title: Please Don't Destroy

text: Please Don't Destroy is a comedy group in New York City consisting of Ben Marshall, John Higgins, and Martin Herlihy, who began collaborating as students at New York University. The group was originally founded in 2017 and based on an act entitled "Please Don't Destroy My Farm". The troupe performed monthly comedy shows, appeared at the New York Comedy Festival and produced sketch videos posted to YouTube. During the COVID-19 pandemic they began creating shorter videos for TikTok and Twitter.


title: Please Don't Destroy

text: In 2021 the trio was hired as writers on "Saturday Night Live" ("SNL") to produce prerecorded digital videos for the show's 47th season. "Please Don't Destroy" debuted on SNL on October 9, 2021. They recorded the song "Three Sad Virgins" with Pete Davidson and Taylor Swift.


title: Please Don't Destroy

text: Herlihy is the son of former "SNL" head writer and producer Tim Herlihy, while Higgins' father is long-time "SNL" writer, announcer and producer Steve Higgins.


title: The 8th Son? Are You Kidding Me?

text: Shingo Ichinomiya was once a single company worker until the day he fell asleep and woke up in a magical fantasy world as a little boy named Wendelin von Benno Baumeister, the eighth son of the noble Baumeister family. Due to his family being poor, Wendelin is unlikely to inherit anything from his father as the family's lord, wealth and possessions will go to his eldest brother Kurt while the rest of his brothers leave the succession to find income by other means. He looks through his father's library and finds a magic testing orb that glows with rainbow colors when he activates it, proving he has an ability to use magic. Alfred, a former court wizard turned restless undead, senses his presence and decides to secretly teach Wendelin everything he knows about magic. Thanks to Alfred, Wendelin becomes a skilled swordsman and mage, leading him to become a famous adventurer known throughout the kingdom. Although his talent could bring prosperity to his family, in his situation it only brought disaster.


title: The 8th Son? Are You Kidding Me?

text: "Hachinan tte, Sore wa Nai Deshō!" is written by Y.A. and illustrated by Fuzichoco. The light novels has been published by Media Factory, under their MF Books imprint. Twenty-six volumes have been released as of August 2022.


title: The 8th Son? Are You Kidding Me?

text: A manga adaptation with art by Hiroki Kusumoto has been published online by Kadokawa Shoten's ComicWalker since 2015. As of May 2022, it has been collected in eleven "tankōbon" volumes.


title: The 8th Son? Are You Kidding Me?

text: An anime adaptation of the series was announced by Media Factory on December 14, 2018. The anime was later confirmed to be a television series, which aired from April 2 to June 18, 2020 on Tokyo MX, BS11, and AT-X. The series is animated by Shin-Ei Animation, with assistance by SynergySP, and is directed by Tatsuo Miura, featuring series composition by Takeshi Miyamoto and character designs by Keiji Tanabe. Minako Sato is composing the series' music. The opening theme is performed by Demon Kakka and Arika Takarano, while the ending theme is performed by Akino Arai x AKINO from Bless4. The series' English dub premiered on Crunchyroll on May 14, 2020.


title: Action Jackson (2014 film)

text: Action Jackson is a 2014 Indian Hindi-language action thriller film directed by Prabhu Deva and produced by Gordhan P. Tanwani and Sunil Lulla. The film features Ajay Devgn in a double role, alongside Sonakshi Sinha, Yami Gautam and Manasvi Mamgai, while Kunaal Roy Kapur appears in a supporting role with Anandaraj playing the main antagonist. Deva and Devgn have paired for the first time with this film. Action Jackson released on 5 December 2014.


title: Action Jackson (2014 film)

text: Vishi is a small-time crook who would do anything for money. He falls in love with Khushi, a simple HR executive, who then begins a relationship with him. One day, Vishi, who frequently gets involved in fights, publicly beats up a street gangster, who later seeks a revenge attack with his gang. The gangster and his gang brutally beat up Vishi, and easily escape the scene. It is then revealed that the person they had beaten is actually Vishi's lookalike, Jai. The goons escape when the police arrive, and Vishi is found alive on a bike, then the same goons get beaten brutally by Vishi. Khushi tries to explain to Vishi that she loves him; he understands, and they both start dating. On another occasion, a police inspector, Shirke, arrests Jai and hands him over to a group of gangsters led by Pedro. Jai single-handedly kills them all and is revealed to be a professional assassin and previous right-hand man of underworld criminal Xavier Fonseca, nicknamed AJ. After AJ single-handedly rescued Xavier's sister Marina from a bunch of kidnappers, Marina falls for Jai, but he rejects her as he is married to Anusha.


title: Action Jackson (2014 film)

text: Angered, Xavier tries to kill Anusha twice to get AJ married to Marina, which leaves her brutally injured. Jai escapes to India and is in the process of getting her treated. When Vishi spots Jai, he reveals his identity and story to Vishi. Jai then asks Vishi to go to Bangkok disguised as AJ to fool Xavier and Marina; meanwhile, AJ makes time to get Anusha operated on, as she is expecting a baby. Vishi agrees to help and goes to Bangkok along with his friend Musa. Meanwhile, Shirke finds AJ's lookalike and tries to inform Xavier, but he is murdered in a style that triggers suspicion in Xavier's mind. Marina, upon realizing the situation, tortures Musa to know the truth. He reveals that Vishi is the one who masqueraded as AJ. Xavier hatches a plan to bring AJ to Bangkok by kidnapping his wife, baby, and lookalike and threatens to kill all three of them. It is revealed up to that Vishi is actually in Mumbai, and AJ and himself switched their places in the airport at a time after the job is done. AJ reaches the spot and kills all of Xavier's henchmen. In a fight with Marina, AJ smashes her against the furnace and Marina is burned alive. After killing Xavier, he runs away with Anusha and the child. Later the child is revealed to be safe, rescued by one of Xavier's henchmen, Robert (Razzak Khan). The film ends with AJ, and Vishi meeting at the airport, and Anusha requests Vishi to marry Khushi soon.


title: Action Jackson (2014 film)

text: Prarthna Sarkar from "International Business Times" gave "Action Jackson" 3 star out of 5, stating it is a "bad dream" for viewers. Gayatri Sarkar from Zee News gave 1 star out of 5, stating that the film failed to entertain the audience. Deepanjana Paul from "Firstpost" praised the font used for the credits saying it was legible. Film critic Rajeev Masand rated the film 3 out of 5, feeling that the film has excessive action. Under a headline calling the film a feminist milestone, Raja Sen for Rediff rated it 3/5, saying that while the film is filled with "relentless absurdity", the women propel the narrative in a refreshing way. Rachit Gupta from Filmfare gave a similar rating of 3/5, stating that the genre mixing of unscripted comedy and stylized action is " too inconsistent to garner any appreciation". "Mumbai Mirror" similarly rated it 3/5 and responded positively.


title: Action Jackson (2014 film)

text: The soundtrack was composed by Himesh Reshammiya, while the lyrics were written by Shabbir Ahmed and Sameer. The introduction of "Gangster Baby" is from "Adiyae Kolluthe" from "Vaaranam Aayiram".


title: The Oregon Trail (1971 video game)

text: The Oregon Trail is a text-based strategy video game developed by Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann, and Paul Dillenberger in 1971 and produced by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) beginning in 1975. It was developed as a computer game to teach school children about the realities of 19th-century pioneer life on the Oregon Trail. In the game, the player assumes the role of a wagon leader guiding a party of settlers from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon City, Oregon via a covered wagon in 1847. Along the way the player must purchase supplies, hunt for food, and make choices on how to proceed along the trail while encountering random events such as storms and wagon breakdowns. The original versions of the game contain no graphics, as they were developed for computers that used teleprinters instead of computer monitors. A later Apple II port added a graphical shooting minigame.


title: The Oregon Trail (1971 video game)

text: The first version of the game was developed over the course of two weeks for use by Rawitsch in a history unit at Jordan Junior High School in Minneapolis. Despite its popularity with the students, it was deleted from the school district's mainframe computer at the end of the school semester. Rawitsch recreated the game in 1974 for the MECC, which distributed educational software for free in Minnesota and for sale elsewhere, and recalibrated the probabilities of events based on historical journals and diaries for the game's release the following year. After the rise of microcomputers in the 1970s, the MECC released several versions of the game over the next decade for the Apple II, Atari 8-bit family, and Commodore 64 computers, before redesigning it as a graphical commercial game for the Apple II under the same name in 1985.


title: The Oregon Trail (1971 video game)

text: The game is the first entry in "The Oregon Trail" series; games in the series have since been released in many editions by various developers and publishers, many titled "The Oregon Trail". The multiple games in the series are often considered to be iterations on the same title, and have collectively sold over 65 million copies and have been inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame. The series has also inspired a number of spinoffs such as "The Yukon Trail" and "The Amazon Trail".


title: The Oregon Trail (1971 video game)

text: "The Oregon Trail" is a text-based strategy video game in which the player, as the leader of a wagon train, controls a group journeying down the Oregon Trail from Independence, Missouri to Oregon City, Oregon in 1847. The player purchases supplies, then plays through approximately twelve rounds of decision making, each representing two weeks on the trail. Each round begins with the player being told their current distance along the trail and the date, along with their current supplies. Supplies consist of food, bullets, clothing, miscellaneous supplies, and cash, each given as a number. Players are given the option to hunt for food, and in some rounds to stop at a fort to purchase supplies, and then choose how much food to consume that round. The game closes the round by randomly selecting one or two events and weather conditions. The events include storms damaging supplies, wagons breaking down, and attacks by wild animals or "hostile riders"; weather conditions can slow down the rate of travel, which can result in additional rounds needed to reach Oregon.


title: The Oregon Trail (1971 video game)

text: When hunting, or when attacked, the game prompts the player to type a word—"BANG" in the original version, or a randomly selected word like "BANG" or "POW" in later versions—with misspellings resulting in no effect. When hunting, the faster the word is typed, the more food is gathered. The game ends when the player reaches Oregon, or if they die along the trail; death can occur due to an attack or by running out of supplies. Running out of food results in starvation, while lack of clothing in cold weather, low levels of food, or random events such as snakebite or a hunting accident lead to illness; this results in death if the player does not have miscellaneous supplies for minor or regular illnesses, or cannot afford a doctor in the case of serious illnesses.


