title: Iowa City, Iowa

text: Iowa City's three public high schools, City, West, and Liberty, are members of the Mississippi Valley Conference. Regina competes in the River Valley Conference.


title: Iowa City, Iowa

text: The Iowa City Gold Sox were a semi-professional baseball team that called Iowa City home from 1912 through 1913.


title: Iowa City, Iowa

text: Iowa City is home to many public spaces. Most of the facilities are operated by the City of Iowa City Parks & Recreation Department, while some are owned by the University of Iowa, and others held by private entities such as the Bur Oak Land Trust.


title: Iowa City, Iowa

text: Some of the more significant parks include Waterworks Prairie Park which is a naturalized sand pit and the largest park in the city at 231 acres. City Park contains the Bobby Oldis Fields, an outdoor pool complex, many picnic areas and playgrounds, as well as the Riverside Festival Stage. Hickory Hill Park is a large wooded park on the north side of town. Hubbard Park is a green space directly south of the Iowa Memorial Union building and used for many campus events.


title: Iowa City, Iowa

text: There are three golf courses within city limits. Finkbine Golf Course is an 18-hole course owned by the University of Iowa. Pleasant Valley Golf Course is a public 18 hole course located south along the Iowa River. Elks Lodge Country Club is a private 9 hole course located near the Peninsula Neighborhood.


title: Iowa City, Iowa

text: The Iowa City Kickers Soccer Complex can hold more than 17 soccer fields depending on layout and is home of the Iowa City Kickers soccer club. Napoleon park is located along the Iowa River and has 8 baseball diamonds. Bobby Oldis Fields are located within City Park and has 8 baseball diamonds. Hawkeye Recreation Fields is in the University of Iowa and contains to 12 soccer fields, 4 beach volleyball pitches, and 4 basketball courts. Bill and Jim Ashton Cross Country Course is one of the few dedicated cross country courses in the country. The University of Iowa also operates the Fieldhouse, Campus Recreation & Wellness Center, and Hawkeye Tennis & Recreation Complex which contain fitness space as well as indoor sports pitches and pools.


title: Iowa City, Iowa

text: Iowa City has many miles of cycling trails. There are dedicated trails along the Iowa River, Clear Creek, Willow Creek, and Ralston Creek. The Iowa City trail system connects to the northwest to Coralville, Tiffin, and North Liberty's trail systems.


title: Iowa City, Iowa

text: Iowa City is governed by an elected city council of seven members: four council members at large and three district members. The two council members at large who receive the most votes and the three district council members serve four-year terms. The other two council members at large serve two-year terms. A mayor and mayor pro tem are elected by the council from within its members to serve terms of two years. , Iowa City Council members are:


title: Iowa City, Iowa

text: Under this form of council-manager government the powers of the city are vested in the city council. The council is responsible for appointing the city manager ( Geoff Fruin) who implements the policy decisions of the city council, enforces city ordinances and appoints city officials. The council selects the mayor and appoints the city attorney and city clerk.


title: Iowa City, Iowa

text: Iowa City is unusual in that it is one of only four cities in Iowa in which the mayor is chosen by the city council. The mayor of Iowa City serves a two-year term from amongst the members of the council. The mayor is primarily a figurehead or a "first among equals", with some power to set agendas and lead meetings, as well as serving as the public face of city government.


title: Iowa City, Iowa

text: Three radio stations are based out of the University of Iowa. Two have become part of the statewide Iowa Public Radio network: WSUI 910 AM, a National Public Radio affiliate and originator of some Iowa Public Radio news and talk programming; and KSUI 91.7 FM, which broadcasts classical music and concerts by Iowa classical orchestras, opera companies, and other artists, as well as interviews. KCCK-FM is Iowa's only Jazz station and affiliated with Public Radio International. KRUI 89.7 FM is the university's student-run radio station.


title: Iowa City, Iowa

text: iHeartMedia owns two of the Iowa City area's commercial radio stations: KXIC 800 AM, a news/talk station, and KKRQ 100.7 FM, a classic rock station. KCJJ 1630 AM is an independently owned, 10,000-watt station that broadcasts a mixture of talk radio and Hot AC music programming along with area high school football and basketball games and NASCAR racing. Another Iowa City-licensed station, KRNA 94.1 FM, now broadcasts from Cedar Rapids and is operated by Cumulus Media. Radio signals from other cities, including Cedar Rapids and the Quad Cities, also reach the Iowa City area.


title: Iowa City, Iowa

text: Iowa City and Johnson County are part of the Cedar Rapids-Waterloo-Iowa City-Dubuque media market, which was ranked 87th by Nielsen Media Research for the 2007–2008 TV season. Two television stations, KIIN channel 12 (PBS) and KWKB channel 20 (Court TV Mystery), are licensed to Iowa City. KCRG-TV 9, the ABC affiliate in Cedar Rapids, maintains a news bureau at Old Capitol Mall in downtown Iowa City.


title: Iowa City, Iowa

text: Mediacom, a local cable television franchisee, provides channel space for seven Public, educational, and government access (PEG) cable TV channels in Iowa City: City Channel 4, Infovision (channel 5), Kirkwood Television Services (channel 11), Public Access Television (channel 18), the Iowa City Public Library Channel (channel 20), and the Iowa City Community School District's channel 21.


title: Iowa City, Iowa

text: Two daily newspapers are published in Iowa City. The "Iowa City Press-Citizen", owned by Gannett, publishes six days a week with Gannett's "Des Moines Sunday Register" standing in as a Sunday edition. "The Daily Iowan", an independent newspaper based at the University of Iowa, publishes Monday through Friday while classes are in session. In addition, "The Gazette" of Cedar Rapids maintains a news bureau in Iowa City.


title: Iowa City, Iowa

text: "Little Village" is an independent alt-weekly magazine covering Iowa City and Cedar Rapids metropolitan areas.


title: Iowa City, Iowa

text: Iowa City has a general aviation airport, the Iowa City Municipal Airport, on the south side of the city. The Eastern Iowa Airport, to the northwest, serves Iowa City and Cedar Rapids with scheduled passenger flights.


title: Iowa City, Iowa

text: Interstate 80 runs east–west along the north edge of Iowa City. U.S. Highway 218 and Iowa Highway 27 (the Avenue of the Saints) are co-signed along a freeway bypassing Iowa City to the west. U.S. Highway 6 and Iowa Highway 1 also run through Iowa City.


title: Iowa City, Iowa

text: Iowa City is served by the freight-only Iowa Interstate Railroad and the Cedar Rapids and Iowa City Railway (CRANDIC). The historic Iowa City Depot, shown in the picture at left, is no longer in use for railway services; it has been modified into a commercial office building.


title: Iowa City, Iowa

text: In 2009, the Iowa City metropolitan statistical area (MSA) ranked as the seventh highest (tied with Hinesville-Fort Stewart, Georgia MSA) in the United States for percentage of commuters who walked to work (8.2 percent). In 2013, the Iowa City MSA ranked as the sixth lowest in the United States for percentage of workers who commuted by private automobile (73.4 percent). During the same year, 11.1 percent of Iowa City area commuters walked to work.


title: Iowa City, Iowa

text: Iowa City Transit, Coralville Transit, and the University of Iowa's Cambus system provide public transportation.


title: Iowa City, Iowa

text: Intercity bus transit is served at either the Court Street Transportation Center in Iowa City or the Coralville Transit Intermodal Facility in Coralville.


title: Iowa City, Iowa

text: Some of the main roads also have designated bike lanes or sharrows, such as Jefferson street, Market street, and College street. As of 2017, both Iowa City and the University of Iowa have been awarded 'silver' status as a bicycle friendly community and university, respectively, by the League of American Bicyclists.


Princess Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha , later Grand Duchess Victoria Feodorovna of Russia (25 November 1876 – 2 March 1936), was the third child and second daughter of Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and of Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia. She was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and also of Emperor Alexander II of Russia.


title: Princess Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha

text: Born a British princess, Victoria spent her early life in England and lived for three years in Malta, where her father served in the Royal Navy. In 1889 the family moved to Coburg, where Victoria's father became the reigning duke in 1893. In her teens Victoria fell in love with her first cousin Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich of Russia (the son of her mother's brother, Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich of Russia) but his faith, Orthodox Christianity, discouraged marriage between first cousins. Bowing to family pressure, Victoria married her paternal first cousin, Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine in 1894, following the wishes of their grandmother, Queen Victoria. The marriage failed – Victoria Melita scandalized the royal families of Europe when she divorced her husband in 1901. The couple's only child, Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine, died of typhoid fever in 1903.


text: Victoria married Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich in 1905. They wed without the formal approval of Britain's King Edward VII (as the Royal Marriages Act 1772 would have required), and in defiance of Russia's Emperor Nicholas II. In retaliation, the Tsar stripped Kirill of his offices and honours, also initially banishing the couple from Russia. They had two daughters and settled in Paris before being allowed to visit Russia in 1909. In 1910 they moved to Russia, where Nicholas recognized Victoria Melita as Grand Duchess Victoria Feodorovna. After the fall of the Russian monarchy in 1917 they escaped to Finland (then still part of the Russian Republic) where she gave birth to her only son in August 1917. In exile they lived for some years among her relatives in Germany, and from the late 1920s on an estate they bought in Saint-Briac in Brittany. In 1926 Kirill proclaimed himself Russian emperor in exile, and Victoria supported her husband's claims. Victoria died after suffering a stroke while visiting her daughter Maria in Amorbach (Lower Franconia).


text: Victoria was born on 25 November 1876 in San Anton Palace in Attard, Malta, hence her second name, Melita. Her father, who was stationed on the island as an officer in the Royal Navy, was Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, the second son of Queen Victoria. Her mother was Grand Duchess Marie Alexandrovna, the only surviving daughter of Alexander II of Russia and Marie of Hesse.


text: As a grandchild of the British monarch, she was styled "Her Royal Highness" Princess Victoria of Edinburgh. Within her family, she was always known as "Ducky". At the time of her birth, she was 10th in the line of succession to the British throne. The princess was christened on 1 January 1877 at San Anton Palace by a Royal Navy chaplain. Her godparents included her paternal grandmother Queen Victoria, who was represented by a proxy.


