title: Bouzouki

text: The bouzouki (, ; ; "bouzoukia", from Greek ), also spelled buzuki or buzuci, is a musical instrument popular in Greece. It is a member of the long-necked lute family, with a round body with a flat top and a long neck with a fretted fingerboard. It has steel strings and is played with a plectrum producing a sharp metallic sound, reminiscent of a mandolin but pitched lower. There are two main types of bouzouki: the "trichordo" ("three-course") has three pairs of strings (known as courses) and the "tetrachordo" ("four-course") has four pairs of strings. The instrument was brought to Greece in the early 1900s by Greek refugees from Anatolia, and quickly became the central instrument to the rebetiko genre and its music branches. It is now an important element of modern Laïko pop Greek music.


title: Bouzouki

text: The name "bouzouki" comes from the Turkish word , meaning "broken" or "modified", and comes from a particular re-entrant tuning called , which was commonly used on its Turkish counterpart, the . It is in the same instrumental family as the mandolin and the lute. Originally the body was carved from a solid block of wood, similar to the saz, but upon its arrival in Greece in the early 1910s it was modified by the addition of a staved back borrowed from the Neapolitan mandola, and the top angled in the manner of a Neapolitan mandolins so as to increase the strength of the body to withstand thicker steel strings. The type of the instrument used in rebetiko music was a three-course instrument with three pairs of strings, but in the 1950s a four-course variety was developed and was made popular by Manolis Chiotis.


title: Bouzouki

text: From a construction point of view, the bouzouki can have differences not only in the number of strings but also in other features, e.g. neck length, width, height, depth of the bowl or main body, the width of the staves (the wooden gores or slices of the bowl) etc. These differences are determined by the manufacturer, who in his experience and according to the sound that the instrument should make, modifies his functional elements to achieve a more piercing, deeper or heavier sound.


title: Bouzouki

text: The size and type of the resonating body largely determine the instrument's timbre, while the length of the neck, and by extension the strings, determines the instrument's pitch range, as well as influencing the timbre. While neck length can vary from instrument to instrument, most bouzoukis have the same number of frets (27), spaced such as to provide a chromatic scale in 12-tone equal temperament. On modern instruments the frets are metal, and set into a fixed position in the fingerboard (in contrast to early instruments and the related baglama, in which frets were of gut or cord tied onto the neck, and moveable.) The quality of the wood from which the instrument is made is of great importance to the sound. For the construction of the bowl, mulberry, apricot, cherry, acacia, and elm are considered to be the best woods, with walnut, plane, and chestnut being slightly inferior. The wood must be solid and sourced from slow-growth trees. The top or soundboard should be cedar or spruce (preferably spruce) if possible, cut in one piece. The top plays a major role in the sound because it resonates and strengthens and prolongs the vibration of the strings. Another factor that affects the quality of the sound is the varnish and the method of its application. The best varnish is a natural one made of shellac, which is applied by hand in many layers in the traditional way, for both acoustic and visual effects. The neck must be of very dry hardwood in order not to warp and increase the distance of the strings from the fret board (the action height) which makes playing the instrument more laborious. Manufacturers use different techniques to achieve this, each one having its own secrets. Many modern instruments have a metal rod or bar (truss-rod) set into a channel in the neck, under the fingerboard, which adds some weight but increases rigidity, and allows adjustment of the neck should it begin to warp.


title: Bouzouki

text: The Greek bouzouki is a plucked musical instrument of the lute family, called the thabouras or tambouras family. The tambouras existed in ancient Greece as the pandura, and can be found in various sizes, shapes, depths of body, lengths of neck and number of strings. The bouzouki and the baglamas are the direct descendants. The Greek marble relief, known as the Mantineia Base (now exhibited at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens), dating from 330–320 BC, shows a muse playing a variant of the pandoura.


title: Bouzouki

text: From Byzantine times it was called first "pandoura" and then "tambouras". On display in the National Historical Museum of Greece is the tambouras of a hero of the Greek revolution of 1821, General Makriyiannis.


title: Bouzouki

text: Other sizes have appeared and include the Greek instrument tzouras, an instrument smaller in size than standard bouzoukia.


title: Bouzouki

text: The bouzouki arrived in Greece following the 1919–1922 war in Asia Minor and the subsequent population exchange between Greece and Turkey. The early bouzoukia mostly had three courses (six strings in three pairs, known as "trichordo") and were tuned in different ways, according to the scale one wanted to play. At the end of the 1950s, four-course (tetrachordo) bouzoukia started to gain popularity. The four-course bouzouki was made popular by Manolis Chiotis, who also used a tuning akin to standard guitar tuning, which made it easier for guitarists to play bouzouki; this angered purists, but allowed for greater virtuosity and helped elevate the bouzouki into a truly popular instrument capable of a wide range of musical expression. Recently the three-course bouzouki has gained in popularity. The first recording with the four-course instrument was made in 1956.


title: Bouzouki

text: The Irish bouzouki, with four courses, a flatter back, and differently tuned from the Greek bouzouki, is a more recent development, stemming from the introduction of the Greek instrument into Irish music by Johnny Moynihan around 1965. It was subsequently adopted by Andy Irvine, Dónal Lunny, and many others, although some Irish musicians, such as the late Alec Finn, continued to use the Greek-style instruments.


title: Bouzouki

text: This is the classic style of bouzouki, introduced around 1900, that was the mainstay of most rebetiko music. It has fixed frets and 6 strings in three pairs. In the lower-pitched (bass) course, the pair consists of a thick wound string and a thin string, tuned an octave apart. The conventional modern tuning of the "trichordo" bouzouki is DD–AA–DD. This tuning was called the "European tuning" by Markos Vamvakaris, who mentioned (but failed to describe) several other tunings, or "douzenia", in his autobiography. The illustrated bouzouki was made by Karolos Tsakirian of Athens, and is a replica of a "trichordo" bouzouki made by his grandfather for Markos Vamvakaris. The absence of the heavy mother-of-pearl ornamentation often seen on modern bouzoukia is typical of bouzoukia of the period. It has tuners for eight strings, but has only six strings, the neck being too narrow for eight. The luthiers of the time often used sets of four tuners on trichordo instruments, as these were more easily available, being also used on mandolins.


title: Bouzouki

text: This type of bouzouki has 8 metal strings, which are arranged in 4 pairs, known as courses, typically tuned CC–FF–AA–DD (i.e., one whole step below the four high strings of a guitar). In the two higher-pitched (treble) courses, the two strings of the pair are tuned to the same note. In the two lower-pitched (bass) courses, the pair consists of a thick wound string and a thin string tuned an octave apart. On the bouzouki the lower-pitched string comes first in these courses, the reverse of most other instruments with octave-paired courses (such as the 12-string guitar, charango or bajo sexto). These 'octave strings' add to the fullness of the sound and are used in chords and bass drones (continuous low notes that are played throughout the music). The guitar-like tuning was introduced by composer and soloist Manolis Hiotis, who found it better suited to the kind of virtuoso playing he was famous for. Today, the tetrachordo is the most common bouzouki used in Greek music, though a few traditionalists still prefer the trichordo, particularly for the older "rebetiko" style of playing.


title: Bouzouki

text: In addition to developing the modern tetrachordo bouzouki, Manolis Hiotis was a pioneer of the use of amplification for the instrument, which he may have been using as early as 1945. However, the earliest documented use of amplification for the bouzouki comes from a 1952 photograph, showing Vasilis Tsitsanis and Yiannis Papaioannou playing bouzoukis, each with an electric guitar-style pick-up attached in the soundhole. There are also numerous photographs between 1953 and 1959 showing bands in which both vocalists and bouzouki players are using microphones for amplification. By 1960 special bouzouki pickups (such as the German "Ideal") were being produced and permanently mounted in the instruments. Similar pickups are widely used by several Greek artists today and come in active and passive versions.


title: Bouzouki

text: The Greek baglamas () or baglamadaki () is very different from the Turkish bağlama. It is tuned the same as the trichordo bouzouki but pitched an octave higher (nominally D–A–D), with unison pairs on the four highest strings and an octave pair on the lower D. Musically, the baglamas is most often found supporting the bouzouki in the Piraeus style of rebetiko.


title: Laurent-Désiré Kabila

text: Laurent-Désiré Kabila () (27 November 1939 – 18 January 2001) or simply Laurent Kabila ( ), was a Congolese revolutionary and politician who was the third President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1997 until his assassination in 2001.


title: Laurent-Désiré Kabila

text: A longtime opponent of Mobutu Sese Seko, he led the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (ADFLC), a Rwandan and Ugandan-sponsored rebel group that invaded Zaire and overthrew Mobutu during the First Congo War from 1996 to 1997. Having now become the new president of the country, whose name was changed back to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kabila found himself in a delicate position as a puppet of his foreign backers. The following year, he ordered the departure of all foreign troops from the country to prevent a potential coup, leading to the Second Congo War in which his former Rwandan and Ugandan allies began sponsoring several rebel groups to overthrow him including the Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD) and the Movement for the Liberation of the Congo (MLC). During the war, he was assassinated by one of his bodyguards, and was succeeded ten days later by his 29-year-old son Joseph.


title: Laurent-Désiré Kabila

text: Kabila was born to the Luba people in Baudouinville, Katanga Province, (now Moba, Tanganyika Province), or Jadotville, Katanga Province, (now Likasi, Haut-Katanga Province in the Belgian Congo. His father was a Luba and his mother was a Lunda; his father's ethnicity was defining in the patriarchal kinship system. It is claimed that he studied abroad (political philosophy in Paris, got a PhD in Tashkent, in Belgrade and at last in Dar es Salaam), but no proof has been found or provided.


title: Laurent-Désiré Kabila

text: Shortly after the Congo achieved independence in 1960, Katanga seceded under the leadership of Moïse Tshombe. Kabila organised the Baluba in an anti-secessionist rebellion in Manono. In September 1962 a new province, North Katanga, was established. He became a member of the provincial assembly and served as chief of cabinet for Minister of Information Ferdinand Tumba. In September 1963 he and other young members of the assembly were forced to resign, facing allegations of communist sympathies.


