title: Sesame Workshop

text: CTW's summative research was done by the Workshop's first research director, Edward L. Palmer, whom they met at the curriculum seminars Lesser conducted in Boston in the summer of 1967. In the summer of 1968, Palmer began to create educational goals, define the Workshop's research activities, and hire his research team. Lesser and Palmer were the only scientists in the U.S. studying the interaction of children and television at the time. They were responsible for developing a system of planning, production, and evaluation, and the interaction between television producers and educators, later called the "CTW model". Cooney observed of the CTW model: "From the beginning, we—the planners of the project—designed the show as an experimental research project with educational advisers, researchers, and television producers collaborating as equal partners". She described the collaboration as an "arranged marriage".


title: Sesame Workshop

text: The CTW devoted 8% of its initial budget to outreach and publicity. In what television historian Robert W. Morrow called "an extensive campaign" that Lesser stated "would demand at least as much ingenuity as production and research", the Workshop promoted the show with educators, the broadcast industry, and the show's target audience, which consisted of inner-city children and their families. They hired Evelyn Payne Davis from the Urban League, whom Michael Davis called "remarkable, unsinkable, and indispensable", as the Workshop's first Vice President of Community Relations and manager of the Workshop's Community Educational Services (CES) division. Bob Hatch was hired to publicize their new series, both before its premiere and to take advantage of the media attention concerning "Sesame Street" during its first year of production.


title: Sesame Workshop

text: According to Davis, despite her involvement with the project's initial research and development, Cooney's installment as CTW's executive director was questionable due to her lack of executive experience, untested financial management skills, and lack of experience with children's television and education. Davis also speculated that sexism was involved, stating, "Doubters also questioned whether a woman could gain the full confidence of a quorum of men from the federal government and two elite philanthropies, institutions whose wealth exceeded the gross national product of entire countries". At first, Cooney did not fight for the position. However she had the help of her husband and Morrisett, and the project's investors soon realized they could not begin without her. She was eventually named to the post in February 1968. As one of the first female executives in American television, her appointment was termed "one of the most important television developments of the decade". The formation of the Children Television Workshop was announced at a press conference at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City on 20 May 1968.


title: Sesame Workshop

text: After her appointment, Cooney hired Bob Davidson as her assistant; he was responsible for making agreements with approximately 180 public television stations to broadcast the new series. She assembled a team of producers: Jon Stone was responsible for writing, casting, and format; David Connell assumed control of animation and volume production; and Samuel Gibbon served as the show's chief liaison between the production staff and the research team. Stone, Connell, and Gibbon had worked on another children's show, "Captain Kangaroo", together. Cooney later said about "Sesame Street"s original team of producers, "collectively, we were a genius". CTW's first children's show, "Sesame Street", premiered on 10 November 1969. The CTW was not incorporated until 1970 because its creators wanted to see if the series was a success before they hired lawyers and accountants. Morrisett served as the first chairperson of CTW's board of trustees, a job he had for 28 years.


title: Sesame Workshop

text: During the second season of "Sesame Street", to capitalize on the momentum the Workshop was enjoying and the attention it received from the press, the Workshop created its second series, "The Electric Company", in 1971. Morrisett used the same fund-acquisition techniques as he had used for "Sesame Street". "The Electric Company" stopped production in 1977, but continued in reruns until 1985; it eventually became one of the most widely used TV shows in American classrooms and was revived in 2009. Starting in the early 1970s, the Workshop ventured into adult programming, but found that it was difficult to make their programs accessible to all socio-economic groups. In 1971, it produced a medical program for adults termed "Feelin' Good", hosted by Dick Cavett, which was broadcast until 1974. According to writer Cary O'Dell, the show "lacked a clear direction and never found a large audience". In 1977, the Workshop broadcast an adult drama called "Best of Families", which was set in New York City around the turn of the 20th century. However, it lasted for only six or seven episodes and helped the Workshop decide to emphasize children's programs only.


title: Sesame Workshop

text: Throughout the 1970s, the CTW's main non-television efforts changed from promotion to the development of educational materials for preschool settings. Early efforts included mobile viewing units that broadcast the show in the inner cities, in Appalachia, in Native American communities, and in migrant worker camps. In the early 1980s, the CTW created the Preschool Education Program (PEP), whose goal was to assist preschools, by combining television viewing, books, hands-on activities, and other media, in using the series as an educational resource. The Workshop also provided materials to non-English speaking children and adults. Starting in 2006, the Workshop expanded its programs by creating a series of PBS specials and DVDs largely concerning how military deployment affects the families of soldiers. Other efforts by the Workshop concerned families of prisoners, health and wellness, and safety.


title: Sesame Workshop

text: According to Cooney and O'Dell, the 1980s were a problematic period for the Workshop. A series of poor investments in video games, motion picture production, theme parks, and other business ventures hurt the organization financially. Cooney brought in Bill Whaley during the late 1970s to work on their licensing agreements, but he was unable to compensate for the CTW's losses until 1986, when licensing revenues stabilized and its portfolio investments increased. Despite financial troubles, the Workshop continued to produce new shows throughout the decade. "3-2-1 Contact" premiered in 1980 and ran for seven seasons. The CTW found that finding funding for this series and other science-oriented series like "Square One Television", which was broadcast from 1987 to 1992, was easy because the National Science Foundation and other foundations were interested in funding science education.


title: Sesame Workshop

text: Cooney stepped down as chairman and chief executive officer of the CTW in 1990, when she was replaced by David Britt, who was her "chief lieutenant in the executive ranks through the mid-1990s" and whom Cooney termed her "right-hand for many years". Britt had worked for her at the CTW since 1975 and had served as its president and chief operating officer since 1988. At that time, Cooney became chairman of the Workshop's executive board, which managed its businesses and licensing, and became more involved with the organization's creative efforts. The Workshop had a reorganization in 1995, and dismissed about 12 percent of its staff. In 1998, for the first time in the series' history, they accepted funds from corporations for "Sesame Street" and its other programs, a policy criticized by consumer advocate Ralph Nader. The Workshop defended the acceptance of corporate sponsorship, stating that it compensated for a decrease of government subsidies. Also in 1998, the Workshop invested $25 million in the cable channel Noggin, initiated in 1999 by the Workshop and Nickelodeon. In 2000, the profit the CTW earned from the deal, along with its 1998 revenue caused partly by the "Tickle Me Elmo" craze, enabled the CTW to purchase The Jim Henson Company's rights to the "Sesame Street" Muppets from the German media company EM.TV, which had acquired Henson earlier that year. The transaction, valued at $180 million, also included a small interest Henson had in the Noggin cable channel. Gary Knell stated, "Everyone, most especially the puppeteers, were thrilled that we were able to bring them home. It protected "Sesame Street" and allowed our international expansion to continue. Owning these characters has allowed us to maximize their potential. We are now in control of our own destiny".


title: Sesame Workshop

text: The CTW changed its name to Sesame Workshop in June 2000, to better represent its non-television activities and interactive media. Also in 2000, Gary Knell succeeded Britt as president and CEO of the Workshop; according to Davis, he "presided over an especially fertile period in the nonprofit's history". Knell was instrumental in the creation of the cable channel Universal Kids (formerly Sprout TV network) in 2005. Sprout (launched as PBS Kids Sprout) was founded as a partnership between the Workshop, Comcast, PBS, and HIT Entertainment, all of whom contributed programming to the new network. After seven years as a partner, the Workshop divested its stake in Sprout to NBCUniversal in December 2012.


title: Sesame Workshop

text: In 2007, the Sesame Workshop founded The Joan Ganz Cooney Center, an independent, non-profit organization that studies how to improve children's literacy by using and developing digital technologies "grounded in detailed educational curriculum", just as was done during the development of "Sesame Street".


title: Sesame Workshop

text: The 2008–2009 recession, which resulted in budget reductions for many nonprofit arts organizations, severely affected the organization; in 2009, it had to dismiss 20% of its staff. Despite earning about $100 million from licensing revenue, royalties, and foundation and government funding in 2012, the Workshop's total revenue was down 15% and its operating loss doubled to $24.3 million. In 2013, it responded by dismissing 10% of its staff, saying that it was necessary to "strategically focus" their resources because of "today's rapidly changing digital environment". In 2011, Knell left Sesame Workshop to become the chief executive of National Public Radio (NPR). H. Melvin Ming, who had been the organization's chief financial officer since 1999 and chief operating officer since 2002, was named as his replacement. In 2014, H. Melvin Ming retired and was succeeded by former HIT Entertainment and Nickelodeon executive Jeffery D. Dunn. Dunn's appointment was the first time someone not affiliated with CTW or Sesame Workshop became its manager, although he had associations with the organization previously. In 2021, Dunn retired and was replaced by Sherrie Rollins Westin, who had served as president of SW's Social Impact and Philanthropy Division for six years.


title: Sesame Workshop

text: In 2019, "The Hollywood Reporter" reported that Sesame Workshop's operating income was approximately $1.6 million, after the majority of its funds earned from grants, licensing deals, and royalties went back into its content, its total operating costs were over $100 million per year. Operating costs included salaries, $6 million in rent for its Lincoln Center corporate offices, its production facilities in Queens, and the costs of producing content for its YouTube channels and other outlets. The organization employed about 400 people, including "several highly skilled puppeteers". Royalties and distribution fees, which accounted for $52.9 million in 2018, made up the Workshop's biggest revenue source. Donations brought in $47.8 million, or 31 percent of its income. Licensing revenue from games, toys, and clothing earned the organization $4.5 million.


title: Sesame Workshop

text: After "Sesame Street"s initial success, the CTW began to think about its survival beyond the development and first season of the show, since its funding sources were composed of organizations and institutions that tended to start projects, not sustain them. Although the organization was what Cooney termed "the darling of the federal government for a brief period of two or three years", its first ten years of existence was marked by conflicts between the two; in 1978, the US Department of Education refused to deliver a $2 million check until the last day of the CTW's fiscal year. According to Davis, the federal government was opposed to funding public television, but the Workshop used Cooney's prestige and fame, and the fact that there would be "great public outcry" if the series was de-funded, to withstand the government's attacks on PBS. Eventually, the CTW got its own line item in the federal budget. By 2019, the U.S. government donated about four percent of the Workshop's budget, or less than $5 million a year.


