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Shore Line East

Commuter rail service in southern Connecticut, US

Shore Line East (SLE) is a commuter rail service which operates along the Northeast Corridor through southern Connecticut, United States. The rail service is a fully owned subsidiary of the Connecticut Department of Transportation (CTDOT) and is operated under the CT Rail brand. SLE provides service seven days a week along the Northeast Corridor between New London and New Haven; limited through service west of New Haven to Bridgeport and Stamford has been suspended since 2020. Cross-platform transfers to Metro-North Railroad New Haven Line trains are available at New Haven for service to southwestern Connecticut and New York City. Pre-COVID, around 2,200 riders used the service on weekdays. The service was introduced in 1990 as a temporary measure to reduce congestion during construction work on I-95. However, it proved more popular than expected, and service was continued after construction ended despite criticisms that the line was too expensive to operate. Limited service was extended to New London in 1996 and to Stamford in 2001. A second station in New Haven was added in 2002, and most of the stations were rebuilt for accessibility between 2001 and 2008. Reverse peak service was added in 2007, followed by weekend service in 2008. Second platforms were added to several stations between 2014 and 2022 to support bidirectional service. Service was temporarily cut during 2018–2019 due to Amtrak track work and a locomotive shortage. It was again cut in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, though some service was re-added in June 2021. Diesel trains were replaced by M8 electric railcars in May 2022. Proposals for future expansion include an extension to Westerly, Rhode Island, an infill station in Niantic, and through service to New York City. ## Service Most weekday SLE trains run local between New London and New Haven. Until 2020, some peak trains operated through New Haven as far as Stamford. Eastbound morning trains and westbound afternoon trains skip Madison because it only has one platform, and trains operating in the other direction would have to switch tracks to serve the station. All trains that do not operate west of New Haven make a connection with a Metro-North Railroad New Haven Line train at New Haven, for service to and from points in Connecticut, Westchester County, New York, and New York City. These connections are commonly used by extreme commuters who live in suburban Connecticut and work in New York City. New London SLE multi-ride pass holders are also allowed to board selected Northeast Regional trains. Although SLE service is funded by CTDOT, it is operated under contract by Amtrak. Amtrak owns and controls the Northeast Corridor east of New Haven. West of New Haven, the New Haven Line is owned by CTDOT and trains are dispatched by Metro-North. During the OpSail and SailFest tall ship festivals at New London, extra Friday and weekend service is operated from New Haven to New London. During OpSail 2000, through service operated from New Haven to Mystic – the only time Shore Line East service has run east of New London. ## Service history ### Previous service The section of the Northeast Corridor that Shore Line East operates on was once the New York–Boston mainline of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. The section from New Haven to New London was built as the New Haven and New London Railroad. It was charted in 1848, began construction in 1850, and opened for service in July 1852. The line was owned by the New York, Providence and Boston Railroad (the "Stonington Road") from 1858 to 1862, and by the Shore Line Railway from 1864 until it was acquired by the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad (the "New Haven") in 1870. Crossing the Connecticut River required a ferry transfer until a drawbridge was built in 1870. The line was referred to by the New Haven Railroad as the Shore Line, to distinguish it from the railroad's Main Line from New Haven to Springfield, Massachusetts. In recognition of the large role played by the New Haven in the history of Connecticut, CTDOT painted SLE's diesel-powered locomotives in the New Haven's orange and black style. New Haven Railroad colors and emblems were placed at several stations, particularly New Haven Union Station. The New Haven Railroad operated local service on the Shore Line up until its merger with Penn Central on January 1, 1969, when most commuter service east of New Haven was abandoned. Intercity service continued, but generally only stopped at New Haven, Old Saybrook, and New London. Penn Central continued to operate the Clamdigger, a single daily New London-New Haven round trip with local stops, as well as a New London-Boston round trip. Amtrak took over the Clamdigger along with most intercity passenger service, in May 1971. In January 1972, Amtrak discontinued the Clamdigger and Penn Central cut the New London–Boston trip. In 1976–77, Amtrak operated the Clamdigger as a Providence-New Haven round trip with limited local stops; for three months in 1978, it was revived with additional commuter-based stops. It was replaced in April 1978 by the New Haven–Providence–Boston Beacon Hill, which made local stops including Branford, Madison, Old Saybrook, Niantic, New London, and Mystic. The Beacon Hill (which served the Providence and Boston commuting markets rather than New Haven) was discontinued in 1981 due to funding cuts, ending commuter rail service in Connecticut east of New Haven. ### Initial service In 1981 and 1986, legislation was proposed to restore commuter service between New Haven and New London, as well as between New Haven and Hartford. A 1986 CTDOT study analyzed congestion on Interstate 95, which runs parallel to the line. The study showed that Old Saybrook was a better terminus for initial service, with an expected ridership of 420 riders in each direction daily. An additional study in 1989 indicated higher potential ridership of 700 to 1350 daily riders. Based on the 1986 study, Governor William O'Neill ordered CTDOT in October 1986 to initiate rail service on the corridor. It was established as a temporary service to newly reopened local stations between Union Station in New Haven and Old Saybrook, to alleviate traffic congestion that arose from scheduled construction work on I-95. O'Neill introduced a \$50 million transportation program that included \$900,000 (later reduced to \$500,000) for basic stations and \$4 million to refurbish 12 Budd Rail Diesel Cars for rolling stock. The RDCs were found to be insufficient and two diesel trainsets were purchased from the defunct PATrain service in 1989 instead. Testing of the equipment on the Northeast Corridor began on December 2, 1989. The state bought Amtrak's New Haven maintenance facility in May 1989 and signed a service contract with Amtrak in November. Construction of 5 intermediate stations was completed in April 1990. Shore Line East service began on May 29, 1990, with four trains each direction during the morning and evening. The service carried the Clamdigger name during planning; "Shore Line East" did not appear until shortly before service began. Shore Line East was threatened to be cut in 1991 by newly elected Governor Lowell Weicker, but it proved more popular than expected, and was effectively made permanent. A 1996 study found that Shore Line East captured eight percent of regional commuter trips and attracted a loyal ridership base. In 1995 and 1997, then-governor John Rowland proposed to replace Shore Line East and the Waterbury Branch with bus service, citing a high subsidy of \$18.70 per rider per trip, in order to decrease the unpopular gas tax. Lawmakers from the region called the proposals political and defended the line's ability to reduce congestion and pollution, while opponents of the line called it an example of government waste. The Shore Line East Rider's Association and other groups lobbied to save both services each time, and after public hearings a small fare increase was enacted in late 1997 instead. ### Early expansions In July 1995, Governor Rowland signed a bill ordering various studies, including one that analyzed extending service to New London as had been originally planned. Before the study was completed, CTDOT unilaterally decided to implement New London service, which the report commended. On February 1, 1996, two round trips per weekday were extended to New London. At that point, ridership was up 18 percent over 1991 numbers. In December 2001, a single morning rush-hour round trip branded SLExpress was extended to Stamford, with a stop at Bridgeport plus eastbound-only stops at Stratford and Milford. An evening eastbound trip was also extended to Stamford with only the Bridgeport intermediate stop. This trip was intended to allow commuters to reach employment centers in Bridgeport and Stamford without having to make a transfer at New Haven. On June 24, 2002, additional Stamford trains were added, for a total of two westbound and three eastbound trains. When West Haven opened on August 18, 2013, it was added to these trips as well. In 2003, in order to add four additional Amtrak trips along the corridor, four of the six round trips to New London were cut back to Old Saybrook. An agreement with the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection limits service over the Amtrak Old Saybrook – Old Lyme Bridge in order to avoid inconveniencing recreational boaters. CTDOT's agreement with Amtrak allowed commuters with monthly passes to ride certain Amtrak trains instead. After criticism over the service cuts, in April 2008 CTDOT began allowing commuters with multi-ride passes to board the selected Amtrak trains as well. ### Station reconstruction Because Shore Line East was intended to be a temporary service, the five intermediate stations built in 1990 were little more than wooden decks. Since the service was started two months before the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed, the platforms were not built to be accessible. In January 2001, because of changes in Amtrak rules related to the introduction of Acela Express service, passengers were no longer allowed to cross tracks to access trains. New platforms were opened on the south side of the tracks at Branford and Westbrook at approximately the same locations. Later that year, accessible high-level platforms were added at New London to support Acela Express service. On June 7, 2002, State Street station was opened in New Haven to provide better access to the downtown area than Union Station. It was built as a traffic mitigation measure during the reconstruction of the Pearl Harbor Memorial Bridge. The first existing station to be rebuilt specifically for Shore Line East was Old Saybrook. A new high-level island platform and pedestrian bridge opened on November 1, 2002; the final configuration of two platforms serving all three tracks allows Amtrak trains to pass SLE trains at the station. Beginning on May 24, 2004, construction of new platforms began at Clinton, Guilford, and Branford. The rebuilt Clinton station opened on July 25, 2005, and the rebuilt Branford station opened on August 8, 2005; both consist of a single high-level platform on the south side of the tracks. The new Guilford station, which has platforms on both sides of the tracks (connected by a pedestrian bridge) to allow for greater operational flexibility, opened on November 28, 2005. Construction at Madison started on September 24, 2007, and finished with the opening of the rebuilt station platform on July 28, 2008. Reconstruction of Westbrook station was delayed due to environmental and cost issues. No site was available until Westbrook and CTDOT traded the new station site on Norris Avenue for a highway garage site off Route 145. The controversial land swap was begun in 2004 but was not finalized until 2006, and town operations were not moved to the Route 145 site until September 2011. Site clearing began in November 2011, and ground was broken for the \$14.4 million station in January 2012. A new station with a larger 210-space lot and platforms on both tracks opened on March 25, 2014, with full bidirectional service to the station beginning on May 11. ### Weekend and New London service On October 8, 2007, reverse-peak and more midday service were introduced, which officials hailed as the beginning of Shore Line East as a true bidirectional system. Several existing express trains also began to stop at Guilford. A pilot of weekend service was run from November 17, 2007, to December 30, 2007, with six "Shopper's Special" round trips from Old Saybrook to New Haven. The trains were scheduled to connect with similar Metro-North specials at New Haven. Year-round weekend service began on July 4, 2008, with 9 daily Old Saybrook – New Haven round trips on weekends. No weekend service was run to New London, but weekday service was increased by the addition of cross-honoring of multiple-ride and monthly tickets on two Amtrak trains. The major obstacle preventing full New London service was the bridge over the Connecticut River between Old Saybrook and Old Lyme. The drawbridge section is closed for a certain period of time to allow trains to pass, which prevents large boats from passing under. The Marine Trades Association opposes additional service, which would mandate more bridge closings. The 2003 agreement with Amtrak limited weekday traffic over the bridge to 2 SLE and 39 Amtrak trains until 2018, although it was revised in 2010 and 2013. Since 2003, New London had been served by cross-honored Amtrak trains plus one or two dedicated SLE round trips. On February 16, 2010, an additional round trip was extended to New London. Three more were extended on May 10, 2010. However, advocates for full service to New London said that then-governor Jodi Rell failed to deliver on promises to New London, with one newspaper columnist writing that "she seems incapable of standing up to the marine trades lobby" regarding the bridge openings. In July 2012, then-governor Dannel Malloy announced that five weekend round trips would be extended to New London beginning in April 2013. However, the extension was dependent on ongoing negotiations with the marine industry over mandated closings of the Connecticut River bridge. Two weekday midday trips were added in May 2013, while weekend service began on June 1, 2013, after the application for additional bridge closings was approved by the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. By July, New London represented 26 percent of weekend ridership. In December 2013, the state announced that ridership was up 35 percent for the year as a result of the increased service. From 2009 to 2014, monthly New London ridership increased from less than 1,000 monthly passengers to approximately 5,000, accounting for a significant fraction of ridership increases on Shore Line East during that period. ### Second platforms In a 2007 report, CTDOT outlined plans to turn SLE into a full-service bidirectional regional rail line, with full-day service and all trains extended to New London. This involved incremental improvements, similar to those that have already been put into place. One of the first priorities was to add a second platform at all stations, which was mandated by the 2003 agreement with Amtrak. By that time, several stations already had multiple platforms (New London, Old Saybrook, Guilford, and the stations from New Haven Union Station west), while State Street had an island platform serving two tracks. Branford was the first previously rebuilt station to be further renovated with a second platform. A \$60 million bond in February 2011 included \$16.5 million for a second platform and pedestrian bridge at Branford, \$7.3 million for platform extensions at Guilford, and \$11 million to electrify several sidings along the line. Construction on the new platform at Branford began in September 2013, while the Guilford work was underway by early 2014. After delays, the enlarged Branford station opened on September 30, 2016, although the north platform was not immediately served by trains. The north platform entered service on November 5, 2016. As with other stations, reverse-peak trains began stopping at Branford with the opening of the second platform. Construction of a second platform at Clinton station was originally planned to start in early 2012, but was indefinitely delayed by 2014. Construction was again announced in October 2017. After delays due to funding issues, construction began in June 2019. The second platform opened on April 4, 2022, leaving Madison as the only single-platform station. (Bidding on a second platform and three-level parking garage at Madison, planned since 2009, was scheduled to begin in 2013 but did not occur.) Expansion of the original parking facilities was also necessary to meet demand, since many started with small lots suitable for just a few dozen cars. The rebuilt stations at Branford, Guilford, Madison, Clinton, and Westbrook have larger lots than the 1990 stations, and a second lot with 272 spaces opened at Branford in June 2011. A 585-space, three-level parking garage is eventually planned for Madison station. ### Service cuts In 2018, two separate issues caused numerous delays and cancellations with many trains replaced by buses. An Amtrak track maintenance project required single-tracking of sections of the line, and CTDOT lacked sufficient functional locomotives as the aging fleet was sent out for refurbishment. Three weekday round trips were reverted from bus to train in January 2019 when one locomotive returned from refurbishment, though additional issues were expected during a second summer of track work in 2019. Full service was restored on August 5, 2019. By that time, ridership had fallen by 25 percent, averaging 1,340 weekday riders and 767 weekend riders. On March 16, 2020, weekday service began operating on a reduced schedule due to the coronavirus pandemic. Cross-honoring of tickets on Amtrak trains was suspended that June. Weekday service was expanded from 8 to 11.5 round trips (compared to 18 pre-COVID round trips) on July 26, 2021, with all trains running to New London. Cross-honoring resumed on September 27, 2021. Electrification and track work on Track 6 at New London took place from November 2021 to April 2022. This allowed all-electric service using M8 railcars to begin on May 24, 2022. Shore Line East ridership only reached about 25% of pre-pandemic ridership by mid-2022 – compared to 40% to 72% for other rail lines in the state – which was attributed to previous riders largely being white-collar workers who shifted to remote work. ### Proposed expansion In April 2012, state officials released a report detailing possible sites for an infill station in East Lyme. Four sites were analyzed – two near downtown Niantic and two at Rocky Neck State Park. (Niantic station had previously been a stop on the Clamdigger.) As part of a 2015 bonding proposal made by then-governor Malloy, \$750,000 was to be allocated for a new station at Niantic. The possibility of extending service eastward has also been considered. In a 2001 report examining commuter rail for Rhode Island, the Rhode Island Department of Transportation (RIDOT) considered an extension of Shore Line East to via (effectively restoring the Clamdigger service). Ultimately, MBTA Commuter Rail service, which already ran to Providence as part of the Providence/Stoughton Line, was extended southward instead (although only to ). However, both RIDOT and SLE have long-term plans to extend their services to meet at Westerly. Extending SLE service would require negotiations with the US Coast Guard, the Marine Trades Association, and other stakeholders for increased use of the Thames River Bridge and the Mystic River Bridge. As part of Malloy's 2015 30-year transit plan, Shore Line East was to be extended to Westerly at a cost of \$200 million. In February 2016, the state public transportation commission issued a report recommending extension of Shore Line East rail service to Mystic and Westerly as soon as possible. The 2016 plans also called for limited direct service between Grand Central Terminal and Old Saybrook after M8 cars entered service. In 2021, state lawmakers allocated \$2.3 million for CTDOT to study the eastward extension to Westerly with infill stations in Groton and Stonington, as well a northward extension from New London to Norwich along a freight line. As of September 2022, the study is scheduled for completion in 2023. ## Rolling stock SLE service uses four-car trains of state-owned Kawasaki M8 electric multiple units. These cars are part of a larger fleet, jointly owned by the state and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, that operate on the Metro-North Railroad New Haven Line and New Canaan Branch. The M8 cars replaced push-pull diesel-powered trains on May 24, 2022. In 2007, CTDOT proposed to use up to 32 M8 cars in SLE service as far as Old Saybrook; the diesel equipment would then be used on the Hartford Line and for use with low platforms on New London / Mystic / Westerly service. Amtrak crew qualification of M8 electric multiple units on Shore Line East took place in April 2022; testing had previously taken place as early as 2015. SLE operated diesel service from 1990 to 2022, as Amtrak had not yet electrified the Northeast Corridor between New Haven and Boston at the time service began. Initial service used two F7 locomotives and ten Pullman-Standard coaches purchased from Pittsburgh's PATrain for \$1.7 million. In 1991, CTDOT purchased 10 Bombardier Shoreliner III coaches, similar to ones already used on the Danbury Branch and Waterbury Branch, and leased three additional diesel locomotives: two EMD GP38s and one EMD GP7. In 1994, Amtrak rebuilt 11 of CTDOT's surplus SPV-2000 diesel railcars into coaches, dubbed "Constitution Liners." In 1996, SLE took delivery of six remanufactured GP40-2H diesels to replace the entire motive power fleet. These were supplemented in 2005 with 8 GE P40DC Genesis diesels leased from Amtrak. CTDOT purchased the P40DCs in 2008. To augment capacity CTDOT acquired 33 Mafersa coaches from the Virginia Railway Express in 2004. These began entering service in 2006, displacing the Shoreliners and Constitution Liners. CTDOT acquired an additional four GE P40DC locomotives from New Jersey Transit in 2015. Originally built for Amtrak in 1993, these locomotives had been used by NJ Transit on the short-lived Atlantic City Express Service. In January 2018, ConnDOT awarded a contract to Amtrak to overhaul all twelve P40DC locomotives at the Beech Grove Shops. The first unit was completed in early 2021. The GP40-2H locomotives were sent to NRE for rebuilding in 2017 and 2018, followed by use on the new Hartford Line service. ## Stations All stations are accessible. Service west of New Haven has been suspended since 2020.

By Your Side (The Black Crowes album)

By Your Side is the fifth studio album by American rock band The Black Crowes. It was released in early 1999 on Columbia Records, following the band's move from American Recordings, after second guitarist Marc Ford and bassist Johnny Colt had left the band in 1997. Audley Freed and Sven Pipien were hired as the new guitarist and bassist, respectively, although Rich Robinson played all the guitar parts on the album. By Your Side was recorded in New York City during the second quarter of 1998 and produced by Kevin Shirley. It comprised songs written in the studio, revised songs from pre-production and re-recorded songs from the abandoned 1997 album Band. The Black Crowes promoted By Your Side by performing on numerous television programs in North America and Europe. The album debuted at its peak position of number 26 on the Billboard 200 and generally received positive reviews. While some critics depreciated By Your Side for its similarity to albums by Rod Stewart and The Rolling Stones, most reviewers lauded The Black Crowes' return to the straightforward approach of their debut album, Shake Your Money Maker (1990). Chris Robinson's singing and Rich's guitar playing also won praise from critics, though reviews of the lyrics were mixed. Beginning in February 1999, the band toured North American theaters for two months in support of the album. Setlists from the tour, known as the "Souled Out Tour", typically included more than half the album's songs. The concerts were followed by a short co-headlining tour of US amphitheaters with Lenny Kravitz. The band spent the remainder of the summer opening for Aerosmith's European tour. ## Background Personnel changes and label interference frustrated The Black Crowes' attempts to follow up their 1996 album Three Snakes and One Charm. During May and June 1997, they recorded an album called Band, but it was rejected by their label, American Recordings. Lead singer Chris Robinson said American "couldn't go with the vibe" and wanted something more "safe". In August, guitarist Marc Ford was fired due to a heroin habit that impaired his performances. Guitarist Rich Robinson said, "We would be onstage playing 'Remedy', and he would be playing a completely different song.... We told him to clean up or get out. We assumed, since he loved music and the band, that he would clean up." Bassist Johnny Colt had been losing interest in the band since the recording of Three Snakes and One Charm; his contributions to that album were minimal, as Rich played bass in his stead on all but one track. Colt quit in October to become a yoga instructor. Sven Pipien was hired in December to replace Colt. Pipien had previously played with Mary My Hope and had been a housemate of Chris. Audley Freed was hired as the second guitarist before a 1998 tour in support of the band's Sho' Nuff box set. Recording sessions for By Your Side were well underway at this point, and continued after the tour, but Freed did not contribute to the album. Chris said of the new members, "It's great. These guys want to be here—and we feed off of that. And that will become obvious when you see us on the road." American Recordings was partially absorbed by Columbia Records in early 1998. Though the arrangement preserved the American label, The Black Crowes transferred to Columbia after privately expressing their desire to disassociate themselves from American Recordings founder Rick Rubin. Despite working under a larger label, the band felt they had more freedom and support under Columbia; Chris remarked, "At American, I never knew what a record company did. We never had an A&R guy. Now we have a product manager.... It's like ... I didn't know what the music business was." ## Writing and production Pre-production for By Your Side began in December 1997 with songs that later underwent substantial revision or were dropped altogether. Early versions of "HorseHead" and "It Must Be Over" were recorded at this point, and a reworked riff from "Every Little Bit" and some lyrics from "Tickle Tickle" were later incorporated into "Heavy". Some of the songs ultimately dropped, such as "Baby" and "Bled to Death", were later rewritten by Rich for his debut solo album, Paper (2004). More songs were introduced in January 1998, including "Red Wine Stains", which eventually became "Go Faster", and an early version of "Virtue and Vice". Some unused sections from this batch were borrowed for Paper, as well, including the main riffs of what became "Tomorrow Is Here" and "Thrown It All Away". Producer Kevin Shirley was brought in on the advice of Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry. As Rich explained, "We really wanted to work with someone who can come in and say, 'That's not good.' ... If Kevin says something I disagree with, he'll be the first one to say, 'Hey, it's your song,' but it's healthy for me and Chris to have him come in and be as excited about our songs as we are and say, 'Okay, that's cool, but what if we tried this?'" At his first meeting with the band, Shirley described the songs played for him as having "the same old jammy, shuffle feel of the last two records. I stopped them then and I said to them ... 'You've got to feel like you're teenagers again. You need a song like that.'" Shirley's prompting led the band to write "Kickin' My Heart Around" on the spot, before he had signed on to produce. Rich agreed that Shirley shifted the focus to making "a rock record" that was "focused and concise". The band hired Shirley and agreed to his recording conditions, which meant recording in New York City at Avatar Studios, taking weekends off and recording from 1:00–8:00 pm. Chris said of the rigid schedule, "We loved it.... We had lives other than just being in the studio 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Got a different vantage point on the whole thing." Shirley's laid-back style also won praise from the band. "Kevin is the first guy that I've worked with that just went with it—especially my singing. A lot of this album is just my scratch vocals. It's very loose, and Kevin let it go.... He'd say, if we didn't get it in two or three takes, 'We'll come back tomorrow'", said Chris. Of the album's lyrical bent, Chris said, "...there is a lot of love on it, and I've never written love songs. I do think having a muse in my life like the woman I'm with now helped.... I think there's also a lot of humor on this album, which is something we haven't touched on before, except maybe on Shake Your Money Maker, which was a lighter time and a lighter mood." There was also a conscious effort to "simplify the language", which was inspired by Chris's listening to music by Otis Redding, George Jones and Muddy Waters. "I realized how direct and honest those records were – and I wanted that here", said Chris. For the first time on a Black Crowes album, Rich was the only guitarist involved in the recording. He said recording that way was not a challenge because he recorded most of the guitar parts on Three Snakes and One Charm, as well. Rich also noted that having only one guitarist gives the band "a different dynamic" because it affords Pipien and keyboardist Eddie Harsch "a lot of space". Chris praised his brother's performance, saying, "It sounds like there's two guitarists, two distinct personalities." Fifteen songs were recorded in the second quarter of 1998 during the main recording session with Kevin Shirley. Some were updated versions of songs from pre-production; a few were totally new; others combined newly written music with parts from older, shelved songs. The main riff of a Three Snakes and One Charm leftover called "Pastoral", for example, was used for the B-side "You Don't Have to Go", while its chorus riff was borrowed for "Then She Said My Name". Four of the songs were holdovers from the Band sessions: "Only a Fool" and "If It Ever Stops Raining" were included on the album (the latter with new chorus lyrics as "By Your Side"), while "Peace Anyway" and "Smile" were released as B-sides. One cover song, Bob Dylan's "When the Night Comes Falling from the Sky", was recorded during the session and later released as a B-side. While touring in support of Sho' Nuff, Chris and Rich finished writing "Diamond Ring" and "Go Tell the Congregation". The two songs were recorded after the tour during a planned session for putting finishing touches on By Your Side, though the decision delayed the album's release from November 17 to January 12. Rich said, "It's cool that Columbia Records is backing us on an artistic level and they're being open to all the hassles that come with moving an album into the new year. I know we're driving them insane with these last-minute changes, but we know it's all for the right reasons." After finishing the album, Chris noted that it "has the same sort of energy" as Shake Your Money Maker, "...but there is much more to it. There are a lot of subtleties in these songs. These are rock 'n' roll songs with subversive pop hooks." ## Promotion and release The Black Crowes began promoting By Your Side in September 1998 when they performed at the Hard Rock Cafe in New York City for an episode of the VH1 show Hard Rock Live; the episode aired on December 12. The first noticeable instance of promotion was Columbia's release of "Kickin' My Heart Around" as the album's first single on November 2, 1998. The track spent ten weeks at its peak position of number 3 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart starting on November 28; it also charted in Canada and the UK. The band's next promotional event was a performance and interview for a live album premiere radio broadcast on January 6. On January 11, the Crowes performed "Kickin' My Heart Around" on the Late Show with David Letterman. By Your Side was released on January 12, 1999. The album's cover art is a blue-tinted nighttime photograph of the band, all dressed in white and standing in front of a lake. The band name is rendered in tiny white lights above their heads, and other small white lights are scattered at their feet. In keeping with the tiny lights theme, the back of the booklet shows a satellite image of the United States at night, in which densely populated areas can be discerned by light pollution, and the booklet contains drawings of constellations. The album's disc artwork is designed after a centaur with a crow's head in place of the man's head. On the day the album was released, the band appeared at a Tower Records store in Manhattan to sign autographs and give away 1,000 tickets to that night's private show at Irving Plaza. By Your Side debuted at its peak position of number 26 on the Billboard 200 on January 30. The album has sold 271,000 copies in the US as of January 2002. The next two weeks were filled with radio and television appearances in Canada, Belgium, France, Sweden, and Italy. The Black Crowes returned to the US to perform during pre-game festivities at Joe Robbie Stadium before Super Bowl XXXIII on January 31. While on tour in support of the album in February, the band performed the second single, "Only a Fool", on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. The single was released in mid-February and peaked at number 7 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. The accompanying promotional video was directed by "Weird Al" Yankovic. After an early April stop at an Atlanta radio station where the band played a half-hour acoustic set, The Black Crowes made a third late night television appearance at the end of that month, playing the album's third single, "Go Faster", on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. "Go Faster" peaked at number 24 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart in July. Also in late April, Chris Robinson promoted By Your Side in an interview on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. ## Critical reception By Your Side was generally well received by critics. Regarding the songwriting, most reviewers praised The Black Crowes for returning to the straightforwardness of Shake Your Money Maker (1990) following the more adventuresome Amorica (1994) and Three Snakes and One Charm. Gemma Tarlach of The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel welcomed the album "because it represents a great band's return to what it does best", calling it "45 minutes of good, dirty fun". Wall of Sound's Russell Hall found that the band's emergence from "the jam-band haze that's infected" their recent work resulted in a "laser-sharp focus". Mark Falkner of The Florida Times-Union said that beyond the band's mastery of their influences' musical styles, what prevents them "from being just another tribute act is that they have (also) mastered the power, the passion and the fun that made the mix work". Some critics, also noting the change in approach, derided the band for returning to mine the same influences perceived in their debut album. Jim Farber of the Daily News thus described By Your Side as "a copy-of-a-copy-of-a-copy" and marked "Go Faster" a sped-up version of Humble Pie's "Hot 'n' Nasty". The Times Nigel Williamson called "HorseHead" "Zeppelinesque" and labeled "By Your Side" "a kicking boogie half way between [the Faces'] 'Cindy Incidentally' and [The Rolling Stones'] 'Tumbling Dice'". Steve Dougherty of People summed up by commenting, "Purists will wonder why to buy this album when [The Rolling Stones'] 1972 Exile on Main Street or [Rod] Stewart's 1970 Gasoline Alley exist on CD." On some tracks, the influence of soul music was perceived. Richard Harrington of The Washington Post wrote that "Only a Fool" "conjures '60s-era Stax-Volt passions while Robinson's jubilant vocals evoke Redding's rough-edged insistence" and compared "Diamond Ring" to Al Green's work. The Dirty Dozen Brass Band's playing on "Welcome to the Goodtimes" was called "infectious" by Wayne Bledsoe of The Knoxville News-Sentinel. The musical performances and sound of the album were frequently hailed by critics. Lorraine Ali of Rolling Stone identified Rich Robinson's guitar playing as "brilliant in spots, letting it rip with Southern-rock abandon or lazy, drawling slide guitar". Allmusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine praised the band's retention of the sonic detail from Amorica, and Jane Stevenson of the Toronto Sun appreciated the "soulful" backing vocals throughout. Echoing those sentiments was CMJ, which noted the "lazy slide-guitar textures, harmonica moans and choirs of soulful singers", but also stated "Chris Robinson's gritty, cocksure vocals blaze the trail." Stephen Thompson of The A.V. Club called Robinson's vocal performance on "HorseHead" "an inflection-for-inflection imitation of ... Billy Squier"; elsewhere on the album Robinson's voice was compared to that of Rod Stewart. Stewart himself called the album "brilliant" and said it "absolutely knocked [him] out". Robinson's lyrics were alternately praised and panned. The Guardian's Caroline Sullivan called "Go Faster" an amalgam of the band's interests, "including drugs ... nubile wenchhood ... scrapes ... and touring". The Washington Post's Harrington, however, called Robinson "convincing when he sings [in 'Virtue and Vice'], 'I feel so alive today and that's all I want to say/ I hope it stays this way,' adding, 'If not, I'll be okay'". ## Concert tours The Black Crowes played a few shows in the eastern US in early January before the release of By Your Side, then spent the rest of the month promoting the album via television appearances in the US, Canada and Europe. A brief warm-up show in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on February 10 preceded a two-month tour of North American theaters, called the Souled Out Tour, with Moke as the opening band. Every song from By Your Side was played at some point on this tour – "Go Faster", "Kickin' My Heart Around", "By Your Side" and "Virtue and Vice" were performed at most shows, but "Diamond Ring" was played only twice. A 1963 Fender Esquire guitar belonging to Rich was stolen from the backstage area at DeVos Performance Hall in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on February 16. The band's management waited six weeks before issuing a press release asking for its return, hoping the guitar would turn up in a local pawnshop. No update on the guitar was ever provided. After taking two weeks off, the band spent six weeks playing outdoor amphitheaters in the US on a co-headlining tour with Lenny Kravitz; opening acts were Everlast and Cree Summer. Beginning in June, The Black Crowes toured Europe for six weeks, opening for Aerosmith in concert halls and at festivals. "Go Faster" and "Kickin' My Heart Around" remained staples of the band's 60- to 75-minute sets. Harsch required emergency surgery for a twisted intestine on June 24 and missed the band's next eight shows. (The crew continued to set up Harsch's keyboards and placed a human-sized inflatable green alien in his spot.) One of the shows Harsch missed was a charity concert in London at which The Black Crowes played a 45-minute set of Led Zeppelin songs and blues covers with Jimmy Page. The band's last show in support of By Your Side was a one-off festival date in Niigata, Japan, on July 30. ## Track listing All songs written by Chris Robinson and Rich Robinson. 1. "Go Faster" – 4:04 2. "Kickin' My Heart Around" – 3:40 3. "By Your Side" – 4:28 4. "HorseHead" – 4:02 5. "Only a Fool" – 3:43 6. "Heavy" – 4:43 7. "Welcome to the Goodtimes" – 4:00 8. "Go Tell the Congregation" – 3:36 9. "Diamond Ring" – 4:09 10. "Then She Said My Name" – 3:43 11. "Virtue and Vice" – 4:45 Australian bonus disc 1. "It Must Be Over" – 4:49 2. "You Don't Have to Go" – 4:24 3. "Twice As Hard" (From VH1 Hard Rock Live) – 4:34 4. "HorseHead" (Acoustic Version) – 4:12 Album session tracks included on single b-sides''' 1. "It Must Be Over" – 4:49 (Kickin' My Heart Around) 2. "You Don't Have to Go" – 4:24 (Kickin' My Heart Around) 3. "Smile" – 4:19 (Only A Fool) 4. "When The Night Comes Falling From The Sky" (Bob Dylan) – 4:10 (Only A Fool) 5. "Grows A Rose" – 3:17 (By Your Side) 6. "Peace Anyway" – 3:46 (By Your Side) 7. "HorseHead" (Acoustic Version) – 4:12 (By Your Side'') ## Personnel The Black Crowes - Chris Robinson – vocals and harmonica - Rich Robinson – guitar - Steve Gorman – drums - Eddie Harsch - keyboards - Sven Pipien – bass guitar Additional personnel - Dirty Dozen Brass Band – horns - Zoe Thrall – flute - Curtis King, Cindy Mizelle, Tawatha Agee, Brenda White King, Vanees Thomas – background vocals - David Campbell – arranger Production - Kevin Shirley – producer, engineer, mixing - Rich Alvy – engineer - Pat Thrall – editing - George Marino – mastering - Leon Zervos – mastering - Pete Angelus – personal manager - Leslie Langlo – A&R - John Kalodner – John Kalodner - John Cheuse – art direction, design - Josef Astor – photography - Will Kennedy – digital imaging ## Charts

Agnes Marshall

English cookery writer, 1852–1905

Agnes Bertha Marshall (née Smith; 24 August 1852 – 29 July 1905) was an English culinary entrepreneur, inventor, and celebrity chef. An unusually prominent businesswoman for her time, Marshall was particularly known for her work on ice cream and other frozen desserts, which in Victorian England earned her the moniker "Queen of Ices". Marshall popularised ice cream in England and elsewhere at a time when it was still a novelty and is often regarded as the inventor of the modern ice cream cone. Through her work, Marshall may be largely responsible for both the look and popularity of ice cream today. It is unknown when and where Marshall first learned to cook; scant later writings allude to her having learnt from chefs in England, France and Austria. She began her career in 1883 through the founding of the Marshall's School of Cookery, which taught high-end English and French cuisine and grew to be a renowned culinary school. Marshall wrote four well-received cookbooks, two of which were devoted to ice cream and other desserts. Together with her husband Alfred, Marshall operated a variety of different businesses. From 1886 onwards she published her own magazine, The Table, which included weekly recipes and at times articles written by Marshall on various topics, both serious and frivolous. Marshall had an intense interest in technology; she was an early adopter of new technologies, frequently wrote about her own predictions of the future, and invented several new appliances. Though she was one of the most celebrated cooks of her time and one of the foremost cookery writers of the Victorian age, Marshall rapidly faded into obscurity after her death and was largely forgotten until she once more achieved renown in the late twentieth century. Technology invented or conceptualised by Marshall, including her ice cream freezer and the idea of creating ice cream with the use of liquid nitrogen, have since become repopularised. ## Personal life For years it was believed that Agnes Bertha Smith was born on 24 August 1855 in Walthamstow, Essex, and was the daughter of John Smith, who worked as a clerk, and his wife Susan. Recent research has discovered that she was three years older than she claimed; and her birth certificate shows that she was in fact born on 24 August 1852 in Haggerston, in the East End of London, as Agnes Beere Smith, the illegitimate daughter of Susan Smith. Her birth was registered in the customary fashion for illegitimate births under her mother's surname, and giving the father's name, 'Beere', as an extra forename. She was raised by her maternal grandmother, Sarah Smith, in Walthamstow, and can be found living there in the 1861 census. Her mother Susan then had three further illegitimate children with a man named Charles Wells: Mary Sarah Wells Smith (1859), John Osborn Wells Smith (1863) and Ada Martha Wells Smith (1868). Susan and Charles Wells were married in 1869, and the children thereafter discarded the surname Smith. Nothing is known of how, where or when she learned to cook. According to a later article in the Pall Mall Gazette, she had "made a thorough study of cookery since she was a child, and has practiced at Paris and with Vienna's celebrated chefs". In the preface to her first book, Marshall wrote that she had received "practical training and lessons, through several years, from leading English and Continental authorities". This seems unlikely, coming from a poor background in the East End of London, and the 1878 birth certificate for her daughter Ethel describes her as a domestic servant. She is probably the eighteen year-old, born in Walthamstow, working as a kitchen maid in Ayot St Lawrence, Herts., in the 1871 census. In April 1878, Agnes Beer (sic) Smith, domestic servant, gave birth to a daughter, Ethel Doyle Smith, in Dalston and the birth certificate indicates that the father's name was Doyle, and not, as generally assumed, her future husband. A few months later, on 17 August 1878, she married Alfred William Marshall, son of a builder named Thomas Marshall, at St. George's Church, Hanover Square. The couple had three children: Agnes Alfreda (called "Aggie", born 1879), Alfred Harold (born 1880) and William Edward born 1882). Daughter Ethel was raised as one of the family; and at some date Agnes changed her second forename to Bertha. ## Career ### Business ventures and The Book of Ices Marshall was a formidable businesswoman even by modern standards. In January 1883, she and her husband acquired the Lavenue cookery school which was situated at 67 Mortimer St., and renamed it the Marshall's School of Cookery. The school was founded by Felix Lavenue, the pseudonym of Englishman Charles Shepperd, who died in 1864. In 1883, it was being run by his daughter, Agnes Mary Lavenue, and she died in Tunbridge Wells a few months after the sale. The Marylebone rate books show that 67 Mortimer St. was scheduled for demolition in 1883, and soon after the purchase the Marshalls moved the school down the road to 30 Mortimer St. Agnes's half-brother John was employed as the school's manager, and half-sister Ada worked for a time as the housekeeper. The original records of the transaction have not survived but later evidence suggests that the couple purchased the school together, and this was unusual as women had only very recently earned the legal right to purchase property through the Married Women's Property Act 1882. The Marshall's School of Cookery mainly taught a mixture of high-end English and French cuisine and swiftly became one of only two major cookery schools in the city, alongside The National Training School Of Cookery. A year into the school's operation, Marshall was lecturing classes of up to 40 students five to six times a week and within a few years the school reportedly had nearly 2,000 students, lectured in cooking by prominent specialists. Among the lectures offered at the school were lessons in curry-making, taught by an English colonel who had once served in India and a class in French high-end cuisine taught by a Le Cordon Bleu graduate. The couple also operated a business involving the creation and retail of cooking equipment, an agency that supplied domestic staff, as well as a food shop that sold flavorings, spices and syrups. In 1885, Marshall wrote and published her first book, The Book of Ices, which contained 177 different ice cream and dessert recipes. The Book of Ices was self-published through the cookery school and was well-written and thoroughly illustrated. In addition to the recipes, the book also promoted some of Marshall's ice cream-related inventions, including the Marshall's Patent Freezer. The Book of Ices received favourable reviews from critics but it mainly received attention in various local newspapers and did not reach the national-level media. The Marshall's Patent Freezer, patented by her husband, was able to freeze a pint of ice cream in less than five minutes and her design remains faster and more reliable than even many modern electric ice cream machines. Marshall also designed an extensive range of over a thousand different molds for use with ice cream. She also invented an "ice-breaking machine", an "ice cave" (an insulated box for storing ice cream), and several different kitchen appliances and food ingredients, sold by her company. ### The Table and A Pretty Luncheon From 1886 onwards, Marshall and her husband published the magazine The Table, a weekly paper on "Cookery, Gastronomy [and] food amusements". Every issue of The Table was accompanied by a weekly recipe contributed by Marshall and for the first six month (and periodically thereafter) the magazine also included weekly articles written by Marshall on an assortment of subjects she took an interest in. According to the historian John Deith, these articles were written in a "chatty, witty and ironic, Jane Austenesque style". Among the articles she wrote were musings on hobbies such as riding, playing tennis, and gardening, as well as spirited attacks on The National Training School Of Cookery (the main competitor of her own school). She also published articles in support of improving the working conditions of kitchen staff in aristocratic homes, which she wrote "received less respect than carriage horses". At one point, Marshall authored a highly critical article on a financial venture of Horatio Bottomley, who printed The Table, which resulted in Bottomley threatening legal action (which never materialised) and refusing to print future critical material. Marshall responded by simply calling Bottomley "impudent" and partnering with another printer. In 1887, Marshall was preparing to publish her second book, Mrs A. B. Marshall's Book of Cookery, set for publication in February 1888. Wishing to reach a wider audience than she had with The Book of Ices, Marshall decided to embark on a promotional tour across England which she dubbed A Pretty Luncheon. In addition to promoting the upcoming book, the tour also served to bring attention to her cookery school and to her various businesses. The tour saw Marshall cooking meals in front of large audiences, helped on stage by a team of assistants. A Pretty Luncheon began in August 1888, with the shows held in Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle and Glasgow. On 15 and 22 October, Marshall held two successive shows at the Willis's Rooms in London which received unanimous and widespread critical acclaim. Encouraged by the success of the first part of the tour, Marshall embarked on the second part of the tour in the autumn and winter, cooking in front of audiences in Bath, Brighton, Bristol, Cheltenham, Colchester, Leicester, Liverpool, Nottingham, Plymouth, Shrewsbury, Southampton and Worcester. Some of her shows had as many as 500–600 attendants in the audience. According to Deith, A Pretty Luncheon made Marshall into "the most talked about cook in England" and "the best known cook since Soyer". ### Further writings and late career After some delays, Mrs A. B. Marshall's Book of Cookery was published on 12 May 1888. Well-planned, well-written and practically arranged, the book was an enormous success, selling over 60,000 copies and being published in fifteen editions. Book of Cookery cemented Marshall's reputation among the prominent cooks of England. In Book of Cookery, Marshall mentioned putting ice cream in an edible cone, the earliest known reference in English to ice cream cones. Her cone, which she called a "cornet", was made from ground almonds and might have been the first portable and edible ice cream cone. Marshall's cornet bore little resemblance to its modern counterpart and was intended to be eaten with utensils but Marshall is accordingly frequently considered to be the inventor of the modern ice cream cone. In the summer of 1888, Marshall went on a tour to the United States. Her lecture received a positive review in the Philadelphia Bulletin but she did not achieve the same level of acclaim in America as she had in England. Marshall is recorded to have provided Christmas dinners for the "Hungry Poor" in Stepney and Poplar in London in 1889. She also provided warm soup to the poor throughout the winter of that year. Book of Cookery was followed by her third book, Mrs A. B. Marshall's Larger Cookery Book of Extra Recipes (1891), dedicated "by permission" to Princess Helena and devoted to more high-end cuisine than the previous book. Marshall's fourth and final book, Fancy Ices, was published in 1894 and was a follow-up to The Book of Ices. The cooking books written by Marshall contained recipes she had created herself, unlike many other books of the age which were simply compilations of work by others, and she assured readers that she had tried out every recipe herself. Among the various foods featured, Marshall's books contain the earliest known written recipe for Cumberland rum butter. In the 1890s, Marshall also resumed her weekly articles on various subjects in The Table, writing on both serious and frivolous topics. Among the articles she wrote during this time were musings on the poor quality of food on trains and at railway stations, a denouncement of canned food, a lament on the lack of good-quality tomatoes in her area, support for women's rights, criticism of superstition, and speculations on future technology. She made several correct predictions for the future; Marshall predicted that motor cars would "revolutionise trade and facilitate the travelling of the future", speculated on how refrigerated lorries could be used to deliver fresh food nationwide, predicted that larger stores would bring small provision shops out of business, and that chemically purified water might one day be provided to all homes as a matter of course. Marshall was greatly interested in technological developments and her shop was an early adopter of technologies such as the dishwasher, the teasmade and automatic doors. ## Death and legacy In 1904, Marshall fell from a horse and suffered injuries from which she never properly recovered. She died of cancer the next year, in the early morning of 29 July 1905 at The Towers, Pinner. The Towers was a large estate purchased and refurbished by Marshall in 1891. Marshall was cremated at the Golders Green Crematorium and her ashes were interred at the Paines Lane Cemetery in Pinner. Alfred remarried within a year of her death to Gertrude Walsh, a former secretary that Marshall had previously fired. The two had likely been engaged in an affair before Marshall's death. Their son Alfred died in 1907 and his ashes were interred next to Marshall's. The elder Alfred died in 1917 in Nice during World War I; his ashes were at his request also interred next to Marshall's in 1920. Marshall was one of the most celebrated cooks of her time and one of the foremost cookery writers of the Victorian age, particularly on ice cream. Her recipes were renowned for their detail, simplicity and accuracy. For her work on ice cream and other frozen desserts, Marshall in her lifetime earned the nickname "Queen of Ices". Only a single book on ice cream is known from England before Marshall's work and she helped popularise ice cream at a time when the concept was still novel in England and elsewhere, particularly through the portable ice cream freezer and the ice cream cone. Before Marshall's writings and innovations, ice cream was often sold frozen to metal rods which had to be returned after all had been licked off and was mainly enjoyed by just the upper classes. She increased the popularity of ice cream to such an extent that she was credited for causing an increase in ice imports from Norway. In 1901, she became the first person known to have suggested the use of liquid nitrogen to freeze ice cream (and the first to suggest using liquified gas on food in general). Marshall imagined that this would be the ideal method to make ice cream since the ice cream could be created in seconds and the ice crystals resulting from this method would be tiny, as desired. Despite her fame in life, Marshall's reputation declined rapidly after her death and her name faded into obscurity. Her husband continued to operate their businesses but they declined without Marshall's personality and drive. In 1921, the company was sold and became a limited company and in 1954 it ceased operations. Marshall's cookery school remained in operation until the outbreak of World War II. The Table also continued to be published to around the same time. The rights to her books were sold off to the publishing house Ward Lock at some time in 1927 or 1928, though Ward Lock had little interest in keeping them in print. In the 1950s, a fire destroyed much of Marshall's personal papers which further pushed her into obscurity. More recently, from the late 20th century onwards, Marshall's reputation has been restored as one of the most prominent cooks of the Victorian age. The cookery writer Elizabeth David referred to her as the "famous Mrs Marshall" in the posthumously published Harvest of the Cold Months (1994) and the author Robin Weir declared her to have been "the greatest Victorian ice cream maker" in a 1998 biographical study. Weir assessed Marshall in 2015 as a "unique one-woman industry" whose achievements were "arguably unequalled" and who "deserves much more credit than she has been given by history". Since the late 20th century, Marshall's books have once more been reprinted and ice cream freezers based on her original designs are once again in commercial use. Using liquid nitrogen to freeze ice cream has also become an increasingly popular trend. A liquid nitrogen ice cream store that was inspired by Marshall's proposed technique was opened in 2014 in St. Louis, Missouri and named "Ices Plain & Fancy" after her book.

HMSAS Bloemfontein

Algerine-class minesweeper built for the Royal Navy in Canada during World War II

HMSAS Bloemfontein was an Algerine-class minesweeper built for the Royal Navy in Canada during World War II. The ship was originally named Rosamund (pennant number: J439) and spent several years clearing minefields in Europe after she was completed in 1945 before she was placed in reserve. Rosamund was purchased by South Africa in 1947 and later renamed HMSAS Bloemfontein. The ship spent most of its early career in the South African Navy training or making good-will visits to foreign countries. She was laid up in the late 1950s and was recommissioned in 1961 to serve as an interim training ship until the shore-based training establishment then under construction was completed. This occurred in 1963 and Bloemfontein returned briefly to reserve before she was deemed surplus to requirements. The ship was sunk as a target in 1967. ## Description Bloemfontein displaced 950 long tons (965 t) at standard load and 1,250 long tons (1,270 t) at deep load. The ship had an overall length of 225 feet (68.6 m), a beam of 35 feet 6 inches (10.8 m) and a deep draught of 12 feet 3 inches (3.7 m). She was powered by a pair of vertical triple-expansion steam engines, each driving one propeller shaft, using steam provided by two Admiralty three-drum boilers. The engines developed a total of 2,400 indicated horsepower (1,800 kW) which gave a maximum speed of 16.5 knots (30.6 km/h; 19.0 mph). The ship carried 230 long tons (234 t) of fuel oil that she had a range of 5,000 nautical miles (9,300 km; 5,800 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph). The ship was armed with a single four-inch (102 mm) Mk V dual-purpose gun and two twin and two single mounts for Oerlikon 20-millimetre (0.8 in) light anti-aircraft (AA) guns. For anti-submarine work, Bloemfontein was fitted with two depth charge rails, and four depth charge throwers for 92 depth charges. The ship was also equipped with a Type 271 surface-search radar and a Type 291 air-search radar. Her crew numbered 85 officers and ratings. ## Construction and career Bloemfontein was ordered on 15 March 1943 from the Port Arthur Shipbuilding Company of Port Arthur, Ontario, Canada, and laid down on 26 April 1944 with the name of Rosamund. The ship was the first of her name to serve in the Royal Navy. She was launched on 20 December and completed six months later on 10 July 1945. The ship was assigned to clear the coastal waters of Western Europe of minefields laid during the war and did so until she was laid up in 1947 at Devonport Royal Dockyard. Rosamund was purchased by the South African Navy later that year, together with her sister ship, Pelorus. The sisters departed England on 22 November after a refresher course at the minesweeping school at HMS Lochinvar, Port Edgar, Scotland. They arrived at Cape Town on 24 December, making stops at Gibraltar, Freetown and Walvis Bay en route. Rosamund was rechristened as Bloemfontein in East London during that city's centenary celebrations in mid-1948. In August she made her first supply run to Marion Island. In November of that year, the sisters exercised with the British 3rd Aircraft Carrier Squadron. Later that month, together with the frigate , they visited ports in Portuguese Mozambique, returning to Durban on 12 December. The sisters were placed in reserve in the late 1950s, after the navy had purchased 10 Ton-class minesweepers. Bloemfontein was recommissioned in April 1961 to serve as a stationary training ship in Simon's Town until the navy's training facility SAS Simonsberg was completed in July 1963. The navy decided that the ship was no longer needed and she was stripped of useful equipment before being sunk as a target in False Bay by the frigate and the minesweeper on 5 June 1967.

Languages of the Roman Empire

Latin and Greek were the dominant languages of the Roman Empire, but other languages were regionally important. Latin was the original language of the Romans and remained the language of imperial administration, legislation, and the military throughout the classical period. In the West, it became the lingua franca and came to be used for even local administration of the cities including the law courts. After all freeborn male inhabitants of the Empire were universally enfranchised in 212 AD, a great number of Roman citizens would have lacked Latin, though they were expected to acquire at least a token knowledge, and Latin remained a marker of "Romanness". After the conquests of Alexander the Great in late 4th century BCE, Koine Greek had become a shared language around the eastern Mediterranean and diplomatic communications in the East, even beyond the borders of the Empire. The international use of Greek was one condition that enabled the spread of Christianity, as indicated for example by the choice of Greek as the language of the New Testament in the Bible and its use for the ecumenical councils of the Christian Roman Empire rather than Latin. With the dissolution of the Empire in the West, Greek became the more dominant language of the Roman Empire in the East, modernly referred to as the Byzantine Empire. As the communication in ancient society was predominantly oral, it can be difficult to determine the extent to which regional or local languages continued to be spoken or used for other purposes under Roman rule. Some evidence exists in inscriptions, or in references in Greek and Roman texts to other languages and the need for interpreters. For Punic, Coptic, and Aramaic or Syriac, a significant amount of epigraphy or literature survives. The Celtic languages were widespread throughout much of western Europe, and while the orality of Celtic education left scant written records, Celtic epigraphy is limited in quantity but not rare. The Germanic languages of the Empire have left next to no inscriptions or texts, with the exception of Gothic. Multilingualism contributed to the "cultural triangulation" by means of which an individual who was neither Greek nor Roman might construct an identity through the processes of Romanization and Hellenization. After the decentralization of political power in late antiquity, Latin developed locally in the Western provinces into branches that became the Romance languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Catalan, Occitan and Romanian. By the early 21st century, the first or second language of more than a billion people derived from Latin. Latin itself remained an international medium of expression for diplomacy and for intellectual developments identified with Renaissance humanism up to the 17th century, and for law and the Roman Catholic Church to the present. ## Latin Latin was the language of the Romans from the earliest known period. Writing under the first Roman emperor Augustus, Virgil emphasizes that Latin was a source of Roman unity and tradition. In Virgil's epic Aeneid about the founding of Rome, the supreme deity Jupiter dictates that the refugee Trojans who have come to settle in Italy will use the language of the native Latini as a means of unification: "they will keep the speech (sermo) and mores of their fathers ... and I will make them all Latins with one mode of expression" (uno ore, literally "with one mouth"). The Julio-Claudian emperors, who claimed descent from the Virgilian hero Aeneas, encouraged high standards of correct Latin (Latinitas), a linguistic movement identified in modern terms as Classical Latin, and favored Latin for conducting official business. Latin became the language of conquered areas because local people started speaking it, and not because the population was displaced by Latin-speakers. Latin was not imposed officially on peoples brought under Roman rule. Saint Augustine observed that Romans preferred for Latin to be adopted per pacem societatis, through a social pact. This language policy contrasts with that of Alexander, who aimed to impose Greek throughout his empire as the official language. Latin was not a requirement for Roman citizenship, and there was no state-supported schooling that privileged it as the medium for education: fluency was desirable for its "high cultural, political, legal, social and economic value". Latin was needed for imperial service and advancement, and was the language used for the internal functioning of government. Edicts and official communications of the emperor were in Latin, including rulings on local laws that might be in another language. The Romans placed a high value on the written word, as indicated by their obsession with documentation and public inscriptions. The Imperial bureaucracy was so dependent on writing that the Babylonian Talmud (bT Shabbat 11a) declared "if all seas were ink, all reeds were pen, all skies parchment, and all men scribes, they would be unable to set down the full scope of the Roman government's concerns." Estimates of the average literacy rate in the Empire range from 5 to 30 percent or higher, depending in part on the definition of "literacy". The lack of state intervention in access to education was a barrier to literacy, since formal education was available only to children from families who could pay for it. The birth certificates and wills of Roman citizens had to be written in Latin until the time of Alexander Severus (reigned 222–235). Illiterate Roman subjects would have someone such as a government scribe (scriba) read or write their official documents for them. Laws and edicts were posted in writing as well as read out. Public art and religious ceremonies were ways to communicate imperial ideology regardless of language spoken or ability to read. An early form of story ballet (pantomimus) was brought to Rome by Greek performers and became popular throughout the multilingual empire in part because it relied on gesture rather than verbal expression. Latin was the official language of the Roman army until the mid-6th century, and remained the most common language for military use even in the Eastern empire until the 630s. By contrast, only two bishops are known to have spoken Latin at the ecumenical councils held during the reign of Theodosius II (d. 450 AD). ## Greek Koine Greek had become the common language of the eastern Mediterranean and into Asia Minor after the conquests of Alexander the Great. Lucian even imagines that Greek is the universal language of the dead in the underworld. In late antiquity, a Greek-speaking majority lived in the Greek peninsula and islands, major cities of the East, and most of Anatolia. Greek continued as the language of the Eastern Roman Empire, and developed into a distinctive medieval Greek that gave rise to modern Greek. The emperor Claudius tried to limit the use of Greek, and on occasion revoked the citizenship of those who lacked Latin. Even in addressing the Roman Senate, however, he drew on his own bilingualism in communicating with Greek-speaking ambassadors. Suetonius quotes him as referring to "our two languages," and the employment of two imperial secretaries, one for Greek and one Latin, dates to his reign. The everyday interpenetration of the two languages is indicated by bilingual inscriptions, which sometimes even switch back and forth between Greek and Latin. The epitaph of a Greek-speaking soldier, for instance, might be written primarily in Greek, with his rank and unit in the Roman army expressed in Latin. In the Eastern empire, laws and official documents were regularly translated into Greek from Latin. Both languages were in active use by government officials and the Church during the 5th century. From the 6th century, Greek culture was studied in the West almost exclusively through Latin translation. Latin loanwords appear liberally in Greek texts on technical topics from late antiquity and the Byzantine period. ## Language reform movements Atticism was a trend of the Second Sophistic. Intellectuals such as Aelius Aristides sought to restore the standards of classical Greek characteristic of the Attic dialect, represented by Thucydides, Plato, Demosthenes, and other authors from the Classical period. Prose stylists who aspired to Atticism tried to avoid the vulgarisms of koine—an impractical goal, but this linguistic purism also reflected the 2nd-century flourishing of grammarians and lexicographers. Expertise in language and literature contributed to preserving Hellenic culture in the Roman Imperial world. Among other reforms, the emperor Diocletian (reigned 284–305) sought to renew the authority of Latin, and the Greek expression ἡ κρατοῦσα διάλεκτος (hē kratousa dialektos) attests to the continuing status of Latin as "the language of power." The scholar Libanius (4th century) regarded Latin as causing a decline in the quality of Greek rhetoric. In the early 6th century, the emperor Justinian engaged in a quixotic effort to reassert the status of Latin as the language of law, even though in his time Latin no longer held any currency as a living language in the East. ## Regional languages The dominance of Latin and Greek among the literate elite may obscure the continuity of spoken languages, since all cultures within the Roman Empire were predominantly oral. In areas where Syriac, Coptic, and Aramaic were spoken, they coexisted with Greek. ### Aramaic and Syriac Aramaic was the primary language of Syria and Mesopotamia, with several dialects. Syriac was in use around Antioch, one of the three largest cities of the Empire, and particularly by Christians. Syriac literature is known from the latter 2nd century, spreading from the Christian community in Edessa. Early Syriac literature was produced in a largely Greek intellectual milieu until the 4th century, but was distinctive for its use of rich symbolism and emphasis on verse forms, and influenced Greek writers such as Eusebius, Basil and Theodoret. Among the earliest Syriac literature was the Diatessaron of Tatian, and translations of sections from the Bible. The prolific Syrian scholar Bardesanes knew Greek and sent his son for schooling in Athens, but chose to write in his ethnic language. In addition to Syriac homilies and treatises, Bardesanes wrote 150 hymns "of enormous influence and doubtful doctrine". Other Syriac literature of the time included Christian treatises, dialogues, and apocryphal Acts. Some Syriac literature had Gnostic elements, and also played a role in the dissemination of Manicheanism. From the 5th century onward, it included Monophysite and Nestorian writings. Works by the Syriac writer Ephraim were translated into Greek. The satirist and rhetorician Lucian came from Samosata in the province of Syria; although he wrote in Greek, he calls himself a Syrian, and a reference to himself as a "barbarian" suggests that he spoke Syriac. Soldiers from Palmyra even used their dialect of Aramaic for inscriptions, in a striking exception to the rule that Latin was the language of the military. ### Coptic "Coptic" is the modern term for the form of ancient Egyptian that had developed in late antiquity. Written Coptic as a literary language seems to have resulted from a conscious effort among Egypt's educated class to revive their cultural heritage. In the 4th century, Coptic script—based on the Greek alphabet with additional characters from Egyptian demotic to reflect Egyptian phonology—is found in documents in several dialects, including Old Bohairic, Fayumic, Achmimic, and Sahidic. At this time Coptic emerged as a fully literary language, including major translations of Greek scriptures, liturgical texts, and patristic works. From the 4th to 7th centuries, original works—including homilies, saints' lives, monastic rules, letters, and exhortations—were composed in Coptic, primarily in the Sahidic dialect. As a writing system, Coptic was used for everyday purposes such as inventories and real estate transactions, as well as for poetry. By the 640s, when Egypt came under Arab rule, Coptic-speaking Christians constituted the majority of the population. At the end of the 7th century, legal texts might still be written in Coptic: in one example, a bilingual Greek-Arabic protocol with a reference to Mohammed precedes a document entirely in Coptic that invokes the Trinity. ### Punic Punic, the Semitic language of the Carthaginians, continued to be used in North Africa during the Imperial period. Before the Roman conquest in 146 BC, nearly all Punic inscriptions had been votive to the deities Tanit and Ba'al or funerary commemorations, but during the Roman era a broader range of content is found in Neo-Punic, often appearing with parallel texts in Latin or Greek. A striking occurrence of Neo-Punic is found at the otherwise thoroughly Roman temple of Roma and Augustus, built 14–19 AD at Leptis Magna. One of the latest Neo-Punic inscriptions on a monument dates to the reign of Domitian (81–96 AD). No inscription in Punic script on stone can be dated later than the 2nd or 3rd century. Latin script was used to write Punic in the 4th and 5th centuries. Punic was spoken at the highest level of society: the emperor Septimius Severus (reigned 193–211) was born in Leptis Magna and spoke Punic as well as Latin and Greek, while his sister supposedly had little command of Latin at all. Augustine, who was from North Africa, several times mentions Punic; he observed that it was related to Hebrew and Syriac, and his knowledge of Punic helped him figure out transliterated Semitic words from the Bible. ### Celtic Celtic languages at the beginning of the Imperial period include Gaulish, spoken in Gaul (Gallia, present-day France, Belgium, Switzerland and northwestern Italy); Celtiberian and Gallaecian, in parts of Hispania (Spain and Portugal); Brittonic in Britannia (Roman Britain), and Galatian, a branch of Celtic brought to Anatolia by the Gallic invasions of the 3rd century BC. The place name Galatia, a Roman province, derives from the Greek word for "Gauls" or "Celts", Galatai. Loanwords from Gaulish are recorded in Latin as early as the time of Ennius (ca. 239–169 BC), due to the presence of Celtic settlements on the Italian peninsula. By late antiquity, some Gaulish words had become so Latinized that their origin was no longer recognized as such. Celtiberian is documented as a written language only after contact with the Romans in the 2nd century BC. Of 103 Celtiberian inscriptions, thirty in Iberian script are hospitality tokens (tesserae hospitales), twenty of which are in the shape of animals. The social custom of pledging mutual support among families or communities was compatible with hospitium in Roman culture, and the Celtiberians continued to produce the tokens, though switching to Latin, into the 2nd century of the Imperial era. Under Augustus, the territory of the Celtiberians became part of the Tarraconensis province. Written Celtiberian ceases early in the reign of Augustus, if not before. Several references to Gaulish in late antiquity may indicate that it continued to be spoken. Irenaeus, bishop of Lugdunum (present-day Lyon) from 177 AD, complains that he has to communicate with his parishioners in their "barbarous tongue", probably Gaulish. The jurist Ulpian (170–228) mentions the need to recognize Gaulish verbal contracts. Lampridius says that a druidess made a prophecy in Gaulish to Alexander Severus (208–235). Jerome (331–420), who had first-hand knowledge, observes that the Gallic Treveri speak a language "more or less the same" as that of the Galatians. The collection of pharmacological recipes by Marcellus of Bordeaux (late 4th- or early 5th-century) contains several Gaulish words, mainly plant names, and seems to indicate that the language remained in use for at least some purposes such as traditional medicine and magic. Sulpicius Severus (363–425), also from Gallia Aquitania, takes note of Gaulish-Latin bilingualism, with Gaulish as the first language. Other mentions of people who speak "in the Gallic manner" (gallice) or similar may refer to speaking Latin with a regional Gaulish accent. Much of historical linguistics scholarship postulates that Gaulish was indeed still spoken as late as the mid to late 6th century in France. Despite considerable Romanization of the local material culture, the Gaulish language is held to have survived and had coexisted with spoken Latin during the centuries of Roman rule of Gaul. ### Germanic Next to nothing is recorded of the Germanic languages spoken in the Empire, with the exception of Gothic. A phrase of Gothic is quoted in an elegiac couplet from the Latin Anthology, and more substantially parts of the Gospels were translated into Gothic and preserved by the 6th-century Codex Argenteus. While Latin gained some Germanic loanwords, most linguistic influence ran the other way. Bilingualism in a Germanic language and Latin was especially important in the military for officers in command of units recruited from Germanic-speaking areas. Tacitus observes that Arminius, the Cheruscan officer who later led a disastrously successful rebellion against the Romans, was bilingual. The emperor Julian employed a bilingual Germanic military tribune as a spy. The officers and secretaries who kept the records preserved in the Vindolanda tablets were Batavian, but their Latin contains no hint; the common soldiers of their units, however, may have retained their Germanic speech. Less commonly, Latin-speaking officers learned a Germanic language through their service and acted as interpreters. Acquiring Germanic might be regarded as a dubious achievement inducing anxieties of "barbarism": in 5th-century Gaul, Sidonius Apollinaris thinks it funny that his learned friend Syagrius has become fluent in Germanic. ## Multilingualism Trilingualism was perhaps not uncommon among educated people who came from regions where a language other than Latin or Greek was spoken. The Latin novelist Apuleius also wrote in Greek, and had learned Punic from his mother. The Babatha Archive is a suggestive example of practical multilingualism. These papyri, named for a Jewish woman in the province of Arabia and dating from 93 to 132 AD, mostly employ Aramaic, the local language, written in Greek characters with Semitic and Latin influences; a petition to the Roman governor, however, was written in Greek. One striking example of multilingualism as well as multiculturalism in the Empire is a 2nd-century epitaph for a woman named Regina, discovered in 1878 near the Roman fort at South Shields, northeast England. The inscription is written in Latin and Palmyrene Aramaic, the language of Regina's husband, Barates, who has been identified with a standardbearer (vexillarius) of that name from Palmyra, Syria. He was most likely in the military stationed along Hadrian's Wall. The Latin, however, is constructed grammatically in the manner of Greek honorific inscriptions typical of Palmyra, suggesting that Barates was bilingual in Aramaic and Greek, and added Latin as a third language. The Latin portion is larger and longer, and provides most of the information. The Palmyrene is carved in a fluid cursive script, and conveys only the name of Regina and an expression of grief. Since few people in Britain could have read Palmyrene, its use may be Barates' personal statement of his identity and emotions. A fourth linguistic element is the name Regina, which can be either Latin or Celtic. Such names seem often to have been chosen for their deliberate duality. Regina herself is identified as from the British Catuvellauni, a people whose civitas capital was Verulamium, but the Gallo-Brittonic spelling Catuallauna (feminine) is used in the Latin inscription. ## Geographical distribution ### Italian peninsula and Sicily In Italy, the written use of Latin had replaced Oscan—like Latin, an Italic language—and Etruscan by the end of the 1st century AD. Oscan graffiti are preserved by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79 at Pompeii and Herculaneum, which was in the Oscan region, and a couple may date before or after an earlier regional earthquake in AD 62. In the mid-1st century, the emperor Claudius, who had keen antiquarian interests, knew Etruscan and wrote a multi-volume history of the Etruscans, but the work has not survived. Multilingualism had been characteristic of Sicily for centuries, resulting from occupations by the Carthaginians, Greeks, and Romans. While the slave trade during the Republican period brought speakers of Greek and other languages from the East to the island, Greek was the language of higher-status persons such as government officials and businessmen during the Imperial era. Immigration to Sicily in the early Empire originated more often in places where Latin was spoken than in Greek-speaking areas. African speakers of Latin were a significant presence in Sicily. Christian inscriptions are far more likely to be in Greek. In late antiquity, Greek-Latin bilingualism was common enough that it would have been acquired through everyday personal interaction. The Jewish communities of Syracuse seem to have been bilingual in Greek and Hebrew. There is some Sicilian evidence of Syriac. ### Western provinces In the Western Empire, Latin gradually replaced the Celtic languages, which were related to it by a shared Indo-European origin. Commonalities in syntax and vocabulary facilitated the adoption of Latin. Mediterranean Gaul (southern France) had become trilingual (Greek, Latin, Gaulish) by the mid-1st century BC. The importance of Latin in gaining access to the ruling power structure caused the rapid extinction of inscriptions in scripts that had been used to represent local languages on the Iberian peninsula (Hispania) and in Gaul. Among other aspects of a distinctive Gallo-Roman culture was the creation of Gallo-Latin text. In Latin commemorative inscriptions, individuals with Celtic names rarely identify themselves as "Celtic" or "Gallic"; they are much more likely to name the people of their civitas (such as Aedui, Remi, Pictones) or their voting tribe (tribus) as Roman citizens. Several major writers of Latin came from the Iberian peninsula in the Imperial period, including Seneca, Lucan, Quintilian, Martial, and Prudentius. However despite acquisition of Latin, Gaulish is held by some to have held on quite a long time, lasting at least until the middle of the 6th century CE, despite considerable Romanization in the local material culture. Most of the 136 Greek inscriptions from Mediterranean Gaul (the Narbonensis), including those from originally Greek colonies, are post-Augustan. Their content indicates that Greek was used increasingly for specialized purposes: "education, medicine, acting, agonistic activities, art, magic, religion, including Christianity". Inscriptions from Marseilles (ancient Massilia), founded as a Greek Phocaean colony around 600 BC, show the continued use of Greek, especially in education and medicine, into the 2nd and 3rd centuries of the Imperial era. In the 4th century, the Latin poet and scholar Ausonius, from Gallia Aquitania (present-day Bordeaux), characterizes his physician father as speaking Attic Greek with more eloquence than Latin. Basque, not an Indo-European language, survived in the region of the Pyrenees. The people of southwestern Gaul and northeastern Hispania (roughly present-day Aquitaine and Navarre) were regarded by Julius Caesar as ethnically distinct from the Celts, and the Aquitanian language they spoke was Vasconic like Basque, judging from place names. The Aquitani adopted Latin under Roman rule. Gaulish survived in Gaul into the late 6th century, and played a decisive role in the formation of Gallo-Romance languages. Latin did not become as deeply entrenched in the province of Britannia, and may have dwindled rapidly after the Roman withdrawal around 410 AD, although pockets of Latin-speaking Britons survived in western Britain until about 700 AD. The evidence of Latin loanwords into Brittonic suggests that the Latin of Roman Britain was academic, in contrast to the everyday conversational Latin ("Vulgar" Latin) on the continent. ### African provinces In the provinces of Africa westwards of Cyrenaica (a region colonised by Greeks since the 7th century BC), the people of Carthage and other Phoenician colonies spoke and wrote Punic, with Latin common in urban centers. Other Roman Africans spoke Afroasiatic languages (Libyan, Numidian), debatably early versions of Berber. Punic was used for legends on coins during the time of Tiberius (1st century AD), and Punic inscriptions appear on public buildings into the 2nd century, some bilingual with Latin. Inscriptions might also be trilingual: one pertaining to Imperial cult presents "the official Latin, the local Punic, and the Greek of passing traders and an educated or cosmopolitan elite". Inscriptions in Libyan use a script similar to tifinagh, usually written vertically from the bottom up. The 23 characters are "of a rather rigid geometric form". Bilingual examples are found with either Punic or Latin, and indicate that some people who could write these languages could also at least transliterate their names into the Libyan script. Although Libyan inscriptions are concentrated southeast of Hippo, near the present-day Algerian-Tunisia border, their distribution overall suggests that knowledge of the language was not confined to isolated communities. Notable writers of Latin from Africa during the Imperial period include the novelist Apuleius, and the Church Fathers Tertullian and Augustine. Latin-speaking communities remained in North Africa, particularly around Carthage, during the period of the Vandal Kingdom (435–534), but died out by the late 7th century, with the Arab conquest. Roger Blench (2018) suggests that although Berber had split off from Afroasiatic several thousand years ago, Proto-Berber itself can only be reconstructed to a period as late as 200 CE, with modern-day Berber languages displaying low internal diversity. The presence of Punic borrowings in Proto-Berber points to the diversification of modern Berber language varieties subsequent to the fall of Carthage in 146 B.C.; only Guanche and Zenaga lack Punic loanwords. Additionally, Latin loanwords in Proto-Berber point to the breakup of Proto-Berber between 0-200 A.D. During the time of the Roman Empire, Roman innovations such as the ox-plough, camel, and orchard management were adopted by Berber communities along the limes, or borders of the Roman Empire, resulting in a new trading culture involving the use of a lingua franca which became Proto-Berber. ### Egypt In Egypt, Coptic predominated, but Greek had been in use since the conquest of Alexander, and Latin and Greek were the administrative languages during the Roman Imperial period. Alexandria, founded in 331 BC under Greek rule and one of the three largest cities of the Roman Empire, was a leading city in Greek intellectual life during the Hellenistic and Imperial periods. Famed for the Library of Alexandria, it was also a center for the dissemination of Christianity, which spread first among Greek speakers in Egypt. Around 700 AD, Greek was replaced for administrative use by Arabic after the Arab conquest of Egypt. Coptic began to decline, and from this point, was preserved mainly for liturgical purposes. ### Eastern empire Although Greek was in common use around the Mediterranean and into Asia Minor even beyond Imperial borders, linguistic distribution in the eastern part of the Empire was complex. Now-extinct languages in Anatolia included Galatian (the form of Celtic introduced by invading Gauls in the 3rd century BC), Phrygian, Pisidian, and Cappadocian, attested by Imperial-era inscriptions. Christian sources also mention the survival of Galatian, Cappadocian, Mysian, and Isaurian in Asia Minor. Like Greek and Latin, these are sometimes categorized as Indo-European. Phrygian is not named as a language in a literary text until the 6th century, but is preserved in about a hundred funerary inscriptions in Greek script, most accompanied by Greek text as well and dating from the 3rd century. A Cappadocian accent in speaking Greek seems to be mentioned in a few sources. Outside the military, Latin never became the language of everyday life in the East. An exception was the Roman colony of Berytus (present-day Beirut), where a Latin education could be obtained, and which became famous for its school of Roman law. ### Danubian provinces and Balkans The Danubian provinces lay within a geographical area encompassing the middle and lower Danube basins, the Eastern Alps, the Dinarides, and the Balkans. Provinces in this general region include Noricum, Dacia, Dalmatia, Moesia, Thrace, Scythia, and Pannonia. The relative influence of Latin versus Greek and vice versa in this area and in the Balkans in general, is sometimes demarcated by the Jireček Line. Greek had been in use in the southern part of the Balkans since the late 4th century BC, as a result of the Macedonian conquests of Philip and Alexander. The ancient Macedonian language, perhaps a Greek dialect, may have been spoken in some parts of what is now Macedonia and northern Greece; to the north of this area, Paeonian would have been used, and to the south Epirot, both scantily attested. Illyrian was spoken in the northwest, and to the northeast Thracian and Dacian. These three languages, all Indo-European, are thought to be candidates for the ancestor of Albanian. From his exile in Tomis on the Black Sea (present-day Constanța, Romania), the Augustan poet Ovid learned Getic (Dacian) and Sarmatian, and noted that Greek was spoken with a markedly Getic accent. Inscriptions from Tomis in the Imperial period are generally Greek, with Thracian personal names and religious references. ### Jewish diaspora Inscriptions in Greek and Latin set up by Jews attest to Jewish bi- or multilingualism, and their distribution in the Empire reflects the Jewish diaspora. These may have the Hebrew tag shalom at the end. Evidence for Jews in Egypt is preserved by papyri until the Jewish revolt of 116–117. In the first half of the 5th century, Greek coexisted with Hebrew and Jewish Aramaic in the Jewish communities of Palaestina Prima and Secunda, and is found in mosaic inscriptions even in synagogues. Like the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible that predated the Imperial era, Jewish literature in Greek under the Empire was written mainly for Jews who spoke Greek. Some Jews writing in Greek during the late Hellenistic and early Imperial period—notably the philosopher Philo and the historian Josephus—included gentiles among their intended audience. The Sibylline Oracles and the Wisdom of Solomon are other examples of Jewish literature in Greek from this general period. No surviving Greek texts written after the year 100 CE can be securely identified as having a Jewish author. After this time, Jewish writings in Greek became irrelevant to Christians, who were thus unlikely to preserve them. The manuscription tradition of medieval Jewish culture has preserved only writings in Hebrew and Aramaic. ### Christian communities The Epistle to Diognetus states that language was not a determining factor in Christian identity; Christians might speak any language. By late antiquity, at least some Christian literature had been created for virtually every language in regular use throughout the Empire. The international use of Greek was one factor enabling the spread of Christianity, as indicated for example by the use of Greek for the Epistles of Paul. Constantine, the first emperor to actively support Christianity, presumably knew some Greek, but Latin was spoken in his court, and he used an interpreter to address Greek-speaking bishops at the Council of Nicaea. In the Christian Latin West, Greek became associated with "paganism" and regarded as a foreign language (lingua peregrina). Saint Augustine confessed that he loathed Greek and found it hard to learn. By late antiquity, however, it was possible to speak Greek as a primary language while not conceiving of oneself as a "Hellene" in matters of religion and culture. In the first half of the 5th century, Greek was the standard language in which bishops communicated, and the Acta Conciliorum ("Acts of the Church Councils") were recorded originally in Greek and then translated into Latin, Syriac, or Coptic. During this period, Latin played only a subordinate role in the ecumenical councils, as did representatives from the Western empire. Although traditionally Armenian is regarded as having been established as a Christian language by this time, it does not appear in the Acta. There are hints that Coptic might be spoken at the councils, but no secure record. On-the-spot translation into Greek was available for the participant who used his own language, including some who are referred to as "Arabs", "Saracens" or "Ishmaelites". Christian content has been found in a few Arabic inscriptions from the 6th century. ## Ritual language The form of private or personalized ritual characterized as "magic" might be conducted in a hodgepodge of languages. Magic, and even some therapies for illnesses, almost always involved incantation or the reciting of spells (carmina), often accompanied by the ritualized creation of inscribed tablets (lamellae) or amulets. These are known from both archaeological artifacts and written texts such as the Greek Magical Papyri, a collection of spells dating variously from the 2nd century BC to the 5th century AD. Although Augustus attempted to suppress magic by burning some 2,000 esoteric books early in his reign, magical practices were disseminated widely throughout the Greco-Roman world, and attest to an awareness of multilingualism among the peoples of the Empire. Spells were not translated, because their efficacy was thought to reside in their precise wording; a language such as Gaulish thus may have persisted for private ritual purposes when it no longer had everyday currency. The Greek Magical Papyri (PGM) reflect Greco-Egyptian syncretism, incorporating not only Egyptian and Hellenistic religion, but Near Eastern elements, including Jewish magic and dashes of Christian magic. Egyptian and Greek deities, the God of the Jews and Judaic angels, and Jesus are named. The PGM are written primarily in Greek with substantial passages in Demotic Egyptian and inserted strings of syllables that are "pronounceable, though unintelligible". These voces magicae ("magic words") occur throughout magic texts and inscriptions, and often suggest corrupt Coptic or Egyptian, Hebrew, Aramaic or other Semitic languages, and Celtic. Hebrew and Greek appear in Demotic magical texts; Coptic magic incorporates Hebrew; Egyptian pops up in Latin spells. While many voces magicae may be deliberate neologisms or obscurantism, scholars have theorized that the more recognizable passages may be the products of garbled or misunderstood transmission, either in copying a source text or transcribing oral material. Inscriptions for the practice of magic in Gaul show the characteristic use of Greek for spells in the Imperial period. A 2nd-century curse tablet from Autun (Augustodunum) lists the names of those to be cursed in Latin, two magic words in Greek, and a series of voces magicae. A defixio (binding spell) from Amélie-les-Bains seems composed in Celtic with bits of Latin. A lamella from Roman Britain has been interpreted as Hebrew written in Greek characters. Christians in late antiquity might insert Hebrew into Greek exorcisms. Saint Jerome reports an odd story about a Frankish-Latin bilingual man of the Candidati Imperial bodyguard who, in a state of demonic possession, began speaking perfect Aramaic, a language he did not know. ## Legal language Roman law was written in Latin, and the "letter of the law" was tied strictly to the words in which it was expressed. Any language, however, could be binding in more general verbal contracts and procedures grounded in the ius gentium or international law. The ius gentium was not a written legal code, but was thought to exist among all peoples as a matter of natural law. Roman jurists show a concern for local languages such as Punic, Gaulish, and Aramaic in assuring the correct understanding and application of laws and oaths. While the birth certificates and wills of Roman citizens had to be written in Latin until the 220s, in the legal opinion of Ulpian (ca. 215), fideicommissa (bequests in trust) were not limited to Latin or even Greek, but could also be created in "Punic, Gaulish or any other" language. Originally, a testator's fideicommissum placed the heir under a moral rather than legal obligation, and Ulpian asserted that "any kind of speech contains the obligation of its words, provided that each party understands the other's language himself or through accurate interpreters". The jurist Gaius distinguished between verbal contracts that derived their validity from formulaic utterance in Latin, and obligations expressing a mutual understanding of the ius gentium regardless of whether the parties were Roman or not. ## Linguistic legacy After the decentralization of political power in late antiquity, Latin developed locally into branches that became the Romance languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian, Catalan, Sardinian, Aromanian, African Romance, Mozarabic, Dalmatian, and Venetian, among others. As an international language of learning and literature, Latin itself continued as an active medium of expression for diplomacy and for intellectual developments identified with Renaissance humanism up to the 17th century, and for law and the Roman Catholic Church to the present. Greek continued as the language of the Byzantine Empire, but never replaced certain languages with which it had long coexisted, such as Coptic in Egypt, and Aramaic in Syria and Mesopotamia.

Interstate 235 (Iowa)

Highway in Iowa

Interstate 235 (I-235) in Iowa is an auxiliary Interstate Highway that runs just north of downtown Des Moines through the heart of the Des Moines metropolitan area. I-235 runs from the junction of I-35 and I-80 in West Des Moines to the separation of the same two Interstates in Ankeny. The highway is approximately 14 miles (23 km) long. I-235, which had seen little improvement since its construction in the 1960s, was completely rebuilt and widened in a project that spanned most of the 2000s. Prior to the reconstruction, I-235 had two lanes in each direction with a third lane near downtown; the entire route now has at least three lanes of traffic in each direction, with an additional one or two lanes closer to the heart of the city. The modernized freeway now handles on average between 75,000 and 125,000 vehicles per day, making it the busiest highway in the state of Iowa. ## Route description I-235 begins at the western intersection of I-35 and I-80, known locally as the West Mixmaster. Here, eastbound I-80 exits the highway, which becomes I-235 and joins northbound I-35. From the West interchange, I-235 heads east. Almost immediately is a half diamond interchange with 50th Street in West Des Moines at exit 1A. One mile (1.6 km) later is a partial cloverleaf interchange at exit 1B with Valley West Drive, which was renamed from 35th Street in 1988 due to its proximity to Valley West Mall and Valley High School. At Windsor Heights at a tight partial cloverleaf interchange, I-235 meets 73rd Street/8th Street at exit 3. The interchange is particularly tight because of an Iowa Interstate Railroad line just to the east. 73rd Street/8th Street are actually a single road: north of I-235, 73rd Street follows the Des Moines street numbering plan, while south of I-235, 8th Street follows the older street numbering plan of West Des Moines. At the Iowa Highway 28 (Iowa 28)/63rd Street interchange (exit 4), I-235 picks up a fourth lane of eastbound travel and drops a lane westbound. Now within the city limits of Des Moines, it passes the through the heavily wooded Waterbury neighborhood. Near the 42nd Street interchange (exit 5B, I-235 curves to the south around Theodore Roosevelt High School. An interchange with 31st Street is 0.5 miles (0.80 km) later at exit 6, which provides access to Drake University to the north, and to Terrace Hill, the governor's mansion, to the south. East of 31st Street, I-235 briefly picks up a fifth lane and drops a lane westbound, creating a 10-lane freeway just west of downtown. This stretch of freeway receives, on average, over 125,000 vehicles per day, making it the busiest stretch of road in the state. There are three eastbound interchanges connecting I-235 to downtown Des Moines. From exit 7A, Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway and 19th Street, a pair of oneway streets, lead traffic to the west of downtown. From exit 7B, Keosauqua Way, known locally as Keo Way, enters downtown from the northwest. These interchanges are combined westbound at exit 7. Closer to the Des Moines River, a combined interchange in each direction (exit 8A) filters off the rest of downtown traffic to two destinations: 7th Street and 6th Avenue and 3rd Street and 2nd Avenue, each of which are pairs of oneway streets. The fourth lane of traffic drops off at this combined interchange. At the Des Moines River, I-235 passes Wells Fargo Arena, the main Iowa Events Center facility, which lies to the south along the western bank and the Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden to the north on the eastern bank. On the eastside of Des Moines, it skirts the northern edge of the East Village, the Iowa State Capitol, and East High School before the interchange with U.S. Highway 69 (US 69) at East 14th Street and East 15th Street . One mile (1.6 km) east is an interchange with Iowa 163/East University Avenue at exit 10A. Up to now, East University Avenue had been relatively parallel to I-235. It also provides access to the Iowa State Fairgrounds for northbound I-35 and eastbound I-80 traffic. At Iowa 163, I-235 begins curving to the north, dividing an industrial district to the west and residential areas to the east. It intersects US 6/East Euclid Avenue at a partial cloverleaf interchange (exit 12) 1.5 miles (2.4 km) to the north. It continues north for another 1.5 miles (2.4 km) until it meets I-35 and I-80 again at the East interchange. ## History The first section of I-235 to open, from Cottage Grove Avenue to Keo Way, opened on December 14, 1961. Over the next seven years, sections of I-235 opened, spreading east and west toward the interchanges until it was completed on October 30, 1968. Construction of the freeway required the acquisition of 1,650 parcels, the demolition of three schools and seven churches, and closure of the original Des Moines Golf and Country Club. In October 1963, the Des Moines city council designated I-235 the John MacVicar Freeway in honor of two former mayors of Des Moines: John MacVicar Sr. (1896–1900, 1916–1918, 1928) and John MacVicar Jr. (1942–1948). However, this name is seldom used; most people simply refer to it as I-235. In March 2002, a six-year-long project to completely rebuild I-235 and the bridges which cross it began. The first two years consisted of rebuilding most of the bridges which cross it, starting with 42nd Street in West Des Moines. The final four years of the project entailed finishing the remaining bridges and widening, regrading, and repaving the entire length of the highway. ### Pedestrian bridges An additional part of the highway improvement plan were three pedestrian bridges, located at 40th, 44th, and East 6th streets. The three bridges were replacements for bridges which were too narrow to accommodate the newly widened highway. These highly visible bridges act as icons, locating the neighborhoods for travelers along the freeway. The design of the I-235 pedestrian bridges was completed by Boston-based bridge designer Miguel Rosales in collaboration with HNTB Engineering. The three bridges, the Edna M. Griffin Memorial Bridge (East 6th Street), the 40th Street Pedestrian Bridge, and the Rider Way Pedestrian Bridge (44th Street) were each completed by 2005. The new design utilizes basket–handle steel arches with clear spans of approximately 230 feet (70 m). Inclined cables connect the steel blue arches to the prestressed concrete deck. By selecting a tied arch form, the Iowa Department of Transportation was able to keep disruption of traffic to a minimum during construction. An innovative curved screen system is used to enhance security and the appearance of the structure creating a visually appealing experience for pedestrians and bicyclists using the bridge. The resulting series of bridges has created a distinctive form that is unique to the city and the state. ## Exit list

Type 26 revolver

The Type 26 or Model 26 "hammerless" revolver (二十六年式拳銃, Nijuuroku-nen-shiki kenjuu) was the first modern revolver adopted by the Imperial Japanese Army. It was developed at the Koishikawa Arsenal and is named for its year of adoption in the Japanese dating system (the 26th year of the Meiji era, i.e., 1893). The revolver saw action in conflicts including the Russo-Japanese War, World War I and World War II. It is an amalgamation of design features from other revolvers made during the time period. The revolver has a design flaw in that the cylinder freewheels when not engaged, so during movement (such as in combat) it may rotate to an already fired chamber. Five distinct phases of production have different markings depending on the time and individual Type 26 produced. The 9mm Japanese revolver ammunition used is unique to the weapon. The Type 26 has a double-action only mechanism and is therefore difficult to aim accurately. The Type 26 was replaced by the Nambu pistol in the first half of the 20th century. ## History Known as the Meiji 26 Nen Ken Ju (meaning 'Pistol, pattern of the 26th year of the Meiji era'), the Type 26 revolver was the first indigenous revolver adopted by the Japanese military. The Type 26 was produced to replace the aging Smith & Wesson New Model No. 3 and was officially adopted March 29, 1894. The design is widely believed to be a mixture of features taken from other revolvers. The lock is similar to Galand designs, the hinged frame is similar to Smith & Wesson designs, and the hinged side plate covering the lock is similar to the Modèle 1892 revolver. The cartridge was loaded with black powder until 1900 when the cartridges began to be loaded with smokeless powder. The Type 26 is considered a remarkable leap in Japanese pistol development despite the international influence, with the matchlock being the most common domestic Japanese handgun 40 years earlier. Production stopped after 1923 when much of the Koishikawa Arsenal was destroyed in the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake, with assembly continuing until the exhaustion of stockpiled parts. Approximately 59,000 Type 26 revolvers were produced and an additional 900 revolvers were made in pre-production. Restoration and re-issue of revolvers that had been removed from service because of damage or wear, was carried out on an as-needed basis over a period of many years. The original Type 26s are missing the external markings of later produced revolvers and are identifiable by numbers stamped on internal parts. Type 26s were still being used in 1945 which, according to firearms expert and author Ian Hogg, is considered a testament to their original workmanship and a much more suitable combat weapon than later Japanese produced pistols. ## Design The Type 26 revolver is 231 mm (9.09 in) in length and 130 mm (5.12 in) tall, weighing 880 g (1 lb 15oz) unloaded. It has an octagonal barrel, with the foresight blade being embedded directly into the barrel. The rear sight is incorporated into the top of the frame. A hinged sideplate allows access to the mechanism for lubricating and servicing. The weapon was opened by lifting the top latch, after which the barrel was swung downward, activating the automatic ejector. The notch that allows access to the cylinder is at the top rear of the frame. The revolver is double-action only because of the absence of a cocking spur, intended to avoid snagging on clothing and firing accidentally. The lock was self-cocking and was slow to respond. The delay in response made accurate shooting virtually impossible. The cylinder contains a serious design flaw, with it only notching while the hammer is cocked. This allows the cylinder to revolve by being brushed against an object or the inertia from a sudden sideways motion. As the cylinder can move freely, an empty or already-fired chamber can rotate into position instead of the next shot, a dangerous event for the user during combat. Later Type 26 revolvers have grips with lateral serrations in place of an earlier knurled pattern as well as differences in external finish, depth, and look of die stamped markings. The bluing of the steel is excellent, even though the steel used is soft compared to Western standards. The 9 mm Japanese revolver ammunition used by the Type 26 is unique to the weapon. Both the Type 26 revolver and the ammunition used was later replaced by semi-automatic pistols such as the Nambu in the beginning of the 20th century. ## Five production periods Differences in markings and appearance across surviving Type 26 revolvers, has led to the categorization of production runs into five categories. ### Limited early production with no markings Early production Type 26s have no external markings. The revolvers have markings that indicate they were arsenal re-worked and believed to have been produced in late 1893 or early 1894 before official adoption. It is possible that around 300 revolvers with no external marking were produced. No known examples of Type 26 revolvers have duplicate serial numbers. ### Limited early production A small number of revolvers are known to have the external arsenal symbol stamped but without the external serial number stamped on the frame. The revolvers are interspersed among revolvers with standard production markings for unknown reasons. This production range has examples reported to chamber .38 S&W ammunition but this could be because of later modifications. ### Standard production All standard production Type 26s have checked pattern grip panels as well as original finished characteristics. Most standard production revolvers have a serial number that is between 1,000 and 58,900. Many of the standard production models suffered from extreme wear because of the long military service the revolvers served. ### Limited final production The final production revolvers were possibly produced after the Great Kantō earthquake and possibly only 325 of these revolvers were produced. Known examples have serial numbers ranging from 58,903 to 59,227. ### Arsenal reworked Arsenal reworked Type 26s lack the bright charcoal blue finish or standard checked patterned grip panels. Serrated grip panels are common among reworked Type 26s and the marking of the Nagoya Arsenal indicate repairing of the Type 26 past its production at the Koshikawa Arsenal. Two existing arsenal reworked Type 26s show stampings of Siamese numerals on the front grips indicating official procurement by the Thai government. Two additional reworked Type 26s have a five-pointed star stamped on the side plate of the revolver indicating Indonesian service after World War II. ## Accessories ### Holster The Type 26 revolver was issued with a clamshell holster similar to the French Modèle 1892 revolver. The earliest Type 26 holsters were black, and the cotton lanyards issued with them were a dark blue color known in Japan as kon. A leather pocket for the cleaning rod was provided, sewn onto the forward edge of the holster body. Most examples of holsters are stamped on the inside of the clamshell flap with the maker's identification and arsenal inspection markings with the year of manufacture. Very early holsters, issued in the late 1890s and early 1900s, were of a slightly different size and shape and without a pocket for the cleaning rod. A few holsters developed in 1943 have been noted to be all black lacquered hardware, missing the brass and galvanized steel fittings. Holsters produced towards the end of World War II have a last ditch fabric similar to late production Type 94 Nambu pistol holsters, with no shoulder straps or pouches for cleaning rods and ammunition. ### Grenade launcher The Type 90 tear gas grenade launcher was developed to be fired with the Type 26 revolver. Gas grenades could be fired by a special 9x22 mm cartridge in place of the regular ball ammunition. ## Users - Empire of Japan - Republic of China: Used by some warlord armies (including locally-made and captured copies). ## See also - List of Japanese military equipment of World War II

Marienbad (video game)

1962 video game

Marienbad was a 1962 Polish puzzle mainframe game created by Elwro engineer Witold Podgórski in Wrocław, Poland for its Odra 1003. It was an adaption of the logic game nim. Inspired by the discussion in the magazine Przekrój of a variant of nim in the 1961 film Last Year at Marienbad (L'Année dernière à Marienbad), named "Marienbad" by the magazine, Podgórski programmed the game for the in-development 1003 mainframe, released in 1963. The game had players opposing the computer in alternating rounds of removing matches from a set, with the last player to take a match the loser. As the computer always played the optimal moves, it was essentially unbeatable. Marienbad did not spread far beyond its initial location. Elwro did not produce or advertise the game, though Podgórski recreated it at the Wojskowa Akademia Techniczna (Military University of Technology in Warsaw). The game fell into obscurity, with no pictures or documentation surviving to recreate it in its original form; as there is only one known Odra 1003 remaining and no way of recreating the game exists, it is considered lost. Despite its simplicity, it is considered possibly the first Polish computer or video game. ## Gameplay In nim, players take turns removing at least one object from a set of objects, traditionally matchsticks, with the goal of either being or not being the player who removes the last object. The gameplay options can be modeled mathematically. In Marienbad's default game mode, four rows of matches were generated, with either one, three, five or seven matches within each row. The side that was left with the last match lost. The computer printout showed the player the current layout of matches. A single player could play the game at a time, whose turn alternated with the computer's. Regardless of which side started the game, the computer was almost certain to be the winner, as it always made the perfect moves. On its maximum settings, the game consisted of 8,000 rows containing up to 1 trillion matches, requiring an hour for the computer to choose its next move. The game did not support a video output, as the Odra 1003 did not have a screen. Instead, the game was played via a teletypewriter and card perforator, on which the machine printed the results. ## Development Elwro was a Polish company established in 1959 and based in Wrocław, Poland, that designed and manufactured mainframe and microcomputers. Its first release was the Odra 1001 mainframe in 1960, followed by the Odra 1002 in 1962 and the Odra 1003 in 1963. Witold Podgórski was a recent graduate of the Wrocław University of Technology, having majored in electronic engineering and specialized in mathematical machines. Having first heard about the existence of "electronic brains" in 1955 in high school, he embarked on five years of study toward the automation of "digital machines". He completed his masters thesis at Elwro, where he was employed on 10 October 1961, working with the Odra 1001. He developed a way to manipulate the computer's memory to allow content to be saved, thus paving the way for the Odra 1003. The new machine used modern transistor switches that allowed for 500 operations per second, and the drum memory of the Odra 1003 program had a capacity of 40 kilobytes. While working for Elwro in 1961, Podgórski discovered the logic game nim while reading an issue in the weekly magazine Przekrój. The magazine described a two-player game where players remove any number of items from one of four rows, with the player holding the last item losing. Przekrój named this variant of nim as "Marienbad" after the 1960 French film Last Year at Marienbad (L'Année dernière à Marienbad), in which characters frequently play these mathematical duels. Podgórski became inspired by the use of the game nim in the film after reading about its principles. While sitting in a multi-hour lecture for his obligatory military study class, Podgórski decided to decipher the Marienbad algorithm and save it to a binary system which could be understood by computers. Podgórski would later assert that the algorithm was extremely simple to implement into a computer and could be expressed in two words, adding that if nobody was interested in it he would take it to the grave. He programmed the game for the first prototype of the Odra 1003, then in development and scheduled to be installed in the Board of the Topographic General Staff of the Polish Army in Wrocław. The game, intended for logical duels, was developed solely by Podgórski by creating the algorithm, writing a list of instructions which were printed on sheets the size of postcards, and manually setting the initial state of each memory cell. He designed the game to be unbeatable: if the human player made a single mistake, the computer would win. While employees in the Elwro factory knew that the result of the game was predetermined, many volunteered to play it. They could not beat the standard 16-match version of Marienbad, let alone higher settings of the game. ## Legacy Like many games in the early history of video games, Marienbad did not spread far beyond the initial location. Mainframe computers were rare throughout the world and primarily located in government or military institutions or large corporations, so were generally unavailable for amusement purposes. Elwro produced only 42 Odra 1003 mainframes between 1963 and 1965. Elwro declined to publish or advertise the game, and the title was mostly forgotten. After developing the game, Podgórski became a student at the Wojskowa Akademia Techniczna (Military University of Technology in Warsaw), and with the assistance of fellow student Bogdan Bleja set up a version of the game there on an Odra 1003 that was mediated by a university operator. The computer, and therefore the game, could be used or played by any student, but only through an operator who received the intended input from the player and passed the information to the computer. As in Podgórski's original game instance, the game was essentially unbeatable; the operators as a result actively discouraged the players from participating. The university authorities supported this, as they wanted to forcibly remove the "nasty habit of harassing computers for logic games", which they believed should be used only for serious military purposes. Players took to holding secret meetings in front of the massive computer in the late evenings when the operators were gone. Podgórski recalled that despite knowing that the game was designed to always beat the player, many people spent many hours trying to decipher the algorithm or win. In later years, variants of nim and Marienbad were the second most popular type of computer game present on Polish computers after noughts and crosses, since it was a relatively simple game to program. Wojciech Pijanowski [pl], who would later become the two-decade long host of Wheel of Fortune from the 1970s, proposed to Polish television a game show where players compete against a computer in nim on a Momik 8b minicomputer. Meanwhile, Podgórski continued to work for Elwro, co-creating Odra computers, though he did not stop working on games. After colleagues brought a variant of the Mancala board game from Egypt, he became inspired to adapt it to the computer. This time he did not want to create an unbeatable game, but included adjustable difficulty levels to create a fun experience regardless of the player's expertise. Writing for Polish Bytes (Bajty Polskie), Bartłomiej Kluska asserts that as the only copy of the Odra 1003 is kept at the Museum of Technology in Warsaw in an inactive state, the original game of Marienbad no longer exists outside of the memory of players. No recreations of the game have been made for more modern computers, and there are no known photos or documentation for how the game was played or created. In the research paper Gry komputerowe jako dziedzictwo kulturowe (Computer games as a cultural heritage) by Maria Garda, she notes that the game should be written about only in the past tense as the original elements have not been preserved, adding that while the Marienbad algorithm can be recreated in a new programming environment, reconstruction of the physical transistors of the original computer would be nearly impossible. The paper further compared the challenges of playing this title in the modern era to playing Super Mario Bros. on the originally intended equipment in 50 years' time. Marienbad is considered one of the first Polish video games, developed almost 20 years before later candidates OiX (1984), Gąsienica (1985), and Puszka Pandory (1986), and well before the first well-known Polish game, Tajemnica Statuetki (1993). Łódź game historian Bartek Kluska made this assertion in his foundational book on the Polish video gaming industry, Polish Bytes; his research uncovered the game as 24 years older than the game that previously held the title. Kluska notes, however, that it was preceded by "Kółko i krzyżyk", a version of tic-tac-toe written by Department of Mathematical Apparatus programmer Bogdan Miś in 1960 for the XYZ computer, using a chess-sized grid. Michał Nowicki of Gram.pl asserted that Kluska's research, in contrast with the previous and more imprecise Polish video gaming text Dawno temu w grach (Once upon a time in games), allows Marienbad's claim as the first Polish computer or video game to be made with almost 100% certainty. An article by retailer Empik further asserts that Marienbad's simplicity and lack of video output means that the term "computer game" is a somewhat exaggerated term to describe it, much less "video game". Garda's paper claims, however, that regardless of its simplicity the game has importance as one of the earliest computer or video games from the region, although Marcin Kosman of Gamezilla notes that this first attempt at creating a Polish computer game went largely unnoticed. Jacek Głowacki of Gry Online stated that despite its obscurity, it should be considered the ancestor of the modern Polish video gaming industry, and that its existence and creation are worth remembering. The 2018 Ars Independent Festival held an exhibition entitled "From Marienbad to Novigrad" which explored the history of the Polish video gaming industry from Marienbad to The Witcher 3 (2015). ## See also - Nimrod, a 1951 mainframe computer built to play nim - Early history of video games - Early mainframe games

If Madonna Calls

"If Madonna Calls" is a song by American DJ and record producer Junior Vasquez, released as a single on June 7, 1996, by Groovilicious Records. The track includes a snippet of American singer Madonna's voice recorded from Vasquez's answering machine. It was composed after Madonna allegedly failed to appear at one of Vasquez's performances at the last minute. The singer never approved of the track and ended her professional relationship with Vasquez. The track received positive critical feedback and reached number two on the US Dance Club Songs chart and number 24 on the UK Singles Chart. ## Background Junior Vasquez had introduced Madonna to vogue at The Sound Factory Bar in New York City. She became friends with the producer and was later inspired by the dance form to compose her 1990 single "Vogue". Vasquez remixed the singles from Madonna's 1994 studio album, Bedtime Stories, as well as composing many unreleased mixes. Vasquez referred to "If Madonna Calls" as a "bitch track", explaining it as "simply queens reading queens". The track was recorded at Lectrolux Studio and includes a snippet of Madonna's voice recorded from Vasquez's answering machine. The vocal loop repeats the phrases "Are you there?" and "Call me in Miami" while another voice responds "Tell her I'm not here". Fred Jorio assisted Vasquez in the recording of the track, as well as programming and engineering it. Sound engineers Don Grossinger and Greg Vaughn also worked on the song. Tom Moulton did the audio mastering and the editing of the song, with Michael McDavid acting as executive producer. David K. Kessler designed the cover artwork of the CD single. "If Madonna Calls" was released as a single by Groovilicious Records on June 7, 1996, in the United States and ten days later in the United Kingdom. On September 21, 2010, Vasquez released another four remixes of the song after teaming up with German producer duo Fisher & Fiebak. The song was reportedly produced after Madonna failed to appear during one of Vasquez's performances held at New York City nightclub Tunnel at the last moment. Although never confirmed, Madonna did not approve of Vasquez's actions, ending their professional relationship on bad terms. Chances for reconciliation are impossible according to Madonna's longtime publicist Liz Rosenberg, who in a June 2003 news story in New York said "I can assure you that Madonna will never work with Junior again." Vasquez later worked for Madonna and remixed her 2003 single "Hollywood" for a Versace show in Milan. He had also tried to sell copies of his remix of Madonna's 2002 single "Die Another Day", but was stopped by the singer's legal representatives. ## Reception Author Georges Claude Guilbert noted in his book, Madonna as Postmodern Myth, that the singer occupied a "privileged position" on the track. Along with the singer's vocals, there is other "playfully" sung and spoken commentary by Franklin Fuentes on the single. Guilbert theorized that previously when artists used music samples, they chose known figures like Winston Churchill, Sean Connery or Peter Sellers for commentary in the song. Similarly, using Madonna's voice as a sample in the song was an indication of her growing popularity. Author John Walton Cotman noted in his book Cuban Transitions at the Millennium that many people in Miami would state that they were in close contact with Madonna. He believed the song was mocking them, with the main vocals in the track dismissing Madonna searching for Vasquez. Larry Flick from Billboard gave positive feedback, calling it the most "anticipated electronic dance music release" of the time. Describing it as "irresistible", Flick commended Vasquez's production, as well as the remixes accompanying the original track, and hoped that the record label would release an edited version for radio programmers. "If Madonna Calls" was successful on the US Billboard Dance Club Songs chart, where it reached a peak of number two on August 8, 1996, and was present on the chart for a total of 13 weeks. It also reached number eight on the Billboard Dance Singles Sales chart. In Canada, the song reached number seven on the RPM Dance/Urban Singles chart. In the UK, the song debuted and peaked at number 24 on the UK Singles Chart, being present for just two weeks. ## Track listings - Digital download 1. "If Madonna Calls" (X-Beat Mix) – 8:51 2. "If Madonna Calls" (JR's House Mix) – 8:40 3. "If Madonna Calls" (Lectro Dub) – 8:56 4. "If Madonna Calls" (Tribal Break) – 4:50 5. "If Madonna Calls" (X-Beat Instrumental) – 8:48 6. "If Madonna Calls" (JR's House Beats) – 4:05 - CD single 1. "If Madonna Calls" (X-Beat radio edit) – 4:07 2. "If Madonna Calls" (JR's House Mix radio edit) – 4:11 3. "If Madonna Calls" (X-Beat Mix) – 8:50 4. "If Madonna Calls" (Tribal Break) – 4:45 5. "If Madonna Calls" (JR's House Mix) – 8:40 ## Personnel Credits adapted from the liner notes of the CD single. - Junior Vasquez – songwriter, production, recording - Fred Jorio – recording, programming, sound engineering - Don Grossinger – engineering - Greg Vaughn – engineering - Michael McDavid – executive production - Tom Moulton – mastering, editing - Franklin Fuentes – vocals - Kelly Bienvenue – vocals - David K. Kessler – cover art design ## Charts

IND Queens Boulevard Line

New York City Subway line

The IND Queens Boulevard Line, sometimes abbreviated as QBL, is a line of the B Division of the New York City Subway in Manhattan and Queens, New York City, United States. The line, which is underground throughout its entire route, contains 23 stations. The core section between 50th Street in Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan, and 169th Street in Jamaica, Queens, was built by the Independent Subway System (IND) in stages between 1933 and 1940, with the Jamaica–179th Street terminus opening in 1950. As of 2015, it is among the system's busiest lines, with a weekday ridership of over 460,000 people. The Queens Boulevard Line's eastern terminus is the four-track 179th Street station. The line continues westward then northwest as a four-track line with the local tracks to the outside of the express tracks. The Queens Boulevard Line merges with the IND Archer Avenue Line east of Briarwood and with Jamaica Yard spurs west of Briarwood and east of Forest Hills–71st Avenue. The express tracks and the local tracks diverge at 65th Street in Jackson Heights and merge again at 36th Street in Sunnyside. West of 36th Street, the IND 63rd Street Line splits off both pairs of tracks, entering Manhattan via the 63rd Street Tunnel. At Queens Plaza in Long Island City, the line narrows to two tracks, with the local tracks splitting into the 60th Street Tunnel Connection and the IND Crosstown Line. From there, the express tracks of the line provide crosstown service across Manhattan under 53rd Street before turning southwest at Eighth Avenue, ending at the 50th Street station. The two-track section west of Queens Plaza is also known as the IND 53rd Street Line. The Queens Boulevard Line is served by four overlapping routes. The E train serves the section between 50th Street and Briarwood, normally running express. The F runs express from 36th Street to 71st Avenue and local east of 71st Avenue to 179th Street. The R serves local stops on the route west of 71st Avenue, splitting west of Queens Plaza. The E and F serve the line at all times, while the R runs on the line at all times except late nights. During evenings and weekends, the E runs local between 71st Avenue and Briarwood, and E and F trains make all local stops west of 71st Avenue during late nights to provide local service along the line. The routes experience frequent overcrowding during weekdays, and the Queens Boulevard Line has among the highest rush-hour train frequencies in the system. A planned upgrade to the line, to replace its signals with a communications-based train control system, would add capacity to the line. The line's construction in the 1920s and 1930s promoted housing growth along the Queens Boulevard corridor and stimulated the urbanization of central Queens. However, there are multiple provisions for spur routes along the Queens Boulevard line that were never built. The most notable of these proposals was the IND Second System, which would have provided a spur to Maspeth from the Jackson Heights–Roosevelt Avenue station; another spur to the Rockaways east of 63rd Drive–Rego Park via the Rockaway Beach Branch; a third spur east of Briarwood along the former Van Wyck Boulevard to South Ozone Park; and an extension of the line eastward past 179th Street. Other proposals included a "super express bypass" that would use the right-of-way of the Long Island Rail Road's Main Line to bypass all stations between 36th Street and 71st Avenue, as well as a spur from the Woodhaven Boulevard station northeast to Queens College via the Long Island Expressway. ## Route The IND Queens Boulevard Line begins with a large storage yard consisting of two levels with four tracks each south of 185th Street and Hillside Avenue. Once the tracks from the lower level merge with the tracks on the upper level, there is the first station Jamaica–179th Street (), and the line continues as a four-track subway under Hillside Avenue. Just after curving north under the Van Wyck Expressway, a flying junction joins the two-track Archer Avenue Line () to the local and express tracks. Soon after, the line turns west under Queens Boulevard. East of Kew Gardens–Union Turnpike, another flying junction ties the eastward tracks to Jamaica Yard. The other side of the wye curves west to become a lower level of the subway just west of Kew Gardens–Union Turnpike. After passing through 75th Avenue, those tracks join the local and express tracks at another flying junction. At Forest Hills–71st Avenue, trains begin their westward route. West of here, the line (now carrying the ) runs under Queens Boulevard until it turns north onto Broadway after Grand Avenue–Newtown. Near Jackson Heights–Roosevelt Avenue, an abandoned trackless tunnel for the IND Second System branches off into an unused upper part of the station which is used for storage. At the intersection of Broadway and Northern Boulevard, west of the line's Northern Boulevard station, the express tracks turn west under Northern Boulevard. The local tracks take a longer route, remaining under Broadway, then turning south onto Steinway Street and west again onto Northern Boulevard, where they rejoin the express tracks. This is only one of two areas in the subway where the express tracks diverge from the local tracks (the other being the IND Culver Line between Seventh Avenue and Church Avenue.) As the line leaves 36th Street, the two-track IND 63rd Street Line () splits from both sets of tracks at a flying junction, running to Manhattan under 41st Avenue. The Queens Boulevard Line continues under Northern Boulevard to Queens Plaza () before line splitting into three parts at another flying junction. The express tracks () continue towards Manhattan under 44th Drive, while the local tracks split two ways, with the 60th Street Tunnel Connection () turning northwest and the IND Crosstown Line () remaining under Jackson Avenue (Northern Boulevard south of Queens Plaza). From this point on, the Queens Boulevard Line has only two tracks. The line continues west through the 53rd Street Tunnel under the East River into Manhattan. After Lexington Avenue–53rd Street, the westbound tracks rise above the eastbound tracks. A flying junction after Fifth Avenue/53rd Street, ties the westbound tracks into the southbound local tracks of the IND Sixth Avenue Line, which begin here as a merge of these connection tracks and the IND 63rd Street Line. At that junction, the Sixth Avenue express tracks turn west under 53rd Street, just to the south of the Queens Boulevard Line. The two lines share platforms at Seventh Avenue, but no connecting tracks are present. Then the Queens Boulevard Line turns south below the IND Eighth Avenue Line with separate lower-level platforms at 50th Street. Then the tracks split to join the local and express tracks of the Eighth Avenue Line north of 42nd Street–Port Authority Bus Terminal. At that station, a special lower platform formerly served a single southbound track from the Queens Boulevard Line, merging with both southbound tracks of the Eighth Avenue Line south of the station; the long-disused platform was demolished in June 2013 to make way for the extension of the IRT Flushing Line. ## Services The following services use part or all of the IND Queens Boulevard Line: During daytime hours, the portion of the line between Queens Plaza and Forest Hills–71st Avenue is served by three services: the , , and . The E train runs from the Eighth Avenue Line and 53rd Street to Queens Boulevard before making express stops along the line (except evenings and weekends when it makes all stops east of Forest Hills–71st Avenue and during late night hours when it runs local on the entire line) to the Archer Avenue Line east of Briarwood. Limited rush hour E trains also run express to Jamaica–179th Street. The F operates via Sixth Avenue and 53rd Street to Queens Plaza before making express stops to Forest Hills–71st Avenue and local stops to [Jamaica–179th Street (IND Queens Boulevard Line)\|Jamaica–179th Street]]. The F makes all stops during late nights. The R enters Queens Boulevard from the Broadway Line and the 60th Street Tunnel before making local stops to Forest Hills–71st Avenue at all times except late nights. The entire line is patrolled by NYPD Transit Bureau District 20, headquartered at Briarwood. ## History ### Construction The Queens Boulevard Line, also referred to as the Long Island City−Jamaica Line, Fifty-third Street−Jamaica Line, and Queens Boulevard−Jamaica Line prior to opening, was one of the original lines of the city-owned Independent Subway System (IND), planned to stretch between the IND Eighth Avenue Line in Manhattan and 178th Street and Hillside Avenue in Jamaica, Queens. As originally proposed in 1925, the line's junction with the IND Crosstown Line in Long Island City would have been a T-junction, allowing trains from Manhattan to travel south to Brooklyn via the Crosstown line. A map from June of that year shows a proposed alternate routing for the Queens Boulevard Line, that would have had the line turn via Kew Gardens Road after the Union Turnpike station instead of continuing via Queens Boulevard. After proceeding via Kew Gardens Road, the line would have turned via Hillside Avenue. The proposed route via Kew Gardens Road was supported by Queens Borough President Maurice Connolly because it would have served Richmond Hill as well. He also pointed out that there was considerable opposition to building a subway line in front of Maple Grove Cemetery. The map also shows a two-track line continuing from the Van Wyck Boulevard station to 94th Avenue (Atlantic Avenue) in Richmond Hill via Van Wyck Boulevard (today's Van Wyck Expressway). During construction, only bellmouths were built for the line, however, they were eventually used for the IND Archer Avenue Line. As documented by the map, the Queens Boulevard Line, as originally planned, would have had the express trains travel on a more direct route, via Broadway and Queens Boulevard, while the local trains would take a less direct route hitting larger population centers. There were to be two such instances, however, only one was actually completed. The first one, which was not constructed, would have gone through Winfield (now Woodside), west of the existing Elmhurst Avenue station, and the local tracks would have diverged, continuing via Queens Boulevard before turning onto 69th Street (Fisk Avenue), rejoining the express tracks at Broadway in Woodside. The second instance, the one that was built, was planned to have the local tracks continue via Broadway west of the 65th Street station, and then it would turn south via Steinway Street before rejoining the express tracks at the 36th Street station. The express tracks here would take the more direct route, via Northern Boulevard. Originally, the New York City Board of Transportation (BOT) did not plan for a 50th Street station on the Queens Boulevard Line. This station was to have only been served by Eighth Avenue trains heading north toward Washington Heights. The Eighth Avenue Association petitioned the BOT for an additional stop at 50th Street. On November 21, 1926, it was announced that the BOT had agreed to construct a stop at this location for the Queens Boulevard Line. On February 26, 1927, the New York City Board of Estimate awarded and approved a \$10,481,550 contract to the Patrick McGovern Company. Ground was broken at Vernon Boulevard and 44th Drive in Long Island City on April 2, 1927. The first contract for work entirely within Queens was given to the Atwell-Gustin-Morris Company by the BOT on December 14, 1927. The contract covered the section of the line under Jackson Avenue between the junction with the under-construction Crosstown Line near Queen Street and 44th Drive. The section between Arch Street and Steinway Avenue was awarded to the W.G.T. Construction Company, which required moving the support pillars for the elevated IRT Flushing Line to the sides of the street. Triest Construction Company was awarded the next segment, which was between Queen Street and the intersection of Northern Boulevard and 37th Street. The following section was awarded to J.F. Cogan Company, which was required to build the section between the intersection of Steinway Street and Broadway and the intersection of 53rd Street and Northern Boulevard. The remainder of the line was called Route 108, and it was divided into six sections. The first section, between 53rd Street and Pettit Place via Broadway went to Atwell-Gustin-Morris Company, while the section between along Broadway and Queens Boulevard from Pettit Place to 55th Avenue went to George H. Flynn Company. The sections from 55th Avenue to 64th Road and from 64th Road to 71st Road went to Arthur A. Johnson. The final two sections were from 71st Road to Union Turnpike, and from 137th Street (now the Van Wyck Expressway) to Hillside Avenue. The two tubes of the 53rd Street Tunnel under the East River began construction in spring 1927, and were fully excavated between Queens and Manhattan in January 1929, with a ventilation shaft built on Welfare Island (today's Roosevelt Island). On October 4, 1928, the Board of Estimate approved the construction of the Queens Boulevard Line. Construction on the line began in December 1928, and the whole line cost \$58 million. During the line's construction, several intersections of Queens Boulevard with major roads were grade separated, in a similar manner to Grand Concourse in the Bronx during the building of the IND Concourse Line around that same time. At adjacent intersections with Woodhaven Boulevard and Horace Harding Boulevard (now the Long Island Expressway) in Elmhurst, Queens Boulevard's main road was depressed into underpasses. In Kew Gardens, Union Turnpike and the Interboro Parkway (now the Jackie Robinson Parkway) were depressed below Queens Boulevard at the level of the Union Turnpike station's mezzanine. From the mezzanine at Union Turnpike, an entrance was built from the Interboro Parkway, allowing passengers from buses and automobiles to be dropped off here instead of from Queens Boulevard. The subway from Long Island City to Roosevelt Avenue and 74th Street was completed by April 1932. During the 1920s and 1930s, in conjunction with the subway construction project, Queens Boulevard was widened with up to twelve lanes in some places, and a right-of-way of 200 feet (61 m) in width was created. With the widening, Queens Boulevard was wide enough for the construction of a four track subway line without serious disruption of surface travel, with the area alongside the boulevard not built up in many places. More often than not in some places, billboards would be visible instead of buildings. During the construction of the line, electric utility service was temporarily provided by a wooden pole line. Once the construction of the line was completed, the utility service was underground, and the Queens Boulevard trolley line was replaced by bus service (today's ), in part due to competition with the newly constructed subway line. Because the construction of the Queens Boulevard Line utilized the cut-and-cover tunneling method, Queens Boulevard had to be torn up and in order to allow pedestrians to cross, temporary bridges were built over the trenches. Like other IND lines, many stations' mezzanines stretched the full length and width of their stations, and are now considered to be overbuilt. On October 16, 1930, James A. Burke, the chairman of the Hillside Avenue Subway Extension Committee stated that the extension of the line to Springfield Boulevard was a certainty after receiving a letter from the Transportation Commissioner. On December 1, 1930, the BOT announced that a station would be constructed at 178th Street and Hillside Avenue, but would be done under the section between 178th Street and Springfield Boulevard, which was to be constructed simultaneously with the section from 137th Street to 178th Street. This announcement was made in response to a request by the Jamaica Estates Association for a station at 178th Street. At the time, BOT engineers were completing the design for the extension to Springfield Boulevard and the BOT said that bids on its construction might be let in the near future. On December 23, 1930, the contract for the construction of the section between 137th Street and 178th Street, Route 108, Section 11, was let. On December 18, 1931, it was announced that the completion of the Queens Boulevard Line to Roosevelt Avenue was delayed until January 1, 1933. Previously, it has been announced that the line would open in 1931 or 1932. On January 18, 1933, Chairman of the Board of Transportation announced that work on the first section of the line would be completed by September. In addition, Delaney submitted the capital outlay program for the year, which called for the completion of the extension of the line to 177th Street and Hillside Avenue on January 1, 1935. The line was not completed by January 1 because the funding necessary for the final outstanding contract, which was for the installation of transformers and switch houses, was not registered until January by the Controller. In addition, one of the contractors, the L. I. Waldman Company, fell behind schedule. As a result, the company was fined and ordered to increase its labor force to complete the project on schedule. In March the September opening date was moved to August. #### Building boom and the growth of communities The construction of the Queens Boulevard subway line offered the possibility of quick commutes to the central business district in Midtown Manhattan. In the late 1920s, speculators, upon learning the route of the proposed line, quickly bought up property on and around Queens Boulevard, and real estate prices soared, and older buildings were demolished in order to make way for new development. In order to allow for the speculators to build fifteen-story apartment buildings, several blocks were rezoned. They built apartment buildings in order to accommodate the influx of residents from Midtown Manhattan that would desire a quick and cheap commute to their jobs. Since the new line had express tracks, communities built around express stations, such as in Forest Hills and Kew Gardens became more desirable to live. With the introduction of the subway into the community of Forest Hills, Queens Borough President George U. Harvey predicted that Queens Boulevard would become the "Park Avenue of Queens". With the introduction of the subway, Forest Hills and Kew Gardens were transformed from quiet residential communities of one-family houses to active population centers. Following the line's completion, there was an increase in the property values of buildings around Queens Boulevard. For example, a property along Queens Boulevard that would have sold for \$1,200 in 1925, would have sold for \$10,000 in 1930. The population of Forest Hills in 1930 was 18,000, having increased to 100,000 in 1965. The construction boom was not limited to express stations, with fifteen-story apartment buildings built by Cord Meyer, an eighty-family apartment house built by the Rego Park Construction Corporation, and 300 one-family homes built along Woodhaven Boulevard by Pherbus Kaplan, all surrounding the 63rd Drive local station. These development companies all sought out to continue to increase the value of their properties in anticipation of the opening of the subway. Queens Boulevard, prior to the construction of the subway, was just a route to allow people to get to Jamaica, running through farmlands. Since the construction of the line, the area of the thoroughfare that stretches from Rego Park to Kew Gardens has been home to apartment buildings, and a thriving business district that the Chamber of Commerce calls the "Golden Area". In Elmhurst, almost all of the century-old buildings in the heart of the village were destroyed for the construction of the subway. Land was taken on the west side of the Broadway to avoid the demolition of the Saint James Episcopal Church and the Reformed Church. Many nineteenth century residences and the Wandowenock Fire Company buildings had to be torn down. To allow the subway line to curve into Queens Boulevard from Broadway, the northeast corner of the two streets was removed, in addition to some stores and an old Presbyterian chapel. New buildings were built behind a new curb line once the subway was completed, bringing a new face to Elmhurst. The introduction of the subway stimulated local growth in Elmhurst. Commercial buildings and apartment houses replaced existing structures. From 1940 to 1950, in large part because of the construction of the Queens Boulevard Line, the population of Queens dramatically increased by 248,678, of which, 210,000 lived in areas alongside the new line and the buses that connected to it. By 1940, there were 27.5 square miles of vacant land alongside the line that could be used for housing, compared with only 8 in Brooklyn, 4 in the Bronx, and none in Manhattan. ### Opening and expansion The first section of the line, west from Roosevelt Avenue to 50th Street, opened on August 19, 1933 at 12:01 a.m. trains ran local to Hudson Terminal (today's World Trade Center) in Manhattan, while the (predecessor to current G service) ran as a shuttle service between Queens Plaza and Nassau Avenue on the IND Crosstown Line. Initially trains ran on four to six-minute headways during rush hours. Later that year, a \$23 million loan was approved to finance the remainder of the line, along with other IND lines. In 1934 and 1935, construction of the extension to Jamaica was suspended for 15 months and was halted by strikes. Construction was further delayed due to a strike in 1935, instigated by electricians opposing wages paid by the General Railway Signal Company. On January 21, 1935, BOT Chairman John Delaney said that express service in Queens would not begin until construction on the proposed IND Sixth Avenue Line was completed. In February 1935, it was expected that work on Jamaica Yard would be completed by August 20. Construction was not begun until piles had been sunk, through mud and fill, into firm sand. On March 17, 1936, at a hearing of the New York State Transit Commission and the New York State Public Service Commission, the LIRR said that it would seek permission in 1937 to abandon the three stations along its Main Line between Jamaica and Pennsylvania Station—Kew Gardens, Forest Hills, and Woodside. The LIRR had said that it anticipated a loss of annual revenue between \$750,000 and \$1 million with the opening of the extension of the Queens Boulevard Line to Jamaica. The opening of the line to Continental Avenue was expected in October as of April 1936. At the same time, it was announced that Jamaica Yard would be placed into service with this extension of service. The installation of third rail and storage tracks were expected to be completed by the early summer. In April 1936, William Jerome Daly, the secretary of the BOT, stated, in response to requests for a stop at 178th Street, that constructing a station at that location would prevent express service from operating past Continental Avenue. He said that with a final station at 169th Street, expresses could run to Parsons Boulevard, and that if the line was extended to Springfield Boulevard as planned, express service could be extended past 178th Street with a yard east of the new terminal. In August 1936, construction to Forest Hills was expected to be completed by the end of the year. The tracks were installed all the way to 178th Street, and the stations to Union Turnpike were completed. However, the stops to the east still needed to be tiled, have stairways, turnstiles and lighting installed. Only two additional contracts remained to be put up for bid, both the results of last minute changes. The first of the two changes was for finishing the Ely Avenue station which did not open with the initial segment to Roosevelt Avenue. The second of the two entails the eastern terminal of the line. Initially, express trains were planned to terminate at a station at 178th Street. However, the plans were changed to terminate the express trains at Parsons Boulevard, requiring the installation of switches. Since construction of the tunnel was already completed in this section, a few hundred feet of tunnel wall had to be removed to fit the two switches. In addition, a new tunnel roof and new side supports had to be constructed. Since the line's new terminal would be at 169th Street, the tracks at 178th Street would be used to turn back trains. This change led to protests from the Jamaica Estates Association. This change delayed the opening of the line from Union Turnpike to 169th Street. On November 19, 1936, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia announced that the line's extension to Union Turnpike would open on December 31, 1936. Accordingly, the line was extended east from Roosevelt Avenue to Union Turnpike on that date. The day before, a trial run was completed, with Mayor LaGuardia posing for a picture at the controls of the train. This extension cost \$27 million, of which \$5.8 million was for Jamaica Yard, \$1.4 million was for real estate, \$2.2 million, and \$16.2 million for tunnels and tracks. In March 1937, the extension to 169th Street was expected to be opened on May 1, requiring work to be finished by April 3 and fully approved and tested by April 20. As of this point, minor station work remained, including the installation of light bulbs, withs the only major work left to be completed the final 200 feet (61 m) in the 169th Street terminal. Workers were working on installing the signaling for the two additional switches required. The Van Wyck Boulevard station was completed at the same time as the section of the line that opened to Union Turnpike on December 31, 1936. Work on the section east of Union Turnpike, including the eastern yard leads to Jamaica Yard, which was initially planned to be completed on October 20, 1936, was completed on March 31, 1937. On April 9, 1937, Mayor La Guardia announced that the operation of the \$14.4 million extension to Jamaica and express service would begin on April 24. The extension to Hillside Avenue and 178th Street, with a terminal station at 169th Street opened as planned on April 24, 1937. Express service was inaugurated during rush hours, with E trains making express stops from 71st–Continental Avenues to Queens Plaza. The express service operated between approximately 6:30 and 10:30 a.m. and from 3:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Express service was also provided on Saturdays between 6:30 a.m. and 4:00 p.m.. During rush hours, GG trains were extended to Continental Avenue from Queens Plaza, taking over the local. During non-rush hours local service was provided by EE trains which operated between 169th Street and Church Avenue in Brooklyn. The sections of the line east of Roosevelt Avenue were built by the Public Works Administration. This extension was celebrated with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Parsons Boulevard station and with a parade along Hillside Avenue. The initial headway for express service was between three and five minutes. 23rd Street–Ely Avenue station opened as an in-fill station on August 28, 1939. Upon its extension into Jamaica, the line drew Manhattan-bound passengers away from the nearby BMT Jamaica Line subway and the Long Island Rail Road. From April 30, 1939 to October 1940, the Queens Boulevard Line served the 1939 New York World's Fair via the World's Fair Railroad. The World's Fair line ran via a connection through the Jamaica Yard and through Flushing Meadows–Corona Park along the current right-of-way of the Van Wyck Expressway. The 1939 World's Fair was served by GG trains, some of which were marked as S Special. Trains were extended to the World's Fair Station at all times during the fair, supplemented by PM hour trains. The fair closed on October 28, 1940, and was demolished later that year. As a result, GG service was truncated to Forest Hills–71st Avenue. After calls from public officials such as Queens Borough President George Harvey to make the line a permanent connection to Flushing and northern Queens, the line was demolished in 1941. After LaGuardia Airport opened on February 21, 1940, the Roosevelt Avenue station became an important transfer point to buses to the airport, including the privately-owned Q33. On December 15, 1940, trains began running via the newly opened IND Sixth Avenue Line, also running express west of 71st–Continental Avenues. 169th Street and Parsons Boulevard were both used as terminal stations during this time, with the E terminating at one station and the F at the other. This setup was instituted to prevent congestion at both stations. #### New terminal The existing 169th Street station provided an unsatisfactory terminal setup for a four track line, and this required the turning of F trains at Parsons Boulevard, and no storage facilities were provided at the station. The station was overcrowded as it served as a major transfer point for buses heading to areas throughout Eastern Queens. In February 1941, contractors started work on construction two additional staircases at the 169th Street station on each of the eastern corners at 168th Street and Hillside Avenue for \$15,500. As a result, on January 30, 1941, Councilman James A. Burke proposed extending the line one stop to a temporary station at 178th Street to the Transit Commission at a conference on the issue of slow bus service. Under his proposal, 169th Street station would continue to be used by riders on buses from Laurelton, Rosedale, Springfield, and from areas to the north of the station, while the 178th Street station would be patronized by riders from Hollis, Bellerose and Queens Village. Burke stated that the plan would cost \$100,000 and would not require additional trackage or tunneling. In response to the proposal, BOT engineers analyzed the feasibility of such an extension. They determined that the line would have to be extended between 700 feet (210 m) to 1,000 feet (300 m) under Hillside Avenue to store and switch trains, that it would cost at least \$2 million, which the city did not have, and would take between 2 and 3 years. Burke had also proposed two other alternative actions to the Transit Commission: the construction of a bus terminal at the northeast corner of Hillside Avenue and 168th Street, and the construction of a pedestrian tunnel between the 169th Street subway station at Merrick Road to the bus terminal on that street. The BOT engineers determined that it would cost \$150,000. Burke had met with Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and asked him to create a committee to study the matter. The Mayor refused and suggested that a station be built between 175th Street and 178th Street to be used for exiting only during the evening rush hour. The Transit Commission recommended Burke's proposed extension to the BOT, which they estimated would cost \$150,000, and stated that a BOT drawing dated December 30, 1935, had indicated such a temporary station. The construction of an extension was planned in 1940, and was ready to bid on in 1942 when it was delayed by World War II. Therefore, the line was going to be extended to 184th Place with a station at 179th Street with two island platforms, sufficient entrances and exits, and storage for four ten-car trains. The facilities would allow for the operation of express and local service to the station. On August 1, 1946, the Board of Estimate approved the plan for the extension of the line, which was estimated to cost \$10.3 million, of which, \$7,764,000 would go to construction, with the remainder for subway cars, power substations, third rail and signal equipment, and other electrical equipment. The project was expected to be completed within five years of the date that the contract was awarded. On October 22, 1946, it was revealed that work on the extension might begin in early November as the BOT prepared to award the contract to Van Wagner Construction Company, which submitted a low bid of \$5,284,888. The contract called for the extension's completion within two years. The extension was to be constructed using cut-and-cover and required the relocation of underground sewer and electrical lines. Construction on the extension started in 1947 and was projected to be completed in 1949. The extension was completed later than expected and opened on December 11, 1950. E trains were extended there at all times and F trains were extended evenings, nights, and Sunday mornings. On May 13, 1951, all trains outside of rush hour were extended to 179th Street using the local tracks beyond Parsons Boulevard. On October 8, 1951, trains were extended to 179th Street at all times. During rush hours, F trains skipped 169th Street running via the express tracks. At other times, the F stopped at 169th Street. ### Late 20th century In 1953, the platforms were lengthened at 75th Avenue and Sutphin Boulevard to 660 feet (200 m) to allow E and F trains to run eleven car trains. The E and F began running eleven-car trains during rush hours on September 8, 1953. The extra train car increased the total carrying capacity by 4,000 passengers. The lengthening project cost \$400,000. The operation of eleven-car trains ended in 1958 because of operational difficulties. The signal blocks, especially in Manhattan, were too short to accommodate the longer trains, and the motormen had a very small margin of error to properly platform the train. It was found that operating ten-car trains allowed for two additional trains per hour to be scheduled. Because local service was only offered by the GG trains which only ran into Brooklyn, riders were forced to transfer at express stations to reach Manhattan. This caused overcrowding and delays. The BOT had first proposed a connection between the Queens Boulevard Line and the 60th Street Tunnel in 1940. Fifteen years later, on December 1, 1955, a connection to the 60th Street Tunnel opened, allowing trains from the BMT Broadway Line to serve Queens Boulevard as an additional local from 71st−Continental. This connection was one of the most important links in the system, correcting the 1930s error of insufficient capacity for Queens–Manhattan traffic. Service was initially provided by QT Broadway−Brighton trains (predecessor to the train). This service would be replaced by trains in 1961, a new EE train in 1967, and trains in 1976. On August 27, 1977, GG service was cut back to Queens Plaza during late nights, and local service along Queens Boulevard was provided by the . Effective May 6, 1985, use of double letters to indicate local service was discontinued, so the GG was relabeled G. On April 20, 1981, Councilman Steven Orlow said the New York City Transit Authority agreed to put a contract to replace the lighting at six stations on the Queens Boulevard Line from 75th Avenue to 169th Street up for bidding in October, with work to be completed by early 1982. The existing lighting at the stations meant that platforms were very dimly lit, and made riders feel unsafe. Until 1986, 2 E trains and 2 F trains started at Continental Avenue in the morning rush hour with the intention to relieve congestion. These trains were eliminated because they resulted in a loading imbalance as these lightly-loaded trains would be followed by extremely crowded trains from 179th Street, which followed an 8-minute gap of E and F service from 179th Street. On May 24, 1987, and services swapped terminals in Queens to provide R trains direct access to the Jamaica Yard. As part of the reroute plan, F service along Queens Boulevard was discontinued during late nights (1 a.m. to 5 a.m.). Late night local service was replaced by the R, which ran as a Queens Boulevard Local at all times. F trains were cut back to 57th Street on the Sixth Avenue Line during late nights. In addition, Queens Plaza became the northern terminal for the G train on evenings, weekends and late nights. In 1986, the TA studied which two services should serve the line during late nights as ridership at this time did not justify three services. A public hearing was held in December 1986, and it was determined that having the E and R run during late nights provided the best service. #### Archer Avenue changes Originally, the G and N local trains were planned to serve the upper level of the new Archer Avenue Line extension, while the E and F express trains would have remained on the Queens Boulevard mainline towards 179th Street. The N train was to have been extended from 71st Avenue to Jamaica Center during weekdays, and, when it terminated at 57th Street or 71st Avenue, during evenings and weekends, the G would have been extended to Jamaica Center, and during late nights, a G train shuttle would have run between Jamaica Center and Van Wyck Boulevard. On December 11, 1988, the Archer Avenue Lines opened, utilizing existing provisions east of the Briarwood station. The E was rerouted to its current terminus at Jamaica Center. Its opening was expected to reroute 17,500 riders from Hillside Avenue to Archer Avenue. Two service plans were identified prior to the February 25, 1988 public hearing. The first would have split rush-hour E service between the two branches, with late night service to 179th Street provided by the R, while the second would have had all E trains run via Archer Avenue and would have extended R locals to 179th Street. A modified version of the second plan was decided upon. When the Archer Avenue Line opened, the E ran to Jamaica Center via the Queens Boulevard Line's express tracks. The R was extended to 179th Street to serve local stations east of Continental Avenue, replacing local E service to 179th Street, allowing F trains to continue running express to 179th Street. F trains no longer stopped at 169th Street between 10 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. During the morning rush hour, some R trains went into service at Continental Avenue, because local ridership from 179th Street during rush hours did not warrant it. All R trains went to 179th Street during the afternoon rush to avoid taking loaded R trains out of service at Continental. The change in the plan was the operation of some E trains from 179th Street as expresses during the morning rush hour to provide an appropriate level of E service to Archer during the morning rush, to maintain the same level of service to 179th Street while providing express service, and to provide greater choice for riders at the Parsons Boulevard and 179th Street stations on Hillside Avenue. It was decided not to divert some E trains to 179th Street during the afternoon rush hour so that Queens-bound riders would not be confused about where their E train was headed. It was decided to serve Archer with the E as opposed to the F to minimize disruption to passengers who continued to use Hillside Avenue, to maximize Jamaica Avenue ridership and the length of the peak ridership period, which is longer on the F. It was found that most riders using buses diverted to Archer used the E, while passengers on buses to 179th used the F. Having E trains run local between Continental Avenue and Van Wyck Boulevard was dismissed in order to provide 24-hour express service to the Archer Avenue Line. Riders at local stations east of 71st Avenue (169th Street, Sutphin Boulevard, Van Wyck Boulevard and 75th Avenue stations) were angered at losing direct Queens Boulevard Express service in 1988. Local elected officials pressured the MTA to eliminate all-local service at these stations. On September 30, 1990 the R was cut back to 71st–Continental Avenue outside of rush hours. Late night service to 179th Street was replaced by G service, while F trains began running local east of 71st Avenue during middays, evenings, and weekends. In response, the MTA considered three options including leaving service as is, having E trains run local east of 71st Avenue along with R service, and having F trains run local east of 71st Avenue replacing R service. Keeping service as is would have kept the reliability improvement that came with the relocation of the merge between E and F service from 75th Avenue to Van Wyck Boulevard, ensured maximum service capacity, and would have benefited the broad majority of riders on Queens Boulevard in terms of time savings and reliability. The second option would have decreased capacity by eight percent, or two trains per hour, increased travel times for most riders from Eastern Queens by 1-2 minutes, worsened reliability on the E and F, and introduced two merges-one with the R at Van Wyck Boulevard and one with the F at 75th Avenue. The third option was expected to help 13,880 people at former local stops with the introduction of direct express service, while lengthening trips by three minutes for 30,010 riders at Parsons Boulevard and 179th Street. In addition, it would decrease capacity by eight percent, or two trains per hour, reduce the reliability of E and F service, and possibly require more F service and less E service due to increases loads on the F. The third option was chosen to be tested in October or November 1992, and was expected to save the NYCTA \$50,000 a year. It was also expected to slightly reduce ridership and revenue due to increased travel times for Eastern Queens riders. On October 26, 1992, R trains were cut back to 71st Avenue at all times. In its place, the F ran local between 71st Avenue and 179th Street at all times, which eliminated express service along Hillside Avenue. This change was implemented for six months on an experimental basis at the request of passengers using the 169th Street, Sutphin Boulevard, Van Wyck Boulevard and 75th Avenue stations, which had lost direct Queens Boulevard Express service in 1988. After the six months, the change was kept even though 77% of passengers had benefitted from the pre-October 1992 service plan because there was minimal negative passenger reaction and the intensity of the request. The change increased travel time along the F by 3.5 minutes, and reduced travel time for passengers at local stations by one to two minutes. In December 1993, the NYCTA agreed to extend the pilot change for six more months. Between 1988 and 1990, following the opening of the Archer Avenue extension, ridership decreased by 12 percent at 179th Street, by 60 percent at 169th Street, by 47 percent at Parsons Boulevard, by 70 percent at Sutphin Boulevard, and by 28 percent at Van Wyck Boulevard. #### 63rd Street changes As part of the construction of the IND 63rd Street Line in the 1980s, it was proposed to reverse-signal the IND Queens Boulevard Line, to allow three of the line's four tracks to run in a single peak direction. Beginning on March 23, 1997, due to construction on the connector between the IND 63rd Street Line and the IND Queens Boulevard Line, G trains terminated at Court Square on evenings, nights and weekends. On August 30, 1997, late night G service was permanently cut back from 179th Street to Court Square, being replaced with the F running local east of Queens Plaza, meaning that the G only ran along the Queens Boulevard Line on weekdays. On that date, E service began running local in Queens during late nights. On December 16, 2001, the connection to the IND 63rd Street Line (built along with the Archer Avenue subway) opened and F trains were rerouted into it, away from the 53rd Street tunnel. The new peak-hour train was created to replace the F via 53rd Street while running local on Queens Boulevard, requiring the truncation of the G to Court Square during weekdays. G service was extended to Forest Hills–71st Avenue at all other times, which represented the reverse of the previous pattern. The G was to be truncated to Court Square at all times to make room for the V, but due to rider opposition, it was cut back only on weekdays until 8:30 pm. ### 21st century Starting in August 2007 after a series of severe summer storms, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) began installing decorative ventilation grates along the Hillside Avenue section of the line, and sealing other grates, both in order to combat flooding. At the time, the Hillside Avenue subway was considered the most flood-prone area in the subway system, due to its location at the bottom of the terminal moraine which runs across Long Island. Additional grates were later installed along Broadway and Steinway Street at the west end of the line. In 2010, budget constraints within the MTA led to service reductions on the line. On April 19, 2010, G service was permanently truncated to Court Square at all hours; thus Crosstown Line trains, which originally were the sole trains to serve the Queens Boulevard local tracks, no longer ran on the line at all. On June 27, 2010, V service was eliminated, and the train was extended via the Chrystie Street Connection to replace it. The 2015–2019 MTA Capital Plan called for the Queens Boulevard Line's Northern Boulevard, 67th Avenue, and Parsons Boulevard stations, along with 30 others, to undergo a complete overhaul as part of the Enhanced Station Initiative. Updates would have included cellular service, Wi-Fi, USB charging stations, interactive service advisories and maps, improved signage, and improved station lighting. However, in April 2018, it was announced that cost overruns had forced the MTA to reduce the number of subway stations included in the program from 33 stations to 20. The stations to be renovated on the IND Queens Boulevard Line were among the 13 stations without funding, which will be pushed back to the 2020–2024 Capital Plan. As part of the 2020—2024 Capital Plan, the Woodhaven Boulevard, Court Square—23rd Street, Steinway Street, Seventh Avenue, Briarwood, Northern Boulevard, and Parsons Boulevard stations will receive elevators to make them compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. #### Communications-based train control Congestion on the line during peak hours has existed for much of the line's history, and in 2015, the stations along the line had a combined 467,779 entries, making it among the system's busiest. As a result of overcrowding, the MTA is automating the line. Because the line hosts several services, installation of CBTC on the line is more complex than on the IRT Flushing Line and BMT Canarsie Line, which had also received CBTC and which each hosted only one service. The total cost for the entire Queens Boulevard Line is estimated at over \$900 million. The automation of the Queens Boulevard Line means that the will be able to run three more trains during peak hours, up from 30 tph, and the local tracks' capacity would also be increased. Phase one equipped the tracks from 50th Street/8th Avenue and 47th–50th Streets–Rockefeller Center to Kew Gardens–Union Turnpike with communications-based train control. The \$205.8 million contract for the installment of phase one was awarded in 2015 to Siemens and Thales. In January 2017, L.K. Comstock & Company Inc. was selected to fulfill a \$223.3-million contract to upgrade existing signals and install communications, fiber-optic, and CBTC infrastructure for the new signal system. The project also included the conversion of 309 sets of R160 subway cars for CBTC compatibility, which as of April 2022 had been increased to 335 sets. The final section of phase one was activated in February 2022. The 2015–2019 Capital Program was revised in April 2018 to fund to the design for the expedited installation of the Queens Boulevard Line east of Kew Gardens–Union Turnpike, the second phase. In December 2021, the MTA Board approved the first of three contracts to install CBTC on the eastern portion of the Queens Boulevard Line. On March 17, 2023, New York City Transit made adjustments to evening and late night E, F and R service to accommodate long-term CBTC installation on the Queens Boulevard Line between Union Turnpike and 179th Street, which requires using the express tracks west of Forest Hills to be used for overnight train storage. After 9:30 p.m., Queens-bound R trains terminate at Queens Plaza, and Queens-bound E and F trains make local stops in Queens to fill in for R service. Brooklyn-bound F trains run local in Queens after 10:45 p.m.. The MTA did not specify how long these changes would last. ## Provisions for expansion ### IND Second System The Queens Boulevard Line was originally planned to extend farther along Hillside Avenue into eastern Queens. The line would have gone at least to the intersection of Hillside, Springfield Boulevard and Braddock Avenue (the latter two both formerly part of Rocky Hill Road) in Queens Village, with later plans to go as far as Little Neck Parkway in Bellerose near the Nassau County border. The extension to Springfield Boulevard, which on contract drawings was referred to as Route 108-Section 13, would have been a two track extension of the D3 and D4 express tracks, with five stations, at 187th Street, 197th Street, Cross Island Boulevard (today's Francis Lewis Boulevard), 214th Street, and the terminal at Springfield Boulevard. All of these stations, with the exception of Springfield Boulevard, would have had two side platforms. Hillside Avenue was widened in the 1930s between 218th Street and 229th Street, in order to accommodate construction of the proposed Springfield Boulevard station and to accommodate an underpass for Hillside Avenue underneath Springfield Boulevard and Braddock Avenue. Six station entrances would have been provided at Springfield Boulevard and Braddock Avenue. The station would have stretched as far east as 88th Avenue. The two tracks would have continued to 229th Street. As part of the extension of the line to 179th Street in 1950, provisions were made to extend this line farther east via Hillside Avenue. East of the 179th Street there are two four track levels both used as train storage. The upper level was intended to be extended eastward, while the lower level was always intended to be used to relay and store trains. The tracks on the upper level are longer than the lower level tracks and the upper level tracks have a wooden partition at the bumper blocks. The tracks continue until 184th Street. Several stations along the line also have provisions for other extensions as part of the IND Second System. The Roosevelt Avenue station has an additional upper level platform and bellmouth provisions east of the station, which would have gone to a Queens crosstown line to the Rockaways. The 63rd Drive station has similar bellmouths, which would have fed directly into the inactive portion of the Long Island Rail Road's former Rockaway Beach Branch near its former junction with the LIRR Main Line (Whitepot Junction). One stop west, the Woodhaven Boulevard station has provisions to be converted into an express station. East of the Briarwood station, there were additional trackways built for an extension down Van Wyck Boulevard (today the Van Wyck Expressway) to Rockaway Boulevard, near the current site of John F. Kennedy International Airport. None of these proposals were ever funded, and only the Briarwood bellmouths were used for future expansion, while the Rockaway line was connected instead to the IND Fulton Street Line. ### Program for Action When proposed in the mid-1960s under the MTA's Program for Action, the Archer Avenue and 63rd Street subway lines were two parts of a major planned expansion of Queens Boulevard line service. The 63rd Street tunnel would have facilitated service between the Queens Boulevard line and the Second Avenue Subway, via bellmouths west of Roosevelt Island which turn south towards Midtown and Lower Manhattan. These turnouts may be used for the third and fourth phases of the Second Avenue Subway. The proposed connection to the LIRR Rockaway Beach Branch resurfaced, with proposed branch lines along other LIRR lines to outer Queens areas without rapid transit service. Expected to be completed by the mid-1970s and early 1980s, these plans (the most important of which are outlined below) were derailed by the 1970s fiscal crisis, which delayed the completion of the Archer Avenue and 63rd Street lines. #### "Super-express" line The Archer Avenue and 63rd Street lines were planned to be connected by a "super-express" bypass of the Queens Boulevard line, The bypass would have used the outer two of the six trackways of the LIRR Main Line (formerly used by the Rockaway Beach Branch), which are currently unused, and would have allowed trains to travel at speeds of up to 70 miles per hour (110 km/h). It would stretch from the 63rd Street Line east of 21st Street–Queensbridge, with the possibility of access to the 60th and 53rd Street tunnels. At its east end, it would have left the LIRR right-of-way near Whitepot Junction and ran under Yellowstone Boulevard to the Queens Boulevard Line near 71st Avenue station. The 71st Avenue station would have been converted into a bi-level or tri-level station, with the super express tracks using the lower level(s) built south of the current station, before rejoining the main line Queens Boulevard tracks. There were also plans for an intermediate stop at the current Woodside LIRR station, and an additional 63rd Street line station at Northern Boulevard adjacent to Queens Plaza. The bypass and proposed Woodside station would have necessitated the widening of the LIRR Main Line right-of-way onto private property west of Winfield Junction, where the Main Line merges with the Port Washington Branch, and reorganization of the track layout in the Sunnyside Yards. Later proposals suggested routing the bypass directly to the Archer Avenue line via the LIRR Montauk Branch (which no longer has passenger service). While plans to construct the bypass existed as late as 1985, the connection to the Queens Boulevard line at Northern Boulevard was built as an alternative to the bypass. A bellmouth was built at the end of the tunnel should construction on the bypass ever commence. #### Northeast Queens line Another less publicized plan around this time was a branch line diverging from the Queens Boulevard mainline near Woodhaven Boulevard, and running along the Long Island Expressway (LIE) corridor to Kissena Boulevard at Queens College, and later to Fresh Meadows and Bayside. This "Northeastern Queens" line, or Route 131-C, would have been built in conjunction with the planned widening of the expressway. The subway tracks would have been placed under the expressway or its service roads, or in the median of a widened LIE in a similar manner to the Congress Branch of the Chicago "L". The Woodhaven Boulevard station, using existing provisions, would be converted to an express station. Three new stations would have been built during the first phase of the line, at 99th Street near LeFrak City, at Main Street, and a terminal station at Kissena Boulevard. At Main Street there would have been three tracks, and two island platforms. East of the terminus at Kissena Boulevard, there would have been two levels of layup tracks, allowing for an extension further east. A similar line along the corridor had been proposed in the 1939 IND Second System plan as an extension of the BMT Broadway Line east of the 60th Street Tunnel, when the road was called Horace Harding Boulevard prior to the construction of the expressway. #### Southeast Queens line The most important of the proposed lines along LIRR branches was a "Southeast Queens" extension of the Archer Avenue subway along the Locust Manor branch to Springfield Gardens, which was the original intention of the Queens Boulevard extension to Archer Avenue. This would have used an existing provision east of Jamaica Center, and necessitated the installation of two dedicated subway tracks, construction of new stations and/or the conversion of existing facilities along the right-of-way. ## Station listing

Revolver (song)

2009 single by Madonna

"Revolver" is a song by American recording artist Madonna from her third greatest hits compilation, Celebration (2009). It was released on December 14, 2009, by Warner Bros. Records and marked her final single release with the label, which had been her record company since 1982. The song features American rapper Lil Wayne and was written by Madonna, Carlos Battey, Steven Battey, Dwayne Carter, Justin Franks and Brandon Kitchen. It was produced by Madonna and DJ Frank E. The single release included remixes by David Guetta and Afrojack, which won the Grammy Award for Best Remixed Recording, Non-Classical category at the 53rd Grammy Awards. This version also appears on the deluxe version of Guetta's album One More Love (2010). The single also included mixes by Paul van Dyk, Tracy Young and included remixes of "Celebration" by Akon and Felguk. The original album version does not appear on any formats of the release and some versions are credited as "Madonna vs. David Guetta". An electropop song, "Revolver" features Madonna singing the whole song, with a guest appearance by Wayne near the end. The lyrics talk about juxtaposing love with weaponry. Contemporary critics gave a mixed review of the song. Some praised the chorus line "My love’s a revolver" while others felt that it was underwhelming and not on par with Madonna's previous songs. The single charted in the lower regions of the official charts of Belgium, Canada, Finland and the United Kingdom while reaching number four on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Songs chart of United States. The song was performed on The MDNA Tour in 2012, where Madonna wielded a Kalashnikov rifle onstage. The use of weapons in front of the audience generated controversy after the 2012 Aurora, Colorado shooting. ## Background In March 2009, Madonna's representative Liz Rosenberg confirmed that Madonna was planning to release a greatest hits album by fall 2009. She also added that Madonna had plans to go to the studio and record new material for the album. The next day, Madonna's manager, Guy Oseary, asked fans on his Twitter for input regarding the track listing of the greatest hits album. It was later confirmed that she wrote three new tracks for the album, with Paul Oakenfold being confirmed as producer for two of the new songs. Warner Bros. Records reported the title of the greatest hits to be Celebration through Madonna's official website. They also reported that the final song on the collection was to be "Revolver", a collaboration with Lil Wayne and whose demo version was already present in the net. It was present alongside the title track. Before the album was released on September 29, 2009, the original version of "Revolver" was released on the internet; the track had previously appeared in May as a demo recording. In December 2009, NME confirmed "Revolver" as the second single from Celebration. The song was released digitally in the United Kingdom on December 14, 2009, by Warner Bros. Records along with a digital maxi single release worldwide on December 29, 2009, featuring remixes by David Guetta and Afrojack, Paul van Dyk and Tracy Young. ## Recording and composition "Revolver" was written by Madonna, Carlos Battey, Steven Battey, Lil Wayne, Justin Franks and Brandon Kitchen, and produced by Madonna and DJ Frank E. In an interview with Hiphopupdate.com, Frank E recalled that he had gone to the recording session two hours before his scheduled meeting with Madonna to set up and give the audio files to the recording engineer, and he said that the ensuing wait was incredibly nerve-racking for him. After Madonna arrived, they recorded her vocals and the song was finished the next day. Reminiscing about the session, he said: "I will never forget the feeling of leaving that session after vocal producing Madonna, and thinking to myself, 'It can’t it really get any harder than this.' I've taken that mentality into every other session I've been in, and it's helped me make the session and song more of a success. Unfortunately, the mix sounded like crap and the song flopped, but hey, you win some and you lose some." The audio mixing was done by Demacio Castellon while the Pro Tools editing was arranged by Ron Taylor from Warner Bros. Records. The chorus of the song has Madonna singing the line "My love's a revolver, my sex is a killer, do you wanna die happy?" Wayne has a verse towards the end of the song, and sings the lines with reference to ammunitions, and Auto-Tune is used in his vocals. According to Houston Chronicle, the song is electropop in its composition style. The song is set in the time signature of common time, with a moderate tempo of 120 beats per minute. As per the sheet music published at Musicnotes.com by Alfred Publishing Co., Inc., the song is composed in the key of B minor, with Madonna's voice spanning from the tonal nodes of A₃ to E₅. "Revolver" follows in the basic sequence of Bm–D–A–Bm–D–A as its chord progression. ## Critical reception Shaheem Reid from MTV called the song a "sugary ditty" and said that "Guest-verse sniper Weezy F. Baby (Lil Wayne) comes in later and gives himself loads of big-ups when it comes to the women." After the original version of "Revolver" leaked onto the net, Daniel Kreps from Rolling Stone commented that "this cleaned-up version with its sirenesque synths is more befitting of the Queen of Pop." He also called it the most violent love song ever. Rob Sheffield from the same magazine said that "[Madonna's] hitmaking genius is unmatched and — with the new Eurocheese blast 'Celebration' and the Lil Wayne duet 'Revolver' — undiminished." Joseph Brannigan Lynch from Entertainment Weekly was disappointed with the track and called it underwhelming. He added: "Anyone hoping this collaboration with Wayne would mean a new direction for [Madonna] will be disappointed. 'Revolver' is pretty standard Top 40 background listening—more of the same electro R&B she played around with on Hard Candy. [...] It’s not bad by any stretch, but it certainly won’t end up on the next greatest-hits collection she releases ten years from now." However, he praised the chorus line calling it Madonna's "unnerring knack for writing charmingly frivolous lyrics." While reviewing the album, Leah Greenblatt of Entertainment Weekly called the song "glitched-out dance-floor stomper" and called the chorus a "lyrical come-on". While ranking the singer's singles in honor of her 60th birthday, Jude Rogers from The Guardian placed "Revolver" at number 74, writing that "Madonna loves metaphors [but] there have been better ideas". Joey Guerra of Houston Chronicle said that the track was "more filler than truly fascinating." Douglas Wolk from Pitchfork commented that the presence of "Revolver" on the Celebration compilation disc was pale compared to Madonna's previous sex-themed songs like "Justify My Love" (1990) and "Erotica" (1992). Eric Henderson from Slant Magazine called the song a clumsy collaboration. In August 2018, the same author placed it at number 78 on his ranking of the singer's singles, writing: "Forget the uncharacteristic desperate crassness of choosing the then-hot Lil Wayne as a collaborator. Also, ignore the half-heartedness of the track’s electroclash gestures. What you have left is a sex-equals-guns metaphor that, with each passing year in America, grows more and more tone deaf". Sarah Crompton from The Daily Telegraph said that "Revolver" shows off Lil Wayne's skills as a singer better than Madonna's. The One Love Club mix of the song, by David Guetta, won a Grammy in the Best Remixed Recording, Non-Classical category of the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards. ## Chart performance The song charted on the Canadian Hot 100 for one week at position 95 on the issue dated October 17, 2009, but fell off the chart the next week. On the Billboard issue dated January 16, 2010, the song made a re-entry on the chart at a higher position of 47, and was the highest debut of the chart. It made a top-20 debut on the official chart of Finland, at position nineteen and moved to 18 after two weeks. In the United Kingdom, the song was initially positioned at number 188, but after a few weeks it jumped up to a position 130 on the UK Singles Chart. The One Love remix of "Revolver", featuring David Guetta, debuted on the Belgian Singles Chart at Flanders region at position 37. After a few weeks, the song reached number 26 on the Flanders chart and 25 on the Wallonia chart. The song debuted at number 41 on Billboard's Hot Dance Club Songs chart on the issue dated January 16, 2010 as the highest debut of that week, and reached a peak of four, staying for two weeks at the same position. In Italy, the song reached number 12 on the singles chart and was certified gold by the Federation of the Italian Music Industry (FIMI) for shipment of 15,000 copies of the single. The song also charted in Ireland, at position 41. In Spain the song reached 39 on the chart, for one week only. In the Czech Republic, "Revolver" debuted at number 66, and reached a peak of number 22 after seven weeks. ## Live performance and controversy Madonna performed "Revolver" as the second song on The MDNA Tour in 2012. She performed it while holding a Kalashnikov rifle, a common weapon among many rebels, while one of her dancers held an Israeli Uzi submachine gun. Madonna and four dancers then participated in a faux fight and pretended to shoot their weapons and fire bullets. During the performance Lil Wayne appeared on the backdrop screens to perform his verse. It was noted that during the performance Madonna resembled a gunfighter in the style of Kill Bill. During her concert in Phoenix, Madonna pointed her rifle to their fans, while in Miami, she faked murdering her masked dancers. According to Jane Stevenson from Jam!, "[Madonna] really got our attention as she and her dancers wielded guns". The wardrobe for the performance consisted of a black outfit fitted with an ample cleavage, gloves of the same color and heeled boots. The performance of the song at the November 19–20, 2012, shows in Miami, at the American Airlines Arena were recorded and released in Madonna's fourth live album, MDNA World Tour. The use of fake weapons generated controversy. After the concert in Colorado, Madonna was criticised over the use of fake weapons, since the public was sensitized by the 2012 Aurora, Colorado shooting, which occurred at the premiere of The Dark Knight Rises. Peter Burns, a radio broadcaster in the region, told The Hollywood Reporter that "You could see people kinda looking at each other. I heard the word 'Colorado', you know, 'Aurora', 'shooting'. You could hear people talking about it, and it was little bit unsettling. I saw two or three people get up and grab their stuff and actually leave their seats". Ray Mark Rinaldi from Reverb website said that Madonna was "dancing with guns and shooting up bad guys during 'Revolver'. It was a bloody scene, particularly tasteless in Colorado these days, but all cartoon; if folks got upset, they were supposed to". Daniel Brokman from The Phoenix said: "Madonna took the capacity crowd into a dark place that few were expecting minutes earlier from this queen of '80s pop music". In a review of the concert, Ross Raihala from Twin Cities mentioned that there was "darkness hung over much of the first half of the show" because of the performances of "Revolver" and "Gang Bang." Meanwhile, Madonna commented on a letter published in Billboard: "I do not condone violence or the use of guns. Rather they are symbols of wanting to appear strong and wanting to find a way to stop feelings that I find hurtful or damaging. In my case, it's wanting to stop the lies and hypocrisy of the church, the intolerance of many narrow minded cultures and societies I have experienced throughout my life and in some cases the pain I have felt from having my heart broken." ## Track listing and formats - iTunes digital download 1. "Revolver" (Madonna vs. David Guetta One Love Remix) – 2:59 2. "Celebration" (Remix featuring Akon) – 3:55 - European / US / Argentine CD Maxi-single / Digital download 1. "Revolver" (Madonna vs. David Guetta One Love Version) [featuring Lil Wayne] – 3:16 2. "Revolver" (Madonna vs. David Guetta One Love Version) – 2:59 3. "Revolver" (Madonna vs. David Guetta One Love Remix) – 4:31 4. "Revolver" (Paul van Dyk Remix) – 8:35 5. "Revolver" (Paul van Dyk Dub) – 8:35 6. "Revolver" (Tracy Young's Shoot to Kill Remix) – 9:24 7. "Celebration" (Remix featuring Akon) – 3:55 8. "Celebration" (Felguk Love Remix) – 6:37 - European / US 12" Vinyl single 1. "Revolver" (Madonna vs. David Guetta One Love Remix) – 4:31 2. "Revolver" (Paul van Dyk Remix) – 8:35 3. "Revolver" (Tracy Young's Shoot to Kill Remix) – 9:24 4. "Revolver" (Paul van Dyk Dub) – 8:35 5. "Revolver" (Madonna vs. David Guetta One Love Version) [featuring Lil Wayne] – 3:16 6. "Celebration" (Remix featuring Akon) – 3:55 7. "Celebration" (Felguk Love Remix) – 6:37 ## Credits and personnel - Madonna – writer, vocals and record producer - Lil Wayne – writer and vocals - DJ Frank E – writer and record producer - Carlos Battey – writer - Steven Battey – writer - Brandon Kitchen – writer - Demacio Castellon – mixing - Ron Taylor – Pro Tools editing - David Guetta and Afrojack – remixers (One Love remixes) - Paul Van Dyk – remixer and additional production - Tracy Young – remixer and original production - Akon – remixer and vocals ("Celebration" feat. Akon) - Felguk – remixer and additional production Credits adapted from the liner notes of the Celebration CD and "Revolver" Remixes Maxi-Single. ## Charts ### Weekly charts ### Year-end charts ## Certifications ## Release history

Mecoptera

Order of insects with markedly different larvae and adults

Mecoptera (from the Greek: mecos = "long", ptera = "wings") is an order of insects in the superorder Endopterygota with about six hundred species in nine families worldwide. Mecopterans are sometimes called scorpionflies after their largest family, Panorpidae, in which the males have enlarged genitals raised over the body that look similar to the stingers of scorpions, and long beaklike rostra. The Bittacidae, or hangingflies, are another prominent family and are known for their elaborate mating rituals, in which females choose mates based on the quality of gift prey offered to them by the males. A smaller group is the snow scorpionflies, family Boreidae, adults of which are sometimes seen walking on snowfields. In contrast, the majority of species in the order inhabit moist environments in tropical locations. The Mecoptera are closely related to the Siphonaptera (fleas), and a little more distantly to the Diptera (true flies). They are somewhat fly-like in appearance, being small to medium-sized insects with long slender bodies and narrow membranous wings. Most breed in moist environments such as leaf litter or moss, and the eggs may not hatch until the wet season arrives. The larvae are caterpillar-like and mostly feed on vegetable matter, and the non-feeding pupae may pass through a diapause until weather conditions are favorable. Early Mecoptera may have played an important role in pollinating extinct species of gymnosperms before the evolution of other insect pollinators such as bees. Adults of modern species are overwhelmingly predators or consumers of dead organisms. In a few areas, some species are the first insects to arrive at a cadaver, making them useful in forensic entomology. ## Diversity Mecopterans vary in length from 2 to 35 mm (0.1 to 1.4 in). There are about six hundred extant species known, divided into thirty-four genera in nine families. The majority of the species are contained in the families Panorpidae and Bittacidae. Besides this there are about four hundred known fossil species in about eighty-seven genera, which are more diverse than the living members of the order. The group is sometimes called the scorpionflies, from the turned-up "tail" of the male's genitalia in the Panorpidae. Distribution of mecopterans is worldwide; the greatest diversity at the species level is in the Afrotropic and Palearctic realms, but there is greater diversity at the generic and family level in the Neotropic, Nearctic and Australasian realms. They are absent from Madagascar and many islands and island groups; this may demonstrate that their dispersal ability is low, with Trinidad, Taiwan and Japan, where they are found, having had recent land bridges to the nearest continental land masses. ## Evolution and phylogeny ### Taxonomic history The European scorpionfly was named Panorpa communis by Linnaeus in 1758. The Mecoptera were named by Alpheus Hyatt and Jennie Maria Arms in 1891. The name is from the Greek, mecos meaning long, and ptera meaning wings. The families of Mecoptera are well accepted by taxonomists but their relationships have been debated. In 1987, R. Willman treated the Mecoptera as a clade, containing the Boreidae as sister to the Meropeidae, but in 2002 Michael F. Whiting declared the Mecoptera so-defined as paraphyletic, with the Boreidae as sister to another order, the Siphonaptera (fleas). ### Fossil history Among the earliest members of the Mecoptera are the Nannochoristidae of Upper Permian age. Fossil Mecoptera become abundant and diverse during the Cretaceous, for example in China, where panorpids such as Jurassipanorpa, hangingflies (Bittacidae and Cimbrophlebiidae), Orthophlebiidae, and Cimbrophlebiidae have been found. Extinct Mecoptera species may have been important pollinators of early gymnosperm seed plants during the late Middle Jurassic to mid–Early Cretaceous periods before other pollinating groups such as the bees evolved. These were mainly wind-pollinated plants, but fossil mecopterans had siphon-feeding apparatus that could have fertilized these early gymnosperms by feeding on their nectar and pollen. The lack of iron enrichment in their fossilized probosces rules out their use for drinking blood. Eleven species have been identified from three families, Mesopsychidae, Aneuretopsychidae, and Pseudopolycentropodidae within the clade Aneuretopsychina. Their lengths range from 3 mm (0.12 in) in Parapolycentropus burmiticus to 28 mm (1.1 in) in Lichnomesopsyche gloriae. The proboscis could be as long as 10 mm (0.39 in). It has been suggested that these mecopterans transferred pollen on their mouthparts and head surfaces, as do bee flies and hoverflies today, but no such associated pollen has been found, even when the insects were finely preserved in Eocene Baltic amber. They likely pollinated plants such as Caytoniaceae, Cheirolepidiaceae, and Gnetales, which have ovulate organs that are either poorly suited for wind pollination or have structures that could support long-proboscid fluid feeding. The Aneuretopsychina were the most diverse group of mecopterans in the Latest Permian, taking the place of the Permochoristidae, to the Middle Triassic. During the Late Triassic through the Middle Jurassic, Aneuretopsychina species were gradually replaced by species from the Parachoristidae and Orthophlebiidae. Modern mecopteran families are derived from the Orthophlebiidae. ### External relationships Mecoptera have special importance in the evolution of the insects. Two of the most important insect orders, Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) and Diptera (true flies), along with Trichoptera (caddisflies), probably evolved from ancestors belonging to, or strictly related to, the Mecoptera. Evidence includes anatomical and biochemical similarities as well as transitional fossils, such as Permotanyderus and Choristotanyderus, which lie between the Mecoptera and Diptera. The group was once much more widespread and diverse than it is now, with four suborders during the Mesozoic. It is unclear as of 2020 whether the Mecoptera form a single clade, or whether the Siphonaptera (fleas) are inside that clade, so that the traditional "Mecoptera" taxon is paraphyletic. However the earlier suggestion that the Siphonaptera are sister to the Boreidae is not supported; instead, there is the possibility that they are sister to another Mecopteran family, the Nannochoristidae. The two possible trees are shown below: \(a\) Mecoptera (clades in boldface) is paraphyletic, containing Siphonaptera: \(b\) Mecoptera is monophyletic, sister to Siphonaptera: ### Internal relationships All the families were formerly treated as part of a single order, Mecoptera. The relationships between the families are, however, a matter of debate. The cladogram, from Cracraft and Donoghue 2004, places the Nannochoristidae as a separate order, with the Boreidae, as the sister group to the Siphonaptera, also as its own order. The Eomeropidae is suggested to be the sister group to the rest of the Mecoptera, with the position of the Bittacidae unclear. Of those other families, the Meropeidae is the most basal, and the relationships of the rest are not completely clear. ## Biology ### Morphology Mecoptera are small to medium-sized insects with long beaklike rostra, membranous wings and slender, elongated bodies. They have relatively simple mouthparts, with a long labium, long mandibles and fleshy palps, which resemble those of the more primitive true flies. Like many other insects, they possess compound eyes on the sides of their heads, and three ocelli on the top. The antennae are filiform (thread-shaped) and contain multiple segments. The fore and hind wings are similar in shape, being long and narrow, with numerous cross-veins, and somewhat resembling those of primitive insects such as mayflies. A few genera, however, have reduced wings, or have lost them altogether. The abdomen is cylindrical with eleven segments, the first of which is fused to the metathorax. The cerci consist of one or two segments. The abdomen typically curves upwards in the male, superficially resembling the tail of a scorpion, the tip containing an enlarged structure called the genital bulb. The caterpillar-like larvae have hard sclerotised heads with mandibles (jaws), short true legs on the thorax, prolegs on the first eight abdominal segments, and a suction disc or pair of hooks on the terminal tenth segment. The pupae have free appendages rather than being secured within a cocoon (they are exarate). ### Ecology Mecopterans mostly inhabit moist environments although a few species are found in semi-desert habitats. Scorpionflies, family Panorpidae, generally live in broad-leaf woodlands with plentiful damp leaf litter. Snow scorpionflies, family Boreidae, appear in winter and are to be seen on snowfields and on moss; the larvae being able to jump like fleas. Hangingflies, family Bittacidae, occur in forests, grassland and caves with high moisture levels. They mostly breed among mosses, in leaf litter and other moist places, but their reproductive habits have been little studied, and at least one species, Nannochorista philpotti, has aquatic larvae. Adult mecopterans are mostly scavengers, feeding on decaying vegetation and the soft bodies of dead invertebrates. Panorpa raid spider webs to feed on trapped insects and even the spiders themselves, and hangingflies capture flies and moths with their specially modified legs. Some groups consume pollen, nectar, midge larvae, carrion and moss fragments. Most mecopterans live in moist environments; in hotter climates, the adults may therefore be active and visible only for short periods of the year. ### Mating behaviour Various courtship behaviours have been observed among mecopterans, with males often emitting pheromones to attract mates. The male may provide an edible gift such as a dead insect or a brown salivary secretion to the female. Some boreids have hook-like wings which the male uses to pick up and place the female on his back while copulating. Male panorpids vibrate their wings or even stridulate while approaching a female. Hangingflies (Bittacidae) provide a nuptial meal in the form of a captured insect prey, such as a caterpillar, bug, or fly. The male attracts a female with a pheromone from vesicles on his abdomen; he retracts these once a female is nearby, and presents her with the prey. While she evaluates the gift, he locates her genitalia with his. If she stays to eat the prey, his genitalia attach to hers, and the female lowers herself into an upside-down hanging position, and eats the prey while mating. Larger prey result in longer mating times. In Hylobittacus apicalis, prey 3 to 14 millimetres (0.12 to 0.55 in) long give between 1 and 17 minutes of mating. Larger males of that species give prey as big as houseflies, earning up to 29 minutes of mating, maximal sperm transfer, more oviposition, and a refractory period during which the female does not mate with other males: all of these increase the number of offspring the male is likely to have. ### Life-cycle The female lays the eggs in close contact with moisture, and the eggs typically absorb water and increase in size after deposition. In species that live in hot conditions, the eggs may not hatch for several months, the larvae only emerging when the dry season has finished. More typically, however, they hatch after a relatively short period of time. The larvae are usually quite caterpillar-like, with short, clawed, true legs, and a number of abdominal prolegs. They have sclerotised heads with mandibulate mouthparts. Larvae possess compound eyes, which is unique among holometabolous insects. The tenth abdominal segment bears either a suction disc, or, less commonly, a pair of hooks. They generally eat vegetation or scavenge for dead insects, although some predatory larvae are known. The larva crawls into the soil or decaying wood to pupate, and does not spin a cocoon. The pupae are exarate, meaning the limbs are free of the body, and are able to move their mandibles, but are otherwise entirely nonmotile. In drier environments, they may spend several months in diapause, before emerging as adults once the conditions are more suitable. ## Interaction with humans Forensic entomology makes use of scorpionflies' habit of feeding on human corpses. In areas where the family Panorpidae occurs, such as the eastern United States, these scorpionflies can be the first insects to arrive at a donated human cadaver, and remain on a corpse for one or two days. The presence of scorpionflies thus indicates that a body must be fresh. Scorpionflies are sometimes described as looking "sinister", particularly from the male's raised "tail" resembling a scorpion's sting. A popular but incorrect belief is that they can sting with their tails.

