transport and Seago Lines to cover European, Mediterranean, and Intra-Asian markets.


title: Maersk

text: Maersk GSC operates shared service centres that handle back office, off-shore activities for AP Moller Maersk Group. GSCs are located in Chennai, Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru, Chengdu, and Metro Manila.


title: Maersk

text: Tankers, offshore and other shipping activities" was responsible for 8.8% of Maersk's revenue in 2008, and posted 25% of the group's profit for this period. The business segment comprises Maersk Tankers (it's technical management business sold to Synergy Marine Group in 2021), Maersk Supply Service, Maersk Drilling, Maersk FPSOs, Maersk LNG and Svitzer.


title: Maersk

text: Ardent Salvage, a joint operating salvage company formed after the merger between Maersk-operated Svitzer and Crowley-operated TITAN Salvage, is involved in towage, salvage, wreck removal, marine firefighting and other offshore support and is represented in more than 100 ports worldwide. Ardent is based in Houston, Texas.


title: Maersk

text: Acquired in 2020, KGH is a European provider of customs and trade solutions, including customs broker services and software applications development.


title: Maersk

text: The company formerly owned a stake in Dansk Supermarked Group which operates stores under the brands: Bilka (hypermarket), Føtex (supermarket, department store), Salling (department store) and Netto (discount supermarket).


title: Maersk

text: Maersk Training provides specialist training to specific industries. The 2010 merger of Maersk Training Centre and Svitzer Safety Services broadened a portfolio of courses to include the maritime, oil and gas, terminals, and wind power industries.


title: Maersk

text: With Headquarters in Svendborg, the MT Group global locations include Aberdeen and Newcastle in the UK, Esbjerg in Denmark, Stavanger in Norway, Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, Chennai & Mumbai in India, Kuala Lampur in Malaysia. New centres include Houston, United States and Dubai, United Arab Emirates which is also the Middle Eastern hub.


title: Maersk

text: Star Air operates 11 leased Boeing 767 cargo aircraft, primarily engaged in long-term contract flying for United Parcel Service (UPS) in Europe.


title: Maersk

text: In August 2013 Freightliner Group announce the acquisition of leading European intermodal rail operator and railway undertaking ERS Railways B.V. from Maersk Line. ERS Railways B.V. is a railway transport company headquartered in Rotterdam, providing cargo transport, mostly ISO shipping containers.


title: Maersk

text: World Robot Olympiad is a robotic competition headquartered in Singapore. Maersk Oil is currently a Gold sponsor of this event.


title: Maersk

text: A group of leading industry players are taking the next step to develop new fuel types and technologies by launching the Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Center for Zero Carbon Shipping.


title: Maersk

text: In the total count, the weight of A.P. Møller-Maersk is extraordinarily heavy, as the shipping company accounts for over 80% of the danish top 30 companies' emissions of carbon dioxide from operations, and in the overall calculation, the CO reductions in many of the other companies are therefore balanced by the fact, that Mærsk has increased emissions by 2% since 2019, with a total of 37 million tonnes in 2021, but presented plans to be CO neutral as early as 2040.


title: Maersk

text: Since the Danish climate targets of a 70 percent CO reduction in 2030 are territorial based, emissions from foreign shipping and aviation from Danish ports and airports, and internationally, are not counted, as the responsibility lies with the UN's organizations for aviation (ICAO) and shipping (IMO), therefore the Maersk fleet is not obliged to make reductions, but instead pay through slightly higher taxes from the emissions, to a fund based on taxes from the fleets use of bunker fuel, which will be able to compensate and finance climate measures, a concept developed by the Ministry of Climate and the Danish Maritime Authority.


title: Maersk

text: In 2008, it was calculated by the DK Group, that the Maersk fleet together released just over one million tonnes of sulfur dioxide SO per year from the fleets use of bunker fuel, and at the time until 2014, when China Shipping Lanes took over by one meter and 20 percent less fuel emissions, the world's largest container ship Emma Mærsk emits SO equivalent to 50 million cars.


title: Maersk

text: ""These are figures that are publicly available. But they have probably not really come to light because shipping has been totally unregulated. But when the biggest ships sail out, you have to imagine that 50 million cars will follow,"" says Jørn Winkler, founder of DK Group. For example, there are filters that remove virtually all sulfur dioxide and nitrogen, but the price of a filter for a large container ship is DKK 25 million. By comparison, Maersk uses approximately DKK 46 billion worth of fuel per year (expenses deducted as a cost in company tax calculations), and ""In the past 20 years, it has been possible to remove the particles from the ships' exhaust fumes, but the will to do something is lacking,"" says Jørn Winkler in 2008.


title: Maersk

text: The Danish Ministry of the Environment has in 2009 initiated an action plan, where the requirement is that SOx and NOx must be reduced using desulfurization plants, the so-called scrubbers, to built into the ships' chimney systems.


title: Maersk

text: As shipping companies in Denmark have a special tax scheme – tonnage tax, which has been in force since 2001 to keep the shipping companies on Danish soil. Tonnage tax means that shipping companies pay a fixed tax or charge per ship, and the amount is thus not affected by the company's profit. With the tonnage tax, the shipping companies avoid the classic corporation tax of 22 percent, which other companies have to pay. The tax scheme means that in 2021, Maersk paid around 4% of a record-breaking earnings of about 16,08 billion USD (117.5 billion Danish kroner) before tax, and expected to be DKK 270 billion in 2022. This compared to a deficit of DKK 3 billion in the company's accounts for the first half of 2009. – The first deficit in the group's history since World War II, with an expected deficit for the whole of 2009 of DKK 10.7 billion.


title: Maersk

text: On the morning of 8 April 2009 the 17,000-ton was en route to Mombasa, Kenya, when it was hijacked by pirates off the Somali coast. The company confirmed that the US-flagged vessel had 20 US nationals on board. This was the first time that the US had to deal with a situation in which Americans were aboard a ship seized by pirates in over 200 years. By noon, the Americans were able to resist the pirates and regain control of the ship. However, the pirates retreated on a covered life boat and held the captain hostage for four days. On 12 April 2009, it was confirmed that the captain held hostage was freed by the US Navy, whose SEAL sharpshooters killed three of the pirates. A fourth pirate surrendered earlier due to a medical injury. These events were subsequently dramatized in the 2013 film "Captain Phillips", directed by Paul Greengrass, starring Tom Hanks in the titular role.


title: Maersk

text: Maersk Line estimated that piracy costs the company $100 million per year due to longer routes and higher speed, particularly near East Africa.


title: Maersk

text: As of 2010, all 83 Maersk tankers were diverting around the Cape of Good Hope south of Africa instead of going through the Suez Canal, although , the first of the Triple E-class vessels, successfully navigated the Suez during her maiden voyage.


title: Maersk

text: Trade unions and labor rights organizations have criticized Maersk's labor practices in different parts of the world.


title: Maersk

text: In El Salvador, Maersk has been accused of maintaining abusive conditions for port drivers. Charges include excessively long shifts, minimal wages and the repression of freedom of association by running union-busting campaigns, including firing and blacklisting at least 100 drivers in 2001.


title: Maersk

text: Globalization Monitor, a labor rights group based in Hong Kong, has reported poor labor conditions in Maersk facilities in Dongguan and Qingdao, China. In January and May 2008, respectively, two riots reportedly broke out amongst workers at the Maersk plant in Dongguan in protest of poor working conditions and employment terms. In April 2011, Globalization Monitor stated, "Maersk's plants in China are still far from satisfactory as long as labor and human rights are concerned." This although Danish news articles already in November 2009 brought results from a report made by an external work environment consultant Crecea which stated that the environment on the Maersk factory in Dongguan was above average in China.


