title: Coyote (mythology)

text: Coyote asks the Black Spider to make a web out of cooked sinew and the spider agrees to help him. He then asks Parotsok^^itapitsi to accompany him at the edge of the water and shout when the Sky-Down-feather brothers try to fly away in order to keep them in place and he also agrees to do this. Eventually, both of the Sky-Down-feather-brothers get thirsty and search for some water to drink. The younger brother quickly spots the water where Coyote is hiding and suggests they land there to drink but the elder brother knows better and tells his brother that that is where Coyote is hiding, waiting for them. The brothers then try to trick Coyote multiple times by flying close to the water and saying, "Oh, Coyote, sitting by a roasting pit heating a stone!" Each time, Coyote almost reveals himself thinking he has been discovered but each time Parotsok^^itapitsi stops him telling him that the brothers are trying to trick him. Finally, the two brothers stop to drink and in that moment, Coyote throws the hot stone at them and Parotsok^^itapitsi shouts as they try to fly away and the brothers become trapped in the web blocking the sky's hole. Then, Black Spider climbs down the web and bites the brothers on their necks and they both fall back down to the ground.


title: Coyote (mythology)

text: The story concludes with Coyote going to where he had left his grandson's remains only to find that his grandson had been revived and was gone. Coyote deduces that his grandson has become a horse due to the fact that all the grass in the surrounding area had been eaten.


title: Coyote (mythology)

text: Myths and stories of Coyote are also found in the cultures of the Plateau area: the Chinookan (including the Wishram people and the Multnomah), the Flathead, the Nez Perce, the Nlaka'pamux, the Syilx (Okanagan), the St'at'imc, the Tsilhqot'in, and the Yakama.


title: Coyote (mythology)

text: One story from the Chinookan describes Coyote's attempts to catch salmon. After repeated failures, Coyote defecates and his own feces begin to insult him. Eventually, his feces stop insulting him and offer detailed advice not only for catching the salmon, but also for preparing the fish once he has them. Coyote enjoys success for a while before he begins to fail once again. Coyote stops and, as before, defecates again. This batch of feces tells Coyote that there are even more aspects he has to take into consideration when fishing including specific instructions for specific geographic location. The story concludes with Coyote finally understanding how to fish properly but thoroughly exhausted.


title: Coyote (mythology)

text: Sk'elep is the traditional trickster figure in Secwepemc mythology. He is featured in many legends and has many powers, including the ability to die and come back to life. Like the animal his character is enjoined to, he is very clever. But like all intelligent beings, he can also have his foolish moments and can make emblematic mistakes that people can learn from. According to one story, he once decided that he had to climb into a tree and spin a web like a spider. The only result of this misguided idea was that he left behind clumps of his hair in the tree. This magical hair, however, became "wila", the Secwepemc language for a species of lichen.


title: Coyote (mythology)

text: In some other Interior Salish cultures, Coyote went into the tree for other reasons; for example, in Colville-Okanagan culture, he was dropped into the tree by some swans he had grabbed in a hunt. In this story also, though, his hair became the hair moss lichen.


title: Coyote (mythology)

text: Between the Fraser and Columbia rivers, the Natives of the area held stories of Coyote in their Creation mythology. Coyote held a pivotal roll in the change between a world of animals and plants only, to a world where humans roamed as well. "The people of the time, though they had human form, were really animals, gifted with magical powers. Into the world then came certain transformers, the greatest of whom were the Coyote and the Old Man, who put the earth in order, giving the mountains and the valleys their present aspects and transforming the wicked among them, and these were the beings who the ancient world denizens into the animal shapes which are still theirs; the descendants of the good among these pristine beings are the Indians of today"


title: Coyote (mythology)

text: Coyote also appears in the traditions of the Jicarilla Apache. In the mythology of the Tohono O'odham people of Arizona, he appears as an associate of the culture-hero Montezuma. Coyote also appears as a trickster in stories of the Tohono O'odham people. As told by a collective of natives in O'odham Creation and Related Events- Coyote Marries the Hunter's Wives, Red Racer Snake and Coyote, Turtle and Coyote, and many more stories of Coyote dealing in his usual mix of kind gestures with tricky twists and ulterior motives.


title: Coyote (mythology)

text: He appears with a pivotal roll in the creation myth of the Navajo people of Northern Arizona. "The Navajo people believe the world is built in a sequence of storeys, the fifth of these being the earth on which men now dwell. The genesis Legend of this tribe divides into four episodic tales, the first of which, The Age of Beginnings, narrates the ascent of the progenitors of Earth's inhabitants from storey to storey of the Underworld, and their final emergence upon Earth" As the story develops Coyote guides the humans down to earth while badger continues to the underworld. "One day they saw the Sky stooping down and the earth rising to meet it. At the point of contact, Coyote and Badger sprang down from the world above; Badger descended into the world below, but Coyote remained with the people (First Man)"


title: Coyote (mythology)

text: He also appears in a legend of the White Mountain Apache, "Coyote fights a lump of pitch" (a variant of the Tar-Baby theme), and in similar legends of the Zapotec and Popoluca of Mexico.


title: Coyote (mythology)

text: Coyote plays a prominent role in many stories in the Diné (Navajo) mythos; see Coyote (Navajo mythology).


title: Coyote (mythology)

text: Coyote is compared to both the Scandinavian Loki, and also Prometheus, who shared with Coyote the trick of having stolen fire from the gods as a gift for mankind, and Anansi, a mythological culture hero from Western African mythology. In Eurasia, rather than a coyote, a fox is often featured as a trickster hero, ranging from kitsune (fox) tales in Japan to the Reynard cycle in Western Europe.


title: Coyote (mythology)

text: Claude Lévi-Strauss, French anthropologist proposed a structuralist theory that suggests that Coyote and Crow obtained mythic status because they are mediator animals between life and death.


title: Coyote (mythology)

text: Coyote figures prominently in a number of Indigenous language and cultural and preservation projects in North America. For example, the Secwepemc people of the Kamloops Indian Band in Kamloops, British Columbia, have named their recently opened elementary school the Sk'elep School of Excellence, while educational websites such as one co-sponsored by the Neskonlith Indian Band of Chase, British Columbia prominently feature stories about Sk'elep.


title: Coyote (mythology)

text: 9. Cooper, Guy. “World Mythology.” World Mythology, by Roy G. Willis, vol. 1, Metro Books, 2012, pp. 220–234.


title: A. J. Cronin

text: Archibald Joseph Cronin (19 July 1896 – 6 January 1981), known as A. J. Cronin, was a Scottish physician and novelist. His best-known novel is "The Citadel" (1937), about a Scottish doctor who serves in a Welsh mining village before achieving success in London, where he becomes disillusioned about the venality and incompetence of some doctors. Cronin knew both areas, as a medical inspector of mines and as a doctor in Harley Street. The book exposed unfairness and malpractice in British medicine and helped to inspire the National Health Service. "The Stars Look Down", set in the North East of England, is another of his best-selling novels inspired by his work among miners. Both novels have been filmed, as have "Hatter's Castle", "The Keys of the Kingdom" and "The Green Years". His 1935 novella "Country Doctor" inspired a long-running BBC radio and TV series, "Dr. Finlay's Casebook" (1962–1971), set in the 1920s. There was a follow-up series in 1993–1996.


title: A. J. Cronin

text: Cronin was born in Cardross, Dunbartonshire, Scotland, the only child of a Presbyterian mother, Jessie Cronin (née Montgomerie), and a Catholic father, Patrick Cronin. Cronin often wrote of young men from similarly mixed backgrounds. His paternal grandparents had emigrated from County Armagh, Ireland, and become glass and china merchants in Alexandria. Owen Cronin, his grandfather, had had his surname changed from Cronague in 1870. His maternal grandfather, Archibald Montgomerie, was a hatter who owned a shop in Dumbarton. After their marriage Cronin's parents moved to Helensburgh, where he attended Grant Street School. When he was seven years old, his father, an insurance agent and commercial traveller, died of tuberculosis. He and his mother moved to her parents' home in Dumbarton, and she soon became a public health inspector in Glasgow.


title: A. J. Cronin

text: Cronin was not only a precocious student at Dumbarton Academy, who won prizes in writing competitions, but an excellent athlete and association footballer. From an early age he was an avid golfer, and he enjoyed the sport throughout his life. He also loved salmon fishing.


title: A. J. Cronin

text: The family later moved to Yorkhill, Glasgow, where Cronin attended St Aloysius' College in the Garnethill area of the city. He played football for the First XI there, an experience he included in one of his last novels, "The Minstrel Boy". A family decision that he should study either to join the church or to practise medicine was settled by Cronin himself when he chose "the lesser of two evils". He won a Carnegie scholarship to study medicine at the University of Glasgow in 1914. Having been absent in 1916–1917 for naval service, he graduated in 1919 with highest honours in the degree of MBChB. Later that year he visited India as ship's surgeon on a liner. Cronin went on to earn additional qualifications, including a Diploma in Public Health (1923) and Membership of the Royal College of Physicians (1924). In 1925 he gained an MD at the University of Glasgow with a dissertation entitled "The History of Aneurysm".


title: A. J. Cronin

text: During the First World War, Cronin served as a surgeon sub-lieutenant in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve before graduating from medical school. After the war he trained at hospitals that included Bellahouston Hospital and Lightburn Hospital in Glasgow and the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin. He undertook general practice at Garelochhead, a village on the , and in Tredegar, a mining town in South Wales. In 1924 he was appointed Medical Inspector of Mines for Great Britain. His survey of medical regulations in collieries and his reports on the correlation between coal-dust inhalation and pulmonary disease were published over the next few years. Cronin drew on his medical experience and research into the occupational hazards of the mining industry for his later novels – "The Citadel", set in Wales, and "The Stars Look Down", set in Northumberland. He subsequently moved to London, where he practised in Harley Street before opening a busy medical practice of his own in Notting Hill. Cronin was also the medical officer for the Whiteleys department store at the time and had an increasing interest in ophthalmology.


