title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: On Thursday, May 2, more than 1,000 students, some reportedly as young as eight, opted to leave school and gather at the 16th Street Baptist Church. Demonstrators present were given instructions to march to downtown Birmingham and discuss with the mayor their concerns about racial segregation in the city, and to integrate buildings and businesses currently segregated. Although this march was met with fierce resistance and criticism, and 600 arrests were made on the first day alone, the Birmingham campaign and its Children's Crusade continued until May 5. The intention was to fill the jail with protesters. These demonstrations led to an agreement, on May 8, between the city's business leaders and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, to integrate public facilities, including schools, in the city within 90 days. (The first three schools in Birmingham to be integrated would do so on September 4.)


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: These demonstrations and the concessions from city leaders to the majority of demonstrators' demands were met with fierce resistance by other whites in Birmingham. In the weeks following the September 4 integration of public schools, three additional bombs were detonated in Birmingham. Other acts of violence followed the settlement, and several staunch Klansmen were known to have expressed frustration at what they saw as a lack of effective resistance to integration.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: As a known and popular rallying point for civil rights activists, the 16th Street Baptist Church was an obvious target.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: In the early morning of Sunday, September 15, 1963, four members of the United Klans of America—Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr., Robert Edward Chambliss, Bobby Frank Cherry, and (allegedly) Herman Frank Cash—planted a minimum of 15 sticks of dynamite with a time delay under the steps of the church, close to the basement.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: At approximately 10:22 a.m., an anonymous man phoned the 16th Street Baptist Church. The call was answered by the acting Sunday School secretary, a 14-year-old girl named Carolyn Maull. The anonymous caller simply said the words, "Three minutes" to Maull before terminating the call. Less than one minute later, the bomb exploded. Five children were in the basement at the time of the explosion, in a restroom close to the stairwell, changing into choir robes in preparation for a sermon entitled "A Rock That Will Not Roll". According to one survivor, the explosion shook the entire building and propelled the girls' bodies through the air "like rag dolls".


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: The explosion blew a hole measuring in diameter in the church's rear wall, and a crater wide and deep in the ladies' basement lounge, destroying the rear steps to the church and blowing a passing motorist out of his car. Several other cars parked near the site of the blast were destroyed, and windows of properties located more than two blocks from the church were also damaged. All but one of the church's stained-glass windows were destroyed in the explosion. The sole stained-glass window largely undamaged in the explosion depicted Christ leading a group of young children.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: Hundreds of individuals, some of them lightly wounded, converged on the church to search the debris for survivors as police erected barricades around the church and several outraged men scuffled with police. An estimated 2,000 black people converged on the scene in the hours following the explosion. The church's pastor, the Reverend John Cross Jr., attempted to placate the crowd by loudly reciting the 23rd Psalm through a bullhorn.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: Four girls—Addie Mae Collins (age 14, born April 18, 1949), Carol Denise McNair (age 11, born November 17, 1951), Carole Rosamond Robertson (age 14, born April 24, 1949), and Cynthia Dionne Wesley (age 14, born April 30, 1949)—were killed in the attack. The explosion was so intense that one of the girls' bodies was decapitated and so badly mutilated that her body could be identified only through her clothing and a ring. Another victim was killed by a piece of mortar embedded in her skull. The pastor of the church, the Reverend John Cross, recollected in 2001 that the girls' bodies were found "stacked on top of each other, clung together". All four girls were pronounced dead on arrival at the Hillman Emergency Clinic.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: Between 14 and 22 additional people were injured in the explosion, one of whom was Addie Mae's younger sister, 12-year-old Sarah Collins. She had 21 pieces of glass embedded in her face and was blinded in one eye. In her later recollections of the bombing, Collins would recall that in the moments immediately before the explosion, she had watched her sister, Addie, tying her dress sash. Another sister of Addie Mae Collins, 16-year-old Junie Collins, would later recall that shortly before the explosion, she had been sitting in the basement of the church reading the Bible and had observed Addie Mae Collins tying the dress sash of Carol Denise McNair before she returned upstairs to the ground floor of the church.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: Violence escalated in Birmingham in the hours following the bombing, with reports of groups of black and white youth throwing bricks and shouting insults at each other. Police urged parents of black and white youths to keep their children indoors, as the Governor of Alabama, George Wallace, ordered an additional 300 state police to assist in quelling unrest. The Birmingham City Council convened an emergency meeting to propose safety measures for the city, although proposals for a curfew were rejected. Within 24 hours of the bombing, a minimum of five businesses and properties had been firebombed and numerous cars—most of which were driven by whites—had been stoned by rioting youths.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: In response to the church bombing, described by the Mayor of Birmingham, Albert Boutwell, as "just sickening", the Attorney General dispatched 25 FBI agents, including explosives experts, to Birmingham to conduct a thorough forensic investigation.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: Although reports of the bombing and the loss of four children's lives were glorified by white supremacists, who in many instances chose to celebrate the loss as "four less niggers", as news of the church bombing and the fact that four young girls had been killed in the explosion reached the national and international press, many felt that they had not taken the civil rights struggle seriously enough. The day following the bombing, a young white lawyer named Charles Morgan Jr. addressed a meeting of businessmen, condemning the acquiescence of white people in Birmingham toward the oppression of blacks. In this speech, Morgan lamented: "Who did it [the bombing]? We all did it! The 'who' is every little individual who talks about the 'niggers' and spreads the seeds of his hate to his neighbor and his son ... What's it like living in Birmingham? No one ever really has known and no one will until this city becomes part of the United States." A "Milwaukee Sentinel" editorial opined, "For the rest of the nation, the Birmingham church bombing should serve to goad the conscience. The deaths ... in a sense, are on the hands of each of us."


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: Two more black youths, Johnny Robinson and Virgil Ware, were shot to death in Birmingham within seven hours of the Sunday morning bombing. Robinson, aged 16, was shot in the back by a policeman as he fled down an alley, after ignoring police orders to halt. The police were reportedly responding to black youths throwing rocks at cars driven by white people. Robinson died before reaching the hospital. Ware, aged 13, was shot in the cheek and chest with a revolver in a residential suburb north of the city. A 16-year-old white youth named Larry Sims fired the gun (given to him by another youth named Michael Farley) at Ware, who was sitting on the handlebars of a bicycle ridden by his brother. Sims and Farley had been riding home from an anti-integration rally which had denounced the church bombing. When he spotted Ware and his brother, Sims fired twice, reportedly with his eyes closed. (Sims and Farley were later convicted of second-degree manslaughter, although the judge suspended their sentences and imposed two years' probation upon each youth.)


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: Some civil rights activists blamed George Wallace, Governor of Alabama and an outspoken segregationist, for creating the climate that had led to the killings. One week before the bombing, Wallace granted an interview with "The New York Times", in which he said he believed Alabama needed a "few first-class funerals" to stop racial integration.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: The city of Birmingham initially offered a $52,000 reward for the arrest of the bombers. Governor Wallace offered an additional $5,000 on behalf of the state of Alabama. Although this donation was accepted, Martin Luther King Jr. is known to have sent Wallace a telegram saying, "the blood of four little children ... is on your hands. Your irresponsible and misguided actions have created in Birmingham and Alabama the atmosphere that has induced continued violence and now murder."


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: Carole Rosamond Robertson was laid to rest in a private family funeral held on September 17, 1963. Reportedly, Carole's mother, Alpha, had expressly requested that her daughter be buried separately from the other victims. She was distressed about a remark made by Martin Luther King, who had said that the mindset that enabled the murder of the four girls was the "apathy and complacency" of black people in Alabama.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: The service for Carole Rosamond Robertson was held at St. John's African Methodist Episcopal Church. In attendance were 1,600 people. At this service, the Reverend C. E. Thomas told the congregation: "The greatest tribute you can pay to Carole is to be calm, be lovely, be kind, be innocent." Carole Robertson was buried in a blue casket at Shadow Lawn Cemetery.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: On September 18, the funeral of the three other girls killed in the bombing was held at the Sixth Avenue Baptist Church. Although no city officials attended this service, an estimated 800 clergymen of all races were among the attendees. Also present was Martin Luther King Jr. In a speech conducted before the burials of the girls, King addressed an estimated 3,300 mourners—including numerous white people—with a speech saying:


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: As the girls' coffins were taken to their graves, King directed that those present remain solemn and forbade any singing, shouting or demonstrations. These instructions were relayed to the crowd present by a single youth with a bullhorn.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: Initially, investigators theorized that a bomb thrown from a passing car had caused the explosion at the 16th Street Baptist church. But by September 20, the FBI was able to confirm that the explosion had been caused by a device that was purposely planted beneath the steps to the church, close to the women's lounge. A section of wire and remnants of red plastic were discovered there, which could have been part of a timing device. (The plastic remnants were later lost by investigators.)


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: Within days of the bombing, investigators began to focus their attention upon a KKK splinter group known as the "Cahaba Boys". The Cahaba Boys had formed earlier in 1963, as they felt that the KKK was becoming restrained and impotent in response to concessions granted to black people to end racial segregation. This group had previously been linked to several bomb attacks at black-owned businesses and the homes of black community leaders throughout the spring and summer of 1963. Although the Cahaba Boys had fewer than 30 active members, among them were Thomas Blanton Jr., Herman Cash, Robert Chambliss, and Bobby Cherry.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: Investigators also gathered numerous witness statements attesting to a group of white men in a turquoise 1957 Chevrolet who had been seen near the church in the early hours of the morning of September 15. These witness statements specifically indicated that a white man had exited the car and walked toward the steps of the church. (The physical description by witnesses of this person varied, and could have matched either Bobby Cherry or Robert Chambliss.)