Netherlands Antilles at the 2008 Summer Olympics

A delegation from the Netherlands Antilles competed at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China. It was the fifteenth and final appearance of the Netherlands Antilles at the Summer Olympics, as the territory was dissolved before the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, during which the IOC decided that Dutch Antillean athletes would participate independently under the Olympic flag. The Netherlands Antilles' delegation was composed of three athletes participating in three different sports: Rodion Davelaar in swimming, Philip Elhage in shooting, and Churandy Martina in track and field. Neither Davelaar or Elhage continued past the qualification rounds, but Martina reached the finals for the 100m and 200m dashes. Martina scored fourth place in the 100m dash and second place in the 200m dash (the latter behind Usain Bolt), but was disqualified after a controversial American-led protest. ## Background The appearance of the Netherlands Antilles at the Beijing Summer Olympics marked its thirteenth and final appearance. The Netherlands Antilles had consistently appeared at the Summer Olympics since the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, Finland, excluding two Olympics that had been boycotted due to Soviet incursions in other countries. Churandy Martina was the flagbearer for the Netherlands Antilles at the closing and opening ceremonies for the 2008 Summer Olympics. Issues regarding debt and revenue-sharing within the Netherlands Antilles eventually led to the dissolution of the territory and its division as constituent islands Curaçao and Sint Maarten claimed a status of autonomy similar to that of Aruba, while the islands Bonaire, Saba, and Sint Eustatius were absorbed directly into the Netherlands. Thus, the 2008 Summer Olympics served as the final Olympic Games in which the Netherlands Antilles participated as a territory. The future of the Dutch Antillean athletes to participate in the 2012 Summer Olympics in London were cast into doubt as a result. As residents of the Netherlands Antilles hold Dutch passports, IAAF General Secretary Pierre Weiss remarked all former Dutch Antillean athletes should immediately become eligible to represent the Netherlands in the Netherlands Antilles' stead. Ultimately, however, the IOC decided in its 123rd session upon three items: that former Dutch Antillean athletes would compete independently under the Olympic flag; that recognition for the Netherlands Antilles' Olympic Committee was to be withdrawn; and that a temporary administrative structure would serve in the Dutch Antillean NOC's place until after the 2012 London games, directly supervised and supported by the IOC. ## Athletics Churandy Martina was the only Dutch Antillean to participate in track and field in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. He participated in two events: The 100m dash and the 200m dash. ### 100 m dash On 14 August, Martina completed round one of qualifications for the 100m dash at 10.35 seconds. This placed Martina at first in his heat (Heat 10). He ranked twenty-seventh in the round, tying with Walter Dix from the United States and Andrew Hinds from Barbados. In round two on 14 August, Martina ran the 100m dash in 9.99 seconds, tying for second with Richard Thompson of Trinidad and Tobago, and falling behind Usain Bolt of Jamaica by 0.07 seconds. Martina advanced because of his score, and was first in his heat on 15 August, running 9.99 seconds. Churandy Martina advanced to semifinals and ran the 100m dash in 9.94 seconds, scoring third in his heat (behind Thompson and Jamaica's Asafa Powell) and fourth overall (also behind Bolt). He also ranked fourth in the finals, falling 0.02 seconds short of bronze medalist Walter Dix's time. Consequently, he did not medal in the event. ### 200 m dash Martina ranked third in his heat in the 17 August qualifications for the 200m dash, finishing the event in 20.78 seconds and falling behind Azerbaijan's Ramil Guliyev and Nigeria's Obinna Metu. Overall, Martina ranked in twenty-fourth place, but advanced. During round two of qualifications on 17 August, Martina ran the 200m dash in 20.42 seconds, second place in the heat before Antigua and Barbuda's Brendan Christian. In round two, Martina ranked tenth place, tying with the United States' Shawn Crawford. Martina ran the 200m in 20.11 seconds during semifinals, ranking first in his heat and second overall behind Usain Bolt. He then advanced to the finals round. Martina's participation in the 200m finals round was controversial. Martina came in second place to Usain Bolt, completing the event in 19.82 seconds over Usain Bolt's world-record breaking performance of 19.30 seconds. However, when American would-be bronze medalist Wallace Spearmon was disqualified for running outside of his lane, the American coaches reviewed video records of the race and found that Martina had done the same. The United States filed a protest against the Netherlands Antilles. The Dutch Antillean Olympic committee argued that the challenge was invalid, having been filed after the 30-minute post-race deadline, but Martina was disqualified from receiving the silver medal anyway. Shawn Crawford of the United States, who originally finished the race in fourth place, was given the silver medal, and Walter Dix was given the bronze medal in place of Spearmon. Shortly after the 2008 Olympics, Crawford competed against Martina again in a meet in Zurich, Switzerland. At a hotel during the course of the meet, Crawford left the silver medal for Martina, believing that Martina deserved the medal more than he. Men ## Shooting Philip Elhage was the only Dutch Antillean to participate in shooting events at the 2008 Summer Olympics. He participated in the 10m air pistol. During 9 August, the 10m air pistol event was held in Beijing, with forty-nine competitors. Elhage scored 566.0, ranking forty-fifth. Elhage scored the same as Yusuf Dikec from Turkey. Overall, Elhage's score fell 122.2 short of Pang Wei of China, who won the gold medal in the event. Men ## Swimming Rodion Davelaar was the only Dutch Antillean athlete to participate in swimming in the 2008 Summer Olympics. He participated in the 50m freestyle. He was the recipient of a 2008 IOC Olympic Scholarship, which provided Davelaar with training facilities, a specialized coach and insurance. Additionally, the Scholarship covered costs for lodging, checkups, and Davelaar's entry for and participation in qualification competitions for the 2008 Olympics. During the 14 August preliminaries, Davelaar swam the 50m freestyle in 24.21 seconds. He ranked second in Heat 6, falling behind Yellow Yei Yah of Nigeria by 0.21 seconds. Overall, Davelaar ranked fifty-seventh out of ninety-seven swimmers. Davelaar's time was 2.75 seconds slower than French swimmer Amaury Leveaux during his performance in the 14 August preliminaries, who ranked first and set an Olympic record in the preliminary session. Davelaar did not advance past the 14 August preliminaries. Men ## See also - Netherlands Antilles at the 2007 Pan American Games - Netherlands Antilles at the 2010 Central American and Caribbean Games

Planet of the Apes (2001 film)

2001 film by Tim Burton

Planet of the Apes is a 2001 American science fiction adventure film directed by Tim Burton from a screenplay by William Broyles Jr., Lawrence Konner, and Mark Rosenthal. The sixth installment in the Planet of the Apes film series, it is loosely based on the 1963 novel of the same name by Pierre Boulle and serves as a remake of the 1968 film version. The film stars Mark Wahlberg, Tim Roth, Helena Bonham Carter, Michael Clarke Duncan, Kris Kristofferson, Estella Warren, and Paul Giamatti. It tells the story of astronaut Leo Davidson (Wahlberg) crash-landing on a planet inhabited by intelligent apes. The apes treat humans as slaves, but with the help of an ape named Ari (Bonham Carter), Leo starts a rebellion. Development for a Planet of the Apes remake started as far back as 1988 with Adam Rifkin. His project nearly reached the pre-production stage before being canceled. Terry Hayes's script, titled Return of the Apes, would have starred Arnold Schwarzenegger, under the direction of Phillip Noyce. Oliver Stone, Don Murphy, and Jane Hamsher were set to produce. Creative differences ensued between Hayes and distributor 20th Century Fox. Chris Columbus, Sam Hamm, James Cameron, Peter Jackson, and the Hughes brothers later became involved. With Broyles Jr.'s script, Burton was hired as director, and the film was put into active development. Konner and Rosenthal rewrote the script, and filming took place from November 2000 to April 2001. Planet of the Apes was released in the United States on July 27, 2001, by 20th Century Fox. The film received mixed reviews from critics, who criticized the confusing plot and ending, but praised Rick Baker's prosthetic makeup designs, visual aspects, and musical score. Despite its financial success, Fox chose not to produce a sequel, and later rebooted the film series in 2011 with Rise of the Planet of the Apes. ## Plot In 2029, aboard the United States Air Force space station Oberon, Leo Davidson works closely with apes who are trained for space missions. His favorite ape co-worker is a chimpanzee named Pericles. With a deadly electromagnetic storm approaching the station, a small space pod piloted by Pericles is used to probe the storm. Pericles's pod heads into the storm and disappears. Leo takes a second pod and finds Pericles. Entering the storm, Leo loses contact with the Oberon and, in 5021 A.D., crashes on a planet called Ashlar. He learns that the world is ruled by humanoid apes who speak English, use domesticated horses for transportation, and treat human beings as slaves. Leo meets a female chimpanzee named Ari, who protests the mistreatment humans receive. Ari decides to buy Leo and a female slave named Daena to have them work as servants in the house of her father, Senator Sandar. Leo escapes his cage and frees other humans. Limbo, an orangutan trader in captured humans, sees them but is taken prisoner to ensure his silence. The murderous General Thade and his gorilla junior, Colonel Attar, march ape warriors to pursue the humans. Leo discovers Calima, the forbidden, but holy temple of "Semos", the first ape whom the apes revere as a god. Calima turns out to be the remains of the Oberon which had crashed on the planet's surface and now looks ancient (the name Calima comes from the sign "CAution LIve aniMAls", the relevant letters being the only ones not covered in dust). According to the computer logs, the station has been there for thousands of years. Leo deduces that when he entered the vortex, he was pushed forward in time, while the Oberon, searching after him, was not, crashing on the planet long before he did. The Oberon's log reveals that the apes on board, led by Semos, organized a mutiny and took over the vessel after it crashed. The human and ape survivors of the struggle left the ship and their descendants are the people Leo has encountered since landing. The apes arrive and attack the humans who have gathered to see Leo, although he is able to even the odds when he uses the Oberon's last fragments of fuel to fire a final blast at the first wave of apes. The battle stops when a familiar vehicle descends from the sky, which Leo immediately identifies as the pod piloted by Pericles, the chimpanzee astronaut who was pushed in time as Leo was and had just now found his way to the planet, the electromagnetic storm actually releasing people from it in an opposite direction in time to their entrance because they were actually traveling backwards not forward in time. When Pericles lands and the pod opens, the apes bow, interpreting his arrival as the return of Semos, and hostilities between humans and apes suddenly cease. Pericles runs into the wreck of the Oberon and Leo runs after him, followed by General Thade. Thade and Leo fight. Pericles tries to help Leo, but Thade throws him hard against a wall. Thade takes Leo's gun from him and tries to fire it at Leo. Leo sees that Thade is within the pilot's deck and closes the automatic door, trapping Thade inside. Thade fires the gun repeatedly at the door, but the ricochets create sparks that scare Thade, who huddles under a control panel. Deciding to escape Ashlar and return to Earth, Leo gives Pericles to Ari, who promises to look after him. After saying farewell to Ari and Daena, Leo climbs aboard Pericles's undamaged pod and returns to the present through the same electromagnetic storm. Leo crashes in Washington, D.C., on Earth and looks up at what appears to be the Lincoln Memorial, only to find that it is now a monument memorializing General Thade. A swarm of police officers, firefighters, and news reporters descend upon him, revealed to all be apes as Leo realizes that he is on ape-dominated Earth created by the temporal incursion of the crash landing Oberon (aka Calima). ## Cast - Mark Wahlberg as Captain Leo Davidson An astronaut who accidentally enters a portal to another world inhabited by talking humanoid apes and is captured by them. Leo leads a rebellion of the planet's humans. Wahlberg had backed out of a commitment to Ocean's Eleven to take this role in Planet of the Apes (Matt Damon was eventually cast in the Ocean's Eleven role). Whereas other actors contending for the Leo Davidson role wanted to see the script before signing a contract, Wahlberg signed on after a five-minute meeting with Burton. To avoid evoking associations with his previous work as an underwear model, Wahlberg did not wear a loincloth, even though Heston had worn one in the original film. - Tim Roth as General Thade An ambitious and brutal chimpanzee military commander who wants control over the ape civilization. Thade also intends to marry Ari, but she denies him due to his cold soul. Gary Oldman was originally cast in the role but dropped out due to financial reasons. Roth turned down the role of Severus Snape in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone because of his commitment to Planet of the Apes. Alan Rickman was eventually cast as Snape. Roth rewrote some scenes to give his character a more frightening presence. - Helena Bonham Carter as Ari A virtuous chimpanzee who protests the way humans are treated. She helps Leo lead the rebellion. Burton met Bonham Carter while casting for the film, telling her "Don't take this the wrong way, but you were the first person I thought of to play a chimpanzee." They were in a relationship for 13 years and had two children. - Michael Clarke Duncan as Colonel Attar A gorilla military officer who was Thade's closest associate and second in-command. Djimon Hounsou had turned down the role because of scheduling conflicts with The Four Feathers. Ron Perlman was also a potential candidate that Rick Baker vouched for and even did a design on an old lifecast. - Kris Kristofferson as Karubi, Daena's father. Karubi is killed by Thade while trying to escape. Kristofferson had immediately agreed to be cast. "The director Tim Burton is a hero of mine. I have eight kids and we've seen all of his films from Pee-wee's Big Adventure to Sleepy Hollow many times." - Estella Warren as Daena A female slave and Karubi's daughter, she develops a romantic attraction to Leo. - Paul Giamatti as Limbo A comical orangutan who works in the trade business of human slaves. Limbo is caught in the conflict between humans and apes and tries his best to simply survive. Giamatti drew inspiration from W. C. Fields for his performance. - Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa as General Krull A firm but fair gorilla and former military leader whose career had been destroyed by Thade. Krull became a servant of Senator Sandar and assisted the humans in their rebellion. - David Warner as Senator Sandar, a politician, who is also Ari's father. - Erick Avari as Tival, a member of the human resistance. - Luke Eberl as Birn, a young human who fights in the rebellion. - Lisa Marie as Nova, Senator Nado's chimpanzee companion. - Evan Parke as Gunnar, a member of the human resistance. - Glenn Shadix as Senator Nado, a pompous orangutan politician in ape society. Other roles include Freda Foh Shen (Bon), Chris Ellis (Lt. Karl Vasich), Anne Ramsay (Lt. Col. Grace Alexander), Michael Jace (Maj. Frank Santos), Andrea Grano (Maj. Maria Cooper), Kam Heskin (Friend at Leo's Party), and Melody Perkins (Friend at Leo's Party). Jonah & Jacob (both uncredited) as Pericles, the trained chimpanzee who works with Leo on the space station. There are also cameo appearances by Charlton Heston (uncredited) as Zaius, Thade's father, and Linda Harrison (the woman in the cart). Both participated in the first two films in the original series, Planet of the Apes (1968) and Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970) as George Taylor and Nova, respectively. ## Development ### Late 1980s 20th Century Fox president Craig Baumgarten was impressed with Adam Rifkin's filmmaking with Never on Tuesday. In 1988, Rifkin was brought in the studio to pitch ideas for films. Rifkin, being a fan of the 1968 Planet of the Apes felt it was best to continue the film series. "Having independent film experience, I promised I could write and direct a huge-looking film for a reasonable price and budget, like Aliens." Fox commissioned Rifkin to write what amounted to a sequel, "but not a sequel to the fifth film, an alternate sequel to the first film". He took influences from Spartacus, with the storyline being "the ape empire had reached its Roman era. A descendant of Charlton Heston's character named Duke would eventually lead a human slave revolt against the oppressive Romanesque apes, led by General Izan. A real sword and sandal spectacular, monkey style. Gladiator did the same movie without the ape costumes." Titled Return to the Planet of the Apes, the project was put on fast track and almost entered pre-production. Rick Baker was hired to design the prosthetic makeup with Danny Elfman composing the film score. Tom Cruise and Charlie Sheen were in contention for the lead role. "I can't accurately describe in words the utter euphoria I felt knowing that I, Adam Rifkin, was going to be resurrecting the Planet of the Apes. It all seemed too good to be true. I soon found out it was." Days before the film was to commence pre-production, new studio executives arrived at Fox, which caused creative differences between Rifkin and the studio. Rifkin was commissioned to rewrite the script through various drafts. The project was abandoned until Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh pitched their own idea, with the apes going through a Renaissance. In the story, the ape government becomes concerned over the new art works, the humans are revolting and the liberal apes shelter a half-human, half-ape from the gorillas. Roddy McDowall was enthusiastic about their proposal and agreed to play the Leonardo da Vinci-type character they had written for him. However, the executive Jackson spoke to was not a fan of the series and seemingly unaware of McDowall's involvement in the series, and Jackson turned his attention back to Heavenly Creatures. ### Oliver Stone By 1993, Fox hired Don Murphy and Jane Hamsher as producers. Sam Raimi and Oliver Stone were being considered as possible directors, though Stone signed on as executive producer/co-writer with a \$1 million salary. On the storyline, Stone explained in December 1993, "It has the discovery of cryogenically frozen Vedic Apes who hold the secret numeric codes to the Bible that foretold the end of civilizations. It deals with past versus the future. My concept is that there's a code inscribed in the Bible that predicts all historical events. The apes were there at the beginning and figured it all out." Stone brought Terry Hayes to write the screenplay entitled Return of the Apes. Set in the near future, a plague is making humans extinct. Geneticist Will Robinson discovers the plague is a genetic time bomb embedded in the Stone Age. He time travels with a pregnant colleague named Billie Rae Diamond to a time when Palaeolithic humans were at war for the future of the planet with highly evolved apes. The apes' supreme commander is a gorilla named Drak. Robinson and Billie Rae discover a young human girl named Aiv (pronounced Eve) to be the next step in evolution. It is revealed that it was the apes that created the virus to destroy the human race. They protect her from the virus, thus ensuring the survival of the human race 102,000 years later. Billie Rae gives birth to a baby boy named Adam. Fox president Peter Chernin called Return of the Apes "one of the best scripts I ever read". Chernin was hoping Hayes' script would create a franchise that included sequels, spin-off television shows and merchandise. In March 1994, Arnold Schwarzenegger signed on as Will Robinson with the condition he had approval of director. Chuck Russell was considered as a possible director before Phillip Noyce was hired in January 1995, while pre-production was nearing commencement with a \$100 million budget. Stone first approached Rick Baker, who worked on Rifkin's failed remake, to design the prosthetic makeup, but eventually hired Stan Winston. Fox became frustrated by the distance between their approach and Hayes' interpretation of Stone's ideas. As producer Don Murphy put it, "Terry wrote a Terminator and Fox wanted The Flintstones". Fox studio executive Dylan Sellers felt the script could be improved by comedy. "What if Robinson finds himself in Ape land and the Apes are trying to play baseball? But they're missing one element, like the pitcher or something." Sellers continued. "Robinson knows what they're missing and he shows them, and they all start playing." Sellers refused to give up his baseball scene, and when Hayes turned in the next script, sans baseball, Sellers fired him. Dissatisfied with Sellers' decision to fire Hayes, Noyce left Return of the Apes in February 1995 to work on The Saint. ### Columbus and Cameron Stone pursued other films of his own, Chernin was replaced by Thomas Rothman, and a drunken Sellers crashed his car, killing a much-loved colleague and earning jail time, while producers Murphy and Hamsher were paid off. "After they got rid of us, they brought on Chris Columbus", Murphy stated. "Then I heard they did tests of apes skiing, which didn't make much sense." Stan Winston was still working on the makeup designs. Columbus brought Sam Hamm, his co-writer on an unproduced Fantastic Four script, to write the screenplay. "We tried to do a story that was simultaneously an homage to the elements we liked from the five films, and would also incorporate a lot of material [from Pierre Boulle's novel] that had been jettisoned from the earlier production," Hamm continued. "The first half of the script bore little resemblance to the book, but a lot of the stuff in the second half comes directly from it, or directly inspired by it." Hamm's script had an ape astronaut from another planet crash-landing in New York Harbor, launching a virus that will make human beings extinct. Dr. Susan Landis, who works for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Alexander Troy, an Area 51 scientist, use the ape's spacecraft to return to the virus' planet of origin, hoping to find an antidote. They find an urban environment where apes armed with heavy weapons hunt humans. The main villain was Lord Zaius; in contrast to Dr. Zaius, Lord Zaius was very cruel to the humans. Landis and Troy discover the antidote and return to Earth, only to find in their 74-year absence that apes have taken over the planet. "The Statue of Liberty's once proud porcelain features have been crudely chiseled into the grotesque likeness of a great grinning ape". Schwarzenegger remained attached, but Fox had mixed emotions with Hamm's script. When Columbus dropped out in late 1995 to work on Jingle All the Way, Fox offered the director's position to Roland Emmerich in January 1996. James Cameron was in talks during the filming of Titanic as writer and producer. Cameron's version would have drawn elements from the original film and its sequel Beneath the Planet of the Apes. After the financial and critical success of Titanic, Cameron dropped out. After learning about his previous involvement, Chernin and Rothman met with Peter Jackson to learn about his original Renaissance idea. Jackson turned down directing the film with Schwarzenegger and Cameron as his producer, recognizing they would probably conflict over the direction. Schwarzenegger left to work on Eraser. Michael Bay then turned down the director's position. Jackson again turned down the project while facing the possible cancellation of The Lord of the Rings in 1998, because he was unenthusiastic following Roddy McDowall's death. In mid-1999, the Hughes brothers were interested in directing but were committed to From Hell. ### Pre-production In 1999, William Broyles Jr. turned down the chance to write the script, but decided to sign on "when I found out I could have an extensive amount of creative control". Fox projected the release date for July 2001, while Broyles sent the studio an outline and a chronicle of the fictional planet "Aschlar". Entitled The Visitor and billed as "episode one in the Chronicles of Aschlar", Broyles' script caught the attention of director Tim Burton, who was hired in February 2000. The film deviated from Burton's usual gothic films. "I wasn't interested in doing a remake or a sequel of the original Planet of the Apes film," Burton said later. "But I was intrigued by the idea of revisiting that world. Like a lot of people, I was affected by the original film. I wanted to do a 're-imagining'." Richard D. Zanuck signed on as producer in March. "This is a very emotional film for me. I greenlighted the original Apes when I was the head of Fox in 1967." Under Burton's direction, Broyles wrote another draft, but his script was projected at a \$200 million budget. Fox wanted to cut it to \$100 million. In August 2000, two months before principal photography, Fox brought Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal for rewrites. Broyles "had a lot of respect with the work they [Konner and Rosenthal] did. And to think that given what I'd done and given what Tim wanted, they navigated the right course." One of the considered endings had Leo Davidson crash-landing at Yankee Stadium, witnessing apes playing baseball. Various alternatives were considered before the filmmakers decided on the final one. The production of Planet of the Apes was a difficult experience for Burton. This was largely contributed by Fox's adamant release date (July 2001), which meant that everything from pre-production to editing and visual effects work was rushed. Konner and Rosenthal were rewriting the script even as sets were being constructed. Ari, Helena Bonham Carter's character, was originally a princess. She was changed to "a Senator's daughter with a liberal mentality". One of the drafts had General Thade, Tim Roth's character, as an albino gorilla, but Burton felt chimpanzees were more frightening. Limbo, Paul Giamatti's character "was supposed to turn into a good guy. There was supposed to be this touching personal growth thing at the end," Giamatti reflected. "But Tim [Burton] and I both thought that was kind of lame so we decided to just leave him as a jerk into the end." ### Filming Burton wanted to begin filming in October 2000, but it was pushed back to November 6, 2000 and ended in April 2001. Filming for Planet of the Apes began at Lake Powell, where parts of the original film were shot. Due to a local drought, production crews had to pump in extra water. The film was mostly shot at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, California, while other filming locations included lava plains in Hawaii and Trona Pinnacles at Ridgecrest. To preserve secrecy, the shooting script did not include the ending. Fox considered using computer-generated imagery to create the apes, but Burton insisted on using prosthetic makeup designed by Rick Baker. Baker was previously involved with Adam Rifkin's and Oliver Stone's unproduced remakes. Burton commented, "I have a relationship with both of them (Winston and Baker), so that decision was hard," he says. "Stan worked on Edward Scissorhands and Baker did Martin Landau's makeup [as Béla Lugosi in Ed Wood]". On his hiring, Baker explained, "I did the Dino De Laurentiis version of King Kong in 1976 and was always disappointed because I wasn't able to do it as realistically as I wanted. I thought Apes would be a good way to make up for that." In addition to King Kong, Baker previously worked with designing ape makeup on Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, Gorillas in the Mist, and the 1998 remake of Mighty Joe Young. The makeup took ranged from 2 to 4 & 1/2 hours to apply and an hour to remove. Burton explained, "it's like going to the dentist at two in the morning and having people poke at you for hours. Then you wear an ape costume until nine at night." Burton was adamant that the apes should be substantially "more animal-like; flying through trees, climb walls, swing out of windows, and go ape shit when angry." For a month and a half before shooting started, the actors who portrayed apes attended "ape school" under the choreography of Terry Notary. Industrial Light & Magic, Rhythm and Hues Studios and Animal Logic were commissioned for the visual effects sequences. Rick Heinrichs served as the production designer and Colleen Atwood did costume design. To compose the film score, Burton hired regular collaborator Danny Elfman, who had previously been set as composer when Adam Rifkin was attached to do his own remake of the original back in 1989 before various filmmakers, including but eventually Burton himself, were attempted to do so later on. Elfman noted that his work on Planet of the Apes contained more percussion instruments than usual. During filming, Roth held a grudge against Heston due to his work with the National Rifle Association: "It was very difficult for me. On one level, there's the man and he's my dad. But on the other level, the whole NRA thing is what it is now. I'm so against it, very vocally so. But it was inappropriate for the workplace. If I'm going to talk to him, I'll talk to him outside the workplace. So it was just two guys in makeup doing a scene." Roth later claimed he would not have appeared in the film had he known he would be sharing a scene with Heston. ## Reception ### Box office Hasbro released a toy line, while Dark Horse Comics published a comic book adaptation. The original release date for the film was July 4, 2001. Planet of the Apes was released on July 27, 2001 in 3,500 theaters across the United States and Canada, grossing \$68,532,960 in its opening weekend. This was the second-highest opening weekend of 2001, after Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. The film also dethroned Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace for having the best opening for any 20th Century Fox film. At that point, it had the second-highest opening weekend of any film, behind The Lost World: Jurassic Park. It was the second film of the year to cross the \$60 million mark during its first three days, following The Mummy Returns. This record would be later joined by Monsters, Inc. and Rush Hour 2. Both the latter film and Planet of the Apes teamed up with Jurassic Park III and American Pie 2 to become the first four consecutive films to make an opening weekend above the \$45 million mark. Planet of the Apes crushed X-Men's record for having the largest July opening weekend. The film would hold that record until Austin Powers in Goldmember took it in 2002. Additionally, the film surpassed Batman Returns for scoring the biggest opening weekend for a Tim Burton film. It would go on to hold this record for less than a decade until it was taken by Alice in Wonderland in 2010. For its second weekend, the film made a total of \$28.5 million. Meanwhile, Planet of the Apes would begin to expand to Asian countries. While the film was unable to take the top chart spot from Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away, its opening was still a strong start to the company's international roll-out in one of the most significant international territories. Plus, it had a record opening in Brazil. It took in \$1.5 million from 366 screens, beating the previous record held by Independence Day. In Mexico, Planet of the Apes earned \$3.1 million from 547 screens, making it the second largest movie opening in the country, after Dinosaur. The film went on to gross \$180,011,740 in the United States and Canada and \$182,200,000 elsewhere, for a worldwide total of \$362,211,740. Planet of the Apes was the tenth-highest-grossing film in North America, and ninth-highest worldwide, of 2001. ### Project APE To help promote the release of Planet of the Apes, 20th Century Fox collaborated with Geocaching and released an internet marketing campaign nicknamed "Project APE", that involved people going out into the real world. Geocaching was barely a year old at the time, and was just beginning to become more well known. The promotion's backstory, which actually had no connection to the movie, was that a group of renegade humans were placing artefacts (geocaches) around the globe in an effort to reveal an Alternate Primate Evolution. Over the course of several weeks in 2001, a cache containing props and memorabilia from the movie (prop blindfolds, prop knives, posters, trading cards and more) was released every week. However, the cache's location was not given, but clues were given throughout the week that narrowed down the location until the cache's coordinates were released on a Friday. It was then a race to get to the cache, with the first person arriving at the location getting a pick of the goodies in the cache. The caches were large ammo boxes, with "Project APE" spray painted on the front. Fourteen caches were placed in a series of missions numbered 1–12 (one was "Special Movie" for the movie premiere in New York and there was a Mission 10a & 10b, with 10b being another cache with the London premiere tickets). Evidence points to a potential Mission 13, but no cache page has been found for it. Most of the caches did not last beyond a couple of finds, as most of them were muggled (stolen). Only two caches are active today, with one located outside of Seattle, Washington, and the other in Brazil. ### Critical response On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes Planet of the Apes has an approval rating of 44% based on 158 reviews, with an average rating of 5.51/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "This remake of Planet of the Apes can't compare to the original in some critics' minds, but the striking visuals and B-movie charms may win you over." On Metacritic the film has an average score of 50 out of 100, based on 34 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 21⁄2 stars. He praised the twist ending, but felt the film lacked a balanced story structure. > The movie is great-looking. Rick Baker's makeup is convincing even in the extreme closeups, and his apes sparkle with personality and presence. The sets and locations give us a proper sense of alien awe. Tim Burton made a film that's respectful to the original, and respectable in itself, but that's not enough. Ten years from now, it will be the 1968 version that people are still renting. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave a negative review. "Call it a letdown, worsened by the forces of shoddy screenwriting. To quote Heston in both films, 'Damn them, damn them all'." Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times believed "the actors in the nonhuman roles are mostly too buried by makeup to make strong impressions. Unfortunately, none of the good work counts as much as you'd think it would," Turan said. "Planet of the Apes shows that taking material too seriously can be as much of a handicap as not taking it seriously at all." Elvis Mitchell of The New York Times gave a more favorable review, feeling the script was balanced and the film served its purpose as "pure entertainment". Susan Wloszczyna of USA Today enjoyed Planet of the Apes, feeling most of the credit should go to prosthetic makeup designer Rick Baker. Much criticism was leveled against the ambiguous ending. Tim Roth, who portrayed General Thade, said "I cannot explain that ending. I have seen it twice and I don't understand anything." Helena Bonham Carter, who played Ari, said, "I thought it made sense, kind of. I don't understand why everyone went, 'Huh?' It's all a time warp thing. He's gone back and he realizes Thade's beat him there." Although the ending was ambiguous, it was closer to the ending of the actual Pierre Boulle book than was the ending of the 1968 Charlton Heston movie version. In the first of two twist endings of the Pierre Boulle book, the astronaut escapes back to planet Earth, only to be greeted by a gorilla in a jeep on the landing strip. Burton claimed the ending was not supposed to make any sense, but it was more of a cliffhanger to be explained in a possible sequel. "It was a reasonable cliffhanger that could be used in case Fox or another filmmaker wanted to do another movie," he explained. The film was nominated for two BAFTA Awards, one for Best Make-up held by Rick Baker, the other for Best Costume Design. Roth (Supporting Actor), Bonham Carter (Supporting Actress), Colleen Atwood (Costume), and Rick Baker (Make-up) received nominations at the Saturn Awards. Atwood and Baker were nominated at the 55th British Academy Film Awards, while music composer Danny Elfman was nominated for his work at the 43rd Grammy Awards. Planet of the Apes won Worst Remake at the 22nd Golden Raspberry Awards, while Heston (Worst Supporting Actor) and Estella Warren (Worst Supporting Actress) also won awards. At the 2001 Stinkers Bad Movie Awards, the film received nominations for Worst Director (Burton), Worst Supporting Actress (Warren), and Worst Screenplay for a Film Grossing Over \$100M Worldwide Using Hollywood Math, but it failed to win any of those. ## Future ### Cancelled sequel Fox stated that if Planet of the Apes was a financial success, then a sequel would be commissioned. Ultimately, they decided against pursuing another film. When asked whether he would be interested in working on a follow-up, director Tim Burton replied, "I'd rather jump out a window." Mark Wahlberg and Helena Bonham Carter would have returned if Burton had decided to make another Apes film. Paul Giamatti had been interested in reprising his role. "I think it'd be great to have apes driving cars, smoking cigars," Giamatti said. "Wearing glasses, sitting in a board room, stuff like that." Planet of the Apes was the last film Burton worked on with his former fiancée Lisa Marie. After their relationship broke up, Burton started a relationship with Bonham Carter, who portrayed Ari. Planet of the Apes was also Burton's first collaboration with producer Richard D. Zanuck. ### Reboot Fox returned to the franchise in 2011 with Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a reboot of the series that led to its own sequels. ## Video game In 1998, after 20th Century Fox had greenlit James Cameron's version of the film remake, the company's video game division, Fox Interactive, started planning a video game tie-in. The film project went on hold when Cameron pulled out, but Fox Interactive remained confident a remake would progress eventually and continued with the game. Fox contracted French company Visiware as developer; with the film on hold, the creators developed their own story inspired by Boulle's novel and the original films. The game is an action-adventure in which the player controls astronaut Ulysses after he crashes on the Planet of the Apes. The game was developed for PC and PlayStation. The game experienced serious delays due to setbacks with the film project and Fox Interactive's decision to co-publish with a third party. Despite its long development, the game missed the debut of Burton's film. Fox Interactive and co-publisher Ubisoft finally released the PC version on September 20, 2001; the PlayStation version followed on August 22, 2002. The game received mostly negative reviews. Additionally, Ubisoft and developer Torus Games produced a substantially different Planet of the Apes game for Game Boy Advance and Game Boy Color. It is a side-scroller following the first two films; the player controls astronaut Ben on the Planet of the Apes. The Game Boy versions received average reviews. ## Home media Planet of the Apes was released on DVD and VHS on November 20, 2001. DVD rentals grossed \$40.8 million in the United States, as of December 2001. This THX certified two-disc DVD release features rare Nuon technology, which can only be used on Nuon-enhanced DVD players. These Nuon features include viddies and various zoom points during the film. The first disc features audio commentaries with Tim Burton and Danny Elfman, cast and crew profiles and enhanced viewing mode. It also contains a DTS 5.1 audio track and DVD-ROM. On the second disc, there are extended scenes, an HBO special, The Making of Planet of the Apes, behind-the-scenes footage, theatrical trailers, TV spots, previews for Moulin Rouge! and Dr. Dolittle 2, posters and press kit, a music promo, screen tests, galleries, multi-angle featurettes and more.

Eric Hacker

American baseball player (born 1983)

Eric Lynn Hacker (born March 26, 1983) is an American professional baseball pitcher who is a free agent. Hacker stands 6 feet 1 inch (1.85 m) and weighs 230 pounds (100 kg). He throws right-handed but is a switch hitter. He has also played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Pittsburgh Pirates, Minnesota Twins, and San Francisco Giants. He throws a fastball, a slider, a curveball, and a changeup. Hacker was drafted out of Duncanville High School by the New York Yankees in 2002. He pitched in their minor league system from 2002 to 2009 (missing 2004 and 2006 with injuries) before getting traded to the Pirates. He made his major league debut with Pittsburgh on September 22, 2009, and pitched in three games for them that season. He signed with the Giants in the offseason and spent the entire 2010 season in the minor leagues. In 2011, he signed with the Twins and appeared in two games with them. He signed with San Francisco in 2012 and made his first career start in the majors, recording a loss. He also pitched three games in relief for the Giants that year. ## High school and personal life Hacker was born in Duncanville, Texas; growing up, he attended Duncanville High School. He was named the starting quarterback on the school's football team his senior year, but he broke his foot in the second game of the season. Although some colleges were interested in him as a football player, he decided to concentrate on baseball as a result of the injury. As a senior, he was a third-team Class 5A All-State pitcher. Currently, Hacker lives in Southlake, Texas, with his wife, Christine, whom he married in November 2008. He is a Dallas Cowboys fan. Two of his hobbies are fishing and pool. ## Professional career ### New York Yankees organization Drafted by the New York Yankees in the 23rd round of the 2002 Major League Baseball draft, Hacker began his career with the GCL Yankees of the rookie-level Gulf Coast League. He appeared in three games with them in 2002. In 2003, he appeared in seven games (five starts) with them, posting a 3–2 record, a 2.86 earned run average (ERA), 26 strikeouts, and seven walks in 28+1⁄3 innings pitched. He also pitched with the Staten Island Yankees of the Class A short-season New York–Penn League, where he had no record and an ERA of 1.00 in two starts. He underwent Tommy John surgery in 2004 and missed the entire season. During his time with the GCL Yankees, he was roommates with Brandon Weeden. The two still correspond. In 2005, Hacker pitched for the Charleston RiverDogs of the Class A South Atlantic League and was named to the league's All-Star game. On July 2, he threw eight shutout innings in a 1–0 victory over the Rome Braves. However, he was placed on the disabled list the next day and missed the rest of the season with right shoulder inflammation. In 10 starts, Hacker had a 5–2 record, a 1.60 ERA, 40 strikeouts, 14 walks, and one complete game in 62 innings pitched. Hacker missed the entire 2006 season after undergoing right shoulder surgery. Hacker began 2007 with Charleston, where he had a 9–2 record, a 2.56 ERA, 54 strikeouts, 18 walks, and 95 innings pitched in 17 starts. He also appeared in nine games (seven starts) for the Tampa Yankees of the Class A advanced Florida State League (FSL), posting a 3–3 record, a 6.10 ERA, 22 strikeouts, and 14 walks in 38+1⁄3 innings. He finished the season by appearing in one game (which he won) with the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees of the Class AAA International League (IL). Hacker began 2008 with Tampa. He was named the FSL Pitcher of the Week from April 8 to 14 after throwing 14 scoreless innings. After recording a 2–2 record, a 1.87 ERA, 31 strikeouts, nine walks, and 53 innings pitched in nine starts, he was promoted to the Trenton Thunder of the Class AA Eastern League on May 28. In 17 starts with the Thunder, he had a 7–4 record, a 2.76 ERA, 84 strikeouts, and 28 walks in 95+1⁄3 innings pitched. His minor league totals were a 9–6 record, a 2.43 ERA, 79 strikeouts, 33 walks, and 144+1⁄3 innings pitched in 26 starts. In the playoffs, he had a 2–0 record and a 1.54 ERA in two starts as the Thunder won the Eastern League championship. In 2009, Hacker attended spring training with New York for the first time but was sent to the minors on March 8 after two games. He began the season with Trenton, where he recorded a 1–1 record, a 4.11 ERA, eight strikeouts, seven walks, and 15+1⁄3 innings pitched in three starts. After three starts, he was promoted to Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, where he had an 0–1 record, a 7.88 ERA, 12 strikeouts, four walks, and 16 innings pitched in three starts. On May 9, he was designated for assignment to make room on the 40-man roster for Brett Tomko. ### Pittsburgh Pirates On May 16, Hacker was traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates for Rómulo Sánchez. The Pirates assigned him to the Indianapolis Indians of the International League. He was named the IL Pitcher of the Week for August 3–9 after winning both of his starts and striking out 14 hitters during the week. He recorded a 5–5 record, a 4.02 ERA, 82 strikeouts, 46 walks, and 116+1⁄3 innings pitched in 21 starts and was called up to the majors for the first time on September 8 following the IL season. Hacker said upon being called up: > Obviously as a kid, this was your dream goal to get to the big leagues. It hasn't quite set in with me yet until I actually step onto the field, and it's game time. I'm just excited to be here, be a part of the team. Hopefully I can contribute. Hacker made his major league debut on September 22, allowing two runs in an inning in a 10–4 loss to the Cincinnati Reds. He pitched a scoreless inning in a 6–0 loss to the Chicago Cubs in his next game on September 29. In his final game of the year on October 4, he pitched a scoreless inning in a 6–0 loss to Cincinnati. Hacker had no record, a 6.00 ERA, one strikeout, two walks, and three innings pitched in his three games with the Pirates. He was outrighted (sent to the minors and removed from the 40-man roster) on November 6, and he became a minor league free agent on November 9. ### San Francisco Giants (first stint) On December 18, 2009, Hacker signed with the San Francisco Giants. He pitched in four games for the Giants in spring training but was sent to the minors after posting a 14.29 ERA. With the Fresno Grizzlies of the AAA Pacific Coast League (PCL), he won eight consecutive decisions from July 4 to August 20. In 29 starts, Hacker posted a 16–8 record, a 4.51 ERA, 129 strikeouts, and 62 walks in 165+2⁄3 innings pitched. He tied for the PCL lead in starts with Lance Lynn while finishing sixth in innings pitched, sixth in ERA, and fourth in strikeouts (behind Lynn (141), Brandon Dickson (137), and Michael Kirkman (130)). His 16 wins led the PCL, the highest total since 1995 when Donne Wall won 17. On November 6, he became a free agent. ### Minnesota Twins On November 9, 2010, Hacker signed with the Minnesota Twins. He attended spring training but was sent to the minors after posting a 13.50 ERA in five games. He was called up to Minnesota on April 19 to replace Alex Burnett (who was optioned) in the bullpen; Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said, "We need a long guy [in the bullpen]." He made his Twins' debut that day, throwing two scoreless innings in an 11–0 loss to the Baltimore Orioles. In his next game on April 27, he gave up one unearned run in 3+1⁄3 innings but allowed three inherited runners to score in an 8–2 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays. After the game, Hacker was optioned back to Triple-A Rochester to make room on the roster for Anthony Swarzak. On July 17, he was outrighted off the 40-man roster to make room for Scott Diamond. With the Rochester Red Wings of the International League, Hacker had a 7–14 record, a 6.10 ERA, 98 strikeouts, 50 walks, and 135+2⁄3 innings pitched in 26 games (25 starts). He tied with Diamond for the league lead in losses, ranked sixth in the league in walks, led the league in runs allowed (103), and ranked third in the league in earned runs allowed (92, behind Thad Weber's 95 and Corey Kluber's 93). On October 4, he became a free agent. ### San Francisco Giants (second stint) In 2012, Hacker re-signed with the Giants. He was called up to make his first career start for the Giants on April 27 due to an earlier doubleheader. He allowed three runs and got the loss (his first career decision) but recorded seven strikeouts in six innings as the San Diego Padres defeated the Giants 5–3. After the game, he was returned to Fresno to make room for Steve Edlefsen on the roster. Hacker was selected to the PCL All-Star Game in 2012. On August 17, he was called up to be used as a long reliever soon after Brad Penny was placed on the disabled list. The next day, he gave up a run in 1+2⁄3 innings (a home run by Carlos Quentin) in an 8–7 victory over San Diego. He gave up a run in one inning (a home run by Will Venable) in a 7–1 loss to San Diego on August 19. He allowed a run in one inning in a 7–3 loss to the Atlanta Braves in his next outing on August 25. After the game, Hacker was optioned to Fresno to make room for Eli Whiteside when the Giants decided to have three catchers on their roster. With the Giants, he had an 0–1 record, a 5.59 ERA, eight strikeouts, two walks, and 9+2⁄3 innings pitched in four games (one start). In 26 games (25 starts) with Fresno, Hacker had a 12–6 record, a 4.01 ERA, 103 strikeouts, and 43 walks in 150+1⁄3 innings pitched. He tied with Tom Koehler, Ryan Verdugo, and Brad Peacock for fourth in the PCL in wins (behind John Ely's and Sean O'Sullivan's 14 and Barry Enright's 13) and finished fourth in ERA (behind Ely's 3.20, Yusmeiro Petit's 3.46, and Brad Hand's 4.00). He was designated for assignment on September 4 to make room for Emmanuel Burriss on the Giants' roster, and he became a free agent four days later. ### NC Dinos On January 15, 2013, Hacker signed with the NC Dinos in their inaugural season in the KBO League. Hacker was part of a starting rotation alongside fellow former MLB pitchers Charlie Shirek and Adam Wilk. On April 4, Hacker started against the Lotte Giants. He pitched 7 innings while allowing 3 earned runs, but no run support and poor defense caused him to take the loss. During the rest of April, Hacker had a lot of trouble in dealing with runners on base, because his pitching motion was vulnerable to stolen bases. So, by the end of April, Hacker was forced to make changes his pitching delivery. On March 10, he faced the Doosan Bears, and his delivery was changed. Twelve days later, he got his first win in KBO. In late 2013, Hacker re-signed for the 2014 season with NC Dinos. He later re-signed twice with the Dinos. Hacker's best season in the KBO was 2015, when he led the league with 19 wins to go along with a 3.13 ERA and 164 strikeouts. For his efforts we was given the 2015 pitcher's Golden Glove Award. Hacker pitched for the Dinos in the 2016 Korean Series, starting and losing Game Two. On December 27, 2016, Hacker signed a one-year, \$1 million contract to remain with the Dinos. He started and won the deciding fifth game of the 2017 Semi-playoffs against the Lotte Giants, as the Dinos won 9-0. ### Nexen Heroes On June 20, 2018, Hacker signed a \$300,000 contract with the Nexen Heroes of the KBO League. Hacker spent six seasons in the KBO League, going 61–37 (.622 winning percentage) with a 3.66 ERA and 675 strikeouts. ## Pitching style Hacker throws four pitches: a fastball, a slider, a curveball, and a changeup. Early in his minor league career, he only threw the fastball and the slider; former Indians' pitching coach Ray Searage believes the other two pitches have helped him keep hitters "off balance." After his first start (against the Padres in 2012), Padres' manager Bud Black said, "He has a deliberate motion out of the windup."

Dragon Quest (video game)

1986 video game

titled Dragon Warrior when initially localized to North America, is a role-playing video game developed by Chunsoft for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was released by Enix in Japan in 1986 and by Nintendo in North America in 1989. It is the first game in the Dragon Quest video game series. Dragon Quest has been ported and remade for several video game platforms, including the MSX, MSX2, PC-9801, Super Famicom, Game Boy Color, Nintendo 3DS, PlayStation 4, mobile phones, and Nintendo Switch as of 2019. The player controls the hero character who is charged with saving the Kingdom of Alefgard and rescuing its princess from the evil Dragonlord. Dragon Warrior's story became the second part in a trilogy, with several spinoff anime and manga series. Dragon Quest was created by Yuji Horii, inspired by previous role-playing games such as Wizardry, Ultima, and his own 1983 game The Portopia Serial Murder Case. Horii wanted to create an introductory RPG for a wide audience. He emphasized storytelling and emotional involvement, and simplified the interface, to translate the mostly Western PC game genre of RPG to the Japanese console market. Manga artist and Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama produced the artwork and Koichi Sugiyama composed the music. The North American version features numerous changes, including battery-backed RAM save games (rather than using a password save system), larger character sprites, and pseudo-Elizabethan English style dialog. Dragon Quest was commercially successful in Japan, but its later release as Dragon Warrior in North America was less favorably received. The original version of the game sold more than 2 million copies worldwide, with 1.5 million sold in Japan and 500,000 in the United States. Later, Western critics noted the game's shortcomings but acknowledged its importance to the genre. It inspired fan-made ROM hacks with substantial changes. The game's synthesized soundtrack has been orchestrated, and its music has been performed at numerous concerts. As a whole, Dragon Warrior has been credited with establishing the basic template for subsequent Japanese console RPGs. ## Gameplay Dragon Warrior is a single-player role-playing video game. Years after its release, its gameplay mechanics have been described as simplistic and spartan. The player controls a young hero who sets out to defeat a being known as the Dragonlord. The player starts with a menu to begin a new quest, continue a previous quest, or change the speed in which messages appear on the screen. In the Japanese version, continuing a quest requires a password. In the North American Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) English version, the quest is saved onto the game cartridge's battery-backup (called an "Adventure Log" in the "Imperial Scrolls of Honor"), with options to delete or duplicate a saved quest. In a new quest, the player may give the hero any name which the game analyzes to determine the initial ability scores and their statistical growth over the course of the game. Dragon Warrior presents players with a clear objective from the start and uses a series of smaller scenarios to increase the hero's strength in order to achieve the objective. The game begins in King Lorik's chamber in Tantegel Castle, where the hero receives information about the Dragonlord, whom he must defeat, and the stolen Balls of Light, which he must retrieve. After receiving some items and gold, the hero sets out on his quest. Much of Dragon Warrior is spent talking to townspeople and gathering information from them that leads to additional places, events, and secrets. Towns contain shops that sell improved weapons and armor; general stores where the player may buy other goods; inns that allow the hero to recover his health and magic, and shops that offer keys for purchase. The player may sell items at half price to shops that provide weapons, armor, or general goods. The hero's status window is shown whenever he stops moving, displaying his current experience level (LV) and the number of hit points (HP), magic points (MP), gold (G), and experience points (E). To safely progress to the next areas in the game, the player needs to accumulate experience points and gold by defeating enemies outside of towns – in the overworld and in dungeons. Apart from the Dragonlord's castle, there are no physical restrictions on where players can roam. Instead, monsters increase in difficulty as players venture further from Tantegel castle. As the hero's level increases, the player can explore further afield with less risk. Enemies appear in random encounters and the hero fights one opponent at a time. The encounter rate is lowest on fields and increases in forests and hills. Battles are turn-based and fought from a first-person perspective while the hero remains off-screen. In combat, players must defeat the enemy by reducing its HP to zero. During combat, players have four commands: "fight", "run", "spell", and "item". The "fight" command causes the hero to attack the enemy with a weapon, or with his bare fists if no weapon is available, in an attempt to inflict damage. With the "run" command, the hero attempts to escape from a battle, which is recommended if his HP is low. The "spell" command casts magic that can, for example, heal the hero or damage the enemy. The "item" command uses herbs that replenish the hero's HP. During combat, the hero loses HP when he takes damage, and the display turns red when his HP is low. If his HP falls to zero, he dies and is taken back to King Lorik to be resurrected, and loses half his gold "as punishment". If the hero succeeds in defeating an enemy, he gains experience points and gold; if he gains enough experience points, his experience level increases, giving him greater strength, agility, speed, and the ability to use magic spells. Every time a spell is used, the hero's MP decreases at a different cost per spell. Both HP and MP can be restored by resting at an inn, and a non-player character can replenish the hero's MP in Tantegel Castle. As the hero earns more gold, better weapons, armor, and items can be purchased. The player can conservatively manage the limited inventory space. Exploring the dark caves requires a torch or the "RADIANT" spell to display a temporary field of vision. In the English version, the player can return to King Lorik at any time to save the quest. The control pad moves the hero and the menu cursor. Other buttons confirm and cancel commands. The English version has menu commands to talk to people, check their status, search beneath their feet, use items, take treasure chests, open doors, and use stairs. In some remakes, certain commands are assigned to buttons, navigating stairs is automatic, and the hero's speed is higher. ## Plot Dragon Warrior's plot is a twist on the classic damsel in distress, in that the player does not even have to meet with or speak with her to complete the game. ### Backstory Dragon Warrior, its sequel, Dragon Quest II, and its prequel, Dragon Quest III, make up a trilogy with a shared timeline. The story's background begins when the kingdom of Alefgard was shrouded in permanent darkness. The brave warrior Erdrick ("Loto" in the Japanese versions and Game Boy Color remake) defeated an evil creature and restored light to the land. In Erdrick's possession was the Ball of Light, which he used to drive away enemies who threatened the kingdom. Erdrick handed the Ball of Light to King Lorik, and Alefgard remained peaceful for a long time. The Ball of Light kept winters short in Alefgard and helped maintain peace and prosperity for the region. However, there is one man who shunned the Ball of Light's radiance and secluded himself in a mountain cave. One day, while exploring the cave's extensive network of tunnels, the man encountered a sleeping dragon who awoke upon his entrance. He feared the dragon would incinerate him with its fiery breath, but the dragon instead knelt before him and obeyed his commands. This man, who is later discovered to be a dragon, became known as the Dragonlord. One day, after his soul became corrupted by learning magic, the Dragonlord attacked Tantegel Castle and the nearby town of Breconnary with his fleet of dragons and set the town on fire. Riding a large red dragon, the Dragonlord descended upon Tantegel Castle and stole the Ball of Light. Soon, monsters began to appear throughout the entire land, destroying everything in their paths. Much of the land became poisonous marshes, and at least one destroyed town never recovered and remains in ruins. The following day, Erdrick arrived at Tantegel Castle to speak with King Lorik and offered his help to defeat the Dragonlord. After searching the land for clues to the Dragonlord's location, Erdrick found that the Dragonlord lived on an island that could be accessed only via a magical bridge that only a Rainbow Drop could generate. After venturing to the island, Erdrick disappeared. Many years later, during King Lorik XVI's reign, the Dragonlord attacked the kingdom again and captured Princess Gwaelin. Many heroes tried and failed to rescue the princess and recover the Ball of Light from the Dragonlord's castle, called Charlock. The prophet Mahetta predicted that "One day, a descendant of the valiant Erdrick shall come forth to defeat the Dragonlord." However, when the descendant arrives as the game's hero, many of the people of Alefgard have forgotten the story of Erdrick, and those few who do remember consider it a myth and do not believe in Mahetta's prophecy. King Lorik starts to mourn the decline of his kingdom. ### Main story The game begins when the player assumes the role of a stranger who arrives at Tantegel Castle. A castle guard tells him that a dragon has captured the princess and is holding her captive in a distant cave. Determined to rescue the princess and defeat the Dragonlord, he discovers an ancient tablet hidden inside a desert cave; carved on the tablet is a message from Erdrick that outlines what the hero needs to do to follow in Erdrick's footsteps and defeat the Dragonlord. The hero eventually rescues Princess Gwaelin, but realizes that in order to restore light to Alefgard, he must defeat the Dragonlord at Charlock Castle. After the hero collects a series of relics, he creates a bridge to reach Charlock and fights his way through the castle before finally confronting the Dragonlord. At this point the hero is given a dialogue choice – to side with the Dragonlord or to challenge him. If players choose the former, the game ends, the hero is put to sleep, and the game freezes; however, in the GBC remake, the hero instead wakes up from a bad dream. If the player chooses to fight, a final battle between the hero and the Dragonlord commences. Once the hero defeats the Dragonlord he reclaims the Ball of Light, eradicating all monsters in Alefgard, and triumphantly returns to Tantegel Castle where King Lorik offers his kingdom as a reward. The hero turns down the offer and instead wishes to find his own kingdom. Accompanied by Princess Gwaelin, the hero then sets off in search of a new land; this sets the stage for the events in Dragon Warrior II, which take place many years later and tells the story of three of the hero's descendants. ### Characters The two main characters are the hero and the Dragonlord. Major supporting characters are King Lorik (King Lars in the GBC remake); his daughter Princess Gwaelin (Lady Lora), and two sages the hero meets during his journey. The hero, who comes from a land beyond Alefgard, is a descendant of the legendary Erdrick. When the hero arrives, he does not appear to be a warrior – he arrives without weapons or armor – and is ignorant of the situation. The populace thinks his claim of the ability to defeat the Dragonlord are preposterous; however, King Lorik sees this ability, which give him hope and he aids the hero on his quest. The Dragonlord is a dragon who rules from Charlock Castle, which is visible from Tantegel Castle, the game's starting point. His soul became evil by learning magic. Rumors say that, through a spy network, he knows everything that happens in Alefgard. He seeks "unlimited power and destruction", which results in a rising tide of evil throughout Alefgard. The Dragonlord wants to enslave the world with his army of monsters that he controls with his will. ## Development ### Background When Eidansha Boshu Service Center was founded in 1975 it published tabloid magazines that advertised real estate. In 1982, after failing to establish a chain of stores, the company's founder Yasuhiro Fukushima transformed it into a software company devoted to gaming and created Enix. To find talent for the company, Fukushima held the "Enix Game Hobby Program Contest". The competition was styled after manga competitions, was advertised in computer and manga magazines, and had a million prize for the winners. The winners were Kazuro Morita (森田和郎), Koichi Nakamura, and manga magazine Shōnen Jump writer Yuji Horii, who was the top winner. Horii designed a tennis game, Love Match Tennis, which became Enix's first release. While he did not believe he would win, he was motivated by his editor, who enjoyed the games and published Horii's articles on them. Later, when Enix began creating games for the NES, Fukushima held another contest. This time, Nakamura won with his "cartoonish and creative contest entry" Door Door, which became Enix's first release for the NES. Horii's earliest inspiration for Dragon Quest is his own 1983 PC visual novel The Portopia Serial Murder Case – a murder mystery adventure game that bears some similarities to games such as Mystery House (1980), Zork (1980), King's Quest (1984), and particularly Déjà Vu (1985). Horii wanted to advance the game's storyline through dialogue. Portopia was originally released for Japan's NEC PC-6001 and was later ported to the NES in 1985. The port is Enix's second release for the system and the first game which Horii and Nakamura worked on together. Horii redesigned the interface for the port to accommodate the console's limited controls, and added a dungeon-crawling area which the detective explores. While Portopia did not directly result in Dragon Quest's creation, it was, according to 1UP.com, "a proving ground" for the RPG. The menu-based command system of Portopia would later be used in Dragon Quest. The original idea for what became Dragon Quest came during the development of the 1985 NES port of Portopia. Horii and Nakamura discovered the RPG Wizardry at a Macworld Conference & Expo. It had some influence on the NES Portopia's dungeon crawl segments, and Horii liked its depth and visuals. He wanted to create a game similar to Wizardry, to expose Japan to the mainly Western-dominated RPG genre, and to expand the genre beyond computer enthusiasts. Horii also cited Ultima as an inspiration for Dragon Quest's gameplay, specifically the first-person random battles in Wizardry and the overhead perspective of Ultima. Though the RPG genre was predominantly Western and limited to PCs, Japanese gamers enjoyed home-grown games such as The Black Onyx and the Dragon Slayer series alongside Western RPG ports. However, while Horii and Nakamura enjoyed the dungeon crawling and statistical nature of Wizardry, they realized most people would not. This had not originally been a concern, but the success of Super Mario Bros. greatly increased the potential audience of any new Famicom or NES game. To create Dragon Quest, the gameplay needed to be simplified. According to Horii: "There was no keyboard, and the system was much simpler, using just a [game] controller. But I still thought that it would be really exciting for the player to play as their alter ego in the game. I personally was playing Wizardry and Ultima at the time, and I really enjoyed seeing my own self in the game." In order to create an RPG that would appeal to a wide audience unfamiliar with the genre, and video games in general, Horii wanted to create a new kind of RPG that did not rely on previous experience with the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop RPG, did not require hundreds of hours of rote fighting, and could appeal to any kind of gamer. To accomplish this he needed to simplify the system and have players associate themselves with the hero. Thus as the game progressed, the hero would become stronger, in contrast to action games like Super Mario Bros. where Mario does not become continuously more powerful throughout the entire game. He wanted to build on Portopia and place a greater emphasis on storytelling and emotional involvement. He developed a coming-of-age tale that audiences could relate to and made use of RPG level-building gameplay as a way to represent this. ### Japanese development Yuji Horii and his team at Chunsoft began developing Dragon Quest in 1985. He believed that the Famicom was the ideal platform for it, because unlike arcade games, players would not worry about spending money if they got a game over, and they could continue playing from where they left off. Losing a battle results in resurrection at a previous save point rather than the game ending, making the game more accessible. He wanted to include multiple player characters but was forced to use only one due to memory constraints. Horii knew that RPGs had a steeper learning curve than other video games, and to compensate for this he implemented quick level-ups at the start of the game with a clear final goal that is visible from the world map's starting point: the Dragonlord's castle. He provided a series of smaller scenarios in order to build up the player's strength to achieve the final objective. He created an open world which is not blocked physically in any way except by monsters that can easily kill unprepared players; Gamasutra described this as one of the earliest examples of nonlinear gameplay. Horii used bridges to signify changes in difficulty and implemented a level progression with a high starting growth rate that decelerates over time, which contrasts with the random initial stats and constant growth rates of the early editions of Dungeons & Dragons. To appeal to a larger audience, manga artist and creator of Dragon Ball, Akira Toriyama, was hired. As with Dragon Ball, his artwork features characters "whose strength and cunning transcend generations", with humorous elements such as a chibi style. Koichi Sugiyama, the game's music composer, solicited Enix via a PC game's feedback questionnaire. He was already a well-known television composer, and, upon seeing his feedback, Enix producer Yukinobu Chida contacted him to confirm that "he was the Sugiyama from television". Chida asked Sugiyama to compose a score for Dragon Quest. The game's classical score is Sugiyama's second video game composition after Wingman 2. He said it took him five minutes to compose the original opening theme, and noted the difficulty in adding a personal touch to the short jingles, but that his past experience with creating music for television commercials helped. According to Sugiyama, a composer has between three and five seconds to catch the audience's attention through music. The theme and his other jingles for Dragon Quest have remained relatively intact in its sequels. ### 1989 North American localization Coverage of Dragon Quest's North American localization first appeared in Nintendo Fun Club News's winter 1988 issue. With this, the game's title was changed to Dragon Warrior to avoid infringing on the trademark on wargame publisher Simulations Publications's pen-and-paper RPG DragonQuest. The article sources the game's Japanese version for images and names, briefly explaining the backstory and basic gameplay elements, comparing the game to The Legend of Zelda. The game was later mentioned in Nintendo Power's "Pak Watch" preview section in March 1989, mentioning Dragon Quest III's Japanese release in the magazine's premiere July 1988 issue. It again mentioned the change of name from Dragon Quest to Dragon Warrior, its inspiration of two Japanese sequels, and that its release was still distant in time. ## Release Dragon Quest was released in Japan in 1986 for the Famicom, the MSX, the MSX2, and the PC-9801. Dragon Warrior was released in North America by Nintendo of America under the direction of Satoru Iwata with help from Horii in August 1989 – months before the Japanese release of Dragon Quest IV. Because the game was released in North America nearly three years after the original release in Japan, the graphics were improved. Instead of lengthy passwords with kana characters, the North American version has a battery-backed RAM savegame. Akira Toriyama's artwork in the instruction booklets was changed to reflect a more traditional tone of popular American based RPGs such as the Ultima series. The character sprites were changed to face their direction of travel; in the Japanese versions, the sprites are smaller and face only forward, requiring players to choose a direction for actions from a menu. Spells were given self-explanatory one-word titles instead of the made-up words of the Japanese version. Locations were renamed, and dialogue was rewritten from its whimsical style comparable to Dragon Ball to a style inspired by Elizabethan English, with sentences such as "Thy hit points have decreased by 1." Nintendo also removed salacious humor and religious connotations from the English-language version. For example, in the Japanese version, in the town where the hero first buys keys, a woman offers to sell puff-puff—a Japanese onomatopoeia for a girl rubbing her breasts in someone's face, or juggling her own breasts. In the North American version, the same woman sells tomatoes. The term has been included in the game's sequels as well as in Toriyama's Dragon Ball series. Katsuya Terada created some of the artwork for the early Dragon Warrior articles in Nintendo Power. Neither Terada nor those editing the artwork for the instruction booklet followed Toriyama's work; they instead used the settings and character poses to create alternate artwork in an American style. The Japanese hero has a chibi manga style, and the English version's appearance is based on "the West's template of a medieval hero". In June 1989, Electronic Gaming Monthly's "Quartermann" speculated that Dragon Warrior would be Nintendo's "big release" in North America that Christmas based on the immense popularity of the series in Japan, especially Dragon Quest III. Nintendo Power provided three feature articles on Dragon Warrior for issues between May and October 1989 and the November–December 1989 issue includes a strategy guide. The March–April 1990 issue of Nintendo Power has a map of the game world, with a poster of Super Contra on the other side, and a Dragon Warrior text adventure. In late 1990, Nintendo reportedly strategized the unloading of unsold game units by sending free copies of Dragon Warrior to Nintendo Power subscribers, including a 64-page Explorer's Handbook with a full walkthrough of the game and additional backstory. At the time, the game cost approximately at retail and the magazine's subscription fee was only . The giveaway attracted nearly 500,000 new magazine subscribers, and many more renewed subscriptions just to get the game. This ultimately led to the success of the series in the Western market. ### Re-releases and remakes Enix remade Dragon Quest and Dragon Quest II for the single-cartridge compilation Dragon Quest I + II for the Super Famicom on December 18, 1993. More than 1.2 million copies were sold in Japan. In 1998, Enix released BS Dragon Quest for the Super Famicom via the Satellaview peripheral exclusively in Japan. The latter consists of four one-hour scenarios downloaded on a weekly schedule. The player is tasked with leveling the character, collecting medals, and completing scenario-specific conditions with special real-time events. The compilation was re-released for the GBC, developed by Tose and released by Enix on September 23, 1999, in Japan and September 27, 2000, in North America. It uses an entirely new translation, discards the pseudo-Elizabethan English style and uses names closer to those in the Japanese version. In this remake, "Dragonlord" is changed to "DracoLord", and "Erdrick" is changed to "Loto". Several additional features were added such as where the player can quicksave the game anytime outside a battle. Players can store some gold. The menu was streamlined and monsters yield more experience and gold, saving time. In 2004, Dragon Quest and its sequel were remade for mobile phones in Japan. These are graphically based on the Super Famicom remake of Dragon Quest III and Dragon Quest VI. On September 15, 2011, the Dragon Quest 25th Anniversary Collection compilation for the Wii was released in Japan, containing the Famicom version, Super Famicom version, Dragon Quest II, and Dragon Quest III. It includes original copies of the games' strategy guides, original artwork, and development material. In October 2013, Square Enix announced the re-release of Dragon Quest I–VIII for Android and iOS. In November 2013, the game was released for iOS and Android in Japan, based on the 2004 mobile remake. The United States and Europe mobile versions were released on September 11, 2014. In the Nintendo Direct in September 2019, Nintendo confirmed that "Dragon Quest", "II" and "III", would be released on the Nintendo Switch on September 27, 2019. ## Related media Dragon Warrior has inspired related media in the form of a manga series, which has been adapted to anime, and a symphonic video game soundtrack. ### Anime and manga The manga series, , was written by Chiaki Kawamata and Junji Koyanagi, with artwork by Kamui Fujiwara, and was published between 1991 and 1997 by Monthly Shōnen Gangan. Enix compiled the series into 21 volumes, which were later released on compact disc in 1994. It was released on December 11, 2009 for the PlayStation Store as part of the initial launch of Sony's digital comic distribution. In 1996, an anime movie based on the manga was released on videocassette. Square Enix started publishing a sequel series, , in 2005. wrote the first four volumes, and Takashi Umemura wrote the last five; Yuji Horii supervised the manga, and Kamui Fujiwara contributed the artwork. Dragon Quest Saga: Emblem of Roto takes place between Dragon Warrior III and Dragon Warrior. After monsters possessed Carmen's king for seven years, the kingdom fell to the hordes of evil. The only survivors were Prince Arus and an army General's daughter, Lunafrea. Meanwhile, in the Kingdom of Loran, a child is born and is named Jagan in accordance with the demon lord Imagine's orders. Arus and Lunafrea set out to defeat the monsters and restore peace to the world. The sequel, To the Children Who Inherit the Emblem, takes place five years after the events in Dragon Quest Saga: Emblem of Roto. The world is again in chaos and a young boy, Arosu (アロス), sets out to gather companions to help him save the world from evil. ### Soundtrack Koichi Sugiyama composed and directed the music for Dragon Warrior. The soundtrack included eight tracks, which RPGFan said was "the foundation for Sugiyama's career". The pieces were arranged and incorporated into later Dragon Warrior games' soundtracks. The music has been released in a variety of formats. The first is as a Drama CD, released by Enix on July 19, 1991, which incorporated a narrated story. Super Famicom Edition Symphonic Suite Dragon Quest I, published by Sony Records on January 12, 1994, followed; the soundtrack featured orchestral versions of the tracks played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the original versions of the tunes. The game's classical score was considered revolutionary for console game music. The soundtrack's "eight melodies" approach set the template for most RPG soundtracks released since then, hundreds of which have been organized in a similar manner. The orchestral albums for Dragon Warrior I and II were combined in Symphonic Suite Dragon Quest I•II, released by SME Visual Works on August 23, 2000, King Records reprinted it on October 7, 2009. The orchestral tracks were again released in the Symphonic Suite Dragon Quest I album, including orchestral versions of the game's sound effects. Numerous live concerts have featured performances of the game's music; many performances were later released as albums such as Dragon Quest in Concert and Suite Dragon Quest I•II. ## Reception ### NES version Initial sales of the game were so low that Enix was going to lose money, but several Shonen Jump articles by Horii helped increase its sales substantially. People liked Toriyama's artwork and Sugiyama's music, which the book Power-Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life said "was richer and more exciting than any game music had ever sounded". In Japan, 1.5 million copies of the original version were sold. More than 1 million of those copies were sold within the first six months. It was very successful there and launched a popular series with several spin-off series and stand-alone games. In the first Famitsu Best Hit Game Awards (published February 1987, for 1986 releases), Dragon Quest won the awards for Game of the Year, Best Scenario/Story, Best Character Design, Best Programmer (for Koichi Nakamura), and Best RPG. The 1989 "All Soft Catalog" issue of Famicom Tsūshin (Famitsu) includes Dragon Quest in its list of the best games of all time, receiving the Best RPG and Best Character Design awards, but losing to Dragon Quest III for the overall Grand Prize for best game of all time. Several years after the Japanese release, the first English version of Dragon Warrior was initially seen as a commercial failure, but the Nintendo Power subscription giveaway was eventually a success and allowed Enix to bring the next three games to North America. According to Chris Kohler, Nintendo profited immensely from the giveaway because "Nintendo Power was essentially a hundred-page monthly ad for Nintendo products", and it was now in thousands of households. The game sold about 500,000 copies in the United States, making it the third best-selling 1989 game release in North America, below Nintendo's Tetris and Super Mario Land. In total, Dragon Quest sold more than 2 million copies worldwide. In North America, the English version garnered average reviews overall. Nintendo Power rated it about three out of five. It debuted at No. 7 on the magazine's bimonthly "Top 30" top NES games list in November 1989. It climbed to No. 5 in January 1990 and remained there for 4 months; it then dropped to No. 11 in May, No. 14 in July, and No. 16 in September 1990, then leaving the list. In the "Nintendo Power Awards 1989", the game was nominated for "Best Theme, Fun" and "Best Overall"; but did not win in either category. In response to Japanese youths' arrests while waiting for Dragon Quest III's release, Electronic Gaming Monthly's Quartermann said that the game was not "that special at all", compared it to the NES version of Ultima III: Exodus and recommended that others play that game instead. The game's release has been regarded as important in the history of the console RPG genre. Kohler noted that Toriyama's and Sugiyama's contributions to the game "made Dragon Quest as visually and aurally exciting as the game play was unique and sophisticated". GameSpot named it as one of the fifteen most influential video games in history. IGN listed it as the eighth best all-time NES game. In 2005, it listed it as the 92nd-best all-time video game, and in 2007 it listed the game as the 29th best. Nintendo Power rated Dragon Warrior as the 140th-best game made for the Nintendo System in its Top 200 Games list in 2006. RPGamer's Bill Johnson gave it a 4 out of 5 overall score. The NES version received considerable praise for adding extra characters and depth to the story. The removal of the stylized dialogue in the GBC remake has similarly been lamented. AllGame declared that "despite its enormous influence [...] Dragon Warrior is a flawed game. It has some decent design ideas, but it's just not terribly enjoyable", noting simplistic graphics, slow pace, and poor sound. Seemingly primitive by modern standards, Dragon Warrior features one-on-one combat, a limited item and equipment array, ten spells, five towns, and five dungeons. While noting its importance to the development of the RPG genre, Allgame reviewer Kyle Knight stated that "taken on its own merits, it's just not an enjoyable game to play." 1UP.com explained that the series was not immensely popular at first in North America because American console gamers were not used to the idea of RPGs, and that it would take a decade for the genre to be "flashy enough to distract from all of those words they made you read". Chi Kong Lui wrote for GameCritics that the game added realism to video games, which allows players to identify with the main character on a much larger scale, saying "If a player perished in Dragon Warrior, he or she had to suffer the dire consequences of losing progress and precious gold. That element of death evoked a sense of instinctive fear and tension for survival." IGN writer Mark Nix compared the game's seemingly archaic plot to more modern RPGs, saying, "Noble blood means nothing when the society is capitalist, aristocratic, or militaristic. Damsels don't need rescuing—they need a battle axe and some magic tutoring in the field." Reviewing Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King, GameSpy staff wrote that Dragon Warrior is many gamers' first exposure to the console RPG. Recalling their past, a staff member commented: > It opened my eyes to a fun new type of gameplay. Suddenly strategy (or at least pressing the "A" button) was more important than reflex, and the story was slightly (slightly!) more complex than the 'rescue the princess' stuff I'd seen up 'till then. After all, Dragon Warrior was only half-over when you rescued its princess. Bill Johnson compared Dragon Warrior to modern RPGs and noted the game's lack of replay value, which is due to the game's requirement of total completion and to its overall difficulty. He noted the game's historical importance, saying, "[Playing Dragon Warrior is] a tough road to walk, but reaching its end will instill a new appreciation of what today's RPGs are all about." The 2009 book Vintage Games contrasted Dragon Warrior to the 1986 NES game The Legend of Zelda, saying that though both games share common RPG elements, Zelda features a fantasy setting and magic but no level or turn-based combat system, and Dragon Warrior features both. Nintendo Power said the game's historical significance is its greatest aspect, and noted that "playing Dragon Warrior these days can be a bit of a chore". GamePro wrote that their favorite aspect of the game was the Elizabethan-English dialogue, and that they were disappointed by its removal in the GBC remake. ### Remakes The Dragon Quest I & II remake for the Super Famicom yielded 1.2 million copies sold in Japan. Famitsu gave the Super Famicom compilation remake Dragon Quest I + II a rating of 35 out of 40. The Satellaview remake was given a mixed, but overall positive review by Microgroup, saying that the touches such as the real-time event and voicing were appreciated but their implementation was lacking. They praised the medal collection as a nice way to compete with friends. Dragon Warrior's English remake, as part of the dual GBC cartridge Dragon Warrior I & II, received better reviews than the original. IGN and Nintendo Power gave it an 8 out of 10. IGN's Marc Nix noted that while "it's one of the only interesting RPGs on the Game Boy Color to actually make American shores", players will be frustrated; those who played the original will lament the changes, while new players will find the game too linear and simple. GameSpot gave it a 9.6 out of 10, citing the great improvements to sound quality and the appeal of playing both games in succession, and GameRankings reports an 82% overall score. It received both GameSpot's and RPGamer's awards for Game Boy Color Game of the Year, and was nominated for GameSpot's "Role-Playing Game of the Year" prize among console games. Comparing it to its NES counterpart, RPGamer's Derek Cavin awarded it 3 out of 5, saying that the game is above average in all aspects, and particularly praised the visual elements. He criticized its repetitiveness, but said that it is short enough that most players should finish the game before repetition becomes an issue. Combined, both the SNES and GBC remakes had more than 1.94 million copies sold worldwide. With the remakes' good sales performances, Enix released Dragon Warrior III for the GBC in 2001, which was based on a previously unreleased SNES update of Dragon Quest III's English version. ### Related media Square Enix Music Online's Juan2Darien reviewed the game's symphonic scores: Dragon Quest Suite; Dragon Quest I Remix Symphonic Suite (London Philharmonic Orchestra); Dragon Quest I & II Symphonic Suite (London Philharmonic Orchestra Remastered); and Dragon Quest I Symphonic Suite (Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra). Comparing each of the suites, he gave all ratings ranging 7 through 9 out of 10, and found the Tokyo Strings Ensemble recording superior. He praised efforts by Koichi Sugiyama and the orchestras to compose an above-average piece beyond the flatness of the source material. Gamasutra's Kurt Kalata also praised the symphonies' melody, commenting that "the overworld theme... is pretty simplistic and grating, but actually sounds pretty beautiful when played by a live orchestra". Dragon Quest Retsuden: Roto no Monshō – To the Children Who Inherit the Emblem had high sales in Japan. For the week of August 26 to September 1, 2008, volume 7 was ranked 9th in Japan, with 59,540 copies sold. For the week of February 24 to March 2, 2009, volume 8 was ranked 19th in Japan, at 76,801 copies. For the week of October 26 to November 1, 2009, volume 9 was ranked 16th in Japan, at 40,492 copies for a total of 60,467. ## Legacy The release of Dragon Quest and Dragon Warrior prompted a turning point in video game history. The game has been listed as a genre builder for RPGs. Its popularity in Japan is synonymous with RPGs. Though bearing elements of previous RPGs, Dragon Quest set a comprehensively new template from gameplay to narrative, as the foundation for nearly every subsequent RPG. According to Shigeru Miyamoto, the success of Dragon Quest changed the nature of video game development by making scenario writers far more important. Many of the development techniques were intended to compensate for Famicom hardware limitations, but contemporary RPG developers continue to use these techniques regardless of technological advances. Dragon Warrior introduced the damsel-in-distress storyline that many RPGs follow, and a fresh plot twist to the "saving the princess" formula, where the game's true objective is not revealed until the princess is rescued. The game introduced an element of romance, where the player character is given a dialogue choice to respond to the princess's question of whether he loves her; romance has since become a commonplace feature in the genre. The game's 2D graphic style was used by most RPGs until the advent of 3D graphics, and is still a staple of the genre. Dragon Warrior's top-down perspective has become "a dead giveaway to an RPG". The game featured elements still found in most RPGs, such as the ability to obtain better equipment, major quests that intertwine with minor subquests, an incremental spell system, use of hit points and experience points, and a medieval theme. Reviewers said that, though Final Fantasy has been considered more important due to its popularity and attention in North America, Dragon Warrior laid the fundamentals on which Final Fantasy was based. In the Nintendo Power's November 2010 issue, in celebration of the NES's 25th anniversary in North America, Horii recalled the making of Dragon Warrior. Horii was a fan of basic RPG mechanics, and wanted to simplify the interfaces; he said that many other RPGs' interfaces at the time "were so complicated that they intimidated new users". He said that Dragon Quest's simplified gameplay made the game appealing to people and made the franchise successful. He had been told that the Famicom lacks sufficient capacity for RPGs, which further motivated him to make one. Dragon Quest became a national phenomenon in Japan, inspiring spinoff media and figurines. The video game industry has called it Japan's national game. Horii, who was linked through his Shonen Jump articles, increased in celebrity status, and become a household name in Japan, as well known in Japan as Steven Spielberg is in the US; in contrast Miyamoto, creator of Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda, is not nearly as well-known. In a Famitsu poll, the Japanese public voted Dragon Quest as the seventh favorite game for the NES. Several games such as Glory of Heracles, Legend of the Ghost Lion, and Mother were inspired by the Japanese version's success. Shigesato Itoi was a fan of Dragon Quest, and Miyamoto was a detractor of the RPG genre, so in developing Mother, they subverted the Dragon Quest template by changing the setting and themes from the Middle Ages to those of the US. Many NES games including Dragon Warrior have had fan-made ROM hacks with a new plot and revised character sprites upon the same gameplay and layout, such as Super Mario Remix II from the Mario series. Dragon Quest became so popular in Japan that, if asked to draw slime, a Japanese person is likely to draw a shape similar to that of the game's Slime creature. Many aspects of pop culture reference Dragon Warrior. The video game music band Descendants of Erdrick, based in Austin, Texas, is named after the game's main character. On April Fools' Day 2012, Google added a Dragon Warrior-inspired 8-bit option to Google Maps. In 2016, the spinoff Dragon Quest Builders was released as an alternate sequel to the first game. The story is set after the "bad ending" of the first game, where the Hero accepts the Dragonlord's offer to join him and rule half of the world.

Landsat 4

American Earth-observing satellite launched in 1982 as part of the Landsat program

Landsat 4 is the fourth satellite of the Landsat program. It was launched on July 16, 1982, with the primary goal of providing a global archive of satellite imagery. Although the Landsat Program is managed by NASA, data from Landsat 4 was collected and distributed by the U.S. Geological Survey. Landsat 4 science operations ended on December 14, 1993, when the satellite lost its ability to transmit science data, far beyond its designed life expectancy of five years. The satellite housekeeping telemetry and tracking continued to be maintained by NASA until it was decommissioned on June 15, 2001. ## Background Landsat 1, then known as ERTA-A, was launched July 23, 1972. The satellite took over 100,000 images of the Earth over the course of its life. Landsat 2 had a similar design, and was launched three years later. Landsat 3, launched in 1978, was the last satellite to have a similar design to Landsat 1, and was the last Landsat to be managed by NASA during the Landsat program. Landsat 4 was the first Landsat to be operated by NOAA. The second generation of Landsat, Landsat 4 and 5, flew in lower orbits than the first three missions. Although they were in lower orbits, they had a higher field of view (FOV) so they had the same swath widths. The new Landsat spacecraft also featured improved instrumentation. ## Satellite design ### Operation The spacecraft was built by GE Astro Space, who would later become Lockheed Martin Missile and Space. It used the MultiMission Modular Spacecraft (MMS) bus developed by Fairchild Industries. The satellite was designed to be fixed by astronauts in space via the Space Shuttle, or taken back to Earth for repairs. It was expected that the shuttles would be able to reach Landsat's relatively far orbit by 1985. Landsat 4's attitude was controlled with hydrazine thrusters. The satellite was constructed with aluminum panels and graphite struts. The spacecraft was three-axis stabilized with reaction wheels. It was powered by three nickel-cadmium batteries (NiCd), which were charged via a single solar array that had one axis of articulation. The solar array produced 1430 W of power. The satellite weighed 4,300 pounds (2,000 kg). Landsat 4 was designed to last a minimum of three years. The satellite communicated to the ground with a direct downlink with the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) at 85 Mbit/s on the S-, X-, L-, and Ku-bands. The high gain antenna was extended with a retractable boom. The data used 8 bit quantization. ### Sensors Landsat 4 carried an updated Multispectral Scanner (MSS), used on previous Landsat satellites, and a Thematic Mapper. It had a reflective resolution of 30 meters (98 ft) and a thermal resolution of 120 meters (390 ft). Both were built by Hughes Aircraft. Landsat 4 was the first satellite in the Landsat program to incorporate the Thematic Mapper (TM) sensor. The Landsat TM sensor is able to gather seven bands of data as opposed to the four bands of data collected from the Multispectral Scanner. In addition to having three more bands of data to work with, scientists are able to view the TM data at a much higher resolution than with MSS. Bands 1–5 and 7 each have a spatial resolution of 30 meters (98 ft) while the MSS is only capable of a 57 meters (187 ft) by 79 meters (259 ft) resolution. Band 6 (which is a thermal infrared band) has a maximum spatial resolution of 120 meters (390 ft). The data rate for TM data was 84.9Mbit/s, via an X-band transmitter to modernized ground antennas. ## Mission ### Launch The satellite was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on July 16, 1982, on a Delta 3920. Landsat 4 was placed into a north–south near polar orbit, approximately 700 kilometers (430 mi) above Earth's surface, and circling the globe every 99 minutes. ### Operations The first major malfunction occurred July 27, 1982. The high gain Ku antenna was commanded to deploy but failed. Attempts to free the antenna were successful on August 15. In February 1983, the satellite lost half of its solar power and the ability to send science data directly to Earth, prompting fears the satellite would fail sooner than expected. This caused the early launch of Landsat 5, a satellite that was identical in specification to Landsat 4. After the issue was identified in Landsat 4, modifications were made to Landsat 5 to prevent the same issue from occurring. Landsat 4 was able to resume science operations when the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRS) came online, then was placed in standby in January 1986. Landsat 4 was brought back online to provide international coverage in 1987, when Landsat 5 lost its TDRS link, and thus the ability to image areas beyond line of sight to a ground station, and continued to do so until it, too, lost its TDRS link in 1993, ending science data return. Landsat 4 continued to broadcast telemetry, tracking, and command data, which was transmitted on the still-functional S-band, until the satellite was decommissioned June 15, 2001. ### Space Shuttle service mission As early as 1982, a mission was in the planning stages to retrieve Landsat 4 for servicing back on earth. The 1982 edition of the STS Flight Assignment Manifest scheduled the second Space Shuttle mission from Vandenberg AFB for that task. The Space Shuttle orbiter Discovery was scheduled to launch on 15 June 1986 for a three-day mission to capture Landsat 4 for return to earth (designated STS-2V). The following year, the mission was rescheduled to launch on 1 April 1986. Later on, the idea to retrieve Landsat 4 were first replaced by a servicing mission in early 1987, before any mention of it was removed from the flight manifest published in June 1985. The slot for the proposed mission was first assigned to a dedicated Space Shuttle flight for the Department of Defense before the idea of launching the Space Shuttle from Vandenberg AFB were scrapped altogether after the Challenger disaster.

Caroline Pafford Miller

American writer

Caroline Pafford Miller (August 26, 1903 – July 12, 1992) was an American novelist. She gathered the folktales, stories, and archaic dialects of the rural communities she visited in her home state of Georgia in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and wove them into her first novel, Lamb in His Bosom, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1934, and the French literary award, the Prix Femina Americain in 1935. Her success as the first Georgian winner of the fiction prize inspired Macmillan Publishers to seek out more southern writers, resulting in the discovery of Margaret Mitchell, whose first novel, Gone with the Wind, also won a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1937. Miller's story about the struggles of nineteenth-century south Georgia pioneers found a new readership in 1993 when Lamb in His Bosom was reprinted, one year after her death. In 2007, Miller was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame. ## Early years and education Caroline Pafford was born on August 26, 1903, in Waycross, Georgia, to Elias Pafford and Levy Zan (Hall) Pafford. She was the youngest of seven children. Her father was a Methodist minister and schoolteacher, who died while she was in middle school. Her mother died during Caroline's junior year of high school. During the remaining years of school, she was raised by her older sisters. In her high school years, Caroline expressed an interest in writing and in the performing arts. She never attended college. After graduating from high school she married William D. Miller, who was her English teacher, and moved to Baxley, Georgia, in the late 1920s, where her husband ultimately became superintendent of schools in the Baxley area. William Miller introduced Caroline to classical literature, and she would later say that "he was my college". The couple had three sons, two of whom were twins. During her early years of marriage, while raising her children and performing her domestic duties, Miller wrote short stories, an activity first begun in high school. The stories were well received, and the small amounts she was paid supplemented the family income. ## First novel and Pulitzer Prize Miller gathered much of the material for Lamb in His Bosom while she was buying chickens and eggs tens of miles in the backwoods. She recorded her local research and genealogy in a notebook while she traveled throughout rural south Georgia. Miller gathered folktales and family oral histories, as well as idiomatic expressions which would eventually color the text of her novel. Her initial work was done when "returning to Baxley, she would go to Barnes Drugstore, order a Coca-Cola, and write down the stories she had heard on the day's trip"; then she would slowly flesh out her novel in the quiet hours of the evening on her kitchen table. While stories from the backwoods became part of the fabric of her novel, Miller also drew upon the inspiring tales of the pioneer women in her own family history. Upon completion of the novel, Miller began looking for a publisher. During this search, she met former Pulitzer Prize winner Julia Peterkin, who read and then forwarded Miller's manuscript for Lamb in His Bosom to her own agent. Harper published the book in 1933. Lamb in His Bosom is a story about the struggles of poor white pioneers, in the Wiregrass Region of nineteenth-century southern Georgia. Upon publication, literary critics embraced the work, describing it as "regional historical realism". The New York Times''' critic Louis Kronenberger said the novel "has a wonderful freshness about it; not simply the freshness of a new writer, but the freshness of a new world. It all seems to have happened far away and long ago, yet Mrs. Miller has caught it roundly here and made it in its small way imperishable". It has been described as "one of the most critically acclaimed first novels of the Southern Renaissance period". The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction was awarded to her at Columbia University on May 7, 1934. Addressing the audience, Miller said that "she felt like Cinderella and that the success of her book seemed like a fairy tale". Upon her return to Baxley, she was greeted by a crowd of 2,500 and a marching band, which escorted her back to her home. Margaret Mitchell wrote to Miller, saying: "Your book is undoubtedly the greatest that ever came out of the South about Southern people, and it is my favorite book". In 1935, Miller was also honored with a French literary award, the Prix Femina Americain. Author Finis Farr said that after Miller's novel won the Pulitzer, Macmillan Publishers sent editor Harold S. Latham south, on a scouting trip for more southern authors. He famously found Margaret Mitchell and subsequently published Gone with the Wind. ## Divorce and second marriage The newfound celebrity, that both complimented and burdened the new Pulitzer Prize winner, proved stressful for the rural Georgia school superintendent and his wife. The obligations and attention imposed upon Caroline were incompatible with the quiet, simple, existence that she and William had enjoyed prior to her fame. The Millers divorced in 1936. Caroline remarried one year later to Clyde H. Ray Jr., an antique dealer and florist. She moved with him to the town of Waynesville in North Carolina, where Caroline worked in the family business while continuing to write short stories and articles for newspapers and magazines, such as Pictorial Review and Ladies' Home Journal. They had one daughter and a son. ## Later years In 1944, Miller finished her second novel, Lebanon, which garnered mixed reviews from the critics. Although constructed along the lines of her earlier work, set in rural Georgia, the new novel had a romantic storyline which was criticized as being awkward and unrealistic. After her second husband died, Miller moved to a remote mountain home. It was described as "so remote that visitors had to drive through a cow pasture taking care to close a maze of gates behind them". In the decades that followed, Miller continued to write, completing several manuscripts. But she never sought to publish them. For the most part, she lived a quiet, private life in her rural western North Carolina home. ## Death and legacy On July 12, 1992, Miller died in Waynesville, North Carolina, at the age of 88. She is buried in Green Hill Cemetery. She was survived by her daughter, and three of her four sons. Her first novel regained popularity a year after her death when Peachtree Publishers (Atlanta) reprinted Lamb in His Bosom with a new afterword from historian Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. By Miller's own definition, she had achieved the greatest award given a novelist: "the knowledge that after he dies he will leave the best part of himself behind". Miller was honored when named into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame. In 1991, the city of Baxley honored her with Caroline Miller Day. ## Works - Lamb in His Bosom (Harper & Brothers, 1933) - Lebanon'' (Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1944) ## See also

USS Albany (1846)

American sloop in 1846

USS Albany, the first United States Navy ship of that name, was built in the 1840s for the US Navy. The ship was among the last of the wooden sloops powered by sail and saw extensive service in the Mexican War. Before and after her combat service, Albany conducted surveillance and observation missions throughout the Caribbean. In September 1854, during a journey along the coast of Venezuela, Albany was lost with all hands on 28 or 29 September 1854. Included among the 250 men lost were several sons and grandsons of politically prominent men. ## Description and construction Albany was one of a group of eight full-rigged, three-masted wooden sloops built in the early 1840s that were the last American sailing sloops to be commissioned. The ship measured 147 feet 11 inches (45.1 m) long between perpendiculars and she had a beam of 38 feet 6 inches (11.7 m). Albany had a draft of 17 feet 9 inches (5.4 m) and had a tonnage of 1042 tons burthen. The ship had a crew of 210 officers and enlisted men. She could maintain a speed of 13 knots (24 km/h; 15 mph). Albany could mount up to four 8-inch (203 mm) shell guns and eighteen 32-pounder (15 kg) cannon. By 1853, she was armed with six 8-inch guns and sixteen 32-pounder cannon. The ship's keel was laid down in 1843 at the New York Navy Yard; she was launched on 27 June 1846, and commissioned on 6 November, with Captain Samuel Livingston Breese in command. Her construction was accelerated so she would be complete for the impending war with Mexico. Although she could carry 22 guns, Albany sailed with only 20. ## Service history in war with Mexico The sloop put to sea for her first cruise on 26 November 1846 and joined the Home Squadron—then engaged in operations against Mexican forces—on 8 January 1847 at Anton Lizardo. Soon thereafter, however, she left the Mexican coast for an independent cruise to the vicinity of the Azores. Upon her return to the east coast of Mexico early in March, Albany guarded the transport anchorage at Isla Verde in preparation for General Winfield Scott's operations against Veracruz. During the 9 March amphibious action, Albany landed the reserve elements under Brigadier General David E. Twiggs. Because the Mexican leaders chose not to oppose the landings, Albany saw no combat. Later, on 22 March, the sloop of war sent one of her eight-inch shell guns and its crew ashore to assist in the siege of Veracruz. After Veracruz surrendered on 29 March, Albany moved to the next objective—Alvarado. The Mexican forces, however, had already abandoned that port; and Lieutenant Charles G. Hunter, commanding Scourge, which arrived first, took possession of the town. Albany soon headed for another target—Tuxpan. She and the other ships of the squadron arrived at the mouth of the Tuxpan River on the morning of 17 April. Capt. Breese—commanding Albany—then formed his landing party of over 1,500 sailors and marines drawn from all ships in the squadron. They embarked in the barges and the six ships chosen to ascend the river and capture Tuxpan. Although Albany herself did not participate in the action, Breese and his landing party did. From 18 to 22 April, Breese's force moved up the river, engaged and captured two artillery batteries, destroyed fortifications and military equipment at Tuxpan, and then retired down the river to rejoin the squadron. When the American warships dispersed to various blockade stations along the eastern coast of Mexico, Albany and Reefer remained off the mouth of the Tuxpan River. During service on the blockade at various other points, Albany arrived off the mouth of the Tabasco River by 13 June. As in the Tuxpan operation, members of her crew joined an inland expedition. The movement upriver began late in the first dog watch on 14 June. In two days, the American force ascended the river, disembarked the landing force, routed the defenders on the approaches to Tabasco, and captured the town. The Americans remained there until 22 July, when yellow fever and Mexican troops forced the evacuation of the town. Subsequently, Albany headed home for repairs. She left the Mexican coast on 11 July and arrived in Hampton Roads, Virginia, on 6 August. From there, she soon moved north to Boston where she completed her repairs on 27 September. On 10 October, the sloop of war put to sea to return to the Gulf of Mexico; she resumed blockade duty along the Mexican coast until March 1848, when she was sent to Venezuela to protect American citizens there during a highly volatile constitutional crisis. ### Midshipman controversy With the Mexican–American War at an end, Albany began cruising the Caribbean-West Indies region. That duty lasted until 12 September 1848, when she returned to Norfolk. During the West Indies cruise, however, John McIntosh Kell and three other passed midshipmen refused a direct order they considered demeaning: they had been ordered to light a candle to summon the relief attendant, a task generally assigned to a midshipman, not a passed midshipman. The commander, Victor M. Randolph, brought them up on charges, of which they were convicted and released from the Navy in November 1849, although all were reinstated a year later. ## Post-war cruises Between 15 November 1848 and the latter part of 1853, the sloop made three more extended deployments in the Caribbean-West Indies area as a unit of the Home Squadron. In 1850, the American merchant ship North Carolina was wrecked and plundered on the coast of Puerto Rico. Her crew survived, but were imprisoned at Mayagüez. They were released when Albany threatened to bombard the town with her cannons. On 12 December 1853, Albany set sail from Boston, Massachusetts. In May 1854, the commander had filed a report with the Secretary of the Navy James C. Dobbin that the main mast of Albany was unseaworthy. On 20 May, Victor Randolph, the former commander of Albany and now commanding officer (pro tem) of the Naval Yard Warrington, reported that an appropriate mast had been identified and was ready for Albany. During the replacement of the main mast, there was also some discussion of the condition of the fore mast. Apparently both were replaced. ### Last cruise Initially, Gerry had instructions to sail to San Juan, Cartagena, and Aspinwall (now Colón, Panama), and Albany set out on 29 June. By 11 August, instructions ordered Gerry to pass along the coast and to investigate a suspicious ship lurking near Saint Thomas. Additional instructions, sent separately, told Gerry to continue patrolling the Windward Islands and Grand Turk. Inline with its instructions, Albany arrived in Curacao on 7 September 1854, from La Guaira, Venezuela. She stayed in port for two days, and left on the morning of the 9th for Cartagena in Colombia, in what was then called New Granada. A letter from a Curacao correspondent of 19 September 1854 reported that all the crew were well. The sloop made an imposing appearance moored in the harbor and, upon leaving port, she saluted one of the forts with twenty-one guns, which was answered, and then saluted a Dutch ship, the corvette Palloo with eleven guns. On 28 September, Commander Gerry sent a report updating his superiors on the cruise, dispatched from Aspinwall. Albany departed Aspinwall, Colombia on 28–29 September 1854, intending to sail to New York. She was never seen again. By the November, reports circulated through coastal cities that there was much "uneasiness felt in Washington in relation to the sloop-of-war Albany," which had not been heard from since 28 September, when she left Aspinwall for New York. By early December, the steamer USS Princeton had returned from searching for the missing sloop, which had not been seen or heard from on any of the channels frequented by ship traffic of the British West Indies. In late December, a report surfaced that the vessel had arrived at Cartagena safely, but this report was apparently in error, possibly generated by the arrival of the report that Gerry had mailed before leaving Aspinwall at the end of September. By this time, the Navy's steam ships were searching the area for Albany. The steamer USS Fulton searched from January to May from Cartagena to Aspinwall, the Bay of Darien, into the Bay of Guatemala, and along the Mosquito Coast. By January 1856, after an exhaustive search of 15 months, the ship was given up as lost. ### Family compensation The Department of the Navy requested an inquiry into the loss, which was passed on to the appropriate Senate Committee. A second craft, USS Porpoise, had been lost in a typhoon while conducting an exploratory cruise of the Bonins, the Ladrones, and the Mariana islands. By resolution of the Senate, a fund was provided for the widows and orphans of the officers, mariners, and seamen of both ships. Furthermore, the appropriate wages were paid to the families (including parents, brothers, or sisters) of the men lost, despite the loss of Nixon White (Purser)'s account books. In the case of Rowland Leach, the ship's carpenter, this amounted to \$1559, including \$779 for a year's gratuitous pay ordered by the Department of the Navy. ### Partial list of the lost As of 30 June 1854, the crew of Albany consisted of 18 officers, 156 seaman, and 23 Marines. It is likely the ship's complement was little changed when she was lost three months later. The crew included several sons and grandsons of prominent men: Commander James T. Gerry, youngest son of Elbridge Gerry, formerly Vice President of the United States, Lieutenant John Quincy Adams, grandson of the second president and nephew of the sixth, and Midshipman Bennet Israel Riley, son of Brevet General Bennet C. Riley, the former military governor of California during its statehood controversy. ## Commanders - Samuel Livingston Breese, 1846–47 - John Kelly, 1847–48 - Victor M. Randolf, 1848–1850 - Charles T. Platt, 1850–1852 - James Thompson Gerry, 1853–54 ## See also - List of people who disappeared mysteriously at sea ## Notes and citations ## Additional information - Berner, Thomas F. The Brooklyn Navy Yard. Arcadia, 1999, 9780738556956 - Kell, John McIntosh, The Civil War Naval Encyclopedia, Volume 1, ABC-CLIO, 2011. 9781598843385 - Potter, E.B. Sea Power: A Naval History. Naval Institute Press, 15 Jun 2014. 9781612517674 - Tucker, Spencer. Encyclopedia of Mexican American War: A Political, Social and Military history., ABC-CLIO, 2013. - USS Albany Association Inc. USS Albany Organization. Tallahassee, FL. [1846 ships](Category:1846_ships "wikilink") [1850s missing person cases](Category:1850s_missing_person_cases "wikilink") [Missing ships](Category:Missing_ships "wikilink") [Maritime incidents in September 1854](Category:Maritime_incidents_in_September_1854 "wikilink") [Ships built in Brooklyn](Category:Ships_built_in_Brooklyn "wikilink") [Ships lost with all hands](Category:Ships_lost_with_all_hands "wikilink") [Shipwrecks in the Caribbean Sea](Category:Shipwrecks_in_the_Caribbean_Sea "wikilink") [Sloops of the United States Navy](Category:Sloops_of_the_United_States_Navy "wikilink") [People lost at sea](Category:People_lost_at_sea "wikilink")

Egg predation

Feeding strategy for many animals

Egg predation is a feeding strategy in many groups of animals (ovivores) in which they consume eggs. Since an egg represents a complete organism at one stage of its life cycle, eating an egg is a form of predation, the killing of another organism for food. Egg predation is found widely across the animal kingdom, including in fish, birds, snakes, mammals, and arthropods. Some species are specialist egg predators, but many more are generalists which take eggs when the opportunity arises. Humans have accidentally or intentionally introduced egg predators such as rats to places that had been free of them, causing damage to native species such as ground-nesting seabirds. Predatory birds such as ravens and gulls have spread, threatening ground-nesting birds such as sage grouse and terns. Measure to control such predators include the use of poisoned bait eggs. ## Definitions An ovivore or ovivorous animal is one that eats eggs, from Latin ovum, egg, and vorare, to devour. An obligate ovivore or egg predator is an animal that feeds exclusively on eggs. This is different from an egg parasite, an animal such as a parasitic wasp which grows inside the egg of another insect. ## Ecological relationship Egg predation is an ecological relationship in which an animal (a predator) hunts for and eats the eggs of another (prey) species. This reduces the evolutionary fitness of the parents whose eggs are preyed on. ### Generalist egg predators Generalist predators can have a substantial effect on ground-nesting birds such as the European golden plover, Pluvialis apricaria: in Norway 78.2% of nests of this species were preyed on. Experimental removal of two nest and egg predators, red fox and carrion crow, raised the percentage of pairs that fledged young from c. 18% to c. 75%. Population increases among many generalist predators such as buzzard, badger, carrion crow, pine marten, raven, and red fox in Scotland have contributed to the decline in several ground-nesting bird species by taking eggs, young, and sitting hen (female) birds. ### Learnt behaviours for egg predation Corvids such as ravens are intelligent and able to develop novel foraging behaviours. Within the 21st century, little ravens have learnt to depredate little penguin burrows to access the eggs on Phillip Island off southeastern Australia. About a quarter of the attacks were down the entrance hole (for short burrows only); the remainder were by digging a hole through the roof of the burrow. Ravens depredated 61% of monitored burrows. The primatologist Jane Goodall noted that some birds and mammals used tools to break eggs. Egyptian vultures both drop small eggs to break them, and throw stones at ostrich eggs which are too large to pick up. Several species of mongooses throw eggs at rocks, or pick eggs up and drop them on rocks. ### Specialist egg predators Some colubrid snakes such as the Formosa kukri snake Oligodon formosanus and the marbled sea snake Aipysurus eydouxii specialise in egg predation. These snakes have atrophied venom glands and their fangs are ineffective. The marbled sea snake also has a deletion mutation in its three-finger toxin gene, reducing its venom toxicity by between 50- and 100-fold. These changes have been explained as an evolutionary adaptation to their diet, since venom is not required to subdue their prey, unlike in their venomous and conventionally predatory ancestors. Among invertebrates, the aquatic piscicolid leech Cystobranchus virginicus is an egg predator. It may be an obligate egg-feeder, as it has not been seen feeding on an adult, but has been found in the nests of a variety of species of North American freshwater fish of the genera Campostoma and Moxostoma. A species of thrips, Mirothrips arbiter, from Brazil is an obligate egg predator; it breeds in colonies of paper wasps (Polistinae); both its larvae and its adults feed on the eggs of the wasp. ### Strategies against egg predation r/K selection theory implies two broad strategies for surviving predation: to reproduce so rapidly (r-strategists) that predators are unable to eliminate the prey; or to provide sufficient care (K-strategists) for a smaller number of offspring that enough of them survive to adulthood. In the case of eggs, this means that r-strategists lay large numbers of eggs, while K-strategists take care to protect a smaller number of eggs. Lacebugs of the genus Corythucha are subject to egg predation by obligate egg predators like mirid bugs, pirate bugs, and thrips, and respond to it in varying ways. C. solani mothers defend their eggs from predators, while C. marmorata buries its eggs inside leaves and distributes them in space and time. Bird nests are vulnerable to egg predation, especially for those such as eider ducks which nest on the ground. In response to the robbing of eggs from eider duck nests, half the individuals started a fresh clutch of eggs in a new nest; they always avoided the area around the robbed nest. Tree-nesting birds, too, are depredated by snakes, mammals, and birds, particularly in tropical forests. In Costa Rica, the rate of nest predation on artificial nests was greatest at intermediate altitudes (between 500 and 650 metres), with a decline in predation at higher altitudes to 2,740 metres. This may explain why many bird species migrate uphill to breed. Egg predation by snakes is rarely directly opposed, but the Asian long-tailed skink Eutropis longicaudata aggressively protects its eggs from the Formosa kukri snake, Oligodon formosanus. Bird eggs are coloured and patterned, seemingly primarily for camouflage to deceive the eyes of egg predators; for example, Eurasian curlews nest among tall grasses and have eggs that are green and spotted like their background, as well as being defended by the adults; in contrast, the eggs of little ringed plovers, laid on pebbly beaches, are pale and speckled, hard to see among small stones. ## Fossil record Egg predation may be an ancient feeding strategy. A fossil of the Late Cretaceous snake Sanajeh of western India, found coiled around an egg and a hatchling sauropod dinosaur, was most likely a predator of sauropod nest sites including of eggs. Sanajeh was about 3.5 metres (11 ft) in length; its skull was 95 millimetres (3.7 in) long. Oviraptor was a late Cretaceous dinosaur; it was given its name, meaning "egg thief", as it was initially thought to be an egg predator; later, it was discovered to have been brooding its own eggs, and its toothless jaws have been reinterpreted as adapted to a different diet, perhaps of leaves. Sauropod dinosaurs, some of the largest animals that have ever lived, appear surprisingly to have followed an r-strategy, producing a large number of hard-shelled eggs. This contrasts with the K-strategy, in whales, which are marine mammals of comparable size. Whales produce few eggs which develop internally, receiving a high level of parental investment. A possible cause is that egg size is limited: extrapolating from the sizes of bird eggs relative to adult body weight, a 10 tonne sauropod would produce eggs weighing some 333 kilograms, far over the limit (around 10 kilograms) which an egg shell could support. If that is correct, then sauropods inevitably had to follow an r-strategy with many relatively small eggs, not specifically a response to egg predation. ## Interaction with humans ### Damage to commercial fisheries Among fish, egg predation by species such as haddock (Melanogrammus aeglefinus) can contribute to the decline in commercially-important fish populations such as of Atlantic herring (Clupea harengus). This effect can be important in attempts to restore fisheries damaged by overfishing. ### Introduced and invasive species Invasive species frequently prey on eggs and young of native species. The harlequin ladybird Harmonia axyridis eats eggs of species including other ladybirds, such as the two-spot ladybird Adalia bipunctata. Females of the prey species laid eggs with higher amounts of defensive alkaloids when egg predation was occurring. Egg predation is an especially severe threat to colonies of ground-nesting seabirds. These have often selected offshore islands as nest sites, as the islands historically had fewer predators than the mainland. Accidental introductions of predator species have upset seabird reproduction, as the predators have a concentrated supply of food in the form of eggs on the ground or in burrows, and can increase rapidly. Offshore island populations in Australasia have been widely affected by exotic species such as rats, arriving by ship from Eurasia. Native species, such as blotched blue-tongue lizards, Tiliqua nigrolutea, and water-rats, Hydromys chrysogaster, may also have an impact on seabirds like the short-tailed shearwater, Ardenna tenuirostris on islands off Tasmania, though predation rates were relatively low. Eggs were usually taken when burrows were unattended, implying that the parent birds were able to defend their eggs effectively against these predators. ### Control of egg predators Where populations of concern are threatened by egg predators, conservationists may attempt to control the predators so as to allow the prey species to recover. In the case of bird predators, one approach has been to put out bait eggs treated with the slow-acting avicide DRC-1339. This has for example controlled ravens which threatened ground-nesting sage grouse, and among seabirds, gulls which threatened nesting tern colonies. Sea turtles breed by laying and burying their eggs on nesting beaches, so the control of egg predators at these sites may be effective in assisting the recovery of turtle populations. ## See also - Balut - Seed predation

Party of Freedom and Justice

Political party in Serbia

The Party of Freedom and Justice (Serbian Cyrillic: Странка слободе и правде, romanized: Stranka slobode i pravde, abbr. SSP) is a social democratic political party in Serbia. It is led by Dragan Đilas. Founded in 2019 as the merger of the Green Ecological Party – The Greens and Serbian Left, SSP was a member of the Alliance for Serbia (SZS), a coalition of opposition political parties that was initiated by Đilas in 2018. Together with SZS, SSP boycotted the 2020 parliamentary election, claiming that the election would not be free and fair. After the election, SSP became part of the United Opposition of Serbia (UOPS), the successor of SZS. UOPS would be eventually dissolved in January 2021, due to disputes between SSP and the People's Party (Narodna). In late 2021, SSP and Narodna returned together with the Movement of Free Citizens and Democratic Party to form the United for the Victory of Serbia (UZPS) alliance, which was officially formalised in February 2022, to take part in the 2022 general election. The elections resulted in the SSP gaining 10 seats in the National Assembly and 6 seats in the City Assembly of Belgrade. UZPS was also dissolved after the elections. Since then, SSP has led the Forward to Europe parliamentary group in the National Assembly. SSP is a centre-left political party and it serves in opposition to SNS. An anti-corruption party, the party is also opposed to party employment, while regarding economy, SSP has called for tax reforms that would bring in progressive taxation. SSP supports financing free textbooks and school meals for school children, and has called for the introduction of a new labour law. The party supports the accession of Serbia to the European Union, wants Serbia to harmonise its foreign policy with the European Union, and initiate sanctions on Russia regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine. SSP has criticised Chinese investments into infrastructure and it had adopted a platform in which they pledged "reconciliation, cooperation, and the acceptance of diversity" between countries in the Balkans. Supporters of SSP are pro-European while they also see themselves as socially progressive. SSP has cooperated with parties inside the Party of European Socialists, namely the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia and Social Democratic Party of Austria. ## History ### Background and formation The Party of Freedom and Justice (SSP) was formed out of the Green Ecological Party – The Greens (ZEP–Zeleni), a political party that was established in 2008. Dejan Bulatović was the leader of ZEP–Zeleni after 2015. He led the party into a coalition with the Greens of Serbia (ZS), which fell apart before the 2017 presidential election, and was a part of the Civic Bloc 381 coalition which was formed in 2018 and headed by the Movement of Free Citizens (PSG). ZEP–Zeleni left the bloc in November 2018. A month later, ZEP–Zeleni joined the Alliance for Serbia (SZS), an opposition political alliance initiated by Dragan Đilas in 2018. A series of anti-government protests began in December 2018 after a physical attack on Borko Stefanović; SZS supported the protests. In March 2019, it was announced that Đilas agreed with Bulatović to reconstruct the party as SSP with Đilas as the party's president; Đilas previously stated that he had no plans of buying ZEP–Zeleni. Alongside ZEP–Zeleni, the Serbian Left (LS), a political party led by Stefanović, and ten movements and individuals merged to create SSP. The founding convention was held on 19 April 2019, at which Đilas was chosen president, Stefanović as deputy president, and Bulatović and Marinika Tepić as vice-presidents. Following its formation, SSP gained two seats in the National Assembly of Serbia and 13 seats in the City Assembly of Belgrade. ### 2019–2021 SSP announced that it would boycott the 2020 parliamentary election in September 2019, claiming that the election would not be free and fair. This position was adopted by SZS later that month. Mass protests that began in 2018 formally ended in March 2020 due to the proclamation of the COVID-19 pandemic in Serbia. After the June 2020 parliamentary election, SZS was dissolved and subsequently transformed into the United Opposition of Serbia (UOPS), in which SSP also took part. However, UOPS remained unstable; SSP announced in December 2020 that it would form a joint platform with the PSG regarding the inter-party dialogues on electoral conditions. This was opposed by the People's Party (Narodna), which ultimately led to the dissolution of UOPS in January 2021. SSP presented its political platform for the inter-party dialogues in February 2021. The dialogues lasted from July to October 2021, though SSP left the dialogues in September 2021 after stating that the proposed document is "unacceptable" (neprihvatljiv), claiming that the document does not offer concrete solutions regarding electoral conditions. After leaving the dialogues, SSP renewed its cooperation with Narodna, which led to the announcement that they would take part in a coalition for the 2022 general election. In November 2021, it was announced that Tepić would be the ballot representative of the joint coalition, which was mainly composed of SSP, Narodna, PSG, and the Democratic Party (DS). ### 2022–present Shortly before the January 2022 constitutional referendum, SSP called for citizens to not take part in the referendum. Later in January 2022, SSP proposed Zdravko Ponoš of Narodna as the presidential candidate of the joint coalition. This coalition was formalised in February 2022 under the name United for the Victory of Serbia (UZPS), when Ponoš was confirmed to be their joint presidential candidate. In the parliamentary election, UZPS won 14 percent of the popular vote and 10 seats in the National Assembly, while Ponoš won 18 percent of the popular vote, placing second behind Aleksandar Vučić, the incumbent president of Serbia. Additionally, SSP won 6 seats in the City Assembly of Belgrade in the 2022 Belgrade City Assembly election. Following the elections, Đilas met with Vučić to discuss about the outcome of the Belgrade City Assembly election. This resulted into criticism from Narodna; DS also added that Đilas did not consult with other coalition members before the meeting. This ultimately led to the dissolution of UZPS. Following the elections, SSP announced that it would form a joint parliamentary group with PSG, Movement for Reversal, and United Trade Unions of Serbia "Sloga" in the National Assembly and City Assembly of Belgrade; these groups were formalised under the name Ujedinjeni. Đilas was re-elected president of SSP in July 2022, while Stefanović, Tepić, and Bulatović retained their positions; Goran Petrović and Dušan Nikezić also became vice-presidents of the party. Bulatović however left SSP and the Ujedinjeni parliamentary group in December 2022, claiming that Tepić allegedly lobbies for the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS). He then met with several government ministers before forming the Alliance of Social Democrats citizens' group in January 2023. SSP has taken part in the 2023 mass protests, which began after the Belgrade school shooting and a mass murder near Mladenovac and Smederevo in early May 2023. The Ujedinjeni parliamentary group changed its name to Forward to Europe in July 2023. ## Ideology and platform ### Political leanings At the founding convention in April 2019, Đilas stated that SSP would focus on economic prosperity and education, and that it would adopt a declaration of reconciliation regarding the Kosovo issue. This declaration was presented in May 2019, with SSP stating that the declaration "predicts the way to solve the people's life problems [in Kosovo]" (predviđa put rešavanja životnih problema ljudi [na Kosovu]). SSP serves in opposition to SNS. An anti-corruption party, SSP proposed a law regarding the "fight against corruption of public officeholders" (borbu protiv korupcije javnih funkcionera) in November 2019; Tepić noted that the proposal was written on the model of practice of former Romanian anti-corruption prosecutor Laura Kövesi. SSP is also opposed to "party employment" (stranačko zapošljavanje), saying that "it should not matter whether you are a member of a political party, but whether you have the qualifications to do a certain job" (neće biti važno da li ste član stranke, već da li imate kvalifikaciju da radite određeni posao). In July 2022, SSP criticised attacks on investigative journalists. Ideologically, SSP has been described as a social democratic and socially liberal party, and it is positioned on the centre-left on the political spectrum. Dušan Spasojević, a professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences of University of Belgrade, noted that within the party, Đilas is closer to the political centre, while Tepić is significantly more leftist. Regarding social issues, Spasojević positioned SSP on the centre-left. SSP supported the manifestation of 2022 EuroPride in Belgrade. ### Economy SSP criticised the increase on toll fees in June 2019, claiming that the quality of the roads has not improved since 2017, when the toll fees were previously increased. Later in December 2019, SSP presented its proposed law on the origin of property at its party session, which according to Stefanović would confiscate property from those who cannot prove that they acquired it legally. According to its programme from 2020, SSP guaranteed to "implement tax reforms that would introduce a progressive taxation of citizens' income and reduce taxes and contributions to 60% of net earnings" (sprovođenje poreske reforme kojom će se uvesti progresivno oporezivanje dohotka građan i smanjivanje poreza i doprinosa 60% neto zarade), while it also stated its support for abolishing parafiscal taxes and introduce tax reliefs for donations and endowments in health, culture, and sports. SSP supports financing free textbooks and school meals for school children in Serbia; in September 2022, SSP also said that "with the reduction of corruption and abolishment of unnecessary projects, enough money would be collected to finance free schoolbooks and higher salaries for educators" (ukoliko bi se smanjila korupcije i ukinuli nepotrebni projekti, prikupilo dovoljno para za finansiranje besplatnih udženika i većih plata za prosvetne radnike). SSP has criticised workers' conditions in Serbia and has called for the adoption of a new labour law that would according to SSP "increase wages that could be then used to live with dignity" (omogućiti plate od kojih može da se dostojanstveno živi). Đilas also stated that he is opposed to neoliberalism, calling it "not just wrong, but life-threatening" (neoliberalna ideologija ne samo pogrešna, već i opasna po život). ### Foreign policies A pro-European party, SSP supports the accession of Serbia to the European Union, stating that "Serbia's future is in Europe" (budućnost Srbije u Evropskoj uniji). SSP also wants Serbia to harmonise its foreign policy with the European Union and has urged the government to continue the integration of Serbia to the European Union. Following the beginning of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, SSP has called for the end of the war in Ukraine, stated its support for the territorial integrity of Ukraine, and has called for humanitarian aid to be sent to the vulnerable population. Initially, SSP opposed to sanctioning Russia, though they reversed this position after the 2022 general elections. Đilas later criticised political neutrality regarding the issue, stating that "neutrality is treated as siding with [Russia]" (politička neutralnost u ovom trenutku se tretira kao svrstavanje uz [Rusiju]"; he also said that Serbia should remain military neutral but with a clear position regarding the war in Ukraine. In November 2022, SSP proposed a resolution that would align Serbia's foreign policy with the European Union and implement sanctions on Russia. SSP adopted the "Serbia in the EU until 2030" declaration in March 2023, while a month later it presented its "Forward to Europe" programme, aimed at bringing Serbia closer to the European Union. ### Domestic and regional issues SSP criticised Chinese investments into Serbian infrastructure, claiming that "Serbia became the first Chinese colony in Europe" (Srbija prva kineska kolonija u Evropi). Regarding Belgrade, SSP stated its support for the termination of the contract with the investor of Belgrade Waterfront in April 2021. SSP called for the end of "environmental massacre" (ekološki masakr) in Aleksinac in May 2019, claiming that the trees in the centre of Aleksinac were cut down illegally. SSP criticised the ministry of environmental protection regarding the quality of air in Bor in June 2019, claiming that the government ignored excessive air pollution with sulfur dioxide and heavy metal particles. Regarding regional cooperation, SSP has adopted a platform in which they pledged reconciliation, cooperation, and the acceptance of diversity between countries in the Balkans. SSP condemned the Srebrenica genocide, stating that "11 July should be the remembrance of the genocide in Srebrenica" (11. jul treba da bude posvećen srebreničkim žrtvama), and that "the Balkans should function on the principles of tolerance and cooperation" (Balkan koji funkcioniše na principima tolerancije i saradnje). ### Demographic characteristics According to a Heinrich Böll Foundation research from November 2020, supporters of SSP saw themselves as socially progressive and economically leftist. The researchers also noted that voters with more liberal preferences were also orientated towards SSP. Spasojević noted in 2022 that its supporters closely represented the views of Tepić than Đilas, while he also noted that its voters are pro-European. ## Organisation SSP is led by Dragan Đilas, who was most recently re-elected in 2022. Additionally, Stefanović serves as the party's deputy president, while Tepić, Nikezić, and Petrović serve as vice-presidents of SSP. Alongside them, Velibor Pavlović serves as the president of the party's executive board, Peđa Mitrović serves as the general-secretary of SSP, and Ana Stevanović serves as the international secretary of SSP. Its headquarters is located at Danijelova 12-16 in Belgrade. SSP has a youth wing named the SSP Youth and a women's wing named Women's Network. ### International cooperation Đilas met with Zoran Zaev, the president of the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia, in February 2019 with whom he discussed cooperation between SSP and Zaev's party. As the representative of SSP, Đilas took part in a meeting that was organised by the Party of European Socialists (PES) in May 2020, where he expressed his party's position regarding the 2020 parliamentary election and European Union. In November 2022, SSP formed connections with the Social Democratic Party of Austria which stated its support for SSP to be admitted into PES. As the representative of SSP, Tepić took part in the Global Progressive Forum which was organised by PES in December 2022. In the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, SSP is represented by Tatjana Pašić, who sits in the Socialists, Democrats and Greens Group, while in the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, SSP is represented by Marko Dimić, who is a substitute and sits as a "non-registered" member. ### List of presidents ## Electoral performance ### Parliamentary elections ### Presidential elections ### Provincial elections ### Belgrade City Assembly elections

Muammar Gaddafi

Ruler of Libya from 1969 to 2011

Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi, (c. 7 June 1942 – 20 October 2011) was a Libyan revolutionary, politician and political theorist who ruled Libya from 1969 until his assassination in 2011 by rebel forces. He first served as Revolutionary Chairman of the Libyan Arab Republic from 1969 to 1977 and then as the Brotherly Leader of the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya from 1977 to 2011. Initially ideologically committed to Arab nationalism and Arab socialism, Gaddafi later ruled according to his own Third International Theory. Born near Sirte, Italian Libya, to a poor Bedouin Arab family, Gaddafi became an Arab nationalist while at school in Sabha, later enrolling in the Royal Military Academy, Benghazi. Within the military, he founded a revolutionary group which deposed the Western-backed Senussi monarchy of Idris in a 1969 coup. Having taken power, Gaddafi converted Libya into a republic governed by his Revolutionary Command Council. Ruling by decree, he deported Libya's Italian population and ejected its Western military bases. Strengthening ties to Arab nationalist governments—particularly Gamal Abdel Nasser's Egypt—he unsuccessfully advocated pan-Arab political union. An Islamic modernist, he introduced sharia as the basis for the legal system and promoted Islamic socialism. He nationalized the oil industry and used the increasing state revenues to bolster the military, fund foreign revolutionaries, and implement social programs emphasizing house-building, healthcare and education projects. In 1973, he initiated a "Popular Revolution" with the formation of Basic People's Congresses, presented as a system of direct democracy, but retained personal control over major decisions. He outlined his Third International Theory that year in The Green Book. Gaddafi transformed Libya into a new socialist state called a Jamahiriya ("state of the masses") in 1977. He officially adopted a symbolic role in governance but remained head of both the military and the Revolutionary Committees responsible for policing and suppressing dissent. During the 1970s and 1980s, Libya's unsuccessful border conflicts with Egypt and Chad, support for foreign militants, and alleged responsibility for bombings of Pan Am Flight 103 and UTA Flight 772 left it increasingly isolated on the world stage. A particularly hostile relationship developed with Israel, the United States and the United Kingdom, resulting in the 1986 U.S. bombing of Libya and United Nations–imposed economic sanctions. From 1999, Gaddafi shunned pan-Arabism, and encouraged pan-Africanism and rapprochement with Western nations; he was Chairperson of the African Union from 2009 to 2010. Amid the 2011 Arab Spring, protests against widespread corruption and unemployment broke out in eastern Libya. The situation descended into civil war, in which NATO intervened militarily on the side of the anti-Gaddafist National Transitional Council (NTC). Gaddafi's government was overthrown; he retreated to Sirte only to be captured and killed by NTC militants. A highly divisive figure, Gaddafi dominated Libya's politics for four decades and was the subject of a pervasive cult of personality. He was decorated with various awards and praised for his anti-imperialist stance, support for Arab—and then African—unity, as well as for significant development to the country following the discovery of oil reserves. Conversely, many Libyans strongly opposed Gaddafi's social and economic reforms; he was posthumously accused of various human rights violations. He was condemned by many as a dictator whose authoritarian administration systematically violated human rights and financed global terrorism in the region and abroad. ## Early life and early career ### Childhood: 1940s to 1950 Muammar Mohammed Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi was born near Qasr Abu Hadi, a rural area outside the town of Sirte in the deserts of Tripolitania, Italian western Libya. Gaddafi was the only son of his parents and the youngest of four siblings. His family came from a small, relatively uninfluential tribe called the Qadhadhfa, who were Arab in heritage. His mother was named Aisha bin Niran (died 1978), and his father, Mohammad Abdul Salam bin Hamed bin Mohammad, was known as Abu Meniar (died 1985); the latter earned a meager subsistence as a goat and camel herder. Like other contemporary nomadic Bedouin tribes, the family were illiterate and did not keep any birth records. Many biographers have used 7 June; however, his birthday is not known with certainty and sources have set it in 1942 or the spring of 1943, although his biographers David Blundy and Andrew Lycett noted that it could have been pre-1940. Gaddafi's upbringing in Bedouin culture influenced his personal tastes for the rest of his life; he preferred the desert over the city and would retreat there to meditate. From childhood, Gaddafi was aware of the involvement of European colonial powers in Libya; his nation was occupied by Italy, and during the North African Campaign of the Second World War it witnessed conflict between Italian and British forces. According to later claims, Gaddafi's paternal grandfather, Abdessalam Bouminyar, was killed by the Italian Army during the Italian invasion of 1911. At the end of the Second World War in 1945, Libya was occupied by British and French forces. Britain and France considered dividing the nation between their empires, but the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN) decided that the country was to be granted political independence, and in 1951 created the United Kingdom of Libya, a federal state under the leadership of a pro-Western monarch, Idris, who banned political parties and centralized power in his own hands. ### Education and political activism: 1950–1963 Gaddafi's earliest education was of a religious nature, imparted by a local Islamic teacher. Subsequently, moving to nearby Sirte to attend elementary school, he progressed through six grades in four years. Education in Libya was not free, but his father thought it would greatly benefit his son despite the financial strain. During the week Gaddafi slept in a mosque, and only at weekends and holidays walked 20 miles (32 km) to visit his parents. Even though Gaddafi's father was not educated, he made great sacrifices to send his son to school. As an impoverished bedouin, he faced bullying and discrimination from his city-dwelling classmates. However, he had many Egyptian teachers who informed him of the dramatic events occurring in their homeland. From Sirte, he and his family moved to the market town of Sabha in Fezzan, south-central Libya, where his father worked as a caretaker for a tribal leader while Muammar attended secondary school, something neither parent had done. Gaddafi was popular at this school; some friends made there received significant jobs in his later administration, most notably his best friend, Abdul Salam Jalloud. Many teachers at Sabha were Egyptian, and for the first time, Gaddafi had access to pan-Arab newspapers and radio broadcasts, especially the Cairo-based Voice of the Arabs. Growing up, Gaddafi witnessed significant events rock the Arab world, including the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, the Suez Crisis of 1956, and the short-lived existence of the United Arab Republic (UAR) between 1958 and 1961. Gaddafi admired the political changes implemented in the Arab Republic of Egypt under his hero, President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Nasser argued for Arab nationalism; the rejection of Western colonialism, neo-colonialism, and Zionism; and a transition from capitalism to socialism. Gaddafi was influenced by Nasser's book, Philosophy of the Revolution, which outlined how to initiate a coup. One of Gaddafi's Egyptian teachers, Mahmoud Efay, was reportedly sympathetic towards the youth's political ideas, and advised him that a successful revolution would need the support of the army. Gaddafi organized demonstrations and distributed posters criticizing the monarchy. In October 1961, he led a demonstration protesting against Syria's secession from the UAR, and raised funds to send cables of support to Nasser. Twenty students were arrested as a result of the disorder. Gaddafi and his companions also broke windows in a local hotel that was accused of serving alcohol. To punish Gaddafi, the authorities expelled him and his family from Sabha. Gaddafi moved to Misrata, there attending Misrata Secondary School. Maintaining his interest in Arab nationalist activism, he refused to join any of the banned political parties active in the city—including the Arab Nationalist Movement, the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, and the Muslim Brotherhood—claiming that he rejected factionalism. He read voraciously on the subjects of Nasser and the French Revolution of 1789, as well as the works of the Syrian political theorist Michel Aflaq and biographies of Abraham Lincoln, Sun Yat-sen, and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. ### Military training: 1963–1966 Gaddafi briefly studied history at the University of Libya in Benghazi before dropping out to join the military. Despite his police record, in 1963 he began training at the Royal Military Academy, Benghazi, alongside several like-minded friends from Misrata. The armed forces offered the only opportunity for upward social mobility for underprivileged Libyans, and Gaddafi recognized it as a potential instrument of political change. Under Idris, Libya's armed forces were trained by the British military; this angered Gaddafi, who viewed the British as imperialists, and accordingly, he refused to learn English and was rude to the British officers, ultimately failing his exams. British trainers reported him for insubordination and abusive behaviour, stating their suspicion that he was involved in the assassination of the military academy's commander in 1963. Such reports were ignored, and Gaddafi quickly progressed through the course. With a group of loyal cadres, in 1964 Gaddafi established the Central Committee of the Free Officers Movement, a revolutionary group named after Nasser's Egyptian predecessor. Led by Gaddafi, they met secretively and were organized into a clandestine cell system, pooling their salaries into a single fund. Gaddafi travelled around Libya collecting intelligence and developing connections with sympathizers, but the government's intelligence services ignored him, considering him little threat. Graduating in August 1965, Gaddafi became a communications officer in the army's signal corps. In April 1966, he was assigned to the United Kingdom for further training; over nine months he underwent an English-language course at Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, an Army Air Corps signal instructors course in Bovington Camp, Dorset, and an infantry signal instructors course at Hythe, Kent. Despite later rumours to the contrary, he did not attend the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. The Bovington signal course's director reported that Gaddafi successfully overcame problems learning English, displaying a firm command of voice procedure. Noting that Gaddafi's favourite hobbies were reading and playing football, he thought him an "amusing officer, always cheerful, hard-working, and conscientious". Gaddafi disliked England, claiming British Army officers had racially insulted him and finding it difficult adjusting to the country's culture; asserting his Arab identity in London, he walked around Piccadilly wearing traditional Libyan robes. He later related that while he travelled to England believing it more advanced than Libya, he returned home "more confident and proud of our values, ideals and social character". ## Libyan Arab Republic ### Coup d'état: 1969 Idris' government was increasingly unpopular by the latter 1960s; it had exacerbated Libya's traditional regional and tribal divisions by centralizing the country's federal system to take advantage of the country's oil wealth. Corruption and entrenched systems of patronage were widespread throughout the oil industry. Arab nationalism was increasingly popular, and protests flared up following Egypt's 1967 defeat in the Six-Day War with Israel; Idris' administration was seen as pro-Israeli due to its alliance with the Western powers. Anti-Western riots broke out in Tripoli and Benghazi, while Libyan workers shut down oil terminals in solidarity with Egypt. By 1969, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was expecting segments of Libya's armed forces to launch a coup. Although claims have been made that they knew of Gaddafi's Free Officers Movement, they have since claimed ignorance, stating that they were instead monitoring Abdul Aziz Shalhi's Black Boots revolutionary group. Shalhi, who effectively served as Idris' chief of staff, and his brother Omar were the sons of Idris' former chief advisor Ibrahim Shalhi, who had been murdered by Queen Fatima's nephew in the fall of 1954. After their father's assassination, they became the favorites of Idris. In mid-1969, Idris travelled abroad to spend the summer in Turkey and Greece amid widespread rumors of an abdication or a British-backed coup by the Shalhi brothers on 5 September. Gaddafi's Free Officers, recognizing this as their last chance to preempt the Shelhis in overthrowing the monarchy, initiating "Operation Jerusalem". If Gaddafi's Free Officers had not preempt the Shelhis, they would have almost certainly been defeated by the combined forces of Abdul Aziz Shelhi, the deputy commander of Libya's army, and the prominent families in Cyrenaica that supported the Shelhi family. On 1 September, Gaddafi's Free Officers occupied airports, police depots, radio stations, and government offices in Tripoli and Benghazi. Gaddafi took control of the Berka barracks in Benghazi, while Umar Muhayshi occupied Tripoli barracks and Jalloud seized the city's anti-aircraft batteries. Khweldi Hameidi took over the Tripoli radio station and was sent to arrest crown prince Sayyid Hasan ar-Rida al-Mahdi as-Sanussi and force him to relinquish his claim to the throne. They met no serious resistance and wielded little violence against the monarchists. Once Gaddafi removed the monarchical government, he announced the foundation of the Libyan Arab Republic. Addressing the populace by radio, he proclaimed an end to the "reactionary and corrupt" regime, "the stench of which has sickened and horrified us all". Due to the coup's bloodless nature, it was initially labelled the "White Revolution", although was later renamed the "One September Revolution" after the date on which it occurred. Gaddafi insisted that the Free Officers' coup represented a revolution, marking the start of widespread change in the socio-economic and political nature of Libya. He proclaimed that the revolution meant "freedom, socialism, and unity", and over the coming years implemented measures to achieve this. ### Consolidating leadership: 1969–1973 The 12-member central committee of the Free Officers proclaimed themselves the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), the government of the new republic. Lieutenant Gaddafi became RCC chairman, and therefore the de facto head of state, also appointing himself to the rank of colonel and becoming commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Jalloud became Prime Minister, while a civilian Council of Ministers headed by Sulaiman Maghribi was founded to implement RCC policy. Libya's administrative capital was moved from al-Beida to Tripoli. Although theoretically a collegial body operating through consensus building, Gaddafi dominated the RCC. Some of the others attempted to constrain what they saw as his excesses. Gaddafi remained the government's public face, with the identities of the other RCC members only being publicly revealed on 10 January 1970. All young men from (typically rural) working and middle-class backgrounds, none had university degrees; in this way they were distinct from the wealthy, highly educated conservatives who previously governed the country. The coup completed, the RCC proceeded with their intentions of consolidating the revolutionary government and modernizing the country. They purged monarchists and members of Idris' Senussi clan from Libya's political world and armed forces; Gaddafi believed this elite were opposed to the will of the Libyan people and had to be expunged. People's Courts were founded to try various monarchist politicians and journalists, many of whom were imprisoned, although none executed. Idris was sentenced to execution in absentia. Three months after Gaddafi came to power, the army minister and interior minister, both of whom were from the eastern Barqa region, tried to overthrow him in a failed coup. In 1970, Idris' great nephew Ahmed al-Senussi tried to instigate another coup against Gaddafi; the monarchist plot was foiled in August and Ahmed was sentenced to death (commuted in 1988 and pardoned by Gaddafi in 2001). In May 1970, the Revolutionary Intellectuals Seminar was held to bring intellectuals in line with the revolution, while that year's Legislative Review and Amendment united secular and religious law codes, introducing sharia into the legal system. Ruling by decree, the RCC maintained the monarchy's ban on political parties, in May 1970 banned trade unions, and in 1972 outlawed workers' strikes and suspended newspapers. In September 1971, Gaddafi resigned, claiming to be dissatisfied with the pace of reform, but returned to his position within a month. In July 1972, amid widespread speculation that Gaddafi had been ousted or jailed by his political opponents, a new 18-man cabinet was formed with only two of them, Jalloud and Abdel Moneim al-Houni, being military men; the rest were civilian technocrats per Gaddafi's insistence. In February 1973, Gaddafi resigned again, once more returning the following month. #### Economic and social reform The RCC's early economic policy has been characterized as being state capitalist in orientation. Many initiatives were established to aid entrepreneurs and develop a Libyan bourgeoisie. Seeking to expand the cultivatable acreage in Libya, in September 1969 the government launched a "Green Revolution" to increase agricultural productivity so that Libya could rely less on imported food. The hope was to make Libya self-sufficient in food production. All land that had either been expropriated from Italian settlers or which was not in use was repossessed and redistributed. Irrigation systems were established along the northern coastline and around various inland oases. Production costs often surpassed the value of the produce and thus Libyan agricultural production remained in deficit, relying heavily on state subsidies. With crude oil as the country's primary export, Gaddafi sought to improve Libya's oil sector. In October 1969, he proclaimed the current trade terms unfair, benefiting foreign corporations more than the Libyan state, and threatened to decrease production. In December Jalloud successfully increased the price of Libyan oil. In 1970, other OPEC states followed suit, leading to a global increase in the price of crude oil. The RCC followed with the Tripoli Agreement of 20 March 1971, in which they secured income tax, back-payments and better pricing from the oil corporations; these measures brought Libya an estimated \$1 billion in additional revenues in its first year. Increasing state control over the oil sector, the RCC began a program of nationalization, starting with the expropriation of British Petroleum's share of the British Petroleum-N.B. Hunt Sahir Field in December 1971. In September 1973, it was announced that all foreign oil producers active in Libya were to see 51 per cent of their operation nationalized, including the stake of Nelson Bunker Hunt, son of H.L. Hunt, who had played a key role in the discovery of oil in Libya. Among the companies that were partially nationalized was Armand Hammer's Occidental Petroleum. For Gaddafi, this was an essential step towards socialism. It proved an economic success; while gross domestic product had been \$3.8 billion in 1969, it had risen to \$13.7 billion in 1974, and \$24.5 billion in 1979. In turn, the Libyans' standard of life greatly improved over the first decade of Gaddafi's administration, and by 1979 the average per-capita income was at \$8,170, up from \$40 in 1951; this was above the average of many industrialized countries like Italy and the UK. In 1969, the government also declared that all foreign owned banks must either close down or convert to joint-stock operations. The RCC implemented measures for social reform, adopting sharia as a basis. The consumption of alcohol was prohibited, night clubs and Christian churches were shut down, traditional Libyan dress was encouraged, and Arabic was decreed as the only language permitted in official communications and on road signs. The RCC doubled the minimum wage, introduced statutory price controls, and implemented compulsory rent reductions of between 30 and 40 per cent. Gaddafi also wanted to combat the strict social restrictions that had been imposed on women by the previous regime, establishing the Revolutionary Women's Formation to encourage reform. In 1970, a law was introduced affirming equality of the sexes and insisting on wage parity. In 1971, Gaddafi sponsored the creation of a Libyan General Women's Federation. In 1972, a law was passed criminalizing the marriage of any females under the age of sixteen and ensuring that a woman's consent was a necessary prerequisite for a marriage. Gaddafi's regime opened up a wide range of educational and employment opportunities for women, although these primarily benefited a minority in the urban middle-classes. From 1969 to 1973, it used oil money to fund social welfare programs, which led to house-building projects and improved healthcare and education. House building became a major social priority, designed to eliminate homelessness and to replace the shanty towns created by Libya's growing urbanization. The health sector was also expanded; by 1978, Libya had 50 per cent more hospitals than it had in 1968, while the number of doctors had increased from 700 to over 3000 in that decade. Malaria was eradicated, and trachoma and tuberculosis greatly curtailed. Compulsory education was expanded from 6 to 9 years, while adult literacy programs and free university education were introduced. Beida University was founded, while Tripoli University and Benghazi University were expanded. In doing so, the government helped to integrate the poorer strata of Libyan society into the education system. Through these measures, the RCC greatly expanded the public sector, providing employment for thousands. These early social programs proved popular within Libya. This popularity was partly due to Gaddafi's personal charisma, youth and underdog status as a Bedouin, as well as his rhetoric emphasizing his role as the successor to the anti-Italian fighter Omar Mukhtar. To combat the country's strong regional and tribal divisions, the RCC promoted the idea of a unified pan-Libyan identity. In doing so, they tried discrediting tribal leaders as agents of the old regime, and in August 1971 a Sabha military court tried many of them for counter-revolutionary activity. Long-standing administrative boundaries were re-drawn, crossing tribal boundaries, while pro-revolutionary modernizers replaced traditional leaders, yet the communities they served often rejected them. Realizing the failures of the modernizers, Gaddafi created the Arab Socialist Union (ASU) in June 1971, a mass mobilization vanguard party of which he was president. The ASU recognized the RCC as its "Supreme Leading Authority", and was designed to further revolutionary enthusiasm throughout the country. It remained heavily bureaucratic and failed to mobilize mass support in the way Gaddafi had envisioned. #### Foreign relations The influence of Nasser's Arab nationalism over the RCC was immediately apparent. The administration was instantly recognized by the neighbouring Arab nationalist regimes in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Sudan, with Egypt sending experts to aid the inexperienced RCC. Gaddafi propounded pan-Arab ideas, proclaiming the need for a single Arab state stretching across North Africa and the Middle East. In December 1969, Libya signed the Tripoli Charter alongside Egypt and Sudan. This established the Arab Revolutionary Front, a pan-national union designed as a first step towards the eventual political unification of the three nations. In 1970 Syria declared its intention to join. Nasser died unexpectedly in September 1970, with Gaddafi playing a prominent role at his funeral. Nasser was succeeded by Anwar Sadat, who suggested that rather than creating a unified state, the Arab states should create a political federation, implemented in April 1971; in doing so, Egypt, Syria, and Sudan received large grants of Libyan oil money. In July 1971, Gaddafi sided with Sadat against the Soviet Union in the 1971 Sudanese coup d'état and dispatched Libyan fighter jets to force down a British Airlines jetliner carrying the leading coup plotters, Farouk Osman Hamadallah and Babikir al-Nour. They were extradited back to Khartoum, where they were promptly executed by Sudanese leader Jaafar Nimeiry. In February 1972, Gaddafi and Sadat signed an unofficial charter of merger, but it was never implemented because relations broke down the following year. Sadat became increasingly wary of Libya's radical direction, and the September 1973 deadline for implementing the Federation passed by with no action taken. After the 1969 coup, representatives of the Four Powers—France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet Union—were called to meet RCC representatives. The UK and the US quickly extended diplomatic recognition, hoping to secure the position of their military bases in Libya and fearing further instability. Hoping to ingratiate themselves with Gaddafi, in 1970 the US informed him of at least one planned counter-coup. Such attempts to form a working relationship with the RCC failed; Gaddafi was determined to reassert national sovereignty and expunge what he described as foreign colonial and imperialist influences. His administration insisted that the US and the UK remove their military bases from Libya, with Gaddafi proclaiming that "the armed forces which rose to express the people's revolution [will not] tolerate living in their shacks while the bases of imperialism exist in Libyan territory." The British left in March and the Americans in June 1970. Moving to reduce Italian influence, in October 1970 all Italian-owned assets were expropriated, and the 12,000-strong Italian community was expelled from Libya alongside the smaller community of Libyan Jews. The day became a national holiday known as "Vengeance Day". Italy complained that this was in contravention of the 1956 Italo-Libyan Treaty, although no UN sanctions were forthcoming. Aiming to reduce NATO power in the Mediterranean, in 1971 Libya requested that Malta cease allowing NATO to use its land for a military base, in turn offering Malta foreign aid. Compromising, Malta's government continued allowing NATO to use the island, but only on the condition that NATO would not use it for launching attacks on Arab territory. Over the coming decade, Gaddafi's government developed stronger political and economic links with Dom Mintoff's Maltese administration, and under Libya's urging Malta did not renew the UK's airbases on the island in 1980. Orchestrating a military build-up, the RCC began purchasing weapons from France and the Soviet Union. The commercial relationship with the latter led to an increasingly strained relationship with the US, which was then engaged in the Cold War with the Soviets. Gaddafi was especially critical of the US due to its support of Israel, and sided with the Palestinians in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, viewing the 1948 creation of the State of Israel as a Western colonial occupation forced upon the Arab world. He believed that Palestinian violence against Israeli and Western targets was the justified response of an oppressed people who were fighting against the colonization of their homeland. Calling on the Arab states to wage "continuous war" against Israel, in 1970 he initiated a Jihad Fund to finance anti-Israeli militants. In June 1972 Gaddafi created the First Nasserite Volunteers Centre to train anti-Israeli guerrillas. Like Nasser, Gaddafi favoured the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and his group, Fatah, over more militant and Marxist Palestinian groups. As the years progressed however, Gaddafi's relationship with Arafat became strained, with Gaddafi considering him too moderate and calling for more violent action. Instead, he supported militias like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, As-Sa'iqa, the Palestinian Popular Struggle Front, and the Abu Nidal Organization. He funded the Black September Organization whose members perpetrated the 1972 Munich massacre of Israeli athletes in West Germany and had the killed militants' bodies flown to Libya for a hero's funeral. Gaddafi financially supported other militant groups across the world, including the Black Panther Party, the Nation of Islam, the Almighty Black P. Stone Nation, the Tupamaros, the 19th of April Movement and the Sandinista National Liberation Front in Nicaragua, the ANC among other liberation movements in the fight against Apartheid in South Africa, the Provisional Irish Republican Army, ETA, Action directe, the Red Brigades, and the Red Army Faction in Europe, and the Armenian Secret Army, the Japanese Red Army, the Free Aceh Movement, and the Moro National Liberation Front in the Philippines. Gaddafi was indiscriminate in the causes which he funded, sometimes switching from supporting one side in a conflict to the other, as in the Eritrean War of Independence. Throughout the 1970s these groups received financial support from Libya, which came to be seen as a leader in the Third World's struggle against colonialism and neocolonialism. Though many of these groups were labelled "terrorists" by critics of their activities, Gaddafi rejected this characterization, instead considering them to be revolutionaries who were engaged in liberation struggles. ### The "Popular Revolution": 1973–1977 On 16 April 1973, Gaddafi proclaimed the start of a "Popular Revolution" in a speech at Zuwarah. He initiated this with a five-point plan, the first point of which dissolved all existing laws, to be replaced by revolutionary enactments. The second point proclaimed that all opponents of the revolution had to be removed, while the third initiated an administrative revolution that Gaddafi proclaimed would remove all traces of bureaucracy and the bourgeoisie. The fourth point announced that the population must form People's Committees and be armed to defend the revolution, while the fifth proclaimed the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in Libya, to expunge the country of "poisonous" foreign influences. He began to lecture on this new phase of the revolution in Libya, Egypt, and France. As a process, it had many similarities with the Cultural Revolution implemented in China. As part of this Popular Revolution, Gaddafi invited Libya's people to found General People's Committees as conduits for raising political consciousness. Although offering little guidance for how to set up these councils, Gaddafi claimed that they would offer a form of direct political participation that was more democratic than a traditional party-based representative system. He hoped that the councils would mobilize the people behind the RCC, erode the power of the traditional leaders and the bureaucracy, and allow for a new legal system chosen by the people. Many such committees were established in schools and colleges, where they were responsible for vetting staff, courses, and textbooks to determine if they were compatible with the country's revolutionary ideology. The People's Committees led to a high percentage of public involvement in decision making, within the limits permitted by the RCC, but exacerbated tribal divisions and tensions. They also served as a surveillance system, aiding the security services in locating individuals with views critical of the RCC, leading to the arrest of Ba'athists, Marxists, and Islamists. Operating in a pyramid structure, the base form of these Committees were local working groups, who sent elected representatives to the district level, and from there to the national level, divided between the General People's Congress and the General People's Committee. Above these remained Gaddafi and the RCC, who remained responsible for all major decisions. In crossing regional and tribal identities, the committee system aided national integration and centralization and tightened Gaddafi's control over the state and administrative apparatus. #### Third International Theory and The Green Book In June 1973, Gaddafi created a political ideology as a basis for the Popular Revolution: Third International Theory. This approach regarded both the US and the Soviet Union as imperialist and thus rejected Western capitalism as well as Marxist-Leninist atheism. In this respect, it was similar to the Three Worlds Theory developed by China's political leader Mao Zedong. As part of this theory, Gaddafi praised nationalism as a progressive force and advocated the creation of a pan-Arab state which would lead the Islamic and Third Worlds against imperialism. Gaddafi saw Islam as having a key role in this ideology, calling for an Islamic revival that returned to the origins of the Qur'an, rejecting scholarly interpretations and the Hadith; in doing so, he angered many Libyan clerics. During 1973 and 1974, his government deepened the legal reliance on sharia, for instance by introducing flogging as punishment for those convicted of adultery or homosexual activity. Gaddafi summarized Third International Theory in three short volumes published between 1975 and 1979, collectively known as The Green Book. Volume one was devoted to the issue of democracy, outlining the flaws of representative systems in favour of direct, participatory GPCs. The second dealt with Gaddafi's beliefs regarding socialism, while the third explored social issues regarding the family and the tribe. While the first two volumes advocated radical reform, the third adopted a socially conservative stance, proclaiming that while men and women were equal, they were biologically designed for different roles in life. During the years that followed, Gaddafists adopted quotes from The Green Book, such as "Representation is Fraud", as slogans. Meanwhile, in September 1975, Gaddafi implemented further measures to increase popular mobilization, introducing objectives to improve the relationship between the Councils and the ASU. In 1975, Gaddafi's government declared a state monopoly on foreign trade. Its increasingly radical reforms, coupled with the large amount of oil revenue being spent on foreign causes, generated discontent in Libya, particularly among the country's merchant class. In 1974, Libya saw its first civilian attack on Gaddafi's government when a Benghazi army building was bombed. Much of the opposition centred around RCC member Umar Muhayshi. With fellow RCC members Bashir Saghir al-Hawaadi and Awad Ali Hamza, he began plotting a coup against Gaddafi. In 1975, their plot was exposed and Muhayshi fled to Tunisia, eventually receiving asylum from Sadat's Egypt. Hawaadi, Hamza, and Omar El-Hariri were arrested. Most of the other conspirators were executed in March 1976. Another RCC member, foreign minister Abdul-Munim al-Huni, also fled to Egypt. In the aftermath, only five RCC members remained: Gaddafi, Jalloud, Abu-Bakr Yunis Jabr, Mustafa Kharubi, and Kweldi al-Hamidi. Thus, power was further concentrated in Gaddafi's hands. This ultimately led to the RCC's official abolition in March 1977. In September 1975, Gaddafi purged the army, arresting around 200 senior officers, and in October he founded the clandestine Office for the Security of the Revolution. In April 1976, he called upon his supporters in universities to establish "revolutionary student councils" and drive out "reactionary elements". During that year, anti-Gaddafist student demonstrations broke out at the universities of Tripoli and Benghazi, resulting in clashes with both Gaddafist students and police. The RCC responded with mass arrests and introduced compulsory national service for young people. In January 1977, two dissenting students and a number of army officers were publicly hanged; Amnesty International condemned it as the first time in Gaddafist Libya that dissenters had been executed for purely political crimes. Dissent also arose from conservative clerics and the Muslim Brotherhood, who accused Gaddafi of moving towards Marxism and criticized his abolition of private property as being against the Islamic sunnah; these forces were then persecuted as anti-revolutionary, while all privately owned Islamic colleges and universities were shut down. #### Foreign relations Following Anwar Sadat's ascension to the Egyptian presidency, Libya's relations with Egypt deteriorated. Over the coming years, the two slipped into a state of cold war. Sadat was perturbed by Gaddafi's unpredictability and insistence that Egypt required a cultural revolution akin to that being carried out in Libya. In February 1973, Israeli forces shot down Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114, which had strayed from Egyptian airspace into Israeli-held territory during a sandstorm. Gaddafi's foreign minister Salah Busir was on board and allegedly targeted by Israel in retaliation for the Munich massacre. Gaddafi was infuriated that Egypt had not done more to prevent the incident, and in retaliation planned to destroy the Queen Elizabeth 2, a British ship chartered by American Jews to sail to Haifa for Israel's 25th anniversary. Gaddafi ordered an Egyptian submarine to target the ship, but Sadat cancelled the order, fearing a military escalation. Gaddafi was later infuriated when Egypt and Syria planned the Yom Kippur War against Israel without consulting him and was angered when Egypt conceded to peace talks rather than continuing the war. Gaddafi became openly hostile to Egypt's leader, calling for Sadat's overthrow. When Sudanese President Gaafar Nimeiry took Sadat's side, Gaddafi also spoke out against him, encouraging the Sudan People's Liberation Army's attempt to overthrow Nimeiry. In 1974, Gaddafi released Abdul-Aziz Shennib, a commander under King Idris, from prison and appointed him Libyan ambassador to Jordan. Shennib had attended the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst with King Hussein of Jordan and was tasked by Gaddafi with Hussein's assassination. Shennib instead informed Hussein of the plot and defected to Jordan. Relations with Syria also soured over the events in the Lebanese Civil War. Initially, both Libya and Syria had contributed troops to the Arab League's peacekeeping force, although after the Syrian army attacked the Lebanese National Movement, Gaddafi openly accused Syrian President Hafez al-Assad of "national treason"; he was the only Arab leader to criticize Syria's actions. In late 1972 and early 1973, Libya invaded Chad to annex the uranium-rich Aouzou Strip. Intent on propagating Islam, in 1973 Gaddafi founded the Islamic Call Society, which had opened 132 centres across Africa within a decade. In 1973 he converted Gabonese President Omar Bongo, an action which he repeated three years later with Jean-Bédel Bokassa, president of the Central African Republic. Between 1973 and 1979, Libya provided \$500 million in aid to African countries, namely to Zaire and Uganda, and founded joint-venture companies throughout the countries to aid trade and development. Gaddafi was also keen on reducing Israeli influence within Africa, using financial incentives to successfully convince eight African states to break off diplomatic relations with Israel in 1973. A strong relationship was also established between Gaddafi's Libya and Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's Pakistani government, with the two countries exchanging nuclear research and military assistance. In recognition of Gaddafi's support of Pakistan's right to pursue nuclear weapons and financial support for the "Islamic bomb," Lahore Stadium was renamed Gaddafi Stadium. Gaddafi also provided support for Pakistan in the Bangladesh Liberation War; he reportedly deployed F-5s to Sargodha AFB and penned a strongly worded letter to Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi accusing her of aggression against Pakistan. Gaddafi's strong relationship with Pakistan ended after Bhutto was deposed by Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in 1977 as Zia distrusted Gaddafi and rejected further Libyan financing for the Pakistani nuclear program in favor of Saudi financing. Gaddafi sought to develop closer links in the Maghreb; in January 1974 Libya and Tunisia announced a political union, the Arab Islamic Republic. Although advocated by Gaddafi and Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba, the move was deeply unpopular in Tunisia, and it was soon abandoned. Retaliating, Gaddafi sponsored anti-government militants in Tunisia into the 1980s. Turning his attention to Algeria, in 1975 Libya signed, in Hassi Messaoud, a defensive alliance allegedly to counter alleged "Moroccan expansionism", also funding the Polisario Front of Western Sahara in its independence struggle against Morocco. Seeking to diversify Libya's economy, Gaddafi's government began purchasing shares in major European corporations like Fiat as well as buying real estate in Malta and Italy, which would become a valuable source of income during the 1980s oil slump. ## Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya ### Foundation: 1977 On 2 March 1977, the General People's Congress adopted the "Declaration on the Establishment of the Authority of the People" at Gaddafi's behest. Dissolving the Libyan Arab Republic, it was replaced by the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (Arabic: الجماهيرية العربية الليبية الشعبية الاشتراكية, al-Jamāhīrīyah al-‘Arabīyah al-Lībīyah ash-Sha‘bīyah al-Ishtirākīyah), a "state of the masses" conceptualized by Gaddafi. A new, all-green banner was adopted as the country's flag. Officially, the Jamahiriya was a direct democracy in which the people ruled themselves through the 187 Basic People's Congresses (BPCs), where all adult Libyans participated and voted on national decisions. These then sent members to the annual General People's Congress, which was broadcast live on television. In principle, the People's Congresses were Libya's highest authority, with major decisions proposed by government officials or with Gaddafi himself requiring the consent of the People's Congresses. Gaddafi became General Secretary of the GPC, although he stepped down from this position in early 1979 and appointed himself "Leader of the Revolution". Although all political control was officially vested in the People's Congresses, in reality Libya's existing political leadership continued to exercise varying degrees of power and influence. Debate remained limited, and major decisions regarding the economy and defence were avoided or dealt with cursorily; the GPC largely remained "a rubber stamp" for Gaddafi's policies. On rare occasions, the GPC opposed Gaddafi's suggestions, sometimes successfully; notably, when Gaddafi called on primary schools to be abolished, believing that homeschooling was healthier for children, the GPC rejected the idea. In other instances, Gaddafi pushed through laws without the GPC's support, such as when he desired to allow women into the armed forces. At other times, he ordered snap elections when it appeared that the GPC would enact laws he opposed. Gaddafi proclaimed that the People's Congresses provided for Libya's every political need, rendering other political organizations unnecessary; all non-authorized groups, including political parties, professional associations, independent trade unions, and women's groups, were banned. Despite these restrictions, St. John noted that the Jamahiriya system still "introduced a level of representation and participation hitherto unknown in Libya". With preceding legal institutions abolished, Gaddafi envisioned the Jamahiriya as following the Qur'an for legal guidance, adopting sharia law; he proclaimed "man-made" laws unnatural and dictatorial, only permitting Allah's law. Within a year he was backtracking, announcing that sharia was inappropriate for the Jamahiriya because it guaranteed the protection of private property, contravening The Green Book's socialism. His emphasis on placing his own work on a par with the Qur'an led conservative clerics to accuse him of shirk, furthering their opposition to his regime. In July 1977, a border war broke out with Egypt, in which the Egyptians defeated Libya despite their technological inferiority. The conflict lasted one week before both sides agreed to sign a peace treaty that was brokered by several Arab states. Both Egypt and Sudan had aligned themselves with the US, and this pushed Libya into a strategic, although not political, alignment with the Soviet Union. In recognition of the growing commercial relationship between Libya and the Soviets, Gaddafi was invited to visit Moscow in December 1976; there, he entered talks with Leonid Brezhnev. In August 1977, he visited Yugoslavia, where he met its leader Josip Broz Tito, with whom he had a much warmer relationship. He also enjoyed a warm relationship with Romanian leader Nicolae Ceaușescu. According to Romanian spy chief Ion Mihai Pacepa, Gaddafi once exclaimed to Ceaușescu, "My brother! You are my brother for the rest of my life!" After Pacepa defected to the US in July 1978, Gaddafi and Yasser Arafat contributed \$1 million each to Ceaușescu's \$4 million bounty on Pacepa. ### Revolutionary Committees and furthering socialism: 1978–1980 In December 1978, Gaddafi stepped down as Secretary-General of the GPC, announcing his new focus on revolutionary rather than governmental activities; this was part of his new emphasis on separating the apparatus of the revolution from the government. Although no longer in a formal governmental post, he adopted the title of "Leader of the Revolution" and continued as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. The historian Dirk Vandewalle stated that despite the Jamahariya's claims to being a direct democracy, Libya remained "an exclusionary political system whose decision-making process" was "restricted to a small cadre of advisers and confidantes" surrounding Gaddafi. Libya began to turn towards socialism. In March 1978, the government issued guidelines for housing redistribution, attempting to ensure that every adult Libyan owned their own home. Most families were banned from owning more than one house, while former rental properties were expropriated by the state and sold to the tenants at a heavily subsidized price. In September, Gaddafi called for the People's Committees to eliminate the "bureaucracy of the public sector" and the "dictatorship of the private sector"; the People's Committees took control of several hundred companies, converting them into worker cooperatives run by elected representatives. On 2 March 1979, the GPC announced the separation of government and revolution, the latter being represented by new Revolutionary Committees, who operated in tandem with the People's Committees in schools, universities, unions, the police force, and the military. Dominated by revolutionary zealots, most of whom were youths, the Revolutionary Committees were led by Mohammad Maghgoub and a Central Coordinating Office based in Tripoli and met with Gaddafi annually. Membership of the Revolutionary Committees was drawn from within the BPCs. According to Bearman, the revolutionary committee system became "a key—if not the main—mechanism through which [Gaddafi] exercises political control in Libya". Publishing a weekly magazine The Green March (al-Zahf al-Akhdar), in October 1980 they took control of the press. Responsible for perpetuating revolutionary fervour, they performed ideological surveillance, later adopting a significant security role, making arrests and putting people on trial according to the "law of the revolution" (qanun al-thawra). With no legal code or safeguards, the administration of revolutionary justice was largely arbitrary and resulted in widespread abuses and the suppression of civil liberties: the "Green Terror". In 1979, the committees began the redistribution of land in the Jefara plain, continuing through 1981. In May 1980, measures to redistribute and equalize wealth were implemented; anyone with over 1000 dinar in their bank account saw that extra money expropriated. The following year, the GPC announced that the government would take control of all import, export and distribution functions, with state supermarkets replacing privately owned businesses; this led to a decline in the availability of consumer goods and the development of a thriving black market. Gaddafi was also frustrated by the slow pace of social reform on women's issues, and in 1979 launched a Revolutionary Women's Formation to replace the more gradualist Libyan General Women's Federation. In 1978 he had established a Women's Military Academy in Tripoli, encouraging all women to enlist for training. The measure was hugely controversial, and voted down by the GPC in February 1983. Gaddafi remained adamant, and when it was again voted down by the GPC in March 1984, he refused to abide by the decision, declaring that "he who opposes the training and emancipation of women is an agent of imperialism, whether he likes it or not." The Jamahiriya'''s radical direction earned the government many enemies. Most internal opposition came from Islamic fundamentalists, who were inspired by the events of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. In February 1978, Gaddafi discovered that his head of military intelligence was plotting to kill him, and began to increasingly entrust security to his Qadhadfa tribe. Many who had seen their wealth and property confiscated turned against the administration, and a number of Western-funded opposition groups were founded by exiles. Most prominent was the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL), founded in 1981 by Mohammed Magariaf, which orchestrated militant attacks against Libya's government. Another, al-Borkan, began killing Libyan diplomats abroad. Following Gaddafi's command to kill these "stray dogs", under Colonel Younis Bilgasim's leadership, the Revolutionary Committees set up overseas branches to suppress counter-revolutionary activity, assassinating various dissidents. Although nearby nations like Syria and Israel also employed hit squads, Gaddafi was unusual in publicly bragging about his administration's use of them; in April 1980, he ordered all dissidents to return home by June 10 or be "liquidated wherever you are". Within a three months period in 1980, at least ten Libyan dissidents were murdered in Europe, including ex-diplomats, ex-army officers, businessmen, journalists, and student activists in disparate locations such as Rome, Bonn, London, Greece, Austria, and Cyprus. At least eleven more dissidents were assassinated abroad in 1981. In November 1984, Gaddafi was tricked by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak into announcing the successful assassination of former Libyan Prime Minister Abdul Hamid al-Bakkoush in Cairo; Bakkhoush not only turned up alive but held a press conference with Egypt's Interior Minister. In 1979, Gaddafi also created the Islamic Legion, through which several thousand Africans were trained in military tactics. Libya had sought to improve relations with the US under the presidency of Jimmy Carter, for instance by courting his brother, the businessman Billy Carter, and paying for the services of a group of rogue former CIA officers led by Edwin P. Wilson, but in 1979 the US placed Libya on its list of "State Sponsors of Terrorism". Relations were further damaged at the end of the year when a demonstration torched the US embassy in Tripoli in solidarity with the perpetrators of the Iran hostage crisis. The following year, Libyan fighters began intercepting US fighter jets flying over the Mediterranean, signalling the collapse of relations between the two countries. Major sources in the Italian media have alleged that the Itavia Flight 870 was shot down during a dogfight involving Libyan, United States, French and Italian Air Force fighters in an assassination attempt by NATO members on an important Libyan politician, perhaps even Gaddafi, who was flying in the same airspace that evening. Libyan relations with Lebanon and Shi'ite communities across the world also deteriorated due to the August 1978 disappearance of imam Musa al-Sadr when visiting Libya; the Lebanese accused Gaddafi of having him killed or imprisoned, a charge he denied. Relations with Pakistan broke down in this period. Despite Gaddafi's repeated appeals to Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq to spare Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's life, Bhutto was executed in April 1979. In retaliation for Bhutto's execution and Zia's refusal to share Pakistan's nuclear technology with Libya, Gaddafi began training Al-Zulfiqar, an anti-Zia insurgency led by Bhutto's sons Murtaza and Shahnawaz, expelled all 150,000 Pakistanis living in Libya, and provided asylum for the Bhutto family. Relations with Syria improved, as Gaddafi and Syrian President Hafez al-Assad shared an enmity with Israel and Egypt's Sadat. In 1980, they proposed a political union, with Libya promising to pay off Syria's £1-billion debt to the Soviet Union; although pressures led Assad to pull out, they remained allies. Another key ally was Uganda, and in 1979, during the Uganda–Tanzania War, Gaddafi sent 2,500 troops into Uganda to defend the regime of President Idi Amin from Tanzanian invaders. The mission failed; 400 Libyans were killed and they were forced to retreat. Gaddafi later came to regret his alliance with Amin, openly criticizing him as a "fascist" and a "show-off". ### Conflict with the US and its allies: 1981–1986 The early and mid-1980s saw economic trouble for Libya; from 1982 to 1986, the country's annual oil revenues dropped from \$21 billion to \$5.4 billion. Focusing on irrigation projects, 1983 saw construction start on Libya's largest and most expensive infrastructure project, the Great Man-Made River; although designed to be finished by the end of the decade, it remained incomplete at the start of the 21st century. Military spending increased, while other administrative budgets were cut back. Libya's foreign debt rose, and austerity measures were introduced to promote self-reliance; in August 1985 there was a mass deportation of foreign workers, most of them Egyptian and Tunisian. Domestic threats continued to plague Gaddafi; in May 1984, his Bab al-Azizia home was unsuccessfully attacked by a militia—linked either to the NFSL or the Muslim Brotherhood—and in the aftermath 5,000 dissidents were arrested. In the spring of 1985, members of the military tried to assassinate Gaddafi twice. The first attempt was a plot by conservative officers to assassinate Gaddafi at one of his villas on the outskirts of Tripoli; the second attempt was an assault on his convoy. In November 1985, Colonel Hassan Ishkal, the third most powerful man in Libya, head of the military region of Sirte, and a distant cousin of Gaddafi, died in a suspicious car accident. Ishkal's death was attributed to Jalloud, Khalifa Hunaysh (d. 2012), or Gaddafi himself. Libya had long supported the FROLINAT militia in neighbouring Chad, but the FROLINAT itself became divided over its ties to Libya in 1976. In January 1978, the anti-Libya faction within FROLINAT, led by Hissène Habré, switched side and formed an alliance with Chadian President Félix Malloum. Sudan and Saudi Arabia played a role in the negotiation due to their desire to contain Gaddafi. Meanwhile, the pro-Libya faction within FROLINAT, led by Goukouni Oueddei, renamed itself People's Armed Forces (FAP). In December 1980, Gaddafi re-invaded Chad at the request of the FAP-controlled GUNT government to aid in the civil war; in January 1981, Gaddafi suggested a political merger. The Organisation of African Unity (OAU) rejected this and called for a Libyan withdrawal, which came about in November 1981. The civil war resumed, and so Libya sent troops back in, clashing with French forces who supported the southern Chadian forces. In 1982, the GUNT government was overthrown by Habré's forces and Oueddei fled to Libya, where Gaddafi provided him with arms to continue to wage guerrilla warfare against Habré. In November 1984, Gaddafi met with French President François Mitterrand in Crete, where both sides agreed to withdraw from Chad. Oueddei broke with Gaddafi in 1985 due to the former's intentions to negotiate a truce with Habré. Consequently, he was placed under house arrest by Gaddafi in August and allegedly arrested by Libyan police and shot in the stomach in October. Oueddei survived the shooting and fled to Algeria, but continued to claim he and Gaddafi enjoyed a good relationship. When Gaddafi ordered the remnant of GUNT to attack Habré in February 1986 in violation of his agreement with Mitterand, France immediately launched Operation Épervier, which escalated into the Toyota War. Libya suffered a humiliating defeat as it was completely expelled from Chad and its chief commander, Khalifa Haftar, was captured along with 600-700 Libyan soldiers. Shortly after this disastrous battle, Gaddafi disavowed Haftar and the other Libyan prisoners of war who were captured by Chad. One possible contributing factor to Gaddafi's repudiation of Haftar and of other captured prisoners of war may have been the fact that Gaddafi had earlier signed an agreement to withdraw all Libyan forces from Chad, and Haftar's operations inside of Chad had been in violation of this agreement. An embittered Haftar then joined the anti-Gaddafi National Front for the Salvation of Libya, became a CIA asset, and eventually was given refuge in the US. Many African nations were tired of Libya's interference in their affairs; by 1980, nine African states had severed diplomatic relations with Libya, while in 1982 the OAU cancelled its scheduled conference in Tripoli to prevent Gaddafi gaining chairmanship. Some African states, such as Jerry Rawlings's Ghana and Thomas Sankara's Burkina Faso, nevertheless had warm relations with Libya during the 1980s. Proposing political unity with Morocco, in August 1984, Gaddafi and Moroccan monarch Hassan II signed the Oujda Treaty, forming the Arab–African Union; such a union was considered surprising due to the strong political differences and longstanding enmity that existed between the two governments. In a sign of warming relations, Gaddafi promised to stop funding the Polisario Front and Hassan II extradited former RCC member Umar Muhayshi to Libya, where he was immediately killed. Relations remained strained, particularly due to Morocco's friendly relations with the US and Israel; in August 1986, Hassan abolished the union. Angered by the snub, Gaddafi plotted with Abu Nidal to assassinate Hassan in 1987, but the plot was later aborted. In 1981, the new US President, Ronald Reagan, pursued a hardline approach to Libya, viewing it as a puppet regime of the Soviet Union. Gaddafi played up his commercial relationship with the Soviets, revisiting Moscow in 1981 and 1985, and threatening to join the Warsaw Pact. The Soviets were nevertheless cautious of Gaddafi, seeing him as an unpredictable extremist. In August 1981, the US staged military exercises in the Gulf of Sirte – an area which Libya claimed as a part of its territorial waters. The US shot down two Libyan Su-22 planes which were on an intercept course. Closing down Libya's embassy in Washington, DC, Reagan advised US companies operating in Libya to reduce the number of American personnel stationed there. In December 1981, the White House claimed Gaddafi had dispatched a hit squad to assassinate Reagan, allegedly led by Carlos the Jackal, who had been living in Libya under Gaddafi's protection after the 1975 OPEC siege. Secretary of State Alexander Haig, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, Counselor to the President Edwin Meese, chief of staff James Baker, and deputy chief of staff Michael Deaver were also considered potential targets and thus given special security. US ambassador to Italy Maxwell M. Rabb, who was Jewish, was urgently recalled to Washington due to threats against his life. Gaddafi denied the allegations. Gaddafi was also accused of having ties to the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions, which had murdered US military attaché Charles R. Ray and Israeli diplomat Yacov Barsimantov in Paris. In March 1982, the US implemented an embargo of Libyan oil, and in January 1986 ordered all US companies to cease operating in the country, although several hundred workers remained when the Libyan government doubled their pay. In Spring 1986, the US Navy again performed exercises in the Gulf of Sirte; the Libyan military retaliated, but failed as the US sank several Libyan ships. Diplomatic relations also broke down with the UK, after Libyan diplomats were accused in the killing of Yvonne Fletcher, a British policewoman stationed outside their London embassy, in April 1984. In 1980, Gaddafi hired former CIA agent Edwin P. Wilson, who was living in Libya as a fugitive from US justice, to plot the murder of an anti-Gaddafi Libyan graduate student at Colorado State University named Faisal Zagallai. Zagallai was shot in the head twice on October 14, 1980 in Fort Collins, Colorado by a former Green Beret and associate of Wilson named Eugene Tafoya. Zagallai survived the attack and Tafoya was convicted of third-degree assault and conspiracy to commit assault in November 1981. Wilson was lured back to the US and sentenced to 32 years in prison over four separate trials due to his ties to Gaddafi in 1983. In 1984, Gaddafi publicly executed Al-Sadek Hamed Al-Shuwehdy, a student and aeronautical engineer studying in the US. After the US accused Libya of orchestrating the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing, in which two American soldiers died, Reagan decided to retaliate militarily. The CIA was critical of the move, believing that Syria was a greater threat and that an attack would strengthen Gaddafi's reputation; however Libya was recognized as a "soft target". Reagan was supported by the UK but opposed by other European allies, who argued that it would contravene international law. In Operation El Dorado Canyon, orchestrated on 15 April 1986, US military planes launched a series of air-strikes on Libya, bombing military installations in various parts of the country, killing around 100 Libyans, including several civilians. One of the targets had been Gaddafi's home. Himself unharmed, two of Gaddafi's sons were injured, and he claimed that his four-year-old adopted daughter Hanna was killed, although her existence has since been questioned. In the immediate aftermath, Gaddafi retreated to the desert to meditate. There were sporadic clashes between Gaddafists and army officers who wanted to overthrow the government. Although the US was condemned internationally, Reagan received a popularity boost at home. Publicly lambasting US imperialism, Gaddafi's reputation as an anti-imperialist was strengthened both domestically and across the Arab world, and, in June 1986, he ordered the names of the month to be changed in Libya. ### "Revolution within a Revolution": 1987–1998 The late 1980s saw a series of liberalizing economic reforms within Libya designed to cope with the decline in oil revenues. In May 1987, Gaddafi announced the start of the "Revolution within a Revolution", which began with reforms to industry and agriculture and saw the re-opening of small business. Restrictions were placed on the activities of the Revolutionary Committees; in March 1988, their role was narrowed by the newly created Ministry for Mass Mobilization and Revolutionary Leadership to restrict their violence and judicial role, while in August 1988 Gaddafi publicly criticized them. In March, hundreds of political prisoners were freed, with Gaddafi falsely claiming that there were no further political prisoners in Libya. In June, Libya's government issued the Great Green Charter on Human Rights in the Era of the Masses, in which 27 articles laid out goals, rights, and guarantees to improve the situation of human rights in Libya, restricting the use of the death penalty and calling for its eventual abolition. Many of the measures suggested in the charter would be implemented the following year, although others remained inactive. Also in 1989, the government founded the Al-Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights, to be awarded to figures from the Third World who had struggled against colonialism and imperialism; the first year's winner was South African anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela. From 1994 through to 1997, the government initiated cleansing committees to root out corruption, particularly in the economic sector. In the aftermath of the 1986 US attack, the army was purged of perceived disloyal elements, and in 1988, Gaddafi announced the creation of a popular militia to replace the army and police. In 1987, Libya began production of mustard gas at a facility in Rabta, although publicly denied it was stockpiling chemical weapons, and unsuccessfully attempted to develop nuclear weapons. The period also saw a growth in domestic Islamist opposition, formulated into groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. Several assassination attempts against Gaddafi were foiled, and in turn, 1989 saw the security forces raid mosques believed to be centres of counter-revolutionary preaching. In December 1993, former Libyan foreign minister Mansour Rashid El-Kikhia, a leader of an anti-Gaddafi coalition in exile, was abducted in Cairo. His body was not found until 2012 in a morgue that belonged to Gaddafi's intelligence chief Abdullah Senussi. In October 1993, elements of the increasingly marginalized army, led by officers from the powerful Warfalla tribe, initiated a failed coup in Misrata and Bani Walid allegedly with help from the National Front for the Salvation of Libya, Khalifa Haftar, and the CIA, while in September 1995, Islamists launched an insurgency in Benghazi, and in July 1996 an anti-Gaddafist football riot broke out in Tripoli. In March 1996, Haftar again briefly returned to Libya to instigate an uprising against Gaddafi in the mountains of eastern Libya. The Revolutionary Committees experienced a resurgence to combat these Islamists. In 1989, Gaddafi was overjoyed by the foundation of the Arab Maghreb Union, uniting Libya in an economic pact with Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria, viewing it as beginnings of a new pan-Arab union. Gaddafi was able to recover some influence in Chad after Hissène Habré was overthrown by Idriss Déby in a Libya-sponsored coup in 1990. Déby also gave Gaddafi detailed information about CIA operations in Chad. Meanwhile, Libya stepped up its support for anti-Western militants such as the Provisional IRA, and in 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie in Scotland, killing 243 passengers and 16 crew members, plus 11 people on the ground. British police investigations identified two Libyans – Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah – as the chief suspects, and in November 1991 issued a declaration demanding that Libya hand them over. When Gaddafi refused, citing the Montreal Convention, the United Nations (UN) imposed Resolution 748 in March 1992, initiating economic sanctions against Libya which had deep repercussions for the country's economy. The country suffered an estimated US\$900 million financial loss as a result. On 5 November 1995, US President Bill Clinton declared the US would continue to induce pressure on Libya, also recognizing that Libyan terrorists were responsible for the Lockerbie bombing. Further problems arose with the West when in January 1989, two Libyan warplanes were shot down by the US off the Libyan coast and in September 1989, UTA Flight 772 was blown up over the Ténéré desert in Niger, killing all 170 people on board (156 passengers and 14 crew members). In 1996, Gaddafi wrote a letter to the newly elected Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's daughter Sheikh Hasina, pleading with her to spare the lives of her father's assassins Syed Faruque Rahman and Khandaker Abdur Rashid. Rahman and Rashid both had business ties to Libya. Many Arab and African states opposed the UN sanctions, with Mandela criticizing them on a visit to Gaddafi in October 1997, when he praised Libya for its work in fighting apartheid and awarded Gaddafi the Order of Good Hope. They would only be suspended in 1998 when Libya agreed to allow the extradition of the suspects to the Scottish Court in the Netherlands, in a process overseen by Mandela. As a result of the trial, Fhimah was acquitted and al-Megrahi convicted. Privately, Gaddafi maintained that he knew nothing about who perpetrated the bombing and that Libya had nothing to do with it. ### Pan-Africanism, reconciliation and privatization: 1999–2011 #### Links with Africa and conflicts in the Arab League During the final years of the 20th century, Gaddafi—frustrated by the failure of his pan-Arab ideals and the refusal of the Arab world to challenge the international air embargo imposed on Libya—increasingly rejected Arab nationalism in favour of pan-Africanism, emphasizing Libya's African identity. In a 1998 interview, Gaddafi claimed that "the Arab world is finished" and expressed his wish for Libya to become a "black country." From 1997 to 2000, Libya initiated cooperative agreements or bilateral aid arrangements with 10 African states, and in 1999 joined the Community of Sahel-Saharan States. In June 1999, Gaddafi visited Mandela in South Africa, and the following month attended the OAU summit in Algiers, calling for greater political and economic integration across the continent and advocating the foundation of a United States of Africa. He became one of the founders of the African Union (AU), initiated in July 2002 to replace the OAU. At the opening ceremonies, he called for African states to reject conditional aid from the developed world, a direct contrast to the message of South African President Thabo Mbeki. There was speculation that Gaddafi wanted to become the AU's first chair, raising concerns within Africa that this would damage the Union's international standing, particularly with the West. At the third AU summit, held in Tripoli, Libya, in July 2005, Gaddafi called for greater integration, advocating a single AU passport, a common defence system, and a single currency, using the slogan: "The United States of Africa is the hope." His proposal for a Union of African States, a project originally conceived by Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah in the 1960s, was rejected at the 2001 Assembly of Heads of States and Government (AHSG) summit in Lusaka by African leaders who thought it "unrealistic" and "utopian". In June 2005, Libya joined the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA). In March 2008 in Uganda, Gaddafi gave a speech once again urging Africa to reject foreign aid. In August 2008, Gaddafi was proclaimed "King of Kings" by a committee of traditional African leaders; they crowned him in February 2009, in a ceremony held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. That same month, Gaddafi was elected as the chairperson of the African Union, a position he retained for one year. In October 2010, Gaddafi apologized to African leaders for the historical enslavement of Africans by the Arab slave trade. Meanwhile, Gaddafi continued to have testy relationships with most of his fellow Arab leaders. In the 2003 Arab League summit, Gaddafi was involved in a public verbal altercation with Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, then the Crown Prince. Gaddafi accused Saudi Arabia of having made an "alliance with the devil" when it invited the US to intervene in the 1991 Gulf War. Abdullah responded that Gaddafi was a "liar" and an "agent of colonizers" and threatened Gaddafi that "your grave awaits you." Two weeks after the summit, Gaddafi allegedly plotted with the Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani of Qatar to assassinate Abdullah. The plot was overseen by Libyan intelligence chief Moussa Koussa, Mohammed Ismail (a colonel in Gaddafi's military intelligence), and Abdul Rahman al-Amoudi (an American citizen and founder of American Muslim Council). The assassination conspiracy was foiled by Saudi intelligence with the help of the FBI and CIA. Amoudi was sentenced to 23 years in prison in the US and stripped of his American citizenship. Ismail was arrested by Saudi Arabia, pardoned by Abdullah in 2005, and later acquired UAE citizenship due to his close ties with its ruler Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. After the failure of the assassination plot, Gaddafi continued to discuss instigating a regime change in Saudi Arabia with multiple power brokers in the Persian Gulf, including Qatar's Foreign Minister Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, Oman's foreign minister Yusuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah, and Kuwaiti extremist preacher Hakem al-Mutairi. The Gaddafi–Abdullah feud came into public view again in the 2009 Arab League summit when Gaddafi accused Abdullah, who had become King of Saudi Arabia in 2005, of being created by Britain and protected by the US. Alluding to their 2003 altercation, Gaddafi taunted Abdullah for ostensibly avoiding a confrontation with him for six years and quoted Abdullah's 2003 "grave awaits you" threat back at him before storming out of the meeting to visit a museum. Abdullah also left the meeting hall in anger. A Saudi official later claimed that Gaddafi and Abdullah had held a 30 minutes meeting at the sideline of the summit and that the "personal problem" between them was "over." #### Rebuilding links with the West In 1999, Libya began secret talks with the British government to normalize relations. In September 2001, Gaddafi publicly condemned the September 11 attacks on the US by al-Qaeda, expressing sympathy with the victims and calling for Libyan involvement in the US-led War on Terror against militant Islamism. His government continued suppressing domestic Islamism, at the same time as Gaddafi called for the wider application of sharia law. Libya also cemented connections with China and North Korea, being visited by Chinese President Jiang Zemin in April 2002. However, relations with China became strained in May 2006 due to a visit to Tripoli by Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian. Influenced by the events of the Iraq War, in December 2003, Libya renounced its possession of weapons of mass destruction, decommissioning its chemical and nuclear weapons programs. Relations with the US improved as a result. British Prime Minister Tony Blair visited Gaddafi in March 2004; the pair developed close personal ties. In 2003, Libya paid US\$2.7 billion to the families of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing as it was the condition the US and UK had made for terminating the remaining UN sanctions. Libya continued to deny any role in the bombing. In 2009, Gaddafi attempted to strong-arm global energy companies operating in Libya to cover Libya's settlement with the families of the victims of Lockerbie. In 2004, Gaddafi traveled to the headquarters of the European Union (EU) in Brussels—signifying improved relations between Libya and the EU—and the EU dropped its sanctions on Libya. As a strategic player in Europe's attempts to stem illegal migration from Africa, in October 2010, the EU paid Libya over €50 million to stop African migrants passing into Europe; Gaddafi encouraged the move, saying that it was necessary to prevent the loss of European cultural identity to a new "Black Europe". Gaddafi also completed agreements with the Italian government that they would invest in various infrastructure projects as reparations for past Italian colonial policies in Libya. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi gave Libya an official apology in 2006, after which Gaddafi called him the "iron man" for his courage in doing so. In August 2008, Gaddafi and Berlusconi signed a historic cooperation treaty in Benghazi; under its terms, Italy would pay \$5 billion to Libya as compensation for its former military occupation. In exchange, Libya would take measures to combat illegal immigration coming from its shores and boost investment in Italian companies. After the US removed Libya from its list of state sponsors of terrorism in 2006, Gaddafi nevertheless continued his anti-Western rhetoric. At the 2008 Arab League summit, held in Syria, he warned fellow Arab leaders that they could be overthrown and executed by the US like Saddam Hussein. At the Second Africa-South America Summit, held in Venezuela in September 2009, he called for a military alliance across Africa and Latin America to rival NATO. That same month he traveled to New York City and addressed the United Nations General Assembly for the first time on 23 September 2009, using it to condemn "Western aggression," and spoke for just over 90 minutes instead of the allotted 15. In the Spring of 2010, Gaddafi proclaimed jihad against Switzerland after Swiss police accused two of his family members of criminal activity in the country, resulting in the breakdown of bilateral relations. Gaddafi allegedly financed Nicolas Sarkozy in the 2007 French presidential election. He also financed Austrian far-right politician Jörg Haider starting in 2000. #### Economic reform Libya's economy witnessed increasing privatization; although rejecting the socialist policies of nationalized industry advocated in The Green Book, government figures asserted that they were forging "people's socialism" rather than capitalism. Gaddafi welcomed these reforms, calling for wide-scale privatization in a March 2003 speech; he promised that Libya would join the World Trade Organization. These reforms encouraged private investment in Libya's economy. By 2004, there was US\$40 billion of direct foreign investment in Libya, a six-fold rise over 2003. Sectors of Libya's population reacted against these reforms with public demonstrations, and in March 2006, revolutionary hard-liners took control of the GPC cabinet; although scaling back the pace of the changes, they did not halt them. In 2010, plans were announced that would have seen half the Libyan economy privatized over the following decade, these plans appear to have been soon abandoned however, as the companies that the government stated they were going to float on the stock market, among them the National Commercial Bank and the Libyan Iron and Steel Company were never floated and remained 100% state-owned. Many socialist policies remained however, with subsidiaries of logistics company HB Group being nationalized in 2007. Agriculture remained largely untouched by the reforms, with farms remaining cooperatives, the Agricultural Bank of Libya remaining wholly state-owned and state interventionist policies and price controls remaining. The oil industry remained largely state-owned, with the wholly state-owned National Oil Corporation retaining a 70% share in Libya's oil industry, the government also imposed a 93% tax on all oil that foreign companies produced in Libya. Price controls and subsidies over oil and food remained in place, and state-provided benefits such as free education, universal healthcare, free housing, free water and free electricity remained in place. Libya also changed its stance on the WTO after the removal of technocrat Shukri Ghanem, with Gaddafi condemning the WTO as a neocolonial terrorist organisation, and urging African and Third World countries not to join it. While there was no accompanying political liberalization, with Gaddafi retaining predominant control, in March 2010, the government devolved further powers to the municipal councils. Rising numbers of reformist technocrats attained positions in the country's governance; best known was Gaddafi's son and heir apparent Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, who was openly critical of Libya's human rights record. He led a group who proposed the drafting of a new constitution, although it was never adopted. Involved in encouraging tourism, Saif founded several privately run media channels in 2008, but after criticizing the government, they were nationalized in 2009. ## Libyan Civil War ### Origins and development: February–August 2011 Following the start of the Arab Spring in 2011, Gaddafi spoke out in favour of Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, then threatened by the Tunisian Revolution. He suggested that Tunisia's people would be satisfied if Ben Ali introduced a Jamahiriyah system there. Fearing domestic protest, Libya's government implemented preventive measures by reducing food prices, purging the army leadership of potential defectors, and releasing several Islamist prisoners. This proved ineffective, and on 17 February 2011, major protests broke out against Gaddafi's government. Unlike Tunisia or Egypt, Libya was largely religiously homogeneous and had no strong Islamist movement, but there was widespread dissatisfaction with the corruption and entrenched systems of patronage, while unemployment had reached around 30 percent. Accusing the rebels of being "drugged" and linked to al-Qaeda, Gaddafi proclaimed that he would die a martyr rather than leave Libya. As he announced that the rebels would be "hunted down street by street, house by house and wardrobe by wardrobe", the army opened fire on protesters in Benghazi, killing hundreds. Shocked at the government's response, a number of senior politicians resigned or defected to the protesters' side. The uprising spread quickly through Libya's less economically developed eastern half. By February's end, eastern cities such as Benghazi, Misrata, al-Bayda, and Tobruk were controlled by rebels, and the Benghazi-based National Transitional Council (NTC) formed to represent them. In the conflict's early months it appeared that Gaddafi's government—with its greater fire-power—would be victorious. Both sides disregarded the laws of war, committing human rights abuses, including arbitrary arrests, torture, extrajudicial executions, and revenge attacks. On 26 February, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1970, suspending Libya from the UN Human Rights Council, implementing sanctions and calling for an International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation into the killing of unarmed civilians. In March, the Security Council declared a no-fly zone to protect the civilian population from aerial bombardment, calling on foreign nations to enforce it; it also specifically prohibited foreign occupation. Ignoring this, Qatar sent hundreds of troops to support the dissidents and, along with France and the United Arab Emirates, provided weaponry and military training to the NTC. NATO announced that it would enforce the no-fly zone. On 30 April a NATO airstrike killed Gaddafi's sixth son and three of his grandsons in Tripoli. This Western military intervention was criticized by various leftist governments, including those that had criticized Gaddafi's response to the protests, because they regarded it as an imperialist attempt to secure control of Libya's resources. In June, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Gaddafi, his son Saif al-Islam, and his brother-in-law Abdullah Senussi, head of state security, for charges concerning crimes against humanity. That month, Amnesty International published their report, finding that Gaddafi's forces were responsible for numerous war crimes but added that a number of allegations of human rights abuses lacked credible evidence. The report added that "much Western media coverage has from the outset presented a very one-sided view of the logic of events, portraying the protest movement as entirely peaceful and repeatedly suggesting that the regime's security forces were unaccountably massacring unarmed demonstrators". In July, over 30 governments recognized the NTC as the legitimate government of Libya; Gaddafi called on his supporters to "Trample on those recognitions, trample on them under your feet ... They are worthless". In August, the Arab League recognized the NTC as "the legitimate representative of the Libyan state". Aided by NATO air cover, the rebel militia pushed westward, defeating loyalist armies and securing control of the centre of the country. Gaining the support of Amazigh (Berber) communities of the Nafusa Mountains, who had long been persecuted as non-Arabic speakers under Gaddafi, the NTC armies surrounded Gaddafi loyalists in several key areas of western Libya. In August, the rebels seized Zliten and Tripoli, ending the last vestiges of Gaddafist power. It is probable that without the NATO air strikes supporting the rebels, they would not have been able to advance west and Gaddafi's forces would have ultimately retaken control of eastern Libya. ## Capture and killing After the fall of Tripoli, only a few towns in western Libya such as Bani Walid, Sebha, and Sirte remained Gaddafist strongholds. Gaddafi was reportedly planning to catch up with his Sebha commander Ali Kanna's Tuareg forces and seek asylum in Burkina Faso. Instead, Gaddafi retreated to his hometown of Sirte, where he convened a meeting with his son Mutassim and intelligence chief Abdullah Senussi and learned that his youngest son Khamis had been killed by a NATO airstrike on 29 August. In the weeks that followed, Gaddafi continued to broadcast defiant audio messages through Syria-based Arrai TV. On 10 September, General Massoud Abdel Hafiz announced the formation of the Republic of Fezzan in Sebha, where Gaddafi would be president for life. Sebha fell on 22 September. Surrounding himself with bodyguards and a small entourage, including Mutassim, security chief Mansour Dhao, and defense minister Abu-Bakr Yunis Jabr, Gaddafi continually changed residences to escape NATO and NTC shelling, devoting his days to prayer and reading the Qur'an. On 20 October, Gaddafi recorded a farewell audio message for his family, later publicized by AlHadath, and then broke out of Sirte's District 2 in a joint civilian-military convoy. According to Dhao, it was a "suicide mission" as Gaddafi wanted to die in the Jarref Valley, close to where he was born. At around 08:30, NATO bombers attacked, destroying at least 14 vehicles and killing at least 53 people. The convoy scattered, and Gaddafi and those closest to him fled to a nearby villa, which was shelled by rebel militia from Misrata. Fleeing to a construction site, Gaddafi and his inner cohort hid inside drainage pipes while his bodyguards battled the rebels; in the conflict, Gaddafi suffered head injuries from a grenade blast while Jabr was killed. The Misrata militia took Gaddafi prisoner, causing serious injuries as they tried to apprehend him; the events were filmed on a mobile phone. A video appears to picture Gaddafi being poked or stabbed in the anus "with some kind of stick or knife" or possibly a bayonet. Pulled onto the front of a pick-up truck, he fell off as it drove away. His semi-naked, lifeless body was then placed into an ambulance and taken to Misrata; upon arrival, he was found to be dead. Official NTC accounts claimed that Gaddafi was caught in a cross-fire and died from bullet wounds. Other eye-witness accounts claimed that rebels had fatally shot Gaddafi in the stomach. That afternoon, NTC Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril publicly revealed the news of Gaddafi's death. His corpse was placed in the freezer of a local market alongside the corpses of Yunis Jabr and Mutassim; the bodies were publicly displayed for four days, with Libyans from all over the country coming to view them. Footage of Gaddafi's death was broadcast extensively across media networks internationally. In response to international calls, on 24 October Jibril announced that a commission would investigate Gaddafi's death. On 25 October, the NTC announced that Gaddafi had been buried at an unidentified location in the desert. ## Political ideology Gaddafi's ideological worldview was molded by his environment, namely his Islamic faith, his Bedouin upbringing, and his disgust at the actions of Italian colonialists in Libya. As a schoolboy, Gaddafi adopted the ideologies of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism, influenced in particular by Nasserism, the thought of the Egyptian President Nasser, whom Gaddafi regarded as his hero; Nasser privately described Gaddafi as "a nice boy, but terribly naïve". During the early 1970s, Gaddafi formulated his own particular approach to Arab nationalism and socialism, known as Third International Theory, which The New York Times described as a combination of "utopian socialism, Arab nationalism, and the Third World revolutionary theory that was in vogue at the time". He regarded this system as a practical alternative to the then-dominant international models of Western capitalism and Marxism–Leninism. He laid out the principles of this Theory in the three volumes of The Green Book, in which he sought to "explain the structure of the ideal society". The Libyan studies specialist Ronald Bruce St. John regarded Arab nationalism as Gaddafi's "primordial value", stating that during the early years of his government, Gaddafi was "the Arab nationalist par excellence". Gaddafi called for the Arab world to regain its dignity and assert a major place on the world stage, blaming Arab backwardness on stagnation resulting from Ottoman rule, European colonialism and imperialism, and corrupt and repressive monarchies. Gaddafi's Arab nationalist views led him to the pan-Arabist belief in the need for unity across the Arab world, combining the Arab nation under a single nation-state. To this end, he had proposed a political union with five neighbouring Arab states by 1974, although without success. In keeping with his views regarding Arabs, his political stance was described as nativist. Gaddafi also had international ambitions, wanting to export his revolutionary ideas throughout the world. Gaddafi saw his socialist Jamahiriyah as a model for the Arab, Islamic, and non-aligned worlds to follow, and in his speeches declared that his Third International Theory would eventually guide the entire planet. He nevertheless had minimal success in exporting the ideology outside of Libya. Along with Arab nationalism, anti-imperialism was also a defining feature of Gaddafi's regime during its early years. He believed in opposing Western imperialism and colonialism in the Arab world, including any Western expansionism through the form of Israel. He offered support to a broad range of political groups abroad that called themselves "anti-imperialist", especially those that set themselves in opposition to the United States. For many years, anti-Zionism was a fundamental component of Gaddafi's ideology. He believed that the state of Israel should not exist and that any Arab compromise with the Israeli government was a betrayal of the Arab people. In large part due to their support of Israel, Gaddafi despised the United States, considering the country to be imperialist and lambasting it as "the embodiment of evil". He sought to distinguish "oriental" Jews who had lived in the Middle East for generations from the European Jews who had migrated to Palestine during the 20th century, calling the latter "vagabonds" and "mercenaries" who should return to Europe. He rallied against Jews in many of his speeches, with Blundy and Lycett claiming that his anti-Semitism was "almost Hitlerian". As Pan-Africanism increasingly became his focus in the early 21st century, Gaddafi became less interested in the Israel-Palestine issue, calling for the two communities to form a new single-state that he termed "Isratin". This would have led the Jewish population to become a minority within the new state. ### Islamic modernism and Islamic socialism Gaddafi rejected the secularist approach to Arab nationalism that had been pervasive in Syria, with his revolutionary movement placing a far stronger emphasis on Islam than previous Arab nationalist movements had done. He deemed Arabism and Islam to be inseparable, referring to them as "one and indivisible", and called on the Arab world's Christian minority to convert to Islam. He insisted that Islamic law should be the basis for the law of the state, blurring any distinction between the religious and secular realms. He desired unity across the Islamic world, and encouraged the propagation of the faith elsewhere; on a 2010 visit to Italy, he paid a modelling agency to find 200 young Italian women for a lecture he gave urging them to convert. According to the Gaddafi biographer Jonathan Bearman, in Islamic terms Gaddafi was a modernist rather than a fundamentalist, for he subordinated religion to the political system rather than seeking to Islamicise the state as Islamists sought to do. He was driven by a sense of "divine mission", believing himself a conduit of God's will, and thought that he must achieve his goals "no matter what the cost". His interpretation of Islam was nevertheless idiosyncratic, and he clashed with conservative Libyan clerics. Many criticized his attempts to encourage women to enter traditionally male-only sectors of society, such as the armed forces. Gaddafi was keen to improve women's status, although saw the sexes as "separate but equal" and therefore felt women should usually remain in traditional roles. Gaddafi described his approach to economics as "Islamic socialism". For him, a socialist society could be defined as one in which men controlled their own needs, either through personal ownership or through a collective. Although the early policies pursued by his government were state capitalist in orientation, by 1978 he believed that private ownership of the means of production was exploitative and thus he sought to move Libya away from capitalism and towards socialism. Private enterprise was largely eliminated in favour of a centrally controlled economy. The extent to which Libya became socialist under Gaddafi is disputed. Bearman suggested that while Libya did undergo "a profound social revolution", he did not think that "a socialist society" was established in Libya. Conversely, St. John expressed the view that "if socialism is defined as a redistribution of wealth and resources, a socialist revolution clearly occurred in Libya" under Gaddafi's regime. Gaddafi was staunchly anti-Marxist, and in 1973 declared that "it is the duty of every Muslim to combat" Marxism because it promotes atheism. In his view, ideologies like Marxism and Zionism were alien to the Islamic world and were a threat to the ummah, or global Islamic community. Nevertheless, Blundy and Lycett noted that Gaddafi's socialism had a "curiously Marxist undertone", with political scientist Sami Hajjar arguing that Gaddafi's model of socialism offered a simplification of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels's theories. While acknowledging the Marxist influence on Gaddafi's thought, Bearman stated that the Libyan leader rejected Marxism's core tenet, that of class struggle as the main engine of social development. Instead of embracing the Marxist idea that a socialist society emerged from class struggle between the proletariat and bourgeoisie, Gaddafi believed that socialism would be achieved through overturning "unnatural" capitalism and returning society to its "natural equilibrium". In this, he sought to replace a capitalist economy with one based on his own romanticized ideas of a traditional, pre-capitalist past. This owed much to the Islamic belief in God's natural law providing order to the universe. ## Personal life A very private individual, Gaddafi was given to rumination and solitude and could be reclusive. Gaddafi described himself as a "simple revolutionary" and "pious Muslim" called upon by God to continue Nasser's work. Gaddafi was an austere and devout Muslim, although according to Vandewalle, his interpretation of Islam was "deeply personal and idiosyncratic." He was also a football enthusiast and enjoyed both playing the sport and horse riding as a means of recreation. He regarded himself as an intellectual; he was a fan of Beethoven and said his favourite novels were Uncle Tom's Cabin, Roots, and The Outsider. Gaddafi regarded personal appearance as important, with Blundy and Lycett referring to him as "extraordinarily vain." Gaddafi had a large wardrobe, and sometimes changed his outfit multiple times a day. He favoured either a military uniform or traditional Libyan dress, tending to eschew Western-style suits. He saw himself as a fashion icon, stating "Whatever I wear becomes a fad. I wear a certain shirt and suddenly everyone is wearing it." Following his ascension to power, Gaddafi moved into the Bab al-Azizia barracks, a 6-square-kilometre (2.3 sq mi) fortified compound located two miles from the centre of Tripoli. In the 1980s, his lifestyle was considered modest in comparison to those of many other Arab leaders. He was preoccupied with his own security, regularly changing where he slept and sometimes grounding all other planes in Libya when he was flying. He made particular requests when travelling to foreign countries. During his trips to Rome, Paris, Madrid, Moscow, and New York City, he resided in a bulletproof tent, following his Bedouin traditions. Gaddafi was notably confrontational in his approach to foreign powers and generally shunned Western ambassadors and diplomats, believing them to be spies. In the 1970s and 1980s, there were reports of his making sexual advances toward female reporters and members of his entourage. Starting in the 1980s, he travelled with his all-female Amazonian Guard, who were allegedly sworn to a life of celibacy. After Gaddafi's death, the Libyan psychologist Seham Sergewa, part of a team investigating sexual offences during the civil war, stated that five of the guards told her they had been raped by Gaddafi and senior officials. After Gaddafi's death, the French journalist Annick Cojean published a book alleging that Gaddafi had had sexual relations with women, some in their early teenage years, who had been specially selected for him. One of those Cojean interviewed, a woman named Soraya, claimed that Gaddafi kept her imprisoned in a basement for six years, where he repeatedly raped her, urinated on her, and forced her to watch pornography, drink alcohol, and snort cocaine. The alleged sexual abuse was said to have been facilitated by Gaddafi's Chief of Protocol Nuri al-Mismari and Mabrouka Sherif. Gaddafi also hired several Ukrainian nurses to care for him; one described him as kind and considerate and was surprised that allegations of abuse had been made against him. Gaddafi married his first wife, Fatiha al-Nuri, in 1969. Although they had one son, Muhammad Gaddafi (born 1970), their relationship was strained, and they divorced in 1970. Gaddafi's second wife was Safia Farkash, née el-Brasai, a former nurse from the Obeidat tribe born in Bayda. They met in 1969, following his ascension to power, when he was hospitalized with appendicitis; he claimed that it was love at first sight. The couple remained married until his death. Together they had seven biological children: Saif al-Islam Gaddafi (born 1972), Al-Saadi Gaddafi (born 1973), Mutassim Gaddafi (1974–2011), Hannibal Muammar Gaddafi (born 1975), Ayesha Gaddafi (born 1976), Saif al-Arab Gaddafi (1982–2011), and Khamis Gaddafi (1983–2011). He also adopted two children, Hana Gaddafi and Milad Gaddafi. Several of his sons gained a reputation for lavish and anti-social behaviour in Libya, which proved a source of resentment toward his administration. At least three of his cousins were prominent figures in Gaddafi's regime. Ahmed Gaddaf al-Dam is Libya's former Special Envoy to Egypt and a leading figure of the Gaddafi regime. Mansour Dhao was his chief of security and led the People's Guard. Sayyid Gaddaf al-Dam was a brigadier general and described as the second most powerful person in Libya in the 1980s. ## Public life According to Vandewalle, Gaddafi "dominated [Libya's] political life" during his period in power. The sociologist Raymond A. Hinnebusch described the Libyan as "perhaps the most exemplary contemporary case of the politics of charismatic leadership", displaying all of the traits of charismatic authority outlined by the sociologist Max Weber. According to Hinnebusch, the foundations of Gaddafi's "personal charismatic authority" in Libya stemmed from the blessing he had received from Nasser coupled with "nationalist achievements" such as the expulsion of foreign military bases, the extraction of higher prices for Libyan oil, and his vocal support for the Palestinian and other anti-imperialist causes. A cult of personality devoted to Gaddafi existed in Libya through most of his rule. His biographer Alison Pargeter noted that "he filled every space, moulding the entire country around himself." Depictions of his face could be found throughout the country, including on postage stamps, watches, and school satchels. Quotations from The Green Book appeared on a wide variety of places, from street walls to airports and pens, and were put to pop music for public release. In private, Gaddafi often complained that he disliked this personality cult surrounding him, but that he tolerated it because the people of Libya adored him. The cult served a political purpose, with Gaddafi helping to provide a central identity for the Libyan state. Several biographers and observers characterized Gaddafi as a populist. He enjoyed attending lengthy public sessions where people were invited to question him; these were often televised. Throughout Libya, crowds of supporters would arrive at public events where he appeared. Described as "spontaneous demonstrations" by the government, there are recorded instances of groups being coerced or paid to attend. He was typically late to public events, and would sometimes fail to arrive. Although Bianco thought he had a "gift for oratory", he was considered a poor orator by Blundy and Lycett. The biographer Daniel Kawczynski noted that Gaddafi was famed for his "lengthy, wandering" speeches, which typically involved criticizing Israel and the US. The journalist Ruth First described his speeches as being "an inexhaustible flow; didactic, at times incoherent; peppered with snatches of half-formed opinions; admonitions; confidences; some sound common sense, and as much prejudice". ## Awards and honours ## Reception and legacy Supporters praised Gaddafi's administration for the creation of a more equal society through domestic reform. They stressed the regime's achievements in combating homelessness, ensuring access to food and safe drinking water, and to dramatic improvements in education. Supporters have also applauded achievements in medical care, praising the universal free healthcare provided under the Gaddafist administration, with diseases like cholera and typhoid being contained and life expectancy raised. Gaddafi's government's treatment of non-Arab Libyans came in for criticism from human rights activists, with native Berbers, Italians, Jews, refugees, and foreign workers all facing persecution in Gaddafist Libya. Human rights groups also criticized the treatment of migrants, including asylum seekers, who passed through Gaddafi's Libya on their way to Europe. During the Civil War, various leftist groups endorsed the anti-Gaddafist rebels—but not the Western military intervention—by arguing that Gaddafi had become an ally of Western imperialism by cooperating with the War on Terror and efforts to block African migration to Europe. Gaddafi was widely perceived as a terrorist, especially in the US and UK. ### Posthumous assessment International reactions to Gaddafi's death were divided. Gaddafi was mourned as a hero by many across sub-Saharan Africa but was widely condemned elsewhere. Following his defeat in the civil war, Gaddafi's system of governance was dismantled and replaced by the interim government of the NTC, which legalized trade unions and freedom of the press. In January 2013, the GNC officially renamed the Jamahiriyah'' as the "State of Libya". Gaddafi loyalists then founded a new political party, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Libya. Led by Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the Popular Front was allowed to participate in the future general election. ## See also - Alleged Libyan financing in the 2007 French presidential election - Disarmament of Libya - Egyptian–Libyan War - History of Libya under Muammar Gaddafi - HIV trial in Libya - Libya and weapons of mass destruction - Pan Am Flight 103 - SNC-Lavalin affair - UTA Flight 772 - West Berlin discotheque bombing