text: After the Duke's service in Malta was over, they returned to England, where the family lived for the next few years. They divided their time between Eastwell Park, their country home in Kent, and Clarence House, their residence in London facing Buckingham Palace. Eastwell, a large estate of 2,500 acres near Ashford, with its forest and park was the children's favorite residence. In January 1886, shortly after Princess Victoria turned nine, the family left England when her father was appointed commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean naval squadron, based on Malta. For the next three years, the family lived at the San Anton Palace in Malta, Victoria's birthplace.


text: The marriage of her parents was unhappy. The Duke was taciturn, unfaithful, prone to drinking and emotionally detached from his family. Victoria's mother was independent-minded and cultured. Although she was unsentimental and strict, the Duchess was a devoted mother and the most important person in her children's lives. As a child, Victoria had a difficult temperament. She was shy, serious and sensitive. In the judgment of her sister Marie: "This passionate child was often misunderstood." Princess Victoria Melita was talented at drawing and painting and learned to play the piano. She was particularly close to Marie. The two sisters would remain very close throughout their lives. They contrasted in appearance and personality. Victoria was dark and moody while Marie was blonde and easy-going. Although she was one year younger, Victoria was taller and seemed to be the older of the two.


text: As a son of Queen Victoria's deceased husband, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Victoria Melita's father was in the line of succession to Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the sovereign German duchy ruled by Albert's elder brother, Ernest II, until his death in 1893. Prince Alfred became heir presumptive to the duchy when his older brother, the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII), relinquished his Saxon succession rights in favour of his younger brothers. Alfred and his family therefore moved to Coburg in 1889. Their mother immediately began attempting to "Germanise" her daughters by installing a new governess, buying them plain clothing, and having them confirmed in the German Lutheran church, even though they had previously been raised as Anglicans. The children rebelled and some of the new restrictions were eased.


text: The teenage Victoria was a "tall, dark girl, with violet eyes ... with the assuredness of an Empress and the high spirits of a tomboy," according to one observer. Victoria had "too little chin to be conventionally beautiful," in the opinion of one of her biographers, but "she had a good figure, deep blue eyes, and dark complexion." In 1891, Victoria travelled with her mother to the funeral of her maternal aunt Grand Duchess Alexandra Georgievna of Russia. There Victoria met her first cousin Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich. Although the two were deeply attracted to each other, Victoria's mother was reluctant to allow her to marry him because the Russian Orthodox faith forbids the marriage of first cousins. She was also suspicious of the morality of the Romanov men. When her teenage daughters were impressed by their handsome cousins, their mother warned them that the Russian grand dukes did not make good husbands.


text: Soon after her sister Marie was married to Crown Prince Ferdinand of Romania, a search was made for a suitable husband for Victoria. Her visit to her grandmother Queen Victoria at Balmoral Castle in the autumn of 1891 coincided with a visit by her cousin Prince Ernest Louis of Hesse, heir apparent to the grand ducal throne of Hesse and by Rhine. Both were artistic and fun loving, got along well and even shared a birthday. The Queen, observing this, was very keen for her two grandchildren to marry.


text: Eventually, Victoria and Ernst bowed to their families' pressure and married on 19 April 1894 at Schloss Ehrenburg in Coburg. The wedding was a large affair, with most of the royal families of Europe attending, including Queen Victoria, the Empress Frederick, Kaiser Wilhelm II and the Prince of Wales. Victoria became Grand Duchess of Hesse and by Rhine, Ernest having ascended the throne in 1892. Her wedding is also significant since at the same time the official engagement of the future Tsar Nicholas II of Russia to Ernst's younger sister, Alix, was proclaimed. Together Victoria and Ernst had two children, a daughter, Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine, whom they nicknamed Ella, born on 11 March 1895, and a stillborn son, born on 25 May 1900.


text: Victoria and Ernst proved incompatible. Victoria despaired of her husband's lack of affection towards her, while Ernst devoted much of his attention to their daughter, whom he adored. Elisabeth, who physically resembled her mother, preferred the company of her father to Victoria. Ernst and Victoria both enjoyed entertaining and frequently held house parties for young friends. Their unwritten rule was that anyone over thirty "was old and out." Formality was dispensed with and royal house guests were referred to by their nicknames and encouraged to do as they wished. Victoria and Ernst cultivated friends who were progressive artists and intellectuals as well as those who enjoyed fun and frolic. Victoria's cousin Prince Nicholas of Greece and Denmark remembered one stay there as "the jolliest, merriest house party to which I have ever been in my life."


text: Victoria was, however, less enthusiastic about fulfilling her public role. She avoided answering letters, put off visits to elderly relations whose company she did not enjoy, and talked to people who amused her at official functions while ignoring people of higher standing whom she found boring. Victoria's inattention to her duties provoked quarrels with Ernst. The young couple had loud, physical fights. The volatile Victoria shouted, threw tea trays, smashed china against the wall, and tossed anything that was handy at Ernst during their arguments. Victoria sought relief in her love for horses and long gallops over the countryside on a hard-to-control stallion named Bogdan. While she was in Russia for the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II, Victoria's affection for Kirill was also rekindled. She enjoyed flirting with him at the balls and celebrations that marked the coronation.


text: Her marriage to Ernst suffered a further blow in 1897, when Victoria returned home from a visit to her sister Queen Marie of Romania and reportedly caught Ernst in bed with a male servant. She did not make her accusation public, but told a niece that "no boy was safe, from the stable hands to the kitchen help. He slept quite openly with them all." Queen Victoria was saddened when she heard of trouble in the marriage from Sir George Buchanan, her chargé d'affaires, but refused to consent to her grandchildren's divorce because of their daughter, Elisabeth. Efforts to rekindle the marriage failed and, when Queen Victoria died in January 1901, significant opposition to the end of the marriage was removed.


text: Ernst, who had at first resisted the divorce, came to believe it was the only possible step. "Now that I am calmer I see the absolute impossibility of going on leading a life which was killing her and driving me nearly mad," Ernst wrote to his elder sister Princess Louis of Battenberg. "For to keep up your spirits and a laughing face while ruin is staring you in the eyes and misery is tearing your heart to pieces is a struggle which is fruitless. I only tried for her sake. If I had not loved her so, I would have given it up long ago." Princess Louis later wrote that she was less surprised by the divorce than Ernst was. "Though both had done their best to make a success of their marriage, it had been a failure ... [T]heir characters and temperaments were quite unsuited to each other and I had noticed how they were gradually drifting apart." The divorce of the reigning Grand Duke and Grand Duchess of Hesse caused scandal in the royal circles of Europe. Tsar Nicholas wrote to his mother that even death would have been better than "the general disgrace of a divorce."


text: Elisabeth died at age eight and a half of typhoid fever during a November 1903 visit to Tsar Nicholas II and his family at their Polish hunting lodge. The doctor advised the Tsar's family to notify the child's mother of her illness, but it is rumored that the Tsarina delayed in sending a telegram. Victoria received the final telegram notifying her of the child's death just as she was preparing to travel to Poland to be at her bedside. At Elisabeth's funeral, Victoria removed her Hessian Order, a medallion, and placed it on her daughter's coffin as a final gesture "that she had made a final break with her old home."


text: After Victoria's divorce from Ernst, Grand Duke Kirill, whom Victoria had seen on all her subsequent visits to Russia, was discouraged by his parents from trying to keep a close relationship with her. Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna told Kirill to keep Victoria as his mistress and marry someone else.


text: A few months later, war broke out between Russia and Japan. As a senior member of the navy, Kirill was sent on active service to the front in the Russo-Japanese War. His ship was blown up by a Japanese mine while entering Port Arthur and he was one of the few survivors. Sent home to recover, the Tsar finally allowed him permission to leave Russia and he left for Coburg to be with Victoria. The narrow escape from death had hardened Kirill's determination to marry Victoria. "To those over whom the shadow of death has passed, life has a new meaning," Kirill wrote in his memoirs. "It is like daylight. And I was now within visible reach of fulfillment of the dream of my life. Nothing would cheat me of it now. I had gone through much. Now, at last, the future lay radiant before me."


text: The couple married on 8 October 1905 in Tegernsee. It was a simple ceremony, with Victoria's mother, her sister Beatrice, and a friend, Count Adlerburg, in attendance, along with servants. The couple's uncle Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich of Russia was invited, without being told the reason, but did not arrive until after the ceremony. Tsar Nicholas II responded to the marriage by stripping Kirill of his imperial allowance and expelling him from the Russian navy. The Tsarina was outraged at her former sister-in-law and said she would never receive Victoria, "a woman who had behaved so disgracefully", or Kirill. The couple retired to Paris, where they purchased a house off the Champs-Élysées and lived off the income provided by their parents.


text: Victoria, who had matured as she entered her 30s, decided to convert to the Russian Orthodox Church in 1907, a decision that thrilled both her mother and her husband. Three days later the first of their three children, Maria Kirillovna, was born. She was named after both her grandmothers and nicknamed "Masha". Their second daughter, Kira Kirillovna, was born in Paris in 1909. Victoria and Kirill, who had hoped for a son, were disappointed to have a girl, but named their daughter after her father.


text: Nicholas II reinstated Kirill after deaths in the Russian imperial family promoted Kirill to third in the line of succession to the Russian throne. Kirill and Victoria were allowed in Russia, Victoria was granted the title of Grand Duchess Victoria Feodorovna, and in May 1910 the couple arrived in St Petersburg. The new grand duchess enjoyed entertaining at evening dinners and lavish balls attended by the cream of Saint Petersburg society. Victoria had an artistic talent that she applied to home decoration in her several elaborate residences, which she arranged attractively. She decorated, gardened, and rode and also enjoyed painting, particularly watercolors.


text: Victoria fit in within the Russian aristocracy and the circle of her mother-in-law Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna. As French was frequently spoken in high circles, Victoria never completely mastered the Russian language. Although she was a first cousin of both Nicholas II, on her mother's side, and to Empress Alexandra, on her father's side, the relationship with them was neither close nor warm. As Kirill became a keen auto racer, the couple often took trips by car; a favorite pastime was traveling through the Baltic provinces. Victoria dreaded the long Russian winter with its short days, and she traveled abroad, frequently visiting her sister Marie in Romania and her mother in the south of France or in Coburg. Victoria and her husband had a close relationship with their daughters, Maria and Kira. The family was spending the summer of 1914 on their yacht in the Gulf of Finland and were in Riga when the war broke out.