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: Chambliss was questioned by the FBI on September 26. On September 29, he was indicted upon charges of illegally purchasing and transporting dynamite on September 4, 1963. He and two acquaintances, John Hall and Charles Cagle, were each convicted in state court upon a charge of illegally possessing and transporting dynamite on October 8. Each received a $100 fine (the equivalent of $850 ) and a suspended 180-day jail sentence. At the time, no federal charges were filed against Chambliss or any of his fellow conspirators in relation to the bombing.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: The FBI encountered difficulties in their initial investigation into the bombing. A later report stated: "By 1965, we had [four] serious suspects—namely Thomas Blanton Jr., Herman Frank Cash, Robert Chambliss, and Bobby Frank Cherry, all Klan members—but witnesses were reluctant to talk and physical evidence was lacking. Also, at that time, information from our surveillance was not admissible in court. As a result, no federal charges were filed in the '60s."


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: On May 13, 1965, local investigators and the FBI formally named Blanton, Cash, Chambliss, and Cherry as the perpetrators of the bombing, with Robert Chambliss the likely ringleader of the four. This information was relayed to the Director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover; however, no prosecutions of the four suspects ensued. There had been a history of mistrust between local and federal investigators. Later the same year, J. Edgar Hoover formally blocked any impending federal prosecutions against the suspects, and refused to disclose any evidence his agents had obtained with state or federal prosecutors.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: In 1968, the FBI formally closed their investigation into the bombing without filing charges against any of their named suspects. The files were sealed by order of J. Edgar Hoover.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: The Birmingham campaign, the March on Washington in August, the September bombing of the 16th Street Baptist church, and the November assassination of John F. Kennedy—an ardent supporter of the civil rights cause who had proposed a Civil Rights Act of 1963 on national television—increased worldwide awareness of and sympathy toward the civil rights cause in the United States.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: Following the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, newly-inaugurated President Lyndon Johnson continued to press for passage of the civil rights bill sought by his predecessor.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: On July 2, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed into effect the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In attendance were major leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, including Martin Luther King Jr. This legislation prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, gender, or national origin; to ensure full, equal rights of African Americans before the law.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: Officially, the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing remained unsolved until after William Baxley was elected Attorney General of Alabama in January 1971. Baxley had been a student at the University of Alabama when he heard about the bombing in 1963, and later recollected: "I wanted to do something, but I didn't know what."


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: Within one week of being sworn into office, Baxley had researched original police files into the bombing, discovering that the original police documents were "mostly worthless". Baxley formally reopened the case in 1971. He was able to build trust with key witnesses, some of whom had been reluctant to testify in the first investigation. Other witnesses obtained identified Chambliss as the individual who had placed the bomb beneath the church. Baxley also gathered evidence proving Chambliss had purchased dynamite from a store in Jefferson County less than two weeks before the bomb was planted, upon the pretext the dynamite was to be used to clear land the KKK had purchased near Highway 101. This testimony of witnesses and evidence was used to formally construct a case against Robert Chambliss.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: After Baxley requested access to the original FBI files on the case, he learned that evidence accumulated by the FBI against the named suspects between 1963 and 1965 had not been revealed to the local prosecutors in Birmingham. Although he met with initial resistance from the FBI, in 1976 Baxley was formally presented with some of the evidence which had been compiled by the FBI, after he publicly threatened to expose the Department of Justice for withholding evidence which could result in the prosecution of the perpetrators of the bombing.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: On November 14, 1977, Robert Chambliss, then aged 73, stood trial in Birmingham's Jefferson County Courthouse. Chambliss had been indicted by a grand jury on September 24, 1977, charged with four counts of murder, for each dead child in the 1963 church bombing. But at a pre-trial hearing on October 18, Judge Wallace Gibson ruled that the defendant would be tried upon one count of murder—that of Carol Denise McNair—and that the remaining three counts of murder would remain, but that he would not be charged in relation to these three deaths.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: Before his trial, Chambliss remained free upon a $200,000 bond raised by family and supporters and posted October 18.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: Chambliss pleaded not guilty to the charges, insisting that although he had purchased a case of dynamite less than two weeks before the bombing, he had given the dynamite to a Klansman and FBI agent provocateur named Gary Thomas Rowe Jr.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: To discredit Chambliss's claims that Rowe had committed the bombing, prosecuting attorney William Baxley introduced two law enforcement officers to testify as to Chambliss's inconsistent claims of innocence. The first of these witnesses was Tom Cook, a retired Birmingham police officer, who testified on November 15 as to a conversation he had had with Chambliss in 1975. Cook testified that Chambliss had acknowledged his guilt regarding his 1963 arrest for possession of dynamite, but that he (Chambliss) was insistent he had given the dynamite to Rowe before the bombing. Following Cook's testimony, Baxley introduced police sergeant Ernie Cantrell. He testified that Chambliss had visited his headquarters in 1976 and that he had attempted to affix the blame for the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing upon an altogether different member of the KKK. Cantrell also stated that Chambliss had boasted of his knowledge of how to construct a "drip-method bomb" using a fishing float and a leaking bucket of water. (Upon cross-examination by defense attorney Art Hanes Jr., Cantrell conceded that Chambliss had emphatically denied bombing the church.)


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: One individual who went to the scene to help search for survivors, Charles Vann, later recollected that he had observed a solitary white man whom he recognized as Robert Edward Chambliss (a known member of the Ku Klux Klan) standing alone and motionless at a barricade. According to Vann's later testimony, Chambliss was standing "looking down toward the church, like a firebug watching his fire".


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: One of the key witnesses to testify on behalf of the prosecution was the Reverend Elizabeth Cobbs, Chambliss's niece. Reverend Cobbs stated that her uncle had repeatedly informed her he had been engaged in what he referred to as a "one-man battle" against blacks since the 1940s. Moreover, Cobbs testified on November 16 that, on the day before the bombing, Chambliss had told her that he had in his possession enough dynamite to "flatten half of Birmingham". Cobbs also testified that approximately one week after the bombing, she had observed Chambliss watching a news article relating to the four girls killed in the bombing. According to Cobbs, Chambliss had said: "It [the bomb] wasn't meant to hurt anybody ... it didn't go off when it was supposed to." Another witness to testify was William Jackson, who testified as to his joining the KKK in 1963 and becoming acquainted with Chambliss shortly thereafter. Jackson testified that Chambliss had expressed frustration that the Klan was "dragging its feet" on the issue of racial integration, and said he was eager to form a splinter group more dedicated to resistance.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: In his closing argument before the jury on November 17, Baxley acknowledged that Chambliss was not the sole perpetrator of the bombing. He expressed regret that the state was unable to request the death penalty in this case, as the death penalty in effect in the state in 1963 had been repealed. The current state death penalty law applied only to crimes committed after its passage. Baxley noted that the day of the closing argument fell upon what would have been Carol Denise McNair's 26th birthday and that she would have likely been a mother by this date. He referred to testimony given by her father, Chris McNair, about the family's loss, and requested that the jury return a verdict of guilty.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: In his rebuttal closing argument, defense attorney Art Hanes Jr. attacked the evidence presented by the prosecution as being purely circumstantial, adding that, despite the existence of similar circumstantial evidence, Chambliss had not been prosecuted in 1963 of the church bombing. Hanes noted conflicting testimony among several of the 12 witnesses called by the defense to testify as to Chambliss's whereabouts on the day of the bombing. A policeman and a neighbor had each testified that Chambliss was at the home of a man named Clarence Dill on that day.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: Following the closing arguments, the jury retired to begin their deliberations, which lasted for over six hours and continued into the following day. On November 18, 1977, they found Robert Chambliss guilty of the murder of Carol Denise McNair. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for her murder. At his sentencing, Chambliss stood before the judge and stated: "Judge, your honor, all I can say is God knows I have never killed anybody, never have bombed anything in my life ... I didn't bomb that church."


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: On the same afternoon that Chambliss's guilty verdict was announced, prosecutor Baxley issued a subpoena to Thomas Blanton to appear in court about the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. Although Baxley knew he had insufficient evidence to charge Blanton at this stage, he intended the subpoena to frighten Blanton into confessing his involvement and negotiating a plea deal to turn state evidence against his co-conspirators. Blanton, however, hired a lawyer and refused to answer any questions.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: Chambliss appealed his conviction, as provided under the law, saying that much of the evidence presented at his trial—including testimony relating to his activities within the KKK—was circumstantial; that the 14-year delay between the crime and his trial violated his constitutional right to a speedy trial; and the prosecution had deliberately used the delay to try to gain an advantage over Chambliss's defense attorneys. This appeal was dismissed on May 22, 1979.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: Robert Chambliss died in the Lloyd Noland Hospital and Health Center on October 29, 1985, at the age of 81. In the years since his incarceration, Chambliss had been confined to a solitary cell to protect him from attacks by fellow inmates. He had repeatedly proclaimed his innocence, insisting Gary Thomas Rowe Jr. was the actual perpetrator.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: In 1995, ten years after Chambliss died, the FBI reopened their investigation into the church bombing. It was part of a coordinated effort between local, state and federal governments to review cold cases of the civil rights era in the hopes of prosecuting perpetrators. They unsealed 9,000 pieces of evidence previously gathered by the FBI in the 1960s (many of these documents relating to the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing had not been made available to DA William Baxley in the 1970s). In May 2000, the FBI publicly announced their findings that the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing had been committed by four members of the KKK splinter group known as the "Cahaba Boys." The four individuals named in the FBI report were Blanton, Cash, Chambliss, and Cherry. By the time of the announcement, Herman Cash had also died; however, Thomas Blanton and Bobby Cherry were still alive. Both were arrested.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: On May 16, 2000, a grand jury in Alabama indicted Thomas Edwin Blanton and Bobby Frank Cherry on eight counts each in relation to the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. Both named individuals were charged with four counts of first-degree murder, and four counts of universal malice. The following day, both men surrendered to police.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: The state prosecution had originally intended to try both defendants together; however, the trial of Bobby Cherry was delayed due to the findings of a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation. It concluded that vascular dementia had impaired his mind, therefore making Cherry mentally incompetent to stand trial or assist in his own defense.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: On April 10, 2001, Judge James Garrett indefinitely postponed Cherry's trial, pending further medical analysis. In January 2002, Judge Garrett ruled Cherry mentally competent to stand trial and set an initial trial date for April 29.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr. was brought to trial in Birmingham, Alabama, before Judge James Garrett on April 24, 2001. Blanton pleaded not guilty to the charges and chose not to testify on his behalf throughout the trial.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: In his opening statement to the jurors, defense attorney John Robbins acknowledged his client's affiliation with the Ku Klux Klan and his views on racial segregation. But, he warned the jury: "Just because you don't like him, that doesn't make him responsible for the bombing."