30 West 56th Street

Building in Manhattan, New York

30 West 56th Street (originally the Henry Seligman Residence) is a building in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. It is along 56th Street's southern sidewalk between Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue. The five-story building was designed by C. P. H. Gilbert in the French Renaissance Revival style. It was constructed between 1899 and 1901 as a private residence, one of several on 56th Street's "Bankers' Row". The main facade is largely clad with limestone, while the side facades are clad with brick and have limestone quoins. It is divided vertically into three bays. The ground story contains three openings within a wall of rusticated blocks; the center opening was the original main entrance. The second floor contains wood-framed windows and the third and fourth stories have window openings containing three panes; there are ornamental balconettes at the second and fourth stories. A cornice and mansard roof rises above the fourth floor. The interior was ornately decorated, with a marble reception hall, Japanese-style smoking room, and Gothic style library. The house was commissioned for banker Henry Seligman, of J. & W. Seligman & Co., and his wife Adelaide. The couple was involved in numerous clubs and organizations and hosted events at the house until they both died in the early 1930s. Afterward, the house was leased to the Beethoven Association in 1934 and divided into apartments in 1941. The ground floor housed numerous restaurants starting in 1940, and modifications were made to the building in subsequent years. In 1994 it was purchased by Alberta Ferretti's firm Aeffe USA, which has occupied the building since 1996. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the house as an official landmark in 2007. ## Site 30 West 56th Street is in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. It is along the southern sidewalk of 56th Street between Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue. The land lot is slightly irregular and covers 4,350 square feet (404 m²), with a frontage of 41 feet (12 m) and a maximum depth of 110 feet (34 m). The house was built by combining two rectangular lots: one at 30 West 56th Street to the east, measuring 16 by 100 feet (4.9 by 30.5 m), and one at 32 West 56th Street to the west, measuring 25 by 110 feet (7.6 by 33.5 m). The building is on the same block as the townhouses at 10, 12, and 26 West 56th Street, as well as the skyscraper at 712 Fifth Avenue and the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, all to the east. Other nearby buildings include The Peninsula New York hotel and the University Club of New York to the southeast; the Rockefeller Apartments to the south; 46 West 55th Street to the southwest; and 17 West 56th Street and the Crown Building to the northeast. Fifth Avenue between 42nd Street and Central Park South (59th Street) was relatively undeveloped through the late 19th century. The surrounding area was once part of the common lands of the city of New York. The Commissioners' Plan of 1811 established Manhattan's street grid with lots measuring 100 feet (30 m) deep and 25 feet (7.6 m) wide. Upscale residences were constructed around Fifth Avenue following the American Civil War. The block of 56th Street from Fifth to Sixth Avenue contained rowhouses by 1871, many of which were recessed from the lot line and had entrance stoops. By the end of the 19th century, the area had many wealthy residents, and the houses in the area were either modified or rebuilt altogether. The adjacent block of 56th Street was developing into a "bankers' row", with the residences of Frederick C. Edey at number 10, H. B. Hollins at number 12, Edward Wasserman at number 33, and Arthur Lehman at number 31. Many of these houses persisted through the mid-20th century as part of a restaurant and retail strip. ## Architecture The Seligman House at 30 West 56th Street was designed by C. P. H. Gilbert in the Renaissance Revival style. It was constructed by Harvey Murdock. The building is five stories tall. The facade is divided horizontally into three sections, and the windows on upper stories are progressively smaller, using forced perspective to create an illusion of a larger house. In front of the entrances on 56th Street is a cement yard with fire standpipes and a metal grill. ### Facade The 56th Street facade is divided vertically into three bays. The first floor is clad with rusticated blocks of limestone and has three recessed doorways. The left and right doorways (respectively on the east and west) contain metal-and-glass doors with cast-stone frames. The central doorway is surrounded by a limestone frame and contains a short stoop with iron railings. In the original design, there was a stoop with three steps. The current stoop, which is not original, leads up to a sliding metal gate, behind which is a metal and glass door. Above the doorway is a decorative lintel with a cartouche. A belt course with acanthus-leaf decorations runs above the entire first story. Atop the belt course, over the center doorway, is a projecting second-story balconette with a lion head motif at the middle, as well as acanthus leaves and torches separated by balusters. Above the left and right doorways are plain stone panels. The other stories on 56th Street are clad with limestone, which is mostly smooth except for quoin blocks on the extreme left and right sides. The second-floor window openings consist of wood-framed windows surrounded by inwardly curved limestone moldings with egg-and-dart motifs. Each second-story window has three panes: a pair of "bowed arched" panes at the bottom beneath a transom pane. The individual lintels above each window contain consoles, modillions, and rosettes. The third and fourth stories are surrounded by limestone. They were designed as wooden sash windows, which were replaced with casement windows beneath a transom. Above the center window on the third story is a cartouche and two brackets supporting an ornamental balconette with balusters, acanthus leaves, and beads. The center window at the fourth story is designed with two pairs of casement windows and two transoms, one on each side of a vertical limestone mullion that has a cartouche above it. Above the fourth story is a modillioned cornice with consoles on the far left and right. The mansard roof is covered with asphalt shingles but was originally clad with tile. Three segmental-arched dormers protrude from the roof on 56th Street. The left and right dormers each have one window, while the center dormer has two, one on each side of a vertical limestone mullion. The center dormer has an entablature above the windows, with consoles, modillions, and rosettes. Above the entablature of the center dormer, as well as the windows in the left and right dormers, are ornamental cartouches with leaf branches on either side. The top of the roof has copper trim and motifs of lion heads. On either end of the roof are chimneys with limestone caps and limestone parapet walls. There are party walls on both the east and west sides of the house, which are concealed by adjacent buildings beneath the fourth story. The visible portions of the party walls are clad with brick and have limestone quoins at the northern corner of the wall. Portions of the chimneys can also be seen on both walls. ### Interior Inside the main entrance was an entrance hall measuring 30 feet (9 m) deep and 40 feet (12 m) wide. The ceilings, walls, floors, and even the furniture and fireplaces were made of green marble; at the far end of the reception room were separate dressing and toilet rooms for male and female guests. The hall led to a double-flight staircase connecting with the second floor, which in turn led to a space that was lit by a skylight at the roof. The stairs were largely for decoration, as the house was equipped from the outset with an electric elevator. The other rooms had various styles. The second floor had a drawing room at the front and a dining room in the rear, which was separated by the central hall and stairs. Behind the dining room, at the back of the lot, were two extensions around a private court, with the butler's pantry on one side and a smoking room on the other. The smoking room was designed in a Japanese style. At the front of the third floor was a private library designed in the Gothic style, with a ceiling, doors, and furniture designed in that style. This design extended even to the wastebasket. The rear of the third floor was used for the bedrooms, boudoir, and private bedrooms of the Seligman family. The rear of the fourth and fifth floors also contained private bedrooms. The original interiors had been modified in the mid-20th century but were restored to nearly their original condition during a 1990s renovation. After that renovation, the second floor had a terrazzo floor with a yin and yang motif outside the elevator, as well as a full-height fireplace in one room and double-height windows in another room. The third floor contained a marble fireplace, glass chandeliers, and a wood floor. On that floor, the offices of the Italian designers had a molded plaster ceiling that was reproduced from the original design. The fourth and fifth floors had similar decorations, but slightly different designs were created for the showrooms on either floor. ## History The house was commissioned for Henry Seligman, a prominent banker. He was born in 1857 and his father and uncles had cofounded the banking firm J. & W. Seligman & Co. in Lower Manhattan in 1864. The company also developed branches around the world, though these branches had become independent by the 1890s. The Seligman family was a prominent German- and Jewish-American family during the late 19th century and was nicknamed the "American Rothschilds". In March 1899, Henry Seligman married 40-year-old Adelaide Walter, who went by the nickname "Addie" and had previously been married to Henry's cousin David. ### Seligman residence In September 1899, Henry Seligman bought two four-story rowhouses at 30 and 32 West 56th Street from James Lenox Banks and Mrs. Sheppard Knapp, respectively. He planned to build a new residence on the site. Seligman took title to the rowhouses that October and demolished the structures two months later. Seligman hired C. P. H. Gilbert to design his house. At the time, many wealthy residents around Fifth Avenue in Midtown were commissioning New York City's top architects to design their houses. Fewer private dwellings were being constructed in Manhattan, and such dwellings were increasingly being constructed for wealthy individuals. According to Herbert Croly, there were one-sixth as many private houses being constructed in the borough in 1902 compared to in 1892, and average costs for individual houses had increased fourfold over that period. By September 1901, the house had been completed. The Seligman house had cost \$200,000 (), while the average for comparable houses was \$136,000 less (). The family held a housewarming party in January 1902, their first major event at the house, in which the Mannes Quartet held a performance on the second floor. The Seligman couple's children Gladys, Rhoda, and Walter lived in the house, as did various waitstaff. Gladys's marriage to Henry P. Wertheim took place at the house in 1905, as did Rhoda's marriage to Frederick Lewissohn in 1907. Henry Seligman was involved in numerous clubs and Republican Party politics. Addie Seligman was also involved in the leadership of various clubs and societies, including the St. Cecilia Club musical organization, the Mount Sinai Training School for Nurses, and political organizations. She held various events at the house for these clubs. In the 1910s, these included a speech for a group opposed to women's suffrage, a dinner in which New York governor Charles Seymour Whitman was a guest, and a contract bridge party to raise money for the YMCA. The family also constructed houses at Elberon, New Jersey, and Palm Beach, Florida, which were respectively used as summer and winter homes. After World War I, the surrounding neighborhood was rapidly becoming a commercial zone, and many neighboring townhouses were converted to commercial use. The Seligman residence was one of the major exceptions to this trend, and the couple continued to live there until their respective deaths. The house was renovated in 1923. The side entrances had originally contained service stairways, but these were removed. In addition, the windows were replaced. The Seligman couple continued to host events, such as the receptions they gave each December before they left for their Palm Beach house, some of which were accompanied by musical programs and special guests. The annual December receptions ended when Henry Seligman died of a heart attack at his 56th Street home on December 23, 1933. His funeral took place four days later on the second floor. Addie Seligman, who had been ill for several weeks at the time of her husband's death, died a month later on January 31, 1934. ### Mid-20th century Adelaide Seligman's estate auctioned the furniture and tableware in April 1934; the dinner plates alone netted \$2,660.92 (). The Beethoven Association rented the house the same month for use as its new headquarters. Early that June, the association opened its new quarters with a housewarming party. Adelaide Seligman's estate sold the house in February 1935 to politician Joseph L. Buttenwieser, for about \$77,500 (), while the house was still under lease to the Beethoven Association. According to the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC), Buttenwieser did not live in the house and only owned it for investment purposes. Throughout the Beethoven Association's occupancy, the house hosted events such as meetings for the American Musicological Society, as well as benefit concerts. The house was renovated in 1939 for private clubhouse usage. In March 1940, the Beethoven Association moved out of the house, and the association disbanded two months later. Arthur D. Kunze acquired the house in May 1941. At the time, it was occupied by the Horizon Club, described in The New York Times as "a social organization composed of Russians". The ground floor was also occupied by Camillo Restaurant, which moved into the space in 1940. After acquiring the house, Kunze renovated the upper stories into residential apartments, which became home to various garment industry workers, actors, musicians, and singers. The house was recorded as having 14 apartments when it was sold in January 1946 to David S, Meister at an assessed value of \$135,000 (). By July 1947, a restaurant named Leslie House had opened within the building. Monaco Restaurant opened in the house in 1949. The light court in the rear was enclosed the next year, at which point the ground floor was occupied by Blair House Restaurant. The restaurant's owner, Nickey Blair, hired Russell Patterson to redesign the restaurant interior, with the hope that the design and cuisine would attract guests. ### Late 20th century to present By 1964, the restaurant space was occupied by Korean restaurant Arirang House. Romeo Salta took over the restaurant space in 1971 for his own Italian restaurant. The restaurant had relocated from another address on the same block, which it had occupied for nearly two decades previously. With its relocation to 30 West 56th Street, Salta was able to expand its space. Another portion of the house was taken up by Alex & Walter, a gymnastics club, by the mid-1980s. Around the same time, Italian clothing manufacturer Cerruti 1881 also had a store in the building. The block's restaurant row declined in the two decades following the mid-1970s. Romeo Salta moved out of the house in 1994. Zingarella Realty Corp sold the house in 1994 to Aeffe USA Inc, a fashion company operated by Alberta Ferretti. The new tenant, Fashion Service USA, chose the house because it contained enough space for meetings and a showroom. The company planned to restore the space to its original condition; at the time, the rooms were mostly unchanged, but the center staircase had been demolished. During the next two years, the house was renovated into a series of showrooms. The second floor contained space for the collections of Italian fashion house Moschino, while the third through fifth floors had the respective showrooms of Alberta Ferretti, Jean Paul Gaultier, and Rifat Ozbek. On July 24, 2007, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the former Seligman residence at 30 West 56th Street as a city landmark, along with the Frederick C. Edey residence at 10 West 56th Street. The Seligman house was transferred to Ferrim USA Inc in 2012 for \$13.35 million. As of 2021, Aeffe USA and Moschino still occupy the building. ## See also - List of New York City Designated Landmarks in Manhattan from 14th to 59th Streets

New Jersey Route 161

State highway in Clifton, New Jersey, United States

Route 161 is a 1.10 miles (1.77 km) state highway in Clifton, New Jersey, United States, running along Clifton Avenue between Allwood Road (County Route 602 or CR 602) and Van Houten Avenue (CR 614). Although it is a signed state highway, it does not connect to any other state-maintained roadways. However, the south terminus is aligned just northeast of the interchange of Route 3 and the Garden State Parkway (interchange 153). The highway originated as Route S3 Spur, a suffixed spur of State Highway Route 3 to State Highway Route 6 (currently U.S. Route 46 or US 46). The route was redesignated in 1953 as Route 161, though in one late 1950s Essex County Hagstrom map and in the NJ highway code for mid-block crosswalks the highway is shown as Route 61. It is unknown whether Route 61 existed. ## Route description Route 161 begins at the intersection of Clifton Avenue and Allwood Road (CR 602) in Clifton. The route passes a park and large commercial building at the southern terminus. A short distance after, Route 161 provides a connector to Richfield Terrace on the northbound side of the highway, the park's divider known as Cross Street. The highway continues northward, intersecting with Richland Court, which provides access to local residential homes. The next intersection is with Joan Place, which serves a similar function to Richland Court. Soon after, Route 161 intersects with Saint Andrew's Boulevard, which also serves as the northern terminus of Richfield Terrace and connects the highway with CR 609 (Mount Prospect Avenue). Just past Saint Andrew's Boulevard Route 161 passes through a largely commercial section of Clifton with a heavy concentration of medical offices before terminating at an intersection with CR 614 (Van Houten Avenue). The right-of-way of Route 161 continues as CR 611 (Clifton Avenue) towards downtown Clifton. ## History Route S3 was defined in 1929 to run from Route 3 in East Rutherford west to Route 6 (US 46) in Clifton, (this is now part of Route 3). In 1942, the state took over the alignment and made it an unnumbered state highway was defined to run from the intersection of Clifton Avenue and Van Houten Avenue southwest to Route S3, which then ran along Allwood Road. World War II delayed completion of Route S3 long enough for an alternate freeway route to be selected, and the part of Allwood Road that was taken over is no longer a state highway. In 1948, the route was assigned the number Route S3 Spur. The number was changed to Route 161 in the 1953 state highway renumbering, and ever since then it has remained an isolated state highway. ## Major intersections ## See also

Mississippi Highway 5

State highway in Benton County, Mississippi, United States

Mississippi Highway 5 (MS 5) is a state highway in Benton County, Mississippi, United States. It runs 24.3 mi (39.107 km) from MS 178 in Hickory Flat north to U.S. Route 72 (US 72) to the south of Michigan City. The route runs through the Holly Springs National Forest for much of its length and passes through Ashland. To the south of Ashland, MS 5 has a concurrency with MS 4. The MS 5 designation was first used by 1932 for an unpaved road between Hickory Flat and the Tennessee border in Michigan City. In 1943, the northern terminus was cut back to US 72. MS 5 was completely paved by 1951 and has retained its current alignment since then. ## Route description MS 5 begins at an intersection with MS 178 in the community of Hickory Flat, which is within the Holly Springs National Forest. The route heads north from this point on a two-lane undivided road through dense forests with some fields and homes. After a junction with the western terminus of MS 2, the highway continues through rural land and passes a few lakes. After crossing the Tippah River, MS 5 reaches the MS 4 intersection and forms a concurrency with that route. The two routes leave the boundaries of the Holly Springs National Forest, passing through a mix of farmland and woodland with some homes and coming to the community of Ashland. Here, MS 4 splits from MS 5 by turning to the west, and MS 5 becomes Boundary Drive, which runs by businesses and homes. The road intersects the western terminus of MS 370 before it leaves Ashland. The route heads into agricultural areas with some woodland and homes, making a turn to the northwest before resuming north. MS 5 comes to its northern terminus at an intersection with US 72 located to the south of Michigan City. MS 5 is legally defined in Mississippi Code § 65-3-3. The entire length of MS 5 is designated a scenic route by Chapter 316, Senate Bill 2547, Laws 1989. While not signed with the blue scenic route shields, it does have the scenic route marker above all shields along the highway, except for the junction with US 72. ## History What is now MS 5 originally existed as an unnumbered unpaved road by 1928. The MS 5 designation was assigned by 1932 for the road running from US 78 in Hickory Flat to the Tennessee border in Michigan City, where it connected to SR 18. This road was a gravel road south of Ashland and an earth road north of Ashland. Two years later, the portion north of Ashland became a gravel road. In 1943, the northern terminus of MS 5 was cut back to its current location at US 72, with MS 7 connecting to SR 18 at the Tennessee border. By 1948, the portion of route south of Ashland was paved. The remainder of the route was paved three years later. Since then, the route has not undergone any alignment changes. Since March 2, 1989, the entire length of the highway has been designated a scenic route. ## Major intersections ## See also - List of state highways in Mississippi

Eighth Army Ranger Company

American Ranger light infantry company

The Eighth Army Ranger Company, also known as the 8213th Army Unit, was a Ranger light infantry company of the United States Army that was active during the Korean War. As a small special forces unit, it specialized in irregular warfare. Intended to combat the North Korean (NK) commandos who had been effective at infiltration and disruption behind United Nations (UN) lines, the Eighth Army Ranger Company was formed at the height of the Battle of Pusan Perimeter in September 1950 and was the first U.S. Army Ranger unit created since World War II. The company went into action as a part of the 25th Infantry Division during the UN advance into North Korea in October and November. It was best known for its defense of Hill 205 against an overwhelming Chinese attack during the Battle of the Ch'ongch'on River which resulted 41 of the 51 Rangers becoming casualties. The company later undertook a number of other combat missions during late 1950 and early 1951, conducting infiltration, reconnaissance and raiding. It scouted Chinese positions during Operation Killer and struck behind Chinese lines during Operation Ripper before being deactivated at the end of March 1951. The company saw 164 days of continuous combat and was awarded a Republic of Korea Presidential Unit Citation. Military historians have since studied the economy of force of the company's organization and utilization. Although the experimental unit led to the creation of 15 more Ranger companies, historians disagree on whether the unit was employed properly as a special forces unit and whether it was adequately equipped for the missions it was designed to conduct. ## Origins Following the outbreak of the Korean War on 25 June 1950, the North Korean People's Army had invaded the Republic of Korea (ROK) with 90,000 well-trained and equipped troops who had easily overrun the smaller and more poorly equipped Republic of Korea Army. The United States (U.S.) and United Nations (UN) subsequently intervened, beginning a campaign to prevent South Korea from collapsing. The U.S. troops engaged the North Koreans first at the Battle of Osan, and were badly defeated by the better-trained North Koreans on 5 July. By August, U.S. and UN forces had been pushed back to the Pusan Perimeter. At the same time, North Korean agents began to infiltrate behind UN lines and attack military targets and cities. UN units, spread out along the Pusan Perimeter, were having a difficult time repelling these units as they were untrained in combating guerrilla warfare. North Korean special forces units like the NK 766th Independent Infantry Regiment had been successful in defeating ROK troops, prompting Army Chief of Staff General J. Lawton Collins to order the creation of an elite force which could "infiltrate through enemy lines and attack command posts, artillery, tank parks, and key communications centers or facilities." All U.S. Army Ranger units had been disbanded after World War II because they required time-consuming training, specialization, and expensive equipment. Yet with the defeat of the NK 766th Regiment at the Battle of P'ohang-dong, and the strength of U.S. infantry units in question, U.S. commanders felt recreating Ranger units was essential to beginning a counteroffensive. In early August as the Battle of Pusan Perimeter was beginning, the Eighth United States Army ordered Lieutenant Colonel John H. McGee, the head of its G-3 Operations Miscellaneous Division, to seek volunteers for a new experimental Army Ranger unit. McGee was given only seven weeks to organize and train the unit before it was sent into combat, as commanders felt the need for Rangers was dire, and that existing soldiers could be trained as Rangers in a relatively short period of time. Because of this limitation, volunteers were solicited only from existing Eighth Army combat units in Korea, though subsequent Ranger companies were able to recruit Ranger veterans from World War II. From the Eighth Army replacement pool, McGee recruited Second Lieutenant Ralph Puckett, newly commissioned from West Point and with no combat experience, to serve as the company commander. Second Lieutenants Charles Bunn and Barnard Cummings, Jr., became Puckett's two platoon leaders. Several hundred enlisted men volunteered from the Eighth Army, though few had combat experience. Through a quick and informal selection process, Puckett picked the men to fill out the company based on weapons qualifications, athleticism, and duty performance. There was no time to administer physical fitness tests for the applicants, and unmarried men younger than 26 were preferred. Recruits were told they would receive no hazard pay. Once Puckett had selected 73 enlisted men, the Eighth Army Ranger Company was formally organized at Camp Drake, Japan, on 25 August 1950. Three days later, it sailed from Sasebo to Pusan, South Korea, aboard the ferry Koan Maru. Upon arrival, the company was sent to the newly established Eighth Army Ranger Training Center for seven weeks of specialized training. This took place at "Ranger Hill" near Kijang, where the men became skilled in reconnaissance, navigation, long-range patrolling, motorized scouting, setting up roadblocks, maintaining camouflage and concealment, and adjusting indirect fire. They also undertook frequent live fire exercises, many at night, simulating raids, ambushes and infiltration, using North Korean operatives that were known to be hiding in the area as an opposing force. Adopting techniques that had been established during World War II, they worked 60 hours per week, running 5 miles (8.0 km) each day and frequently undertaking 20-mile (32 km) speed marches. The troops also all shaved their hair into mohawks, under orders of the officers who wanted to build esprit de corps. Of the original 76 men who started the course, 12 either dropped out or were injured, and as a result 10 South Korean troops, known as KATUSAs, were attached to the unit to fill its ranks. ### Organization Established to experiment with the notion of deploying small light infantry units that specialized in infiltration and irregular warfare to Korea, the Eighth Army Ranger Company was created with an organization that was unique to other U.S. Army units. Consisting of three officers and 73 enlisted men, it was organized as a company of two platoons based on the Table of Organization and Equipment documents used to raise Ranger units during World War II. Within each platoon, a headquarters element of five men (a platoon leader, platoon sergeant, platoon guide, and 2 messengers) provided command and control. In addition, both platoons had thirty-six men in three squads – two assault squads and one heavy weapons squad – and were furnished with a 60 mm M2 mortar, two M20 Super Bazookas, and a M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle as well as the M1 Garand and M2 Carbines that the majority of the men were armed with. One man from each platoon was designated as a sniper. The company was assigned no vehicles, and no provision was made for mess facilities or to provide medical assets. As no independent battalion-level headquarters existed in Korea, the company had to be attached to a higher formation at all times. Employing the Sub Intelligent Numbers Selector theory that assigned non-descript unit names and randomized numerical designations to formations in order to disguise their role from the enemy, the company was designated the 8213th Army Unit. Upon formation, it was decided that the company would be considered an ad hoc, or provisional unit, which meant it did not have a permanent lineage and was only a temporary formation, akin to a task force. This decision was unique to the Eighth Army Ranger Company, as subsequent companies assumed the lineage of Ranger units from World War II, and veterans later expressed resentment with the choice as it prevented the company from accruing its own campaign streamers or unit decorations. While subsequent Ranger companies were authorized shoulder sleeve insignia with the distinctive black and red scroll of their World War II predecessors, the Eighth Army Ranger Company wore the shoulder patch of the Eighth United States Army, which commanded all UN troops in Korea. ## History ### Advance By the time the Eighth Army Ranger Company completed training on 1 October, UN forces had broken out of the Pusan Perimeter following an amphibious landing at Inchon. The company was subsequently committed to the offensive from Pusan Perimeter. On 8 October it was redesignated the 8213th Army Unit signifying its activation as a unit, and on 14 October Puckett took an advance force to join the US 25th Infantry Division at Taejon, as part of the US IX Corps. The Rangers' first assignment was to probe north to Poun with the division's reconnaissance elements in search of pockets of guerrillas which had been isolated during the UN breakout from Pusan. The platoons moved to two villages near Poun and began a northward sweep with the 25th Infantry Division. The troops then rapidly moved 175 miles (282 km) to Kaesong where they eliminated the last North Korean resistance south of the 38th Parallel. In these missions, the Eighth Army Ranger Company saw frequent combat with small groups of North Korean troops. During this time they also scrounged supplies from local units, including commandeering a jeep, and taking rice and other rations from the countryside. With South Korea liberated, the Rangers led the 25th Infantry Division's advance into North Korea. Acting as a spearhead, they sent out reconnaissance patrols ahead of the divisional main body and set up roadblocks to limit the movement of retreating North Korean forces. The Rangers became a part of "Task Force Johnson" with the 25th Infantry Division Reconnaissance Company and the 2nd Battalion, 35th Infantry in November to probe and clear the Uijeongbu, Dongducheon, and Shiny-ri areas of North Korean elements. On 18 November, the Rangers were detached from Task Force Johnson and returned to Kaesong, where they were attached to the 89th Medium Tank Battalion. On 20 November, the 89th Medium Tank Battalion moved to join the renewed UN offensive north to destroy the remaining North Korean troops and advance to the Yalu River. The battalion was designated "Task Force Dolvin" and ordered to spearhead the drive. At 01:00 that morning they advanced to Kunu-ri, reaching the front lines at Yongdungpo by 16:00. ### Hill 205 On 23 November, the 25th Infantry Division rested in preparation for its final advance to the Yalu, which was to begin the next day at 10:00. As the division spent the day enjoying a Thanksgiving Day meal, the Rangers scouted 5 kilometers (3.1 mi) north of the planned line of departure but made no contact with North Korean forces. On 24 November, the company moved out on time in the center of Task Force Dolvin's advance, riding on tanks from B Company, 89th Tank Battalion, including M4A3 Sherman and M26 Pershings. About 5 kilometers (3.1 mi) into their advance, they rescued 30 U.S. prisoners of war from the 8th Cavalry Regiment who had been captured at the Battle of Unsan but abandoned by the retreating Chinese. At 14:00 they reached their objective at Hill 222. As soon as the Rangers dismounted the tanks, the troops came under mortar fire. One Ranger was subsequently killed, the company's first fatality since its formation. Cummings and 2nd Platoon advanced 800 meters (2,600 ft) to the crest of the hill. At that time the tanks of the 89th mistakenly opened fire on the Rangers, causing a number of friendly fire casualties including two killed, before Puckett was able to signal them to stop. The Rangers took up positions on Hill 222 for the night. An additional two men became weather casualties, suffering frostbite that evening as temperatures fell to 0 °F (−18 °C). The next day, 25 November, Task Force Dolvin resumed its advance, with 51 Rangers of the Eighth Army Ranger Company continuing north on the 89th's tanks. The troops immediately ran into Chinese resistance as they began to advance. On both flanks, Task Force Dolvin troops encountered sporadic resistance throughout the morning, but were able to capture their objectives. The Eighth Army Ranger Company rode the tanks a further 5 kilometers (3.1 mi) north to Hill 205. As the Rangers and tanks approached the hill they came under mortar and small arms fire, but were able to capture the hill after light Chinese resistance, suffering four wounded in the process. The Rangers then established a perimeter on the position and spent the remainder of the day fortifying it. The Chinese Second Phase Offensive was launched that evening, with the unprepared UN troops hit all along the Korean front as 300,000 Chinese troops swarmed into Korea. Several kilometers away on the Rangers' left flank, the U.S. 27th Infantry Regiment's E Company was hit with a heavy Chinese attack at 21:00, alerting the Rangers to a pending attack. At 22:00, troops of the Chinese 39th Army began a frontal assault on Hill 205, signaled by drums and whistles. An estimated platoon-sized force of Chinese made the first attack. The Rangers fought back with heavy small arms fire and several pre-sighted artillery concentrations, repulsing this first attack at 22:50. A number of Rangers were wounded in this attack, including Puckett, who refused evacuation. At 23:00 the Chinese launched a second attack which was quickly repelled, as was a third attack several minutes later. Both of these attacks were an estimated company in strength. The Rangers inflicted heavy casualties each time as a result of a well-established defensive perimeter, though the platoon of tanks at the foot of the hill opposite the Chinese attack were unable to assist the Rangers, as the crews had no experience in night operations. By 23:50 the Chinese began attacking in greater numbers, with an estimated two companies advancing at a time, moving to within hand grenade range. The Rangers began to run low on ammunition while their casualties continued to mount, and Puckett was wounded again. Over the course of several hours the Chinese launched a fourth and a fifth attack, each of which was narrowly pushed back by the Rangers. The Rangers were then ordered to fix bayonets in preparation for the next attack. At 02:45, the Chinese began a sixth and final attack with a heavy mortar barrage which inflicted heavy casualties on the remaining Rangers, including Cummings, who was killed instantly by a mortar shell and Puckett, who was severely wounded. The Chinese then sent a reinforced battalion of 600 infantry at the hill, while simultaneously striking other elements of Task Force Dolvin, preventing artillery from providing effective support. Without artillery support of their own, and low on ammunition, they were overwhelmed by the subsequent Chinese attack. The Chinese forces swarmed the hill in overwhelming numbers, and many of the Rangers were shot and killed in their foxholes or stabbed with bayonets. The company was destroyed in the fighting, with the survivors retreating from the hill. Three Rangers later chased away Chinese troops as they tried to capture the severely wounded Puckett. The remaining Rangers gathered at an assembly area at the base of the hill under First Sergeant Charles L. Pitts, the highest ranking unwounded member of the company, and withdrew. The Rangers suffered over 80 percent casualties on Hill 205; of the 51 who captured the hill, 10 were killed or missing and another 31 wounded. ### 1951 raids The heavy casualties on Hill 205 rendered the company ineffective, and for several weeks it was only capable of being used to conduct routine patrols or as a security force for divisional headquarters elements. Puckett was evacuated to recover from his wounds. On 5 December, Captain John P. Vann assumed command of the company, and Captain Bob Sigholtz, a veteran of Merrill's Marauders, was also assigned to the unit. Yet with the company's casualties being replaced by regular soldiers who had no Ranger training it did not return to full combat capability after the Hill 205 battle. The replacements were subsequently given cursory training between missions, but U.S. military historians contend that the inexperienced replacements dramatically decreased the usefulness of the company as a special forces unit. The company participated in a few isolated missions in late 1950 and early 1951, including the recapture of Ganghwa Island from Chinese forces while attached to the Turkish Brigade. It advanced with the 25th Division during Operation Killer in late February as part of an effort to push Chinese forces north of the Han River. During that operation the company was employed as a scouting force, probing the strength of Chinese formations as they launched raids and attacks on the 25th Infantry Division. The frequent scouting missions were also intended to draw Chinese fire and determine the locations of their units. Returning to action, the company's 2nd Platoon effected a crossing of the Han River at 22:00 on 28 February 1951 for a raid on Yangsu-ri to destroy Chinese positions and capture a prisoner. Despite difficulties crossing the icy river the platoon moved into the village after 23:00, finding it deserted. After probing 1 mile (1.6 km) north and finding no Chinese, the Rangers returned to UN lines. On 1 March, 1st Platoon conducted a follow-up mission to scout railroad tunnels north of the village but had to turn back as heavy ice blocked its boats from crossing, and several men fell into the freezing water. During the first days of March, the company stepped up its patrols across the Han River, this time with a renewed emphasis on determining the locations of Chinese forces and pinpointing their strongpoints, in preparation for the next major offensive. ### Operation Ripper Vann was replaced by Captain Charles G. Ross on 5 March 1951. At the same time, the UN began Operation Ripper to drive the Chinese north of the 38th Parallel. As the 25th Infantry Division attacked forward, the Eighth Army Ranger Company scouted 6 miles (9.7 km) ahead of the general attack, reconnoitering Chinese positions. For much of the month they were utilized as a flank security force for the 25th Infantry Division, holding successive blocking positions as elements of the division advanced. On 18 March, they were sent a further 7 miles (11 km) north of the front lines to set up an ambush at a road and railway line which ran through a defile. Chinese troops were retreating through this defile, and at 15:30 on 19 March Ross assembled the men nearby. Through the night they established roadblocks and prepared to attack oncoming Chinese troops, but none passed through the area, and Ross took the company back to UN lines at 05:00. The company's final mission came on 27 March, an infiltration 6 miles (9.7 km) north to Changgo-ri to reconnoiter the size of a Chinese force holding there and to prevent it from setting a rearguard. The 25th Infantry Division would then attack and overwhelm the Chinese concentration more easily. The Rangers began their advance at 22:00 and arrived at the village at 01:00. Ross then ordered 2nd Platoon to conduct a stealth attack into the village which destroyed an outpost and a food cache and caught the Chinese troops by surprise. The Rangers temporarily succeeded in pushing the sizable Chinese force out of the village and into a trench, inflicting heavy casualties on it in the process. The Chinese, estimated to be a battalion, subsequently attempted to counterattack but were repulsed by the Rangers. Following this, Ross ordered the company to withdraw back to UN lines, arriving there at 05:00 having suffered no casualties in the action. The Eighth Army Ranger Company was deactivated on 31 March 1951. Some of its equipment was subsequently consolidated with the 5th Ranger Infantry Company, which was newly arrived in Korea and had been assigned to the 25th Infantry Division. The men of the new Ranger company had formally attended Ranger School, though they were inexperienced and less effective in their initial actions with the division. In the meantime, most of the men of the former Eighth Army Ranger Company were transferred to other units of the 25th Infantry Division, while those who were paratrooper qualified through the United States Army Airborne School were allowed to transfer to the 187th Regimental Combat Team or one of the other Ranger companies then beginning to arrive in Korea. During its brief existence, the Eighth Army Ranger Company saw 164 days of combat and was awarded a Republic of Korea Presidential Unit Citation. ## Analysis In September 1950, on Collins' orders the Ranger Training Center was moved to Fort Benning, Georgia, and in October the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Ranger Companies began training. The effective employment of the Eighth Army Ranger Company had demonstrated the viability of the concept to Army planners, and the subsequent Chinese attacks in November reinforced the need for more such units. As a result, the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th Ranger Companies were ordered to form. Altogether, another fifteen Ranger companies would be formed in 1950 and 1951, and six of them would see combat in Korea. Subsequent military science studies of the use of Rangers during the Korean War have focused on analysing their economy of force by looking at how well the U.S. military employed them as special forces. In an analysis of the operations of all Ranger units in the Korean War, Major Chelsea Y. Chae proposed in a 1996 thesis to the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College that they were misused and ineffective in general, and that in particular the Eighth Army Ranger Company had been poorly employed. Chae noted that the Ranger formations' lack of support personnel made them a logistic and administrative liability, as they had to be attached to conventional units for support. Furthermore, he argued that the Rangers' small formation sizes meant that they lacked the manpower to conduct basic tactical maneuvers, and their employment with divisional elements did not provide them with the intelligence information necessary for effective infiltration operations. He concluded that these problems were due to a "lack of understanding of Ranger capabilities, limitations inherent in Rangers–——°' force structure, and basic distrust of elite forces." However, retired Colonel Thomas H. Taylor, a military historian, contended in his 1996 book that in spite of their original purpose of short range infiltration, the Eighth Army Ranger Company was employed well for the missions they conducted, most of which were reactionary and borne out of a need to rapidly counter North Korean and Chinese attacks. Taylor noted that particularly in their earlier missions, the Rangers had been successful at operating as a night combat force, a skill that the rest of the U.S. forces in Korea were largely untrained in. Taylor also believed that the Rangers, who were drawn from replacement and occupation units in Japan, effectively gave the 25th Infantry Division an extra force it would not otherwise have possessed, allowing it to employ its conventional forces elsewhere. Taylor praised division commander Major General William B. Kean for his employment of the Rangers, and argued that the successes of the subsequent Ranger companies validated the existence of the Eighth Army Ranger Company.

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral

1881 shootout in Tombstone, Arizona, United States

The gunfight at the O.K. Corral was a thirty-second gunfight between lawmen led by Virgil Earp and members of a loosely organized group of outlaws called the Cowboys that occurred at about 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday, October 26, 1881, in Tombstone, Arizona, United States. It is generally regarded as the most famous gunfight in the history of the American Old West. The gunfight was the result of a long-simmering feud. Cowboys Billy Claiborne, brothers Ike and Billy Clanton, and brothers Tom and Frank McLaury were on one side. On the other side were Deputy U.S. Marshal and Town Marshal Virgil Earp, his two brothers and Special Policemen Morgan and Wyatt Earp, and temporary policeman Doc Holliday. Billy Clanton and both McLaury brothers were killed. Ike Clanton and Billy Claiborne ran from the fight. Virgil, Morgan, and Holliday were wounded, but Wyatt was unharmed. Wyatt is often erroneously regarded as the central figure in the shootout, as his brother Virgil was Tombstone's Town Marshal and Deputy U.S. Marshal that day and had far more experience as a sheriff, constable, marshal, and soldier in combat. Virgil made the decision to enforce a city ordinance prohibiting carrying weapons in town and to disarm the Cowboys. Wyatt was only a temporary assistant marshal to his brother. The shootout has come to represent a period of the Old West when the frontier was virtually an open range for outlaws, largely unopposed by lawmen who were spread thin over vast territories. It was not well known to the American public until 1931, when Stuart Lake published the initially well-received biography Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal two years after Earp's death. The book was the basis for the 1939 film Frontier Marshal, with Randolph Scott and Cesar Romero, the 1946 film My Darling Clementine, directed by John Ford, and the 1957 film Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, after which the shootout became known by that name. Since then, the conflict has been portrayed with varying degrees of accuracy in numerous Western films and books, and has become an archetype for much of the popular imagery associated with the Old West. Despite its name, the gunfight did not take place within or next to the O.K. Corral, which fronted Allen Street and had a rear entrance lined with horse stalls on Fremont Street. The shootout actually took place in a narrow lot on the side of C. S. Fly's photography studio on Fremont Street, six doors west of the O.K. Corral's rear entrance. Some members of the two opposing parties were initially only about 6 feet (1.8 m) apart. About thirty shots were fired in thirty seconds. Ike Clanton subsequently filed murder charges against the Earps and Holliday. After a thirty-day preliminary hearing and a brief stint in jail, the defendants were shown to have acted lawfully. The gunfight was not the end of the conflict. On December 28, 1881, Virgil was ambushed and maimed in a murder attempt by the Cowboys. On March 18, 1882, a Cowboy fired from a dark alley through the glass door of Campbell & Hatch's saloon and billiard parlor, killing Morgan. The suspects in both incidents furnished alibis supplied by other Cowboys and were not indicted. Wyatt, newly appointed as Deputy U.S. Marshal in Cochise County, then took matters into his own hands in a personal vendetta. He was pursued by county sheriff Johnny Behan, who had received a warrant from Tucson for Wyatt's killing of Frank Stilwell. ## Background Tombstone, located in Arizona Territory about 30 miles (50 km) from the Mexican border, was founded in March 1879 after silver was discovered in the area. Like many mining boomtowns on the American frontier, Tombstone grew rapidly. At its founding, it had a population of just 100, and only two years later, in late 1881, the population was more than 7,000 (excluding Chinese, Mexicans, women, and children), making it the largest boomtown in the American Southwest. Silver mining and its attendant wealth attracted many professionals and merchants, who brought their wives and families. With them came churches and ministers. By 1881 the town boasted fancy restaurants, a bowling alley, four churches, an ice house, a school, an opera house, two banks, three newspapers, and an ice cream parlor, along with 110 saloons, fourteen gambling halls, and numerous brothels, all situated among a number of dirty, hardscrabble mines. Horse rustlers and bandits from the countryside often came to town, and shootings were frequent. In the 1880s, the theft of cattle and the smuggling of alcohol and tobacco across the border were common. The Mexican government assessed heavy export taxes on these items, and smugglers earned a handsome profit by stealing them in Mexico and selling them in Tombstone. James, Virgil, and Wyatt Earp arrived in Tombstone on December 1, 1879, when the town was mostly composed of tents as living quarters, a few saloons and other buildings, and the mines. Virgil had been hired as Deputy U.S. Marshal for eastern Pima County, with his offices in Tombstone, only days before his arrival. In June 1881 he was also appointed as Tombstone's town marshal (or police chief). Though not universally liked by the townspeople, the Earp brothers tended to protect the interests of the town's business owners and residents; even so, Wyatt helped protect outlaw "Curly Bill" Brocius from being lynched after he accidentally killed Tombstone town marshal Fred White. In contrast, Cochise County Sheriff Johnny Behan was generally sympathetic to the interests of the rural ranchers and members of the loosely organized outlaw group called the Cochise County Cowboys, or simply the Cowboys, to which Brocius belonged. (In that time and region, the term cowboy generally meant an outlaw; legitimate cowmen were instead referred to as cattle herders or ranchers.) ## Conflicting versions of events Many of the sources describing the events leading up to the gunfight, and details of the gunfight itself, conflict with each other. Newspapers of the day were not above taking sides, and news reporting often editorialized on issues to reflect the publisher's interests. John Clum, publisher of The Tombstone Epitaph, had helped organize a "Committee of Safety" (a vigilance committee) in Tombstone in late September 1881. He was elected as Tombstone's first mayor under the new city charter that year. Clum and his newspaper tended to side with the interests of local business owners and supported Deputy U.S. Marshal Virgil Earp. Harry Woods, the publisher of the other major newspaper, The Daily Nugget, was an undersheriff to Behan. He and his newspaper tended to side with Behan, the Cowboys (some of whom were part-time ranchers and landowners) and the rural interests of the ranchers. Much of what is known of the event is based on month-long preliminary hearings held afterward, generally known as the Spicer hearings. Reporters from both newspapers covered the hearings and recorded the testimony there and at the coroner's inquest, but only the reporter from the Nugget knew shorthand. The testimony recorded by the court recorder and the two newspapers varied greatly. According to the Earps' version of events, the fight was in self-defense because the Cowboys, armed in violation of local ordinance, defied a lawful order to hand over their weapons and drew their pistols instead. The Cowboys maintained that they raised their hands, offered no resistance, and were shot in cold blood by the Earps. Sorting out who was telling the truth was difficult then and remains so to this day. Though usually opposing each other in their depiction of events, reporting by both the Epitaph and the Nugget initially supported the lawmen's version of events. Woods, the publisher of the pro-Cowboy Nugget, was out of town during the hearings, and an experienced reporter, Richard Rule, wrote the story. The Nugget staff had a close relationship with Behan, but Rule's story, as printed in the Nugget the day after the shootout, backed up the Earps' account. This varied widely from Behan's and the Cowboys' later court testimony. Subsequent stories about the gunfight published in the Nugget after that day supported Behan's and the Cowboys' view of events. Other stories in the Epitaph countered the Nugget's later view entirely and supported the lawmen. Dr. George Goodfellow, who examined the Cowboys after their deaths, told the court that the angle of the wound in Billy Clanton's wrist indicated that his hands could not have been in the air, or holding his coats open by the lapels, as witnesses loyal to the Cowboys testified. Part-time newspaper reporter Howell "Pat" Hayhurst transcribed the testimony from the hearings in the early 1930s as part of a Federal Writers' Project, which was part of the Works Progress Administration. According to one report, Hayhurst was a friend of the Behan family. After he completed his transcription, he kept the original document in his home, where it was destroyed in a house fire. ## Origins of the conflict ### Earps versus Cowboys The interpersonal conflicts and feuds leading to the gunfight were complex. Each side had strong family ties. The brothers James, Virgil, Wyatt, Morgan, and Warren Earp were a tight-knit family, working together as lawmen, pimps, and saloon owners in several frontier towns, among other occupations, and had moved together from one town to another. Virgil served in the Union Army during the American Civil War and in 1877 became a police officer in Prescott, Arizona Territory. He followed that with a job as a night watchman before he became a constable. Wyatt had held jobs as either a guard or police officer in the cattle-drive towns of Wichita and Dodge City, Kansas. James, Virgil, and Wyatt Earp, together with their wives, arrived in Tombstone on December 1, 1879, during the early period of rapid growth associated with mining, when there were only a few hundred residents. Virgil was appointed Deputy U.S. Marshal shortly before he arrived in town. In the summer of 1880, Morgan and Warren Earp also moved to Tombstone. Wyatt arrived hoping he could leave "lawing" behind. He bought a stagecoach, only to find the business was already very competitive. The Earps invested together in several mining claims and water rights. The Earps were Republicans and Northerners who had never worked as cowmen or ranchers. The Earps quickly came into conflict with Frank and Tom McLaury, Billy and Ike Clanton, Johnny Ringo, and William "Curly Bill" Brocius, among others. They were part of a large, loose association of cattle smugglers and horse thieves known as the Cowboys, outlaws who had been implicated in various crimes. Ike Clanton was prone to drinking heavily and threatened the Earp brothers numerous times. Tombstone resident George Parson wrote in his diary, "A Cowboy is a rustler at times, and a rustler is a synonym for desperado—bandit, outlaw, and horse thief." The San Francisco Examiner wrote in an editorial, "Cowboys [are] the most reckless class of outlaws in that wild country ... infinitely worse than the ordinary robber." During the 1880s in Cochise County, it was an insult to call a legitimate cattleman a "Cowboy." The Cowboys teamed up for various crimes and came to each other's aid. Virgil thought that some of the Cowboys had met at Charleston and taken "an oath over blood drawn from the arm of Johnny Ringo, the leader, that they would kill us." ### The Earps as lawmen Among the lawmen involved in the O.K. Corral shooting, only Virgil had any real experience in combat. Virgil had been constable in Prescott and was the deputy United States Marshal in Tombstone. He was appointed Deputy U.S. Marshal for eastern Pima County by U.S. Marshal Crawley Dake, on November 27, 1879, before the Earps arrived in Tombstone on December 1. He was appointed as Tombstone's acting town marshal on September 30, 1880, after popular Tombstone town marshal Fred White was accidentally shot and killed by Brocius. Wyatt had been a deputy city marshal in Kansas, as well as deputy sheriff in Tombstone. Only six weeks later, Virgil ran for the office on November 12, 1880, but lost to Ben Sippy. However, on June 6, 1881, Sippy asked for a two-week leave of absence. The city soon discovered \$3,000 () in financial improprieties in Sippy's records. A few days later Virgil was appointed as town marshal in his place. At the time of the gunfight, Virgil was both Deputy U.S. Marshal and town marshal. The city suspended him as town marshal after Ike Clanton filed murder charges. After Wyatt first arrived in Tombstone, his business efforts yielded little profit, and he took a job as a stagecoach shotgun messenger for Wells Fargo, guarding shipments of silver bullion. On July 28, 1880, Wyatt was appointed Pima County Deputy Sheriff. He held this position for only three months, until after the election of November 9, 1880, when he resigned. When Virgil was maimed by an assassination attempt, Wyatt was appointed Deputy U.S. Marshal in his place. He held that position until he left Cochise County in April 1882. Wyatt was an imposing, handsome man: blond, 6 feet (1.8 m) tall, weighing 165 to 170 pounds (75 to 77 kg), broad-shouldered, long-armed, and muscular. He had been a boxer and was reputed to be an expert with a pistol. According to author Leo Silva, Earp showed no fear of any man. Wyatt had been an assistant marshal when he and policeman James Masterson, along with a few other citizens, fired their pistols at several cowboys who were fleeing town after shooting up a theater. A member of the group, George Hoyt (sometimes spelled Hoy), was shot in the arm and died of his wound a month later. Wyatt always claimed to have been the one to shoot Hoyt, although it could have been anyone among the lawmen. Wyatt had developed a reputation as a no-nonsense, hard-nosed lawman, but prior to the gunfight he had been involved in only one other shooting, in Dodge City, Kansas, during the summer of 1878. The 1931 book Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal was a best-selling biography by Stuart N. Lake. It established Wyatt Earp's role as a fearless lawman in the American Old West and the legend of the "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" in the public consciousness. But Lake and many others in the popular media wildly exaggerated Wyatt's role as the central figure in the gunfight. It was only discovered much later that Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal, based on eight interviews with Earp, was largely fictional. The book and later Hollywood portrayals embellished Wyatt's reputation and magnified his mystique as a western lawman. Morgan Earp had been a police officer in Montana, but had no known experience with gunfighting prior to their arrival in Tombstone. While Wyatt was Pima County Deputy Sheriff on July 27, 1880, Morgan Earp took over his job as shotgun messenger for Wells Fargo. Morgan also occasionally assisted Virgil and at the time of the gunfight was a special deputy policeman and drawing pay. Doc Holliday had a reputation as a gunman and had reportedly been in nine shootouts during his life, although it has only been verified that he killed three men. One well-documented episode occurred on July 19, 1879, when Holliday and his business partner, former deputy marshal John Joshua Webb, were seated in their saloon in Las Vegas, New Mexico. Former U.S. Army scout Mike Gordon got into a loud argument with one of the saloon girls whom he wanted to take with him. Gordon stormed from the saloon and began firing his revolver into the building. Before Gordon could get off his second shot, Holliday killed him. Holliday was tried for the murder but acquitted, mostly based on the testimony of Webb. Holliday had saved Wyatt Earp's life at one time and had become a close friend. He had been living in Prescott, Arizona Territory and making a living as a gambler since late 1879. There, he first met future Tombstone sheriff Johnny Behan, a sometime gambler and saloon owner. In late September 1880, Holliday followed the Earps to Tombstone. ### Rural Cowboys vs. Tombstone interests The ranch owned by Newman Haynes Clanton near Charleston, Arizona was believed to be the local center for the Cowboys' illegal activities. Tom and Frank McLaury worked with the rustlers buying and selling stolen cattle. Many of the rural ranchers and Cowboys resented the growing influence of the city residents over county politics and law enforcement. The ranchers largely maintained control of the country outside Tombstone, due in large part to the sympathetic support of Cochise County Sheriff Johnny Behan, who favored the Cowboys and rural ranchers, and who also grew to intensely dislike the Earps. Behan tended to ignore the Earps' complaints about the McLaurys' and Clantons' horse thieving and cattle rustling. The Earps were known to bend the law in their favor when it affected their gambling and saloon interests, which earned them further enmity with the Cowboy faction. ### Relevant law in Tombstone To reduce crime in Tombstone, on April 19, 1881, the city council passed ordinance 9, requiring anyone carrying a bowie knife, dirk, pistol or rifle to deposit their weapons at a livery or saloon soon after entering town. > To Provide against Carrying of Deadly Weapons > > Section 1. It is hereby declared unlawful to carry in the hand or upon the person or otherwise any deadly weapon within the limits of said city of Tombstone, without first obtaining a permit in writing. > > Section 2: This prohibition does not extend to persons immediately leaving or entering the city, who, with good faith, and within reasonable time are proceeding to deposit, or take from the place of deposit such deadly weapon. > > Section 3: All fire-arms of every description, and bowie knives and dirks, are included within the prohibition of this ordinance. The ordinance was the legal basis for City Marshal Virgil Earp's decision to confront the Cowboys on the day of the shootout. ### Smuggling and stock thefts In the borderlands south of Tombstone there was only one passable route between Arizona and Mexico, a passage known as Guadalupe Canyon. In August 1881, 15 Mexicans carrying gold, coins and bullion to make their purchases were ambushed and killed in Skeleton Canyon. The next month Mexican Commandant Felipe Neri dispatched troops to the border, where they killed five Cowboys, including Newman Haynes "Old Man" Clanton, in Guadalupe Canyon. The Earps knew that the McLaurys and Clantons were reputed to be mixed up in the robbery and murder in Skeleton Canyon. Wyatt Earp said in his testimony after the shootout, "I naturally kept my eyes open and did not intend that any of the gang should get the drop on me if I could help it." ### Earp loses sheriff's office to Behan On July 27, 1880, Pima County Sheriff Charles A. Shibell, whose offices were in the county seat of Tucson, appointed Wyatt Earp as deputy sheriff. On October 28, 1880, Tombstone Marshal Fred White attempted to disarm some late-night revelers who were shooting their pistols in the air. When he attempted to disarm Curly Bill Brocius, the gun discharged, striking White in the abdomen. Wyatt saw the shooting and pistol-whipped Brocius, knocking him unconscious, and arrested him. Wyatt later told his biographer John Flood that he thought Brocius was still armed at the time, and didn't see Brocius' pistol on the ground. Brocius waived the preliminary hearing so he and his case could be immediately transferred to Tucson. Wyatt and a deputy took Brocius in a wagon the next day to Tucson to stand trial, possibly saving him from being lynched. Wyatt testified that he thought the shooting was accidental. It was also demonstrated that Brocius's pistol could be fired from half-cock. Fred White left a statement before he died two days later that the shooting was not intentional. Based on the evidence presented, Brocius was not charged with White's death. The Tombstone council convened and appointed Virgil Earp as "temporary assistant city marshal" to replace White for a salary of \$100 per month () until an election could be held on November 12. For the next few weeks, Virgil represented federal and local law enforcement and Wyatt represented Pima County. In the November 2, 1880, election for Pima County sheriff, Democrat Shibell ran against Republican Bob Paul, who was expected to win. Votes arrived as late as November 7, and Shibell was unexpectedly re-elected. He immediately appointed Johnny Behan as the new deputy sheriff for eastern Pima County, a job that Wyatt wanted. A controversy ensued when Paul uncovered ballot-stuffing by Cowboys and he sued to overturn the election. While San Simeon precinct, east of Tombstone, only had 10 registered voters, Shibell won that precinct with 103 votes to 1. Ike Clanton was the election inspector and Johnny Ringo was the one of the election judges. Paul finally became sheriff in April 1881, but it was too late to re-appoint Wyatt Earp as deputy sheriff because on February 1, 1881, the eastern portion of Pima County containing Tombstone had been split off into the new Cochise County, which would need its own sheriff, based in the county's largest city, Tombstone. This position was filled by a political appointment from the governor, and Wyatt and Behan both wanted the job. The Cochise County sheriff's position was worth more than \$40,000 a year (equivalent to \$ million in ) because the office holder was also county assessor and tax collector, and the board of supervisors allowed him to keep ten percent of the amounts paid. Behan used his existing position and his superior political connections to successfully lobby for the position. He also promised Wyatt a position as his undersheriff if he was appointed over Wyatt. Wyatt withdrew from the political contest and the governor and legislature appointed Behan to the job of Cochise County sheriff on February 10, 1881. Behan reneged on his deal with Earp and appointed Harry Woods as undersheriff instead. Behan said he broke his promise to appoint Earp because Wyatt Earp used Behan's name to threaten Ike Clanton when Wyatt recovered his stolen horse from Clanton. ## Earp conflicts with Cowboys Tensions between the Earp family and both the Clanton and McLaury clans increased through 1881. On July 25, 1880, Captain Joseph H. Hurst, of Company A, 12th U.S. Infantry, and Commanding Officer of Fort Bennett, asked Deputy U.S. Marshal Virgil Earp to help him track Cowboys who had stolen six U.S. Army mules from Camp Rucker. This was a federal matter because the animals were U.S. property. Hurst brought four soldiers, and Virgil invited Wyatt and Morgan Earp, as well as Wells Fargo agent Marshall Williams. The posse found the mules on the McLaury's Ranch on Babacomari Creek, northwest of Tombstone, as well as the branding iron used to change the "US" brand to "D8." To avoid bloodshed, Cowboy Frank Patterson promised Hurst they would return the mules and Hurst persuaded the posse to withdraw. Hurst went to nearby Charleston, but the Cowboys showed up two days later without the mules, laughing at Hurst and the Earps. In response, Hurst had printed and distributed a handbill in which he named Frank McLaury as specifically assisting with hiding the mules. He re-printed this in The Tombstone Epitaph on July 30, 1880. Virgil later said that McLaury had asked him if he had posted the handbills. When Virgil said he had not, McLaury said if Virgil had printed the handbills it was Frank's intention to kill Virgil. He warned Virgil, "If you ever again follow us as close as you did, then you will have to fight anyway." This incident was the first run-in between the Clantons and McLaurys and the Earps. ### March stagecoach robbery and murder On the evening of March 15, 1881, a Kinnear & Company stagecoach carrying \$26,000 in silver bullion () was en route from Tombstone to Benson, Arizona, the nearest freight terminal. Bob Paul, who had run for Pima County Sheriff and was contesting the election he lost due to ballot-stuffing, was temporarily working once again as the Wells Fargo shotgun messenger. He had taken the reins and driver's seat in Contention City because the usual driver, a well-known and popular man named Eli "Bud" Philpot, was ill. Philpot was riding shotgun. Near Drew's Station, just outside Contention City, a man stepped into the road and commanded them to "Hold!" Three Cowboys attempted to rob the stage. Paul, in the driver's seat, fired his shotgun and emptied his revolver at the robbers, wounding a Cowboy later identified as Bill Leonard in the groin. Philpot, riding shotgun, and passenger Peter Roerig, riding in the rear dickey seat, were both shot and killed. The horses spooked and Paul wasn't able to bring the stage under control for almost one mile (1.6 km), leaving the robbers with nothing. Paul, who normally rode shotgun, later said he thought the first shot killing Philpot had been meant for him. Deputy U.S. Marshal Virgil Earp, along with temporary federal deputies Wyatt and Morgan Earp, Wells Fargo agent Marshall Williams, former Kansas Sheriff Bat Masterson (who was dealing faro at the Oriental Saloon), and County Sheriff Behan set out to find the robbers. Wells Fargo issued a wanted poster offering a \$3,600 reward () for the three robbers (\$1,200 each), dead or alive. Robbery of a mail-carrying stagecoach was both a federal crime and territorial crime, and the posse consisted of both county and federal authorities and deputies. The posse trailed the robbers to a nearby ranch where they found a drifter named Luther King. He would not tell who his confederates were until the posse lied and told him that Doc Holliday's girlfriend had been shot. Fearful of Holliday's reputation, he confessed to holding the reins of the robbers' horses, and identified Bill Leonard, Harry "The Kid" Head, and Jim Crane as the robbers. They were all known Cowboys and rustlers. Behan and Williams escorted King back to Tombstone. Remarkably, King walked in the front door of the jail and a few minutes later walked out the back. King had arranged with Undersheriff Harry Woods (publisher of the Nugget) to sell the horse he had been riding to John Dunbar, Sheriff Behan's partner in the Dexter Livery Stable. On March 19, King conveniently escaped while Dunbar and Woods were making out the bill-of-sale. Woods claimed that someone had deliberately unlocked a secured back door to the jail. The Earps and the townspeople were furious at King's easy escape. Williams was later dismissed from Wells Fargo, leaving behind a number of debts, when it was determined he had been stealing from the company for years. The Earps pursued the other two men for 17 days, riding for 60 hours without food and 36 hours without water, during which Bob Paul's horse died, and Wyatt and Morgan's horses became so weak that the two men walked 18 miles (29 km) back to Tombstone to obtain new horses. After pursuing the Cowboys for over 400 miles (640 km) they could not obtain more fresh horses and were forced to give up the chase. They returned to Tombstone on April 1. Behan submitted a bill for \$796.84 () to the county for posse expenses, but he refused to reimburse the Earps for any of their costs. Virgil was incensed. They were later reimbursed by Wells, Fargo & Co., but the incident caused further friction between county and federal law enforcement, and between Behan and the Earps. After he was passed over by Johnny Behan for the position of undersheriff, Wyatt thought he might beat him in the next Cochise County election in late 1882. He thought catching the murderers of Bud Philpot and Peter Roerig would help him win the sheriff's office. Wyatt later said that on June 2, 1881, he offered the Wells, Fargo & Co. reward money and more to Ike Clanton if he would provide information leading to the capture or death of the stage robbers. According to Wyatt, Ike was initially interested, but the plan was foiled when the three suspects — Leonard, Head and Crane — were killed in unrelated incidents. Ike began to fear that word of his possible cooperation had leaked, threatening to compromise his standing among the Cowboys. Undercover Wells Fargo Company agent M. Williams suspected a deal, and said something to Ike, who was fearful that other Cowboys might learn of his double-cross. Ike now began to threaten Wyatt and Doc Holliday (who had learned of the deal) for apparently revealing Ike's willingness to help arrest his friends. The fallout over the Cowboys' attempt to implicate Holliday and the Earps in the robbery, along with Behan's involvement in King's escape, was the beginning of increasingly bad feelings between the Earp brothers and Cowboy factions. ### Earp and Behan attracted to Josephine Marcus Wyatt Earp and Cochise County sheriff Johnny Behan were interested in the same sheriff's position and also might have shared an interest in the same woman, Josephine Marcus, known as Sadie. Citizens of Tombstone believed that Behan and Sadie were married, but Behan was a known womanizer and had sex with prostitutes and other women. In early 1881, Sadie ended the relationship after she came home and found Behan in bed with the wife of a friend and kicked him out, although she used the Behan surname through the end of that summer. She rented her home sometime before April 1881 to Dr. George Goodfellow. Wyatt Earp lived with Mattie Blaylock, who was listed as his wife in the 1880 census. She had a growing addiction to the opiate laudanum, which was readily available at the time. Earp remained with Blaylock until he left Tombstone in April 1882. There are no contemporary Tombstone records that indicate a relationship between Sadie and Earp, but Earp certainly knew her, because both Behan and Earp had offices above the Crystal Palace Saloon. Sadie, traveling as either Mrs. J. C. Earp or Mrs. Wyatt Earp, left for Los Angeles on March 25, 1882, and then returned to her family in San Francisco. In July 1882, Wyatt left Colorado and went to San Francisco, where he sought out Sadie and his brother Virgil, who was seeking treatment for his arm. In February or March 1883, Sadie and Earp left San Francisco for Gunnison, where Earp ran a Faro bank until he received a request in April for assistance from Luke Short in Dodge City. Sadie was his common-law wife for the next 46 years. ### September stage holdup Tensions between the Earps and the McLaurys further increased when another passenger stage on the 'Sandy Bob Line' in the Tombstone area, bound for Bisbee, was held up on September 8, 1881. The masked bandits robbed all of the passengers of their valuables since the stage was not carrying a strongbox. During the robbery, the driver heard one of the robbers describe the money as "sugar", a phrase known to be used by Frank Stilwell. Stilwell had, until the prior month, been a deputy for Sheriff Behan but had been fired for "accounting irregularities". Wyatt and Virgil Earp rode with a sheriff's posse and tracked the Bisbee stage robbers. Virgil had been appointed Tombstone's town marshal (i.e., chief of police) on June 6, 1881, after Ben Sippy abandoned the job. However, Virgil at the same time continued to hold his position of deputy U.S. marshal, and it was in this federal capacity that he continued to chase robbers of stage coaches outside Tombstone city limits. At the scene of the holdup, Wyatt discovered an unusual boot print left by someone wearing a custom-repaired boot heel. The Earps checked a shoe repair shop in Bisbee known to provide widened boot heels and were able to link the boot print to Stilwell. #### Stilwell and Spence arrests Frank Stilwell had just arrived in Bisbee with his livery stable partner, Pete Spence, when the two were arrested by Deputy U.S. Marshal Virgil Earp for the holdup. Both were friends of Ike Clanton and the McLaurys. At the preliminary hearing, Stilwell and Spence were able to provide several witnesses who supported their alibis. Judge Spicer dropped the charges for insufficient evidence just as he had done for Doc Holliday earlier in the year. Released on bail, Spence and Stilwell were re-arrested October 13 by Marshal Virgil Earp for the Bisbee robbery on a new federal charge of interfering with a mail carrier. The newspapers, however, reported that they had been arrested for a different stage robbery that occurred on October 8 near Contention City. Ike and other Cowboys believed the new arrest was further evidence that the Earps were illegally persecuting the Cowboys. They told the Earps that they could expect retaliation. While Virgil and Wyatt were in Tucson for the federal hearing on the charges against Spence and Stilwell, Frank McLaury confronted Morgan Earp. He told him that the McLaurys would kill the Earps if they tried to arrest Spence, Stilwell, or the McLaurys again. The Tombstone Epitaph reported "that since the arrest of Spence and Stilwell, veiled threats [are] being made that the friends of the accused will 'get the Earps.'" #### Cowboys accuse Holliday of robbery Milt Joyce, a county supervisor and owner of the Oriental Saloon, had a contentious relationship with Doc Holliday. In October 1880, Holliday had trouble with a gambler named Johnny Tyler in Milt Joyce's Oriental Saloon. Tyler had been hired by a competing gambling establishment to drive customers from Joyce's saloon. Holliday challenged Tyler to a fight, but Tyler ran. Joyce did not like Holliday or the Earps and he continued to argue with Holliday. Joyce ordered Holliday removed from the saloon but would not return Holliday's revolver. But Holliday returned carrying a double-action revolver. Milt brandished a pistol and threatened Holliday, but Holliday shot Joyce in the palm, disarming him, and then shot Joyce's business partner William Parker in the big toe. Joyce then hit Holliday over the head with his revolver. Holliday was arrested and pleaded guilty to assault and battery. Holliday and his on-again, off-again mistress Big Nose Kate had many fights. After a particularly nasty, drunken argument, Holliday kicked her out. County Sheriff John Behan and Milt Joyce saw an opportunity and exploited the situation. They plied Big Nose Kate with more booze and suggested to her a way to get even with Holliday. She signed an affidavit implicating Holliday in the attempted stagecoach robbery and murders. Holliday was a good friend of Bill Leonard, a former watchmaker from New York, one of three men implicated in the robbery. Judge Wells Spicer issued an arrest warrant for Holliday. The Earps found witnesses who could attest to Holliday's location at the time of the murders and Kate sobered up, revealing that Behan and Joyce had influenced her to sign a document she didn't understand. With the Cowboy plot revealed, Spicer freed Holliday. The district attorney threw out the charges, labeling them "ridiculous." Doc gave Kate some money and put her on a stage out of town. ### Ike Clanton's conflict with Doc Holliday Wyatt Earp testified after the gunfight that five or six weeks prior he had met Ike Clanton outside the Alhambra Hotel. Ike told Wyatt that Doc Holliday had told him he knew of Ike's meetings with Wyatt and about Ike providing information on Head, Leonard, and Crane, as well as their attempted robbery of the stage. Ike now accused Earp of telling Holliday about these conversations. Earp testified that he told Ike he had not told Holliday anything. Wyatt Earp offered to prove this when Holliday and the Clantons next returned to town. A month later, the weekend before the shootout, Morgan Earp was concerned about possible trouble with the Cowboys. He asked Doc Holliday to come back to Tombstone from a fiesta celebration in Tucson where Holliday had been gambling. Upon his return, Wyatt Earp asked Holliday about Ike's accusation. On the morning of Tuesday, October 25, 1881, the day before the gunfight, Ike Clanton and Tom McLaury drove 10 miles (16 km) in a spring wagon from Chandler's Milk Ranch at the foot of the Dragoon Mountains to Tombstone. They were in town to sell a large number of beef stock, most of them owned by the McLaurys. Fred Dodge, an undercover detective for Wells Fargo, heard from J.B. Ayers, another undercover Wells Fargo man in Contention, that Frank McLaury, Billy Clanton, and Billy Claiborne were in town and planning to join Ike and Tom in Tombstone Wednesday afternoon. Dodge, who had been sick, got up and went looking for city marshal Virgil Earp. He found Tombstone Deputy City Marshal Morgan Earp at the Alhambra Saloon instead and told him the news. Near midnight, Holliday saw Clanton in the Alhambra Saloon and confronted him, accusing him of lying about their previous conversations. They got into a heated argument. Wyatt Earp (who was not wearing a badge) encouraged his brother Morgan to intervene. Morgan took Holliday out onto the street and Ike, who had been drinking steadily, followed them. City Marshal Virgil Earp arrived a few minutes later and threatened to arrest both Holliday and Clanton if they did not stop quarreling. Wyatt Earp walked over to the Oriental Saloon and Ike followed him. They talked again, and Ike threatened to confront Holliday in the morning. Ike told Earp that the fighting talk had been going on for a long time and that he intended to put an end to it. Ike told Earp, "I will be ready for you in the morning." Wyatt told Ike to go home "because there was no money in it." Ike sat down near Wyatt, his revolver in plain sight, and told Earp "You must not think I won't be after you all in the morning." Virgil Earp went to the Occidental Saloon across the street. ## Morning of the gunfight ### Events leading up to the Ike Clanton court hearing After Holliday's confrontation with Ike Clanton, Wyatt Earp took Holliday back to his room at Camillus Sidney "Buck" Fly's Lodging House to sleep off his drinking, then went home and to bed. Tombstone Marshal Virgil Earp played poker with Ike Clanton, Tom McLaury, Cochise County Sheriff Johnny Behan and a fifth unnamed man in a back room of the Occidental Saloon until morning. At about dawn on October 26, the card game broke up and Behan and Virgil Earp went home to bed. Ike Clanton testified later he saw Virgil take his six-shooter out of his lap and stick it in his pants when the game ended. Not having rented a room, Tom McLaury and Ike Clanton had no place to go. Shortly after 8:00 am barkeeper E. F. Boyle spoke to Ike Clanton in front of the telegraph office. Clanton had been drinking all night and Boyle encouraged him to get some sleep, but Ike insisted he would not go to bed. Boyle later testified he noticed Ike was armed and covered his gun for him. Boyle later said that Ike told him, "'As soon as the Earps and Doc Holliday showed themselves on the street, the ball would open — that they would have to fight' ... I went down to Wyatt Earp's house and told him that Ike Clanton had threatened that when Wyatt, his brothers, and Doc Holliday showed themselves on the street that the ball would open." Ike said in his testimony afterward that he remembered neither meeting Boyle nor making any such statements that day. Deputy Marshal Andy Bronk also heard the talk around town. He woke Virgil, who listened, and went back to sleep. Ike's continuous threats were not worth losing sleep over. Later in the morning, Ike picked up his rifle and revolver from the West End Corral, where he had deposited his weapons and stabled his wagon and team after entering town. By noon that day, Ike was still drinking and once again armed, in violation of the city ordinance against carrying firearms in the city. He told anyone who would listen he was looking for Holliday or an Earp. At Fly's boarding house where Holliday and his common-law wife Mary Katharine Horony were sleeping, proprietor Mary Fly heard Clanton's threats and banged on Holliday's door. Fly told Horony, "Ike Clanton was here looking for [Holliday], and he had a rifle with him." Horony woke Holliday and relayed the threat, who replied, "If God will let me live to get my clothes on, he will see me." At about 1:00 p.m., Marshal Virgil and his Deputy Morgan Earp found Ike on Fourth Street, still armed, and Virgil pistol whipped him from behind. Disarming him, the Earps took Ike to appear before Justice of the Peace A.O. Wallace for violating the ordinance. Wyatt waited with Clanton while Virgil went to find Justice Wallace so a court hearing could be held. ### Ike Clanton court hearing While Wyatt waited for Virgil to return with Justice Wallace, witnesses overheard Wyatt tell Clanton, "You cattle thieving son-of-a-bitch, and you know that I know you are a cattle thieving son-of-a-bitch, you've threatened my life enough, and you've got to fight!", Ike Clanton was heard to reply, "Fight is my racket, and all I want is four feet of ground!" Ike reported in his testimony afterward that Wyatt Earp cursed him. He said Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan offered him his rifle and to fight him right there in the courthouse, which Ike declined. Ike also denied ever threatening the Earps. Justice Wallace fined Ike \$25 () plus court costs. Ike paid the fine and Virgil told Ike he could pick up his confiscated rifle and revolver at the Grand Hotel, which was favored by Cowboys when in town. Ike testified that he picked up the weapons from William Soule, the jailer, a couple of days later. ### Tom McLaury's concealed weapon Outside the court house where Ike was being fined, Tombstone Deputy Marshal Wyatt almost walked into 28-year-old Tom McLaury as the two men were brought up short nose-to-nose. Tom, who had arrived in town the day before, was required by the well-known city ordinance to deposit his pistol when he first arrived in town. When Wyatt demanded, "Are you heeled or not?", McLaury said he was not armed. Wyatt testified that he saw a revolver in plain sight on the right hip of Tom's pants. As an unpaid deputy marshal for Virgil, Wyatt habitually carried a pistol, in his waistband or in a coat pocket lined with leather to make drawing it easier. Witnesses reported that Wyatt drew his revolver from his coat pocket and pistol whipped Tom McLaury with it twice, leaving him prostrate and bleeding on the street. Saloon-keeper Andrew Mehan testified at the Spicer hearing afterward that he saw McLaury deposit a revolver at the Capital Saloon sometime between 1:00–2:00 p.m., after the confrontation with Wyatt, which Mehan also witnessed. Wyatt said in his deposition afterward that he had been temporarily acting as city marshal for Virgil the week before while Virgil was in Tucson for the Pete Spence and Frank Stilwell trial. Wyatt said that he still considered himself a deputy city marshal, which Virgil later confirmed. Since Wyatt was an off-duty officer, he could not legally search or arrest Tom for carrying a revolver within the city limits — a misdemeanor offense. Only Virgil or one of his city police deputies, including Morgan Earp and possibly Warren Earp, could search him and take any required action. Wyatt, who was portrayed as a non-drinker, testified at the Spicer hearing that he went to Haffords and bought a cigar and went outside to watch the Cowboys. At the time of the gunfight about two hours later, Wyatt could not know if Tom was still armed. It was early afternoon by the time Ike and Tom had seen doctors for their head wounds. The day was chilly, with snow still on the ground in some places. Both Tom and Ike had spent the night gambling, drinking heavily, and without sleep. Now they were both out-of-doors, both wounded from head beatings, and at least Ike was still drunk. ### More Cowboys enter town At around 1:30–2:00 p.m., after Tom had been pistol-whipped by Wyatt, Ike's 19-year-old younger brother Billy Clanton and Tom's older brother Frank McLaury arrived in town. They had heard from their neighbor, Ed "Old Man" Frink, that Ike had been stirring up trouble in town overnight, and they had ridden into town on horseback to back up their brothers. They arrived from Antelope Springs, 13 miles (21 km) east of Tombstone, where they had been rounding up stock and had breakfasted with Ike and Tom the day before. Both Frank and Billy were armed with a revolver and a rifle, as was the custom for riders in the country outside Tombstone. Apache warriors had engaged the U.S. Army near Tombstone just three weeks before the O.K. Corral gunfight, so the need for weapons outside of town was well established and accepted. Billy and Frank stopped first at the Grand Hotel on Allen Street, and were greeted by Doc Holliday. They learned immediately about their brothers' beatings by the Earps within the previous two hours. The incidents had generated a lot of talk in town. Angrily, Frank said he would not drink, and he and Billy left the saloon immediately to seek Tom. By law, both Frank and Billy should have left their firearms at the Grand Hotel. Instead, they remained fully armed. ### Virgil and Wyatt Earp's reactions Wyatt said that he saw Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury in Spangenberg's gun and hardware store on 4th Street filling their gun belts with cartridges. Ike testified afterward that Tom was not there and that he had tried to buy a new revolver but the owner saw Ike's bandaged head and refused to sell him one. Ike apparently had not heard Virgil tell him that his confiscated weapons were at the Grand Hotel around the corner from Spangenberg's shop. When Virgil Earp learned that Wyatt was talking to the Cowboys at Spangenberg's gun shop, he went there himself. Virgil testified afterward that he thought he saw all four men, Ike Clanton, Billy Clanton, Frank McLaury, and Tom McLaury, buying cartridges. Virgil went around the corner on Allen Street to the Wells Fargo office, where he picked up a 10-gauge or 12-gauge, short, double-barreled shotgun. It was an unusually cold and windy day in Tombstone, and Virgil was wearing a long overcoat. To avoid alarming Tombstone's public, Virgil hid the shotgun under his overcoat when he returned to Hafford's Saloon. From Spangenberg's, the Cowboys moved to the O.K. Corral where witnesses overheard them threatening to kill the Earps. For unknown reasons the Cowboys then walked out the back of the O.K. Corral and then west, stopping in a narrow, empty lot next to C. S. Fly's boarding house. Virgil initially avoided a confrontation with the newly arrived Frank McLaury and Billy Clanton, who had not yet deposited their weapons at a hotel or stable as the law required. The statute was not specific about how far a recently arrived visitor might "with good faith, and within reasonable time" travel into town while carrying a firearm. This permitted a traveler to keep his firearms if he was proceeding directly to a livery, hotel or saloon. The three main Tombstone corrals were all west of 4th Street between Allen and Fremont, a block or two from where Wyatt saw the Cowboys buying cartridges. Miner Ruben F. Coleman later told The Tombstone Epitaph: > I was in the O.K. Corral at 2:30 p.m. when I saw the two Clantons and the two McLaurys in an earnest conversation across the street at Dunbar's corral. I went up the street and notified Sheriff Behan and told them it was my opinion that they meant trouble, and it was his duty, as sheriff, to go and disarm them. I told him they had gone to the West End Corral. I then went and saw Marshal Virgil Earp and notified him to the same effect. ### Behan attempts to disarm Cowboys Cochise County Sheriff Johnny Behan, a friend of the Cowboys, later testified that he woke up about 1:30 p.m. after the late-night card game, and went to get a shave at a barbershop. That's where he first learned that the Cowboys were armed. Behan stated he quickly finished his shave and went to locate the Cowboys. At about 2:30 p.m. he found Frank McLaury holding a horse and talking to someone on 4th Street near the corner of Fremont. When he saw Ike Clanton and Tom McLaury near C. S. Fly's photography studio, he walked there with Frank. He told the Cowboys that they must give up their arms. Ike Clanton said he was not armed, and Tom McLaury pulled his coat open to show he was not carrying a weapon. The Cowboys were located in a narrow 15–20 feet (4.6–6.1 m) lot between the Harwood house and Fly's 12-room boarding house and photography studio at 312 Fremont Street, where Doc Holliday roomed. Behan later said he attempted to persuade Frank McLaury to give up his weapons, but Frank insisted that he would give up his guns only after City Marshal Virgil Earp and his brothers were first disarmed. The Cowboys were about a block and a half from the West End Corral at 2nd. Street and Fremont, where Ike and Tom's wagon and team were stabled. Virgil Earp later testified that he thought Ike and Tom were stabled at the O.K. Corral on Allen between 3rd and 4th, from which he thought they would be departing if they were leaving town. While Ike Clanton later said he was planning to leave town, Frank McLaury reported that he had decided to remain behind to take care of some business. Will McLaury, Tom and Frank's brother and a judge in Fort Worth, Texas, claimed in a letter he wrote during the preliminary hearing after the shootout that Tom and Frank were still armed because they were planning to conduct business before leaving town to visit him in Texas. He wrote that Billy Clanton, who had arrived on horseback with Frank, intended to go with the McLaurys to Fort Worth. Will McLaury came to Tombstone after the gun fight and joined the prosecution team in an attempt to convict the Earps and Holliday for his brothers' murder. Paul Johnson told a different story, that the McLaurys were about to leave for Iowa to attend the wedding of their sister, Sarah Caroline, in Iowa. Tom and Frank were especially close to Sarah, one of their 14 siblings and half-siblings. Caroline married James Reed in Richland, Iowa at the end of November that year. ### Virgil decides to disarm Cowboys Citizens reported to Virgil on the Cowboys' movements and their threats told him that Ike and Tom had left their livery stable and entered town while armed, in violation of the city ordinance. Virgil Earp was told by several citizens that the McLaurys and the Clantons had gathered on Fremont Street. Virgil decided he had to disarm the Cowboys. His decision to take action may have been influenced by the Cowboy's repeated threats to the Earps, their proximity to Holliday's room in Fly's boarding house, and their location on the route the Earps usually took to their homes two blocks further west on Fremont Street. Several members of the citizen's vigilance committee offered to support him with arms, but Virgil refused. He had, during the prior month, appointed Morgan as a Special Policeman. He had also appointed Wyatt as a Special Policeman while Virgil had been in Prescott on business. He had also called on Doc Holliday that morning for help with disarming the Clantons and McLaurys. Wyatt spoke of his brothers Virgil and Morgan as the "marshals" while he acted as "deputy." Virgil Earp picked up the shotgun he had retrieved from the Wells Fargo office earlier. He gave the shotgun to Doc Holliday who hid it under his overcoat. He took Holliday's walking-stick in return. As usual, the Earps carried their revolvers in their coat pockets or in their waistbands. Wyatt Earp was carrying a .44 caliber American 1869 Smith & Wesson revolver. Holliday was carrying a nickel-plated pistol in a holster, but this was concealed by his long coat, as was the shotgun. The Earps and Holliday walked west, down the south side of Fremont Street past the rear entrance to the O.K. Corral, but out of visual range of the Cowboys' last reported location. Near the corner of Fourth St. and Fremont St., the Earps ran into Sheriff Behan. He had left the Cowboys and came toward the Earps, though he looked nervously backward several times. Virgil testified afterward that Behan told them, "For God's sake, don't go down there or they will murder you!" Wyatt said Behan told him and Morgan, "I have disarmed them." Behan testified afterward that he'd only said he'd gone down to the Cowboys "for the purpose of disarming them," not that he'd actually disarmed them. One eyewitness, laundryman Peter H. Fallehy, testified afterward that Virgil Earp told Behan, "those men have made their threats and I will not arrest them but I will kill them on sight." When Behan said he had disarmed them, Virgil attempted to avoid a fight. "I had a walking stick in my left hand and my hand was on my six-shooter in my waist pants, and when he said he had disarmed them, I shoved it clean around to my left hip and changed my walking stick to my right hand." Wyatt said, "I took my pistol, which I had in my hand, under my coat, and put it in my overcoat pocket." The Earps walked further down Fremont street and came into full view of the Cowboys in the lot. Wyatt testified he saw "Frank McLaury, Tom McLaury, and Billy Clanton standing in a row against the east side of the building on the opposite side of the vacant space west of Fly's photograph gallery. Ike Clanton and Billy Claiborne and a man I don't know [Wes Fuller] were standing in the vacant space about halfway between the photograph gallery and the next building west." Addie Bourland corroborated Wyatt's testimony, stating that she saw "five men opposite my house, leaning against a small house west of Fly's Gallery and one man was holding a horse, standing a little out from the house." ## The gunfight Martha J. King was in Bauer's butcher shop located on Fremont Street. She testified that when the Earp party passed by her location, one of the Earps on the outside of the group looked across and said to Doc Holliday nearest the store, "... let them have it!" to which Holliday replied, "All right." ### Physical proximity When the Earps approached the lot, the four law men initially faced six Cowboys: Frank McLaury, Tom McLaury, Billy Clanton, Billy Claiborne, Wes Fuller, and Ike Clanton. When the Cowboys saw the officers, they stepped away from the Harwood house. In testimony given by witnesses afterward, they disagreed about the precise location of the men before, during and after the gunfight. The coroner's inquest and the Spicer hearing produced a sketch showing the Cowboys standing, from left to right facing Fremont Street, with Billy Clanton and then Frank McLaury near the Harwood house and Tom McLaury and Ike Clanton roughly in the middle of the lot. Opposite them and initially only about 6 to 10 feet (1.8 to 3.0 m) away, Virgil Earp was on the left end of the Earp party, standing a few feet inside the vacant lot and nearest Ike Clanton. Behind him a few feet near the corner of C. S. Fly's boarding house was Wyatt. Morgan Earp was standing on Fremont Street to Wyatt's right, and Doc Holliday anchored the end of their line in Fremont Street, a few feet to Morgan's right. Wyatt Earp drew a sketch in 1924 and another with John Flood on September 15, 1926, that depicted Billy Clanton near the middle of the lot, close to the Harwood house. Tom and Frank McLaury stood deeper in the lot. Frank was in the center between the two buildings, holding the reins of his horse. Tom was closer to C. S. Fly's boarding house. According to Wyatt's sketches, Morgan was on the right of the lawmen, close to the Harwood house, opposite Billy Clanton near the Harwood house and close to Fremont St. Virgil was deeper in the lot, opposite Frank and Ike Clanton. Wyatt was to Virgil's left, opposite Tom. Doc Holliday hung back a step or two on Fremont Street. Neither of Wyatt's sketches included Ike Clanton or Billy Claiborne, who ran from the fight. ### Gun battle begins Virgil Earp was not expecting a fight. After Behan said that he'd disarmed the Cowboys, Virgil and Wyatt put the pistols they had been holding in their waistband or overcoat pocket. Holliday had a short coach gun concealed under his long jacket. Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury wore revolvers in holsters on their belts and stood alongside their saddled horses with rifles in their scabbards, possibly in violation of the city ordinance prohibiting carrying weapons in town. When Virgil saw the Cowboys, he testified, he immediately commanded the Cowboys to "Throw up your hands, I want your guns!" Wyatt said Virgil told the Cowboys, "Throw up your hands; I have come to disarm you!" Virgil and Wyatt both testified they saw Frank McLaury and Billy Clanton draw and cock their single action six shot revolvers. Virgil yelled: "Hold! I don't mean that!" or "Hold on, I don't want that!" Jeff Morey, who served as the historical consultant on the film Tombstone, compared testimony by partisan and neutral witnesses and came to the conclusion that the Earps described the situation accurately. Who started shooting first is not certain; accounts by both participants and eyewitnesses are contradictory. The smoke from the black powder used in the weapons added to the confusion of the gunfight in the narrow space. Those loyal to one side or the other told conflicting stories, and independent eyewitnesses who did not know the participants by sight were unable to say for certain who shot first. The six or seven men with guns fired about 30 shots in around 30 seconds. First two shots Virgil Earp reported afterward, "Two shots went off right together. Billy Clanton's was one of them." Wyatt testified, "Billy Clanton leveled his pistol at me, but I did not aim at him. I knew that Frank McLaury had the reputation of being a good shot and a dangerous man, and I aimed at Frank McLaury." He said he shot Frank McLaury after both he and Billy Clanton went for their revolvers: "The first two shots were fired by Billy Clanton and myself, he shooting at me, and I shooting at Frank McLaury." Morey agreed that Billy Clanton and Wyatt Earp fired first. Clanton missed, but Earp shot Frank McLaury in the stomach. All witnesses generally agreed that the first two shots were almost indistinguishable from each other. General firing immediately broke out. Virgil and Wyatt thought Tom was armed. When the shooting started, the horse that Tom McLaury held jumped to one side. Wyatt said he also saw Tom throw his hand to his right hip. Virgil said Tom followed the horse's movement, hiding behind it, and fired once or twice over the horse's back. Holliday shoots Tom According to one witness, Holliday drew a "large bronze pistol" (interpreted by some as Virgil's coach gun) from under his long coat, stepped around Tom McLaury's horse, and shot him with the double-barreled shotgun in the chest at close range. Witness C. H. "Ham" Light saw Tom running or stumbling westward on Fremont Street towards Third Street, away from the gunfight, while Frank and Billy were still standing and shooting. Light testified that Tom fell at the foot of a telegraph pole on the corner of Fremont and 3rd Street and lay there, without moving, through the duration of the fight. Fallehy also saw Tom stagger across the street until he fell on his back. After shooting Tom, Holliday tossed the empty shotgun aside, pulled out his nickel-plated revolver, and continued to fire at Frank McLaury and Billy Clanton. Cowboys run Ike Clanton had been publicly threatening to kill the Earps for several months, including very loud threats on the day before. Wyatt told the court afterward that Clanton had bragged that he would kill the Earps or Doc Holliday at his first opportunity. However, when the gunfight broke out, Clanton ran forward and grabbed Wyatt, exclaiming that he was unarmed and did not want a fight. To this protest Wyatt said he responded, "Go to fighting or get away!" Clanton ran through the front door of Fly's boarding house and escaped, unwounded. Other accounts say that Ike drew a hidden pistol and fired at the Earps before disappearing. Like Ike, Billy Claiborne was unarmed. He and Cowboy Wes Fuller, who had been at the rear of the lot, also ran from the fight as soon as the shooting began. Frank McLaury shot According to The Tombstone Epitaph, "Wyatt Earp stood up and fired in rapid succession, as cool as a cucumber, and was not hit." Morgan Earp fired almost immediately, as Billy Clanton drew his gun right-handed. Morgan's shot hit Billy in the right wrist, disabling his hand. Forced to shift the revolver to his left hand, Clanton continued shooting until he emptied the gun. Virgil and Wyatt were now firing. Morgan Earp tripped and fell over a newly buried waterline and fired from the ground. Wyatt shot Frank McLaury in the abdomen, and Frank took his horse by its reins and struggled across Fremont Street. He tried and failed to grab his rifle from the scabbard but lost control of the horse. Frank crossed Fremont Street firing his revolver instead. Frank and Holliday exchanged shots as Frank moved across Fremont Street, and Frank hit Holliday in his pistol pocket, grazing him. Holliday followed him, exclaiming, "That son of a bitch has shot me and I am going to kill him." Morgan Earp picked himself up and also fired at Frank. Frank fell to the sidewalk on the east side of Fremont Street. A number of witnesses observed a man leading a horse into the street and firing near it and Wyatt in his testimony thought this was Tom McLaury. Claiborne said only one man had a horse in the fight, and that this man was Frank, holding his own horse by the reins, then losing it and its cover, in the middle of the street. Wes Fuller also identified Frank as the man in the street leading the horse. Morgan Earp wounded Though wounded, Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury kept shooting. One of them, perhaps Billy, shot Morgan Earp across the back in a wound that struck both shoulder blades and a vertebra. Morgan went down for a minute before picking himself up. Either Frank or Billy shot Virgil Earp in the calf (Virgil thought it was Billy). Virgil, though hit, fired his next shot at Billy Clanton. Frank, now entirely across Fremont street and still walking at a good pace according to Claiborne's testimony, fired twice more before he was shot in the head under his right ear. Both Morgan and Holliday apparently thought they had fired the shot that killed Frank, but since neither of them testified at the hearing, this information is only from second-hand accounts. A passerby testified to having stopped to help Frank, and saw Frank try to speak, but he died where he fell, before he could be moved. Billy Clanton was shot in the wrist, chest and abdomen, and after a minute or two slumped to a sitting position near his original position at the corner of the Harwood house in the lot between the house and Fly's Lodging House. Claiborne said Clanton was supported by a window initially after he was shot, and fired some shots after sitting, with the pistol supported on his leg. After he ran out of ammunition, he called for more cartridges, but C. S. Fly took his pistol at about the time the general shooting ended. A few moments later, Tom McLaury was carried from the corner of Fremont and Third into the Harwood house on that corner, where he died without speaking. Passersby carried Billy Clanton to the Harwood house, where Tom had been taken. Billy was in considerable pain and asked for a doctor and some morphine. He told those near him, "They have murdered me. I have been murdered. Chase the crowd away and from the door and give me air." Billy gasped for air, and someone else heard him say, "Go away and let me die." Ike Clanton, who had repeatedly threatened the Earps with death, was still running. William Cuddy testified that Ike passed him on Allen Street and Johnny Behan saw him a few minutes later on Toughnut Street. ## Outcome of the battle Both Wyatt and Virgil believed Tom McLaury was armed and testified that he had fired at least one shot over the back of a horse. Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury exchanged gunfire with the lawmen. During the gunfight, Doc Holliday was bruised by a bullet fired by Frank that struck his holster and grazed his hip. Virgil Earp was shot through the calf, he thought by Billy Clanton. Morgan Earp was struck across both shoulder blades by a bullet that Morgan thought Frank McLaury had fired. Wyatt Earp was unhurt. Tom McLaury, his brother Frank, and Billy Clanton were killed. ### Behan attempts arrest As the wounded lawmen were carried to their homes, they passed in front of the Sheriff's Office, and Johnny Behan told Wyatt Earp, "I will have to arrest you." Wyatt paused two or three seconds and replied very forcibly: "I won't be arrested today. I am right here and am not going away. You have deceived me. You told me these men were disarmed; I went to disarm them." Dr. George Goodfellow treated the Earps' wounds. ### Cowboy wounds Dr. Henry M. Mathews examined the dead Cowboys late that night. He found Frank McLaury had two wounds: a gunshot beneath the right ear that horizontally penetrated his head, and a second entering his abdomen one inch (2.5 cm) to the left of his navel. Mathews stated that the wound beneath the ear was at the base of the brain and caused instant death. Sheriff Behan testified that he had heard Morgan Earp yell "I got him" after Frank was shot. However, during the gunfight, Frank moved across Fremont street, putting Holliday on Frank's right and Morgan on his left. This makes it much more likely that Holliday shot the fatal round that killed Frank. When he examined Tom McLaury's body, Mathews found twelve buckshot wounds from a single shotgun blast on the right side under his arm, between the third and fifth ribs. The wound was about four inches (10 cm) across. The nature and location of the wound indicated that it could not have been received if Tom's hands were on his coat lapels as the Cowboys later testified. Both Virgil and Wyatt stated that Holliday had shot Tom, which the coroner's exam supported. Dr. George Goodfellow testified about Billy Clanton's wounds at the Spicer hearing. He stated that the angle of the wrist wound indicated that Billy's hand could not have been raised over his head as claimed by Cowboy witnesses. In his coroner's report, Mathews did not mention Billy's arm wound, but witness Keefe, who examined the arm closely, testified later that Clanton was shot through the right arm, close to the wrist joint and "the bullet passed through the arm from "inside to outside," entering the arm close to the base of the thumb, and exiting "on the back of the wrist diagonally" with the latter wound larger. This indicated to the judge that Billy could not have been holding his coat's lapels open, his arms raised, as the Cowboys testified. Dr. Mathews found two other wounds on Billy's body. The first was two inches (5 cm) from Clanton's left nipple, and penetrated his lung. The other was in the abdomen beneath the twelfth rib, six inches (20 cm) to the right of the navel. Both were fired from the front. Neither passed completely through his body. The wound to Billy Clanton's right wrist may have been inflicted by Morgan Earp or Doc Holliday immediately at the outset of the fight as Billy was drawing his gun. ### Weapons carried by the Cowboys Billy Clanton Billy Clanton was armed with a Colt Frontier 1873 revolver in .44-40 caliber, which were identified by their serial numbers at the Spicer hearing. C.S. Fly found Billy Clanton's empty revolver in his hand where he lay and took it from him. Frank McLaury Frank McLaury was also armed with a Colt Frontier 1873 revolver in .44-40 caliber, which was recovered by laundryman Fallehy on the street about 5 feet (1.5 m) from his body with two rounds remaining in it. Fallehy placed it next to Frank's body before he was moved to the Harwood house. Dr. Mathews laid Frank's revolver on the floor while he examined Billy and Tom. Cowboy witness Wes Fuller said he saw Frank in the middle of the street shooting a revolver and trying to remove a Winchester rifle from the scabbard on his horse. The two Model 1873 rifles were still in the scabbards on Frank and Tom McLaury's horses when they were found after the gunfight. If, as was customary, Frank carried only five rounds, then he had fired only three shots. Tom McLaury Witnesses differed about whether Tom McLaury was carrying a weapon during the shootout or not. No revolver or rifle was found near his body and he was not wearing a cartridge belt. Wyatt testified that he had arrested Tom earlier that day when he found him carrying a weapon earlier in violation of a city ordinance. He pistol-whipped him and took him to the courthouse where he was fined. Saloon-keeper Mehan testified that Tom had deposited his revolver at the Capital Saloon on 4th Street and Fremont after his arrest and before the fight, between 1 and 2 p.m. Several Cowboy witnesses testified that Tom was unarmed and claimed that the Earps had murdered a defenseless man. Behan testified that when he searched Tom McLaury for a weapon prior to the gunfight, he was not thorough, and that Tom might have had a pistol hidden in his waistband. Behan's testimony was significant, since he was a prime witness for the prosecution but had equivocated on this point. Behan's sympathy to the Cowboys was well known, and during the trial he firmly denied he had contributed money to help Ike with his defense costs. However, documents were located in 1997 that showed Behan served as guarantor for a loan to Ike Clanton during the Spicer hearing. Since Wyatt planned to run against Behan for County Sheriff, Behan had an incentive to help convict Wyatt. A story by Richard Rule in the Cowboy-friendly newspaper, the Nugget, told the story in the manner of the day, without attribution. Rule wrote, "The Sheriff stepped out and said [to the Earps]: 'Hold up boys, don't go down there or there will be trouble; I have been down there to disarm them.'" In his testimony, Behan repeatedly insisted he told the Earps that he only intended to disarm the Cowboys, not that he had actually done so. The article said that Behan "was standing near by commanding the contestants to cease firing but was powerless to prevent it." The Nugget had a close relationship to Behan; it was owned by Harry Woods, who was also undersheriff to Behan, but Woods was collecting prisoners in El Paso, Texas, that day. So it is extremely likely that Rule interviewed Behan. Both Virgil and Williams' testified that Behan visited Virgil Earp that evening and said, “I am your friend, and you did perfectly right.” This corroborated the initial Nugget report, which upon Wood's return was altered to a version that favored the Cowboys and which Behan later supported in his testimony at the hearing. Though saloon-keeper Andrew Mehan had seen Tom deposit his pistol after his beating by Earp and before the gunfight, none of the Earps had any way of knowing that Tom had left his revolver at the saloon. Hotel keeper Albert "Chris" Billickie, whose father Charles owned the Cosmopolitan Hotel, saw Tom McLaury enter Bauer's butcher shop about 2:00 p.m. He testified that Tom's right-hand pants pocket was flat when he went in but protruded, as if it contained a pistol (so he thought), when he emerged. Retired army surgeon Dr. J. W. Gardiner also testified that he saw the bulge in Tom's pants. However, the bulge in Tom's pants pocket may have been the nearly \$3,300 () in cash and receipts found on his body, perhaps in payment for stolen Mexican beef purchased by the butcher. Wyatt and Virgil Earp and Doc Holliday believed that Tom had a revolver at the time of the gunfight. Wyatt thought Tom fired a revolver under the horse's neck and believed until he died that Tom's revolver had been removed from the scene by Wesley Fuller. Witness Fallehy wrote that he saw Morgan Earp and Doc Holliday shooting at a man who was using a horse to barricade himself, and once shot the man fell. In his statement, Fallehy wrote that the man still held his pistol in his hand. Although he did not see him shoot, he thought Tom McLaury was armed. Ruben F. Coleman also said afterward that he thought Tom was armed, though he later equivocated on this point. He was quoted in the October 27 issue of The Tombstone Epitaph in which he said, "Tom McLaury fell first, but raised and fired again before he died." Coleman also testified at the coroner's inquest one day later. Part-time newspaper reporter Howell 'Pat' Hayhurst transcribed all of the testimony from the hearing in the early 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project, in the Works Progress Administration. When he transcribed Coleman's second testimony, he quoted Coleman as saying, "Tom McLaury, after the first two shots were fired, ran down Fremont Street and fell ... I think that the report I gave to the Epitaph was pretty near correct as published." However, it's known that Hayhurst arbitrarily removed text that he decided was not relevant. Author Stuart N. Lake later said Hayhurst 'mutilated' the transcription. The documents were subsequently lost and are still unaccounted for. Even if Tom wasn't armed with a revolver, Virgil Earp testified Tom attempted to grab a rifle from the scabbard on the horse in front of him before he was killed. Judge Spicer ruled afterward that "if Thomas McLaury was one of a party who were thus armed and were making felonious resistance to an arrest, and in the melee that followed was shot, the fact of his being unarmed, if it be a fact, could not of itself criminate the defendants [Earps], if they were not otherwise criminated." Ike Clanton and Billy Claiborne Ike Clanton and Billy Claiborne both said they were unarmed when they fled the gunfight. ## Public reaction The bodies of the three dead Cowboys were displayed in a window at Ritter and Reams undertakers with a sign: "Murdered in the Streets of Tombstone." ### Sympathy for Cowboys The funerals for Billy Clanton (age 19), Tom McLaury (age 28) and his older brother Frank (age 33) were well attended. About 300 people joined in the procession to Boot Hill and as many as two thousand watched from the sidewalks. Both McLaurys were buried in the same grave, and Billy Clanton was buried nearby. The story was widely printed in newspapers across the United States. Most versions favored the lawmen. The headline in the San Francisco Exchange was, "A Good Riddance". Three days after the shootout, the ruling of the Coroner's Jury convened by Dr. Henry Matthews neither condemned nor exonerated the lawmen for shooting the Cowboys. "William Clanton, Frank and Thomas McLaury, came to their deaths in the town of Tombstone on October 26, 1881, from the effects of pistol and gunshot wounds inflicted by Virgil Earp, Morgan Earp, Wyatt Earp, and one—Holliday, commonly called 'Doc Holliday'." ### Spicer hearings Four days after the shootout, Ike Clanton filed murder charges against Doc Holliday and the Earps. Wyatt and Holliday were arrested and brought before Justice of the Peace Wells Spicer. Morgan and Virgil were still recovering at home. Only Wyatt and Holliday were required to post \$10,000 bail (), which was paid by their attorney Thomas Fitch, local mine owner E.B. Gage, Wells Fargo undercover agent Fred Dodge, and other business owners appreciative of the Earps' efforts to maintain order. Virgil Earp was suspended as town marshal pending the outcome of the trial. Justice Spicer convened a preliminary hearing on October 31 to determine if there was enough evidence to go to trial. The prosecution was led by Republican District Attorney Lyttleton Price, assisted by John M. Murphy, James Robinson, and Ben Goodrich. They were joined by William McLaury, Frank and Tom's older brother, he also being an able attorney, who played a key role on the prosecutor's team. The Earps' attorney Thomas Fitch was an experienced trial lawyer and had earned a reputation as the "silver-tongued orator of the Pacific." Spicer took written and oral testimony from a number of witnesses over more than a month. Accounts by both participants and eye-witnesses were contradictory. Those loyal to one side or the other told conflicting stories and independent eyewitnesses who did not know the participants by sight were unable to say for certain who shot first. Cochise County Sheriff Johnny Behan testified on the third day of the hearing. During two days on the stand, he gave strong testimony that the Cowboys had not resisted but either threw up their hands and turned out their coats to show they were not armed. Behan's views turned public opinion against the Earps, who were free on bail. He and other prosecution witnesses testified that Tom McLaury was unarmed, that Billy Clanton had his hands in the air, and that neither of the McLaurys were troublemakers. They portrayed Ike Clanton and Tom McLaury as being unjustly bullied and beaten by the vengeful Earps on the day of the gunfight. On the strength of the prosecution case, Spicer revoked the bail for Doc and Wyatt Earp and had them jailed on November 7. They spent the next 16 days in jail. Defense accounts contradicted the testimony of Behan, Claiborne and Allen, who all said that a man had fired a nickel-plated pistol first. Claiborne and Allen both said it was Holliday. Virgil, Wyatt and other witnesses testified that Holliday was carrying a shotgun. (Morgan remained bedridden throughout the trial and did not testify.) The prosecution's scenario would have required Holliday to fire with his pistol first, switch to the shotgun to shoot Tom McLaury, then switch back again to his pistol to continue firing. Three witnesses gave key evidence that swayed Justice Spicer to hold that Virgil had acted within his capacity as town marshal and that there was insufficient evidence to indict the Earps and Doc Holliday for murder. H.F Sills was an AT&SF RR engineer who had just arrived in town and knew none of the parties involved. He testified that he saw "the marshal go up and speak to this other party. I ... saw them pull out their revolvers immediately. The marshal had a cane in his right hand at the time. He throwed up his hand and spoke. I did not hear the words though. By that time Billy Clanton and Wyatt Earp had fired their guns off." Grilled by the prosecution, he corroborated virtually all of the defense's testimony. Addie Bourland was a dressmaker whose residence was across Fremont Street from Fly's Boarding House. She testified that she saw both sides facing each other, that none of the Cowboys had held their hands up, that the firing was general, and that she had not seen Billy Clanton fall immediately as the Cowboys had testified. Judge J.H. Lucas of the Cochise County Probate Court had offices in the Mining Exchange Building about 200 feet (60 m) from the shootout. Lucas corroborated Addie Bourland's testimony that Billy Clanton was standing throughout the fight, which contradicted prosecution witnesses who maintained he went down immediately after being shot at close range in the belly. Spicer noted that no powder burns were found on his clothing. These witnesses' testimony, especially that of H.F. Sills, a disinterested party, discredited much of the testimony given by Sheriff Johnny Behan, Ike Clanton and the other Cowboy witnesses. After hearing all the evidence, Justice Spicer ruled on November 30 that Virgil, as the lawman in charge that day, had acted within his office and that there was not enough evidence to indict the men. He described Frank McLaury's insistence that he would not give up his weapons unless the marshal and his deputies also gave up their arms as a "proposition both monstrous and startling!" He noted that the prosecution claimed that the Cowboys' purpose was to leave town, yet Ike Clanton and Billy Claiborne did not have their weapons with them. Spicer noted that the doctor who examined the dead Cowboys established that the wounds they received could not have occurred if their hands and arms had been in the positions that prosecution witnesses described. Spicer did not condone all of the Earps' actions and criticized Virgil Earp's use of Wyatt and Holliday as deputies, but he concluded that no laws were broken. He said the evidence indicated that the Earps and Holliday acted within the law and that Holliday and Wyatt had been properly deputized by Virgil Earp. ## In popular culture The public perception of the Earp brothers' actions at the time were widely divergent. Even today, the event and its participants are viewed differently by opinionated admirers and detractors. The controversy still stimulates ongoing interest in the gunfight and related events. ### Gunfight sketch A hand-drawn sketch of the gunfight was made by John Flood with Wyatt Earp's assistance on September 15, 1921; it was sold at auction in October 2010 for \$380,000. The map describes the position of a number of witnesses and all of the participants with the exception of Ike Clanton, who fled from the gunfight. ### Paintings In 1952, Victor Clyde Forsythe, a popular painter of desert scenes and cowboy artist, painted Gunfight at O.K. Corral, a 43 by 60 inches (110 by 150 cm) oil painting. Forsythe's father William Bowen Forsyth and uncle Ira Chandler owned the store Chandler & Forsyth C.O.D. at 328 Fremont Street, west of the back entrance to the O.K. Corral and half a block from the site of the gunfight. They claimed that they had been present and witnessed the shootout. Newspaper accounts of the painting reported that Forsythe had interviewed Tombstone residents and examined many of the existing buildings before beginning to plan his painting. In May 1988, his studio printed and sold a limited edition of 390 copies of the painting. John Gilchriese became friends with John Flood, who had been Wyatt Earp's secretary, confidante, and best friend for many years. When Earp died, Flood inherited many of his personal belongings. Flood in turn willed them to Gilchriese, who amassed over a number of years one of the largest collections of personal items belonging to Wyatt and Virgil Earp, along with many unpublished photos of them and their family. Gilchriese opened the Wyatt Earp Museum in Tombstone in 1966 and commissioned Western artist Don Perceval to paint the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. The oil on masonite painting titled The Street Fight is 6 feet 4 inches by 4 feet 0 inches (1.93 by 1.22 m). It was the largest work ever executed by Perceval. He referred to original documents in Gilchriese's collection, including Wyatt Earp's own diagram of the shootout, and unpublished notes made by John Flood, to create what is regarded as the most accurate depiction of the shootout. Gilchreise had 500 lithographic prints reproduced from the original, which Perceval signed. The prints were sold by the museum for \$10 (). After Gilchriese closed his museum, the painting and other contents of the museum were sold at auction by John's Western Gallery of San Francisco. The estimated auction price for the painting had been \$200,000 to \$300,000; the final sale price on June 25, 2004, was \$40,250. It was put up for auction again on June 14, 2014, with an estimated selling price of \$40,000–\$60,000 but failed to sell. ### Origin of the gunfight's name Less than a month after the shootout it was described by a local newspaper as the "Gunfight at The O.K. Corral". William Breakenridge in his 1928 book Helldorado: Bringing Law to the Mesquite described it as "The Incident Near the O.K. Corral". Stuart Lake titled his chapter about the conflict "At the O.K. Corral" in his popular book Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal. But it was the popular movie Gunfight at the O.K. Corral that cemented the incident and its erroneous location in popular consciousness. The movie and accompanying mythologizing also altered the way that the public thought of the Earps and the outlaws. Prior to the movie, the media often criticized the Earps' actions in Tombstone. In the movies, they became the good guys, always ready to stand for what is right. The incident has become a fixture in American history due to the personal nature of the feud between the Earps and the McLaury and Clanton brothers and the symbolism of the fight between lawmen and the Cowboys. The Cowboys maimed Virgil and murdered Morgan but escaped prosecution, and Wyatt's extra-legal campaign for revenge captured people's attention. The gunfight and its aftermath stand for the change overcoming America as the Western frontier ceased to exist, as a nation that was rapidly industrializing pushed out what had been a largely agrarian economy. The town of Tombstone has capitalized on interest in the gunfight. A portion of the town is a historical district that has been designated a National Historic Landmark and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places by the U.S. National Park Service. A local company produces daily theatrical re-enactments of the gunfight. ### Film and television With the widespread sales of televisions after World War II, producers spun out a large number of western-oriented shows. At the height of their popularity in 1959, there were more than two dozen "cowboy" programs on each week. At least six of them were directly or indirectly connected with Wyatt Earp: The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Tombstone Territory, Broken Arrow, Johnny Ringo, and Gunsmoke. Hugh O'Brian portrayed Earp on the namesake show Wyatt Earp which ran for six seasons, and he was forever associated with that role. A 2003 episode of Discovery Channel's Unsolved History used modern technology to attempt to re-enact the gunfight. They utilized a movie set to recreate a space similar to the lot where the original gun fight took place. They confirmed that the front-to-back wrist wound suffered by Billy Clanton could only have occurred if his arm was raised in the manner of one holding a pistol, and that the black powder may have obscured the shooters' view of each other. The episode concluded that the three eyewitnesses for the prosecution (Sheriff Behan, Ike Clanton, and Billy Claiborne) likely offered perjured testimony. They found that Tom McLaury may have been hit by the shotgun round under his armpit as he reached over his horse for a rifle in his scabbard, as the horse turned away from him at the same time. The stories about the gunfight written in the 20th century affected American culture. Numerous dramatic, fictional, and documentary works have been produced about or in reference to the event, with widely varying degrees of accuracy. These works include: - Law and Order (1932) with Walter Huston, the first film to depict the gunfight - Tombstone, the Town Too Tough to Die (1942) with Richard Dix - My Darling Clementine (1946) with Henry Fonda - The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (1955–1961), TV series with Hugh O'Brian, season 6 episode 36 - Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957) with Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas - The Gunfighters (1966), a Doctor Who serial - Hour of the Gun (1967) with James Garner - "Spectre of the Gun" (1968), an original Star Trek episode - Doc (1971) written by Pete Hamill - "Showdown at O.K. Corral" (1972), an Appointment with Destiny episode that was nominated for an Emmy Award - "Ghost Fight at the OK Corral" (1987), The Real Ghostbusters season 2 episode 47 - Tombstone (1993) with Kurt Russell - Wyatt Earp (1994) with Kevin Costner - "Shootout at Fly's Photographic Studio", a History Bites episode - "Rule of the Gun" (2004), an episode of Days That Shook the World - Tombstone Rashomon (2017), a film by Alex Cox ### In print - Saint Johnson (1930), – A novel by W.R. Burnett. A thinly fictionalized depiction of the conflict between the outlaws and the law officers. - Who Rides with Wyatt (1955), – A novel by Will Henry. - Warlock (1958), – A novel by Oakley Hall. - Bloody Season (1987), – A novel by Loren D. Estleman, a carefully researched depiction of events leading up the shootout and gunfight itself. - Cristo versus Arizona (1988), – An experimental novel by Spanish Nobel winner Camilo José Cela, it consists of a single sentence that is more than one hundred pages long. - Frontier Earth (1999), – a sci-fi/western novel by actor Bruce Boxleitner, about the events leading up to the gunfight. - The Return of Little Big Man (1999), – in which novelist Thomas Berger's wandering protagonist Jack Crabb becomes a witness to the event. - Gunman's Rhapsody (2001), – by Robert B. Parker - Telegraph Days (2006), – a novel by Larry McMurtry, includes a representation of the gunfight, told by a fictional journalist and eyewitness - Territory (2007), – a novel by Emma Bull offers a fantasy retelling of the events leading up to the fight. - The Buntline Special (2010), – by Mike Resnick, a Steampunk re-imagining of the gunfight. - The Last Kind Words Saloon (2014), – by Larry McMurtry, culminates with a version of the gunfight. - Epitaph: A Novel of the O.K. Corral (2015), – by Mary Doria Russell tells Wyatt Earp's story. - Tombstone: The Earp Brothers, Doc Holliday, and the Vendetta Ride from Hell (2020), by Tom Clavin ### In mathematics David Williams and Paul McIlroy introduced a mathematical model for the O.K. Corral gunfight, which they published in Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society (1998). Later this model was analyzed by Sir John Kingman (1999, 2002), and Kingman and Volkov (2003). They analyzed the probability of "survival of exactly S gunmen given an initially fair configuration." ## See also - Arizona Territory in the American Civil War - Confederate Arizona - Ten Percent Ring

New Jersey Route 56

State highway in southern New Jersey, US

Route 56 is a state highway in the southern part of the U.S. state of New Jersey. Also known as Landis Avenue, it runs 9.19 mi (14.79 km) from an intersection with Route 77 and County Route 622 (CR 622) in Upper Deerfield Township, Cumberland County, to an intersection with Route 47 (Delsea Drive) in Vineland, Cumberland County. The route serves as a connector between Bridgeton and Vineland. West of the interchange with Route 55 in Vineland, Route 56 is a two-lane undivided road that passes through rural areas of Cumberland County, also entering a corner of Salem County. East of Route 55, the route is a four-lane locally maintained road that runs through commercial areas of Vineland. The portion of current Route 56 in Vineland was built as a 100-foot (30 m) wide road when Vineland was planned in the 1860s, serving as the main east–west road through the community. In the past, the Route 56 number was used twice for a never-built road between the Laurelton Circle and Mantoloking in Ocean County legislated in 1938 and for the portion of U.S. Route 30 between current Route 157 and Atlantic City between 1938 and 1953. The current iteration of Route 56 was legislated in 1977 to run from Route 77 north of Bridgeton to Route 47 in Vineland, replacing County Route 22 between Route 77 and the Salem County border, County Route 6 within Salem County, and County Route 23 between the Salem County border and Route 47. This portion of road was designated as Route 56 in October 1983. In 2007, two bridges along the route were replaced. The Rainbow Lake Bridge in Pittsgrove Township was rebuilt after it was washed out by the April 2007 Nor'easter while the Maurice River bridge was reconstructed to make it wider and higher. ## Route description Route 56 begins at Route 77 and CR 622 in Upper Deerfield Township, Cumberland County, a short distance north of Bridgeton. From this intersection, the route heads to the northeast as two-lane undivided Landis Avenue. Shortly after it begins, it passes businesses and intersects CR 611. From here, Route 56 turns to the east-northeast and passes a mix of residences and farm fields. The route comes to a five-way junction with CR 553 and CR 687 before intersecting County Route 645. The road heads into Deerfield Township, coming to a junction with CR 686. Past this intersection, Route 56 continues toward the community of Rosenhayn. Here, the road intersects CR 737 before running past homes and crossing CR 634, where there are some businesses along the road. A short distance later, the route intersects CR 717, where it crosses into Pittsgrove Township in Salem County. Route 56 heads through a mix of farms and woodland, passing to the south of Rainbow Lake. Past the lake, the road turns to the east and continues into agricultural areas and intersects CR 655. Traveling eastward, the road crosses CR 638 and a Winchester and Western Railroad line. The route heads into forested areas, where it passes over the Maurice River into Vineland in Cumberland County. Here, it widens into a four-lane divided highway and comes to a cloverleaf interchange with Route 55. Past this interchange, Route 56 becomes a four-lane undivided road that is locally maintained. The route heads through commercial sectors of Vineland before coming to a crossroads with CR 628. The route continues past more inhabited areas and businesses before reaching its end at Route 47 (Delsea Drive). From here, Landis Avenue continues to the east toward the downtown area of Vineland. ## History The portion of Route 56 in Vineland was built as a 100-foot (30 m) wide road when Vineland was planned in the 1860s, serving as the main east–west road through the community. In 1938, two separate roads numbered Route 56 were legislated. One was located in Ocean County and was to run from the Laurelton Circle east to Mantoloking; this road was never built. The other was located in the Atlantic City area along U.S. Route 30 (Absecon Boulevard) east of current Route 157; the Route 56 designation on this road was dropped in the 1953 New Jersey state highway renumbering. What is modern-day Route 56 was originally designated as County Route 22 between Route 77 and the Salem County border, County Route 6 in Salem County, and County Route 23 between the Salem County border and Route 47. In 1977, Route 56 was legislated onto its current alignment between Route 77 in Upper Deerfield Township and Route 47 in Vineland, replacing County Routes 6, 22, and 23. The route was designated in October 1983. Due to the April 2007 Nor'easter, the Rainbow Lake Bridge in Pittsgrove Township was washed out and the New Jersey Department of Transportation had to replace it with a new bridge. This closure led to detours for traffic traveling between Vineland and Bridgeton. The new Rainbow Lake Bridge was opened in November 2007. The bridge spanning the Maurice River, which connects Vineland and Pittsgrove Township, was closed in July 2007 for planned repairs. This bridge replacement, which was completed in December 2007, cost \$5 million and provided a wider and higher crossing of the river. ## Major intersections ## See also

Leila (novel)

2017 novel by Prayaag Akbar

Leila is a 2017 Indian dystopian novel written by Prayaag Akbar. Set in the 2040s, the story follows Shalini, who tries to find her missing daughter Leila in a totalitarian regime. It was published by Simon & Schuster in several formats worldwide on 20 April 2017 and received a positive critical reception. It is also available as an audiobook narrated by Tania Rodriguez. The novel was awarded the 2018 juried Crossword Book Award for fiction and the Tata Literature Live First Book Award the same year. It was also shortlisted for The Hindu Literary Prize. Leila was adapted as a Netflix series by Deepa Mehta, Shanker Raman and Pawan Kumar with Huma Qureshi, Siddharth, Rahul Khanna, Sanjay Suri and Arif Zakaria. The series premiered on 14 June 2019 to mostly positive reviews from critics. ## Plot In the late 2040s, with drinking water and fresh air being extravagances, India is ruled by The Council. Shalini is married to Rizwan Chaudhury, a Muslim man with whom she has a daughter, Leila. One day Rizwan is abducted and killed by goons known as "Repeaters" in an attempt to cleanse the bloodlines and stop inter-faith marriages. Her daughter Leila is also abducted. Shalini is sent to a Purity Camp where she serves as a slave for sixteen years. During her long stay, her mental health starts deteriorating. One day she escapes. She is later caught and sent back to the camp where she is appointed as a housekeeper to the Dixits, an advantaged family at the Record Towers. Mr. Dixit is one of the designers for the up-and-coming Skydome, which will be utilized to make fresh air. Shalini gains access to the tower through the bureaucracy, in order to get more information. Mr. Dixit is sent to the camp after he neglects to make the arch by the due date. Feeling for Mrs. Dixit, Shalini helps her escape. One day, Shalini gets into the wealthy facility to find answers concerning the whereabouts of her missing girl. She sees a blurb demonstrating one of the specialists she thinks is one of the men who came to kill her husband and kidnap Leila. Shalini sees a video of Dixit clarifying that the Skydome will resemble a climate control system with vents blowing tourist outside of it that can murder individuals outside of it. While checking for the whereabouts of her daughter, Shalini stumbles on a file of all the children in the country. She notices Leila's picture and her school. Shalini visits the school and sees a little girl free from any danger yet being brainwashed into being a blind follower. Shalini thinks of her as Leila. The girl does not recognize Shalini. A politician Mr. Rao, tells Shalini to get inside the facility and switch off the power and take photos of the Skydome's arrangements. Shalini performs the task and then meets with Rao and gives him the film reel she took before of his preferred sonnet. Rao helps Shalini get into the Skydome work as her daughter will perform there. He gives Shalini content to peruse to the capacity, arranging an upset in an offer to govern over Joshi. Shalini shrouds the light inside Rao's lunch. As Joshi arrives, the youngsters perform for the group of spectators. Joshi then solicits one from the kids, which happens to be Leila, to remain with him. Shalini leaves the building and as she is standing outside, she stares up at the girl she thinks is Leila. Shalini feels like the girl is calling out to her but it is never sure whether it is real or her imagination. ## Development Akbar had wanted to write since his childhood and retire as a journalist to pursue a writing career. He wanted to depict the political changes that can "have a devastating impact on people's lives" by humanising the impact. He said that he was drawn by the "isolated, insular experience" of cities like Delhi and Mumbai: "In today's India, there are forces at work which are beyond our immediate control. There are huge, overarching political changes that can have personal ramifications, and can go on to devastate lives." He started writing with the idea of a mother and a daughter being separated. After reading Kazuo Ishiguro's 1982 novel A Pale View of Hills, Akbar wanted to write a story from a women's perspective as it made him realise that a male writer could write well in a woman's voice. Akbar began writing the story with Shalini and her daughter while the elements of dystopia came later on. Akbar felt that in India, it is always important to ascribe the "minute identities of caste and subcaste to each other." He said this experience inspired the setting of the novel. The novel was written over the course of five years. Akbar said that he deliberately chose "Leila" as the main character's name as it is both a Muslim and a Christian name. He wanted to show that "people also exist between the [religion] space." Leila was published by Simon & Schuster on 20 April 2017 in various formats. The audiobook version, narrated by Tania Rodriguez, was released on 4 April 2019. ## Reception Writing for The Economic Times, Lopamudra Ghatak described the novel as "stark" and Shalini's pain "at her loss and longing" ... "evocative". Minakshi Raja of The Free Press Journal described the book as "well worth a read" but felt the ending was conventional. Karishma Kuenzang of India Today said that the book is "intriguing enough to keep you hooked till the last page". She also compared it to Amitav Ghosh's The Shadow Lines, which was based on a similar theme. Ananya Borgohain of The Pioneer praised the novel saying it is "fascinatingly surreal and social at the same time." A review published by The Telegraph pointed that the resemblance between the reality and the "horrific world that Akbar conjures up is striking." Aditya Mani Jha of The Hindu Business Line compared the mother-daughter bond with that in Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Rini Burman of The Indian Express wrote: "Prayaag Akbar conjures up a future society, the inner seams of which reflect rigid class and caste divisions — almost eerie echoes of the reality we are living out now." Keshava Guha of The Hindu called it a "gripping debut novel that is a dystopian work that speaks directly to the ongoing changes in India's politics and society." Nandini Krishnan of The Wire praised the writing and said that the world of the novel is "not frightening so much as credible." Avantika Mehta of Hindustan Times described the novel as a "powerful debut" that "knocks you sideways with its complex questions." Bhanuj Kappal of The National described the writing as "tight and unrelenting" that never lets the reader's attention drift. Trisha Gupta of Scroll.in felt the future shown in the novel is "really already here." Somak Ghoshal of HuffPost praised the novel and noted the mother-daughter relationship as the highlight. Nudrat Kamal of Dawn called the prose "engaging" and said the "narrative tension of Shalini's increasingly desperate attempts to reunite with her daughter keeps the reader in its thrall." Aditya Singh of The Millions felt the novel was a "political and social allegory" with a "powerful commentary on the inherently unstable foundations that India's societal setup rests upon." Roger Cox of The Scotsman called the novel timely and memorable saying it "takes "xenophobic small-mindedness to its chilling conclusion." Kerryn Goldsworthy of The Sydney Morning Herald noted that Akbar successfully "create(s) a society in which everyone must be labelled by categories and sub-categories of race, religion and family, and movements around the city are strictly monitored." Akbar was awarded the juried Crossword Book Award for fiction. He also won the Tata Literature Live First Book Award. It was also shortlisted for The Hindu Literary Prize. ## Adaptation In February 2018, Netflix announced it was commissioning an original series based on the novel. Produced by Deepa Mehta, it starred Huma Qureshi, Siddharth, Rahul Khanna, Sanjay Suri and Arif Zakaria. Directed by Mehta, Shanker Raman and Pawan Kumar, the series began filming in November 2018 and finished in April 2019. It premiered on 14 June 2019 to mostly positive reviews from critics.

Howard Hille Johnson

American educator and school founder

Howard Hille Johnson (February 19, 1846 – February 8, 1913) was a blind American educator and writer in the states of Virginia and West Virginia. Johnson was instrumental in the establishment of the West Virginia Schools for the Deaf and Blind in 1870, after which he taught blind students at the institution's School for the Blind for 43 years. Johnson was born in 1846 near Franklin in Pendleton County, Virginia (now West Virginia) to the affluent and prominent Johnson family. His father, Colonel Jacob F. Johnson, represented Pendleton County in the West Virginia Legislature and his grandfather, James Johnson, represented the county in the Virginia General Assembly. Like his elder brother James, Johnson was born with severe visual impairment which became total blindness a few years after his birth. He and his brother received their early education at home from a governess. Johnson furthered his education at the Virginia School for the Deaf and the Blind, a common school in Franklin during the American Civil War, and at a classical school in New Market. During his studies at New Market, Johnson made considerable progress in mathematics, literature, science and foreign languages. In 1865 he returned to Franklin, where he and his brother conducted a private classical school. Johnson undertook advanced studies at the Virginia School for the Deaf and the Blind for his profession as a teacher from 1866 to 1867. He returned to Franklin, establishing a public school under the free education system, and in 1868 accepted a teaching position at a Moorefield public school. In early 1869, Johnson identified the need for a school for the blind in the new state of West Virginia; with statehood, deaf and blind West Virginia children attended schools for the deaf and blind in neighboring states (with West Virginia paying their tuition). Johnson began corresponding with West Virginia Governor William E. Stevenson, canvassing across the state to arouse public sentiment in support of a school for the blind. Despite rebukes from prominent West Virginian politicians, Johnson became the leading advocate for a state institution for the blind. He and other educated blind people staged an exhibition in the legislative chamber of the West Virginia House of Delegates, which was praised by the legislators. The bill establishing the school was presented to the West Virginia House of Delegates for a vote, and before it became state law the words "deaf and dumb" were inserted before "blind" throughout its text. The final version of the bill establishing the West Virginia Institution for the Deaf, Dumb and Blind became state law on March 3, 1870. At the time of the institution's establishment Johnson was only 24 years old, and is credited by West Virginia historians as the founder of the West Virginia Schools for the Deaf and Blind. Serving on the school's inaugural Board of Regents, he was later selected as its principal teacher. The school began its first academic session on September 29, 1870. Johnson taught in its blind department continuously for 43 years, until his death in 1913. In addition to his educational work, Johnson wrote prose and poetry and was a member of the Romney Literary Society. ## Early life and family Johnson was born on February 19, 1846, at his family's home on Friend's Run, near Franklin in Pendleton County, Virginia (now West Virginia). His father, Colonel Jacob F. Johnson, was a prominent citizen of the county and served in the West Virginia Legislature from 1872 to 1873. Johnson's grandfather, James Johnson, represented Pendleton County in the Virginia General Assembly and was a member of the 1829 Virginia Constitutional Convention. Like his elder brother James, Johnson was born with severe visual impairment which became total blindness several years after his birth. His affluent parents were determined to prepare Johnson and his brother for the challenges of life by providing them with the opportunities afforded to sighted children, arranging for their sons to receive a good education and "proper instruction" and teaching them self-sufficiency. Johnson's father employed a governess to instruct him and his brother at home, and James was taught to read from books using braille. ## Education James (Howard's brother) enrolled at the Virginia School for the Deaf and the Blind in Staunton in 1848 at age ten, completing his coursework there in 1855. After his graduation Johnson's father urged James to become a teacher, and at age 17 he taught a summer school on the South Fork South Branch Potomac River. James was also Howard's primary instructor, preparing him for higher education. Johnson followed in his brother's footsteps two years later, enrolling at the Virginia School for the Deaf and the Blind at age eleven. Although he studied there for four years, the school closed after the 1861 outbreak of the American Civil War and he was unable to complete his education there. At Staunton, teachers and acquaintances acknowledged Johnson's "remarkably rapid" progress in his studies. His studies were otherwise uninterrupted during the war; he attended a common school in Franklin, and was taught by James with sighted children. Johnson could not read text, and his lessons were read to him by his classmates. In 1863 James encouraged him to further his education at a classical school in New Market, since Johnson had completed the coursework at the Franklin common school. The New Market school was taught by Joseph Salyards (or Saliards), a professor and writer described as one of "the most learned men of the age" and "a most remarkable scholar in many respects." Johnson was accompanied to New Market by a young man with the surname of Clark, who read him his lessons; he tutored Clark in several subjects, including French. At New Market, Johnson made so much progress in mathematics, literature, science and foreign languages with his sighted classmates that he returned to Franklin after two years. In 1866 the Virginia School for the Deaf and the Blind in Staunton offered him the opportunity to advance his professional studies in education, and he completed one term in 1867. After Johnson's departure the New Market school became known as the New Market Polytechnic Institute, with Salyards remaining on its faculty. The institute, through Salyards' efforts, conferred on him a "most gratefully appreciated" Master of Arts degree in 1877. ## Early teaching career When Johnson returned to Franklin from New Market he was reunited with James, and they founded a private classical school where he taught during the winter of 1865–66. The Johnsons' school offered an opportunity for young men in Franklin whose studies were interrupted by the war to complete their education. After Johnson finished his term at the Virginia School for the Deaf and the Blind, he returned to Franklin and founded a public school in September 1867 operating under the free education system recently authorized in Pendleton County. The following year he accepted a teaching position in Moorefield, teaching with "great acceptance" for three successive terms at a public school. ## Campaign for a West Virginia school for the blind ### Search for public support While Johnson was teaching at Moorefield in early 1869, he decided to establish a state school for the education of the blind; no provision for such a school had been made in the new state's public-school system since its creation six years earlier. Before West Virginia statehood, deaf and blind youth in western Virginia attended the Virginia School for the Deaf and the Blind in Staunton (as Johnson had). After statehood, deaf and blind West Virginia children attended schools for the deaf and blind in neighboring states; West Virginia paid their tuition. Hoping to expedite the foundation of a state school for the blind, Johnson began a correspondence with newly-inaugurated Governor William E. Stevenson (who assured Johnson of his "sympathy and support" for the school). In addition to lobbying the governor, Johnson began canvassing the state to arouse public support for the proposed school. ### Search for legislative support Due to Johnson's campaign, which gained wide public support for the school, the West Virginia Legislature convened a session in Wheeling (then the state's capital) on January 18, 1870, and proposed legislation establishing a school for the blind that year. After drafting the bill, Johnson traveled to Wheeling; en route, at Fairmont, he met former Union Governor of Virginia Francis Harrison Pierpont. Although Johnson tried to enlist Pierpont's support in formally presenting the proposed legislation to the legislature, Pierpont said that he "could not afford to connect his name with an enterprise so sure to fail". Pierpont was not the only state legislator to decline Johnson's request; Joseph S. Wheat, member of the West Virginia House of Delegates representing Morgan County, believed that the proposed bill would fail because he felt that the state could not establish any more public institutions. Undaunted by these rebukes from prominent West Virginian politicians, Johnson remained the leading advocate for a state institution for the blind. With help from friends and other educated blind people, he was granted the use of the legislative chamber of the West Virginia House of Delegates to present an exhibition of "music, [scholarly] recitation, and class drill" with a delegation including his brother James and blind educator Susan Ridenour. Johnson's exhibition attracted a large audience, and after the performance he delivered an impassioned plea to West Virginia lawmakers to establish a state school for West Virginia's blind youth. The exhibition and Johnson's speech were praised by the legislators, most notably Joseph Wheat (who had previously rebuffed his proposal). The day before Johnson's presentation, Wheat declared his opposition to the bill and advocated its defeat; after Johnson's speech he "pressed up to [Johnson] and grasping his hand, said earnestly, 'Johnson, I'll vote for your bill if it costs a hundred thousand dollars'". The bill for the school was presented to the House of Delegates by John James Davis, representing Harrison County. When it was introduced it outlined the establishment of a school only for the blind, not the deaf. The approved bill progressed through the necessary steps, and shortly before it became state law it was amended by House Delegate James Monroe Jackson of Wood County; Johnson advocated the insertion of "deaf and dumb" before "blind" in every instance in its text as a "humane and economic" measure. Jackson's amendment was accepted, and the bill establishing the West Virginia Institution for the Deaf, Dumb and Blind became state law on March 3, 1870. Although Johnson had campaigned for a state school for the blind, it was common practice during the 19th century to combine schools for the deaf and blind as one institution. At the time of the institution's founding he was 24 years old, and is credited by West Virginia historians as the founder of the West Virginia Schools for the Deaf and Blind. In Johnson's bill, the legislature agreed that "all deaf and dumb and blind youth, residents of the state of West Virginia, between the ages of six and twenty-five years, shall be admitted to pupilage in the institution on application to the principal until the institution is filled." ### Institution site selection After the bill's passage Johnson was appointed by Governor Stevenson to the institution's inaugural Board of Regents, which convened in Wheeling on April 20, 1870. Johnson and his fellow board members began a competition among West Virginia municipalities for the location of the new institution for the deaf and blind; the three finalists were Wheeling, Parkersburg and Romney. The board selected Wheeling, which offered its Female College campus. However, after the board's adjournment Female College supporters, unwilling to see the school closed, pressured city authorities to rescind their offer. At the board's June 23, 1870 meeting, Johnson and his colleagues unanimously selected Romney's proposal offering the Romney Classical Institute campus and an adjoining 15 acres (6.1 ha) of property on behalf of the Romney Literary Society. When the institution's site was finalized, the board reconvened on July 20, 1870, in Romney at the old Romney Classical Institute campus and selected its academic faculty and personnel. H. H. Hollister of the Ohio Institution for the Deaf and Blind was chosen as the school's first principal, and Johnson was appointed principal teacher of its School for the Blind. ## Career at the school The West Virginia Schools for the Deaf and Blind began their first academic session on September 29, 1870, with an enrollment of thirty students: twenty-five were deaf and five blind. After the school's first academic year, Board of Regents secretary Robert White wrote in his report to Governor Stevenson: "Professor Johnson, in the instruction of the blind, has displayed a marked ability which is showing, and will show, good results in the department." Johnson represented the new school in 1871 at the inaugural convention of the American Association for Instructors of the Blind, and in 1876 he provided large maps used to teach his blind students as part of West Virginia's exhibit at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The exposition was the first world's fair hosted in the United States, and the first since West Virginia became a state in 1863. During Johnson's twenty-seventh year of teaching at the West Virginia Schools for the Deaf and Blind, he framed a bill for the West Virginia Legislature which would separate the institution into two schools: one for the deaf and one for the blind. It read in part: "Be it enacted, That the West Virginia schools for the deaf and the blind, located at Romney, in the county of Hampshire, shall, after the expiration of the present term, that is to say after the 15th day June, 1897, cease to be a school for the education of deaf and blind youth, and shall thereafter be a school for the education of deaf youth only", and would provide a separate school for the blind. Despite Johnson's active support for the bill, it failed to pass. In 1892 he wrote an article which was published in the Perkins Institute for the Blind publication The Mentor, "Keep the Schools Out of Politics", decrying the appointment of school administrators, educators and trustees on the institute's Board of Regents based on affiliation with the West Virginia Democratic Party instead of qualifications. Johnson taught in the school's blind department continuously for 43 years, until his death in 1913. He was the subject of an April 1899 article in The West Virginia School Journal, where he was described as "still in sound health and vigor" and "cheerful and patient" after 29 years of teaching. Despite his efforts to establish the West Virginia Schools for the Deaf and Blind and his long tenure, Johnson earned a minimal salary which enabled him to "eke out a bare living." During his career, he acquired a "working knowledge of several languages, a wide range of scientific knowledge, and of mathematics." In the 1897 History of Hampshire County, West Virginia: From Its Earliest Settlement to the Present, Hu Maxwell and Howard Llewellyn Swisher wrote about Johnson: ## Writing In addition to his career as an academic and educator, Johnson was a prolific writer of prose and verse. He was elected to the Romney Literary Society, which donated its buildings and the grounds of the Romney Classical Institute to the West Virginia Schools for the Deaf and Blind after its establishment in 1870. His poems include: - "A Question" - "Blindness" - "Intuitive Love" - "Hymn to Spring" ## Personal life In 1868 Johnson married Ms. Barbee of Virginia, and they had three children: Leila B. Johnson, William T. Johnson and H. Guy (or Howard H.) Johnson. His wife died in 1880, and his children from his first marriage were raised by their grandparents in Bridgewater, Virginia. In 1882 Johnson married Elizabeth Neale, the daughter of Hamlet V. Neale of Keyser. He and Elizabeth had two children: George N. Johnson and Lucy N. Johnson. Johnson died as a result of paralysis on February 8, 1913, in Romney, and is buried in its Indian Mound Cemetery.

