title: Horst Buchholz

text: That year he starred in "Two Worlds" (1958), "Wet Asphalt" (1958), and "Auferstehung" (1958) aka "Resurrection".


title: Horst Buchholz

text: Buchholz began appearing in English-language films in 1959, when he co-starred in the British production "Tiger Bay" with Hayley Mills. It was a notable success. In her autobiography, Mills revealed she had a schoolgirl crush on Buchholz during the filming of "Tiger Bay" and was saddened when the cast threw him an engagement party.


title: Horst Buchholz

text: He returned to Germany for "Ship of the Dead" (1959), then accepted an offer from Hollywood to play a young aspiring gunslinger in "The Magnificent Seven" (1960), a remake of Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" (1954) in which he would play the role originally portrayed by Toshiro Mifune in the Japanese version. Arriving in the U.S. with time to spare before filming began, Buchholz lingered in New York and appeared on Broadway in a short-lived adaptation of "Cheri" (1959) and then continued westward.


title: Horst Buchholz

text: After "The Magnificent Seven", which went on to become a classic, Buchholz played in the romantic drama "Fanny" (1961) with Leslie Caron and Maurice Chevalier, and the Berlin-set comedy "One, Two, Three" (1961), directed by Billy Wilder and starring James Cagney. Though filmed in Mexico, France and Germany respectively, these were Hollywood productions and Buchholz had begun a period of residence in Los Angeles. He proved to be popular with American audiences, but several missed opportunities thwarted the upward trajectory of his career and it began to stall. Filming schedule conflicts prevented him from accepting the offered roles of Tony in "West Side Story" (1961) and Sherif Ali in "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962), a part that eventually went to Omar Sharif.


title: Horst Buchholz

text: Instead he played the lead in "Nine Hours to Rama" (1963) for Twentieth Century Fox and "The Empty Canvas" (1963), shot in Italy with Bette Davis. He returned to Broadway to appear in "Andorra" (1963), which had a short run.


title: Horst Buchholz

text: On the advice of his agent, like many other actors who were asked, he turned down the starring role in "A Fistful of Dollars" (1964). He was in "Marco the Magnificent" (1965) with Anthony Quinn; "That Man in Istanbul" (1965), a Eurosopy film; "Johnny Banco" (1967), a comedy with Yves Allégret; and "Young Rebel" (1967), a biopic of Miguel de Cervantes with Gina Lollobrigida. He guest starred on "The Danny Thomas Hour" (1968).


title: Horst Buchholz

text: Buchholz starred in "Astragal" (1969), "How, When and with Whom" (1969), "The Dove Must Not Fly" (1970), and "The Saviour" (1971). He returned to Hollywood lead roles briefly with "The Great Waltz" (1971) playing Johann Strauss.


title: Horst Buchholz

text: Buchholz starred in "...But Johnny!" (1973), and "The Catamount Killing" (1974). He appeared on German television in shows like "Die Klempner kommen" (1976).


title: Horst Buchholz

text: Buchholz moved to supporting roles in films like "The Savage Bees" (1976), "Raid on Entebbe" (1976), "Dead of Night" (1977), and "The Amazing Captain Nemo" (1978). He guest starred on episodes of "Logan's Run", "Fantasy Island", "Charlie's Angels", and "How the West Was Won" and had the lead in "Women in Hospital" (1977) and a role in "The French Atlantic Affair " (1979).


title: Horst Buchholz

text: Buchholz was in "From Hell to Victory" (1979), and "Avalanche Express" (1979). He had the co lead in "Berlin Tunnel 21" (1981) and was top billed in "Aphrodite" (1981). He guest starred on "Derrick" and had a supporting part in "Sahara" (1983).


title: Horst Buchholz

text: Buchholz focused on Germany: "Funkeln im Auge" (1984), and "" (1984). He went to Hollywood for parts in "" (1985) and "Crossings" (1986).


title: Horst Buchholz

text: Buchholz's credits include "Affari di famiglia" (1986), "Die Fräulein von damals" (1986), and "Der Schatz im Niemandsland" (1987). He had the lead in "And the Violins Stopped Playing" (1989) and supporting role in "Escape from Paradise" (1990).


title: Horst Buchholz

text: Buchholz turned up in "" (1992), "Touch and Die " (1992), "Faraway, So Close!" (1993), "The Cave of the Golden Rose 4" (1995), "Tödliches Erbe" (1995), "Der Clan der Anna Voss" (1995), "Maître Da Costa", and "The Firebird" (1997). He portrayed Dr. Lessing in Roberto Benigni's "Life Is Beautiful" (1997).


title: Horst Buchholz

text: He was in "Geisterstunde – Fahrstuhl ins Jenseits" (1997), "Der kleine Unterschied" (1997), "Dunckel" (1998) and "Der kleine Unterschied" (1998), and voiced Fa Zhou in the German dub of "Mulan". He returned to America for "Voyage of Terror" (1998).


title: Horst Buchholz

text: Buchholz's last performances include "Kinderraub in Rio – Eine Mutter schlägt zurück" (1998), "Heller als der Mond" (2000), "The Enemy" (2001), "Der Club der grünen Witwen" (2001), "Traumfrau mit Verspätung" (2001), "Detective Lovelorn und die Rache des Pharao" (2001), "Abschnitt 40" (2001), "Atlantic Affairs" (2002) and "In der Mitte eines Lebens" (2003).


title: Horst Buchholz

text: In 1958, Buchholz married French actress Myriam Bru and they had two children: Christopher, an actor, and daughter Beatrice.


title: Horst Buchholz

text: Usually reticent about his private life, in a 2000 interview in the German magazine "Bunte", Buchholz publicly stated "Yes, I also love men. Ultimately, I'm bisexual ... I have always lived my life the way I wanted." He explained that he and his wife of nearly 42 years had a stable and enduring arrangement, with her life centered in Paris and his in Berlin, the city that he loved. Their son Christopher Buchholz, also an actor and the producer of the feature-length documentary "Horst Buchholz ... Mein Papa" (2005), has publicly acknowledged his father's bisexuality. In the 1950s, the film producer Wenzel Lüdecke was his partner.


title: Horst Buchholz

text: Buchholz died unexpectedly at the age of 69 in the Berlin Charité from pneumonia that developed after an operation for a hip fracture. Berlin was the city to which his loyalty was consistent, and he was buried there in the Friedhof Heerstraße.


title: Thevar Magan

text: Thevar Magan () is a 1992 Indian, Tamil-language drama film written by Kamal Haasan, who also produced the film, and directed by Bharathan. It stars Haasan, Sivaji Ganesan, Revathi, Gautami and Nassar; with Kallapart Natarajan, Kaka Radhakrishnan, Sangili Murugan and Vadivelu in supporting roles. The film's story involves a respected village chieftain's son who wants to open a business but whose his father wants him to help the villagers.


title: Thevar Magan

text: The script of "Thevar Magan" was completed in seven days; it was written using screenwriting software called "Movie Magic". Haasan said "The Godfather" (1972) and the Kannada film "Kaadu" (1973) were inspirations for the film. P. C. Sreeram was the cinematographer and N. P. Satish edited the film, which was mostly made in Pollachi, with a few days' filming at Madras and Ooty.


title: Thevar Magan

text: "Thevar Magan" was released on 25 October 1992 – Diwali day; it received critical acclaim and completed a 175-day run at the box office. It was chosen as India's entry for the Best Foreign Language Film for the 65th Academy Awards but was not nominated. "Thevar Magan" won five National Film Awards, including Best Tamil Film, Best Supporting Actress for Revathi, and a Special Jury Award for Sivaji Ganesan, which he declined. It was later remade in Hindi as "Virasat" (1997) and in Kannada as "Thandege Thakka Maga" (2006).


title: Thevar Magan

text: Sakthivel "Sakthi" Thevar returns home to his father Periya Thevar's village after completing his education in London. To his father's annoyance, he brings with him his westernised girlfriend Bhanumathi "Bhanu" to meet his family. Sakthi announces his plan to open a chain of restaurants in Madras, which saddens his father, who wanted his son to help local residents. Periya is a respected village chief whose younger half-brother Chinna Thevar and nephew Maya "Mayan" Thevar hold a grudge against him. The entire village suffers from this long-standing family feud. Mayan always tries to outdo Periya.


title: Thevar Magan

text: Sakthi spends time in the village with Bhanu. They find an old temple that has been closed off on Mayan's orders. Sakthi insists on entering with the help of his friend and servant Isakki. Mayan hears of this and a riot between the two village factions occurs. To quell the situation, Periya contemplates apologising to his opponents. Sakthi feels he or Isakki should apologise instead. When Sakthi asks for Isakki, he learns Mayan has severed Isakki's arm as punishment for opening the temple. To prevent further escalation of the situation, Sakthi, with his father's permission and with the help of his friends in the government, legally opens the temple for all.


title: Thevar Magan

text: Slighted by this, Mayan hires goons to break a dam protecting a part of the village that supports Periya. The goons use explosives to damage the dam, flooding half of the village and resulting in numerous deaths, including infants. This saddens Sakthi, who spots the goon who placed the explosives and gives chase. After capturing the goon, Sakthi hands him over to the police. The goon does not mention Mayan's involvement in fear for his own family's safety. Later, Mayan closes a portion of his land, preventing the public from easily reaching the main road. Sakthi and his father invite them for talks at the village "panchayat" to resolve the standoff.


title: Thevar Magan

text: In the "panchayat", both sides accuse the other. With no evidence, Mayan accuses Periya of orchestrating attacks on his brother's family. Disrespected and broken, Periya returns home and later that night dies from a heart attack. Sakthi takes over his father's duties as the village chieftain. The villagers express concern to Sakthi about having to daily circumnavigate the piece of land belonging to Mayan's side of the village, which causes a much longer travelling time. Sakthi reasons with the landowner Paramasivam to open it up for all villagers. Although understanding and willing, Paramasivam is Mayan's maternal uncle and is afraid of his nephew's backlash, especially because he has a daughter named Panchavarnam.


title: Thevar Magan

text: Sakthi assuages his fear by arranging the marriage between Panchavarnam and a wealthy villager. Everybody involved happily agrees and Paramasivam opens up the land. On the day of the wedding, the groom runs away, fearing Mayan. Paramasivam and Panchavarnam are distraught, and worried if someone marries his daughter, they would live in constant fear. With her father's permission, Sakthi marries Panchavarnam, although he still has feelings for Bhanu. Soon, Bhanu returns and learns about Sakthi's marriage. Although saddened, she understands the situation and leaves. Sakthi starts his new life with Panchavarnam.