title: The Oregon Trail (1971 video game)

text: In 1971, Don Rawitsch, a history major and senior at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, taught an 8th-grade history class at Jordan Junior High School in Minneapolis as a student teacher. His supervising teacher assigned him to prepare a unit on "The Western Expansion of the Mid-19th Century", and Rawitsch decided to create a board game activity about the Oregon Trail for the students. After one week of planning the lessons, he was in the process of drawing out the trail on sheets of paper on the floor of his apartment when his roommates, fellow Carleton students Bill Heinemann and Paul Dillenberger, came in. Heinemann, who along with Dillenberger was a math student and student teacher with experience in programming, discussed the project with Rawitsch, and told him that it would be well-suited to a computer program, as it could keep track of the player's progress and calculate their chances of success based on their supplies instead of a dice roll. Rawitsch was initially hesitant, as the unit needed to be complete within two weeks, but Heinemann and Dillenberger felt it could be done if they worked long hours each day on it. The trio then spent the weekend designing and coding the game on paper.


title: The Oregon Trail (1971 video game)

text: The Minneapolis school district had recently purchased an HP 2100 minicomputer, and the schools the trio were teaching in, like the other schools in the district, were connected to it via a single teleprinter. These teleprinters could send and print messages from programs running on the central computer. The video game industry was in its infancy in 1971, and the three had no resources to draw on to develop the game software beyond their own programming knowledge; instead, they spent two weeks working and coding in HP Time-Shared BASIC on their own. Rawitsch focused on the design and historical portions of the game, while Heinemann and Dillenberger did the programming, working on the teleprinter kept in a small room that was formerly a janitor's closet at the school they taught at, Bryant Junior High School, as well as bringing it to the apartment to continue working. Heinemann focused on the overall programming flow, and came up with the hunting minigame, while Dillenberger made subroutines for the game to use, wrote much of the text displayed to the player, and tested for bugs in the code. As there was only one terminal, Heinemann wrote code on paper while Dillenberger entered it into the system along with his own.


title: The Oregon Trail (1971 video game)

text: They implemented the basics of the game in those two weeks, including purchasing supplies, making choices at specific points of the journey, and the hunting minigame. They also included the random events happening to the player, and Heinemann had the idea to make the random events tied to the geography of the trail, so that cold weather events would be more likely in the mountains and attacks more likely in the plains. They also added small randomization of outcomes such as the amount of food gained from hunting; they expected that in order for the children to be interested in playing the game multiple times there needed to be variations between plays. Prior to the start of Rawitsch's history unit, Heinemann and Dillenberger let some students at their school play it to test; the students were enthusiastic about the game, staying late at school to play. The other teachers were not as interested, but did recommend changes to the game, particularly removing negative depictions of Native Americans as they were based more on Western movies and television than history, and could be problematic towards the several students with Native American ancestry at the schools.


title: The Oregon Trail (1971 video game)

text: "The Oregon Trail" debuted to Rawitsch's classes on December 3, 1971. He was unsure how interested the students would be in the game, as they had had limited exposure to computers and several seemed uninterested in history altogether, but after he showed them the game students would line up outside the door for their turn and stay after school for another chance. Rawitsch has recounted that, as only one student could use the teleprinter at one time and he could only reserve it for one week, he had the students play in groups, and they organized themselves into voting for responses and delegating students to handle hunting, following the map, and keeping track of supplies. Other teachers at the school came up with "flimsy excuses" for their students to try the game as well. The trio adjusted the game's code as the students played in response to bugs found, such as purchasing clothes for negative money. As the school district shared a single central minicomputer, schools across the city began to play the game as well. When the semester and their student teaching term ended, the team printed out copies of the source code—about 800 lines of code—and deleted the program from the computer.


title: The Oregon Trail (1971 video game)

text: In 1974, Rawitsch was hired by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC), a state-funded organization that developed educational software for the classroom, as an entry-level liaison for local community colleges. The MECC had a similar system to the Minneapolis school district's setup in 1971, with a CDC Cyber 70/73-26 mainframe computer which schools across the state could connect to via terminals. The system contained several educational programs, and Rawitsch's boss let him know that it was open to submissions. Rawitsch, with permission from Heinemann and Dillenberger, spent the 1974 Thanksgiving weekend copying and adjusting the printed BASIC source code into the system. Rather than submit the recreated copy, he instead enhanced the game with research on the events of the Oregon Trail that he had not had time for with the original version, and changed the frequency and types of random events, such as bad weather or wagons breaking down, to be based on the actual historical probabilities for what happened to travelers on the trail at each location in the game. Rawitsch calculated the probabilities himself, basing them on historical diaries and narratives of people on the trail that he read. He also added in more positive depictions of Native Americans, as his research indicated that many settlers received assistance from them along the trail. He placed "The Oregon Trail" into the organization's time-sharing network in 1975, where it could be accessed by schools across Minnesota.


title: The Oregon Trail (1971 video game)

text: The 1975 mainframe game was the most popular software in the system for Minnesota schools for five years, with thousands of players monthly. Rawitsch, Heinemann, and Dillenberger were not publicly acknowledged as the creators of the original game until 1995, when MECC honored them in a ceremony at the Mall of America. By then, several versions of the game had been created. Rawitsch published the source code of "The Oregon Trail" in "Creative Computing"s May–June 1978 issue, along with some of the historical information he had used to refine the statistics. That year MECC began encouraging schools to adopt the Apple II microcomputer, purchasing large amounts at a discount and reselling them to schools. MECC began converting several of their products to run on microcomputers, and John Cook adapted the game for the Apple II; though the text-based gameplay remained largely the same, he added a display of the player's position along the trail on a map between rounds, and replaced the typing in the hunting and attack minigame with a graphical version in which a deer or attacker moves across the screen and the player presses a key to fire at it. A version for the Atari 8-bit family, again titled "The Oregon Trail", was released in 1982. The Apple II version was included under the name "Oregon" as part of MECC's "Elementary" series, distributed to Minnesota schools for free and for profit to schools outside of the state, on "Elementary Volume 6" in 1980. "Oregon" was ported to the Commodore 64 in 1984 as part of a collection like "Elementary Volume 6" titled "Expeditions". By the mid-1980s, MECC was selling their educational software to schools around the country, and "The Oregon Trail" was their most popular product by far.


title: The Oregon Trail (1971 video game)

text: In 1985, MECC produced a fully-graphical version of the game for Apple II computers, redesigned by R. Philip Bouchard as a greatly expanded product for home consumers under the same name. "The Oregon Trail" was extremely successful, and along with successive versions of the game it sold over 65 million copies. Several further games have been released in "The Oregon Trail" series, many under the title "The Oregon Trail", as well as a number of spinoffs such as "The Yukon Trail" and "The Amazon Trail".


title: The Oregon Trail (1971 video game)

text: The original "Oregon Trail" has been described in "Serious Games and Edutainment Applications" as "one of the most famous ancestors" of the serious game subgenre. The text-based and graphical versions of "The Oregon Trail" are often described as different iterations of the same game when discussing the game's legacy; Colin Campbell of "Polygon", for example, has described it collectively as one of the most successful games of all time, calling it a cultural icon. Kevin Wong of "Vice" claimed that the collective game was "synonymous with edutainment". Due to its widespread popularity, "The Oregon Trail", referring to all versions of the game released over 40 years, was inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame in 2016. Time named the game as one of the 100 greatest video games in 2012, and placed it 9th on its list of the 50 best games in 2016.


title: Peoples Democratic Party (Nigeria)

text: The Peoples Democratic Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in Nigeria, along with its main rival, the All Progressives Congress.


title: Peoples Democratic Party (Nigeria)

text: Its policies generally lie towards the centre-right of the political spectrum. It won every presidential election between 1999 and 2011 and was, until the 2015 elections, the governing party in the Fourth Republic, although sometimes amid a few controversial electoral circumstances.


title: Peoples Democratic Party (Nigeria)

text: In 1998, the PDP in its first presidential primary election held in Jos, Plateau State, North Central Nigeria nominated former military leader Olusegun Obasanjo who had just been released from detention as political prisoner as the presidential candidate in the elections of February 1999, with Atiku Abubakar (Governor-Elect of Adamawa State and a former leading member of the Social Democratic Party) as his running mate. They won the presidential election and were inaugurated 29 May 1999.


title: Peoples Democratic Party (Nigeria)

text: In the legislative election held on 12 April 2003, the party won 54.5% of the popular vote and 223 out of 360 seats in the House of Representatives, and 76 out of 109 seats in the Senate. Its candidate in the presidential election of 19 April 2003, Olusegun Obasanjo, was re-elected with 61.9% of the vote. In December 2006, Umaru Yar'Adua (formerly of the Peoples Redemption Party and the Social Democratic Party) was chosen as the presidential candidate of the ruling PDP for the April 2007 general election, receiving 3,024 votes from party delegates; his closest rival, Rochas Okorocha, received only 372 votes. Yar'Adua was eventually declared the winner of the 2007 general elections, held on April 21, and was sworn in on May 29, 2007, amid widespread allegations of electoral fraud. In the Nigerian National Assembly election, the party won 260 out of 360 seats in the House of Representatives and 85 out of 109 seats in the Senate. At the PDP's 2008 National Convention, it chose Prince Vincent Ogbulafor as its National Chairman on March 8, 2008. Ogbulafor, who was the PDP's National Secretary from 2001 to 2005, was the party's consensus choice for the position of National Chairman, selected as an alternative to the rival leading candidates Sam Egwu (who was backed by Obasanjo) and Anyim Pius Anyim. All 26 other candidates, including Egwu and Anyim, withdrew in favor of Ogbulafor. Meanwhile, Alhaji Abubakar Kawu Baraje was elected as National Secretary.


title: Peoples Democratic Party (Nigeria)

text: In 2011, after the Peoples Democratic Party saw members defect for the Action Congress of Nigeria, some political commentators suspected that the PDP would lose the Presidency. Following PDP candidate Goodluck Jonathan's victory in the 2011 elections, it was reported that there were violent protests from northern youth.


title: Peoples Democratic Party (Nigeria)

text: The longtime slogan of the Peoples Democratic Party has been "Power to the people". During the party's National Convention in Port Harcourt, Rivers State on 21 May 2016, David Mark, a former President of the Senate of Nigeria, introduced "Change the change" as the party's campaign slogan for the 2019 general elections. Although, in 2018, the BoT Chairman maintained that the party will not change it slogan or umbrella symbol.


title: Peoples Democratic Party (Nigeria)

text: The party has a neoliberal stance in its economic policies and maintains a conservative stance on certain social issues, such as same-sex relations.


