title: Tom Lehrer

text: Lehrer was drafted into the U.S. Army from 1955 to 1957, working at the National Security Agency (NSA). Lehrer has stated that he invented the Jello shot during this time, as a means of circumventing a naval base's ban on alcoholic beverages.


title: Tom Lehrer

text: Despite holding a master's degree in an era when American conscripts often lacked a high school diploma, Lehrer served as an enlisted soldier, achieving the rank of Specialist Third Class, which he described as being a "corporal without portfolio". These experiences became fodder for songs, such as "The Wild West is Where I Want to Be" and "It Makes a Fellow Proud to Be a Soldier". In 2020 Lehrer publicly revealed that he had been assigned to the NSA, since the mere fact of its existence was classified at the time; this left him in the position of implicitly using nuclear weapons work as a cover story for something more sensitive.


title: Tom Lehrer

text: From 1962, Lehrer taught in the political science department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 1965 he gave up on his mathematics dissertation on modes in statistics, after having worked on it intermittently for 15 years.


title: Tom Lehrer

text: In 1972, Lehrer joined the faculty of the University of California, Santa Cruz, teaching an introductory course entitled "The Nature of Mathematics" to liberal arts majors—"math for tenors", according to Lehrer. He also taught a class in musical theater. He occasionally performed songs in his lectures.


title: Tom Lehrer

text: In 2001, Lehrer taught his last mathematics class, on the topic of infinity, and retired from academia. He has remained in the area, and in 2003 said he still "hangs out" around the University of California, Santa Cruz.


title: Tom Lehrer

text: Lehrer was mainly influenced by musical theater. According to Gerald Nachman's book "Seriously Funny", the Broadway musical "Let's Face It!" made an early and lasting impression on him. Lehrer's style consists of parodying various forms of popular song. For example, his appreciation of list songs led him to write "The Elements", which lists the chemical elements to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan's "Major-General's Song".


title: Tom Lehrer

text: In author and Boston University professor Isaac Asimov's second autobiographical volume, "In Joy Still Felt", Asimov recounted seeing Lehrer perform in a Boston nightclub on October 9, 1954. Lehrer sang a song about Jim getting it from Louise, and Sally from Jim, "...and after a while you gathered the 'it' was venereal disease. [The song was likely "I Got It From Agnes".] Suddenly, as the combinations grew more grotesque, you realized he was satirizing every known perversion without using a single naughty phrase. It was clearly unsingable outside a nightclub." Asimov also recalled a song that dealt with the Boston subway system, making use of the stations leading into town from Harvard, observing that the local subject-matter rendered the song useless for general distribution. Lehrer subsequently granted Asimov permission to print the lyrics to the subway song in his book. "I haven't gone to nightclubs often," said Asimov, "but of all the times I have gone, it was on this occasion that I had by far the best time."


title: Tom Lehrer

text: Lehrer was encouraged by the success of his performances, so he paid $15 () for some studio time in 1953 to record "Songs by Tom Lehrer". The initial pressing was 400 copies. Radio stations would not air his songs because of his controversial subjects, so he sold the album on campus at Harvard for $3, , while "several stores near the Harvard campus sold it for $3.50, taking only a minimal markup as a kind of community service. Newsstands on campus sold it for the same price." After one summer, he started to receive mail orders from all parts of the country, as far away as San Francisco, after the "San Francisco Chronicle" wrote an article on the record. Interest in his recordings spread by word of mouth. People played their records for friends, who then also wanted a copy. Lehrer recalled, "Lacking exposure in the media, my songs spread slowly. Like herpes, rather than ebola."


title: Tom Lehrer

text: The album included the macabre "I Hold Your Hand in Mine", the mildly risqué "Be Prepared", and "Lobachevsky" regarding plagiarizing mathematicians. It became a cult success by word of mouth, despite being self-published and without promotion. Lehrer embarked on a series of concert tours and recorded a second album in 1959. He released the second album in two versions: the songs were the same, but "More of Tom Lehrer" was a studio recording and "An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer" was recorded live in concert. In 2013, Lehrer recalled the studio session for "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park", which referred to the practice of controlling pigeons in Boston with strychnine-treated corn:


title: Tom Lehrer

text: Lehrer had a breakthrough in the United Kingdom on December 4, 1957, when the University of London awarded a doctor of music degree "honoris causa" to Princess Margaret, and the public orator, Professor J. R. Sutherland, said it was "in the full knowledge that the Princess is a connoisseur of music and a performer of skill and distinction, her taste being catholic, ranging from Mozart to the calypso and from opera to the songs of Miss Beatrice Lillie and Tom Lehrer." This prompted significant interest in Lehrer's works and helped to secure distribution for his five-year-old debut album in Britain. It was there that his music achieved real sales popularity, as a result of the proliferation of university newspapers referring to the material, and inadvertently due to the BBC, which in 1958 banned from broadcast 10 of the 12 songs on the album. By the end of the 1950s, Lehrer had sold 370,000 records.


title: Tom Lehrer

text: The same year, Lehrer toured Australia and New Zealand, performing a total of 33 concerts to great acclaim and controversy. While in New Zealand, Lehrer wrote a song criticizing the All Blacks rugby team 1960 tour of apartheid South Africa. These tours occurred during a time in which he was, he said, "banned, censored, mentioned in several houses of parliament and threatened with arrest". In particular, "Be Prepared" drew advance resistance in Brisbane from the commissioner of police. He performed several unreleased songs in Australia, including "The Masochism Tango". In the early 1960s, he was employed as the resident songwriter for the U.S. edition of "That Was The Week That Was" (TW3), a satirical television show.


title: Tom Lehrer

text: A greater proportion of his output became overtly political, or at least topical, on subjects such as education ("New Math"), the Second Vatican Council ("The Vatican Rag", a tune based on the 1910 "Spaghetti Rag" by Lyons and Yosco), race relations ("National Brotherhood Week"), air and water pollution ("Pollution"), American militarism ("Send the Marines"), and nuclear proliferation ("Who's Next?" and "MLF Lullaby"). He also wrote a song satirizing rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, who worked for Nazi Germany before working for the United States. Lehrer did not appear on the television show; vocalist Nancy Ames performed his songs (to Lehrer's chagrin), and network censors often altered his lyrics. Lehrer later performed these songs on the album "That Was The Year That Was" (1965) at which point people could hear them the way that he intended.


title: Tom Lehrer

text: In 1966, BBC TV host David Frost invited him to contribute some of his classic compositions to his BBC program "The Frost Report". The show was transmitted live, and he pre-recorded all his segments at one performance. Lehrer was not featured in every edition, but his songs featured in an appropriate part of each show. At least two of his songs were not included on any of his LPs: a reworking of Noël Coward's "That is the End of the News" (with some new lyrics) and a comic explanation of how Britain might adapt to the coming of decimal currency. The record deal with Reprise Records for "That Was The Year That Was" also gave Reprise distribution rights for his earlier recordings, as Lehrer wanted to wind up his own record imprint. The Reprise issue of "Songs by Tom Lehrer" was a stereo re-recording. This version was not issued on CD, but the songs were issued on the live "Tom Lehrer Revisited" CD. The live recording included bonus tracks "L-Y" and "Silent E", two of the ten songs that he wrote for the PBS children's educational series "The Electric Company". Lehrer later commented that worldwide sales of the recordings under Reprise surpassed 1.8 million units in 1996. That same year, "That Was The Year That Was" went gold. The album liner notes promote his songs with self-deprecating humor, such as quoting a "New York Times" review from 1959: Mr. Lehrer's muse is "not fettered by such inhibiting factors as taste."


title: Tom Lehrer

text: Lehrer made a short tour in Norway and Denmark in 1967, performing some of the songs from the television program. His performance in Oslo on September 10 was recorded on video tape and aired locally that autumn, then released on DVD some 40 years later. He performed as a prominent international guest at the "Studenterforeningen" (student association) in Copenhagen, which was televised, and he commented on stage that he might be America's "revenge for Victor Borge". He performed original songs in a Dodge automobile industrial film distributed primarily to automobile dealers and shown at promotional events in 1967, set in a fictional American wild west town and titled "The Dodge Rebellion Theatre presents Ballads For '67". He attempted to adapt Sweeney Todd as a Broadway musical, working with Joe Raposo, to star Jerry Colonna. They started a few songs but, as Lehrer noted, "Nothing ever came of it, and of course twenty years later Stephen Sondheim beat me to the punch."


title: Tom Lehrer

text: In the 1970s, Lehrer concentrated on teaching mathematics and musical theater, although he also wrote ten songs for the educational children's television show "The Electric Company". His last public performance for many years took place in 1972, on a fundraising tour for Democratic US presidential candidate George McGovern.


title: Tom Lehrer

text: When asked about his reasons for abandoning his musical career in an interview in the book accompanying his CD boxed set, released in 2000, Lehrer cited a lack of interest, a disdain of touring, and the monotony of performing the same songs repeatedly. He observed that when he was moved to write and perform songs, he did, and when he was not, he did not, and that after a while he simply lost interest. Even though Lehrer was "a hero of the anti-nuclear, civil rights left" and covered its political issues in many of his songs, and even though he shared the New Left's opposition to the Vietnam War, and advocated for civil rights, he disliked the aesthetics of the counterculture of the 1960s and stopped performing as the movement gained momentum.


title: Tom Lehrer

text: Lehrer's musical career was relatively brief. He once mentioned that he performed a mere 109 shows and wrote 37 songs over 20 years. Nevertheless, he developed a significant following in the United States and abroad.


title: Tom Lehrer

text: Tom Lehrer's music became a staple of the Doctor Demento Show when it began national syndication in 1977.


title: Tom Lehrer

text: In 1980, Cameron Mackintosh produced "Tomfoolery", a revue of Lehrer's songs that was a hit on the London stage. Lehrer was not initially involved with the show, but he was pleased with it; he eventually gave the stage production his full support and updated several of his lyrics for the show. "Tomfoolery" contained 27 songs and led to more than 200 productions, including an Off-Broadway production at the Village Gate which ran for 120 performances in 1981. Lehrer made a rare TV appearance on BBC's "Parkinson" show in conjunction with the "Tom Foolery" premiere in 1980 at the Criterion Theatre in London, where he sang "I Got It from Agnes". There were "Tomfoolery" performances in San Francisco about 1982 and in 2018–19. In 1993, he wrote "That's Mathematics" for the closing credits to a Mathematical Sciences Research Institute video celebrating the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.


