title: House of Braganza

text: This symbol can be found in many different monuments in Portugal and Brazil, such as the Monument to the Independence of Brazil in São Paulo and in the palaces of the Imperial family in Rio de Janeiro and Petrópolis. It is famously found atop the Portuguese Crown Sceptre, the Sceptre of the Dragon and the Sceptre of the Emperor of Brazil.


title: House of Braganza

text: The wyvern is also sometimes used as a supporter in the coat of arms of both the Brazilian and Portuguese branches of the family.


title: House of Braganza

text: Because of its use in heraldry by the Braganza as the ruling house, and given Pedro IV's link with Porto, a dragon was added to the old coat of arms of the municipality of Porto and is still a part of FC Porto's coat of arms, who are nicknamed "The Dragons".


title: House of Braganza

text: Since the 17th century, the House of Braganza has allegedly suffered from the Curse of the Braganzas (Portuguese: "Maldição dos Braganças"). For supposedly mistreating a Franciscan friar, a curse was purportedly placed on King João IV of Portugal, stating that never again would a first-born male of the Braganza Dynasty live long enough to succeed to the throne. Since the reign of King João IV, all first-born Braganza males, with only three exceptions, have died before they had the opportunity to reign as monarch, either in Portugal or Brazil.


title: House of Braganza

text: Genealogical tree of the House of Braganza, during its ducal period, from origins of its founder, Afonso I, Duke of Braganza, to the issue of its last noble duke, Teodósio II, Duke of Braganza:


title: House of Braganza

text: Genealogical tree of the House of Braganza, from its first monarch, João IV, King of Portugal, to the fracture of the house into its three main branches, in the issue of João VI, King of United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil, and the Algarves:


title: House of Braganza

text: Genealogical tree of the Brazilian branch House of Braganza, from its first monarch, Pedro I, Emperor of Brazil, to the issue of Pedro II, the last Emperor of Brazil.


title: Richard Basehart

text: John Richard Basehart (August 31, 1914 – September 17, 1984) was an American actor. He starred as Admiral Harriman Nelson in the television science-fiction drama "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" (1964–68). He also portrayed Wilton Knight in the pilot episode of the TV series "Knight Rider" (1982), and provided the narration that was heard during the opening credits throughout the entire series.


title: Richard Basehart

text: Basehart was equally active in cinema, receiving National Board of Review Awards for his performances in "Fourteen Hours" (1951) and "Moby Dick" (1956). He was further nominated for a BAFTA Award for his role in "Time Limit" (1957), the only film directed by Karl Malden.


title: Richard Basehart

text: One of his most notable film roles was the acrobat and clown known as "the Fool" in the acclaimed Italian film "La Strada" (1954), directed by Federico Fellini. He also appeared as the killer in the film noir classic "He Walked by Night" (1948), as a psychotic member of the Hatfield clan in "Roseanna McCoy" (1949), as a timid husband in "Tension" (1950), as Ishmael in "Moby Dick" (1956), in the drama "Decision Before Dawn" (1951), George S. Healey in Titanic (1953) and as Ivan in "The Brothers Karamazov" (1958). He portrayed a high priest in "Kings of the Sun" (1963). From 1964 to 1968, Basehart played the lead role, Admiral Harriman Nelson, on Irwin Allen's first foray into science-fiction television, "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea".


title: Richard Basehart

text: Basehart narrated a wide range of television and movie projects. In 1964, he narrated the David Wolper documentary about the Kennedy assassination, "Four Days in November". In 1980, Basehart narrated the miniseries written by Peter Arnett called "" that covered Vietnam and its battles from the Japanese surrender on September 2, 1945, to the final American embassy evacuation on April 30, 1975.


title: Richard Basehart

text: Basehart appeared in the pilot episode of the television series "Knight Rider" as billionaire Wilton Knight. He is the narrator at the beginning of the show's credits. He accepted the lead role in the 1962 film "Hitler". He appeared in "Probe 7, Over and Out", an episode of "The Twilight Zone", "Hawaii Five-O", and as Hannibal Applewood, an abusive schoolteacher in "Little House on the Prairie" in 1976. In 1972, Basehart appeared in the "Columbo" episode "Dagger of the Mind", in which Honor Blackman and he played a husband-and-wife theatrical team who accidentally kill Sir Roger Haversham, the producer of their rendition of Macbeth.


title: Richard Basehart

text: Basehart played a supporting role as a doctor in the feature film "Rage" (1972), a theatrical feature starring and directed by George C. Scott. Basehart made a few TV movies, including "Sole Survivor" (1970) and "The Birdmen" (1971). Both were based on true stories during World War II. Also in the 1970s, he co-starred in "Chato's Land" (1972) and "The Island of Dr. Moreau" (1977). In 1979, he appeared as a Russian diplomat with Peter Sellers in "Being There".


title: Richard Basehart

text: One month before his death, Basehart narrated a poem during the extinguishing of the flame at the closing ceremonies of the 1984 Summer Olympics.


title: Richard Basehart

text: Basehart was born in Zanesville, Ohio, the son of Mae (née Wetherald) and Harry T. Basehart. He was married three times. After the death of his first wife Stephanie Klein, he married Italian Academy Award-nominated actress Valentina Cortese, with whom he had one son, actor Jackie Basehart; the couple divorced in 1960. In 1962, he married his third wife, Diana Lotery, with whom he had two children and remained married until his death in 1984.


title: Richard Basehart

text: Basehart died in Los Angeles on September 17, 1984, following a series of strokes. He was 70 years old. His body was cremated, and the ashes interred at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. He died eight days before Walter Pidgeon, his film counterpart in "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea".


title: Nasi lemak

text: Nasi lemak is a dish originating in Malay cuisine that consists of fragrant rice cooked in coconut milk and pandan leaf. It is commonly found in Malaysia, where it is considered the national dish. It is also the native dish in neighbouring areas with significant Malay populations such as Singapore, Brunei, and Southern Thailand. In Indonesia it can be found in several parts of Sumatra, especially the Malay regions of Riau, Riau Islands and Medan. "Nasi lemak" can also be found in the Bangsamoro region of Mindanao, prepared by Filipino Moros, as well as Australia's external territories of Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. It is considered an essential dish for a typical Malay-style breakfast. Nasi lemak is featured as a national dish in most of the country’s tourism brochures and promotional materials.


title: Nasi lemak

text: It is not to be confused with "nasi dagang", sold in the Malaysian east coast states of Terengganu and Kelantan (and its kindred region in Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat in Thailand and Natuna in Indonesia), although both dishes are often served for breakfast. However, because "nasi lemak" can be served in a variety of ways, it is often eaten throughout the day. The dish is also different from "nasi katok" in Brunei Darussalam, the latter is distinguished with the usage of plain white rice, a contrast from the coconut milk-base found in nasi lemak.


title: Nasi lemak

text: "Nasi lemak" was mentioned in a book "The Circumstances of Malay Life", written by Sir Richard Olof Winstedt in 1909.


title: Nasi lemak

text: With roots in Malay culture and Malay cuisine, its name in Malay literally means "fatty rice", but is taken in this context to mean "rich" or "creamy". The name is derived from the cooking process whereby rice is soaked in coconut cream and then the mixture steamed. The rice is normally cooked with pandan leaves that gives it a distinctive flavour.


title: Nasi lemak

text: Traditionally, nasi lemak is served with a hot spicy sauce ("sambal"), and usually includes various garnishes, including fresh cucumber slices, small fried anchovies ("ikan bilis"), roasted peanuts, and hard-boiled or fried egg. As a more substantial meal, "nasi lemak" may also be served with an additional protein dish such as "ayam goreng" (fried chicken), "sambal sotong" (cuttlefish in chili), small fried fish, cockles, and rendang daging (beef stewed in coconut milk and spices). Other accompaniments include stir fried water convolvulus ("kangkong"), and spicy pickled vegetables salad acar. Traditionally most of these accompaniments are spicy in nature.


title: Nasi lemak

text: Nasi lemak is widely eaten in Malaysia and Singapore. More commonly consumed as breakfast in both countries, it is commonly sold at hawker food centres and roadside stalls in Malaysia and Singapore. In Indonesia, nasi lemak is a favourite local breakfast fare; especially in Eastern Sumatra (Riau Islands, Riau and Jambi provinces). In Palembang, it is also a favourite local dish with the name "nasi gemuk". In Palembang Malay, "gemuk" has the same meaning as "lemak". This unique dish often comes wrapped in banana leaves, newspaper or brown paper, or in some shops is served on a plate. However, owing to its popularity there are restaurants which serve it as a noon or evening meal, making it possible for the dish to be eaten all day. "Nasi lemak kukus" which means "steamed nasi lemak" is another name given to nasi lemak served with steamed rice. In Malaysia, nasi lemak can also be found in a "pasar malam" (night market) with a variety of dishes.


title: Nasi lemak

text: In Malaysia and Singapore, nasi lemak comes in many variations as they are prepared by different chefs from different cultures. The original nasi lemak in Malaysia is arguably a typical Southern and Central Peninsular Malaysia breakfast, and is considered of Malay origin. However, due to the popularity of the dish, it is regarded as a national dish.


title: Nasi lemak

text: The rice cooked in coconut milk is actually common in Southeast Asia. This is the same process used to make similar rice dishes from their neighbouring country Indonesia, which are "nasi uduk" from Jakarta, "nasi gurih" from Aceh and Javanese "nasi liwet". However, there are differences in taste because knotted leaves of Pandan screwpine are steamed with the rice to impart flavour and fragrance. Less often other spices such as ginger and occasionally herbs like lemon grass may be added for additional fragrance.


title: Nasi lemak

text: Nasi lemak in the Northern West Peninsular tends to include curry. The sambal tends to range from fiery hot to mildly hot with a sweet under taste. Nasi lemak is not as popular as the indigenous "nasi berlauk", "nasi dagang", and "nasi kerabu" in North East Peninsular Malaysia. It is regarded as a speciality imported dish in Sabah and Sarawak. Hotels often feature nasi lemak on their menu with elaborate dishes, such as beef rendang and the addition of other seafood. Hawker centres in Singapore and Malaysia usually wrap them in banana leaves to enhance the flavour. Roadside stalls sell them ready packed, known as "nasi lemak bungkus", with minimal additions that cost between RM 1.50 – 6.00 per pack. Seafood outlets often serve the basic nasi lemak to accompany barbecued seafood. There are Malaysian Chinese and Malaysian Indian versions, and Singaporean Malay and Singaporean Chinese versions. Some people suggest that sambal is the most important part of a nasi lemak meal. If not prepared properly, it could ruin the dish, since Malaysians love food that is hot and spicy. A good deal of spirited and good-natured debate exists around this point.


