title: Menard Correctional Center

text: In 1928, Menard owned of farmland outside the grounds. The farm included a dairy and a piggery that contributed to the prison diet. The root cellar was one of the largest and most intricately designed of any institutions at the time. All industries within the prison were housed in the old buildings that, by 1928, had been renovated to provide better working conditions. The major industries included clothing manufacture, a quarry, and the farm. The products were sold on the open market; however, no compensation was awarded to inmates. By 1931, the farm grew to and brick manufacturing and the machine shop were added to the prison's major industries.


title: Menard Correctional Center

text: In 1897, Illinois adopted indeterminate sentencing. By 1931, eighty percent of the inmates were serving indeterminate sentences.


title: Menard Correctional Center

text: In 1903, a "grade system" was adopted for inmates. This lasted until 1920, when the "progressive Merit System" was adopted. Using this system, "good time" could be awarded to or taken from inmates based on their behavior. In addition, inmates were divided into grades, A, B, C, D, and E, based on behavior. The disciplinary staff, consisting of the warden and his deputies, decided on promotions and demotions in grade levels. For example, men in grades A and B were allowed to write two letters a week. Those in C could only write once a week. D and E inmates could only write on special permission.


title: Menard Correctional Center

text: Silence was mandatory in the mess hall and in marching lines. Smoking was permitted in the cells and dormitories. The prison commissary, around 1930, allowed inmates to buy tobacco, candy, toilet articles, canned goods, and fruit. No limit was set on the purchases.


title: Menard Correctional Center

text: Around 1930, punishment involved a loss of privileges. For more serious offenses the men are put in punishment cells, large cells located in a building to the rear of the deputies' offices. For some offenses men were cuffed to the bars during working hours. By 1931, this practice was discontinued.


title: Menard Correctional Center

text: In the 1970s, a significant increase in inmate population, not only at Menard but also around the country, may have been the cause of two incidents during the time. In May 1973, thirty-eight inmates took over the commissary and held a guard hostage for sixteen hours. In May 1974, sixty inmates held four guards hostage, this time demanding congregation rights in the prison yard and several changes in administrative procedures.


title: Menard Correctional Center

text: In March 1994, Menard was in the news when 24-year-old Michael Blucker took the state to court after contracting HIV when in the prison. Blucker stated that prison staff helped gang members rape him. Although the juries found the staff not to be liable, the case uncovered problems of sexual assault and gang activities within the prison.


title: Menard Correctional Center

text: There were two deaths of prisoners who were housed in solitary confinement with other prisoners inside their cells. Circa 2004, 28-year-old Corey Fox, who was serving a life sentence for murder, killed 22-year-old Joshua Daczewitz, a person from a Chicago suburb who was convicted of arson and robbery. On November 29, 2014, David Sesson killed Bernard Simmons; the two were also placed in a solitary confinement cell together.


title: Menard Correctional Center

text: In the 1993 movie "The Fugitive", Dr. Richard Kimble (played by Harrison Ford) is sent to the prison at Menard to await execution, but escapes following a bus-train collision en route.


Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose: The Forgotten Hero is a 2004 Indian epic biographical war film, written and directed by Shyam Benegal. The film starred an ensemble cast of Sachin Khedekar, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Rajit Kapur, Arif Zakaria, and Divya Dutta, among others. The film depicts the life of the Indian Independence leader Subhas Chandra Bose in Nazi Germany: 1941–1943, and In Japanese-occupied Asia 1943–1945, and the events leading to the formation of Azad Hind Fauj.


title: Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose: The Forgotten Hero

text: The production design was helmed by Samir Chanda, with soundtrack, and background score by A. R. Rahman, Upon release, the film received wide critical acclaim at the BFI London Film Festival, and has garnered the National Film Award for Best Feature Film on National Integration, and the National Film Award for Best Production Design for that year. The film was screened retrospective on August 14, 2016 at the "Independence Day Film Festival" jointly presented by the Indian Directorate of Film Festivals and Ministry of Defence, commemorating 70th Indian Independence Day.


text: Set up in British Raj, after a political disagreement with Mahatma Gandhi, Bose's arrest and subsequent release sets the scene for his escape to Germany, via Afghanistan and the Soviet union. A few days before his escape, he sought solitude and, on this pretext, avoided meeting British guards and grew a beard. On the night of his escape, he dresses himself as a Pathan to avoid being identified. Bose escapes from under British surveillance at his house in Calcutta on 16 January 1941, accompanied by his nephew Sisir K. Bose in a car.


text: Bose journeys to Peshawar with the help of the Abwehr, where he was met by Akbar Shah and Bhagat Ram Talwar. Bose was taken to the home of Abad Khan, a trusted friend of Akbar Shah's. On 26 January 1941, Bose begins his journey to reach Russia through British India's North West frontier with Afghanistan. For this reason, he enlists the help of Mian Akbar Shah, then a Forward Bloc leader in the North-West Frontier Province. Shah had been out of India en route to the Soviet Union, and suggests a novel disguise for Bose to assume. Since Bose could not speak one word of Pashto, it would make him an easy target of Pashto speakers working for the British. For this reason, Shah suggests that Bose act deaf and dumb, and let his beard grow to mimic those of the tribesmen. Bose's guide Bhagat Ram Talwar, unknown to him, is actually a Soviet agent.


text: Supporters of the Aga Khan III help Bose across the border into Afghanistan where he was met by an Abwehr unit posing as a party of road construction engineers from the Organization Todt who then aided his passage across Afghanistan via Kabul to the border with Soviet Russia. After assuming the disguise of a Pashtun insurance agent ("Ziaudddin") to reach Afghanistan, Bose changes his disguise and travels to Moscow on the Italian passport of an Italian nobleman "Count Orlando Mazzotta". From Moscow, he reached Rome, and from there he travels to Germany. Once in Russia the NKVD transport Bose to Moscow where he hope that Russia's traditional enmity to British rule in India would result in support for his plans for a popular rising in India. However, Bose found the Soviets' response disappointing and was rapidly passed over to the German Ambassador in Moscow, Count von der Schulenburg. He had Bose flown on to Berlin in a special courier aircraft at the beginning of April where he was to receive a more favorable hearing from Joachim von Ribbentrop and the Foreign Ministry officials at the Wilhelmstrasse.


text: In Germany, Bose is attached to the Special Bureau for India under Adam von Trott zu Solz which was responsible for broadcasting on the German-sponsored Azad Hind Radio. Bose initiates the Free India Center in Berlin, and created the Indian Legion (consisting of some 4500 soldiers) out of Indian prisoners of war who had previously fought for the British in North Africa prior to their capture by Axis forces. The Indian Legion is attached to the Wehrmacht, and later transferred to the Waffen SS.


text: Its members swore the following allegiance to Hitler and Bose: "I swear by God this holy oath that I will obey the leader of the German race and state, Adolf Hitler, as the commander of the German armed forces in the fight for India, whose leader is Subhas Chandra Bose". This oath clearly abrogates control of the Indian legion to the German armed forces whilst stating Bose's overall leadership of India. He was also, however, prepared to envisage an invasion of India via the USSR by Nazi troops, spearheaded by the Azad Hind Legion; many question his judgment here, as it seems unlikely that the Germans could have been easily persuaded to leave after such an invasion, which might also have resulted in an Axis victory in the War.


text: In all, 3,000 Indian prisoners of war sign up for the Free India Legion. But instead of being delighted, Bose was worried. An admirer of Russia, he was devastated when Hitler's tanks rolled across the Soviet border. Matters were worsened by the fact that the now-retreating German army would be in no position to offer him help in driving the British from India. When he meets Hitler in May 1942, his suspicions were confirmed, and he comes to believe that the Nazi leader was more interested in using his men to win propaganda victories than military ones. So, in February 1943, Bose turned his back on his legionnaires and slipped secretly away aboard a submarine bound for Japan. This leaves the men he had recruited leaderless and demoralized in Germany.


text: Bose lives in Berlin from 1941 until 1943. During his earlier visit to Germany in 1934, he had met Emilie Schenkl, the daughter of an Austrian veterinarian whom he marries in 1937. Their daughter is Anita Bose Pfaff. In 1943, after being disillusioned that Germany could be of any help in gaining India's independence, he leaves for Japan. He travels with the German submarine U-180 around the Cape of Good Hope to the southeast of Madagascar, where he is transferred to the for the rest of the journey to Imperial Japan, The INA's first commitment was in the Japanese thrust towards Eastern Indian frontiers of Manipur. INA's special forces, the Bahadur Group, are extensively involved in operations behind enemy lines both during the diversionary attacks in Arakan, as well as the Japanese thrust towards Imphal and Kohima, along with the Burmese National Army led by Ba Maw and Aung San.


text: However, the Japanese Navy remains in essential control of the island's administration. On the Indian mainland, an Indian Tricolor, modeled after that of the Indian National Congress, was raised for the first time in the town in Moirang, in Manipur, in north-eastern India. The towns of Kohima and Imphal were placed under siege by divisions of the Japanese, Burmese National Army and the Gandhi and Nehru Brigades of INA during the attempted invasion of India, also known as Operation U-GO. However, Commonwealth forces held both positions and then counter-attack, in the process inflicting serious losses on the besieging forces, which were then forced to retreat back into Burma.


text: When the Japanese were defeated at the battles of Kohima and Imphal, the Provisional Government's aim of establishing a base in mainland India was lost forever. The INA was forced to pull back, along with the retreating Japanese army, and fought in key battles against the British Indian Army in its Burma campaign, notable in Meiktilla, Mandalay, Pegu, Nyangyu and Mount Popa. However, with the fall of Rangoon, Bose's government ceases to be an effective political entity. A large proportion of the INA troops surrenders under Lt Col Loganathan. The remaining troops retreated with Bose towards Malaya or made for Thailand. Japan's surrender at the end of the war also leads to the eventual surrender of the Indian National Army, when the troops of the British Indian Army were repatriated to India. On 17 August 1945, Bose leaves from Saigon to Tourane, French Indo-China in the Mitsubishi Ki-21 twin-engine heavy bomber. Subsequently, on 23 August 1945, Reuters announces the death of Bose and General Tsunamasa Shidei of the Japanese Kwantung Army in Japanese-occupied Manchuria. The film ends with the INA trials at Red Fort, Indian Navy rebellion, and the resulting Indian Independence in 1947.