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: The prosecution called a total of seven witnesses to testify in their case against Blanton, including relatives of the victims, John Cross, the former pastor of the 16th Street Baptist Church; an FBI agent named William Fleming, and Mitchell Burns, a former Klansman who had become a paid FBI informant. Burns had secretly recorded several conversations with Blanton in which the latter (Blanton) had gloated when talking about the bombing, and had boasted the police would not catch him when he bombed another church.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: The most crucial piece of evidence presented at Blanton's trial was an audio recording secretly taped by the FBI in June 1964, in which Blanton was recorded discussing his involvement in the bombing with his wife, who can be heard accusing her husband of conducting an affair with a woman named Waylen Vaughn two nights before the bombing. Although sections of the recording—presented in evidence on April 27—are unintelligible, Blanton can twice be heard mentioning the phrase "plan a bomb" or "plan the bomb". Most crucially, Blanton can also be heard saying that he was not with Miss Vaughn but, two nights before the bombing, was at a meeting with other Klansmen on a bridge above the Cahaba River. He said: "You've got to have a meeting to plan a bomb."


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: In addition to calling attention to flaws in the prosecution's case, the defense exposed inconsistencies in the memories of some prosecution witnesses who had testified. Blanton's attorneys criticized the validity and quality of the 16 tape recordings introduced as evidence, arguing that the prosecution had edited and spliced the sections of the audio recording that were secretly obtained within Blanton's kitchen, reducing the entirety of the tape by 26 minutes. He said that the sections introduced as evidence were of poor audio quality, resulting in the prosecution presenting text transcripts of questionable accuracy to the jury. About the recordings made as Blanton conversed with Burns, Robbins emphasized that Burns had earlier testified that Blanton had never expressly said that he had made or planted the bomb. The defense portrayed the audiotapes introduced into evidence as the statements of "two rednecks driving around, drinking" and making false, ego-inflating claims to one another.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: The trial lasted for one week. Seven witnesses testified on behalf of the prosecution, and two for the defense. One of the defense witnesses was a retired chef named Eddie Mauldin, who was called to testify to discredit prosecution witnesses' statements that they had seen Blanton in the vicinity of the church before the bombing. Mauldin testified on April 30 that he had observed two men in a Rambler station wagon adorned with a Confederate flag repeatedly drive past the church immediately before the blast, and that, seconds after the bomb had exploded, the car had "burned rubber" as it drove away. (Thomas Blanton had owned a Chevrolet in 1963; neither Chambliss, Cash nor Cherry had owned such a vehicle.)


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: Both counsels delivered their closing arguments before the jury on May 1. In his closing argument, prosecuting attorney and future U.S. Senator Doug Jones said that although the trial was conducted 38 years after the bombing, it was no less important, adding: "It's never too late for the truth to be told ... It's never too late for a man to be held accountable for his crimes." Jones reviewed Blanton's extensive history with the Ku Klux Klan, before referring to the audio recordings presented earlier in the trial. Jones repeated the most damning statements Blanton had made in these recordings, before pointing at Blanton and stating: "That is a confession out of this man's mouth."


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: Defense attorney John Robbins reminded the jury in his closing argument that his client was an admitted segregationist and a "loudmouth", but that was all that could be proven. He said this past was not the evidence upon which they should return their verdicts. Stressing that Blanton should not be judged for his beliefs, Robbins again vehemently criticized the validity and poor quality of the audio recordings presented, and the selectivity of the sections which had been introduced into evidence. Robbins also discredited the testimony of FBI agent William Fleming, who had earlier testified as to a government witness claiming he had seen Blanton in the vicinity of the church shortly before the bombing.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: The jury deliberated for two and a half hours before returning with a verdict finding Thomas Edwin Blanton guilty of four counts of first-degree murder. When asked by the judge whether he had anything to say before sentence was imposed, Blanton said: "I guess the Lord will settle it on Judgment Day."


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: Blanton was sentenced to life imprisonment. He was incarcerated at the St. Clair Correctional Facility in Springville, Alabama. Blanton was confined in a one-man cell under tight security. He seldom spoke of his involvement in the bombing, shunned social activity and rarely received visitors.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: His first parole hearing was held on August 3, 2016. Relatives of the slain girls, prosecutor Doug Jones, Alabama Chief Deputy Attorney General Alice Martin, and Jefferson County district attorney Brandon Falls each spoke at the hearing to oppose Blanton's parole. Martin said: "The cold-blooded callousness of this hate crime has not diminished by the passage of time." The Board of Pardons and Paroles debated for less than 90 seconds before denying parole to Blanton.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: Bobby Frank Cherry was tried in Birmingham, Alabama, before Judge James Garrett, on May 6, 2002. Cherry pleaded not guilty to the charges and did not testify on his own behalf during the trial.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: In his opening statement for the prosecution, Don Cochran presented his case: that the evidence would show that Cherry had participated in a conspiracy to commit the bombing and conceal evidence linking him to the crime and that he had later gloated over the deaths of the victims. Cochran also added that although the evidence to be presented would not conclusively show that Cherry had personally planted or ignited the bomb, the combined evidence would illustrate that he had aided and abetted in the commission of the act.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: Cherry's defense attorney, Mickey Johnson, protested his client's innocence, citing that much of the evidence presented was circumstantial. He also noted that Cherry had initially been linked to the bombing by the FBI via an informant who had claimed, fifteen months after the bombing, that she had seen Cherry place the bomb at the church shortly before the bombing. Johnson warned the jurors they would have to distinguish between evidence and proof.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: Following the opening statements, the prosecution began presenting witnesses. Crucial testimony at Cherry's trial was delivered by his former wife, Willadean Brogdon, who had married Cherry in 1970. Brogdon testified on May 16 that Cherry had boasted to her that he had been the individual who planted the bomb beneath the steps to the church, then returned hours later to light the fuse to the dynamite. Brogdon also testified that Cherry had told her of his regret that children had died in the bombing, before adding his satisfaction that they would never reproduce. Although the credibility of Brogdon's testimony was called into dispute at the trial, forensic experts conceded that, although her account of the planting of the bombing differed from that which had been discussed in the previous perpetrators' trials, Brogdon's recollection of Cherry's account of the planting and subsequent lighting of the bomb could explain why no conclusive remnants of a timing device were discovered after the bombing. (A fishing float attached to a section of wire, which may have been part of a timing device, was found from the explosion crater following the bombing. One of several vehicles severely damaged in the explosion was found to have carried fishing tackle.)


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: Barbara Ann Cross also testified for the prosecution. She is the daughter of the Reverend John Cross and was aged 13 in 1963. Cross had attended the same Sunday School class as the four victims on the day of the bombing and was slightly wounded in the attack. On May 15, Cross testified that prior to the explosion, she and the four girls killed had each attended a Youth Day Sunday School lesson in which the theme taught was how to react to a physical injustice. Cross testified that each girl present had been taught to contemplate how Jesus would react to affliction or injustice, and they were asked to learn to consider, "What Would Jesus Do?" Cross testified that she would usually have accompanied her friends into the basement lounge to change into robes for the forthcoming sermon, but she had been given an assignment. Shortly thereafter, she had heard "the most horrible noise", before being struck on the head by debris.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: Throughout the trial, Cherry's defense attorney, Mickey Johnson, repeatedly observed that many of the prosecution's witnesses were either circumstantial or "inherently unreliable". Many of the same audiotapes presented in Blanton's trial were also introduced into evidence in the trial of Bobby Cherry. A key point contested as to the validity of the audiotapes being introduced into evidence, outside the hearing of the jury, was the fact that Cherry had no grounds to contest the introduction of the tapes into evidence, as, under the Fourth Amendment, neither his home or property had been subject to discreet recording by the FBI. Don Cochran disputed this position, arguing that Alabama law provides for "conspiracies to conceal evidence" to be proven by both inference and circumstantial evidence. In spite of a rebuttal argument by the defense, Judge Garrett ruled that some sections were too prejudicial, but also that portions of some audio recordings could be introduced as evidence. Through these rulings, Mitchell Burns was called to testify on behalf of the prosecution. His testimony was restricted to the areas of the recordings permitted into evidence.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: On May 21, 2002, both prosecution and defense attorneys delivered their closing arguments to the jury. In his closing argument for the prosecution, Don Cochran said the victims' "Youth Sunday [sermon] never happened ... because it was destroyed by this defendant's hate." Cochran outlined Cherry's extensive record of racial violence dating back to the 1950s, and noted that he had experience and training in constructing and installing bombs from his service as a Marine demolition expert. Cochran also reminded the jury of a secretly obtained FBI recording, which had earlier been introduced into evidence, in which Cherry had told his first wife, Jean, that he and other Klansmen had constructed the bomb within the premises of business the Friday before the bombing. He said that Cherry had signed an affidavit in the presence of the FBI on October 9, 1963, confirming that he, Chambliss, and Blanton were at these premises on this date.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: In the closing argument for the defense, attorney Mickey Johnson argued that Cherry had nothing to do with the bombing, and reminded the jurors that his client was not on trial for his beliefs, stating: "It seems like more time has been spent here throwing around the n-word than proving what happened in September 1963." Johnson reiterated that there was no hard evidence linking Cherry to the bombing, but only evidence attesting to his racist beliefs dating from that era, adding that the family members who had testified against him were all estranged and therefore should be considered unreliable witnesses. Johnson urged the jury against convicting his client by association.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: Following these closing arguments, the jury retired to consider their verdicts. These deliberations continued until the following day.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: On the afternoon of May 22, after the jury had deliberated for almost seven hours, the forewoman announced they had reached their verdicts: Bobby Frank Cherry was convicted of four counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. Cherry remained stoic as the sentence was read aloud. Relatives of the four victims openly wept in relief.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: When asked by the judge whether he had anything to say before sentence was imposed, Cherry motioned to the prosecutors and stated: "This whole bunch lied through this thing [the trial]. I told the truth. I don't know why I'm going to jail for nothing. I haven't done anything!"