title: Nasi lemak

text: This traditional favourite offers sambal, "ikan bilis" (anchovies), peanuts and boiled egg. This is the most traditional version. Nasi lemak stalls can be found serving them with fried egg, "sambal kerang" (cockles) - a local favourite, sambal squids, sambal fish, chicken or chicken/beef rendang, squid fritters or even fried chicken or fish. It can be consumed for breakfast, brunch, lunch, tea, dinner and even supper.


title: Nasi lemak

text: A special feature is the rice, typically white rice, although brown rice may be preferred by health-conscious consumers. Cooked with fresh coconut milk, and sometimes with pandanus leaf (screwpine) thrown in, the rice is served on naturally fragrant banana leaves. This traditional serving style has been inherited for many generations—from a little stall at roadside to commercials, it seems like a simple way to fulfill the craving for this traditional food in cities.


title: Nasi lemak

text: Also known as "Nasi Lemak Kuning" (the yellow Nasi Lemak) or "Nasi Lemak Royale" (the Royale Nasi Lemak), such depiction of Nasi Lemak is more prevalent around parts of northern Kedah — especially in Alor Setar, as well as the state of Perlis. It has a distinct taste, composure, form and texture in contrast to a conventional Nasi Lemak. The rice is yellow in colour and commonly being eaten with curries, although some stalls may offer sambals. Thus, the rendition of the dish in Alor Setar can also be defined as a closer version towards that a Nasi Kandar.


title: Nasi lemak

text: However, as both variations of Nasi Lemak are widely available and prevalent in northern Kedah and Perlis. The locals would commonly refer the traditional Nasi Lemak as "Nasi Lemak Daun Pisang" (Banana Leaf Nasi Lemak) to distinguish between the two diverged interpretations of the meal.


title: Nasi lemak

text: In the east coast state of Terengganu, the Nasi Lemak is largely similar with the traditional Malay interpretation. However, "Ikan Aye/Aya/Tongkol" (Tuna) is one of the unique complimentary side dishes found in the state. The fish is commonly cooked in a sambal-styled sauce and eaten together with the Nasi Lemak. This regional version of Nasi Lemak is a highly popular breakfast option especially in Terengganu's coastal areas.


title: Nasi lemak

text: In Malacca, the "kangkung" (water spinach) is usually being assorted to accompany the Nasi Lemak platter, a contrast from the cucumber that is commonly used in the standard version of the dish.


title: Nasi lemak

text: "Nasi Lemuni", also known as "Nasi Lemak Lemuni" — especially when the meal is paired together with the side dishes typically associated in a classic Nasi Lemak: sambal, fried anchovies and boiled egg.


title: Nasi lemak

text: The variation of the dish traditionally found in the northern Peninsular Malaysia. Its preparation is almost similar with the standard version of Nasi Lemak, however the former differs by the combination of "Daun Lemuni" (Vitex trifolia) in the coconut milk and rice admixture. The introduction of the herb influenced its taste, aroma and contributed to the dark grey and black colourings on the rice. It also believed that the Lemuni-rice is a healthier alternative of Nasi Lemak.


title: Nasi lemak

text: Usually regarded as a unique Cameron Highlands specialty where strawberries are commercially grown and harvested. This variation of Nasi lemak saw a combination of the fruit in its sambal. The rice is also dark pink in colour, to highlight its distinct identity.


title: Nasi lemak

text: Although it is not common to see Malaysian stalls and restaurants selling nasi lemak, there is a non-halal version that contains pork, sold in towns and cities such as Malacca, Penang, Perak and certain parts of Kuala Lumpur. Some Malaysian Chinese hawkers are known to make pork and wild boar curry, sambal and rendang. It is available in most non-halal restaurant and it's served in variety of pork, such as luncheon meat, pork petai, Taiwan pork sausage, braised pork, and grilled pork chop.


title: Nasi lemak

text: The Malaysian Indian variation is similar to the original version. However, many Malaysian Indians are Hindus, and thus do not eat beef. Nasi lemak in the Malaysian Indian version is served with curry, such as chicken curry, fish curry or lamb curry. Moreover, Malaysian Indians also serve a rendition of the dish alongside their very own version of rendang.


title: Nasi lemak

text: Right across the Malacca Strait, the Malay Indonesians of Sumatran east coast shares close kinship and common Malay cuisine heritage with their Malaysian counterpart. As the result, nasi lemak is also native cuisine to Riau Island and Riau province. In archipelagic region like Riau Islands province of Indonesia, usually seafood are used to accompany nasi lemak, such as "ikan bilis" (anchovy), "ikan tamban" ("Sardinella longiceps"), "ikan selar kuning" ("Selaroides leptolepis"), "sotong" or "cumi-cumi" (squid) or small prawns. The Riau islands traditional nasi lemak is quite similar to Malaysian version; it comes as a platter of coconut rice wrapped in banana leaf, with cucumber slices, small dried anchovies ("ikan bilis"), roasted peanuts, hard boiled egg, and hot spicy sauce ("sambal"). The Riau islands version however, comes with an addition of small fish locally known as "ikan tamban", usually fried with "sambal" chili paste and very crispy, the whole fish is edible. Prawns and squids are also commonly stir-fried in chili paste as "sambal udang" or "sambal cumi". In Indonesia, nasi lemak is often sprinkled with "bawang goreng" (crispy fried shallot granules).


title: Nasi lemak

text: In Pekanbaru city in Sumatran province of Riau however, freshwater river fishes are commonly used as "lauk" to accompany nasi lemak. The freshwater fishes includes "ikan selais" ("Kryptopterus cryptopterus") and "ikan patin" ("Pangasius"). Other fish such as "ikan lomek" ("Harpadon nehereus") is also commonly used. These fishes are usually cooked in Minang style "lado ijo" (green chili pepper), minced and fried as "perkedel ikan", or just plainly fried.


title: Nasi lemak

text: Medan "Melayu Deli" "nasi lemak" version usually served with choice of side dishes either "rendang" (beef or chicken) or "balado" (egg or shrimp in chili sauce). A set of complete Medan's "nasi lemak" includes a sprinkle of crispy fried shallot, slices of omelette, "kripik kentang balado" (spicy potato chips), "tempe orek" (seasoned fried tempeh), "perkedel" (fried potato patties), "sambal" chili paste, slices of cucumber, and slightly bitter "emping" cracker. Some traditional restaurant chains have dedicated their business to serving "nasi lemak Medan". Next to "rendang" and "balado", the vegetable dish "sayur masak lemak" (vegetables including long beans, cabbage, and long green chilies in coconut milk) is also offered. It is a popular street food in Medan sold in humble tarp tents "warung", and usually sold together with "Lontong Medan". Since Medan is located near the Aceh border, and there are numbers of Aceh people that reside in the city, the term "nasi lemak" and "nasi gurih" are often used interchangeably in the city, since the terms refer to a similar coconut rice dish.


title: Nasi lemak

text: For most of the Singaporean Malay variation, the sambal of the nasi lemak has more of a sweeter and less spicy taste when compared to other variations. As the sambal is a crucial portion of the nasi lemak, it is preferred to be less spicy so as not to overpower the taste of the coconut based rice and the other ingredients. The sides to this dish includes ikan bilis (anchovies), peanuts and an omelette or fried egg, which is rather similar to the Malaysian version, although the use of a boiled egg as with the Malaysian version is somewhat less common. Occasionally, a variant using the long grain basmati rice may also be found. The rice is sometimes artificially colored green to suggest that it has been flavored with green pandan leaves.


title: Nasi lemak

text: Retaining the familiar aroma of pandan leaves, the Singaporean Chinese variation comes with a variety of sides that includes deep fried drumstick, chicken franks, fish cake, curried vegetables and tongsan luncheon meat. There is also the traditional way of serving it with just the ikan bilis (anchovies), peanuts and fried egg similar to the classic Malay version. Sometimes the rice is also coloured emerald green with the use of screwpine leaf extract or essence, commonly called pandan leaves, that perfumes the rice with a nice fragrance when added to the rice with the coconut milk as well as giving it its bright green colour. The use of the colour may have arisen as a gimmick to entice customers.


title: Nasi lemak

text: In certain parts of Malaysia, hawkers and restaurants may offer vegetarian Nasi Lemak in which the dried anchovies and the shrimp paste for sambal are replaced with vegetarian substitutes.


title: Nasi lemak

text: In March 2016, "nasi lemak" was mentioned as one of the 10 healthy international breakfast foods by TIME magazine. However, this opinion may be misleading as the writer might have been referring to the dish's "healthier" and smaller version, and comparing it to the larger American breakfast (fried bacon, eggs, pancakes/hash browns). A single, full size serving of "nasi lemak" with additional fried chicken, meat or fish, can be between 800 and well over 1,000 calories. The savoury coconut milk-infused rice also contains saturated fat, an ingredient connected to health problems, including diabetes. It is noticeable that although Malaysian main dishes have been related to high carbohydrate and protein contents, and lack of vegetables, a study done among 432 adults showed that Malaysian adults had a controllable consumption of local ready-to-eat cooked dishes as most of the dishes were consumed in low quantities.


title: Popcorn Sutton

text: Marvin "Popcorn" Sutton (October 5, 1946March 16, 2009) was an American Appalachian moonshiner and bootlegger. Born in Maggie Valley, North Carolina, he grew up, lived and died in the rural areas around Maggie Valley and nearby Cocke County, Tennessee. He wrote a self-published autobiographical guide to moonshining production, self-produced a home video depicting his moonshining activities, was the subject of several documentaries, including one that received a Regional Emmy Award, and is the subject of the award-winning biography and photobook The Moonshiner Popcorn Sutton.


title: Popcorn Sutton

text: Sutton died by suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning in March 2009, aged 62, rather than report to federal prison after being convicted of offenses related to moonshining and illegal firearm possession. Since his death, a new company and associated whiskey brand have been named after him.


title: Popcorn Sutton

text: Sutton had a long career making moonshine and bootlegging. Sutton said he considered moonshine production a legitimate part of his heritage, as he was a Scots-Irish American and descended from a long line of moonshiners. In the 1960s or 1970s, Sutton was given the nickname of "Popcorn" after his frustrated attack on a bar's faulty popcorn vending machine with a pool cue. Before his rise to fame at around 60 years of age, he had been in trouble with the law several times, but had avoided prison sentences. He was convicted in 1974 of selling untaxed liquor and in 1981 and 1985 on charges of possessing controlled substances and assault with a deadly weapon, but received only probation sentences until the 1985 arrest, after which he served time in the Craggy Correctional Center in Asheville. In 1998 his roadside store in Maggie Valley, NC was searched by state agents, who seized a moonshine still and sixty gallons of moonshine, and Sutton was again placed on probation with a suspended sentence.


title: Popcorn Sutton

text: Sutton then wrote a self-published autobiography and guide to moonshine production called "Me and My Likker", and began selling copies of it in 1999 out of his junk shop in Maggie Valley. The "New York Times" later called it "a rambling, obscene, and often hilarious account of his life in the trade". (A woman named Ernestine Upchurch, with whom Sutton had been living in the 1990s, later said she helped write the book.) At around the same time, Sutton produced a home video of the same title and released it on VHS tape.