title: Sesame Workshop

text: For the first time, a public broadcasting series had the potential to earn a great deal of money. Immediately after its premiere, "Sesame Street "gained attention from marketers, so the Workshop explored sources such as licensing arrangements, publishing, and international sales, and became, as Cooney envisioned, a "multiple media institution". Licensing became the foundation of, as writer Louise Gikow stated, the Sesame Workshop endowment, which had the potential to fund the organization and future productions and projects. Muppet creator Jim Henson owned the trademarks to the Muppet characters: he was reluctant to market them at first, but agreed when the CTW promised that the profits from toys, books, and other products were to be used exclusively to fund the CTW. The producers demanded complete control of all products and product decisions throughout its history; any product line associated with the series had to be educational, inexpensive, and not advertised during broadcastings of "Sesame Street". As Davis reported, "Cooney stressed restraint, prudence, and caution" in their marketing and licensing efforts. In the early 1970s, the CTW negotiated with Random House to establish and manage a non-broadcast materials division. Random House and the CTW named Christopher Cerf to assist the CTW in publishing books and other materials that emphasized the series' curriculum. By 2019, the Sesame Workshop had over 500 licensing agreements, and its total revenue in 2018 was $35 million. A million children play with "Sesame Street"-themed toys per day.


title: Sesame Workshop

text: Soon after the premiere of "Sesame Street", producers, educators, and officials of other nations began requesting that a version of the series be broadcast in their countries. CBS executive Michael Dann was required to quit his job at that network due to a change of corporate policy preceding the so-called "rural purge"; upon his ouster, he became vice-president of the CTW and Cooney's assistant. Dann then began developing foreign versions of "Sesame Street" by arranging what were eventually termed co-productions, or independent programs with their own sets, characters, and curriculum goals. By 2009, "Sesame Street" had expanded into 140 countries; "The New York Times" reported in 2005 that income from the CTW's international co-productions of the series was $96 million. By 2008, the "Sesame Street" Muppets accounted for between $15 million and $17 million per year in licensing and merchandising fees, divided between the Workshop and Henson Associates. The Workshop began pursuing funding from corporate sponsors in 1998; consumer advocate Ralph Nader urged parents to protest the move by boycotting the show. In 2018, the Workshop made a deal with Apple to develop original content, including live-action, puppet, and animated series, for Apple's streaming service. In 2019, "Parade Magazine" reported that the organization had received two $100 million grants from the MacArthur Foundation and from the LEGO Foundation; the funds were used to undertake "the largest early childhood intervention in the history of humanitarian response to help refugee children and families".


title: Sesame Workshop

text: In 1970, the CTW established a department managing the development of "nonbroadcast" materials based upon "Sesame Street". The Workshop decided that all materials its licensing program created would "underscore and amplify" the series' curriculum. Coloring books, for example, were prohibited because the Workshop felt they would restrict children's imaginations. The CTW published "Sesame Street Magazine" in 1970, which incorporated the show's curriculum goals in a magazine format. As with the series, research was performed for the magazine, initially by CTW's research department for a year and a half, and then by the Magazine Research Group in 1975.


title: Sesame Workshop

text: Working with Random House editor Jason Epstein, the CTW hired Christopher Cerf to manage "Sesame Street"s book publishing program. During the division's first year, Cerf earned $900,000 for the CTW. He quit to become more involved with writing and composing music for the series, and was replaced eventually by Bill Whaley. Ann Kearns, vice president of licensing for the CTW in 2000, stated that Whaley was responsible for expanding the licensing to other products, and for creating a licensing model used by other children's series. As of 2019, the Workshop had published over 6,500 book titles. and as researcher Renee Cherow-O'Leary stated in 2001, "the print materials produced by CTW have been an enduring part of the legacy of Sesame Street". In one of these books, for example, the death of the "Sesame Street" character Mr. Hooper was featured in a book entitled "I'll Miss You, Mr. Hooper", published soon after the series featured it in 1983. In 2019, "Parade Magazine" reported that 20 million copies of "" and "Another Monster at the End of this Book" had been sold, making them the top two best-selling e-books sold. Its YouTube channel had almost 5 million subscribers.


title: Sesame Workshop

text: According to director Jon Stone, the music of "Sesame Street" was unlike any other children's program on television. For the first time, the show's songs fulfilled a specific purpose and was related to its curriculum. Cooney observed in her initial report that children had an "affinity for commercial jingles", so many of the show's songs were like television advertisements.


title: Sesame Workshop

text: To attract the best composers and lyricists, and to encourage them to compose more music for the series, the CTW allowed songwriters to retain the rights to the songs they wrote. For the first time in children's television, the writers earned lucrative profits, which as Davis reported, "helped the show sustain the level of public interest in the show". Scriptwriters often wrote their own lyrics to accompany their scripts. Songwriters of note were Joe Raposo, Jeff Moss, Christopher Cerf, Tony Geiss, and Norman Stiles. Many of the songs written for "Sesame Street" have become what writer David Borgenicht termed "timeless classics". These songs included "Can You Tell Me How to Get to Sesame Street?", "I Love Trash", "Rubber Duckie", "Bein' Green", and "Sing". Many "Sesame Street" songs were recorded by well-known artists such as Barbra Streisand, Lena Horne, Dizzy Gillespie, Paul Simon, and Jose Feliciano. By 2019, there were 180 albums of "Sesame Street" music produced.


title: Sesame Workshop

text: The show's first album, "Sesame Street Book & Record", recorded in 1970, was a major success and won a Grammy Award. "Parade Magazine" reported in 2019 that the show's music had been honored with 11 children's Grammys. According to Gikow, Raposo won three Emmys and four Grammys for his work for the series.


title: Sesame Workshop

text: Soon after "Sesame Street" debuted in the US, the CTW was asked independently by producers from several countries to produce versions of the series in their countries. Cooney remarked, "To be frank, I was really surprised, because we thought we were creating the quintessential American show. We thought the Muppets were quintessentially American, and it turns out they're the most international characters ever created". She hired former CBS executive Mike Dann, who quit commercial television to become her assistant, as a CTW vice-president. One of Dann's tasks was to manage offers to produce versions of "Sesame Street" in other countries. In response to Dann's appointment, television critic Marvin Kitman said, "After [Dann] sells ["Sesame Street"] in Russia and Czechoslovakia, he might try Mississippi, where it is considered too controversial for educational TV". This was a reference to the May 1970 decision by the state's PBS station to not air the series. By summer 1970, Dann had made the first international agreements for what the CTW came to term "co-productions".


title: Sesame Workshop

text: The earliest international versions were what CTW vice-president Charlotte Cole and her colleagues termed "fairly simple", consisting of dubbed versions of the series with local language voice-overs and instructional cutaways. Dubbed versions of the series continued to be produced if the country's needs and resources warranted it. Eventually, a variant of the CTW model was used to create and produce independently produced preschool television series in other countries. By 2006, there were twenty co-productions. In 2001, there were more than 120 million viewers of all international versions of "Sesame Street", and by the show's 50th anniversary in 2019, 190 million children viewed over 160 versions of "Sesame Street" in 70 languages. In 2005, Doreen Carvajal of "The New York Times" reported that income from the co-productions and international licensing accounted for $96 million. As Cole and her colleagues reported in 2000, "Children's Television Workshop (CTW) can be regarded as the single largest informal educator of young children in the world".


title: Sesame Workshop

text: Ten years after the premiere of "Sesame Street", the CTW began experimenting with new technologies. In 1979, it began to plan the development of a theme park, Sesame Place, which opened in 1980 in Langhorne, Pennsylvania. Three international parks, "Parque Plaza Sesamo" in Monterrey, Mexico since 1995, Universal Studios Japan, and "Vila Sesamo" Kids' Land in Brazil were later built. One of the park's features was a computer gallery, which was developed by a small in-house team and included 55 computer programs. The team evolved into the Children's Computer Workshop (CCW) in 1982, which was disbanded and became the Interactive Technologies division of the CTW in the late 1980s. As "Sesame Street" researcher Shalom M. Fisch stated, no television series could be as interactive as computer games, even "participatory" shows like "Blue's Clues" or the "Sesame Street" segment "Elmo's World". The CTW has chosen to take advantage of the contingent feedback inherent in interactive computer games by developing and creating educational software based upon the television series' content and curriculum.


title: Sesame Workshop

text: In 2008, the Sesame Workshop began to offer clips and full-length episodes on the websites Hulu, YouTube, and iTunes, where "Word on the Street" segments became the most popular webcast. Sesame Workshop won a Peabody Award in 2009 for its website, sesamestreet.org. In 2010, the Workshop began offering, for a subscription fee, a library of over 100 eBooks. The on-line publishing platform was managed by the electronic publishing company Impelsys.


title: Spire of Dublin

text: The Spire of Dublin, alternatively titled the Monument of Light (), is a large, stainless steel, pin-like monument in height, located on the site of the former Nelson's Pillar (and prior to that a statue of William Blakeney) on O'Connell Street, the main thoroughfare of Dublin, Ireland.


title: Spire of Dublin

text: Following the bombing of Nelson's Pillar by former IRA members in 1966, and subsequent controlled demolition six days later of what was left, the site remained vacant for years as no decision could be reached on a suitable replacement. Eventually, the "Anna Livia" monument was installed on the site to celebrate the 1988 Dublin Millennium celebrations.