title: Tom Lehrer

text: On June 7 and 8, 1998, Lehrer performed in public for the first time in 25 years at the Lyceum Theatre, London as part of the show "Hey, Mr. Producer!" celebrating the career of Cameron Mackintosh, who had produced "Tom Foolery". The June 8 show was his only performance before Queen Elizabeth II. Lehrer sang "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" and an updated version of the nuclear proliferation song "Who's Next?"


title: Tom Lehrer

text: In 2000, Lehrer commented that he doubted his songs had any real effect on those not already critical of the establishment: "I don't think this kind of thing has an impact on the unconverted, frankly. It's not even preaching to the converted; it's titillating the converted ... I'm fond of quoting Peter Cook, who talked about the satirical Berlin kabaretts of the 1930s, which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the Second World War."


title: Tom Lehrer

text: Lehrer has said, jokingly, of his musical career: "If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend, or perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worth the while."


title: Tom Lehrer

text: In 2003, Lehrer commented that his particular brand of political satire is more difficult in the modern world: "The real issues I don't think most people touch. The Clinton jokes are all about Monica Lewinsky and all that stuff and not about the important things, like the fact that he wouldn't ban land mines ... I'm not tempted to write a song about George W. Bush. I couldn't figure out what sort of song I would write. That's the problem: I don't want to satirize George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporize them."


title: Tom Lehrer

text: In 2000, the boxed CD set "The Remains of Tom Lehrer" was released by Rhino Entertainment. It included live and studio versions of his first two albums, "That Was The Year That Was", the songs that he wrote for "The Electric Company", and some previously unreleased material, a small hardbound lyrics book with an introduction by Dr. Demento. In 2010, Shout! Factory launched a reissue campaign, making Lehrer's out-of-print albums available digitally. The CD/DVD combo "The Tom Lehrer Collection" was also issued, including his best-known songs, with a DVD featuring an Oslo concert.


title: Tom Lehrer

text: In a February 2008 phone call, Gene Weingarten of "The Washington Post" interviewed Lehrer off the record. When Weingarten asked if there was anything he could print for the record, Lehrer responded "Just tell the people that I am voting for Obama."


title: Tom Lehrer

text: In 2012 rapper 2 Chainz sampled Lehrer's song "The Old Dope Peddler", on his 2012 debut album, "Based on a T.R.U. Story." In 2013, Lehrer said he was "very proud" to have his song sampled "literally sixty years after I recorded it". Lehrer went on to describe his official response to the request to use his song: "As sole copyright owner of 'The Old Dope Peddler', I grant you motherfuckers permission to do this. Please give my regards to Mr. Chainz, or may I call him 2?"


title: Tom Lehrer

text: In 2020, at the age of 92, Lehrer donated all of his lyrics and music written by him to the public domain. He followed this on November 1, 2022 with all recording and performing rights of any kind, making all of his music that he has originally composed or performed free for anyone to use and available directly from his site for free download. His statement releasing all his works into the public domain concludes with this note: "This website will be shut down at some date in the not too distant future, so if you want to download anything, don’t wait too long."


title: Tom Lehrer

text: In 1967, Swedish actor Lars Ekborg, known outside Sweden for his part in Ingmar Bergman’s "Summer with Monika", made an album called "I Tom Lehrers vackra värld" ("In the beautiful world of Tom Lehrer"), with 12 of Lehrer's songs interpreted in Swedish. Lehrer wrote in a letter to the producer Per-Anders Boquist that, "Not knowing any Swedish, I am obviously not equipped to judge, but it sounds to me as though Mr. Ekborg is perfect for the songs," along with further compliments to pianist Leif Asp for unexpected additional flourishes.


title: Tom Lehrer

text: In 1971, Argentinian singer Nacha Guevara sang Spanish versions of several Lehrer songs for the show/live album "Este es el año que es".


title: Tom Lehrer

text: Composer Randy Newman said of Lehrer, "He's one of the great American songwriters without a doubt, right up there with everybody, the top guys. As a lyricist, as good as there's been in the last half of the 20th century." Singer and comedian Dillie Keane has acknowledged Lehrer's influence on her work.


title: Tom Lehrer

text: Dr. Demento praised Lehrer as "the best musical satirist of the twentieth century." Other artists who cite Lehrer as an influence include "Weird Al" Yankovic, whose work generally addresses more popular and less technical or political subjects, and educator and scientist H. Paul Shuch, who tours under the stage name Dr. SETI, and calls himself "a cross between Carl Sagan and Tom Lehrer: He sings like Sagan and lectures like Lehrer." Yankovic saw Daniel Radcliffe (who called Lehrer his "hero") perform "The Elements" on The Graham Norton Show, which led to Radcliffe starring in "".


title: Tom Lehrer

text: In 2004, British medical satirists Amateur Transplants acknowledged the debt they owe to Lehrer on the back of their first album, "Fitness to Practice". Their song "The Menstrual Rag" uses the tune of Lehrer's "The Vatican Rag"; and "The Drugs Song" mirrors Lehrer's song "The Elements", both using the tune of the "Major-General's Song" from "The Pirates of Penzance" by Gilbert and Sullivan. The Amateur Transplants' second album, "Unfit to Practise", opens with an update of Lehrer's "The Masochism Tango" called "Masochism Tango 2008".


title: Tom Lehrer

text: From January 16 to February 25, 2006, the play "Letters from Lehrer", written and performed by Canadian Richard Greenblatt, ran at CanStage in Toronto. It followed Lehrer's musical career, the meaning of several songs, the politics of the time, and Greenblatt's own experiences with Lehrer's music, while playing some of Lehrer's songs.


title: Tom Lehrer

text: In 2010, the German musician-comedian Felix Janosa released an album with the title "Tauben vergiften: Die bösen Lieder von Tom Lehrer" ("Poisoning pigeons: The Evil Songs of Tom Lehrer"), with German versions of some of his best-known songs.


title: Tom Lehrer

text: Performers influenced by Lehrer's style include American political satirist Mark Russell, Canadian comedian and songwriter Randy Vancourt, and the British duo Kit and The Widow.


title: Tom Lehrer

text: The sheet music of many songs is published in "The Tom Lehrer Song Book" (Crown Publishers Inc., 1954; Library of Congress Card Catalog Number 54-12068) and "Too Many Songs by Tom Lehrer: With Not Enough Drawings by Ronald Searle" (Pantheon, 1981, ; Methuen, 1999, ). A second song book, "Tom Lehrer's Second Song Book", is out of print, .


title: Acadians

text: The Acadians ( , ) are an ethnic group descended from the French who settled in the New France colony of Acadia during the 17th and 18th centuries. Most Acadians live in the region of Acadia, as it is the region where the descendants of a few Acadians who escaped the Expulsion of the Acadians (aka The Great Upheaval / "Le Grand Dérangement") re-settled. Most Acadians in Canada continue to live in majority French-speaking communities, notably those in New Brunswick where Acadians and Francophones are granted autonomy in areas such as education and health.


title: Acadians

text: Acadia was one of the 5 regions of New France. Acadia was located in what is now Eastern Canada's Maritime provinces, as well as parts of Quebec and present-day Maine to the Kennebec River. It was ethnically, geographically and administratively different from the other French colonies and the French colony of Canada (modern-day Quebec). As a result, the Acadians developed a distinct history and culture. The settlers whose descendants became Acadians primarily came from the southwestern region of France, also known as Occitania, such as the rural areas of Poitou-Charentes and Aquitaine (Gascony).


title: Acadians

text: During the French and Indian War, British colonial officers suspected that Acadians were aligned with France, after finding some Acadians fighting alongside French troops at Fort Beauséjour. Though most Acadians remained neutral during the war, the British, together with New England legislators and militia, carried out the Great Expulsion (Le Grand Dérangement) of the Acadians between 1755 and 1764. They forcefully deported approximately 11,500 Acadians from the maritime region. Approximately one-third perished from disease and drowning. In retrospect, the result has been described as an ethnic cleansing of the Acadians from Maritime Canada.


title: Acadians

text: Most Acadians were deported to various British American colonies, where many were put into forced labour or servitude. Some Acadians were deported to England, some to the Caribbean, and some to France. After being expelled to France, many Acadians were eventually recruited by the Spanish government to migrate to "Luisiana" (present-day Louisiana). These Acadians settled into or alongside the existing Louisiana Creole settlements, sometimes intermarrying with Creoles, and gradually developed what became known as Cajun culture.


title: Acadians

text: In time, some Acadians returned to the Maritime provinces of Canada, mainly to New Brunswick. The British prohibited them from resettling their lands and villages in what became Nova Scotia. Before the American Revolutionary War, the Crown settled Protestant European immigrants and New England Planters in former Acadian communities and farmland. After the war, it made land grants in Nova Scotia to Loyalists. British policy was to establish a majority culture of Protestant religions and to assimilate Acadians with the local populations where they resettled.


title: Acadians

text: Acadians speak a variety of French called Acadian French, which has a few regional accents (for example, Chiac in the southeast of New Brunswick, or Brayon in the northwest of New Brunswick). Most can also speak English. The Louisiana Cajun descendants tend to speak English, including Cajun English, and/or Louisiana French, a relative of Acadian French from Canada.


title: Acadians

text: Estimates of contemporary Acadian populations vary widely. The Canadian census of 2006 reported only 96,145 Acadians in Canada, based on self-declared ethnic identity. However the Canadian Encyclopedia estimates that there are at least 500,000 of Acadian ancestry in Canada, which would include many who declared their ethnic identity for the census as French or as Canadian.


title: Acadians

text: During the early 17th century, about 60 French families were established in Acadia. They developed friendly relations with the peoples of the Wabanaki Confederacy (particularly the regional Mi'kmaq), learning their hunting and fishing techniques developed for local conditions. The Acadians lived mainly in the coastal regions of the Bay of Fundy; they reclaimed farming land from the sea by building dikes to control water and drain certain wetlands. Living in a contested borderland region between French Canada and the British territories on New England and the coast, the Acadians often became entangled in the conflict between the powers. Their competition in Europe played out in North America as well. Over a period of 74 years, six wars (the four French and Indian Wars, Father Rale's War, and Father Le Loutre's War) took place in Acadia and Nova Scotia, in which the Wabanaki Confederacy and some Acadians fought to keep the British from taking over the region. While France lost political control of Acadia in 1713, the Mí'kmaq did not concede land to the British. Along with Acadians, the Mi'kmaq from time to time used military force to resist the British. That was particularly evident in the early 1720s during Dummer's War, but hostilities were brought to a close by a treaty signed in 1726.