title: Popcorn Sutton

text: His first appearance in a feature film (that was not self-published) was in Neal Hutcheson's 2002 documentary, "Mountain Talk", as one of various people of southern Appalachia featured in this film focused on the "mountain dialect" of the area. Sutton next appeared in another Hutcheson film that would become the cornerstone of his notoriety, called "This is the Last Dam Run of Likker I'll Ever Make". Filmed and released in 2002, the film quickly became a cult classic and over time drew the attention of television producers in Boston and New York.


title: Popcorn Sutton

text: In 2007, a fire on Sutton's property in Parrottsville led to firefighters discovering 650 gallons of untaxed alcohol there, for which he was convicted and put on probation again by Cocke County authorities.


title: Popcorn Sutton

text: Sutton was featured in the 2007 documentary "Hillbilly: The Real Story" on The History Channel. The source footage from the 2002 documentary was also re-worked into another Hutcheson documentary, "The Last One", which was released in 2008 and was broadcast on PBS. It received a 2009 Southeast Emmy Award.


title: Popcorn Sutton

text: In March 2008, Sutton told an undercover federal officer that he had 500 gallons of moonshine in Tennessee and another 400 gallons in Maggie Valley that he was ready to sell. This led to a raid of his property by the ATF, led by Jim Cavanaugh of Waco siege infamy. In January 2009, Sutton, who had used a public defender as his attorney in the case and had pleaded guilty, was sentenced to 18 months in a federal prison for illegally distilling spirits and possession of a firearm (a .38-caliber handgun) as a felon. Sutton, 62 and suffering from a long illness that his doctors had failed to diagnose, asked the U.S. District Judge Ronnie Greer to allow him to serve his sentence under house arrest, and several petitions were made by others requesting that his sentence be reduced or commuted, but this time to no avail. The judge noted that Sutton was still under probation in Tennessee at the time of the federal raid, and said that putting a man on probation again after being convicted five times of various crimes would not serve the community interest. He said he had considered a harsher sentence of 24 months, but had decided on 18 months after considering Sutton's age and medical condition.


title: Popcorn Sutton

text: Sutton died by suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning on March 16, 2009, apparently to avoid a federal prison term due to begin a few days later. His wife Pam, whom he had married about two years before his death, returned home from running errands and discovered her husband in his green Ford Fairmont (which was still running) at the rear of their property in Parrottsville, Tennessee. Mrs. Sutton said, "He called it his three-jar car because he gave three jugs of liquor for it." His daughter said he had told her in advance that he would die by suicide rather than go to jail, adding that he had "the strength to die the way he lived: according to his own wishes and no one else's."


title: Popcorn Sutton

text: Sutton's body was initially interred at a family graveyard in Mount Sterling, North Carolina. However, on October 24, 2009, it was relocated to his property in Parrottsville, and a private memorial service was held. His body was carried to its new resting spot by horse and carriage. Sutton's memorial grew in spectacle as country music singer Hank Williams Jr. flew in to pay his respects. A small memorial was also held for close friends and family.


title: Popcorn Sutton

text: A conventional grave marker was used at the head of Sutton's grave, reading "Marvin Popcorn Sutton / Ex-Moonshiner / October 5, 1946 / March 16, 2009". He had also prepared a footstone in advance for his gravesite, and for years he had kept it by his front porch and had kept his casket ready in his living room. The epitaph on his footstone reads "Popcorn Said Fuck You".


title: Popcorn Sutton

text: On November 9, 2010, Hank Williams Jr. announced his partnership with J&M Concepts LLC and widow Pam Sutton to distill and distribute a brand of whiskey named after Sutton that was asserted to follow his legacy. Dubbed "Popcorn Sutton's Tennessee White Whiskey", it was marketed as having been produced on stills designed by Sutton using his secret family recipe and techniques Sutton entrusted to former Supercross professional Jamey Grosser of J&M Concepts. Country music stars attending the launch event included Martina McBride, Jamey Johnson, Randy Houser, Travis Tritt, Tanya Tucker, Zac Brown, Josh Thompson, Kentucky Headhunters, Little Big Town, Colt Ford, Montgomery Gentry, Jaron and the Long Road to Love, and Lee Brice. According to press reports, Popcorn Sutton's Tennessee White Whiskey would be initially distributed in Tennessee and throughout the southeast.


title: Popcorn Sutton

text: On October 25, 2013, Jack Daniel's Properties, Inc. filed suit against the distiller of Popcorn Sutton's whiskey, claiming that the newly redesigned bottle, with its square shape, beveled shoulders, and white-on-black label, too closely resembled their own. The lawsuit said that the design "...is likely to cause purchasers and prospective purchasers of the product to believe mistakenly that it is a new Tennessee white whiskey product in the Jack Daniel's line." The suit asked that all current existing bottles be taken off the market and that all profits from the sales of those bottles be handed over to Jack Daniel's. The lawsuit was settled in 2014 with undisclosed terms, and as of May 2016, the Sutton brand's bottle design has been substantially changed. The brand now uses a clear, round bottle with a smaller label.


title: Popcorn Sutton

text: In 2014, Popcorn Sutton Distilling opened a new distillery in Newport, Tennessee, the county seat of Cocke County. Copper stills for the facility were made by Vendome Copper and Brass in Louisville, Kentucky. The CEO of Popcorn Sutton Distilling is Megan Kvamme.


title: Popcorn Sutton

text: In March 2015, it was announced that John Lunn, who had until then been master distiller of George Dickel Tennessee whiskey since 2005, would be joining Popcorn Sutton Distilling as its new master distiller. In July 2016, it was announced Allisa Henley, long time employee and Master Distiller at George Dickel, would join John Lunn at Popcorn Sutton Distilling.


title: Popcorn Sutton

text: In December 2016, the Popcorn Sutton Distillery was sold to the Sazerac Company. The sale included only the distillery, not the brands, which are owned by Popcorn Sutton Distilling LLC, which is based in Ohio. Lunn and Henley and the other employees of the distillery became employees of the Sazerac Company. At the time of the announcement, it had not been decided whether the Popcorn Sutton brands would continue to be produced under contract by the distillery or not.


title: Enrico Caruso

text: Enrico Caruso (, , ; 25 February 1873 – 2 August 1921) was an Italian operatic tenor. He sang to great acclaim at the major opera houses of Europe and the Americas, appearing in a wide variety of roles (74) from the Italian and French repertoires that ranged from the lyric to the dramatic. One of the first major singing talents to be commercially recorded, Caruso made 247 commercially released recordings from 1902 to 1920, which made him an international popular entertainment star.


title: Enrico Caruso

text: Enrico Caruso came from a poor but not destitute background. Born in Naples in the via Santi Giovanni e Paolo n° 7 on 25 February 1873, he was baptised the next day in the adjacent Church of San Giovanni e Paolo. His parents originally came from Piedimonte d'Alife (now called Piedimonte Matese), in the Province of Caserta in Campania, Southern Italy.


title: Enrico Caruso

text: Caruso was the third of seven children and one of only three to survive infancy. There is a story of Caruso's parents having had 21 children, 18 of whom died in infancy. However, on the basis of genealogical research (amongst others conducted by Caruso family friend Guido D'Onofrio), biographers Pierre Key, Francis Robinson, and Enrico Caruso Jr. and Andrew Farkas, have proven this to be an urban legend. Caruso himself and his brother Giovanni may have been the source of the exaggerated number. Caruso's widow Dorothy also included the story in a memoir that she wrote about her husband. She quotes the tenor, speaking of his mother, Anna Caruso ("née" Baldini): "She had twenty-one children. Twenty boys and one girl – too many. I am number nineteen boy."


title: Enrico Caruso

text: Caruso's father, Marcellino, was a mechanic and foundry worker. Initially, Marcellino thought his son should adopt the same trade, and at the age of 11, the boy was apprenticed to a mechanical engineer who constructed public water fountains. (Whenever visiting Naples in future years, Caruso liked to point out a fountain that he had helped to install.) Caruso later worked alongside his father at the Meuricoffre factory in Naples. At his mother's insistence, he also attended school for a time, receiving a basic education under the tutelage of a local priest. He learned to write in a handsome script and studied technical draftsmanship. During this period he sang in his church choir, and his voice showed enough promise for him to contemplate a possible career in music.


title: Enrico Caruso

text: Caruso was encouraged in his early musical ambitions by his mother, who died in 1888. To raise cash for his family, he found work as a street singer in Naples and performed at cafes and soirées. Aged 18, he used the fees he had earned by singing at an Italian resort to buy his first pair of new shoes. His progress as a paid entertainer was interrupted, however, by 45 days of compulsory military service. He completed this in 1894, resuming his voice lessons upon discharge from the army.


title: Enrico Caruso

text: On 15 March 1895 at the age of 22, Caruso made his professional stage debut at the Teatro Nuovo in Naples in the now-forgotten opera, "L'Amico Francesco", by the amateur composer Mario Morelli. A string of further engagements in provincial opera houses followed, and he received instruction from the conductor and voice teacher Vincenzo Lombardi that improved his high notes and polished his style. Three other prominent Neapolitan singers taught by Lombardi were the baritones Antonio Scotti and Pasquale Amato, both of whom would go on to partner Caruso at the Metropolitan Opera and the tenor Fernando De Lucia, who would also appear at the Met and later sing at Caruso's funeral.


title: Enrico Caruso

text: Money continued to be in short supply for the young Caruso. One of his first publicity photographs, taken on a visit to Sicily in 1896, depicts him wearing a bedspread draped like a toga since his sole dress shirt was away being laundered.


title: Enrico Caruso

text: During the final few years of the 19th century, Caruso performed at a succession of theatres throughout Italy until 1900, when he was rewarded with a contract to sing at La Scala. His La Scala debut occurred on 26 December of that year in the part of Rodolfo in Giacomo Puccini's "La bohème" with Arturo Toscanini conducting. Audiences in Monte Carlo, Warsaw and Buenos Aires also heard Caruso sing during this pivotal phase of his career and, in 1899–1900, he appeared before the Tsar and the Russian aristocracy at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg and the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow as part of a touring company of first-class Italian singers.


title: Enrico Caruso

text: The first major operatic role that Caruso created was Federico in Francesco Cilea's "L'arlesiana" (1897); then he was Loris in Umberto Giordano's "Fedora" (1898) at the Teatro Lirico, Milan. At that same theatre he created the role of Maurizio in Francesco Cilea's "Adriana Lecouvreur" (1902). Puccini considered casting the young Caruso in the role of Cavaradossi in "Tosca" at its premiere in January 1900, but ultimately chose the older, more established Emilio De Marchi instead. Caruso appeared in the role later that year and Puccini stated that Caruso sang the part better.