title: Spire of Dublin

text: In 1998, as part of a planned multi-million euro re-development of O'Connell Street (as well as a memorial to the upcoming millennium and the aspirations of Ireland in the midst of its Celtic Tiger economic boom), a competition was launched to find a replacement for Nelson's Pillar. O'Connell Street had been in decline for a number of years due to the proliferation of fast-food restaurants, the opening of bargain shops using cheap plastic shop fronts, and proliferation of derelict sites along both sides of the road. The re-development plan, which was aimed for completion by 2004, hoped to move the street "away from the image of fast-food restaurants, to a family place to go". As part of the project to improve the overall streetscape, a new granite plaza was promised and the number of trees in the central reservation, which had over-grown and obscured views and monuments, was reduced dramatically. This was controversial, as the trees had been growing for a century. Statues were cleaned and in some cases relocated. Shop-owners were required to replace plastic signage and frontage with more attractive designs. Traffic was re-directed where possible away from the street and the number of traffic lanes was reduced to make it more appealing to pedestrians. The centrepiece of this regeneration was to be the replacement monument for Nelson's Pillar.


title: Spire of Dublin

text: The Spire, or "Spire of Light", was chosen from a large number of submissions in an international competition by a committee chaired by the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Joe Doyle. Following an appeal by an objector, the plans were taken to the High Court, meaning that the monument was not ready for the Millennium celebrations in the year 2000. On 28 December 2000, after an Environmental Impact Study (EIS) had been carried out, Environment Minister Noel Dempsey announced that construction of the Monument of Light, or "The Spike", had been approved and that construction of the monument would take nineteen months to complete. The announcement constituted a defeat for An Taisce, Ireland's non-governmental organisation active in the areas of the environment and built heritage, which had called for the spire's height to be reduced. Dempsey noted that Dublin Corporation had previously failed to complete an EIS in its haste to complete the monument quickly.


title: Spire of Dublin

text: The spire was designed by Ian Ritchie of Ian Ritchie Architects, who sought an "Elegant and dynamic simplicity bridging art and technology". The contract was awarded to SIAC-Radley JV and it was manufactured by Radley Engineering of Dungarvan, County Waterford, and erected by SIAC Construction Ltd & GDW Engineering Ltd. The "Anna Livia" monument was eventually moved away to make room for the Spire in 2001.


title: Spire of Dublin

text: The first section was installed on 18 December 2002. Construction of the sculpture was delayed because of difficulty in obtaining planning permission and environmental regulations. The Spire consists of eight hollow stainless steel cone sections, the longest being , which were installed on 21 January 2003. It is an elongated cone of diameter at the base, narrowing to at the top. The total weight of the eight sections amounts to 133.15 tonnes. It features two tuned mass dampers inside the fifth section from the bottom, designed by engineers Arup, to counteract sway. The steel underwent shot peening to alter the quality of light reflected from it.


title: Spire of Dublin

text: The pattern around the base of the Spire is based on a core sample of rock formation taken from the ground where the spire stands and the DNA double helix. The pattern was applied by bead blasting the steel through rubber stencil masks whose patterns were created by water jet cutting based on core sample drawings supplied by the contractor. The design around the lower part of the Spire was created by the architects making a 3D pattern model combining the core sample and double helix and then digitally translated to a 2D image drawing supplied to the contractor and used by specialists for cutting the masking material.


title: Spire of Dublin

text: At dusk, the base of the monument is lit and the top is illuminated through 11,884 holes through which light-emitting diodes shine.


title: Spire of Dublin

text: Some opposition initially greeted the monument. Supporters compare it to other initially unpopular urban structures such as the Eiffel Tower, while detractors complain that the Spire has little architectural or cultural connection to the city. Complaints were also aired about the danger posed by the monument to low-flying aircraft, the absence of a Christian message and a lack of consideration of feng shui. It has inspired a number of nicknames, as is common with public art in Dublin, including the nail in the Pale, the stiletto in the ghetto, the pin in the bin, the stiffy by the Liffey, the spire in the mire, or the spike.


title: Critters (film)

text: Critters is a 1986 American science fiction comedy horror film directed by Stephen Herek in his directorial debut, and co-written with Domonic Muir. It stars Dee Wallace, M. Emmet Walsh, Billy "Green" Bush and Scott Grimes in his film debut. The plot follows a group of small, furry aliens with carnivorous behavior escaping from two shape-shifting bounty hunters, landing in a small countryside town to feast on its inhabitants.


title: Critters (film)

text: Although widely believed to have been inspired by the success of Joe Dante's 1984 film "Gremlins", Herek has refuted this in interviews, pointing out that the script was written by Muir long before "Gremlins" went into production and subsequently underwent rewrites to reduce the apparent similarities between the two films. The film grossed $13.6 million during its release in the United States, and spawned a "Critters" franchise consisting of three sequels and a web series titled "" released on Shudder. The fifth entry "Critters Attack!" serves as a reboot of the series.


title: Critters (film)

text: On an asteroid prison, a group of dangerous aliens known as Krites are set to be transported to another station. The Krites engineer an escape and hijack a ship, prompting the warden to hire two shape-changing bounty hunters to pursue them to Earth. Studying life on Earth via various satellite television transmissions, the first bounty hunter assumes the form of rock star Johnny Steele, while the second remains undecided, thus retaining his blank, featureless head.


title: Critters (film)

text: On a rural Kansas farm, the Brown family sits down to breakfast. Father Jay and mother Helen send teenage daughter April and younger son Brad off to school while waiting on mechanic Charlie McFadden. A former baseball pitcher, Charlie has become the town drunk and crackpot, with claims of alien abductions foretold by messages through his fillings.


title: Critters (film)

text: Playing with overly potent self-made fireworks and Charlie's slingshot, Brad takes the blame when Charlie accidentally shoots April and for Brad’s punishment he gets no dinner for the day. On the roof that evening, Brad mistakes the Critters' crashing spaceship for a meteorite; Jay and Brad investigate and interrupt the creatures consuming a cow. The creatures then kill and feed on a local police officer (later the second bounty hunter takes his form and the pair take his police car), and later besiege the farm and cut its electrical connection. While checking the circuit breaker, Jay is attacked by one of the Critters and, being severely wounded, just barely manages to escape.


title: Critters (film)

text: In the barn, April is about to have sex with her boyfriend Steve when he is killed by the one of the Critters; the creature itself is slain when it devours one of Brad's lit firecrackers. The remaining Critters sabotage the Browns' and Steve's cars, forcing the Browns to hole up inside the main house. Meanwhile, the two bounty hunters search the town for the Critters, causing a panic at the church and bowling alley, with the second hunter assuming the form of various townspeople, including Charlie. Brad escapes the farm to get help and runs into the bounty hunters, and upon learning of their true nature and intentions, he leads them to the Critters' location.


title: Critters (film)

text: The last surviving Critters kidnap April and return to their ship when the bounty hunters arrive, and attempt to flee. Charlie and Brad manage to rescue April, but Brad drops a large firecracker he intended to use to destroy the ship when the Critters discover their escape. Just as the Critters take off and destroy the farmhouse out of spite, Charlie throws a Molotov cocktail made from his whiskey bottle into the ship, causing a fire which detonates the cracker and kills the Critters. The bounty hunters leave in their ship after giving Brad a handheld device to contact them in case of future invasion, and also restore the house. Unbeknownst to them, Critter eggs can be seen in the barn inside a chicken's nest that seem to be ready to hatch.


title: Critters (film)

text: Herek began a friendship with Muir while working as assistant editors on "City Limits" (1985). When Herek was looking for his next project, Muir offered him his screenplay for "Critters". Herek loved Muir's script and felt it would be fun to make a film that was "a very smart homage to 50's B-movies." After working on the script, he successfully pitched it to Sho Films. Despite being set in Kansas, principal photography began in Valencia, California in July 1985 on a six-week shooting schedule.


title: Critters (film)

text: Special effects coordinator Chuck Stewart hired Joseph Lombardi as a consultant for the scene of the barn exploding, where they rigged second-floor ceiling with Primacord that carried an explosive charge inside it. The sequence of the Critter swallowing a cherry bomb was controlled by puppeteers who were positioned below in a hayloft to operate the stomach and eye movements. Crew member Dwight Roberts commented that it took some effort to coordinate the Critters’ bulging stomach and eyes as it kneeled over in the hay due to the number of people needed to articulate it.


title: Critters (film)

text: The role of Charlie was specifically written for Don Opper, a close friend of Muir and Herek. Opper, who was a writer with no real acting experience, took the role due to his friendship with the filmmakers.


title: Critters (film)

text: "Critters" was theatrically released on April 11, 1986 by New Line Cinema, opening across the United States to 633 theaters. It earned $1,618,800 in its opening weekend, and ultimately grossed $13,167,232 at the box office.


title: Critters (film)

text: On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 50% approval rating based on 50 reviews, with an average of 5.4/10. The site's consensus reads: "While "Critters" ekes out some fun from a game cast and screwball tone, the titular monsters fail to deliver the credible menace that makes a creature feature satisfying". Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" rated the film three out of four stars: "What makes "Critters" more than a ripoff are its humor and its sense of style. This is a movie made by people who must have had fun making it".


title: Critters (film)

text: Marylynn Uricchio, film critic for the "Pittsburgh Post-Gazette" described the film as an enjoyable, if unoriginal, low budget monster movie. Uricchio wrote: ""Critters" isn't a memorable or even very slick movie, but it is good fun. What it lacks in substance it makes up for with a perverse kind of charm". Caryn James of "The New York Times" complained that the movie lacked humor and suspense: ""Critters" just doesn't make the audience laugh or jump often enough".


title: Critters (film)

text: Alex Stewart reviewed "Critters" for "White Dwarf" #83, and stated that ""Critters" scuttled by quite pleasantly. Nothing really stands out, despite M. Emmet Walsh as the sweaty sheriff, and a scene wherein a couple of Heavy Metal bounty hunters blow away a baptist church, but the film actually thinks through how the Browns react, as a family, to the anti-social little aliens".