title: Thevar Magan

text: Agitated by the land opening, Mayan plants a bomb during a festival, causing deaths on both sides of the village. Enraged, both factions go after Mayan and his family. Sakthi protects the innocent family and helps them escape from the villagers. Appreciative of Sakthi's efforts to protect them, they disclose Mayan's hiding place. Sakthi locates Mayan and asks him to surrender to the police before the villagers kill him but Mayan refuses. Mayan blames Sakthi for his problems and tries to kill him. In the ensuing struggle, Sakthi beheads Mayan. The villagers offer to take the blame for Mayan's death, but Sakthi refuses and surrenders to the police.


title: Thevar Magan

text: In the 1980s, Muktha Srinivasan planned to direct a film based on "The Godfather" (1972) with Sivaji Ganesan and Kamal Haasan but the project was abandoned after Haasan's associate Ananthu felt it would be a Ganesan-focused film rather than a Haasan film. Haasan later wrote a script, which eventually became "Thevar Magan", in seven days, although he said he was challenged to write it in twelve. The film was initially titled "Nammavar" but was later renamed to its final title. Haasan also said it was inspired by "The Godfather" and the Kannada film "Kaadu" (1973). Due to his lack of experience in directing, Haasan approached Bharathan to direct "Thevar Magan".


title: Thevar Magan

text: According to Haasan, "Thevar Magan" is the first film that was written using a screenwriting software called "Movie Magic". In 2016, Gangai Amaran said he was supposed to direct a film titled "Adhi Veerapandian" starring Haasan but Amaran's brother Ilaiyaraaja advised Haasan against accepting the film, feeling Amaran was "not a good filmmaker", and the film was shelved. Amaran said; "Kamal took the story of "Adhi Veerapandian" and remade it as "Thevar Magan"". P. C. Sreeram was the cinematographer and N. P. Satish edited the film. Tirru worked as Sreeram's assistant and actor Tinku worked as assistant photographer.


title: Thevar Magan

text: According to Haasan, casting was done "against everyone else's suggestion". In portraying Sakthi, Haasan wore colourful, buttoned-up shirts and jeans, and a medium-size beard and a mullet in the first half of the film. He grew a thick handlebar moustache and wore of village dhoti for the part of village head. The unit had originally wanted to cast either Vijayakumar or S. S. Rajendran for the character Periya Thevar but Haasan approached Sivaji Ganesan, who completed his scenes within seven days. Haasan persuaded Ganesan because it was his long-time desire to act in at least one film with him; Ganesan, who had retired from acting, agreed. Haasan described "Thevar Magan" as a "love story about Sivaji and me. I wanted to become him and he allowed me to become him".


title: Thevar Magan

text: Meena was approached to play the character Panchavarnam; she acted for a few days but due to date issues, she was replaced by Revathi. Gautami played Sakthi's initial lover Bhanu; her voice was dubbed by K. R. Anuradha. Vadivelu, who played Isakki, said;"While shooting of "Singaravelan", Kamal asked me to go to his Raaj Kamal office next morning and collect an advance payment for my role in his next film, "Thevar Magan". But, I was not ready to wait until the next morning. So I went to his office the same evening after the shoot" and received a cheque for 5,000. Thalaivasal Vijay was cast as Sakthi's elder brother on Haasan's recommendation. Salim Ghouse was the initial choice for the role of the antagonist Maya Thevar which ultimately went to Nassar. Neelima portrayed Maya Thevar's daughter – it was her feature-film debut.


title: Thevar Magan

text: "Thevar Magan" was mostly filmed at Pollachi in 75 days, and for few days at Madras and Ooty. Some scenes were filmed at a palatial bungalow situated at Singanallur. Haasan has stated the scene in which a truck with a cargo of steel rods jutting out reverses into a car was initially written for "Nayakan" (1987) but could not be used there because producer Muktha Srinivasan would not let a car be damaged. Writer Kalaignanam suggested the concept of one temple having two locks, which Haasan liked and added. Some scenes were filmd at Mariamman Temple in Sulukkal, Pollachi. Nassar filmed only seven scenes, of which two are major.


title: Thevar Magan

text: According to Haasan, "Thevar Magan" was inspired by "The Godfather" and "Kaadu"; journalist S. Shiva Kumar saying he re-used "The Godfather"s "crucial emotional core of a reluctant son ascending a throne full of thorns". Baradwaj Rangan said Haasan's screenplay "uses small gestures to say a lot between the lines, without explaining everything in tiresome detail", and that Bhanu is frequently shown boarding and alighting from trains, establishing her status as an outsider.


title: Thevar Magan

text: Ilaiyaraaja composed the soundtrack of "Thevar Magan" and the lyrics were written by Vaali. It was released under the label AVM Audio. Embar Kannan performed the violin portions. The soundtrack has eight tracks with two alternatives. Haasan's six-year-old daughter Shruti made her singing debut with this film, singing one version of "Potri Paadadi Penne"; T. K. S. Kalaivanan and Mano sang the other version. "Inji Iduppazhagi" is based on the Hindi song "Yeh Dil Deewana", which was composed by S. D. Burman for "Ishq Par Zor Nahin" (1970). Haasan wanted Ilaiyaraaja to compose on the lines of the Hindi song; Ilaiyaraaja completed the song within 10 minutes. Haasan credited Gangai Amaran for the idea of "Sandhu Pottu", which was initially intended for "Adhi Veerapandian". "Manamagale Manamagale" is set in the Carnatic raga known as Shuddha Saveri, "Maasaru Ponne" is set in Mayamalavagowla, and "Inji Iduppazhagi" is set in Jaunpuri. It was later remixed by Smita for her album "Kalakkal". The original song was re-used in "Size Zero" (2015).


title: Thevar Magan

text: "Thevar Magan" was released on 25 October 1992, Diwali day. The film was dubbed in Telugu as "Kshatriya Putrudu". The film became controversial for identifying the Thevar community with glorified violence, and faced competition from other Diwali releases "Pandian", "Rasukutty", "Senthamizh Paattu", "Kaviya Thalaivan", "Thirumathi Palanisamy", "Thai Mozhi" and "Mangala Nayagan". Despite these, "Thevar Magan" was commercially successful and ran for 175 days, becoming a silver jubilee film. Dilip Kumar attended the film's silver-jubilee celebration. No print of "Thevar Magan" has survived but the film is available on home video.


title: Thevar Magan

text: "Thevar Magan" received critical acclaim. On 25 October 1992, "The Indian Express" said; "The formidable combination of Kamal Haasan and Sivaji Ganesan, the directorial talent of Bharathan, excellent cinematography of P. C. Sriram and music by the maestro [Ilaiyaraaja], have all gone into producing "Thevar Magan"". The Tamil magazine "Ananda Vikatan" in its review dated 8 November 1992 appreciated the film and said its naturalism is greatly enhanced by the giving of equal opportunity to all actors in the film. It rated the film 60 out of 100. K. Vijiyan of "New Sunday Times" wrote ""Devar Magan" proved a satisfying experience at the cinema and well worth the wait". C. R. K. of "Kalki" praised the film for perfectly concentrating on character design, natural dialogues and the screenplay that carries these elements.


title: Thevar Magan

text: "Thevar Magan" was chosen as India's entry for the Best Foreign Language Film for the 65th Academy Awards but was not nominated. The film was screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in 1994. Ilaiyaraaja was a strong contender for the National Film Award for Best Music Direction, which he lost to A. R. Rahman for "Roja"; the award was tied with eight votes each for Ilaiyaraaja and Rahman before the chairman of the jury Balu Mahendra voted in favour of Rahman. Ganesan had been awarded the Special Jury Award – Actor in the same ceremony but he refused to accept the award. Haasan claimed he convinced Ganesan not to accept it.


title: Thevar Magan

text: Haasan initially planned to remake "Thevar Magan" in Hindi with Dilip Kumar in Ganesan's role but according to Haasan, Kumar found the theme "too violent" and refused the offer. Priyadarshan directed the Hindi remake "Virasat" (1997). S. Mahendar also remade "Thevar Magan" in Kannada as "Thandege Thakka Maga" (2006).


title: Thevar Magan

text: "Thevar Magan" attained cult status in Tamil cinema. Rajan Krishnan, PhD scholar in film studies at Columbia University, said; "it was Kamal Hassan who brought that sickle bearing genre", and that ""Thevar Magan" ... inaugurated the era of the south being represented as primarily a sickle bearing space". Stalin Rajangam, who has extensively written on the caste component and narrative structures of Tamil films, said; ""Thevar Magan" was first of its kind with stronger idioms of caste and glorification of caste-based practices". Tamil writer S. Ramakrishnan said "Thevar Magan" captured "the very essence of the south Tamil Nadu's rural culture". Vadivelu called the film a "turning point" in his career.


title: Thevar Magan

text: Directors N. Lingusamy, Mysskin, Gautham Vasudev Menon, and S. J. Suryah called "Thevar Magan" one of their favourite films. Gauthami also listed it as her one of her favourite films. Sify, in its review of "Sandakozhi" (2005), compared Rajkiran's character with Ganesan's character in "Thevar Magan". The July 2010 edition of magazine "South Scope" included Haasan's performance in "'Thevar Magan" in its list of "Kamal's best performances". Silverscreen in its review of "Vetrivel" (2016) called the film "pretty much an unsophisticated copy of "Thevar Magan"".


title: Thevar Magan

text: In 2013, "The Hindu" listed the song "Potri Paadadi" among lyricist Vaali's songs in the list "Best of Vaali: From 1964 – 2013". Rediff listed the same song alongside "Madhavi Pon Mayilaal" from "Iru Malargal" (1967) and "Andha Naal Gnabagam" from "Uyarndha Manithan" (1968).


title: Thevar Magan

text: On Haasan's birthday, 7 November 2015, Latha Srinivasan of "Daily News and Analysis" considered "Thevar Magan" to be one of the "films you must watch to grasp the breadth of Kamal Haasan's repertoire". Behindwoods included the scene in which Kamal's character takes over his father's duty as village head in its lists "Top 20 Mass Scenes" and "10 Mass Interval Blocks".


title: Motel

text: A motel, also known as a motor hotel, motor inn or motor lodge, is a hotel designed for motorists, usually having each room entered directly from the parking area for motor vehicles rather than through a central lobby. Entering dictionaries after World War II, the word "motel", coined as a portmanteau of "motor hotel", originates from the Milestone Mo-Tel of San Luis Obispo, California (now called the Motel Inn of San Luis Obispo), which was built in 1925. The term referred to a type of hotel consisting of a single building of connected rooms whose doors faced a parking lot and in some circumstances, a common area or a series of small cabins with common parking. Motels are often individually owned, though motel chains do exist.