title: Enrico Caruso

text: Caruso took part in a grand concert at La Scala in February 1901 that Toscanini organised to mark the recent death of Giuseppe Verdi. Among those appearing with him at the concert were two other leading Italian tenors of the day, Francesco Tamagno (the creator of the protagonist's role in Verdi's "Otello") and Giuseppe Borgatti (the creator of the protagonist's role in Giordano's "Andrea Chénier"). In December 1901, Caruso made his debut at the San Carlo Opera House in Naples in "L'Elisir d'Amore" to a lukewarm reception; two weeks later he appeared as Des Grieux in Massenet's "Manon" which was even more coolly received. The indifference of the audiences and harsh critical reviews in his native city upset him deeply and he vowed never to sing there again. He later said: "I will never again come to Naples to sing; it will only be to eat a plate of spaghetti". Caruso embarked on his last series of La Scala performances in March 1902, creating the principal tenor part of Federico Loewe in "Germania" by Alberto Franchetti.


title: Enrico Caruso

text: A month later, on 11 April, he was engaged by the Gramophone Company to make his first group of acoustic recordings in a Milan hotel room for a fee of 100 pounds sterling. These ten discs swiftly became best-sellers. Among other things, they helped spread 29-year-old Caruso's fame throughout the English-speaking world. The management of London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, signed him for a season of appearances in eight different operas ranging from Verdi's "Aida" to Mozart's "Don Giovanni". His successful debut at Covent Garden occurred on 14 May 1902, as the Duke of Mantua in Verdi's "Rigoletto". Covent Garden's highest-paid diva, the Australian soprano Nellie Melba, partnered him as Gilda. They would sing together often during the early 1900s. In her memoirs, Melba praised Caruso's voice but considered him to be a less sophisticated musician and interpretive artist than Jean de Reszke—the Met's biggest tenor drawcard prior to Caruso.


title: Enrico Caruso

text: In 1903, Caruso made his debut with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. The gap between his London and New York engagements had been filled by a series of performances in Italy, Portugal and South America. Caruso's contract had been negotiated by his agent, the banker and impresario Pasquale Simonelli. Caruso's debut was in a new production of "Rigoletto" on 23 November 1903. This time, Marcella Sembrich sang opposite him as Gilda. A few months later, he began his lifelong association with the Victor Talking Machine Company. He made his first American records on 1 February 1904, having signed a lucrative financial deal with Victor. Thereafter, his recording career ran in tandem with his Met career, both bolstering each other, until his death in 1921.


title: Enrico Caruso

text: Caruso purchased the Villa Bellosguardo, a palatial country house near Florence, in 1904. The villa became his retreat away from the pressures of the operatic stage and the grind of travel. Caruso's preferred address in New York City was a suite at Manhattan's Knickerbocker Hotel. Caruso commissioned the New York jewellers Tiffany & Co. to strike a 24-carat-gold medal adorned with the tenor's profile. He presented the medal in gratitude to Simonelli as a souvenir of his many well-remunerated performances at the Met.


title: Enrico Caruso

text: In addition to his regular New York engagements, Caruso gave recitals and operatic performances in a large number of cities across the United States and sang in Canada. He also continued to sing widely in Europe, appearing again at Covent Garden in 1904–07 and 1913–14, and undertaking a UK tour in 1909. Audiences in France, Belgium, Monaco, Austria, Hungary and Germany also heard him before the outbreak of World War I. In 1909, Melba asked him to participate in her forthcoming tour of Australia, but he declined because of the significant amount of travel time that such a trip would entail.


title: Enrico Caruso

text: Members of the Met's roster of artists, including Caruso, had visited San Francisco in April 1906 for a series of performances. Following an appearance as Don José in "Carmen" at the city's Grand Opera House, a strong jolt awakened Caruso at 5:13 on the morning of the 18th in his suite at the Palace Hotel. He found himself in the middle of the San Francisco earthquake, which led to a series of fires that destroyed most of the city. The Met lost all the sets, costumes and musical instruments that it had brought on tour but none of the artists were harmed. Holding an autographed photo of President Theodore Roosevelt, Caruso ran from the hotel but was composed enough to walk to the St. Francis Hotel for breakfast. Charlie Olson, the broiler cook, made the tenor bacon and eggs. Apparently, the quake had no effect on Caruso's appetite, as he cleaned his plate and tipped Olson $2.50. Caruso made an ultimately successful effort to flee the city, first by boat and then by train. He vowed never to return to San Francisco and kept his word.


title: Enrico Caruso

text: In November 1906, Caruso was charged with an indecent act allegedly committed in the monkey house of New York's Central Park Zoo. The police accused him of pinching the buttocks of a married woman. Caruso claimed a monkey did the bottom-pinching. He was found guilty and fined 10 dollars, although suspicions linger that he may have been entrapped by the victim and the arresting officer. The leaders of New York's opera-going high society were outraged initially by the incident, which received widespread newspaper coverage, but they soon forgot about it and continued to attend Caruso's Met performances. Caruso's fan base at the Met was not restricted, however, to the wealthy. Members of America's middle classes also paid to hear him sing—or buy copies of his recordings—and he enjoyed a substantial following among New York's 500,000 Italian immigrants.


title: Enrico Caruso

text: Caruso created the role of Dick Johnson in the world premiere of Puccini's "La fanciulla del West" on 10 December 1910. The composer conceived the music for Johnson with Caruso's voice specifically in mind. With Caruso appeared two more of the Met's star singers, the Czech soprano Emmy Destinn and baritone Pasquale Amato. Toscanini, then the Met's principal conductor, presided in the orchestra pit.


title: Enrico Caruso

text: Caruso's success in the Metropolitan Opera drew the attention of Black Hand extortionists. They threatened to injure his throat with lye or harm him and his family if he did not pay them money. He initially paid their extortion fee of $2,000 expecting the matter to be settled, but his willingness to pay made them more brazen. They subsequently demanded an even larger sum of $15,000." He was aided by New York City police detective Joseph Petrosino who, impersonating Caruso, captured the extortionists. Two Italian men, Antonio Misiano and Antonio Cincotto, would be later specifically accused of the crime.


title: Enrico Caruso

text: Caruso's timbre darkened as he aged and, from 1916 onwards, he began adding heroic parts such as Samson, John of Leyden, and Eléazar to his repertoire. Caruso toured the South American nations of Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil in 1917, and two years later performed in Mexico City. In 1920, he was paid the enormous sum of 10,000 U.S. dollars a night (~$126,000 in 2018) to sing in Havana, Cuba.


title: Enrico Caruso

text: The United States had entered World War I in 1917, sending troops to Europe. Caruso did extensive charity work during the conflict, raising money for war-related patriotic causes by giving concerts and participating enthusiastically in Liberty Bond drives. The tenor had shown himself to be a shrewd businessman since arriving in America. He put a sizable proportion of his earnings from record royalties and singing fees into a range of investments. Biographer Michael Scott writes that by the end of the war in 1918, Caruso's annual income tax bill amounted to $154,000.


title: Enrico Caruso

text: Prior to World War I, Caruso had been romantically linked to an Italian soprano, Ada Giachetti, who was a few years older than he was. Though already married, Giachetti bore Caruso four sons during their liaison, which lasted from 1897 to 1908. Two survived infancy: Rodolfo Caruso (1898–1951) and singer/actor Enrico Caruso Jr. (1904–1987). Ada had left her husband, manufacturer Gino Botti, and an existing son to cohabit with the tenor. Information provided in Scott's biography of Caruso suggests that she was his vocal coach as well as his lover. Statements by Enrico Caruso Jr. in his book tend to substantiate this. Her relationship with Caruso broke down after 11 years and they separated. Giachetti's subsequent attempts to sue him for damages were dismissed by the courts.


title: Enrico Caruso

text: Towards the end of the war, Caruso met and courted a 25-year-old socialite, Dorothy Park Benjamin (1893–1955). She was the daughter of a wealthy New York patent lawyer. In spite of the disapproval of Dorothy's father, the couple wed on 20 August 1918. They had a daughter, Gloria Caruso (1919–1999). Dorothy wrote two biographies of Caruso, published in 1928 and 1945. The books include many of Caruso's letters to his wife.


title: Enrico Caruso

text: A fastidious dresser, Caruso took at least two baths a day and enjoyed good food and convivial company. He forged a particularly close bond with his Met and Covent Garden colleague Antonio Scotti – an amiable and stylish baritone from Naples. Caruso was superstitious and habitually carried several good-luck charms with him when he sang. He played cards for relaxation and sketched friends, other singers and musicians. His wife, Dorothy, said that by the time she knew him, her husband's favourite hobby was compiling scrapbooks. He also amassed valuable collections of rare postage stamps, coins, watches and antique snuffboxes. Caruso was a heavy smoker of strong Egyptian cigarettes. This deleterious habit, combined with a lack of exercise and the punishing schedule of performances that Caruso willingly undertook season after season at the Met, may have contributed to the persistent ill-health which afflicted the last year of his life.


title: Enrico Caruso

text: On 16 September 1920, Caruso concluded three days of recording sessions at Victor's Trinity Church studio in Camden, New Jersey. He recorded several discs, including the "Domine Deus" and "Crucifixus" from the "Petite messe solennelle" by Rossini. These recordings were to be his last.


title: Enrico Caruso

text: Dorothy Caruso noted that her husband's health began to decline in late 1920 after he returned from a lengthy North American concert tour. In his biography, Enrico Caruso Jr. points to an on-stage injury suffered by Caruso as the possible trigger of his fatal illness. A falling pillar in "Samson and Delilah" on 3 December had hit him on the back, over the left kidney (and not on the chest as popularly reported). A few days before a performance of "Pagliacci" at the Met (Pierre Key says it was 4 December, the day after the "Samson and Delilah" injury) he suffered a chill and developed a cough and a "dull pain in his side". It appeared to be a severe episode of bronchitis. Caruso's physician, Philip Horowitz, who usually treated him for migraine headaches with a kind of primitive TENS unit, diagnosed "intercostal neuralgia" and pronounced him fit to appear on stage, although the pain continued to hinder his voice production and movements.


title: Enrico Caruso

text: During a performance of "L'elisir d'amore" by Donizetti at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on 11 December 1920, he suffered a throat haemorrhage and the performance was cancelled at the end of Act 1. Following this incident, a clearly unwell Caruso gave only three more performances at the Met, the final one being as Eléazar in Halévy's "La Juive", on 24 December 1920. By Christmas Day, the pain in his side was so excruciating that he was screaming. Dorothy summoned the hotel physician, who gave Caruso some morphine and codeine and called in another doctor, Evan M. Evans. Evans brought in three other doctors and Caruso finally received a correct diagnosis: purulent pleurisy and empyema.


