title: American comic book

text: In 1961, at the demand of publisher Martin Goodman (who was reacting to a surge in sales of National's newest superhero title "The Justice League of America"), writer/editor Stan Lee and artist/co-plotter Jack Kirby created the Fantastic Four for Atlas, which now re-named itself Marvel Comics. With an innovation that changed the comic-book industry, "Fantastic Four" #1 initiated a naturalistic style of superheroes with human failings, fears, and inner demons - heroes who squabbled and worried about the likes of paying the rent. In contrast to the super-heroic do-gooder archetypes of established superheroes at the time, this ushered in a revolution. With dynamic artwork by Kirby, Steve Ditko, Don Heck, and others, complementing Lee's colorful, catchy prose, the new style became very popular among teenagers and college students who could identify with the angsty and irreverent nature of characters like Spider-Man, Hulk, X-Men and Fantastic Four. This was a time of social upheaval, giving birth to a new generation of hip and more counter-cultural youngsters, who found a voice in these books. Because Marvel's books were distributed by its rival, National, from 1957 until 1968 Marvel were restricted to publishing only eight titles a month. This was a cloud with a silver lining, and proved the making of Marvel, allowing the company to concentrate its brightest and best talent on a small number of titles, at a time when its rivals were spreading their creative talents very thin across a huge number of monthly titles. The quality of Marvel's product soared in consequence, and sales soared with it.


title: American comic book

text: While the creators of comics were given credit in the early days of comic books, this practice had all but vanished during the 1940s and 1950s. Comic books were produced by comic book "companies" rather than by individual creators (EC being a notable exception, a company that not only credited its creative teams but also featured creators' biographies). Even comic books by revered and collectible artists like Carl Barks were not known by their creator's name—Disney comics by Barks were signed "Walt Disney". In the 1960s, DC, and then Marvel, began to include writer and artist credits on the comics that they published.


title: American comic book

text: Other notable companies publishing comics during the Silver Age included the American Comics Group (ACG), Charlton, Dell, Gold Key, Harvey Comics, and Tower.


title: American comic book

text: Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll were featured, as the anti-authoritarian underground comix made waves in 1968, following the publication of Robert Crumb's irregularly published "Zap Comix". Frank Stack had published "The Adventures of Jesus" as far back as 1962, and there had been a trickle of such publications until Crumb's success. What had started as a self-publishing scene soon grew into a minor industry, with Print Mint, Kitchen Sink, Last Gasp and Apex Novelties among the more well-known publishers. These comix were often extremely graphic, and largely distributed in head shops that flourished in the countercultural era.


title: American comic book

text: Legal issues and paper shortages led to a decline in underground comix output from its 1972 peak. In 1974 the passage of anti-paraphernalia laws in the US led to the closing of most head shops, which throttled underground comix distribution. Its readership also dried up as the hippie movement itself petered out in the mid-1970s.


title: American comic book

text: "Wizard" originally used the phrase "Bronze Age", in 1995, to denote the Modern Horror age. But historians and fans use "Bronze Age" to describe the period of American mainstream comics history that began with the period of concentrated changes to comic books in 1970. Unlike the Golden/Silver Age transition, the Silver/Bronze transition involves many continuing books, making the transition less sharp.


title: American comic book

text: The development of the "direct market" distribution system in the 1970s coincided with the appearance of comic-book specialty stores across North America. These specialty stores were a haven for more distinct voices and stories, but they also marginalized comics in the public eye. Serialized comic stories became longer and more complex, requiring readers to buy more issues to finish a story.


title: American comic book

text: In the mid-to-late 1980s, two series published by DC Comics, "" and "Watchmen", had a profound impact upon the American comic-book industry. Their popularity, along with mainstream media attention and critical acclaim, combined with changing social tastes, led to a considerably darker tone in comic books during the 1990s nicknamed by fans as the "grim-and-gritty" era.


title: American comic book

text: The growing popularity of antiheroes such as Wolverine and the Punisher exemplified this change, as did the darker tone of some independent publishers such as First Comics, Dark Horse Comics, and (founded in the 1990s) Image Comics. This tendency towards darkness and nihilism was manifested in DC's production of heavily promoted comic book stories such as "" in the "Batman" series (in which The Joker brutally murdered Batman's sidekick Robin), while at Marvel the continuing popularity of the various X-Men books led to storylines involving the genocide of superpowered "mutants" in allegorical stories about religious and ethnic persecution.


title: American comic book

text: In addition, published formats like the graphic novel and the related trade paperback enabled the comic book to gain some respectability as literature. As a result, these formats are now common in book retail and the collections of US public libraries.


title: Dead Space (2023 video game)

text: Dead Space is an upcoming survival horror game developed by Motive Studio and published by Electronic Arts. A remake of the 2008 game of the same name developed by EA Redwood Shores, it is scheduled to be released on January 27, 2023, for PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S. It is the first release in the "Dead Space" series since 2013's "Dead Space 3".


title: Dead Space (2023 video game)

text: The game retains the same basic plot as the original. Set in the 26th century, the story follows engineer Isaac Clarke, a crewman on a repair vessel assigned to the USG "Ishimura", a massive planetary mining ship that has gone silent. While investigating a distress call sent by the ship's medical officer Nicole Brennan (Isaac's girlfriend), the vessel's crew is attacked by mutated human corpses; Isaac is forced to fend for himself as he tries to save his surviving crewmates and learn the truth behind the loss of "Ishimura".


title: Dead Space (2023 video game)

text: Games journalist Jeff Grubb of "GamesBeat" reported that a remake of "Dead Space" was in development at Motive on July 1, 2021. He speculated that the success of EA's single-player "" (2019) and Capcom's remakes of "Resident Evil 2" and "Resident Evil 3" were instrumental in the publisher's decision to green-light the "Dead Space" remake.


title: Dead Space (2023 video game)

text: The game is being developed using EA's proprietary Frostbite engine, which Motive Studios previously used to develop "" and the single-player campaign of "Star Wars Battlefront II". The game will retain the same story and structure as the original but feature redesigned assets, character models, and environments. The developers intend to take advantage of SSDs on the ninth generation of consoles to have the game be presented as an "uninterrupted sequence shot", absent of loading screens. Content that was removed from the original game due to technical constraints may also be added. The game will not feature any microtransactions, in contrast to "Dead Space 3", where the addition of microtransactions resulted in a negative reception. The art director for the game, Mike Yazijan, previously worked as art director at EA Montreal assisting Visceral Games in developing "Dead Space 2".


title: Dead Space (2023 video game)

text: The original "Dead Space" was noted for its audio design, and the team are intended to stay true to the original atmosphere while improving and modifying where necessary. The original musical score by Jason Graves was retained, with new musical elements and cues composed by Trevor Gureckis. Gunner Wright will be reprising his role as Isaac Clarke, who will be fully voiced, like his appearances in "Dead Space 2" and "Dead Space 3". Tanya Clarke is also reprising her role as Nicole Brennan from "Dead Space 2". The other cast members include Anthony Alabi as Zach Hammond, Brigitte Kali Canales as Kendra Daniels, and Faran Tahir as Challus Mercer.


title: Dead Space (2023 video game)

text: The game was announced at EA's Play Live event on July 22, 2021, accompanied by a teaser trailer, with an initial target release date of late 2022. On March 11, 2022, it was announced that the game was being pushed to early 2023. On October 4, 2022, a gameplay trailer for "Dead Space" was released which revealed the game's release date to be January 27, 2023.


title: Bison Dele

text: Bison Dele ( ; born Brian Carson Williams; April 6, 1969 – July 7, 2002) was an American professional basketball player who played center for the NBA's Orlando Magic, Denver Nuggets, Los Angeles Clippers, Chicago Bulls and Detroit Pistons. Dele won a championship with the Bulls in 1997. He is believed to have been murdered at sea by his older brother Miles Dabord in 2002. His girlfriend, Serena Karlan, and skipper Bertrand Saldo are also presumed to have been killed by Dabord.


title: Bison Dele

text: Williams was born on Easter Sunday, April 6, 1969, in Fresno, California, the second son of Patricia Phillips and of singer Eugene "Geno" Williams Jr. of the musical group The Platters, who later divorced. Patricia Phillips remarried and raised her two sons in Fresno until that marriage ended when Brian was in junior high. He was of African-American and Cherokee descent.


title: Bison Dele

text: As a junior in high school, he attended Bishop Gorman High School in Las Vegas, Nevada. He averaged 17.3 points, 12.7 rebounds, 2.1 assists, 2.5 steals and 9.1 blocks per game in his senior season, shooting 57.7% from the field. As a senior, he attended Saint Monica Catholic High School in Santa Monica, California, where his jersey is retired. He was a track and field runner, until a high school growth spurt pushed him towards basketball. His collegiate basketball career began at the University of Maryland, where he played for one year before sitting out the next season while transferring to the University of Arizona.


title: Bison Dele

text: After playing for two seasons at Arizona, Williams was drafted with the 10th pick in the first round of the 1991 NBA Draft by the Orlando Magic. He saw limited action during two seasons in Orlando.


title: Bison Dele

text: After playing for Orlando, Williams joined the Denver Nuggets, for whom he played two seasons. In 1993–94, he played a career-high 80 games and averaged 8.0 points per game. Williams then played one year for the Los Angeles Clippers, earning increased playing time and averaging 15.8 points per game. Due to a contract dispute and reports that Williams' asking price was too high, he could not find a team at the beginning of the 1996–97 season, sitting out most of the season. He was then signed by the Chicago Bulls nine games before the end of the season and became an important backup player in the Bulls' run to their fifth championship. Williams finished his career playing two seasons with the Detroit Pistons, where he set career highs of 16.2 points and 8.9 rebounds per game in 1997–98.


title: Bison Dele

text: In 1998, he changed his name to Bison Dele to honor his Native American (Cherokee) and African ancestry, and played his final season under that name.


