title: Joey Logano

text: In 2016, Logano was a "Fox NASCAR" guest analyst for the Xfinity Series races at Phoenix and Richmond. A year later, Logano was a color commentator for the Fox broadcast of the Xfinity race at Pocono. Part of a Cup drivers-only coverage, he worked alongside Kevin Harvick and Clint Bowyer in the broadcast booth.


title: Joey Logano

text: On April 30, 2019, Logano was invited to White House in Washington D.C. by the President of United States,


title: Joey Logano

text: Born in Middletown, Connecticut and raised over the river in Portland, Logano moved to Georgia where his father, Tom grew his racing career. As he started his career he earned the nickname “sliced bread” because he won a lot as a young racer. On November 13, 2013, Logano announced his engagement to childhood sweetheart Brittany Baca. He announced, via Twitter, that their wedding date was set for December 2014, during the NASCAR off-season. Logano and Baca were married on December 13, 2014. The couple announced the birth of their first child, a son named Hudson Joseph Logano, in January 2018. Their second child, a son named Jameson Jett Logano, was born on May 7, 2020. Their third child, and first daughter, was born in February 2022. Her name is Emilia Love Logano.


title: Joey Logano

text: In September 2019, Logano was diagnosed with Alopecia areata, an autoimmune disorder that attacks hair follicles. While the disease does not cause any health risks or physical effects, it does lead to patches of thinning hair or baldness, which Logano has often joked about.


title: Joey Logano

text: In March 2020, the Joey Logano Foundation partnered with Bobbee O's BBQ in Charlotte, North Carolina, to offer free meals to children during the COVID-19 lockdown.


title: Martha Wash

text: Martha Elaine Wash (born December 28, 1953) is an American singer-songwriter, actress, and producer. Known for her distinctive and powerful voice, Wash first achieved fame as half of the Two Tons O' Fun, who sang backing vocals for the disco singer Sylvester including on his signature hit "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)". After gaining their own record deal, they released three consecutive commercially successful songs which all peaked at number two in the dance charts. The duo was renamed The Weather Girls in 1982 after they released the top-selling single "It's Raining Men", which brought them to mainstream pop attention. The Weather Girls released five albums and were heavily featured on Sylvester's albums.


title: Martha Wash

text: After disbanding in 1988, Wash transitioned to house music as a featured artist on several successful songs. Her success on "Billboard"'s Dance chart has earned her the honorific title The Queen of Clubland, with a total of fifteen number-one songs on the chart to date.


title: Martha Wash

text: Wash is also noted for sparking legislation in the early 1990s that made vocal credits mandatory on CDs and music videos. Starting in the late-1980s, her studio vocals were used in several successful dance songs without her permission or proper credit. Models lip-synced to her voice in music videos and during live performances, obscuring Wash's contributions and hiding Wash's size as a full-figured woman. As a result, she was denied credit and royalties for many of the songs she recorded. This included platinum-selling song "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)". Subsequently, in "Rolling Stone", music critic Jason Newman described Martha Wash as "The Most Famous Unknown Singer of the '90s". In December 2016, "Billboard magazine" ranked her as the 58th most successful dance artist of all time.


title: Martha Wash

text: Wash attended in McKinley Elementary and graduated from San Francisco Polytechnic High School, where she sang in the school choir. During her time in high school, the school choir traveled and performed throughout Europe for two weeks. Wash also appeared on four albums in the school choir. Shortly after graduating high school, Wash joined a gospel group NOW (News of the World), which also included Izora Rhodes. Wash also worked as a secretary for UC Hospital.


title: Martha Wash

text: In February 1976, Wash auditioned as a backup singer before a singer-songwriter Sylvester and his manager Brent Thomson. Impressed with her vocal performance, Sylvester inquired if she had another large black friend who could sing, after which she introduced him to Izora Rhodes. Although he referred to them simply as "the girls", Wash and Rhodes formed a musical duo called Two Tons O' Fun (sometimes referred to as "The Two Tons"). Two Tons O' Fun debuted as Sylvester's backing vocalists on his self-titled third album "Sylvester", released in 1977. The duo sang backup vocals on the album's singles "Down, Down, Down" and "Over and Over", which charted at number eighteen on the "Billboard" Dance chart. In an interview with Daily Xtra!, Wash stated that working alongside Sylvester helped her hone her own vocal stylings. In 1978, Sylvester released his fourth album "Step II", which also featured The Two Tons' background vocals throughout the album. "Dance (Disco Heat)", the album's lead single which prominently featured The Tons, peaked at number one on "Billboard" Dance chart and became their first number-one single on that chart. In 1979, Two Tons O' Fun sang on Sylvester's live album "Living Proof", including showstopping solos from both Wash and Rhodes on the track “You Are My Friend”. Later that year, the duo secured their own record deal with Fantasy Records.


title: Martha Wash

text: On January 24, 1980, the duo released their debut self-titled album "Two Tons of Fun". The album spawned two top-five dance singles: "Earth Can Be Just Like Heaven" and "I Got the Feeling". Their second album "Backatcha" was released later that year. The album spawned a single "I Depend On You" that peaked at number 72 on the Dance chart.


title: Martha Wash

text: In September 1982, the duo released their single "It's Raining Men". The song became their biggest hit, peaking at number one on the Dance chart and number 46 on "Billboard"'s Hot 100 chart. Following the success of the song, Two Tons o Fun changed their group name to The Weather Girls. On January 22, 1983, they released their third album "Success". The album's titled-track "Success" was released as the second single and peaked at number eighty-nine on the R&B chart. In 1985, The Weather Girls released their fourth album "Big Girls Don't Cry". In 1986, Wash released a solo song, "Breakin' The Ice", on the soundtrack for the Paramount feature film "Gung Ho". In 1988, The Weather Girls released their self-titled fourth album "The Weather Girls", Wash's final album with the duo. Shortly after the album, The Weather Girls disbanded and Wash took up a solo career and also began working as a session vocalist. Among other appearances, she contributed background vocals on Aretha Franklin's single "Freeway of Love" for her album "Who's Zoomin' Who?" (1985).


title: Martha Wash

text: In 1989, Wash recorded the song "(You're My One and Only) True Love" as a demo, produced by David Cole who would later form the C+C Music Factory. Cole later gave the song to then-upcoming female group Seduction. The song appeared on Seduction's debut album "Nothing Matters Without Love", released in September 1989, retaining the use of Wash's lead vocals and added Seduction's background vocals to the song. In addition, she was only credited for her background vocals and Cole remixed and altered Wash's lead vocals of the song to make her voice less recognizable on the song. "(You're My One and Only) True Love" was released as Seduction's second single in July 1989. The single became an unexpected success when it peaked at number twenty-three on the "Billboard" Hot 100 chart and number three on the Dance chart. Wash would eventually file a lawsuit against the producers and A&M Records for unauthorized use of her voice. The case reached an out-of-court settlement in December 1990.


title: Martha Wash

text: In the summer of 1989, Italian house music group Black Box recruited Wash initially as a session singer to demo their upcoming songs. Wash demoed a total of six songs for the group. Despite being recruited strictly for demoing the songs, Black Box retained the use of Wash vocals on the songs and released them on their debut album "Dreamland". In December 1989, Black Box released their second single "I Don't Know Anybody Else". The song, which featured Wash's vocals, became an international hit and peaked in the top-ten positions of many countries. The group followed up with release of another single "Everybody Everybody", also featuring Wash, which became another international success. Despite Wash's contributions to the songs, Black Box never credited Wash for her vocals and instead used French fashion model Katrin Quinol to lip-sync Wash's vocals during music videos, televised performances, and concert performances. Wash initially became aware of the scandal and sued RCA Records and Black Box for commercial appropriation in September 1990. RCA settled the case out-of-court in December 1990, agreeing to pay Wash a "substantial" financial fee. The company also signed her to an eight-album recording contract and financed her national tour. In addition, many of Black Box's releases that contained Wash's vocals were re-issued with her sleeve credits. Black Box continued releasing singles in 1991 which saw the release of the top-ten international hit "Strike It Up", "Fantasy" and "Open Your Eyes".


title: Martha Wash

text: In November 1990, the C+C Music Factory released their debut single "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)", which featured Wash's uncredited vocals on the chorus. The song became an international hit, peaking at number one on "Billboard"'s Hot 100, and selling over a million copies in the United States. After discovering that the group was using model-turned-singer Zelma Davis in the music video, Wash attempted to negotiate with the producers of the C+C Music Factory for sleeve credits and royalties which ultimately proved unsuccessful. Additionally, the song used an edited compilation of vocal parts that Wash recorded in June 1990 for an unrelated demonstration tape. On December 11, 1991, Wash filed a lawsuit in the Los Angeles Superior Court against C+C Music Factory's Robert Clivilles and David Cole, charging the producers and their record company, Sony Music Entertainment, with fraud, deceptive packaging and commercial appropriation. The case was eventually settled in 1994 and as a result of the settlement, Sony made an unprecedented request to MTV to add a disclaimer that credited Wash for vocals and Zelma Davis (who lip-synched Wash's vocals in the official music video) for "visualization" to the "Gonna Make You Sweat" music video.


title: Martha Wash

text: Her self-titled first solo album "Martha Wash" was released on February 23, 1993. The album peaked at number 169 on the Billboard 200, number 42 on the R&B Albums chart, and number 8 on the Heatseekers Albums chart. The album's lead single, "Carry On", released on October 30, 1992, became Wash's fifth number-one dance single as a solo artist in the US. The second single "Give It to You" also reached number one on the dance chart. The album's third single "Runaround" reached the top-ten on the Dance chart, but the follow-up single "So Whatcha Gonna Do" failed to chart. "Now That You're Gone" was also released as a promotional single.


title: Martha Wash

text: In 1994, the C+C Music Factory, who had just reached an agreement with Wash and her lawsuit, asked Wash to join the group and record on their album. On August 9, 1994, the group released their second album "Anything Goes!". The album's lead single "Do You Wanna Get Funky" featured a collaboration of Wash, C+C Music Factory, Zelma Davis, and Trilogy. "Do You Wanna Get Funky" peaked at number forty on the Hot 100 and number one on the Dance chart. Wash also featured another song "Takin' Over" from the album. In the same year, Wash also recorded and released a cover of Jean Knight's "Mr. Big Stuff" for the soundtrack of American sports comedy-drama film "". In 1995, Wash embarked on an international tour with the C+C Music Factory.