title: Enrico Caruso

text: Caruso's health deteriorated further during the new year, lapsing into a coma and nearly dying of heart failure at one point. He experienced episodes of intense pain because of the infection and underwent seven surgical procedures to drain fluid from his chest and lungs. He slowly began to improve and he returned to Naples in May 1921 to recuperate from the most serious of the operations, during which part of a rib had been removed. According to Dorothy Caruso, he seemed to be recovering but allowed himself to be examined by an unhygienic local doctor, and his condition worsened dramatically after that. The Bastianelli brothers, eminent medical practitioners with a clinic in Rome, recommended that his left kidney be removed. He was on his way to Rome to see them but, while staying overnight in the Vesuvio Hotel in Naples, his condition deteriorated and was given morphine to help him sleep.


title: Enrico Caruso

text: Caruso died at the hotel shortly after 9:00 a.m. local time, on 2 August 1921. He was 48. The Bastianellis attributed the cause of death to peritonitis arising from a burst subphrenic abscess. The King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III, opened the Royal Basilica of the Church of San Francesco di Paola for Caruso's funeral, which was attended by thousands of people. His embalmed body was preserved in a glass sarcophagus at Del Pianto Cemetery in Naples for mourners to view. In 1929, Dorothy Caruso had his remains sealed permanently in an ornate stone tomb.


title: Enrico Caruso

text: Caruso's career, which lasted from 1895 to 1920, included 863 appearances with the New York Metropolitan Opera (both at the Met and on tour) before his death in 1921 at the age of 48. Thanks largely to his tremendously popular phonograph records, Caruso was one of the most famous entertainment personalities of his day, and his fame has continued to endure to the present. He was one of the first examples of a global media celebrity. Beyond records, Caruso's name became familiar to millions throughout the world via newspapers, books, magazines, and the new media technology of the 20th century: cinema, the telephone, and telegraph.


title: Enrico Caruso

text: Caruso toured widely both with the Metropolitan Opera touring company and on his own, giving hundreds of performances throughout Europe, and North and South America. He was a client of the noted promoter Edward Bernays, during the latter's tenure as a press agent in the United States. Beverly Sills noted in an interview: "I was able to do it with television and radio and media and all kinds of assists. The popularity that Caruso enjoyed without any of this technological assistance is astonishing."


title: Enrico Caruso

text: Caruso biographers Pierre Key, Bruno Zirato and Stanley Jackson attribute Caruso's fame not only to his voice and musicianship but also to a keen business sense and an enthusiastic embrace of commercial sound recording, then in its infancy. Many opera singers of Caruso's time rejected the phonograph (or gramophone) owing to the low fidelity of early discs. Others, including Adelina Patti, Francesco Tamagno and Nellie Melba, exploited the new technology once they became aware of the financial returns that Caruso was reaping from his initial recording sessions.


title: Enrico Caruso

text: Caruso made more than 260 extant recordings in America for the Victor Talking Machine Company (later RCA Victor) from 1904 to 1920, and he and his heirs earned millions of dollars in royalties from the retail sales of these records. He was also heard live from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House in 1910, when he participated in the first public radio broadcast to be transmitted in the United States.


title: Enrico Caruso

text: Caruso also appeared in two motion pictures. In 1918, he played a dual role in the American "My Cousin" (silent film, entirely restored in July 2021) for Paramount Pictures. This film included a sequence depicting him on stage performing the aria "Vesti la giubba" from Leoncavallo's opera "Pagliacci". The following year Caruso played a character called Cosimo in another film, "The Splendid Romance". Producer Jesse Lasky paid Caruso $100,000 each to appear in these two efforts but "My Cousin" flopped at the box office, and "The Splendid Romance" was apparently never released. Brief candid glimpses of Caruso offstage have been preserved in contemporary newsreel footage.


title: Enrico Caruso

text: While Caruso sang at such venues as La Scala in Milan, the Royal Opera House, in London, the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg, and the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, he appeared most often at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, where he was the leading tenor for 18 consecutive seasons. It was at the Met, in 1910, that he created the role of Dick Johnson in Giacomo Puccini's "La fanciulla del West".


title: Enrico Caruso

text: Caruso's voice extended up to high D-flat in its prime and grew in power and weight as he grew older. At times, his voice took on a dark, almost baritonal coloration. He sang a broad spectrum of roles, ranging from lyric, to spinto, to dramatic parts, in the Italian and French repertoires. In the German repertoire, Caruso sang only two roles, Assad (in Karl Goldmark's "The Queen of Sheba") and Richard Wagner's "Lohengrin", both of which he performed in Italian in Buenos Aires in 1899 and 1901, respectively.


title: Enrico Caruso

text: During his lifetime, Caruso received many orders, decorations, testimonials and other kinds of honours from monarchs, governments and miscellaneous cultural bodies of the various nations in which he sang. He was also the recipient of Italian knighthoods. In 1917, he was elected an honorary member of the Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, the national fraternity for men involved in music, by the fraternity's Alpha chapter of the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. One unusual award bestowed on him was that of "Honorary Captain of the New York Police Force". In 1960, for his contribution to the recording industry, Caruso received a star located at 6625 Hollywood Boulevard on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Caruso was posthumously awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987. On 27 February of that same year, the United States Postal Service issued a 22-cent postage stamp in his honour. He was voted into "Gramophone"s Hall of Fame in 2012.


title: Enrico Caruso

text: Caruso's operatic repertoire consisted primarily of Italian works along with a few roles in French. He also performed two German operas, Wagner's "Lohengrin" and Goldmark's "Die Königin von Saba", singing in Italian, early in his career. Below are the first performances by Caruso, in chronological order, of each of the operas that he undertook on the stage. World premieres are indicated with **.


title: Enrico Caruso

text: Caruso also had a repertory of more than 500 songs. They ranged from classical compositions to traditional Italian melodies and popular tunes of the day, including a few English-language titles such as George M. Cohan's "Over There", Henry Geehl's "For You Alone" and Arthur Sullivan's "The Lost Chord".


title: Enrico Caruso

text: Caruso possessed a phonogenic voice which was "manly and powerful, yet sweet and lyrical", to quote the singer/author John Potter (see bibliography, below). He became one of the first major classical vocalists to make numerous recordings. Caruso and the disc phonograph, known in the United Kingdom as the gramophone did much to promote each other in the first two decades of the 20th century. Many of Caruso's recordings have remained continuously available since their original issue over a century ago, and all of his surviving recordings (including several unissued takes) have been remastered and reissued several times over the years. Although recordings of complete operas have been available since the early 1900s, ("Carmen" in 1908 for example), Caruso never participated in a complete opera recording.


title: Enrico Caruso

text: Caruso's first recordings were arranged by recording pioneer Fred Gaisberg and cut on disc in three separate sessions in Milan during April, November and December 1902. They were made with piano accompaniments for HMV/EMI's forerunner, the Gramophone & Typewriter Limited. In April 1903, he made seven further recordings, also in Milan, for the Anglo-Italian Commerce Company (AICC). These were originally released on discs bearing the Zonophone label. Three more Milan recordings for AICC followed in October 1903, released by Pathé Records on cylinders as well as on discs. He made one final recording for the Gramophone & Typewriter Ltd in April 1904. On 1 February 1904, Caruso made his first recordings in America for the Victor Talking Machine Company and thereafter recorded exclusively for Victor. While most of Caruso's American recordings would be made in Victor's studios in New York and its headquarters


title: Enrico Caruso

text: in Camden, New Jersey, Caruso later recorded in Camden's Trinity Church, which Victor acquired as a recording studio in 1917 for its acoustical properties and which could accommodate a large band of musicians. Caruso's first recordings for Victor in 1904 were made in Room 826, a small vocal studio at Carnegie Hall in New York. "Questa o quella" and "La donna è mobile" from Verdi's "Rigoletto" were the first to be recorded. Caruso's final recording session took place at Victor's Trinity Church studio in Camden on 16 September 1920, with the tenor singing the "Domine Deus" and "Crucifixus" from Rossini's "Petite messe solennelle".


title: Enrico Caruso

text: Caruso's earliest Victor records of operatic arias from 1904–05, like their thirty or so Milan-made predecessors, were all accompanied by piano. From February 1906, however, orchestral accompaniments became the norm, utilizing an ensemble of between eleven and twenty musicians. The regular conductors of these recording sessions with the orchestra were Walter B. Rogers and, from 1916, Josef Pasternack. Beginning in 1932, RCA Victor in the US and EMI (HMV) in the UK, reissued several of the Caruso discs with the original accompaniment over-dubbed by a larger electrically recorded orchestra. Earlier experiments using this re-dubbing technique, carried out by Victor in 1927, had been considered unsatisfactory. In 1950, RCA Victor reissued a number of Caruso recordings on 78-rpm discs pressed on red vinylite instead of the usual shellac. As long-playing discs (LPs) became popular, many of his recordings were electronically enhanced with reverb and similar effects to make them sound "fuller" for release on the extended format. Most Caruso LP collections issued by RCA Victor during the early 1950s were also simultaneously released on their new 45-rpm format.


title: Enrico Caruso

text: Caruso recorded with several sopranos including Nellie Melba, Geraldine Farrar, Amelita Galli-Curci, Frances Alda, Emmy Destinn, Alma Gluck, Frieda Hempel, Luisa Tetrazzini, Johanna Gadski, Marcella Sembrich, and Bessie Abott. Among the mezzo-sopranos and contraltos with whom Caruso made records, are Louise Homer, Minnie Egener, Flora Perini and Ernestine Schumann-Heink.


title: Enrico Caruso

text: During the 1970s, Thomas G. Stockham of the University of Utah developed an early digital reprocessing technique called "Soundstream" to remaster Caruso's recordings for RCA. This computer process removed or reduced some of the undesirable resonances and reduced surface noise typical of the early acoustically recorded discs. From 1976 to 1985, these early digitised efforts were partially issued on LP (RCA never finished the Complete Caruso series on LP and the pre-1906 recordings were never remastered using the Soundstream process) and were finally issued complete by RCA Victor on compact disc (in 1990, again in 2004 and a third time, in 2017). Other complete sets of Caruso's recordings in new remasterings were issued on CD on the Pearl label and in 2000–2004 by Naxos. The Pearl and Naxos sets were remastered by the noted American audio-restoration engineer Ward Marston. In 1993, Pearl also released a two-CD collection devoted to RCA and EMI's electrically over-dubbed versions of some of Caruso's original acoustic discs, originally issued in the 1930s. RCA Victor has issued three CDs of Caruso recordings with over-dubbed modern, orchestral accompaniments, digitally recorded. Since the expiration of their original copyrights, Caruso's records are now in the public domain and have been reissued by several different record labels with varying degrees of sound quality. They are also available over the internet as digital downloads. Caruso's best-selling downloads at iTunes have been the popular Italian folk songs "Santa Lucia" and "'O sole mio".


title: Enrico Caruso

text: Caruso died before the introduction of high fidelity, electrical recording technology in 1925. All of his recordings were made using the acoustic process, which required the recording artist to sing into a metal horn or funnel which relayed sound directly to a master disc via a stylus. This process captured only a limited range of the overtones and nuances present in his singing voice. Caruso's 12-inch acoustic recordings were limited to a maximum duration of around four and one-half minutes. Consequently, most of the selections that he recorded were limited to those that could be edited to fit this time constraint. Longer selections were occasionally issued on two or more record sides.


title: Marvin Minsky

text: Marvin Lee Minsky (August 9, 1927 – January 24, 2016) was an American cognitive and computer scientist concerned largely with research of artificial intelligence (AI), co-founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI laboratory, and author of several texts concerning AI and philosophy.


title: Marvin Minsky

text: Marvin Lee Minsky was born in New York City, to an eye surgeon father, Henry, and to a mother, Fannie (Reiser), who was a Zionist activist. His family was Jewish. He attended the Ethical Culture Fieldston School and the Bronx High School of Science. He later attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. He then served in the US Navy from 1944 to 1945. He received a B.A. in mathematics from Harvard University in 1950 and a Ph.D. in mathematics from Princeton University in 1954. His doctoral dissertation was titled "Theory of neural-analog reinforcement systems and its application to the brain-model problem." He was a Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows from 1954 to 1957.


title: Marvin Minsky

text: He was on the MIT faculty from 1958 to his death. He joined the staff at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in 1958, and a year later he and John McCarthy initiated what is, , named the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He was the Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, and professor of electrical engineering and computer science.


title: Marvin Minsky

text: Minsky's inventions include the first head-mounted graphical display (1963) and the confocal microscope (1957, a predecessor to today's widely used confocal laser scanning microscope). He developed, with Seymour Papert, the first Logo "turtle". Minsky also built, in 1951, the first randomly wired neural network learning machine, SNARC. In 1962, Minsky worked in small universal Turing machines and published his well-known 7-state, 4-symbol machine.


title: Marvin Minsky

text: Minsky's book "Perceptrons" (written with Seymour Papert) attacked the work of Frank Rosenblatt, and became the foundational work in the analysis of artificial neural networks. The book is the center of a controversy in the history of AI, as some claim it to have had great importance in discouraging research of neural networks in the 1970s, and contributing to the so-called "AI winter". He also founded several other AI models. His paper "A framework for representing knowledge" created a new paradigm in knowledge representation. While his "Perceptrons" is now more a historical than practical book, the theory of frames is in wide use. Minsky also wrote of the possibility that extraterrestrial life may think like humans, permitting communication.


title: Marvin Minsky

text: In the early 1970s, at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, Minsky and Papert started developing what came to be known as the Society of Mind theory. The theory attempts to explain how what we call intelligence could be a product of the interaction of non-intelligent parts. Minsky says that the biggest source of ideas about the theory came from his work in trying to create a machine that uses a robotic arm, a video camera, and a computer to build with children's blocks. In 1986, Minsky published "The Society of Mind", a comprehensive book on the theory which, unlike most of his previously published work, was written for the general public.


title: Marvin Minsky

text: In November 2006, Minsky published "The Emotion Machine", a book that critiques many popular theories of how human minds work and suggests alternative theories, often replacing simple ideas with more complex ones. Recent drafts of the book are freely available from his webpage.


title: Marvin Minsky

text: Minsky was an adviser on Stanley Kubrick's movie ; one of the movie's characters, Victor Kaminski, was named in Minsky's honor. Minsky is mentioned explicitly in Arthur C. Clarke's derivative novel of the same name, where he is portrayed as achieving a crucial break-through in artificial intelligence in the then-future 1980s, paving the way for HAL 9000 in the early 21st century:


title: Marvin Minsky

text: In Fargo Season 3 episode 3 (titled "The Law of Non-Contradiction"), at least two allusions are made to Minsky. The first, through the depiction of a "useless machine": a device that was invented by Minsky as a philosophical joke. The second, through the depiction of an animation of a robot called "minsky" - a character in a sci-fi novel called "The Planet Wyh".


title: Marvin Minsky

text: In 1952, Minsky married pediatrician Gloria Rudisch; together they had three children. Minsky was a talented improvisational pianist who published musings on the relations between music and psychology.


title: Marvin Minsky

text: He was a critic of the Loebner Prize for conversational robots, and argued that a fundamental difference between humans and machines was that while humans are machines, they are machines in which intelligence emerges from the interplay of the many unintelligent but semi-autonomous agents that comprise the brain. He argued that "somewhere down the line, some computers will become more intelligent than most people," but that it was very hard to predict how fast progress would be. He cautioned that an artificial superintelligence designed to solve an innocuous mathematical problem might decide to assume control of Earth's resources to build supercomputers to help achieve its goal, but believed that such negative scenarios are "hard to take seriously" because he felt confident that AI would go through a lot of testing before being deployed.


title: Marvin Minsky

text: Minsky received a $100,000 research grant from Jeffrey Epstein in 2002, four years before Epstein's first arrest for sex offenses; it was the first from Epstein to MIT. Minsky received no further research grants from him.


title: Marvin Minsky

text: Minsky organized two academic symposia on Epstein's private island Little Saint James, one in 2002 and another in 2011, after Epstein was a registered sex offender. Virginia Giuffre testified in a 2015 deposition in her defamation lawsuit against Epstein's associate Ghislaine Maxwell that Maxwell "directed" her to have sex with Minsky among others. There has been no allegation that sex between them took place nor a lawsuit against Minsky's estate. Minsky's widow, Gloria Rudisch, says that he could not have had sex with any of the women at Epstein's residences, as they were always together during all of the visits to Epstein's residences.


title: Marvin Minsky

text: In January 2016 Minsky died of a cerebral hemorrhage, at the age of 88. Minsky was a member of Alcor Life Extension Foundation's Scientific Advisory Board. Alcor will neither confirm nor deny whether Minsky was cryonically preserved.


title: Marvin Minsky

text: Minsky won the Turing Award (the greatest distinction in computer science) in 1969, the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 1982, the Japan Prize in 1990, the IJCAI Award for Research Excellence for 1991, and the Benjamin Franklin Medal from the Franklin Institute for 2001. In 2006, he was inducted as a Fellow of the Computer History Museum "for co-founding the field of artificial intelligence, creating early neural networks and robots, and developing theories of human and machine cognition." In 2011, Minsky was inducted into IEEE Intelligent Systems' AI Hall of Fame for the "significant contributions to the field of AI and intelligent systems". In 2014, Minsky won the Dan David Prize for "Artificial Intelligence, the Digital Mind". He was also awarded with the 2013 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Information and Communication Technologies category.


title: Miss Marple (TV series)

text: Miss Marple is a British television series based on the Miss Marple murder mystery novels by Agatha Christie, starring Joan Hickson in the title role. It aired from 26 December 1984 to 27 December 1992 on BBC One. All 12 original Miss Marple Christie novels were dramatised. The adaptations were written by T. R. Bowen, Julia Jones, Alan Plater, Ken Taylor and Jill Hyem, and the series was produced by George Gallaccio. In addition to its availability on VHS and DVD, the series began to be released on Blu-ray Disc in October 2014, marking its 30th anniversary.


title: Miss Marple (TV series)

text: Agatha Christie had never been very happy with most filmed adaptations of her works, and according to her grandson Mathew Pritchard, who handled her estate after her death, she "did not care much for television", either. Producer Pat Sandys of LWT first approached Pritchard and the Christie estate with a researched, detailed plan to film the novels "Why Didn't They Ask Evans?" and "The Seven Dials Mystery" in the early 1980s. Although indifferently treated by critics, the projects were popular with audiences and led to the filming of a number of short stories and the Tommy and Tuppence Beresford stories including "The Secret Adversary" and in the subsequent series "Agatha Christie's Partners in Crime". With the success of that series, the BBC received approval to produce the stories of one of Christie's most famous detectives.


title: Miss Marple (TV series)

text: When the BBC was granted the screen rights to all 12 Miss Marple novels, the rights to three already co-existed and were set to expire at the end of 1988. "The Mirror Crack'd From Side to Side" had already been filmed and theatrically released in 1980 with Angela Lansbury in the role, and the same production company was in the process of filming "A Caribbean Mystery" and "They Do It With Mirrors" with Helen Hayes for television broadcast. Thus these three titles were the last to be dramatised under the BBC's agreement.


title: Miss Marple (TV series)

text: The adaptations are mainly true to the original novels. Joan Hickson, who played Miss Marple, was an octogenarian herself during most of the series' production. In 1980 she had appeared in a minor role of Mrs Rivington in "Why Didn't They Ask Evans?". Decades before, she had appeared in a minor role in "Murder, She Said", in which Margaret Rutherford played Miss Marple and interestingly referred to Hickson's character as the younger generation. Hickson had also appeared in a stage adaptation of the novel "Appointment with Death" in 1946, after which Christie sent Hickson a note that read, "I hope one day you will play my dear Miss Marple."


title: Miss Marple (TV series)

text: In addition to Miss Marple, there are two semi-regular characters in the series. The first is Inspector (later Superintendent) Slack, played by David Horovitch; the second is Constable (later Sergeant) Lake, played by Ian Brimble. Slack and Lake appear in five episodes: "The Body in the Library", "The Murder at the Vicarage", "4.50 From Paddington", "They Do It with Mirrors" and "The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side". They are the official detectives and both (particularly Slack) originally dislike and are exasperated by Miss Marple, her interference and her methods, but they eventually come to respect (and indeed, in the case of Lake, like) her.


title: Miss Marple (TV series)

text: BBC producer Guy Slater cast Joan Hickson as Miss Marple. The series was filmed beginning in 1983 in areas including Norfolk, Devon, Oxfordshire and Barbados. The town of Nether Wallop in Hampshire doubled as Miss Marple's home village of St. Mary Mead. Slater was replaced by producer George Gallaccio starting with the fourth film. The closing credits refer to the films being ""A BBC-tv production in association with The Arts and Entertainment Network, USA and The Seven Network, Australia"".


title: Miss Marple (TV series)

text: The first series consisted of four books adapted into ten episodes, each approximately 55–60 minutes in length and were broadcast between December 1984 and March 1985. The second series featured another four books, adapted as eight episodes, but the first two were combined into a 100-minute feature length episode shown on Christmas Day 1986, followed by the remaining six episodes at 50 minutes in length each in January and February 1987. The remaining four stories were broadcast as stand alone, 120 minute feature length episodes in the Christmas periods of 1988, 1989, 1991 and 1992. Eventually, with multiple repeats, all twelve stories were broadcast as both stand alone, feature length stories and broken into 50-55 minute single episodes.


title: Miss Marple (TV series)

text: Hickson vowed not to do another film after 1989's "A Caribbean Mystery", but was persuaded to return for the final two films in 1991 and 1992. "A Caribbean Mystery" was shot on location at the Coral Reef Hotel in Barbados, where Christie had stayed in her visit to the country, and which had been the inspiration for the setting of the novel. Owners Budge and Cynthia O'Hara, who still owned the hotel 30 years later, were the inspirations for the characters in the novel and were able to share a treasure trove of Christie memorabilia with the cast.