title: Bison Dele

text: Dele suddenly retired from the NBA before the start of the 1999–2000 season at age 30, when he was still in the prime of his career. He had been the Pistons' highest-paid player, but had strained relationships with the organization and decided to walk away from the remaining five years and US$36.45 million on his contract rather than be traded. It has also been theorized he had never been especially passionate about playing basketball and felt he had earned enough money to allow him to walk away from the pro game and lifestyle.


title: Bison Dele

text: Dele reportedly dated Madonna at one point in his career. He played the saxophone, violin and trumpet, enjoyed adventure travel, and earned a pilot's license. After his retirement he spent long periods traveling to Lebanon, the Mediterranean, and the Australian outback before learning to sail and purchasing a catamaran.


title: Bison Dele

text: On July 6, 2002, Dele and his girlfriend, Serena Karlan, along with skipper Bertrand Saldo, sailed from Tahiti on Dele's catamaran, the "Hukuna Matata". Dele's brother, Miles Dabord (born Kevin Williams), was the only person involved in the voyage who was seen or heard from after July 8, 2002, when the last of three satellite phone calls from the voyage was made. Dele and Karlan had previously kept regular contact with their banks and family members. On July 20, Dabord brought the boat into Tahiti; he was alone aboard the vessel.


title: Bison Dele

text: On September 6, 2002, police used a sting operation organized by Dele's family and friends to detain Dabord in Phoenix. Dabord had forged Dele's signature in order to buy US$152,000 worth of gold under his brother's name, using Dele's passport as identification. Mexican police later found that Dabord had been staying at a hotel in Tijuana, Mexico. Two days before, the "Hukuna Matata", which had been registered in Tahiti under another name, was found off the coast of Tahiti with its name plate removed and some possible bullet holes patched. About the same time, Dabord phoned his mother, Patricia Phillips, telling her that he would never hurt Dele and that he could not survive in prison.


title: Bison Dele

text: The FBI and French authorities became involved in the investigation, and concluded that Dele, Karlan and Saldo were probably murdered and then thrown overboard, by Dabord. Given that the bodies were likely dumped in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, it would be highly unlikely that the three would ever be found.


title: Bison Dele

text: Dabord, the only first-person source of information regarding the case, intentionally overdosed on insulin and slipped into a coma. On September 27, 2002, Dabord died in a California hospital. In his account of events, Dabord said he and his brother had fought, and that Karlan had been accidentally hit and died when her head struck part of the boat. When Saldo wanted to report her death, a panicked Dele killed him; Dabord then shot his brother in self-defense, threw the bodies overboard and subsequently fled back to the U.S. It is not known if Dabord's story is true that Dele wanted to kill Saldo, and that Dabord had to shoot Dele in self-defense, as that would not explain why Dabord allegedly threw all three bodies overboard, and subsequently overdosed on insulin purposely instead of explaining to authorities what had happened, if that were all true. After Dabord's death, officials did not expect to find much more regarding the case. A memorial service was then held for both Dele and Dabord.


title: Bison Dele

text: The brothers were frequently at odds with each other. After Dabord's death, his lawyer and lifelong friend, Paul White, was questioned regarding Dabord but was somewhat evasive and gave little information about what happened.


title: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

text: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is the second studio album by American rock band Neutral Milk Hotel, released on February 10, 1998, by Merge Records. The music is predominantly indie rock and psychedelic folk, and is characterized by an intentionally low-quality sound. Traditional rock instruments like the guitar and drums are paired with less conventional instruments such as a singing saw, uilleann pipes, and "zanzithophone" (Casio digital horn). The lyrics are surrealistic and opaque, with themes ranging from nostalgia to love, and were partially inspired by "The Diary of a Young Girl" by Anne Frank.


title: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

text: "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" was recorded at Pet Sounds Studio between July to September 1997. Producer Robert Schneider worked with bandleader Jeff Mangum to improve upon the low-quality sound of the band's debut album "On Avery Island". Instead of using studio equipment like guitar pedals or effects units to induce distortion, Schneider developed a recording technique that involved heavy compression. To promote the album, Neutral Milk Hotel undertook a tour of North America and Europe, and developed a reputation for chaotic and physically demanding performances.


title: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

text: Contemporary reviews were mostly positive, but not laudatory. Over time however, the album developed a cult following, and Mangum struggled to cope with this newfound attention. He grew tired of performing and explaining his lyrics, and disappeared from the public eye. In the years since its release "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" critical standing has risen tremendously, and has been described by music journalists as a landmark album for indie rock and as one of the best albums of the 1990s.


title: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

text: Neutral Milk Hotel originated in Ruston, Louisiana, in the late 1980s, as one of the many home-recording projects of musician Jeff Mangum. The simple home recordings Mangum made with his friends Robert Schneider, Bill Doss, and Will Cullen Hart led to the formation of the Elephant 6 musical collective. After graduating from high school, Mangum released the single "Everything Is" on Cher Doll Records under the alias Neutral Milk Hotel. The single's exposure convinced Mangum to record more music under this name. He moved to Denver and worked with Schneider to record the 1996 album "On Avery Island". Although Schneider was interested in an expansive Beatlesque production, he aligned with Mangum's preference for a low-quality sound called lo-fi, admitting that "at first it was frustrating, but I came to enjoy it. That's how I learned to produce, doing that record, because I totally had to let go of what I thought it should be like."


title: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

text: After the release of "On Avery Island", Mangum recruited three musicians to tour with: Julian Koster, Jeremy Barnes, and Scott Spillane. The North American tour in support of "On Avery Island" generated enough money to enable the quartet to move to Athens, Georgia, where a large group of Elephant 6 musicians were living. By the spring of 1997, Mangum had written and demoed nearly every song for "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea". He shared the demos with his bandmates before they moved to Denver to record the album.


title: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

text: "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" was produced by Schneider, and was recorded from July to September 1997. It was recorded at Pet Sounds Studio in Denver, the home of Schneider's friend Jim McIntyre. Schneider paid half the rent for access to every room in the house except McIntyre's bedroom. The recording sessions for "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" coincided with several other sessions. Schneider was already producing the Minders' album "Hooray for Tuesday" when Neutral Milk Hotel members began to arrive, and decided to halt production until "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" was finished. McIntyre was recording the Von Hemmling song "My Country 'Tis of Thee" in his bedroom while the band members played, and whenever Koster was not needed, he would work on songs for the Music Tapes, such as "Television Tells Us" and "Aliens".


title: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

text: Schneider separated the band members into different rooms, but always kept Mangum close to the control room in case he wanted to plug Mangum's acoustic guitar into a four-track cartridge. Schneider occasionally tried using an electric guitar, but wiped these recordings as he felt it did not sound like Mangum's music. As the sessions progressed, Schneider wanted to find a way to record the acoustic sound into a microphone instead of into the cartridge. He decided to record the sound through Neumann U 87 microphones. According to Scheider: "[Mangum] liked an acoustic plugged in because he kinda found it fuzzy and raw, like an electric guitar, but it had a strummy quality to it, too ... I had developed an acoustic guitar sound on my own that he was really happy with by the second record, and I think it's really good."


title: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

text: Neutral Milk Hotel biographer Kim Cooper believes "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" is one of the most heavily distorted albums ever made, but also notes the lack of equipment such as Big Muffs or distortion pedals. Mangum liked having a layer of distortion over the music, but Schneider decided to not use standard effects equipment. Instead, Schneider used heavy compression and placed a Bellari RP-220 tube mic pre-amp close to his guitar. Schneider then ran the sound through a mixing console and maxed out the sound on a cassette tape. This process was done for nearly every instrument used on "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea". Schneider claimed that the nonlinearities of microphone distortion gave the album its unique "warm" quality.


title: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

text: The horn arrangements were primarily written by Schneider. He wrote these parts on a piano or organ, then conferred with trombonist Rick Benjamin to ensure the musical notation was correct. Spillane was the last band member to arrive, so Schneider showed him the arrangements he had already written. The trumpets were written in treble clef, but as Spillane could only read bass clef, he had to rewrite these arrangements before he could learn them. As he did while learning the songs for "On Avery Island", Spillane spent hours every day practicing and writing more arrangements in the basement. Toward the end of the recording sessions, Schneider and Spillane worked together to seamlessly combine their differing arrangements. Schneider's parts were more melancholic while Spillane wrote chaotic and boisterous parts.


title: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

text: "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" is difficult to categorize into a specific genre. Critics generally describe it as indie rock and psychedelic folk with a lo-fi sound, but also note the wide range of influences, including Eastern European choral music, Canterbury Sound, circus music, musique concrète, drone music, free jazz, and Tropicália. Jason Ankeny of AllMusic compares the album to a "marching band on an acid trip", while Kim Cooper wrote: "the music is like nothing else in the 90s underground". Part of the musical variance comes from the instruments used on the album. Traditional instruments like the accordion, drums, and distorted guitars are paired with more unique instruments like the shortwave radio, singing saw, uilleann pipes, and zanzithophone.


title: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

text: Jeff Mangum's guitars are a key component for much of the album. Mangum often plays simple chord progressions, which Erik Himmelsbach of "Spin" compared to the '50s progression. Other important aspects to the music include the heavy amount of distortion, as well as the multitrack recording method Schneider used for the majority of the instruments. "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" emphasizes structure and texture, and tracks seamlessly segue into one another. The overall sound of the album sometimes abruptly shifts from track to track. "Rolling Stone" notes the range of musical styles present, such as slow funeral marches and fast-paced punk rock. Critic Chris DeVille wrote: "On the musical axis, Neutral Milk Hotel veered from piercingly intimate psychedelic campfire sing-alongs to full-band segments that barreled ahead with haphazard grace."