title: Critters (film)

text: The film was released on VHS and LaserDisc by RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video after its theatrical release. In September 1997, New Line Home Video re-released the film on VHS. New Line Home Entertainment released "Critters" on DVD in 2003, and was re-released in a set containing all four "Critters" films by Warner Bros. in 2010.


title: Critters (film)

text: Warner Bros. produced a reboot web series based on the "Critters" films. "" premiered on Shudder on March 21, 2019.


title: Jenilee Harrison

text: Jenilee A. Harrison (born June 12, 1958) is an American actress who appeared as Cindy Snow, a cousin of and replacement for blonde roommate Chrissy Snow on the hit sitcom "Three's Company", between 1980 and 1982. She went on to play Jamie Ewing Barnes in "Dallas" from 1984 to 1986.


title: Jenilee Harrison

text: Before breaking into show business, Harrison was a cheerleader from 1978–1980 for the Los Angeles Rams.


title: Jenilee Harrison

text: In the early 1980s, Harrison dated L.A. Rams guard Dennis Harrah and Major League Baseball player Reggie Jackson.


title: Jenilee Harrison

text: Harrison married Dr. Bruce Oppenheim, a prominent Los Angeles-area chiropractor, who is the ex-husband of actress Cybill Shepherd.


title: Infinity Blade

text: Infinity Blade is an action role-playing game developed by Chair Entertainment and Epic Games and released through the Apple App Store on December 9, 2010. It was the first iOS video game to run on the Unreal Engine. In the game, the unnamed player character fights a series of one-on-one battles in a derelict castle to face the immortal God King. When in battle, players swipe the screen to attack and parry, and tap the screen to dodge and block enemy attacks. Upon defeat, the player restarts the game as the character's descendant with the same items and experience level.


title: Infinity Blade

text: The game was developed by a team of twelve people, who took two months to make a playable demo and three more to finish the game. "Infinity Blade" was intended to demonstrate the new iOS version of the Unreal Engine, and to combine the swordplay of "Karateka" and "Prince of Persia" with the loneliness of "Shadow of the Colossus". The game received four free expansions that added new equipment, endings, and game modes.


title: Infinity Blade

text: "Infinity Blade" was the fastest-grossing app in the history of iOS upon its release. It made US$1.6 million in its first four days, and over US$23 million by the end of 2011. It was well received by gaming critics. Reviews praised the graphics and compared the mobile game favorably to console games. Critics also praised the swipe-based combat system, but split opinions on the cyclical gameplay as either addictive or repetitive. Chair later released an arcade port and two sequels: "Infinity Blade II" and "Infinity Blade III". Author Brandon Sanderson also wrote two novellas set between the games: "" and "".


title: Infinity Blade

text: The game, along with its two sequels, was removed from the App Store on December 10, 2018, due to difficulties in updating the game for newer hardware.


title: Infinity Blade

text: In the primary portion of "Infinity Blade", the player character travels a mostly linear path through a ruined castle and fights one-on-one battles with oversized enemies. The path through the castle is a series of discrete locations where the player can pan the camera around the stationary player character to view a fully three-dimensional area. The player taps locations highlighted onscreen to trigger either a short cutscene as the player character moves to the next location, or a sword battle with an enemy. During combat, the player controls the character's sword by swiping a finger across the screen. Players can touch icons at the bottom of the screen to dodge attacks by ducking right or left, or to block attacks with a shield, which has a limited number of uses during a single battle. Players may also parry incoming attacks with an intercepting sword move that, for example, parries an attack from the left with a swipe to the left. Each of these three counters can leave the enemy vulnerable to counterattack for a short period, but incorrect counters result in damage to the player character, as reflected in the health bar. When players fail in battle en route to the God King, the game resets to the location preceding the previous battle. Enemies can perform attacks that cannot be parried or blocked—such as a shield bash—that must be dodged. Players use two special abilities via icons atop the screen: the Super Attack temporarily stuns the opponent, and magic heals or attacks as indicated by drawing a given symbol. Both require time to recharge after use. When attacking, the player can swipe in any direction, and can do specific attack combinations to deal extra damage.


title: Infinity Blade

text: In addition to combat, there is also a mild role-playing component. An experience point system levels up the player character and their equipment (weapons, armor, shields, helms, and magic rings). Equipment pieces have special properties and a predetermined number of experience points required to master them. Mastering a piece of equipment increases its sale value but decreases the player's experience gain by 20%. Upon leveling up or mastering a piece of equipment, players gain attribute points that can be allotted towards four character attributes: health, attack, shield power, or magic. Each point can only be allocated once and is a permanent upgrade to the character. Players can purchase new equipment using in-game money from sacks and treasure chests found throughout the castle, defeated enemies, and sales of unused equipment. In-game money can be purchased with real money within the game.


title: Infinity Blade

text: The game follows a cyclical narrative structure in which the protagonist and his descendants individually explore a castle in a quest to battle the primary antagonist, the immortal God King. In the game's introduction, the non-playable protagonist has just finished this quest, but is slain by the God King. The player then assumes the role of the dead protagonist's descendant as he starts his journey at the beginning of the castle. This cycle, called a bloodline, continues after the player finally faces the God King and either dies or wins. The player may also choose to join the God King and terminate the cycle; upon doing so, the game resumes at the checkpoint before fighting the God King. Enemy difficulty increases with each bloodline cycle. Another bloodline ending is unlocked after purchasing the Infinity Blade item: the sword is placed into a pedestal in the castle's underground dungeons and three doors open. After then defeating each of the three "Deathless"—immortal beings like the God King—of increasing difficulty found within, a final fourth door opens, and the player faces a mechanized warrior guarding the high-tech chamber where the God King is reborn whenever he is killed. Upon defeating the mechanized warrior, the chamber is revealed to be controlled by an ancestor of the player character, who chose to serve the God King. After fighting the ancestor, the player character is told that the Infinity Blade can prevent immortals like the God King from resurrecting after death. The player is then given the option of either starting the next bloodline as they do when defeated, or resetting the game and starting New Game+ mode, which resets all gold and item progression but maintains the character's experience level, letting the player remaster the items and level up even further.


title: Infinity Blade

text: Chair Entertainment released four expansions as free updates to the game. The first, released December 20, 2010, added a new enemy, equipment, and microtransactions. It also removed an experience level cap. The second update, titled "Infinity Blade: The Deathless Kings", was released on March 2, 2011, and added the dungeons as a second branch to the game's path. This expansion also added new equipment, enemies, and the second ending where the player character defeats his ancestor. The third update, "Infinity Blade: Arena", was released on May 19, 2011. It added the player vs. player "Arena Mode", a tiered combat game progression where one player fights as the hero and the other as an enemy from the game. The update also included new equipment and a single-player version of Arena Mode called "Survival Mode". On October 4, 2011, a fourth update added a new enemy and new equipment to coincide with the announcement of the forthcoming sequel "Infinity Blade II".


title: Infinity Blade

text: "Infinity Blade" was created by Chair Entertainment, a subsidiary company of Epic Games. In July 2010, Chair had both recently finished the Xbox Live Arcade game "Shadow Complex" and been acquired by Epic. Chair was brainstorming Kinect and Wii games, including an idea similar to "Infinity Blade", and Epic was nearing completion of an iOS version of the Unreal Engine 3 graphics engine and in need of a "killer game" to show it off. Epic had previously licensed the engine for use in numerous console and personal computer games. They asked Chair to develop a game for the engine in five months, with a playable demo for the Apple Special Event conference in two months. The team decided within a few days to work on the "Infinity Blade" concept, codenamed "Project Sword". Instead of normal initial game development, where working prototypes test gameplay ideas, Chair spent the first week of development refining the gameplay concept on paper before beginning to code. Many of the core gameplay ideas were developed in their first few hours. Geremy Mustard, Chair's co-founder and technical director, estimates that the team cut two-thirds of that initial design due to lack of time. Refining the complex touch-based interface was complicated due to the Unreal Engine's incomplete status and the native iOS code library's lack of support for fast touch-based gameplay. The five-month development was completed by a team of twelve people from Chair, with assistance from Epic. In addition to Geremy Mustard, the team was composed of Chair co-founder and creative director Donald Mustard; Simon Hurley as producer; Joshua Andersen and Scott K. Bowen as programmers; Adam Ford as art director; Orlando Barrowes, Bert Lewis, Mike Low, Scott Stoddard, and Nathan Trewartha as artists and animators; Joshua Akers as composer; and Brandon Raul Campos as lead tester.


title: Infinity Blade

text: The game's swipe-based swordplay was based on Donald Mustard's desire for unique gameplay based on nuanced sword fighting and parrying. He described the game's influences as the combat of "Karateka" and "Prince of Persia" combined with the "lonely epicness" of "Shadow of the Colossus". Chair sought to develop an experience that could be picked up and played for a minute (a single battle) or half an hour (a bloodline). They felt that many other developers accustomed to consoles were wrong to make iOS games that required long-playing experiences to feel meaningful, and so Chair developed the bloodline concept as a natural breakpoint. They also felt that mobile games like "Infinity Blade" with constant action elements went too long without giving the player time to relax and resulted in player exhaustion, and so Chair kept their battles short with brief cinematic pauses in longer battles. Chair showed their playable demo at the Apple conference on September 1, 2010, after weeks of rehearsal, and attracted much attention to the game. It was released on December 9, 2010. While Chair itself spent little on marketing, Apple used the game extensively in advertisements for its devices.


title: Infinity Blade

text: The music for the game was composed by Josh Aker, who had written the music for previous Chair games. The soundtrack was intended by Aker to be "intense" during combat, but to vary between "serene" and "otherworldly" outside battle. It is a mixture of live and synthetic instrument performances. Cello and nyckelharpa were the primary instruments used. Aker wanted to have "avant-garde performances" for the recordings. The soundtrack was sold as a digital album, "Infinity Blade: Original Soundtrack", through several online music retailers. Chair began to develop the game's first update before the initial game was released. They intended only to add new monsters and features, but added the ability to purchase gold due to customer requests. Chair did not rebalance the game to incentivize in-app purchases. Work on "The Deathless Kings" update began immediately afterward. Chair felt that releasing several large, free updates to the game would increase their overall user base and result in more total sales due to word of mouth.