title: A. J. Cronin

text: In 1930 Cronin was diagnosed with a chronic duodenal ulcer and told to take six months' complete rest in the country on a milk diet. At Dalchenna Farm by Loch Fyne he was finally able to indulge a lifelong desire to write a novel, having previously "written nothing but prescriptions and scientific papers." From Dalchenna Farm he travelled to Dumbarton to research the background of his first novel, using files from Dumbarton Library, which still has a letter from him requesting advice. He composed "Hatter's Castle" in the span of three months and quickly had it accepted by Gollancz, the only publisher to which he submitted it, apparently after his wife had randomly stuck a pin in a list of publishers. It was an immediate success and launched Cronin's career as a prolific author. He never returned to medicine.


title: A. J. Cronin

text: Many of Cronin's books were bestsellers in their day and translated into many languages. Some of his stories draw on his medical career, dramatically mixing realism, romance and social criticism. Cronin's works examine moral conflicts between the individual and society, as his idealistic heroes pursue justice for the common man. One of his early novels, "The Stars Look Down" (1935), chronicles transgressions in a mining community in north-east England and an ambitious miner's rise to be a Member of Parliament (MP).


title: A. J. Cronin

text: A prodigiously fast writer, Cronin liked to average 5,000 words a day, meticulously planning the details of his plots in advance. He was known to be tough in business dealings, although in private life he was a person whose "pawky humour... peppered his conversations," according to one of his editors, Peter Haining.


title: A. J. Cronin

text: Cronin also contributed stories and essays to various international publications. During the Second World War he worked for the British Ministry of Information, writing articles as well as participating in radio broadcasts to foreign countries.


title: A. J. Cronin

text: "The Citadel" (1937), a tale of a mining company doctor's struggle to balance scientific integrity with social obligations, helped to promote the establishment of the National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom by exposing the inequity and incompetence of medical practice at the time. In the novel Cronin advocated a free public health service to defeat the wiles of doctors who "raised guinea-snatching and the bamboozling of patients to an art form." Cronin and Aneurin Bevan had both worked at the Tredegar Cottage Hospital in Wales, which served as one of the bases for the NHS. The author quickly made enemies in the medical profession, and there was a concerted effort by one group of specialists to get "The Citadel" banned. Cronin's novel, which became the highest-selling book ever published by Gollancz, informed the public about corruption in the medical system, which eventually led to reform. Not only were the author's pioneering ideas instrumental in creating the NHS, but according to the historian Raphael Samuel, the popularity of Cronin's novels played a major role in the Labour Party's landslide victory in 1945.


title: A. J. Cronin

text: By contrast, one of Cronin's biographers, Alan Davies, called the book's reception mixed. A few of the more vociferous medical practitioners of the day took exception to one of its many messages: that a few well-heeled doctors in fashionable practices were extracting large amounts of money from their equally well-off patients. Some pointed to a lack of balance between criticism and praise for hard-working doctors. The majority accepted it for what it was, a topical novel. The press tried to incite passions within the profession in an attempt to sell copy, while Victor Gollancz followed suit in an attempt to promote the book – both overlooking that it was a work of fiction, not a scientific piece of research, and not autobiographical.


title: A. J. Cronin

text: In the United States "The Citadel" won the National Book Award, Favorite Fiction of 1937, voted by members of the American Booksellers Association. According to a Gallup poll taken in 1939, "The Citadel" was voted the most interesting book readers had ever read.


title: A. J. Cronin

text: Some of Cronin's novels also deal with religion, which he had grown away from during his medical training and career, but to which he became reacquainted in the 1930s. At medical school, as he recounts in his autobiography, he had become an agnostic: "When I thought of God it was with a superior smile, indicative of biological scorn for such an outworn myth." During his practice in Wales, however, the deep religious faith of the people he worked among made him start to wonder whether "the compass of existence held more than my text-books had revealed, more than I had ever dreamed of. In short I lost my superiority, and this, though I was not then aware of it, is the first step towards finding God."


title: A. J. Cronin

text: Cronin also came to feel, "If we consider the physical universe... we cannot escape the notion of a primary Creator... Accept evolution with its fossils and elementary species, its scientific doctrine of natural causes. And still you are confronted with the same mystery, primary and profound. "Ex nihilo nihil", as the Latin tag of our schooldays has it: nothing can come of nothing." This was brought home to him in London, where in his spare time he had organised a working boys' club. One day he invited a distinguished zoologist to deliver a lecture to the members. The speaker, adopting "a frankly atheistic approach", described the sequence of events leading to the emergence, "though he did not say how," of the first primitive life-form from lifeless matter. When he concluded, there was polite applause. Then, "a mild and very average youngster rose nervously to his feet," and with a slight stammer asked how there came to be anything in the first place. The naïve question took everyone by surprise. The lecturer "looked annoyed, hesitated, slowly turned red. Then, before he could answer, the whole club burst into a howl of laughter. The elaborate structure of logic offered by the test-tube realist had been crumpled by one word of challenge from a simple-minded boy."


title: A. J. Cronin

text: It was at university that Cronin met his future wife, Agnes Mary Gibson (May, 1898–1981), who was also a medical student. She was the daughter of Robert Gibson, a master baker, and Agnes Thomson Gibson (née Gilchrist) of Hamilton, Lanarkshire. The couple married on 31 August 1921. As a physician, May worked with her husband briefly in the dispensary while he was employed by the Tredegar Medical Aid Society. She also assisted him with his practice in London. When he became an author, she would proofread his manuscripts. Their first son, Vincent, was born in Tredegar in 1924. Their second, Patrick, was born in London in 1926, and Andrew, their youngest, in London in 1937.


title: A. J. Cronin

text: With his stories being adapted for Hollywood films, Cronin and his family moved to the United States in 1939, living in Bel Air, California, Nantucket, Massachusetts, Greenwich, Connecticut, and Blue Hill, Maine. In 1945, the Cronins sailed back to England aboard the RMS "Queen Mary", staying briefly in Hove and then in Raheny, Ireland, before returning to the US the following year. They took up residence at the Carlyle Hotel in New York City and then in Deerfield, Massachusetts, before settling in New Canaan, Connecticut, in 1947. Cronin also travelled frequently to summer homes in Bermuda and Cap-d'Ail, France.


title: A. J. Cronin

text: Ultimately Cronin returned to Europe, to reside in Lucerne and Montreux, Switzerland, for the last 25 years of his life. He continued to write into his eighties. He included among his friends Laurence Olivier, Charlie Chaplin and Audrey Hepburn, to whose first son he was a godfather. Richard E. Berlin was the godfather of his son Andrew.


title: A. J. Cronin

text: Although the latter part of his life was spent entirely abroad, Cronin retained great affection for the district of his childhood, writing in 1972 to a local teacher: "Although I have travelled the world over I must say in all sincerity that my heart belongs to Dumbarton... In my study there is a beautiful 17th-century coloured print of the Rock... I even follow with great fervour the fortunes of the Dumbarton football team." Further evidence of Cronin's lifelong support of Dumbarton F.C. comes from a framed typewritten letter hanging in the foyer of the club's stadium. The letter, written in 1972 and addressed to the club's then secretary, congratulates the team on its return to the top division after a gap of 50 years. He recalls his childhood support for it, and on occasion being "lifted over" the turnstiles (a common practice in times past so that children did not have to pay).


title: A. J. Cronin

text: Cronin died on 6 January 1981 in Montreux and is interred at La Tour-de-Peilz. Many of Cronin's writings, including published and unpublished literary manuscripts, drafts, letters, school exercise books and essays, laboratory books and his M.D. thesis, are held at the National Library of Scotland and at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas.


title: A. J. Cronin

text: Cronin's widow Agnes followed him on June 10, 1981, and after cremation, her ashes were buried next to him.


The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Hearts of Stone is the first expansion pack for the 2015 video game "". Developed by CD Projekt Red, "Hearts of Stone" was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on 13 October 2015, later released for the Nintendo Switch on 15 October 2019, and PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S versions planning for release in 2022. The expansion is an adaptation of the Polish folktale of Pan Twardowski, following Geralt of Rivia coming in contact with a mysterious man known as Gaunter O'Dimm, and his connections to Olgierd von Everec, a cursed nobleman.


title: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Hearts of Stone

text: Geralt takes up a contract sent out by a noble named Olgierd von Everec, who tasks him with eliminating a giant toad monster in the sewers of Oxenfurt. While hunting the monster, Geralt runs into Shani, a medic and an old acquaintance of his, whom he has the option of romancing. Geralt then kills the toad monster, only to find it was actually a cursed Ofieri prince. The prince's guards capture Geralt with the intention of executing him. While awaiting his execution en route to Ofier, Geralt is approached by the mysterious Gaunter O'Dimm. O'Dimm helps Geralt escape, but in return, Geralt must help O'Dimm recover a debt from von Everec, who had set up Geralt knowing the toad monster was an Ofieri prince. O'Dimm brands Geralt and tells him that according to terms of his contract with von Everec, he must fulfill three of von Everec's wishes. O'Dimm disappears and a strong storm gets the boat to crash. While being handcuffed and taken as a prisoner by the Offieri, Geralt manages to escape. Geralt confronts von Everec and discovers that von Everec had obtained immortality at the cost of his emotions, giving him a "Heart of Stone". He admits to cursing the Ofieri prince since he was arranged to marry his true love, Iris, and that he wished for immortality in order to be with her. He then tells Geralt his three wishes: to entertain his brother Vlodimir for one night, to get revenge on the Borsodi family by obtaining Maximilian Borsodi's house, and to obtain the violet rose he had given to Iris. O'Dimm tells Geralt that the three tasks are meant to be impossible, as Maximilian Borsodi's house is kept in a highly secure vault, and both Vlodimir and Iris have been dead for years, but despite that, he agrees to assist Geralt.


text: With O'Dimm's help, Geralt allows Vlodimir's spirit to possess his body for one night, allowing him to attend a wedding party and fulfilling the first wish. O'Dimm banishes Vlodimir when the task is done, implying that he has powerful magic. Geralt then participates in a heist to steal Maximilian Borsodi's house from its vault and finds that it contains a will that would grant the entire Borsodi fortune to charity, fulfilling von Everec's revenge and second wish. To obtain Iris' rose, Geralt enlists the help of two demonic entities that resemble a cat and a dog to gain access to a supernatural realm where he witnesses von Everec and Iris' past. There, he learns that due to his "Heart of Stone," von Everec could not genuinely love Iris, and she died neglected and unhappy. Geralt, based on the player's choice, can either obtain the rose from Iris' spirit in order to free her from being "pinned" into the world or let the rose remain with her. Either way, Geralt fulfills von Everec's last wish and goes to meet with him. Along the way, he learns that O'Dimm is, in fact, an ancient entity of pure evil that relishes tricking people into trading away their souls in return for granting wishes that, unknown to the recipients, contain harmful side effects. When Geralt meets with von Everec, the three wishes are fulfilled, and O'Dimm arrives to collect von Everec's soul.