title: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

text: Mangum wrote the lyrics for every track on "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea". The lyrics are surreal and often reference seemingly unrelated subject matter. Cooper cites the opening track "King of Carrot Flowers, Pt. One" as an example of this style of songwriting. While the lyrics are about childhood fantasies, there are references to sexual awakenings, domestic violence, religious fanaticism, and tarot card readings. Fans and journalists have long argued over the exact meaning of the album. Some listeners believe there is a central message found throughout the lyrics, while other listeners believe the album is too abstract to derive meaning from. DeVille said: "["In the Aeroplane Over the Sea"] collides the familiar and the disorienting in a way that renders meaning elusive even as it provokes intense emotional reckoning."


title: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

text: Common lyrical themes include childhood and nostalgia. "Pitchfork" Mark Richardson wrote that the lyrics are written with childlike wonder, in which mundane interactions are illustrated as fantastical moments. "It's like a children's book or a fairy tale, "Where the Wild Things Are" on wax" said Richardson. Mangum's lyrics have also been seen as a depiction of adolescence, and the need to develop one's own identity. Some critics have compared the album to a coming-of-age story. Mangum's descriptions of these experiences evoke a sense of nostalgia. According to Richardson: "it's an album of memories and associations, how skin feels against the grass and what passes through your mind the first time you realize your own powerlessness. It puts ultimate faith in raw feelings, the kind that consume you without logic or sense."


title: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

text: Love is another prominent lyrical theme, although this concept takes on different forms. PJ Sauerteig of "PopMatters" believes "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" central message is Mangum's longing desire to be loved by the people he idolizes, whether that be a love interest or his peers. The lyrics will sometimes describe how Mangum wants to physically merge with the things he loves, which symbolizes a need for interconnectedness with loved ones. Sauerteig cites the track "Two-Headed Boy" as an example of this concept. The track describes conjoined twins, although Sauerteig believes the conjoined twins are a metaphor for two people who unsuccessfully merged, and now feel like they are trapped in an interdependent relationship.


title: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

text: Although there is little concrete information as to the genesis of some of the lyrics, Mangum has stated a major influence was Anne Frank, a teenage girl who died in a Nazi concentration camp. Before recording "On Avery Island", Mangum read "The Diary of a Young Girl", a book of writings from Frank's diary that she kept while in hiding during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. He was deeply affected by the book and spent "about three days crying", having dreams of traveling back in time and saving her. Tracks such as "Holland, 1945" and "Ghost" incorporate elements of Anne Frank's life into the lyrics. As a result, some listeners have labeled "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" as a concept album. However, Frank's importance to the lyrics is a subject of debate. Some critics argue she is merely an inspiration for some of the tracks, as opposed to an important character within a narrative arc. While writing about the Anne Frank connection, Anwen Crawford of "The Monthly" said: "It would be overly literal, though, to describe "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" as an album about the Holocaust, for Frank is only one of many phantasms to populate a set of looping, interlinked narratives that proceed with the closed logic of a dream or a religious vision."


title: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

text: The front cover contains a drawing of two old-fashioned bathers out at sea. One swims in the water while the other sits atop a dock. The latter wears a red dress and has a drumhead instead of a face. The back cover shows a drawing of marching band members wearing stilts, led by a short bandmaster. Both illustrations were created by Chris Bilheimer, who at the time was designing artwork for the band R.E.M. Mangum met Bilheimer while living in Athens, and asked him to create the artwork for Neutral Milk Hotel's upcoming album. Mangum was interested in imagery associated with early 20th century penny arcades, and would often buy postcards from thrift shops that featured this style. One postcard in particular featured three bathers at sea, which Bilheimer cropped and slightly altered to form the album cover.


title: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

text: In addition to Bilheimer's drawings, New York multimedia artist Brian Dewan created the interior artwork found within physical copies of "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea". Dewan's best-known piece for the album is a black and white sketch of a flying Victrola over an industrial plant. Dewan had previously been commissioned by Koster to make the artwork for the Music Tapes demos. When Mangum asked Dewan for artwork, he was provided with two sketches: a magic radio, and a flying Victrola, the latter of which was chosen. To give the disparate drawings a cohesive look, Bilheimer scanned every image onto a dirty piece of paper, which made the drawings look the same age, with an effect of slow decay. Bilheimer then splashed dirt on the album cover just above the female character's outstretched arm.


title: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

text: "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" was released in the United States on February 10, 1998 by Merge Records, and in the United Kingdom in May 1998 by The Blue Rose Record Company. Merge pressed 5,500 CD and 1,600 vinyl copies, and expected sales to be similar to "On Avery Island". These initial projections were correct, as the album sold moderately well for the first few months. The song "Holland, 1945" was released as a 7" single.


title: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

text: To promote the album, Neutral Milk Hotel embarked on a tour of North America and Europe. Musicians John Fernandes and Will Westbrook were brought on as touring members, and were taught how to play the horn parts with Spillane. For the tour, Mangum wanted the band to learn how to play the Charlie Haden track "Song for Che", a difficult improvisational jazz piece. Although Mangum was expecting a lot out of the newly expanded band, many outsiders noted how caring and nurturing he was toward everyone involved. Filmmaker Lance Bangs said: "He wasn't any kind of a taskmaster—never turning and glaring at anybody—it was never like that. Clearly, there was a love of his circle of friends that made it important for him to build this community and bring them along with him."


title: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

text: While on tour, Neutral Milk Hotel gained a reputation for chaotic and physically demanding concerts. Great Lakes member Ben Crum recalled: "It was definitely dangerous. There often seemed to be a very real chance that someone, probably Julian, would get hurt. Jeff was always doing things like picking him up and throwing him into the drums." The audio technicians for most venues were confused and did not know what to expect. As a result, Laura Carter took on the unusual role of "mix-board translator". According to Carter: "It was more like talking them through what was about to happen, because so much was happening onstage that without someone helping, it was a wail or squeal and the soundman would look at twenty instruments onstage and not know what to dive for."


title: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

text: Initial critical responses to "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" were generally enthusiastic, but not laudatory. In "Spin", Erik Himmelsbach wrote that Neutral Milk Hotel's psychedelic folk-infused music had set them apart from the indie-pop sound of their Elephant 6 peers. Rob Brunner of "Entertainment Weekly" praised the unique instrumentation and "bouncy pop melodies", but described some of the acoustic songs as "lifeless acoustic warblers". "Pitchfork" M. Christian McDermott also commended the music, which he called a blend of ""Sgt. Pepper" with early 90s lo-fi" that he found "as catchy as it is frightening". Ben Ratliff of "Rolling Stone" was more critical of the music. He felt the rhythms and chord changes were boring, while the heavy layer of distortion masked the absence of decent melodies. Ratliff ultimately summarized his review by writing: ""Aeroplane" is thin-blooded, woolgathering stuff."


title: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

text: The lyrics drew critical attention. Dele Fadele of "NME" described the lyrics as "evocative" and "compelling". Both Himmelsbach and Ratliff noted the semireligious undertones. Himmelsbach described the lyrics as "darkly comedic and wonderfully wide-eyed", and commended the stream of consciousness style of songwriting. McDermott also discussed the dark lyrics, and wrote: "[Mangum] inherits a world of cannibalism, elastic sexuality and freaks of nature. We can only assume he likes it there."


title: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

text: "CMJ New Music Monthly" ranked "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" as the number one album of 1998, and it placed 15th in the "Village Voice" annual Pazz & Jop poll of American music critics. Despite the album's generally positive reception, it fell into critical neglect shortly after its release. In a year-end column accompanying the Pazz & Jop, Robert Christgau dismissed the album as "a funereal jape that gets my goat." In a 2016 article, journalist Luke Winkie said the initial reception was "the standard response to a confusing second album from a band without a preexisting pedigree: distant praise, hedged bets, avoiding the heart at all cost."


title: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

text: After the album's release, Neutral Milk Hotel's heightened profile had a negative effect on Mangum. He grew tired of touring and having to constantly explain his lyrics, and his mental health began to deteriorate. In a 2002 interview, Mangum said that "a lot of the basic assumptions I held about reality started crumbling". He would sometimes shut himself inside his home for days on end, and hoarded rice in preparation for the possible Y2K problem. Mangum realized he would not be able to continue writing and performing his songs for a public audience, but could not bring himself to tell the band. Some of them had quit their jobs to be in Neutral Milk Hotel, and it seemed impossible to justify a breakup immediately after their first genuine success. Instead, he avoided the topic of new music altogether and increasingly isolated himself. The situation resulted in the unspoken, unannounced breakup of Neutral Milk Hotel shortly after the tour. The band members remained friends, but moved on to other projects. Mangum occasionally worked on music over the next few years—he released a field recording of Bulgarian folk music, played as a touring member of Circulatory System, and briefly hosted a program for the freeform radio station WFMU—but remained out of the spotlight and released no new songs.


title: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

text: There was no public explanation for the band's sudden breakup. Some of the group's original fans became angry and accused Mangum of being selfish, while others perpetuated hoaxes around Neutral Milk Hotel's breakup. The large response helped the album gain a cult following, and converted Mangum into a larger-than-life figure. In 2003, "Creative Loafing" writer Kevin Griffis dedicated an entire cover story to trying to track down Mangum for personal closure. The search ended when Mangum sent him an email that read: "I'm not an idea. I am a person, who obviously wants to be left alone." Journalist Mark Richardson attempted to explain the album's rise in popularity: "Because [Mangum] was inaccessible, there was no outlet for connection other than the record itself and other fans who shared a passion. By doing nothing, Neutral Milk Hotel developed a cult."