Addie Brown

African-American letter writer (1841–1870)

Addie Brown (December 21, 1841 – January 11, 1870) was an American working-class free Black woman, who worked in various New England towns and wrote of her difficulties to earn a living. Her letters depict not only the racism and sexism faced by Northern Black women, but also her struggles with education, her awareness of politics, and her romantic friendship with Rebecca Primus. An acute observer, she provided through her letters perspective on the lives of working-class people in the nineteenth century, as well as on women's intimate relationships. Brown was raised in Philadelphia and had no formal education. She learned to read and write and, in order to improve her ability to earn a living, to sew and cook. Having few ties with her own family, she became an intimate member of the prominent Primus family of Hartford, Connecticut. For a decade between 1859 and 1868, she had a romantic friendship with the oldest daughter of the family and exchanged letters with her. The letters tell of Brown's fourteen different employers and eight addresses during the period, in addition to giving information about her chronic illnesses and fatigue. She wrote vivid descriptions of events in the Black communities in which she lived. Housed in the Primus collection of the Connecticut Historical Society, her letters give rare insight into the lives of working-class Black women in the period immediately preceding and following the American Civil War. ## Early life and education Adeline Brown was born on December 21, 1841, and was raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as a free Black person. Her father died during her childhood and her mother remarried, over Addie's objections. She lived briefly with an aunt in Philadelphia, and then cut off ties with her family, except for a brother, Ally Brown, who served in the Civil War. Brown did not have a formal education, and although she had learned to read and write her handwriting was difficult to read and peppered with poor grammar and colloquial speech. It is unknown how she came to know the Primus family of Hartford, Connecticut. She may have attended the Shiloh Baptist Church in Philadelphia, which was pastored by Jeremiah Asher, a first cousin to Holdridge Primus, or have been a boarder in the Primus's home. She might also have worked at a restaurant in Hartford owned by Jeremiah Jacobs and Raphael Sands. Jacobs was the brother of Mehitable Primus and Sands was their brother-in-law. Although it is unknown how she met the family, by 1859, Brown was part of the inner circle of the Primus family and had begun an intense friendship with Holdridge and Mehitable's oldest daughter, Rebecca. Brown was described as tall, and although she exchanged photographs with Primus, none have been found. She was friendly, congenial, and spirited, but was cautious in giving her own affection. Independent and confident, she made pragmatic choices to survive and had little patience with irritable people. She was at times a mischief-maker, but she was open and honest about her feelings and poured out her emotions in her letters. Lacking close family ties, Brown created fictitious family connections with friends. The one brother with whom she kept in touch, broke off contact with her after she was unable to visit him for Thanksgiving because she needed to work. She was bright, intelligent, keenly observant, and a good story-teller, bringing life and detail to the events she described in her letters. ## Career In 1859, Brown was employed by the Games family of Waterford, Connecticut. Her charge, Mrs. Games, was ill and Brown found the post unsatisfactory, primarily because of the unwanted advances of Mr. Games. Although Mrs. Games offered to continue the position, Brown did not accept, longing to return to Hartford and Rebecca Primus. In a February 1860 letter, she asked Primus to intercede with her mother so that she could learn how to sew, realizing that sewing would allow her to work even if she did not have the physical stamina to do domestic work. Returning to Hartford, she worked for a few months for a Mrs. Kellogg, but left in August, after experiencing a severe sunburn. By early 1861, Brown was living in the household of John H. Jackson, proprietor of an eating house and saloon in New York City. Her brother Ally also resided in this family's home, which was also a boardinghouse, in Greenwich Village. Brown cared for the couple's nine children and kept their house, but was rarely paid. Instead, Mrs. Jackson at times treated Brown as if she was family and at other times as if she was an apprentice learning the trade to be a milliner and seamstress. Struggling with overwork and irregular pay, Brown left the Jacksons in September 1862, and returned to Hartford. In 1862, she worked for Primus's family friends Henry and Elizabeth Nott. Elizabeth allowed Primus to spend the night with Brown at her home, but these visits stopped when Rebecca's father, Holdridge, objected. For the rest of her first three years in Hartford, little is known of Brown's employment. Few letters were written by Brown, since she and Primus were living in the same town. The letters that exist in the period show that at this time their physical relationship became more intense. In 1865, Brown worked at Smith's Dye House, an establishment resembling a modern laundry or dry cleaner. She made good money, \$19 per month at a time when female domestic workers earned about \$2.65 per month including their board. From her salary, she paid Primus's aunt, Emily Sands, about \$8.50 per month for room and board. Brown also worked regular hours, instead of being on call at all hours of the day and night when working in a household. She lost the job because of a lack of customers in December 1865. The previous month, Primus had gone to Maryland to establish a school for the Freedmen's Bureau. Brown recognized at that time that although her feelings for Primus had not lessened, it was likely that their lives would be lived separately. One of her suitors for several years had been Joseph Tines. He was a waiter on the Granite State steamship, which regularly ran between Hartford and New York City. He was originally from Philadelphia, so she may have known him from childhood there, or met him when she was working in New York. She announced her engagement to Tines in a letter to Primus in December 1865. At that time, Brown was working for various Hartford ladies – Mrs. Couch, Mrs. Doughlass, and Mrs. Swans – sewing garments and hoping to make enough money to get through the winter of 1866. She often secured clients through Mehitable. By February, she was working for professor John T. Huntington, who taught at Trinity College. From the beginning the job did not go well as Huntington had agreed to pay her \$2.50 per week and then tried to pay her only \$2.00. Brown objected and was successful in the dispute, but did not like the work and left in April, taking in sewing until she secured a position with the Crowell family in May. Brown remained at the Crowells for a year, but in May 1867 moved to Farmington to work at Miss Porter's School, as an assistant to Raphael Sands. She initially enjoyed working at the school, the comradery of other workers, and the ability to use the library. She earned \$12 per month and did not have to pay for room and board, but the work was exhausting and she reported that she often had headaches, backaches, and poor health. She also experienced racist attitudes while working at the school. Her political conscience was growing at the time and she reported in letters to Primus that she refused to attend a minstrel show and protested against the local church's segregated seating. She took over Raphael's position as head cook in the summer, but decided in January 1868 that she was definitely going to marry. Even though Miss Porter offered to hire both Brown and Tines, Brown turned down the job because it was so strenuous. In April, Brown married Tines and moved back to Philadelphia. An anonymous letter, possibly from Tines, indicates that they had a happy life and children. ## Correspondence Brown wrote more than a hundred letters to Primus between 1859 and 1869. They contain critical observations about the details of her life and work, society and politics, gossip about their community, her search for affection, and her expression of deep feeling for Primus. In some letters, she signed as Aerthena and addressed Primus as Stella. She often wrote of flirtations with suitors and the possibility of marriage, which were openly discussed without fear of threat to their own relationship. Her principle emotional attachment was to Primus, but she recognized the importance of marriage for her economic security and social stability. From 1862, the nature of the letters changed, with Brown focusing on what she was reading and her involvement in community events. She became more confident and wrote more of her efforts at self-improvement and the ways she tried to better her opportunities. She wrote of attending balls, fairs, and debates, giving perspective on the events which were important to the black community and weighing in on issues like emancipation, civil rights, and political events. Although the letters contain Brown's private thoughts and expressions of eroticism, the relationship between the two women was not a secret to their family and friends. Some of them felt the relationship was an infatuation that would dissolve after marriage. Mehitable accepted the relationship and acknowledged that if one of them had been a man, they might have married. Their community supported their friendship, as long as it would not interfere with a courtship with an eventual marriage to a man. Writing about a novel, Women Friendships by Grace Aguilar, that she had read, Brown analyzed whether the characters' differing social status, age, and education mirrored her own relationship with Primus. As the book was a cautionary tale against mixed-class friendships, Brown wondered if it meant that their relationship was doomed. According to sociologist Farah Griffin, Primus thought that class was less important than one's moral reputation. Besides Brown's own declarations of love for Primus, the letters also gossiped openly about topics like incest and sex outside of marriage, as well as of encounters with other women with whom she had shared a bed. ## Death and legacy Brown died from tuberculosis on January 11, 1870, at her home. Primus had saved the correspondence Brown wrote to her, indicating the importance of their relationship. After Primus's death, the letters were acquired in 1934 by the Connecticut Historical Society. Women's historian Eloise E. Scroggins noted that Brown's letters "provide insight into Black female relationships and the difficulties of life for Northern Blacks during the Civil War" period. They reveal the precarious economic and political circumstances of African Americans living in New England both before and after the war; Brown had at least fourteen employers and eight addresses between 1859 and 1867. They also fill a void in the historical documentation about Black women's private lives. History has often focused on records left by organizations and leaders, paying scarce attention to the lives and interactions of ordinary people and particularly women's lives have remained unexplored. Research on romantic friendships has also focused on White women's relationships, which do not typically depict an erotic nature to their passionate attachments. Some scholars, such as Carroll Smith-Rosenberg and Lillian Faderman, have argued that liaisons between White women at the time describe kissing, hugging, and sharing a bed, but not sexual contact. Other scholars, according to Sue Morgan, Judith M. Bennett and Leila J. Rupp, have disagreed, noting that the depiction of romantic friendship as devoid of lesbian behavior was premature as while few documents have surfaced, some have, and such a conclusion might erase lesbian identity. Nevertheless, Brown's letters add dimension to the analysis of nineteenth-century same-sex relationships, as she openly wrote of their passion, kisses, and touching of the breasts. The relationship between Brown and Primus defies modern definitions of heterosexual and homosexual relationships, because of the separate spheres in which men and women lived their lives in the nineteenth century. What the letters show, according to sociologist Karen Hansen, is that sexuality was more fluid in the Victorian era than had been previously acknowledged by scholars. Their relationship also gives insight into the attitudes among members of the Black community in the years after slavery ended.

French ironclad Duguesclin

Ironclad warship of the French Navy

Duguesclin was an ironclad barbette ship built for the French Navy in the late 1870s and 1880s; she was the second and final member of the Vauban class. Intended for service in the French colonial empire, she was designed as a "station ironclad", which were smaller versions of the first-rate vessels built for the main fleet. The Vauban class was a scaled down variant of Amiral Duperré. They carried their main battery of four 240 mm (9.4 in) guns in open barbettes, two forward side-by-side and the other two aft on the centerline. Duguesclin was laid down in 1879 and was completed in 1885. Despite the intention to use her overseas, the ship remained in home waters for the duration of her career, serving with the Mediterranean Squadron from 1888 to 1895, though the last two years were as part of the Reserve Division. She spent the next several years in the 2nd category of reserve, ultimately being struck from the naval register in 1904. She was sold for scrap the following year and broken up in Italy. ## Design The Vauban class of barbette ships was designed in the late 1870s as part of a naval construction program that began under the post-Franco-Prussian War fleet plan of 1872. At the time, the French Navy categorized its capital ships as high-seas ships for the main fleet, station ironclads for use in the French colonial empire, and smaller coastal defense ships. The Vauban class was intended to serve in the second role, and they were based on the high-seas ironclad Amiral Duperré, albeit a scaled-down version. Unlike their wooden-hulled predecessors of the Bayard class, Duguesclin and Vauban adopted composite steel and iron construction for their hulls. Duguesclin was 84.7 m (277 ft 11 in) long overall, with a beam of 17.45 m (57 ft) and a draft of 7.39 m (24 ft 3 in). She displaced 6,207.6 t (6,109.6 long tons; 6,842.7 short tons). The crew numbered 24 officers and 450 enlisted men. The ship had a fairly minimal superstructure that consisted of a small conning tower. As was typical for French ironclads of the period, her hull featured a pronounced tumblehome shape and a ram bow. Her propulsion machinery consisted of two compound steam engines that drove a pair of screw propellers, with steam provided by eight coal-burning fire-tube boilers that were vented through a single funnel. Her engines were rated to produce 4,000 indicated horsepower (3,000 kW) for a top speed of 14 knots (26 km/h; 16 mph). She had a coal storage capacity of 450 t (440 long tons; 500 short tons), which permitted her a cruising radius of 2,380 nautical miles (4,410 km; 2,740 mi) at a speed of 12.8 knots (23.7 km/h; 14.7 mph). To supplement the steam engines, she was fitted with a brig sail rig with a total area of 2,160 m² (23,200 sq ft). Her main battery consisted of four 240 mm (9.4 in), 19-caliber M1870M guns mounted in individual barbette mounts, two forward placed abreast, and two aft, both of the latter on the centerline. She carried a 194 mm (7.6 in) 19,8-cal. M1870 gun in the bow as a chase gun. These guns were supported by a secondary battery of six 138.6 mm (5.46 in) 21.3-cal. M1870 guns carried in a central battery located amidships in the hull, three guns per broadside. For defense against torpedo boats, she carried twelve 37 mm (1.5 in) 1-pounder Hotchkiss revolver cannon, all in individual mounts. Her armament was rounded out with two 356 mm (14 in) torpedo tubes in above-water launchers forward of the central battery. She also carried a pair of 65 mm (2.6 in) field guns that could be sent ashore with a landing party. In 1889, the ship received a pair of 47 mm (1.9 in) guns in place of two of the 37 mm guns, and by 1893, a further four of the 47 mm guns were added. The ship was protected with wrought iron armor; her belt was 150 to 250 mm (5.9 to 9.8 in) thick and extended for the entire length of the hull. The barbettes for the main battery were 200 mm (7.9 in) thick, and her main deck was 50 mm (2 in) thick. Her conning tower received 30 mm (1.2 in) of armor plating. ## Service history The keel for Duguesclin was laid down at the Arsenal de Rochefort in March 1877, and she was launched on 7 April 1883. Installation of her propulsion machinery followed, beginning in May and lasting until 8 September 1884. She was commissioned on 1 January 1886 to begin sea trials, which lasted for several months. On 10 April, she moved to Brest for further trials, arriving there three days later. Her initial testing lasted through June, and on 28 July, she was placed in reserve for repairs to her hull. Duguesclin was recommissioned on 27 April 1887 for another round of trials, and on 7 July she was placed back in reserve. The ship then moved to Toulon with a reduced crew on 13 February 1888, where she was allocated to the 2nd category of reserve. Duguesclin was activated on 23 August 1888 for the annual fleet maneuvers. She got underway two days later to join the rest of the fleet, which had assembled at Hyères by 30 August. The maneuvers ended on 4 September, with the fleet returning to Toulon by the 10th. On 20 March 1889, Duguesclin was placed in full commission for active service for the first time, to be assigned to the Eastern Mediterranean and Levant Squadron. She joined the unit three days later, and remained active with it through 1892. During this period, the ship routinely returned to French waters to take part in annual training exercises with the rest of the fleet. Duguesclin served in the 3rd Division of the Mediterranean Squadron in 1890, along with her sister ship Vauban and the ironclad Bayard. She took part in the annual fleet maneuvers that year in company with her division-mates and six other ironclads, along with numerous smaller craft. Duguesclin served as part of the simulated enemy force during the maneuvers, which lasted from 30 June to 6 July. During the 1890 fleet maneuvers, the ship was transferred to the 4th Division of the 2nd Squadron of the Mediterranean Fleet, along with Duguesclin and Bayard. The ships concentrated off Oran, French Algeria on 22 June and then proceeded to Brest, France, arriving there on 2 July for combined operations with the ships of the Northern Squadron. The exercises began four days later and concluded on 25 July, after which Duguesclin and the rest of the Mediterranean Fleet returned to Toulon. During the fleet maneuvers of 1891, which began on 23 June, Duguesclin served in the 3rd Division, once again with Vauban and Bayard. The maneuvers lasted until 11 July, during which the 3rd Division operated as part of the "French" fleet, opposing a simulated hostile force that attempted to attack the southern French coast. On 1 January 1893, Duguesclin left the Eastern Mediterranean and Levant Squadron, and she was allocated to the 2nd category of reserve on 9 February. At that time, she and Vauban were rated as armored cruisers. While in reserve, the ships were kept in commission with full crews for six months of the year to take part in training exercises. On 25 October 1894, she was reduced to the 3rd category of reserve, by which time she no longer saw active service. By that time, the two Vauban-class ironclads had been replaced by new, purpose-built armored cruisers. They were retained in a state that allowed them to be mobilized in the event of a major war. The French Navy had reconstructed several ironclads in the 1890s, but in 1899, decided against allocating funds to modernize Duguesclin. She was instead decommissioned on 1 September 1903 and struck from the naval register on 10 October 1904, before being sold to the Italian ship breaking firm M. Cerrutti of Genoa on 3 August 1905; she was subsequently taken there to be dismantled. Despite having been designed and built to serve in the French colonies, Duguesclin never deployed overseas.

Pyrrhus' invasion of the Peloponnese

Pyrrhus' campaigns in the Peloponnese

Pyrrhus' invasion of the Peloponnese in 272 BC was an invasion of south Greece by Pyrrhus, King of Epirus. He was opposed by Macedon and a coalition of Greek city-states (poleis), most notably Sparta. The war ended in a joint victory by Macedonia and Sparta. After being defeated by the Roman Republic in the Pyrrhic War in 275 BC, Pyrrhus (r. 297–272 BC) decided to turn his attention to Greece. He declared war on Antigonus Gonatas (r. 283–239 BC) of Macedon and in a rapid campaign, managed to defeat him and make himself king of Macedon. In 272 BC, Pyrrhus agreed to assist the disgruntled Spartan prince, Cleonymus, who requested his assistance in securing the Spartan throne. Pyrrhus advanced with his army through central Greece and upon reaching the Peloponnese, he marched against Sparta. The city was sparsely defended at the time as the majority of its army had been taken to Crete by King Areus I (r. 309–265 BC). The Spartans led by Crown Prince Acrotatus were able to withstand a series of Epiriote assaults until Macedonian reinforcements and Areus' army arrived to relieve the defenders. Following the arrival of the relieving force, Pyrrhus lifted the siege and prepared to winter in Laconia. However, he was approached by an Argive citizen who requested his assistance in overthrowing the government of Argos. Seeking to take advantage of the opportunity, Pyrrhus took his army to Argos, being harried along the way by the Spartans. Whilst attempting to seize Argos by night, Pyrrhus was set upon by his Argive opponents as well as the Spartans and Antigonus' Macedonians. In the ensuing mêlée, Pyrrhus was slain. His death prompted the capitulation of his army and the reestablishment of a Macedonian hegemony over Greece. ## Prelude Following entreaties from the Greek polis of Tarentum in 281 BC, Pyrrhus, the king of Epirus in northern Greece, invaded Italy with an army of 25,500 and 20 war elephants. The aim of the expedition was to combat the aggression of the Roman Republic, which was increasingly annexing the Greek cities of Magna Graecia. Upon arriving in Italy in 280 BC, Pyrrhus assumed command of an army consisting of the Greeks of Magna Graecia. Adding these forces to his own from Epirus, he engaged and defeated the Roman army at the Battle of Heraclea, near Tarentum in 280 BC. The Epiriote victory caused a number of native groups such as the Samnites and the Lucanians, who were also fearful of Roman expansionism to join Pyrrhus. Subsequently, Pyrrhus advanced towards Rome and at the Battle of Asculum he vanquished another Roman army. Despite having bested the Romans in their battles, Pyrrhus had sustained heavy casualties. With his Italian allies wavering, Pyrrhus decided to abandon his campaign against Rome. At this point in time, Pyrrhus had two options available. Firstly, he could return to Greece where the throne of Macedon had been left vacant by the death of King Ptolemy Keraunos at the hands of the Gallic invaders of Greece. Pyrrhus had coveted the Macedonian throne and had briefly held it from 287 BC to 285 BC. Alternatively, he could respond to the appeal of the Greek poleis of Sicily which were requesting his assistance to combat Carthaginian aggression. Ultimately, in 278 BC, Pyrrhus decided to direct his army against the Carthaginians in Sicily. Pyrrhus was highly successful in his campaign against Carthage and by 275 BC had managed to restrict them to the settlement of Lilybaeum in the far west of the island. Despite these victories, Pyrrhus' despotic disposition and pretensions alienated his Sicilian allies who began to abandon him. In light of these developments, Pyrrhus decided to return to mainland Italy to continue his war against Rome. The Epiriotes attacked the Roman army but after the inconclusive Battle of Beneventum, he returned to Epirus. Despite Pyrrhus leaving a garrison there, Tarentum succumbed to Rome in 272 BC. ## War against Macedon On his return to his homeland, Pyrrhus found himself in a difficult position. His Italian sojourn had emptied his coffers and crippled his army, leaving him reliant on Sicilian mercenaries who required payment. In order to secure funds to pay his troops, Pyrrhus planned a war against Antigonus II Gonatas, the new king of Macedon. Citing Antigonus' refusal to provide him with aid during his Italian expedition as a casus belli, Pyrrhus invaded Macedon in the spring of 274 BC. He was accompanied by an army consisting of 8,000 infantry and 500 cavalry although their numbers were probably augmented by Gallic mercenaries. It has been speculated that by invading Macedon, Pyrrhus was acting as the agent of the monarchs of Ptolemaic Egypt, Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II, however N. G. L. Hammond posits that this is highly unlikely. Initially, Pyrrhus had simply viewed his incursion into Macedon as an opportunity to plunder. However, the capture of numerous towns and the defection to his side of 2,000 Macedonian soldiers caused him to make his objective the seizure of the Macedonian throne. Antigonus marched with his army to western Macedon and was confronted by Pyrrhus at the Battle of the Aous. Pyrrhus began the engagements by slaughtering Antigonus' Gallic rearguard before securing the surrender of the Macedonian war elephants. Demoralised by these sudden reverses, the Macedonian phalangites responded to Pyrrhus' appeals and defected to the Epiriote side. Abandoned by his army, Antigonus managed to escape to Thessaloniki with a small force of cavalry. He was able to entrench himself there, protected by his strong navy which enabled him to maintain links with his possessions in Greece. Antigonus' flight left Pyrrhus in complete control of the Macedonian hinterland and Thessaly in central Greece. However, not all of Macedon surrendered to the Epiriote king and he was compelled to send his general, the Spartan Prince Cleonymus to capture Edessa. Despite initially being welcomed with enthusiasm by the Macedonians, he managed to alienate his new subjects when his Gallic troops ransacked the royal Macedonian tombs at Vergina. By late 274 BC or early 273 BC, Pyrrhus secured the occupation of Macedonia and returned to Epirus, leaving his son Ptolemy to govern the region. ## Advance into the Peloponnese Following his Macedonian triumph, Pyrrhus was approached by his officer Cleonymus. The Spartan convinced the Epiriote king to aid him in a scheme to seize control of his homeland. Cleonymus' reasons for seeking to attack Sparta were twofold. Firstly, he was angry that he had been overlooked for the Agiad kingship of Sparta in favour of his nephew, Areus II. Plutarch ascribes Cleonymus' failure to secure the throne to his arbitrariness and violent nature. Furthermore, Cleonymus had become a target of ridicule in Sparta by the fact that his new wife, Chilonis, was engaging in an affair with Acrotatus, the son of Areus. Pyrrhus' motivation for agreeing to assist Cleonymus is more complex. By installing Cleonymus on the throne, the Epiriote would secure Sparta as an ally. Additionally, by invading the Peloponnese, Pyrrhus would be able to subdue any cities which had remained loyal to Antigonus. In doing so, he could prevent Antigonus using the peninsula as a base from which to launch a counter-attack on Macedon. The size of the force assembled by Pyrrhus is indicative of his intention to extend his hegemony into the Peloponnese. The Epiriote king mustered an army consisting of 25,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry as well as 24 war elephants. In 272 BC, Pyrrhus marched his army through Central Greece to the city of Pleuron from where they were ferried across the Gulf of Corinth to the Peloponnese. This suggests that the invasion was supported by the Aetolian League, a powerful confederate in Central Greece which was allied with Pyrrhus and hostile to Antigonus. Antigonus attempted to exploit Pyrrhus' absence from Macedon by launching an invasion to reclaim his kingdom. However, his attack on Macedon was unsuccessful as he was defeated in battle by Pyrrhus' son, Ptolemy. Unperturbed by Antigonus' offensive, Pyrrhus advanced into the Peloponnese where he was welcomed in Achaia. The Epiriote army marched to Megalopolis, a central Peloponnesian city which lay on the border with Sparta. Several of Sparta's neighbours, namely Megalopolis, Elis and many of the Achaians poleis, supported Pyrrhus' invasion as they would profit from the reduction of Spartan influence in the region. While his force was camped at Megalopolis, Pyrrhus received ambassadors from Messene, Athens, the Achaian League and Sparta. In response to the Spartans' inquires as to the reasons for his Peloponnesian incursion, Pyrrhus managed to dupe the envoys. He told the Spartans that he had come to liberate any cities still held by Antigonus and that he hoped to send his sons to Sparta to obtain a traditional education at the agoge. However, when the emissaries returned to Sparta, Pyrrhus advanced into Laconia. He advanced south, following the course of the Eurotas River and ravaging the lands of the Spartan perioeci. It may have been at this time that Pyrrhus assigned Cleonymus a series of independent commands as he is recorded as subjugating the city of Alifeira in Elis as well as sacking Zarax in the Parnon region of Laconia. Pyrrhus' perfidy was met with anger in Sparta and ambassadors were immediately sent to Pyrrhus to rebuke him. ## Siege of Sparta The Spartans were caught unawares by Pyrrhus' invasion. Areus had taken the majority of the Spartan army with him to Crete, where he was campaigning on behalf of Gortyn at the request of Ptolemaic Egypt. The result was that the settlement was lightly defended. Arriving at Sparta as night fell, Cleonymus advised Pyrrhus to attack the city immediately. However, the Epiriote declined to as he was fearful of the damage that would be wrought by Gallic troops if they entered the city at night and moreover expected the sparsely defended city to surrender in the morning. The Spartan council of Elders, the gerousia, suggested that the Spartan women be sent to Crete for their protection. They were dissuaded from doing so by Arachidamia, the former queen and grandmother of the Eurypontid King Eudamidas II who convinced them that the women could assist in the city's defence. In order to guarantee the fighting men some rest, the women and the elderly began bolstering defences. Aware that Pyrrhus had elephants with him, the defenders dug a large trench and sunk wagons into the ground at its flanks in order to hinder the Epiriote advance. Moreover, messengers were sent both to summon Areus back and to request aid from Antigonus, despite the fact the Sparta and Macedon had traditionally been hostile. Pausanias, the Greek geographer, claims that Sparta received some aid from Messene and the pro-Spartan faction at Argos. The Epiriotes launched their first assault against the city at daybreak. However, they were unable to get a firm footing because of the trench and were repulsed by the defenders, who were encouraged by the women. In order to circumvent this obstacle. Pyrrhus ordered a 2,000 picked force of Gauls and Chaonians commanded by Ptolemy to attempt to go around the trench. Finding their path blocked by the wagons, they began to pulling them out of the ground. Aware of the danger, Acrotatus used a series of depressions to attack this force from the rear and managed to the push the Epiriote flanking group into the trench after inflicting heavy casualties upon them. Unable to make an impact on the defences, Pyrrhus ordered his troops to withdraw to their camp at nightfall. After receiving a favourable omen during the night Pyrrhus renewed his assault. An effect of the shortage of warriors was that the Spartan women were active in providing the defenders with missiles and refreshments as well as taking away the wounded. In an attempt to nullify the Spartans' advantage, the Epiriotes tried to fill up with trench with debris and bodies but were prevented from doing so by the Sparta. Responding to this Spartan counter-attack, Pyrrhus personally led a charge against the Spartan lines and succeeded in entering the city, spreading panic amongst the defenders. However, at this point his horse threw him after it was wounded by a javelin in the belly. Pyrrhus' fall threw his companions into a state of dismay, permitting the Spartans to rally and they managed to slay many of the companions in a barrage of missiles. Despite this, Pyrrhus was taken safely back to his camp. Prompted by this unsuccessful foray, Pyrrhus order his army to return to its camp. He now expected the Spartans seek terms as the severity of their casualties would make the defence unsustainable. However, Sparta was saved by the arrival of unexpected reinforcements. In the interim, Antigonus had launched another offensive in northern Greece and succeeded in evicting Pyrrhus' garrisons from Macedon (this possibly accounts for the presence of Ptolemy in Pyrrhus' army). Having reclaimed his kingdom, Antigonus moved south into the Peloponnese, probably using the sea route to avoid a confrontation with the Aetolian League. Upon his arrival in Corinth, he sent his general Ameinias the Phocian with a group of mercenaries to assist the Spartans. The arrival of the Macedonia mercenaries was closely followed by Areus' return from Crete with 2,000 men. Enheartened by the arrival of these reinforcements, the defenders prepared to face Pyrrhus' next assault. The Epiriotes launched an attack in the morning but after this was repelled Pyrrhus became convinced of the futility of the situation and ordered his men to lift the siege. ## March to Argos Pyrrhus retreated with his army into the Laconian hinterland with the purpose of wintering there before making another attempt against Sparta. However, as his troops were ravaging the surrounding countryside, he received news that Antigonus was marching on Argos from Corinth on his way to trap Pyrrhus in Laconia. Pyrrhus was approached by Aristeas, the leader of the democratic faction in Argos, who sought Epiriote support to counter the pro-Macedonian aristocratic party of Argos led by Aristippos. Accepting Aristeas' proposal, Pyrrhus began his march north to the Argolis. Pyrrhus' advance on Argos did not go smoothly as his army was constantly harassed by vengeful Spartan troops led by Areus. By setting up ambushes and occupying strategic positions along the Epiriote line of retreat, the Spartans were able to inflict heavy casualties on Pyrrhus' rearguard of Gauls and Molossians. In an attempt to restore the wavering morale of his rear, Pyrrhus sent Ptolemy to assume its command. Pyrrhus hoped that the presence of his son amongst the troops would stiffen their resolve and enable to him to extricate the remainder of his troops from the narrow pass through which they were passing. Ptolemy's position was attacked by a picked Spartan war band under the command of Evaclus. In the ensuing struggle, Ptolemy was slain by the Spartans causing his remaining troops to rout. The victorious Spartans pursued the fleeing Epiriote rearguard until they were checked by some Epiriote infantry. Upon hearing of his son's death and the collapse of his rearguard, Pyrrhus summoned his Molossian cavalry and charged the Spartans. In the battle that followed, Pyrrhus killed the Spartan leader Evaclus with his own hand and succeeded in annihilating the pursuing Spartan troops. After this skirmish, the Epiriotes continued their march to Argos. However, upon reaching his destination, he found that Antigonus had arrived at Argos first and camped to the city's north. The Macedonian presence compelled Pyrrhus to pitch camp at Nauplion to the south of Argos. Pyrrhus attempted to goad Antigonus into fighting a pitched battle on the plain in front of Argos but the Macedonian king was unmoved. The Argives sent ambassadors to both kings, beseeching them to respect the city's neutrality. Antigonus agreed to the Argives' terms and gave his son as a hostage in order to demonstrate his sincerity. While Pyrrhus agreed to retreat from Argos, he failed to give a pledge and as a result was regarded with suspicion. ## Battle of Argos During the night, Pyrrhus was able to enter Argos. While Pausanias recounts that he did so by force, Plutarch asserts that Diamperes Gate had been left open for the Epiriotes by Aristeas. Hammond opines that it is more likely that Aristeas admitted Pyrrhus into the city. Although Pyrrhus' Gauls were able to occupy the Argive agora, the rest of the army was delayed due to the war elephants being too large to pass through the gate. In order for them to enter, the towers need to be taken off their backs and reattached once they were inside the city. Furthermore, Pyrrhus left the majority of his army outside the city walls under the command of his son Helenus. This delay gave the Argives enough time to reach their citadel, the Aspis, and seek aid from Antigonus. The Macedonian king responded immediately, advancing towards the city walls and sending a relief force inside under the command of his son Halcyoneus. The situation further deteriorated for Pyrrhus when Areus entered Argos with a force of 1,000 lightly armed Cretans and Spartans. The Argives, assisted by their Spartan and Macedonian allies, launched a counter-attack on Pyrrhus' Gallic troops in the agora and threw them into a state of panic. Due to the labyrinthine layout of the city and the darkness, both Pyrrhus' advancing troops and those of his opponents become scattered throughout Argos. The result was that Pyrrhus, entering the city at the head of his cavalry to assist the Gauls, was unable to effectively communicate his commands to his soldiers. Realising the difficulty of his situation, Pyrrhus ordered his army to retreat from Argos as day broke. Understanding that the gates were too narrow for his army to exit in an orderly fashion, Pyrrhus ordered Helenus to tear down part of the wall and to be prepared to fend off any enemy counter-attacks against the retreating troops. However, the instructions brought by the messenger were unclear and instead of organising the retreat, Helenus advanced with the rest of the army into Argos. With the majority of his troops streaming in through the gates, Pyrrhus' line of retreat was blocked off. The disorder was exacerbated when Pyrrhus' largest elephant fell and blocked the gateway and another elephant started running amok after his mahout was felled. The weight of the enemy's assault pushed Pyrrhus and his troops from the agora and compelled them to fight in the narrow street leading to the Diamperes Gate. In the fighting which ensued, Pyrrhus was wounded by a spear wielded by an Argive. As Pyrrhus turned to strike down his assailant, he was hit on the head by a roof tile thrown by his attacker's mother. Pyrrhus was either killed by the force of the tile's impact or, alternately, having fallen dazed from his horse he was decapitated by one of Antigonus' Macedonian soldiers, Zopyrus. Pyrrhus' head was brought by Halcyoneus to Antigonus, who expressed dismay when he saw it and upbraided his son for acting in such a barbarous manner. Upon Pyrrhus' death, Epiriote resistance crumbled and Antigonus accepted the surrender of Helenus, giving him Pyrrhus' body for burial. ## Aftermath The expedition into the Peloponnese was a disaster for Epiriote ambitions. Although Helenus was permitted by Antigonus to return to his homeland with the remainder of his army, Epirus ceased to be a regional power. Pyrrhus' son and successor, Alexander II of Epirus was granted generous terms by the Macedonian king. Epirus was able to keep Pyrrhus' conquests of Tymphaea, Parauaea and Atintania in western Macedon. Antigonus realised that an independent Epirus was essential in order to act as a buffer against the Illyrians to the north. Antigonus emerged from the conflict as the unchallenged ruler of Macedon and the leading power in Greece. After his victory in Argos, Antigonus was able to install his supporter Aristippos as tyrant of the city and appointed various pro-Macedonian leaders as tyrants in other Greek cities. His support for tyrants over democratic rulers would lead to growing resentment amongst the Greek cities against Macedon. On his journey north to Macedon, Antigonus succeeded in placing garrisons in the cities of Chalcis and Eretria on the important island of Euboia with the outcome being that he further consolidated his power in Greece. The Spartan-Macedon alliance proved to be transient. Angered by Macedon's supremacy and full of ambition, Areus formed a coalition with several Greek poleis, most notably Athens. In the resulting Chremonidean War, Areus was slain by his former ally Antigonus in a battle on the Isthmus of Corinth in 265 BC. The war ended in a defeat that was so crushing for Sparta that it would not rise as a regional power again until the reign of Cleomenes III thirty years later.

Röyksopp

Norwegian electronic music duo

Röyksopp () are a Norwegian electronic music duo from Tromsø formed in 1998. The duo consists of Svein Berge and Torbjørn Brundtland who met as youths. They formed Röyksopp during the Bergen Wave. After experimenting with different genres of electronic music, the band solidified their place in the electronica scene with their 2001 debut album, Melody A.M., released on the Wall of Sound record label. Röyksopp has consistently experimented with various genres pertaining to electronic music. Stylistically, the band makes use of various genres, including ambient, house music and synth-pop. The band is also known for its elaborate concert performances, which often feature eccentric outfits. Since their 1998 debut, the duo has gained critical acclaim and popular success around the world. To date, Röyksopp has been nominated for two Grammy Awards, won seven Spellemannprisen awards, performed worldwide tours, and produced albums that have topped the charts in several countries, including four consecutive number-one albums in their native country. ## Band name Røyksopp literally means in English "smoke mushroom". It is the Norwegian word for the class of mushrooms known as puffball. The band's name replaces the second letter (ø) with ö, which is non-existent in the Norwegian alphabet but corresponds to the same sound in the Swedish alphabet. ## History ### 1990–1997: Origins Berge and Brundtland were introduced to each other through a mutual friend in Tromsø, Norway, when Berge was 12 years old and Brundtland was 13. They enjoyed the same films and music, and shared an interest in electronics. The two began playing music together due to a shared interest in electronica, experimented with various forms of electronic music. They bought a drum machine together part of the Tromsø techno scene of the early 1990s. Their childhood in Tromsø and the natural scenery of Northern Norway have often been mentioned as some of their most important inspirations. The pair separated before obtaining any popular success with their music, but reunited with each other in 1998 in Bergen, Norway. Bergen, a city of 212,944 people in 1990, had overtaken Tromsø's position as the most vital scene for underground electronic music in Norway, and Röyksopp worked with other Norwegian musicians like Frost, Those Norwegians, Drum Island, and Kings of Convenience's guitarist and singer Erlend Øye in what was called the Bergen Wave. During this time, the duo befriended Geir Jenssen. Under the tutelage of Jenssen, the duo started a band called Aedena Cycle with Gaute Barlindhaug and Kolbjørn Lyslo. In 1994 Aedena Cycle recorded a vinyl EP called Traveler's Dreams. The EP was released under the R&S Records sublabel Apollo. Following the release of the EP, Jenssen almost convinced the band to sign a full record deal with Apollo Records. ### 1998–2000: Early years After recording as part of Aedena Cycle, Berge and Brundtland left the group to form their own band, Röyksopp. The word röyksopp is a stylized version of the Norwegian word for the puffball mushroom, "røyksopp". The band has stated that the word could also evoke the mushroom cloud resulting from an atomic blast. Röyksopp's debut single was released by local Bergen Wave-era independent label Tellé. Röyksopp's first single "So Easy", which was later re-released on their first album, was the second record released by Tellé. After being used in a UK T-Mobile advertisement, "So Easy" became popular in the UK market and was later re-released, combined with their later single "Remind Me". ### 2001–2004: Melody A.M. and early success After leaving Tellé, the band signed with British label Wall of Sound and released Melody A.M., which became certified platinum in the band's native Norway and sold over a million copies worldwide. The album peaked at number one in Norway, and produced the UK Top 40 singles "Eple", "Poor Leno", and "Remind Me". A final single, "Sparks", was also released. Eple () – meaning "apple" in Norwegian – was licensed by Apple Inc. for use as the welcome music to the company's Mac OS X Panther operating system, playing the first time a user booted a new Apple-brand computer. The band's popularity was boosted by several graphically experimental music videos, many of which were put into heavy rotation by MTV. The music video for "Remind Me", featuring an infographic-style video by French company H5, won the 2002 MTV Europe Music Award for best music video. In this same event the duo was nominated in three more categories: "Best Nordic Act", "Best New Artist" and "Best Dance Act". The duo performed the song "Poor Leno" at the event. One year later they received a nomination for "Best Group" at the Brit Awards. During this period Röyksopp slowly gained popularity in the United States. "Remind Me", one of the two Röyksopp and Erlend Øye collaborations found on Melody A.M., was featured in a Geico car insurance commercial, the fourth of the "It's so easy a caveman could do it" ads. During this time, Röyksopp were approached to compose the soundtrack for The Matrix Reloaded, although they declined the offer. ### 2005–2008: The Understanding Röyksopp's second studio album, The Understanding, was released on 12 July 2005, preceded by the single "Only This Moment" on 27 June 2005. The single managed to peak at number 33 in the United Kingdom. The video for "Only This Moment" is closely based on the events of the Paris 1968 riots, and elements of propaganda are found throughout the video clip. The album's second single, "49 Percent", with the vocals of Chelonis R. Jones was released on 26 September 2005. A third single, "What Else Is There?", including vocals from Swedish singer Karin Dreijer of The Knife, became the album's biggest single, peaking at number 32 in the United Kingdom, and at number four in Norway. "Beautiful Day Without You" was the album's fourth single, and a non-album track, "Curves", was also released. Building upon the success of Melody A.M., The Understanding was very successful in Europe. The album peaked at number one in Norway, and at number 13 in the UK. During this time, Röyksopp's popularity continued to increase in the United States. The album charted on many Billboard charts, and peaked at number two on the Top Electronic Albums chart, number 22 on the Top Heatseekers chart, and number 32 on the Top Independent Albums. After the release of The Understanding, some of Röyksopp's singles were licensed for movie appearances. "What Else Is There?" was featured during a scene in the 2007 American film Meet Bill and during the end credits of the 2006 British film Cashback, and "Circuit Breaker" was used in the 2007 snowboard film Picture This. On 19 June 2006, Röyksopp released a nine-track live album called Röyksopp's Night Out. Notably, the album contains a reinterpretation of the song "Go with the Flow", originally by Queens of the Stone Age. On 5 March 2007, Röyksopp compiled their favourite tracks by other artists for the Back to Mine series. Called Back to Mine: Röyksopp, the album was released in the US on 5 March 2007, and in the UK on 27 April 2007. The album also includes their own track "Meatball", released under the pseudonym "Emmanuel Splice". Svein Berge also contributed as a board member for the celebration of the Grieg year, as Norway celebrated their famous composer Edvard Grieg. On the tenth anniversary of Röyksopp's formation—15 December 2008—the band released a new track, "Happy Birthday", free of charge to celebrate the event. The song was released via free streaming on the band's website. ### 2009–2011: Junior and Senior Röyksopp's third studio album, Junior, was released on 23 March 2009, featuring the single "Happy Up Here". The song debuted on BBC Radio 1's Pete Tong show on 9 January 2009. It was officially released digitally on 16 March 2009. The music video for "Happy Up Here", made by Reuben Sutherland, features elements from the arcade game Space Invaders. Both the single and the video were met with positive reactions from the press and fans. "The Girl and the Robot", the second single from the album Junior, featuring vocals from Swedish singer Robyn, was released on 15 June 2009. The vinyl and digital versions of the single included remixes of the song by Kris Menace, Chateau Marmont and Spencer & Hill. At the 52nd Grammy Awards, the Jean Elan remix of "The Girl and the Robot" was nominated for Best Remixed Recording, Non-Classical. "This Must Be It" is the third single from the album, including vocals from Swedish singer Karin Dreijer of The Knife and Fever Ray. The single also featuring remixes by Thin White Duke, LehtMoJoe, Rex the Dog and Apparat, among others. The band later released the stems for the song "Tricky Tricky" as part of a remix competition and the winning entries were released on 27 October 2009. Junior was a success around the world. The album peaked at number one in Norway, the band's third consecutive release to do so. Junior also peaked at number 21 on the UK Albums Chart and charted on many Billboard charts, including the Billboard 200–the first Röyksopp release to do so–where it peaked at number 126. The album also peaked at number four on the Top Electronic Albums chart and number two on the Top Heatseekers chart. Junior was followed by Senior, which is more quiet, "withdrawn and introspective" and "create[s] an atmosphere and an ambiance". Senior is the duo's first album to consist solely of instrumental tracks. The first single from the album, "The Drug", was released on 9 August 2010. The album itself was released on 13 September 2010, and was successful in the band's native Norway, peaking at number one, the band's fourth consecutive release to do so. ### 2013–2016: Do It Again, The Inevitable End and Star Wars Headspace In January 2013, Röyksopp released a song called "Running to the Sea", a collaboration with Norwegian artist Susanne Sundfør. According to the band, the song was written and recorded in two days for a televised performance. The single was released on 16 December 2013, with a B-side containing a song called "Something in My Heart", featuring Jamie McDermott from The Irrepressibles. Röyksopp and Sundfør also collaborated in creating a cover version of Depeche Mode's "Ice Machine" for their Late Night Tales compilation album, Late Night Tales: Röyksopp. On 14 April 2014, Röyksopp announced a collaborative EP with Robyn titled Do It Again to coincide with their joint tour. A snippet of one of the five tracks set to be released on the album, "Monument", was released the same day. The album was released on 26 May through Dog Triumph, Wall of Sound, and Cooking Vinyl. The duo stated that a re-worked version of "Monument" would form a part of their next album. On 29 September 2014, Röyksopp announced that their next album, titled The Inevitable End, would explore "darker subject matter with emphasis on the lyrical content", and would be their last LP, though they will not stop making music. The album was released on 7 November 2014 by Dog Triumph. The special edition of the album includes new versions of the previously released tracks "Running to the Sea", "Do It Again" and "Monument" as well as the original version of "Something in My Heart". Some singles did precede the release of the album: "Skulls", "Sordid Affair" and the new version of "Monument". "Skulls" and "Monument" were accompanied by two new video clips. The video for "I Had This Thing" was shared on 11 May 2015. In early 2015, it was announced that the band had composed a musical accompaniment to a comedic work based upon the novels of Franz Kafka. The project debuted at the Bergen International Festival in the same year. Also in 2015, the Norwegian public broadcaster NRK introduced a series of new jingles by Röyksopp for the TV output of the NRK Nyheter news division, as part of a comprehensive redesign of the sub-brand. The same year, they won the award for "Best Cinematography" at the Berlin Music Video Awards for their "Skulls" music video. On 8 February 2016, Röyksopp announced that a new track titled "Bounty Hunters" would be included on the Star Wars Headspace compilation. The album was released on 19 February 2016. On 9 September 2016, Röyksopp released a new song, in collaboration with Susanne Sundfør, called "Never Ever". Additional remixes of the song have been released between February and April 2017, including Röyksopp's own club mix. ### 2019–2021: Lost Tapes In February 2019, the band announced that they would be releasing B-sides, exclusives and previously unreleased tracks through the Lost Tapes playlist, starting with "I Wanna Know" and "Rising Urge". The tracks have been released for free on music streaming services, including Spotify and YouTube, but are also sold in digital stores like Amazon and the iTunes Store. In August 2019, Röyksopp released a collaborative single with Lars Vaular, called "To minutter". The band kept releasing new Lost Tapes until 25 January 2021, when they announced the project has come to a halt for the time being. In August 2021, the physical edition of Lost Tapes was announced for release on 17 September 2021. It contains the first 10 tracks from the series and is available on vinyl, CD and cassette. ### 2022-2023: Profound Mysteries I, II and III At the end of 2021, the band launched a new Instagram account which led to speculation of new music. Through a series of teasers with the tagline "Press R" on social media and snippets of new material on the redesigned official website, the band confirmed a new project would be released in 2022, titled Profound Mysteries. Röyksopp described the "conceptual project" as an "expanded creative universe" and a "continuous, holistic experience", suggesting the release of three albums in 2022 (listed on the website as red, yellow and green). Each release in the series was accompanied by a series of short-films from multiple directors and AI-generated "artefacts" and visualisers by an Australian artist Jonathan Zawada. The two new songs were officially released in January 2022, "(Nothing But) Ashes..." and "The Ladder", followed by "Impossible" (featuring Alison Goldfrapp) in February. The Profound Mysteries album was released on 29 April 2022, with the band hosting a livestream of the album, followed by a tease of the next album and snippets of new music on the official website. On 14 June 2022, the band released Sorry, featuring Jamie Irrepressible as a lead single for Profound Mysteries II. At the same time the album became available for pre-order with "Unity", featuring Karen Harding available alongside it. A collection of remixes was also released. The second album was released on 19 August 2022, with the band once again hosting a YouTube event and teasing the next album, officially confirming the trilogy. A number of individual songs were released in a run-up to the third and final album, starting with "Speed King" and "The Night" in August 2022. Profound Mysteries III was released on 18 November 2022 and features collaborations with Jamie Irrepressible, Alison Goldfrapp, Susanne Sundfør and Astrid S, among other artists. The series has been also released on vinyl for the first time, as 6LP boxset featuring all three albums and individual 2LP releases. In 2023, the duo have embarked on a headline tour and continued to release new remixes of the tracks from the Profound Mysteries series. The "True Electric" tour started in February 2023, with shows in European cities including Stockholm, London and Berlin. The band described the tour as "energetic beats meet vast, transcending soundscapes" and explained their wish to bring "the pure and immersive Röyksopp experience" of studio productions to the stage. The shows were followed by appearances at various summer festivals in Europe including Bilbao BBK Live and Rock Werchter. The band is continuing their headline tour in autumn 2023 with 16 concerts in North America and Europe. ## Style ### Musical style Röyksopp's music is often referred to as "warm", a reference to the band's downbeat electronica that combines elements of house music and Afro-American sounds. A notable component of Röyksopp's song repertoire relies on the use of multiple lead vocalists. For instance, Melody A.M. features the vocal talents of Anneli Drecker and Erlend Øye, The Understanding features Kate Havnevik, Chelonis R. Jones, and Karin Dreijer, and Junior features Robyn, Anneli Drecker, Karin Dreijer, and Lykke Li. Röyksopp enjoy using classic synthesizers, including the monophonic Korg MS-20, the polyphonic Roland Juno-106, and multiple members of the Akai Sampler Series. The band has stated that they prefer using analogue synthesizers over digital ones. Svein Berge said, "It's fairly limited the fun you can have with the use of a mouse. We like to mix." In addition to writing their own music, the duo enjoy remixing songs. Berge said, "It's obviously fun remixing people like Coldplay, artists of such a big calibre. Whenever people approach us for a remix it's very nice; being approached by Roots Manuva, The Streets, and even Peter Gabriel is quite fun." The band was also asked by Britney Spears for a remix, but had to turn down the offer due to scheduling conflicts. ### Influences As they grew up in northern Norway, Svein Berge and Torbjørn Brundtland listened to local artists like Bel Canto and former Bel Canto member Biosphere (whom, coincidentally, Berge and Brundtland would remix in 1997 while they were part of Alanïa). The band has also expressed their interest in the music of Kraftwerk, Brian Eno, Giorgio Moroder, Art of Noise, Vangelis, Erik Satie, and Francis Lai. Svein Berge has also stated that he is very fond of the production and programming skills of Datassette, who produced a remix of the Röyksopp single "Happy Up Here". Röyksopp often include references and homages to their musical influences. For instance, "Röyksopp Forever" pays homage to famous electronica musicians from the 1970s, including, "the likes of Vangelis and these people, and Krautrock, like Tangerine Dream and even Pink Floyd and King Crimson." ### Live performances Röyksopp is known for its elaborate concert performances. Marc Hogan of Pitchfork Media said that "Those who have heard Röyksopp's two albums ... won't be surprised to learn the Norwegian duo's live set is much better and more raucuous than hunching next to the speakers at yer [sic] local Crate & Barrel". When performing live, the duo often appear in eccentric outfits. Ari Stein, of Electronic Beats, said, that during one particular live set, "Röyksopp returned with two separate encores, one which included Berge playing "Eple" with a space suit capsule on his head". ## Discography ### Studio albums - Melody A.M. (2001) - The Understanding (2005) - Junior (2009) - Senior (2010) - The Inevitable End (2014) - Profound Mysteries (2022) - Profound Mysteries II (2022) - Profound Mysteries III (2022) ## Reception and awards ### Critical reception In addition to sales success, Röyksopp has garnered generally positive reception from many music critics. The band has also been nominated for many prestigious awards, including multiple Spellemannprisens and a Grammy. The tracks "What Else Is There?" and "Eple" were chosen among the top 500 tracks of the decade by Pitchfork Media and placed in 375th and 336th place respectively. Another track written by Röyksopp, Annie's "Heartbeat", was placed 17th on the same list. On 24 November 2009, Melody A.M. was named the best Norwegian album of the decade by Norway's largest newspaper, Verdens Gang. The Understanding came 5th on the same list. In a ranking of the top 10 Norwegian tracks of the decade by VG, "Eple" and "What Else Is There?" were placed 3rd and 6th respectively. However, some criticism has been aimed at the repetitive nature of the band and the trip hop genre in general. Robert Christgau said that, "chill-out tends toward waiting-room music for plastic surgeons who really want you to order that butt implant. Where once [Röyksopp] were extolled for their subtle melodicism, here their schlock candidly attacks the jugular. If they're Air, Goldie was Tricky." Pitchfork Media, in their review of Senior, said that "the kind of downtempo stuff that makes up the majority of Röyksopp's vocal-less compositions just doesn't hold up to concentrated, repeated listens like many other forms of instrumental electronic music." ### Awards and nominations

Billie Nipper

American artist (1929–2016)

Billie Nipper (November 22, 1929 – February 24, 2016) was an American artist who specialized in painting portraits of horses. Nipper, a native of Cleveland, Tennessee, painted every horse to win the Tennessee Walking Horse World Grand Championship from 1976 until her death. Besides Tennessee Walking Horses, she painted other breeds of horse, as well as landscapes. Her paintings were made into prints and transferred onto china and other objects. Nipper also bred horses, and her husband and son were horse trainers. Nipper's art was owned by Ronald Reagan and Zsa Zsa Gabor. Her paintings are in the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, Kentucky, and the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame in Amarillo, Texas. Nipper herself was inducted into the Tennessee Walking Horse Hall of Fame and the Tennessee Agriculture Hall of Fame. She died in February 2016. ## Life and career Nipper was born on November 22, 1929, in Cleveland, Tennessee. She was one of six children born to Ina Mae Arthur and John Ernest Rymer. She married J. L. Nipper. A year after their marriage, the couple moved to Cleveland, Ohio due to J. L.'s job. Out of boredom, Nipper bought an art kit and began painting. She thought her first efforts were "horrible", but her husband liked her work and showed it to others. Nipper began to study horses in an effort to portray them more accurately. Her father-in-law was a professional horse trainer and farrier, and she began painting pictures of him at work. Nipper's husband initially rode horses as an amateur, but he later became a professional trainer, as did his and Nipper's son, Joel. Joel Nipper first specialized in Tennessee Walking Horses, but later switched to Racking Horses, a related breed. Nipper continued painting for her own enjoyment until one Christmas when she gave her father-in-law a painting of his own horse as a gift. Some of his clients who saw the painting became interested in Nipper's work, and asked her to paint portraits of their own horses. She had many requests and soon began charging for her paintings. She soon began to get commissions to paint Tennessee Walking Horses, particularly those involved in the upper levels of show competition. She personalized her paintings by taking pictures of the actual horses to use for reference and in order to show correct proportions and individual characteristics. In 1976, she began painting pictures of each Tennessee Walking Horse to win the breed's World Grand Championship, held annually as part of the Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration. Nipper's first World Grand Champion portrait was of that year's winner Shades of Carbon, and his trainer Judy Martin. In all, she painted over 30 World Grand Champions, the last one before her death being I Am Jose. For a time, Nipper operated in conjunction with the Tennessee Walking Horse Breeders' and Exhibitors' Association, but then went out on her own, saying, "Us artists like our independence". Nipper had a temporary office at the Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration each year, from which she displayed and sold her work. She had her own art gallery, and additionally had paintings in several other art galleries in and around Cleveland. In many of her World Grand Championship portraits, Nipper painted a montage depicting the horse's life and show career. She first used this technique for a portrait of Pride's Generator. When Nipper asked the horse's owner, Claude Crowley, if she could do a montage, Nipper said, "He said 'I don't know what that is, but why not?'" The style soon caught on and was requested by other horse owners. Nipper herself bred Tennessee Walking Horses, and once bred a mare to The Whole Nine Yards, a World Grand Champion, of whom she had previously painted a portrait. Although the portrait was painted before the horse ever won a title, Nipper depicted him with roses around his head. The horse's owner later said she almost sent the picture back. In the mid-1970s, Nipper began to have her oil paintings made into prints, after getting requests from people who could not afford the originals. Nipper's work was also transferred onto Gorham china, decorative objects such as music boxes, and made into wallpaper borders. Besides her horse portraits, Nipper sometimes painted landscapes of rural Tennessee, as well as paintings of flowers and old barns. She continued painting privately commissioned works until the end of her career. Nipper died in her hometown of Cleveland, Tennessee on February 24, 2016, at the age of 86. Although she had slowed down due to age, she continued painting until a few weeks before her death. ## Legacy and recognition Nipper was inducted into the Tennessee Walking Horse Hall of Fame, as well as being inducted into the Tennessee Agriculture Hall of Fame. She was listed in Who's Who by the Tennessee Walking Horse Breeders' and Exhibitors' Association and was given an award for her paintings by the Walking Horse Trainers' Association. In the 1980s, she was selected to paint a horse-themed plate that was given to American president Ronald Reagan who also owned a Nipper painting on canvas. In 1982, her work was displayed in the Fine Arts Pavilion at the World's Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee. In 2012, Nipper painted an ornament that decorated the Christmas tree at the Governor of Tennessee's mansion. Nipper was also commissioned to paint pictures for Zsa Zsa Gabor and Shania Twain. Nipper has a painting in the Kentucky Horse Park, a museum of and tribute to horses located in Lexington, Kentucky. Five of her paintings, depicting World Champion Quarter Horses are also in the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame in Texas. While most of her work was sold in the United States, some of her paintings are in England and South America. The city of Cleveland, Tennessee has held an annual art show in honor of Nipper each fall for over 40 years. The show is named the Nillie Bipper Arts and Crafts Festival; "Nillie Bipper" is an intentional play on Nipper's first and last names, done for humorous purposes. However, the first year the festival was held, many people called the local newspaper office to complain that the organizers had gotten Nipper's name wrong. Nipper was also chairperson of Cleveland's Creative Guild, which promoted art within the city.

Game Workers Unite

Labor rights group for the video game industry

Game Workers Unite is a worker-run, labor rights group seeking to organize the video game industry. Founded during events surrounding the March 2018 Game Developers Conference, the flat organization has grown to over a thousand members across more than 20 international chapters. Its goal is a single union for all games workers, including artists, designers, producers, and programmers. Game Workers Unite has supported actions including Riot Games's 2019 walkout over sex discrimination and social media campaigns against CEOs who executed layoffs. The British chapter of Game Workers Unite is legally recognized as a union within the Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain and is working to end crunch overtime practices, improve diversity and inclusion, support targeted workers, and ensure steady and fair wages. Game Workers Unite co-founder Emma Kinema was hired by the Communications Workers of America to organize workers in the high tech and video game industries in early 2020, the first American initiative of its kind in those sectors. ## Description Game Workers Unite seeks to organize a trade union for video game developers to improve working conditions. Their activists are largely anonymous game developers from both indie and major firms. The group's flat organization eschews leaders and coordinates through Discord and Facebook. Their goal is a single union for all developers, including programmers, artists, designers, and producers, with subgroups within the union representing disciplines. In Australia, where the industry is smaller, Game Workers Unite wants to include esports professionals and marketing staff as well. They have argued that working conditions will only improve when studio managers are forced, and that workers cannot wait for managers to set realistic deadlines, fairer hiring practices, and to keep those promises. They also seek to show the emphasize the humans and conditions behind the making of games and have argued that, allied with consumers, workers can fight business practices that concern gamers, such as gambling-based gameplay mechanics. Some of the largest issues motivating the industry's organizing efforts include crunch time, when developers work overtime to finish a project in its last weeks, and social issues such as diversity and inclusion in the predominantly white and male industry. ## History Game Workers Unite was at the center of a 2018 push for video game industry unionization. In March 2018, the collective evolved from a private game developers Facebook Group to a Discord server where over 100 games industry members congregated. The group's website soon collected 200 pledges of support to unionize the games industry. Their first action was to distribute informational materials at the Game Developers Conference later that month. The results were a turning point for pro-union momentum in the industry. Following a panel on arguments for and against unionization at the conference, developers expressed interest in unionization on social media. Within a few weeks, Game Workers Unite was officially founded and its membership quickly rose from less than 10 to about 300. Membership was about 600 by November 2018, and in the thousands across over 20 international chapters by mid-2019, including cities such as Los Angeles, Montreal, San Francisco, and Vancouver. The group keeps its members' employers private, has no official membership count, and does not announce its nascent campaigns, though at least 12 were in progress as of late 2018. Game Workers Unite's protest badges and pamphlets became quickly visible at developer expositions worldwide. Variety named the Game Workers Unite organizers and Emma Kinema (the group's most public figure) among the most influential people in video games in 2018, and by the March 2019 Game Developers Conference, AFL–CIO representation began outreach with video game workers. When considering its strategy, the group first met with media unions such as the Writers Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild before reaching out to smaller games communities. They hoped to build relationships with established unions and local developer communities before expanding to the global industry and collaborating with groups like the International Game Developers Association. The group saw the breadth and volume of roles in the games industry as posing potential difficulty for a single union strategy. The workplaces affiliated with Game Workers Unite campaigns include those with less than 100 and those with thousands. Some are working in conjunction with labor unions and others are working only with Game Workers Unite. The group also advocates for worker cooperatives. Kinema helped to organize the May 2019 walkout at Riot Games over its handling of sex discrimination. After employees attended a 2018 Game Workers Unite meeting, Kinema helped them create an organizing committee and advised the walkout organizers via phone. The company announced that it would retain its forced arbitration policy but would create a diversity and inclusion group. The organizers are working towards a worker-led group for rectifying burnout and overwork. The Communications Workers of America hired Kinema in early 2020 to organize workers in the video game and tech industries, the first such American union-sanctioned initiative in those sectors, launching the Campaign to Organize Digital Employees. Game Workers Unite's other actions have included social media campaigns to fire CEOs presiding over layoffs, such as Activision's Bobby Kotick and ArenaNet's Mike O'Brien. The group retracted their campaign on the latter based on his employee and fan support. Game Workers Unite issued a statement calling attention to the disparity in job security across game worker roles, with developers and artists generally safe while quality assurance testers and event organizers were being laid off and furloughed. The group's British chapter, Game Workers Unite UK, became a legally recognized union within the Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain in December 2018. Their four goals are ending unpaid overtime, bettering diversity and inclusion, educating and promoting targeted workers, and establishing steady and fair wages. It was the country's first games industry union. Game Workers Unite Toronto partnered with Communication Workers of America in early 2020. Game Workers Unite Australia will become a union under Professionals Australia in 2022. ## See also - Google worker organization - Tech Workers Coalition

Deke Slayton

American astronaut (1924–1993)

Donald Kent "Deke" Slayton (March 1, 1924 – June 13, 1993) was a United States Air Force pilot, aeronautical engineer, and test pilot who was selected as one of the original NASA Mercury Seven astronauts. He went on to become NASA's first Chief of the Astronaut Office and Director of Flight Crew Operations, responsible for NASA crew assignments. Slayton joined the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II, and flew in Europe and the Pacific. He left the Army after World War II, went on to receive a Bachelor of Science degree in aeronautical engineering from University of Minnesota in 1949, and later joined the Minnesota Air National Guard after working for Boeing as an aeronautical engineer. He joined the United States Air Force, and attended the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School in 1955. In 1959, he applied to, and was selected as one of the Mercury Seven, NASA's first class of astronauts. Slayton was scheduled to pilot the second U.S. crewed orbital spaceflight, but was grounded in 1962 by atrial fibrillation, an irregular heart rhythm. In March 1972, he was medically cleared to fly and was the docking module pilot of the 1975 Apollo–Soyuz Test Project (ASTP). Slayton continued to work at NASA until 1982. He also helped develop the Space Shuttle. He died from a brain tumor on June 13, 1993, aged 69. ## Early life and career Donald Kent Slayton was born on March 1, 1924, on a farm near Leon, Wisconsin, to Charles Sherman Slayton (1887–1972) and Victoria Adelia Slayton (née Larson; 1895–1970). He was of English and Norwegian descent. From a young age, he worked on the farm to raise sheep and cows, and grow tobacco. Throughout Slayton's childhood, his family's home did not have electricity or indoor plumbing. At the age of five, Slayton was clearing a horse-drawn hay mower when his left ring finger was severed. He attended a two-room elementary school in Leon, and graduated from Sparta High School in 1942, where he boxed, played trombone, and was active in the Future Farmers of America (FFA). ### World War II The 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese Empire occurred during Slayton's senior year of high school. He initially wished to join the U.S. Navy, but joined the U.S. Army Air Forces when it began accepting high school graduates to fly. After graduation, Slayton moved to San Antonio, Texas, and entered the Aviation Cadet Training Program. He was initially medically delayed because of his severed ring finger, but was deemed able to fly. Slayton began flight training in Vernon, Texas, where he trained on the Fairchild PT-19, the PT-17 Stearman, and the AT-6 Texan. After three months of primary training, Slayton moved to Waco, Texas, for basic flight training, where he flew the BT-13 Valiant. Despite Slayton's wishes to fly single-engine fighter aircraft, he was selected to fly multi-engine aircraft. Slayton began multi-engine training on the Beechcraft AT-10, Cessna AT-12, and the Curtis AT-9. Slayton graduated from flight training on April 22, 1943, and was assigned to fly on the B-25 Mitchell, his last choice for aircraft. Slayton moved to Columbia Army Air Base in South Carolina for the three-month-long B-25 Mitchell training. After completing training, he was assigned to the 340th Bombardment Group, and departed for the European theater of operations on ship from Newport News, Virginia. After a stop in Zerni, North Africa, his convoy traveled to Naples, Italy. While traveling near the Strait of Gibraltar, their ships came under attack from German bombers and submarines. After he arrived in Naples, the 340th Bombardment Group moved to San Petrazio, where Slayton flew combat missions into the Balkan Peninsula. After six weeks, he moved to Foggia, where 48 aircraft were destroyed after an eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Afterwards, Slayton flew out of Salerno and Corsica, where he upgraded from copilot to pilot. After 56 combat sorties, Slayton completed his combat tour and returned to the U.S. in May 1944. Immediately upon his return to Columbia Army Air Base to serve as a B-25 instructor, Slayton applied and was accepted to fly the new A-26 Invader bomber aircraft. He moved to Selfridge Field in Michigan for training, and began preparing for a deployment to the Pacific. In July 1945, he arrived on Okinawa Island and joined the 319th Bombardment Group. He flew seven combat missions over Japan, and encountered little Japanese resistance. Slayton flew his final combat mission on August 12, three days after the bombing of Nagasaki and spent two months waiting for his return to the U.S. After the war, Slayton worked as B-25 instructor in Albany, Georgia, and Boca Raton, Florida and separated from the Army in November 1946. ### Post-World War II After he was discharged from the Army, Slayton enrolled at the University of Minnesota, in Minneapolis, and studied aeronautical engineering. As a student, he supported himself using the GI Bill and by working at a Montgomery Ward warehouse. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1949, and accepted a job as an engineer with the Boeing Aircraft Corporation at Seattle, Washington. After moving to Seattle, Slayton lived in a rooming house and began working as a junior design engineer. While at Boeing, he worked on the B-52 Stratofortress and the KC-97 Stratofreighter. While he was a college student, Slayton joined the Air Force Reserve, and was a T-6 Texan pilot flying out of Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport. He transitioned to the Minnesota Air National Guard (ANG), after accepting a demotion from captain to second lieutenant, to allow him to fly the A-26 Invader and P-51 Mustang. He left the Minnesota ANG when he moved to Seattle. Slayton attempted to join an Air Force Reserve unit in Seattle at the start of the Korean War, but was rejected on the grounds that his inactive reserve status had expired. He contacted his previous squadron commander in Minnesota and accepted his offer to rejoin his former squadron in February 1951. Upon his return, Slayton was initially medically disqualified from flying for his eyesight. He served as a maintenance officer while waiting for his medical clearance and then became a maintenance flight test officer once he had returned to flying status. In 1952, Slayton transferred to active duty Air Force from the Air National Guard. After completing his education at Air Command and Staff School, he was assigned as a maintenance inspector at Twelfth Air Force Headquarters in Wiesbaden Army Airfield, West Germany. He additionally served as an F-86 Sabre pilot and maintenance officer with the 36th Fighter Day Wing at Bitburg Air Base, West Germany. While stationed in Germany, he met Marjorie Lunney and married her on May 18, 1955. At the start of his assignment in West Germany, Slayton applied to the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School (TPS), but was rejected on the basis that he had to complete his current three-year assignment. He reapplied and was accepted in 1955, and joined TPS Class 55C. After graduating in December 1955, he became a test pilot at the Flight Test Center at Edwards Air Force Base, California. He tested the F-101, F-102, F-104, F-105 and F-106. He was first assigned to the F-102, and tested the Matador and Genie missiles, and later tested the stall-spin characteristics of the F-105. In 1958, he helped test Britain's first supersonic fighter, the English Electric P1B Lightning. ## NASA career ### Mercury Seven In January 1959, Slayton was selected as one of the candidates for NASA's Project Mercury, the first U.S. crewed space flight program. Despite his initial lack of interest in spaceflight, he agreed to pursue astronaut selection. After an initial interview at the temporary NASA headquarters in the Dolley Madison House in Washington, D.C., Slayton was psychologically and physically tested at the Lovelace Clinic in Albuquerque, New Mexico, along with fellow future astronauts Scott Carpenter and Jim Lovell. On April 2, 1959, Slayton was notified of his selection as an astronaut. He moved his family from Edwards Air Force Base to a housing development near Fort Eustis, where he was neighbors with fellow Mercury Seven astronauts Gus Grissom and Wally Schirra. After he began at NASA, Slayton was assigned to the development of the Convair Atlas LV-3B. In 1959, during a centrifuge training course, he underwent an electrocardiogram that found that he had erratic heart activity. He received further medical evaluation at Brooks Air Force Base and was diagnosed with idiopathic atrial fibrillation, but he was considered healthy enough to continue flying. During the uncrewed Mercury-Atlas 4 orbital spaceflight, he worked at the tracking station in Bermuda. He was selected for the second American crewed orbital mission, Mercury-Atlas 7, which he intended to name Delta 7. In early 1962, NASA Administrator James Webb opened an investigation into Slayton's atrial fibrillation. On March 15, 1962, two months prior to the launch of Delta 7, Slayton was medically disqualified from the flight and replaced on the mission by Scott Carpenter. Initially, Slayton's ineligibility was only for his assigned mission, and he attempted to improve his health by exercising more regularly and abstaining from alcohol. NASA leadership determined that Slayton was still at risk for atrial fibrillation and removed his eligibility to fly any of the remaining Mercury missions. Flight doctors recommended a cardiac catheterization to determine if he had a congenital condition, but NASA management rejected the proposal because of the risks of the operation. ### NASA management After being grounded by NASA, Slayton was selected in early 1962 to serve as the senior manager of the astronaut office. One of his first roles was to select the Group 2 astronauts, and the new class was announced in September 1962. Additionally, he was tasked with making future crew assignments, and assigned Gordon Cooper to Mercury-Atlas 9. In an administrative restructuring in October 1963, Slayton became assistant director of Flight Crew Operations, in addition to his job managing the astronaut office. In November 1963, he resigned from his commission in the Air Force after he was permanently disqualified from flying and became a civilian executive for NASA. After Alan Shepard was grounded due to Ménière's disease, he replaced Slayton as the manager of the astronaut office, while Slayton continued to work for Flight Crew Operations and was promoted to its director in 1966. Slayton continued to be responsible for making crew assignments, and determined the astronauts that would fly on the Gemini and Apollo missions. Slayton created a crew rotation, where a crew would be selected as the backup crew for a mission and would later be the prime crew three missions later. During the Apollo 1 fire, Slayton was in the Cape Canaveral LC-34 blockhouse. He was a close friend of fellow astronaut Gus Grissom and had considered working inside the capsule to determine communications problems and would have worked under the footrests, where the fire would later begin. After the fire, Slayton called a meeting of the astronauts from the first groups to be chosen, in April 1967 and announced that they were the candidates for the first lunar landing. Slayton oversaw the crew reassignments for the upcoming Apollo missions, as well as the selection for Group 6 and Group 7 astronauts. During this time, he continued to show symptoms of atrial fibrillation. After NASA Administrator James Webb decided that Apollo 8 would become a circumlunar mission, Slayton switched the previous crew to the Apollo 9 because of their experience with the lunar module and moved both the prime and backup crew from Apollo 9 to Apollo 8. Due to his crew rotation schedule, the backup crew of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins became the primary crew for Apollo 11. Slayton continued to assign the crew for the remaining lunar landings. Slayton chose to replace Ken Mattingly with Jack Swigert on Apollo 13, after concerns arose that Mattingly could develop measles during the mission. In 1969, he made the controversial decision to assign Alan Shepard as the Apollo 13 commander, which was viewed by some astronauts as a conflict of interest, due to Shepard's previous position as head of the astronaut office. Shepard would be later reassigned to command Apollo 14 by the Office of Manned Spaceflight director George Mueller, against Slayton's wishes, who felt that Shepard needed additional training time. After the postal covers scandal during the Apollo 15 mission, Slayton reassigned the crew to non-flying jobs, effectively ending their astronaut careers. Slayton supported keeping Joe Engle as the lunar module pilot on Apollo 17, but was pressured by NASA management to replace him with Jack Schmitt, a scientist-astronaut. ### Return to flight status While grounded, Slayton took several measures to attempt to be restored to flight status, including regularly exercising, taking vitamins, quitting cigarette smoking and coffee and reducing his consumption of alcoholic beverages. In 1970 his palpitations became more frequent and he started taking experimental daily doses of quinidine, a crystalline alkaloid. This treatment was successful, but concerned that taking medication would still disqualify him from solo flying, Slayton stopped taking it against doctors orders. After a decade of seeing doctors around the world, in 1971 Slayton was examined at the Mayo Clinic after a long period without heart fibrillation, and was determined to not have a coronary condition. On March 13, 1972, NASA announced that Slayton had returned to flight status. ### Apollo–Soyuz flight In February 1973, Slayton was assigned to the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) as a docking module pilot, along with commander Thomas Stafford and command module pilot Vance Brand. The American crew began a two-year training program, which included learning the Russian language and making trips to the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in the USSR. He remained in a managerial role throughout the Skylab program, and resigned as Director of Flight Crew Operations in February 1974 in preparation for his upcoming flight. The Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft both launched on July 15, 1975. On July 17, the two craft rendezvoused in orbit and the American astronauts conducted crew transfers with cosmonauts Alexei Leonov and Valeri Kubasov. At the end of the flight, an erroneous switch setting led to noxious nitrogen tetroxide fumes from the command module's RCS thrusters being sucked into the cabin during landing and the crew was hospitalized as a precaution in Honolulu, Hawaii, for two weeks. During hospitalization, a lesion was discovered on Slayton's lung and removed. It was determined to be benign, but he would have likely been grounded from ASTP if it had been discovered before the flight. He was 51 years old, making him the oldest astronaut to fly in space at the time. ### Space Shuttle program Prior to the ASTP flight, Slayton was assigned by Chris Kraft to manage the Approach and Landing Tests (ALT) of the Space Shuttle program. The ALT program developed the tests for the Space Shuttle orbiter Enterprise, and modified several F-104 Starfighters and T-38 Talons to train the astronauts. While working on the Space Shuttle, he also assisted in developing the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft. The ALT program ended in late 1977 and Slayton agreed to manage the Space Shuttle's Orbital Flight Tests (OFT). During the selection of the Group 8 astronauts, Slayton advocated for fewer selections, with the expectation that two-man crews would fly the regular satellite deployment missions. He officially retired in 1980, but continued to serve in an advisory role for STS-1, and flew a T-38 chase plane during the landing of STS-2. He formally left NASA on February 27, 1982, and had flown 7,164 hours. ## Post-NASA career After his retirement from NASA, Slayton served as president of Space Services Inc., a Houston-based company earlier founded to develop rockets for small commercial payloads. He served as mission director for a rocket called the Conestoga, which was successfully launched on September 9, 1982, and was the world's first privately funded rocket to reach space. Slayton also became interested in aviation racing, and was President of International Formula One Pylon Air Racing and Director of Columbia Astronautics. He also served on the Department of Transportation's Commercial Space Advisory Committee. In 1991, Slayton began working with space historian Michael Cassutt to write his autobiography, titled Deke!: U.S. Manned Space from Mercury to the Shuttle, which was published in 1994, a year after his death. Slayton also co-wrote the 1994 book Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America's Race to the Moon with fellow astronaut Alan Shepard. ## Personal life Slayton married Marjorie "Marge" Lunney (1921–1989) on May 18, 1955, and they had one son, Kent Sherman, born April 8, 1957. They divorced in April 1978, and Slayton moved to a condominium near the Johnson Space Center. He married Bobbie Belle Jones (1945–2010), who also worked at NASA, in October 1983, and they remained married until his death. When Slayton was a test pilot, one of his pilot colleagues was also named Don. In order to avoid confusion in radio communications, Slayton was referred to by his initials, D.K., which were eventually shortened to "Deke." In 1992, Slayton was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. On June 13, 1993, he died in his home in League City, Texas, from the illness, at the age of 69. ## Awards and honors Slayton's military and NASA decorations: During and after his career, Slayton received numerous awards from different organizations. He received the Society of Experimental Test Pilots (SETP) James H. Doolittle Award in 1972 and the SETP Iven C. Kincheloe Award. In 1975, he received the National Institute of Social Sciences Gold Medal, the Zeta Beta Tau's Richard Gottheil Medal, and the Wright Brothers International Manned Space Flight Award. In 1976, he received the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Space Award, the American Heart Association's Heart of the Year Award, the District 35-R Lions International American of the Year Award, and the AAS Flight Achievement Award. In 1977, he received the AIAA Special Presidential Citation, the University of Minnesota's Outstanding Achievement Award, and the Houston Area Federal Business Association's Civil Servant of the Year Award. Slayton, along with Brand and Kubasov, won the FAI Yuri Gagarin Gold Medal in 1976. Additionally, he received the Collier Trophy, the Gen. Billy Mitchell Award, and the AIAA Haley Astronautics Award for 1978. Slayton received an Honorary D.Sc. from Carthage College in 1961, and an Honorary Doctorate in Engineering from Michigan Technological University in 1965. He was a fellow of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots (SETP) and the American Astronautical Society, as well as an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He was a member of the Experimental Aircraft Association, the Space Pioneers, the Confederate Air Force, the Order of Daedalians, the National Rifle Association of America, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the Fraternal Order of Eagles. Additionally, he was an honorary member of the American Fighter Aces Association, the National WWII Glider Pilots Association and the Association of Space Explorers. Deke Slayton was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame on May 11, 1990, the International Space Hall of Fame in 1990, the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1996, and the International Air & Space Hall of Fame in 2001. The Texas Oncology-Deke Slayton Cancer Center in Webster, Texas, is named in his honor. The main stretch of road in League City, Texas, FM 518, was renamed Deke Slayton Highway. The Deke Slayton Memorial Space & Bicycle Museum in Sparta, Wisconsin was named in his honor. The Slayton biographical exhibit includes his Mercury space suit, his Ambassador of Exploration Award, which showcases a lunar sample, and more. In nearby La Crosse, Wisconsin, an annual summer aircraft air show, the Deke Slayton Airfest, has been held in his honor, featuring modern and vintage military and civilian aircraft, along with NASA speakers. The Cygnus CRS Orb-3 mission, which was lost when the Antares rocket exploded during its launch, was named the S.S. Deke Slayton. The Cygnus CRS Orb-4 Orbital ATK space vehicle was named the S.S. Deke Slayton II and launched to the International Space Station on December 6, 2015, on an Atlas V rocket. In 2017, Solstar and NASA developed a preliminary design for Slayton Space Communicator (SC-Slayton), a commercial router on the International Space Station named in his honor. The device is intended for low-earth orbit service (LEO). ## In media - 1983 film The Right Stuff – played by Scott Paulin - 1995 film Apollo 13 – played by Chris Ellis - 1996 TV movie Apollo 11 – played by Jack Conley - 1998 TV miniseries From the Earth to the Moon – played by Nick Searcy - 2009 TV movie Moonshot – played by Nigel Whitmey - 2015 TV series The Astronaut Wives Club – played by Kenneth Mitchell - 2016 film Hidden Figures – played by Evan Holtzman - 2018 film First Man – played by Kyle Chandler - 2019 TV series For All Mankind – played by Chris Bauer - 2020 Disney+/National Geographic miniseries The Right Stuff - played by Micah Stock ## See also - Apollo–Soyuz Commemorative stamp - List of brain tumor patients

2015 Bahrain Grand Prix

4th round of the 2015 Formula One season

The 2015 Bahrain Grand Prix (formally known as the 2015 Formula 1 Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix) was a Formula One motor race that was held on 19 April 2015 at the Bahrain International Circuit in Sakhir, Bahrain. The race was the fourth round of the 2015 season and marked the eleventh time that the Bahrain Grand Prix has been run as a round of the Formula One World Championship. Lewis Hamilton, who was the defending race winner, came into the race with a 13-point lead over Sebastian Vettel after his victory a week prior in China. He took the 42nd pole position of his career during Saturday's qualifying, and his fourth in a row. In the race, Hamilton won from Kimi Räikkönen and Nico Rosberg, taking his 36th race victory. ## Report ### Background There were tensions in the Mercedes team prior to the Grand Prix. After the the week before, Nico Rosberg had accused his teammate Lewis Hamilton of deliberately backing him into the charging Ferrari cars during the race, claiming he had "compromised" his race. Hamilton in turn claimed that Rosberg was never close enough to attack him, an assertion that Rosberg rejected, saying he "did try to attack". The team reacted by issuing a warning to their drivers, that they would start "managing" them more if they should not be able to race for the best of the team on track. After comments made by Hamilton saying that his contract extension negotiations were going slow, rumours arose that Hamilton had asked for a clear number one status in the team, a claim denied by both driver and team. #### Political protests As with previous years there were protests against the race going forward. The protests highlighted the situation of the Shi'ite majority in the Sunni-ruled Arab country, demanding the release of political prisoners. The protesters tried to use the arrival of Formula One to bring their demands into the public eye. The race came only one week after a report was published by Amnesty International about "unabated" human rights violations in Bahrain. In previous years, Formula One commercial rights executive Bernie Ecclestone had maintained the view that the political situation should be kept separate from the sport, saying in 2013: "We're not here, or we don't go anywhere, to judge how a country is run". However, in what was viewed as a "180-degree policy reversal", Formula One issued a statement ahead of the 2015 Grand Prix, stating that it "has committed itself to respecting human rights in Bahrain and other countries in which it conducts business". #### Weather The weather for the Bahrain Grand Prix was "typically hot [and] dry", with temperatures on Friday around 36 °C (97 °F) as the first practice session began. However, lower temperatures were expected for race day, when the race was held at night. #### Tyres As in 2014, Pirelli announced they would be supplying teams with the white-banded medium compound tyre as the prime selection and the yellow-banded soft compound as the option selection for the event. ### Free practice Per the regulations for the 2015 season, three practice sessions were held, two 1.5-hour sessions on Friday and another one-hour session before qualifying on Saturday. Kimi Räikkönen and Sebastian Vettel of Ferrari were quickest in the first free practice session on Friday afternoon, with Räikkönen the only driver to lap the course in less than 1:38. The Mercedes team focused on long runs, running their cars on high fuel loads to examine tyre wear and were therefore down in 15th and 16th places respectively. Vettel's Ferrari showed problems early in the session, but Vettel was able to run without issues towards the end. Jenson Button spun out in turn one on the start of his first flying lap and was unable to run again as his team tried to change his car's battery. It was however an uplifting session for McLaren nonetheless, since Button's teammate Fernando Alonso finished in seventh place, just seven-tenths away from Räikkönen's fastest time. After China the week before, Jolyon Palmer once again took part in the first practice session for Lotus. Mercedes hit back in the second session on Friday night, with Nico Rosberg leading his teammate Lewis Hamilton by about a tenth of a second. The Ferraris were about half a second behind, with Räikkönen again the faster of the two. It was another dismal session for Jenson Button who had to park his car halfway through the session, though he was able to come back for a couple of laps towards the end of the session. A late red flag came out when Vettel, braking slowly into turn one, was clipped by the Force India of Sergio Pérez, taking off part of his front wing endplate. Lewis Hamilton topped the time sheets in Saturday's free practice session, with Sebastian Vettel a tenth of a second behind, while Rosberg and Räikkönen completed the top four. Few cars took to the track during the early part of the session due to high temperatures and strong winds. A brief red flag period occurred midway through practice when Daniil Kvyat spun out in turn four. ### Qualifying Qualifying consisted of three parts, 18, 15 and 12 minutes in length respectively, with five drivers eliminated from competing after each of the first two sessions. All teams, including Mercedes used the softer tyre compound during the first session (Q1). Jenson Button, who had problems with his car all during practice, was unable to set a time when his car broke down on his out lap. Lewis Hamilton set the fastest time, with Valtteri Bottas in second. Along with Button, both Manor Marussia cars were eliminated in Q1, as well as Daniil Kvyat – who made a mistake during his final lap – and Pastor Maldonado. Fernando Alonso was the first driver to reach a second qualifying session for McLaren over the course of the season. Hamilton once again set the time in Q2, almost a second ahead of second-placed Kimi Räikkönen, while Felipe Massa went faster than Sebastian Vettel in third. Alonso was eliminated in 14th position, ahead of Max Verstappen in the Toro Rosso, who was half a second slower than Carlos Sainz Jr., his teammate. Sergio Pérez joined the two Sauber drivers as the last three cars not to make it into the top 10. All but Daniel Ricciardo did their first run in Q3 on used tyres in order to save a set for the race, with Hamilton fastest yet again. When the cars came around for their second and final timed laps, Ricciardo crossed the line first ahead of the Ferrari drivers, with Vettel going faster than teammate Räikkönen. When the two Mercedes came across the line last, Hamilton took his fourth consecutive pole position, while Nico Rosberg had to settle for third on the grid, not being able to beat Vettel's time. The two Williams cars filled the third row, while Nico Hülkenberg was delighted with eighth on the grid. #### Post-qualifying Jenson Button was required to apply to the stewards to be allowed to race, because he did not post a lap time during the first part of qualifying. They gave him permission to start based on his satisfactory practice times. ### Race Prior to the start, McLaren confirmed that they were unable to get Jenson Button's car to the grid, as the data indicated his earlier electrical issues continued. Felipe Massa's Williams did not get off the line at the start of the formation lap, so he had to start from pit lane. The start lights went on after a long delay, due to Pastor Maldonado being in the wrong grid position. At the start proper, Lewis Hamilton was able to hold his lead, while his teammate Nico Rosberg tried to attack Sebastian Vettel in second place. This opened up the opportunity for the second Ferrari of Kimi Räikkönen to go around the outside of the Mercedes and take third. Hamilton tried to open up a gap in order to cover his position, should the Ferrari drivers attempt a so-called undercut, a strategy in which a car entered the pit lane early in order to use fresher tyres to get in front of another car without overtaking them on track. Meanwhile, Rosberg took back third from Räikkönen on lap four before doing the same with Vettel on the end of lap nine. As the pit stops started on lap eleven, Massa, Nico Hülkenberg and Felipe Nasr were the first to come in for new tyres. Hamilton had extended his advantage over Vettel to almost 8 seconds when Vettel made a pit stop – the first of the front-runners to do so – on lap 14. The undercut-strategy worked, as Rosberg emerged from the pit lane behind the Ferrari when he made a pit stop one lap later. Hamilton changed tyres on the following lap, emerging close in front of the battling Rosberg and Vettel, with the Mercedes driver taking second position in a DRS-aided move on the inside of turn one. He was now close behind teammate Hamilton, but ultimately unable to attack him for the lead. Räikkönen was the last of the top four to pit, on lap 18 and applied a different strategy, as he used the harder medium tyres, while the Mercedes and Vettel were running their middle stint on the softer tyre compound. Even with the harder tyres, he was able to close to the top three. Felipe Massa tried to make up places after his pit lane-start, but was caught in midfield battles. He went into the pit lane simultaneously with Felipe Nasr in front and Pastor Maldonado behind him. A swift stop by the Lotus pit crew meant that Maldonado was able to get out ahead and gain two positions. Sauber driver Marcus Ericsson was running eighth when he came into the pit lane on lap 26. A 27-second pit stop due to problems with the front left tyre meant that he fell out of reach for a points finish. Carlos Sainz Jr. retired from the race right after exiting pit lane on lap 30, due to an issue with his front left wheel. His Toro Rosso teammate Max Verstappen joined him on the sidelines on lap 34 due to an electrical failure. On lap 34, both Hamilton and Vettel came in for their second and final planned stop, both equipping the medium tyre set. The undercut worked once more for the Ferrari, as Rosberg emerged behind Vettel one lap later. However, Vettel ran wide on the exit of the final corner on lap 36, letting Rosberg past and damaging his front wing, meaning he had to come into the pit lane for an unscheduled stop on the next lap, leaving him down in fifth position. His teammate Räikkönen made a second pit stop on lap 40, taking the softer and faster tyres, trying to catch the two Mercedes towards the end of the race. Fourteen laps before the finish, Räikkönen was fifteen seconds down on second-placed Rosberg, but closing by more than a second per lap. With the Mercedes in front having to make their way through backmarkers, Räikkönen was able to cut down the gap even faster, reaching Rosberg with three laps of the race to go. Rosberg, suffering from brake overheating over the entire course of the race, outbraked himself at turn one on lap 56, which allowed Räikkönen to take second place from him. The other Mercedes of Hamilton had brake problems as well towards the end, but was able to control the gap to the Ferrari to take his third victory of the season. Four-time world champion Vettel however was unable to overtake the Williams of Valtteri Bottas for fourth. The other Williams of Felipe Massa had applied the undercut well in the early part of the race to recover from his pit lane-start to eighth position, but when his tyres started to degrade he was passed by both Sergio Pérez and Daniil Kvyat and finished tenth, taking one point. The race ended spectacularly when the Red Bull of Daniel Ricciardo suffered an engine blow-up on the final straight, just being able to coast his car over the finish line. ### Post-race During the podium interviews conducted by Jackie Stewart, Lewis Hamilton conceded it had been a tough race, saying: "The Ferraris gave us a real good run for our money and out there it was really difficult to look after the tyres in these conditions, behind backmarkers and all sorts, but fortunately I was able to keep the car together, keep the tyres as healthy as possible and pull it through." Kimi Räikkönen expressed disappointment with not being able to win, but said he was "very happy how the team is working" and highlighted the big step forward Ferrari had made over the winter. Nico Rosberg was disappointed about the brake failure costing him second place, but added that he was very happy with the car altogether. Sebastian Vettel said he felt that he had let the team down with his mistake that cost him a chance to challenge Rosberg for second position himself, but was happy with "a good recovery and still some decent points". After the race, particular praise from the press was directed at Räikkönen, who returned to the podium for the first time since the 2013 Korean Grand Prix, 18 months prior. German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung called his drive a "cool application" for a contract extension after 2015. After Daniel Ricciardo's engine gave up on the finish straight of the last lap, he was already down to his last engine of the season after only four races. Should he needed to use another one, he would face grid penalties. This added to Renault's problems, after the two Toro Rosso drivers also failed to finish and put more strain on the relationship between Red Bull and their engine provider. Max Verstappen was quoted calling the engine "a bit of a nightmare", saying it could jeopardise the goal of fifth place for Toro Rosso in the constructors' championship. Subsequently, team boss Christian Horner confirmed that the teams would agree on the plan decided upon earlier that year, to increase the engine limit from four to five, taking some of the pressure off Red Bull and Ricciardo. ## Classification ### Qualifying Notes: - – Jenson Button received permission from the stewards to start the race despite not setting a qualifying time. ### Race Notes: - – Pastor Maldonado mistakenly lined up in 18th position on the starting grid. This pushed Will Stevens behind him one row down as well, while the 16th slot was left vacant. Maldonado received a 5-second penalty as a result. - – McLaren were unable to start Jenson Button's car due to a problem with the Energy Recovery System, as a result of which it remained in the pit lane altogether. ## Championship standings after the race Drivers' Championship standings Constructors' Championship standings - Note: Only the top five positions are included for both sets of standings. ## See also - 2015 Bahrain GP2 Series round

Da la Vuelta

1999 single by Marc Anthony

"Da la Vuelta" (English: "Turn Around") is a song written by Emilio Estefan and Kike Santander and performed by American singer Marc Anthony. Produced by Anthony, Estefan, and Ángel "Cucco" Peña, it is a salsa track which deals with the singer letting go of his former lover. It is one of the three Spanish-language songs to be included on Anthony's 1999 self-titled album and was released as a promotional single in the same year. Despite the album being met with unfavorable reviews, "Da la Vuelta" garnered positive reactions from music critics who praised it as a danceable number. The record received a Latin Grammy nomination for Best Tropical Song in 2000 and was nominated for Tropical Song of the Year at the Lo Nuestro Awards the following year. Commercially, it reached number 22 and number six on the Billboard Hot Latin Songs and Tropical Songs charts in the United States respectively. ## Music, lyrics, and release "Da la Vuelta" is a salsa track composed by Emilio Estefan and Kike Santander and produced by Anthony, Estefan, and Ángel "Cucco" Peña. Peña had previously collaborated with Anthony as a producer for his third studio album Contra la Corriente in 1997. It is one of the three Spanish-language records included on Marc Anthony along with the Spanish-language versions of "I Need to Know" ("Dímelo") and "She's Been Good to Me" ("Cómo Ella Me Quiere a Mi"). The song begins as a "soft ballad" with a bolero guitar and mariachi horn arrangements before transitioning into a salsa number. Lyrically, it is about the singer letting go of his former lover. "Da la Vuelta" was released as a promotional single for the album in 1999. Anthony performed the song live at Madison Square Garden; this performance was included on the video set The Concert from Madison Square Garden. ## Reception The Richmond Times-Dispatch journalist Melissa Ruggierit called "Da la Vuelta" a "traditional romp co-written by Emilio Estefan that is a scorcher." Chloe Cabrera of The Tampa Tribune felt that "Da la Vuelta", along with "Dímelo", has "the feel of his Grammy-award winning 1997 album, Contra la Corriente." Mario Tarradell, who gave Marc Anthony a negative review on The Dallas Morning News, lamented that the record was filled with ballads instead of dance numbers like "Da la Vuelta", "Dímelo", and "That's Okay". However, he also remarked that "we know he can do the salsa stuff" and insisted that they were "not a challenge" for Anthony. Parry Gettelman, who also wrote an unfavorable review of the album, mentioned that "Da la Vuelta" was "certainly worthy of Anthony's voice." The Dayton Daily News editor Sofia Villalobos opined that the track "combines an older, Tito Puente style with the latest fads of the aforementioned Lopez. Similarly, The San Diego Union-Tribune writer Ernesto Portillo, Jr. called it a "danceable salsa number" while Rueben Rosario highlighted the record as "hip-grinding" and "vintage Anthony" on St. Paul Pioneer Press. Grace Bastidas of The Village Voice praised it as a "beautiful little letting-go number". "Da la Vuelta" received a nomination for Best Tropical Song at the inaugural Latin Grammy Awards in 2000, which was awarded to "El Niágara en Bicicleta" by Juan Luis Guerra. It also was nominated Tropical Song of the Year at the 13th Annual Lo Nuestro Awards in 2001 but lost to "A Puro Dolor" by Son by Four. Santander and Estefan were presented with a BMI Latin Award in 2001 as it was recognized as the one of the best-performing songs of the year. The track was included on Anthony's greatest hits album Sigo Siendo Yo: Grandes Exitos (2006). Commercially, "Da la Vuelta" peaked at number 22 on the Billboard Hot Latin Songs chart in the United States. It fared better on the Billboard Latin Tropical Songs chart by reaching number 6 and ended 2000 as the ninth best-performing tropical song of the year in the country. ## Charts ### Weekly charts ### Year-end charts ## Personnel Credits adapted from the Marc Anthony liner notes. - Marc Anthony – arrangement, co-production, vocals - Luis Aquina – trumpet - Joe Caldas – audio engineer - Wichy Camacho – background vocals - Enrique Collazo – violin - Antonio Salcedo Corpas – string contractor - J. Dederic – violin - Jorge Diaz – trombone - Emilio Estefan – co-production, songwriting - Tito de Garcia – bongos, timbales - Jose Gazmei – bass - Orlando Guillot – cello - Henry Hutchinson – violin - José Janga – violin - Gerardo Lopez – audio engineer - Tony Mardini – assistant audio engineer - Emma Matos – violin - Fernando Medina – violin - Naldi Morales – cello - Fernando Muscolo – keyboards - Ángel "Cucco" Peña – arrangement, co-production - Lito Peña, Jr. – assistant audio engineer - Charlie Sierra – percussion - Kachiro Thompson – conga - Rafi Torres – trombone - Chequi Ramos – background vocals - Hector I. Rosa – audio engineer - Josue Rosado – background vocals - Sheila Ortiz – cello - Fermin Segarra – cello - Maximo Torres – guitar - Victor Vasquez – trombone - Chris Wiggins – assistant audio engineer

History of cannons

The history of cannons spans several hundred years from the 12th century to modern times. The cannon first appeared in China sometime during the 12th and 13th centuries. It was most likely developed in parallel or as an evolution of an earlier gunpowder weapon called the fire lance. The result was a projectile weapon in the shape of a cylinder that fired projectiles using the explosive pressure of gunpowder. Cannons were used for warfare by the late 13th century in the Yuan dynasty and spread throughout Eurasia in the 14th century. During the Middle Ages, large and small cannons were developed for siege and field battles. The cannon replaced prior siege weapons such as the trebuchet. After the Middle Ages, most large cannons were abandoned in favor of greater numbers of lighter, more maneuverable field artillery. New defensive fortifications such as bastions and star forts were designed specifically to better withstand artillery sieges. Cannons transformed naval warfare with its deadly firepower, allowing vessels to destroy each other from long range. As rifling became more commonplace, the accuracy of the cannon was significantly improved, and they became deadlier than ever, especially to infantry. In World War I, a considerable majority of all deaths were caused by cannons; they were also used widely in World War II. Most modern cannons are similar to those used in the Second World War, including autocannons—with the exception of naval guns, which are now significantly smaller in caliber. ## Development in China ### Fire lance The cannon may have possibly appeared in China as early as the 12th century, but did not see wider use in the region until the 13th century. The cannon was likely a parallel development or evolution of the fire-lance, a 12th-century gunpowder weapon that combined a tube of gunpowder with a polearm weapon. This early fire lance is not considered a true gun because it did not include projectiles, whereas a gun by definition uses "the explosive force of the gunpowder to propel a projectile from a tube: cannons, muskets, and pistols are typical examples." However co-viative projectiles, which only partially occlude the barrel, such as iron scraps or porcelain shards were added at some point, and eventually, the paper and bamboo materials of fire lance barrels were replaced by metal. In 1259 a type of "fire-emitting lance" (tuhuoqiang 突火槍) made an appearance and according to the History of Song: "It is made from a large bamboo tube, and inside is stuffed a pellet wad (子窠). Once the fire goes off it completely spews the rear pellet wad forth, and the sound is like a bomb that can be heard for five hundred or more paces." The pellet wad mentioned is possibly the first true bullet in recorded history depending on how bullet is defined, as it did occlude the barrel, unlike previous co-viatives used in the fire lance. ### Eruptor Fire lances transformed from the "bamboo- (or wood- or paper-) barreled firearm to the metal-barreled firearm" to better withstand the explosive pressure of gunpowder. From there it branched off into several different gunpowder weapons known as "eruptors" in the late 12th and early 13th centuries, with different functions such as the "filling-the-sky erupting tube" which spewed out poisonous gas and porcelain shards, the "orifice-penetrating flying sand magic mist tube" (鑽穴飛砂神霧筒) which spewed forth sand and poisonous chemicals into orifices, and the more conventional "phalanx-charging fire gourd" which shot out lead pellets. These eruptors were more cannon-like but only shot shrapnel and shells. ### Cannon The earliest known depiction of a cannon is a sculpture from the Dazu Rock Carvings in Sichuan, dated to 1128, that portrays a figure carrying a vase-shaped bombard, firing flames and a cannonball. The oldest surviving gun bearing a date of production is the Xanadu Gun, dated to 1298. Other specimens have been dated to even earlier periods, such as the Wuwei Bronze Cannon, to 1227, and the Heilongjiang hand cannon, to 1288. However they contain no inscriptions. The Wuwei Bronze Cannon was discovered in 1980 and may possibly be the oldest as well as largest cannon of the 13th century: a 100 centimeter 108 kilogram bronze cannon discovered in a cellar in Wuwei, Gansu Province, it contains no inscription, but has been dated by historians to the late Western Xia period between 1214 and 1227. The gun contained an iron ball about nine centimeters in diameter, which is smaller than the muzzle diameter at twelve centimeters, and 0.1 kilograms of gunpowder in it when discovered, meaning that the projectile might have been another co-viative. The Heilongjiang hand cannon was discovered in Heilongjiang, in northeastern China. It is 3.5 kilograms, 34 cm (Needham says 35 cm), and has a bore of approximately 2.5 cm (1 in). Based on contextual evidence, historians believe it was used by Yuan forces against a rebellion by Mongol prince Nayan in 1287. The History of Yuan states that a Jurchen commander known as Li Ting led troops armed with hand cannon into battle against Nayan, scoring two victories, one in 1287 and another in early 1288. Another specimen, dated to 1332, has a muzzle bore diameter of 10.5 cm (4 in). > Li Ting personally led a detachment of ten brave soldiers holding huo pao, and in a night attack penetrated the enemy's camp. Then they let off the pao, which caused great damage, and such confusion that the enemy soldiers attacked and killed each cother, flying 'in all directions'... Li Ting chose gun-soldiers (chong zi), concealing those who bore the huo pao on their backs; then by night he crossed the river, moved upstream, and fired off (the weapons). This threw all the enemy's horses and men into great confusion... and he gained a great victory. According to the Taiheiki, during the Mongol invasions of Japan, enemy troops used a weapon shaped like a bell that made a noise like thunder-clap and shot out thousands of iron balls. The Red Turban Rebellion saw the application of arrow-firing cannons to both siege and naval warfare in the conflict. During the Siege of Shaoxing of 1358–9, the Ming army attacked the city and the defenders "used ... fire tubes to attack the enemy's advance guard". The siege was won by the defenders, whose "fire tubes went off all at once, and the [attacker's] great army could not stand against them and had to withdraw." In 1363 Chen Youliang failed to take Nanchang due to the defenders' use of cannons and was forced to set up a blockade in an attempt to starve them out. In the Siege of Suzhou of 1366, the Ming army fielded 2,400 large and small cannons in addition to 480 trebuchets, but neither were able to breach the city walls despite "the noise of the guns and the paos went day and night and didn't stop." Cannons were also used on the frontier as garrison artillery from 1412 onwards. Cannons were also used on board naval vessels. In the Battle of Lake Poyang on 29 August 1363, Zhu Yuanzhang's fleet arrived armed with "fire bombs, fire guns, fire arrows, fire seeds [probably grenades], large and small fire lances, large and small 'commander' fire-tubes, large and small iron bombs, rockets." His fleet engaged Chen's under orders to "get close to the enemy's ships and first set off gunpowder weapons (發火器), then bows and crossbows, and finally attack their ships with short range weapons." However it was fire bombs hurled using ship mounted trebuchets that succeeded in "burning twenty or more enemy vessels and killing or drowning many enemy troops." Zhu eventually came out victorious by ramming and burning the enemy fleet with fire ships. While guns were used during the battle, ultimately they were not pivotal to success, and the battle was won using incendiary weapons. After emerging victorious over the other rebels and Mongol forces, the Hongwu Emperor created a Bureau of Armaments (軍器局). It was tasked with producing every three years 3,000 handheld bronze guns, 3,000 signal cannons, and ammunition as well as accoutrements such as ramrods. His Armory Bureau (兵仗局) was responsible for producing types of guns known as "great generals," "secondary generals," "tertiary generals," and "gate-seizing generals." Other firearms such as "miraculous [fire] lances," "miraculous guns," and "horse-beheading guns" were also produced. It is unclear what proportion or how many of each type were actually manufactured. In 1388 cannons were used against war elephants successfully during the Ming–Mong Mao War and again in 1421 during the Lam Sơn uprising. In 1414 the Ming army clashed with an Oirat force near the Tula River and frightened them so much with their guns that the Oirats fled without their spare horses, only to be ambushed by concealed Chinese guns. According to a Chinese observer the Oirats avoided battle several days later, "fearing that the guns had arrived again." Ming dynasty artillery included a vase shaped "long range awe inspiring" cannon dated from 1350 and found in the 14th century treatise Huolongjing. Another cannon included in the treatise called the bronze "thousand ball thunder cannon" is not vase shaped, showing an advance in metallurgy that made thickening the explosion chamber unnecessary. It is also depicted with a wheeled carriage, making it perhaps the earliest piece of field artillery. According to the Huolongjing, it was cast from bronze, fastened with iron hoops to a four-wheeled carriage, with a wooden shield placed in front to hide it from the enemy, only to be removed when firing. Early Ming cannons coalesced into a few typical designs. There was the crouching tiger cannon, a small cannon fitted with a metal collar and two legs for support. There was a middling cannon known as the "awe-inspiring long range cannon", which added a sight and weighed around 85 kilograms. Larger cannons such as the great general and great divine cannon were also developed and at least 300 of them were being made in 1465. The muzzle loading wrought iron "great general cannon" (大將軍炮) weighed up to 360 kilograms and could fire a 4.8 kilogram lead ball. Its heavier variant, the "great divine cannon" (大神銃), could weigh up to 600 kilograms and was capable of firing several iron balls and upward of a hundred iron shots at once. These were the last indigenous Chinese cannon designs prior to the incorporation of European models in the 16th century. ## Spread ### Medieval Europe The earliest European references to gunpowder are found in Roger Bacon's Opus Majus from 1267. The earliest known European depiction of a cannon appeared in a manuscript by Walter de Milemete dated to 1326. Although not necessarily drawn by him, known as De Nobilitatibus, sapientii et prudentiis regum (Concerning the Majesty, Wisdom, and Prudence of Kings), it displays a cannon loaded with a large arrow emerging from it and its user lowering a long stick to ignite the cannon through the touch hole. Another similar illustration dated to 1326 shows a darker gun being set off by a group of knights, which also featured in another work of de Milemete's, De secretis secretorum Aristotelis. On 11 February of that same year, the Signoria of Florence appointed two officers to obtain canones de mettallo and ammunition for the town's defense. In the following year a document from the Turin area recorded a certain amount was paid "for the making of a certain instrument or device made by Friar Marcello for the projection of pellets of lead." The pot-de-fer's bolt was probably wrapped in leather to allow greater thrusting power, it was set off through a touch hole with a heated wire. This weapon, and others similar, were used by both the French and English, during the Hundred Years' War, when cannons saw their first real use on the European battlefield. Even then, cannons were still a relatively rare weapon. The French raiding party that sacked and burned Southampton in 1338 brought with them a ribaudequin and 48 bolts (but only 3 pounds of gunpowder). By 1341 the town of Lille had a "tonnoire master", and a tonnoire was an arrow-hurling gun. In 1345, two iron cannons were present in Toulouse. In 1346 Aix-la-Chapelle too possessed iron cannons, which shot arrows (busa ferrea ad sagittandum tonitrum). "Ribaldis," which shot large arrows and simplistic grapeshot, were first mentioned in the English Privy Wardrobe accounts during preparations for the Battle of Crécy, between 1345 and 1346. The Florentine Giovanni Villani recounts their destructiveness, indicating that by the end of the battle, "the whole plain was covered by men struck down by arrows and cannon balls." Similar cannons were also used at the Siege of Calais, in the same year, although it was not until the 1380s that the "ribaudekin" clearly became mounted on wheels. By 1350 Petrarch wrote that the presence of cannons on the battlefield was 'as common and familiar as other kinds of arms'. The first cannon appeared in Russia around 1380, though they were used only in sieges, often by the defenders. Around the same period, the Byzantine Empire began to accumulate its own cannons to face the Ottoman threat, starting with medium-sized cannons 3 feet (0.91 m) long and of 10 in caliber. The first definite use of artillery in the region was against the Ottoman siege of Constantinople, in 1396, forcing the Ottomans to withdraw. They acquired their own cannons, and laid siege to the Byzantine capital again, in 1422, using "falcons", which were short but wide cannons. Before the siege of Constantinople, it was known that the Ottomans had the ability to cast medium-sized cannons, but the range of some pieces they were able to field far surpassed the defenders' expectations. Instrumental to this Ottoman advancement in arms production was a somewhat mysterious figure by the name of Orban (Urban), a Hungarian (though some suggest he was German). One cannon designed by Orban was named "Basilica" and was 27 feet (8.2 m) long, and able to hurl a 600 lb (272 kg) stone ball over a mile (1.6 km). The master founder initially tried to sell his services to the Byzantines, who were unable to secure the funds needed to hire him. Orban then left Constantinople and approached Mehmed II, claiming that his weapon could blast 'the walls of Babylon itself'. Orban labored for four months at Edirne to create a six-meter (20-foot) long cannon, which required hundreds of pounds of gunpowder to fire, and its stone projectiles weighed between 550 (12 short cwt, 11 Imp. cwt) and 800 kilograms (16.6 short cwt, 15.75 Imp. cwt). The gun's projectiles were reported to have flown for a mile before landing, and shook the entire ground when fired, the roar blasting four miles away. It had to be transported by 30 wagons pulled by 60 oxen, with the assistance of 200 handlers. An additional 50 carpenters and 200 laborers helped in the transport by leveling terrain and building bridges. During the actual siege of Constantinople the gun proved to be somewhat underwhelming. The aiming process was laborious and after each shot it required hot oil ointment for cooling. Its rate of fire was once every three hours, and may have even suffered damage from cracks early on, never to be repaired. Fortunately for the Ottomans it wasn't Mehmed's only cannon. Dozens of other large cannons alongside 500 smaller cannons bombarded Constantinople's walls in their weakest sections for 55 days. A Greek contemporary, Kritoboulos, describes the scene thus, "The stone, borne with tremendous force and velocity, hit the wall, which it immediately shook and knocked down, and was itself broken into many fragments and scattered, hurling the pieces everywhere and killing those who happened by be near by. Sometimes it demolished a whole section, and sometimes a half-section, and sometimes a larger or smaller section of a tower or turret or battlement. And there was no part of the wall strong enough or resistant enough or thick enough to be able to withstand it, or to wholly resist such force and such a blow of the stone cannon-ball." Mehmed's smaller artillery pieces also proved effective. Constantinople's defenders wielded their own formidable guns and "fired ... five or ten bullets at a time, each about the size of a ... walnut, and having a great power of penetration. If one of these hit an armed man it would go right through his shield and his body and go on to hit anyone else who happened to be in his way, and even a third, until the force of the powder diminished; so one shot might hit two or three men." Despite the fierce defense, the city's fortifications were ultimately overwhelmed in a final assault and the sultan won the siege. ### Southeast Asia Mongol troops of Yuan dynasty carried Chinese cannons to Java during their 1293 invasion. Cannons were used by the Ayutthaya Kingdom in 1352 during its invasion of the Khmer Empire. Within a decade large quantities of gunpowder could be found in the Khmer Empire. Vietnam's Lý dynasty had begun using gunpowder weapons such as the fire arrow (hỏa tiễn) during the Lý–Song War (1075 – 1077) at the siege of Yongzhou. Around the 1260s, the Vietnamese used a weapon called the thủ pháo, which was a small bamboo tube with one side closed and a small hole for the fuse that ignited the gunpowder and fired a sharp piece of iron. In 1390, the King of Champa, Po Binasuor, and his army were ambushed and killed by cannons of Vietnamese prince Trần Khát Chân while Champa was attacking Đại Việt. When the Portuguese first came to Malacca (1509), they found a large colony of Javanese merchants under their own headmen; they were manufacturing their own cannons, which is deemed as important as sails in a ship. By the early 16th century, the Javanese were locally-producing large guns, some of them still survived until the present day and dubbed as "sacred cannons" or "holy cannons". These cannons varied between 180- and 260-pounders, weighing anywhere between 3 and 8 tons, length of them between 3 and 6 m (9.8 and 19.7 ft). ### Islamic world According to historian Ahmad Y. al-Hassan, during the Battle of Ain Jalut in 1260, the Mamluks used a cannon against the Mongols. He claims that this was "the first cannon in history" and used a gunpowder formula almost identical to the ideal composition for explosive gunpowder. He also argues that this was not known in China or Europe until much later. Hassan further claims that the earliest textual evidence of cannons is from the Middle East, based on earlier originals which report hand-held cannons being used by the Mamluks at the Battle of Ain Jalut in 1260. However, Hassan's claims contradict earlier claims from the historians David Ayalon, Iqtidar Alam Khan, Joseph Needham, Tonio Andrade and Gabor Ágoston. Khan (1996) argued that it was the Mongols who introduced gunpowder to the Islamic world, and believed cannons only reached Mamluk Egypt in the 1370s. According to Needham (1986), the term midfa, dated to textual sources from 1342 to 1352, did not refer to true hand-guns or bombards, and contemporary accounts of a metal-barrel cannon in the Islamic world do not occur until 1365 Similarly, Andrade dates the textual appearance of cannons in middle eastern sources to the 1360s. Gabor Ágoston and David Ayalon believed the Mamluks had certainly used siege cannons by the 1360s, but earlier uses of cannons in the Islamic World are vague with a possible appearance in the Emirate of Granada by the 1320s and 1330s, however evidence is inconclusive. Ibn Khaldun reported the use of cannons as siege machines by the Marinid sultan Abu Yaqub Yusuf at the siege of Sijilmasa in 1274. The passage by Ibn Khaldun on the Marinid Siege of Sijilmassa in 1274 occurs as follows: "[The Sultan] installed siege engines ... and gunpowder engines ..., which project small balls of iron. These balls are ejected from a chamber ... placed in front of a kindling fire of gunpowder; this happens by a strange property which attributes all actions to the power of the Creator." However the source is not contemporary and was written a century later around 1382. Its interpretation has been rejected as anachronistic by historians, notably Ágoston and Peter Purton who urge caution regarding claims of Islamic firearms use in the 1204–1324 period as late medieval Arabic texts used the same word for gunpowder, naft, as they did for an earlier incendiary, naphtha. > References to early use of firearms in Islamdom (1204, 1248, 1274, 1258-60, 1303 and 1324) must be taken with caution since terminology used for gunpowder and firearms in late medieval Arabic sources is confused. Furthermore, most of these testimonies are given by later chroniclers of the fifteenth century whose use of terminology may have reflected their own time rather than that of the events they were writing about. It's not certain when the Ottomans started using firearms, however it's argued that they had been using cannons since the Battles of Kosovo (1389) and Nukap (1396) and most certainly by the 1420s. Some argue that field guns only entered service shortly after the Battle of Varna (1444) and more certainly used in the Second Battle of Kosovo (1448). The arquebus reached them around 1425. Super-sized bombards were used by the troops of Mehmed II to capture Constantinople, in 1453. Jim Bradbury argues that Urban, a Hungarian cannon engineer, introduced this cannon from Central Europe to the Ottoman realm. According to Paul Hammer, however, it could have been introduced from other Islamic countries which had earlier used cannons. It could fire heavy stone balls a mile, and the sound of their blast could reportedly be heard from a distance of 10 miles (16 km). A piece of slightly later date, the Dardanelles Gun (see picture), was cast in bronze and made in two parts: the chase and the breech, which, together, weighed 18.4 tonnes. The two parts were screwed together using levers to facilitate the work. Created by Munir Ali in 1464, the Dardanelles Gun was still present for duty more than 300 years later in 1807, when a Royal Navy force appeared and commenced the Dardanelles Operation. Turkish forces loaded the ancient relics with propellant and projectiles, then fired them at the British ships. The British squadron suffered 28 dead through this bombardment. ### East Asia Korea began producing gunpowder in 1374 and were using cannons against Japanese pirates by the 1380s. By 1410, 160 Korean ships were reported to have equipped artillery of some sort. Mortars firing thunder-crash bombs are known to have been used, and four types of cannons are mentioned: chonja (heaven), chija (earth), hyonja (black), and hwangja (yellow), but their specifications are unknown. These cannons typically shot wooden arrows tipped with iron, the longest of which were nine feet long, but stone and iron balls were sometimes used as well. Mounted bronze guns that shot iron-fletched darts were also used in a cart style weapon that was the early hwacha. Firearms seem to have been known in Japan around 1270 as proto-cannon invented in China, which the Japanese called teppō (鉄砲 lit. "iron cannon"). Gunpowder weaponry exchange between China and Japan was slow and only a small number of hand guns ever reached Japan. However the use of gunpowder bombs in the style of Chinese explosives is known to have occurred in Japan from at least the mid-15th century onward. The first recorded appearance of the cannon in Japan was in 1510 when a Buddhist monk presented Hōjō Ujitsuna with a teppō iron cannon that he had acquired during his travels in China. Firearms saw very little use in Japan until Portuguese matchlocks were introduced in 1543. During the Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–1598), the forces of Toyotomi Hideyoshi effectively utilized matchlock firearms against the Korean forces of Joseon, although they would ultimately be defeated and forced to withdraw from the Korean peninsula. ## Early modern period By the 16th century, cannons were made in a great variety of lengths and bore diameters, but the general rule was that the longer the barrel, the longer the range. Some cannons made during this time had barrels exceeding 10 ft (3.0 m) in length, and could weigh up to 20,000 pounds (9,100 kg). Consequently, large amounts of gunpowder were needed, to allow them to fire stone balls several hundred yards. By mid-century, European monarchs began to classify cannons to reduce the confusion. Henry II of France opted for six sizes of cannons, but others settled for more; the Spanish used twelve sizes, and the English sixteen. Better powder had been developed by this time as well. Instead of the finely ground powder used by the first bombards, powder was replaced by a "corned" variety of coarse grains. This coarse powder had pockets of air between grains, allowing fire to travel through and ignite the entire charge quickly and uniformly. The end of the Middle Ages saw the construction of larger, more powerful cannons, as well their spread throughout the world. As they were not effective at breaching the newer fortifications resulting from the development of cannons, siege engines—such as siege towers and trebuchets—became less widely used. However, wooden "battery-towers" took on a similar role as siege towers in the gunpowder age—such as that used at siege of Kazan in 1552, which could hold ten large-caliber cannons, in addition to 50 lighter pieces. Another notable effect of cannons on warfare during this period was the change in conventional fortifications. Niccolò Machiavelli wrote, "There is no wall, whatever its thickness that artillery will not destroy in only a few days." Although castles were not immediately made obsolete by cannons, their use and importance on the battlefield rapidly declined. Instead of majestic towers and merlons, the walls of new fortresses were thicker, angulated, and sloped, while towers became lower and stouter; increasing use was also made of earthen, brick, and stone breastworks and redoubts. These new defenses became known as "star forts," after their characteristic shape. A few of these featured cannon batteries, such as the Tudors' Device Forts, in England. Star forts soon replaced castles in Europe, and, eventually, those in the Americas, as well. By end of the 15th century, several technological advancements were made, making cannons more mobile. Wheeled gun carriages and trunnions became common, and the invention of the limber further facilitated the transportation of artillery. As a result, field artillery became viable, and began to emerge, often used alongside the larger cannons intended for sieges. The better gunpowder, improved, cast-iron projectiles, and the standardization of calibers meant that even relatively light cannons could be deadly. In The Art of War, Machiavelli observed that "It is true that the arquebuses and the small artillery do much more harm than the heavy artillery." This was the case at Flodden, in 1513: the English field guns outpaced the Scottish siege artillery, firing twice, or even thrice, as many rounds. Despite the increased maneuverability, however, cannons were still much slower than the rest of the army: a heavy English cannon required 23 horses to transport, while a culverin, nine, yet, even with this many animals transporting them, they still moved at a walking pace. Due to their relatively slow speed, and lack of organization, discipline, and tactics, the combination of pike and shot still dominated the battlefields of Europe. Innovations continued, notably the German invention of the mortar, a thick-walled, short-barreled gun that blasted shot upward at a steep angle. Mortars were useful for sieges, as they could fire over walls and other defenses. This cannon found more use with the Dutch, who learned to shoot bombs filled with powder from them. However, setting the bomb fuse in the mortar was a problem. "Single firing" was the first technique used to set the fuse, where the bomb was placed with the fuse down against the propelling charge. This practice often resulted in the fuse being blown into the bomb, causing it to blow up in front of the mortar. Because of this danger, "double firing" was developed, where the fuse was turned up and the gunner lighted the fuse and the touch hole simultaneously. This, however, required much skill and timing, and was especially dangerous when the gun failed to fire, leaving a lighted bomb in the barrel. Not until 1650 was it accidentally discovered that double-lighting was a superfluous process: the heat of firing was enough to light the fuse. Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden emphasized the use of light cannons and mobility in his army, and created new formations and tactics that revolutionized artillery. He discontinued using all 12 pounder—or heavier—cannons as field artillery, preferring, instead, to use cannons that could be manned by only a few men. One gun, called the "leatheren," could be serviced by only two persons, but was abandoned, replaced by 4 pounder and 9 pounder demi-culverins. These could be operated by three men, and pulled by only two horses. Also, Adolphus's army was the first to use a special cartridge that contained both powder and shot, which sped up loading, and therefore increased the rate of fire. Additionally, he pioneered the use of canister shot against infantry, which was essentially a can, filled with musket balls. At the time, for each thousand infantrymen, there was one cannon on the battlefield; Gustavus Adolphus increased the number of cannons in his army so dramatically, that there were six cannons for each one thousand infantry. Each regiment was assigned two pieces, though he often decided to arrange his artillery into batteries, instead. These were to decimate the enemy's infantry, while his cavalry outflanked their heavy guns. At the Battle of Breitenfeld, in 1631, Adolphus proved the effectiveness of the changes made to his army, in particular his artillery, by defeating Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly. Although severely outnumbered, the Swedes were able to fire between three and five times as many volleys of artillery without losing ground, due to their infantry's linear formations. Battered by cannon fire, and low on morale, Tilly's men broke rank, and fled. Around this time also came the idea of aiming the cannon to hit a target. Gunners controlled the range of their cannons by measuring the angle of elevation, using a "gunner's quadrant." Cannons did not have sights, therefore, even with measuring tools, aiming was still largely guesswork. In the latter half of the 17th century, the French engineer Vauban introduced a more systematic and scientific approach to attacking gunpowder fortresses, in a time when many field commanders "were notorious dunces in siegecraft." Careful sapping forward, supported by enfilading ricochet fire, was a key feature of this system, and it even allowed Vauban to calculate the length of time a siege would take. He was also a prolific builder of star forts, and did much to popularize the idea of "depth defense" in the face of cannons. These principles were followed into the mid-19th century, when changes in armaments necessitated greater depth defense than Vauban had provided for. It was only in the years prior to World War I that new works began to break radically away from his designs. ## 18th and 19th centuries The lower tier of 17th-century English ships of the line were usually equipped with demi-cannons, guns that fired a 32-pound (15 kg) solid shot, and could weigh up to 3,400 pounds (1,500 kg). Demi-cannons were capable of firing these heavy metal balls with such force, that they could penetrate more than a meter of solid oak, from a distance of 90 m (300 ft), and could dismast even the largest ships at close range. Full cannons fired a 42 lb (19 kg) shot, but were discontinued by the 18th century, as they were too unwieldy. By the end of the century, principles long adopted in Europe specified the characteristics of the Royal Navy's cannons, as well as the acceptable defects, and their severity. The United States Navy tested guns by measuring them, firing them two or three times,—termed "proof by powder"—and using pressurized water to detect leaks. The carronade was adopted by the Royal Navy in 1779; the lower muzzle velocity of the round shot when fired from this cannon was intended to create more wooden splinters when hitting the structure of an enemy vessel, as they were believed to be deadly. The carronade was much shorter, and weighed between a third to a quarter less than an equivalent long gun; for example, a 32 pounder carronade weighed less than a ton, compared with a 32 pounder long gun, which weighed over 3 tons. The guns were, therefore, easier to handle, and also required less than half as much gunpowder, allowing fewer men to crew them. Carronades were manufactured in the usual naval gun calibers, but were not counted in a ship of the line's rated number of guns. As a result, the classification of Royal Navy vessels in this period can be misleading, as they often carried more cannons than were listed. In the 1810s and 1820s, greater emphasis was placed on the accuracy of long-range gunfire, and less on the weight of a broadside. The carronade, although initially very successful and widely adopted, disappeared from the Royal Navy in the 1850s, after the development of jacketed steel cannon, by William George Armstrong and Joseph Whitworth. Nevertheless, carronades were used in the American Civil War. The Great Turkish Bombards of the Siege of Constantinople, after being on display for four centuries, were used to battle a British fleet in 1807, in the Dardanelles Operation. The artillery hit a British ship with two 700 lb (320 kg) cannonballs, killing 60 sailors; in total, the cannons claimed over 100 lives, prompting the British to retreat. In 1867, Sultan Abdul Aziz gave Queen Victoria the 17-ton "Dardanelles Gun," one of the cannon used at the siege of Constantinople. In contrast to these antiquated weapons, Western cannons during the 19th century became larger, more destructive, more accurate, and could fire at longer range. One example is the American 3 in (76 mm) wrought-iron, muzzle-loading howitzer, used during the American Civil War, which had an effective range of over 1.1 mi (1.8 km). Another is the smoothbore 12 pounder Napoleon, which was renowned for its sturdiness, reliability, firepower, flexibility, relatively light weight, and range of 1,700 m (5,600 ft). Cannons were crucial in Napoleon Bonaparte's rise to power, and continued to play an important role in his army in later years. During the French Revolution, the unpopularity of the Directory led to riots and rebellions. When over 25,000 of these royalists—led by General Danican—assaulted Paris, Paul François Jean Nicolas, vicomte de Barras was appointed to defend the capital; outnumbered five to one and disorganized, the Republicans were desperate. When Napoleon arrived, he reorganized the defenses, while realizing that without cannons, the city could not be held. He ordered Joachim Murat to bring the guns from the Sablons artillery park; the Major and his cavalry fought their way to the recently captured cannons, and brought them back to Napoleon. When Danican's poorly trained men attacked, on 5 October 1795, 13 Vendémiaire, 4 in the calendar used in France, at the time—Napoleon ordered his cannons to fire grapeshot into the mob, an act that became known as the "whiff of grapeshot". The slaughter effectively ended the threat to the new government, while, at the same time, made Bonaparte a famous—and popular—public figure. Among the first generals to recognize that artillery was not being used to its full potential, Napoleon often massed his cannons into batteries, and introduced several changes into the French artillery, improving it significantly, and making it among the finest in Europe. Such tactics were successfully used by the French, for example, at the Battle of Friedland, when sixty-six guns fired a total of 3,000 roundshot, and 500 grapeshot, inflicting severe casualties on the Russian forces, whose losses numbered over 20,000 killed and wounded, in total. At the Battle of Waterloo—Napoleon's final battle—the French army had many more artillery pieces than either the British or Prussians. As the battlefield was muddy, recoil caused cannons to bury themselves into the ground after firing, resulting in slow rates of fire, as more effort was required to move them back into an adequate firing position; also, roundshot did not ricochet with as much force from the wet earth. Despite the drawbacks, sustained artillery fire proved deadly during the engagement, especially during the French cavalry attack. The British infantry, having formed infantry squares, took heavy losses from the French guns, while their own cannons fired at the cuirassiers and lancers, when they fell back to regroup. Eventually, the French ceased their assault, after taking heavy losses from the British cannons and musket fire. The practice of rifling—casting spiraling lines inside the cannon's barrel—was applied to artillery more frequently by 1855, as it gave cannons gyroscopic stability, which improved their accuracy. One of the earliest rifled cannons was the Armstrong gun—also invented by William George Armstrong—which boasted significantly improved range, accuracy, and power than earlier weapons. The projectile fired from the Armstrong gun could reportedly pierce through a ship's side, and explode inside the enemy vessel, causing increased damage, and casualties. The British military adopted the Armstrong gun, and was impressed; the Duke of Cambridge even declared that it "could do everything but speak." Despite being significantly more advanced than its predecessors, the Armstrong gun was rejected soon after its integration, in favor of the muzzle-loading pieces that had been in use before. While both types of gun were effective against wooden ships, neither had the capability to pierce the armor of ironclads; due to reports of slight problems with the breeches of the Armstrong gun, and their higher cost, the older muzzle-loaders were selected to remain in service, instead. Realizing that iron was more difficult to pierce with breech-loaded cannons, Armstrong designed rifled muzzle-loading guns, which proved successful; The Times reported: "even the fondest believers in the invulnerability of our present ironclads were obliged to confess that against such artillery, at such ranges, their plates and sides were almost as penetrable as wooden ships." The superior cannons of the Western world brought them tremendous advantages in warfare. For example, in the Opium War in China, during the 19th century, British battleships bombarded the coastal areas and fortifications from afar, safe from the reach of the Chinese cannons. Similarly, the shortest war in recorded history, the Anglo-Zanzibar War of 1896, was brought to a swift conclusion by shelling from British battleships. The cynical attitude towards recruited infantry in the face of ever more powerful field artillery is the source of the term cannon fodder, first used by François-René de Chateaubriand, in 1814; however, the concept of regarding soldiers as nothing more than "food for powder" was mentioned by William Shakespeare as early as 1598, in Henry IV, Part 1. ## 20th and 21st centuries Cannons in the 20th and 21st centuries are usually divided into sub-categories, and given separate names. Some of the most widely used types of modern cannons are howitzers, mortars, guns, and autocannon, although a few very large-calibre cannons, custom-designed, have also been constructed. Modern artillery is used in a variety of roles, depending on its type. According to NATO, the general role of artillery is to provide fire support, which is defined as "the application of fire, coordinated with the maneuver of forces to destroy, neutralize, or suppress the enemy." When referring to cannons, the term gun is often used incorrectly. In military usage, a gun is a cannon with a high muzzle velocity and comparatively flat trajectory, as opposed to other types of artillery, such as howitzers or mortars, which have lower muzzle velocities, and usually fire indirectly. ### Artillery By the early 20th century, infantry weapons became more powerful and accurate, forcing most artillery away from the front lines. Despite the change to indirect fire, cannons still proved highly effective during World War I, causing over 75% of casualties. The onset of trench warfare after the first few months of World War I greatly increased the demand for howitzers, as they fired at a steep angle, and were thus better suited than guns at hitting targets in trenches. Furthermore, their shells carried larger amounts of explosives than those of guns, and caused considerably less barrel wear. The German army took advantage of this, beginning the war with many more howitzers than the French. World War I also marked the use of the Paris Gun, the longest-ranged gun ever fired. This 200 mm (8 in) caliber gun was used by the Germans to bombard Paris, and was capable of hitting targets more than 122 km (76 mi) away. The Second World War sparked new developments in cannon technology. Among them were sabot rounds, hollow-charge projectiles, and proximity fuses, all of which were marginally significant. The World War II-era "legend" of the dreaded German 88 mm gun was launched during the Battle of Arras on 21 May 1940 when Generalmajor Erwin Rommel first ordered their use against Allied armor, devastating British Matilda II tanks, a well-armored design. The proximity fuse emerged on the battlefields of Europe in late December 1944. They became known as the American artillery's "Christmas present" for the German army, and were employed primarily in the Battle of the Bulge. Proximity fuses were effective against German personnel in the open, and hence were used to disperse their attacks. Also used to great effect in anti-aircraft projectiles, proximity fuses were used in both the European and Pacific Theaters of Operations, against V-1 flying bombs and kamikaze planes, respectively. Anti-tank guns were also tremendously improved during the war: in 1939, the British used primarily 2 pounder and 6 pounder guns. By the end of the war, 17 pounders had proven much more effective against German tanks, and 32 pounders had entered development. Meanwhile, German tanks were continuously upgraded with better main guns, in addition to other improvements. For example, the Panzer III was originally designed with a 37 mm gun, but was mass-produced with a 50 mm cannon. To counter the threat of the Russian T-34s, another, more powerful 50 mm gun was introduced, only to give way to a larger 75 mm cannon. Despite the improved guns, production of the Panzer III was ended in 1943, as the tank still could not match the T-34, and was, furthermore, being replaced by the Panzer IV and Panther tanks. Following the 88 mm FlaK 36's initial anti-tank success in 1940 and through the German forces' battles in North Africa and the Soviet Union, in 1944, its improved tank-mounted version, the 8.8 cm KwK 43,—and its multiple variations—entered service, used by the Wehrmacht, and was adapted to be both a tank's main gun, and the PaK 43 anti-tank gun. One of the most powerful guns to see service in World War II, it was capable of destroying any Allied tank at very long ranges. Despite being designed to fire at trajectories with a steep angle of descent, howitzers can be fired directly, as was done by the 11th Marine Regiment at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, during the Korean War. Two field batteries fired directly upon a battalion of Chinese infantry; the Marines were forced to brace themselves against their howitzers, as they had no time to dig them in. The Chinese infantry took heavy casualties, and were forced to retreat. The tendency to create larger caliber cannons during the World Wars has been reversed in more recent years. The United States Army, for example, sought a lighter, more versatile howitzer, to replace their aging pieces. As it could be towed, the M198 was selected to be the successor to the World War II-era cannon used at the time, and entered service in 1979. Still in use today, the M198 is, in turn, being slowly replaced by the M777 Ultralightweight howitzer, which weighs nearly half as much, and can be transported by helicopter—as opposed to the M198, which requires a C-5 or C-17 to airlift. Although land-based artillery such as the M198 are powerful, long-ranged, and accurate, naval guns have not been neglected, despite being much smaller than in the past, and, in some cases, having been replaced by cruise missiles. However, the Zumwalt-class destroyer's planned armament includes the Advanced Gun System (AGS), a pair of 155 mm guns, which fire the Long Range Land-Attack Projectile. The warhead, which weighs 24 pounds (11 kg), has a circular error of probability of 50 m (160 ft), and will be mounted on a rocket, to increase the effective range to 100 nmi (190 km)—a longer range than that of the Paris Gun. The AGS's barrels will be water cooled, and will be capable of firing 10 rounds per minute, per gun. The combined firepower from both turrets will give Zumwalt-class destroyers the firepower equivalent to 18 conventional M-198 howitzers. The reason for the re-integration of cannons as a main armament in United States Navy ships is because satellite-guided munitions fired from a gun are far less expensive than a cruise missile, and are therefore a better alternative to many combat situations. ### Autocannon An autocannon is a cannon with a larger caliber than a machine gun, but smaller than that of a field gun. Autocannons have mechanisms to automatically load their ammunition, and therefore have a faster rate of fire than artillery, often approaching—and, in the case of Gatling guns, surpassing—that of a machine gun. The traditional minimum bore for autocannons—indeed, for all types of cannons, as autocannons are the lowest-caliber pieces—has remained 20 mm, since World War II. Most nations use these rapid-fire cannons on their light vehicles, replacing a more powerful, but heavier, tank gun. A typical autocannon is the 25 mm "Bushmaster" chain gun, mounted on the LAV-25 and M2 Bradley armored vehicles. Autocannons have largely replaced machine guns in aircraft, due to their greater firepower. The first airborne cannon appeared in World War II, but each airplane could carry only one or two, as cannons are heavier than machine guns, the standard armament. They were variously mounted, often in the wings, but also high on the forward fuselage, where they would fire through the propeller, or even through the propeller hub. Due both to the low number of cannons per aircraft, and the lower rate of fire of cannons, machine guns continued to be used widely early in the war, as there was a greater probability of hitting enemy aircraft. However, as cannons were more effective against more heavily armored bomber aircraft, they were eventually integrated into newer fighters, which usually carried between two and four autocannons. The Hispano-Suiza HS.404, Oerlikon 20 mm cannon, MG FF, and their numerous variants became among the most widely used autocannons in the war. Nearly all modern fighter aircraft are armed with an autocannon, and most are derived from their counterparts from the Second World War. The largest, heaviest, and most powerful airborne cannon used by the military of the United States is the GAU-8/A Avenger Gatling-type rotary cannon; it is surpassed only by the specialized artillery pieces carried on the AC-130 gunship. Although capable of generating a high volume of fire, autocannons are limited by the amount of ammunition that can be carried by the weapons systems mounting them. For this reason, both the 25 mm Bushmaster and the 30 mm RARDEN are deliberately designed with relatively slow rates of fire, to extend the amount of time they can be employed on a battlefield before requiring a resupply of ammunition. The rate of fire of modern autocannons ranges from 90 rounds per minute, to 1,800 rounds per minute. Systems with multiple barrels—Gatling guns—can have rates of fire of several thousand rounds per minute; the fastest of these is the GSh-6-30K, which has a rate of fire of over 6,000 rounds per minute.

Italian cruiser Aretusa

Torpedo cruiser of the Italian Royal Navy

Aretusa was a torpedo cruiser of the Partenope class built for the Italian Regia Marina (Royal Navy) in the 1880s. Laid down in June 1889 at the Cantiere navale fratelli Orlando shipyard, she was launched in March 1891 and was commissioned in September 1892. Her main armament were her six torpedo tubes, which were supported by a battery of ten small-caliber guns. Aretusa spent most of her career in the main Italian fleet, where she was primarily occupied with training exercises. At the start of the Italo-Turkish War in September 1911, she was assigned to the Red Sea Squadron in Italian Eritrea. She bombarded Ottoman positions in the Arabian Peninsula and took part in a blockade of the coast. Worn out by the end of the war in October 1912, Aretusa was sold for scrap that December and broken up. ## Design The Partenope-class cruisers were derivatives of the earlier, experimental Goito-class cruisers, themselves based on the preceding cruiser Tripoli. The class marked a temporary shift toward the ideas of the Jeune École in Italian naval thinking. The doctrine emphasized the use of small, torpedo-armed craft to destroy expensive ironclads. Aretusa was 73.1 meters (239 ft 10 in) long overall and had a beam of 8.22 m (27 ft) and an average draft of 3.48 m (11 ft 5 in). She displaced 833 long tons (846 t) normally. The ship had a short forecastle deck that terminated at the conning tower. She had a crew of between 96 and 121 personnel. Her propulsion system consisted of a pair of horizontal triple-expansion steam engines, each driving a single screw propeller. Steam was supplied by four coal-fired locomotive boilers, which were vented through two widely spaced funnels. Specific figures for Aretusa's engine performance have not survived, but the ships of her class had top speeds of 18.1 to 20.8 knots (33.5 to 38.5 km/h; 20.8 to 23.9 mph) at 3,884 to 4,422 indicated horsepower (2,896 to 3,297 kW). The ship had a cruising radius of about 1,800 nautical miles (3,300 km; 2,100 mi) at a speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph). Aretusa was armed with a main battery of one 120 mm (4.7 in) /40 gun placed on the forecastle. Close-range defense against torpedo boats was provided by a secondary battery of six 57 mm (2.2 in) /43 guns mounted singly. She was also equipped with three 37 mm (1.5 in) /20 guns in single mounts. Her primary offensive weapon was her five 450 mm (17.7 in) torpedo tubes. The ship was protected by an armored deck that was up to 1.6 in (41 mm) thick; her conning tower was armored with the same thickness of steel plate. ## Service history Aretusa was laid down at the Cantiere navale fratelli Orlando (Orlando Brothers' Shipyard) in Livorno on 1 June 1889, and was launched on 14 March 1891. After fitting-out work was completed, the ship was commissioned into the fleet on 1 September 1892. During the 1893 fleet maneuvers, Aretusa served with the 3rd Division of the Reserve Squadron, along with the protected cruisers Vesuvio and Ettore Fieramosca and four torpedo boats. During the maneuvers, which lasted from 6 August to 5 September, the ships of the Reserve Squadron defended against a simulated attack by the Active Squadron, which gamed a French attack on the Italian fleet. Beginning on 14 October 1984, the Italian fleet, including Aretusa, assembled in Genoa for a naval review held in honor of King Umberto I at the commissioning of the new ironclad Re Umberto. The festivities lasted three days. In 1895, Aretusa was stationed in the 2nd Maritime Department, split between Taranto and Naples, along with most of the torpedo cruisers in the Italian fleet. These included her sister ships Partenope, Minerva, Euridice, Iride, Urania, and Caprera, the four Goito-class cruisers, and Tripoli. As of 1898, Aretusa was assigned to the Active Squadron, with included the ironclads Sicilia and Sardegna and two other cruisers. ### Italo-Turkish War At the start of the Italo-Turkish War in September 1911, Aretusa was stationed in Italian Eritrea in the Red Sea Squadron. Italian naval forces in the region also included five protected cruisers and several smaller vessels. Shortly after the start of the war on 2 October, Aretusa and the gunboat Volturno encountered the Ottoman torpedo cruiser Peyk-i Şevket off Al Hudaydah. In a short engagement, the Italians vessels forced the Ottoman ship to flee into Al Hudaydah, bombarded the port facilities, and then withdrew. Peyk-i Şevket was later interned in British-controlled Suez. The threat of an Ottoman attack from the Arabian Peninsula led the Italian High Command to reinforce the Red Sea Squadron; the additional ships included another cruiser and several destroyers. The protected cruiser Piemonte and two destroyers annihilated a force of seven Ottoman gunboats in the Battle of Kunfuda Bay on 7 January 1912. Following the neutralization of Ottoman naval forces in the region, Aretusa and the rest of the Italian ships then commenced a bombardment campaign against the Turkish ports in the Red Sea before declaring a blockade of the city of Al Hudaydah on 26 January. On 27 July and 12 August, Aretusa, her sister ship Caprera, and Piemonte conducted two bombardments of Al Hudaydah. During the second attack, they destroyed an Ottoman ammunition dump. With the threat of an Ottoman attack greatly reduced, the High Command thereafter began to withdraw forces from the Red Sea Squadron. By the end of August, the unit was reduced to three protected cruisers, Aretusa, Caprera and two auxiliaries. On 14 October, the Ottoman government agreed to sign a peace treaty, ending the war. Aretusa's career ended shortly thereafter; the Regia Marina discarded the ship in December and she was subsequently broken up for scrap.

Louis Laybourne Smith

Australian architect (1880–1965)

Louis Edouard Laybourne Smith CMG (1 April 1880 – 13 September 1965) was an architect and educator in South Australia. Born in the Adelaide inner-southern suburb of Unley, he became interested in engineering and architecture while in the goldfields of Western Australia and later studied mechanical engineering at the School of Mines, serving an apprenticeship under architect Edward Davies. After graduating he accepted a position as a lecturer at the school, and was responsible for developing the first formal architecture course in the State in 1904. Between 1905 and 1914, he served as registrar at the school before leaving to join his long-time friend, Walter Bagot, at the architectural firm of Woods, Bagot and Jory. He remained with the firm until his death in 1965, and over the years was involved in a number of significant projects, including the South Australian National War Memorial and the original Australian Mutual Provident building on King William Street. Along with his teaching and professional duties, Laybourne Smith was a member of the South Australian Institute of Architects, the Federal Council of the Australian Institute of Architects, and the Australian Institute of Architects, as well as being on numerous committees and advising the State Government in the formation of both the State Building Act of 1923 and the 1939 Architects Act (which brought the Architects Board of South Australia into existence). During his life Laybourne Smith received a number of awards and honours, including Life Fellowship to the Royal Australian Institute of Architects and the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Royal Australian Institute of Architects Gold Medal, and was invested as a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George. Today, the architectural school which he founded (now part of the University of South Australia) bears his name—the Louis Laybourne Smith School of Architecture. ## Early life and education Louis Laybourne Smith was born to Joseph and Annie Laybourne Smith on 1 April 1880, in Unley, South Australia. His parents had emigrated to Australia so that his father could take up a post as a chemist with F.H. Faulding & Co. However, it appears that Joseph Laybourne Smith found dentistry more to his liking, for he went on to gain qualifications in the field through the Australian College of Dentistry. Both Laybourne Smith's primary and secondary education were obtained at the nearby Windham and Way colleges; his education was interrupted in the mid-1890s when his parents decided to move to the goldfields of Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie in Western Australia. According to Laybourne Smith, he became interested in machinery while in the goldfields. His parents decided to direct him towards architecture, as it "was the nearest thing to white-collar engineering work that they could think of". He was articled to A. A. E. Dancker for a period before returning to Adelaide in 1898. Laybourne Smith's parents had intended for him to study architecture at the University of Adelaide, but there were no courses available at the time. As a result, Laybourne Smith undertook to complete a mechanical engineering course part-time at the School of Mines, and (in order to pursue his interest in architecture) he was articled to Edward Davies from 1901. He proved to be an excellent student, winning scholarships in both his second and third years, and was the first person to finish the course within the proscribed four years. He completed his apprenticeship with Davies in 1904, and was admitted as an Associate to the South Australian Institute of Architects, although the ongoing impact of the depression made finding work difficult. In spite of this, he found employment as a draftsman, initially with Ernest Bayer and later with John Quinton Bruce. After graduating at the School of Mines, Laybourne Smith continued his studies at the University of Adelaide, completing a Bachelor of Science in 1911. This was surrendered in 1914 for a Bachelor of Engineering. ## Teaching career In 1903, Laybourne Smith was invited to lecture in mechanical engineering at the School of Mines—a position which Page states that Laybourne Smith was "delighted" to accept. He was thereafter elected as the school's registrar in 1905, and continued in that post full-time until 1914, after which he ran the school part-time until 1951. Even then, Laybourne Smith's involvement with the school did not end after Gavin Walkley took over, and he was still associated with the school when he died in 1965. While working at the school, Laybourne Smith initiated his own classes on architecture, gathering "a group of colleagues who instructed one another" in the field. After being approached in 1906 by the Council of the School of Mines, Laybourne Smith teamed with Walter Bagot to develop a new architecture course. The result was a three-year part-time Associate Diploma, although students were still expected to be articled to professional architects in order to gain more practical experience in the field. By 1916 the course was regarded as of sufficient quality to place its students "in the same rank as architectural students in other parts of the world". While the School of Mines no longer exists, the school of architecture founded by Laybourne Smith is now part of the University of South Australia, and since 1963 the Louis Laybourne Smith School of Architecture and Building has borne his name as its founder. ## Architectural career Upon leaving his full-time position at the School of Mines, Laybourne Smith acted as a "stand-in" for Walter Bagot at Bagot's architectural firm, Woods, Bagot and Jory, while Bagot was overseas. Edward Woods died in 1913, and three years later Laybourne Smith became a full partner in the newly named Woods, Bagot, Jory & Laybourne Smith. Laybourne Smith was to remain with the firm until his death in 1965. Laybourne Smith's friendship with Walter Bagot had spanned many years prior to the partnership, but their respective working methods was "so different that they seemed unlikely partners". While Baggot was "notorious" for the attention he gave to minor details in designs, Laybourne Smith was described as being just as happy to develop a sketch and to pass it on to the draftsmen to "work up" (although this does not represent a lack of attention, as his designs were "sketched in tiny, neat detail"). In spite of these differences, their respective strengths tended to balance one another: Bagot was a traditionalist in design, while Laybourne Smith brought an engineer's knowledge and "ingenuity" to the partnership. ### Works Laybourne Smith's first major work with Woods, Bagot & Jory was the refurbishment of the National Bank building on King William Street, and from there he graduated to work on a number of notable buildings within South Australia and interstate. Both the firm in general and Laybourne Smith in particular were traditionalists in their designs, to the point where Page reports that Laybourne Smith took as a compliment a description of one of his works in 1965 as "striped pants and all". This traditionalism was particularly evident in their work for the University of Adelaide. Between 1910 and 1945, the firm served as architects to the University of Adelaide, and Bagot strove towards congruity for the university. The result included a number of buildings that were designed by Laybourne Smith in a "Georgian revival" style, including the original heritage listed Student Union building and the main building of the Waite Agricultural Research Institute, which is also heritage listed and has been described as being "reministent of the great English country houses". Similarly, Laybourne Smith applied traditional designs to a number of ecclesiastical projects. These include St Cuthbert's Anglican Church in North Adelaide, which is heritage listed as an example of Gothic Revival architecture; and the romanesque St. Dominic's Chapel at the Cabra Dominican College in Cumberland Park. His background in engineering was put to good use on a number of projects. In particular, the John Martins store on Rundle Street (now Rundle Mall), was constructed by raising the top floor of the building on hydraulic jacks, building two new floors underneath while the remainder of the store continued to operate normally. Another of Laybourne Smith's buildings, the Australian Mutual Provident building on King William Street in Adelaide, was one of the first in the state to feature air conditioning, as this was considered to be quite an "innovative" addition in 1934. Other works by Laybourne Smith include the facade on the Balfours Cafe in Rundle Mall (heritage listed in part due to the innovative "building envelope", which is "independent of the internal structure"), the Repatriation General Hospital in Daw Park (developed by Laybourne Smith from sketch plans produced by Melbourne firm Stephenson & Turner), and the South Australian National War Memorial. This last structure represents a collaboration between Laybourne Smith, Walter Bagot, and Sydney-based sculptor Rayner Hoff. Although Walter Bagot produced the original design for the architectural competition in 1924, his design was, (along with the other entrants), deemed to be "unsuitable". After the entries were destroyed by fire late that year, Laybourne Smith, working with artist Rayner Hoff, was able to redraw the design largely from memory in order to enter the subsequent 1926 competition. In doing so they built upon Bagot's work, making the memorial "grander" in its scope—and this proved to be sufficient for the firm to be awarded the commission. ## Professional activities and associations Although Laybourne Smith continued to be involved in teaching and architectural design, he was also involved in professional organisations and committees. He was admitted to the South Australian Institute of Architects (SAIA) as an associate in 1904, made a fellow in 1907, elected to the council in 1909, and served two terms as President (1921–1923 and 1935–1937). In all, Laybourne Smith served on the SAIA council for 50 years, from 1909 to 1959. Laybourne Smith played a significant role in the formation of a national body of architects. He was a founding member of the Federal Council of the Australian Institute of Architects, first proposed in 1914 and officially formed in 1915, which served as a "first step" towards the formation of a national body. Between 1991 and 1922, he served as president of this body. After the Royal Australian Institute of Architects (RAIA) was formed (now known as the Australian Institute of Architects), he served as a councillor for 11 years (between 1933 and 1944), and as the President of the institute from 1937 to 1938. In addition to his role on the councils, Laybourne Smith was an adviser during the development of the State Building Act of 1923, and he was largely responsible for the framing of the 1939 Architects Act, (which provided for the formal registration of architects in South Australia). Because of his work on the State Building act, Laybourne Smith sat on the Board of Referees responsible for adjudicating disputes, and his position on the Architects Board of South Australia was a direct result of his involvement in the creation of the Architects Act. ## Influence and awards Laybourne Smith is regarded as being one of the "key practitioners" of architecture in South Australia. In particular, he had a significant influence on the direction of architectural education in South Australia. His career spanned more than half a century, with much of it directly involved in education, and during that time he (and Walter Bagot) served as one of the "last links with the distant past of South Australian architecture"—having known (either directly or indirectly) most of the architects of the colonial era, while being responsible for the training of many of those who were to follow. Furthermore, he had a substantial impact on the development of architecture as a professional body through his involvement in the Architects Act of 1931 and the formation of a national body for architects. This political work also had a social dimension: his work on the Building Act Advisory Committee helped to highlight the low quality of the housing in the poorer areas of Adelaide, and this led to a change in how the public viewed what was acceptable as low-income housing. The South Australian Housing Trust was a direct result of his actions, and led to the provision of low cost rental housing to working families in the state. As well as having the architectural school named in his honour, in 1961 Laybourne Smith was awarded the Gold Medal by the Royal Australian Institute of Architects, and prior to that date, in 1948, he was invested as a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George. Two busts of his likeness have also been commissioned. One was by Rayner Hoff, with whom he had collaborated on the design for the South Australian National War Memorial, and is kept in the offices of Woods Bagot. The second was unveiled in 1961, and was sculpted by South Australian artist John Dowie. It can be found at the Louis Laybourne Smith School of Architecture at the University of South Australia. Laybourne Smith was a Life Fellow with both the Royal Australian Institute of Architects, (awarded in 1944), and a Fellow (1939) and Life Fellow (1944) of the Royal Institute of British Architects. ## Personal life Described as a "dapper young man with a moustache waxed into long points", he made for a "dynamic figure with a penetrating voice", and was noted for riding his Douglas motorcycle through the 1920s and 30s in his khaki overalls as he travelled between his professional practice, teaching duties and home life. On the home front, Louis Laybourne Smith married Frances Maude Davies, the daughter of Edward Davies to whom he had been articled, on 9 April 1903. They had three daughters and a son, Gordon Laybourne Smith, who ultimately followed his father into architecture. Laybourne Smith "consistently overworked"; architecture was said to be both his profession and his obsession. When his firm announced a retirement scheme he declared that he had no intention of retiring, and such proved to be the case—he died at his desk on 13 September 1965 at the age of 85. ## See also - Herbert Jory