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: Bobby Frank Cherry died of cancer on November 18, 2004, at age 74, while incarcerated at the Kilby Correctional Facility.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: Following the convictions of Blanton and Cherry, Alabama's former Attorney General, William Baxley, expressed his frustration that he had never been informed of the existence of the FBI audio recordings before they were introduced in the 2001 and 2002 trials. Baxley acknowledged that typical juries in 1960s Alabama would have likely leaned in favor of both defendants, even if these recordings had been presented as evidence, but said that he could have prosecuted Thomas Blanton and Bobby Cherry in 1977 if he had been granted access to these tapes. (A 1980 Justice Department report concluded that J. Edgar Hoover had blocked the prosecution of the four bombing suspects in 1965, and he officially closed the FBI's investigation in 1968.)


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: Although both Blanton and Cherry denied their involvement in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, until his death in 1985, Robert Chambliss repeatedly insisted that the bombing had been committed by Gary Thomas Rowe Jr. Rowe had been encouraged to join the Klan by acquaintances in 1960. He became a paid FBI informant in 1961. In this role, Rowe acted as an agent provocateur between 1961 and 1965. Although informative to the FBI, Rowe actively participated in violence against both black and white civil rights activists. By Rowe's own later admission, while serving as an FBI informant, he had shot and killed an unidentified black man and had been an accessory to the murder of Viola Liuzzo.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: Investigative records show that Rowe had twice failed polygraph tests when questioned as to his possible involvement in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing and two separate, non-fatal explosions. These polygraph results had convinced some FBI agents of Rowe's culpability in the bombing. Prosecutors at Chambliss's 1977 trial had initially intended to call Rowe as a witness; however, DA William Baxley had chosen not to call Rowe as a witness after being informed of the results of these polygraph tests.


title: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

text: Although never formally named as one of the conspirators by the FBI, Rowe's record of deception on the polygraph tests leaves open the possibility that Chambliss's claims may have held a degree of truth. Nonetheless, a 1979 investigation cleared Rowe of any involvement in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing.


title: Welcome to Waikiki

text: Welcome to Waikiki () is a 2018 youth South Korean television series starring Kim Jung-hyun, Lee Yi-kyung, and Son Seung-won. It aired from February 5 to April 17, 2018 on JTBC's Mondays and Tuesdays at 23:00 (KST) time slot.


title: Welcome to Waikiki

text: Three very different young men – Dong Goo (Kim Jung Hyun), who dreams of becoming a film director, Joon Ki (Lee Yi Kyung), an eccentric actor who performs to make a living, and Doo Shik (Son Seung Won), a freelancer writer who fiddles around doing nothing most of the time - open a guest house named “Waikiki” in Itaewon, where many foreigners come to stay. Although they have no clue how to run it, they’re eager to earn money to pay for the production of their upcoming film. They are joined by Dong Goo’s younger sister, Seo Jin (go Won Hee), who actually manages the household in Waikiki, single mother Yoon Ah (Jung In Sun), who has made an unexpected entrance at the guest house with her baby, and Dong Goo’s ex-girlfriend Soo Ah (Lee Joo Woo).


title: Vic Reeves

text: James Roderick Moir (born 24 January 1959), better known by his stage name Vic Reeves, is an English comedian, artist, surrealist, musician, actor and television presenter, best known for his double act with Bob Mortimer as Reeves & Mortimer. He is known for his surreal sense of humour.


title: Vic Reeves

text: In 2003, Reeves and Mortimer were listed in "The Observer" as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy. In a 2005 poll to find the "Comedians' Comedian", Reeves and Mortimer were voted the ninth-greatest comedy act ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders.


title: Vic Reeves

text: Moir was born in Leeds, the son of Audrey (née Leigh) and James Neill Moir (1926–2004). At the age of five, he moved to Darlington, County Durham, with his parents and younger sister Lois. He attended Heathfield Infants and Junior School and went on to the nearby secondary school, Eastbourne Comprehensive in Darlington. After leaving school, Reeves undertook an apprenticeship in mechanical engineering at a factory in Newton Aycliffe. Eventually he moved to London, where he attended the Polytechnic of North London and Middlesex Polytechnic.


title: Vic Reeves

text: Moir formed the Fashionable Five, a group of five friends (including Jack Dent, who ran the original Fan Club) who would follow bands like the Enid and Free onto stage, and perform pranks (including Reeves pretending to have a brass hand, and following a Terry Scott lookalike around Darlington town centre in single-file formation). Moir had an early breakthrough with the help of comedian Malcolm Hardee.


title: Vic Reeves

text: Before finding fame with his comedy, Moir was a member of several bands with many different names and musical styles, in which he usually played bass guitar and/or sang. He sold tapes of his early material in the back pages of "NME" magazine under the name International Cod. Mark Lamarr, later to become a team captain on "Shooting Stars", was sent a tape of Moir's band Fan Tan Tiddly Span. When Moir appeared, as Vic Reeves, on "Never Mind the Buzzcocks" in 1998, Lamarr repeatedly played a sample from the song "Fantasia (Side A)" in an attempt to embarrass him.


title: Vic Reeves

text: In 1983, Moir began a part-time course at a local art college, developed his love of painting and eventually persuaded a local art gallery to stage an exhibition of his work. Although still primarily known as a comedian, Moir is gaining a reputation as an artist. His drawings and paintings have been used in his television shows and form a major part of his 1999 book, "Sun Boiled Onions".


title: Vic Reeves

text: As well as working and performing in bands in London, including being an original member of the Industrial/Experimental band Test Dept and performing onstage with them at their debut gig (then leaving soon afterwards), Moir also joined the alternative comedy circuit under many different guises. These included a loudmouthed American called Jim Bell, a beat poet called Mister Mystery and eventually, "The North-East's Top Light Entertainer"- Vic Reeves, whose name is derived from two of his favourite singers, Vic Damone and Jim Reeves. His stage show "Vic Reeves Big Night Out" began life as a regular Thursday night gig at Goldsmith's Tavern, New Cross (now the New Cross House). Here, he met Bob Mortimer, a solicitor who attended the show and enjoyed it so much that he soon began to participate.


title: Vic Reeves

text: Reeves' television début came in December 1986 on Channel 4 Television's "The Tube" in a comedy game show segment called "Square Celebrities", suspended by a wire to ask the "celebrities" questions. His next appearance was on the short-lived chat/comedy show "One Hour with Jonathan Ross" in a game show segment known as "Knock Down Ginger". Reeves' growing TV profile led to "Big Night Out" being given a slot on Channel 4 the following year. It was about this time that Reeves and Bob Mortimer rented a back room at Jools Holland's office/recording studio in Westcombe Park, Greenwich where they would spend hours writing material.


title: Vic Reeves

text: Reeves continued to work alongside Mortimer as a comedy duo in a series of 1990s programmes, "The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer", "Shooting Stars", and "Bang, Bang, It's Reeves and Mortimer", some of which also featured future cast members of "The Fast Show" and "Little Britain". A 1994 pilot written by Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson entitled "The Honeymoon's Over" was due to feature Chris Bell, a character from "The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer"; however, the series was never commissioned. The same year, Reeves made a guest appearance on the Radio 1 series "Shuttleworth's Showtime", hosted by John Shuttleworth. Between August 1998 and May 1999, Reeves and Mortimer presented the Channel X produced BBC Saturday game show "Families at War" with Alice Beer.


title: Vic Reeves

text: Reeves played Marty Hopkirk in the BBC's 2000–2001 thriller series "Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)", a revival of the original 1960s series, with Mortimer as Randall, Emilia Fox as Jeannie Hopkirk, and Tom Baker as Wyvern. In 2000, Reeves presented a series entitled, "Vic Reeves Examines" on UK Play, featuring celebrities such as Ricky Gervais, Johnny Vegas, Lauren Laverne and Emma Kennedy discussing a topic of their choice. The same year, Reeves presented a one-off radio show on BBC Radio 1, entitled "Cock of the Wood".


title: Vic Reeves

text: In 2004 Reeves and his wife, Nancy Sorrell were both contestants in the fourth series of "I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!". He also appeared in the series "Catterick" with Mortimer appearing as several characters. In September 2005, Reeves hosted a show for Virgin Radio called "Vic Reeves Big Night In" produced by Mark Augustyn, for a short period on Wednesdays and Thursdays from 7.00pm.


title: Vic Reeves

text: Reeves presented a historical ten-part series, entitled "Rogues Gallery", which was shown on the Discovery Channel (UK) in 2005, where he investigated, and portrayed Anne Bonny and Mary Read, Captain Kidd, Claude Duval, Jonathan Wild, Rob Roy, Colonel Blood, George Ransley, Deacon Brodie, Blackbeard and Dick Turpin. Sorrell also appeared in some episodes. Continuing in this vein, "Vic Reeves' Pirates" was shown on ITV West and, subsequently, on the History Channel in 2007. In May 2006, Reeves presented a programme on ITV Tyne Tees about Northeast comedy culture called "It's Funny Up North with... Vic Reeves".


title: Vic Reeves

text: In 2007, Reeves hosted a show called "Vic Reeves Investigates: Jack the Ripper". Reeves, with the help of historians and leading experts, tried to discover who Jack the Ripper was. At the end of the show, he came to the conclusion that Jack the Ripper was Francis Tumblety. On 8 May 2007, Reeves was the main presenter of "" during the fifth and sixth series, replacing Richard Hammond. Beginning in June 2007, Reeves presented a BBC Radio 2 panel game called "Does the Team Think?". On 17 November 2007, Reeves appeared in a weekly sketch show on BBC Radio 2, entitled "Vic Reeves' House Arrest". The show's premise was that he had been put under house arrest for "a crime he didn't commit", and each episode consists of the various events that take place in and around his house on a particular day. Mortimer plays his housecall-making hairdresser, Carl, while other performers include "The Mighty Boosh" star Noel Fielding as a local vagrant who comes to Reeves' door on a weekly basis looking for work, as well as Nancy Sorrell in multiple roles.