title: Laurent-Désiré Kabila

text: Kabila established himself as a supporter of hard-line Lumumbist Prosper Mwamba Ilunga. When the Lumumbists formed the Conseil National de Libération, he was sent to eastern Congo to help organize a revolution, in particular in the Kivu and North Katanga provinces. This revolution was part of the larger Simba rebellions happening in the provinces at the time. In 1965, Kabila set up a cross-border rebel operation from Kigoma, Tanzania, across Lake Tanganyika.


title: Laurent-Désiré Kabila

text: Kabila met Che Guevara for the first time in April 1965 where Guevara had appeared in the Congo with approximately 100 Cuban men who planned to bring about a Cuban-style revolution to overthrow the Congolese government. Guevara assisted Kabila and his rebel forces for a few months before Guevara judged Kabila (then age 26) as "not the man of the hour" he had alluded to, being too distracted and his men poorly trained and disciplined. This, in Guevara's opinion, accounted for Kabila showing up days late at times to provide supplies, aid, or backup to Guevara's men. Kabila preferred to spend most of his time at local bars or brothels instead of training his men or fighting the Congolese government forces. The lack of cooperation between Kabila and Guevara contributed to the suppression of the revolt in November that same year.


title: Laurent-Désiré Kabila

text: In Guevara's view, of all of the people he met during his campaign in Congo, only Kabila had "genuine qualities of a mass leader"; but Guevara castigated Kabila for a lack of "revolutionary seriousness". After the failure of the rebellion, Kabila turned to smuggling gold and timber on Lake Tanganyika. He also ran a bar and brothel in Kigoma, Tanzania.


title: Laurent-Désiré Kabila

text: In 1967, Kabila and his remnant of supporters moved their operation into the mountainous Fizi – Baraka area of South Kivu in the Congo, and founded the (PRP). With the support of the People's Republic of China, the PRP created a secessionist Marxist state in South Kivu province, west of Lake Tanganyika.


title: Laurent-Désiré Kabila

text: The PRP state came to an end in 1988 and Kabila disappeared and was widely believed to be dead. While in Kampala, Kabila reportedly met Yoweri Museveni, the future president of Uganda. Museveni and former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere later introduced Kabila to Paul Kagame, who would become president of Rwanda. These personal contacts became vital in mid-1990s, when Uganda and Rwanda sought a Congolese face for their intervention in Zaire.


title: Laurent-Désiré Kabila

text: As Rwandan Hutu refugees fled to Congo (then Zaire) after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, refugee camps along the Zaire-Rwanda border became militarized with Hutu militia vowing to retake power in Rwanda. The Kigali regime considered these militias as a security threat and was seeking a way to dismantle those refugee camps. After Kigali had expressed its security concerns to Kinshasa, requesting that refugee camps get moved further inside the country, and Kinshasa ignored these concerns, Kigali believed that only military option could solve the issue. However, a military operation inside Zaire was likely be seen by the international community as an . A plan was put in place to foment a rebellion that would serve as a cover. The Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (AFDL) was then born with Rwanda's blessing, and with Kabila as its spokesperson.


title: Laurent-Désiré Kabila

text: By mid-1997, the AFDL had almost completely overrun the country and the remains of Mobutu's army. Only the country's decrepit infrastructure slowed Kabila's forces down; in many areas, the only means of transit were irregularly used dirt paths. Following failed peace talks held on board of the South African ship SAS "Outeniqua", Mobutu fled into exile on 16 May.


title: Laurent-Désiré Kabila

text: The next day, from his base in Lubumbashi, Kabila declared victory and installed himself as president. Kabila suspended the Constitution and changed the name of the country from Zaire to the Democratic Republic of the Congo—the country's official name from 1964 to 1971. He made his grand entrance into Kinshasa on 20 May and was sworn in on 31 May, officially commencing his tenure as president.


title: Laurent-Désiré Kabila

text: Kabila had been a committed Marxist, but his policies at this point were social democratic. He declared that elections would not be held for two years, since it would take him at least that long to restore order. While some in the West hailed Kabila as representing a "new breed" of African leadership, critics charged that Kabila's policies differed little from his predecessor's, being characterised by authoritarianism, corruption, and human rights abuses. As early as late 1997, Kabila was being denounced as "another Mobutu". Kabila was also accused trying to set up a personality cult. Mobutu's former minister of information, Dominique Sakombi Inongo, was retained by Kabila; he branded Kabila as "the Mzee," and created posters reading "Here is the man we needed" () appeared all over the country.


title: Laurent-Désiré Kabila

text: By 1998, Kabila's former allies in Uganda and Rwanda had turned against him and backed a new rebellion of the Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD), the Second Congo War. Kabila found new allies in Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe, and managed to hold on in the south and west of the country and by July 1999, peace talks led to the withdrawal of most foreign forces.


title: Laurent-Désiré Kabila

text: The DRC's authorities managed to keep power, despite Kabila's assassination. The exact circumstances are still disputed. Kabila reportedly died on the spot, according to DRC's then health minister Leonard Mashako Mamba, who was in the next door office when Kabila was shot and arrived immediately after the assassination. The government claimed that Kabila was still alive, however, and he was flown to a hospital in Zimbabwe after he was shot so that DRC authorities could organize the succession.


title: Laurent-Désiré Kabila

text: The Congolese government announced that he had died of his wounds on 18 January. One week later, his body was returned to Congo for a state funeral and his son, Joseph Kabila, became president ten days later. By doing so, DRC officials were accomplishing the "verbal testimony" of the deceased President. Then Justice Minister Mwenze Kongolo and Kabila's aide-de-camp Eddy Kapend reported that Kabila had told them that his son Joseph, then number two of the army, should take over, if he were to die in office.


title: Laurent-Désiré Kabila

text: The investigation into Kabila's assassination led to 135 people, including four children, being tried before a special military tribunal. The alleged ringleader, Colonel Eddy Kapend (one of Kabila's cousins), and 25 others were sentenced to death in January 2003, but not executed. Of the other defendants 64 were jailed, with sentences from six months to life, and 45 were exonerated. Some individuals were also accused of being involved in a plot to overthrow his son. Among them was Kabila's special advisor Emmanuel Dungia, former ambassador to South Africa. Many people believe the trial was flawed and the convicted defendants innocent; doubts are summarized in an "Al Jazeera" investigative film, "Murder in Kinshasa".


title: Laurent-Désiré Kabila

text: In January 2021, DRC's President Félix Tshisekedi pardoned all those convicted in the murder of Laurent-Désiré Kabila in 2001. Colonel Eddy Kapend and his co-defendants, who have been incarcerated for 15 years, were released.


title: Laurent-Désiré Kabila

text: He had at least nine children with his wife Sifa Mahanya: Josephine, Cécile, Fifi, Selemani, twins Jaynet and Joseph, Zoé, Anina and Tetia. He was also the alleged father of Aimée Kabila Mulengela whose mother is Zaïna Kibangula.


title: Strigoi

text: Strigoi in Romanian mythology are troubled spirits that are said to have risen from the grave. They are attributed with the abilities to transform into an animal, become invisible, and to gain vitality from the blood of their victims. Bram Stoker's "Dracula" has become the modern interpretation of the Strigoi through their historic links with vampirism. The most recent modern day depiction of a strigoi is from the FX’s series The Strain.


title: Strigoi

text: Strigoi is a Romanian word that originated from a root related to the Latin terms "strix" or "striga" with the addition of the augmentative suffix "-oi" (feminine "-oaie"). Otila Hedeşan notes that the same augmentative suffix appears in the related terms "moroi" and "bosorcoi" and considers this parallel derivation to indicate membership in the same "mythological micro-system." The "-oi" suffix notably converts feminine terms to the masculine gender as well as often investing it with a complex mixture of augmentation and pejoration. The root has been related particularly to owls. Cognates are found throughout the Romance languages, such as the Italian words "strega" or the Venetian word "strìga" which mean "witch". The Italian "stregone" even has the parallel cognate augmentative suffix and means "sorcerer." In French, "stryge" means a bird-woman who sucks the blood of children. Jules Verne used the term "stryges" in Chapter II of his novel "The Castle of the Carpathians", published in 1892. The Greek word "Strix", Polish "strzyga", and the Albanian word "shtriga" are also cognate.


title: Strigoi

text: In the late Roman period the word became associated with witches or a type of ill-omened nocturnal flying creature. A "strix" (Late Latin "striga", Greek στρίγξ), referred to night-time entities that craved human flesh and blood, particularly infants'.


title: Strigoi

text: One of the earliest mentions of a historical strigoi was Jure Grando Alilović (1579–1656) from the region of Istria. The villager is believed to have been the first real person described as a vampire because he was referred to as a "strigoi", "štrigon" or "štrigun" in contemporary local records. Grando is supposed to have terrorized his former village sixteen years after his death. Eventually he was decapitated by the local priest and villagers. The Carniolan scientist Johann Weikhard von Valvasor wrote about Jure Grando Alilović's life and afterlife in his extensive work "The Glory of the Duchy of Carniola" when he visited Kringa during his travels. This was the first written document on vampires. Grando was also mentioned in writings by Erasmus Francisci and Johann Joseph von Goerres ("La mystique divine, naturelle, et diabolique", Paris 1855), whose story was much more elaborate, full of fantastic details to make the story more interesting and sensational. In modern times, Croatian writer Boris Perić has researched the legend and written a book ("The Vampire") on the story.


title: Strigoi

text: "Striga" are mentioned by the Moldavian statesman and soldier, Dimitrie Cantemir, in his work the "" (1714–1716). He thought that the striga were mostly Moldavian and Transylvanian beliefs. However, he associated them with witches or warlocks rather than blood-drinking undead vampires. The book ascribes dunking – a traditional test for witchcraft – as a method of identifying a striga.


title: Strigoi

text: An 1865 article on Transylvanian folklore by Wilhelm Schmidt describes the "strigoi" as nocturnal creatures that preyed on infants. He reports a tradition in which, upon the birth of a child, one tosses a stone behind oneself and exclaims "This into the mouth of the "strigoi"!"


title: Strigoi

text: In 1909, Franz Hartmann mentioned in his book "An Authenticated Vampire Story" that peasant children from a village in the Carpathian Mountains started to die mysteriously. The villagers began to suspect a recently deceased count was a vampire, dwelling in his old fortress. Frightened villagers burned the castle to stop the deaths.