2011 Atlantic hurricane season

Hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean

The 2011 Atlantic hurricane season was the second in a group of three very active Atlantic hurricane seasons, each with 19 named storms. The above-average activity was mostly due to a La Niña that persisted during the previous year. Of the season's 19 tropical storms, only seven strengthened into hurricanes, and only four of those became major hurricanes: Irene, Katia, Ophelia, and Rina. The season officially began on June 1 and ended on November 30, dates which conventionally delimit the period during each year in which most tropical cyclones develop in the Atlantic Ocean. However, the first tropical storm of the season, Arlene, did not develop until nearly a month later. The final system, Tropical Storm Sean, dissipated over the open Atlantic on November 11. Due to the presence of a La Niña in the Pacific Ocean, many pre-season forecasts called for an above-average hurricane season. In Colorado State University (CSU)'s spring outlook, the organization called for 16 named storms and 9 hurricanes, of which 4 would intensify further into major hurricanes. On May 19, 2011, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued their pre-season forecast, predicting 12–18 named storms, 6–10 hurricanes, and 3–6 major hurricanes. Following a quick start to the season, NOAA subsequently increased their outlook to 14–19 named storms, 7–10 hurricanes, and 3–5 major hurricanes on August 4; CSU made no changes to the number of cyclones forecast throughout the year. Many tropical cyclones affected land during the 2011 season; most impacts, however, did not result in a significant loss of life or property. On June 29, Arlene made landfall in Mexico near Cabo Rojo, Veracruz, causing over \$223 million (2011 USD) damage and killing 22 people. Tropical Storm Harvey moved into the coastline of Central America in mid-August, and three deaths were reported as a result. During the month of September, Tropical Storm Lee and Hurricane Nate moved into the central United States Gulf Coast and central Mexico, respectively; the former led to 18 deaths, and the latter caused 5 fatalities. As an extratropical cyclone, Lee caused significant damage in the form of flooding across the Northeast United States, especially in New York and Pennsylvania. The deadliest and most destructive cyclone of the season developed east of the Lesser Antilles on August 21. Hurricane Irene caused significant impact across some of the Caribbean Islands and United States Eastern Seaboard, leaving about \$14.2 billion in damage and resulting in the name's retirement. Overall, the season resulted in 112 deaths and nearly \$17.4 billion in damage. ## Seasonal forecasts In advance of, and during, each hurricane season, several forecasts of hurricane activity are issued by national meteorological services, scientific agencies, and noted hurricane experts. These include forecasters from the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)'s National Hurricane and Climate Prediction Center's, Philip J. Klotzbach, William M. Gray and their associates at Colorado State University (CSU), Tropical Storm Risk, and the United Kingdom's Met Office. The forecasts include weekly and monthly changes in significant factors that help determine the number of tropical storms, hurricanes, and major hurricanes within a particular year. As stated by NOAA and CSU, an average Atlantic hurricane season between 1981 and 2010 contains roughly 12 tropical storms, 6 hurricanes, 3 major hurricanes, and an accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) Index of 66-103 units. ACE is, broadly speaking, a measure of the power of the hurricane multiplied by the length of time it existed, so storms that last a long time or that are particularly strong hurricanes have high ACEs. It is only calculated for full advisories on tropical systems at or exceeding 39 mph (63 km/h), the threshold for tropical storm strength. NOAA typically categorizes a season as either above-average, average, of below-average based on the cumulative ACE Index; however, the number of tropical storms, hurricanes, and major hurricanes within a hurricane season is considered occasionally as well. ### Pre-season forecasts On December 6, 2010, Tropical Storm Risk (TSR), a public consortium that comprises experts on insurance, risk management and seasonal climate forecasting at University College London, issued an extended-range forecast for the 2011 Atlantic hurricane season, calling for tropical cyclone activity roughly 40% above the 1950–2010 average. The team called for 15.6 (±4.3) tropical storms, 8.4 (±3.0) hurricanes, and 4.0 (±1.7) major hurricanes, with a cumulative ACE Index of 141 (±58). Two days later, Colorado State University issued its first extended-range forecast for the 2011 season. In its report, the organization predicted an above-average hurricane season with 17 named storms, 9 hurricanes, and 5 major hurricanes. In addition, the team expected an ACE value of approximately 165, citing that El Niño conditions had little chance to develop by the start of the season. The team also predicted that there was a higher chance of a tropical cyclone hitting the United States coastline when compared to 2010. TSR released an updated forecast on April 4, lowering the number of predicted cyclones by one. On April 4, 2011, CSU revised their December forecast slightly, predicting 16 named storms, 9 hurricanes, and 5 major hurricanes. On May 19, 2011, NOAA released their first forecast for the 2011 Atlantic hurricane season. The organization expected 12–18 named storms, 6–10 hurricanes, and 3–6 major hurricanes would form in the Atlantic during 2011, citing above-normal sea surface temperatures, a weakening La Niña, and the effect of the warm regime of the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation. NOAA also stated that, when looking at climate models, "activity comparable to some of the active seasons since 1995" could occur. On May 26, the UK Met Office (UKMO) issued a forecast of a slightly above-average season. They predicted 13 tropical storms with a 70% chance that the number would fall between 10 and 17. However, they did not – and do not – issue forecasts on the number of hurricanes and major hurricanes. The team also predicted an ACE Index of 151 with a 70% chance that the index would be in the range 89 to 212. ### Mid-season forecasts On June 1, CSU released their mid-season predictions, with numbers unchanged from those published in April. Concurrently, the Florida State University Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies (FSU COAPS) issued its third annual Atlantic hurricane season forecast, predicting 17 named storms, 9 hurricanes, and an ACE Index of 163. No prediction for the number of major hurricanes was made. A little over a month later, Weather Services International (WSI) issued their first forecast for the season. A total of 15 named storms, 8 hurricanes, and 4 major hurricanes were expected to develop for the entirety of the season. On August 3, CSU issued a mid-season update, though no change in predictions from their April outlook was made. The following day, NOAA issued their mid-season and final forecast for the season, calling for 14-19 named storms, 7-10 hurricanes, and 3-5 major hurricanes. The increase in numbers when compared to the pre-season forecast was due to the near-record start to the season. TSR also issued their sixth and final outlook on August 4, which increased the number of tropical storms to 16 and the number of hurricanes to 9, but continued to predict that there would be 4 major hurricanes. The final forecast for the 2011 season was issued by WSI on September 21, in which the organization called for 21 named storms, 7 hurricanes, and 4 major hurricanes; the philosophy for the increase in numbers was unchanged from CSU's. ## Seasonal summary The Atlantic hurricane season officially began on June 1, 2011. It was an above average season in which twenty tropical cyclones formed. Nineteen of the twenty depressions attained tropical storm status, tied with 1887, 1995, 2010, and later the 2012 season for the fourth-highest number of named storms since record-keeping began in 1851. Seven of these tropical storms became hurricanes, while four of those hurricanes further intensified into major hurricanes. The season was more active than usual due to lower than average wind shear, warmer than average sea surface temperatures, and the presence of a La Niña. Collectively, the tropical cyclones of this season resulted in nearly \$18.5 billion in damage and there were 114 deaths; a majority of it was caused by Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee. The season officially ended on November 30, 2011. Tropical cyclogenesis began in the month of June, with Tropical Storm Arlene forming on June 28. After Arlene dissipated on July 1, there was about a two-week lull in activity, before Bret, Cindy, and Don developed in the latter half of July. August was the most active month of the season, featuring eight tropical cyclones – Emily, Franklin, Gert, Harvey, Irene, Tropical Depression Ten, Jose, and Katia. The number of named storms in August was well above the 1944–2010 average of four, and just one short of the record of eight set in 2004 and later in 2012, but the number of hurricanes was below the mean. September was slightly above average, with 5 named storms, 2 hurricanes, and 1 major hurricane and featuring the unnamed tropical storm, Lee, Maria, Nate, Ophelia, and Philippe. Ophelia was the most intense tropical cyclone of the season, peaking as a Category 4 hurricane with winds of 140 mph (225 km/h) and a minimum pressure of 940 mbar (28 inHg). The next two months featured one system each, with Rina developing in October and Sean forming in November. Sean was the final storm of the season and became extratropical on November 11. The season's activity was reflected with an average cumulative ACE rating of 125. ## Systems ### Tropical Storm Arlene A tropical wave emerged into the eastern Atlantic on June 13. Tracking westward, the disturbance remained disorganized prior to reaching the western Caribbean. Cyclonic rotation became increasingly evident on satellite imagery, though organization was halted by the disturbance's passage over the Yucatán Peninsula on June 26. After emerging into the Bay of Campeche, favorable environmental conditions allowed for the development of Tropical Storm Arlene by 18:00 UTC on June 28. Moving generally westward due to the influence of high pressure to the cyclone's north, Arlene gradually intensified, reaching its peak intensity with maximum sustained winds of 65 mph (105 km/h) and a minimum barometric pressure of 993 mbar (29.3 inHg) at 12:00 UTC on June 30; the strong tropical storm moved ashore in Mexico near Cabo Rojo, Veracruz, about an hour later. Once inland, the center of circulation became increasingly diffuse, and the storm dissipated over the Sierra Madre Mountains early on July 1. Numerous tropical cyclone watches and warnings were issued for the coastline of Mexico shortly after the formation of Arlene; once inland, all were discontinued. Despite its relatively weak strength, Arlene produced isolated rainfall totals in excess of 9 in (230 mm). High amounts of precipitation led to numerous mudslides and flooding, causing an estimated \$223.4 million in damage. A total of 22 deaths were reported in association with Tropical Storm Arlene. Although the center of circulation remained over Mexico, the storm's far-reaching effects brought minimal relief to drought-stricken portions of southern Texas and Florida. ### Tropical Storm Bret An area of low pressure formed on the southern extent of a stalled cold front just off the East Coast of the United States on July 16. Tracking south-southeast, the low-pressure center was initially baroclinic in nature, but quickly transitioned into a warm-core low over the warm waters of the western Atlantic. Decreasing vertical wind shear allowed for the development of convection – shower and thunderstorm activity – atop the low-level circulation, and Dvorak satellite classifications were initiated early on July 17 given the organization on satellite imagery. Following an aircraft reconnaissance flight into the disturbance that afternoon, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) subsequently classified the system as Tropical Depression Two at 18:00 UTC on July 17 about 100 mi (160 km) northwest of Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas. After about six hours, the depression intensified into Tropical Storm Bret. As the system turned northeastward, the formation of an anticyclone atop Bret's center provided favorable conditions for intensification; accordingly, an eye-like feature and an eyewall – a ring of thunderstorms around the eye where typically the most intense convection associated with a tropical cyclone is located – were noted on microwave satellite imagery during the afternoon hours of July 18. At 18:00 UTC, the system attained its peak intensity with winds of 70 mph (115 km/h) and a minimum barometric pressure of 995 mbar (29.4 inHg). After moving over increasingly cool sea surface temperatures, the cyclone began to gradually weaken. Bret weakened to a tropical depression at around 00:00 UTC on July 22 and no longer met the criteria of a tropical cyclone by 12:00 UTC, while positioned approximately 375 mi (605 km) north of Bermuda. Bret left minimal impact in the Bahamas, with rainfall alleviating drought conditions. Precipitation was also generally beneficial on Bermuda, though minor flooding affected some local businesses in poor-drainage areas. ### Tropical Storm Cindy On July 17, an area of showers and thunderstorms, associated with the same frontal system that spawned Tropical Storm Bret, consolidated around a developing area of low pressure about 345 mi (555 km) west-southwest of Bermuda. Tracking east-northeastward, the system gradually organized and became better defined. The disturbance produced moderate rains while passing south of the territory, peaking at 1.16 in (29 mm); gusty winds were also observed. At 06:00 UTC on July 20, the low developed into a tropical depression east of Bermuda. Embedded within the mid-latitude westerlies, the depression moved northeast and maintained this general direction for the remainder of its existence. Six hours after formation, the system strengthened into Tropical Storm Cindy. Convection steadily increased over the storm, and a ragged eye-like feature appeared on both visible and microwave satellite imagery. Corresponding with this, Cindy attained its peak intensity late on July 21, with winds of 70 mph (115 km/h) and a barometric pressure of 994 mbar (29.4 inHg). Shortly thereafter, the storm moved over waters cooler than 78.8 °F (26 °C). Throughout July 22, convection diminished and the system transitioned into an extratropical cyclone about 985 mi (1,585 km) southwest of Ireland. The remnants persisted for another 12 hours before degenerating into a trough over the North Atlantic on July 23. ### Tropical Storm Don A tropical wave emerged off the western coast of Africa on July 16. Tracking westward, the disturbance produced sporadic convection, but remained disorganized through its passage into the Caribbean on July 23. Once there, showers and thunderstorms began to develop within an environment marginally conducive for tropical cyclogenesis. A broad area of low pressure formed and consolidated over the northwestern Caribbean Sea, and the NHC subsequently designated Tropical Depression Four on July 27; the system further intensified into Tropical Storm Don at 18:00 UTC. Steered west-northwestward by a subtropical ridge across over the southeastern United States, the cyclone strengthened initially under low wind shear, attaining a peak intensity with maximum sustained winds of 50 mph (80 km/h) and a minimum barometric pressure of 997 mbar (hPa; 29.44 inHg). Despite low shear, Don was met with a significantly more stable environment as it emerged into the Gulf of Mexico. Convection around the center of the storm gradually diminished as a result of a lack of vertical instability, and a decrease in sustained winds was observed accordingly. Don weakened to a tropical depression as it moved ashore in Texas, along the Padre Island National Seashore, and continued west-northwestward thereafter; the system degenerated into a remnant area of low pressure by 06:00 UTC on July 30. As a tropical cyclone, Don prompted tropical cyclone advisories for the southern Texas coastline. Due to its abrupt weakening prior to landfall, rainfall totals and wind observations along the warned areas were scarce; a maximum precipitation total of 2.56 in (65 mm) was documented near Bay City, Texas, and a peak wind gust of 41 mph (66 km/h) was recorded at Waldron Field. The storm produced storm surge values lower than 2 ft (0.61 m) as well. No damage was reported. ### Tropical Storm Emily A tropical wave emerged off the west coast of Africa on July 25. Tracking westward, the disturbance gradually consolidated as multiple centers of circulation eventually dissipated and a new one formed. A marginally favorable atmospheric environment allowed for convection to develop, and a reconnaissance aircraft flight into the system led to the classification of Tropical Storm Emily around 00:00 UTC on August 2 near Dominica. Turning west-northwestward along the southwest edge of a large subtropical ridge to its northeast, Emily remained relatively disorganized on satellite imagery due to strong westerly wind shear. Despite a large burst of convection south of Hispaniola on August 3, the center of circulation accelerated west-northwestward, with a mid-level center moving inland over the island. At 18:00 UTC the following day, Emily degenerated into a tropical wave. The mid-level remnants of Emily continued northwestward, with a new area of low pressure developing over the Bahamas. The low regenerated into a tropical depression at 18:00 UTC on August 6; six hours later, it re-intensified into Tropical Storm Emily. However, strong wind shear exposed the center of circulation once again. At 12:00 UTC on August 7, Emily degenerated into a remnant area of low pressure northeast of the Bahamas. Heavy rainfall and landslides in Martinique damaged 29 homes. One indirect death was reported on the island. In Puerto Rico, flooding and mudslides damaged roads, homes, and crops. Additionally, around 18,500 people lost electricity after winds damaged an electrical grid. About \$5 million in infrastructural damage occurred. In Dominican Republic, flooding and mudslides left 56 communities isolated and caused three people to drown. Flooding in Haiti damaged over 300 homes and destroyed several cholera treatment centers. One death occurred in the country. The storm brought up to 7.9 in (200 mm) of rainfall to the Bahamas. ### Tropical Storm Franklin A low-pressure area developed in association with a slow-moving frontal boundary over western Atlantic on August 10 and August 11. Tracking northeastward in response to deep southeasterly flow, the disturbance was initially slow to organize, but a marked organization of thunderstorm activity took place on August 12. Thus, Tropical Depression Six developed at 18:00 UTC while situated roughly 260 mi (420 km) north of Bermuda. The system brought unsettled weather to island, with rainfall reaching 0.07 in (1.8 mm) at L.F. Wade International Airport. Moving northeastward, the depression intensified into Tropical Storm Franklin at 06:00 UTC on August 13, following a large burst of convection over its center. Six hours later, Franklin peaked with winds of 45 mph (70 km/h), before encountering increasing wind shear and decreasing ocean temperatures. Rapid deterioration of the storm's structure took place as environmental conditions became increasingly hostile, with convection being sheared well away from the center. Franklin began acquiring extratropical characteristics and completed its transition into an extratropical cyclone late on August 13. The remnants degenerated into a trough of low pressure early on August 16. ### Tropical Storm Gert During the second week of August, a weak low-pressure area, located east of Bermuda, became associated with a synoptic-scale trough. Moving west-southwestward, it interacted with an upper low and eventually developed into a small low pressure by August 13. After the low become very well-defined with a tight circulation and deep convection, it was designated as a tropical depression at 18:00 UTC that day, about 360 mi (580 km) southeast of Bermuda. As the depression curved west-northwestward along the weakening subtropical ridge, it intensified into Tropical Storm Gert early on August 14. As Gert neared Bermuda, a small eye-like feature became apparent on radar imagery. Coinciding with this, Gert reached its peak intensity with winds of 60 mph (95 km/h). Passing roughly 90 mi (145 km) east of Bermuda, Gert brought light rain and winds up to 25 mph (40 km/h). By August 16, convection had mostly dissipated due to increasing wind shear and cooler water temperatures, degenerating into post-tropical cyclone about 500 mi (800 km) northeast of Bermuda. The remnant low dissipated well east of Newfoundland on August 17. ### Tropical Storm Harvey On August 10, a tropical wave emerged into the Atlantic from the west coast of Africa. After moving westward across the Atlantic and Caribbean for several days, the wave developed into a tropical depression about 100 mi (160 km) east-northeast of Cabo Gracias a Dios at the Honduras–Nicaragua border. Tracking over the warm waters of the northwestern Caribbean, the depression strengthened into Tropical Storm Harvey while just offshore Honduras. Additional intensification occurred, with Harvey attaining its peak intensity with winds of 65 mph (105 km/h) prior to landfall in Belize on August 20. Harvey weakened to a tropical depression on August 21, but re-intensified to a tropical storm after emerging into the Bay of Campeche. Early on August 22, it made landfall near Punta Roca Partida, Veracruz, then weakened and dissipated several hours later. The precursor disturbance produced squally weather and gusty winds throughout the Lesser Antilles. On Saint Croix in the United States Virgin Islands, gusty winds downed trees, which struck power lines, leaving minor electrical outages. Along its path, Harvey dropped heavy rainfall across much of Central America. Strong winds and heavy precipitation were reported in Belize, damaging or destroying homes in Crooked Tree. A tornado in northern Belize also caused wind damage in a few villages. Heavy rains in Mexico triggered numerous landslides, one of which killed three people. Two other fatalities occurred in the country. Landslides and overflowing rivers damaged 36 homes and 334 homes in the states of Chiapas and Veracruz, respectively. ### Hurricane Irene A tropical wave developed into Tropical Storm Irene about 190 mi (305 km) east of the Lesser Antilles early on August 21. The storm made landfall in Saint Croix as a strong tropical storm later that day. Early on August 21, the storm struck Puerto Rico. While crossing the island, Irene strengthened into a Category 1 hurricane. The storm moved parallel to the coast of Hispaniola, continuing to slowly intensify in the process. Shortly before making four landfalls in the Bahamas, Irene peaked as a 120 mph (195 km/h) Category 3 hurricane. Thereafter, the storm slowly weakened as it struck the Bahamas and then curved northward after passing east of Grand Bahama. Irene was downgraded to a Category 1 hurricane before making landfall near Cape Lookout, North Carolina, on August 27. Early on the following day, the storm re-emerged into the Atlantic from southeastern Virginia. Although the cyclone remained a hurricane over water, it weakened to a strong tropical storm while making landfall at Little Egg Inlet in New Jersey on August 28. A few hours later, Irene struck Brooklyn, New York City, while slightly weaker. Early on August 29, Irene became extratropical near the New Hampshire–Vermont state line, before being absorbed by a frontal system over Labrador on August 30. In Puerto Rico, heavy rainfall caused several rivers burst their banks, damaging roads and crops, particularly in Maunabo and Yabucoa. One death occurred after a woman attempted to drive across a bridge over a rain-swollen river, but her car was swept away. Strong winds toppled many trees and utility poles, leaving over 1 million people without electricity. Overall, damage in Puerto Rico totaled approximately \$500 million. In Dominican Republic, flooding displaced more than 37,700 people and left at least 88 communities isolated. A total of 2,292 homes were damaged, 16 of which were rendered beyond repair. Throughout the country, there were five deaths and about \$30 million in damage. In Haiti, brisk winds in the Port-au-Prince area blew down many refuge tents home to victims from the major 2010 earthquake. Two people were killed after being caught in rain-swollen rivers. In the Bahamas, strong winds damaged at least 40 homes on Mayaguana, while dozens of homes on Acklins were destroyed. On Cat Island, the storm caused "millions of dollars" in structural damage and left many people homeless. Damage throughout the Bahamas reached about \$40 million. Irene impacted the East Coast of the United States from Florida to Maine. Rough seas along the coast of Florida resulted in minor beach erosion and the deaths of two people. Overall, damage in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina was minimal. Eastern North Carolina was lashed with heavy rainfall, strong winds, and abnormally high tides. In all, over 1,100 homes were destroyed and thousands of others were damaged in North Carolina. Damage in the state reached about \$1.2 billion. New Jersey was also hit hard by flooding, strong winds, and storm surge. A number of rivers and creeks reached record or near record levels. Winds left approximately 1.6 million people without electricity. About 200,000 buildings and homes across the state suffered some degree of damage. The cost of damage throughout the state was approximately \$1 billion. In New York, winds left almost 350,000 homes and businesses without power in Nassau and Suffolk counties alone, but the state received only minor wind damage overall. Storm surge left hundreds of millions in damage in New York City and on Long Island. Severe flooding occurred in the Catskill Mountains region, with three towns rendered completely uninhabitable. Damage in the state of New York was estimated at over \$1.3 billion. In Vermont, rainfall totals of 4–7 in (100–180 mm) were common. Approximately 800 homes were damaged or destroyed. Additionally, nearly 2,400 roads and 300 bridges were damaged or washed away, several of which were covered bridges built more than 100 years prior to the storm. Flooding in Vermont was considered the worst since the flood of November 1927, with uninsured losses alone reaching about \$733 million. The other states of New England experienced extensive flooding, but to a less degree. The storm left at least 58 deaths and about \$15.8 billion in damage in the United States, which makes it the seventh costliest hurricane in the country. The remnants of Irene also brought flooding to Canada, especially Quebec. One death and about \$130 million in insured damage were reported. ### Tropical Depression Ten A well-organized tropical wave moved into the eastern Atlantic on August 22. Tracking westward at a fast pace, the wave gradually developed shower and thunderstorm activity and a closed center of low pressure. Curved bands extended from the center by 00:00 UTC on August 25, indicating the development of a tropical depression; at this time, the system was centered about 405 mi (650 km) west-southwest of the southernmost Cape Verde Islands. Unfavorable northeasterly shear prevented intensification, with the depression peaking with winds of 35 mph (55 km/h) and a minimum pressure of 1006 mbar (hPa; 29.71 inHg) at the time of formation. As a mid-level ridge to the north of the cyclone weakened, it turned west-northwest while gradually weakening. By late on August 26, little convection existed over the center of circulation. At 00:00 UTC on August 27, the depression degenerated into a remnant area of low pressure and dissipated a few hours later after the center deteriorated into a trough. ### Tropical Storm Jose A mesoscale convective system developed north of an upper-level low east-southeast of Bermuda on August 25. A small mid-level area of low pressure formed on the western side of the convective complex later that same day, gradually developing into the lower levels of the atmosphere. As convection near the center of circulation increased in coverage and intensity, the system developed into a tropical depression at 06:00 UTC on August 27. Six hours later, the depression intensified into Tropical Storm Jose. After formation, strong wind shear from nearby Hurricane Irene slowed, and eventually halted, development trends. Jose attained its peak intensity with winds of 45 mph (70 km/h) and a minimum barometric pressure of 1006 mbar (hPa; 29.71 inHg) but slowly weakened thereafter. Accelerating to the north and northeast, shower and thunderstorm activity gradually diminished, the low-level circulation became exposed, and the NHC determined Jose degenerated into a remnant area of low pressure near 00:00 UTC on August 29, roughly 135 mi (215 km) north-northwest of Bermuda. As a tropical cyclone, Jose produced tropical storm-force wind gusts on the island and several nearby buoys. ### Hurricane Katia A tropical wave developed into a tropical depression about 430 mi (690 km) southwest of the southernmost Cape Verde Islands early on August 29. It intensified into a tropical storm the following day and further developed into a hurricane by September 1, although unfavorable atmospheric conditions hindered strengthening thereafter. As the storm began to recurve over the western Atlantic, favorable conditions allowed Katia to become a major hurricane by September 5 and peak as a Category 4 hurricane with winds of 140 mph (225 km/h). However, internal core processes, increased wind shear, an impinging cold front, and increasingly cool ocean temperatures caused the cyclone to weaken almost immediately. Katia ultimately transitioned into an extratropical cyclone on September 10 about 290 mi (465 km) south-southeast of Newfoundland. At 00:00 UTC on September 13, Katia's remnant merged with a larger extratropical system, over the North Sea. Although Katia passed well north of the Lesser Antilles, a yellow alert was hoisted for Guadeloupe to notify residents of dangerous seas. Strong rip currents along the East Coast of the United States led to the deaths of two swimmers. After losing its tropical characteristics, Katia prompted the issuance of numerous warnings across Europe. Hurricane-force winds impacted numerous locations, downing trees and power poles, leaving thousands of people without electricity. The storm was responsible for two deaths in the United Kingdom, with one from when a tree fell on a vehicle in County Durham and another during a multi-car accident on the M54 motorway resulting from adverse weather conditions. The post-tropical cyclone caused approximately £100m (\$157 million) in damage in the United Kingdom alone. ### Unnamed tropical storm As part of their routine post-season analysis, the NHC identified an additional tropical storm. In late August, an area of convection that formed to the southwest of Bermuda organized into a distinct low-pressure area. At around 00:00 UTC on September 1, a tropical depression formed about 335 mi (540 km) north of Bermuda. It initially drifted erratically northeastward due to its position within a stationary front. Despite moderate southwesterly wind shear, the depression intensified into a tropical storm after about 12 hours, based on an increase of convection over the center. At that time, the storm attained maximum sustained winds of 45 mph (70 km/h) and a minimum barometric pressure of 1,002 mbar (29.6 inHg). The thunderstorms continued to pulsate, resulting in the winds fluctuating slightly. Additionally, the intermittent nature of the convection, as well as uncertainty on whether it was associated with a cold front, prevented the storm from being classified as a tropical cyclone in real time. On September 2, a Tropical Weather Outlook (TWO) by the NHC stated that "only a slight increase in organization [would] result in the formation of a tropical storm." That day, an approaching trough caused the storm to accelerate northeastward. Cooler waters and increased wind shear stripped away the convection, resulting in the storm becoming extratropical early on September 3. The remnants continued northeastward, with the circulation dissipating by September 4. ### Tropical Storm Lee A tropical wave developed into the season's thirteen tropical depression in the Gulf of Mexico about 255 mi (410 km) southwest of the mouth of the Mississippi River at 00:00 UTC on September 2. About 12 hours later, the depression intensified into Tropical Storm Lee. The cyclone moved slowly north-northwestward and continued to strengthen. However, Lee transitioned into a subtropical storm at 12:00 UTC on September 3 due to a significantly expanded wind field, further interaction with an upper-level low pressure, and weak convection near the center. Around that time, the cyclone peaked with maximum sustained winds of 60 mph (95 km/h) and a minimum barometric pressure of 986 mbar (29.1 inHg). Lee weakened slightly before making landfall near Intracoastal City, Louisiana, at 10:30 UTC on September 4. After moving inland, the storm moved northeastward and merged with a cold front over eastern Louisiana early on September 5. The remnant low dissipated over Georgia by late on the following day. In Louisiana, storm surge from Lake Pontchartrain flooded more than 150 homes in Jefferson and St. Tammany parishes. Freshwater flooding also occurred in low-lying areas of southeastern Louisiana and southern and central Mississippi due to 10–15 in (250–380 mm) of rainfall across the area. Several roads were inundated, while 35 roads were damaged, 5 of which were washed out, in Neshoba County, Mississippi. The storm spawned 46 tornadoes, one of which damaged about 400 homes in Cherokee County, Georgia. In the Mid-Atlantic, the remnants of Lee produced over 10 in (250 mm) of rainfall in a wide area, causing worse flooding than in June and July 2006 and Hurricane Agnes in 1972. About 100,000 people in Pennsylvania evacuated, including the governor's residence. In Dauphin and Lebanon counties alone, nearly 5,000 dwellings were damaged or demolished. Extensive flooding also occurred in western New York, particularly in Binghamton, Endicott, Johnson City, Owego, Vestal, and Waverly. Overall, Lee resulted in 21 deaths and about \$1.6 billion in damage. ### Hurricane Maria A tropical wave developed into a tropical depression about 700 mi (1,100 km) west-southwest of the southern Cape Verde Islands on late September 6. Early the following day, the depression strengthened into Tropical Storm Maria. The system reached winds of 50 mph (80 km/h) on September 8, before encountering stronger wind shear and cooler water temperatures near the Leeward Islands, degenerating into a low-pressure area on September 9. It slowly curved toward the north and northeast around the western periphery of the subtropical ridge, and regained tropical storm status on September 10. Maria further strengthened to attain hurricane status while making its closest approach to Bermuda. The cyclone peaked with winds of 80 mph (130 km/h) on September 16, but soon weakened due to an increase in wind shear and cooler ocean temperatures. Maria made landfall near Cape St. Mary's, Newfoundland, on September 16, before being absorbed by a frontal system later that day. Despite its poor organization, Maria brought heavy rainfall to portions of the eastern Caribbean, especially Puerto Rico. Numerous roadways and homes were flooded, with 150 dwellings in the Yabucoa area receiving water damage. Many people were forced to evacuate after water and mud began entering their homes. Nearly 16,000 people were without electricity in Puerto Rico. Maria left approximately \$1.36 million in damage on the island. In addition, tropical storm-force winds were observed on many of the U. S. Virgin Islands. As the system passed west of Bermuda, brief tropical storm-force sustained winds were recorded, along with higher gusts; rainfall on the island, however, was minimal. In Newfoundland, fairly strong winds were recorded, but rainfall totals were generally minimal. ### Hurricane Nate On September 5 and September 6, a frontal trough stalled in the Bay of Campeche. A low developed and organized sufficiently to be designated as Tropical Storm Nate at 18:00 UTC on September 7. Moving in an erratic motion at a very slow pace, Nate continued to strengthen. Late on September 8, the cyclone intensified into a Category 1 hurricane, peaking with maximum sustained winds of 75 mph (120 km/h) and a minimum barometric pressure of 994 mbar (29.4 inHg). Due to the storm's slow movement, Nate began to upwell cooler waters in its wake, while very dry air began entering into the storm, resulting in weakening. Around 16:00 UTC on September 11, Nate made landfall in Mexico near Tecolutla, Veracruz, with winds of 45 mph (70 km/h). Shortly after making landfall, much of Nate's showers and thunderstorms diminished, with the system generating into a remnant low by 00:00 UTC on September 12, which dissipated about six hours later. In the Bay of Campeche, 10 oil rig workers evacuated the Trinity II rig, but were forced to abandon their lifeboat. Seven of the ten were rescued, though the other four perished. The storm brought up to 9.84 in (250 mm) of precipitation to southern Veracruz, causing flooding that damaged 839 homes. One person died in the state after being struck by lightning. ### Hurricane Ophelia On September 19, a tropical wave developed into a tropical depression about 1,300 mi (2,100 km) east of the Lesser Antilles. Moving west-northwestward, the depression became Tropical Storm Ophelia on September 21, and strengthened further to reach an initial peak wind speed of 65 mph (105 km/h) on September 22. As the storm entered a region of higher wind shear it began to weaken, and was subsequently downgraded to a remnant low on September 25. The following day, however, the remnants of the system began to reorganize as wind shear lessened, and on September 27, the system became a tropical depression again. Moving northward, Ophelia regained tropical storm status early on September 28, and significantly deepened to attain its peak intensity with maximum sustained winds of 140 mph (225 km/h) on October 2. This peak was short-lived however as the system passed over cooler water temperatures and into an area of high wind shear, causing it to quickly weaken and undergo transition to an extratropical cyclone. Ophelia weakened to a tropical storm early on October 3, and became fully extratropical shortly after. The extratropical low was absorbed by a larger weather system on the following day. As the system made its closest approach to the Leeward Islands, Ophelia produced over 10 in (250 mm) of rainfall on some islands, leading to mudslides and several road rescues. Light precipitation totals and gusty winds below tropical storm force were observed on Bermuda, while storm surge and dangerous rip currents along the coast caused minimal damage. In Newfoundland, heavy rainfall contributed to floods that destroyed roads and exposed the inadequacy of some repair work in the aftermath of Hurricane Igor, which struck the previous year. Following Ophelia's transition into an extratropical cyclone, residents in the British Isles were urged to prepare for strong winds in excess of 75 mph (120 km/h) and precipitation accumulations up to 4 in (100 mm). In the northern regions of Ireland, a combination of moisture and significantly cooler weather produced several inches of snow, leaving hundreds without electricity. ### Hurricane Philippe On September 23, a well-defined tropical wave emerged off the coast of Africa, associated with plentiful shower and thunderstorm activity. Moving westward and embedded within a favorable environment for development, the wave quickly became organized. On September 24, a tropical depression developed about 290 mi (465 km) south of the southernmost Cape Verde Islands. Later that day, the depression intensified into Tropical Storm Philippe. Strong wind shear from upper-level winds and later on from Ophelia's outflow, as well as periodic entrainment of dry air, kept the cyclone both small and disorganized. Additionally, the low-level circulation was often exposed. Because of this hostile environment, Philippe remained near the minimum for a tropical storm and briefly weakened to a tropical depression on September 28. The storm began to strengthen significantly by October 1, with an Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT) pass on the following day confirming that Philippe was a strong tropical storm, contrary to satellite estimates. Despite high wind shear, it briefly strengthened to a hurricane on October 4 when it developed an eye feature, before weakening back to a tropical storm several hours later. Philippe re-acquired hurricane intensity on October 6 and peaked with maximum sustained winds of 90 mph (145 km/h) later that day. However, Philippe weakened to a tropical storm on October 8, before transitioning into an extratropical cyclone later that day. Early on October 9, the remnants extratropical storm was absorbed by larger low-pressure area to the west of the Azores. ### Hurricane Rina A tropical wave emerged into the Atlantic from the west coast of Africa on October 9. After reaching the southwestern Caribbean, convection intensified near the center and organized into a broad low on October 21, possibly due to a cold front that moved into the region. After a marked increase in convection near and west of the center, a tropical depression developed early on October 23 about 60 mi (97 km) north of Isla de Providencia. The depression moved northward into a weakness in a ridge near Florida, caused by a broad mid-level trough over the Southeastern United States. Initially, the depression intensified gradually, becoming Tropical Storm Rina early on October 24. After a decrease in easterly wind shear, however, Rina rapidly deepened while crossing warm waters, reaching hurricane status at 18:00 UTC on October 24 and becoming a major hurricane about 24 hours later. Early on October 26, the storm peaked with winds of 115 mph (185 km/h). After the storm reaching peak intensity, upper-level winds and wind shear quickly became unfavorable, weakening Rina to a Category 2 later on October 26. While moving west-northwest and northward along the western periphery of the ridge, the cyclone weakened to a tropical storm on October 27. Later that day, Rina curved northward. Around 02:00 UTC on October 28, Rina struck Quintana Roo about 12 mi (19 km) southwest of Playa del Carmen with winds of 60 mph (95 km/h). The storm left little impact in the Yucatán Peninsula due to its weakened state. Rina degenerated into a remnant low late on October 28, upon emerging into the Yucatán Channel. The remnant low dissipated near the western tip of Cuba on October 29. A cold front, combined with moisture from Rina, resulted in 5–7 in (130–180 mm) of rainfall across parts of South Florida in less than six hours, causing street flooding and leaving water damage in at least 160 homes and buildings in Broward County alone. Farther north, two tornadoes touched down in the vicinity of Hobe Sound, one of which damaged 42 mobile homes, 2 vehicles, and a number of trees. ### Tropical Storm Sean A low-pressure area of non-tropical origins developed into Subtropical Storm Sean at 06:00 UTC on November 8 about 445 mi (716 km) southwest of Bermuda. While convection and the wind field had become more symmetric, the system remained a subtropical cyclone due to the associated upper-level low. Within 12 hours, Sean separated from the low and transitioned into a tropical cyclone, after developing a warm core. It developed outflow and intensified due to light wind shear, combined with sufficiently warm water temperatures of at least 78.8 °F (26.0 °C). With a ridge to the northeast, the storm moved slowly to the west. On November 9, an eye feature developed in association with Sean, which later morphed into a ring of convection. The storm peaked with winds of 65 mph (105 km/h) on November 10 as reported by the hurricane hunters. An approaching cold front subsequently induced higher wind shear on the cyclone as it tracked northeastward into cooler waters; this led to weakening. Sean transitioned into an extratropical cyclone on November 11. Early on the next day, it was absorbed by the cold front. Sean and its precursor produced light rainfall for several days in Bermuda. Shortly after development, the Bermuda Weather Service issued a tropical storm watch, which was later upgraded to a tropical storm warning. When Sean passed near the island on November 11, it produced sustained winds of 43 mph (69 km/h), with gusts to 62 mph (100 km/h). The storm produced rough seas to the east coast of Florida, which drowned one swimmer in Jensen Beach. Rip currents were also observed in North Carolina. ## Storm names The following list of names was used for named storms that formed in the North Atlantic in 2011. The names not retired (with the exception of Irene) from this list were used again in the 2017 season. This was the same list used in the 2005 season with the exceptions of Don, Katia, Rina, Sean, and Whitney, which replaced Dennis, Katrina, Rita, Stan, and Wilma, respectively. The names Don, Katia, Rina, and Sean were used for the first time this year. ### Retirement On April 13, 2012, at the 34th Session of the RA IV hurricane committee, the World Meteorological Organization retired the name Irene from its rotating name lists due to its significant impacts in the United States. It was replaced with Irma for the 2017 season. ## Season effects This is a table of all of the storms that formed in the 2011 Atlantic hurricane season. It includes their duration, names, intensities, areas affected, damages, and death totals. Deaths in parentheses are additional and indirect (an example of an indirect death would be a traffic accident), but were still related to that storm. Damage and deaths include totals while the storm was extratropical, a wave, or a low, and all of the damage figures are in 2011 USD. ## See also - Tropical cyclones in 2011 - 2011 Pacific hurricane season - 2011 Pacific typhoon season - 2011 North Indian Ocean cyclone season - South-West Indian Ocean cyclone seasons: 2010–11, 2011–12 - Australian region cyclone seasons: 2010–11, 2011–12 - South Pacific cyclone seasons: 2010–11, 2011–12 - South Atlantic tropical cyclone - Mediterranean tropical-like cyclone

Depression Quest

2013 video game

Depression Quest is a 2013 interactive fiction game dealing with the subject of depression. It was developed by Zoë Quinn using the Twine engine, with writing by Quinn and Patrick Lindsey, and music by Isaac Schankler. It was first released for the web on February 14, 2013, and for Steam on August 11, 2014. The game tells the story of a person suffering from depression and their attempts to deal with their condition. It was created to foster a greater understanding of depression. Depression Quest can be played for free, and has a pay-what-you-want pricing model. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline receives part of the proceeds. Depression Quest was praised by critics for its portrayal of depression and its educational value. The game was noted for diverging from mainstream uses of video games as a medium. Depression Quest received backlash from some gamers who disliked its departure from typical game formats and from other gamers who opposed "political" intrusions into gamer culture. Quinn received threats and harassment from people who disapproved of the game. False allegations that the game had received a positive review from a journalist in a relationship with Quinn around the time of the game's Steam release triggered the start of the Gamergate harassment campaign. ## Gameplay Depression Quest is an interactive fiction game, which presents descriptions of various situations and prompts the player to choose their response. In addition, most pages feature a set of still images and atmospheric music. The game has over 40,000 words of text, and multiple possible endings. Players assume the role of a person suffering from depression, and the story centers on their daily life, including encounters at work and their relationship with their girlfriend. The story also features various treatments for depression. Players are periodically faced with choices that alter the course of the story. To make a choice, the player must click on the corresponding hyperlink. However, choices are often crossed out and cannot be clicked on, a mechanism that Depression Quest uses to portray the character's mental state and the fact that logical decisions may not be available to them. Beneath the choices presented to the player are a set of statements about the character, indicating their level of depression, whether or not they are in therapy, and whether or not they are currently on medication. ## Development and release The game was designed by Zoë Quinn and written by Quinn and Patrick Lindsey, both of whom have had depression. The soundtrack was composed by Isaac Schankler. Quinn and Lindsey started the project, with the aim of communicating how the mind of a depression sufferer functions. Quinn purposely designed the game's protagonist as someone with an outwardly happy and easy life, so as to "preëmpt the argument that someone is only depressed because they have a difficult life." Depression Quest was first released online as a web browser game on February 14, 2013. Quinn also submitted the game through Steam's Greenlight program and consequently received disparaging comments and hate mail, causing them to withdraw the game from the service. After receiving positive feedback from players who had played the game and receiving an invitation to Indiecade, Quinn tried Greenlight again. They received further harassment, but felt that they could deal with the stress. "I thought, honestly, I could take the hate if it meant the game could reach somebody who would get something out of it, feel less alone," Quinn stated. The game was accepted by Greenlight in January 2014, and was released on Steam in August that year. The day it was due to go live, news broke that actor Robin Williams had died from a suspected suicide. Quinn considered delaying the Steam release, as they did not want to be seen as taking advantage of Williams' death. They eventually decided to keep to the original release schedule, as Quinn thought that making the game available to those struggling with their own problems was more important than any negative publicity they might receive, writing, "I can't in good conscience hold back offering someone something that could help them start making real changes in their life for the sake of reducing the risk of offending people or hurting my own reputation." The game uses a pay-what-you-want pricing model: it is free to play, but players can pay any amount they think is appropriate. Part of the proceeds from the game are sent to a charity – initially iFred, but this was later changed to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline after the game was released on Steam. ## Reception Depression Quest received mostly positive reviews from critics, who generally viewed it as not being intended for entertainment but for education. Jessica Vasquez, writing for Game Revolution, praised the game's portrayal of how sufferers are affected by depression, and expressed optimism in its potential to educate people about depression. Writing for Gizmag, Adam Williams called the experience of Depression Quest "dark and compelling". He added that he did not find the game fun to play, and that "it's certainly no Super Mario Brothers, but that's probably the point". Tim Biggs, writing for the Sydney Morning Herald, also stressed a lack of fun in the game, and went on to say that the game was "a testing and, at times, a boring experience to go through". However, he praised the game's execution, and acknowledged its importance as a tool for raising awareness of depression and for helping its sufferers. The game also received praise from mental health professionals. Writing in Ars Technica, Kyle Orland called Depression Quest "one of the most gripping and educational views on the subject [of depression]". Adam Smith, in Rock, Paper, Shotgun, wrote that Depression Quest was "'game' as communication, comfort and tool of understanding". In Giant Bomb, Patrick Klepek praised Depression Quest's writing, and said that "by the end, [he] was able to say [he] understood depression a bit better". He also warns players not to expect the game to be enjoyable, saying: "Playing Depression Quest isn't 'fun', like watching Schindler's List isn't 'enjoyable'. They're important for different reasons, and it's okay if they exist for the small audiences who will appreciate them as they are." Depression Quest designer Quinn also headed a Playboy article which featured several video games dealing directly with the subjective experience of depression, in which they noted "I'm very interested in games that aren't there to make the player feel exceptional." Depression Quest faced backlash online from some gamers who disliked its departure from typical game formats emphasizing violence and skill, and who opposed "political" intrusions into gamer culture. The text-driven interior monologue style of the game was criticized as boring. Quinn has faced harassment in response to Depression Quest since the game's initial release. This intensified with the additional publicity the game received on Steam. Quinn initially withdrew the game from Steam's Greenlight service, after having a detailed rape threat mailed to their home address. When they brought Depression Quest back to Greenlight, Quinn began receiving threatening phone calls. In mid-August 2014, soon after the game's official Steam release, a former boyfriend of Quinn wrote a lengthy and negative blog post about their relationship. The post alleged that Quinn had been in a relationship with Nathan Grayson, who was then a video game journalist for Kotaku. Opponents of Quinn claimed that Grayson had given Depression Quest a positive review as a result of this relationship. Investigations proved this to be false: Grayson had at no point reviewed Depression Quest. These false accusations against Quinn sparked what would later be known as the Gamergate harassment campaign. Quinn was subjected to wide-scale harassment, the game's profile page was flooded with what The New Yorker described as "angry user reviews", and reviews for the game were temporarily disabled. The Daily Dot reported that 4chan's video game board had bombarded the game's Metacritic page with negative reviews.

CitySpire

Skyscraper in Manhattan, New York

CitySpire (also known as CitySpire Center) is a mixed-use skyscraper at 150 West 56th Street in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Completed in 1990 and designed by Murphy/Jahn Architects, the building measures 814 feet (248 m) tall with 75 stories. CitySpire was developed by Ian Bruce Eichner on a site adjacent to the New York City Center theater. When completed, CitySpire was the second-tallest concrete tower in the United States after the Sears Tower. The skyscraper has an octagonal plan with a dome inspired by that of the New York City Center. The facade is made of stone with glass windows, and it contains setbacks at the 46th and 62nd floors. The building has entrances at 56th and 55th Streets, connected by a passageway that forms part of 61⁄2 Avenue. The lowest 22 floors of the tower are for commercial use. Above are luxury apartments, which are larger on higher floors. Eichner proposed CitySpire in 1984, acquiring unused air rights above City Center and making improvements to the theater to almost double the tower's area. After several agencies approved the project, City Center began construction in 1985 and was topped out by June 1987. A controversy ensued when the building exceeded its approved height by 11 or 14 feet (3.4 or 4.3 m); Eichner agreed to add dance-studio space to compensate for the height overrun, but he ultimately never built the space. Soon after CitySpire's opening in 1989, the building went into foreclosure, and there were complaints of a whistling noise from the roof for two years. ## Site CitySpire is at 150 West 56th Street, between Sixth Avenue and Seventh Avenue three blocks south of Central Park, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. The building's land lot covers 24,237 square feet (2,251.7 m²) and has a frontage of 225.5 feet (68.7 m) along 56th Street. While the site is 200 feet (61 m) deep, extending south to 55th Street, only a small section of the lot has frontage on 55th Street. The building is directly west of the New York City Center and 125 West 55th Street; the former is a New York City designated landmark at 135 West 55th Street. Immediately to the north are Carnegie Hall, Carnegie Hall Tower, Russian Tea Room, and Metropolitan Tower from west to east. Other nearby buildings include 140 West 57th Street, 130 West 57th Street, and the Parker New York hotel to the northeast, as well as the 55th Street Playhouse to the southwest and 1345 Avenue of the Americas to the southeast. The neighborhood was historically part of an artistic hub that developed around the two blocks of West 57th Street from Sixth Avenue west to Broadway during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, following the opening of Carnegie Hall. Several buildings in the area were constructed as residences for artists and musicians, such as 130 and 140 West 57th Street, the Rodin Studios, and the Osborne Apartments, as well as the demolished Sherwood Studios and Rembrandt. In addition, the area contained the headquarters of organizations such as the American Fine Arts Society, the Lotos Club, and the American Society of Civil Engineers. Just prior to CitySpire's construction, the site was occupied by six vacant lots at 132–158 West 56th Street and one on 137 West 55th Street. These lots were acquired in the 1970s by Richard M. Chapman, who razed the buildings there. ## Architecture CitySpire (also known as CitySpire Center) was designed by Murphy/Jahn and developed by Ian Bruce Eichner. It was constructed by Tishman Realty & Construction, with Robert Rosenwasser Associates as structural engineer. CitySpire is 814 feet (248 m) tall with 75 above-ground levels and two basement stories; the concrete frame reaches a height of 800 feet (240 m). When completed, CitySpire was the second-tallest concrete tower in the United States after the Sears Tower in Chicago. ### Form and facade CitySpire was designed from the beginning as an octagonal tower with wings on the east and west. CitySpire has three setbacks on the east and west they are placed at the 23rd, 46th, and 62nd floors. Most of the building is no more than 80 feet (24 m) wide. Because the building is so narrow, the upper stories sometimes sway during heavy storms. As proposed, the main shaft of the tower was to be clad in stone, while the wings were to be made of glass. The facade is made of Sardinian "luna pearl" that is cut into 13⁄16-inch (21 mm) slabs, measuring about 15 pounds per square foot (73 kg/m²). Each slab is attached to the aluminum curtain wall frame on all sides, supported only by the curtain wall. The stone panels are entirely prefabricated and are insulated with fiberglass panels measuring 2+5⁄8 inches (67 mm) thick, along with neoprene gaskets and silicone caulk. The setbacks at the 46th and 62nd floors were designed with parapets of steel and concrete, which were reduced in size as part of a 1988 lawsuit settlement concerning the building's height. Eichner disliked the parapets; he suggested that residents on the 46th floor "can look out at it and know they're looking at a wall instead of Central Park so that Helmut Jahn can rest easy knowing that his 'artistic integrity' is intact." The roof has a copper-faced dome which, as originally proposed, was supposed to be 13 feet (4.0 m) tall. When it was ultimately installed in 1988, the dome contained eight steel ribs, each measuring 20 feet (6.1 m) long and weighing 700 pounds (320 kg). Each rib consisted of three sections. The dome itself contains louvers and was designed with a green surface. When the dome was constructed, wind created a loud whistling sound when passing through the louvers; this was remedied in 1992 with the removal of alternating panels. Paul Sachner of Architectural Record initially likened the dome to that of the Nebraska State Capitol, while Paul Goldberger of The New York Times said the dome was meant to relate to City Center. ### Structural features The superstructure is made of concrete. Because of CitySpire's mixed-use spaces, it contains nine different structural systems, since a unified grid of columns was infeasible for apartment layouts. Further, because Eichner wanted to maximize views of the surrounding city, the wind-resisting sections of the superstructure had to be placed in the interior. The lower stories, used as offices, were largely designed as a grid of concrete columns, allowing for flexible office layouts. While the lower stories are largely composed of grids of columns, there are also sections of rectangular concrete panels, which are staggered across several levels to create a diagonal wind brace. The upper stories are designed as a "shear wall/open tube" structural system, in which shear walls extend from the elevator core at the center of the tower, connecting to the outer columns. ### Interior CitySpire has a floor area of around 830,000 square feet (77,100 m²), and ten elevators rise the height of the building. Before CitySpire was developed, the site was zoned to only allow a building of around 34 stories without any modifications. Given the size of the lot, this would have provided up to 363,000 square feet (33,700 m²) of space. Eichner obtained unused air rights above City Center, which only occupied a small amount of the maximum space allowed for its lot; this allowed a 60-story tower. On top of this, Eichner was allowed to increase the building's floor area ratio by 20 percent in exchange for renovating City Center. This amounted to 128,000 square feet (11,900 m²) of extra space. These bonuses allowed CitySpire to be more than twice as large as it ordinarily would have been. The interior floor-numbering system skips floors 13 and 25, so there are physically only 73 stories, though the top story is numbered 75. The lowest 22 or 23 floors of the building are for commercial use. There are luxury apartments on the remaining floors, as well as a mechanical story. The building was designed with elaborate details. The attention to detail extended to the elevator buttons, which Jahn redesigned with three buttons to a row when Eichner found two buttons per row to be unpleasing. #### Base A pedestrian arcade between 56th and 55th Streets is included in CitySpire's base as part of its construction. The arcade is one of nine passageways that form 61⁄2 Avenue, a set of full-block passageways from 51st to 57th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues. It was built as a "through-block connection" under the Special Midtown District, created in 1982. The connection itself was not opened until 1997, several years after the building opened; the delay was largely due to the building's foreclosure and other disputes in the early 1990s. The arcade, designed by Brennan Beer Gorman, consists of marble and granite walls as well as a 25-foot (7.6 m) ceiling. The passageway is decorated in an Art Deco-inspired style, with theater posters on the walls. The space has recessed lights on the ceiling and lights on the walls, but there is no seating since the passageway was designed merely for pedestrian movement. The office and residential lobbies are separate from each other. The residential lobby at 150 West 56th Street has a domed ceiling as well as wooden paneling. The office portion of CitySpire has the address 156 West 56th Street. There is also a bar called Carnegie Club (originally Carnegie Bar and Books). The bar, on the ground floor, has a ceiling 25 feet (7.6 m) high with an overhanging mezzanine. A garage and cafe was also included in the base. The building was planned with 305,000 square feet (28,300 m²) of office space. Each of the office stories typically measures 193 by 80 feet (59 by 24 m), with polygonal cutouts at each corner. #### Tower The building was proposed with 355 luxury residential condominiums, but it was completed with 339 or 340 condos. According to the New York City Department of City Planning, there are 340 condominiums in the entire building, of which 337 are residential units. About 100 of the apartments were built with one bedroom, with the rest having multiple bedrooms. Many of the residential units are separated from each other by the building's shear walls. Due to the setbacks on the exterior, floors 47 through 61 typically measure 157 by 80 feet (48 by 24 m), while floors 63 through 69 are an octagon measuring 80 feet across. The apartments at CitySpire vary in size and arrangement, though many of the units contain 20-foot-wide (6.1 m) terraces. For instance, one studio apartment has a living room, kitchen, and terrace. Some of the one-bedroom units also have living and dining rooms with angled walls. In some of the two-bedroom units, there is a foyer with a living/dining room, kitchens, and bedrooms leading off it. There are also duplex units with kitchens, living rooms, and dining rooms on the lower tier, as well as bedrooms on the upper tiers. One of the larger duplexes, on floors 65/66, has four bedrooms; a living/dining area with a library and breakfast area; a family room; and a terrace measuring 44 by 36 feet (13 by 11 m). On upper floors, the units tend to be larger, reaching 2,200 square feet (200 m²) below the penthouse. Eichner originally intended to occupy a penthouse apartment atop CitySpire, but he ended up never living in the unit. The penthouse was instead purchased in 1993 by real estate developer Steven Klar for about \$4.5 million as a "raw space"; it covers floors 72 through 75, though floor 72 is a guest suite. Klar had hired Juan Pablo Molyneux to redesign the penthouse over two and a half years. The penthouse, covering 8,000 square feet (740 m²), has six bedrooms and nine bathrooms, as well as three terraces. The master bedroom takes up an entire story, while the master bathroom has green marble cladding as well as bronze and mahogany fixtures. The penthouse also has a classical-columned foyer, a large dining room with a chandelier, a wine closet with space for 1,000 bottles, and a private elevator. Molyneux personally disliked the design, calling it a "horror", though this was apparently because Molyneux actually never saw the design in person, having been dismissed before the design was completed. When CitySpire was built, it was advertised with amenities such as the SpireCard, a charge account to which each resident could request a luxury service for a fee. It was also advertised with a media room containing a large-screen TV; a lounge with bar; and a business center with stock quote and telex machines. The modern amenities include a party and conference rooms, play area, and fitness center with pool. ## History The neighboring New York City Center had opened in 1924 as the Mecca Temple, a house of worship for the Shriners. The Mecca Temple was acquired by the New York City government in 1943 and became a theater. In 1982, City Center completed a minor renovation to the lobby and orchestra. City Center planned another set of improvements to enlarge stage, storage, and balcony areas. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) designated City Center as a city landmark in 1983; as a result, the commission was required to approve any major alterations to the theater. Concurrently, Bruce Eichner bought Chapman's neighboring site for \$18 million. He also bought a parking garage, whose owner agreed to sell it on the condition a replacement parking garage was built. ### Development #### Planning In May 1984, Eichner announced that he would build a 72-story skyscraper on the site, designed by Murphy/Jahn. The building would contain 22 stories of offices and 49 stories of condominiums. It would be shaped like an octagon with setbacks and a domed roof. A key part of Eichner's development was his proposal to purchase unused air rights above City Center. Eichner would also make improvements to City Center to obtain additional space. The sale was expected to raise \$10 to 14 million for the New York City Opera, New York City Ballet, and City Center's sublessee 55th Street Dance Theater. The proposed air-rights sale received criticism both for its relatively low price and for the fact that it would allow an excessively large building. City Center Tower was one of several high-rise developments planned for the area at the time; Metropolitan Tower and Carnegie Hall Tower were being proposed as well. The air-rights transfers needed the approval of several agencies. In August 1984, the New York City Board of Estimate voted to allow the sale of air rights. The LPC was scheduled to hold a hearing for the proposed sale in November 1984, but an unrelated controversy over another landmark candidate took up all the time allotted for discussing the air-rights sale. The LPC granted the project a "certificate of appropriateness" in January 1985, which allowed the LPC to apply for a special zoning permit from the New York City Planning Commission (CPC) for the air-rights transfer. Several agencies then needed to approve the tower itself. Following objections from members of the Board of Estimate and CPC, some elements of City Center Tower were downsized. The CPC approved the tower in June 1985, followed by the Board of Estimate that August. The building had been approved to a height of about 800 feet (240 m). Though the City Center Tower was to be New York City's tallest residential tower upon its construction, Eichner cited a study that "proved" the top of the tower would not cast shadows on the street. He described the tower as a "quintessential New York skyscraper", compared to the "undistinguished" glass-clad office buildings on Madison and Park Avenues. Eichner received \$157.5 million in construction financing. Both Eichner and his lawyer Howard Horenstein donated several thousand dollars to Mayor Ed Koch, who had voted in favor of the tower. The donations were investigated in an ethics probe in 1987. #### Construction By the time the Board of Estimate had approved City Center Tower, pouring of the concrete slabs was underway. The project was being referred to as CitySpire by mid-1986, when European American Bank leased eight of the office stories. The construction of CitySpire involved controversies over safety. Susan Guszynski of the Joffrey Ballet, a tenant in City Center, wrote a letter to the New York City Department of Buildings (DOB) in late 1986, alleging that three Joffrey staff had been hit by falling concrete during one week that October. The Buildings Department subsequently received four additional complaints of falling objects, including one instance in which a portion of the facade fell from the roof. Neighbors also filed lawsuits claiming that CitySpire's construction had led to debris pileups and various incidents. One neighbor claimed that he received death threats after complaining to the police about cracked windows, while another neighbor was allegedly raped after an attacker climbed into her apartment through CitySpire's scaffolding. Marketing for the residential units started in March 1987, with TV advertisements that featured celebrities such as Dick Cavett, Carol Channing, Lauren Hutton, Robert Joffrey, Lynn Redgrave, and Tommy Tune. Despite this, only 60 of the 340 condos were in contract by that August. The slow sales were attributed to the shortage of small apartments, as well as the tower's location in a traditionally non-residential neighborhood. The advertisements also received complaints for including only white people; the director of the building's marketing team claimed they were just targeting the demographic who was most likely to buy apartments there. Horenstein denied the advertisements were intended to discourage minorities. #### Completion and height controversy The building had topped out by mid-1987. The building, as constructed, exceeded its approved height by either 11 feet (3.4 m) or 14 feet (4.3 m). The difference of 3 feet (0.91 m) was a calculation error from two different methods of measuring height, but the extra 11 feet came from Eichner's decision to add 2 inches (51 mm) of cement to all the floor slabs to stiffen them. The topped-out structure had to undergo a second public review from the Board of Estimate, Manhattan Community Board 5, and the CPC. Eichner voluntarily agreed to halt CitySpire's structural work, though he saw the height overruns as being "of no consequence to anyone". By November 1987, Eichner and city officials were discussing a compromise in which Eichner would give more arts funding but keep the extra height. By the end of 1987, Eichner had sold 164 of the apartments, and some of the commercial space was already occupied. Residential prices at CitySpire had remained relatively low in the wake of Black Monday two months earlier. Community Board 5 officials voted against allowing the extra height in protest of the zoning law. The CPC rejected the additional height that December, saying Eichner could have pursued other options, including lowering ceiling heights, to stay within the 800-foot height limit. CPC chairwoman Sylvia Deutsch rejected Eichner's offer to add unrelated amenities and pay the city extra cash, and she also dismissed complaints from neighbors who opposed the project for unrelated reasons. In April 1988, the city and Eichner tentatively reached a settlement in which Eichner agreed to build 7,200 square feet (670 m²) of dance studios above the pedestrian arcade and reduce some facade details. The agreement, contingent on the dome not being completed, had not been ratified by the CPC or Board of Estimate. Deutsch called the agreement "reasonable"; however, community groups thought it would set a precedent for developers who built past their height limits, and some LPC members specifically opposed the design. Residents of the lower floors were allowed to move into the building by mid-1988, even though the upper stories did not have their occupancy certificate. CitySpire's dome was completed in August 1988, apparently in violation of the settlement. While Community Board 5 had notified the DOB about the illegal work earlier, the dome had been completed by the time the DOB issued a stop-work order. Koch ordered the dome dismantled that November. The ribs were partially removed so CitySpire would only exceed the permitted height by 1.5 feet (0.46 m). City Center filed a lawsuit that month, alleging that Eichner had not renovated the theater as promised. City Center sought an injunction to forbid the DOB from issuing CitySpire a certificate of occupancy for the top twenty stories until the renovations were performed. A New York Supreme Court justice declined to issue the injunction, and the city allowed Eichner to open the 51st through 63rd floors. Community Board 5 "demanded" the city deny CitySpire a special zoning permit for the extra height. The removal of the dome was temporary pending the approval of a zoning variance through the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, which was granted in January 1989. Soon after, the CPC voted to permit the completion of CitySpire's dome in exchange for the dance studios in the base. The Board of Estimate continued to debate over whether the dance studios were an appropriate penalty for Eichner. In March 1989, the Board of Estimate voted 6–5 to allow the dance studios as an appropriate penalty. The height agreement received opposition from city comptroller Harrison J. Goldin, who charged that Eichner was violating the law, and from critics who believed the dance studios, at 21 by 60 feet (6.4 by 18.3 m), were too small. The dome was subsequently damaged in a fire in May 1989, which investigators determined was an arson. Eichner had still not completed renovations at City Center like he had promised, and the building's pedestrian arcade was not open to the public. ### Usage Eichner had sold 280 of the apartments and three-quarters of the office space by early 1989, and the building was completed by 1990. CitySpire's dance studios were supposed to be completed in September 1989, but it was not until mid-1990 that Eichner applied for a permit. Construction on the studios had not even started because, according to Hornstein, the plans had to be approved by several agencies. Eichner still had yet to sell the 50 remaining apartments and the remaining 20 percent of commercial space. Ten of these apartments were in the top stories that could not be completed until the studios were finished. #### Noise pollution and bankruptcy Shortly after CitySpire's completion, Eichner was concurrently negotiating construction loans with his lenders, which included Citibank and European American Bank. He was also delinquent on \$3.7 million of tax payments, which the city sued that July to recover. In October 1990, European American Bank challenged the collateral behind \$50 million worth of construction loans on the building. The next month, the bank foreclosed on the loans. That December, the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) fined CitySpire for noise violations, making CitySpire the first building to be individually cited by the DEP for noise pollution. The DEP had received hundreds of complaints about a loud whistling noise that was audible several blocks away; the noise was caused by wind blowing through louvers on the dome. Neighbors reported being kept awake by the noise. Monroe Price opined that "the community should attempt to understand what the building is trying to say", while Progressive Architecture said: "In a less restrictive era, we might look forward to developers' plans for 'The Wind Chime Centre' or 'One Kazoo Plaza'." At a hearing in February 1991, Judge Gerald Denaro of New York City's Environmental Control Board ordered a study on the noise coming from the dome. The building faced a fine of up to \$880 if it was found guilty of whistling. West 56th Street Association, the building's legal owner, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection at the end of that month. The association, a limited partnership where Eichner was the general partner, faced lawsuits from both European American Bank and Bank of Nova Scotia. The association had also faced a receivership proceeding, as it had also failed to pay the condominium apartments' common charges. The bankruptcy proceeding absolved Eichner from paying \$11 million in unpaid taxes, but the building's residential sales office had to shut down that year. In April 1991, Denaro ruled that CitySpire was guilty of violating the noise ordinance and fined the managing agent \$220. A federal judge ruled that September that the city's noise code was too vague to be enforced, leading the New York City Council to draft a law to more strictly define noise. By May 1992, the building's board of managers said the whistling would be fixed within several weeks. Bankruptcy proceedings, meanwhile, had been stalled over an unpaid \$324,000 capital gains tax. A reorganization plan for the tower was finally approved in September 1992, eighteen months after the building's owner had filed for bankruptcy. The roof noise was stopped that October, and the receivers paid the city \$2.1 million instead of renovating City Center's studios as a penalty. The receivers also sought to be exempted from their obligation to build studios above the pedestrian arcade, which was still unfinished. #### Late 1990s to present Euram, a subsidiary of European American Bank's parent ABN AMRO, took over the residential section and renovated 75 vacant units. The Bank of Nova Scotia rebranded the commercial section as Midland Tower. Euram started marketing the vacant apartments in May 1993; ten of the units had been sold within a month, and all the condos were sold by the following year. Eichner continued to maintain offices at CitySpire. Although the financial issues and noise complaints had been resolved, the studios and arcade, which had been a compromise for CitySpire's height, had still not been completed by 1995. The arcade was strewn with litter and blocked off with razor wire and wooden panels, and CitySpire's owners planned to renovate it for use. The owners planned to scrap the studios above the arcade, instead creating additional rehearsal space in City Center itself. Around 1996, Joseph Neumann and Credit Suisse First Boston acquired CitySpire for \$38 million. The building had been offered for \$50 million, but Neumann and First Boston were able to buy the building for less after beating a competing bid from Henry Elghanayan. At the time, the building owed \$1.9 million in taxes to the city government. The office owners (composed of First Boston and external investors), along with the residential condo owners, bore the cost of the pedestrian arcade's \$1 million renovation. CitySpire's pedestrian arcade was finally completed in late 1997. Upon the arcade's completion, David W. Dunlap wrote for The New York Times that it had taken seven years between the authorization of the first transcontinental railroad and the laying of its golden spike, but it had taken twelve years between the arcade's approval and its opening. The arcade's opening completed the set of walkways from 51st to 57th Street. In addition, some of the office space was converted into "prebuilt" offices. The office stories were owned by Singapore government investment fund GIC by 2001. GIC leased space to Windels Marx, GE Capital, and The Recording Academy. That year, Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley provided a \$900 million mortgage to GIC for CitySpire's office stories and some of GIC's other properties. The office section of CitySpire was acquired in 2004 by Tishman Speyer, who bought a 51 percent majority stake. GIC continued to hold a 49 percent stake. In 2012, Tishman Speyer and an unidentified pension fund acquired CitySpire and several other buildings as part of a portfolio valued at \$1.6 billion. The same year, Douglas Elliman marketed the penthouse apartment for \$100 million, which would have made it the most expensive residence in New York City had it been sold at that price. After receiving few offers, the penthouse's owner withdrew the unit from the market and offered it for sale himself, only to withdraw it again in 2015. At that point, the majority of CitySpire's residences, over sixty percent, were being used as pieds-a-terre rather than as primary residences. As of 2021, CitySpire's commercial occupants include New York Road Runners, Windels Marx, and Brown Shoe Company. ## Critical reception When CitySpire was being planned, Paul Goldberger praised Jahn for including design elements inspired by both City Center and earlier New York City skyscrapers. However, he said the design was "only partially successful in terms of its relationship to the City Center building itself", especially as both buildings' domes were rarely visible simultaneously. Harry Berkowitz of Newsday described the project as one of several designed by architects who "want little to do with the idea of adjusting to a neighborhood". Paul M. Sachner wrote for Architectural Record that the plans "exemplify the 'high-tech historicist' quality" of Murphy/Jahn's work, but he said "many question the appropriateness of a 70-story building" on such a narrow site. By the time CitySpire was completed, Goldberger believed it looked weaker than the neighboring Carnegie Hall and Metropolitan towers, even though CitySpire had looked better in conceptual depictions. CitySpire, Carnegie Hall Tower, and Metropolitan Tower became known as the "Tuning Fork Trio" because of their shape and proximity to each other. John McPhee of The New Yorker wrote in 2003 that the buildings "look like three chopsticks incongruously holding a cocktail blini", as they surrounded the small Russian Tea Room. CitySpire's construction also prompted discussion on the appropriateness of transferring air rights from city landmarks, such as City Center, to raise money for landmarks' upkeep. New York Landmarks Conservancy executive director Laurie Beckelman said that "we save [city landmarks] by putting them out of context" in allowing the transfers, and Community Board 5 district manager Joan E. Ramer said that "selling off a precious city resource without understanding the ramifications is simply irresponsible". Former city planning commissioner Martin Gallent said the zoning exceptions allowed midtown Manhattan to be more "overly dense" than it already was. After the height compromise in 1988, Goldberger said, "What is to prevent another developer from adding 22 feet to his building and offering to build two dance studios?" Goldberger also referred to CitySpire as a "case of the city selling its birthright for a mess of pottage". ## See also - List of tallest buildings in New York City - List of tallest buildings in the United States

Gateway of India

Landmark monument in Mumbai, India

The Gateway of India is an arch-monument built in the early 20th century in the city of Mumbai (Bombay), India. It was erected to commemorate the landing of King-Emperor George V, the first British monarch to visit India, in December 1911 at Strand Road near Wellington Fountain. The foundation stone was laid in March 1913 for a monument built in the Indo-Islamic style, inspired by elements of 16th-century Gujarati architecture. The final design of the monument by architect George Wittet was sanctioned only in 1914, and construction was completed in 1924. The structure is a memorial arch made of basalt, which is 26 metres (85 feet) high, with an architectural resemblance to a triumphial arch as well as Gujarati architecture of the time. After its construction, the Gateway was used as a symbolic ceremonial entrance to India for important colonial personnel. The Gateway is also the monument from where the last British troops left India in 1948, following Indian independence. It is located on the waterfront at an angle, opposite the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel and overlooks the Arabian Sea. Today, the monument is synonymous with the city of Mumbai, and is amongst its prime tourist attractions. The gateway is also a gathering spot for locals, street vendors, and photographers soliciting services. It holds significance for the local Jewish community as it has been the spot for Hanukkah celebrations, with the lighting of the menorah, since 2003. There are five jetties located at the Gateway, of which two are used for commercial ferry operations. The Gateway was the site of a terror attack in August 2003, when there was a bomb blast in a taxi parked in front of it. Access to the gateway was restricted after people congregated at its premises following the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, in which the Taj Hotel opposite the gateway and other locations in its vicinity were targeted. In March 2019, the Maharashtra state government proposed a four-step plan to develop the location for the convenience of tourists, following a direction issued by the state governor in February 2019. ## History and significance The Gateway of India was built to commemorate the arrival of George V, Emperor of India and Mary of Teck, Empress consort, in India at Apollo Bunder, Mumbai (Bombay) on 2 December 1911 prior to the Delhi Durbar of 1911; it was the first visit of a British monarch to India. However, they only got to see a cardboard model of the monument, as construction did not begin until 1915. The foundation stone for the Gateway was laid on 31 March 1913 by then Governor of Bombay, Sir George Sydenham Clarke with the final design of George Wittet for the Gateway sanctioned in August 1914. Before the Gateway's construction, Apollo Bunder used to serve a native fishing ground. Between 1915 and 1919 work continued at the Apollo Bunder to reclaim the land on which the Gateway was to be built, along with the construction of a sea wall. Gammon India had undertaken construction work for the gateway. Its foundations were completed in 1920 while construction was finished in 1924. The Gateway was opened to the public on 4 December 1924 by then Viceroy, Rufus Isaacs, 1st Marquess of Reading. Following Indian independence, the last British troops to leave India, the First Battalion of the Somerset Light Infantry, passed through the Gateway with a 21-gun salute, as part of a ceremony on 28 February 1948, signalling the end of the British Raj. N. Kamala, professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, refers to the Gateway as a "jewel in the crown" and a "symbol of conquest and colonisation". The monument commemorates the legacy of British colonial rule, namely the first visit of a British monarch to India and its use as an entry point for prominent colonial personnel into British India. Today the Gateway is synonymous with the city of Mumbai. Since its construction, the gateway has remained amongst the first structures visible to visitors arriving in Bombay by the sea. Since 2003, the Gateway has been the location for the local Jewish community to light the menorah for Hanukkah celebrations every year. This ritual was started by Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg of the chabad in Mumbai (located in Nariman House). It also became a site for prayers following the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks which targeted, amongst others, Nariman House. Rabbi Holtzberg lost his life in the 2008 terror attacks. ## Design and architecture It consists of four turrets and an arched entrance. The exterior features intricate busts, while the hinder facade has a more simple design. The Gateway is a major corner in Mumbai and it's frequently used as a symbol of the mega city. The structural design of the Gateway of India is constituted of a big bow, with a height of 26m. The monument is erected in yellow basalt and indissoluble concrete. The structural plan of Gateway of India is aimed at the Indo- Saracenic fashion. One can also discover traces of Muslim architectural styles incorporated into the structure of the grandiose hall. The Gateway's arch has a height of 26 metres (85 feet) with its central dome being 15 metres (49 feet) in diameter. The monument is built of yellow basalt and reinforced concrete. The stones were sourced locally while the perforated screens were brought in from Gwalior. The monument faces towards the Mumbai Harbour. There are four turrets on the structure of the gateway, and there are steps constructed behind the arch of the Gateway which lead to the Arabian Sea. The monument features intricate stone latticework (also known as the jali work). The Scottish architect, George Wittet combined indigenous architectural elements with elements of 16th-century architecture of Gujarat. The harbour front was realigned in order to make an esplanade, which would sweep down to the centre of the town. On each side of the arch, there are large halls with the capacity to hold 600 people. The cost of the construction was ₹21 lakh (US\$26,000), borne by the then government. Due to a paucity of funds, the approach road was never built. Hence, the Gateway stands at an angle to the road leading up to it. In February 2019, Seagate Technology and CyArk embarked on a mission to digitally record and preserve the Gateway, by digital scanning and archiving of the monument. The images and data collected will be used to make photo-real three dimensional models. This is a part of CyArk's international programme for digitally preserving heritage monuments. It involves aerial surveys conducted with terrestrial laser scanning (LiDAR), drones, and photogrammetry exercises. The drawings and three-dimensional models will inform any future reconstruction works. ## Location and jetties The Gateway stands at an angle, opposite to the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel, which was built in 1903. In the grounds of the gateway, opposite the monument, stands the statue of Shivaji, the Maratha warrior-hero who fought against the Mughal Empire to establish the Maratha Empire in the 17th century. The statue was unveiled on 26 January 1961 on the occasion of India's Republic Day. It replaced a bronze statue of King-Emperor George V which stood at its place. In 2016, Mid-Day reported that the George V statue is kept locked in a tin shed belonging to the Public Works Department, behind Elphinstone College, in Fort, Mumbai. The George V statue was sculpted by G. K. Mhatre, who has over 300 sculptures to his credit in India. Hemant Pathare, Mhatre's great-grandson and Sandeep Dahisarkar, a historian, researcher, and academician, have made efforts to relocate the George V statue to a museum, the latter of whom has reasserted the statue as swadeshi art. The other statue in the locality of the gateway is that of Swami Vivekananda, an Indian monk who is credited as a key figure in the introduction of Indian philosophies such as Vedanta and Yoga to the west, and with bringing Hinduism to the status of a major world religion during the late 19th century. There are five jetties located around the monument. The first jetty is exclusive to the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, while the second and third are used for commercial ferry operations, the fourth one is closed, and the fifth is exclusive to the Royal Bombay Yacht Club. The second and third jetties are the starting point for tourists to reach the Elephanta Caves, which are fifty minutes away by boat from the monument. Other routes from the gateway include ferry rides to Rewas, Mandwa, and Alibaug, while cruises also operate from the gateway. These ferries reportedly carry an overload of daily passengers. The Mumbai Port Trust licenses vessels to use the gateway while the Maharashtra Maritime Board issues fitness certificates to them. ## Tourism and development The Gateway is amongst the prime tourist attractions in Mumbai. The Gateway is a protected monument in Maharashtra under the aegis of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). It is a regular gathering place for locals, street vendors, and photographers. In 2012, the Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation moved the Elephanta Festival of Music and Dance from its original location at Elephanta Caves — where it had been celebrated for 23 years — to the Gateway, due to the increased capacity offered by the venue. The Gateway can host 2,000 to 2,500 people, whereas Elephanta Caves could host only 700 to 800. By 2012, the Bombay Municipal Corporation increased the plaza area around the Gateway for pedestrians by restoring the area at a cost of ₹5 crores. It involved the cutting down of trees, reducing the garden area, replacing toilets, and closing the car park. The redevelopment led to a dispute between the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) and the Urban Design Research Institute, and the government was criticised for poor project implementation which critics alleged had failed to conform to the original plans. In January 2014, Philips Lighting India, in association with the Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation, undertook the expenditure of ₹2 crores to illuminate the gateway, by installing an LED lighting system with sixteen million shades. Philips used products from its Philips Color Kinetics and LED street lighting, and did not receive any branding for the illumination project in which 132 light points were created, which were reportedly sixty-percent more energy efficient than the old lighting system. In August 2014, the state Directorate of Archaeology and Museums had proposed conservation of the Gateway by the ASI, after noting deterioration caused by saline deposits from the sea. An estimate of costs was to be prepared and approved by the ASI. The last such conservation had been undertaken twenty years earlier. An independent study had earlier been conducted at the Gateway, between June 2001 and May 2002, aimed at informing future conservation of the monument understanding the degree of colour changes of stones owing to seasonal weather conditions and saturated colour of minerals. The study found the stones of the monument to appear darker during monsoon than during other seasons while the colour change in the inner portions of the monument rises with variations of seasonal humidity and temperature, given they do not face the sea, rainwater, or sunlight. It concluded with the finding that the alteration degree and overall colour change in the inner portions are higher than those in the outer portions of the monument. In 2015, the Maharashtra Maritime Board and the Maharashtra Coastal Zone Management Authority approved a proposal to construct a passenger jetty near Apollo Bunder and a promenade between the Gateway and the Bombay Presidency Radio Club. The project was aimed at reducing crowding at the Gateway by closing all its jetties and refocusing the location solely as a tourist attraction. The Gateway has interested companies and corporate houses such as the Tata Group, the RPG Group, and the JSW Group, who have expressed their wish to maintain the Gateway and enhance its facilities. This happened after the state government identified 371 heritage sites under its Maharashtra Vaibhav State Protected Monuments Adoption Scheme (MVSPMAS). Under this scheme, companies and corporates can adopt heritage monuments and give out funds for their maintenance, to satisfy their corporate social responsibility. The scheme also provides sponsors with the opportunity to generate revenue by selling their rights to feature the heritage monuments in commercials and advertisements. Other revenue-generating opportunities include the sale of entry tickets to the site and charging for the use of facilities. In February 2019, the Maharashtra state government initiated a plan to restore, clean, and beautify the monument. A project plan was to be prepared in a month. The state governor, C. Vidyasagar Rao, directed the Bombay Municipal Corporation commissioner and architects to submit a project plan in a month on measures to be taken for the purpose. In the same month, chemical conservation was proposed by the state archaeology department noting blackening of and algae on stones and surface cracks. Structural stability audit had last been conducted eight years earlier with plant growth on the monument removed annually. In March 2019 the state government agreed on a four-stage plan to manage tourists visiting the site. This involved the physical conservation of the monument, the installation of a sound-and-light show, the relocation of the anchorage around the monument and a streamlined, ticketed entry system. The plan followed UNESCO guidance for protected heritage sites and took into account the views of interested parties, including the Directorate of Museums and Archaeology, which has the monument within its purview; the Mumbai Port Trust, which is entrusted with the land; and the Bombay Municipal Corporation, which controls the location. The task of coming up with a suitable management plan was delegated to architects. In August 2019, Snapchat extended its Landmarker features to the Gateway by which users can superimpose augmented reality experiences on top of their pictures of the Gateway. ## Events and incidents The Gateway was the location of a terror attack on 25 August 2003, when there was a bomb blast in front of it. The force of the explosion, from a bomb in a taxi parked near the Taj Mahal Hotel, reportedly threw bystanders into the sea. On 13 August 2005, a mentally unstable man stabbed two young girls from Manipur at the gateway premises. On New Year's Eve, 2007 a woman was groped by a mob at the gateway. Following the November 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, which targeted the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel opposite to the Gateway, among other locations, crowds of people including news television reporters and cameramen congregated at the Gateway premises. Subsequently, public access to the area around was restricted. Fearing further attacks on the Gateway and on the Elephanta caves, the state government proposed the closure of all of the jetties at the Gateway and their replacement with two new piers, to be built near the Bombay Presidency Radio Club. In response to the terror attacks, a solidarity march was held at the Gateway premises on 3 December 2008. In February 2019, protests were organised at the premises in the wake of the Pulwama attack. In January 2020, the Gateway became a site of spontaneous protests that commenced overnight, under the name of "Occupy Gateway", in the aftermath of the attack on Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. Protestors were later relocated from the Gateway premises to Azad Maidan in Mumbai to ease the movement of traffic and people. ## In the media The Mumbai-based video game Mumbai Gullies is expected to feature the Gateway of India in its fictional map. Several films, such as Bhai Bhai (1956), Gateway of India (1957), Shararat (1959), Hum Hindustani (1960), Mr. X in Bombay (1964), Sadhu aur Shaitan (1968), Ansoo aur Muskaan (1970), Andaz (1971),Chhoti si Baat (1976) and Don (1978) have been shot at the Gateway of India. ## Gallery

Yasser Usman

Indian television journalist

Yasser Usman (born 1980s) is an Indian television journalist, news presenter, and biographer. Born in Moradabad, Yasser Usman began his career by working as a television presenter and was awarded the prestigious Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award for his contribution. Usman has been recognised by the media as one of India's most successful film biographers. As a biographer, Usman's meticulously researched books primarily focus on the great cinematic journeys of stars, delving not only into their stardom but also their turbulent personal lives and tragic downfalls. His recent book is Guru Dutt An Unfinished Story. Before this book, Usman wrote the Untold trilogy, a series of books that contain the word "untold" in their titles, started with Rajesh Khanna: The Untold Story of India's First Superstar (2014), which marked his debut as a biographer, and concluded with Sanjay Dutt: The Crazy Untold Story of Bollywood's Bad Boy (2018). Along with Rekha: The Untold Story (2016), Rajesh Khanna was nominated for the Crossword Book Award. ## Early life Yasser Usman was born in the 1980s in Moradabad.^:xii His father, M. Usman, is a chemistry professor and college principal; his mother, Haseeba Khanam, is a philanthropist. After finishing his schooling in several cities of Uttar Pradesh, he moved to Delhi to attend the University of Delhi and the Ramjas College, graduating with a Master of Science degree in environmental studies at the latter. He subsequently joined the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, training as a journalist for radio and television. ## Career ### Journalism He started a career with the television company B.A.G. Films, and followed it by working for Channel 7; he produced a reality sports show titled Speedster, hosted the film review show Premier 7 and wrote-directed Raaz: Forensic Files Se, a television show on forensic science in India. After resigning from Channel 7, Usman worked on an investigative show, Benaqab, and served as the creative consultant for The Tony B Show, a talk show aired on Channel V in 2006. Usman joined Star News (later renamed ABP News) in 2007, in which he specialized in the non-fiction programming part; he directed several documentaries about sports and biographies of political figures and film personalities. In addition to working as a film critic and commentator, he hosted ABP News' digital show Cinema Uncut with Yasser Usman. In 2012, Usman won the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award for his contribution to film and television journalism. In 2016, the website Filmymonkey, on which he served as the founding editor, was launched. ### Author In 2014, Usman made his debut as an author with Rajesh Khanna: The Untold Story of India's First Superstar, a Penguin Books biography about the actor and politician Rajesh Khanna. The writing started when he was in Mumbai to record a show for ABP News, at the same time he got to know about Khanna's death in 2012. Vijay Lokapally from The Hindu labelled it as an exception tribute to Khanna, but Gautam Chintamani of India Today observed that Usman did not detail much of his films. Following the publication, Usman said he received handwritten letters and emails from Khanna's fans, saying that they were surprised about Khanna's loneliness, motivating him to research other popular film stars' lives.^:ix Usman's next book, Rekha: The Untold Story, is about the actress Rekha. The second biography of the actress after Mohan Deep's Eurekha! (1999), Usman's one-year research for this work included collecting archives of magazine issues about Rekha and interviewing her contemporaries, around 40 to 50 people.^:x–xii The Asian Age's Nayare Ali wrote it as "a book that anyone who is a fan or even fascinated by the star, would be tempted to read". Rohini Nair of Firstpost saw the book reveals nothing "untold" about the actress, and felt Usman relied entirely on the existing sources. Sowmya Rajendran from The News Minute wrote positively of the book's prose, calling it "fast-paced and lucidly written with plenty of spice, making it a perfect airplane read". Usman's other two books: Sanjay Dutt: The Crazy Untold Story of Bollywood's Bad Boy and Guru Dutt: An Unfinished Story, also garnered a generally positive reception. Published in 2018, the former details the life of the actor Sanjay Dutt and is the last of his Untold trilogy, reflecting the use of the word "untold" in the title of Usman's first three books. It was controversial after Dutt decried that the book was published without his authorisation. Mint's Sanjukta Sharma praised Usman's deep research and his neutral point of view, and Film Companion listed it as one of the "top seven books on cinema of the year". Guru Dutt: An Unfinished Story, released in 2021 by Simon & Schuster, describes the life of the filmmaker Guru Dutt. It was after watching Dutt's films at the 2004 Osian's Cinefan Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema when Usman was motivated to write about him. While researching for the book, Usman was met with the lack of free-domain archives of Dutt's interviews. Writing for The Hindu, Mini Anthikad Chhibber appreciated the book's remembrances by Dutt's sister, the artist Lalita Lajmi. In his review for Business Standard, the reviewer Chintan Girish Modi wrote, "Guru Dutt: An Unfinished Story is a moving account of a creative genius who was influenced by Hollywood melodrama, German expressionism, Bhakti poetry, and the Bauls of Bengal." Sathya Saran of The New Indian Express, however, gave a scathing review. The Hindustan Times featured the book in their "The Most Interesting Reads of the Week" listing, and The Telegraph included it in their year-end "Page Turners of 2021". Asian Voice (London) praised the book saying, "a mirror that reflects the hard-hitting realities of cinema ever since its inception. It is a narrative that shatters the myths, the rose-tinted glasses with which we as viewers look up to the film industry." ## Reception Yasser Usman has been recognised by the media as one of India's most successful film biographers and gained a reputation for his writings that primarily focus on what is called the "dark side" of Bollywood. All of his books are unauthorised biographies; writing for The Telegraph in 2018, "However, 'unauthorised' doesn't mean 'irresponsible'. It only means I was going to have a harder time piecing together the narrative." This has once led him to controversy after his book on Sanjay Dutt was published when Dutt criticised Usman for not asking for his permission to write the book. Usman's books on Rajesh Khanna and Rekha were nominated for the Crossword Book Award in the biography category.

Agapemonites

Christian religious group in England from 1846 to 1956

The Agapemonites or Community of The Son of Man was a Christian religious group or sect that existed in England from 1846 to 1956. It was named from the Greek: agapemone meaning "abode of love". The Agapemone community was founded by the Reverend Henry Prince in Spaxton, Somerset. The sect also built a church in Upper Clapton, London, and briefly had bases in Stoke-by-Clare in Suffolk, Brighton and Weymouth. The ideas of the community were based on the theories of various German religious mystics and its primary object was the spiritualisation of the matrimonial state. The Church of England had dismissed Prince earlier in his career for his radical teachings. The Agapemonites predicted the imminent return of Jesus Christ. According to newspaper accounts, Prince's successor, John Hugh Smyth-Pigott, declared himself Jesus Christ's reincarnation. The Agapemone community consisted mostly of wealthy unmarried women. Both Prince and Smyth-Pigott took many spiritual brides. Later investigations have shown that these "brides" were not solely spiritual and that some produced illegitimate children. In 1860, Prince lost a lawsuit brought on behalf of Louisa Nottidge by the Nottidge family and the group vanished from the public eye. It finally closed in 1956 when the last member died. ## Henry James Prince Henry James Prince (1811–1899) studied medicine at Guy's Hospital, obtained his qualifications in 1832 and was appointed medical officer to the General Hospital in Bath, his native city. Compelled by ill health to abandon his profession, he entered himself in 1837 as a student at St David's College, Lampeter (now the Lampeter campus of the University of Wales Trinity Saint David), where he gathered about him a band of earnest religious enthusiasts known as the Lampeter Brethren. The vice principal of the college contacted the Bishop of Bath and Wells who, in 1846, installed Prince as the curate of Charlinch in Somerset, where he had sole charge during the illness and absence of the rector, Samuel Starkey. Attendances at the church were small until, during one of the services, Prince acted as if he was possessed, throwing himself around the church. Congregations grew each week as the "possession" was repeated. The congregation was then divided with separate services for men and women. Subsequently, he separated them again into sinners and the righteous, the latter of which generally included females who were wealthy. The bishop was summoned to investigate the practices. By that time, Prince had contracted his first "spiritual marriage" and had persuaded himself that he had been absorbed into the personality of God and become a visible embodiment of the Holy Spirit. During his illness, Reverend Starkey read one of his curate's sermons, and was not only "cured" forthwith, but embraced his strange doctrines. Together they procured many conversions in the countryside and the neighbouring towns. In the end the rector was deprived of his living and Prince was defrocked. Together with a few disciples they started the Charlinch Free Church, which had a very brief existence, meeting in a supportive farmer's barn. Prince used money inherited on the death of his first wife, Martha, to marry Julia Starkey, the sister of the rector. They all moved to Stoke-by-Clare in Suffolk where Prince started again to build a congregation, which grew over the subsequent one to two years. The Bishop of Ely then expelled them. Prince opened Adullam Chapel, which was also known as Cave Adullam, in the North Laine area of Brighton. Meanwhile, Starkey established himself at Weymouth. Their chief success lay in the latter town, and Prince soon moved there. ## Followers A number of followers, estimated by Prince at 500 but by his critics at one fifth of the number, were gathered together, and it was given out by "Beloved" or "The Lamb" (the names by which the Agapemonites designated their leader) that his disciples must divest themselves of their possessions and throw them into the common stock. This was done, even by the poor, all of whom looked forward to the speedy end of the present dispensation and were content, for the short remainder of this world, to live in common and, while not repudiating earthly ties, to treat them as purely spiritual. With the money thus obtained the house at Spaxton that was to become the "Abode of Love" was enlarged and furnished luxuriously, and the three Nottidge sisters, who contributed £6,000 each, were immediately married to three of Prince's nearest disciples. Agnes, the eldest of the Nottidge sisters, objected to the spiritual marriage which entailed a celibate life and, as one writer reports, became pregnant by another member of the community; however, it is unlikely that she committed adultery because her husband never accused her, and she later gained sole custody of their child in 1850 after proving herself of good moral character before a court. Agnes wrote to her younger sister Louisa Nottidge warning her not to come to Spaxton. Despite this Louisa travelled to Somerset to join them. Her mother Emily feared the spiritual and financial influence that Prince had established over her daughters. Emily instructed her son Edmund, her nephew Edward Nottidge, and her son-in-law, Frederick Ripley, to travel down to Somerset and to rescue her unmarried daughter, Louisa after her arrival. The three men succeeded in removing Louisa against her will in November 1846, and imprisoned her in 12 Woburn Place, a villa by Regents Park. Following Louisa's persistent claims regarding the divinity of Henry Prince, her mother enlisted medical aid and had Louisa certified insane and then placed her in Moorcroft House Asylum, Hillingdon. Her treatment and forced incarceration in the asylum have remained of interest with respect to the rights of psychiatric patients; Dr Arthur Stillwell, the presiding physician, made notes on Louisa's condition and treatment, recorded in The Lancet. Louisa escaped from the asylum in January 1848, travelling across London to meet the Reverend William Cobbe from The Agapemone at a hotel in Cavendish Square, but was recaptured two days later at Paddington railway station. Cobbe alerted the Commissioners in Lunacy, whose report by Bryan Procter led to her release in May 1848. Louisa then sued her brother, cousin, and brother-in-law, Frederick Ripley, for abduction and false imprisonment in Nottidge v. Ripley and Another (1849); the trial was reported daily in The Times newspaper. Louisa Nottidge returned to Spaxton and spent the rest of her life as one of the Agapemonites. In 1860 Louisa's brother, Ralph Nottidge, sued Prince to recoup the money that Louisa had given him as a result of his undue influence over her, in the case of Nottidge v. Prince (1860). The Nottidges won the case, with costs. In 1856, a few years after the establishment of the “Abode of Love”, Prince and Zoe Patterson, one of his virginal female followers, engaged in public ceremonial sexual intercourse on a billiard table in front of a large audience. The scandal led to the secession of some of his most faithful friends, who were unable any longer to endure what they regarded as the amazing mixture of blasphemy and immorality offered for their acceptance. The most prominent of those who remained received such titles as the "Anointed Ones", the "Angel of the Last Trumpet", the "Seven Witnesses" and so forth. ## Spaxton Extensive building work was undertaken to accommodate members and followers at Four Forks in Spaxton, to which Prince and his followers moved in the summer of 1846. Behind 15-foot (4.6 m) high walls were built a 20-bedroom house and attached chapel, as well as a gazebo, stables, and cottages, all set within landscaped gardens. The buildings were designed by William Cobbe. The buttressed chapel, with its pinnacles and stained glass, was completed in 1845; today, together with the attached house, it is a Grade II listed building. In 1899, Prince died at the age of 88. His followers buried Prince in the grounds of the chapel, with his coffin positioned vertically so that he would be standing on the day of his resurrection. In the early 20th century, a number of houses (some in the Arts and Crafts style) were built at Four Forks by members of the Agapemonites, including Joseph Morris and his daughter Violet. Since closure of the community, the chapel has been used as a studio for the production of children's television programmes, including Trumpton and Camberwick Green. The complex of buildings became known as Barford Gables and was put on the market in 1997. The chapel received planning permission for conversion into a residential house and was put on the market again in 2004. ## Upper Clapton Between 1892 and 1895 the Agapemonites built the Church of the Ark of the Covenant, Upper Clapton, London. It was designed by Joseph Morris (and his sons and daughters, some of whom lived with the sect) in a Gothic style. Although it is fairly conventional in floor plan, the outside of the church is a riot of statuary and symbolism. The main doorways sport large carvings of angels and the four evangelists symbolised by a man, an eagle, a bull and a lion. The same four figures, cast in bronze, look out over the four quarters of the Earth from the base of the steeple. The two flanking weather vanes show a certain symbolic debt to William Blake's Jerusalem depicting, as they do, a fiery chariot and a sheaf of arrows (presumably of desire), while the main steeple is clearly surmounted by a spear. The stained glass windows, designed by noted children's book illustrator Walter Crane, and made by J. S. Sparrow, betray the unconventional nature of the sect as they illustrate the 'true station of womankind'. The church was abandoned after 1956, used by a splinter group, and now is used by the Georgian Orthodox Church who have renamed it as the Cathedral of the Nativity of our Lord. ## John Hugh Smyth-Pigott After Prince died in 1899 he was replaced by the Reverend John Hugh Smyth-Pigott. Around 1890, Smyth-Pigott again started leading meetings of the community and recruited 50 young female followers to supplement the ageing population of Agapemonites. He took Ruth Anne Preece as his second wife and she had three children, named Glory, Power and Life. By 1902 his fame had spread as far as India, from where Mirza Ghulam Ahmad warned him of his false teachings and made a death prophecy against him in a letter written in November 1902, stating that should Smyth-Pigott refuse to repent from his claims to divinity, then he would die within the lifetime of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. Also adding that should Smyth-Pigott not die within his lifetime, then this would falsify Mirza Ghulam's claim to messiahship. Along with the cited letter, Mirza Ghulam also separately announced the prophecy he received about Smyth-Pigott in 1902. This was recorded in the 'Tadhkirah'-a collection of his dreams, visions and revelations. Despite this prophecy, Smyth-Pigott continued to claim to be God, both during the life of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, and after his death. Cited are two August 1905 newspaper clippings from the Auckland Star and The Cambrian detailing separate eyewitness reports of both Smyth-Pigott claiming to be God and his followers still openly preaching his divinity. Similarly, following Mirza Ghulam's death in 1908, Smyth-Pigott once again claimed to be God in 1909 during his inhibition by the Bishop of Bath and Wells, as recorded in the Nottingham Evening Post of March 1927. The house which may have belonged to Smyth-Pigott in St John's Wood was visited by John Betjeman in his film Metro-land. It is built in the neo-gothic style. It is currently the home of the television presenter Vanessa Feltz and was previously the home of Charles Saatchi. Following Smyth-Pigott's death in 1927, the sect gradually declined until the last member, Ruth, died in 1956. Her funeral in 1956 was the only time when outsiders were admitted to the chapel. Smyth-Pigott's grand daughter, Margaret Campbell, recalled that her grandmother (Ruth Preece) had warned her that there were many stories made up about Smyth-Pigott but that he was a 'good man'. Campbell argued that Smyth-Pigott, or Beloved as he was known, did not have affairs although he did have two bigamous wives. She claimed that both wives were happy with the arrangement (one being older and unable to have children) and that the sect had to be viewed as of its time, emerging shortly after religious emancipation in the 1830s. It allowed many rich women an alternative lifestyle to their other options of governess or wife and they lived in luxury at the Agapemone in Somerset until their death. She recalled growing up at the cult as a very happy experience in an interview to the Henley Standard in 2016, shortly before her death. Campbell argued that Beloved had once given a sermon in which he said, 'Christ is no longer here (pointing skywards) but here (pointing to his chest),' thereby expounding the central Christian doctrine of Christ within every Christian and that this had been twisted by the media for their own aims. Kate Barlow deftly dispels rumours of a 'revolving stage of virgins' as described by one newspaper at the time as myth in her memoir 'The Abode of Love' and details many interesting aspects of the cult such as its own signature tea served at 4pm every day. ## Books about the sect The Abode of Love by Aubrey Menen – "an appallingly inaccurate popular account" according to one review – is a novelisation of the history of the Agapemonites under Prince's leadership. In 2006 Smyth-Pigott's granddaughter, Kate Barlow, published an account of life as a child with her family in the sect. The book includes family photographs and details of conversations she had as a child with the then elderly sect members.

Treehouse of Horror III

"Treehouse of Horror III" is the fifth episode of the fourth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on October 29, 1992. The third annual Treehouse of Horror episode, it features segments in which Homer buys Bart an evil talking doll, Homer is a giant ape which is captured by Mr. Burns in a parody of the 1933 version of King Kong, and Bart and Lisa inadvertently cause zombies to attack Springfield. The episode was written by Al Jean, Mike Reiss, Jay Kogen, Wallace Wolodarsky, Sam Simon, and Jon Vitti, and directed by Carlos Baeza. ## Plot The episode's wraparound segment shows the Simpson family having a Halloween party for the children of Springfield. Lisa, Grampa, and Bart each tell a horror story. In Lisa's story, "Clown Without Pity", Homer buys a cursed Krusty the Clown doll as a last-minute birthday present for Bart. After the doll makes numerous attempts on Homer's life, he captures the doll, locks it in a suitcase, and drops it in a "Bottomless Pit". Returning home, Homer is ambushed by the escaped doll, who tackles him into the kitchen and tries to drown him in a dog bowl. Marge calls the consumer service hotline. A repairman arrives and discovers that the doll has been set to "evil" mode. He flips the switch to "good" and the Krusty doll becomes friends with Homer, although it is quickly put to work as Homer's slave. In Grampa's story, "King Homer", inspired by Grampa watching lots of movies, Marge joins Mr. Burns and Mr. Smithers on an expedition to Ape Island as bait for the legendary giant ape King Homer in 1936. The natives of Ape Island capture Marge and tie her to a post as an offering for King Homer, who is summoned by the sound of drums. Marge is initially terrified but sees the friendly side of Homer, and the two form a friendship. Nonetheless, Mr. Burns is determined to capture King Homer and Smithers knocks Homer unconscious with a gas bomb. Returning to Springfield, the group display King Homer at a theater. The photographers' flashes enrage King Homer, who breaks free from his restraints. He abducts Marge and attempts to climb a skyscraper, but is unable to get past the second story of the building and collapses in exhaustion. In the end, King Homer and Marge get married. In Bart's story, "Dial "Z" for Zombies", Bart finds a book of black magic in Springfield Elementary Library when he is asked to write a book report for class. That night, he tries to resurrect the family's dead cat, Snowball I, but accidentally reanimates corpses from the nearby human cemetery instead. The zombies terrorize Springfield, turning many people into zombies. Aided by Homer wielding a shotgun, Lisa and Bart find a book at the library to cast the appropriate counter-spell, causing all of the zombies to return to their graves. ## Production This episode originally encountered trouble when the color version came back from South Korea. With only six weeks to the airdate, the writers made almost one hundred line changes, a very rare occurrence. It was decided to completely overhaul the episode after a poorly received screening with the writing staff. The tombstones that appeared at the start of and during the episode were abandoned in later episodes because it was becoming increasingly difficult to think of ideas. A subtle tombstone joke in this episode is in the scene where two zombies are crawling out of their graves. The names Jay Kogen and Wolodarsky (two of The Simpsons writers who worked on the episode) are written on the tombstones, but both are misspelled. The "King Homer" segment is one of Matt Groening's all-time favorite stories from the Treehouse of Horror series. Al Jean was also quite worried about this segment because it was the longest running black-and-white segment they had ever aired, and he thought that some people might be concerned that their televisions were broken. The "He was a zombie?" line, created by Mike Reiss, is, in the opinions of the writers, one of the all-time classic lines from the series. ## Cultural references The opening sequence where Homer walks into Alfred Hitchcock's silhouette is a parody of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. It was meant to show Homer's stomach bigger than that of the outline, but it was so subtle that not many people realized the joke. In the episode's wraparounds, Bart is dressed as Alex from the film A Clockwork Orange. The "Clown Without Pity" segment is based on the Twilight Zone episode "Living Doll" and the film Trilogy of Terror. The title itself is a play on the song "Town Without Pity", written for the movie of the same name and performed by Gene Pitney. The man that gives Homer the Krusty doll is based on Mr. Wing from the film Gremlins. The song Homer sings in the bathtub is a variation of the Oscar Meyer song with the letters spelling out his name instead of "O-S-C-A-R". The Krusty doll riding under Homer's car is a reference to the 1991 film Cape Fear. The song Marge hears while put on hold after calling the Krusty doll hotline is "Everybody Loves a Clown" by Gary Lewis & the Playboys. The "King Homer" segment is a parody of the 1933 film King Kong. In "King Homer", the tribal leader is heard saying 'Mosi Tatupu, Mosi Tatupu', which means they will sacrifice the blue-haired lady. During King Homer's rampage, he spots Shirley Temple singing On the Good Ship Lollipop and ends up grabbing and devouring her. The title "Dial "Z" for Zombies" is a play on the title of the 1954 Hitchcock film Dial M for Murder. "Dial "Z" for Zombies" references Return of the Living Dead, Night of the Living Dead and Pet Sematary. In the pet cemetery, there are tombstones that read Fish Police, Capitol Critters and Family Dog, each a short-lived animated series intended to capitalize on The Simpsons' success. As Zombie William Shakespeare is dying he says “Is this the end of Zombie William Shakespeare?”, which is a reference to the line from Little Caesar (film) “Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico?” When raising the dead from their graves, Bart wears Michael Jackson's record album cover Thriller on his head. This is a reference to Jackson's famous music video, in which he dances with zombies. ## Reception In its original broadcast, "Treehouse of Horror III" finished 20th in ratings for the week of October 26 – November 1, 1992, with a Nielsen rating of 14.7, equivalent to approximately 13.7 million viewing households. It was the highest-rated show on the Fox network that week, beating In Living Color. Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, the authors of the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, thoroughly enjoyed the episode. They described the episode as "Another seasonal treat. Dial Z for Zombies is particularly impressive ('Die, you freak!' 'Dad, you killed the zombie Flanders!' 'He was a zombie?')." In 2006, IGN voted "Dial Z For Zombies" as the second best segment of the Treehouse of Horror episodes. "Clown Without Pity" was also rated sixth. In the film 28 Days Later (2002), there is a scene where Sgt. Ferrell mentions that his favorite joke from The Simpsons was the line "Women and seamen (semen) don't mix", said by Smithers during the "King Homer" segment. The episode's reference to Night of the Living Dead was named the 16th greatest film reference in the history of the show by Total Film's Nathan Ditum.

USS Rudyerd Bay

Casablanca-class escort carrier of the US Navy

USS Rudyerd Bay (CVE-81) was the twenty-seventh of fifty Casablanca-class escort carriers built for the United States Navy during World War II. She was named after Rudyerd Bay, within Ketcchikan Gateway Bourough, of the Territory of Alaska. Today, the bay lies within Misty Fjords National Monument. The ship was launched in January 1944, commissioned in February, and served as a replenishment and transport carrier throughout the Mariana and Palau Islands campaign and the Philippines campaign. Later, she served as a frontline carrier, providing air cover and support for the invasion of Iwo Jima, and the Battle of Okinawa. Postwar, she participated in Operation Magic Carpet, repatriating U.S. servicemen from throughout the Pacific. She was decommissioned in June 1946, when she was mothballed in the Atlantic Reserve Fleet. Ultimately, she was sold for scrapping in January 1960. ## Design and description Rudyerd Bay was a Casablanca-class escort carrier, the most numerous type of aircraft carriers ever built, and designed specifically to be mass-produced using prefabricated sections, in order to replace heavy early war losses. Standardized with her sister ships, she was 512 ft 3 in (156.13 m) long overall, at the waterline, she was 490 ft (150 m) long, she had a beam of 65 ft 2 in (19.86 m), at her widest point, this was 108 ft (33 m), and a draft of 20 ft 9 in (6.32 m). She displaced 8,188 long tons (8,319 t) standard, 10,902 long tons (11,077 t) with a full load. She had a 257 ft (78 m) long hangar deck and a 477 ft (145 m) long flight deck. She was powered with two Skinner Unaflow reciprocating steam engines, which drove two shafts, providing 9,000 shaft horsepower (6,700 kW), thus enabling her to make . The ship had a cruising range of 10,240 nautical miles (18,960 km; 11,780 mi) at a speed of 15 knots (28 km/h; 17 mph). Power was provided by four Babcock & Wilcox water-tube boilers. Her compact size necessitated the installation of an aircraft catapult at her bow, and there were two aircraft elevators to facilitate movement of aircraft between the flight and hangar deck: one each fore and aft. One 5-inch (127 mm)/38 caliber dual-purpose gun was mounted on the stern. Anti-aircraft defense was provided by eight Bofors 40-millimeter (1.6 in) anti-aircraft guns in single mounts, as well as 12 Oerlikon 20-millimeter (0.79 in) cannons, which were mounted around the perimeter of the deck. By the end of the war, Casablanca-class carriers had been modified to carry thirty 20 mm cannons, and the amount of 40 mm guns had been doubled to sixteen, by putting them into twin mounts. These modifications were in response to increasing casualties due to kamikaze attacks. Although Casablanca-class escort carriers were designed to function with a crew of 860 and an embarked squadron of 50 to 56, the exigencies of wartime often necessitated the inflation of the crew count. Casablanca-class escort carriers were designed to carry 27 aircraft, but the hangar deck could accommodate more. During the Invasion of Iwo Jima, she carried 15 FM-2 fighters, 11 TBM-1C torpedo bombers, and a TBM-1CP reconnaissance plane for a total of 27 aircraft. During the Battle of Okinawa, she carried 17 FM-2 fighters and 12 TBM-3 torpedo bombers, for a total of 29 aircraft. ## Construction Her construction was awarded to Kaiser Shipbuilding Company, Vancouver, Washington under a Maritime Commission contract, on 18 June 1942. The escort carrier was laid down on 24 October 1943 under the name Kaita Bay, as part of a tradition which named escort carriers after bays or sounds in Alaska. She was laid down as MC hull 1118, the twenty-seventh of a series of fifty Casablanca-class escort carriers. She was launched on 12 January 1944; sponsored by the wife of Captain Scott Ernest Peck; transferred to the United States Navy and commissioned on 25 February 1944, with Captain Curtis Stanton Smiley in command. ## Service history Upon being commissioned, Rudyerd Bay underwent a shakedown cruise down the West Coast to Southern California, where she took on a load of aircraft, which she ferried to Espiritu Santo of the New Hebrides throughout April and May. Upon returning to the West Coast, the carrier conducted qualification exercises off the California coast until July, before making another transport run to Majuro, in the Marshall Islands from 20 July to 26 July, escorted by the destroyer escort O'Flaherty. After finishing her mission, she embarked Composite Squadron 77 (VC-77), departing on 8 August for the West Pacific. At Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands, she joined Task Group 30.8, the Fleet Oiler and Transport Carrier Group, which at the time, consisted of seven escort carriers (including Rudyerd Bay), seven destroyers, fifteen destroyer escorts, and twenty-four replenishment oilers, organized into eight task units. She then proceeded with the task group to Manus Island, in the Admiralty Islands, arriving on 31 August. Throughout early September, Rudyerd Bay served as a replenishment carrier, providing replacement aircraft (from VC-77), parts, and supplies for the frontline Fast Carrier Task Force of the Third Fleet, which at the time was supporting the Mariana and Palau Islands campaign. Later, during October, she continued supporting the fast carriers as they operated in support of the Philippines campaign. Rudyerd Bay was still a part of Task Group 30.8, now renamed the At Sea Logistics Group. The fleet oilers had been detached, and the number of escort carriers involved had increased to eleven. On 18 October, the carrier took on the wounded of the light cruiser Houston, which had been subjected to two separate aerial torpedo hits. She transported them to Ulithi in the Caroline Islands, and by November, the carrier was back to replenishment duties, which would eventually take her into Typhoon Cobra. On 17 December 1944, Rudyerd Bay was a part of Task Unit 30.8.12, alongside her sister Nehenta Bay, which was acting as the flagship. The two escort carriers were screened by the destroyer escorts Wesson and Swearer. By then, the Third Fleet had been operating against positions on Luzon since 14 December, but its escorting destroyers ran low on fuel. As a result, the fleet retired to the east to refuel, and to receive replacement aircraft from Task Group 30.8. Rudyerd Bay rendezvoused with the Third Fleet about 300 mi (480 km) east of Luzon early on 17 December. The location had been chosen because it lay out of range of Japanese fighters, but it also happened to lie within Typhoon Alley, where many Pacific tropical cyclones transited. As the escort carriers and the Third Fleet met, Typhoon Cobra began to bear down. At 01:00, fueling operations were attempted with the destroyers, although heavy winds and listing seas complicated the matter. At the same time, barometers on-board the ships began to drop, and tropical storm force winds were recorded. As the weather continued to deteriorate, Admiral William Halsey Jr. ordered fueling operations suspended at 13:10. He ordered his fleet to move to the next morning's planned rendezvous spot, approximately 160 mi (260 km) northwest, and comfortably safe from the typhoon's impacts. Two hours later, he instead ordered his fleet to proceed due southwards, 180 mi (290 km) from where the fleet was located. This brought the fleet directly into the typhoon's core. To make matters worse for the Third Fleet, Halsey ordered the fleet to proceed northwards at 22:20, putting the fleet in the quadrant of the typhoon with the highest winds. Blurry data and observations meant that command had little idea of where the typhoon actually was, with some weather maps pinning the typhoon's center some 100 mi (160 km) away, even whilst the fleet sailed directly into the eye. Attached to the Third Fleet, Rudyerd Bay followed. At 07:00, on the morning of 18 December, the fleet was inescapably trapped in the typhoon's path. Conflicting orders meant that some of the destroyers attempted to do some fueling during the morning, even as waves with an estimated height of 60 ft (18 m) pounded the task force. At 07:22, Rudyerd Bay came to course at 60°, along with her sisters Kwajalein and Nehenta Bay. Rudyerd Bay struggled to maintain its course as it battled with high winds and waves cresting over the flight deck. At 10:17, Rudyerd Bay radioed that she was dead in the water, albeit control was quickly regained. Nonetheless, all appearances suggest that Rudyerd Bay passed through Typhoon Cobra relatively intact and without much damage, given the fact that on 19 December, Halsey found it judicious to assign upon her and her sister Anzio, the task of combing through the area looking for survivors. On 20 December, at 05:00, the carrier was the first to report to Halsey that the destroyer Spence had capsized, with the loss of most of its crew. At 08:40, Rudyerd Bay, along with her screens, relieved the destroyer escort Tabberer, which had been conducting search and rescue operations for fifty straight hours. Upon concluding rescue operations, Rudyerd Bay steamed back to Ulithi, where the destroyer escorts unloaded the survivors of the Spence. On 28 December, the escort carrier, accompanied by Nehenta Bay, several oilers, and various other ships, departed Ulithi, voyaging westwards to continue their replenishment role in support of the Philippines campaign. The carrier was situated in the Philippine Sea, until 10 January 1945, when she moved north to the South China Sea, in order to better support the fast carriers as they participated in the invasion of Lingayen Gulf and conducted strikes against Japanese shipping stretching from Indochina to Formosa. On 22 January, Rudyerd Bay left replenishment duty, transiting via the Sulu Sea, Mindanao Sea, and Leyte Gulf, before docking at Ulithi. Rudyerd Bay remained at Ulithi until 10 February, when she left for Saipan, in the Mariana Islands, in preparation for the invasion of Iwo Jima. During this time period, Captain John Golden Foster Jr. took over command of the carrier. On 16 February, she left the Mariana Islands, as a part of Task Group 51.17, along with Saginaw Bay. The two carriers were responsible for providing air cover and escorting the troop transports as they ferried marines to the shores of Iwo Jima. Finishing this duty without incident on 18 February, the two carriers joined Task Group 52.2, the Support Carrier Group, as a part of Task Unit 52.2.3, which was under the command of Rear Admiral George R. Henderson. Rudyerd Bay's aircraft contingent, VC-77, began flying missions in support of the marines on 19 February, as U.S. forces began touching down on the island's beaches. These missions were expected to include reconnaissance missions, flown by VC-77's sole TBM-1CP reconnaissance plane. However, after the plane had just taken off on its first mission, at 09:14, a scanty twelve minutes after the first U.S. forces had touched down on the island, the Avenger had a large Japanese shell tear into it, turning the plane into a fireball and killing VC-77's commanding officer. Nonetheless, VC-77 continued providing close air support and conducting antisubmarine patrols around Iwo Jima until 8 March, when Rudyerd Bay retired for Ulithi. Whilst Rudyerd Bay was stationed at Ulithi from 11 March to 20 March, her aircraft contingent was exchanged, with Composite Squadron 96 (VC-96) being embarked in preparation for the Battle of Okinawa. On 21 March, the carrier got underway, as a part of Task Unit 52.1.2, which was under the command of Rear Admiral Felix Stump. She arrived at her position on 25 March, about 60 mi (97 km) to the south of Okinawa, where she began launching strikes against enemy positions on Kerama Retto and on Okinawa itself. Rudyerd Bay's aircraft contingent, with the exceptions of 1 April and 8 April, operated daily until 17 April. From 13 to 15 April, VC-96 concentrated on the Sakishima Islands, where a squadron of Japanese kamikaze aircraft were being launched. Throughout these operations, Rudyerd Bay witnessed a steady stream of both kamikazes and conventional Japanese aircraft make attacks on the escort carriers. For example, on the late afternoon of 2 April, Rudyerd Bay's fighters were scrambled when two kamikazes attacked her sister Wake Island, with an extreme near-miss tearing a large hole in the starboard side of the carrier. As the sun set, one of VC-96's fighters shot down a Mitsubishi A6M Zero, and as the Japanese planes disengaged, eight of her fighters were forced to make night landings, even though none of the pilots had been night-qualified. In the ensuing mayhem, two Wildcat fighters and an Avenger on the flight deck were rendered as complete losses, with four more planes being severely damaged, albeit remarkably, none of the pilots were killed or seriously injured. On 17 April, Rudyerd Bay was rotated to Task Group 50.8, the Logistics Support Group, for a 10-day period of relative rest, although her aircraft were still responsible for providing an air screen for the replenishment carriers. She was rotated back to Task Group 52.1 on 27 April, whereupon she continued providing close air support. She was rotated again to Task Group 50.8 on 8 May, providing air cover until 20 May, when she retired from the Ryukyu Islands. By then, VC-96 had flown 1,257 sorties in support of the battle on Okinawa. Proceeding eastwards, Rudyerd Bay arrived on Guam on 23 May, where she detached her aircraft contingent, VC-96, and embarked Composite Squadron 85 (VC-85) for transport back to the West Coast. Upon arriving back in the United States, she underwent overhaul, which took until the end of July. Upon the completion of overhaul, she was reassigned to plane ferry duty, which began on 1 August, when she ferried a load of aircraft from Naval Air Station Alameda to the Marshall Islands. Whilst she was still midway in her ferry mission, the Japanese surrender was announced. Nonetheless, Rudyerd Bay continued onwards, unloading cargo and passengers at Enewetak, before heading to Ulithi and the Philippines, and moving Composite Squadron (VC-33) to Okinawa. She then took on another aircraft squadron, which she transported back to the West Coast, arriving at San Francisco on 8 October. There, Rudyerd Bay underwent repairs and modifications in order to better accommodate troops, before being assigned to the "Magic Carpet" fleet, which repatriated servicemen from throughout the Pacific. She made Magic Carpet runs for the rest of 1945, into the new year, finishing her final trans-Pacific run on 23 January 1946. On 18 February, she left dock at California, bound for the Eastern seaboard. She transited through the Panama Canal on 28 February, unloaded some aircraft at Jacksonville, Florida in early March, and steamed north to Boston, where inactivation work was commenced. Rudyerd Bay was decommissioned on 11 June, and mothballed in the Atlantic Reserve Fleet, as part of its Boston group. Docked at the South Boston Naval Annex, she was reclassified as a utility carrier (CVU-81) on 12 June 1955. She was then further reclassified as an aviation transport (AKV-29) on 7 May 1959. She was struck from the Navy list on 1 August 1959, and sometime in January 1960, she was sold to Cantieri Navali Santa Maria, which broke her up in Genoa, Italy throughout 1960. Rudyerd Bay' received five battle stars for her World War II service.

Badlaa

"Badlaa" is the tenth episode of the eighth season of the American science fiction television series The X-Files. It premiered on the Fox network on January 21, 2001. The episode was written by John Shiban and directed by Tony Wharmby. "Badlaa" is a "Monster-of-the-Week" story, unconnected to the series' wider mythology. The episode received a Nielsen rating of 7.3 and was viewed by 11.8 million viewers. Overall, the episode received mostly negative reviews from critics. The series centers on FBI special agents Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) and her new partner John Doggett (Robert Patrick)—following the alien abduction of her former partner, Fox Mulder (David Duchovny)—who work on cases linked to the paranormal, called X-Files. When a mystic smuggles himself out of India, Scully and Doggett give chase as his murderous spree starts terrorising two families in suburban Washington, D.C. But Scully soon comes upon a crisis of faith when she realises how dissimilar her techniques are from those of Mulder, even as she tries to be the believer. "Badlaa" was inspired by stories of Indian fakirs as well as the idea of someone asking for money actually being "a bad guy." Gurdeep Roy, a noted stuntman better known as Deep Roy, was chosen to play the part of the antagonistic beggar. The episode's title means "vengeance" or "revenge" in Hindi. ## Plot At the Sahar International Airport in Mumbai, India, an obese American businessman dismissively makes his way past a paraplegic beggar missing his legs from the knee down. While using the airport's toilet, the businessman is pulled out of the stall violently by the beggar he passed earlier. Later, the businessman checks into a Washington, D.C., hotel and sits down on his bed. Soon, blood streams out of his bodily orifices. Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) arrives late to the crime scene and John Doggett (Robert Patrick) tells her that the man's blood all drained abruptly in the hotel. A child's bloody print is found, but Scully doesn't believe that a child did this. Meanwhile, the beggar, somehow disguised as an ordinary-looking white man, applies for a janitorial job at a Cheverly, Maryland, elementary school. In the morgue, Scully describes the massive stomach damage done to the body which leads Doggett to the idea of drugs being forcibly cut out of him. However, the man showed no sign of drugs in the blood tests and Scully tells Doggett that his time of death was 24 to 36 hours prior, long before he left India. Due to a discrepancy in weight, she begins to believe that there was a passenger in the corpse. Quinton, a student at the elementary school in Cheverly, calls his father up to his room after he sees the legless beggar man at night. His father tells him that he imagined it. The father goes back downstairs, but then screams. Quinton rushes down and finds his dad dead, his eyes dripping blood. Doggett and Scully investigate this latest death after the police tell them about the strange man the boy saw. While discussing the lack of any damage to the body except the broken blood vessels in the eyes, Scully comes to the conclusion that the man is still inside the latest victim. She rushes to the morgue and finds the boy's father with a distended belly. She cuts into him and then sees a hand emerge from the scalpel incision. After being knocked over, she follows a bloody trail to a storage closet, but finds no one inside. Having turned invisible to Scully, the beggar watches her. At the school, the principal tells the janitor that she was very worried when he did not show up that morning. Trevor, a bully who had previously tormented Quinton, sees flickers of the beggar through his janitor's guise. Trevor later goes to Quinton's home to apologize and express sympathy over Quinton's father's death. He also tells Quinton who he thinks killed his father. Scully and Doggett consult Chuck Burks, an old friend of Fox Mulder's, who tells them about the fakir, ascetic masters who kind themselves to torture in order to attain enlightenment. He also tells the agents that Siddhi mystics could do the things Scully described; the mystics have powers of the mind and can alter people's perceptions of reality and their secret practices are passed on from father to son. When Doggett remains skeptical of both Chuck's insights and the Siddhi, Chuck remarks to Scully that he isn't surprised because "it's hard to believe in something you can't understand." Struggling to see the case as Mulder might, Scully consults with Chuck again and the two discuss how that if a Siddhi mystic were to use their powers for murder would violate the very foundation of their lives and endanger their souls. Scully then shares a theory that revenge might drive a Siddhi to act in such a way and that one such Siddhi is seeking retribution against persons who worked for an American chemical plant in Vishi, outside of Mumbai, that inadvertently released a gas cloud that killed 118 people. One victim was the 11-year-old son of a holy man of the beggar caste. After hearing a strange squeaking sound--which are the wheels of the unseen fakir's dolly--he runs home, brushing past his mother in the foyer. Trevor's mother follows him outside to find him face-down in their pool. She dives in to get him, but his form turns into the beggar. At the scene of the crime, the real Trevor returns home and tells Scully that the "little man" followed him and killed his mother. Acting on Trevor's tip about the janitor, Doggett and the police arrest him. After Scully calls Chuck Burks, he turns up with his video camera hoping to capture footage of a fakir. To Doggett's bewilderment, the video camera shows no one sitting in the chair the janitor appears to be seated in and Doggett and Chuck realize they do not, in fact, have a suspect in custody. Doggett calls Scully, who has gone to Trevor's house to speak with him only to find that Trevor is not at home and snuck out past his father. Quinton and Trevor hunt the fakir at school where the principal and her assistant call Scully to make her aware they've seen the janitor back at work. The fakir turns the hunt around and begin stalking the boys, eventually taking Trevor's form just as Scully arrives. Scully hesitantly fires at the boy, wounding the fakir who reverts back to his true form. Following the shooting, Scully weeps as she realizes she was "just not capable of" viewing this particular case without prejudice, without judgment, or with having an open mind as Mulder would have done. Two weeks later at the Sahar International Airport, the fakir, unharmed, watches another American businessman with a large frame pass by. ## Production The title of "Badlaa"—which was written by John Shiban and inspired by stories of Indian fakirs—means "to retort" or "to revenge" in Urdu. Shiban was also inspired when he wondered: "What if someone who came up to me and asked me for money was actually a bad guy?" Shiban later noted that his early drafts of the episode featured the antagonist "with no legs who can actually shrink himself and climb inside your ear". Carter vetoed the idea and suggested that it be revised. Shiban later said that "... one thing about this episode that I'm sort of proud is that people often have told me that it is the most disgusting thought that they ever had, that this little man would actually enter your body and travel around inside you." The scenes featuring the Indian airport were filmed at a cruise line terminal in Long Beach, California. Ilt Jones, the location manager for the series, felt that the "dated feel" of the terminal added to the scene. He noted, "if you look at newsreel footage of India, they always have old English cars from the sixties, the cruise line terminal in Long Beach was perfect." Casting director Rick Millikan was tasked with finding a suitable actor to play the part of the beggar. Millikan's only instructions were to look for "a small all-Indian man with no legs." Eventually, Gurdeep Roy, better known as Deep Roy was chosen to play the part. Deep Roy was a noted stunt man who had notably played Droopy McCool of the Max Rebo Band in Return of the Jedi. Deep Roy, however, is not an amputee and so a cart with a false bottom was created. Anytime there was a scene where the beggar had to move, blue screen technology was used to add the background in during post-production. The cart featured a distinct "squeak" that Paul Rabwin described as "creepy". He noted, "There was a squeak that had to let us know that it was him. It had to scare us [...] Finally we came up with what we thought was just the right squeak and John [Shiban] said 'Okay, that's the one.'" Producer Paul Rabwin was displeased with the episode, noting, "'Badlaa' was the one episode I did not like the most [...] I think if I had done it different, I would have had John Shiban change the method of transportation. I don't think it ever worked on any level for me. It was just weird and creepy, but I think the whole idea was distasteful to me." He later bluntly concluded that "it's the only episode that I kind of wish we hadn't done." ## Reception "Badlaa" first aired on Fox on 21 January 2001. The episode earned a Nielsen household rating of 7.3, meaning that it was seen by 7.3% of the nation's estimated households. The episode was viewed by 7.46 million households and 11.8 million viewers. The episode ranked as the 50th most-watched episode for the week ending January 21. The episode subsequently debuted in the United Kingdom on the BBC Two on May 12, 2002. Fox promoted the episode with the tagline "Imagine a man who can squeeze into a shoebox... a suitcase... or a victim." Critical reception to the episode was mostly negative. Television Without Pity writer Jessica Morgan rated the episode a "C" and criticized the episode's plot holes, such as how the beggar appears back in India after being shot by Scully. Robert Shearman and Lars Pearson, in their book Wanting to Believe: A Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen, rated the episode two stars out of five. The two noted that the episode was "best" when "it's at its most tasteless", citing the beggar "crawling up the bottom of an obese man" as "pretty tasteless". Shearman and Pearson, however, noted that it suffered from the fact that "it doesn't have the courage of its convictions". Emily VanDerWerff of The A.V. Club awarded the episode a "C+", calling it "a messy episode". She argued that it is an example of "magnificently bad television". This in turn, makes it somewhat entertaining; VanDerWerff argued that she would "rather watch this episode several times than I would some of those season seven outings where everybody seemed like they would rather be just about anywhere else." However, she did compliment the episode's gross-out scares, noting that the beginning was "a pretty great cold open". Tom Kessenich, in his book Examinations, was extremely critical of the episode. Referring to it as the series' "nadir", he ridiculed the plot and sarcastically labeled the main villain "Butt Munch". Paula Vitaris from Cinefantastique gave the episode a negative review and awarded it one star out of four. Vitaris, sardonically referring to the episode as "The X(enophobic)-Files", noted that while "the butt-crawler is new, the plot is pure "X-Files generic Monster-of-the-Week." Matt Hurwitz and Chris Knowles noted in their book The Complete X-Files that the episode soon became known as the "'Butt Genie' episode" among fans. Despite the negativity, several reviews wrote positively of the episode's antagonistic beggar. Both TV Guide and UGO Networks listed him amongst the greatest monster-of-the-week characters in The X-Files. The UGO review, in particular, noted that the character was "One of the series' more blatant allegories [...], as a legless Indian Mystic [...] literally climbs into his victims to travel where he will. [...] Scully and Doggett investigate the bloody goings-on [...] and a gut-wrenching climax, though not entirely successful, still opens up some thorny issues over how we view weakness, deformity, race, and 'otherness.'

William Ferrers, 5th Baron Ferrers of Groby

English nobleman in the late middle ages

William Ferrers, 5th Baron Ferrers of Groby (1372–1445) was an English baron in the late middle ages. He was an important figure in Leicestershire society and took part in most of the royal commissions that were held there. He was also active at a national level and earlier in his career he took part in some of the crises in the reigns of both King Richard II and Henry IV. However, he supported the Lancastrian regime under Henry V and acted as a councillor to that King's baby son when the latter inherited the throne at the age of six months. Ferrers was married three times, twice to daughters of the peerage. Because his eldest son died before him, the Ferrers barony descended to his granddaughter's husband. Thus, when William Ferrers died, the Ferrers line, which had begun in England with the Norman conquest, after which they were first granted lands in Leicestershire came to an end. ## Early years and inheritance Ferrers was born at Hoo, Bedfordshire, and baptised there on the same day, 25 April 1372. He was the only son and heir of Henry Ferrers, 4th Baron Ferrers of Groby and his wife, Jean, daughter of Sir Thomas Hoo of Luton Hoo. The bulk of the Ferrers' family landholding was in Leicestershire. In May 1394, Ferrers turned 21- the age of majority- and, on paying homage to King Richard II, received livery of his inheritance, the King's escheator taking his fealty in Warwickshire and Leicestershire. By July he had received his mother's dower lands, including the knight's fees and advowsons, and the following year he had received livery of manors in Suffolk. ## Career One of Ferrers' earliest acts of royal service was to join the King on his 1394-5 expedition to Ireland, where a by-now "resurgent" Irish nobility was threatening royal rule. Two years later, Ferrers was summoned to parliament for the first time, and would attend four more parliaments between then and January 1444. On at least two of those occasions, he was appointed a trier of petitions. (n.(''f'') Although he had shown loyalty to the King in his early years, says the Ferrers family's most recent biographer, William's "political affiliations were flexible." Ferrers took part in some of the momentous events of the last years of Richard II's turbulent reign. In September 1397 he was among those who swore, upon the shrine of Edward the Confessor in the Palace of Westminster, to uphold statutes. Two years later— after the usurpation of Henry IV —he was a member of the House of Lords that gave its assent to the secret imprisonment of the by-then deposed King Richard. In 1401 he was a member of the lords who condemned two members of the Holland family as traitors, John, Duke of Exeter and his nephew Thomas, Duke of Surrey, who had been executed the previous year for their part in the failed 'Epiphany Rising' of the previous year. Five years later, Ferrers also sealed the exemplifications of the Acts which settled the royal succession, in July and December 1406. Ferrers also joined the royal council in 1422, after the death of King Henry V in France, as the new King— also Henry —was a six-month-old baby. Ferrers' appointment, says Ralph Griffiths, "provided an injection of youth into discussions hitherto conducted by a rather elderly group"; in any case, it made the regency council "more fully and representatively attended." However, Ferrers spent as much time as a local administrator and looking after his estates as he did in national politics. He was a justice of the peace and a commissioner of array in Leicestershire for most of his life. However, local politics was not always more peaceful than government. In 1426, for example, Sir William Bermingham, from Coventry, with a group of men, attacked Ferrers' house in Smethwick and killed two of Ferrers' servants in doing so. ## Family Ferrers married three times. His first marriage was arranged whilst he was still a minor. At the age of sixteen, a few months after the death of his father, the right to dictate his marriage was conferred upon Roger, Lord Clifford. As was the custom of the time, Clifford arranged for Ferrers to marry Clifford's daughter Philippa, and this not only connected Ferrers to the Clifford noble house but also (through Clifford's marriage to Maud Beauchamp, daughter of Thomas) to the Earl of Warwick. Ferrers' second marriage was to a Margaret Montagu (died before October 1416), daughter of John, Earl of Salisbury, and his third was to Elizabeth Standisshe, daughter of Robert Standisshe of Lancashire. This last marriage had taken place by the end of October 1416, and had not received a royal licence; Ferrers was her third marriage also. ### Death and will Elizabeth predeceased him, dying in either January or February 1441; he outlived her by slightly over four years, dying on 18 May 1445 at his manor of Woodham Ferrers, Essex. His will had been written the day before. Ferrers left a bequest that his body be buried in Ulverscroft Priory, Leicestershire. Ferrers had had to take part in the Income tax of 1436, at which his estate was valued at £666. Ferrers' heir, Thomas, was worth £100 on top of this. However, although Thomas was his heir, he was only William's second son. Ferrers' eldest son and original heir, Henry, had died in 1425. As a result, the family caput honoris of Groby and its barony passed not to Thomas but to William Ferrers' granddaughter—and Henry's heiress—Elizabeth (1419–1483). She eventually married Sir Edward Grey (son of Reynold Grey, 3rd Baron Grey of Ruthin) in 1426 and thus conveyed the Barony of Groby away from the Ferrers family; this, historian K. B. McFarlane believed, was the point at which the Ferrers family line was finally extinguished.

Pastel QAnon

Sub-community of QAnon followers

Pastel QAnon is a collection of techniques and strategies that use "soft" and feminine aesthetics – most notably pastel colors – that are used to attract women into the QAnon conspiracy theory, often using mainstream social media sites like Instagram, Facebook, Telegram and YouTube. Pastel QAnon social media influencers focus on aspects of the theory that tend to appeal to maternal instincts, such as the prevention of child sexual abuse and child sex trafficking, and use emotive and personable language. They are popular among wellness, yoga and New Age influencers. The term was coined by Marc-André Argentino, a researcher at Concordia University, Canada. ## Background QAnon is an ongoing, American far-right, political conspiracy theory and mass political movement centering around false claims made by an anonymous individual or individuals known as "Q" that a cabal of Satanic, cannibalistic sexual abusers of children operate a global child sex trafficking ring that conspired against the former U.S. President Donald Trump during his term in office. Although QAnon arose from mostly male-dominated online groups, women were and still represent a key demographic of QAnon supporters. According to political scientist Lorna Bracewell, right-wing movements that focus on child protection, such as QAnon, "speak to a distinctively feminine set of anxieties and fears to mobilize a distinctively feminine species of anger". Bracewell noted a similarity to the Tea Party movement, which attracted both local and national female leaders – most notably vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin. The QAnon movement appeals to the maternal notion of guardianship; for example, "mama grizzlies" who protect their children. ## Groups targeted According to BuzzFeed News, lifestyle influencers began to spread pastel QAnon-related messages on Instagram as early as April 2020, largely using content relating to the COVID-19 pandemic, but were also one of the primary sources of misinformation. Pastel QAnon targets several existing communities and movements that are aimed at women. The messages appealed to white, Republican-voting women, particularly suburban "soccer moms". This community is sometimes referred to as "QAmoms", a term followers use to refer to themselves. It has been associated with multilevel marketing groups, the wellness industry, and social media influencers, as well as a commercialisation of the QAnon movement in general, operating "within the concept of spectacle". Many wellness and New Age groups mistrust mainstream institutions, authority, and pharmaceutical companies, and as such are susceptible to QAnon beliefs. Researchers have identified scandals in the food industry, concerns over additives in food and genetically modified organisms (GMOs), conflicting scientific advice on child-rearing and the U.S. opioid epidemic – all of which disproportionately affect women – a lack of investment in women's health and general gender discrimination in medicine as key drivers for some women to reject mainstream science in favour of conspirituality – conspiratorial thinking combined with New Age spirituality – and QAnon beliefs, particularly anti-vaccine conspiracies or rhetoric. QAnon believers facilitated this popularisation by moving from encrypted pages and anonymous message boards to mainstream websites such as Facebook and Instagram. The negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on many businesses led leaders to contact social media influencers or use viral marketing to promote their services. ## Content ### Gateway messaging Pastel QAnon uses existing social media messages about child protection, child trafficking, health and other topics as a gateway into the movement, and frames them using familiar, inspirational language. This is often done in an anecdotal, informal style. The messages do not always identify themselves as being related to QAnon and posters often deny any knowledge of QAnon but spread the same conspiracy theories in ways that are framed for a female audience, such as \#SavetheChildren campaigns, which purport to be about child sex-trafficking but contain other QAnon-related content. Gateway messaging is also done to avoid the deletion of posts; explicit QAnon references are banned on many social media sites. The movement also uses private groups, and the technique of posting and then auto-deleting stories on Instagram to promote their claims, giving conspiracy spreaders semi-plausible deniability. People and groups pushing pastel QAnon messages often deny any knowledge of QAnon. The messages tend to use and expand upon the targeted groups' existing distrust and misunderstanding, positive reinforcement, and fears for children's safety and security that became heightened during the COVID-19 pandemic. ### Aesthetics Pastel QAnon uses feminine aesthetics, a pastel color palette, inspirational imagery, cute fonts, design language and phrases that are commonly used to market products and services aimed at women. This aesthetic includes glitter; diluted colors; handwriting fonts; illustrations and photographs of natural scenery, fashion, make up and aspirational lifestyles; and language such as spiritual and motivational quotations; in styles with which the targeted groups are familiar to make them attractive. Becca Lewis, Stanford University researcher of online political subcultures, said: > We say you "fall down a rabbit hole". But it's not how the ecosystem actually works. So much of this content is being disseminated by super popular accounts with absolutely mainstream aesthetics ... If you're able to make this covetable, beautiful aesthetic and then attach these conspiracy theories to it, that normalizes the conspiracy theories in a very specific way that Instagram is particularly good for. ## See also - Aestheticization of politics - Gender advertisement - Gender differences in social network service use - Priming (media) - Purplewashing

Edward the Martyr

King of the English (975–978)

Edward (Old English: Eadweard, ; c. 962 – 18 March 978), often called the Martyr, was King of the English from 975 until he was murdered in 978. Edward was the eldest son of King Edgar, but was not his father's acknowledged heir. On Edgar's death, the leadership of England was contested, with some supporting Edward's claim to be king and others supporting his younger half-brother Æthelred, recognised as a legitimate son of Edgar. Edward was chosen as king and was crowned by his main clerical supporters, the archbishops Dunstan of Canterbury and Oswald of York. The great nobles of the kingdom, ealdormen Ælfhere and Æthelwine, quarrelled, and civil war almost broke out. In the so-called anti-monastic reaction, the nobles took advantage of Edward's weakness to dispossess the Benedictine reformed monasteries of lands and other properties that King Edgar had granted to them. Edward's short reign was brought to an end by his murder at Corfe in 978 in circumstances that are not altogether clear. He was hurriedly buried at Wareham, but was reburied with great ceremony at Shaftesbury Abbey in Dorset early in 979. In 1001 Edward's remains were moved to a more prominent place in the abbey, probably with the blessing of his half-brother King Æthelred. Edward was already reckoned a saint by this time. A number of lives of Edward were written in the centuries following his death in which he was portrayed as a martyr, generally seen as a victim of the Queen Dowager Ælfthryth, mother of Æthelred. He is today recognised as a saint in the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Anglican Communion. ## Family Edward's date of birth is unknown, but he was the eldest of King Edgar's three children. He was probably in his teens when he succeeded his father, who died at age 32 in 975. Edward was known to be King Edgar's son, but he was not the son of Queen Ælfthryth, the third wife of Edgar. This much and no more is known from contemporary charters. Later sources of questionable reliability address the identity of Edward's mother. The earliest such source is a life of Dunstan by Osbern of Canterbury, probably written in the 1080s. Osbern writes that Edward's mother was a nun at Wilton Abbey whom the king seduced. When Eadmer wrote a life of Dunstan some decades later, he included an account of Edward's parentage obtained from Nicholas of Worcester. This denied that Edward was the son of a liaison between Edgar and a nun, presenting him as the son of Æthelflæd, daughter of Ordmær, "ealdorman of the East Anglians", whom Edgar had married in the years when he ruled Mercia (between 957 and Eadwig's death in 959). Additional accounts are offered by Goscelin in his life of Edgar's daughter Saint Edith of Wilton and in the histories of John of Worcester and William of Malmesbury. Together these various accounts suggest that Edward's mother was probably a noblewoman named Æthelflæd, surnamed Candida or Eneda—"the White" or "White Duck". A charter of 966 describes Ælfthryth, whom Edgar had married in 964, as the king's "lawful wife", and their eldest son Edmund as the legitimate son of the king. Edward is noted as the king's son. Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester was a supporter of Ælfthryth and Æthelred, but Dunstan, the Archbishop of Canterbury, appears to have supported Edward, and a genealogy created at his Glastonbury Abbey circa 969 gives Edward precedence over Edmund and Æthelred. Ælfthryth was the widow of Æthelwald, Ealdorman of East Anglia, and perhaps Edgar's third wife. Cyril Hart argues that the contradictions regarding the identity of Edward's mother, and the fact that Edmund appears to have been regarded as the legitimate heir until his death in 971, suggest that Edward was probably illegitimate. However, Barbara Yorke thinks that Æthelflæd was Edgar's wife, but Ælfthryth was a consecrated queen when she gave birth to her sons, who were therefore considered more "legitimate" than Edward. Æthelwold denied that Edward was legitimate, but Yorke considers this "opportunist special pleading". Edmund's full brother Æthelred may have inherited his position as heir. On a charter to the New Minster at Winchester, the names of Ælfthryth and her son Æthelred appear ahead of Edward's name. When Edgar died on 8 July 975, Æthelred was probably nine and Edward only a few years older. ## Disputed succession Edgar had been a strong ruler who had forced monastic reforms on a probably unwilling church and nobility, aided by the leading clerics of the day, Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury; Oswald of Worcester, Archbishop of York; and Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester. By endowing the reformed Benedictine monasteries with the lands required for their support, he had dispossessed many lesser nobles, and had rewritten leases and loans of land to the benefit of the monasteries. Secular clergy, many of whom would have been members of the nobility, had been expelled from the new monasteries. While Edgar lived, he strongly supported the reformers, but following his death, the discontents which these changes had provoked came into the open. The leading figures had all been supporters of the reform, but they were no longer united. Relations between Archbishop Dunstan and Bishop Æthelwold may have been strained. Archbishop Oswald was at odds with Ealdorman Ælfhere, Ealdorman of Mercia, while Ælfhere and his kin were rivals for power with the affinity of Æthelwine, Ealdorman of East Anglia. Dunstan was said to have questioned Edgar's marriage to Queen Dowager Ælfthryth and the legitimacy of their son Æthelred. These leaders were divided as to whether Edward or Æthelred should succeed Edgar. Neither law nor precedent offered much guidance. The choice between the sons of Edward the Elder had divided his kingdom, and Edgar's elder brother Eadwig had been forced to give over a large part of the kingdom to Edgar. The Queen Dowager certainly supported the claims of her son Æthelred, aided by Bishop Æthelwold; and Dunstan supported Edward, aided by his fellow archbishop Oswald. It is likely that Ealdorman Ælfhere and his allies supported Æthelred and that Æthelwine and his allies supported Edward, although some historians suggest the opposite. Later sources suggest that perceptions of legitimacy played a part in the arguments, as did the relative age of the two candidates. In time, Edward was anointed by Archbishops Dunstan and Oswald at Kingston upon Thames, most likely in 975. There is evidence that the settlement involved a degree of compromise. Æthelred appears to have been given lands which normally belonged to the king's sons, some of which had been granted by Edgar to Abingdon Abbey and which were forcibly repossessed for Æthelred by the leading nobles. ## Edward's reign After recording Edward's succession, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports that a comet appeared, and that famine and "manifold disturbances" followed. The "manifold disturbances", sometimes called the anti-monastic reaction, appear to have started soon after Edgar's death. During this time, the experienced Ealdorman Oslac of Northumbria, effective ruler of much of northern England, was exiled due to unknown circumstances. Oslac was followed as ealdorman by Thored, either Oslac's son of that name or Thored Gunnar's son mentioned by the Chronicle in 966. Edward, or rather those who were wielding power on his behalf, also appointed a number of new ealdormen to positions in Wessex. Little is known of two of these men, and it is difficult to determine which faction, if any, they belonged to. Edwin, probably ruling in Sussex, and perhaps also parts of Kent and Surrey, was buried at Abingdon, an abbey patronised by Ælfhere. Æthelmær, who oversaw Hampshire, held lands in Rutland, perhaps suggesting links to Æthelwine. The third ealdorman, Æthelweard, today best known for his Latin history, ruled in the west. Æthelweard was a descendant of King Æthelred of Wessex and probably the brother of King Eadwig's wife. He appears to have been a supporter of Edward rather than of either faction. In some places, the secular clergy who had been removed from the monasteries returned, driving the regular clergy out in their turn. Bishop Æthelwold had been the main supporter of the regulars, and Archbishop Dunstan appears to have done little to aid his fellow reformer at this time. More generally, the magnates took the opportunity to undo many of Edgar's grants to monasteries and to force the abbots to rewrite leases and loans to favour the local nobility. Ealdorman Ælfhere was the leader in this regard, attacking Oswald's network of monasteries across Mercia. Ælfhere's rival Æthelwine, while a staunch protector of his family monastery of Ramsey Abbey, treated Ely Abbey and other monasteries harshly. At some point during these disorders, Ælfhere and Æthelwine appear to have come close to open warfare. This may well have been related to Ælfhere's ambitions in East Anglia and to attacks upon Ramsey Abbey. Æthelwine, supported by his kinsman Ealdorman Byrhtnoth of Essex and others unspecified, mustered an army and caused Ælfhere to back down. Very few charters survive from Edward's reign, perhaps as few as three, leaving Edward's brief reign in obscurity. By contrast, numerous charters survived from the reigns of his father Edgar and half-brother Æthelred. All of the surviving Edward charters concern the royal heartland of Wessex; two deal with Crediton where Edward's former tutor Sideman was bishop. During Edgar's reign, dies for coins were cut only at Winchester and distributed from there to other mints across the kingdom. Edward's reign permitted dies to be cut locally at York and at Lincoln. The general impression is of a reduction or breakdown of royal authority in the midlands and north. The machinery of government continued to function, as councils and synods met as customary during Edward's reign, at Kirtlington in Oxfordshire after Easter 977, and again at Calne in Wiltshire the following year. During the meeting at Calne, some councillors were killed and others injured by the collapse of the floor of their room. ## Death The version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle containing the most detailed account records that Edward was murdered in the evening of 18 March 978, while visiting Ælfthryth and Æthelred, probably at or near the mound on which the ruins of Corfe Castle now stand. It adds that he was buried at Wareham "without any royal honours". The compiler of this version of the Chronicle, manuscript E, called the Peterborough Chronicle, says: > "No worse deed for the English race was done than this was, since they first sought out the land of Britain. Men murdered him, but God exalted him. In life he was an earthly king; after death he is now a heavenly saint. His earthly relatives would not avenge him, but his Heavenly Father has much avenged him." Other recensions of the Chronicle report less detail, the oldest text stating only that he was killed, while versions from the 1040s say that he was martyred. Of other early sources, the life of Oswald of Worcester, attributed to Byrhtferth of Ramsey, adds that Edward was killed by Æthelred's advisers, who attacked him when he was dismounting. It agrees that he was buried without ceremony at Wareham. Archbishop Wulfstan II alludes to the killing of Edward in his Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, written not later than 1016. A recent study translates his words as follows: > "And a very great betrayal of a lord it is also in the world, that a man betray his lord to death, or drive him living from the land, and both have come to pass in this land: Edward was betrayed, and then killed, and after that burned ..." Later sources, further removed from events, such as the late 11th-century Passio S. Eadwardi and John of Worcester, claim that Ælfthryth organised the killing of Edward, while Henry of Huntingdon wrote that she killed Edward herself. Modern historians have offered a variety of interpretations of Edward's killing. Three main theories have been proposed. Firstly, that Edward was killed, as the life of Oswald claims, by nobles in Æthelred's service, either as a result of a personal quarrel, or to place their master on the throne. The life of Oswald portrays Edward as an unstable young man who, according to Frank Stenton: "had offended many important persons by his intolerable violence of speech and behaviour. Long after he had passed into veneration as a saint it was remembered that his outbursts of rage had alarmed all who knew him, and especially the members of his own household." This may be a trope of hagiography. In the second version, Ælfthryth was implicated, either beforehand by plotting the killing, or afterwards in allowing the killers to go free and unpunished. A third alternative, noting that Edward in 978 was very close to ruling on his own, proposes that Ealdorman Ælfhere was behind the killing so as to preserve his own influence and to prevent Edward taking revenge for Ælfhere's actions earlier in the reign. John notes this and interprets Ælfhere's part in Edward's reburial as being a penance for the assassination. ## Reburial and early cult Edward's body lay at Wareham for a year before being disinterred. Ælfhere initiated the reinterment, perhaps as a gesture of reconciliation. According to the life of Oswald, Edward's body was found to be incorrupt when it was disinterred (which was taken as a miraculous sign). The body was taken to Shaftesbury Abbey, a Benedictine house of nuns, with royal connections which had been endowed by King Alfred the Great and where Edward and Æthelred's grandmother Ælfgifu had spent her latter years. Edward's remains were reburied with lavish public ceremony. Later versions, such as the Passio S. Eadwardi, have more complicated accounts. It said that Edward's body was concealed in a marsh, where it was revealed by miraculous events. The Passio dates the reburial to 18 February. In 1001, Edward's relics (he was considered a saint, although never canonised) were translated to a more prominent place within the abbey church at Shaftesbury. The ceremonies are said to have been led by the then-Bishop of Sherborne, Wulfsige III, accompanied by a senior cleric whom the Passio calls Elsinus, sometimes identified with Ælfsige, the abbot of the New Minster, Winchester. King Æthelred, preoccupied with the threat of a Danish invasion, did not attend in person, but he issued a charter to the Shaftesbury nuns late in 1001 granting them lands at Bradford on Avon, which is thought to be related. A 13th-century calendar of saints gives the date of this translation as 20 June. The rise of Edward's cult has been interpreted in various ways. It is sometimes portrayed as a popular movement, or as the product of a political attack on King Æthelred by former supporters of Edward. Alternatively, Æthelred has been seen as one of the key forces in the promotion of Edward's cult and that of their sister Eadgifu (Edith of Wilton). He was thought to make the charter in 1001 granting land to Shaftesbury at the elevation of Edward's relics, and some accounts suggest that Æthelred legislated the observance of Edward's feast days across England in a law code of 1008. It is unclear whether this innovation, seemingly drafted by Archbishop Wulfstan II, dates from Æthelred's reign. It may instead have been promulgated by King Cnut. David Rollason has drawn attention to the increased importance of the cults of other murdered royal saints in this period. Among these are the cults of King Ecgberht of Kent's nephews, whose lives form part of the Mildrith Legend, and those of the Mercian Saints Kenelm and Wigstan. ## Later cult During the sixteenth century and English Reformation, King Henry VIII led the dissolution of the monasteries and many holy places were demolished. Edward's remains were hidden so as to avoid desecration. In 1931, the relics were recovered by Wilson-Claridge during an archaeological excavation at Shaftesbury abbey ruins; their identity was confirmed by Dr. T. E. A. Stowell, an osteologist. In 1970, examinations performed on the relics suggested that the young man had died in the same manner as Edward. Wilson-Claridge wanted the relics to go to the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. His brother, however, wanted them to be returned to Shaftesbury Abbey. For decades, the relics were kept in a cutlery box in a bank vault at the Midland Bank in Woking, Surrey because of the unresolved dispute about which of two churches should have them. In time, the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia was granted the remains, and they were placed in a church in Brookwood Cemetery in Woking, with the enshrinement ceremony occurring in September 1984. The St Edward Brotherhood of monks was organised there as well. The church is now named St Edward the Martyr Orthodox Church, and it is under the jurisdiction of a traditionalist Greek Orthodox community. However, while the bones are of approximately the right date, they are of a man in his late twenties or early thirties rather than a youth in his mid teens. In the Orthodox Church, St Edward is ranked as a Passion-bearer, a type of saint who accepts death out of love for Christ. Edward was widely venerated before the canonisation process was formalised, and he is regarded as a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion. His feast day is celebrated on 18 March, the day of his murder. The Orthodox Church commemorates him a second time each year on 3 September and commemorates the translation of his relics into Orthodox possession on 13 February. ## See also - House of Wessex family tree - List of Catholic saints

Zdravko Ponoš

Serbian politician

Zdravko Ponoš (Serbian Cyrillic: Здравко Понош; born 3 November 1962) is a Serbian politician, former diplomat, and retired general who served as chief of the General Staff of the Serbian Armed Forces from 2006 to 2008. Born in Golubić, a village near Knin, Ponoš later moved to Zagreb, where he spent most of his youth and obtained a degree in electronic engineering. Ponoš moved to Serbia in 1986, where he began his military career. Two years later, he obtained a job at the Department of Development and Equipment in Belgrade, where he worked until 2002. Ponoš then acquired a position at the Ministry of Defense, where he served as an advisor to multiple ministers, including future president Boris Tadić. In 2005, he was promoted to the rank of major general after having served as a colonel since 2000, and also became deputy chief of the General Army. A year later, Tadić promoted him to become the chief of the General Staff of the Serbian Armed Forces. As chief of the General Staff, Ponoš worked on army reforms and professionalisation, though this process stagnated in late 2008 due to a conflict between himself and Minister Dragan Šutanovac, which led to his dismissal in December 2008. Ponoš was retired as an army officer a year later. After leaving the military, Ponoš worked as a diplomatic assistant to Foreign Affairs Minister Vuk Jeremić, whom he previously worked with in the Serbian government. Their cooperation continued even after 2012, and Ponoš served as chief of Jeremić's cabinet during his mandate as president of the UN General Assembly. After returning from the United States, they formed the Center for International Cooperation and Sustainable Development, with Ponoš initially serving as executive director and later as a senior advisor. Ponoš entered politics in 2017 after participating in Jeremić's campaign team during the presidential election, and later that year, they founded the People's Party. He was elected vice-president, a role he held until November 2021. Ponoš was the nominee of the United for the Victory of Serbia coalition in the 2022 presidential election, in which he placed second. He left the People's Party after the election and formed the Serbia Centre organisation in July 2022, which became a registered party a year later. A centrist politician, he is in favour of the accession of Serbia to the European Union and military cooperation with NATO. He also criticised Aleksandar Vučić and the government's approach towards foreign relations and military. ## Early life and education Zdravko Ponoš was born on 3 November 1962 in Golubić, a village near Knin, in the SR Croatia, Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia. He comes from a Serb family. He finished elementary school in Golubić and moved to Zagreb in his youth, where he finished secondary technical school and attended land forces high school. He decided to continue with military school, later stating that "it was something completely new and unknown". Ponoš enrolled in a technical military academy in Zagreb, where he obtained a degree in electronic engineering in 1986. He finished his postgraduate studies in 1999 at the University of Belgrade's Faculty of Electrical Engineering, with a master's degree in Global Navigation Systems. During his time at the University of Belgrade, he published his work regarding Global Navigation Systems in a notable Japanese magazine. He attended the Royal College of Defense Studies in London and also completed courses in Switzerland and Germany. He had also completed STANAG 6001, a NATO course. ## Military career ### 1980s–1990s Ponoš's military career began in 1986. After finishing military academy in Zagreb, he was offered a position there as an assistant, but he rejected the offer, instead choosing to work at the Military Technical Institute in Belgrade. Ponoš was stationed in Užice and SAP Kosovo. During that time, he worked on jamming TV Tirana broadcasts in Kosovo, later stating that "the job was rather futile, but the army did not assign those tasks themselves". He was stationed in Kosovo until 1988, when he decided to move back to Belgrade to work at the Department of Development and Equipment. He described his job as "interesting", and that it was mainly concentrated on intensive contacts with civic institutes and companies. By the 1990s, he had already moved to Serbia, and during the beginning of the break-up of Yugoslavia, he thought of leaving the country, but ended up staying. During the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, he and his team used methods of detecting aircraft flying overhead to prevent greater losses, especially in AP Kosovo and Metohija. He described it as "the brightest phase of our work". Following the bombing, Ponoš was awarded the Order of Merit in the Field of Defense and Security by Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević. ### 2000s Ponoš was promoted to colonel in 2000 and five years later he became a major general. He experienced polarisation in the army during the overthrow of Slobodan Milošević, stating that "effective changes did not occur in the army after the 5 October revolution". He worked at the Department until 2002, and shortly after he began working at the defense ministry. He had served as an advisor to Boris Tadić while he was the head of the defence ministry. During his time at the defence ministry, he was offered to form a "cooperation department with NATO" which he accepted. He described his time under Tadić as "a successful collaboration". Ponoš remained in that position until 2004, when he was appointed as chief of the directorate. In 2005, he became the deputy chief of the army. As deputy chief, he was primarily orientated towards army reform and professionalisation, and after the dissolution of Serbia and Montenegro in 2006, he joined the team led by minister Zoran Stanković to continue the reforms. At that time, he was one of the youngest members of the general staff. ### Chief of the General Staff (2006–2008) Ponoš was appointed by Tadić, by then president of Serbia, as the chief of the General Staff on 13 December 2006. He was also promoted to the rank of lieutenant general. His appointment was described by academics as "a package for faster access to European integration" due to his status as a pro-Western general. As chief of the general staff, he continued his support for army reform and professionalisation, and also stated his support for higher salaries for army officers and for army cooperation with neighbouring countries, European Union and NATO. During his first week as chief of the general staff, he represented Serbia during the opening of the NATO liaison office in Serbia. Dragan Šutanovac replaced Stanković as defence minister in May 2007. Four days later, Ponoš travelled to the United States where he met with the US chief of staff. Ponoš commented in October that "the army would not protect war criminals that were convicted by ICTY". Later in December, Ponoš and Šutanovac stayed for several days near administrative lines with Kosovo to observe the situation, which they later stated to be "peaceful" and that "destabilization in this part of Serbia would not be expected to occur". In October 2008, he met with army representatives of Turkey and Norway. A month later, he expressed his support to change the Kumanovo Agreement. A conflict between Ponoš and Šutanovac became public after Ponoš stated in an interview that reforms were allegedly stopped by the ministry, and that Šutanovac allegedly violated military's autonomy. Shortly after, Tadić stated that "the defense system is stable" during an interview. Tadić then decided to side with Šutanovac in this conflict, and he dismissed Ponoš on 30 December, after alleging that he had violating military rules. Ponoš was previously called by conservative politicians to resign due to his reforms and pro-Western views. This had sparked media attention in April 2007. Radio Free Europe journalist Branka Mihajlović had considered the conflict to be a "political showdown within the Democratic Party". Under Ponoš, the Ohio Army National Guard and Serbia cooperated and engaged in military drills under the auspices of the US State Partnership Program; the program was implemented in September 2007, shortly before his appointment as chief of the General Staff. Ponoš declassified parts of the transcripts from the sessions of the collegium of the chief of the General Staff revealing that Slobodan Milošević and later, to a lesser extent, Vojislav Koštunica, planned to use the army for political purposes, especially in Montenegro. During his time as chief of the General Staff, the army held highest approval ratings according to the Serbian public. He was succeeded by Miloje Miletić in February 2009. ### Retirement After his dismissal as chief of the General Staff, Ponoš stayed in the army for another year, although unallocated. Ponoš expressed a wish to become an assistant for Vuk Jeremić's foreign affairs ministry, although Šutanovac stated that "he does not intend to propose his retirement to Tadić" and he suggested Ponoš should resign from his position in the defence ministry. He was retired by president Tadić on 31 December 2009. ## Political career ### Early period His interest into politics developed while he was reading the newspaper Borba, and during his time at the army in the 1990s, he opposed the regime of Slobodan Milošević. He met Tadić during the early 2000s, with whom he had a discussion regarding the army during their first encounter. During the campaign period for the 2008 elections, Ponoš stated that "frequent elections do not negatively affect army reforms". Shortly after his retirement from the military, he became an assistant to Jeremić. Ponoš previously cooperated with Jeremić during the early 2000s while Jeremić served as an advisor to Tadić. In April 2010, he was a part of the delegation that confirmed the friendship with Libya. Ponoš opened an exhibition in June 2011 to promote the history of diplomatic relations between France and Serbia. He worked for Jeremić until the change of government in 2012. He later became the chief of Jeremić's cabinet while he was the president of the 67th session of the UN General Assembly. During that time, he resided in New York City. After coming back to Belgrade, Ponoš and Jeremić founded the Center for International Cooperation and Sustainable Development (CIRSD). Ponoš held the position of executive director, while Jeremić was elected as president. He later served as senior advisor. ### Contemporary career After his army and diplomatic careers, Ponoš entered politics in 2017, and participated in Jeremić's campaign team during the 2017 presidential election. Jeremić placed fourth, winning 5.65% of the popular vote. Later that year in October, he participated in the foundation of the People's Party. He was elected as vice-president at the first party conference. Ponoš supported the formation of a wider coalition for the 2018 Belgrade City Assembly election that would be composed of opposition parties. He appeared on the ballot list, which ended up winning 19% of the popular vote. Later that year, he supported the appointment of Milan Mojsilović as chief of the General Staff. He was also one of the representatives of the opposition during the protests in 2018 and 2019. In July 2019, he stated his opposition to participating in the 2020 parliamentary election, and called for other parties to boycott. This move was later adopted by the Alliance for Serbia, which his party was a part of. He also called for citizens to boycott the parliamentary election. Ponoš was re-elected as vice-president of the People's Party in November 2019. At a party conference in the same month, Ponoš was chosen as the ballot representative for the upcoming Belgrade City Assembly election, although Ponoš later rejected the offer. After boycotting the 2020 election, Ponoš announced that "opposition parties will exert pressure to the government in order to hold the future election under fair conditions". In early 2021, he expressed his support for a joint participation in the 2022 general election and for a joint opposition presidential candidate. Ponoš was also one of the participants of the inter-party dialogues on electoral conditions that took place during 2021. Ponoš stepped down as vice-president of the People's Party at its party conference in November 2021. ### 2022 election Ponoš stated in early November 2021 that he would run for the presidency if "opposition parties unite themselves at all levels". Jeremić stated that he was surprised by this move, and also stated that the candidate should rather be reached by consensus between opposition parties. Sanda Rašković Ivić, one of the vice-presidents of the People's Party, condemned the attacks that were done by pro-government media and MPs on Ponoš. On 22 January, the Party of Freedom and Justice proposed Ponoš as a joint opposition candidate, while Jeremić stated that his party was ready to back him up. Leaders of the coalition held discussions on 28 and 29 January, after which they concluded their support for Ponoš as presidential candidate. On 2 February, Ponoš was presented as the presidential candidate of the United for the Victory of Serbia coalition. His candidacy was confirmed by the Republic Electoral Commission (RIK) on 6 March. Beginning in February, Ponoš had announced his advisors who would cooperate with him if he were to get elected president. During his campaign, Ponoš held rallies in cities and towns across Serbia. He placed second in the presidential election after winning 18% of the popular vote. Ponoš has been a target of attacks by the pro-government media from 2021 and during the 2022 campaign period. ### Post-election career Following his election loss, Ponoš left the People's Party. On 16 June 2022, he announced that he would form a political organisation that would be orientated towards pro-Europeanism. In July, Ponoš had announced that the organisation would be named Serbia Centre (SRCE). As the president of SRCE, Ponoš criticised President Aleksandar Vučić's approach towards foreign policy, most notably regarding the European Union and Russian invasion of Ukraine. Its leadership was elected in December 2022, with Ponoš officially serving as its president. In March 2023, Ponoš announced that Serbia Centre would begin collecting signatures to register as a political party. SRCE was registered as a political party in July 2023. ## Political positions Ponoš is a self-described centrist, and has stated that his views combine both the centre-left and centre-right. The Associated Press has described him as a centrist. Observers have described his views as reformist, and moderate conservative. He opposes the rule of the Serbian Progressive Party, and has accused Aleksandar Vučić of working "in his self-interests". Ponoš has compared Vučić with Augusto Pinochet and has accused him of "humiliating the state and the army". ### Domestic policies Ponoš has described his political views as a mix of civic and national issues, and has stated his support for constitutionalism, and social justice. He has also stated that "civil partnerships should not be called same-sex marriage" and had assessed that "people who live in such a community should receive same rights as everyone else", but he had also emphasised that he is against LGBT adoption. He supports the change of the presidential electoral system to a system in which the president would be elected in a secret vote by the National Assembly. Ponoš had stated that, if elected president, he would sign a law that would return confiscated pensions, which was done by the Vučić-led government in 2014. Regarding his views on the army, Ponoš criticised the law on the army which was adopted in 2018, and stated that "the law was made to satisfy the interests of arms dealers and brokers". He has also argued that "instead of introducing mandatory conscriptions, they should raise salaries for officers in the army", and has accused the government of abusing the police during electoral campaigns. Ponoš has called for the military leadership to resist the use of the army for political purposes, and has accused the government of being made up of "incompetent politicians are playing with the defense system". ### Foreign policies Ponoš is in favour of accession of Serbia to the European Union, and during the 2022 campaign period, Ponoš described himself as a "pro-European candidate". He is also supportive of Serbia's membership in the Partnership for Peace and its cooperation with NATO, but is opposed to Serbia joining the military alliance. In 2006, he stated that "the Serbian army should focus on modernization in order to reach the standards of EU and NATO" and that the question regarding NATO should be decided via referendum. In 2017, he stated that Serbia's entry into NATO would be an "irrational and emotionally unacceptable move for generations surviving the trauma of the bombing", and that Serbia should remain militarily neutral. He had accused Aleksandar Vulin of not respecting military neutrality. He had previously supported the so-called "four pillars" of Serbian foreign policy, in which he also included European integration, Kosovo, and regional cooperation; the "four pillars" of Serbian foreign policy, a term coined by former president Tadić, included free trade agreements with the European Union, Russia, United States, and China. Ponoš stated his opposition to the Russian invasion of Ukraine that began on 24 February 2022. In June, Ponoš stated his support for sanctioning Russia due to its invasion of Ukraine. ### Kosovo question Ponoš is against the recognition of independence of Kosovo, claiming that the recognition of Kosovo is something that "no democratic government in Serbia can accept" and that the solution for this question will not be brought by the people who incited hatred and war. He has also stated that "it is important that things do not go in the wrong situation, and to slowly normalize life and build trust". He has also stated that "Kosovo is a problem that must be solved...so that any solution is in favor of the citizens who live there". He had also expressed his support for "solving the Kosovo issue", instead of leaving it "frozen and remain as it is". He has criticised the Serb List and Vučić's approach towards Kosovo. ### Srebrenica massacre and Ratko Mladić During an interview in February 2022, Ponoš stated that he once met Ratko Mladić in Knin. Talking about Mladić's involvement in the Srebrenica massacre, Ponoš stated that Mladić's troops "committed brutal crimes" and that "he was responsible for those crimes, but the whole generation or the whole nation should not be responsible for that". He has also stated that he supports the Srebrenica Declaration, which was adopted by the National Assembly in 2010. Ponoš was criticised by the pro-government media in Serbia over his comments. ## Personal life During his youth, Ponoš resided in Zagreb and later married Zdenka, a Croat woman from Inđija. He has one brother, while his father died shortly before Operation Storm. His maternal grandfather was mobilised by the Yugoslav Partisans and died in combat at the Syrmian Front. He also holds Croatian citizenship. Besides his native Serbian, he also speaks English and Russian. His hobbies include studying history, music, films, football, and cartoons; Ponoš is a fan of The Simpsons animated sitcom. Ponoš is also an author of several academic papers, and he served as a supervisory editor of the journal Horizons. The weekly Vremе news magazine named Ponoš as the person of the year in 2006. Ponoš tested positive for COVID-19 on 29 March 2020, and was subsequently sent for treatment to the Infectious Diseases Clinic in Belgrade. By 13 April, he tested negative.

Underneath the Tree

2013 song by Kelly Clarkson

"Underneath the Tree" is a song by American pop singer Kelly Clarkson from her sixth studio album and first Christmas album, Wrapped in Red (2013). She co-wrote the track with its producer Greg Kurstin. It is a Christmas-themed song that sings of gratitude for companionship during the holidays, in which the loved one is referred to as the only present needed "underneath the tree". Accompanied by various instrumental sounds, the song prominently incorporates a Wall of Sound treatment along with sleigh bells and bell chimes to resonate a holiday atmosphere. "Underneath the Tree" was first released to Adult Contemporary radio stations on November 5, 2013, by RCA Records as the album's lead single. "Underneath the Tree" has been praised by music critics, who considered it the main highlight of Wrapped in Red and lauded its potential to be a holiday classic. They also favorably compared it to Mariah Carey's 1994 Christmas song "All I Want for Christmas Is You". The track reached number eight on the Billboard Global 200 in addition to the top ten in Austria, Canada, Germany, Lithuania, and the Netherlands as well as the top 20 in Hungary, Ireland, Portugal, Slovakia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It has been certified platinum in Denmark and the United Kingdom, and gold in Australia and Norway. In 2021, "Underneath the Tree" was named the ASCAP's most popular Christmas song released in the 21st century. Directed by English director Hamish Hamilton, the music video for the song has a live performance from the television special Kelly Clarkson's Cautionary Christmas Music Tale at The Venetian Las Vegas. Apart from the television special, Clarkson has also performed it in various televised performances, such as Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and the American singing competition The Voice. ## Production and composition After recording tracks for her greatest hits compilation, Greatest Hits – Chapter One, Clarkson began discussing with her record label RCA Records about plans for her sixth studio album being a Christmas release in late 2012, during which she also began to write original Christmas material. Greg Kurstin, whom she had previously collaborated with, was approached by Clarkson to produce the album; and together, they co-wrote the tracks "Underneath the Tree" and "4 Carats". "Underneath the Tree" was produced by Kurstin, who also played most of the instruments, including a mellotron and a Chamberlin, to evoke a Phil Spector's Wall of Sound treatment—a sound that Billboard and HitFix noticed upon hearing the song. He also had Clarkson provide all the voices in it, including all its backing vocals. She recalled the experience as new, stating, "I've never had to do anything like this before—doing all my backup vocals, essentially being my own choir." "Underneath the Tree" is an uptempo big band-style Christmas, pop song written by Clarkson and Kurstin. It is one of the five original songs recorded for Wrapped in Red. According to the sheet notes at Musicnotes published by EMI Music Publishing, the song was written in the key of E major, in which the vocal range spans from E₄ to G₅. Apart from the Wall of Sound, various other sounds, such as sleigh bells and bell chimes, are also prominently heard on the song, which features a bari saxophone solo on the bridge. ## Release On October 18, 2013, Clarkson premiered "Underneath the Tree" on her Vevo channel. On November 5, 2013, RCA Records released it as a single on Adult Contemporary radio stations in the United States, while also planning to release it on Mainstream Pop stations. It was then released as a digital download in the United Kingdom on November 22, 2013, and in the United States on December 9, 2013. A digital EP containing remixes of the song was released internationally on December 17, 2013. ## Critical response "Underneath the Tree" has received critical acclaim from various music critics on its release, who lauded it as main highlight of Wrapped in Red and a prospective Christmas standard. Billboard's Marisa Fox called it the album's "biggest surprise", and described it as an optimistic tune that has Clarkson powering through Darlene Love-style vocals. Mikael Wood of the Los Angeles Times described it as a remarkably cheery single. In her review, Christina Vinson of Taste of Country remarked that the track "has everything a Christmas song could want: a jazzy, big band sound, saxophone and bells ringing, all bottled up in an optimistic and catchy holiday track" and said that Clarkson "shines", as her "strong vocals are needed to offset the snazzy production and chorus." In his review, Idolator's Carl Williott wrote that the song "sounds instantly familiar—sleigh bells, laments about a lonely Christmas day, a sax solo—but with a tightly coiled hook and Clarkson's transcendent voice, the whole thing is kind of invigorating." Sarah Rodman of The Boston Globe called it a bouncy, cooing number tailor-made to soundtrack sleigh rides, and named it the best track on the album. Critics also approvingly compared it to Mariah Carey's modern Christmas classic "All I Want for Christmas Is You" (1994), a track that RCA chief executive Peter Edge described as the song's inspiration. Williot added that "Underneath the Tree" is strong enough that it could enter the pantheon of modern Christmas staples like Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You" and 'N Sync's "Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays". Jenna Hally Rubenstein of MTV News remarked, "if we may be so bold, it is definitely on par with other impeccable Christmas originals—namely Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You"." Sal Cinquemani of Slant Magazine noted the similar themes of both songs, and that "Underneath the Tree" is likely to become Clarkson's very own contemporary standard. Melinda Newman of HitFix wrote, "It's a finger-popping, bell-ringing pleaser that could achieve that rare feat of becoming a new Christmas standard. That hasn't happened since Carey's "All I Want For Christmas" in 1994." The Independent's Hugh Montgomery called "Underneath The Tree" a "winner on all fronts" for having "sass, jingle, and a sax solo". ## Commercial performance "Underneath the Tree" has recurrently charted every year since its original release in 2013. Upon the release of Wrapped in Red, "Underneath the Tree" entered the Billboard Holiday Digital Songs chart as an album cut at number four on the week ending November 16, 2013. Following its release as a single, it reached a peak position of number three for the week ending December 28, 2013. After being released as a single to Adult Contemporary radio, the song debuted at number 21 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart for the week ending November 23, 2013, eventually topping the chart after three weeks, and becoming her third Adult Contemporary number-one song and her first since "Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You)" (2012). That same week, "Underneath the Tree" also entered the Billboard Holiday 100 chart at number 34, making it her second entry at the Holiday Songs after "I'll Be Home for Christmas" (2011). The song entered the chart's top 10 after two weeks (at number 10). For the week ending December 21, 2013, the song entered the main Billboard Hot 100 chart at number 92, and ascended to number 78 for the week ending January 4, 2014. In 2018, "Underneath the Tree" re-entered the Billboard Hot 100 chart at number 44, and in 2019, it re-charted and reached a new peak of number 31. One year later (on the week ending December 12, 2020), the song re-entered the Hot 100 chart at number 30, and rose to an overall peak position of number 12 three weeks later. Internationally, "Underneath the Tree" became a recurring top forty hit in Austria, Canada, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. After debuting at number 41 on the Billboard Canadian Hot 100 chart for the week ending December 21, 2013, the song reached a peak of number 28 after a week. In the United Kingdom, "Underneath the Tree" debuted on the UK Singles Chart at number 79 for the week ending December 14, 2013, eventually reaching number 30 for the week ending December 28, 2013. Nine years after its original release, the song re-charted and climbed to an overall peak position of number 12 on the chart December 30, 2022. It has sold over 318,000 units and has been streamed over 26 million times in the region as of December 2019. In Austria, "Underneath the Tree" debuted on the Ö3 Austria Top 40 chart at number 68 in 2014 and peaked at number 26 four years later. In the Netherlands, "Underneath the Tree" debuted on the Mega Top 50 chart at number 38 for the week ending December 14, 2013, and peaked at number 34 for the week ending December 28, 2013. That same week, it entered the Mega Single Top 100 at number 85, and peaked at number 69. "Underneath the Tree" entered the Dutch Top 40 chart at number 26, making it her first top 40 hit in that region after four years since "I Do Not Hook Up" peaked at number 19 in 2009. It then peaked at number 25 after a week. In South Korea, "Underneath the Tree" debuted at number 77 on the Gaon Singles Chart and at number two on the Gaon International Singles Chart for the week ending November 9, 2013. In Japan, "Underneath the Tree" debuted on the Billboard Japan Hot 100 chart at number 84 for the week ending January 4, 2014, and spent two weeks on the chart. In 2017, "Underneath the Tree" debuted on the national charts of Germany, Ireland, and Switzerland. In 2019, the song debuted on the Australian ARIA Singles Chart at number 54. ## Music video On the eve of Wrapped in Red's release, RCA Records released an animated lyric video for "Underneath the Tree", featuring shots of ice skating, a snow-covered town, and copious Christmas trees. The lyric video was released to positive reviews, with Idolator's Sam Lansky describing it as "a nice visual accompaniment to the song that just lends an extra high-octane Yuletide cheer to its already-effervescent spirit". Hamish Hamilton directed the official music video, which premiered on December 3, 2013, on Vevo and featured a live performance of the song from the stage of Clarkson's NBC television special, Kelly Clarkson's Cautionary Christmas Music Tale. ## Live performances and usage in media Clarkson has performed "Underneath the Tree" in various televised performances. She first performed "Underneath the Tree" in a live televised performance on The Today Show on November 26, 2013. Apart from being performed from the set of Kelly Clarkson's Cautionary Christmas Music Tale featured in the song's accompanying music video, a different live performance was aired during the television special itself, in which Clarkson was accompanied by children while singing it. She also performed the song on the fifth season of the American singing competition The Voice on December 3, 2013. On December 5, 2013, she then performed it on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. In 2016 Clarkson performed the track on The Wonderful World of Disney: Magical Holiday Celebration television special at the Walt Disney World resort, and the recording was used on the holiday comedy film Office Christmas Party. In December 2019, Clarkson recorded a performance of the song on her talk show, The Kelly Clarkson Show, as part of its "Kellyoke" segment. ## Impact Brian Mansfield of USA Today reported that "Underneath the Tree" was American radio's most-played new holiday song of 2013. In a report published by ASCAP, "Underneath the Tree" was listed as the most-performed new and original holiday song in their repertoire in the years 2015, 2018, and 2019. Marketing curator PlayNetwork also reported that the track was one of the only newer original songs heard by holiday shoppers in 2015. In a 2017 op-ed piece by Pitchfork contributor Grayson Haver Currin on guitarist John Fahey's Christmas music, he sampled the song as a "new Christmas classic" along with "All I Want for Christmas Is You". In an interview on Vogue, Genius content director Elizabeth Milch referred to the song as "the most recent thing to make a play for the "All I Want" crown", while The Washington Post writer Allison Stewart also described it as a close cousin to "All I Want for Christmas is You". In a 2019 Mediabase report by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "Underneath the Tree" is the only new song from the past 20 years in their most played top 50 Christmas songs, as most of the tracks that are being played are from the 1940s to 60s. In a retrospective listing of the best holiday songs from each year since 1967, Billboard editors chose "Underneath the Tree" as the best holiday song of 2013. Announcing the return of their 2019 Holiday 100 chart, Billboard reported that the track is the only one that was released in the 21st century to appear inside the top twenty. In a 2019 data analysis by Quartz reporter Dan Kopf, he remarked that the song might be a successor to "All I Want for Christmas is You" based on its chart performance. Several publications also promulgated "Underneath the Tree" in their best Christmas songs lists throughout the years: - 1st – Bustle, 16 Christmas Pop Songs That Totally Sleigh - 1st – Cosmopolitan, 17 Christmas Pop Songs That are Total Bops - 1st – Metro, Best Christmas Pop Songs of the 2010s - 2nd – The Varsity, 10 Songs that Need to be on Your Holiday Playlist - 7th – O, The Oprah Magazine, 50 Best Christmas Songs of All Time - 9th – Redbook, The 50 Best Christmas Songs of All Time - 18th – Men's Health, The 25 Best Christmas Pop Songs of All Time - 23rd – Good Housekeeping, 40 Best Modern Christmas Songs - 33rd – Country Living, 60 Best Christmas Songs of All Time - 33rd – Time Out, The 50 Best Christmas Songs of All Time ## Track listing ## Credits and personnel Credits adapted from the Wrapped in Red liner notes. Recording - Produced at Echo Recording Studio, Los Angeles, California Personnel - All vocals – Kelly Clarkson - Engineering – Jesse Shatkin - Bass guitar, drums, engineering, guitar, horn arrangements, keyboards, production and programming – Greg Kurstin - Mixing – Serban Ghenea - Engineered for mixing – John Hanes - Flugelhorn, mellophone, saxophones (tenor, baritone), trombone, trumpet – David Ralicke ## Charts ### Weekly charts ### Year-end charts ## Certifications ## Radio and release history ## See also - List of Christmas hit singles in the United Kingdom - List of Christmas hit singles in the United States - List of number-one adult contemporary singles of 2013 (U.S.) - List of number-one adult contemporary singles of 2014 (U.S.)