text: During World War I, Victoria worked as a Red Cross nurse and organized a motorized ambulance unit that was known for its efficiency. Victoria frequently visited the front near Warsaw and she occasionally carried out her duties under enemy fire. Kirill, for his part, was also in Poland, assigned to the naval department of Admiral Russin, member of the staff of Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich, commander in chief of the Russian army. Kirill and Victoria had always shared their relatives' distaste for the Tsar and Tsarina's friendship with the "starets" Grigori Rasputin. The Tsarina believed Rasputin healed her son of his hemophiliac attacks with his prayers. Victoria told her sister, Queen Marie of Romania, that the Tsar's court was "looked upon as a sick man refusing every doctor and every help."


text: When Rasputin was murdered in December 1916, Victoria and Kirill signed a letter along with other relatives asking the Tsar to show leniency to Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia, one of those implicated in the murder. The Tsar denied their request. Twice during the war Victoria visited Romania, where her sister Marie was now queen, volunteering aid for war victims. Victoria returned to Saint Petersburg in February 1917. Kirill had been appointed commander of the Naval Guards, quartered in Saint Petersburg, so he could be with his family for some time. Although publicly loyal to the Tsar, Victoria and Kirill began to meet in private with other relatives to discuss the best way to save the monarchy.


text: At the end of the "February Revolution" of 1917, Tsar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate and political turmoil followed. Victoria wrote to Queen Marie of Romania in February 1917 that their home was surrounded by a mob, "yet heart and soul we are with this movement of freedom which at the time probably signs our own death warrant ... We personally are losing all, our lives changed at one blow and yet we are almost leading the movement." By March 1917, the revolution had spread all over Petrograd (Saint Petersburg).


text: Kirill led his naval unit to the Provisional Government on 14 March 1917, which was obliged to share headquarters with the new Petrograd Soviet, and swore loyalty to its leadership, hoping to restore order and preserve the monarchy. It was an action which later provoked criticism from some members of the family, who viewed it as treason. Victoria supported her husband and felt he was doing the right thing. She also sympathized with the people who wanted to reform the government. Kirill was forced to resign his command of the Naval Guards, but nevertheless his men remained faithful and they continued to guard Kirill and Victoria's palace on Glinka Street. Close to despair, Victoria wrote to her sister Marie of Romania that they had "neither pride nor hope, nor money, nor future, and the dear past blotted out by the frightful present; nothing is left, nothing."


text: Anxious for their safety, Kirill and Victoria decided that the best thing to do was to leave Russia. They chose Finland as the best possible place to go. Although a territory of the Russian Empire, Finland possessed its own government and constitution, so in a way it would be like being in Russia and not being at the same time. They had already been once invited to Haikko, a beautiful estate, near Porvoo, a small town on the south coast of Finland, not far away from Helsinki. The Provisional Government permitted them to leave, though they were not allowed to take anything of value with them. They sewed jewels into the family's clothing, hoping they would not be discovered by the authorities.


text: After two weeks in Haikko, the family moved to a rented house in Porvoo where, in August 1917, Victoria gave birth to Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich of Russia, her only son and the heir to the dynasty. The family remained in Finland, a former grand duchy under Russian rule, which had declared its independence in December 1917. They hoped that the White Russians would prevail. They gradually ran out of supplies and had to beg for help from family. In July 1918, Victoria wrote to her first cousin, Crown Princess Margaret of Sweden, begging her to send baby food so she could feed Vladimir. She was alienated from England because she felt her English relatives had not done enough to help the Romanovs.


text: She pleaded with her cousin, George V, to help the White Russians retake the country. In a letter to the King, Lord Acton, the British minister in Helsinki, noted the toll the revolution had taken on Victoria. She "looked aged and battered and has lost much of her beauty, which is not astonishing considering all that she has gone through."


text: After more than two years living under strained conditions, in the autumn of 1919 Victoria and Kirill left Finland and went to Germany. In Munich they were reunited with Victoria's mother and the family group moved to Zurich in September 1919. With the death of Victoria's mother, she inherited her villa, Chateau Fabron in Nice and her residence in Coburg, the "Edinburg Palais". In the following years the exiled family divided their time between these two places.


text: While in Germany, Victoria showed an interest in the Nazi Party, which appealed to her because of its anti-Bolshevik stance and her hope that the movement might help restore the Russian monarchy. She attended a Nazi rally in Coburg in 1922. She was likely unaware of the most sinister aspects of the Nazi Party.


text: Kirill suffered a nervous breakdown in 1923 and Victoria nursed him back to health. She encouraged his dreams of restoring the monarchy in Russia and becoming tsar. At Saint-Briac Kirill, aware of the murders of Tsar Nicholas II and his only son, officially declared himself the Guardian of the Throne in 1924. Victoria went on a trip to the United States in 1924, hoping to raise American support for restoration of the monarchy. Her efforts evoked little response, due to the isolationism prevalent in the United States during the 1920s. She continued in her efforts to help Kirill restore the monarchy and also sold her artwork to raise money for the household.


text: By the mid-1920s, Victoria worried over the prospects of her children. Maria, her eldest daughter, married the head of one of Germany's mediatized families, Karl, Hereditary Prince of Leiningen on 25 November 1925, Victoria's 49th birthday. Victoria was at her daughter's bedside when she gave birth to her first child, Emich Kirill, in 1926 (later father of claimant to the Russian throne, Prince Karl Emich of Leiningen).


text: In the mid-1920s, the German government established relations with Moscow and the presence of Kirill and his wife, pretenders to the Russian throne, became an embarrassment. Although the Bavarian government rejected pressures to expel the Russian claimant, Kirill and Victoria decided to establish their permanent residence in France. In the summer of 1926 they moved to Saint-Briac on the Breton coast, where they had spent their summer vacations. The remoteness of Brittany provided both privacy and security. They bought a large house on the outskirts of the town and gave it a Breton name, "Ker Argonid", Villa Victoria. The resort town of Saint-Briac was a favorite spot for retired British citizens who wanted to live well on a limited income. Victoria made friends among the Britons as well as the French and other foreign residents of the town. Though at first her manner could seem haughty, residents soon discovered that Victoria was more approachable than her husband. Their friends treated them with deference, curtsying or calling them by their imperial titles. They lived a secluded country life, finding it more agreeable than at Coburg.


text: Victoria was exceedingly protective of her son Vladimir, upon whom her hopes for the future rested. She would not let him attend school because she was worried about his safety and because she wanted him to be brought up as Romanov grand dukes were prior to the revolution. Instead, she hired a tutor for him. She also refused to let him be educated for a future career. In return for her devotion, Vladimir loved and respected his mother. "We adored our parents and their love for us was infinite," Vladimir wrote after their deaths. "All the hardships and bitterness we had to endure in the years were fully covered by our mutual love. We were proud of (them)."


text: In Saint-Briac, during the summer, Kirill played golf and he and Victoria joined in picnics and excursions. They were part of the social life of the community, going out to play bridge and organizing theatricals. During the winter Victoria and her husband enjoyed visiting nearby Dinard and invited friends home for parties and games. However, it was rumored in town that Kirill went to Paris "for the occasional fling". Victoria, who had devoted her life to Kirill, was devastated when she discovered in 1933 that her husband had been unfaithful to her, according to correspondence of her sister Marie of Romania. She kept up a façade for the sake of her children, including her teenage son Vladimir, but was unable to forgive Kirill's betrayal. Victoria suffered a stroke soon after attending the christening of her fifth grandchild, Mechtilde of Leiningen, in February 1936. Family and friends arrived, but nothing could be done. When her closest sister reached her bedside Victoria was asked if she was glad Marie had come, to which Victoria haltingly replied, "It makes all the difference." However, she "shuddered away from Kirill's touch," wrote Marie. She died on 1 March 1936. Queen Marie eulogized her sister in a letter after her death: "The whole thing was tragic beyond imagination, a tragic end to a tragic life. She carried tragedy within her – she had tragic eyes – always – even as a little girl – but we loved her enormously, there was something mighty about her – she was our Conscience."


text: Victoria was buried in the ducal family mausoleum at "" in Coburg, until her remains were transferred to the Grand Ducal Mausoleum of the Peter and Paul Fortress in Saint Petersburg on 7 March 1995. Her husband was intensely lonely after her death. The marriage of their daughter, Kira, to Louis Ferdinand, Prince of Prussia, in 1938 was a bright spot for Kirill, who saw it as the joining of two dynasties. However, Kirill died just two years after his wife. Kirill, though he had been unfaithful, still loved and missed the wife he had depended so much upon and passed his remaining years writing memoirs of their life together. "There are few who in one person combine all that is best in soul, mind, and body," he wrote. "She had it all, and more. Few there are who are fortunate in having such a woman as the partner of their lives – I was one of those privileged."


text: Victoria Melita's letters to her sister Alexandra are preserved in the Hohenlohe Central Archive (Hohenlohe-Zentralarchiv Neuenstein) in Neuenstein Castle in the town of Neuenstein, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.


text: As a male-line grandchild of the British monarch, Victoria Melita bore the royal arms, with an inescutcheon for Saxony, the whole differenced by a label of five points argent, the outer pair bearing hearts gules, the inner pair anchors azure, and the central point a cross gules. In 1917, the inescutcheon was dropped by royal warrant. Her arms from that point on are duplicated in the arms of Princess Alexandra, The Honourable Lady Ogilvy.


title: Four Knights of the Apocalypse

text: Set years after the disbanding of the Seven Deadly Sins, Britannia's most infamous Holy Knights, the series focuses on the young boy Percival, who discovers that he is destined to be part of a group of four knights prophesied to destroy the world. Targeted by the forces of Camelot as a result, Percival travels to find the other three members of the Four Knights alongside Lancelot, a Liones knight who is the son of the Seven Sins member Ban.