title: Strigoi

text: In his book "In Search of Dracula, The History of Dracula and Vampires", Radu Florescu mentions an event in 1969 in the city of Căpățâneni, where after the death of an old man, several family members began to die in suspicious circumstances. Unearthed, the corpse did not show signs of decomposition, his eyes were wide open, and his face was red and twisted. The corpse was burned to save his soul.


title: Strigoi

text: During the Romanian Revolution of 1989, the corpse of Nicolae Ceaușescu did not receive a proper burial. This made the ghost of the former dictator a threat in the minds of superstitious Romanians. A revolutionary activist, Gelu Voican, carpeted the apartment of the Conducător with braids of garlic. This is a traditional remedy against the strigoi.


title: Strigoi

text: In February 2004, a woman from the village of Marotinu de Sus in Dolj County, revealed that she had been visited by her late uncle, a 76-year-old Romanian man named Petre Toma who had died in December the previous year. Fearing the deceased might have become a "strigoi", the woman's brother-in-law, Gheorghe Marinescu, organized a vampire hunting group made up of several family members. After drinking some alcohol, they dug up the coffin of Petre Toma, made an incision in his chest, and tore the heart out. After removal of the heart, the body was burned and the ashes were mixed in water and drunk by Toma's niece, believing that this would put an end to the haunting. Dolj County police later arrested six of the family members who participated in the ritual, charging them with "disturbing the peace of the dead". They were sentenced to six months' imprisonment and ordered to pay damages to the family of the deceased. Since then, in the nearby village of Amărăştii de Sus, people drive a fire-hardened stake through the heart or belly of the dead as a "preventive measure".


title: Strigoi

text: The encyclopedist Dimitrie Cantemir and the folklorist Teodor Burada in his book "Datinile Poporului român la înmormântări" published in 1882 refer to cases of strigoism. The strigoi can be a living man, born under certain conditions:


title: Strigoi

text: The strigoi are said to be bald on top of the head, does not eat garlic and onions, avoids incense, and towards the feast of Saint Andrew he sleeps outside. Its spine is elongated in the form of a tail, covered with hair.


title: Strigoi

text: If there is a drought in a village, it means that there is a strigoi that prevents the rains. If it rains with stones (hail), God punishes the strigoi who does not let "clean rain fall", and if it rains with sun, it is believed that one of the strigoi is has been killed.


title: Strigoi

text: The strigoi take the milk from the cows, take the manna of the wheat, the strength of the people, stop the rains, bring hail and bring death among men and cattle. On Saint George's day (April 23), the boys water the girls so that they don't suffer from strigoi, but also so that they don't turn into these creatures.


title: Strigoi

text: To kill them, the grave of the supposed strigoi is searched and the order is read to him by the priests and an oak, yew or ash branch is struck in his heart, it is pierced with a nail or a knife, to remain bound of the coffin and not being able to go out to do mischief.


title: Strigoi

text: Tudor Pamfile in his book "Mitologie românească" compiles all appellations of strigoi in Romania "strâgoi", "Moroi" in western Transylvania, Wallachia and Oltenia, "vidmă" in Bucovina, "vârcolacul", "Cel-rau", or vampire. The types described are:


title: Strigoi

text: A common way used to identify a vampire was to place a 7 year old boy dressed in white on a white horse near the graveyard at midday. It was believed that the horse would stop at the grave of the suspected vampire.


title: Strigoi

text: In 1887, French geographer Élisée Reclus details burials in Romania: "If the deceased has red hair, he is very concerned that he was back in the form of dog, frog, flea or bedbug, and that it enters into houses at night to suck the blood of beautiful young girls. So it is prudent to nail the coffin heavily, or, better yet, a stake through the chest of the corpse."


title: Strigoi

text: Simeon Florea Marian in "Înmormântarea la români" (1892) describes another preventive method, unearthing and beheading, then re-interring the corpse and head face-down.


title: Strigoi

text: "The Dracula Scrapbook" by Peter Haining, published by New English Library editions in 1976, reported that the meat of a pig killed on the 17 October, the feast day of Saint Ignatius, was a good way to guard against vampires, according to Romanian legend.


title: Strigoi

text: "Strigoiulu" (the Strigoi) was the name of a Romanian-language satirical magazine published briefly in 1862 in Pest.


title: 21st century skills

text: 21st century skills comprise skills, abilities, and learning dispositions that have been identified as being required for success in 21st century society and workplaces by educators, business leaders, academics, and governmental agencies. This is part of a growing international movement focusing on the skills required for students to master in preparation for success in a rapidly changing, digital society. Many of these skills are also associated with deeper learning, which is based on mastering skills such as analytic reasoning, complex problem solving, and teamwork. These skills differ from traditional academic skills in that they are not primarily content knowledge-based.


title: 21st century skills

text: During the latter decades of the 20th century and into the 21st century, society has undergone an accelerating pace of change in economy and technology. Its effects on the workplace, and thus on the demands on the educational system preparing students for the workforce, have been significant in several ways. Beginning in the 1980s, government, educators, and major employers issued a series of reports identifying key skills and implementation strategies to steer students and workers towards meeting the demands of the changing workplace and society.


title: 21st century skills

text: The current workforce is significantly more likely to change career fields or jobs. Those in the Baby Boom generation entered the workforce with a goal of stability; subsequent generations are more concerned with finding happiness and fulfillment in their work lives. Young workers in North America are now likely to change jobs at a much higher rate than previously, as much as once every 4.4 years on average. With this employment mobility comes a demand for different skills, ones that enable people to be flexible and adaptable in different roles or in different career fields.


title: 21st century skills

text: As western economies have transformed from industrial-based to service-based, trades and vocations have smaller roles. However, specific hard skills and mastery of particular skill sets, with a focus on digital literacy, are in increasingly high demand. People skills that involve interaction, collaboration, and managing others are increasingly important. Skills that enable people to be flexible and adaptable in different roles or in different fields, those that involve processing information and managing people more than manipulating equipment—in an office or a factory—are in greater demand. These are also referred to as "applied skills" or "soft skills", including personal, interpersonal, or learning-based skills, such as life skills (problem-solving behaviors), people skills, and social skills. The skills have been grouped into three main areas:


title: 21st century skills

text: Many of these skills are also identified as key qualities of progressive education, a pedagogical movement that began in the late nineteenth century and continues in various forms to the present.


title: 21st century skills

text: Since the early 1980s, a variety of governmental, academic, non-profit, and corporate entities have conducted considerable research to identify key personal and academic skills and competencies they determined were needed for the current and next generation. The identification and implementation of 21st century skills into education and workplaces began in the United States but has spread to Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and through national and international organizations such as APEC and the OECD.


title: 21st century skills

text: In 1981, the US Secretary of Education created the National Commission on Excellence in Education to examine the quality of education in the United States." The commission issued its report "A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform" in 1983. A key finding was that "educational reform should focus on the goal of creating a Learning Society." The report's recommendations included instructional content and skills:


title: 21st century skills

text: Other Curriculum Matters: Develop proficiency, rigor, and skills in Foreign Languages, Performing Arts, Fine Arts, Vocational Studies, and the pursuit of higher-level education.


title: 21st century skills

text: Until the dawn of the 21st century, education systems across the world focused on preparing their students to accumulate content and knowledge. As a result, schools focused on providing literacy and numeracy skills to their students, as these skills were perceived as necessary to gain content and knowledge. Recent developments in technology and telecommunication have made information and knowledge ubiquitous and easily accessible in the 21st century. Therefore, while skills such as literacy and numeracy are still relevant and necessary, they are no longer sufficient. In order to respond to technological, demographic and socio-economic changes, education systems began to make the shift toward providing their students with a range of skills that relied not only on cognition but also on the interdependencies of cognitive, social, and emotional characteristics.


title: 21st century skills

text: Notable efforts were conducted by the US Secretary of Labor's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS), a national coalition called the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21), the international Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the American Association of College and Universities, researchers at MIT and other institutions of higher learning, and private organizations.


title: 21st century skills

text: Additional research has found that the top skills demanded by U.S. Fortune 500 companies by the year 2000 had shifted from traditional reading, writing and arithmetic to teamwork, problem solving, and interpersonal skills. A 2006 Conference Board survey of some 400 employers revealed that the most important skills for new workforce entrants included oral and written communications and critical thinking/problem solving, ahead of basic knowledge and skills, such as the reading comprehension and mathematics. While the ‘three Rs’ were still considered foundational to new workforce entrants’ abilities, employers emphasized that applied skills like collaboration/teamwork and critical thinking were ‘very important’ to success at work."


title: 21st century skills

text: A 2006 report from MIT researchers countered the suggestion that students acquire critical skills and competencies independently by interacting with popular culture, noting three continuing trends that suggest the need for policy and pedagogical interventions:"


title: 21st century skills

text: According to labor economists at MIT and Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, the economic changes brought about over the past four decades by emerging technology and globalization, employers’ demands for people with competencies like complex thinking and communications skills has increased greatly. They argue that the success of the U.S. economy will rely on the nation's ability to give students the "foundational skills in problem-solving and communications that computers don’t have."


title: 21st century skills

text: In 2010, the Common Core State Standards Initiative, an effort sponsored by the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), issued the Common Core Standards, calling for the integration of 21st century skills into K-12 curricula across the United States. Teachers and general citizens also played a critical role in its development along with the NGA and CCSSO by commenting during two public forums which helped shape the curriculum and standards. States also convened teams of teachers to assist and provide feedback as well as they looked towards the National Education Association (NEA) and many other education organizations to provide constructive feedback. As of December 2018, 45 states have entirely adopted the common core standards, one state has adopted half by only adopting the literacy section (Minnesota), and only four states remain who have not adopted into the common core standards of education (Alaska, Nebraska, Texas, and Virginia).


title: 21st century skills

text: The skills and competencies that are generally considered "21st Century skills" are varied but share some common themes. They are based on the premise that effective learning, or deeper learning, a set of student educational outcomes including acquisition of robust core academic content, higher-order thinking skills, and learning dispositions. This pedagogy involves creating, working with others, analyzing, and presenting and sharing both the learning experience and the learned knowledge or wisdom, including to peers and mentors as well as teachers. This contrasts with more traditional learning methodology that involves learning by rote and regurgitating info/knowledge back to the teacher for a grade. The skills are geared towards students and workers to foster engagement; seeking, forging, and facilitating connections to knowledge, ideas, peers, instructors, and wider audiences; creating/producing; and presenting/publishing. The classification or grouping has been undertaken to encourage and promote pedagogies that facilitate deeper learning through both traditional instruction as well as active learning, project-based learning, problem based learning, and others. A 2012 survey conducted by the American Management Association (AMA) identified three top skills necessary for their employees: critical thinking, communication and collaboration. Below are some of the more readily identifiable lists of 21st century skills.