title: Motel

text: As large highway systems began to be developed in the 1920s, long-distance road journeys became more common, and the need for inexpensive, easily accessible overnight accommodation sites close to the main routes led to the growth of the motel concept. Motels peaked in popularity in the 1960s with rising car travel, only to decline in response to competition from the newer chain hotels that became commonplace at highway interchanges as traffic was bypassed onto newly constructed freeways. Several historic motels are listed on the US National Register of Historic Places.


title: Motel

text: Motels differ from hotels in their location along highways, as opposed to the urban cores favored by hotels, and their orientation to the outside (in contrast to hotels, whose doors typically face an interior hallway). Motels almost by definition include a parking lot, while older hotels were not usually built with automobile parking in mind.


title: Motel

text: Because of their low-rise construction, the number of rooms which would fit on any given amount of land was low compared to the high-rise urban hotels which had grown around train stations. This was not an issue in an era where the major highways became the main street in every town along the way and inexpensive land at the edge of town could be developed with motels, car dealerships, fuel stations, lumber yards, amusement parks, roadside diners, drive-in restaurants, theaters, and countless other small roadside businesses. The automobile brought mobility and the motel could appear anywhere on the vast network of two-lane highways.


title: Motel

text: Motels are typically constructed in an "I"-, "L"-, or "U"-shaped layout that includes guest rooms; an attached manager's office; a small reception; and in some cases, a small diner and a swimming pool. A motel was typically single-story with rooms opening directly onto a parking lot, making it easy to unload suitcases from a vehicle. A second story, if present, would face onto a balcony served by multiple stairwells.


title: Motel

text: The post-war motels, especially in the early 1950s to late 1960s, sought more visual distinction, often featuring eye-catching colorful neon signs which employed themes from popular culture, ranging from Western imagery of cowboys and Indians to contemporary images of spaceships and atomic era iconography. U.S. Route 66 is the most popular example of the "neon era". Many of these signs remain in use to this day.


title: Motel

text: In some motels, a handful of rooms would be larger and contain kitchenettes or apartment-like amenities; these rooms were marketed at a higher price as "efficiencies" as their occupants could prepare food themselves instead of incurring the cost of eating all meals in restaurants. Rooms with connecting doors (so that two standard rooms could be combined into one larger room) also commonly appeared in both hotels and motels. A few motels (particularly in Niagara Falls, Ontario, where a motel strip extending from Lundy's Lane to the falls has long been marketed to newlyweds) would offer "honeymoon suites" with extra amenities such as whirlpool baths.


title: Motel

text: The first campgrounds for automobile tourists were constructed in the late 1910s. Before that, tourists who couldn't afford to stay in a hotel either slept in their cars or pitched their tents in fields alongside the road. These were called auto camps. The modern campgrounds of the 1920s and 1930s provided running water, picnic grounds, and restroom facilities.


title: Motel

text: Auto camps predated motels by a few years, established in the 1920s as primitive municipal camp sites where travelers pitched their own tents. As demand increased, for-profit commercial camps gradually displaced public camp grounds.


title: Motel

text: Until the first travel trailers became available in the 1930s, auto tourists adapted their cars by adding beds, makeshift kitchens and roof decks. The next step up from the travel trailer was the cabin camp, a primitive but permanent group of structures. During the Great Depression, landholders whose property fronted onto highways built cabins to convert unprofitable land to income; some opened tourist homes. The (usually single-story) buildings for a roadside motel or cabin court were quick and simple to construct, with plans and instructions readily available in how-to and builder's magazines.


title: Motel

text: Expansion of highway networks largely continued unabated through the depression as governments attempted to create employment but the roadside cabin camps were primitive, basically just auto camps with small cabins instead of tents.


title: Motel

text: The 1935 City Directory for San Diego, California, lists "motel"-type accommodations under tourist camps. One initially could stay in the Depression-era cabin camps for less than a dollar per night but small comforts were few and far between.


title: Motel

text: Travelers in search of modern amenities soon would find them at cottage courts and tourist courts. The price was higher but the cabins had electricity, indoor bathrooms, and occasionally a private garage or carport. They were arranged in attractive clusters or a U-shape. Often, these camps were part of a larger complex containing a filling station, a café, and sometimes a convenience store. Facilities like the Rising Sun Auto Camp in Glacier National Park and Blue Bonnet Court in Texas were "mom-and-pop" facilities on the outskirts of towns that were as quirky as their owners. Auto camps continued in popularity through the Depression years and after World War II, their popularity finally starting to diminish with increasing land costs and changes in consumer demands.


title: Motel

text: In contrast, though they remained small independent operations, motels quickly adopted a more homogenized appearance and were designed from the start to cater purely to motorists.


title: Motel

text: In town, tourist homes were private residences advertising rooms for auto travelers. Unlike boarding houses, guests at tourist homes were usually just passing through. In the southwestern United States, a handful of tourist homes were opened by African-Americans as early as the Great Depression due to the lack of food or lodging for travelers of color in the Jim Crow conditions of the era.


title: Motel

text: "The Negro Motorist Green Book" (1936–64) listed lodgings, restaurants, fuel stations, liquor stores, and barber and beauty salons without racial restrictions; the smaller "Directory of Negro Hotels and Guest Houses in the United States" (1939, U.S. Travel Bureau) specialized in accommodations. Segregation of U.S. tourist accommodation would legally be ended by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and by a court ruling in "Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States" affirming that Congress' powers over interstate commerce extend to regulation of local incidents (such as racial discrimination in a motel serving interstate travelers) which might substantially and harmfully affect that commerce.


title: Motel

text: The term "motel" originated with the Motel Inn of San Luis Obispo, originally called the Milestone Mo-Tel, which was constructed in 1925 by Arthur Heineman. In conceiving of a name for his hotel, Heineman abbreviated "motor hotel" to "mo-tel" after he could not fit the words "Milestone Motor Hotel" on his rooftop. Many other businesses followed in its footsteps and started building their own auto camps.


title: Motel

text: Combining the individual cabins of the tourist court under a single roof yielded the motor court or motor hotel. A handful of motor courts were beginning to call themselves motels, a term coined in 1926. Many of these early motels are still popular and are in operation, as in the case of the 3V Tourist Court in St. Francisville, Louisiana, built in 1938.


title: Motel

text: During the Great Depression, those still traveling (including business travelers and traveling salespeople) were under pressure to manage travel costs by driving instead of taking trains and staying in the new roadside motels and courts instead of more costly established downtown hotels where bell captains, porters, and other personnel would all expect a tip for service.


title: Motel

text: In the 1940s, most construction ground to a near-halt as workers, fuel, rubber, and transport were pulled away from civilian use for the war effort. What little construction did take place was typically near military bases where every habitable cabin was pressed into service to house soldiers and their families.


title: Motel

text: The post-war 1950s ushered in a building boom on a massive scale. By 1947, approximately 22,000 motor courts were in operation in the U.S. alone; a typical 50-room motel in that era cost $3000 per room in initial construction costs, compared to $12,000 per room for metropolitan city hotel construction. By 1950 there were 50,000 motels serving half of the 22 million U.S. vacationers; a year later motels surpassed hotels in consumer demand. The industry peaked in 1964 with 61,000 properties and fell to 16,000 properties by 2012.


title: Motel

text: Many motels began advertising on colorful neon signs that they had "air cooling" (an early term for "air conditioning") during the hot summers or were "heated by steam" during the cold winters. A handful used novelty architecture such as wigwams or teepees, or used decommissioned rail cars to create a "Caboose Motel" or "Caboose Inn" in which each cabin was a rail car.


title: Motel

text: The 1950s and 1960s was the pinnacle of the motel industry in the United States and Canada. As older mom-and-pop motor hotels began adding newer amenities such as swimming pools or color TV (a luxury in the 1960s), motels were built in wild and impressive designs. In-room gimmicks such as the coin-operated Magic Fingers vibrating bed were briefly popular; introduced in 1958, these were largely removed in the 1970s due to vandalism of the coin boxes. The American Hotel Association (which had briefly offered a Universal Credit Card in 1953 as forerunner to the modern American Express card) became the American Hotel & Motel Association in 1963.


title: Motel

text: As many motels vied for their place on busy highways, the beach-front motel instantly became a success. In major beach-front cities such as Jacksonville, Florida, Miami, Florida, and Ocean City, Maryland, rows of colorful motels such as the Castaways, in all shapes and sizes, became commonplace.


title: Motel

text: The original motels were small, locally owned businesses which grew around two-lane highways which were main street in every town along the way. As independents, the quality of accommodation varied widely from one lodge to another; while a minority of these properties were inspected or rated by the American Automobile Association and Canadian Automobile Association (which have published maps and tour book directories of restaurants and rooms since 1917), no consistent standard stood behind the "sanitized for your protection" banner. There was no real access to national advertising for local motels and no nationwide network to facilitate reservation of a room in a distant city.


title: Motel

text: The main roads into major towns therefore became a sea of orange or red neon proclaiming VACANCY (and later COLOR TV, air conditioning, or a swimming pool) as competing operators vied for precious visibility on crowded highways. Other venues for advertising were local tourist bureaus and postcards provided for free use by clients.


title: Motel

text: A rating in the "Directory of Motor Courts and Cottages by the American Automobile Association" was just one of many credentials eagerly sought by independent motels of the era. Regional guides (such as "Official Florida Guide by A. Lowell Hunt" or "Approved Travelers Motor Courts") and the food/lodging guidebooks published by restaurant reviewer Duncan Hines ("Adventures in Good Eating", 1936 and "Lodging for a Night", 1938) were also valued endorsements.


title: Motel

text: The referral chain in lodging originated in the early 1930s, originally serving to promote cabins and tourist courts. A predecessor of the modern "franchise chain" model, a referral chain was a group of independent motel owners in which each member lodge would voluntarily meet a set of standards and each property would promote the others. Each property would proudly display the group's name alongside its own.


title: Motel

text: United Motor Courts, founded in 1933 by a group of motel owners in the southwestern U.S., published a guidebook until the early 1950s. A splinter of this now-defunct group, Quality Courts, began as a referral chain in 1941, but was converted to a franchised operation (Quality Inn) in the 1960s. Budget Host and Best Value Inn are also referral chains.


title: Motel

text: Best Western (1946) was a similar referral chain of independent western U.S. motels. It remains in operation as a member-owned chain, although the modern Best Western operation shares many of the characteristics (such as centralized purchasing and reservation systems) of the later franchise systems.


title: Motel

text: The earliest motel chains, proprietary brands for multiple properties built with common architecture, were born in the 1930s. The first of these were ownership chains, in which a small group of people owned and operated all of the motels under one common brand.