text: At this point, Geralt has the option of allowing O'Dimm to take von Everec's soul or intervening to save von Everec. If Geralt does nothing, O'Dimm kills von Everec, takes his soul, and rewards Geralt with one wish. If Geralt intervenes, he challenges O'Dimm by wagering his own soul to save von Everec. After Geralt solves O'Dimm's riddle, O'Dimm is forced to release both Geralt and von Everec from their pacts. Von Everec, now mortal again, regains his emotions and immediately feels regret for his past actions and mistakes. He gives Geralt his family sword and promises to start a new life free from O'Dimm's control.


text: Gameplay does not differ much from the base game apart from a different story and exclusive quests. The expansion contains several new weapons and items, for example, the Runewright system, where Oferi craftsmen offer Runes (upgrades for weapons and armor) to the player in exchange for money.


text: On 7 April 2015, CD Projekt announced two expansion packs for ""— the first expansion being "Hearts of Stone" and the second being "". "Hearts of Stone" was released on 13 October 2015.


text: "Hearts of Stone" received highly positive reviews from critics, with the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions garnering "Universal Acclaim", according to the review aggregator website Metacritic. The game scored a 9/10 from reviewers at both "IGN" and "GameSpot".


title: The Prince of Tides (novel)

text: The Prince of Tides is a novel by Pat Conroy, first published in 1986. It revolves around traumatic events that affected former football player Tom Wingo's relationship with his immediate family. As Tom grapples with his twin sister's attempted suicide and the absence of his charismatic older brother Luke, the story outlines life in the south and the events that threaten to tear Tom's family apart. The novel was adapted into a 1991 American film of the same name.


title: The Prince of Tides (novel)

text: Tom Wingo is a middle-aged man with a wife and three young daughters who has recently lost his job as a high school English teacher and football coach. He learns that his twin sister, Savannah, has attempted suicide yet again. Starting in her childhood, Savannah experienced visual and aural hallucinations involving bloody figures and dogs which tell her to kill herself. Savannah moves to New York City and becomes an emerging writer of poetry, writing about her past as a way to escape from it. After many years, Savannah attempts suicide and nearly dies, the hallucinations still haunting her. Tom agrees to go to New York to look after his sister until she is well again. Before he leaves his home in South Carolina, he learns that Sallie, his wife, is having an affair. He is not completely surprised as he has not been very affectionate toward her.


title: The Prince of Tides (novel)

text: In New York, Tom stays at Savannah’s apartment, as she is in the hospital. He meets with her psychiatrist, Susan Lowenstein, and agrees to stay in the city until he has filled Susan in on the dysfunctional childhood he and Savannah shared. Susan does not think it is a good idea for Tom to visit Savannah for a while since contact with any of her family greatly disturbs her.


title: The Prince of Tides (novel)

text: Susan and Tom grow close during all the time they spend together talking about Savannah. They are very different people: Susan is a wealthy Jewish psychiatrist who lives in New York City and Tom is a Catholic teacher who grew up poor in rural Colleton County, South Carolina. They often butt heads, but they develop a relationship of mutual comfort and respect. Susan tells Tom about her shaky marriage to Herbert Woodruff, a famous concert violinist, and her husband’s affair with another woman. Tom and Susan spend a lot of time together socially as well as professionally. He also agrees to coach Susan’s difficult teenaged son, Bernard, in football.


title: The Prince of Tides (novel)

text: Tom recounts his sad and horrific childhood for Susan in hopes that it might help her save Savannah. We learn that Tom and his siblings, twin sister Savannah and their elder brother, Luke, were the offspring of an abusive father and uncaring mother. Their father, Henry, a WWII bomber crewman who survived being shot down and managed to evade capture by the Nazis, thought that the best way to raise a family was by beating them, and did so regularly. He was a shrimp boat operator and, despite being successful at that profession, spent all of his money on frivolous business pursuits. One business attempt was a gas station that he advertised with a live tiger, which became the family pet, Caesar. These attempts leave the family in poverty. Their overly proud, status-hungry mother, Lila, was only concerned about the family's public image and would not let her children say a word about their father's abuse.


title: The Prince of Tides (novel)

text: Eventually, Tom reveals the most traumatic event of their childhood, which ultimately caused the first of several of Savannah's suicide attempts. A man the children nickname "Callanwolde,” who they first encounter in the woods next to their grandmother's home in Atlanta, later escapes from prison with two other men and goes to the Wingo home on Melrose Island, South Carolina when the twins were 18. They rape Tom, Savannah, and Lila. Luke, who was working outside, comes to the house, sees the men through the window, and releases Caesar, who kills the men raping Lila and Savannah. Meanwhile, Tom kills the man who raped him. Lila and the children dispose of the men's bodies and she makes them promise that they will never tell a soul about what happened.


title: The Prince of Tides (novel)

text: After the revelation of the rape, Susan feels that she is even closer to helping Savannah. Tom says the worst thing that happened to their family was Luke’s death. This is the incident that caused Tom to have a nervous breakdown and lose his job. He then tells the story of how Luke died. Lila ends up divorcing Henry many years later, and marries Reese Newbury, a prominent landowner in the city of Colleton and the father of Tom's childhood rival. Lila had gained Melrose Island in the divorce settlement, and sells it to Newbury, who in turn sells it to the Atomic Energy Commission, who are beginning construction of production plants there. Luke, an ex-Navy SEAL who served in Vietnam, decides to fight for his land and the city by using guerrilla tactics to destroy bridges and building equipment, leading him to become a wanted man. An FBI agent approaches Tom and asks him to offer Luke a deal of only three to five years in prison in exchange for his cease-fire. Both Savannah and Tom track down Luke, and they try to persuade him to give up instead of being killed by the FBI. Luke agrees to the deal, but on his way to the rendezvous point to surrender, he is shot and killed by a soldier who did not know about the agreement. Luke's death was the driving force behind Savannah's latest suicide attempt, and Susan and Tom figure out that in order to save Savannah, she would have to write poetry about Luke's life the way she wrote about her childhood.


title: The Prince of Tides (novel)

text: Tom and Susan begin an affair, but Tom realizes that he still loves Sallie. During his time in the city, he becomes a new man. He falls in love with life again and owes much of his transformation to Susan. After saving Savannah, Tom and Susan part ways and he returns to his family in South Carolina, reconciling with Sallie. He becomes much closer to his wife and daughters as a result of his time in New York. We later learn that Susan ends up divorcing Herbert and is now dating a lawyer. Meanwhile, Savannah recovers from her suicide attempt, and she and Tom become closer to each other. Henry, after being released from prison for drug trafficking, is confronted by Tom about his abuse. However, he does not remember ever hurting his family. Although Savannah and Tom can never completely forgive Henry for the damage that he did, they look forward to getting to know their father better, who acts like a changed man. Despite an earlier apologetic conversation between Lila and Tom, he and Savannah have not completely repaired their relationship with their mother. At the novel’s conclusion, it appears that despite all that has happened, everyone will be all right.


title: The Prince of Tides (novel)

text: "The Prince of Tides" was acclaimed by critics and became a best seller. In 1991, a film version, with Nick Nolte as Tom, Melinda Dillon as Savannah, Kate Nelligan as their mother, and Barbra Streisand (who also directed) as Lowenstein, was released. Although not as critically acclaimed as the novel, the movie was a box-office hit and was nominated for several Academy Awards, including Best Picture.


title: The Prince of Tides (novel)

text: Both the film and the novel have inspired or been referenced in other creative works. Jimmy Buffett and Michael Utley wrote a song titled "Prince of Tides" for Buffett's 16th studio album "Hot Water", released in June 1988. The song retells the story of the book, and starts and finishes with Jimmy Buffett reading passages from the book. The song is dedicated: "Pat Conroy, Doc Pomus and the people of Daufuskie Island have already said it all. I am thankful for such inspiration." In the television comedy series "Ted Lasso" (season 2, episode 2), sports psychologist Dr. Sharon Fieldstone calls "The Prince of Tides" her favorite book.


title: Narodniks

text: The Narodniks (, ) were a politically conscious movement of the Russian intelligentsia in the 1860s and 1870s, some of whom became involved in revolutionary agitation against tsarism. Their ideology, known as Narodism, Narodnism or (; , similar to the German ), was a form of agrarian socialism though is often misunderstood as populism.


title: Narodniks

text: The (; meaning 'going to the people') campaigns were the central impetus of the Narodnik movement. The Narodniks were in many ways the intellectual and political forebears and, in notable cases, direct participants of the Russian Revolution—in particular of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, which went on to greatly influence Russian history in the early 20th century.


title: Narodniks

text: Narodnichestvo as a philosophy was influenced by the works of Alexander Herzen (1812–1870) and Nikolay Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky (1828–1889), whose convictions were refined by Pyotr Lavrov (1823–1900) and Nikolay Mikhaylovsky (1842–1904). In the late 19th century, socialism and capitalism were slowly becoming the primary theories of Russian political thought, and Mikhaylovsky, realizing this shift in thought, began to tweak his original ideas of Narodnism, such that two groups of Narodniks emerged: the so-called "Critical Narodniks" and "Doctrinaire Narodniks". Critical Narodniks followed Mikhaylovsky, and assumed a very flexible stance on capitalism, whilst adhering to their basic orientation. The more well-known Doctrinaire Narodniks had a firm belief that capitalism had no future in Russia or in any agrarian country.


title: Narodniks

text: Narodnichestvo arose after the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 under Tsar Alexander II, which signaled the end of feudalism in Russia. Arguing that freed serfs were being sold into wage slavery, in which the bourgeoisie had replaced landowners, Narodnism aimed to become a political force opposed to the phenomenon. They supported the existing "obshchina" system of communes and wanted to strengthen peasant self-governance.