title: Peoples Democratic Party (Nigeria)

text: The PDP favors free-market policies which support economic liberalism, and limited government regulation. In 2003, President Olusegun Obasanjo and Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala embarked on an economic reform program, which reduced government spending through conservative fiscal policies, and saw the deregulation and privatization of numerous industries in Nigerian services sector — notably the Nigerian Telecommunications (NITEL) industry.


title: Peoples Democratic Party (Nigeria)

text: On the other hand, the PDP adopts a more leftist stance towards poverty and welfare. In 2005, President Obasanjo launched Nigeria's first National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) to ensure that every Nigerian has access to basic health care services.


title: Peoples Democratic Party (Nigeria)

text: The PDP strives to maintain the status quo on oil revenue distribution. Though the PDP government set up the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) to address the needs of the oil-producing Niger Delta states, it has rebuffed repeated efforts to revert to the 50% to 50% federal-to-state government revenue allocation agreement established in 1966 during the First Republic.


title: Peoples Democratic Party (Nigeria)

text: The PDP is against same-sex relations, and favors social conservatism on moral and religious grounds. In 2007, the PDP-dominated National Assembly sponsored a bill to outlaw homosexual relations, making it punishable by law for up to 14 years in prison.


title: Peoples Democratic Party (Nigeria)

text: The party is a moderate advocate of state-autonomy and religious freedom for the Nigerian states. In the year 2000 the introduction of Islamic law in some states in Northern Nigeria triggered sectarian violence in Kaduna and Abia states. The PDP-led federal government refused to bow to pressure from the southern, predominantly Christian states to repeal the law, and instead opted for a compromise where Islamic law would only apply to Muslims.


title: Peoples Democratic Party (Nigeria)

text: Tunde Ayeni, chairman of the PDP fundraising event in December 2014 who donated N2 billion was involved in the mismanagement of bank's funds.


title: Peoples Democratic Party (Nigeria)

text: In the 2015 elections, the incumbent president and PDP presidential nominee, Goodluck Jonathan, was defeated by General Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress by 55% to 45%, losing by 2.6 million votes, out of approximately 28.6 million valid votes cast. Out of Nigeria's 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, General Muhammadu Buhari won 21 states while President Goodluck Jonathan won 15 states and the Federal Capital Territory.


title: Peoples Democratic Party (Nigeria)

text: In the 2019 elections, former vice president Atiku Abubakar and PDP presidential candidadate together with his party rejected the outcome of the elections as INEC was yet to conclude the process and make an official pronouncement. On the 25th of February, PDP National Party Chair, Prince Uche Secondus alleged that the result as announced by INEC were incorrect.


title: Peoples Democratic Party (Nigeria)

text: Godwin Obaseki won re-election as governor of Edo State on 20 September 2020 PDP with 307,955 votes, defeating sixteen opponents. Security was tight and voters took health precautions in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic that has infected 57,000 and killed 1,100.


title: Joe Meek

text: Robert George "Joe" Meek (5 April 1929 – 3 February 1967) was an English record producer, sound engineer and songwriter who pioneered space age and experimental pop music. He also assisted in the development of recording practices like overdubbing, sampling and reverberation. Meek is considered one of the most influential sound engineers of all time, being one of the first to develop ideas such as the recording studio as an instrument, and becoming one of the first producers to be recognised for his individual identity as an artist.


title: Joe Meek

text: Charting singles Meek produced for other artists include "Johnny Remember Me" (John Leyton, 1961), "Just Like Eddie" (Heinz, 1963), "Angela Jones" (Michael Cox, 1960), "Have I the Right?" (the Honeycombs, 1964), and "Tribute to Buddy Holly" (Mike Berry, 1961). The Tornados' instrumental "Telstar" (1962), written and produced by Meek, became the first record by a British rock group to reach number one in the US Hot 100. It also spent five weeks at number one in the UK singles chart, with Meek receiving an Ivor Novello Award for this production as the "Best-Selling A-Side" of 1962. He also produced music for films such as "Live It Up!" (US title "Sing and Swing", 1963), a pop music film. Meek's concept album "I Hear a New World" (1960), which contains innovative use of electronic sounds, was not fully released in his lifetime.


title: Joe Meek

text: His reputation for experiments in recording music was acknowledged by the Music Producers Guild who in 2009 created "The Joe Meek Award for Innovation in Production" as a "homage to [the] remarkable producer's pioneering spirit". In 2014, Meek was ranked the greatest producer of all time by "NME", elaborating: "Meek was a complete trailblazer, attempting endless new ideas in his search for the perfect sound. ... The legacy of his endless experimentation is writ large over most of your favourite music today."


title: Joe Meek

text: At the time of his death, Meek possessed thousands of unreleased recordings later dubbed "The Tea Chest Tapes". His commercial success as a producer was short-lived, and he gradually sank into debt and depression. On 3 February 1967, using a shotgun owned by musician Heinz Burt, Meek killed his landlady, Violet Shenton, and then shot himself.


title: Joe Meek

text: Meek was born at 1 Market Square, Newent, Gloucestershire, and developed an interest in electronics and performance art at a very early age, filling his parents' garden shed with begged and borrowed electronic components, building circuits, radios and what is believed to be the region's first working television. During his national service in the Royal Air Force, he worked as a radar technician which increased his interest in electronics and outer space. From 1953 he worked for the Midlands Electricity Board. He used the resources of the company to develop his interest in electronics and music production, including acquiring a disc cutter and producing his first record.


title: Joe Meek

text: He left the electricity board to work as an audio engineer for a leading independent radio production company which made programmes for Radio Luxembourg, and made his breakthrough with his work on Ivy Benson's "Music for Lonely Lovers". His technical ingenuity was first shown on the Humphrey Lyttelton jazz single "Bad Penny Blues" (Parlophone Records, 1956) when, contrary to Lyttelton's wishes, Meek modified the sound of the piano and compressed the sound to a greater than normal extent. The record became a hit. He then put enormous effort into Denis Preston's Landsdowne Studio but tensions between Preston and Meek soon saw Meek leaving. During his time he recorded US actor George Chakiris for SAGA Records and it was this that led him to Major Wilfred Alonzo Banks and an independent career. He also engineered many jazz and calypso records including vocalist and percussionist Frank Holder and band leader Kenny Graham.


title: Joe Meek

text: Meek was also working as a songwriter at this time, using the name "Robert Duke". After being initially released by Eddie Silver and later by Tommy Steele, the Duke composition "Put A Ring On My Finger" was recorded by Les Paul & Mary Ford in 1958, and reached #32 on the US charts.


title: Joe Meek

text: In January 1960, together with William Barrington-Coupe, Meek founded Triumph Records. At the time Barrington-Coupe was working at SAGA records in Empire Yard, Holloway Road for Major Wilfred Alonzo Banks and it was the Major who provided the finance. The label very nearly had a No.1 hit with Meek's production of "Angela Jones" by Michael Cox. Cox was one of the featured singers on Jack Good's TV music show "Boy Meets Girls" and the song was given massive promotion. As an independent label, Triumph was dependent on small pressing plants, which were unable to meet the demand for product. The record made a respectable appearance in the Top Ten, but it demonstrated that Meek needed the distribution network of the major companies for his records to reach retail outlets.


title: Joe Meek

text: Its indifferent business results and Meek's temperament eventually led to the label's demise. Meek later licensed many Triumph recordings to labels such as Top Rank and Pye. That year Meek conceived, wrote and produced an "Outer Space Music Fantasy" album titled "I Hear a New World" with a band called Rod Freeman & the Blue Men. The album was shelved for decades, apart from the release of some EP tracks taken from it.


title: Joe Meek

text: Meek went on to set up his own production company known as RGM Sound Ltd (later Meeksville Sound Ltd) with toy importer Major Wilfred Alonzo Banks as his financial backer. He operated from his home studio which he constructed at 304 Holloway Road, Islington, a three-floor flat above a leather-goods store.


title: Joe Meek

text: His first hit from Holloway Road reached No.1 in the UK: John Leyton's "Johnny Remember Me" (1961) written by Geoff Goddard. This "death ditty" was cleverly promoted by Leyton's manager, expatriate Australian entrepreneur Robert Stigwood. Stigwood was able to gain Leyton a booking to perform the song several times in an episode of "Harpers West One", a short-lived ITV soap opera in which he was making a guest appearance. Meek's third UK No.1 and last major success was with the Honeycombs' "Have I the Right?" in 1964, written by Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley. The Meek-produced track which also became a number 5 hit on the American "Billboard" pop charts. The success of these recordings was instrumental in establishing Stigwood and Meek as two of Britain's first independent record producers.


title: Joe Meek

text: When his landlords, who lived downstairs, felt that the noise was too much, they would indicate so with a broom on the ceiling. Meek would signal his contempt by placing loudspeakers in the stairwell and turning up the volume.


title: Joe Meek

text: A privately manufactured "black plaque" (designed to resemble the official blue plaque) has since been placed at the location of the studio to commemorate Meek's life and work.


title: Joe Meek

text: Meek heard many up and coming bands and artists over his career, some of which he did not see any potential for. After Brian Epstein asked his opinion of the Beatles' demo tape, Meek told him not to bother signing them. On another occasion he signed a band on the condition that they get rid of their lead singer: a 16-year-old Rod Stewart.


title: Joe Meek

text: Meek became fascinated with the idea of communicating with the dead. He would set up tape machines in graveyards in an attempt to record voices from beyond the grave, in one instance capturing the meows of a cat he believed was speaking in human tones, asking for help. In particular, he had an obsession with Buddy Holly (saying the late American rocker had communicated with him in dreams). By the end of his career, Meek's fascination with these topics had taken over his life following the deterioration in his mental health, and he started to believe that his flat contained poltergeists, that aliens were substituting his speech by controlling his mind, and that photographs in his studio were trying to communicate with him.


title: Joe Meek

text: Meek was affected by bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, and, upon receiving an apparently innocent phone call from American record producer Phil Spector, Meek immediately accused Spector of stealing his ideas before hanging up angrily. His professional efforts were often hindered by his paranoia (Meek was convinced that Decca Records would put hidden microphones behind his wallpaper to steal his ideas), depression, and extreme mood swings. In later years, Meek started experiencing psychotic delusions, culminating in his refusal to use the studio telephone for important communications due to his belief that his landlady was eavesdropping on his calls through the chimney, that he could control the minds of others with his recording equipment, and that he could monitor his acts while away from the studio through supernatural means.