title: Motel

text: Alamo Plaza Hotel Courts, founded 1929 in East Waco, Texas, was the first such chain with seven motor courts by 1936 and more than twenty by 1955. With Simmons furniture, Beautyrest mattresses on every bed, and telephones in every room, the Alamo Plaza rooms were marketed as "tourist apartments" under a slogan of "Catering to those who care."


title: Motel

text: In 1935, building contractor Scott King opened King's Motor Court in San Diego, California, renaming the original property Travelodge in 1939 after having built two dozen more simple motel-style properties in five years on behalf of various investors. He incorporated and expanded the entire chain under the TraveLodge banner after 1946.


title: Motel

text: In 1937, Harlan Sanders opened a motel and restaurant as Sanders Court and Café alongside a fuel station in Corbin, Kentucky; a second location was opened in Asheville, North Carolina, but expansion as a motel chain was not pursued further.


title: Motel

text: In 1951, residential developer Kemmons Wilson returned to Memphis, Tennessee disillusioned by motels encountered on a family road trip to Washington, D.C. In each city, rooms varied from well-kept to filthy, few had a swimming pool, no on-site restaurant meant a few miles driving to buy dinner, and (while the room itself was $8 to $10) motor courts charged $2 extra per child, substantially increasing costs of a family vacation. He would build his own motel at 4941 Summer Avenue (U.S. 70) on the main highway (U.S. 70) from Memphis to Nashville, adopting a name from a 1942 musical film "Holiday Inn" about a fictional lodge only open on public holidays. Every new Holiday Inn would have TV, air conditioning, a restaurant, and a pool; all would meet a long list of standards in order to have a guest in Memphis to have the same experience as someone in Daytona Beach, Florida or Akron, Ohio. Originally a motel chain, Holiday Inn was first to deploy an IBM-designed national room reservations system in 1965 and opened its 1000th location by 1968.


title: Motel

text: In 1954 a 60-room motor hotel in Flagstaff, Arizona, opened as the first Ramada (Spanish for "a shaded resting place"). The Twin Bridges Motor Hotel, established in 1957 near Washington, D.C. as a member of Quality Courts, became the first Marriott in 1959, expanding from motel to hotel in 1962.


title: Motel

text: For individual motel owners, a franchise chain provided an automated central reservation system and a nationally recognized brand which assured consumers that rooms and amenities met a consistent minimum standard. This came at a cost; franchise fees, marketing fees, reservation fees, and royalty fees were not reduced during times of economic recession, leaving most of the business risk with the franchisee while franchise corporations profited. Some franchise contracts restricted the franchisee's ability to sell the business as a going concern or leave the franchise group without penalty.


title: Motel

text: For the chain, the franchise model allowed a higher level of product standardization and quality control than was possible as a referral chain model while allowing expansion beyond the maximum practical size of a tightly held ownership chain.


title: Motel

text: In some cases, loosely-knit ownership chains (such as Travelodge) and referral chains (such as Quality Courts, founded in 1939 by seven motel operators as a non-profit referral system) were converted to franchise systems.


title: Motel

text: Quality Courts (1939) and The Best Western Motels (1946) were both originally referral chains and largely marketed together (as Quality Courts were predominantly east of the Mississippi River) until the 1960s. Both built national supply chain and reservation systems while aggressively removing properties not meeting minimum standards. In 1963, their paths diverged. Quality Courts became Quality Inn, abandoning its former co-operative structure to become a for-profit corporation, use shareholder capital to build entirely company-owned locations, and require its members to become franchisees, while Best Western retained its original member-owned status as a marketing co-operative.


title: Motel

text: With the introduction of chains, independent motels started to decline. The emergence of freeways bypassing existing highways (such as the Interstate Highway System in the U.S.) caused older motels away from the new roads to lose clientele to motel chains built along the new road's offramps.


title: Motel

text: Some entire roadside towns were abandoned. Amboy, California (population 700) had grown as a Route 66 rest stop and would decline with the highway as the opening of Interstate 40 in 1973 bypassed the village entirely. The ghost town and its 1938 Roy's Motel and Café were allowed to decay for years and used by film makers in a weathered and deteriorated state.


title: Motel

text: Even the original 1952 Holiday Inn Hotel Courts in Memphis closed by 1973 and was eventually demolished, as I-40 bypassed U.S. 70 and the chain repositioned itself as a mid-price hotel brand. The Twin Bridges Marriott was demolished for parkland in 1990.


title: Motel

text: Many independent 1950s-era motels would remain in operation, often sold to new owners or renamed, but continued their steady decline as clients were lost to the chains. Often the building's design, as traditionally little more than a long row of individual bedrooms with outside corridors and no kitchen or dining hall, left it ill-suited to any other purpose.


title: Motel

text: In the 1970s and 1980s, independent motels were losing ground to chains such as Motel 6 and Ramada, existing roadside locations were increasingly bypassed by freeways, and the development of the motel chain led to a blurring of motel and hotel.


title: Motel

text: While family-owned motels with as few as five rooms could still be found, especially along older highways, these were forced to compete with a proliferation of Economy Limited Service chains. ELS hotels typically do not offer cooked food or mixed drinks; they may offer a very limited selection of continental breakfast foods but have no restaurant, bar, or room service.


title: Motel

text: Journey's End Corporation (founded 1978 in Belleville, Ontario) built two-story hotel buildings with no on-site amenities to compete directly in price with existing motels. Rooms were comparable to a good hotel but there was no pool, restaurant, health club, or conference center. There was no room service and generic architectural designs varied little between cities. The chain targeted "budget-minded business travelers looking for something between the full-service luxury hotels and the clean-but-plain roadside inns", but largely drew individual travelers from small towns who traditionally supported small roadside motels.


title: Motel

text: International chains quickly followed this same pattern. Choice Hotels created Comfort Inn as an economy limited service brand in 1982. New limited-service brands from existing franchisors provided market segmentation; by using a different trademark and branding, major hotel chains could build new limited-service properties near airports and freeways without undermining their existing mid-price brands. Creation of new brands also allowed chains to circumvent the contractual minimum distance protections between individual hoteliers in the same chain. Franchisors placed multiple properties under different brands at the same motorway exit, leading to a decline in revenue for individual franchisees. An influx of newly concocted brands became a key factor in a boom in new construction which ultimately led to market saturation.


title: Motel

text: By the 1990s, Motel 6 and Super 8 were built with inside corridors (so were nominally hotels) while other former motel brands (including Ramada and Holiday Inn) had become mid-price hotel chains. Some individual franchisees built new hotels with modern amenities alongside or in place of their former Holiday Inn motels; by 2010 a mid-range hotel with an indoor pool was the standard required to remain a Holiday Inn.


title: Motel

text: In many once-prime locations, independent motels which thrived in the 1950s and 1960s were being squeezed out by the 1980s as they were forced to compete with growing chains with a much larger number of rooms at each property. Many were left stranded on former two-lane main highways which had been bypassed by motorways or declined as original owners retired and subsequent proprietors neglected the maintenance of buildings and rooms. As these were low-end properties even in their heyday, most are now showing their age.


title: Motel

text: In Canada, the pattern was most visible in the densely populated Windsor-Quebec Corridor, particularly the urban locations like Toronto's Kingston Road motel strip once bypassed by the completed Highway 401, and the section of Highway 7 between Modeland Road and Airport Road known as the "Golden Mile" for its plethora of motels and restaurants (as well as points of interest such as the Sarnia Airport and Hiawatha Racetrack and Waterpark) which was bypassed by Highway 402. The decline of motels was also found at awkward rural locations formerly on the main road. Many remote stretches of the Trans-Canada Highway remain unbypassed by motorway and some independent motels survive.


title: Motel

text: In the U.S., the Interstate Highway System was bypassing U.S. Highways nationwide. The best-known example was the complete removal of Route 66 from the U.S. highway system in 1985 after it was bypassed (mostly by Interstate 40). U.S. 66 was particularly problematic as the old route number was often moved to the new road as soon as the bypasses were constructed, while Highway Beautification Act restrictions left existing properties with no means to obtain signage on the newly constructed Interstate. Some motels were demolished, converted to private residences, or used as storage space while others have been left to slowly fall apart.


title: Motel

text: In many towns, maintenance and renovation of existing properties would stop as soon as word was out that an existing highway was the target of a proposed bypass; this decline would only accelerate after the new road opened. Attempts by owners to compete for the few remaining clients on a bypassed road by lowering prices typically only worsened the decline by leaving no funds to invest in improving or properly maintaining the property; accepting clients who would have been formerly turned away also led to crime problems in cities.


title: Motel

text: By 1976 the term "cockroach motel" was well-established; a slogan for Black Flag's trademark "Roach Motel" bug traps would be paraphrased as "they check in, but they don't check out" to refer to these declining properties.


title: Motel

text: In declining urban areas (like Kingston Road in Toronto, or some of the districts along Van Buren Street in Phoenix, largely bypassed as a through route to California by Interstate 10), the remaining low-end motels from the two-lane highway era are often seen as seedy places for the homeless, prostitution, and drugs as vacant rooms in now-bypassed areas are often rented (and in some cases acquired outright) by social-service agencies to house refugees, abuse victims, and families awaiting social housing. Conversely, some areas which were merely roadside suburbs in the 1950s are now valuable urban land on which original structures are being removed through gentrification and the land used for other purposes. Toronto's Lake Shore Boulevard strip in Etobicoke was bulldozed to make way for condominiums.


title: Motel

text: In some cases, historic properties have been allowed to slowly decay. The Motel Inn of San Luis Obispo, which (as the Milestone Motor Hotel) was the first to use the "motel" name, sits incomplete with what is still standing left boarded up and fenced off at the side of U.S. Route 101; a 2002 restoration proposal never came to fruition.


title: Motel

text: Alamo Plaza Hotel Courts, the first motel chain, was sold off in pieces as the original owners retired. Most of its former locations on the U.S. highway system have declined beyond repair or were demolished. One 1941 property on U.S. Route 190 in Baton Rouge remains open with its Alamo Plaza Restaurant now gone, its pool filled in, its original color scheme painted over, its front desk behind bulletproof glass, and its rooms infested with roaches and other vermin. A magnet for criminal activity, police are summoned daily. Other Alamo sites in Chattanooga, Memphis, and Dallas have simply been demolished.


title: Motel

text: The American Hotel and Motel Association removed 'motel' from its name in 2000, becoming the American Hotel and Lodging Association. The association felt that the term 'lodging' more accurately reflects the large variety of different style hotels, including luxury and boutique hotels, suites, inns, budget, and extended stay hotels.