text: "Bose: The Forgotten Hero", which offered a controversial view of the life of Bose, sparked protest in India. Director Benegal was forced to cancel its premiere in Calcutta. The film was fiercely opposed by the Forward Bloc party. The party was angry at the film's suggestion that Bose secretly married an Austrian woman, Emilie Schenkl, in 1937, and that he died in a plane crash in Taiwan rather than fleeing to Russia in 1945 as some people believe.


text: BBC gave 3 stars out of 5 for "Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose: The Forgotten Hero". Critic Jaspreet Pandohar called it "an informative and fascinating lesson worth sitting through" and "an absorbing drama." "Benegal is best known for his intimate portraits of Indian women, so it comes as some surprise that his latest film is a biopic of one of India's most famous male icons, Subhas Chandra Bose. Benegal ensures Bose's amazing but complex life story is peppered with just the right amount of detail so as to be easily understood. But what stops this film from becoming a [box-office] hit is its marathon length. At nearly three and a half hours, Sachin Khedekar's gallant performance isn't enough to make this a rousing affair," Pandohar wrote in his analysis.


text: Sachin Khedekar's portrayal of Bose was praised by critics including Ziya us-Salam of "The Hindu" newspaper. "Khedekar may not win too many international awards for portraying Bose but accolades in India should come in thick and fast," she wrote in her review. "Benegal may not have put together an epic to challenge the lasting greatness of "Gandhi," Richard Attenborough's tribute to our father of the nation. But nor has he had the advantage of such resources. Where Benegal deserves credit is not in the canvas of his work but the intellectual honesty he has brought to the film. He refrains from either diluting or distorting history to serve his ends." Salam also noted the limitations of a director working under a relatively small budget for a historical film.


text: The highly acclaimed music score that accompanies the film was composed by A. R. Rahman. The soundtrack features 20 pieces composed by Rahman, including 12 instrumentals and orchestral themes, six songs with lyrics by Javed Akhtar and a full orchestral version of Indian National Anthem. Most of the score was conducted by Matt Dunkley and performed by Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. Performers include the Western Choir Chennai (for "Aazadi") and the Mumbai Film Choir ("Hum Dilli Dilli Jayenge").


text: The soundtrack got high critical acclaim. A. R. Rahman received unanimous positive appreciations for his work. Popular music reviewing website "Planet Bollywood" gave 10 out of 10 stating "Bose – The Forgotten Hero is one of A.R. Rahman's and Javed Akhtar's finest creations. It's [sic] lack of mainstream compatibility and item numbers may hinder it from topping tabloid music charts, but that is barely a price to pay for having the distinction of creating musical storytelling of such high caliber. With three creative geniuses (A.R. Rahman, Javed Akhtar, and Shyam Benegal) at work, this quality soundtrack promises a very exciting movie to watch out for." Another popular review website "nowrunning" gave a positive review stating "The entire album is created for a patriotic, period film and is totally different from the regular film albums that one hears nowadays. It is always a difficult task to write songs that can cause one's patriotism to surge and flow. To his credit, it must be said that Rahman has succeeded in this and is ably aided by some wonderful lyrics by Javed Saab. As usual, Rahman has used original compositions to enhance the value of original songs and words used by the Indian National Army, way back in the 40s. A good album, but one that may not get popular acclaim but will definitely appeal to a niche audience."


text: The soundtrack is considered one of Rahman's finest works and was particularly praised for grand orchestration.


title: Flag of South Vietnam

text: The flag of South Vietnam was first introduced by the Provisional Central Government of Vietnam, later served as the national flag of the State of Vietnam (known as "South Vietnam" after 1954), and its successor, the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) from 1948 to 1975 until the fall of Saigon. The design consists of a yellow background with three red horizontal stripes through the middle. It is used to represent the "Vietnamese Heritage and Freedom Flag".


title: Flag of South Vietnam

text: The flag was designed by Lê Văn Đệ in 1948. The flag consists of a yellow field and three horizontal red stripes, and can be explained as emblematic of the common blood running through northern, central, and southern Vietnam.


title: Flag of South Vietnam

text: Although South Vietnam ceased to exist in 1975, the flag still finds use among private citizens in other countries and is still shown and used overseas by some Vietnamese emigrés, particularly in North America and Australia. Since June 2002, several American governmental bodies adopted resolutions recognizing the former flag as "Vietnamese Heritage and Freedom Flag." Both North Vietnam and South Vietnam ceased to exist when they unified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.


title: Flag of South Vietnam

text: During the reign of Emperor Gia Long (1802–1820), the yellow flag was also used as the symbol of the Empire of Vietnam. This was continued as the Emperor's flag when the Court of Huế became a French protectorate. Later the flag added a red bend on two sides.


title: Flag of South Vietnam

text: After the deportation and exile of the Emperors Thành Thái and Duy Tân, the new pro-French puppet emporer Khải Định introduced new imperial flag as a yellow flag with single horizontal band of red, following the Imperial Order of the Dragon of Annam. Formally known as the "", the flag was the official flag of the Nguyễn Court.


title: Flag of South Vietnam

text: In 1945 with the French ousted by Japan, Prime Minister Trần Trọng Kim of the newly restored Empire of Vietnam adopted another variant of the yellow flag. It included three red bands but the middle band was broken to form the . Derived from the trigrams, Quẻ Ly is the third of the Bát Quái (the Eight Trigrams – Ba gua): Càn (乾), Đoài (兌), Ly (離), Chấn (震), Tốn (巽), Khảm (坎), Cấn (艮), Khôn (坤). It was chosen to symbolize the sun, fire, light, and civilization. And most importantly, it represents the southern lands under the "Later Heaven" order, that is Vietnam. This flag was used briefly from June to August 1945 when Emperor Bảo Đại abdicated.


title: Flag of South Vietnam

text: On 2 June 1948, the Prime Minister of the Provisional Central Government of Vietnam, Brigadier General Nguyễn Văn Xuân, signed the decree with the specifications for the Vietnamese National Flag as follows: "The national emblem is a flag of yellow background, the height of which is equal to two-thirds of its width. In the middle of the flag and along its entire width, there are three horizontal red bands. Each band has a height equal to one-fifteenth of the width. These three red bands are separated from one another by a space of the band's height."


title: Flag of South Vietnam

text: The new national flag was raised for the first time on 5 June 1948 on a boat named "Dumont d'Urville" outside of Hạ Long Bay during the signing of the Halong Bay Agreements ("Accords de la baie d’Along") by High Commissioner Emile Bollaert and Nguyễn Văn Xuân.


title: Flag of South Vietnam

text: A detailed design of the flag appeared on the newspaper on 3 June 1948, and again on the next day (with correction to the flag ratio). The residents of Hanoi were requested to display the flag at their home on 5 June 1948 to celebrate the Hạ Long Bay event.


title: Flag of South Vietnam

text: When the former Emperor Bảo Đại was made chief of state in 1949, this design was adopted as the flag of the State of Vietnam.


title: Flag of South Vietnam

text: The three red bands have the divination sign of "Quẻ Càn", the first of the Eight Trigrams mentioned above. Quẻ Càn represents heaven. Based on the traditional worldview of the Vietnamese people, Quẻ Càn also denotes the South (as of the "Earlier Heaven" order), the Vietnamese Nation, Vietnamese people, and the people's power. Another interpretation places the three red bands as symbols of the three regions of Vietnam: North, Central, and South.


title: Flag of South Vietnam

text: With the foundation of the republic in 1955, the flag was adopted by the successor state, the Republic of Vietnam (more commonly known as South Vietnam). It was the national flag for the entire duration of that state's existence (1955–1975) from the First Republic to the Second Republic. With the capitulation of Saigon on 30 April 1975, the Republic of Vietnam came to an end and the flag ceased to exist as a state symbol. Afterwards, it has been adopted by many in the Vietnamese diaspora to symbolically distance themselves from the Communist government and continues to be used either as an alternative symbol for ethnic unity or as a protest tool against the current government.


title: Flag of South Vietnam

text: The flag of the former South Vietnam is popular with the case of Vietnamese Americans, Vietnamese Australians, and other Vietnamese around the world who fled Vietnam after the war, who call it the "Vietnamese Heritage and Freedom Flag", and they started the movement to struggle for recognitions for their political identity.


title: Flag of South Vietnam

text: In the United States, few Vietnamese immigrants of that time period use the current flag of Vietnam, which many of them consider offensive. Instead, they prefer to use the flag of South Vietnam in its place. The same is true for Vietnamese Canadians in Canada, Vietnamese Germans in western Germany, for Vietnamese in the Netherlands, France, Norway and the United Kingdom, and for Vietnamese Australians in Australia for that time period as well.


title: Paris Themmen

text: Paris Themmen (born June 25, 1959) is an American former actor who started his career as a child actor. He is best known for his role as Mike Teavee in "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory". After leaving acting, he worked in business as a real estate broker and casting director.


title: Paris Themmen

text: Themmen was born on June 25, 1959, in Boston, Massachusetts, to Ivana Marburger Themmen and Harold B. Themmen, both classical musicians. Themmen's mother was a renowned composer for orchestras in the late 20th century. A guitar concerto of hers was in final contention for the 1982 Kennedy Center Friedheim Award. Themmen's father, a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music, was a clarinetist and librarian for the American Ballet Theatre, and also played for the Boston Pops Orchestra.


title: Paris Themmen

text: Themmen appeared in radio and TV commercials, voice-overs and theater performing on Broadway in "Mame" with Ann Miller in 1967 and in "The Rothschilds" in 1970. In 1971, aged 11, he got his breakthrough role in "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" as Mike Teevee.


title: Paris Themmen

text: Declaring a hiatus from acting at age 14 to "just be a kid," Themmen went on to receive a B.F.A. in theatre from New York University. He founded Access International, a travel service that arranged Europe-bound charter flights for backpackers.


title: Paris Themmen

text: Following brief stints in real estate, film production, commercial casting, business representation at Walt Disney Imagineering, and a few other ventures, he now signs autographs at movie conventions, runs a photography business, and makes sporadic appearances in commercials, plays and TV shows.


title: Paris Themmen

text: Themmen's adult acting appearances include "", a 2000, sixth-season episode of the TV series "", as a fawning fan. He was billed as a "former child star" in two 2008 episodes of the American game show "Duel".


title: Paris Themmen

text: On May 4, 2011, Themmen appeared on the British television morning show "Daybreak", alongside the other child actors from "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory": Peter Ostrum (Charlie Bucket), Julie Dawn Cole (Veruca Salt), Denise Nickerson (Violet Beauregarde) and Michael Bollner (Augustus Gloop). They made an additional 40th Anniversary reunion appearance on NBC's "Today Show" eleven days later. He reunited with the partial "Wonka" cast again on the program in 2015.