title: Martha Wash

text: In 1997, American DJ and record producer Todd Terry released his sixth album "Ready for a New Day". The album's lead single "Keep on Jumpin'", featuring a collaboration of Terry, Wash, and Jocelyn Brown, was released on June 24, 1996. The song peaked on at number one on the Dance charts and reached the top-ten on the UK Singles chart. On June 9, 1997, they released a follow-up single "Something Goin' On (In Your Soul)". The song topped the Dance charts and peaked at number five on the UK Singles chart. Additionally, the song was also certified Silver-status in the United Kingdom.


title: Martha Wash

text: In January 1998, Wash released a compilation album "The Collection", on Logic Records. The lead single "It's Raining Men...The Sequel", which featured RuPaul, peaked at number twenty-two on the Dance chart. The album's second single "Catch the Light" became Wash's tenth number-one song on the Dance chart. The album's final single "Come" peaked at number four on the Dance chart. Wash was also featured on Todd Terry's single "Ready for a New Day", which peaked at number twenty on the Dance chart.


title: Martha Wash

text: In 2000, Wash released two singles "Listen to the People" and re-recorded version of "It's Raining Men". In 2004, she released a gospel single "You Lift Me Up". Wash performed at the opening ceremony of the OutGames in Montreal in July 2006. She also performed at numerous Human Rights Campaign events in the U.S. In 2006, Wash appeared as a guest on GSN's "I've Got a Secret", and performed "It's Raining Men" for the all-gay panel.


title: Martha Wash

text: DJ Tony Moran's compilation CD "The Event" featured a single featuring Martha entitled "Keep Your Body Working". It reached No. 1 on "Billboard"'s Hot Dance Club Play chart for the week ending December 22, 2007. In 2007, Gay Pimpin' with Jonny McGovern, gay-themed podcast, dedicated an episode to Wash and she obliged them with an extended telephone interview.


title: Martha Wash

text: In March 2008, she performed at the annual Big Gay Day in Brisbane, Australia. She also performed at Chicago Pride Parade in June 2008. In August 2009, she performed at the opening ceremony of the NAGAAA Gay Softball World Series.


title: Martha Wash

text: On October 1, 2012, she appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman, celebrating the 30th anniversary of the release of "It's Raining Men". Wash's second solo album "Something Good" was released on January 10, 2013, worldwide. The album's lead single "I've Got You", released on April 1, 2011, received positive feedback from critics. In March 2013, she was a special guest for the New York City Gay Men's Chorus during their spring production "Big Gay Sing 6: Club Night Out". The second single "It's My Time" was released on September 22, 2013. In the same year, Wash also made an appearance in the documentary film "20 Feet from Stardom". In February 2014, Wash was featured on the song "Can I Get An Amen?" for RuPaul's album "Born Naked". In March 2014, Wash released a remix of the third single "I'm Not Coming Down", which peaked at number two on the Dance chart.


title: Martha Wash

text: In February 2015, Wash and Tony Moran released "Free People", which also reached number one on the Dance Club Songs chart. In 2015, Wash formed a group with disco vocalists Evelyn "Champagne" King and Linda Clifford called First Ladies of Disco. The group released their debut single "Show Some Love" in March 2015, which peaked at number six on the Dance charts. In December 2015, Wash released a single "N2U", produced by Showtek and Eva Shaw on Spinnin' Records. In November 2017, Wash collaborated with Turkish singer Serhat, releasing a single with multi-versions of his Eurovision 2016 entry "I Didn't Know".


title: Martha Wash

text: In March 2018, Wash began her YouTube web series called "10 Minutes with Martha Wash". In April 2018, Wash released a single "Come into the Light". The song was featured on the musical film "Wholly Broken" for which Wash plays the role of a woman named "Rose". In September 2018, Wash joined the cast of WaistWatchers: The Musical.


title: Martha Wash

text: In March 2019, First Ladies of Disco (now composed of Wash, Clifford, and Norma Jean Wright) released their second single "Don't Stop Me Now". On August 10, 2019, Wash released a single "Like Fire". The song served as the lead single from her third album "Love & Conflict". "Love & Conflict" was released on January 6, 2020.


title: Martha Wash

text: As of 2014, songs featuring Wash's voice have earned fifteen number-one dance singles, placing her among the top singers with the most number-one hits on the U.S. Dance Club Songs chart. Her success as one of the leading singers in the genre of house music would garner her honorific title The Queen of Clubland. She has also been referred to as The Voice. In "Rolling Stone", music critic Jason Newman described Martha Wash as "The Most Famous Unknown Singer of the '90s".


title: Martha Wash

text: Martha Wash's work has influenced numerous artists including RuPaul, who stated that "[Wash] merged a gospel voice into pop and dance music seamlessly. Her voice speaks to both the church and a pop ear and was built to cut through the bass of a dance club. The timbre of her voice is so distinctive and beautiful. A lot of gospel-based singers have come and gone in dance music, but she is the one." RuPaul acknowledged Wash's song "Carry On" comforted him during his mother's passing. Her single with the C+C Music Factory, "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)" was included in the top-ten VH1's "100 Greatest Dance Songs", while "It's Raining Men" ranked at number thirty-five.


title: Martha Wash

text: On September 14, 2014, "Mighty Real: A Fabulous Sylvester Musical", a Broadway musical about Sylvester, debuted in New York City. Wash's likeness was featured in the production and she was portrayed by actress Jacqueline B. Arnold.


title: Martha Wash

text: The City of Washington D.C. declared Martha Wash Day in the city in 2016. The City of San Francisco, California declared Martha Wash Day in their city. In the City of Miami, Florida, Wash was presented with the key to the city.


title: Martha Wash

text: In 2004, Wash launched her own independent recording label called Purple Rose Records. James Washington, also Wash's manager, is the label's head of A&R. Intended to be a platform for emerging talent and for artists who may be overlooked by major record labels, Purple Rose Records was established in New York City. The first release on the label was the single "You Lift Me Up" in September 2004, a song by Wash, which peaked in the top five of "Billboard"'s Dance Club Songs chart. "Something Good", Wash's second album, was the label's first album released in January 2013. The label has continued to distribute all of Wash's official releases to date.


title: Martha Wash

text: Purple Rose also began managing other musical acts. First Ladies of Disco, a female group originally composed of Martha Wash, Linda Clifford, and Evelyn "Champagne" King, released their debut single "Show Some Love" on the label in 2015. The song peaked in the top-ten on "Billboard"'s Dance chart. The group has since toured throughout the United States of America on the First Ladies of Disco Tour. In July 2016, The Ritchie Family released a single "Ice" on the label. The song was later remixed and released as a maxi-single of six tracks.


title: Martha Wash

text: On March 25, 2019, First Ladies of Disco released their second single "Don't Stop Me Now" on Purple Rose Records.


title: Martha Wash

text: In 1990, Wash won lawsuits against music groups C+C Music Factory and Black Box for failing to provide vocal credits for songs she recorded with them as well as committing fraud by using models to lip-sync her vocals in music videos, stage shows, and televised performances. The lawsuit was filed under the truth-in-advertising laws. In the same year, bills were introduced in the New Jersey and New York legislatures to require concert promoters to disclose whether pre-recorded material would be used on stage. Wash's activism and legal wranglings on behalf of recording artists also resulted in eventual federal legislation making vocal credit mandatory for all albums and music videos.


title: Martha Wash

text: Wash, who is viewed as a gay icon, has been involved in LGBT rights and she remains an outspoken advocate for the gay community. In open letter addressed to the LGBT community, Wash acknowledged the support she has received back from community. Wash also stated "It means the world to me when fans tell me they've followed me through the Sylvester years, or they came out to my music, or someone decided not to take their life. These are the people I sing for. So to all you beautiful people out there I say: stand strong, don't give in and carry on." Wash has also been an activist for the fight against HIV/AIDS for more than thirty years after watching close-friend and music mentor Sylvester succumb to the disease. On World AIDS Day in December 2012, she was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award in San Francisco from the AIDS Emergency Fund for her advocacy and fundraising to provide financial assistance to victims of the disease.


title: Martha Wash

text: Wash is a spokesperson for Quality Services for the Autism Community (QSAC Inc.). The non-profit organization providing comprehensive services to individuals with autism and their families. In 2011, Wash headlined three separate charity concerts for the nonprofit AIDS organization: Fortitude, a President's Day weekend celebration in Fort Lauderdale benefiting amfAR, and two local San Antonio AIDS charities. Wash released a song "Light It Up", included on the 13th Carols for a Cure 2011 charity album to help raise funds benefiting Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. In 2012, Wash became a supporter of the You Can Play Project. The non-profit organization is dedicated to ensuring equality, respect, and safety for all athletes without regard to sexual orientation.


title: Renu Desai

text: Renu Desai's mother tongue is Marathi, but she is also fluent in Telugu. She has a son, born in 2004 with Telugu actor Pawan Kalyan, whom she married on 28 January 2009. The couple also has a daughter born in 2010. They filed for divorce 2011, which was finalised in 2012. In 2018, Desai was engaged to another man.


title: Renu Desai

text: Before her entry into Telugu films, Desai was a model and appeared in the music video of Shankar Mahadevan's song "Breathless".