title: Motel

text: In the late 20th century, a majority of motels in the United States came under the ownership of people of Indian descent, particularly Gujaratis as the original "mom and pop" owners retired from the motel industry and sold their properties. However, some families still kept their motels, and to this day, one can find a motel that is owned by the same family who built and ran it originally (i.e. the Maples Motel in Sandusky, Ohio) with a subsequent generation continuing the family business.


title: Motel

text: Amenities offered have also changed, with motels that once touted color television as a luxury now emphasizing wireless Internet, flatscreen television, pay-per-view or in-room movies, microwave ovens, and minibar fridges in rooms which may be reserved online using credit cards and secured against intruders with key cards which expire as soon as a client checks out. Many independent motels add amenities simply to remain competitive with franchise chains, which are taking an increasing market share. Long-time independent motels which join existing low-end chains to remain viable are known as "conversion" franchises; these do not use the standardized architecture which originally defined many franchise brands.


title: Motel

text: While many former motel chains left the low-end of the market to franchise mid-range hotels, a handful of national franchise brands (Econo Lodge, Travelodge, Knights Inn and Magnuson Hotels lowest tier M-Star) remain available to owners of existing motels with the original drive-up-to-room motor court architecture.


title: Motel

text: Most of these establishments, previously called motels, may still look like motels but are now called hotels, inns, or lodges.


title: Motel

text: In the early to mid 2000s, much original 1950s roadside infrastructure on now-bypassed U.S. highways had fallen into decline or was being razed for development. The National Trust for Historic Preservation named the Wildwoods Shore motel district in New Jersey in its 2006 list of America's Most Endangered Historic Places and included the Historic Route 66 Motels from Illinois to California on its 2007 list.


title: Motel

text: Preservationists have sought to list endangered properties on various federal or state historic registries, although in many cases a historic listing gives a building little or no protection from alteration or demolition.


title: Motel

text: The Oakleigh Motel in Oakleigh, Victoria, Australia, constructed using Googie architecture during the 1956 Summer Olympics as one of the first motels in the state, was added to the Victorian Heritage Register in 2009. The building was gutted by developers in 2010 for a row house development; only the outer shell remains original.


title: Motel

text: The Aztec Motel in Albuquerque, New Mexico (built in 1932) was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1993 and listed on the New Mexico State Register of Cultural Properties as the oldest continuously operating U.S. Route 66 motel in New Mexico. It was demolished in 2011. While listing the Coral Court Motel near St. Louis, Missouri, on the National Register of Historic Places failed to prevent a 1995 demolition, one of the cabins survives as part of an exhibit at the National Museum of Transportation after being painstakingly dismantled by volunteers for relocation.


title: Motel

text: The plight of Route 66, whose removal from the United States Highway System in 1985 turned places like Glenrio, Texas and Amboy, California into overnight ghost towns, has captured public attention. Route 66 associations, built on the model of Angel Delgadillo's first 1987 association in Seligman, Arizona, have advocated preservation and restoration of the motels, businesses, and roadside infrastructure of the neon era. In 1999, the National Route 66 Preservation Bill allocated $10 million in matching fund grants for private restoration and preservation of historic properties along the route. The road popularized through John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" and Bobby Troup's "(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66" was marketed not as transportation infrastructure but as a tourism destination in its own right.


title: Motel

text: To many small towns bypassed by Interstate highways, embracing 1950s nostalgia and historic restoration brings in badly needed tourism dollars to restore sagging local economies. Many vintage motels, some dating to the cabin court era of the 1930s, have been renovated, restored, and added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places or to local and state listings. While a handful were repurposed as either low-income housing, boutique hotels, apartments, or commercial/office space, many were simply restored as motels.


title: Motel

text: While some modern amenities (such as wi-fi or flatscreen TV) may appear in the newly restored rooms, exterior architecture and neon highway signage is meticulously restored to original designs. By 2012, Route 66 travelers were spending $38 million/year visiting historic places and museums in communities on the former highway, with $94 million annually invested in heritage preservation; "The Motels of Route 66" was announced as an upcoming documentary film.


title: Motel

text: The early motels were built in the southwestern United States as a replacement for the tourist camps and tourist cabins which had grown around the U.S. highway system. In Australia and New Zealand, motels have followed largely the same path of development as in Canada and the United States. The first Australian motels include the West End Motel in Ballina, New South Wales (1937) and the Penzance Motel in Eagle Hawk, Tasmania (1939).


title: Motel

text: Motels gained international popularity in countries such as Thailand, Germany, and Japan but in some countries the term "motel" now connotes either a low-end hotel (such as Hotel Formule 1 in Europe) or a no-tell motel.


title: Motel

text: As in the U.S., the initial 1930s roadside accommodations were primitive tourist camps, with over a hundred campgrounds listed in Ontario alone on one 1930 provincial road map. While most of these provided access to the most basic of amenities (like picnic tables, playgrounds, toilet facilities and supplies), fewer than a quarter offered cottages in the pre-Depression era, and the vast majority required travelers bring their own tents. In Canada's climate, these sites were effectively unusable outside the high season.


title: Motel

text: Because cabins and camps were ill-suited to a Canadian winter, the number and variety of motels grew dramatically after World War II, peaking just before freeways such as Ontario Highway 401 opened in the 1960s. Due to Canada's climate and short tourist season, which begins at Victoria Day and continued until Labour Day or Thanksgiving, any outdoor swimming pool would be usable for little more than two months of the year and independent motels would operate at a loss or close during the off-season.


title: Motel

text: By the 1980s, motels were losing ground rapidly to franchises such as Journey's End Corporation and the U.S.-based chains. The section of Highway 7 between Modeland Road and Airport Road, known as the "Golden Mile" for its plethora of motels and restaurants was bypassed once Highway 402 was completed in 1982, however the Golden Mile still retains points of interest such as the Sarnia Airport and Hiawatha Racetrack and Waterpark.


title: Motel

text: Much of Canada's population is crowded into a few small southern regions. While the Windsor-Québec corridor was bypassed by motorways relatively early, in more sparsely populated regions (including much of Northern Ontario) thousands of kilometers of mostly two-lane Trans-Canada Highway remain undisturbed as the road makes its lengthy journey westward through tiny, distant and isolated communities.


title: Motel

text: The original concept of a motel as a motorist's hotel which grew up around the highways of the 1920s is of American origin. The term appears to have initially had the same meaning in other countries, but has since been used in many places to refer either to a budget-priced hotel with limited amenities or a love hotel, depending on the country and language. The division between motel and hotel, like elsewhere, has been blurred, so many of these are low-end hotels.


title: Motel

text: In France, motel-style chain accommodations of up to three stories (with exterior hallways and stairwells) usually reach the "one-star" rank in France's national tourism agency classification of tourist hotels. The Louvre Hôtels chain operates Première Classe (1 star) as a market segmentation brand in this range, using other "marques" for higher or mid-range hotels. The use of "motel" to identify any budget-priced roadhouse hotel ("Rasthaus", "Raststätte") also exists in the German language; some French chains operating in Germany (such as Accor's Hotel Formule 1) offer automated registration and small, Spartan rooms at reduced cost.


title: Motel

text: In Portuguese, "motel" (plural: "motéis") commonly refers not to the original drive-up accommodation house for motorists but to an "adult motel" or love hotel with amenities such as whirlpool baths, in-room pornography, candles and oversize or non-standard-shaped beds in various honeymoon-suite styles. These rooms are available for as little as four hours, and minors are excluded from these establishments. (The Portuguese-language term "rotel" had brief usage in 1970s Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for a similar concept, ro- for rooms through which clients rotate in a matter of hours instead of overnight.)


title: Motel

text: A similar association of "motel" to short-stay hotels with reserved parking and luxury rooms which can be rented by couples for a few hours has begun to appear in Italy, where the market segment has shown significant growth since the 1990s and become highly competitive.


title: Motel

text: In Latin America, a "motel" (in Mexico, "Motel de paso") is an establishment often associated with extramarital encounters and rented typically for a few hours (15 minutes to 12 hours). In Ecuador, any establishment with the title "Motel" is related to extramarital encounters; in Argentina and Peru these hotels for couples are called "albergue transitorio" ("temporary shelter") and offered for anything from a few hours to overnight, with décor based on amenities such as dim lights, a whirlpool and a king-size bed. In other Spanish-speaking countries these establishments have other slang names like "mueble", "amueblado" ("furniture", "furnished rental") or "telo".


title: Motel

text: In the Dominican Republic, "cabins" (named for their cabin-like shape) have all these amenities (such as a whirlpool bath, oversize bed and HDTV) but generally do not have windows, and have private parking for each room individually. Registration is handled not in a conventional manner but, upon entering the room, by delivering a bill with the registration through a small window that does not allow eye contact to ensure greater discretion.


title: Motel

text: The connotations of "motel" as adult motel or love hotel in both the Spanish and Portuguese languages can be awkward for U.S.-based chains accustomed to using the term in its original meaning, although this issue is diminishing as chains (such as Super 8 Motels) increasingly drop the word "motel" from their corporate identities at home.


title: Motel

text: Many auto camps were used as havens and hide-outs for criminals of the 1920s; Bonnie and Clyde had a shootout in the infamous Red Crown Tourist Court near Kansas City on July 20, 1933. Courtney Ryley Cooper's 1940 "American Magazine" article "Camps of Crime" attributed to J. Edgar Hoover a denunciation of tourist courts as bases of operation for gangs of desperadoes, claiming that "a large number of roadside cottage groups appear to be not tourist camps but assignation camps" and alleging that "marijuana sellers have been found around such places."


title: Motel

text: Ultimately, efforts to curb the unconstrained growth of tourist courts were futile as motor courts (as motels were called in the 1930s and 1940s) grew in number and popularity.


title: Motel

text: Motels have served as a haven for fugitives in the past as the anonymity and a simple registration process helped fugitives to remain ahead of the law. Several changes have reduced the capacity of motels to serve this purpose. In many jurisdictions, regulations now require motel operators to obtain ID from clients and meet specific record-keeping requirements. Credit card transactions, which in the past were more easily approved and took days to report, are now approved or declined on the spot and are instantly recorded in a database, thereby allowing law enforcement access to this information.


title: Motel

text: Motels which allow a room to be rented inexpensively for less than one full night's stay or which allow a couple not wishing to be seen together publicly to enter a room without passing through the office or lobby area have been nicknamed "no-tell motels" due to their long association with adultery. Even where rooms were rented overnight to middle-class travelers (and not locals or extended-stay clients) there have been ongoing problems with theft of motel property by travelers; everything from waterbeds to television sets to bedspreads and pillows have routinely gone missing in what one 1970s Associated Press report labelled "highway robbery".