title: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

text: Some journalists have noted the release of "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" coincided with the rise of the Internet. The album, and by extension Neutral Milk Hotel, became common fixtures on online message boards, and early music websites like "Pitchfork" gave the band an increased level of promotion. Winkie wrote: "Would "Aeroplane" occupy the same untouchable place in American indie-rock culture if it was released in 1992? Or 1987? It's hard to say. The internet has a one-of-a-kind relationship with Neutral Milk Hotel." Memes about "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" proliferated on websites like 4chan, reflecting a wave of "hipster" listeners who first discovered the album online, long after the band had broken up.


title: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

text: "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" critical standing rose tremendously in the years after its release. Mark Richardson of "Pitchfork" awarded the 2005 reissue a perfect 10/10 score. Richardson said that although he initially found Mangum's infatuation with Anne Frank embarrassing, he grew an appreciation for the lyrics, and called them the album's defining characteristic. He highlighted the surrealistic imagery, and wrote: "It's a record of images, associations, and threads; no single word describes it so well as the beautiful and overused kaleidoscope." In the 2004 edition of "The Rolling Stone Album Guide", critic Roni Sarig described the album as "timeless transcendentalist pop steeped in a century of American music, from funeral marches to punk rock..."Aeroplane" is a fragile, creaky, dignified, and ballsy record". AllMusic's Jason Ankeny wrote that: "Neutral Milk Hotel's second album is another quixotic sonic parade; lo-fi yet lush, impenetrable yet wholly accessible". Ankeny did note however the lyrics were too abstract to derive meaning from. Marvin Lin of "Tiny Mix Tapes" felt it was difficult to concisely explain why the album is so great, and ultimately summarized his review with the statement: "As beautiful as it is disturbing, "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" is a stunning piece of art that draws you deeper with each listen. Most great art takes time to appreciate, and this album is no exception."


title: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

text: Even amid the generally positive critical reevaluation, the album was not without its detractors. According to Richardson, listeners who dislike the album have often found its lyrics to be awkward, infantile, or disconcerting, and he said Mangum could come across as a "privileged dude sharing naive stoner wisdom". "Grantland" writer Steven Hyden said he had once been an admirer of the album but felt his appreciation diminish over time, which he ascribed in part to the gradual loss of its original mystique. Just as the album itself became a meme, the tendency to lavish it with hyperbolic praise also became an online in-joke, exemplified by a headline from the satirical website "ClickHole": "Disgusting: ISIS Just Released a 2-Star Review of "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea"".


title: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

text: Despite modest sales projections and never charting on the "Billboard" 200, "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" has sold over 393,000 copies, with reported sales of 25,000 copies a year. "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" was the sixth best-selling vinyl record of 2008, and its sales helped contribute to a revitalization of vinyl in the late 2000s. The "33⅓" book about "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" by author Kim Cooper similarly shares large sales numbers, as it is the second best-selling book in the series.


title: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

text: Several websites and magazines have ranked "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" as one of the greatest indie rock albums of all time, including Amazon.com, "Blender", and "Entertainment Weekly". Some outlets have also ranked it as one of the best albums of the 1990s. "Pitchfork" initially ranked it at number eighty-five on its list of the best albums of the 1990s, but moved the album all the way to number four in its 2003 revised list. "Paste" similarly ranked it highly, placing it at number two, only behind Radiohead's "OK Computer". Other websites that placed "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" in their list of the best albums of the 1990s include Cleveland.com (number twenty) and "Slant Magazine" (number forty-three). "Q" and "Spin" placed "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" on their lists of the best albums of the last twenty-five and thirty years respectively, while "Rolling Stone" and "NME" ranked it at 376 and 98 on their lists of the 500 greatest albums of all time respectively.


title: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

text: "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" has been highly influential. According to "Pitchfork" contributor Mike McGonigal, "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" disparate genres laid the groundwork for a musical template followed by bands such as Bright Eyes and Six Organs of Admittance. Mangum's vocals influenced singers such as Colin Meloy of the Decemberists and Zach Condon of Beirut. Arcade Fire frontman Win Butler said "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" was a contributing factor to their signing with Merge Records. On the album's tenth anniversary, "Pitchfork" published an article in which indie musicians such as Dan Snaith, Tim Kasher, and fellow Elephant 6 member Kevin Barnes discussed its importance. Snaith said:


title: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

text: All tracks are written by Jeff Mangum, except where noted; horn arrangements by Robert Schneider and Scott Spillane.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: The Peterloo Massacre took place at St Peter's Field, Manchester, Lancashire, England, on Monday 16 August 1819. Fifteen people died when cavalry charged into a crowd of around 60,000 people who had gathered to demand the reform of parliamentary representation.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: After the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 there was an acute economic slump, accompanied by chronic unemployment and harvest failure due to the Year Without a Summer, and worsened by the Corn Laws, which kept the price of bread high. At that time only around 11 percent of adult males had the vote, very few of them in the industrial north of England, which was worst hit. Reformers identified parliamentary reform as the solution and a mass campaign to petition parliament for manhood suffrage gained three-quarters of a million signatures in 1817 but was flatly rejected by the House of Commons. When a second slump occurred in early 1819, radical reformers sought to mobilise huge crowds to force the government to back down. The movement was particularly strong in the north-west, where the Manchester Patriotic Union organised a mass rally in August 1819, addressed by well-known radical orator Henry Hunt.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: Shortly after the meeting began, local magistrates called on the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry to arrest Hunt and several others on the platform with him. The Yeomanry charged into the crowd, knocking down a woman and killing a child, and finally apprehended Hunt. Cheshire Magistrates' chairman William Hulton then summoned the 15th Hussars to disperse the crowd. They charged with sabres drawn, and contemporary accounts estimated that between nine and seventeen people were killed and 400 to 700 injured in the ensuing confusion. The event was first labelled the "Peterloo massacre" by the radical "Manchester Observer" newspaper in a bitterly ironic reference to the bloody Battle of Waterloo which had taken place four years earlier.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: Historian Robert Poole has called the Peterloo Massacre "the bloodiest political event of the 19th century in English soil", and "a political earthquake in the northern powerhouse of the industrial revolution". The London and national papers shared the horror felt in the Manchester region, but Peterloo's immediate effect was to cause the government to pass the Six Acts, which were aimed at suppressing any meetings for the purpose of radical reform. It also led indirectly to the foundation of the "Manchester Guardian" newspaper. In a survey conducted by "The Guardian" in 2006, Peterloo came second to the Putney Debates as the event from radical British history that most deserved a proper monument or a memorial.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: For some time, Peterloo was commemorated only by a blue plaque, criticised as being inadequate and referring only to the "dispersal by the military" of an assembly. In 2007, the City Council replaced the blue plaque with a red plaque with less euphemistic wording, explicitly referring to "a peaceful rally" being "attacked by armed cavalry" and mentioning "15 deaths and over 600 injuries". In 2019, on the 200th anniversary of the massacre, Manchester City Council inaugurated a new Peterloo Memorial by the artist Jeremy Deller, featuring eleven concentric circles of local stone engraved with the names of the dead and the places from which the victims came.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: In 1819, Lancashire was represented by two county members of parliament (MPs) and a further twelve borough members sitting for the towns of Clitheroe, Newton, Wigan, Lancaster, Liverpool, and Preston, with a total of 17,000 voters in a county population of nearly a million. Thanks to deals by Whig and Tory parties to carve up the seats between them, most had not seen a contested election within living memory.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: Nationally the so-called rotten boroughs had a hugely disproportionate influence on the membership of the Parliament of the United Kingdom compared to the size of their populations: Old Sarum in Wiltshire, with one voter, elected two MPs, as did Dunwich in Suffolk, which by the early 19th century had almost completely disappeared into the sea. The major urban centres of Manchester, Salford, Bolton, Blackburn, Rochdale, Ashton-under-Lyne, Oldham and Stockport had no MPs of their own, and only a few hundred county voters. By comparison, more than half of all MPs were returned by a total of just 154 owners of rotten or closed boroughs. In 1816, Thomas Oldfield's "The Representative History of Great Britain and Ireland; being a History of the House of Commons, and of the Counties, Cities, and Boroughs of the United Kingdom from the earliest Period" claimed that of the 515 MPs for England and Wales 351 were returned by the patronage of 177 individuals and a further 16 by the direct patronage of the government: all 45 Scottish MPs owed their seats to patronage. These inequalities in political representation led to calls for reform.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: After the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, a brief boom in textile manufacture was followed by periods of chronic economic depression, particularly among cotton textile weavers and spinners. The cotton textile trade was concentrated in Lancashire and the wool textile trade was concentrated over the border in West and North Yorkshire. Weavers who could have expected to earn 15 shillings for a six-day week in 1803, saw their wages cut to 5 shillings or even 4s 6d by 1818. The industrialists, who were cutting wages without offering relief, blamed market forces generated by the aftershocks of the Napoleonic Wars. Exacerbating matters were the Corn Laws, the first of which was passed in 1815, imposing a tariff on foreign grain in an effort to protect English grain producers. The cost of food rose as people were forced to buy the more expensive and lower quality British grain, and periods of famine and chronic unemployment ensued, increasing the desire for political reform both in Lancashire and in the country at large.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: In the winter of 1816–17 massed reform petitions were rejected by the House of Commons, the largest of them from Manchester with over 30,000 signatures. On 10 March 1817 a crowd of 5,000 gathered in St Peter's Fields to send some of their number to march to London to petition the Prince Regent to force parliament into reform; the so-called 'blanket march', after the blankets which the protesters carried with them to sleep in on the way. After the magistrates read the Riot Act, the crowd was dispersed without injury by the King's Dragoon Guards. The ringleaders were detained for several months without charge under the emergency powers then in force which suspended "habeas corpus", the right to be either charged or released. In September 1818 three former leading Blanketeers were again arrested for allegedly urging striking weavers in Stockport to demand their political rights, 'sword in hand', and were convicted of sedition and conspiracy at Chester Assizes in April 1819.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: By the beginning of 1819 pressure generated by poor economic conditions was at its peak and had enhanced the appeal of political radicalism among the cotton loom weavers of south Lancashire. In January 1819, a crowd of about 10,000 gathered at St Peter's Fields to hear the radical orator Henry Hunt and called on the Prince Regent to choose ministers who would repeal the Corn Laws. The meeting, conducted in the presence of the cavalry, passed off without incident, apart from the collapse of the hustings.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: A series of mass meetings in the Manchester region, Birmingham, and London over the next few months alarmed the government. "Your country [i.e. county] will not be tranquillised until blood shall have been shed, either by the law or the sword", the Home Secretary wrote to the Lancashire magistrates in March. Over the next few months the government worked to find a legal justification for the magistrates to send in troops to disperse a meeting when riot was expected but not actually begun. In July 1819, the magistrates wrote to Lord Sidmouth warning they thought a "general rising" was imminent, the "deep distress of the manufacturing classes" was being worked on by the "unbounded liberty of the press" and "the harangues of a few desperate demagogues" at weekly meetings. "Possessing no power to prevent the meetings" the magistrates admitted they were at a loss as to how to stem the doctrines being disseminated. The Home Office assured them privately that in "an extreme case a magistrate may feel it incumbent upon him to act even without evidence, and to rely on Parliament for an indemnity."