title: Joe Meek

text: Meek was also a frequent recreational drug user, with his barbiturate abuse further worsening his depressive episodes. In addition, his heavy consumption of amphetamines caused him to fly into volatile rages with little or no provocation, at one point leading him to hold a gun to the head of drummer Mitch Mitchell to 'inspire' a high-quality performance.


title: Joe Meek

text: Meek's homosexuality – at a time when homosexual acts were illegal in the UK – put him under further pressure and he was particularly afraid that his mother would find out about his sexual orientation. In 1963 he was convicted and fined £15 () for "importuning for immoral purposes" in a London public toilet, and was consequently subject to blackmail. In January 1967, police in Tattingstone, Suffolk, discovered two suitcases containing the remains of Bernard Oliver. According to some accounts, Meek was afraid of being questioned by the Metropolitan Police, as it was known they were intending to interview all of the gay men in London. This was enough for him to lose his self-control.


title: Joe Meek

text: Meek always walked everywhere outside the studio wearing sunglasses, fearing recognition by local gangsters such as the Kray twins, who he feared would attempt to steal his acts or blackmail him regarding his homosexuality.


title: Joe Meek

text: Meek's depression deepened as his financial position became increasingly desperate. French composer Jean Ledrut accused him of plagiarism, claiming that the melody of "Telstar" had been copied from "La Marche d'Austerlitz", a piece from a score Ledrut had written for the film "Austerlitz" (1960). The lawsuit meant that Meek did not receive royalties from the record during his lifetime, and the issue was not resolved in his favour until three weeks after his death in 1967.


title: Joe Meek

text: On 3 February 1967, Meek killed his landlady Violet Shenton and then himself with a single-barrelled shotgun that he had confiscated from his protégé, former Tornados bassist and solo star Heinz Burt, at his Holloway Road home/studio. Meek and Shenton argued over his noise levels and the rent that he still owed before Meek picked up the shotgun. He had taken the gun from Burt when he informed Meek that he had used it, while on tour, to shoot birds. Meek had kept the gun under his bed, along with some cartridges. As the shotgun had been owned by Burt, he was questioned intensively by police before being eliminated from their enquiries. Meek was buried at Newent Cemetery, Newent, Gloucestershire.


title: Joe Meek

text: Meek's inability to play a musical instrument or write notation did not prevent him writing and producing successful commercial recordings. For songwriting, he was reliant on musicians such as Dave Adams, Geoff Goddard or Charles Blackwell to transcribe melodies from his vocal "demos". He worked on 245 singles, 45 of which reached the top fifty. He pioneered studio tools such as multiple over-dubbing on one- and two-track machines, close miking, direct input of bass guitars, the compressor, and effects like echo and reverb, as well as sampling. Unlike other producers, his search was for the 'right' sound rather than for a catchy musical tune, and throughout his brief career he single-mindedly followed his quest to create a unique "sonic signature" for every record he produced.


title: Joe Meek

text: At a time when many studio engineers were still wearing white coats and assiduously trying to maintain clarity and fidelity, Meek was producing everything on the three floors of his "home" studio and was never afraid to distort or manipulate the sound if it created the effect he was seeking.


title: Joe Meek

text: Meek was one of the first producers to grasp and fully exploit the possibilities of the modern recording studio. His innovative techniques — physically separating instruments, treating instruments and voices with echo and reverb, processing the sound through his fabled home-made electronic devices, the combining of separately recorded performances and segments into a painstakingly constructed composite recording – constituted major breakthroughs in sound production. Up to that time, the standard technique for pop recording was to record all the performers in one studio, playing together in real time. This was substantially different from that of his contemporary Phil Spector, who typically created his "Wall of Sound" productions by making live recordings of large ensembles that used multiples of major instruments like bass, guitar, and piano to create the complex sonic backgrounds for his singers.


title: Joe Meek

text: In 1993, former session singer Ted Fletcher introduced the "Joemeek" line of audio processing equipment. The tribute to Meek was due to his influence in the early stages of audio compression. The name and product line were sold to the American company PMI Audio Group in 2003. The current product line includes a microphone series called "Telstar", named after Meek's biggest hit.


title: Joe Meek

text: After Meek's death, the thousands of recordings he hid at his studio remained unreleased and preserved by Cliff Cooper of the Millionaires. Subsequent to his suicide in 1967, Cooper is said to have purchased all of Meek's recordings for £300 (). These recordings were called the "Tea Chest Tapes" among fans, as they were stored in tea chests when Cooper took them out of his flat. Alan Blackburn, former president of the Joe Meek Appreciation Society, catalogued all of them in the mid-1980s.


title: Joe Meek

text: On 4 September 2008, these unreleased recordings were auctioned in Fame Bureau's 'It's More Than Rock 'N' Roll' auction, where they reportedly sold for £200,000, although, in a 2021 interview for the BBC, Cliff Cooper states that they had failed to sell on that occasion. They contained over 4,000 hours of music on approximately 1,850 tapes, including recordings by David Bowie as singer and sax player with the Konrads, Gene Vincent, Denny Laine, Billy Fury, Tom Jones, Jimmy Page, Mike Berry, John Leyton, Ritchie Blackmore, Jess Conrad, Mitch Mitchell and Screaming Lord Sutch. The tapes also contained many examples of Meek composing songs and experimental sound techniques. Tape 418 has Meek composing songs for the film "Live It Up!"


title: Joe Meek

text: On 2 September 2020, Cherry Red Records announced that they had purchased the tapes from Cliff Cooper and would begin the process of digitising the archive with a view to releasing the material, subject to rights clearance.


title: Joe Meek

text: Meek passed up the chance to work with the then unknown David Bowie, the Beatles (the latter he once described as "just another bunch of noise, copying other people's music") and Rod Stewart. John Repsch, in "The Legendary Joe Meek", recounts that upon hearing Stewart sing, Meek rushed into the studio, put his fingers in his ears and screamed until Stewart had left. He preferred to record instrumentals with the band he sang with – the Moontrekkers.


title: Joe Meek

text: In 1963 Meek worked with a then little-known singer Tom Jones, then the lead vocalist of Tommy Scott & the Senators. Meek recorded seven tracks with Jones and took them to various labels in an attempt to get a record deal, with no success. Two years later after Jones' worldwide hit "It's Not Unusual" in 1965, Meek was able to sell the tapes he had recorded with Jones to Tower (USA) and Columbia (UK).


title: Joe Meek

text: In later years, the interest in Meek's life as well as influence on the music industry, has spawned at least two documentary films, a radio play, a stage play and a feature film.


title: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

text: "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" is a poem and song by Gil Scott-Heron. Scott-Heron first recorded it for his 1970 album "Small Talk at 125th and Lenox", on which he recited the lyrics, accompanied by congas and bongo drums. A re-recorded version, with a full band, was the B-side to Scott-Heron's first single, "Home Is Where the Hatred Is", from his album "Pieces of a Man" (1971). It was also included on his compilation album, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" (1974). All these releases were issued on the Flying Dutchman Productions record label.


title: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

text: The song's title was originally a popular slogan among the 1960s Black Power movements in the United States. Its lyrics either mention or allude to several television series, advertising slogans and icons of entertainment and news coverage that serve as examples of what "the revolution will not" be or do. The song is a response to the spoken-word piece "When the Revolution Comes" by The Last Poets, from their eponymous debut, which opens with the line "When the revolution comes some of us will probably catch it on TV".


title: Happy Wheels

text: Happy Wheels is a ragdoll physics-based platform browser game developed and published by Fancy Force. Created by video game designer Jim Bonacci in 2010, the game features several player characters, who use different, sometimes atypical, vehicles to traverse the game's many levels. The game is best known for its graphic violence and the amount of user-generated content its players produce on a regular basis, with game maps shared on a public server. A sequel is in development


title: Happy Wheels

text: "Happy Wheels" tagline is "Choose your inadequately prepared racer, and ignore severe consequences in your desperate search for victory!" The actual mechanics of gameplay vary because of character choice and level design; the game includes characters such as a businessman on a Segway.


title: Happy Wheels

text: The goal of the game also differs depending on the level. In most levels, the goal is to reach a finish line or to collect tokens. Many levels feature alternate or nonexistent goals for the player.


title: Happy Wheels

text: Reviewers have noted that "Happy Wheels" exhibits graphic violence in its gameplay. For instance, characters can be decapitated, shot, or crushed by different obstacles. Loss of limbs and animated blood loss are also graphic elements.


title: Happy Wheels

text: Players also have the choice to upload instant replays of their level attempts, which can then be viewed.


title: Happy Wheels

text: "Happy Wheels" features a level editor, which allows players to create custom levels of their own. It contains a plethora of tools and objects for level building. Users can upload their maps to a public server where they are accessible.


title: Happy Wheels

text: Indie game developer Jim Bonacci, largely the programmer and artist for the game, began work on the game in 2006. Bonacci has said that his inspiration for the game came from other ragdoll physics-based games in the browser games community, as his friend and former boss, Alec Cove, had made a Verlet physics engine for flash. Bonacci said that "[he] was messing around with it, and eventually created a guy in a wheelchair that would endlessly fall down a random hill. [He] thought it was funny and stupid, so [he] kept expanding on it. It was only meant to be a very small game, but eventually it became [his] main focus."


title: Happy Wheels

text: In addition, he explained the violent nature of the game in terms of his frustration with how consequences of certain actions were not treated realistically in other game titles, as he stated that "it always bothered [him] when... you'd fall off your vehicle and harmlessly bounce around. In other cases, you would have the same canned animation over and over. [He's] not sure if it was a lack of detail or concern on the part of the developer, but the consequences of your in-game actions were often improperly illustrated. For [him], half of the fun of playing a game that imitates life (sort of), is making mistakes and seeing the end result."


title: Happy Wheels

text: Bonacci also noted that, because gameplay would often involve the player dying repeatedly, he put a great deal of effort into making that part of the game enjoyable.


title: Happy Wheels

text: The full version of "Happy Wheels" is only available on Bonacci's original website, and demo versions of the game are licensed to other websites. These demo versions only include a limited number of featured maps and selectable characters.


title: Happy Wheels

text: There are approximately 5 million user-generated levels. The total count of level plays is over 13 billion.


title: Happy Wheels

text: Currently, Jason Schymick helps Bonacci work on the game programming, although different people have contributed. "The others who helped are all amazing", says Bonacci. Alec Cove joined Fancy Force in 2013 and handles all serverside architecture and development.


title: Happy Wheels

text: On September 30, 2014, Schymick announced that iOS and Android ports of the game have been in development. The iOS version was released as a free download through the App Store on August 20, 2015. For the Android version, Fancy Force began accepting beta test applications in October 2019. Following a beta testing phase, the finished version was released on January 25, 2020.


title: Happy Wheels

text: On January 9, 2020, Bonacci posted on his website that a JavaScript port by Goodboy Digital was in development and the game will continue to function after Adobe Flash ends at the end of 2020. Eleven months later, on December 28, 2020, the JavaScript port was released, continuing the existence of the game after the end of Flash.


title: Happy Wheels

text: "Happy Wheels" has received generally positive reviews. It was recommended by GameSetWatch and considered one of the "Best Free Games" by IGN. Its level editor and amount of user-generated content have received praise from reviewers. The over-the-top nature of the violence is a central theme of the game, and some reviewers have considered it humorous; one review stated that "It is so genuinely difficult to play "Happy Wheels" and not just laugh and laugh at the ridiculous ways in which your character can be torn into pieces."


title: Thomas J. Hudner Jr.

text: Thomas Jerome Hudner Jr. (August 31, 1924 – November 13, 2017) was an officer of the United States Navy and a naval aviator. He rose to the rank of captain, and received the Medal of Honor for his actions in trying to save the life of his wingman, Ensign Jesse L. Brown, during the Battle of Chosin Reservoir in the Korean War.


title: Thomas J. Hudner Jr.

text: Born in Fall River, Massachusetts, Hudner attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts and the United States Naval Academy. Initially uninterested in aviation, he eventually took up flying and joined Fighter Squadron 32, flying the F4U Corsair at the outbreak of the Korean War. Arriving near Korea in October 1950, he flew support missions from the aircraft carrier .


title: Thomas J. Hudner Jr.

text: On 4 December 1950, Hudner and Brown were among a group of pilots on patrol near the Chosin Reservoir when Brown's Corsair was struck by ground fire from Chinese troops and crashed. In an attempt to save Brown from his burning aircraft, Hudner intentionally crash-landed his own aircraft on a snowy mountain in freezing temperatures to help Brown. In spite of these efforts, Brown died of his injuries and Hudner was forced to leave Brown's body behind, as a rescue helicopter could not fly in the dark and Hudner had suffered his own injuries in the landing.


title: Thomas J. Hudner Jr.

text: Following the incident, Hudner held positions aboard several U.S. Navy ships and with a number of aviation units, including a brief stint as executive officer of during a tour in the Vietnam War, before retiring in 1973. In subsequent years, he worked for various veterans' organizations in the United States. The guided missile destroyer is named for him.


title: Thomas J. Hudner Jr.

text: Hudner was born 31 August 1924 in Fall River, Massachusetts. His father, Thomas Hudner Sr., was a businessman of Irish descent who ran a chain of grocery stores, Hudner's Markets. Three brothers were later born, named James, Richard, and Phillip.


title: Thomas J. Hudner Jr.

text: Hudner entered the prestigious Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, in 1939. His family had a long history in the academy, with his father graduating in 1911 and his uncle, Harold Hudner, graduating in 1921. Eventually, the three younger Hudner children would attend the academy as well; James in 1944, Richard in 1946 and Phillip in 1954. During his time in the high school, Thomas was active in several organizations, serving as a team captain in the school track team as well as a member of the football and lacrosse teams, a class officer, a member of student council, and an assistant house counselor.


title: Thomas J. Hudner Jr.

text: Following the attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States' entry into World War II, Hudner heard a speech by academy headmaster Claude Fuess which he later said inspired him to join the military. One of 10 from Phillips to be accepted into the academy from his class, he entered the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1943 and graduated in 1946. By the time he was commissioned, however, World War II had ended. Hudner attended the Naval Academy with a number of other notable classmates, including Marvin J. Becker, James B. Stockdale, Jimmy Carter, and Stansfield Turner. He played football at the academy, eventually becoming a starting running back for the junior varsity team.


title: Thomas J. Hudner Jr.

text: After graduation, Hudner served as a communications officer aboard several surface ships. During his initial years in the military, Hudner said he had no interest in aircraft. After a one-year tour of duty aboard the "Baltimore"-class heavy cruiser , which was operating off the coast of Taiwan, he transferred to a post as a communications officer at the Naval Base Pearl Harbor where he served for another year. By 1948, Hudner became interested in aviation, and applied to flight school, seeing it as "a new challenge". He was accepted into Naval Air Station Pensacola in Pensacola, Florida, where he completed basic flight training, and was transferred to Naval Air Station Corpus Christi in Texas, where he completed advanced flight training and qualified as a naval aviator in August 1949. After a brief posting in Lebanon, Hudner was assigned to VF-32 aboard the aircraft carrier USS "Leyte", piloting the F4U Corsair. He later said he enjoyed this assignment, as he considered the Corsair to be "safe and comfortable".


title: Thomas J. Hudner Jr.

text: On the night of 25 June 1950, ten divisions of the North Korean People's Army launched a full-scale invasion of the nation's neighbor to the south, the Republic of Korea. The force of 89,000 men moved in six columns, catching the Republic of Korea Army by surprise, resulting in a rout. The smaller South Korean army suffered from widespread lack of organization and equipment, and was unprepared for war. The numerically superior North Korean forces destroyed isolated resistance from the 38,000 South Korean soldiers on the front before it began moving steadily south. Most of South Korea's forces retreated in the face of the invasion. The North Koreans were well on their way to South Korea's capital of Seoul within hours, forcing the government and its shattered army to retreat further south.


title: Thomas J. Hudner Jr.

text: To prevent South Korea's collapse the United Nations Security Council voted to send military forces. The United States' Seventh Fleet dispatched Task Force 77, led by the fleet carrier , and the British Far East Fleet dispatched several ships, including , to provide air and naval support. Although the navies blockaded North Korea and launched aircraft to delay the North Korean forces these efforts alone did not stop the North Korean Army juggernaut on its southern advance. U.S. President Harry S. Truman later ordered ground troops into the country to supplement the air support. All U.S. Navy units and ships including "Leyte" were placed on alert. The ship was in the Mediterranean Sea, and Hudner did not expect to be deployed to Korea, but on 8August a relief carrier arrived in the area and "Leyte" was ordered to Korea. Naval commanders felt the pilots on "Leyte" were better trained and prepared than those of other available carriers, so they were among the first dispatched to the theater. "Leyte" sailed from the Strait of Gibraltar across the Atlantic Ocean and to Quonset, then through the Panama Canal and to San Diego, California, Hawaii, and Japan before arriving in the waters off Korea around 8October.


title: Thomas J. Hudner Jr.

text: The ship joined Task Force 77 off the northeast coast of the Korean Peninsula, part of a fleet of 17 ships from the U.S. Seventh Fleet, including the aircraft carrier , battleship , and cruiser . Hudner flew 20 missions in the country. These missions included attacks on communication lines, troop concentrations, and military installations around Wonsan, Chongpu, Songjim, and Senanju.


title: Thomas J. Hudner Jr.

text: Following the entrance of the People's Republic of China into the war in late November 1950, Hudner and his squadron were dispatched to the Chosin Reservoir, where an intense campaign was being fought between X Corps (United States) and the People's Volunteer Army’s 9th Army. Almost 100,000 Chinese troops had surrounded 15,000 U.S. troops, and the pilots on "Leyte" were flying dozens of close air support missions every day to prevent the Chinese from overrunning the area.


title: Thomas J. Hudner Jr.

text: On 4 December 1950, Hudner was part of a six-aircraft flight supporting U.S. Marine Corps ground troops who were trapped by Chinese forces. At 13:38, he took off from "Leyte" with squadron executive officer Lieutenant Commander Dick Cevoli, Lieutenant George Hudson, Lieutenant Junior Grade Bill Koenig, Ensign Ralph E. McQueen, and the first African American Naval Aviator, Ensign Jesse L. Brown, who was Hudner's wingman. The flight traveled from Task Force 77's location to the Chosin Reservoir, flying 35 to 40 minutes through very harsh wintery weather to the vicinity of the villages Yudam-ni and Hagaru-ri. The flight began searching for targets along the west side of the reservoir, lowering their altitude to in the process. The three-hour search and destroy mission was also an attempt to probe Chinese troop strength in the area.


title: Thomas J. Hudner Jr.

text: Though the flight spotted no Chinese, at 14:40 Koenig radioed to Brown that he appeared to be trailing fuel. The damage had likely come by small arms fire from Chinese infantry, who were known to hide in the snow and ambush passing aircraft by firing in unison. At least one bullet had ruptured a fuel line. Brown, losing fuel pressure and increasingly unable to control the aircraft, dropped his external fuel tanks and rockets and attempted to land the craft in a snow-covered clearing on the side of a mountain. Brown crashed into a bowl-shaped valley at approximately , near Somong-ni, behind Chinese lines, and in 15-degree (- 10 °C) weather. The aircraft broke up violently upon impact and was destroyed. In the crash, Brown's leg was pinned beneath the fuselage of the Corsair, and he stripped off his helmet and gloves in an attempt to free himself, before waving to the other pilots, who were circling close overhead. Hudner and the other airborne pilots thought Brown had died in the crash, and they immediately began a mayday radio to any heavy transport aircraft in the area as they canvassed the mountain for any sign of nearby Chinese ground forces. They received a signal that a rescue helicopter would come as soon as possible, but Brown's aircraft was smoking and a fire had started near its internal fuel tanks.


title: Thomas J. Hudner Jr.

text: Hudner attempted in vain to rescue Brown via radio instruction, before intentionally crash-landing his aircraft, running to Brown's side and attempting to wrestle him free from the wreck. With Brown's condition worsening by the minute, Hudner attempted to drown the aircraft fire in snow and pull Brown from the aircraft, all in vain. Brown began slipping in and out of consciousness, but in spite of being in great pain, did not complain to Hudner. A rescue helicopter arrived around 15:00, and Hudner and its pilot, Lieutenant Charles Ward, were unable to put out the engine fire with a fire extinguisher. They tried in vain to free Brown with an axe for 45 minutes. They briefly considered, at Brown's request, amputating his trapped leg. Brown lost consciousness for the last time shortly thereafter. His last known words, which he told Hudner, were "tell Daisy I love her." The helicopter, which was unable to operate in the darkness, was forced to leave at nightfall with Hudner, leaving Brown behind. Brown is believed to have died shortly thereafter of his injuries and exposure to the extreme cold. No Chinese forces threatened the site, likely because of the heavy air presence of the VF-32 pilots.


title: Thomas J. Hudner Jr.

text: Hudner begged superiors to allow him to return to the wreck to help extract Brown, but he was not allowed, as other officers feared an ambush of the vulnerable helicopters resulting in additional casualties. In order to prevent the body and the aircraft from falling into Chinese or North Korean hands, the U.S. Navy bombed the crash site with napalm two days later; the aircrew recited the Lord's Prayer over the radio as they watched flames consume Brown's body. The pilots observed that his body looked to have been disturbed and his clothes stolen, but he was still stuck in the aircraft. The remains of both Brown and the aircraft were never recovered. Brown was the first African American U.S. Navy officer killed in the war.


title: Thomas J. Hudner Jr.

text: The 4 December incident grounded Hudner for a month, as he injured his back in the landing, an injury he later said persisted for 6to 8years. He flew 27 combat missions during the war, serving there until 20 January 1951, when "Leyte" was rotated back to the Atlantic Fleet. On 13 April 1951, Hudner received the Medal of Honor from President Harry S. Truman, meeting Brown's widow, Daisy Brown, in the process. The two stayed in regular contact for at least 50 years following this meeting. He was the first service member to receive the medal during the Korean War, though several others would receive the medal for actions which occurred before 4December 1950.


title: Thomas J. Hudner Jr.

text: Hudner said he was occasionally criticized for his actions, and that "about 90" people had told him he acted recklessly. His commanders noted his actions may have endangered the helicopter pilot and sacrificed an aircraft, criticisms Hudner later said did not make him regret his decision, as he felt it was a spur-of-the-moment action. Still, commanders later issued orders forbidding pilots from crash-landing in a similar way to try to save downed wingmen. On later reflection, Hudner indicated he did not consider himself a hero for his actions.


title: Thomas J. Hudner Jr.

text: After receiving the Medal of Honor, Hudner was transferred to the United States and served as a flight instructor at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi in Texas in 1952 and 1953. Following this, he served as a staff officer for Carrier Division 3, which at the time was part of Task Force 77 and operating around Japan, in 1953 and 1954. In 1955 and 1956, he served in Air Development Squadron 3 at Naval Air Station Atlantic City in New Jersey, where he flew developmental and experimental aircraft. During this time, he was trained on jet engine-powered aircraft.


title: Thomas J. Hudner Jr.

text: Beginning in October 1957, Hudner served in an exchange program with the U.S. Air Force, flying for two years with the 60th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron at Otis Air Force Base in Barnstable County, Massachusetts. During this assignment, he flew the F-94 Starfire and the F-101 Voodoo. He was then promoted to commander and served as aide to the Chief of the Bureau of Naval Weapons until 1962, when he attended the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. Upon graduating in July 1963, he returned to flying duty and was appointed the executive officer of Fighter Squadron 53, flying the F-8E Crusader aboard . After serving as executive officer, Hudner assumed command of VF-53. Following this assignment, he was transferred to a position as Leadership Training Officer at the office of Commander, Naval Air Forces, at Naval Air Station North Island in Coronado, California.


title: Thomas J. Hudner Jr.

text: Hudner was promoted to captain in 1965, taking command of Training Squadron 24 at Naval Air Station Chase Field in Bee County, Texas, which he commanded in 1965 and 1966. In 1966 he was assigned to , first as navigator, then as the ship's executive officer. "Kitty Hawk" deployed off the shore of South Vietnam in 1966 and 1967, launching missions in support of the Vietnam War, and he served on the ship during this tour but saw no combat and flew none of the missions himself. In 1968, he was assigned as the operations officer for the Southeast Asia Air Operations division of the U.S. Navy. That year, he married Georgea Smith, a widow with three children, whom he had met in San Diego. The two had one son together, Thomas Jerome Hudner III, born in 1971. Hudner's final Navy posting was as the head of Aviation Technical Training in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations in Washington, D.C., a post which he held until his retirement in February 1973.


title: Thomas J. Hudner Jr.

text: On 17 February 1973, days before Hudner's retirement, the Navy commissioned the , the third U.S. ship to be named in honor of an African American. Present at the commissioning ceremony in Boston, Massachusetts, were Daisy Brown Thorne, who had remarried, her daughter Pamela Brown, and Hudner, who gave a dedication. The ship was decommissioned on 27 July 1994 and sold to Egypt.


title: Thomas J. Hudner Jr.

text: After retiring, Hudner initially worked as a management consultant, and later worked with the United Service Organizations. Because of his Medal of Honor, he worked regularly with various veterans groups in his retirement as a leader in the veterans' community, otherwise living a quiet life. From 1991 to 1999, he served as Commissioner for the Massachusetts Department of Veterans' Services, until he gave up that position to Thomas G. Kelley, another Medal of Honor recipient.


title: Thomas J. Hudner Jr.

text: He received a number of honors in his later life. In 1989, he was honored by the Gathering of Eagles Program of the Air Force at Maxwell Air Force Base. In 2001, Hudner presented Daisy Brown Thorne with several of Jesse Brown's posthumous medals at Mississippi State University. In May 2012, the Secretary of the Navy announced that an guided missile destroyer would be named . The ship was christened on April 1, 2017, with Hudner in attendance, and commissioned in Boston on 1 December 2018.


title: Thomas J. Hudner Jr.

text: After 1991, Hudner lived in Concord, Massachusetts, with his wife, Georgea. In July 2013, he visited Pyongyang, North Korea, in an attempt to recover Jesse Brown's remains from the crash site. He was told by North Korean authorities to return in September when the weather would be more predictable.


title: Thomas J. Hudner Jr.

text: Hudner's official biography—"Devotion: An Epic Story of Heroism, Friendship, and Sacrifice"—was released in October 2015, after seven years of collaboration with author Adam Makos.


title: Thomas J. Hudner Jr.

text: Hudner died at his home in Concord, Massachusetts, on November 13, 2017, at the age of 93. He was interred at Arlington National Cemetery on April 4, 2018, in a ceremony attended by General Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.


title: Thomas J. Hudner Jr.

text: Hudner was one of 11 men awarded the Medal of Honor during the Battle of Chosin Reservoir. He was the first of seven U.S. Navy servicemen, and the only Naval aviator, to be awarded the Medal of Honor in the Korean War.


title: Matthias, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Matthias (24 February 1557 – 20 March 1619) was Holy Roman Emperor from 1612 to 1619, Archduke of Austria from 1608 to 1619, King of Hungary and Croatia from 1608 to 1618, and King of Bohemia from 1611 to 1617. His personal motto was "Concordia lumine maior" ("Unity is stronger than light").


title: Matthias, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Matthias played a significant role in the familial opposition of the Habsburgs against his brother Emperor Rudolf II. After gaining power, he showed little political initiative of his own. The course of his politics was determined by Cardinal Klesl until his fall in 1618. As a consequence of his failed religious and administrative policies the Bohemian Revolt, the initial theatre of the Thirty Years War set off during the final year of his reign.


title: Matthias, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Matthias was born in the Austrian capital of Vienna as the fourth son of Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor, and Maria of Spain. His brothers were Rudolf (who became Emperor Rudolf II), Ernest, Maximilian (from 1585 Grand Master of the Teutonic Order), Albert (archbishop of Toledo, later governor of the Netherlands), and Wenceslaus (Grand Prior of the Order of Malta in Castile). He also had six sisters. His sister Anna was married to King Philip II of Spain, and his sister Elisabeth to King Charles IX of France. Almost nothing is known about his upbringing. One of his teachers was the writer and historian Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq. Upon Maximilian II's death the family's estates and property were all inherited by Rudolf, the eldest son. The other sons - including Matthias - were compensated with cash pensions and appointments to church or state positions. Matthias married Archduchess Anna of Austria, daughter of his uncle Archduke Ferdinand II of Austria, whose successor in Further Austria Matthias became in 1595. Their marriage did not produce surviving children.


title: Matthias, Holy Roman Emperor

text: In 1578, Matthias was invited to the Netherlands by the States-General of the rebellious provinces, who offered him the position of Governor-General. Matthias had come into contact with Gautier von der Gracht, the envoy of the Dutch provinces, at the Regensburg Reichstag in 1576. Philippe III de Croÿ, Duke of Aarschot and other representatives of a rather moderate party agreed with Matthias to make him the governor of the Netherlands against the will of his uncle, Philip II of Spain, the hereditary ruler of the provinces and without the knowledge of Emperor Rudolf II. Matthias accepted the appointment, although the position was not recognized by Philip II. He set down the rules for religious peace within most of the United Provinces. His work is noted in Article 13 of the 1579 Union of Utrecht, which established freedom of religion as a locally determined issue. Matthias continued as titular governor for the rebels until they deposed Philip II and declared full independence in 1581, at which point he returned home to Austria.


title: Matthias, Holy Roman Emperor

text: He returned to Austria in 1583, where he settled in Linz with a small household. He made several unsuccessful attempts to get elected as bishop (Münster, Liège, Speyer). In 1586 negotiations for the succession of the Polish king Stephen Báthory were equally unsuccessful. He also applied for the regency in Tyrol and Further Austria. It was only when his brother Ernest was appointed "General Governor" in the Netherlands in 1593 (ruled from 1594) that Matthias was able to secure governance over Austria.


title: Matthias, Holy Roman Emperor

text: He was immediately confronted with the vigorous advocacy of their religious rights among the Protestant estates. The problems were exacerbated by the high taxes and the troops raised as a result of the Long Turkish War. In the years 1595 and 1597 the farmers in Lower and Upper Austria revolted in the hope to negotiate with the emperor. Matthias forced the insurgents into submission with mercenary troops.


title: Matthias, Holy Roman Emperor

text: After the uprising had been quelled, Matthias' policies on religion changed. If there had previously been Protestants at his court, he now went on a strict Counter-Reformation course. His chancellor had been Melchior Khlesl, bishop and administrator of Wiener Neustadt, since 1599 and supporter of the Counter-Reformation. The emperor appointed him in 1594/95 and again in 1598/1600 as nominal commander in chief in the Turkish war and as his representative to the Hungarian Reichstag.


title: Matthias, Holy Roman Emperor

text: With great concern, the Habsburgs observed the increasing psychological decline of the ageing emperor. After Ernest's death in 1595, Matthias became the oldest among the archdukes. From 1599 onwards Matthias in vain urged the childless emperor to arrange his succession as Matthias was rejected. The crisis carried on in 1604 during the uprising under Stephen Bocskai in Hungary. Matthias initially avoided an argument with the emperor. But Bishop Klesl urged him to take command in the conflict with Rudolf. In November 1600 at Schottwien the Archdukes Matthias, Maximilian and Ferdinand signed an agreement of concerted opposition against the emperor, in 1606 declared Rudolf insane (document dated 25 April), appointed Matthias as the head of the family, and began to oust Rudolf. It was Matthias and not the emperor who had brokered the Peace of Zsitvatorok with the Ottomans and in 1606 had ended the conflict in Hungary by granting freedom of religion in Hungary and guaranteed the right of Transylvanians to elect their own independent princes in the future.


title: Matthias, Holy Roman Emperor

text: As unrest resurfaced in Hungary and spread into parts of Moravia and Austria, Matthias attempted to utilize this opposition in the power struggle against the emperor. He joined the rebellious Diet of Hungary and the Lower and Upper Austrian estates in Bratislava in 1608 and in Moravia shortly later. In April 1608 Matthias marched on Prague and besieged the city. Although unable to fully win over the Bohemian estates, he forced Rudolf to negotiate and sign a peace treaty in June 1608. This, unsurprisingly, resulted in the redistribution of power. Rudolf kept Bohemia, Silesia and Lusatia and Matthias received Hungary, Austria and Moravia.


title: Matthias, Holy Roman Emperor

text: However, the takeover of power did not proceed according to customary protocol. Matthias, as the new sovereign had not guaranteed the privileges of the estates before they officially paid homage to him. He tried to reverse the order, which led to the so-called "Homage dispute". As the majority of the estates were Protestant in Austria and Moravia their nobles then formed the powerful Horner Confederation (Horner Bund) and paid homage only against a guarantee of their religious rights. The Horner Confederation continued to exist until the beginning of the Thirty Years War.


title: Matthias, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Matthias was crowned King of Bohemia on 23 May 1611 and was, after Rudolf's death on 20 January 1612, elected Emperor. On 4 December 1611, he married his cousin Archduchess Anna of Austria, yet the union failed to produce children. Matthias allegedly fathered an illegitimate son named "Matthias of Austria" with an unknown mother.


title: Matthias, Holy Roman Emperor

text: The court and administration were gradually moved from Prague to Vienna after 1612. The new emperor was less interested in art than Rudolf II and most court artists soon turned their backs on his court. Matthias maintained however a close relationship with the painter Lucas van Valckenborch. For the private crown of his brother Rudolf II, he had a sceptre and an orb made. The Emperor's wife founded the Capuchin Church and the Imperial Crypt in Vienna as the future burial site of the Habsburg family. Matthias had allegedly found a spring in the area of today's Schönbrunn Palace. It is said that it became the eponymous name of the area and the palace from his remark: ""Look, what a beautiful spring"" (beautiful=schön, spring=Brunn[en]).


title: Matthias, Holy Roman Emperor

text: After Matthias's imperial accession, his kingship was dominated by Klesl, who hoped to bring about a compromise between Catholic and Protestant states within the Holy Roman Empire in order to strengthen it. Matthias had already been forced to grant religious concessions to Protestants in Austria and Moravia, as well as in Hungary, when he had allied with them against Rudolf. Matthias imprisoned Georg Keglević who was the Commander-in-chief, General, Vice-Ban of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia and since 1602 Baron in Transylvania, but soon left him free again. At that time the Principality of Transylvania was a fully autonomous area of Hungary, but under the nominal suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire, where it was the time of the Sultanate of Women.


title: Matthias, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Matthias's conciliatory policies were opposed by the more intransigent Catholic Habsburgs, particularly Matthias's brother Archduke Maximilian, who hoped to secure the succession for the inflexible Catholic Archduke Ferdinand (later Emperor Ferdinand II). The Protestant Bohemians, concerned about their religious freedom, fiercely opposed all Catholic officials, appointed by Matthias and the Habsburg Archduke (elected King of Bohemia in June 1617) in particular. The dispute came to a head in the Bohemian Protestant revolt. This provoked Maximilian to imprison Klesl and revise his policies. However, old and ailing, he was unable to prevent a takeover by Maximilian's faction. He died of natural causes at age 62 on 20 March 1619, and Ferdinand, who had already been crowned King of Bohemia (1617) and of Hungary (1618), succeeded Matthias as Holy Roman Emperor.


title: Matthias, Holy Roman Emperor

text: As the Imperial Crypt at Vienna was not yet completed, Anna († in 1618) and Matthias († in 1619) were temporarily buried in St. Maria's Queen's Monastery. Not until 1633 were they transferred to the Imperial Crypt at the Capuchin Church. Emperor Matthias is one of the 41 people who received a "separate burial", as their bodies are distributed among all three traditional Viennese burial sites of the Habsburgs (Imperial Crypt, Herzgruft, Ducal Crypt).


title: Matthias, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Matthias, by the grace of God elected Holy Roman Emperor, forever August, King in Germany, of Hungary, Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Rama, Serbia, Galicia, Lodomeria, Cumania and Bulgaria, Archduke of Austria, Duke of Burgundy, Brabant, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, Luxemburg, Württemberg, the Upper and Lower Silesia, Prince of Swabia, Margrave of the Holy Roman Empire, Burgau, Moravia, the Upper and Lower Lusatia, Princely Count of Habsburg, Tyrol, Ferrette, Kyburg, Gorizia, Landgrave of Alsace, Lord of the Wendish March, Pordenone and Salins, etc. etc.


title: Memphis Group

text: The Memphis Group, also known as Memphis Milano, was an Italian design and architecture group founded by Ettore Sottsass. It was active from 1980 to 1987. The group designed postmodern furniture, lighting, fabrics, carpets, ceramics, glass and metal objects.


title: Memphis Group

text: The Memphis group's work often incorporated plastic laminate and terrazzo materials and was characterized by ephemeral design featuring colorful and abstract decoration as well as asymmetrical shapes, sometimes arbitrarily alluding to exotic or earlier styles and designs.


title: Memphis Group

text: Memphis was born on the evening of December 11, 1980, when Sottsass invited a group of young designers and architects to discuss the future of design. Together, they wanted to change the concept of what design had been focused on, which had been Modernism and aimed to do so by creating and forming a new design collective. After their initial meeting, the group went away to brainstorm different ideas and concepts, and three months later, came back together ready to share over a hundred drawings they had produced during that time.


title: Memphis Group

text: The inspiration behind naming themselves "Memphis" came about during their first meeting when Bob Dylan's record "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" had been playing repeatedly in the background. For Sottsass, the name "Memphis" represented two things: a city in Tennessee, and ancient Egypt's capital city. The group of designers then went ahead and used the ambiguity behind the name "Memphis" to represent and symbolise their ambiguous design philosophies of furniture, objects and textiles. In Sottsass' case specifically, he showed great interest in the middle-class taste, the traditions of the Third World and the East, and unspoiled nature.


title: Memphis Group

text: The group disbanded in 1987 because its members found it difficult to sustain their commercial success after the hype of their new movement had faded.


title: Memphis Group

text: Memphis' colorful furniture has been described as "bizarre", "misunderstood", "loathed", and "a shotgun wedding between Bauhaus and Fisher-Price".


title: Memphis Group

text: During their active years, the group designed a series of non-conformist furniture. One of their most popular and well-known designs is the ""Carlton" Room Divider", a totemic pole incorporating a variety of bright colours, solid shapes and voids. The structure itself is constructed using cheap plastic laminates, though designed to be sold by a luxury market, and incorporates a series of equilateral triangles, both real and implied.


title: Memphis Group

text: The 1980 design of furniture, architecture, household items, and clothes was heavily influenced by Memphis Design. Surfing, skateboarding, skiing and BMX companies were quick to adopt the aesthetic into their designs.


title: Memphis Group

text: Television shows such as Miami Vice showcased many architectural examples. Nickelodeon used the style as the basis for their "Double Dare" set design.


title: Memphis Group

text: Memphis designs served as inspiration for the Fall/Winter 2011–2012 Christian Dior haute couture collection fashion show, for the Winter 2015 Missoni collection,


title: Memphis Group

text: Notable Memphis design collectors included fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld and musician David Bowie. After Bowie's death in 2016, his collection was auctioned off at Sotheby's for a total of £1,387,000.


title: Memphis Group

text: A "flat, geometric, figurative" illustration style "usually made up of solid colours", popular in the late 2010s, particularly with startups, was dubbed "Corporate Memphis" by "Wired Magazine" for its resemblance to Memphis designs.


title: Memphis Group

text: Being the founder of the group, Ettore Sottsass became the leader of the Memphis Group and is now one of the most well known Italian post-War designers.


title: Memphis Group

text: Martine Bedin, a French designer, was also a member of Memphis. She first joined the group when she was in her twenties and was deemed in charge of over-looking all Memphis lighting that was produced. Her father had been an engineer and she was also continuously 'playing with forbidden things', all of which contributed to her designated position. During her time in Memphis, Bedin designed and thought of numerous ideas. Her design of the Super lamp placed on wheels, first designed in 1978, supposedly represented, along with a group of other objects, 'friend-like' items. Bedin's lamp was later produced in an artisanal workshop, where all Memphis products were manufactured, and her first prototype is now featured in the Victoria & Albert Museum, in London, England.


title: Memphis Group

text: Peter Shire, a sculptor, designer and potter originally from California, was another figure who formed the Memphis Group. He was first discovered thanks to "Wet: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing," a lifestyle publication on the west coast that Sottsass' partner on occasion would contribute to. In one article featuring Shire's teapots in 1977, he quoted "I'm not much of a tea-drinker [...] Actually my first impulse is to put Coke in teapots. I'm a big Coke drinker and I'd love to see Coke flowing out of the teapots and foaming on the ground." His unique approach and attitude later secured him a spot as a member of Memphis.


title: Memphis Group

text: After Memphis' disbandment in 1987, members went their separate ways. Some like Nathalie Du Pasquier, a French-born ex-member of the group, have collaborated with brands and companies in recent years. In 2013, she and the Danish company HAY collaborated where she designed and created Memphis-esque patterned bags. She later on also collaborated with American Apparel, a Canadian-founded fashion company that moved to California, where she designed one of their collections.