title: Acadians

text: The British had conquered Acadia in 1710. Over the next 45 years, the Acadians refused to sign an unconditional oath of allegiance to Britain. Many were influenced by Father Jean-Louis Le Loutre, who from his arrival in 1738 until his capture in 1755, preached against the "English devils". Father Le Loutre led the Acadian people during the Acadian Exodus, as an act of defiance towards British demands and oppression. Acadians took part in various militia operations against the British and maintained vital supply lines to the French Fortress of Louisbourg and Fort Beausejour. During the French and Indian War, the British sought to neutralize any military threat posed by the Acadians and to interrupt the vital supply lines which they provided to Louisbourg by deporting Acadians from Acadia.


title: Acadians

text: The British founded the town of Halifax and fortified it in 1749 in order to establish a base against the French. The Mi'kmaq resisted the increased number of British (Protestant) settlements by making numerous raids on Halifax, Dartmouth, Lawrencetown, and Lunenburg. During the French and Indian War, the Mi'kmaq assisted the Acadians in resisting the British during the Expulsion of the Acadians.


title: Acadians

text: Many Acadians might have signed an unconditional oath to the British monarchy had the circumstances been better, while other Acadians would not sign because it was religious oath which denied the Catholic faith because the British Monarch was Head of the Church of England. Acadians had numerous reasons against signing an oath of loyalty to the British Crown. The British monarch was the head of the Church of England. Acadian men feared that signing the oath would commit them to fighting against France during wartime. They also worried about whether their Mi'kmaq neighbours might perceive an oath as acknowledging the British claim to Acadia rather than that of the indigenous Mi'kmaq. Acadians believed that if they signed the oath, they might put their villages at risk of attack by the Mi'kmaq.


title: Acadians

text: In the Great Expulsion (known by French speakers as "le Grand Dérangement"), after the Battle of Fort Beauséjour beginning in August 1755 under Lieutenant Governor Lawrence, approximately 11,500 Acadians (three-quarters of the Acadian population in Nova Scotia) were expelled, families were separated, their lands and property confiscated, and in some cases their homes were burned. The Acadians were deported to separated locations throughout the British eastern seaboard colonies, from New England to Georgia, where many were put into forced labour or imprisoned.


title: Acadians

text: After 1758, thousands were transported to France. Most of the Acadians who later went to Louisiana sailed there from France on five Spanish ships. These had been provided by the Spanish Crown, which was eager to populate their Louisiana colony with Catholic settlers who might provide farmers to supply the needs of New Orleans residents. The Spanish had hired agents to seek out the dispossessed Acadians in Brittany and kept this effort secret in order to avoid angering the French king. These new arrivals from France joined the earlier wave expelled from Acadia, and gradually their descendants developed the Cajun population (which included multiracial unions and children) and culture. They continued to be attached to French culture and language, and Catholicism.


title: Acadians

text: The Spanish offered the Acadians lowlands along the Mississippi River in order to block British expansion from the east. Some would have preferred Western Louisiana, where many of their families and friends had settled. In addition, that land was more suitable to mixed crops of agriculture. Rebels among them marched to New Orleans and ousted the Spanish governor. The Spanish later sent infantry from other colonies to put down the rebellion and execute the leaders. After the rebellion in December 1769, Spanish Governor O'Reilly permitted the Acadians who had settled across the river from Natchez to resettle along the Iberville or Amite rivers closer to New Orleans.


title: Acadians

text: The British conducted a second and smaller expulsion of Acadians after taking control of the north shore of what is now New Brunswick. After the fall of Quebec and defeat of the French, the British lost interest in such relocations. Many Acadians gradually returned to British North America, settling in coastal villages that were not occupied by colonists from New England. A few of the Acadians in this area had evaded the British for several years, but the brutal winter weather eventually forced them to surrender. Some returnees settled in the region of Fort Sainte-Anne, now Fredericton, but were later displaced when the Crown awarded land grants to numerous United Empire Loyalists from the Thirteen Colonies after the victory of the United States in the American Revolution. Most of the descendants of Acadian returnees now live primarily on the eastern coast of New Brunswick, Canada.


title: Acadians

text: In 2003, at the request of Acadian representatives, Queen Elizabeth II, Queen of Canada issued a Royal Proclamation acknowledging the deportation. She established 28 July as an annual day of commemoration, beginning in 2005. The day is called the "Great Upheaval" on some English-language calendars.


title: Acadians

text: The Acadians today live predominantly in the Canadian Maritime provinces (New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia), as well as parts of Quebec, Canada, and in Louisiana and Maine, United States.


title: Acadians

text: In New Brunswick, Acadians inhabit the northern and eastern shores of New Brunswick. Other groups of Acadians can be found in the Magdalen Islands and the Gaspé Peninsula. Ethnic Acadian descendants still live in and around the area of Madawaska, Maine, where some of the Acadians first landed and settled in what is now known as the St. John Valley. There are also Acadians in Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia, at Chéticamp, Isle Madame, and Clare. East and West Pubnico, located at the end of the province, are the oldest regions that are predominantly ethnic Acadian.


title: Acadians

text: Other ethnic Acadians can be found in the southern regions of New Brunswick, Western Newfoundland and in New England. Many of these communities have assimilated to varying degrees into the majority culture of English speakers. For many families in predominantly Anglophone communities, French-language attrition has occurred, particularly in younger generations.


title: Acadians

text: The Acadians who settled in Louisiana after 1764 became known as Cajuns for the culture they developed. They have had a dominant cultural influence in many parishes, particularly in the southwestern area of the state, which is known as Acadiana.


title: Acadians

text: Acadians are a vibrant minority, particularly in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, Canada, and in Louisiana (Cajuns) and northern Maine, United States. Since 1994, "Le Congrès Mondial Acadien" has worked as an organization to unite these disparate communities and help preserve the culture.


title: Acadians

text: In 1881, Acadians at the First Acadian National Convention, held in Memramcook, New Brunswick, designated 15 August, the Christian feast of the Assumption of Mary, as the national feast day of their community. On that day, the Acadians celebrate by having a "tintamarre," a big parade and procession for which people dress up with the colors of Acadia and make a lot of noise and music. The national anthem of the Acadians is "Ave Maris Stella", adopted in 1884 at Miscouche, Prince Edward Island. The anthem was revised at the 1992 meeting of the Société Nationale de l'Acadie. The second, third and fourth verses were translated into French, with the first and last kept in the original Latin.


title: Acadians

text: The Federation des Associations de Familles Acadiennes of New Brunswick and the Société Saint-Thomas d'Aquin of Prince Edward Island have resolved to commemorate 13 December annually as "Acadian Remembrance Day," in memory of the sinking of the "Duke William" and of the nearly 2,000 Acadians deported from Ile-Saint Jean who died in 1758 while being deported across the North Atlantic: from hunger, disease and drowning. The event has been commemorated annually since 2004; participants mark the day by wearing a black star.


title: Acadians

text: American writer Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published "Evangeline", an epic poem loosely based on the 1755 deportation. The poem became an American classic. Activists used it as a catalyst in reviving a distinct Acadian identity in both Maritime Canada and in Louisiana. Antonine Maillet's novel "Pélagie-la-charette" concerns the return voyage to Acadia of several deported families, starting 15 years after the Great Expulsion. In 1976, the Canadian-American rock group The Band released the song Acadian Driftwood, influenced by Longfellow's poem.


title: Acadians

text: In the early 20th century, two statues were made of the fictional figure of "Evangeline" to commemorate the Expulsion: one was installed in St. Martinville, Louisiana and the other in Grand-Pré, Nova Scotia. The Acadian Memorial (Monument Acadien) has an eternal flame; it honors the 3,000 Acadians who settled in Louisiana after the Expulsion. Monuments to the Acadian Expulsion have been erected at several sites in the Maritime Provinces, such as at Georges Island, Nova Scotia, and at Beaubears Island.


title: Acadians

text: The flag of the Acadians is the French tricolour, with the addition of a golden star in the blue field. This symbolizes Saint Mary, Our Lady of the Assumption, patron saint of the Acadians and widely known as the "Star of the Sea". This flag was adopted in 1884 at the Second Acadian National Convention, held in Miscouche, Prince Edward Island.


title: Acadians

text: Acadians in the diaspora have adopted other symbols. The flag of Acadians in Louisiana, known as Cajuns, was designed by Thomas J. Arceneaux of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. In 1974 it was adopted by the Louisiana legislature as the official emblem of the Acadiana region. The state has supported the culture, in part because it has attracted cultural and heritage tourism.


title: Acadians

text: In 2004 New England Acadians, who were attending Le Congrès Mondial Acadien in Nova Scotia, endorsed a design by William Cork for a New England Acadian flag.


title: Zulu (1964 film)

text: Zulu is a 1964 British epic war film depicting the Battle of Rorke's Drift between the British Army and the Zulus in January 1879, during the Anglo-Zulu War. It shows how 150 British soldiers, 30 of whom were sick and wounded patients in a field hospital, successfully held off a force of 4,000 Zulu warriors.


title: Zulu (1964 film)

text: The film was directed by American screenwriter Cy Endfield and produced by Stanley Baker and Endfield, with Joseph E. Levine as executive producer. The screenplay was by Endfield and historical writer John Prebble, based on Prebble's 1958 "Lilliput" article "Slaughter in the Sun". The film stars Baker and introduces Michael Caine, in his first major role, with a supporting cast that includes Jack Hawkins, Ulla Jacobsson, James Booth, Nigel Green, Paul Daneman, Glynn Edwards, Ivor Emmanuel, and Patrick Magee. Zulu chief and future South African political leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi played Zulu King Cetshwayo kaMpande, his great-grandfather. The opening and closing narration is spoken by Richard Burton.


title: Zulu (1964 film)

text: The film was first shown on the 85th anniversary of the actual battle, 22 January 1964, at the Plaza Theatre in the West End of London. In 2017 a poll of 150 actors, directors, writers, producers, and critics for "Time Out" magazine ranked it the 93rd best British film ever.


title: Zulu (1964 film)

text: In 1879, a communiqué from Lord Chelmsford (narrated by Richard Burton) to the Secretary of State for War in London details the crushing defeat of a 1,300-man British column by the Zulu armies at Isandlwana. In the aftermath of the battle, Zulu tribesmen are shown scavenging the battlefield and collecting rifles and ammunition from the dead soldiers. At a mass Zulu marriage ceremony witnessed by missionary Otto Witt and his daughter Margareta, Zulu King Cetshwayo is informed of the great victory; Witt and Margareta flee when they realize what has happened.


