title: Temple Grandin

text: Several reports and sources cited the different names of the schools Grandin attended: Beaver Country Day School or Cherry Falls Girl’s School (the latter named in her first book, "Emergence: Labeled Autistic"); and Hampshire Country School or Mountain Day School (the latter called by Grandin in the early books). Following her expulsion from Beaver Country Day School, Grandin’s mother enrolled her at Hampshire Country School in Rindge, New Hampshire. That school was founded in 1948 by Boston child psychologist, Henry Patey, for the students of “exceptional potential (gifted) that have not been successful in a typical setting”. She was accepted there and became Winter Carnival Queen and captain of the hockey team. At HCS, Grandin met William Carlock, a science teacher who had worked for NASA, who became her mentor and helped her significantly toward building up her self-confidence.


title: Temple Grandin

text: It was Carlock who encouraged Grandin to develop her idea to build her squeeze machine when she returned from her aunt's farm in Arizona in her senior year of high school. At the age of 18 when she was still attending Hampshire Country School, with Carlock's and school owner/founder Henry Patey's support, Grandin built the hug box. Carlock's supportive role in Grandin's life continued even after she left Hampshire Country School. As a favor to Henry Patey, the President of the newly founded Franklin Pierce College (5 miles from Hampshire Country School) agreed to accept Temple as a student without the typical records and files of a typical High School student. When Grandin was facing criticism for her hug box at Franklin Pierce College, it was Carlock who suggested that Grandin undertake scientific experiments to evaluate the efficacy of the device. It was his constant guidance to Grandin to refocus the rigid obsessions she experienced with the hug box into a productive assignment that subsequently allowed this study undertaken by Grandin to be widely cited as evidence of Grandin's resourcefulness.


title: Temple Grandin

text: After she graduated from Hampshire Country School in 1966, Grandin went on to earn her bachelor's degree in human psychology from Franklin Pierce College in 1970, a master's degree in animal science from Arizona State University in 1975, and a doctoral degree in animal science from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1989.


title: Temple Grandin

text: Grandin is a prominent and widely cited proponent for the humane treatment of livestock for slaughter. She is internationally famous as a spokesperson on autism, as well.


title: Temple Grandin

text: Steve Silberman, in his book "NeuroTribes", wrote that Temple Grandin helped break down years of shame and stigma because she was one of the first adults to publicly disclose that she was autistic. Bernard Rimland, a father of an autistic son and author of the book "Infantile Autism", wrote the foreword to Grandin's first book "Emergence: Labeled Autistic". Her book was published in 1986. Rimland wrote "Temple's ability to convey to the reader her innermost feelings and fears, coupled with her capacity for explaining mental processes will give the reader an insight into autism that very few have been able to achieve."


title: Temple Grandin

text: In Developing Talents, 2nd Edition, Grandin explores many unnoticed aspects of vocational rehabilitation programs that provide job training and placement for people with disabilities, as well as Social Security Administration programs that offer vocational assistance.


title: Temple Grandin

text: In her later book, "Thinking in Pictures", published in 1995, the neurologist Oliver Sacks wrote at the end of the foreword that the book provided "a bridge between our world and hers, and allows us to glimpse into a quite other sort of mind."


title: Temple Grandin

text: In her early writings, Grandin characterized herself as a recovered autistic and, in his foreword, Bernard Rimland used the term recovered autistic individual. In her later writings, she has abandoned this characterization. Steve Silberman wrote, "It became obvious to her, however, that she was not recovered but had learned with great effort to adapt to the social norms of the people around her."


title: Temple Grandin

text: When her book "Thinking in Pictures" was written in 1995, Grandin thought that all individuals with autism thought in photographic-specific images the way she did. By the time the expanded edition was published in 2006, she had realized that it had been wrong to presume that every person with autism processed information in the same way she did. In the 2006 edition, she wrote that there were three types of specialized thinking. They were: 1. Visual Thinkers like she is, who think in photographically specific images. 2. Music and Math Thinkers – who think in patterns and may be good at mathematics, chess, and programming computers. 3. Verbal Logic Thinkers – who think in word details, and she noted that their favorite subject may be history.


title: Temple Grandin

text: In one of her later books, "", the concept of three different types of thinking by autistic individuals is expanded. This book was published in 2013. An influential book that helped her to develop her concept of pattern thinking was Clara Claiborne Park's book entitled "Exiting Nirvana: A Daughter's Life with Autism". It was published in 2001. "The Autistic Brain" also contains an extensive review of scientific studies that provide evidence that object-visual thinking is different from spatial-visualization abilities.


title: Temple Grandin

text: Grandin became well-known beyond the American autistic community, after being described by Oliver Sacks in the title narrative of his book "An Anthropologist on Mars" (1995), for which he won a Polk Award. The title is derived from Grandin's characterization of how she feels around neurotypical people. In the mid-1980s Grandin first spoke in public about autism at the request of Ruth C. Sullivan, one of the founders of the Autism Society of America (ASA). Sullivan writes:


title: Temple Grandin

text: Based on personal experience, Grandin advocates early intervention to address autism and supportive teachers, who can direct fixations of the child with autism in fruitful directions. She has described her hypersensitivity to noise and other sensory stimuli. She says words are her second language and that she thinks "totally in pictures", using her vast visual memory to translate information into a mental slideshow of images that may be manipulated or correlated. Grandin attributes her success as a humane livestock facility designer to her ability to recall detail, which is a characteristic of her visual memory. Grandin compares her memory to full-length movies in her head, that may be replayed at will, allowing her to notice small details. She also is able to view her memories using slightly different contexts by changing the positions of the lighting and shadows.


title: Temple Grandin

text: As a proponent of neurodiversity, Grandin does not support eliminating autism genes or treating mildly-autistic individuals. However, she believes that autistic children who are severely disabled need therapy with applied behavioral analysis. Additionally, she has claimed that she only will attend talks given by autistics who can hold down a career.


title: Temple Grandin

text: In March of every year, Grandin hosts a public event at Boston University. The event was cancelled in March 2020 due to COVID-19.


title: Temple Grandin

text: In 1980 Grandin published her first two scientific articles on beef cattle behavior during handling: "Livestock Behavior as Related to Handling Facilities Design" in the "International Journal for the Study of Animal Problems, Vol. 1, pp. 33–52" and "Observations of Cattle Behavior Applied to the Design of Cattle Handling Facilities", "Applied Animal Ethology, Vol. 6, pp. 19–31." She was one of the first scientists to report that animals are sensitive to visual distractions in handling facilities such as shadows, dangling chains, and other environmental details that most people do not notice. When she was awarded her Ph.D. at the University of Illinois, she studied the effects of environmental enrichment on pigs. The title of her dissertation was "Effect of Rearing Environment and Environmental Enrichment on the Behavior and Neural Development in Young Pigs". Grandin expanded her theories in her book, "Animals Make Us Human".


title: Temple Grandin

text: In 1993, she edited the first edition of "Livestock Handling and Transport". Grandin wrote three chapters and included chapters from contributors from around the world. Subsequent editions of the book were published in 2000, 2007, and 2014. In her academic work as a professor at Colorado State University, her graduate student Bridgett Voisinet conducted one of the early studies that demonstrated that cattle who remained calm during handling had higher weight gains. In 1997, when the paper was published, this was a new concept. The paper is entitled, "Feedlot Cattle with Calm Temperaments Have Higher Average Daily Gains Than Cattle with Excitable Temperaments", published in "The Journal of Animal Science, Vol. 75, pp. 892–896."


title: Temple Grandin

text: Another important paper published by Grandin was, "Assessment of Stress During Handling and Transport", "Journal of Animal Science, 1997, Vol. 75, pp. 249-257". This paper presented the concept that an animal's previous experiences with handling could have an effect on how it will react to being handled in the future, as a new concept in the animal-handling industry.


title: Temple Grandin

text: A major piece of equipment that Grandin developed was a center track (double rail) conveyor restrainer system for holding cattle during stunning at large beef slaughtering plants. The first system was installed in the mid-1980s for calves and a system for large beef cattle was developed in 1990. This equipment is now being used by many large meat companies. It is described in "Double Rail Restrainer Conveyor for Livestock Handling", first published in the "Journal of Agricultural Engineering Research, Vol. 4, pp. 327–338" in 1988, and "Transferring results of behavioral research to industry to improve animal welfare on the farm, ranch, and slaughter plant", "Applied Animal Behavior Science, Vol. 8, pp. 215–228", published in 2003.


title: Temple Grandin

text: Grandin also developed an objective, numerical scoring system for assessing animal welfare at slaughtering plants. The use of this scoring system resulted in significant improvements in animal stunning and handling during slaughter. This work is described in "Objective scoring of animal handling and stunning practices in slaughter plants", "Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, Vol. 212, pp. 3–39, "The feasibility of using vocalization scoring as an indicator of poor welfare during slaughter", "Applied Animal Behavior Science, Vol. 56, pp. 121–128," and "Effect of animal welfare audits of slaughter plants by a major fast food company on cattle handling and stunning practices", "Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, Vol. 216, pp. 848–851.


title: Temple Grandin

text: In 2008, Grandin published "Humane Livestock Handling" with contributions by Mark Deesing, a long time collaborator with her. The book contains a review of the main aspects of cattle behavior and provides a visual guide in the form of construction plans and diagrams for the implementation of Grandin's ideas relating to humane livestock handling. Many of her contributions to the field of handling livestock and the design of livestock handling systems advocated for in her books are available through her website as well.


title: Temple Grandin

text: Grandin is the author or co-author of more than 60 peer-reviewed scientific papers on a variety of other animal behavior subjects. Some of the other subjects are the effect of hair whorl position on cattle behavior, the influence of stress prior to slaughter upon meat quality, religious slaughter, mothering behavior of beef cows, cattle temperament, and causes of bruising.