title: 21st century skills

text: The Common Core Standards issued in 2010 were intended to support the "application of knowledge through higher-order thinking skills." The initiative's stated goals are to promote the skills and concepts required for college and career readiness in multiple disciplines and life in the global economy. Skills identified for success in the areas of literacy and mathematics:


title: 21st century skills

text: Following the release of "A Nation at Risk", the U.S. Secretary of Labor appointed the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) to determine the skills needed for young people to succeed in the workplace to foster a high-performance economy. SCANS focused on what they called "learning a living" system. In 1991, they issued their initial report, "What Work Requires of Schools". The report concluded that a high-performance workplace requires workers who have key fundamental skills: basic skills and knowledge, thinking skills to apply that knowledge, personal skills to manage and perform; and five key workplace competencies.


title: 21st century skills

text: In 2002 the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (now the Partnership for 21st Century Learning, or P21) was founded as a non-profit organization by a coalition that included members of the national business community, education leaders, and policymakers: the National Education Association (NEA), United States Department of Education, AOL Time Warner Foundation, Apple Computer, Inc., Cable in the Classroom, Cisco Systems, Inc., Dell Computer Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, SAP, Ken Kay (President and Co-Founder), and Dins Golder-Dardis. To foster a national conversation on "the importance of 21st century skills for all students" and "position 21st century readiness at the center of US K-12 education", P21 identified six key skills:


title: 21st century skills

text: The P21 organization also conducted research that identified deeper learning competencies and skills they called the Four Cs of 21st century learning:


title: 21st century skills

text: The University of Southern California's Project New Literacies website list four different "C" skills:


title: 21st century skills

text: Researchers at MIT, led by Henry Jenkins, Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program, in 2006 issued a white paper ("Confronting the Challenges of a Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century"), that examined digital media and learning. To address this Digital Divide, they recommended an effort be made to develop the cultural competencies and social skills required to participate fully in modern society instead of merely advocating for installing computers in each classroom. What they term participatory culture shifts this literacy from the individual level to a broader connection and involvement, with the premise that networking and collaboration develop social skills that are vital to new literacies. These in turn build on traditional foundation skills and knowledge taught in school: traditional literacy, research, technical, and critical analysis skills.


title: 21st century skills

text: Participatory culture is defined by this study as having: low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one's creations, informal mentorship, belief that members' own contributions matter, and social connection (caring what other people think about their creations).


title: 21st century skills

text: A 2005 study (Lenhardt & Madden) found that more than one-half of all teens have created media content, and roughly one third of teens who use the Internet have shared content they produced, indicating a high degree of involvement in participatory cultures. Such digital literacies emphasize the intellectual activities of a person working with sophisticated information communications technology, not on proficiency with the tool.


title: 21st century skills

text: In 2003 the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory and the Metiri Group issued a report entitled "enGauge® 21st Century Skills: Literacy in the Digital Age" based on two years of research. The report called for policymakers and educators to define 21st century skills, highlight the relationship of those skills to conventional academic standards, and recognize the need for multiple assessments to measure and evaluate these skills within the context of academic standards and the current technological and global society. To provide a common understanding of, and language for discussing, the needs of students, citizens, and workers in a modern digital society, the report identified four "skill clusters":


title: 21st century skills

text: In 1997, member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development launched the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to monitor "the extent to which students near the end of compulsory schooling have acquired the knowledge and skills essential for full participation in society". In 2005 they identified three "Competency Categories to highlight delivery related, interpersonal, and strategic competencies:"


title: 21st century skills

text: The AAC&U conducted several studies and surveys of their members. In 2007 they recommended that graduates of higher education attain four skills - The Essential Learning Outcomes:


title: 21st century skills

text: The ISTE Educational Technology Standards (formerly National Educational Technology Standards (NETS)) are a set of standards published by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) to leverage the use of technology in K-12 education. These are sometimes intermixed with information and communication technologies (ICT) skills. In 2007 NETS issued a series of six performance indicators (only the first four are on their website as of 2016):


title: 21st century skills

text: In 2007 the Educational Testing Service (ETS) ICT Literacy Panel released its digital literacy standards:


title: 21st century skills

text: A person possessing these skills would be expected to perform these tasks for a particular set of information: access, manage, integrate, evaluate, create/publish/present. The emphasis is on proficiency with digital tools.


title: 21st century skills

text: In 2005, Chris Dede of the Harvard Graduate School of Education developed a framework based on new digital literacies entitled


title: 21st century skills

text: With the exponential expansion of personal access to Internet resources, including social media, information and content on the Internet has evolved from being created by website providers to individuals and communities of contributors. The 21st century Internet centered on material created by a small number of people, Web 2.0 tools (e.g. Wikipedia) foster online communication, collaboration, and creation of content by large numbers of people (individually or in groups) in online communities.


title: 21st century skills

text: In 2015, the World Economic Forum published a report titled ‘New Vision for Education: Unlocking the Potential of Technology’ that focused on the pressing issue of the 21st-century skills gap and ways to address it through technology. In the report, they defined a set of 16 crucial proficiencies for education in the 21st century. Those skills include six “foundational literacies”, four “competencies” and six “character qualities” listed below.


title: 21st century skills

text: In a paper titled ‘Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century’ produced by the National Research Council of National Academies, the National Research defines 21st century skills, describes how the skills relate to each other and summaries the evidence regarding 21st century skills.


title: 21st century skills

text: As a first step toward describing “21st century skills,” the National Research Council identified three domains of competence: cognitive, interpersonal, and intrapersonal while recognizing that the three domains while different, are intertwined in human development and learning. These three domains represent distinct facets of human thinking and build on previous efforts to identify and organize dimensions of human behaviour. The committee produced the following cluster of 21st century skills in the above-mentioned 3 domains.


title: 21st century skills

text: Multiple agencies and organizations have issued guides and recommendation for implementation of 21st century skills in a variety of learning environments and learning spaces. These include five separate educational areas: standards, assessment, professional development, curriculum & instruction, and learning environments.


title: 21st century skills

text: The designs of learning environments and curricula have been impacted by the initiatives and efforts to implement and support 21st century skills with a move away from the factory model school model and into a variety of different organizational models. Hands-on learning and project-based learning have resulted in the development of programs and spaces such as STEM and makerspaces. Collaborative learning environments have fostered flexibility in furniture and classroom layout as well as differentiated spaces, such as small seminar rooms near classrooms. Literacy with, and access to, digital technology has impacted the design of furniture and fixed components as students and teachers use tablets, interactive whiteboards and interactive projectors. Classroom sizes have grown to accommodate a variety of furniture arrangements and grouping, many of which are less space-efficient than traditional configurations of desks in rows.


title: Josh Alexander (wrestler)

text: Joshua Lemay (born May 29, 1987) is a Canadian professional wrestler better known by the ring name Josh Alexander. He is currently signed with Impact Wrestling, where he is the current Impact World Champion in his second reign. He is also a former Impact X Division Champion.


title: Josh Alexander (wrestler)

text: He is a two-time Impact World Tag Team Champion with Ethan Page as The North, as well as a one-time PWG World Tag Team Champion with Ethan Page as Monster Mafia, and a one-time AAW Heavyweight Champion.


title: Josh Alexander (wrestler)

text: Josh Alexander was trained to wrestle by Johnny Devine. He debuted in 2005. He then started his career on the regional Canadian independent circuit. He met fellow wrestler Ethan Page in the Alpha-1 promotion in Ontario in 2010, where the two became close friends. A year later, they formed the tag team Monster Mafia where they wrestled for various promotions including Ring of Honor (ROH) and AAW Wrestling. In 2013 he suffered a neck injury during a AAW match. After taking time off to heal, he returned to action. A few months after, he reinjured his neck during a ROH tryout match with ReDRagon. He had herniated a disk so he would have his C5-C6 vertebrae fused to fix the injury.


title: Josh Alexander (wrestler)

text: However, he did not take time off during this time and kept the injury a secret, not wanting to squander the opportunity to work with ROH. In February 2015, Monster Mafia debuted for Pro Wrestling Guerilla (PWG), facing The Young Bucks in their first match. He would shortly after again injure his neck in a match with Matt Sydal and Chris Sabin. Alexander would again work through it, with Page and him participating in the annual Dynamite Duumvirate Tag Team Title Tournament in May. They would win the PWG World Tag Team Championship in the first round match with Joey Ryan and Candice LeRae. The reign would be short-lived, losing it later that night. Alexander would again have neck surgery in July 2015, retiring from wrestling.


title: Josh Alexander (wrestler)

text: After him and Page momentary went their separate ways, he wrestled for Absolute Intense Wrestling (AIW), Progress Wrestling, and Beyond Wrestling, among other promotions.


title: Josh Alexander (wrestler)

text: Alexander began appearing in Impact Wrestling in 2018 by making appearances on "Xplosion" as an enhancement talent against the likes of Killer Kross and Matt Sydal. In February 2019, Alexander signed a three-year contract with the promotion. Impact Wrestling subsequently hyped Alexander's debut with an online documentary made by Toronto-based filmmaker Glen Matthews. Alexander reformed with Ethan Page under the name The North, as they defeated El Reverso and Sheldon Jean on the April 12 episode of "Impact!" while subsequently establishing himself as a heel. North would team up with Moose to defeat The Rascalz in a six-man tag team match at Rebellion, marking Alexander's pay-per-view debut in Impact.


