title: Anastasia (musical)

text: A Portuguese-language production premiered on November 9, 2022 at the Renault Theatre in São Paulo, produced by T4F and Caradiboi. The cast is led by Giovanna Rangel as Anya, Rodrigo Filgueiras as Dmitry, Luciano Andrey as Gleb, Tiago Abravanel as Vlad, Carol Costa as Countess Lily and Edna d'Oliveira as Dowager Empress.


title: Anastasia (musical)

text: A Mexican production is expected to open in 2023 at the Teatro Telcel in Mexico City, produced by OCESA Teatro.


title: Anastasia (musical)

text: In 1906 St. Petersburg, Russia, the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna comforts her youngest granddaughter, five-year-old Grand Duchess Anastasia, who is saddened by the fact that her grandmother is moving to Paris, France. Before leaving, the Dowager Empress gives Anastasia a music box as a parting gift ("Prologue: Once Upon a December"). Eleven years later, Anastasia is attending a ball with her family when the Bolsheviks invade the palace. As the Romanovs attempt to escape, Anastasia tries to retrieve her music box, only to be shot at and captured, along with the rest of her family ("The Last Dance of the Romanovs"). The Dowager Empress later receives word in Paris that the entire family has been executed.


title: Anastasia (musical)

text: In 1927, Gleb Vaganov, a general for the Bolsheviks who now control Russia, announces to the gloomy Russians that the now-poor Saint Petersburg has been renamed Leningrad, and he promises a bright and peaceful future. The Russians protest this change, but are uplifted by a rumor that Anastasia may have survived the Bolsheviks' attack. Two wanted con men, the handsome young Dmitry and an ex-member of the Imperial Court named Vlad Popov, hear the rumors and brainstorm "the biggest con in history": they will groom a naive girl to become Anastasia in order to extract money from the Dowager Empress ("A Rumor in St. Petersburg").


title: Anastasia (musical)

text: Dmitry and Vlad hold unsuccessful auditions for the scheme at the theater in the abandoned Yusupov Palace. Just as they are about to give up hope of finding a suitable impostor, a street sweeper named Anya walks in to ask Dmitry about paperwork to get tickets for Paris. Dmitry and Vlad become fascinated as Anya explains that she doesn't remember who she is due to her amnesia and has very few memories of her past ("In My Dreams"). Amazed by her memory loss and resemblance to Anastasia, they select Anya as their impostor.


title: Anastasia (musical)

text: At the capital, government workers sort through rumors and reports for any that require further action. Three bitter actresses report Anya, Dmitry, and Vlad's plot to Gleb, but he dismisses them and files a case for Anya ("The Rumors Never End"). Back at the palace, Vlad and Dmitry groom a feisty Anya to become Anastasia through history, dining, and dancing lessons ("Learn to Do It").


title: Anastasia (musical)

text: Gleb orders Anya's arrest, and she is brought to his office in the Nevsky Prospect. The general interrogates the girl and warns her about the consequences of pretending to be Anastasia. He tries to convince her that Anastasia is really dead. He reveals that his father was one of the soldiers who shot the Romanovs and, as a boy, Gleb heard the gunshots and the family's screams. However, Gleb notices that Anya has the "Romanov eyes" and realizes that Anya could indeed be Anastasia. As he harbors feelings for her, he lets her off with a warning ("The Neva Flows").


title: Anastasia (musical)

text: Anya reunites with Dmitry and they are teased and attacked by his old con partners, whom they must fight off ("The Neva Flows Reprise"). Impressed by Anya's fighting skills, Dmitry opens up to her for the first time and tells her about his childhood in the streets of St. Petersburg and how he had to take care of himself as an orphan ("My Petersburg"). Dmitry begins to trust her enough to show her a music box that he's failed to open, unaware it is the memento that was given to Anastasia by the Dowager Empress. Anya easily winds and opens the box and begins to vaguely remember her past, including an imperial ball many years earlier ("Once Upon a December"). After this episode, Anya is more resolute than ever in her desire to get to Paris, but Dmitry tells her that they don't have enough money to buy the train tickets. Then she gives him her most prized possession, a diamond that was found sewn to her dress when she was discovered years earlier ("A Secret She Kept").


title: Anastasia (musical)

text: At the train station, Count Ipolitov recognizes Anya as Anastasia and kisses her hand. As they board the train to Paris, Count Ipolitov leads everyone in a prayer of farewell to Russia ("Stay, I Pray You"). During the train ride, Anya, Dmitry, and Vlad reflect on what they hope to accomplish in Paris: Anya hoping to discover that she is actually Anastasia, Dmitry's desire for the money, and Vlad hoping to win back Countess Lily Malevsky-Malevitch ("Sophie" in the 1997 animated film), the Dowager Empress's lady-in-waiting with whom he had an affair ("We'll Go From There"). Count Ipolitov is fatally shot by the police for illegally boarding the train. The police officers then go after Anya, Dmitry, and Vlad since they are wanted criminals in Russia, but they all jump off the train, narrowly avoiding capture.


title: Anastasia (musical)

text: As they travel across Russia by foot, Gleb receives orders to follow Anya and kill her if she is the real Anastasia ("Traveling Sequence"). Gleb agrees to the task, but he realizes that he is in love with Anya and questions his heart ("Still"). Anya, Vlad, and Dmitry finally arrive in France, and as they travel to Paris, Anya summons the courage to continue on with the hope that she will finally discover who she is ("Journey to the Past").


title: Anastasia (musical)

text: Anya, Vlad, and Dmitry arrive in Paris and are swept up by the sights and sounds of the city ("Paris Holds the Key (to Your Heart)"). When Vlad and Dmitry go off on their own, Anya visits the Pont Alexandre III bridge, named after Anastasia's grandfather, and she feels a strong connection to it ("Crossing a Bridge").


title: Anastasia (musical)

text: Now a bitter, elderly woman, Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna reads the letters of various Anastasia impersonators and, heartbroken, gives up hope of finding Anastasia ("Close the Door"). As Gleb arrives in Paris, Lily parties at the Neva Club, where rich and noble Russians exiles reminisce about the old Russia ("Land of Yesterday"). Lily is reunited with Vlad, with whom she is angry for stealing her jewelry when they were lovers. The two rekindle their scandalous romance and Vlad convinces her to let Anya meet the Dowager Empress at the ballet the next week ("The Countess and the Common Man"). However, Vlad accidentally drops the ballet tickets and Gleb, overhearing their plans, picks up their tickets ("Land of Yesterday Reprise").


title: Anastasia (musical)

text: At the hotel, Anya has a nightmare about the execution of the Romanovs ("A Nightmare"). Dmitry comforts her and recounts a story of how he bowed to Anastasia at a parade as a young boy. Anya vividly remembers this, and the two realize that Anya is indeed the Grand Duchess Anastasia ("In a Crowd of Thousands").


title: Anastasia (musical)

text: At the ballet, Vlad suspects that Anya and Dmitry are falling in love and is heartbroken on their behalf that the two can never be together ("Meant to Be"). During the performance of "Swan Lake", Anya sees the Dowager Empress and remembers her. The Dowager Empress also sees Anya and recognizes her, but clings to denial. Dmitry and Gleb (who is conflicted about whether or not to shoot Anya) reflect on their romantic feelings ("Quartet at the Ballet").


title: Anastasia (musical)

text: After the ballet, Lily also recognizes Anya as Anastasia and immediately takes her to the Dowager Empress. Dmitry is anxious about the meeting and realizes that he is in love with Anya, but knows he must let her go to her family ("Everything to Win"). Anya leaves the meeting enraged, having learned from the Dowager Empress that Vlad and Dmitry intended to use her in their scheme for money. As she storms off, Dmitry waits for the Dowager Empress. Marie coldly dismisses him, but Dmitry disrespectfully stops her. He begs her to see Anya, but she refuses again.


title: Anastasia (musical)

text: Back at their hotel, Anya starts her packing, but she is interrupted by the Dowager Empress who, impressed by Dmitry's courage, has come to give her an opportunity. Anya is shocked by the Dowager Empress's cruelty, asserting that she isn't the nana that Anya remembered. The Dowager Empress angrily questions Anya about her past and the Romanov family, but Anya compels her to reflect on the person she has become over last two decades. Anya suddenly remembers the night that the Dowager Empress left her for Paris. When Anya produces the music box and sings the lullaby, the Dowager Empress finally realizes that Anya really is Anastasia and the two embrace, now reunited after twenty years ("Once Upon a December Reprise").


title: Anastasia (musical)

text: A press conference is held the next morning, where Vlad and Lily try to fend off the hungry reporters ("The Press Conference"). Before appearing in public, the Dowager Empress tells Anya that Dmitry did not take the reward after all and reveals her respect for him. Anya expresses misgivings about her future life as a princess and the Dowager Empress insists that no matter what she chooses, they'll always be together. Anya runs off to think; she realizes that she is in love with Dmitry, and decides that she must go after him ("Everything to Win Reprise"). As she turns to leave, Anya sees that Gleb has slipped in and locked them in the room. She realizes why he is there and Gleb says that he must kill her to complete his father's mission. Anya now clearly remembers the day her family was killed and, without fear, taunts him to kill her so that she can be with her family. Overcome with emotion and not willing to bear the shame of his father, Gleb is unable to kill Anya ("Still/The Neva Flows Reprise"). Anya comforts Gleb and they call a truce.


title: Anastasia (musical)

text: Vlad, Lily, and the palace staff search for Anya and the Dowager Empress is joyful, knowing that Anya is now where she belongs. She and Gleb announce to their people that the rumors of Anastasia will now cease; the reward for finding her will be donated to charity. Anya discovers Dmitry at Pont Alexandre III, where they embrace. The couple leaves Paris as the spirits of the Romanovs celebrate the life that Anya and Dmitry will have together ("Finale").


title: Anastasia (musical)

text: "Replaced by a reprise of "Paris Holds the Key (To Your Heart)" in the US tour and international productions (∞)"


title: Anastasia (musical)

text: The Broadway production was met with mixed to positive reviews. "The Hollywood Reporter" reviewer, David Rooney, wrote: "The seamlessness and storytelling economy of that opening sequence is quite impressive, deftly handling the ambiguity surrounding Anastasia's fate, while her family is murdered by revolutionaries. But the long first act gets bogged down, and while Ahrens and Flaherty certainly know how to craft a narrative-driven song, the music is more often serviceable than inspired. McNally's book dutifully follows the Disney-princess model... The second act picks up considerably with the 1927 move to Paris..."