title: Renu Desai

text: She starred with her future husband in the films "Badri" and "Johnny". Renu returned to her hometown and is active in Marathi films now. In 2013, she turned producer with "Mangalashtak Once More" and turned director with "Ishq Wala Love" in 2014.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: Mehmed Talaat (1 September 187415 March 1921), commonly known as Talaat Pasha or Talat Pasha, was a Turkish Ottoman politician and convicted war criminal of the late Ottoman Empire who served as its leader from 1913 to 1918. Talaat Pasha was chairman of the Union and Progress Party, which operated a one-party dictatorship in the Ottoman Empire, and later on became Grand Vizier (Prime Minister) during World War I. He was one of the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide and other ethnic cleansings during his time as Minister of Interior Affairs.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: Born in Kırcaali (Kardzhali), Adrianople (Edirne) Vilayet, Mehmed Talaat grew up to despise Sultan Abdul Hamid II's autocracy. He was an early member of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), a secret revolutionary Young Turk organization, and over time became its leader. After the CUP succeeded in restoring the constitution and parliament in the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, Talaat was elected as a deputy from Adrianople to the Chamber of Deputies and later became Minister of the Interior. He played an important role in the downfall of Abdul Hamid the next year during the 31 March Incident by organizing a counter government. Multiple crises in the Empire including the 31 March Incident, attacks on Rumelian Muslims in the Balkan Wars, and the power struggle with the Freedom and Accord Party made Talaat and the Unionists disillusioned with multicultural Ottomanism and political pluralism, turning them into hard-line authoritarian Turkish nationalists.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: After the 1913 coup and Mahmud Şevket Pasha's assassination, the Ottoman Empire was ruled by Union and Progress in a one-party dictatorship, whose leaders were the triumvirate of Talaat, İsmail Enver, and Ahmed Cemal (known as the Three Pashas), of whom Talaat as its civilian leader was politically most powerful. Talaat and Enver were influential bringing the Ottoman Empire into the First World War. During World War I, he on 24 April 1915 the arrest and deportation of Armenian intellectuals in Constantinople (now Istanbul), most of them being ultimately murdered, and on 30 May 1915 requested the Temporary Law of Deportation; these events initiated the Armenian genocide. He is widely considered the main perpetrator of the genocide, and is thus held responsible for the death of around 1 million Armenians.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: In a move that established total Unionist control over the Ottoman government, Talaat Pasha became Grand Vizier in 1917, and introduced many social reforms. Talaat personally negotiated the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Bolsheviks, regaining parts of Eastern Anatolia which were occupied by Russia since 1878, and won the race to Baku on the Caucasus front. However breakthroughs by the Allies in the Macedonia and Palestine fronts meant defeat for the Ottomans and the downfall of the CUP. On the night of 2–3 November 1918, Talaat Pasha and other members of the CUP's central committee fled the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Special Military Tribunal convicted Talaat and sentenced him to death "in absentia" for subverting the constitution, profiteering from the war, and organizing massacres against Greeks and Armenians. Exiled in Berlin, he supported the Turkish Nationalists led by Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk) in Turkey's War of Independence. He was assassinated in Berlin in 1921 by Soghomon Tehlirian, a member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, as part of Operation Nemesis.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: Mehmed Talaat was born in 1874 in Kırcaali, Adrianople (Edirne) Vilayet into a middle-class family of Romani and Pomak descent. His father, Ahmet Vasıf, was a kadı from Çeplece, a nearby village. His mother Hürmüz was from a family that migrated from Dedeler village, Kayseri. Talaat also had two sisters. Talaat's family fled to Constantinople when their home was occupied by Russian troops during the 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish war, an experience that contributed to Talaat's nationalism. His father died when Talaat was eleven years old.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: Talaat had a powerful build and a dark complexion. His manners were gruff, which caused him to be expelled from the military secondary school at the age of sixteen without a certificate after a conflict with his teacher. Without earning a degree, he joined the staff of a telegraph company as a postal clerk in Adrianople to provide for his family. His salary was not high, so he worked after hours as a Turkish language teacher in the Alliance Israelite School which served the Jewish community of Adrianople. At the age of 21 Talaat was involved in a love affair with the daughter of the Jewish headmaster for whom he worked.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: The Ottoman Empire was ruled by the sultan Abdul Hamid II, who ran a modern autocracy, complete with a secret police, mass surveillance, and censorship. This autocracy in turn produced a culture of suspicion as well as a spirit of clandestine rebellion in many Ottoman citizens, young Talaat included. He was caught sending a telegram saying "Things are going well. I'll soon reach my goal." He was confronted by the police for this telegram, and claimed that the message was to his dalliance, who defended him. With two of his friends from the post office, he was charged with tampering with the official telegraph and was arrested in 1893.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: After being released from prison, he joined the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), a secret revolutionary Young Turk organization which was agitating against Abdul Hamid's autocracy. In 1896 he was imprisoned for having been part of a CUP cell together with his brother-in-law. Sentenced to three years in jail, Talaat was pardoned after serving two years but exiled to Salonika (Thessaloniki), where he became a postal clerk in July 1898. Between 1898 and 1908 he served as a postman on the staff of the Salonika Post Office, during which he continued his revolutionary activities in secret. He was promoted to municipal chief clerk in April 1903, following which he could afford to bring his mother and sisters to Salonika. His job in the postal administration gave him the opportunity to smuggle into the city newspapers published by the dissidents abroad. Talaat met then economics professor, later friend and CUP Finance Minister Mehmed Cavid in Salonika Law School, where he took classes to supplement his lackluster education. The government was still monitoring his activities, and he was almost exiled again to Anatolia. However the Inspector General for Macedonia Hüseyin Hilmi Pasha was partial towards the secret committee and intervened, and Talaat returned to Salonika to work as a school principal.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: In September 1906, the (OFC) was formed as another secret Young Turk organization based in Salonika. The founders of the OFC included Talaat, the CUP's future general secretary Dr. Midhat Şükrü, Mustafa Rahmi, and . Many officers of the Third Army were recruited into the OFC, including the future heroes of the revolution Ahmed Niyazi and İsmail Enver. Under Talaat's initiative, the Salonika-based OFC merged with Ahmet Rıza's Paris-based CUP in September 1907, and the group became the internal center of the CUP in the Ottoman Empire. Talaat was briefly secretary-general of the internal CUP, while Bahattin Şakir was secretary-general of the external CUP. After the revolution, Talaat's more radical and militant internal CUP would see themselves supplant the older cadre of Young Turks that was Rıza's network of exiles.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: The Unionists found themselves at the behest of a spontaneous revolution in 1908, which commenced with Niyazi and Enver's flight into the Albanian hinterlands. Talaat's role during the Young Turk Revolution was to organize a plot to assassinate the garrison commander of Salonika, Ömer Nazım, who was a Hamidian loyalist and spy master of the area. Nazım survived his hired "Fedai" with injury, but the incident, as well as other assassinations carried out by the CUP during the revolution, intimidated the Hamidian establishment enough to reopen the parliament and reinstate the constitution. For the first time in three decades, an election was held for the Chamber of Deputies, which this time featured political parties. Talaat was easily elected into parliament as Union and Progress's candidate for deputy of Adrianople, and then was elected the parliament's vice-president. Talaat was the most important politician in the Ottoman Empire between 1908 and 1918.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: A year later in the 31 March Incident, what started out as an anti-Unionist demonstration in the capital quickly turned into an anticonstitutionalist-monarchist counter revolution where Abdul Hamid attempted to reestablish his autocracy. The Grand Vizier Hüseyin Hilmi Pasha was forced to resign for Ahmed Tevfik Pasha. Khachatur Malumian, leader of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), hid Talaat and Dr. Nazım in his house while mob violence targeted MPs. Three days later, Talaat and 100 MPs escaped Constantinople for Ayastefanos (Yeşilköy) to organize a separate national assembly from the volatile situation in Constantinople, and declared the change in government illegal. Relief came in the form of pro-constitutionalist forces known as the Action Army led by Mahmud Şevket Pasha, which stopped in Ayastefanos before marching on the capital; it was secretly agreed there that Abdul Hamid would be replaced by his brother. After the reactionary revolt was crushed, Talaat bullied the Shaykh al-Islam to get a fatwa for Abdul Hamid's deposition, and convinced Tevfik Pasha to step down and return Hilmi Pasha to the premiership. With the fatwa, the parliament voted to depose Abdul Hamid II. Talaat and Ahmed Muhtar Pasha headed the delegation to announce to Prince Reşad of his ascension to the throne.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: In August 1909 Mehmed Talaat led a 17-member parliamentary delegation to Westminster. He learned there that he was appointed Minister of the Interior in Hilmi Pasha's cabinet reshuffle, becoming the second Unionist with a cabinet position (first being Cavid as Finance Minister). He continued Hamidian era anti-Zionist restrictions in Ottoman Palestine, as well as enforce imperial rule in revolting provinces like Albania and Yemen. That year, Louis Rambert, director of the Régie des Tabacs, wrote that Talaat was "the acknowledged head of the Committee of Union and Progress and the Young Turks." Biographer Hans-Lukas Kieser writes that he was under the influence of Bahattin Şakir and Mehmed Nazım before 1908, but after late 1909 he had an increased interest in the new Central Committee member Ziya Gökalp and his more revolutionary and Pan-Turkist ideas.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: Due to an increasingly toxic political climate, Talaat stepped down as Interior Minister in March 1911 for his fellow committee-man Halil Menteşe. For a short time he was in January 1912.