title: Four Knights of the Apocalypse

text: Following the conclusion of "The Seven Deadly Sins" manga with the release of its 346th chapter, the final chapter of the series, in the 17th issue of "Weekly Shōnen Magazine" on March 25, 2020, it was announced by the manga's author, Nakaba Suzuki, that his next series would serve as a sequel to "The Seven Deadly Sins". The manga artist also revealed that the new series was tentatively titled "The Four Knights of the Apocalypse", which he later changed by removing the word "The" at the beginning, giving the manga its current title.


title: Four Knights of the Apocalypse

text: While planning the storyline for the manga, Suzuki originally desired to use the character of Tristan—who was introduced at the end of "The Seven Deadly Sins" as the son of Meliodas and Elizabeth Liones—to be the protagonist of "Four Knights of the Apocalypse". However, Suzuki eventually changed his mind, not wanting to have a main character so closely related to the cast of his previous series. Instead, he decided to have Percival, a character created specifically for the sequel, as the protagonist. During an interview in April 2021, Suzuki commented that, in regards to Percival's design, he particularly focuses on the cuteness of the character when drawing him, adding elements that are able to highlight this in Percival, such as his helmet and cloak.


title: Four Knights of the Apocalypse

text: Written and illustrated by Nakaba Suzuki, the manga was announced in November 2020. The series began its serialization in Kodansha's "shōnen" manga magazine "Weekly Shōnen Magazine" on January 27, 2021. Kodansha has collected its chapters into individual "tankōbon" volumes. The first volume was released on April 16, 2021. As of November 17, 2022, nine volumes have been released.


title: Four Knights of the Apocalypse

text: North American publisher Kodansha USA has licensed the series for simulpublication in North America as it is released in Japan. With the first five chapters of the series already available when it started to be published on February 23, 2021 on multiple digital platforms, including Crunchyroll Manga, BookWalker, ComiXology and Amazon Kindle, with a chapter of the manga translated into English being released weekly. The series is available in English worldwide (except Japan) on the digital manga service Azuki, which was launched on June 28, 2021. Additionally, Kodansha Comics started releasing the volumes in print on January 25, 2022.


title: Four Knights of the Apocalypse

text: In June 2021, "Four Knights of the Apocalypse" was nominated for the seventh Next Manga Award in the Best Printed Manga category.


title: Four Knights of the Apocalypse

text: Ever since it began its serialization, the series has received a generally positive reception from fans and critics alike. Junko Kuroda said the manga is "definitely an adventure fantasy that can be enjoyed smoothly", even for fans unfamiliar with "The Seven Deadly Sins".


title: Brick and mortar

text: Brick and mortar (also bricks and mortar or B&M) refers to a physical presence of an organization or business in a building or other structure. The term "brick-and-mortar business" is often used to refer to a company that possesses or leases retail shops, factory production facilities, or warehouses for its operations. More specifically, in the jargon of e-commerce businesses in the 2000s, brick-and-mortar businesses are companies that have a physical presence (e.g., a retail shop in a building) and offer face-to-face customer experiences.


title: Brick and mortar

text: This term is usually used to contrast with a transitory business or an Internet-only presence, such as fully online shops, which have no physical presence for shoppers to visit, talk with staff in person, touch and handle products and buy from the firm in person. However, such online businesses normally have non-public physical facilities from which they either run business operations (e.g., the company headquarters and back office facilities), and/or warehouses for storing and distributing products. Concerns such as foot traffic, storefront visibility, and appealing interior design apply to brick-and-mortar businesses rather than online ones. An online-only business needs to have an attractive, well-designed website, a reliable e-commerce system for payment, a good delivery or shipping service and effective online marketing tactics to drive web traffic to the site. Governments are also adopting e-government approaches, which is the use of online services for citizens to enable them to fill in government forms, pay tax bills and register for government programs online; these services aim to cut bricks and mortar costs (building leasing/purchase and staff costs) and improve services to citizens (by offering 24/7 access to information and services).


title: Brick and mortar

text: The name is a metonym derived from the traditional building materials associated with physical buildings: bricks and mortar, however, it is applicable to all stores with a physical storefront, not just those built out of bricks and mortar. The term was originally used by 19th century American novelist Herman Melville in the book Moby Dick (chapter 96). The term "brick-and-mortar businesses" is also a retronym, in that most shops had a physical presence before the advent of the Internet. The term is also applicable in a pre-Internet era, when contrasting businesses with physical retail presence with those that operated strictly in an order-by-mail capacity pre-Internet.


title: Brick and mortar

text: The history of brick and mortar businesses cannot be dated precisely, but it existed in the earliest vendor stalls in the first towns (as early as 7500 BC), where merchants brought their agricultural produce, clay pots and handmade clothing to sell in a village market. Bricks and mortar businesses remain important in the 2010s, though many shops and services, ranging from consumer electronics shops to clothing shops and even grocery shops have begun offering online shopping. This physical presence, either of a retail shop, a customer service location with staff, where clients can go in person to ask questions about a product or service, or a service center or repair facility where customers can bring their products, has played a crucial role in providing goods and services to consumers throughout history.


title: Brick and mortar

text: All large retailers in the 19th and the early to mid-20th century started off with a smaller brick and mortar presence, which increased as the businesses grew. A prime example of this is McDonald’s, a company that started with one small restaurant and now has nearly 36,000 restaurants in over 120 countries and plans to grow further; this shows the importance of having a physical presence. For many small businesses, their business model is mostly limited to a bricks and mortar model, such as a diner restaurant or a dry cleaning service. Nevertheless, even service-based businesses can use websites and "apps" to reach new customers or improve their services. For example, a dry cleaning service could use a website to let customers know of the hours and location(s) of their bricks and mortar stores.


title: Brick and mortar

text: Netflix, an online movie streaming website founded in 1997, is an example of how an online business has affected a B&M businesses such as video rental stores. After Netflix and similar companies became popular, traditional DVD rental stores such as Blockbuster LLC went out of business. Customers preferred to be able to instantly watch movies and TV shows using "streaming", without having to go to a physical rental store to rent a DVD, and then return to the store to give the DVD back. "The rapid rise of online film streaming offered by the likes of Lovefilm and Netflix made Blockbuster's video and DVD [rental] business model practically obsolete.'


title: Brick and mortar

text: There has been an increase in online retailers in the 2000s, as people are using e-commerce (online sales) to fulfill basic needs ranging from grocery shopping to book purchases. Sales through mobile devices such as tablet computers and smartphones have also risen in the 2000s: "While total online sales rose 18% year-on-year in December to £11.1 [B], according to the latest figures [January 2014] from e-tail industry body IMRG and advisory firm Capgemini, sales via mobile devices doubled to £3 [B].'


title: Brick and mortar

text: The increase in households where both adults work outside the home, combined with the convenience of shopping for and buying products and services online, has decreased the number of customers going to retail outlets, as consumers can access the same information about products and services without paying for gas, parking and other costs, thus saving them time and money. "Today’s consumers lead busy lives and [Bricks and Mortar] shopping takes time. Often it is a [challenging] task. Consumers find researching and shopping on the Web far more convenient than brick-and-mortar visits." Brick and mortar businesses are not limited to having a physical presence only, they may also have an online presence such as Tesco, who offer an online grocery service as well as a brick and mortar retail presence.


title: Brick and mortar

text: Fixed costs are a serious challenge for B&M businesses. Fixed costs are payments that a business has to make for elements such as rent of a store and monthly payments for services such as a security alarm. Fixed costs stay the same for a business even if it ramps up its operations or winds down its operations during a slow period. In contrast, variable costs change as a business ramps its operations up or down. Variable costs include wages (for employees paid by the hour) and electricity for operating machinery used by the business during its operating hours. If a business increases its hours of operation, its hourly wages and electricity bill will rise, but its rent and security alarm costs will stay the same (assuming that the business does not add additional locations). Start-up companies and other small businesses typically find it hard to pay all of the fixed costs that are part of their venture. Research shows that 70% of new start up businesses fail within the first 10 years.


title: Brick and mortar

text: People have busier lifestyles in the 2010s, with more families having both adults working, and therefore they find it harder to find the time to physically go and shop at stores and services. As well, in many cities traffic jams and congestion on roads have made it more stressful and time-consuming to drive to physical locations to shop. Online shopping and online services, which consumers can access from an Internet-connected laptop or smartphone are more convenient for these people. With mobile devices, consumers can order take-out food, gifts and services even when they are "on the go", such as stuck sitting on a bus or waiting in an airport lounge for a plane...


title: Brick and mortar

text: B&M increases the fixed cost for any business, therefore the products sold in physical shops tend to be more expensive compared to online shops. For stores selling expensive products or services in a B&M format, customers expect beautiful window displays, fine decorating in the establishment and well-dressed salespeople who earn high commission on their sales. Some high-end hair salons and luxury car stores even offer conveniences such as free espresso and bottled water, all of which add to the overhead of selling these products and services. Online shops, even those for luxury goods, do not have to pay for high-end retail stores and salespeople. Nevertheless, high-end online stores typically incur higher costs for their online presence, because they need to have leading edge Web 2.0 functions on their website, a professionally designed site, and in some cases, staff available to respond to phone calls, e-mails and online "chat" questions.


title: Brick and mortar

text: Products may be out stock in relatively small brick and mortar retail stores and due to limited space in small business retail stores, these establishments may only be able to carry a few types of each product. Online shops are able to have a huge amount of stock in numerous large warehouses (e.g., Amazon.com has warehouses in numerous locations from which it ships its products) which it can quickly ship out. An online store may be able to order up products from a large number of geographically dispersed warehouses, even warehouses owned and operated by third parties (e.g., smaller companies), which are connected to the large company via the Internet.


title: Brick and mortar

text: Queues (lineups and waiting rooms) are part and parcel of B&M retail businesses, due to physical constraints and the limitations on how many staff the business can afford to hire. A physical store may only have a few salespeople to serve customers, so many customers may have to wait in line during the busiest hours. To lessen the stress of waiting, some B&M stores provide big-screen TVs with cable TV, free coffee and newspapers; while these niceties improve the customer experience, they add to the costs of operating a B&M establishment. On the other hand, an online virtual store in which customers select their own purchases in a virtual "shopping cart" and pay for them using e-commerce approaches may be able to serve thousands of customers at the same time.


title: Brick and mortar

text: Beginning in the 1990s and early 2000s, many governments in industrialised countries began to offer e-government services to citizens. Online government services are offered by a range of government departments and agencies, ranging from departments of motor vehicles (online car registration), police (paying speeding tickets online), city services (paying parking tickets online or requesting that a pothole be filled) and social services (registering for social assistance or unemployment insurance) and tax departments (paying a tax bill or submitting a tax return online). Many governments use e-services to provide online information to citizens (e.g., "help" guides, Frequently Asked Question lists, manuals for government program applicants, etc.), thus saving on the need for call centers where citizens can call to ask questions or physical service locations where citizens can come in person to ask about government forms or services.


title: Brick and mortar

text: These online government services aim at two goals: reducing costs to governments and improving client service. By offering these services and information online, governments save money, because they do not have to offer as many bricks and mortar client service centers where citizens can come and fill in these forms and pay government bills. Governments offering e-services can also operate with less civil servants and thus less salary and benefits costs, as the citizens using online services are generally doing all of the administrative tasks (e.g., downloading a form, filling in a form, looking up guidance in an online "help" manual, paying fees) themselves using their home computer. E-government services also improve service for citizens who have access to a computer, Internet and an online payment method (e.g., a credit card or PayPal), because these citizens are not limited by the 9 am-5 pm or 8 am-4 pm business hours of most physical government offices, and citizens do not have to incur the costs of transportation (e.g., bus tickets, gas, parking, etc.) associated with going to a bricks and mortar location. Nevertheless, government e-services do not help all citizens, due to the digital divide; citizens who are in poverty, who are homeless or who live in rural or remote regions may not have access to high speed Internet. These citizens, as well as those who are not comfortable with computers or those who do not understand how to use them, which in practice means elderly people, are not able to benefit from e-services.


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: Two Door Cinema Club are a band from Bangor, Northern Ireland. The band formed in 2007 and is composed of three members: Alex Trimble (vocals, rhythm guitar, beats, synths), Sam Halliday (lead guitar, backing vocals), and Kevin Baird (bass, synths, backing vocals).


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: The band's debut album, "Tourist History", was released on 1 March 2010 by French independent record label Kitsuné Music. In the United States, where the band are signed to Glassnote Records, the album was released on 27 April 2010. "Tourist History" was selected for the Choice Music Prize for Irish Album of the Year (2010) the following year.


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: The band's second album "Beacon" was released on 3 September 2012, debuted at number one on the Irish Albums Chart and reached number two in the UK Albums Chart.


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: The band's third album "Gameshow" was released on 14 October 2016. The first single, "Are We Ready? (Wreck)" was released on 14 June 2016 and was debuted on Annie Mac's Hottest Record on BBC Radio 1. Two more singles, "Bad Decisions" and the title track "Gameshow" were released prior to the album and are also included on the track list.


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: Their fourth album "False Alarm" released on 21 June 2019 and featured the singles "Satellite" and "Talk". In the following years, they have become a frequent sight at festivals like Reading and Leeds Festival and Glastonbury.


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: Trimble and Halliday first met while attending Bangor Grammar School; the pair later met Baird while he was flirting with girls who were known to his future bandmates. The three first performed as a band at the age of 16 on "ATL Rock School" under the name Life Without Rory; the band finished in last place. Life Without Rory recorded three demos before disbanding; the first, "Safe in Silence" and the second, "Conscripted By Choice" are still on the band's inactive MySpace page, while the third "You Missed the Point" can be viewed on YouTube.


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: Trimble, Halliday and Baird formed another band shortly after the demise of their first musical project; on this occasion, a permanent drummer was not included. An interim drummer by the name of Owen Bullington was appointed but was kicked out due to creative differences. The new band's name was taken from Halliday's mispronunciation of the name of the local cinema, the Tudor Cinema; in 2007, Two Door Cinema Club was formed. Following an increased interest in the band's social network page, the three members forwent their university places and commenced work on studio material.


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: An EP entitled "Four Words to Stand On" was released on 26 March 2008 and received attention on a number of websites. The EP was self-recorded and produced and was mixed and mastered by Ryan Mitchell. For the tenth anniversary of the EP, the band publicly released it in March 2018.


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: In July 2009, Two Door Cinema Club began recording its debut album at Eastcote Studios in London, with Eliot James. In September 2009, the band began mixing the record with Phillipe Zdar at Motorbass, Zdar's studio in Paris.


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: In January 2010, Two Door Cinema Club announced the track listing and details of the band's debut album in an interview with "NME". The album, entitled "Tourist History", was released on 26 February 2010 in the Republic of Ireland, 1 March 2010 in the United Kingdom and 27 April 2010 in the U.S. The album was also preceded by the singles "Something Good Can Work", "I Can Talk" and "Undercover Martyn".


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: On 18 January 2011, Two Door Cinema Club appeared on the American late night talk show, "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon", performing the song, "What You Know," which later became their biggest hit off the record.


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: In April 2012, the band's official account revealed that a second album was near completion. On 20 June 2012, the band announced "Beacon" as the title of their second studio album, along with a release date of 3 September 2012 in the UK and 4 September elsewhere. Jacknife Lee, responsible for producing artists such as U2, R.E.M., Snow Patrol and Bloc Party, produced the album.


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: On 19 July 2012, "Sleep Alone" was selected as the lead single from "Beacon" and a "Sleep Alone" SoundCloud player was embedded on the "NME" site, allowing readers to listen to the single on 19 July 2012; however, the single was not officially released until 21 July. The accompanying music video for the single was uploaded to the band's YouTube channel on 8 August. "Sleep Alone" was also featured in the EA Sports game, FIFA 13.


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: In early October 2012, it was announced that the second single to be released from "Beacon" was to be "Sun"; which was released on 18 November. The video for "Sun" had made its debut on the band's YouTube channel on 11 October 2012.


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: Following the release of "Beacon", the band released a four-part tour documentary entitled "What We See". Filmed by Gregg Houston from Babysweet Sessions, a company that is friends with the band, the documentary accompanies the band members as they undertake a 2012 European summer tour prior to the release of the second album. Bassist Baird explained, in relation to the film: "Our good friends at Babysweet followed us around for a few weeks so our fans could get an idea of what life is really like for us on the road. Take a peek inside our average day."


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: Two Door Cinema Club announced in December 2012 that they will be playing at the Scottish music festival, T in the Park 2013 in July 2013.


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: On 8 August 2013, the band announced that a new EP entitled "Changing of the Seasons" was to be released. Along with the news came a 30-second clip of the title track, which was set for release on 20 August and is the first single taken from the EP. On 15 August, BBC Radio 1 premiered the single. In an interview with the BBC on 15 July 2014, Trimble stated that the band had started work on its third studio album. He also mentioned that the band was aiming to release the album by early 2015. Trimble also announced that the band had left Kitsuné and signed with former EMI subsidiary Parlophone Records.


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: In January 2016, the band stated that new material, presumably its third album, would be released in 2016.


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: On 4 April 2016, the band announced the completion of its third studio album, "Gameshow", via Twitter after announcing previously that it would be at Glastonbury in the summer. Prior to the completion of the album, Two Door Cinema Club had played one of the songs named "Gameshow" from the album at a concert in Boston.


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: On 14 June 2016, the album artwork was revealed. On the same day, BBC Radio 1 debuted a new song from the album called "Are We Ready? (Wreck)". Prior to that, the band put the album up for pre-order. Two Door Cinema Club then released "Bad Decisions" as the second single off of the album, followed by the third and final single "Gameshow". On 6 July 2016, the band released a music video for "Are We Ready? (Wreck)". On 14 October 2016, the band released their third studio album, "Gameshow".


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: In February 2019, the band released a teaser video on their social media, hinting to an upcoming release of a fourth album.


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: Over the course of two months the band released two more singles from the album titled "Dirty Air" and "Once" before releasing the album on 21 June 2019.


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: On 16 June 2022, Two Door Cinema Club released the first single, """Wonderful Life" from their forthcoming fifth album, "Keep On Smiling."


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: On 28 July, after using lottery scratcher-themed posts to reveal the date, "Lucky" was released as the second single.


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: The album was released digitally by Lower Third Records/Prolifica Inc. on 2 September 2022, with a limited edition run of 5,000 vinyl albums being released on 4 November 2022 (in association with PIAS in Europe and Glassnote in North America). As a protest to multi-format releases and album bundles, which has seen many indie acts like The Wombats, Sea Power and Maximo Park drop out of the UK Top 75 Albums Chart from the Top 5 in their second week of release, the band decided to destroy their latest album's masters in a furnace, so it could never be issued on CD or re-issued in the future.


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: In July 2012, Trimble participated in the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony, singing "Caliban's Dream", a song written by Underworld's Rick Smith. Trimble revealed in an interview that filmmaker Danny Boyle, who had been commissioned as the event's "ceremony chief", had selected the singer for the role to sing at the ceremony.


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: In December 2009, Two Door Cinema Club was featured in the BBC's Sound of... 2010 – a poll compiled by 165 British "tastemakers".


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: "Tourist History" was announced as the winner of the Choice Music Prize for Irish Album of the Year 2010 at Vicar Street on 3 March 2011; the band revealed that the award was its first. They donated the prize money to Abaana, a Northern Ireland-based charity from their hometown. Two Door Cinema Club also won the Breaking Woodie from mtvU.


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: In the 2010 Triple J Hottest 100, "Undercover Martyn" came in at number 21 and "I Can Talk" was at number 72. In the 2012 Triple J Hottest 100,"Sun" came in at number 37 and "Sleep Alone" was at number 90. In the 2013 Triple J Hottest 100, "Changing of the Seasons" came in at number 71.


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: Two Door Cinema Club has received several nominations for NME awards. In 2011, they were nominated the best new band, and their debut album "Tourist History" was nominated for best album. In 2012, they were nominated for the best live band. In 2014, they were nominated for the best British band.


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: In the live performance arena, Two Door Cinema Club has opened for other musical acts, such as autoKratz, Delphic, Foals, Phoenix and Metronomy. They opened for Phoenix during the band's 2010 U.S. tour.


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: Following the release of "Tourist History," the band toured the UK and Ireland in March 2010. The band also played at several May Balls at the University of Cambridge in June 2010, including the Christ's College and Jesus College balls.