title: Anastasia (musical)

text: Ben Brantley, reviewing for "The New York Times", wrote: "The show in which she [Christy Altomare] appears trembles nonstop with internal conflicts during its drawn-out two-and-a-half hours. Part of the source of its malaise may be detected in a conspicuous credit below the title in the program that reads, 'Inspired by the 20th Century Fox motion pictures' ... "Anastasia" may well tap into the dewy-eyed demographic that made "Wicked" such an indestructible favorite of female adolescents. Those without such nostalgic insulation are likely to find this "Anastasia" a chore... bloody periods of history, like the Russian Revolution, do not naturally lend themselves to perky song and dance".


title: Eric Benét

text: Eric Benét Jordan (born October 15, 1967) is an American R&B/neo soul singer-songwriter and actor, who has received a total of four Grammy nominations to date for his musical work.


title: Eric Benét

text: Benét was born on October 15, 1966 in Mobile, Alabama and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is the youngest of five siblings.


title: Eric Benét

text: Benét sang with a Top 100-style group called Gerard in the late 1980s. Benét, his sister Lisa, and his cousin George Nash Jr. formed a band called Benét and released a self-titled album in 1992, and it went on to sell over 100,000 copies. Two years later, Eric Benét broke onto the music scene with his solo career and signed with Warner Bros. Records, releasing his debut solo album, "True to Myself" in 1996. His second album, "A Day in the Life", was released in 1999 and featured his smash hit "Spend My Life With You (featuring Tamia)". The song rose to No. 1 on the US Billboard R&B charts (for 3 weeks), was certified gold, and nominated for a 2000 Grammy Award for "Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group". The album also won a Soul Train Music Award for "Best R&B/Soul Album, Male".


title: Eric Benét

text: Benét's career, however, was interrupted by a series of personal tragedies. His father died of cancer. In addition, his girlfriend, Tami Marie Stauff, died on April 24, 1993, from injuries suffered in an automobile accident, leaving Eric a single father to their one-year-old daughter, India (born December 4, 1991).


title: Eric Benét

text: In 1994, Benét signed with Warner Bros. Records, releasing his solo debut album, "True to Myself" in 1996. Individual songs from the album were successful, including the top-ten R&B hits "Spiritual Thang", "Femininity" and "Let's Stay Together", which originally appeared on the soundtrack of the film "A Thin Line Between Love and Hate".


title: Eric Benét

text: In between albums, Eric collaborated with his then-labelmates Somethin' for the People on their 1997 album "This Time It's Personal" singing leads on the single "Act Like You Want It". His next album, "A Day in the Life", was released in 1999. Its first single, "Georgy Porgy (featuring Faith Evans)" received significant airplay, but the second single, "Spend My Life With You (featuring Tamia)", became a smash hit. "Spend My Life With You" rose to number one on the American R&B charts, was certified gold, and nominated for a 2000 Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group. The album, "A Day in the Life" also won a Soul Train Music Award for Best R&B/Soul Album, Male.


title: Eric Benét

text: Benét also recorded for Earth, Wind, and Fire's 30th anniversary CD. He contributed vocals to the post-Katrina charity single, "Heart of America", along with Michael McDonald, Wynonna Judd, and Terry Dexter. He has also lent his vocals to many jazz albums for such artists as Wayman Tisdale, George Duke, Chris Botti, Jeff Lorber, and Boney James.


title: Eric Benét

text: Benét recorded his following album "Better and Better" in 2001, but Warner Bros. rejected to release this album and forced him to stay in the R&B genre. Due to the controversy about music style and creative freedom, Benét changed to Reprise-distributed label Friday Records and recorded his next album, "Hurricane." Thus "Hurricane" became his third released studio album on June 21, 2005 in the US. "I Wanna Be Loved" was the song that received the most airplay. The single reached number two on the Urban Adult Contemporary chart.


title: Eric Benét

text: His fourth album "Love & Life" was released on September 9, 2008. It debuted at number eleven on the "Billboard" 200 and number two on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, making this his own highest peak position since "A Day in the Life" in 1999. The first single "You're the Only One" is also his first top 20 hit on the R&B chart in two years.


title: Eric Benét

text: "Lost in Time" was Benét's fifth studio album which was released in the US on November 30, 2010. The first single "Sometimes I Cry" reached number one on the Hot Adult R&B Songs Chart. With its musical direction representing Benét's homage to the sweet soul sound of the early to mid-1970s, the album featured duets with Faith Evans; Chrisette Michelle; Ledisi; and Eddie Levert of The O'Jays.


title: Eric Benét

text: On June 5, 2012, Eric Benét then released his latest album "The One". It was the first album released on Benét's newly formed record label Jordan House Records, which he created in partnership with EMI. "Real Love" was the first single off "The One" and was the No. 1 added song to Urban AC when shipped to radio in October 2011.


title: Eric Benét

text: In 2013, Eric Benét's 6th studio album, "The One", won him the SoulTracks Readers' Choice Award for Best Male Vocalist. "The One" delivered 3 big hit tracks including 'Runnin,' 'Real Love,' and 'Harriett Jones.'


title: Eric Benét

text: In April 2014, Benét signed R&B singer-songwriter Calvin Richardson and Goapele to his imprint along with BMG/Primary Wave Music to release their upcoming albums in the US.


title: Eric Benét

text: In 2014, Eric Benét released an international album, "The Other One", teaming up with the European production collective, The Afropeans to revisit his 2012 album "The One".


title: Eric Benét

text: Later that year, he then released an album of classic cover songs, exclusively distributed in Japan, titled, "From E to U, Vol. 1".


title: Eric Benét

text: In April 2016, he announced a new single "Sunshine" set to premiere on May 13, ahead of his eighth studio album that was due in the fall.


title: Eric Benét

text: On October 7, 2016, Benét released his eponymous seventh studio album and first major album release since 2012's "The One", the album featured guest appearances from Tamia, Arturo Sandoval and MC Lyte.


title: Eric Benét

text: In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic Benet started an on demand powdered by Omnis titled "Eric After Dark" (stylized as Eric @fter Dark).


title: Eric Benét

text: Benét has also been active as an actor; he had a recurring role on "For Your Love" (1998–2002). He made his film debut alongside Mariah Carey in "Glitter" (2001). He has a recurring role on the MTV scripted show "Kaya" (2007) where he plays a music producer. Benét appeared on "Half & Half", in which he portrayed Reece Wilcox in 2005.


title: Eric Benét

text: His second feature film role "Trinity Goodheart" premiered at the American Black Film Festival on July 9, 2011, and premiered on GMC on August 20, 2011.


title: Eric Benét

text: In Fall 2013, Eric Benét appeared on the second season of BET's hit television show, "Real Husbands of Hollywood". Benét was a guest star alongside Kevin Hart, Bobby Brown, and Boris Kodjoe.


title: Eric Benét

text: His eldest daughter India Brianne Jordan was born December 3, 1991, to his late partner Tami Stauff, who died in a car accident in 1993. He married actress Halle Berry in January 2001, but by early October 2003, they had separated, with the divorce finalized in January 2005.


title: Eric Benét

text: On July 31, 2011, he married Toronto native Manuela Testolini, ex-wife of Prince. Their first child, a girl named Lucia Bella, was born on December 21, 2011 and their second daughter together, Amoura Luna, was born on July 13, 2014.


title: Texas Killing Fields

text: The Texas Killing Fields is a 25-acre patch of land in League City, Texas situated a mile from Interstate Highway 45 and approximately 26 miles southeast of Houston.


title: Texas Killing Fields

text: Since the early 1970s, 33 bodies of murder victims have been found along the I-45 area. They were mainly the bodies of girls or young women. Furthermore, many additional young girls have disappeared from this area; these girls' bodies are still missing.


title: Texas Killing Fields

text: It is believed that many of the murders are the work of multiple serial killers. Most of the victims were aged 12–25 years. Some shared similar physical features, such as similar hairstyles.


title: Texas Killing Fields

text: Despite efforts by the League City, Texas police, along with the assistance of the FBI, very few of these murders have been solved, and those that have been solved were predicated on confessions given by prisoners, or confessions given under duress from the police.


title: Texas Killing Fields

text: The fields have been described as "a perfect place [for] killing somebody and getting away with it". After visiting some of the sites of recovered bodies in League City, Ami Canaan Mann, director of the film "Texas Killing Fields", commented: "You could actually see the refineries that are in the south end of League City. You could see the I-45. But if you yelled, no one would necessarily hear you. And if you ran, there wouldn't necessarily be anywhere to go." Despite the fact that many popular true crime podcasts have grouped the murders of Dean and Tina Clouse with these victims, Dean and Tina Clouse were actually found in Houston off Interstate 10 in the 13,000 block of Wallisville Road, not League City (the location of the Texas Killing Fields).


title: Texas Killing Fields

text: In 1972, a gas station operator and convicted sex offender from Galveston, Michael Lloyd Self, became a suspect in the murders of Rhonda Johnson and Sharon Shaw. After hours of interrogation, Self confessed to the murders. He was taken to the district prison, later aiding with locating the bodies. In the following months, he retracted his confession, claiming that he had been tortured into confessing, with the interrogators suffocating with a plastic bag, burning him with cigarette butts and a radiator, as well as being assaulted by the police chief, Don Morris. Nevertheless, on September 18, 1974, Self was convicted of killing Shaw and received a life imprisonment term, despite the fact that his confessions showed great discrepancies concerning the victims' clothing, the date of the murders, the locations of the bodies, how they were killed, and various other details.


title: Texas Killing Fields

text: Three years later, in 1976, Don Morris and his deputy, Tommy Deal, were arrested and convicted of various crimes, including torture and other misconduct against detainees. Morris was sentenced to 55 years, while Deal to 30. After this, Self regularly applied for an appeal, but was rejected every time.


title: Texas Killing Fields

text: Michael Self died on December 21, 2000, still in custody. It was only after his death that a number of police officials, including the former Harris County District Attorney, stated their belief that Self was wrongly convicted.