title: Narodniks

text: Narodniki established semi-underground circles (кружки, ) such as the Chaikovsky Circle and Land and Liberty, with the goals of self-education and external propaganda work. They shared the common general aims of destroying the Russian monarchy and of distributing land fairly among the peasantry. The Narodniks generally believed that it was possible to forgo the capitalist phase of Russia's development and proceed directly to socialism.


title: Narodniks

text: The Narodniks saw the peasantry as the revolutionary class that would overthrow the monarchy, and perceived the village commune as the embryo of socialism. However, they also believed that the peasantry would not achieve revolution on their own, insisting instead that history could only be made by outstanding personalities, who would lead an otherwise passive peasantry to revolution. Vasily Vorontsov called for the Russian intelligentsia to "bestir itself from the mental lethargy into which, in contrast to the sensitive and lively years of the seventies, it had fallen and formulate a scientific theory of Russian economic development". However, some Narodnik intellectuals called for an immediate revolution that went beyond philosophical and political discussion.


title: Narodniks

text: In the spring of 1874, the Narodnik intelligentsia left the cities for the villages, Going to the People in an attempt to uplift the peasantry their moral imperative to revolt. They found almost no support. Given the Narodniks' generally middle- and upper-middle-class social background, they found difficulty relating to the impoverished peasants and their culture. They spent much of their time learning peasant customs, such as clothing and peasant labor. Narodniks were viewed with suspicion by many Russian peasants, who were completely removed from the more modernized culture of the urban sphere. The authorities responded to the Narodniks' attempt with repression: revolutionaries and their peasant sympathizers were imprisoned and exiled.


title: Narodniks

text: One response to this repression was the formation of Russia's first organized revolutionary party, "Narodnaya Volya" ("People's Will"), in June 1879. It favoured secret society-led terrorism, justified “as a means of exerting pressure on the government for reform, as the spark that would ignite a vast peasant uprising, and as the inevitable response to the regime's use of violence against the revolutionaries”. The attempt to get the peasantry to overthrow the Tsar proved unsuccessful, due to the peasantry's idolisation of the latter as someone "on their side". Narodism therefore developed the practice of terrorism: the peasantry, they believed, had to be shown that the Tsar was not supernatural, and could be killed. This theory, called "direct struggle", intended "uninterrupted demonstration of the possibility of struggling against the government, in this manner lifting the revolutionary spirit of the people and its faith in the success of the cause, and organising those capable of fighting". On March 1, 1881, they succeeded in assassinating Alexander II. This act backfired on a political level, because the peasantry were generally horrified by the murder, and the government had many Narodnaya Volya leaders hanged, leaving the group unorganized and ineffective.


title: Narodniks

text: However, these events did not mark the end of the movement, and the later Socialist-Revolutionaries, Popular Socialists, and Trudoviks all pursued similar ideas and tactics to the Narodniks. The philosophy and actions of the Narodniks therefore helped prepare the way for the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917.


title: Narodniks

text: The Narodnik movement was a populist initiative to engage the rural classes of Russia in a political debate that would overthrow the Tsar’s government in the nineteenth century. Unlike the French Revolution or the Revolutions of 1848, the “to the people” movement was political activism primarily by the Russian intelligentsia. These individuals were generally anti-capitalist, and they believed that they could facilitate both an economic and a political revolution amongst rural Russians by “going to” and educating the peasant classes.


title: Narodniks

text: The concept of the narod, like the volk in Germany, was an attempt to establish a new national identity in Russia that was both nationalistic and liberal. Fyodor Dostoevsky said that “none of us like the narod as they actually are, but only as each of us has imagined them.” Russian political activists and government officials often claimed to be working to improve the lives of Russian peasants; in reality, they were manipulating the image of the peasant to further their own political objectives. Narodniks saw the peasant commune as a Russia that had not been tainted by western influence; Alexander Herzen wrote that the narod was “the official Russia; the real Russia.” Hampered by a biased understanding of the peasantry, the Narodniks struggled, mostly unsuccessfully, to relate to the peasantry. Rural Russians were typically highly devoted to the Tsar and to the Russian Orthodox Church; not understanding this, the Narodnik rhetoric blamed the Tsar and centralized religion for the peasants’ lack of land and material resources. Another example of the cultural disconnect between the intelligentsia and the peasants in the “to the people” movement was the Narodniks propagandizing through pamphlets when virtually all poor Russians were illiterate. In essence, the Narodnik movement in 1874 failed because they approached the peasants as though the peasants were intellectuals like themselves. Radicals in the latter part of the 1870s would learn that their concept of the narod was flawed, and intellectuals would have to instead make themselves into peasants to have success in the movement and begin a revolution against the government of Alexander II. Nikolay Chernyshevsky’s “anthropological principle” held that all humans, regardless of class, have many intrinsic similarities, and intellectuals saw in the peasants a purified version of themselves that could be radicalized; time demonstrated that this was simply not the case.


title: Narodniks

text: Disunity between Bakunists and Lavrists, and Narodnik circles acting on independent initiative, were a further obstacle. The Bakunists believed revolution among the peasantry and populist uprisings in Russia would begin in the immediate future, the latter believed that propaganda should precede revolution, and the process would be more gradual. Bakunists believed that the peasants were ready to revolt with little propagandizing, whereas the Lavrists thought that considerable effort would be needed for the uprisings to begin. A lack of ideological unity resulted in varied approaches to the movement, and because of this the Narodniks no longer presented a united front to rural Russia. Some Narodniks believed in propagandizing by staying in one area for an extended period of time and assimilating into a commune that they were trying to revolutionize (“settled” propaganda), and others practiced propagandizing by using pamphlets and literature to maximize the number of people that the message reached (“flying” propaganda).


title: Narodniks

text: Disunity was prevalent even though Narodniks only traveled in three directions: either towards Volga, Dnieper, or Don. The Narodniki, who often took up work as nurses, scribes, schoolteachers, or participated in construction and harvest, struggled in unfamiliar terrain and poverty. All Narodniks resented foreign intervention into Russia, wanted Russian communes to control their own economic policies. Narodniks believed that the Tsar had impoverished the peasants, but Narodniks should have understood how highly the peasants regarded the Tsar. By failing to present a disciplined message and avoid directly attacking the Tsar, the Narodniki was often simply ignored. It was not until the formation of Narodnaya Volya in 1879 that young revolutionaries saw the need for organization and a disciplined message.


title: Narodniks

text: This lack of unity is responsible for the third reason that the “going to the people movement” failed; the peasants did not receive the intellectuals well. The reception that the intelligentsia received in the communes was so poor that it destroyed their idealized image of the peasant that was so common prior to 1874. The Narodniks saw peasants as a unified body; they thought that all peasants dressed poorly, so intellectuals dressed as poorly as was possible in order to fit in. In actuality, the peasants saw a poorly dressed person as a person with no authority or credibility. Accordingly, intellectuals dressing as they imagined the peasant dressed had an adverse effect; it actually made peasants suspicious of the intellectuals. Furthermore, Narodnik propaganda failed to address the more mundane, ordinary concerns of the peasantry. The everyday troubles of a rural Russian—a lack of material goods, poor healthcare, etc.—left little time for discussions of socialism or egoism.


title: Narodniks

text: Feminism in the Narodnik movement was also hard for the peasantry to accept. Pre-Marxist revolutionaries believed in an unusually strong equality of sex, and educated noblewomen played major roles in radical movements in the latter decades of the nineteenth century. Russian revolutionary literature in the 1840s and 1850s linked the causes of emancipation of serfs with the emancipation of the Russian woman—this literature was manifest in the Narodnik movement. The Narodniks promulgated Chernyshevskyan ideas of chaste cohabitation—that men and women should live together with no sexual interactions—and gender equality. These concepts were extremely odd to most peasants, and they did not generally react well to them. Furthermore, Narodniks often lived in communes where non-married men and women slept and lived in the same rooms. To Orthodox Russian peasants in the 1870s, such disregard of gender norms were both offensive and off-putting. When you consider the fact that nearly 60% of Narodnik women were from wealthy classes it becomes clear why the Russian peasant could not relate to most intellectuals in the movement intellectually, economically or socially. Historian Dmitri Pisarev writes that “sensing their inability to act alone, the intelligent radical made the peasantry the instrument to realize their hopes.” As historian Daniel Field wrote, however, “Narodniks found that the peasant desire for land was not accompanied by a wish to rebel.” The Russian government did not look favorably on the Narodniks advocating their overthrow, and peasants would only abide Narodniks so long as no criminal connections could be drawn to them. The Narodniks believed that the peasants were the class in Russia most prone to revolution, yet the peasants were not ready for revolutionary action.


title: Narodniks

text: Government suppression of the Narodniki resulted in mass trials that widely publicized the views of the Narodniki, and outraged the public. Between 1873 and 1877, the Russian police arrested 1,611 propagandists, of whom 15% were women. Radicals in the movement focused on Russia’s oppressive taxation and land laws, and their propaganda was viewed as a threat by Tsar Alexander II. He ordered the arrest and trial of known Narodniks and Narodnik sympathizers in the peasantry; peasants were forced to expose the Narodniks to the authorities to escape persecution themselves. Beginning in 1877, a long and slow trial of 193 Narodniks was conducted. The propagandists had to either operate covertly or face imprisonment.


title: Narodniks

text: The more the government tried to repress the Narodniks, the more radical the Narodniks became. They grew increasingly selective in their membership, and their Zemlya i Volya (Land and Freedom) members would eventually evolve to form more terroristic organizations: Narodnaya Volya (The People’s Will) and Chornyperedel (Black Repartition). These groups sought to begin a revolution through violence, and when members of Narodnaya Volya killed Tsar Alexander in 1881, the larger Narodnik movement lost virtually all support in the communes and rural parts of Russia. Government oppression further radicalized the Narodniks, and the peasants could not support enhanced radicalization of the already radical intelligentsia.


title: Narodniks

text: "Narodnichestvo" had a direct influence on politics and culture in Romania, through the writings of Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea and the advocacy of the Bessarabian-born Constantin Stere (who was a member of "Narodnaya Volya" in his youth). The latter helped found various groups, included one formed around the literary magazine "Viața Românească", which he published along with Garabet Ibrăileanu and Paul Bujor.


title: Narodniks

text: Stere and the "Poporanist" (from "popor", Romanian for "people") movement eventually rejected revolution altogether. Nevertheless, he shared the Narodnik view that capitalism was not a necessary stage in the development of an agrarian country. This perspective, which contradicted traditional Marxism, also influenced Ion Mihalache's Peasants' Party and its successor, the National Peasants' Party, as well as the philosophy of Virgil Madgearu.


title: Blade (1998 film)

text: Blade is a 1998 superhero film directed by Stephen Norrington and written by David S. Goyer. Based on the Marvel Comics superhero of the same name, it is the first installment of the "Blade" franchise. The film stars Wesley Snipes as the titular character with Stephen Dorff, Kris Kristofferson and N'Bushe Wright in supporting roles. In the film, Blade is a Dhampir, a human with vampire strengths but not their weaknesses, who together with his mentor Abraham Whistler and hematologist Karen Jenson, fights against vampires, namely the exceptionally vicious Deacon Frost.


title: Blade (1998 film)

text: Released on August 21, 1998, "Blade" was a commercial success, grossing $70 million at the U.S. box office, and $60.2 million worldwide. Despite mixed reviews from film critics, the film received a positive reception from audiences and has since garnered a cult following. It is also hailed as one of Snipes' signature roles. It was followed by two sequels, "Blade II" and "", both written by Goyer who also directed the latter.


title: Blade (1998 film)

text: "Blade" was noted as a dark superhero film for its time, as well as being Marvel's first successful film and setting the stage for further comic book film adaptations.


title: Blade (1998 film)

text: In 1967, a pregnant woman is attacked by a vampire, causing her to go into premature labor. Doctors are able to save her baby, but the woman dies.


title: Blade (1998 film)

text: Thirty years later, the child has become the vampire hunter, Blade, who is a human-vampire hybrid that possesses the supernatural abilities of the vampires without any of their weaknesses, except for the requirement to consume human blood. Blade raids a rave club owned by the vampire Deacon Frost. Police take one of the vampires to the hospital, where he kills Dr. Curtis Webb and feeds on hematologist Karen Jenson, and escapes. Blade takes Karen to a safe house where she is treated by his old friend Abraham Whistler. Whistler explains that he and Blade have been waging a secret war against vampires using weapons based on their elemental weaknesses, such as sunlight, silver, and garlic. As Karen is now "marked" by the bite of a vampire, both he and Blade tell her to leave the city.


title: Blade (1998 film)

text: At a meeting of the council of pure-blood vampire elders, Frost, the leader of a faction of younger vampires, is rebuked for trying to incite war between vampires and humans. As Frost and his kind are not natural-born vampires, they are considered socially inferior. Meanwhile, returning to her apartment, Karen is attacked by police officer Krieger, who is a familiar, a human loyal to vampires. Blade subdues Krieger and uses information from him to locate an archive that contains pages from the "vampire bible".


title: Blade (1998 film)

text: Krieger informs Frost of what happened, and Frost kills Krieger. Frost also has one of the elders executed and strips the others of their authority, in response to the earlier disrespect shown him at the council of vampires. Meanwhile Blade comes upon Pearl, a morbidly obese vampire, and tortures him with a UV light into revealing that Deacon wants to command a ritual where he would use 12 pure-blood vampires to awaken the "blood god" La Magra; and Blade's blood is the key.


title: Blade (1998 film)

text: Later, at the hideout, Blade injects himself with a special serum that suppresses his urge to drink blood. However, the serum is beginning to lose its effectiveness due to overuse. While experimenting with the anticoagulant EDTA as a possible replacement, Karen discovers that it explodes when combined with vampire blood. She manages to synthesize a vaccine that can cure the infected but learns that it will not work on Blade. Karen is confident that she can cure Blade's bloodthirst but it would take her years of treating it.


title: Blade (1998 film)

text: Frost and his men attack the hideout, infect Whistler, and abduct Karen. When Blade returns, he helps Whistler commit suicide. When Blade attempts to rescue Karen from Frost's penthouse, he is shocked to find his still-alive mother, who reveals that she came back the night she was attacked and was brought in by Frost, who appears and reveals himself as the vampire who bit her. Blade is then subdued and taken to the Temple of Eternal Night, where Frost plans to perform the summoning ritual for La Magra. Karen is thrown into a pit to be devoured by Webb, who has transformed into a decomposing zombie-like creature. Karen injures Webb and escapes. Blade is drained of his blood, but Karen allows him to drink from her, enabling him to recover. Frost completes the ritual and obtains the powers of La Magra. Blade confronts Frost after killing all of his minions, including his mother. During their fight, Blade injects Frost with all of the syringes; the overdose of EDTA causes his body to inflate and explode, killing him.


title: Blade (1998 film)

text: Karen offers to help Blade cure himself; instead, he asks her to create an improved version of the serum, so he can continue his crusade against vampires. In a brief epilogue, Blade confronts a vampire in Moscow.


title: Blade (1998 film)

text: The character Blade was created in 1973 for Marvel Comics by the writer Marv Wolfman and artist Gene Colan as a supporting character in the 1970s comic "The Tomb of Dracula". The comic Blade used teakwood knives and was much more the everyman in his behavior and attitude. Though courageous and brave, he displayed flaws as well, such as an inability to get along with certain other supporting cast members and a hatred of vampires that bordered on fanaticism.


title: Blade (1998 film)

text: The character was not originally a "daywalker" but a human being immune to being turned into a vampire. Lacking the superhuman speed and strength of his undead quarry, he relied solely on his wits and skill until he was bitten by the character Morbius as seen in #8, first published in August 1999. The film portrayal of Blade was updated for a 1990s audience and the comics character was subsequently modified to match. Goyer replaced the daggers Blade used in the comics with a sword and gave him a more samurai-like aesthetic. The film's version of Deacon Frost also differs greatly from his comic counterpart. He was older with white hair and literally a church deacon, but the film retains Frost's upstart ambitions.


title: Blade (1998 film)

text: When New World Pictures bought the rights to Marvel Comics, they were set to make a Mexico-set western starring Richard Roundtree as the vampire hunter. Marvel Studios then started to develop the film in early 1992, when rapper/actor LL Cool J was interested in playing the lead role. "Blade" was eventually set up at New Line Cinema, with David S. Goyer writing the script. When Goyer heard a film was in development he went in to pitch with director Ernest Dickerson. New Line originally wanted to do "Blade" as "something that was almost a spoof" before the writer convinced them otherwise. At one point, the studio even asked if Blade could be white. Goyer wanted to take the character seriously, and ground them in a sense of reality with vampirism as a biological disease. He even pitched a trilogy of movies "almost Wagnerian in scope". He also wanted to demystify the vampires and treat them as serious villains with a greater sense of realism instead of the doomed romantic characters shown in Anne Rice's "Interview with the Vampire". Goyer's drafts early drafts predated but took a similar post-modern approach as the films "From Dusk till Dawn" and "Vampire in Brooklyn".


title: Blade (1998 film)

text: After failing to get a Black Panther film into production, in 1996 Wesley Snipes signed on to star as Blade.


title: Blade (1998 film)

text: When Goyer first pitched the idea of doing a "Blade" film, Mike DeLuca, head of New Line, suggested Denzel Washington, Wesley Snipes, and Laurence Fishburne, but to Goyer, Snipes was always the perfect choice for Blade. The finalized script was sent to Snipes and no other actor was seriously considered.


title: Blade (1998 film)

text: Patrick McGoohan was the first choice to play Whistler, as Stephen Norrington was a fan of "The Prisoner" (1967). Jon Voight was also considered for the role.


title: Blade (1998 film)

text: "Blade" was produced on a budget of $45 million and principal photography commenced on February 5, 1997, in large part done in Los Angeles, with some scenes being shot in Death Valley. All sets were constructed, and all on-set filming occurred, in what was formerly the Redken Shampoo factory in Canoga Park. The effects for the film were done by Flat Earth Productions.


title: Blade (1998 film)

text: The first cut of the film was 140 minutes long. It had a disastrous test screening with audiences. Heavy edits and re-shoots were implemented which delayed the release date for more than half a year. The most significant change was the addition of the final sword fight between Blade and Deacon Frost, which did not exist in the original cut. In the original ending, Frost turned into La Magra and became a large swirling mass of blood instead of keeping his form. This was scrapped because the filmmakers could not get the special effects to look right. It can be seen as a special feature on the DVD. Stan Lee originally had a cameo that was ultimately cut from the film. He played one of the cops that came into the blood club during the aftermath and discover Quinn's body on fire. The scene where Karen and Deacon are talking about the cure for vampirism initially ran slightly longer and answered the question of how the vampires would feed if everybody was turned into a vampire. They would keep some humans alive in giant blood bags to harvest them. The bags can still be seen in a doorway during the scene, and later played an integral part of the plot in "".


title: Blade (1998 film)

text: Marvel was not going to give Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan credit for the characters they had created, but Goyer insisted. He asked New Line and they accepted, but representatives of Marv Wolfman said only he should get credit, and not Gene Colan. Goyer insisted that both be credited.


title: Blade (1998 film)

text: A soundtrack containing hip hop music was released on August 25, 1998, by TVT Records and Epic Records. It peaked at #36 on the "Billboard" 200 and #28 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums. The British techno band The Prodigy was approached to do the soundtrack and score to the film but had to turn down the offer due to other commitments.


title: Blade (1998 film)

text: "Blade" was Marvel's first box office success, and set the stage for further comic film adaptations. "Blade" followed "Howard the Duck" as the second Marvel property to get a wide theatrical release in the United States.


title: Blade (1998 film)

text: "Blade" was first released on DVD and VHS on December 1, 1998. The DVD is part of New Line Cinema's Platinum Series DVD brand.


title: Blade (1998 film)

text: Marv Wolfman unsuccessfully sued Marvel, New Line, and Time Warner for $35 million after the release of the film, claiming he was not bound by a work for hire contract when he created the character in 1972. He, along with artist Gene Colan, received a "based on characters created by" credit in this film.


title: Blade (1998 film)

text: The film went to number one in both Spain and Australia for their opening weekends. With 200 theaters showing the film, Spain's filmgoers earned the film $1.5 million (US) in three days, whilst Australia earned $1 million from 132 cinemas showing the film. In the Flemish Region of Belgium, the film earned $323,000 from 20 cinemas, and the Netherlands earned the film $246,000 from 44 cinemas. France made $1.9 million in five days from 241 cinemas, but the film was less successful in Hong Kong (with $182,000 from 22 cinemas) and South Africa ($159,000 from 64 cinemas). The United Kingdom was more successful, taking in $5.7 million over 10 days, as was Brazil, making $855,000 in four days from 133 cinemas. The film was banned from showing in Malaysia, widely considered to have the most controlling censors in Southeast Asia. Despite the success of the film Marvel shared only a flat fee of $25,000.


title: Blade (1998 film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 57% based on 107 reviews, with an average rating of 5.92/10. The site's critics consensus states: "Though some may find the plot a bit lacking, "Blade"s action is fierce, plentiful, and appropriately stylish for a comic book adaptation." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 47 out of 100 based on review from 23 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A-" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Blade (1998 film)

text: Roger Ebert gave the film 3 stars out of 4, writing: ""Blade" ... is a movie that relishes high visual style. It uses the extreme camera angles, the bizarre costumes and sets, the exaggerated shadows, the confident cutting between long shots and extreme closeups. It slams ahead in pure visceral imagery". James Berardinelli gave the film 2½ stars out of 4, writing: ""Blade" has the capacity to dazzle, but it also will leave many viewers dissatisfied". Berardinelli also wrote: ""Blade" opens brilliantly, with a series of fast-paced, visually-engaging scenes that display the seedy underbelly of vampire society and introduce the implacable title character in true superhero fashion. For about its first hour, the movie offers violent, visceral, rapid fire entertainment that concentrates as much on developing a distinctive atmosphere as on advancing a minimalist storyline. Unfortunately [...] it keeps going and going, eventually wearing out its welcome". Dennis Harvey of Variety wrote: "Though slick and diverting in some aspects, increasingly silly pic has trouble meshing disparate elements -- horror, superhero fantasy, straight-up action -- into a workable whole". John Krewson of "The A.V. Club" was critical of the story and the dialogue, but praised the "creative cinematography and non-stop, decently choreographed gratuitous violence".


title: Blade (1998 film)

text: Critics such as A. Asbjørn Jøn have noted not only the important place of "Blade" in the wider vampire genre but also possible intertextual links between the Whistler character and a character named Whistler in "A Dozen Black Roses" (1996) by Nancy A. Collins, as they possess "striking similarities in role, dramatic focus, visual appearance, and sharing the name".


title: Blade (1998 film)

text: A video game prequel was published and released by Activision in 2000. The game received mixed reviews. On Metacritic it received a weighted average score 51% based on reviews from 11 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". A separate game for the Game Boy Color was also released.


title: Blade (1998 film)

text: The success of the film led to two sequels, "Blade II" in 2002, "Blade Trinity" in 2004, and a television series.


title: Blade (1998 film)

text: In August 2014, Snipes spoke about his desire to return to the franchise: "I'd be open to it. I think we've got some stones left unturned and there's some latitude left for us to build on and I'd love to get back in the suit again and do some things I've learned how to do now that I didn't know how to do then".


title: Blade (1998 film)

text: During their 2019 San Diego Comic-Con presentation, Marvel Studios announced a "Blade" reboot set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with Mahershala Ali starring as Blade. Some fans of Snipes were disappointed but Snipes expressed his support for Ali saying he would "do great".


title: Blade (1998 film)

text: In 2021, Marvel published "The Darkhold: Blade" one-shot written by Daniel Kibblesmith, presenting an alternate ending to the film, where Deacon Frost succeeded in his plans at using his power attained as avatar of La Magra to turn billions of humans around the world into vampires.


title: PEGI

text: PEGI () or Pan-European Game Information is a European video game content rating system established to help European consumers make informed decisions when buying video games or apps through the use of age recommendations and content descriptors. It was developed by the Interactive Software Federation of Europe (ISFE) and came into use in April 2003, replacing many national age rating systems with a single European system. The PEGI system is now used in 41 countries and is based on a code of conduct, a set of rules to which every publisher using the PEGI system is contractually committed. PEGI self-regulation is composed by five age categories and nine content descriptors that advise the suitability of a game for a certain age range based on the game's content. The age rating is not intended to indicate the difficulty of the game or the skill required to play it.


title: PEGI

text: Black and white icons were used until June 2009, with new colour-coded icons: with green for 3 and 7, orange for 12 and 16, and red for 18. Plus signs were removed from the icons, and the background wallpaper now says "PEGI" as opposed to "ISFE". That design was slightly altered at the start of 2010, by removing the watermark and locking the URL bar underneath the age rating icon. Reprinted games from 2010 or before often still display the old designs.


title: PEGI

text: In Portugal, two of the PEGI categories were originally aligned with the age ratings of the film classification system to avoid confusion: 3 was changed to 4 and 7 was changed to 6. Finland also used a modified scale, where 12 became 11 and 16 became 15. Finland fully adopted PEGI on January 1, 2007, and the standard ratings were fully enforced as well. Portugal fully adopted PEGI on February 1, 2021, and the standard ratings were also fully enforced.


title: PEGI

text: In addition to the above ratings, PEGI also uses eight content descriptors (nine if Fear and Horror are counted separately):


title: PEGI

text: As of December 2015, PEGI has rated more than 25,300 games. 42.2% of these games were rated 3, 15.8% rated 7, 22.3% rated 12, 12.7% rated 16 and only 7% were rated 18.


title: PEGI

text: A consumer survey commissioned by ISFE in 2012 demonstrated that the PEGI age rating labels are recognised on average by 51% of respondents in 16 countries (highest: France 72%; lowest: Czechia 28%), while 86% of all respondents found them to be clear and 89% found them useful.


title: PEGI

text: PEGI is an example of European harmonization. The European Commission supports the PEGI self-regulation: "PEGI appears to have achieved good results and PEGI On-line is also a promising initiative, making of PEGI a good example of self-regulation in line with the better regulation agenda."


title: PEGI

text: Moreover, the European Parliament in its last report on the protection of consumers "takes the view that the PEGI system for rating games is an important tool which has improved transparency for consumers, especially parents, when buying games by enabling them to make a considered choice as to whether a game is suitable for children".


title: PEGI

text: To obtain the ratings for any piece of interactive software, the applicant submits the game with other supporting materials and completes a content declaration, all of which is evaluated by an independent administrator called the Netherlands Institute for the Classification of Audiovisual Media (NICAM). It is based on the Dutch Kijkwijzer system as well.


title: PEGI

text: Following the evaluation the applicant will receive a license to use the rating logos. If the applicant disagrees with the rating, they can ask for an explanation or make a complaint to the complaints board. Consumers may also make complaints to this board.


title: PEGI

text: Although PEGI was established by an industry body (ISFE) the ratings are given by a body independent of the industry and the whole system is overseen by a number of different Boards and Committees. There is the PEGI Council, composed mainly by national representatives for PEGI, that recommends adjustments to the code in light of social, legal and technological developments. Members of the PEGI Council are recruited for their skill and experience from among parent/consumer body representatives, child psychologists, media specialists, civil servants, academics and legal advisers versed in the protection of minors in Europe.


title: PEGI

text: There is also a Complaints Board with experts from various European countries. They deal with complaints related to breaches of requirements of the code of conduct or to age rating recommendations. Should a complaint be received from a consumer or publisher regarding a rating given to a game and no satisfactory settlement can be reached by the PEGI administrator through discussion, explanation or negotiation the complainant may formally request the Complaints Board to mediate. Three board members will then convene, hear the complaint and decide on a ruling. Publishers using the PEGI system are bound by the decision of the Complaints Board. Consequently, they are obliged to carry out any corrective actions required and, in cases of non-compliance, are subject to sanctions as laid out by the code.


title: PEGI

text: In 2013, PEGI co-founded the International Age Rating Coalition with USK and the ESRB. IARC aims to streamline the rating of digitally distributed games and apps by providing a single online system that produces age ratings for all participating regions. By filling out one questionnaire, a publisher instantaneously receives ratings from PEGI, USK, ESRB, ACB and others.


title: PEGI

text: In 2007, the PEGI Online division of PEGI was formed as an addition to the PEGI system for online games. Goals include giving young people in Europe improved protection against unsuitable online gaming content and educating parents on how to ensure safe online play. This project is supported directly by the European Commission:


title: PEGI

text: The licence to display the PEGI Online Logo is granted by the PEGI Online Administrator to any online gameplay service provider that meets the requirements set out in the PEGI Online Safety Code (POSC).


title: PEGI

text: PEGI is the standard age rating system for video games in 40 European countries alongside Israel, but products with PEGI labels can be found across the globe alongside other rating systems as a result of import for linguistic reasons (e.g.: English versions in India, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates, Spanish or Portuguese versions in Latin America). The official status of PEGI ratings varies from country to country, depending on the way national legislation deals with age classification and the protection of minors. In some countries, PEGI is the de facto standard without specific regulation, other countries have officially acknowledged PEGI as the sole system for age ratings, while yet another number of countries have incorporated the PEGI rating system into laws governing the age classification of media, making the labels enforceable in retail.


title: PEGI

text: Games containing minigames resembling casino games and gambling may be subject to heightened ratings due to "12" being the minimum for the "Gambling" descriptor. A 2016 re-release of "Pokémon Red and Blue" for Nintendo 3DS received a "12" rating (despite receiving the "E" rating from the U.S.-based ESRB) due to its "Game Corner" feature, which includes slot machines that can be played with in-game cash to earn coins redeemable for items. The European release of "Pokémon Platinum" (2009) was modified to remove the slot machines and replace them with non-interactive "game machines".


title: PEGI

text: In 2019, the basketball video game "NBA 2K20" received criticism for a trailer, focused on its "MyTeam" mode, which depicted chance-based minigames styled after casino games such as roulette, slots and pachinko. The visuals were considered to be sensitive due to increasing controversy over use of "loot box" mechanics in video games. After receiving an e-mail expressing concern over the trailer, PEGI clarified in response that the "Gambling" descriptor applies only to games that "teach" and "encourage" gambling, although admitting that the trailer's imagery may have been "too close for comfort" for some viewers, and that PEGI did not base its ratings decisions on singular trailers.


title: Bristol Brabazon

text: The Bristol Type 167 Brabazon was a large British piston-engined propeller-driven airliner designed by the Bristol Aeroplane Company to fly transatlantic routes between the UK and the United States. The type was named "Brabazon" after the Brabazon Committee and its chairman, Lord Brabazon of Tara, who had developed the specification to which the airliner was designed.


title: Bristol Brabazon

text: While Bristol had studied the prospects of developing very large aircraft as bomber aircraft prior to and during the Second World War, it was the release of a report compiled by the Brabazon Committee which had led the company to adapting its larger bomber proposal into a prospective large civil airliner to meet the "Type I" specification for a very large airliner for the long-distance transatlantic route. Initially designated as the Type 167, the proposed aircraft was furnished with a huge 25 ft (8 m)-diameter fuselage containing full upper and lower decks on which passengers would be seated in luxurious conditions; it was powered by an arrangement of eight Bristol Centaurus radial engines which drove a total of eight paired contra-rotating propellers set on four forward-facing nacelles.


title: Bristol Brabazon

text: Bristol decided to submit the Type 167 proposal to meet Air Ministry Specification 2/44; following a brief evaluation period, a contract to build a pair of prototypes was awarded to Bristol. At the time of its construction, the Brabazon was one of the largest aeroplanes ever built, being sized roughly between the much later Airbus A300 and Boeing 767 airliners. Despite its vast size, the Brabazon was designed to carry a total of only 100 passengers, each one being allocated their own spacious area about the size of the entire interior of a small car. On 4 September 1949, the first prototype conducted its maiden flight. In addition to participating in a flight test programme in support of intended production aircraft, the prototype made high-profile public flying displays at the 1950 Farnborough Airshow, Heathrow Airport, and the 1951 Paris Air Show.


title: Bristol Brabazon

text: However, the Brabazon was unable to attract any firm commitments for the type due to the high cost per seat mile compared to the alternatives. Being unable to attract any orders, the aircraft was a commercial failure. On 17 July 1953, Duncan Sandys, the Minister of Supply, announced that the Brabazon had been cancelled due to a lack of military or civil orders for the type. In the end, only the single prototype was flown; it was broken up in 1953 for scrap, along with the incomplete turboprop-powered Brabazon I Mk.II.


title: Bristol Brabazon

text: During the Second World War, the British government made the decision to dedicate its aircraft industry to the production of combat aircraft and to source the majority of its transport aircraft from manufacturers in the United States. Having foreseen that the effective abandonment of any development in terms of civil aviation would put Britain's aviation industry at a substantial disadvantage once the conflict had come to an end, during 1943 a British government committee began meeting under the leadership of Lord Brabazon of Tara with the aim of investigating and forecasting the post-war civil aviation requirements of Britain and the Commonwealth of Nations.


title: Bristol Brabazon

text: The committee, which had become known simply as the Brabazon Committee, delivered its report, which was likewise known as the "Brabazon Report". This report called for the construction of a total of four of five designs they had studied. Of these designs, the "Type I" was a very large transatlantic airliner, the "Type II" was a short-haul airliner, the "Type III" was a medium-range airliner for the multiple-hop 'Empire' air routes, and the "Type IV" was an innovative jet-powered 500 mph (800 km/h) airliner. In particular, the Type I and Type IV were regarded as being of very high importance to the industry, particularly the jet-powered Type IV which would give Britain a commanding lead in the field of jet transportation. An outline of the specifications for the various envisioned aircraft, including the gigantic Type I, was issued by the Committee.


title: Bristol Brabazon

text: As early as 1937, the Bristol Aeroplane Company had already conducted studies into prospective very large bomber designs, one of which received the internal company designation of "Type 159" and another design that was undesignated which broadly resembled the eventual configuration of the Brabazon. Additionally, Bristol's design team had already been considering the requirements of a prospective aircraft capable of conducting routine transatlantic flights, which had resulted in projections of the necessary size, weight, and range of such an airliner. Amongst these, it was determined that a minimum payload of 100 passengers should be carried by the type in order to be profitable.


title: Bristol Brabazon

text: In 1942, the Air Ministry issued a draft operational requirement from the Air Staff, which sought a heavy bomber design that would be capable of carrying a payload of at least 15 tons of bombs. In response, Bristol dusted off their original work and updated it to account for their newer and substantially more powerful Bristol Centaurus engines. The Bristol design team, led by L. G. Frise and Archibald Russell, worked with several key performance parameters; these included a range of 5,000 mi (8,000 km), 225 ft (69 m) wingspan, eight engines buried in the wings driving four pusher propeller installations, and enough fuel for transatlantic range. The Convair B-36 was in many ways the American equivalent of this projected "100 ton bomber". In addition to Bristol, many of the leading British manufacturers had provided several preliminary studies in response to the Air Ministry's operational requirement; however, in expectation of long development times, and the difficulties associated with balancing the aircraft's range, load and defensive armament, the Ministry never proceeded to take up any of the British manufacturer's designs. Instead, it was decided to continue development of the existing Avro Lancaster, which led to the production of the improved Avro Lincoln.


title: Bristol Brabazon

text: In 1942, the Brabazon Report was published and Bristol chose to respond, submitting a slightly modified version of their bomber to fill the needs for the Type I requirement. Bristol's earlier work had shown the sort of performance that the Brabazon Committee had been looking for, and thus the Committee authorised the firm to proceed with preliminary work towards designing such an aircraft that year, with the proviso that work on wartime aircraft should not be disrupted by the project. Bristol was soon issued with a contract to produce a pair of prototype aircraft.


title: Bristol Brabazon

text: In November 1944, following on from further work on the design, a final concept for the Type 167 was published. As it stood in the final concept, the design featured a large 177 ft (54 m) fuselage which was paired with a sizable wing. This wing, which had a 230 ft (70.1 m) wingspan, possessed an enormous internal volume, which was used to house the fuel for the transatlantic flights envisioned for the type. It was powered by eight Bristol Centaurus 18-cylinder radial engines; these were the most powerful British-built piston engines available at the time, each being capable of generating 2,650 hp. These engines which were installed in a unique arrangement of setting each engine in pairs in the wing; instead of using a common crankshaft, the paired engines each had their driveshafts angled towards an enormous central gearbox. They drove a series of eight paired contra-rotating propellers, which were set on four forward-facing nacelles.


title: Bristol Brabazon

text: The Brabazon Report had assumed that the wealthy people flying in the aircraft would consider a long trip by air to be uncomfortable, and they had accordingly designed the Type I for luxury, demanding 200 ft (6 m) of space for every passenger, this was expanded to 270 ft (8 m) for luxury class. If outfitted with conventionally spaced seating, the dimensions of the Type 167 could have accommodated up to 300 passengers, instead of the 60 seats opted for. Other high-comfort measures were proposed for installation on operational aircraft, such as an onboard cinema, a cocktail bar, and lounge area. According to Author Stephan Wilkinson, the decision to focus on comfort over other qualities such as speed and payload had been a historic preoccupation of Britain operators to specifically tailor their services towards wealthy travellers, and noted this as having been a key pre-war ethos of British airline Imperial Airways. Meanwhile, some figures within the aircraft industry were forecasting heavy demand from the passengers then relying on ocean liners.


title: Bristol Brabazon

text: To meet these varied requirements, the Type 167 specified a huge 25 ft (8 m)-diameter fuselage, which is about 5 ft (1.5 m) greater than a 747, with full-length upper and lower decks. This enclosed sleeping berths for 80 passengers, a dining room, 37-seat cinema, promenade and bar; or alternatively an arrangement of day seats for 150 people. At one point, the Committee recommended the adoption of a narrower fuselage that was intended to house a total of 50 passengers; the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) agreed with this recommendation, and also expressed its preference for a design accommodating only 25 passengers. In August 1943, an agreement reached with the airline led to the selection of an interior layout which contained a forward area housing six compartments, each one for six passengers, along with a seventh compartment for just three passengers; a midsection above the wing – the wing was 6 feet deep at that point – which accommodated 38 seats arranged around tables in groups of four along with a pantry and galley; and a rear area populated by 23 seats within an aft-facing cinema, complete with a cocktail bar and lounge. Similar to the Saunders-Roe Princess, the Brabazon concept was a fusion of prewar and postwar thinking, using highly advanced design and engineering to build an aircraft that was no longer required in the postwar world.


title: Bristol Brabazon

text: The Brabazon was the first aircraft to be outfitted with 100 per cent powered flying controls; it was also the first to feature electric engine controls, and the first equipped with high-pressure hydraulics. The large span and mounting of the engines close inboard, together with structural weight economies, demanded some new measure to prevent bending of wing surfaces in turbulence. Thus, one of the innovative features of the Brabazon was a purpose-developed gust-alleviation system, which used an assortment of servos that were triggered from a gust-sensing probe installed on the exterior of the aircraft's nose; an improved version of this system, along with fully automated trimming, was to have been deployed on board the Brabazon Mark II. Hydraulic power units were also designed to operate the aircraft's giant control surfaces.


title: Bristol Brabazon

text: A tremendous effort was put into saving weight across the aircraft. The Type 167 used a number of non-standard gauges of skinning in order to tailor every panel to the strength required, thereby saving several tons of metal. Bristol employed revolutionary new machining and construction methods for drilling, milling, folding, and rolling many of the airframe's components. Rivets were sealed in aircraft dope to greatly reduce the number of rivets required for airframe assembly. Significant emphasis had been placed upon simplifying the construction process and incorporating several manufacturing efficiencies. Some of the design and construction work for the aircraft was shared out to other British companies, such as Folland Aircraft.


title: Bristol Brabazon

text: The act of manufacturing the Brabazon alone was found to be a challenge. During the first two years of the development, the question of how and where to manufacture the aircraft was amongst the biggest issues that had preoccupied the design team and delayed progress on the project. Bristol's existing factory at Bristol Filton Airport proved to be too small to handle what was one of the largest aircraft in the world, let alone producing the type in quantity, while the adjacent 2,000 ft (610 m) runway was also too short to launch it. While considerations were made for developing the firm's Banwell facility, it was eventually decided to expand the main Filton site to suit the Brabazon. Work on the project was slowed as a consequence of meeting Bristol's wartime commitments; amongst the early physical steps was the construction of a full-scale wooden mockup in the old No. 2 Flight Shed so that components and fittings could be applied and tested.