title: Zulu (1964 film)

text: A company of the British Army's 24th Regiment of Foot is using Witt's missionary station at Rorke's Drift in Natal as a supply depot and hospital for British forces in Zululand. Receiving news of Isandlwana from Natal Native Contingent Commander Adendorff and warnings that 4,000 Zulu warriors are advancing on their position, Lieutenant John Chard of the Royal Engineers assumes command of a force consisting of less than 200 men as he is slightly senior to their nominal commander, Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead. With not enough time to order a full evacuation, Chard decides to stay and fight. He has wagons, sacks of mealie (maize), and crates of hardtack stacked to form a defensive perimeter, gun holes knocked in the hospital walls, and a medical ward set up in Witt's chapel.


title: Zulu (1964 film)

text: A contingent of South African cavalrymen who had fought at Isandlwana arrive, refuse Chard's pleas to help reinforce the station on the grounds that it is hopeless, and swiftly depart on their horses. Witt, enraged by Chard arming the hospital's patients and ordering them to fight instead of allowing them to be evacuated, persuades the Zulus serving in the Natal Native Contingent to desert. Chard then angrily orders Witt to be locked up in the chapel's supply room after Witt starts drinking heavily and proclaims that none of the soldiers will survive the coming battle.


title: Zulu (1964 film)

text: The Zulu "impis" approach and then charge before quickly retreating under British fire; Adendorff explains that they are trying to find weak points in the station's defenses. Chard permits Margareta to take her father away; the Zulus, recognizing Witt, allow them to pass unharmed. Chard is concerned that the northern perimeter wall is under-defended and realises that the Zulus, aware of this, are preparing to attack the station from all sides. Zulu warriors armed with British rifles also start taking potshots at the soldiers. Throughout the day and night, wave after wave of Zulu attackers are repelled, but the defenders are slowly killed off one-by-one. The Zulus succeed in setting fire to the hospital, and Private Henry Hook rallies the patients to fight them and escape.


title: Zulu (1964 film)

text: The next morning, the Zulus approach to within several hundred yards and sing a lament before launching again into their war chant; the British respond by singing the Welsh song "Men of Harlech". In the final assault, just as it seems the Zulus will finally overwhelm the tired defenders, the British soldiers fall back to a small redoubt in front of the chapel. With a reserve of men hidden within the redoubt, they form into three ranks and fire volley after volley, inflicting heavy casualties; the Zulus retreat. After a pause of three hours, the Zulus re-form on the Oscarberg. Resigned to another assault, the British are astonished when the Zulus instead sing a song to honour the bravery of the defenders before departing.


title: Zulu (1964 film)

text: The film ends with another narration by Richard Burton, listing the eleven defenders who received the Victoria Cross for the defence of Rorke's Drift, the most ever awarded for a single action.


title: Zulu (1964 film)

text: Cy Endfield was inspired to make the film after reading an article on the Battle of Rorke's Drift by John Prebble. He took it to actor Stanley Baker with whom he had made several films and who was interested in moving into production. Endfield and Prebble drafted a script, which Baker then showed to Joseph E. Levine while making "Sodom and Gomorrah" (1962) in Italy. Levine agreed to fund the movie, which was produced by Baker's company, Diamond Films. It was shot using the Super Technirama 70 cinematographic process, and distributed by Paramount Pictures in all countries excluding the United States, where it was distributed by Embassy Pictures.


title: Zulu (1964 film)

text: Most of "Zulu" was shot on location in South Africa. The mission depot at Rorke's Drift was recreated beneath the natural Amphitheatre in the Drakensberg Mountains (considerably more precipitous than the real Rorke's Drift, which is little more than two small hills). The set for the British field hospital and supply depot at Rorke's Drift was created near the Tugela River with the Amphitheatre in the background. The real location of the battle was 100 kilometres (60 mi) to the northwest, on the Buffalo River near the isolated hill at Isandlwana.


title: Zulu (1964 film)

text: Other scenes were filmed within the national parks of KwaZulu-Natal. Interiors and all the scenes starring James Booth were completed at Twickenham Film Studios in Middlesex, England. The majority of the Zulus were real Zulus. 240 Zulu extras were employed for the battle scenes, bused in from their tribal homes over 100 miles away. Around 1,000 additional tribesmen were filmed by the second unit in Zululand. Eighty South African military servicemen were cast as soldiers.


title: Zulu (1964 film)

text: The film was compared by Baker to a Western movie, with the traditional roles of the United States Cavalry and Native Americans taken by the British and the Zulus respectively. Director Endfield showed a Western to Zulu extras to demonstrate the concept of film acting and how he wanted the warriors to conduct themselves. It has been rumoured that due to the apartheid laws in South Africa, none of the Zulu extras could be paid for their performance and that, consequently, Endfield circumvented this restriction by leaving them all the animals, primarily cattle, used in the film. This allegation is incorrect; no such law existed and all of the Zulu extras were paid in full – the main body of extras were paid the equivalent of nine shillings per day each, additional extras eight shillings, and the female dancers slightly less.


title: Zulu (1964 film)

text: Michael Caine, who at this early stage in his career was primarily playing bit parts, was originally up for the role of Private Henry Hook, which went to James Booth. According to Caine, he was extremely nervous during his screen test for the part of Bromhead, and director Cy Endfield told him that it was the worst screen test he had ever seen, but they were casting Caine in the part anyway because the production was leaving for South Africa shortly and they had not found anyone else for the role. Caine also believed that he was fortunate that the film was directed by an American (Endfield), because "no English director would've cast me as an officer, I promise you, not one," due to his Cockney roots. Caine later said "My entire movie career is based on the length of the bar at the Prince of Wales theatre, because I was on my way out [after failing to get the part auditioned for] and it was a very long walk to the door. And I had just got there, when he called out: 'Come back!'


title: Zulu (1964 film)

text: Caine's performance in "Zulu" won him praise from reviewers, and his next film role would be as the star of "The Ipcress File" in which he was reunited with Nigel Green.


title: Zulu (1964 film)

text: The company was unable to obtain enough historically authentic Martini-Henry rifles for all of the extras, and had to use additional later Lee Enfields, with a very noticeable moving bolt on the right side, absent on the Martini-Henry. The sidearms used were also visibly later types, World War I-vintage Webley Mk VI revolvers.


title: Zulu (1964 film)

text: The budget of the film has been the subject of some speculation. Press related figures of $3 million and even $3.5 million were mentioned upon the picture's American release. Joe Levine later revealed that Stanley Baker had approached him with a script and budget in 1962, just after the filming of "Sodom and Gomorrah". Levine agreed to finance the picture up to $2 million. According to the records of the British completion bond company, Film Finance, Ltd., the production eventually finalized its budget at £666,554 (approximately, $1,720,000). This included a contingency amount of £82,241, of which only £34,563 had been used by the time the picture had all but wrapped post-production (Cost Report #15, 18 October 1963). This would have placed the near-final negative cost at £618,876 (approximately $1,600,000).


title: Zulu (1964 film)

text: The basic premises of the film are true and largely accurate, but is not a historical re-enactment of real events. The heavily outnumbered British successfully defended Rorke's Drift more or less as portrayed in the film. Writer Cy Endfield even consulted a Zulu tribal historian for information from Zulu oral tradition about the attack. There are, however, a number of historical inaccuracies in the film.


title: Zulu (1964 film)

text: There are several inconsistencies with the historical record concerning the Swedish missionaries, the Witts. In the film, Witt is depicted as a middle-aged widower, a pacifist and drunkard, who has an adult daughter called Margareta. In reality, Otto Witt was aged 30 and had a wife, Elin, and two infant children. Witt's family were away at the time of the battle. On the morning of the battle, Otto Witt, with the chaplain, George Smith and Surgeon-Major James Henry Reynolds had ascended Shiyane (Oscarberg), the large hill near the station, and noticed the approach of the Zulu force across the Buffalo River. Far from being a pacifist, Witt had co-operated closely with the army and negotiated a lease to put Rorke's Drift at Lord Chelmsford's disposal. Witt made it clear that he did not oppose British intervention against Cetshwayo. He had stayed at Rorke's Drift because he wished "to take part in the defence of my own house and at the same time in the defence of an important place for the whole colony, yet my thoughts went to my wife and to my children, who were at a short distance from there, and did not know anything of what was going on". He therefore left on horseback to join his family shortly before the battle.


title: Meg Ryan filmography

text: Meg Ryan is an American actress and producer. Ryan began her acting career in 1981 in minor roles before joining the cast of the CBS soap opera "As the World Turns" in 1982. Subsequently, she began to appear in supporting roles in films during the mid 1980s like box office hit "Top Gun", achieving recognition in independent films such as "Promised Land" (1987) before her performance in the Rob Reiner-directed romantic comedy "When Harry Met Sally..." (1989) brought her widespread attention and her first Golden Globe nomination.


title: Meg Ryan filmography

text: Ryan subsequently established herself, both nationally and internationally, as one of the most successful actresses in the 1990s and early 2000s, particularly in romantic comedy films such as "Sleepless in Seattle" (1993), "French Kiss" (1995), "You've Got Mail" (1998), "Hanging Up" (2000) and "Kate & Leopold" (2001). Her other films include "The Doors" (1991), "When a Man Loves a Woman" (1994), "Courage Under Fire" (1996), "Addicted to Love" (1997), "City of Angels" (1998), "Proof of Life" (2000), and "The Women" (2008). In 2015, she made her directorial debut with "Ithaca", a film in which she also acted.


title: Lawless (film)

text: Lawless is a 2012 American crime drama film directed by John Hillcoat. The screenplay, by Australian singer-screenwriter Nick Cave, is based on Matt Bondurant's historical novel "The Wettest County in the World" (2008). The film stars Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, and Guy Pearce.


title: Lawless (film)

text: The film is about the violent conflict between three bootlegging brothers: Forrest (Hardy), Howard (Clarke), and Jack Bondurant (LaBeouf) — and the ruthless lawman Charley Rakes (Pearce), who tries to shut down the brothers' Prohibition-era moonshine business after Forrest refuses to pay him off. The film was in development for about three years before being produced. It screened at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival and was theatrically released on August 29, 2012.


