title: Guzaarish (film)

text: The song "Udi" was pictured during this session which was choreographed by Longinus Fernandes, whom Bhansali had judged in "Jhalak Dikhla Jaa", a popular dance based reality show. Fernandes was already known for his works in "Slumdog Millionaire" and "Jaane Tu... Ya Jaane Na". According to him Bhansali "..wanted to make the song different and unique. I asked him if we can add a little bit of Spanish to it and give it a raw, earthy feel. He liked the idea, so we gave the whole dance a very rustic look in order to make it look as natural as possible". The choreographer added that the dance sequence was very distinct in that the audience had never seen Rai doing such steps. He went gaga over the lead actress saying that she danced like a dream. Longinus said in an interview that it ".. did not take her long to learn the dance but it did take her some time to perfect it and to get into the mood of the character". In an interview Sanjay Leela Bhansali said that in the song Udi, "..with such few words Sofia manages to say so much. It was my tribute to Waheeda Rahman's character in "Guide". "In a sequence from the film, Ethan explains Omar, that the first magic he had performed was for his mother. Bhansali said that it is inspired from his childhood days. He said, "I remember my grandmother selling off the last of her silver and storing chillar in large Johnson baby powder tin. Every afternoon she would count that money and put it back. That kurr-kurr of the coins being bought out, counted and put back had to be heard again. The value of those coins doesn't exist anymore but it was an important part of my growing up." Since Roshan's character, Ethan, plays a magician in the initial portion of the film, a Ukrainian magician was hired for teaching him magic tricks, after a long search for a professional magician. The magic stunts performed by Roshan and Monikangana Dutta formed the major portion of the film shot in the last schedule.


title: Guzaarish (film)

text: Among the many stunts shot there was a particular sequence in which Roshan had to dance using a large transparent ball as a property. The actor said that he had trained the hardest to practice spin in one of the dance sequence. Roshan said, "I trained for a month. It was not a long piece of dance but there was lot of jazz ballet where I was required to spin as there is a ball in my hand and I am playing with it as well as dancing. None of my songs up till now have spin because I am very bad at it." The cinematographer of the movie Sudeep Chatterjee was asked to interpret the script completely so that Bhansali could understand his perception too. Praising his director to be very open and cooperative Chatterjee acknowledged in an interview about Bhansali's penchant for closed spaces. He said that his main challenge was to make the scenes look different though the protagonist is locked in a single room. To make these differences the lighting was adjusted such that one sees the room in twilight, at night, during the day, in early morning. The camera was made always mobile to counter Ethan's stillness. Slightly mobile things were deliberately kept always around Ethan like a fluttering curtain, a fish bowl on Ethan's night stand which according to the cinematographer mocked at his stillness all the time.


title: Guzaarish (film)

text: To enhance the intensity between his characters, Bhansali wanted a correctly intense reference point for Hrithik and Aishwarya's feelings and conversations. Bhansali said that he thought the sentiment of thwarted passion and smothered intensity of star-crossed lovers in Romeo & Juliet expressed his protagonists' inexpressible feelings very well.


title: Guzaarish (film)

text: When asked about the preparation she did for the film, actor Aishwarya Rai said in an interview that both herself and the director Bhansali ".. just like to walk randomly around the sets and "feel". Sometimes I sit quietly and gaze into space or the ground and he captures all that. In fact, the poster picture with me looking away was taken like that. I was looking at the ground, lost in deep thought and he clicked it and told me that he was putting it on his poster. He knows when I am ready to do a scene, when I am in character, and the like. For instance, I delayed going on the set by two days and he did not say anything. He called me on the set and said we would start shooting in five days. On the second day, I tried hair, make-up, and costume. He told me I was ready to give my first shot and indeed, I was." About the script Bhansali said that he had worked on the script for 18 months and says, "My film is mainstream in terms of budgets, cast and audience and I had to make sure that I did not hurt anyone but evoked a debate."


title: Guzaarish (film)

text: Sabyasachi Mukherjee made a debut in jewelry line with "Guzaarish". He had designed the line keeping in mind a multicultural element with a nomadic vibe. Omar Siddiqui played by Aditya Roy Kapur was styled like a struggling French musician. Suhel Seth, who played Ethan's doctor, is presented in stiff suits and Shernaz Patel, Ethan's lawyer is given a look of a Gandhian in cotton saris and three-quarter blouses. The maids are in dumpy dresses. The costume designer says that "..the clothes are nearly theatrical and they have a mind of their own. If you remove the characters and hang the clothes, they will tell a story. It's like Neverland or the reality version of The Magic Faraway Tree!". The entire look of Rai consisted of thirty-seven long frocks, four dumpy shoes, maxis, aprons with motifs of cutlery, quirky glasses and jewelry, surreal hairdos and red lips. For the collection, Sabyasachi used precious and semi-precious stones, minakari and filigree and had to work with about 60 skilled workers from West Bengal to complete the line. The price range of rings and earrings starts from Rs. 40,000 and navratan necklaces are priced at Rs. 510,000. On the look of Ethan Mascarenhas, Mukherjee said that the make up and costume was more organic. On a lighter note he added that he wanted his hero to look like Clark Kent and not James Bond.


title: Guzaarish (film)

text: The DI and VFX for Guzaarish was done by Prime Focus, a global Visual Entertainment Services group, who had previously collaborated with Sanjay Leela Bhansali on many films including 'Black' and 'Saawariya'.


title: Guzaarish (film)

text: The first look of the film was supposed to be released along with Dharma Productions' "We Are Family" on 3 September. Later the trailer was withdrawn from "We Are Family". The official reason given for the postponement of the trailer was the time factor as the producers felt that there was a lot of time before the release of "Guzaarish", and hence it was decided Guzaarish's first promotional trailer would feature in theaters a month later with Siddharth Anand's "Anjaana Anjaani".


title: Guzaarish (film)

text: Owing to the Ayodhya verdict, the release of "Anjaana Anjaani" was also postponed to 1 October, which saw the release of another Aishwarya Rai film "Enthiran – The Robot". The first viewing opened to positive responses. The 1 minute, 48 seconds long trailer focused entirely on Hrithik and Aishwarya and was sans dialogue. The trailer was described by the critics as ".. delightful visuals, exhilarating background score, elaborate costumes, and understated but intense emotions – the promo has a signature Bhansali look and feel. It reminds you of "Black", it reminds you of "Saawariya". Faridoon Shahryar, Content Head Bollywood Hungama website, opined that the first look was ".. sheer poetry, amalgamation of mesmeric music, metaphorical imagery, a tinge of humour, a larger than life settings, and loads of pathos". Alongside the release of the promotional trailer, posters and downloadable background materials were also spread officially through the internet. During the "presser", attended by Aishwarya Rai, Hrithik Roshan, Ronnie Screwvala, Aditya Roy Kapur, Monikangana Dutta, Shernaz Patel, other cast and crew of the movie and Bhansali himself, the director said ".. You go through so much in life, so many things about life are unspoken, hope and joy of living, and I thought it was important to make a film which dealt with a topic like this."


title: Guzaarish (film)

text: A nervous Bhansali, who had met the media after a long time, said he was very afraid of handling a mic after so long. He thanked UTV Chairman Ronnie Screwvala for his unrelenting support. Bhansali made headlines for the day when he said that Aishwarya Rai was ".. his muse, his "jaan", and I get terribly excited when I make a film with her because she is very, very special. Some people are timeless and Aishwarya will be there for another 20 years". About the lead actor he said, "I have never enjoyed working with any other actor as much as I have enjoyed working with Hrithik.


title: Guzaarish (film)

text: Aishwarya Rai told the press that "This was a very special film for us. We are glad to share this special piece of work with you before we reveal it to the rest of the world." Hrithik Roshan shared with the press that it was ".. true that I have not done anything that has been life altering. This movie has changed my outlook towards work, changed my life. It is so beautiful that 30 years or 40 years from now, I'll look back and smile I had the opportunity to make this film."


title: Guzaarish (film)

text: Hrithik Roshan elaborated on his character saying that he was ".. a super character in the film. I have interacted with about 20 such patients who suffer from complete paralysis of the lower half of the body, including both legs which is mostly caused by damage of the spinal cord. They are real life superheroes and I am representing their emotions on screen".Roshan said that he was able to identify with Ethan Mascarenhas because, when he was going through the Guzaarish script, he had been nursing a knee problem and doctors told him that the knee will never be okay. According to Roshan, the script "..energised me so much that I was not depressed about my knee problem anymore".


title: Guzaarish (film)

text: A controversy regarding the film's plot originated when veteran Indian writer Dayanand Rajan claimed that the plot of the film was plagiarised from his unpublished novel "Summer Snow". The main plot, the love story, the hero being wheelchair-bound due to an accident and even the mercy killing are the same as in the movie. The other similarities include a serious accident, in both the scripts, which require the protagonist to begin using a wheelchair and introduce him to the woman taking care of him –Raajan has dashed off a legal notice to the producers, UTV and Bhansali asking them for an explanation on how their film has so many similarities with his novel but Bhansali's office refused to accept the notice. In late-October, a PIL was filed by Aditya Dewan, a lawyer, in Delhi High Court alleging that "Guzaarish" promotes euthanasia or mercy killing, which is illegal, and portrays the legal profession in bad light. He demanded a disclaimer from the producers saying mercy killing is not legal in India and that there is a debate on whether such deaths can be allowed. But the case was dismissed by the court saying the facts averred were inadequate for the court to appreciate and that it cannot be entertained in its present form.


title: Guzaarish (film)

text: Another controversy regarding the movie started brewing when the first look of the movie was released which showed the lead actor Aishwarya Rai smoking in a car. National Organisation for Tobacco Eradication (India), the body working for tobacco eradication, wrote to actor Aishwarya Rai-Bachchan expressing concern over use of her images smoking a cigarette in the banners of film Guzaarish displayed all over Mumbai. The organization's spokesperson said, that it would issue a legal notice to the actor under the provisions of the anti-tobacco legislation for the alleged advertisement of tobacco smoking in the public.


title: Guzaarish (film)

text: After the film release in November, Akhil Rajendra Dwivedi, a script writer, sued Bhansali for Rs. 20 million alleging that the director used his script without informing him. Dwivedi claimed that he had registered his script, very similar to that of "Guzaarish", in 2005 and had even met Bhansali in 2008. He alleged that the director had loved the script and said that he would get back to Dwivedi in a few weeks time. Dwivedi claimed that Bhansali never reverted and was unreachable for Dwivedi. Salman Khan, a close associate of Sanjay Leela Bhansali, in an award ceremony Super Idols, for felicitating specially abled people, by television channel IBN-7, took potshots at "Guzaarish", hinting at its poor box office collection and said that "Recently a movie released, "Guzaarish", oops sorry! and I made a movie on HIV/ AIDS, not even a dog came to watch the movie." Later in the same event, he said to one of the winners of the awards, "I will give you the number of Sanjay Leela Bhansali, you write it down, he has made Black, Khamoshi, made many pictures and made heaps of money but may be it won't come out, but it should come out." The comments came as a shocker to many, since Salman was one of Bhansali's favorites and the lead actor in his first movie and Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam. Bhansali reacted by saying that "If such an old and trusted friend can be so insensitive I don't want anything to do with the entertainment industry".


title: Guzaarish (film)

text: The film's storyline is also similar to 2004 Spanish film "The Sea Inside", which was based on a true story of a sailor, Ramón Sampedro, who becomes a quadriplegic following an accident.


title: Guzaarish (film)

text: Sanjay Leela Bhansali, who had famously given a lavish premier of his earlier film "Saawariya", decided to do away with a similar event for "Guzaarish". Though the movie had released on 16 November in Dubai, it was slated to release in India on the 19th of the same month. Sources reported that "..some of the VVIP invitees who told him that he had made another masterpiece ("Saawariya") were busy sending out bulk messages against the film during the premiere. Since the "Saawariya" premiere took place two nights (on Wednesday rather than Thursday) before its public release the damage done was irreparable. Sanjay decided there and then to never have a premiere of any of his films."


title: Guzaarish (film)

text: The director had the first screening of "Guzaarish" for the cast members and their families on Monday night. After the screening, the director allowed himself to be convinced to show the film to a few chosen ones. Hence he specially handpicked 30 invitees include the Bachchan family, leading man Hrithik's parents Pinky and Rakesh Roshan, Hrithik Roshan's Father- in-law Sanjay Khan, Shabana Azmi and Javed Akhtar, Deepika Padukone, Rohan Sippy, Karan Johar, Ashutosh Gowariker, Rajkumar Hirani, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Goldie Bhel singer Kunal Ganjawala, film Maker Akbar Khan, fashion designers Sandip Khosla, Manish Malhothra, and Shahid Kapoor." According to Bhansali he already had got the "big thumbs-up" he needed, "For me, it was more than enough that my mother liked the film. All other opinions, I'll take with a pinch of salt."


title: Guzaarish (film)

text: Later, Aishwarya Rai also requested for a special screening of the movie for her family. According to Rai, this was a special gift to her father, who was celebrating his birthday on the same date. It was also attended by directors Subhash Ghai, David Dhawan, actors Shabana Azmi and Sonam Kapoor.


title: Guzaarish (film)

text: The film received mostly positive reactions from critics. "Filmfare" rated the film 4 out of 5 and wrote, ""Guzaarish" is unabashedly Sanjay Leela Bhansali. In a film where life itself is the villain everything is larger than life, no surprise there. The house is grand, the characters even more so, the laughter is magnificent, the pain operatic and the treatment of all of the above is colossal in a deafening, attention seeking way that leaves no room for subtext or imagination." Writing for NDTV, Anupama Chopra rated the film 3 out of 5 and believed that the film would be effective if the writing was more organic and the emotions felt more authentic but Bhansali never gives us a chance to invest in these people. Reuters trashed the movie for its over the top performances and stated that the lead actor Hrithik Roshan is the only saving grace of the movie where "everything else, like Aishwarya Rai's make-up, seems fake and loud, and puts you off. The emotions, the set design, the dialogues, Hrithik Roshan's beard are all out of this world, residing in some alien planet that only Bhansali inhabits." "The Hindu" reviewer Sudhish Kamath gave a negative review to the movie and heaped praises on the lead actor Hrithik Roshan saying that "Hrithik Roshan gives one of the best performances of his career as a man trapped in a wheelchair/bad film, desperately craving for freedom.." As a bottomline he said that "Guzaarish" is "Highly pretentious, boring film with leftover craving-for-your-sympathy melodrama from "Black" and unused sets from "Saawariya"". "The Times of India", which gave a 4.5 rating, mentioned that ""Guzaarish" is an unusual film in many respects".


title: Guzaarish (film)

text: Australian critic and columnist Simon Foster of "Special Broadcasting Service (SBS)" gave a 3 star rating in which described it as "a melodrama that never says in two words what it can say in ten, Sanjay Leela Bhansali's "Guzaarish" balances its blubbery sentimentality with some beautifully realised images to heart-warming and generally likable effect. "The Sunday Times" gave a nine star rating and said ""Guzaarish" is a movie about hope, magic and life. "Khaleej Times" said " This wonderful work of art, nuanced and magical in its portrayal, is about dying. But Ethan, as played by Hrithik Roshan, is so bemused by adversity that he can actually look at his own suffering with dispassionate humour." "Deccan Herald" noted that only select – audience may find the movie appealing saying that "the performances stand out. "Guzaarish" might appeal only to Bhansali viewers."


title: Guzaarish (film)

text: "Guzaarish" had a good opening at the box office, collecting a net gross of in its opening weekend. The movie went on to collect nett in its first week. The movie netted in its lifetime run.


title: Guzaarish (film)

text: Sanjay Leela Bhansali made his debut as a film song composer with this movie. The lyrics were penned by A. M. Turaz, Vibhu Puri, and the late Jagdish Joshi. It features playback singers K.K., Rakesh Pandit, Sunidhi Chauhan, Kunal Ganjawala, Harshdeep Kaur and Shankar Mahadevan and was produced under T-Series label. Vibhavari Apte Joshi made her Bollywood debut through this film. She caught the attention of Sanjay Leela Bhansali, who noticed her as a participant in Sa Re Ga Ma (aired on a Marathi channel) while she was singing Konkani – Hindi song.


title: Guzaarish (film)

text: The official music launch of Guzaarish took place on 25 October 2010, by T-Series. The event was hosted by Aditya Roy Kapur. Actors Aishwarya Rai, Hrithik Roshan, Shernaz Patel, Suhel Seth, Monikangana Dutta, UTV chairman Ronnie Screwvala and Bhansali himself along with the entire music and background team were present in the music launch. Singers Shankar Mahadevan, KK, Kunal Ganjawala, Vibhavari Apte Joshi, and Shail Hada, who had lent their voices to the film's soundtrack gave a stage performance of each of their songs in the album.


title: Ragtime (film)

text: Ragtime is a 1981 American drama film directed by Miloš Forman, based on the 1975 historical novel "Ragtime" by E.L. Doctorow. The film is set in and around turn-of-the-century New York City, New Rochelle, and Atlantic City, and includes fictionalized references to actual people and events of the time. The film stars James Cagney, Mary Steenburgen, Howard Rollins, Brad Dourif, James Olson and Elizabeth McGovern, features the final film appearances of Cagney and Pat O'Brien, and features early appearances in small parts by Jeff Daniels, Fran Drescher, Samuel L. Jackson, Ethan Phillips and John Ratzenberger.


title: Ragtime (film)

text: At the turn of the 20th century, architect Stanford White unveils a nude statue atop Madison Square Garden, modeled after former chorus girl Evelyn Nesbit. After learning of this, Nesbit's husband, billionaire industrialist Harry Kendall Thaw, becomes convinced White has corrupted her and publicly shoots him dead.


title: Ragtime (film)

text: An upper-class family resides in New Rochelle, New York, where Father owns a factory where his wife's Younger Brother makes fireworks. An African American baby is abandoned in their garden, and upon learning the police intend to charge the child's mother, Sarah, with child abandonment and attempted murder, Mother takes Sarah and her child into the home despite Father's objections. Ragtime pianist Coalhouse arrives in search of Sarah, driving a new Ford Model T, and realizing he is the baby's father, announces his intention to marry Sarah.


title: Ragtime (film)

text: Younger Brother witnesses White's murder and becomes obsessed with Evelyn. Thaw's lawyer Delmas bribes Evelyn with a million-dollar divorce settlement to keep silent about Thaw's mental instability and to testify that White abused her. Passing through the Lower East Side, Evelyn encounters street artist Tateh, who throws out his unfaithful wife. He leaves New York with their daughter and sells the flip book he created. Evelyn and Younger Brother begin an affair as she prepares her return to the stage, while he assumes they will eventually marry. After Thaw is found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity, his lawyers inform Evelyn that Thaw will sue her for divorce on the grounds of infidelity and she accepts a smaller settlement. The affair ends, leaving Younger Brother adrift.


title: Ragtime (film)

text: In New Rochelle, Coalhouse is targeted by bigoted volunteer firemen led by Willie Conklin, who refuse to allow his automobile to pass by. Coalhouse finds a policeman and returns to find his car soiled with horse manure. Coalhouse attempts to force the policeman to intervene, but the policeman insists that Colehouse should clean the manure off his car and move on, giving him the choice to do so or be arrested. Colehouse refuses, and is hauled in to the local precinct. After Father arranges for Coalhouse's release, they discover his car has been further vandalized. Coalhouse pursues legal action, but can find no lawyer willing to represent him. Father and Younger Brother argue over Coalhouse's legal recourse. At a presidential rally, Sarah attempts to tell President Roosevelt about Coalhouse's case but is beaten by guards and dies.


title: Ragtime (film)

text: After Sarah's funeral, Coalhouse and his supporters kill several firemen. He threatens to attack other firehouses, demanding his car be restored and Conklin be turned over to him. Father is disgusted at the violence but Younger Brother joins Coalhouse's gang with his knowledge of explosives. Ostracized by their own white community and hounded by reporters, Father and Mother leave for Atlantic City. They encounter Tateh, now a film director on a photoplay with Evelyn. Mother is attracted to Tateh and she and Father quarrel. Coalhouse's gang hold the Pierpont Morgan Library's collection hostage. Police Commissioner Rhinelander Waldo sends for Walker's child as a bargaining chip but Mother refuses to give him up. Father demands she turn the child over and returns to New York to assist Waldo and Mother leaves.