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: Against this background, a "great assembly" was organised by the Manchester Patriotic Union formed by radicals from the "Manchester Observer". Johnson, the union's secretary, wrote to Henry Hunt asking him to chair a meeting in Manchester on 2 August 1819. Johnson wrote:


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: Unknown to Johnson and Hunt, the letter was intercepted by government spies and copied before being sent to its destination, confirming the government's belief that an armed rising was planned.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: The mass public meeting planned for 2 August was delayed until 9 August. The "Manchester Observer" reported it was called "to take into consideration the most speedy and effectual mode of obtaining Radical reform in the Common House of Parliament" and "to consider the propriety of the 'Unrepresented Inhabitants of Manchester' electing a person to represent them in Parliament". The government's legal advice was that to elect a representative without a royal writ for an election was a criminal offence, and the magistrates decided to declare the meeting illegal.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: On 3 August however the Home Office conveyed to the magistrates the view of the Attorney-General that it was not the "intention" to elect an MP that was illegal, but the execution of that intention. It advised against any attempt to forcibly prevent the 9 August meeting unless there was an actual riot:


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: The radicals' own legal advice however urged caution, and so the meeting was accordingly cancelled and rearranged for 16 August, with its declared aim solely "to consider the propriety of adopting the most LEGAL and EFFECTUAL means of obtaining a reform in the Common House of Parliament".


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: Samuel Bamford, a local radical who led the Middleton contingent, wrote that "It was deemed expedient that this meeting should be as morally effective as possible, and, that it should exhibit a spectacle such as had never before been witnessed in England." Instructions were given to the various committees forming the contingents that "Cleanliness, Sobriety, Order and Peace" and a "prohibition of all weapons of offence or defence" were to be observed throughout the demonstration. Each contingent was drilled and rehearsed in the fields of the towns around Manchester adding to the concerns of the authorities. A royal proclamation forbidding the practice of drilling had been posted in Manchester on 3 August but on 9 August an informant reported to Rochdale magistrates that at Tandle Hill the previous day, 700 men were "drilling in companies" and "going through the usual evolutions of a regiment" and an onlooker had said the men "were fit to contend with any regular troops, only they wanted arms". The magistrates were convinced that the situation was indeed an emergency which would justify pre-emptive action, as the Home Office had previously explained, and set about lining up dozens of local loyalist gentlemen to swear the necessary oaths that they believed the town to be in danger.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: St Peter's Field was a piece of land alongside Mount Street which was being cleared to enable the last section of Peter Street to be constructed. Piles of timber lay at the end of the field nearest to the Friends Meeting House, but the remainder of the field was clear. Thomas Worrell, Manchester's Assistant Surveyor of Paving, arrived to inspect the field at 7:00 am. His job was to remove anything that might be used as a weapon, and he duly had "about a quarter of a load" of stones carted away.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: Monday, 16 August 1819, was a hot summer's day, with a cloudless blue sky. The fine weather almost certainly increased the size of the crowd significantly; marching from the outer townships in the cold and rain would have been a much less attractive prospect.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: The Manchester magistrates met at 9:00 am, to breakfast at the Star Inn on Deansgate and to consider what action they should take on Henry Hunt's arrival at the meeting. By 10:30 am they had come to no conclusions, and moved to a house on the southeastern corner of St Peter's Field, from where they planned to observe the meeting.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: They were concerned that it would end in a riot, or even a rebellion, and had arranged for a substantial number of regular troops and militia yeomanry to be deployed. The military presence comprised 600 men of the ; several hundred infantrymen; a Royal Horse Artillery unit with two six-pounder guns; 400 men of the Cheshire Yeomanry; 400 special constables; and 120 cavalry of the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry. The Manchester & Salford Yeomanry were relatively inexperienced militia recruited from among local shopkeepers and tradesmen, the most numerous of which were publicans. Recently mocked by the "Manchester Observer" as "generally speaking, the fawning dependents of the great, with a few fools and a greater proportion of coxcombs, who imagine they acquire considerable importance by wearing regimentals," they were subsequently variously described as "younger members of the Tory party in arms", and as "hot-headed young men, who had volunteered into that service from their intense hatred of Radicalism." Socialist writer Mark Krantz has described them as "the local business mafia on horseback". R J White described them as "exclusively cheesemongers, ironmongers and newly enriched manufacturers, (who) the people of Manchester … thought … a joke."


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: The British Army in the north was under the overall command of General Sir John Byng. When he had initially learned that the meeting was scheduled for 2 August he wrote to the Home Office stating that he hoped the Manchester magistrates would show firmness on the day:


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: He then excused himself from attendance, however, as the meeting on the 9th clashed with the horse races at York, a fashionable event at which Byng had entries in two races. He wrote to the Home Office, saying that although he would still be prepared to be in command in Manchester on the day of the meeting if it was thought really necessary, he had absolute confidence in his deputy commander, Lieutenant Colonel Guy L'Estrange. The postponement to 16 August made it possible for Byng to attend after the races but he chose not to, having had enough of dealing with the Manchester magistrates. He had dealt firmly and bloodlessly with the blanketeers two years before; L'Estrange was to exhibit no such qualities of command.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: The crowd that gathered in St Peter's Field arrived in disciplined and organised contingents. Contingents were sent from all around the region, the largest and "best dressed" of which was a group of 10,000 who had travelled from Oldham Green, comprising people from Oldham, Royton (which included a sizeable female section), Crompton, Lees, Saddleworth and Mossley. Other sizeable contingents marched from Middleton and Rochdale (6,000 strong) and Stockport (1,500–5,000 strong). Reports of the size of the crowd at the meeting vary substantially. Contemporaries estimated it from 30,000 to as many as 150,000; modern estimates have been 50,000–80,000. Recent work however has reduced these numbers. A reasonably reliable count of the numbers on the various marches indicates a total of around 20,000 who came in from outside Manchester, but the number who attended informally from Manchester and Salford is much harder to estimate. Bush argues from the casualty figures that two-thirds were from Manchester and Salford, suggesting a total crowd of 50,000, but Poole revises this to a half, bringing the total down to 40,000. Steele's estimate of the capacity of the ground suggests 30,000 which, if correct, lowers the attendance but raises the casualty rate.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: The assembly was intended by its organisers to be a peaceful meeting; Henry Hunt had exhorted everyone attending to come "armed with no other weapon but that of a self-approving conscience", and many were wearing their "Sunday best" clothes. Samuel Bamford recounts the following incident, which occurred as the Middleton contingent reached the outskirts of Manchester:


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: Although William Robert Hay, chairman of the Salford Hundred Quarter Sessions, claimed that "The active part of the meeting may be said to have come in wholly from the country", others such as John Shuttleworth, a local cotton dealer, estimated that most were from Manchester, a view that would subsequently be supported by the casualty lists. Of the casualties whose residence was recorded, sixty-one per cent lived within a three-mile radius of the centre of Manchester. Some groups carried banners with texts like "No Corn Laws", "Annual Parliaments", "Universal suffrage" and "Vote By Ballot". The first female reform societies were established in the textile areas in 1819 and women from the Manchester Female Reform Society, dressed in white, accompanied Hunt to the platform. The society's president Mary Fildes rode in Hunt's carriage carrying its flag. The only banner known to have survived is in Middleton Public Library; it was carried by Thomas Redford, who was injured by a yeomanry sabre. Made of green silk embossed with gold lettering, one side of the banner is inscribed "Liberty and Fraternity" and the other "Unity and Strength." It is the world's oldest political banner.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: At about noon, several hundred special constables were led onto the field. They formed two lines in the crowd a few yards apart, in an attempt to form a corridor through the crowd between the house where the magistrates were watching and the hustings, two wagons lashed together. Believing that this might be intended as the route by which the magistrates would later send their representatives to arrest the speakers, some members of the crowd pushed the wagons away from the constables, and pressed around the hustings to form a human barrier.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: Hunt's carriage arrived at the meeting shortly after 1:00 pm, and he made his way to the hustings. Alongside Hunt on the speakers' stand were John Knight, a cotton manufacturer and reformer, Joseph Johnson, the organiser of the meeting, John Thacker Saxton, managing editor of the "Manchester Observer", the publisher Richard Carlile, and George Swift, reformer and shoemaker. There were also a number of reporters, including John Tyas of "The Times", John Smith of the "Liverpool Mercury" and Edward Baines Jr, the son of the editor of the "Leeds Mercury." By this time St Peter's Field, an area of , was packed with tens of thousands of men, women and children. The crowd around the speakers was so dense that "their hats seemed to touch"; large groups of curious spectators gathered on the outskirts of the crowd.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: William Hulton, the chairman of the magistrates watching from the house on the edge of St Peter's Field, saw the enthusiastic reception that Hunt received on his arrival at the assembly, and it encouraged him to action. He issued an arrest warrant for Henry Hunt, Joseph Johnson, John Knight, and James Moorhouse. On being handed the warrant the Constable, Jonathan Andrews, offered his opinion that the press of the crowd surrounding the hustings would make military assistance necessary for its execution. Hulton then wrote two letters, one to Major Thomas Trafford, the commanding officer of the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry Cavalry, and the other to the overall military commander in Manchester, Lieutenant Colonel Guy L'Estrange. The contents of both notes were similar:


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: The notes were handed to two horsemen who were standing by. The Manchester and Salford Yeomanry were stationed just a short distance away in Portland Street, and so received their note first. They immediately drew their swords and galloped towards St Peter's Field. One trooper, in a frantic attempt to catch up, knocked down Ann Fildes in Cooper Street, causing the death of her son when he was thrown from her arms; two-year-old William Fildes was the first casualty of Peterloo.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: Sixty cavalrymen of the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry, led by Captain Hugh Hornby Birley, a local factory owner, arrived at the house from where the magistrates were watching; some reports allege that they were drunk. Andrews, the Chief Constable, instructed Birley that he had an arrest warrant which he needed assistance to execute. Birley was asked to take his cavalry to the hustings to allow the speakers to be removed; it was by then about 1:40 pm.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: The route towards the hustings between the special constables was narrow, and as the inexperienced horses were thrust further and further into the crowd they reared and plunged as people tried to get out of their way. The arrest warrant had been given to the Deputy Constable, Joseph Nadin, who followed behind the yeomanry. As the cavalry pushed towards the speakers' stand they became stuck in the crowd, and in panic started to hack about them with their sabres. On his arrival at the stand Nadin arrested Hunt, Johnson and a number of others including John Tyas, the reporter from "The Times". Their mission to execute the arrest warrant having been achieved, the yeomanry set about destroying the banners and flags on the stand. According to Tyas, the yeomanry then attempted to reach flags in the crowd "cutting most indiscriminately to the right and to the left to get at them" – only then (said Tyas) were brickbats thrown at the military: "From this point the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry lost all command of temper".


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: From his vantage point William Hulton perceived the unfolding events as an assault on the yeomanry, and on L'Estrange's arrival at 1:50 pm, at the head of his hussars, he ordered them into the field to disperse the crowd with the words: "Good God, Sir, don't you see they are attacking the Yeomanry; disperse the meeting!" The 15th Hussars formed themselves into a line stretching across the eastern end of St Peter's Field, and charged into the crowd. At about the same time the Cheshire Yeomanry charged from the southern edge of the field. At first the crowd had some difficulty in dispersing, as the main exit route into Peter Street was blocked by the 88th Regiment of Foot, standing with bayonets fixed. One officer of the 15th Hussars was heard trying to restrain the by now out of control Manchester and Salford Yeomanry, who were "cutting at every one they could reach": "For shame! For shame! Gentlemen: forbear, forbear! The people cannot get away!"


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: On the other hand, Lieutenant Jolliffe of the 15th Hussars said "It was then for the first time that I saw the Manchester troop of Yeomanry; they were scattered singly or in small groups over the greater part of the Field, literally hemmed up and powerless either to make an impression or to escape; in fact, they were in the power of those whom they were designed to overawe and it required only a glance to discover their helpless position, and the necessity of our being "brought to their rescue"" Further Jolliffe asserted that "… nine out of ten of the sabre wounds were caused by the "Hussars" … however, the far greater amount of injuries were from the pressure of the routed multitude."


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: Within ten minutes the crowd had been dispersed, at the cost of 11 dead and more than 600 injured. Only the wounded, their helpers, and the dead were left behind; a woman living nearby said she saw "a very great deal of blood." For some time afterwards there was rioting in the streets, most seriously at New Cross, where troops fired on a crowd attacking a shop belonging to someone rumoured to have taken one of the women reformers' flags as a souvenir. Peace was not restored in Manchester until the next morning, and in Stockport and Macclesfield rioting continued on the 17th. There was also a major riot in Oldham that day, during which one person was shot and wounded.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: The exact number of those killed and injured at Peterloo has never been established with certainty, for there was no official count or inquiry and many injured people fled to safety without reporting their injuries or seeking treatment. The Manchester Relief Committee, a body set up to provide relief for the victims of Peterloo, gave the number of injured as 420, while Radical sources listed 500. The true number is difficult to estimate, as many of the wounded hid their injuries for fear of retribution by the authorities. Three of William Marsh's six children worked in the factory belonging to Captain Hugh Birley of the Manchester Yeomanry, and lost their jobs because their father had attended the meeting. James Lees was admitted to Manchester Infirmary with two severe sabre wounds to the head, but was refused treatment and sent home after refusing to agree with the surgeon's insistence that "he had had enough of Manchester meetings."


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: A particular feature of the meeting at Peterloo was the number of women present. Female reform societies had been formed in North West England during June and July 1819, the first in Britain. Many of the women were dressed distinctively in white, and some formed all-female contingents, carrying their own flags. Of the 654 recorded casualties, at least 168 were women, four of whom died either at St Peter's Field or later as a result of their wounds. It has been estimated that less than 12 per cent of the crowd was made up of women, suggesting that they were at significantly greater risk of injury than men by a factor of almost 3:1. Richard Carlile claimed that the women were especially targeted, a view apparently supported by the large number who suffered from wounds caused by weapons. A recently unearthed set of 70 victims' petitions in the parliamentary archives reveals some shocking tales of ferocity, including the accounts of the female reformers Mary Fildes, who carried the flag on the platform, and Elizabeth Gaunt, who suffered a miscarriage following ill-treatment during eleven days' detention without trial.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: Eleven of the fatalities listed occurred on St Peter's Field. Others, such as John Lees of Oldham, died later of their wounds, and some like Joshua Whitworth were killed in the rioting that followed the crowd's dispersal from the field. Bush puts the fatalities at 18 and Poole supports this figure, albeit a slightly different 18 based on new information. It is these 18 whose names are carved on the 2019 memorial, including the unborn child of Elizabeth Gaunt.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: The Peterloo Massacre has been called one of the defining moments of its age. Many of those present at the massacre, including local masters, employers and owners, were horrified by the carnage. One of the casualties, Oldham cloth-worker and ex-soldier John Lees, who died from his wounds on 9 September, had been present at the Battle of Waterloo. Shortly before his death he said to a friend that he had never been in such danger as at Peterloo: "At Waterloo there was man to man but there it was downright murder." When news of the massacre began to spread, the population of Manchester and surrounding districts was horrified and outraged.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: After the events at Peterloo, many commemorative items such as plates, jugs, handkerchiefs and medals were produced; they were carried by radical supporters and may also have been sold to raise money for the injured. The People's History Museum in Manchester has one of these Peterloo handkerchiefs on display. All the mementos carried the iconic image of Peterloo; cavalrymen with swords drawn riding down and slashing at defenceless civilians. The reverse of the Peterloo medal carried a Biblical text, derived from :


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: Peterloo was the first public meeting at which journalists from important, distant newspapers were present and within a day or so of the event, accounts were published in London, Leeds and Liverpool. The London and national papers shared the horror felt in the Manchester region, and the feeling of indignation throughout the country became intense. James Wroe, editor of the "Manchester Observer", was the first to describe the incident as the "Peterloo Massacre", coining his headline by creating the ironic portmanteau from St Peter's Field and the Battle of Waterloo that had taken place four years earlier. He also wrote pamphlets entitled "The Peterloo Massacre: A Faithful Narrative of the Events". Priced at 2d each, they sold out every print run for 14 weeks and had a large national circulation. Sir Francis Burdett, a reformist MP, was jailed for three months for publishing a seditious libel.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: Percy Bysshe Shelley was in Italy and did not hear of the massacre until 5 September. His poem "The Masque of Anarchy", subtitled "Written on the Occasion of the Massacre at Manchester", was sent for publication in the radical periodical "The Examiner", but because of restrictions on the radical press it was not published until 1832, ten years after the poet's death.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: The immediate effect of Peterloo was a crackdown on reform. The government instructed the police and courts to go after the journalists, presses and publication of the "Manchester Observer." Wroe was arrested and charged with producing a seditious publication. Found guilty he was sentenced to 12 months in prison and fined £100. Outstanding court cases against the "Manchester Observer" were rushed through the courts and a continual change of sub-editors was not sufficient defence against a series of police raids, often on the suspicion that someone was writing a radical article. The "Manchester Observer" closed in February 1820.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: Hunt and eight others were tried at York Assizes on 16 March 1820, charged with sedition. After a two-week trial, five defendants were found guilty, on a single one of the seven charges. Hunt was sentenced to 30 months in Ilchester Gaol; Bamford, Johnson, and Healey were given one year each, and Knight was jailed for two years on a subsequent charge. A civil case on behalf of a weaver wounded at Peterloo was brought against four members of the Manchester Yeomanry, Captain Birley, Captain Withington, Trumpeter Meagher, and Private Oliver, at Lancaster Assizes, on 4 April 1822. All were acquitted, as the court ruled their actions had been justified to disperse an illegal gathering and that the murders were nothing more than self-defense.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: The government declared its support for the actions taken by the magistrates and the army. The Manchester magistrates held a supposedly public meeting on 19 August, so that resolutions supporting the action they had taken three days before could be published. Cotton merchants Archibald Prentice (later editor of "The Manchester Times") and Absalom Watkin (a later corn-law reformer), both members of the "Little Circle", organised a petition of protest against the violence at St Peter's Field and the validity of the magistrates' meeting. Within a few days it had collected 4,800 signatures. Nevertheless, the Home Secretary, Lord Sidmouth, on 27 August conveyed to the magistrates the thanks of the Prince Regent for their action in the "preservation of the public peace." That public exoneration was met with fierce anger and criticism. During a debate at Hopkins Street Robert Wedderburn declared "The Prince is a fool with his Wonderful letters of thanks … What is the Prince Regent or King to us, we want no King – he is no use to us." In an open letter, Richard Carlile said:


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: For a few months following Peterloo it seemed to the authorities that the country was heading towards an armed rebellion. Encouraging them in that belief were two abortive uprisings, in Huddersfield and Burnley, the Yorkshire West Riding Revolt, during the autumn of 1820, and the discovery and foiling of the Cato Street conspiracy to blow up the cabinet that winter. By the end of the year, the government had introduced legislation, later known as the Six Acts, to suppress radical meetings and publications, and by the end of 1820 every significant working-class radical reformer was in jail; civil liberties had declined to an even lower level than they were before Peterloo. Historian Robert Reid has written that "it is not fanciful to compare the restricted freedoms of the British worker in the post-Peterloo period in the early nineteenth century with those of the black South African in the post-Sharpeville period of the late twentieth century."