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: The band performed at numerous festivals in 2010, including the iTunes Festival, the Red Bull Bedroom Jam Futures Stage at T in the Park, the NME Stage at Reading Festival and Leeds Festival, the main stage at Oxegen, Southside Festival, Hurricane Festival, the Benicassim festival, the Splendour in the Grass Australian festival and the Electric Picnic festival in Ireland. A 2010 eastern tour involved the band performing in Australia, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Singapore and Hong Kong.


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: On 13 January 2011, Two Door Cinema Club commenced a 2-week co-headlining tour of the U.S. and Canada with Canadians Tokyo Police Club; support came from bands such as Work Drugs and Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin.


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: Following a 2010 announcement, Two Door Cinema Club performed at the Orange Evolution Festival in 2011. The band played at numerous other festivals including the Glastonbury Festival, the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, the Isle of Wight Festival, Oxegen, the Parklife Festival, Lollapalooza, the Reading and Leeds Festivals, the Paredes de Coura in Portugal, the Open'er Festival and the Virgin Mobile FreeFest in Columbia, Maryland.


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: Following the summer festival season of 2011, the band toured again in the U.S. for three weeks and then worked on the second album in a home studio in Glasgow. The band then toured again in America in November and December 2011, before continuing onto the festival season.


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: In March 2012 the band appeared on tour in South Africa, playing at a promotional concert for 5 chewing gum brand. They performed in two shows, one in Johannesburg and the other in Cape Town, both being supported by local acts.


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: Two Door Cinema Club completed two American tours in May and June 2012 and September 2012 and October 2012, while also headlining the 2012 NME Awards Tour at the start of the year and a brief UK/Irish tour in September 2012.


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: In addition to Portugal's SW TMN Festival, the band performed at the 2012 Reading and Leeds Festivals, Bestival on the Isle of Wight, the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Tennessee, and the A Perfect Day Festival in Verona.


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: Two Door Cinema Club embarked on a full UK tour in 2013 that started in Belfast on 18 January, included a sellout show at Dublin's O2 Arena, and finished at London's Brixton Academy on 8 February; the band were supported by Bastille and Swim Deep. The band then commenced a three-week European tour in Zurich, Switzerland, with support from Dog Is Dead and The 1975, followed by their biggest ever London show at Alexandra Palace on 27 April. As of May 2013, four summer festivals are confirmed for 2013: Scotland's T in the Park, England's Virgin Media V Festival, Portugal's NOS Alive and their fourth appearance at Glastonbury. Two Door Cinema Club has also been mentioned within a list of supposedly fake band names in Jimmy Kimmel's Lie Witness News interviews at Coachella. and Colombia's Estéreo Picnic.


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: They have announced as being part of the line up at the Splendour in the Grass Music Festival at North Byron Parklands, in New South Wales, Australia. The Music Festival will commence for three days starting from 21 July 2017. On 7 April 2017 they have also announced playing sideshows in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth, starting 19 July 2017, with tickets on sale on 11 April 2017.


title: Two Door Cinema Club

text: A European tour and North American tour were scheduled in 2022 but the band cancelled both while the band's bassist and synth player, Kevin Baird, deals with health issues. Baird had previously announced that he had an "incurable autoimmune disease". He later announced that he was scheduled to have an operation in early October 2022.


title: Atlantic Canada

text: Atlantic Canada, also called the Atlantic provinces (), is the region of Eastern Canada comprising the provinces located on the Atlantic coast, excluding Quebec. The four provinces are New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. As of 2021, the landmass of the four Atlantic provinces was approximately 488,000 km, and had a population of over 2.4 million people. The provinces combined had an approximate GDP of $121.888 billion in 2011. The term "Atlantic Canada" was popularized following the admission of Newfoundland as a Canadian province in 1949.


title: Atlantic Canada

text: The first premier of Newfoundland, Joey Smallwood, coined the term "Atlantic Canada" when Newfoundland joined Canada in 1949. He believed that it would have been presumptuous for Newfoundland to assume that it could include itself within the existing term "Maritime provinces," used to describe the cultural similarities shared by New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia. The three Maritime provinces entered Confederation during the 19th century (New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were founding members of the Dominion of Canada in 1867, and Prince Edward Island joined in 1873).


title: Atlantic Canada

text: Although Quebec has a physical Atlantic coast on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, it is generally not considered an Atlantic Province, instead being classified as part of Central Canada along with Ontario. Atlantic and Central Canada together are also known as Eastern Canada. The following tables use Statistics Canada's 2021 Census Data.


title: Atlantic Canada

text: The following tables provide 2021 census figures for "Metropolitan Areas" (built from entire municipalities) and "Population Centres" (limited to actual continuously-built-up areas) in Atlantic Canada. The list includes communities above 15,000, by Metropolitan Area population, or 10,000 by Population Centre population.


title: Beant Singh (assassin)

text: Beant Singh (Punjabi: ਬੇਅੰਤ ਸਿੰਘ) (6 January 195931 October 1984), was a bodyguard of the Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi, and was one of two, along with Satwant Singh, who took part in her assassination in 1984.


title: Beant Singh (assassin)

text: Singh's widow Bimal Kaur Khalsa initially joined the Sikh militant group, and then got imprisoned. Later she was elected from Ropar Constituency. His father, Baba Sucha Singh, was also an elected member of the Lok Sabha from Bathinda (Lok Sabha constituency).


title: Beant Singh (assassin)

text: In 2003, a Bhog ceremony was held at the highest Sikh temporal seat in Akal Takht, located in the Golden Temple Complex in Amritsar, where tributes were paid.


title: Beant Singh (assassin)

text: In 2004, his death anniversary was again observed at Akal Takht, Amritsar, where his mother was honored by the head priest and tributes were paid to Satwant Singh and Kehar Singh by various political parties.


title: Beant Singh (assassin)

text: The Sikhism-centric political party in India, Shiromani Akali Dal, observed the death anniversary of Beant Singh and Satwant Singh as 'martyrdom' for the first time on 31 October 2008; every 31 October since, their 'martyrdom day' has been observed at Sri Akal Takht Sahib.


title: Ray Luzier

text: Raymond Lee Luzier (born June 14, 1970) is an American musician. He is the drummer of nu metal band Korn, having become a full-time member of the band in April 2009.


title: Ray Luzier

text: Luzier was raised in West Newton, Pennsylvania, a small town an hour outside of Pittsburgh on a 118-acre farm. He began playing drums at age five, and participated in high school jazz, concert, and marching bands. After graduating in 1988, Luzier moved to Hollywood, California, to pursue an education at the Musicians Institute. He graduated in 1989 with a degree from MI's Percussion Institute of Technology. Luzier later returned as an instructor at Musicians Institute (1992–2001), where he taught rock-style drumming classes and gave private lessons.


title: Ray Luzier

text: Luzier is well known for his work with David Lee Roth, for whom he played drums from 1997 to 2005. Luzier has also played with the Hideous Sun Demons, a progressive-rock/fusion trio formed with DLR bandmembers Toshi Hiketa (guitar) and James LoMenzo (bass). Luzier became the drummer for Steel Panther shortly after the band formed in 1997. He remained with Steel Panther for six years until his DLR touring schedule interfered. In 2004, Luzier released an instructional DVD. It features a wide variety of lessons, including double-kick technique, drum fills, motion exercises, and warm-ups. It was released through Hal Leonard Publishing Co.


title: Ray Luzier

text: In January 2006, Luzier appeared at the NAMM in Anaheim, California with Billy Sheehan and Toshi Hiketa. Robert DeLeo and Dean DeLeo of Stone Temple Pilots appeared at the same NAMM venue as part of an impromptu band put together by Steve Ferrone. After seeing Luzier's performance, the DeLeo brothers invited Luzier to join Army of Anyone, the band they were putting together with vocalist Richard Patrick of the band Filter.


title: Ray Luzier

text: In 2007, after original drummer David Silveria had left (in 2006), Korn hired many touring drummers including Joey Jordison of Slipknot. Jordison left due to preparation for the recording of Slipknot's new album "All Hope Is Gone". Consequently, Korn was then looking for a new drummer; and Luzier reportedly flew to Seattle to audition for Korn with James "Munky" Shaffer and Reginald "Fieldy" Arvizu. When told to learn only five of their songs, Luzier learned 30. At his audition, Luzier was immediately invited to join Korn.


title: Ray Luzier

text: Luzier played his first show with Korn on January 13, 2008, in Dublin, Ireland, and played with the band throughout 2008. Korn recorded their ninth studio album together with Luzier and their original producer Ross Robinson. Korn frontman Jonathan Davis said in March 2009 that Luzier was now an official member of the band. Luzier made "UltimateRockGods" Artist Of The Month for July.


title: Ray Luzier

text: Luzier also played live with Stone Temple Pilots for a couple of the band's shows on their reunion tour in October filling in for drummer Eric Kretz, who took time off due to the death of his father. In November 2010, Luzier played drums for the Japanese pop group KAT-TUN on their song "Change UR World." It was Kat-Tun's thirteenth number one single on the Oricon charts.


title: Ray Luzier

text: In 2014, he released the self-titled CD,"KXM" with his side project KXM, which consisted of Luzier, ex-Dokken and Lynch Mob guitarist George Lynch, and King's X vocalist and bassist Doug Pinnick.


title: Ray Luzier

text: Luzier's kit changes to fit the style of the artist he performs or records with. He currently endorses Pearl Drums, Sabian cymbals, Remo drumheads, DW hardware, Vic Firth drumsticks, and Factory Metal Percussion Cymbals. He previously endorsed ddrum, Orange County Drum and Percussion (OCDP), and Promark drumsticks.


title: Palenque

text: Palenque (; Yucatec Maya: ), also anciently known in the Itza Language as Lakamhaʼ ("Big Water or Big Waters"), was a Maya city state in southern Mexico that perished in the 8th century. The Palenque ruins date from ca. 226 BC to ca. 799 AD. After its decline, it was overgrown by the jungle of cedar, mahogany, and sapodilla trees, but has since been excavated and restored. It is located near the Usumacinta River in the Mexican state of Chiapas, about 130 km (81 mi) south of Ciudad del Carmen, above sea level. It averages a humid 26°C (79°F) with roughly of rain a year.


title: Palenque

text: Palenque is a medium-sized site, smaller than Tikal, Chichen Itza, or Copán, but it contains some of the finest architecture, sculpture, roof comb and bas-relief carvings that the Mayas produced. Much of the history of Palenque has been reconstructed from reading the hieroglyphic inscriptions on the many monuments; historians now have a long sequence of the ruling dynasty of Palenque in the 5th century and extensive knowledge of the city-state's rivalry with other states such as Calakmul and Toniná. The most famous ruler of Palenque was K'inich Janaab Pakal, or Pacal the Great, whose tomb has been found and excavated in the Temple of the Inscriptions. By 2005, the discovered area covered up to 2.5 km (1sq mi), but it is estimated that less than 10% of the total area of the city is explored, leaving more than a thousand structures still covered by jungle. Palenque received 920,470 visitors in 2017.


title: Palenque

text: Mythological beings using a variety of emblem glyphs in their titles suggests a complex early history. For instance, Kʼukʼ Bahlam I, the supposed founder of the Palenque dynasty, is called a "Toktan Ajaw" in the text of the Temple of the Foliated Cross.


title: Palenque

text: The famous structures that we know today probably represent a rebuilding effort in response to the attacks by the city of Calakmul and its client states in 599 and 611. One of the main figures responsible for rebuilding Palenque and for a renaissance in the city's art and architecture is also one of the best-known Maya "Ajaw", Kʼinich Janaabʼ Pakal (Pacal the Great), who ruled from 615 to 683. He is known through his funerary monument dubbed the Temple of Inscriptions, after the lengthy text preserved in the temple's superstructure. At the time Alberto Ruz Lhuillier excavated Pakal's tomb, it was the richest and best preserved of any scientifically excavated burial then known from the ancient Americas. It held this position until the discovery of the rich Moche burials at Sipan, Peru and the recent discoveries at Copan and Calakmul.


title: Palenque

text: Beside the attention that K'inich Janaab' Pakal's tomb brought to Palenque, the city is historically significant for its extensive hieroglyphic corpus composed during the reigns of Janaab' Pakal, his son Kʼinich Kan Bahlam II, and his grandson K'inich Akal Mo' Naab', and for being the location where Heinrich Berlin and later Linda Schele and Peter Mathews outlined the first dynastic list for any Maya city. The work of Tatiana Proskouriakoff as well as that of Berlin, Schele, Mathews, and others, initiated the intense historical investigations that characterized much of the scholarship on the ancient Maya from the 1960s to the present. The extensive iconography and textual corpus has also allowed for study of Classic period Maya mythology and ritual practice.


title: Palenque

text: The first "ajaw", or king, of B'aakal that we know of was K'uk Balam (Quetzal Jaguar), who governed for four years starting in the year 431. After him, a king came to power, nicknamed "Casper" by archaeologists. The next two kings were probably "Casper"'s sons. Little was known about the first of these, B'utz Aj Sak Chiik, until 1994, when a tablet was found describing a ritual for the king. The first tablet mentioned his successor Ahkal Mo' Naab I as a teenage prince, and therefore it is believed that there was a family relation between them. For unknown reasons, Akhal Mo' Naab I had great prestige, so the kings who succeeded him were proud to be his descendants.


title: Palenque

text: When Ahkal Mo' Naab I died in 524, there was an interregnum of four years, before the following king was crowned at Toktán in 529. K'an Joy Chitam I governed for 36 years. His sons Ahkal Mo' Naab II and K'an B'alam I were the first kings who used the title "Kinich", which means "the great sun". This word was used also by later kings. B'alam was succeeded in 583 by Yohl Ik'nal, who was supposedly his daughter. The inscriptions found in Palenque document a battle that occurred under her government in which troops from Calakmul invaded and sacked Palenque, a military feat without known precedents. These events took place in 599.


title: Palenque

text: A second victory by Calakmul occurred some twelve years later, in 611, under the government of Aj Ne' Yohl Mat, son of Yohl Iknal. In this occasion, the king of Calakmul entered Palenque in person, consolidating a significant military disaster, which was followed by an epoch of political disorder. Aj Ne' Yohl Mat was to die in 612.


title: Palenque

text: B'aakal began the Late Classic period in the throes of the disorder created by the defeats before Calakmul. The glyphic panels at the Temple of Inscriptions, which records the events at this time, relates that some fundamental annual religious ceremonies were not performed in 613, and at this point states: "Lost is the divine lady, lost is the king." Mentions of the government at the time have not been found.


title: Palenque

text: It is believed that after the death of Aj Ne' Yohl Mat, Janaab Pakal, also called Pakal I, took power thanks to a political agreement. Janaab Pakal assumed the functions of the "ajaw" (king) but never was crowned. He was succeeded in 612 by his daughter, the queen Sak K'uk', who governed for only three years until her son was old enough to rule. It is considered that the dynasty was reestablished from then on, so B'aakal retook the path of glory and splendor.


title: Palenque

text: The grandson of Janaab Pakal is the most famous of the Mayan kings, K'inich Janaab' Pakal, also known as Pakal the Great. He began rule at the age of 12 years after his mother Sak Kuk resigned as queen after three years, thus passing power on to him. Pakal the Great reigned in Palenque from 615 to 683, and his mother remained an important force for the first 25 years of his rule. She may have ruled jointly with him. Known as the favorite of the gods, he carried Palenque to new levels of splendor, in spite of having come to power when the city was at a low point. Pakal married the princess of Oktán, Lady Tzakbu Ajaw (also known as Ahpo-Hel) in 624 and had at least three children.


title: Palenque

text: Most of the palaces and temples of Palenque were constructed during his government; the city flourished as never before, eclipsing Tikal. The central complex, known as The Palace, was enlarged and remodeled on various occasions, notably in the years 654, 661, and 668. In this structure, is a text describing how in that epoch Palenque was newly allied with Tikal, and also with Yaxchilan, and that they were able to capture the six enemy kings of the alliance. Not much more had been translated from the text.


title: Palenque

text: After the death of Pakal in 683, his older son K'inich Kan B'alam assumed the kingship of B'aakal, who in turn was succeeded in 702 by his brother K'inich K'an Joy Chitam II. The first continued the architectural and sculptural works that were begun by his father, as well as finishing the construction of the famous tomb of Pakal. Pakal's sarcophagus, built for a very tall man, held the richest collection of jade seen in a Mayan tomb. A jade mosaic mask was placed over his face, and a suit made of jade adorned his body, with each piece hand-carved and held together by gold wire.


title: Palenque

text: Furthermore, K'inich Kan B'alam I began ambitious projects, including the Group of the Crosses. Thanks to numerous works begun during his government, now we have portraits of this king, found in various sculptures. His brother succeeded him continuing construction and art with the same enthusiasm, reconstructing and enlarging the north side of the Palace. Thanks to the reign of these three kings, B'aakal had a century of growth and splendor.


title: Palenque

text: In 711, Palenque was sacked by the realm of Toniná, and the old king K'inich K'an Joy Chitam II was taken prisoner. It is not known what the final fate of the king was, and it is presumed that he was executed in Toniná. For 10 years there was no king. Finally, K'inich Ahkal Mo' Nab' III was crowned in 722. Although the new king belonged to the royalty, there is no evidence that he was the direct inheritor of K'inich K'an Joy Chitam II. It is believed, therefore, that this coronation was a break in the dynastic line, and probably K'inich Ahkal Nab' arrived to power after years of maneuvering and forging political alliances. This king, his son, and grandson governed until the end of the 8th century. Little is known about this period, except that, among other events, the war with Toniná continued, where there are hieroglyphics that record a new defeat of Palenque.


title: Palenque

text: Occasionally city-state lords . Lady Sak Kuk ruled at Palenque for at least three years starting in 612 CE, before she passed her title to her son. However, these female rulers were accorded male attributes. Thus, these women became more masculine as they assumed roles that were typically male roles.


title: Palenque

text: During the 8th century, B'aakal came under increasing stress, in concert with most other Classic Mayan city-states, and there was no new elite construction in the ceremonial center sometime after 800. An agricultural population continued to live here for a few generations, then the site was abandoned and was slowly grown over by the forest. The district was very sparsely populated when the Spanish first arrived in the 1520s.


title: Palenque

text: The Temple of Inscriptions had begun perhaps as early as 675 as the funerary monument of Hanab-Pakal. The temple superstructure houses the second longest glyphic text known from the Maya world (the longest is the Hieroglyphic Stairway at Copan). The Temple of the Inscriptions records approximately 180 years of the city's history from the 4th through 12th K'atun. The focal point of the narrative records K'inich Janaab' Pakal's K'atun period-ending rituals focused on the icons of the city's patron deities prosaically known collectively as the Palenque Triad or individually as GI, GII, and GIII.


title: Palenque

text: The Pyramid measures 60 meters wide, 42.5 meters deep and 27.2 meters high. The Summit temple measures 25.5 meters wide, 10.5 meters deep and 11.4 meters high. The largest stones weigh 12 to 15 tons. These were on top of the Pyramid. The Total volume of pyramid and temple is 32,500 cu. meters.


title: Palenque

text: In 1952 Alberto Ruz Lhuillier removed a stone slab in the floor of the back room of the temple superstructure to reveal a passageway (filled in shortly before the city's abandonment and reopened by archeologists) leading through a long stairway to Pakal's tomb. The tomb itself is remarkable for its large carved sarcophagus, the rich ornaments accompanying Pakal, and for the stucco sculpture decorating the walls of the tomb. Unique to Pakal's tomb is the psychoduct, which leads from the tomb itself, up the stairway and through a hole in the stone covering the entrance to the burial. This psychoduct is perhaps a physical reference to concepts about the departure of the soul at the time of death in Maya eschatology where in the inscriptions the phrase "ochb'ihaj sak ik'il" (the white breath road-entered) is used to refer to the leaving of the soul. A find such as this is greatly important because it demonstrated for the first time the temple usage as being multifaceted. These pyramids were, for the first time, identified as temples and also funerary structures.


title: Palenque

text: The much-discussed iconography of the sarcophagus lid depicts Pakal in the guise of one of the manifestations of the Maya maize god emerging from the maws of the underworld.


title: Palenque

text: The temple also has a duct structure that still is not completely understood by archaeologists. It has been suggested that the duct aligns with the winter solstice and that the sun shines down on Pakal's tomb.