title: Vic Reeves

text: On 27 February 2008, Reeves announced that he and Mortimer were working together on a new sitcom about superheroes who get their powers through a malfunctioning telegraph pole. He also reiterated his desire to bring back "Shooting Stars" for a 6th series. Along with his son, Reeves is also featured in one edition of a factual series for Five, "Dangerous Adventures for Boys", based on the best-selling book written by Conn and Hal Iggulden, "The Dangerous Book for Boys".


title: Vic Reeves

text: In February 2009, Reeves appeared as presenter of the first episode of "My Brilliant Britain", one of the new television shows commissioned for UKTV People channel's relaunch as Blighty. On 25 August 2009, Reeves appeared as a guest on BBC One's "The One Show" with Mortimer. Series 6 of "Shooting Stars" began airing on 26 August 2009 with Reeves and Mortimer, along with Ulrika Jonsson and Jack Dee as team captains. Reeves appeared as one of the guests in "Reece Shearsmith's Haunted House", a light-hearted radio discussion show broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in two parts on either side of Halloween on 29 October 2009 and 5 November 2009.


title: Vic Reeves

text: In July 2011, Reeves and Mortimer released a selection of YouTube improvised comedy sketches, in association with Foster's. They released their "Afternoon Delight" clips every weekday afternoon in July.


title: Vic Reeves

text: In 2020, Reeves co-hosted the Netflix original, reality series "The Big Flower Fight" alongside Natasia Demetriou.


title: Vic Reeves

text: Reeves has appeared in television advertisements, both with Mortimer and alone. He has done solo advertising work for a variety of products including Guinness, MFI, Müller Light, First Direct, Mars Bar, Fanta, Heinz Tomato Ketchup, Domestos bleach, Maryland Cookies, 888 Ladies and East Coast Trains. Reeves also advertised Jools Holland's 2006 album "Moving Out to the Country". With Mortimer, he advertised Cadburys Boost and Churchill Insurance. Mortimer voiced the nodding bulldog, Churchill, and in early adverts, Reeves’ voice would ask questions about car insurance, to which Churchill replied with his catchphrase, “Oh, yes!” However, in 2005 Reeves was dropped from the adverts after being arrested on charges of drunk-driving.


title: Vic Reeves

text: As part of early "Big Night Out" performances, Reeves would sometimes hand out promotional materials to the audience. On one occasion he handed out a 7" flexi disc of original song "The Howlin' Wind". Having surplus copies of the discs, Reeves passed them on to Darlington-based band Dan, who then included a copy of the disc with their album "Kicking Ass at T.J.'s".


title: Vic Reeves

text: "I Will Cure You" was Reeves' only album. It was released in 1991 by Island Records and peaked at No. 16 in the UK Albums Chart. It featured the Number One single "Dizzy" which was a collaboration with The Wonder Stuff. It included a mixture of covers and original songs in a variety of musical styles, many of which were originally introduced in "Big Night Out". Along with "Dizzy", two other singles were released from the album, a cover of the Matt Monro song "Born Free" and a dance reworking of Christian hymn "Abide With Me" which reached No. 6 and No. 47 in the UK Singles Chart, respectively.


title: Vic Reeves

text: In 1995, Reeves and Mortimer released a cover of The Monkees song "I'm a Believer" with British band EMF which reached No. 3 in the UK Singles Chart. Reeves had a history with the track, having both sung it at the beginning of early "Big Night Out" performances in London, and opened the Channel 4 series with it. In the music video, which was directed by Reeves, the duo dress as Mike Nesmith and Davy Jones of The Monkees. On the CD release of the single, a studio version of "At This Stage I Couldn't Say" was included, a track originally sung by characters Mulligan and O'Hare in "The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer". On the 7" release, the bonus track was "At Least We've Got Our Guitars", which was the opening song for the last episode of "The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer".


title: Vic Reeves

text: In April 2007, the theme to British stop-motion animation "Shaun the Sheep", sung by Reeves, was released as a single. The song reached No. 20 in the UK Singles Chart.


title: Vic Reeves

text: In 1990 both Reeves and Mortimer contributed backing vocals to Jools Holland's "Holy Cow" (a Lee Dorsey cover). The track was included on Holland's album "World of his Own" and released as a single. Later, Reeves would advertise Holland's album "Moving Out to the Country".


title: Vic Reeves

text: Also in 1990, Reeves provided backing vocals for former Smiths singer Morrissey's cover of "That's Entertainment", originally by The Jam. Reeves' vocals were not used in the final edit but he was thanked (as Jim Moir) in the sleeve notes of Morrissey's Sing Your Life single, which featured "That's Entertainment" as a bonus track. A fan of the Smiths, Reeves opened some episodes of "Big Night Out" with covers of the band's songs including "Sheila Take a Bow" which he intended to include a cover of on his album "I Will Cure You". It did not make the final cut.


title: Vic Reeves

text: In 1992, Reeves contributed a track to "Ruby Trax", a compilation album released by "NME" magazine to commemorate 40 years of the publication. He covered the Ultravox song "Vienna", but drastically altered the original lyrics.


title: Vic Reeves

text: In 1998, Reeves contributed to "", a tribute album featuring notable singers and bands such as Elton John, Sting, Robbie Williams and Paul McCartney. Reeves covered Coward's 1934 track "Don't Put Your Daughter on the Stage Mrs. Worthington", which was arranged by David Arnold for the album. The song, described by Reeves as "sinister", was initially recorded with all original verses intact, but as the last included foul language, it was edited out of the final release.


title: Vic Reeves

text: In 2000, Reeves' cover of "Ain't That a Kick in the Head?" was featured as a bonus track on the theme single to the "Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)" series in which he starred. Reeves was originally to duet with Nina Persson (of the Cardigans), who provided vocals, but missed the final cut. A shortened version of Reeves' cover also featured in the series itself. Both Reeves and Mortimer appeared in the music video for the single.


title: Vic Reeves

text: Other than the music videos for his own singles, Reeves has appeared in others. His first was the 1987 video for Shakin' Stevens' single "What Do You Want to Make Those Eyes at Me For". He was hired for the shoot and paid £10 for his appearance.


title: Vic Reeves

text: Reeves also appeared in the 1988 music video for Band of Holy Joy's song "Tactless". He introduces the band and can be seen at the bar part way through. The video was filmed in Deptford, London and original advertising posters for "Big Night Out" can be seen at the beginning.


title: Vic Reeves

text: Moir has produced art both under the name Jim Moir and Vic Reeves. This reflects that his art, while serious, also combines with his comedy. Moir works in many media including painting, ceramics, photography and lino prints, and has a distinctive style. His work has been described as Dada-esque, surreal and sometimes macabre. For Moir, his art and comedy are different ways of expressing the same idea. He says "I think putting your imagination on canvas or a television screen is the same thing" and "I don't differentiate between painting, acting or comedy. I think everything I do is art." Moir has stated that he is an artist first and a comedian second, and that in ten years time he would like to be remembered for his art and writing, rather than his comedy.


title: Vic Reeves

text: Much like his comedy, Moir is not one to analyse his artworks. He has said that art should be "just for laughs" and that he dislikes people looking for statements in his work, because there are none. "If something makes me laugh, that's it." "I've done straight drawings and paintings ... and I haven't got as much pleasure out of them as if I'd done something that would make me laugh." His work has been described by artists Jake and Dinos Chapman as "able to command our laughter as a purgative, to encourage the viewer to leak at both ends". Artist Damien Hirst, a friend, has also described Moir's work as Reeves as an influence. This crossover of comedy and art often features within Reeves and Mortimer's television shows. A notable example is "The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer" first episode. Several of Reeves' drawings are featured, illustrating the lyrics of the opening song. (These drawings would later be published within his book "Sun Boiled Onions".) As seen in the script book for the show, Reeves often drew sketches for the BBC's costume and set designers saying that "if we just tell them what we want, it never ends up looking like it does in our minds".


title: Vic Reeves

text: Arts and crafts played a large part in Moir's upbringing. His mother and father, a seamstress and typesetter by trade, made extra money by selling handmade wooden crafts and ceramics at local markets. Building on these money-making schemes, Moir began charging for his own artistic services such as customising and painting his school friend's Haversack bags and elaborately embroidering clothing. Later he would go on to forge artworks his acquaintances liked with the aim of selling them to them. Wanting to study art, but being pressured into work, Moir began a five-year engineering apprenticeship at a factory in Newton Aycliffe with the aim of working in their technical drawings department.


title: Vic Reeves

text: After completing the apprenticeship, Moir applied to Goldsmiths College in London to study art, but failed to get a place. He has admitted to sneaking in and using their equipment regardless. In 1983 he completed a one-year foundation course at Sir John Cass College, where he is now an honorary graduate. Once leaving college, he worked as a curator at The Garden Gallery, an independent London gallery. It was there that he held his first art exhibition in 1985, with the help of a grant from Lewisham Council.


title: Vic Reeves

text: As Vic Reeves, he has released two books of his art, "Sun Boiled Onions" in 1999 and "Vic Reeves' Vast Book of World Knowledge" in 2009. His drawings also appear in his autobiography "Me:Moir Volume One", and the published script book for "The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer". He provided thirty illustrations for Random House's 2011 reprint of Jerome K. Jerome's classic story "Three Men in a Boat". He was also commissioned to create several celebrity drawings for Jools Holland's Channel 5 series "Name That Tune".


title: Vic Reeves

text: In 2010, a selection of Reeves' paintings were displayed at the Saatchi Gallery, London as part of an exhibition by charity The Art of Giving. He was also a judge for the charity's open art competition.


title: Vic Reeves

text: In 2012, Reeves took part in the Illuminating York festival. His illuminations, known as "Wonderland", were projected across a number of historic buildings including the Yorkshire Museum, St Mary's Abbey, and the ten-acre site of York Museum Gardens.


title: Vic Reeves

text: Reeves has appeared without Mortimer on a number of British television shows, primarily game shows, poll programmes and charity telethons. These include:


title: Vic Reeves

text: Reeves has four children, the eldest two by his first wife, Sarah Vincent; Reeves and Vincent were married in 1990 and divorced in 1999. He met his second wife, Nancy Sorrell, in 2001; the couple married on 25 January 2003. Sorrell gave birth to twin girls at the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford, Kent, on 25 May 2006. Reeves, Sorrell and their two girls live in Charing, near Ashford.


title: Vic Reeves

text: In September 2021, Reeves said he had been diagnosed with a vestibular schwannoma, a benign and non-cancerous brain tumour. The tumour is inoperable and has left him deaf in one ear.


title: Big Nose Kate

text: Mary Katherine Horony Cummings (November 7, 1850 – November 2, 1940), popularly known as Big Nose Kate, was a Hungarian-born American outlaw, gambler, prostitute and longtime companion and common-law wife of Old West gambler and gunfighter Doc Holliday. "Tough, stubborn and fearless", she was educated, but chose to work as a prostitute due to the independence it provided her. She is the only woman with whom Holliday is known to have had a relationship.


title: Big Nose Kate

text: Mary Katherine Horony (also misspelled as Harony, Haroney, and Horoney) was born on November 7, 1850, in Érsekújvár, Kingdom of Hungary (present-day Nové Zámky, Slovakia). She was the second daughter of Hungarian physician and teacher Mihály Horony (1817–1865) and Katalin Boldizsár (1830–1865).


title: Big Nose Kate

text: In 1860, Dr. Horony, his second wife Katharina, and his children left Hungary for the United States, arriving in New York City on the German ship "Bremen" in September.


title: Big Nose Kate

text: The Horony family settled in a predominantly German area of Davenport, Iowa, in 1862. Horony and his wife died within a month of one another in 1865. Mary Katherine and her younger siblings were placed in the home of her brother-in-law, Gustav Susemihl, and in 1870 they were left in the care of attorney Otto Smith. The 1870 United States Census records for Davenport show Kate's younger sister, 15-year-old Wilhelmina (Wilma), living with and working as a domestic for Austrian-born David Palter and his Hungarian wife Bettina.


title: Big Nose Kate

text: At age 16, Kate ran away from her foster home and stowed away on a riverboat bound for St. Louis, Missouri. Kate later claimed that while she lived in St. Louis she married a dentist named Silas Melvin with whom she had a son, and that both died of yellow fever. The United States Census records report that a Silas Melvin lived in St. Louis in the mid 1860s but that he was married to a steamship captain's daughter named Mary Bust. The census also shows that another Melvin was employed by a St. Louis asylum. Since Kate met Doc Holliday in the early 1870s, she may have confused the two and their occupations when recalling the facts later in her life.


title: Big Nose Kate

text: Researcher Jan Collins states that Kate entered the Ursuline Convent but did not remain long. In 1869, she is recorded as working as a prostitute for madam Blanche Tribole in St. Louis. In 1874, Kate was fined for working as a "sporting woman" (prostitute) in a "sporting house" (brothel) in Dodge City, Kansas, run by Nellie "Bessie" (Ketchum) Earp, James Earp's wife.


title: Big Nose Kate

text: In 1876, Kate moved to Fort Griffin, Texas, where in 1877 she met Doc Holliday. Doc said at one point that he considered Kate his intellectual equal. The couple went with Earp to Dodge City and registered as Mr. and Mrs. J.H. Holliday at Deacon Cox's boarding house. Doc opened a dental practice by day but spent most of his time gambling and drinking. The two fought regularly and sometimes violently, but made up after fights despite the volatile relationship.


title: Big Nose Kate

text: According to Kate, the couple later married in Valdosta, Georgia. They traveled to Trinidad, Colorado, and then to Las Vegas, New Mexico, where they lived for about two years. Holliday worked as a dentist by day and ran a saloon on Center Street by night. Kate also occasionally worked at a dance hall in Santa Fe, New Mexico.


title: Big Nose Kate

text: By her own account, Doc and Kate met up again with Wyatt Earp and his brothers on their way to the Arizona Territory. Virgil Earp had already been in Prescott, Arizona, and persuaded his brothers to move to Tombstone. Holliday was making money at the gambling tables in Prescott. In 1880, he and Kate parted ways when Kate left for Globe, Arizona, but she rejoined Holliday soon after he arrived in Tombstone.


title: Big Nose Kate

text: Holliday, like his friend Wyatt Earp, was always looking for an opportunity to make money, and joined the Earps in Tombstone during the fall of 1880. On March 15, 1881, at 10:00 pm, three cowboys attempted to rob a Kinnear & Company stagecoach carrying $26,000 in silver bullion (by the inflation adjustment algorithm: $ in today's dollars) near Benson, Arizona, during which the popular driver Eli "Budd" Philpot and passenger Peter Roerig were killed. Cochise County Cowboy Bill Leonard, a former watchmaker from New York City, was one of three men implicated in the robbery, and he and Holliday had become good friends. When Kate and Holliday had a fight, County Sheriff Johnny Behan and Milt Joyce, a county supervisor and owner of the Oriental Saloon, decided to exploit the situation. Both were members of the Tombstone Ten Percent Ring.


title: Big Nose Kate

text: Behan and Joyce plied Kate with alcohol and suggested to her a way to get even with Holliday. She signed an affidavit implicating Holliday in the murders and attempted robbery. Judge Wells Spicer issued an arrest warrant for Holliday. The Earps found witnesses who could attest to Holliday's whereabouts elsewhere at the time of the murders. Kate said that Behan and Joyce had influenced her to sign a document she didn't understand. With the Cowboy plot revealed, Judge Spicer freed Holliday. The district attorney threw out the charges, labeling them "ridiculous". After Holliday was released, he gave Kate money and put her on the stage. Kate returned to Globe for a time, but she returned to Tombstone in October of that year.


title: Big Nose Kate

text: In a 1939 letter to her niece Lillian Rafferty, Kate claimed that she was in the Tombstone area with Holliday during the days before the shootout. According to Kate, she was with Holliday in Tucson, Arizona when they attended the San Augustin Feast and Fair in Levin Park during October 1881. On October 20, 1881, Morgan Earp rode to Tucson to request Holliday's assistance with dealing with Cochise County Cowboys who had threatened to kill the Earps. She wrote that Holliday asked her to remain in Tucson for her safety, but she refused, and traveled with Holliday and Earp. Kate reminisced in the letter about her stay with Holliday at C.S. Fly's Boarding House which bordered the alley where the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral took place.


title: Big Nose Kate

text: Kate accurately described minor details of the shootout, writing that on the day of the gunfight a man entered Fly's Boarding House with a "bandaged head" and a rifle. He was looking for Holliday, who was still in bed after a night of gambling. Kate recalled that the man who was turned away by Mrs. Fly was later identified as Ike Clanton, whom city marshal Virgil Earp had pistol-whipped earlier that day when he found Clanton carrying a rifle and pistol in violation of city ordinances. Clanton's head was bandaged afterward.


title: Big Nose Kate

text: Virgil Earp had disarmed him earlier that day and told Ike he would leave Ike's confiscated rifle and revolver at the Grand Hotel, which was favored by cowboys when they were in town. Ike testified afterward that he had tried to buy a new revolver at Spangenberger's gun and hardware store on 4th Street but the owner saw Ike's bandaged head and refused to sell him one. Clanton was unarmed at the time of the shootout later that afternoon. Ike testified that he picked up the weapons from William Soule, the jailer, a couple of days later.


title: Big Nose Kate

text: Author Glenn Boyer disputes that Kate saw the gunfight through the window of the boarding house. Also according to him, Kate stated that after Doc Holliday returned to his room, he sat at the edge of his bed and wept from the shock of what had happened during the close-range gunfight. "That was awful," Kate claims he said. "Just awful." Boyer's work, however, has been rejected by serious scholars.


title: Big Nose Kate

text: Kate is reported to have made trips to Tombstone to see Holliday until he left for Colorado in April 1882. In 1887, Kate traveled to Redstone, Colorado, close to Glenwood Springs, Colorado, to visit with her brother Alexander. Some historians have tried to connect Kate and Doc to possible reconciliation attempts between the two.


title: Big Nose Kate

text: After Doc Holliday died in 1887, Kate married Irish blacksmith George Cummings in Aspen, Colorado, on March 2, 1890. After working several mining camps throughout Colorado, they moved to Bisbee, Arizona, where she briefly ran a bakery. After returning to Willcox, Arizona, in Cochise County, Cummings became an abusive alcoholic and they separated. In 1900, Kate moved to Dos Cabezas or Cochise and worked for John and Lulu Rath, owners of the Cochise Hotel. Cummings committed suicide in Courtland, Arizona, in July 1915.


title: Big Nose Kate

text: Kate is enumerated in the 1910 U.S. Census in Dos Cabezas, Arizona, as a member of the home of miner John J. Howard. When Howard died in 1930, Kate was the executrix of his estate. She contacted his only daughter, who lived in Tempe, Arizona, and settled the inheritance.


title: Big Nose Kate

text: In 1931 the 80-year-old Kate contacted her longtime friend Arizona Governor George Hunt, and applied for admittance to the Arizona Pioneers' Home in Prescott, Arizona. The home had been established in 1910 by the State of Arizona for destitute and ailing miners and male pioneers of the Arizona Territory. It took Kate six months to be admitted because the home had a requirement that residents must be American citizens. According to the 1935 Bork interview, Kate was owed money by the Howard estate, but the amount owed was not enough to buy firewood through the winter, as Kate had complained in her letters to the governor.