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: The Peterloo Massacre also influenced the naming of the 1821 Cinderloo Uprising in the Coalbrookdale Coalfield of east Shropshire. The uprising saw 3,000 protesting workers confronted by the Shropshire Yeomanry, leading to the deaths of 3 crowd members.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: One direct consequence of Peterloo was the foundation of the "Manchester Guardian" newspaper in 1821, by the Little Circle group of non-conformist Manchester businessmen headed by John Edward Taylor, a witness to the massacre. The prospectus announcing the new publication proclaimed that it would "zealously enforce the principles of civil and religious Liberty … warmly advocate the cause of Reform … endeavour to assist in the diffusion of just principles of Political Economy and … support, without reference to the party from which they emanate, all serviceable measures."


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: Events such as the Pentrich rising, the March of the Blanketeers and the Spa Fields meeting, all serve to indicate the breadth, diversity and widespread geographical scale of the demand for economic and political reform at the time. Peterloo had no effect on the speed of reform, but in due course all but one of the reformers' demands, annual parliaments, were met. Following the Great Reform Act of 1832, the newly created Manchester parliamentary borough elected its first two MPs. Five candidates including William Cobbett stood, and the Whigs, Charles Poulett Thomson and Mark Philips, were elected. Manchester became a Municipal Borough in 1838, and the manorial rights were purchased by the borough council in 1846.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: On the other hand, R J White has affirmed the true significance of Peterloo as marking the point of final conversion of provincial England to the struggle for enfranchisement of the working class. "The ship which had tacked and lain for so long among the shoals and shallows of Luddism, hunger-marching, strikes and sabotage, was coming to port"; "Henceforth, the people were to stand with ever greater fortitude behind that great movement, which, stage by stage throughout the nineteenth century, was to impose a new political order upon society"; "With Peterloo, and the departure of Regency England, parliamentary reform had come of age."


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: The Skelmanthorpe Flag, believed to have been made in Skelmanthorpe, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, in 1819, was made to honour the victims of the Peterloo Massacre and was flown at mass meetings held in the area demanding the reform of Parliament. This was one of dozens of mass protest meetings held in 1819, until the Six Acts put an end to protests. Throughout the nineteenth century, the memory of Peterloo was a political rallying point for both radicals and liberals to attack the tories and demand further reforms of parliament. These came at the rate of one per generation in 1832, 1867, 1884, and 1918, when universal manhood suffrage and partial female suffrage was achieved.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: The Free Trade Hall, home of the Anti-Corn Law League, was built partly as a "cenotaph raised on the shades of the victims" of Peterloo, but one which acknowledged only the reformers' demand for the repeal of the corn laws and not for the vote. At the centenary in 1919, just two years after the Russian revolution and the Bolshevik coup, trade unionists and communists alike saw Peterloo as a lesson that workers needed to fight back against capitalist violence. The Conservative majority on Manchester City Council in 1968-9 declined to mark the 150th anniversary of Peterloo, but their Labour successors in 1972 placed a blue plaque high up on the wall of the Free Trade Hall, now the Radisson Hotel. This in turn was criticised for failing to recognise that anyone was killed or injured. In a 2006 survey conducted by "The Guardian", Peterloo came second to St. Mary's Church, Putney, the venue for the Putney Debates, as the event from radical British history that most deserved a proper monument. The euphemism on the blue plaque was described by comedian Mark Thomas as "an act of historical vandalism akin to Stalin airbrushing dissidents out of photographs". A Peterloo Memorial Campaign was set up to lobby for a 'Respectful, Informative and Permanent' (RIP) monument to an event that has been described as Manchester's Tiananmen Square.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: In 2007, Manchester City Council replaced the original blue plaque with a red one, giving a fuller account of the events of 1819. It was unveiled on 10 December 2007 by the Lord Mayor of Manchester, Councillor Glynn Evans. Under the heading "St. Peter's Fields: The Peterloo Massacre", the present plaque reads, "On a peaceful rally of 60,000 pro-democracy reformers, men, women and children, was attacked by armed cavalry resulting in 15 deaths and over 600 injuries."


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: In 2019, shortly before the 200th anniversary of the massacre, Manchester City Council "quietly unveiled" a new memorial by the artist Jeremy Deller. It was inaugurated at a large public gathering on 16 August 2019, widely reported in the press, covered extensively on regional TV and radio, and marked by a special edition of the Manchester Evening News.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: The 1.5 metre high memorial features 11 concentric steps engraved, sculpted from polished local stone and carved with the names of the dead and the places from which the victims came. The material not visible from the ground is reproduced at ground level, and there is a floor plaque.While this met the official standards for access, it was also interpreted by some as a 'speaking platform' made inaccessible by its stepped design. The City Council has promised that it will be modified to rectify this. Some disability campaigners described the memorial as 'vile' and calling for it to be demolished, a stance which in turn caused offence by appearing to dismiss the experiences of the many disabled victims of Peterloo. It has in practice proved very difficult to design a wheelchair ramp that does not damage or block substantial parts of the inscriptions.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: The memorial has meanwhile become widely appreciated and visited, and the Peterloo Memorial Campaign site states that it is 'Proud to have campaigned for a respectful, informative and permanent Peterloo Memorial at the heart of Manchester'.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: In 1968, in celebration of its centenary, the Trades Union Congress commissioned British composer Sir Malcolm Arnold to write the "Peterloo Overture". The organist Jonathan Scott recorded a solo work, 'Peterloo 1819', at the parish church in the radical village of Royton in 2017. Scott is a descendant of the wider family of the Peterloo radical Samuel Bamford from nearby Middleton. Several musical pieces in different genres from rap to oratorio were commissioned and performed in connection with the 2019 Peterloo bicentenary. Other musical commemorations include Harvey Kershaw MBE's folk revival song, which was recorded by the Oldham Tinkers (listen), "Ned Ludd Part 5" on British folk rock group Steeleye Span's 2006 album "Bloody Men", and Rochdale rock band Tractor's suite of five songs written and recorded in 1973, later included on their 1992 release "Worst Enemies". The long history of verse about Peterloo is covered in Alison Morgan's 2018 book "Ballads and Songs of Peterloo." In 2019 a whole volume of essays was devoted to the commemoration of Peterloo, including an essay by Ian Haywood on 'The Sounds of Peterloo' and other contributions covering Hunt, Cobbett, Castlereagh, Bentham, Wordsworth, Shelley, Scotland, and Ireland.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: The 2018 Mike Leigh film "Peterloo" is based on the events at Peterloo, and was widely acclaimed for its powerful rendition of events and its recreation of the period. The 1947 film "Fame Is the Spur", based on the Howard Spring novel of the same name, depicts the rise of a politician inspired by his grandfather's account of the massacre. Recent novels about Peterloo include Carolyn O'Brien's "The Song of Peterloo" and Jeff Kaye's "All the People." The most important fictional treatment remains Isabella Banks's 1876 novel, "The Manchester Man", for its author lived in Manchester at the time and wove into her account numerous testimonies she picked up from people who were involved. It was also the subject of a graphic novel in 'verbatim' form, "Peterloo: Witnesses to a Massacre," with the story told mainly through words written and spoken at the time.


title: Peterloo Massacre

text: In 2016, Big Finish released a Doctor Who audio adventure based around the events of the Peterloo Massacre.


title: Super Bowl LVI halftime show

text: The Super Bowl LVI halftime show, officially known as the Pepsi Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show, took place on February 13, 2022, at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, as part of Super Bowl LVI. It was televised nationally in the U.S. by NBC, and was the final Super Bowl halftime show to be sponsored by Pepsi. The show was headlined by Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, and Kendrick Lamar, and included guest appearances by 50 Cent and Anderson .Paak. It is the first Super Bowl halftime show to be centered entirely around hip hop music.


title: Super Bowl LVI halftime show

text: The performance was met with critical acclaim and is the first Super Bowl halftime show to win the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety Special (Live). The show also won the Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Production Design for a Variety Special and Outstanding Music Direction.


title: Super Bowl LVI halftime show

text: On May 15, 2021, in an interview with Yahoo!, Snoop Dogg expressed interest in performing at the halftime show with other hip hop artists such as Dr. Dre, Kendrick Lamar and Eminem.


title: Super Bowl LVI halftime show

text: On September 30, 2021, Pepsi and Roc Nation announced that Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, and Kendrick Lamar would headline the show. Blige previously performed at the Super Bowl XXXV halftime show in 2001. The halftime show was produced by Jesse Collins and Roc Nation, and was directed by Hamish Hamilton, who has directed each Super Bowl halftime show for twelve years. Deaf rappers Sean Forbes and Warren "WAWA" Snipe performed as American Sign Language interpreters.