title: Texas Killing Fields

text: An investigation by the League City police and the FBI in the 1970s identified another local resident, Edward Harold Bell, a known exhibitionist, as a suspect. He had been arrested at least 12 times on charges of showing his genitals to children, but each time avoided imprisonment. Bell lived on a property near the beach in Galveston, where he was a silent partner of a surf shop. He even knew two of the victims, Debbie Ackerman and Maria Johnson, who frequented the store. In the mid-1970s, he acquired a plot of land in Dickinson and lived near the place where two more victims, Brooks Bracewell and Georgia Geer, were last seen alive. In 1978, Bell, while masturbating on the street in front of a group of teenage girls, he was confronted by 26-year-old former Marine Larry Dickens, while his mother called the police. Dickens removed the keys from Bell's vehicle and refused to return them. In retaliation, Edward killed him and fled, but was subsequently apprehended by police. He posted bail several weeks later and in order to avoid conviction and further incarceration, he fled Texas and escaped from the United States, evading police for more than two decades. In 1993, he was arrested in Panama and extradited back to the United States, where he was subsequently convicted of Dickens' murder and received a 70-year sentence. In 1998, Bell wrote several letters to the Harris County Attorney, confessing to the murders of five girls in 1971 and six more between 1974 and 1977. He stated that he did not remember the names of most of his victims, but confidently stated that he had killed Debbie Ackerman, Maria Johnson, Colette Wilson and Kimberly Pitchford, as well as two other then-unnamed girls whom he had abducted from Webster in August 1971, later identified as Rhonda Johnson and Sharon Shaw.


title: Texas Killing Fields

text: Despite this, Bell was never charged with these murders, since no evidence, biological or otherwise, incriminated him. He remained a prime suspect until his death in April 2019.


title: Texas Killing Fields

text: In 2013, Mark Roland Stallings, a convicted kidnapper serving a life term, confessed to killing a girl in 1991 and later dumping her body in the fields, later identified as Donna Prudhomme. At the time of the murder, Stallings was living and working in League City, and was near the homes of some of the girls who went missing and were later found dead. Despite the fact that his testimony shows great consistency with details, he hasn't been charged with any murders yet, but remains a suspect in the murders of Donna Prudhomme and Audrey Cook, as well as two unrelated murders in Fort Bend County.


title: Texas Killing Fields

text: Clyde Hedrick was named as a suspect in the 2022 documentary series . Hedrick was released from jail in 2021 after serving eight years for the death in 1984 of Ellen Beason. He once said he had murdered four to five women.


title: Texas Killing Fields

text: In April 2012, 16 years after Krystal Jean Baker's beaten, raped and strangled body was found, Kevin Edison Smith was arrested and convicted of murdering her. In 2009, Smith had been arrested on a drug charge in Louisiana. At about the same time, a detective tested Baker's dress for DNA. A match was confirmed, using advanced technology that was not available at the time of Krystal's disappearance. A jury deliberated for about 30 minutes and found Smith guilty. He was sentenced to life in prison.


title: Texas Killing Fields

text: In 1987, 30-year-old John Robert King phoned the El Paso police, claiming that on May 24, 1986, he, together with 33-year-old Gerald Peter Zwarst, attacked Shelley Sikes while she was in her car, after which the girl was raped and strangled. After his arrest, Zwarst told the police that he had hidden the body in one of the fields, where the other bodies were found. Both men were asked to indicate the whereabouts of Sikes' body in exchange for avoiding life sentences, but their directions failed to uncover it. King and Zwarst were convicted of aggravated kidnapping, and received life imprisonment sentences in 1998. They were also probed for other such crimes committed during the mid-1980s, but both vehemently denied any involvement. King died from natural causes behind bars in October 2015, while Zwarst died in prison in November of 2020.


title: Texas Killing Fields

text: In May 1997, William Lewis Reece was arrested for the kidnapping and attempted murder of 19-year-old Sandra Sapaugh from Webster. The following year, he was found guilty and convicted, receiving a 60-year imprisonment term. In 2015, his DNA was matched to the killer of 19-year-old Tiffany Johnston, who was found murdered in Oklahoma in 1997. After this revelation, Reece confessed to killing Jessica Cain and Kelli Cox, leading the investigators to the bodies' burial sites. He has been suspected of kidnapping and killing Laura Smither and confessed, in 2016, to Friendswood Police that he did kill her.


title: Texas Killing Fields

text: In 2021, Reece was convicted of Johnston's murder and sentenced to death. The following year, he was extradited to Texas and was convicted of the murders of Smither, Cain and Cox, receiving a life term after pleading guilty to each of the three murders.


title: Texas Killing Fields

text: A film adaptation of the deadly events that occurred along the I-45 highway was released on September 9, 2011, with the title "Texas Killing Fields".


title: Texas Killing Fields

text: It was directed by Ami Canaan Mann and starred Sam Worthington and Jeffrey Dean Morgan. The film is loosely based on the murders while depicting a fictional portrayal of the struggle that local police faced while attempting to solve the murders. The film focuses on the lead police detectives, Capt. Brian Goetschius and Mike Land, who dedicated their careers to solving the mysteries of I-45. The filmmakers hired officers Goetschius and Land as consultants while making the movie.


title: Texas Killing Fields

text: Screenwriter and Federal Agent Donald Ferrarone said he drew information from an interview with a kidnapping victim, Michelle Ann E. and the family of one of the murder victims.


title: Texas Killing Fields

text: Janet Miller, mother of victim Laura Miller, said in an interview with the "Dallas Morning News" that she was angry at first about the film, stating "I was upset because no one notified me. The parents should know what's going on." Tim Miller, the father of Laura Miller, said he saw the film for what the filmmakers intended — to raise awareness about the crimes and to generate new tips.


title: Texas Killing Fields

text: In an interview with CBS News for "48 Hours", actor Sam Worthington said, "People — you never know — might just go and see the movie and go, 'Oh, I remember when someone went down in the fields, and I remember a certain car and a certain person seemed a bit dodgy.' Maybe a family can then know what happened to their daughter."


title: Texas Killing Fields

text: "", a three-part miniseries about the Texas Killing Fields, was released on Netflix in November 2022. The series was directed by Jessica Dimmock.


title: Kensington, Philadelphia

text: Kensington, colloquially known locally as “Kenzo,” is a neighborhood in Philadelphia that belongs to or divides Lower Northeast and North Philadelphia. As with all neighborhoods in the city, the lack of any official designation means the boundaries of the area vary between sources over time and are disputed among locals. Kensington, as most long-term residents view it, refers generally to the area consisting of Kensington, East or Lower Kensington, West Kensington, and Harrowgate; the adjacent Fairhill and Norris Square neighborhoods are more separate but may be included in Kensington; Fishtown and South (Olde) Kensington were previously included but have developed new identities with gentrification. The most conservative boundaries of the neighborhood, shown in the map below, are Front Street and 5th Street to the West, the Amtrak train tracks to the North, Trenton Avenue, the Trenton Avenue train tracks, and Frankford Avenue to the East, and Cecil B. Moore Avenue to the South.


title: Kensington, Philadelphia

text: Kensington is a primarily low income area after the loss of its industries in the 1960s during deindustrialization and the subsequent loss of much of its working class population to the suburbs. Disinvestment and general neglect has led to high abandonment in some sections of the neighborhood, catalyzing several grassroots actions from its residents. Kensington is still considered to be one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Philadelphia for its gun violence and illegal drug market.


title: Kensington, Philadelphia

text: Kensington is home to a large population of Hispanic Americans, mainly Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, and African Americans. Groups of Irish Americans, Polish Americans, and Asian Americans also make up the neighborhood. Additionally, there is a large population of homeless individuals. The neighborhood also recently has seen a large influx of primarily white young urban professionals and gentrification particularly in Fishtown – which is no longer considered to be Kensington – and in Olde Kensington, Norris Square, and East Kensington.


title: Kensington, Philadelphia

text: Kensington was previously known for its large working class Irish Catholic community and was the site of the Philadelphia Nativist Riots in the 19th century. It was also the birthplace of the K&A Gang (currently known as the Northeast Philly Irish Mob), an Irish American organized crime network.


title: Kensington, Philadelphia

text: As with all neighborhoods in the city, the lack of any official designation means the boundaries of the area vary between sources over time. Before the Act of Consolidation, 1854, the Kensington District included portions of the neighborhoods known today as Olde Kensington, East Kensington, West Kensington, and Fishtown, with its northern border at Lehigh Avenue. These boundaries have since shifted so that a large area north of Lehigh Avenue is now considered part of Kensington, while Fishtown is no longer considered part of the neighborhood. The current greater Kensington area roughly coincides with the former Kensington District, Richmond District, Aramingo Borough, and Northern Liberties Township.


title: Kensington, Philadelphia

text: The generally accepted boundaries of the neighborhood are Front Street and 5th Street to the West, the Amtrak train tracks to the North, Trenton Avenue, the Trenton Avenue train tracks, and Frankford Avenue to the East, and Cecil B. Moore Avenue to the South. More simply, some define Kensington as the triangular area bounded by Erie Avenue to the north, Front Street (and sometimes Fifth Street) to the West, and Trenton Avenue to the East. Google Maps’ borders for Kensington show it including much of what is considered Fishtown and excludes West Kensington.


title: Kensington, Philadelphia

text: Kensington belongs to or divides Lower Northeast and North Philadelphia. It is part of the River Wards section of the city, a group of neighborhoods close to the Delaware River in North Philadelphia. Kensington's river ward identity puts it in contrast with the neighborhoods to its west. Fairhill and Norris Square are separate from Kensington with a more central North Philadelphia identity; however, exactly where the neighborhoods separate is subject to much debate and there are people within both neighborhoods who identify with Kensington.


title: Kensington, Philadelphia

text: To the east of Kensington, Port Richmond and Olde Richmond are each predominantly white neighborhoods. Port Richmond has a historically Polish population but is becoming more mixed, and Olde Richmond, an area just north of Fishtown, is experiencing similar gentrification.


title: Kensington, Philadelphia

text: Juniata, the neighborhood to the north, and Kensington are similar demographically, yet the former is slightly wealthier and has more green space.


title: Kensington, Philadelphia

text: Within Kensington, various sub-neighborhoods including Kensington (the Heart of Kensington), Harrowgate, Lower Kensington, West Kensington. Central Kensington, or "the Heart of Kensington" as it is called in a recent Impact Services neighborhood plan, stretches along Kensington Avenue from Tusculum and Somerset Streets to Tioga Street (see Impact Services plan for a more accurate map). The area is known as the center of Kensington and was historically the commercial center of the neighborhood. The area is densely residential, but crime rates are highest in this part of Kensington and, because of relocation actions taken by Philadelphia's Police, it has the highest concentration of homeless and opioid addicted residents. Harrowgate is the furthest north, bordering Juniata and named for Harrowgate Park. It is similar to Central Kensington but is slightly quieter and has fewer crimes.