Seth Kinman

American pioneer (1815–1888)

Seth Kinman (September 29, 1815 – February 24, 1888) was an early settler of Humboldt County, California, a hunter based in Fort Humboldt, a famous chair maker, and a nationally recognized entertainer. He stood over 6 ft (1.83 m) tall and was known for his hunting prowess and his brutality toward bears and Indian warriors. Kinman claimed to have shot a total of over 800 grizzly bears, and, in a single month, over 50 elk. He was also a hotel keeper, saloon keeper, and a musician who performed for President Lincoln on a fiddle made from the skull of a mule. Known for his publicity seeking, Kinman appeared as a stereotypical mountain man dressed in buckskins on the U.S. east coast and selling cartes de visites of himself and his famous chairs. The chairs were made from elkhorns and grizzly bear skins and given to U.S. Presidents. Presidents so honored include James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford Hayes and Grover Cleveland. He may have had a special relationship with President Lincoln, appearing in at least two of Lincoln's funeral corteges, and claiming to have witnessed Lincoln's assassination. His autobiography, dictated to a scribe in 1876, was first published in 2010 and is noted for putting "the entertainment value of a story ahead of the strict facts." His descriptions of events change with his retelling of them. Contemporary journalists and modern writers were clearly aware of the stories contained in the autobiography, "but each chooses which version to accept." ## Early life Seth Kinman's father, James Kinman, ran a ferry across the West Branch Susquehanna River in central Pennsylvania, in an area then called Uniontown, now called Allenwood in Gregg Township, Union County. James also was a millwright and an inn-keeper, whose forebears were Quakers from Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Seth's mother, Eleanor Bower Kinman, was of German descent whose family lived in Reading, Pennsylvania. Seth was born in Uniontown in 1815. While in Pennsylvania, he learned to read and write, "I could form good letters with a pen but I never learned to spell well." In 1830 his father took the family and migrated to Tazewell County, Illinois. In his autobiography, Seth stated that his father fought in the Blackhawk War in Illinois in 1832. He also claimed that his father and Abraham Lincoln fought together in the war, became friends afterward, and that Seth met the future president during Lincoln's circuit-riding days in Illinois. During this time period, the Kinmans acquired a rifle, known as "Old Cotton Bale," that Seth kept throughout his life. The rifle had a 4 ft (1.2 m) long barrel and "is supposed to have killed Gen'l Peckenham" at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. With some skepticism, Anspach relates a long history of the rifle, gleaned from an 1864 local newspaper story on Kinman, of a renegade Kentucky sniper shooting the British general while carrying on a conversation with American General Andrew Jackson. Seth spent ten years working in his father's mill in Illinois, sawing lumber and grinding grain. After his father's death in 1839, he sold the mill and tried farming. He married Anna Maria Sharpless, of Catawissa, Pennsylvania, in 1840 and they had five children together: James (1842), Carlin, who is sometimes called Calvin (1846), Austin (1847), Ellen (1849), and Roderick (1851). Anna Maria and two of their sons, James and Austin, died during the winter of 1852–1853, while Seth was in California. By 1848 Kinman was operating the Eagle Hotel in Pekin, Illinois, on the Illinois River. The hotel was known less for its comforts than for Kinman's rendition of the fiddle tune Arkansas Traveler. > A traveler came off a steamboat one day and went to the Eagle Hotel. There had been a little western "scrimmage" at the "Eagle" the night before, and though things had not been put in order, the proprietor, Seth Kinman, was sitting in front of the door, playing his favorite tune, the "Arkansaw Traveler", with the greatest self-satisfaction. > > The stranger, stopping, said to Seth: "Are you the proprietor here?" > > Seth, without resting his bow, replied: "Wall, I reckon I be, stranger". > > "Do you keep tavern?" > > "Of course I do: I keep tavern like h—l," said Seth, fiddling away with all his might, "Just pile in: hang your freight on the floor, and make yourself at home." "The boys," continued Seth, "have been having a little fun, but if there is a whole table or plate in the house, I'll get you some cold hash toward night." The stranger didn't like this peculiarly western reception, so took his departure, leaving Kinman still enjoying his violin. ## Life in California Kinman claimed to have migrated to California in 1849 during the great Gold Rush and worked as a prospector in Pierson B. Reading's party on the Trinity River near present-day Douglas City. He then returned to Illinois for two years. In 1852, he travelled to California and explored the Humboldt Bay area, near present-day Eureka, California. Humboldt Bay had been recently rediscovered by gold miners seeking a faster and cheaper route to transport supplies. An early settlement in the area was also named Uniontown, but is now known as Arcata. During this period, prospectors and their suppliers were often flush with gold, but had little to spend it on. On Christmas, 1852 Kinman was hired to perform on fiddle at the then exorbitant amount of \$50, despite his lack of musical training. As described by a fellow '49er: > Seth Kinman, the noted hunter and antler chair-maker, and myself were tendered fifty dollars each to preside as the orchestra for a Christmas ball at Uniontown in 1852. Kinman's repertoire consisted mainly of an alternation of the "Arkansaw Traveler" and "Hell on the Wabash" and mine was little more varied or pretentious. He responded. My conscience has not yet reached that level of elasticity. Over the winter of 1852–1853 he lived in what is now Ferndale in the cabin of Stephen Shaw. His wife and two of their children died that winter, and he may have gone back to Illinois to bring back his mother and three remaining children by 1854. In 1853 he started working as a hunter, feeding U.S. troops in Fort Humboldt. While at Fort Humboldt he met future president Ulysses S. Grant, and future General George Crook. According to tradition, about this time, he brought the first herd of cattle to Humboldt County. Some events and their timing are unclear during this early period. Sources disagree on whether he brought his family to California from Illinois in 1852 or 1854. Carranco dates Seth's first return to Illinois starting in 1850, with his return to California in August 1852, his arrival in Humboldt County in February 1853, another return to Illinois in September 1853, and a trip back to California starting in May 1854 with his mother, two children, and a herd of cattle. Thus, in the course of the six years 1849–1854, he is believed to have crossed the Great Plains, Rocky Mountains, and the Sierra Nevada Mountains five times, travelling mostly on foot. Kinman lived in several places in the county, including houses near Fern Cottage and a dairy farm on Bear River Ridge. He bought 80 acres (320,000 m²) of farm or ranch land 1 mi (1.6 km) east of the future Table Bluff Lighthouse in October 1858, and about 10 mi (16 km) south of Fort Humboldt. This was the first purchase of land in the Humboldt Land District, which was established by an Act of Congress in March 1858. He later built a hotel and bar on the site. Kinman made his name first as a hunter, especially as a hunter of grizzly bears. California was noted for its large population of grizzlies. Seth's son Carlin claimed that they once saw 40 grizzlies at one time. But by 1868, the last grizzly in Humboldt County had been killed. While Kinman was on his way to deliver one of the presidential chairs, he met Methodist bishop and writer Oscar Penn Fitzgerald on a California steamboat. Fitzgerald recorded his impressions in the sketch The Ethics of Grizzly Hunting. He presented Kinman as a drunkard who cruelly abused Indians and grizzly bears. > His countenance was expressive of a mixture of brutality, cunning, and good humor. He was a thorough animal. Wild frontier life had not sublimated this old sinner in the way pictured by writers who romance about such things at a distance. Kinman's eyes made a special impression on Fitzgerald. Decades later he compared Kinman's eyes to those of the California bandit Tiburcio Vásquez, "His eyes were nature's special label of one of her malignest creations. Only in two other human beings have I ever seen such eyes as those.... It was the eye of a wild beast, the baleful glitter you have seen in the eyes of snakes, panthers, catamounts, or other creatures of the reptile or feline kind." During a gale on the night of January 5–6, 1860, Kinman was alerted by distress signals from the Northerner which had been breached by a submerged rock. Kinman tethered himself to the shore and waded into the surf to rescue passengers. In all, 70 people were saved by various means and 38 people perished. He was hailed as a hero and awarded a Bible and free life-time passage on the Pacific Mail Steamship Company's ships. ### Relations with Native Americans Native Americans in northern California suffered greatly at the hands of European-Americans in the last half of the 19th century, and their population declined. The Wiyot people, who live around Humboldt Bay, were particularly hard hit. Their population declined from about 1,500-2,000 in 1850 to about 200 in 1860. Kinman's brutality was noted by James R. Duff, a fellow '49er, who described him as "an avowed enemy of the red man, ... (who) shot an Indian on sight." Carranco states that "Seth always took an Indian along on a hunt – partly to carry the game, but primarily to serve as bear bait," and concludes "sometimes he regarded them (Indians) as human beings ... other times, only as predatory animals to shoot at." Kinman himself claimed to be an official Indian agent, though there is little evidence that he actually served in the position. He collected "Indian artifacts" including scalps, which he claimed to have taken himself. Kinman had terrible relations with the Wiyot Tribe who continue to live on Table Bluff, near his farm, at Table Bluff Reservation. The key event in Wiyot history was the February 25–26, 1860 Wiyot Massacre on Indian Island, when over one hundred Wiyot were murdered in their sleep. At the same time there were massacres of the Wiyot at other sites, possibly including Table Bluff. Kinman has not been specifically identified as one of the murderers. Nevertheless, in May 1860 he was elected to represent Bear River at a county-wide meeting ostensibly called to discuss ways to protect white settlers from the Indians. In 1864 he scouted for Captain William Hull's California Volunteers, which according to Kinman, "slaughtered and captured Indians, and at one time they took as many as 160 captives to Fort Humboldt." ### Life as an entertainer While delivering an elkhorn chair to President Buchanan in 1857, Kinman said, "l awoke one fine morning and found myself famous." He made use of this fame starting in the summer of 1861, together with ventriloquist and magician J. G. Kenyon, by opening an exhibit, first in Eureka and then in San Francisco in August of that same year. Kinman displayed his "curiosities" including an elkhorn chair, mounted grizzly bears, several fiddles, and scalps, and gave a lecture. > How they shouted and yelled when I related some of my old 'bar' stories and hair-breadth escapes, and played on that fiddle made out of the skull bones. That got them! I would wind up on the "Arkansas Traveler" and their enthusiasm wound up to the highest pitch. Before I fetched my 'bar', I would horrify them by telling them how the 'bar' tore Indian children to pieces, and how I finally trapped the 'bar' with a young dead Indian. Then the 'bar' was led out by a chain, and he would dance before he unbuttoned himself and out stepped a man. Then I had to explain about the 'bar' skin. Then I told the audience how I sawed off those Indian scalps the ladies looked horrified and aghast. Then I would tell about the Indian way of life. I would finish up by describing my elkhorn chair and how I had constructed it. They then toured gold mining camps and the San Francisco Bay area as entertainers. Later he opened a traveling "museums of curiosities" in Eureka, San Francisco, Sacramento and Los Angeles. During his trip to the East Coast in 1864–1866, Kinman exhibited his curiosities including his chairs, primarily in Pennsylvania and Illinois. He took a ten-year-old Native American boy, named Burtch or Burtchfield, with him on this trip, but Burtch died in December, 1864. Kinman said that he took the boy on the trip because he had killed both of Burtch's parents. Kinman may have also displayed his chairs at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876. As late as 1885, Kinman opened a museum in Los Angeles with his sons Carlin and Roderick. ## Presidential chairs Kinman first used the large number of elkhorns shed near his farm every year to create a fence. With the help of George Hill, about 1856 he created his first elkhorn chair, which he traded to Dr. Josiah Simpson of Fort Humboldt for a telescope. The construction of an elkhorn chair included using matching horns to make the front legs and arms of the chair. These horns interlocked with another matching pair, which formed the rear legs and the back of the chair. An elk-hide seat was added, along with actual elk feet as the feet of the chair, and the horns were connected beneath the seat. Inspired by the 1856 election of James Buchanan, a fellow Pennsylvanian, to the presidency, Kinman built his first presidential elkhorn chair and brought it to Washington. > I kill deer and elk meat up in Humboldt County. My range is from Bear Valley into Oregon. This winter I killed considerable meat so I thought I would take it easy and set about to make this cheer with a view of sending it on to Washington for Old Buck. After I got it finished, though, the boys up in our parts thought it enough to travel on; so I thought I would try and go on with it to Washington myself, leaving my mother and four children behind, and started with nothing but my rifle and powder horn. Nobody has yet sot in this cheer, and never shall till after the President. He arranged free passage on the ship Golden Age to Panama, then to New York, and finally to Washington. With some help from Peter Donahue and O.M. Wozencraft, on May 26, 1857, after an introduction from the Commissioner of Indian Affairs James W. Denver, Kinman presented the chair to Buchanan. The President was so pleased by the present that he bought Kinman a rifle and two pistols in return. In 1861 he advertised that he had made a chair that he would present to Napoleon III. Later, because of French involvement in Mexico, he abandoned the idea. Kinman took two chairs on his 1864 trip to the East Coast for use in exhibitions. Kinman's presentation of an elkhorn chair to President Abraham Lincoln at 10 a.m. on Saturday, November 26, 1864, was recorded by artist Alfred Waud, the only known picture of Lincoln accepting a gift. The drawing shows Lincoln examining Kinman's rifle, which he called "Ol' Cottonblossum." Kinman also presented a fiddle made from the skull and a rib of his favorite mule and played the instrument. > Much to the amusement of Lincoln and other spectators, he played 'Essence of Old Virginia' and 'John Brown' on the bones of the mule. Lincoln said that if he could play the fiddle he would ask him for it, but since he could not, the fiddle would be better off in Mr. Kinman's hands. Within three weeks, Lincoln stated that he would prefer to eat Kinman's chair, antlers and all, than to appoint a certain office-seeker. The following April, Kinman marched in President Lincoln's funeral cortege in Washington. Kinman was allegedly in Ford's Theater the night of the assassination and witnessed the murder. He escorted Lincoln's body on its way to burial as far as Columbus, Ohio. On April 26, 1865, the New York Times described Kinman in the funeral cortege in New York City: "Much attention was attracted to Mr. Kinman, who walked in a full hunting suit of buckskin and fur, rifle on shoulder. Mr. Kinman, it will be remembered, presented to Mr. Lincoln some time ago a chair made of California elk-horn, and continuing his acquaintance with him, it is said, enjoyed quite a long conversation with him the very day before the murder." During his stays on the East Coast, many cartes de visites photographs of Kinman and his chairs were taken by Mathew Brady. Kinman claimed to have paid Brady \$2,100 in one three-month period for photos at 8 cents apiece, which calculates to an unlikely amount of over 26,000 photographs. Kinman sold these photographs, among other places, in the U.S. Capitol. He also toured the country, performing in his buckskins as a frontier story teller and fiddle player. Kinman's tour de force in presidential chairs was presented to President Andrew Johnson on September 8, 1865. > This was intended to surpass all his previous efforts, and was made from two grizzly bears captured by Seth. The four legs and claws were those of a huge grizzly and the back and sides ornamented with immense claws. The seat was soft and exceedingly comfortable, but the great feature of the chair was that, by touching a cord, the head of the monster grizzly bear with jaws extended, would dart out in front from under the seat, snapping and gnashing its teeth as natural as life. Johnson kept the chair in his White House library, the Yellow Oval Room. On September 18, 1876, Kinman presented an elkhorn chair to Governor Rutherford Hayes of Ohio, who was soon to become the President of the United States. The chair is now displayed in the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center in Fremont, Ohio. He later gave a chair constructed of bearskin and other bear body parts to Hayes's vice-president William A. Wheeler. ## Legacy In 1876, Kinman dictated his memoirs, but they were not published until 2010. Dictated to a "H. Niebur" it was originally titled “Seth Kinman: Life and Adventures of the Renowned Humboldt and Trapper, Guide and Explorer.” He also kept an extensive scrapbook of newspaper articles. About 1930, a one-time neighbor of Kinman, George Richmond, copied the memoirs and the scrapbook by hand. Original pieces of H. Niebur's dictations appear in Richmond's manuscript. Portions of H. Niebur's work is available for viewing at Humboldt State University Special Collections. The original manuscript and scrapbook were then sent to a potential publisher or agent, and lost after Richmond's death. The published version is from Richmond's copy. Richmond also recalled many of Kinman's stories and collected others from Kinman's family and friends, then retold these stories in a book now published as I'm a Gonna Tell Ya a Yarn. In his later years, Kinman lived in Table Bluff, California with his family, where he owned a hotel and bar. In 1886, Kinman was preparing to send chairs to President Grover Cleveland and former presidential candidate General Winfield Scott Hancock. He died in 1888 after accidentally shooting himself in the leg. He was interred at Table Bluff Cemetery in Loleta, California, in his buckskin clothing. Mrs. R.F. Herrick bought Kinman's traveling museum collection of 186 items, including at least two of his famous chairs, and displayed them in San Francisco in 1893. She then took the collection to Chicago to display them at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, where she reportedly sold the individual items. The Clarke Historical Museum in Eureka once displayed a suit of his buckskins, complete with beaded moccasins, as well as a wooden chest he owned,but no longer does so due to Kinman's problematic legacy. The Ferndale Museum displays several Kinman items, including another of his buckskin suits. ### Kinman's guns At least two of Kinman's guns are believed to have survived and have been exhibited on video. His long rifle "Old Cotton Blossum" was placed for sale in 2018 at an Illinois auction house with an estimated sales price of \$20,000 – \$40,000. The auction house reported that the gun was offered for sale by a Kinman biographer Alan W. Maki, who bought the rifle from Kinman's great-great-granddaughter. One of two pistols given to Kinman by President Buchanan was shown on Antiques Roadshow and valued for insurance purposes at about \$50,000. It is a 36 caliber Colt model 1851 made in Hartford, Connecticut. Kinman modified the pistol, trimming the hammer and adding a front blade site made of horn or bone. ## Gallery ## See also - Bald Hills War - Mountain men - Fur trappers - North American fur trade

Two Point Hospital

2018 simulation video game

Two Point Hospital is a 2018 business simulation game developed by Two Point Studios and published by Sega for Linux, macOS, and Windows. Console versions for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One were released in February 2020. A version for Amazon Luna was also made available in November 2020. A spiritual successor to Bullfrog Productions' 1997 game Theme Hospital, players are tasked with constructing and operating an empire of hospitals in the fictional Two Point County, with the goal of curing patients of fictitious, comical ailments. Since visiting real hospitals is often unpleasant, the emphasis on humour to lighten the mood was deemed important by the developers. The game was designed and developed by some of the creators of Theme Hospital, including Mark Webley and Gary Carr. Within weeks of release, Two Point Hospital was the second most downloaded game in the sales charts for Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Australia. The game was received positively by critics, garnering acclaim for its style, humour and its faithfulness to Theme Hospital'''s aesthetics, but criticised for its repetitiveness and room design. The game received seven major updates as downloadable content after its release which added new regions and illnesses to cure, as well as four item packs. A successor titled Two Point Campus was released in 2022. ## Gameplay Two Point Hospital features a similar style of gameplay to that of Theme Hospital. Players take on the role of a hospital administrator charged with constructing and maintaining a hospital. Tasks include building rooms and amenities that satisfy the needs (such as hunger and thirst) of patients and staff (such as toilets, staff rooms, reception desks, cafés, seating, and vending machines), expanding the hospital into new plots, the hiring and management of doctors, nurses, janitors, and assistants to maintain the hospital; and dealing with a variety of comical illnesses. The player can manage several hospitals, each with their own layout objectives. Two Point Hospital features unique, comical conditions such as "Light-Headedness" (having a light bulb for a head), "Pandemic" (having a pan on one's head), "Mock Star" (patients are Freddie Mercury impersonators), and "Animal Magnetism" (having animals stuck to the patient's body). When patients die, they sometimes become ghosts, which disrupt the hospital by terrorising patients and staff. Only janitors with the Ghost Capture skill can remove them. The process of diagnosing patients begins in a GP's Office before they are sent for further diagnosis in other rooms, and eventually treatment. From time to time, an influx of patients with a specific disease can occur. On later levels, players can also experience epidemics, during which an infectious disease spreads throughout the hospital. Players are issued with a certain number of vaccines to inoculate patients, and there is a reward if all infected patients are immunised. Otherwise, the player's reputation (a performance rating that affects the chances of new patients coming) is tarnished. Every game year, there is an awards ceremony in which the player is given performance-based rewards. Examples of objectives include: making the hospital attractive enough, and finding cures for certain diseases, though the general goal is curing as many patients as possible. The completion of challenges and other tasks awards "Kudosh", a currency that can be used to unlock new items that can be placed within rooms and corridors. Players can research new rooms and machine upgrades in the Research room. Newly introduced elements include star ratings, hospital levels, and room prestige. The achievement of a one-star rating allows players to progress to the next hospital, though they may continue building up their current hospital by completing additional objectives to increase the rating to two or three stars. If the player moves on, they can return to the hospital at any time. Hospital levels are determined by the number of rooms and staff members a hospital has – increasing the level attracts more patients and skilled staff. A room's prestige is affected by its size and ornamentation, and the higher a room's prestige level, the happier staff are inside it (if staff become unhappy, they may quit). Staff training is more complex than in Theme Hospital; all staff, not just doctors, can learn and receive qualifications that grant them new skills or improve their ability in a certain department. For example, the General Practitioner skill improves a doctor's skill in the GP's Office. Additionally, staff have personalities and specialisations which affect their job performance. Assistants can run marketing programmes to attract patients with a certain illness or staff with certain skills. The game features online leaderboards, along with co-operative and competitive multiplayer modes. An update released in October 2018 also added a sandbox mode. Steam Workshop support was added in February 2019, giving players the ability to customise the pictures, walls, and floors of the hospital, either by using image files from the player's computer, or by downloading other players' items. In April 2019, the "Superbug Initiative" update added co-operative community challenges, featuring numerous goals along progression system. The community completing these goals works together towards unique in-game content as a reward for. The update also added the ability to customise the game's soundtrack. ## Development Two Point Hospital is a spiritual sequel to Theme Hospital, a 1997 simulation game developed by Bullfrog Productions and released by Electronic Arts. The game was developed using the Unity engine. Among those involved in the development of both games were Theme Hospital's producer Mark Webley, Theme Hospital's lead artist Gary Carr, and Theme Hospital's composer Russell Shaw. Theme Hospital followed Theme Park, also developed by Bullfrog, and there had been plans to expand the range of Theme simulation games. After Theme Hospital's release, Webley left Bullfrog to found Lionhead Studios with Peter Molyneux, Carr left to join Mucky Foot Productions, and the expansion of Bullfrog's Theme series never happened. After they left Bullfrog, Webley and Carr continued to discuss a follow-up to Theme Hospital. Their first attempt was ER Tycoon, which was planned during Carr's time at Mucky Foot Productions but was cancelled because they could not find a publisher for the game. After postponing their ambition of continuing the Theme series for 20 years after they left Bullfrog, they founded Two Point Studios in 2016 to follow up on Theme Hospital. Carr said: "I wanted to work on something like Theme Hospital again, appealing to a broader range of people", and Webley stated that they "had been talking about this project for a number of years". The timing of a Theme Hospital-style game was also apt: art director Mark Smart said making a hospital-simulation game "felt right" and that there was "a lot of love for Theme Hospital", while studio co-founder and technical director Ben Hymers said players had been wanting a sequel to Theme Hospital for years. According to Webley and Carr, Two Point Hospital is a completely new game, rather than a reapplication of new assets to an existing game. The game was developed by envisioning fictional symptoms (often based on wordplay) and the means to cure them. Webley and Carr also wanted to develop a graphics style that would remain "future-proof" relative to changes in graphics rendering technology, and opted to use claymation-like effects, which they found would not become dated and made it easy for players to observe on-screen situations. Online features were an early target of the design of Two Point Hospital; Webley and Carr recognised that players of management games tend to prefer single-player experiences. They designed the online elements of the game to be opt-in and to feature asynchronous gameplay elements, including multiplayer challenges. Players would be tasked with achieving objectives such as curing patients within a set number of months and their scores would be placed on online leaderboards. Players would be able to view their progress compared to that of friends and other players during the challenge from these leaderboards, an approach Webley and Carr took from ghosts (a recorded version of a racer that replays a time record for a given track) that are used in some racing games. Hymers said Two Point Hospital would feature mod support, which will not be available at launch. To produce the game, Webley and Carr considered a few approaches before signing with Sega. They originally considered crowdfunding the development through Kickstarter. Shortly afterwards, however, they found video game development via Kickstarter was waning and decided this approach was too risky. They also considered taking an early access approach. Hymers suggested they approach Sega as a publisher, which was fortuitous because Sega wanted to expand their profile with games similar to Theme Hospital. While they were in negotiations with Sega, they selected a number of Lionhead Studios developers to help with Two Point Hospital's development. However, Microsoft closed Lionhead in April 2016 before the Sega deal was complete and they had to quickly choose their staff on limited funds. According to Hymers, the developers used their experience in making games including Theme Hospital, Populous, and Black & White to make Two Point Hospital. Smart said the team wanted the game to be accessible and that they wanted players to have confidence when examining the sub-menus and realising the level of strategy involved. Smart also said people do not like to visit hospitals and that using humour makes a difference to the atmosphere. According to Smart, the ailments were concocted from "terrible puns", or backwards from what someone wanted. Hymers said that patient queues and their movement along corridors were difficult to develop because the game is in 3D, which raised questions about wall thickness and cell width. He believed that this was less of an issue in Theme Hospital, which is 2D with graphics made from sprites, and that people were drawn in front of the walls. He also stated that making people avoid each other was tricky. A later patch for the game added character customisation and a "copy and paste" rooms feature. ### Sound The sound effects were created by Tom Puttick and Phil French of Cedar Studios (with Shaw being the Audio Director) using an Audient ASP880 pre-amplifier, which facilitated the conversion of the two-channel setup into a 10-channel setup. Two Point Studios gave Cedar Studios a brief for the music that enabled them to create "elevator music with a jukebox feel". Ambient tree sound effects were recorded in Guildford, Surrey, river sounds in Scotland, and waves on a beach in Spain. Other background sounds were recorded in a hospital. They also went to Two Point Studios' offices to record their staff members and emotive sounds for the interactions. Their original intention was to create all the sound effects themselves and not use any samples, but they changed their minds when they saw the machines (which diagnose or treat patients) in the game. Many of the sounds they created originally sounded too realistic; for example, Cubism (a disease which causes the patient's body to become a set of cubes) sounded "a bit gory" and was changed to make it more bubbly. For the user interface, Puttick and French originally used real-world sounds. One of the most difficult parts of the sound implementation was making the machines sound the same on all three game speeds. According to French, the process of creating the sounds was "weird"; it included watching animations and "looking at everything that could make a sound" in an effort to figure out how to recreate those sounds. For example, an umbrella, some straws, and a yoghurt drink were used by French to create the sounds for Chromotherapy (a disease which causes patients to turn grey and requires them to be re-coloured). French stated that the songwriting process began with a guitar or piano riff together with percussion elements (which included bongos and claves). They recorded many sounds of their own in the studio, for example, French made his own instrument by using PVC bathroom pipes, which was sampled so it could be played on a keyboard. The DJ voice-overs were recorded with voice actor Marc Silk at his studio. The voice-overs were then sent to Cedar Studios, and Puttick and French went through them and chose the best ones to put in the game. Due to the presence of a radio DJ, Two Point Studios did not want the songs to have any vocals. For one of the radio advertisements, singer Sophie Worsley was hired to sing the lyrics sung by the game's popstar. The public address voices were recorded at Cedar Studios, and Puttick and French added the public address effect. ## Release Two Point Hospital was announced on 16 January 2018 in a short YouTube video showing the game's visuals and comedic styling, and depicted a patient suffering from Light Headedness. Edge compared this disease's role in the game's marketing to that of Theme Hospital's Bloaty Head, which was described as its "poster disease". The first public viewing of Two Point Hospital was held at the PC Gamer Weekender event on 17 February 2018. The gameplay demo explored the game's user interface and its turning camera, which was not present in Theme Hospital. The game's publisher also announced a potential release date in August 2018. The panel discussed some of the new ailments that would be included in the game, confirming one that changes the patient into a mummy. In a GamesTM preview, Smart stated that the closest illness in the game to a real one is Hurty Leg, which he described as "almost like somebody in plaster". Developer Two Point Studios announced in a newsletter that subscribers would receive a "golden ticket" that would allow the player to download an in-game "golden toilet". In July 2018, Steam began accepting pre-orders for the game, which was released on 30 August 2018, for Linux, macOS, and Windows. On 2 September 2018, Two Point Hospital was the second most-downloaded game in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Australia. A Halloween patch was released on 23 October 2018, which introduced a "creepier" soundtrack, new DJ lines, a night-time intervention, and the 'Frightheadedness' disease. A free update in March 2019 added new decorative objects based on other game series on Steam, including Total War: Three Kingdoms, Endless Space, Football Manager, and Half-Life 2. The game's first paid downloadable content, "Bigfoot", was released on 5 December 2018. It adds additional hospital scenarios set in snow-based areas and a number of new illnesses to be cured related to the setting, among other improvements. On 18 March 2019, the "Pebberley Island" add-on was released. It is set on a tropical island and adds 34 diseases. The third expansion, "Close Encounters", released on 29 August 2019 adds science fiction elements such as aliens and the mysterious "Chasm 24". The fourth expansion, "Off the Grid", was released on 25 March 2020, and adds new plant-themed ailments and items with a focus on eco-friendliness. "Culture Shock", released in October 2020, introduced hospitals in culture settings like a film studio, which alongside curing patients with new diseases, will need to help with creating a television medical drama. "A Stitch in Time", released in February 2021, added hospital settings in different time eras along with medical conditions specific to those periods. Sega announced in July 2019 that the game will be brought to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One consoles, with all post-release updates that have been added to the personal computer version including the "Bigfoot" expansion, sometime later in 2019. The release for consoles was pushed to 25 February 2020, with the developers trying to better implement the game for console systems. A Jumbo edition release for consoles, which includes all prior DLC and the "Off the Grid" and "Close Encounters" packs, released on 5 March 2021. The game was released for Amazon Luna on 19 November 2020. ## Reception Two Point Hospital was received positively by critics. Media review aggregation website Metacritic summarised the game as garnering "generally favorable reviews". Critics were especially positive about how it holds up in comparison to Theme Hospital, with many giving praise for its nostalgic value as well as the improvements. Rachel Weber of GamesRadar+ was positive about the game's use of nostalgia, stating that the game had "taken the funny bones" from the original and transplanted them into Two Point Hospital. Game Informer's Ben Reeves thought that Two Point Studios had done "a remarkable job reviving Theme Hospital". GamesMaster described Two Point Hospital as "the perfect cure" for the "Bullfrog deficiency" and said it is precisely what Theme Hospital fans wanted it to be. Even before release, Dominic Tarason of Rock, Paper, Shotgun described Two Point Hospital as "Theme Hospital 2 in all but name", a view shared by Bit-Tech's Rick Lane and GamesTM. Similar views were held by Edge, Johnny Chiodini of Eurogamer, and Jacob Bukacek of Hardcore Gamer. Other critics who noted the similarity to Theme Hospital include Jeuxvideo.com and James Ide of the Daily Mirror. The game's humour was also widely praised by critics. UK newspaper Metro regarded the "amusing script and visual humour" of Two Point Hospital as one of its best features, calling it "endearing". Nic Reuben of Rock, Paper, Shotgun also commented on the game's humour, writing: "it's not that any individual element is hilarious – it's more of an infinite dads pulling infinite crackers sort of scenario. It just feels comfy, goofy and pleasant ..." James Swinbanks of GameSpot and GamesRadar+'s Rachel Weber echoed these sentiments by complimented the game's British sense of humour. GamesTM believed the humour was taken from Bullfrog and praised the balance, saying the game is not "trying too hard" and keeps it light-hearted. Steven Asarch of US magazine Newsweek with this sentiment, and lauded the game's "sick, depraved sense of humor". Shacknews's Chris Jarrard liked the sound effect and believed that the game's "outstanding" radio station helps put Two Point Hospital on par with Bullfrog games. José Cabrera of IGN Spain was positive about the gameplay, referring to the game as being "fun and light-hearted" and praising its addictiveness along with Asarch. Cabrera also called the game a "perfectly balanced simulation". TJ Hafer believed Two Point Hospital "revitalizes the business management genre". Fraser Brown of PC Gamer magazine agreed with Hafer, calling it a "brilliant management game, regardless of nostalgia". The presentation was also received well. Whereas Weber was complimentary of the visuals, calling them a "delight", Paul Tamburro of Game Revolution lauded the "seriously impressive" user interface specifically, believing that the game took "all the work out of management". He and Weber also liked the learning curve. The characters and animation were commended by Reeves, who believed they were influenced by Aardman Animations, and Brendan Frye of Canadian magazine CGMagazine likewise thought the animation is similar to Wallace and Gromit. Brown, however, was critical of the game's balance, stating that some "missions bleed together" and only a few levels are noticeably distinct. Some reviewers were more critical of the similarities to Theme Hospital. GamesTM believed that Two Point Hospital is too similar to Theme Hospital, saying that more could have been done to distance itself from it. The room design also received critique. Jarrard found that item placement and hospital construction can be "incredibly frustrating" when one is not used to it. He further stated that he believed some room types were not fully thought out and working them into the hospital is not easy. Reeves disliked needing to build a hospital from scratch when moving to a new one. Other criticisms were levied at the game's repetition, the lack of an ability to copy rooms, and the lack of a sandbox mode. The PC version of the game sold 1 million units. ### Awards \|- \| rowspan=2 \| 2018 \| Best Strategy Game \| Game Critics Awards \| \| \| \|- \| PC Game of the Year \| Golden Joystick Awards \| \| \| \|- \| rowspan=4 \| 2019 \| Game, Simulation \| National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers Awards \| \| \| \|- \| British Game \| 15th British Academy Games Awards \| \| \| \|- \| Best Original IP \| rowspan=2 \| Develop:Star Awards \| \| rowspan=2 \| \| rowspan=2 \| \|- \| Game of the Year \| \|- \| 2020 \| Strategy/Simulation \| 2020 Webby Awards \| \| \| The game won the "Editor's Choice" award from both PC Gamer UK and Game Revolution. Polygon also awarded Two Point Hospital its Polygon Recommends badge. Two Point Hospital was ranked number six on Bit-Tech's "Best Games of 2018" list. In 2020, Rock, Paper, Shotgun rated it number 6 on their best management games for the PC. ## See also - Hospital Tycoon – a similar hospital simulator - Project Hospital - CorsiTX'' - an open-source remake

Chitty Chitty Death Bang

"Chitty Chitty Death Bang" is the third episode of the first season of the animated comedy series Family Guy. It was originally shown on Fox in the United States on April 18, 1999. The episode follows Peter after he tries to make amends for his son, Stewie's, first birthday party when he loses their reservation at a popular kids' restaurant known as Cheesie Charlie's. Meanwhile, Meg becomes friends with an excitable girl named Jennifer, who leads her to join a death cult (inspired from the 1997 Heaven's Gate mass suicide), in an attempt to fit in. The episode was written by Danny Smith and directed by Dominic Polcino, both firsts in the Family Guy series. The episode featured guest performances by Butch Hartman, Waylon Jennings, Rachael MacFarlane and John O'Hurley, along with several recurring voice actors for the series. Much of the episode features a cutaway style of humor that is typically used in Family Guy, many of which feature cultural references including the Incredible Hulk, The Dukes of Hazzard, Three Little Pigs, and Couplehood. The title "Chitty Chitty Death Bang" is a variation on that of the 1968 musical film, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. ## Plot Lois has booked Cheesie Charlie's for Stewie's upcoming first birthday party and sends Peter, along with Chris, to drop off the deposit check at the restaurant. However, once they arrive, they seek the opportunity to play with all the machines, causing Peter to lose his watch in a claw machine. A little boy wins his watch, which causes Peter to become angry and tries to force the watch off the child. Five minutes later, the manager sees this and asks Peter to leave. But once Peter shows the deposit check, he immediately apologizes and exclaims how they are very excited to host Stewie's birthday party. Peter, angered by how he was treated, states that they will not be celebrating Stewie's party there, which causes a crowd of people to circle around the manager shouting for the reservation. Peter, realizing what he has just done, immediately returns home with a poorly crafted lie in an attempt to evade Lois' aggravation, which involves him saying that they are Nazis who torture, kill and kidnap people. He pretends that he has already planned an extravagant party at home so that Lois does not have to do any work. Meanwhile, Stewie misinterprets the meaning of his birthday and assumes that the same mysterious "Man in White" who delivered him as an infant will be returning to force Stewie back into Lois' womb, from which he escaped just one year ago. Meg cries all the way home to Peter from cheerleading practice, and has been having trouble fitting in at school. Later, she discovers a new friend named Jennifer. Meanwhile, Stewie makes it all the way to the airport looking for tickets, but then is stopped by a member of staff. The man then gives Stewie some advice, saying that running from your problems never solves anything. Stewie then reflects on this, deciding to finally face "The Man in White". But before he leaves, he wishes the man luck before freezing him in carbonite. Peter tries desperately, but ultimately unsuccessfully, to put together a party in time for Stewie's birthday. He finally reroutes a circus into the Griffins' backyard, saving the day - that is, until he reveals to Lois that he gave Meg permission to go to a party at her friend's house. Lois, who wanted the whole family together for Stewie's party, is upset with Peter for letting Meg go. What Peter and Lois do not realize is that Meg's "party" is actually a cult meeting where all the members are about to commit group suicide. Peter goes to retrieve Meg from her "party" and asks Meg to come as Lois wants her there. Meg just says it is just a birthday party and asks who would remember if she was not there. Peter says that Lois would, as she remembers everything, and that her best memories are of when Meg and her brothers were born. He then has an epiphany: having the entire family at the party is more for Lois than Stewie. Realizing how terrible she has been, Meg agrees to come home, and the cult members agree as well. Peter makes a toast, then looks at his watch before he can drink the poisoned punch and pulls Meg out before she can drink hers, oblivious to the fact that he is saving her life in the process while the cult members all die. The cult leader chases after them while wearing his ceremonial white robe and is mistaken by Stewie as "The Man in White". Stewie does away with him and, feeling victorious, joins the others to enjoy his party. ## Production "Chitty Chitty Death Bang" was written by Danny Smith and directed by Dominic Polcino, both their first episodes in the Family Guy series. Staff writers included voice actor Mike Henry and Andrew Gormley, while Ricky Blitt, Chris Sheridan as executive story editors, and Neil Goldman and Garrett Donovan acted as the story editors. To help Polcino direct the episode were supervising directors Peter Shin and Roy Allen Smith. In addition to the regular cast, guest stars included actor and comedian Patrick Bristow, animator, executive producer, animation director, storyboard artist and producer Butch Hartman (who played Mr. Weed, Peter's boss, and various other characters), writer Gary Janetti (who played the Demon and Riff), actor John O'Hurley (who played the Cult Leader), and Waylon Jennings (who played himself). Recurring cast members included Mike Henry who played Cleveland Brown and Lori Alan who played Dianne Simons. This is the first episode Seth MacFarlane's sister, Rachael MacFarlane guest starred in the episode as the voice of Jennifer. In future episodes, she would become a recurring voice actor for the series. Rachel has noted that she was asked by Seth to lend her voice for the show, but she did have to audition for the role. As with the remaining first four episodes of the season, the title of the episode, "Chitty Chitty Death Bang", was derived from 1930s and 1940s radio programs, particularly the radio thriller anthology "Suspense", which featured several elements pertaining to death and murder. This convention was later dropped following the fifth episode of the season, "A Hero Sits Next Door". due to individual episodes becoming difficult to identify and distinguish. ## Cultural references When Peter explains to Lois why he canceled the party at Cheesie Charlie's, he said he had been kidnapped by them and that they are Nazis. He explains to Lois that he escaped by turning into the Incredible Hulk. The place where Lois had planned Stewie's birthday party is called Cheesie Charlie's, which is a reference to the food chain Chuck E. Cheese's. When Stewie recalls how he was conceived, he tells the story of which he was in a sperm ship and gets into a fight with other sperm ships is a reference to fights in the Star Wars trilogy. Peter loses his Dukes of Hazzard watch. When Peter is looking for pigs for a petting zoo he takes down a house of straw and a house made of sticks, this is a reference to the fairy tale Three Little Pigs. Peter is also struck in the head by a paint can on a string, a reference to the film Home Alone. Items added to the suicide cult punch mix by Jennifer include cyanide, arsenic, rat poison, and the book Couplehood by Paul Reiser. The episode title is a reference to the 1968 musical film, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. ## Reception A 2008 review of the episode written by Ahsan Haque of IGN was generally positive; Haque stated that while he did not believe "Chitty Chitty Death Bang" was an "instant classic", it has "plenty of memorable moments" and "a nicely crafted storyline". Haque went on to praise Peter's attempt to "convince that the people at Cheesie Charlie's are Nazi devils who kidnapped him and that he only manages to escape because he was able to turn into the Incredible Hulk", as well as Stewie's role in the episode, calling it "extremely clever". Haque concluded his review by rating the episode an 8.4/10. David Williams from the DVD Movie Guide said that this and other episodes of the first season did a marvelous job of introducing the characters of the series to the viewers. In his review of "Chitty Chitty Death Bang" the TV Critic called the writing in the episode wittier than in previous ones. He found the Stewie storyline very enjoyable, and also commented positively on the moral of the story. He criticized the Meg storyline as he did not find mass suicide funny; he also commented that Peter felt a lot like Homer from The Simpsons. In his final comments he said it had some odd moments but it was a fun story.

Lisa's Sax

"Lisa's Sax" is the third episode of the ninth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on October 19, 1997, to overwhelmingly positive reviews. In the series' sixth flashback episode, it is explained how Lisa got her saxophone. The episode was executive produced by Al Jean and Mike Reiss and was the first episode Jean wrote by himself, as all of his previous writing credits had been shared with Reiss. It was directed by Dominic Polcino and guest starred Fyvush Finkel, who appeared as himself portraying Krusty in a film. ## Plot Homer and Bart are watching the Warner Bros. Network on television when they are interrupted by Lisa playing her saxophone in her bedroom. Bart enters Lisa's bedroom and tries to grab the saxophone from her, but he inadvertently tosses it out the window. It lands in the middle of the street and is run over by traffic and stomped on by Nelson Muntz. In a period of mourning, Lisa reveals she cannot remember ever not having that saxophone, so Homer recounts the instrument's origins. In a flashback to 1990, Bart goes to his first day of school, but things do not go so well for him and he becomes depressed. It is during discussions of Bart's future that the school psychologist realizes the young Lisa is very intelligent, telling Homer and Marge that they need to nurture her gifted spirit. They try to send Lisa to a private school but the tuition fee costs \$6,000. Meanwhile, a terrible heatwave hits Springfield and Homer saves \$200 to buy an air conditioner. Marge, however, asks Homer not to buy one until they figure out how to help Lisa. At the school, Bart talks with Milhouse and makes a farting sound, which Milhouse finds amusing. Encouraged, Bart entertains a group of children and sets out on his path to become the school prankster. On his way to purchase a new air conditioner, Homer discovers that a musical instrument is a way to encourage a gifted child, and subsequently sacrifices his air conditioner money to buy Lisa her first saxophone. In the present, Marge mentions that there is some money in the air conditioner account, so Homer decides to buy another saxophone for Lisa. ## Production "Lisa's Sax" is the first episode that Al Jean had ever been credited as having written by himself. Before this episode, all of his writing credits had been shared with Mike Reiss. The episode was written with a small staff that consisted of Jean, Reiss and David Stern, among others. According to Reiss, the final episode contained 80–90% of Jean's original script. It is the sixth flashback episode done by the show. "The Way We Was" was the first flashback episode and in it, Homer graduated from high school in 1974 and that made it difficult to have a realistic timeframe as this episode is set in 1990. Jean conceived the idea for the All in the Family style opening while waiting to get tickets to the O.J. Simpson murder trial. The episode was originally very short, so the montage of Lisa playing the sax at the end was added to pad it out, and the full intro is used. The pastel drawing of Krusty was drawn entirely by Dominic Polcino, who revealed it was the only piece of original artwork created solely by him that was featured in an episode. He created the pastel drawing with this in mind. It was an easy episode for Polcino to direct due to the lack of crowds and being a "grounded episode". This is the last episode in which Doris Grau has a speaking role as Lunchlady Doris, although this episode aired nearly two years after her death. It would also mark the final time the character would speak until Season 18's "The Mook, the Chef, the Wife and Her Homer" when she was voiced by Tress MacNeille. ## Cultural references While telling Bart and Lisa about 1990, Homer says, "Tracey Ullman was entertaining America with [...] crudely drawn filler material." This is a reference to The Simpsons's debut as "bumpers" airing before and after commercials on The Tracey Ullman Show. The song "Those Were the Days" parodies the opening credits of the television show All in the Family. Bart's blackboard punishment "I no longer want my MTV" is a reference to the old MTV slogan "I Want My MTV" (and a jab at the channel's declining quality due to lack of music videos and an uptick in reality TV shows, like The Real World). One of the people who run over the saxophone is a man on a tricycle, who promptly falls over. This is a reference to the show Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. At the beginning of the flashback, the song "Don't Worry, Be Happy" by Bobby McFerrin can be heard. In the flashback, Dr. Hibbert fashioned his hair and attire like Mr. T in The A-Team. Homer can be seen watching Twin Peaks and The Giant is then shown waltzing with the White Horse. In King Toot's music store, when Homer buys Lisa her first saxophone, there is a guitar in the background that is similar to Eddie Van Halen's "Frankenstrat" guitar. The photo beside Kent Brockman on the news has him modeled after the Coppertone Girl. At the end of the episode, Lisa performs a brief, cruder rendition of the hook of "Baker Street" by Gerry Rafferty on her new saxophone before the music segues into the original song. ## Reception In its original broadcast, "Lisa's Sax" finished 51st in ratings for the week of October 13–19, 1997, with a Nielsen rating of 8.2, equivalent to approximately 8.0 million viewing households. It was the second highest-rated show on the Fox network that week, following King of the Hill. The authors of the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, called it "a terrific episode, full of amusing self-referential wit and it is especially nice to finally discover what it was that caused Bart to go down the path to the dark side." Robert Canning of IGN strongly praised the episode, saying it is "not only very funny, but it's also loaded with Simpson heart." A review of The Simpsons season 9 DVD release in The San Diego Union-Tribune highlighted "Lisa's Sax" along with "All Singing, All Dancing" and "Trash of the Titans" as some of the more memorable episodes of the series. Stephen Becker of The Dallas Morning News noted that season 9 "has a special affinity for Lisa", and highlighted this episode along with "Das Bus" and "Lisa the Simpson" in his review of the DVD. A segment of the episode where two schoolgirls chant the digits of pi while playing patty-cake is used by mathematicians Sarah J. Greenwald of Appalachian State University and Andrew Nestler of Santa Monica College in a website on the mathematics of The Simpsons.

Kartik Aaryan

Indian actor (born 1990)

Kartik Aaryan Tiwari (born 22 November 1990) is an Indian actor who works in Hindi films. After pursuing a degree in engineering, he made his acting debut with Luv Ranjan's buddy film Pyaar Ka Punchnama (2011). He went on to star in the romances Akaash Vani (2013) and Kaanchi (2014), but these failed to propel his career forward. Aaryan had commercial successes in Ranjan's comedies Pyaar Ka Punchnama 2 (2015) and Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety (2018), with the latter emerging as his breakthrough film. He gained further prominence by starring in the romantic comedies Luka Chuppi and Pati Patni Aur Woh (both 2019), and the comedy horror film Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 (2022). The last of these emerged as his highest-grossing release and earned him a nomination for the Filmfare Award for Best Actor. He also played against type in the thrillers Dhamaka (2021) and Freddy (2022), and the romantic drama Satyaprem Ki Katha (2023). In addition to his acting career, Aaryan endorses several brands and products, and has co-hosted award ceremonies. He appeared in Forbes India's Celebrity 100 list of 2019. ## Life and career ### Early life and work (1990–2017) Kartik Tiwari (later Aaryan) was born on 22 November 1990 in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh. Both his parents are doctors; his father, Dr. Manish Tiwari, is a paediatrician, and his mother, Dr. Mala Tiwari, is a gynaecologist. Aaryan did his schooling at St. Paul's School in Gwalior. He later pursued an engineering degree in biotechnology from D. Y. Patil College of Engineering, Navi Mumbai, while secretly harbouring ambitions for a career in film. He has said that he would skip his classes and travel for two hours to attend auditions. Aaryan began a modelling career while in university and after three years of unsuccessfully auditioning for films, he did an acting course from the Kreating Charakters institute. He informed his parents of his desire to become an actor only after he signed his first film. While still in his third year of college, Aaryan made his acting debut with Luv Ranjan's buddy film Pyaar Ka Punchnama (2011), co-starring Divyendu Sharma, Raayo S Bakhirta, and Nushrat Bharucha, which revolves around the romantic tribulations faced by three young men. He found a casting call for the film on Facebook and secured the role after auditioning for six months. As he had limited financial means at that point, he lived in an apartment with 12 other aspiring actors and earned money by cooking for them. In Pyaar Ka Punchnama, his character's four-minute monologue was one of the lengthiest single shots done for a Hindi film to that point. Reviewing it for Rediff.com, Shaikh Ayaz found Aaryan's "bursting soliloquy on why women are the way they are and can never be understood [to be] riotously funny". Namrata Joshi of Outlook criticised the film for portraying each of the female characters as a "hard-hearted bitch" but was appreciative of Aaryan's monologue and the chemistry between the three men. The film emerged as a sleeper hit and he received a nomination for the Producers Guild Film Award for Best Male Debut. After the release of Pyaar Ka Punchnama, Aaryan completed his engineering degree at the insistence of his mother. His next film release came two years later when he collaborated once again with Ranjan and Bharucha in the romance Akaash Vani (2013), which is about the titular lovers who are separated when Vani is married off to an abusive husband. Sudhish Kamath of The Hindu praised the film for exploring chauvinism in India, a rare concept for Hindi film, and praised the chemistry between the two stars, writing that "you can tell how much they are in love, even when they don't have any lines". Sudhir Chaudhary, the cinematographer in Aaryan's previous films, showed his work to Subhash Ghai, who was impressed by Aaryan and cast him in his directorial Kaanchi (2014). It is a drama about a woman's quest for justice when her husband is murdered by politicians, in which Aaryan played the love interest of the title character (played by Mishti). Despite a brief role, Aaryan agreed to the project to work with Ghai. Saibal Chatterjee of NDTV disliked the film but wrote that Aaryan "exudes strong screen presence and shows flashes of qualities needed to be a mainstream Bollywood lover boy". Both Akaash Vani and Kaanchi did not perform well commercially, leading Aaryan to question his career prospects. In 2015, Aaryan starred in Ranjan's comedy sequel Pyaar Ka Punchnama 2, which retained some of the original's cast, including him and Bharucha, and added the actors Omkar Kapoor and Sunny Singh. In it, he delivered an even longer, seven minute single-shot monologue. Mike McCahill of The Guardian criticised the film's poor handling of female roles, but considered the banter between Aaryan and Bharucha's characters to be its highlight. Shubha Shetty-Guha of Mid-Day too took note of the misogynistic themes but found parts of it "uproariously funny". When asked about the sexism in the film, Aaryan said that as a proponent of gender equality his character did not reflect his personal beliefs. With earnings of over ₹880 million (US\$11 million) against a budget of ₹220 million (US\$2.8 million), Pyaar Ka Punchnama 2 emerged as a major financial success. For his performance, Aaryan won a Stardust Award for Best Actor In A Comic Role. The following year, Aaryan featured as a young Muslim boy who falls in love with an older woman in Tanuja Chandra's short film Silvat, which was made as part of the Zeal For Unity initiative to bridge cultural barriers between India and Pakistan. As he enjoyed working in comedies, Aaryan next starred alongside Paresh Rawal and Kriti Kharbanda in Guest iin London (2017), which is about a young couple troubled by unwelcome guests. A few scenes between Rawal and him were improvised on set. In a scathing review, Rohit Vats of Hindustan Times criticised the film's reliance on flatulence humour, and wrote that Aaryan "looks good, dances well, does his gags well, but eventually ends up playing the second fiddle to Rawal. Kartik has a likeable vibe, but that gets drowned in Rawal's perennial farting." It did not perform well commercially. ### Breakthrough (2018–2021) Aaryan's breakthrough came in 2018 when he collaborated with Ranjan and Bharucha for the fourth time in Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety, which also reunited him with Singh. The film tells the story of Sonu (Aaryan) who plots to separate his best friend Titu (Singh) from his fiancée Sweety (Bharucha) as Sonu considers her to be a gold digger. As with the Pyaar Ka Punchnama films, reviewers criticised the film's misogyny; Anna M. M. Vetticad of Firstpost took note of the film's homosexual undertones but panned it as a "dreary woman-hate-fest" and thought that Aaryan was "tiresome and hammy" in it. Rajeev Masand too disliked the "objectionable stereotyping" of women but found it to be "unquestionably funny" and credited Aaryan for making his character a "relatable, likeable figure despite his misdeeds". Once again addressing the criticisms, Aaryan said that portraying women as negative characters did not amount to misogyny just as casting men in villainous roles did not amount to misandry. With earnings of ₹1.5 billion (US\$19 million), the film emerged as Aaryan's biggest success. He won the Zee Cine Award for Best Actor in a Comic Role. Aaryan believed that the success of Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety allowed him to choose from a wider variety of roles. He was drawn to Luka Chuppi (2019), a satire on live-in relationships in small-town India, for depicting social issues through comedy. Co-starring Kriti Sanon, it was filmed in his hometown of Gwalior. Shubhra Gupta of The Indian Express criticised the writing for failing to subvert the issues raised in the film, and thought that both Aaryan and Sanon "come off standard-issue Bollywood". He next starred alongside Bhumi Pednekar and Ananya Panday in the comedy Pati Patni Aur Woh, a remake of the 1978 film of the same name. He took on the part of a philandering husband, which was played by Sanjeev Kumar in the original film. Anupama Chopra considered the film to be less misogynistic than the original; she wrote that Aaryan "enthusiastically commits" to his part but added that he had been overshadowed by his leading ladies. Both Luka Chuppi and Pati Patni Aur Woh were commercially successful, each grossing over ₹1 billion (US\$13 million) worldwide. For the latter, he won his second consecutive Zee Cine Award for Best Actor in a Comic Role. Imtiaz Ali's romantic drama Love Aaj Kal, a spiritual successor to Ali's 2009 film of the same name was Aaryan's sole film release of 2020. He played dual roles of young men in 1990 and 2020, opposite Arushi Sharma and Sara Ali Khan, respectively, after working on the mannerisms and body language of the characters to differentiate them from each other. In a negative review of the film, Nandini Ramnath of Scroll.in wrote that Aaryan "nails the diffidence and callowness of his characters" but bemoaned that he lacked "brooding quality and simmering intensity" in certain scenes. It emerged as a box office bomb. Aaryan was cast by Dharma Productions in the comedy sequel Dostana 2, but after filming for 20 days, he was fired. Bollywood Hungama reported that it was due to creative differences between him and producer Karan Johar, and that the production company would not work with Aaryan in the future. In 2021, Aaryan starred in Ram Madhvani's thriller Dhamaka, a remake of the Korean film The Terror Live (2013). Filmed entirely in 10 days, it was released on Netflix. Stutee Ghosh of The Quint believed Aaryan's dark, against-type performance to be among the film's positive aspects. ### Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 and beyond (2022–present) In 2022, Aaryan starred in Anees Bazmee's horror comedy Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 with Tabu and Kiara Advani. He temporarily lost his voice while filming its climax sequence. In a mixed review, Shalini Langer of The Indian Express noted that Aaryan's "cockiness [and] enthusiasm... lends some much-needed energy to the film". The film emerged as his highest-grossing release, with worldwide earnings of over ₹2.6 billion (US\$33 million). He won the Zee Cine Critics Award for Best Actor – Male and received a nomination for the Filmfare Award for Best Actor. He next played the titular role of a socially awkward dentist with a dark past in the psychological thriller Freddy, which released on Disney+ Hotstar. In preparation, he gained 14 kg, observed a dentist at work, and lived in isolation. Reviewers for India Today and Hindustan Times were appreciative of Aaryan for playing against his comic and romantic image. In 2023, Aaryan starred in a remake of the Telugu action film Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo (2020), titled Shehzada. When the film's producers suffered a financial crisis, Aaryan returned his salary, and was thus credited as producer. The film was a critical and commercial failure. Reacting to its reception, Aaryan said that he would not work in a remake again. He reunited with Kiara Advani in Satyaprem Ki Katha, a romantic drama about a troubled marriage. Although Nandini Ramnath wrote that "Aaryan puts visible effort" into a complex role and Sukanya Verma believed that he "sparkles in certain moments of vulnerability", they both opined that he had been overshadowed by Advani. It emerged as one of the year's highest-grossing films. Aaryan will next star in Kabir Khan's Chandu Champion, a sports film based on the life of Paralympic swimmer Murlikant Petkar. ## Other work and media image In addition to acting in films, Aaryan endorses several brands and products, including the sportswear brand Hummel International, the cream Emami Fair And Handsome and the clothing brand Manyavar. He has also co-hosted the 2018 IIFA Awards with Ayushmann Khurrana, and the 2019 Zee Cine Awards with Vicky Kaushal. In 2016, Aaryan became a member of the All Stars Football Club, which organises football matches for charity. He participated with several other celebrities, including Ranbir Kapoor, for a tournament held in New Delhi the following year. Aaryan was scheduled to take part in the club's next tournament, held in Singapore in 2018, but had to back out after dislocating his toe during practice. In 2018, Aaryan raised awareness on plastic pollution during World Environment Day. The following year, the Election Commission of India appointed him to raise awareness on voter participation in his home state of Madhya Pradesh. Aaryan was placed eighth in The Times of India's listing of the country's most desirable men of 2018. He held the 12th spot in the next two years. In 2019, he appeared in Forbes India's Celebrity 100 list, ranking 67th with an estimated annual income of ₹103.8 million (US\$1.3 million). In 2021, he ranked 20th in Duff & Phelps's listing of the country's most valuable celebrity brands. In 2022, he was ranked 15th in GQ India's "30 most influential young Indians" list. ## Filmography ### Films ### Television ### Music videos ## Awards and nominations

Doga (yoga)

Yoga involving dogs

Doga (a portmanteau of "Dog Yoga", and pronounced to rhyme with "yoga") is the practice of yoga as exercise with pet dogs. The yoga hybrid began in America around 2002, came to Britain in 2004, and had spread around the Western world by 2011. Doga teachers have noted the "seemingly enlightened" nature of dogs and the benefits of exercise, bonding and enjoyment that the activity can bring. The Doga teacher Mahny Djahanguiri has stated that while dogs "don't actually do yoga", Doga brings laughter and joy, freeing people from feeling they must be perfect to practice. Doga has however been criticised as a fad and for trivialising yoga. ## History Doga is a hybrid of yoga as exercise with the use of pet dogs. It began in America; the actress Suzi Teitelman created it around 2002. Teitelman states that "The person takes dog deeper into a stretch, and the dog takes the person deeper", while "if you have a dog on your arm in a standing posture it helps balance and strength." She adds that perhaps Doga's main benefit "for dogs and their owners is the bonding it creates." In 2003, Jennifer Brilliant and William Berloni published their book Doga: Yoga for Dogs; they claimed that "Dogis [sic] never try to impress. They practice doga with effortlessness and compassion, self-aware but never self-conscious." ABC News reported that the 30-minute classes that "allow[ed] you to meditate with dogs" were "surprisingly orderly". Doga was brought to the United Kingdom in 2004 by a pet shop, the Pet Pavilion of London. In this version, the pets are often held by their owners. Doga was popularised in the UK by the Swiss-British yoga teacher Mahny Djahanguiri; her 2015 book Doga: Yoga for you and your dog notes that "of course dogs don't actually do yoga", and suggests that "Doga has very little to do with perfection. It brings laughter and joy to people's hearts". The travel writer Elizabeth Gowing tried one of Djahanguiri's classes in Shoreditch, an inner-city district with few dogs; she observed the similarity of the way puppies romped about the class to the wandering of her unruly puppy-mind thoughts when first learning meditation, and noted that city-dwellers without dogs seemed to be longing for dogs to love. The class stepped through the asanas, modified to include dogs: reclining Boat pose, the dogs reclining in their owners' laps; the standing Triangle pose, with dog under an arm "like a handbag"; and the inverted Downward Dog, one "obliging spaniel" joining in. Doga arrived in Australia by 2011, where the instructor Hannah Reed stated that "the dogs are massaged gently using pressure points" and that the practice was safe for dogs with arthritis or hip dysplasia, but she noted that classes could be "quite chaotic". A 2014 Canadian version of Doga claimed to explore and develop the dogs' social learning through imitation and cognition. ## Benefits Bethany Lyttle writing in The New York Times, and Katie Briney writing on the Active website, report claimed advantages of Doga, including that the practice emphasizes yoga's focus on union between beings; helps establish a pack mentality; strengthens the bond between owner and pet; can provide additional weight resistance to intensify a physical practice; can assist injured, obese, or elderly dogs; and is enjoyable. Doga teacher Brenda Bryan writes in her 2009 book Barking Buddha that "with their innate instincts, joy in simple pleasures, and soulful eyes, dogs also are seemingly enlightened beings—Barking Buddhas, if you will", and can "teach us about life and love". The occupational therapist Melissa Y. Winkle describes in her book Dogwood Doga a wide range of activities shared by owner and dog, selected for their therapeutic value, with precautions to be observed. ## Issues Doga has been criticised as a fad, for trivialising yoga, for lax policies on teacher certification, and for untrained dogs' interference in participants' concentration and relaxation. The UK charity Dogs Trust has warned that unsupervised Doga may harm the dogs' welfare. Australian dog trainer Martin Dominick stated without adducing evidence that doga could worsen the behaviour of disobedient dogs. A pet insurance CEO, Jack Stephens, stated that yoga's therapeutic effects "were never proven on dogs". Analysts at the Swedish merchant bank SEB selected "dog yoga" in 2007 as the most evident sign of "overheating" – an excessive money supply encouraging people to spend on trivia, possibly predicting a financial crash – in the Swedish economy.

In Flanders Fields

First World War poem by John McCrae

"In Flanders Fields" is a war poem in the form of a rondeau, written during the First World War by Canadian physician Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae. He was inspired to write it on May 3, 1915, after presiding over the funeral of friend and fellow soldier Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, who died in the Second Battle of Ypres. According to legend, fellow soldiers retrieved the poem after McCrae, initially dissatisfied with his work, discarded it. "In Flanders Fields" was first published on December 8 of that year in the London magazine Punch. Flanders Fields is a common English name of the World War I battlefields in Belgium and France. It is one of the most quoted poems from the war. As a result of its immediate popularity, parts of the poem were used in efforts and appeals to recruit soldiers and raise money selling war bonds. Its references to the red poppies that grew over the graves of fallen soldiers resulted in the remembrance poppy becoming one of the world's most recognized memorial symbols for soldiers who have died in conflict. The poem and poppy are prominent Remembrance Day symbols throughout the Commonwealth of Nations, particularly in Canada, where "In Flanders Fields" is one of the nation's best-known literary works. The poem is also widely known in the United States, where it is associated with Veterans Day and Memorial Day. ## Background John McCrae was a poet and physician from Guelph, Ontario. He developed an interest in poetry at a young age and wrote throughout his life. His earliest works were published in the mid-1890s in Canadian magazines and newspapers. McCrae's poetry often focused on death and the peace that followed. At the age of 41, McCrae enrolled with the Canadian Expeditionary Force following the outbreak of the First World War. He had the option of joining the medical corps because of his training and age but he volunteered instead to join a fighting unit as a gunner and medical officer. It was his second tour of duty in the Canadian military; he had previously fought with a volunteer force in the Second Boer War. He considered himself a soldier first; his father was a military leader in Guelph and McCrae grew up believing in the duty of fighting for his country and empire. McCrae fought in the Second Battle of Ypres in the Flanders region of Belgium, where the German army launched one of the first chemical attacks in the history of war. They attacked French positions north of the Canadians with chlorine gas on April 22, 1915 but were unable to break through the Canadian line, which held for over two weeks. In a letter written to his mother, McCrae described the battle as a "nightmare", > For seventeen days and seventeen nights none of us have had our clothes off, nor our boots even, except occasionally. In all that time while I was awake, gunfire and rifle fire never ceased for sixty seconds ... And behind it all was the constant background of the sights of the dead, the wounded, the maimed, and a terrible anxiety lest the line should give way. Alexis Helmer, a close friend, was killed during the battle on May 2. McCrae performed the burial service himself, where he noticed how poppies quickly grew around the graves of those who died at Ypres. The next day, he composed the poem while sitting in the back of an ambulance at an Advanced Dressing Station outside Ypres. This place has since become known as the John McCrae Memorial Site. ## Poem In Flanders Fields and Other Poems, a 1919 collection of McCrae's works, contains two versions of the poem: a printed text as below and a handwritten copy where the first line ends with "grow" instead of "blow", as discussed under Publication: > ` In Flanders Fields` > ` In Flanders Fields, the poppies blow` > ` Between the crosses, row on row, ` > ` That mark our place; and in the sky` > ` The larks, still bravely singing, fly` > ` Scarce heard amid the guns below.` > > ` We are the dead. Short days ago ` > ` We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,` > ` Loved and were loved, and now we lie,` > ` In Flanders fields` > > ` Take up our quarrel with the foe:` > ` To you from failing hands we throw` > ` The torch; be yours to hold it high.` > ` If ye break faith with us who die` > ` We shall not sleep, though poppies grow` > ` In Flanders fields.` As with his earlier poems, "In Flanders Fields" continues McCrae's preoccupation with death and how it stands as the transition between the struggle of life and the peace that follows. It is written from the point of view of the dead. It speaks of their sacrifice and serves as their command to the living to press on. As with many of the most popular works of the First World War, it was written early in the conflict, before the romanticism of war turned to bitterness and disillusion for soldiers and civilians alike. An article by Veteran's Administration Canada provides this account of the writing of In Flanders Fields: > The day before he wrote his famous poem, one of McCrae's closest friends was killed in the fighting and buried in a makeshift grave with a simple wooden cross. Wild poppies were already beginning to bloom between the crosses marking the many graves. Unable to help his friend or any of the others who had died, John McCrae gave them a voice through his poem. It was the second last poem he was to write. ## Publication Cyril Allinson was a sergeant major in McCrae's unit. While delivering the brigade's mail, he watched McCrae as he worked on the poem, noting that McCrae's eyes periodically returned to Helmer's grave as he wrote. When handed the notepad, Allinson read the poem and was so moved he immediately committed it to memory. He described it as being "almost an exact description of the scene in front of us both". According to legend, McCrae was not satisfied with his work. It is said he crumpled the paper and threw it away. It was retrieved by a fellow member of his unit, either Edward Morrison or J. M. Elder, or Allinson. McCrae was convinced to submit the poem for publication. An early copy of the poem is found in the diary of Clare Gass, who was serving with McCrae as a battlefield nurse, in an entry dated October 30, 1915—nearly six weeks before the poem's first publication in the magazine Punch on December 8, 1915. Another story of the poem's origin claimed that Helmer's funeral was held on the morning of May 2, after which McCrae wrote the poem in 20 minutes. A third claim, by Morrison, was that McCrae worked on the poem as time allowed between arrivals of wounded soldiers in need of medical attention. Regardless of its true origin, McCrae worked on the poem for months before considering it ready for publication. He submitted it to The Spectator in London but it was rejected. It was then sent to Punch, where it was published on December 8, 1915. It was published anonymously, but Punch attributed the poem to McCrae in its year-end index. The word that ends the first line of the poem has been disputed. According to Allinson, the poem began with "In Flanders Fields the poppies grow" when first written. McCrae ended the second-to-last line with "grow", Punch received permission to change the wording of the opening line to end with "blow". McCrae used either word when making handwritten copies for friends and family. Questions over how the first line should end have endured since publication. Most recently, the Bank of Canada was inundated with queries and complaints from those who believed the first line should end with "grow", when a design for the ten-dollar bill was released in 2001, with the first stanza of "In Flanders Fields", ending the first line with "blow". ## Popularity According to historian Paul Fussell, "In Flanders Fields" was the most popular poem of its era. McCrae received numerous letters and telegrams praising his work when he was revealed as the author. The poem was republished throughout the world, rapidly becoming synonymous with the sacrifice of the soldiers who died in the First World War. It was translated into numerous languages, so many that McCrae himself quipped that "it needs only Chinese now, surely". Its appeal was nearly universal. Soldiers took encouragement from it as a statement of their duty to those who died while people on the home front viewed it as defining the cause for which their brothers and sons were fighting. It was often used for propaganda, particularly in Canada by the Unionist Party during the 1917 federal election amidst the Conscription Crisis. French Canadians in Quebec were strongly opposed to the possibility of conscription but English Canadians voted overwhelmingly to support Prime Minister Robert Borden and the Unionist government. "In Flanders Fields" was said to have done more to "make this Dominion persevere in the duty of fighting for the world's ultimate peace than all the political speeches of the recent campaign". McCrae, a staunch supporter of the empire and the war effort, was pleased with the effect his poem had on the election. He stated in a letter: "I hope I stabbed a [French] Canadian with my vote". The poem was a popular motivational tool in Great Britain, where it was used to encourage soldiers fighting against Germany, and in the United States where it was reprinted across the country. It was one of the most quoted works during the war, used in many places as part of campaigns to sell war bonds, during recruiting efforts and to criticize pacifists and those who sought to profit from the war. At least 55 composers in the United States set the poem "In Flanders Fields" to music by 1920, including Charles Ives, Arthur Foote, and John Philip Sousa. The setting by Ives, which premiered in early 1917, is perhaps the earliest American setting. Fussell criticized the poem in his work The Great War and Modern Memory (1975). He noted the distinction between the pastoral tone of the first nine lines and the "recruiting-poster rhetoric" of the third stanza. Describing it as "vicious" and "stupid", Fussell called the final lines a "propaganda argument against a negotiated peace". ## Legacy McCrae was moved to the medical corps and stationed in Boulogne, France, in June 1915 where he was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel and placed in charge of medicine at the Number 3 Canadian General Hospital. He was promoted to the acting rank of colonel on January 13, 1918, and named Consulting Physician to the British Armies in France. The years of war had worn McCrae down; he contracted pneumonia that day and later came down with cerebral meningitis. On January 28, 1918, he died at the military hospital in Wimereux and was buried there with full military honours. A book of his works, featuring "In Flanders Fields", was published the following year. "In Flanders Fields" is very popular in Canada, where it is a staple of Remembrance Day ceremonies and may be the best-known literary piece among English Canadians. It has an official French adaptation, entitled "Au champ d'honneur", written by Jean Pariseau and used by the Canadian government in French and bilingual ceremonies. With an excerpted appearance on the ten-dollar bill from 2001 to 2013, the Royal Canadian Mint has released poppy-themed quarters on several occasions. A version minted in 2004 featured a red poppy in the centre and is considered the first multi-coloured circulation coin in the world. To mark the poem's centennial in 2015, a coloured and uncoloured poppy quarter and a "toonie" (\$2 coin) were issued as circulation coins, as well as other collector coins. Among its uses in popular culture, the lines "to you from failing hands we throw / the torch, be yours to hold it high" has served as a motto for the Montreal Canadiens hockey club since 1940. Canada Post honoured the 50th anniversary of John McCrae's death with a stamp in 1968 and marked the centennial of his famous poem in 2015. Other Canadian stamps have featured the poppy, including ones in 1975, 2001, 2009, 2013 and 2014. Other postal authorities have employed the poppy as a symbol of remembrance, including those of Australia, Gibraltar, the United Kingdom and United States. McCrae's birthplace in Guelph, Ontario has been converted into a museum dedicated to his life and the war. McCrae was named a National Historic Person in 1946, and his house was listed as a National Historic Site in 1966. In Belgium, the In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres, named after the poem and devoted to the First World War, is situated in one of Flanders' largest tourist areas. A monument commemorating the writing of the poem is located at Essex Farm Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery, which is thought to have been the location of Helmer's burial and lies within the John McCrae Memorial Site. Despite its fame, "In Flanders Fields" is often ignored by academics teaching and discussing Canadian literature. The poem is sometimes viewed as an anachronism; it spoke of glory and honour in a war that has since become synonymous with the futility of trench warfare and the slaughter produced by 20th-century weaponry. Nancy Holmes, professor at the University of British Columbia, speculated that its patriotic nature and use as a tool for propaganda may have led literary critics to view it as a national symbol or anthem rather than a poem. ### Remembrance poppies The red poppies that McCrae referred to had been associated with conflict since the Napoleonic Wars when a writer of that time first noted how the poppies grew over the graves of soldiers. The damage done to the landscape in Flanders during the battle greatly increased the lime content in the surface soil, leaving the poppy as one of the few plants able to grow in the region. Inspired by "In Flanders Fields", American professor Moina Michael resolved at the war's conclusion in 1918 to wear a red poppy year-round to honour the soldiers who had died in the war. She also wrote a poem in response called "We Shall Keep the Faith". She distributed silk poppies to her peers and campaigned to have them adopted as an official symbol of remembrance by the American Legion. Madame E. Guérin attended the 1920 convention where the Legion supported Michael's proposal and was inspired to sell poppies in her native France to raise money for the war's orphans. In 1921, Guérin sent poppy sellers to London ahead of Armistice Day, attracting the attention of Field Marshal Douglas Haig. A co-founder of The Royal British Legion, Haig supported and encouraged the sale. The practice quickly spread throughout the British Empire. The wearing of poppies in the days leading up to Remembrance Day remains popular in many areas of the Commonwealth of Nations, particularly Great Britain, Canada and South Africa and in the days leading up to ANZAC Day in Australia and New Zealand. ## See also - 1915 in poetry - Military history of Canada during World War I - "The Red Poppies on Monte Cassino"

Crocodile (Black Mirror)

"Crocodile" is the third episode of the fourth series of the anthology series Black Mirror. It was written by series creator Charlie Brooker and directed by John Hillcoat. The episode first aired on Netflix, along with the rest of series four, on 29 December 2017. The episode follows Mia (Andrea Riseborough) fifteen years after she helped her friend Rob (Andrew Gower) cover up a hit-and-run death, as she commits several murders in order to cover up her past crimes. Meanwhile, Shazia (Kiran Sonia Sawar) is an insurance investigator who uses a "Recaller" that can project people's visual memories onto a screen. The writers were inspired by Nordic noir and by a similar memory technology in series one's "The Entire History of You". The first draft featured a male protagonist and Scotland as its setting. It was filmed in Iceland. The episode garnered mixed reviews. Critics mostly found its bleakness and violence to be excessive, with further criticism of the plot twists. Some reviewers found the Recaller technology to be interesting, but not meaningfully explored by the episode. Riseborough and Sawar's acting, as well as the visual aesthetics, were acclaimed. ## Plot Driving intoxicated after a party, Rob (Andrew Gower) hits a cyclist on a mountain road, killing him. Rob's companion Mia Nolan (Andrea Riseborough) helps him throw the body off a cliff into a lake. Fifteen years later, Mia is married with a nine-year-old son and works as an architect. After she delivers an important presentation, a newly-sober Rob meets her at her hotel. He is going to write an anonymous letter to the victim's wife, after seeing a news article indicating she never moved on, but Mia is afraid the letter will be traced. An argument ensues and Mia breaks Rob's neck, killing him. Out of the window, she notices a self-driving pizza delivery truck hit a pedestrian. Playing pornography in the room as an alibi, she disposes of Rob's body. The pedestrian is visited by Shazia (Kiran Sonia Sawar), an insurance investigator who uses a "Recaller" to view his memories, as best as he can picture them, on a screen. She finds a woman he passed on the street before the incident, who directs her to a dentist, who saw Mia looking at the accident from her hotel room. In each case Shazia makes them smell beer from the nearby brewery and replays a song that played in a passing car to strengthen their memories. Hoping to get bonus pay from a quick investigation, Shazia makes a lengthy drive to meet Mia. A tense Mia only allows Shazia in when told that refusal will be reported to the police. Mia tries to divert her memory away from the accident but fails, and Shazia sees memories of both of her killings. Shazia tries to leave but her car does not start and Mia smashes the window, knocks her out and ties her up in a shed. Mia disbelieves Shazia's promise to keep the information secret, and uses the Recaller to learn that Shazia had told her husband Anan (Anthony Welsh) her whereabouts. Mia kills Shazia, drives to her house and, masked, kills Anan as he bathes. As Mia exits, having removed her mask, she sees the couple's baby son babbling in front of her and kills him so as not to leave a witness. However, the baby was born blind. Police use the Recaller on the baby's pet guinea pig, which had observed the final murder. Officers then quietly arrive at the ending of Mia's son's school production of Bugsy Malone, where she is in the audience. ## Production Whilst series one and two of Black Mirror were shown on Channel 4 in the UK, in September 2015 Netflix commissioned the series for 12 episodes, and in March 2016 it outbid Channel 4 for the rights to distribute the series in the UK, with an offer of \$40 million. The twelve-episode order was divided into two series of six episodes each, with "Crocodile" in the latter group. The six episodes in series four were released on Netflix simultaneously on 29 December 2017. "Crocodile" is listed as the third episode, but as Black Mirror is an anthology series, each instalment can be watched in any order. ### Writing and casting The episode was written by the series creator Charlie Brooker, with Annabel Jones as executive producer. It was inspired by the series one episode "The Entire History of You", which featured a personal implant that a person could use privately to review their memories. According to Jones, they considered what the situation would be like if these memories were not private, developing a "cat-and-mouse type drama" that would highlight the importance of memories, and to what lengths someone with a secret would go to conceal them. In its original form, the script involved a woman who, at the age of two, had seen her mother die, causing her to become an anxious and fearful person. Brooker compared this to a virtual reality trip down a jungle river with random events: one person may have an enjoyable experience despite some negative happenstances, but an unlucky person may be attacked by a crocodile almost immediately and, thinking that they are in a "crocodile attack simulator", be anxious for the rest of the game. While the script significantly changed over the course of production, the title was established as "Crocodile" because of this analogy. The episode was initially conceived with a male protagonist. Andrea Riseborough read the script to audition for the insurance investigator, who was later renamed Shazia and played by Kiran Sonia Sawar. However, Riseborough liked the journey of the protagonist and asked if the part could be rewritten as a woman. Both Brooker and Jones described the change as interesting, with Jones asking, "How often do you see a mother reduced to this level of desperation?" Though they questioned whether a woman would have the physical strength to dispose of a body, Riseborough argued that her character could find that strength in desperation. Brooker commented that "the panicking male murderer is practically a trope", so the gender change was "refreshing". The episode ends with Mia killing Shazia's son, who turns out to be blind, and her murder is witnessed by a guinea pig. This was intended as dark humour in the tone of 1996 black comedy thriller Fargo, though the episode had been more serious up until that point. Mia then watches her son in a stage adaptation of the 1976 musical film Bugsy Malone, which starred Jodie Foster—the director of the preceding episode "Arkangel". ### Filming The episode was directed by John Hillcoat, who described the episode as a "pitch-black comedy of errors". Hillcoat said that "Crocodile" is about "how human beings actually work and how we would respond to something the tech revolution may well bring into our lives". The memory reader technology was conceived by Brooker with the arcade machine for Space Invaders in mind. Production designer Joel Collins compares it to a slide viewer, contrasting with the thin screens of contemporary devices. After the memory reader was designed, other technology in the episode such as the pizza truck were re-designed with similar box styles. The episode was shot in Iceland and includes scenes filmed in the Harpa concert hall. Brooker had originally called for filming in Scotland in his script, but he later said that Netflix suggested Iceland as a "stunning backdrop". Hillcoat commented that the "cruel inescapable logic" of Mia's actions were suited for Icelandic "strange, vast and primeval landscapes". During filming, Iceland had its largest snowfall in forty years. The scenes involving the pizza van were the worst affected, with shooting taking place over two nights. Snow needed to be continually brushed and special effects teams used heaters and hoses on important areas in frame. A line of dialogue about snow was added, the intention being that the difference in snow was a consequence of observers' differing memories. Riseborough's performance as Mia was less panicked than Brooker had pictured when writing the episode. Hillcoat opined that Mia has ambition as a "deep inner flaw", whereas Jones thought her actions was a "logical inevitability" of her initially protecting her friend Rob. Brooker said that Mia "really turns" when she hides Rob's body, rather than confessing to causing his death. In her first rehearsal, Riseborough injured her ribs. Sawar found the scene in which her character Shazia was killed by Mia difficult to film, and was unable to watch the scene in the finished episode. ## Marketing In May 2017, a Reddit post unofficially announced the names and directors of the six episodes in series 4 of Black Mirror. The first trailer for the series was released by Netflix on 25 August 2017, and contained the six episode titles. Beginning on 24 November 2017, Netflix published a series of daily posters and trailers for the fourth series, referred to as the "13 Days of Black Mirror". The trailer for "Crocodile" was the second to be released, on 27 November 2017. On 6 December, Netflix published a trailer featuring an amalgamation of scenes from the fourth series, which announced that the series would be released on 29 December. ## Analysis The writers were inspired by the aesthetic of Nordic noir, a genre of crime fiction in the Nordic countries. David Sims of The Atlantic additionally identified elements of psychological thriller, and Charles Bramesco of Vulture found "a familiar series of law-and-order beats". Shazia has the "detective role" in the story, according to Nick Harley of Den of Geek. Harley and The Guardian's Lanre Bakare both found it one of the bleakest episodes of Black Mirror, and Paste's Jacob Oller wrote that there was an "unrelenting pessimism at the heart of the story". Critics suggested various motivations or emotions behind Mia's actions. Louisa Mellor of Den of Geek found her to be "traumatised by her actions but ... stuck on a murderous path from which she can't turn back". The Telegraph's Chris Harvey saw a message that "there in all of us, a long way down" is the propensity to murder. Prior to her killing spree, Bramesco found that Mia was "trying her best to be a dutiful mother and wife while pursuing excellence as an architecture expert". Writing for The Verge, Laura Hudson viewed that Mia "benefits from the presumption of innocence" as a white woman, and that she is "effective" as "an unlikely killer". Hudson noted that most of Mia's victims are people of colour and drew comparisons to Get Out (2017), a horror film which she said "positioned white femininity as the canny, quiet heart of its violence". Oller saw Mia's predicament as like the video game Until Dawn (2015), describing that in the game "your every decision begins a series of butterfly effects". Some critics drew connections between the title and the idiom "crocodile tears", which refers to insincere expressions of sorrow. Rosie Fletcher of Digital Spy commented that Mia is seen crying in the episode, and initially seems much more emotional than Rob about the car crash death, but Fletcher says that she becomes "a completely ruthless and cold killer". Zack Handlen, a reviewer for The A.V. Club, saw an ambiguity over whether Mia's grief was insincere, suggesting that it could be "all for show" or because "no matter how awful she feels, she keeps pushing forward". Hudson compared her "pseudo-sympathetic tears" to a line from Shakespeare's Hamlet that a person can "smile and smile and smile and be a villain". Jason Koebler of Vice noted that Mia does not read the End-User License Agreement (EULA) for the Recaller, and suggests that Shazia is lying about the "legal requirement" to use the Recaller, as she previously implied Mia could opt out. Thus, Mia reading the EULA could have allowed her to decline, and the later murders would not have happened. Kevin P. Sullivan of Entertainment Weekly saw the technology in the episode as "the means to another end and a different message entirely", though Hudson wrote that it was "hard to identify a takeaway". Some questions were raised by the Recaller. Hudson said it was "an obvious proxy for the increasingly invasive ways our lives are surveilled, from cameras to face-recognition to data theft". Handlen viewed that the episode asks: "Is it ethical to force people to reveal their memories? Is it just another form of police questioning, or something more sinister?" Alissa Wilkinson of Vox found it "frightening" that "memories are not just unreliable, but suggestible". In the episode, one person's memory is seen to change when Shazia tells the person what colour a woman's jacket was. Wilkinson thought that this could be misused by a malicious employee in the justice system. In January 2018, Toyota announced its self-driving delivery vehicle, the e-Palette. One of their partnerships was with Pizza Hut, to create a self-driving pizza delivery truck. This led to comparisons to the truck with the same function in "Crocodile". The official Twitter account for Black Mirror replied to the announcement with "We know how this goes." Comparisons were made to other Black Mirror episodes. In terms of the genre, Bramesco found that the instalment "pivots into a two-pronged procedural" like that of "Hated in the Nation". In relation to the technology, the "grain" in "The Entire History of You" records one's vision and hearing exactly, whereas in "Crocodile" the Recaller is dependent on imperfect recollections. In "Crocodile", the song "Anyone Who Knows What Love Is (Will Understand)" plays—it became a recurring feature of Black Mirror after Abi sang it in "Fifteen Million Merits". The talent show Hot Shots and pornography channel WraithBabes, two other features of "Fifteen Million Merits", are also mentioned in "Crocodile". Other "Easter egg" references to Black Mirror instalments include the appearance of UKN, a news channel from "The National Anthem", and the pizza company Fence's, which also features in "USS Callister". A newspaper article briefly shown also contains the text: "Of course the real question is why anyone would pause what they're watching just to read a sentence in a printed out newspaper article, says a voice in your head — before advising you to go and share this finding on Reddit". ## Reception The episode received mixed critical reception, with consensus that the technological themes could have been explored further and that the ending was gratuitously dark, but that the characters were well-acted and the setting was aesthetically pleasing. On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the episode received positive reviews from 53% of 19 critics, with an average rating of 6.39/10. The site's summary says that the episode is "beautiful but blunt" and that its "nightmarish concept can't quite overcome its own shallow nihilism." Out of five stars, the episode received a rating of three stars in Vulture and The Telegraph and 2.5 stars in Den of Geek. Additionally, Paste rated it 7.1 out of 10 and The A.V. Club gave it a B−. Handlen said that the episode was the "thinnest from a conceptual standpoint" of the series four episodes, that there was "not a lot to this story" and that its plot becomes "clear" when the Recaller's functionality is established. Wilkinson wrote that it "doesn't feel all that innovative" and Sims felt "emotionally and intellectually unfilfilled". Harvey said it was "a little too predictable". In contrast, Mellor had a more positive response, calling it "stunning to look at, very sick and very funny". Critics mostly found the bleakness to be unjustified: Vulture's Jen Chaney wrote that it was "filled with so much brutal, senseless violence", comparing it unfavourably to the episode "Black Museum". Harley saw it as "grossly over the top" and "the most mean-spirited" Black Mirror episode to date. Sims wrote that it "didn't seem to have much of a deeper point". Reviewing for Wired, James Temperton said that the episode "raises genuinely interesting questions about technological advancement", though there is a question of how the Recaller would become "universally accepted". Hudson saw the design of the Recall as having "a lot of potential" that "is largely wasted" and Harley concurred that the episode "never really takes advantage" of the idea of "distortions of recalled events". Similarly, Handlen said it was "frustrating how much time the episode spends developing its technology without that development actually leading to anything relevant". Sims wrote that "there seemed to be no broader message to justify the horror". However, Harvey saw the Recaller as "a fascinating example of how science-fiction does not need vast budgets to play with interesting ideas". The ending was mostly criticised. Handlen summarised: "while both reveals are unexpected, neither of them illuminate anything that came before it". Hudson saw the "dramatic irony" in the baby's blindness, but critiqued that "it arrives abruptly and without setup". Bramesco saw the twist that the baby was blind as "needlessly cruel" and Bakare analysed that it was "a step too far for many". Hudson said that the guinea pig being used to catch Mia "makes no sense, even within the episode's techno-mythos", though Mellor found this twist funny. Oller said that the ending overall was "written well enough that the dread precedes the groans", but contained "enough overkill" and was "more than a bit silly". The acting received acclaim, although Mia's character was criticised. Sullivan lauded that "Riseborough's performance is as close to undeniable as they come". Sims said she was a "wonderful actress" and "almost sold [him] on Mia's abrupt descent into darkness early on in this episode". Harley said that she was "steely and reserved" but shows emotion "at all of the right times", so that Mia does not become "a complete heartless sadist". In contrast, The Independent's Jacob Stolworthy saw her as "perhaps the most unlikeable creation to have featured in Black Mirror" to that point, and it was "unclear" whether that was intentional. Chaney said that Mia's actions "seem completely out of character" given her initial behaviour after the car crash. Sawar was praised, with Harley saying that she employed a "bright, plucky determinism" as Shazia. Oller said that her "professionalism and personal touch" was "endearing" and desirable in a detective character. Additionally, Sims found it pleasant to see Shazia assembling information "methodically but with empathy and care". The aesthetics were praised: for instance, Hudson found them "austere and beautiful" and Temperton commented that the episode "looks magnificent". Handlen said: "The Icelandic setting is gorgeous, managing to convey the characters' isolation and vulnerability with visuals alone". Hillcoat was praised for his directing work by Stolworthy, who found the episode "often stylistically pleasing". Oller enjoyed the "unflinching, up-close grotesquery" in his direction. Chaney saw Hillcoat as "summoning a frostbitten grimness from forbidding territory", made possible by the "vivid, evocative setting". ### Episode rankings "Crocodile" received middling rankings on critics' lists of the 23 instalments of Black Mirror by quality, from best to worst: - 8th – Travis Clark, Business Insider - 10th – Corey Atad, Esquire - 11th – Matt Donnelly and Tim Molloy, TheWrap - 12th – Charles Bramesco, Vulture - 16th – Aubrey Page, Collider - 17th – Morgan Jeffery, Digital Spy - 18th – James Hibberd, Entertainment Weekly - 19th – Ed Power, The Telegraph IndieWire authors ranked the 22 Black Mirror instalments excluding Bandersnatch by quality, putting "Crocodile" in last place. Eric Anthony Glover of Entertainment Tonight found the episode to be second-worst of the 19 episodes from series one to four. Instead of by quality, Proma Khosla of Mashable ranked the episodes by tone, concluding that "Crocodile" is the 12th-most pessimistic episode of the show. Other reviewers ranked "Crocodile" against other series four episodes: - 4th (grade: C+) – TVLine - 5th – Christopher Hooton, Jacob Stolworthy, The Independent

Hard to Do

"Hard to Do" is a song by American singer K. Michelle from her second studio album Anybody Wanna Buy a Heart? (2014). The song was released in 2015 as the fourth single from the album. It was written by K. Michelle, Bianca Atterberry, Maurice Simmonds, Julian Jackson, Brian James, Janice Johnson, and Raphael Saadiq, and was produced by American record producer Soundz. "Hard to Do" is a soul ballad with lyrics revolving around missing a partner following a break-up and the desire to have sex with them. One commentator noted that the single's melody was reminiscent of American girl group Total's single "Kissin' You" from their 1996 self-entitled album. Critical response to "Hard to Do" was positive, with music critics highlighting its content and Michelle's vocals. It peaked at number 23 on the Hot R&B Songs Billboard chart. To promote the single, a music video was released on May 18, 2015 through VH1. In the video, Michelle performs the track with various exotic animals while dressed in risqué clothing. Critics positively responded to the video, with Michelle's sexual image receiving attention. Michelle performed "Hard to Do" at the BET Awards 2015, as part of a set with American singers Tamar Braxton and Patti LaBelle, and at the Power 107 Bash. ## Recording and release "Hard to Do" was written by K. Michelle, Bianca "Blush" Atterberry, Maurice Simmonds, Julian Jackson, Brian James, Janice Johnson, and Raphael Saadiq, and it was produced by American record producer Soundz. Derek Blythe performed the guitar on the track; the vocals were produced by Atterberry and recorded by C Travis Kr8ts, with additional assistance from Jared Lynch and the Soundz. The track was mixed by Jaycen Joshua, with assistance from Maddox Chhim and Ryan Kaul, and mastered by David Kutch. On April 17, 2015, "Hard to Do" was released as the fourth single from Michelle's second studio album Anybody Wanna Buy a Heart? (2014); it was put forth as a single following her previous releases "Love 'Em All", "Maybe I Should Call", and "Something About the Night". ## Composition and lyrics "Hard to Do" is a soul ballad that lasts three minutes and 58 seconds. Mike Wass of Idolator viewed the track as "retro-leaning". Sarah Godfrey of The Washington Post felt that the single's melody had the "slightest resemblance" to American girl group Total's single "Kissin' You" from their 1996 self-entitled album. When describing the similarity in sound, Godfrey wrote that Michelle had purposefully made listeners feel more comfortable with the album's "more experimental R&B" direction by "eas[ing] [them] into the sound by borrowing whispers of popular songs and fusing them to her work". The song's lyrics revolve around how Michelle misses her partner and wishes to have sex with them. The chorus consists of Michelle singing: "Missing you is hard to do / I'd rather be fucking you." Other lyrics include: "Lately I've been in my feelings, dealing with the daily thoughts of missing you". Elias Leight and Steven J. Horowitz of Billboard interpreted the single as focusing on "the regret of a breakup". ## Reception Upon its release, "Hard to Do" received positive reviews from music critics. Sarah Godfrey praised the single as "uniquely beautiful", and a writer from The Rickey Smiley Show identified it as the strongest track from the album. Mike Wass positively responded to Michelle's vocals on "Hard to Do", and described the song as "another gripping, intensely autobiographical (and explicit) ballad". On June 6, 2015, "Hard to Do" peaked at number 23 on the Hot R&B Songs Billboard chart, and remained on the chart for seven weeks. When discussing the single's commercial performance, Maurice Simmonds said: "Even though the record was a single[,] I feel that it wasn’t pushed hard enough." ## Music video The music video for "Hard to Do" was exclusively released on VH1 on May 18, 2015, before being made available on other digital platforms the next day. It premiered after an episode of American reality television series Love & Hip Hop: New York. Prior to its release, Michelle had uploaded a fifteen-second teaser to her Instagram account, which featured her various costumes. When describing the video, the singer wrote: "Rebels!!! I'm feeling SUPER excited about the \#HardToDo video! Stepping out the box for this one, and it's never felt better!" On April 28, 2015, Michelle also released a photo of herself posing in a bathtub while wearing a thong and fishnets; Mike Wass called it an "eye-popping, pulse-quickening glimpse". In the video directed by Child Basquiat, Michelle wears revealing clothing while accompanied by various animals. She sings with a zebra in a white room while dressed in a striped bodysuit, and performs in a bathtub surrounded by flamingos while wearing only a black thong and pink feathers. Michelle is also shown wrestling and kissing a woman in the mud in the middle of a rainstorm. The music video received positive attention from critics due to Michelle's sexuality, with Mike Wass calling it the sexiest video of 2015. Emily Tan of The Boombox wrote that the singer chooses to follow a "playful route" and "channels her wild side" through the release. Tan interpreted the video's emphasis on animals as connected to the song's sexual content and how Michelle "get[s] in touch with her primal senses". A writer from Singersroom felt that the ending of the video hinted at Michelle's bisexuality, and a contributor for Rap-Up described the video as "avant-garde". ## Live performances Michelle performed "Hard to Do" at the BET Awards 2015, along with American singers Tamar Braxton and Patti LaBelle. As part of the performance, Braxton also sang her 2015 single "If I Don't Have You" and the three artists performed LaBelle's 1983 single "If Only You Knew". The performance was noted by media outlets as ending the rivalry between Braxton and Michelle; Braxton said: “Life is all about forgiveness, love, and unity, so tonight, I’m sorry K. Michelle, and I also forgive you.” The two artists previously had disagreements after Braxton joked about Michelle's allegations that she was physically abused by her ex-boyfriend. A writer for BET described the performance as a "battle of the ballads". Michelle also sang "Hard to Do" during the Power 107 Bash on August 1, 2015. Diana Renee Williams of The Augusta Chronicle praised Michelle's performance, writing that it "showcas[ed] her relevance on the R&B music scene and solidif[ied] her talent as a solo artist". ## Credits and personnel Credits were adapted from the liner notes from Anybody Wanna Buy A Heart?: - Kimberly Pate – lyricist - Bianca Atterberry – lyricist, vocal production - Soundz – production, music, additional recording - Brion James – lyricist - Janice Johnson – lyricist - Julian Jackson – lyricist - Maurice Simmonds – lyricist - Raphael Saadiq – lyricist - Derek Blythe – guitar, music - C Travis Kr8ts – recording - Jared Lynch – additional recording - Jaycen Joshua – mixing - Maddox Chhim – mixing assistantance - Ryan Kaul – mixing assistantance - David Kutch – mastering ## Charts

Horse

Domesticated four-footed mammal from the equine family

The horse (Equus ferus caballus) is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature, close to Eohippus, into the large, single-toed animal of today. Humans began domesticating horses around 4000 BCE, and their domestication is believed to have been widespread by 3000 BCE. Horses in the subspecies caballus are domesticated, although some domesticated populations live in the wild as feral horses. These feral populations are not true wild horses, as this term refers to horses that have never been domesticated. There is an extensive, specialized vocabulary used to describe equine-related concepts, covering everything from anatomy to life stages, size, colors, markings, breeds, locomotion, and behavior. Horses are adapted to run, allowing them to quickly escape predators, and possess an excellent sense of balance and a strong fight-or-flight response. Related to this need to flee from predators in the wild is an unusual trait: horses are able to sleep both standing up and lying down, with younger horses tending to sleep significantly more than adults. Female horses, called mares, carry their young for approximately 11 months and a young horse, called a foal, can stand and run shortly following birth. Most domesticated horses begin training under a saddle or in a harness between the ages of two and four. They reach full adult development by age five, and have an average lifespan of between 25 and 30 years. Horse breeds are loosely divided into three categories based on general temperament: spirited "hot bloods" with speed and endurance; "cold bloods", such as draft horses and some ponies, suitable for slow, heavy work; and "warmbloods", developed from crosses between hot bloods and cold bloods, often focusing on creating breeds for specific riding purposes, particularly in Europe. There are more than 300 breeds of horse in the world today, developed for many different uses. Horses and humans interact in a wide variety of sport competitions and non-competitive recreational pursuits as well as in working activities such as police work, agriculture, entertainment, and therapy. Horses were historically used in warfare, from which a wide variety of riding and driving techniques developed, using many different styles of equipment and methods of control. Many products are derived from horses, including meat, milk, hide, hair, bone, and pharmaceuticals extracted from the urine of pregnant mares. Humans provide domesticated horses with food, water, and shelter as well as attention from specialists such as veterinarians and farriers. ## Biology Specific terms and specialized language are used to describe equine anatomy, different life stages, colors, and breeds. ### Lifespan and life stages Depending on breed, management and environment, the modern domestic horse has a life expectancy of 25 to 30 years. Uncommonly, a few animals live into their 40s and, occasionally, beyond. The oldest verifiable record was "Old Billy", a 19th-century horse that lived to the age of 62. In modern times, Sugar Puff, who had been listed in Guinness World Records as the world's oldest living pony, died in 2007 at age 56. Regardless of a horse or pony's actual birth date, for most competition purposes a year is added to its age each January 1 of each year in the Northern Hemisphere and each August 1 in the Southern Hemisphere. The exception is in endurance riding, where the minimum age to compete is based on the animal's actual calendar age. The following terminology is used to describe horses of various ages: Foal A horse of either sex less than one year old. A nursing foal is sometimes called a suckling, and a foal that has been weaned is called a weanling. Most domesticated foals are weaned at five to seven months of age, although foals can be weaned at four months with no adverse physical effects. Yearling A horse of either sex that is between one and two years old. Colt A male horse under the age of four. A common terminology error is to call any young horse a "colt", when the term actually only refers to young male horses. Filly A female horse under the age of four. Mare A female horse four years old and older. Stallion A non-castrated male horse four years old and older. The term "horse" is sometimes used colloquially to refer specifically to a stallion. Gelding A castrated male horse of any age. In horse racing, these definitions may differ: For example, in the British Isles, Thoroughbred horse racing defines colts and fillies as less than five years old. However, Australian Thoroughbred racing defines colts and fillies as less than four years old. ### Size and measurement The height of horses is measured at the highest point of the withers, where the neck meets the back. This point is used because it is a stable point of the anatomy, unlike the head or neck, which move up and down in relation to the body of the horse. In English-speaking countries, the height of horses is often stated in units of hands and inches: one hand is equal to 4 inches (101.6 mm). The height is expressed as the number of full hands, followed by a point, then the number of additional inches, and ending with the abbreviation "h" or "hh" (for "hands high"). Thus, a horse described as "15.2 h" is 15 hands plus 2 inches, for a total of 62 inches (157.5 cm) in height. The size of horses varies by breed, but also is influenced by nutrition. Light-riding horses usually range in height from and can weigh from 380 to 550 kilograms (840 to 1,210 lb). Larger-riding horses usually start at about and often are as tall as , weighing from 500 to 600 kilograms (1,100 to 1,320 lb). Heavy or draft horses are usually at least high and can be as tall as high. They can weigh from about 700 to 1,000 kilograms (1,540 to 2,200 lb). The largest horse in recorded history was probably a Shire horse named Mammoth, who was born in 1848. He stood high and his peak weight was estimated at 1,524 kilograms (3,360 lb). The record holder for the smallest horse ever is Thumbelina, a fully mature miniature horse affected by dwarfism. She was 43 cm (17 in) tall and weighed 26 kg (57 lb). #### Ponies Ponies are taxonomically the same animals as horses. The distinction between a horse and pony is commonly drawn on the basis of height, especially for competition purposes. However, height alone is not dispositive; the difference between horses and ponies may also include aspects of phenotype, including conformation and temperament. The traditional standard for height of a horse or a pony at maturity is . An animal or over is usually considered to be a horse and one less than a pony, but there are many exceptions to the traditional standard. In Australia, ponies are considered to be those under . For competition in the Western division of the United States Equestrian Federation, the cutoff is . The International Federation for Equestrian Sports, the world governing body for horse sport, uses metric measurements and defines a pony as being any horse measuring less than 148 centimetres (58.27 in) at the withers without shoes, which is just over , and 149 centimetres (58.66 in; 14.2+1⁄2 hands), with shoes. Height is not the sole criterion for distinguishing horses from ponies. Breed registries for horses that typically produce individuals both under and over consider all animals of that breed to be horses regardless of their height. Conversely, some pony breeds may have features in common with horses, and individual animals may occasionally mature at over , but are still considered to be ponies. Ponies often exhibit thicker manes, tails, and overall coat. They also have proportionally shorter legs, wider barrels, heavier bone, shorter and thicker necks, and short heads with broad foreheads. They may have calmer temperaments than horses and also a high level of intelligence that may or may not be used to cooperate with human handlers. Small size, by itself, is not an exclusive determinant. For example, the Shetland pony which averages , is considered a pony. Conversely, breeds such as the Falabella and other miniature horses, which can be no taller than 76 centimetres (30 in), are classified by their registries as very small horses, not ponies. ### Genetics Horses have 64 chromosomes. The horse genome was sequenced in 2007. It contains 2.7 billion DNA base pairs, which is larger than the dog genome, but smaller than the human genome or the bovine genome. The map is available to researchers. ### Colors and markings Horses exhibit a diverse array of coat colors and distinctive markings, described by a specialized vocabulary. Often, a horse is classified first by its coat color, before breed or sex. Horses of the same color may be distinguished from one another by white markings, which, along with various spotting patterns, are inherited separately from coat color. Many genes that create horse coat colors and patterns have been identified. Current genetic tests can identify at least 13 different alleles influencing coat color, and research continues to discover new genes linked to specific traits. The basic coat colors of chestnut and black are determined by the gene controlled by the Melanocortin 1 receptor, also known as the "extension gene" or "red factor", as its recessive form is "red" (chestnut) and its dominant form is black. Additional genes control suppression of black color to point coloration that results in a bay, spotting patterns such as pinto or leopard, dilution genes such as palomino or dun, as well as greying, and all the other factors that create the many possible coat colors found in horses. Horses that have a white coat color are often mislabeled; a horse that looks "white" is usually a middle-aged or older gray. Grays are born a darker shade, get lighter as they age, but usually keep black skin underneath their white hair coat (with the exception of pink skin under white markings). The only horses properly called white are born with a predominantly white hair coat and pink skin, a fairly rare occurrence. Different and unrelated genetic factors can produce white coat colors in horses, including several different alleles of dominant white and the sabino-1 gene. However, there are no "albino" horses, defined as having both pink skin and red eyes. ### Reproduction and development Gestation lasts approximately 340 days, with an average range 320–370 days, and usually results in one foal; twins are rare. Horses are a precocial species, and foals are capable of standing and running within a short time following birth. Foals are usually born in the spring. The estrous cycle of a mare occurs roughly every 19–22 days and occurs from early spring into autumn. Most mares enter an anestrus period during the winter and thus do not cycle in this period. Foals are generally weaned from their mothers between four and six months of age. Horses, particularly colts, are sometimes physically capable of reproduction at about 18 months, but domesticated horses are rarely allowed to breed before the age of three, especially females. Horses four years old are considered mature, although the skeleton normally continues to develop until the age of six; maturation also depends on the horse's size, breed, sex, and quality of care. Larger horses have larger bones; therefore, not only do the bones take longer to form bone tissue, but the epiphyseal plates are larger and take longer to convert from cartilage to bone. These plates convert after the other parts of the bones, and are crucial to development. Depending on maturity, breed, and work expected, horses are usually put under saddle and trained to be ridden between the ages of two and four. Although Thoroughbred race horses are put on the track as young as the age of two in some countries, horses specifically bred for sports such as dressage are generally not put under saddle until they are three or four years old, because their bones and muscles are not solidly developed. For endurance riding competition, horses are not deemed mature enough to compete until they are a full 60 calendar months (five years) old. ### Anatomy #### Skeletal system The horse skeleton averages 205 bones. A significant difference between the horse skeleton and that of a human is the lack of a collarbone—the horse's forelimbs are attached to the spinal column by a powerful set of muscles, tendons, and ligaments that attach the shoulder blade to the torso. The horse's four legs and hooves are also unique structures. Their leg bones are proportioned differently from those of a human. For example, the body part that is called a horse's "knee" is actually made up of the carpal bones that correspond to the human wrist. Similarly, the hock contains bones equivalent to those in the human ankle and heel. The lower leg bones of a horse correspond to the bones of the human hand or foot, and the fetlock (incorrectly called the "ankle") is actually the proximal sesamoid bones between the cannon bones (a single equivalent to the human metacarpal or metatarsal bones) and the proximal phalanges, located where one finds the "knuckles" of a human. A horse also has no muscles in its legs below the knees and hocks, only skin, hair, bone, tendons, ligaments, cartilage, and the assorted specialized tissues that make up the hoof. #### Hooves The critical importance of the feet and legs is summed up by the traditional adage, "no foot, no horse". The horse hoof begins with the distal phalanges, the equivalent of the human fingertip or tip of the toe, surrounded by cartilage and other specialized, blood-rich soft tissues such as the laminae. The exterior hoof wall and horn of the sole is made of keratin, the same material as a human fingernail. The result is that a horse, weighing on average 500 kilograms (1,100 lb), travels on the same bones as would a human on tiptoe. For the protection of the hoof under certain conditions, some horses have horseshoes placed on their feet by a professional farrier. The hoof continually grows, and in most domesticated horses needs to be trimmed (and horseshoes reset, if used) every five to eight weeks, though the hooves of horses in the wild wear down and regrow at a rate suitable for their terrain. #### Teeth Horses are adapted to grazing. In an adult horse, there are 12 incisors at the front of the mouth, adapted to biting off the grass or other vegetation. There are 24 teeth adapted for chewing, the premolars and molars, at the back of the mouth. Stallions and geldings have four additional teeth just behind the incisors, a type of canine teeth called "tushes". Some horses, both male and female, will also develop one to four very small vestigial teeth in front of the molars, known as "wolf" teeth, which are generally removed because they can interfere with the bit. There is an empty interdental space between the incisors and the molars where the bit rests directly on the gums, or "bars" of the horse's mouth when the horse is bridled. An estimate of a horse's age can be made from looking at its teeth. The teeth continue to erupt throughout life and are worn down by grazing. Therefore, the incisors show changes as the horse ages; they develop a distinct wear pattern, changes in tooth shape, and changes in the angle at which the chewing surfaces meet. This allows a very rough estimate of a horse's age, although diet and veterinary care can also affect the rate of tooth wear. #### Digestion Horses are herbivores with a digestive system adapted to a forage diet of grasses and other plant material, consumed steadily throughout the day. Therefore, compared to humans, they have a relatively small stomach but very long intestines to facilitate a steady flow of nutrients. A 450-kilogram (990 lb) horse will eat 7 to 11 kilograms (15 to 24 lb) of food per day and, under normal use, drink 38 to 45 litres (8.4 to 9.9 imp gal; 10 to 12 US gal) of water. Horses are not ruminants, they have only one stomach, like humans, but unlike humans, they can digest cellulose, a major component of grass. Horses are hindgut fermenters. Cellulose fermentation by symbiotic bacteria occurs in the cecum, or "water gut", which food goes through before reaching the large intestine. Horses cannot vomit, so digestion problems can quickly cause colic, a leading cause of death. Horses do not have a gallbladder; however, they seem to tolerate high amounts of fat in their diet despite lack of a gallbladder. #### Senses The horses' senses are based on their status as prey animals, where they must be aware of their surroundings at all times. They have the largest eyes of any land mammal, and are lateral-eyed, meaning that their eyes are positioned on the sides of their heads. This means that horses have a range of vision of more than 350°, with approximately 65° of this being binocular vision and the remaining 285° monocular vision. Horses have excellent day and night vision, but they have two-color, or dichromatic vision; their color vision is somewhat like red-green color blindness in humans, where certain colors, especially red and related colors, appear as a shade of green. Their sense of smell, while much better than that of humans, is not quite as good as that of a dog. It is believed to play a key role in the social interactions of horses as well as detecting other key scents in the environment. Horses have two olfactory centers. The first system is in the nostrils and nasal cavity, which analyze a wide range of odors. The second, located under the nasal cavity, are the vomeronasal organs, also called Jacobson's organs. These have a separate nerve pathway to the brain and appear to primarily analyze pheromones. A horse's hearing is good, and the pinna of each ear can rotate up to 180°, giving the potential for 360° hearing without having to move the head. Noise impacts the behavior of horses and certain kinds of noise may contribute to stress: A 2013 study in the UK indicated that stabled horses were calmest in a quiet setting, or if listening to country or classical music, but displayed signs of nervousness when listening to jazz or rock music. This study also recommended keeping music under a volume of 21 decibels. An Australian study found that stabled racehorses listening to talk radio had a higher rate of gastric ulcers than horses listening to music, and racehorses stabled where a radio was played had a higher overall rate of ulceration than horses stabled where there was no radio playing. Horses have a great sense of balance, due partly to their ability to feel their footing and partly to highly developed proprioception—the unconscious sense of where the body and limbs are at all times. A horse's sense of touch is well-developed. The most sensitive areas are around the eyes, ears, and nose. Horses are able to sense contact as subtle as an insect landing anywhere on the body. Horses have an advanced sense of taste, which allows them to sort through fodder and choose what they would most like to eat, and their prehensile lips can easily sort even small grains. Horses generally will not eat poisonous plants, however, there are exceptions; horses will occasionally eat toxic amounts of poisonous plants even when there is adequate healthy food. ### Movement All horses move naturally with four basic gaits: - the four-beat walk, which averages 6.4 kilometres per hour (4.0 mph); - the two-beat trot or jog at 13 to 19 kilometres per hour (8.1 to 11.8 mph) (faster for harness racing horses); - the canter or lope, a three-beat gait that is 19 to 24 kilometres per hour (12 to 15 mph); - the gallop, which averages 40 to 48 kilometres per hour (25 to 30 mph), but the world record for a horse galloping over a short, sprint distance is 70.76 kilometres per hour (43.97 mph). Besides these basic gaits, some horses perform a two-beat pace, instead of the trot. There also are several four-beat 'ambling' gaits that are approximately the speed of a trot or pace, though smoother to ride. These include the lateral rack, running walk, and tölt as well as the diagonal fox trot. Ambling gaits are often genetic in some breeds, known collectively as gaited horses. These horses replace the trot with one of the ambling gaits. ### Behavior Horses are prey animals with a strong fight-or-flight response. Their first reaction to a threat is to startle and usually flee, although they will stand their ground and defend themselves when flight is impossible or if their young are threatened. They also tend to be curious; when startled, they will often hesitate an instant to ascertain the cause of their fright, and may not always flee from something that they perceive as non-threatening. Most light horse riding breeds were developed for speed, agility, alertness and endurance; natural qualities that extend from their wild ancestors. However, through selective breeding, some breeds of horses are quite docile, particularly certain draft horses. Horses are herd animals, with a clear hierarchy of rank, led by a dominant individual, usually a mare. They are also social creatures that are able to form companionship attachments to their own species and to other animals, including humans. They communicate in various ways, including vocalizations such as nickering or whinnying, mutual grooming, and body language. Many horses will become difficult to manage if they are isolated, but with training, horses can learn to accept a human as a companion, and thus be comfortable away from other horses. However, when confined with insufficient companionship, exercise, or stimulation, individuals may develop stable vices, an assortment of bad habits, mostly stereotypies of psychological origin, that include wood chewing, wall kicking, "weaving" (rocking back and forth), and other problems. #### Intelligence and learning Studies have indicated that horses perform a number of cognitive tasks on a daily basis, meeting mental challenges that include food procurement and identification of individuals within a social system. They also have good spatial discrimination abilities. They are naturally curious and apt to investigate things they have not seen before. Studies have assessed equine intelligence in areas such as problem solving, speed of learning, and memory. Horses excel at simple learning, but also are able to use more advanced cognitive abilities that involve categorization and concept learning. They can learn using habituation, desensitization, classical conditioning, and operant conditioning, and positive and negative reinforcement. One study has indicated that horses can differentiate between "more or less" if the quantity involved is less than four. Domesticated horses may face greater mental challenges than wild horses, because they live in artificial environments that prevent instinctive behavior whilst also learning tasks that are not natural. Horses are animals of habit that respond well to regimentation, and respond best when the same routines and techniques are used consistently. One trainer believes that "intelligent" horses are reflections of intelligent trainers who effectively use response conditioning techniques and positive reinforcement to train in the style that best fits with an individual animal's natural inclinations. #### Temperament Horses are mammals, and as such are warm-blooded, or endothermic creatures, as opposed to cold-blooded, or poikilothermic animals. However, these words have developed a separate meaning in the context of equine terminology, used to describe temperament, not body temperature. For example, the "hot-bloods", such as many race horses, exhibit more sensitivity and energy, while the "cold-bloods", such as most draft breeds, are quieter and calmer. Sometimes "hot-bloods" are classified as "light horses" or "riding horses", with the "cold-bloods" classified as "draft horses" or "work horses". "Hot blooded" breeds include "oriental horses" such as the Akhal-Teke, Arabian horse, Barb, and now-extinct Turkoman horse, as well as the Thoroughbred, a breed developed in England from the older oriental breeds. Hot bloods tend to be spirited, bold, and learn quickly. They are bred for agility and speed. They tend to be physically refined—thin-skinned, slim, and long-legged. The original oriental breeds were brought to Europe from the Middle East and North Africa when European breeders wished to infuse these traits into racing and light cavalry horses. Muscular, heavy draft horses are known as "cold bloods", as they are bred not only for strength, but also to have the calm, patient temperament needed to pull a plow or a heavy carriage full of people. They are sometimes nicknamed "gentle giants". Well-known draft breeds include the Belgian and the Clydesdale. Some, like the Percheron, are lighter and livelier, developed to pull carriages or to plow large fields in drier climates. Others, such as the Shire, are slower and more powerful, bred to plow fields with heavy, clay-based soils. The cold-blooded group also includes some pony breeds. "Warmblood" breeds, such as the Trakehner or Hanoverian, developed when European carriage and war horses were crossed with Arabians or Thoroughbreds, producing a riding horse with more refinement than a draft horse, but greater size and milder temperament than a lighter breed. Certain pony breeds with warmblood characteristics have been developed for smaller riders. Warmbloods are considered a "light horse" or "riding horse". Today, the term "Warmblood" refers to a specific subset of sport horse breeds that are used for competition in dressage and show jumping. Strictly speaking, the term "warm blood" refers to any cross between cold-blooded and hot-blooded breeds. Examples include breeds such as the Irish Draught or the Cleveland Bay. The term was once used to refer to breeds of light riding horse other than Thoroughbreds or Arabians, such as the Morgan horse. #### Sleep patterns Horses are able to sleep both standing up and lying down. In an adaptation from life in the wild, horses are able to enter light sleep by using a "stay apparatus" in their legs, allowing them to doze without collapsing. Horses sleep better when in groups because some animals will sleep while others stand guard to watch for predators. A horse kept alone will not sleep well because its instincts are to keep a constant eye out for danger. Unlike humans, horses do not sleep in a solid, unbroken period of time, but take many short periods of rest. Horses spend four to fifteen hours a day in standing rest, and from a few minutes to several hours lying down. Total sleep time in a 24-hour period may range from several minutes to a couple of hours, mostly in short intervals of about 15 minutes each. The average sleep time of a domestic horse is said to be 2.9 hours per day. Horses must lie down to reach REM sleep. They only have to lie down for an hour or two every few days to meet their minimum REM sleep requirements. However, if a horse is never allowed to lie down, after several days it will become sleep-deprived, and in rare cases may suddenly collapse as it involuntarily slips into REM sleep while still standing. This condition differs from narcolepsy, although horses may also suffer from that disorder. ## Taxonomy and evolution The horse adapted to survive in areas of wide-open terrain with sparse vegetation, surviving in an ecosystem where other large grazing animals, especially ruminants, could not. Horses and other equids are odd-toed ungulates of the order Perissodactyla, a group of mammals dominant during the Tertiary period. In the past, this order contained 14 families, but only three—Equidae (the horse and related species), Tapiridae (the tapir), and Rhinocerotidae (the rhinoceroses)—have survived to the present day. The earliest known member of the family Equidae was the Hyracotherium, which lived between 45 and 55 million years ago, during the Eocene period. It had 4 toes on each front foot, and 3 toes on each back foot. The extra toe on the front feet soon disappeared with the Mesohippus, which lived 32 to 37 million years ago. Over time, the extra side toes shrank in size until they vanished. All that remains of them in modern horses is a set of small vestigial bones on the leg below the knee, known informally as splint bones. Their legs also lengthened as their toes disappeared until they were a hooved animal capable of running at great speed. By about 5 million years ago, the modern Equus had evolved. Equid teeth also evolved from browsing on soft, tropical plants to adapt to browsing of drier plant material, then to grazing of tougher plains grasses. Thus proto-horses changed from leaf-eating forest-dwellers to grass-eating inhabitants of semi-arid regions worldwide, including the steppes of Eurasia and the Great Plains of North America. By about 15,000 years ago, Equus ferus was a widespread holarctic species. Horse bones from this time period, the late Pleistocene, are found in Europe, Eurasia, Beringia, and North America. Yet between 10,000 and 7,600 years ago, the horse became extinct in North America. The reasons for this extinction are not fully known, but one theory notes that extinction in North America paralleled human arrival. Another theory points to climate change, noting that approximately 12,500 years ago, the grasses characteristic of a steppe ecosystem gave way to shrub tundra, which was covered with unpalatable plants. ### Wild species surviving into modern times A truly wild horse is a species or subspecies with no ancestors that were ever successfully domesticated. Therefore, most "wild" horses today are actually feral horses, animals that escaped or were turned loose from domestic herds and the descendants of those animals. Only two wild subspecies, the tarpan and the Przewalski's horse, survived into recorded history and only the latter survives today. The Przewalski's horse (Equus ferus przewalskii), named after the Russian explorer Nikolai Przhevalsky, is a rare Asian animal. It is also known as the Mongolian wild horse; Mongolian people know it as the taki, and the Kyrgyz people call it a kirtag. The subspecies was presumed extinct in the wild between 1969 and 1992, while a small breeding population survived in zoos around the world. In 1992, it was reestablished in the wild by the conservation efforts of numerous zoos. Today, a small wild breeding population exists in Mongolia. There are additional animals still maintained at zoos throughout the world. The question of whether the Przewalski's horse was ever domesticated was challenged in 2018 when DNA studies of horses found at Botai culture sites revealed captured animals with DNA markers of an ancestor to the Przewalski's horse. The study concluded that the Botai animals appear to have been an independent domestication attempt and apparently unsuccessful, as these genetic markers do not appear in modern domesticated horses. However, the question of whether all Przewalski's horses descend from this population is also unresolved, as only one of seven modern Przewalski's horses in the study shared this ancestry. The tarpan or European wild horse (Equus ferus ferus) was found in Europe and much of Asia. It survived into the historical era, but became extinct in 1909, when the last captive died in a Russian zoo. Thus, the genetic line was lost. Attempts have been made to recreate the tarpan, which resulted in horses with outward physical similarities, but nonetheless descended from domesticated ancestors and not true wild horses. Periodically, populations of horses in isolated areas are speculated to be relict populations of wild horses, but generally have been proven to be feral or domestic. For example, the Riwoche horse of Tibet was proposed as such, but testing did not reveal genetic differences from domesticated horses. Similarly, the Sorraia of Portugal was proposed as a direct descendant of the Tarpan on the basis of shared characteristics, but genetic studies have shown that the Sorraia is more closely related to other horse breeds, and that the outward similarity is an unreliable measure of relatedness. ### Other modern equids Besides the horse, there are six other species of genus Equus in the Equidae family. These are the ass or donkey, Equus asinus; the mountain zebra, Equus zebra; plains zebra, Equus quagga; Grévy's Zebra, Equus grevyi; the kiang, Equus kiang; and the onager, Equus hemionus. Horses can crossbreed with other members of their genus. The most common hybrid is the mule, a cross between a "jack" (male donkey) and a mare. A related hybrid, a hinny, is a cross between a stallion and a "jenny" (female donkey). Other hybrids include the zorse, a cross between a zebra and a horse. With rare exceptions, most hybrids are sterile and cannot reproduce. ## Domestication and history Domestication of the horse most likely took place in central Asia prior to 3500 BCE. Two major sources of information are used to determine where and when the horse was first domesticated and how the domesticated horse spread around the world. The first source is based on palaeological and archaeological discoveries; the second source is a comparison of DNA obtained from modern horses to that from bones and teeth of ancient horse remains. The earliest archaeological evidence for the domestication of the horse comes from sites in Ukraine and Kazakhstan, dating to approximately 4000–3500 BCE. By 3000 BCE, the horse was completely domesticated and by 2000 BCE there was a sharp increase in the number of horse bones found in human settlements in northwestern Europe, indicating the spread of domesticated horses throughout the continent. The most recent, but most irrefutable evidence of domestication comes from sites where horse remains were interred with chariots in graves of the Sintashta and Petrovka cultures c. 2100 BCE. A 2021 genetic study suggested that most modern domestic horses descend from the lower Volga-Don region. Ancient horse genomes indicate that these populations influenced almost all local populations as they expanded rapidly throughout Eurasia, beginning about 4,200 years ago. It also shows that certain adaptations were strongly selected due to riding, and that equestrian material culture, including Sintashta spoke-wheeled chariots spread with the horse itself. Domestication is also studied by using the genetic material of present-day horses and comparing it with the genetic material present in the bones and teeth of horse remains found in archaeological and palaeological excavations. The variation in the genetic material shows that very few wild stallions contributed to the domestic horse, while many mares were part of early domesticated herds. This is reflected in the difference in genetic variation between the DNA that is passed on along the paternal, or sire line (Y-chromosome) versus that passed on along the maternal, or dam line (mitochondrial DNA). There are very low levels of Y-chromosome variability, but a great deal of genetic variation in mitochondrial DNA. There is also regional variation in mitochondrial DNA due to the inclusion of wild mares in domestic herds. Another characteristic of domestication is an increase in coat color variation. In horses, this increased dramatically between 5000 and 3000 BCE. Before the availability of DNA techniques to resolve the questions related to the domestication of the horse, various hypotheses were proposed. One classification was based on body types and conformation, suggesting the presence of four basic prototypes that had adapted to their environment prior to domestication. Another hypothesis held that the four prototypes originated from a single wild species and that all different body types were entirely a result of selective breeding after domestication. However, the lack of a detectable substructure in the horse has resulted in a rejection of both hypotheses. ### Feral populations Feral horses are born and live in the wild, but are descended from domesticated animals. Many populations of feral horses exist throughout the world. Studies of feral herds have provided useful insights into the behavior of prehistoric horses, as well as greater understanding of the instincts and behaviors that drive horses that live in domesticated conditions. There are also semi-feral horses in many parts of the world, such as Dartmoor and the New Forest in the UK, where the animals are all privately owned but live for significant amounts of time in "wild" conditions on undeveloped, often public, lands. Owners of such animals often pay a fee for grazing rights. ### Breeds The concept of purebred bloodstock and a controlled, written breed registry has come to be particularly significant and important in modern times. Sometimes purebred horses are incorrectly or inaccurately called "thoroughbreds". Thoroughbred is a specific breed of horse, while a "purebred" is a horse (or any other animal) with a defined pedigree recognized by a breed registry. Horse breeds are groups of horses with distinctive characteristics that are transmitted consistently to their offspring, such as conformation, color, performance ability, or disposition. These inherited traits result from a combination of natural crosses and artificial selection methods. Horses have been selectively bred since their domestication. An early example of people who practiced selective horse breeding were the Bedouin, who had a reputation for careful practices, keeping extensive pedigrees of their Arabian horses and placing great value upon pure bloodlines. These pedigrees were originally transmitted via an oral tradition. In the 14th century, Carthusian monks of southern Spain kept meticulous pedigrees of bloodstock lineages still found today in the Andalusian horse. Breeds developed due to a need for "form to function", the necessity to develop certain characteristics in order to perform a particular type of work. Thus, a powerful but refined breed such as the Andalusian developed as riding horses with an aptitude for dressage. Heavy draft horses were developed out of a need to perform demanding farm work and pull heavy wagons. Other horse breeds had been developed specifically for light agricultural work, carriage and road work, various sport disciplines, or simply as pets. Some breeds developed through centuries of crossing other breeds, while others descended from a single foundation sire, or other limited or restricted foundation bloodstock. One of the earliest formal registries was General Stud Book for Thoroughbreds, which began in 1791 and traced back to the foundation bloodstock for the breed. There are more than 300 horse breeds in the world today. ## Interaction with humans Worldwide, horses play a role within human cultures and have done so for millennia. Horses are used for leisure activities, sports, and working purposes. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that in 2008, there were almost 59,000,000 horses in the world, with around 33,500,000 in the Americas, 13,800,000 in Asia and 6,300,000 in Europe and smaller portions in Africa and Oceania. There are estimated to be 9,500,000 horses in the United States alone. The American Horse Council estimates that horse-related activities have a direct impact on the economy of the United States of over \$39 billion, and when indirect spending is considered, the impact is over \$102 billion. In a 2004 "poll" conducted by Animal Planet, more than 50,000 viewers from 73 countries voted for the horse as the world's 4th favorite animal. Communication between human and horse is paramount in any equestrian activity; to aid this process horses are usually ridden with a saddle on their backs to assist the rider with balance and positioning, and a bridle or related headgear to assist the rider in maintaining control. Sometimes horses are ridden without a saddle, and occasionally, horses are trained to perform without a bridle or other headgear. Many horses are also driven, which requires a harness, bridle, and some type of vehicle. ### Sport Historically, equestrians honed their skills through games and races. Equestrian sports provided entertainment for crowds and honed the excellent horsemanship that was needed in battle. Many sports, such as dressage, eventing, and show jumping, have origins in military training, which were focused on control and balance of both horse and rider. Other sports, such as rodeo, developed from practical skills such as those needed on working ranches and stations. Sport hunting from horseback evolved from earlier practical hunting techniques. Horse racing of all types evolved from impromptu competitions between riders or drivers. All forms of competition, requiring demanding and specialized skills from both horse and rider, resulted in the systematic development of specialized breeds and equipment for each sport. The popularity of equestrian sports through the centuries has resulted in the preservation of skills that would otherwise have disappeared after horses stopped being used in combat. Horses are trained to be ridden or driven in a variety of sporting competitions. Examples include show jumping, dressage, three-day eventing, competitive driving, endurance riding, gymkhana, rodeos, and fox hunting. Horse shows, which have their origins in medieval European fairs, are held around the world. They host a huge range of classes, covering all of the mounted and harness disciplines, as well as "In-hand" classes where the horses are led, rather than ridden, to be evaluated on their conformation. The method of judging varies with the discipline, but winning usually depends on style and ability of both horse and rider. Sports such as polo do not judge the horse itself, but rather use the horse as a partner for human competitors as a necessary part of the game. Although the horse requires specialized training to participate, the details of its performance are not judged, only the result of the rider's actions—be it getting a ball through a goal or some other task. Examples of these sports of partnership between human and horse include jousting, in which the main goal is for one rider to unseat the other, and buzkashi, a team game played throughout Central Asia, the aim being to capture a goat carcass while on horseback. Horse racing is an equestrian sport and major international industry, watched in almost every nation of the world. There are three types: "flat" racing; steeplechasing, i.e. racing over jumps; and harness racing, where horses trot or pace while pulling a driver in a small, light cart known as a sulky. A major part of horse racing's economic importance lies in the gambling associated with it. ### Work There are certain jobs that horses do very well, and no technology has yet developed to fully replace them. For example, mounted police horses are still effective for certain types of patrol duties and crowd control. Cattle ranches still require riders on horseback to round up cattle that are scattered across remote, rugged terrain. Search and rescue organizations in some countries depend upon mounted teams to locate people, particularly hikers and children, and to provide disaster relief assistance. Horses can also be used in areas where it is necessary to avoid vehicular disruption to delicate soil, such as nature reserves. They may also be the only form of transport allowed in wilderness areas. Horses are quieter than motorized vehicles. Law enforcement officers such as park rangers or game wardens may use horses for patrols, and horses or mules may also be used for clearing trails or other work in areas of rough terrain where vehicles are less effective. Although machinery has replaced horses in many parts of the world, an estimated 100 million horses, donkeys and mules are still used for agriculture and transportation in less developed areas. This number includes around 27 million working animals in Africa alone. Some land management practices such as cultivating and logging can be efficiently performed with horses. In agriculture, less fossil fuel is used and increased environmental conservation occurs over time with the use of draft animals such as horses. Logging with horses can result in reduced damage to soil structure and less damage to trees due to more selective logging. ### Warfare Horses have been used in warfare for most of recorded history. The first archaeological evidence of horses used in warfare dates to between 4000 and 3000 BCE, and the use of horses in warfare was widespread by the end of the Bronze Age. Although mechanization has largely replaced the horse as a weapon of war, horses are still seen today in limited military uses, mostly for ceremonial purposes, or for reconnaissance and transport activities in areas of rough terrain where motorized vehicles are ineffective. Horses have been used in the 21st century by the Janjaweed militias in the War in Darfur. ### Entertainment and culture Modern horses are often used to reenact many of their historical work purposes. Horses are used, complete with equipment that is authentic or a meticulously recreated replica, in various live action historical reenactments of specific periods of history, especially recreations of famous battles. Horses are also used to preserve cultural traditions and for ceremonial purposes. Countries such as the United Kingdom still use horse-drawn carriages to convey royalty and other VIPs to and from certain culturally significant events. Public exhibitions are another example, such as the Budweiser Clydesdales, seen in parades and other public settings, a team of draft horses that pull a beer wagon similar to that used before the invention of the modern motorized truck. Horses are frequently used in television, films and literature. They are sometimes featured as a major character in films about particular animals, but also used as visual elements that assure the accuracy of historical stories. Both live horses and iconic images of horses are used in advertising to promote a variety of products. The horse frequently appears in coats of arms in heraldry, in a variety of poses and equipment. The mythologies of many cultures, including Greco-Roman, Hindu, Islamic, and Germanic, include references to both normal horses and those with wings or additional limbs, and multiple myths also call upon the horse to draw the chariots of the Moon and Sun. The horse also appears in the 12-year cycle of animals in the Chinese zodiac related to the Chinese calendar. Horses serve as the inspiration for many modern automobile names and logos, including the Ford Pinto, Ford Bronco, Ford Mustang, Hyundai Equus, Hyundai Pony, Mitsubishi Starion, Subaru Brumby, Mitsubishi Colt/Dodge Colt, Volkswagen Polo, Pinzgauer, Steyr-Puch Haflinger, Pegaso, Porsche, Rolls-Royce Camargue, Ferrari, Carlsson, Kamaz, Corre La Licorne, Iran Khodro, Eicher, and Baojun. Indian TVS Motor Company also uses a horse on their motorcycles & scooters. ### Therapeutic use People of all ages with physical and mental disabilities obtain beneficial results from an association with horses. Therapeutic riding is used to mentally and physically stimulate disabled persons and help them improve their lives through improved balance and coordination, increased self-confidence, and a greater feeling of freedom and independence. The benefits of equestrian activity for people with disabilities has also been recognized with the addition of equestrian events to the Paralympic Games and recognition of para-equestrian events by the International Federation for Equestrian Sports (FEI). Hippotherapy and therapeutic horseback riding are names for different physical, occupational, and speech therapy treatment strategies that use equine movement. In hippotherapy, a therapist uses the horse's movement to improve their patient's cognitive, coordination, balance, and fine motor skills, whereas therapeutic horseback riding uses specific riding skills. Horses also provide psychological benefits to people whether they actually ride or not. "Equine-assisted" or "equine-facilitated" therapy is a form of experiential psychotherapy that uses horses as companion animals to assist people with mental illness, including anxiety disorders, psychotic disorders, mood disorders, behavioral difficulties, and those who are going through major life changes. There are also experimental programs using horses in prison settings. Exposure to horses appears to improve the behavior of inmates and help reduce recidivism when they leave. ### Products Horses are raw material for many products made by humans throughout history, including byproducts from the slaughter of horses as well as materials collected from living horses. Products collected from living horses include mare's milk, used by people with large horse herds, such as the Mongols, who let it ferment to produce kumis. Horse blood was once used as food by the Mongols and other nomadic tribes, who found it a convenient source of nutrition when traveling. Drinking their own horses' blood allowed the Mongols to ride for extended periods of time without stopping to eat. The drug Premarin is a mixture of estrogens extracted from the urine of pregnant mares (pregnant mares' urine), and was previously a widely used drug for hormone replacement therapy. The tail hair of horses can be used for making bows for string instruments such as the violin, viola, cello, and double bass. Horse meat has been used as food for humans and carnivorous animals throughout the ages. Approximately 5 million horses are slaughtered each year for meat worldwide. It is eaten in many parts of the world, though consumption is taboo in some cultures, and a subject of political controversy in others. Horsehide leather has been used for boots, gloves, jackets, baseballs, and baseball gloves. Horse hooves can also be used to produce animal glue. Horse bones can be used to make implements. Specifically, in Italian cuisine, the horse tibia is sharpened into a probe called a spinto, which is used to test the readiness of a (pig) ham as it cures. In Asia, the saba is a horsehide vessel used in the production of kumis. ### Care Horses are grazing animals, and their major source of nutrients is good-quality forage from hay or pasture. They can consume approximately 2% to 2.5% of their body weight in dry feed each day. Therefore, a 450-kilogram (990 lb) adult horse could eat up to 11 kilograms (24 lb) of food. Sometimes, concentrated feed such as grain is fed in addition to pasture or hay, especially when the animal is very active. When grain is fed, equine nutritionists recommend that 50% or more of the animal's diet by weight should still be forage. Horses require a plentiful supply of clean water, a minimum of 38 to 45 litres (10 to 12 US gal) per day. Although horses are adapted to live outside, they require shelter from the wind and precipitation, which can range from a simple shed or shelter to an elaborate stable. Horses require routine hoof care from a farrier, as well as vaccinations to protect against various diseases, and dental examinations from a veterinarian or a specialized equine dentist. If horses are kept inside in a barn, they require regular daily exercise for their physical health and mental well-being. When turned outside, they require well-maintained, sturdy fences to be safely contained. Regular grooming is also helpful to help the horse maintain good health of the hair coat and underlying skin. ### Climate change ## See also - Glossary of equestrian terms - Lists of horse-related topics - List of historical horses - Dülmener - The horse in Nordic mythology - Equus gallicus

Lover (Taylor Swift song)

2019 single by Taylor Swift

"Lover" is a song written and performed by American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, taken from her seventh studio album of the same name (2019). Aiming to create a timeless love song, Swift wrote the track about an intimate and committed relationship. The way that newlywed couples customize their marriage vows inspired the bridge, which draws on the bridal rhyme "Something old". Produced alongside Jack Antonoff, the song combines country and indie folk over a waltz tempo. It has an acoustic-guitar-driven, retro-influenced balladic production consisting of snare drums, piano, pizzicato strings, and vocals saturated in reverberation. Republic Records released "Lover" for digital download and streaming on August 16, 2019; the song became the album's third radio single the next month. Swift and Drew Kirsch directed the music video, which was released on August 22 and follows a couple living inside a dollhouse in a snow globe. Three alternate versions of "Lover" were released—a duet remix featuring Canadian singer Shawn Mendes, an orchestral remix based on Swift's performance at the 2019 American Music Awards subtitled "First Dance Remix", and a live version recorded at Swift's 2019 City of Lover concert. Music critics lauded "Lover" for what they thought were emotionally engaging lyrics and a romantic production; many appreciated the production reminiscent of Swift's early albums. Publications including Billboard, Complex, and Pitchfork featured the song on their 2019 year-end lists. It was Swift's first solo-written track nominated for Song of the Year at the 2020 Grammy Awards, and its video received two MTV Video Music Award nominations. The single peaked within the top 10 in Australia, Canada, the United States, Ireland, Lebanon, New Zealand, and Singapore, and received multi-platinum certifications in the first three countries. ## Writing and production American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift described her seventh studio album, Lover, as a "love letter to love" that conveys an emotional spectrum "through a romantic gaze". The album took under three months to record; recording ended in February 2019. Released on August 23, 2019, through Republic Records, Lover musically draws on 1980s-inspired pop rock and synth-pop. Its songs explore many aspects of Swift's personality and altogether convey her emotional liberation to embrace future possibilities, renouncing the media gossip and celebrity-inspired themes on her previous album, Reputation (2017). Musician Jack Antonoff, who had worked with Swift on her two previous studio albums (1989 and Reputation), co-produced 11 tracks for Lover. The title track, "Lover", is one of the three songs (alongside "Cornelia Street" and "Daylight") on the album that Swift wrote by herself. She wrote "Lover" late one night on piano at her home in Nashville, Tennessee. Though she quickly finished the refrain and the first verse, it took her longer to write the bridge, which she wanted to be a "fairy-tale lullaby fable expanding upon a song that has been not as detailed until that point", feeling that the verses were not up to her expectation. To that end, she was inspired by how newly-wed couples customize their marriage vows, and described the bridge as very personal and intimate. Swift said that "Lover" was the first "pure" love song she wrote, which she felt very proud of. After finishing the lyrics, she sent a voice memo of the song to Antonoff; the two went to Electric Lady Studio in New York City together with recording engineer Laura Sisk the next day to record the song. Recording took six hours to complete. Because Swift wanted "Lover" to be a timeless love song, she envisioned as if it could have been played "at a wedding reception in 1980 or 1970 or now". She and Antonoff therefore used instruments that were all invented by the 1970s or earlier. They replaced the original piano with guitar, composed the bridge, and incorporated what Antonoff called a "Paul McCartney-inspired bass line". Other instruments Antonoff played were live drums, a bass guitar, an upright piano, and the Mellotron. According to the album's liner notes, Swift and Antonoff are credited as producers. Sisk and Antonoff, assisted by John Rooney, recorded the song. Serban Ghenea, assisted by John Hanes, mixed the track at MixStar Studios in Virginia Beach, Virginia. ## Composition ### Music "Lover" is built upon a slow waltz tempo and a retro-styled musical motif. Swift said while recording, she imagined the production to sound like "just the last two people on a dance floor at 3 a.m. swaying". The track is driven by acoustic instruments, primarily guitars and percussion. The production incorporates piano, reverbed drums and vocals, and Mellotron-simulated, pizzicato strings. The rhythm is punctuated by booming snare drums and a bass line described by Vanity Fair's Erin Vanderhoff as "sonorous, swung". Many critics compared the production to the music of alternative rock band Mazzy Star, specifically their 1993 single "Fade into You". Roisin O'Connor of The Independent described the track as a tender, 1960s-styled acoustic ballad that shows Swift experimenting with rhythm and meter. Many music critics, including Alice Vincent of The Daily Telegraph, Louise Bruton of The Irish Times, and Annie Zaleski of The A.V. Club, characterized "Lover" as a country song, with Zaleski describing it as a country torch song and an indie folk production. Vincent and NME's Karen Gwee considered the guitar-based melody of "Lover" a throwback to Swift's early country-music albums, with the former commenting that it is a "mature companion" to Fearless (2008) and Speak Now (2010). Nate Jones of Vulture, Nick Levine of NME, and Jon Caramanica of The New York Times described the song as alternative country. Billboard's Jason Lipshutz disagreed: "'Lover' is not a country song, but it certainly nods to the bare songwriting that marked much of Swift's early career." In The Atlantic, Spencer Kornhaber said that the track could have been a country-music song had the production trimmed down the reverb. Mikael Wood from the Los Angeles Times called the song "dream-folk", and The Ringer's Lindsay Zoladz wrote that the single "doesn't sound like anything else currently popular" on either of country or pop radio formats. ### Lyrics and interpretation The lyrics to "Lover" are about a couple's committed and intimate relationship. In the verses, the narrator describes scenes of their domestic life, such as leaving the Christmas lights on past the holiday season and having their friends sleeping over on the living-room floor. Swift initially wrote the opening line as, "We could leave the Christmas lights up 'til April," but changed it to "up 'til January" on the final version. She explained that the change was meant to portray simple and universal experiences of couples who live together, "It's not about that being a crazy thing. It's about how mundane it is." At one point, the narrator asks if she has known her love "20 seconds or 20 years". She asks to commit to her partner in the refrain, "Can I go where you go?/ Can we always be this close?" The marriage-vow-inspired bridge is a declaration of their romance, "Ladies and gentlemen will you please stand/ With every guitar string scar in my hand/ I take this magnetic force of a man to be my lover." Swift said the cited lyrics were special to her, because it made her reflect on her past songwriting about failed relationships and heartbreak. The narrator promises to stay with her lover, "You'll save all your dirtiest jokes for me/ And at every table, I'll save you a seat." Some media publications noticed the lyric, "My heart's been borrowed and yours has been blue," drawing on the bridal rhyme "Something old", which describes the bridal costume on her wedding day, "Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue." Critics related the song's theme to Swift's past songs, with many drawing similarities between the narratives of "Lover" and "New Year's Day", a song taken from Reputation (2017). Jane Song from Paste noted the intertwined storylines between the two songs, dubbing "Lover" a sequel: "They're cleaning up bottles as they laugh at their friends passed out in the living room." Reviewers commented the narrator on "Lover" finally lives up her happily-ever-after dream that Swift's past songs strived for. Vincent opined that the "guitar string scars" imagery is an allusion to Swift's albums Red (2012) and 1989 (2014), on which she moved from country to pop. Meanwhile, Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone deemed "Lover" a sequel to "Last Kiss", a song off Speak Now (2010), "but with a decade's worth more soul going into it". In Vulture, Craig Jenkins noticed its intimate and introspective sentiments after the two preceding singles for the album—"Me!" and "You Need to Calm Down"—which have lyrics concerning the outer world and empowering oneself. Jenkins surmised that after the negative press surrounding Reputation, "Lover" reflected Swift's desire to "want nothing more than a quiet place to retreat to when the rigors of life in public get her down". ## Release Swift previewed "Lover" and part of the lyrics in a Vogue cover interview published on August 8, 2019. Three days later, she announced its release date at the 2019 Teen Choice Awards. Republic Records released "Lover" for digital download and streaming on August 16, 2019. The same day, a lyric video was released onto YouTube; it shows the song's lyrics projected onto a white bedsheet, on which home videos play in the background. On September 5, 2019, Billboard reported that "Lover" was the third radio single from the album, released to US pop and adult contemporary formats. Republic Records released three alternate versions of "Lover". The first, a duet remix featuring Canadian singer Shawn Mendes, was released on November 13, 2019. Mendes contributed verses written by himself. Media publications praised Mendes's verses and falsetto vocals, but complained that they occasionally became cloying. The second, a remix subtitled "First Dance Remix", whose title refers to a newly-wed couple's opening dance at a wedding, was released on November 26, 2019. Featuring an orchestral arrangement used in Swift's performance at the 2019 American Music Awards, it received positive reviews for its ballroom atmosphere. The third, a live version subtitled "Live at Paris", recorded at Swift's City of Lover concert, was released on May 17, 2020. ## Music video The music video for "Lover", directed by Swift and Drew Kirsch, premiered on YouTube on August 22, 2019, hours before the album's release. Christian Owens, a dancer on Swift's 1989 and Reputation tours, stars as the male lead. The video was filmed in a set in Hollywood. According to Swift, its concept was inspired by the lyric "You two are dancing in a snow globe round and round" from the song "You Are in Love", a song about two best friends in love, taken from Swift's album 1989. The video begins with a child receiving a snow globe as a gift on Christmas day, before focusing on the dollhouse inside the snow globe. Swift and Owens portray a couple who live in the house, which has seven distinctly-colored rooms. Each features scenes of the couple's domestic life through the ups and downs of their love. For instance, the green room shows Swift's character playing drums, the yellow room features the couple playing board games, the blue room has a giant fishbowl in which the couple swim, and an attic is where they reminisce by watching home videos. At the end, the child who receives the snow globe is revealed to be the couple's daughter. The video includes easter eggs to many of Swift's other songs and albums, including each room in the dollhouse represents one previous Taylor Swift's album (her later albums, Folklore, Evermore and Midnights, were referenced into the dollhouse and its related landscape by Taylor after their release). Media outlets welcomed the video's romantic and dreamy atmosphere; Teen Vogue's Mary Elizabeth Andriotis compared the cinematography to the films of director Wes Anderson. ## Critical reception "Lover" was met with widespread critical acclaim and seen as a large improvement compared to the lukewarm reception to the more upbeat singles from Lover that preceded it. They praised what they described as intimate lyrics and a romantic production. Jay Willis of GQ, in a review of the album Lover, dubbed the song "the best love story" that Swift had ever produced. Many critics commended "Lover" as a testament to Swift's talents as a singer-songwriter, with Abby Aguirre of Vogue describing the song as a "romantic, haunting [...] singer-songwritery nugget". Slate critic Carl Wilson found the songwriting "replete with the little twists of phrase and zoomed-in details that make the best Swift songs so Swifty". The Independent's Alexandra Pollard called it a reminder of Swift's ability to "distil infatuation into something specific and universal". The production was another point of praise. Zoladz said that "Lover", which she deemed the best single off the album, did not have commercial potential because it sounded like an outlier on radio, but for a good reason: "It's destined for more sacred spaces, like headphones, lonely car rides home after dropping someone off at an airport, and first dances at weddings." Bruton and Vincent described the romantic, "sepia-toned haze" as a welcoming artistic direction for Swift after the "messy clapbacks and vengeful undertones" directed at her media image on Reputation. NPR's Katie Alice Greer and The Boston Globe's Nora Princiotti lauded the bridge, with the former adding that the snare drums were her favorite sound on the album. Wilson lauded the "musical self-assuredness" that makes "Lover" a compelling track, and Toronto Star critic Ben Rayner opined that the stripped-down production, compared to other upbeat album tracks, highlights Swift's vocals and makes it a standout. Critics have featured "Lover" highly on rankings of all songs in Swift's discography, including Vulture's Nate Jones (2021), who ranked it 13th out of 179 songs; NME's Hannah Mylrea (2020), 12th out of 161, and Paste's Jane Song (2020), 6th out of 158. O'Connor ranked it 10th out of select 100 album tracks by Swift, lauding it as an experimental work "impressively bold this far into her career". Sheffield ranked "Lover" seventh in his 2021 ranking of Swift's 206-song catalog, praising her vocals as "the sensation at the top of the roller coaster when you realize you're zooming all the way down", and the use of the word "lover": "She reclaims the cringiest noun in the language and makes it credible for the first time since Prince sang, 'I Wanna Be Your Lover'." ### Rankings "Lover" featured on many publications' lists of the best songs of 2019. Cosmopolitan included it in the top 10, Elle placed it second among the "19 best love songs", and Idolator ranked it 63rd among the "75 best pop songs" of 2019. The track featured on unranked lists by Marie Claire and The Philadelphia Inquirer. Other publications that prominently ranked "Lover" in their year-end lists included Billboard (21st), Complex (35th), and Pitchfork (87th). In individual critics' lists, the song topped the list by David Farr from the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and made it to the top 10 (unranked) by Wilson. Insider included "Lover" at number 104 in their list of the 113 best songs of the 2010s decade. ## Commercial performance In the United States, "Lover" debuted atop the Hot Digital Songs chart with 35,000 digital copies sold first-week, giving Swift her 18th chart topper and extending her record as the artist with the most Hot Digital Songs number-one songs. On the Billboard Hot 100 chart dated August 31, 2019, it debuted at number 19. After its music video was released, the song rose to number 10 on the next charting week, becoming Lover's third top-10 single and Swift's 25th top-10 chart entry. It spent a total of 22 weeks on the Hot 100. On Billboard's airplay charts, the single peaked at numbers six on Adult Top 40, 10 on Adult Contemporary, and 16 on Mainstream Top 40. The Recording Industry Association of America, in October 2020, certified "Lover" double platinum for surpassing two million units based on sales and streaming. "Lover" peaked within the top 20 on singles charts of other English-speaking countries, reaching number three in both Australia and New Zealand, number seven in Canada, number nine in Ireland, number 12 in Scotland, and number 14 in the United Kingdom. The single was certified platinum by the British Phonographic Industry, double platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association, and triple platinum by Music Canada. In other countries, "Lover" reached number 14 on Poland's airplay chart and was certified platinum by the Polish Society of the Phonographic Industry; it also reached the top five in Lebanon and Singapore, and top 20 in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, and was certified platinum by the Associação Fonográfica Portuguesa in Portugal. ## Awards and nominations At the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards in 2020, "Lover" was nominated for Song of the Year, becoming Swift's fourth nomination in the category after "You Belong with Me" (2010), "Shake It Off" (2015), and "Blank Space" (2016), and her first solo-written nomination. It lost to "Bad Guy", written by Billie Eilish and Finneas O'Connell; according to the Los Angeles Times, the Grammy loss prompted speculation on whether it was affected by Swift's ongoing dispute with talent manager Scooter Braun and her former label Big Machine, over the acquisition of the master recordings to her past albums. At the 2020 Nashville Songwriter Awards, organized by the Nashville Songwriters Association International, "Lover" was listed among "10 Songs I Wish I'd Written". The single was one of the "10 International Gold Songs" awarded at Hong Kong's RTHK International Pop Poll Awards, and the Shawn Mendes remix was nominated for Best Remix at the iHeartRadio Music Awards. In 2021, Broadcast Music, Inc. during the BMI Pop Awards honored "Lover" as one of the 50 most-performed songs throughout the year, based on airplay and streaming performance. The music video won Best Production Design in a Video at the MVPA Awards, and received nominations for Favorite International Video at the Philippines' Myx Music Awards and Best Music Video and Best Cinematography at Poland's Camerimage film festival. At the 2020 MTV Video Music Awards, "Lover" was nominated for Best Pop Video and Best Art Direction. Kurt Gefke, the video's production designer, received a nomination in the "Short Format" category at the ADG Excellence in Production Design Awards. ## Live performances and cover versions Swift performed "Lover" live on many occasions during promotion of the album in 2019. She first reprised it as part of a medley with "You Need to Calm Down" at the 2019 MTV Video Music Awards, on August 26; she played the song a pink guitar and was surrounded with blue lights and a hovering moon. She sang "Lover" as part of a mini-concert held at BBC Radio 1's Live Lounge, which premiered on September 2. On September 9, she included it in the set list to her one-off City of Lover concert in Paris. In October, she performed the song on Saturday Night Live, where she sang a stripped-down, piano-led version, at a Tiny Desk Concert for NPR Music, and at the We Can Survive charity concert in Los Angeles. On November 10, Swift sang the track on the piano at the Alibaba Singles' Day Gala in Shanghai. At the 2019 American Music Awards on November 24, where Swift was honored as Artist of the Decade, she performed a medley of select singles, which included "Lover" with an orchestral arrangement. During the song, Swift played and sang on a piano, donning a pink cape with gold detailing, as Misty Copeland and Craig Hall performed a ballet. Variety's Chris Willman selected Swift's medley as the night's most memorable highlight, opining that the lush, string-laden orchestral atmosphere and the ballet performance elevated the show to a high point. The orchestral arrangement was incorporated into the original track, released as the "First Dance Remix". In December, she performed the song at Capital FM's Jingle Bell Ball 2019 in London and at iHeartRadio Z100's Jingle Ball in New York City. On December 14, Swift performed the song at the finale of BBC One's Strictly Come Dancing. Swift included "Lover" on the set list for the Eras Tour (2023). Country musician Keith Urban covered "Lover" at his Washington State Fair concert on August 31, 2019. He had showed gratitude for "Lover", which he described as "so exquisitely written [...] gorgeously crafted" that made him appreciate the "art of making music", on social media, and after the performance said he wish he had composed the song himself. Urban's cover was nominated for Best Cover Song at the 2020 iHeartRadio Music Awards. On March 4, 2020, Irish singer Niall Horan and American singer Fletcher released a cover version of the song, titled "Lover – Recorded at Air Studios, London", exclusively on Spotify. Critics described the cover as a power ballad combining rock styles such as pop rock and arena rock, with electric guitars, keyboard chords, and loud drums. ## Credits and personnel "Lover" (album version) - Taylor Swift – vocals, songwriter, producer - Jack Antonoff – producer, programmer, recording engineer, acoustic guitar, bass guitar, piano, keyboard, drums, percussion - Serban Ghenea – mixing - John Hanes – mix engineer - John Rooney – assistant recording engineer - Laura Sisk – recording engineer "Lover" (Remix featuring Shawn Mendes) - Taylor Swift – vocals, songwriter, producer - Jack Antonoff – producer, programmer, recording engineer, acoustic guitar, bass guitar, piano, keyboard, drums, percussion - Serban Ghenea – mixing - John Hanes – mix engineer - John Rooney – assistant recording engineer - Laura Sisk – recording engineer - Shawn Mendes – vocals, songwriter - Mike Gnocato – vocal engineer - Scott Harris – songwriter - George Seara – vocal engineer - Zubin Thakkar – vocal producer ## Charts ### Weekly charts ### Shawn Mendes remix ### Year-end charts ## Certifications ## Release history ## See also - List of Billboard Hot 100 top-ten singles in 2019 - List of number-one digital songs of 2019 (U.S.) - List of top 10 singles in 2019 (Australia)

Give It Up (Bonnie Raitt album)

Give It Up is the second studio album by American musician Bonnie Raitt. Released in 1972 by Warner Bros. Records, Give It Up is an amalgamation of various genres, including folk, blues, R&B, and soft rock. Seven of the ten tracks on the album are covers, and the tracks range from soft sentimental ballads to fast-paced folk rock pieces. Lyrically, Give It Up revolves around Raitt's femininity, relationships, and being comfortable with herself. Raitt recorded the album at Bearsville Studios with producer Michael Cuscuna. Give It Up was Raitt's first album to reach the Billboard Top LPs & Tapes chart, where it peaked at number 138. The initial reception was positive, as critics liked the vocals and the musicianship throughout the album. Contemporary reviews are also positive, with some critics calling Give It Up a stand-out album within Raitt's discography. In 2012, Rolling Stone ranked Give It Up at number 495 on its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. ## Composition Give It Up was recorded in June 1972 at Bearsville Studios in New York, with producer Michael Cuscuna. It is an amalgamation of several music genres, including folk, blues, R&B, and soft rock. The ten tracks on the album are a mix of soft sentimental ballads and fast-paced folk rock pieces. Some of the faster tracks are accompanied by brass instrumentation, which is played in the style of a New Orleans brass band. This sound is demonstrated on the opening track "Give It Up or Let Me Go". It begins with an acoustic guitar, but then transitions into an explosive sound of a brass band, reminiscent of Dixieland music. Give It Up features many guest musicians, most of which were from the area around Woodstock, New York. Among these are future politician John Hall, multi-instrumentalist Freebo, and blues singer Paul Butterfield. Overall, Give It Up has a smoother, more polished sound than its predecessor Bonnie Raitt. Raitt wrote three songs for the album. The other seven songs are covers of songs by musicians like Chris Smither, Jackson Browne, and Joel Zoss. Lyrically, Give It Up revolves around Raitt's femininity, relationships, and being comfortable with herself. According to biographer Mark Bego, Raitt sounds more confident while singing on this album when compared to her vocal performance on Bonnie Raitt. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic wrote: "Raitt can be earthy and sexy, but she balances it with an inviting sensuality that makes the record glow". Raitt herself would later criticize the vocals, stating: "I sound like Mickey Mouse!" ## Release and reception Give It Up was released in September 1972 by Warner Bros. Records. It sold moderately well, and was Raitt's first album to reach the Billboard Top LPs & Tapes chart, where it peaked at number 138. It was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America in 1985, denoting shipments of 500,000 copies. The song "Too Long at the Fair" was released as a promotional single to radio stations, although it did not reach any music charts. Give It Up received positive reviews upon release. A critic for Billboard magazine wrote: "Bonnie Raitt is presented in her second album for the label and it should be a big one. Her unique vocal treatments and guitar style on 'Stayed [sic] Too Long at the Fair' and the title song should do a lot to sell the album." Record World described Give It Up as "an exceptional effort. The choice of material, from the self-penned numbers to a stunning Jackson Browne tune, is excellent and the musicianship and production could hardly be better." Rolling Stone critic Jon Landau also praised the album, writing that "the best thing about Bonnie Raitt is her singing, and the best thing about Give It Up is that she sings great from beginning to end; in doing so, she successfully handles a far greater range of styles and material than on her first album and has produced a more interesting and satisfying record in the process." Landau highlighted the three original songs, and called "Love Has No Pride" the perfect summation of Raitt's musical abilities. Retrospective appraisals have also been positive. In The New Rolling Stone Record Guide, critic Bart Testa wrote: "Give It Up [comes] closest to perfecting her approach: she [mingles] her blues resources with a variety of contemporary and folk-oriented songs, coming up with classics in 'Been Too Long at the Fair' and Eric Kaz's 'Love Has No Pride'." Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic noted how singers like Sheryl Crow and Shelby Lynne were likely inspired by Give It Up, and ultimately described it as "one of the great Southern California records." In a review published for Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981), Robert Christgau commended Raitt's maturity and intelligence in both her style of play as well as her lyrics. Christgau later ranked Give It Up at number 31 on his decade-end list of the best albums of the 1970s. In 2012, Rolling Stone ranked Give It Up at number 495 on its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, calling it "gorgeous folksy blues". ## Track listing ## Personnel Credits adapted from the liner notes of the 1972 release. Each number denotes which track features the musician and instrument. ### Musicians - Bonnie Raitt – lead vocals, steel guitar (1, 3), acoustic guitar (2, 4-8, 10), backing vocals (3, 7), 12-string guitar (6), electric rhythm guitar (9), acoustic piano (10) - Jack Viertel – steel guitar (1) - T.J. Tindall – electric guitar (3, 7) - Kal David – electric guitar (4) - Lou Terriciano – acoustic piano (1, 8) - Mark Jordan – acoustic piano (3), vibraphone (3), electric piano (7) - Merl Saunders – acoustic piano (4) - Dave Holland – acoustic bass (1, 2, 8) - Chris Parker – drums (1, 4, 8) - Wells Kelly – congas (2, 3, 9), drums (3, 6, 7, 9), cowbell (3, 7), backing vocals (3) - Dennis Whitted – drums (5) - Eric Kaz – vibraphone (2), acoustic piano (6), horn arrangement (9) - Peter Ecklund – cornet (1, 3) - Amos Garrett – trombone (1) - Freebo – tuba (1), 12-string rhythm guitar (2), fretless bass (3-7, 9, 10), backing vocals (3) - John Payne – tenor saxophone (2), clarinet (8), soprano saxophone (9), sax solo (9) - Marty Grebb – tenor saxophone (4), alto saxophone (9) - Terry Eaton – tenor saxophone (9) - Gene Boris Stashuk – cello (6) - Paul Butterfield – harmonica (7) - John Hall – backing vocals (3), electric guitar (6, 9), "steel drum" guitar (9) - Jackie Lomax – backing vocals (3) - Tim Moore – backing vocals (7) ### Production - Producer, liner Notes – Michael Cuscuna - Engineer – Kendall Pacios - Remixing – Nick Jameson and Kendall Pacios - Mastering – Lee Hulko - Art Direction – Ed Thrasher - Photography – Michael Dobo ## Charts and certifications

Hella Good

2002 single by No Doubt

"Hella Good" is a song by American rock band No Doubt from their fifth studio album, Rock Steady (2001). Written by Gwen Stefani, Tony Kanal and the Neptunes (Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo), and produced by Nellee Hooper and the band, "Hella Good" was released as the album's second single on March 11, 2002, and received positive reviews from contemporary music critics, who made comparisons to the work of a diverse range of artists such as Afrika Bambaataa and Madonna. Commercially, "Hella Good" was successful, and Roger Sanchez's remix of the song topped the US Billboard Dance Club Songs. For the 45th Grammy Awards, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences introduced new categories for Best Dance Recording and Best Remixed Recording, Non-Classical. "Hella Good" was nominated for Best Dance Recording, but lost to Dirty Vegas' "Days Go By", and Sanchez's remix won for Best Remixed Recording, Non-Classical. No Doubt performed a medley of "Underneath It All" and "Hella Good" at the ceremony. The accompanying music video for "Hella Good", directed by Mark Romanek, was filmed in March 2002 and released in April 2002, and it features the band squatting in an abandoned ship. The song was featured in the opening sequence of the 2005 film The Longest Yard, covered by Rita Ora at Radio 1's Big Weekend, and was also used for the second season Alias episode "The Getaway" in 2003 and in the pilot episode of The Black Donnellys in 2007. ## Background and writing No Doubt decided to work with hip hop production duo the Neptunes as a sort of "cultural collision". Lead singer Gwen Stefani wanted to write a high-spirited and celebratory song about the positive things in her life, so they wrote an optimistic upbeat song. The word hella was a slang term used mostly in the San Francisco Bay Area and other parts of California to mean "very". Having toured in the Bay Area, Stefani borrowed the term to describe her mood. Stefani wanted to use the word dance in a chorus, so she decided to end each line of "Hella Good"'s chorus with the phrase "keep on dancing". The song's funk sound is based on songs such as Queen's 1980 single "Another One Bites the Dust" and The Commodores' 1977 single "Brick House". ## Composition "Hella Good" is a rock song composed in the key of G minor. It is written in common time and moves at a moderately fast 115 beats per minute. The song is influenced by electro, punk and funk music. The song's beat drew several comparisons to that of Michael Jackson's 1983 single "Billie Jean". Its hook comes from a simple progression of power chords alternating between G and A flat, suggesting Phrygian mode. "Hella Good" follows a verse-chorus form with a chorus following each of the two verses. Following the bridge, the chorus is repeated and the song closes with an outro. ## Critical reception About.com ranked the song number one in a list of the top five singles from Stefani's career, with the band as well as solo, reasoning by saying that the song's "bumping contemporary beat pushes along 80's style keyboards making it nearly impossible to keep from moving your body." Blender described it as a "blazing start" to Rock Steady and compared it to the work of pop group Was (Not Was), rapper and producer Timbaland, ska punk band Fishbone, and electro DJ Afrika Bambaataa. The NME also compared the song to Bambaataa's music as well as that of Britney Spears and Duran Duran. PlayLouder called the track outstanding and compared Nellee Hooper's production to the electroclash style of Chicago house DJ Felix da Housecat. Entertainment Weekly characterized the song as a sequel to Madonna's 1985 single "Into the Groove". The publication listed "Hella Good" seventh on its list of the top singles of 2002. It went on to include the song in its list of the top five No Doubt songs, in which it described the song as "a dance-pop delight irresistible enough to make you forget that ''hella'' is one of history's most irritating slang terms." Stylus Magazine was pleased with the use of overdubbing in the song's "anthemic rock chorus", but referred to its lyrics as stupid. Billboard referred to the group as the B-52's of the 2000s and praised "Hella Good"'s combination of a strong bassline; "fairly aggressive electric guitar accents"; Kraftwerk-style electronics; and Stefani's "loose, playful" vocals. The song was listed at number 26 on the 2002 Pazz & Jop list, a survey of several hundred music critics conducted by Robert Christgau. ## Chart performance In the United States, "Hella Good" reached number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100. The single was more successful in mainstream markets, reaching number three on the Billboard Mainstream Top 40. It had success on adult contemporary stations, peaking at number nine on the Billboard Adult Top 40. It additionally had some crossover success in urban contemporary markets and reached number 29 on the Billboard Rhythmic Top 40. Interscope Records approached DJ Roger Sanchez to produce a remix of the song, which went on to top the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart. The single was less successful on the Canadian Singles Chart, where it peaked at number 26 for three non-consecutive weeks. On the UK Singles chart, "Hella Good" debuted at number 12 but was unable to reach a higher position. The single peaked at number eight on the Australian ARIA Singles Chart in June 2002 and remained on the chart for three months. It was listed at number 65 on the Australian year-end chart for 2002, and was certified Gold by the Australian Recording Industry Association. In New Zealand, it peaked at number 17 and spent 15 weeks on the chart. ## Music video The black-and-white music video was directed by Mark Romanek. Not following any plot, the video depicts the band as a group of punk rockers squatting in an abandoned ship while the rest are chasing Stefani throughout the ship. During the course of the video, the band members perform the song, using bodyboards to float electronic equipment, and they and their friends explore and dance throughout the ship. There are also sequences of people riding on personal water crafts, Stefani performing on a coiled rope, people playing Jet Set Radio Future, and Stefani broadcasting on a pirate radio station. Romanek came up with the video's concept it and e-mailed it to the band. He based it on a black-and-white Italian Vogue fashion shoot from the mid-1990s which featured models on waverunners. The video was then filmed over three days in March 2002 in Long Beach, California. The scenes inside the ship were filmed from man-made sets at South Bay Studios. The music video was moderately successful. Following a premiere on an episode of MTV's Making the Video, it reached number four on the network's video countdown Total Request Live. The video debuted on MuchMusic's Countdown in April 2002 and peaked at number six, spending over four months on the program. At the 2003 Music Video Production Association Awards, production designer Laura Fox won the Universal Studios Production Services Award for Best Art Direction for her work on this video. ## Track listings Australasian and Japanese CD single 1. "Hella Good" (album version) – 4:02 2. "Hey Baby" ("Stank Remix" dirty version featuring Outkast and Killer Mike) – 4:06 3. "Hey Baby" (Kelly G's Bumpin' Baby club mix) – 8:14 4. "Hella Good" (video) – 4:02 UK CD single 1. "Hella Good" (album version) – 4:02 2. "Hella Good" (Roger's Release Yourself mix) – 7:13 3. "Hey Baby" ("Stank Remix" dirty version featuring Outkast and Killer Mike) – 4:06 4. "Hella Good" (video) – 4:02 UK 12-inch single A1. "Hella Good" (Roger's Release Yourself mix) – 7:13 B1. "Hella Good" (Roger's Release the Dub mix) – 7:14 B2. "Hey Baby" ("Stank Remix" dirty version featuring Outkast and Killer Mike) – 4:02 UK cassette single 1. "Hella Good" (album version) – 4:02 2. "Hella Good" (Roger's Release Yourself mix) – 7:13 European CD single 1. "Hella Good" (album version) – 4:02 2. "Hey Baby" ("Stank Remix" dirty version featuring Outkast and Killer Mike) – 4:06 ## Charts ### Weekly charts ### Year-end charts ## Certifications ## Release history

Jabari Smith Jr.

American basketball player (born 2003)

Jabari Montsho Smith Jr. (born May 13, 2003) is an American professional basketball player for the Houston Rockets of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He played college basketball for the Auburn Tigers. Born in Fayetteville, Georgia, to former professional basketball player Jabari Smith Sr., Smith began playing basketball at a young age under his father's mentorship. Smith attended Sandy Creek High School, where in his senior year the team made a state championship appearance. In high school, Smith was named a McDonald's All-American and Mr. Georgia Basketball. A five star prospect ranked the nation's number seven overall recruit, he committed to Auburn University to play college basketball. As a freshman at Auburn, Smith helped the team achieve their first ever AP poll number one ranking and an SEC regular season championship. At the conclusion of his freshman year, Smith was named an All-American, and won the USBWA National Freshman of the Year Award. Following his freshman season, Smith would declare for the 2022 NBA draft and was selected by the Rockets with the third overall pick. He is also a distant cousin of NBA player Kwame Brown. ## Early life and high school career Smith was born on May 13, 2003, in Fayetteville, Georgia, to Jabari Smith Sr. and Taneskia Purnell. His father played college basketball at LSU, and had a four year career in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for the Sacramento Kings, Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Nets, before playing overseas in Spain, Turkey, Iran and Puerto Rico. Smith began playing basketball when he was five, and was trained by his father. His father while in the NBA had noticed the arrival of tall international players with strong shooting, and decided to mold Smith as a player that despite his tall height, would win with shooting rather than with size. At the age of 15, Smith would join the Atlanta Celtics on the Amateur Athletic Union circuit, coached by the father of star Auburn point guard Jared Harper. Smith started playing varsity basketball as a sophomore at Sandy Creek High School in Tyrone, Georgia. As a junior, he averaged 24.5 points, 10.8 rebounds, and 2.8 blocks per game. In his senior season, Smith averaged 24 points, 10 rebounds, three steals, and three blocks per game, leading his team to a Class 3A state runner-up finish. He was named Mr. Georgia Basketball, Georgia Gatorade Player of the Year and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution All-Classification Player of the Year. Smith was selected to the rosters for the McDonald's All-American Game, Jordan Brand Classic and Nike Hoop Summit and finished as a runner up for Mr. Basketball USA. ### Recruiting Smith was a consensus five-star recruit and one of the top players in the 2021 class. On October 9, 2020, he announced his commitment to play college basketball for Auburn University over offers from Tennessee, Georgia, LSU, Georgia Tech and North Carolina. Upon his commitment he became the highest ranked player to commit to Auburn in the modern recruiting era. Smith has said that he committed to Auburn due to his fit within the teams play style under head coach Bruce Pearl, the school's relatively close proximity to his hometown and because the school could provide him a more traditional college experience than he would get elsewhere. ## College career Smith entered his freshman season with high expectations due to his recruiting ranking. Smith emerged as a leader in preseason practice with coach Bruce Pearl describing him as "the hardest working player on the team." He made his college debut against Morehead State in a 77–54 victory for the Tigers. On January 11, 2022, on the road against fierce rival Alabama Smith scored a then career-high 25 points to help the Tiger's avoid an upset in an 81-77 victory. On February 16, 2022, Smith recorded a career-high 31 points on just 16 shots in an 94–80 victory over Vanderbilt. As a freshman, he averaged 16.9 points, 7.4 rebounds, and two assists per game while helping lead the Tigers to an SEC regular season championship and the programs first ever \#1 ranking in the AP poll. In his NCAA Tournament debut against Jacksonville State, Smith recorded his 6th double-double of the season scoring 20 points and grabbing 14 rebounds. In the second round of the tournament Smith would record another double-double but would also have his worst shooting performance of the season going 3-of-16 from the field as the \#2 seeded Tigers were upset by \#10 seeded Miami 79-62, ending the Tigers season. At the conclusion of his freshman season, Smith was awarded many honors including being named the USBWA Freshman of the Year, a member of the All-SEC first team and a second-team All American, the Tigers first All American selection since Chris Porter in 1999. On April 5, 2022, Smith declared for the 2022 NBA draft, forgoing his remaining college eligibility. Smith was projected as a top-three selection in the 2022 NBA draft and the potential first pick. ## Professional career ### Houston Rockets (2022–present) #### 2022-23 season Prior to the 2022 NBA draft, Smith was believed by many analysts and insiders to be the number one overall pick, with Smith even saying that he would be surprised not to be picked number one by the Orlando Magic. However the Magic ended up selecting Paolo Banchero and Smith ending up being selected with third overall pick by the Houston Rockets, making him the highest drafted player to ever come out of Auburn, surpassing Chris Morris and Chuck Person whom were drafted 4th overall. He made his summer league debut with 10 points, seven rebounds, three assists, and a steal in a 91–77 loss against the Orlando Magic. On October 2, 2022, Smith made his preseason debut, scoring 21 points with 5-of-8 shooting from three along with eight rebounds and two assists in a 134–96 win against the San Antonio Spurs. On October 19, 2022, Smith made his regular season debut, scoring 17 points along with seven rebounds and an assist in a 117–107 loss to the Atlanta Hawks. On October 24, 2022, Smith recorded his first 20+ point game with free 21 points by shooting 6-to-10 from the field with nine rebounds in a 114–106 victory over the Utah Jazz, the Rockets first victory of the season. On December 2, 2022, Smith scored 17 points with six rebounds, one steal, and one blocked shot in a 122–121 victory against the Phoenix Suns. He finished by shooting 7-of-12 from the field, including 3-of-5 from three-point range. The outing was the sixth straight game in which Smith made at least three 3-pointers, the second-longest streak in history by a rookie. On December 23, 2022, He recorded his sixth double-double with 24 points by shooting 58.8% from the field and 3-of-8 from three with 10 rebounds in a loss against the Dallas Mavericks. On January 13, 2023, Smith scored a then career-high 27 points with three blocks and eight rebounds in a game loss against the Sacramento Kings. On March 9, Smith grabbed 12 rebounds and set a career-high 30 points in a 134–125 overtime loss to the Indiana Pacers. On March 14, Smith scored 24 points by shooting 83.8 precent from the field with 5 threes made and 11 rebounds in a game win against the Boston Celtics. In doing so, he became the first player in Rockets franchise to average 20-plus points and 10-plus rebounds in three straight games since Hakeem Olajuwon in 1985. On March 17, Smith made a game-winning three-pointer in a 114–112 win over the New Orleans Pelicans. At the conclusion of his rookie season he was voted to the All-Rookie second team. ## Player profile Standing at 6 feet and 11 inches (2.11 meters) with a 7-1 feet wingspan and weighing 220 pounds (93.6 kilograms), Smith predominately plays the power forward position. Smith's length makes him a versatile player on both offense and defense. He often utilizes jab-steps to help create space for his jump shot and has range out to the three-point line, shooting 42% from three-point range in college. On defense, he is mobile on the perimeter and physical inside, making him a candidate to defend big men but also switch comfortably onto guards. Smith was noted for his defensive instincts and quick hands, averaging a block and a steal per game in college. Many sources and scouts have compared his play making style to other big men such as Rashard Lewis, Chris Bosh, Michael Porter Jr. and Kevin Durant. Scouts noted that Smith's main weakness on offense entering the draft is his ball handling, as he often times struggles to generate offense off of the dribble. ## National team career Smith played for the United States at the 2019 FIBA Under-16 Americas Championship in Belém, Brazil. He averaged 13.8 points and 6.2 rebounds per game and helped the United States win the gold medal. ## Career statistics ### NBA \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|2022–23 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Houston \| 79 \|\| 79 \|\| 31.0 \|\| .408 \|\| .307 \|\| .786 \|\| 7.2 \|\| 1.3 \|\| .5 \|\| .9 \|\| 12.8 \|- class="sortbottom" \| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"\|Career \| 79 \|\| 79 \|\| 31.0 \|\| .408 \|\| .307 \|\| .786 \|\| 7.2 \|\| 1.3 \|\| .5 \|\| .9 \|\| 12.8 ### College All statistics per Sports Reference. \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|2021–22 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Auburn \| 34 \|\| 34 \|\| 28.8 \|\| .429 \|\| .420 \|\| .799 \|\| 7.4 \|\| 2.0 \|\| 1.1 \|\| 1.0 \|\| 16.9 ## Personal life Smith's father, Jabari, played in the NBA for four seasons and competed professionally overseas. He has one older brother, named A.J. Smith's distant cousin, Kwame Brown, was the first overall pick in the 2001 NBA draft and played in the NBA for 13 seasons.

The Sixth Extinction (The X-Files)

"The Sixth Extinction" is the first episode of the seventh season of the science fiction television series The X-Files. It was first shown on the Fox network on November 7, 1999, in the United States. The episode was written by Chris Carter and directed by Kim Manners. "The Sixth Extinction" earned a Nielsen household rating of 10.6, being watched by 17.82 million people in its initial broadcast. The episode received mixed to positive reviews from critics. The show centers on FBI special agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) who work on cases linked to the paranormal, called X-Files. Mulder is a believer in the paranormal, while the skeptical Scully has been assigned to debunk his work. In the episode, Assistant Director Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi) and Michael Kritschgau (John Finn) work desperately in an attempt to discover what is wrong with Mulder, whose abnormal brain activity has rendered him imprisoned in his own head, but they are unaware of Agent Diana Fowley’s (Mimi Rogers) duplicity. In the meanwhile, Scully is hunting for an ancient artifact in Africa. "The Sixth Extinction" helped to explore new aspects of the series' overarching mythology and was the second episode in a trilogy of episodes featuring Mulder's severe reaction to the appearance of an alien artifact. The episode was written due to series creator Chris Carter's fascination with the possibility that extraterrestrials were involved in the great extinctions that had happened millions of years ago. ## Plot On the coast of Côte d'Ivoire, Scully sits in her tent studying detailed photographs of the spacecraft half-buried in the beach nearby. A figure, the Primitive African Man, mysteriously appears before suddenly vanishing, after which Scully's tent is swarmed by flying insects. Back in the U.S., Walter Skinner visits a delusional Fox Mulder, who is being kept in a padded cell at a Georgetown hospital. Mulder seemingly attacks Skinner, but actually covertly passes him a torn shred of his hospital gown reading, "HELP ME". Scully is visited by Dr. Amina Ngebe, Solomon Merkmellen's former colleague, who warns her to not tell any of the locals about the swarm or the Primitive African Man, although word is already out on the "African internet". Soon afterwards, one of the locals working on excavating the ship is apparently scalded by boiling seawater. With the arrival of Dr. Barnes another "plague" occurs: that night the ocean turns blood red. Skinner revisits a heavily drugged Mulder, who cannot talk but writes "Kritschgau". Skinner visits Michael Kritschgau, now unemployed and living in a low-cost apartment, and convinces him to visit the hospital with him. Once there, Kritschgau believes Mulder has alien-induced mind reading abilities and injects him with phenytoin to slow down his brain activity. Later, Diana Fowley and his doctor arrive, and with his mind-reading abilities, Mulder tells Skinner that he knows about him being indebted to Alex Krycek, and Fowley's connections with the Smoking Man. Scully, with Barnes' help, is able to translate some of the inscriptions on the spacecraft, which contains information on genetics and various religions. However, Barnes' behavior becomes increasingly erratic and, arming himself with a machete, he refuses to let Scully or Ngebe leave. Barnes realizes that the craft is bringing dead fish back to life. Scully and Ngebe take the opportunity to knock him out and escape. Scully sees the Primitive African Man again in the car as they drive off. Kritschgau and Skinner put Mulder under additional tests to verify his abnormal brain activity. They again inject Mulder with phenytoin, but this time they are caught by Fowley; Mulder goes into a seizure. Meanwhile, Barnes, in a bizarre experiment, kills his driver, only for the driver to soon reanimate and kill Barnes instead. Scully flies back to the U.S. and visits Mulder at the hospital. On the African coast, Ngebe arrives with the police, finding Barnes dead and the spaceship gone. ## Production Regarding this episode's origins, Frank Spotnitz said, "[We] destroyed all the stuff about Mulder's father, the project, and the Syndicate. All the things that had sustained us for six years were suddenly gone. We had no crutches. From that point on, every time we sat down to write a mythology show, we knew it was going to be a completely different challenge." Chris Carter believed that "The Sixth Extinction" functioned as a "transitional episode", stating, "I felt that, with 'The Sixth Extinction', I was just playing a supporting role and that the episode, essentially the middle episode of a three-episode arc, was just a transitional episode to get us to 'Amor Fati', which was really less about the mythology and more about Mulder's choices in life." Because David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson both had other commitments at the start of the season, production for this episode was delayed. It ended up being filmed third in the season, after the episodes "Hungry" and "The Goldberg Variation". Carter wrote the episode simultaneously as Duchovny was working on the next episode, "The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati". Kim Manners said preparations were confusing since it was not clear how the storylines would unfold and feed into one another. Spotnitz said of the end result, "For me, it was a lot like a fifties monster movie with Scully out on the beach with this guy going nuts with a machete, the bug attacks, and the sea of blood. Yeah, it was supposed to be serious business but, overall, I thought it was shaping up as a pretty entertaining hour." The producers had to move the filming of the beach sequences from the previous episodes due to changes in the tides at that time of year. Similar to the previous episode, the large spaceship wreck was created with computer-generated graphics. The sequence where the locals are boiled by the ocean water required the use of "various degrees of burn makeup", which was applied to stunt performers. An underwater camera was then used to capture these actors as they writhed in pain. To create the scene in which a huge number of insects swarm Scully's tent, popcorn and foam peanuts were blown by a large fan onto the soundstage; images of crickets were then digitally composited on top of the detritus during post-production. Over 50,000 dead crickets were also rented by the show and strewn about on the stage of the floor to further the effect. A large portion of the episode was based on the ancient astronaut theory, which proposes that intelligent extraterrestrial beings have visited Earth in antiquity or prehistory and made contact with humans. Frank Spotnitz was astounded at how little negative fan mail the show received, despite the fact that the "Biogenesis"/"The Sixth Extinction"/"Amor Fati" story arc heavily hinted that aliens were the originators of the notion of God and religion. He credited the manner in which the show handled this delicate subject, saying, "Often in the past, we've done stuff where I was sure we would get angry letters. But we rarely do. And the reason is because of the way we handle things. In 'Amor Fati' we treated the religious side with respect." The ancient astronaut themes were later revisited in the two season nine episodes "Provenance" and "Providence." ## Reception ### Ratings "The Sixth Extinction" was first shown in the United States on November 7, 1999. This episode earned a Nielsen rating of 10.6, with a 16 share, meaning that roughly 10.6 percent of all television-equipped households, and 16 percent of households watching television, were tuned in to the episode. It was viewed by 17.82 million viewers and was the most watched episode of the seventh season in the United States. The episode aired in the United Kingdom and Ireland on Sky1 on May 7, 2000, and received 1.00 million viewers and was the third most watched episode that week. Fox promoted the episode with the tagline "Something is driving Mulder insane. Something he's been searching for. Something he shouldn't have found." The episode was later included on The X-Files Mythology, Volume 3 – Colonization, a DVD collection that contains episodes involved with the alien Colonist's plans to take over the earth. ### Reviews "The Sixth Extinction" received mixed to positive reviews from critics. Tom Kessenich, in his book Examination: An Unauthorized Look at Seasons 6–9 of the X-Files gave the episode a positive review, noting that the episode takes the themes of "Biogenesis" and "runs with them". Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly awarded the episode a "B+". Tucker praised series creator Chris Carter's writing ability, stating that "the kickoff episode suggests the author's limitless imagination for sustaining his alien-nation tropes". Robert Shearman and Lars Pearson, in their book Wanting to Believe: A Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen, rated the episode three-and-a-half stars out of five. The two called the episode "the most arresting season opener in years" and noted that it "promises that maybe there's life in the old mythology yet." Shearman and Pearson, however, did critique the lack of finality to the episode, but attributed most of this to the fact that the episode was the second of a three-part mythology tale. Den of Geek writer Nina Sordi ranked "The Sixth Extinction," along with "Biogenesis" and "The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati," as the fifth best episode of the series, writing, "it is evident that as [The X-Files] progressed, the episodes surrounding those storylines and the breaking points Mulder and Scully endured push them further and further towards total, irreversible defeat. This is especially poignant when viewing this anxiety inducing trio of episodes." Monica S. Kuebler of Exclaim magazine called "The Sixth Extinction", along with "Biogenesis" and "Amor Fati", one of the "best" episodes during the show's "colonization" phase. Kenneth Silber of Space.com wrote positively of the episode, hoping that it foreshadowed answers to come, writing "As the middle installment of a three-part story and what was then thought to be the final season premiere of The X-Files, 'The Sixth Extinction' is suffused with a somber pre-apocalyptic mood, but one vivified by the possibility that soon we'll have answers to the most important outstanding mysteries of the series." Not all reviews were so positive. Paula Vitaris from Cinefantastique gave the episode a negative review and awarded it one-and-a-half stars out of four. She noted that "Mulder's situation is handled just poorly" and argued that Mulder's illness was created solely to provide a cross-season cliffhanger. Emily VanDerWerff of The A.V. Club awarded the episode a "C" and called it a "weird bridge". Largely, she criticized the episode for featuring "no real twists or complications here" in lieu of "things just [...] getting worse along a linear path".