title: Big Nose Kate

text: She was admitted as one of the first female residents of the home. She lived there and became an outspoken resident, assisting other residents with living comforts. Kate wrote many letters to the Arizona state legislature, often contacting the governor when she was not satisfied with their response. Near the end of her life, several reporters tried to record Kate's life story, her relationship with Doc Holliday and her time in Tombstone. She only talked to Anton Mazzonovich and Prescott historian A.W. Bork.


title: Big Nose Kate

text: Kate died on November 2, 1940, five days before her 90th birthday, of acute myocardial insufficiency, a condition she started showing symptoms of the day before her death. Her death certificate states that she also suffered from coronary artery disease and advanced arteriosclerosis. Kate's death certificate contained significant discrepancies regarding her parents' names and her birthplace. Although she was born in Hungary, her death certificate states she was born in Davenport, Iowa, to father Marchal H. Michael and mother Catherine Baldwin. The birthplace of both her parents is shown on the certificate as "unknown". The superintendent of the Pioneer Home is named as the informant on the death certificate.


title: Timbre

text: In music, timbre ( ), also known as tone color or tone quality (from psychoacoustics), is the perceived sound quality of a musical note, sound or tone. Timbre distinguishes different types of sound production, such as choir voices and musical instruments. It also enables listeners to distinguish different instruments in the same category (e.g., an oboe and a clarinet, both woodwind instruments).


title: Timbre

text: In simple terms, timbre is what makes a particular musical instrument or human voice have a different sound from another, even when they play or sing the same note. For instance, it is the difference in sound between a guitar and a piano playing the same note at the same volume. Both instruments can sound equally tuned in relation to each other as they play the same note, and while playing at the same amplitude level each instrument will still sound distinctively with its own unique tone color. Experienced musicians are able to distinguish between different instruments of the same type based on their varied timbres, even if those instruments are playing notes at the same fundamental pitch and loudness.


title: Timbre

text: The physical characteristics of sound that determine the perception of timbre include frequency spectrum and envelope. Singers and instrumental musicians can change the timbre of the music they are singing/playing by using different singing or playing techniques. For example, a violinist can use different bowing styles or play on different parts of the string to obtain different timbres (e.g., playing sul tasto produces a light, airy timbre, whereas playing sul ponticello produces a harsh, even and aggressive tone). On electric guitar and electric piano, performers can change the timbre using effects units and graphic equalizers.


title: Timbre

text: "Tone quality" and "tone color" are synonyms for "timbre", as well as the ""texture" attributed to a single instrument". However, the word texture can also refer to the type of music, such as multiple, interweaving melody lines versus a singable melody accompanied by subordinate chords. Hermann von Helmholtz used the German "Klangfarbe" ("tone color"), and John Tyndall proposed an English translation, "clangtint", but both terms were disapproved of by Alexander Ellis, who also discredits "register" and "color" for their pre-existing English meanings. Determined by its frequency composition, the sound of a musical instrument may be described with words such as "bright", "dark", "warm", "harsh", and other terms. There are also colors of noise, such as pink and white. In visual representations of sound, timbre corresponds to the shape of the image, while loudness corresponds to brightness; pitch corresponds to the y-shift of the spectrogram.


title: Timbre

text: The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) Acoustical Terminology definition 12.09 of timbre describes it as "that attribute of auditory sensation which enables a listener to judge that two nonidentical sounds, similarly presented and having the same loudness and pitch, are dissimilar", adding, "Timbre depends primarily upon the frequency spectrum, although it also depends upon the sound pressure and the temporal characteristics of the sound".


title: Timbre

text: Many commentators have attempted to decompose timbre into component attributes. For example, J. F. Schouten (1968, 42) describes the "elusive attributes of timbre" as "determined by at least five major acoustic parameters", which Robert Erickson finds, "scaled to the concerns of much contemporary music":


title: Timbre

text: An example of a tonal sound is a musical sound that has a definite pitch, such as pressing a key on a piano; a sound with a noiselike character would be white noise, the sound similar to that produced when a radio is not tuned to a station.


title: Timbre

text: Erickson gives a table of subjective experiences and related physical phenomena based on Schouten's five attributes:


title: Timbre

text: The richness of a sound or note a musical instrument produces is sometimes described in terms of a sum of a number of distinct frequencies. The lowest frequency is called the "fundamental frequency", and the pitch it produces is used to name the note, but the fundamental frequency is not always the dominant frequency. The dominant frequency is the frequency that is most heard, and it is always a multiple of the fundamental frequency. For example, the dominant frequency for the transverse flute is double the fundamental frequency. Other significant frequencies are called overtones of the fundamental frequency, which may include harmonics and partials. Harmonics are whole number multiples of the fundamental frequency, such as ×2, ×3, ×4, etc. Partials are other overtones. There are also sometimes subharmonics at whole number "divisions" of the fundamental frequency. Most instruments produce harmonic sounds, but many instruments produce partials and inharmonic tones, such as cymbals and other indefinite-pitched instruments.


title: Timbre

text: When the tuning note in an orchestra or concert band is played, the sound is a combination of 440 Hz, 880 Hz, 1320 Hz, 1760 Hz and so on. Each instrument in the orchestra or concert band produces a different combination of these frequencies, as well as harmonics and overtones. The sound waves of the different frequencies overlap and combine, and the balance of these amplitudes is a major factor in the characteristic sound of each instrument.


title: Timbre

text: William Sethares wrote that just intonation and the western equal tempered scale are related to the harmonic spectra/timbre of many western instruments in an analogous way that the inharmonic timbre of the Thai renat (a xylophone-like instrument) is related to the seven-tone near-equal tempered pelog scale in which they are tuned. Similarly, the inharmonic spectra of Balinese metallophones combined with harmonic instruments such as the stringed rebab or the voice, are related to the five-note near-equal tempered slendro scale commonly found in Indonesian gamelan music.


title: Timbre

text: The timbre of a sound is also greatly affected by the following aspects of its "envelope": attack time and characteristics, decay, sustain, release (ADSR envelope) and transients. Thus these are all common controls on professional synthesizers. For instance, if one takes away the attack from the sound of a piano or trumpet, it becomes more difficult to identify the sound correctly, since the sound of the hammer hitting the strings or the first blast of the player's lips on the trumpet mouthpiece are highly characteristic of those instruments. The envelope is the overall amplitude structure of a sound.


title: Timbre

text: Instrumental timbre played an increasing role in the practice of orchestration during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Berlioz and Wagner made significant contributions to its development during the nineteenth century. For example, Wagner's "Sleep motif" from Act 3 of his opera "Die Walküre", features a descending chromatic scale that passes through a gamut of orchestral timbres. First the woodwind (flute, followed by oboe), then the massed sound of strings with the violins carrying the melody, and finally the brass (French horns).Debussy, who composed during the last decades of the nineteenth and the first decades of the twentieth centuries, has been credited with elevating further the role of timbre: "To a marked degree the music of Debussy elevates timbre to an unprecedented structural status; already in "Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune" the "color" of flute and harp functions referentially". Mahler’s approach to orchestration illustrates the increasing role of differentiated timbres in music of the early twentieth century. Norman Del Mar describes the following passage from the Scherzo movement of his Sixth Symphony, as "a seven-bar link to the trio consisting of an extension in diminuendo of the repeated As… though now rising in a succession of piled octaves which moreover leap-frog with Cs added to the As. The lower octaves then drop away and only the Cs remain so as to dovetail with the first oboe phrase of the trio." During these bars, Mahler passes the repeated notes through a gamut of instrumental colors, mixed and single: starting with horns and pizzicato strings, progressing through trumpet, clarinet, flute, piccolo and finally, oboe: See also Klangfarbenmelodie.


title: Timbre

text: In rock music from the late 1960s to the 2000s, the timbre of specific sounds is important to a song. For example, in heavy metal music, the sonic impact of the heavily amplified, heavily distorted power chord played on electric guitar through very loud guitar amplifiers and rows of speaker cabinets is an essential part of the style's musical identity.


title: Timbre

text: Often, listeners can identify an instrument, even at different pitches and loudness, in different environments, and with different players. In the case of the clarinet, acoustic analysis shows waveforms irregular enough to suggest three instruments rather than one. David Luce suggests that this implies that "[C]ertain strong regularities in the acoustic waveform of the above instruments must exist which are invariant with respect to the above variables". However, Robert Erickson argues that there are few regularities and they do not explain our "...powers of recognition and identification." He suggests borrowing the concept of subjective constancy from studies of vision and visual perception.


title: Timbre

text: Psychoacoustic experiments from the 1960s onwards tried to elucidate the nature of timbre. One method involves playing pairs of sounds to listeners, then using a multidimensional scaling algorithm to aggregate their dissimilarity judgments into a timbre space. The most consistent outcomes from such experiments are that brightness or spectral energy distribution, and the "bite", or rate and synchronicity and rise time, of the attack are important factors.


title: Timbre

text: The concept of tristimulus originates in the world of color, describing the way three primary colors can be mixed together to create a given color. By analogy, the musical tristimulus measures the mixture of harmonics in a given sound, grouped into three sections. It is basically a proposal of reducing a huge number of sound partials, that can amount to dozens or hundreds in some cases, down to only three values. The first tristimulus measures the relative weight of the first harmonic; the second tristimulus measures the relative weight of the second, third, and fourth harmonics taken together; and the third tristimulus measures the relative weight of all the remaining harmonics.


title: Timbre

text: However, more evidence, studies and applications would be needed regarding this type of representation, in order to validate it.


title: Timbre

text: The term "brightness" is also used in discussions of sound timbres, in a rough analogy with visual brightness. Timbre researchers consider brightness to be one of the perceptually strongest distinctions between sounds, and formalize it acoustically as an indication of the amount of high-frequency content in a sound, using a measure such as the spectral centroid.


title: Waluigi

text: First debuting in the 2000 Nintendo 64 game "Mario Tennis" to polarizing reception from the media, Waluigi has since attained a cult following, especially helped through his use as an Internet meme.