title: Kensington, Philadelphia

text: The part of Kensington below Lehigh Street, or as it has been rebranded "Lower Kensington" or "East Kensington", is the part of Kensington most clearly experiencing gentrification. As it is just north of Fishtown, higher income residents have been moving further up, increasing property values and rents.


title: Kensington, Philadelphia

text: West Kensington is similar to Norris Square and Fairhill in that it has a similar demographic to most of Kensington while having a more North Central Philadelphia identity, but unlike the other two neighborhoods it remains certainly part of Kensington.


title: Kensington, Philadelphia

text: Kensington was founded by Anthony Palmer in the early 1730s. Using proceeds from the sale of the Hope Farm estate (present day Port Richmond), which included three enslaved people named Abraham, Hannibal, and Phillis, Palmer purchased what was called the Fairman Estate, located along the Delaware River in the Northern Liberties Township (area just north of the City of Philadelphia on the Delaware River). The entire estate consisted of 191.5 acres of land, much smaller than the present-day Kensington area. Palmer was an English merchant who came to Philadelphia by 1704 from Barbados.


title: Kensington, Philadelphia

text: The town of Kensington was named for the area in London known as Kensington, which had been recently established as the residency of the British crown. Palmer laid out his town and sold parcels to many of the shipwrights and shipbuilders who were outgrowing their riverfront lots in present-day Old City, Southwark, and Society Hill areas. He also sold to recent German fishermen immigrants. The original area of Kensington is now more commonly called "Fishtown," mainly because of the shad fishing that was one of the dominant businesses in Kensington in the 18th and 19th centuries.


title: Kensington, Philadelphia

text: Kensington has traditionally been known as one of the working class centers of Philadelphia. Initially, employment focused around the nearby waterfront and the activities of fishermen and ship- and boatbuilders. In the early 19th century, Kensington transitioned to iron and steel manufacturing and became home to a variety of factories, potteries, and machine works.


title: Kensington, Philadelphia

text: By the mid-19th century, Kensington became one of the leading centers of the textile industry, particularly in carpet. McNeil Laboratories began with the purchase of a pharmacy in the area in 1879 by the company's namesake. In 1903 Mother Jones organized a "Children's Crusade" of children from the local mills and mines to protest against child labor. They marched from Kensington to Oyster Bay, New York, carrying banners demanding, "We want to go to School and not the mines!"


title: Kensington, Philadelphia

text: Deindustrialization eventually took hold in the neighborhood in the 1950s, leading to a significant population loss, high unemployment, economic decline, and abandoned homes. However, some sections of the neighborhood have been revitalized in recent years, especially those near Frankford Avenue, Kensington's neighbor south of Lehigh Avenue, and Fishtown, another traditionally working-class neighborhood which has seen rents increase. While most of the large manufacturers have left, the area has many small shops and large renovated factories and warehouses for newer artisans to set up shop.


title: Kensington, Philadelphia

text: Kensington has a population of approximately 42,000 people according to data from ASC 2020 survey. The majority of its population is Hispanic or Latino (59.9%), consisting primarily of Puerto Rican and Dominican Americans. Of the non-Hispanic or Latino population, 19% is White, 15.1% is Black or African American, 3.6% is Asian, and 2.2% identify as two or more races. The median yearly income of the neighborhood is $28,368, ranging from $18,516 to $77,979. Additionally, 65.8%, almost two thirds, of Kensington residents can be described financially as "poor or struggling" (defined by a Ratio of Income in 2020 to Poverty Level of under 2.00). The majority of the neighborhood is renter occupied, 55.6% overall, and up to 66.3% in one tract.


title: Kensington, Philadelphia

text: Kensington's high percentage of low income renters puts its residents at risk of displacement from gentrification. Significant rent increases are commonly triggered by increasing property values and a new wealthier demographic that can afford to pay higher rents. Such a phenomenon is happening across Kensington, causing long-term residents to be priced out. Looking to be close to Center City by both car and transit, young white collar workers have been moving to cheaper neighborhoods around downtown. SEPTA's Market–Frankford Line runs to Center City from Kensington, offering short commute times. Fishtown, formerly a small subsection of Kensington, has transformed with a new population of more college educated white people as well as increased investment from real estate developers.


title: Kensington, Philadelphia

text: Kensington has several medium and small sized parks and playgrounds which offer a variety of uses for visitors. Parks in and adjacent to the neighborhood include Harrowgate Park, McPherson Square, Hope Park, Fairhill Square Park, Norris Square Park, Mascher Park, Frankford Avenue Garden, Arcadia Commons, Trenton and Auburn Park, Letterly Green, Emerald Park, Konrad Square, and Palmer Park. Kensington has many playgrounds within or adjacent to its boundaries including Nelson Playground, Waterloo Playground, Hissey Playground, McPherson Square Playground, Heitzman Recreation Center, McKinley Playground / McVeigh Recreation Center, Scanlon Playground and Ice Rink, Harrowgate Park Playground, Fairhill Square Park Playground, Eric Casiano Field, Mascher Park / Maguire Playground, Black Coyle and McBride Playground, Pop's Playground, Pop's Skatepark, Hagert Street Playground, Shissler Recreation Center, and Towey Playground.


title: Kensington, Philadelphia

text: Strong community groups and nonprofits in Kensington have used the neighborhood's empty lots as an opportunity to create community garden spaces. Community garden spaces in and around the neighborhood include Kensington Corridor Trust Community Garden, NKCDC Garden, Las Parcelas - Norris Square, El Batey - Norris Square, Collins Smith Barrick Play Garden, Emerald Street Community Farm, Rainbow Park, House of Grace Community Garden, Port Kensington, Hart Lane Farm, Circle of Hope / Frankford Ave Garden.


title: Kensington, Philadelphia

text: On March 21, 2021, SEPTA indefinitely closed the Somerset Station of the Market-Frankford Line (MFL). The closure, which happened without consulting with residents and lacked advanced notice, was ostensibly to repair elevators that had been damaged by human waste and trash and concerns about safety for workers. However, the decision to close the station "indefinitely" led hundreds of Kensington residents to march from Somerset Station to Allegheny Station in protest, recreating the longer trip many of them had to take to access the MFL since the closure. Protestors demanded a clear reopening date for the station, safer conditions for SEPTA workers, addiction services, services for homeless people in the area, and more. The station was reopened on April 5 with increased police presence.


title: Kensington, Philadelphia

text: The proposal to open a supervised injection site in Kensington has faced backlash from residents, despite the area's prevalent public drug use. Safehouse, a nonprofit founded in 2018 with the purpose of opening the first supervised injection site in the country, sought a location in Kensington after their proposed South Philly location ran into opposition from neighbors of the site. In Kensington, most residents have opposed the plans and organized against the site being located in Kensington, including leaders of five civic organizations in the area. However, some residents and many harm reduction advocates in the area are supportive.


title: Kensington, Philadelphia

text: Kensington is home to a number of community development corporations working to improve housing conditions and economic activity in the neighborhood:


title: Kensington, Philadelphia

text: Kensington is represented on the Philadelphia's City Council by Districts 1 and 7. Mark Squilla is the Councilmember for District 1 and Maria D. Quiñones Sánchez is the Councilmember for District 7.


title: Kensington, Philadelphia

text: Kensington mostly lies under the 180th State Representative District, being represented by Jose Giral. Parts of the neighborhood lie in the 177th or 197th Districts, represented by Joseph C. Hohenstein and Danilo Burgos respectively.


title: Kensington, Philadelphia

text: The United States Post Office operates the Kensington Post Office at 1602 Frankford Ave. The U.S. Postal Service designates Kensington as ZIP codes 19125 (Kensington Station). The U.S. Postal service considers 19134 (Richmond Station) as the area known as Port Richmond. Adjacent neighborhoods are Northern Liberties (ZIP code 19123), Fishtown and Olde Richmond (ZIP code 19125), Port Richmond (ZIP code 19134).


title: Kensington, Philadelphia

text: The intersection of Kensington and Allegheny Avenues (commonly referred to by Philadelphians as "K & A") is a major transportation and retail hub in the Kensington neighborhood, as it is served by the Frankford Elevated portion of the Market–Frankford Line which, running on top of Kensington Avenue, dominates the intersection. SEPTA City Bus routes (on Kensington Avenue, running underneath the "El") and on Allegheny Avenue, with route nearby on Frankford Avenue, also serve the K & A area.


title: Kensington, Philadelphia

text: The School District of Philadelphia operates public schools. Public schools in Kensington include Kensington High School Complex, Jules E. Mastbaum Vocational Technical High School, Russell Conwell Middle Magnet School and John H. Webster Elementary School. There is also a charter school, Sankofa Freedom Academy Charter School.


title: Kensington, Philadelphia

text: In 2011 the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced the closures of three Kensington Catholic schools, as their student numbers had declined: Ascension of Our Lord, St. Anne, and St. Hugh of Cluny.


title: Kensington, Philadelphia

text: The Free Library of Philadelphia operates the McPherson Square Branch at 601 East Indiana Avenue, and the Kensington Branch at 104 W Dauphin Street.


title: Kensington, Philadelphia

text: Kensington was the birthplace of the K&A Gang, an Irish American organized crime association known for their distribution of methamphetamine in the 1980s. Over time black and Hispanic street dealers took over larger portions of the drug trade, especially heroin, fentanyl, and crack cocaine.


title: Kensington, Philadelphia

text: In recent years, Kensington has experienced increasing social issues primarily related to drug abuse. Sections of the neighborhood are frequented by a significant number of people experiencing drug addiction and/or homelessness. After Philadelphia Police forcibly removed a large encampment of these people from an abandoned railroad track by Lehigh Street, several smaller encampments formed under the tracks. Police, after a year and a half, removed these encampments causing its residents to spread up Kensington Avenue. People suffering from addiction and/or homelessness concentrate around the Somerset and Allegheny train stations, in nearby parks, and on residential streets, angering long-term residents.


title: Kensington, Philadelphia

text: The neighborhood has gained nationwide attention and great notoriety because of extensive press coverage of its thriving narcotics drug scene, often described as the largest on the east coast. The intersection of Kensington Avenue and Somerset Street was listed number one in a 2007 list of the city's top ten recreational drug corners according to an article by "Philadelphia Weekly" reporter Steve Volk. It is also known as an area of prostitution.


title: Kensington, Philadelphia

text: In 2010, three women (Elaine Goldberg, 21; Nicole Piacentini, 35; and Casey Mahoney, 27) were strangled to death in the neighborhood. The killer is referred to by the media as "The Kensington Strangler". A "person of interest" in the case, Antonio Rodriguez, was arrested in January 2011. Rodriguez confessed to the murders and was sentenced to life in prison in 2012.