title: Bristol Brabazon

text: In October 1945, construction of the first prototype's fuselage commenced in an existing hangar while a gigantic hall for performing final assembly of up to eight Brabazons was constructed; at the time of construction, the hall was the largest hangar in the world. the designer of the new assembly hall, T. P. O'Sullivan, was subsequently awarded the Telford Premium for the work. The runway was also lengthened to 8,000 ft (2,440 m), as well as being widened; this extension had necessitated the compulsory relocation of the inhabitants of the village of Charlton to neighbouring Patchway, which was a somewhat controversial measure at the time.


title: Bristol Brabazon

text: During the early 1940s, the only means for providing propulsion to large aircraft was to produce increasingly complex and enlarged radial engines. The emergence of jet propulsion, specifically the turboprop engine, happened to coincide with the Brabazon's development. Accordingly, there was considerable interest in applying such an engine to the airliner as it potentially offered a simpler and more powerful alternative to the original Centaurus powerplant. Other advantages of turboprops included lower vibration levels (which would increase passenger comfort) and superior performance at higher altitudes.


title: Bristol Brabazon

text: In 1946, it was decided to build the second prototype using eight Bristol Coupled Proteus turboprop engines – paired turboprops driving four-bladed screws through a common gearbox. This would have increased the Brabazon's cruising speed, from 260 to 330 mph (420–530 km/h), and its ceiling, while also reducing the aircraft's empty weight by about 10,000 lb (4,540 kg). This Brabazon Mark II would have been able to cross the Atlantic (London-New York) in a reduced time of 12 hours. However, by 1950, development of the Proteus engine had run into substantial difficulties, being both overweight and underpowered as well as being subject to fatigue issues at one stage.


title: Bristol Brabazon

text: In addition to the adoption of the Proteus, there were other envisioned changes for the Brabazon Mark II. In particular, a revised wheel arrangement which had been planned would have enabled the type to use the majority of runways on both the North Atlantic and Empire routes. Although the Proteus was slimmer than the Centaurus, the wing thickness was not to be reduced in the Mark II but the leading edge would be extended around the engines.


title: Bristol Brabazon

text: In December 1945, Bristol Chief Test Pilot Bill Pegg was selected to be the chief pilot for the Brabazon. In preparation for the impending flight testing, as a means of gaining experience in operating such a vast aircraft, Pegg accepted an invitation issued by Convair to travel to Fort Worth, Texas, to fly their B-36 Peacemaker, a large strategic bomber operated by the United States Air Force.


title: Bristol Brabazon

text: During December 1948, the Mk.I prototype, registration "G-AGPW", was rolled out for engine runs. On 3 September 1949, the prototype, piloted by Pegg and co-piloted by Walter Gibb, along with a crew of eight observers and flight engineers, performed a series of trial taxi runs; these revealed no problems save for the nosewheel steering not working correctly, thus this was temporarily disabled. On 4 September 1949, the prototype performed its maiden flight over the Bristol area, flying for a total of 25 minutes, captained by Pegg. Prior to the takeoff, around 10,000 people had gathered at the airfield's perimeter to witness the feat. During this flight, it ascended to about 3,000 ft (910 m) at 160 mph (257 km/h) and landed at 115 mph (185 km/h), throttling back at 50 ft (15 m). The British press mainly reported favourably of the occasion, one newspaper praising the aircraft as being "the queen of the skies, the largest land-plane ever built".


title: Bristol Brabazon

text: Four days later, the prototype was presented at Society of British Aircraft Constructors' Airshow at Farnborough; according to author Philip Kaplan, the timing of the first flight had been set as such to enable such a high-profile early appearance to be performed. The Brabazon's appearance at Farnborough would lead to the adoption of a formal and deliberate company policy as much of the aircraft's test programme in the vicinity of various British cities in order to spread public awareness. Accordingly, the Brabazon was demonstrated at the 1950 Farnborough Airshow, at which it performed a takeoff, clean configuration flypast and a landing. In June 1950, the Brabazon made a visit to London's Heathrow Airport, during which it made a number of successful takeoffs and landings; it was also demonstrated at the 1951 Paris Air Show. Gibb, who flew the aircraft as pilot-in-command on multiple flights, summarised his flying experiences with the type: "It was very comfortable. It flew very well. It was big. You didn't whip it around like a Tiger Moth or Spitfire, but as long as you treated it like a double-decker bus or a large aeroplane, you had no trouble at all".


title: Bristol Brabazon

text: While the Brabazon's flight tests were being performed, BOAC became increasingly uninterested with the prospects for operating the type. On a test flight, BOAC chairman Sir Miles Thomas briefly took the controls and found the aircraft to be underpowered and very slow to respond to the controls. BOAC quickly decided it was not for them. Bristol had been subject to financial hardship, while development of the Proteus engine intended to power the envisioned and improved Brabazon Mark II was proving troublesome. Flight tests of the aircraft itself had revealed some fatigue issues in the inner wingbox area, while the projected operating costs for the Brabazon had been revised upwards as the programme had proceeded. BOAC, being unconvinced of the aircraft's merits, ultimately chose to decline to place any order for the type. Gibb stated of the situation: "the spec wasn't correct for post-war flying. The people who wrote the specs... conceived of an aeroplane with all this comfort, bunks, and a great dining room to eat in. And, of course, come the day, that wasn't what the airlines wanted. They wanted to ram as many passengers as possible into the tube and give 'em lunch on their laps.


title: Bristol Brabazon

text: At one point, although some interest was shown by British European Airways (BEA) for conducting operational flights using the prototype Brabazon itself, various problems that would typically be expected to be present on a prototype meant the aircraft would never receive an airworthiness certificate.


title: Bristol Brabazon

text: By 1952, about £3.4 million had been spent on development and there were no signs of purchase by any airline. In March, the British government announced that work on the second prototype had been postponed. The cancellation of the project was announced by the Minister of Supply (Duncan Sandys) on 17 July 1953 in the Commons, saying the programme had given all the useful technical knowledge it could but without any firm interest from either civil or military users, there was no justification for continuing to spend money on the Brabazon. By this point, roughly £6 million had been spent on the programme and a further £2 million would have been required in order to complete the Mark II. In October 1953, after 164 flights totalling 382 hours' flying time, the first prototype was broken up, sold for £10,000 in scrap value, along with the uncompleted Mk.II prototype. All that remains are a few parts at the M Shed museum in Bristol and the National Museum of Flight in Scotland.


title: Bristol Brabazon

text: Although considered a failure and a white elephant, the record of the Brabazon is not entirely unfavourable. At least half of the large sums spent on the project had been expended upon the construction of infrastructure, including £6 million for new large hangars and an extended runway at Filton. These improvements meant that Bristol was in an excellent position to continue production of other designs; the assembly hall was soon being used for building another transatlantic aircraft, the Britannia. In addition, many of the techniques which had been developed during the Brabazon project were applicable to any aircraft, not just airliners.


title: Bristol Brabazon

text: Bristol had also been awarded the contract for the Type III aircraft, for which they delivered the Britannia. By making use of the advances made during the development of the Brabazon, Bristol were able to design the Britannia to possess the best payload fraction of any aircraft up to that time, and it held that record for a number of years. Although the Britannia was delayed after problems with the separate Type IV, the jet-powered de Havilland Comet, it went on to be a workhorse for many airlines into the 1970s.


title: Saab 9000

text: The Saab 9000 is an automobile produced by the Swedish company Saab from 1984 to 1998. Representing the company's foray into the executive car scene, it was developed as a result of the successes of the turbocharged 99 and 900 models. The 9000 remained in production until May 1998 and it was replaced by the Saab 9-5 in late 1997, although some final cars were produced into 1998. The Saab 9000 was only available with petrol engines, as 5-door hatchback or 4-door notchback and never as a convertible (except for one prototype) or a Coupé.


title: Saab 9000

text: Saab designed the 9000 as part of the Type Four platform in conjunction with the Italian automaker Fiat Automobiles. Fiat retailed similar derivative versions as the more basic Fiat Croma, the luxury-themed Lancia Thema, and the sports-oriented Alfa Romeo 164. Unlike the 164, which shares only the chassis, the Croma and Thema are outwardly similar to the 9000. As such, much of the bodywork appeared interchangeable between the 9000, Croma and Thema; for example, the doors. However, because Saab fitted heavier side impact protection they will not fit. Also the front of the Saab is radically different from the Italian siblings due to the much improved crash protection. Only seven parts are actually interchangeable. The 9000's body was designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro and Saab designer Björn Envall.


title: Saab 9000

text: Despite being shorter overall than the 900 which was still produced in parallel, the 9000 has a longer wheelbase and greater interior space with 123-cu.ft. of interior space (23.5-cu.ft. in the trunk, 56.5-cu.ft. with rear seats folded), qualifying as an EPA-rated “large car", a distinction shared only with the contemporary Rolls-Royce in America. This was achieved by installing the engine transversely to the direction of travel in the Saab 9000 (instead longitudinally as in the Saab 900). Unlike the 900 the 9000 kept the ignition switch in the more conventional steering column position rather than between the front seats. The inspiration for the seats was taken by Björn Envall from The Muppet Show's "Pigs in Space", a sketch by the late puppeteer Jim Henson.


title: Saab 9000

text: The 9000 was launched to the motoring press at a conference at Kolmården Game Park on 24 May 1984 and 1985 in the European market. This original model called "Saab 9000 Turbo 16" and was a five-door liftback, only available with manual gearbox and the 2.0 turbo engine with 16 valves (producing 129 kw/173 hp DIN without cat and already known from the Saab 900). Drag resistance for the original model is C 0.34, very competitive for the time.


title: Saab 9000

text: At the end of 1985 (with cars of MY 1986) the 9000 was rolled out (with the 2.0 Turbo and an exhaust gas purification via catalytic converter, producing 118 kw/160 hp DIN) in the most important foreign market for Saab: the US. Saab also introduced during the model year at all markets the fuel injected non-turbo engine for the Saab 9000 (producing 125 hp DIN with catalytic converter, 128 hp DIN without), based on the same engine as the turbo version and with four valves per cylinder, electronic ignition and a knock sensor.