title: Temple Grandin

text: Grandin has lectured widely about her first-hand experiences of the anxiety of feeling threatened by everything in her surroundings, and of being dismissed and feared, which motivates her work in humane livestock handling processes. She studied the behavior of cattle, how they react to ranchers, movements, objects, and light. Grandin then designed curved corrals she adapted with the intention of reducing stress, panic, and injury in animals being led to slaughter. This has proved to be a further point of criticism and controversy among animal activists who have questioned the congruence of a career built on animal slaughter alongside Grandin's claims of compassion and respect for animals. While her designs are widely used throughout the slaughterhouse industry, her claim of compassion for the animals is that because of her autism she can see the animals' reality from their viewpoint, that when she holds an animal's head in her hands as it is being slaughtered, she feels a deep connection to them.


title: Temple Grandin

text: In 2004, Grandin won a "Proggy" award in the "Visionary" category, from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.


title: Temple Grandin

text: One of her notable essays about animal welfare is, "Animals Are Not Things", in which she posits that technically, animals are property in society, but the law ultimately gives them ethical protections or rights. She compares the properties and rights of owning cattle, versus owning screwdrivers, enumerating how both may be used to serve human purposes in many ways, but when it comes to inflicting pain, there is a vital distinction between such "properties", because legally, a person can smash or grind up a screwdriver, but cannot torture an animal.


title: Temple Grandin

text: Her insight into the minds of cattle has taught her to value the changes in details to which animals are particularly sensitive and to use her visualization skills to design thoughtful and humane animal-handling equipment. She was named a fellow of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers in 2009.


title: Temple Grandin

text: In 2012, when the American beef industry was struggling with public perception of its use and sale of pink slime, Grandin spoke out in support of the food product. She said, "It should be on the market. It should be labeled. We should not be throwing away that much beef."


title: Temple Grandin

text: Grandin's work has attracted the attention of philosophers interested in the moral status of animals. One view found in the academic literature is that Grandin's method of slaughter is a significant positive development for animals, but her attempts to formulate a moral defense of meat-eating have been less successful.


title: Temple Grandin

text: Grandin says that "the part of other people that has emotional relationships is not part of me", and she has neither married nor had children. She later stated that she preferred the science fiction, documentary, and thriller genre of films and television shows to more dramatic or romantic ones. Beyond her work in animal science and welfare and autism rights, her interests include horseback riding, science fiction, movies, and biochemistry.


title: Temple Grandin

text: She has noted in her autobiographical works that autism affects every aspect of her life. Grandin has to wear comfortable clothes to counteract her sensory processing disorder and has structured her lifestyle to avoid sensory overload. She regularly takes antidepressants, but no longer uses her squeeze machine, stating in February 2010 that: "It broke two years ago, and I never got around to fixing it. I'm into hugging people now."


title: Temple Grandin

text: In 2010, Grandin was named in the "Time 100" list of the one hundred most influential people in the world, in the "Heroes" category. In 2011, she received a Double Helix Medal. She has received honorary degrees from many universities including McGill University in Canada (1999), and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (2009), Carnegie Mellon University in the United States (2012), and Emory University (2016). In 2015, she was named an honorary fellow of the Society for Technical Communication.


title: Temple Grandin

text: In 2012, she was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.


title: Temple Grandin

text: Grandin received a Meritorious Achievement Award from the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) in 2015.


title: Temple Grandin

text: Grandin has been featured on major media programs, such as Lisa Davis' "It's Your Health", ABC's "Primetime Live", the "Today Show", "Larry King Live", and "Fresh Air with Terry Gross". She has been written up in "Time" magazine, "People" magazine, "Discover" magazine, "Forbes", and "The New York Times". In 2012, Grandin was interviewed on Thriving Canine Radio to discuss "A Different Perspective on Animal Behavior".


title: Temple Grandin

text: She was the subject of the "Horizon" documentary "The Woman Who Thinks Like a Cow", first broadcast by the BBC on June 8, 2006, and "Nick News with Linda Ellerbee" in the spring of 2006. She also was the subject of the first episode in the series "First Person" by Errol Morris.


title: Temple Grandin

text: Grandin is the focus of a semi-biographical HBO film entitled "Temple Grandin", starring Claire Danes as Grandin. The film was broadcast on February 6, 2010. The movie was nominated for 15 Primetime Emmy Awards and won seven awards, including Outstanding Television Movie and Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Movie for Claire Danes. Grandin was on stage as the award was accepted and she spoke briefly to the audience. Coincidentally, the 62nd Primetime Emmy Awards happened on Grandin's birthday – August 29. On January 16, 2011, at the 68th Golden Globe Awards, Claire Danes won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Miniseries or Television Film.


title: Temple Grandin

text: Grandin was featured in "Beautiful Minds: A Voyage Into the Brain", a documentary produced in 2006 by Colourfield Tell-A-Vision, a German company. She was named one of 2010's one hundred most influential people in the world by "Time" magazine. In 2011, she was featured in an episode of the Science documentary series "Ingenious Minds". In 2018, Grandin was featured in the documentary "This Business of Autism", which explored autism employment and the success story of autism employers such as Spectrum Designs Foundation and was produced by Mesh Omnimedia.


title: Temple Grandin

text: She also was interviewed by Michael Pollan in his best-selling book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma", in which she discussed the livestock industry.


title: Temple Grandin

text: Folk-punk band AJJ, formerly known as Andrew Jackson Jihad, included two songs called "Temple Grandin" and "Temple Grandin Too" on their LP "Christmas Island".


title: Temple Grandin

text: In 2017, Grandin was the focus of a children's book by author Julia Finlay Mosca titled "The Girl Who Thought In Pictures, A Story of Temple Grandin".


title: Temple Grandin

text: In 2018, Grandin was profiled in the book "Rescuing Ladybugs" by author and animal advocate Jennifer Skiff as a "global hero" for "standing her ground and fighting for change after witnessing the extreme mistreatment of animals" used in farming.


title: The French Connection (film)

text: The French Connection is a 1971 American crime action thriller film directed by William Friedkin. The screenplay, written by Ernest Tidyman, is based on Robin Moore's 1969 book of the same name. It tells the story of NYPD detectives Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle and Buddy "Cloudy" Russo, whose real-life counterparts were Narcotics Detectives Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso, in pursuit of wealthy French heroin smuggler Alain Charnier. The film stars Gene Hackman as Popeye, Roy Scheider as Cloudy, and Fernando Rey as Charnier. Tony Lo Bianco and Marcel Bozzuffi also star.


title: The French Connection (film)

text: At the 44th Academy Awards, the film earned eight nominations and won five for Best Picture, Best Actor (Hackman), Best Director, Best Film Editing, and Best Adapted Screenplay, and was also nominated for Best Supporting Actor (Scheider), Best Cinematography, and Best Sound Mixing. Tidyman also received a Golden Globe Award nomination, a Writers Guild of America Award, and an Edgar Award for his screenplay. A sequel, "French Connection II", followed in 1975 with Hackman and Rey reprising their roles.


title: The French Connection (film)

text: Considered one of the greatest films ever made, "The French Connection" appeared in the American Film Institute's list of the best American films in 1998 and again in 2007. In 2005, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".


title: The French Connection (film)

text: In Marseille, a police detective follows Alain Charnier, who runs the world's largest heroin-smuggling syndicate. The policeman is murdered by Charnier's hitman, Pierre Nicoli. Charnier plans to smuggle $32 million worth of heroin into the United States by hiding it in the car of his unsuspecting friend, television personality Henri Devereaux, who is traveling to New York by ship. In New York City, detectives Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle and Buddy "Cloudy" Russo go out for drinks at the Copacabana. Popeye notices Salvatore "Sal" Boca and his young wife, Angie, entertaining mobsters involved in narcotics. They tail the couple and establish a link between the Bocas and lawyer Joel Weinstock, who is part of the narcotics underworld. Popeye learns that a massive shipment of heroin will arrive within two weeks. The detectives convince their supervisor to wiretap the Bocas' phones. Popeye and Cloudy are joined by federal agents Mulderig and Klein.


title: The French Connection (film)

text: Devereaux's vehicle arrives in New York City. Boca is impatient to make the purchase while Weinstock urges patience, knowing they are being investigated. Charnier realizes he is being observed. He "makes" Popeye and escapes on a departing subway shuttle at Grand Central Station. To avoid being tailed, he has Boca meet him in Washington D.C., where Boca asks for a delay to avoid the police. Charnier, however, wants to conclude the deal quickly. On the flight back to New York City, Nicoli offers to kill Popeye, but Charnier objects, knowing that Popeye would be replaced by another policeman. Nicoli insists, however, saying they will be back in France before a replacement is assigned. Soon after, Nicoli attempts to shoot Popeye but misses. Popeye chases Nicoli, who boards an elevated train. Popeye shouts to a policeman on the train to stop Nicoli and then commandeers a car. He gives chase, accidentally crashing into several vehicles on the way.


title: The French Connection (film)

text: Realizing he is being pursued, Nicoli works his way forward through the carriages, shoots a policeman who tries to intervene and hijacks the motorman at gunpoint, forcing him to drive straight through the next station, also shooting the train conductor. The motorman has a heart attack and they are just about to slam into a stationary train when an emergency trackside brake engages, hurling the assassin against a glass window. A battered Popeye arrives to see the killer descending from the platform. When the killer sees Popeye, he turns to run but is shot dead by Popeye. After a lengthy stakeout, Popeye impounds Devereaux's Lincoln. In a police garage, he and his team tear the car apart piece by piece, searching for the drugs, but seemingly come up empty handed. Then, Cloudy notes that the vehicle's shipping weight is 120 pounds over its listed manufacturer's weight; they realize that the contraband must still be in the car. Finally, they remove the rocker panels and discover the hidden packages of heroin. The police reassemble and return the car to Devereaux, who delivers it to Charnier.


title: The French Connection (film)

text: Charnier drives to an old factory on Wards Island to meet Weinstock and deliver the drugs. After Charnier has the rocker panels removed, Weinstock's chemist tests one of the bags and confirms its quality. Charnier removes the drugs and hides the money, concealing it beneath the rocker panels of another car purchased at an auction of junk cars, which he will take back to France. Charnier and Sal drive off in the Lincoln, but hit a roadblock with a large contingent of police led by Popeye. The police chase the Lincoln back to the factory, where Boca is killed during a shootout while most of the other criminals surrender. Charnier escapes into the warehouse with Popeye and Cloudy in pursuit. Popeye sees a shadowy figure in the distance and opens fire a split-second after shouting a warning, killing Mulderig. Undaunted, Popeye tells Cloudy that he will get Charnier. After reloading his gun, Popeye runs into another room and a single gunshot is heard. Title cards describe the fates of various characters. Weinstock was indicted, but his case was dismissed for "lack of proper evidence"; Angie Boca received a suspended sentence for an unspecified misdemeanor; Lou Boca (Sal’s brother, an accessory to the handoff) received a reduced sentence; Devereaux served four years in a federal penitentiary for conspiracy; and Charnier was never caught. Popeye and Cloudy were transferred out of the narcotics division and reassigned.