title: Kensington, Philadelphia

text: In 2022, multiple gunmen fired approximately 40 rounds into a crowd from a black vehicle near Kensington Avenue and East Allegheny hitting nine people.


title: Soviet space program

text: The Soviet space program () was the national space program of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), active from 1955 until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.


title: Soviet space program

text: Soviet investigations in rocketry began with the formation of a research laboratory in 1921, but these efforts were hampered by the devastating war with Germany. Competing in the Space Race with the United States and later with the European Union and China, the Soviet program was notable in setting many records in space exploration, including the first intercontinental missile that launched the first satellite and sent the first animal into Earth orbit in 1957, and placed the first human in space in 1961. In addition, the Soviet program also saw the first woman in space in 1963 and a cosmonaut performing the first spacewalk in 1965. Other milestones included computerized robotic missions exploring the Moon starting in 1959, with the second mission being the first to reach the surface of the Moon, recording the first image of the far side of the Moon, and achieving the first soft landing on the Moon. The Soviet program also achieved the first space rover deployment in 1966 and sent the first robotic probe that automatically extracted a sample of lunar soil and brought it to Earth in 1970. The Soviet program was also responsible for leading the first interplanetary probes to Venus and Mars and made successful soft landings on these planets in the 1960s and 1970s. It put the first space station into low Earth orbit in 1971 and the first modular space station in 1986. Its Interkosmos program was also notable for sending the first citizen of a country other than the United States or Soviet Union into space.


title: Soviet space program

text: After WWII, the Soviet and US space programs both utilised German technology in their early efforts. Eventually, the program was managed under Sergei Korolev, who led the program based on unique ideas derived by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, sometimes known as the father of theoretical astronautics. Contrary to its American, European, and Chinese competitors, who had their programs run under a single coordinating agency, the Soviet space program was divided and split among several internally competing design bureaus led by Korolev, Kerimov, Keldysh, Yangel, Glushko, Chelomey, Makeyev, Chertok and Reshetnev.


title: Soviet space program

text: The Soviet space program served as an important marker of Soviet claims to its global superpower status.


title: Soviet space program

text: The theory of space exploration had a solid basis in the Russian Empire before the First World War with the writings of the Russian and Soviet rocket scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857–1935), who published pioneering papers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries on astronautic theory, including calculating the Rocket equation and in 1929 introduced the concept of the multistaged rocket. Additional astronautic and spaceflight theory was also provided by the Ukrainian and Soviet engineer and mathematician Yuri Kondratyuk who developed the first known lunar orbit rendezvous (LOR), a key concept for landing and return spaceflight from Earth to the Moon. The LOR was later used for the plotting of the first actual human spaceflight to the Moon. Many other aspects of spaceflight and space exploration are covered in his works. Both theoretical and practical aspects of spaceflight was also provided by the Latvian pioneer of rocketry and spaceflight Friedrich Zander, including suggesting in a 1925 paper that a spacecraft traveling between two planets could be accelerated at the beginning of its trajectory and decelerated at the end of its trajectory by using the gravity of the two planets' moons — a method known as gravity assist.


title: Soviet space program

text: The first Soviet development of rockets was in 1921 when the Soviet military sanctioned the commencement of a small research laboratory to explore solid fuel rockets, led by Nikolai Tikhomirov, a chemical engineer and supported by Vladimir Artemyev a Soviet engineer. Tikhomirov had commenced studying solid and Liquid-fueled rockets in 1894, and in 1915 he lodged a patent for "self-propelled aerial and water-surface mines." In 1928 the laboratory was renamed the Gas Dynamics Laboratory (GDL). The First test-firing of a solid fuel rocket was carried out in March 1928, which flew for about 1,300 meters Further developments in the early 1930s were led by Georgy Langemak. and 1932 in-air test firings of RS-82 missiles from an Tupolev I-4 aircraft armed with six launchers successfully took place.


title: Soviet space program

text: A key contributor to early soviet efforts came from a young Ukrainian aircraft engineer Sergey Korolev, who would later become the de facto head of the Soviet space programme.


title: Soviet space program

text: In 1926 as an advanced student Korolev was mentored by the famous Soviet aircraft designer Andrey Tupolev, who was a professor at his University. In 1930 while working as a lead engineer on the Tupolev TB-3 heavy bomber he became interested in the possibilities of liquid-fueled rocket engines to propel airplanes. This led to contact with Zander, and sparked his interest in space exploration and rocketry.


title: Soviet space program

text: Practical aspects built on early experiments carried out by members of the 'Group for the Study of Reactive Motion' (better known by its Russian acronym "GIRD") in the 1930s, where Zander, Korolev and other pioneers such as the Russian engineers Mikhail Tikhonravov, Leonid Dushkin, Vladimir Vetchinkin and Yuriy Pobedonostsev worked together. On August 18, 1933, the Lenigrad branch of GIRD, led by Tikhonravov, launched the first hybrid propellant rocket, the GIRD-09, and on November 25, 1933, the Soviet's first liquid-fueled rocket GIRD-X.


title: Soviet space program

text: In 1933 GIRD was merged with GDL by the Soviet government to form the Reactive Scientific Research Institute (RNII), which brought together the best of the Soviet rocket talent, including Korolev, Langemak, Ivan Kleymyonov and former GDL engine designer Valentin Glushko. Early success of RNII included the conception in 1936 and first flight in 1941 of the RP-318 the Soviets first rocket-powered aircraft and the RS-82 and RS-132 missiles entered service by 1937, which became the basis for development in 1938 and serial production from 1940 to 1941 of the Katyusha multiple rocket launcher, another advance in the reactive propulsion field. RNII's research and development were very important for later achievements of the Soviet rocket and space programs.


title: Soviet space program

text: During the 1930s Soviet rocket technology was comparable to Germany's, but Joseph Stalin's Great Purge severely damaged its progress. In November 1937, Kleymyonov and Langemak were arrested and later executed, Glushko and many other leading engineers were imprisoned in the Gulag. Korolev was arrested in June 1938 and sent to a forced labour camp in Kolyma in June 1939. However, due to intervention by Tupolev, he was relocated to a prison for scientists and engineers in September 1940.


title: Soviet space program

text: During World War II rocketry efforts were carried out by three Soviet design bureaus. RNII continued to develop and improve solid fuel rockets, including the RS-82 and RS-132 missiles and the Katyusha rocket launcher, where Pobedonostsev and Tikhonravov continued to work on rocket design. In 1944 RNII was renamed Scientific Research Institute No 1 (NII-I) and combined with design bureau OKB-293, led by Soviet engineer Viktor Bolkhovitinov, which developed, with Aleksei Isaev, Boris Chertok, Leonid Voskresensky and Nikolay Pilyugin a short-range rocket powered interceptor called Bereznyak-Isayev BI-1.


title: Soviet space program

text: Special Design Bureau for Special Engines (OKB-SD) was led by Glushko and focused on developing auxiliary liquid-fueled rocket engines to assist takeoff and climbing of prop aircraft, including the RD-IKhZ, RD-2 and RD-3. In 1944, the RD-1 kHz auxiliary rocket motor was tested in a fast-climb Lavochkin La-7R for protection of the capital from high-altitude "Luftwaffe" attacks. In 1942 Korolev was transferred to OKB-SD, where he proposed development of the long rang missiles D-1 and D-2.


title: Soviet space program

text: The third design bureau was Plant No 51 (OKB-51), led by Soviet Ukrainian Engineer Vladimir Chelomey, where he created the first Soviet pulsating air jet engine in 1942, independently of similar contemporary developments in Nazi Germany.


title: Soviet space program

text: During World War II Nazi Germany developed rocket technology that was more advanced than the Allies and a race commenced between the Soviet Union and the United States to capture and exploit the technology. Soviet rocket specialist were sent to Germany in 1945 to obtain V-2 rockets and worked with German specialists in Germany and later in the Soviet Union to understand and replicate the rocket technology. The involvement of German scientists and engineers was an essential catalyst to early Soviet efforts. In 1945 and 1946 the use of German expertise was invaluable in reducing the time needed to master the intricacies of the V-2 rocket, establishing production of the R-1 rocket and enable a base for further developments. However, after 1947 the Soviets made very little use of German specialists and their influence on the future Soviet rocket program was marginal.


title: Soviet space program

text: The Soviet space program was tied to the USSR's Five-Year Plans and from the start was reliant on support from the Soviet military. Although he was "single-mindedly driven by the dream of space travel", Korolev generally kept this a secret while working on military projects—especially, after the Soviet Union's first atomic bomb test in 1949, a missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead to the United States—as many mocked the idea of launching satellites and crewed spacecraft. Nonetheless, the first Soviet rocket with animals aboard launched in July 1951; the two dogs were recovered alive after reaching 101 km in altitude. Two months ahead of America's first such achievement, this and subsequent flights gave the Soviets valuable experience with space medicine.


title: Soviet space program

text: Because of its global range and large payload of approximately five tons, the reliable R-7 was not only effective as a strategic delivery system for nuclear warheads, but also as an excellent basis for a space vehicle. The United States' announcement in July 1955 of its plan to launch a satellite during the International Geophysical Year greatly benefited Korolev in persuading Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to support his plans. In a letter addressed to Khrushchev, Korolev stressed the necessity of launching a "simple satellite" in order to compete with the American space effort. Plans were approved for Earth-orbiting satellites ("Sputnik") to gain knowledge of space, and four uncrewed military reconnaissance satellites, Zenit. Further planned developments called for a crewed Earth orbit flight by and an uncrewed lunar mission at an earlier date.


title: Soviet space program

text: After the first Sputnik proved to be a successful propaganda coup, Korolev—now known publicly only as the anonymous "Chief Designer of Rocket-Space Systems"—was charged to accelerate the crewed program, the design of which was combined with the Zenit program to produce the Vostok spacecraft. After Sputnik, Soviet scientists and program leaders envisioned establishing a crewed station to study the effects of zero-gravity and the long term effects on lifeforms in a space environment. Still influenced by Tsiolkovsky—who had chosen Mars as the most important goal for space travel—in the early 1960s the Soviet program under Korolev created substantial plans for crewed trips to Mars as early as 1968 to 1970. With closed-loop life support systems and electrical rocket engines, and launched from large orbiting space stations, these plans were much more ambitious than America's goal of landing on the Moon.