title: Memphis Group

text: The designs of the Memphis Group have acted as an inspiration to many other fashion companies, like Dior and Missoni, who both were inspired to design fashion collections based on Memphis' original work.


title: Wagons East

text: Wagons East (sometimes stylised as Wagons East!) is a 1994 American Western adventure buddy comedy film directed by Peter Markle and starring John Candy and Richard Lewis. The film was released in the United States on August 26, 1994. Filming took place in Sierra de Órganos National Park in the town of Sombrerete, Mexico, and in Durango, Mexico.


title: Wagons East

text: During the final days of the film's production in Durango, Mexico, John Candy died of a heart attack at the age of 43. Script re-writes, a stand-in and special effects were used to complete his remaining scenes, and it was released five months after his death. The film marked Candy's penultimate performance.


title: Wagons East

text: As well as being one of John Candy's final performances, this is also the last Carolco Pictures production to be distributed by


title: Wagons East

text: TriStar Pictures. The film was panned by critics with the rare 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The film grossed $4.4 million at the box office.


title: Wagons East

text: In the 1860s Wild West, a group of misfit settlers, including ex-doctor Phil Taylor, prostitute Belle, and gay bookseller Julian Rogers, decide they cannot live in their current situation in the west, so they hire a grizzled alcoholic wagon master by the name of James Harlow to take them on a journey back to their hometowns in the East.


title: Wagons East

text: Comedic exploits ensue as the drunken wagon master lets his horse choose the correct fork in the road, leads them to a dried out watering hole, and eventually guides them into Sioux territory where they are captured. The Chief, however, is sympathetic to the idea of 'white men heading back east', and offers an escort off Sioux land. Meanwhile, they must also contend with (inept) hired gunslingers who have been sent by railroad magnates to stop the journey, as they fear the bad publicity it could create for the settlers about to commence a 'land rush' into the west.


title: Wagons East

text: Harlow's secret, that he had been wagon master for the infamous Donner Party, eventually comes out, and the group confront Harlow about his past; he chooses to walk away from the group and they proceed on their own. As he resumes his drinking at the closest tavern, he overhears that the cavalry will be confronting the group the following day, and intends to wipe them out, as directed by the head of the railroad company.


title: Wagons East

text: As the cavalry arrives the next day, and the group 'square their wagons', Harlow rides in to the rescue and 'calls out' the cavalry leader to single combat. After a drawn out and comical fight scene, Harlow is victorious, and the group celebrates. Harlow and Belle decide to pursue a relationship, Julian departs for somewhere 'even further west' (San Francisco) and the group rides toward the now visible St. Louis to finish the journey.


title: Wagons East

text: Candy was contractually mandated to make this film due to his existing contract with Carolco Pictures from their scrapped John Hughes film "Bartholomew v. Neff," which Candy was to star in with Sylvester Stallone. Despite his misgivings about the script, and due to the fact that he owed more than $1 million due to his stake as a minority owner with the Toronto Argonauts football team, Candy agreed to make "Wagons East" in Durango, Mexico.


title: Wagons East

text: On March 4, 1994, Candy died of a heart attack in his sleep after finishing the day’s shooting. Following Candy's death, Carolco received an insurance payout of $15.3 million. The film was completed by using CGI, a body double and script rewrites to finish Candy’s remaining scenes.


title: Wagons East

text: The film was released five months after Candy's death and was a box-office bomb. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, with 30 reviews, the film has a rare approval rating of 0%meaning no favorable reviews whatsoeverreceiving an average rating of 2.9/10. The site's consensus describes the film as "a witless, toothless satire of Westerns that falls far below the standard set by "Blazing Saddles", and is notable only for being John Candy's final screen performance."


title: Wagons East

text: Film critic Roger Ebert, who called the film "a sad way to end John Candy's career", stated that his legacy was already permanent and would survive this film. In the book "The Comedy Film Nerds Guide to Movies", "Wagons East!" is listed at number one on its list of "The Ten Worst Westerns".


title: Muscat International Airport

text: Muscat International Airport , formerly Seeb International Airport, is the main international airport in Oman and is located in Seeb, 32 km from the old city and capital Muscat within the Muscat metropolitan area. The airport serves as the hub for flag carrier Oman Air and Oman's first budget airline Salam Air, and features flights to several regional destinations as well as some intercontinental services to Asia, Africa and Europe.


title: Muscat International Airport

text: The airport opened as Seeb International Airport in 1973, replacing a smaller airfield located in Bayt al Falaj.


title: Muscat International Airport

text: It has hosted Royal Air Force BAe Nimrods in the past, including for the 1991 Gulf War. These aircraft cooperated with the Royal Navy of Oman in the 'Magic Roundabout' exercise series. The base was used by a detachment of Vickers VC10 tankers from No. 101 Squadron RAF during the Gulf War training with Royal Air Force SEPECAT Jaguars.


title: Muscat International Airport

text: On 1 February 2008, the airport's name was changed from Seeb International Airport to Muscat International Airport.


title: Muscat International Airport

text: The entire airport is spread over an area of 5,250 acres (21 km). It originally featured one passenger terminal building, one runway as well as minor cargo and maintenance facilities. Part of the airport complex extension featured housing for airport employees and Oman Air employees.


title: Muscat International Airport

text: During the expansion, a new terminal and control tower was built along with a new runway. The current terminal is the biggest airport in Oman, construction was started in 2007 and opened in 2018. The new facilities also include a VIP terminal for private jets and an onsite airport hotel.


title: Muscat International Airport

text: The Royal Flight of Oman and Royal Air Force of Oman are based at the airport and the RAFO also shares its facilities with the airport. A Royal Terminal and Royal Flight hangars are located adjacent to the old terminal.


title: Muscat International Airport

text: Since 2019 the Aaronia AARTOS C-UAS drone detection system is installed which makes it the first international airport in the world to have an operational drone detection system.


title: Muscat International Airport

text: The airport's newer and significantly larger terminal located north of the existing terminal and first runway, opened in 2018. This new building initially brought the airport's capacity up to 20 million passengers a year upon completion of the first phase. Subsequent enlargements under second and third phases will increase the airport capacity to 24 and 48 million annual passengers respectively. The terminal covers 580,000 sqm and features 118 check-in counters, 10 baggage reclaim belts, 82 immigration counters, 45 gates and a new, 97-meter control tower. The new terminal is located between the old and new runways and is capable of handling large aircraft such as Airbus A380s and Boeing 747s. The terminal opened on 18 March 2018, with the first flight, an Oman Air flight from Najaf, arriving at 6:30 p.m.


title: Muscat International Airport

text: Terminal 2 is a single-building, two-story, T-shaped passenger terminal. It opened in the 1970s as a replacement of the Bait al-Falaj airport and has been expanded several times during the last years to cater for growing passenger numbers. This terminal featured 58 check-in counters, 23 departure gates, 4 baggage reclaim belts and several service counters and shops. During its years of operation, passengers and crew were transported to and from the aircraft using shuttle buses as the terminal lacks jet bridges.


title: Muscat International Airport

text: The last international flight to depart from the old terminal was an Oman Air flight to Zurich, Switzerland, while another Oman Air flight bound for Salalah became the last domestic flight. The old facility was planned to be redeveloped into a low-cost carrier terminal, but was instead turned into a field hospital and COVID-19 vaccination site ever since the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus.


title: Muscat International Airport

text: The airport has two runways. The original runway, designated as Runway 08R/26L, is capable of handling the Boeing 747-400 and 777. The second runway, located to the north of the new terminal building, numbered 08L/26R, opened on December 14, 2014, and can handle larger airplanes such as the Boeing 747-8, Airbus A380, and the Antonov An-225. The original runway between the new facilities and the old passenger terminal closed in 2015 for refurbishment and expansion as part of the construction of the entirely new main terminal building and apron area.


title: Muscat International Airport

text: The old terminal's apron features 32 stands on both sides of the T-shaped passenger terminal building with 30 new ones constructed in two phases in front of the new terminal building of which several are already in use as of September 2016.


title: Muscat International Airport

text: Oman National Transport Company (Mwasalat) operates 24-hour service special airport buses at fixed intervals. The Route A1 operates between Mabela and Ruwi bus station with a stop at Muscat Airport. Bus Route 8 (Al Mouj-Al Khuwair) also has a stop at Muscat Airport. Metered-airport taxis are available with special counters at the baggage and arrival halls. Car hire and chauffeur services are also available.


title: Crown Royal

text: Crown Royal, also known as Seagram's Crown Royal, is a blended Canadian whisky brand created by Seagram and owned by Diageo since 2000. Production of Crown Royal is done at Gimli, Manitoba, while the blending and bottling of the whisky are done in a facility in Amherstburg, Ontario.


title: Crown Royal

text: The whisky was introduced in 1939 by Samuel Bronfman for the 1939 royal tour of Canada. The whisky was sold exclusively in Canada until the 1960s, when it was first introduced to international markets. It is the top-selling brand of Canadian whisky in the United States.


title: Crown Royal

text: Crown Royal was introduced in 1939 by Samuel Bronfman, president of Seagram, as a tribute to the 1939 royal tour of Canada by King George VI and his wife, Queen Elizabeth, the first of a reigning monarch to Canada. It was available only in Canada until 1964, being introduced to the United States in the 1960s.


title: Crown Royal

text: Crown Royal is produced solely at the company's distillery at Gimli, on the shores of Lake Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The production of Crown Royal uses 10,000 bushels of rye, maize and barley daily, which is sourced from Manitoba and surrounding provinces, and requires of water naturally filtered through the limestone beneath the lake.


title: Crown Royal

text: Crown Royal offerings have generally performed well at international spirit ratings competitions. For example, the basic Canadian whisky was awarded a string of five gold medals at the San Francisco World Spirits Competitions between 2005 and 2012.


title: Crown Royal

text: The Special Reserve received an editors choice gold award from "Whisky Magazine" and received ratings from 7¾ to 8¾ from three of the critics.


title: Crown Royal

text: Jim Murray's "Whisky Bible" named Crown Royal's Northern Harvest Rye as the World Whisky of the Year for 2016.


title: Crown Royal

text: Crown Royal advertises in motor sports, horse shows, and horse racing. It sponsored the No. 17 Ford Fusion of Matt Kenseth from 2010 to 2011, the No. 26 Ford Fusion of Jamie McMurray from 2006 to 2009, and has sponsored NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races since 2006. From 2004 until 2006, Crown Royal was the title sponsor of the International Race of Champions.