title: Motel

text: The least costly motels sometimes serve as temporary housing for people who are not able to afford an apartment or have recently lost their home. Motels catering to long-term stays occasionally have kitchenettes or efficiencies, or a motel room with a kitchen. While conventional apartments are more cost-effective with better amenities, tenants unable to pay first and last month's rent or undesirable due to unemployment, criminal records or credit problems do seek low-end residential motels because of a lack of viable short-term options.


title: Motel

text: Motels in low-income areas are often plagued with drug activity, street prostitution or other crime. Some correctional officials temporarily place newly paroled convicts into motels if upon release they have nowhere to stay. These motels have daily to monthly rates.


title: Motel

text: The annual number of calls for service to police departments per room ("CFS/room") as a metric has been used to identify motels with poor surveillance of visitors, inadequate staff or management unwilling to pro-actively exclude known or likely problem tenants. Motels with lax security in bad neighborhoods attract disturbances (including guests who will not leave or pay), robbery, auto theft and theft from rooms or vehicles, vandalism, public intoxication and alcoholism, drug dealing or clandestine methamphetamine laboratories, fighting, street gang activity, pimping and street prostitution or sexual assaults.


title: Motel

text: As severe unlawful conduct issues impact the neighborhood as a whole, some municipalities have adopted a nuisance abatement strategy of using public health and fire safety violations or taxation laws as pretexts to shut down bad motels. City bylaws such as Seattle's "Chronic Nuisance Properties" ordinance have also been used to penalize owners or shut down a business entirely.


title: Motel

text: The Bates Motel is an important part of "Psycho", a 1959 novel by Robert Bloch, and Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 film adaptation. "Psycho II", "Psycho III" and "", sequels to the film, also feature the motel, as does Gus Van Sant's 1998 remake of the original film. A comedic 1987 television movie "Bates Motel" and the 2013 television series "Bates Motel", a prequel to the films, both use the name of the motel as a title. In the 2010 Halloween TV special "Scared Shrekless", Puss in Boots tells a cautionary tale about the "Boots Motel".


title: Motel

text: The scenario of an isolated motel being operated by a serial killer, whose guests subsequently become victims, has been exploited in a number of other horror films, notably "Motel Hell" (1980) and "Mountaintop Motel Massacre" (1986). More recently, the genre has been revived with such films as "Mayhem Motel" (2001), "Murder Inn" (2005), "Vacancy" (2007), and its direct-to-video prequel, "" (2009).


title: Motel

text: Several of these horror films also incorporate the sub-theme of voyeurism, whereby the motel owner spies on (or even films) the sexual exploits of the guests. This plays on the long-established connotations of motels and illicit sexual activity, which has itself formed the basis for numerous other films, variously representing the thriller, comedy, teen film, and sexploitation genres. Stephen C. Apostolof's "Motel Confidential" (1967) and the porn film "Motel for Lovers" (1970) were two notable early examples. More recent manifestations include "Paradise Motel" (1985), "Talking Walls" (1987), "Desire and Hell at Sunset Motel" (1991), and the Korean films "Motel Cactus" (1997) and "The Motel" (2005).


title: Motel

text: In countless other films and TV series, the motel—invariably depicted as an isolated, run-down, and seedy establishment—has served as the setting for sordid events often involving equally sordid characters. Examples include "Pink Motel" (1982), "Motel Blue 19" (1993), "Backroad Motel" (2001), "Stateline Motel" (2003), "Niagara Motel" (2006), and "Motel 5150" (2008).


title: Motel

text: In the film "Sparkle Lite Motel" (2006) and the TV miniseries "The Lost Room" (2006), the motel made forays into the realms of science fiction. In the Pixar animation "Cars" (2006), a clientele of solely anthropomorphic vehicles requires all hotels be motels where clients drive directly to their rooms; allusions to real Route 66 motels on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places abound in the film. The Cozy Cone Motel design is the Wigwam Motel on U.S. Route 66 in Arizona with the neon "100% Refrigerated Air" slogan of Tucumcari, New Mexico's Blue Swallow Motel; the Wheel Well Motel's name alludes to the restored stone-cabin Wagon Wheel Motel in Cuba, Missouri. A long-defunct "Glenn Rio Motel" recalls Route 66 ghost town Glenrio, New Mexico and Texas, now a national historic district on the state line. Glenrio once boasted the "First Motel in Texas" (as seen when arriving from New Mexico) or "Last Motel in Texas" (the same motel, its signage viewed from the opposite side).


title: Motel

text: In computer gaming, "Murder Motel" was an online text game by Sean D. Wagle, hosted on various dial-up bulletin board systems (1980s, originally Color64, ported to various other platforms). The object was for each player to attempt to brutally kill all fellow guests in each room of a motel using a variety of weapons.


title: Motel

text: In theatre, the seedy motel room has been the setting for two-hander plays such as "Same Time, Next Year" (1975) and "Bug" (2006). Both were later adapted as films. Broadway musicals have also paid homage to the lowbrow reputation of motel culture, demonstrated by songs such as "The No-Tel Motel" from "Prettybelle" and "At the Bed-D-by Motel" from "Lolita, My Love"


title: Motel

text: The British soap opera "Crossroads" was set in a motel in the English Midlands which was originally based on American-style motels with chalets but later was transformed into a luxury country hotel.


title: Motel

text: A run-down motel was used as the relocated residence of the unfortunate Rose family in the Emmy-award winning series Schitt's Creek. As the show progressed, Eugene Rose and Stevie Budd venture into turning old motels into authentic boutique motels. In one episode, a presidential suite is seen complete with era-correct furniture.


title: ISU-152

text: The ISU-152 (, meaning "IS tank based self-propelled installation with 152mm caliber gun") is a Soviet self-propelled gun developed and used during World War II. It was unofficially nicknamed "zveroboy" (; "beast killer") in response to several large German tanks and guns coming into service, including Tigers and Panthers. Since the ISU-152's gun was mounted in a casemate, aiming it was awkward, and had to be done by repositioning the entire vehicle using the tracks. Therefore, it was used as mobile artillery to support more mobile infantry and armor attacks. It continued service into the 1970s and was used in several campaigns and countries.


title: ISU-152

text: The beginnings of the ISU-152 came on 24 January 1943, when the first prototype of the SU-152 was unveiled. This was a fully enclosed 152mm gun-howitzer on the KV-1S tank chassis. It was designated ' ("Project 236") . Project 236 was completed in Factory No. 100 in Chelyabinsk, and was tested successfully from 24 January to 7 February 1943. On 14 February the vehicle was adopted and put into production under the KV-14"' ("кв"-14) designation; in April 1943 the designation was changed to SU-152" ("СУ"-152).


title: ISU-152

text: Although the SU-152 was successful in combat, production of the KV-1S tank chassis was ending, which made the modernisation of the vehicle necessary, using the new IS tank chassis. On 25 May 1943 the administration of Factory No. 100 ordered the modernisation of the SU-152, which included increased armour protection and other improvements. Development began in July 1943, under the supervision of Josef Kotin, the chief designer of Soviet heavy tanks, and G. N. Moskvin as the main designer.


title: ISU-152

text: The new design, designated IS-152 ("ИС"-152), was tested from September to November 1943. Testing revealed a large number of deficiencies, which sent it back for further improvement. On 6 November 1943 an order was issued for adoption of the improved variant, under the ISU-152 () designation, and in December production began at the Chelyabinsk Kirovsk Plant, replacing the SU-152.


title: ISU-152

text: On 15 April 1942, at the plenum of the artillery committee, where the development of assault guns for support of the infantry was discussed, the necessity of also developing assault guns capable of destroying fortified positions was acknowledged. It was intended these assault guns would be armed with a 152.4 mm gun-howitzer and used for penetration of the enemy defence in the offensive operations planned for 1942–1943. This resulted in the development of the Object 236, and eventually the SU-152, which concept was later continued and further developed with the ISU-152.


title: ISU-152

text: The ISU-152 followed the same design as most other Soviet self-propelled guns. The fully armoured hull was divided into two compartments: fighting compartment for the crew, gun and ammunition in the front of the hull, and engine and transmission in the rear. The gun was mounted slightly to the right of centre with a limited traverse of 12 degrees left and right. The crew consisted of four or five men placed in the superstructure. Three of the crew were to the left of the gun: driver to the front, then gunner and last the loader. The vehicle commander and lockman (who operated the gun breech) were to the right: commander to the front and the lockman behind. When the crew consisted of four men, the loading was carried out by the lockman.


title: ISU-152

text: The suspension consisted of twelve torsion bars for the six road wheels on either side. The drive sprockets were at the back, and the front idlers were identical to the road wheels. Each track was made up of 90 links. There were three internal fuel tanks, two in the crew area and one in the engine compartment. These were usually supplemented with four unconnected external fuel tanks. 12- and 24-volt electrical power supplies came from a 1 kW generator feeding four accumulator batteries.


title: ISU-152

text: For observation from the interior, all roof hatches had periscopes and there were two gun sights: telescopic ST-10 (СТ-10) and panoramic. For crew communication a TPU-4-BisF intercom was fitted, and for inter-vehicle communication there was a single 10R or 10RK radio. These were better than Soviet equipment at the start of the war but still inferior to German equivalents.


title: ISU-152

text: The crew were given two PPSh submachine guns with 1491 rounds and 20 F-1 grenades for short-range self-defence.


title: ISU-152

text: The ISU-152 was armed with the same gun as the SU-152, but it used the hull of the IS-1 tank instead of the KV-1S. Later in the war the ISU-152 was further improved. It used the hull of the IS-2 or IS-2 model 1944 tank, the armour of the mantlet was increased, the gun was replaced by newer variants, a 12.7×108 mm DShK anti-aircraft machine gun was installed by the right forward hatch and later its ammunition capacity increased, the 10R radio set was upgraded to a 10RK and the fuel capacity was increased.


title: ISU-152

text: Some ISU-152s were equipped with even larger external fuel tanks, two tanks on the rear hull deck, in addition to the four external fuel tanks — each, maximum — or with two smaller additional external fuel tanks, on the hull rear. This option was probably available for the post-war ISU-152 variants.


title: ISU-152

text: Between December 1943 and May 1945, 1,885 ISU-152s were built. Mass production ceased in 1947, with 3,242 vehicles produced in total.


title: ISU-152

text: Post-war ISU-152 modernisation included installation of night vision sights, replacing of the V-2IS engine with the V-54K, the 12.7mm machine gun was replaced by a newer variant, the ammunition capacity increased to 30 rounds, additional armor, automotive improvements and significant increase of the main fuel capacity.