title: Paris Themmen

text: On January 23, 2015, Themmen appeared on Ken Reid's TV Guidance Counselor Podcast. The episode was recorded live in Wilmington, Massachusetts during North East ComicCon.


title: Paris Themmen

text: Themmen was a "Jeopardy!" contestant on March 13, 2018, finishing in second place. His wife, Nikki Grillos, previously appeared on the program in 2015, returning twice as a champion before being defeated on her third appearance.


title: Paris Themmen

text: Themmen has been married to Nikki Grillos since 2014. Together, the couple currently resides in Los Angeles, California.


title: Paris Themmen

text: Themmen's sister Allegra Themmen-Pigott (1967–2019) was a coloratura soprano opera singer and music therapist. His sister Tania is married to voice actress and voice director Susan Blu.


title: Marlin Model 60

text: The Marlin Model 60, also known as the Marlin Glenfield Model 60, is a semi-automatic rifle that fires the .22 LR rimfire cartridge. Produced by Remington Arms in Huntsville, Alabama formerly in Mayfield, Kentucky, formerly by Marlin Firearms Company of North Haven, Connecticut, it was in continuous production from 1960 to 2020 and the company says it is the most popular rifle of its kind in the world. Major features include a micro-groove barrel, a cross-bolt safety, hardwood stock with Monte Carlo comb, and brass or blued steel inner magazine tube. The Marlin Model 795 is a very similar rifle and based on the Marlin Model 60, changed only to accept a detachable box magazine.


title: Marlin Model 60

text: The Marlin Model 99 was developed in 1959 by Ewald Nichol. Internally, it was essentially what would become the Model 60 in 1960. However, major differences were visible from the exterior. The Model 99 featured a walnut stock, and the receiver, instead of being grooved for tip-off scope mounts like the Model 60 would be, was factory-tapped to accept screw-on scope mounts. The Model 99 was offered from 1959 through 1961, and a lower priced version, Model 99G, was offered under Marlin's Glenfield line.


title: Marlin Model 60

text: The Marlin Model 60 was developed in 1960 from the Model 99 design. The primary difference was that the stock was made of birch instead of walnut to reduce the recurring production costs for the more expensive wood. Marlin also moved away from their practice of using steel inner tubes with their tubular magazine. They moved back to brass inner tubes as other companies had done. This, instead of the steel tubes often seen on earlier Marlin .22 rifles, eliminated the rust problems that the all-steel tubular magazines had experienced which helped make the inexpensive Marlin rifle as durable as more expensive .22 caliber rifles. The Model 60 additionally featured a 16-groove rifled barrel, utilizing Marlin's trademarked Micro-Groove rifling technology, which had been developed in 1953. This rifling, with its precision-crowned muzzle, gave the Model 60 an inherent, enhanced accuracy over competing rifles, which used traditional deep grooved rifling, because the bullet was not as severely deformed while traveling down the barrel, and downrange.


title: Marlin Model 60

text: The Model 60 has a manual "fully open" bolt hold position, activated by pushing the charging handle inwards towards the gun when it is in the fully retracted, open breech position. To close the bolt with the manual bolt hold-open engaged, the charging handle must be pulled out, away from the gun, before the bolt will go forward. Since 1985, the Model 60 has also included a patented automatic "last-shot" bolt hold-open. This latter feature is a safety feature that locks the bolt half-way open after the last cartridge is fired, thereby allowing the safe inspection of the now-open action. This also notifies the user when the gun is empty.


title: Marlin Model 60

text: During the late-1980s, the capacity of the rifle was reduced to a 15-round maximum limit, to meet New Jersey's firearms law for semi-automatic guns. For a few years in the mid-1980s the Model 60 rifles had both the "last shot hold open" feature and also held 18 rounds in the tube magazine. Those rifles with those two features are among the most sought after Model 60s. The redesigned magazine tube was visibly shorter than the barrel, which is how rifles from this period can be easily identified. Then, in the early 2000s the length of the barrel was reduced from 22 to 19 inches (559 to 483 mm), to match the length of the reduced length magazine. This had the effect of reducing the length of the rifle from 40.5 to 37.5 inches (1029 to 953 mm). (The photo above is of the 40.5 inch (1029 mm) version, the rifle having been manufactured in 1982.) Non-removable tubular magazine-fed rifles were never subject to the 10 round limit of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban. Marlin also manufactured models for export, which had various capacities to comply with foreign firearms regulations.


title: Marlin Model 60

text: Despite slight design changes since 1960, there is general backwards compatibility of nearly all internal parts. Some notable parts that are year-specific are the feed throat mechanisms, magazine tubes, firing pins, and hammers.


title: Marlin Model 60

text: In 2020 Marlin was sold to Sturm, Ruger & Co. when Remington Arms assets were sold off. Production of the Model 60 ceased at this time. Ruger relaunched Marlin in fall of 2021. As of January 2022, Ruger announced it has no plans to resume production of the Model 60.


title: Marlin Model 60

text: The action design is a self-loading, straight blowback operation, with right-side ejection. The receiver top has a serrated, non-glare finish. The receiver is held in the stock by front and rear machine screws through forearm and the trigger guard respectively (later models add a wood screw behind the trigger guard to reinforce the wrist of the stock). The receiver is grooved for a scope mount. For use without a scope, the barrel features an adjustable open rear light and a ramp front sight. The charging handle is used to load the first round from the magazine and can be retracted and pushed in as a manual bolt hold-open feature. Current model has an automatic "last-shot" bolt hold-open device with an external lever in the front of the trigger guard to release the bolt. Earliest Model 60s did not have a bolt hold-open; first the manual, then in the mid-1980s the automatic "last shot" hold-open were added. The rifle has an easily accessible cross-bolt safety located above the trigger. When disassembled, the trigger guard with trigger and safety remains in the stock.


title: Marlin Model 60

text: Marlin uses their proprietary Micro-Groove rifling in the Model 60. The twist rate is 1:16 inches, right-hand. Micro-Groove rifling uses 16 small lands and grooves rather than 4, 6 or 8 deeper grooves used in most rifles. This increases the accuracy of the rifle by lessening deformation of fired bullets traveling down the barrel. Although the Model 60 is one of the least expensive .22 semi-automatic rifles sold, it has the reputation of being one of the most accurate rifles out of the box, with no modifications necessary.


title: Marlin Model 60

text: Unlike some competing .22 semi-automatic rifles, such as the Ruger 10/22, there are relatively few aftermarket accessories sold for the utilitarian Model 60.


title: Marlin Model 60

text: The Model 60 has been sold in over thirty-five variants, and is one of the fastest-selling sporting rifles ever, as of 1983.


title: Marlin Model 60

text: While earlier .22 semi-automatic rifles were often designed to function with .22 Short, .22 Long and .22 Long Rifle interchangeably, the Model 60 is optimized for the .22 Long Rifle cartridge only.


title: Marlin Model 60

text: The Model 60 is well-suited for small-game hunting and vermin control, as well as for serious but low-cost target practice while preparing for hunting with larger rifles. The relatively large ammunition capacity is adequate for casual recreational target shooting ("plinking"), plus the low price and ease of handling makes it well-suited as a first rifle by young hunters just learning to use a semi-automatic rifle.


title: Marlin Model 60

text: The production of Marlin Model 60's was moved to Huntsville, Alabama. This move took place in 2016 and 2017. Rifles now are labeled on the barrel with the new location as Huntsville, Alabama USA.


title: Marlin Model 60

text: Other private-label versions were manufactured for Montgomery Ward, Coast to Coast Stores, and Cotter & Company.


title: Punycode

text: Punycode is a representation of Unicode with the limited ASCII character subset used for Internet hostnames. Using Punycode, host names containing Unicode characters are transcoded to a subset of ASCII consisting of letters, digits, and hyphens, which is called the letter–digit–hyphen (LDH) subset. For example, "München" (German name for Munich) is encoded as "Mnchen-3ya".


title: Punycode

text: While the Domain Name System (DNS) technically supports arbitrary sequences of octets in domain name labels, the DNS standards recommend the use of the LDH subset of ASCII conventionally used for host names, and require that string comparisons between DNS domain names should be case-insensitive. The Punycode syntax is a method of encoding strings containing Unicode characters, such as internationalized domain names (IDNA), into the LDH subset of ASCII favored by DNS. It is specified in IETF Request for Comments 3492.


title: Punycode

text: As stated in RFC 3492, "Punycode is an instance of a more general algorithm called "Bootstring", which allows strings composed from a small set of 'basic' code points to uniquely represent any string of code points drawn from a larger set." Punycode defines parameters for the general Bootstring algorithm to match the characteristics of Unicode text. This section demonstrates the procedure for Punycode encoding, using the example of the string "bücher" ("Bücher" is German for "books"), which is translated into the label "bcher-kva".


title: Punycode

text: First, all ASCII characters in the string are copied from input to output, skipping over any other characters. For example, "bücher" is copied to "bcher". If any characters were copied, i.e. if there was at least one ASCII character in the input, an ASCII hyphen is appended to the output (e.g., "bücher" → "bcher-", but "ü" → "").


title: Punycode

text: Note that hyphens are themselves ASCII characters. Thus, they can be present in the input and, if so, they will be copied to the output. This causes no ambiguity: if the output contains hyphens, the one that got added is always the last one. It marks the end of the ASCII characters.


title: Punycode

text: The encoder then calculates i*n, and encodes the resulting number into a sequence of base-36 digits. It renders those in ASCII, and appends the result to the output string.


title: Punycode

text: The ASCII rendering is: 0 → 'a', ..., 25 → 'z', 26 → '0', ..., 35 → '9', with the number's digits arranged in little-endian order.


title: Punycode

text: The base-36 encoding process is more complex. It outputs variable-length integers. These have the property that each number's most significant digit (e.g. the digit "1" in the number "123") is recognizable without context. Thus, the digits from multiple numbers can be concatenated, with nothing separating them, yet the original numbers can still be recognized and extracted.


title: Punycode

text: To prevent hyphens in non-international domain names from triggering a Punycode decoding, the string codice_1 is prepended to Punycode sequences in internationalized domain names. This is called ACE (ASCII Compatible Encoding).


title: Punycode

text: "i" is an index into the string, ranging from zero (representing a potential insertion at the start) to the current length of the extended string (representing a potential insertion at the end). "i" starts at zero.