title: Soviet space program

text: The Soviet space program was secondary in military funding to the Strategic Rocket Forces' ICBMs. While the West believed that Khrushchev personally ordered each new space mission for propaganda purposes, and the Soviet leader did have an unusually close relationship with Korolev and other chief designers, Khrushchev emphasized missiles rather than space exploration and was not very interested in competing with Apollo.


title: Soviet space program

text: While the government and the Communist Party used the program's successes as propaganda tools after they occurred, systematic plans for missions based on political reasons were rare, one exception being Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, on Vostok 6 in 1963. Missions were planned based on rocket availability or ad hoc reasons, rather than scientific purposes. For example, the government in February 1962 abruptly ordered an ambitious mission involving two Vostoks simultaneously in orbit launched "in ten days time" to eclipse John Glenn's Mercury-Atlas 6 that month; the program could not do so until August, with Vostok 3 and Vostok 4.


title: Soviet space program

text: Unlike the American space program, which had NASA as a single coordinating structure directed by its administrator, James Webb through most of the 1960s, the USSR's program was split between several competing design groups. Despite the remarkable successes of the Sputniks between 1957 and 1961 and Vostoks between 1961 and 1964, after 1958 Korolev's OKB-1 design bureau faced increasing competition from his rival chief designers, Mikhail Yangel, Valentin Glushko, and Vladimir Chelomei. Korolev planned to move forward with the Soyuz craft and N-1 heavy booster that would be the basis of a permanent crewed space station and crewed exploration of the Moon. However, Dmitry Ustinov directed him to focus on near-Earth missions using the Voskhod spacecraft, a modified Vostok, as well as on uncrewed missions to nearby planets Venus and Mars.


title: Soviet space program

text: Yangel had been Korolev's assistant but with the support of the military, he was given his own design bureau in 1954 to work primarily on the military space program. This had the stronger rocket engine design team including the use of hypergolic fuels but following the Nedelin catastrophe in 1960 Yangel was directed to concentrate on ICBM development. He also continued to develop his own heavy booster designs similar to Korolev's N-1 both for military applications and for cargo flights into space to build future space stations.


title: Soviet space program

text: Glushko was the chief rocket engine designer but he had a personal friction with Korolev and refused to develop the large single chamber cryogenic engines that Korolev needed to build heavy boosters.


title: Soviet space program

text: Chelomey benefited from the patronage of Khrushchev and in 1960 was given the plum job of developing a rocket to send a crewed vehicle around the Moon and a crewed military space station. With limited space experience, his development was slow.


title: Soviet space program

text: The progress of the Apollo program alarmed the chief designers, who each advocated for his own program as the response. Multiple, overlapping designs received approval, and new proposals threatened already approved projects. Due to Korolev's "singular persistence", in August 1964—more than three years after the United States declared its intentions—the Soviet Union finally decided to compete for the moon. It set the goal of a lunar landing in 1967—the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution—or 1968. At one stage in the early 1960s the Soviet space program was actively developing 30 projects for launchers and spacecraft. With the fall of Krushchev in 1964, Korolev was given complete control of the crewed program.


title: Soviet space program

text: In 1961, Valentin Bondarenko, a cosmonaut and member of the Vostok Spacecraft, was killed in an endurance experiment after the chamber he was in caught on fire. The Soviet Union chose to cover up his death and continue on with the space program.


title: Soviet space program

text: Korolev died in January 1966, following a routine operation that uncovered colon cancer, from complications of heart disease and severe hemorrhaging. Kerim Kerimov, who had previously served as the head of the Strategic Rocket Forces and had participated in the State Commission for Vostok as part of his duties, was appointed Chairman of the State Commission on Piloted Flights and headed it for the next 25 years (1966–1991). He supervised every stage of development and operation of both crewed space complexes as well as uncrewed interplanetary stations for the former Soviet Union. One of Kerimov's greatest achievements was the launch of Mir in 1986.


title: Soviet space program

text: The leadership of the OKB-1 design bureau was given to Vasily Mishin, who had the task of sending a human around the Moon in 1967 and landing a human on it in 1968. Mishin lacked Korolev's political authority and still faced competition from other chief designers. Under pressure, Mishin approved the launch of the Soyuz 1 flight in 1967, even though the craft had never been successfully tested on an uncrewed flight. The mission launched with known design problems and ended with the vehicle crashing to the ground, killing Vladimir Komarov. This was the first in-flight fatality of any space program.


title: Soviet space program

text: Following this tragedy and under new pressures, Mishin developed a drinking problem. The Soviets were beaten in sending the first crewed flight around the Moon in 1968 by Apollo 8, but Mishin pressed ahead with development of the flawed super heavy N1, in the hope that the Americans would have a setback, leaving enough time to make the N1 workable and land a man on the Moon first. There was a success with the joint flight of Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 in January 1969 that tested the rendezvous, docking, and crew transfer techniques that would be used for the landing, and the LK lander was tested successfully in earth orbit. But after four uncrewed test launches of the N1 ended in failure, the program was suspended for two years and then cancelled, removing any chance of the Soviets landing men on the Moon before the United States.


title: Soviet space program

text: Besides the crewed landings, the abandoned Soviet Moon program included the multipurpose moon base Zvezda, first detailed with developed mockups of expedition vehicles and surface modules.


title: Soviet space program

text: Following this setback, Chelomey convinced Ustinov to approve a program in 1970 to advance his Almaz military space station as a means of beating the US's announced Skylab. Mishin remained in control of the project that became Salyut but the decision backed by Mishin to fly a three-man crew without pressure suits rather than a two-man crew with suits to Salyut 1 in 1971 proved fatal when the re-entry capsule depressurized killing the crew on their return to Earth. Mishin was removed from many projects, with Chelomey regaining control of Salyut. After working with NASA on the Apollo–Soyuz, the Soviet leadership decided a new management approach was needed, and in 1974 the N1 was canceled and Mishin was out of office. The design bureau was renamed NPO Energia with Glushko as chief designer.


title: Soviet space program

text: In contrast with the difficulty faced in its early crewed lunar programs, the USSR found significant success with its remote moon operations, achieving two historical firsts with the automatic Lunokhod and the Luna sample return missions. The Mars probe program was also continued with some success, while the explorations of Venus and then of the Halley comet by the Venera and Vega probe programs were more effective.


title: Soviet space program

text: In spite of many other Soviet-allied nations contributed to the national space program, the Soviet program was mostly inherited by the Russian Federation and fewer facilities to Ukraine after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The primary spaceport, Baikonur Cosmodrome, is now in Kazakhstan that leases the facility to Russia.


title: Soviet space program

text: The Soviet space program had withheld information on its projects predating the success of Sputnik, the world's first artificial satellite. In fact, when the Sputnik project was first approved, one of the most immediate courses of action the Politburo took was to consider what to announce to the world regarding their event.


title: Soviet space program

text: The Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) established precedents for all official announcements on the Soviet space program. The information eventually released did not offer details on who built and launched the satellite or why it was launched. The public release revealed, "there is an abundance of arcane scientific and technical data... as if to overwhelm the reader with mathematics in the absence of even a picture of the object". What remains of the release is the pride for Soviet cosmonautics and the vague hinting of future possibilities then available after Sputnik's success.


title: Soviet space program

text: The Soviet space program's use of secrecy served as both a tool to prevent the leaking of classified information between countries and also to create a mysterious barrier between the space program and the Soviet populace. The program's nature embodied ambiguous messages concerning its goals, successes, and values. Launchings were not announced until they took place. Cosmonaut names were not released until they flew. Mission details were sparse. Outside observers did not know the size or shape of their rockets or cabins or most of their spaceships, except for the first Sputniks, lunar probes and Venus probe.


title: Soviet space program

text: However, the military influence over the Soviet space program may be the best explanation for this secrecy. The OKB-1 was subordinated under the Ministry of General Machine Building, tasked with the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles, and continued to give its assets random identifiers into the 1960s: "For example, the Vostok spacecraft was referred to as 'object IIF63' while its launch rocket was 'object 8K72K'". Soviet defense factories had been assigned numbers rather than names since 1927. Even these internal codes were obfuscated: in public, employees used a separate code, a set of special post-office numbers, to refer to the factories, institutes, and departments.


title: Soviet space program

text: The program's public pronouncements were uniformly positive: as far as the people knew, the Soviet space program had never experienced failure. According to historian James Andrews, "With almost no exceptions, coverage of Soviet space exploits, especially in the case of human space missions, omitted reports of failure or trouble".


title: Soviet space program

text: "The USSR was famously described by Winston Churchill as 'a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma' and nothing signified this more than the search for the truth behind its space program during the Cold War. Although the Space Race was literally played out above our heads, it was often obscured by a figurative 'space curtain' that took much effort to see through" says Dominic Phelan in the book "Cold War Space Sleuths" (Springer-Praxis 2013).


title: Soviet space program

text: Two days after the United States announced its intention to launch an artificial satellite, on July 31, 1955, the Soviet Union announced its intention to do the same. Sputnik 1 was launched on October 4, 1957, beating the United States and stunning people all over the world.


title: Soviet space program

text: The first official cosmonaut fatality during training occurred on March 23, 1961, when Valentin Bondarenko died in a fire within a low pressure, high oxygen atmosphere.


title: Soviet space program

text: The Soviets continued striving for the first lunar mission with the huge N-1 rocket, which exploded on each of four uncrewed tests shortly after launch. The Americans won the race to land men on the Moon with Apollo 11 on July 20, 1969.


title: Soviet space program

text: In 1971, the Soyuz 11 mission to stay at the Salyut 1 space station resulted in the deaths of three cosmonauts when the reentry capsule depressurized during preparations for reentry. This accident resulted in the only human casualties to occur in space (beyond , as opposed to the high atmosphere). The crew members aboard Soyuz 11 were Vladislav Volkov, Georgy Dobrovolsky, and Viktor Patsayev.


title: Soviet space program

text: On April 5, 1975, Soyuz 7K-T No.39, the second stage of a Soyuz rocket carrying two cosmonauts to the Salyut 4 space station malfunctioned, resulting in the first crewed launch abort. The cosmonauts were carried several thousand miles downrange and became worried that they would land in China, which the Soviet Union was then having difficult relations with. The capsule hit a mountain, sliding down a slope and almost slid off a cliff; however, the parachute lines snagged on trees and kept this from happening. As it was, the two suffered severe injuries and the commander, Lazarev, never flew again.


title: Soviet space program

text: On March 18, 1980, a Vostok rocket exploded on its launch pad during a fueling operation, killing 48 people.


title: Soviet space program

text: In August 1981, Kosmos 434, which had been launched in 1971, was about to re-enter. To allay fears that the spacecraft carried nuclear materials, a spokesperson from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR assured the Australian government on 26 August 1981, that the satellite was "an experimental lunar cabin". This was one of the first admissions by the Soviet Union that it had ever engaged in a crewed lunar spaceflight program.


title: Soviet space program

text: In September 1983, a Soyuz rocket being launched to carry cosmonauts to the Salyut 7 space station exploded on the pad, causing the Soyuz capsule's abort system to engage, saving the two cosmonauts on board.


title: Soviet space program

text: The Soviet Buran program attempted to produce a class of spaceplanes launched from the Energia rocket, in response to the US Space Shuttle. It was intended to operate in support of large space-based military platforms as a response to the Strategic Defense Initiative. Buran only had orbital maneuvering engines, unlike the Space Shuttle, Buran did not fire engines during launch, instead relying entirely on Energia to lift it out of the atmosphere. It copied the airframe and thermal protection system design of the US Space Shuttle Orbiter, with a maximum payload of 30 metric tons (slightly higher than that of the Space Shuttle), and weighed less. It also had the capability to land autonomously. Due to this, some retroactively consider it to be the more capable launch vehicle. By the time the system was ready to fly in orbit in 1988, strategic arms reduction treaties made Buran redundant. On November 15, 1988, Buran and its Energia rocket were launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, and after two orbits in three hours, glided to a landing a few miles from its launch pad. While the craft survived that re-entry, the heat shield was not reusable. This failure resulted from United States counter intelligence efforts. After this test flight, the Soviet Ministry of Defense would defund the program, considering it relatively pointless compared to its price.


title: Soviet space program

text: The Polyus satellite was a prototype orbital weapons platform designed to destroy Strategic Defense Initiative satellites with a megawatt carbon-dioxide laser. Launched mounted upside-down on its Energia rocket, its single flight test was a failure when the inertial guidance system failed to rotate it 180° and instead rotated a complete 360°.


title: Soviet space program

text: The Energia was a successfully developed super heavy-lift launch vehicle which burned liquid hydrogen fuel. But without the Buran or Polyus payloads to launch, it was also canceled due to lack of funding on dissolution of the USSR.


title: Soviet space program

text: The Vesta mission would have consisted of two identical double-purposed interplanetary probes to be launched in 1991. It was intended to fly-by Mars (instead of an early plan to Venus) and then study four asteroids belonging to different classes. At 4 Vesta a penetrator would be released.


title: Soviet space program

text: The Tsiolkovsky mission was planned as a double-purposed deep interplanetary probe to be launched in the 1990s to make a "sling shot" flyby of Jupiter and then pass within five or seven radii of the Sun. A derivative of this spacecraft would possibly be launched toward Saturn and beyond.


title: ISO basic Latin alphabet

text: The ISO basic Latin alphabet is an international standard (beginning with ISO/IEC 646) for a Latin-script alphabet that consists of two sets (uppercase and lowercase) of 26 letters, codified in various national and international standards and used widely in international communication. They are the same letters that comprise the current English alphabet. Since medieval times, they are also the same letters of the modern Latin alphabet. The order is also important for sorting words into alphabetical order.


title: ISO basic Latin alphabet

text: By the 1960s it became apparent to the computer and telecommunications industries in the First World that a non-proprietary method of encoding characters was needed. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) encapsulated the Latin script in their (ISO/IEC 646) 7-bit character-encoding standard. To achieve widespread acceptance, this encapsulation was based on popular usage. The standard was based on the already published "American Standard Code for Information Interchange", better known as ASCII, which included in the character set the 26 × 2 letters of the English alphabet. Later standards issued by the ISO, for example ISO/IEC 8859 (8-bit character encoding) and ISO/IEC 10646 (Unicode Latin), have continued to define the 26 × 2 letters of the English alphabet as the basic Latin script with extensions to handle other letters in other languages.


title: ISO basic Latin alphabet

text: The Unicode block that contains the alphabet is called "C0 Controls and Basic Latin". Two subheadings exist:


title: ISO basic Latin alphabet

text: In ASCII the letters belong to the printable characters and in Unicode since version 1.0 they belong to the block "C0 Controls and Basic Latin". In both cases, as well as in ISO/IEC 646, ISO/IEC 8859 and ISO/IEC 10646 they are occupying the positions in hexadecimal notation 41 to 5A for uppercase and 61 to 7A for lowercase.


title: ISO basic Latin alphabet

text: Not case sensitive, all letters have code words in the ICAO spelling alphabet and can be represented with Morse code.


title: ISO basic Latin alphabet

text: All of the lowercase letters are used in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). In X-SAMPA and SAMPA these letters have the same sound value as in IPA.


title: ISO basic Latin alphabet

text: Notable omissions due to these rules include Spanish, Esperanto, Filipino and German. The German alphabet is sometimes considered by tradition to contain only 26 letters (with ä, ö, ü considered variants and ß considered a ligature), but the current German orthographic rules include ä, ö, ü, ß in the alphabet placed after Z; however, this order is normally not used in collation: usually ä, ö, ü are collated as a, o, u (or sometimes as ae, oe, ue), ß as ss.


title: ISO basic Latin alphabet

text: The Roman (Latin) alphabet is commonly used for column numbering in a table or chart. This avoids confusion with row numbers using Arabic numerals. For example, a 3-by-3 table would contain Columns A, B, and C, set against Rows 1, 2, and 3. If more columns are needed beyond Z (normally the final letter of the alphabet), the column immediately after Z is AA, followed by AB, and so on (see bijective base-26 system). This can be seen by scrolling far to the right in a spreadsheet program such as Microsoft Excel or LibreOffice Calc.


title: ISO basic Latin alphabet

text: These are double-digit "letters" for table columns, in the same way that 10 through 99 are double-digit numbers. The Greek alphabet has a similar extended form that uses such double-digit letters if necessary, but it is used for chapters of a fraternity as opposed to columns of a table.


title: ISO basic Latin alphabet

text: Such double-digit letters for bullet points are AA, BB, CC, etc., as opposed to the number-like place value system explained above for table columns.


title: So I Married the Anti-fan

text: So I Married the Anti-fan () is a 2021 South Korean streaming television series starring Choi Tae-joon, Choi Soo-young, Hwang Chan-sung, Han Ji-an and Kim Min-kyu. It is based on the 2010 novel of the same title which was made into a webtoon and was also previously adapted into a Chinese film. It aired from April 30 to June 19, 2021 on Naver TV, with simultaneous broadcast through V Live and global platforms iQIYI, Viki and Amazon Prime Video in Japan.


title: So I Married the Anti-fan

text: It is about the romance between top star Hoo Joon (Choi Tae-joon) and his anti-fan reporter Lee Geun-young (Choi Soo-young) who end up participating in a television show where they live together.


title: So I Married the Anti-fan

text: "So I Married the Anti-fan" is a pre-produced series. The first script reading of the cast was held on August 20, 2018, and filming began the same month.


title: So I Married the Anti-fan

text: The release of the series was delayed for three years due to difficulties in finding a television network to broadcast it. Adding to that, the two male leads, Choi Tae-joon and Hwang Chan-sung, started their military service not long after it had finished filming, so there were potential difficulties in promotional activities without them.


title: Sonja Sohn

text: Sonja Denise Plack (' Williams; born May 9, 1964), known professionally as Sonja Sohn"', is an American actress, activist and filmmaker, best known for portraying Baltimore detective Kima Greggs in the HBO drama "The Wire" (2002–2008). She is also known for having starred in the independent film "Slam", which she co-wrote, and appearing as Samantha Baker in the ABC series "Body of Proof". Her role in "The Wire" led to her work as the leader of a Baltimore community initiative called ReWired for Change.


title: Sonja Sohn

text: Sohn was born Sonja Denise Williams in Fort Benning, Georgia. Her mother was Korean and her father was Black. Her parents met when her father was stationed in South Korea after the Korean War. She attended and graduated from Warwick High School in Newport News.


title: Sonja Sohn

text: Before she was an actress, Sohn was a slam poet. While performing her work on stage, she was spotted by Marc Levin who offered her a role in his film "Slam". She also wrote lyrics and co-wrote the script for the film. It went on to win the Grand Jury Prize for Dramatic Film at the Sundance Film Festival. After debuting in "Slam", Sohn appeared in minor roles in films such as "Shaft" and "Bringing Out the Dead". She also starred in independent films "Perfume", "G" and "The Killing Zone". Through the five seasons of the HBO series "The Wire", she held a starring role as Detective Kima Greggs.


title: Sonja Sohn

text: She struggled during the first season of "The Wire" and considered quitting as she had trouble recalling her lines. She has also guest-starred on many episodes of "Cold Case" as "Toni Halstead". She won the supporting television actress award at the 2008 Asian Excellence Awards for her character on "The Wire".


title: Sonja Sohn

text: She had a supporting role in the Hollywood film "". In 2008-09, she was a guest star in the ABC series "Brothers & Sisters", and in 2010 she appeared in an episode of CBS series "The Good Wife". In 2011, she was a guest star on the show "Bar Karma". She played Detective Samantha Baker in the first two seasons of the medical drama television series "Body of Proof" with Dana Delany and Jeri Ryan, which premiered on ABC on March 29, 2011.


title: Sonja Sohn

text: On May 30, 2014, it was announced that Sohn would be joining season 2 of "The Originals", in a recurring role as the witch Lenore a.k.a. Esther Mikaelson.


title: Sonja Sohn

text: Sohn made her directorial debut with the 2017 HBO documentary "Baltimore Rising" about the 2015 Baltimore protests and community organizing that arose in response to police violence.


title: Sonja Sohn

text: Previously involved in political activism (she campaigned in North Carolina in support of Barack Obama's 2008 presidential bid), Sohn took a break from acting in 2009 to concentrate on social issues. She is the founder and CEO of the Baltimore-based reWIRED for Change, an outreach program intended to communicate with (and ultimately rehabilitate) at-risk youth involved in criminal activity.


title: Sonja Sohn

text: The program is run out of the University of Maryland School of Social Work and uses episodes of "The Wire" as a teaching tool, encouraging the participants to examine and query their lives and past actions. Other actors and writers involved with "The Wire" serve as board members. In 2011, she was presented with the Woman of the Year award from the Harvard Black Men's Forum.


title: Sonja Sohn

text: In 2003, Sohn married didgeridoo player Adam Plack. She has two daughters born 1986 and 1990. Sohn and Plack are divorced. On July 21, 2019, Sohn was arrested in North Carolina and charged with felony possession of cocaine.