title: Palenque

text: The Temple of the Cross, Temple of the Sun, and Temple of the Foliated Cross are a set of graceful temples atop step pyramids, each with an elaborately carved relief in the inner chamber depicting two figures presenting ritual objects and effigies to a central icon. Earlier interpretations had argued that the smaller figure was that of K'inich Janaab' Pakal while the larger figure was K'inich Kan B'ahlam. However, it is now known based on a better understanding of the iconography and epigraphy that the central tablet depicts two images of Kan B'ahlam. The smaller figure shows K'inich Kan B'ahlam during a rite of passage ritual at the age of six (9.10.8.9.3 9 Akbal 6 Xul) while the larger is of his accession to kingship at the age of 48. These temples were named by early explorers; the cross-like images in two of the reliefs actually depict the tree of creation at the center of the world in Maya mythology.


title: Palenque

text: The Palace, a complex of several connected and adjacent buildings and courtyards, was built by several generations on a wide artificial terrace during four century period. The Palace was used by the Mayan aristocracy for bureaucratic functions, entertainment, and ritualistic ceremonies. The Palace is located in the center of the ancient city.


title: Palenque

text: Within the Palace there are numerous sculptures and bas-relief carvings that have been conserved. The Palace most unusual and recognizable feature is the four-story tower known as The Observation Tower. The Observation Tower like many other buildings at the site exhibit a mansard-like roof. The A-shaped Corbel arch is an architectural motif observed throughout the complex. The Corbel arches require a large amount of masonry mass and are limited to a small dimensional ratio of width to height providing the characteristic high ceilings and narrow passageways. The Palace was equipped with numerous large baths and saunas which were supplied with fresh water by an intricate water system. An aqueduct, constructed of great stone blocks with a three-meter-high vault, diverts the Otulum River to flow underneath the main plaza. The Palace is the largest building complex in Palenque measuring 97 meters by 73 meters at its base.


title: Palenque

text: The site also has a number of other temples, tombs, and elite residences, some a good distance from the center of the site, a court for playing the Mesoamerican Ballgame, and an interesting stone bridge over the Otulum River some distance below the Aqueduct.


title: Palenque

text: After de la Nada's brief account of the ruins, no attention was paid to them until 1773 when one Don Ramon de Ordoñez y Aguilar examined Palenque and sent a report to the Capitan General in Antigua Guatemala, a further examination was made in 1784 saying that the ruins were of particular interest, so two years later surveyor and architect Antonio Bernasconi was sent with a small military force under Colonel Antonio del Río to examine the site in more detail. Del Rio's forces smashed through several walls to see what could be found, doing a fair amount of damage to the Palace, while Bernasconi made the first map of the site as well as drawing copies of a few of the bas-relief figures and sculptures. Draughtsman Luciano Castañeda made more drawings in 1807, and a book on Palenque, "Descriptions of the Ruins of an Ancient City, discovered near Palenque", was published in London in 1822 based on the reports of those last two expeditions together with engravings based on Bernasconi and Castañedas drawings; two more publications in 1834 contained descriptions and drawings based on the same sources.


title: Palenque

text: Juan Galindo visited Palenque in 1831, and filed a report with the Central American government. He was the first to note that the figures depicted in Palenque's ancient art looked like the local Native Americans; some other early explorers, even years later, attributed the site to such distant peoples as Egyptians, Polynesians, or the Lost Tribes of Israel.


title: Palenque

text: Starting in 1832 Jean Frederic Waldeck spent two years at Palenque making numerous drawings, but most of his work was not published until 1866. Meanwhile, the site was visited in 1840 first by Patrick Walker and Herbert Caddy on a mission from the governor of British Honduras, and then by John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood who published an illustrated account the following year which was greatly superior to the previous accounts of the ruins.


title: Palenque

text: Désiré Charnay took the first photographs of Palenque in 1858, and returned in 1881–1882. Alfred Maudslay encamped at the ruins in 1890–1891 and took extensive photographs of all the art and inscriptions he could find, and made paper and plaster molds of many of the inscriptions, and detailed maps and drawings, setting a high standard for all future investigators to follow. Maudslay learned the technique of making the papier mache molds of the sculptures from Frenchman Desire Charnay.


title: Palenque

text: Several other expeditions visited the ruins before Frans Blom of Tulane University in 1923, who made superior maps of both the main site and various previously neglected outlying ruins and filed a report for the Mexican government on recommendations on work that could be done to preserve the ruins.


title: Palenque

text: From 1949 through 1952 Alberto Ruz Lhuillier supervised excavations and consolidations of the site for Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH); it was Ruz Lhuillier who was the first person to gaze upon Pacal the Great's tomb in over a thousand years. Ruz worked for four years at the Temple of Inscriptions before unearthing the tomb. Further INAH work was done in lead by Jorge Acosta into the 1970s.


title: Palenque

text: In 1973, the first of the very productive Palenque "Mesa Redonda" (Round table) conferences was held here on the inspiration of Merle Greene Robertson; thereafter every few years leading Mayanists would meet at Palenque to discuss and examine new findings in the field. Meanwhile, Robertson was conducting a detailed examination of all art at Palenque, including recording all the traces of color on the sculptures.


title: Palenque

text: In the last 15 or 20 years, a great deal more of the site has been excavated, but currently, archaeologists estimate that only 5% of the total city has been uncovered.


title: Palenque

text: In 2010, Pennsylvania State University researchers, Christopher Duffy and Kirk French, identified the Piedras Bolas Aqueduct as a pressurised aqueduct, the earliest known in the New World. It is a spring-fed conduit located on steep terrain that has a restricted outlet that would cause the water to exit forcefully, under pressure, to a height of . They were unable to identify the use for this man-made feature.


title: Palenque

text: In June 2022, archaeologists from the Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) announced the discovery of a 1,300-year-old nine-inch-tall plaster head statue indicating a young Hun Hunahpu, the Maya’s mythological maize god. The figure's semi-shaved haircut that resembles ripe corn gives reason to the possibility that it is a young maize god. Researchers assume that the Mayan inhabitants of Palenque possibly placed a large stone statuette over a pond to represent the entrance to the underworld. According to archaeologist Arnoldo González Cruz, the Mayan people symbolically shuttered the pool by breaking up some of the plaster and filling it with animal remains, including pottery fragments, carved bone remains, shells, obsidian arrowheads, beads, vegetables, and others.


title: Palenque

text: Palenque National Park was designated in 1981 by the Mexican government. It covers an area of 17.72 km, which encompasses the ancient city and the hills to the south. The park includes a family camp site.


title: The Score (2001 film)

text: The Score is a 2001 American heist film directed by Frank Oz, and starring Robert De Niro, Edward Norton, Angela Bassett and Marlon Brando in his final film role. It was the only time that Brando and De Niro appeared onscreen together. The screenplay was based on a story by Daniel E. Taylor and Kario Salem.


title: The Score (2001 film)

text: After nearly being caught during a burglary, master safe-cracker Nick Wells considers retiring to live with his girlfriend Diane and run his Montréal jazz club as a legitimate businessman. He declines another job from his fence Max, and is approached by the job's mastermind Jack Teller, an ambitious fellow thief. Nick sends his associate Burt to intimidate Jack into leaving town, but Jack gains the upper hand and arrives at Nick's home to change his mind. Nick agrees to join the heist in exchange for total control of the operation, and negotiates a $6 million cut from Max.


title: The Score (2001 film)

text: Their target is a royal sceptre smuggled into Canada but discovered by customs, now stored in the ultra-secure basement of the Montréal Customs House. Jack has infiltrated the Customs House by posing as a mentally-challenged janitor, and Nick finds access to the basement through the sewers beneath. Diane, disappointed that Nick has taken on this final score, reconsiders their future together.


title: The Score (2001 film)

text: Nick recruits Steven, a hacker associate, who breaks into the Customs House security company's system to obtain bypass codes, but is caught by a systems administrator who demands $50,000 for the information. The administrator arranges to meet in a public park, bringing his cousin for protection; tensions arise when the cousin and Jack each reveal they have brought a gun, to Nick's displeasure, but the exchange is made.


title: The Score (2001 film)

text: After seeing a pressurized beer keg burst open in the street, Nick concocts a plan to defeat the Customs House's impregnable safe. He frustrates Jack by urging patience and refusing to let him be part of the handoff with Max, despite Jack's insistence. Advised by Burt that the job may be too risky, Nick confronts Max, who confesses that he is deeply in debt to a mob boss but is secretly selling the sceptre for $30 million. Max implores him to finish the job, and Nick reluctantly agrees.


title: The Score (2001 film)

text: The Customs House adds additional closed-circuit television cameras and infrared detectors to the basement after realizing the sceptre's true value as a French national treasure, forcing the thieves to move up their timetable. Jack arrives for his graveyard shift — with his gun hidden inside a portable radio — while Nick breaks into the basement through the sewer tunnels. Burt, posing as a garbage truck driver, delivers computer components that Jack uses to bypass the security system. Jack shuts off the cameras as Nick enters the storage room, but a fellow janitor stumbles upon Jack, who locks him in a closet at gunpoint.


title: The Score (2001 film)

text: Bypassing the infrared sensors, Nick fills the safe with water from the basement sprinkler system and inserts a depth charge, blowing off the door. He packs the sceptre in a carrying case but is held at gunpoint by Jack, who forces him to hand over the case. As rigged by Jack, the cameras and alarms turn back on, alerting security and forcing Nick to escape back through the sewers; Jack returns upstairs, hiding the case inside his uniform and slipping past the police as they arrive.


title: The Score (2001 film)

text: Arriving at a bus station to flee the city, Jack calls Nick to gloat, but Nick reveals that he anticipated his betrayal: he had already planned a route through the sewers to evade pursuit, and Jack opens the case to discover a scrap metal decoy; Nick still has the real sceptre. Brushing off Jack's threats of vengeance, Nick advises him to flee as "every cop in the city" will now be looking for him. Later, Max smiles as he watches a news broadcast reporting a massive manhunt to find Jack, the prime suspect, whose accomplice has "vanished without a trace," while Nick reunites with Diane at Montréal-Mirabel International Airport.