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: In the 1912 election known as the "election of clubs", Union and Progress won a lopsided victory against the Freedom and Accord Party due to widespread employment of electoral fraud and violence. As a result, Freedom and Accord organized a group in the military known as the Savior Officers to bring down the CUP dominated legislature. Talaat urged for Şevket Pasha, who was appointed Minister of War after the 31 March Incident, to resign as in the lead-up to the coup d'état, something he wrote that he regretted once Şevket Pasha did so in support of the Savior Officers. Eventually, pro-CUP Grand Vizier Said Pasha had to acquiesce to the Savior Officers demands, and the parliament was dissolved with a new election to take place in autumn of 1912. It was no longer safe for Unionists to be in the open, and it was plausible that the CUP would be banned by the government. Talaat had to once again lay low, hiding with Midhat Şükrü, Hasan Tahsin, and Cemal Azmi in Tahsin's brother-in-law's house. By 1912 Talaat definitely abandoned the belief that constitutionalism and rule of law could unite the multi-ethnic and fragmented "Ottoman nation", which was the original "raison d'être" of the Young Turks, and turned to more radical politics. He and other high ranking CUP leaders organized and gave speeches in a pro-war rally against the Balkan nations in Sultanahmet Square before the Balkan Wars broke out.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: The Savior Officer-backed government of Ahmed Muhtar Pasha fell soon after when the Balkan League achieved decisive victory over the Ottoman Empire in the First Balkan War. Talaat volunteered for the war, but was dismissed from the army for distributing political propaganda. The CUP's headquarters in Salonika had to be relocated to Constantinople when the city fell to Greece, while his hometown of Adrianople was besieged by the Bulgarians. The imperial capital swelled with Rumelian Muslims refugees that were expelled from the Balkans. The scheduled election had to be canceled, and Kâmil Pasha's government started peace negotiations with the Balkan League in December. Following rumors that the government was willing to surrender Adrianople which was still under siege, Talaat and Enver began plotting a coup. The coup launched on 23 January 1913, known as the Raid on the Sublime Porte, succeeded in overthrowing the government, with Kâmil Pasha and his cabinet resigning for Mahmud Şevket Pasha's national unity government which this time included the CUP, and resumed fighting. Talaat and Enver urged Şevket Pasha to accept the Grand Vezierate, but mutual distrust between the generalissimo and the committee meant Talaat only came back as deputy Interior Minister, so he employed "komiteci" politics to stay influential. He urged for the Empire to continue fighting in the First Balkan War to relieve Adrianople, as well as order the arrests against leading Freedom and Accord members and journalists in the subsequent state of emergency. However, with demands from the great powers to surrender Adrianople and a deteriorating military situation, Şevket Pasha and the CUP finally acknowledged defeat.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: Once Şevket Pasha was out of the picture due to his assassination on 12 July 1913, the CUP established a de facto one-party state in the Ottoman Empire. Talaat returned as interior minister in Said Halim Pasha's cabinet. He kept this post until the CUP's fall from power following the Ottoman Empire's surrender in World War I in 1918. Talaat, with Enver and commandant Ahmet Cemal, formed a group later known as the Three Pashas. These men were a triumvirate that ran the Ottoman government until the end of World War I in October 1918. However historian Hans-Lukas Kieser asserts that this state of rule by triumvirate was accurate for only the years 1913–1914, and thereafter Talaat was the sole dictator of the Ottoman Empire, especially once he became Grand Vizier in 1917. Erik Jan Zürcher instead asserts a rule of diarchy, with Talaat leader of the civilian government and Enver the military, especially after Cemal Pasha's dispatch to Syria. Kieser asserts his Ottoman Empire was not a totalitarian state, but a balance of many factions maintained through kickbacks and corruption. Strong governors had much maneuverability to themselves, provided they execute Talaat and the central committee's new Turkification programmes.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: That summer came Bulgaria's attack on Greece and Serbia, starting the Second Balkan War. Talaat was able to procure an important loan from the Régie to ensure success in retaking Adrianople. The Ottomans soon joined the war, retaking the city even though the great powers had forced the Ottomans to surrender Adrianople only months earlier. Talaat symbolically joined the army and took part in the recapture. This was a failure of diplomacy by the great powers; for Talaat and the committee, this moment made them learn to not take international diplomacy seriously if the situation on the ground reflected otherwise. He led the negotiations with Bulgaria in the Constantinople conference, which resulted in a population exchange and formalizing Ottoman reassertion of sovereignty over Adrianople. Talaat would negotiate another peace with Greece too. This peace was very tenuous however, as Talaat, Enver Pasha, and Mahmud Celal (Bayar), secretary of the local CUP branch, organized the deportations of Rûm in the Smyrna Vilayet, which almost started a war with Greece. Talaat was confronted by the sultan when the sultan learned of the deportations , but insisted that the stories of persecution of Rûm were fabricated by the Empire's enemies.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: Between 1911 and 1914 the Ottoman Empire negotiated with the European powers and the ARF on reform in the East. He attended multiple meetings with leading Armenian politicians Krikor Zohrab, Karekin Pastermadjian, , and Vartkes Serengülian, however lack of trust between the old allies of the committee and the ARF and growing radicalism within the CUP slowed negotiations. Under overwhelming diplomatic pressure, a reform package was finally produced in December 1914, but it would be soon terminated under wartime conditions and an about-face by the committee on the Armenian question. On 6 September, Talaat Pasha sent a telegram to the governors of Hüdâvendigâr (Bursa), İzmit, Canik, Adrianople, Adana, Aleppo, Erzurum, Bitlis, Van, Sivas, Mamuretülaziz (Elazığ), and Diyarbekir to prepare for the arrests of Ottoman Armenian citizens. Armenians and Assyrians within the Empire began organising themselves into militias to protect themselves as the Special Organisation, a Unionist paramilitary, started harassing them.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: Throughout the Second Constitutional Era, the Ottoman Empire was diplomatically isolated, which it paid for dearly through territorial losses in the Balkans. Therefore, on 9 May, Talaat and Ahmet İzzet Pasha met with Czar Nicholas II and Sergei Sazanov to propose an alliance with Russia, which ended up falling through. Talaat, Enver, and Halil were successful in securing a secret alliance with Germany during the July Crisis. Following the sale of the "Goeben" and "Breslau" to the Ottoman Empire, the three convinced Cemal Pasha to agree to a naval strike against Russia. The resulting declarations of war saw many resign from the government, including Cavid, which saddened Talaat. He became finance minister in Cavid's place.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: With the expectation that the new war would free the Empire of its constraints on its sovereignty by the great powers, Talaat went ahead with accomplishing major goals of the CUP; unilaterally abolishing the centuries-old Capitulations, prohibiting foreign postal services, terminating Lebanon's autonomy, and suspending the reform package for the Eastern Anatolian provinces that had been in effect for just seven months. This unilateral action prompted a joyous rally in Sultanahmet Square.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: Talaat and his committee hoped to save the Ottoman Empire by quickly and decisively establishing Turan by capitalizing on the declaration of Jihad. But Enver Pasha's decisive defeat in Sarikamish and Cemal Pasha's failure to take Suez meant Talaat had to come to terms with the reality on the ground, which made him fall into a depression. He worked to keep morale afloat on the crumbling Caucasian front by relaying false information of successes in wars in the Balkans which weren't even happening.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: A report presented to Talaat and Cevdet Bey (governor of Van Vilayet) by ARF members Arshak Vramian and Vahan Papazian on atrocities committed by the Special Organisation against Armenians in Van created more friction between the two organisations. However, the Unionists were still not yet confident enough to purge Armenians from politics or pursue policies of ethnic engineering. Victory of the defence of the Bosphorus on 18 March though galvanized Talaat, and he decided to take action by starting the machinations of the destruction of Christian minorities in the Ottoman Empire.On 24 April 1915, Talaat Pasha issued an to close all Armenian political organizations operating within the Ottoman Empire and arrest Armenians connected to them, justifying the action by stating that the organizations were controlled from outside the empire, were inciting upheavals behind the Ottoman lines, and were cooperating with Russian forces. This order resulted in the arrest on the night of 24–25 April 1915 of 235 to 270 Armenian community leaders in Constantinople, including Dashnak and Hunchak politicians, clergymen, physicians, authors, journalists, lawyers, and teachers, the majority of whom were eventually murdered, including his colleagues Zohrab and Serengülian. Although the mass killings of Armenian civilians had begun in Van several weeks earlier, these mass arrests in Constantinople are considered by many commentators to be the start of the Armenian genocide.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: He then issued the order for the Tehcir Law of 1 June 1915 to 8 February 1916 that allowed for the mass deportation of Armenians, a principal means of carrying out what is now recognized as a genocide against Armenians. The deportees did not receive any humanitarian assistance and there is no evidence that the Ottoman government provided the extensive facilities and supplies that would have been necessary to sustain the life of hundreds of thousands of Armenian deportees during their forced march to the Syrian Desert or after. Meanwhile, the deportees were subject to periodic rape and massacre. Talaat, who was a telegraph operator from a young age, had installed a telegraph machine in his own home and sent "sensitive" telegrams during the course of the deportations. This was confirmed by his wife Hayriye, who stated that she often saw him using it to give direct orders to what she believed were provincial governors.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: Numerous diplomats and notable figures confronted Talaat Pasha over the deportations and news of massacres. He had several conversations with the United States ambassador, Henry Morgenthau, Sr. On 2 August 1915 Talaat told him that "that our Armenian policy is absolutely fixed and that nothing can change it. We will not have the Armenians anywhere in Anatolia. They can live in the desert but nowhere else." In another exchange, he demanded from Morgenthau the list of the holders of American insurance policies belonging to Armenians in an effort to appropriate the funds to the state. Morgenthau refused. Talaat told him in a later conversation that:


title: Talaat Pasha

text: Talaat believed Armenian deportation avenged the Muslim expulsions of the Balkan Wars, and resettled Muhacir in abandoned Armenian property.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: The Assyrian Christian community was also targeted by the Unionist government in what is now known as the Seyfo. Talaat ordered the governor of Van to remove the Assyrian population in Hakkâri, leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands, however this anti-Assyrian policy couldn't be implemented nationally.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: Meanwhile, deportations of the Rûm were put on hold as Germany wished for a Greek ally or neutrality, however for the sake of their alliance, German reaction to the deportations of Armenians was muted. The participation of the Ottoman Empire as an ally against the Entente powers was crucial to German grand strategy in the war, and good relations were needed. Following Russian breakthrough in the Caucasus and signs that Greece would side with the Allied powers after all, the CUP was finally able to resume operations against the Greeks of the empire, and Talaat ordered the deportation of the Pontus Greeks of the Black Sea coast.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: Talaat was also a leading force in the Turkification and deportation of Kurds. In May 1916 he mandated Kurds be deported to the western region of Anatolia, and prohibited the resettlement of Kurds to the south in order to prevent Kurds from becoming Arabized. He was a major force behind the policies regarding the resettlement of Kurds and wanted to be informed of whether the Kurds would really be turkified or not and how they got along with the Turkish inhabitants in the areas where they had been resettled too. Talaat outlined that nowhere in the Empire's vilayets should the Kurdish population be more than 5%. To that end, Balkan Muslim and Turkish refugees were prioritised to be resettled in Urfa, Maraş, and Antep, while some Kurds were deported to Central Anatolia. Kurds were also supposed to be resettled in abandoned Armenian property, however negligence by resettlement authorities still resulted in the deaths of many Kurds by famine.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: Approximately 1.7 million Christians (including 200,000 Greeks and 100,000 Lebanese Christians and Druze) died during World War I and the total Ottoman war deaths of some 3.7 million amounted to 14% of the prewar population. According to the Ottoman Interior Ministry, the population of Ottoman Armenians decreased to 284,000 from 1,256,000.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: On 4 February 1917, Talaat finally replaced Said Halim Pasha (a puppet of the committee anyway) by becoming the Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire, while also retaining the Ministry of the Interior. This made him the first member of parliament to become a Prime Minister in Ottoman (and Turkish) history. This move completed the Unionist party-state, as he was both Grand Vizier and chairman of the Union and Progress Party.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: On 15 February, Talaat Pasha gave a speech to parliament of his program, expressing his will to reform to bring Ottoman society on par with European civilization. Like first president of the succeeding republic, Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk), would later say similarly, Talaat Pasha believed that there was "only one civilization in the world [Europe], [and that Turkey] to be saved, must be joined to civilization." Another point brought up was cracking down on corruption, much of which he was responsible for and never followed through with.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: Many social reforms were introduced, including modernization of the calendar, employment of women as nurses, charitable organizations, in army shops, and in labor battalions behind the front and new faculties in Istanbul University for architecture, arts, and music. One particular piece of controversial social reform was the 1917 "Temporal Family Law" which was a significant advance in women's rights and secularism in Ottoman matrimonial law. When it came to religious reform, the Quran was translated into (Ottoman) Turkish, and even the call to prayer was held in Turkish in a few select mosques in the capital. These pre-Kemalist secularisation and modernisation reforms paved the way for further and more far reaching reforms by Atatürk's regime.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: During this time tensions flared between Talaat and Enver. Enver won out in a conflict over prioritizing rationing in favor of the army. In response Talaat established the Ministry of Rationing, and appointed as its head. In a play of "zugzwang" after the Balfour Declaration, Talaat reproached with the Zionist movement, promising to open up Jewish immigration to Jerusalem. This promise did not reflect ground conditions, as his first year as Grand Vizier saw the loss of Jerusalem and Baghdad.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: However territorial loss in the south coincided with diplomatic success with the signing of the Brest-Litovsk treaty in March 1918, with Talaat himself negotiating for the Ottoman Empire, resulting in the return of Kars, Batumi, and Ardahan to Ottoman rule after their loss forty years ago. Another treaty with the Caucasian states signed in Batum strengthened the Ottoman's position in a future drive on Baku, which was accomplished by September. Spring 1918 was the zenith of Unionist power and Talaat Pasha's political career, followed by a slow realization of defeat in WWI over the summer. In a conversation with Cavid, Talaat felt trapped between three "fires": Enver Pasha, who was becoming increasingly erratic and overly optimistic after the breakthrough in the Caucasus; the new sultan Mehmed VI, an anti-Unionist who was more assertive than his deceased half brother, and the Allied armies advancing from the West and the South. In October 1918, the British defeated both Ottoman armies they faced in the Palestinian front. Simultaneously on the Macedonian front, Bulgaria capitulated to the allies, leaving no sufficient forces to check an advance on the Ottoman capital. With defeat certain (and growing unrest from years of unfettered corruption) Talaat Pasha announced his intention to resign on 8 October 1918 and lead a caretaker government for a few more days. Ahmed İzzet Pasha became the new Grand Vizier and signed the Armistice of Mudros with the Allies, ending hostilities in the Middle East on 30 October.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: Talaat Pasha delivered a farewell speech in the last CUP congress on 1 November, where it was decided to dissolve the party. With Enver, Cemal, Nazım, Şakir, Azmi, and Osman Bedri, he fled the Ottoman capital on a German torpedo boat that night where they landed in Sevastopol, Crimea and scattered from there. Before escaping the Ottoman Empire, he wrote a letter to İzzet Pasha promising his return to the country. Public opinion was shocked by the departure of Talaat Pasha, even though he had been known to turn a blind eye on corrupt ministers appointed because of their associations with the CUP.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: Talaat, Nazım, and Şakir wound up in Berlin on 10 November, the day after Kaiser Wilhelm II fled the city due to the November Revolution. The new chancellor, Friedrich Ebert of the SPD, signed the documents secretly allowing Talaat asylum in Germany, where he and Nazım settled in a flat at Hardenbergerstraße 4 (Ernst-Reuter Square), Charlottenburg, under the pseudonym "Ali Sâî Bey". Next to his apartment he founded the "Oriental Club" (Şark Kulübesi), where anti-Entente Muslims and European activists met. Though he was a wanted man in the Ottoman Empire and Britain, Talaat managed to attend the Socialist International in the Netherlands. He was also able to travel to Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, and Denmark. In all of these visits, he lobbied against the new Allied world-order, specifically against their designs on the Ottoman Empire. Behind bars for his role in the Sparticist uprising, Karl Radek reconnected Talaat (their previous encounter being on opposite sides of the negotiating table at Brest) who frequently visited him at Moabit prison. Despite his mobility, his exile was one of practical poverty. At one point wishing to start a newspaper, he didn't have enough money to do so, so he wrote his memoirs instead.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: Questioned whether he would return and join the Turkish nationalist movement, Talaat declined, arguing that Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk) is now the new leader. He held regular correspondences with Mustafa Kemal from Berlin. Unlike Enver, Kemal had friendly relations with Talaat, with Kemal addressing Talaat as his "brother" in their communiques. Even though he effectively endorsing Mustafa Kemal as his "successor", from Berlin Talaat was able to directly issue orders to Turkish commanders in the opening stages of the Turkish War of Independence. He also kept in contact with Tevfik Rüştü (Aras), Halide Edip (Adıvar), Celal (Bayar), and Nuri (Conker). The Ankara government sent the ambassadors Bekir Sami (Kunduh) and to meet with Talaat and support his network that assisted the Turkish nationalist movement from abroad. Through these efforts, he was able to cobble together a disparate coalition of Turkish nationalists, German nationalists, and Bolsheviks.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: After the failure of the Kapp Putsch Talaat offered comments in the subsequent press conference, criticizing the putschists for their dilettantism, exclaiming "A putsch without a cabinet ready at hand was just childish."


title: Talaat Pasha

text: The British government exerted diplomatic pressure on the Ottoman Porte and brought to trial the Ottoman leaders who had held positions of responsibility between 1914 and 1918 for having perpetrated the Armenian genocide. İzzet Pasha was pressured early on by the British to arrest Talaat, but he didn't order his arrest nor order his extradition from Germany until a Constantinople court demanded it. With the allied occupation of Constantinople, İzzet Pasha resigned. Ahmet Tevfik Pasha took the position of grand vizier the same day that Royal Navy ships entered the Golden Horn. Talaat's remaining property was confiscated during Tevfik Pasha's premiership, which lasted until 4 March 1919. He was replaced by Damat Ferid Pasha, whose first order was the arrest of leading members of Union and Progress. Those who were caught were put under arrest at the Bekirağa division and were subsequently exiled to Malta. Courts-martials were then organized to punish the CUP for the empire's ill-conceived involvement in World War I.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: By January 1919, a report to Sultan Mehmed VI accused over 130 suspects, most of whom were high officials. The indictment accused the main defendants, including Talaat, of being "mired in an unending chain of bloodthirstiness, plunder and abuses". They were accused of deliberately engineering Turkey's entry into the war "by a recourse to a number of vile tricks and deceitful means". They were also accused of "the massacre and destruction of the Armenians" and of trying to "pile up fortunes for themselves" through "the pillage and plunder" of their possessions. The indictment alleged that "The massacre and destruction of the Armenians were the result of decisions by the Central Committee of Ittihadd". The court released its verdict on 5 July 1919: Talaat's title of Pasha was stripped, and he, Enver, Cemal, Nazım, and Şakir were condemned to death in absentia.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: The British government continued to monitor Talaat's activities after the war. The British government had intelligence reports indicating that he had gone to Germany, and the British High Commissioner pressured Ferid Pasha and the Sublime Porte to request that Germany extradite him to the Ottoman Empire. Germany was well aware of Talaat's presence but refused to surrender him.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: The last official interview Talaat granted was to Aubrey Herbert, a British intelligence agent. During this interview, Talaat maintained at several points that the CUP had always sought British friendship and advice, but claimed that Britain had never replied to such overtures in any meaningful way.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: With most CUP leaders in exile, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation organized a plot to assassinate the perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide, known as Operation Nemesis. On 15 March 1921 Talaat was assassinated with a single bullet as he came out of his Hardenbergstraße flat to purchase a pair of gloves. His assassin was a Dashnak member from Erzurum named Soghomon Tehlirian, whose entire family was killed during the genocide. Tehlirian admitted to the shooting, but, after a cursory two-day trial, he was found innocent by a German court on grounds of temporary insanity due to the traumatic experience he had gone through during the genocide. Immediately after the assassination, Nazım and Şakir, who were also staying in the area, received police protection. Şakir would be assassinated a year later by a Dashnak.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: Initially, Talaat's friends hoped he could be buried in Anatolia, but neither the Ottoman government in Constantinople nor the Turkish nationalist movement in Ankara wanted the body; it would be a political liability to associate themselves with the man considered the worst criminal of World War I. Invitations from Hayriye and the Orient Club were sent to Talaat's funeral, and on 19 March, he was buried in the Alter St.-Matthäus-Kirchhof in a well-attended ceremony. At 11:00 a.m., prayers led by the imam of the Turkish embassy, Şükri Bey, were held at Talaat's apartment. Afterwards, a large procession accompanied the coffin to Matthäus, where he was interred. Many prominent Germans paid their respects, including former foreign ministers Richard von Kühlmann and Arthur Zimmermann, along with the former head of Deutsche Bank, the ex-director of the Baghdad railway, several military personnel who had served in the Ottoman Empire during the war and August von Platen-Hallermünde, attending on behalf of the exiled Kaiser Wilhelm II. The German foreign office sent a wreath with a ribbon saying, "To a great statesman and a faithful friend." Şakir, barely able to maintain his composure, read a funeral oration while the coffin was lowered into the grave, covered in an Ottoman flag. He asserted the assassination was "the consequence of imperialist politics against the Islamic nations". A house and a martyr's pension was granted to Talaat's family with a law passed by the Grand National Assembly in 1926.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: During World War II, at the request of the Prime Minister of Turkey, Şükrü Saracoğlu, Talaat's remains were disinterred from Germany and transported to Turkey, where he received a state funeral on 25 February 1943, attended by German ambassador Franz von Papen, Ahmet Emin Yalman, and Saracoğlu. With this gesture, Adolf Hitler hoped to secure Turkish support for the Axis. Talaat's friend Hüseyin Cahit (Yalçın) gave the funeral oration as he was buried at the Monument of Liberty, originally dedicated to those who died during the 31 March Incident. His return to Turkey was welcomed by Turkish society.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: Many of Talaat's contemporaries wrote of his charm but also of a melancholy spirit. Some occasionally noticed his naivety and others commented on his intimidation skills.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: Mehmed Cavid wrote of the fall of Talaat and the CUP into a delusional "all or nothing" approach for salvation by war via the July Crisis. Krikor Zohrab wrote "[Talaat was] the foremost partisan of war" for "whom [he] and his disciples, this war was "tout ou rien" [all or nothing]". Talaat's intentional falsehoods were noted by his contemporaries, and even some of his close friends considered him a liar.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: Alfred Nossig described Talaat as "The strongest man of Young Turkey", a "man of will", a "unique and outstanding talent of statesmanship" who dominates "the whole state machine". Whereas "the sultan is a constitutional ruler, Talaat is an autocratic sultan." He called him "the Turkish Bismarck" upon his becoming Grand Vizier, a title which German journalist and companion Ernst Jäckh affirmed. Others drew similarities between Talaat and some of his contemporaries, such as Greek prime minister Eliftherios Venizelos and de facto co-dictator of Germany General Erich Ludendorff.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: Talaat married Hayriye Hanım (b. 1895) (later known as Hayriye Talat Bafralı), an Albanian girl from Yanya (Ioannina) on 19 March 1910. Talaat met Hayriye in 1909, while she was studying in the French girls' Lycée Notre Dame de Sion in Constantinople. He learned to speak French in the Israelite School at Salonika, and picked up Greek from his wife. They learned in 1911 that they were not able to have children, but they adopted an orphan, Münevver, as their daughter. Hayriye joined Talaat in Berlin in spring 1920 and returned to Turkey after her husband's assassination. She remarried with Hamdi Bafralı in 1946, and they had two sons. Hayriye died in İstanbul on 15 January 1983.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: Her granddaughter, Ayşegül Bafralı, provided Murat Bardakçı documents from the interior ministry that Hayriye stored away containing data on Armenian deportatation and resettlement of Muhacirs in their place. Bardakçı went on to publish these documents, and an interview with Hayriye 27 years later, in "The Remaining Documents of Talaat Pasha".


title: Talaat Pasha

text: Talaat Pasha was a member of the Bektashi order and a 33° freemason and first became a member of the Salonica Freemason Lodge Macedonia Risorta in 1903 during his time in the Ottoman Balkans. He was also the first Grand Master of the society. He used both organizations as channels for his anti-Hamidian activism, as they were inaccessible for the spies of Yıldız Palace.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: In his posthumously published memoirs, he propagated a "national myth – that all Ottoman Armenians were rebels, betrayers, secessionists, and that they were responsible for the massacres that took place in 1915-1916". The memoirs were published many times especially when the Armenian genocide was under discussion.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: Biographer Hans-Lukas Kieser states that many Jews engaged in "open propaganda for him and CUP causes" despite Talaat's involvement in genocide, and that this continued even after his death into the late twentieth century.


title: Talaat Pasha

text: Talaat Pasha is viewed as a "great statesman, skillful revolutionary, and farsighted founding father" in Turkey, where many schools, streets, and mosques are named after him. In Turkey, Talaat and the rest of the Three Pashas are only criticized for causing the Ottoman Empire's entry into World War I and its subsequent partitioning by the Allies. Mustafa Kemal criticized Talaat and his colleagues for their policies during and immediately prior to the First World War.


title: Dentist

text: A dentist, also known as a dental surgeon, is a health care professional who specializes in dentistry (the diagnosis, prevention, management, and treatment of diseases and conditions of the oral cavity and other aspects of the craniofacial complex including the temporomandibular joint). The dentist's supporting team aids in providing oral health services. The dental team includes dental assistants, dental hygienists, dental technicians, and sometimes dental therapists.


title: Dentist

text: In China as well as France, the first people to perform dentistry were barbers. They have been categorized into 2 distinct groups: guild of barbers and lay barbers. The first group, the Guild of Barbers, was created to distinguish more educated and qualified dental surgeons from lay barbers. Guild barbers were trained to do complex surgeries. The second group, the lay barbers, were qualified to perform regular hygienic services such as shaving and tooth extraction as well as basic surgery. However, in 1400, France made decrees prohibiting lay barbers from practicing all types of surgery. In Germany as well as France from 1530 to 1575 publications completely devoted to dentistry were being published. Ambroise Paré, often known as the Father of Surgery, published his own work about the proper maintenance and treatment of teeth. Ambroise Paré was a French barber surgeon who performed dental care for multiple French monarchs. He is often credited with having raised the status of barber surgeons.


title: Dentist

text: Pierre Fauchard of France is often referred to as the "father of modern dentistry" for being the first to publish a scientific textbook (1728) on the techniques and practices of dentistry. Over time, trained dentists immigrated from Europe to the Americas to practice dentistry, and by 1760, America had its own native born practicing dentists. Newspapers were used at the time to advertise and promote dental services. In America from 1768 to 1770 the first application of dentistry to verify forensic cases was being pioneered; this was called forensic dentistry. With the rise of dentists, there was also the rise of new methods to improve the quality of dentistry. These new methods included the spinning wheel to rotate a drill and chairs made specifically for dental patients.


title: Dentist

text: In the 1840s the world's first dental school and national dental organization were established. Along with the first dental school came the establishment of the Doctor of Dental Surgery degree, often referred to as a DDS degree. In response to the rise in new dentists as well as dentistry techniques, the first dental practice act was established to regulate dentistry. In the United States, the First Dental Practice Act required dentists to pass each specific state medical board exam in order to practice dentistry in that particular state. However, because the dental act was rarely enforced, some dentists did not obey the act. From 1846 to 1855 new dental techniques were being invented such as the use of ester anesthesia for surgery, and the cohesive gold foil method which enabled gold to be applied to a cavity. The American Dental Association was established in 1859 after a meeting with 26 dentists. Around 1867, the first university-associated dental school was established, Harvard Dental School. Lucy Hobbs Taylor was the first woman to earn a dental degree.


title: Dentist

text: In the 1880s, tube toothpaste was created which replaced the original forms of powder or liquid toothpaste. New dental boards, such as the National Association of Dental Examiners, were created to establish standards and uniformity among dentists. In 1887 the first dental laboratory was established; dental laboratories are used to create dentures and crowns that are specific to each patient. In 1895 the dental X-ray was discovered by a German physicist, Wilhelm Röntgen.


title: Dentist

text: In the 20th century, new dental techniques and technology were invented such as the porcelain crowns (1903), Novocain (a local anesthetic) 1905, precision cast fillings (1907), nylon toothbrushes (1938), water fluoridation (1945), fluoride toothpaste (1950), air driven dental tools (1957), lasers (1960), electric toothbrushes (1960), and home tooth bleaching kits (1989) were invented. Inventions such as the air driven dental tools ushered in a new high-speed dentistry.


title: Dentist

text: By nature of their general training, a licensed dentist can carry out most dental treatments such as restorative (dental restorations, crowns, bridges), orthodontics (braces), prosthodontic (dentures, crown/bridge), endodontic (root canal) therapy, periodontal (gum) therapy, and oral surgery (extraction of teeth), as well as performing examinations, taking radiographs (x-rays) and diagnosis. Additionally, dentists can further engage in oral surgery procedures such as dental implant placement. Dentists can also prescribe medications such as antibiotics, fluorides, pain killers, local anesthetics, sedatives/hypnotics and any other medications that serve in the treatment of the various conditions that arise in the head and neck.


title: Dentist

text: All DDS and DMD degree holders are legally qualified to perform a number of more complex procedures such as gingival grafts, bone grafting, sinus lifts, and implants, as well as a range of more invasive oral and maxillofacial surgery procedures, though many choose to pursue residencies or other post-doctoral education to augment their abilities. A few select procedures, such as the administration of General anesthesia, legally require postdoctoral training in the US. While many oral diseases are unique and self-limiting, poor conditions in the oral cavity can lead to poor general health and vice versa; notably, there is a significant link between periodontal and cardiovascular disease. Conditions in the oral cavity may also be indicative of other systemic diseases such as osteoporosis, diabetes, AIDS, and various blood diseases, including malignancies and lymphoma.


title: Dentist

text: Several studies have suggested that dentists and dental students are at high risk of burnout. During burnout, dentists experience exhaustion, alienate from work and perform less efficiently. A systemic study identified risk factors associated with this condition such as practitioner's young age, personality type, gender, the status of education, high job strain and/or working hours, and the burden of clinical degrees requisites. The authors of this study concluded that intervention programs at an early stage during the undergraduate level may provide practitioners with a good strategy to prepare for / cope with this condition.


title: Dentist

text: Depending on the country, all dentists are required to register with their national or local health board, regulators, and professional indemnity insurance, in order to practice dentistry. In the UK, dentists are required to register with the General Dental Council. In Australia, it is the Dental Board of Australia, while in the United States, dentists are registered according to the individual state board. The main role of a dental regulator is to protect the public by ensuring only qualified dental practitioners are registered, handle any complaints or misconduct, and develop national guidelines and standards for dental practitioners to follow.


title: Dentist

text: For many countries, after satisfactory completion of post-graduate training, dental specialists are required to join a specialist board or list, in order to use the title 'specialist'.


title: Dentist

text: In the US, dental specialties are recognized by the American Dental Association (ADA) or the American Board of Dental Specialties (ABDS) Currently, the ADA lists twelve dental specialties, who are recognized by the National Commission on Recognition of Dental Specialties and Certifying Boards, while the ABDS recognizes four dental specialty boards.


title: Dentist

text: Specialists in these fields are designated "registrable" (in the United States, "board eligible") and warrant exclusive titles such as dentist anesthesiologist, orthodontist, oral and maxillofacial surgeon, endodontist, pediatric dentist, periodontist, or prosthodontist upon satisfying certain local accreditation requirements (U.S., "Board Certified")


title: Dentist

text: In the UK, the specialties are recognized by the General Dental Council (GDC). Currently the GDC lists 13 different dental specialties:


title: Dentist

text: European Union legislation recognizes two dental specialities: Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery (A degree in dentistry and medicine being compulsory) and Orthodontics.


title: Love Hurts

text: "Love Hurts" is a song written and composed by the American songwriter Boudleaux Bryant. First recorded by the Everly Brothers in July 1960, the song is most well known from the 1974 international hit version by Scottish hard rock band Nazareth and 1975 Top 5 hit in the UK by English singer Jim Capaldi.


title: Love Hurts

text: The song was introduced in October 1960 as an album track on "A Date with The Everly Brothers" but was never released as a single (A-side or B-side) by the Everlys. Due to a falling out with their manager and publisher Wesley Rose they were prevented from issuing it as a single, though it had been meant for them. It was after the quarrel was settled in 1964 that they rerecorded it for the 1965 album Rock 'n' Soul.


title: Love Hurts

text: The first hit version of the song is by Roy Orbison, who earned Australian radio play, hitting the Top Five of that country's singles charts in 1961.


title: Love Hurts

text: A recording by Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons is included on Parsons' posthumously released "Grievous Angel" album. After Parsons' 1973 death, Harris made the song a staple of her repertoire and has included it in her concert setlists from the 1970s to the present. Harris has since re-recorded the song twice.


title: Love Hurts

text: The most successful recording of the song is by Scottish hard rock band, Nazareth, who took the song to the U.S. Top 10 in 1975 and hit No. 1 in Norway and the Netherlands.


title: Love Hurts

text: In the UK, the most successful version of the song is by former Traffic member, Jim Capaldi, who took it to No. 4 in the charts in November 1975 during an 11-week run.


title: Love Hurts

text: The song was also covered by Cher in 1975 for her album, "Stars"; Cher re-recorded the song in 1991 for her album of the same name.


title: Love Hurts

text: Heart offers a live unplugged rendition on their 1995 live album, "The Road Home", also included on the album's 1995 VHS concert video and later on its 2003 DVD reissue.


title: Love Hurts

text: Rod Stewart recorded the song in 2006 for his album, "Still the Same... Great Rock Classics of Our Time", which was No. 1 on the "Billboard" 200 chart. Jazz guitarist Julian Lage performs the song on his 2019 album of the same name.


title: Love Hurts

text: The bluegrass version appearing in both the "Deadpool 2" "Super Duper Cut" and the "Once Upon A Deadpool" DVD during the montages featuring the titular character's suicide attempts following Vanessa's death, was first recorded by The Osborne Brothers for their 1977 release, "From Rocky Top to Muddy Bottom: The Songs of Boudleaux & Felice Bryant".


title: Love Hurts

text: Roy Orbison covered "Love Hurts" in 1961 and issued it as the B-side to "Running Scared." While "Running Scared" was an international hit, the B-side only picked up significant airplay in Australia. Consequently, chart figures for Australia show "Running Scared"/"Love Hurts" as a double A-Side, both sides peaking at No. 5. This makes Orbison's recording of "Love Hurts" the first version to be a hit.


title: Love Hurts

text: Performed as a power ballad, the Nazareth version is the most popular version of the song and the only rendition of "Love Hurts" to become a hit single in the United States, reaching No. 8 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 in early 1976. "Billboard" ranked it as the No. 23 song for 1976. As part of the "Hot Tracks (EP)" it also reached No. 15 in the UK in 1977. Nazareth's version was an international hit, peaking at No. 1 in Canada, the Netherlands, Belgium, South Africa and Norway. The Nazareth single was so successful in Norway that it charted for 61 weeks on the Norwegian charts (VG-lista Top 10), including 14 weeks at No. 1, making it the top single of all time in that country.


title: Love Hurts

text: A later recording by Nazareth, featuring the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, peaked at No. 89 in Germany.


title: Love Hurts

text: The lyrics of the song were changed for Nazareth's 1975 recording, where the original line "love is like a stove/it burns you when it's hot" was changed to "love is like a flame/it burns you when it's hot".


title: Love Hurts

text: The song was used in an advertisement for Esurance, and also in a series of advertisements by Zurich.


title: Love Hurts

text: The song has been featured in several video games and films, including "Click", "The Doors", "Wayne's World", "Josie and the Pussycats", "Sid and Nancy", "This Is Spinal Tap", "Airheads", "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure", "Dude, Where's My Car?", "Empire Records", "High Fidelity", "Dazed and Confused", "Rock Star", "The Rocker", "The Full Monty", "Napoleon Dynamite", "Monkeybone", "Idiocracy", "Speed", "Lethal Weapon 4", "Exit Wounds", "", "Guitar Hero II", "Rock Band 3", "Barnyard", "Flushed Away", "Halloween", "Detroit Rock City", "Chicken Little", and "Toy Story 3".


title: Love Hurts

text: Jim Capaldi reached number 4 in the UK charts with his interpretation of "Love Hurts" in November 1975, which was to prove his highest-charting UK single. Described by "Rolling Stone" as having "a sense of pain very different from Roy Orbison's." the single also charted in the US, Germany, and Sweden.


title: Love Hurts

text: American singer Cher recorded her first version in 1975 for the album "Stars" but did not release this version as a single. She later recorded a second version in 1991 for her album of the same name. This version was a cover of Nazareth's version. The single became a minor hit in the UK in December 1991.


title: Peggy Gou

text: Peggy Gou is a South Korean DJ and record producer based in Germany. She has released seven EPs on record labels including Ninja Tune and Phonica. In 2019, she launched her own independent record label, Gudu Records, and released a DJ-Kicks compilation, "", on !k7 Records.


title: Peggy Gou

text: Peggy Gou was born Kim Min-ji, in Incheon, South Korea, on 3 July 1991. Her father, Kim Chang-yong, is a former journalist, a professor of mass communication at Inje University and standing commissioner of Korea Communications Commission. Gou began classical piano lessons at age 8. At age 14, her parents sent her to London, England to study English. She moved back to Korea when she was 18 years old, but six months later she returned to London to study fashion at the London College of Fashion. After graduating, she worked as the London correspondent editor for Harper's Bazaar Korea, and then moved to Berlin, Germany.


title: Peggy Gou

text: Gou was taught to DJ in 2009 by her friend from Korea. She had her first gig in Cirque Le Soir, Soho, and later performed weekly at The Book Club, East London. In 2013, she learned to use Ableton Live and began to create her own tracks. Her first track, "Hungboo", was completed in 2014. "Hungboo" was named for the hero of a Korean fairy tale. She played the track in Korea for the first time at the 2016 Style Icon Awards opening show, featuring award-winning actor Yoo Ah-in in a visual art video.


title: Peggy Gou

text: Gou made her recording debut in January 2016 on Radio Slave's Rekids label with "The Art of War Part 1", featuring a remix from Galcher Lustwerk. She next released four EPs including "Seek for Maktoop", with hit track "It Makes You Forget (Itgehane)". "Maktoop" was named after the Arabic word "maktoob", the equivalent to "written" or "destiny". This was followed by EPs "Once" and "Han Jan" in 2018, and "Moment" in April 2019. "Once" is the first time she has sung on a record.


title: Peggy Gou

text: Gou embarked on her first North American tour and made a Boiler Room debut in NYC in 2017. She became the first Korean DJ to play in Berlin's nightclub Berghain. She plays more than one hundred live gigs in a year and has performed alongside the likes of Moodymann, The Blessed Madonna and DJ Koze. She has since had gigs in the worldwide festival sets at Coachella, Glastonbury, Sonus in Croatia, Amsterdam's Dekmantel, London's Printworks, Ibiza, Amsterdam Dance Event, Primavera Sound in Portugal, Barcelona's Sónar, as well as Virgil Abloh's Off-White fashion show among others. In an Interview with "Vice", she stated that she preferred to stay out of politics and would just perform for the people who want to hear her music.


title: Peggy Gou

text: Gou released her music on record labels Ninja Tune and Phonica in 2018. That same year, "It Makes You Forget (Itgehane)" won Best Track at the AIM Independent Music Awards. "It Makes You Forget (Itgehane)" was also listed on the tracklist for FIFA 2019.


title: Peggy Gou

text: In 2019, Forbes named Gou as one of the Asian leaders, pioneers and entrepreneurs under age 30. She launched her own fashion label KIRIN ("giraffe" in Korean), supported by Virgil Abloh, under the New Guards Group in February, followed by her own independent record label, Gudu Records (gudu means "shoes" in Korean) in March. She has stated that she launched Gudu to give artists starting out better opportunities and treatment than she received at the beginning of her career. She next released "", the 69th installment of !K7's DJ-Kicks mix compilation in June. The album became her first Billboard chart appearance, reaching 9th in Dance/Electronic Album Sales, and the second compilation that ever got into the top 10 after Moodymann's. In July, Gou released her first music video for her hit 2019 track "Starry Night" exclusively on Apple Music, directed by Jonas Lindstroem, and once again featured Yoo Ah-in, the lead actor in the award-winning South Korean film, "Burning". The music video was released worldwide on YouTube in September 2019.


title: Peggy Gou

text: In December 2020, Gou joined Apple Music's "New Year's Eve DJ Mixes" with 21 other electronic artists. She next released her seventh single "Nabi" in June 2021, featuring Oh Hyuk from Korean indie rock band Hyukoh, followed by a tribute to her teenage years, "I Go", that she called "My own reimagination of the sounds I grew up loving."


title: MSG Sphere at The Venetian

text: MSG Sphere at The Venetian is a sphere-shaped music and entertainment arena being built in Paradise, Nevada, near the Las Vegas Strip and east of the Venetian resort. The 17,500-seat auditorium was initially scheduled to open in 2021, but construction was suspended in April 2020 due to a disruption in the project's supply chain, caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Construction resumed later that year, and the opening is scheduled for the second half of 2023.


title: MSG Sphere at The Venetian

text: The MSG Sphere arena was announced in February 2018, and is being built in partnership between The Madison Square Garden Company (MSG) and Las Vegas Sands Corporation. The MSG Sphere is located east of Las Vegas Sands' Venetian resort and just off the Las Vegas Strip. The sphere-shaped venue will have a capacity of 17,500 and feature the world's largest LED screen. Las Vegas Sands contributed the site for the project. The sphere was designed by Populous. The property will include 304 parking spaces, while additional spaces will be available at the parking garages for the nearby Venetian, Palazzo, and Venetian Expo.


title: MSG Sphere at The Venetian

text: A groundbreaking ceremony was held on September 27, 2018, and was attended by approximately 300 people, including Las Vegas Sands' Sheldon Adelson and Nevada governor Brian Sandoval. In November 2018, it was reported that the MSG Sphere would be built along with new bars, private suites, a museum and retail space. AECOM began working on the site in February 2019, through a preliminary agreement. AECOM had worked on several other stadiums, including the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. Excavation was underway in March 2019. Approximately of dirt and caliche were excavated to prepare the site for construction. AECOM was named as the general contractor in June 2019. The project had 400 construction workers. This number was expected to eventually reach a peak of 1,500. Construction of the basement was underway in July 2019. Madison Square Garden estimated the project to cost $1.2 billion, while AECOM projected costs at $1.7 billion. Negotiations were underway to lower the costs.


title: MSG Sphere at The Venetian

text: By October 2019, construction crews had completed the basement as well as the first ground level of the sphere. The basement area will be used as public space for events. Excavation went as deep as 21 feet for construction of the basement. In December 2019, the sphere reached 65 feet in height with the completion of a fourth level. MSG Sphere will have a total of eight levels upon completion, and will be the largest spherical building in the world at .


title: MSG Sphere at The Venetian

text: In February 2020, Madison Square Garden said that the cost of the project had been increased to $1.66 billion as a result of design changes consisting of guest enhancements. That month, the world's fourth-largest crane was set up on the site's northeast side for the purpose of lifting heavy construction materials. The crane is capable of standing up to 580 feet. In a disassembled state, the crane was transported across the Atlantic Ocean from Zeebrugge, Belgium to Port Hueneme, California. The crane then required 120 tractor-trailers to transport it to Las Vegas. A separate crane was required to assemble the main crane, a process which took 18 days. In March 2020, construction reached the widest point of the sphere, the 516-foot diameter, located at the sixth level and 108 feet above ground.


title: MSG Sphere at The Venetian

text: MSG Sphere is expected to create 4,400 jobs upon opening. The project had been scheduled to open in 2021. On March 31, 2020, Madison Square Garden announced that construction would be suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The project experienced a disruption in its supply chain, a result of the pandemic, and this hindered construction progress. All construction work on the project was expected to come to a stop over the next two weeks following the announcement. In August 2020, MSG Entertainment announced that construction had resumed on the project, with the opening rescheduled for 2023. Over the subsequent 15 months, construction would be focused on concrete, followed by steel erection and then the 13,000-ton steel-domed roof, the most complex part of the project. In October 2020, crews completed the heaviest lift up to that point, with the installation of two 240-ton steel girders.


title: MSG Sphere at The Venetian

text: Madison Square Garden took over as general contractor in December 2020, although AECOM continued to provide support. A 170-ton steel compression ring was added in February 2021, marking the heaviest lift of the entire project. Due to its size, the ring had to be assembled at the construction site. Work crews spent three weeks welding and bolting the prefabricated steel pieces together, and the crane was then used to lift the ring into place.


title: MSG Sphere at The Venetian

text: The dome's roof required 3,000 tons of steel. The roof started to take shape in March 2021, as crews began the installation of 32 trusses, each one weighing 100 tons. Truss installation reached the midway point in May 2021, and the crane had to be moved to the southern side of the property to install the remainder. Because of its size, the crane's relocation took two days. It was announced a few days later that the projected cost of the MSG Sphere had increased to $1.826 billion. The cost had already been expected to increase as construction proceeded.


title: MSG Sphere at The Venetian

text: The dome was topped off on June 18, 2021, and work was already underway on an external exosphere which would be built around the dome. The exosphere will be made of LED light panels which will be visible from several miles away. It will be 30 percent taller than the dome. Work on the sphere's interior began in August 2021, with the project now estimated to cost $1.865 billion.


title: MSG Sphere at The Venetian

text: Upon completion of the roof's steel frame, 6,000 cubic yards of concrete were then pumped onto the roof. This formed a layer measuring 10 inches in thickness, and weighing approximately 10,000 tons. The roof was finished in October 2021. Crews then turned their focus to a 730-ton steel interior frame which will support the LED screens and audio system. Work on the interior frame was expected to continue into 2022.


title: MSG Sphere at The Venetian

text: A second topping out, for the exosphere, took place on May 24, 2022. This was followed by installation of the interior and exterior LED screens. Later in the year, construction costs increased again, reaching $2.175 billion. The latest increase was due to global supply chain issues and the 2021–2022 inflation surge.


title: MSG Sphere at The Venetian

text: Upon its completion, the MSG Sphere will be high and wide at its broadest point. It will include seating for 17,500 people, and all seats will have high speed internet access. The venue can accommodate 20,000 people in standing capacity. The sphere has nine levels, including the basement, where a VIP club will be located. A total of 23 suites will be included, across the third and fifth floors.


title: MSG Sphere at The Venetian

text: The MSG Sphere will be equipped with 19,000 by 13,500 resolution LED screens which will spread across the interior of the venue. The wraparound screen will measure . It will be the largest and highest-resolution LED screen in the world. The exterior of the venue will feature of programmable lighting, which can be modified based on holidays, for example to depict the sphere as a Halloween pumpkin or a Christmas snow globe. The sphere will feature 164,000 speakers, and the sound system will deliver sound through the floorboards. 4D features, including scent and wind, will also be used.


title: MSG Sphere at The Venetian

text: The arena will primarily host awards shows and concerts, in addition to other entertainment events. Although it was not designed to host sporting events, there is the possibility of hosting matches for boxing and mixed martial arts, as well as esports tournaments.


title: MSG Sphere at The Venetian

text: A 1,000-foot pedestrian bridge will connect the sphere to the Venetian Expo, and there are plans to build a new Las Vegas Monorail station to serve the MSG Sphere and The Venetian. However, these plans were put on hold in April 2020, due to the financial impact of the pandemic.


title: MSG Sphere at The Venetian

text: An identical MSG Sphere is planned to be built in Stratford, East London, and Madison Square Garden intends to build others around the world.


title: MSG Sphere at The Venetian

text: MSG Sphere Studios opened in Burbank, California in May 2022. The facility handles production and post-production work for the Las Vegas sphere and future spheres. MSG Sphere Studios sought to collaborate with filmmakers and musicians to create some of the content for the Las Vegas sphere. Ted King, who previously worked on , is among those who will create visual content for the MSG Sphere. The studio will also produce content in association with the 2023 Las Vegas Grand Prix, which will travel past the MSG Sphere.


title: Chaco War

text: The Chaco War (, ) was fought from 1932 to 1935 between Bolivia and Paraguay, over the control of the northern part of the Gran Chaco region (known in Spanish as "Chaco Boreal") of South America, which was thought to be rich in oil. The war is also referred to as "La Guerra de la Sed" (Spanish for "The War of Thirst") in literary circles since it was fought in the semi-arid Chaco. The bloodiest interstate military conflict fought in South America in the 20th century, it was fought between two of its poorest countries, both of which had lost territory to neighbours in 19th-century wars.


title: Chaco War

text: During the war, both landlocked countries faced difficulties shipping arms and supplies through neighbouring countries. Bolivia, in particular, faced external trade problems and poor internal communications. Although Bolivia had lucrative mining income and a larger and better-equipped army, a series of factors turned the tide against it, and Paraguay controlled most of the disputed zone when the war had ended.


title: Chaco War

text: The origins of the war are commonly attributed to a long-standing territorial dispute and to the discovery of oil deposits on the eastern Andes range, in 1929, the Treaty of Lima ended the hopes of the Bolivian government of recovering a land corridor to the Pacific Ocean, which was thought imperative to further development and trade.


title: Chaco War

text: Both Bolivia and Paraguay were landlocked. The 600,000 km Chaco was sparsely populated, but control of the Paraguay River running through it would provide access to the Atlantic Ocean. That became especially important to Bolivia, which had lost its Pacific coast to Chile during the 1879 War of the Pacific. Paraguay had lost almost half of its territory to Brazil and Argentina in the Paraguayan War of 1864 to 1870 and was not prepared to surrender its economic viability.


title: Chaco War

text: In international arbitration, Bolivia argued that the region had been part of the original Spanish colonial province of Moxos and Chiquitos to which Bolivia was heir. Meanwhile, Paraguay based its case on the occupation of the land. Indeed, both Paraguayan and Argentine planters were already breeding cattle and exploiting quebracho woods in the area, and the small nomadic indigenous population of Guaraní-speaking tribes was related to Paraguay's own Guaraní heritage. As of 1919, Argentine banks owned 400,000 hectares of land in the eastern Chaco, and the Casado family, a powerful part of the Argentine oligarchy, held 141,000. The presence of Mennonite colonies in the Chaco, who settled there in the 1920s under the auspices of the Paraguayan Parliament, was another factor in favour of Paraguay's claim.


title: Chaco War

text: The impetus for war was exacerbated by a conflict between oil companies jockeying for exploration and drilling rights, with Royal Dutch Shell backing Paraguay and Standard Oil supporting Bolivia. The discovery of oil in the Andean foothills sparked speculation that the Chaco might prove a rich source of petroleum, and foreign oil companies were involved in the exploration. Standard Oil was already producing oil from wells in the high hills of eastern Bolivia, around Villa Montes. However, it is uncertain if the war would have been caused solely by the interests of the companies, not by aims of Argentina to import oil from the Chaco. In opposition to the "dependency theory" of the war's origins, the British historian Matthew Hughes argued against the thesis that Bolivian and Paraguayan governments were the "puppets" of Standard Oil and Royal Dutch Shell respectively by writing: "In fact, there is little hard evidence available in the company and government archives to support the theory that oil companies had anything to do with causing the war or helping one side or the other during the war". Nonetheless, "the blurred lines between the bank and the oil industry show that [Standard Oil] did indeed finance the Bolivian build-up, even if instigating the war was left to Bolivian generals."


title: Chaco War

text: The first confrontation between the two countries dates back to 1885, when the Bolivian entrepreneur Miguel Araña Suárez founded Puerto Pacheco, a port on the Upper Paraguay River, south of Bahía Negra. He assumed that the new settlement was well inside Bolivian territory, though Bolivia had implicitly recognized Bahía Negra as Paraguayan. The Paraguayan government sent in a naval detachment aboard the gunboat "Pirapó", which forcibly evicted the Bolivians from the area in 1888. Two agreements followed, in 1894 and 1907, which neither the Bolivian nor the Paraguayan Parliaments ever approved. Meanwhile, in 1905 Bolivia founded two new outposts in the Chaco, Ballivián and Guachalla, this time along the Pilcomayo River. The Bolivian government ignored the halfhearted Paraguayan official protest.


title: Chaco War

text: Bolivian penetration in the region went unopposed until 1927, when the first blood was shed over the Chaco Boreal. On 27 February, a Paraguayan Army foot patrol and its native guides were taken prisoners near the Pilcomayo River and held in the Bolivian outpost of Fortin Sorpresa, where the commander of the Paraguayan platoon, Lieutenant Adolfo Rojas Silva, was shot and killed in suspicious circumstances. "Fortín" (Spanish for "little fort") was the name used for the small pillbox and trench-like garrisons in the Chaco, although the troops' barracks usually were no more than a few mud huts. The Bolivian government formally regretted the death of Rojas Silva, but Paraguayan public opinion called it "murder." After subsequent talks arranged in Buenos Aires failed to produce any agreement and eventually collapsed in January 1928, the dispute grew violent. On 5 December 1928, a Paraguayan cavalry unit overran Fortin Vanguardia, an advance outpost established by the Bolivian army a few kilometres northwest of Bahía Negra. The Paraguayans captured 21 Bolivian soldiers and burned the scattered huts to the ground.