title: ISU-152

text: The initial variant was developed in 1943. The factory designation was Object 241 (Объект 241). It was armed with the 152.4 mm ML-20S (МЛ-20С) model 1937 gun-howitzer, with a barrel length of over 4.2 metres (27.9 calibers). This gun had a maximum range of . The armor-piercing round, weighing , had a muzzle velocity of and a maximum penetration of of rolled homogeneous armour (RHA) at 90° at a range of . The rate of fire was 2-3 rounds/min. The ISU-152 carried 21 rounds of two piece (shell and charge) armor-piercing and high explosive ammunition. Later ISU-152 versions had a newer gun with a slightly longer barrel, up to over 4.9 metres (32.3 calibers), with a maximum range of fire of up to .


title: ISU-152

text: The ISU-152 had different versions, with changes in the gun (later versions), the number of hatches, or the hull (based on the hull of the IS-1, IS-2 or IS-2 model 1944 tanks). The IS-2 based versions had a thicker gun shield and larger fuel tank. Until May 1944, the main armament was the 152.4 mm ML-20 model 1937 gun-howitzer. The ISU-152 had a rate of fire of 2-3 rounds/min. The early versions had three hatches in the superstructure roof and one emergency hatch at the bottom of the hull behind the driver's seat, which had an armored cover. Later versions had a fourth, round hatch in the superstructure roof on the right, next to the rectangular hatch on the left.


title: ISU-152

text: ISU-152BM (ИСУ-152БМ), sometimes referred to as ISU-152BM-1 or ISU-152-1, with the factory designation Object 246 (Объект 246), was a single prototype developed in April 1944 in Factory No. 100 in attempt to increase the firepower of the ISU-152. The "BM" ("БМ") in the designation stands for "High-Powered" ("Большой Мощности"). The main purpose of the ISU-152BM was to fight against heavily armored tank destroyers such as the Elefant and the Jagdtiger. It was armed with the 152.4 mm BL-8 (БЛ-8) long-barreled gun, which unlike the ISU-152's gun was not a gun-howitzer. The gun had a maximum range of , with the high-explosive shell which had a muzzle velocity of . The overall length of the gun was over , with a barrel length of (50 calibers). The armor-piercing round, weighing , had a muzzle velocity of . During test firing at armour plates with different thicknesses, the ISU-152BM successfully penetrated a maximum of of RHA at 90° at ranges of up to . However, during trials in July 1944, the gun showed some deficiencies, such as being difficult for the crew to operate, unreliability of the muzzle brake and the breech block, and unsatisfactory performance of the shells. In addition, the gun, protruding far forward of the hull front, limited the maneuverability of the vehicle. The self-propelled gun carried 21 rounds of two-piece (shell and charge) ammunition, and had a rate of fire of 2 rounds per minute. It used the engine, transmission, running gear, and electric equipment of the ISU-122. In August 1944 the BL-8 gun was replaced with the improved 152.4 mm BL-10 (БЛ-10) long-barreled gun, with a slightly shorter barrel of (48.5 calibers). This vehicle gun was designated ISU-152-2 (ИСУ-152-2). The factory designation was Object 247 (Объект 247). It was also equipped with external fuel tanks. The gun had a modified muzzle brake and a semi-automatic breech block. It had a rate of fire of 3 rounds/min. The BL-10 had a maximum range of , with the high-explosive shell. In December 1944 the ISU-152-2 underwent trials, revealing the barrel strength and the angle of horizontal guidance were unsatisfactory. The gun was sent for further improvement, but it was not completed before the war ended. The vehicle was never adopted. After the war, the final and most improved, third modification of ISU-152-2 was completed. The gun had a maximum range of , using a high-explosive shell with a muzzle velocity of .


title: ISU-152

text: Object 704 (Объект 704) was the factory designation for a prototype self propelled gun developed in 1945. Also known as the Kirovets-2, it was developed on the chassis of the Kirovets-1, the initial prototype of the project that became the IS-3. The overall height of the vehicle was reduced to , which was compensated with an increased width of the superstructure.It was armed with the 152.4 mm ML-20SM model 1944 (МЛ-20СМ обр. 1944 г.) gun-howitzer, with a barrel length of over (29.6 calibers) and no muzzle brake. It had a maximum range of . The self-propelled gun carried 20 rounds of two-piece (shell and charge) armour-piercing and high-explosive ammunition. The armour-piercing round, weighing , had a muzzle velocity of . The rate of fire was 1-2 round/min. Object 704 had four hatches at the superstructure roof and one emergency hatch at the bottom of the hull behind the driver's seat, which had an armoured cover. The self-propelled gun carried two external fuel tanks, not connected to the supply system. The secondary armament of the fighting vehicle consisted of two 12.7×108 mm DShK machine guns, one anti-aircraft and one co-axial. The protection was increased by placing thicker armour at more radical angles. In the area of the gun, where the mantlet combined with the hull front behind it and the housing of the recoil mechanism, the armour thickness was . Object 704 was the best protected of all experimental or production Soviet self-propelled guns of the Second World War. However, the radical incline of the superstructure walls combined with the increased recoil of the gun, due to the lack of a muzzle brake, significantly complicated the work of the crew, and for this reason it was not adopted.


title: ISU-152

text: Object 241K (Объект 241К) was the factory designation for a modernised variant of the wartime ISU-152, developed in 1956. It used a new engine, that of the T-54, with a cooling system and a heater. The capacity of the main internal fuel tank was increased to , which added more to the vehicle′s range on a road. The ammunition capacity was increased to 30 rounds after the removal of an additional internal fuel tank placed in the crew compartment. The gun had a maximum range of . It received a new commander's cupola, and also new sights. The running gear used many elements of the T-10. The mantlet had additional armor ring protecting the sight. Some of the ISU-152Ks received an additional 15 mm armour plate welded on top of the 60 mm armour plate covering the mantlet above. Also, some of them received an additional armour plate welded on the upper mantlet front. The modernisation was carried out in the Leningrad Kirov Plant.


title: ISU-152

text: ISU-152M was the final variant of ISU-152, developed in 1959. The work was now transferred to the Chelyabinsk Kirovsk Plant. This modernisation was parallel to the IS-2M program and the ISU-152M used many elements of the tank. The factory designation was Object 241M (Объект 241М). The innovations included night vision sights, increased ammunition stowage for the 12.7 mm machine gun, which was replaced by the improved DShKM, and internal automotive improvements. It had the same new commander's cupola and sights as the ISU-152K. It also had the same main internal fuel tank capacity, , adding more to the vehicle′s range on a road compared to the ISU-152, and an increased ammunition capacity to 30 rounds due to the removal of an internal fuel tank. The gun had a maximum range of . The ring protecting the sight was present, and the armour of the upper mantlet front was further increased with a thicker additional armour plate. The ISU-152M had the same V-54K engine with a heater, but lacked the cooling system.


title: ISU-152

text: The ISU-152 self-propelled gun combined three battle roles: heavy assault gun, heavy tank destroyer and heavy self-propelled artillery. The 152.4 mm gun used a number of powerful (shell and charge) ammunition. Some of these ammunition had a 43.56 kg high-explosive shell, or a 48.78 kg armour-piercing shell, or the heaviest of all, the 53-G-545 (53-Г-545) long-range concrete-piercing ammunition with a 56 kg shell. The ISU-152 was used for infantry and tank support in attacking fortified enemy positions in a direct-fire role, for artillery support on the battlefield in an indirect-fire role and for engagement against armored vehicles in a direct-fire role.


title: ISU-152

text: As a heavy assault gun, the ISU-152 was an extremely valuable weapon in urban combat operations such as the Battle of Berlin, Budapest and Königsberg. The vehicle's excellent armour protection finally provided the 152.4 mm gun with good protection from most German anti-tank guns, allowing it to advance into the face of direct anti-tank fire, while the huge, low velocity, high-explosive rounds were excellent at blasting open even the most heavily fortified and reinforced enemy strongpoints. Such actions would be much more dangerous and much less effective for a conventional towed artillery piece, with their high crew exposure and low mobility, or even a tank, with their smaller main guns. When supporting tanks, the usual tactics of the ISU-152 were to be used in the second line of the attack order, behind the attacking tanks, which were usually IS tanks with equal mobility.


title: ISU-152

text: The ISU-152, like the earlier SU-152 and contemporary ISU-122, was employed by Independent Heavy Self-propelled Artillery Regiments. Between May 1943 and 1945, 53 of these regiments were formed. Many of them were re-formed tank regiments, and employed similar direct fire tactics as used by tanks when supporting infantry. Each of the heavy regiment had 21 guns, divided into four artillery batteries of five vehicles and the commander's vehicle. For support, these heavy regiments had some supplementary unarmoured vehicles such as trucks, jeeps, or motorcycles. In December 1944, Guards Heavy Self-propelled Artillery Brigades were formed, to provide heavy fire support to the tank armies. They were organized along the model of tank brigades, each with 65 ISU-152 or ISU-122 self-propelled guns.


title: ISU-152

text: To minimize the risks of being knocked out by "Panzerfaust"-equipped units during urban operations, the ISU-152 usually acted in one- or two-vehicle detachments alongside infantry squads for protection. The infantry squad would include a specialist sniper (or at least a sharpshooter), some submachine gunners and sometimes a flamethrower. The ISU-152's heavy-calibre DShK machine gun was also useful for targeting Panzerfaust gunners hiding on upper floors of city buildings or behind protective cover and defensive barricades. Effective teamwork between the ISU-152 crew and supporting infantry allowed them to achieve their goals with minimal losses, but if such tactics were not adhered to, the attacking vehicles were easily attacked and destroyed, usually through the weaker armor on the roof or rear compartment.


title: ISU-152

text: The ISU-152 could also operate as an effective heavy tank destroyer. Though it was not designed for the role, the vehicle inherited the nickname "Zveroboy" ("beast killer") from its predecessor, the SU-152, for its ability to reliably kill the best protected German fighting vehicles; the Panther tank, the Tiger I and Tiger II tanks, and even the rare Elefant and Jagdtiger tank destroyers. The sheer weight of the 152.4 mm shells resulted in an extremely low rate of fire, only one to three rounds per minute, and were not as accurate at long range as high-velocity tank and anti-tank guns. However, the massive blast effect from the heavy high-explosive warhead was capable of blowing the turret completely off a Tiger tank. A direct hit usually destroyed or damaged the target's tracks and suspension, immobilizing it. While the low-velocity 152mm shell did not generally penetrate heavy armor, it frequently killed or severely wounded the crew through spalling (splintering) inside the hull as well as injuries caused by blast concussion. Due to the brittle nature of German tank steel during the latter stages of the war, it was common for impacted armor plates to shatter from the concussive blast, or for weld lines to break, allowing the entire armor piece to fall away. Surviving crew were often left with an immobilized vehicle which had to be hurriedly abandoned before being destroyed.