title: Super Bowl LVI halftime show

text: The halftime show received critical acclaim as critics praised the lineup and setlist. Some mentioned that the performance was crafted to induce nostalgia among Generation X and Millennial audiences.


title: Super Bowl LVI halftime show

text: Steven McIntosh of BBC News wrote that the timing was balanced enough to allow each artist to perform their biggest songs, concluding "The show had been a success, and they knew it. It might have taken a long time to get here, but after a performance like this, nobody could now Forget About Dre."


title: Super Bowl LVI halftime show

text: A list in "Rolling Stone" by Rob Sheffield praised the performance as an "old-school West Coast rap history lesson" and ranked it the fourth-best Super Bowl halftime show of all time, behind those by Beyoncé, U2 and Prince. He wrote that Kendrick Lamar deserved his own full-length performance, and named Eminem taking a knee as the highlight.


title: Super Bowl LVI halftime show

text: Kevin E G Perry of "The Independent" gave the show four stars out of five. Commenting on criticism relating to Dr. Dre's history of violence against women, Perry concluded "No performance could wash that blemish from his reputation, but tonight’s hit-packed performance did demonstrate the range and longevity of Dre’s influence as a rapper and producer". Perry was also thankful that rumors of the return of the controversial 2012 Tupac hologram were not true.


title: Super Bowl LVI halftime show

text: In a review for "The New York Times", Jon Caramanica commented that rumors of Eminem being barred from kneeling "had the feel of a pre-manufactured controversy"; as an NFL spokesperson confirmed that the gesture was authorized, Caramanica asked "Is it still protest if it’s been signed off on and approved?"


title: Super Bowl LVI halftime show

text: The Federal Communications Commission received 33 complaints regarding the show's content, an unusually low number (compared to 1,300 for the Super Bowl LIV halftime show, 50 for the Super Bowl LIII halftime show and 540,000 for the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show).


title: Super Bowl LVI halftime show

text: The show had an average of 103.4 million viewers in the 8:15–8:30 PM ET slot, up 7 percent from the previous year's halftime show by the Weeknd. The viewership for the halftime show was higher than the game itself, which was viewed by an average of 101.1 million television viewers.


title: Super Bowl LVI halftime show

text: Following the performance, streams of Dr. Dre's music rose by 185 percent on Spotify. Two of the songs that he performed, "The Next Episode" and "Still D.R.E." from his 1999 album "2001", experienced increases in streaming of 270 percent and 245 percent, respectively. In the end of the week, the album jumped back to the top 10 in "Billboard" 200 with 30,500 units sold, a 220% increase.


title: Super Bowl LVI halftime show

text: Also on Spotify, Mary J. Blige's "No More Drama" saw an increase of 520 percent, while streams of Kendrick Lamar's "Alright" rose 250 percent.


title: Super Bowl LVI halftime show

text: The following day, Eminem's "Lose Yourself" entered the top 10 of the U.S. Spotify chart for the first time ever. At the end of that week, Eminem's "Curtain Call" jumped 118 spots to the top 10 on "Billboard" 200, for the first time since March 11, 2006, at number eight, selling 31,000 units (256% increase). In the United Kingdom, the album jumped back into the Top 10 at number eight.


title: Action research

text: Action research is a philosophy and methodology of research generally applied in the social sciences. It seeks transformative change through the simultaneous process of taking action and doing research, which are linked together by critical reflection. Kurt Lewin, then a professor a MIT, first coined the term "action research" in 1944. In his 1946 paper "Action Research and Minority Problems" he described action research as "a comparative research on the conditions and effects of various forms of social action and research leading to social action" that uses "a spiral of steps, each of which is composed of a circle of planning, action and fact-finding about the result of the action".


title: Action research

text: Action research is an interactive inquiry process that balances problem-solving actions implemented in a collaborative context with data-driven collaborative analysis or research to understand underlying causes enabling future predictions about personal and organizational change.


title: Action research

text: After six decades of action research development, many methods have evolved that adjust the balance to focus more on the actions taken or more on the research that results from the reflective understanding of the actions.


title: Action research

text: Action research challenges traditional social science by moving beyond reflective knowledge created by outside experts sampling variables, to an active moment-to-moment theorizing, data collecting and inquiry occurring in the midst of emergent structure. "Knowledge is always gained through action and for action. From this starting point, to question the validity of social knowledge is to question, not how to develop a reflective science about action, but how to develop genuinely well-informed action – how to conduct an action science". In this sense, engaging in action research is a form of problem-based investigation by practitioners into their practice, thus it is an empirical process. The goal is both to create and share knowledge in the social sciences.


title: Action research

text: Chris Argyris' action science begins with the study of how human beings design their actions in difficult situations. Humans design their actions to achieve intended consequences and are governed by a set of environment variables. How those governing variables are treated in designing actions are the key differences between single-loop and double-loop learning. When actions are designed to achieve the intended consequences and to suppress conflict about the governing variables, a single-loop learning cycle usually ensues.


title: Action research

text: On the other hand, when actions are taken not only to achieve the intended consequences, but also to openly inquire about conflict and to possibly transform the governing variables, both single- and double-loop learning cycles usually ensue. (Argyris applies single- and double-loop learning concepts not only to personal behaviors but also to organizational behaviors in his models.) This is different from experimental research in which environmental variables are controlled and researchers try to find out cause and effect in an isolated environment.


title: Action research

text: Cooperative, aka collaborative, inquiry was first proposed by John Heron in 1971 and later expanded with Peter Reason and Demi Brown. The major idea is to "research 'with' rather than 'on' people." It emphasizes the full involvement in research decisions of all active participants as co-researchers.


title: Action research

text: Cooperative inquiry creates a research cycle among 4 different types of knowledge: propositional (as in contemporary science), practical (the knowledge that comes with actually doing what you propose), experiential (the real-time feedback we get about our interaction with the larger world) and presentational (the artistic rehearsal process through which we craft new practices). At every cycle, the research process includes these four stages, with deepening experience and knowledge of the initial proposition, or of new propositions.


title: Action research

text: Participatory action research builds on the critical pedagogy put forward by Paulo Freire as a response to the traditional formal models of education where the "teacher" stands at the front and "imparts" information to the "students" who are passive recipients. This was further developed in "adult education" models throughout Latin America.


title: Action research

text: Orlando Fals-Borda (1925–2008), Colombian sociologist and political activist, was one of the principal promoters of participatory action research ( in Spanish) in Latin America. He published a "double history of the coast", book that compares the official "history" and the non-official "story" of the north coast of Colombia.


title: Action research

text: William Barry defined an approach to action research which focuses on creating ontological weight. He adapted the idea of ontological weight to action research from existential Christian philosopher Gabriel Marcel. Barry was influenced by Jean McNiff's and Jack Whitehead's phraseology of living theory action research but was diametrically opposed to the validation process advocated by Whitehead which demanded video "evidence" of "energy flowing values" and his atheistic ontological position which influenced his conception of values in action research.


title: Action research

text: Barry explained that living educational theory (LET) is "a critical and transformational approach to action research. It confronts the researcher to challenge the status quo of their educational practice and to answer the question, 'How can I improve what I'm doing?' Researchers who use this approach must be willing to recognize and assume responsibility for being 'living contradictions' in their professional practice – thinking one way and acting in another. The mission of the LET action researcher is to overcome workplace norms and self-behavior which contradict the researcher's values and beliefs. The vision of the LET researcher is to make an original contribution to knowledge through generating an educational theory proven to improve the learning of people within a social learning space. The standard of judgment for theory validity is evidence of workplace reform, transformational growth of the researcher, and improved learning by the people researcher claimed to have influenced...".


title: Action research

text: Wendell L. French and Cecil Bell define organization development (OD) at one point as "organization improvement through action research". If one idea can be said to summarize OD's underlying philosophy, it would be action research as it was conceptualized by Kurt Lewin and later elaborated and expanded on by other behavioral scientists. Concerned with social change and, more particularly, with effective, permanent social change, Lewin believed that the motivation to change was strongly related to action: If people are active in decisions affecting them, they are more likely to adopt new ways. "Rational social management", he said, "proceeds in a spiral of steps, each of which is composed of a circle of planning, action and fact-finding about the result of action".


title: Action research

text: "Figure 1" summarizes the steps and processes involved in planned change through action research. Action research is depicted as a cyclical process of change.


title: Action research

text: Major adjustments and reevaluations would return the OD project to the first or planning stage for basic changes in the program. The action-research model shown in "Figure 1" closely follows Lewin's repetitive cycle of planning, action, and measuring results. It also illustrates other aspects of Lewin's general model of change. As indicated in the diagram, the planning stage is a period of unfreezing, or problem awareness. The action stage is a period of changing, that is, trying out new forms of behavior in an effort to understand and cope with the system's problems. (There is inevitable overlap between the stages, since the boundaries are not clear-cut and cannot be in a continuous process).


title: Action research

text: The results stage is a period of refreezing, in which new behaviors are tried out on the job and, if successful and reinforcing, become a part of the system's repertoire of problem-solving behavior. Action research is problem centered, client centered, and action oriented. It involves the client system in a diagnostic, active-learning, problem-finding and problem-solving process.


title: Action research

text: Action research has become a significant methodology for intervention, development and change within groups and communities. It is promoted and implemented by many international development agencies and university programs, as well as local community organizations around the world, such as AERA and Claremont Lincoln in America, CARN in the United Kingdom, CCAR in Sweden, CLAYSS in Argentina, CARPED and PRIA in India, and ARNA in the Americas.


title: Action research

text: The Center for Collaborative Action Research makes available a set of twelve tutorials as a self-paced online course in learning how to do action research. It includes a free workbook that can be used online or printed.


title: Action research

text: The field is supported by a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal, "Action Research", founded in 2003 and edited by Hilary Bradbury.