title: Josh Alexander (wrestler)

text: On the June 14 episode of "Impact!", North defeated Rob Van Dam and Sabu to earn a title shot against The Latin American Xchange (Santana and Ortiz) for the World Tag Team Championship at the Bash at the Brewery event on July 5. North defeated LAX at the event to win the titles for the first time. North retained the titles against LAX and The Rascalz in a three-way match at Slammiversary in their first title defense. North would go on to retain the titles throughout the rest of the year against Reno Scum and the team of Rich Swann and Willie Mack at Unbreakable, the team of Swann and Mack and the team of Rob Van Dam and Rhino at Bound for Glory and Swann and Mack at Turning Point. They would go on to become the longest-reigning World Tag Team Champions as they retained the titles in 2020 against Willie Mack in a handicap match at Hard To Kill, The Rascalz at Sacrifice and the team of Ken Shamrock and Sami Callihan at Slammiversary until they lost it against The Motor City Machine Guns on the July 21 episode of "Impact!".


title: Josh Alexander (wrestler)

text: The North unsuccessfully challenged Motor City Machine Guns in a rematch for the World Tag Team Championship at Emergence but regained the titles at Bound for Glory, before lost it a few weeks later to The Good Brothers at Turning Point. Then, Alexander and Page started a storyline where they did not work well together, leading to Page's departure from Impact.


title: Josh Alexander (wrestler)

text: Following the departure of Ethan Page, Alexander returned to singles competition. He faced Brian Myers at the Hard To Kill pre-show in a losing effort. On the January 19 episode of "Impact!", Alexander turned face when he confronted Ace Austin backstage. He was subsequently assaulted by Austin and Madman Fulton until new signee Matt Cardona came to even the odds. This would culminate into a tag team match the following week, where Alexander and Cardona emerged victorious.


title: Josh Alexander (wrestler)

text: At No Surrender, Alexander won a Triple Threat Revolver match to be the number one contender to the Impact X Division Championship, where he lost against TJP on the February 16 episode of "Impact!". At Rebellion, he defeated Ace Austin and TJP to win the X Division Championship for the first time. On the April 29 episode of "Impact!", Alexander made his first successful title defense against Austin. At Under Siege, he had another successful title defense against New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW) talent El Phantasmo. On June 3, Alexander defended the title against TJP in Impact's first-ever 60-minute Iron man match, winning 2–1 in sudden death overtime. At Slammiversary, Alexander successfully retained his X Division Championship in an Ultimate X match against Austin, Chris Bey, Petey Williams, Rohit Raju, and Trey Miguel. Alexander then retained his title against Black Taurus at Homecoming, against Jake Something at Emergence, and against Chris Sabin at Victory Road.


title: Josh Alexander (wrestler)

text: Later that night at Victory Road, Alexander confronted Impact World Champion Christian Cage (who had retained his title moments before against Ace Austin), invoking Option C to relinquish his X Division Championship for a World Championship match in the main event of Bound for Glory. At Bound for Glory on October 23, Alexander defeated Cage to win the Impact World Championship. However, while celebrating with his family, he lost the title to Moose, who cashed in his Call Your Shot Gauntlet trophy. At Turning Point, Alexander called out Moose but was instead attacked by the debuting Jonah. At Hard To Kill, Alexander defeated Jonah. On February 14, 2022, Alexander announced that his contract with Impact Wrestling had expired.


title: Josh Alexander (wrestler)

text: At Sacrifice, Alexander made his return, attacking Impact World Champion Moose after his match against Heath. Alexander revealed that he signed a new multi-year contract with Impact Wrestling, while also challenging Moose for the Impact World Championship in the main event of Rebellion. At Rebellion, Alexander defeated Moose in the main event to capture the Impact World Championship for a second time. At Under Siege, Alexander made his first successful title defense against NJPW talent Tomohiro Ishii. At Slammiversary, he had another successful title defense against Eric Young. He would successfully defend his world title against Joe Doering at Against All Odds, ending Doering's undefeated streak in Impact Wrestling. On July 31, at Ric Flair's Last Match event, Alexander defended the title against Major League Wrestling (MLW) talent Jacob Fatu, but it ended in a no contest due to interference from Brian Myers, Matt Cardona and Mark Sterling.


title: Josh Alexander (wrestler)

text: On August 12, at Emergence, Alexander successfully defended the world title against Alex Shelley. On September 23, at Victory Road, he teamed with Heath and Rich Swann to face Honor No More (Eddie Edwards, Matt Taven, and Mike Bennett) in a six-man tag team match, suffering his first pinfall loss in nearly a year. At Bound for Glory, Alexander made another successful title defense against Edwards, before being confronted by Call Your Shot Gauntlet winner Bully Ray. On November 18, at Over Drive, Alexander retained his title against Frankie Kazarian.


title: Josh Alexander (wrestler)

text: Alexander made his debut for New Japan Pro-Wrestling on the June 18, 2021 episode of "NJPW Strong" and defeated Alex Coughlin.


title: Josh Alexander (wrestler)

text: Lemay has been married to fellow professional wrestler Jade Chung since 2016. Together they have two children. In addition to his wrestling career, Lemay worked as a construction insulator until September 1, 2021.


title: Josh Alexander (wrestler)

text: Lemay revealed on Twitter in May 2021 that he wears amateur wrestling-styled headgear after developing a serious case of cauliflower ear in 2013 that resulted in the temporary amputation of his left ear to remove scar tissue; he wore the headgear to protect the ear after it was reattached. Although Lemay doesn't need the headgear now, he has continued to wear the headgear as it fits with his shoot-style gimmick, making him and Rick Steiner among the few professional wrestlers with amateur backgrounds to wear the amateur-style headgear on a regular basis.


title: Francis Ouimet

text: Francis DeSales Ouimet () (May 8, 1893 – September 2, 1967) was an American amateur golfer who is frequently referred to as the "father of amateur golf" in the United States. He won the U.S. Open in 1913 and was the first non-Briton elected Captain of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews. He was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1974.


title: Francis Ouimet

text: Ouimet was born to Mary Ellen Burke and Arthur Ouimet in Brookline, Massachusetts, a suburb west of Boston. His father was a French-Canadian immigrant, and his mother was originally from Ireland. When Francis was four years old, his family purchased a house on Lee Street across from Clyde Street in Brookline, directly across from the 17th hole of The Country Club. The Ouimet family grew up relatively poor and were near the bottom of the economic ladder, which was hardly the position of any American golfer at the time. As far as the general public was concerned, amateur golf was reserved for the wealthy, while professional golf provided competition and income for former caddies, who were prohibited by the USGA from caddying after the age of 16 if they wanted to keep their amateur status.


title: Francis Ouimet

text: Ouimet became interested in golf at an early age and started caddying at The Country Club at the age of 11. Using clubs from his brother and balls he found around the course, he taught himself to play. His game soon caught the eye of many country club members and caddie master Dan MacNamara. It was not long before Ouimet was the best high school golfer in the state. When he was a junior in high school, his father insisted that he drop out and do "something useful" with his life. Ouimet worked at a drygoods store before landing a job at a sporting goods store owned by future Baseball Hall of Famer George Wright.


title: Francis Ouimet

text: In 1913, Ouimet won his first significant title at age 20, the Massachusetts Amateur, an event he won five more times. He participated in the U.S. Amateur at the Garden City Golf Club in Long Island, New York, in early September, losing in the quarterfinals to the eventual champion, Jerome Travers. Soon after, he was asked personally by the president of the United States Golf Association, Robert Watson, if he would play in the national professional championship, the 1913 U.S. Open, which had been postponed to mid-September from its original June dates to allow for the participation of British golfers Harry Vardon and Ted Ray, both of Jersey. Vardon had won the U.S. Open in 1900 and The Open Championship five times to that point. Ray had won the Open Championship in 1912. The 1913 event was played at the course Ouimet knew best, The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts. Ouimet originally declined to play, having just returned from an absence from work to play in the National Amateur. His participation in the Open was soon arranged, however, with the cooperation of his employer.


title: Francis Ouimet

text: It was Ouimet's first appearance in the championship. Eddie Lowery was his ten year old caddie. After 72 holes of regulation play ended in a three-way tie, Ouimet, Vardon, and Ray engaged in an 18-hole playoff the next day in rainy conditions. Ouimet won the playoff at one-under-par for the day, beating Vardon by 5 strokes and Ray by 6. His victory was widely hailed as a stunning upset over the strongly favored British, who were regarded as the top two golfers in the world. He was the first amateur to win the U.S. Open. The biggest crowds ever seen in American golf followed the playoff, and his achievement was front-page news across the country.


title: Francis Ouimet

text: Ouimet's U.S. Open success is credited for bringing golf into the American sporting mainstream. Before his win over Vardon and Ray, golf was dominated by British players. In America, the sport was restricted to players with access to private facilities. There were very few public courses (the first, Van Cortlandt Golf Course in The Bronx borough of New York City, opened in 1895.) Ten years after his 1913 victory, the number of American players had tripled and many new courses had been built, including numerous public ones.


title: Francis Ouimet

text: In 1963, WGBH-TV, Boston's public television station, aired an interview with Ouimet at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts, to mark the 50th anniversary of his win at the 1913 U.S. Open. The kinescope of that interview was included in the DVD of the Walt Disney film "The Greatest Game Ever Played". Disney's film took artistic license, portraying the win as having been by a single stroke when, in reality, Ouimet won by five strokes.


title: Francis Ouimet

text: Ouimet never turned professional; he wished to remain an amateur for his whole career, as he decided before his U.S. Open success that he wanted to work in the world of business. In 1916, however, the USGA, in one of the most controversial decisions in their history, stripped Ouimet of his amateur status. Its reasoning was that he was using his celebrity to aid his own sporting goods business and was therefore making a living from golf. This was at the time when caddies were not allowed to continue caddying after they reached the age of 16, unless they declared themselves professionals. The decision was greeted with uproar from Ouimet's fellow golfers. In 1918, Ouimet enlisted in the U.S. Army and rose to the rank of lieutenant. After the war, the USGA quietly reinstated his amateur status. Ouimet did not bear a grudge against the USGA and served on several committees. He was also a golf member of Charles River Country Club in Newton Centre, and was a member of the Woodland Golf Club of Auburndale.


title: Francis Ouimet

text: Ouimet won his second U.S. Amateur in 1931. During the 1920s, he lost several close matches to Bobby Jones, who dominated amateur golf for that decade.