title: The French Connection (film)

text: The film was originally set up at National General Pictures but they later dropped it and Richard Zanuck and David Brown offered to make it at Fox with a production budget of $1.5 million. The film came in $300,000 over budget at a total cost of $1.8 million.


title: The French Connection (film)

text: In an audio commentary track recorded by Friedkin for the Collector's Edition DVD release of the film, Friedkin notes that the film's documentary-like realism was the direct result of the influence of having seen "Z", a French film by Costa-Gavras. Friedkin mentioned the film's influence on him when directing "The French Connection": The film was among the earliest to show the World Trade Center: the completed North Tower and the partially completed South Tower are seen in the background of the scenes at the shipyard following Devereaux's arrival in New York.


title: The French Connection (film)

text: Friedkin credits his decision to direct the movie to a discussion with film director Howard Hawks, whose daughter was living with Friedkin at the time. Friedkin asked Hawks what he thought of his movies, to which Hawks bluntly replied that they were "lousy." Instead Hawks recommended that he "Make a good chase. Make one better than anyone's done."


title: The French Connection (film)

text: Though the cast ultimately proved to be one of the film's greatest strengths, Friedkin had problems with casting choices from the start. He was strongly opposed to the choice of Hackman for the lead, and actually first considered Paul Newman (out of the budget range), then Jackie Gleason, Peter Boyle and a New York columnist, Jimmy Breslin, who had never acted before. However, Gleason, at that time, was considered box-office poison by the studio after his film "Gigot" had flopped several years before, Boyle declined the role after disapproving of the violent theme of the film, and Breslin refused to get behind the wheel of a car, which was required of Popeye's character for an integral car chase scene. Steve McQueen was also considered, but he did not want to do another police film after "Bullitt" and, as with Newman, his fee would have exceeded the movie's budget. Tough guy Charles Bronson was also considered for the role. Lee Marvin, James Caan, and Robert Mitchum were also considered; all turned it down. Friedkin almost settled for Rod Taylor (who had actively pursued the role, according to Hackman), another choice the studio approved, before he went with Hackman.


title: The French Connection (film)

text: The casting of Fernando Rey as the main French heroin smuggler, Alain Charnier (irreverently referred to throughout the film as "Frog One"), resulted from mistaken identity. Friedkin had seen Luis Buñuel's 1967 French film "Belle de Jour" and had been impressed by the performance of Francisco Rabal, who had a small role in the film. However, Friedkin did not know his name, and remembered only that he was a Spanish actor. He asked his casting director to find the actor, and the casting director instead contacted Rey, a Spanish actor who had appeared in several other films directed by Buñuel. After Rabal was finally reached, they discovered he spoke neither French nor English, and Rey was kept in the film. After screening the film's final cut, Rey's French was deemed unacceptable by the filmmakers. They decided to dub his French while preserving his English dialogue.


title: The French Connection (film)

text: The plot centers on drug smuggling in the 1960s and early 1970s, when most of the heroin illegally imported into the East Coast came to the United States through France ("see" French Connection).


title: The French Connection (film)

text: On April 26, 1968, a record-setting seizure of of heroin was made, concealed in a Citroën DS and smuggled to New York on the ocean liner. The total amount smuggled during the many transatlantic voyages of this DS was according to arrested smuggler Jacques Bousquet.


title: The French Connection (film)

text: In addition to the two main protagonists, several of the fictional characters depicted in the film also have real-life counterparts. The Alain Charnier character is based upon Jean Jehan who was arrested later in Paris for drug trafficking, though he was not extradited since France does not extradite its citizens. Sal Boca is based on Pasquale "Patsy" Fuca, and his brother Anthony. Angie Boca is based on Patsy's wife Barbara, who later wrote a book with Robin Moore detailing her life with Patsy. The Fucas and their uncle were part of a heroin-dealing crew that worked with some of the New York City crime families.


title: The French Connection (film)

text: Henri Devereaux, who takes the fall for importing the film's Lincoln smuggle car to New York City, is based on Jacques Angelvin, a television actor arrested and sentenced to three to six years in a federal penitentiary for his role, serving about four before returning to France and turning to real estate. The Joel Weinstock character is, according to the director's commentary, a composite of several similar drug dealers.


title: The French Connection (film)

text: The film is often cited as containing one of the greatest car chase sequences in movie history. The chase involves Popeye commandeering a civilian's car (a 1971 Pontiac LeMans) and then frantically chasing an elevated train, on which a hitman is trying to escape. The scene was filmed in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, roughly running under the BMT West End Line (currently the , then the B train) which runs on an elevated track above Stillwell Avenue, 86th Street and New Utrecht Avenue in Brooklyn, with the chase ending just north of the 62nd Street station. At that point, the train hits a train stop, but is going too fast to stop in time and collides with the train ahead of it, which has just left the station.


title: The French Connection (film)

text: The most famous shot of the chase is made from a front bumper mount and shows a low-angle point of view shot of the streets racing by. Director of photography Owen Roizman wrote in "American Cinematographer" magazine in 1972 that the camera was undercranked to 18 frames per second to enhance the sense of speed; this effect can be seen on a car at a red light whose exhaust pipe is pumping smoke at an accelerated rate. Other shots involved stunt drivers who were supposed to barely miss hitting the speeding car, but due to errors in timing, accidental collisions occurred and were left in the final film. Friedkin said that he used Santana's cover of Peter Green's song "Black Magic Woman" during editing to help shape the chase sequence, though the song does not appear in the film, "it [the chase scene] did have a sort of pre-ordained rhythm to it that came from the music."


title: The French Connection (film)

text: The scene concludes with Doyle confronting Nicoli the hitman at the stairs leading to the subway and shooting him as he tries to run back up them. Many of the police officers acting as advisers for the film objected to the scene on the grounds that shooting a suspect in the back was simply murder, not self-defense, but director Friedkin stood by it, stating that he was "secure in my conviction that that's exactly what Eddie Egan (the model for Doyle) would have done and Eddie was on the set while all of this was being shot."


title: The French Connection (film)

text: Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" gave the film 4 out of 4 stars and ranked it as one of the best films of 1971. Roger Greenspun of "The New York Times" wrote that "The French Connection" "is in fact a very good new kind of movie, and that in spite of its being composed of such ancient material as cops and crooks, with thrills and chases, and lots of shoot-'em-up." A review in "Variety" stated, "So many changes have been made in Robin Moore's taut, factual reprise of one of the biggest narcotics hauls in New York police history that only the skeleton remains, but producer Philip D'Antoni and screenwriter Ernest Tidyman have added enough fictional flesh to provide director William Friedkin and his overall topnotch cast with plenty of material, and they make the most of it." Gene Siskel of the "Chicago Tribune" awarded a full 4 stars out of 4 and raved, "From the moment a street-corner Santa Claus chases a drug pusher thru the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, to the final shootout on deserted Ward's Island, 'The French Connection' is a gutty, flatout thriller, far superior to any caper film of recent vintage."


title: The French Connection (film)

text: Charles Champlin of the "Los Angeles Times" called it "every bit as entertaining as 'Bullitt,' a slam-bang, suspenseful, plain-spoken, sardonically funny, furiously paced melodrama. But because it has dropped the romance and starry glamor of Steve McQueen and added a strong sociological concern, 'The French Connection' is even more interesting, thought-provoking and reverberating." Gary Arnold of "The Washington Post" called the film "an undeniably sensational movie, a fast, tense, explosively vicious little cops-and-robbers enterprise" with "a deliberately nervewracking, runaway quality ... It's a cheap thrill in the same way that a roller coaster ride is a cheap thrill. It seems altogether appropriate that the showiest sequence intercuts between a runaway train and a recklessly speeding car." In his book "Reverse Angle", John Simon wrote "Friedkin has used New York locations better than anyone to day," "[t]he performances are all good", and "Owen Roizman's cinematography, grainy and grimy, is a brilliant rendering of urban blight."


title: The French Connection (film)

text: Pauline Kael of "The New Yorker" was generally negative, writing, "It's not what I want not because it fails (it doesn't fail), but because of what it is. It is, I think, what we once feared mass entertainment might become: jolts for jocks. There's nothing in the movie that you enjoy thinking about afterward—nothing especially clever except the timing of the subway-door-and-umbrella sequence. Every other effect of the movie—even the climactic car-versus-runaway-elevated-train chase—is achieved by noise, speed, and brutality." David Pirie of "The Monthly Film Bulletin" called the film "consistently exciting" and Gene Hackman "extremely convincing as Doyle, trailing his suspects with a shambling determination; but there are times when the film (or at any rate the script) seems to be applauding aspects of his character which are more repulsive than sympathetic. Whereas in "The Detective" or "Bullitt" the hero's attention was directed unmistakably towards liberal ends (crooked businessmen, corrupt local officials, etc.) Doyle spends a fair part of his time beating up sullen blacks in alleys and bars. These violent sequences are almost all presented racily and amusingly, stressing Doyle's 'lovable' toughness as he manhandles and arrests petty criminals, usually adding a quip like 'Lock them up and throw away the key.'"


title: The French Connection (film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 96% based on 89 reviews, with an average rating of 8.8/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Realistic, fast-paced and uncommonly smart, "The French Connection" is bolstered by stellar performances by Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider, not to mention William Friedkin's thrilling production." On Metacritic the film has a score of 94% based on reviews from 18 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".


title: The French Connection (film)

text: In 2014, "Time Out" listed "The French Connection" as the 31st best action film of all time, according to a poll of several film critics, directors, actors and stunt actors.