title: Ragtime (film)

text: Booker T. Washington fails to persuade Walker to surrender, as does Father. Conklin is captured by police and forced to apologize to Coalhouse. Waldo is disgusted by Conklin's bigotry but cannot submit to terrorist demands and has him arrested. Coalhouse agrees to surrender if Waldo permits his supporters to depart in his restored car and Waldo agrees after Father volunteers to stay as a hostage. Coalhouse's supporters escape and he drives Father out of the library. Ready to blow himself up, Coalhouse instead surrenders but is shot dead on Waldo's orders. The film ends with another newsreel: Evelyn dances in vaudeville and Thaw is released from an asylum. Houdini escapes from a straitjacket several stories above the ground, while newspapers announce that the First World War has begun. Younger Brother returns to his fireworks job and Father watches from the house in New Rochelle as Mother departs with Tateh and Coalhouse's son.


title: Ragtime (film)

text: The film is notable for introducing numerous actors for whom this was one of their first appearances in an American film: Samuel L. Jackson, Debbie Allen, Jeff Daniels, Andreas Katsulas, Ethan Phillips, Stuart Milligan, and Mandy Patinkin. Additionally, it was the final film of James Cagney and Pat O'Brien. Cagney had not acted in a film for 20 years before his appearance in "Ragtime".


title: Christopher Thomas Knight

text: Christopher Thomas Knight (born December 7, 1965), also known as the North Pond Hermit, is a former recluse and burglar who lived without human contact (with two very brief exceptions) for 27 years between 1986 and 2013 in the North Pond area of Maine's Belgrade Lakes.


title: Christopher Thomas Knight

text: During his seclusion, Knight lived within a mile of summer cabins in a crude camp he built in a well-drained woodland obscured within a cluster of glacial erratic boulders. Having entered the woods with almost no possessions, he set up a camp composed entirely of items stolen from nearby cabins and camps. He survived by committing around 1,000 burglaries against houses in the area, at a rate of roughly 40 per year, to be able to survive during the harsh winters of Maine.


title: Christopher Thomas Knight

text: Apart from the fear and notoriety his many burglaries created in the local area, Knight's unusual life also attracted widespread international media reports upon his capture. Journalist Michael Finkel wrote an in-depth story about the incident for "GQ", and later wrote a book titled "The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit".


title: Christopher Thomas Knight

text: Christopher Thomas Knight graduated from Lawrence High School in Fairfield, Maine in 1984. Knight entered the woods in 1986 at 20 years of age, saying goodbye to no one. His parents never reported him missing to the police. In an interview, Knight said, "I had good parents", and, "We're not emotionally bleeding all over each other. We're not touchy-feely. Stoicism is expected." At the time of his notoriety, neighbors who lived near Knight's childhood home reported that for 14 years, they had exchanged no more than a few words with Knight's mother.


title: Christopher Thomas Knight

text: Knight survived the bitterly cold Maine winters (with temperatures dipping as low as ) by waking up during the coldest part of the night and pacing his camp until warm. He regularly took cold sponge baths, shaved, and cut his hair, in part to avoid suspicion in the event he was spotted by others. He avoided building wood fires, whose smoke might reveal the location of his camp, but relied upon a propane camp stove to cook and melt snow for drinking and bathing. Stolen propane cylinders were transported in canoes borrowed from vacant camps. He quietly paddled along the shadowy shoreline in the predawn hours to avoid being silhouetted on open water. Knight concealed thefts by sprinkling pine needles over the canoes he had used when he returned them, presumably to make them appear to have been undisturbed. He stockpiled supplies to remain in his camp from November through March to avoid revealing his location by footprints on snow-covered ground.


title: Christopher Thomas Knight

text: Some have expressed doubt for Knight's outdoor survival skills, saying that Knight might have broken into and taken refuge in vacant cabins.


title: Christopher Thomas Knight

text: At the time of his arrest, Knight claimed only one instance occurred during his 27 years of solitude in which he spoke with another human; at some point in the 1990s, he exchanged the word "hi" with a hiker whom he encountered on a lightly traveled path.


title: Christopher Thomas Knight

text: In the summer of 2012, Knight broke into a cabin where a man was sleeping. There was no car in the driveway, so Knight thought it was empty. Without either one seeing each other, the man shouted "Get the hell out of here!", after which Knight ran out.


title: Christopher Thomas Knight

text: Biographer Michael Finkel later reported that around February 2013, a fisherman named Tony Bellavance (along with his son and grandson) had discovered Knight in his camp, two months before he was apprehended by police. Knight later admitted to having been discovered by the fishermen, but had not mentioned it to police at the time of his arrest because the group swore a pact to not tell anyone of their meeting (after the anglers learned that Knight simply wanted to be left alone).


title: Christopher Thomas Knight

text: Knight was captured by game warden Sergeant Terry Hughes on April 4, 2013, while burgling the Pine Tree Camp in Rome, Maine. He was sentenced to seven months in jail on October 28, 2013, of which he had already served all but a week while awaiting sentencing. In addition to the jail sentence, Knight paid $2,000 in restitution to victims, completed a Co-Occurring Disorders Court Program (designed for people with substance abuse problems and mental health disorders), and completed three years of probation.


title: Christopher Thomas Knight

text: Knight has described deep-felt ethical misgivings about the burglaries committed, saying that stealing is wrong. Even the prosecutor said a longer sentence would have been cruel. Judge Nancy Mills believes that Knight was unlikely to reoffend. After release, Knight met with the judge every week, avoided alcohol, and secured a job with his brother.


title: Christopher Thomas Knight

text: Journalist Michael Finkel met with Knight for nine one-hour sessions while he was in jail. This was the genesis for first an article in "GQ" in August 2014, and then the book "The Stranger In The Woods", published in March 2017.


title: Christopher Thomas Knight

text: Knight was largely reluctant to express any inkling of motives or insights gained through his experience, but he did offer, "solitude bestows an increase in something valuable... my perception. But... when I applied my increased perception to myself, I lost my identity. There was no audience, no one to perform for... To put it romantically, I was completely free." Finkel compared this observation to similar statements by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles de Foucauld, and Thomas Merton. Knight however resented being compared to Henry David Thoreau, instead calling him a dilettante because Thoreau only lived for two years in his Walden Pond cabin and his mother did his laundry, saying he was "...just a show-off who went out there and wrote a book saying 'Look how great I am.' " Knight now leads a quiet life in rural Maine.


title: Ghosts (Pac-Man)

text: Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde, collectively known as the Ghost Gang, are a quartet of characters from the "Pac-Man" video game franchise. Created by Toru Iwatani, they first appear in the 1980 arcade game "Pac-Man" as the main antagonists. The ghosts have appeared in every "Pac-Man" game since, sometimes becoming minor antagonists or allies to Pac-Man, such as in "Pac-Man World" and the "Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures" animated series.


title: Ghosts (Pac-Man)

text: Some entries in the series went on to add other ghosts to the group, such as Sue in "Ms. Pac-Man", Tim in "Jr. Pac-Man", and Funky and Spunky in "Pac-Mania"; however, these did not appear in later games. The group has since gained a positive reception and is cited as one of the most recognizable video game villains of all time.


title: Ghosts (Pac-Man)

text: The ghosts were created by Toru Iwatani, who was the head designer for the original "Pac-Man" arcade game. The idea for the ghosts was made from Iwatani's desire to create a video game that could attract women and younger players, particularly couples, at a time where most video games were "war"-type games or "Space Invaders" clones. In turn, he made the in-game characters cute and colorful, a trait borrowed from Iwatani's previous game "Cutie Q" (1979), which featured similar "kawaii" characters. Iwatani cited Casper the Friendly Ghost or "Little Ghost Q-Taro" as inspiration for the ghosts. Their simplistic design was also attributed to the limitations of the hardware at the time, only being able to display a certain amount of colors for a sprite. To prevent the game from becoming impossibly difficult or too boring to play, each of the ghosts were programmed to have their own distinct traits — the red ghost would directly chase Pac-Man, the pink and blue ghosts would position themselves in front of him, and the orange ghost would be random.


title: Ghosts (Pac-Man)

text: Originally, all four of the ghosts were meant to be red instead of multicolored, as ordered by Namco president Masaya Nakamura — Iwatani was against the idea, as he wanted the ghosts to be distinguishable from one another. Although he was admittedly afraid of Nakamura, he conducted a survey with his colleagues that asked if they wanted single-colored enemies or multicolored enemies. After being present with a 40-to-0 result in favor of multicolored ghosts, Nakamura agreed to the decision. The original Japanese version of the game had the ghosts named "Oikake", "Machibuse", "Kimagure" and "Otoboke", translating respectively to "chaser", "ambusher", "fickle" and "stupid". When the game was exported to the United States, Midway Games changed their names to "Shadow", "Speedy", "Bashful" and "Pokey", their nicknames being changed to "Blinky", "Pinky", "Inky" and "Clyde" respectively. Early promotional material would sometimes refer to the ghosts as "monsters" or "goblins".


title: Ghosts (Pac-Man)

text: In the 1982 "Pac-Man" cartoon, the hero faced five Ghosts — four males wearing various styles of hats, and a female ghost named Sue, who wore earrings. The Ghost Monsters work for Mezmaron, who assigns them the job of finding the Power Pellet Forest.


title: Ghosts (Pac-Man)

text: In the 2013 TV series "Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures", the four ghosts come from the Netherworld, ruled by Lord Betrayus. They are actually good-natured spirits and often secretly supply Pac-Man with information about Betrayus' plots to destroy Pac-World, hoping to one day be restored to life in exchange. Blinky was portrayed as the confident leader of the group, Inky was crafty, yet slightly nervous out of the bunch. Pinky was slightly vain, yet had an open crush on Pac-Man, while Clyde was slow-witted, but was more relaxed and friendly.


title: Ghosts (Pac-Man)

text: The ghosts have received a positive reception from critics and have been cited as one of the most recognizable video game villains of all time. "IGN" commented on each of the ghosts having their own personality and "adorable" design. "Boy's Life" praised their simplicity and determination, labeling them as one of the most recognizable villains in video game history. In their list of the 50 "coolest" video game villains, "Complex" ranked the ghosts in as the fourth, noting of their iconic design and recognition and for being "pretty tough customers" "Metro UK" listed them at second place in their list of the ten greatest video game villains of all time, praising their easy recognition and cute designs.


title: Ghosts (Pac-Man)

text: "Kotaku" stated that the ghosts' artificial intelligence was still impressive by modern standards, being "smarter than you think". "GamesRadar+" liked each of the ghosts having their own unique AI and traits, while "GameSpy" said that the ghosts' intelligence is one of the game's "most endearing" aspects for adding a new layer of strategy to the game.


title: Ghosts (Pac-Man)

text: Inky alone was ranked the seventh greatest game villain of all time by Guinness World Records in 2013, based on reader votes.


title: Valley Forge

text: Valley Forge functioned as the third of eight winter encampments for the Continental Army's main body, commanded by General George Washington, during the American Revolutionary War. In September 1777, Congress fled Philadelphia to escape the British capture of the city. After failing to retake Philadelphia, Washington led his 12,000-man army into winter quarters at Valley Forge, located approximately 18 miles (29 km) northwest of Philadelphia. They remained there for six months, from December 19, 1777 to June 19, 1778. At Valley Forge, the Continentals struggled to manage a disastrous supply crisis while retraining and reorganizing their units. About 1,700 to 2,000 soldiers died from disease, possibly exacerbated by malnutrition.


title: Valley Forge

text: Today, Valley Forge National Historical Park protects and preserves over 3,500 acres of the original encampment site.


title: Valley Forge

text: In 1777, Valley Forge consisted of a small proto-industrial community located at the juncture of the Valley Creek and the Schuylkill River. In 1742, Quaker industrialists established the Mount Joy Iron Forge. Largely thanks to capital improvements made by John Potts and his family over the following decades, the small community expanded the ironworks, established mills, and constructed new dwellings for residents. Surrounding the valley was a rich farmland, where mainly Welsh-Quaker farmers grew wheat, rye, hay, Indian corn, among other crops, and raised livestock including cattle, sheep, pigs, and barnyard fowl. Settlers of German and Swedish descent also lived nearby.


title: Valley Forge

text: In the summer of 1777 the Continental Army's quartermaster general, Thomas Mifflin, decided to station a portion of his army's supplies in outbuildings around the forges, because of its variety of structures and secluded location between two prominent hills. Fearing such a concentration of military supplies would undoubtedly become a target for British raids, the forge-ironmaster, William Dewees Jr., expressed concerns about the army's proposal. Mifflin heeded Dewees' concerns but established a magazine at Valley Forge anyway.


title: Valley Forge

text: After the British landing at Head of Elk (present-day Elkton, Maryland), on August 25, 1777, the British Army maneuvered out of the Chesapeake basin and towards Valley Forge. Following the Battle of Brandywine (September 11, 1777) and the abortive Battle of the Clouds (September 16), on September 18 several hundred soldiers under General Wilhelm von Knyphausen raided the supply magazine at Valley Forge. Despite the best efforts of Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Hamilton and Captain Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee, the two Continental army officers selected to evacuate the supplies from Valley Forge, Crown soldiers captured supplies, destroyed others, and burned down the forges and other buildings.


title: Valley Forge

text: Political, strategic, and environment factors all influenced the Continental Army's decision to establish their encampment near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, in the winter of 1777–1778. Washington conferred with his officers to select the site that would be most advantageous to his army.


title: Valley Forge

text: Washington first asked his generals where to quarter the Continental Army in the winter of 1777–1778 on October 29, 1777. In addition to suggestions from his officers, Washington also had to contend with the recommendations of politicians. Pennsylvania state legislators and the Continental Congress expected the Continental Army to select an encampment site that could protect the countryside around Philadelphia. Some members of the Continental Congress also believed that the army might be able to launch a winter campaign. Interested parties suggested other sites for an encampment, including Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and Wilmington, Delaware. However, following the inconclusive Battle of Whitemarsh from December 5–8, increasing numbers of officers and politicians began to appreciate the need to defend the greater Philadelphia region from British incursions.


title: Valley Forge

text: Considering these questions, an encampment at Valley Forge had notable advantages. Valley Forge's high terrain meant that enemy attacks would be difficult. Its location allowed for soldiers to be readily detached to protect the countryside. Proximity to the Schuylkill River could facilitate supply movements down the river. Wide, open areas provided space for drilling and training. On December 19, Washington conducted his 12,000-man army to Valley Forge to establish the encampment.


title: Valley Forge

text: The encampment was primarily situated along the high, flat ground east of Mount Joy and south of the Schuylkill River. In addition to a concentration of soldiers at Valley Forge, Washington ordered nearly 2,000 soldiers to encamp at Wilmington, Delaware. He posted the army's mounted troops at Trenton, New Jersey, and additional outposts at Downingtown and Radnor, Pennsylvania, among other places. In the two winter encampments prior to Valley Forge, the Continental army had sheltered themselves in a combination of tents, constructed huts, civilian barns and other buildings. Valley Forge marked the first time Washington ordered the army primarily concentrated into a more permanent post where they constructed their own shelters. This strategic shift encouraged a whole new host of problems for the American Patriots.


title: Valley Forge

text: George Washington later wrote of the march into Valley Forge, "To see men without clothes to cover their nakedness, without blankets to lay on, without shoes by which their marches might be traced by the blood from their feet, and almost as often without provisions as with; marching through frost and snow and at Christmas taking up their winter quarters within a day's march of the enemy, without a house or hut to cover them till they could be built, and submitting to it without a murmur is a mark of patience and obedience which in my opinion can scarce be paralleled."


title: Valley Forge

text: The Valley Forge encampment became the Continental Army's first large-scale construction of living quarters. While no accurate account exists for the number of log huts built, experts estimate a range between 1,300 and 1,600 structures. There are no known contemporary images of the Valley Forge cantonment. The correspondence of General Washington and other soldiers’ letters and notebooks are the only accounts of what took place. Brigadier General Louis Lebègue de Presle Duportail selected grounds for the brigade encampments and planned the defenses. Afterwards, brigadier generals appointed officers from each regiment to mark out the precise spot for every officer and all enlisted men's huts. Despite commanders' attempts at standardization, the huts varied in terms of size, materials, and construction techniques. Military historian John B. B. Trussell Jr. writes that many squads "dug their floors almost two feet below ground level," to reduce wind exposure or the number of logs required for construction. In addition, some huts had thatched straw roofs, while others consisted of brush, canvas, or clapboards. In a letter to his wife Adrienne, Lafayette described the huts as "small barracks, which are scarcely more cheerful than dungeons."


title: Valley Forge

text: The Continental Army that marched into Valley Forge consisted of about 12,000 people—soldiers, artificers, women, and children. Throughout the winter, patriot commanders and legislators faced the challenge of supplying a population the size of a colonial city. In May and June 1777, the Continental Congress had authorized the reorganization of the supply department. Implementation of those changes never fully took effect, because of the fighting surrounding Philadelphia. Consequently, the supply chain had broken down even before the Continental Army arrived at Valley Forge. In large part, supplies dried up through the neglect of Congress so that by the end of December 1777 Washington had no way to feed or to adequately clothe the soldiers. Washington chose the area partly for its strategic benefits, but wintertime road conditions impeded supply wagons on route to the encampment.


title: Valley Forge

text: That winter, starvation and disease killed more than 1,000 soldiers and perhaps as many as 1,500 horses. The men suffered from continual, gnawing hunger and cold. Washington ordered that soldiers' rations include either one to one and a half pounds of flour or bread, one pound of salted beef or fish, or three-quarters pound of salted pork, or one and a half pounds of flour or bread, a half pound of bacon or salted pork, a half pint of peas or beans, and one gill of whiskey or spirits. In practice, however, the army could not reliably supply the full ration. Perishable foods began to rot before reaching the troops because of poor storage, transportation problems, or confusion regarding the supplies' whereabouts. Other rations became lost or captured by the enemy. Traveling to market proved dangerous for some vendors. When combined with the Continental Army's lack of hard currency, prices for perishable goods inflated. Therefore, during the first few days of constructing their huts, the Continentals primarily ate firecakes, a tasteless mixture of flour and water cooked upon heated rocks. In his memoir, Joseph Plumb Martin wrote that "to go into the wild woods and build us habitations to stay (not to live) in, in such a weak, starved and naked condition, was appalling in the highest degree." Resentment swelled within the ranks towards those deemed responsible for their hardship.


title: Valley Forge

text: On December 23, Washington wrote Henry Laurens, the President of the Continental Congress. Washington related how his commanders had just exerted themselves with some difficulty to quell a "dangerous mutiny" fomenting, because of the lack of provision. Washington continued with a dire warning to Congress: "unless some great and capital change suddenly takes place in that line, this Army must inevitably be reduced to one or other of these three things, Starve, dissolve, or disperse, in order to obtain subsistence in the best manner they can." While Washington dealt with serious circumstances, he may have exaggerated slightly to obtain a quicker response from the Continental Congress.


title: Valley Forge

text: That winter was not particularly harsh at Valley Forge, but many soldiers remained unfit for duty, owing to the disease, lack of proper clothing and uniforms ("naked" referred to a ragged or improperly attired individual). Years later, Lafayette recalled that "the unfortunate soldiers were in want of everything; they had neither coats, hats, shirts, nor shoes; their feet and legs froze till they had become almost black, and it was often necessary to amputate them."


title: Valley Forge

text: On January 7, Christopher Marshall related how "ten teams of oxen, fit for slaughtering, came into camp, driven by loyal Philadelphia women. They also brought 2,000 shirts, smuggled from the city, sewn under the eyes of the enemy." While these women provided crucial assistance, most people remained relatively unaware of the Continental Army's plight—"an unavoidable result of a general policy" to prevent such intelligence from reaching the British.


title: Valley Forge

text: The outlook for the army's situation improved when a five-man congressional delegation arrived on January 24. The delegates consisted of "Francis Dana of Massachusetts, Nathaniel Folsom of New Hampshire, John Harvie of Virginia, Gouverneur Morris of New York, and Joseph Reed of Pennsylvania." According to historian Wayne Bodle, they came to understand through their visit "how vulnerable the new army could be to logistical disruption, owing to its size, its organizational complexity, and its increasing mobility." Washington and his aides convinced them to implement recommended reforms to the supply department. In March 1778, Congress also appointed Nathanael Greene as Quartermaster General, who reluctantly accepted at Washington's behest. One of the Continental Army's most able generals, Greene did not want an administrative position. Yet he and his staff better supplied the troops at a time when the weather and road conditions began to improve. The Schuylkill River also thawed, allowing the Continental Army to more easily to transport convoys from the main supply depot at Reading.


title: Valley Forge

text: Maintaining cleanliness was a challenge for the Continental Army. Scabies broke out because of the filthy conditions within the encampment, as did other deadlier ailments. The army had a limited water supply for cooking, washing, and bathing. Dead horse remains often lay unburied, and Washington found the smell of some places intolerable. Neither plumbing nor a standardized system of trash collection existed. To combat the spread of contagion, Washington commanded soldiers to burn tar or "the Powder of a Musquet Cartridge" in the huts everyday, to cleanse the air of putrefaction. On May 27, Washington had ordered his soldiers remove the mud-and-straw chinking from huts "to render them as airy as possible."


title: Valley Forge

text: Outbreaks of typhoid and dysentery spread through contaminated food and water. Soldiers contracted influenza and pneumonia, while still others succumbed to typhus, caused by body lice. Although the inconsistent delivery of food rations did not cause starvation, it probably exacerbated the health of ailing soldiers. Some patients might have suffered from more than one ailment. In total, about 1,700–2,000 troops died during the Valley Forge encampment, mostly at general hospitals located in six different towns. Valley Forge had the highest mortality rate of any Continental Army encampment, and even most military engagements of the war.


title: Valley Forge

text: Despite the mortality rate, Washington did curb the spread of smallpox, which had plagued the Continental Army since the American Revolution had begun in 1775. In January 1777, Washington had ordered mass inoculation of his troops, but a year later at Valley Forge, smallpox broke out again. An investigation uncovered that 3,000–4,000 troops had not received inoculations, despite having long-term enlistments. So, Washington ordered inoculations for any soldiers vulnerable to the disease.


title: Valley Forge

text: A precursor to vaccination (introduced by Edward Jenner in 1798), inoculation gave the patient a milder form of smallpox with better recovery rates than if the patient had acquired the disease naturally. The procedure provided lifetime immunity from a disease with a roughly 15–33% mortality rate. In June 1778, when the Continental Army marched out of Valley Forge, they had completed "the first large-scale, state-sponsored immunization campaign in history." By continuing the inoculation program for new recruits, Washington better maintained military strength among the regular, Continental Army troops throughout the remainder of the war.


title: Valley Forge

text: While each hut housed a squad of twelve enlisted soldiers, sometimes soldiers' families joined them to share that space as well. Throughout the encampment period, Mary Ludwig Hays and approximately 250–400 other women had followed their soldier husbands or sweethearts to Valley Forge, sometimes with children in tow. Washington once wrote that "the multitude of women in particular, especially those who are pregnant, or have children, are a clog upon every movement." Yet women on the whole proved invaluable, whether on the march or at an encampment like Valley Forge. They often earned income either by laundering clothes or by nursing troops, which kept soldiers cleaner and healthier. In turn, this made the troops appear more professional and disciplined.


title: Valley Forge

text: Lucy Flucker Knox, Catharine Littlefield "Caty" Greene, and other senior officers' wives journeyed to Valley Forge at the behest of their husbands. On 22 December, Martha Washington predicted that her husband would send for her as soon as his army went into winter quarter, and that "if he does I must go." Indeed, she did, traveling in wartime with a group of slaves over poor roads, reaching her destination in early February. Washington's aide-de-camp Colonel Richard Kidder Meade met her at the Susquehanna ferry dock to escort her into the encampment. Over the next six months, Martha hosted political leaders and military officials, managing domestic staff within the confined space of Washington's Headquarters. Martha was one of many important women at Valley Forge. She also organized meals and kept spirits high during the rough times at the encampment.


title: Valley Forge

text: Valley Forge had a high percentage of racial and ethnic diversity, since Washington's army comprised individuals from all 13 states. About 30% of Continental soldiers at Valley Forge did not speak English as their first language. Many soldiers and commanders hailed from German-speaking communities, as with Pennsylvania-born Brigadier General Peter Muhlenberg. Still others spoke Scottish- or Irish-Gaelic, and a few descended from French-speaking Huguenot and Dutch-speaking communities in New York. Local residents sometimes conversed in Welsh. Several senior officers in the Continental Army originally came from France, Prussia, Poland, Ireland, and Hungary.


title: Valley Forge

text: Although Native and/or African American men served the Continental Army as drovers, waggoners, and laborers, others fought as soldiers, particularly from Rhode Island and Massachusetts. The smallest of the states, Rhode Island had difficulty meeting recruitment quotas for white men, spurring Brigadier General James Mitchell Varnum to suggest the enlistment of slaves for his 1st Rhode Island Regiment. Over a four-month period in 1778, the Rhode Island General Assembly allowed for their recruitment. In exchange for enlisting, soldiers of the 1st Rhode Island Regiment gained immediate emancipation, and their former owners received financial compensation equal to the slave's market value. They bought freedom for 117 enslaved recruits before the law allowing them to do so was repealed, but these free African American Soldiers continued to enlist in the military. By January 1778, nearly 10% of Washington's effective force consisted of African-American troops.


title: Valley Forge

text: Commanders brought servants and enslaved people with them into the encampment, usually black people. Washington's enslaved domestic staff included his manservant William Lee, as well as cooks Hannah Till and her husband Isaac. William Lee had married Margaret Thomas, a free black woman who worked as a laundress at Washington's Headquarters. Hannah Till's legal owner Reverend John Mason lent her out to Washington, but Hannah secured an arrangement whereby she eventually bought her freedom.


title: Valley Forge

text: By Spring of 1778, Wappinger, Oneida and Tuscarora warriors who were on the side of the Patriots, with prominent Oneida leader Joseph Louis Cook of the St. Regis Mohawk among them, had joined the Americans at Valley Forge. Most served as scouts, keeping an eye out for British raiding parties in the area, and in May 1778, they fought under Lafayette at Barren Hill. In the oral history of the Oneida people, a prominent Oneida woman named Polly Cooper brought "hundreds of bushels of white corn" to hungry troops, teaching them how to process it for safe consumption. During the Revolutionary War, most Native American tribes sided with the British in order to protect their traditional homelands from the encroachment of American settlers. However, several tribes, including the Oneida, sided with the Patriots due in part to ties with American settlers, such as Presbyterian minister Samuel Kirkland. The Seven Nations of Canada and the Iroquois at what would be the Six Nations Reserve, who were mostly emigrants from the colony of New York, were brought to the brink of war by the Anglo-American conflict.


title: Valley Forge

text: Among the challenges befalling the Continental Army during the Valley Forge winter included poor organization. Two years of war, shuffling leadership, and uneven recruitment resulted in irregular unit organization and strength. During the Valley Forge encampment, the army was reorganized into five divisions under Major Generals Charles Lee, Marquis de Lafayette, Johan de Kalb, and William Alexander "Lord Stirling," with Brigadier General Anthony Wayne serving in place of Mifflin. Thanks to the widespread reorganization, unit strength and the terms of service became more standardized, improving the Continental army's efficiency.


title: Valley Forge

text: Although Washington enjoyed support among enlisted soldiers, commissioned officers and congressional officials were not as enthusiastic. During the Valley Forge winter, Washington's detractors attacked his leadership ability in both private correspondence and in popular publications. One anonymous letter in January 1778 disparaged Washington. It read, "The proper methods of attacking, beating, and conquering the Enemy has never as yet been adapted by the Commander in [Chief]."


title: Valley Forge

text: While historians disagree as to the seriousness of the threat to Washington's leadership during the Valley Forge winter, the most organized of these threats (albeit loosely organized) was the so-called Conway Cabal. The cabal consisted of a handful of military officers and American politicians who attempted to replace Washington with Major General Horatio Gates as the head of the Continental army. The movement was nominally led by Thomas Conway, a foreign Continental army general and critic of Washington's leadership. If the cabal ever posed any real threat to Washington's leadership, a series of leaks and embarrassing exposures in the fall and winter of 1777 and 1778 dissolved the threat. Thanks to the demise of the cabal, following the Valley Forge encampment George Washington's reputation in the American war effort improved.


title: Valley Forge

text: Increasing military efficiency, morale, and discipline improved the army's well-being with better supply of food and arms. The Continental Army had been hindered in battle because units administered training from a variety of field manuals, making coordinated battle movements awkward and difficult. They struggled with basic formations and lacked uniformity, thanks to multiple drilling techniques taught in various ways by different officers. The task of developing and carrying out an effective training program fell to Baron Friedrich von Steuben, a Prussian drill master who had recently arrived from Europe.


title: Valley Forge

text: He drilled the soldiers, improving their battle and formation techniques. Under Steuben's leadership, the Continentals practiced volley fire, improved maneuverability, standardized their march paces, exercised skirmishing operations, and drilled bayonet proficiency. These new efforts to train and discipline the army also improved morale among the soldiers more generally.


title: Valley Forge

text: Initially, France remained reluctant to directly involve themselves in the war against Great Britain. In part, they worried that revolutionary fervor might spread into their own empire (which it did by 1789), but they also did not think the American colonists could win. However, the October 1777 surrender of British General John Burgoyne's army at Saratoga won for Americans the assistance they needed from other foreign powers. France and the United States subsequently signed a treaty on February 6, 1778, creating a military alliance between the two countries. In response, Great Britain declared war on France five weeks later, on March 17.


title: Valley Forge

text: On May 6, having already received word of the French alliance, Washington ordered the Continental Army to perform a Grand Feu de Joie, a formal ceremony consisting of a rapid and sequential firing of guns down the ranks. Continental officer George Ewing wrote that "the troops then shouted, three cheers and 'Long live the King of France!' after this…three cheers and shout of 'God Save the friendly Powers of Europe!'…and cheers and a shout of 'God Save the American States!'" Each soldier received an extra gill of rum (about four ounces) to enjoy that day, and after the troops' dismissal, Washington and other officers drank many patriotic toasts and concluded the day "with harmless Mirth and jollity."


title: Valley Forge

text: They had cause for celebration. As empires, both France and Great Britain had territory around the world that required protection. Sir Henry Clinton replaced General Sir William Howe as British Commander-in-Chief of Land Forces in North America, and had to divert troops from Philadelphia to the Crown's valuable possessions in the West Indies. The British also feared a French naval blockade of Philadelphia, so in June, Clinton abandoned it for New York City—a loyalist stronghold. On June 18, Washington and his troops marched after them, with the remainder vacating Valley Forge one day later—exactly six months after the Continental Army had arrived.


title: Valley Forge

text: As they marched through south and central New Jersey on their way to New York City, the British destroyed property and confiscated supplies and food, inspiring growing enmity among the area's civilians. Meanwhile, small-scale cooperative operations between the Continentals and New Jersey militia harassed and exhausted the British forces.


title: Valley Forge

text: The armies met on the morning of June 28, beginning the Battle of Monmouth. Continental soldiers under the command of General Charles Lee engaged the British in approximately five hours of continuous fighting in a ferocious heat. That night, British General Sir Henry Clinton moved his army out of Freehold and resumed their march to Manhattan. Both sides claimed elements of victory. The British army completed its march to New York City, while the Continental Army had forced a battle and performed admirably on an open field. The standardized training instilled at Valley Forge had improved their performance on the battlefield.


title: Valley Forge

text: Valley Forge long occupied a prominent place in U.S. storytelling and memory. The encampment in Pennsylvania later became a historic national park where many efforts were taken to preserve and capture the meaning and feelings many had behind the location’s historic significance and well-known myths; this perceived enduring atmosphere regarding the historical context behind the site, molded history’s patriotic view on Valley Forge. Many historians have supported and conveyed Valley Forge’s relevance in mythological context versus its historic understanding. The image of Valley Forge as a site of terrible suffering and unshakeable perseverance emerged years after the encampment ended.


title: Valley Forge

text: One of the most enduring myths about the Valley Forge encampment concerns the weather. Later depictions of Valley Forge described the encampment as blanketed in snow, with exposure and frostbite supposedly claiming the lives of many soldiers. Amputations occurred, but no corroborating sources state that death occurred from the freezing temperatures alone. Rather, snowfall occurred infrequently, above-freezing temperatures were regular, and ice was uncommon. Stories of harsh weather likely originated from the 1779–1780 winter encampment at Jockey Hollow, near Morristown, New Jersey, which had the coldest winter of the war.


title: Valley Forge

text: One of the most popular Valley Forge myths involves Washington kneeling in the snow praying for his army's salvation. The image was popularized in paintings and in newspapers, and at one point, President Ronald Reagan even repeated it. However, no contemporary evidence exists suggesting such a prayer occurred. The story first appeared in an 1804 article by Mason Locke Weems, an itinerant minister, popular folklorist, and Washington biographer. In Weems' story, a neutral Quaker named Isaac Potts discovered Washington at prayer, relayed the story to his wife, and then declared his support for the U.S. cause. However, Potts did not live near Valley Forge during the encampment period and did not marry his wife until 1803. Despite the dubious origins, many have repeated the story over the years.


title: David Starkey

text: David Robert Starkey (born 3 January 1945) is an English historian and radio and television presenter, with views that he describes as conservative. The only child of Quaker parents, he attended Kendal Grammar School before studying at Cambridge through a scholarship. There he specialised in Tudor history, writing a thesis on King Henry VIII's household. From Cambridge, he moved to the London School of Economics, where he was a lecturer in history until 1998. He has written several books on the Tudors.


title: David Starkey

text: Starkey first appeared on television in 1977. While a regular contributor to the BBC Radio 4 debate programme "The Moral Maze", his acerbic tongue earned him the sobriquet of "rudest man in Britain"; his frequent appearances on "Question Time" have been received with criticism and applause. Starkey has presented several historical documentaries. In 2002, he signed a £2 million contract with Channel 4 for 25 hours of programming, and in 2011 was a contributor on the Channel 4 series "Jamie's Dream School".


title: David Starkey

text: Starkey was widely censured for a comment he made during a podcast interview with Darren Grimes in June 2020 that was perceived as racist, for which he later apologised. Immediately afterwards, he resigned as an honorary fellow of his alma mater, Fitzwilliam College, had several honorary doctorates and fellowships revoked, book contracts and memberships of learned societies cancelled, and his Medlicott Medal withdrawn.


title: David Starkey

text: Starkey was born on 3 January 1945 in Kendal, Westmorland. He is the only child of Robert Starkey and Elsie Lyon, Quakers who had married 10 years previously in Bolton, at a Friends meeting house. His father, the son of a cotton spinner, was a foreman in a washing-machine factory, while his mother followed in her father's footsteps and became a cotton weaver and later a cleaner. They were both born in Oldham and moved to Kendal in the 1930s during the Great Depression. He was raised in an austere and frugal environment of near-poverty, with his parents often unemployed for long periods of time; an environment which, he later stated, taught him "the value of money". Starkey is equivocal about his mother, describing her as both "wonderful", in that she helped develop his ambition, and "monstrous", intellectually frustrated and living through her son. "She was a wonderful but also very frightening parent. Finally, she was a Pygmalion. She wanted a creature, she wanted something she had made." Her dominance contrasted sharply to his father, who was "poetic, reflective, rather solitary...as a father he was weak." Their relationship was "distant", but improved after his mother's death in 1977.


title: David Starkey

text: Starkey was born with two club feet. One was fixed early, while the other had to be operated on several times. He also suffered from polio. He suffered a nervous breakdown at secondary school, aged 13, and was taken by his mother to a boarding house in Southport, where he spent several months recovering. Starkey blamed the episode on the unfamiliar experience of being in a "highly competitive environment". He ultimately excelled at Kendal Grammar School, winning debating prizes and appearing in school plays.


title: David Starkey

text: Although he showed an early inclination towards science, he chose instead to study history. A scholarship enabled his entry into Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, where he gained a first-class degree.


title: David Starkey

text: Starkey was fascinated by King Henry VIII, and his thesis focused on the Tudor monarch's inner household. His doctoral supervisor was Professor Sir Geoffrey Elton, an expert on the Tudor period. Starkey claimed that with age his mentor became "tetchy" and "arrogant". In 1983, when Elton was awarded a knighthood, Starkey derided one of his essays, "Cromwell Redivivus" and Elton responded by writing an "absolutely shocking" review of a collection of essays Starkey had edited. Starkey later expressed his remorse over the spat: "I regret that the thing happened at all."


title: David Starkey

text: He was a fellow at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge from 1970 to 1972. Bored at Cambridge and attracted to London's gay scene, in 1972 Starkey moved to the London School of Economics and secured a position as a part-time junior associate lecturer. He claimed to be an "excessively enthusiastic advocate of promiscuity", seeking to liberate himself from his mother, who strongly disapproved of his homosexuality. A 30-year career as a teacher ended in 1998 when, blaming boredom and modern academic life, he gave it up.


title: David Starkey

text: Starkey entered a wider public awareness in 1992 on the BBC Radio 4 debate programme "The Moral Maze", where he debated morality with his fellow panellists Rabbi Hugo Gryn, Roger Scruton and the journalist Janet Daley. He soon acquired a reputation for abrasiveness; he explained in 2007 that his personality possesses "a tendency towards showmanship... towards self-indulgence and explosion and repartee and occasional silliness and going over the top." The "Daily Mail" gave him the sobriquet of "the rudest man in Britain", to which Starkey was said to have told friends, "Don’t worry darlings, it’s worth at least £100,000 a year", claiming that his character was part of a "convenient image". He once attacked George Austin, the Archdeacon of York, over "his fatness, his smugness, and his pomposity", but after a nine-year stint on the programme he left, citing his boredom with being "Dr Rude" and its move to an evening slot.


title: David Starkey

text: From 1995 he also spent three years at Talk Radio UK, presenting "Starkey on Saturday", later "Starkey on Sunday". An interview with Denis Healey proved to be one of his most embarrassing moments: "I mistakenly thought that he had become an amiable old buffer who would engage in amusing conversation, and he tore me limb from limb. I laugh about it now, but I didn't feel like laughing about it at the time."


title: David Starkey

text: His first television appearance was in 1977, on Granada Television's "Behave Yourself" with Russell Harty. He was a prosecution witness in the 1984 ITV programme "The Trial of Richard III", whose jury acquitted the king of the murder of the Princes in the Tower on the grounds of insufficient evidence. His television documentaries on "The Six Wives of Henry VIII" and Elizabeth I were ratings successes. His breathless delivery of the script, with noticeable breaths and choppy cadence, is widely imitated.


title: David Starkey

text: In 2002 he signed a £2 million contract with Channel 4 to produce 25 hours of television, including "Monarchy", a chronicle of the history of English kings and queens from Anglo-Saxon times onward. He presented the 2009 series "Henry: Mind of a Tyrant", which Brian Viner, a reviewer for the "Independent", called "highly fascinating", although A. A. Gill was less complimentary, calling it "Hello! history". In an interview about the series for the "Radio Times", Starkey complained that too many historians had focused not on Henry, but on his wives. Referring to a "feminised history", he said: "so many of the writers who write about this are women and so much of their audience is a female audience." This prompted the historian Lucy Worsley to describe his comments as misogynistic. More recently, in 2011, he taught five history lessons in Channel 4's "Jamie's Dream School", after which he criticised the state education system.


title: David Starkey

text: In 1984 Starkey was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and in 1994 a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. He was also given an Honorary Fellowship at his Cambridge College, Fitzwilliam College. He was until 2015, a visiting professor of the University of Kent.


title: David Starkey

text: On 25 June 2012 Starkey gave his lecture 'Head of Our Morality: why the twentieth-century British monarchy matters' at The Marc Fitch Lectures.


title: David Starkey

text: Starkey's political views have changed over the years from what he called "middle-of-the-road Labour left until the end of the 1970s" to a conservative outlook, that he attributed to economic failures of the Callaghan government. He is a supporter of one-nation conservatism and believes that Victorian Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli was a great symbol of this. He has written that Disraeli was "exotic, slippery and had a gift for language and phrase-making", drawing similarities with the rhetorical style of former UK Prime minister Boris Johnson. He argues that the working classes need more explicit "nationalism" of the type demonstrated by Disraeli. He believes that Disraelianism could strengthen the Anglo-American "conservative" alliance between US and the UK. However, he suspects that despite Boris Johnson being a Conservative prime minister, he is actually "a liberal", so he doubts whether Johnson would ever take this view.


title: David Starkey

text: Starkey blames the Callaghan administration for "blow[ing] the nation's finances". During the 1980s he was an active Conservative Party member, and he was a Conservative candidate for Islington Borough Council in 1986 in Tollington ward, and in 1990 in Hillrise ward.


title: David Starkey

text: He bemoaned the Conservatives when they were in Opposition, criticising Michael Howard in particular: "I knew Michael Howard was going to be a disaster as soon as he opposed top-up fees, either out of sentimentality or calculated expediency so that it might get him a bit of the student vote...Instead of backing Tony Blair, causing revolution in the Labour Party, the Conservatives have been whoring after strange gods, coming up with increasingly strange policies." He likened Gordon Brown to the fictional Kenneth Widmerpool, continuing, "It seems to me that with Brown there is a complete sense of humour and charm bypass." Of Ed Miliband, in 2015 he said "He is a man of high ambition and low talent – the worst possible combination. His whole language at the moment is soak the rich, hate the rich."


title: David Starkey

text: During the 2011 Conservative Party Conference he spoke at a fringe meeting, declaring Mayor Boris Johnson to be a "jester-despot" and the Prime Minister, David Cameron, as having "absolutely no strategy" for running the country. He urged the party to re-engage with the working class rather than the ""Guardian"-reading middle class". In 2015 he claimed that while Cameron and his Chancellor, George Osborne, had introduced some meaningful reforms to education and welfare policies, they had not made large enough cuts to the UK's budget deficit.


title: David Starkey

text: Starkey prefers radical changes to the UK's constitution in line with the federal system used by the United States, although in an interview with Iain Dale he expressed his support for the monarchy, the Queen and Prince Charles. In the run-up to the UK Alternative Vote referendum, he was a signatory on a letter to "The Times", which urged people to vote against the proposals. Starkey thinks the modern UK House of Commons has become a weak political institution and that it should return to its core value of being in defiance of state authority, as it was in its origin. He believes the House too often gives way to the state, such as with the police being allowed to search the place without a warrant. This occurred in 2008 with the searching of the Westminster office of Conservative politician Damian Green after the custodians of the House, the Speaker and the Serjeant at Arms, allowed the police to search the place without a warrant.


title: David Starkey

text: Starkey was a supporter of the Tory Campaign for Homosexual Equality ("Torche"), and during one of many appearances on the BBC's "Question Time" he attacked Jeffrey Archer over his views on the age of homosexual consent. However, in 2012 he described himself as "torn" on the issue of same-sex marriage, describing marriage as "part of the baggage of heterosexual society."


title: David Starkey

text: In 2009, Mike Russell, then the Scottish Government Minister for Culture and External Affairs, called on him to apologise for his declaration on the programme that Scotland, Ireland and Wales are "feeble little countries". Starkey responded that it had been a joke regarding the lack of necessity for the English to outwardly celebrate their nationalism, approvingly quoting H. G. Wells's observation that "the English are the only nation without national dress". He described Alex Salmond, then Scottish First Minister, as a "Caledonian Hitler" who thinks that "the English, like the Jews, are everywhere". In August 2014, Starkey was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to "The Guardian" expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in September's referendum on that issue. In June 2015 in an interview for "The Sunday Times" Starkey compared the Scottish National Party (SNP) with the Nazi Party. He said:


title: David Starkey

text: You have as a symbol the twisted cross: the saltire or the swastika. You have a passionate belief in self-sufficiency: known by the Nazis as autarky and the Scots as oil. And also you have the propensity of your elderly and middle-aged supporters to expose their knees.


title: David Starkey

text: SNP member of parliament Kirsten Oswald described Starkey's comments as "deeply offensive" to the Jewish community and SNP voters, and described Starkey as a "serial utterer of bile and bilge".


title: David Starkey

text: Starkey is very critical of the European Union (EU). As a result, he supported the "Leave" vote in the 2016 EU referendum. This is because, as Starkey argues, the United Kingdom is best off as a self-governing nation, and the EU conflicts with this notion of self-government. Furthermore, he believes that the continuing support for the ideas of national pride and sovereignty, not xenophobia, in the UK were the biggest factors behind the UK's decision to leave the EU. He argues that the support for these ideas is what makes the UK different from the other EU member states which, as a result of the legacy of World War Two, tend to believe that nationalism is the cause of war and so joined the EU to prevent this.


title: David Starkey

text: As an historian, Starkey presents a view of Brexit in a wider historical context to try to show its importance in British history. He makes comparisons between Brexit and Henry VIII's split from Rome and the Reformation that followed. He believes the Reformation sowed the seeds of Euroscepticism particularly in England and the nation's "semi-detached relationship with continental Europe". This had its origin with Henry VIII because "nobody before Henry would make any argument about England being much different from the rest of Europe. It was Henry who turns England into a defensible island, who literally fortifies the English coastline. It really is Henry that turns England into a genuine island." He claimed that Henry VIII could be considered the first Brexiteer. As Starkey explained in an interview in 2018, "The Roman Church was a super-national organisation with its own system of law, its own language, governance and own system of taxation. In other words, exactly like the European Union! And it's no accident at all that the EU was founded by the Treaty of Rome." He explains that Henry VIII fought on the grounds of England ruling itself, which is analogous to the Brexit debates.


title: David Starkey

text: Starkey argues that, "Remainers have somehow got the notion that we get our rights and liberties from Europe" but actually, we created our own values over our 800-year history. He believes that Brexit was a reaffirmation of those values, but was nevertheless a "...deeply irrational vote, not about what will make us better off, but rather, 'we'll be poorer, but we'll be free'."


title: David Starkey

text: Starkey is an atheist. He has described the Catholic Church as being "riddled with corruption". However, he has often defended the right for Christians to hold their beliefs, arguing that they should have the right to their views and penalising them for it is "intolerant, oppressive and tyrannical".


title: David Starkey

text: Starkey believes the royal charter of rights Magna Carta is of great importance. He has often spoken about it and has written about it most notably in his book "" (2015). He also presented a television documentary on the subject "David Starkey’s Magna Carta", in which he argued that Magna Carta is a steadying force for constitutions. He believes that Magna Carta is essential in keeping peace and constraints on the state and the public and says that it is this rather shaky but very important 800 year old document that has led to a "constitutional edifice" developing in the UK.


title: David Starkey

text: Starkey often speaks about the political implications of Magna Carta in present-day politics. He believes the modern UK state appears to be fragmenting and would be helped by the core principles of the charter with a new charter of liberties or a new William Marshal figure. In a review of Starkey's book on Magna Carta, medieval historian James Masschaele said that Starkey viewed the barons as republican figures.


title: David Starkey

text: In August 2011, Starkey attracted criticism for some comments made on the BBC's "Newsnight" programme where he was a panel member together with Owen Jones and Dreda Say Mitchell. The programme discussed the 2011 England riots. Starkey condemned "this language which is wholly false, which is this Jamaican patois that’s been intruded in England, and this is why so many of us have this sense of literally a foreign country", that listening to the voice of the black MP for Tottenham where the riots occurred "you would think he was white" and that "The whites have become black. A particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic, gangster culture."


title: David Starkey

text: The comments were heavily criticised by MPs and some notable media presenters and described as a "career ending moment". He was criticised by fellow panellist Dreda Say Mitchell for focusing on "black culture", since "Black communities are not homogenous. So there are black cultures. Lots of different black cultures." The then-leader of the Labour Party, Ed Miliband, spoke about Starkey's remarks, saying that "they are racist comments, frankly". The author Toby Young, blogging in the "Telegraph", defended Starkey by saying that Starkey had not been talking about black culture in general. "The Spectator" columnist Rod Liddle argued in support of the remarks. Jones described the comments as "one of the ugliest episodes of the backlash". Writing in "The Daily Telegraph", Starkey argued his views had been distorted, he referred only to a "particular sort" of "black culture", and that the "black educationalists" Tony Sewell and Katharine Birbalsingh supported the substance of his "Newsnight" comments.


title: David Starkey

text: The BBC received more than 700 complaints (and broadcast regulator Ofcom a further 103) about the comments. A petition to demand a public apology from the BBC attracted more than 3,600 signatures. Ofcom deemed the comments to have been part of a "serious and measured discussion" and took no action, and Starkey described the reaction as "hysteria about race".


title: David Starkey

text: In the aftermath of the "Newsnight" broadcast, 102 university historians wrote an open letter that demanded Starkey no longer be described as a "historian" on anything but his specialist subject, the Tudors. The letter criticised "[h]is crass generalisations about black culture and white culture as oppositional, monolithic entities demonstrate a failure to grasp the subtleties of race and class that would disgrace a first-year history undergraduate." The letter also criticised his supposed "lack of professionalism" and "some of the worst practices of an academic" in shouting down, belittling, and mocking, opposing views, rather than meeting them with evidence.


title: David Starkey

text: In a June 2012 debate Starkey was criticised for stating that the perpetrators of the Rochdale child sex abuse ring had values "entrenched in the foothills of the Punjab or wherever it is" and were "acting within their cultural norm". He was accused by his fellow panelist, writer Laurie Penny, of "playing xenophobia and national prejudice for laughs". In 2013, he criticised the inclusion of the British-Jamaican nurse Mary Seacole in British school history curriculums, which he argued


title: David Starkey

text: In January 2015, Starkey was criticised after calling political journalist Mehdi Hasan "Ahmed" and saying that "nothing important" had been written in Arabic for 500 years. He was also criticised for appearing to imply that a female victim of a child sexual abuse grooming gang was at fault for the abuse she had experienced.


title: David Starkey

text: In November 2015 the University of Cambridge dropped a fundraising video featuring Starkey after a backlash from staff and students. A letter signed by hundreds of students and staff criticised Starkey's involvement in the video due to him "repeatedly making racist statements".


title: David Starkey

text: On 30 June 2020, in a podcast interview with Darren Grimes, Starkey spoke about the Black Lives Matter movement. Starkey suggested that people should not "go on about" slavery because it had been abolished in 1833 and that "Slavery was not genocide, otherwise there wouldn't be so many damn blacks in Africa or in Britain would there? An awful lot of them survived ..." He had made the same point in a column eight days earlier except without the use of the word "damn". Starkey's comments were rebuffed by Health Secretary Sajid Javid, who said they were racist and that they serve as "a reminder of the appalling views that still exist", and they were widely described as racist in the media. Historian David Olusoga, praised by Starkey in the same broadcast, described the comments as "truly disgusting. And by the same ridiculous, twisted logic the Holocaust would not be counted as a genocide".


title: David Starkey

text: As a result, the Mary Rose Trust accepted his resignation from the board of trustees and the Historical Association announced on Twitter that it would withdraw the Medlicott Medal it had awarded him 20 years previously. Fitzwilliam College of Cambridge University distanced themselves from his comments and later accepted his resignation as an honorary fellow on 3 July 2020. Canterbury Christ Church University, where Starkey had been a visiting professor, removed him from that role in response to his "completely unacceptable" remarks. The magazine "History Today" also removed him from their editorial board. Lancaster University revoked Starkey's honorary degree after an investigation found that his comments were "racist and contradictory to the values of the University". The University of Kent launched a formal review of his honorary graduate status. HarperCollins terminated its book deal with Starkey and his previous publisher, Hodder & Stoughton, has also said that they "will not be publishing any further books by him". Vintage Books announced it would be reviewing the status of books by Starkey in their back catalogue. Also on 3 July 2020, at a meeting of the Royal Historical Society, the society's council resolved that Starkey should be asked to resign his fellowship with immediate effect. On 6 July 2020, Starkey resigned his fellowship of the Society of Antiquaries of London at the request of its council.


title: David Starkey

text: On 25 September 2020, the Metropolitan Police opened an investigation into the interview over an allegation of a public order offence. In October, Starkey was investigated by the police for "stirring up racial hatred" through the comments he made in the podcast with Darren Grimes. In regard to the allegations, Starkey said that he did not "intend to stir up racial hatred and there was nothing about the circumstances of the broadcast which made it likely to do so" and also that the investigation by the police was "neither proportionate nor in the best interests of preserving proper freedom of expression".


title: David Starkey

text: On 14 October the police dropped their investigation saying that "it is no longer proportionate that this investigation continues". This followed a free speech backlash from several major UK politicians such as then Home Secretary Priti Patel who said the law should protect freedom of speech as a "general principle" which should not be violated. Following the news of the ending of the investigation, Starkey said: "The investigation should never of course have begun. From the beginning it was misconceived, oppressive and designed to misuse the criminal law to curtail the proper freedom of expression and debate …freedom is our birth right; and it is more important than ever at this critical juncture in our nation's history."


title: David Starkey

text: Grimes and Starkey subsequently launched a formal complaint against the Metropolitan Police accusing them of being biased against them and acting in "deference" to the Black Lives Matter movement.


title: David Starkey

text: Starkey lived for many years with his partner, James Brown, a publisher and book designer, until the latter's death in 2015. The couple had three homes: a house in Highbury, a manor house in Kent, and another in Chestertown, Maryland, US. Starkey previously lived at John Spencer Square in Canonbury, Islington.


title: Goundamani

text: Subramaniyan Karuppaiya (born 25 May 1939), known by his stage name Goundamani, is an Indian actor and comedian who works in Tamil cinema. He is known for his comic duo partnership in Tamil films with fellow actor Senthil. The pair dominated the Tamil industry as comedians in the 1980s and 90s.


title: Goundamani

text: He was called Goundamani after acting as a Gounder in one of his early day dramas and the pseudonym stuck with him forever. He has the ability to give counter dialogues on the spot and off the script on stage and during shooting but it has nothing to do with his screen name, contrary to popular belief (as counter is a term that was popular only from the late 2000s). He was at his peak of his career as a comedian in Tamil cinema for nearly 40 years. Despite his popularity, Goundamani is known for being a social recluse.


title: Goundamani

text: Goundamani was born as Subramaniyan on 25 May 1939 in Vallakundapuram, a village near Pollachi in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India. His father is Karuppaiya and his mother is Annammal. He married Shanthi in 1963 and has 2 daughters.


title: Goundamani

text: On having interest in acting, he went to Chennai and initially started acting in theatre dramas and then entered into the Tamil film industry (Kollywood) due to his strong theatrical background.


title: Goundamani

text: He made his film acting debut in "Thenum Paalum" (1964) where he featured in a minor and uncredited role as a driver. He made his full fledged debut in 1977 film "16 Vayathinile" where he played the role of Rajinikanth's sidekick. His role in the 1977 P. Bharathiraja directorial was also Goundamani's first credited role in his film


title: Goundamani

text: Goundamani has played lead roles in a few films during his career, but is predominantly a supporting actor playing comedy roles. While performing roles of a solo comedian in films, he often co-starred with Senthil to form a comedy duo. The pair was described as "Tamil cinema's Laurel and Hardy" and have performed slapstick humour in many Tamil films from the mid-1980s until the early 2000s. Both of them are also remembered as partners-in-crime and also known for their chemistry.


title: Goundamani

text: Both Goundamani and Senthil were critically acclaimed for their career defining performance in Gangai Amaren's directorial "Karakattakkaran" (1989). Karakattakaran also coincidentally marked Goundamani and Senthil's 100th film as comedians together. Senthil and Goundamani both reportedly spent full 28 days on set during the shooting of the film. Goundamani's phrases in one of the comedy scenes featured in Karakattakaran, "Adhu enda enna pathu andha kelvi ketta?" when Senthil asked him "Intha cara vachiruntha Sopanasundhariya yaaru vaichiruka" became the highlight of the film and later became viral internet memes.


title: Goundamani

text: Goundamani's comedy scene from "Thangamana Raasa" (1989) is also best remembered by critics for dreaming of singing under the music of Ilaiyaraja when he was spending a jail term for petty crime. His one line phrases "Start the music" and "Arasiyal la ithellam saatharnamappa" which featured in the 1992 film "Suriyan" also later became a viral meme and trendsetter in Internet.


title: Goundamani

text: After recuperating from diabetes and respiratory illnesses during the late 2000s, he featured in "Vaaimai" and also played the lead role in "49-O", which began productions in 2013. It was directed by debutant Arokiadoss, a former assistant of Gautham Vasudev Menon. In 2019, he was approached by film director R. Kannan and actor Santhanam to cast him in a supporting role for their film project but Goundamani reportedly turned down the offer as he was sceptical about the role.


title: Shabir Ibrahim Kaskar

text: Shabir Ibrahim Kaskar (died 12 February 1981) was a notorious Indian criminal based in Mumbai. He was the elder brother of Dawood Ibrahim, the current gang leader of the D-Company. The rise of Shabir and Dawood in Mumbai's underworld and the sympathetic attitude of the Mumbai police towards them evoked the jealousy and resentment of other established gang members from the Pathan gang that dominated South Mumbai area. Finally, the inter-gang rivalry grew to such an extent that Manya Surve, his gang and Amirzada and Alamzeb plotted to kill Shabir and Dawood. On 12 February 1981, they gunned Shabir down at a petrol pump in Prabhadevi.


title: Shabir Ibrahim Kaskar

text: The murder of Shabir is an important chapter in Mumbai's underworld as it unleashed a gruesome gang war between Dawood Ibrahim gang and the Pathan gang leading to a spate of shootouts until the retired don Karim Lala requested a truce, and eventually the Pathan gang's dominance was replaced by the Dawood Ibrahim gang.


title: Shabir Ibrahim Kaskar

text: Shabir Ibrahim Kaskar, the son of a police head constable Ibrahim Kaskar Maniyar , hailed from Mumka village in Ratnagiri district, Konkan region in the Indian state of Maharashtra in 1955. He belongs to the Maniyar/Manihar Muslim community.


title: Shabir Ibrahim Kaskar

text: His father Ibrahim Kaskar was a police constable in the CID department at Azad Maidan police station. The family had eight children and they were perennially impoverished. Shabir and his younger brother, Dawood were school dropouts and often spent their days wandering in the streets of Dongri-Bhendi Bazar. In those days, people lived in fear and awe of Karim Lala, the leader of the Pathan gang and Haji Mastan, the smuggler who enjoyed a cult following among the impoverished Muslim youths in South Mumbai including Shabir and Dawood.


title: Shabir Ibrahim Kaskar

text: Soon, Shabir and Dawood joined in the petty street crime of selling smuggled electronics goods and watches. They often cheated gullible travelers and got involved in street brawls.


title: Shabir Ibrahim Kaskar

text: Shabir, Dawood, and their friends called their group, "Young Company." They would hang out near Crawford Market in search of gullible travelers and offer them smuggled Rolex watches for a measly price compared to the actual cost. After the buyer paid them in cash, they would pretend to wrap the watch in a small paper or cloth and tell the buyer not to open it to avoid police suspicion. It would be a stone instead of the watch. They called this activity "Alta-palti." If the buyer found out that he had been cheated and accosted them, they would intimidate him with the help of burly Pathan hoodlums from the neighborhood.


title: Shabir Ibrahim Kaskar

text: Their father requested Haji Mastan to give his wastrel sons decent employment. On Mastan's instructions, they worked in an electronic shop at Manish Market for some time, but very soon they were back to their petty crime and mob fights. Soon they found their way into the Pathan gang where they did odd jobs often transporting contraband and illegal goods from one place to another.


title: Shabir Ibrahim Kaskar

text: The Pathan gang was run by Karim Lala. He was supported by his Pathan cronies like Amirzada, Alamzeb, his nephew Samad Khan, Saeed Batla, and Ayub Lala. The Ibrahim brothers worked with Bashu dada and other gangsters. Being the sons of a police constable and due to the Pathan gangs increasing violence and notoriety Dawood would gain the support of the Mumbai police and develop what was seen at the time as a symbiotic relationship to clean up Mumbai city of its “trash”, term used to describe criminals who target innocents and law enforcement.


title: Shabir Ibrahim Kaskar

text: By some accounts Mumbai police officers decided to deliberately turn a blind eye to the Criminal activities of Ibrahim brothers while using their help to target the larger Pathan gang. This resulted in the Ibrahim brothers committing attacks against the Pathan gang with immunity and gaining the support of the general public, law enforcement and local newspapers who hailed them as the “protectors of the community“. The most active among the journalist who supported the brothers and helped paint them as heroes was Iqbal Naatiq. In fact Iqbal would play a role in bringing together the police and Ibrahim brothers to combat the Pathans, who he felt unnecessarily targeted innocent civilians. After Iqbal Naatiq tipped-off the police about Ayub Lala and Saeed Batla’s illegal gambling and liquor dens they kidnapped Naatiq and brutally stabbed him 67 times leaving him for dead .


title: Shabir Ibrahim Kaskar

text: Manoj Bajpai's character Zubair Imtiaz Haksar in the film, "Shootout at Wadala" was based on Shabir Ibrahim Kaskar. "Shootout at Wadala" initially premiered the name as Shabir Ibrahim Kaskar on their promos, which later on changed to Zubair Imtiaz Haksar.