title: Punycode

text: The state progression is a monotonic function. A state transition either increments "i" or, if "i" is at its maximum, resets "i" to zero and increments "n". At the next state transition, we resume incrementing "i". At each state, the code point denoted by "n" either gets inserted or not.


title: Punycode

text: The numbers generated by the encoder represent how many possibilities to skip before an insertion is made.


title: Punycode

text: There are six possible places to insert a character in the string "bcher" (including before the first character and after the last one). There are 124 code points between the last ASCII code point (127 = 0x7F, the end of ASCII) and "ü" (code point 252 = 0xFC, see Unicode's Latin-1 Supplement). There is one insertion position for the "ü" that must be skipped (position zero: before the 'b').


title: Punycode

text: Thus, the decoder will skip a total of (6 × 124) + 1 = 745 possible insertions before reaching the required one. Once the character is inserted, there are now seven possible places to insert another character.


title: Punycode

text: Punycode uses generalized variable-length integers to represent these values. For example, this is how "kva" is used to represent the code number 745:


title: Punycode

text: A number system with little-endian ordering is used which allows variable-length codes without separate delimiters: a digit lower than a threshold value marks that it is the most-significant digit, hence the end of the number. The threshold value depends on the position in the number and also on previous insertions, to increase efficiency. Correspondingly the weights of the digits vary.


title: Punycode

text: In this case a number system with 36 symbols is used, with the case-insensitive 'a' through 'z' equal to the decimal numbers 0 through 25, and '0' through '9' equal to the decimal numbers 26 through 35. Thus "kva", corresponds to the decimal number string "10 21 0".


title: Punycode

text: To decode this string of symbols, a sequence of thresholds will be needed, in this case it's (1, 1, 26, 26, ...). The weight (or place value) of the least-significant digit is always 1: 'k' (=10) with a weight of 1 equals 10. After this, the weight of the next digit depends on the first threshold: generally, for any "n", the weight of the ("n"+1)-th digit is the weight of the previous one times (36 − threshold of the "n"-th digit). So the second symbol has a place value of 36 minus the previous threshold value, in this case, 35. Therefore, the sum of the first two symbols 'k' (=10) and 'v' (=21) is 10 × 1 + 21 × 35. Since the second symbol is not less than its threshold value of 1, there is more to come. However, since the third symbol in this example is 'a' (=0), we may ignore calculating its weight. Therefore, "kva" represents the decimal number (10 × 1) + (21 × 35) = 745.


title: Punycode

text: The thresholds themselves are determined for each successive encoded character by an algorithm keeping them between 1 and 26 inclusive. The case can then be used to provide information about the original case of the string.


title: Punycode

text: Because special characters are sorted by their code points by encoding algorithm, for the insertion of a second special character in "bücher", the first possibility is "büücher" with code "bcher-kvaa", the second "bücüher" with code "bcher-kvab", etc. After "bücherü" with code "bcher-kvae" comes codes representing insertion of ý, the Unicode character following ü, starting with "ýbücher" with code "bcher-kvaf" (different from "übücher" coded "bcher-jvab"), etc.


title: Punycode

text: To make the encoding and decoding algorithms simple, no attempt has been made to prevent some encoded values from encoding inadmissible Unicode values: however, these should be checked for and detected during decoding.


title: Punycode

text: Punycode is designed to work across all scripts, and to be self-optimizing by attempting to adapt to the character set ranges within the string as it operates. It is optimized for the case where the string is composed of zero or more ASCII characters and in addition characters from only one other script system, but will cope with any arbitrary Unicode string. Note that for DNS use, the domain name string is assumed to have been normalized using nameprep and (for top-level domains) filtered against an officially registered language table before being punycoded, and that the DNS protocol sets limits on the acceptable lengths of the output Punycode string.


title: Leona Naess

text: Leona Kristina Naess (or Næss) (born 31 July 1974) is a British singer-songwriter. She released her debut album, "Comatised", in March 2000, which produced the single "Charm Attack" (Adult Top 40 #29).


title: Leona Naess

text: Naess was raised in London. She is the daughter of Filippa Kumlin D'Orey, a Swedish interior designer, and the late Arne Næss Jr., a Norwegian mountaineer and business magnate, who was of Norwegian and German descent. She has two full siblings; an older brother, Christoffer, and a sister, Katinka, from that marriage. Her great-uncle was the Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss. Naess was 7 years old when her parents divorced in 1982. She attended school in London's Chelsea area while growing up, and later attended the Purcell School in Hertfordshire, where she studied music composition. Her father married African-American entertainer and global music sensation Diana Ross in 1986 and had two boys, her half-brothers Ross Naess and Evan Ross. Naess would often travel to their Connecticut home, where she was close with her stepmother and stepsisters Chudney Ross, Rhonda Ross Kendrick, and actress Tracee Ellis Ross. Her father and Ross divorced in 2000, and Naess also has two other half-brothers, Nicklas and Louis Naess, from her father's subsequent marriage to Camilla Astrup.


title: Leona Naess

text: A paternal aunt to Naess' mother Filippa Kumlin was Elsa Kumlin, married Crafoord, and grand mother to Swedish singer/song writer Wille Crafoord, making the two pop stars second cousins.


title: Leona Naess

text: Naess received her first guitar at the age of 14, a gift from her mother. The first song she learned to play was "The Cross" by Prince. She soon began writing her own songs. In addition to Julie Andrews in the musicals "Mary Poppins" and "The Sound of Music", her early influences were 1980s British rock. Naess soon found inspiration in the contemporary singer-songwriters Tracy Chapman, Sinéad O'Connor, and Edie Brickell, as well as in Joni Mitchell and Carole King. Her other early musical influences include Patti Smith, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen and John Lennon.


title: Leona Naess

text: At the age of 18, Naess moved to New York City to study music at New York University, she later switched her major, receiving a degree in anthropology. A resident of Greenwich Village, she began performing with her guitar at open mics and was soon performing regularly in coffeehouses, bars and clubs like The Bitter End around Lower Manhattan, even busking at times.


title: Leona Naess

text: A friend, who was an intern at Sony Records, invited an executive to see Naess perform. Soon, a number of record companies were interested in signing her. She signed with producer Scott Litt's record label, Outpost Records, at the age of 22, shortly after graduating from NYU.


title: Leona Naess

text: Naess began work on her first album in 1998, which was completed in June 1999. A series of business mergers postponed the album, meanwhile the Outpost label went out of business. The head of MCA Records, another division of the Universal Music Group of which Outpost had become part of, brought her contract over to MCA. Naess's first album, "Comatised", was released in March 2000. Naess continued to develop as a performer during the delays. "Comatised" produced the single "Charm Attack" (Adult Top 40 #29), which was also featured in the teen comedy film "Whatever It Takes". She appeared as a model for Calvin Klein prior to the release of the album. Naess soon released her second album, "I Tried to Rock You But You Only Roll" (2001), produced by Swedish producer Martin Terefe.


title: Leona Naess

text: In 2002, Naess recorded backing vocals on Counting Crows album "Hard Candy", primarily on the song "Black and Blue". She signed with Geffen Records and released her third album, "Leona Naess" (2003), produced by Ethan Johns. The album was a new direction for Naess with its stripped-down instrumentation. A song from this album, "Ballerina", appeared in the first season of the Showtime program, "Weeds" (2005), in the episode entitled "". Another song from her third album, "Christmas", also appeared in "The O.C." on the episodes, "The Debut", and the episode "The Chrismukkah Almost That Wasn't, as well as the soundtrack "". In 2004, her song "Calling" was featured on the soundtrack to "".


title: Leona Naess

text: In January 2004, Naess' father died in a climbing accident in South Africa. Devastated by the loss, she withdrew from music and moved back to London to live with her mother. Naess was dropped from her record label, split with her manager, and considered going back to school. Eventually, she resumed songwriting and began collaborating with music producer Samuel Dixon. Naess released a fourth album, "Thirteens", on 16 September 2008 with Verve Forecast Records in the US The title refers to thirteen lo-fi home-recorded albums that Naess created over approximately two years before the album's release, although Naess has stated that the title has another meaning, which is a secret. The album consists of first takes, which were then overdubbed. A single, "Heavy Like Sunday", was released on 2 June 2008 on Blue Flowers Records. 500 copies of a 7" vinyl version included a Polaroid picture taken by Naess. The album was released on 11 May 2009 by Polydor Records in the UK.


title: Leona Naess

text: Naess is featured on the Ray LaMontagne album, "Gossip in the Grain" (2008), on the songs "A Falling Through" and "I Still Care for You", and toured with LaMontagne in September – November 2008. She has also toured with Eagle-Eye Cherry, David Gray, Travis, Ryan Adams, Emm Gryner, Hem, Josh Rouse, Ben Lee, Badly Drawn Boy, and appeared as part of the 1999 Lilith Fair.


title: Leona Naess

text: Naess returned to the stage, performing at New York's Rockwood Music Hall in October 2016, her first show in over seven years. She is planning a new album and extensive live shows in 2017.


title: Leona Naess

text: Naess lives in New York City and frequently travels back to London. She was engaged to singer-songwriter Ryan Adams, but the engagement ended in 2003. Naess wrote on her MySpace blog in January 2010 that she was pregnant, taking a break from music, and had "never been happier". On 4 June 2010, she had a baby boy, and she had her second child in 2011.


title: Leona Naess

text: She is the sister-in-law of actress Christa Miller, paternal half-sister of actor and musician Evan Ross, and the ex-stepdaughter of musician Diana Ross; with whom she remains close. She is also the former stepsister of actress Tracee Ellis Ross and singer-songwriter Rhonda Ross Kendrick, with whom she also remains close.


title: 2018 Under-19 Cricket World Cup

text: The 2018 ICC Under-19 Cricket World Cup was an international limited-overs cricket tournament that was held in New Zealand from 13 January to 3 February 2018. It was the twelfth edition of the Under-19 Cricket World Cup, and the third to be held in New Zealand (after the 2002 and 2010 events). New Zealand was the first country to host the event three times. The opening ceremony took place on 7 January 2018. The West Indies were the defending champions. However, they failed to defend their title, after losing their first two group fixtures.


title: 2018 Under-19 Cricket World Cup

text: Following the group stage fixtures, Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, England, India, New Zealand, Pakistan and South Africa had all qualified for the Super League quarter-final stage of the tournament. The other eight teams moved to the Plate League to determine their final placements in the competition. Sri Lanka went on to win the Plate League, giving them a final position of ninth overall in the tournament.