title: Saturday Night Fever (soundtrack)

text: Saturday Night Fever is the soundtrack album from the 1977 film "Saturday Night Fever" starring John Travolta. The soundtrack was released on November 15, 1977. It is one of the best-selling albums in history, and remains the second-biggest-selling soundtrack of all time, after "The Bodyguard," selling over 40 million copies worldwide.


title: Saturday Night Fever (soundtrack)

text: In the United States, the album was certified 16× Platinum for shipments of at least 16 million units. The album stayed atop the charts for 24 straight weeks from January to July 1978 and stayed on "Billboard"s album charts for 120 weeks until March 1980. Three singles from the album contributed by the Bee Gees – "How Deep Is Your Love", "Stayin' Alive" and "Night Fever" – along with Yvonne Elliman's "If I Can't Have You", all reached No. 1 in the US. In the UK, the album spent 18 consecutive weeks at No. 1. The album epitomized the disco phenomenon on both sides of the Atlantic and was an international sensation. The album has been added to the National Recording Registry in the Library of Congress in 2014 for being culturally significant.


title: Saturday Night Fever (soundtrack)

text: According to the DVD commentary for "Saturday Night Fever", the producers intended to use the song "Lowdown" by Boz Scaggs in the rehearsal scene between Tony and Stephanie in the dance studio, and choreographed their dance moves to the song. However, representatives for Scaggs's label, Columbia Records, refused to grant legal clearance for it, as they wanted to pursue another disco movie project, which never materialized. Composer David Shire, who scored the film, had to, in turn, write a song to match the dance steps demonstrated in the scene and eliminate the need for future legal hassles. However, this track does not appear on the movie's soundtrack.


title: Saturday Night Fever (soundtrack)

text: The Bee Gees's involvement in the film did not begin until post-production. As John Travolta asserted, "The Bee Gees weren't even involved in the movie in the beginning ... I was dancing to Stevie Wonder and Boz Scaggs."


title: Saturday Night Fever (soundtrack)

text: Producer Robert Stigwood commissioned the Bee Gees to create the songs for the film. As Robin Gibb asserted:


title: Saturday Night Fever (soundtrack)

text: The brothers wrote the songs "virtually in a single weekend" at Château d'Hérouville studio in France. The first song they recorded was "If I Can't Have You", but their version was not used in the film.


title: Saturday Night Fever (soundtrack)

text: Barry Gibb remembered the reaction when Stigwood and music supervisor Bill Oakes arrived and listened to the demos:


title: Saturday Night Fever (soundtrack)

text: Maurice Gibb recalled, "We played him demo tracks of 'If I Can't Have You', 'Night Fever' and 'More Than a Woman'. He asked if we could write it more discoey."


title: Saturday Night Fever (soundtrack)

text: The track was recorded at Criteria Studios, with Maurice Gibb playing a bass line similar to the guitar riff, Barry Gibb and Alan Kendall on guitar riffs, and Blue Weaver on synthesizers.Barry chose to sing falsetto on the whole song, except on the line "life’s going nowhere, somebody help me". Dennis Bryon, who was a backing drummer, left in the middle of the session due to the death of his mother. So the group looked for a replacement.


title: Saturday Night Fever (soundtrack)

text: However, as there was a shortage of qualified drummers in the area, they tried out a drum machine, with unsatisfactory results. After listening to the drum track of the already-recorded Night Fever,they took two bars from that track, and re-recorded them as a loop on a separate tape.


title: Saturday Night Fever (soundtrack)

text: The original issue of the album included the original studio version of "Jive Talkin; later LP pressings included a version culled from "Here at Last ... Bee Gees ... Live". All CD releases have included the original "Jive Talkin. "Jive Talkin was to have been used in a deleted scene taking place the day after Tony Manero's first Saturday night at the disco, but as the sequence was cut for the final film, the song was cut as well. In addition to the Bee Gees songs, additional incidental music was composed and adapted by David Shire. Three of Shire's cues – "Manhattan Skyline", "Night on Disco Mountain" (based on the classical piece "Night on Bald Mountain") and "Salsation" – are included on the soundtrack album as well. Five additional cues – "Tony and Stephanie", "Near the Verrazano Bridge" (both adapted from the Bee Gees' song "How Deep Is Your Love"), "Barracuda Hangout", "Death on the Bridge" and "All Night Train" – while heard in the film, remain unreleased on CD. In 1994, the soundtrack was re-released on CD through Polydor Records. In 2006, the album was re-released on Reprise Records as part of the Bee Gees' regaining control of their master tapes.


title: Saturday Night Fever (soundtrack)

text: To commemorate the movie's 40th anniversary, Capitol Records released a newly remastered version on April 21, 2017, with the original artwork and gatefold packaging.


title: Saturday Night Fever (soundtrack)

text: On November 17, 2017, a deluxe box set was released with the original soundtrack, 4 new mixes of "Stayin' Alive", "Night Fever", "How Deep Is Your Love" and "You Should Be Dancing", a collector's book, art prints, a movie poster and a turntable mat.


title: Saturday Night Fever (soundtrack)

text: Along with the success of the movie, the soundtrack, composed and performed primarily by the Bee Gees, is the second best-selling soundtrack album of all time. "Saturday Night Fever" had a large cultural impact in the United States. The Bee Gees had originally written and recorded five of the songs used in the film – "Stayin' Alive", "Night Fever", "How Deep Is Your Love", "More Than a Woman" (performed in the film in two different versions – one version by Tavares, and another by the Bee Gees) and "If I Can't Have You" (performed in the movie by Yvonne Elliman) as part of a regular album. They had no idea at the time they would be making a soundtrack and said that they basically lost an album in the process. Two previously released Bee Gees songs – "Jive Talkin and "You Should Be Dancing" – are also included on the soundtrack. Other previously released songs from the disco era round out the music in the movie.


title: Saturday Night Fever (soundtrack)

text: The soundtrack won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. It is the only disco album to do so, and one of only three soundtrack albums so honored. In 2012, the album was ranked No. 132 on "Rolling Stone" magazine's list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time", ranked again in a 2020 revised list at number 163. The soundtrack hit the No. 1 spot on the "Billboard" chart's Pop Album and Soul Album charts. In 2003 the TV network VH1 named it the 57th greatest album of all time, and it was ranked 80th in a 2005 survey held by British television's Channel 4 to determine the 100 greatest albums of all time. Pitchfork Media listed "Saturday Night Fever" as the 34th best album of the 1970s.


title: Saturday Night Fever (soundtrack)

text: The album was added to the National Recording Registry in the Library of Congress on March 21, 2013 for preservation.


title: The Finale (Seinfeld)

text: "The Finale" is an episode of the American television sitcom "Seinfeld". As the two-part series finale, it comprises the 179th and 180th episodes of the show and the 23rd and 24th episodes of the ninth season. It aired on NBC on May 14, 1998, to an audience of 76 million viewers. Its initial running time was 1 hour and 15 minutes.


title: The Finale (Seinfeld)

text: In this episode, Jerry and George's "Jerry" pilot is finally picked up as a series by NBC. However, when their private plane is forced to land in a small town in Massachusetts, Jerry, George, and their friends Elaine and Kramer unknowingly violate a local duty to rescue law (referred to as a Good Samaritan law in the episode's dialogue) and are put on trial. Co-creator Larry David, who departed from the series after the seventh season, returned to write the script for this last episode.


title: The Finale (Seinfeld)

text: Elizabeth Clark calls Jerry and George from the office of NBC President James Kimbrough, offering a deal to produce their pilot "Jerry" as a series. Jerry and George will be moving to California to begin work. Jerry is given use of NBC's private jet and he, George, Elaine, and Kramer decide to go to Paris for "one last hurrah". Elaine calls her friend Jill. First, she can't get any reception with her cell phone on the street. Then, Jerry calls her with news of the pilot pickup and Elaine hangs up on Jill to take the call.


title: The Finale (Seinfeld)

text: On the plane, Kramer desperately tries to get the water out of his ears from a trip to the beach by jumping up and down. He stumbles into the cockpit, causing the pilots to lose control. They make an emergency landing in the town of Latham, Massachusetts. While waiting for the airplane to be repaired, they witness an overweight man named Howie getting carjacked at gunpoint. They make fat jokes while Kramer films the theft on his camcorder. Howie tells an officer nearby, who arrests the group on a duty to rescue violation that requires bystanders to help out in such a situation.


title: The Finale (Seinfeld)

text: Jerry calls on Jackie Chiles to represent them for the upcoming trial. The prosecution has the eyewitness testimonies of Howie and the responding officer and Kramer's camcorder recording as proof of their violation, but because this is the first case implementing this law, District Attorney Hoyt stacks the case against them as much as possible by summoning numerous character witnesses. Nearly everyone the defendants have met over the past nine years is brought in to testify to their unethical behavior, both real and assumed, to the point where the judge calls a halt to the testimonies in the simple interest of time.


title: The Finale (Seinfeld)

text: The jury finds Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer guilty of criminal indifference, and the judge sentences them to a year in prison. While awaiting their prison transport, Kramer finally gets the water out of his ears. Elaine decides to use her one phone call from prison to call Jill, saying that the prison call is the "king of calls". While sitting in their cell, Jerry talks about the placement of buttons on George's shirt (alluding to the first conversation of the first episode). George asks if they had this conversation before and Jerry says he believes so.


title: The Finale (Seinfeld)

text: Jerry performs standup in the prison cafeteria in front of George, Kramer and the rest of the inmates. Nobody other than Kramer is laughing. As Jerry is being heckled and forceably being taken off the stage he says "Hey, you've been great! See you in the cafeteria!"


title: The Finale (Seinfeld)

text: "The Finale" featured a massive cast. As usual for "Seinfeld", the four regular cast members all appeared:


title: The Finale (Seinfeld)

text: The "Seinfeld" team made an effort to recruit as many guest stars from previous episodes as possible for "The Finale". However, only a handful of them were given significant roles:


title: The Finale (Seinfeld)

text: The rest were limited to cameo appearances, in many cases simply summarizing the events of the episode they appeared in to the courtroom or watching the trial in silence from the gallery. Geraldo Rivera, Jane Wells, and Keith Hernandez played themselves in the episode.


title: The Finale (Seinfeld)

text: "Seinfeld" co-creator Larry David, who had left the series after season seven, returned to write this episode. This freed up co-creator/star Jerry Seinfeld, who had had his hands full running the show without David, to put together an opening stand-up comedy routine for the first time since David left the show.