title: Miss Marple (TV series)

text: The evocative theme tune for the TV series was composed by Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley. The series opening titles featured paintings by renowned illustrator Paul Birkbeck of seemingly pleasant village life, darkened by suspicious looking characters and the shot of a murder victim behind a cricket sight screen. Gossipy women were made to look like they were hiding secrets, whilst the vicar appeared to be hiding in the shadows. For the first four adaptations, these paintings were black and white, but from "The Murder at the Vicarage" onwards, new colour drawings replaced them. The series closing credits featured a contemplative portrait of Hickson as Miss Marple in her trademark straw hat.


title: Miss Marple (TV series)

text: Adaptations of the books "A Caribbean Mystery" (1964) and "Nemesis" (1971) were filmed out of order. "Nemesis" was produced in February 1987 and "A Caribbean Mystery" in December 1989. The significance of this is the character Jason Rafiel, who is introduced in "A Caribbean Mystery" and in "Nemesis" has died and made a request of Miss Marple to solve a years-old mystery. Because the two episodes were filmed out of order, viewers of "Nemesis" are clueless as to what part Jason Rafiel played in Miss Marple's life until they watch "A Caribbean Mystery". Rafiel was portrayed by Frank Gatliff in "Nemesis", and by Donald Pleasence in "A Caribbean Mystery".


title: Miss Marple (TV series)

text: The character of Inspector Craddock presents another inconsistency in the series. The character is clearly unknown to Miss Marple in "A Murder is Announced" but in his second appearance in "The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side", Craddock is Miss Marple's nephew.


title: Miss Marple (TV series)

text: All of the episodes take place in the 1950s. "The Murder at the Vicarage" is set in 1954, according to a sign about money being raised for the church fund. This takes place after the events of "The Body in the Library", which Miss Marple relates briefly when describing how she first came across Inspector Slack. "Nemesis" is set in 1955 or 1956 as it is said to be seven or eight years after the murder of the story which happened in 1948, according to the dates on the victim's gravestone. "A Caribbean Mystery" is set prior to this. "At Bertram's Hotel" is set relatively shortly after the launch of ITV (in September 1955), so probably in 1956 (though it also shows the London Hilton completed, which suggests the early 1960s), and "4.50 from Paddington" is set in 1957, during the launch of Sputnik.


title: Miss Marple (TV series)

text: The first episode was enthusiastically received by critics. "The Times" said "once hooked, you won't be able to turn off", and "The Sun" said it was a series "with pulling power and real class". For episode two, "The Moving Finger", "The Daily Telegraph" stated "Once again Guy Slater's production is built around the brilliant performance of Joan Hickson, behind whose faded blue eyes and spinsterish sibilants, the wheels of detective intelligence can be seen positively whirring around. The enterprise is impeccably cast, beautifully ordered, lovingly photographed." Reviews for subsequent films were equally positive.


title: Miss Marple (TV series)

text: Alan McKee, of the Museum of Broadcast Communications, reviews the series as "a good example of a 'heritage' production", popular in the 1980s. It combines new Victorianism in moral standards and a sanitised version of England's past. Mostly set in a rural past, English architecture and country mansion houses are featured. Like many BBC programmes, production values are impeccable and costumes, houses and decor, cars, hairstyles and make-up could all be described as "sumptuous".


title: Miss Marple (TV series)

text: McKee also praises the series for "being as faithful as possible to the source material. Miss Marple does not chase the villains herself as Margaret Rutherford does in her film series, nor are the titles of the books altered to make them more sensational."


title: Miss Marple (TV series)

text: As for Hickson personally, she is frequently described as the "definitive" Miss Marple as Christie would have pictured her, and Hickson personally credited in large part the bestowal of an OBE award to the role, as Queen Elizabeth II was a fan of the series and Hickson's performance.


title: Miss Marple (TV series)

text: Hickson was twice nominated for the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress during the series' run. Firstly in 1987 for "Murder at the Vicarage" and then again in 1988 for "Nemesis".


title: Miss Marple (TV series)

text: All 12 episodes were shown in the United States on the PBS "Mystery!" series. "Miss Marple" was also seen in over 30 countries, including Spain, the former Soviet Union and China.


title: Miss Marple (TV series)

text: "Miss Marple" was first released in DVD in the UK (Region 2) in 2000. A complete box set of all 12 stories was released in 2005 by 2 Entertain Video. In North America (Region 1), episodes were first released in 2001.


title: Miss Marple (TV series)

text: In summer 2009, the Sunday edition of the Greek newspaper "Kathimerini" was offering to its readers DVDs (one per week) of the series.


title: Miss Marple (TV series)

text: In January 2010, the "Daily Mail" offered six DVDs (from 2 Entertain Video) each with a complete episode from series. The episodes in the DVD giveaway offer were "The Murder at the Vicarage", "Sleeping Murder", "At Bertram's Hotel", "Nemesis", "A Caribbean Mystery", and "They Do It with Mirrors".


title: Miss Marple (TV series)

text: To mark the 30th anniversary of the series, BBC Home Entertainment fully remastered the series for release on DVD and, for the first time, on Blu-ray Disc. The series was released in three volumes. "Miss Marple: Volume One", released on 28 October 2014, included the episodes "The Body in the Library", "A Murder Is Announced", "The Moving Finger," and "Murder at the Vicarage" and the first part of the three-part documentary special, "A Very British Murder, Part 1: A New Taste for Blood". "Miss Marple: Volume Two", released on 31 March 2015, included the episodes "They Do It with Mirrors", "The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side", "4.50 from Paddington", and "A Pocketful of Rye" along with the bonus material "A Very British Murder, Part 2: Detection Most Ingenious". "Miss Marple: Volume Three," released on 9 June 2015, included the episodes "A Caribbean Mystery", "At Bertram’s Hotel", " Sleeping Murder", and "Nemesis" along with the bonus material "A Very British Murder, Part 3: The Golden Age".


title: Hannah Spearritt

text: Hannah Louise Spearritt (born 1 April 1981) is an English actress and singer. She is an original member of the pop group S Club 7. Spearritt is also known for playing the role of Abby Maitland in the British science-fiction drama "Primeval".


title: Hannah Spearritt

text: When she was 12, Spearritt landed a part in the Lowestoft Players amateur dramatics society's production of "Annie". Thereafter, she successfully auditioned for the National Youth Music Theatre, and became part of the company. She appeared in the NYMT's productions "Pendragon" (1994–1995), "Tin Pan Ali" (1996), and the West End musical "Bugsy Malone" (1997). In 1998, she was cast in the television film "The Cater Street Hangman", playing the role of a maid who gets murdered. Spearritt also made appearances on the National Lottery and "Blue Peter".


title: Hannah Spearritt

text: In 1998, Spearritt auditioned for and became a member of S Club 7. In the five years they were together, the group had four UK number one singles and a UK number one album. They recorded a total of four studio albums, released eleven singles and went on to sell over fourteen million albums worldwide. Their first album, "S Club", had a strong 1990s pop sound, similar to many artists of their time. However, through the course of their career, their musical approach changed to a more dance and R&B sound which is heard mostly in their final album, "Seeing Double". S Club 7 won two BRIT Awards—in 2000 for British breakthrough act and in 2002, for Best British Single. In 2001, the group earned the Record of the Year award. On 21 April 2003, during a live onstage performance, S Club announced that they were to disband.


title: Hannah Spearritt

text: In 2003, she was in Los Angeles to audition for a role in the film "", a fact that she revealed at the UK premiere of the film on 24 March 2004 in London. In 2004, Spearritt appeared in horror film "Seed of Chucky". In 2005, she appeared in the BBC series "Blessed" as Sarah. In December 2005, Spearritt appeared in the West End musical "Snow! The Musical", at London's Sound Theatre.


title: Hannah Spearritt

text: In 2006, it was revealed that Spearritt had landed a lead role in the ITV series "Primeval". She portrayed the role of Abby Maitland, a reptile enthusiast who gets mixed up with time travelling Professor Nick Cutter (Douglas Henshall) after discovering a species of reptile she had never encountered. Later that year, she made an appearance in "Agatha Christie's Marple". In March 2012, Spearritt took over the role of Pauline in "One Man, Two Guvnors" at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. She participated with S Club 7 in a reunion tour, titled Bring It All Back 2015, which toured the UK in May 2015. In December 2015, it was confirmed that Spearritt would star as Mercedes Christie in the BBC medical drama "Casualty". Spearritt made her debut on 23 January 2016. In 2017, Spearritt joined the cast of "EastEnders" as Kandice Taylor, the sister of Karen Taylor (Lorraine Stanley), leaving the show when she got pregnant.


title: Hannah Spearritt

text: Spearritt and Paul Cattermole met in 1994 when both were members of the National Youth Music Theatre. In 1999, Spearritt and Cattermole became members of S Club 7. They dated from 2001 until 2006. In 2006 Spearritt started dating Andrew-Lee Potts, her co-star on the series "Primeval"; the couple were engaged from 2008 until 2013.


title: Hannah Spearritt

text: On 20 December 2018, it was announced that Spearritt had given birth to a baby girl. In December 2020, Spearritt announced the birth of her second child, a girl, both with her boyfriend Adam Thomas.


title: Hannah Spearritt

text: Spearritt is the niece of Eddie Spearritt, who played professional football in the then-top level of the English football league system.


title: Sandor Clegane

text: Sandor Clegane, nicknamed the Hound, is a fictional character in the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series of fantasy novels by American author George R. R. Martin, and its television adaptation "Game of Thrones".


title: Sandor Clegane

text: Introduced in 1996's "A Game of Thrones", Sandor is the estranged younger brother of Ser Gregor Clegane, from the fictional Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. Sandor serves as King Joffrey Baratheon's personal bodyguard. He subsequently appeared in Martin's "A Clash of Kings" (1998), "A Storm of Swords" (2000), and "A Feast for Crows" (2005). Like his brother, Sandor is regarded as one of the fiercest and strongest fighters in the Seven Kingdoms. His face is marked by gruesome facial burns he received as a child when his brother shoved his face into a brazier; ever since he has retained a crippling fear of fire, as well as a fierce hatred for his brother. While initially appearing brutal and fatalistic, he later proves to be far more honorable, sympathetic and compassionate, particularly through his relationships with Sansa and Arya Stark.


title: Sandor Clegane

text: Sandor is portrayed by Scottish actor Rory McCann in the HBO television adaptation. McCann also narrates the animated "History and Lore" for House Clegane, available in the bonus material on the Blu Ray releases.