title: The French Connection (film)

text: Director David Fincher cited "The French Connection" as one of the five films that "had a Profound Impact on my Life" and served as an important influence on the cinematography on his film Seven.


title: The French Connection (film)

text: The actor Brad Pitt is an admirer of the film and has cited it as one of the main reasons why he chose to participate in David Fincher's film Seven.


title: The French Connection (film)

text: Director Steven Spielberg said that he studied "The French Connection" in preparation for his 2005 historical action thriller film, "Munich".


title: The French Connection (film)

text: Benny Safdie of the Safdie Brothers named "The French Connection" as one of his top five favorite films of all time.


title: The French Connection (film)

text: In 2012, the Motion Picture Editors Guild listed the film as the tenth best-edited film of all time based on a survey of its membership.


title: The French Connection (film)

text: "The French Connection" has been issued in a number of home video formats. On September 25, 2001, the film was released on VHS and DVD, with both formats being released in box sets featuring both the film and its sequel, "French Connection II". For a 2009 reissue on Blu-ray, William Friedkin controversially altered the film's color timing to give it a "colder" look. Cinematographer Owen Roizman, who was not consulted about the changes, dismissed the new transfer as "atrocious". On March 18, 2012, a new Blu-ray transfer of the movie was released. This time the color-timing was supervised by both Friedkin and Roizman, and the desaturated and sometimes over-grainy look of the 2009 edition have been corrected.


title: Pippa Middleton

text: Philippa Charlotte Matthews (née Middleton; born 6 September 1983) is an English socialite, author and columnist. She is the younger sister of Catherine, Princess of Wales.


title: Pippa Middleton

text: Born in Reading and raised in Bucklebury, Berkshire, Middleton attended Marlborough College before graduating with a degree in English literature from the University of Edinburgh. She worked at firms for public relations and event management before joining her parents' party supply company. Middleton began receiving media attention during her sister's relationship with Prince William, and her appearance at their wedding was subject to widespread coverage. She has also penned two books and previously contributed to "Vanity Fair" and "The Sunday Telegraph" columns.


title: Pippa Middleton

text: Middleton married James Matthews, a hedge fund manager and the heir apparent to the lairdship of Glen Affric, in 2017. They have three children.


title: Pippa Middleton

text: Philippa Charlotte Middleton was born on 6 September 1983 at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading, Berkshire, England. She is the second of three children born to Michael Middleton (born 1949), a former British Airways flight dispatcher, and Carole Middleton (née Goldsmith; born 1955), a former flight attendant. Her father is a member of a wealthy family from Yorkshire linked to the British aristocracy. Her mother descends from labourers and coal miners from County Durham. She was christened at St Andrew's Bradfield, Berkshire. The family resided in Bradfield Southend. Middleton has an older sister, Catherine, Princess of Wales, and a younger brother, James.


title: Pippa Middleton

text: The Middletons moved to Amman, Jordan in May 1984, where her father worked for British Airways, before returning to Berkshire in September 1986. In 1987, Middleton's mother founded Party Pieces, a mail-order party supply company, estimated to be worth £30 million, though accounts show that the company has lost £1.068 million during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 1995, her family moved to the village of Bucklebury. Middleton was first educated at St Andrew's School, a private boarding school in Pangbourne and then Downe House School, a girls' day and boarding school in Cold Ash. She was a boarder at Marlborough College, where she held a sports/all-rounder scholarship. Middleton then graduated from the University of Edinburgh with an undergraduate MA in English literature. She shared a house with Lord Edward Innes-Ker, a son of the Duke of Roxburghe, and with Earl Percy, heir apparent of the Duke of Northumberland.


title: Pippa Middleton

text: In 2022, Middleton earned her postgraduate master's degree in Physical Education, Sport and Physical Literacy from University of Wales Trinity Saint David.


title: Pippa Middleton

text: Following her graduation, Middleton briefly worked in 2008 at a public relations firm promoting luxury products. She then had an events management job with Table Talk, a company based in London that organises corporate events and parties. In 2008, "Tatler" magazine named Middleton "the Number 1 Society Singleton", ahead of singer-songwriter James Blunt and Princess Eugenie of York, although in the same "Tatler" article she was described as someone who "goes to a lot of parties, but mainly as the caterer." Since then, she has often been described as a socialite. As part of a duo with her elder sister, Middleton has received wide press coverage, focusing on her social life and her lifestyle. She was also photographed sunbathing topless which was published in the British press. In April 2012, "Time" magazine listed Middleton as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World.


title: Pippa Middleton

text: Middleton has worked part-time for her parents' company Party Pieces, editing the web magazine "Party Times." Penguin Books paid Middleton a £400,000 advance for a book on party planning. The book, entitled "Celebrate", was published in autumn 2012, and had lower than anticipated sales as many reviewers mocked it for the obviousness of its content. In March 2013, Middleton parted from her literary agent.


title: Pippa Middleton

text: Middleton is also a regular columnist for several publications. She has contributed articles to "The Spectator" magazine since December 2012 and began having a food column in the supermarket magazine "Waitrose Kitchen" beginning in spring 2013. In June 2013 she was named a contributing editor of "Vanity Fair". She went on to write a series of columns for the magazine. Beginning in September 2013, Middleton also wrote a fortnightly sports and social column for "The Sunday Telegraph". Middleton discontinued writing for "The Telegraph" in May 2014.


title: Pippa Middleton

text: In May 2013, she became the sole director and shareholder of PXM Enterprises Limited. The company was headquartered at 19 Portland Place in London. Middleton closed the company down in mid-2017.


title: Pippa Middleton

text: In April 2013, Middleton became an ambassador to the Mary Hare School for deaf children in Berkshire. In June 2014, Middleton became an ambassador to the British Heart Foundation (BHF). That month, she took part in the Race Across America, a 3,000 mile cycling race across the United States, followed by the Bosphorus Cross-Continental Swimming Race, a 6.5 km swimming competition in Istanbul, as two fundraising opportunities for the BHF. Her bicycle was also auctioned on eBay for the BHF. She then attended the BHF's Roll out the Red Ball at the Park Lane Hotel on 10 February 2015. She auctioned one of her L.K.Bennett dresses at the ball.


title: Pippa Middleton

text: In June 2015, she collaborated with the British brand Tabitha Webb on designing a floral pink dress and a lightweight scarf, with the proceeds from selling the items donated to the BHF. She took part in the London to Brighton Bike Ride for the BHF on 21 June 2015. In September 2015, Middleton participated in a 47-mile swim-run competition in Sweden alongside her brother and her future husband, James Matthews, to raise money for the Michael Matthews Foundation, a charity founded in honour of Matthews' brother who died descending from the peak of Everest. In September 2016, Middleton released her second book, "Heartfelt", whose proceeds go to the British Heart Foundation.


title: Pippa Middleton

text: Middleton served as the maid of honour at her sister Catherine's wedding in 2011 to Prince William. At the wedding, Middleton's dress, which was created by Sarah Burton of Alexander McQueen, who also created the bride's dress, was highly praised in the media. Made of ivory crêpe fabric, it was styled with a cowl at the front and organza-covered buttons at the back. Copies of the dress were soon available on the High Street where there was a great demand for them. Similar to her sister, Middleton is reported to have had her own effect in sales of particular products and brands, a trend which has been referred to as "Pippa Middleton effect".


title: Pippa Middleton

text: In September 2016, Middleton's iPhone was hacked. "The Sun" reported it had been approached by a hacker who claimed to have 3,000 images from her iCloud account and demanded £50,000 for them. The hacker was arrested that same month.


title: Pippa Middleton

text: In July 2016, in the Lake District, Middleton became engaged to James Matthews, a hedge fund manager who is a former professional racing driver. The couple married on 20 May 2017 at St Mark's Church, at Englefield Estate, Berkshire, near Bucklebury Manor, the Middleton family home. Matthews' father is Laird of Glen Affric, a 10,000 acre estate in Scotland which he will inherit. Consequently, Middleton will one day become Lady Glen Affric. Presently, she can use the courtesy title Mrs Matthews of Glen Affric the Younger. Their son Arthur Michael William was born in October 2018 at St Mary's Hospital, London. Their elder daughter Grace Elizabeth Jane was born in March 2021. Their second daughter Rose was born in June 2022.


title: Ball lightning

text: Ball lightning is a rare and unexplained phenomenon described as luminescent, spherical objects that vary from pea-sized to several meters in diameter. Though usually associated with thunderstorms, the observed phenomenon is reported to last considerably longer than the split-second flash of a lightning bolt, and is a phenomenon distinct from St. Elmo's fire.


title: Ball lightning

text: Some 19th-century reports describe balls that eventually explode and leave behind an odor of sulfur. Descriptions of ball lightning appear in a variety of accounts over the centuries and have received attention from scientists. An optical spectrum of what appears to have been a ball lightning event was published in January 2014 and included a video at high frame rate. Laboratory experiments have produced effects that are visually similar to reports of ball lightning, but how these relate to the supposed phenomenon remains unclear.


title: Ball lightning

text: Scientists have proposed a number of hypotheses to explain reports of ball lightning over the centuries, but scientific data on ball lightning remain scarce. The presumption of its existence has depended on reported public sightings, which have produced inconsistent findings. Owing to the lack of reproducible data, the existence of ball lightning as a distinct physical phenomenon remains unproven.


title: Ball lightning

text: Ball lightning is a possible source of legends that describe luminous balls, such as the mythological Anchimayen from Argentinean and Chilean Mapuche culture.


title: Ball lightning

text: According to statistical investigations in 1960, ball lightning had been seen by 5% of the population of the Earth. Another study analyzed reports of 10,000 cases.


title: Ball lightning

text: The chronicle of Gervase of Canterbury, an English monk, contains what is possibly the earliest known reference to ball lightning, dated 7 June 1195. He states, "A marvellous sign descended near London", consisting of a dense and dark cloud, emitting a white substance that grew into a spherical shape under the cloud, from which a fiery globe fell towards the river.