title: Infinity Blade

text: "Infinity Blade" was noted for its sales at launch, selling more than 270,000 copies and making over US$1.6 million in its first four days—the "fastest-grossing app" ever released for iOS at the time. By the end of 2011, it had made at least US$23 million in revenue. Around fourteen months after the initial release, Chair noted that half of the game's sales were for the iPhone and half were for the iPad and iPod. After releasing the sequel, Epic Games noted in 2012 that the series was Epic's most profitable by measure of revenue against person-hours spent in development.


title: Infinity Blade

text: "Infinity Blade" was reviewed by several major gaming sites in addition to mobile game-focused sites. Critics praised the game's graphics heavily. IGN reviewer Hilary Goldstein said that it was "an absolute stunner for any handheld device and ushers in a new era of possibility for high-end graphics." "GamePro" Ryan Rigney called the game "downright gorgeous" and said that the graphics were almost at the level of an Xbox 360 game, which was echoed by John Meyer of "Wired", who claimed that it had the best graphics of any iPad game. The reviewer for "Edge" further praised the art direction, especially with regards to the enemy and armor designs.


title: Infinity Blade

text: The gameplay was generally praised by reviewers, who typically found the combat engaging, but were split on the repetitive aspects of the game. 1UP.com's Matt Clark said that the sword gameplay "just feels right", while Mark Brown of "Eurogamer" said that the combat had an excitement factor that pushed players to keep on going for one more battle. Tracy Erickson of "Pocket Gamer" described the swipe-based combat system as "easy to understand, though tough to master", and Nick Chester of Destructoid said that although the combat was not very complicated, it was fun to play. The role-playing game elements were praised—Destructoid's Chester called them "satisfying", and IGN's Goldstein said that they added to the game's difficulty. Brown's review for "Eurogamer", however, said that while good they were not as engaging as the combat, and the "Edge" review dismissed them as minimal. Reviewers had mixed opinions on the effectiveness of the bloodline system's repetition: Destructoid's Chester described it as addictive, and IGN's Goldstein agreed, but Erickson's review for "Pocket Gamer" said that the game had problems with repetition and "Wired" Meyer dismissed it as "repetitive ... as the title suggests". J. Nicholas Geist, writing for "Kill Screen", focused his entire review on the cyclical nature of the game, treating its nature of repetition with small changes between each bloodline as a metaphor for life. Most reviewers found themselves between the two extremes, with Brown of "Eurogamer" simultaneously describing it as "alarmingly repetitious" but still addictive and 1UP.com's Clark saying that enjoying the game required getting past the repetition, despite being "stellar".


title: Infinity Blade

text: On October 28, 2011, Epic Games and Adrenaline Amusements released an arcade version of the game, "Infinity Blade FX". The game is played on a 46-inch screen rigged with optical sensors to mimic a large iPhone or iPad screen. Each arcade stand contains up to three screens, and players can play against each other or in the single-player game. A sequel to the iOS game, "Infinity Blade II", was announced on October 4, 2011, during the Apple iPhone 4S keynote presentation. It was released on December 1, 2011, and features enhanced graphics, a new storyline, and new fighting styles. A spinoff game, "Infinity Blade: Dungeons", was in development for iOS by Epic Games subsidiary Impossible Games, but was cancelled in February 2013 when Impossible Games was shut down. A final game in the trilogy, "Infinity Blade III", was released on September 18, 2013.


title: Infinity Blade

text: A novella by author Brandon Sanderson was released before both "Infinity Blade II" and "III" to serve as a story bridge between the games. "Infinity Blade: Awakening" was released as an e-book on October 4, 2011, to correspond with the announcement of "Infinity Blade II". The story gives the protagonist of the first game a name, Siris, introduces the idea that the God King was one of multiple Deathless in the world, as is Siris, and has Siris and the assassin Isa journey to find the Worker of Secrets in order to kill the resurrected God King and the other Deathless. The second e-book novella, "Infinity Blade: Redemption", was released on September 9, 2013, just before the third game. In it, Siris and the God King escape from their imprisonment by the Worker of Secrets, while extensive flashbacks show the rise of the Deathless in a future-Earth analog. While Siris disrupts the Worker of Secret's plans, the God King confronts and is killed by the Worker.


title: Infinity Blade

text: A Chinese version of the game for Xbox One and Android was published by Tencent Games on November 28, 2015.


title: Infinity Blade

text: A day after Epic Games removed the "Infinity Blade" trilogy from the App Store, the titular weapon made a crossover appearance in the winter-themed seventh season of "Fortnite Battle Royale" as a unique, very powerful melee weapon that can be obtained in a match, granting any player who finds it devastating abilities and extra survivability, at the cost of being unable to use other items. Three days later, however, Epic Games later "vaulted" the weapon over concerns that it was too overpowered. Epic Games later brought back the Infinity Blade in February 2019 as a restricted item that is only available in the limited-time mode "Sword Fight", reducing its power and allowing multiple copies of it to be found from loot chests.


title: Love Don't Cost a Thing (film)

text: Love Don't Cost a Thing (stylized as "Love Don't Co$t a Thing") is a 2003 American teen comedy film written and directed by Troy Beyer and starring Nick Cannon and Christina Milian. It also stars Steve Harvey, Kenan Thompson, and Kal Penn. The film is a remake of the 1987 film "Can't Buy Me Love" and takes its title from the Jennifer Lopez song of the same name.


title: Love Don't Cost a Thing (film)

text: Alvin Johnson is an extremely intelligent nerd skilled in designing car engines. He has also taken up a job as a pool cleaner, to raise money to buy a camshaft, a part needed to build an engine for a scholarship project that will ensure him a full ride to the school of his choice. Alvin has always dreamed of hanging out with the popular kids, especially Paris Morgan, a beautiful, popular cheerleader dating NBA star Dru Hilton. When Paris crashes her mother's Escalade during an argument with Dru, Alvin agrees to repair the car using the money he had earned for his project, jeopardizing his scholarship opportunity, after a few missteps, Paris eventually pays him back by giving him a $1,500 makeover and agreeing to pretend for two weeks that she's dating Alvin.


title: Love Don't Cost a Thing (film)

text: Alvin then begins to ingratiate himself with the popular crowd. He and Paris grow closer as she shares with him her secret love of music and he shares with her that he knows how to build car engines. Paris begins to develop feelings for Alvin and at the end of their two-week dating period, she tries to hint that she would like to kiss him. However, Alvin misinterprets her and goes along with their original plan of a public break up at school.


title: Love Don't Cost a Thing (film)

text: Even after the break up, Alvin continues to grow in popularity, alienating his former nerdy friends and flirting with Paris's friends. Paris is unhappy to realize how shallow and vapid her friends are, and by extension, Alvin. Tired of him constantly ditching them in favor of the popular kids, Alvin's friends confront him on the matter, during which Alvin's sister Aretha overhears. She comes to realize that Alvin paid Paris to date her seeing how he has nothing of value after his big makeover. She tells their parents, who attempt to talk to Alvin, but he blows them off.


title: Love Don't Cost a Thing (film)

text: At the end of the year on Senior Ditch Day, Paris asks Alvin to hang out as real friends, but a newly egotistical Alvin insults her. They argue and storm off from each other. Dru is also at the party to meet up with Paris but breaks up with her when he finds out she had been "dating" Alvin. In an attempt to win Dru back, Paris reveals the truth about her and Alvin to the whole school, and Alvin is immediately ostracized. Now back to being unpopular, Alvin finally realizes he does not have the camshaft for his project.


title: Love Don't Cost a Thing (film)

text: Alvin's father Clarence pays for the camshaft, telling Alvin that they will work out a plan later to pay him back while also explaining to Alvin that he'd supported his sudden transformation because he wanted Alvin to have the same experiences he did while he was in high school, seeing as he was one of the most popular guys at his school. He also admits that he didn't have Alvin's brains or potential but he's always been proud of his son. With this confidence restored, Alvin builds an engine with the part his dad bought. Alvin's friends push the broken car they had been working on into the garage. They congratulate him on a job well done on completing the engine but are still angry with him for blowing them off. Alvin sees that their car needs a new engine so he installs the one he just built to restore their car, telling them to let him have it sometime within that next week so he can present it to the scholarship committee. Alvin's friends forgive him.


title: Love Don't Cost a Thing (film)

text: Together, they all attend a school basketball game where Alvin stands up for his nerd friends against the basketball players. Alvin finally redeems himself in front of everyone and his friends become friendly with the popular crowd. Alvin leaves the gymnasium, and as Paris follows him out, she is stopped by Dru. Paris blows him off and chases after Alvin. They finally kiss and agree to start a real relationship.


title: Love Don't Cost a Thing (film)

text: A soundtrack containing hip hop music was released on December 9, 2003 by Hollywood Records. It peaked at 22 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums and 14 on the Top Soundtracks. "Allmusic" rated this soundtrack three stars out of five.


title: Love Don't Cost a Thing (film)

text: The film opened at #4 at the U.S. Box office raking in $6,315,311 USD in its first opening weekend behind "Stuck on You", "The Last Samurai", and "Something's Gotta Give".


title: Love Don't Cost a Thing (film)

text: The film has received mostly negative reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes it has an approval rating of 13% based on reviews from 72 critics. The site's consensus: "A stale, unnecessary remake of "Can't Buy Me Love"." On Metacritic it has a score of 37% based on reviews from 23 critics.


title: Love Don't Cost a Thing (film)

text: Roger Ebert, film critic of the "Chicago Sun-Times", gave the film a positive three-star rating after giving the original, "Can't Buy Me Love", only half a star. Ebert describes the remake as wiser and less cynical than the original and suggests that it might have some insight into the insecurities of high school.