title: 2018 Under-19 Cricket World Cup

text: In the first Super League semi-final, Australia beat Afghanistan by 6 wickets to progress to the final. In the second semi-final, India beat Pakistan by 203 runs to advance into the final. In the third-place playoff, no play was possible due to rain and a wet outfield. Pakistan therefore finished in third place, as they finished their group ahead of Afghanistan on net run rate. In the final, India beat Australia by 8 wickets to win their fourth Under-19 World Cup, the most by any side.


title: 2018 Under-19 Cricket World Cup

text: The ten full members of the International Cricket Council (ICC), as of 2016, qualified automatically for the tournament. Namibia, which placed seventh at the 2016 World Cup, also qualified automatically as the highest ranked associate member. The other five places in the tournament were awarded to the winners of the five regional under-19 tournaments.


title: 2018 Under-19 Cricket World Cup

text: On 3 January 2018, the ICC appointed the officials for the tournament. Along with the seventeen umpires, Jeff Crowe, Dev Govindjee, David Jukes and Graeme Labrooy were also named as the match referees.


title: 2018 Under-19 Cricket World Cup

text: Each team selected a 15-man squad for the tournament. Any players born on or after 1 September 1998 were eligible to be selected for the competition.


title: Florence LaRue

text: Florence LaRue (born February 4, 1942) is an American singer and actress, best known as an original member of the 5th Dimension.


title: Florence LaRue

text: LaRue was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, but moved to Glenside, Pennsylvania, when she was young. She began her musical education studying dance and violin. Her family moved to Los Angeles, California, where she earned an Associate's Degree in Music from Los Angeles City College. She later received a Bachelor of Arts in Elementary Education from California State University.


title: Florence LaRue

text: In 1966, LaRue was approached by Lamonte McLemore and Marilyn McCoo to join their recently formed group the 5th Dimension. LaRue nearly always sang female lead on one song per album, with McCoo taking the lead on one song as well; otherwise she sang the alto voice parts along with McCoo's soprano, being featured prominently on "Stoned Soul Picnic", or shared the lead with McCoo on songs including "Blowing Away", "Puppet Man", "Save the Country", and "Sweet Blindness". After McCoo's departure, LaRue was lead singer on hit songs including "Love Hangover" (1976). As a member of the 5th Dimension, LaRue received six Grammy Awards, including Grammy Award for Record of the Year for "Up, Up and Away" (1968) and "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In" (1969).


title: Florence LaRue

text: LaRue appeared in the CBS movie of the week "Happy" with Dom DeLuise. She also performed in the national tour of Broadway's Tony Award winning musical "Ain't Misbehavin", and starred in the Toronto and Calgary productions of "Mo' Magic".


title: Florence LaRue

text: LaRue co-hosted the Arthritis Telethon with Jane Wyman, judged two segments of "Puttin' on the Hits", appeared as a celebrity guest on "Star Search", and has been a special guest on numerous television shows, including several appearances on "The Dale Evans Show", "The Today Show", The Carol Lawrence Show, and numerous other Christian and secular programs.


title: Florence LaRue

text: , the group was touring as "Florence LaRue & The Fifth Dimension" led by LaRue with Willie Williams, Leonard Tucker, Patrice Morris, and Floyd Smith. She is married to Laurence P. Kantor. She was previously married to Errol Aubry, Marc Gordon, and Bennett Curland, with one child from her marriage to former manager Gordon.


title: Florence LaRue

text: In June 2016, LaRue and the group performed in The Villages, Florida, just days after the Orlando nightclub shooting. LaRue took the opportunity to share her thoughts on the events: "We will not be terrorized. We know what’s happening in the world, but this is a song about good health, love, peace and happiness. We still believe in those things today," she stated before performing one of the band's hit singles, "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In".


title: Rich Vos

text: Rich Vos is an American stand-up comedian, writer and actor. Since 2011, he has been the co-host of the podcast "My Wife Hates Me" with his wife, comedian Bonnie McFarlane.


title: Rich Vos

text: Vos was raised in a Jewish family who lived in an "all black neighborhood" in New Jersey. Vos's parents divorced when he was young and he did not graduate from high school. He became a fan of stand-up comedy from watching television as a child and cites acts featured on "The Ed Sullivan Show" as a big influence.


title: Rich Vos

text: Vos began his stand-up career in 1984, choosing to pursue it full-time as he "failed at everything else", and developed his act in local clubs. In 1995, Vos became the first white comic to perform a set on "Def Comedy Jam" on HBO, a show usually featuring African American comedians. In July 1999, Vos hosted at the Woodstock '99 festival, later calling it a highlight of his career. In 2000, Vos received the Bistro Award for Outstanding Achievement as Comedy Performer. In 2001, Vos played the bouncer and wrote and performed skits on the British television show "The People vs. Jerry Sadowitz".


title: Rich Vos

text: In 2001, Vos released his first stand-up comedy album, "I'm Killing Here". This was followed by the DVD "Vos" in 2004, consisting of an unedited, 55-minute performance recorded at the Stress Factory in New Jersey. He went on to produce two half-hour specials on "Comedy Central Presents".


title: Rich Vos

text: From 2002 to 2004, Vos was a frequent guest on "Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn" on Comedy Central. He picked the show as one of his favourites to do as he lived close to its filming location and by the fact that he could do it with his best friends. In 2003, Vos finished third on the first season of "Last Comic Standing" on NBC. During this time he was given the nickname "The Don" by Cory Kahaney "because of my rough and tough demeanor ... maybe it was more because I was the most experienced comic". At the end of the season, Vos toured with Kahaney and Dave Mordal for eight months. In 2004, Vos was a finalist in its third season.


title: Rich Vos

text: Vos was a frequent guest on the "Opie and Anthony" radio show, with jokes centered at his expense, most often highlighting his speech impediment or lack of intellect. In 2002, he was responsible for having fellow comedian Patrice O'Neal come on the show, who also became a popular regular guest. When the show aired on SiriusXM Radio, Vos hosted a Saturday night program with his wife Bonnie McFarlane. He hosted the 2006 and 2007 editions of the Opie and Anthony's Traveling Virus Comedy Tour.


title: Rich Vos

text: Between 2006 and 2008, Vos prepared three pilot episodes for a comedy series alongside McFarlane, but neither were picked up by a network.


title: Rich Vos

text: In 2016, Vos released his fifth comedy album "V", of which its material took between one year and a half and two years to develop. It charted at number one on the iTunes and "Billboard" release charts.


title: Rich Vos

text: In 2022, while performing at a comedy club in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Vos made racist comments about members of the audience based on their Indigenous ethnicity. After several Indigenous members of the audience walked out, Vos reportedly said "They should all go back to their f——— wigwam," at which point more audience members walked out. He also reportedly used the word "gay" in a derogatory sense during his set.


title: Rich Vos

text: After struggling with crack cocaine and alcohol addiction throughout his 20s, Vos completed a one-month rehabilitation course in 1987, three years into his comedy career. He has been clean since.


title: Rich Vos

text: Vos has married twice; he and his first wife have two daughters, Jessica and Ellen, before they divorced. In September 2005, Vos married comedian Bonnie McFarlane. Their daughter Rayna was born in 2007. Vos lives in Hillsborough Township, New Jersey to be closer to his children.


title: My Own Prison

text: My Own Prison is the debut studio album by American rock band Creed, released in 1997. The album was released independently by the band's record label Blue Collar Records on June 24, 1997, but then was released by Wind-up Records on August 26, 1997. Manager Jeff Hanson matched Creed up with John Kurzweg, and "My Own Prison" was recorded for $6,000, funded by Hanson. The album was distributed to Florida radio stations. The band wrote several songs trying to discover their own identity. In the early days of the band, the members of the band had jobs to make money while their bassist Brian Marshall got a degree. The band got a record deal with Wind-up Records and began recording music.


title: My Own Prison

text: At the time of "My Own Prison" release, Creed were compared to several bands, including Soundgarden (especially the "Badmotorfinger" era), Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Hootie & the Blowfish, Metallica, and Tool. Influenced by heavy metal and 1970s stadium rock, "My Own Prison" music has been described as grunge, and "slightly heavy metal, slightly alternative". The album is a lot more heavy and a lot more than Creed's other albums. The lyrics on the album include topics like emerging adulthood, Christianity and faith, sinning, suicide, unity, struggling to prosper in life, and Creed singer Scott Stapp and guitarist Mark Tremonti said their early adulthood inspired lyrics to songs like the title track and "Torn". Stapp was inspired by music like U2 (particularly U2's album "The Joshua Tree"), Led Zeppelin, and The Doors. Inspired by thrash metal bands like Metallica, Slayer, Exodus, and Forbidden, Tremonti brought heavy metal musical elements into Creed's music.


title: My Own Prison

text: Creed released four singles for the album: the title track, "Torn", "What's This Life For", and "One". Despite only peaking at number twenty-two on the "Billboard" 200, strong radio airplay propelled "My Own Prison" to become a commercial success. All singles had music videos, except "One", that received a lot of airplay on MTV while also finding success on the Modern Rock Tracks and Mainstream Rock Tracks charts. "My Own Prison" was eventually certified sextuple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and, as of 2009, sold over 6,000,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan. "My Own Prison" received reviews ranging from negative to positive, complimenting its guitar riffs and music but criticizing its similarity to 1990s grunge bands.


title: My Own Prison

text: For the band's debut release, manager Jeff Hanson matched them up with John Kurzweg, a producer friend who, with his unobtrusive production style and talents as a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, he felt was a great fit. Together, the album was recorded for $6,000, which was funded by Hanson. "My Own Prison" was originally released independently on their own record label, Blue Collar Records, in 1997. The album was distributed to Florida radio stations, and their enthusiasm for the record helped it sell 6,000 copies in the first two months in Florida alone. Creed singer Scott Stapp said that even though Creed were trying to find the band's creative stride, it took a while for the band to discover its musical style. Stapp said: "I remember after Mark and I and the guys wrote our first five or seven songs and we hadn't found our identity yet. Then we wrote a song called 'Grip My Soul,' which we never recorded or put out but I remember leaving band rehearsal and all of us felt the same way. Like, alright, we found ourselves. We found out who we are and then right after that is when 'My Own Prison' poured out of us." Stapp then said: "If I'm remembering correctly, those were essentially the next 10 out of 13 songs that we wrote after that initial 'find your identity' moment that I think every band has." Creed guitarist Mark Tremonti said that in Creed's early days, he was working as a cook at Chili's and Stapp was working as a cook at Ruby Tuesday's. Creed drummer Scott Phillips was managing a knife store at a mall and Creed bassist Brian Marshall was the only one without a job, and, according to Tremonti, Marshall "was also the only one who ended up getting his degree before it was all said and done." When Creed got a record deal, the band got an advance and Tremonti quit his job and started working for about 3 weeks at the local guitar shop and then after that, Creed began touring. "My Own Prison" was originally released through Blue Collar Records, but was remixed by Wind-up Records and then released through Wind-up Records. Creed recorded the original version of the album in Kurzweg's house in Tallahassee, Florida. For the of the album, the band went to Long View Farm in Massachusetts.


