title: Police procedural

text: Ed McBain, the pseudonym of Evan Hunter, wrote dozens of novels in the "87th Precinct" series beginning with "Cop Hater," published in 1956. Hunter continued to write 87th Precinct novels almost until his death in 2005. Although these novels focus primarily on Detective Steve Carella, they encompass the work of many officers working alone and in teams, and Carella is not always present in any individual book.


title: Police procedural

text: As if to illustrate the universality of the police procedural, many of McBain's 87th Precinct novels, despite their being set in a slightly fictionalized New York City, have been filmed in settings outside New York, even outside the US. Akira Kurosawa's 1963 film, "High and Low", based on McBain's "King's Ransom" (1959), is set in Yokohama. "Without Apparent Motive" (1972), set on the French Riviera, is based on McBain's "Ten Plus One" (1963). Claude Chabrol's "Les Liens de Sang" (1978), based on "Blood Relatives" (1974), is set in Montreal. Even "Fuzz" (1972), based on the 1968 novel, though set in the US, moves the action to Boston. Two episodes of ABC's Columbo, set in Los Angeles, were based on McBain novels.


title: Police procedural

text: A prolific author of police procedurals, whose work has fallen out of fashion in the years since her death, is Elizabeth Linington writing under her own name, as well as "Dell Shannon" and "Lesley Egan". Linington reserved her Dell Shannon pseudonym primarily for procedurals featuring LAPD Central Homicide Lieutenant Luis Mendoza (1960–86). Under her own name she wrote about Sergeant Ivor Maddox of LAPD's North Hollywood Station, and as Lesley Egan she wrote about suburban cop Vic Varallo. These novels are sometimes considered flawed, partly due to the author's far-right political viewpoint (she was a member of the John Birch Society), but primarily because Miss Linington's books, notwithstanding the frequent comments she made about the depth of her research, were all seriously deficient in the single element most identified with the police procedural, technical accuracy. However, they have a certain charm in their depiction of a kinder, gentler California, where the police were always "good guys" who solved all the crimes and respected the citizenry.


title: Police procedural

text: Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö planned and wrote the Martin Beck police procedural series of ten books between the 1960s and 1970s, set in Sweden. The series is particularly renowned for its extensive character development throughout the series. Beck himself is gradually promoted from detective in a newly nationalised Swedish police force to Chief Inspector of the National Murder Squad, and the realistic depiction, as well as criticism of the Swedish welfare state at the time whilst the tedium of the police procedural continues in the background, is something still widely used today, with authors such as Jo Nesbø and Stieg Larsson. The books gave rise to the Swedish noir scene, and "The Laughing Policeman" earned a "Best Novel" Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America in 1971. The books were translated from Swedish into 35 different languages, and have sold roughly ten million copies. Sjöwall and Wahlöö used black humour extensively in the series, and it is widely recognised as one of the finest police procedural series.


title: Police procedural

text: Tony Hillerman, the author of 17 novels involving Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn, wrote procedurals in which the procedures were those of the Navajo Tribal Police.


title: Police procedural

text: Though not the first police officer to write procedurals, Joseph Wambaugh's success has caused him to become the exemplar of cops who turn their professional experiences into fiction. The son of a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, policeman, Wambaugh joined the Los Angeles Police Department after a stint of military duty. In 1970, his first novel, "The New Centurions", was published. This followed three police officers through their training in the academy, their first few years on the street, culminating in the Watts riots of 1965. It was followed by such novels as "The Blue Knight", 1971, "The Choirboys", 1975, "Hollywood Station", 2006, and acclaimed non-fiction books like "The Onion Field", 1973, "Lines and Shadows", 1984, and "Fire Lover", 2002. Wambaugh has said that his main purpose is less to show how cops work on the job, than how the job works on cops.


title: Police procedural

text: It is difficult to disentangle the early roots of the procedural from its forebear, the traditional detective novel, which often featured a police officer as protagonist. By and large, the better known novelists such as Ngaio Marsh produced work that falls more squarely into the province of the traditional or "cozy" detective novel. Nevertheless, some of the work of authors less well known today, like Freeman Wills Crofts's novels about Inspector French or some of the work of the prolific team of G.D.H. and Margaret Cole, might be considered as the antecedents of today's police procedural. British mystery novelist and critic Julian Symons, in his 1972 history of crime fiction, "Bloody Murder", labeled these proto-procedurals "humdrums", because of their emphasis on the plodding nature of the investigators.


title: Police procedural

text: "Tracy" creator Chester Gould seemed to be trying to reflect the real world. Tracy himself, conceived by Gould as a "modern-day Sherlock Holmes", was partly modeled on real-life law enforcer Eliot Ness, and his first, and most frequently recurring, antagonist, the Big Boy, was based on Ness's real-life nemesis Al Capone. Other members of Tracy's Rogues Gallery, like Boris Arson, Flattop Jones, and Maw Famon, were inspired, respectively, by John Dillinger, Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd, and Kate "Ma" Barker.


title: Police procedural

text: Once "Tracy" was sold to the "Chicago Tribune" syndicate, Gould enrolled in a criminology class at Northwestern University, met with members of the Chicago Police Department, and did research at the department's crime lab, to make his depiction of law enforcement more authentic. Ultimately, he hired retired Chicago policeman Al Valanis, a pioneering forensic sketch artist, as both an artistic assistant and police technical advisor.


title: Police procedural

text: The success of "Tracy" led to many more police strips. While some, like Norman Marsh's "Dan Dunn" were unabashedly slavish imitations of "Tracy", others, like Dashiell Hammett's and Alex Raymond's "Secret Agent X-9", took a more original approach. Still others, like Eddie Sullivan's and Charlie Schmidt's "Radio Patrol" and Will Gould's "Red Barry", steered a middle course. One of the best post-"Tracy" procedural comics was "Kerry Drake", written and created by Allen Saunders and illustrated by Alfred Andriola. It diverged from the metropolitan settings used in "Tracy" to tell the story of the titular Chief Investigator for the District Attorney of a small-town jurisdiction. Later, following a personal tragedy, he leaves the DA's Office and joins his small city's police force in order to fight crime closer to the grass roots level. As both a DA's man and a city cop, he fights a string of flamboyant, Gould-ian criminals like "Stitches", "Bottleneck", and "Bulldozer".


title: Police procedural

text: Other syndicated police strips include Zane Grey's "King of the Royal Mounted", depicting police work in the contemporary Canadian Northwest, Lank Leonard's "Mickey Finn", which emphasized the home life of a hard-working cop, and "Dragnet", which adapted stories from the pioneering radio-TV series into comics. Early comic books with police themes tended to be reprints of syndicated newspaper strips like "Tracy" and "Drake". Others adapted police stories from other mediums, like the radio-inspired anthology comic "Gang Busters", Dell's "87th Precinct" issues, which adapted McBain's novels, or "The Untouchables", which adapted the fictionalized TV adventures of real-life policeman Eliot Ness.


title: Police procedural

text: More recently, there have been attempts to depict police work with the kind of hard-edged realism seen in the novels of writers like Wambaugh, such as Marvel's four-issue mini-series "Cops: The Job", in which a rookie police officer learns to cope with the physical, emotional, and mental stresses of law enforcement during her first patrol assignment. With superheroes having long dominated the comic book market, there have been some recent attempts to integrate elements of the police procedural into the universe of costumed crime-fighters. "Gotham Central", for example, depicts a group of police detectives operating in Batman's Gotham City, and suggested that the caped crime-fighter is disliked by many Gotham detectives for treading on their toes. Meanwhile, "Metropolis SCU" tells the story of the Special Crimes Unit, an elite squad of cops in the police force serving Superman's Metropolis.


title: Police procedural

text: The use of police procedural elements in superhero comics can partly be attributed to the success of Kurt Busiek's groundbreaking 1994 series "Marvels", and his subsequent "Astro City" work, both of which examine the typical superhero universe from the viewpoint of the common man who witnesses the great dramas from afar, participating in them tangentially at best.


title: Police procedural

text: In the wake of Busiek's success, many other writers mimicked his approach, with mixed results – the narrative possibilities of someone who does not get involved in drama are limited. In 2000, however, Image Comics published the first issue of Brian Michael Bendis's comic "Powers", which followed the lives of homicide detectives as they investigated superhero-related cases. Bendis's success has led both Marvel Comics and DC Comics to begin their own superhero-themed police procedurals ("District X" and the aforementioned "Gotham Central"), which focus on how the job of a police officer is affected by such tropes as secret identities, superhuman abilities, costumes, and the near-constant presence of vigilantes.


title: Police procedural

text: While the detectives in "Powers" were "normal" (unpowered) humans dealing with super-powered crime, Alan Moore and Gene Ha's "Top 10" mini-series, published by America's Best Comics in 2000–01, centered around the super-powered police force in a setting where powers are omnipresent. The comic detailed the lives and work of the police force of Neopolis, a city in which everyone, from the police and criminals to civilians, children and even pets, has super-powers, colourful costumes and secret identities.


title: Police procedural

text: The police procedural is considered to be a male-dominant genre which very often portrays the masculine hero dedicated to the professional realm. The introduction of women as protagonists is commonly attributed to either adding sexual appeal, introducing gendered issues like investigating sex crimes, or delving into the personal relationships of the characters. It also often portrays rape myths, such as that rape is more often committed by strangers rather than a known acquaintance of the victim, that the majority of rape claims are false, and that rapes only happen to "bad girls".


title: Police procedural

text: The portrayal of the criminal justice system also under-represents issues of race and institutional racism. A report by Color of Change Hollywood and the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center identified that in these shows there was a severe lack of portrayal of racial bias in the criminal procedure, discussion about criminal justice reform, and victims who are women of color. There is also little representation of people of color in the creation of these shows.


title: Police procedural

text: The police procedural genre is becoming increasingly popular and has accounted for about 22% of all scripted shows on US broadcast network in the last 10 years. This prevalence implies that viewers are often facing TV series that place police officers at the center of the story, showing exclusively their vision of the world. This approach has been denounced as enforcing the idea that the life and views of policemen are more important than the ones of the communities being policed.