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: On 24 September 2015, a crowd crush resulted in the death of more than 2,000 individuals, many of whom were suffocated or crushed, during the annual Hajj pilgrimage in Mina, Mecca, Saudi Arabia, making it the deadliest Hajj disaster in history. Estimates of the number of dead vary: the Associated Press reported dead, while Agence France-Presse reported killed. Based on the total of the individual national reports cited in the table below (nationalities of victims), at least people died. The government of Saudi Arabia officially reported two days after the event that there had been 769 deaths and 934 injured. These figures remained official at the time of the next year's Hajj and were never updated. The largest number of victims were from Iran, followed by Mali and Nigeria.


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: The crush occurred in Mina at the intersection of streets 204 and 223 leading to Jamaraat Bridge. The cause of the disaster remains in dispute. The Mina disaster inflamed tensions between regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran, which were already elevated due to the wider turmoil in the Middle East, such as the Syrian Civil War and Yemeni Civil War. In a press conference held on the day of the incident, Saudi Ministry of Interior spokesman Mansour Al-Turki attempted to address most issues regarding the incident. He said in September 2015 that an investigation was ongoing, and that the exact cause of the overcrowding that resulted in the deadly crush had not yet been ascertained.


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: The Hajj is an annual pilgrimage in Mecca prescribed as a duty for Muslims to perform at least once during their lifetime if they can afford to do so physically and financially. As traditionally performed, the Hajj consists of a series of rites including the Stoning of the Devil ( "") which is done at the Jamaraat Bridge in Mina, a district a few miles east of Mecca. The Jamaraat Bridge is a pedestrian bridge from which pilgrims can throw pebbles at the three "jamrah" ("pebble") pillars. The stoning ritual is the last major ritual and the part of the Hajj with the most potential for disaster given its large crowds, confined spaces, and precise scheduling.


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: The 2015 Hajj occurred during a time of regional turmoil (including wars in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya), the highest temperatures in Mecca in 20 years, the threat of MERS, and pre-existing tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran.


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: A number of Hajj-related crowd crush disasters have occurred in the past, with 1,426 people being suffocated and trampled to death in a 1990 tunnel tragedy, and at least 701 people killed in crowd crushes between 1991 and 2005. 346 people were killed in a similar Jamaraat incident in 2006, which prompted the Saudi government to improve the infrastructure of the city and its procession routes.


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: The Saudi Arabian government has been spending $60 billion to expand the Grand Mosque which houses the Kaaba, and has deployed 100,000 security forces and 5,000 CCTV cameras to monitor the crowds. The Saudis have also built a permanent tent city in the Mina valley. It is covered with approximately 160,000 air-conditioned tents across multiple campsites (grouped by nationality) for use by Hajj pilgrims.


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: According to a statement by the Saudi civil defence directorate, the stampede occurred Thursday 24 September 2015 at 09:00 Mecca time (06:00 UTC) at the junction between street 204 and 223 as pilgrims were en route to the Jamaraat Bridge. The Saudi Interior Ministry stated that the stampede began when two large groups of pilgrims intersected from different directions onto the same street. The area was not identified previously as dangerous. The junction lay between two pilgrim camp sites. The "International Business Times" reported that the governor of Mecca Province and Saudi Arabia's director of the main Hajj committee, Prince Khalid bin Faisal Al Saud, blamed the crush outside the holy city on "some pilgrims with African nationalities"; prompting condemnation from several African government officials.


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: In a press conference held the day of the incident, spokesman of the Ministry of Interior Mansour Al-Turki attempted to address the incident. He said that an investigation was ongoing, that the exact causes for crowding that resulted in the deadly stampede on Mina Street 204 are yet to be ascertained. He explained that "Street number 204 is a road leading from the camps to the Jamarat Bridge. What happened was that a group of pilgrims on buses were allowed to descend onto the pathways that lead to the Jamarat Bridge at a time that wasn’t allocated to them," Al Arabiya News Channel's correspondent in Mina, Saad Al-Matrafi said. "As they neared the area, they converged with an existing group of people who were already in the area, which pushed the area to over capacity."


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: One day after the Mina crush disaster, Saudi media publicized a statement by the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Abdul-Aziz ibn Abdullah Al ash-Sheikh, exonerating Crown Prince Muhammad bin Nayef (known as "MBN") from responsibility for the disaster, as his title of Minister of the Interior holds him accountable for safety issues at the Mecca shrine. The Grand Mufti's statement, which characterized the incident as "beyond human control", "inevitable", and attributable to "fate", immunized MBN against possible domestic criticism.


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: The exact casualty total for the Mina crowd collapse is disputed. The Saudi government officially reported deaths, a number that was not changed, while Iranian media sources have proposed totals as great as 4,173, after a withdrawn early number given by Saudi authorities. Independent estimates range between and (see nationalities of victims table) people killed, with the most recent Associated Press estimate giving a death toll of , based on "media reports and officials comments from 36 of the over 180 countries that sent citizens to the hajj".


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: Estimates of the injured and missing also vary greatly; Saudi reports claim 934 injured; Iranian reports are much higher, estimating more than 2,000 injuries. On the day of the disaster, the Saudi Civil Defence directorate stated that casualties were of multiple nationalities and announced the deployment of 4,000 personnel to the stampede site alongside 220 emergency response units. Pilgrims were redirected away from the stampede site, and the Saudi Red Crescent Authority was mobilised. Medics at Mina's emergency hospital said they alone received almost 700 people on the day of the incident. The eight hospitals around the Hajj landmarks and the six main hospitals in the city of Mecca were operating at full capacity after the stampede, medics said.


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: By 2 October 2015, the Saudi Arabia Health Ministry stated they had completed the DNA profiling of all unidentified pilgrims who were killed or injured in the crush. DNA samples of the next of kin of Hajj stampede victims were collected at Al-Nour Specialist Hospital, Mecca.


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: Early statements by eyewitnesses indicated that the crush was caused by the closure of the eastern part of Street 206, which forced pilgrims to travel on Street 223, colliding with a mass of people moving the opposite direction on Street 204.


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: Alhaji Samaila Dabai Yombe, Deputy Governor of the Nigerian state of Kebbi, who was present at the incident, stated that the deaths happened due to a blockage of the route to Jamaraat Bridge. "What actually happened was that all the pilgrims scheduled to throw Jamrat at that time were channeled to one particular street. At a time we got to a certain point around 8:00am, a military vehicle was set across to create a barrier and then some of the Saudi soldiers were standing by, suggesting that you cannot go beyond that point. [...] About 5,000 people coming from the same direction were not aware of the road block in front, which resulted to a tight and stationary human traffic, which made it very difficult for us to even stand. So, we continued to squat to make room for fresh air while the temperature was about 47 degrees Celsius. [...] Pilgrims, in efforts to get fresh air, attempted to scale fences of tents on both sides of the road. Very few succeeded, while most people just succumb to the situation. It was at this juncture that we saw dead bodies piling up around us".


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: Ishaq Akintola, a Nigerian Professor of Islamic eschatology, gave an eyewitness account of the disaster: "on that fateful day, we found out that some of those who had thrown their own stones made a U-turn instead of moving ahead to take a detour. They came through the route meant for entrance and not exit. They came towards us. They were in a very large group and the road was not spacious enough to allow a free flow of those of us coming to throw stones at the Devil and those who had stoned the Devil. The road could not take those coming and those going. And I discovered that most of those who took the wrong way were Egyptians".


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: In a statement released by the Saudi embassy, Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir stated, "The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques has directed to launch a thorough investigation that will be transparent [...] We will reveal the facts when they emerge, and we will not hold anything back. If mistakes were made, those who made them will be held accountable, and we will make sure that we will learn from this in order to ensure that it doesn’t happen again."


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: A few weeks after the incident, the Saudi Vice Minister of Health officially announced 4,173 people dead in this incident in a press release, however, this page was removed from the website within three hours and requesting it would redirect the visitor to the homepage. The Saudi Minister of Health claimed that the published death toll was false in a Twitter post. Fars News, an official news agency of Iran, provided a walkthrough video to accessing the webpage assuming it was out of reach due to many page requests.


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Nayef supervised the official investigation. Saudi newspapers reported that on 18 October 2015 bin Nayef talked to the investigators and urged them to "continue their efforts to find the causes of the accident, praying to Allah Almighty to accept the martyrs and wishing the injured a speedy recovery". However, Saudi Arabia, , has not yet released any findings by their investigators.


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: Prompted by difficulties in identifying bodies after the Mina disaster, Saudi Arabian Deputy Minister of Health, Hamad Al-Duwailie, announced plans to require all Hajj pilgrims to wear an electronic bracelet containing identity information. Al-Duwailie also said that Saudi Ministry of Health would upgrade its current Hajj and Umrah committee a permanent coordinating body within the Ministry. In January 2016, the Saudi Shura Council recommended "raising the capacity of roads leading to the Jamarat facility, and to the accommodation areas in Mina" as well as more studies on Hajj-related transportation flow.


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: Najmedin Meshkati, Professor of Engineering and International Relations at the University of Southern California, who is an expert in accident investigation, recommended in a self-authored opinion piece in the "World Post" that, "the Saudi government should embark on the immediate creation of an independent investigation commission/panel. This interdisciplinary commission/panel should be chaired by a nationally renowned Saudi statesman or scholar, with members selected from Saudi Arabia and affected countries based on their technical expertise and to include responsible governmental entities, first responder agencies, and academics of requisite disciplines for accident investigation. [...] And it should be empowered by the subpoena power and charged to conduct a comprehensive, systematic and interdisciplinary investigation by employing the system-oriented, robust 'AcciMap' methodology to write the most technically-sound report on the root-causes of this tragedy".


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: Amer Shalaby is a Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Toronto's Transportation Research Institute, former Hajj pilgrim, and consultant to Saudi government on crowd management. Shalaby, who specializes in transportation planning for large-scale events, proposes using "smart phones and other static and dynamic sensors" to provide authorities real-time information that could identify potential trouble places during the Hajj. He also suggests that "some of the effective methods of highway traffic flow management, such as flow metering, could be adapted for streamlining crowd flows in Mecca".