title: Maersk

text: In response to a complaint from whistleblower Jerry H. Brown II, the US Government filed suit against Maersk for overcharging for shipments to US forces fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a settlement announced on 3 January 2012, the company agreed to pay $31.9 million in fines and interest, but made no admission of wrongdoing. Brown was entitled to $3.6 million of the settlement.


title: Maersk

text: In August 2010, the US government fined Maersk $3.1 million for violating its embargo on Sudan. "Maersk had a waiver from the US government to deliver US Food Aid into Sudan so the US-flagged ship was in Port Sudan to deliver humanitarian aid," a U.S. government spokesman said, but "the booking systems did not identify cargo that was coming on and off the ship and that could be of violation of the embargo". The US government imposed a trade embargo on Sudan in 1997 due to human rights violations linked to the civil war between the north and south of the African country, and also because of the regime's alleged support of international terrorist groups.


title: Maersk

text: In July 2010, the advocacy group originally highlighted Maersk's ties to a blacklisted Iranian company, Tidewater Middle East Co. The firm suspended operations at several Iranian ports owned by Tidewater Middle East Co. Maersk operates in other Bangladeshi ports and also diverted shipments to Dubai, partnering with other Bangladeshi companies that are not bound by U.S. sanctions.


title: Maersk

text: On 28 April 2015, the Marshall Islands-flagged container ship "Maersk Tigris", which was not owned by Maersk, was travelling westbound through the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian Revolutionary Guard naval patrol boats contacted the ship, and directed it to proceed into Iranian territorial waters, according to a spokesman for the US Defense Department. When the ship's master declined, one of the Iranian craft fired shots across the bridge of "Maersk Tigris". The master complied and proceeded into Iranian waters near Larak Island. The US Navy sent aircraft and a destroyer, , to monitor the situation.


title: Maersk

text: Maersk stated they have agreed to pay an Iranian company $163,000 over a dispute about ten container boxes transported to Dubai in 2005. The court ruling allegedly ordered a fine of $3.6 million.


title: Maersk

text: In October 2010, Maersk plead guilty to 8 counts of failing to provide adequate hours of rest and 1 count of failing to improve the situation.


title: Maersk

text: In February 2014, Maersk paid 8.7 million to settle allegations that it Maersk had forged documents on a contract to ship cargo to Afghanistan. The government says they uncovered 277 instances "in which claims verifying receipt of shipments in Afghanistan contained forged signatures." The settlement included no admission of guilt.


title: Maersk

text: In May 2021, a Maersk officer's license was suspended after he was accused of sexual assault including abusive, unwanted, and inappropriate touching in violation of Maersk anti-harassment policy. On 12 October 2021, Maersk suspended five employees for their involvement in the rape of a 19-year-old girl.


title: Maersk

text: In June 2022, Hope Hicks, formerly known as "Midshipman X" filed a lawsuit against Maersk, alleging that the company failed to protect her from rampant sexual abuse. In the same month, a second US Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA) student under the alias "Midshipman Y" filed a suit against Maersk, also alleging that the company did not protect her from sexual abuse and violence.


title: Maersk

text: In 2009, it was estimated that the Maersk fleet's use of bunker fuel released sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, into the atmosphere corresponding to the emissions from 9 billion cars, with resultant serious health, environmental, and climate change impacts related.


title: Maersk

text: The health problem with bunker fuel (heavy fuel oil), a type of oil used in 80 percent of the world's merchant ships in 2008, with a total consumption of 290 million tons per year is, that it has a very high sulfur content, which smokes directly from the chimney, after which it spreads and can make people sick or even be lethal," says Jørgen Brandt, who is a senior researcher at the Department of Atmospheric Environment at Aarhus University. Mærsk is aware of the extent of the problem. Ivan Seistrup, group vice-president in A.P. Møller Mærsk, stated in 2009: "Among other things, we have entered into close cooperation with Boeing on the development of biofuel for the shipping industry, which will constitute a technological quantum leap. One solution could be to sail on clean biofuel in coastal areas, and then use bunker fuel in the open sea, where it does no harm."


title: Maersk

text: On 27 June 2017 Maersk IT systems were the victim of a malware attack utilizing NotPetya, which was designed to appear to be a ransomware attack. The cyberattack was perpetrated by the Russian military cyberorganization, the GRU, and designed to attack Ukraine, but in fact almost destroyed Maersk Shipping, the largest shipper of containers in the world. "Wired" magazine described the malware attack as the 'Most Devastating Cyberattack in History.' In March 2020 Maersk revealed they would be terminating the employment and outsourcing the work of the UK based IT team that helped them successfully fend off and recover from the ransomware attack that shut down operations.


title: A Christmas Story

text: A Christmas Story is a 1983 Christmas comedy film directed by Bob Clark and based on Jean Shepherd's semi-fictional anecdotes in his 1966 book "", with some elements from his 1971 book "Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories And Other Disasters". It stars Melinda Dillon, Darren McGavin, and Peter Billingsley and is a seasonal classic in North America. It has been shown in a marathon annually on TNT since 1997 and on TBS since 2004 titled "24 Hours of "A Christmas Story"", consisting of 12 consecutive airings of the film from the evening of Christmas Eve to the evening of Christmas Day annually. It is the third installment in the Parker Family Saga. It is often ranked as one of the best Christmas films.


title: A Christmas Story

text: The film was released on November 18, 1983, and it received positive reviews from critics. Filmed partly in Canada, it earned two Canadian Genie Awards in 1984. In 2012, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".


title: A Christmas Story

text: Set in December 1940, the film is presented in a series of vignettes, with narration provided by the adult Ralphie Parker reminiscing on one particular Christmas when he was nine years old in the fictional town of Hohman, Indiana. Ralphie wanted only one thing that Christmas: a Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-shot Range Model air rifle. Ralphie's desire is rejected by his mother, his teacher Miss Shields, and even a Santa Claus at Higbee's department store, all giving him the same warning: "You'll shoot your eye out".


title: A Christmas Story

text: On Christmas morning, Ralphie receives some presents that he enjoys but is disappointed not to find the rifle among them. When it appears that all of the presents have been opened, Ralphie's father ("The Old Man") directs him to one last box hidden in the corner, which proves to contain the rifle. He eagerly hurries outside to try it out, attaching a target to a metal sign in the backyard; when he fires, the BB ricochets back and hits him in the face. Believing at first that he has indeed shot his eye out, he realizes that the BB only knocked his glasses off and begins searching for them in the snow, only to step on them by accident and break them. He lies to his mother that a falling icicle struck him in the face and broke his glasses, and she believes him and takes him to the bathroom to get cleaned up.


title: A Christmas Story

text: That night, Ralphie goes to sleep with the gun by his side as his adult self reflects that it was the best Christmas present he had ever received or would ever receive.


title: A Christmas Story

text: The basis of the screenplay is a series of monologues written and performed by Jean Shepherd on the radio. Shepherd wrote the adaptation with Bob Clark and Leigh Brown. Several subplots are incorporated into the body of the film, based on other separate short stories by Shepherd. Shepherd provides the film's narration from the perspective of an adult Ralphie, a narrative style later used in the comedy-drama television series "The Wonder Years". Shepherd, Brown, and Clark have cameo appearances in the film: Shepherd plays the man who directs Ralphie and Randy to the back of the Santa line at the department store; Brown – Shepherd's wife in real life – plays the woman in the Santa line with Shepherd; Clark plays Swede, the neighbor the Old Man talks to outside during the Leg Lamp scene.