title: ISU-152

text: For anti-tank operations following the July 1943 Battle of Kursk, armour-piercing ammunition was developed, with an eye towards giving the howitzer a more traditional anti-tank capability. However, these rounds were expensive, in short supply, and only moderately more effective than the standard non-penetrating high-explosive round. As a howitzer the ML-20S exchanged velocity and accuracy for throw weight and distance, and was not intended to compete with true anti-tank guns. Sometimes the concrete-piercing ammunition was used for the anti-tank role. A primitive shaped charge ammunition, with a shell, was also developed. It had a maximum penetration of 250 mm of RHA at 90°, but it was not used during the war.


title: ISU-152

text: The ISU-152's 90 mm of sloped frontal armor, in contrast to the SU-152's 65 mm, provided excellent frontal protection from the 75mm KwK 40 gun of the ubiquitous Panzer IV and StuG family at all but the closest ranges, while also forcing the original Tiger I, with its vaunted 88 mm KwK 36 gun, to close to medium ranges in order to successfully penetrate the vehicle, negating its traditional long-range superiority and putting it within effective range of the Soviet T-34-85 medium tanks


title: ISU-152

text: The ISU-152 was not a true purpose-built tank destroyer. It had a very low rate of fire compared with specialised tank destroyers such as the German Jagdpanther or the Soviet SU-100, which could manage a brief burst of five to eight rounds per minute. However, prior to the introduction of the SU-100 it was the only Soviet armored vehicle capable of tackling the German heavy tanks with any kind of reliability, and its ability to satisfy multiple roles meant it was produced in far greater numbers than the SU-100. Attention to camouflage, quick relocation between firing positions, and massed ambushes of four or five vehicles firing in salvo at a single target's flanks reduced the disadvantage of the low rate of fire.


title: ISU-152

text: The ISU-152 was also sometimes used as self-propelled artillery for support on the battlefield and preparatory bombardments, though it had a medium range of fire and a slow speed of reloading. The Soviet army had not developed specialized vehicles for this purpose. Their tank and mechanized units were well equipped with towed artillery, but the towed guns were very vulnerable while moving and they could not support tanks and motorized infantry during rapid advances into enemy positions, especially when they lacked the armored fully enclosed design of vehicles like ISU-152.


title: ISU-152

text: The internal stowage was limited to only 20 or 21 rounds of ammunition, with extra rounds often stowed on the rear deck. Replenishing the vehicle's ammunition supply took over 40 minutes and required a very strong loader, due to the large size and weight of the shells - over . The ST-10 telescopic sight used for direct fire was graduated up to . A second, panoramic, sight was used for direct fire up to range no direct fire. However, it was problematic for the gunner to switch between the two. To compensate it was simpler to concentrate the fire of several vehicles onto the target, sacrificing accuracy for volume of firepower. The high-explosive shells were large enough to take out even a heavily armoured vehicle, or a fortification with the even heavier long-range concrete-piercing shells. The usual complement of ammunition was 13 high-explosive and 7 armour-piercing or concrete-piercing.


title: ISU-152

text: In June 1944, during the Continuation War, a captured ISU-152 was used by the Finnish military. It was abandoned during the counter-attack at Kärstilänjärvi after receiving numerous shots from Soviet T-34-85 medium tanks. This was a direct result of the Finnish crew's lack of experience and training with the ISU-152. Another captured one was repaired in Varkaus, Finland, but never saw combat.


title: ISU-152

text: In 1944, more than 30 ISU-152s were delivered to the People's Army of Poland. Shortly afterwards, the Polish military created the 25th Polish Self-Propelled Artillery Regiment, which consisted of 10 ISU-152s and 22 ISU-122s. As part of the 1st Polish Tank Corps (which operated both T-34-76 and T-34-85 tanks), the regiment took part in combat action along the River Nysa, located in southwestern Poland in March 1945. In the early months of 1945, the Polish command began to form another ISU-152 regiment, but with too few vehicles, the newly-formed 13th Polish self-propelled artillery regiment received two ISU-152s and two batteries comprising SU-85s. This regiment took part in the Battle of Berlin between April and May of 1945.


title: ISU-152

text: As part of the Soviet Union's military assistance to friendly or pro-Soviet countries around the world, a few ISU-152s were transferred to the Czechoslovakian military after World War II, which operated them until the end of 1950s. For several decades it was the heaviest armored vehicle in the Czechoslovak People's Army, which used these to test newly-developed anti-tank obstacles.


title: ISU-152

text: One captured during World War II. The Romanian Army had received 20 ISU-152s during the 1950s; these were assigned to the artillery units of the 6th, 7th and 57th tank divisions of the Romanian Army. They were known as T-152 in Romanian service.


title: ISU-152

text: The Yugoslav Army had only one ISU-152 in its inventory. This sole vehicle was abandoned by units of the Soviet Red Army's 2nd Ukrainian Front in 1944. In 1946, members of the Yugoslav 2nd Tank Brigade's first battalion, led by technical officer Stojimir Ilijevic – Guerrilla, recovered the self-propelled gun after five days of work. As a unique vehicle it was used by the Army's Tank School at Bela Crkva. After it was withdrawn from service, this single Yugoslav ISU-152 ended up as a practice target at the Manjača firing range.


title: ISU-152

text: In 1955, the Soviet Army moved out from Dalian in northeastern China, officially ending 10 years of military occupation. All weapons and armaments left behind by the Soviet Union were sold to the Chinese People's Liberation Army, including 67 ISU-152s; 45 were given to the newly-created 1st Mechanized Division of the PLA.


title: ISU-152

text: During and after the Korean War, ISU-152s were operated by the Korean People's Army of the DPRK. North Korea reportedly still uses ISU-152s in both active and reserve units, however, the actual number is unknown.


title: ISU-152

text: In the early 1960s the Egyptian military received at least one regiment of ISU-152s. They were used during the Arab-Israeli conflicts between 1967 and 1973. They proved mostly ineffective and several were captured by the Israeli Defence Forces; one is now on display in Yad la-Shiryon.


title: ISU-152

text: The ISU-152 can be seen, exhibited or simply located, at different museums and memorials around the world. Some were used to create monuments.


title: 2020–21 EFL Championship

text: The 2020–21 EFL Championship (referred to as the Sky Bet Championship for sponsorship reasons) was the 17th season of the Football League Championship under its current title and the 29th season under its current league division format.


title: 2020–21 EFL Championship

text: As with the end to the previous season, the season was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in games being played behind closed doors. However, on 19 September 2020, two matches in the division, between Norwich City and Preston North End at Carrow Road, and between Middlesbrough and Bournemouth at The Riverside Stadium, were held in front of 1,000 spectators, as part of EFL pilots.


title: 2020–21 EFL Championship

text: This was seen as the beginning of fans gradually returning, but a rapid rise of cases from the end of September (eventually resulting in a second nationwide lockdown in November), led to plans being put on hold.


title: 2020–21 EFL Championship

text: With the second nationwide lockdown ending on 2 December 2020, it was announced England would return to its previous three tier system, with clubs in Tier 2 allowed to host a maximum of 2,000 spectators. The first of these matches took place on 2 December 2020 itself, although the matches of Luton Town and Wycombe Wanderers were capped at 1,000 spectators, as they had not previously held an EFL pilot event.


title: 2020–21 EFL Championship

text: On Saturday 5 December 2020, Reading, Millwall, Watford, Norwich City and Brentford all hosted matches in front of the maximum allotted 2,000 spectators permitted, with fans in attendance at Brentford Community Stadium for the very first time.


title: 2020–21 EFL Championship

text: However, it was then announced that from Wednesday 16 December 2020, that London, parts of Essex and parts of Hertfordshire, would move up to Tier 3, the highest tier of restrictions in England, meaning football clubs in these areas, (for The EFL Championship: Brentford, Millwall, Queens Park Rangers and Watford), would revert to playing behind closed doors without fans, due to a rise in coronavirus cases, following a tier review.


title: 2020–21 EFL Championship

text: It was then announced that from Saturday, 19 December 2020 that Bedfordshire, Berkshire, and Buckinghamshire would also move into Tier 3, meaning for the EFL Championship that Luton Town, Reading & Wycombe Wanderers would also revert to playing behind closed doors without fans again, as of this date. Conversely, Bristol City, who had previously been unable to host fans, would now be able to allow fans back in, with Bristol being downgraded from Tier 3 to Tier 2. As of these updated restrictions, it now meant that only Bournemouth, Bristol City and Norwich City's stadiums would be open to host fans in The EFL Championship. This was reversed on Wednesday 23 December 2020, with Bournemouth the sole team in the division eligible to host fans. A week later on 30 December 2020, Tier 2 was removed in England, with mainland England in either Tiers 3 or 4, meaning once again, no clubs could host fans for the foreseeable future. A third national lockdown in January 2021 meant that fans ultimately were barred from matches for the rest of the regular season. Following an easing of restrictions in May 2021, the play-offs were able to take place in front of crowds of up to 20% of a stadium's capacity.


title: Shane Douglas

text: Troy Allan Martin (born November 21, 1964) is an American professional wrestler and promoter, better known by his ring name Shane Douglas. He is best known for his tenures in Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW), World Championship Wrestling (WCW), World Wrestling Federation (WWF) as Dean Douglas, and Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA), where he worked as a wrestler and manager.


title: Shane Douglas

text: Martin held a dozen championships between ECW, WCW, and the WWF and is a five-time world champion: a four-time ECW World Heavyweight Champion and a one-time NWA World Heavyweight Champion. As ECW Champion, he holds the records for most combined days as champion (874) and the longest single reign (406 days). Martin is also a two-time ECW World Television Champion, a one-time WWF Intercontinental Champion, a one-time WCW United States Heavyweight Champion and a two-time WCW World Tag Team Champion.


title: Shane Douglas

text: Martin was also the first of eleven men (the others being Mick Foley, Terry Funk, Chris Jericho, Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, Perry Saturn, Chris Candido, Dean Malenko, Raven, and Lance Storm) to win a championship in all three major U.S. promotions in the 1990s, after he won the WWE Intercontinental Championship in 1995.


title: Shane Douglas

text: Martin achieved the greatest success of his career in ECW, where he debuted in 1993 and captured the ECW Heavyweight Championship twice in his first year with the company. He gained attention when he won a tournament for the NWA World Heavyweight Championship, where he publicly rejected the NWA title belt and helped ECW in evolving from an NWA territory to a national promotion. Within ECW, he was dubbed "The Franchise" in reference to his status as the franchise player of the promotion. WWE, who purchased that organization, asserted: "Without Shane Douglas, there would have been no ECW." He headlined many events for ECW including three editions of the company's premier pay-per-view event November to Remember in 1996, 1997 and 1998.