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: Keith Still, Professor of Crowd Science at Manchester Metropolitan University in Britain, who helped redesign the Jamaraat (the pillars representing the devil stoned by pilgrims) after a disaster in 2004, said there was criticism at the time that the upgrades at the Jamaraat had not been extended to other areas. He said "For complex systems that flow in and out, if you make one change along the way it can have knock-on and ripple effects elsewhere. Change any one part of system with 3 million people, and there's a danger of an accident like this."


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: Mohammed Ajmal, a physician specializing in Emergency Medicine and former manager of a medical center established to treat Indian Hajj pilgrims, details issues with both the design of the Mina tent city and quick access to disaster medical care at the site. Ajmal discussed structural design flaws in Mina, calling it a "badly designed death trap—in times of disaster" as it attempts to funnel tens of thousands of people through T intersections, such as the junction of Streets 204 and 223 where the crush occurred. Compression asphyxia is the cause of death for most victims of a crowd collapse, and can occur within ten minutes; Ajmal notes that Mina's design prevents medical care from arriving within that time stating that people at crush sites are "destined to die" within minutes, before any medical help can reach the site.


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: After the Mina disaster, many of the world's politicians sent messages of sympathy and consolation, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Qatari Prime Minister Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani, King Mohammed VI of Morocco, Kuwaiti Emir Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, Pakistani President Mamnoon Hussain, and Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi.


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: Lebanon-based Arabic-language daily "Ad-Diyar" reported that a convoy escorting Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud, Deputy Crown Prince and Saudi Minister of Defense, composed of 200 soldiers and 150 police officers initiated the disaster by blocking a street forcing pilgrims to turn around against the flow of traffic. The paper also alleged that the deputy crown prince and entourage swiftly left the scene, and that the Saudi authorities sought to impose a media blackout on reporting the Prince's presence in the area.


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: Iranian media reported the "Ad-Diyar" story, and Iranian Hajj officials stated that two streets near the disaster point had been sealed for "unknown reasons", while the Iranian Fars News Agency, quoted a member of the Iraqi parliament, Hassan Salem, as saying "the Mina disaster was an engineered tragedy to kidnap the Iraqi and Iranian officials on the pretext of the Mina incident." A reporter with the BBC's Hausa Service, Yusuf Ibrahim Yakasai, confirmed that at least one road leading to the Jamaraat was blocked. Saudi officials denied the reports, stating diplomatic convoys take place in the south of Mina and in tunnels, while the incident took place in the north.


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused the Saudis of killing injured pilgrims by putting them in containers along with the dead.


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: The 2015 Mina Crush disaster has increased tensions in the already-strained relationship between Saudi Arabia and Iran, led to calls from politicians in a number of Muslim nations for changes in oversight of Mecca and the Hajj, and bolstered opposition to King Salman among the senior members of the Saudi Arabian royal family.


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: Politicians and religious leaders in a number of Muslim countries have cited the 2015 Mina Crush disaster as reason for control of the Hajj be given either to a different nation or to a pan-Islamic organization. Mehmet Ali Sahin Deputy Chair of Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP) criticised the Saudi organisation, and claimed that Turkey could do a better job than Saudi Arabia at organising the Hajj pilgrimage, calling for Turkey to be entrusted with its management. Nouri al-Maliki, former Prime Minister of Iraq, proposed that the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) should take over administration of the Hajj. Mohammad Emami Kashani, an Iranian Ayatollah, also demanded transfer of the control of the Hajj to the OIC, stating "Saudi Arabia is incapable of organising the pilgrimage. The running of the Hajj must be handed over to Islamic states." Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary General of Hezbollah stated that Saudi Arabia should allow Muslim countries to help the kingdom run the Hajj pilgrimage rituals, emphasising the need for the formation of a Muslim committee to "supervise the management" of the annual Islamic event. The Saudi government rejected such calls; Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal stated Saudi control over the Hajj was "a matter of sovereignty and privilege and service".


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: In 2016, supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei sent a global message via his website severely criticizing Saudi rulers for what he called "the crimes they have caused throughout the world of Islam," and asked they be held responsible. In his message Khamenei described the nature of Saudi rulers as "blasphemous, faithless, dependent and materialistic," and asked "the world of Islam" to know them. He demanded reconsidering the management of two holy places and the issue of hajj due to what he described as "Saudi rulers' oppressive behavior towards God's guests," referring to 2015 Mina disaster. "Otherwise Muslims would face biggest problems," he warned. "The hesitation and failure to rescue the half-dead and injured people... is also obvious and incontrovertible. ... They murdered them," he said.


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: Government and religious leaders of Iran—which lost at least 464 citizens in the Mina disaster—have been harshly critical of Saudi Arabia. Saudi leaders have in turn have claimed that Iran is attempting to take advantage of a tragedy for political purposes.


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: Soon after the Mina Crush, both Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, and Iranian President, Hassan Rouhani, had harsh words for the Saudi government and blamed Saudi Arabia for the disaster. Rouhani suggested that the Mina crush could be the result of the Saudi government moving their best troops to Yemen, and leaving Hajj crowd control to less experienced soldiers. While Ebrahim Raisi, Iran's then State Prosecutor claimed the disaster had been caused by the Saudi officials blocking a road so as to clear a path for a Saudi convoy, and that the House of Saud should be held responsible by international law. Iranian legal experts later decided that Iran could not bring such a case before the International Court of Justice or the International Criminal Court due to jurisdictional issues. Iranian officials also accused Saudi Arabia with kidnapping Iranian diplomat, Ghazanfar Roknabadi, who became missing during the Hajj, until his body was finally identified on 25 November 2015. On 24 November 2015, Iran announced that it was forming its own fact-finding committee to investigate the disaster. Iran claims that the death toll of the disaster greatly exceeds what has been reported, and that between 4,700 and 7,500 pilgrims actually died. On 4 January 2016, Iranian government spokesman Mohammad Bagher Nobakht stated that Iran would be suspending participation by its nationals in the Umrah pilgrimage to Mecca, as "conditions of safety will not be guaranteed to pilgrims".


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir has urged Iran to wait for the results of the official Saudi investigation, stating that the Saudi government, "will reveal the facts when they emerge. And we will not hold anything back. If mistakes were made, who made them will be held accountable." Saudi government officials have made few official comments addressing specific Iranian allegations, while attempting to de-escaltate tensions with Iran. However, Mohammed bin Nawaf bin Abdulaziz, Saudi Ambassador to the UK, did specifically deny what he called "unfounded allegations", including accusations that a road blockage by a Saudi royal convoy caused the disaster. Additionally, an anonymous Saudi official involved with management of the Hajj suggested to a reporter for Al-Monitor that Mina disaster might be the result of Iranian sabotage, and that the Iranian Hajj Mission was being investigated.


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: Amid deteriorating diplomatic relations and after months of negotiations concerning visa requirements and safety logistics, in May 2016 Iran suspended participation with the upcoming Hajj scheduled for September 2016. Iran previously suspended participation with the Hajj of 1988 and 1989, after 400 Iranian pilgrims were killed by Saudi security forces.


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: The Mina disaster increased and emboldened opposition to Saudi King Salman. "The Guardian" reported after the disaster that a "senior Saudi prince has launched an unprecedented call for change in the country's leadership" writing two letters calling for his replacement. The prince was quoted by the "Guardian" as saying "The public are also pushing this very hard, all kinds of people, tribal leaders [...] They say you have to do this or the country will go to disaster." According to reports, favored to replace Salman is his younger brother, Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz, another son of Saudi Arabia's founding king Ibn Saud, and former Interior Minister.


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: The likelihood of such a coup, at least in the short term, and the authenticity of the prince's letter, have both been questioned. However, structural economic problems, the Yemen War, and discord in the royal family all contribute to the real possibility of instability for Saudi Arabia. But as the holder of the royal title "Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques", King Salman has been embarrassed by the twin disasters that bracketed the 2015 Hajj season—the Mecca crane collapse and the Mina Crush.


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: Some academics who study crowd movements and crushing disasters have questioned the use of the term "stampede". "The rhetoric of 'stampede' is often used to imply that the crowd is animalistic or mindless, but from a crowd psychology point of view, I'm sure that there was a logical explanation for the crush", University of Sussex crowd behavioral expert Anne Templeton told "Newsweek". "The density of the Hajj has been shown to reach up to 6–8 people per square meter, so I would be very surprised if a stampede (implying people running mindlessly) could occur in the first place".


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: They argue that the Mina disaster is better described as a "progressive crowd collapse": beginning at densities of about six to seven persons per square meter, individuals are pressed so closely against each other they are unable to move as individuals, and shockwaves can travel through a crowd which, at such densities, behaves somewhat like a fluid. If a single person falls, or other people reach down to help, waves of bodies can be involuntarily precipitated forward into the open space. One such shockwave can create other openings in the crowd nearby, precipitating further crushing. Unable to draw breath, people in a crowd can also be crushed while standing.


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: Use of the word "stampede", says Edwin Galea of the University of Greenwich, is the result of "pure ignorance and laziness … it gives the impression that it was a mindless crowd only caring about themselves, and they were prepared to crush people." In reality, "people are only directly crushed by others who have no choice, and the people who can choose ... are too far away from the epicentre" to be aware of what is happening. According to experts, true "stampedes" (and "panics") rarely occur except when a crowd is fleeing in fear, such as from a fire, and rarely does trampling by other human beings in such "stampede" conditions result in fatal injuries.


title: 2015 Mina stampede

text: "If you look at the analysis, I’ve not seen any instances of the cause of mass fatalities being a stampede," says Keith Still, professor of crowd science at Manchester Metropolitan University. "People don't die because they panic. They panic because they are dying."


title: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

text: Of mixed-race birth, Coleridge-Taylor achieved such success that he was referred to by white New York musicians as the "African Mahler" when he had three tours of the United States in the early 1900s. He was particularly known for his three cantatas on the epic 1855 poem "The Song of Hiawatha" by American Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Coleridge-Taylor premiered the first section in 1898, when he was 22.


title: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

text: He married a British woman, Jessie Walmisley, and both their children had musical careers. Their son Hiawatha adapted his father's music for a variety of performances. Their daughter Avril Coleridge-Taylor became a composer-conductor.


title: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

text: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was born at 15 Theobalds Road, Holborn, London, in 1875 to Alice Hare Martin (1856–1953), an English woman, and Daniel Peter Hughes Taylor, a Krio man from Sierra Leone who had studied medicine in the capital and became a prominent administrator in West Africa. They were not married, and Daniel Taylor returned to Africa without learning that Alice was pregnant. (Alice Hare Martin's parents were not married at her birth, either.) Alice Martin named her son Samuel Coleridge Taylor (without a hyphen) after the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.


title: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

text: Alice lived with her father Benjamin Holmans and his family after she had the boy. Her father was a skilled farrier and was married to a woman other than her mother; they had four daughters and at least one son. Alice and her father called her son Coleridge. The family lived in Croydon, Surrey. In 1887 Alice Martin married George Evans, a railway worker. Their street had a railway line at its end.


title: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

text: Taylor was brought up in Croydon. There were numerous musicians on his mother's side and her father played the violin. He started teaching it to Coleridge when he was young. His ability quickly was obvious, and his grandfather paid for the boy to have violin lessons. The extended family arranged for Taylor to study at the Royal College of Music, beginning at the age of 15. He changed from violin to composition, working under professor Charles Villiers Stanford. After completing his degree, Taylor became a professional musician, soon being appointed a professor at the Crystal Palace School of Music and conducting the orchestra at the Croydon Conservatoire.


title: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

text: The young man later used the name "Samuel Coleridge-Taylor", with a hyphen, said to be following a printer's typographical error. In 1894, his father Daniel Taylor was appointed coroner for the British Empire in the Province of Senegambia.


title: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

text: In 1899 Coleridge-Taylor married Jessie Walmisley, whom he had met as a fellow student at the Royal College of Music. Six years older than him, Jessie had left the college in 1893. Her parents objected to the marriage because Taylor was of mixed-race parentage, but relented and attended the wedding. The couple had a son, named Hiawatha (1900–1980) after a Native American immortalised in poetry, and a daughter Gwendolyn Avril (1903–1998). Both had careers in music: Hiawatha adapted his father's works. Gwendolyn started composing music early in life, and also became a conductor-composer; she used the professional name of Avril Coleridge-Taylor.


title: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

text: By 1896, Coleridge-Taylor was already earning a reputation as a composer. He was later helped by Edward Elgar, who recommended him to the Three Choirs Festival. His "Ballade in A minor" was premiered there. His early work was also guided by the influential music editor and critic August Jaeger of music publisher Novello; he told Elgar that Taylor was "a genius".


title: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

text: On the strength of "Hiawatha's Wedding Feast", which was conducted by Professor Charles Villiers Stanford at its 1898 premiere and proved to be highly popular, Coleridge-Taylor made three tours of the United States. In the United States, he became increasingly interested in his paternal racial heritage. Coleridge-Taylor participated as the youngest delegate at the 1900 First Pan-African Conference held in London, and met leading Americans through this connection, including poet Paul Laurence Dunbar and scholar and activist W.E.B. Du Bois.


title: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

text: Coleridge-Taylor's father Daniel Taylor was descended from African-American slaves who were freed by the British and evacuated from the colonies at the end of the American War of Independence; some 3,000 of these Black Loyalists were resettled in Nova Scotia. Others were resettled in London and the Caribbean. In 1792 some 1200 blacks from Nova Scotia chose to leave what they considered a hostile climate and society, and moved to Sierra Leone, which the British had established as a colony for free blacks. The Black Loyalists joined free blacks (some of whom were also African Americans) from London, and were joined by maroons from Jamaica, and slaves liberated at sea from illegal slave ships by the British navy. At one stage Coleridge-Taylor seriously considered emigrating to the United States, as he was intrigued by his father's family's past there.


title: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

text: In 1904, on his first tour to the United States, Coleridge-Taylor was received by President Theodore Roosevelt at the White House, a rare event in those days for a man of African descent. His music was widely performed and he had great support among African Americans. Coleridge-Taylor sought to draw from traditional African music and integrate it into the classical tradition, which he considered Johannes Brahms to have done with Hungarian music and Antonín Dvořák with Bohemian music. Having met the African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar in London, Taylor set some of his poems to music. A joint recital between Taylor and Dunbar was arranged in London, under the patronage of US Ambassador John Milton Hay. It was organised by Henry Francis Downing, an African-American playwright and London resident. Dunbar and other black people encouraged Coleridge-Taylor to draw from his Sierra Leonean ancestry and the music of the African continent.


title: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

text: Due to his success, Coleridge-Taylor was invited to be one of the judges at music festivals. He was said to be personally shy but was still effective as a conductor.


title: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

text: Composers were not handsomely paid for their music, and they often sold the rights to works outright in order to make immediate income. This caused them to lose the royalties earned by the publishers who had invested in the music distribution through publication. The popular "Hiawatha's Wedding Feast" sold hundreds of thousands of copies, but Coleridge-Taylor had sold the music outright for the sum of 15 guineas, so did not benefit directly. He learned to retain his rights and earned royalties for other compositions after achieving wide renown but always struggled financially.


title: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

text: Coleridge-Taylor was 37 when he died of pneumonia. His death is often attributed to the stress of his financial situation. He was buried in Bandon Hill Cemetery, Wallington, Surrey (today in the London Borough of Sutton).


title: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

text: Coleridge-Taylor's work continued to be popular. He was later championed by conductor Malcolm Sargent. Between 1928 and 1939, Sargent conducted ten seasons of a large costumed ballet version of "The Song of Hiawatha" at the Royal Albert Hall, performed by the Royal Choral Society (600 to 800 singers) and 200 dancers.


title: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

text: Coleridge-Taylor's greatest success was undoubtedly his cantata "Hiawatha's Wedding Feast", which was widely performed by choral groups in England during Coleridge-Taylor's lifetime and in the decades after his death. Its popularity was rivalled only by the choral standards Handel's "Messiah" and Mendelssohn's "Elijah". The composer soon followed "Hiawatha's Wedding Feast" with two other cantatas about Hiawatha, "The Death of Minnehaha" and "Hiawatha's Departure". All three were published together, along with an Overture, as "The Song of Hiawatha", Op. 30. The tremendously popular "Hiawatha" seasons at the Royal Albert Hall, which continued until 1939, were conducted by Sargent and involved hundreds of choristers, and scenery covering the organ loft. "Hiawatha's Wedding Feast" is still occasionally revived.


title: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

text: Coleridge-Taylor also composed chamber music, anthems, and the "African Dances" for violin, among other works. The "Petite Suite de Concert" is still regularly played. He set one poem by his namesake Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Legend of Kubla Khan".


title: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

text: Coleridge-Taylor was greatly admired by African Americans; in 1901, a 200-voice African-American chorus was founded in Washington, D.C., named the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Society. He visited the United States three times in the early 1900s, receiving great acclaim, and earned the title "the African Mahler" from the white orchestral musicians in New York in 1910. Public schools were named after him in Louisville, Kentucky, and in Baltimore, Maryland.


title: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

text: Coleridge-Taylor composed a violin concerto for the American violinist Maud Powell. The American performance of the work was subject to rewriting because the parts were lost "en route"—not, as legend has it, on the RMS "Titanic" but on another ship. The concerto has been recorded by Philippe Graffin and the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra under Michael Hankinson (nominated "Editor's Choice" in "Gramophone" magazine), Anthony Marwood and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Martyn Brabbins (on Hyperion Records), and Lorraine McAslan and the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Nicholas Braithwaite (on the Lyrita label). It was also performed at Harvard University's Sanders Theatre in the autumn of 1998 by John McLaughlin Williams and William Thomas, as part of the 100th-anniversary celebration of the composition of "Hiawatha's Wedding Feast".


title: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

text: Lists of Coleridge-Taylor's compositions and recordings of his work and of the many articles, papers and books about Coleridge-Taylor's life and legacy are available through the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Foundation and the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Network.


title: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

text: There are two blue plaques in his memory, one in Dagnall Park, South Norwood, and the other in St Leonards Road, Croydon, at the house where he died. A metal figure in the likeness of Coleridge-Taylor has been installed in Charles Street, Croydon.


title: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

text: A two-hour documentary, "Samuel Coleridge Taylor and His Music in America, 1900–1912" (2013), was made about him and includes a performance of several of his pieces, as well as information about him and his prominent place in music. It was written and directed by Charles Kaufmann, and produced by The Longfellow Chorus.


title: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

text: A feature animation, "The Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Story" (2013), was made about him, written and directed by Jason Young. It was screened as part of Southwark Black History Month and Croydon Black History Month in 2020.


title: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

text: On 26 August 2021 Coleridge-Taylor's Symphony in A minor received its Proms premier by the Chineke! Orchestra with Kalena Bovell.


title: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

text: In 1999, freelance music editor Patrick Meadows identified three important chamber works by Coleridge-Taylor that had never been printed or made widely available to musicians. A handwritten performing parts edition of the "Piano Quintet", from the original in the Royal College of Music (RCM) Library, had been prepared earlier by violinist Martin Anthony Burrage of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. The first modern performance of the "Piano Quintet" was given on 7 November 2001 by Burrage's chamber music group, Ensemble Liverpool / Live-A-Music in Liverpool Philharmonic Hall. The lunchtime recital included the "Fantasiestücke". Live recordings of this performance are lodged with the RCM and the British Library. The artists were Andrew Berridge (violin), Martin Anthony (Tony) Burrage (violin), Joanna Lacey (viola), Michael Parrott (cello) and John Peace (piano).