title: Sandor Clegane

text: Sandor Clegane, known also as The Hound, is the younger brother of Gregor Clegane, and was a retainer to House Lannister. He was regarded as one of the most dangerous and skilled fighters in Westeros. His size (in the novels he is 6'8", or 2 m and over 300 lbs, or 140 kg) and strength makes him an imposing figure, though he is not even as large as his brother Gregor. His visage is distinguished by gruesome burn scars that he received as a child, when his brother forced his head into a brazier. Consequently, Clegane fears fire and hates his brother. He is cynical and scornful of a knight's vows and their code of honor, as Gregor is a brutal knight utterly devoid of any morality or even humanity, a sadist who delights and revels in rape, bloodshed and violence. Clegane was described as a tormented man, driven by anger and hate, suffering from childhood post-traumatic stress disorder and obsessed with killing his brother.


title: Sandor Clegane

text: Sandor Clegane is not a point of view character in the novels, so his actions are witnessed mainly through the eyes of Sansa and Arya Stark, with some narrations from other characters such as Ned Stark and Tyrion Lannister.


title: Sandor Clegane

text: In "A Game of Thrones", he acts as bodyguard and servant to Crown Prince Joffrey Baratheon, who calls him "Dog" but is somewhat attached to him, as Joffrey lacks a father figure from King Robert. While escorting Sansa home, he reveals to her how his face was scarred and expresses much resentment of his brutish older brother and towards the concept of knighthood in general. Clegane hunts down Arya Stark's friend Mycah, and leads the Lannister attack on Eddard Stark's men in the Tower of the Hand during the purge of the Starks.


title: Sandor Clegane

text: Sandor is named Joffrey's Kingsguard towards the end of "A Game of Thrones", but always refuses to become a Knight. Clegane is often assigned to guard Sansa, and becomes quite protective of her, calling her "little bird." He tries to protect her from Joffrey's abuse in "A Clash of Kings", and advising her to do whatever Joffrey tells her as the best method of survival. He saves Sansa's life when Joffreys entourage is set upon by his own impoverished citizens, in the streets of King's Landing. Sandor becomes disillusioned during the Battle of the Blackwater and abandons his duty as Joffrey's guard due to the widespread use of wildfire (a fictional incendiary substance inspired by Greek fire). He offers to help Sansa flee King's Landing, and is agitated when she refuses. He threatens her but then calms down after she sings him a song about mercy, before fleeing the capital on his own.


title: Sandor Clegane

text: In "A Storm of Swords", the lordless Sandor gets drunk and is captured by the Brotherhood Without Banners, who sentences him to a trial by combat on a charge of murder accused by Arya. Sandor prevails against the Brotherhood leader Beric Dondarrion and is set free. He later kidnaps Arya and hopes to ransom her to her brother Robb Stark at Riverrun in order to earn a place in Robb's service. He takes her to the Twins, where Robb is attending the wedding of his uncle. However, just as they arrive, the Red Wedding happens and the Freys begin slaughtering the Starks. Sandor knocks Arya unconscious to prevent her from running into the castle and fights his way out, killing three Frey knights. They later encounter three of Gregor's men — Polliver, Tickler and a pimply squire from House Sarsfield — at the Crossroad Inn. Sandor is provoked while drunken and kills Polliver in the ensuing altercation, but is seriously injured. He becomes critically ill when his wounds begin to fester, so Arya abandons him under a tree to await his apparent death.


title: Sandor Clegane

text: He is mentioned a few times in "A Feast for Crows" (2005), because stories are spreading that somebody using the Hound's helmet is committing atrocities. But the Elder Brother mentions to Brienne of Tarth that he found Sandor moribund, and is now "at rest", so his helmet was doubtless stolen from his graveyard. However, the appearance of a mute gravedigger who matches Sandor physically and the Elder Brother's refusal to confirm if Sandor is dead imply that he may still be alive.


title: Sandor Clegane

text: As for the Hound's helmet, it is after revealed to Brienne and Podrick that it was Rorge and his criminal band who took it. And when the two of them are captured by the Brotherhood Without Banners and Rorge's band is killed, Lem decides to keep the helmet for himself, despite Thoros' opposition.


title: Sandor Clegane

text: Scottish actor Rory McCann has received acclaim for his portrayal of Sandor Clegane in the television adaptation of the series of books.


title: Sandor Clegane

text: Clegane is first introduced in the pilot episode when he accompanies the royal court on Robert Baratheon's visit to Winterfell. On the return trip to King's Landing, Joffrey falsely accuses a butcher's boy, Mycah, of having attacked him with a sword, and so Clegane must hunt the fugitive boy down, attracting the hatred of Mycah's friend Arya Stark. Weeks later, during the Tourney of the Hand, Sandor's brutally sadistic brother, Gregor, tries to kill Ser Loras Tyrell for unhorsing him, but Sandor intervenes, saving Loras' life.


title: Sandor Clegane

text: When Ned Stark reveals that Joffrey is a bastard born of incest, Clegane assists the Lannister soldiers in the subsequent purge of the Stark household and Sansa Stark's capture, although he later comforts Sansa when Joffrey torments her and advises how to avoid future pain. With Joffrey's ascension to the throne, Clegane is named to the Kingsguard to replace the ousted Ser Barristan Selmy.


title: Sandor Clegane

text: Sandor Clegane continues to defend Sansa, covering her after Joffrey has her humiliated and stripped in front of the assembled royal court. His humanity and underlying compassion are briefly revealed when he rescues Sansa from a fatal gang-rape, during a King's Landing street riot. But when Sansa thanks him and praises his bravery, he curtly brushes aside her gratitude, cynically professing, "Killing is the sweetest thing there is. Your father was a killer, your brothers are killers. Your betrothed, the king, is a killer."


title: Sandor Clegane

text: He is one of the more effective leaders at the Battle of the Blackwater against Stannis Baratheon's shore forces, but is visibly shaken by fire "If any of those flaming fucking arrows come near me, I'll strangle you with your own guts" and horrified by the wildfire that incinerates much of Stannis' fleet. He ultimately deserts the battle and city after losing half of his men and witnessing some burned alive, "Fuck the kings guard. Fuck the city. Fuck the king." Before he leaves King's Landing, in a drunken stupor, he offers to take Sansa north to Winterfell, but she declines.


title: Sandor Clegane

text: In the Riverlands, Clegane is captured by the Brotherhood Without Banners, a group of knights and soldiers sent by Eddard Stark (in season 1) to stop Gregor and restore order to the Riverlands. At a rustic inn, while being transported, he notices and reveals Arya Stark's true identity to them. At the Brotherhood's cave hideout, he is accused and tried via combat against their leader, Lord Beric Dondarrion; although Clegane asserts that any killings, even running down Mycah, the butcher's son, were committed in protection of Prince Joffrey, "I was (his) sworn shield. My place is not to question princes". Despite Beric's flaming sword, Sandor secures his freedom, dealing a fatal blow to Lord Beric, who is then immediately resurrected by the Red Priest, Thoros of Myr. Accusing them of thievery, as they will not now return his gold, days later, Clegane, still in the area, kidnaps a fleeing Arya, intending to ransom her to Robb Stark, at the wedding of Edmure Tully and Roslin Frey. However, they arrive at the Twins, just as the Freys unfold their "Red Wedding" plot, and Clegane and Arya barely escape the ensuing bloody massacre.


title: Sandor Clegane

text: With the rest of House Stark believed dead and the Riverlands now under the rule of House Frey, Clegane decides to ransom Arya to her aunt Lysa Arryn in the Vale. During their journey, Arya reveals to Clegane that she has not forgiven him for killing Mycah and has vowed to kill him. The duo arrive in the Vale to find that Lysa has ostensibly committed suicide. Returning from the Bloody Gate, they encounter the sworn sword to Arya's mother Catelyn, Brienne of Tarth, who had promised to take the Stark children to safety. When Arya refuses to go with Brienne, Brienne and Clegane engage in single combat that culminates in Brienne's knocking Clegane off a cliff, gravely wounding him. Although Clegane begs Arya to kill him, she leaves him to die.


title: Sandor Clegane

text: It is revealed that Clegane survived; he had been discovered by Ray, a warrior turned septon. Clegane assists Ray and his followers in building a sept, but one day, after a brief journey into nearby woods to chop wood, Clegane returns to the community to find everyone slaughtered by rogue members of the Brotherhood Without Banners. Clegane takes up an ax to hunt down those responsible and kills four of them before discovering the remaining three about to be hanged by Lord Beric Dondarrion and Thoros of Myr, who inform him that the group were acting independently of the Brotherhood. Lord Beric allows Clegane to help hang two of the outlaws, followed by an offer to join the Brotherhood in their journey north to help Jon Snow and the Night's Watch fight the White Walkers.


title: Sandor Clegane

text: During their journey north, the Brotherhood stops at a farm owned by a farmer Clegane had previously robbed. Inside, they find the bodies of the farmer and his daughter. Remorseful, Clegane digs them a grave with Thoros's help. Thoros has Clegane look into the flames of the Brotherhood's campfire, and in them the skeptical Clegane sees the White Walkers and their forces marching towards the Wall.


title: Sandor Clegane

text: The Brotherhood attempts to cross the Wall via Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, but are intercepted by wildling scouts manning the castle and are locked in the ice cells. Soon afterward, Jon Snow, Davos Seaworth, Jorah Mormont, and Gendry arrive at Eastwatch, intending to capture a wight to present to Cersei (now Queen of the Seven Kingdoms) as evidence the White Walkers exist. Clegane, Beric, and Thoros are released to accompany Jon, Jorah, Gendry, and the wilding Tormund Giantsbane beyond the Wall. The group soon captures a wight but is surrounded by the White Walkers and their army of wights, although not before Gendry flees to Eastwatch to request Daenerys Targaryen's aid. Daenerys arrives with her dragons before the group can be overrun. One dragon is killed and reanimated by the Night King, but Daenerys' group, minus Jon - who stays behind to fight back the White Walkers - are able to flee. Clegane joins Jon, Daenerys, and Davos as they sail to King's Landing.


title: Sandor Clegane

text: At King's Landing, Clegane meets Brienne of Tarth. Despite their previous brutal fight, they converse on civil terms. Clegane learns that Arya is alive and with her family, prompting a rare smile. During the summit in the Dragon Pit outside King's Landing, Clegane confronts his brother and asks what they did to him then cuts off the answer and tells him he always knew who would come for him. Clegane brings out the trunk containing the wight, revealing to Cersei and Jaime Lannister the threat that lies beyond the wall. In the aftermath, Clegane sails to White Harbor with Daenerys' forces with the intention of travelling to Winterfell to aid Jon and Daenerys against the Night King.


title: Sandor Clegane

text: The Hound joins Daenerys, Jon, and their retinues as they march to Winterfell, where he is reunited with Arya and Sansa. The Hound and Arya make peace with one another before the dreaded Battle of Winterfell against the White Walkers. During the battle, the Hound is triggered by the use of fire to destroy the wights and is close to giving up, but is convinced by Beric to keep fighting, indicating towards Arya who is relentlessly fighting beside them.