title: Francis Ouimet

text: Ouimet won the U.S. Amateur twice (1914 and 1931). He played on the first eight Walker Cup Teams and was Captain of the next four for a team record of 11-1. In 1951, he became the first non-Briton elected Captain of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews and in 1955 was the first-ever winner of the Bob Jones Award, the highest honor given by the USGA, in recognition of distinguished sportsmanship in golf. Ouimet has been named to many golf halls of fame and has a room named after him in the USGA Museum.


title: Francis Ouimet

text: Two other aspects of Ouimet's golf career are important: He used the overlapping grip to hold the club and was among the first top players to use this method. He very likely used the grip to emulate Vardon, who often is credited with developing the grip. Many great golf champions since have used this technique. The method is named for the "overlapping' of the little finger of the top hand between the forefinger and middle finger of the bottom hand. Ouimet mentored and encouraged the young Gene Sarazen, who developed into one of golf's greatest champions.


title: Francis Ouimet

text: In 1949, a group of Ouimet's friends started a scholarship in his honor, naming it the Francis Ouimet Scholarship Fund. The scholarship was created to give college scholarship aid to young people who worked as caddies at clubs in Massachusetts. The inaugural class had 13 scholars who received a total of $4,600. Since then more than 6,300 students have been selected as Ouimet Scholars, receiving more than $43 million in need-based college tuition assistance. Today's requirements state that young people who have given at least two years of service to golf as caddies, worked in a pro shop operations, in course superintendent operations or "on-course" food and beverage in Massachusetts are eligible to receive the four-year renewable Scholarship.


title: Francis Ouimet

text: The Ouimet Fund overview can be found at www.ouimet.org and is the second largest "caddie" scholarship in the U.S. and the largest independent scholarship fund in Massachusetts. Students complete a rigorous application and interview process, similar to the college process, before being selected as a Ouimet Scholar. The final step is an interview with a group of Ouimet Alumni, directors and/or donors. Once selected, students may attend any school they wish, and annually, these Scholars attend approximately 150 different colleges or universities across the country. Since the Ouimet Fund is a need-based scholarship, awards can range anywhere from a few thousand dollars to $80,000 or more over four years.


title: Francis Ouimet

text: The "Francis Ouimet Award for Lifelong Contributions to Golf" was first presented in 1997 and is presented annually at the Francis Ouimet Scholarship Fund's banquet. Past winners include Arnold Palmer (1997), Peter Jacobsen (2006), Jack Nicklaus (2007), and Annika Sörenstam (2010) and in 2021 the Ouimet Fund honors broadcaster Jim Nantz.


title: Francis Ouimet

text: In 1988 a portrait of Ouimet appeared on a commemorative 25-cent United States Postal Service postage stamp in his honor.


title: Francis Ouimet

text: In 2002, Mark Frost wrote a biographical account of Ouimet's U.S. Open victory titled "The Greatest Game Ever Played: Harry Vardon, Francis Ouimet, and the Birth of Modern Golf". Shortly afterward, Frost was tapped by Walt Disney Studios to write a motion picture adaptation. "The Greatest Game Ever Played" was released in theaters in 2005. The film starred Shia LaBeouf as Ouimet and was directed by Bill Paxton and produced by Larry Brezner.


title: Francis Ouimet

text: Appearing on the cover of "The Greatest Game" is a photograph of Ouimet at the U.S. Open with his ten-year-old caddie, Eddie Lowery. This iconic image is one of the best known in American golf and was used as the logo for the United States Golf Association's Centennial celebrations. A statue of Ouimet and Lowery based on the photograph stands in Brookline, Massachusetts, and at the World Golf Hall of Fame in St. Augustine, Florida.


title: Francis Ouimet

text: A street is named after Ouimet in Greenside, Johannesburg, South Africa, close to the Parkview Golf Course. A number of adjacent streets are also named after golfers, although the street in Johannesburg is named Quimet Street. How the misspelling occurred is not known. The street is still sometimes pronounced (correctly) without the Q, while it is also sometimes pronounced in the French way (Wee-May).


title: Francis Ouimet

text: Ouimet aspired to become a businessman to elevate himself into the middle class. The life of a professional golfer at that time did not offer an avenue to reach that goal. Within ten years of his U.S. Open victory, Ouimet had started to work as a banker and eventually a stock broker, which had always been his intention. He culminated his business career as a customer's financial advisor at Brown Brothers Harriman.


title: Francis Ouimet

text: He married Stella M. Sullivan on September 11, 1918. They had two daughters: Janice Salvi and Barbara McLean.


title: Mike Thalassitis

text: Michael Thalassitis (; 19 January 1993 – 16 March 2019) was a British footballer and television personality. He was known for his appearances on the third series of ITV2 reality series "Love Island" and the fourth series of E4 dating series "Celebs Go Dating".


title: Mike Thalassitis

text: Thalassitis signed a professional two-year contract with Stevenage in May 2011, having joined the club's Centre of Excellence ahead of the 2010–11 season, just after Stevenage's promotion to the Football League. He made his first-team debut in August 2011. Two months later, Thalassitis joined Conference South side Boreham Wood on loan, returning to his parent club in January 2012. He was loaned out once again a month later, signing for Hayes & Yeading United on a one-month loan deal. During the 2012–13 season, Thalassitis was briefly loaned out to Cambridge United in September 2012, before joining Bishop's Stortford on loan two months later. He then spent the remainder of the season on loan at Boreham Wood, his second loan spell at the club. Ahead of the 2013–14 season, Thalassitis joined Ebbsfleet United on a season-long loan. In 2017, Thalassitis appeared on the ITV2 reality series "Love Island". He retired from football in December that year.


title: Mike Thalassitis

text: Thalassitis joined Stevenage's youth system ahead of the 2010–11 season. He scored 17 goals in 26 games for the club's U18 side in his first season with the club. As a result of his fine form during the season, he was handed a two-year professional contract with the club on 18 May 2011. This meant that Thalassitis was the first player to sign a professional deal with the club from the Centre of Excellence that was "hastily formed" following the club's promotion to the Football League. Thalassitis made his competitive debut for Stevenage in the club's 1–0 away defeat to Milton Keynes Dons on 27 August 2011, coming on as a 63rd-minute substitute in the match. During the game, he produced a "strong run forcing goalkeeper David Martin to tip his effort from the edge of the box onto the bar", as well as missing a chance to restore parity in injury-time.


title: Mike Thalassitis

text: Thalassitis joined Conference South side Boreham Wood on a one-month loan deal in October 2011. He made his debut for the club a day after signing, scoring after 17 minutes in a 3–1 home victory against Dartford. During his initial one-month loan spell, Thalassitis made five league appearances for the club, in which Boreham Wood recorded five straight victories — propelling them from twentieth place to eighth in the Conference South standings. His loan spell was subsequently extended for a further month on 9 November 2011. Three days later, on 12 November, Thalassitis scored a hat-trick in Boreham Wood's sixth consecutive league victory, a 4–2 home win against Dover Athletic. After scoring five times in twelve games for Boreham Wood, Thalassitis returned to his parent club on 4 January 2012. He was loaned out for a second time during the season, joining Conference National side Hayes & Yeading United on a one-month loan deal on 17 February 2012. He made his debut for the club a day later, scoring a consolation goal in injury-time in a 4–1 defeat to promotion chasing Wrexham. Thalassitis scored the only goal of the game in his next match three days later, netting with a header from goalkeeper Steve Arnold's long clearance in a 1–0 away victory at Bath City. He scored once more during his time at Hayes & Yeading, scoring in a 3–1 away win at Forest Green Rovers, and played five games during his one-month loan spell.<ref name="Games played by Michael Thalassitis in 2011/2012"></ref> He was recalled by Stevenage on 22 March, and went on to make two further substitute appearances for the club during the latter stages of the season.


title: Mike Thalassitis

text: Thalassitis made his first appearance of the 2012–13 season in Stevenage's first game of the season, coming on as a second-half substitute in a 3–1 home win over AFC Wimbledon in the League Cup. He scored his first goal for Stevenage in the following round of the competition, scoring a consolation strike in injury-time as the club lost 4–1 to Premier League side Southampton on 28 August 2012. A month later, Stevenage announced that Thalassitis had signed a three-year contract extension, and would also be going out on a one-month loan deal to Conference National side Cambridge United. During the brief loan spell, Thalassitis made just two appearances, both of which were as a late substitute.<ref name="Games played by Michael Thalassitis in 2012/2013"></ref> He was loaned out once again in November 2012, the fourth loan spell of his career, joining Conference South side Bishop's Stortford on a one-month loan agreement. The loan was later extended until January 2013, with Thalassitis making eight appearances in all competitions during his two-month spell. Thalassitis was loaned out almost immediately following his return from Stortford, joining Boreham Wood on loan for the remainder of the 2012–13 campaign. He began his second spell at the club by scoring the first goal in a 3–0 victory over Hayes & Yeading on 28 January 2013. Thalassitis went on to score seven times in 19 appearances during his second loan spell with Boreham Wood, returning to Stevenage at the end of the season.


title: Mike Thalassitis

text: Ahead of the 2013–14 season, Thalassitis was loaned out to Conference South side Ebbsfleet United on a season-long loan deal.


title: Mike Thalassitis

text: On 30 October 2015, Thalassitis joined Chelmsford City after departing Bishop's Stortford. Thalassitis scored his first goal for the Clarets in a loss against Gosport Borough on 5 December 2015. Thalassitis left on 2 January 2016 to join Concord Rangers. Less than a month after joining Concord, on 29 January 2016, Thalassitis signed for St Albans City.


title: Mike Thalassitis

text: On 27 May 2016, Thalassitis joined Margate from St Albans City. On 26 October 2016, Thalassitis joined Hemel Hempstead Town from Margate. On 28 February 2017, Thalassitis joined Welling United from Hemel Hempstead Town.


title: Mike Thalassitis

text: In December 2011, Thalassitis was called up to a three-day training camp with the Cyprus U19 side, and was later called up to represent the U19 side in March 2012. He made two appearances for Cyprus as they drew twice with the Georgia U19 side.


title: Mike Thalassitis

text: In May 2012, Thalassitis was called up for Cyprus U19's two games against Estonia, with both games taking place within the space of three days. He played 75 minutes of the first match, a 1–0 defeat; and then played 60 minutes of the next match, which ended 0–0. After impressing during his time with Cyprus, he was named in their 21-man squad to travel to Denmark for the 2012 UEFA European U19 elite qualification group. He started all three games as Cyprus finished bottom of their group.