title: Lawless (film)

text: In 1931, the Bondurant brothers — middle brother Forrest, eldest brother Howard, and youngest brother Jack — are running a successful moonshine business in Franklin County, Virginia. The brothers use their gas station and restaurant as a front for dealing with the assistance of Cricket, Jack's mechanically gifted friend who builds and maintains their stills. Jack witnesses rum-runner Floyd Banner shoot dead two federal agents in broad daylight for trying to arrest him.


title: Lawless (film)

text: Forrest hires Maggie, a financially struggling dancer, as a waitress. Shortly afterward, the gas station is visited by newly appointed U.S. Marshal Charley Rakes, accompanied by the sheriff and corrupt state's attorney Mason Wardell. Rakes demands that he and Wardell receive a cut of profits from all bootleggers within the county, including Forrest, in exchange for ignoring their operations. Forrest refuses and implores his fellow bootleggers to unite against Rakes, but they refuse.


title: Lawless (film)

text: Meanwhile, Jack lusts after Bertha, daughter of the local Brethren preacher. He attends their church service drunk, embarrassing himself but piquing her interest. Jack walks in on a visit from Rakes to Cricket's house and is beaten by him as a message to his brothers. Later that night, Forrest throws out two drunk customers who had been harassing and threatening Maggie. After Maggie leaves, Forrest is ambushed by the two men, who slit his throat. Maggie returns looking for Forrest but is beaten and raped by the men. She hides the assault from Forrest, not wanting him to take revenge.


title: Lawless (film)

text: While Forrest recovers at a hospital, Jack, deciding to retire from bootlegging rather than cross Rakes any further, crosses the county line with Cricket to sell their remaining liquor. They get ambushed by Banner and his crew but are spared when Jack reveals he is a Bondurant, whom Banner admires for their stance against Rakes. Banner reveals to Jack the address of his brother's assailants, revealing that both men are former bootleggers now working as deputy marshals for Rakes.


title: Lawless (film)

text: Forrest and Howard find, torture, and kill the men and send one of their testicles to Rakes. Banner becomes a regular client of the brothers, who invest their profits into setting up larger stills deep in the woods. Jack continues to court Bertha. Maggie decides to return to Chicago, but Forrest convinces her to stay and provides her with a spare room; they soon develop a romantic relationship. On a day trip, Jack decides to show Bertha the brothers' secret operation, but they are followed and ambushed by Rakes and his officers. Howard and Jack flee but Cricket and Bertha are caught. The police take Bertha home, while Cricket has his neck snapped by Rakes.


title: Lawless (film)

text: After Cricket's funeral, the sheriff warns the Bondurants that Rakes has set up a blockade at the bridge to trap them while Wardell arranges for Prohibition agents to round up every bootlegger in the county. Jack speeds off in Cricket's car to confront Rakes. Howard and Forrest quickly follow to provide backup, to Maggie's chagrin. She reveals she had delivered him to the hospital after the attack and Forrest realizes that she had been raped.


title: Lawless (film)

text: Jack arrives at the bridge but is wounded by Rakes. Howard and Forrest arrive, and a shootout ensues, during which Forrest and his driver are also wounded, the latter fatally. A convoy of bootleggers arrive and hold the lawmen at gunpoint. Rakes ignores them and attempts to execute Forrest but is shot in the leg by the sheriff in an attempt to halt the bloodshed. Rakes turns to leave the scene, but suddenly turns around and shoots Forrest several times. The convoy opens fire on Rakes, but he runs into a covered bridge. Since he is unable to run far, the badly wounded Jack and Howard follow and plunge a knife into Rakes' back, killing him.


title: Lawless (film)

text: Following the end of Prohibition in 1933, Wardell is arrested on corruption charges while the Bondurants are all married — Jack to Bertha, Forrest to Maggie, and Howard to a Martinsville woman — and working in legitimate occupations. During a festive reunion at Jack's house sometime later, Forrest drunkenly ambles to a frozen lake and falls into the freezing water. Although he drags himself out, he later dies of pneumonia, putting to rest the legend of his invincibility.


title: Lawless (film)

text: Writer Matt Bondurant wrote the historical novel "The Wettest County in the World" (2008), based on the Prohibition-era bootlegging activities of his grandfather Jack Bondurant and grand-uncles Forrest and Howard. Producers Douglas Wick and Lucy Fisher optioned the book in 2008 and sent it to director John Hillcoat. Hillcoat later said,


title: Lawless (film)

text: [Bootlegging] sort of drew [the Bondurants] into this crazy kind of world of corruption and lawlessness ironically, but then mostly they survived, they got through it all and actually went on to have businesses and children. And traditionally the gangster film teaches us that we've got to pay for our sins. Usually the gangster is shot down in a blaze of glory and doesn't get up again.


title: Lawless (film)

text: Hillcoat and screenwriter Nick Cave, who had worked together on the Western film "The Proposition" (2005), were attracted to the story by the success of the Bondurants. Hillcoat also said, "we also loved the idea that it sort of touched on the whole immortality that a lot of these guys start to feel when they do survive so many strange experiences."


title: Lawless (film)

text: The first actor to be cast was Shia LaBeouf as Jack, the youngest Bondurant brother. James Franco was attached to play Howard and Ryan Gosling was attached to play Forrest; Amy Adams and Scarlett Johansson were also attached to the project. Originally titled "The Wettest County in The World", the same as the novel, the film's title was changed to "The Promised Land".


title: Lawless (film)

text: Although Hillcoat intended to begin shooting in February 2010, in January the project was reported to have fallen apart due to financing problems. Only LaBeouf remained with the project. He said that after he saw "Bronson" (2008), "I went home and wrote Tom [Hardy] a letter saying I was a fan. He sent me a script, and I sent him "Lawless". He called me back and said, 'This is fucking amazing. Cinematographer Benoît Delhomme recommended Jessica Chastain to Hillcoat. Chastain said, "I am a big fan of "The Proposition". I hadn't even read the script, but I told [Hillcoat], 'If you cast me, I'll do it.' I approach every role in terms of: 'Have I done this before? Is it something I'm repeating?' "Lawless" offered a new opportunity."


title: Lawless (film)

text: By December 2010, Hardy and Chastain were reported to have joined the project. Michael Benaroya of Benaroya Pictures and Megan Ellison of Annapurna Pictures were undertaking its financing. Jason Clarke and Dane DeHaan were cast in January 2011. Guy Pearce, Gary Oldman, and Mia Wasikowska joined the cast in February 2011.


title: Lawless (film)

text: According to Cave, "a lot of the truly brutal stuff did not make it through into the film. In the book, you get lulled by the beautiful lyricism of the writing, then suddenly you are slapped in the face by a graphic description of a killing. I tried to be true to that as much as I could." He also said the filmmakers "tried to stay as true to the original story as possible", adding "we kind of changed aspects of the personality and temperament of Rakes to get [Pearce] involved."


title: Lawless (film)

text: Before Pearce was cast, "Rakes, the character Rakes, was very much like the character in the book. He was a nasty country cop. We made him a city cop, gave him his disturbed sexuality and all the rest of it," Cave said. Pearce created the hairstyle worn by Rakes in the film.


title: Lawless (film)

text: "Lawless" was filmed early 2011 in various locations near Atlanta, Georgia, including Newnan, Grantville, Haralson, LaGrange, Carroll County's McIntosh Park, and the Red Oak Creek Covered Bridge south of Gay. The cast lived in apartments in Peachtree City for three months during production, and Hillcoat screened dailies for the cast every weekend. Hillcoat and Delhomme consulted with cinematographers Roger Deakins and Harris Savides on digital cinematography. They chose to use the Arri Alexa digital camera system for "Lawless", and Delhomme always used two cameras during filming.


title: Lawless (film)

text: In March 2011, Momentum Pictures and its parent company Alliance Films acquired the U.K. and Canadian distribution rights. In May 2011, the Weinstein Company bought the U.S. distribution rights, with plans for a wide release. In March 2012, the title was changed to "Lawless".


title: Lawless (film)

text: "Lawless" screened In Competition at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival on May 19 and received a nearly 10-minute standing ovation. The film was theatrically released in the U.S. on Wednesday, August 29, 2012. The Weinstein Company hoped that good word of mouth would be built up for the upcoming Labor Day weekend. Audiences polled by the market research firm CinemaScore gave "Lawless" a B+ grade on average.


title: Lawless (film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 66% based on 217 reviews, with an average rating of 6.47/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Grim, bloody, and utterly flawed, "Lawless" doesn't quite achieve the epic status it strains for, but it's too beautifully filmed and powerfully acted to dismiss." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 58 out of 100, based on reviews from 38 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: Lawless (film)

text: "If "Lawless" doesn't achieve the mythic dimensions of the truly great outlaw and gangster movies, it is a highly entertaining tale set in a vivid milieu, told with style and populated by a terrific ensemble. For those of us who are suckers for blood-soaked American crime sagas from that era, those merits will be plenty."


title: Lawless (film)

text: Mike D'Angelo of "The A.V. Club" gave the film a B− grade, calling it "a thoroughly familiar—but flavorful and rousing—shoot-'em-up set among Prohibition bootleggers. ... If you've seen even a handful of Tommy-gun movies, however, everything that happens here will feel preordained". Richard Corliss of "Time" magazine wrote: "much of the picture has a fossilized feeling; it could be a diorama under glass at the Museum of Nasty People. As a serious film worthy of the Cannes Competition, "Lawless" tries to be flawless; as a movie, it's often listless—lifeless."


title: Lawless (film)

text: "it's basically a smug, empty exercise in macho-sentimental violence in which we are apparently expected to root for the lovable good ol' boys, as they mumble, shoot, punch and stab. Our heroes manage to ensnare the affections of preposterously exquisite young women, and the final flurry of self-adoring nostalgia is borderline-nauseating."


title: Lawless (film)

text: Owen Gleiberman of "Entertainment Weekly" gave "Lawless" a B grade, writing: "Hardy's presence is compelling, but the film comes fully alive only when it turns bloody. At those moments, though, it has the kick of a mule." Mick LaSalle of the "San Francisco Chronicle" also praised Hardy's performance, and concluded, "The filmmakers detail a long-gone conflict from a long-lost era and end up showing how the dreams and longings that motivate Americans never really change." Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" gave the film 2.5 stars out of 4, writing: ""Lawless" is a solid outlaw adventure, but you can feel it straining for a greatness that stays out of reach. There's even a prologue and an epilogue, arty tropes signifying an attempt to make a "Godfather"-style epic out of these moonshine wars. Not happening." Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" also gave the film 2.5 stars out of 4, writing:


title: Lawless (film)

text: I can only admire this film's craftsmanship and acting, and regret its failure to rise above them. Its characters live by a barbaric code that countenances murder. They live or die in a relentless hail of gunfire. It's not so much that the movie is too long, as that too many people must be killed before it can end.


title: Lawless (film)

text: Claudia Puig of "USA Today" gave the film 2 stars out of 4, writing: "The unflinching slicing and dicing is viscerally brutal, but without sufficient character development "Lawless" simply feels lifeless." David Edelstein of "New York" magazine wrote: "The mixture of arthouse pacing and shocking gore seems to convince a lot of people that they're seeing a mythic depiction of the outlaw way of existence. I saw a standard revenge picture played at half-speed." Robert Abele of the "Los Angeles Times" felt that the film was clichéd, writing that it "turns the Virginia hills of the early 1930s into just another backdrop for a clockwork succession of perfunctorily filmed showdowns and shootouts." A. O. Scott of "The New York Times" similarly wrote:


title: Lawless (film)

text: There are too many action-movie clichés without enough dramatic purpose, and interesting themes and anecdotes are scattered around without being fully explored. This is weak and cloudy moonshine: it doesn't burn or intoxicate.


title: The Emoji Movie

text: The Emoji Movie is a 2017 American computer-animated science fiction comedy film produced by Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation, and distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing. Directed by Tony Leondis, who wrote the script with Eric Siegel and Mike White, it stars the voices of T.J. Miller, James Corden, Anna Faris, Maya Rudolph, Steven Wright, Jennifer Coolidge, Jake T. Austin, Christina Aguilera, Sofía Vergara, Sean Hayes, and Sir Patrick Stewart. Based on emojis, the film centers on a multi-expressional emoji who exists in a teenager's smartphone embarking on a journey to become a normal emoji capable of only a single expression.


title: The Emoji Movie

text: "The Emoji Movie" premiered on July 23, 2017 at the Regency Village Theatre and was theatrically released in the United States five days later. The movie was a commercial success after grossing $217 million worldwide against its $50 million production budget, but was universally lambasted by critics, who criticized its script, humor, use of product placement, tone, voice performances, lack of originality, and plot, with negative comparisons and similarities to other animated films, especially "Wreck-It Ralph" (2012), "The Lego Movie" (2014), and "Inside Out" (2015). "The Emoji Movie" was nominated for five awards at the 38th Golden Raspberry Awards, winning four. It is the first animated film to win in any of those categories. It is frequently cited as the worst film of 2017, as well as one of the worst animated movies ever made.


title: The Emoji Movie

text: Gene is an emoji that lives in Textopolis, a digital city inside the phone of his user, a teenager named Alex. He is the son of two meh emojis named Mel and Mary and is able to make multiple expressions despite his parents' upbringing. His parents are hesitant about him going to work, but Gene insists so that he can feel useful. Upon receiving a text from his love interest Addie McCallister, Alex decides to send her an emoji. When Gene is selected, he panics, makes a panicked expression, and wrecks the text center. Gene is called in by Smiler, a smiley emoji and leader of the text center, who concludes that Gene is a "malfunction" and therefore must be deleted. Gene is chased by bots but is rescued by Hi-5, a once-popular emoji who has since lost his fame due to lack of use. He tells Gene that he can be fixed if they find a hacker, and Hi-5 accompanies him so that he can reclaim his fame.


title: The Emoji Movie

text: Smiler sends more bots to look for Gene when she finds out that he has left Textopolis, as his actions have caused Alex to think that his phone needs to be fixed. Gene and Hi-5 come to a piracy app where they meet a hacker emoji named Jailbreak, who wants to reach Dropbox so that she can live in the cloud. The trio is attacked by Smiler's bots, but manage to escape into the game "Candy Crush". Jailbreak reveals that Gene can be fixed in the cloud, and the group goes off into the "Just Dance" app. While there, Jailbreak is revealed to be a princess emoji who fled home after tiring of being stereotyped. They are once again attacked by bots, and their actions cause Alex to delete the "Just Dance" app. Gene and Jailbreak escape, but Hi-5 is taken along with the app and ends up in the trash.


title: The Emoji Movie

text: Mel and Mary go searching for Gene and have a very lethargic argument. They make up in the Instagram app when Mel reveals that he, too, is a malfunction, explaining Gene's behavior. While traveling through Spotify, Jailbreak admits that she likes Gene just the way he is and that he should not be ashamed of his malfunction. The two start to fall in love and Gene silently debates his choice to change himself. They make it to the trash and rescue Hi-5, but are soon attacked by a bot upgraded with illegal malware. They evade it by entangling its arms and enter Dropbox, where they encounter a firewall. After many tries, the gang gets past it with a password being Addie's name and make it to the cloud, where Jailbreak prepares to reprogram Gene. Gene admits his feelings for Jailbreak, but she wishes to stick to her plan of venturing into the cloud, unintentionally causing Gene to revert to his apathetic programming out of heartbreak. Suddenly, the upgraded bot sneaks into the cloud and captures Gene, prompting Hi-5 and Jailbreak to go after him with a Twitter bird summoned by Jailbreak in her princess form.


title: The Emoji Movie

text: As Smiler prepares to delete Gene, Mel and Mary arrive. Mel reveals to everyone that he is also a malfunction, prompting Smiler to threaten to delete him as well. Jailbreak and Hi-5 arrive and disable the bot, which falls on top of Smiler. Alex has since taken his phone to a store in hopes that a factory reset performed by technical support would restore his phone's functionality, which would entail total destruction of Gene's world should such operation complete. Out of desperation, Gene prepares to have himself texted to Addie, making numerous faces to express himself. Realizing that Addie received a text from him, Alex cancels the factory reset just as it nearly finishes, saving the emoji and finally getting to speak with Addie, who likes the emoji Alex sent. Gene accepts himself for who he is and is celebrated by all of the emojis.


title: The Emoji Movie

text: In a mid-credits scene, Smiler has been relegated to the "loser lounge" with the other unused and forgotten emojis for her crimes, wearing numerous braces due to her teeth being chipped by the bot, and playing and losing a game of Go Fish.


title: The Emoji Movie

text: The film was inspired by director Tony Leondis' love of "Toy Story" (1995). Wanting to make a new take on the concept, he began asking himself, "What is the new toy out there that hasn't been explored?" At the same time, Leondis received a text message with an emoji, which helped him realize that this was the world he wanted to explore. In fleshing out the story, Leondis considered having the emojis visit the real world. However, his producer felt that the world inside a phone was much more interesting, which inspired Leondis to create the story of where and how the emojis lived. As Leondis is gay, he connected to Gene's plight of "being different in a world that expects you to be one thing," and in eventually realizing that the feeling held true for most people, Leondis has said the film "was very personal".


title: The Emoji Movie

text: In July 2015, it was announced that Sony Pictures Animation had won a bidding war against Warner Bros. Pictures and Paramount Pictures over production rights to make the film, with the official announcement occurring at the 2016 CinemaCon. The film was fast tracked into production by the studio after the bidding war. Unlike most other animated films, the film had a production time of two years, as there were concerns that the movie would become outdated due to the evolution of phone technology.


title: The Emoji Movie

text: On World Emoji Day on July 17, 2016, Miller was announced as the lead. Leondis created the part with Miller in mind, although the actor was initially hesitant to play the role, only accepting after Leondis briefed him on the story. Leondis chose Miller because "when you think of irrepressible, you think of TJ. But he also has this surprising ability to break your heart". in addition Miller also contributed some re-writes. In October 2016, it was announced that Ilana Glazer and Corden would join the cast as well. Glazer was later replaced by Anna Faris. According to Jordan Peele, he was initially offered the role of "Poop", which he would go on to state led to his decision to retire from acting. The part would ultimately go to Patrick Stewart.


title: The Emoji Movie

text: The film's score was composed by Patrick Doyle, who previously composed the score for Leondis' "Igor" (2008). Singer Ricky Reed recorded an original song, "Good Vibrations", for the film. While also voicing a character in the film, Christina Aguilera's song "Feel This Moment" was also used during the film and the end credits.


title: The Emoji Movie

text: On December 20, 2016, a teaser trailer for the film was released, which received overwhelming criticism from social media users, collecting almost 22,000 "dislikes" against 4,000 "likes" within the first 24 hours of its release. A second trailer was released on May 16, 2017, which also received an extremely negative reception. Sony promoted the release of the latter trailer by hosting a press conference in Cannes, the day before the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, which featured T. J. Miller parasailing in. "Variety" called the event "slightly awkward", and "The Hollywood Reporter" described it as "promotional ridiculousness".


title: The Emoji Movie

text: Sony Pictures was later criticized after the film's official Twitter account posted a promotional picture of a parody of "The Handmaid's Tale", featuring Smiler. The parody was considered to be "tasteless" due to the overall themes of the work, and the image was deleted afterward.


title: The Emoji Movie

text: On July 17, 2017, the Empire State Building was lit "emoji yellow". That same day, director Tony Leondis and producer Michelle Raimo Kouyate joined Jeremy Burge and Jake T. Austin to ring the closing bell of the New York Stock Exchange and Saks Fifth Avenue hosted a promotional emoji red carpet event at its flagship store to promote branded "Emoji Movie" merchandise.


title: The Emoji Movie

text: On July 20, 2017, Sony Pictures invited YouTuber Jacksfilms (whom they considered "the [No. 1] fan of the Emoji Movie") to the world premiere and sent him a package containing various "Emoji Movie" memorabilia including fidget spinners, face masks, and a plushie of the poop emoji. Jacksfilms had praised the movie four months prior, although it was sarcasm and he was actually making fun of the movie.


title: The Emoji Movie

text: "The Emoji Movie" premiered on July 23, 2017, at the Regency Village Theatre in Los Angeles. The film was originally scheduled for general release on August 11 and August 4, but it was moved up to July 28. In theaters, "The Emoji Movie" was accompanied by a short film "Puppy!" (2017)


title: The Emoji Movie

text: "The Emoji Movie" was released on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray, and DVD on October 24, 2017, by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. According to The Numbers, the domestic DVD sales are $8,616,759 and the Blu-ray sales are $6,995,654.


title: The Emoji Movie

text: "The Emoji Movie" grossed $86.1 million in the United States and Canada and $131.7 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $217.8 million, against a production budget of $50 million.