title: Waluigi

text: Waluigi was created during the development of the game "Mario Tennis", to serve as the bitter rival to Luigi and as a doubles partner for Wario. He was created by Fumihide Aoki and is voiced by Charles Martinet. His name is a portmanteau of Luigi's name and the Japanese adjective "warui" (悪い) meaning "bad"; hence, a "bad Luigi".


title: Waluigi

text: He is said to be a mischievous, cunning man. Martinet stated that the cornerstone of Waluigi's personality is one of self-pity, a character who feels that everything goes right for everyone but himself. As displayed in "Mario Power Tennis" and "Mario Hoops 3-on-3", Waluigi features the ability to summon a body of water and swim towards each game's respective ball, which IGN editor Rob Burman described as "baffling".


title: Waluigi

text: Waluigi borrows Wario's design principle as an evil, twisted version of his counterpart, pushing Luigi's leaner body type to the extreme, which renders him particularly skinny and angular, with a pointy chin and thin mustache. While these features contrast strongly with Wario's, the two still share a lot of physical attributes: a large pink nose, pointy shoes, a W-shaped mustache, a wide permanent grin with blocky teeth, and bags under their eyes. He has a high-pitched, nasal voice.


title: Waluigi

text: He is the same age as Luigi and wears black overalls, a purple long-sleeved shirt, a purple hat with a yellow "Γ" symbol (an inverted L, paralleling Wario's W as an upside-down M), orange shoes, and white gloves with a yellow "Γ" symbol as well. When asked whether Waluigi was a brother to Wario, Martinet stated that while he did not know, he felt that they were just "two nice, evil guys who found each other".


title: Waluigi

text: Waluigi's first two appearances were in the Nintendo 64 and Game Boy Color versions of "Mario Tennis", establishing himself as Luigi's supposedly long time rival and Wario's doubles partner, whom he would remain partners with for most future installments, the one exception being "", the only time that he appeared in-game without Wario. Since his introduction, Waluigi has appeared as a playable character in every "Mario" sports game. Notably, in "" and "Mario Power Tennis", he holds up the sign for Camelot Software Planning to signify the game developers in the opening movies.


title: Waluigi

text: Alongside Princess Daisy, Waluigi joined the "Mario Party" series starting with "Mario Party 3", where he owns an island filled with traps and explosives. In the game's story mode, he is faced as the penultimate foe after defeating Bowser.


title: Waluigi

text: Waluigi appears in the "Mario Kart" series, first appearing in "". He would go on to be featured in all future console installments with the exception of "Mario Kart 7", where he was cut due to time constraints despite his course, "Waluigi Pinball", being selectable.


title: Waluigi

text: Waluigi's most significant role to date was as the main antagonist of "", in which he wreaks havoc in the Mushroom Kingdom by pilfering special objects called the Music Keys to hypnotize the world with his dancing, hoping to conquer it and spread chaos. The rest of the keys are held by a Blooper, Wario, and Bowser, respectively.


title: Waluigi

text: In the "Super Smash Bros." series, starting with "Brawl", Waluigi appears as a non-playable Assist Trophy item, while his purple color palette appears as one of Luigi's alternate costumes and in later installments, for Mario and Wario as well. During Waluigi's reveal for "Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U", game director Masahiro Sakurai jokingly stated that "just because you try hard doesn't mean you'll make it into the battle." He was also used as an example for K.O.ing assist trophies during the gameplay reveal of "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate".


title: Waluigi

text: As for minor appearances, Waluigi graces in "Super Mario Maker" as an unlockable Mystery Mushroom costume for Mario to wear in the "Super Mario Bros." style. Although he does not make an appearance in "", if the player has both the Wario emblem and the Luigi emblem equipped at the same time, Mario will be dressed in the colors of Waluigi. In "Super Mario Odyssey", an outfit modeled after Waluigi's own can be purchased in-game and worn by Mario after the player has either scanned the Waluigi amiibo or collected enough Power Moons; the description mentions his desire for the spotlight. Waluigi makes a very brief appearance in "Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle" as a figurine in the opening, however, a Rabbid version, named Bwaluigi, appears as a boss alongside Wario's Rabbid counterpart, Bwario.


title: Waluigi

text: Since his appearance in "Mario Tennis", Waluigi has received a mixed reception. Gamervision editor Jonathan Cooper wrote an article entitled "Ten Reasons Waluigi is Awesome", listing such qualities as his developed personality, his role in "Super Smash Bros. Brawl", and his role in "Mario" sports games. In the book "Icons of Horror and the Supernatural: An Encyclopedia of Our Worst Nightmares, Volume 1", author S. T. Joshi cites both Waluigi and Wario as examples of alter egos, also as evidence of how popular it is to feature such character archetypes. IGN editor Matt Casamassina described him as a recognizable mascot to many, but also as a beloved one to Nintendo fans. Hiroyuki Takahashi, a developer for "Mario Power Tennis" listed him, along with his companion Wario, as his favorite character in "Power Tennis", describing them both as detestable heels, adding that he likes characters with more personality. Gamingillustrated.com's writer Greg Johnson, during his article about "Mario Kart 8", described Waluigi's return as one of the game's bright-sides. An article in Gameranx.com, entitled "Waluigi: Unwrapping the Enigma", dwells in Waluigi's self-pity and ambiguous origins, describing him as one of the most misunderstood characters in video games, and more than capable of holding his own game. In addition, Steve Haske, from Unwinnable.com wrote an article called "Defending Waluigi" that discussed Waluigi's partly negative reception, claiming Waluigi to be an even more interesting character than Wario, praising Waluigi for the comic relief he provides and mentioning his absence as a playable character in "Super Smash Bros. Brawl" as a sad disrespect to his fans. Evilgeeks.com, a website dedicated towards villains, claimed Waluigi to be Nintendo's most evil character, because of his hatred, greed, and power, and wrote that Waluigi should have his own game simply so that we could see what he is capable of. In addition to those articles, venturebeat.com's writer Chris Hoadley wrote an article called "The Greatness of Waluigi", describing him as the most cynical "Mario" franchise character, and the greatest one of the last decade. Chris wrote about how Waluigi, despite being constantly ridiculed for his lack of importance, has one of the strongest and most developed personalities of the cast.


title: Waluigi

text: Conversely, GameDaily listed him as one of the characters they wanted to kill but were not able to, describing him as "One of the most unimportant characters in video game history". Kotaku editor Mike Fahey commented that Waluigi was his personal most annoying video game character. GamesRadar described Waluigi as a "lame-o villain" in an otherwise great game, referencing "Mario Tennis". Editor Henry Gilbert titled his section "Waluigi: The worst character ever", suggesting that the creation process involved the developers of "Mario Tennis" having no one to fill the final character slot, and conceiving him as an "evil Luigi". He describes such an act as "plunging to the bottom of the intellectual barrel". He also calls Waluigi "disgustingly tall and thin" as opposed to Wario, who he calls a "fatass". He later states that the staff of GamesRadar feels that Waluigi is seen as "less than legitimate" by Nintendo, who he feels may not find him good enough to appear in a main "Mario" or "Wario" title. IGN editor Lucas M. Thomas discussed him as a possible, yet unlikely, candidate for a "second banana" character to be playable in "Super Smash Bros. Brawl", commenting that Waluigi, amongst other sidekick characters, are not well-liked. IGN staff, while praising Bowser as one of the most memorable video game villains, criticized both Waluigi and Wario as being "evil twin knockoffs".


title: Waluigi

text: Despite Waluigi's popularity gain as an Internet meme, he has yet to appear outside of "Mario" spin-offs, most notably being his lack of playability within "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate" (confirmed when the character was announced as a non-playable Assist Trophy during E3 2018), which was met with negative reception from the gaming press and social media, with websites such as Reddit and Twitter leading the outcry; online Change.org petitions have been created in support of Waluigi being added as a playable character, garnering thousands of supporters. IGN's Joe Skrebels described his non-playable status within the game as "...a slap in the face for those who want a playable Waluigi."


title: Waluigi

text: Former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé has acknowledged the popularity of Waluigi and the desire to have him playable in "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate", citing that series director Masahiro Sakurai "...will be aware of the groundswell of support that appeared for Waluigi. And in the end, it's his decision to make."


title: Gok Wan

text: Kowkhyn Wan (; born 9 September 1974), known as Gok Wan, is a British fashion consultant, author, television presenter, actor, DJ, chef and event manager.


title: Gok Wan

text: Initially training in the performing arts at the Central School of Speech and Drama, he then entered the fashion business, writing for popular fashion magazines and appearing on various television shows. In 2006, Channel 4 employed him to present his own television show, "How to Look Good Naked", which lasted for seven series, and "Say Yes to the Dress Lancashire". Moving into other genres, he presented a series of documentaries on social problems among young people, drawing on his personal battles with obesity and homophobia, and presented Chinese cooking shows entitled "Gok Cooks Chinese" and "Gok's Chinese Takeaway".


title: Gok Wan

text: Gok Wan was born in Leicester, to an English mother, Myra, and a Chinese father, John Tung Shing Wan, who was born in Hong Kong and emigrated to Britain at the age of 16. He grew up in Whetstone, Leicestershire, where he worked in his parents' restaurant. Wan stood out from his peers from a young age and endured bullying from other children due to the fact that he was mixed race, tall, overweight and gay.


title: Gok Wan

text: During his teenage years he weighed as much as 21 stone (133 kg, 294 lb) He was drawn to performing arts with aspirations of becoming an actor, and after leaving Babington Community College he began attending a course at the Charles Keene College of Further Education. Wan received a diploma from the college, then enrolled at the Central School of Speech and Drama and continued to study performing arts. However, the other students had backgrounds very different from his and he felt that his weight was beginning to dictate his life, later saying: "[It affected] everything: my personality, how people reacted to me, what I wore, everything. When you sit down with someone who's 21 stone you have certain expectations of what they're like: stupid, lazy or really funny." He felt restricted and unhappy and eventually dropped out of the course, returning to live with his family.