title: Mike Thalassitis

text: In May 2014, Thalassitis was called up to the Cyprus senior side for the first time, for their away friendly with Japan. However, he was unable to travel due to suffering a ruptured ACL during the final game of the season whilst on loan.


title: Mike Thalassitis

text: On 29 May 2017, Thalassitis was announced as part of the cast for the third series of the reality TV show "Love Island". While the series began on 5 June 2017, Thalassitis did not enter the villa until 15 June 2017. Margate manager Steven Watt said in an interview that he was "disappointed" that Thalassitis did not tell him that he was going to be a part of the show. Thalassitis earned the nickname "Muggy Mike" from contestant Chris Hughes after he chose to pair up with Hughes' love interest in a weekly recoupling. Thalassitis and fellow contestant Jessica Shears, along with their respective partners Olivia Attwood and Dom Lever, emerged among the three couples with the lowest votes for Favourite Couple from the public, and Thalassitis and Shears were dumped from the island as a result.


title: Mike Thalassitis

text: On 16 March 2019, it was confirmed that Thalassitis had been found dead the previous day. His body was found hanging in a park in Edmonton, North London. On 5 June 2019, the North London Coroner's Court concluded that his cause of death was suicide.


title: Michael Curtiz

text: Michael Curtiz ( ; born Manó Kaminer; since 1905 Mihály Kertész; ; December 24, 1886 April 10, 1962) was a Hungarian-American film director, recognized as one of the most prolific directors in history. He directed classic films from the silent era and numerous others during


title: Michael Curtiz

text: Curtiz was already a well-known director in Europe when Warner Bros. invited him to Hollywood in 1926, when he was 39 years of age. He had already directed 64 films in Europe, and soon helped Warner Bros. become the fastest-growing movie studio. He directed 102 films during his Hollywood career, mostly at Warners, where he directed ten actors to Oscar nominations. James Cagney and Joan Crawford won their only Academy Awards under Curtiz's direction. He put Doris Day and John Garfield on screen for the first time, and he made stars of Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, and Bette Davis. He himself was nominated five times and won twice, once for Best Short Subject for "Sons of Liberty" and once as Best Director for "Casablanca".


title: Michael Curtiz

text: Curtiz was among those who introduced to Hollywood a visual style using artistic lighting, extensive and fluid camera movement, high crane shots, and unusual camera angles. He was versatile and could handle any film genre: melodrama, comedy, love story, film noir, musical, war story, Western, horror, or historical epic. He always paid attention to the human-interest aspect of every story, stating that the "human and fundamental problems of real people" were the basis of all good drama.


title: Michael Curtiz

text: The death of 25 horses in "The Charge of the Light Brigade" under Curtiz's direction led to a near-violent confrontation between Curtiz and star Errol Flynn, which led to the U.S. Congress and the ASPCA to enact legislation and policy to prevent cruelty to animals on the sets of movies.


title: Michael Curtiz

text: Curtiz helped popularize the classic swashbuckler with films such as "Captain Blood" (1935) and "The Adventures of Robin Hood" (1938). He directed many other dramas which are considered classics: "Angels with Dirty Faces" (1938), "The Sea Wolf" (1941), "Casablanca" (1942), and "Mildred Pierce" (1945). He directed leading musicals, including "Yankee Doodle Dandy" (1942), "This Is the Army" (1943), and "White Christmas" (1954), and he made comedies with "Life With Father" (1947) and "We're No Angels" (1955).


title: Michael Curtiz

text: Curtiz was born Manó Kaminer to a Jewish family in Budapest in 1886, where his father was a carpenter and his mother an opera singer. In 1905, he Magyarised his name to Mihály Kertész. Curtiz had a lower-middle-class upbringing. He recalled during an interview that his family's home was a cramped apartment, where he had to share a small room with his two brothers and a sister. "Many times we are hungry," he added.


title: Michael Curtiz

text: After graduating from high school, he studied at Markoszy University, followed by the Royal Academy of Theater and Art, in Budapest, before beginning his career.


title: Michael Curtiz

text: Curtiz became attracted to the theater when he was a child in Hungary. He built a little theater in the cellar of his family home when he was 8 years old, where he and five of his friends re-enacted plays. They set up the stage, with scenery and props, and Curtiz directed them.


title: Michael Curtiz

text: After he graduated from college at age 19, he took a job as an actor with a traveling theater company, where he began working as one their traveling players. From that job, he became a pantomimist with a circus for a while, but then returned to join another group of traveling players for a few more years. They played Ibsen and Shakespeare in various languages, depending on what country they were in. They performed throughout Europe, including France, Hungary, Italy, and Germany, and he eventually learned five languages. He had various responsibilities:


title: Michael Curtiz

text: He worked as Mihály Kertész at the National Hungarian Theater in 1912. and was a member of the Hungarian fencing team at the Olympic Games in Stockholm. Kertész directed Hungary's first feature film, "Today and Tomorrow" ("Ma és holnap", 1912), in which he also had a leading role. He followed that with another film, " The Last Bohemian" ("Az utolsó bohém", also 1912).


title: Michael Curtiz

text: Curtiz began living in various cities in Europe to work on silent films in 1913. He first went to study at Nordisk studio in Denmark, which led to work as an actor and assistant director to August Blom on Denmark's first multireel feature film, "Atlantis" (1913).


title: Michael Curtiz

text: After World War I began in 1914, he returned to Hungary, where he served in the army for a year, before he was wounded fighting on the Russian front. Curtiz wrote of that period:


title: Michael Curtiz

text: He was assigned to make fund-raising documentaries for the Red Cross in Hungary. In 1917, he was made director of production at Phoenix Films, the leading studio in Budapest, where he remained until he left Hungary. However, none of the films he directed there survive intact, and most are completely lost.


title: Michael Curtiz

text: By 1918, he had become one of Hungary's most important directors, having by then directed about 45 films. However, following the end of the war, in 1919, the new communist government nationalized the film industry, so he decided to return to Vienna to direct films there.


title: Michael Curtiz

text: Curtiz briefly worked at UFA GmbH, a German film company, where he learned to direct large groups of costumed extras, along with using complicated plots, rapid pacing, and romantic themes. His career truly started due to his work for Count Alexander Kolowrat (known as Sascha), with whom he made at least 21 films for the count's film studio, Sascha Films. Curtiz later wrote that at Sascha, he "learned the basic laws of film art, which, in those days, had progressed further in Vienna than anywhere else."


title: Michael Curtiz

text: Among the films he directed were Biblical epics such as "Sodom und Gomorrha" (1922) and "Die Sklavenkönigin" (1924) (titled "Moon of Israel" in the U.S.). He also made "Red Heels" (1925) and "The Golden Butterfly" (1926), and once directed 14-year-old Greta Garbo in Sweden. During this period, he tended to specialize in directing two kinds of films, either sophisticated light comedies or historical spectaculars. He launched the career of Lucy Doraine, who went on to become an international star, along with that of Lili Damita, who later married Errol Flynn.


title: Michael Curtiz

text: "The Moon of Israel" (1924) was a spectacle of the enslavement of the children of Israel and their miraculous deliverance by way of the Red Sea. Shot in Vienna with a cast of 5,000, it had for its theme the love story of an Israelite maiden and an Egyptian prince. Paramount Pictures in the U.S. bought the rights to the film to compete with Cecil B. DeMille's "The Ten Commandments". However, "The Moon of Israel" caught the attention of Jack and Harry Warner, and Harry went to Europe in 1926 just to meet Curtiz and watch him work as director.


title: Michael Curtiz

text: The Warners were impressed that Curtiz had developed a unique visual style which was strongly influenced by German Expressionism, with high crane shots and unusual camera angles. The film also showed that Curtiz was fond of including romantic melodrama "against events of vast historical importance, for driving his characters to crises and forcing them to make moral decisions," according to Rosenzweig. He offered Curtiz a contract to be a director at his new film studio in Hollywood, Warner Bros., where he would direct a similar epic that had been planned, "Noah's Ark" (1928). By the time Curtiz accepted Warner's offer, he was already a prolific director, having made 64 films in countries including Hungary, Austria, and Denmark.


title: Michael Curtiz

text: Curtiz arrived in the United States in the summer of 1926, and began directing at Warner Bros. under the anglicised name Michael Curtiz. During what became a 28-year period at Warner Bros., he directed 86 films, including his best work.


title: Michael Curtiz

text: Although he was an experienced filmmaker, now aged 38, Warners assigned him to direct a number of average-quality films to break him in, the first being "The Third Degree" (1926). Curtiz's unique camerawork technique was used throughout, visible in dramatic camera angles, in a style which one critic assumed other directors would likely envy.


title: Michael Curtiz

text: Learning English quickly was an immediate hurdle, however, since he had no free time. When Jack Warner gave him the film to direct, Curtiz recalls, "I could not speak one word of English." It was a romantic story about jail life and gangsters in Chicago, a place he had never been about American underworld figures he had never met.


title: Michael Curtiz

text: To gain some direct experience about the subject, Curtiz convinced the Los Angeles sheriff to let him spend a week in jail. "When I came out, I knew what I needed for the picture."


title: Michael Curtiz

text: Curtiz firmly believed that investigating the background of every story should be done first and done thoroughly before starting a film. He said that whenever someone asked him how he, a foreigner, could make American films, he told them, "human beings are the same all over the world. Human emotions are international." He treated his first films in the U.S. as learning experiences:


title: Michael Curtiz

text: Although the language barrier made communicating with the casts and crews a hardship, he continued to invest time in preparation. Before he directed his first Western, for example, he spent three weeks reading about the histories of Texas and the lives of its important men. He found it necessary to continue such intensive studying of American culture and habits in preparation for most other film genres. But he was quite satisfied being in Hollywood:


title: Michael Curtiz

text: "The Third Degree" (1926), available at the Library of Congress, made good use of Curtiz's experience in using moving cameras to create expressionistic scenes, such as a sequence shot from the perspective of a bullet in motion. The film was the first of eight Curtiz films to have Dolores Costello as its star.