title: The Emoji Movie

text: The film was released on July 28, 2017. "The Emoji Movie" grossed $10.1 million on its first day, including $900,000 from Thursday night previews. The film debuted at second grossing $25.7 million from 4,075 theaters. Its second weekend earnings dropped by 50 percent to $12.4 million, and followed by another $6.5 million the third weekend. "The Emoji Movie" completed its theatrical run in the United States and Canada on November 30, 2017.


title: The Emoji Movie

text: Review embargoes for the film were lifted midday July 27, only a few hours before the film premiered to the general public, in a move considered among several tactics studios are using to try to curb bad Rotten Tomatoes ratings. Speaking of the effect embargoing reviews until last minute had on the film's debut, Josh Greenstein, Sony Pictures president of worldwide marketing and distribution, said, ""The Emoji Movie" was built for people under 18 ... so we wanted to give the movie its best chance. What other wide release with a score under 8 percent has opened north of $20 million? I don't think there is one."


title: The Emoji Movie

text: On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, "The Emoji Movie" has an approval rating of based on professional reviews, with an average rating of . Metacritic (which uses a weighted average) assigned "The Emoji Movie" a score of 12 out of 100 based on 26 critics, indicating "overwhelming dislike", becoming the lowest-rated animated film on the site. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.


title: The Emoji Movie

text: David Ehrlich of "IndieWire" gave the film a D, writing: "Make no mistake, "The Emoji Movie" is very, very, "very" bad (we're talking about a hyperactive piece of corporate propaganda in which Spotify saves the world and Sir Patrick Stewart voices a living turd), but real life is just too hard to compete with right now." Alonso Duralde of "TheWrap" was also critical of the film, calling it "a soul-crushing disaster because it lacks humor, wit, ideas, visual style, compelling performances, a point of view or any other distinguishing characteristic that would make it anything but a complete waste of your time".


title: The Emoji Movie

text: Glen Kenny of "The New York Times" described the film as "nakedly idiotic", stating that the film plays off a Hollywood idea that the "panderingly, trendily idiotic can be made to seem less so". Owen Gleiberman of "Variety" lambasted the film as "hectic situational overkill" and "lazy" while viciously criticizing the film, writing: "There have been worse ideas, but in this case the execution isn't good enough to bring the notion of an emoji movie to funky, surprising life." Writing in "The Guardian", Charles Bramesco called the film "insidious evil" and wrote that it was little more than an exercise in advertising smartphone downloads to children. Reviewers like "The Washington Post", "The Guardian", the Associated Press, "The New Republic", and the "Hindustan Times" also cited the film's negative comparisons and similarities to "Inside Out" (2015), "Toy Story" (1995), "The Lego Movie" (2014), "Wreck-It Ralph" (2012), and "Bee Movie" (2007), among others.


title: The Emoji Movie

text: Nigel Andrews of the "Financial Times", however, gave the film 3/5 stars, writing: "Occasionally it's as if "The Lego Movie" is reaching out a long, friendly arm to "Inside Out" and falling into the chasm between. But the film is inventive too", while Jake Wilson of "The Sydney Morning Herald" gave the film 4/5 stars, calling it "a rare attempt by Hollywood to come to grips with the online world".


title: The Emoji Movie

text: At the 38th Golden Raspberry Awards, "The Emoji Movie" received a nomination for The Razzie Nominee So Rotten You Loved It; and won Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Screen Combo, and Worst Screenplay. It became the first animated film to win in any of those categories.


title: Romanichal

text: Romanichal Travellers ( ; more commonly known as English Gypsies or English Travellers) are a Romani subgroup within the United Kingdom and other parts of the English-speaking world. There are an estimated 200,000 Romani in the United Kingdom; almost all live in England. Most Romanichal speak Angloromani, a mixed language that blends Romani vocabulary with English syntax.


title: Romanichal

text: Nearly all Romanichal Travellers in Britain live in England, with smaller communities in South Wales, Northeast Wales, and the Scottish Borders.


title: Romanichal

text: The Romanichal diaspora emigrated from Great Britain to other parts of the English-speaking world. Based on some estimates, there are now more people of Romanichal descent in the United States than in Britain. They are also found in smaller numbers in South Africa, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, and there is a small Romanichal community in Malta, descended from British Romanichal migrants who moved there during colonial times. In the US, most Romanichal are in the Deep South and New England regions. Most South African Romanichal are in the Cape region, most Canadian Romanichal are in the Vancouver area, most New Zealand Romanichal are in the Auckland region, and most Australian Romanichal are in the eastern states.


title: Romanichal

text: In Great Britain, there is a sharp north–south divide between Romanichal Travellers. Southern Romanichal Travellers live in the Southeast, Southwest, Midlands, East Anglia, and South Wales, and Northern Romanichal Travellers live in the Northwest, Yorkshire, Scottish Borders, and Northeast of Wales. The two groups' dialects differ in accent and vocabulary.


title: Romanichal

text: The Romani people in England are thought to have spoken the Romani language until the 19th century, when it was replaced by English and Angloromani, a creole language that combines the syntax and grammar of English with the Romani lexicon. Most Romanichals also speak English.


title: Romanichal

text: There are two dialects of Angloromani: Southern Angloromani (spoken in the Southeast, Southwest, Midlands, East Anglia, and South Wales) and Northern Angloromani (spoken in the Northeast, Northwest, Yorkshire, Scottish Borders, and Northeast of Wales). These two dialects, along with the accents that accompany them, have led to two regional Romanichal Traveller identities forming, these being the Southern Romanichal identity and the Northern Romanichal Traveller identity.


title: Romanichal

text: Many Angloromani words have been incorporated into English, particularly in the form of British slang.


title: Romanichal

text: The Romani people have origins in the Indian subcontinent, specifically Rajasthan, and began migrating westwards in the 11th century. The first groups of Romani people arrived in Great Britain by the end of the 16th century, escaping conflicts in Southeastern Europe (such as the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans).


title: Romanichal

text: In 1506, there are recorded Romani persons in Scotland originating from Spain, and coming to England in 1512. Rulers soon passed laws aimed at stopping the immigration of Romani and enforcing the assimilation of those already present.


title: Romanichal

text: During the reign of Henry VIII, the Egyptians Act of 1530 banned Romanies from entering the country and required those already living there to leave within sixteen days. Failure to do so could result in confiscation of property, imprisonment, and deportation. During the reign of Mary I, the Act was amended by the Egyptians Act of 1554, which removed the threat of punishment if Romanies abandoned their "naughty, idle and ungodly life and company" and adopted a sedentary lifestyle, but increased the penalty for non-compliance to death.


title: Romanichal

text: In 1562, a new law offered Romanies born in England and Wales the possibility of becoming English subjects if they assimilated into the local population. Despite this new option, the Romani were forced into a marginal lifestyle and subjected to discrimination by the authorities and by many non-Romani. In 1596, 106 men and women were condemned to death at York for being Romani, and nine were executed. Samuel Rid wrote two books about them in the early 17th century.


title: Romanichal

text: From the 1780s onwards, the anti-Romani laws were gradually repealed. The identity of the Romanichals was formed between 1660 and 1800, as a Romani group living in Britain.


title: Romanichal

text: Hostility and discrimination against Romani people is still present in the UK. In 2008, it was reported that the Romani experienced a higher degree of racism than any other group in the United Kingdom, including asylum-seekers, and a Mori poll indicated that a third of UK residents admitted to being prejudiced against Romani.


title: Romanichal

text: The authorities began to deport Romanichals, principally to Norway, as early as 1544. The process was continued and encouraged by Elizabeth I and James I.


title: Romanichal

text: The Finnish Kale, a Romani group in Finland, maintain that their ancestors were originally a Romani group who travelled from Scotland, supporting the idea that they and some of the Scandinavian Travellers/Romani are distantly related to Scottish Romani and English Romanichals.


title: Romanichal

text: In 1603, an Order in Council was made for the transportation of Romanichal to the Low Countries, France, Newfoundland, Spain, and the West Indies. In many cases, those deported in this manner lost contact with other members of their ethnic group because of the separations after the round-up, the sea passage, and the subsequent settlement as slaves. At the same time, voluntary emigration began to the English overseas possessions. Romani groups that survived continued their expression of the Romani culture there.


title: Romanichal

text: In the years following the American War of Independence, Australia was the preferred destination for penal transportation of Romanichal. The exact number of Romanichal deported to Australia is unknown. It has been suggested that three Romanichal were carried by the First Fleet, one of whom is thought to have been James Squire, who founded Australia's first commercial brewery in 1798, and whose grandson, James Farnell, became the first native-born premier of New South Wales in 1877. The total Romani population of Australia seems to have been extremely low, reflecting the fact that British Romani people probably made up just 0.01 per cent of the original convict population of 162,000. However, it has been suggested that Romanichal were discriminated against under the transportation laws and may well have been undercounted. Fragmentary records suggest that at least fifty British Romanies may have been transported to Australia. It has been suggested that transportation was particularly harsh for Romanies:


title: Romanichal

text: For Romani convicts, transportation meant social and psychological death; exiled, they had little hope of returning to England to re-establish family ties, cultural roots, continuous expression, and validation that would have revived their Romani identity in the convict era.


title: Romanichal

text: At least one Romany returned from Australia to England: Henry Lavello (or Lovell) was repatriated with a full pardon and was accompanied to England by a son born to an Aboriginal woman.


title: Romanichal

text: In the 17th century, Oliver Cromwell's government shipped Romanichals as indentured labourers to plantations in North America. From a later period, there is documentation of English Romanichal being enslaved by freed blacks in Jamaica, Barbados, Cuba and Louisiana.


title: Romanichal

text: Historically, Romanichals earned a living doing agricultural work and would move to the edges of towns for the winter months. There was casual work available on farms throughout the spring, summer, and autumn months. Spring would start with seed sowing and planting potatoes and fruit trees, early summer with weeding, and summer to late autumn with the harvesting of crops. Of particular significance was the hop industry, which employed thousands of Romanichals both in spring for vine training and for the harvest in early autumn. Winter months were often spent doing casual labour in towns or selling goods or services door to door.


title: Romanichal

text: Mass industrialisation of agriculture in the 1960s led to the disappearance of many of the casual farm jobs Romanichals had traditionally carried out.


title: Romanichal

text: Traditional economic activities include gardening and groundwork, fortune telling, hawking, selling, and collecting scrap. They have also produced notable boxers such as Henry Wharton and Billy Joe Saunders, as well as some notable footballers like Freddy Eastwood.


title: Romanichal

text: A didicoy (Angloromani; didikai, also "diddicoy", "diddykai") is a person of mixed Romany and Gorger (non-Romanichal) blood.


title: Romanichal

text: Originally, Romanichals would travel on foot or with light, horse-drawn carts, and would build bender tents where they settled for a time, as is typical of other Romani groups. A bender is a type of tent constructed from a frame of bent hazel branches (hazel is chosen for its straightness and flexibility), covered with canvas or tarpaulin.


title: Romanichal

text: Around the mid- to late-19th century, Romanichals started using wagons that incorporated living spaces on the inside. These they called "vardos" and were often brightly and colorfully decorated on the inside and outside. In the present day, Romanichals are more likely to live in caravans or houses.


title: Romanichal

text: Over 60% of 21st-century Romanichal families live in houses of bricks and mortar, whilst the remaining 40% still live in various forms of traditional Traveller modes of transport, such as caravans, trailers, or static caravans (a small minority still live in vardos).


title: Romanichal

text: According to the Regional Spatial Strategy caravan count for 2008, there were 13,386 caravans owned by Romani in the West Midlands region of England, whilst a further 16,000 lived in bricks and mortar. Of the 13,386 caravans, 1,300 were parked on unauthorised sites (that is, on land where Romani were not given permission to park).


title: Romanichal

text: Over 90% of Britain's travelling Romanichals live on authorised sites where they pay full rates (council tax).


title: Romanichal

text: On most Romanichal Traveller sites, there are usually no toilets or showers inside caravans because in Romanichal culture, this is considered unclean, or "mochadi". Most sites have separate utility blocks with toilets, sinks, and electric showers. Many Romanichals will not do their laundry inside, especially not underwear, and subsequently many utility blocks also have washing machines. In the days of horse-drawn wagons and vardos, Romanichal women would do their laundry in a river, being careful to wash upper-body garments further upstream from underwear and lower-body garments, and personal bathing would take place much further downstream. In some modern trailers, a double wall separates the living areas from the toilet and shower.


title: Romanichal

text: Due to the Caravan Sites Act 1968, which greatly reduced the number of caravans allowed to be pitched on authorised sites, many Romanichals cannot find legal places on sites with the rest of their families.


title: Romanichal

text: Like most itinerant groups, Romanichals travel around for work, usually following set routes and set stopping places (called "atching tans") that have been established for hundreds of years. Many traditional stopping places were established before land ownership changed and any land laws were in place. Many "atching tans" were established by feudal landowners in the Middle Ages, when Romani would provide agricultural or manual labour services in return for lodgings and food.


title: Romanichal

text: Today, most Romani travel within the same areas that were established generations ago. Most people can trace their presence in an area back over a hundred or two hundred years. Many traditional stopping places were taken over by local governments or by settled individuals decades ago and have subsequently changed hands numerous times; however, Romani have long historical connections to such places and do not always willingly give them up. Most families are identifiable by their traditional wintering base, where they will stop travelling for the winter, and this place will be technically where a family is 'from'.


title: Gospel of Luke

text: The Gospel of Luke tells of the origins, birth, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. Together with the Acts of the Apostles, it makes up a two-volume work which scholars call Luke–Acts, accounting for 27.5% of the New Testament. The combined work divides the history of first-century Christianity into three stages, with the gospel making up the first two of these – the life of Jesus the Messiah from his birth to the beginning of his mission in the meeting with John the Baptist, followed by his ministry with events such as the Sermon on the Plain and its Beatitudes, and his Passion, death, and resurrection.


title: Gospel of Luke

text: Most modern scholars agree that the main sources used for Luke were a), the Gospel of Mark, b), a hypothetical sayings collection called the Q source, and c), material found in no other gospels, often referred to as the L (for Luke) source. The author is anonymous; the traditional view that it was Luke the Evangelist, the companion of Paul, is still occasionally put forward, but the scholarly consensus emphasises the many contradictions between Acts and the authentic Pauline letters. The most probable date for its composition is around AD 80–110, and there is evidence that it was still being revised well into the 2nd century.


title: Gospel of Luke

text: Autographs (original copies) of Luke and the other Gospels have not been preserved; the texts that survive are third-generation copies, with no two completely identical. The earliest witnesses (the technical term for written manuscripts) for the Gospel of Luke fall into two "families" with considerable differences between them, the Western and the Alexandrian text-type, and the dominant view is that the Western text represents a process of deliberate revision, as the variations seem to form specific patterns.


title: Gospel of Luke

text: The fragment is often cited as the oldest witness. It has been dated from the late 2nd century, although this dating is disputed. Papyrus 75 (= Papyrus Bodmer XIV–XV) is another very early manuscript (late 2nd/early 3rd century), and it includes an attribution of the Gospel to Luke.


title: Gospel of Luke

text: The oldest complete texts are the 4th-century Codex Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, both from the Alexandrian family; Codex Bezae, a 5th- or 6th-century Western text-type manuscript that contains Luke in Greek and Latin versions on facing pages, appears to have descended from an offshoot of the main manuscript tradition, departing from more familiar readings at many points.


title: Gospel of Luke

text: Codex Bezae shows comprehensively the differences between the versions which show no core theological significance.


title: Gospel of Luke

text: The gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles make up a two-volume work which scholars call Luke–Acts. Together they account for 27.5% of the New Testament, the largest contribution by a single author, providing the framework for both the Church's liturgical calendar and the historical outline into which later generations have fitted their idea of the story of Jesus.


title: Gospel of Luke

text: The author is not named in either volume. According to a Church tradition, first attested by Irenaeus ( AD), he was the Luke named as a companion of Paul in three of the Pauline letters, but "a critical consensus emphasizes the countless contradictions between the account in Acts and the authentic Pauline letters." An example can be seen by comparing Acts' accounts of Paul's conversion (Acts 9:1–31, Acts 22:6–21, and Acts 26:9–23) with Paul's own statement that he remained unknown to Christians in Judea after that event (Galatians 1:17–24). The author of the Gospel of Luke clearly admired Paul, but his theology was significantly different from Paul's on key points and he does not (in Acts) represent Paul's views accurately. He was educated, a man of means, probably urban, and someone who respected manual work, although not a worker himself; this is significant, because more high-brow writers of the time looked down on the artisans and small business-people who made up the early church of Paul and were presumably Luke's audience.


title: Gospel of Luke

text: The eclipse of the traditional attribution to Luke the companion of Paul has meant that an early date for the gospel is now rarely put forward. Most scholars date the composition of the combined work to around 80–90 AD, although some others suggest 90–110, and there is textual evidence (the conflicts between Western and Alexandrian manuscript families) that Luke–Acts was still being substantially revised well into the 2nd century.


title: Gospel of Luke

text: Luke–Acts is a religio-political history of the founder of the church and his successors, in both deeds and words. The author describes his book as a "narrative" (), rather than as a gospel, and implicitly criticises his predecessors for not giving their readers the speeches of Jesus and the Apostles, as such speeches were the mark of a "full" report, the vehicle through which ancient historians conveyed the meaning of their narratives. He seems to have taken as his model the works of two respected Classical authors, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who wrote a history of Rome ("Roman Antiquities"), and the Jewish historian Josephus, author of a history of the Jews ("Antiquities of the Jews"). All three authors anchor the histories of their respective peoples by dating the births of the founders (Romulus, Moses, and Jesus) and narrate the stories of the founders' births from God, so that they are sons of God. Each founder taught authoritatively, appeared to witnesses after death, and ascended to heaven. Crucial aspects of the teaching of all three concerned the relationship between rich and poor and the question of whether "foreigners" were to be received into the people.


title: Gospel of Luke

text: Mark, written around 70 AD, provided the narrative outline for Luke, but Mark contains comparatively little of Jesus' teachings, and for these Luke likely turned to a collection of sayings called Q source, which would have consisted mostly, although not exclusively, of "sayings". Mark and Q account for about 64% of Luke; the remaining material, known as the L source, is of unknown origin and date. Most Q and L-source material is grouped in two clusters, Luke 6:17–8:3 and 9:51–18:14, and L-source material forms the first two sections of the gospel (the preface and infancy and childhood narratives).


title: Gospel of Luke

text: Luke was written to be read aloud to a group of Jesus-followers gathered in a house to share the Lord's Supper. The author assumes an educated Greek-speaking audience, but directs his attention to specifically Christian concerns rather than to the Greco-Roman world at large. He begins his gospel with a preface addressed to "Theophilus": the name means "Lover of God," and could refer to any Christian, though most interpreters consider it a reference to a Christian convert and Luke's literary patron. Here he informs Theophilus of his intention, which is to lead his reader to certainty through an orderly account "of the events that have been fulfilled among us." He did not, however, intend to provide Theophilus with a historical justification of the Christian faith – "did it happen?" – but to encourage faith – "what happened, and what does it all mean?"


title: Gospel of Luke

text: Following the author's preface addressed to his patron and the two birth narratives (John the Baptist and Jesus), the gospel opens in Galilee and moves gradually to its climax in Jerusalem:


title: Gospel of Luke

text: The structure of Acts parallels the structure of the gospel, demonstrating the universality of the divine plan and the shift of authority from Jerusalem to Rome:


title: Gospel of Luke

text: Luke's theology is expressed primarily through his overarching plot, the way scenes, themes and characters combine to construct his specific worldview. His "salvation history" stretches from the Creation to the present time of his readers, in three ages: first, the time of "the Law and the Prophets", the period beginning with Genesis and ending with the appearance of John the Baptist; second, the epoch of Jesus, in which the Kingdom of God was preached; and finally the period of the Church, which began when the risen Christ was taken into Heaven, and would end with his second coming.


title: Gospel of Luke

text: Luke's understanding of Jesus – his Christology – is central to his theology. One approach to this is through the titles Luke gives to Jesus: these include, but are not limited to, Christ (Messiah), Lord, Son of God, and Son of Man. Another is by reading Luke in the context of similar Greco-Roman divine saviour figures (Roman emperors are an example), references which would have made clear to Luke's readers that Jesus was the greatest of all saviours. A third is to approach Luke through his use of the Old Testament, those passages from Jewish scripture which he cites to establish that Jesus is the promised Messiah. While much of this is familiar, much also is missing: for example, Luke makes no clear reference to Christ's pre-existence or to the Christian's union with Christ, and makes relatively little reference to the concept of atonement: perhaps he felt no need to mention these ideas, or disagreed with them, or possibly he was simply unaware of them.