title: My Own Prison

text: "My Own Prison" is a lot heavier and more grunge-oriented than other Creed albums. The lyrics on the album include themes like Christianity, faith, sinning, and The music on the album has been described as grunge, and heavy metal. Jon Parales of "The New York Times" compared the album to the "Badmotorfinger" era of Soundgarden. He also compared the album's music to Hootie & the Blowfish and compared the song "Unforgiven" to Metallica. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic wrote that "Creed don't have an original or distinctive sound -- they basically fall into the category of post-Seattle bands who temper their grunge with a dose of Live earnestness". In 1997, when "My Own Prison" first brought Creed some attention from the mainstream, Bradley Bambarger of "Billboard" wrote that Creed sound "disconcertingly reminiscent of Alice in Chains". Justin Seremet of the "Hartford Courant" wrote that Creed "is essentially Alices in Chains without the bite" He compared singer Stapp's vocals to Alice in Chains deceased singer Layne Staley. He described the album as "scrunge", which he defined as "the adopted name for groups that rode the Seattle wave with a couple of hits and subsequently vanished -- bands like Silverchair, Sponge, Candlebox and so on." In a review of "My Own Prison", "The Spokesman-Review" described Creed as "slightly heavy metal, slightly alternative." "The New Rolling Stone Album Guide" described the album as being influenced by 1970s stadium rock, and wrote that the album includes "thundering metallic tracks and sweeping ballads". Phil Freeman of "Stereogum" wrote:


title: My Own Prison

text: Creed lead singer Scott Stapp was influenced heavily by U2's album "The Joshua Tree" and was also influenced by The Doors and Led Zeppelin. Despite being inspired by The Doors, Led Zeppelin and U2, Creed was compared frequently by critics to Tool, Soundgarden and, most frequently, Pearl Jam. In response to the Pearl Jam comparison, Stapp said: "It could be worse," he says. "They could be comparing us to some shitty band that no one has ever heard of, rather than the biggest band of the decade." Tremonti also was okay with the Pearl Jam comparison: "It doesn't bother me so much. They're one of the best bands to come out in the past 10 years." Stapp left his home when he was 17 years old to enroll in "the school of hard knocks," Stapp said, and it was in the latter days during this education that Stapp decided he will "take responsibility" for his actions. Stapp was inspired by this experience when he wrote "My Own Prison" title track. Stapp said the song relates his discovery that he "couldn't blame others for the walls constricting my life. 'My Own Prison' was the consequences for my bad decisions. It was my own fault that I did shitty in school, that I got fired from my job, that I was living in my car. I had to grow up." Stapp said about writing the title track: "One night I woke up about 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. from a dream and I just wrote it all down," Stapp said. "I didn't know it was a song at the time. A few days later I called [guitarist] Mark [Tremonti], he had been putting together some music, and we sat down and got the song together in about 30 minutes." "What's This Life For" is about a best friend of Tremonti who committed suicide, and Tremonti described the song as "a song about suicide and kids searching for that meaning of life". "One", a more catchy and more upbeat-sounding song on "My Own Prison", is about unity and criticizes society's alleged lack of unity. "Torn" is about how Stapp was expelled from a Christian school, lived in an apartment, and wrote his thoughts on a piece of paper, becoming the basis of the song. Tremonti wrote "Torn". Prior to Creed's mainstream success, Tremonti had a couple of jobs to finance college, and he washed cars for 4 years and worked as a cook. "One day, I came home from work at about 3 in the morning," he said. "I was all dirty and stinky and hating my life, so I just wrote a song about what it's like being a kid in between 18 and 23, when you haven't graduated from school yet and you don't know what you're doing with your life." Tremonti then said: "It's about how hard that period of time is, when you're broke, you have to work two jobs to go to school. I was at a hard point in my life, so I wrote a song about it," he explained.


title: My Own Prison

text: Prior to releasing the album on their own independent label, Blue Collar Records, the band recruited Daniel Tremonti, brother of guitarist Mark Tremonti, to become the band's creative director. Stapp described Daniel as a "super soulful guy with the heart and talent of a true artist." The band decided to settle on a photo that Daniel had taken for a photography class as the cover art for the record. The image was of a man named Justin Brown, a friend of the band, which depicted him kneeling shirtless in a corner with his hands on top of his head. Stapp claimed the artwork "captured him to the core", and that it reflected the isolation, conflict and torture that was driving him as well as seeing hope and feeling that he was like man in the artwork "who had been beaten down but could now get up." Looking to have a professional-looking final product, the band acquired a loan from bassist Brian Marshall's father, who worked as a physician, and went to a one-stop company to package and manufacture the record. The band ordered five thousand copies and took them to major outlets in Tallahassee, Florida. All five thousand copies were sold within the first month.


title: My Own Prison

text: The original Blue Collar Records version featured the band's original logo, a wordmark inside a roundel, which was situated to the top right just over Justin Brown and the album title at the bottom of the cover. The Wind-up Records version featured an updated band wordmark logo in a Mason Serif Regular font now situated on top left and the album title just below that to the right. The band's updated logo would go on to become their permanent logo, although the font would eventually become slightly more extended on future releases.


title: My Own Prison

text: Creed released four singles for "My Own Prison": the title track, "Torn", "What's This Life For", and "One". The title track was released in 1997 and "Torn" was released in the spring of 1998. "What's This Life For" also was released in 1998, and "One", the last single, was released in early 1999. All four singles had success on the Mainstream Rock Tracks and Modern Rock Tracks charts. Because all four singles were not initially sold in the United States, they were ineligible for the US "Billboard" Hot 100. However, by the time "One" was released that restriction was lifted, and the song became Creed's first song that charted on the "Billboard" Hot 100, charting at number 70. "My Own Prison" and "One" also managed to peak at number 54 and 49 on the US "Billboard" Hot 100 Airplay respectively. The title track, "Torn" and "What's This Life For" all had music videos, with the title track's music video receiving a lot of airplay on MTV. The Blue Collar release of "My Own Prison" was on June 24, 1997 and the Wind-up version was released on August 26, 1997. Soon after the release of "My Own Prison", the title track began being played on the locals only radio show in Tallahassee, Florida. Another radio station in a nearby city in Georgia started playing the album's song "Pity for a Dime". The band were asked to perform a show there and there were around 5,000 to 6,000 people. Pretty soon, the title track began playing on radio outside the Georgia and Florida area.


title: My Own Prison

text: "My Own Prison" peaked at number 22 on the "Billboard" 200 on May 2, 1998, being on the chart for 112 weeks. The album also peaked at number 1 on the Heatseekers Albums chart on November 8, 1997. On January 22, 2000, the album peaked at number 1 on the Catalog Albums chart, remaining on the chart for 157 weeks. "My Own Prison" was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on August 25, 1998. It was certified triple platinum on February 26, 1999, 4× platinum on November 3, 1999, 5× platinum on December 4, 2000, and on August 26, 2002. On January 2, 1998, MTV reported that "My Own Prison" sold 175,000 copies in the United States. On September 18, 1998, "The New York Times" reported that "My Own Prison" had sold 2,200,000 copies in the United States. "Time" reported on October 18, 1999, that "My Own Prison" sold nearly 4,000,000 copies. On January 3, 2002, "Rolling Stone" reported that, according to Nielsen SoundScan, "My Own Prison" sold 5,700,000 copies in the United States. As of 2009, "My Own Prison" sold more than 6,000,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan. "My Own Prison" sold 15,000,000 copies worldwide, making it one of the most successful debut albums of all time.


title: My Own Prison

text: "My Own Prison" received mixed reviews from critics. AllMusic wrote: "Creed don't have an original or distinctive sound -- they basically fall into the category of post-Seattle bands who temper their grunge with a dose of Live earnestness -- but they work well within their boundaries. At their best, they are a solid post-grunge band, grinding their riffs out with muscle; at their worst, they are simply faceless. The best moments of "My Own Prison" suggest they'll be able to leave post-grunge anonymity behind and develop their own signature sound." Trevor Miller of Music Critic described the album as "overall, an excellent first album".


title: My Own Prison

text: Jon Pareles of "The New York Times", with an article entitled "Grunge Gets Religion, and It's Not Pretty", criticized "My Own Prison" and wrote: "Convictions aside, Creed's weakness is its music. The band's imitation of Soundgarden circa 1991 is a clumsy one." "The Spokesman-Review" wrote: "I like the CD. I like the band, but there is room for improvement." Justin Seremet of the "Hartford Courant" panned "My Own Prison": "Just as the Warrants and Slaughters of the world hung around long after their brand of music had gone to the grave, so will Creed. Let's move on, folks."


title: Maria (Blondie song)

text: "Maria" is a song by American rock band Blondie. The song was written by Blondie keyboardist Jimmy Destri and produced by Craig Leon. Taken from their seventh album, "No Exit" (1999), it was Blondie's first new release since 1982. "Maria", issued as a single in Europe on January 11, 1999, reached number one in the United Kingdom; Blondie's sixth UK chart-topper. The song also topped the charts of Greece and Spain, becoming a top-20 hit across Europe and in New Zealand.


title: Maria (Blondie song)

text: The song was included on the band's 2014 compilation album, "Greatest Hits Deluxe Redux". The compilation was part of a two-disc set titled "Blondie 4(0) Ever", which includes "Ghosts of Download", their tenth studio album, and marked the 40th anniversary of the band's formation.


title: Maria (Blondie song)

text: "Maria" was written by the band's keyboardist, Jimmy Destri, who had penned some of their earlier hits such as "Atomic". He wrote the song while reflecting on his days in Catholic school, when he fantasized about meeting the ideal girl. According to Destri, the track is about teenage desire. A line from the song: "...like a millionaire/walking on imported air", was used in the previous Blondie track "Walk Like Me" (also written by Destri) from the album "Autoamerican" (1980), and the track shares a similar lyrical motif with their 1977 single "Rip Her to Shreds". "Maria" is written and composed in the key of A major, with Harry's range in the song spanning from the low note of E to the high note of C.