title: A Christmas Story

text: In the DVD commentary, director Bob Clark mentions that Jack Nicholson was considered for the role of the Old Man; Clark expresses gratitude that he ended up with Darren McGavin instead, who later appeared in several other Clark films. He cast Melinda Dillon on the basis of her similar role in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". Some 8,000 actors auditioned for the role of Ralphie, among the 8,000 actors were Keith Coogan, Sean Astin and Wil Wheaton; "He walked in, and he had us from the beginning", Clark later recalled of Peter Billingsley who was already a successful actor in commercials and from co-hosting the TV series "Real People". Clark initially wanted him for the role of Ralphie but decided he was "too obvious" a choice and auditioned many other young actors before realizing that Billingsley was the right choice after all.


title: A Christmas Story

text: Ian Petrella was cast immediately before filming began. Tedde Moore had previously appeared in Clark's film "Murder by Decree" and was the only onscreen character from "A Christmas Story" who was played by the same actor in the sequel, "My Summer Story". Jeff Gillen was an old friend of Clark's who had been in one of his earliest films. The schoolyard bully, Scut Farkus, was played by Zack Ward, now an actor, writer and director, who had actually been bullied himself while in elementary school. In 2017, he said he was surprised at the impact his role had over the years: "I saw that I was ranked – as Christmas villains go – higher than the Grinch. That's amazing".


title: A Christmas Story

text: The screenplay for "A Christmas Story" is based on material from author Jean Shepherd's collection of short stories, "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash". Three of the semi-autobiographical short stories on which the film is based were originally published in "Playboy" magazine between 1964 and 1966. Shepherd later read "Duel in the Snow, or Red Ryder nails the Cleveland Street Kid" and told the otherwise unpublished story "Flick's Tongue" on his WOR Radio talk show, as can be heard in one of the DVD extras. Bob Clark states on the DVD commentary that he became interested in Shepherd's work when he heard "Flick's Tongue" on the radio in 1968. Additional source material for the film, according to Clark, came from unpublished anecdotes that Shepherd told live audiences "on the college circuit". While shooting scenes in Cleveland in early 1983, Clark told a reporter that it had taken him a considerable amount of years to get the film into production. Shepherd envisioned his stories as "Dickens’s Christmas Carol as retold by Scrooge", although Clark would soften it for the movie; the two did not particularly get along, as Clark did not admire Shepherd's attempts at trying to guide the actors with ideas about how the characters should be played, to the point where he had him barred from the set.


title: A Christmas Story

text: The film is set in Hohman, Indiana, a fictionalized version of Shepherd's hometown of Hammond, near Chicago. The name is derived from Hohman Avenue, a major street in downtown Hammond. Local references in the film include Warren G. Harding Elementary School and Cleveland Street (where Shepherd spent his childhood). Other local references include mention of a person "swallowing a yo-yo" in nearby Griffith, the Old Man being one of the fiercest "furnace fighters in Northern Indiana" and that his obscenities were "hanging in space over Lake Michigan", a mention of the Indianapolis 500, and the line to Santa Claus "stretching all the way to Terre Haute". The Old Man is also revealed to be a fan of the Bears (whom he jokingly calls the "Chicago Chipmunks") and White Sox, consistent with living in northwest Indiana. In commemoration of the setting, the City of Hammond holds an annual exhibit regarding the film in November and December, including a statue recreating the scene where Ralphie's friend Flick freezes his tongue to a flagpole.


title: A Christmas Story

text: Director Bob Clark reportedly sent scouts to twenty cities before selecting Cleveland for exterior filming. Cleveland was chosen because of Higbee's Department Store in downtown Cleveland. (Since Higbee's was exclusive to northeast Ohio, the department store referred to in Shepherd's book and the film is most likely Goldblatt's, located in downtown Hammond (with the Cam-Lan Chinese Restaurant three doors down on Sibley Ave). Until they connected with Higbee's, location scouts had been unsuccessful in finding a department store that was willing to be part of the film. Higbee's vice president Bruce Campbell agreed to take part in the project on the condition he is allowed to edit the script for cursing. Ultimately, Higbee's was the stage for three scenes in the film:


title: A Christmas Story

text: In addition to the scenes involving Higbee's, the exterior shots (and select interior shots where Ralphie lived, including the opening of the leg lamp) of the house and neighborhood, were filmed in the Tremont section of Cleveland's West Side. The house used as the Parker home in these scenes has been restored, reconfigured inside to match the soundstage interiors, and opened to the public as "A Christmas Story House". Appropriately, the fictional boyhood home of Ralphie Parker is on Cleveland Street, the name of the actual street where Shepherd grew up.


title: A Christmas Story

text: Several other locations were used. The school scenes were shot at the Victoria School in St. Catharines, Ontario. The Christmas tree-purchasing scene was filmed in Toronto, Ontario, as was the sound stage filming of interior shots of the Parker home. The "...only I didn't say fudge" scene was filmed at the foot of Cherry Street in Toronto; several lake freighters are visible in the background spending the winter at Toronto's port, which lends authenticity to the time of year when the film was produced.


title: A Christmas Story

text: In 2008, two Canadian fans released a documentary that visits every location. Their film, "Road Trip for Ralphie", was shot over two years and includes footage of the filmmakers saving Miss Shields' blackboard from the garbage bin on the day the old Victoria School was gutted for renovation, discovering the antique fire truck that saved Flick, locating original costumes from the film, and tracking down the location of the film's Chop Suey Palace in Toronto.


title: A Christmas Story

text: The "Red Ryder" model BB Gun was manufactured in Plymouth, Michigan by Daisy, beginning in 1940; it was never manufactured in the exact configuration mentioned in the film. The Daisy "Buck Jones" model did have a compass and a sundial in the stock, but these features were not included in the Red Ryder model. The compass and sundial were placed on Ralphie's BB gun, but on the opposite side of the stock due to Peter Billingsley being left-handed.


title: A Christmas Story

text: Director Bob Clark stated in the film's DVD commentary that both he and author Shepherd wished for the film to be seen as "amorphously late-'30s, early-'40s". A specific year is never explicitly mentioned in the film. The "Look" magazine that Ralphie hides the Red Ryder ad in, is the December 1937 cover with Shirley Temple and Santa. Ralphie's "Little Orphan Annie" Secret Society Decoder Pin bears the date 1940 (and is the real-life decoder pin released to society members that year, though by that time Ovaltine had ceased its sponsorship and Quaker was the primary sponsor of the series), the parade in front of Higbee's features characters from MGM's version of "The Wizard of Oz", which was released in 1939, a 1939 calendar is seen in one scene, and World War II, which the United States entered in December 1941, is never mentioned. The "Old Man's" treasured Oldsmobile 6 is a 1937 model. Despite the director and author both stating that the year has been obfuscated, numerous sources, including "The New York Times" and CBS News, have dated the film to 1940 or the early 1940s.


title: A Christmas Story

text: The real Shepherd was several years older than Ralphie; Shepherd was intentionally dishonest about many of the details of his own life and regularly obscured the line between fact and fiction in his writings. A teacher named "Miss Shields" was Shepherd's second-grade teacher at Warren G. Harding Elementary School in 1928. By 1939, Shepherd had already graduated from high school.


title: A Christmas Story

text: Initially overlooked as a sleeper film, "A Christmas Story" was released a week before Thanksgiving 1983 to moderate success, earning about $2 million in its first weekend. Film critic Roger Ebert initially gave the film three stars out of four, but later gave the film four stars and added the film to his "Great Movies" list, suggested the film had only modest success because holiday-themed films were not popular at the time. Vincent Canby's mostly negative "The New York Times" review complained that "the movie's big comic pieces tend only to be exceedingly busy. Though Mr Billingsley, Mr Gavin [sic], Miss Dillon and the actress who plays Ralphie's school teacher (Tedde Moore) are all very able, they are less funny than actors in a television situation comedy".


title: A Christmas Story

text: In Canada, the film would go on to win two categories in the 5th Genie Awards, for Director Bob Clark and Best Original Screenplay for the work of Leigh Brown, Bob Clark and Jean Shepherd.


title: A Christmas Story

text: By Christmas 1983, the film was no longer playing at most venues but remained in about a hundred theatres until January 1984. Gross earnings were just over $19.2 million. In the years since, due to television airings and home video release, "A Christmas Story" has become widely popular and is now an annual Christmas special. The film was produced and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). The rights to the film were acquired by Turner Entertainment Co. after Ted Turner's purchase of MGM's pre-1986 film library. Subsequently, Time Warner purchased Turner Entertainment, and currently holds rights to the film as Warner Bros. Discovery.


title: A Christmas Story

text: Over the years, the film's critical reputation has grown considerably and it is regarded by some as one of the best films of 1983. Based on 57 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an overall approval rating from critics of 90%, with an average score of 8.53/10. The site's consensus reads: "Both warmly nostalgic and darkly humorous, "A Christmas Story" deserves its status as a holiday perennial". On Metacritic, the film has a score of 77 out of 100, based on 16 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". In his movie guide, Leonard Maltin awarded the film a four-star rating, calling the film "delightful" and "truly funny for kids and grown-ups alike" with "wonderful period flavor".


title: A Christmas Story

text: On December 24, 2007, AOL ranked the film their #1 Christmas film of all time. IGN ranked the film the top holiday-themed film of all time. In 2012, a Marist Poll named the film the favorite holiday film in the US. In 2019, a poll commissioned by Tubitv and conducted by Onepoll also ranked the film Best Holiday Movie Ever.


title: A Christmas Story

text: In August 2011, Zack Ward, who played Scut Farkus in the film, sued Warner Bros. and Enesco over merchandising for the film after the company authorized a figure resembling his character from the film without his permission. It was revealed that when he signed on to play that character, he didn't receive any merchandising rights because of a mishap with his contract. The lawsuit was dropped in January 2012 after Warner Bros. revealed that the figurine showed a "generic face" that has been used on them since 2006 and that statute of limitations had run out.


title: A Christmas Story

text: In December 2012, Ward sued Warner Bros. again over his image after attending the annual "Christmas Story" charity fundraiser convention in Cleveland in November 2010, where a fan handed him a "Christmas Story" board game, playing cards, and calendar showing his face. The lawsuit was settled three days later.


title: A Christmas Story

text: The film first aired on television on premium networks The Movie Channel, HBO, and Showtime as early as December 1985, and quickly attracted a growing following. In December 1987, the film premiered on SuperStation WTBS and local television stations. In 1989 and 1990, TBS showed it Thanksgiving night, while in 1991 and 1992, they aired it the night after.


title: A Christmas Story

text: Turner Broadcasting has maintained ownership of the broadcast rights, and since the mid-1990s, aired the film increasingly on TBS & TNT all throughout the holiday season annually. TCM has also aired the film many times too as well. By 1995, it was aired on those networks a combined six times on December 24–26, and in 1996, it was aired eight times over four days, not including local airings.


title: A Christmas Story

text: Due to the increasing popularity of the film, in 1997, TNT began airing a 24-hour marathon dubbed "24 Hours of "A Christmas Story"", consisting of the film shown twelve consecutive times beginning at 8 p.m. on Christmas Eve and ending at 8 p.m. on Christmas Day. This was in addition to various other airings earlier in the month of December. In 2004, after TNT switched to a predominantly drama format, sister network TBS, under its comedy-based "Very Funny" moniker, took over the marathon. Clark stated that, in 2002, an estimated 38.4 million people tuned into the marathon at one point or another, nearly one sixth of the country. TBS reported 45.4 million viewers in 2005, and 45.5 million in 2006. In 2007, new all-time ratings records were set, with the highest single showing (8 p.m. Christmas Eve) drawing 4.4 million viewers. Viewership increased again in 2008, with 8 p.m. Christmas Eve drawing 4.5 million viewers, and 10 p.m. drawing 4.3 million, and 54.4 million total. As of 2009, the film had been shown 250 times on the Turner family of networks.


title: A Christmas Story

text: In 2007, the marathon continued, and the original tradition was revived. TNT also aired the film twice the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend (November 25). In 2009, the 24-hour marathon continued on TBS, for the 13th overall year, starting at 8 p.m. eastern on Christmas Eve.


title: A Christmas Story

text: In 2009, the film aired on TBS during a 24-hour marathon on Christmas Eve. The first viewing at 8 p.m. Eastern on December 24 earned a 1.6 rating (18–49) and beat the major broadcast networks (NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox). In 2010, the marathon averaged 3 million viewers, up 2% from the previous year, ranking TBS as the top cable network for the 24-hour period. The 10 a.m. airing on December 25 was seen by 4.4 million viewers, and the 8 p.m. airing on December 24 was close behind with 4.3 million viewers. The marathons in 2011 and 2012 continued to see increases in ratings.


title: A Christmas Story

text: Beginning with the 2014 edition of the marathon, Turner elected to simulcast it on both TNT and TBS, marking the first time since 2003 that TNT aired it as well as the first time the marathon was aired on multiple networks. The two networks staggered their airings one hour apart. The TBS marathon began at 8 p.m. (eastern), while the TNT marathon began at 9 p.m. (eastern). Both networks have run 24-hour marathons with the one-hour offset format from 2014 annually making it a new tradition for both TBS and TNT networks. For 2019, a majority of the most-watched programs—13 out of the top 25—broadcast on cable Christmas Day were "A Christmas Story".


title: A Christmas Story

text: The PBS series "American Playhouse" produced two subsequent television film adaptations featuring the same characters, also with Shepherd narrating: "The Star-Crossed Romance of Josephine Cosnowski" and "Ollie Hopnoodle's Haven of Bliss". The latter of these was set in the early 1950s with a now-teenaged Ralphie and his friends and family. Shepherd had previously created "The Phantom of the Open Hearth" and "The Great American Fourth of July and Other Disasters" for the same network.


title: A Christmas Story

text: A theatrical sequel involving Ralphie and his family, titled "It Runs in the Family", was made in 1994. With the exceptions of Tedde Moore as Miss Shields (Ralphie's teacher) and Jean Shepherd as the narrator (the voice of the adult Ralphie), it features an entirely different cast. It received a limited release before being retitled "My Summer Story" for home video and television release.


title: A Christmas Story

text: "A Christmas Story 2" is a direct sequel to the film, which ignores the references and events of "My Summer Story" and was released direct-to-video in 2012 and directed by Brian Levant. It was filmed in New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada.


title: A Christmas Story

text: Another sequel to the film (which has no relation with "A Christmas Story 2"), entitled "A Christmas Story Christmas", was released in 2022. The film is directed by "The Christmas Chronicles" director Clay Kaytis and written by "The Mule" writer Nick Schenk (who is also executive producer of the film). Peter Billingsley reprised the role from the original film, in addition serving as the film's producer. The film was released via streaming on HBO Max by Warner Bros. Discovery Global Streaming & Interactive Entertainment. It takes place in the 1970s following an adult Ralphie catching up with his old childhood friends. Ian Petrella, Scott Schwartz, R. D. Robb, and Zack Ward reprised their roles of Randy Parker, Flick, Schwartz, and Scut Farkus, respectively. Erinn Hayes, River Drosche, and Julianna Layne played Ralphie's wife and his kids while Julie Hagerty played Mrs. Parker in a role originated by Melinda Dillon (who retired from acting in 2007) in the original film. The film is dedicated to the memory of Darren McGavin (who played Ralphie's Old Man in the original film), who died on February 25, 2006 at the age of 83.


title: A Christmas Story

text: In November 2012, "", based on the film, opened on Broadway. Written by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (music and lyrics) and Joseph Robinette (book), the musical opened to positive reviews. The run ended on December 30 the same year. The musical was directed by John Rando with choreography by Warren Carlyle and featured Dan Lauria as Jean Shepherd. The musical received Tony Award nominations for Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical (Robinette), and Best Original Score (Music or Lyrics) Written for the Theatre.


title: A Christmas Story

text: The musical was then adapted for television as the three hour "A Christmas Story Live!", which aired on the Fox network in the United States on December 17, 2017. Reviews were mixed; on Rotten Tomatoes, the production received a 46% rating based on 13 critics' reviews.


title: Sony Pictures Animation

text: Sony Pictures Animation Inc. is an American animation studio owned by Sony Entertainment's Sony Pictures Entertainment through their Motion Picture Group division and founded on May 9, 2002. The studio's films are distributed worldwide by Sony Pictures Releasing under their Columbia Pictures label, while all direct-to-video releases are released by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.


title: Sony Pictures Animation

text: The first film produced by the studio, "Open Season", was released on September 29, 2006, and their most recent film was "" on January 14, 2022. Their upcoming slate of films includes "" on June 2, 2023, and "Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse" on March 29, 2024.


title: Sony Pictures Animation

text: In 2001, Sony Pictures considered selling off its visual effects facility Sony Pictures Imageworks but after failing to find a suitable buyer, having been impressed with the CGI sequences of "Stuart Little 2" and seeing the box office successes of DreamWorks Animation's "Shrek" and Disney/Pixar's "Monsters, Inc.", SPI was reconfigured to become an animation studio. "Astro Boy", which had been in development at Sony since 1997 as a live-action film, was set to be SPI's first all-CGI film, but never made it to fruition. On May 9, 2002, Sony Pictures Animation was established to develop characters, stories and movies with SPI taking over the digital production while maintaining its visual effects production. Meanwhile, SPI produced two short films, the Academy Award-winning "The ChubbChubbs!" and "Early Bloomer", as a result of testing its strengths and weaknesses in producing all-CGI animation.


title: Sony Pictures Animation

text: On its first anniversary on May 9, 2003, Sony Pictures Animation announced a full slate of animated projects in development: "Open Season", an adaptation of a Celtic folk ballad "Tam Lin", "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs", "Surf's Up", and a feature-length film version of "The ChubbChubbs!".


title: Sony Pictures Animation

text: On November 3, 2014, the studio collaborated with Frederator Studios' Cartoon Hangover on "GO! Cartoons", an incubator series consisting of 12 short films, with at least one short film being developed into a series. The short films were funded by SPA, with the additional goal of attracting new talent for the studio.


title: Sony Pictures Animation

text: In June 2019, Sony Pictures Animation announced that they had launched an "International" division headed by Aron Warner at the 2019 Annecy International Animated Film Festival, with "Wish Dragon" set to be the division's first film. The same day, they also announced an "Alternative" division aimed at producing adult animated content, headed by Katie Baron and Kevin Noel. In addition to Tartakovsky's films "Black Knight" and "Fixed", the division's TV shows are set to include "The Boondocks", a reboot of the original TV series that originally aired on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming block from 2005 to 2014; "Superbago", a co-production with Stoopid Buddy Stoodios that was originally greenlit as a feature film; and "Hungry Ghosts", a series based on the Dark Horse graphic novel by Anthony Bourdain and Joel Rose. They had previously announced their plans to produce adult content at the 2017 Annecy festival.


title: Sony Pictures Animation

text: According to Kristine Belson, president of SPA, the studio produces films on a 1:1 development-to-production ratio, meaning that the studio puts films into development as much as it places films in production, unlike other animation studios.


title: Sony Pictures Animation

text: Following the support of video game works, Pixelopus is partnering with SPA, working an untitled PS5-exclusive video game with Unreal Engine 5.


title: Sony Pictures Animation

text: Sony Pictures Animation's first feature film was "Open Season", released in September 2006, which became Sony's second-highest-grossing home entertainment film in 2007 and spawned three direct-to-video sequels. Its second feature film, "Surf's Up" was released in June 2007, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, and won two Annie Awards. SPA's first 3D movie since the IMAX 3D release of "Open Season", "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs", was released in September 2009 and was nominated for four Annie Awards, including Best Animated Feature. "The Smurfs" (2011) was the studio's first CGI/live-action hybrid. SPA's parent company Sony Pictures had partnered in 2007 with Aardman Animations to finance, co-produce and distribute feature films. Together, they produced two films: "Arthur Christmas" (2011), and "The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists!" (2012), the latter which was SPA's first stop-motion film. In 2012, SPA released "Hotel Transylvania", which grossed over $350 million worldwide and launched a successful franchise with three sequels and a . Two sequels were released in 2013: "The Smurfs 2" and "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2".


title: Sony Pictures Animation

text: SPA's latest releases are "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse", an animated superhero film based on the Spider-Man comics and featuring the Miles Morales incarnation of the character, "The Angry Birds Movie 2", a sequel to the 2016 film "The Angry Birds Movie" produced by Rovio Animation, "The Mitchells vs. the Machines", a robot apocalypse/road trip film written and directed by Michael Rianda and Jeff Rowe while produced by longtime collaborators Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, "Wish Dragon", a co-production with Base FX, and the musical film, Lin-Manuel Miranda's "Vivo", which marks Sony Pictures Animation's first musical film. SPA has since signed Genndy Tartakovsky to a long-term deal with the studio to develop and direct original films.


title: Sony Pictures Animation

text: , the studio is working on projects such as "", which will be released on June 2, 2023, and its sequel "" on March 29, 2024. It has as well other projects in development, including an animated "Ghostbusters" spin-off film; a musical comedy "K-Pop: Demon Hunters"; another R-rated comedy "Bubble", a co-production with Point Grey Pictures based on the podcast of the same name, "Tao", a China-set science-fiction adventure film directed by "The Lego Movie 2" story artist Emily Dean, and "Tut", an afro-futuristic coming-of-age story set in ancient Egypt directed by "Hair Love" creator Matthew A. Cherry.


title: Sony Pictures Animation

text: In a similar fashion to the Warner Animation Group and Paramount Animation, the studio outsources their films to other animation companies and visual effects studios, with the majority of their films being animated by Sony Pictures Imageworks (its sister company). Some films, such as "Arthur Christmas" and "The Pirates! Band of Misfits" were acquired by Sony Pictures Animation to be released under their banner while others, such as "Goosebumps" and "Peter Rabbit", were made with no involvement from the studio.


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol ( – ) was a Russian novelist, short story writer and playwright of Ukrainian origin.


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: Gogol was one of the first to use the technique of the grotesque, in works such as "The Nose", "Viy", "The Overcoat", and "Nevsky Prospekt". These stories, and others such as "Diary of a Madman", have also been noted for their proto-surrealist qualities. According to Viktor Shklovsky, Gogol's strange style of writing resembles the "ostranenie" technique of defamiliarization. His early works, such as "Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka", were influenced by his Ukrainian upbringing, Ukrainian culture and folklore. His later writing satirised political corruption in the Russian Empire ("The Government Inspector", "Dead Souls"). The novel "Taras Bulba" (1835), the play "Marriage" (1842), and the short stories "The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich", "The Portrait" and "The Carriage", are also among his best-known works.


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: Many writers and critics have recognized Gogol's huge influence on Russian, Ukrainian and world literature. Gogol's influence was acknowledged by Mikhail Bulgakov, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, Flannery O'Connor, Franz Kafka and others.


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: Gogol was born in the Ukrainian Cossack town of Sorochyntsi, in the Poltava Governorate of the Russian Empire. His mother was descended from Leonty Kosyarovsky, an officer of the Lubny Regiment in 1710. His father Vasily Gogol-Yanovsky, who died when Gogol was 15 years old, was supposedly a descendant of Ukrainian Cossacks (see Lyzohub family) and belonged to the 'petty gentry'. His father wrote poetry in Ukrainian as well as Russian, and was an amateur playwright in his own theatre. As was typical of the left-bank Ukrainian gentry of the early nineteenth century, the family spoke Ukrainian as well as Russian. As a child, Gogol helped stage plays in his uncle's home theater.


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: In 1820, Nikolai Gogol went to a school of higher art in Nezhin (Nizhyn) (now Nizhyn Gogol State University) and remained there until 1828. It was there that he began writing. He was not popular among his schoolmates, who called him their "mysterious dwarf", but with two or three of them he formed lasting friendships. Very early he developed a dark and secretive disposition, marked by a painful self-consciousness and boundless ambition. Equally early he developed a talent for mimicry, which later made him a matchless reader of his own works and induced him to toy with the idea of becoming an actor.


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: On leaving school in 1828, Gogol went to Saint Petersburg, full of vague but ambitious hopes. He desired literary fame, and brought with him a Romantic poem of German idyllic life – "Hans Küchelgarten", and had it published at his own expense, under the pseudonym "V. Alov." The magazines he sent it to almost universally derided it. He bought all the copies and destroyed them, swearing never to write poetry again.


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: In 1831, the first volume of Gogol's Ukrainian stories ("Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka") was published, and met with immediate success. A second volume was published in 1832, followed by two volumes of stories entitled "Mirgorod" in 1835, and two volumes of miscellaneous prose entitled "Arabesques". At this time, Russian editors and critics such as Nikolai Polevoy and Nikolai Nadezhdin saw Gogol as a regional Ukrainian writer, and used his works to illustrate the specific of Ukrainian national characters. The themes and style of these early prose works by Gogol, as well as his later drama, were similar to the work of Ukrainian-language writers and dramatists who were his contemporaries and friends, including Hryhory Kvitka-Osnovyanenko. However, Gogol's satire was much more sophisticated and unconventional.


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: At this time, Gogol developed a passion for Ukrainian Cossack history and tried to obtain an appointment to the history department at Saint Vladimir Imperial University of Kiev. Despite the support of Alexander Pushkin and Sergey Uvarov, the Russian minister of education, the appointment was blocked by a bureaucrat on the grounds that Gogol was unqualified. His fictional story "Taras Bulba", based on the history of Zaporozhian Сossacks, was the result of this phase in his interests. During this time, he also developed a close and lifelong friendship with the historian and naturalist Mykhaylo Maksymovych.


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: In 1834, Gogol was made Professor of Medieval History at the University of St. Petersburg, a job for which he had no qualifications. The academic venture proved a disaster:He turned in a performance ludicrous enough to warrant satiric treatment in one of his own stories. After an introductory lecture made up of brilliant generalizations which the 'historian' had prudently prepared and memorized, he gave up all pretence at erudition and teaching, missed two lectures out of three, and when he did appear, muttered unintelligibly through his teeth. At the final examination, he sat in utter silence with a black handkerchief wrapped around his head, simulating a toothache, while another professor interrogated the students. Gogol resigned his chair in 1835.


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: Between 1832 and 1836, Gogol worked with great energy, and had extensive contact with Pushkin, but he still had not yet decided that his ambitions were to be fulfilled by success in literature. During this time, the Russian critics Stepan Shevyrev and Vissarion Belinsky, contradicting the earlier critics, reclassified Gogol from a Ukrainian to a Russian writer. It was only after the presentation of his comedy "The Government Inspector" ("Revizor") at the Saint Petersburg State Theatre, on 19 April 1836, that he finally came to believe in his literary vocation. The comedy, a violent satire of Russian provincial bureaucracy, was staged thanks only to the intervention of the emperor, Nicholas I.


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: From 1836 to 1848, Gogol lived abroad, travelling through Germany and Switzerland. Gogol spent the winter of 1836–37 in Paris, among Russian expatriates and Polish exiles, frequently meeting the Polish poets Adam Mickiewicz and Bohdan Zaleski. He eventually settled in Rome. For much of the twelve years from 1836, Gogol was in Italy, where he developed an adoration for Rome. He studied art, read Italian literature and developed a passion for opera.


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: Pushkin's death produced a strong impression on Gogol. His principal work during the years following Pushkin's death was the satirical epic "Dead Souls". Concurrently, he worked at other tasks – recast "Taras Bulba" (1842) and "The Portrait", completed his second comedy, "Marriage" ("Zhenitba"), wrote the fragment "Rome" and his most famous short story, "The Overcoat".


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: In 1841, the first part of "Dead Souls" was ready, and Gogol took it to Russia to supervise its printing. It appeared in Moscow in 1842, under a new title imposed by the censorship, "The Adventures of Chichikov". The book established his reputation as one of the greatest prose writers in the language.


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: After the triumph of "Dead Souls", Gogol's contemporaries came to regard him as a great satirist who lampooned the unseemly sides of Imperial Russia. They did not know that "Dead Souls" was but the first part of a planned modern-day counterpart to the "Divine Comedy" of Dante. The first part represented the "Inferno"; the second part would depict the gradual purification and transformation of the rogue Chichikov under the influence of virtuous publicans and governors – "Purgatory".


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: In April 1848, Gogol returned to Russia from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and passed his last years in restless movement throughout the country. While visiting the capitals, he stayed with friends such as Mikhail Pogodin and Sergey Aksakov. During this period, he also spent much time with his old Ukrainian friends, Maksymovych and Osyp Bodiansky. He intensified his relationship with a starets or spiritual elder, Matvey Konstantinovsky, whom he had known for several years. Konstantinovsky seems to have strengthened in Gogol the fear of perdition (damnation) by insisting on the sinfulness of all his imaginative work. Exaggerated ascetic practices undermined his health and he fell into a state of deep depression. On the night of 24 February 1852 he burned some of his manuscripts, which contained most of the second part of "Dead Souls". He explained this as a mistake, a practical joke played on him by the Devil. Soon thereafter, he took to bed, refused all food, and died in great pain nine days later.


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: Gogol was mourned in the Saint Tatiana church at the Moscow University before his burial and then buried at the Danilov Monastery, close to his fellow Slavophile Aleksey Khomyakov. His grave was marked by a large stone (Golgotha), topped by a Russian Orthodox cross.


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: In 1931, Moscow authorities decided to demolish the monastery and had Gogol's remains transferred to the Novodevichy Cemetery. His body was discovered lying face down, which gave rise to the story that Gogol had been buried alive. The authorities moved the Golgotha stone to the new gravesite, but removed the cross; in 1952 the Soviets replaced the stone with a bust of Gogol. The stone was later reused for the tomb of Gogol's admirer Mikhail Bulgakov. In 2009, in connection with the bicentennial of Gogol's birth, the bust was moved to the museum at Novodevichy Cemetery, and the original Golgotha stone was returned, along with a copy of the original Orthodox cross.


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: The first Gogol monument in Moscow, a Symbolist statue on Arbat Square, represented the sculptor Nikolay Andreyev's idea of Gogol rather than the real man. Unveiled in 1909, the statue received praise from Ilya Repin and from Leo Tolstoy as an outstanding projection of Gogol's tortured personality. Joseph Stalin did not like it, however, and the statue was replaced by a more orthodox Socialist Realist monument in 1952. It took enormous efforts to save Andreyev's original work from destruction; it stands in front of the house where Gogol died.


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: D. S. Mirsky characterizes Gogol's universe as "one of the most marvellous, unexpected – in the strictest sense, original – worlds ever created by an artist of words".


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: A characteristic of Gogol's writing is his 'impressionist' vision of reality and people. He saw the outer world strangely metamorphosed, a singular gift particularly evident from the fantastic spatial transformations in his Gothic stories, "A Terrible Vengeance" and "A Bewitched Place". His pictures of nature are strange mounds of detail heaped on detail, resulting in an unconnected chaos of things: "His people are caricatures, drawn with the method of the caricaturist – which is to exaggerate salient features and to reduce them to geometrical pattern. But these cartoons have a convincingness, a truthfulness, and inevitability – attained as a rule by slight but definitive strokes of unexpected reality – that seems to beggar the visible world itself." According to Andrey Bely, Gogol's work influenced the emergence of Gothic romance, and served as a forerunner for absurdism and impressionism.


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: The aspect under which the mature Gogol sees reality is expressed by the Russian word "poshlost'", which means something similar to "triviality, banality, inferiority", moral and spiritual, widespread in some group or society. Like Sterne before him, Gogol was a great destroyer of prohibitions and of romantic illusions. He undermined Russian Romanticism by making vulgarity reign where only the sublime and the beautiful had before. "Characteristic of Gogol is a sense of boundless superfluity that is soon revealed as utter emptiness and a rich comedy that suddenly turns into metaphysical horror."


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: His stories often interweave pathos and mockery, while "The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich" begins as a merry farce and ends with the famous dictum, "It is dull in this world, gentlemen!"


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: It stunned Gogol when critics interpreted "The Government Inspector" as an indictment of tsarism despite Nicholas I's patronage of the play. Gogol himself, an adherent of the Slavophile movement, believed in a divinely inspired mission for both the House of Romanov and the Russian Orthodox Church. Like Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Gogol sharply disagreed with those Russians who preached constitutional monarchy and the disestablishment of the Orthodox Church.


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: After defending autocracy, serfdom, and the Orthodox Church in his book "Selected Passages from Correspondence with his Friends" (1847), Gogol came under attack from his former patron Vissarion Belinsky. The first Russian intellectual to publicly preach the economic theories of Karl Marx, Belinsky accused Gogol of betraying his readership by defending the "status quo".


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: Even before the publication of "Dead Souls", Belinsky recognized Gogol as the first Russian-language realist writer and as the head of the Natural School, to which he also assigned such younger or lesser authors as Goncharov, Turgenev, Dmitry Grigorovich, Vladimir Dahl and Vladimir Sollogub. Gogol himself appeared skeptical about the existence of such a literary movement. Although he recognized "several young writers" who "have shown a particular desire to observe real life", he upbraided the deficient composition and style of their works. Nevertheless, subsequent generations of radical critics celebrated Gogol (the author in whose world a nose roams the streets of the Russian capital) as a great realist, a reputation decried by the "Encyclopædia Britannica" as "the triumph of Gogolesque irony".


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: The period of literary modernism saw a revival of interest in and a change of attitude towards Gogol's work. One of the pioneering works of Russian formalism was Eichenbaum's reappraisal of "The Overcoat". In the 1920s a group of Russian short-story writers, known as the Serapion Brothers, placed Gogol among their precursors and consciously sought to imitate his techniques. The leading novelists of the period – notably Yevgeny Zamyatin and Mikhail Bulgakov – also admired Gogol and followed in his footsteps. In 1926 Vsevolod Meyerhold staged "The Government Inspector" as a "comedy of the absurd situation", revealing to his fascinated spectators a corrupt world of endless self-deception. In 1934 Andrei Bely published the most meticulous study of Gogol's literary techniques up to that date, in which he analyzed the colours prevalent in Gogol's work depending on the period, his impressionistic use of verbs, the expressive discontinuity of his syntax, the complicated rhythmical patterns of his sentences, and many other secrets of his craft. Based on this work, Vladimir Nabokov published a summary account of Gogol's masterpieces.


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: Gogol's impact on Russian literature has endured, yet various critics have appreciated his works differently. Belinsky, for instance, berated his horror stories as "moribund, monstrous works", while Andrei Bely counted them among his most stylistically daring creations. Nabokov especially admired "Dead Souls", "The Government Inspector", and "The Overcoat" as works of genius, proclaiming that "when, as in his immortal 'The Overcoat', Gogol really let himself go and pottered happily on the brink of his private abyss, he became the greatest artist that Russia has yet produced." Critics traditionally interpreted "The Overcoat" as a masterpiece of "humanitarian realism", but Nabokov and some other attentive readers argued that "holes in the language" make the story susceptible to interpretation as a supernatural tale about a ghostly double of a "small man". Of all Gogol's stories, "The Nose" has stubbornly defied all abstruse interpretations: D.S. Mirsky declared it "a piece of sheer play, almost sheer nonsense". In recent years, however, "The Nose" became the subject of several postmodernist and postcolonial interpretations.


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: Some critics have paid attention to the apparent anti-Semitism in Gogol's writings, as well as in those of his contemporary, Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Felix Dreizin and David Guaspari, for example, in their "The Russian Soul and the Jew: Essays in Literary Ethnocentrism", discuss "the significance of the Jewish characters and the negative image of the Ukrainian Jewish community in Gogol's novel "Taras Bulba", pointing out Gogol's attachment to anti-Jewish prejudices prevalent in Russian and Ukrainian culture." In Léon Poliakov's "The History of Antisemitism", the author mentions that "The 'Yankel' from "Taras Bulba" indeed became the archetypal Jew in Russian literature. Gogol painted him as supremely exploitative, cowardly, and repulsive, albeit capable of gratitude. But it seems perfectly natural in the story that he and his cohorts be drowned in the Dniper by the Cossack lords. Above all, Yankel is ridiculous, and the image of the plucked chicken that Gogol used has made the rounds of great Russian authors."


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: Despite his portrayal of Jewish characters, Gogol left a powerful impression even on Jewish writers who inherited his literary legacy. Amelia Glaser has noted the influence of Gogol's literary innovations on Sholem Aleichem, who


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: "chose to model much of his writing, and even his appearance, on Gogol... What Sholem Aleichem was borrowing from Gogol was a rural East European landscape that may have been dangerous, but could unite readers through the power of collective memory. He also learned from Gogol to soften this danger through laughter, and he often rewrites Gogol's Jewish characters, correcting anti-Semitic stereotypes and narrating history from a Jewish perspective."


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: Gogol's oeuvre has also had an impact on Russia's non-literary culture, and his stories have been adapted numerous times into opera and film. The Russian composer Alfred Schnittke wrote the eight-part "Gogol Suite" as incidental music to "The Government Inspector" performed as a play, and Dmitri Shostakovich set "The Nose" as his first opera in 1928 – a peculiar choice of subject for what was meant to initiate the great tradition of Soviet opera. More recently, to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Gogol's birth in 1809, Vienna's renowned Theater an der Wien commissioned music and libretto for a full-length opera on the life of Gogol from Russian composer and writer Lera Auerbach.


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: More than 135 films have been based on Gogol's work, the most recent being "The Girl in the White Coat" (2011).


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: Gogol has been featured many times on Russian and Soviet postage stamps; he is also well represented on stamps worldwide. Several commemorative coins have been issued from Russia and the USSR. In 2009, the National Bank of Ukraine issued a commemorative coin dedicated to Gogol. Streets have been named after Gogol in various towns, including Moscow, Sofia, Lipetsk, Odessa, Myrhorod, Krasnodar, Vladimir, Vladivostok, Penza, Petrozavodsk, Riga, Bratislava, Belgrade, Harbin and many other towns and cities.


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: Gogol is mentioned several times in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "Poor Folk" and "Crime and Punishment" and Chekhov's "The Seagull".


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: BBC Radio 4 made a series of six Gogol short stories, entitled "Three Ivans, Two Aunts and an Overcoat" (2002, adaptations by Jim Poyser) starring Griff Rhys-Jones and Stephen Moore. The stories adapted were "The Two Ivans", "The Overcoat", "Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka and His Aunt", "The Nose", "The Mysterious Portrait" and "Diary of a Madman".


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: Gogol's short story "Christmas Eve" (literally the Russian title «Ночь перед Рождеством» translates as "The Night before Christmas") was adapted into operatic form by at least three East Slavic composers. Ukrainian composer Mykola Lysenko wrote his "Christmas Eve" («Різдвяна ніч», with libretto in Ukrainian by Mykhailo Starytsky) in 1872. Just two years later, in 1874, Tchaikovsky composed his version under the title "Vakula the Smith" (with Russian libretto by Yakov Polonsky) and revised it in 1885 as "Cherevichki (The Tsarina's Slippers)". In 1894 (i.e., just after Tchaikovsky's death), Rimsky-Korsakov wrote the libretto and music for his own opera based on the same story. "Christmas Eve" was also adapted into a film in 1961 entitled The Night Before Christmas. It was adapted also for radio by Adam Beeson and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 24 December 2008 and subsequently rebroadcast on both Radio 4 and Radio 4 Extra on Christmas Eve 2010, 2011 and 2015.


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: Gogol's story "Viy" was adapted into film by Russian filmmakers four times: the original "Viy" in 1967; the horror film "Vedma" (aka "The Power of Fear") in 2006; the action-horror film "Viy" in 2014; and the horror film "Gogol Viy" released in 2018. It was also adapted into the Russian FMV video game "Viy: The Story Retold" (2004). Outside of Russia, the film loosely served as the inspiration for Mario Bava's film "Black Sunday" (1960) and the South Korean horror film "Evil Spirit: Viy" (2008).


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: Gogol's short story "The Portrait" is being made into a feature film "The Portrait" by fine artists Anastasia Elena Baranoff and Elena Vladimir Baranoff.


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: The Russian TV-3 television series "Gogol" features Nikolai Gogol as a lead character and presents a fictionalized version of his life that mixes his history with elements from his various stories. The episodes were also released theatrically starting with "Gogol. The Beginning" in August 2017. A sequel entitled "Gogol: Viy" was released in April 2018 and the third film "Gogol: Terrible Revenge" debuted in August 2018.


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: In 1963 an animated version of Gogol's classic surrealist story "The Nose" was made by Alexandre Alexeieff and Claire Parker, using the pinscreen animation technique, for the National Film Board of Canada.


title: Nikolai Gogol

text: A definitive animated movie adaptation of Gogol's "The Nose" released in January 2020. "The Nose or Conspiracy of Mavericks" has been in production for about fifty years.


title: 2014 Indian general election

text: General elections were held in India in nine phases from 7 April to 12 May 2014 to elect the members of the 16th Lok Sabha. With 834 million registered voters, they were the largest-ever elections in the world until being surpassed by the 2019 elections. Around 23.1 million or 2.7% of the total eligible voters were aged 18–19 years. A total of 8,251 candidates contested the 543 elected Lok Sabha seats. The average election turnout over all nine phases was around 66.40%, the highest ever in the history of Indian general elections.


title: 2014 Indian general election

text: The results were declared on 16 May, 15 days before the 15th Lok Sabha completed its constitutional mandate on 31 May 2014. The counting exercise was held at 989 counting centres. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) received 31% of the vote and won 282 seats, while its National Democratic Alliance won a total of 336 seats. The BJP's vote share was the lowest by a party winning a majority of seats since independence, However, the governing coalition had the largest majority since the 1984 elections, and it was the first time since 1984 that a party had won enough seats to govern without the support of other parties.


title: 2014 Indian general election

text: In contrast, the result was the worst-ever performance by the Indian National Congress (INC), which had ruled India for most of its post-independence history. The INC received 19.3% of the vote and won only 44 seats, with its wider alliance, the United Progressive Alliance, winning a total of just 59. In order to become the official opposition party in India, a party must have 55 seats; as a result, there was no official opposition party.


title: 2014 Indian general election

text: As per the requirements of the Indian Constitution, elections to the Lok Sabha must be held at an interval of five years or whenever parliament is dissolved by the president. The previous election, to the 15th Lok Sabha, was conducted in April–May 2009, and its term would have naturally expired on 31 May 2014. The election to the 16th Lok Sabha was organised and conducted by the Election Commission of India (ECI) and was held in multiple phases, to better handle the large electoral base and security concerns.


title: 2014 Indian general election

text: Since the last general election in 2009, the anti-corruption movement by Anna Hazare, and other similar moves by Baba Ramdev and Arvind Kejriwal (founder of Aam Aadmi Party), gathered momentum and political interest. Kejriwal went on to form a separate political party, Aam Aadmi Party, in November 2012. The 2012 presidential election resulted in Pranab Mukherjee of Indian National Congress becoming the president. Andhra politics was further shaken following the death of its chief minister, Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy. His son, Y. S. Jaganmohan Reddy, then broke from the INC and founded the YSR Congress Party, taking several politicians with him.


title: 2014 Indian general election

text: The final session of parliament started on 6 February and ended on 21 February. Amongst the agenda in the final session was passing The Lokpal and Lokayuktas Bill, 2013 in tackling corruption and the creation of Telangana.


title: 2014 Indian general election

text: The Cabinet of India revised the limit of election expenditure by a candidate for parliamentary constituencies to in bigger states and to in smaller states and all union territories except Delhi. This revision of the ceiling on the elections were attributed to the increase in the number of electors and polling stations as well as the increase in the cost inflation index.


title: 2014 Indian general election

text: Satyendra Singh, a doctor with a disability, showed the lack of preparedness by the Election Commission of India (ECI) towards electors with disabilities through the Right to Information Act. The Chief Electoral Officer in Delhi, Vijay Dev then started a campaign on providing accessibility for the disabled, along with him. Singh conducted sensitisation workshops for election officers and helped in setting up a registration link for voters with disabilities to register to vote and provide their requirements.


title: 2014 Indian general election

text: The Chief Election Commissioner of India (CEC), V. S. Sampath, announced the polling schedule on 5 March. Voting was scheduled to be held in nine phases from 7 April to 12 May, and the results of the election were announced on 16 May. Simultaneous elections were held for the "Vidhan Sabha" of Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Odisha, Telangana and Sikkim.


title: 2014 Indian general election

text: Important issues during the campaign included high inflation, lack of jobs, economic slow down, corruption, security and terrorism, religious division and communalism, and infrastructure such as roads, electricity and water. In a survey by "Zee News", inflation was indicated to be the main issue in the election.