title: Ball lightning

text: Physicist Emeritus Professor Brian Tanner and historian Giles Gasper of Durham University identified the chronicle entry as probably describing ball lightning, and noted its similarity to other accounts: ""Gervase's description of a white substance coming out of the dark cloud, falling as a spinning fiery sphere and then having some horizontal motion is very similar to historic and contemporary descriptions of ball lightning ... It is fascinating to see how closely Gervase's 12th century description matches modern reports of ball lightning.""


title: Ball lightning

text: One early account reports on the Great Thunderstorm at a church in Widecombe-in-the-Moor, Devon, in England, on 21 October 1638. Four people died and approximately 60 suffered injuries during a severe storm. Witnesses described an ball of fire striking and entering the church, nearly destroying it. Large stones from the church walls were hurled onto the ground and through large wooden beams. The ball of fire allegedly smashed the pews and many windows, and filled the church with a foul sulphurous odour and dark, thick smoke.


title: Ball lightning

text: The ball of fire reportedly divided into two segments, one exiting through a window by smashing it open, the other disappearing somewhere inside the church. Because of the fire and sulphur smell, contemporaries explained the ball of fire as "the devil" or as the "flames of hell". Later, some blamed the entire incident on two people who had been playing cards in the pews during the sermon, thereby incurring God's wrath.


title: Ball lightning

text: In December 1726, a number of British newspapers printed an extract of a letter from John Howell of the sloop "Catherine and Mary":


title: Ball lightning

text: Admiral Chambers on board the "Montague", 4 November 1749, was taking an observation just before noon...he observed a large ball of blue fire about distant from them. They immediately lowered their topsails, but it came up so fast upon them, that, before they could raise the main tack, they observed the ball rise almost perpendicularly, and not above from the main chains when it went off with an explosion, as great as if a hundred cannons had been discharged at the same time, leaving behind it a strong sulphurous smell. By this explosion the main top-mast was shattered into pieces and the main mast went down to the keel.


title: Ball lightning

text: Five men were knocked down and one of them very bruised. Just before the explosion, the ball seemed to be the size of a large mill-stone.


title: Ball lightning

text: A 1753 report recounts lethal ball lightning when professor Georg Richmann of Saint Petersburg, Russia, constructed a kite-flying apparatus similar to Benjamin Franklin's proposal a year earlier. Richmann was attending a meeting of the Academy of Sciences when he heard thunder and ran home with his engraver to capture the event for posterity. While the experiment was under way, ball lightning appeared, travelled down the string, struck Richmann's forehead and killed him. The ball had left a red spot on Richmann's forehead, his shoes were blown open, and his clothing was singed. His engraver was knocked unconscious. The door-frame of the room was split and the door was torn from its hinges.


title: Ball lightning

text: An English journal reported that during an 1809 storm, three "balls of fire" appeared and "attacked" the British ship "HMS Warren Hastings". The crew watched one ball descend, killing a man on deck and setting the main mast on fire. A crewman went out to retrieve the fallen body and was struck by a second ball, which knocked him back and left him with mild burns. A third man was killed by contact with the third ball. Crew members reported a persistent, sickening sulphur smell afterward.


title: Ball lightning

text: Ebenezer Cobham Brewer, in his 1864 US edition of "A Guide to the Scientific Knowledge of Things Familiar", discusses "globular lightning". He describes it as slow-moving balls of fire or explosive gas that sometimes fall to the earth or run along the ground during a thunderstorm. He said that the balls sometimes split into smaller balls and may explode "like a cannon".


title: Ball lightning

text: In his book "Thunder and Lightning", translated into English in 1875, French science-writer Wilfrid de Fonvielle wrote that there had been about 150 reports of globular lightning:


title: Ball lightning

text: Globular lightning seems to be particularly attracted to metals; thus it will seek the railings of balconies, or else water or gas pipes etc, It has no peculiar tint of its own but will appear of any colour as the case may be ... at Coethen in the Duchy of Anhalt it appeared green. M. Colon, Vice-President of the Geological Society of Paris, saw a ball of lightning descend slowly from the sky along the bark of a poplar tree; as soon as it touched the earth it bounced up again, and disappeared without exploding. On 10th of September 1845 a ball of lightning entered the kitchen of a house in the village of Salagnac in the valley of Correze. This ball rolled across without doing any harm to two women and a young man who were here; but on getting into an adjoining stable it exploded and killed a pig which happened to be shut up there, and which, knowing nothing about the wonders of thunder and lightning, dared to smell it in the most rude and unbecoming manner.


title: Ball lightning

text: The motion of such balls is far from being very rapid – they have even been observed occasionally to pause in their course, but they are not the less destructive for all that. A ball of lightning which entered the church of Stralsund, on exploding, projected a number of balls which exploded in their turn like shells.


title: Ball lightning

text: Tsar Nicholas II, the last Emperor of Russia, reported witnessing what he called "a fiery ball" while in the company of his grandfather, Emperor Alexander II:


title: Ball lightning

text: Once my parents were away, and I was at the all-night vigil with my grandfather in the small church in Alexandria. During the service there was a powerful thunderstorm, streaks of lightning flashed one after the other, and it seemed as if the peals of thunder would shake even the church and the whole world to its foundations. Suddenly it became quite dark, a blast of wind from the open door blew out the flame of the candles which were lit in front of the iconostasis, there was a long clap of thunder, louder than before, and I suddenly saw a fiery ball flying from the window straight towards the head of the Emperor. The ball (it was of lightning) whirled around the floor, then passed the chandelier and flew out through the door into the park. My heart froze, I glanced at my grandfather – his face was completely calm. He crossed himself just as calmly as he had when the fiery ball had flown near us, and I felt that it was unseemly and not courageous to be frightened as I was. I felt that one had only to look at what was happening and believe in the mercy of God, as he, my grandfather, did. After the ball had passed through the whole church, and suddenly gone out through the door, I again looked at my grandfather. A faint smile was on his face, and he nodded his head at me. My panic disappeared, and from that time I had no more fear of storms.


title: Ball lightning

text: British occultist Aleister Crowley reported witnessing what he referred to as "globular electricity" during a thunderstorm on Lake Pasquaney in New Hampshire, United States, in 1916. He was sheltered in a small cottage when he, in his own words,


title: Ball lightning

text: ...noticed, with what I can only describe as calm amazement, that a dazzling globe of electric fire, apparently between in diameter, was stationary about below and to the right of my right knee. As I looked at it, it exploded with a sharp report quite impossible to confuse with the continuous turmoil of the lightning, thunder and hail, or that of the lashed water and smashed wood which was creating a pandemonium outside the cottage. I felt a very slight shock in the middle of my right hand, which was closer to the globe than any other part of my body.


title: Ball lightning

text: Jennison, of the Electronics Laboratory at the University of Kent, described his own observation of ball lightning in an article published in "Nature" in 1969:


title: Ball lightning

text: I was seated near the front of the passenger cabin of an all-metal airliner (Eastern Airlines Flight EA 539) on a late night flight from New York to Washington. The aircraft encountered an electrical storm during which it was enveloped in a sudden bright and loud electrical discharge (0005 h EST, March 19, 1963). Some seconds after this a glowing sphere a little more than in diameter emerged from the pilot's cabin and passed down the aisle of the aircraft approximately from me, maintaining the same height and course for the whole distance over which it could be observed.


title: Ball lightning

text: A beautiful yet strange phenomenon was seen in this city on last Monday night. The wind was high and the air seemed to be full of electricity. In front of, above and around the new Hall of Engineering of the School of Mines, balls of fire played tag for half an hour, to the wonder and amazement of all who saw the display. In this building is situated the dynamos and electrical apparatus of perhaps the finest electrical plant of its size in the state. There was probably a visiting delegation from the clouds, to the captives of the dynamos on last Monday night, and they certainly had a fine visit and a roystering game of romp.


title: Ball lightning

text: Descriptions of ball lightning vary widely. It has been described as moving up and down, sideways or in unpredictable trajectories, hovering and moving with or against the wind; attracted to, unaffected by, or repelled from buildings, people, cars and other objects. Some accounts describe it as moving through solid masses of wood or metal without effect, while others describe it as destructive and melting or burning those substances. Its appearance has also been linked to power lines, altitudes of and higher, and during thunderstorms and calm weather. Ball lightning has been described as transparent, translucent, multicolored, evenly lit, radiating flames, filaments or sparks, with shapes that vary between spheres, ovals, tear-drops, rods, or disks.


title: Ball lightning

text: Ball lightning is often erroneously identified as St. Elmo's fire. They are separate and distinct phenomena.


title: Ball lightning

text: The balls have been reported to disperse in many different ways, such as suddenly vanishing, gradually dissipating, being absorbed into an object, "popping," exploding loudly, or even exploding with force, which is sometimes reported as damaging. Accounts also vary on their alleged danger to humans, from lethal to harmless.


title: Ball lightning

text: A review of the available literature published in 1972 identified the properties of a "typical" ball lightning, whilst cautioning against over-reliance on eye-witness accounts:


title: Ball lightning

text: In January 2014, scientists from Northwest Normal University in Lanzhou, China, published the results of recordings made in July 2012 of the optical spectrum of what was thought to be natural ball lightning made by chance during the study of ordinary cloud–ground lightning on the Tibetan Plateau. At a distance of , a total of 1.64 seconds of digital video of the ball lightning and its spectrum was made, from the formation of the ball lightning after the ordinary lightning struck the ground, up to the optical decay of the phenomenon. Additional video was recorded by a high-speed (3000 frames/sec) camera, which captured only the last 0.78 seconds of the event, due to its limited recording capacity. Both cameras were equipped with slitless spectrographs. The researchers detected emission lines of neutral atomic silicon, calcium, iron, nitrogen, and oxygen—in contrast with mainly ionized nitrogen emission lines in the spectrum of the parent lightning. The ball lightning traveled horizontally across the video frame at an average speed equivalent of . It had a diameter of and covered a distance of about within those 1.64 s.


title: Ball lightning

text: Oscillations in the light intensity and in the oxygen and nitrogen emission at a frequency of 100 hertz, possibly caused by the electromagnetic field of the 50 Hz high-voltage power transmission line in the vicinity, were observed. From the spectrum, the temperature of the ball lightning was assessed as being lower than the temperature of the parent lightning (<15,000 to 30,000 K). The observed data are consistent with vaporization of soil as well as with ball lightning's sensitivity to electric fields.


title: Ball lightning

text: Scientists have long attempted to produce ball lightning in laboratory experiments. While some experiments have produced effects that are visually similar to reports of natural ball lightning, it has not yet been determined whether there is any relation.


title: Ball lightning

text: Nikola Tesla reportedly could artificially produce balls and conducted some demonstrations of his ability. Tesla was more interested in higher voltages and powers as well as remote transmission of power; the balls he made were just a curiosity.


title: Ball lightning

text: The International Committee on Ball Lightning (ICBL) held regular symposia on the subject. A related group uses the generic name "Unconventional Plasmas". The last ICBL symposium was tentatively scheduled for July 2012 in San Marcos, Texas but was cancelled due to a lack of submitted abstracts.


title: Ball lightning

text: Ohtsuki and Ofuruton described producing "plasma fireballs" by microwave interference within an air-filled cylindrical cavity fed by a rectangular waveguide using a 2.45 GHz, 5 kW (maximum power) microwave oscillator.


title: Ball lightning

text: Some scientific groups, including the Max Planck Institute, have reportedly produced a ball lightning-type effect by discharging a high-voltage capacitor in a tank of water.


title: Ball lightning

text: Many modern experiments involve using a microwave oven to produce small rising glowing balls, often referred to as "plasma balls".


title: Ball lightning

text: Generally, the experiments are conducted by placing a lit or recently extinguished match or other small object in a microwave oven. The burnt portion of the object flares up into a large ball of fire, while "plasma balls" float near the oven chamber ceiling. Some experiments describe covering the match with an inverted glass jar, which contains both the flame and the balls so that they don't damage the chamber walls. (A glass jar, however, eventually explodes rather than simply causing charred paint or melting metal, as happens to the inside of a microwave.) Experiments by Eli Jerby and Vladimir Dikhtyar in Israel revealed that microwave plasma balls are made up of nanoparticles with an average radius of . The Israeli team demonstrated the phenomenon with copper, salts, water and carbon.


title: Ball lightning

text: Experiments in 2007 involved shocking silicon wafers with electricity, which vaporizes the silicon and induces oxidation in the vapors. The visual effect can be described as small glowing, sparkling orbs that roll around a surface. Two Brazilian scientists, Antonio Pavão and Gerson Paiva of the Federal University of Pernambuco have reportedly consistently made small long-lasting balls using this method. These experiments stemmed from the theory that ball lightning is actually oxidized silicon vapors "(see vaporized silicon hypothesis, below)".


title: Ball lightning

text: There is at present no widely accepted explanation for ball lightning. Several hypotheses have been advanced since the phenomenon was brought into the scientific realm by the English physician and electrical researcher William Snow Harris in 1843, and French Academy scientist François Arago in 1855.


title: Ball lightning

text: This hypothesis suggests that ball lightning consists of vaporized silicon burning through oxidation. Lightning striking Earth's soil could vaporize the silica contained within it, and somehow separate the oxygen from the silicon dioxide, turning it into pure silicon vapor. As it cools, the silicon could condense into a floating aerosol, bound by its charge, glowing due to the heat of silicon recombining with oxygen. An experimental investigation of this effect, published in 2007, reported producing "luminous balls with lifetime in the order of seconds" by evaporating pure silicon with an electric arc. Videos and spectrographs of this experiment have been made available. This hypothesis got significant supportive data in 2014, when the first ever recorded spectra of natural ball lightning were published. The theorized forms of silicon storage in soil include nanoparticles of Si, SiO, and SiC.


title: Ball lightning

text: Matthew Francis has dubbed this the "dirt clod hypothesis", in which the spectrum of ball lightning shows that it shares chemistry with soil.


title: Ball lightning

text: In this model ball lightning is assumed to have a solid, positively charged core. According to this underlying assumption, the core is surrounded by a thin electron layer with a charge nearly equal in magnitude to that of the core. A vacuum exists between the core and the electron layer containing an intense electromagnetic (EM) field, which is reflected and guided by the electron layer. The microwave EM field applies a ponderomotive force (radiation pressure) to the electrons preventing them from falling into the core.


title: Ball lightning

text: Pyotr Kapitsa proposed that ball lightning is a glow discharge driven by microwave radiation that is guided to the ball along lines of ionized air from lightning clouds where it is produced. The ball serves as a resonant microwave cavity, automatically adjusting its radius to the wavelength of the microwave radiation so that resonance is maintained.


title: Ball lightning

text: The Handel Maser-Soliton theory of ball lightning hypothesizes that the energy source generating the ball lightning is a large (several cubic kilometers) atmospheric maser. The ball lightning appears as a plasma caviton at the antinodal plane of the microwave radiation from the maser.


title: Ball lightning

text: In 2017, Researchers from Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, have proposed that the bright glow of lightning balls is created when microwaves become trapped inside a plasma bubble. At the tip of a lightning stroke reaching the ground, a relativistic electron bunch can be produced when in contact with microwave radiation.


title: Ball lightning

text: Julio Rubinstein, David Finkelstein, and James R. Powell proposed that ball lightning is a detached St. Elmo's fire (1964–1970). St. Elmo's fire arises when a sharp conductor, such as a ship's mast, amplifies the atmospheric electric field to breakdown. For a globe the amplification factor is 3. A free ball of ionized air can amplify the ambient field this much by its own conductivity. When this maintains the ionization, the ball is then a soliton in the flow of atmospheric electricity.


title: Ball lightning

text: Powell's kinetic theory calculation found that the ball size is set by the second Townsend coefficient (the mean free path of conduction electrons) near breakdown. Wandering glow discharges are found to occur within certain industrial microwave ovens and continue to glow for several seconds after power is shut off. Arcs drawn from high-power low-voltage microwave generators also are found to exhibit afterglow. Powell measured their spectra, and found that the after-glow comes mostly from metastable NO ions, which are long-lived at low temperatures. It occurred in air and in nitrous oxide, which possess such metastable ions, and not in atmospheres of argon, carbon dioxide, or helium, which do not.


title: Ball lightning

text: The soliton model of a ball lightning was further developed. It was suggested that a ball lightning is based on spherically symmetric nonlinear oscillations of charged particles in plasma – the analogue of a spatial Langmuir soliton. These oscillations were described in both classical and quantum approaches. It was found that the most intense plasma oscillations occur in the central regions of a ball lightning. It is suggested that bound states of radially oscillating charged particles with oppositely oriented spins – the analogue of Cooper pairs – can appear inside a ball lightning. This phenomenon, in its turn, can lead to a superconducting phase in a ball lightning. The idea of the superconductivity in a ball lightning was considered earlier. The possibility of the existence of a ball lightning with a composite core was also discussed in this model.


title: Ball lightning

text: One theory that may account for the wide spectrum of observational evidence is the idea of combustion inside the low-velocity region of spherical vortex breakdown of a natural vortex (e.g., the 'Hill's spherical vortex').


title: Ball lightning

text: Oleg Meshcheryakov suggests that ball lightning is made of composite nano or submicrometer particles—each particle constituting a battery. A surface discharge shorts these batteries, causing a current that forms the ball. His model is described as an aerosol model that explains all the observable properties and processes of ball lightning.


title: Ball lightning

text: The declassified Project Condign report concludes that buoyant charged plasma formations similar to ball lightning are formed by novel physical, electrical, and magnetic phenomena, and that these charged plasmas are capable of being transported at enormous speeds under the influence and balance of electrical charges in the atmosphere. These plasmas appear to originate due to more than one set of weather and electrically charged conditions, the scientific rationale for which is incomplete or not fully understood. One suggestion is that meteoroids breaking up in the atmosphere and forming charged plasmas as opposed to burning completely or impacting as meteorites could explain some instances of the phenomena, in addition to other unknown atmospheric events. However, according to Mark Stenhoff and Adrian James, this explanation is considered insufficient to explain the ball lightning phenomenon, and would likely not withstand peer review.


title: Ball lightning

text: Cooray and Cooray (2008) stated that the features of hallucinations experienced by patients having epileptic seizures in the occipital lobe are similar to the observed features of ball lightning. The study also showed that the rapidly changing magnetic field of a close lightning flash is strong enough to excite the neurons in the brain. This strengthens the possibility of lightning-induced seizure in the occipital lobe of a person close to a lightning strike, establishing the connection between epileptic hallucination mimicking ball lightning and thunderstorms.


title: Ball lightning

text: More recent research with transcranial magnetic stimulation has been shown to give the same hallucination results in the laboratory (termed magnetophosphenes), and these conditions have been shown to occur in nature near lightning strikes.


title: Ball lightning

text: This hypothesis fails to explain observed physical damage caused by ball lightning or simultaneous observation by multiple witnesses. (At the very least, observations would differ substantially.)


title: Ball lightning

text: Theoretical calculations from University of Innsbruck researchers suggest that the magnetic fields involved in certain types of lightning strikes could potentially induce visual hallucinations resembling ball lightning. Such fields, which are found within close distances to a point in which multiple lightning strikes have occurred over a few seconds, can directly cause the neurons in the visual cortex to fire, resulting in magnetophosphenes (magnetically induced visual hallucinations).


title: Ball lightning

text: Manykin et al. have suggested atmospheric Rydberg matter as an explanation of ball lightning phenomena. Rydberg matter is a condensed form of highly excited atoms in many aspects similar to electron-hole droplets in semiconductors. However, in contrast to electron-hole droplets, Rydberg matter has an extended life-time—as long as hours. This condensed excited state of matter is supported by experiments, mainly of a group led by Holmlid. It is similar to a liquid or solid state of matter with extremely low (gas-like) density. Lumps of atmospheric Rydberg matter can result from condensation of highly excited atoms that form by atmospheric electrical phenomena, mainly from linear lightning. Stimulated decay of Rydberg matter clouds can, however, take the form of an avalanche, and so appear as an explosion.


title: Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl

text: "Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl" received mixed reviews from critics, who praised aspects of the gameplay but were divided over certain changes made to the original, the games' visual design, and lack of features and Pokédex from Pokémon Platinum.


text: Gameplay of "Pokémon Brilliant Diamond" and "Shining Pearl" is similar to the original "Diamond" and "Pearl" games, comparable to previous remakes such as "Omega Ruby" and "Alpha Sapphire". The games are presented in a top-down isometric third-person perspective, though with a distinct visual style.


text: As with the original games, "Brilliant Diamond" and "Shining Pearl" are set in the fictional region of Sinnoh, an island based on the Japanese island of Hokkaidō.


text: "Brilliant Diamond" and "Shining Pearl" were developed by ILCA; as such, they are the first main-series "Pokémon" games to have a different company as the lead developer instead of Game Freak. They were directed by Yuichi Ueda from ILCA and Junichi Masuda from Game Freak, the director of the original games.


text: Possible development on remakes of "Diamond" and "Pearl" had been leaked on 15 January 2021, when a "diamondpearl" subdomain of the "Pokémon" website was registered and published. Shortly after, the domain was taken offline. On 26 February 2021, the day of the "Pokémon" 25th Anniversary Pokémon Presents presentation, several leakers claimed that the upcoming livestream would announce remakes of "Diamond" and "Pearl", titled "Brilliant Diamond" and "Shining Pearl", alongside an action role-playing game also set in the Sinnoh region, later revealed to be "". During the Pokémon Presents, "Brilliant Diamond" and "Shining Pearl" were announced for the Nintendo Switch with a tentative late 2021 release date.


text: On 26 May 2021, a release date of 19 November 2021 was announced along with a reveal of the games box art. During the reveal of the Nintendo Switch OLED model on 6 July 2021, footage displaying improved visuals for the games was shown. A Pokémon Presents presentation on 18 August 2021 showed new features including character customization, the return of The Underground which is now called The Grand Underground, Poké Ball decorations (now renamed Stickers rather than Seals), the Union Room, Super Contest Shows, and Pokémon being able to follow the player. It was revealed that a Pokémon egg of the Mythical Pokémon Manaphy would be available from Mystery Gift as an early purchase bonus until February 21, 2022.


text: On 28 September 2021, on the 15th anniversary of the original "Pokémon Diamond" and "Pearl", a new trailer was released showcasing the Pokétch with Hidden Moves, Poffins, Pokémon party following the player in Hearthome City's Amity Square, STAT trainers Cheryl and Riley, and Eterna City Gym Leader Gardenia. On 26 October, another trailer was released featuring Snowpoint City Gym Leader Candice and Sunyshore City Gym Leader Volkner; Team Galactic Commanders Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, and Team Galactic Boss Cyrus; and the three Legendary Lake Pokémon Mesprit, Azelf, and Uxie. Moreover, it was announced that the outfits of the protagonists Lucas and Dawn from "Pokémon Platinum" would be available from Mystery Gift as an early purchase bonus until February 21, 2022. An overview trailer summarizing the main features of the games was released on 5 November 2021 on the official Japanese Nintendo YouTube channel.


text: "Pokémon Brilliant Diamond" and "Shining Pearl" have been described as having a "litany of glitches", with numerous glitches discovered within weeks after release. This includes the ability to walk through walls to catch the Mythical Pokémon Shaymin, access the location for the Darkrai event location early and to speedrun the game in 23 minutes, as well as an exploit to duplicate multiple Pokémon at a time along with their held items. Several of these glitches were fixed in version 1.1.2 released on December 1, 2021.


text: After the announcement, fans were divided on the new chibi art style shown in the trailer. Opponents argued that the graphics were a downgrade compared to the two previous Pokémon remakes ("Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire" and ). Proponents argued the new look stays faithful to the original 2D games while making the leap to 3D.


text: "Brilliant Diamond" and "Shining Pearl" received "mixed or average" reviews from critics, according to review aggregator Metacritic. The game earned a 34 out of 40 total score from Japanese magazine "Famitsu" based on individual scores of 8, 9, 8, and 9.


text: Rebekah Valentine of "IGN" gave the games an 8 out of 10, stating: "Like the themes of its story, "Pokémon Brilliant Diamond" and "Shining Pearl" are solid and enduring – leaning on the past, with all of its triumphs and tripwires." They would ultimately declare that "If a good remake is defined by its loyalty to the original, then "Pokémon Brilliant Diamond" and "Shining Pearl" are very good remakes indeed," but lamented that they "weren’t braver in how they improved upon the originals in the same way other "Pokémon" remakes were." "Game Informer"s John Carson likewise called the titles "faithful remakes" of the DS games, but that they "deviate from the mechanical blueprint, with varying degree of success." He would go on to praise the graphics engine which was "mostly free of framerate drops or the slowdown that plagues other 3D entries in the series," and declare the games "a welcome throwback to a simpler time when I felt completing a Pokédex was a somewhat realistic task to undertake."


text: While the games' stylized chibi art style was mostly praised by "IGN" with the exception of certain story sequences meant to be taken seriously, others such as "Destructoid"s Chris Carter felt that the visuals took some getting used to. He said that while the region can be a "joy to explore", developer ILCA tried to stick too closely to the originals while adding a few new features on top, leading to a disjointed experience. In addition, the inability to turn off the Experience Share feature can result in the player's Pokémon being over-leveled for the majority of the game, making battles with NPCs "a chore" rather than a legitimate challenge. Jordan Middler from "Nintendo Life" declared the change in art style to be "for the worse" and that the characters resembled "emotionless Funko Pops", but the correctly proportioned character models in battles were considerably better. ILCA's decision to exclude story elements and features seen in "Pokémon Platinum" was also seen as a detriment, but the inclusion of the new Grand Underground area made up for the otherwise limited selection of Pokémon originally included in "Diamond" and "Pearl". "GameSpot"s Steve Watts praised the chibi art style and quality-of-life improvements while criticizing the franchise's lack of evolution and difficulty spike the Elite Four represented. Takuya Watanabe of "IGN Japan" gave the games a 5 out of 10, criticizing them for staying overly faithful to Diamond and Pearl, noting the awkward appearance of the chibi characters in closeup, and concluding that the games would mostly appeal to players with nostalgia for the originals.


text: "Pokémon Brilliant Diamond" and "Shining Pearl" sold 1.39 million copies in its first three days in Japan alone, surpassing the launch sales of "Pokémon Sword" and "Shield" in the same period in that region. It became the second-biggest launch for a Switch release in Japan after "" in 2020, and the second best-selling game launch of 2021 in the UK behind "FIFA 22". The games collectively sold 6 million copies worldwide one week after release. As of June 30, 2022, the games had sold 14.79 million copies worldwide.


title: Ben Feldman

text: Ben Feldman (born May 27, 1980) is an American actor and producer. Throughout his career, Feldman has undertaken roles on stage, including the Broadway play "The Graduate" along with more prominent roles in television series such as his role as Jonah Simms in the NBC sitcom "Superstore". He has also played lead characters in films including "The Perfect Man" with Hilary Duff.


title: Ben Feldman

text: Feldman was born on May 27, 1980 in Potomac, Maryland. His mother is Marcia Muir Mitchell, a writer, and his father is Robert "Bob" Feldman, who runs a Maryland advertising agency. His stepmother is Kris Feldman, a realtor. Feldman is from a Jewish family and attended Conservative Jewish and Orthodox Jewish synagogues and schools. He has a sister, Morgan Leiter, who works in fashion. His aunt through his stepmother, Susan Feniger, is a chef in Los Angeles.


title: Ben Feldman

text: He was involved in acting camp and school theater from the age of 6. He attended Winston Churchill High School in Potomac, Maryland and graduated with the class of 1998. He worked as a camp counselor in the theater and taught a videography class for several summers in Bethesda, and attended Ithaca College in New York, where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in acting.


title: Ben Feldman

text: After graduating, he moved to New York City, where he performed on Broadway and eventually moved to Los Angeles to act in film and television.


title: Ben Feldman

text: From 2009 to 2011, he was a regular on the television series "Drop Dead Diva" in the role of guardian angel Fred before leaving the series at the start of the fourth season. In April 2012, he joined the cast of AMC's "Mad Men" as a regular, playing the character Michael Ginsberg. He also appeared as lawyer Ron LaFlamme on HBO's "Silicon Valley" from 2014 to 2019, and from 2015 to 2021 played the lead Jonah Simms in the NBC sitcom "Superstore". He also produced Superstore in 2019-2021. In 2021, he starred as Tylor Tuskmon in Disney's "Monsters at Work".


title: Ben Feldman

text: Feldman lives in Los Angeles, California. In 2012, he became engaged to Michelle Mulitz. They were married on October 12, 2013, at Smokey Glen Farm in Gaithersburg, Maryland. The couple have two children together, a son born in October 2017, and a daughter born in May 2019.


title: February Revolution

text: The February Revolution (), known in Soviet historiography as the February Bourgeois Democratic Revolution and sometimes as the March Revolution, was the first of two revolutions which took place in Russia in 1917.


title: February Revolution

text: The main events of the revolution took place in and near Petrograd (present-day Saint Petersburg), the then-capital of Russia, where long-standing discontent with the monarchy erupted into mass protests against food rationing on 23 February Old Style (8 March New Style). Revolutionary activity lasted about eight days, involving mass demonstrations and violent armed clashes with police and gendarmes, the last loyal forces of the Russian monarchy. On 27 February O.S. (12 March N.S.) the forces of the capital's garrison sided with the revolutionaries. Three days later Tsar Nicholas II abdicated, ending Romanov dynastic rule and the Russian Empire. The Russian Provisional Government under Prince Georgy Lvov replaced the Council of Ministers of Russia.


title: February Revolution

text: The Provisional Government proved deeply unpopular and was forced to share dual power with the Petrograd Soviet. After the July Days, in which the Government killed hundreds of protesters, Alexander Kerensky became head of Government. He was unable to fix Russia's immediate problems, including food shortages and mass unemployment, as he attempted to keep Russia involved in the ever more unpopular war. The failures of the Provisional Government led to the October Revolution by the Communist Bolsheviks later that year. The February Revolution had weakened the country; the October Revolution broke it, resulting in the Russian Civil War and the eventual formation of the Soviet Union.


title: February Revolution

text: The revolution appeared to have broken out without any real leadership or formal planning. Russia had been suffering from a number of economic and social problems, which compounded after the start of World War I in 1914. Disaffected soldiers from the city's garrison joined bread rioters, primarily women in bread lines, and industrial strikers on the streets. As more and more troops of the undisciplined garrison of the capital deserted, and with loyal troops away at the F


title: February Revolution

text: front, the city fell into chaos, leading to the Tsar's decision to abdicate under his generals' advice. In all, over 1,300 people were killed during the protests of February 1917. The historiographical reasons for the revolution have varied. Russian historians writing during the time of the Soviet Union cited as cause anger of the proletariat against the bourgeois boiling over. Russian Liberals cited World War I. Revisionists tracked it back to land disputes after the serf era. Modern historians cite a combination of these factors and criticize mythologization of the event.


title: February Revolution

text: Despite occurring in March of the Gregorian calendar, the event is most commonly known as the "February Revolution" because at the time Russia still used the Julian calendar. The event is sometimes known as the "March Revolution", after the Soviet Union modernized its calendar. To avoid confusion, both O.S and N.S. dates have been given for events. (For more details see Old Style and New Style dates) .


title: February Revolution

text: A number of factors contributed to the February Revolution, both short and long-term. Historians disagree on the main factors that contributed to this. Liberal historians emphasise the turmoil created by the war, whereas Marxists emphasise the inevitability of change. Alexander Rabinowitch summarises the main long-term and short-term causes:


title: February Revolution

text: Despite its occurrence at the height of World War I, the roots of the February Revolution dated further back. Chief among these was Imperial Russia's failure, throughout the 19th and early 20th century, to modernise its archaic social, economic, and political structures while maintaining the stability of ubiquitous devotion to an autocratic monarch. As historian Richard Pipes writes, "the incompatibility of capitalism and autocracy struck all who gave thought to the matter".


title: February Revolution

text: The first major event of the Russian Revolution was the February Revolution, a chaotic affair caused by the culmination of over a century of civil and military unrest between the common people and the Tsar and aristocratic landowners. The causes can be summarized as the ongoing cruel treatment of peasants by the bourgeoisie, poor working conditions of industrial workers, and the spreading of western democratic ideas by political activists, leading to a growing political and social awareness in the lower classes. Dissatisfaction of proletarians was compounded by food shortages and military failures. In 1905, Russia experienced humiliating losses in its war with Japan, then during Bloody Sunday and the Revolution of 1905, Tsarist troops fired upon a peaceful, unarmed crowd. These events further divided Nicholas II from his people. Widespread strikes, riots, and the famous mutiny on the Battleship "Potemkin" ensued.


title: February Revolution

text: These conditions caused much agitation among the small working and professional classes. This tension erupted into general revolt with the 1905 Revolution, and again under the strain of war in 1917, this time with lasting consequences.


title: February Revolution

text: The revolution was provoked by Russian military failures during the First World War, as well as public dissatisfaction with the way the country was run on the home front. The economic challenges faced due to fighting a total war also contributed.


title: February Revolution

text: In August 1914, all classes supported and virtually all political deputies voted in favour of the war. The declaration of war was followed by a revival of nationalism across Russian society, which temporarily reduced internal strife. The army achieved some early victories (such as in Galicia in 1915 and with the Brusilov Offensive in 1916) but also suffered major defeats, notably Tannenberg in August 1914, the Winter Battle in Masuria in February 1915 and the loss of Russian Poland during May to August 1915. Nearly six million casualties —dead, wounded, and missing— had been accrued by January 1917. Mutinies sprang up more often (most due to simple war-weariness), morale was at its lowest, and the newly called-up officers and commanders were at times very incompetent. Like all major armies, Russia's armed forces had inadequate supply. The pre-revolution desertion rate ran at around 34,000 a month. Meanwhile, the wartime alliance of industry, the Duma (lower house of parliament) and the Stavka (Military High Command) started to work outside the Tsar's control.


title: February Revolution

text: In an attempt to boost morale and repair his reputation as a leader, Tsar Nicholas announced in the summer of 1915 that he would take personal command of the army, in defiance of almost universal advice to the contrary. The result was disastrous on three grounds. Firstly, it associated the monarchy with the unpopular war; secondly, Nicholas proved to be a poor leader of men on the front, often irritating his own commanders with his interference; and thirdly, being at the front made him unavailable to govern. This left the reins of power to his wife, the German Tsarina Alexandra, who was unpopular and accused of being a German spy, and under the thumb of her confidant – Grigori Rasputin, himself so unpopular that he was assassinated by members of the nobility in December 1916. The Tsarina proved an ineffective ruler in a time of war, announcing a rapid succession of different Prime Ministers and angering the Duma. The lack of strong leadership is illustrated by a telegram from Octobrist politician Mikhail Rodzianko to the Tsar on 26 February O.S. (11 March N.S) 1917, in which Rodzianko begged for a minister with the "confidence of the country" be instated immediately. Delay, he wrote, would be "tantamount to death".


title: February Revolution

text: On the home front, a famine loomed and commodities became scarce due to the overstretched railroad network. Meanwhile, refugees from German-occupied Russia came in their millions. The Russian economy, which had just seen one of the highest growth rates in Europe, was blocked from the continent's markets by the war. Though industry did not collapse, it was considerably strained and when inflation soared, wages could not keep up. The Duma, which was composed of liberal deputies, warned Tsar Nicholas II of the impending danger and counselled him to form a new constitutional government, like the one he had dissolved after some short-term attempts in the aftermath of the 1905 Revolution. The Tsar ignored the advice. Historian Edward Acton argues that "by stubbornly refusing to reach any "modus vivendi" with the Progressive Bloc of the Duma... Nicholas undermined the loyalty of even those closest to the throne [and] opened an unbridgeable breach between himself and the public opinion." In short, the Tsar no longer had the support of the military, the nobility or the Duma (collectively the "élites"), or the Russian people. The inevitable result was revolution.


title: February Revolution

text: When Rasputin was assassinated on 30 December 1916, and the assassins went unchallenged, this was interpreted as an indication of the truth of the accusation his wife relied on the Siberian starets. The authority of the tsar, who now stood as a moral weakling, sank further. On the Emperor dismissed his Prime Minister, Alexander Trepov. On a hesitatant Nikolai Golitsyn became the successor of Trepov. Golitsyn begged the Emperor to cancel his appointment, citing his lack of preparation for the role of Prime Minister. On Mikhail Belyaev succeeded Dmitry Shuvayev (who did not speak any foreign language) as Minister of War, likely at the request of the Empress.


title: February Revolution

text: The Duma President Mikhail Rodzianko, Grand Duchess Marie Pavlovna and British ambassador Buchanan joined calls for Alexandra to be removed from influence, but Nicholas still refused to take their advice. Many people came to the conclusion that the problem was not Rasputin. According to Rodzianko the Empress "exerts an adverse influence on all appointments, including even those in the army." On 11 January O.S. (24 January N.S.) the Duma opening was postponed to the 25th (7 February N.S.).


title: February Revolution

text: On 14 January O.S. (27 January N.S.) Georgy Lvov proposed to Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich that he (the Grand Duke) should take control of the country. At the end of January/beginning of February major negotiations took place between the Allied powers in Petrograd; unofficially they sought to clarify the internal situation in Russia.


title: February Revolution

text: On 8 February, at the wish of the Tsar, Nikolay Maklakov, together with Alexander Protopopov ..., drafted the text of the manifesto on the dissolution of the Duma (before it was opened on 14 February 1917). The Duma was dissolved and Protopopov was proclaimed dictator. On 14 February O.S. (27 February N.S.) police agents reported that army officers had, for the first time, mingled with the crowds demonstrating against the war and the government on Nevsky Prospekt. Alexander Kerensky took the opportunity to attack the Tsarist regime.


title: February Revolution

text: By 1917, the majority of Petersburgers had lost faith in the Tsarist regime. Government corruption was unrestrained, and Tsar Nicholas II had frequently disregarded the Imperial Duma. Thousands of workers flooded the streets of Petrograd (modern St. Petersburg) to show their dissatisfaction. The first major protest of the February Revolution occurred on 18 February O.S. (3 March N.S) as workers of Putilov Factory, Petrograd's largest industrial plant, announced a strike to demonstrate against the government. Strikes continued on the following days. Due to heavy snowstorms, tens of thousands of freight cars were stuck on the tracks, with the bread and fuel. On 22 February O.S. (7 March N.S.) the Tsar left for the front.


title: February Revolution

text: On 23 February O.S. (8 March N.S.), Putilov protesters were joined in the uprising by those celebrating International Woman's Day and protesting against the government's implemented food rationing. As the Russian government began rationing flour and bread, rumors of food shortages circulated and bread riots erupted across the city of Petrograd. Women, in particular, were passionate in showing their dissatisfaction with the implemented rationing system, and the female workers marched to nearby factories to recruit over 50,000 workers for the strikes. Both men and women flooded the streets of Petrograd, demanding an end to Russian food shortages, the end of World War I, and the end of autocracy. By the following day 24 February O.S. (9 March N.S), nearly 200,000 protesters filled the streets, demanding the replacement of the Tsar with a more progressive political leader. They called for the war to end and for the Russian monarchy to be overthrown. By 25 February O.S (10 March N.S), nearly all industrial enterprises in Petrograd were shut down by the uprising. Although all gatherings on the streets were absolutely forbidden some 250,000 people were on strike. The president of the Imperial Duma Rodzianko asked the chairman of the Council of Ministers Golitsyn to resign; the minister of Foreign Affairs Nikolai Pokrovsky proposed the resignation of the whole government. There were disturbances on the Nevsky Prospect during the day and in the late afternoon four people were killed.


title: February Revolution

text: The Tsar took action to address the riots on 25 February O.S (10 March N.S) by wiring garrison commander General Sergey Semyonovich Khabalov, an inexperienced and extremely indecisive commander of the Petrograd military district, to disperse the crowds with rifle fire and to suppress the "impermissible" rioting by force. On 26 February O.S (11 March N.S) the centre of the city was cordoned off. Nikolai Pokrovsky reported about his negotiations with the Bloc (led by Maklakov) at the session of the Council of Ministers in the Mariinsky Palace. The Bloc spoke for the resignation of the government.