MLS Cup 2004

2004 edition of the MLS Cup

MLS Cup 2004 was the ninth edition of the MLS Cup, the championship match of Major League Soccer (MLS), which took place on November 14, 2004, at the Home Depot Center in Carson, California. It was contested between D.C. United and the Kansas City Wizards to decide the champion of the 2004 season. The two teams had qualified for the playoffs after seasons with mixed results that ended in top-two finishes in their respective conferences. D.C. United won the match 3–2, scoring all three of its goals in a seven-minute span during the first half after the Wizards had taken an early lead. Alecko Eskandarian was named the match MVP for scoring the first two goals for D.C., one of which included an alleged handball that was uncalled. The 2004 final featured the first red card in MLS Cup history, awarded for a handball which resulted in a penalty kick for Kansas City's second goal. It was D.C. United's fourth MLS Cup title and their first since 1999, and manager Peter Nowak became the first person to win the MLS Cup as a player and coach. ## Venue The Home Depot Center in Carson, California, the home venue of the Los Angeles Galaxy, was announced by the league as the host of MLS Cup 2004 on June 23, 2004. The 27,000-seat stadium had hosted the previous edition of the MLS Cup and the 2003 FIFA Women's World Cup Final in its first year of operation. The 2004 final marked the first time that a stadium had hosted consecutive editions of the MLS Cup, which would be followed by Pizza Hut Park in Frisco, Texas in 2005 and 2006. ## Road to the final The MLS Cup is the post-season championship of Major League Soccer (MLS), a professional club soccer league based in the United States. The 2004 season was the ninth in the league's history and was contested by ten teams in two conferences, divided into the east and west. Each team played a total of 30 matches in the regular season from April to October, facing teams within their conference four times, outside of their conference two times, and playing an additional home game against a non-conference team. The playoffs ran from mid-October to November and was contested by the top four teams in each conference. It was organized into three rounds: a home-and-away series with a winner determined by aggregate score in the Conference Semifinals, a single-match Conference Final, and the MLS Cup final. MLS Cup 2004 was contested by D.C. United and the Kansas City Wizards. Both teams had previously won the MLS Cup and finished in the top two seeds of their respective conferences in regular season play. D.C. and Kansas City had played each other twice during the regular season, trading 1–0 away wins at their respective homes: the Wizards won at RFK Memorial Stadium in May and D.C. United won at Arrowhead Stadium in July. Kansas City qualified for the playoffs as the top seed in the Western Conference, finishing level with Supporters' Shield winners Columbus Crew on points, while D.C. United rode late-season momentum to finish with a record slightly above .500. ### D.C. United D.C. United won three MLS Cup titles in the first four seasons of the league's existence, only finishing as runners-up in 1998, and established a dynasty under head coaches Bruce Arena and Thomas Rongen. From 2000 to 2002, however, D.C. failed to qualify for the playoffs for three consecutive seasons and Rongen was fired. Ray Hudson lead the team to a playoffs return in 2003, where they lost 4–0 on aggregate to the Chicago Fire in the first round. In January 2004, D.C. hired recently retired Chicago Fire midfielder Peter Nowak as its fourth head coach in nine seasons. The last remaining player from the club's inaugural season, forward Marco Etcheverry, left the club at the end of the 2003 season. To replace Etcheverry, the club recalled Jaime Moreno from the MetroStars and drafted 14-year-old forward Freddy Adu, who had already agreed in November to sign with them. Nowak implemented an aggressive playstyle that emphasized counterattacks and team-oriented play that took hold late in the season. The club earned a 5–5–5 record at the beginning of the season, including a 271-minute scoreless streak and a four-match unbeaten streak that was capped with a 6–2 win over the MetroStars. After a four-match winless streak to start the second half of the season, D.C. United found a more consistent rhythm and finished the season with a winning record and a ten-match home unbeaten streak. The club signed Argentine midfielder Christian Gómez in the summer transfer window and paired him with forward Alecko Eskandarian, who lead D.C. in goals scored, to close out the season; rookie goalkeeper Troy Perkins was promoted to the starting lineup and played in place of Nick Rimando before he returned later in the season. By winning five of their final six regular season matches, D.C. United clinched the second-place seed in the Eastern Conference behind the Columbus Crew. In the Conference Semifinals, D.C. played host to their Atlantic Cup rivals, the New York/New Jersey MetroStars, who they had played in the final week of the season. D.C. United won 2–0 in the first leg at Giants Stadium on second-half goals by Earnie Stewart and Eskandarian. In the second leg of the series at RFK Memorial Stadium, D.C. defeated the MetroStars 2–0, with late goals scored by Moreno and Bryan Namoff, and advanced to the Conference Final on an aggregate score of 4–0. D.C. United faced the fourth-seeded New England Revolution, who upset the Columbus Crew in the semifinals, in the Conference Final at RFK Memorial Stadium on November 6, 2004. During the match, considered one of the best in MLS history, D.C. took the lead three times and New England responded with three equalizing goals. Eskandarian opened the scoring in the 11th minute on a defensive mistake, but Taylor Twellman leveled the score at 1–1 six minutes later with a volleyed shot from inside the box. Jamie Moreno restored the lead for D.C. in the 21st minute, curling a shot around the left post to beat goalkeeper Matt Reis; New England were awarded a penalty kick after the ball hit the arm of defender Brian Carroll, and Steve Ralston's shot deflected off the post and Nick Rimando before going into the net and tying the match 2–2 at halftime. Gómez scored D.C.'s third goal in the 67th minute, heading a cross from Earnie Stewart, but New England's Pat Noonan responded with a headed goal in the 85th minute that tied the match at the end of regulation time. Despite several attempts at goal, the match remained tied 3–3 after extra time and would be the first MLS playoff match decided by a penalty shootout. After an opening round in which neither penalty taker scored, five consecutive penalties were scored to give D.C. a 3–2 lead. In the fourth round, the shot by Jay Heaps for New England was saved by Rimando, but the follow-up by Moreno was saved by Reis to prevent the Revolution from being eliminated. New England's Shalrie Joseph scored his penalty to trigger a sudden death round, which saw Brian Carroll score and Clint Dempsey's shot saved by Nick Rimando. The penalty shootout ended in a 4–3 victory for D.C. United, who clinched an appearance in their fifth MLS Cup final. ### Kansas City Wizards The Kansas City Wizards had won the MLS Cup in 2000, defeating the Chicago Fire, in the same season that they had clinched the Supporters' Shield for the best regular season record. The team qualified for the playoffs in six of their first eight seasons, including four consecutive appearances under manager Bob Gansler. The Wizards finished in second place in the Western Conference at the end of the 2003 season, relying on 40-year-old forward Preki as he led the league in scoring and was named the most valuable player. The team advanced past the Colorado Rapids and qualified for the Conference Finals, where they were defeated 3–2 by the San Jose Earthquakes in extra time. The Wizards began the 2004 season without Preki, who broke his leg during preseason and replaced with Josh Wolff and Davy Arnaud as starting forwards. The season began with only three wins in the first nine matches, but the Wizards found their form in June and went unbeaten in nine despite playing five consecutive away matches. The team saw their unbeaten streak broken at the end of July before the All-Star Game break, remaining in second place behind the Los Angeles Galaxy in the Western Conference standings. Veteran goalkeeper Tony Meola picked up an injury to his achilles tendon during a pre-game warm-up in August and was replaced by backup goalkeeper Bo Oshoniyi, who would start for the rest of the season. The Wizards also lost starting midfielder Chris Klein to a torn ligament in his knee, while Preki returned only for three matches before being sidelined for an additional ankle surgery. Kansas City returned from the All-Star break by continuing a four-match winless streak, but finished the season with five wins in the final nine matches to clinch the first seed in the Western Conference. The team's success was credited to a league-leading defense, conceding one goal per game on average, and strong performances from reserve and replacement players under Gansler. The Wizards also won their first U.S. Open Cup title in September by defeating the Chicago Fire 1–0 with a golden goal in extra time. The team were tied with the Columbus Crew in the overall standings with 49 points, but lost the Supporters' Shield on the third tiebreaker, goals scored. Two Wizards players, defender Jimmy Conrad and midfielder Kerry Zavagnin, were named to the MLS Best XI, but Gansler finished as runner-up to Columbus's Greg Andrulis for MLS Coach of the Year. The Wizards began their playoff campaign in the Western Conference Semifinals against the San Jose Earthquakes, the defending MLS Cup champions. The team fell 2–0 in the first leg of the series in San Jose, conceding goals to Dwayne De Rosario and Craig Waibel near halftime, but Oshoniyi saved further chances from the Earthquakes. The Wizards returned to Arrowhead Stadium and earned a 2–0 lead in the second half to tie the series, with a first-half goal from rookie midfielder Khari Stephenson and an own goal scored on a deflection off Earthquakes forward Brian Ching. In the second minute of stoppage time, Kansas City midfielder Jack Jewsbury scored the winning goal to give his team a 3–2 win on aggregate that would clinch a berth in the Western Conference Final. The Wizards then hosted the Los Angeles Galaxy in the Western Conference Final, repeating similar playoff matchups that the Galaxy won in 1996 and 2002 and lost in 2000; the Galaxy, who were hosting the MLS Cup final, was also winless in four regular season matches against the Wizards in 2004. With a strong defensive performance, Kansas City advanced to their second MLS Cup final on a 2–0 win over Los Angeles; both of the team's goals were scored by Davy Arnaud in the 24th and 69th minutes. ### Summary of results Note: In all results below, the score of the finalist is given first (H: home; A: away). ## Broadcasting and entertainment The MLS Cup final was televised in the United States on ABC in English, along with a Spanish broadcast using secondary audio programming, both produced by ESPN. English play-by-play commentary was provided by JP Dellacamera with color analysis by Eric Wynalda, reprising their roles in the previous final. Play-by-play commentator Ernesto Motta returned to the Spanish-language broadcast, working alongside color analyst Robert Sierra. The ABC/ESPN broadcast was produced by a team of 85 people and used 20 cameras, including specialized replay and slow-motion cameras. The match was also broadcast in over 175 other countries by ESPN International. Radio coverage of the match was provided by the local teams in English and Radiovisa nationally in Spanish. It was also carried on the American Forces Radio Network internationally. The ABC broadcast earned a Nielsen rating of 0.8 and averaged a local 2.4 rating in the Kansas City metropolitan area—far below the competing Kansas City Chiefs game. The match's halftime show featured San Diego-based alternative rock band Switchfoot and a pyrotechnics display. ## Match ### Summary The match kicked off at 12:45 p.m. Pacific Time on November 14, 2004, at the Home Depot Center in Carson, California, in front of a crowd of 25,797 spectators—including several hundred traveling D.C. United supporters. At kickoff, the temperature measured 81 °F (27 °C), setting a new record for hottest MLS Cup final. Kansas City took an early lead in the sixth minute after defender José Burciaga Jr. scored on a shot from 30 yards (27 m), following sustained offensive pressure from kickoff. D.C. United responded with its own offensive pressure and scored three goals within seven minutes to take a 3–1 lead by the 30th minute of play. Alecko Eskandarian scored D.C.'s first two goals, first receiving a pass from Brian Carroll and turning around defender Nick Garcia to score from 14 yards (13 m) in the 19th minute. Four minutes later, Eskandarian stole the ball from a Wizards throw-in meant for defender Jimmy Conrad and scored on a left-footed shot from 18 yards (16 m) for a 2–1 lead; during the run-up to the goal, Eskandarian used his forearm to block the ball, but it was not called by referee Michael Kennedy despite protests from Kansas City players and coaches. D.C. United extended their lead to 3–1 in the 26th minute after Wizards defender Alex Zotinca scored an own goal by deflecting a cross from Earnie Stewart into the goal with his chest. D.C. remained ahead by two goals at halftime, but Kansas City began the second half with an offensive push along the wings to narrow the lead. Burciaga Jr. took a corner kick for the Wizards in the 56th minute that was headed towards goal by Conrad, who led the team with four shots, but it was blocked by Eskandarian on the goal line and deflected away by goalkeeper Nick Rimando. The ball returned to Conrad, who took a short, volleyed shot towards the goal that hit the hand of D.C. midfielder Dema Kovalenko. After the referee and an assistant discussed the play, Kansas City were awarded a penalty kick and Kovalenko received the first red card in MLS Cup history for his handball. The resulting penalty kick was scored in the 58th minute by Josh Wolff, but the Wizards failed to find an equalizing goal with their one-man advantage. Manager Bob Gansler made two substitutions to bring on attacking players, but the team failed to capitalize on chances given to Burciaga in the 81st minute and Matt Taylor in stoppage time. Nowak responded by making several defensive substitutions for D.C., also bringing on Freddy Adu in the 65th minute for Eskandarian, who suffered a leg injury, as the team held onto their lead to win the match 3–2 and clinch an MLS Cup. ### Details ## Post-match D.C. United won its fourth MLS Cup championship and its first since 1999, solidifying its place as the most successful sports franchise in Washington, D.C. Peter Nowak became the first person to win the MLS Cup as both a player and as a head coach, as well as the first coach without American or Canadian citizenship to win the title. He was the MLS Cup MVP during the Chicago Fire's 1998 victory against D.C. United and also played in their loss to Kansas City in 2000. Josh Wolff, who scored Kansas City's second goal in the 2004 cup, was a teammate of Nowawk's and played in the 2000 cup. 15-year-old substitute Freddy Adu became the youngest member of an American professional championship team in modern sports history, beating a record set by 18-year-old baseball pitcher Art Houtteman with the Detroit Tigers in 1945. Eskandarian was named the match's MVP for his two goals, capping a season of redemption after spending his rookie year on the bench. After the match, he stated, "I didn't even know where the ball hit me. It was just what you learn in youth soccer; you keep going until you hear a whistle." In 2011, Eskandarian publicly acknowledged that there was a handball on the play that led to his second goal in a Twitter roast of retiring defender Jimmy Conrad. Wizards head coach Bob Gansler complimented United's defensive performance and lamented his team's defensive errors that lead to the three conceded goals. Both finalists qualified for the 2005 CONCACAF Champions' Cup and were placed in the quarterfinals, which were played during the MLS preseason in early March. Kansas City tied Deportivo Saprissa in its home leg, but were eliminated by losing 2–1 after extra time the following week in San José, Costa Rica. D.C. played against Harbour View of Jamaica and advanced from the quarterfinals with a 4–2 aggregate score. In the semifinals, they played against Mexican champions UNAM Pumas and drew 1–1 in the home leg, but were eliminated after losing 5–0 in Mexico City.

Green Lantern (Six Flags Great Adventure)

Steel roller coaster

Green Lantern, formerly known as Chang, is a stand-up roller coaster located at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson Township, New Jersey. Green Lantern stands 155 feet (47 m) tall and features a top speed of 63 miles per hour (101 km/h). The 4,155-foot-long (1,266 m) ride features five inversions and a duration of approximately 21⁄2 minutes. This steel coaster was designed and built by Swiss manufacturer Bolliger & Mabillard. The ride originally operated at Kentucky Kingdom in Louisville, Kentucky from 1997 to 2009, where it was known as Chang. Upon opening in 1997, it set world records for this type of coaster in height, drop, speed, length and number of inversions. The introduction of the ride caused Kentucky Kingdom to achieve record attendance levels. After Six Flags abandoned Kentucky Kingdom in 2009, the ride was relocated to Six Flags Great Adventure. The ride debuted in 2011 as Green Lantern, replacing the former Great American Scream Machine roller coaster. ## History ### Chang (1997–2010) Chang ("long" in Mandarin Chinese) opened at Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom on April 4, 1997, setting world records for this type of coaster in height, drop, speed, length and number of inversions. The ride was constructed by Martin & Vleminckx. When it debuted, Chang had a yellow track and supports. Around 1999, its track was painted lime green and the support columns violet. In early 2006, the track was returned to its original yellow, while the supports were re-painted blue. Six Flags originally announced that the ride would have a Batman theme, along with its T2 coaster. T2 was expected to be known as "Batman: The Ride" and Chang "Riddler's Revenge", but those plans were later canceled. Chang was removed over the weekend of September 19, 2009 for a proposed expansion of Splashwater Kingdom which was soon cancelled as Six Flags later announced plans to dispose of its Kentucky Kingdom property. The removal of Chang and the closure of Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom caused the owners of the park land (the Kentucky State Fair Board) to sue Six Flags for ownership of the rides. Kentucky Kingdom is now open under new operators as of May 24, 2014. ### Green Lantern (2011–present) In 2010, parts from Chang reportedly appeared at Six Flags Great America. The ride was planned to be moved to Six Flags Great America in 2011; the park obtained approval to exceed the 125-foot (38 m) height limit imposed on the park, but plans were later dropped in favor of a water park expansion. On July 5, 2010, Six Flags Great Adventure announced that its Great American Scream Machine would close on July 18 to make way for a new attraction the following year, sparking rumors that Chang would move there in 2011. Although Six Flags did not confirm the speculation, a first look at the park's new-ride layout from the Jackson Township zoning board meeting was posted on the JTown Magazine website and the layout was identical to that of Chang. On September 16, Six Flags Great Adventure announced that it would open a Green Lantern-themed roller coaster in 2011 in honor of the 2011 film Green Lantern starring Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan. The specifications released for the new ride matched those of Chang. As part of the relocation, the ride would receive technical renovations and a new coat of paint. Footers were poured for the ride in December 2010, with track installation beginning the following month. In January 2011, construction of the lift hill was completed. In April 2011 the final pieces of track were put in place. On May 19, Green Lantern soft-opened to a select group of season-pass holders, media and families from Children's Miracle Network. The ride opened to the public on May 25. ## Characteristics ### Location Green Lantern is located in the Boardwalk section of the park. Green Lantern is the third roller coaster to occupy this plot of land, following the Sarajevo Bobsled (which ran at Great Adventure from 1984 to 1988 before moving to Six Flags Great America and Great Escape) and the Great American Scream Machine (an Arrow Dynamics looping coaster which had occupied this area from 1989 to 2010). Like the Great American Scream Machine, the infield of Green Lantern is covered with gravel. The coaster also reuses the Scream Machine's queue area building. ### Manufacturer Green Lantern is Six Flags Great Adventure's fifth Bolliger & Mabillard roller coaster, joining Batman: The Ride, Medusa, Nitro and Superman: Ultimate Flight. The coaster is the park's second standup coaster; the first was a smaller coaster manufactured by Intamin, Shockwave, which operated from 1990 to 1992. Before Shockwave arrived at Great Adventure, the coaster was previously installed at Six Flags Magic Mountain from 1986 through 1988, preceding Riddler's Revenge. ### Theme As its name suggests, Green Lantern is themed for the DC Comics character of the same name. The theme was chosen to coincide with the Green Lantern film scheduled for release in 2011. The track is painted green, with the exception of the yellow vertical loop. The second corkscrew was originally the track section which was going to be yellow, but it was decided to switch the scheme to the first loop. The loop is yellow because Green Lantern's enemy is the yellow Parallax. In June 2011, a Parallax cutout with clutching arms through which the train passes was placed at the bottom of the first drop. The ride's queue area features a series of comic-book-style boards relating the story of Hal Jordan (the Green Lantern) and the Green Lantern Corps. ### Trains Green Lantern currently operates with two steel-and-fiberglass trains. Each train has seven cars with four seats in a single row, for a total of 28 riders. Riders are secured by an over-the-shoulder harness. Green Lantern originally operated with three trains but the park later reduced operation to two trains due to the trains "stacking" on the brake run. Although Green Lantern is a stand-up roller coaster, there is a small bicycle seat on which riders can lean. ## Ride experience The first section of Green Lantern is basically a mirrored version of Rougarou at Cedar Point. Leaving the station, the train starts by climbing the 155-foot-tall (47 m) chain lift hill, on which the Green Lantern oath is played over loudspeakers along the steps. At the top, the train goes through a pre-drop before making a slightly-banked 180° turnaround. After this, the train goes down a 144 foot (44 m) drop into a 121.6-foot-tall (37.1 m) vertical loop. Out of the loop, the track rises to the right into a 103.8-foot-tall (31.6 m) diving loop, hugging the first drop of Superman: Ultimate Flight. Riders then rise into a diving turnaround over the station, and the train enters a right-leaning 72-foot-tall (22 m) inclined loop. After a small hill, the train then rises to the left into the mid-course brake run. It then drops into a clockwise corkscrew, turning right and weaving through the diving loop. The track then makes a ground-hugging left turn and enters a low, second clockwise corkscrew. After a right turn the train makes a final, 180° left turn into the final brake run before returning to the station. Green Lantern is 4,155 feet (1,266 m) long, with a ride taking about 21⁄2 minutes to complete. ## Records At its opening, Chang claimed the record for the tallest vertical loop of any roller coaster in the world. At the time, it was the world's tallest, fastest and longest stand-up coaster. It also claimed records for the largest drop and the most inversions on a stand-up roller coaster. All of these records had eclipsed those set by Mantis, which opened at Cedar Point in 1996. In 1998, Riddler's Revenge opened at Six Flags Magic Mountain, surpassing each title held by Chang. ## Reception After Chang's 1997 opening at Kentucky Kingdom, the park saw a rise in attendance to a record of more than one million visitors. The previous record of about 730,000 was set in 1996. The ride was Kentucky Kingdom's marquee attraction. After the ride's relocation to Six Flags Great Adventure, Brady MacDonald of the Los Angeles Times ranked it 8 of the park's 13 roller coasters. Mekado Murphy of The New York Times highlighted the different forces at play on a stand-up roller coaster, compared with a traditional one: "Other coasters create pressure mostly in your upper body; Green Lantern creates pressure in your legs, making them a much more active part of the experience". Both JTown Magazine and The Star-Ledger interviewed a number of park guests and coaster enthusiasts when the Green Lantern opened; all gave favorable reviews. ## See also - 2011 in amusement parks - Green Lantern: First Flight- A former ZacSpin roller coaster at Six Flags Magic Mountain

Fish in a Drawer

"Fish in a Drawer" is the seventeenth episode of the fifth season of Two and a Half Men and the 113th episode overall. The episode was written by Evan Dunsky, Sarah Goldfinger, Carol Mendelsohn and Naren Shankar, the writers of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, who swapped shows with the writing staff of Two and a Half Men. The episode revolves around Teddy Leopold (Robert Wagner), who is found dead on Charlie (Charlie Sheen)'s bed during his mother's wedding reception. A crime scene investigation crew searches Charlie's house, trying to find out who murdered Teddy. "Fish in a Drawer" aired May 5, 2008 on CBS, and was watched by approximately 13 million viewers, making it the night's third most watched show, behind CSI: Miami and Dancing with the Stars. ## Plot At the reception of Evelyn and Teddy's wedding, Charlie decides to marry Courtney, his new stepsister, and leads her up to his room. When they lie down on the bed, in the dark, Courtney discovers that she is lying on something, when Charlie turns on the light he finds Teddy lying dead on his bed with his pants around his knees, and lipstick on his "Hoo Hoo". When Charlie tells Alan, they know they have an even bigger problem: telling their mother. After pulling Evelyn away from the piano, they tell her and she then cashes in their honeymoon tickets for a trip for one to Fiji before calling the police. After the police arrive and examine the crime scene, Charlie, Alan, Evelyn, Berta, Courtney, and Jake are brought to the station for separate statements. Charlie becomes sexually attracted to the female interrogator (Jamie Rose), Alan is afraid of going to jail and struggles to talk, Evelyn spends more time complaining about the coffee, Berta is unhelpful in her answers, and Jake talks about food. It soon appears to be Evelyn as the prime suspect, since almost all of her prior husbands had died. Evelyn mentions her first husband died from food poisoning, explaining she was a young bride, just learning to cook, and didn't know you couldn't "keep fish in a drawer". After the files of Teddy and his daughter Courtney come back, the crime team discovers that their real names are Nathan Krunk and Sylvia Fishman, and they are not related. It turns out that Sylvia and Nathan were con artists. The crime team thought that Nathan was murdered, because of the bruise on the back of his head, but it was revealed that he died of a heart attack, while attempting to have sex with Sylvia. The bruise had occurred two days earlier, when he bumped his head while having sex with Sylvia. As the police lead Sylvia away, Charlie plans to berate her for lying to him, but he can only manage to say "I'll wait for you." ## Production In 2007, Chuck Lorre, the creator of Two and a Half Men, contacted Carol Mendelsohn, the show runner of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, about a crossover. The first reactions to this were that it was a stupid idea. CSI writer and executive producer Naren Shankar commented that when Mendelsohn first told him about the idea he replied: "What a nut". However, that same year, the idea resurfaced, when Lorre and Mendelsohn met at the World Television Festival in Banff. Upon hearing this, the cast of both shows were surprised and not interested, but they eventually jumped aboard. In an interview with The New York Post, before the idea was fully worked out, Mendelsohn described the possible crossover as "a great challenge". When Mendelsohn was giving a talk, she accidentally mentioned the crossover, as a result Variety was already inquiring about the crossover episodes that same day. Mendelsohn eventually revealed the crossover at the Banff event in Canada. After the episode was taped, Lorre stated: "The biggest challenge for us was doing a comedy with a murder in it. Generally our stories are a little lighter. Would our audience go with a dead body in it? There was a moment where it could have gone either way. I think the results were spectacular. It turned out to be a really funny episode." "Fish in a Drawer" was written by Carol Mendelsohn and Naren Shankar and directed by Jeff Melman. As an inside joke, George Eads, who plays crime scene investigator Nick Stokes on CSI made a cameo as a guest at the wedding reception. Three days after the initial airing of "Fish in a Drawer", "Two and a Half Deaths", the corresponding CSI episode, aired on CBS. However, in an early Zap2it interview, both Mendelsohn and Lorre stated that this might be the last time a crossover like this might occur. ## Reception "Fish in a Drawer" was broadcast on May 5, 2008 on CBS, and was watched by 13.61 million viewers, that night beating The Big Bang Theory with 7.38 million viewers and making it the night's third most watched show, behind CSI: Miami and Dancing with the Stars. The episode was the fifth most watched program on CBS in the week of May 5 to May 11, 2008. Allison Waldman of AOL's TV Squad, stated that she found the corresponding CSI: Crime Scene Investigation episode Emmy Award worthy, while she found "Fish in a Drawer", "not rip-roaring, but still good". Andy Grieser of Zap2it, said that he was attracted to the episode due to the news about the crossover, he stated he found the Faux-Catherine "brilliant" and that "the grainy flashbacks were the best parts". Conchata Ferrell submitted this episode for consideration for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for the 60th Primetime Emmy Awards, but did not end up being nominated. The director of this episode, Jeff Melman, also submitted this episode for consideration for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series, but was not nominated either.

Silvio Meier

East German left-wing activist and squatter

Silvio Meier (1965–1992) was an East German activist and squatter who was killed by neo-Nazis in Berlin on 21 November 1992. After moving to East Berlin in 1986, Meier became involved in oppositional politics with the Church from Below (Kirche von Unten [de]). His death has been commemorated with an annual memorial march and the renaming of a street in the Berlin district of Friedrichshain. ## Career Silvio Meier was born in 1965 and grew up in the East German town of Quedlinburg. He trained as a toolmaker, before moving to East Berlin in 1986 where he quickly became involved in the punk movement and oppositional politics. With others, he ran a radical library at the church at Zionskirchplatz and published a samizdat newsletter called Infoblatt mOAningstar (the capital letters "OA" referencing Offene Arbeit [de]). He helped to found the Kirche von Unten [de] (Church from Below) organisation, which campaigned for a space to organise alternative events. One such event was a clandestine concert in the Zionskirchplatz church on 17 October 1987 which attracted one thousand people, with the band Die Firma supporting the headliners Element of Crime, who were from West Berlin. Meier had good connections to the West Berlin anarchist scene because his older brother was living in exile there. After the bands had played, the gig was attacked by neo-Nazis and the police watched but did not intervene, causing a controversy in both East and West German media. Along with other activists, Meier and his partner were picked up and interrogated by the Stasi in 1988, after a demonstration near the Pergamon Museum. When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, Meier was involved in squatting Schreinerstrasse 47 in Friedrichshain, one of the first buildings to be occupied in East Berlin. This was the beginning of a housing movement which squatted over 100 buildings by mid-1990 and then declined after the Battle of Mainzer Straße in November. ## Death and legacy In 1992, Meier was living at Schreinerstrasse 47 and working as a printer. He had a one-year-old son and called his house "Villa Felix" after him. On 21 November 1992, Meier intended to go to the Eimer club in Mitte with some friends. At the Samariterstraße U-Bahn station on the corner of Samariterstraße and Frankfurter Allee, the group encountered a gang of neo-Nazis from Lichtenberg. A confrontation ensued, in which Meier was stabbed in the chest and another man was knocked unconscious. Meier died from his wounds, at the age of 27. The following day, a group of 100 people met at Schrienerstrasse 47. They marched to a youth club named after Judith Auer in Lichtenberg which was known to be frequented by neo-Nazis and ransacked it. In 1993, a 17-year-old man was sentenced to four and a half years imprisonment for the manslaughter of Meier and two others also received suspended sentences. All three were associated with the youth club. A plaque was erected at the U-Bahn station where Meier was murdered and a commemorative march happens every year on 21 November. Numbers grew from 200 participants in 1994 to 5,000 marchers in both 2012 and 2013. It was cancelled in 2018 and occurred again in 2019. In April 2013, a street in Friedrichshain was renamed Silvio-Meier-Straße. The naming concerned friends of Meier, who believed he would not have wanted to have been made into a hero. The previous year a self-managed social centre in Bologna had named a square after Meier. In 2016, the Silvio Meier Prize was created by the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg borough as a means to recognise actions taken against right-wing extremism. It was awarded to two anti-fascist activists. The following year it was received by the campaign Stand Up Against Racism.

Battle of Elands River (1900)

Battle of the Second Boer War

The Battle of Elands River was an engagement of the Second Boer War that took place between 4 and 16 August 1900 in western Transvaal. The battle was fought at Brakfontein Drift near the Elands River between a force of 2,000 to 3,000 Boers and a garrison of 500 Australian, Rhodesian, Canadian and British soldiers, which was stationed there to protect a British supply dump that had been established along the route between Mafeking and Pretoria. The Boer force, which consisted of several commandos under the overall leadership of Koos de la Rey, was in desperate need of provisions after earlier fighting had cut it off from its support base. As a result, it was decided to attack the garrison along the Elands River in an effort to capture the supplies located there. Over the course of 13 days, the Elands River supply dump was heavily shelled from several artillery pieces that were set up around the position, while Boers equipped with small arms and machine guns surrounded the garrison and kept the defenders under fire. Outnumbered and isolated, the defenders were asked to surrender by the Boer commander, but refused. The siege was subsequently lifted when the garrison was relieved by a 10,000-strong flying column led by Lord Kitchener. The relief effort, although successful, drew forces away from efforts to capture a Boer commander, Christiaan de Wet, who ultimately managed to evade British capture. This, along with the difficulty the British had in effecting the relief, buoyed Boer morale although the defenders' efforts also drew praise from Boer commanders. ## Background The first months of the Second Boer War were characterised by the use of large-scale conventional infantry forces by the British, which suffered heavy casualties in engagements with highly mobile Boer forces. Following this, a series of British counter-offensives, including mounted infantry units from the Australian colonies and Canada, among others, managed to capture and secure the main population centres in South Africa by June 1900. Much of the Boer force surrendered with the loss of their supply bases. In response, the Boers, including many who dishonoured their parole after having surrendered, and others who had melted away into civilian life, began a guerrilla warfare campaign. Operating in small groups, Boer commandos attacked columns of troops and supply lines, sniping, ambushing and launching raids on isolated garrisons and supply depots. As a defensive measure to protect the supply route between Mafeking and Pretoria, the British had established a garrison along the Elands River. Positioned near Brakfontein Drift, now the town of Swartruggens, about 173 kilometres (107 mi) west of Pretoria, the location was developed into a supply dump by the British to supply forces operating in the area and to serve as a way point on the route between Rustenburg and Zeerust. By mid-1900, the supplies that were located at Elands River included between 1,500 and 1,750 horses, mules and cattle, a quantity of ammunition, food and other equipment worth over 100,000 pounds, and over 100 wagons. As the supplies were vulnerable to Boer raids, a garrison, spread across several positions, had been established. The main position was at a farm located about 1 kilometre (0.6 mi) away from the river, occupying a small ridge, while two smaller positions were established on hills to the south, closer to the river, which were later called Zouch's Kopje and Butters' Kopje. The area was bracketed by two creeks – the Brakspruit to the north and the Doornspruit to the south – which flowed west into the river. A telegraph line ran through the farm along the Zeerust–Rustenburg road, which crossed the river at a ford about 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) west of the farm. While the ground to the north, south and west of the supply dump dropped to the river where the Reit Valley opened towards Zeerust, 50 kilometres (31 mi) away, the ground to the east of the farm rose towards a high point which came to be known as Cossack Post Hill. The hill was used by the garrison defending the post to send messages to Rustenburg – 70 kilometres (43 mi) away – using a heliograph. ## Prelude On 3 August, an 80-wagon supply convoy arrived at Elands River from Zeerust, where they were to wait for their escort, a column of 1,000 men from the New South Wales Imperial Bushmen along with South African irregulars, commanded by General Frederick Carrington, to arrive from Mafeking. Desperate for provisions, Boer forces decided to attack the garrison with a view to securing the supplies located there. Prior to the battle, the garrison had received intelligence warning them of the attack. As a result, some actions were taken to fortify the position, with a makeshift defensive perimeter being established utilising stores and wagons to create barricades. Little attempt had been made to dig-in, as the ground around the position was hard and the garrison lacked entrenching tools. The garrison defending the Elands River post consisted of about 500 men. The majority were Australians, comprising 105 from A Squadron of the New South Wales Citizen Bushmen, 141 from the Queensland Citizen Bushmen, 42 Victorians and nine Western Australians from the 3rd Bushmen Regiment, and two from Tasmania. In addition, there were 201 Rhodesians from the British South Africa Police, the Rhodesia Regiment, the Southern Rhodesian Volunteers, and the Bechuanaland Protectorate Regiment, along with three Canadians and three Britons. A British officer, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Hore, was in overall command. Their only fire support was one or two Maxim machine-guns and an antiquated 7-pounder screw gun, for which there was only about 100 rounds of ammunition. In addition to the garrison, there were civilians, consisting of Africans working as porters, drivers, or runners and about 30 loyalist European settlers who had moved to the farm prior to being evacuated. Against this, the Boer force, consisting of between 2,000 and 3,000 men drawn from the Rustenburg, Wolmaransstad and Marico commandos, under the overall command of Generals Koos de la Rey and Hermanus Lemmer, possessed five or six 12-pounder field guns for indirect fire, three quick-firing 1-pound pom-poms, which could provide rapid direct fire support, and two machine guns. ## Battle The Boer surrounded the garrison during the night while the latter were occupied singing around their campfires, and began their attack early on 4 August after the garrison had been stood down for breakfast. Rifle shots from snipers positioned in the riverbed announced the commencement of the attack. They were followed by an intense artillery barrage from the Boer guns. One pom-pom and a 12-pounder engaged one of the outposts from the south-west from behind an entrenched position about 2,700 metres (3,000 yd) away on the opposite side of the river, while the main position was engaged by three guns positioned to the east along with a Maxim gun, snipers, a pom-pom and an artillery piece in multiple positions to the north-west about 1,800 metres (2,000 yd) away. A third firing point, about 3,900 metres (4,300 yd) away, consisting of an artillery piece and a pom-pom, engaged the garrison from high ground overlooking the river to the west. In response, the defenders' screw gun returned fire, destroying a farmhouse from which Boers were firing; however, the gun soon jammed. Unanswered, the Boer barrage of around 1,700 shells devastated the oxen and killed around 1,500 horses, mules and cattle. Those that remained alive were set free to avoid a stampede. In addition, the telegraph line and considerable stores were destroyed, and a number of casualties inflicted. In an effort to silence the guns, a small party of Queenslanders under Lieutenant James Annat, sallied 180 metres (200 yd) to attack one of the Boer pom-pom positions, forcing its crew to pack up their weapon and withdraw. Nevertheless, the other guns remained in action and the barrage continued throughout the day, before easing as night fell. The defenders then used the brief respite to begin digging in, using their bayonets, and to clear away the dead animals. Casualties during the first day amounted to at least 28, of which eight were killed. The following morning, 5 August, the Boer gunners continued the shelling, but the effects were limited by the defences dug the night before. About 800 shells were fired on the second day, bringing the total to 2,500 over two days. Later that day, the expected 1000 strong column led by Carrington was ambushed by a Boer force under Lemmer's command about 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) west of the position and, although their casualties consisted of only 17 wounded, Carrington chose to withdraw. The ambush was facilitated by the inadequate reconnaissance provided by Carrington's scouts. The column later destroyed supplies at Groot Marico, Zeerust and Ottoshoop, so that they would not fall into Boer hands, although a large amount of supplies remained usable in many locations, including at Zeerust, and were ultimately captured by the Boers. Carrington's force then withdrew hastily to Mafeking, a decision which damaged his reputation amongst some of his soldiers, particularly the Australians. When it became apparent that the relief had been turned back, the Boer commander, De la Rey, seeking to end the siege before another relief force could be sent, ordered his men to cease fire and sent a messenger calling upon the garrison to surrender. After the garrison rejected the offer, the shelling resumed and continued throughout the night. Nevertheless, the defenders continued to improve their position, constructing stone sangars and digging their fighting pits deeper, reinforcing them with crates, sacks and wagon wheels. Wood, salvaged from wrecked wagons, was used to provide overhead protection to the positions, several of which were linked with a tunnel. A kitchen was also established, and a makeshift hospital built in the centre of the position using several ambulances and reinforced with wagons filled with dirt and various stores and containers. Although the defenders had repaired their screw gun, they were only able to use it for counter-battery fire sparingly due to lack of ammunition. After the initial heavy barrage, on the third day of the siege the Boer gunners eased their rate of fire when it became apparent that they were destroying some of the supplies they were trying to capture. Nevertheless, the Boers maintained small arms fire, keeping defenders trapped in their defences during the intense heat of the day; the heat also accelerated the decomposition of the dead animals, the smell of which was considerable. There was no water source within the main camp so patrols under a Rhodesian officer, Captain Sandy Butters, who commanded the southernmost outpost at Butters' Kopje, were sent out at night to collect it from the Elands River, about 800 metres (870 yd) away. During several of these sallies, fire was exchanged and the party had to fight their way back. De la Rey opted not to launch a direct assault on the position to limit his losses. The southern and eastern sides were well protected, but he realised that an approach from the south-west might offer more chance of success. Attempts were made by the Boers to take the kopje to the south of the Doornspruit on two nights – 6 and 7 August in an effort to cut off the defenders' supply of water; however, Rhodesians, under the command of Butters, helped by supporting fire from the Zouch's Kopje near the creek's confluence with the river, repulsed both attacks. A force of 2,000 Boers took part in these efforts, and on the second night attempted to cover their approach by advancing behind a herd of sheep and goats. On 8 August, the post's hospital came under artillery fire, even though it was marked with a Red Cross flag. One of the shells struck it, further wounding some of those receiving treatment. After five days, De la Rey again called for surrender, as he became concerned about being caught by relief forces. The message was received by Hore around 9:00 am on the fifth day of the siege after several hours of artillery fire. Hore had been suffering from malaria even before the siege and had been largely confined to the post. As a result, command had effectively passed to an Australian, Major Walter Tunbridge from the Queensland Citizen Bushmen. Upon receiving the message, Hore discussed it with the other officers, at which point Tunbridge told him that the Australians refused to surrender. In order to demonstrate the respect with which he held the defence that the garrison had put up, De la Rey offered them safe passage to British lines and was even prepared to allow the officers to retain their revolvers so that they could leave the battlefield with dignity. Once again, however, the offer was rejected, and Hore is reputed to have stated: "I cannot surrender. I am in command of Australians who would cut my throat if I did." Butters took a similar line, repeatedly shouting towards the Boers that "Rhodesians never surrender!" As the fighting continued, the British made a second attempt to relieve the garrison, dispatching a force of about 1,000 men under Colonel Robert Baden-Powell from Rustenburg on 6 August. He halted just 13 kilometres (8 mi) from Rustenburg, around the Selous River, about a third of the way, and sent out scouts. Failing to allow a proper reconnaissance, around midday Baden-Powell messaged General Ian Hamilton and turned back, determining the relief effort pointless, citing previous instructions and warnings from Commander-in-Chief of British Forces in South Africa Lord Roberts about becoming isolated, and claiming to have heard gun fire moving westward that suggested the garrison may have been evacuated to the west by Carrington. Based on the reports provided by Carrington upon his return, the British commanders in Pretoria and Mafeking were under the impression that the garrison had surrendered and, as a result, when Baden-Powell's force was about 30 kilometres (19 mi) away from the besieged Elands River garrison at Brakfontein, Lord Roberts ordered him and the rest of Hamilton's force at Rustenburg to return to Pretoria, to focus on capturing Christiaan De Wet, an important Boer commander. Late on 6 August, Roberts learned that Carrington had failed to evacuate the Elands River garrison; in response Roberts ordered Carrington to try again. The siege continued; however, the size of the Boer force surrounding the garrison dwindled as their attention was drawn to attacks on nearby farms by members of the Kgatla tribe, who were in revolt against the Boers following a series of tenant disputes. The ammunition situation was also concerning de la Rey and, as it became clear that the garrison would continue to hold out, he withdrew his artillery before superior numbers of British troops arrived. Ultimately, only about 200 men from the Wolmaransstad commando remained. As a result, the Boer weight of fire decreased and finally ceased altogether. In response, the defenders sent patrols out to scout the Boer positions and small raiding parties were also sent out at night. These raids failed to confirm that the Boers were retreating and as a result, instead of seizing the initiative the defenders remained largely in their defences, thinking that the Boers were attempting a ruse to draw them out. On 13 August, the British commanders learned that the garrison was still holding out when they intercepted a message between Boer commanders via a runner. Two days later, 10,000 men under the command of Lord Kitchener, set out towards Elands River. As they approached, de la Rey, faced by a superior force, withdrew what remained of his force. Small arms fire around the perimeter ceased on 15 August and the garrison observed rising dust from the withdrawal. That evening, a message was sent to Hore by four Western Australians from a force under Beauvoir de Lisle, and Kitchener's column arrived the following day, on 16 August. Carrington's relief force from Mafeking, having been ordered to make a second attempt by Roberts, backtracked very slowly and ultimately arrived after the siege had been lifted. ## Aftermath Casualties for the defenders amounted to 12 soldiers killed and 36 wounded. In addition, four African porters were killed and 14 wounded, and one loyalist European settler was wounded. Most of the wounded were evacuated to Johannesburg. The loss of animals was heavy, with only 210 left alive out of 1,750. Of the 12 soldiers who were killed, eight were Australians. During the siege, defenders who had been killed were hastily buried under the cover of darkness in a temporary cemetery. At the conclusion of the fighting, the graves were improved with several slate headstones and white rocks to mark the outlines, and a formal funeral was provided. After the war, the dead were exhumed and reburied at Swartruggens Cemetery, with individual crosses replacing the group slate headstones. One of the original slate headstones was brought back to Australia in the 1970s and placed on display in the Australian War Memorial. Although the behaviour of the defending troops was not beyond reproach, with some becoming drunk during the siege, the commander of the relieving force, Lord Kitchener, told the garrison upon his arrival that their defence had been "remarkable" and that only " ... Colonials could have held out in such impossible circumstances". The garrison's performance was also later lauded by Jan Smuts, who was at the time a senior Boer commander, describing the defenders as " ... heroes who in the hour of trial ...[had risen]... nobly to the occasion". The battle has been described by historian Chris Coulthard-Clark as being " ... perhaps the most notable action involving Australians in South Africa". The writer, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who served in a British field hospital at Bloemfontein during 1900 and who later published a series of accounts of the conflict, also highlighted the significance of the battle in The Great Boer War. The flag flown by the garrison during the siege was later displayed in the Cathedral of St Mary and All Saints in Salisbury, Rhodesia. For their actions during the siege, the Rhodesian commander, Butters, and Captain Albert Duka, a medical officer from Queensland, were invested with the Distinguished Service Order. Three soldiers – Corporal Robert Davenport and Troopers Thomas Borlaise and William Hunt – received the Distinguished Conduct Medal. Borlaise, who had been a miner before enlisting, received his medal for the role he had played in improving the position's defences, while Davenport received the award for rescuing two wounded men under fire. Conversely, Carrington continued nominal command of the Rhodesian Field Force, which became a paper formation, and was sent back to England by the end of the year. The battle had strategic implications. The difficulty the British had in relieving the garrison served to boost Boer morale, which had been flagging due to earlier reverses, while the act of doing so drew forces away from the cordon that was being set up by the British to capture De Wet, who subsequently managed to escape through the Magaliesberg, which had been abandoned by Baden-Powell during the relief effort. This ultimately prolonged the war, which would continue for almost another two years. Over a year after the siege, on 17 September 1901, another battle was fought along a different Elands River at Modderfontein farm in the then Cape Colony, where a Boer force under Smuts and Deneys Reitz overwhelmed a detachment of the 17th Lancers and raided their camp for supplies.

The Spy Who Loved Me (film)

1977 James Bond spy film by Lewis Gilbert

The Spy Who Loved Me is a 1977 spy film, the tenth in the James Bond series produced by Eon Productions. It is the third to star Roger Moore as the fictional secret agent James Bond. The film co-stars Barbara Bach and Curt Jürgens and was directed by Lewis Gilbert. The screenplay was by Christopher Wood and Richard Maibaum, with an uncredited rewrite by Tom Mankiewicz. The film takes its title from Ian Fleming's 1962 novel The Spy Who Loved Me, the tenth book in the James Bond series, though it does not contain any elements of the novel's plot. The storyline involves a reclusive megalomaniac named Karl Stromberg, who plans to destroy the world and create a new civilisation under the sea. Bond teams up with a Soviet agent, Anya Amasova, to stop the plans, all while being hunted by Stromberg’s powerful henchman, Jaws. It was shot on location in Egypt (Cairo and Luxor) and Italy (Costa Smeralda, Sardinia), with underwater scenes filmed at the Bahamas (Nassau), and a new soundstage built at Pinewood Studios for a massive set which depicted the interior of a supertanker. The Spy Who Loved Me was well received by critics, who saw the film as a return to form for the franchise and praised Moore's performance. Moore himself called the film his personal favourite of his tenure as Bond. The soundtrack composed by Marvin Hamlisch also met with success. The film was nominated for three Academy Awards amid many other nominations and novelised in 1977 by Christopher Wood as James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me. ## Plot A British and a Soviet ballistic-missile submarine suddenly vanish. James Bond – MI6 agent 007 – is summoned to investigate. On the way to his briefing, Bond escapes an ambush by a squad of Soviet agents in Austria, killing one during a downhill ski chase and evading the others. The plans for a highly advanced submarine tracking system are being offered in Egypt. There, Bond encounters Major Anya Amasova – KGB agent Triple X – as a rival for the microfilm plans. They travel across Egypt together, encountering Jaws – a tall assassin with razor-sharp steel teeth – along the way. Bond and Amasova reluctantly join forces after a truce is agreed by their respective British and Soviet superiors. They uncover evidence linking the plans to shipping tycoon and reclusive scientist Karl Stromberg. While travelling by train to Stromberg's base in Sardinia, Bond saves Amasova from Jaws, and their cooling rivalry turns to affection. Posing as a marine biologist and his wife, they visit Stromberg's base and discover that he had launched a mysterious new supertanker, the Liparus, nine months previously. As they leave the base, a henchman on a motorcycle featuring a rocket sidecar, Jaws in a car, and Naomi, an assistant/pilot of Stromberg in an attack helicopter, chase them, but Bond and Amasova escape underwater when his car – a Lotus Esprit from Q Branch – converts into a submarine. Jaws survives a car crash, and Naomi is killed when Bond fires a sea-air missile from his car which destroys her helicopter. While examining Stromberg's underwater Atlantis base, a bathyscaphe, the pair confirms that he is operating the submarine tracking system and evade an attack by a group of Stromberg's minisubs. Back on land, Bond finds out that the Liparus, after being fitted out nine months ago, has never visited any known port or harbour. Amasova discovers that Bond killed her lover Sergei Barsov (as shown at the beginning of the movie), and she vows to kill Bond as soon as their mission is complete. Bond and Amasova board an American submarine, USS Wayne, to examine the Liparus, but the submarine is captured by the tanker, which is revealed to be a floating submarine dock. Stromberg sets his plan in motion: the simultaneous launching of nuclear missiles from the captured British and Soviet submarines to obliterate Moscow and New York City. This would trigger a global nuclear war, which Stromberg would survive in Atlantis, and subsequently a new civilization would be established underwater. He leaves for Atlantis with Amasova, but Bond escapes and frees the captured British, Russian and American sailors. They battle the Liparus crew and eventually breach the control room, only to learn from the dying captain of the Liparus that the commandeered British and Soviet submarines are primed to fire their missiles in only a few minutes. Bond tricks the submarines into firing the nukes at each other, destroying the subs and Stromberg's crews. The victorious submariners escape the sinking Liparus on the American submarine. Wayne is ordered by the Pentagon to destroy Atlantis but Bond insists on rescuing Amasova first. He confronts and kills Stromberg but again encounters Jaws, whom he drops into a shark tank. However, Jaws kills the tiger shark and escapes. Bond and Amasova flee in an escape pod as Atlantis is sunk by torpedoes. Amasova picks up Bond's gun and points it at him, but then chooses not to kill him and the two embrace. The Royal Navy recovers the pod and the two spies are seen in an intimate embrace through its port window, to the astonishment of their superiors on the ship. ## Cast - Roger Moore as James Bond, British MI6 agent 007, assigned to investigate the theft of two submarines. - Barbara Bach as Anya Amasova, a Soviet KGB agent XXX, also investigating the theft. Bach was cast only four days before principal photography began, and performed her audition expecting just a supporting role in the film. - Curt Jürgens as Karl Stromberg, a megalomaniac planning to trigger World War III and destroy the world, then recreate a new civilisation underwater. Jürgens's casting was a suggestion of director Lewis Gilbert, who had worked with him before. - Richard Kiel as Jaws, Stromberg's seemingly indestructible juggernaut of a henchman, afflicted with gigantism and having a set of metal teeth. - Caroline Munro as Naomi, Stromberg's personal pilot and a would-be assassin. Munro's casting was inspired by an advertisement campaign she had made. Her voice was dubbed by an uncredited Barbara Jefford, who had previously dubbed Daniela Bianchi in From Russia with Love. - Geoffrey Keen as Sir Frederick Gray (credited as Minister of Defence). Keen would reprise the role in five more Bond films. - Edward de Souza as Sheikh Hosein, an Arab sheikh and old friend of Bond; they were students at Cambridge University - George Baker as Captain Benson, a British naval officer stationed at the Royal Navy's Faslane Naval Base in Scotland. - Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny, M's secretary. - Walter Gotell as General Gogol, the head of the KGB and Amasova's boss. Gotell previously played Morzeny in From Russia with Love. Gotell would also reprise this role for five more Bond films. - Vernon Dobtcheff as Max Kalba, an Egyptian nightclub owner and black market racketeer who possesses the microfilm and tries to encourage Bond and Amasova to bid for it. - Desmond Llewelyn as Q, MI6's head of research and development. He supplies Bond with unique vehicles and gadgets. Amasova refers to him as Major Boothroyd. - Michael Billington as Sergei Barsov, Russian agent and Anya Amasova's lover. Billington had previously screentested for the role of Bond. - Bernard Lee as M, the head of MI6. - Shane Rimmer as Commander Carter, commanding officer of USS Wayne. - Bryan Marshall as Commander Talbott, commanding officer of HMS Ranger. - Nadim Sawalha as Aziz Fekkesh, a middle-man on the trail of the stolen microfilm. - Robert Brown as Admiral Hargraves, a British Royal Navy official. Brown would later play M in four films from Octopussy to Licence to Kill. - Sue Vanner as Log Cabin Girl, a Russian agent who sets a trap for 007 in the pre-credit sequence. Other actors in smaller roles include Sydney Tafler as the Captain of the Liparus, Eva Rueber-Staier as Rubelvitch, General Gogol's secretary; Milton Reid as Sandor, one of Stromberg's thugs; Olga Bisera as Felicca, Fekkesh's glamorous associate; Valerie Leon as the hotel receptionist in Sardinia, Cyril Shaps as Professor Beckmann, Milo Sperber as Dr. Markovitz, Albert Moses as an Egyptian bartender, Marilyn Galsworthy as Stromberg's treacherous secretary. Nicholas Campbell, Bob Sherman, Murray Salem, John Truscott, Vincent Marzello, Garrick Hagon, Ray Jewers, and George Mallaby appear as USS Wayne crewmen. Kevin McNally, Jeremy Bulloch, Sean Bury, David Auker, Keith Buckley, and John Salthouse appear as HMS Ranger crewmen. The assistant director for the Italian locations, Victor Tourjansky, had a cameo as a man drinking his wine as Bond's Lotus emerges from the beach. As an in-joke, he returned in similar appearances in another two Bond films shot in Italy, Moonraker (the Venice gondola sequence) and For Your Eyes Only (during the ski chase). ## Production Given the relatively poor financial returns and generally unfavourable response of critics to its predecessor, The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), The Spy Who Loved Me was a pivotal film for the Bond franchise. The project was plagued with difficulties from the outset, the first being the departure of Bond producer Harry Saltzman, who was forced to sell his half of the Bond film franchise in 1975 for £20 million. Saltzman had branched out into several other ventures of dubious promise, including an unfilmed biopic about Cuthbert Grant starring Sean Connery, and consequently was struggling through personal financial reversals unrelated to Bond. Saltzman offered his shares in the company as collateral for his loans, and UBS attempted to foreclose on them. When Saltzman's attempted hostile takeover of Technicolor led to a lawsuit, Broccoli refused to allow him to use Danjaq funds, leading to a deadlock in the company as Saltzman refused to allow another Bond film to go forward. This was exacerbated by the twin personal tragedies of his wife's terminal cancer and many of the symptoms of clinical depression in himself. Under Danjaq's distribution agreement with United Artists, it was required they produce a Bond adaptation every eighteen months or run the risk of losing the rights to the series to United Artists if they did not. However, Saltzman continued blocking production on another Bond film and refused to allow Broccoli to buy his shares. Maurice Binder and Broccoli held negotiations about selling Saltzman's shares to Adnan Khashoggi, David Frost, Lord Hanson, and Lord Harlech. Saltzman finally agreed to sell his shares directly to United Artists so that another Bond film could go forward. Although Broccoli initially objected to the deal, he acquiesced after Saltzman received a counter-offer to sell his rights to the rival studio Columbia Pictures. Another troubling aspect of the production was the difficulty in obtaining a director. Guy Hamilton, who had directed the previous three Bond films as well as Goldfinger (1964), was initially set to direct. However, in November 1975, he left after being offered the opportunity to direct the 1978 film Superman, although Richard Donner subsequently took over the project. Steven Spielberg, who had finished Jaws (1975) months earlier, approached Broccoli about wanting to direct the next Bond film, but Broccoli declined his offer. By December of that year, Broccoli hired Lewis Gilbert, who had directed the earlier Bond film You Only Live Twice (1967), after screening his then-latest film, Operation Daybreak (1975). Since Ian Fleming permitted Eon to use only the name of his novel but not the actual plot, Fleming's name was moved for the first time from above the film's title to above "James Bond 007". His name reverted to the traditional location for Moonraker, the last Eon Bond film based on a Fleming novel before 2006's Casino Royale. However, the credit style first used in The Spy Who Loved Me has been used on all Eon Bond films since For Your Eyes Only, including Casino Royale. ### Writing Broccoli commissioned a number of writers to work on the script, including Stirling Silliphant, John Landis, Ronald Hardy, Anthony Burgess, Cary Bates, and Derek Marlowe. The British television producer Gerry Anderson also stated that he provided a film treatment (although originally planned to be Moonraker) very similar to what ended up as The Spy Who Loved Me. Bates's script featured Bond and his former ally Tatiana Romanova teaming up to stop a SPECTRE hijacking of a nuclear submarine coordinated by Hugo Drax from a base underneath Loch Ness. Burgess's draft, featuring characters from his previous novel Tremor of Intent: An Eschatological Spy Novel, featured Bond fighting the criminal organization CHAOS in Singapore and thwarting a plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II by a bombing of Sydney Opera House. Andrew Biswell of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation described it as "an outrageous medley of sadism, hypnosis, acupuncture, and international terrorism." Landis, working in the same office as Burgess, wrote a separate screenplay about Bond stopping a kidnapping of the Pope in Latin America. Eventually, Richard Maibaum provided the initial draft, and at first he tried to incorporate ideas from all of the other writers into his script. Maibaum's original script featured an alliance of international terrorists—including the Red Brigades, the Baader-Meinhof Gang, the Black September Organization, and the Japanese Red Army—attacking SPECTRE's headquarters in Norway and deposing Ernst Stavro Blofeld, before trying to destroy the world with nuclear SLBM attacks on the world's petroleum reservoirs to make way for a New World Order. Maibaum did location scouting in Budapest for the concept. However, this was shelved because Broccoli felt it was too political. After Gilbert was reinstated as director, he decided to bring in another writer, Christopher Wood. Gilbert also decided to fix what he felt the previous Roger Moore films were doing wrong, which was writing the Bond character too much the way Sean Connery played him, and instead portray Bond closer to the books – "very English, very smooth, good sense of humour". Broccoli asked Wood to create a villain with metal teeth, Jaws, inspired by a metal brace-wearing henchman named Sol "Horror" Horowitz, and his short bald accomplice Sandor inspired by Sluggsy Morant in Fleming's novel. Broccoli agreed to Wood's proposed changes, but before he could set to work there were more legal complications. In the years since Thunderball (1965), Kevin McClory had set up two film companies and had been cleared to produce a rival Bond film after the imposed ten-year moratorium had expired. He was in development of a film project, with the working title Warhead, in collaboration with Sean Connery and novelist Len Deighton. McClory had learned of Broccoli's plans to use SPECTRE, an organisation that had first been created by Fleming while working with McClory and Jack Whittingham on the very first attempt to film Thunderball, back even before it was a novel, in the late 1950s. McClory filed a injunction against Eon Productions alleging copyright infringement. Not wishing to extend the already ongoing legal dispute that could have delayed the production of The Spy Who Loved Me, Broccoli requested Wood remove all references to Blofeld and SPECTRE from the script. In June 1976, McClory was awarded the sole rights to SPECTRE and Blofeld. Broccoli decided to include the KGB in the film as Bond's allies after showing a group of Russians a James Bond film during the production of The Blue Bird (1976) in the Soviet Union. When they enjoyed the film but commented that it could not be shown there because it was too "anti-Russian," Broccoli decided to include characters such Amasova and Gogol who would be "not a hero, not a villain, but acceptable in terms of Russian distribution." Tom Mankiewicz, who worked on the three preceding Bond films, claims he was called in to do an extensive rewrite of the script. Mankiewicz says he did not receive credit, because Broccoli was limited to the number of non-British in key positions he could employ on the films to obtain Eady Levy assistance. Vernon Harris also did uncredited rewrites on the script. ### Filming Tom Mankiewicz claims that Catherine Deneuve wanted to play the female lead and was willing to cut her normal rate from \$400,000 per picture to \$250,000, but Broccoli would not pay above \$80,000. Marthe Keller and Dominique Sanda were also considered, while the original frontrunner Lois Chiles was not pursued after her agent informed the producers that she had retired. Before the casting of Richard Kiel, Will Sampson and David Prowse were considered to play Jaws. The film was shot at the Pinewood Studios in London, Porto Cervo in Sardinia (Hotel Cala di Volpe), Egypt (Karnak, Mosque of Ibn Tulun, Gayer-Anderson Museum, Abu Simbel temples), Malta, Scotland, Hayling Island UK, Okinawa, Switzerland and Mount Asgard on Baffin Island in the then northern Canadian territory of Northwest Territories (now located in Nunavut). As no studio was big enough for the interior of Stromberg's supertanker, and set designer Ken Adam did not want to repeat what he had done with SPECTRE's volcano base in You Only Live Twice – "a workable but ultimately wasteful set" – construction began in March 1976 of a new sound stage at Pinewood, the 007 Stage, at a cost of \$1.8 million. To complement this stage, Eon also paid for building a water tank capable of storing approximately 1,200,000 imperial gallons (5,500,000 L). The soundstage was so huge that cinematographer Claude Renoir found himself unable to effectively light it due to his deteriorating eyesight, and so Stanley Kubrick visited the production, in secret, to advise on how to light the stage. For the exterior, while Shell was willing to lend an abandoned tanker to the production, the elevated insurance and safety risks caused it to be replaced with miniatures built by Derek Meddings's team and shot in the Bahamas. Stromberg's shark tank was also filmed in the Bahamas, using a live shark in a saltwater swimming pool. Adam decided to do experiments with curved shapes for the scenery, as he felt all his previous setpieces were "too linear". This was demonstrated with the Atlantis, which is a dome and curved surfaces outside, and many curved objects in Stromberg's office inside. For Gogol's offices, Adam wanted an open space to contrast M's enclosed headquarters, and drew inspiration from Sergei Eisenstein to do a "Russian crypt-like" set. The main unit began its work in August 1976 in Sardinia. Don McLaughlan, then head of public relations at Lotus Cars, heard that Eon were shopping for a new Bond car. He drove a prototype Lotus Esprit with all Lotus branding taped over, and parked it outside the Eon offices at Pinewood studios; on seeing the car, Eon asked Lotus to borrow both of the prototypes for filming. Initial filming of the car chase sequence resulted in disappointing action sequences. While moving the car between shoots, Lotus test driver Roger Becker so impressed the crew with his handling of the car that for the rest of filming on Sardinia, Becker became the stunt driver. The motorcycle sidecar missile used in one chase sequence was built by film staff at Pinewood and used a standard Kawasaki Z900 and a custom-made sidecar outfit. The sidecar was made large enough so that a stuntman could lie flat inside. It had two 10-inch scooter wheels on each side, a Suzuki 185 engine, and the detached projectile was steered through a small solid rubber wheel at the front. A heavily smoked perspex nose allowed the stuntman sufficient visibility to steer the device whilst being entirely hidden from view. A pincer-type lock held the sidecar in place until operated by the pilot via a solenoid switch. The sequences involving the outfit were sped up, as the weight of the sidecar made the outfit very difficult to control. In October, the second unit travelled to Nassau to film the underwater sequences. To create the illusion of the car becoming a submarine, seven different models were used, one for each step of the transformation. One of the models was a fully mobile submarine equipped with an engine built by Miami-based Perry Submarines. The car seen entering the sea was a mock-up shell, propelled off the jetty by a compressed air cannon, whilst the first underwater shot of the car was a miniature model filmed in a test tank. Three full-size bodyshells were used to depict the actual car-to-submersible transition. During the model sequences, the air bubbles seen appearing from the vehicle were created by Alka-Seltzer tablets. In September, production moved to Egypt. While the Great Sphinx of Giza was shot on location, lighting problems caused the pyramids to be replaced with miniatures. While construction of the Liparus set continued, the second unit (headed by John Glen) departed for Mount Asgard, Baffin Island, where in July 1976 they staged the film's pre-credits sequence. Bond film veteran Willy Bogner captured the action, staged by stuntman Rick Sylvester, who earned \$30,000 for the stunt. The scene of Bond skiing off the mountain was inspired by a Canadian Club Whisky advertisement in Playboy magazine of Sylvester performing the same stunt. This stunt cost \$500,000 – the most expensive single movie stunt at that time. Additional scenes for the pre-credits sequence were filmed in the Bernina Range in the Swiss alps. The production team returned briefly to the UK to shoot at the Faslane submarine base before setting off to Spain, Portugal and the Bay of Biscay, where the supertanker exteriors were filmed. On 5 December 1976, with principal photography finished, the 007 Stage was formally opened by former Prime Minister Harold Wilson. The end credits state "James Bond Will Return in For Your Eyes Only", but following the success of Star Wars, the originally planned For Your Eyes Only was dropped in favour of the space-themed Moonraker for the next film. ### Music The theme song, "Nobody Does It Better", was composed by Marvin Hamlisch, written by Carole Bayer Sager, and performed by Carly Simon. It was the first theme song in the series with a different title to that of the film, although the title is in the lyrics. It was nominated for the Best Song Oscar but lost to "You Light Up My Life". The song met immediate success and is featured in numerous films, including Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), Little Black Book, Lost in Translation, and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004). In 2004, it was honoured by the American Film Institute as the 67th greatest song as part of their 100 Years Series. The soundtrack to the film was composed by Marvin Hamlisch, who filled in for veteran John Barry, who was unavailable to work in the United Kingdom because of tax reasons. The soundtrack, in comparison to other Bond films of the time, is more disco-oriented and included a new disco rendition of the James Bond theme titled "Bond 77"; several pieces of classical music were also included in the score. For instance, while feeding a duplicitous secretary to a shark, Stromberg plays Bach's "Air on the G String", which was famous for accompanying disappointed characters in Hamlet cigar commercials. He then plays the opening string section of the second movement, Andante, of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 as his hideout Atlantis rises from the sea. The score also includes two pieces of popular film music scored by Maurice Jarre. The Doctor Zhivago theme, which is played on Anya's music box during the pre-credit sequence, and the theme from Lawrence of Arabia, which appears as background music during a desert sequence. ## Release and reception On top of the production budget, \$7.5 million was spent on advertising, prints and parties for The Spy Who Loved Me. On 20 May 1977, Roger Moore and Barbara Bach attended the Cannes Film Festival to promote the film's upcoming release. It opened with a Royal Premiere attended by Princess Anne at the Odeon Leicester Square in London on 7 July 1977. It grossed \$185.4 million worldwide, with \$46 million in the United States and Canada. It was United Artist's highest-grossing film at the time. It grossed £10 million in the United Kingdom. On 25 August 2006, the film was re-released at the Empire, Leicester Square for one week. It was again shown at the Empire Leicester Square on 20 April 2008 when Lewis Gilbert attended the first digital screening of the film. Eon executive Charles Juroe said that at a screening attended by Charles, Prince of Wales, during the Union Jack-parachute scene: "I have never seen a reaction in the cinema as there was that night. You couldn't help it. You could not help but stand up. Even Prince Charles stood up." This scene came in second place in a 2013 Sky Movies poll for greatest moment of the James Bond film franchise, beaten only by the "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!" sequence from Goldfinger. It was Roger Moore's favourite Bond film, and many reviewers consider it the best instalment to star the actor. ### Contemporary reviews Janet Maslin of The New York Times considered the film formulaic and "half an hour too long, thanks to the obligatory shoot-'em-up conclusion, ... nevertheless the dullest sequence here" but praised Moore's performance and the film's "share of self-mockery", which she found refreshing. Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times felt "The Spy Who Loved Me is an extravagant silliness, a high-cost undertaking in let's pretend which delivers a perfect formula. It may not be everyone's tonic, but it is what it says it is, rousingly." Gene Siskel of The Chicago Tribune praised the ski jump stunt in which he wrote that "you begin to think Spy may turn out to be as good as From Russia with Love, the best Bond of all. No such luck. True, opening pace of Spy is impossible to sustain, but the rest of the picture is merely good, not great." He also found Stromberg to be less memorable than previous Bond villains, even noting that "Jaws is far more entertaining than his master." Variety remarked the film "is unoriginal and mild on suspense as these capers go. But the gimmick-laden action is bountiful and eye-ravishing, and will compensate most audiences." Christopher Porterfield, reviewing for Time magazine, was complimentary of the pre-titles sequence and Richard Kiel's performance as Jaws. However, he criticised the film for being too similar to previous instalments, remarking "[a]ll that's left of Bond formula here is 007 character, sexy starlets and gee-whiz gadgets. (Question: What else did it ever consist of?)" Similarly, Maureen Orth of Newsweek wrote: "After the opening sequence, much of the action in The Spy Who Loved Me, the tenth James Bond screen epic and the third starring Roger Moore as Bond, is somewhat downhill. But the film, shot in seven countries, is so rich in fantasy, so filled with beautiful scenery, gorgeous women, preposterous villains and impossible situations that's it easier to suspend disbelief entirely and escape inside the gadgetry and glamour." John Simon, writing in his book Reverse Angle, stated "There is a kind of film that can get away with everything, and deserves to. The latest James Bond, Spy Who Loved Me, belongs in that class." Gary Arnold of The Washington Post dismissed the film as "a tolerable disappointment. The Bond movies have been so successful that it may be commercially impossible to terminate the series. However, it's been quite a while since a Bond adventure appeared to set fashions in escapist, glamorous entertainment. Once widely imitated and parodied by other producers, Bond films are now more likely to imitate themselves with decreasing effectiveness." ### Retrospective reviews On the website FilmCritic.com, Christopher Null awarded the film 3+1⁄2 stars out of 5, in which he praised the gadgets, particularly the Lotus Esprit car. James Berardinelli of Reelviews wrote that the film is "suave and sophisticated", and Barbara Bach proves to be an ideal Bond girl – "attractive, smart, sexy, and dangerous". Brian Webster stated the special effects were "good for a 1979 [sic] film", and Marvin Hamlisch's music, "memorable". Danny Peary described The Spy Who Loved Me as "exceptional ... For once, the big budget was not wasted. Interestingly, while the sets and gimmicks were the most spectacular to date, Bond and the other characters are toned down (there's a minimum of slapstick humour) so that they are more realistic than in other Roger Moore films. Moore gives his best performance in the series ... [Bond and Anya Amasova] are an appealing couple, equal in every way. Film is a real treat – a well acted, smartly cast, sexy, visually impressive, lavishly produced, powerfully directed mix of a spy romance and a war-mission film." The Times placed Jaws and Stromberg as the sixth and seventh best Bond villains (respectively) in the series in 2008, and also named the Esprit as the second best car in the series (behind the Aston Martin DB5). On the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 81% based on 57 reviews with an average rating of 7.20/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "Though it hints at the absurdity to come in later installments, The Spy Who Loved Me's sleek style, menacing villains, and sly wit make it the best of the Roger Moore era." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 55 based on 12 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews". ### Accolades - Golden Screen, awarded by the German film industry. - Writers Guild of America WGA Award: Nominee for Best Comedy Adapted to Another Medium: Christopher Wood and Richard Maibaum. - 2 nominations for the Saturn Award granted by the United States Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Film Academy. - Roger Moore for Best Actor. - Richard Kiel for Best Supporting Actor. ## Novelisation When Ian Fleming sold the film rights to the James Bond novels to Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli, he gave permission only for the title The Spy Who Loved Me to be used. Since the screenplay for the film had nothing to do with Fleming's original novel, Eon Productions, for the first time, authorised a novelisation based upon the script. This would also be the first regular Bond novel published since Colonel Sun nearly a decade earlier. Christopher Wood, who co-authored the screenplay, was commissioned to write the book titled James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me. The novelisation and the screenplay, although both written by Wood, are somewhat different. In the novelisation, SMERSH is still active and after James Bond. Their role begins during the pre-title. After the mysterious death of Fekkish, SMERSH appears yet again, this time capturing and torturing Bond for the whereabouts of the microfilm that retains plans for a submarine tracking system (Bond escapes after killing two of the interrogators). The appearance of SMERSH conflicts with a number of Bond stories, including the film The Living Daylights (1987), in which General Leonid Pushkin remarks that SMERSH has been defunct for over 20 years. It also differs from the latter half of Fleming's Bond novels in which SMERSH is said to have been put out of operation. Members of SMERSH from the novelisation include Amasova and her lover Sergei Barsov as well as Colonel-General Nikitin, a character from Fleming's novel From Russia, with Love who has since become the head of SMERSH. In the book, Jaws remains attached to the magnet that Bond dips into the tank, as opposed to the film where Bond releases Jaws into the water. There are also a number of elements that are either underplayed for more plausibility (the Lotus does not have any gadgets on land, unlike the film version) or are expanded to give more background to the characters (Jaws has a full history, Nikitin is in lust with Amasova, Stromberg’s name is Sigmond and is tall, bald and has a small fleshy growth on one finger - unlike the webbed fingered Karl Stromberg of the film). Neither the characters of Q or Miss Moneypenny appear in the novelisation. The henchmen who falls off the roof in Cairo is killed when he lands on top of a piano, a death Wood reused in the script for his next Bond film, Moonraker. ## Sale of props The Lotus Esprit, also known as Wet Nellie, capable of transforming from car to submarine in the film, was purchased for £616,000 at a London auction in October 2013 by Elon Musk, who planned to rebuild the vehicle and attempt to make the fictional dual-purpose car be an actual dual-purpose car (underwater and on land). ## See also - James Bond 007: Nightfire, a 2002 video game featuring the Liparus and Atlantis settings from this film, which also includes a submarine-car not unlike the Lotus Esprit. - "Our Man Bashir", a 1995 episode of the television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was largely based on this film. - Outline of James Bond - Rinspeed sQuba, a submersible car inspired by the film.

Leigh Diffey

Australian sports commentator

Leigh Diffey (born 3 March 1971) is an Australian-American auto racing commentator. His career began calling motorcycle races in his home country before moving to the United Kingdom to cover other forms of motorsport. Diffey then moved to the United States to join Speed Channel, while simultaneously working for Network Ten in Australia. Since 2013, he has served as a play-by-play announcer and studio host with NBC Sports in the United States. ## Early career: Network Ten and BBC Diffey grew up in Queensland, Australia where he briefly raced motorcycles with his friend Daryl Beattie, who eventually became a professional motorcycle racer. Diffey worked as a physical education teacher at Ipswich Grammar School. Meanwhile, he began working in motorsports broadcasting; his first job came in 1990 at the age of 19, calling Ipswich Motorcycle Club racing at Tivoli Raceway. In 1995 he left his teacher job to pursue a full-time career in sports television. Prior to his move to the United States, Diffey commentated on the Superbike World Championship and presented coverage of the World Rally Championship for the BBC in the United Kingdom, working alongside Steve Parrish and Suzi Perry. Additionally, Diffey covered V8 Supercars with Greg Rust, Barry Sheene, Bill Woods and Mark Oastler, as well as Formula One racing, both for Network Ten. He also covered the 12 Hours of Sebring, an event for he would call for a total of ten years. ## 2003–2012: Speed Channel and return to Network Ten In 2001, Diffey moved to the US to cover the American-based open-wheel racing CART series, while still working for the BBC. Two years later in 2003, Diffey made a full-time move to the States when he was hired by Speed Channel, which later simply became "Speed". At Speed, Diffey was the play-by-play announcer for the network's coverage of the Speed World Challenge, the American Le Mans Series, the Rolex Sports Car Series, the Rolex Grand-Am Cup, the SCCA Trans-Am Series, and a regular anchor of The Speed Report and Speed Center. Diffey occasionally filled in for Speed commentator Bob Varsha during the network's Formula One broadcasts. He also commentated selected rounds of the AMA Superbike and AMA Motocross Championships. Diffey worked with Speed to call several sports car races during his tenure with the network, including the 24 Hours of Daytona and the 24 Hours of Le Mans. While at Speed, Diffey also occasionally returned to Network Ten in Australia as a regular host for the network's nightly sports wrap, Sports Tonight. He also covered other two other sports for the Australian network: sailing, hosting coverage of the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race, and golf, which he covered for five years. In 2011 alone, he covered no fewer than sixteen individual divisions of motorsport on Speed. ## 2013–present: NBC Sports ### Motorsports #### Formula One and IndyCar In November 2012, NBC Sports announced that Diffey would join its network to become the play-by-play announcer for its broadcasts of both Formula One and IndyCar events starting in 2013. Diffey called the day of the announcement "one of the best days of my life. People have been so complimentary." The announcement named David Hobbs and Steve Matchett as the analysts who would work alongside him for the Formula One broadcasts. In December 2015, Diffey, Hobbs and Matchett were given an Honorable Mention in a list of Best Broadcast Teams of the year published on the Sports Illustrated website SI.com. On two occasions, Diffey covered both series on the same day. On 23 August 2015, he called the Belgian Grand Prix from NBC's base in Stamford, Connecticut, before he and Matchett traveled to Pocono Raceway for the ABC Supply 500. Likewise, on 3 September 2017, Diffey called the Italian Grand Prix in Connecticut and then traveled to Watkins Glen International for the IndyCar Grand Prix at The Glen. Diffey's open-wheel focus shifted solely to IndyCar in 2018 when the US Formula One television rights were transferred to ESPN. #### NASCAR Diffey was one of several recurring co-hosts of NASCAR America, a weekday NBCSN program dedicated to NASCAR. While he had covered NASCAR practice and qualifying sessions with Speed, it was not until his tenure with NBC that he made his NASCAR debut as a play-by-play announcer for a race, covering the Xfinity Series (NXS) at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course on 15 August 2015. After calling the race, Diffey spoke of the experience as "a thrill...I've been a NASCAR fan and dabbled in it, and for that to be my first race was something else." He also commentated the Richmond, Dover, and Kansas NXS races. Diffey made his Sprint Cup Series broadcasting debut alongside Dale Jarrett at Homestead-Miami Speedway in 2015, leading NBCSN's "Hot Pass" coverage of NASCAR's championship race, which focused solely on the four drivers still eligible for the series championship. Diffey reprised this role with Parker Kligerman in the 2016 Homestead race, and again with Jarrett in 2017, 2018, and 2019. In August 2017, Diffey served as the lead announcer for NASCAR on NBC's primary coverage of the renamed Monster Energy Cup Series for two races (Watkins Glen and Michigan), filling in for regular announcer Rick Allen who was working in London with NBC's coverage of the 2017 IAAF World Championships. #### Global Rallycross Diffey served as lead announcer for several events of NBCSN's coverage of Red Bull Global Rallycross beginning with the opening event from Fort Lauderdale in the 2015 season. He continued to cover the series for the network until the series folded, doing play-by-play for the final round of the 2017 season from the Port of Los Angeles on 14 October. #### Dakar Rally Diffey serves as the US announcer for the daily world feed highlight broadcast of the Dakar Rally on NBCSN. #### IMSA Diffey returned to sports car racing in 2019 as the lead announcer for NBC Sports' coverage of IMSA's WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, beginning with the 2019 24 Hours of Daytona. #### Motorcycles Diffey began calling the AMA Supercross Championship in 2020, working play-by-play for NBC for the series along with Ralph Sheheen. Diffey took over the lead commentating role replacing Sheheen starting the 2021 season with Ricky Carmichael, Daniel Blair, and Will Christien. He also served as a studio host for the network's MotoGP and Moto2 coverage. ### Other sports Diffey has worked on NBC's coverage of the Olympic Games, covering luge, skeleton, and bobsled at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi. NBC executive Sam Flood had expressed interest in having him serve as an announcer outside of motorsports while negotiating his contract with the network, and he prepared Diffey for the Olympics by having him host the Penn Relays and the Luge World Cup. Diffey remarked of serving in the Olympics: "Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine this is where my career would take me. Just working for NBC, that alone made my life. Now going to the Olympics for NBC? I just pinch myself as if to wonder is this really happening?" He returned to the Olympics to cover rowing at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, and also called the same events he had in Sochi at the 2018 Winter Games in Pyongchang. Beyond the Olympics, Diffey has covered rugby, anchoring studio coverage of Premiership Rugby and doing play-by-play for the Collegiate Rugby Championship. He also covered the Prefontaine Classic in 2018, as well as the 2019 World Athletics Championships. In 2021, Diffey took over as the NBC track and field commentator, covering both the US Olympic trials and the 2020 Summer Olympics. ## Personal life Diffey obtained his United States citizenship in 2011, explaining, "This country has given me so much, and I felt I needed to give back. That's why I accepted US citizenship. I'm Australian and I'm also American." A former resident of Charlotte, North Carolina, he currently resides in Connecticut with his wife and two children.

M5 half-track

US Military Vehicle

The M5 half-track (officially the Carrier, Personnel, Half-track, M5) was an American armored personnel carrier in use during World War II. It was developed in 1942 when existing manufacturers of the M2 half-track car, and M3 half-track could not keep up with production demand. International Harvester (IH) had capacity to produce a similar vehicle to the M3, but some differences from the M3 had to be accepted due to different production equipment. IH produced the M5 from December 1942 to October 1943. Using the same chassis as their M5, IH could produce an equivalent to the M2, which was the M9 half-track. There were also variants of the M13 and M16 MGMCs based on the M5. The M13 and M16 were exported to the United Kingdom and to Soviet Union respectively. The M5 was supplied to Allied nations (the British Commonwealth, France, and the Soviet Union) under Lend-Lease. After WWII, the M5 was leased to many NATO countries. The Israel Defense Forces used it in several wars and developed it into the M3 Mark A and the M3 Mark B. ## Specifications The specifications of the M5 were almost identical to the specifications of the M3 half-track. It was 20.8 feet (6.3 m) long, 7.3 feet (2.23 m) wide, 9 feet (2.74 m) high, and had a gross weight of either 18,900 lb (8.6 t) (M5) or 19,050 lb (8.64 t) (M5A1). It had vertical volute springs for the tracks and semi-elliptical longitudinal leaf springs for the wheels. It was powered by a 142 hp (106 kW) IHC RED-450-B, 451 cubic inch (7,390 cc), 6-cylinder engine, with a compression ratio of 6.35:1. It had a fuel capacity of 60 US gallons (230 L), a range of 220 miles (350 km), and a speed of 42 miles per hour (68 km/h). It had constant mesh transmission, 6.5–13.5 mm (0.26–0.53 in) of armor, one 0.5 in (12.7 mm) M2 machine gun and two 0.3 in (7.6 mm) M1919 machine guns, and crew of three with up to ten passengers. The track was an endless rubber-band track which was made of molded rubber over steel cabling with metal track guides. ## Development After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the demand for U.S. produced armored vehicles grew and the existing production capacity was stretched by the need to equip the expanding U.S. military as well as its allies. As a result, the war munitions industry in the U.S. rapidly expanded. While the existing manufacturers of M3 half-tracks could not meet the increased demands, International Harvester (IH) could build them, but changes in components and construction were necessary. Prototype vehicles were provided designated as the M3E2 and the M2E5. After testing by General Motors, they were accepted for production under the designations M5 and M9 respectively. Due to a lack of face-hardened armor, homogeneous armor was used instead. Although thicker at 5⁄16 inch (7.9 mm) to the M3's 1⁄4 inch (6.4 mm), it was effectively less protection – armor-piercing rifle-caliber bullets could penetrate it at 300 yards (270 m) rather than 200 yards (180 m) for the M3. At the same time, IH produced a version of the M2 half-track car, the M9 half-track. ## Service history The first production run of the M5 was completed in December 1942. Changes to the demand for half-tracks led to reduced orders from the U.S. Army, and the M5 became "limited standard" in the U.S. military. A total of 7,484 were produced before production was stopped in October 1943. Almost all M5s were sent to U.S. allies for further use. The added weight of the armor reduced the speed to 42 mph (68 km/h) and range was reduced to 125 mi (201 km). The final vehicles were completed in early October 1943. In the UK, the Universal Carrier already fulfilled the infantry transport role and the M5 was used instead as an artillery tractor for towing the British 6-pounder and 17-pounder guns. Some were also retained in the U.S. for training purposes. The French Far East Expeditionary Corps used M5 half-tracks during the First Indochina War. The M5 later saw service with the Israeli army in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. They were commonly painted red to disguise them as agricultural tractors. In 1955, the Israelis used M5s to make the M3 Mark A and the M3 Mark B. The former was an M3 or M5 with a few modifications and the latter was a M5 converted into a command carrier. Regular M5s were simply designated "M3 IHC". It was later used in the Suez Crisis and the Six-Day war. By the Yom Kippur War, the M3/M5 had been replaced by the M113 armored personnel carrier but some were still with service as command vehicle with reserve units during the 1982 Lebanon War. ## Operators During the war, the majority of M5 (and M9) production went to the United Kingdom, which then passed them on to Commonwealth forces or other allies operating with the British Army, such as Free Polish or Free Czech forces. The Soviet Union received supplies directly. In British service, they were used as utility vehicles for Royal Engineers units, or to tow anti-tank guns in motor battalions instead of 15cwt trucks. After the war, half tracks were provided under the Military Aid Program (MAP). - Brazil – Received 20 during the war. - Belgium – Received 20. - Chile – Received 10. - ROC – Loaned from the U.S. during the war - Czechoslovakia – Loaned from Britain during the war. - France – Received 1,196 during the war - Israel – Acquired in 1948–49 from Europe, and directly from U.S. after 1949. - Mali – Aid from France. - Mexico – Received two. - Nazi Germany – Captured from the U.S. and U.S.S.R. - Poland – Loaned from Britain during the war. - Soviet Union – Received 450 during World War II, and 401 after the war. - United States – Used for training purposes only. - United Kingdom - Yugoslavia – 157 M5/M5A1 received during the Informbiro period ## Variants - M3E2/M5 – An IH half-track, that was virtually identical to the M3. The only differences was the thicker armor (up to 20 mm), different engine (IHC RED-450-B), and lower range (125 mi (201 km)). This model was mainly supplied to the Soviet Union, the British Commonwealth, and France. A total 4,625 were produced. - M5A1 – M5 with a M49 machine gun mount. It could fit one 0.5 inch (12.7 mm) M2 Browning heavy machine gun, and two 0.3 inch M1919 Browning machine guns, and 2,859 were produced. - M5A2 – Similar to the M3A2, the M5A2 was a combination of the M5 and M9 half-tracks. This was a project that was never mass-produced. - M9 – Same as the M5, stowage arranged as the M2 half-track car, with access to radios from inside (as opposed to outside) and rear doors, plus pedestal machine gun mount, with 2,026 being produced. - M9A1 – Same as the M9, with ring mount and three machine gun pintles, with 1,407 being produced. - M14 half-track – A version of the M13 Multiple Gun Motor Carriage, based on the M5. It had two 0.5 in machine guns mounted in a M33 Maxson turret on the rear of the chassis. Several hundred were produced before it was replaced by the M16 MGMC and M17 MGMC, with a total 1,605 were produced. - M17 half-track – M5 with the same quadruple 0.5 inch machine gun turret as the M16 MGMC. All 1,000 were supplied to the USSR. It saw limited use at end of World War II and was also deployed during the Korean War. - M3 Mk. A – A modified M5. The only difference was the variety of machine guns were used in place of the M49 mount. - M3 Mk. B – A M5 modified as a command carrier. It had extra radios and a front winch bumper. ## See also - List of U.S. military vehicles by model number

Vietnam National Museum of History

Archeological museum in Hanoi, Vietnam

The Vietnam National Museum of History (Vietnamese: Viện Bảo tàng Lịch sử Việt Nam) is in the Hoan Kiem district of Hanoi, Vietnam. The museum building was an archaeological research institution of the French School of the Far East under French colonial rule (Louis Finot École française d'Extrême-Orient EFEO) of 1910, was extensively refurbished in 1920. It was redesigned between 1926 and 1932 by architect Ernest Hébrard. The museum was acquired by the government of North Vietnam (now the government of Vietnam) in 1958 and then the artifact collections were expanded to cover eastern arts and national history. The museum highlights Vietnam's prehistory (about 300,000–400,000 years ago) up to the August 1945 Revolution. It has over 200,000 exhibits displayed covering items from prehistory up to the 1947 revolution and founding of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, arranged in five major sections. ## Location The museum is at the back of the Hanoi Opera House. It is on 1 Trang Tien Street, 216 Tran Quang Khai Street, Hanoi. ## History The museum building used to be the archaeological research institution of the French School of the Far East under French colonial rule (Louis Finot École française d'Extrême-Orient EFEO), which opened in 1910. This was extensively refurbished in 1920, and redesigned between 1926 and 1932 by the architect Ernest Hébrard. It is considered a blend of French colonial and traditional Vietnamese architecture, also called Indochina architecture. The museum was acquired by the government of North Vietnam in 1958 and then the artifact collections were expanded to cover eastern arts and national history. It was formally opened for public viewing on 3 September 1958. The museum's exhibits highlight Vietnam's prehistory (about 300,000–400,000 years ago) up to the August 1945 Revolution. ## Features The museum is housed in a colonial French building which is a cupola shaped edifice in the shape of a pagoda. The design of the building is an amalgamation of French and Chinese architecture known as Indochina architecture. The building designed by Hebrard, incorporates double walls and balconies for a natural ventilation system and protection from sunshine. The exhibition area is more than 2,200 square metres (24,000 sq ft) with exhibits arranged chronologically. It is divided into five major sections: Section 1 covers period from the prehistoric period from the Stone Age (30,000–40,000 years ) to 4,000–5,000 years ago; Section 2 has displays from the time of nation building during the Tran dynasty; Section 3 has exhibits from the period of the Ho dynasty to the August 1945 Revolution; and Section 4 has artifacts of the Champa stone sculptures. The museum showcases Vietnam's history with very large collection of about 200,000 items, covering the Neolothic age, Bronze Age, Sa Hunh, Oc Eo, and Hung periods, Nguyen dynasty, Cham period, and also northern Vietnam's Dong Son, a culture which existed about 1000 BC-100 AD. These exhibits are in the main building. The exhibits highlight communism and depict the rule of the French colonists as cruel. ## Exhibits Exhibits in the museum include Hung era and Neolithic mortuaries, Bronze Age implements such as axe heads, and Cham period artifacts. There is an intimidating sculpture of Quan Am, the Goddess of Mercy, which has 1,000 eyes and arms. Also on display are the 13 Nguyễn dynasty emperor's ornamented throne, dresses and other antiquities. These include the large Dong Son drums, which are symbolic of Vietnamese culture. At ground level the display consist of stone implements, pottery, and ornaments, up to 1400 AD. On the first floor the exhibits pertain to the monarchic reign from the time of the Dinh and Le eras of 900 ADs to Vietnam's last emperors; these are decorative items such as a chest of drawers inlaid with mother-of-pearl, cylindrical containers of enamel (these are funerary jars), ceramics and bright lacquer ware. There is a stele which was found during an archaeological excavation with an inscription at a monument labeled G1, which is dedicated to God Harivamsesvara by Harivarman I (ca. 1137) is preserved in the museum. The exhibits of new artifacts cover Central Vietnam, Central Highlands, South Vietnam and also an old shipwreck near Cu Lao Cham Island. The museum has signage in English, but this is inadequate to express all that is on display in the museum. To popularize Vietnam's history from the past to the present, the Museum administration organized an exhibition of 450 artifacts (416 from 13 Vietnamese museums and the balance from 8 European museums) in Austria and Belgium from September 2003 to November 2004. The Royal Museum of Arts and History (Kingdom of Belgium) and the Vienna Ethnology Museum (Republic of Austria) were associated with this exhibition, which was titled "Vietnam – Past and Present."

1987 World Championships in Athletics – Women's marathon

Long distance running race at the 1987 World Championships in Athletics

The women's marathon was one of the road events at the 1987 World Championships in Athletics in Rome, Italy. It took place on 29 August 1987; the course started and finished at the Stadio Olimpico and passed several of Rome's historic landmarks. The race was won by Portugal's Rosa Mota in 2:25:17, a new championship record, ahead of Zoya Ivanova of the Soviet Union in second and France's Jocelyne Villeton in third. In warm conditions, the pre-race favourite, Mota, led from the start. Another of the runners expected to do well, Australia's Lisa Martin, was suffering from fatigue after working too hard in training, and she pulled out of the race after 25 kilometres (16 mi). Mota won the race by almost seven and a half minutes, but did not initially realise that she had finished the race, as she thought she still had to run another lap of the track in the stadium. ## Background The race started and finished at the Stadio Olimpico, and largely stayed within the area of central Rome enclosed by the Aurelian Walls. It skirted around the lower edges of three of the seven hills of Rome without climbing any of them, and passed several ancient landmarks, including the Colosseum, the Baths of Caracalla and St. Peter's Square. Part of the course ran along cobbled streets, which along with the warm temperatures forecast, led to expectations that there would not be fast times in the race. Several of the world's quickest female marathoners were absent from the race. Ingrid Kristiansen, who was the world record holder, having run the 1985 London Marathon in 2:21:06, opted to run the 10,000 metres instead. Joan Benoit, the Olympic champion, was also missing, as she was pregnant. Grete Waitz, the reigning world champion suffered a suspected stress fracture in her foot after running a 5,000-metre time-trial on 15 August, and although she travelled to Rome and considered running with painkillers, she decided not to take the risk, and withdrew. In their absence, the favourites were Rosa Mota of Portugal and Australia's Lisa Martin. Mota was a two-time European champion, and the third quickest female marathoner, while Martin had run the fifth fastest women's marathon time. Both came into the Championships in less than ideal situations: Mota had been suffering from a urinary tract infection, while training in Florida, Martin had overtrained in hot conditions. ## Summary The race started at 16:55 local time on 29 August 1987, the opening day of the Championships, in temperatures of around 27 °C (80 °F). Mota took the lead before the marathon left the stadium, and extended it as the race progressed. She completed the first half of the marathon in 1:12:10, and won by over seven minutes. When she crossed the finish line, in 2:25:17, she continued running, as she thought she had another lap to complete. It was only when a race official flagged her down 30 metres (98 ft) into her second lap, telling her that she had finished, that she stopped. She blamed her mistake on the instructions she had received before the race: "an official told me I had to take two loops of the track". Mota's time was a new championship record, beating the 2:28:09 set by Grete Waitz at the 1983 marathon. Martin, who was expected to be the most likely to challenge Mota in the race withdrew after 25 kilometres (16 mi); she was falling back down the field, and her whole body felt sore. She blamed it residual fatigue from the problems she had suffered during training in Florida. Martin was one of nine runners to pull out of the race. Zoya Ivanova of the Soviet Union finished in second, in 2:32:38, while France's Jocelyne Villeton claimed bronze, in 2:32:53. ## Aftermath At the 1988 Olympics, Mota beat Martin by 13 seconds and became the only woman to be the reigning European, World, and Olympic champion simultaneously. ## Results ## See also - 1984 Women's Olympic Marathon (Los Angeles) - 1986 Women's European Championships Marathon (Stuttgart) - 1988 Women's Olympic Marathon (Seoul) - 1990 Women's European Championships Marathon (Split)

Elizabeth College, Guernsey

The Royal College of Elizabeth, better known as Elizabeth College, is a co-educational independent school in Saint Peter Port, Guernsey. One of the earliest members of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (HMC), it is a public school in the British sense of the term. Founded on 25 May 1563 by royal charter from Queen Elizabeth I, the school is one of the oldest in the British Isles and is the oldest public school in the Channel Islands. The school endured a difficult two and a half centuries after its foundation, with several principals being dismissed or resigning following disputes with the local authorities. In 1824, it was re-chartered with new staff and an improved curriculum to attract fee-paying pupils from England. During the German occupation of the Channel Islands, the school was evacuated to Great Hucklow, Derbyshire. Having been a boarding school since its foundation, the decline in the number of children admitted as boarders following the world war period meant the school became a day school in 1996. The school became co-educational in 2021. The school teaches around 500 pupils aged 11 to 18. As a selective school, prospective pupils must pass an entrance exam to be offered a place, although the school accepts pupils from a wide ability range. The school charges £4,907 per term, with three terms per academic year, (or £14,721 per annum) as of 2023/2024. There is an associated junior school for ages 21⁄2 to 11 on adjoining sites at the nearby Acorn House (pre-school), in King's Road, and Beechwood (primary school), in Queen's Road. Alumni of the school are known as Old Elizabethans. Since 1824, pupils have each been allocated a unique, sequential school number. Among these alumni are multiple Olympians, several Bailiffs of Guernsey and a number of notable persons in various fields including the arts, sports and academia. Noted in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries for producing students who would later join military colleges in the United Kingdom, the school has produced four Victoria Cross recipients. ## History ### Foundation Prior to the school's foundation, the Queen's Commissioners raised concern over the civil and religious administration of Guernsey. The 1824 review of the school described how, in the first half of the sixteenth century, the island "was in a state of dissension and confusion" and "appears to have been most deplorable, for ignorance, superstition, and, especially, for the unsettled state of its political and religious affairs", noting that "in the year of the institution of the College, three persons were burned for witchcraft". In 1563, the Privy Council recommended that Guernsey's "spiritual and temporal jurisdictions [be examined] to reform errors and abuses" and recommended the establishment of a school by royal charter. They believed the island required secondary education so that students might go on to preach as clergymen in Guernsey in line with principles of the Protestant reformation. The Charter required the States of Guernsey to found a free grammar school with a schoolmaster appointed by the Governor of Guernsey. The school was founded on 25 May 1563, by a patent roll from Queen Elizabeth I which read: > Also since there is no grammar school in the isle, to erect a free grammar school there called Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School under the seal of the isle; the schoolmaster thereof to be appointed and removable by the Captain (except the Queen shall otherwise order); the school to be endowed with wheat rentes of 80 quarters a year found to belong to the Queen by the late Commissioners. The school was instituted in September that year, and was the fourth school established on the island. To create a site for the school, Franciscan friars were moved from land at La Rue Des Frères, a site which the school still occupies. The first schoolmaster was Belgian scholar, Adrian Saravia, who went on to be a translator of the King James Bible. Saravia left the island by 1571, describing the local population as an "uncivilised race" which "hates all learning". ### Reform and reconstruction Over the next two and a half centuries, the school suffered from insufficient buildings and staff and the pupil roll never exceeded 29. Many principals were appointed, but resigned or were dismissed by the States of Guernsey. In 1824, due to increased demand for a higher standard of local education and a properly-run College, the island's Lieutenant Governor, John Colborne, established a committee to review the school. It was re-chartered that year, and by 1826, with new staff and an improved curriculum, the school was ready to attract pupils from England. On 19 October 1826, the foundation stone of a new building was laid by Colborne, and the school was renamed the Royal College of Elizabeth. The reform introduced a register of pupils, whereby each pupil since is allocated a unique, sequential school number. After the re-chartering, Charles Stocker was appointed principal and developed a reputation for flogging. He set out to raise the academic standing of the school and oversee the construction of the new main building. In the school's first year after the re-chartering, there were more than 100 boys on the school roll. However, over the next couple of years, the number of new entrants decreased to as low as 17 in 1827. In 1829, three years after the laying of the foundation stone, the new building was ready for use. Upper Canada College, in Toronto, Ontario, was founded in 1829 by Sir John Colborne, based on his experience with the school. In the 1850s, a new form of punishment was introduced whereby the window recesses in the upper gallery of the school were converted into 'lock-ups' in which students would be held during school hours. The wood-panelled walls of the cells were covered with carvings from those who had been held there. The school significantly expanded both its teaching and extra-curricular facilities in the latter half of the 19th century, building a gymnasium on the school site and purchasing fields in Kings Road for a cricket ground which was completed and named the College Field in 1888. The old school building was converted into a science laboratory, named after Edward Ozanne. Some of the biggest developments came under principal William Penney, appointed in 1888, who identified faults with the quality of teaching and attending to the building which was badly in need of repair. He revised the entire syllabus, introduced masters' meetings to be held twice a term and had reports sent to parents every half term. He revised the punishment system too, only allowing himself and the vice-principal to use the cane, oversaw the reincarnation of The Elizabethan magazine, and formed the Old Elizabethan Association, which set about wiping the school's debts by 1898 through a variety of money-raising ventures. ### World war period In the 19th century, the school gained a reputation for catering for the sons of British government officials employed across the British Empire, many of whom followed distinguished colonial careers in their own right. In this era, the school was noted for producing students who would later join military colleges in the United Kingdom. 662 alumni served in World War I, 105 of which were known to have been killed and many more died of injuries sustained in battle, meaning approximately one in five of all the boys who had joined the school since the re-chartering had served in the Great War. A roll of honour is displayed in the main hall to commemorate those who fought and died in the war. Four alumni have been awarded the Victoria Cross: The first in 1857 to Duncan Home, followed in 1881 by John McCrea, then Lewis Halliday in 1900 and Wallace Le Patourel in 1943. The four houses at the junior school were later named in their memory. In 1939, the school remained largely unaffected by the transition from peace to the Phoney War, with many believing the Channel Islands to be the safest place in the British Isles. Precautionary measures were taken nonetheless; air-raid shelters were dug in front of the school's main building, and black-out regulations required some school activities and societies to be curtailed. The air-raid shelter was later converted by German forces into a secure holding area for weapons and ammunition. Following developments in the war in May 1940, all the senior boys were required to join the Local Defence Volunteers and came to school with rifles slung across their shoulders. Many school activities continued uninterrupted at this point, with cricket and swimming continuing in the unusually fine weather. In June however, the extent of the dangers of war began to be realised. French resistance collapsed, after which the island's Army and RAF units left the island. Fearing the imminent occupation of the Channel Islands by German forces, an evacuation scheme was quickly assembled by the school Governors with Jersey and the Home Office, and on the evening of Thursday 20 June the school was evacuated to Great Hucklow, Derbyshire, where it would spend five years 'in exile', during which pupils had little or no contact with their parents. At the start of the occupation, the school buildings were home to the States Controlling Committee, but in 1941 the German authorities demanded the use of the school buildings as headquarters and offices. A strongroom bunker was built inside what is now the AJ Perrot room, which remains to this day, albeit without the door. Despite the shortages in staff, facilities and money, there were still a number of scholastic successes over this period, with eight pupils receiving scholarships to the University of Oxford. The official liberation announcement by Brigadier Alfred Ernest Snow was made from the steps of the school in 1945 to a crowd of cheering locals, although it was not until August that the boys were able to return home to continue their education at College. German prisoners of war were tasked with cleaning up and repairing the damage to the building, which was not as bad as had been feared initially. ### Modern period The school's uptake increased at such a rate after the war that, for the first time since 1829, the main building was too small to accommodate the students. Rapid development followed, including the purchase of Beechwood, a former nursing home, in 1948 which was converted into a boarding house. A squash court was added, the nearby Grange Club was purchased in 1950 and converted into a library, land was acquired at Footes Lane for a cricket field, and a new science block was built. The 1990s saw the refurbishment of the science laboratories, improved facilities for sport and physical education, and the development of a purpose-built art department. Having been a boarding school since its re-chartering in 1824, the end of the 20th century saw a gradual decline in the number of children being sent to the island to board, not helped by the increasingly high fares on air and sea routes from the mainland. There was also a growing requirement for independent infant schooling in Guernsey, and so the King's Road boarding house was reopened in October 1996 as Acorn House pre-school and pre-prep. In 1992, the school accepted a group of girls into the sixth form from the relocating Blanchelande College. They were the first girls to be officially registered and receive college numbers, and provoked the first discussions about the possibility for a mixed-sex sixth form run in co-operation with the Ladies' College sixth form. David Toze's appointment as principal saw a large number of changes implemented at the school. He appointed the first-ever female headteacher of Beechwood in 2000, oversaw the merging of Acorn House and Beechwood into the Elizabeth College Junior School and drove forward the link between the Ladies' and Elizabeth College sixth forms. Having appointed its first-ever female principal, Jenny Palmer, in 2017, in January 2020 the school announced that "in recognition of the needs of contemporary society", girls would be admitted to the upper school into Year 7 and into the sixth form from September 2021 as part of plans for the school to be entirely coeducational by 2025. ## Governance Governance is delivered by a board of between nine and twelve directors who serve for a six-year term, with the exception of the Dean of Guernsey, who acts as chairman. In addition to the Dean, two directors are appointed by the Lieutenant Governor and six are elected by the States of Guernsey. Several of the school's directors are former pupils of the school and parents of current pupils. These directors are required to meet both UK and Guernsey safeguarding standards. The school has charitable status in both the UK and Guernsey. In 2007 the school established The Elizabeth College Foundation (Guernsey registered charity CH91) and The Elizabeth College UK Foundation (a UK registered charity 1120954). The school is one of the earliest members of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (HMC) and is considered to be a public school in the British sense of the term. ## Admissions The school admits pupils between the ages of 11 and 18. It is selective, meaning prospective pupils must pass an entrance exam in order to be offered a place. Candidates for entry at age 11 sit an entrance assessment in November prior to entry in the following September which tests English, mathematics and verbal reasoning, while entry into the sixth form at 16 is based upon GCSE results. As of 2023/2024, the school charges £4,907 per term with three terms per academic year. The school accepts pupils with a wide ability range, though the results of standardised tests indicated that the average ability of the pupils at the senior school is well above the national average of pupils in secondary schools in the UK, and the average ability of sixth-form pupils is also above the national average of the UK. ## Curriculum ### Structure The school designs its own curriculum, which was described by an Independent Schools Inspectorate (ISI) report conducted in October 2015 as providing "an excellent range of options" and a "flexible pattern of pupil grouping ... so that the specific needs of subjects are strongly met". PSHE lessons are timetabled for all years below the sixth form, and specialist themed days are hosted further up the school. As of 2015, students typically sit ten or more GCSEs and three or four A-levels. Assessing the quality of educational provision, in October 2015 the ISI awarded the school the highest rating of excellent in eight aspects and good in the other two. The inspection stated that "[i]n many academic ... activities pupils demonstrate high levels of knowledge and understanding as well as being both highly literate and articulate". The report praised the school for delivering the curriculum with "good teaching throughout". The breadth of the curriculum was described as "a significant strength" of the school, furthered by the co-educational sixth form partnership with the Ladies' College. The strength of the curriculum for informing the pupils' cultural awareness, in particular with appreciating Guernsey's own customs and culture in addition to other cultures, was also observed, with the cultural development of pupils being described as excellent. Approximately 40% of pupils at the school learn how to play a musical instrument, and the ISI noted in October 2015 that 'many pupils achieve distinctions and merits in their instrumental music examinations'. ### Examinations At GCSE level, the school regularly achieves a 99% pass rate of 5 grades 9–4/A\*–C including English and Maths, significantly higher than the national average of the Bailiwick of Guernsey. In 2017, 99% of students achieved five or more grades 9–4/A\*–C including English and Maths compared to the national average of 66%. Analysing GCSE results, the 2015 ISI inspection found that "around half of the grades achieved were A\* and A grades", that "GCSE performance has been above the UK average for boys in maintained schools" and that "IGCSE results in history and maths have been higher than ... worldwide norms". The school consistently achieves A-level pass rates of 100%, with between 80 and 90% being graded between A\*–C and about a third being grades A\*–A. In 2020, 37.6% of A-levels were graded A\*–A, and the highest proportion of A\*–A grades in recent times was 49.1% in 2012. The 2015 ISI inspection found that "A-level results have been above the UK average for boys in maintained schools" and that "over this period, just under three-quarters of the grades were in the range A\* to B". Value-added statistics, which compare the results at GCSE and A-Level against the expectations for pupils based on assessment when they joined the school, place Elizabeth College in the top 17% of all British schools. Most pupils who leave the school after A-level study proceed to university or other further education and nine out of ten leavers secure places at their first choice UK universities. ## Extracurricular activities The school has traditionally focused on hockey, football and cricket in each school term, respectively. A range of other sports and outdoor activities are offered, and the school participates in The Duke of Edinburgh's Award scheme. In 2018, The Cricketer magazine named Elizabeth College as one of the top 100 cricketing secondary schools in the United Kingdom. Representing Great Britain, alumnus Carl Hester has won three medals in the Team Dressage event at the Summer Olympics. Founded in 1902, the school's Combined Cadet Force (CCF) performs a number of traditional military and ceremonial duties in the island, including the Liberation Day, Queen's Birthday and Remembrance Day parades. Since 1951, it has been the only uniformed military body in the island and provides guards of honour for visiting members of the royal family. The school has been successful in rifle shooting and has attended the schools' meeting in Bisley since 1906. Alumnus Charles Trotter twice competed at the Olympics, won a bronze medal at the 1982 Commonwealth Games, and won the Queen's Prize in 1975. Several students have represented the British Cadet Rifle Team and the Great Britain Under-19 Rifle Team. ## Buildings and sites The school occupies 69 acres (280,000 m²) of land overlooking the town of Saint Peter Port. The current main building, designed by John Wilson, was formally opened on 20 August 1829. On the main site, there is an indoor sports hall, hardcourt, pool and an indoor 25 yard .22 rifle range. The oldest remaining building on the site is the cottage on the lowest corner of the current campus. Adjacent to the main buildings, the school owns property in Upland Road, and in 2020, the school purchased property to the north of the main site, formerly occupied by the Royal Bank of Canada, which was named Perrot Court in honour of major donor and alumnus, Roger Perrot. The weekly whole-school assembly is held at the nearby St James concert hall. Away from the main site, the school owns two extensive playing fields and sports facilities in St Peter Port – the College field and the Memorial Field – both of which are used throughout the year for the school's three main sports. The design of the main building was described unfavourably by David Ansted and Robert Latham in their 1862 publication The Channel Islands, as "unfortunately harmonising in its utter tastelessness with other modern buildings in the island" and being "erected at great cost" presenting "a bald, plastered, unmeaning face, too prominent to be overlooked." ## Notable alumni The school's alumni are often referred to as Old Elizabethans. Notable alumni of the school in the military include four Victoria Cross holders, Duncan Home, John McCrea, Lewis Halliday and Wallace Le Patourel. Other alumni in the military include British Army officers Herbert Abbott and Donald Banks, RAF officer and heir to the Seigneur of Sark, Francis William Beaumont, Air Chief Marshal Sir Peter Le Cheminant, Indian army officer Horace Searle Anderson, and Chief Commissioner of Police in South Australia, William John Peterswald. Notable governmental figures educated at the school include several Bailiffs of Guernsey, including Thomas Godfrey Carey, William Carey, Havilland Walter de Sausmarez, Victor Gosselin Carey, Ambrose Sherwill, Sir Geoffrey Rowland and Sir Richard Collas. British Members of Parliament from the school include Conservative politician Edward Arthur Somerset; and Labour politician Malcolm Wicks; Lord Justice of Appeal for England and Wales, Adrian Fulford was educated at the school. Alumni in the arts include actor Barry Jones; authors William Adolf Baillie Grohman and P.G. Wodehouse; and Jean Hugo, artist and great-grandson of Victor Hugo; journalist and novelist Robert Sherard; and engineer and author Hugh Pembroke Vowles. Alumni in the sciences includes physician and academic author Dr Norman Hay Forbes; anthropologist Arthur Maurice Hocart; John Richard Magrath, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford; egyptologist Sir Peter le Page Renouf; geologist Nick McCave; and nuclear physicist Ian Chapman. Notable school alumni in sport include footballers Craig Allen and Chris Tardif; multiple world champion racing driver Andy Priaulx; athletes Dale Garland and Cameron Chalmers; cricketers George Bailey and Tim Ravenscroft; dressage rider and Olympic gold-medallist Carl Hester; squash player Chris Simpson; cyclist Tobyn Horton; and sport shooters Peter Jory and Charles Trotter. The school is also the alma mater of television presenters Bruce Parker and Murray Dron; UK media magnate, Ashley Highfield; clergyman, historian and social activist, James Parkes; Bishop of Blackburn, Nicholas Reade; explorer Edmund Kennedy; and plastic surgeon Simon Kay. ## Principals The school's first principal (then known as the master) was Adrian Saravia. From Saravia's departure up to the 1824 re-chartering, the record of principals is uncertain. Charles Stocker was the first principal appointed after the re-chartering. Since his appointment, portraits have been made of every principal except for George Proctor. These portraits are permanently on display in the Le Marchant library. In 2017, Jenny Palmer became the first female principal in the school's history. ## See also - List of schools in Guernsey - Upper Canada College, founded 1829 and modelled after Elizabeth College.

Gerlin Bean

Jamaican community worker and activist (born 1940)

Gerlin Bean (born 1940) is a Jamaican community worker who was active in the radical feminist and Black nationalist movements in the United Kingdom in the 1960s and 1970s. Trained as a nurse, she became a dedicated community activist and social worker, involved in the founding of the Black Women's Action Committee of the Black Unity and Freedom Party, the women's section of the Black Liberation Front, the Brixton Black Women's Group, and the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD). Bean's work and activism focused on eliminating discriminatory policies for people of colour, women, and people with disabilities. She fought for equal educational opportunity, fair wages, adequate housing, and programmes that supported families, such as counselling services, child care, and health care. In 1983, Bean left England when Zimbabwe gained its independence and worked there on development programmes for women and children for five years. She later returned to Jamaica and focused on women's and children's issues there too. She was the managing director of 3D Projects, a charity that provided assistance programmes for children with disabilities and their families. She has been involved in the development of schools to assist children and in other community education programmes regarding disability. Bean has also served on the St. Catherine's Parish Council. Her activism has been celebrated by activities arranged for the UK Black History Month festivities, such as the 2014 exhibit "400 Years of African Women Resistance Leaders" in Islington, and a 2017 sculpture of the clenched fists of Black women activists that was exhibited at the Guildhall Art Gallery in London. ## Early life and education Bean was born in 1940 in Hanover Parish, Jamaica, to a couple who were farmers. The rural setting taught her about communal living and instilled the values of mutual aid in the community. She trained as a general and psychiatric nurse after moving to Surrey, England, at the age of 19. When she turned 20 in 1960, she had a daughter, Jennifer, but broke off her engagement to her daughter's father. From the time Jennifer was six months old, Bean arranged foster care for her with a local family so that her child's life would remain stable whilst she worked. Bean earned a bachelor's degree in Social Science and Administration at the London School of Economics and in 1995 completed a master's degree in Public Health at the University of the West Indies in Mona, Jamaica. ## Career and activism ### England (1960–1982) #### Social work and community development After several years of working as a nurse in London, Bean left the field of medical care and began working as a community development and youth activist. She helped set up the 70s Coffee Bar in Paddington, which was organised by the Westminster City Council as a youth activities and counselling centre. Later, she left Paddington and moved to Brixton to found the Gresham Youth Project. In 1969, the Caribbean Education and Community Workers' Association, based in North London, organised a conference to evaluate how West Indian children were faring in the British school system. A paper presented at the symposium by Bernard Coard demonstrated the systemic bias of administrative policies, which routinely placed Caribbean children in special classes for students with learning disabilities. Parents were outraged at the report's conclusion that their children were considered intellectually inferior because of their race. Parents from Brixton met to discuss a pioneering solution brought forward by Bean, Reverend Anthony Ottey, and the teacher Ansel Wong to hold supplementary schools to help children with their homework and reading. The plan also aimed to empower parents by teaching them how to interact with teachers and administrators and be more involved in their children's education. The trio, who worked together at the Gresham Youth Project, founded the Afiwe School, which among other services sent volunteers to accompany parents to school meetings, provided tutoring services, and assisted in outreach with schools and tuition solutions. Bean, Ottey, and Wong also provided information to the Lambeth Council for Community Relations, which launched a temporary housing and counselling service for runaway youth. Bean, Gloria Cameron, and Mabel Carter began meeting as the West Indian Parents Action Group (WIPAG) around 1971, but the group was not formalised until 1974. The goal of the organisation was to address under-achievement by Black children in the British school system and was particularly focused on early childhood education that gave training to children before they entered formal schooling. Bean was also involved with Wong, Lu Garvey, and Tony Soares in 1972 in establishing a cooperative in the basement of 61 Golborne Road in Kensal Town, where community experts were able to train unemployed young people in various skills, including barbering, electrical repair, and typesetting. Around the same time, Wong and Bean created the Abeng Centre in Brixton. The staff of the facility worked in conjunction with the Afiwe School, providing advice and counselling services, vocational training, and serving as a youth club. After searching for a suitable property, WIPAG secured a lease from the Housing Directorate of Lambeth in 1976 for 7 Canterbury Crescent, an abandoned terraced house. Delays in funding for staff training and equipment pushed the opening of the facility back to January 1978. Within a short period of time, 24 children were enrolled and more than 80 children were on the waiting list. Problems with the building and the need for a bigger space led Bean and Cameron to search for a more suitable location. They found a building at 3 & 5 Gresham Road and negotiated a 30-year lease at a peppercorn rent with the Lambeth Council. The planning authority granted WIPAG renovation permission in 1979 and in 1981 the facility was given official charitable status. The new nursery school officially opened in 1983, the year Bean moved to Zimbabwe. #### Political activism Around 1966, Bean began to attend meetings with the Gay Liberation Front in London. While she recognised that some people viewed homosexuality as a threat to families, she maintained people should be free to be who they were. In 1970, the Black Unity and Freedom Party (BUFP) was formed and Bean began pressing for the group to include a women's platform. She had been inspired by her attendance at the Women's Liberation National Conference held that year at Ruskin College, Oxford University. There were 600 women at the meeting and Bean was one of only a few Black women attendees. Before the BUFP was a year old, Bean had founded the Black Women's Action Committee, as its women's section. She specifically wanted to focus on Black women's issues because white feminists addressed different issues, such as abortion and being paid for housework. These were not central problems for Black women who sought to be paid sufficient wages to provide child care for their children, needed adequate housing and educational opportunities, and called for protection from racism and violence. Bean published a pamphlet Black Women Speak Out in 1970–71. Despite this overt expression of the point of view of Black women and the space afforded to women by the BUFP to "express themselves politically", the scholar Rosalind Eleanor Wild notes that some members continued to "feel very constricted". The activist and academic Harry Goulbourne has also observed that the BUFP was "extremely authoritarian, extremely intolerant". When the Black Liberation Front (BLF), a group with stronger socialist ties than a strictly Black nationalist focus, was formed in 1971, Bean left the Black Unity and Freedom Party. She founded a women's section of the BLF and began publishing "Sister's Column" in the organisation's Grassroots newsletter. The three main black power movements — the British Black Panthers, the Black Liberation Front and the Black Unity and Freedom Party — all initially attracted women members, but women often found that their issues were not taken seriously. According to scholars such as John Narayan and W. Chris Johnson, women activists in these movements often felt that they were the "oppressed of the oppressed" and "most exploited" because they were impacted by the same racial and class discrimination as Black males, but also had to face sexism from both white and Black men. By 1973, the British Black Panthers had dissolved and women in the other two political groups stopped gathering. In 1974 Bean, Zainab Abbas and Wong formed part of the British delegation to the Sixth Pan-African Congress, which was hosted in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The British delegates' address to the Congress reiterated the commitment of Black Britons to the liberation of Africans, people of African descent, and others throughout the world, from colonial policies, imperialism, and racism. #### Women's rights In 1973, Bean joined with Abbas, Beverley Bryan, Olive Morris, Liz Obi and other activists to found the Brixton Black Women's Group (BBWG). Though they were accused by some male activists of splitting the Black struggle, the women believed that their issues were not being heard and wanted to find solutions by working with other women, including women's groups in Africa. Gail Lewis, a BBWG member, stated in a 2019 interview in Feminist Theory: > Activism was understood in a singular way, even if it happened in a multiplicity of places/spaces of life: work, the courtroom, the police station, the school, the local and central state. ...It happens in all our kitchens, because whether they're from the Caribbean or from the African Continent or South Asia the women were leading from the kitchen. And by 'the kitchen' I mean an understanding that the lived realities and social relations of the kitchen were as much about politics as everything else, including the bedroom. And I also mean that 'the kitchen' was and is a place of political learning and theory-making. ...[I]n that kind of register, and then of course we would – we being me, and Avtar [Brah] who was with Southall Black Sisters then, and Gerlin Bean, and all these people – would raise these questions with the guys. In Brixton we had a very tense relationship with Race Today, around feminism really, but they didn't just write us off, and it wasn't really hostile. Of paramount importance to the women were the lack of available housing; Sus laws, which allowed police to stop and search anyone who might be suspected of having the intent to commit an offence; and education. Sus law arrests were often directed at Black youth and police at the time were given broad latitude in interpreting the terms "suspect" and "intent". The Brixton Black Women's Group worked to obtain state funding to expand the Sabarr Bookshop, using the store as a link to provide educational materials both for schools and activists. In 1978, Bean, Stella Dadzie and Morris met with students from Ethiopia and Eritrea, who were attending the London School of Economics. Together, they formed the Organisation for Women of Africa and African Descent. The formation of this group was identified by historians Line Nyhagen Predelli and Beatrice Halsaa as "a watershed in the history of Black women's rights activism" in their 2012 publication Majority-Minority Relations in Contemporary Women's Movements: Strategic Sisterhood. Within six months, the group asked Asian activists to join them and the name changed to the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent, known as OWAAD. This umbrella organisation allowed Black — from the political stance — women's groups throughout England to work together on common issues. As one of the first Black feminist groups that was politically formalised, OWAAD gave members experience in how to organise their communities, battle against discrimination, and educate themselves and the community about government policies. Bean served as the chair of OWAAD's first conference held in 1979 at the Abeng Centre. That same year, Bean and Dadzie went to Chicago, Illinois, to develop networks with the National Alliance of Black Feminists. ### Zimbabwe (1982–1988) From 1982, Bean focused on establishing programmes to assist women and children in Zimbabwe. Then, after Zimbabwe gained its independence from the UK, she moved to Africa in 1983. She worked with women to develop plans for family health and children's welfare. As a volunteer for the Catholic Institute for International Relations in Harare, Bean recruited doctors and nurses from the UK, encouraging them to move to Zimbabwe and work in rural areas to improve education and health facilities and programmes. She maintained ties with WIPAG, sharing educational materials from Africa with the nursery school on Gresham Road in London. ### Jamaica (1988–present) Bean returned to Jamaica in 1988 and studied for a degree in public health. In 1994, she became the deputy director at the Project Dedicated to the Development of Persons with Disabilities, known as 3D Projects, a charitable organisation that provided services for persons with disabilities and support for their families. She co-wrote a chapter titled "Mobilising Parents of Children with Disabilities in Jamaica and the English Speaking Caribbean" with Marigold J. Thorburn for a book published in 1995. Within four years, Bean was serving as a project director of 3D Projects, which was headquartered in Spanish Town, in Saint Catherine Parish, and by 2002 had become its managing director. As director of that development, in 2005, she initiated an innovative programme called "Skills For Life" to teach sex education to people with disabilities and their carers. The programme was designed to reduce the taboos of talking about sex and minimize the vulnerability and potential for sexual exploitation of persons with disabilities. Supported with funds provided by the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund, the programme was connected to a treatment project for young people in Jamaica who were living with HIV/AIDS. In 2009, she established a school in Saint Catherine Parish to provide early education opportunities for children with disabilities. Bean participated in the University of the West Indies lecture series titled "That Time In Foreign — Life Stories of Jamaican England Returnees", which ran from 2006 to 2007. She has been a presenter for numerous community seminars touching on issues of disability, family violence, HIV/AIDS education, and overall health and support for people with disabilities. She worked as the chair of the gender section on the Council for Voluntary Social Services in 2007 and served as a member of the Saint Catherine Parish Committee from 2008 to 2011. She has worked with international organisations such as the Committee on the Rights of the Child and UNESCO, national policy boards and regional policy groups of the Disabled Peoples' International in order to create and design inclusive policies for children and persons with disabilities. In 2020 Bean was one of the few Black feminists who participated in the Oxford International Women's Festival at Oxford University, which was organised to honour the 50th anniversary of the 1970 Ruskin Conference at Oxford. The event was criticised for being predominantly white and middle-class and Bean told The New Yorker that, as a Black woman, she "couldn't really pick on the relevance" of the conference. ## Legacy Bean is thought of by many activists as a mentor who introduced them to and guided them in their political development. Among these are Abbas, Dadzie, Ama Gueye, and Gail Lewis. When the book The Heart of the Race (1985) was in the planning stages, Bean worked with Dadzie and Bryan to ensure that it involved as many varied experiences of women activists as possible and to show that they had united in the common cause to resist economic exploitation, imperialism, racism, and sexism. When the Remembering Olive Collective was formed to gather materials in commemoration of Olive Morris, Bean donated her personal photographs and memorabilia of her friend to the archive. The Olive Morris Collection was made available to the public in 2009 and is housed at the Lambeth Archives in South London. Bean has been the subject of two papers about her involvement radical feminism presented by W. Chris Johnson of the University of Toronto. Her activism in Britain has been recognised in UK Black History Month celebrations, such as the 2014 exhibit "400 Years of African Women Resistance Leaders" hosted by Black History Walks in Islington and a 2017 sculpture, A Fighters' Archive, by Wijnand De Jonge, which was exhibited at the Guildhall Art Gallery in London. The sculpture featured bronze casts of the clenched fists (to represent boxing or fighting) of 15 Black women activists, including Bean. The castings were made live with each of the women. ## Selected works

Go to the Future

Go to the Future () is the debut studio album by Japanese band Sakanaction. It was released on May 9, 2007 through Victor Entertainment sub-label BabeStar. Recorded and produced in the band's native Hokkaido in a month, the album compiled the band's early songs, including compositions from the band's vocalist Ichiro Yamaguchi's high-school band Dutchman. The album mixed electronic and rock music conventions, and featured live instruments as a way to conceptually separate the album from pure dance music. Though not commercially successful nationally, the album was well received in Hokkaido. The leading song of the album, "Mikazuki Sunset", received strong airplay by radio stations such as FM North Wave and FM Hokkaido. Critics praised the album, noting Yamaguchi's distinct vocals and the band's varied electronic and rock sound. In 2009, the album was made available globally as a digital download, alongside the band's second and third albums Night Fishing (2008) and Shin-shiro (2009). In 2015, the album was reissued on CD, LP record and lossless digital formats. ## Background and development Sakanaction was first formed in August 2005 in Sapporo, Hokkaido. It was originally a two-member unit, consisting of vocalist Ichiro Yamaguchi and guitarist Motoharu Iwadera. Yamaguchi first worked together with Iwadera in the band Dutchman, that formed at their high school in 1998 and performed British rock-inspired music. In 2004, the band broke up, and Yamaguchi took the name for his solo project, where he created techno and club music. Yamaguchi had the idea that it would be interesting to mix electronic music with Japanese-style "folky melodies", so formed Sakanaction with Iwadera. Bassist Ami Kusakari first joined the band as a support member in December 2005. She was originally in a separate band that often performed at the same events as Dutchman. When her band broke up, Yamaguchi took advantage of this and asked her to join. In the summer of 2006, keyboardist Emi Okazaki and drummer Keiichi Ejima joined the band to form the group's current five-member line-up. Ejima was introduced to Yamaguchi through a friend, and Okazaki was originally a co-worker of Yamaguchi's. Before the band's debut, they mostly performed at live houses around Sapporo. In August, the band made their first festival appearance at the Rising Sun Rock Festival in Yamaguchi's home town of Otaru. During this period, Sakanaction sent demos of their songs "Mikazuki Sunset" and later "Shiranami Top Water" to College Radio Japan Sapporo. Both songs were well received by listeners, managing to be in the top five weekly songs for the radio program, and "Shiranami Top Water" charted in the top 100 songs on FM North Wave's Sapporo Hot 100 chart in September. While a member of Dutchman, Yamaguchi had been scouted and trained by Victor Entertainment. After they had managed to go through the audition process to perform at the Rising Sun Rock Festival, Yamaguchi sent his material with Sakanaction to his contact at Victor, which led to the band's debut through BabeStar. Originally the group featured three official members, after drummer Ejima had been added, but for the group's major label debut they officially promoted support members Kusakari and Okazaki. The band was unveiled as being on BabeStar's line-up in February 2007. ## Writing and production The album was recorded at two locations in Sapporo, Studio Jack at the Yamaha Center in Chūō-ku, and at Chieria Studio in the Sapporo Lifelong Learning Center in Nishi-ku. After it was commissioned, the album took only a month to produce, as Sakanaction mostly reworked demos they had already produced to create an album. Only the song "Yoru no Higashigawa" was written specifically for the album. Two of the songs had been released by Yamaguchi's first band Dutchman, "Inner World" in 2002 and "Mikazuki Sunset" in 2003. As a soloist, Yamaguchi released a remix of the song "Shiranami Top Water" on the compilation album Music for Pardisco in 2004. Retrospectively, Yamaguchi said that Go to the Future felt like a business card for Sakanaction, due to the album being a compilation of already created songs. The album was recorded and produced entirely in Hokkaido, including the album's cover artwork and music videos. When writing the songs, Yamaguchi thought up imagery for each song, and asked the other band members to picture this while creating and performing the songs. Yamaguchi created the album's music and melody while thinking about how they would be received by other people, but wrote the lyrics entirely introspectively. "Mikazuki Sunset" and "Shiranami Top Water" were the first songs produced by the band, and were the band's first attempts at making club-style music. Due to their success on college radio, Yamaguchi felt like this was proof that the mix of dance music with Japanese melodies was a good direction, and continued to make music in this style. Yamaguchi was inspired by the differences in house and techno music styles when writing the album. Yamaguchi was mindful about how to reach a wide audience, and considered that live instruments were important to stress how the album was rock music, as pure dance music was based on electronic and sampled instruments. One convention the band kept for the album was to record everything at 126BPM, to make it easier for the band's drummer, who had not experienced performing dance music before. Yamaguchi considered folky melodies on top of techno and house music the core of Sakanaction's sound on Go to the Future. In a retrospective interview conducted with Rockin' On Japan in 2011, Yamaguchi felt that his need to construct his own personal musical vision was too strong, and felt like the other members of Sakanaction had too little say in the album's content. "Amefura" was the first song that Sakanaction worked on together as a five-piece band, and was created to be a playful song mixing American and French styles. "Go to the Future" was originally an acoustic song, that grew into a triple metre song when the band developed their electronic sound. The song as the band originally envisioned it was re-recorded for their 2015 compilation album Natsukashii Tsuki wa Atarashii Tsuki: Coupling & Remix Works. Footage on the visual media disc of the album shows Yamaguchi and Iwadera returning to the studio where they had originally performed the song in Sapporo, to recreate the song. The published version of the song "Fukurō" found on the album used the ad-libbed lyrics Yamguchi had created while composing the guitar chords of the song. ## Promotion and release The album was primarily promoted by the song "Mikazuki Sunset". The song was used on several television programs as opening or closing credit music, including MM-TV on Mainichi Broadcasting System, Music-03 on Chiba Television Broadcasting and Yumechika 18 on Hokkaido Television Broadcasting. Both "Mikazuki Sunset" and "Shiranami Top Water" received music videos. "Mikazuki Sunset"'s video was directed by Yoshihiro Mori, and "Shiranami Top Water"'s by Hokkaido artist Hiroshi Kondo. A special website was created to promote Go to the Future, which opened on April 26. It featured the music videos of the two promotional songs on the album, as well as song commentary by Yamaguchi. Live performances of "Mikazuki Sunset" and "Inner World" were broadcast on Yumechika 18 on May 16, featuring footage of the band's performance at the Sapporo Kraps Hall on April 28. Sakanaction performed a short tour of Japan to promote the album's release, performing concerts in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya from May 11 to May 13, and held a solo-billed live at Bessie Hall in Sapporo on May 27. The band were featured in many major magazine publications in Japan to promote the album, including Pia, CD Data, What's In?, Barfout! and Rockin' On Japan. In 2015 the album was reissued, initially on vinyl record and a CD re-release in March, followed by a lossless digital release. Originally the band had planned on releasing a new studio album around March 2015, however could not do so due to bassist Kusakari's pregnancy. ## Reception ### Critical reception CDJournal online reviewers gave the album their star of recommendation, praised the variety of sounds and tempos on the album, as well as the "peculiar musical world" created by Yamaguchi's "dry" vocals layered on top of a "floating-feeling" techno and "funky" sound. They further noted Sakanaction's intense usage of surround sound during the album. Reviewer Yuji Tayama praised the album for its multi-faceted nature, and focused his praise on Emi Okazaki's keyboard work, the band's "funky rhythms" and vocalist Ichiro Yamaguchi's "nostalgic, youthful vocals". He felt the album had a "dazzling" and "refined" pop sense echoed in their "clear 'vocal post-rock' sound", and described the album as being "at times colorful like the pattern of a tropical fish, and at times gloomy like the mood of a deep sea fish". Mayumi Tsuchida of Bounce felt the album's strength was the harmony between the "[rock] band sound smeared with techno and electronica" and Yamaguchi's sorrowful, literary lyrics. She singled out "Shiranami Top Water" as the best example of this, feeling that its "bouncy synths and elegant guitar" worked together to "paint a spiral" and soared together, to create "breathtaking beauty". Retrospectively, Entertainment Media Kulture felt that the album showed Sakanaction still in the process of finding their sound, with many aspects feeling avant-garde. ### Commercial reception In its debut week, Go to the Future was the number 105 most sold album in Japan, according to the Japanese music chart Oricon, selling 1,500 copies. It continued to chart in the top 300 for an additional four weeks, selling an additional 3,000 copies. During the release of the band's single "Aruku Around" in January 2010, the album re-charted for a single week, bringing the total tracked number of copies sold to 5,000. In 2015, the album's reissued version debuted at number 55, selling 1,500 copies in its first week, and bringing the total copies of the album sold to 7,000. Tracking the regional sales of Japanese Tower Records stores, CDJournal noted a significant number of copies sold in Sapporo. In its first week, Go to the Future was the second most sold album, only behind Mr. Children's B-Side; selling 200 copies at Sapporo's Tower Records and HMV stores. CDJournal noted the album had a mid-level success in two Tokyo locations, notably at the Tower Records Shibuya where it sold 100 copies in the first ten days. However, CDJournal did not note any significant sales in the other regional centers of Nagoya, Osaka and Fukuoka. In May, "Mikazuki Sunset" reached number two on FM North Wave's airplay and sales chart, the Sapporo Hot 100, while the song "Shiranami Top Water" also received minor radio airplay during this time. Radio data compiler Plantech tracked the song as being the second most played song in Hokkaido in early May. "Mikazuki Sunset" eventually became the 66th most successful song of 2007 on the Sapporo Hot 100. ## Track listing ## Personnel Personnel details were sourced from Go to the Futures liner notes booklet. Sakanaction - All members – arrangement, production - Keiichi Ejima – drums - Motoharu Iwadera – guitar - Ami Kusakari – bass guitar - Emi Okazaki – keyboards - Ichiro Yamaguchi – vocals, guitar, songwriting Personnel and imagery' - Brown Post – mixing, recording - Hakkaman – mastering - Kentaro Ishikawa – A&R (AD Room/Sapporo) - Ted Jensen – mastering (2015 reissued edition) - Atsuko Kitaura – photography - Yasumura Kubota – executive producer (AD Room) - Yousuke Ohno (Natural Bicycle) – artwork - Takeshi Takagaki – supervisor (BabeStar) - Masaharu Terada – executive producer (BabeStar) - Wataru Woka – A&R (BabeStar) ## Charts ### Sales ## Release history

Trobairitz

Occitan female troubadours of the 12th and 13th centuries

The trobairitz () were Occitan female troubadours of the 12th and 13th centuries, active from around 1170 to approximately 1260. Trobairitz is both singular and plural. The word trobairitz is first attested in the 13th-century romance Flamenca. It comes from the Provençal word trobar, the literal meaning of which is "to find", and the technical meaning of which is "to compose". The word trobairitz is used very rarely in medieval Occitan, as it does not occur in lyrical poetry, grammatical treatises or in the biographies (vidas) of the trobairitz or troubadours. It does occur in the treatise Doctrina d'acort by Terramagnino da Pisa, written between 1282 and 1296. He uses it as an example of a word the plural and singular of which are the same. Trobairitz composed, wrote verses, and performed for the Occitan noble courts. They are exceptional in musical history as the first known female composers of Western secular music; all earlier known female composers wrote sacred music. The trobairitz were part of courtly society, as opposed to their lower class counterparts the joglaressas. Although troubadours sometimes came from humble origins—Bernart de Ventadorn might have been the son of a castle's baker—the trobairitz were usually nobly born. The most important trobairitz were Alamanda de Castelnau, Azalais de Porcairagues, Maria de Ventadorn, Tibors, Castelloza, Garsenda de Proença, Gormonda de Monpeslier, and the Comtessa de Diá. ## Sources of information There are very few extant sources of information on the individual trobairitz. Almost all information which exists about them come from their vidas (biographies) and razós (contextual explanations of the songs), the brief descriptions that were assembled in song collections called chansonniers. The vidas are notoriously unreliable, since they frequently consisted of little more than romanticized extrapolations from the poems of the trobairitz themselves. The names of about twenty female poets from the 12th and 13th centuries survive, with an estimated thirty-two works attributed to the trobairitz. There are about 5 percent as many trobairitz as there are troubadours, and the number of surviving compositions by trobairitz amounts to around 1 percent of those we have by the troubadours. The earliest surviving lyric written by a trobairitz is that of Bels dous amics, written by Tibors around 1150. Only one survives with musical notation intact, "A chantar" by Comtessa de Diá (see below). Some works which are anonymous in the sources are ascribed by certain modern editors to women, as are some works which are attributed to men in the manuscripts. For comparison, of the 460 male troubadours, about 2600 of their poems survive. Of these, about one in 10 survive with musical notation intact. Only two trobairitz have left us with more than one song apiece. Those two women are Comtessa de Dia, who leaves us with four cansos, and Castelloza, with three cansos and a fourth that is anonymous. The early chansonniers did not separate the works of the male troubadours from those of the trobairitz. It was only in later Italian and Catalan chansonniers that the works of the trobairitz were found in different sections than those of their male counterparts. ## Position in medieval society Throughout the 13th century, women of the court were expected to be able to sing, play instruments, and write jocs partis, or partimen (a debate or dialogue in the form of a poem). The cultivation of these womanly skills may have led to the writings of the trobairitz. The trobairitz may also have arisen due to the power women held in southern France during the 12th and 13th centuries. Women had far more control over land ownership, and Occitan society was far more accepting of women than were most other societies of the time. During the Crusades many men were away, which left women with more administrative responsibility, and thus, power. Nevertheless, this society was not "feminist", nor was fin' amor, which exalted women while at the same time circumscribing many aspects of their lives and behavior. There is difficulty in labeling the trobairitz as either amateurs or professionals. The distinction between these two roles was complicated in the medieval era, since professionals were generally lower class, and amateurs had as much time as professionals to devote to their craft. Joglaresse were lower class, professional composers far less respected than the trobairitz. Both troubadours and trobairitz wrote of fin' amors, or courtly love. Women were generally the subject of the writings of troubadours, however: "No other group of poets give women so exalted a definition within so tightly circumscribed a context of female suppression." The tension between the suppression of women present in the poetry of the troubadours and similar themes in the poetry of the trobairitz is a major source of discussion for modern commentators. Trobairitz poetry pertaining to love tended to offer a less idealized conception of the subject than the poetry of their male counterparts, with a more conversational and less flourished style of writing intended to more closely emulate a more grounded vision of relationships. The trobairitz wrote in the canso (strophic song) and tenso (debate poem) genres. Besides cansos and tensos, trobairitz also wrote sirventes (political poems), planh (lament), salut d’ amor (a love letter not in strophic form), alba (dawn songs), and balada (dance songs). Judging by what survives today, the trobairitz wrote no pastorelas or malmariee songs, unlike their troubadour counterparts. Furthermore, in keeping with the troubadour tradition, the trobairitz closely linked the action of the singing to the action of loving. Comtessa de Dia demonstrates this in her poem Fin ioi me don'alegranssa, stating that "Fin ioi me dona alegranssa/per qu'eu chan plus gaiamen," translated as "Happiness brings me pure joy/which makes me sing more cheerfully." ## Attribution The number of works attributed to the trobairitz is estimated at thirty-two songs, but ranges anywhere from 23 to 46. There are a number of reasons why an exact number is not known. In the courtly love tradition it was common for poems to be written as an exchange of letters, or a debate, as in a tenso. Some of these may have been originally written by one poet; however, some were originally an actual exchange of epistles, later gathered together in a manuscript. Some of these were between men, and some were between a man and a woman. Some modern editors attribute these solely to the man who originated the exchange, and some attribute them to both the man and the woman involved. There is a long history of attributing these solely to men, even when all evidence points to the contrary. Since poetry was highly stylized, it is difficult to determine when a poet speaking as a woman actually was a woman, or a man speaking as a woman. This adds to the difficulty of attribution, especially of anonymous writers. There is some debate as to whether or not the poems by the trobairitz represent genuine feminine voices, since they worked within the highly circumscribed conventions of the troubadours. Matilda Bruckner suggests that the trobairitz "spoke in her own voice as channeled through the voices of many others". By manipulating the strict constructs of troubadour lyric, the trobairitz were able to create their own "fictions of the female voice". There is one notable instance where clear attribution is given to a woman, Bieiris de Romans (also given as Beatritz), but the subject of the poem is another woman, Na Maria. In the poem "Na Maria" Beatritz expresses her love for Maria in the traditional fin' amors style, both in terms of physical longing and courtly admiration. This poem, if not clearly marked as by a woman, would be assumed to be by a man. Some controversy surrounds the works of the Bieiris de Romans, as scholars have suggested that her canso expresses "lesbian desire." The troubadour would typically speak to the domna (woman); the fact that the lyrical dialogue takes place exclusively between one woman and another is an extreme rarity. ## List of trobairitz - Alais Iselda and Carenza: Na Carenza al bel cors avinen - Alamanda de Castelnau - Almucs de Castelnau and Iseut de Capio: Domna n’Almucs, si-us plages - Azalais d'Altier - Azalais de Porcairagues - Beatriz de Diá: A chantar m'er de so qu'eu no volria - Beatritz de Romans: Na Maria, pretz e fina valors - Castelloza - Clara d'Anduza - Felipa - Garsenda de Proença: Vos qe’m semblatz dels corals amadors - Gaudairença: Coblas e dansas (not extant) - Gormonda de Monpeslier - Guillelma de Rosers - Domna H. - Lisa de Londres - Lombarda - Maria de Ventadorn: Gui d'Uisel, be.m pesa de vos - Tibors de Sarenom - Ysabella ## See also - List of troubadours and trobairitz - Medieval music - Provençal literature - Marie de France - the only female composer from northern France: the northern term trouvère did not have a female equivalent (as trobairitz is the female equivalent of troubadour) - List of Medieval composers - List of female composers

Venus (Lady Gaga song)

"Venus" is a song recorded and produced by American singer Lady Gaga for her third studio album, Artpop (2013). It was written by Gaga, Paul "DJ White Shadow" Blair, Madeon, Dino Zisis, Nick Monson, and Sun Ra. The recording includes a sample from the French electropop duo Zombie Zombie's cover of Sun Ra's song "Rocket Number 9", from his studio album, Interstellar Low Ways (1966); Sun Ra received a co-writing credit on the track. Originally intended to be the second single from the album, it was released as the first promotional single from Artpop on October 27, 2013, to the iTunes Store, following the positive reception of "Do What U Want", which was planned to be a promotional single only. "Venus" is an '80s-inspired synth-pop, dance-pop and glam rock song with four hooks, and references Sandro Botticelli's painting The Birth of Venus. Gaga worked on the song with Madeon and was inspired by a number of things, chief among them were: Venus, the Roman goddess of love, the eponymous planet, and sexual intercourse. Lyrically it also name-checks the planets in the solar system. Three accompanying artworks were designed for the single by Steven Klein, including one with a scorpion attached to Gaga's head, a picture of a dead bat, and a third showing her standing naked with an open clam shell superimposed above her shoulder and covering her lower face. A music video was initially conceived for the song, but never materialized. The track was later used during a sequence in the music video for Artpop's third single, "G.U.Y." instead. Upon its release, "Venus" received mixed reviews from music critics. They called the song catchy, but had mixed feelings towards the lyrics, and preferred the previously released "Do What U Want". It achieved moderate success on charts around the world, reaching the top of the charts in Hungary and Spain, and the top ten in seven additional countries. The song debuted and peaked at number 32 on the US Billboard Hot 100. Gaga performed the track on the tenth series of British The X Factor, along with a suggestive performance of "Do What U Want", which prompted complaints to the broadcaster and British media regulator, Ofcom. Other notable performances occurred at The Graham Norton Show, Gaga's ArtRave promotional event, and the ArtRave: The Artpop Ball tour in 2014. ## Background and development Development of Gaga's third studio album, Artpop, began shortly after the release of her second record, Born This Way (2011), and by the following year, the album's concepts were "beginning to flourish" as Gaga collaborated with producers Fernando Garibay and DJ White Shadow. In the meantime, the singer also worked with French disc jockey Madeon. This was his first experience collaborating with a vocalist face-to-face. On MTV News he clarified that he had "always wanted to work with pop artists and my \#1 on my list was Lady Gaga. So when I had the opportunity to do that, I was really thrilled." Having mutual respect for each other's work, Gaga praised Madeon's production skills, saying, "He is so amazing. He has such an understanding of music at such a young age. He reminds me of myself so much. He's obsessed, so obsessed with music." Madeon was associated with co-writing and co-producing three songs on Artpop—"Venus", "Mary Jane Holland" and "Gypsy". During her interview with SiriusXM radio, Gaga confirmed that "Venus" was the first song developed for Artpop and it set the mood and tone for the rest of the album to follow. Gaga produced the track entirely by herself with some co-producing contributions from Madeon. Among the inspirations behind the track were: Venus, the Roman goddess of love, the eponymous planet, and sexual intercourse. A further explanation was provided by the singer: > "So, this song is about faith, but it's also about finding faith in other places, in the beyond, and my experience with love being something that took me up a really long time to find. So it's really psychedelic and it really takes you on a journey [...] I kinda got this lot of different inspiration from this sort of futuristic disco meets late 70's and jazz and this really really kinda gooey deep groove [...] This song is really about sex, but it's about sex on the most mythological way." ## Recording and composition Gaga did not spare any free time for the song's recording and would usually start the sessions after the Born This Way Ball show performances were over. Madeon noted, "She would still give everything – even on the demo take! She's really impressive." Madeon's production on Artpop was different from his usual endeavours, and he helped take the mood of the track from being a ballad to being an anthem, but still retaining the sentimental and inspirational aspects of it. "Venus" was written and produced by Gaga, with additional songwriting from DJ White Shadow, Nick Monson and Dino Zisis. The song also includes a sample from the French electropop duo Zombie Zombie's cover of jazz musician Sun Ra's song "Rocket Number 9", from his studio album, Interstellar Low Ways (1966). Sun Ra was thus given a co-writing credit on the track. The chorus' build-up, bridge and drums are heavily influenced by Madeon's unreleased track titled 'Ubelkeit'. The song was recorded by Dave Russell, Bill Malina and Ghazi Hourani at the Record Plant Studios, with additional recording carried out by Benjamin 'Ben' Rice at CRC Studios. Andrew Robertson and Daniel Zaidenstadt assisted Rice in the recording sessions, while Steve Faye assisted Malina. Gaga did the bass arrangements with Monson, who also worked on the synth arrangement with Madeon and on additional production. Tim Stewart was responsible for the guitars played on "Venus". It was mixed by Manny Marroquin at Larrabee North Studios; further mixing was done by Chris Galland and Delhert Bowers. Gene Grimaldi mastered the track at Oasis Mastering Studios, in Burbank, California. "Venus" is a synth-pop, dance-pop and glam rock song consisting of four hooks, which "swings like a pendulum from one emotional extreme to another, from its deadpan hashtag rap [...] to its glittering dance balladry". Gaga's vocal delivery is similar to that of David Bowie in his persona Ziggy Stardust, while the song's structure is reminiscent of Bananarama's 1986 single of the same name. Along with the Bowie-esque verses, there's one hook where the beat drops, then another hook where it starts building up, and finally the chorus is reached. When Bradley Stern from MuuMuse reviewed the single, he described the chorus as "total pop euphoria" with Gaga belting the lyrics, "When you touch me I die just a little inside / I wonder if this could be love!" The song is written in the key of F minor and composed in the time signature of common time, with a tempo of 122 beats per minute. Gaga's vocals range from F₃ to E₅, and the track follows a basic sequence of Fm–D#–Fm–D# in the first verse, G#–D#–Fm–D# in the second hook, Fm–A#–Fm–A# in the third verse, and finally Fm–G#–D#–C# in the chorus. According to Jon Pareles of The New York Times, it is a "mutating, episodic dance-floor track, [in which] the singer presents herself as the goddess of love in the 'seashell bikini' painted by Botticelli [in The Birth of Venus]". The lyrics of "Venus" are space-themed, name-checking the planets in the Solar System, with references to the planet's mythical counterpart, Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love. The extraterrestrial themes drew comparisons to Katy Perry's "E.T." (2011) in the Entertainment Weekly review of the track. John Walker from MTV News noted that "During Gaga's futuristic ballroom emcee moment, where she channels something straight out of Paris Is Burning she utters the line 'Uranus!/ Don't you know my ass is famous!?' That's like, the greatest version of 'Don't You Know Who I Am!?' that we've ever heard." ## Release and artwork Gaga announced that "Venus" would be the second single from Artpop through her Twitter account. However, on October 22, 2013, Gaga announced that she would release "Do What U Want" featuring R. Kelly as the second single instead of "Venus", due to the former's overwhelming success on the iTunes Store. "Venus" was released as the first promotional single, with Gaga tweeting, "Don't worry monsters! We are still scheduled to release \#Venus this Monday with a snippet on Friday! AND it will STILL have its own video." After two successive previews, the full track was made available for streaming on October 27, 2013, through Vevo and was released for purchase the next day. Prior to the release, Gaga unveiled three cover artworks, which were photographed by Steven Klein. The first one shows Gaga naked with a scorpion balanced on her head inspired by Serbian performance artist Marina Abramović's Portrait with Scorpion (Closed Eyes). In the second image, the singer stands naked with a kebab in her mouth, while the third shows a dead bat laying flat on its back. A writer for Rap-Up called the artworks "striking", while Metro commented that the covers were only more "photo[s] of Lady Gaga doing something weird." John Walker from MTV News found it difficult to understand the meaning behind the artworks, but nevertheless found them compelling. When the song debuted on YouTube, yet another picture was used to accompany the audio showing Gaga in metallic paint with a scorpion attached to her head. Gaga had announced that the music video for "Venus" would be directed by filmmaker Ruth Hogben, who previously collaborated with the singer on interludes for The Monster Ball Tour, and photographed her for the October 2013 issue of Elle magazine. However, the music video was never released. A shortened version of the song was later included in the full-length music video for Artpop's third single, "G.U.Y.". It is played as Gaga enters Hearst Castle and is lowered into the Neptune Pool. This is followed by a shot of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills playing musical instruments while lip-synching the lyrics to "Venus" in matching pink dresses. ## Critical reception Upon its release, "Venus" received mixed reviews from music critics. Shirley Li of Entertainment Weekly was positive in her assessment of the song, describing it as "catchy". Lars Brandle of Billboard gave a positive review, noting its "catchy, radio-friendly chorus." Philip Sherburne wrote in Spin magazine that Artpop gets "a lot artier" with "Venus". Mikael Wood of the Los Angeles Times expressed that its "throbbing disco-glam" groove "feels like a throwback to her 'Just Dance' days", calling it "fun, kind of, but hardly extraordinary." Spencer Kornhaber commented in The Atlantic that with the song packing four separate choruses, it makes the music sound "enormous". Christina Lee of Idolator gave a positive review, saying that "'Venus' doesn't waste a single moment dealing with subtlety or nuances of any kind. 'Venus' swings like a pendulum from one emotional extreme to another, from its deadpan hashtag rap to its glittering dance balladry." John Walker of MTV Buzzworthy called the song "crazy, otherwordly [sic], barely intelligible sense, but still — sense!" Bradley Stern of MuuMuse described "Venus" as "a track just weird and stupid and messy and catchy enough to work." He compared the chorus to that of "Bad Romance" adding that "no matter how weird Gaga gets with her music [...] she'll always bring it back to that undeniably massive pop chorus." Reviewing Artpop for USA Today, Jerry Shriver recommended "Venus" as one of the tracks audiences should download. Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone gave the song a rating of 3 stars out of 5, and wrote that Gaga's "space-disco ode to the planet of sex sounds even more like Madonna than you'd expect, especially 'Papa Don't Preach'". Philip Matusavage of MusicOMH called the song an attempt to be "self-consciously epic", but it is a "disjointed mess" instead. Sal Cinquemani wrote in Slant Magazine that the song confirms that the singer knows how to write catchy hooks, but she does not know what to do with them." In a separate review, Alexa Camp of the same magazine, called the song a "tongue-in-cheek album filler" with non-sense lyrics, feeling that "it was a solar system away from smashes" like the singer's previous releases "Telephone" and "Bad Romance". Michael Cragg of The Guardian expressed that "Venus" was not "good enough to support the weight of the clanging metaphors" of the album, describing it as "almost parodical." ## Chart performance In the United States, "Venus" debuted at number 32 on the Billboard Hot 100 with 108,000 digital downloads sold, enabling it to enter the Hot Digital Songs chart at number 12. The song also entered the Hot Dance/Electronic Songs at number 13 on the week of Artpop's release, and was present on the chart for a total of 10 weeks. "Venus" also debuted and peaked at number 19 on the Canadian Hot 100, and was present for one week only. "Venus" performed moderately in Oceania, debuting and peaking at numbers 31 and 20 in Australia and New Zealand, respectively. In South Korea, "Venus" debuted at number four on the Gaon International Downloads Chart with sales of 11,985 copies, and sold 21,016 digital downloads by November 2013. In the United Kingdom, "Venus" was not allowed to chart when it was first released, since the Official Charts Company only allows independent song releases. Tracks released as part of the album's pre-order are considered to be free downloads by the company and hence barred from charting. Following the official release of Artpop, "Venus" sold 3,174 digital downloads independent of the album, to debut at number 76 on the UK Singles Chart. As of March 2020, the song has gone on to sell 11,200 copies and has been streamed 3.37 million times. In Ireland it debuted and peaked at number 13, while in Scotland it reached number 74. Across Europe, the song reached the top of the charts in Hungary and Spain, top 10 of the download charts in Finland, Greece and Sweden, and top 10 of the main charts in France and Italy. This enabled the track to debut and peak at number seven on the Euro Digital Songs chart. ## Live performances Gaga performed "Venus" for the first time at London's G-A-Y nightclub on the October 26, 2013, stripping naked in the process and provoking a media frenzy. The next day, she performed the song as well as "Do What U Want" on the tenth series of The X Factor (UK), along with a flurry of backup dancers and seashells covering her breasts. At the end of the performance, the singer removed the blond wig she wore and started singing "Do What U Want". ITV, which aired the performance, and the Office of Communications (Offcom), the British media regulator, received roughly 260 complaints regarding the performance because of Gaga's costume and the suggestive lyrics of the track. The show was broadcast before the 9pm watershed. A spokesperson from the channel released a statement saying that they did not believe the performance to be inappropriate. Ofcom said they would assess the complaints and investigate based on their results. Two weeks later, Gaga performed "Venus" and "Do What U Want" on The Graham Norton Show, which was aired on November 8, 2013. The singer went barefoot for the performance wearing a blond wig and seashell bikini similar to those in her performance on The X Factor. Kirsty McCormack of the Daily Express noted Gaga's look was comparable to the painting The Birth of Venus. "Venus" was next performed at Gaga's ArtRave one-off concert on November 10, 2013, at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, on the main stage adjacent to a Jeff Koons sculpture of the singer. Before starting the performance, Gaga announced to the audience that they were "blasting off to a new dimension" and then stepped onto a rotating three-tiered stage. During the opening of the Lady Gaga and the Muppets Holiday Spectacular, Gaga performed the track with The Muppets as backup singers. The singer was dressed in nude colored seashell and rhinestone bra and underwear, with her hair coiffed high, and wearing a septum piercing. Gaga also sang the track on the Japanese variety show SMAP×SMAP on November 28, 2013. "Venus" was included on the setlist for the ArtRave: The Artpop Ball tour in 2014. She performed it wearing a mop-top wig and clam-shell bikini, while playing a Gibson Flying V guitar. During the performance, 15 large, inflatable flowers rose up from below on stage. The flowers were inflated using an air hose to create a garden on the stage. According to Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone, "Gaga did 'Venus' in a clamshell bikini and a wig evoking Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C., while her dancers wore sad little white costumes that made them look like Woody Allen and Christopher Guest playing sperm cells in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex\* (\*But Were Afraid to Ask)." In 2017, Gaga performed the song at the Coachella Festival. ## Credits and personnel Credits adapted from the liner notes of Artpop. ### Management - Recorded at The Record Plant Studios, Hollywood, California and CRC Studios, Chicago, Illinois - Mixed at Larrabee North Studios, North Hollywood, California and Popcultur Studios, Paris, France - Mastered at Oasis Mastering Studios, Burbank, California - Stefani Germanotta P/K/A Lady Gaga (BMI) Sony ATV Songs LLC/House of Gaga Publishing, LLC/GloJoe Music Inc. (BMI), Maxwell and Carter Publishing, LLC (ASCAP). ### Personnel - Lady Gaga – lead vocals, songwriter, producer, guitars, piano - Madeon – songwriter, mixing - Paul "DJ White Shadow" Blair – songwriter - Dave Russell – recording - Benjamin Rice – recording - Bill Malina – recording - Ghazi Hourani – recording - Daniel Zaidenstadt – recording assistant - Andrew Robertson – recording assistant - Steve Faye – recording assistant - Manny Marroquin – mixing - Chris Gallant – mixing assistant - Delhert Bowers – mixing assistant - Tim Stewart – guitar - Ivy Skoff – union contract administrator - Gene Grimaldi – mastering ## Charts ## See also - Sun Ra discography

Tiffany Doggett

Fictional character of Netflix series Orange Is the New Black

Tiffany "Pennsatucky" Doggett is a fictional character in the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black, portrayed by Taryn Manning. Manning was offered the role without needing to audition. The character of Doggett is based on a real-life prisoner, a "young woman from western Pennsylvania who proudly called herself a redneck". She is originally from Waynesboro, Virginia. Prior to her imprisonment, she is shown to be exchanging sexual favors for soda or money. Doggett is also known to have had five abortions. She is charged with shooting an abortion doctor and decides to hire a Christian lawyer; the ensuing support she receives from Christian groups leads to Doggett becoming a born-again Christian. Doggett makes her first appearance in Season 1, episode 5 and initially is the main antagonist but becomes a protagonist in later seasons. In her debut episode, she unsuccessfully attempts to hang up a cross in the prison chapel and expresses homophobic views. She conflicts with Alex Vause and Piper Chapman throughout the first season. In the second season, Doggett's storyline revolves around her friendships with Sam Healy and Carrie "Big Boo" Black. This friendship with Big Boo continues into the third season. Big Boo comforts Doggett when the latter is feeling remorse for her abortions and when she is raped by a correctional officer. When she is transferred to maximum security, she becomes close friends with Suzanne Warren and begins studying to get her GED and when she is wronged by the system and believes herself to have failed the test which she passed, Doggett overdoses, resulting in her death. The character Doggett and her storylines have received mixed reviews from critics, though Manning's performance has received critical acclaim. ## Creation and casting Tiffany Doggett's nickname "Pennsatucky" is derived from Pennsyltucky, a slang term for the rural portions of Pennsylvania. The author, Piper Kerman, of the book Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison, which inspired Orange is the New Black, describes the real life version of Pennsatucky as "a young woman from western Pennsylvania who proudly called herself a redneck". Kerman further describes her as someone addicted to crack cocaine and dealing with the loss of custody of her child. Taryn Manning, already an established actress, did not have to audition for the role of Doggett and was offered it. Manning, when speaking about this to Joshua Rotter of Download.com, said that she immediately accepted the offer. "I loved it and didn't need to look any further. I was sold." To prepare for the role, Manning did some research on faith healing and evangelistic ceremonies. She also states that her inspiration for Doggett at least partly comes from the White family in the 2009 documentary film The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia. The only make-up that Manning wears for her role as Doggett, in the first season, is on her teeth to create the effect of receding gums and missing teeth. From the second season onward, however, Doggett has false teeth in place and so the teeth seen are Manning's own. ## Fictional background Doggett is from Waynesboro, Virginia. After Doggett has her first period, her mother gives her advice about sex: "go on and let them [referring to men] do their business." This leads to her, later in life, to have sex with men in exchange for soda or money. Her perspective of sex changes when she meets Nathan. Jonathon Dornbush, of Entertainment Weekly writes "[Nathan] wants them both to enjoy the experience [of sex], and it opens Tiffany's perception of relationships." Nathan and his family move away, causing their relationship to end, and, almost immediately afterwards, Doggett is raped by an ex-boyfriend. Doggett has had five abortions. After having her fifth abortion, which takes place at an abortion clinic in Fishersville, Virginia, the nurse remarks "we should give you a punch card, get the sixth one free." Doggett is so offended by this joke that she shoots the nurse with a shotgun. She agrees to have a Christian lawyer as it was likely to lead to a lighter sentence and her legal bills being paid for. Since she shot an abortion nurse, she became a 'hero' of the anti-abortion movement. Doggett regularly receives cards praising her for her claims of defending the unborn as well as generous cash donations to her commissary account by fans & supporters. Although her Christian faith was initially fake, at some point Doggett did become a Christian; this was confirmed by Manning in an interview. Manning describes Doggett's faith as "a hybrid of Christianity, Baptism, Presbyterian". ## Storylines ### Season 1 Doggett first appears in the fifth episode. She wishes to hang up a cross in Litchfield Penitentiary's chapel but is refused permission. She ignores this and hangs her cross up on a light fixture; this causes the entire fixture to fall down and hence damages the chapel's ceiling. She also displays transphobia; calling the transgender woman Sophia Burset (played by Laverne Cox) an 'abomination' and 'it' and blaming her for the damage to the chapel. Doggett has numerous clashes with Alex Vause (played by Laura Prepon); firstly Vause threatens to rape Doggett after growing tired of her complaining about Piper Chapman (played by Taylor Schilling); Doggett locks Vause in a dryer while she is helping Chapman to fix it and, lastly, Doggett snitches on Chapman and Vause for dancing provocatively with each other; resulting in Chapman being placed in solitary confinement. Chapman and Vause get revenge on Doggett and trick her into believing that she has faith healing powers, eventually culminating in her being sent to the psychiatric ward. Although Chapman aids in Doggett's release from the psychiatric ward, Doggett still bears a grudge against her. Doggett's lawyer encourages her to evangelize to Chapman instead and this leads to Chapman 'converting' but then refusing to be baptized. Doggett sees this as disrespectful and expresses a wish to kill Chapman. The two have a confrontation at the end of the season's final episode. Doggett attacks Chapman with a shiv made from a wooden cross; Chapman throws Doggett to the ground and hits her repeatedly. ### Season 2 It is revealed in the third episode that Suzanne Warren (played by Uzo Aduba) is also involved in the fight at the end of season one. She punches Chapman in the face twice and knocks her unconscious (Doggett is already unconscious at this stage). This gives the impression that Doggett and Chapman were evenly matched and therefore equally responsible. Following Doggett's return to full health, she finds that her previous best friends, Leanne Taylor (played by Emma Myles) and Angie Rice (played by Julie Lake), no longer want to be associated with her. This leaves Doggett seeking prison counsellor Sam Healy (played by Michael J. Harney) for comfort. Following her friendships with Taylor and Rice continuing to deteriorate, Doggett forms friendships with Healy and Carrie "Big Boo" Black (played by Lea DeLaria). Healy and Doggett unite to form "Safe Place", a therapy group where prisoners can share their feelings in a confidential and supportive environment. "Safe Place" is short-lived, however, and Healy decides to cancel the group indefinitely after Doggett fails to attend one of the sessions; when he investigates her reason for non-attendance, he finds her getting a hair cut from Burset. Doggett initially talks to Big Boo, an openly lesbian inmate, during a blackout in the prison as she believes that there is a secret 'gay agenda' and she believes that Big Boo will give her the answers that she is seeking. Doggett's physical appearance also changes in this season; she has white false teeth, neater hair and her skin looks smoother. ### Season 3 In the first episode, Big Boo and Doggett's friendship continues to develop. Seeing that Doggett bears strong feelings of guilt relating to the five abortions that she has had, Big Boo makes reference to the book Freakonomics, which suggests that crime rates in the 1990s fell because of Roe v. Wade. Following Lorna Morello (played by Yael Stone) being relieved of her duty of driving the prison van, the role is given to Doggett. She comes into contact with one of the new correctional officers called Charlie Coates (played by James McMenamin). Coates is initially friendly towards Doggett. Despite relationships between prison staff and prisoners being forbidden, Coates kisses Doggett, against her will, after feeding some ducks. Following another outing, Coates gets in trouble with his boss Joe Caputo (Nick Sandow) for being late for court and is placed on probation. Doggett apologises for having caused him trouble, but nevertheless he rapes her in the back of the prison van. When Big Boo learns of the rape, she encourages Doggett to take revenge on Coates by making him unconscious and then raping him with a broomstick. Whilst they successfully drug Coates, neither of them are willing to violate him. In order to end contact with Coates, Doggett fakes a seizure on her next outing with him and is declared unfit for driving a van. She is replaced as prison van driver by another inmate, Maritza Ramos (played by Diane Guerrero). ### Season 4 Coates approaches Doggett in the fourth episode of season 4; Doggett responds in a manner that shows clearly that she is still affected by the rape. This is also the first time that Doggett openly refers to the incident as a 'rape'. Coates is seen to be visibly distressed by this. Towards the middle of the season, it is shown that Coates finally apologizes to Doggett and she, clearly surprised and relieved, forgives him and goes on to tell Big Boo about what happened. Big Boo, still furious about the rape, refuses to accept Doggett's decision, straining their friendship. In the twelfth episode of the season, Doggett explains to Big Boo the reasons why she decided to forgive Coates: "Pain is always there... but suffering is a choice". The two resume their friendship following this. In "Toast Can Never Be Bread Again", as Doggett and Big Boo are assigned to cover the cafeteria following the death of Poussey Washington (played by Samira Wiley), Coates is also there to watch over the body. Coates then tells Doggett that he needs to quit because he hates how awful the prison is becoming. She tells him she does not want him to go, since they are on good terms, and she likes talking to him, despite what happened. She kisses him and Coates makes it clear that he wants to go further than this but chooses not to, reasoning "I don't want to ruin where we are now". ### Season 5 During the first episode, "Riot FOMO", Doggett hides in commissary with Boo while a riot takes place throughout the prison. She later turns against her former friends Angie and Leanne in favour of Coates; she snatches a gun from Angie and passes it to Coates so that he can escape the prison. Doggett is then put on trial in a kangaroo court, but Boo convinces the other inmates to let her go; arguing that punishing Doggett would make them, morally, no better than the prison guards that have been mistreating them all for such a long time. At the end of the season, she escapes the prison through a broken fence to reunite with Coates. ### Season 6 At the beginning of the sixth season, Doggett was hiding in the trunk of Coates' car as he and Officer Dixon take a 'road trip'. While parked in front of a hotel, she eventually gets tired of hiding in the trunk, goes up to their hotel room, and gets in bed with Coates. Later, Doggett, disguised as a young boy, Coates, and Dixon go to an amusement park, where she and Coates are mistaken for a gay couple and harassed before Dixon intervenes. Coates plans to take Doggett with him to Canada where they can live a 'normal life' together; in the hotel, he grabs Doggett quite violently while making this point to her. While camping in the woods, Coates has another anger outburst in the presence of Doggett, and, after Coates falls asleep, Doggett leaves him and turns herself into the police. While back in prison, she makes a deal with Linda Ferguson (played by Beth Dover) that she would be placed in a desirable cell block in exchange for keeping quiet about Ferguson's relationship with Big Boo during the riot. ### Season 7 Doggett learns that she has dyslexia while studying for the GED, and receives extra tutoring from Tasha "Taystee" Jefferson (played by Danielle Brooks). Because of the carelessness of Joel Luschek (played by Matt Peters), she doesn't receive her extra time (because of her dyslexia) on her final exam and she assumes that she has failed. Distraught, Doggett meets with Dayanara "Daya" Diaz (played by Dascha Polanco) and her gang who are doing drugs in a laundry room, joins them, overdoses on fentanyl and dies before Taystee sees her lying on the floor, unconscious. Her spirit is later seen waving goodbye before disappearing. It is also revealed later that Doggett had, in fact, passed her GED exam, without the need for extra time after all. ## Critical commentary Doggett was widely perceived to have been the series' main antagonist in its first season. She was seen to be homophobic and racist; one Cosmopolitan critic described her as 'vile'. A critic for TV Insider described the first season Doggett as "terrifying, manipulative and so entirely unlikable" but also "hypnotic to watch". Horatia Harrod's review in the Daily Telegraph described Manning's portrayal of Doggett as "brilliantly unhinged". Other critics have praised the character, especially in the final episode of season one; calling her "fantastic", a "solid character" and "one of the best characters on the show". Some also felt that Manning's performance was worthy of an Emmy nomination. Following the release of the first season of Orange is the New Black, Doggett received some criticism from different media. Writing for The American Conservative, B. D. McClay claimed that Doggett was a poor and inaccurate representation of American Christians; "Pennsatucky is such an aggressively terrible character" and "her faith is neither well-understood nor well-drawn". Laura Leonard of Christianity Today, supports Clay's view and goes further to say "it was frustrating to see this one painful narrative represent Christian faith on OITNB, a show that masters other aspects of the melting pot so well", speaking about Doggett's background story and conflict with Chapman. Two critics for The A.V. Club also gave negative reviews of Doggett; Emily VanDerWerff says that "Pennsatucky never really comes together as a character in the same way as some of the others on the show" and Myles McNutt opted to criticize the storyline of the final episode of the first season specifically, saying that it "[treats] her like a cartoon villain instead of a real character". Betsy Leondar-Wright accused the series' creators of classism and said that Doggett was an "outrageous Redneck stereotype". Doggett's rape storyline in the third season garnered much reaction, both positive and negative. Jada Yuan of Vulture described the rape scenes (both the one in the flashback and the one involving correctional officer Coates) as "heartbreaking" and praised episode director Jesse Peretz's decision to keep the camera focused on Manning during the scenes. Megan Vick praised the 'transformation' of the character of Doggett, calling it "the season's breakout storyline and performance". McNutt, who had been critical of Doggett in the first season, spoke positively about the rape storyline. Marissa Higgins, writing for xoJane, contended that the show "didn't accomplish anything with their portrayal of sexual assault" and said that she disliked the way that the story ended with Doggett effectively quitting her job as van driver in order to avoid further contact with Coates. Emma Eisenberg, of Salon, criticized the scenes depicting Doggett growing up in Waynesboro as being "riddled with excessive Appalachian clichés". She went further by calling Doggett's mother unrealistic in her attitude towards sex: "the mothers I met [near Waynesboro] wanted their daughters to understand sex and to make informed choices". Eisenberg claimed that, therefore, Doggett's mother's speech about sex − "it's like a bee sting, in and out, over before you knew it was happening" − was not representative of people in Waynesboro at that time. Chloe Stillwell completely disagreed with Eisenberg and insisted that the character of Doggett was realistic: "Eisenberg's argument completely misses the point that perhaps the show is trying to be as real as possible, and acknowledging that there are real life Pennsatuckies in this world isn't to disenfranchise Appalachia." The relationship between Coates and Doggett continued to gain criticism in seasons 5 and 6. Anne Cohen, writing for Refinery29, says "Are we supposed to conveniently forget that as an inmate, Doggett can't legally consent? And if that's the direction the show has chosen to go in, is that really the kind of thing we need in a TV culture already brimming with problematic depictions of sexual violence?" Following the termination of their relationship, another critic remarks "I’m relieved she’s away from Coates, and even more relieved that OITNB tied up this story line." Doggett's death in the penultimate episode of the final season of the show gained significant coverage. Ryan Schwartz called it "one of the biggest tragedies in the series’ seven-year history". Another critic, Allison Schonter, comments on how much the character has grown since being an antagonist in the first series, "[Doggett's] death marked a devastating end for a character who experienced immense character growth throughout seven seasons". Sarah Halle Corey commented that the producers used hints that Taystee was going to commit suicide as a red herring before revealing the plot twist in Doggett's death from drug overdose. Jackie Strause, writing for The Hollywood Reporter, echoed what many other critics had stated, "[the] overdose is especially heartbreaking given how much the character turned her life around since season one." ## See also - List of Orange Is the New Black characters

Killer Klowns from Outer Space

1988 film by the Chiodo Brothers

Killer Klowns from Outer Space is a 1988 American science fiction horror comedy film written, directed and produced by the Chiodo Brothers, and starring Grant Cramer, Suzanne Snyder, John Allen Nelson and John Vernon. It is the only film written and directed by the Chiodo Brothers, who also created the practical effects and makeup. It concerns a clan of evil extraterrestrials who resemble clowns. They arrive on Earth and invade a small town in order to capture, kill and harvest the human inhabitants to use as sustenance by drinking their blood. Killer Klowns from Outer Space was filmed in Watsonville, California, and at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. The film utilizes practical effects, including rubber suits. The score was composed by John Massari. The film received generally positive reviews and has been considered a cult classic. Sequels have been in development hell since the original film's release. Stephen Chiodo stated in 2016 that he hopes to produce three additional films, or possibly a television series. In 2018, NBCUniversal's Syfy announced that it was in talks to license the rights to make one or more sequels. ## Plot Just outside the town of Crescent Cove, Mike Tobacco and his girlfriend Debbie Stone are parked with other couples at the local lovers' lane when they spot a strange glowing object falling to Earth. Nearby, farmer Gene Green, believing it to be Halley's Comet, ventures into the woods to find the impact site. He stumbles upon a large circus tent-like structure, and he and his dog are captured by mysterious clown-like aliens known as "Klowns". Mike and Debbie arrive to investigate for themselves. Entering the structure, they discover a complex interior with bizarre rooms and eventually realize it is the object and a spaceship. They find a gelatinized Gene Green encased in a sticky cocoon and are spotted by a klown, who shoots popcorn at them from a bazooka-like weapon and then chases them. He is aided by another klown, who uses a living balloon dog. Narrowly escaping to the local police station, they report the incident to one of the officers and Debbie's ex-boyfriend, Dave Hansen, and his curmudgeonly partner, Curtis Mooney. Mike takes Dave to the site of the ship, only to find it has disappeared and left a large crater in its place. They travel to the lovers' lane, only to find all the cars abandoned and covered in the cocoon's substance. The klowns begin encasing townspeople in cocoons using toy-like rayguns. Several klowns perform pranks and mock circus acts which result in the deaths of several onlookers. Mike and Dave witness a klown using shadow puppets to shrink a crowd of people, then dump them into a bag full of popcorn, which are revealed to be klowns in larval form. Back at the police station, another klown arrives and Mooney arrests him, believing him to be a teenage prankster. Dave returns to the station to find the place ransacked and the klown using a deceased Mooney as a ventriloquist's dummy. Dave shoots the alien in the nose, which causes him to spin wildly and explode. Mike meets with his friends, Rich and Paul Terenzi, and using the loudspeaker on their ice cream truck, they drive around town attempting to warn people of the klowns. At Debbie's house, popcorn from her earlier encounter with the klowns evolves into juvenile klowns and attacks her. As she attempts to escape, she is intercepted by five of the klowns, who trap her in a giant balloon. Mike, Dave, and the Terenzis witness Debbie's capture and give chase, following the klowns to the local amusement park, where they have relocated their ship. Journeying through a funhouse, the Terenzi brothers become separated. After Dave and Mike witness a klown using a drinking straw to drink one of the gelatinized townspeople's blood, they rescue Debbie and flee into a maze full of traps. The trio then finds themselves surrounded by a legion of klowns. The Terenzis arrive in their ice cream truck and use the PA to distract the aliens. A gargantuan klown puppet, Jojo the Klownzilla, appears and destroys the ice cream truck, seemingly killing the Terenzis; Dave creates a distraction and Mike and Debbie escape before the ship begins to take off. Dave uses his badge to pierce Jojo's nose, causing him to explode and destroy the ship. A clown car drops out of the sky and Dave emerges along with the Terenzi brothers, who miraculously survived by hiding in the ice cream truck's freezer moments before it was destroyed. As the group watches the fireworks created by the ship's destruction, pies fall from the sky and land on their faces. ## Cast ## Production The film's original title was simply Killer Klowns, but the filmmakers added the words "from Outer Space" to prevent audiences from assuming the film was a slasher movie. Filming took place in the city of Watsonville and at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. The film was Christopher Titus' first role in a motion picture. The popcorn gun used by the clowns in the film, which included a compressor that would allow the weapon to actually propel popcorn, was the most expensive prop made for the production, costing \$7,000 to create and taking six weeks to build. The legs of the clowns' balloon animal dog were coated in latex by the film's special effects department in order to keep the balloon from popping on the pine needles which covered the ground. While the Chiodo Brothers were well-known as special effects artists, much of the special effects work was carried out by other artists, allowing the brothers to focus more on their production duties. However, the brothers did personally construct the miniature set for the "Klownzilla" sequence. Most of the vehicles used in the film were rented and therefore were not allowed to be damaged. Two cars were accidentally damaged; one was driven off a bridge, although it was only intended to roll a short distance, and the Jeep filled with webbing needed \$3,000 of repairs after solvent in the webbing damaged the interior. The Chiodo Brothers wanted to cast comedian Soupy Sales as the security guard killed by the clowns' acidic pies, as he was known for receiving pies in the face on his children's television show Lunch with Soupy Sales. However, the executive producers did not want to allocate funds to pay for Sales' plane ticket to the production, as they felt that audiences would not know who Sales was. Jojo the Klownzilla, the colossal klown who appears at the end of the film, was originally intended to be created using stop-motion animation, but was instead portrayed by Charles Chiodo in a rubber suit. In the film's original finale, Deputy Dave dies in the explosion of the clowns' ship, but this was changed after audiences in test screenings desired a more upbeat ending. Four molds were made for the main clowns. One was peanut shaped, another was triangular, circular, and the final shape was an inverted triangle. From those four molds the effects artists produced two clown characters from each. Klownzilla had its own mask molded specifically for its appearance. Two of the masks that were used to create the clowns in the film were re-purposed and used to portray trolls in the 1991 film Ernest Scared Stupid. ## Soundtrack The film's score was composed by John Massari. The title song "Killer Klowns" was written and performed by the American punk rock band the Dickies and was released on their album Killer Klowns from Outer Space in 1988. Frontman Leonard Phillips wrote the song without seeing the movie. A limited-edition complete soundtrack was released in 2006 through Percepto Records and features twenty-six tracks of the score, the title song "Killer Klowns", and four bonus tracks at a running time just over sixty-nine minutes. The score was later released by Waxwork Records on a vinyl LP. ## Release Killer Klowns from Outer Space was released in the United States on May 27, 1988. The film was released on VHS by Media Home Entertainment in 1989, and then by MGM Home Entertainment in 2000 as part of their "Midnite Movies" line, and on DVD on August 28, 2001. MGM released the film on Blu-ray on September 11, 2012. On May 25, 2013, the film received a 35 mm screening at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Vintage Park in Houston, Texas, as well as a 35 mm screening at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Yonkers, New York on June 20, 2014. On April 9, 2018, Arrow Films released their special edition Blu-Ray of Killer Klowns From Outer Space. This release was newly restored, with interviews, documentary featurettes, Klown auditions, bloopers, deleted scenes, a double-sided poster that features the original theatrical poster, as well as art by Sara Deck, and more. ## Critical reception The film has been considered a cult classic. On the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an average score of 76%, based on 25 critic reviews. The site's consensus reads: "Killer Klowns from Outer Space's title promises darkly goofy fun – and more often than not, the movie delivers." Leonard Klady of The Los Angeles Times wrote that the film "demonstrates both above-average technical skill and large dollops of imagination". Film critic Leonard Maltin initially declared the film a BOMB ("Strictly tenth-rate."), but gave the movie a second look after a few years; this time, Maltin awarded the picture two-and-a-half out of a possible four stars. In his second review, Maltin wrote "Routinely plotted, but vividly designed, with cheeky humor ... plays its premise to the hilt, all 'circus' bases touched". Charles Bramesco of The A.V. Club recommended the film, writing that "The film is patently absurd, but the filmmakers are fully committed to that absurdity. It's hard not to respect", and noted the film's "enduring appeal". Charles Webb of MTV.com called the performances "a little rough", and wrote "If Killer Klowns isn't especially scary, it's only kind of funny but still gets by on the execution of extremely inventive visuals based on the clown/circus motif". Dread Central gave the film three out of a possible five stars. JoBlo.com gave the film a rating of 8/10, stating that the film "is the king of '80s B-movies and it delivers the tacky goods by the truckloads". John Gugie of HorrorNews.net gave the film a score of 3/5, calling it "a hit or miss for horror and sci-fi fans". Author Matthew Chojnacki recommended the film in his book Alternative Movie Posters: Film Art From the Underground. Jim Craddock, in his book VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever, gave the film two-and-a-half out of four bones, calling the film a "Visually striking, campy but slick horror flick that'll make you think twice about your next visit to the big top". Director Brian Herzlinger considers Killer Klowns from Outer Space to be "his favorite cult film". ## Planned sequels The Chiodo brothers planned to release a "requel" (a portmanteau of remake and sequel), titled Return of the Killer Klowns from Outer Space in 3D, in 2012. Stephen Chiodo was to direct the movie, and his brother Charles would be a production designer. Grant Cramer, who starred in the original film as Mike Tobacco, stated that his character would return. According to Cramer, Tobacco now would be a town drunk, whose ramblings about the Klowns are dismissed. When the Klowns come back, Tobacco, who has been preparing for their return, teams up with two young street performers to fight them. Cramer also said that there might be multiple sequels, each revolving around a character from the original movie. It was reported later that the release date had been delayed, but, according to the Facebook page for the film, it was "officially in post-production." A page on a website for the original movie promised that the follow-up film (referred to as a sequel, rather than a "requel") would be released in 2013. In 2016 interviews, Stephen Chiodo stated that efforts to make further Killer Klowns productions had shifted, from planning one or more theatrical releases, to focus on television. He explained the concept of "a trilogy in four parts, with the original film being the first," adding, "We've got it all written out." However, he also ambiguously referred to the same plans as "a long arch series for cable" and "a long-ranging series". On October 22, 2018, it was announced that the Syfy channel was in talks to license the rights to make one or more sequels to Killer Klowns from Outer Space, as well as additional movies in the Critters franchise. ## Legacy In 2005, SOTA Toys announced they would produce Killer Klown figurines as part of their Now Playing film action figures line. One figure was produced in 2006. After SOTA stopped producing the toys, Amok Time took over until 2017, when the company announced that its license to produce Killer Klown figures had expired. Both Klown and Shorty figures have become high-end collectibles, and are much sought after by collectors. John Massari, the composer of the synthesizer-filled score for the movie, rerecorded the music with a full orchestra at Warner Brothers Studios in 2016. In 2018, Klowns, as well as the infamous ice cream truck from the film, were featured in a Killer Klowns from Outer Space-themed "scare zone" at Universal Orlando's 28th annual Halloween Horror Nights event. On July 25, 2019, it was announced that the Killer Klowns from Outer Space scare zone of the previous year would be expanded into a full-fledged haunted house attraction for the 2019 event at both the Orlando and Hollywood locations. Later in August, it was revealed that exclusive Killer Klowns from Outer Space merchandise would be sold during Halloween Horror Nights. The haunted house later returned for the 2022 edition of Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood. In 2021, Spirit Halloween dedicated a section of its seasonal stores to merchandise tied to the movie. In addition to costumes, statues, props, doormats, signage, and life-sized animatronic characters were featured. In August 2022, it was announced that an asymmetrical multiplayer game based on the film was being developed by Teravision Games and published by Good Shepherd Entertainment with a planned release in 2024 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. It was revealed in August 2023 that IllFonic was brought onto the project to co-develop the game with Teravision as well as relieve Good Shepherd from publishing duties. ## See also - Evil clown - List of films featuring extraterrestrials

Austro-Hungarian occupation of Serbia

1914–1918 military occupation

The Austro-Hungarian Armed Forces occupied Serbia from late 1915 until the end of World War I. Austria-Hungary's declaration of war against Serbia on 28 July 1914 marked the beginning of the war. After three unsuccessful Austro-Hungarian offensives between August and December 1914, a combined Austro-Hungarian and German offensive breached the Serbian front from the north and west in October 1915, while Bulgaria attacked from the east. By January 1916, all of Serbia had been occupied by the Central Powers. Serbia was divided into two separate occupation zones, one Bulgarian and the other Austro-Hungarian, both governed under a military administration. Germany declined to directly annex any Serbian territory and instead took control of railways, mines, and forestry and agricultural resources in both occupied zones. The Austro-Hungarian occupation zone covered the northern three-quarters of Serbia. It was ruled by the Military General Governorate, an administration set up by the Austro-Hungarian Army with a military governor at its head, seconded by a civil commissioner. The goal of the new administration was to denationalise the Serb population and turn the country into a territory from which to draw food and exploit economic resources. In addition to a military legal system that banned all political organizations, forbade public assembly, and brought schools under its control, the Austro-Hungarian Army was allowed to impose martial law, practice hostage-taking, burn villages in punitive raids and respond to uprisings with public hangings and summary executions. During the occupation, between 150,000 and 200,000 men, women and children were deported to purpose-built internment and concentration camps in Austria-Hungary, most notably Mauthausen in Austria, Doboj in Bosnia, and Nagymegyer, Arad and Kecskemét in Hungary. In September 1918, Allied forces, spearheaded by the Serbian Second Army and the Yugoslav Volunteer Division, broke through the Salonica front, leading to the surrender of Bulgaria on 30 September, followed by the quick liberation of Serbia and the retreat of all remaining Austro-Hungarian troops by the end of October. By 1 November 1918, all of pre-war Serbia had been liberated, bringing the occupation to an end. ## Background On 28 June 1914, the heir to the Habsburg throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated by Bosnian Serb student Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo. The preservation of Austria-Hungary's prestige necessitated a punishing attack on Serbia, which the Austro-Hungarian leadership deemed responsible for the murder. The Austro-Hungarian military leadership was determined to quash Serbia's independence, which it viewed as an unacceptable threat to the future of the empire given its sizeable South Slavic population. On 28 July 1914, exactly one month after Franz Ferdinand's assassination, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. That evening, Austro-Hungarian artillery shelled the Serbian capital of Belgrade from the border town of Semlin (modern-day Zemun), effectively starting World War I. Command of the Austro-Hungarian invasion force was delegated to Feldzeugmeister Oskar Potiorek, the Governor-General of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who had been responsible for the security of Franz Ferdinand and his wife Duchess Sophie of Hohenberg in Sarajevo. On the morning of 12 August 1914, the Austro-Hungarian Fifth Army crossed the Drina River, effectively starting the first invasion of Serbia. ### Punitive expedition and first occupation During the first invasion of Serbia, which the Austro-Hungarian leadership euphemistically dubbed a punitive expedition (German: Strafexpedition), Austro-Hungarian forces occupied parts of Serbia for thirteen days. Their war aims were not only to eliminate Serbia as a threat but also to punish her for fuelling South Slav irredentism in the Monarchy. The occupation turned into a war of annihilation, accompanied by massacres of civilians and the taking of hostages. Austro-Hungarian troops committed a number of war crimes against the Serbian population, especially in the area of Mačva, where according to historian Geoffrey Wawro the Austro-Hungarian army savaged the civilian population in a wave of atrocities. During the short occupation between 3,500 and 4,000 Serb civilians were killed in executions and acts of random violence by marauding troops. Mass killings took place in numerous towns in northern Serbia. On 17 August 1914, in the Serbian town of Šabac, 120 residents—mostly women, children and old men, who had previously been locked in a church—were shot and buried in the churchyard by Austro-Hungarian troops on the orders of Feldmarschall-Leutnant Kasimir von Lütgendorf. The remaining residents were beaten to death, hanged, stabbed, mutilated or burned alive. A pit was later discovered in the village of Lešnica containing 109 dead peasants who were "bound together with a rope and encircled by wire"; they had been shot and immediately buried, even with some still alive. Wawro writes that in Krupanj, men of the 42nd Home Guard Infantry Division, the exclusively Croat formation known as the Devil's Division, bashed a group of old men and boys to the ground using rifle buttstrokes and then hanged any who were still breathing. These types of attacks were planned at the highest level, the ground for the escalation of violence was ideologically prepared by the commanders' verbal radicalism, on August 13 Potiorek ordered reprisal hangings, the taking of hostages and arson by all units. Often bodies were left hanging on the gallows, trees or street lamps for days as a deterrent and as evidence of the Austro-Hungarian military's determination to deal with Serbian suspects. Many executions were photographed by Austro-Hungarian soldiers and officers; some of the images were reproduced as postcards and sold through the Austro-Hungarian army's official sales outlets. The Swiss criminologist and physician Archibald Reiss reported on the atrocities committed by the Austro-Hungarian army in a report that was presented at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, Reiss recorded that the number of civilians killed in the invaded Serbian territory amounted to between 3,000 and 4,000, including a large number of women and children, in the region around Šabac he counted 1,658 burned buildings. According to historian James Lyon, "the Habsburg forces engaged in an orgy of looting, rape, murder, mass extermination, and other atrocities". Reiss likened the Austro-Hungarian atrocities to the Rape of Belgium. On 24 August, after delivering a major defeat to Austria-Hungary's invading "Balkan Armed Forces" (German: Balkanstreitkräfte) at the Battle of Cer, the Royal Serbian Army liberated Šabac and reached the frontier banks of the Sava River, thereby bringing the first Austro-Hungarian invasion of Serbia to an end, and securing the first Allied victory of World War I. #### Repulsed invasions and Serbian victory On 8 September 1914 the Austro-Hungarians launched a second invasion, a twin-pronged night attack across the Drina to secure a firm bridgehead. This time engaging all their forces the well-equipped Habsburg forces outnumbered the Serbs who were short of munitions two to one. Facing fierce resistance, the Fifth Army was pushed back into Bosnia while the Sixth Army's offensive was stopped by a strong Serbian counterattack. On 23 October, the flagship of the Austro-Hungarian Danube Flotilla, the SMS Temes, which had shelled Belgrade on the first day of the war, was sunk by a mine on the Sava. Although it suffered nearly 30,000 casualties and the invasion was temporarily halted, the Austro-Hungarian army retained a foothold in Serbia. Convinced that Serbia was near defeat, Potiorek regrouped and launched a third offensive on 5 November 1914. Potiorek exploited the Austro-Hungarians' superiority in artillery, including large calibre mortar, to capture Valjevo on 15 November and with support from a monitor group of the Danube Flotilla as well as aerial reconnaissance, Belgrade on 30 November, forcing the Royal Serbian Army to retreat. The conquered territory was divided into five county commands (German: Etappenbezirkskommando). The Austro-Hungarian Feldmarschall of Croatian ethnicity Stjepan Sarkotić, commander during the first invasion of the 42nd Home Guard Infantry Division, was appointed governor-general of Serbia by Emperor Franz Joseph on 24 November 1914. Under Sarkotić's administration, multiple concentration camps were established in which tens of thousands of Serbs were interned, in the town of Šabac alone, between 1,500 and 2,000 civilians were deported to internment camps in Hungary. According to the historian Bastian Matteo Scianna, the Austro-Hungarian atrocities had a planned exterminatory character. In early December, the Royal Serbian Army launched a sustained counterattack, decisively defeating the Austro-Hungarians at the Battle of Kolubara and recapturing Belgrade a day after General Sarkotic's new military government had been established. By 15 December, the Royal Serbian Army had captured Zemun, having crossed the border in pursuit of the Austro-Hungarians, Defeat at the hands of Serbia, a small Balkan peasant kingdom, wounded the pride of Austria-Hungary's military and civilian leadership. One Austrian officer was reported as saying that Potiorek would be shot if he appeared among his own troops. On 22 December, Potiorek was relieved of his command and replaced by Archduke Eugen of Austria. Although Austria-Hungary had failed to defeat Serbia, the Royal Serbian Army had exhausted its military capability, losing 100,000 men in battle, and was forced to deal with a typhoid epidemic that further decimated the army and civilian population. German officials urged their Austro-Hungarian counterparts to launch yet another offensive against Serbia, despite the fact that the Austro-Hungarians were engaged in a costly second front with Russia to the east. The Austro-Hungarian leadership would not consider invading Serbia again for almost a year, when Bulgarian participation in such an invasion was guaranteed. ### Conquest of Serbia On 6 September 1915, Germany and Bulgaria entered into a secret military alliance. German officials promised Bulgaria all of Serbian Macedonia, parts of northeastern Serbia, as well as a new loan of 200,000,000 gold francs in return for Bulgaria's participation in an upcoming invasion of Serbia. The agreement was signed in the German town of Plessa. On 5 October 1915, Austria-Hungary and Germany launched a joint invasion of Serbia. The offensive marked Austria-Hungary's fourth attempt to conquer Serbia, this time led by German General August von Mackensen. On that day, artillery bombardment began, a few days later three German and three Austro-Hungarian Army corps crossed the Sava, attacking from the north as part of Army Group Mackensen. On 14 October, with the bulk of the Serbian forces opposing combined invaders up north, two Bulgarian armies invaded southern Serbia from the east, advancing towards Niš and Skoplje. The Bulgarian offensive cut off the Royal Serbian Army's lines of communication to the south as well as a retreat route towards French General Maurice Sarrail's relief force, which had advanced northwards up the Vardar River valley from the Allies' new base in Salonica. Despite the treaty of mutual assistance with Serbia against a Bulgarian attack, King Constantine of Greece refused to let the Greek army enter the war to aid the Serbs or let the Allies use the Greek railroads devoted to supporting their mobilization. The Central Powers enjoyed massive superiority in numbers and equipment, especially in artillery, along the nearly 1,000-kilometre (620 mi) front. Serbia and Montenegro could hardly muster half the number of soldiers as the Central Powers. Within six weeks, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Germany had succeeded in conquering Serbia. While the strategic goals set before the offensive had been achieved, the Central Powers were deprived of a decisive victory by the Royal Serbian Army's winter retreat over the mountains of Albania and Montenegro towards the Adriatic coast. Ultimately, around 140,000 Serbian soldiers and hundreds of thousands of civilians were evacuated to the Greek island of Corfu, among them the entire Serbian government, as well as the Serbian royal family. The Royal Serbian Army retrenched itself in Greece, where it was reorganised and repurposed to combating Bulgarian and German troops on the Salonica front. Towards the end of 1915, Serbia was divided between Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria, with both countries establishing military administrations in the territories they had occupied. ## Administration and governance Shortly after the retreat of the Royal Serbian Army, the country was divided into three zones. The Austro-Hungarian occupational zone stretched from the region west of the Morava Valley to the Macedonian frontier, and included Belgrade. Bulgaria gained the whole of Serbian Macedonia, as well as the areas east of the Morava, and Southern Serbia between Kosovo and the Danube River. A German control zone was established in the area east of the Velika Morava, the Južna Morava in Kosovo and the Vardar Valley. The Germans took control of all railways, mines, forestry, and agricultural resources in Serbia. On 1 January 1916, the Austro-Hungarian High Command (German: Armeeoberkommando; AOK) ordered the formation of the Military General Governorate of Serbia (German: Militärgeneralgouvernement in Serbien; MGG/S), with Belgrade as its administrative centre. The Austro-Hungarian occupation zone was divided into thirteen approximately equal districts (German: Kreise), which were then divided into sixty-four boroughs (German: Brezirke), with the city of Belgrade as its own district. The occupational administration was subordinate to the AOK under General Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, and later under Generaloberst Arthur Arz von Straußenburg. The Military Governorate was headed by a General Governor with the rank of a corps commander. The first governor-general, Johann Graf Salis-Seewis, an ethnic Croat with experience fighting insurgents in Macedonia, had served as the commander of the 42nd Devil's Division after Sarkotić. Salis-Seewis was appointed to the position in late 1915 by Emperor Franz Joseph, officially taking office on 1 January 1916. The historian and Balkan specialist Lajos Thallóczy was appointed as the Military General Governorate's civilian commissioner, as well as Salis-Seewis's deputy. Thallóczy arrived in Belgrade on 17 January 1916. With the Austrians in charge of the military, the civilian administration was mostly made up of Hungarians and Croats. Four administrative departments were set up: military, economic, judicial, and political, with the latter, which had its own intelligence and police forces, under former Devil's Division officer and future Ustaše leader Major Slavko Kvaternik. Military intelligence (German: Nachrichtenabteilung) for the occupation zone was entrusted to Croat Lujo Šafranek-Kavić, as the Austro-Hungarian army relied considerably on South Slav officers and Bosnian Muslims knowledge of the language for intelligence purposes. In December 1916, Thallóczy was killed in a train crash while returning from Vienna to Belgrade. In January 1917, Teodor Kušević, a high-ranking functionary from Bosnia and Herzegovina, was appointed to replace him as the civilian commissioner. The function was given more prominence with new areas of responsibility including trade, police, religion, education, justice and finance. ## System of occupation ### Rule of law The first measure of the occupiers was to establish a new legal system to secure order, prevent guerrilla resistance and exploit the country's resources. MGG/S control over the population was accomplished in accordance with the "Directives for the Political Administration in the Areas of the General Military Governorate in Serbia" (German: Direktiven für die politische Verwaltung im Bereiche des Militärgeneralgouvernements in Serbien) and with the "General Principles for the Imperial and Royal Military Administration in the Occupied Territories of Serbia" (German: Allgemeine Grundzüge für die K.u.K Militärverwaltung in den beset-zen Gebieten Serbiens). The MGG/S intended to ignore Hungarian objections and integrate Serbia as a part of the empire, but as an area that would remain under direct military rule for decades after the end of the war and where political participation would be prohibited to prevent the emergence of a new Serbian state. ### Occupation forces The MGG was safeguarded by a permanent Austro-Hungarian garrison consisting, in August 1916, of 35 battalions, a Landsturm regiment, six companies of patrol troops, 12 units of railway guards, four-and-a-half squadrons, five artillery batteries and two anti-aircraft batteries, totaling around 70,000 men, of which 50,000 were reserved for military operations. Within the towns and villages of the twelve districts, 5,000 gendarmes were posted in groups of 20 to 30. If needed, patrol companies also served as mobile combat reserves. To help police the civilian population and to track down partisans, the Austro-Hungarian leadership decided to recruit amongst ethnic minority groups positively disposed towards the Dual Monarchy. With Thallóczy's encouragement, the Austro-Hungarian authorities permitted Kosovo Albanians to volunteer for service in the Austro-Hungarian Armed Forces. Prominent Albanians in towns such as Novi Pazar and Kosovska Mitrovica declared their support and offered to recruit volunteers for the occupying authorities. According to the notes of Colonel Hugo Kerchnawe, the Muslims in the Sandžak and the Albanians in Kosovo "behaved very loyally and offered their support" to the empire, Kerchnawe added in his report that "our interests ran parallel with the Muslims' interests." A special commission to organise recruitment was set up by Thallóczy, assisted by former Ottoman officers and Bosnian militia leaders. Over 8,000 volunteers were recruited this way, despite the fact that the recruitment drive was a violation of the Hague Convention treaties that Austria-Hungary had signed, which forbade the use of occupied populations towards a country's war efforts. In March 1917, a home battalion was formed, supported by Bosnian gendarmes and led by former Ottoman officers. In the final phase of the Serbian Campaign, the Austro-Hungarian military had relied on paramilitaries consisting of Albanian clansmen from Kosovo and northern Albania as irregular troops, organised early in the occupied territories Albanian pursuit fighting units were set up to assist Austro-Hungarians patrols track down Serbian guerrillas. These counter-insurgency bands were based on their Bosnian counterparts, the Streifkorps, paramilitary groups made up of Muslim volunteers with experience fighting Serb guerrillas and a reputation for heavy-handed tactics. District pursuit units were established in each district of the Austro-Hungarian occupied zone, each consisted of 40 men led by one officer. The Bulgarian occupation authorities also used Albanian gendarmes and irregular troops within their occupation zones. ## Conflicts between the Central Powers ### Annexation The separation of power in Serbia quickly led to clashes between the civilian and military authorities, as well as between Austrian and Hungarian occupation officials. The Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs' envoy in Serbia, Lajos Széchényi, argued that Salis-Seewis' policies would lead to Serbia's annexation to the Dual Monarchy, which Thallóczy, following Hungarian prime minister István Tisza's directives, strongly opposed. In mid-February 1916, Thallóczy complained to Tisza about the number of Slavs in positions of authority, writing, "the governor is Croat, the chief of the general staff is Czech, the deputy governor is from the former military border and the new General Staff Officer Slavko Kvaternik is the son in law of Croatian independentist Josip Frank." General Conrad saw the military administration of Serbia as preliminary to its annexation, along with Montenegro and Albania, to a future South Slavic union under Croatian leadership. Conrad worried that by not annexing Serbia the monarchy would lose its Great Power status. Austria-Hungary's Joint Foreign Minister, Stephan Burián von Rajecz, supported the annexation of Serbia, but only if it would be allotted to Hungary. Tisza refused to consider the annexation of Serbia as it would lead to a substantial increase in Austria-Hungary's Slavic population, and significantly reduce the proportion of Hungarians within the Dual Monarchy. He demanded instead that northern Serbia be colonized by Hungarian and German farmers. After touring the three northwestern districts of Serbia together with Salis-Seewis and the visiting General Conrad, Tisza came to regard the Austro-Hungarian military's efforts in the occupied territory as a prelude to annexation. Tisza submitted a complaint to Burián asking for a thorough reorganisation of the Military Governorate, the removal of Salis-Seewis, whose administration he described as "Serbophile and economically incompetent", and requesting the condemnation of those demanding that Serbia be annexed. Burián took the complaint directly to Emperor Franz Joseph. On 6 July 1916, the emperor decreed that Salis-Seewis and his chief of staff, Colonel Gelinek, were to be replaced by his former corps commander, General Adolf Freiherr von Rhemen and Colonel Hugo Kerchnawe, effective 26 July 1916. Rhemen remained in this office until the end of the war. ### Austro-Bulgarian confrontation Tensions between Bulgaria and the Dual Monarchy started after Bulgaria extended its zone to western Kosovo, on the Austro-Hungarian side of the treaty border, going as far as Elbasan in Albania, a region that Austria-Hungary considered an occupied friendly state and of "outstanding importance" to the Dual Monarchy. Kaiser Wilhelm himself repeatedly told Bulgarian king Ferdinand that Germany supported "the independence of Albania under Austrian protection". Burián also reminded Ferdinand that at the "west of the treaty border began the Austro-Hungarian sphere of interest." According to the terms of the secret alliance between Bulgaria and Germany, the greater part of Kosovo, including the areas of Priština, Prizren, Gnjilane, Uroševac, and Orahovac, were to fall under Bulgarian rule as part of the Military Region of Macedonia. Metohija, the southwestern area of Kosovo, was to be incorporated as part of the Austro-Hungarian zone of Montenegro, with the rest of Kosovo, including Kosovska Mitrovica, Vučitrn, and Đakovica, established as part of the Austro-Hungarian Military Governorate of Serbia. The Bulgarians maintained that they had the right to install a civilian administration on any territory they conquered, including outside their treaty border. Conrad, suspecting Bulgaria of harbouring ambitions to annex the whole region, sent troops to expel the Bulgarian civilian administrators. The arrival of Austro-Hungarian troops in areas already garrisoned by Bulgarian forces resulted in a military confrontation. On 27 February the Bulgarian military commander Racho Petrov issued an ultimatum to the Austrians to immediately evacuate Kačanik, on the frontier with Macedonia, resulting in a military standoff. Conrad warned the Bulgarian High Command that unless local Bulgarian commanders abstained from interfering with the Austro-Hungarian administration, a conflict with his troops would be inevitable. On 15 March, the Austro-Hungarians issued an order to secure Novi Pazar, and prepared to add Kosovska Mitrovica to their governorate. The German chief of staff, General Erich von Falkenhayn, ordered Mackensen to mediate between the two parties. Mackensen visited Sofia in person to meet Ferdinand and Prime Minister Vasil Radoslavov. The proposed German compromise was accepted and an agreement on a demarcation line was signed between the Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian high commands on 1 April 1916. The Bulgarians withdrew eastwards, retaining the district containing Prizren and Priština, but leaving Albania and western Kosovo to the Austro-Hungarians. The agreement gave Bulgaria administrative rights over areas of Serbia that were not in the original agreement. In return, Bulgaria agreed to let Germany have access to the valleys east of the Velika Morava, the Južna Morava in Kosovo, as well as the Vardar Valley, effectively turning Macedonia and Kosovo into zones dedicated to German economic exploitation. ## Life under the occupation ### Denationalisation and depoliticisation The occupational authorities considered Serbian national consciousness an existential threat to Austria-Hungary. Thus, the policies of the Military Governorate were aimed at depoliticising and denationalising the Serbian population. Public gatherings and political parties were banned, the Cyrillic script was termed "dangerous to the state" (German: staatsgefährlich) and banned from schools and public spaces, streets named after people perceived as being significant to Serbian national identity were renamed, the wearing of traditional Serbian clothing was proscribed and the Gregorian calendar replaced the Julian. Additionally, all Serbian students had to be educated in the German language, according to Austrian academic standards and through teachers imported from Austria. Significant cultural institutions such as the Royal Serbian Academy, the National Museum and the National Library were closed down and looted of their historical artifacts and art collections. The University of Belgrade, as well as various publishing houses and bookshops, were closed down. Schoolbooks and books in French, English, Russian and Italian were banned. Political expression was severely limited with the prohibition of newspaper publication except for the official MGG/S propaganda newspaper Belgrader Nachrichten (published in Serbian as Beogradske novine), which featured letters and photographs purporting to show how well those who stayed behind in occupied Serbia were living. Such propaganda was intended to convince Serbian soldiers who came across the Belgrader Nachrichten to desert. ### Repression In 1916, both Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria announced that Serbia had ceased to exist as a political entity, and that its inhabitants could therefore not invoke the international rules of war dictating the treatment of civilians as defined by the Geneva Conventions and the Hague Conventions. The occupational authorities carried out numerous summary executions with little or no legal process. Upon being found guilty by a military court, victims were usually shot or hanged. Martial law, such as Kriegsnotwehrrecht (the martial law of self-defense), was employed to quash dissent and severe preventive measures were undertaken against civilians. The occupational authorities were gripped by the fear of levée en masse and of civilians taking up arms. The Austro-Hungarian Army consequently employed the seizure of hostages from the general population and the burning of villages in punitive raids as a means of quelling resistance. These measures, as well as summary executions, were all permitted under section 61 of the Dienstreglement (k.u.k army regulations). Disarming the populace was done by holding village elders responsible for handing over a certain quota of weapons that were judged to be held before the war began. The sentence for possession of a weapon was death by hanging. Military courts also tried civilians for newly defined offenses, including the crime of lèse-majesté. Civilians suspected of engaging in resistance activities were subjected to the harshest measures, including hanging and shooting. The house of an offender's family would also be destroyed. Victims were usually hanged on the main squares of villages and towns, in full view of the general population. The lifeless bodies were left to hang by the noose for several days so as to clearly show the treatment reserved for "spies" and "traitors". ### Deportation and forced labour The MGG/S, as well as the High Command in Vienna, considered sending civilian prisoners to internment camps as a preventive measure to discourage insurgent activities. During the occupation, between 150,000 and 200,000 men, women and children were deported to various camps in Austria-Hungary, it has been estimated they represented slightly more than 10 per cent of the Serb population. Since Serbia did not have its own Red Cross, Serbian prisoners did not have access to the aid the Red Cross provided to other Allied prisoners. Moreover, Serbian prisoners were not considered "enemy aliens" but "internal enemies" by Austria-Hungary's Ministry of War. By defining them as "terrorists" or "insurgents", the Austro-Hungarian authorities were not obliged to disclose the number of captives they held, and which camps they were being held in, to Red Cross societies.Four significant waves of deportations occurred in occupied Serbia. The first occurred at the very start of the occupation, when Salis-Seewis rounded up 70,000 "dissidents", mostly able-bodied men, ex-soldiers, politically active individuals, as well as members of the political and cultural elite who had remained in the country after the retreat to Corfu. University professors, teachers, and priests, especially those who had participated in political, cultural or even athletic associations, were arrested and sent to internment camps. The second and largest deportations took place after Romania entered the war on the side of the Allies on 27 August 1916. From mid-August to late October 1916, an order to arrest all males between the ages of 17 and 50 was issued. These men were targeted because they were of fighting age. More than 16,500 males were sent to internment camps during this round of deportations. During the Toplica uprising, in the Spring of 1916 when armed resistance seemed to be spreading, more deportations took place. The fourth and final round of deportations occurred after the Allied breakthrough on the Salonica front in late 1918. In Bohemia, the camp at Braunau (modern-day Broumov, Czech Republic) held about 35,000 prisoners, almost exclusively Serbian, civilian, military prisoners, men, women and children. According to a 1918 press report, an epidemic of dysentery almost wiped out all the children in the camp. After the war, a mass grave was found behind the camp containing the remains of 2,674 people (these remains were later moved to the crypt of the Heinrichsgrün camp). The camp at Heinrichsgrün (modern-day Jindřichovice, Czech Republic), held mostly Serbs, both soldiers and civilians, from the Šumadija and Kolubara districts of western Serbia. An average of 40 people died there every day. In Hungary, the largest internment camps were in the Nezsider district; Nezsider (modern-day Neusiedl am See, Austria) was a concentration camp primarily used to detain civilians from Serbia and Montenegro, and the principal camp for Serbs suspected to be "terrorists" or "agitators". The number of detainees by May 1917 was 9,934, including children as young as nine. Over the course of the war, the Nezsider camp held 17,000 internees, about 4,800 people are known to have perished at the camp. In addition to those deported to Hungary, some 30,000 Serb civilians were sent to Austrian camps or used as forced labour. In Lower Austria, the camps of Drosendorf and Mittendorf held both Serbian soldiers and civilians. Thousand of Serbs perished during a typhus epidemic at the Mauthausen camp in Upper Austria when about 14,000 were being held; an official Austro-Hungarian army report mentioned 5,600 prisoners of war buried in the camp graveyard in the early months of the war. According to official figures, between 27 December 1915 and 5 July 1917, 45,791 civilians and prisoners of war from Serbia and Montenegro were held captive at the camp in Doboj, in Bosnia. Around 12,000 are estimated to have perished there. Other camps held both civilians and prisoners of war, including Boldogasszony, Nagymegyer (modern-day Veľký Meder, Slovakia), Arad (modern-day Romania), Cegléd, Kecskemét and Győr. By May 1917, 39,359 people from Serbia, including women and children, were interned outside the country. These large scale deportations caused concern around Europe quickly becoming an international scandal. The Spanish authorities complained then, in April 1917, the Holy See intervened through the office of the Apostolic Nunciature to Austria against the internment of Serbian women and children between the ages of 10 and 15. By the end of the year, Austria-Hungary's Ministry of War admitted that 526 Serb children were in fact being held at Nezsider, but that it was necessary on the grounds of military security. According to a Red Cross report dated 1 February 1918, by the end of 1917, there were 206,500 prisoners of war and internees from Serbia in Austro-Hungarian and German camps. According to the historian Alan Kramer, the Serbians in Austro-Hungarian captivity received the worst treatment of all the prisoners, and at least 30,000–40,000 had died of starvation by January 1918. ### Economic exploitation and famine Tensions between the Austrian and German authorities increased after Burián complained that the German military was employing a ruthless system of requisition, resulting in famine and the pauperisation of the population. Behind the front lines, the Germans "Etappenzone" was an area that Berlin had secured as a zone dedicated to agricultural production to feed its troops on the Salonica front. As the German exploitation of resources in occupied Serbia was handled by the German Oriental Society (German: Deutsch-orientalische Gesellschaft), the exploitation of mines failed to satisfy the Dual Monarchy's need for vital raw materials because Germany took two-thirds of all production from Serbia as reparations for its military aid. Austro-Hungarian reports on the state of Serbia in 1915 noted famine threatening the occupation zone and a population in a desperate state after nearly four years of constant war. The return of refugees exacerbated the shortage of food. Reports from late 1915 spoke of the necessity of receiving urgent relief to avoid disaster. Starvation loomed after soldiers destroyed or captured much of Serbia's foodstuffs and livestock. Harvest yields and produced goods had to be turned over to authorities while food was rationed. > In this very year (1917) there was a drought that can never be forgotten. A frost and then a drought destroyed everything. Even had there nor been a war, hunger would have invaded us. People ate wild herbs and sawdust made from beechwood . . . . It was then for the first time that we spoke of death. In early 1916, Conrad ordered that Serbia's resources be "squeezed dry" regardless of the consequences for the population. As news of the famine in Serbia spread around the world, campaigns were organised asking for Relief for Agonized Serbia. American, Swiss and Swedish humanitarian organisations offered assistance. According to Red Cross reports, starvation killed more than 8,000 Serbians during the first winter under Austro-Hungarian occupation. By mid-May 1917, figures from the Habsburg High Command reported that 170,000 cattle, 190,000 sheep, and 50,000 pigs had been exported to Austria-Hungary. ### Resistance Immediately after the withdrawal of the Royal Serbian Army and the start of the Austro-Hungarian occupation, armed individuals and small groups of insurgents, called Chetniks, made up of former soldiers who had remained in the country, began to wage a guerrilla campaign against the occupiers. The Chetniks had a long tradition as guerrillas after centuries of Ottoman rule. Their actions were often considered heroic by the population and depicted in epic folk poetry, giving them strong local support. The first organised guerrilla group was formed in the Novi Pazar and Kosovska Mitrovica districts in early 1916, and was led by former army captain Kosta Vojinović. In March 1916, General Conrad ordered that all resistance be quashed with ruthless severity. Komitadjis, as the Austro-Hungarian army called the insurgents, were deemed outside international law by the MGG and were to be "completely wiped out". Jovan Avakumović, a former Prime Minister of Serbia, suggested to Salis-Seewis that he should issue a joint proclamation for the restoration of peace and order. Avakumović's proposal was turned down and Salis-Seewis ordered his arrest and internment. The Military Governorate responded to the multiplication of guerrilla groups by employing small Ottoman and Albanian counter-guerrilla units based on the Streifkorps from Bosnia instead of regular patrol troops. In late September 1916, the Serbian High Command flew in the experienced Chetnik guerrilla leader Kosta Pećanac from Allied Headquarters in Salonica. He was parachuted in by air to organize resistance in Serbia together with Vojinović. In early February 1917, a rebellion led by Vojinović broke out in the vicinity of Kuršumlija and Prokuplje. The insurgents, supported by volunteers and Chetniks from Montenegro, liberated Kuršumlija, Prokuplje, Pusta Reka, Lebane and Ribarska. The uprising was planned to coincide with an Allied offensive. Later that month, a large scale uprising broke out in the Toplica District in Bulgarian-occupied Serbia. A force of 4,000 armed men and women managed to liberate a significant area in the Morava Valley before the uprising was put down. During the summer of 1917, the Austro-Hungarian Army was forced to bring in troops from the Isonzo Front to reinforce the Bulgarian Army and Bulgarian paramilitary groups. Without the expected Allied support, the uprising collapsed. In late 1917, Vojinović was killed; Pećanac managed to escape and went into hiding. According to contemporary Austro-Hungarian Army reports, 20,000 Serbs were killed in the course of the rebellion, while 2,600 managed to escape into the forests. Despite the harsh repression, guerrilla groups managed to survive and were able to support Allied offensive operations in the summer of 1918. After the war, Chief of Staff Paul Kirch described the withdrawal of the German 11th Army: > Serb guerrilla groups emerged throughout the country and attacked our units when they were resting or eating. They also attacked our rearguard and our supply trains on the march and sabotaged the railways. We have sent special Jäger units against them, but it would have been easier to find a needle in a haystack than to find those guerrilla groups in the mountain terrain they are familiar with. ## Liberation of Serbia In September 1918, following the Vardar Offensive and the success of Allied forces at the Battle of Dobro Pole, Bulgaria capitulated and signed the Armistice of Salonica. On 3 October, a German military governorate was created in Niš to replace the departing Bulgarian administration, while new Austro-Hungarian and German troops were redeployed to try to block the northward advance of Serb and French troops. Guerilla warfare broke out spontaneously across all occupied regions in support of the Allies offensive. By the third week of October, General Hermann von Kövess, commander of all Austro-Hungarian and German forces in the Balkans, ordered a strategic retreat behind the Danube, Sava and Drina rivers, also ordering that ‘about "two per cent of the male population should be taken as hostages, and kept with the troops on the march". On 29 October, Governor-General von Rhemen and his staff left occupied Serbia. The following day, Belgrade was liberated by the Royal Serbian Army. By 1 November, all of pre-war Serbia had been liberated, bringing the three-year Central Powers occupation to an end. ## Military commanders and governors ### Austro-Hungarian commanders - Feldzeugmeister Oskar Potiorek (12 August 1914 – 27 December 1914) - Generaloberst Archduke Eugen Ferdinand (27 December 1914 – 27 May 1915) - General Karl Tersztyánszky von Nádas (27 May 1915 – 27 September 1915) - General Hermann Kövess von Kövessháza (27 September 1915 – 1 January 1916) ### Austro-Hungarian military governors-general - Feldmarschallleutnant Johann Ulrich Graf von Salis-Seewis (1 January 1916 – July 1916) - Generaloberst Adolf Freiherr von Rhemen zu Barensfeld (6 July 1916 – October 1918) - Feldmarschall Hermann Kövess von Kövessháza (October 1918 – 1 November 1918) ## See also - Military General Governorate of Serbia - Bulgarian occupation of Serbia (World War I) - Nazi occupation of Serbia (World War II)

Cú Chulainn

Irish mythological hero

Cú Chulainn (/kuːˈkʌlɪn/ koo-KUL-in ), is a warrior hero and demigod in the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology, as well as in Scottish and Manx folklore. He is believed to be an incarnation of the Irish god Lugh, who is also his father. His mother is the mortal Deichtine, sister of king Conchobar mac Nessa. Born Sétanta, he gained his better-known name as a child, after killing Culann's fierce guard dog in self defence and offering to take its place until a replacement could be reared, hence he became the "Hound (cú) of Culann". He was trained in martial arts by Scáthach, who gave him the spear Gáe Bulg. It was prophesied that his great deeds would give him everlasting fame, but that his life would be short. At the age of seventeen he defends Ulster single-handedly against the armies of queen Medb of Connacht in the famous Táin Bó Cúailnge ("Cattle Raid of Cooley"). He is known for his terrifying battle frenzy (ríastrad), in which he becomes an unrecognisable monster who knows neither friend nor foe. He fights from his chariot, driven by his loyal charioteer Láeg and drawn by his horses, Liath Macha and Dub Sainglend. Cú Chulainn's wife is Emer, although he has many other lovers. With Aífe he has a son named Connla, whom Cú Chulainn tragically kills. Cú Chulainn himself is said to have died in battle, binding himself to a standing stone so he can die on his feet. He later became an icon for Irish nationalists. ## Name His birth name Sétanta may be linked to a Celtic tribe, the Setantii, who dwelt on the west coast of Celtic Britain. His later name Cú Chulainn, is usually translated "Culann's hound", and was explained in the tale whereby he stood in for Culann's guard dog. Although cú literally means "hound", it was also a common figurative term for a warrior in early Irish literature, thus can also mean "Culann's warrior". Folklorist Dáithí Ó hÓgáin speculated that the second part of the name could come from an old Irish word for a chariot, cul, thus meaning "chariot-warrior". ## Legends ### Birth There are a number of versions of the story of Cú Chulainn's miraculous birth. In the earliest version of Compert C(h)on Culainn ("The Conception of Cú Chulainn"), his mother Deichtine is the daughter and charioteer of Conchobar mac Nessa, king of Ulster, and accompanies him as he and the nobles of Ulster hunt a flock of magical birds. As snow begins to fall, Ulstermen seek shelter in a nearby house. As the host's wife goes into labour, Deichtine assists in the birth of a baby boy, while a mare gives birth to twin colts. The next morning, the Ulstermen find themselves at the Brug na Bóinde (the Neolithic mound at Newgrange)—the house and its occupants have disappeared, but the child and the colts remain. Deichtine takes the boy home and begins raising him as her own, but the boy falls ill and dies. The god Lug appears to her and tells her he was their host that night, and that he has put his child in her womb, who is to be called Sétanta. Her pregnancy turns into a scandal as she is betrothed to Sualtam mac Róich, and the Ulstermen suspect Conchobar of being the father, so she aborts the child and goes to her husband's bed "virgin-whole". She then conceives a son whom she names Sétanta. In the later and better-known version of Compert Con Culainn, Deichtine is Conchobar's sister, and disappears from Emain Macha, the Ulster capital. As in the previous version, the Ulstermen go hunting a flock of magical birds, are overtaken by a snowstorm and seek shelter in a nearby house. Their host is Lug, a member of the Tuatha Dé Danann, but this time his wife, who gives birth to a son that night, is Deichtine herself. The child is named Sétanta. The nobles of Ulster argue over which of them is to be his foster father, until the wise Morann decides he should be fostered by several of them: Conchobar himself; Sencha mac Ailella, who will teach him judgement and eloquent speech; the wealthy Blaí Briugu, who will protect and provide for him; the noble warrior Fergus mac Róich, who will care for him and teach him to protect the weak; the poet Amergin, who will educate him, and his wife Findchóem, who will nurse him. He is brought up in the house of Amergin and Findchóem on Muirthemne Plain in modern County Louth (at the time part of Ulster), alongside their son Conall Cernach. In another version, the child is named Sédana, and the name is given to him by Ceat mac Mágach. Ceat takes Sédana into fosterage and gives him to his own foster parents, Srían and Gabur, to nurse; they are the parents of Láeg, Cú Chulainn's charioteer, and so the pair grow up together from infancy. The County Louth town of Dundalk has the motto Mé do rug Cú Chulainn cróga(Irish) "I gave birth to brave Cú Chulainn". ### Childhood The stories of Cú Chulainn's childhood are told in a flashback sequence in Táin Bó Cúailnge. As a small child, living in his parents' house on Muirthemne Plain, he begs to be allowed to join the boy-troop at Emain Macha. However, he sets off on his own, and when he arrives at Emain he runs onto the playing field without first asking for the boys' protection, being unaware of the custom. The boys take this as a challenge and attack him, but he has a ríastrad (transformative battle frenzy) and beats them single-handed. Conchobar puts a stop to the fight and clears up the misunderstanding, but no sooner has Sétanta put himself under the boys' protection than he chases after them, demanding they put themselves under his protection. Culann the smith invites Conchobar to a feast at his house. Before going, Conchobar goes to the playing field to watch the boys play hurling. He is so impressed by Sétanta's performance that he asks him to join him at the feast. Sétanta has a game to finish, but promises to follow the king later. But Conchobar forgets, and Culann lets loose his ferocious hound to protect his house. When Sétanta arrives, the enormous hound attacks him, but he kills it in self defence, in one version by smashing it against a standing stone, and in another by driving a sliotar (hurling ball) down its throat with his hurley. Culann is devastated by the loss of his hound, so Sétanta promises he will rear him a replacement, and until it is old enough to do the job, he himself will guard Culann's house. The druid Cathbad announces that his name henceforth will be Cú Chulainn—"Culann's Hound". One day at Emain Macha, Cú Chulainn overhears Cathbad teaching his pupils. One asks him what that day is auspicious for, and Cathbad replies that any warrior who takes arms that day will have everlasting fame. Cú Chulainn, though only seven years old, goes to Conchobar and asks for arms. None of the weapons given to him withstand his strength, until Conchobar gives him his own weapons. But when Cathbad sees this he grieves, because he had not finished his prophecy—the warrior who took arms that day would be famous, but his life would be short. Soon afterwards, in response to a similar prophecy by Cathbad, Cú Chulainn demands a chariot from Conchobar, and only the king's own chariot withstands him. He sets off on a foray and kills the three sons of Nechtan Scéne, who had boasted they had killed more Ulstermen than there were Ulstermen still living. He returns to Emain Macha in his battle frenzy, and the Ulstermen are afraid he will slaughter them all. Conchobar's wife Mugain leads out the women of Emain, and they bare their breasts to him. He averts his eyes, and the Ulstermen wrestle him into a barrel of cold water, which explodes from the heat of his body. They put him in a second barrel, which boils, and a third, which warms to a pleasant temperature. ### Emer and Cú Chulainn's training In Cú Chulainn's youth he is so beautiful the Ulstermen worry that, without a wife of his own, he will steal their wives and ruin their daughters. They search all over Ireland for a suitable wife for him, but he will have none but Emer, daughter of Forgall Monach. However, Forgall is opposed to the match. He suggests that Cú Chulainn should train in arms with the renowned warrior-woman Scáthach in the land of Alba (Scotland), hoping the ordeal will be too much for him and he will be killed. Cú Chulainn takes up the challenge, travelling to her residence Dún Scáith (Fortress of Shadows) on the Isle of Skye. In the meantime, Forgall offers Emer to Lugaid mac Nóis, a king of Munster, but when he hears that Emer loves Cú Chulainn, Lugaid refuses her hand. Scáthach teaches Cú Chulainn all the arts of war, including the use of the Gáe Bulg, a terrible barbed spear, thrown with the foot, that has to be cut out of its victim. His fellow trainees include Ferdiad, who becomes Cú Chulainn's best friend and foster brother. The two foster brothers share a very close relationship, sharing a bed at times and speaking often and at great length of their love for one another; this has at times led to speculation that the two men were lovers (though this theory is controversial). During his time there, Scáthach faces a battle against Aífe, her rival and in some versions her twin sister. Scáthach, knowing Aífe's prowess, fears for Cú Chulainn's life and gives him a powerful sleeping potion to keep him from the battle. However, because of Cú Chulainn's great strength, it only puts him to sleep for an hour, and he soon joins the fray. He fights Aífe in single combat, and the two are evenly matched, but Cú Chulainn distracts her by calling out that Aífe's horses and chariot, the things she values most in the world, have fallen off a cliff, and seizes her. With his sword at her throat, he agrees to spare her life on the condition that she call off her enmity with Scáthach, and bear him a son. Leaving Aífe pregnant, Cú Chulainn returns from Scotland fully trained, but Forgall still refuses to let him marry Emer. Cú Chulainn storms Forgall's fortress, killing twenty-four of Forgall's men, abducts Emer and steals Forgall's treasure. Forgall himself falls from the ramparts to his death. Conchobar has the "right of the first night" over all marriages of his subjects. He is afraid of Cú Chulainn's reaction if he exercises it in this case, but is equally afraid of losing his authority if he does not. Cathbad suggests a solution: Conchobar sleeps with Emer on the night of the wedding, but Cathbad sleeps between them. ### Killing his son Eight years later, Connla, Cú Chulainn's son by Aífe, comes to Ireland in search of his father, but Cú Chulainn takes him as an intruder and kills him when he refuses to identify himself. Connla does not identify himself, as his mother Aífe bound him to not identify himself or back down from a challenge. She does this as she wishes revenge upon Cú Chulainn for loving another woman after her. Connla was also trained and almost beat his father in battle, but misses his spear shot on purpose as he finds out Cú Chulainn is his father. However Cú Chulainn hits Connla with his spear, the Gae Bulg, which mortally wounds him. Connla's last words to his father as he dies are that they would have "carried the flag of Ulster to the gates of Rome and beyond", leaving Cú Chulainn grief-stricken. The story of Cú Chulainn and Connla shows a striking similarity to the legend of Persian hero Rostam who also kills his son Sohrab. Rostam and Cú Chulainn share several other characteristics, including killing a ferocious beast at a very young age, their near invincibility in battle, and the manner of their deaths. Another similar myth is found in the Hildebrandslied, in which Hildebrand is thought to kill his son, Hadubrand, though the poem's ending is lost. ### Lugaid and Derbforgaill During his time abroad, Cú Chulainn had rescued Derbforgaill, a Scandinavian princess, from being sacrificed to the Fomorians. She falls in love with him, and she and her handmaid come to Ireland in search of him in the form of a pair of swans. Cú Chulainn, not realising who she is, shoots her down with his sling, and then saves her life by sucking the stone from her side. Having tasted her blood, he cannot marry her, and gives her to his foster-son Lugaid Riab nDerg. Lugaid goes on to become High King of Ireland, but the Lia Fáil (stone of destiny) fails to cry out when he stands on it, so Cú Chulainn splits it in two with his sword. When Derbforgaill is mutilated by the women of Ulster out of jealousy for her sexual desirability and dies of her wounds, Lugaid dies of grief, and Cú Chulainn avenges them by demolishing the house the women are inside, killing 150 of them. ### The Cattle Raid of Cooley At the age of seventeen, Cú Chulainn single-handedly defends Ulster from the army of Connacht in the Táin Bó Cúailnge. Medb, queen of Connacht, has mounted the invasion to steal the stud bull Donn Cúailnge, Cú Chulainn allows her to take Ulster by surprise because he was with a woman when he should have been watching the border. The men of Ulster were disabled by a curse that caused them to suffer from labour pains, so it becomes Cú Chulainn's job to stop Medb's army from advancing further. He does this by invoking the right of single combat at fords. He defeats champion after champion in a standoff that lasts for months. Before one combat a beautiful young woman comes to him, claiming to be the daughter of a king, and offers him her love, but he refuses her. The woman reveals herself as the Morrígan, and in revenge for this slight, she attacks him in various animal forms while he is engaged in combat against Lóch mac Mofemis. As an eel, she trips him in the ford, but he breaks her ribs. As a wolf, she stampedes cattle across the ford, but he blinds her eye with a sling stone. Finally, she appears as a heifer at the head of the stampede, but he breaks her leg with another sling stone. After Cú Chulainn finally defeats Lóch, the Morrígan appears to him as an old woman milking a cow, with the same injuries he had given her in her animal forms. She gives him three drinks of milk, and with each drink he blesses her, healing her wounds. After one particularly arduous combat, Cú Chulainn lies severely wounded but is visited by Lug, who tells him he is his father and heals his wounds. When Cú Chulainn wakes up and sees that the boy-troop of Emain Macha have attacked the Connacht army and been slaughtered, he has his most spectacular ríastrad yet: > The first warp-spasm seized Cúchulainn, and made him into a monstrous thing, hideous and shapeless, unheard of. His shanks and his joints, every knuckle and angle and organ from head to foot, shook like a tree in the flood or a reed in the stream. His body made a furious twist inside his skin, so that his feet and shins switched to the rear and his heels and calves switched to the front... On his head the temple-sinews stretched to the nape of his neck, each mighty, immense, measureless knob as big as the head of a month-old child... he sucked one eye so deep into his head that a wild crane couldn't probe it onto his cheek out of the depths of his skull; the other eye fell out along his cheek. His mouth weirdly distorted: his cheek peeled back from his jaws until the gullet appeared, his lungs and his liver flapped in his mouth and throat, his lower jaw struck the upper a lion-killing blow, and fiery flakes large as a ram's fleece reached his mouth from his throat... The hair of his head twisted like the tangle of a red thornbush stuck in a gap; if a royal apple tree with all its kingly fruit were shaken above him, scarce an apple would reach the ground but each would be spiked on a bristle of his hair as it stood up on his scalp with rage. He attacks the army and kills hundreds, building walls of corpses. When his foster father Fergus mac Róich, now in exile in Medb's court, is sent to face him Cú Chulainn agrees to yield, so long as Fergus agrees to return the favour the next time they meet. Finally, he fights a gruelling three-day duel with his best friend and foster brother, Ferdiad, at a ford that was named Áth Fhir Diadh (Ardee, County Louth) after him. The Ulstermen eventually rouse, one by one at first, and finally en masse. The final battle begins. Cú Chulainn stays on the sidelines, recuperating from his wounds, until he sees Fergus advancing. He enters the fray and confronts Fergus, who keeps his side of the bargain and yields to him, pulling his forces off the field. Connacht's other allies panic and Medb is forced to retreat. At this inopportune moment she gets her period, and although Fergus forms a guard around her, Cú Chulainn breaks through as she is dealing with it and has her at his mercy. However, he spares her because he does not think it right to kill women, and guards her retreat back to Connacht as far as Athlone. ### Bricriu's Feast The troublemaker Bricriu once incites three heroes, Cú Chulainn, Conall Cernach and Lóegaire Búadach, to compete for the champion's portion at his feast. In every test that is set Cú Chulainn comes out on top, but neither Conall nor Lóegaire will accept the result. Cú Roí mac Dáire of Munster settles it by visiting each in the guise of a hideous churl and challenging them to behead him, then allow him to return and behead them in return. Conall and Lóegaire both behead Cú Roí, who picks up his head and leaves, but when the time comes for him to return they flee. Only Cú Chulainn is brave and honourable enough to submit himself to Cú Roí's axe; Cú Roí spares him and he is declared champion. This beheading challenge appears in later literature, most notably in the Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Other examples include the 13th century French Life of Caradoc and the English romances The Turke and Gowin, and Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle. ### The Death of Cú Roí Cú Roí, again in disguise, joins the Ulstermen on a raid on Inis Fer Falga (probably the Isle of Man), in return for his choice of the spoils. They steal treasure, and abduct Blathnát, daughter of the island's king, who loves Cú Chulainn. But when Cú Roí is asked to choose his share, he chooses Blathnát. Cú Chulainn tries to stop him taking her, but Cú Roí cuts his hair and drives him into the ground up to his armpits before escaping, taking Blathnát with him. Like other heroes such as the Biblical Samson, Duryodhana in the Mahabharata and the Welsh Llew Llaw Gyffes, Cú Roí can only be killed in certain contrived circumstances, which vary in different versions of the story. Blathnát discovers how to kill him and betrays him to Cú Chulainn, who does the deed. However, Ferchertne, Cú Roí's poet, enraged at the betrayal of his lord, grabs Blathnát and leaps off a cliff, killing her and himself. ### Emer's only jealousy Cú Chulainn has many lovers, but Emer's only jealousy comes when he falls in love with Fand, wife of Manannán mac Lir. Manannán has left her and she has been attacked by three Fomorians who want to control the Irish Sea. Cú Chulainn agrees to help defend her as long as she marries him. She agrees reluctantly, but they fall in love when they meet. Manannán knows their relationship is doomed because Cú Chulainn is mortal and Fand is a fairy; Cú Chulainn's presence would destroy the fairies. Emer, meanwhile, tries to kill her rival, but when she sees the strength of Fand's love for Cú Chulainn she decides to give him up to her. Fand, touched by Emer's magnanimity, decides to return to her own husband. Manannán shakes his cloak between Cú Chulainn and Fand, ensuring the two will never meet again, and Cú Chulainn and Emer drink a potion to wipe the whole affair from their memories. ### Death (Irish: Aided Con Culainn, also known as Brislech Mór Maige Muirthemne). Medb conspires with Lugaid, son of Cú Roí, Erc, son of Cairbre Nia Fer, and the sons of others Cú Chulainn had killed, to draw him out to his death. His fate is sealed by his breaking of the geasa (taboos) upon him. Cú Chulainn's geasa included a ban against eating dog meat, but in early Ireland there was a powerful general taboo against refusing hospitality, so when an old crone offers him a meal of dog meat, he has no choice but to break his geis. In this way he is spiritually weakened for the fight ahead of him. Lugaid has three magical spears made, and it is prophesied that a king will fall by each of them. With the first he kills Cú Chulainn's charioteer Láeg, king of chariot drivers. With the second he kills Cú Chulainn's horse, Liath Macha, king of horses. With the third he hits Cú Chulainn, mortally wounding him. Cú Chulainn ties himself to a standing stone to die on his feet, facing his enemies. This stone is traditionally identified as Clochafarmore, located near Dundalk. Due to his ferocity even when so near death, it is only when a raven lands on his shoulder that his enemies believe he is dead. Lugaid approaches and cuts off his head, but as he does so the "hero-light" burns around Cú Chulainn and his sword falls from his hand and cuts Lugaid's hand off. The light disappears only after his right hand, his sword arm, is cut from his body. According to the Annals, Cú Chulainn died in the year AD 1. Conall Cernach had sworn that if Cú Chulainn died before him he would avenge him before sunset, and when he hears Cú Chulainn is dead he pursues Lugaid. As Lugaid has lost a hand, Conall fights him with one hand tucked into his belt, but he only beats him after his horse takes a bite out of Lugaid's side. He also kills Erc, and takes his head back to Tara, where Erc's sister Achall dies of grief for her brother. ### Appearance Cú Chulainn's appearance is occasionally remarked on in the texts. He is usually described as small, youthful and beardless. He is often described as dark: in The Wooing of Emer and Bricriu's Feast he is "a dark, sad man, comeliest of the men of Erin", in The Intoxication of the Ulstermen he is a "little, black-browed man", and in The Phantom Chariot of Cú Chulainn "[h]is hair was thick and black, and smooth as though a cow had licked it... in his head his eyes gleamed swift and grey"; yet the prophetess Fedelm in the Táin Bó Cúailnge describes him as blond. The most elaborate description of his appearance comes later in the Táin: > And certainly the youth Cúchulainn mac Sualdaim was handsome as he came to show his form to the armies. You would think he had three distinct heads of hair—brown at the base, blood-red in the middle, and a crown of golden yellow. This hair was settled strikingly into three coils on the cleft at the back of his head. Each long loose-flowing strand hung down in shining splendour over his shoulders, deep-gold and beautiful and fine as a thread of gold. A hundred neat red-gold curls shone darkly on his neck, and his head was covered with a hundred crimson threads matted with gems. He had four dimples in each cheek—yellow, green, crimson and blue—and seven bright pupils, eye-jewels, in each kingly eye. Each foot had seven toes and each hand seven fingers, the nails with the grip of a hawk's claw or a gryphon's clench. ## Later stories ### Siabur-Charpat Con Culaind The Siabur-Charpat Con Culaind (or "Demonic Chariot of Cu Chulaind") tells the story of when Saint Patrick was trying to convert King Lóegaire to Christianity. In the tale St. Patrick visited King Loegaire, attempting to convert him to the Christian faith. The king agreed but on a condition: that the saint call up Cu Chulainn from the dead, bringing him to the king's presence. St. Patrick agreed, and then the hero appeared, complete with chariot, and his two horse Liath Macha and Dub-Sainglend, together with his charioteer Loeg. The saint asks if the king is convinced – he replies that the appearance was so short he was not yet sure. The saint responds that God is so powerful that the king would see the hero again. The ghostly hero returns, and this time salutes and addresses the saint, he then turns to the king, confirms it is Cu Chulainn he sees and not some demon, and implores him to believe in the saint and his god. A dialogue between king and ghostly hero takes place, in which the old hero recounts his life, including a poetic telling of his heroic deeds, ending with a request to Patrick to allow him too into heaven – the king is convinced. At the end of this the saint declares that Cu Chulainn is welcome in heaven. The date of the tale is not certain. ### A Legend of Knockmany Cú Chulainn was later reimagined as an evil giant at odds with Fionn mac Cumhaill (or Finn McCool). Unrecorded before the 19th century, the earliest known version was "A Legend of Knockmany" in the 1845 Tales and Sketches ... of the Irish Peasantry by William Carleton. Variants were published in Patrick Kennedy's Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts (1866), and republished and brought to a larger audience by W.B. Yeats in Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry (1888), followed by numerous adaptions and variant, many uncredited. The work was included in later collections of 'folk tales' by other editors such as Joseph Jacobs in his Celtic Fairy Tales (1891). In this tale, Cú Chullain's power was contained in his middle finger. Wishing to defeat Finn, he came to Finn's house, but Finn disguised himself as a baby while his wife Oona baked cakes, some with griddle irons inside, some without. When Cú Chulainn could not bite through his cake (which had an iron in it) but the baby could (Finn's cake had no iron), in amazement Cú Chulainn felt to see how sharp the baby's teeth were, allowing Finn to bite his middle finger off and deprive Cú Chulainn of both his strength and size. ## Indo-European parallels Cú Chulainn shows striking similarities to the legendary Persian hero Rostam, as well as to the Germanic Lay of Hildebrand and the labours of the Greek epic hero Heracles, suggesting a common Indo-European origin, but lacking in linguistic, anthropological and archaeological material. Cú Chulainn's smiting of the hound with a hurling stick is reminiscent of the tenth labour of Heracles, in which Heracles is charged with stealing the cattle of Geryon and is attacked by a two-headed hound, which he dispatches with a club. Additional Indo-European typological parallels include Lithuanian Velnias, who like Cú Chulainn is the protector of cattle, and Romulus, who is associated with a canine in his youth and is surrounded by a youthful band of warriors (the maccrad in the case of Cú Chulainn). ## Cultural depictions See also Irish mythology in popular culture § Cú Chulainn ### Images The image of Cú Chulainn is often invoked by Irish nationalists. The Gaelic revival fed into the Irish revolutionary period, with elements of Irish mythology adopted in nationalist symbolism. In St. Enda's School, run by revolutionary Patrick Pearse, there was a stained-glass panel of Cú Chulainn. A bronze sculpture of the dying Cú Chulainn by Oliver Sheppard stands in the Dublin General Post Office (GPO) in commemoration of the Easter Rising of 1916. Éamon de Valera unveiled the statue in 1935 as President of the Executive Council (Prime Minister) and described Sheppard's work as "symbolising the dauntless courage and abiding constancy of our people". The statue's image is reproduced on the obverse of 1916 Medal awarded to republican veterans of the rising, the Military Star of the Irish Defence Forces, and the commemorative ten shilling coin issued in 1966 for the rising's 50th anniversary. He is also depicted in several murals in nationalist areas of Northern Ireland. An example is the mural painted in 1996 on Lenadoon Avenue, Belfast commemorating Provisional IRA members from the area, which shows Cú Chulainn in the centre. More recently, some Ulster loyalists have attempted to appropriate Cú Chulainn, depicting him as an ancient "defender of Ulster" from Irish enemies to the south. This is based on Ian Adamson's widely rejected theory that Cú Chulainn was a Cruthin hero and that they were a non-Celtic people who were at war with the Gaels. He is depicted in a loyalist mural on Highfield Drive, and was formerly depicted in another on the Newtownards Road, Belfast. A statue of Cú Chulainn carrying the body of Fer Diad stands in Ardee, County Louth, traditionally the site of their combat in the Táin Bó Cúailnge. A sculpture by Martin Heron, entitled "For the Love of Emer", depicting Cú Chulainn balancing on a tilting 20-foot pole, representing the feat of balancing on the butt of a spear he learned from Scáthach, was installed in Armagh in 2010. ### Literature Augusta, Lady Gregory retold many of the legends of Cú Chulainn in her 1902 book Cuchulain of Muirthemne, which paraphrased the originals but also romanticized some of the tales and omitted most of the more violent content. It was very popular, supported by the Celtic Revival movement. It featured an introduction by her friend William Butler Yeats, who wrote several pieces based on the legend, including the plays On Baile's Strand (1904), The Green Helmet (1910), At the Hawk's Well (1917), The Only Jealousy of Emer (1919) and The Death of Cuchulain (1939), and the poems Cuchulain's Fight with the Sea (1892) and Cuchulain Comforted (1939), the latter completed two weeks before his death. An tAthair Peadar Ua Laoghaire, a priest from Castlelyons in County Cork, serialised the Táin Bó Cúailnge on a weekly basis in The Cork Examiner between 1900 and 1901 as part of the Gaelic revival. Pádraig Pearse, another revivalist age writer and member of Conradh na Gaeilge mentions Cú Chulainn in his 1912 his Irish language poem Mise Éire where Pearse personifies Ireland as a mother figure who gave birth to Cú Chulainn, but whose glory days are behind her. Sheppard's statue of Cú Chulainn is depicted in Samuel Beckett's 1938 novel Murphy as a vice to mock the Irish Free State and the attitude of its inhabitants. The story of Cú Chulainn and many other characters from Irish Béaloideas tales such as Fionn mac Cumhaill are still taught as part of the Irish primary school curriculum in both the Republic and Northern Ireland. ### Television Cú Chulainn appears as a major character and summoned servant in multiple entries of Type-Moon's Fate series, most notably the Fate/stay night visual novel and anime series. ## See also - Setanta College, a sport college, named after Cu Chulainn's given name, due to his legendary hurling prowess.

M-38 (Michigan highway)

State highway in Michigan, United States

M-38 is an east–west state trunkline highway in the Upper Peninsula (UP) of the U.S. state of Michigan. Its west end starts in Ontonagon and runs east to Baraga, some 42.225 miles (67.955 km) apart. The highway crosses streams and rivers in forest lands and provides access to a casino. The east end is located by the Keweenaw Bay of Lake Superior in the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community. There have been two highways in the state to carry the designation. The first was located in the southeastern Lower Peninsula. The current version of M-38 was created from a section of M-35 in the 1960s. This section was orphaned from the rest of M-35 when the highway was cancelled through the Huron Mountains. ## Route description M-38 begins at a four-way intersection in Ontonagon. US Highway 45 (US 45) runs north–south through this intersection while M-64 runs west and M-38 runs east on Steel Street. This intersection is both the eastern terminus of M-64 and the western terminus of M-38. From here, M-38 forms a segment of the Lake Superior Circle Tour along Ontonagon–Greenland Road to a junction with M-26 near Greenland. The roadway runs through forest land and crosses several small streams while traveling southeasterly. Outside of Greenland, M-38 curves north around town after intersecting Plank Road. On the east side of town, M-26 and M-38 meet and join in a concurrency after Ontonagon–Greenland Road meets Plank Road a second time. The two highways run together for just over a mile to the unincorporated community of Lake Mine. There, M-38 turns south through the community while M-26 turns off to the northeast. The highway crosses a set of railroad tracks before turning east. At Post Office Road, M-38 meets Old M-35 Road, a vestige of a highway straightening project during the time the highway was M-35. M-38 crosses the West Branch of the Firesteel River in hilly terrain through this area. The highway continues east and provides access to the Courtney Lake National Forest Campground west of the Houghton County line. East of Federal Forest Highway 16 (FFH-16) near Nisula, M-38 crosses the West Branch of the Otter River. Along this section of roadway in Houghton County, the lowest annual average daily traffic (AADT) counts were measured by the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) in 2007. An average of 680 vehicles traveled on the roadway, according to MDOT surveys. Of those vehicles, only 40 trucks on average were included in the traffic counts. East of Nisula, the roadway runs parallel to Mill Creek. Mill Creek flows into the West Branch of the Sturgeon River near the Baraga County line. East of the county line is the crossing over the Sturgeon River south of Pelkie, home of the Baraga County Fairgrounds. The trunkline crosses more hilly terrain while veering to the northeast. Continuing to the east, M-38 had its highest traffic usage in 2007. The AADT for the Baraga County highway segment was measured at 3,000 vehicles a day. The roadway continues east through Baraga County and runs downhill approaching Baraga and the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, home of the first Native American casino in the United States. After passing through downtown Baraga on Michigan Avenue, M-38 ends at an intersection with US 41; on the western shore of Keweenaw Bay. ## History ### Previous designation The first version of M-38 was designated in 1919 in the Lower Peninsula. It was located on Junction Road from M-10 (later US 10/US 23) southeast of Bridgeport to Frankenmuth, and then ran east to M-19 in the Peck area in 1919. The highway was transferred to county jurisdiction in late 1961 when Interstate 75 (I-75) was completed in the area. ### Current designation In January 1969, the Michigan Department of State Highways redesignated the western section of M-35 as M-38. M-35 was originally planned to start in Menominee and run north to Big Bay, turn west through the Huron Mountains in northern Marquette County and run west from Baraga to Ontonagon. The Huron Mountains portion of M-35 was never built due to opposition from Henry Ford and the Huron Mountain Club. This left M-35 discontinuous. It was later routed along US 41 from Negaunee to Baraga, connecting the two sections until the western section was given the M-38 designation. The original routing of M-38 in the Upper Peninsula ran from M-26 at Greenland to Baraga. US 45 was rerouted in 1971 along M-26 from Rockland to Greenland and Ontonagon–Greenland Road between those two towns. M-26 was shortened to end at the new US 45 in Greenland. This change to US 45 was reversed in 1973. M-26 was re-extended to Rockland, and M-38 was extended along M-26 to Ontonagon–Greenland Road to meet US 45 in Ontonagon. On October 11, 2006, the western terminus of M-38 was relocated about 0.25 miles (0.40 km) south to end at a junction with US 45 and the newly realigned M-64. ## Major intersections ## See also

The French Connection (ice hockey)

Buffalo Sabres line

The French Connection is the nickname of a forward line that played for the Buffalo Sabres of the National Hockey League from 1972 until 1979. The line consisted of Hall of Famer Gilbert Perreault at centre and All-Stars Rick Martin and René Robert at left wing and right wing, respectively. All three players were French-Canadians from Quebec: Perreault from Victoriaville; Robert from Trois-Rivières; and Martin from Verdun. The name referred both to the origins of the players and to the 1971 movie The French Connection, based upon the book of the same name. The name was registered as a trademark by Robert with the approval of his linemates. Perreault and Martin were the first-round draft picks of the Sabres in the franchise's first two years, while Robert was acquired in a trade late in the Sabres' second season. The trio accounted for most of Buffalo's scoring during their seven years together, amassing a total of 1,681 points over 1,536 man-games from 1972 to 1979, while leading the Sabres to the franchise's first appearance in the Stanley Cup Finals in 1975. They continue to hold many of the franchise's scoring records. Each member of the French Connection was named to the official NHL All-Star team at least once and to the National Hockey League All-Star Game at least twice while playing together. ## History Perreault was acquired by the team with their first draft pick of their inaugural season in the 1970 Entry Draft. Martin followed the next year as the team's first pick in 1971. Both players were drafted after three seasons with the Montreal Junior Canadiens. Robert was acquired in a trade on March 4, 1972, for Eddie Shack. He played twelve games for the Sabres during the 1971–72 NHL season. Perreault played his entire 17-season career with the Sabres. Martin played all but 4 games of his injury-shortened 11-season career with the Sabres. The trio played together as a line most of the time until the fall of 1979. On October 5, 1979, Scotty Bowman traded Robert to the Colorado Rockies for defenseman John Van Boxmeer. This ended the French Connection era in Buffalo, but not before the trio became the first three players to accumulate 200 goals in a Sabres uniform. Each player's jerseys were retired; Perreault's \#11 was retired during a ceremony on October 17, 1990, and Robert's \#14 and Martin's \#7 were retired on November 15, 1995. All three numbers hang together from the KeyBank Center rafters under a French Connection banner. In hopes of averting the lean years that troubled most expansion teams, George Imlach, the Sabres first coach and General Manager, attempted to build a high-scoring club to excite the local hockey fans. Perreault was regarded as a smooth skater and tremendous stickhandler. Perreault was chosen to be the franchise player around which a team could be built and succeed. Although Martin and Perreault had played two years together with the Montreal Junior Canadiens (Perreault even lived with Martin's family during the 1969–70 season), they had never played on the same line before being paired in Buffalo. Since Martin was one of the few who could keep up with Perreault as a skater they were paired together after the Sabres drafted Martin. It was very clear during the 1971–72 season that Perreault and Martin were a natural pairing. Sabres coach Joe Crozier felt the two just needed a third player who would stay high and check. Sabres coach quickly teamed Robert with Perreault and Martin after the trade. The two players complemented Perreault and became a dynamic combination that dazzled fans. There are differing claims as to who dubbed the hockey line “The French Connection” as a reference to the Academy Award-winning film. Origination of the term was often given to writer Lee Coppola when he was operating the Buffalo Auditorium message board and who later became Dean of Journalism at St. Bonaventure University. Credit is also given to WKBW TV's Rick Azar, the Dean of TV sportscasters in Buffalo, who used it first on a 6pm Eyewitness News sportscast and references it in his 2014 book, Tales from Azar's Attic. A half century later, Erik Brady, in his July 22, 2021, Buffalo News column on who first named the French Connection line, suggested “maybe the answer is both, independent of one another.” The trio played together as a regular line through the 1974–75 season. At times, they were split up during the last four seasons. When they played together they often faced the opposition's top defensive lineups. Since the trio were tremendous skating scoring threats these opponents would concentrate on checking them and staying on top of them. For example, against the Montreal Canadiens Bob Gainey's line would oppose them. Rick Martin once said about this line "I had Jimmy Roberts between me and my shadow." Perreault was known as a naturally gifted skater and playmaker who was capable of making an end-to-end rush at any time. His fame was hampered by his own shy personality. His stickhandling and head faking confounded even the best defensive players in the world. Martin was considered the "marksman" of the three who was dangerous with the wristshot and slapshot. Robert was known for his "blinding speed and lethal shot". He made his mark with the French Connection, as one of the league's most highly regarded powerplay point men, and on the second line penalty killing unit. He was perhaps the least flashy of the three, but was the most complete. He was the player who checked and worked hard in the corners. Perreault holds numerous club career records (including regular season games played, goals, assists, points, game-winning goals, 30-goal seasons, 20-goal seasons, and shots on goal). However, Martin holds the franchise career records for hat tricks, four-goal games, 40-goal seasons, consecutive 40-goal seasons, 50-goal seasons (tied with Danny Gare) and consecutive 50-goal seasons. Although Robert's name is not as prominent in the record books. his 40-goal and 60-assist 1974–75 NHL season was the club's first 100-point season by an individual. During the seven full seasons the trio was together, Perreault led the Sabres in scoring five times and Robert and Martin led the team once each. Martin led the team three times in goals, Perreault twice and Robert once during this time. Perreault led the team in assists four times and Robert did so twice. In addition, the two tied once for the lead in assists. Martin's 1975–76 season with 7 hat tricks continues to be tied with Alexander Mogilny for the franchise single-season record. Martin and Perreault continue to be first and second for rookie season points and goals in franchise history (records set before the arrival of Robert). The trio led the Sabres to the Stanley Cup playoffs every full season they were together, except the 1973–74 NHL season when Perreault suffered a broken leg and only played in 55 games. The impact of the combination was obvious as the team began the first full season of the French Connection era with a ten-game unbeaten streak; the team made the playoffs for the first time in the history of the franchise and the three members of the French Connection were the team's three leading scorers. The team suddenly went unbeaten in their first 21 home games, while setting a record for post 1967 expansion teams by recording a home winning streak of 12 and while going unbeaten in New York state for 25 games including 1 win at the Nassau Coliseum and 3 at the Madison Square Garden. Their first playoff appearance during their first full season together (1972–73) was not only the franchise's first playoff appearance, but the series also marked history as the only National Hockey League Playoff series with brothers (Ken Dryden and Dave Dryden) as opposing goaltenders. In the first game of the series, both goaltenders were chosen as being among the three stars of the game. During the 1974–75 NHL season, all members of the trio were selected to play in the National Hockey League All-Star game; they all finished among the top ten in league scoring, and they led the team to a tie for first place in the regular season standings. Among their postseason highlights was the May 20, 1975, game three of the 1975 Stanley Cup Finals. This game, known as the fog game, was memorable because Buffalo Memorial Auditorium had no air conditioning and the arena temperature matched the 90 degree outdoor temperature, which caused fog to shroud the ice surface. During the overtime, play was delayed seven times due to fog on the ice surface at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium. The players were instructed by Flyer coach Fred Shero and Sabre coach Floyd Smith to shoot whenever possible because of the impaired goaltender vision. Eventually, the French connection combined to score a Martin to Perreault to Robert game-winning goal. This came after the French Connection swarmed Flyer goalie enabling Bill Hajt to knock in a Rick Martin rebound to send the game to overtime. The 1975–76 season would also be memorable for the trio and the franchise. On January 4, 1976, the Sabres hosted part of the two-team eight-game NHL tour by the opposing the Soviet Wings. The Sabres handed the Russians the first of only two defeats on the tour. The French Connection contributed 4 goals and 5 assists to a 12–6 victory. The night marked the worst defeat by a Russian hockey team in international competition. The trio was, and remains, immensely popular in Buffalo, New York, as well as the surrounding Western New York area, and their international popularity and cultural prominence was also evident. They never won a Stanley Cup, but are an important part of hockey history. Rick Martin was the 1977 National Hockey League All-Star Game most valuable player and Perreault scored the game-winning overtime goal in the 1978 NHL All-Star Game at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium. Perreault was selected to play in nine All-Star games (1970–71, 1971–72, 1973–74, 1974–75, 1976–77, 1977–78, 1978–79, 1979–80, 1983–84), Martin was selected to play in seven consecutive All-Star games (1971–72 through 1977–78) and Robert was selected to two All-Star games (1972–73, 1974–75). In addition, Martin was selected as the Official NHL All-Star first team Left Wing in 1973–74 & 1974–75 and the Official NHL All-Star second team Left Wing in 1975–76 & 1976–77. Perreault was selected as the Official NHL All-Star second team Center in 1975–76 & 1976–77. Rene Robert was selected as the Official NHL All-Star second team Right Wing in 1974–75. Perreault earned the Calder Memorial Trophy in 1971 and the Lady Byng Trophy in 1973. All honours for all players were as Buffalo Sabres. All Official NHL All-Star team selections were earned while the three were teammates. Perreault was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1990. The line made occasional appearances as members of the Buffalo Sabres Alumni Hockey Team until Martin's death in March 2011. Their last appearance together was to introduce Terrence Pegula as the Sabres' owner on February 24, 2011. A statue of "The French Connection," unveiled in 2012, is located outside the Sabres' arena, now known as KeyBank Center. ## The French Connection years ### Regular season ### Playoffs ## See also - List of ice hockey linemates

Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise

2008 video game

Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise is a 2008 simulation video game in the Viva Piñata series for the Xbox 360. Developed by Rare and published by Microsoft Studios, the game builds atop its predecessor, in which the player tends a garden and the piñata creatures that come to live there. New features to the series include a cooperative multiplayer mode, a new plot, additional types of piñata creatures, Xbox Live Vision Camera support, and two new areas for capturing piñatas. Microsoft considered Viva Piñata a success and the sequel's development team sought to make a more definitive version of the original. The team re-used many of the development infrastructure set up for its predecessor and exhausted their gameplay ideas for the piñata gardening concept. The game released to generally favorable reviews in September 2008. Critics considered the game more accessible to newcomers and a worthwhile improvement on the original, but altogether closer to an expansion than a unique sequel. Reviewers praised its game design tweaks, but were mixed on its multiplayer modes and camera integration. Critics were mixed on whether the sequel would attract new players to the franchise. Trouble in Paradise was later included in the developer's 2015 Xbox One retrospective compilation, Rare Replay. ## Gameplay Apart from a few new features, Trouble in Paradise is nearly identical to its predecessor, the 2006 Viva Piñata, in gameplay: The player acts as a gardener whose land is visited by piñata creatures. The creatures are stylized like piñatas but have the qualities of animals. Creature types include horses, raccoons, foxes, frogs, and bees, as well as new species like ladybugs, crabs, geckos, gorillas, and vultures. The player plants seeds, tends to plants, and digs ponds within the garden's boundaries. New types of piñata creatures visit and eventually come to reside in the garden when certain prerequisites are met. For instance, a piñata might be attracted to a garden with a specific plant, type of piñata, or amount of soil. The player uses an in-game encyclopedia to learn each piñata type's preferences, which grow in complexity: advanced creatures require more transformative changes to the garden or many other piñatas to eat. When multiple piñatas are satisfied, the player can "romance" two to make a baby piñata. The player continues to cultivate the garden and the piñata creatures to grow in experience level and unlock upgrades in garden size and gardening tools. An in-game store sells seeds, items, and upgrades. Both games are rendered in the same engine and their supporting casts are the same. The first game's online piñata gifting feature returns in Trouble in Paradise. Atop the previous formula is a new plot, a cooperative multiplayer mode, Xbox Live Vision Camera support, 32 new types of piñata creatures, and two separate areas to trap piñatas. These latter areas—the Dessert Desert and Piñarctic—let the player set traps for wandering piñatas to bait, capture, and return to the garden. At a later player experience level, the player can add sand and ice to their main garden for the piñatas. In the new plot, the player must repopulate a database of piñata information that has been maliciously erased. Trouble in Paradise includes new challenges in which the player finds and indulges a specific piñata with actions it likes such that the piñata can be sent happily to a party somewhere around the world. The game also adds fashion show and side-scrolling racing minigames. A new "Trick Stick" lets players teach piñatas to perform new tricks. Up to four players can join together on Xbox Live to garden in the same plot. The plot's owner can set restrictions on what other players can access. Up to two players can join together locally on the same Xbox 360. The game's additional "Just for Fun" mode is designed for younger children by eliminating monetary restrictions, evil piñatas, and ruffian characters that might otherwise frustrate the player. These malicious "sour" piñatas, which contain evil versions of moles, crocodiles, wolves, and crows, as well as new sour species such as skunks, and scorpions, try to poison the other piñatas, they can be tamed to peaceably join the player's garden. Players can use the Xbox Live Vision Camera to scan collectible cards and unlock piñatas and items. New controls were added to streamline the player's interface interactions, and a leaderboard added for players to compare their progress. ## Development As Rare released the original Viva Piñata for the Xbox 360 in 2006, its development team saw it as incomplete. The developers had cut partial ideas from the release to meet their deadlines. Rare's Gregg Mayles said that the game sold well and steadily on par with their expectations and Xbox's Phil Spencer added that the game was considered a success inside the company. The team incorporated player feedback and worked towards a "more definitive version" of the original. Mayles left the team to work on Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts and Justin Cook became the team's lead designer. The sequel was built atop the original and the developers re-used many of the tools from the original game's development. In both the sequel and the original, the development team volunteered to record the sounds used for the piñatas. One of the team's new ideas was "Piñata Vision", a feature that detects printed cards via the Xbox camera to change the in-game environment (e.g., adding piñatas or altering the weather). Near the time of the sequel's release, Rare's Mayles figured that the team would likely not have enough new gameplay ideas to warrant a sequel to Trouble in Paradise, though Cook said that he would work on the game's shop interface had he more time. Trouble in Paradise released in early September 2008. The two Viva Piñata console games were later re-released in the 2015 compilation of Rare games, Rare Replay, but the server that handled their piñata sharing features had been shut down by that time. In June 2019, both games were enhanced to run at native 4K resolution on Xbox One X. ## Reception The game received "generally favorable" reviews, according to video game review aggregator Metacritic. Critics had found its predecessor surprisingly engaging, and thought that Trouble in Paradise's additions made it the definitive Viva Piñata release. Critics agreed that the changes made the game friendlier for new players and children. They appreciated the new game's improvements, but some were disappointed that the base game was essentially unchanged. Reviewers considered Trouble in Paradise to be an expansion of the original game rather than a unique sequel. Critics praised Trouble in Paradise's new features. Mc Shea (GameSpot) thought that the sequel's in-game challenges resolved the core issue of the original game - the lack of motivation to continue breeding new species, whereas the challenges direct players to collect new species. He appreciated the two new trap areas for adding to the game's variety of characters, though he did not find the actual laying of traps and transport of piñatas interesting. Geddes (IGN) thought that it felt wrong but oddly satisfying to put piñatas in captivity. He considered the trap areas a good idea but unwelcome as another obstacle in the animal acquisition process. Geddes praised Trouble in Paradise's cooperative features, but found local cooperative to lose most of the benefits of efficient multitasking. Mc Shea (GameSpot) on the other hand felt that it was strange to be on either side of the cooperative gardening experience, which lacks the game's creative element when the visitor is directed by the garden's owner. Bramwell (Eurogamer) saw a lack of depth in the online gameplay, both in feelings of connections with others and in how online matchmaking became a brief "show and tell" of a garden instead of a cross-exchange like in Animal Crossing or Spore. Reviewers agreed that cooperative was useful for introducing new players to the game. Reviewers considered some of the smaller additions useful and others gimmicky. Critics appreciated the release's time-saving interface tweaks and overall pacing, but thought, for instance, that the vision camera integration added little to the game. While Electronic Gaming Monthly had wanted more development of the story, Mc Shea (GameSpot) was grateful that the story remained in the background of the game. While Electronic Gaming Monthly wrote that loading times had been improved, Geddes (IGN) considered them "frustratingly long". Considering the previous game's slow start, Tom Bramwell (Eurogamer) thought that Trouble in Paradise did a better job of introducing the player to the world by pre-loading player gardens with animals, plants, and decorations, and offering a tutorial. He wondered whether the game went too far, from too slow to hyperactive. Reviewers praised Trouble in Paradise's bright visuals and cute characters. Mc Shea (GameSpot) was impressed by the game's visuals and wrote that players would continue playing the game if only to unlock nuanced, animated video of piñatas acting cute during major life milestones. Mc Shea recalled the human helper characters as an exception, who were off-putting with creepy masks and "offensive" voice acting. IGN praised the game's surround sound but not its soundtrack's composition, and Mc Shea (GameSpot) considered the voice acting harsh against the game's otherwise tranquil mood. Mc Shea (GameSpot) called Trouble in Paradise "a safe sequel to a great game". Ultimately, Geddes (IGN) wrote that an expansion pack on the original game would have served the same function. Even with Trouble in Paradise's upgraded controls, Bramwell (Eurogamer) preferred the precision of the Nintendo DS version's stylus or of a computer mouse, and thought the game could be further simplified. However, he saw the new release as a more polished opportunity to attract an audience that was not originally convinced by the reception of the first game. Electronic Gaming Monthly said that players that hated the original game would not be swayed by the sequel. GameSpot's 2008 year in review staff nominated but did not award Trouble in Paradise as the "Best Game No One Played".

Battle of Chongju (1950)

Part of the Korean War

The Battle of Chongju (Korean: 정주 전투, 29–30 October 1950), also spelled Battle of Jeongju took place during the United Nations Command (UN) offensive towards the Yalu River, which followed the North Korean invasion of South Korea at the start of the Korean War. The battle was fought between Australian forces from 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (3 RAR) and the 17th Tank Brigade of the Korean People's Army (KPA) for control of Chongju, North Korea and the surrounding area. After detecting a strong KPA armoured force equipped with T-34 tanks and SU-76 self-propelled guns on a thickly wooded ridgeline astride the line of advance, the Australians launched a series of company attacks with American M4 Sherman tanks and aircraft in support. Despite heavy resistance the KPA were forced to withdraw and the Australians captured their objectives after three hours of fighting. That evening the KPA were strongly reinforced, attacking the Australian southern flank manned by D Company 3 RAR, and partially penetrating their perimeter. After two hours of fighting the assault was repulsed, and the KPA subsequently launched a furious assault against A Company 3 RAR on the northern position, which also failed amid heavy losses. The following day the Australians advanced to the high ground overlooking Chongju, killing and capturing a number of KPA in skirmishes. That afternoon the town itself was cleared by the remaining elements of the 27th British Commonwealth Brigade without opposition. KPA casualties during the fighting were heavy, while Australian losses included their commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Green, who was wounded in the stomach by artillery fire after the battle and died two days later. ## Background ### Military situation The Korean War began early in the morning of 25 June 1950, following the surprise invasion of the Republic of Korea by its northern neighbour, the communist Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). Numerically superior and better-equipped, the KPA crossed the 38th Parallel and rapidly advanced south, easily overcoming the inferior Republic of Korea Army (ROK). In response, the United Nations (UN) decided to intervene on behalf of South Korea, inviting member states to send forces to restore the situation. As a consequence, American ground forces were hastily deployed in an attempt to prevent the South Koreans from collapsing, however they too were under strength and poorly equipped, and by early August had been forced back by the KPA to an enclave around Pusan, known as the Pusan Perimeter. Key US allies—Britain, Canada and Australia—also committed forces, although these were initially limited to naval contingents and were largely viewed as token efforts in the US. Under diplomatic pressure the British agreed to deploy an infantry brigade in July, and would later dispatch a second brigade as the crisis worsened. The Canadians also agreed to provide an infantry brigade, although the first battalion would not arrive until December 1950. A total of 21 UN member states eventually contributed forces. Australia was one of the first nations to commit units to the fighting, playing a small but sometimes significant part in the UN forces, which was initially led by General Douglas MacArthur. Forces deployed in Japan as part of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force formed the basis of the Australian response, with P-51 Mustang fighter-bombers from No. 77 Squadron RAAF flying their first missions on 2 July, while the frigate and the destroyer were also committed to naval operations. During this time the 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (3 RAR), which had been preparing to return to Australia prior to the outbreak of the war, remained in Japan, however on 26 July the Australian government announced that it would also commit the understrength and poorly equipped infantry battalion to the fighting, following a period of preparation. Training and re-equipment began immediately, while hundreds of reinforcements were hastily recruited in Australia as part of K Force; they soon began arriving to fill out the battalion. The battalion's commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Floyd Walsh, was subsequently replaced by Lieutenant Colonel Charles Green. An officer with extensive operational experience fighting the Japanese in New Guinea during the Second World War, Green took over from Walsh due to the latter's perceived inexperience. On 23 September 1950, 3 RAR embarked for Korea, concentrating at Pusan on 28 September. There it joined the British 27th Infantry Brigade, a garrison formation hurriedly committed from Hong Kong by the British as the situation deteriorated around the Pusan Perimeter in late August to bolster the US Eighth Army under Lieutenant General Walton Walker. Commanded by Brigadier Basil Coad, the brigade was renamed the 27th British Commonwealth Brigade and consisted of the 1st Battalion, Argyll and Sutherland Highland Regiment (1 ASHR), the 1st Battalion, Middlesex Regiment (1 MR) and 3 RAR. Under strength, the two British battalions had each mustered just 600 men of all ranks, while the brigade was also short on transport and heavy equipment, and had no integral artillery support, for which it would rely entirely on the Americans until the 16th Field Regiment, Royal New Zealand Artillery arrived in January 1951. As such, with a strength of nearly 1,000 men, the addition of 3 RAR gave the brigade increased tactical weight as well as expediently allowing the Australians to work within a familiar organisational environment, rather than being attached to a US formation. Also under the command of the brigade were a number of US Army units, including 155 mm howitzers from the 90th Field Artillery Battalion, M4 Sherman tanks from 89th Tank Battalion and a company from the 72nd Combat Engineer Battalion. ## Prelude ### Opposing forces By the time 3 RAR arrived in the theatre, the KPA had been broken and were in rapid retreat, with MacArthur's forces conducting a successful amphibious assault at Inchon and breakout from the Pusan Perimeter on the southern tip of the Korean peninsula. A steady advance began, driving the North Koreans northwards towards the 38th Parallel. The 27th British Commonwealth Brigade was airlifted from Taegu to Kimpo Airfield north of Seoul on 5 October, however its vehicles had to move by road, driving 420 kilometres (260 mi), and did not arrive until 9 October. It was subsequently attached to the US 1st Cavalry Division, under the command of Major General Hobart R. Gay. On 16 October the brigade took over from the US 7th Cavalry Regiment as the vanguard of the UN advance into North Korea, its axis intended to take it through Kaesong, Kumchon and Hungsu-ri to Sariwon, then through Hwangju to the North Korean capital of Pyongyang. Although the KPA had suffered heavily in the preceding weeks, they continued to resist strongly, while a lack of accurate maps and the narrowness of the roads made rapid movement difficult for the advancing UN forces. During this time 3 RAR had a platoon of American M4 Sherman tanks attached and a battery of field guns in direct support. The 27th British Commonwealth Brigade subsequently moved 70 kilometres (43 mi) from Kumchon, with the Argylls capturing Sariwon on 17 October, killing 215 KPA and taking many prisoners for the loss of one man killed and three wounded. The brigade then passed to the command of the US 24th Infantry Division on 21 October, under the overall command of Major General John H. Church, while the US 1st Cavalry Division remained in Pyongyang to complete its capture. The 27th British Commonwealth Brigade was subsequently ordered to seize Chongju. Consequently, the brigade continued to advance north with little respite, and on 22 October the Australians fought their first major action at Yongju, killing 150 KPA and capturing 239 of the brigade's 800 prisoners, for the loss of seven men wounded. Intending to defeat the KPA and bring the war to a close, the UN forces pushed towards the Yalu River, on the Chinese border. Resistance continued to be met as the brigade crossed the Chongchon River however, and they now moved towards Pakchon. On 24 October, MacArthur had removed all restrictions on the movement of his forces south of the Yalu River and prepared for the final phase of the UN advance, defying a directive of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and risking Chinese intervention in support of North Korea. On the afternoon of 25 October a platoon from 3 RAR was fired on by two companies of KPA as they crossed the Taeryong River to conduct a reconnaissance of the west bank, and although they were subsequently forced to withdraw, the Australians took 10 prisoners with them. Acting as the forward elements of the brigade, that evening Green sent two companies across the river to establish defensive positions, and they subsequently broke up a frontal assault on their positions with mortars while the KPA were in the process of forming up. Sixty KPA supported by a T-34 tank then attacked the forward Australian companies at Kujin early the following morning, resulting in Australian losses of eight killed and 22 wounded. However, the KPA suffered heavy casualties including over 100 killed and 350 captured, and the Australians subsequently succeeded in defending the bridgehead after the KPA withdrew. Intelligence indicated that the British and Australians were facing the KPA 17th Tank Brigade, equipped with 20 tanks, which was preparing a last line of defence at Chongju, 70 kilometres (43 mi) away. Although the KPA had suffered heavy casualties during the previous fighting on the Taeryong River, Coad was now forced to adopt more cautious tactics, advancing in shorter bounds and clearing high points en route. On 27 October the Middlesex continued the advance and was involved in a sharp fight in the hills west of the river near the village of Yongsong-ni. With the war considered all but over the 27th British Commonwealth Brigade continued to pursue the KPA towards Chongju over the next three days, however the advance increasingly encountered strong resistance from KPA infantry dug-in with tanks and self-propelled guns in support, as they approached the Yalu River on the Manchurian border. ## Battle ### Fighting around Chongju, 29 October 1950 3 RAR took over as lead battalion of the 27th British Commonwealth Brigade on 29 October, 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) from Chongju. At 10:00 a United States Air Force (USAF) LT-6G Mosquito light spotter aircraft reported a large KPA formation consisting of a battalion-sized force of 500–600 infantry supported by several tanks and at least two self-propelled guns, positioned on a thickly wooded ridgeline around Chongju. Astride the line of the advance, these positions were noted as being well constructed, camouflaged and dug-in, with the KPA occupying positions on the forward slopes on both sides of the road. Airstrikes were called in and eight sorties were undertaken by USAF F-80 Shooting Stars which rocketed, strafed and napalmed the KPA positions on the ridgelines. By 14:00 the pilots claimed to have destroyed seven T-34 tanks and two SU-76 self-propelled guns, as well as causing many casualties among the KPA forces. These claims proved optimistic however. With only a few hours of daylight remaining, Green then planned a battalion attack with two companies forward. Under the command of Major Walter Brown, D Company was subsequently ordered to attack the KPA positions on the left of the road, followed by A Company commanded by Captain William Chitts, which would attack the right. Meanwhile, preparatory fire from the 155 mm howitzers of the 90th Field Artillery Battalion and 3-inch mortars from Support Company 3 RAR began to fall on the KPA positions. At 14:30, D Company launched an assault against the ridge south of the road, with two platoons of Sherman tanks in support from D Company, US 89th Tank Battalion. One tank platoon led the attack followed by the other carrying infantry from 10 Platoon D Company. Under the command of Lieutenant David Mannett, 10 Platoon made a right flanking assault along the road, while 11 and 12 Platoons attacked the ridge frontally across the paddy fields. Meeting stronger resistance than expected however, the attackers came under heavy fire and one of the Sherman tanks was knocked out by an armour-piercing round that hit its turret. However, with the American tanks providing vital close support to the infantry, 10 Platoon successfully secured its objective, allowing it to take the KPA in enfilade and to provide fire support to the assault. Thus, despite strong opposition, the remainder of D Company gained the high ground by 16:30. With the earlier airstrikes having been ineffective, D Company had been opposed by a number of T-34 tanks and SU-76 self-propelled guns, however the bulk of these were destroyed by the Shermans during the assault. Another tank had been knocked out by well-directed fire at point-blank range from a Bren light machine gun by Private John Stafford, which caused the armoured vehicle's auxiliary fuel tanks to ignite, resulting in its ammunition exploding. Stafford was subsequently awarded the US Silver Star for his bravery. A Company attacked the ridgeline to the north of the road to Chonju just prior to dusk, this time without the support of the Sherman tanks. The Australians again came under heavy fire from the KPA, however they quickly overcame the defenders and the ridge was secured by 17:30. During the fighting for the northern position, three KPA T-34 tanks dug-in on the ridgeline had been destroyed by the Australians at short range with M20 3.5-inch bazookas, which now proved to be effective anti-armour weapons despite difficulties experienced in their use at Kujin several days before. During the day's fighting, a total of 11 T-34 tanks and two SU-76 self-propelled guns had been destroyed by the Australian infantry and American tanks, contrary to the reports of their destruction by USAF airstrikes earlier in the day. Expecting a counter-attack, Green then ordered B Company forward to occupy positions along the road in between the positions held by D and A Companies, while Battalion headquarters moved in behind B Company, with C Company held in reserve at the rear with Support Company. After conducting a limited resupply of the forward companies, the Australians hastily began to dig in. The KPA subsequently brought up substantial reinforcements, and soon after dark they moved against D Company on the southern flank. Preparatory fire by artillery, mortars and machine-guns began at 19:00, following which a battalion-sized ground assault was launched. The weight of the counter-attack fell on 10 Platoon D Company, with Mannett holding his platoon's fire until the KPA were only 10 metres (33 ft) away before engaging, killing 32 men. Mannett was later awarded the Military Cross for his leadership during the initial assault and the subsequent defence of the ridgeline. Regardless, the KPA succeeded in overrunning parts of the Australian position before they were finally repulsed following counter-attacks by 11 and 12 Platoons during two hours of fierce fighting. A number of KPA also succeeded in penetrating the perimeter, and they moved behind D Company from where they fired on the 3 RAR headquarters. Contact was subsequently lost with D Company and was not regained until the KPA were forced to withdraw by Headquarters Company, under Captain Ben O'Dowd, which then cleared the depth positions. At 21:30 the focus of the KPA counter-attack shifted to the northern flank, launching a heavy assault against A Company. This effort also failed however, being repulsed as Chitts called-in indirect fire from the Support Company mortars and American howitzers to within 10 metres (33 ft) of the forward Australian positions. The KPA finally withdrew at 22:15, though a SU-76 self-propelled gun continued to fire sporadically into the Australian positions until 23:00. ### Clearance of the town, 30 October 1950 The following morning the Australians remained in position, and at daybreak they found more than 150 KPA dead within the 3 RAR defensive position. Coad subsequently brought the Middlesex forward to secure his northern flank, while 3 RAR moved forward to the Talchon River, taking up positions in the hills overlooking Chongju by 11:00. During the advance the Australians had clashed with a number of KPA stragglers, killing 12 and capturing 10 in skirmishes. It became clear that organised resistance had ceased however, with the successful Australian assault and the subsequent defence of its objectives the day before breaking the KPA locally. In the north the Middlesex pushed forward to the riverbank, while in the afternoon the Argylls forded the river with two platoons of Shermans. Meanwhile, aerial reconnaissance reported the presence of KPA tanks to the west of Chongju. Regardless, that afternoon the Argylls encountered no further opposition as they entered and cleared the ruined and burning town, securing it by 17:00. The brigade then moved into divisional reserve for the US 24th Infantry Division, with Church ordering the US 21st Infantry Regiment to take its place in the lead in order to give the British and Australian infantry a much needed respite. The tanks and infantry of the 21st Infantry Regiment subsequently moved through the brigade. The 27th British Commonwealth Brigade adopted tight security that evening due to the threat of KPA infiltration. For added protection while in reserve the 3 RAR headquarters had been sited on the reverse slope of a hill overlooking the Talchon River, with the rifle companies occupying the forward slope of the ridgeline to the west and a spur line which thrust towards the river bank. Around dusk at 18:10 on 30 October, six high-velocity shells, likely from a KPA self-propelled gun or tank, hit the area. Five of the shells landed on the forward slope, while the sixth cleared the crest and detonated to the rear of the C Company position after hitting a tree. In his tent on a stretcher after 36 hours without sleep, Green was severely wounded in the stomach by a fragment from the wayward round. He was evacuated to a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) at Anju, however he succumbed to his wounds and died two days later on 1 November. Forty other men who had been in the vicinity when the shell landed were unhurt. A popular and respected commanding officer, Green's loss was keenly felt by the Australians. Meanwhile, Coad received congratulations from Gay for the brigade's victory at Chongju after marching 50 kilometres (31 mi) in twelve hours. ## Aftermath ### Casualties The fighting around Chongju was the heaviest undertaken by the Australians since entering the war. KPA casualties included 162 killed and 10 captured, while Australian losses were nine killed and 30 wounded, including Green. The Royal Australian Regiment was subsequently granted the battle honour "Chongju". Following the capture of the town the US 21st Infantry Regiment had set off rapidly along the road to Sonchon to the west. Encountering only one strong KPA position which they quickly turned, by noon on 1 November the lead battalion had reached Chonggodong, just 30 kilometres (19 mi) from the Yalu River where the Americans clashed with another KPA armoured force. To the north meanwhile, the US 5th and 9th Infantry Regiments of the 24th Division secured Taechon and Kusong, before advancing to within 40 kilometres (25 mi) of the Manchurian border. ### Subsequent operations During the last weeks of October the Chinese had moved 18 divisions of the People's Volunteer Army across the Yalu River under the overall command of Marshal Peng Dehuai in order to reinforce the remnants of the KPA. Undetected by US and South Korean intelligence, the 13th Army Group crossed the border on 16 October and penetrated up to 100 kilometres (62 mi) into North Korea, and were reinforced in early November by 12 divisions from the 9th Army Group; in total 30 divisions composed of 380,000 men. The Chinese subsequently ambushed MacArthur's forces which were now widely dispersed, decimating ROK II Corps at Onjong and encircling and overrunning the US 8th Cavalry Regiment at Unsan. Ultimately Chongju was the furthest north that 27th British Commonwealth Brigade was to penetrate. Walsh, by then an observer at US Eighth Army headquarters, was urgently posted to resume command of 3 RAR following Green's death, however he was relieved of his position by Coad just six days later in the wake of the Battle of Pakchon on 5 November that cost the battalion heavily, losing 12 killed and 64 wounded despite killing 200 PVA. The battalion second-in-command, Major Bruce Ferguson, subsequently assumed command. Suffering significant casualties, the PVA offensive was halted the next day due to logistics difficulties.

Lafayette College

Private liberal arts college in Easton, Pennsylvania, United States

Lafayette College is a private liberal arts college in Easton, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1826 by James Madison Porter and other citizens in Easton, the college first held classes in 1832. The founders voted to name the college after General Lafayette, a hero of the American Revolution. Located on College Hill in Easton, the campus is in the Lehigh Valley, about 70 mi (110 km) west of New York City and 60 mi (97 km) north of Philadelphia. Lafayette College guarantees campus housing to all enrolled students. The college requires students to live in campus housing unless approved for residing in private off-campus housing or at home as a commuter. The student body, consisting entirely of undergraduates, comes from 46 U.S. states and territories and nearly 60 countries. Students at Lafayette have access to more than 250 clubs and organizations, including athletics, fraternities and sororities, special interest groups, community service clubs, and honor societies. ## History ### Founding A group of Easton, Pennsylvania residents, led by James Madison Porter, son of General Andrew Porter of Norristown, Pennsylvania, met on December 27, 1824, at White's Tavern to discuss founding a college in town. The recent visit of General Lafayette to New York during his grand tour of the US in 1824 and 1825 prompted the founders to name the college after the renowned French military officer, a hero of the American Revolutionary War, as "a testimony of respect for [his] talents, virtues, and signal services... in the great cause of freedom". The group established a 35-member board of trustees, a system of governance that continues at the college to the present. They selected Porter, lawyer Jacob Wagener, and Yale-educated lawyer Joel Jones to come up with an education plan. The charter gained state approval from the legislature and, on March 9, 1826, Pennsylvania Governor John Andrew Shulze. Along with establishing Lafayette as a liberal arts college, the charter provided for religious equality among professors, students, and staff. The board of trustees met on May 15, 1826, for the election of officers: Thomas McKeen as Treasurer, Joel Jones as Secretary, and James Madison Porter as the first president of the college. Over the next few years, the board met several times to discuss property and funding for the college's start-up. Six years after the first meeting, Lafayette began to enroll students. The college opened on May 1, 1829, with four students under the guidance of Rev. John Monteith. At the start of the next year, the Rev. George Junkin, a Presbyterian minister, was elected first official president of the college. He moved the all-male Manual Labor Academy of Pennsylvania from Germantown (near Philadelphia) to Easton. Its first two professors were Charles F. McCay and James I. Coon. Classes began on May 9, 1832, with instruction of 43 students in a rented farmhouse on the south bank of the Lehigh River. Junkin supported colonization of Liberia by ex-slaves from the United States. He proposed Lafayette for educating free African Americans for missionary work in the new American colony established by the American Colonization Society. Between 1832 and 1844, ten black students were enrolled at Lafayette, four of whom later served as missionaries in Liberia. Most African Americans, however, wanted to gain their legal rights in the United States, which, for many, had been their homeland for generations. During the college's first years, students were required to work in the fields and workshops to allow the college to earn money to support its programs. This manual labor was retained as part of the curriculum until 1839, as the college was focused on preparing students for Military and Civil Engineering. Later that year, Lafayette purchased property on what is now known as "College Hill" – nine acres of elevated land across Bushkill Creek. The college's first building was constructed two years later on the current site of South College. A dispute between Porter and Rev. Junkin led to the latter man's resignation from the presidency in 1841. The trustees considered the possibility of religious affiliation to achieve financial stability for the college. In 1854, Lafayette College became affiliated with the Presbyterian Church. By relinquishing their control, the college was able to collect \$1000 a year from the Presbyterian Church Board of Education as regularly as the latter could pay it. In the time from 1855 to 1856, Lafayette had a peak enrollment of 112 students in total. The class of 1857, a close-knit group of 27 men, worked in secrecy to establish charters in national fraternities, thus founding the first Greek fraternities at Lafayette College. These fraternities remained secret until 1915, as they were discouraged by the authorities as divisive of group unity. ### World War I In preparation for United States entry into the World War I, which had involved European nations since 1914, Lafayette announced that current students would be awarded their degrees in absentia if they enlisted or went to work on farms to support the war effort. Professor Beverly Kunkel organized The Lafayette Ambulance United, Section 61, United States Army Ambulance Corps. During the summer of 1917, Dr. MacCracken arranged to adapt the campus as a war camp for the War Department. Men trained to serve in mechanical trades. Lafayette remained a war camp until January 2, 1919, when the regular course of study was re-established there. ### Great Depression Between 1930 and 1934, during the Great Depression, the number of students declined dramatically. The college created new scholarships and scholarship loans to enable more students to attend. It also founded an Engineering Guidance Conference for boys. The conference was two weeks long and introduced twenty-one high school students to the concepts of engineering. This program continued until the outbreak of World War II in 1941. Though the college faced its own deficits during the Depression, it aided the larger community by offering a series of free classes to unemployed men, beginning in 1932. They also made athletic facilities available for free to unemployed members of the community. Enrollment began to rise again for the 1935–1936 academic year. ### Decade of Progress campaign As the college moved out of the Great Depression, the college's new president, William Mather Lewis, began what was called the Decade of Progress capital campaign, in order to fund delayed improvements. It started as a celebration of the 70th anniversary of Lafayette's engineering program. President Lewis regarded this 70-year span as a period which "covers the great development in American engineering which has now seemed to reach its peak." The goal of this campaign was to raise \$500,000 for payments on Gates Hall, renovation of Van Wickle Memorial Library, and equipment upgrades in other departments. By the time the campaign closed in 1944, the college had received a total amount of \$280,853.34. ### World War II Initially, most of the faculty and students at Lafayette wanted the U.S. to stay out of the conflict in Europe. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed the Pan-American Congress, saying that the US had a duty to protect Americans' science, culture, freedom and civilization, thirty-seven Lafayette faculty members wired the president objecting to his speech. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and declaration of war by the US, the Northampton County Council of Defense organized a College Council of Defense at Lafayette. The college took official action as well. It bolstered its ROTC program and improved facilities to prepare for air raid tests. The college continued its academic programs until the US lowered the draft age from 20 to 18 in November 1942. While more students enlisted, Lafayette College was one of 36 academic institutions selected by the United States Department of War to train engineering and aviation cadets. After the war, the Serviceman's Readjustment Act of 1944 (known as the GI Bill) resulted in a new wave of enrollment at Lafayette by veterans: in 1949 the college had approximately 2000 students. ### Coeducational institution In 1967, in consideration of cultural changes that included women seeking more participation in society, faculty requested that a special committee be formed to discuss making Lafayette a co-educational institution. That committee issued a formal recommendation the following year. In September 1970, Lafayette College welcomed its first official coeducational class with 146 women (123 freshmen, and 23 transfers). ### 21st century In 2004, a report on religious life at Lafayette College was compiled, recommending a review of the college's formal relationship with the Presbyterian church. The college has retained its affiliation, although it is not a member of the Association of Presbyterian Colleges and Universities. In 2007, the college commemorated the 250th birthday of General Lafayette through a series of lectures and campus dedications. Major festivities were held on September 6, 2007, Lafayette's birthday. They were started the night before with a lecture by renowned historian David McCullough. On March 9, Lafayette commemorated approval of the college charter by the Pennsylvania Legislature with a campus-wide and alumni toast around the world. On January 16, 2013, Dr. Alison R. Byerly was announced as Lafayette's 17th and first female president. She took office on July 1, 2013, replacing outgoing president Daniel Weiss. She was formerly a professor at Middlebury College. In the mid-2010s, the college began to undertake plans for expansion of the student body to 2,900 students and the construction of new dorms and academic buildings, with the stated goal of raising funds for financial aid. Nicole Hurd, the founder of the College Advising Corps, was announced as Byerly's successor as president on May 15, 2021. ## Academics Lafayette College offers a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree in 37 fields. Lafayette also offers 14 Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degrees, 10 in areas of science and four in fields of engineering. Its most popular majors, by 2021 graduates, were: : Economics (81) : Mechanical Engineering (60) : Neuroscience (39) : Political Science & Government (38) : Chemical Engineering (35) : Psychology (34) : Civil Engineering (32) : International Relations & Affairs (32) Lafayette College offers engineering programs within its liberal arts setting. The engineering programs offer five concentrations: chemical, civil, electrical & computer, mechanical, and engineering studies. In 2012, 94% of Lafayette's candidates (currently enrolled) passed the Fundamentals of Engineering Examination. This is the first requirement toward getting a professional engineering license. The national average varies from 70 to 87%, depending on the type of engineering. Lafayette's team was undefeated in the academic College Bowl in 1962, retiring after beating the University of California, Berkeley for its fifth victory. In recent years, Lafayette College students earned numerous national and international scholarships, For the class of 2012, Lafayette gave financial aid to 66% of the students, with the average package amounting to \$26,850 for all students. The college also offers merit-based academic scholarships: the Marquis Fellowship, a full-tuition scholarship, and the Marquis Scholarship, a half-tuition scholarship. As of 2021, Lafayette's endowment was more than \$1.063 billion. ## Campus Lafayette College occupies College Hill in Easton, Pennsylvania, located in the Lehigh Valley. It is about 70 mi (110 km) west of New York City and 60 mi (97 km) north of Philadelphia. Its 340-acre campus houses 69 buildings, comprising approximately 1.76 million square feet. This includes a 230-acre athletic campus. Lafayette's campus buildings range in architectural style from Pardee Hall's Second Empire design and Hogg Hall's Collegiate Gothic, to the late modern architecture of the Williams Center for the Arts, the William E. and Carol G. Simon Wing of Skillman Library, and the Farinon College Center. ### Academic facilities Williams Center for the Arts is the college's performing arts center. Completed in 1983, the building houses the Performance Series, the Williams Art Gallery and College Collections, the College Theater program, the departments of Art and Music, and the student-led Arts Society. The centerpiece of the Williams Center is the 400-seat theater/concert hall and also contains a versatile art gallery, a 100-seat black box theater, and classrooms and studios for music and art. Pardee Hall, funded by Ario Pardee and completed in 1873, is one of the earliest buildings constructed at Lafayette College. When initially constructed, it was one of the largest academic buildings of its era. Pardee was designed to hold all of the science programs. Today it is used for most of Lafayette's humanities and social science departments. The Kirby Hall of Civil Rights was constructed in the late 1920s between the First World War and the Great Depression. The cost of the building was donated by Kirby. The design was "rumored to be per square foot the most expensive building of its day." Lafayette selected the architectural firm Warren and Wetmore, known for their projects of designing the New York Yacht Club, the New York Biltmore Hotel, and Grand Central Station. The building's exterior embraces styles of Republic Rome, the Renaissance, 17th English classicism, and Beaux-Arts. The interior lobby area contains broad staircases and is constructed of travertine marble. The building currently houses the Government and Law department. Students have access to the Kirby library, which has 20-foot ceilings and oak-paneled book cases. Markle Hall, now the main administrative building, holding Offices of Admissions and Financial Aid, was designed as the Hall of Mining Engineering. The college's Special Collections maintains an online historical overview of all the campus buildings. The David Bishop Skillman library, built in 1961, is the main library on campus; the Simon Wing was added in 1986, and a \$22 million renovation and expansion was completed in 2004. `The library contains over 500,000 volumes in its collections and subscribes to thousands of magazines, journals, and newspapers in the electronic and paper format. In addition, the college's Special Collections and College Archives holds materials and displays holdings related to the Marquis de Lafayette. Reading and study areas and computer labs are available to the students.` #### East Asia Image Collection The East Asia Image Collection (EAIC) is an open-access digital repository of images from all areas of the history of the Empire of Japan. It is curated by the Digital Scholarship Services of Lafayette College. Rare materials include prewar picture postcards, high-quality commercial prints, and colonial era picture books. ### Housing and student life facilities Lafayette College guarantees campus housing to all enrolled students. The school requires students to live in campus housing unless approved for residing in private off-campus housing, or at home as a commuter. The college offers on-campus housing options, including traditional halls, Greek chapter houses, suite-style halls, and group living units. Some halls are single gender, while others may be co-ed by floor, wing, room, or suite. In addition, Lafayette College provides specialty housings that ties to specific academic departments, student organizations, or religious affiliations. Other residences include the McKelvy House, the Arts Houses, the Hispanic Society of Lafayette, and the Hillel House. Lafayette College offers a variety of dining options for campus residents. Farinon College Center houses two of the main dining halls on campus. The top floor of Farinon is an "all-you-can-eat" style buffet, while ground level is a food court. Marquis Hall, the second-largest dining hall on campus, is the second dining hall with an "all-you-can-eat" style buffet. Marquis also houses regularly themed events and contests. Gilbert's Cafe, a coffeehouse located on the ground floor of Kirby House, was opened in 1999 to provide a late-night hangout and food for students. Simon's, a sandwich shop, is located in the ground floor of Kamine, a residence hall. The Skillman Café, located in the Skillman Library, sells Starbucks coffee and fresh-baked items made by the college. Lafayette also maintains an off-campus organic farm, LaFarm, which provides vegetables to the dining halls and employment for interested students. ## Athletics The Lafayette Leopards compete in the Patriot League under the guidance of current Athletic Director Sherryta Freeman. Lafayette offers students participation in 23 NCAA Division I sports, 18 club sports, and over 30 intramural sports. Student-athletes are considered students first, and athletes second. Lafayette currently ranks third nationally in student-athlete graduation success rate, according to the most recent NCAA study. In 1896, Lafayette was the first non-Ivy League school to win a national football championship. It was the first to use the "huddle", and the head harness, precursor to the football helmet. ### Chief rivalry (Lafayette-Lehigh) Lafayette College's athletic program is notable for "The Rivalry" with nearby Lehigh University. Since 1884, the two football teams have met 150 times. This rivalry has had the most games in the history of American college football. It is also one of the oldest (when including high school or secondary school contests). It is also the longest-running rivalry in college football, with the teams playing at least once every year since 1897. The Rivalry is considered to be one of the best in college athletics by ESPNU. It recently ranked as \#8 among the Top Ten College Football Rivalries. ## Student life Students at Lafayette are involved in over 200 clubs and organizations including athletics, fraternities and sororities, special interest groups, community service clubs and honor societies. The Lafayette College Student Government, consisting of 40 representatives, selected by 12 elected students, is responsible for chartering and supporting most of the student organizations on campus, and is responsible for allocating their budgets to allow these clubs to create programming and events for the campus community. Student Government collaborates with different administrative bodies on campus to improve the community, and is one component of the shared governance model with the faculty, administration, and Board of Trustees, which operates in order to best meet the needs of the students. ### Greek life Lafayette College has a Greek community. Though students are not eligible to join these organizations until sophomore year, approximately 39% of eligible students join the school's fraternities and sororities. All but two of the Greek organizations at Lafayette are located on campus, making it a viable living option. Additionally, members of each house commit themselves to various philanthropic ventures throughout the academic year as these groups work together with the college, local, and national affiliates to help achieve the goals and ideals their organizations were founded upon. ### Fraternities ### Sororities In addition to the social fraternities and sororities, there are also a number of academic honor societies on campus. ### Academic honor societies ### Newspaper The Lafayette, Lafayette's weekly student newspaper, was founded in 1870 and is the oldest college newspaper in Pennsylvania. It is available in both print and online form. Published every Friday during the academic year, print editions can be found around campus. All articles printed will also be available to read online and are uploaded every Friday. The newspaper has been published continuously since its creation, with the exception of during World War II, when operations were suspended between fall 1943 and March 1945. Over 4,200 digitized issues of The Lafayette are available online. The newsroom is located in the Farinon College Center. ### Campus radio The college radio station, which was founded in 1946, is WJRH and broadcasts to the campus and greater Lehigh Valley area at 104.9FM. ### Student government Lafayette College Student Government is composed of four executive members (president, vice president, treasurer, and secretary), the board of directors, and committee members. With approximately 60 members, the student government covers a wide range of topics. Each committee has one elected director and three to seven committee members that are chosen through an application process and vetted by the elected members. ### Alpha Phi Omega Alpha Phi Omega, an international co-educational service fraternity, was founded at Lafayette in 1925 by Frank Reed Horton in Hogg Hall. The chapter regained its charter in 2018 after the efforts of student leaders, and maintains a mission to provide service work on campus and in the Easton community. ### Investment club Founded in 1946, the club is the oldest student-run investment club in the country. The club made national news in 2016, when CNN profiled their investment skills that led to returns of over 175 times their initial investment over 70 years (from \$3,000 in 1946 to \$530,000 in 2016), thereby beating the S&P 500 Index. As of April 2023, the portfolio has a market value of over \$1 million and contains over 50 stocks. ### Engineers Without Borders The club was founded in 2003 and is a member of EWB-USA. Members of the club represent many disciplines in engineering and the liberal arts. The club is linked with rural villages in the Yoro region of Honduras. EWB's mission is to design and implement projects in these villages that help promote better life. The club has focused its efforts on water treatment systems. El Convento, which is located in the Yoro district of central Honduras, will be the third sustainable water project EWB-LC students have worked on in the country since 2003 when the club was founded. The group has implemented gravity-fed water systems in neighboring Lagunitas and La Fortuna. In La Fortuna, the group utilized a slow sand filter in its system. The group's previous work garnered national media exposure for being one of six national institutions to receive a \$75,000 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. ### Volunteer opportunities #### Landis Center The Landis Center, Lafayette College's community outreach program, provides students with service opportunities. #### Alternative School Break Another volunteering alternative to the aforementioned Engineers Without Borders and Landis is Alternative School Break (ASB). Students travel in teams during the January interim or spring break and help communities build homes, paint, and tutor. Recent destinations have included the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, New Orleans, Chicago, and New York City. Students raise money through various fundraising events to mitigate the cost of the trip. ### Lafayette Activities Forum The Lafayette Activities Forum is a student-run organization to "promote campus interaction and student relations by incorporating programs and entertainment that reflect the interests of the general student body". LAF is made up of five committees: Class Year Experience, Culture, Media, & Entertainment, Traditions, Music & Coffeehouse, and Marketing. They are in charge of planning events such the Spring Concert, Fall Fest, the Spot Underground, Open Mic nights, and Live Comedy. ## Notable people Notable alumni of Lafayette College include CEOs Ian Murray (Vineyard Vines) and Chip Bergh (Levi Strauss & Co.), author Jay Parini, major league baseball manager Joe Maddon, and politicians William E. Simon (Secretary of the Treasury), John W. Griggs (Attorney General), and Marcia Bernicat (U.S. Ambassador to Bangladesh). Additionally, Lafayette counts among its alumni two Nobel Laureates (Philip S. Hench, Haldan K. Hartline), two billionaires, one MacArthur Fellow, and dozens of prominent bankers, judges, and scientists. ### Notable alumni Since the college's establishment in 1826, and in conformity with the changing role of higher education in the U.S., the occupations of its graduates have shifted greatly from mainly clergymen, to rail road engineers, to lawyers, and then in the early-mid 20th century to the more diversified roles across the occupational spectrum seen presently. A non-exhaustive list of alumni achievements known to be deserving of recognition is as follows: In government: Seventeen United States Congressmen, six governors, more than fifty members of state legislatures, four members of the President's cabinet, four ambassadors of the United States, countless diplomats, judges, mayors, and local government officials In business: Several executives have attended including Captains of Industry at the turn of the century such as the founding members or directors of Carnegie Steel, Dow Jones & Company, and Woolworth's. In more recent times, graduates have held executive positions at a variety of Fortune 500 companies including ExxonMobil, Asbury Automotive Group, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs. In technology: Sarkis Acopian, inventor of the solar radio; William C. Lowe, supervisor of the team that launched the first IBM PC; Don Lancaster (class of 1961) author of numerous electronic books including TTL Cookbook and CMOS Cookbook In academia: James McKeen Cattell, the first professor of psychology in the United States; Frank Reed Horton, founder of the Alpha Phi Omega service fraternity; Steven Kuehl, Professor of marine geology; Barry Wellman, founder of the International Network for Social Network Analysis In literature: Stephen Crane, author of The Red Badge of Courage; Jay Parini, professor and a leading innovator in biographical fiction; Ross Gay, poet and professor; Kameisha Jerae Hodge, writer, editor, and poet In medicine: Two Nobel Prize winners, Philip S. Hench and Haldan K. Hartline In military: Two four-star generals, Peyton C. March and George H. Decker, and two three-star generals, Edgar Jadwin and Stuart Risch In science: Chief Chemist, USDA, William McMurtrie; inventor of Corningware, S. Donald Stookey; MacArthur Fellow and professor of psychiatry; Jay Weiss; Leidy Klotz, professor and author In sports: Five members of The College Football Hall of Fame, eight NFL players, seven professional baseball players, and an Olympic gold medalist, including two-time World Series champion Joe Maddon (2002, 2016); and Charlie Berry Jr, who played for the Boston Red Sox and Philadelphia Athletics and is the only person to officiate an NFL Championship, World Series, and College All-star game in the same year. ### Notable faculty - Eugene C. Bingham, former chemistry department head, pioneer in rheology theory - John Franklin Bruce Carruthers, former head of the Bible department, reverend to early aviators - Lyman Coleman, former chair of ancient languages, scholar of religion - Guy Consolmagno, assistant professor, physics, and astronomy - Thomas Messinger Drown, former professor of chemical engineering, analytical chemist, and metallurgist - Clement Eaton, History Department chairman, 1931–1942 - Terry Jonathan Hart, visiting lecturer of engineering - Robert Higgs, former professor of economics, known for his ratchet effect theory - Caspar Wistar Hodge, Jr., former professor of religion and theological scholar - George Junkin, first and third president of Lafayette College - Ed Kerns, former head of the art department, known for his contributions to abstract expressionism - Chawne Kimber, mathematician and quilter - William Sebring Kirkpatrick, former lecturer of municipal law, member of the United States House of Representatives - Francis March, first professor of English Literature at any American college or university - Donald L. Miller, writer and war historian - Michael H. Moskow, former professor of economics, eighth president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago - Bruce Allen Murphy, Supreme Court Scholar - Arnold A. Offner, historian of foreign policy, former president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations - Alix Ohlin, Canadian novelist, associate professor of English - Thomas Conrad Porter, former professor of botany and zoology - Theodore Roethke, poet - Len Roberts, former professor of English, Fulbright scholar and fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities - Anna Rubin, former professor of music, composer - Rosemarie Tong, former professor of philosophy, known for her contributions to bioethics and health care reform - Lee Upton, poet, writer in residence, professor of English - Laura Walls, former professor of English, researcher of American Transcendentalism - Hana Wirth-Nesher, former professor of English, American-Israeli literary scholar ### Notable coaches - George Barclay, head football coach (1908); inventor of the football helmet - Butch van Breda Kolff, head men's basketball coach (1952–1956) - Tom Davis, head men's basketball coach (1971–1977) - Tim Lenahan, head men's soccer coach (1998–2000) - Herb McCracken, head football coach (1924–1935) - Tim Murphy, assistant football coach (1981) - Edward Mylin, head football coach (1937–1942, 1946) - Steve Spagnuolo, assistant football coach, (1984–1986) - Jock Sutherland, head football coach (1919–1923) - Gary Williams, head men's soccer coach and assistant men's basketball coach (1972–1977) - Hal Wissel, head men's basketball coach (1967–1971)

Mother (1910 film)

Mother is a 1910 American silent short drama produced by the Thanhouser Company. The film is a melodrama that focuses with Will Allen who runs away from home after being violently abused by his stepfather and his mother keeps a candle lit for him to return home. Twenty years later, Will returns home after having become a successful lawyer, but cannot find his parents. Will later takes the case to defend a lady being prosecuted by a client company. After being successful he recognizes the lady as his mother and they are reunited. The film's cast included Anna Rosemond, Frank H. Crane and Carey L. Hastings, but other credits are uncertain. The film was released on September 6, 1910, and was met with mixed reviews. The film is presumed lost. ## Plot Though the film is presumed lost, a synopsis survives in The Moving Picture World from September 10, 1910. It states: "The play deals with Will Allen, a country lad, who is unhappy at home, owing to the fact that he is a studious little chap and prefers his books to farm work, which incurs the displeasure and enmity of his stepfather, a rough and surly farmer, to whom book learning does not appeal. Will runs away from home, and although his mother keeps a light in the window, hoping to guide her boy home, he never returns. Twenty years later, when the boy has made a place for himself in the world as a successful lawyer, he goes back to the farm, only to find that his little mother, who has been left a widow, has gone away, whither, no one knows. The mother, in the meantime, being left alone in the world, goes to the city and there supports herself by dressmaking. While shopping in a department store she is unjustly accused of shoplifting. The only person who believes in her innocence is a salesgirl, who is discharged for her presumption and daring to correct her superiors. The girl, in her efforts to help the friendless old lady, enlists the aid of Will, whom she knows to be a lawyer of great ability. Will is about to refuse the case, as the dry goods company is a client of his, when the girl describes the lonely old lady, and begs him for the sake of his mother to befriend her. Will consents. Will's clear statement of the case to the judge, together with May's testimony, frees the mother. When her counsel approaches to offer his congratulations, mutual recognition results." ## Cast - Anna Rosemond - Frank H. Crane - Carey L. Hastings ## Production The writer of the scenario is unknown, but it was most likely Lloyd Lonergan. He was an experienced newspaperman employed by The New York Evening World while writing scripts for the Thanhouser productions. The plot of the production was criticized by a film reviewer The New York Dramatic Mirror because the boy grows up unaware that his stepfather had died or that her mother had moved to the city in search of work. The reviewer states, "One would think that he would have kept in communication with his mother if he loved her so much, but it appears he did not..." The film director is unknown, but it may have been Barry O'Neil. Film historian Q. David Bowers does not attribute a cameraman for this production, but at least two possible candidates exist. Blair Smith was the first cameraman of the Thanhouser company, but he was soon joined by Carl Louis Gregory who had years of experience as a still and motion picture photographer. The role of the cameraman was uncredited in 1910 productions. The cast includes both Anna Rosemond and Frank H. Crane, two early leading actors of the Thanhouser Company. Carey L. Hastings, real name Carey Tidball, was a sister of Gertrude Thanhouser and was an actress that was featured in numerous Thanhouser productions. Hastings first and earliest known work was Thanhouser's St. Elmo adaptation. Hastings would not have another known credit until 1912. The Silent Era website states that Harry Benham and Maude Fealy had roles in the production. However, both of these credits are well-before those attributed by Bowers. Harry Benham is known to have joined the Thanhouser Company in 1910, but the first credit cited by Bowers is The Old Curiosity Shop in January 1911. Bowers also cites Maude Fealy having made only intermittent appearances with the first being The Early Life of David Copperfield in October 1911. Other credits amongst the cast are unknown, but most of the credits are fragmentary for 1910 Thanhouser productions. ## Release and reception The single reel drama, approximately 975 feet long, was released on September 6, 1910. The film was distributed by the Motion Picture Distributing and Sales Company. Once the film was released, it was sometimes listed ambiguously for other productions bearing the same name. One ambiguous listing, most likely for the Thanhouser film, was made by the Crystal Theatre in Hutchinson, Kansas. Known theaters advertising the film, unambiguously, are noted in Indiana and Arizona. A reviewer of The Moving Picture World wrote, "[The film is a] little domestic tragedy which shows how boys are sometimes driven from home and what results from it. ... It is a picture that goes direct to the heart and makes one put himself in the place of all the characters. Perhaps that magic word, mother, is the key to the whole situation." The New York Dramatic Mirror took issue with the depiction of the step father's violent abuse of the young son and found the melodrama to be one "with an ending that appeals to the sympathies". ## See also - List of American films of 1910

Tropical Depression Five (2010)

Atlantic tropical depression in 2010

Tropical Depression Five was an Atlantic tropical cyclone that lasted for 12 hours, although its remnants persisted for almost another week. Its precursor was from a non-tropical trough east of Florida, and on August 10 it developed in the southeastern Gulf of Mexico. It was the fifth depression of the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season. The system was declassified as a tropical cyclone the following day, a remnant circulation later moved over Louisiana and Mississippi, producing heavy rainfall and causing flooding. Along the Florida coast, the system produced heavy waves that contributed to two deaths. Moving inland, the remnants of the depression reached central Alabama before turning southward. The system nearly redeveloped into a tropical cyclone on August 16 after it again reached the Gulf of Mexico, but it became disorganized and turned northward into Mississippi. The depression twice caused BP to delay work in building a relief well to combat the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. ## Meteorological history The origins of the depression were from a dissipating cold front that extended from the northeast Gulf of Mexico across Florida on August 7, connected to a weak non-tropical low-pressure area located several hundred miles east-southeast of Jacksonville, Florida. The system had disorganized convection– thunderstorms– and moved generally southwestward after drifting against the Gulf Stream. Conditions were initially unfavorable for development, due to strong upper-level wind shear and land interaction. By late August 9, the low reached the southeastern Gulf of Mexico, and the National Hurricane Center (NHC) noted a medium chance for tropical or subtropical development, due to an anticipated decrease in wind shear. The convection gradually increased and became better organized, and a hurricane hunters flight late on August 10 confirmed the development of Tropical Depression Five about 120 miles (190 km) west of Fort Myers, Florida. Upon being classified as a tropical cyclone, the tropical depression had a broad circulation and organized deep convection. It was located over very warm water temperatures, although the upper-level environment was not conducive for significant intensification. Easterly wind shear was forecast, but the NHC anticipated the depression strengthening to 45 mph (70 km/h) before making landfall in Louisiana. Under the influence of a mid-level ridge to its north, the depression was forecast to track generally northwestward. Early on August 11, the convection diminished significantly due to the entrainment of dry air and vertical wind shear from a nearby upper-level low. The circulation became difficult to locate; however, conditions favored the redevelopment of the thunderstorm activity. One tropical cyclone prediction model forecast significant intensification to a minimum pressure of 968 mbar, and other models forecast the depression would reach hurricane status upon making landfall. As it continued to the northwest, the circulation remained broad and disorganized, and convection remained minimal. Late on August 11, a hurricane hunters flight reported that the depression was no longer a tropical cyclone, and in post-analysis, the NHC determined that the depression was only a tropical cyclone for 12 hours. Redevelopment was not anticipated. The remnants of Tropical Depression Five moved ashore on Louisiana on August 12, by which time the circulation had become better defined. A small circular area of convection was observed on radar approaching New Orleans, supported by diffluence from an anticyclone over Georgia. The system moved slowly, turning northeastward and tracking inland along southern Mississippi on August 13. By late on August 14, the remnants reached central Alabama and began to move southward due to a ridge to its north. The next day it reached the Florida Panhandle, and before the low reached open waters, the NHC assessed a 50% chance for redevelopment due to favorable conditions. Early on August 16, the low reached the Gulf of Mexico, and a hurricane hunters flight reported a weak circulation and convection that was disorganized and disassociated. Upper-level conditions remained only marginally favorable, although the NHC noted that "only a small increase in organization would result in the formation of a tropical depression." Early on August 18, the remnants of the system dissipated over Southwestern Mississippi. ## Preparations and impact Prior to becoming a tropical cyclone, the system dropped locally heavy rainfall in portions of southern Florida. Palm Beach International Airport recorded 2.25 inches (5.7 cm) on August 8, a record for the date. The system spawned a weak tornado near Boca Raton, which downed a few trees and damaged shingles from one house. In Sarasota, high tides from the system affected 200 sea turtle nests, of which 20 had to be transported to a safer location. Once in the Gulf of Mexico, the developing system threatened the area affected by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill; this prompted BP to stop operations temporarily in constructing a relief well. The same event occurred a week later when the depression was threatening to redevelop. Upon issuing the first advisory on Tropical Depression Five, the NHC issued a tropical storm warning from Destin, Florida to Intracoastal City, Louisiana, including Lake Pontchartrain and New Orleans. Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal issued a state of emergency due to the threat from the depression. The remnants of the depression produced rough surf and riptides along the coast. In Panama City Beach, Florida, one man was hospitalized, and on Anna Maria Island, two elderly people died after being swept away by rip currents; the deaths were believed to have been fatigue-induced heart attacks, and not drowning. In the final advisory on the depression, the NHC noted the potential for the system to produce heavy rainfall across the southern United States. Accordingly, local National Weather Service offices issued flood watches for 12 Louisiana parishes and 8 Mississippi counties. While the depression moved through the region, it dropped heavy rainfall of up to 8 in (20 cm) around the New Orleans area, flooding streets as well as entering one apartment complex. Rainfall from the system extended as far inland as Atlanta, where thunderstorms damaged three houses. As the remnants moved southward toward the Gulf of Mexico, its associated thunderstorms struck Mobile, Alabama and produced heavy rainfall, estimated up to 4 in (10 cm). The rainfall flooded several streets and damaged the city's water line, and 1,921 customers were left without power. When the remnants affected Mississippi a second time, the system dropped heavy rainfall that resulted in flash flooding near Sibley. The system caused about \$1 million in damage after floodwaters washed out a bridge and entered several buildings. As the system approached Louisiana for a second time, local National Weather Offices issued a coastal flood watch and a flash flood watch. Sixteen hours of intense rainfall occurred in Avoyelles Parish, flooding at least 40 buildings. Lightning killed three cows and destroyed a house, and damage was estimated around \$750,000. Further inland, the remnants interacted with a stationary cold front over central Tennessee, causing \$22 million in damage after heavy rainfall affected bridges, roads, and properties. ## See also - List of Florida hurricanes (2000–present) - Tropical Storm Bonnie (2010) – Took a similar track earlier in the season

French cruiser Bugeaud

Protected cruiser of the French Navy

Bugeaud was a Friant-class protected cruiser of the French Navy built in the 1890s, the second of three ships of the class. The Friant-class cruisers were ordered as part of a construction program directed at strengthening the fleet's cruiser force. At the time, France was concerned with the growing naval threat of the Italian and German fleets, and the new cruisers were intended to serve with the main fleet, and overseas in the French colonial empire. Bugeaud and her two sister ships were armed with a main battery of six 164 mm (6.5 in) guns, were protected by an armor deck that was 30 to 80 mm (1.2 to 3.1 in) thick, and were capable of steaming at a top speed of 18.7 knots (34.6 km/h; 21.5 mph). Bugeaud was initially assigned to the Mediterranean Squadron after her completion in 1896 before being transferred to serve as the flagship of the Levant Division in the eastern Mediterranean. During that time, she participated in the International Squadron that intervened in the Cretan Revolt of 1897–1898. Bugead was sent to East Asia in 1900 in response to the Boxer Uprising in Qing China, where she remained for the next several years. Shipyard facilities were poor, and an overhaul conducted in 1903 took more than six months to complete; even afterward, Bugeaud was in poor condition, and she was struck from the naval register in 1907 and then broken up. ## Design In response to a war scare with Italy in the late 1880s, the French Navy embarked on a major construction program in 1890 to counter the threat of the Italian fleet and that of Italy's ally Germany. The plan called for a total of seventy cruisers for use in home waters and overseas in the French colonial empire. The Friant class was the first group of protected cruisers to be authorized under the program. Bugeaud was 94 m (308 ft 5 in) long between perpendiculars and 97.5 m (320 ft) long overall, with a beam of 13.24 m (43 ft 5 in) and an average draft of 5.84 m (19 ft 2 in). She displaced 3,771 t (3,711 long tons; 4,157 short tons) as designed. Her crew consisted of 331 officers and enlisted men. The ship's propulsion system consisted of a pair of triple-expansion steam engines driving two screw propellers. Steam was provided by twenty-four coal-burning Belleville-type water-tube boilers that were ducted into three funnels. Her machinery was rated to produce 9,000 indicated horsepower (6,700 kW) for a top speed of 18.5 knots (34.3 km/h; 21.3 mph), though the ship slightly exceeded those figures during initial speed testing, reaching a speed of 18.95 knots (35.10 km/h; 21.81 mph) from 9,913 ihp (7,392 kW). She had a cruising range of 6,000 nautical miles (11,000 km; 6,900 mi) at a speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph). The ship was armed with a main battery of six 164 mm (6.5 in) 45-caliber guns. They were placed in individual pivot mounts; one was on the forecastle, two were in sponsons abreast the conning tower, and the last was on the stern. These were supported by a secondary battery of four 100 mm (3.9 in) guns, which were carried in pivot mounts in the conning towers, one on each side per tower. For close-range defense against torpedo boats, she carried four 47 mm (1.9 in) 3-pounder Hotchkiss guns and eleven 37 mm (1.5 in) 1-pounder guns. She was also armed with two 350 mm (14 in) torpedo tubes in her hull above the waterline. Armor protection consisted of a curved armor deck that was 30 to 80 mm (1.2 to 3.1 in) thick, along with 75 mm (3 in) plating on the conning tower. ## Service history Bugeaud was ordered on 29 January 1891, and her keel was laid down at the Arsenal de Cherbourg in Cherbourg on 5 April 1892. Her completed hull was launched on 29 August 1893, and after completing fitting out, she was commissioned to begin sea trials on 25 March 1895. Her initial testing revealed the need for alterations to improve her ventilation. Successful trials were held in April, during which she reached a top speed of 19 knots (35 km/h; 22 mph). She placed in full commission on 24 June 1896, the last member of her class to enter service. She joined the Mediterranean Squadron on 8 July, in time to participate in that year's fleet maneuvers with the rest of the unit. She served in the cruiser screen for the 1st Division, along with the armored cruiser Amiral Charner and the torpedo cruisers Wattignies and D'Iberville. The maneuvers for that year took place from 6 to 30 July. Bugeaud was transferred to the Levant Division in 1897, but engine problems forced her to return to Toulon for repairs, her place in the division being taken by the cruiser Suchet. Bugeaud was reassigned to the Mediterranean Squadron after repairs were completed later that year. She was still in service with the squadron in 1898. Later that year, she was deployed to the coast of Ottoman Syria, where she relieved Amiral Charner as the flagship of the Levant Division. The unit at that time also included the torpedo cruisers Vautour, Faucon, and Condor. The divisional commander at the time was Vice Admiral Édouard Pottier. During this period, she served with the International Squadron that intervened in the Cretan Revolt. She carried Prince George of Greece and Denmark to Crete, where he became the High Commissioner of the Cretan State, part of the negotiated settlement to the conflict. The International Squadron was thereafter disbanded. Bugeaud was deployed to East Asia in February 1900, and both of her sister ships had joined her there by January 1901 as part of the response to the Boxer Uprising in Qing China; at that time, six other cruisers were assigned to the station in addition to the three Friant-class ships. She remained in East Asian waters in 1902, but with fighting over in China, the unit began to be reduced in size. By 1903, the unit consisted of the armored cruiser Montcalm and the protected cruisers Châteaurenault and Pascal. Later that year, Bugeaud underwent an overhaul in Saigon that lasted some six months; the lengthy period out of service resulted from the insufficient shipyard facilities in French Indochina. Despite the work, Bugeaud was still in poor condition by 1904, being unable to exceed 16 to 18 knots (30 to 33 km/h; 18 to 21 mph). After arriving home in 1905, the ship was decommissioned at Rochefort on 26 October. She was struck from the naval register on 9 April 1906, and was eventually sold to the firm Frank Rijsdijk' Scheepssloperij of Dordrecht, Netherlands. Bugeaud was then towed to Hendrik-Ido-Ambacht, where she was subsequently broken up.

Ent

Race of tree-giants in The Lord of the Rings

Ents are a species of beings in J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy world Middle-earth who closely resemble trees; their leader is Treebeard of Fangorn forest. Their name is derived from an Old English word for "giant". The Ents appear in The Lord of the Rings as ancient shepherds of the forest and allies of the free peoples of Middle-earth during the War of the Ring. The Ent who figures most prominently in the book is Treebeard, who is called the oldest creature in Middle-earth (a description also given to Tom Bombadil). At the time of the War of the Ring, there are no young Ents (Entings) because the Entwives (female Ents) were lost. Akin to Ents are Huorns, whom Treebeard describes as a transitional form of trees which become animated or, conversely, as Ents who grow more "treelike" over time. Inspired by Tolkien and similar traditions, animated or anthropomorphic tree creatures appear in a variety of media and works of fantasy. ## Etymology The word "Ent" was taken from the Old English ent or eoten, meaning "giant". Tolkien borrowed the word from a phrase in the Anglo-Saxon poems The Ruin and Maxims II, orþanc enta geweorc ("cunning work of giants"), which describes Roman ruins. In Sindarin, one of Tolkien's invented Elvish languages, the word for Ent is Onod (plural Enyd). Sindarin Onodrim means the Ents as a race. ## Internal history ### Description Treebeard, called by Gandalf the oldest living Ent and the oldest living thing that walks in Middle-earth, is described as being around 14 feet (4 m) tall: > [A] large Man-like, almost Troll-like, figure, at least fourteen foot high, very sturdy, with a tall head, and hardly any neck. Whether it was clad in stuff like green and grey bark, or whether that was its hide, was difficult to say. At any rate the arms, at a short distance from the trunk, were not wrinkled, but covered with a brown smooth skin. The large feet had seven toes each. The lower part of the long face was covered with a sweeping grey beard, bushy, almost twiggy at the roots, thin and mossy at the ends. But at the moment the hobbits noted little but the eyes. These deep eyes were now surveying them, slow and solemn, but very penetrating. Ents vary widely in personal traits (height, heft, colouring, even the number of digits), having come to resemble somewhat the specific types of trees that they shepherded. Quickbeam, for example, guarded rowan trees and bore some resemblance to rowans: tall and slender, smooth-skinned, with ruddy lips and grey-green hair. Some Ents, such as Treebeard, were like > beech-trees or oaks. But there were other kinds. Some recalled the chestnut: brown-skinned Ents with large splayfingered hands, and short thick legs. Some recalled the ash: tall straight grey Ents with many-fingered hands and long legs; some the fir (the tallest Ents), and others the birch, ... and the linden. Ents share some of the strengths and weaknesses of trees. Their skin is extraordinarily tough, and very much like wood; they can erode stone extremely rapidly, in the manner of tree roots, but they are vulnerable to fire and chopping blows from axes. Ents are an extremely patient and cautious race, with a sense of time more suited to trees than to short-lived mortals. For example, in the Entmoot regarding the attack on Isengard, some of them considered their three-day deliberation to be "hasty". Ents are tall and very strong, capable of tearing apart rock and stone (though they use their full strength only when they are "roused"). Tolkien describes them as tossing great slabs of stone about, and ripping down the walls of Isengard "like bread-crust". Treebeard boasted of their strength to Merry and Pippin; he said that Ents were much more powerful than Trolls, which Morgoth made in the First Age in mockery of Ents, as orcs were of elves. The book further lays out the power of Ents; their bark-like skin and flesh make them difficult to harm even with axes, and a single punch from an Ent can kill; although they do hurl stones, they use no other weapons. ### First Age Almost nothing is known of the early history of the Ents. After the Dwarves were put to sleep by Eru to await the coming of the Elves, the Vala Aulë told his wife Yavanna, "the lover of all things that grow in the earth," of the Dwarves. She replied, "They will delve in the earth, and the things that grow and live upon the earth they will not heed. Many a tree shall feel the bite of their iron without pity." She went to Manwë and appealed to him to protect the trees, and they realized that Ents, too, were part of the Song of Creation. Yavanna then warned Aulë, "Now let thy children beware! For there shall walk a power in the forests whose wrath they will arouse at their peril." The Ents are called "the Shepherds of the Trees". Much later, when Beren and a force of Green Elves waylay the force of Dwarves returning from the sack of Doriath, the Dwarves are routed and scatter into the wood, where the Shepherds of the Trees ensure that none escape. Although the Ents were sentient beings from the time of their awakening, they did not know how to speak until the Elves taught them. Treebeard said that the Elves "cured us of dumbness", calling that a great gift that could not be forgotten. ("They always wished to talk to everything, the old Elves did.") In the Third Age of Middle-earth, the forest of Fangorn was the only place still inhabited by Ents. Treebeard tells of a time when much of Eriador was forested and part of his domain, but these immense forests dwindled over time. Treebeard's statement is corroborated by Elrond: "Time was when a squirrel could go from tree to tree from what is now the Shire to Dunland west of Isengard." Of this vast forest, according to Treebeard, Fangorn forest was "just the East End". ### Entwives Treebeard says that the Entwives began to move farther away from the Ents because they liked to plant and control things, while the Ents preferred forests and liked to let things take their natural course. The Entwives moved away to the region that would later become the Brown Lands across the Great River Anduin, although the male Ents still visited them. The Entwives, unlike the Ents, interacted with the race of Men and taught them much about the art of agriculture. The Entwives lived in peace until their gardens were destroyed by Sauron, whereupon the Entwives themselves disappeared. The Ents looked for them but never found them. It was sung by the Elves (as the Ents were content simply to "chant their beautiful names") that one day the Ents and Entwives would find each other. Indeed, in The Return of the King, Treebeard implored the Hobbits not to forget to send word to him if they "hear any news" of the Entwives "in your land". In The Fellowship of the Ring, Samwise Gamgee mentions that his cousin Hal claims to have seen a treelike giant, which resembled an elm not only in size but also in actual appearance, in the north of the Shire. During the Fangorn episode, Merry and Pippin told Treebeard about the Shire. Treebeard said that the Entwives would have liked that land. This, combined with the giant-sighting by Sam's cousin Hal mentioned above, has led to some speculation by readers that the Entwives may have lived near the Shire. Tolkien himself spent much time considering what actually happened to the Entwives (at one point saying that even he did not know), but eventually he stated in Letters \#144: "I think that in fact the Entwives have disappeared for good, being destroyed with their gardens in the War of the Last Alliance...some may have fled east, or even have become enslaved..." At the end of the story after Aragorn is crowned king, he promised Treebeard that the Ents could prosper again and spread to new lands with the threat of Mordor gone, and renew their search for the Entwives. However, Treebeard lamented that forests may spread but the Ents would not, and he predicted that the few remaining Ents would remain in Fangorn forest until they slowly dwindled in number or became "treeish", saying: "Sheep get like shepherds, and shepherds get like sheep. [...] But it is quicker and closer, with trees and Ents." ### The Last March of the Ents In The Two Towers, the second volume of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, the Ents – usually a very patient, deliberate people – become roused with their long simmering anger at Saruman, whose armies are cutting down large numbers of their trees. They convene an Entmoot, a meeting of the Ents of Fangorn forest at Derndingle. After lengthy deliberation (three days; though from the perspective of the Ents this was almost no time at all), they march on Saruman's fortress at Isengard - 'the last march of the Ents'. Led by Treebeard, the oldest Ent, and accompanied by the hobbits Meriadoc Brandybuck and Peregrin Took, the Ents numbered about 50, plus an army of Huorns. They destroy Isengard, tearing down the wall around it: "If the Great Sea had risen in wrath and fallen on the hills with storm, it could have worked no greater ruin". Saruman is trapped in the tower of Orthanc. Tolkien noted in a letter that he had created Ents in response to his "bitter disappointment and disgust from schooldays with the shabby use made in Shakespeare's Macbeth of the coming of 'Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane hill': I longed to devise a setting in which the trees might really march to war". As well as destroying Isengard, Treebeard ensured victory at the Battle of Helm's Deep, in which Saruman tried to destroy Rohan. On the morning after the long night of battle, both armies saw that a forest of angry, tree-like Huorns now filled the valley, trapping Saruman's army of Orcs. The Orcs fled into the Huorn forest and were destroyed. Commentators have observed that this represented a wish-fulfilment on Tolkien's part, concerned as he was with the increasing damage to the English countryside in the 20th century. ## Adaptations ### Ents in other media In Peter Jackson's films The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), Treebeard is a combination of a large animatronic model and a CGI construct; he is voiced by John Rhys-Davies, who also portrays Gimli. The Fall of Troy has a song entitled "The Last March of the Ents" on their self-titled debut album released in 2003. Permission was granted for a statue of Treebeard by Tim Tolkien, near his great-uncle J. R. R. Tolkien's former home in Moseley, Birmingham. ### In popular culture Ents appeared in the earliest edition of the roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons in the 1974 white box set, where they were described as tree-like creatures able to command trees, and lawful in nature. In 1975, Elan Merchandising, which owned the game license to the Tolkien estate, issued a cease-and-desist order regarding the use of the word "ent", so the Dungeons & Dragons creatures were renamed "treants". Heroes of Might and Magic III and V include Treants as a part of the Elven alliance; however, in Heroes of Might and Magic V, due to copyright infringement issues, their look was changed between the beta phase and the retail version, making them quadrupedal. The TV series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, set in the Second Age, features Ents. ## See also - List of tree deities - Sacred trees and groves in Germanic paganism and mythology - Trees and forests in Middle-earth - Battle of Droizy

Birnbeck Pier

Pier in Weston-super-Mare

Birnbeck Pier, also known as the 'Old Pier', is a pier situated on the Bristol Channel in Weston-super-Mare, North Somerset, England, approximately 18 miles (29 km) south-west of Bristol. It is the only pier in the country which links the mainland to an island, linking to Birnbeck Island, a 1.2-hectare (3-acre) rocky island just to the west of Worlebury Hill. The grade II\* listed pier was designed by Eugenius Birch and opened in 1867. Birnbeck Pier is one of only six Grade II\* piers surviving in the country. The refreshment and waiting rooms of 1898 were designed by local architect Hans Price and the clocktower and the piermaster's house have been attributed to him. The pier has been closed to the public since 1994 and is now on the Buildings at Risk Register. During the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries the pier was popular both with locals and tourists to the town. As a boarding point for steamers plying their trade in the Bristol Channel, it underwent various extensions and modifications over the years. During the Second World War the pier was commissioned as HMS Birnbeck by the Admiralty as part of the Directorate of Miscellaneous Weapons Development (DMWD) for research into new weapons. Notably conducting trials on the Barnes Wallis 'bouncing bomb'. The pier reopened after the war, but the number of visitors and steamer passengers declined. The final excursion visited the pier in 1979. Since its closure, ownership has changed many times and it has been subject to a series of proposals for its redevelopment which have all proved fruitless. The pier remains in a largely derelict state. Part of the pier collapsed during storms on 30 December 2015. ## History The origin of the name Birnbeck is unknown but may take the 'beck' from the Scandinavian word 'bekk', a bench in literary Old Norse. Alternatively Birnbeck could be from the Old Irish 'berna bec', a 'little gap' because of the narrow channel separating the island from Worlebury Hill.. The rock is limestone, giving rise to the geological term "Birnbeck Limestone Formation". Prior to the construction of the pier, Birnbeck Island could be accessed by a natural causeway at low tide. A proposal was made in 1845 to connect Birnbeck Island to the mainland at the western end of Worlebury Hill. Work commenced on a suspension bridge two years later under a design by James Dredge, architect of the Victoria Bridge in Bath. He patented the taper principle based on using chains rather than cables, as is more common in suspension bridges. Dredge's bridge design was considered "a very significant yet relatively short-lived phase in suspension bridge development". During a strike by stonemasons, what little had been built was damaged during a storm, bringing about the end to the suspension bridge scheme. ### Construction In 1864, a new proposal was made to build a pier across to the island, funded by 2,000 shares which raised £20,000. Cecil Hugh Smyth Pigott, the four-year-old son of the lord of the manor, laid the foundation stone on 28 October 1864 when a public holiday was declared in the town and a celebratory dinner was held in the town hall. The main pier was originally 1,150 feet (351 m) long, and it is 20 feet (6 m) wide with a cantilever construction. However the low water jetty was damaged in a storm in 1903, rebuilt in 1909 and finally dismantled in 1923 meaning that the pier is now 1,040 feet (317 m) long, Due to architectural features such as abutments at either end of the pier, the pier resembles a bridge more than other pleasure piers. Fifteen groups of piles support a continuous lattice girder, each set comprising four piles screwed into the river bed at an angle with an X-brace between each adjacent pair. The fitting of screw blades to iron piles, as opposed to the then accepted wooden pile, created a deeper and far more resilient base support. This was one of the innovations brought by Eugenius Birch which have enabled many of the piers he designed to survive. There were problems with oscillations in the structure when bands marched on the pier, both on the opening day and again in 1886. As a result, further horizontal cross braces were added to the piles, and a law was passed banning marching on the pier. The gothic toll house and pierhead buildings were designed by local architect Hans Price. To allow steamers to bring day trippers to Weston-super-Mare from ports on both the English and Welsh side of the Bristol Channel, a landing jetty was extended on the west side of the island. The Severn Estuary has the second highest tidal range in the world second only to the Bay of Fundy in Eastern Canada. The estuary's funnel shape, its tidal range, and the underlying geology of rock, gravel and sand, produce strong tidal streams and high turbidity, giving the water a notably brown colouration. The tidal range means that the legs of the pier are largely exposed at low tide and hidden at high tide. ### Operation When the pier opened on 5 June 1867, again by Cecil Hugh Smyth Pigott, many of the people of Weston-super-Mare were given a holiday and a banquet was held in the Town Hall. The toll to walk on the pier was 1d (an old penny), but this was quickly raised to 2d, which was the maximum fee permitted by the General Pier and Harbour Act 1861. 120,000 people paid the toll in the first three months. A tramway system was installed to carry the luggage of passengers arriving at the pier. A new wooden northern jetty was added in 1872 which allowed the removal of the original western landing place. Another jetty was built on the south west corner in 1898 which reached deep water even at low tide, thus allowing steamers to use the pier at all states of the tide. This was damaged in a gale in 1903, and although it was rebuilt in 1909, it closed in 1916 and was dismantled in 1923. The northern jetty had also been damaged in the 1903 storm but was replaced by the present steel structure in 1903-4. A second pier, known as the "Grand Pier", was opened in the centre of Weston-super-Mare in 1904. Although it had the capacity to accommodate steamers, it was seldom used due to difficult currents around the structure. An electric tram along the seafront ran to and from the pier approach road at Birnbeck. Many visitors arriving on the steamers never left the pier and Birnbeck Island which between them housed the cafe, pavilion, amusements and funfair. These were destroyed by fire on 26 December 1897 and replaced by the present buildings, although these have been altered over the years. The attractions included Mutoscopes, a shooting gallery, merry-go-round, park swings, a theatre of wonders and a licensed bar. In 1891 a telephone was installed only six months after the first one was installed in the town. In 1909, the amusement area was expanded by an extension on iron supports along the south side of the island. However, this was not built to the proper specifications so was demolished in 1912; a larger concrete platform was added in its place in 1932. The pier was taken over by the Admiralty in 1941 as an outpost of the Directorate of Miscellaneous Weapons Development (DMWD). It was commissioned as HMS Birnbeck and was used for secret weapons development and storage with testing. The "bouncing bomb" was tested at the Brean Down Fort on the opposite side of Weston Bay. After the war, the pier resumed its role as a tourist attraction, but business declined due to competition from the Grand Pier which opened its amusement arcades in 1946. In 1962 the Birnbeck Pier Company sold the pier to P & A Campbell, the steamer operators. After the withdrawal of their ships it was sold to John Critchley, who redeveloped it as a "Victorian pleasure centre" which even had special permission to issue its own currency to visitors. There have since been several proposals to make the pier a commercial success again, including converting it into a hotel, casino, residential use, or the centre of a marina. The most successful steamer company serving the Bristol Channel was P & A Campbell's "White Funnel" fleet. Their operations were suspended during the Second World War, after which the number of passengers decreased with the availability of cheap foreign holidays and the opening of the Severn Bridge in the 1960s. Regular ferries ceased serving Birnbeck in 1971 and the final excursion was made 19 October 1979. The pleasure "steamers" PS Waverley and MV Balmoral still operate in the Bristol Channel, but any calls at Weston are made by a connecting tender from Knightstone Harbour. ### Dereliction In 1984, £1 million of damage was caused to the pier by drifting equipment during engineering work in Sand Bay, to the north of the pier. The damage was quickly repaired, despite fears that Birnbeck might become like nearby Clevedon Pier, which at the time was severed by a collapsed span. The pier was again badly damaged by storms in 1990 and was closed for safety reasons in 1994. Daily trips during the summer months to and from Cardiff, Clevedon, and Penarth were suspended indefinitely. Due to the decline, English Heritage has placed it on the Heritage at Risk Register. In 1999, the lifeboat station installed a walkway across the pier to allow them safe access to the island, at a cost of £20,000. In 2006 the pier was sold to Manchester company Urban Splash. The new owners and the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) launched a competition in August 2007, inviting people to submit ideas for the regeneration of the pier and island. At the time, the repair work required was estimated at £4 million. There were 95 entries for the competition from around the world. Architect Antonino Cardillo’s design included the existing buildings and added a large curvilinear concrete building to the island. The design called for many windows in the building to create a large panorama of the surrounding seascape. The winner of the design competition, Levitate Architecture and Design Studio Ltd, was announced in March 2008. The winning design included a dozen luxury apartments and a 50-room hotel. In September 2010 Urban Splash placed the pier up for sale, citing a downfall in business caused by the recession as their reason. In September 2011 Wahid Samady and Michael Ross were reported to have bought Birnbeck Pier for an undisclosed sum; Samady had also been awarded planning permission for a new development at the nearby Royal Pier Hotel site, just yards from the pier. In August 2012 further reports suggests the sale had not proceeded and that Urban Splash were still the owners. It was bought by CNM Estates of which Wahid Samady is chairman and Michael Ross is a director in 2014. In 2015 the Victorian Society included the pier on its list of the ten most endangered buildings. Part of the north pier collapsed during storms on 30 December 2015. In May 2019, Neil and Ryan Andrews were each sentenced at Bristol Crown Court to 18 months imprisonment for the attempted theft of the clock face from the pier's tower. The judge, noting that the tower and clock had survived the 1897 fire, an attack by the Luftwaffe and an accidental mine attack, said the damage caused was "highly visible and irreparable" and that the Andrews "will always be known as the two men who destroyed the history; it was vandalism and theft for greed". In February 2020, North Somerset Council started a compulsory purchase order on the pier. In November 2021, it was announced that CNM Estates had agreed to sell the pier to the council. Restoration work is planned to take place over several years with funding from the council, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), Historic England, and others. North Somerset Council bought the pier in July 2023. They intend to repair and restore it, allowing the lifeboat station to relocate back to Birnbeck island. ## Weston Lifeboat Station Due to the extreme tidal range in the Bristol Channel, finding a suitable launching site for lifeboats proved an arduous task for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI). Davits were installed on the pier in 1882, enabling a lifeboat to be lowered into the water below, even at low tide. A new, larger lifeboat was stationed here in 1889 and a boathouse was built for it on the north-east side of the island with a 100 feet (30 m) slipway beside the pier. This facility was replaced in 1902 when a new boathouse was built on the south-east side of the island. This had a 368 feet (112 m) slipway which enabled the lifeboat to be launched at most states of the tide and was the longest in England. The slipway was closed in 2007 due to its poor condition, since when the lifeboats have been launched from the north-east side of the island. The crews continued to use the 1889 boathouse but the two inshore lifeboats were kept on their launch trolleys in the open air on Birnbeck Island. In April 2011 a new "temporary" boathouse was erected to give them cover. The structure cost £70,000 but has been designed so that it can be dismantled once permanent facilities are built and transported to be reused elsewhere. In 2015 the RNLI announced that it would seek planning permission for a permanent lifeboat station at Knightstone Harbour along with deep-water anchorage at Anchor Head and the facilities on Birnbeck Pier were closed. Weston-super-Mare is the busiest RNLI station on the south side of the Bristol Channel; in 2011 its two lifeboats were called out 42 times. Historically, the largest number of people rescued at one time was on 22 September 1884 when 40 passengers were taken off the SS Welsh Prince which got into difficulties after leaving the pier. ## See also - Grand Pier - List of piers