title: Maria (Blondie song)

text: "Maria" was serviced to all US radio formats on January 5, 1999, guitarist Chris Stein's 49th birthday. A CD release followed in Europe on January 11, 1999. In the United Kingdom, "Maria" was issued as a CD and cassette on February 1, 1999. The CD contains two remixes of the song, and the cassette contains only one of the remixes.


title: Maria (Blondie song)

text: A reviewer from "Billboard" described the song as a "delectable track", and a "skillfully arranged array of passionate Debbie Harry vocals, great guitar and drum thrusts, and neat harmonica passages that climb into the toll of cathedral bells." It was also noted that "all these touches are in the service of a cool rock/pop intelligence powered by the street smarts that are the Blondie trademark." Scottish newspaper "Daily Record" commented, "Almost two decades after their last No 1, comeback stars Blondie have gone back to their 'new wave' roots" with "Maria". The Daily Vault's Mark Millan called it a "pop gem", that "kicks off". He added that the singer's "commanding performance" really shows off her impressive range, and stated that "this one is still one of their best singles to date." Troy J. Augusto from "Variety" declared it as an "infectious standout song".


title: Maria (Blondie song)

text: "Maria" debuted at number one on the UK Singles Chart on February 7, 1999, giving Blondie their sixth UK number-one single and first chart-topper since "The Tide Is High" in November 1980. It spent 17 nonconsecutive weeks in the top 100, ending the year as the UK's 33rd-best-selling hit. The release of "Maria" came exactly 20 years after "Heart of Glass", Blondie's first UK number-one hit. Across the rest of Europe, "Maria" topped the charts in Greece and Spain and was a top-10 hit in Austria, Flanders, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Sweden, and Switzerland. It additionally reached the top 20 in Italy and the Netherlands and attained a peak of number five on the Eurochart Hot 100.


title: Maria (Blondie song)

text: "Maria" was not as successful in North America, stalling at number 82 on the US "Billboard" Hot 100 and number 43 on the Canadian "RPM" Top Singles chart; however, it did enter the top 20 on the "Billboard" Adult Top 40, Hot Dance Club Play, and Hot Dance Music/Maxi-Singles Sales charts. The single also underperformed in Australia, where it peaked at number 59, but fared better in New Zealand, reaching number 16 during its third week on the country's chart.


title: Maria (Blondie song)

text: The music video for "Maria" was directed by Roman Coppola (credited as Alan Smithee), and takes place in New York City. Parts of New York through night-vision goggles are seen before zooming into an apartment where Blondie are performing the song. Mysterious dark-clothed individuals are seen around different buildings setting up surveillance equipment to monitor the band. Toward the end of the video, one of the dark-clothed individuals aims a sniper rifle towards lead singer Deborah Harry, and fires a bullet at her. In slow motion, the bullet smashes through a window, a light bulb and the microphone towards her, but Harry (moving in real time) simply plucks the bullet from the air before it hits her (perhaps tying into the theme of "no exit", the band's comeback album).


title: Incidents at Universal parks

text: This is a summary of notable incidents that have taken place at various Universal-owned theme parks, amusement parks, or water parks. This list is not intended to be a comprehensive list of every such event, but only those that have a significant impact on the parks or park operations, or are otherwise significantly newsworthy.


title: Incidents at Universal parks

text: The term "incidents" refers to major accidents, injuries, or deaths that occur at a Universal park. While these incidents were required to be reported to regulatory authorities due to where they occurred, they usually fall into one of the following categories:


title: Incidents at Universal parks

text: On October 31, 1986, during the "Fright Nights" event, scare actor Paul Rebalde Brooks, who was supposed to scare the attendees at The Terror Tram (a nighttime version of the Backlot Tour), fell between two of the tram cars and was crushed to death by a tram. Universal Studios Hollywood put Halloween events on hiatus until six years later, when their "Halloween Horror Nights" debuted in 1992.


title: Putin's Palace (film)

text: Putin's Palace. History of World's Largest Bribe () is a 2021 Russian documentary film by the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK). The film investigates the residence commonly known as "Putin's Palace" that it claims was constructed for Russian president Vladimir Putin and details a corruption scheme allegedly headed by Putin involving the construction of the palace. The film estimates that the residence, located near the town of Gelendzhik in Krasnodar Krai, cost over ₽100billion (approximately $1.35billion) with what it says was "the largest bribe in history".


title: Putin's Palace (film)

text: Putin has said that neither he nor his family ever owned the palace and downplayed the investigation. Oligarch Arkady Rotenberg, who has close links to Putin, claimed ownership.


title: Putin's Palace (film)

text: The film opens with a call for people to come out and participate in protests demanding the release of Alexei Navalny, the film's narrator and scriptwriter, who was detained after arriving in Russia following treatment and rehabilitation in Germany in connection with his poisoning in 2020. Alexei Navalny then goes on to tell the story of the making of the film, saying that the film is an in-depth look into the psychological portrait of Vladimir Putin.


title: Putin's Palace (film)

text: The film mainly focuses on the building of the Residence at Cape Idokopas, a dacha located near the town of Gelendzhik in Krasnodar Krai, which Navalny calls "the largest private house in Russia", citing documents regarding its construction, some of which are then presented to the audience for viewing. According to "The Straits Times", these documents included itemised lists of purchased furniture and samples of the building's floor plans, which were handed over to the Anti-Corruption Foundation by a subcontractor involved with its construction. Allegedly, all vehicles entering the compound are subject to inspections at several checkpoints, and workers are strictly forbidden from carrying mobile phones with a camera. Besides the complex itself, the restricted area also includes an underground ice palace and two helipads, an arboretum and greenhouse measuring , a church, an amphitheatre, a teahouse and an bridge leading to the compound, which crosses a ravine. Due to its location on a steep bank, a special tunnel was dug to provide access to the nearby beach, which contains a tasting room overlooking the Black Sea. The area of the palace complex is , with of land surrounding the palace being designated as a closed territory under the jurisdiction of the Federal Security Service. According to the film, all fishing activities within a radius of two kilometres from the Residence at Cape Idokopas is banned and the airspace over the palace complex is closed to all aircraft. The film also shows 3D renders of the palace interior and exterior made using the floorplan, leaked photos and after inquiring with the furniture brands. The film goes on to focus on the businesses located within the complex, a luxury winery, vineyards and an oyster farm, showing inconsistencies between their estimated values and reported productions and revenues. It establishes how the (changing) ownerships conceal an interconnected network of managers as well as "donors" that supply money. The network includes former associates (e.g. Vladimir Kolbin, son of a childhood friend of Putin) or relatives of Putin (e.g. Mikhail Shelomov of JSC Accept), but also state-owned companies such as Transneft through shady "leasing" services. Huge sums are funneled into the compound in what Navalny calls the "biggest bribe" and Putin's "slush fund".


title: Putin's Palace (film)

text: In under a day, the film, which was released on Navalny's YouTube channel, had garnered over 20 million views. According to MBKh Media, the film was the most watched video on YouTube that day. By the next day, the film was in YouTube's top 10 trending videos in 23 countries, with it being number one in Russia, Belarus, Cyprus, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, and Ukraine. In under two days, the film garnered over 40 million views. In three days, it garnered over 60 million views. On 28 January, the film garnered over 100 million views.


title: Putin's Palace (film)

text: On the day the documentary film was published, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that he had not yet seen the film but stated that Putin did not have any palaces. The next day, he called the film a "pseudo-investigation" and a "scam" to reporters, saying that citizens should "think before transferring money to such swindlers".


title: Putin's Palace (film)

text: President Putin later stated, in a video conference with students on Student's Day, that the palace did not belong to him or his close relatives. He also claimed that the materials were used to "brainwash" citizens.


title: Putin's Palace (film)

text: The Federal Security Service (FSB) said that a no-fly zone was established in the area where the palace is located, near where it says an FSB outpost is located, due to "increased intelligence activity by a number of neighboring states, including those belonging to NATO." The FSB also denied that a no-sail order was in effect near the area. The Federal Protective Service (FSO) denied that the area was designated for protection or that there were any FSO-imposed restrictions.


title: Putin's Palace (film)

text: On 30 January, Arkady Rotenberg, who has close links to Putin, publicly claimed ownership of the palace. He said: "I have managed to strike a deal with creditors a few years ago, and I became a beneficiary of this site a few years ago." He also said that the property would be completed "in a couple of years" and that it was expected to become an apartment hotel. However, he gave no further financial details of how it was funded and purchased.


title: Putin's Palace (film)

text: The BBC Russian Service spoke to several construction workers who said they worked on the palace between 2005 and 2020, confirming several of the allegations made in the FBK investigation, including that the palace was being rebuilt due to mould.


title: Putin's Palace (film)

text: In a Levada Center poll carried out from 29 January to 2 February 2021, 26% of Russian adult respondents said that they saw the film, 10% said that they did not see it but were familiar with its content, 32% said they heard about it, and 31% said they did not hear anything about it. Out of those who saw the film or heard about it, 3% said that their attitude to Putin improved, 17% said that it worsened, and 77% said that it did not change. Out of those who saw the film or heard about it, 33% said they were sure that the film was untrue, 38% believed that it seemed true but it was difficult to assess the credibility of the accusations and 17% said they were sure that it was true. Out of all respondents, when asked if they believed Putin was guilty of abuses of power, 17% said that he was undoubtedly guilty, 25% said he was probably as guilty as other high-ranking officials, 24% said that even if true, the country began to live better under his rule, and 29% believed that he did not ever abuse his power. The poll also showed a generational gap, with younger respondents being more likely to have watched the film and believing that Putin was guilty of abuses of power.


title: History of Poland (1918–1939)

text: The history of interwar Poland comprises the period from the revival of the independent Polish state in 1918, until the Invasion of Poland from the West by Nazi Germany in 1939 at the onset of World War II, followed by the Soviet Union from the East two weeks later. The two decades of Poland's sovereignty between the world wars are known as the Interbellum.


title: History of Poland (1918–1939)

text: Poland re-emerged in November 1918 after more than a century of partitions by Austria-Hungary, the German, and the Russian Empires. Its independence was confirmed by the victorious powers through the Treaty of Versailles of June 1919, and most of the territory won in a series of border wars fought from 1918 to 1921. Poland's frontiers were settled in 1922 and internationally recognized in 1923.