title: Police procedural

text: In police procedural the policemen are presented as the "good guys" or close to superhuman, leading to a potentially biased narrative. Even when they use illegal practices it is presented as a necessary decision made in the general interest. A report by Color of Change Hollywood and the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center revealed that police procedural shows were normalizing unjust practices such as illegal search, surveillance, coercion, intimidation, violence, abuse and racism.


title: Police procedural

text: Additionally, criticisms have been raised against the genre for its unrealistic depiction of crime. Particularly, police procedurals have been accused of possessing an unrealistic preoccupation with incidents such as homicide and terrorism. In the United States, plot points involving murder investigations appear at more frequent rates than those involving theft, substance abuse, or domestic violence—all of which citizens are more likely to personally experience. Following the 2001 attack on the World Trade Centre in New York, police procedurals have additionally portrayed attempted terrorism incidents at unrealistically high rates, prompting accusations of racial profiling and fear-mongering.


title: Police procedural

text: The manner in which crime has been portrayed in the media has subsequently been linked with discrepancies both in popular perception of crime rates, as well as sentencing. In a 2005 study conducted on the German public, it was found that despite a decline in total offences between 1992 and 2003, "the German public believes or assumes, on balance, that crime has increased". It has been further posited that the distorted public perception arising from the prevalence of police procedurals has been a factor in influencing sentencing rates. Countries such as the US, UK and Germany—while experiencing declines in crime rates—reported increases in the volume and severity of incarceration.


title: Police procedural

text: However, alongside protests against police brutality in the United States and abroad, and debates on the role of entertainment in the portrayal of law enforcement in society, the genre has been facing increased scrutiny. As a result, some television networks have been making an effort to address and correct the aforementioned criticism. In August 2020, it became known that the CBS writing staff will partner with 21CP Solutions, an advisory group on public safety and law enforcement, on the network's legal dramas and police procedurals. CBS producers state that the team, including civil rights experts, lawyers and police veterans alike, has been hired in order to fill the recently identified lack of reality in crime shows and allow the genre to move with the times. As a result, the main objectives and partnership's attention is supposed to focus on an increase of inclusivity, diversity and authenticity in the production of police procedurals.


title: Group of 77

text: The Group of 77 (G77) at the United Nations (UN) is a coalition of 134 developing countries, designed to promote its members' collective economic interests and create an enhanced joint negotiating capacity in the United Nations. There were 77 founding members of the organization headquartered in Geneva, but it has since expanded to 134 member countries according to the organization. Pakistan holds the chairmanship as of 2021.


title: Group of 77

text: The group was founded on 15 June 1964, by 77 non-aligned nations in the "Joint Declaration of the Seventy-Seven Countries" issued at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). The first major meeting was in Algiers in 1967, where the "Charter of Algiers" was adopted and the basis for permanent institutional structures was begun under the leadership of Raul Prebisch who had previously worked at ECLA. There are "Chapters of the Group of 77" in Geneva (UN), Rome (FAO), Vienna (UNIDO), Paris (UNESCO), Nairobi (UNEP) and the Group of 24 in Washington, D.C. (International Monetary Fund and World Bank).


title: Group of 77

text: The group was credited with a common stance against apartheid and for supporting global disarmament. It has been supportive of the New International Economic Order. It has been subject to criticism for its lacklustre support, or outright opposition, to pro-environmental initiatives, which the group considers secondary to economic development and poverty eradication initiatives.


title: Group of 77

text: As of 2020, the group comprises all of the UN member states (along with the U.N. observer State of Palestine), excluding the following countries:


title: Group of 77

text: The Group of 77 lists China as one of its members. The Chinese government provides consistent political support to the G77 and has made financial contributions to the Group since 1994, but it does not consider itself to be a member. As a result, official statements of the G77 are delivered in the name of The Group of 77 and China or G77+China.


title: Group of 77

text: The Group of 24 (G-24) is a chapter of the G-77 that was established in 1971 to coordinate the positions of developing countries on international monetary and development finance issues and to ensure that their interests were adequately represented in negotiations on international monetary matters. Every member of the G-24, except for Mexico, is also a member of the G77.


title: Mario Lanza

text: Mario Lanza (, ; born Alfredo Arnold Cocozza ; January 31, 1921 – October 7, 1959) was an American tenor and actor. He was a Hollywood film star popular in the late 1940s and the 1950s. Lanza began studying to be a professional singer at the age of 16. After appearing at the Hollywood Bowl in 1947, Lanza signed a seven-year film contract with Louis B. Mayer, the head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, who saw his performance and was impressed by his singing. Prior to that, the adult Lanza sang only two performances of an opera. The following year (1948), however, he sang the role of Pinkerton in Puccini's "Madama Butterfly" in New Orleans.


title: Mario Lanza

text: His film debut for MGM was in "That Midnight Kiss" (1949) with Kathryn Grayson and Ethel Barrymore. A year later, in "The Toast of New Orleans", his featured popular song "Be My Love" became his first million-selling hit. In 1951, he played the role of tenor Enrico Caruso, his idol, in the biopic "The Great Caruso", which produced another million-seller with "The Loveliest Night of the Year" (a song which used the melody of "Sobre las Olas"). "The Great Caruso" was the 11th top-grossing film that year.


title: Mario Lanza

text: The title song of his next film, "Because You're Mine", was his final million-selling hit song. The song went on to receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song. After recording the soundtrack for his next film, "The Student Prince", he embarked upon a protracted battle with studio head Dore Schary arising from artistic differences with director Curtis Bernhardt, and was eventually dismissed by MGM.


title: Mario Lanza

text: Lanza was known to be "rebellious, tough, and ambitious". During most of his film career, he suffered from addictions to overeating and alcohol which had a serious effect on his health and his relationships with directors, producers and, occasionally, other cast members. Hollywood columnist Hedda Hopper writes that "his smile, which was as big as his voice, was matched with the habits of a tiger cub, impossible to housebreak." She adds that he was the "last of the great romantic performers". He made three more films before dying of an apparent pulmonary embolism at the age of 38. At the time of his death in 1959, he was still "the most famous tenor in the world". Author Eleonora Kimmel concludes that Lanza "blazed like a meteor whose light lasts a brief moment in time".


title: Mario Lanza

text: Born Alfredo Arnold Cocozza in Philadelphia, he was exposed to classical singing at an early age by his Abruzzese-Molisan Italian parents. His mother Maria Lanza was from Tocco da Casauria, a town in the province of Pescara in the region of Abruzzo. His father Antonio Cocozza was from Filignano, a town in the province of Isernia in the region of Molise.


title: Mario Lanza

text: By age 16, his vocal talent had become apparent. Starting out in local operatic productions in Philadelphia for the YMCA Opera Company while still in his teens, he later came to the attention of longtime (1924–49) principal Boston Symphony conductor Serge Koussevitzky. In 1942, Koussevitzky provided young Cocozza with a full student scholarship to the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood, Massachusetts. Reportedly, Koussevitzky later told him "Yours is a voice such as is heard once in a hundred years."


title: Mario Lanza

text: He made his opera debut as Fenton in Otto Nicolai's "The Merry Wives of Windsor" (in English) at the Berkshire Music Festival in Tanglewood on August 7, 1942 after a period of study with conductors Boris Goldovsky and Leonard Bernstein. This was when Cocozza adopted the stage name Mario Lanza for its similarity to his mother's maiden name, Maria Lanza.


title: Mario Lanza

text: His performances at Tanglewood won him critical acclaim, with Noel Straus of "The New York Times" hailing the 21-year-old tenor as having "few equals among tenors of the day in terms of quality, warmth and power". Herbert Graf subsequently wrote in "Opera News" (October 5, 1942), "A real find of the season was Mario Lanza [...] He would have no difficulty one day being asked to join the Metropolitan Opera." Lanza sang Nicolai's Fenton twice at Tanglewood, in addition to appearing there in a one-off presentation of Act III of Puccini's "La bohème" with the noted Mexican soprano Irma González, baritone James Pease and mezzo-soprano Laura Castellano. Music critic Jay C. Rosenfeld wrote in "The New York Times" of August 9, 1942, "Irma González as Mimì and Mario Lanza as Rodolfo were conspicuous by the beauty of their voices and the vividness of their characterizations." In an interview shortly before her own death in 2008, González recalled that Lanza was "very correct, likeable, with a powerful and beautiful voice".


title: Mario Lanza

text: His budding operatic career was interrupted in World War II when he was assigned to Special Services in the U.S. Army Air Corps. He appeared in the wartime shows "On the Beam" and "Winged Victory". He also appeared in the film version of the latter (albeit as an unrecognizable member of the chorus). He resumed his singing career with a concert in Atlantic City, New Jersey with the NBC Symphony Orchestra in September 1945 under Peter Herman Adler, subsequently his mentor. The following month, he replaced tenor Jan Peerce on the live CBS radio program "Great Moments in Music" on which he made six appearances in four months, singing extracts from various operas and other works.


title: Mario Lanza

text: He studied with Enrico Rosati for 15 months, and then embarked on an 86-concert tour of the United States, Canada and Mexico between July 1947 and May 1948 with bass George London and soprano Frances Yeend. Reviewing his second appearance at Chicago's Grant Park in July 1947 in the "Chicago Sunday Tribune", Claudia Cassidy praised Lanza's "superbly natural tenor" and observed that "though a multitude of fine points evade him, he possesses the things almost impossible to learn. He knows the accent that makes a lyric line reach its audience, and he knows why opera is music drama."


title: Mario Lanza

text: In April 1948, Lanza sang two performances as Pinkerton in Puccini's "Madama Butterfly" for the New Orleans Opera Association conducted by Walter Herbert with stage director Armando Agnini. Reviewing the opening-night performance in the "St. Louis News" (April 9, 1948), Laurence Oden wrote "Mario Lanza performed ... Lieutenant Pinkerton with considerable verve and dash. Rarely have we seen a more superbly romantic leading tenor. His exceptionally beautiful voice helps immeasurably." Following the success of these performances, he was invited to return to New Orleans in 1949 as Alfredo in Verdi's "La traviata". But, as biographer Armando Cesari wrote, Lanza by 1949 "was already deeply engulfed in the Hollywood machinery and consequently never learned [that key mid-Verdi tenor] role."


title: Mario Lanza

text: At the time of his death, Lanza was preparing to return to the operatic stage. Conductor Peter Herman Adler, with whom Lanza previously had worked both in concert and on the soundtrack of "The Great Caruso", visited the tenor in Rome during the summer of 1959 and later recalled that "[Lanza] was working two hours a day with an operatic coach, and intended to go back to opera, his only true love." Adler promised the tenor "all possible help" in his "planning for his operatic future." In the October 14, 1959 edition of "Variety", it was reported that Lanza had planned to make his return to opera in the role of Canio in Leoncavallo's "Pagliacci" during the Rome Opera's 1960–61 season. This was subsequently confirmed by Riccardo Vitale, artistic director of the Rome Opera. "Variety" also noted that preparations had been underway at the time of Lanza's death for him to participate in recording a series of complete operas for RCA Italiana.


title: Mario Lanza

text: A concert at the Hollywood Bowl in August 1947 had brought Lanza to the attention of Louis B. Mayer, who promptly signed Lanza to a seven-year film contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The contract required him to commit to the studio for six months, and at first Lanza believed he would be able to combine his film career with his operatic and concert one. In May 1949, he made his first commercial recordings with RCA Victor. His rendition of the aria "Che gelida manina" (from "La bohème") from that session was subsequently awarded the prize of Operatic Recording of the Year by the (United States) National Record Critics Association.


title: Mario Lanza

text: Lanza's first two starring films, "That Midnight Kiss" and "The Toast of New Orleans", both opposite top-billed Kathryn Grayson, were commercial successes, and in 1950 his recording of "Be My Love" from the latter became the first of three million-selling singles for the young singer, earning him enormous fame in the process. While at MGM, Lanza worked closely with Academy Award-winning conductor, composer, and arranger Johnny Green.


title: Mario Lanza

text: In a 1977 interview with Lanza biographer Armando Cesari, Green recalled that the tenor was insecure about the manner in which he had become successful, and was keenly aware of the fact that he had become a Hollywood star before first having established himself on the operatic stage.Had [Lanza] been already a leading tenor, if not "the" leading tenor at the Met[ropolitan Opera House], and come to Hollywood in between seasons to make a picture, he would have had [the security of having] the Met as his home," Green remarked. According to Green, Lanza possessed "the voice of the next Caruso. [Lanza] had an unusual, very unusual quality ... a tenor with a baritone color in the middle and lower registers, and a great feeling for the making of music. A great musicality. I found it fascinating, musically, to work with [him].


title: Mario Lanza

text: In 1951, Lanza portrayed Enrico Caruso in "The Great Caruso", which was MGM's biggest success of the year. At the same time, Lanza's increasing popularity exposed him to intense criticism by some music critics, including those who had praised his work years earlier. His performance earned him compliments from the subject's son, Enrico Caruso Jr., a tenor in his own right. Shortly before his own death in 1987, Enrico Jr. wrote in "Enrico Caruso: My Father and My Family" (posthumously published in 1990) that:I can think of no other tenor, before or since Mario Lanza, who could have risen with comparable success to the challenge of playing Caruso in a screen biography ... Lanza was born with one of the dozen or so great tenor voices of the century, with a natural voice placement, an unmistakable and very pleasing timbre, and a nearly infallible musical instinct.


title: Mario Lanza

text: In 1952, Lanza was dismissed by MGM after he had recorded the songs for "The Student Prince". The reason most frequently cited in the tabloid press at the time was that his recurring weight problem had made it impossible for him to fit into the costumes of the Prince. However, as his biographers Cesari and Mannering have established, Lanza was not overweight at the beginning of the production, and it was, in fact, a disagreement with director Curtis Bernhardt over Lanza's singing of one of the songs in the film that led to Lanza walking off the set. MGM refused to replace Bernhardt, and the film was subsequently made with English actor Edmund Purdom, who was dubbed to Lanza's recorded singing voice.


title: Mario Lanza

text: Depressed by his dismissal, and with his self-confidence severely undermined, Lanza became a virtual recluse for more than a year, frequently seeking refuge in alcoholic binges. During this period, Lanza also came very close to bankruptcy as a result of poor investment decisions by his former manager, and his lavish spending habits left him owing about $250,000 in back taxes to the IRS.


title: Mario Lanza

text: Lanza returned to an active film career in 1955 in "Serenade," released by Warner Bros. However the film was not as successful as his previous films, despite its strong musical content, including arias from "Der Rosenkavalier", "Fedora", "L'arlesiana", and "Otello", as well as the Act I duet from "Otello" with soprano Licia Albanese. Mme. Albanese said of Lanza in 1980:I had heard all sorts of stories about Mario [Lanza]. That his voice was too small for the stage, that he couldn't learn a score, that he couldn't sustain a full opera; in fact, that he couldn't even sing a full aria, that his recordings were made by splicing together various portions of an aria. None of it is true! He had the most beautiful lirico spinto voice. It was a gorgeous, beautiful, powerful voice. I should know because I sang with so many tenors. He had everything that one needs. The voice, the temperament, perfect diction. ... Vocally he was very secure. All he needed was coaching. Everything was so easy for him. He was fantastic! Lanza moved to Rome, Italy in May 1957, where he worked on the film "Seven Hills of Rome", and returned to performing live in November of that year, singing for Queen Elizabeth II at the Royal Variety Show at the London Palladium. From January to April 1958, Lanza gave a concert tour of the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Germany. He gave a total of 22 concerts on this tour, receiving mostly positive reviews for his singing. Despite a number of cancellations, which resulted from his poor health during this period, Lanza continued to receive offers for operatic appearances, concerts, and films.


title: Mario Lanza

text: In September 1958, he made a number of operatic recordings at the Rome Opera House for the soundtrack of what would turn out to be his final film, "For the First Time". It was then that he came to the attention of that opera house's artistic director, Riccardo Vitale, who promptly offered the tenor "carte blanche" in his choice of operatic roles. Lanza also received offers to sing in any opera of his choosing from the San Carlo in Naples. At the same time, however, his health continued to decline, with the tenor suffering from a variety of ailments, including phlebitis and acute high blood pressure. His old habits of overeating and crash dieting, coupled with binge drinking, compounded his problems.


title: Mario Lanza

text: In April 1959, Lanza reportedly fell ill, mainly with heart problems as well as pneumonia. On September 25, 1959, he entered Rome's Valle Giulia clinic for the purpose of losing weight for an upcoming film. While in the clinic, he underwent a controversial weight loss program colloquially known as "the twilight sleep treatment", which required its patients to be kept immobile and sedated for prolonged periods. On October 7, Lanza died of an apparent pulmonary embolism at age 38. No autopsy was performed. He was survived by his wife and four children. Betty Hicks Lanza returned to Hollywood completely devastated; she died five months later of a drug overdose. Maria Caniglia, Franco Fabrizi, and Enzo Fiermonte attended the funeral. Frank Sinatra sent his condolences by telegram.


title: Mario Lanza

text: Lanza was the first RCA Victor Red Seal artist to win a gold disc and the first artist to sell two and a half million albums. He was referred to by some sources as the "new Caruso" after his "instant success" in Hollywood films, while MGM hoped he would become the movie studio's "singing Clark Gable" for his good looks and powerful voice. He was a big inspiration to fellow RCA Victor recording star Elvis Presley. A year after Lanza's death, Presley recorded an English translation of "O Sole Mio", which was popularized by Lanza. This song, "It's Now or Never", went on to be one of Presley's all-time best selling songs.


title: Mario Lanza

text: In 1994, José Carreras paid tribute to Lanza during a worldwide concert tour, saying, "If I'm an opera singer, it's thanks to Mario Lanza." Plácido Domingo stated, "Lanza's passion and the way his voice sounds are what made me sing opera. I actually owe my love for opera...to a kid from Philadelphia."


title: Mario Lanza

text: Because he appeared on the operatic stage only twice, many critics felt that he needed to have had more "operatic quality time" in major theaters before he could be considered an opera star. His films, especially "The Great Caruso", influenced numerous future opera stars, including Joseph Calleja, José Carreras, Plácido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti, and Vyacheslav Polozov. According to opera historian Clyde McCants, "Of all the Hollywood singers who performed operatic music...the one who made the greatest impact was Mario Lanza." Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper concluded that "there had never been anyone like Mario, and I doubt whether we shall ever see his like again".


title: Mario Lanza

text: A 90-minute PBS documentary, "", hosted by Plácido Domingo and featuring Lanza's family and professional associates, was released in 1983, and nominated for a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Informational Series or Special that same year. In October 2007, Charles Messina directed the musical "Be My Love: The Mario Lanza Story", written by Richard Vetere and produced by Sonny Grosso and Phil Ramone, about Lanza's life. It premiered at The Tilles Center for the Performing Arts in Greenvale, New York.


title: Mario Lanza

text: Mario Lanza Boulevard is a roadway in the Eastwick section of Lanza's native Philadelphia, close to Philadelphia International Airport and ending on the grounds of the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge. The Mario Lanza Institute and Museum, which honors Lanza's legacy and also provides scholarships to young singers, is located at 712 Montrose Street in South Philadelphia. Philadelphia's Queen Street Park was renamed for Lanza in 1967.


title: Mario Lanza

text: After the home at 636 Christian Street in South Philadelphia where Lanza was born was demolished, a Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission marker was put in its place to mark the site. In 1998, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs, California, Walk of Stars was dedicated to him. Lanza has been awarded two Stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: a Star for Recording at 1751 Vine Street, and a Star at 6821 Hollywood Boulevard for Motion Pictures.


title: Mario Lanza

text: At the height of his career, Lanza was voted by exhibitors as being among the most popular stars in the country:


title: History of Wikipedia

text: Wikipedia began with its first edit on 15 January 2001, two days after the domain was registered by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. Its technological and conceptual underpinnings predate this; the earliest known proposal for an online encyclopedia was made by Rick Gates in 1993, and the concept of a free-as-in-freedom online encyclopedia (as distinct from mere open source) was proposed by Richard Stallman in 1998.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: Crucially, Stallman's concept specifically included the idea that no central organization should control editing. This characteristic greatly contrasted with contemporary digital encyclopedias such as Microsoft Encarta, "Encyclopædia Britannica", and even Bomis's Nupedia, which was Wikipedia's direct predecessor. In 2001, the license for Nupedia was changed to GFDL, and Wales and Sanger launched Wikipedia using the concept and technology of a wiki pioneered in 1995 by Ward Cunningham. Initially, Wikipedia was intended to complement Nupedia, an online encyclopedia project edited solely by experts, by providing additional draft articles and ideas for it. In practice, Wikipedia quickly overtook Nupedia, becoming a global project in multiple languages and inspiring a wide range of other online reference projects.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: Wikipedia's worldwide monthly readership in 2014 was approximately 495 million. Worldwide in September 2018, WMF Labs tallied 15.5 billion page views for the month. According to comScore, Wikipedia receives over 117 million monthly unique visitors from the United States alone.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: The concept of compiling the world's knowledge in a single location dates back to the ancient Library of Alexandria and Library of Pergamum, but the modern concept of a general-purpose, widely distributed, printed encyclopedia originated with Denis Diderot and the 18th-century French encyclopedists. The idea of using automated machinery beyond the printing press to build a more useful encyclopedia can be traced to Paul Otlet's 1934 book "Traité de Documentation"; Otlet also founded the Mundaneum, an institution dedicated to indexing the world's knowledge, in 1910. This concept of a machine-assisted encyclopedia was further expanded in H. G. Wells' book of essays "World Brain" (1938) and Vannevar Bush's future vision of the microfilm-based Memex in his essay "As We May Think" (1945). Another milestone was Ted Nelson's hypertext design Project Xanadu, which was begun in 1960.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: The use of volunteers was integral and instrumental in creating and maintaining Wikipedia. However, even without the internet, huge complex projects of similar nature had made use of volunteers. Specifically, the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary was conceived with the speech at the London Library, on Guy Fawkes Day, Nov 5, 1857 by Richard Chenevix Trench. It took about 70 years to complete. Dr. Trench envisioned a grand new dictionary of every word in the English language, and to be used democratically and freely. According to author Simon Winchester, "The undertaking of the scheme, he said, was beyond the ability of any one man. To peruse all of English literature—and to comb the London and New York newspapers and the most literate of the magazines and journals—must be instead 'the combined action of many.' It would be necessary to recruit a team—moreover, a huge one—probably comprising hundreds and hundreds of unpaid amateurs, all of them working as volunteers."


title: History of Wikipedia

text: Advances in information technology in the late 20th century led to changes in the form of encyclopedias. While previous encyclopedias, notably the "Encyclopædia Britannica", were often book-based, Microsoft's Encarta, published in 1993, was available on CD-ROM and hyperlinked. The development of the World Wide Web led to many attempts to develop internet encyclopedia projects. An early proposal for an online encyclopedia was Interpedia in 1993 by Rick Gates; this project died before generating any encyclopedic content. Free software proponent Richard Stallman described the usefulness of a "Free Universal Encyclopedia and Learning Resource" in 1998. His published document outlined how to "ensure that progress continues towards this best and most natural outcome." On Wednesday 17 January 2001, two days after the founding of Wikipedia, the Free Software Foundation's (FSF) GNUPedia project went online, competing with Nupedia, but today the FSF encourages people "to visit and contribute to [Wikipedia]".


title: History of Wikipedia

text: Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has stated that the germ of the concept for Wikipedia, for him, came back when he was a graduate student at Indiana University where he was impressed with the successes of the open-source movement and found Richard Stallman's Emacs Manifesto promoting free software and a sharing economy to be quite interesting. At the time, Wales was studying finance and was intrigued by the incentives of the many people who contributed as volunteers toward creating free software where there were many examples having excellent results.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: According to "The Economist", Wikipedia "has its roots in the techno-optimism that characterised the internet at the end of the 20th century. It held that ordinary people could use their computers as tools for liberation, education and enlightenment."


title: History of Wikipedia

text: Wikipedia was initially conceived as a feeder project for the Wales-founded Nupedia, an earlier project to produce a free online encyclopedia, volunteered by Bomis, a web-advertising firm owned by Jimmy Wales, Tim Shell and Michael E. Davis. Nupedia was founded upon the use of highly qualified volunteer contributors and an elaborate multi-step peer review process. Despite its mailing list of interested editors, and the presence of a full-time editor-in-chief, Larry Sanger, a graduate philosophy student hired by Wales, the writing of content for Nupedia was extremely slow, with only 12 articles written during the first year.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: Wales and Sanger discussed various ways to create content more rapidly. The idea of a wiki-based complement originated from a conversation between Sanger and Ben Kovitz. Ben Kovitz was a computer programmer and regular on Ward Cunningham's revolutionary wiki "the WikiWikiWeb". He explained to Sanger what wikis were, at that time a difficult concept to understand, over a dinner on Tuesday 2 January 2001. Wales first stated, in October 2001, that "Larry had the idea to use Wiki software", though he later stated in December 2005 that Jeremy Rosenfeld, a Bomis employee, introduced him to the concept. Sanger thought a wiki would be a good platform to use, and proposed on the Nupedia mailing list that a wiki based upon UseModWiki (then v. 0.90) be set up as a "feeder" project for Nupedia. Under the subject "Let's make a wiki", he wrote:


title: History of Wikipedia

text: There was considerable resistance on the part of Nupedia's editors and reviewers to the idea of associating Nupedia with a wiki-style website. In his message to Nupedia mailing list sent on 11 January 2001, Sanger suggested giving the new project its own name, "Wikipedia", and Wikipedia was soon launched on its own domain, , on Monday 15 January 2001. The bandwidth and server (located in San Diego) used for these initial projects were donated by Bomis. Many former Bomis employees later contributed content to the encyclopedia: notably Tim Shell, co-founder and later CEO of Bomis, and programmer Jason Richey.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: Wales stated in December 2008 that he made Wikipedia's first edit, a test edit with the text "Hello, World!", but this edit may have been to an old version of Wikipedia which soon after was scrapped and replaced by a restart. The existence of the project was formally announced and an appeal for volunteers to engage in content creation was made to the Nupedia mailing list on 17 January 2001.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: The project received many new participants after being mentioned on the Slashdot website in July 2001, having already earned two minor mentions in March 2001. It then received a prominent pointer to a story on the community-edited technology and culture website Kuro5hin on 25 July. Between these relatively rapid influxes of traffic, there had been a steady stream of traffic from other sources, especially Google, which alone sent hundreds of new visitors to the site every day. Its first major mainstream media coverage was in "The New York Times" on 20 September 2001.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: The project gained its 1,000th article around Monday 12 February 2001, and reached 10,000 articles around 7 September. In the first year of its existence, over 20,000 encyclopedia entries were created – a rate of over 1,500 articles per month. On Friday 30 August 2002, the article count reached 40,000.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: Wikipedia's earliest edits were long believed lost, since the original UseModWiki software deleted old data after about a month. On Tuesday 14 December 2010, developer Tim Starling found backups on SourceForge containing every change made to Wikipedia from its creation in January 2001 to 17 August 2001. It showed the first edit as being to HomePage on 15 January 2001, reading "This is the new WikiPedia!". That edit was imported in 2019 and can be found .


title: History of Wikipedia

text: Early in Wikipedia's development, it began to expand internationally, with the creation of new namespaces, each with a distinct set of usernames. The first subdomain created for a non-English Wikipedia was (created on Friday 16 March 2001, 01:38 UTC), followed after a few hours by (at 13:07 UTC). The Japanese Wikipedia, started as , was created around that period, and initially used only Romanized Japanese. For about two months Catalan was the one with the most articles in a non-English language, although statistics of that early period are imprecise. The French Wikipedia was created on or around 11 May 2001, in a wave of new language versions that also included Chinese, Dutch, Esperanto, Hebrew, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish. These languages were soon joined by Arabic and Hungarian. In September 2001, an announcement pledged commitment to the multilingual provision of Wikipedia, notifying users of an upcoming roll-out of Wikipedias for all major languages, the establishment of core standards, and a push for the translation of core pages for the new wikis. At the end of that year, when international statistics first began to be logged, Afrikaans, Norwegian, and Serbian versions were announced.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: In January 2002, 90% of all Wikipedia articles were in English. By January 2004, fewer than 50% were English, and this internationalization has continued to increase as the encyclopedia grows. , about 85.5% of all Wikipedia articles are contained within non-English Wikipedia versions.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: In March 2002, following the withdrawal of funding by Bomis during the dot-com bust, Larry Sanger left both Nupedia and Wikipedia. By 2002, Sanger and Wales differed in their views on how best to manage open encyclopedias. Both still supported the open-collaboration concept, but the two disagreed on how to handle disruptive editors, specific roles for experts, and the best way to guide the project to success.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: Wales went on to establish self-governance and bottom-up self-direction by editors on Wikipedia. He made it clear that he would not be involved in the community's day-to-day management, but would encourage it to learn to self-manage and find its own best approaches. , Wales mostly restricts his own role to occasional input on serious matters, executive activity, advocacy of knowledge, and encouragement of similar reference projects.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: Sanger says he is an "inclusionist" and is open to almost anything. He proposed that experts still have a place in the Web 2.0 world. He returned briefly to academia, then joined the Digital Universe Foundation. In 2006, Sanger founded Citizendium, an open encyclopedia that used real names for contributors in an effort to reduce disruptive editing, and hoped to facilitate "gentle expert guidance" to increase the accuracy of its content. Decisions about article content were to be up to the community, but the site was to include a statement about "family-friendly content". He stated early on that he intended to leave Citizendium in a few years, by which time the project and its management would presumably be established.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: Old, even obsolete, encyclopedia articles are highly valuable for historical research. For each Wikipedia article, past versions are accessible through the "View history" link at the top of the page. In addition, ZIM File Archive, at Internet Archive, contains past snapshots of full Wikipedia, as well as articles selections, in multiple languages, from different years. They can be open with Kiwix software.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: Between 2007 and 2011, three CD/DVD versions (called Wikipedia Version , and ) containing a selection of articles from English Wikipedia were released. They are now available as Kiwix ZIM files, both from ZIM File Archive, and from Kiwix download site.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: In March 2000, the Nupedia project was started. Its intention was to publish articles written by experts which would be licensed as free content. Nupedia was founded by Jimmy Wales, with Larry Sanger as editor-in-chief, and funded by the web-advertising company Bomis.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: In January 2001, Wikipedia began as a side-project of Nupedia, to allow collaboration on articles prior to entering the peer-review process. The name was suggested by Sanger on 11 January 2001 as a portmanteau of the words "wiki" (Hawaiian for "quick") and "encyclopedia". The "wikipedia.com" and "wikipedia.org" domain names were registered on 12 and 13 January, respectively, with "wikipedia.org" being brought online on the same day. The project formally opened on 15 January (""), with the first international Wikipedias – the French, German, Catalan, Swedish, and Italian editions – being created between March and May. The "neutral point of view" () policy was officially formulated at this time, and Wikipedia's first slashdotter wave arrived on 26 July. The first media report about Wikipedia appeared in August 2001 in the newspaper "Wales on Sunday".


title: History of Wikipedia

text: The September 11 attacks spurred the appearance of breaking news stories on the homepage, as well as information boxes linking related articles. At the time, approximately 100 articles related to 9/11 had been created. After the September 11 attacks, a link to the Wikipedia article on the attacks appeared on Yahoo!'s home page, resulting in a spike in traffic.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: 2002 saw the end of funding for Wikipedia from Bomis and the departure of Larry Sanger. The forking of the Spanish Wikipedia also took place with the establishment of the "Enciclopedia Libre". The first portable MediaWiki software went live on 25 January. Bots were introduced, Jimmy Wales confirmed that Wikipedia would never run commercial advertising, and the first sister project (Wiktionary) and first formal Manual of Style were launched. A separate board of directors to supervise the project was proposed and initially discussed at Meta-Wikipedia. Close to 200 contributors were editing Wikipedia daily.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: The English Wikipedia passed 100,000 articles in 2003, while the next largest edition, the German Wikipedia, passed 10,000. The Wikimedia Foundation was established, and Wikipedia adopted its jigsaw world logo. Mathematical formulae using TeX were reintroduced to the website. The took place in Munich, Germany, in October. The basic principles of Wikipedia's (known colloquially as "ArbCom") were developed.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: The worldwide Wikipedia article pool continued to grow rapidly in 2004, doubling in size in 12 months, from under 500,000 articles in late 2003 to over 1 million in over 100 languages by the end of 2004. The English Wikipedia accounted for just under half of these articles. The website's server farms were moved from California to Florida, and CSS style configuration sheets were introduced, and the first attempt to block Wikipedia occurred, with the website being blocked in China for two weeks in June. The formal election of a board and Arbitration Committee began. The first formal projects were proposed to deliberately balance content and seek out systemic bias arising from Wikipedia's community structure.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: "Bourgeois v. Peters", (11th Cir. 2004), a court case decided by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit was one of the earliest . It stated: "We also reject the notion that the Department of Homeland Security's threat advisory level somehow justifies these searches. Although the threat level was 'elevated' at the time of the protest, 'to date, the threat level has stood at yellow (elevated) for the majority of its time in existence. It has been raised to orange (high) six times."


title: History of Wikipedia

text: Wikimedia Commons was created on 7 September 2004 to host media files for Wikipedia in all languages.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: In 2005, Wikipedia became the most popular reference website on the Internet, according to Hitwise, with the English Wikipedia alone exceeding 750,000 articles. Wikipedia's first multilingual and subject portals were established in 2005. A formal fundraiser held in the first quarter of the year raised almost US$100,000 for system upgrades to handle growing demand. China again blocked Wikipedia in October 2005.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: The first major Wikipedia scandal, the Seigenthaler incident, occurred in 2005, when a well-known figure was found to have a vandalized biography which had gone unnoticed for months. In the wake of this and other concerns, the first policy and system changes specifically designed to counter this form of abuse were established. These included a new privilege policy update to assist in sock puppetry investigations, a new feature called , a more strict policy on biographies of living people and the tagging of such articles for stricter review. A restriction of new article creation to registered users only was put in place in December 2005, after the Seigenthaler incident where an anonymous user posted a hoax.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: Wikimania 2005, the first Wikimania conference, was held from 4 to 8 August 2005 at the "Haus der Jugend" in Frankfurt, Germany, attracting about 380 attendees.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: The English Wikipedia gained its one-millionth article, Jordanhill railway station, on 1 March 2006. The first approved Wikipedia article selection was made freely available to download, and "Wikipedia" became registered as a trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation. The congressional aides biography scandals – multiple incidents in which congressional staffers and a campaign manager were caught trying to covertly alter Wikipedia biographies – came to public attention, leading to the resignation of the campaign manager. Nonetheless, Wikipedia was rated as one of the top five global brands of 2006.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: Jimmy Wales indicated at Wikimania 2006 that Wikipedia had achieved sufficient volume and called for an emphasis on quality, perhaps best expressed in the call for . A new privilege, "oversight", was created, allowing specific versions of archived pages with unacceptable content to be marked as non-viewable. Semi-protection against anonymous vandalism, introduced in 2005, proved more popular than expected, with over 1,000 pages being semi-protected at any given time in 2006.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: Wikipedia continued to grow rapidly in 2007, possessing over 5 million registered editor accounts by 13 August. The 250 language editions of Wikipedia contained a combined total of 7.5 million articles, totalling 1.74 billion words, by 13 August. The English Wikipedia gained articles at a steady rate of 1,700 a day, with the wikipedia.org domain name ranked the 10th-busiest in the world. Wikipedia continued to garner visibility in – the Essjay controversy broke when a prominent member of Wikipedia was found to have lied about his credentials. Citizendium, a competing online encyclopedia, launched publicly. A new trend developed in Wikipedia, with the encyclopedia addressing people whose notability stemmed from being a participant in a news story by adding a redirect from their name to the larger story, rather than creating a distinct biographical article. On 9 September 2007, the English Wikipedia gained its two-millionth article, El Hormiguero. There was some controversy in late 2007 when the Volapük Wikipedia jumped from 797 to over 112,000 articles, briefly becoming the 15th-largest Wikipedia edition, due to automated stub generation by an enthusiast for the Volapük constructed language.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: According to the "MIT Technology Review", the number of regularly active editors on the English-language Wikipedia peaked in 2007 at more than 51,000, and has since been declining.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: Various in many areas continued to expand and refine article contents within their scope. In April 2008, the 10-millionth Wikipedia article was created, and by the end of the year the English Wikipedia exceeded 2.5 million articles.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: On 25 June 2009 at 3:15 pm PDT (22:15 UTC), following the death of pop icon Michael Jackson, the website temporarily crashed.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: The Wikimedia Foundation reported nearly a million visitors to Jackson's biography within one hour, probably the most visitors in a one-hour period to any article in Wikipedia's history. By late August 2009, the number of articles in all Wikipedia editions had exceeded 14 million. The three-millionth article on the English Wikipedia, Beate Eriksen, was created on 17 August 2009 at 04:05 UTC. On 27 December 2009, the German Wikipedia exceeded one million articles, becoming the second edition after the English Wikipedia to do so. A "TIME" article listed Wikipedia among 2009's best websites.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: On 24 March, the European Wikipedia servers went offline due to an overheating problem. Failover to servers in Florida turned out to be broken, causing DNS resolution for Wikipedia to fail across the world. The problem was resolved quickly, but due to DNS caching effects, some areas were slower to regain access to Wikipedia than others.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: On 13 May, the site released a new interface. New features included an updated logo, new navigation tools, and a link wizard. However, the classic interface remained available for those who wished to use it. On 12 December, the English Wikipedia passed the 3.5-million-article mark, while the French Wikipedia's millionth article was created on 21 September. The 1-billionth Wikimedia project edit was performed on 16 April.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: Wikipedia and its users held many celebrations worldwide to commemorate the site's 10th anniversary on 15 January. The site began efforts to expand its growth in India, holding its first Indian conference in Mumbai in November 2011. The English Wikipedia passed the 3.6-million-article mark on 2 April, and reached 3.8 million articles on 18 November. On 7 November 2011, the German Wikipedia exceeded 100 million page edits, becoming the second language edition to do so after the English edition, which attained 500 million page edits on 24 November 2011. The Dutch Wikipedia exceeded 1 million articles on 17 December 2011, becoming the fourth Wikipedia edition to do so.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: The "Wikimania 2011 – Haifa, Israel" stamp was issued by Israel Post on 2 August 2011. This was the first-ever stamp dedicated to a Wikimedia-related project.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: Between 4 and 6 October 2011, the Italian Wikipedia became intentionally inaccessible in protest against the Italian Parliament's proposed DDL intercettazioni law, which, if approved, would allow any person to force websites to remove information that is perceived as untrue or offensive, without the need to provide evidence.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: Also in October 2011, Wikimedia announced the launch of Wikipedia Zero, an initiative to enable free mobile access to Wikipedia in developing countries through partnerships with mobile operators.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: On 16 January, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales announced that the English Wikipedia would shut down for 24 hours on 18 January as part of a protest meant to call public attention to the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act and PROTECT IP Act, two anti-piracy laws under debate in the United States Congress. Calling the blackout a "community decision", Wales and other opponents of the laws believed that they would endanger free speech and online innovation. A similar blackout was staged on 10 July by the Russian Wikipedia, in protest against a proposed Russian internet regulation law.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: In late March 2012, the announced Wikidata, a universal platform for sharing data between all Wikipedia language editions. The US$1.7-million Wikidata project was partly funded by Google, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. Wikimedia Deutschland assumed responsibility for the first phase of Wikidata, and initially planned to make the platform available to editors by December 2012. Wikidata's first phase became fully operational in March 2013.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: In April 2012, Justin Knapp became the first single contributor to make over one million edits to Wikipedia. Jimmy Wales congratulated Knapp for his work and presented him with the site's "Special Barnstar" medal and the "Golden Wiki" award for his achievement. Wales also declared that 20 April would be "Justin Knapp Day".


title: History of Wikipedia

text: On 13 July 2012, the English Wikipedia gained its 4-millionth article, Izbat al-Burj. In October 2012, historian and Wikipedia editor Richard J. Jensen opined that the English Wikipedia was "nearing completion", noting that the number of regularly active editors had fallen significantly since 2007, despite Wikipedia's rapid growth in article count and readership.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: According to Alexa Internet, Wikipedia was the world's sixth-most-popular website as of November 2012. Dow Jones ranked Wikipedia fifth worldwide as of December 2012.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: On 22 January 2013, the Italian Wikipedia became the fifth language edition of Wikipedia to exceed 1 million articles, while the Russian and Spanish Wikipedias gained their millionth articles on 11 and 16 May respectively. On 15 July the Swedish and on 24 September the Polish Wikipedias gained their millionth articles, becoming the eighth and ninth Wikipedia editions to do so.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: On 27 January, the main belt asteroid 274301 was officially renamed "Wikipedia" by the Committee for Small Body Nomenclature.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: The first phase of the Wikidata database, automatically providing interlanguage links and other data, became available for all language editions in March 2013.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: In April 2013, the French secret service was accused of attempting to censor Wikipedia by threatening a Wikipedia volunteer with arrest unless "classified information" about a military radio station was deleted.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: In July, the VisualEditor editing system was launched, forming the first stage of an effort to allow articles to be edited with a word processor-like interface instead of using wiki markup. An editor specifically designed for smartphones and other mobile devices was also launched.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: In February 2014, a project to make a print edition of the English Wikipedia, consisting of 1,000 volumes and over 1,100,000 pages, was launched by German Wikipedia contributors. The project sought funding through Indiegogo, and was intended to honor the contributions of Wikipedia's editors. On 22 October 2014, the first monument to Wikipedia was unveiled in the Polish town of Slubice.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: On 8 June, 15 June, and 16 July 2014, the Waray Wikipedia, the Vietnamese Wikipedia and the Cebuano Wikipedia each exceeded the one million article mark. They were the tenth, eleventh and twelfth Wikipedias to reach that milestone. Despite having very few active users, the Waray and Cebuano Wikipedias had a high number of automatically generated articles created by bots.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: In mid-2015, Wikipedia was the world's seventh-most-popular website according to Alexa Internet, down one place from the position it held in November 2012. At the start of 2015, Wikipedia remained the largest general-knowledge encyclopedia online, with a combined total of over 36 million mainspace articles across all 291 language editions. On average, Wikipedia receives a total of 10 billion global pageviews from around 495 million unique visitors every month, including 85 million visitors from the United States alone, where it is the sixth-most-popular site.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: "Print Wikipedia" was an art project by Michael Mandiberg that created the ability to print 7473 volumes of Wikipedia as it existed on 7 April 2015. Each volume has 700 pages and only 110 were printed by the artist.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: On 1 November 2015, the English Wikipedia reached 5,000,000 articles with the creation of an article on "Persoonia terminalis", a type of shrub.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: On 19 January 2016, the Japanese Wikipedia exceeded the one million article mark, becoming the thirteenth Wikipedia to reach that milestone. The millionth article was (a World War II submarine of the Imperial Japanese Navy).


title: History of Wikipedia

text: In mid-2016, Wikipedia was once again the world's sixth-most-popular website according to Alexa Internet, up one place from the position it held in the previous year.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: In mid-2017, Wikipedia was listed as the world's fifth-most-popular website according to Alexa Internet, rising one place from the position it held in the previous year. Wikipedia Zero was made available in Iraq and Afghanistan.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: On 29 April 2017, online access to Wikipedia was blocked across all language editions in Turkey by the Turkish authorities. This block lasted until 15 January 2020, as the court of Turkey ruled that the block violated human rights. The encrypted Japanese Wikipedia has been blocked in China since 28 December 2017.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: During 2018, Wikipedia retained its listing as the world's fifth-most-popular website according to Alexa Internet. One notable development was the use of Artificial Intelligence to create draft articles on overlooked topics.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: On 13 April 2018, the number of Chinese Wikipedia articles exceeded 1 million, becoming the fourteenth Wikipedia to reach that milestone. The Chinese Wikipedia has been blocked in Mainland China since May 2015. Later in the year, on 26 June, the Portuguese Wikipedia exceeded the one million article mark, becoming the fifteenth Wikipedia to reach that milestone. The millionth article was "" (the Pardon of Richard Nixon).


title: History of Wikipedia

text: In August 2019, according to Alexa.com, Wikipedia fell from fifth placed to seventh placed website in the world for global internet engagement.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: On 23 April 2019, Chinese authorities expanded the block of Wikipedia to versions in all languages. The timing of the block coincided with the 30th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre and the 100th anniversary of the May Fourth Movement, resulting in stricter internet censorship in China.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: On 23 January 2020, the six millionth article, the biography of Maria Elise Turner Lauder, was added to the English Wikipedia. Despite this growth in articles, Wikipedia's global internet engagement, as measured by Alexa, continued to decline. By February 2020, Wikipedia fell to the eleventh placed website in the world for global internet engagement. Both Wikipedia's coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis and the supporting edits, discussions and even deletions were thought to be a useful resource for future historians seeking to understand the period in detail. The World Health Organization collaborated with Wikipedia as a key resource for the dissemination of COVID-19-related information as to help combat the spread of misinformation.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: On 13 January 2021, the English Wikipedia reached one billion edits, where the billionth edit was made by Steven Pruitt.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: MIT Press published an open access book of essays "Wikipedia @ 20: Stories of an Unfinished Revolution", edited by Joseph Reagle and Jackie Koerner with contributions from prominent Wikipedians, Wikimedians, researchers, journalists, librarians and other experts reflecting on particular histories and themes.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: By November 2021, Wikipedia had fallen to the thirteenth placed website in the world for global internet engagement.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: Every year, the Wikimedia Foundation runs fundraising campaigns on Wikipedia to support its operations. These generally last about a month and happen at different times of the year in different countries. In addition to the fundraising banners on Wikipedia itself, there are also email campaigns; some emails invite people to leave the Wikimedia Foundation money in their wills.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: Revenue has risen every year of the Wikimedia Foundation's existence, reaching in 2020/2021, versus expenses of :


title: History of Wikipedia

text: In addition, the Wikimedia Endowment, an organizationally separate fundraising effort begun in 2016, reached $100 million in 2021, five years sooner than planned.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: Because Wikipedia biographies are often updated as soon as new information comes to light, they are often used as a reference source on the lives of . This has led to attempts to manipulate and falsify Wikipedia articles for promotional or defamatory purposes (see Controversies). It has also led to novel uses of the biographical material provided. Some notable people's lives are being affected by their Wikipedia biography.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: Sanger played an important role in the early stages of creating Wikipedia. Wales says that Sanger was his subordinate employee. Sanger initially brought the wiki concept to Wales and suggested it be applied to Nupedia and then, after some initial skepticism, Wales agreed to try it. It was Jimmy Wales, along with other people, who came up with the broader idea of an open-source, collaborative encyclopedia that would accept contributions from ordinary people and it was Wales who invested in it. Wales stated in October 2001 that "Larry had the idea to use Wiki software." Sanger coined the portmanteau "Wikipedia" as the project name. In review, Larry Sanger conceived of a wiki-based encyclopedia as a strategic solution to Nupedia's inefficiency problems. In terms of project roles, Sanger spearheaded and pursued the project as its leader in its first year, and did most of the early work in formulating policies (including "Ignore all rules" and "Neutral point of view") and building up the community. Upon departure in March 2002, Sanger emphasized the main issue was purely the cessation of Bomis' funding for his role, which was not viable part-time, and his changing personal priorities; however, by 2004, the two had drifted apart and Sanger became more critical. Two weeks after the launch of Citizendium, Sanger criticized Wikipedia, describing the latter as "broken beyond repair." By 2005 Wales began to dispute Sanger's role in the project, three years after Sanger left.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: In 2005, Wales described himself simply as the founder of Wikipedia; however, according to Brian Bergstein of the Associated Press, "Sanger has long been cited as a co-founder." There is evidence that Sanger was called co-founder, along with Wales, as early as 2001, and he is referred to as such in early Wikipedia press releases and Wikipedia articles and in a September 2001 "New York Times" article for which both were interviewed. In 2006, Wales said, "He used to work for me [...] I don't agree with calling him a co-founder, but he likes the title"; nonetheless, before January 2004, Wales did not dispute Sanger's status as co-founder and, indeed, identified himself as "co-founder" as late as August 2002. In Sanger's introductory message to the Nupedia mailing list, he said that Jimmy Wales "contacted me and asked me to apply as editor-in-chief of Nupedia. [...] He had had the idea for Nupedia since at least last fall. He tells me that, when thinking about people (particularly philosophers) he knew who could manage this sort of long-term project, he thought I would be perfect for the job. This is indeed my dream job".


title: History of Wikipedia

text: As of March 2007: Wales emphasized this employer–employee relationship and his ultimate authority, terming himself Wikipedia's sole founder; and Sanger emphasized their statuses as co-founders, referencing earlier versions of Wikipedia pages (2004, 2006), press releases (2002–2004), and media coverage from the time of his involvement routinely terming them in this manner.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: The goals which led to GNUpedia were published at least as early as 18 December 2000, and these exact goals were finalized on the 12th and 13th of January 2001, albeit with a copyright of 1999, from when Stallman had first started considering the problem. The only sentence added between 18 December and the unveiling of GNUpedia the week of 12–16 January was this: "The GNU Free Documentation License would be a good license to use for courses."


title: History of Wikipedia

text: GNUpedia was "formally" announced on the "slashdot" website, on 16 January, the same day that their mailing list first went online with a test-message. Wales posted to the list on 17 January, the first full day of messages, explaining the discussions with Stallman concerning the change in Nupedia content-licensing, and suggesting cooperation. Stallman himself first posted on 19 January, and, in his second post on 22 January, mentioned that discussions about merging Wikipedia and GNUpedia were ongoing. Within a couple of months, Wales had changed his email signature from the open source encyclopedia to the free encyclopedia; both Nupedia and Wikipedia had adopted the GFDL; and the merger of GNUpedia into Wikipedia was effectively accomplished.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: In a separate but similar incident, the campaign manager for Cathy Cox, Morton Brilliant, resigned after being found to have added negative information to the Wikipedia entries of political opponents. Following media publicity, the incidents tapered off around August 2006.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: There are a number of . Other sites also use the MediaWiki software and concept, popularized by Wikipedia. No list of them is maintained.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: Specialized foreign language forks using the Wikipedia concept include Enciclopedia Libre (Spanish), "Wikiweise" (German), WikiZnanie (Russian), Susning.nu (Swedish), and Baidu Baike (Chinese). Some of these (such as "Enciclopedia Libre") use GFDL or compatible licenses as used by Wikipedia, leading to exchange of material with their respective language Wikipedias.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: In 2006, Larry Sanger founded Citizendium, based upon a modified version of MediaWiki. The site said it aimed 'to improve on the Wikipedia model with "gentle expert oversight", among other things'. (See also Nupedia).


title: History of Wikipedia

text: The German Wikipedia was the first to be partly published also using other media (rather than online on the internet), including releases on CD in November 2004 and more extended versions on CDs or DVD in April 2005 and December 2006. In December 2005, the publisher Zenodot Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, a sister company of Directmedia, published a 139-page book explaining Wikipedia, its history and policies, which was accompanied by a 7.5 GB DVD containing 300,000 articles and 100,000 images from the German Wikipedia. Originally, Directmedia also announced plans to print the German Wikipedia in its entirety, in 100 volumes of 800 pages each. Publication was due to begin in October 2006, and finish in 2010. In March 2006, however, this project was called off.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: In September 2008, Bertelsmann published a 1000 pages volume with a selection of popular German Wikipedia articles. Bertelsmann paid voluntarily 1 Euro per sold copy to Wikimedia Deutschland.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: A free software project has also been launched to make a static version of English Wikipedia available for use on iPods. The "Encyclopodia" project was started around March 2006 and can currently be used on 1st to 4th generation iPods.


title: History of Wikipedia

text: In limited ways, the Wikimedia Foundation is protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. In the defamation action "Bauer et al. v. Glatzer et al.", it was held that Wikimedia had no case to answer because of this section. A similar law in France caused a lawsuit to be dismissed in October 2007. In 2013, a German appeals court (the Higher Regional Court of Stuttgart) ruled that Wikipedia is a "service provider" not a "content provider", and as such is immune from liability as long as it takes down content that is accused of being illegal.


title: National Policy on Education

text: The National Policy on Education (NPE) is a policy formulated by the Government of India to promote and regulate education in India. The policy covers elementary education to higher education in both rural and urban India. The first NPE was promulgated by the Government of India by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1968, the second by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1986, and the third by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2022


title: National Policy on Education

text: Since the country's independence in 1947, the Indian government sponsored a variety of programmes to address the problems of illiteracy in both rural and urban India. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, India's first Minister of Education, envisaged strong central government control over education throughout the country, with a uniform educational system. The Union government established the University Education Commission (1948–1949), the Secondary Education Commission (1952–1953), University Grants Commission and the Kothari Commission (1964–66) to develop proposals to modernise India's education system. The Resolution on Scientific Policy was adopted by the government of Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister. The Nehru government sponsored the development of high-quality scientific education institutions such as the Indian Institutes of Technology. In 1961, the Union government formed the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) as an autonomous organisation that would advise both the Union and state governments on formulating and implementing education policies.


title: National Policy on Education

text: Based on the report and recommendations of the Kothari Commission (1964–1966), the government headed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi announced the first National Policy on Education in 1968, which called for a "radical restructuring" and proposed equal educational opportunities in order to achieve national integration and greater cultural and economic development. The policy called for fulfilling compulsory education for all children up to the age of 14, as stipulated by the Constitution of India and specialized training and qualification of teachers. The policy called for a focus on the learning of regional languages, outlining the "three language formula" to be implemented in secondary education - the instruction of the English language, the official language of the state where the school was based, and Hindi. Language education was seen as essential to reduce the gulf between the intelligentsia and the masses. Although the decision to adopt Hindi as the national language had proven controversial, the policy called for the use and learning of Hindi to be encouraged uniformly to promote a common language for all Indians. The policy also encouraged the teaching of the ancient Sanskrit language, which was considered an essential part of India's culture and heritage. The NPE of 1968 called for education spending to increase to six percent of the national income. As of 2013, the NPE 1968 has moved location on the national website.


title: National Policy on Education

text: In 1986, the government led by Rajiv Gandhi introduced a new National Policy on Education. The new policy called for "special emphasis on the removal of disparities and to equalise educational opportunity," especially for Indian women, Scheduled Tribes (ST) and the Scheduled Caste (SC) communities. To achieve such a social integration, the policy called for expanding scholarships, adult education, recruiting more teachers from the SCs, incentives for poor families to send their children to school regularly, development of new institutions and providing housing and services. The NPE called for a "child-centred approach" in primary education, and launched "Operation Blackboard" to improve primary schools nationwide. The policy expanded the open university system with the Indira Gandhi National Open University, which had been created in 1985. The policy also called for the creation of the "rural university" model, based on the philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi, to promote economic and social development at the grassroots level in rural India. 1986 education policy expected to spent 6% of GDP on education.


title: National Policy on Education

text: The 1986 National Policy on Education was modified in 1992 by the P. V. Narasimha Rao government. In 2005, Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh adopted a new policy based on the "Common Minimum Programme" of his United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. Programme of Action (PoA) 1992, under the National Policy on Education (NPE), 1986 envisaged to conduct of a common entrance examination on all India basis for admission to professional and technical programmes in the country. For admission to Engineering and Architecture/Planning programmes, Government of India vide Resolution dated 18 October 2001 has laid down a Three – Exam Scheme (JEE and AIEEE at the National Level and the State Level Engineering Entrance Examinations (SLEEE) for State Level Institutions – with an option to join AIEEE). This takes care of varying admission standards in these programmes and helps in maintenance of professional standards. This also solves problems of overlaps and reduces physical, mental and financial burden on students and their parents due to multiplicity of entrance examinations.


title: National Policy on Education

text: In 2019, the then Ministry of Human Resource Development and now the Ministry of Education released a Draft New Education Policy 2019, which was followed by a number of public consultations. it discusses reducing curriculum content to enhance essential learning, critical thinking and more holistic experiential, discussion-based and analysis-based learning. It also talks about a revision of the curriculum and pedagogical structure from a 10+2 system to a 5+3+3+4 system design in an effort to optimise learning for students based on cognitive development of children. Research Methodology has been added in the last year of graduation course and student will have the choice to leave the course and receive the certificate/ degree according to that.


title: National Policy on Education

text: On 29 July 2020, the cabinet approved a new National Education Policy with an aim to introduce several changes to the existing Indian education system. Which will be introduced in India till 2026.


title: Naveen Chandra

text: Naveen Chandra is an Indian actor who predominantly acts in Telugu films. He starred in the Telugu romance film "Andala Rakshasi" (2012) and won critical acclaim for his performance, before playing leading roles in Tamil films.


title: Naveen Chandra

text: Naveen Chandra was born in a Telugu family in Devi Nagar of Bellary. His father was a head mechanic in KSRTC. Chandra obtained a diploma in Mechanical Engineering and worked as a multimedia animator before he forayed into films.


title: Naveen Chandra

text: Chandra made his debut as a hero in Telugu with the movie "Sambhavami Yuge Yuge" under the stage name Anji in the year 2006, and later acted in the movie "Kalyanam" under the stage name Chandu. Chandra made his debut as a hero in Tamil with "Pazhaniappa Kalloori" under the stage name Pradeep. His next film "Agarathi" never saw a theatrical release. In 2012, he starred in the Telugu movie "Andala Rakshasi" which garnered him positive responses from viewers and critics for his performance in his role as Surya. He shot for the Tamil film "Therodum Veedhiyile" with Payal Ghosh in 2012.


title: Naveen Chandra

text: In the bilingual film "Dalam", Chandra played an ex-naxalite who struggles to return to a normal life. For his role in Sathyashiva's "Sivappu", he lived incognito as a labourer in his friend's construction company for two weeks in order to get into his character. The film also released in 2014. He was also signed as the second lead in the Tamil film "Brahman". He has signed on for the lead role in producer C. V. Kumar's "Sarabam". He next appeared in "Miss India" starring Keerthy Suresh under the direction of Narendra Nath.


title: Karan Arjun

text: Karan Arjun is a 1995 Indian Hindi-language fantasy action film directed and produced by Rakesh Roshan, starring Raakhee, Salman Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol and Mamta Kulkarni in lead roles. Amrish Puri portrays the main antagonist, while Johnny Lever, Arjun, Jack Gaud, Ranjeet and Aasif Sheikh appear in supporting roles. The film revolves around the story of the two titular brothers who seek revenge from their greedy uncle for murdering their father, but are killed by him and are reincarnated to complete the revenge.


title: Karan Arjun

text: "Karan Arjun" theatrically released in India on 13 January 1995. The film received positive reviews from critics and grossed (), emerging as an "all time blockbuster" and the second highest-grossing Bollywood film of 1995 "Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge". It was 6th highest-grossing film of the decade.


title: Karan Arjun

text: At the 41st Filmfare Awards, "Karan Arjun" received 10 nominations, including Best Film, Best Director (Roshan), Best Actor (Salman) and Best Supporting Actress (Raakhee), and won 2 awards – Best Editing and Best Action.


title: Karan Arjun

text: In a village in Rajasthan, Durga Singh is a poor woman raising her two beloved sons Karan and Arjun. When Munshiji of Thakur Sangram Singh, comes to talk to Durga, she tells her husband was the Thakur's son who married her against his father's wishes. Durjan Singh, a relative of Thakur killed Durga's husband to prevent him or his family from inheriting the Thakur's estate.


title: Karan Arjun

text: After learning that Thakur plans to sign over the estate to Karan and Arjun, Durjan kills Thakur, before brutally murdering Karan and Arjun with his brothers-in-law Nahar and Shamsher. Durga worships Goddess Kali to bring her sons back. Miraculously, her prayers are heard and the two are reincarnated, but are separated and grown into different families unaware of their past lives. Durga is unaware of this miracle, but she still believes that her sons will return one day.


title: Karan Arjun

text: Arjun is reincarnated as Vijay and falls in love with the wealthy Sonia Saxena; she also loves him but her wedding is fixed to Durjan's son Suraj. Meanwhile, Karan is reborn as Ajay. He is chased upon by tomboy Bindiya who loves him, and soon works for Govind—Sonia's father and Durjan's partner in his illegal arms trading business. Knowing that Sonia loves Vijay, Suraj attempts to kill him.


title: Karan Arjun

text: Vijay attacks him. Ajay is sent to kill Vijay; they start to fight, that is suddenly interrupted after a bolt of lightning strikes in between them. Govind tries to shoot Vijay; Ajay stops him whilst shouting for Vijay to run. This is something that Ajay said to Vijay in their past when he was attacked. Ajay is prisoned; Vijay escapes. Sonia is forcibly taken to Durjan's house to marry Suraj.


title: Karan Arjun

text: Vijay and his friend Linghaiyya travel to save Sonia. Everybody is stunned and calls him Arjun. He finally remembers his past life and reunites with Durga, where he gets to know about his brother Karan who is now Ajay. Vijay saves Ajay and explains the whole situation that they were brothers named Karan and Arjun. Meanwhile, Bindiya joins them.


title: Karan Arjun

text: Durjan hears about Karan and Arjun's return but refuses to believe it. Nahar and Shamsher attempt to bring them before him but instead get killed by Ajay and Vijay in a similar way as they killed the two brothers. Karan (Ajay) and Arjun (Vijay) frighten Durjan by convincing that they're back. Govind and Durjan have a falling out, in which Govind tells Sonia to run away with Vijay, but it's actually a trap.


title: Karan Arjun

text: Ajay succeeds in creating chaos, letting Vijay and Sonia escape from the trap. Vijay shoots Suraj to death, and Durjan kills Govind in a fit of rage. He attempts to shoot Ajay and Vijay but instead they beat him up. He begs forgiveness from Durga, but Ajay and Vijay take their revenge by killing him on her order. Later, Vijay marries Sonia, Ajay marries Bindiya, and the whole family is united.


title: Karan Arjun

text: Rakesh Roshan originally wanted to make the film with Shah Rukh Khan and Ajay Devgn as the titular characters. However, both wanted to play different roles to the ones offered to them; Khan wanted to play Karan, while Devgn wanted to play Arjun. Roshan did not agree, and, as a result, both backed out of the film. Roshan's next choices for the leads were Aamir Khan and Salman Khan. While Salman agreed to do the film, Aamir could not do it. Shah Rukh then told Roshan that he wanted to do the film. Thus, the casting of the film brought together Salman Khan and Shah Rukh Khan for the first time onscreen, two prominent actors of that time.


title: Karan Arjun

text: The whole film was shot in Rajasthan. More specifically, the village which is portrayed in the film is one of the villages of Alwar District of Rajasthan, named Bhangarh. The Durga temple where Karan Arjun pray in the song is located at Pushkar near Ajmer. Sariska Palace was used as Thakur Durjan Singh's house.


title: Karan Arjun

text: "Karan Arjun" was the second-highest-grossing Indian film of 1995, only surpassed by "Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge", which also starred Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol and Amrish Puri. Worldwide, "Karan Arjun" grossed . Overseas, the film grossed $500,000 ().


title: Karan Arjun

text: The film has also been released on VHD, VCD and DVD formats for home media. It has not seen a release on Blu-ray Disc or subsequent media formats, apart from YouTube.


title: Karan Arjun

text: The music and background score were composed by Rajesh Roshan and lyrics for all the songs were penned by Indeevar. The music rights were originally bought by Time Magnetics (now Tips Music). The song "Bhangra Paale" was remade for the 2020 film" Bhangra Paa Le".


title: Karan Arjun

text: Additionally, the themes from "" and "The Last of the Mohicans" were featured throughout the film, especially during fight & jail scenes.


title: The American President

text: The American President is a 1995 American romantic comedy-drama film directed and produced by Rob Reiner and written by Aaron Sorkin. The film stars Michael Douglas, Annette Bening, Martin Sheen, Michael J. Fox, and Richard Dreyfuss. In the film, President Andrew Shepherd (Douglas) is a widower who pursues a relationship with environmental lobbyist Sydney Ellen Wade (Bening) – who has just moved to Washington, D.C. – while at the same time attempting to win the passage of a crime control bill during a re-election year.


title: The American President

text: The film grossed $107.9 million on a budget of $62 million and was praised by critics for its performances (especially from Douglas and Bening), musical score, story and screenplay. Composer Marc Shaiman was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Musical or Comedy Score for "The American President". The film was nominated for Golden Globes for Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor in a Comedy/Musical for Michael Douglas, Best Actress in a Comedy/Musical for Annette Bening, and Best Comedy/Musical. The American Film Institute ranked "The American President" No. 75 on its list of America's Greatest Love Stories.


title: The American President

text: Popular Democratic President Andrew Shepherd prepares to run for re-election. The president and his staff, led by Chief of Staff and best friend AJ MacInerney, attempt to consolidate the administration's 63% approval rating by passing a moderate crime control bill. However, support for the bill in both parties is tepid: conservatives reject it, and liberals think it is too weak. If passed, however, Shepherd's re-election is presumed to be guaranteed. Shepherd resolves to announce the bill, and have the Congressional support to pass it, by his State of the Union Address.


title: The American President

text: When the unmarried President's cousin, Judith, is sick and unable to act as hostess at a state dinner for the French president, Shepherd realizes his staff's public portrayal of him as lonely widower is true. Soon after, Shepherd meets and is attracted to Sydney Ellen Wade, a lawyer employed by an environmental lobbying firm that is working to pass legislation to substantially reduce carbon dioxide emissions. During a meeting, Shepherd strikes a deal with Wade: if she can secure 24 votes for the environmental bill before his State of the Union Address, he will deliver the last 10 votes. MacInerney believes Wade will fail to obtain enough votes, thus releasing Shepherd from responsibility if the bill fails to pass.


title: The American President

text: Shepherd and Wade begin seeing each other and fall in love. Presidential hopeful Senator Bob Rumson steps up his attacks, focusing on Wade's activist past and maligning Shepherd's ethics and family values. The President's refusal to refute Rumson's aspersions lowers his approval ratings and erodes crucial political support that threatens the crime bill.


title: The American President

text: Wade is dejected after her failed meeting with three Michigan congressmen to discuss the environmental bill. When she tells Shepherd about the meeting, she inadvertently mentions that the congressmen want to defeat both the President's crime bill and Wade's environmental bill. Shepherd and A.J. are conflicted about how they obtained this sensitive information, but are unable to ignore the opportunity to pass the crime bill, even if it means the president going back on his deal with Wade.


title: The American President

text: Eventually, Wade secures enough votes for the environmental bill while Shepherd is three short. He can only obtain them by shelving the environmental bill to solidify the three Michigan congressmen's votes for the crime bill which he agrees to do. Wade's firm fires her for failing to achieve their objectives and for seemingly jeopardizing her political reputation. She goes to see Shepherd to end their relationship and says she has a job opportunity in Hartford, Connecticut. While he defends the crime bill as his top priority, she criticizes it as weakly worded with little chance of preventing crime.


title: The American President

text: Prior to the State of the Union Address, Shepherd makes a surprise appearance in the White House press room and rebukes Rumson's attacks on his values and character, as well as his relentless innuendos that Wade prostituted herself for political favors. He declares he will send the controversial environmental bill to Congress with a massive 20% cut in fossil fuelsfar more than the 10% originally proposed. Furthermore, he is withdrawing the crime bill for a stronger one with significant gun control measures. His passion galvanizes the press and his staff. Shepherd and Wade reconcile, then she walks him to the doors of the House chamber where he enters to thunderous applause as he is about to deliver the State of the Union Address.


title: The American President

text: Originally, actor Robert Redford approached a number of screenwriters with the single-line premise, "the president elopes". Sorkin, on the basis of his treatment, was selected by Redford to write the screenplay with Redford attached to star. Emma Thompson turned down the role of Sydney Wade. When Reiner was brought aboard to direct, Redford dropped out. At the time, in October 1994, with cameras set to roll on November 30 of that year, Redford's publicist attributed his decision to his desire "to do a love story, but (Reiner) wanted to do something that was ultimately about politics". Other sources suggested that Redford and Reiner "didn't get along...It was a personality thing."


title: The American President

text: In later interviews, writer Aaron Sorkin told "TV Guide" he wrote the screenplay while high on crack cocaine while he was living at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles, which is why it took him three years to complete it.


title: The American President

text: An extensive White House set, of both the East and West Wings, was built on the Castle Rock Entertainment lot in Culver City. The set's Oval Office was later reused for the films "Nixon" and "Independence Day."