title: Michael Curtiz

text: Warner Bros. had Curtiz direct three other mediocre stories to be sure he could take on larger projects, during which time he was able to familiarize himself with their methods and work with the technicians, including cameramen, whom he would use in subsequent productions. As biographer James C. Robertson explains, "In each case, Curtiz strove valiantly, but unsuccessfully to revitalize unconvincing scripts through spectacular camera work and strong central performances, the most noteworthy features of all those films."


title: Michael Curtiz

text: On a visit to Hollywood in 1927, Ilya Tolstoy, Leo Tolstoy's son, who had been a friend of Curtiz in Europe, wanted him to direct several films based on his father's novels. He chose Curtiz because he already knew the locale and its people. During this period, Warner Bros. began experimenting with talking films. They assigned two part-silent and part-talking pictures for Curtiz to direct: "Tenderloin" (1928) and "Noah's Ark" (1928), both of which also starred Costello.


title: Michael Curtiz

text: "Noah's Ark" included two parallel stories, one recounting the biblical flood, and the other a World War I-era romance. It was the first epic film attempted by Warner Bros., and in handing production over to Curtiz, they were hoping to assure its success. The climactic flood sequence was considered "spectacular" at the time, observed historian Richard Schickel, while biographer James C. Robertson said it was "one of the most spectacular incidents in film history." Its cast was made up of over 10,000 extras. However, the reissue of the film in 1957 cut an hour off the original time of 2 hours and 15 minutes. The story was an adaptation written by Bess Meredyth, who married Curtiz a few years later.


title: Michael Curtiz

text: The critical success of these films by Curtiz contributed to Warner Bros' becoming the fastest-growing studio in Hollywood.


title: Michael Curtiz

text: In 1930, Curtiz directed "Mammy" (1930), Al Jolson's fourth film after being in Hollywood's first true talking picture, "The Jazz Singer" (1927). During the 1930s, Curtiz directed at least four films each year.


title: Michael Curtiz

text: Although unusual projects for Warner Bros., Curtiz directed two horror films for the studio, "Doctor X" (1932) and "Mystery of the Wax Museum" (1933), both in early Technicolor, with numerous atmospheric scenes filmed on the studio's back lot.


title: Michael Curtiz

text: Another breakthrough film was "20,000 Years in Sing Sing" (1932), starring then little-known actors Spencer Tracy and Bette Davis in one of their earliest films. MGM head Louis B. Mayer saw the film and was impressed enough by Tracy's acting that he hired him on to MGM's roster of stars.


title: Michael Curtiz

text: Curtiz's American career did not really take off until 1935. In the early 1930s, Warner Bros. was struggling to compete with the larger MGM, which was releasing costume dramas such as "Queen Christina" (1933) with Greta Garbo, "Treasure Island" (1934) with Wallace Beery, and "The Count of Monte Cristo" (1934), they decided to take a chance and produce their own costume drama.


title: Michael Curtiz

text: Until then, it was a genre in which Warners' had assumed they could never succeed, owing to its higher production budgets, during the years of the Great Depression. However, in March 1935, Warners announced it would produce "Captain Blood" (1935), a swashbuckler action drama based on the novel by Rafael Sabatini, and directed by Curtiz. It would star a then unknown extra, Errol Flynn, alongside the little-known Olivia de Havilland.


title: Michael Curtiz

text: The film was a major success with positive critical reviews. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, and though not nominated, Curtiz received the second-highest number of votes for Best Director, solely from write-in votes. It also made stars of both Flynn and de Havilland, and it elevated Curtiz to being the studio's leading director.


title: Michael Curtiz

text: Curtiz continued the successful genre of adventure films starring Flynn (often with de Havilland) that included "The Charge of the Light Brigade" (1936), a depiction of the British Light Brigade during the Crimean War. The film, another Oscar winner, was a greater success at the box-office than "Captain Blood". It was followed by "The Adventures of Robin Hood" (1938, co-directed with William Keighley whom Curtiz replaced), the most profitable that year, winning three Academy Awards and being nominated for Best Picture. It is in Rotten Tomatoes' list of Top 100 Movies.


title: Michael Curtiz

text: That being their third Curtiz film together, Flynn and de Havilland continued to star in other hugely successful films under his direction, including "The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex" (1939), co-starring Bette Davis. Davis starred in a Curtiz film in most years during the 1930s. Because of Curtiz's high film productivity, Warner Bros. created a special unit for his pictures, which then allowed him to manage two film crews. One worked with him during actual filming, while the other prepared everything for the next picture.


title: Michael Curtiz

text: John Garfield was among Curtiz's discoveries, with his debut in "Four Daughters" (1938), followed by a co-starring role in its sequel, "Four Wives" (1939). Curtiz discovered Garfield, a stage actor, by accident, when he came across a discarded screen test he gave, and thought he was very good. Garfield had assumed he failed the screen test and was already heading back to New York in disgust. Curtiz then went to Kansas City to intercept the train, where he pulled Garfield off and brought him back to Hollywood. Garfield also later co-starred in Curtiz's "The Sea Wolf" (1941).


title: Michael Curtiz

text: In "Four Daughters", Garfield co-starred with Claude Rains, who would star in 10 Curtiz movies over his career, with six of those during the 1930s. Garfield and Rains "were brilliant together in this unjustly neglected Curtiz classic," says biographer Patrick J. McGrath about "Four Daughters". Garfield considered it his "obscure masterpiece." Reviews praised his role: "Perhaps the greatest single occurrence having to do with "Four Daughters" on reading the critics appears to be the debut of John Garfield, a brilliant young actor recruited from the Broadway stage." Similar approval came from "The New York Times", which called Garfield's acting "bitterly brilliant ... one of the best pictures of anybody's career." Garfield and Rains co-starred the following year in Curtiz's "Daughters Courageous" (1939).


title: Michael Curtiz

text: After James Cagney starred in Curtiz's "Angels with Dirty Faces" (1938), he was nominated for an Oscar for the first time. The New York Film Critics Circle voted him as best actor for his portrayal in the film, where he played the part of a hoodlum who redeems himself. Curtiz was also again nominated, solidifying further his status as the studio's most important director. Curtiz was nominated for the 1938 Oscar for Best Director for both "Angels with Dirty Faces" and "Four Daughters" losing to Frank Capra for "You Can't Take It with You". Curtiz, however, had split his votes between two films and had actually the greater number of aggregate Academy votes.


title: Michael Curtiz

text: The following year, Curtiz directed "Sons of Liberty" (1939), starring Claude Rains, in an Oscar-winning biopic which dramatizes the Jewish contribution to America's independence. Curtiz also elicited some of the finest work from Edward G. Robinson in "Kid Galahad" (1937), where Robinson played a tough and sardonic, but ultimately soft-hearted, boxing manager. The picture co-starred Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart.


title: Michael Curtiz

text: Three Westerns directed by Curtiz also starring Flynn were "Dodge City" (1939), "Santa Fe Trail" (1940) co-starring future US president Ronald Reagan, and "Virginia City" (1940).


title: Michael Curtiz

text: The 1940s continued to have releases of other critically acclaimed films directed by Curtiz, including "The Sea Hawk" (1940), "Dive Bomber" (1941), "The Sea Wolf" (1941), "Casablanca" (1942), "Yankee Doodle Dandy" (1942), "This Is the Army" (1943), "Mildred Pierce" (1945), and "Life with Father" (1947).


title: Michael Curtiz

text: One of the biggest hits of 1940 was "The Sea Hawk" starring Errol Flynn in the role of an adventurer in the mold of Sir Francis Drake. Flora Robson played Queen Elizabeth I, and Claude Rains acted as the Spanish ambassador, whose job it was to mislead the Queen who rightly suspected the Spanish Armada was about to attempt to invade England. Some critics felt the story was equivalent to actual events then taking place in Europe, describing it as a "thinly veiled diatribe against American isolationism on World War II's brink." Film columnist Boyd Martin noticed the similarities:


title: Michael Curtiz

text: "Dive Bomber" (1941) was released a few months before the attack on Pearl Harbor; the film was well received by the public, being rated as the sixth-most popular film that year. No other pre-Pearl Harbor picture matched the quality of its flying scenes. Film columnist Louella Parsons wrote, ""Dive Bomber" again makes us glad we are Americans protected by a Navy as competent as ours."


title: Michael Curtiz

text: Filming at the active naval base in San Diego required great care, especially for aerial sequences. Curtiz shot every foot of "Dive Bomber" with Navy assistance and under strict Navy scrutiny. To create realistic shots, he mounted cameras on the Navy's planes to achieve "amazing point-of-view shots," taking viewers inside the cockpit during flight. He also mounted cameras underneath the wings of planes to dramatize take-offs from the "Enterprise", an aircraft carrier launched a few years earlier. Bosley Crowther of "The New York Times" gave it a good review:


title: Michael Curtiz

text: Edward G. Robinson starred in "The Sea Wolf" (1941), his second film directed by Curtiz. He portrayed the rampaging, dictatorial captain of a ship in an adaptation of one of Jack London's best known novels. Robinson said the character he portrayed "was a Nazi in everything but name," which, Robinson observed, was relevant to the state of the world at that time. John Garfield and Ida Lupino were cast as the young lovers who attempt to escape his tyranny. Some reviews described the film as one of Curtiz's "hidden gems ... one of Curtiz's most complex works." Robinson was impressed by Garfield's intense personality, which he felt may have contributed to his death at age 39:


title: Michael Curtiz

text: Curtiz directed another Air Force film, "Captains of the Clouds" (1942), about the Royal Canadian Air Force. It starred James Cagney and Brenda Marshall. According to Hal B. Wallis, its producer, it became Warner Bros.' most extensive and difficult production, and everything had to be relocated to Canada. Like "Dive Bomber", the vivid aerial scenes filmed in Technicolor were another feature that garnered critical attention, and the film was nominated for Best Art Direction and Best Color Cinematography.


title: Michael Curtiz

text: Curtiz directed "Casablanca" (1942), a World War II-era romantic drama described by Roger Ebert in 1996 as one of the most popular films ever made. Among its stars were Humphrey Bogart, playing an expatriate living in Morocco, and Ingrid Bergman as a woman who was trying to escape the Nazis. The supporting cast features Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sidney Greenstreet, and Peter Lorre. The picture received eight Academy Award nominations and winning three, including one for Curtiz as Best Director. "Time" magazine in 2012 described "Casablanca" as "the best movie ever made".