title: History of Poland (1918–1939)

text: The Polish political scene was democratic but chaotic until Józef Piłsudski (1867–1935) seized power in May 1926 and democracy ended. The policy of agrarianism led to the redistribution of lands to peasants and the country achieved significant economic growth between 1921 and 1939. A third of the population consisted of minorities—Ukrainians, Jews, Belarusians, Lithuanians and Germans.


title: History of Poland (1918–1939)

text: The independence of Poland had been successfully promoted to the Allies in Paris by Roman Dmowski and Ignacy Paderewski. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson made the independence of Poland a war goal in his Fourteen Points, and this goal was endorsed by the Allies in spring 1918. As part of the Armistice terms imposed on Germany, all German forces had to stand down in Poland and other occupied areas. So as the war ended, the Germans sent Piłsudski, then under arrest, back to Warsaw. On November 11, 1918, he took control of the puppet government the Germans had set up. Ignacy Daszyński headed a short-lived Polish government in Lublin from November 6 but Piłsudski had overwhelming prestige at this point. Daszyński and the other Polish leaders acknowledged him as head of the army and in effect head of what became the Republic of Poland. Germany, now defeated, followed the terms of the Armistice and withdrew its forces. Jędrzej Moraczewski became the first prime minister (in November 1918) and Dmowski headed the largest party.


title: History of Poland (1918–1939)

text: From its inception, the Republic fought a series of wars to secure its boundaries. The nation was rural and poor; the richest areas were in the former German areas in the west. Industrialization came very slowly, and was promoted in the mid-1930s with the development of the Central Industrial District.


title: History of Poland (1918–1939)

text: Most Polish leaders of that period wanted to create a larger Polish state; one optimal plan, dating back to the Paris Peace Conference, included the incorporation of East Prussia and the German city of Königsberg being placed in a customs union with Poland. At the same time, the exact boundaries of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth were not desired, though mentioned as an opening gambit by Roman Dmowski. Much of this land had been controlled by the Russian Empire since the Partitions of Poland and its inhabitants were struggling to create their own states (such as Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltics: Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia). The Polish leadership did not aim to restore the nation to its 17th-century boundaries. Opinions varied among Polish politicians as to how much of the territory a new, Polish-led state should contain and what form it should take. Józef Piłsudski advocated a democratic, Polish-led federation of independent states — while Roman Dmowski leader of the "Endecja" movement represented by the National Democratic Party, set his mind on a more compact Poland composed of ethnic Polish or 'polonizable' territories.


title: History of Poland (1918–1939)

text: To the southwest, Poland and Czechoslovakia contested boundary disputes (see: Zaolzie). More ominously, an embittered Germany begrudged any territorial loss to its new eastern neighbor. The December 27, 1918 Great Poland Uprising liberated Greater Poland. The 1919 Treaty of Versailles settled the German-Polish borders in the Baltic region. The port city of Danzig (), with a majority German population and Polish minority was declared a free city independent of Germany, and became a bone of contention for decades. Allied arbitration divided the ethnically mixed and highly coveted industrial and mining district of Upper Silesia between Germany and Poland, with Poland receiving the smaller in size, but a more industrialized eastern section in 1922, after series of three Silesian Uprisings.


title: History of Poland (1918–1939)

text: The military conflict with the Soviets proved the determinant of Poland's frontiers in the east, a theater rendered chaotic by the repercussions of the Russian revolutions and civil war. Piłsudski envisioned creating a federation with the rest of Ukraine (led by the Polish-friendly government in Kiev he was to help to install) and Lithuania, thus forming a Central and East European federation called "Intermarium" (Polish: "Międzymorze", literally "area between seas"). Lenin, leader of the new communist government of Russia, saw Poland as the bridge over which communism would pass into the labor class of a disorganized postwar Germany. And the issue was further complicated as some of the disputed regions had assumed various economic and political identities since the partition in the late 18th century while some did not have an ethnically Polish majority in the first place they were still viewed by Poles as their historic regions since they envisioned Poland as a multiethnic state. In the end, the negotiations broke down, sinking Piłsudski's idea of Międzymorze federation; instead, wars like the Polish-Lithuanian War or the Polish-Ukrainian War decided the borders of the region for the next two decades.


title: History of Poland (1918–1939)

text: The Polish-Soviet war, began in 1919, was the most important of the regional wars. Piłsudski first carried out a major military thrust into Ukraine in 1920 and in May Polish-Ukrainian forces reached Kiev. Just a few weeks later, however, the Polish offensive was met with a Soviet counter-offensive, and Polish forces were forced into a retreat by the Red Army. Poland was driven out of Ukraine and back into the Polish heartland. Most observers at the time marked Poland for extinction and Bolshevization, However at the Battle of Warsaw Piłsudski organized a stunning counterattack that won a famous victory. This "Miracle on the Vistula" became an iconic victory in Polish memory. Piłsudski resumed the offensive, pushing the Red forces east. Eventually, both sides, exhausted, signed a compromise peace treaty at Riga in early 1921 that divided the disputed territories of Belarus and Ukraine between the two combatants. These acquisitions were recognized by the international agreement with the Entente. The treaty gave Poland an eastern border well beyond what the peacemakers in Paris had envisioned and added 4,000,000 Ukrainians, 2,000,000 Jews, and 1,000,000 Belarusians to Poland's minority population.


title: History of Poland (1918–1939)

text: In Soviet historiography, the Polish-Soviet War was also referred to as "the war against White Poles", with epithet "White Poles" ("belopoliaki") alleging the "counter-revolutionary" character of Poland at the time, in an analogy with Russian White Movement.


title: History of Poland (1918–1939)

text: In 1922, in the aftermath of the Polish-Soviet War and Polish-Lithuanian War, Poland also officially annexed Central Lithuania following a plebiscite, which was never recognized by Lithuania.


title: History of Poland (1918–1939)

text: The Riga arrangement influenced the fate of the entire region for the years to come. Ukrainians and Belarusians found themselves without a country or province of their own, and some Polish speakers also found themselves within the borders of the Soviet Union. The latter experienced forced collectivistion, state terror, suppression of religion, purges, labor camps and famine. The newly formed Second Polish Republic, one-third of whose citizens were non-ethnic Poles, engaged in promoting Polish identity, culture and language at the expense of the country's ethnic minorities who felt alienated by the process.


title: History of Poland (1918–1939)

text: Reborn Poland faced a host of daunting challenges: extensive war damage, a ravaged economy, a population one-third composed of wary national minorities, an economy largely under the control of German industrial interests, and a need to reintegrate the three zones that had been forcibly kept apart during the era of partition. Poland's formal political life began in 1921 with the adoption of a constitution that designed Poland as a republic modeled after the French Third Republic, vesting most authority in the legislature, the Sejm. This was mainly to prevent Piłsudski from establishing himself as a dictator. A multitude of political parties emerged, of which there were four major and dozens of minor ones. All had very different ideologies and voter bases, and could scarcely agree on any major issue. There had been no serious consideration of re-establishing a monarchy, and although the great Polish noble families continued to have their names mentioned in newspapers, it was mostly in the society pages. The chief parties were the left-wing Polish Peasant Party (PSL) and on the right National Democracy party (ND) led by Dmowski.


title: History of Poland (1918–1939)

text: The new, inexperienced government faced serious problems; already there was rampant corruption among government officials; a dizzying turnover of cabinets caused confusion and distrust. At a deeper level there was profound disagreement about inclusiveness in the new state. Roman Dmowski envisioned an ethnically-homogeneous Polish nation, and a pro-Western, anti-German path to modernization; he also espoused strong anti-Semitic attitudes, and emphasized that Poland should be a Catholic and hierarchical state. Piłsudski, however, rooted his ideal in notions about the multi-ethnic Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. In practice that meant ignoring the minority vote at home and seeking agreements with nearby countries. Universal suffrage gave the minorities a voice, especially when they formed a coalition, the Bloc of National Minorities (BMN) led by the Jews and including the others who together comprised a third of the population and 20% of the vote. However, the districts were gerrymandered to minimize minority representation. The BMN helped elect Gabriel Narutowicz as president on the PSL ticket in 1922, but he came under nasty attacks from the right and was assassinated after five days in office. The BMN coalition declined in significance and shut down in 1930 as the different groups cut their own deals with the government on isolated issues.


title: History of Poland (1918–1939)

text: After the constitution was adopted, Piłsudski resigned from office, unhappy with the limited role of the executive branch. But he continued to keep a close eye on political developments. The ineffectiveness of the Sejm led some of his inner circle to suggest that he launch a military coup and regain power; he said no. By 1926 he was persuaded and launched the coup of May 1926, which succeeded with little violence. For the next decade, Piłsudski dominated Polish affairs as strongman of a generally popular centrist regime, although he never held a formal title except for minister of defense. He retained the 1921 constitution, and the noisy, ineffective Sejm continued to operate, but it nearly always gave him what he wanted. Critics of the regime were occasionally arrested, but most were sued for libel. The marshal portrayed himself as a national saviour who was above partisan politics and gained more popular support by distancing himself from the Polish Socialist Party. In 1935 a new Polish Constitution was adopted, but Piłsudski soon died and his protégé successors drifted toward open authoritarianism. Opposition voices were increasingly harassed or jailed, a situation that was not surprising in view of the regime's growing fears over national security.


title: History of Poland (1918–1939)

text: In many respects, the Second Republic fell short of the high expectations of 1918. As happened elsewhere in Central Europe, with the exception of Czechoslovakia, the attempt to implant democracy did not succeed. Governments polarized between right- and left-wing factions, neither of which was prepared to honor the actions taken by the other.


title: History of Poland (1918–1939)

text: The government nationalized foreign-owned assets and operated them because there was insufficient domestic capital to buy them and because it was easier than determining who should get what. Overall, Poland had a higher degree of state involvement in the economy and less foreign investment than any other nation in eastern Europe. This emphasis on economic centralization hampered Poland's development. The economy was largely rural, and the worldwide Great Depression that began in 1929 saw hardship in every sector. Worst hit were the peasants whose incomes plunged 50% or more. The government had few solutions except to reduce its own spending as tax revenues fell.


title: History of Poland (1918–1939)

text: About a third of the total population were members of minorities, including five or six million Ukrainians, over three million Jews, one and a half million Belarusians, and some 800,000 Germans. These minorities were increasingly alienated, complaining that they were marginalized in politics and denied rights Poland had agreed to in treaties. Historian Peter D. Stachura has examined the ethnic issue in interwar Poland and summarizes the consensus of historians, he writes: