title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: On October 23, in a unanimous vote, the OAS approved a resolution that endorsed the blockade and called for the removal of the Soviet nuclear weapons from Cuba. That same day, Stevenson presented the U.S. case to the UN Security Council, though the Soviet Union's veto power precluded the possibility of passing a Security Council resolution. On the morning of October 24, over 150 U.S. ships were deployed to enforce the blockade against Cuba. Several Soviet ships approached the blockade line, but they stopped or reverse course to avoid the blockade. On October 25, Khrushchev offered to remove the missiles if the U.S. promised not to invade Cuba. The next day, he sent a second message in which he also demanded the removal of Jupiter missiles from Turkey. EXCOMM settled on what has been termed the "Trollope ploy;" the U.S. would respond to the Khrushchev's first message and ignore the second. On October 27, Kennedy sent a letter to Khrushchev calling for the removal of the Cuban missiles in return for an end to the blockade and an American promise to refrain from invading Cuba. At the president's direction, Robert Kennedy privately informed the Soviet ambassador that the U.S. would remove the missiles from Turkey after the end of the crisis. Few members of EXCOMM expected Khrushchev to agree to the offer, but on October 28 Khrushchev publicly announced that he would withdraw the missiles from Cuba. Negotiations over the details of the withdrawal continued, but the U.S. ended the naval blockade on November 20, and most Soviet soldiers left Cuba by early 1963.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: The U.S. publicly promised never to invade Cuba and privately agreed to remove its missiles in Italy and Turkey; the missiles were by then obsolete and had been supplanted by submarines equipped with UGM-27 Polaris missiles. In the aftermath of the crisis, the United States and the Soviet Union established a hotline to ensure clear communications between the leaders of the two countries. The Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world closer to nuclear war than at any point before or since. In the end, "the humanity" of the two men prevailed. The crisis improved the image of American willpower and the president's credibility. Kennedy's approval rating increased from 66% to 77% immediately thereafter. Kennedy's handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis has received wide praise from many scholars, although some critics fault the Kennedy administration for precipitating the crisis with its efforts to remove Castro. Khrushchev, meanwhile, was widely mocked for his performance, and was removed from power in October 1964.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: Troubled by the long-term dangers of radioactive contamination and nuclear weapons proliferation, Kennedy and Khrushchev agreed to negotiate a nuclear test ban treaty, originally conceived in Adlai Stevenson's 1956 presidential campaign. In their Vienna summit meeting in June 1961, Khrushchev and Kennedy had reached an informal understanding against nuclear testing, but further negotiations were derailed by the resumption of nuclear testing. Soviet-American relations improved after the resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the powers resumed negotiations over a test ban treaty. Negotiations were facilitated by the Vatican and by the shuttle diplomacy of editor Norman Cousins.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: On June 10, 1963, Kennedy delivered a commencement address at the American University in Washington, D.C., in which he announced that the Soviet had agreed to resume nuclear test ban treaty talks. He and also announced, for the purpose of showing "good faith and solemn convictions", his decision to postpone planned atmospheric nuclear weapons tests, and pledged that the U.S. would refrain from conducting further tests as long as all other nations would do the same. The U.S., Kennedy commented, was seeking a goal of "complete disarmament" of nuclear weapons, and he vowed that America "will never start a war".


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: The following month, Kennedy sent W. Averell Harriman to Moscow to negotiate a test-ban treaty with the Soviets. Each party sought a comprehensive test ban treaty, but a dispute over the number of on-site inspections allowed in each year prevented a total ban on testing. Ultimately, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union agreed to a limited treaty that prohibited atomic testing on the ground, in the atmosphere, or underwater, but not underground. The treaty represented an important deescalation of Cold War tensions, but both countries continued to build their respective nuclear stockpiles. The U.S. and the Soviet Union also reached an agreement whereby the U.S. sold millions of bushels of wheat to the Soviet Union.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: When briefing Kennedy, Eisenhower emphasized that the communist threat in Southeast Asia required priority. Eisenhower considered Laos to be "the cork in the bottle;" if it fell to Communism, Eisenhower believed other Southeast Asian countries would as well. The Joint Chiefs proposed sending 60,000 American soldiers to uphold the friendly government, but Kennedy rejected this strategy in the aftermath of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. He instead sought a negotiated solution between the government and the left-wing insurgents, who were backed by North Vietnam and the Soviet Union. Kennedy was unwilling to send more than a token force to neighboring Thailand, a key American ally. By the end of the year, Harriman had helped arrange the International Agreement on the Neutrality of Laos, which temporarily brought an end to the crisis, but the Laotian Civil War continued. Though he was unwilling to commit U.S. forces to a major military intervention in Laos, Kennedy did approve CIA activities in Laos designed to defeat Communist insurgents through bombing raids and the recruitment of the Hmong people.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: During his presidency, Kennedy continued policies that provided political, economic, and military support to the South Vietnamese government. Vietnam had been divided into a communist North Vietnam and a non-Communist South Vietnam after the 1954 Geneva Conference, but North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh established the Viet Cong in 1960 to foment support for unification in South Vietnam. The president of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, had alienated many of his constituents by avoiding land reforms, refusing to hold free elections, and staging an anti-Communist purge. Kennedy escalated American involvement in Vietnam in 1961 by financing the South Vietnam army, increasing the number of U.S. military advisers above the levels of the Eisenhower administration, and authorizing U.S. helicopter units to provide support to South Vietnamese forces.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: Though Kennedy provided support for South Vietnam throughout his tenure, Vietnam remained a secondary issue for the Kennedy administration until 1963. Kennedy increasingly soured on Diem, whose violent crackdown on Buddhist practices further galvanized opposition to his leadership. In August 1963, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. replaced Frederick Nolting as the U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam. Days after his arrival in South Vietnam, Lodge reported that several South Vietnamese generals sought the assent of the U.S. government to their plan of removing Diem from power. The Kennedy administration was split regarding not just the removal of Diem, but also their assessment of the military situation in South Vietnam and the proper U.S. role in the country. Without the full support of the U.S., General Dương Văn Minh (known as "Big Minh") called off the potential coup in South Vietnam. Big Minh again approached the U.S. about a coup, and administration official informed him that the U.S. would neither support or oppose the toppling of Diem. In November 1963, a junta of senior military officers executed Diem and his influential brother, Ngô Đình Nhu.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: By November 1963, there were 16,000 American military personnel in South Vietnam, up from Eisenhower's 900 advisors. In the aftermath of the aborted coup in September 1963, the Kennedy administration reevaluated its policies in South Vietnam. Kennedy rejected both the full-scale deployment of ground soldiers, but also rejected the total withdrawal of U.S. forces from the country. Historians disagree on whether the U.S. military presence in Vietnam would have escalated had Kennedy survived and been re-elected in 1964. Fueling the debate are statements made by Secretary of Defense McNamara in the film "The Fog of War" that Kennedy was strongly considering pulling out of Vietnam after the 1964 election. The film also contains a tape recording of Lyndon Johnson stating that Kennedy was planning to withdraw, a position that Johnson disagreed with. Kennedy had signed National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 263, dated October 11, which ordered the withdrawal of 1,000 military personnel by the end of the year. Such an action would have been a policy reversal, but Kennedy was moving in a less hawkish direction since his acclaimed speech about world peace at American University on June 10, 1963.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: Kennedy sought to contain the threat of communism in Latin America by establishing the Alliance for Progress, which sent aid to some countries and sought greater human rights standards in the region. The Alliance for Progress drew from the Good Neighbor Policy in its peaceful engagement with Latin America, and from the Marshall Plan in its expansion of aid and economic relationships. Kennedy also emphasized close personal relations with Latin American leaders, frequently hosting them in the White House. The U.S. Information Agency was given an important role of reaching out to Latin Americans in Spanish, Portuguese, and French media. The goals of the Alliance for Progress included long-term permanent improvement in living conditions through the advancement of industrialization, the improvement of communications systems, the reduction of trade barriers, and an increase in the number and diversity of exports from Latin America. At a theoretical level, Kennedy's planners hoped to reverse the under-development of the region and its dependency on North America. Part of the administration's motivation was the fear that Castro's Cuba would introduce anti-American political and economic changes if development did not take place.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: The administration had no role in the assassination of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. It supported the government of Trujillo's successor, Juan Bosch. The CIA launched a covert intervention in British Guiana to deny the left-wing leader Cheddi Jagan power in an independent Guyana, and forced a reluctant Britain to participate. The CIA also engaged in operations in Brazil and Chile against left-wing leaders.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: Relations between the United States and Iraq became strained following the overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy on July 14, 1958, which resulted in the declaration of a republican government led by Brigadier Abd al-Karim Qasim. On June 25, 1961, Qasim mobilized troops along the border between Iraq and Kuwait, declaring the latter nation "an indivisible part of Iraq" and causing a short-lived "Kuwait Crisis". The United Kingdom—which had just granted Kuwait independence on June 19, and whose economy was heavily dependent on Kuwaiti oil—responded on July 1 by dispatching 5,000 troops to the country to deter an Iraqi invasion. At the same time, Kennedy dispatched a U.S. Navy task force to Bahrain, and the U.K. (at the urging of the Kennedy administration) brought the dispute to United Nations Security Council, where the proposed resolution was vetoed by the Soviet Union. The situation was resolved in October, when the British troops were withdrawn and replaced by a 4,000-strong Arab League force.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: In December 1961, Qasim's government passed Public Law 80, which restricted the British- and American-owned Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC)'s concessionary holding to those areas in which oil was actually being produced, effectively expropriating 99.5% of the IPC concession. U.S. officials were alarmed by the expropriation as well as the recent Soviet veto of an Egyptian-sponsored UN resolution requesting the admittance of Kuwait as UN member state, which they believed to be connected. Senior National Security Council adviser Robert Komer worried that if the IPC ceased production in response, Qasim might "grab Kuwait" (thus achieving a "stranglehold" on Middle Eastern oil production), or "throw himself into Russian arms." Komer also made note of widespread rumors that a nationalist coup against Qasim could be imminent, and had the potential to "get Iraq back on [a] more neutral keel."


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: The anti-imperialist and anti-communist Iraqi Ba'ath Party overthrew and executed Qasim in a violent coup on February 8, 1963. While there have been persistent rumors that the CIA orchestrated the coup, declassified documents and the testimony of former CIA officers indicate that there was no direct American involvement, although the CIA was actively seeking a suitable replacement for Qasim within the Iraqi military and had been informed of an earlier Ba'athist coup plot. The Kennedy administration was pleased with the outcome and ultimately approved a $55 million arms deal for Iraq.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: President Kennedy ended the arms embargo that the Eisenhower and Truman administrations had enforced on Israel in favor of increased security ties, becoming the founder of the U.S.-Israeli military alliance. Describing the protection of Israel as a moral and national commitment, he was the first to introduce the concept of a 'special relationship' between the U.S. and Israel. In 1962, the Kennedy administration sold Israel a major weapon system, the Hawk antiaircraft missile. Historians differ as to whether Kennedy pursued security ties with Israel primarily to shore up support with Jewish-American voters, or because of his admiration of the Jewish state.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: Kennedy warned the Israeli government against the production of nuclear materials in Dimona, which he believed could instigate a nuclear arms-race in the Middle East. After the existence of a nuclear plant was initially denied by the Israeli government, David Ben-Gurion stated in a speech to the Israeli Knesset on December 21, 1960, that the purpose of the nuclear plant at Beersheba was for "research in problems of arid zones and desert flora and fauna." When Ben-Gurion met with Kennedy in New York, he claimed that Dimona was being developed to provide nuclear power for desalinization and other peaceful purposes "for the time being." In 1962, the US and Israeli governments agreed to an annual inspection regime. Despite these inspection, Rodger Davies, the director of the State Department's Office of Near Eastern Affairs, concluded in March 1965 that Israel was developing nuclear weapons. He reported that Israel's target date for achieving nuclear capability was 1968–1969.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: Between 1960 and 1963, twenty-four countries gained independence as the process of decolonization continued. Many of these nations sought to avoid close alignment with either the United States or the Soviet Union, and in 1961, the leaders of India, Yugoslavia, Indonesia, Egypt, and Ghana created the Non-Aligned Movement. Kennedy set out to woo the leaders and people of the Third World, expanding economic aid and appointing knowledgeable ambassadors. His administration established the Food for Peace program and the Peace Corps to provide aid to developing countries in various ways. The Food for Peace program became a central element in American foreign policy, and eventually helped many countries to develop their economies and become commercial import customers.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: Having chaired a subcommittee on Africa of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kennedy had developed a special interest in Africa. During the election campaign, Kennedy managed to mention Africa nearly 500 times, often attacking the Eisenhower administration for losing ground on that continent. Kennedy considered the Congo Crisis to be one of the most important foreign policy issues facing his presidency, and he supported a UN operation that prevented the secession of the State of Katanga. Kennedy also sought closer relations with Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru through increased economic and a tilt away from Pakistan, but made little progress in bringing India closer to the United States. Kennedy hoped to minimize Soviet influence in Egypt through good relations with President Gamal Abdel Nasser, but Nasser's hostility towards Saudi Arabia and Jordan closed off the possibility of closer relations. In Southeast Asia, Kennedy helped mediate the West New Guinea dispute, convincing Indonesia and the Netherlands to agree to a plebiscite to determine the status of Dutch New Guinea.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: Kennedy called his domestic proposals the "New Frontier"; he included initiatives such as medical care for the elderly, federal aid to education, and the creation of a department of housing and urban development. His New Frontier program can be traced back to the unsuccessful proposals of Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1944 "Second Bill of Rights" address, as well as Harry Truman's Fair Deal. Kennedy pleased conservatives by calling for a large tax cut as an economic stimulus measure. However, nearly all of his programs were blocked by the conservative coalition of Republicans and southern Democrats. The conservative coalition, which controlled key congressional committees and made up a majority of both houses of Congress during Kennedy's presidency, had prevented the implementation of progressive reforms since the late 1930s. Kennedy's small margin of victory in the 1960 election, his lack of deep connections to influential members of Congress, and his administration's focus on foreign policy also hindered the passage of New Frontier policies. Passage of the New Frontier was made even more difficult after the death of Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn; new Speaker John William McCormack and Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield both lacked the influence of their predecessors and struggled to exercise effective leadership over committee chairs.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: In 1961, Kennedy prioritized passing five bills: federal assistance for education, medical insurance for the elderly, housing legislation, federal aid to struggling areas, and an increase in the federal minimum wage. Kennedy's bill to increase the federal minimum wage to $1.25 an hour passed in early 1961, but an amendment inserted by conservative leader from Georgia, Carl Vinson, exempted hundreds of thousands of laundry workers from the law. Kennedy also won passage of the Area Redevelopment Act and the Housing Act of 1961. The Area Redevelopment Act provided federal funding to economically struggling regions of the country, while the Housing Act of 1961 provided funds for urban renewal and public housing and authorized federal mortgage loans to those who did not qualify for public housing. Kennedy proposed a bill providing for $2.3 billion in federal educational aid to the states, with more money going to states with lower per-capita income. Though the Senate passed the education bill, it was defeated in the House by a coalition of Republicans, Southern Democrats, and Catholics. Kennedy's health insurance bill, which would have paid for hospitalization and nursing costs for the elderly, failed to pass either house of Congress due to the opposition of Republicans, Southern Democrats, and the American Medical Association. A bill that would have established the Department of Urban Affairs and Housing was also defeated.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: In 1962 and 1963, Kennedy won approval of the Manpower Development and Training Act, designed to provide job retraining, as well as bills that increased the regulation of drug manufacturers and authorized grants and loans for the construction of higher education facilities. } Following the passage of that act, the U.S. and other countries agreed to major cuts in tariffs in the Kennedy Round. Congress also passed the Community Mental Health Act, providing funding to local mental health community centers. These centers provided out-patient services such as marriage counseling and aid to those suffering from alcoholism. In 1963, Kennedy began to focus more on the issue of poverty, and some of the ideas developed during his presidency would later influence President Johnson's War on Poverty.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: Trade policy included both domestic and foreign policy. Here Kennedy had more success, for the conservative coalition was not active in foreign policy. The 1962 Trade Expansion Act passed Congress by wide majorities. It gave the president the power to cut tariffs, and to retaliate against countries employing discriminatory tariffs. It enabled companies to complain about unfair treatment by foreign governments.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: The economy, which had been through two recessions in three years, and was in one when Kennedy took office, accelerated notably during his presidency. Despite low inflation and interest rates, GDP had grown by an average of only 2.2% per annum during the Eisenhower presidency (scarcely more than population growth at the time), and had declined by 1% during Eisenhower's last twelve months in office. GDP expanded by an average of 5.5% from early 1961 to late 1963, inflation remained steady at around 1%, and unemployment dropped from nearly 7 percent in January 1961 to 5.5 percent in December 1963. Industrial production rose by 15% and motor vehicle sales rose by 40%. This sustained rate of growth in GDP and industry continued until around 1969. Kennedy was the first president to fully endorse Keynesian economics, which emphasized the importance of economic growth as opposed to inflation or deficits. He ended a period of tight fiscal policies, loosening monetary policy to keep interest rates down and to encourage growth of the economy. He presided over the first government budget to top the $100 billion mark, in 1962, and his first budget in 1961 led to the country's first non-war, non-recession deficit.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: In 1962, as the economy continued to grow, Kennedy became concerned with the issue of inflation. He asked companies and unions to work together to keep prices low, and met initial success. He implemented guideposts developed by the Council of Economic Advisers that were designed to avoid wage-price spirals in key industries such as steel and automobiles. Kennedy was proud that his Labor Department helped keep wages steady in the steel industry, but was outraged in April 1962 when Roger Blough, the president of U.S. Steel, quietly informed Kennedy that his company would raise prices. In response, Attorney General Robert Kennedy began a price-fixing investigation against U.S. Steel, and President Kennedy convinced other steel companies to rescind their price increases until finally even U.S. Steel, isolated and in danger of being undersold, agreed to rescind its own price increase. Aside from his conflict with U.S. Steel, Kennedy generally maintained good relations with corporate leaders compared to his Democratic predecessors Truman and FDR, and his administration did not escalate the enforcement of antitrust law. His administration also implemented new tax policies designed to encourage business investment.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: Walter Heller, who served as the chairman of the CEA, advocated for a Keynesian-style tax cut designed to help spur economic growth, and Kennedy adopted this policy. The idea was that a tax cut would stimulate consumer demand, which in turn would lead to higher economic growth, lower unemployment, and increased federal revenues. To the disappointment of liberals like John Kenneth Galbraith, Kennedy's embrace of the tax cut also shifted his administration's focus away from the proposed old-age health insurance program and other domestic expenditures. In January 1963, Kennedy proposed a tax cut that would reduce the top marginal tax rate from 91 percent to 65 percent, and lower the corporate tax rate from 52 percent to 47 percent. The predictions according to the Keynesian model indicated the cuts would decrease income taxes by about $10 billion and corporate taxes by about $3.5 billion. The plan also included reforms designed to reduce the impact of itemized deductions, as well as provisions to help the elderly and handicapped. Republicans and many Southern Democrats opposed the bill, calling for simultaneous reductions in expenditures, but debate continued throughout 1963. Three months after Kennedy died, Johnson pushed the plan through Congress. The Revenue Act of 1964 lowered the top individual rate to 70 percent, and the top corporate rate to 48 percent.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: The turbulent end of state-sanctioned racial discrimination was one of the most pressing domestic issues of the 1960s. Jim Crow segregation had been established law in the Deep South for much of the 20th century, but the Supreme Court of the United States had ruled in 1954 in "Brown v. Board of Education" that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. Many schools, especially in southern states, did not obey the Supreme Court's decision. Kennedy favored desegregation and other civil rights causes, but he generally did not place a high priority on civil rights, especially before 1963. Recognizing that conservative Southern Democrats could block legislation, Kennedy did not introduce civil rights legislation upon taking office. Kennedy did appoint many blacks to office, including civil rights attorney Thurgood Marshall. Kennedy also established the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity to investigate employment discrimination and expanded the Justice Department's involvement in voting rights cases.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: Kennedy believed the grassroots movement for civil rights would anger many Southern whites and make it more difficult to pass civil rights laws in Congress, and he distanced himself from it. As articulated by brother Robert, the administration's early priority was to "keep the president out of this civil rights mess." Civil rights movement participants, mainly those on the front line in the South, viewed Kennedy as lukewarm, especially concerning the Freedom Riders. The Freedom Riders organized an integrated public transportation effort in the South and were repeatedly met with white mob violence. Robert Kennedy, speaking for the president, urged the Freedom Riders to "get off the buses and leave the matter to peaceful settlement in the courts." Kennedy feared sending federal troops would stir up "hated memories of Reconstruction" among conservative Southern whites. Displeased with Kennedy's pace addressing the issue of segregation, Martin Luther King Jr. and his associates produced a document in 1962 calling on the president to follow in the footsteps of Abraham Lincoln and use an executive order to deliver a blow for civil rights as a kind of "Second Emancipation Proclamation."


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: In September 1962, James Meredith enrolled at the University of Mississippi but was prevented from entering. Attorney General Robert Kennedy responded by sending 400 federal marshals, while President Kennedy reluctantly sent 3,000 troops after the situation on campus turned violent. The Ole Miss riot of 1962 left two dead and dozens injured, but Meredith did finally enroll in his first class. Kennedy regretted not sending in troops earlier and he began to doubt whether the "evils of Reconstruction" he had been taught or believed were true. On November 20, 1962, Kennedy signed Executive Order 11063, prohibiting racial discrimination in federally supported housing or "related facilities".


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: Sensitive to criticisms of the administration's commitment to protecting the constitutional rights of minorities at the ballot box, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, early in 1962, urged the president to press Congress to take action. Rather than proposing comprehensive legislation, President Kennedy put his support behind a proposed constitutional amendment that would prohibit states from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a poll tax or other types of tax. He considered the constitutional amendment the best way to avoid a filibuster, as the claim that federal abolition of the poll tax was unconstitutional would be moot. Still, some liberals opposed Kennedy's action, feeling that an amendment would be too slow compared to legislation. The poll tax was one of several laws that had been enacted by states across the South to disenfranchise and marginalize black citizens from politics so far as practicable without violating the Fifteenth Amendment. Several civil rights groups opposed the proposed amendment on the grounds that it "would provide an immutable precedent for shunting all further civil rights legislation to the amendment procedure." The amendment was passed by both houses of Congress in August 1962, and sent to the states for ratification. It was ratified on January 23, 1964, by the requisite number of states (38), becoming the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: Disturbed by the violent reaction to the civil rights campaign in Birmingham, and eager to prevent further violence or damage to U.S. foreign relations, Kennedy took a more active stance on civil rights in 1963. On June 11, 1963, President Kennedy intervened when Alabama Governor George Wallace blocked the doorway to the University of Alabama to stop two African American students from attending. Wallace moved aside only after being confronted by Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach and the Alabama National Guard, which had just been federalized by order of the president. That evening Kennedy delivered a major address on civil rights on national television and radio. In it he launched his initiative for civil rights legislation that would guarantee equal access to public schools and other facilities, the equal administration of justice, and also provide greater protection of voting rights. Kennedy's embrace of civil rights causes would cost him in the South; Gallup polls taken in September 1963 showed his approval rating at 44 percent in the South, compared to a national approval rating of 62 percent. House Majority leader Carl Albert called to advise him that his effort to extend the Area Redevelopment Act had been defeated, primarily by the votes of Southern Democrats and Republicans.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: A crowd of over one hundred thousand, predominantly African Americans, gathered in Washington for the civil rights March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963. Kennedy initially opposed the march, fearing it would have a negative effect on the prospects for the civil rights bills pending in Congress. These fears were heightened just prior to the march when FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover presented Kennedy with reports that some of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.'s close advisers, specifically Jack O'Dell and Stanley Levison, were communists. When King ignored the administration's warning, Robert Kennedy issued a directive authorizing the FBI to wiretap King and other leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Although Kennedy only gave written approval for limited wiretapping of King's phones "on a trial basis, for a month or so", Hoover extended the clearance so his men were "unshackled" to look for evidence in any areas of King's life they deemed worthy. The wiretapping continued through June 1966 and was revealed in 1968.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: The task of coordinating the federal government's involvement in the March on Washington on August 28 was given to the Department of Justice, which channeled several hundreds thousand dollars to the six sponsors of the March, including the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. To ensure a peaceful demonstration, the organizers and the president personally edited speeches that were inflammatory and collaborated on all aspects related to times and venues. Thousands of troops were placed on standby. Kennedy watched King's speech on TV and was very impressed. The March was considered a "triumph of managed protest", and not one arrest relating to the demonstration occurred. Afterwards, the March leaders accepted an invitation to the White House to meet with Kennedy and photos were taken. Kennedy felt that the March was a victory for him as well and bolstered the chances for his civil rights bill.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: Notwithstanding the success of the March, the larger struggle was far from over. Three weeks later, a bomb exploded on Sunday, September 15 at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham; by the end of the day, four African American children had died in the explosion, and two other children shot to death in the aftermath. Due to this resurgent violence, the civil rights legislation underwent some drastic amendments that critically endangered any prospects for its passage. An outraged president called congressional leaders to the White House and by the following day the original bill, without the additions, had enough votes to get it out of the House committee. Gaining Republican support, Senator Everett Dirksen promised the legislation would be brought to a vote, preventing a Senate filibuster. The following summer, on July 2, the guarantees Kennedy proposed in his June 1963 speech became federal law, when President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: In the aftermath of the Soviet launch of "Sputnik 1", the first artificial Earth satellite, NASA had proposed a manned lunar landing by the early 1970s. Funding for the manned program, known as the Apollo program, was far from certain as Eisenhower held an ambivalent attitude on manned spaceflight. Early in his presidency, Kennedy was poised to dismantle the manned space program, but he postponed any decision out of deference to Johnson, who had been a strong supporter of the space program in the Senate. Along with Jerome Wiesner, Johnson was given a major role in overseeing the administration's space policy, and at Johnson's recommendation Kennedy appointed James E. Webb to head NASA. In April 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to fly in space, reinforcing American fears about being left behind in a technological competition with the Soviet Union. Less than a month later, Alan Shepard became the first American to travel into space, strengthening Kennedy's confidence in NASA.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: In the aftermath of the Gagarin's flight, as well as the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, Kennedy felt pressured to respond to the perceived erosion of American prestige. He asked Johnson to explore the feasibility of beating the Soviets to the Moon. Though he was concerned about the program's costs, Kennedy agreed to Johnson's recommendation that the U.S. commit to a manned lunar landing as the major objective of the U.S. space program. In a May 25 speech, Kennedy declared,


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: Though Gallup polling showed that many in the public were skeptical of the necessity of the Apollo Program, members of Congress were strongly supportive in 1961, and they approved a major increase in NASA's funding. In 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth, and the following year Mariner program sent an unmanned flight past Venus. Though some members of Congress came to favor shifting NASA's budget to other programs, Kennedy and Johnson remained committed to the lunar landing. On July 20, 1969, two American astronauts landed on the Moon.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: During the 1960 presidential campaign, Kennedy endorsed the concept of equal pay for equal work, as well as the adoption of an Equal Rights Amendment. His key appointee on women's issues was Esther Peterson, the Director of the United States Women's Bureau, who focused on improving the economic status of women. In December 1961, Kennedy signed an executive order creating the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women to advise him on issues concerning the status of women. Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt led the commission until her death in 1962; she was opposed to the Equal Rights Amendment because it would end special protections for women workers. The commission's final report, entitled "American Women", was issued in October 1963. The report documented the legal and cultural discrimination women in America faced and made several policy recommendations to bring about change. The creation of this commission, as well its prominent public profile, prompted Congress to begin considering various bills related to women's status. Among them was the Equal Pay Act of 1963, an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act, aimed at abolishing wage disparity based on sex; Kennedy signed it into law on June 10, 1963. Kennedy also signed an executive order banning sex discrimination in the federal workforce.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: The issue of organized crime had gained national attention during the 1950s due in part to the investigations of the McClellan Committee. Both Robert Kennedy and John F. Kennedy had played a role on that committee, and in 1960 Robert Kennedy published the book "The Enemy Within", which focused on the influence of organized crime within businesses and organized labor. Under the leadership of the attorney general, the Kennedy administration shifted the focus of the Justice Department, the FBI, and the Internal Revenue Service to organized crime. Kennedy also won congressional approval for five bills designed to crack down on interstate racketeering, gambling, and the transportation of firearms. The federal government targeted prominent Mafia leaders like Carlos Marcello and Joey Aiuppa; Marcello was deported to Guatemala, while Aiuppa was convicted of violating of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. The attorney general's top target was Jimmy Hoffa, the head of the Teamsters Union. The Justice Department's "Get Hoffa Squad" ultimately secured the conviction of over 100 Teamsters, including Hoffa, who was convicted of jury tampering and pension fund fraud.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: As president, Kennedy oversaw the last federal execution prior to Furman v. Georgia, a 1972 case that led to a moratorium on federal executions. Victor Feguer was sentenced to death by a federal court in Iowa and was executed on March 15, 1963. Kennedy commuted a death sentence imposed by a military court on seaman Jimmie Henderson on February 12, 1962, changing the penalty to life in prison. On March 22, 1962, Kennedy signed into law HR5143 (PL87-423), abolishing the mandatory death penalty for first degree murder in the District of Columbia, the only remaining jurisdiction in the United States with such a penalty.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: Construction of the Kinzua Dam flooded of Seneca nation land that they had occupied under the Treaty of 1794, and forced 600 Seneca to relocate to Salamanca, New York. Kennedy was asked by the American Civil Liberties Union to intervene and to halt the project, but he declined, citing a critical need for flood control. He expressed concern about the plight of the Seneca, and directed government agencies to assist in obtaining more land, damages, and assistance to help mitigate their displacement.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: Kennedy had relatively little interest in agricultural issues, but he sought to remedy the issue of overproduction, boost the income of farmers, and lower federal expenditures on agriculture. Under the direction of Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman, the administration sought to limit the production of farmers, but these proposals were generally defeated in Congress. To increase demand for domestic agricultural products and help the impoverished, Kennedy launched a pilot Food Stamp program and expanded the federal school lunch program.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, at 12:30 pm Central Standard Time on November 22, 1963, while on a political trip to Texas to smooth over frictions in the Democratic Party between liberals Ralph Yarborough and Don Yarborough and conservative John Connally. Traveling in a presidential motorcade through downtown Dallas with Jackie Kennedy, Connally, and Connally's wife, Nelly, Kennedy was shot in the head and neck. He was taken to Parkland Hospital for emergency medical treatment, but was pronounced dead at 1:00 pm.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: Hours after the assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald, an order filler at the Texas School Book Depository, was arrested for the murder of police officer J. D. Tippit, and was subsequently charged with Kennedy's assassination. Oswald denied the charges, but was killed by strip-club owner Jack Ruby on November 24. Ruby claimed to have killed Oswald due to his own grief over Kennedy's death, but the assassination of Kennedy and the death of Oswald gave rise to enormous speculation that Kennedy had been the victim of a conspiracy. Kennedy was succeeded as president by Lyndon Johnson, who stated on November 27 that "no memorial or oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy's memory than the earliest possible passage of a civil rights bill for which he fought so long."


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: President Johnson created the Warren Commission—chaired by Chief Justice Earl Warren—to investigate the assassination. The Warren Commission concluded that Oswald acted alone in killing Kennedy, and that Oswald was not part of any conspiracy. The results of this investigation are disputed by many. Various theories place the blame for the assassination on Cuba, the Soviet Union, the Mafia, the CIA, the FBI, top military leaders, or Johnson himself. A 2004 Fox News poll found that 66% of Americans thought there had been a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy, while 74% thought that there had been a cover-up. A Gallup Poll in mid-November 2013, showed 61% believed in a conspiracy, and only 30% thought that Oswald did it alone. In 1979, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that Oswald shot Kennedy, and that neither a foreign government nor a U.S. governmental institution had been involved in the shooting. However, the committee also found that there was a "high probability" that a second shooter, possibly with connections to the Mafia, had fired at Kennedy.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: The assassination had an enormous impact on the American public and contributed to a growing distrust of governmental institutions. Giglio writes that Kennedy's assassination "invoked immeasurable grief," adding, "[t]o many Americans, John Kennedy's death ended an age of excellence, innocence, hope, and optimism." In 2002, historian Carl M. Brauer concluded that the public's "fascination with the assassination may indicate a psychological denial of Kennedy's death, a mass wish...to undo it."


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: Assassinated in the prime of life, Kennedy remains a powerful and popular symbol of both inspiration and tragedy. The term "Camelot" is often used to describe his presidency, reflecting both the mythic grandeur accorded Kennedy in death, and the powerful nostalgia that many feel for that era of American history. He is idolized like Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt; Gallup Poll surveys consistently show his public approval rating to be around 80 percent. Kennedy's legacy strongly influenced a generation of liberal Democratic leaders, including Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Michael Dukakis, and Gary Hart.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: Historians and political scientists tend to rank Kennedy as an above-average president, and he is usually the highest-ranking president who served less than one full term. Assessments of his policies are mixed. The early part of his administration carried missteps highlighted by the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and the 1961 Vienna summit. The second half of his presidency was filled with several notable successes, for which he receives acclaim. He skillfully handled the Cuban Missile Crisis, as he avoided nuclear war and set the stage for a less tense era of U.S.–Soviet relations. On the other hand, his escalation of the U.S. presence in Vietnam has been criticized. Kennedy's effectiveness in domestic affairs has also been the subject of debate. Giglio notes that many of Kennedy's proposals were adopted by Congress, but his most important programs, including health insurance for the elderly, federal aid to education, and tax reform, were blocked during his presidency.


title: Presidency of John F. Kennedy

text: A 2014 "Washington Post" survey of 162 members of the American Political Science Association's Presidents and Executive Politics section ranked Kennedy 14th highest overall among the 43 persons who have been president, including then-president Barack Obama. Then among the "modern presidents", the thirteen from Franklin Roosevelt through Obama, he places in the middle of the pack. The survey also found Kennedy to be the most overrated U.S. president. A 2017 C-SPAN survey has Kennedy ranked among the top ten presidents of all-time. The survey asked 91 presidential historians to rank the 43 former presidents (including then-president Barack Obama) in various categories to come up with a composite score, resulting in an overall ranking. Kennedy was ranked 8th among all former presidents (down from 6th in 2009). His rankings in the various categories of this most recent poll were as follows: public persuasion (6), crisis leadership (7), economic management (7), moral authority (15), international relations (14), administrative skills (15), relations with congress (12), vision/setting an agenda (9), pursued equal justice for all (7), performance with context of times (9). A 2018 poll of the American Political Science Association’s Presidents and Executive Politics section ranked Kennedy as the 16th best president. A 2006 poll of historians ranked Kennedy's decision to authorize the Bay of Pigs invasion as the eighth-worst mistake made by a sitting president.


title: Pacific Division (NBA)

text: The Pacific Division is one of the three divisions in the Western Conference of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The division consists of five teams, the Golden State Warriors, the Los Angeles Clippers, the Los Angeles Lakers, the Phoenix Suns and the Sacramento Kings. All teams, except the Suns, are based in California.


title: Pacific Division (NBA)

text: The division was created at the start of the 1970–71 season, when the league expanded from 14 to 17 teams with the addition of the Buffalo Braves, the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Portland Trail Blazers. The league realigned itself into two conferences, the Western Conference and the Eastern Conference, with two divisions each in each conference. The Pacific Division began with five inaugural members, the Lakers, the Blazers, the San Diego Rockets, the San Francisco Warriors and the Seattle SuperSonics. The Lakers, the Rockets, the Warriors and the SuperSonics all joined from the Western Division.


title: Pacific Division (NBA)

text: The Lakers have won the most Pacific Division titles with 24. The Phoenix Suns have the second most titles with eight. 19 NBA champions have come from the Pacific Division. The Lakers have won 12 championships, the Warriors won 5, and the Blazers and Sonics won one championship each. All of them, except the 1976–77 Blazers, the 2001–02 Lakers and the 2021–22 Warriors, were division champions. In the 1991–92 season, six teams from the division qualified for the playoffs. In the 1977–78 season, all teams in the division had winning percentages above 0.500 (50%). The most recent division champions are the Phoenix Suns.


title: Pacific Division (NBA)

text: Starting with the 2021–22 season, the Pacific Division champions would receive the Chuck Cooper Trophy, named after Hall of Famer Chuck Cooper.


title: James Gregory (comedian)

text: He was born in Lithonia, Georgia, on May 6, 1946, and worked as a salesperson until he was 36, when he began introducing performers at The Punch Line comedy club in Atlanta. His first feature act at the Punch Line was February 17, 1982.


title: James Gregory (comedian)

text: Some of his most notable works include an album and a book titled "It Could Be A Law, I Don't Know" and a video called "Grease, Gravy & John Wayne's Momma". Gregory's style consists of storytelling.


title: James Gregory (comedian)

text: Gregory has appeared regularly as a guest on several syndicated radio shows, including the "John Boy and Billy Show", "Rick and Bubba", the "Bob and Tom Show", and "Steve and DC".


title: Kind Hearts and Coronets

text: Kind Hearts and Coronets is a 1949 British crime black comedy film. It features Dennis Price, Joan Greenwood, Valerie Hobson and Alec Guinness; Guinness plays nine characters. The plot is loosely based on the novel "Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal" (1907) by Roy Horniman. It concerns Louis D'Ascoyne Mazzini, the son of a woman disowned by her aristocratic family for marrying out of her social class. After her death, Louis decides to take revenge on the family and take the dukedom by murdering the eight people ahead of him in the line of succession to the title.


title: Kind Hearts and Coronets

text: Michael Balcon, the head of Ealing Studios and the producer of "Kind Hearts and Coronets", appointed Robert Hamer as director. Hamer thought it an interesting project with possibilities of using the English language in a unique way. Filming took place from September 1948 at Leeds Castle and other locations in Kent, and at Ealing Studios. The themes of class and sexual repression run through the film, particularly love between classes.


title: Kind Hearts and Coronets

text: "Kind Hearts and Coronets" was released on 13 June 1949 in the United Kingdom, and was well received by the critics. It has continued to receive favourable reviews over the years and, in 1999, it was number six in the British Film Institute's rating of the Top 100 British films. In 2005, it was included in "Time"s list of the top 100 films since 1923.


title: Kind Hearts and Coronets

text: In Edwardian England, Louis D'Ascoyne Mazzini, 10th Duke of Chalfont, is in prison, awaiting his hanging for murder the following morning. As he writes his memoirs, the events of his life are shown in flashback.


title: Kind Hearts and Coronets

text: His mother, the youngest daughter of the 7th Duke of Chalfont, eloped with an Italian opera singer named Mazzini and was disowned by her family for marrying beneath her station. The Mazzinis were poor but happy until Mazzini died shortly after Louis, his son, had been born. In the aftermath, Louis's widowed mother raises him on the history of her family and tells him how, unlike most other peerages, the dukedom of Chalfont can descend through female heirs. Louis's only childhood friends are Sibella and her brother, the children of a local doctor.


title: Kind Hearts and Coronets

text: When Louis leaves school, his mother writes to her kinsman Lord Ascoyne D'Ascoyne, a private banker, for assistance in launching her son in a career, but is rebuffed. Louis is forced to work as an assistant in a draper's shop. When his mother dies, her last request, to be interred in the family burial vault at Chalfont Castle, is denied. Louis proposes marriage to Sibella, but she ridicules his proposal, and instead, marries Lionel Holland, a former school friend of her brother who has a rich father. Soon after this, in the draper's shop Louis quarrels with a customer, Ascoyne D'Ascoyne, the banker's only child, who has him dismissed from his job.


title: Kind Hearts and Coronets

text: Louis resolves to kill Ascoyne D'Ascoyne and the other seven people ahead of him in succession to the dukedom. After arranging a fatal boating accident for Ascoyne D'Ascoyne and his mistress, Louis writes a letter of condolence to his victim's father, Lord Ascoyne D'Ascoyne, who employs him as a clerk. Upon his later promotion, Louis takes a bachelor flat in St James's, London, for assignations with Sibella.


title: Kind Hearts and Coronets

text: Louis next targets Henry D'Ascoyne, a keen amateur photographer. He meets Henry and is charmed by his wife, Edith. He substitutes petrol for paraffin in the lamp of Henry's darkroom, with fatal results. Louis decides the widow is fit to be his duchess. The Reverend Lord Henry D'Ascoyne is the next victim. Posing as the Anglican Bishop of Matabeleland, Louis poisons Lord Henry’s after-dinner port. From the window of his flat, Louis then uses a bow and arrow to shoot down the balloon from which the suffragette Lady Agatha D'Ascoyne is dropping leaflets over London. Louis next sends General Lord Rufus D'Ascoyne a jar of caviar which contains a bomb. Admiral Lord Horatio D'Ascoyne presents a challenge, as he rarely sets foot on land. However, by chance he conveniently insists on going down with his ship after causing a collision at sea.


title: Kind Hearts and Coronets

text: When Edith agrees to marry Louis, they notify Ethelred, the childless, widowed 8th duke. He invites them to spend a few days at Chalfont Castle. When Ethelred casually informs Louis that he intends to remarry in order to produce an heir, Louis arranges a hunting "accident". Before murdering the duke, he reveals his motive. Lord Ascoyne D'Ascoyne dies from the shock of learning that he has become the ninth duke, sparing Louis from having to murder his kindly employer. Louis inherits the dukedom and its estates, but his triumph proves short-lived.


title: Kind Hearts and Coronets

text: Sibella's husband, Lionel, makes a drunken plea to Louis for financial help to avoid bankruptcy, but is turned down flat. Lionel is then found dead, and a Scotland Yard detective arrests Louis on suspicion of having murdered him. Louis elects to be tried by his peers in the House of Lords. During the trial, Louis and Edith are married. Sibella falsely testifies that Lionel was about to seek a divorce and name Louis as co-respondent. Ironically, Louis is convicted of a murder he had never even contemplated.


title: Kind Hearts and Coronets

text: Louis is visited by Sibella, who observes that the discovery of Lionel's suicide note and Edith's death would free Louis and enable them to marry, a proposal to which he agrees. Moments before his hanging, the discovery of the note saves him. Louis finds both Edith and Sibella waiting for him outside the prison. When a reporter tells him that "Tit-Bits" magazine wishes to publish his memoirs, Louis suddenly remembers that he has left the incriminating document behind in his cell.


title: Kind Hearts and Coronets

text: In 1947 Michael Pertwee, a scriptwriter at Ealing Studios, suggested an adaptation of a 1907 Roy Horniman novel, "Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal". The writer Simon Heffer observes that the plot of the source novel was dark in places—it includes the murder of a child—and differed in several respects from the resulting film. A major difference was that the main character was the half-Jewish (as opposed to half-Italian) Israel Rank, and Heffer writes that Mazzini's "ruthless using of people (notably women) and his greedy pursuit of position all seem to conform to the stereotype that the anti-semite has of the Jew".


title: Kind Hearts and Coronets

text: The change from Israel Rank to Louis Mazzini was brought about by the "post-war sensitivity about anti-Semitism", and the moral stance of the films produced by Ealing. According to the British Film Institute (BFI), the novel is "self-consciously in the tradition" of Oscar Wilde, which is reflected in the snobbery and dandyism portrayed in the film.


title: Kind Hearts and Coronets

text: The head of Ealing Studios, Michael Balcon, was initially unconvinced by the idea of the film, stating that "I'm not going to make a comedy about eight murders"; the studio's creative staff persuaded him to reconsider. Balcon, who produced the film, chose Robert Hamer as director and warned him that "You are trying to sell that most unsaleable commodity to the British – irony. Good luck to you." Hamer disliked Pertwee, who withdrew from the project, leaving the scriptwriting to Hamer and John Dighton. Hamer saw the potential of the story and later wrote:


title: Kind Hearts and Coronets

text: What were the possibilities which thus presented themselves? Firstly, in that of making a film not noticeably similar to any previously made in the English language. Secondly, that of using this English language ... in a more varied and, to me, more interesting way than I had previously had the chance of doing in a film. Thirdly, that of making a picture which paid no regard whatever to established, although not practised, moral convention.


title: Kind Hearts and Coronets

text: The film was produced at the same time as two other Ealing comedies, "Passport to Pimlico" and "Whisky Galore!"; all three were released into UK cinemas over two months. The film's title was taken from the 1842 poem "Lady Clara Vere de Vere" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. The full couplet reads


title: Kind Hearts and Coronets

text: Alec Guinness was originally offered only four D'Ascoyne parts, recollecting "I read [the screenplay] on a beach in France, collapsed with laughter on the first page, and didn't even bother to get to the end of the script. I went straight back to the hotel and sent a telegram saying, 'Why four parts? Why not eight!?'"; he eventually played nine.


title: Kind Hearts and Coronets

text: Production began on 1 September 1948. Exterior filming was undertaken in the Kent villages of Harrietsham and Boughton Monchelsea. Leeds Castle, also in Kent, was used for Chalfont, the family home of the D'Ascoynes. Additional filming was undertaken at Ealing Studios.


title: Kind Hearts and Coronets

text: The costumes were designed by Anthony Mendleson, who matched Louis's rise through the social ranks with his changing costumes. When employed as a shop assistant, Louis's suit was ill-fitting and drab; he is later seen in tailored suits with satin lapels, wearing a brocade dressing gown and waiting for his execution in a quilted-collar velvet jacket. Mendleson later recounted that to dress Guinness in his many roles, the costumes were of less importance than make-up and the actor's nuances.


title: Kind Hearts and Coronets

text: In one shot Guinness appears as six of his characters at once in a single frame. This was accomplished by masking the lens. The film was re-exposed several times with Guinness in different positions over several days. Douglas Slocombe, the cinematographer in charge of the effect, recalled sleeping in the studio to make sure nobody touched the camera.


title: Kind Hearts and Coronets

text: The death of Admiral Horatio D'Ascoyne was inspired by the collision between HMS "Victoria" and HMS "Camperdown" off Tripoli in 1893 because of an order given by Vice-Admiral Sir George Tryon. "Victoria" was sunk with the loss of over 350 men.


title: Kind Hearts and Coronets

text: While filming the scene Hamer asked Guinness if he could hold his pose—a salute, facing the camera while the water rose around him—so that the water went over his head; Hamer wanted to show the admiral's cap floating on the surface. Guinness agreed, telling Hamer that as he practised yoga, he could hold his breath for four minutes. Guinness was attached to the deck by wires to keep him steady and the shot was taken; when Hamer called "cut", the crew began packing up and forgot to release Guinness until four minutes after the scene ended.


title: Kind Hearts and Coronets

text: The music of the film, played by the Philharmonia Orchestra, is conducted by theatre and film conductor and arranger Ernest Irving who "plunders the works of W.A. Mozart to winning effect; the elegance, refinement, and inherent propriety" of the pieces used offering both a metaphor of an ordered society and a "counterpoint for murder most foul".


title: Kind Hearts and Coronets

text: The British Film Institute see "Kind Hearts and Coronets" as "less sentimental" than many of the other Ealing films. Along with "The Man in the White Suit" (1951) and "The Ladykillers" (1955), "Kind Hearts and Coronets" "unleash[es] transgressive "nightmares", fables of subversive, maverick masculine obsession and action, where the repressed and vengeful bubble up to the surface and lead to a resolutions which were only just contained in the moral strictures permissible in (Balcon's) Ealing cinema at the time".


title: Kind Hearts and Coronets

text: The film historian Sarah Street identifies the theme of sexual repression running through the film, shown with Louis' relationship with the manipulative Sibella. The historian Ross McKibbin sees the film as a "sustained satire" in its portrayal of the upper classes, partly because of the intended absurdity of the D'Ascoyne family being portrayed by Guinness. "Lady Clara Vere de Vere", the poem from which the film's title derived, concerns class tensions surrounding love between classes.


title: Kind Hearts and Coronets

text: "Kind Hearts and Coronets" premiered in London on 13 June 1949. When the film was released in the US the following year, it was edited to satisfy the Hays Office Production Code. A new ending was added, showing Louis's memoirs being discovered before he can retrieve them; the dialogue between Louis and Sibella was altered to play down their adultery; derogatory lines aimed at the Reverend Henry D'Ascoyne were deleted; and in the nursery rhyme "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe", "sailor" replaced the word "nigger". The American version is six minutes shorter than the British original.


title: Kind Hearts and Coronets

text: "Kind Hearts and Coronets" received a warm reception from the critics. Although they thought the film slightly too long, the critic for "The Manchester Guardian" thought that overall it was very enjoyable "because of the light satirical touch with which mass-murder is handled, ... words are so seldom treated with any respect in the cinema". Bosley Crowther, the critic for "The New York Times", called the film a "delicious little satire on Edwardian manners and morals", while the unnamed reviewer for "Time" called it "one of the best films of the year".


title: Kind Hearts and Coronets

text: Guinness's nine roles were praised by several reviewers, including C. A. Lejeune of "The Observer". The unknown reviewer from "The Monthly Film Bulletin" wrote that Guinness played his roles "with intelligence and restraint and show[ed] his power as a character actor", while Crowther considered that Guinness acted with "such devastating wit and variety that he naturally dominates the film". Price's performance was appreciated by a number of critics, including "The Monthly Film Bulletin", who considered he gave a "brilliant performance", and Richard L. Coe, the critic for "The Washington Post" thought Price was "splendid"; Crowther wrote that Price was "as able as Mr. Guinness in his single but most demanding role". Lejeune in "The Observer" dissented, and thought he "seems pitifully outclassed every time he comes up against a Guinness" character.


title: Kind Hearts and Coronets

text: "Kind Hearts and Coronets" was nominated for the British Academy Film Award for Best British Film, alongside "Passport to Pimlico" and "Whisky Galore!", although they lost to "The Third Man" (1949). The film was screened as one of Britain's entries to the 10th Venice International Film Festival; William Kellner won an award for Best Production Design.


title: Kind Hearts and Coronets

text: According to Michael Newton, writing for the BFI, "Kind Hearts and Coronets" has retained the high regard of film historians. In 1964 "The Spectator" called it "the most confident comedy ever to come out of a British studio", and the actor Peter Ustinov considered it the "most perfect achievement" of Ealing Studios, "a film of exquisite construction and literary quality". "Kind Hearts and Coronets" is listed in "Time"s top 100 and also at number six in the BFI Top 100 British films. Thirteen critics and directors voted for "Kind Hearts and Coronets" in the 2012 BFI poll of The Greatest Films of All Time, including Terence Davies, Peter Bradshaw and Philip French.


title: Kind Hearts and Coronets

text: The film has been adapted for radio three times. In March 1965, the BBC Home Service broadcast an adaptation by Gilbert Travers-Thomas, with Dennis Price reprising his role as Louis D'Ascoyne Mazzini. BBC Radio 4 produced a new adaptation in 1980 featuring Robert Powell as the entire D'Ascoyne clan, including Louis, and Timothy Bateson as the hangman, and another in 1996 featuring Michael Kitchen as Mazzini and Harry Enfield as the D'Ascoyne family.


title: Kind Hearts and Coronets

text: In May 2012, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a sequel to the film called "Kind Hearts and Coronets – Like Father, Like Daughter", written by David Spicer. In it, Unity Holland, the illegitimate daughter of Louis and Sibella, is written out of the title by Edith Duchess of Chalfont. Unity then murders the entire D'Ascoyne family, with all seven members played by Alistair McGowan.


title: Kind Hearts and Coronets

text: In September 2004, it was announced that a musical adaption was to be workshopped featuring Raul Esparza, Rebecca Luker, Nancy Anderson and Sean Allan Krill. The workshop had music and lyrics by Steven Lutvak with the book and lyrics by Robert L. Freedman. The musical was produced under the title "A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder" and opened in 2013 at the Walter Kerr Theatre on Broadway. The show has all the victims played by the same actor, in the original company Jefferson Mays. Though the plot remains essentially the same, most of the names are different: half-Italian Louis Mazzini becomes half-Castilian Montague "Monty" Navarro, the D'Ascoynes become the D'Ysquiths and Henry's wife Edith becomes Henry's sister Phoebe. The musical won four Tony Awards, including Best Musical.


title: Kind Hearts and Coronets

text: The Criterion Collection released a two-DVD disc set. Disc one featured the standard version of the film released in the UK and, as a bonus feature, includes the final scene with the American ending. Disc two includes a 75-minutes BBC "Omnibus" documentary "Made in Ealing", plus a 68-minute talk-show appearance with Guinness on the BBC's "Parkinson" television programme. The British distributor Optimum Releasing released a digitally restored version for both DVD and Blu-ray in September 2011.


title: Kind Hearts and Coronets

text: To mark the film's 70th anniversary in June 2019, a new 4k restoration scanned from the 35 mm nitrate original negative was released by Studiocanal in UK cinemas, along with DVD and Blu-Ray versions.


title: Qian Xuesen

text: Qian Xuesen, or Hsue-Shen Tsien (; 11 December 1911 – 31 October 2009), was a Chinese mathematician, cyberneticist, aerospace engineer, and physicist who made significant contributions to the field of aerodynamics and established engineering cybernetics. Recruited from MIT, he joined Theodore von Kármán's group at Caltech.


title: Qian Xuesen

text: During the Second Red Scare, in the 1950s, the US federal government accused him of communist sympathies. In 1950, despite protests by his colleagues, he was stripped of his security clearance. He decided to return to mainland China, but he was detained at Terminal Island, near Los Angeles.


title: Qian Xuesen

text: After spending five years under house arrest, he was released in 1955 in exchange for the repatriation of American pilots who had been captured during the Korean War. He left the United States in September 1955 on the American President Lines passenger liner SS "President Cleveland", arriving in China via Hong Kong.


title: Qian Xuesen

text: Upon his return, he helped lead the Chinese nuclear weapons program. This effort ultimately led to China's first successful atomic bomb test and hydrogen bomb test, making China the fifth nuclear weapons state, and achieving the fastest fission-to-fusion development in history. Additionally, Qian's work led to the development of the Dongfeng ballistic missile and the Chinese space program. For his contributions, he became known as the "Father of Chinese Rocketry", nicknamed the "King of Rocketry". He is recognized as one of the founding fathers of Two Bombs, One Satellite.


title: Qian Xuesen

text: In 1957, Qian was elected an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He served as a Vice Chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference from 1987 to 1998.


title: Qian Xuesen

text: He was the cousin of engineer Hsue-Chu Tsien, who was involved in the aerospace industries of both China and the United States; his nephew is Roger Y. Tsien, the 2008 winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.


title: Qian Xuesen

text: Qian was born in Shanghai International Settlement, with ancestral roots in Lin'an, Hangzhou in 1911. He graduated from The High School Affiliated to Beijing Normal University, with Lu Shijia as classmate, and attended National Chiao Tung University in 1934. There, he received a degree in mechanical engineering with an emphasis on railroad administration. He interned at Nanchang Air Force Base.


title: Qian Xuesen

text: In August 1935, Qian left mainland China on a Boxer Indemnity Scholarship to study mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he earned a Master of Science degree after one year.


title: Qian Xuesen

text: While at MIT he was called Hsue-Shen Tsien. He was influenced by the methods of American engineering education, especially its focus on experimentation. This was in contrast to the contemporary approach practiced by many Chinese scientists, which emphasized theoretical elements rather than "hands-on" experience. Tsien's experiments included plotting of pitot pressures using mercury-filled manometers.


title: Qian Xuesen

text: Kármán made his home a social scene for the aerodynamicists of Pasadena, and Qian was drawn in: "Tsien enjoyed visiting my home, and my sister took to him because of his interesting ideas and straightforward manner."


title: Qian Xuesen

text: Shortly after arriving at Caltech in 1936, Qian became fascinated with the rocketry ideas of Frank Malina, other students of von Kármán, and their associates, including Jack Parsons. Along with his fellow students, he was involved in rocket-related experiments at the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at Caltech. Around the university, the dangerous and explosive nature of their work earned them the nickname "Suicide Squad." Qian received his PhD from Caltech in 1939.


title: Qian Xuesen

text: During the Second World War, Qian worked in the Manhattan Project, which led to America successfully developing the first atomic bomb. In 1943, Qian and two other members of their rocketry group drafted the first document to use the name Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), originally a proposal to the Army for developing missiles in response to Germany's V-2 rocket. This led to Private A, which flew in 1944, and later the Corporal, the WAC Corporal, and other designs.


title: Qian Xuesen

text: In 1945, as an Army colonel with a security clearance, Qian was sent to Germany to investigate laboratories and question German scientists, including Wernher von Braun, and "to recruit German scientists for the American missile program".


title: Qian Xuesen

text: Von Kármán wrote of Qian, "At the age of 36, he was an undisputed genius whose work was providing an enormous impetus to advances in high-speed aerodynamics and jet propulsion." During this time, he worked on designing an intercontinental space plane, which would later inspire the X-20 Dyna-Soar, a precursor to the American Space Shuttle.


title: Qian Xuesen

text: Qian married Jiang Ying (蒋英), a famed opera singer and the daughter of Jiang Baili (蒋百里) and his wife, Japanese nurse Satô Yato. The elder Jiang was a military strategist and adviser to Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek. The Qians were married on 14 September 1947 in Shanghai, and had two children; their son Qian Yonggang (钱永刚, also known as Yucon Qian) was born in Boston on 13 October 1948, while their daughter Qian Yongzhen (钱永真) was born in early 1950 when the family was residing in Pasadena, California.


title: Qian Xuesen

text: Shortly after his wedding, Qian returned to America to take up a teaching position at MIT. Jiang Ying would join him in December 1947. In 1949, with the recommendation of von Kármán, Qian became Robert H. Goddard Professor of Jet Propulsion at Caltech.


title: Qian Xuesen

text: In 1947, Qian was granted a permanent resident permit, and in 1949, he applied for naturalization, although he could not obtain citizenship. Except for the memories of a few individuals, there is no other official proof indicating that Qian had tried to apply for naturalization. Years later, his wife Jiang Ying said in an interview with Phoenix Television that Qian did not apply for naturalization at all.


title: Qian Xuesen

text: By the early 1940s, US Army Intelligence was already aware of allegations that Qian was a communist, but his security clearance was not suspended until prior to the Korean War. Suddenly, on June 6, 1950, his security clearance was revoked and Qian was questioned by the FBI. Two weeks later, Qian announced that he would be resigning from Caltech and returning to mainland China, which by then was effectively governed by the Chinese Communist Party led by Mao Zedong.


title: Qian Xuesen

text: In August, Qian had a conversation on the subject with the then Under Secretary of the Navy Dan A. Kimball, whom Qian knew on a personal basis. After Qian told him of the allegations, Kimball responded, "Hell, I don't think you're a communist", at which point Qian indicated that he still intended to leave the country, saying "I'm Chinese. I don't want to build weapons to kill my countrymen. It's that simple." Kimball then said, "I won't let you out of the country."


title: Qian Xuesen

text: After the firm in charge of arranging Qian move back to mainland China tipped off U.S. Customs that some of the papers encountered among his possessions were marked "Secret" or "Confidential," U.S. officials seized them from a Pasadena warehouse. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service issued a warrant for Qian's arrest on August 25. Qian claimed that the security-stamped documents were mostly written by himself and had outdated classifications, adding that, "There were some drawings and logarithm tables, etc., which someone might have mistaken for codes." Included in the material was a scrapbook with news clippings about the trials of those charged with atomic espionage, such as Klaus Fuchs. Subsequent examination of the documents showed they contained no classified material.


title: Qian Xuesen

text: While at Caltech, Qian had secretly attended meetings with J. Robert Oppenheimer's brother Frank Oppenheimer, Jack Parsons, and Frank Malina that were organized by the Russian-born Jewish chemist Sidney Weinbaum and called Professional Unit 122 of the Pasadena Communist Party. Weinbaum's trial commenced on 30 August and both Frank Oppenheimer and Parsons testified against him. Weinbaum was convicted of perjury and sentenced to four years. Qian was taken into custody on 6 September 1950 for questioning and for two weeks detained at Terminal Island, a low-security United States federal prison near the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.


title: Qian Xuesen

text: When Qian had returned from mainland China with his new bride in 1947, he had answered "no" on an immigration questionnaire that asked if he ever had been a member of an organization advocating overthrow of the U.S. Government by force. This, together with an American Communist Party document from 1938 with Qian's name on it, was used to argue that Qian was a national security threat. Prosecutors also cited a cross-examination session where Qian said, "I owe allegiance to the people of mainland China" and would "certainly not" let the United States government make his decision for him as to whom he would owe allegiance to in the event of a conflict between the U.S. and communist China.


title: Qian Xuesen

text: On 26 April 1951, Qian was declared subject to deportation and forbidden from leaving Los Angeles County without permission, effectively placing him under house arrest.


title: Qian Xuesen

text: During this time, Qian wrote "Engineering Cybernetics", which was published by McGraw Hill in 1954. The book deals with the practice of stabilizing servomechanisms. In its 18 chapters, it considers non-interacting controls of many-variable systems, control design by perturbation theory, and von Neumann's theory of error control (chapter 18). Ezra Krendel reviewed the book, stating that it is "difficult to overstate the value of Qian's book to those interested in the overall theory of complex control systems." Evidently, Qian's approach is primarily practical, as Krendel notes that for servomechanisms, the "usual linear design criterion of stability is inadequate and other criteria arising from the physics of the problem must be used."


title: Qian Xuesen

text: Qian became the subject of five years of secret diplomacy and negotiation between the U.S. and Mainland China. During this time, he lived under constant surveillance with the permission to teach without any classified research duties. Qian received support from his colleagues at Caltech during his incarceration, including president Lee DuBridge, who flew to Washington to argue Qian's case. Caltech appointed attorney Grant Cooper to defend Qian.


title: Qian Xuesen

text: The travel ban on Qian was lifted on August 4, 1955, and he resigned from Caltech shortly thereafter. With President Dwight Eisenhower personally agreeing, Qian departed from Los Angeles for Hong Kong aboard the in September 1955 amidst rumors that his release was a swap for 11 U.S. airmen held captive by communist China since the end of the Korean War. Qian arrived at Hong Kong on 8 October 1955 and entered China via the Kowloon–Canton Railway later that day.


title: Qian Xuesen

text: Under Secretary Kimball, who had tried for several years to keep Qian in the U.S., commented on his treatment: "It was the stupidest thing this country ever did. He was no more a communist than I was, and we forced him to go."


title: Qian Xuesen

text: Upon his return, Qian began a remarkably successful career in rocket science, boosted by the reputation he garnered for his past achievements as well as Chinese state support for his research. He led and eventually became the father of the Chinese missile program, which constructed the Dongfeng ballistic missiles and the Long March space rockets.


title: Qian Xuesen

text: In October 1956, he became the director of the Fifth Academy of the Ministry of National Defense, tasked with ballistic missile and nuclear weapons development.


title: Qian Xuesen

text: Qian's reputation as a prominent scientist who was caught up in the red scare in the United States gave him considerable influence in the era of Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong and afterward. Qian eventually rose through Party ranks to become a Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party member. He became associated with the "China's Space Program - From Conception to Manned Spaceflight" initiative.


title: Qian Xuesen

text: Qian was elected as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1957, a lifelong honor granted to Chinese scientists who have made significant advancements in their field. He organized scientific seminars and dedicated some of his time to training successors for his positions.


title: Qian Xuesen

text: He was heavily involved in the establishment of the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in 1958 and served as the Chairman of the Department of Modern Mechanics of the university for a number of years.


title: Qian Xuesen

text: In 1969, Qian was one of a group of scientists who spoke with an Australian journalist, describing China's first seven nuclear tests and details of a gaseous diffusion plant near Lanzhou.


title: Qian Xuesen

text: Outside of rocketry, Qian had a presence in numerous areas of study. He was among the creators of systematics, and made contributions to science and technology systems, somatic science, engineering science, military science, social science, the natural sciences, geography, philosophy, literature and art, and education. His advancements in the concepts, theories, and methods of the system science field include studying the open complex giant system. Additionally, he helped establish the Chinese school of complexity science.


title: Qian Xuesen

text: From the 1980s onward, Qian had advocated the scientific investigation of traditional Chinese medicine, qigong, and the pseudoscientific concept of "special human body functions". He particularly encouraged scientists to accumulate observational data on qigong so that "future scientific theories could be established".


title: Qian Xuesen

text: In 1979, Qian was awarded Caltech's "Distinguished Alumni Award" for his achievements. Qian eventually received his award from Caltech, and with the help of his friend Frank Marble brought it to his home in a widely covered ceremony. Furthermore, in the early 1990s, the filing cabinets containing Qian's research work were offered to him by Caltech.


title: Qian Xuesen

text: Qian was invited to visit the US by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics after the normalization of the Sino-US relationship, but he refused the invitation, having wanted a formal apology for his detention. In a reminiscence published in 2002, Marble stated that he believed Qian had "lost faith in the American government" but that he had "always had very warm feelings for the American people."


title: Qian Xuesen

text: The Chinese government launched its manned space program in 1992, reportedly with some help from Russia due to their extended history in space. Qian's research was used as the basis for the Long March rocket, which successfully launched the Shenzhou 5 mission in October 2003. The elderly Qian was able to watch China's first manned space mission on television from his hospital bed.


title: Qian Xuesen

text: In 2008, he was named "Aviation Week & Space Technology" Person of the Year. The recognition was not intended as an honor, but is given to the person judged to have the greatest impact on aviation in the past year. Furthermore, that year China Central Television named Qian as one of the eleven most inspiring people in China.


title: Qian Xuesen

text: In July 2009, the Omega Alpha Association, an international systems engineering honor society, named Qian (H. S. Tsien) one of four Honorary Members.


title: Qian Xuesen

text: On October 31, 2009, Qian died at the age of 98 in Beijing from lung illness. He died about six days before former Vice Premier Gu Mu died on November 6. 2009.


title: Qian Xuesen

text: A Chinese film production, "Hsue-shen Tsien", directed by Zhang Jianya and starring Chen Kun as Qian was simultaneously released in Asia and North America on December 11, 2011, and on March 2, 2012, it was released in China.


title: Qian Xuesen

text: Science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, in his 1982 novel "," named a Chinese spaceship after him. The science fiction novel series "The Expanse" by James S. A. Corey also named a Martian spaceship after him (MCRN Xuesen). In the 1981 novel " Noble House" by James Clavell, the American-Chinese scientist who defected to Communist China and helped develop the first atom bomb for China, Dr. Joseph Yu, is a fictionalized version of Dr. Qian Xuesen. His deportation is mentioned (under the name Dr. Hsue-shen Tsie) in "Last Night at the Telegraph Club", a 2021 novel by Malinda Lo.


title: Isabella (The Sopranos)

text: "Isabella" is the 12th episode of the HBO original series "The Sopranos". Written by Robin Green and Mitchell Burgess, and directed by Allen Coulter, it originally aired on March 28, 1999.


title: Isabella (The Sopranos)

text: Tony is deeply depressed after Pussy's unexplained disappearance. He sees a beautiful Italian woman in the Cusamanos' backyard next door. She tells him her name is Isabella and that she is a foreign exchange student staying there while the Cusamanos are away. He takes her out to lunch and she describes the beauty of Avellino, where Tony's grandfather came from. He has a daydream about Isabella in a rocking chair in a village house, nursing a baby named Antonio.


title: Isabella (The Sopranos)

text: One day Isabella is no longer there. When the Cusamanos return Tony asks about her and realizes he has been hallucinating. Dr. Melfi instructs him to stop taking lithium, and theorizes that Isabella was an idealized maternal figure.


title: Isabella (The Sopranos)

text: Mikey, acting through Donnie Paduana, contracts two black gunmen to carry out the hit on Tony. Junior cannot bear to hear the details of the plan when Mikey tries to report.


title: Isabella (The Sopranos)

text: Chris is concerned about his boss's emotional state and secretly follows him; he unknowingly prevents the hit when he pulls his car up next to the assassins', blocking their view of Tony. Mikey and Donnie urgently meet on the streets about the failed attempt, with Junior hiding in the back seat of Mikey's car. Donnie promises the hit will be the next day and casually remarks that even Tony's mother wants him dead. Junior, fearing Donnie's "big mouth", gestures to Mikey that he should kill Donnie. He does it.


title: Isabella (The Sopranos)

text: The next day, the assassins make their move. In a ferocious struggle, one of them is killed and the other is briefly dragged along the street as Tony drives away. Elated, he can't help crashing into a parked car. In the hospital, Tony says that his injuries, only minor, occurred in an attempted carjacking, a story that not even A.J. believes. FBI Agent Harris comes to his bed and offers a deal, including immunity from prosecution, which Tony scornfully rejects.


title: Isabella (The Sopranos)

text: The next day, Livia and Junior call on Tony at home. Livia claims that she doesn't know who Meadow is; Junior later comments on the "good timing" of this apparent memory loss.


title: Isabella (The Sopranos)

text: Alan Sepinwall has lauded "Isabella" as one of the greatest episodes of "The Sopranos". Emily St. James found the subplot with the titular character to be outlandish, but still described the episode as featuring "classic scene after classic scene".


title: Chassepot

text: The Chassepot (pronounced "SHAS-poh"), officially known as Fusil modèle 1866, was a bolt-action military breechloading rifle. It is famous for having been the arm of the French forces in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871. It replaced an assortment of Minié muzzleloading rifles, many of which were converted in 1864 to breech loading (the Tabatière rifles). An improvement to existing military rifles in 1866, the Chassepot marked the commencement of the era of modern bolt action, breech-loading military rifles. The Gras rifle was an adaption of the Chassepot designed to fire metallic cartridges introduced in 1874.


title: Chassepot

text: It was manufactured by "Manufacture d'armes de Saint-Étienne" (MAS), "Manufacture d'Armes de Châtellerault" (MAC), "Manufacture d'Armes de Tulle" (MAT) and, until 1870, in the "Manufacture d'Armes de Mutzig" in the former Château des Rohan. Many were also manufactured under contract in England (the "Potts et Hunts" Chassepots delivered to the French Navy), in Belgium (Liege), and in Italy at Brescia (by "Glisenti"). The approximate number of Chassepot rifles available to the French Army in July 1870 was 1,037,555 units. Additionally, state manufacturies could deliver 30,000 new rifles monthly. Gun manufacturers in England and Austria also produced Chassepot rifles to support the French war effort. The Steyr armory in Austria delivered 12,000 Chassepot carbines and 100,000 parts to France in 1871. Manufacturing of the Chassepot rifle ended in February 1875, four years after the end of the Franco-Prussian War, with approximately 700,000 more Chassepot rifles made between September 1871 and July 1874.


title: Chassepot

text: The Chassepot was named after its inventor, Antoine Alphonse Chassepot (1833–1905), who, from the mid-1850s onwards, had constructed various experimental forms of breech loaders. The first two models of the Chassepot still used percussion cap ignition. The third model, using a similar system to the Prussian Dreyse needle gun, became the French service weapon on 30 August 1866. In the following year it made its first appearance at the Battle of Mentana on 3 November 1867, where it inflicted severe losses upon Giuseppe Garibaldi's troops. It was reported at the French Parliament that ""Les Chassepots ont fait merveille!"", ("The Chassepots have done wonderfully!") The heavy cylindrical lead bullets fired at high velocity by the Chassepot rifle inflicted wounds that were even worse than those of the Minié rifle. By 1868, the entire French active army had been re-armed with the Chassepot.


title: Chassepot

text: In the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), the Chassepot met its Prussian counterpart, the Dreyse needle-fire rifle. The Chassepot had several advantages over the Dreyse. It featured a rubber obturator on its bolt head to provide a more efficient gas-seal. Although it fired a smaller caliber (11 mm vs. 15.4 for the Dreyse), the Chassepot ammunition had more gunpowder (5.68 grams vs 4.85 grams), resulting in higher muzzle velocity (436 meters per second, 33% over the Dreyse), a flatter trajectory and a longer range. Thus the sights on the Chassepot could be elevated up to 1,600 meters, while the maximum sight setting of the Dreyse was only 600 meters. The Chassepot had a weight of 4.1 kg versus 4.57 kg for the needle-fire rifle. It was also shorter (1310 mm vs. 1424 mm).


title: Chassepot

text: In 1872 the Empire of Brazil purchased 8631 Chassepots; after being faced with a possible war involving Argentine claims over Paraguay. The weapons, however, were never officially distributed to the Army, since the decision to buy the Comblain had already been made and because of issue with the cartridge's reliability. The weapons ended their career in deposit or were handed over to police forces and shooting clubs. Some of these weapons were possibly used by rebels during the War of Canudos, they may have been captured from the Bahia police after the engagement at Maceté


title: Chassepot

text: Surplus Chassepot were exported to China. Some of the warriors of the Ethiopian Empire were equipped with Chassepot rifles during the first Italo-Ethiopian War of 1896.


title: Chassepot

text: The breech was closed by a bolt similar to those of more modern rifles. Amongst the technical features of interest introduced in 1866 on the Chassepot rifle was the method of obturation of the bolt by a segmented rubber ring which expanded under gas pressure and thus sealed the breech when the shot was fired. This simple yet effective technology was successfully adapted to artillery in 1877 by Colonel de Bange, who invented grease-impregnated asbestos pads to seal the breech of his new cannons (the De Bange system).


title: Chassepot

text: The Chassepot used a paper cartridge, that many refer to as being 'combustible', whereas in reality it was quite the opposite. It held an 11 mm (.43 inch) round-headed cylindro-conoidal lead bullet that was wax paper patched. An inverted standard percussion cap was at the rear of the paper cartridge and hidden inside. It was fired by the Chassepot's needle (a sharply pointed firing pin) upon pressing the trigger. While the Chassepot's ballistic performance and firing rates were excellent for the time, burnt paper residues as well as black powder fouling accumulated in the chamber and bolt mechanism after continuous firing. The bolt's rubber obturator eroded in action but was easily replaced in the field by infantrymen. The older Dreyse needle gun and its cartridge had been deliberately constructed in a way to minimize those problems but to the detriment of its ballistic properties.


title: Chassepot

text: To correct this problem the "Chassepot" was replaced in 1874 by the Gras rifle which used a centerfire drawn brass metallic cartridge. Otherwise, the Gras rifle was basically identical in outward appearance to the Chassepot rifle. Nearly all rifles of the older Chassepot model (Mle 1866) remaining in store were eventually converted to take the 11 mm Gras metallic cartridge ammunition ("fusil Modèle" 1866/74). About 665,327 Chassepot rifles had been captured by the German coalition that defeated France in 1871. Large numbers of these captured Chassepot rifles were shortened and converted to 11 mm Mauser metallic cartridge. It served with cavalry units of the Kingdom of Saxony and of the Kingdom of Bavaria. Others were disposed of "as is" with British surplus dealers. In most but not all, the French receiver markings on these German-captured Chassepot rifles had been erased.


title: Practical joke

text: A practical joke, or prank, is a mischievous trick played on someone, generally causing the victim to experience embarrassment, perplexity, confusion, or discomfort. A person who performs a practical joke is called a "practical joker" or "prankster". Other terms for practical jokes include gag, rib, jape, or shenanigan.


title: Practical joke

text: Practical jokes differ from confidence tricks or hoaxes in that the victim finds out, or is let in on the joke, rather than being talked into handing over money or other valuables. Practical jokes are generally lighthearted and without lasting effect; they aim to make the victim feel humbled or foolish, but not victimized or humiliated. Thus most practical jokes are affectionate gestures of humour and designed to encourage laughter. However, practical jokes performed with cruelty can constitute bullying, whose intent is to harass or exclude rather than reinforce social bonds through ritual humbling.


title: Practical joke

text: Some countries in Western culture traditionally emphasize the carrying out of practical jokes on April Fools' Day and Mischief Night.


title: Practical joke

text: A practical joke is "practical" because it consists of someone doing something that is physical, in contrast to a verbal or written joke. For example, the joker who is setting up and conducting the practical joke might hang a bucket of water above a doorway and rig the bucket using pulleys so when the door opens the bucket dumps the water. The joker would then wait for the victim to walk through the doorway and be drenched by the bucket of water. Objects can feature in practical jokes, like fake vomit, chewing-gum bugs, exploding cigars, stink bombs, costumes, whoopee cushions, clear tape, and Chinese finger traps. A practical joke can be as long as a person desires. It does not have to be short-lived.


title: Practical joke

text: Practical jokes often occur in offices, usually to surprise co-workers. Examples include covering computer accessories with Jell-O, wrapping a desk with Christmas paper or aluminium foil or filling it with balloons. Practical jokes also commonly occur during sleepovers, when teens play pranks on their friends as they come into the home, enter a room or even as they sleep.


title: Practical joke

text: American humorist H. Allen Smith wrote a 320-page book in 1953 called "The Compleat Practical Joker" that contains numerous examples of practical jokes. The book became a best seller – not only in the United States but also in Japan.


title: Practical joke

text: Moira Marsh has written an entire volume about practical jokes. She found that in the US males perpetrate such gags more often than females.


title: Practical joke

text: University students have a long association with pranks and japes. These can often involve petty crime, such as the theft of traffic cones and other public property, or hoaxes.


title: Practical joke

text: One classic target of student theft are traffic cones. The issue of the theft and misuse of traffic cones by students has gained enough prominence that a spokesperson from the UK National Union of Students stated that "stereotypes of students stealing traffic cones" are "outdated".


title: Practical joke

text: Some universities have gone as far as to devote entire pages of legislation and advice for students with regards to the consequences and laws involving the theft of traffic cones. Misuse of traffic cones in Scotland has even resulted in serious physical injury.


title: Practical joke

text: The traffic cone theft issue came to such a head in the United Kingdom in the 1990s that it was brought up in parliament.


title: Practical joke

text: In 2002, Fife Constabulary declared a "traffic cone amnesty" allowing University of St Andrews students to return stolen traffic cones without fear of prosecution. A police spokesman had said that the theft of traffic cones had become "an almost weekly occurrence".